On the spinning tip

I have been spinning as well as knitting, but it's been a while since I've posted any pictures of the products of my labors. Here is the first half of the two-ply yarn from 11.5 oz of BFL from Briar Rose Fibers. (I couldn't find the exact one on her site, but this one is a pretty close match.) The rest of the singles are waiting to be plied together. This half took me about two hours to ply, and my back started to hurt, so I put the rest aside for later.



Next up is unknown yardage of singles from Fiber Optic Yarns, "Formerly Cranberry overdyed Besame Mucho, No. 26 'Days of Wine and Roses' superwash merino/nylon Foot Notes UNSPUN pencil roving". I have no idea what most of that title means, but it was a super soft and wonderful spin. As you can see from the Etsy listing, the colors were beautifully varied, yet the color after spinning ended up remarkably homogenous, though perhaps with a depth it wouldn't have had with a single color roving. Also, I think this is the first time I've spun pencil roving (although I have a bunch of it, undyed, in my stash) and it certainly makes the process easier - no pesky predrafting needed! It feels a little like cheating. I always have to remind myself that I am not getting graded on things.



I wound it into a cake because I had run out of bobbins and wanted to start plying today. I was considering using it for a 2-ply, although it is quite nice as a singles, I realized after winding it. But it could even go bigger, into a cable-plied 4-ply yarn, because the color is so nice. It's not as pink as this picture makes it look; it's really a deep, intense, cherry red. Or maybe cranberry, like the name of the roving.

Below is 2-ply spun from some gorgeous roving from Pigeonroof Studios. I was a huge fan of P.S. for a really long time and have raved about her skills as a colorist in this blog before. However, I'm kind of disappointed in the direction she has gone of late. She has a cool new methodology she seems to have invented for applying dye to yarn, and within what she calls The Luminosity Project she has been selling beautiful yarns in lots of deep and complex what you might call "anti-dyelots." However, the dye work in the roving she has been selling alongside those yarns does not seem to have the same depth and complexity, but instead seems kind of anemic and faint hearted. I have the RSS feed from her store in my reader and avidly scroll through the pictures whenever I see there are new listings, but I haven't felt the old craven greed to have something from her in a long time. So when I saw this, 4.2 oz of BOMBAY Blue-Faced Leicester/silk roving, I snapped it up. I spun it into this:



Next up, probably, is 'BLACK COFFEE' superwash merino roving, also from Fiber Optic Yarns. It's a grand mix of browns, containing black and gray and green and blue and purple overtones. The name alone makes me happy. I am looking forward to spinning it!

* * * * *
My LYS, Stix-n-Stitches in Montclair, is having a yarn swap this weekend. I participated last June when they had one, but on that occasion I only brought commercial yarns from my stash. It occurred to me this time that maybe I could bring some of my own handspun. I somewhat timidly asked the owner, Sheila Handelsman, and to my surprise she was happy to let me do so. When I brought it in last night, I received the nicest reception to all the yarns from both Sheila and Patty, another staff member there. In fact Sheila bought some of it on the spot, which made me very happy. It was tremendously gratifying. Usually, almost nobody sees my yarns other than myself and MHA; I sometimes feel like I'm in a vacuum out here in the wilds of NJ, making my yarn and then just putting in a huge Tupperware storage container in my studio!

In fact, Sheila put my handspun yarns in a special basket, separate from the yarn swap, with specially attentive focus on the presentation. She said that she thought we might work out something going forward where I could sell it on consignment. She pointed out some bags she sells there; every sale of one of those, she gets a piece of the price and the seller gets the rest. I would be delighted to set up an arrangement like that, so I hope that what I have brought over so far sells well!
 

Orange sweater, briefly noted

In my previous post, which I just re-read, I noted that I am going to be working bust darts in the orange sweater. (For the uninitiated, this means you add a little extra fabric where the boobs are, so that there is room for them.) I realized as I was reading that, although I am working on the back piece right now, I have been measuring as I go so that when I get to 12-1/2" I can add the bust dart short rows in the current piece. I'm delighted to have realized this before I add bust darts to the back of the sweater, rather than after.



 

The orange sweater is underway

I don't think it's going to be exactly like the sweater of my memories. It will be better fitting, because I am a grown-up and I can't hide in oversized men's sweaters anymore. It is variegated in color, rather than one single orange hue, because I fell in love with an orange colorway of Nate's Sock Yarn from Briar Rose Fibers and bought all of it that she had. It might be a little scratchy (in this, I think it will be like the sweater from college days), because there is a little VM in the yarn from time to time, and although I have been trying to pick it out before it gets knitted into the sweater, I have occasionally been working in the dark (while we are commuting home) so I have certainly missed some of it. But that stuff will come out in the wearing, if not the wash.



I considered cables and various Aran embellishments (even though the original was just a simple, boxy, man's stockinette sweater), and I even swatched some, but I was underwhelmed by how those felt once worked using the yarn, so I decided not to use them. I used the Sweater Wizard software to plot out the basic numbers for me, and now I am about 2/5 into the back piece. I am adding a bust dart because I gotta da big boobs. Time to admit it.

Whenever I knit sweaters, I like to do the back, then the sleeves, and then the front. It's a delayed gratification thing; I like that when I am finally working on the front, I am close to being done, and I know when I finish the front, I will be able to put it all together.
 

Kai's Purple Sweater

This is Kai, our friends Cory and Michelle's little peanut. He is wearing the sweater I knit for him several months ago. Like a dumbass, I forgot to take a picture of it before sending it off to them, and then I had to wait until he was big enough for it (squee!) so they could get me some pics. Now he is big enough, and apparently rapidly growing through the size of the sweater, so it may be that next week he won't be able to wear it anymore. In any case, it was a very enjoyable, and of course fast, knit.



It's made from Queensland Collection Bebe Cotsoy; I've never used yarn with soy fiber in it before, and I liked it. Usually cotton is a little rough on my hands, but the mix of soy with it meant that this was really soft. The pattern is Top Down Raglan Baby Sweater by Carole Barenys, and it was quite a pleasure to knit a sweater from the top down as well as in this yarn. All in all, especially taking how small the thing was and therefore how fast it went, which adds the quick gratification factor, this was a great little project that I enjoyed a lot.

I got a little bit of guff for using purple for a boy. C and M were fine with it, and that's all I care about, really. Kai certainly doesn't care. But, to those who are uptight about purple on a boy, let me just say, get over it! Srsly!

Besides, I used these very boyish blue bear buttons!



Ravelry link
 

Connectivity upgrade

Adam fulfilled his promise of running an ethernet cable into my office here at home, despite his certainty that it would not improve the experience on my machine. (I have a Mac, which he would like to believe is the root of all evils.) There was a small amount of squabbling during the process, but it got done eventually and some testing was then done to determine whether it would have any effect. You may ask, how can you tell? We went to speedtest.net, at which very well-named website you can test the speed of your connection to the internet. Here is the output of the test while connected wirelessly:



And here is the output of the test while connected via the new ethernet cable:



Adam was surprised, but convinced. :)
 

Charts vs written instructions: Barbara Walker

I was reading in Annie Modesitt's blog about charts for lace and it occurred to me that there are few (if any?) charts in the first two of Barbara Walker's Stitch Treasuries. MHA gave me vols. 1-3 of these for Christmas this year. I've been poring over the first two and, although I am certainly comfortable with reading written-out instructions for knitting patterns, I find charts much easier to read as a general rule. My question to the world is: Has anybody taken on the task of charting all the instructions in the Barbara Walker books? It strikes me that this would be a monumental task ... but also a tremendous gift to the knitting world if this were done.

I began looking through Google results for "Barbara Walker charts". I found this gem: The Walker Treasury Project, a blog-form collection of color photographs of all the patterns and stitches in the Walker Treasury books (including Mosaic Knitting). I gather that the third book, which I haven't gotten to yet, does include charts. I need to keep pressing on. However, I still wonder if anybody is working on charting the patterns and stitches in the first two books, and whether the fourth one, and/or Mosaic Knitting, include charts.

I discovered that one person, at least, has done some work on it: Lucia, the Knitting Fiend, has a couple of charts she worked up in her blog's stitchpatterns category. I am wondering if there is a community project in this, and whether others would be interested in starting to collect charts they have done of the uncharted material?
 

Technical details ironed out!

Back in the start of 2008 - so, two years ago already, I can't believe it! - I created a pattern for gloves with longish wrist coverage called Gauntlets. (The original post is here.)



Originally I put it up for sale on my Etsy shop, but I have now decided to offer it for free. It took me a little while to get myself set up as a designer on Ravelry, but I am all connected up there now, and the pattern is now available as a free download there.

I continue to use this pattern, with variations, for gloves for myself and MHA, and even for my mom. (If you look close, you can see these are Pittsburgh's colors - black and gold.)



I would love to see anybody who wishes it to take advantage of this fun pattern! One expects it to be a little fiddly, since it starts with the fingers; each finger is done in turn and set on an extra circular needle to await joining. Then the index, middle, and ring fingers are joined, then the pinky, then part of the hand is knitted, then the thumb gets attached and its stitches "gobbled up"! Once the thumb stitches are all consumed, the hand is practically done! After that it's on to the decorative edging, which is easy as pie even though it looks sweet when you finish.



Download Gauntlets now - FREE!

If you are not on Ravelry, leave a comment that you would like the PDF and I will be happy to send it to you. I hope you enjoy using this pattern!