Category Archives: Spinning

Back to Normal

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Yarn

My KnitPicks projects are done and sent back and now I’m back to my normal spinning and knitting. I had a bag of this beautiful, fluffy Shetland that is a mix of white, gray and a light brown all carded together and rolled into giant balls of wool, I thought there was a pound, but I weighed them yesterday and there is two pounds. Don’t you love it when that happens? I started spinning up the wool and finished two bobbins, it’s about fingering weight and I spun it  where the singles have a lot of air and they are thick and thin with little slubs. I’ll spin it all and then start plying, I think I’ll do a two ply and then I’ll lightly full it to make it a little stronger when I’m done. Hopefully I’ll have enough for a little sweater, even if it’s short sleeved. So far I’ve spun about 8oz and that means I just have 24oz left.

In Progress

In the evenings I’ve been knitting. At the top there is my Proverbial Cap, which is by Meg Swanson and is in the Fall ‘10 Interweave Knits. I’m using Wool of the Andes and I’m about to start the decreases but I’m afraid I won’t have enough yarn to finish. I know I have some more of this yarn but I can’t find it. If I need to I’ll order some more since I plan on ordering some lace yarn soon anyway. It will all work out.

The shawl is the Lilac Leaf Shawl from Knitted Lace of Estonia and the yarn is my handspun. This shawl is made the same way Madli’s Shawl was, you knit one edge, then the center, then the other edge separately and then you graft the edge onto the center. Like I did with Madli, I knit both edges first and then I’ll knit the center either until it’s as long as I want or I run out of yarn. This yarn isn’t looking like it’s going to last too long so I’m not sure how bit it’s going to be. This is my sixth shawl of the year and my third from this book. I think it’s safe to say I got my money’s worth with Knitted Lace of Estonia, especially since there’s a few more shawls I plan on making from it.

I might do some weaving next week if I can decide on something to make. I think I’d like to weave some yardage for a messenger bag but I just haven’t decided on that yet.

Have a great weekend!

Spinning Knitting and Dogs

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Mohair/Bamboo Boucle

This isn’t the best picture but I think you can tell this is yarn. Last week I decided I wanted to try to spin a loopy boucle yarn. Boucle yarns have three parts, first is the core, I used some carbonized bamboo that I spun with a  low S twist and I spun it slightly thick, about 25-30 wpi. The second part is the mohair which I spun very thin, between 40 and 60 wpi, with a high Z twist. Then I plyed these two yarns in the S direction, holding the bamboo yarn straight from the orifice and the mohair at about a 90 degree angle. I let the mohair coil and loop loosely around the bamboo and occasionally pulled up a little loop to make a circle around the bamboo, it’s hard to describe and there’s a great article about it in the new Spin-Off, and it took a long time. Lastly I plyed the yarn again counterclockwise (Z direction) with some thick black sewing thread, the thread I used doesn’t have a label on it but it’s thicker than regular thread, I think it’s used for hand quilting or seaming clothing. Anyway, after all this I have about 90yds of loopy boucle yarn and it looks so much better in person than it does here.

Lace Saddle

I’ve been  moving right along on the Lace Saddle Tee. The front knit up much faster than the back did and I immediately started the saddle and sleeves. I took this picture yesterday and I’ve finished the first sleeve already. The directions have you pick up stitches from the front right shoulder, cast on at the neck edge for the saddle, and then pick up stitches on the back shoulder then you knit the saddle, attaching it as you go. Once the saddle is knit you pick up stitches on the arm holes and knit the sleeve cap using short rows. I think this is the first time I’ve done a sleeve like this and I really like it. It looks nice plus it’s just interesting to do, I had to pay attention every step of the way and that kept me from getting bored. Now I just need to do the second sleeve and I’ll be ready to knit the neck and then I’ll be done. I just hope I like it when it’s done, I think I figured out that the real problem I had with Josephine was the color, it doesn’t look too great on me. I don’t care, if I like the way it fits, I’ll wear it.

No picture, but I did finish knitting Madli today and I went right ahead and grafted the second edging on so it just needs blocked. I liked knitting it and I love how it looks but I must admit that I’m glad to be done. It was just too repetitive to keep my attention for more than a few minutes at a time and it just felt like the knitting was dragging on forever. I’ll try to block it early next week, if it isn’t raining.

Sally

I haven’t posted a Sally picture in a while, so here she is. We had to tighten up her collar just a touch the other day, she’s really lost some weight. She has a lot more energy, too. And I feel kinda silly writing that while she’s buried under the pillows sleeping on my bed.

Have a great weekend!

Knitting and Spinning

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CotLin

I’m so tired this week, ugh, I blame the heat. I’ve been trying to find something nice and cool to knit, something that doesn’t require massive amounts of wool in my lap.  A couple years ago I knit the Josephine top, from the Summer ‘07 Interweave Knits, and I never really liked it.  I like the top just not on me.  It was too long, a little too snug around the belly, and I hated the lack of sleeves.  So I got bored Monday and frogged it. There’s just no reason to have a perfectly good pile of yarn sitting around as something I’ll never wear.  What I’d really like to have is a plain old cotton and linen t-shirt that I can throw on with jeans or shorts or a skirt and not have it bother me the whole time I’m wearing it (like Josephine would).  After digging through Ravelry for hours I decided on the Lace Saddle Tee from the Summer 2010 IK.

I’m making a few little modifications to mine. I want this to be just like a regular shirt, fitted but not tight, so I’m making mine with right at zero ease in the chest and I’m leaving out the waist shaping. The neckline and sleeves will be like the pattern, no changes there.

Carbonized Bamboo

Today I was looking for something fun to do so I decided to play with making a boucle yarn, after reading about it in the new Spin-Off, I had to try it. All I got spun this afternoon was the core yarn, this is one ounce of carbonized bamboo spun with a low twist and it’s about lace weight. Tomorrow, if I have time, I’ll spin the yarn that will be looped around this, I’m going to be using some steel gray mohair. We’ll see how it works.

Busy Week

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Stitching the Border

This has been a crazy week.  I’ve barely had time to just sit and do a few stitches on this piece but I did finish the entire picture, all that’s left is the border and you can see where I started it on the top.  The border is three stitches wide and wraps around the piece and I have a feeling that it’s going to take forever to stitch, it’s boring.  I know that the picture will look so much better with it, so I’ll do it but it’s not fun.  I am really happy with how the rest of the piece looks and I think it will look gorgeous framed and hung on my wall.  I have a bright, striped quilt on my bed that has all the colors from this piece so it matches my room perfect.  I really like it.

Baby Camel Down/ Silk

Today I decided to finish spinning the baby camel down and silk that I started last week.  I did the second bobbin and the plying today and then I spun a couple ounces of hemp, which I didn’t get a picture of.  The camel/silk is amazingly soft and slinky and it just glows in the light, I wish I had more of it.  The yarn is thick and thin but mostly a fingering weight and it came out to about 170yds.

Monday and Tuesday were just crazy around here, especially Monday.  We had DirectTV installed and my cousin was here, it is so hard to entertain a nine-year old and try to stay of the way of a satellite installation guy.  Luckily it was pretty nice outside, a little rainy and cool and cloudy, but much better than the hot and humid nastiness we’ve had lately, so we stayed outside most of the day.  We made paper airplanes and stood in the driveway throwing them at each other.  We walked Sally around the front yard for a bit, and then after the satellite guy left we had lunch and played Poptropica until her dad picked her up.

That evening I made the custard for a French style ice cream.  French style ice cream is made with milk or cream and sugar plus eggs and it all has to be cooked and strained and cooled before it can be frozen.  I made Butter Pecan, so I had to brown the butter, melt some brown sugar in the butter and then mix in some cream, add this to the eggs, add more cream and vanilla and almond extract.  Then you pour the whole thing through a strainer and let it sit, I stuck mine in the refrigerator and let it sit all night.  Yesterday I made the ice cream itself.  Last time I made ice cream it didn’t freeze in the machine so I figured my mixing bowl wasn’t cold enough, so this time I made sure it was cold and that it stayed cold, in fact I over did it a bit.  I let the bowl freeze all week, I put it back in the freezer, wrapped in a plastic bag, last week after I made the last batch.  Then when I made this batch yesterday, I set the machine up, poured the mix in, then I wrapped a towel around the bowl and put a plastic bag over the top and then set a plate over the hole in the top of the machine (this is where you pour the mix in), I set a timer for twenty minutes and left it alone.  A minute or so before the timer went off, the machine quit.  I thought it had broke but when I unwrapped it, I saw that the ice cream had frozen so good and was so thick that the machine couldn’t stir it anymore.  The bad thing is that I didn’t have a chance to mix in the pecans, so I dumped the ice cream into another bowl and mixed them in by hand.  The ice cream is perfect, so rich and thick and it has this strong caramel flavor.  It’s perfect.  Next time, though, I’ll keep an eye on how it’s freezing.

The rest of the week hasn’t be as much fun as making ice cream, it’s mostly been doing dishes and cleaning and last night I went to dinner with my grandparents, my mom and my uncle, and then I got to set up our DSL.  It was kind of nice to just sit and spin today.

Some Spinning

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Recent Spinning

I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been spinning with nothing to show for it.  Well, here’s all the spinning I’ve done in the past month or so.  From the top we have some light purple superwash wool/soy silk with bits of angelina and it measures out to a little over 500yds.  This is spun from the roving I blended on my hackle back in March and the yarn came out super soft with a hint of sheen and touches of sparkle.  The middle yarn is some gray Shetland, it is a light fingering weight with some thick and thin spots and it came out to almost 140yds.  The big skein on the bottom is a Moorit Shetland that is mostly fingering weight with some thicker areas and the skein came out to a little over 350yds.  Now I’m up to almost 500yds of Shetland already spun and I still have about seven more pounds of Shetland to spin, so, yeah, I think I’ll have more than enough for a sweater.  This is just about eight ounces of wool so far, half a pound.

Next I’m going to take a short break from Shetland and spin that little bump of baby camel/silk and the hemp and then I’m right back to the Shetland.  I have two wool fleeces and three llama fleeces to wash and I need to start those next week since it’s going to be dry for a few days.  I really, really, really find myself wanting a drum carder.  I wish I could find one for around $200 but I can’t seem to find any for under $300.  I’m just going to keep watching ebay and Craigslist and I’m sure one will show up eventually (I’ve been saying the same thing about a weaving loom since November and I still don’t have one but that’s because I’ve missed out a few since I’m a total tight wad).

This morning I made up a batch of cookies.  I used the basic oatmeal cookie recipe off the cardboard tube thing (brain fart) that the Quaker oats come in but instead of raisins I added a cup each of chocolate and butterscotch chips and they are so tasty.  I forgot to add the salt but you can’t really tell.  They are extremely rich and very sweet and moist and chewy and heavenly.  I will have to make some more these.

That has been my day, cookies and spinning, not a bad day at all.