Category Archives: Spinning

Random Things

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Spinning

Not a lot going on here lately. What I have been doing is spinning and I’m trying to get in at least an hour or two a day. I’m still spinning on my rose gray Shetland and I’ve finished about a bobbin and a half, maybe six ounces. I have three pounds of this wool so I’m going to be spinning for a while. I’m spinning the singles super thin and then I plan on three plying it and hopefully I’ll have enough yarn for a sweater. Hopefully.

Knives

Last week I ran up to my school and ordered my uniforms and got my knives and baking kit. These knives are so much bigger in person than they look here. The blade on the big chef’s knife (second to the right) is 12”. They’re huge. I can’t wait to start class next week, I just hope my uniforms get here on time. Kitty In The Sun

And, just because, here’s Peanut. It was really warm and sunny yesterday and she slept by the back door in the sun all day. She looked so cozy.

Knit and Spin

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That’s what I’ve been doing. So here it is.

Buttercup in progress

Buttercup marches on. I’ve actually knit a little more since this picture was taken and I’m very close to being done with the body of the sweater, about two inches to go.  This has been a nice little knit. The pattern has been easy to follow and it’s very well written and organized. I like that it comes in a wide range of sizes and it’s easy to adjust to fit how you want it to. Most of the knitting is fairly mindless stockinette in the round and has been great while I’m reading or watching TV. The top was fiddly with increases happening at different rates in each section but it went pretty fast. The KnitPicks Cotlin is a great yarn. It starts out kind of rough but as you knit (and especially after it’s washed) it becomes soft and smooth and it feels nice and cool in your hands. I can’t wait to wear it this summer.

Crazy Handspun

And this is the spinning. I blended some different wools, llama, mohair, soy silk, nylon and some cellophane ice cycle stuff on my hackle and spun two yarns, one super thick and thin with cocoons of bright orange sparkle fiber and one that varies from a light fingering to worsted weight. Then I plied those singles with a black rayon chenille yarn. The yarn is fun and bright and poofy. Some sections of it are thin, about heavy worsted weight, and some are about the thickness of my thumb. I ended up with about 78yds of yarn total and I have no idea what to do with it, except just look at it. It’s pretty. I think I need to spin more often I really miss it.

Happy St.Patrick’s Day! 

Making Progress

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Spinning

I feel like I haven’t done any spinning in ages, it’s been since September, I think. This is some super fine Blue Faced Leicester in it’s natural white with little bits of vm still in it. I love this fiber. I bought it in Marshfield last year and waited and waited to start spinning and I’m so glad I did. I want something easy to spin right now since I’m a little out of practice and this is perfect. The fiber is drafting very fine and smooth and I’m getting a fairly consistent, extremely fine single. I know this going to fluff up when I wash it so I’m spinning finer than normal and I’m hoping to get a large amount of lace weight, enough for a big square shawl. I have right at 8oz of fiber and I’ve spun about two so far and the bobbin isn’t even half way full. I think this will make a nice yarn.

Mobius in Progress

On the knitting front, I was finally able to get a shot of my Hoarfrost Mobius. This is so open and the yarn is so thin that getting a picture to come out in focus has been nearly impossible. I’m knitting with Lion Brand Wool Stainless Steel (it’s the same as the Habu but half the price) in wine, you can’t tell it here but the color is a very dark burgundy, it’s pretty, and size 5US/3.75mm needles. I’ve knit about a quarter of it so far and the progress is very slow. I can only knit for a few rows at a time before my hands and shoulder start to hurt and I think the yarn is doing it. This yarn is really pretty but it’s also stiff and it has no stretch at all, it’s pretty hard on my hands to knit with. The fabric is beautiful, so light and airy and it is soft but has a bit of stifness, it hold it’s shape and you can bend and flex it. I really like way the fabric moves and looks but I don’t think I’ll use this yarn again for knitting, it’s just too tough to knit with, but I would love to try to weave with it.

Last night I started another Betiko but I couldn’t get a picture of it, my camera batteries died. I’m using some yarn that I had leftover from Revontuli and I’ve finished the neck edge, I did a simple five stitch garter stitch border and I’ll decide on what to do with the lower border when I get there.

Spinning and Knitting

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Handspun Shetland

I’m all done with my KnitPicks project and so this week I’ve been spinning on the Shetland I started either earlier this month or sometime in August. I finished the singles on Wednesday and I’ve been trying to do an hour or so of plying a day and so far I have three bobbin full. This is the first two that I wound off, the third hasn’t been done yet, I haven’t had a chance to do it. The yarn is two ply, it varies from worsted to fingering weight but I haven’t washed it yet so it could puff up a little. These first two skeins have about 150yds each and I have five or six bobbins left to ply so I should end up with a decent amount of yarn by the time I’m done.

I also washed up my gray Shetland fleece and after three days of drying I can tell you that it is beautiful. This was a very dirty fleece, my first two rinses the water came out almost black it was so dirty. The color lightened up a lot and it is very soft and I can’t wait to start spinning it. I wish I had a drum carder because I’m not looking forward to hand carding two pounds of fleece (not to mention the six other pounds of various other stuff that needs carded).

Pi Shawl

I’ve been spending a little time on the mini Pi shawl and I decided I was done knitting eyelets so I’m doing a few repeats of gull lace and then I’ll start the edging. I think I’ll do either five or six repeats of the lace, the shawl is just about as big as I want it to be. That’s really all I have to say about that.

My mom went on vacation last week and brought me some hand woven goodies and I’ll show them off next week. She gave me a couple bags and I already have pictures of them on my Flickr but there’s a couple pillows I forgot about and I want to post them at the same time.

Have a great weekend!

Knit, Spin, Dye, Weave

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In Progress

I’ve had a fairly busy week so I’m going to limit this post to the crafty stuff.

I finished knitting my Lilac Leaf Shawl and now I’m just waiting until I can remember to block it, I keep forgetting about it. The shawl came up short, it’s only about 48 inches long and I don’t know how long it will block out to be, but it’s fine. I guess I’ll block it next week.

Once the shawl was done I needed something else to knit on so I started a Rib Warmer in my handspun yarn, I think I actually posted this last week. Anyway, I finished one half and started the second and now I’m afraid I won’t have enough yarn to finish. This seems to be a theme with my knitting lately. Today I weighed the first half and then weighed the part that I’ve knit and the yarn I have leftover (there’s another huge skein that I didn’t take a picture of) and they’re close, hopefully I’ll be ok.

And I keep finding other things I want to make, a few sweaters and shawls that I want to cast on right now but I’m making myself wait a while, I have another KnitPicks project on the way and it’s a lot of knitting and only about two weeks to knit it, so I’ll have to knit like crazy when I get the yarn. Then I’m going to treat myself and buy some yarn for some things I’ve had in mind.

Handspun singles

I’ve been spinning this week, too. I’ve tried to spend around an hour a day at the wheel and I’m now up to six bobbins of singles and I have about eight ounces of wool left to spin then I get to ply. This yarn is so soft and fluffy and I can’t wait until I can knit something with it.

Dyed Yarn

On either Monday or Tuesday, don’t remember which, I did some dyeing. The little ball of yarn on the right was dyed a few months ago and I was trying to match that with the skein on the left. I used the same yarn (it’s Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool) and the same dye stock (it had been sitting in a jar in a cool, dark cabinet) but the yarn came out pretty different. The stuff I dyed this week has more red and less of the orangey-yellow than the first yarn. They’re close enough for me, though, I’m not picky.

Weaving

Looks pretty decent, right? I warped the loom with the older yarn and put a small border of the new yarn on each side (this was to make it wider, since the scarf was very narrow, I ran out of yarn fast). I’m using the newer yarn as weft (the strands going back and forth) and I think they look pretty good together, the difference in the color is much less pronounced when woven. I plan on weaving when I need a break from my KnitPicks project over the next few weeks, so I should have something to blog about while I’m working.

That was my week. Hope you all have a great weekend!