Little Knitting but Lots of Love

Happy Monday, friends! It's a Monday off for me, as my office is closed in observance of Juneteeth. Later this morning Rainbow has an orthodontist appointment to get her first contraption removed, but the rest of the day is completely unscheduled -- and I'm planning to fully enjoy that, because I'm expecting a big work project to land in my inbox first thing tomorrow.

As I mentioned on Friday, we had a weekend of birthday celebrations and time spent with family visiting from out of town. We also got lucky with some absolutely spectacular weather, as the humidity dropped and highs were only in the low to mid-70s. Think blue skies, light winds, and plenty of sun. We had good meals and great company, and it was wonderful to see some family members we hadn't seen in person since my brother's wedding in December 2019.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all that family time meant not a whole lot of crafting, but I did manage to finish up that second scrappy hat I started last week.

I used three colorways throughout this hat and played a bit of yarn chicken toward the end, but I had enough to finish. This was intended to be another charity hat, but a certain someone in this house decided she loved it and asked if she could have it -- and how could I say no? I'm sure there are more of these hats in my future, as they're a great way to use up some leftovers and add to my Stash Dash total (currently at a bit more than 3,200 m).

My brother's birthday is now officially less than a month away, so it's really time to focus on getting his sweater done. I am currently working on the pocket of the left front, and I'm planning to spend some time on it this afternoon. I also have a short workweek ahead, as I'm using up my second personal day for the year on Friday. If you catch me getting distracted by more scrappy hats, remind me that I need to finish the sweater!

Do It Twice

If there was a theme for my most recent spinning project, it was "do it twice." Of course, I'd anticipated some of that because I started out with two bags of the same fiber, New Zealand Merino from Southern Cross Fibre in the colorway Yesterday's Love. What I didn't anticipate was that, in addition to spinning the two bobbins of singles to start, I'd also end up plying the yarn twice.

I wanted to have just one skein of yarn after I plied, and so in order to accommodate that much yarn (I'd started with at least 220 g/close to 8 oz. of fiber), I needed to use my Hansen miniSpinner to ply because its bobbins have the largest capacity of any of my wheels. In the past, my miniSpinner was my go-to wheel, but I hadn't used it in some time and was clearly out of practice. Unlike with a treadle wheel, where you have a sense of how much twist is being put into yarn because you're physically adding it by moving the wheel through your treadling, with an espinner you have to rely on how the yarn looks. And looks can be deceiving when it comes to ply twist, because not only do you lose a little bit as the yarn gets wound onto the bobbin, but washing the finished yarn reawakens the twist put into the singles (which is in in the opposite direction of the ply twist) and counteracts the ply twist. That's a long-winded and somewhat technical way of saying that I wasn't getting a good idea of how much ply twist I was putting into the yarn and it wound up being too little for my taste, though I didn't know that for sure until after I'd skeined and washed the yarn. Here is what it looked like at that point (apologies for the glare -- there wasn't good lighting to be had when I took this photo):

Notice how the yarn looks like of scraggly? That means there isn't enough ply twist, at least in my opinion. Fortunately, it's an easy enough problem to solve, provided you're willing to invest a bit more time. Once the yarn was dry, I put it on my swift and wound it into a center-pull ball. Then I ran it back through the miniSpinner to add more ply twist (which is much faster the second time around, and with an espinner means just sitting and holding the ball of yarn) and skeined and washed it again. Much better!

Can you see how the yarn looks like a cohesive unit now, rather than just some strands lying side by side? I'm much happier with it now. Here is a look at the entire skein:

After plying the second time, the finished yarn is sport weight and approximately 580-ish yards/530-ish meters. It was also my last official project for Stash Dash, which I was really only doing on my own (the KnitGirllls moved all the discussion for the event from Ravelry to Discord, and though I signed up there, I didn't really have the mental energy to keep up with the discussion). I tracked my meters through an Excel spreadsheet I kept on my desktop and updated as I finished a project. Handspun meters for this event are counted based on the number of times the yarn goes through your hands, so you get credit for the length of the singles and well as the plying. Because this is a four-ply (sort of) yarn, that means I got to calculate the Stash Dash total for this skein by multiplying the final length times five -- and that means that this skein alone contributed 2,647.5 meters to my total. When Stash Dash officially ended on August 31, my final total for the entire event was close to 18,050 meters. Not bad at all!

Let's take a look at where things stand on my effort to spin down my SCF club stash. Here's the photo I took at the beginning of the year of what I had (and note that this does not include club fiber that has come in since, though I've already spun much of that), along with what I have already spun checked off:

I've made a dent, but there's still a lot to be spun, and I still have another bag coming in each month. I so enjoyed my Shifty sweater spin that I'm contemplating spinning up another sweater's quantity in club fiber, though this time I think I'd do another combo spin. I pulled out several bags that are all predominantly green, with some hints of yellow, blue, and brown, that I thing would go well together:

I think what I'd do with these is split them up into little bits and mix them up to spin the singles, similar with what I did for the yarn I used in my Ramona Cardigan. There's less variation in color in these fiber selections, though, so I think if I mixed them up well, I'd end up with yarn that reads green overall. I was thinking that such a yarn, assuming I could spin enough, would be great for my planned Garland (Ravelry link) sweater for use as the main color, and I could use a contrasting color or even an undyed yarn for the colorwork. Looking at the photo of all the club shipments, I also see quite a few in the red/pink family that look like they'd work well together, so perhaps I could spin those for Rainbow's Little Garland? I'm excited about the possibility of using up a lot of fiber in one spinning project, but I won't be getting started just yet -- my first priority is finally finishing my swatch for my Shifty so that I verify my needle size and get going on that sweater. One handspun sweater at a time!

Baby's First Stripes

It turns out that when you focus on one project, it does get finished!

Pattern: Flax Light by Tin Can Knits, size 6-12 months
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (80% superwash merino/20% nylon), OOAK colorway, 0.77 skeins (308 yards/281.6 meters)
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 2 (2.75 mm)
Started/Completed: August 2/August 18

As you can see, this wee baby sweater is still in need of a good blocking, but it's done, with fairly closely matching sleeves to boot. I started both sleeves in the exact same place in the stripe sequence, but I had to fudge things a little on the second sleeve to make them look almost identical. They are just the tiniest bit off, but I'm not too bothered by this and doubt anyone but me will notice.

The pattern is great -- well written, easy to follow -- and my only modification, if you can even call it that, was to pick up some additional stitches at the underarm when I started the sleeves to avoid holes. I decreased them away in the first few rounds. This is something I often do with top-down sweaters because there's always that gap when you change directions in knitting.

I haven't talked much about Stash Dash on the blog this year, but I have been keeping track of how much yarn I've used up or spun. In the true spirit of the event, I'm challenging no one but myself, and even that has been more casual this year. I didn't set a goal for myself at all but instead have been keeping a tally just to see what the number is. With the addition of this sweater, my current total stands at a bit more than 15,392 meters. It would be amazing to get to 20K, but if I don't, that's fine, too. The event ends at the end of this month, which is not a lot of time left, so we'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I had the urge to start a new project yesterday but forced myself to finish the sweater first, so my reward for finishing was starting a new scrappy charity hat last night:

I had a good amount of the blue/gray variegated yarn, so I pulled some other grays and blues to hold with it and am knitting a marled, double-stranded hat. I decided to do a Musselburgh-style doubled beanie, but mine will be closer to DK weight thanks to the double stranding. The finished product should be a very warm hat for someone and will use up a bunch of scraps. And once I finish the increases, there should be a lot of stockinette in the round (I plan to switch over to a 16" circ then), which should be perfect for knitting while reading!

Wearing My Yellow Jersey

Today marks the end of the Tour de Fleece, which really seemed to fly by this year. Traditionally the leader of the Tour de France wears a yellow cycling jersey, so spinners are encouraged to do the same on the final day. Yellow is not a great color on me, though so I am only wearing one in spirit.

My goals for this year's Tour weren't very lofty -- I just wanted to spin at least a little every day and finish a small number of skeins. And that's exactly what I did. I didn't even have to spin up to the last minute to finish my last project, my HipStrings custom-blended batts. I had finished spinning the last bobbin of singles on Thursday, so I plied a bobbin each on Friday and yesterday and skeined and washed the resulting yarn last night.

I've had to edit these photos quite a bit to get them to even somewhat resemble what the yarn looks like in real life; for some reason, every photo I take comes out looking washed out and much lighter than the actual color. So the surface the skeins are sitting on is actually white, even if it appears blue here.

I ended up with two bit skeins of three ply, falling roughly in the sport to DK range, and a tiny mini skein of the remaining singles from the dark purple batt. The yarn is reading overall as a blue, but I love how there are not only two different shades of blue, plus purple, in the plies but also pops of many other colors from all the bits of silk and sari silk and other add-ins. I still have no idea of the actual fiber content of these batts, but that's just fine -- they were a delight to spin!

My two big skeins gave me nearly 780 yards, which is more than enough for a little sweater (I have my eye on Zero Crops Given, though I might work the body plain and lengthen both the body and the sleeves just a bit). My mini skein is only about 8.5 yards, and I only spun it to use up the rest of the singles, not with any real use in mind.

This may not have been my most prolific Tour ever, but by my count, I finished a bit more than 1,500 yards of yarn. Not too shabby! These most recently finished skeins also put me over the 10K mark for Stash Dash, thanks to the way that handspun is calculated (you get to count the length of each ply plus the total final length of the skein). In fact, I'm almost to 11K!

I am still on a long-term effort to spin down my stash, so don't think that because the Tour de Fleece is over you'll be seeing any less handspun from me. But you just might see me knitting with the handspun more in the months ahead.

On Meeting -- and Exceeding -- My Goal

I wasn't too worried, if I'm honest, but I'm happy to report that I did indeed meet my Stash Dash goal by finishing up that skein of Finnsheep yarn. Here it is after washing and drying:

It made for an interesting spin. The fiber was in roving form and very minimally processed, so there was still quite a bit of lanolin still in the wool and a fair amount of VM that I pulled out or that fell out as I was spinning (I had to make liberal use of my lint roller after each spinning session). Although it was roving, a carded preparation, I decided to spin it short forward draw, which I typically do with combed top, mainly because I wanted it to be a little more consistent and I knew I'd be faster spinning with my default style. It's still a bit lumpy bumpy because the fiber was a mix of different colors, and it's not uncommon for different colors of fleece -- even on the same animal -- to have different textures. I wasn't aiming for perfection, so I'm quite happy with the more rustic finished look. I did give it a good long soak in hot water with some dish soap to get out the lanolin, and it puffed up very nicely.

The finished yarn is, I'd say, in the range of fingering to sport weight and approximately 350.8 yards/320.8 meters. With the way handspun is counted for Stash Dash, it contributed 962.4 meters toward my total, more than enough to get me over my 15K finish line. In fact, my final total was more than 15,800 meters! Even though I did all the work on the projects that got me there, I'm still a bit surprised at how high my total was! More than a third of it was due to my Rambouillet fleece spin, and that's probably what I'm most proud of among my finished projects this summer.

I have since started in on the second bobbin of purple Rambouillet singles, but I haven't gotten very far on it because I've done almost no spinning this weekend. Since late yesterday, I've been feeling strangely under the weather -- no COVID-like symptoms, thank goodness, but I've been tired and my leg joints have all been achy. Last night I didn't sleep very well, and this morning I had a little incident (I'm pretty sure related to an IBS issue; I'll spare you the details) where I actually passed out very briefly in the bathroom. Thankfully I didn't fall this time, but it was scary for a bit there. I spent all today resting in bed, curled up with a cozy blanket and my knitting. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'm back to normal tomorrow; I can tell it's nothing serious because I was able to knit for most of the day (I have learned from past experience that if I don't feel like knitting, something is really wrong!). Thankfully even if I need another day of lounging, I don't have to worry about it because I am taking this week off from work! Rainbow and I have a list of things we'd like to do, but mostly the goal is to spend some time together before she goes back to school on September 1. And I am very lucky that she has been used to me knitting all the time for her whole life, so she thinks nothing of it if my hands are busy while we're talking or playing a game. I may not get as much reading time in this week, but you can be sure we'll be doing a lot of crafting.

Hedging My Bets

It was a productive weekend in terms of finishing things and racking up the meters for Stash Dash, but as I predicted, it's going to come down to the wire.

First, the finished object: I finally finished the hat that has been on the needles for way too long.

The crown ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would (which makes sense given how many stitches I had on the needles!), but I did finish it and get it blocked. I have the pattern roughly written out using my very scientific method of notes on slips of paper, so now it's a matter of getting it typed and into a layout so I can send it to my tech editor. I used a little more than three quarters of my skein of yarn, 281.6 m toward my total.

And though it's not Sunday, I'll share the finished photos of the skein you saw pre-wash on Sunday. It poofed up perfectly!

Polwarth, as I mentioned, does have a tendency to puff up when it's washed; Polwarth is a result of cross-breeding Merino and Lincoln sheep. In the past, I've had it puff up so much that what looked like, say, fingering weight fresh off the wheel turn into sport or DK after washing. But this particular skein stayed firmly in fingering territory, and the poofing it did resulted in a slight tightening of the ply so it's just like I like it. The final yardage was just shy of 417 yards or about 380 meters. The Stash Dash handspun rules allow you to count the length of the skein for each time the yarn passes through your hands, so the total number of plies plus one for plying. For a two-ply yarn, that means length times three, so this skein counted for 1,140.9 meters toward my total.

At the moment, my Stash Dash total is 14,868 m. I am so close to 15K -- just 132 meters left to go! Unfortunately, my WIPs are all are the large side, and I thought it unlikely that I'd finish one by Friday. So what to do? Start another spinning project, of course!

This is some natural Finnsheep roving that I bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2016(!), when it was the featured breed and there was a special tent for Finnsheep breeders. The fiber, which apparently came from a sheep named Stormy from a farm in the middle of Pennsylvania, is very minimally processed -- there's lots of VM to pick out and a good amount of lanolin softening my hands as I spin. I'm spinning the roving from beginning to end and plan to ply from both ends. I'm sure that I'll end up with more than enough meters in the end to get me over the 15K mark, but this particular spin is doing double duty of getting me to spin something that's been in my mental queue for far too long.

I'm not making myself crazy with the spinning and still doing some knitting, and I've turned my attention back to my Torbellino sweater. I'm still on the body and have a little more than 6 inches left to knit before the next section where I have to pay attention (the short rows that make the back of the sweater a little longer than the front).

If you look closely, you'll see that I'm almost at the end of my first skein of my main color, and that's one way I've been able to see that I'm making progress -- it seems like the body of this sweater should be going a lot faster than it has! I am starting to see some signs outside that fall is not that far away, so I'm hopeful that that's enough motivation to get me to really focus on this project. I am very much looking forward to weather that's cool enough to require a sweater!

It's Going to Be a Nail-biter

As of right now, there are five more days of Stash Dash. If I want to hit my 15K goal, I need to make up a gap of just a little less than 1,300 yards. I don't think this skein of handspun is going to take care of all of it, but it'll get me much closer.

The singles were finished yesterday, and though I was very excited to start plying, I made myself wait until today to let the singles rest overnight. (That's strictly not necessary, by the way, but I've found that letting the singles rest allows the spinning twist to calm down a bit, which makes plying a bit easier.) Once I started plying today, though, I really couldn't rest until I was done.

I'm really pleased by the way the colors mixed and mingled, and I was pretty consistent, too, because when one bobbin ran out of singles I had only a bit left on the other bobbin that I Andean plied in order to use every last bit in this skein.

For those of you who think my yarn is perfect coming off the wheel, I present the following exhibit -- how most of my skeins look when they've just been plied:

Many spinners will tell you that the goal of spinning is to get a balanced yarn -- that is, the amount of twist you put into the singles is balanced out by the amount of twist in the other direction that you put in when plying. I don't necessarily think that's the goal for me, and in fact sometimes I like more plying twist because it can help to create a more elastic and thereby more durable yarn, but I share this picture because you really can't tell for sure whether a skein of handspun is balanced or not when it comes off the wheel. In this case, the plying twist is most active because the singles were spun prior to plying, so all that kinking up you're seeing is from the plying. The wonderful thing about wool is that when you get it well, it reawakens the crimp in the fiber and the twist in the singles, so the twist in both directions works itself out.

The skein has been washed and is now sitting out on the porch to dry, so we'll have to wait and see what the final yardage is. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I have some happy news to share! Yesterday my brother and sister-in-law welcomed a new family member. Meet Leo McGarry!

He is a 10-month-old Boxer/hound mix, and he is super sweet. They found in at a shelter in West Virginia and drove down yesterday to meet him. He's still settling in, but based upon the photo my brother texted us last night, he seems to be happy in his new forever home:

I still would like a dog of my own, but we're not quite ready for one just yet. So in the meantime I'll be happy to be "dog aunt"!

Running Out of Time

I looked at the calendar yesterday and realized that if I'm going to hit my 15K Stash Dash goal, I needed to do something different. I'm still working my way out of that knitting black hole here; I'd hoped to finish my hat yesterday, which didn't happen (I've only just started the crown decreases), but even if I had, it would only have been a drop in the bucket with maybe a few hundred meters. The truth is that the fastest way to rack up the meters is by spinning, because the Stash Dash rules allow you to count your meters for each ply in the yarn and for plying. That means that if I spin 100 meters of three-ply yarn, I get to count it as 400 meters. I was also getting pretty close to finishing up my first bobbin of purple singles yesterday, so I decided to take decisive action and split up the Southern Cross Fibre Polwarth I just received and spin it next.

I've spit the fiber for a fractal spin. That's when you have dyed fiber and you split it so that each ply in the yarn goes through the same sequence of colors but at different rates. I split the long piece of fiber in half, and then I intended to split one of those pieces into half again but did a lousy job, so I ended up with three strips. It'll still work just fine; having more pieces for one of the plies just means that the colors will have shorter runs when the fiber is spun. I'm spinning a two ply and aiming for fingering weight -- I'm spinning the singles at my default thickness because I know that Polwarth tends to poof up when you wash it. The goal is to spin and ply by next Friday for the end of Stash Dash.

One reason spinning is so appealing right now (aside from the fact that it seems a bit faster than knitting) is that it's something I can easily do while reading. Yesterday I was surprised -- delighted, actually -- when my library hold came up for The Warmth of Other Suns; I'd thought I had at least another week to wait for it! As luck would have it, I was just about to finish another library book, so the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I finished my bobbin of purple and the book by early afternoon yesterday and then started both the new book and the new spin at about the same time. Those of you who have read it know that this book isn't a short read, so it will be excellent to keep me company while I try to spin this one last skein.

Tomorrow I get to go to my office to pick up some items, and it's been almost exactly five months since I left it. I have a feeling it's going to be a bit surreal. I'm sure all my plants have long since died, but otherwise I expect everything will look exactly the same. When I was last there, I knew I'd be off for a couple of days, but none of us thought we'd be out for the foreseeable future. I certainly never expected to miss the office, either, but I have caught myself staring at the building wistfully from time to time (I see it regularly because it's along my running route).

I'll leave you today with a little bit of eye candy that Rainbow and I spotted when we took a stroll around the neighborhood yesterday. We had a lot of pretty shades of pink and blue in our hydrangeas earlier this summer, before the heat burned all the flowers up, but we'd never before spotted this deep purple shade:

Have a good rest of the week, stay safe and hydrated, and wash your hands! I'll be back to update you on my spinning on Sunday.

Hope Springs (Eternal?)

I'm looking at the clock as I type this and can't believe another weekend is almost over -- where does the time go? We didn't do very much this weekend other than a trip to Target yesterday (which was, frankly, exhausting due to all the people) and a little birthday party for my nephew at the park today, but somehow the past two days have flown by. I honestly think I've been getting more crafting done during the week than over the weekend lately!

I suspect you will not be surprised that I finished another skein of handspun this week, and I think it's the second most-recent Southern Cross Fibre club shipment I received. This was April's club (they're usually mailed out toward the end of the month to begin with, and the mail is obviously taking longer these days, so I don't think I received it until close to the end of May). This moody colorway, called Hope Springs, was dyed on grey Corriedale fiber, and I think that color in the original fiber really gives such depth to the colors.

I spun my default yarn for this skein -- worsted style, short forward draw, three-ply fingering weight. Before I started, I split the fiber into four long strips and then spun each strip all onto one bobbin. I chain-plied the singles to preserve the colors, so this will stripe (albeit subtly) when it's knit up.

I'm very pleased with the finished appearance and the amount of twist in the yarn, but the yardage was a bit low -- only 319 yards/291.7 meters from 4 oz./113 g of fiber. Normally I hope to get about 350-400 yards for that amount, but I suppose this fiber was on the denser side. It'll be excellent for socks, though, and the yarn could easily be stretched by using a contrast color for cuffs, heels, and toes. And according to the special rules for handspun, it'll count for more than 1,160 meters toward my total!

This skein was a bit of a palate cleanser because I'm getting ready to start another sweater spin. The next one won't be quite as bit an undertaking as the fleece, but I will need some stamina to get through spinning a lot of the same color. This is what's on tap next:

This was February's Southern Cross club shipment, Rambouillet in a colorway called Thunderstruck. I loved it so much when David posted the spoiler photo that I went on to the website and bought three more lots of it. My plan is to spin up all four bags into three-ply fingering and use it along with the skein of Pebbles I finished a few weeks ago in a Tiny Dancer (Ravelry link) sweater. Although all the fiber is purple, you can see that it's multiple shades, so I'm splitting up the fiber into some smaller pieces before I spin to mix it up as much as possible. I am spinning using my WooLee Winder, which allows me to get more on my bobbin than my standard flyer, so I will be spinning three bobbins of singles. I have four bags of fiber, so I split one of them into thirds and am adding some additional fiber to each of the three other bags. All the purple should be well mixed up, and I'll be plying it all together in the end, which should counteract any inconsistencies. Here's hoping the plan works as well in real life as it does in my head!

That'll Do

Yesterday one of my daily goals was to ply up the merino I'd been spinning to serve as my contrast color for my Rambouillet fleece spin. I was a bit nervous about matching the grist, so I was anxious to finish the skein and wash it to see if it would work. I should have trusted myself -- it seems like it'll work just fine!

It's a traditional three-ply yarn, and I spun the singles just a tad thicker than I normally would for my default yarn. That was the main challenge, but I think I did okay in the long run. It looks good next to the Rambo:

And a side-by-side comparison shows that the thickness is pretty spot on:

I ended up with approximately 260 yards, which is a bit less than I'd hoped for, though my finished skein seemed like it was a bit light at 100 g (the fiber was labeled 4 oz., which is about 113 g, and the tiny bit of leftover singles I had probably didn't weigh enough to make up the difference). That really doesn't matter in the long run, though, as I should have plenty for the sweater it's intended for and still have some leftover. It's also another braid of fiber that's been converted to yarn in less than a week and another 950 meters toward my Stash Dash total, putting me at 9,574 m at the moment. I've upped my goal to 15K or higher, and frankly with the projects I have going right now, I don't think that's at all inconceivable.

The next spin is ready to go: the April 2020 Southern Cross Fibre club shipment, Hope Springs, on grey Corriedale:

I'm going to spin another chain-plied fingering weight, so I've split the fiber into four vertical strips for striping. I have a three-day online conference to attend this week, which means I'll be doing a lot of listening to speakers, so I expect this'll go fairly quickly. The spinning mojo isn't showing any signs of slowing down!

Time to Get Monogamous

It's July 23 (yes, really; I checked!). One week remains in the month, and I've decided that I really want to finish Rainbow's blanket by the end of the month. So I've decided to buckle down and focus on it almost exclusively. But I have updates on other projects. First, an FO you got a peek at yesterday:

Pattern: Amigurumi Alpaca from A Little Love Every Day

Yarn: Knit Picks Dishie in Verdigris (approximately 66.5 yds.) and Swan (approximately 19 yds.)

Hook: 3.0 mm

Started/Completed: July 16/July 21

Mods: none (at least not any that were intentional!)

I went through a period when I was a teenager when I was making little stuffed animals, but that was, um, quite a few years ago and I had to relearn the technique. Once I got the hang of it, and once I realized that I needed to stick a locking stitch marker in the first stitch of the round to keep track of where it was, it was much easier to than I was expecting. In reality, this little guy didn't take as long as the start-to-finish dates would suggest. I did a bunch when I first started, then put it aside for a couple days, and then pretty much did the rest on Tuesday. I'm sure there are a few mistakes, but you really can't tell and I know for a fact that my nephew won't know the difference. I may try to make a companion in the next week, but I'm not stressing about it if I don't get around to it. I stuffed him just enough to make him squishy and embroidered the face to make him baby safe. The hardest part of the project was definitely sewing on all the little appendages!

I've also gotten past the split on my Torbellino, though I haven't knit on it in a couple of days. I'm at least at the point where it's all stockinette in the round for quite a bit, so it's now a mindless knit.

And here's where things stand on Rainbow's blanket. I've got about half of the current skein left to add plus two full skeins.

I'm fairly certain that she will find this to be big enough when this yarn is used up, particularly given that we can stretch it out even bigger in blocking. Lately she's been favoring blankets that are technically baby blankets, ones that either cover her legs or can be wrapped around her shoulders. And I'm feeling pretty confident that if I focus on this project for even just a few days, I'll be able to wrap it up. If I just end up using the yarn I have left here, it should mean about 3,100 yards or 2,800 meters to add to my Stash Dash total -- more than enough to push me over the 10K mark!

Just Yoking

While I'm sure this won't last for long, because I can already feel my fingers getting itchy, at the moment I have only one knit work in progress, and that's my Torbellino (Ravelry link).

I have now reached and in fact surpassed the point where I have enough stitches to fill a 40 in. circular needle, which is why I'm not able to spread out the full yoke for a photo. I'm really enjoying this, and aside from one mistake from an apparent inability to count to 3 reliably, it's been an easy knit. It's always a joy to knit a pattern that makes you appreciate its cleverness, and it's a bonus when the designer is also a friend. I know the finished sweater is going to be really wearable.

At this point, I think I have one more increase round left in the yoke, and once the yoke is done, it's just single-color stockinette in the round. Perhaps finishing by the end of the month is a stretch, but I might as well try!

Meanwhile, the 100 Day Project is supposed to wrap up this week, but as I've accidentally missed a few days, and seeing as the blanket isn't quite done anyway, I'm going to be carrying on.

I have three more balls of Felici left to add after the current one runs out, and Rainbow is thinking that it might be big enough at that point. We're planning to stretch it rather aggressively in blocking to even out the wonkiness (made worse in the photo by my pathetic attempts to stretch it out, which clearly only made it worse). I will be happy to have this done and added to my Stash Dash total, because there's quite a bit of yarn in it!

Feels Like Fall

The calendar might say that it's still summer, but all the signs that fall is coming are there. Sign number one: Today is Rainbow's first day of school.

After four straight days of sunshine, cooler temperatures, and low humidity, today it is dark and rainy, so we had to settle for an indoor photo in bad lighting. I think she was a little nervous to start but also excited; thankfully it's a half day to start off the year, so I'll be picking her up in a little more than three hours and she'll have the afternoon to play.

Because of this odd start to the school year, I took yesterday and today off from work, giving me an extra-long weekend. I had hoped that would mean lots of extra knitting time, but as the Mister left early Saturday morning to go to a trade show for work, I've actually been rather busy with Rainbow. Still, it's been enough to make a decent dent in my Rhinebeck sweater knitting, and I'm very happy with how it's progressing.

I'm also happy to report that the fit seems to be good. I spent most of my knitting time last night after putting Rainbow to bed knitting and tinking one round of colorwork; I was planning a third band of motifs after this one, but it looks like the individual motifs won't end up centered under the previous two even though they work with the stitch count, and various things I tried last night didn't make the situation any better. Luckily, because I ran out of time before I got too far along, my brain had some time to sit with the problem, and I've come up with a solution that I think will work perfectly. I'll still have to tink back a round, but that's no big deal. With the beginning of September coming and the weather getting better for sweaters, I'm anxious to get this off the needles!

Sock weather will be here soon, too, and I'm trying to get my current pair finished before the end of the month. I did manage to finish up the first sock on Saturday before the end of Stash Dash, and it got me over the 10K finish line.

I'm pretty happy with the gusset changes, though I'll have to judge the fit after I've had a chance to wear the socks for a while. I didn't do the toe entirely in the contrast color because the mini skein was getting a bit light and I wanted to be sure I had enough for the second sock, so I worked two-round stripes. To be honest, I think I actually like it more!

While I hunker down with the knitting this week, I am also trying to finish up some books. At this point, with less than a week left in Summer Book Bingo, I'd say my chances of completing a cover-all are slim to none. But I'm hoping to at least complete two to three more squares. I'm more than halfway through Middlemarch, and I've been listening to Emma for my Classic square (it's been a number of years since I read it last, and I've found that listening to the audiobook at 1.25x speed is perfectly fine and makes it go a lot faster). I'm planning to head to the library this morning to try to read a hard copy of Fox 8 for my Non-human protagonist square; I've had a hold on the ebook from the library for more than a month, I think, and it's estimating I still have at least a two-week wait, which is ridiculous for a book that's so short. I think if I can be at the library when it opens this morning and can find the book easily, I can probably read it in one sitting before it's time to pick Rainbow up from school at noon. And if I can round out the summer with only one or two empty spots on my bingo card, I'll be very satisfied!

Cute (but Not Especially Little)

'Tis done! In plenty of time, no less!

Pattern: Little Boxy by Joji Locatelli, size 8
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (80% superwash merino/20% nylon) in Peacock Blue, 2.21 skeins (another 808 m for Stash Dash!)
Needles: US 2.5 (3.0 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)
Started/Completed: April 28/June 22
Mods: None

This was such a fun knit. Yes, it's true that the body was a bit of a slog, but in reality the hardest part about this adorable sweater was dealing with two skeins of yarn (I alternated every round on the body and every other row on the parts that were worked flat) and having all those extra ends to weave in -- and those have nothing to do with the pattern itself but rather with my decision to use hand-dyed yarn, which meant alternating to avoid pooling or clear lines where I switched from one skein to another. It really wasn't that much extra work, and I think it was more than worth it. The only place I did not alternate was on the sleeves, where I used the remains of the two skeins I started with in order to leave the third skein more or less intact for use in another project.

I was originally going to knit the next size up, thinking that Rainbow will be 10 later this year and I wanted this to fit her for more than the next few months, but I did some measurements and she's such a skinny little thing that the 8 was more than big enough. I did have a brief moment of panic when I went to pick up the stitches for the first sleeve that the arm openings were too small, but then I pulled out one of her pajama tops for comparison and my fears were laid to rest.

As you can see, the circumference of the sweater is nearly twice that of her body (this top has minimal positive ease on her), meaning that the sleeves are going to hit in the middle of her arm to begin with, and on top of that, the armhole opening on the sweater is the same circumference of the armhole opening on the top -- so that even if the sweater armhole did hit at the biggest part of her arm, she'd still be fine.

I'm thrilled, and more importantly I think she'll be thrilled, and I'm happy to have finished it up in plenty of time. I even blocked it over the weekend so that it's all tidy and ready for her to wear, should she so choose (and should the weather cooperate) when she gets back on Friday. And I'm fighting an urge to cast on a new one for me!

Now that this is done, I'm focusing on a sweater for me, specifically my Soldotna Crop. I think that if I give it the same amount of attention I gave Rainbow's sweater last week, I can make quite a dent in it! I'm about halfway through the yoke chart at this point, and the number of stitches is now big enough that I've been able to spread out the fabric on the entire length of my circular needle instead of magic looping.

Today I'm attending a diversity retreat at work all day, and I'm taking my sock project with me (I finished the first one on Saturday). I think there will be enough attendees that I can blend in and knit without disturbing someone, though of course I'll put it away if someone takes issue. But just think of how much sock I can get done if I'm able to work on it more or less all day!

Pregaming

Stash Dash starts this Friday, and I'm fairly certain that my goal will again be 10K, so my plan is to spend the week getting as much done as I can on my current WIPs without actually finishing anything. That was easily done for my sock blank socks, which are about 95% done as of the end of the weekend -- just about half a toe remains.

My toe-up socks are going fairly quickly; I've just started the heel on the first sock, and I feel like I just cast on the sock anyway, so it's bound to be a quick knit.

The colors are off due to a very overcast sky during my lunch break.

The only project that won't be able to be finished up quickly is, naturally, my handspun Boxy, which is growing, albeit at a slow pace. The body is now more than 10 inches long!

The pattern says to knit to 16 inches, but I have a feeling I'm going to want to add some length. That's still a lot of knitting to do, so I'm going to use Stash Dash as motivation to get it done. It will be a lot of meterage if I can finish it by the end of the summer!

Subtlety

In knitting my handspun Boxy sweater, I am getting a very similar feeling to the one I had when spinning for it: This all looks the same. This effect is magnified by the fact that I am often working on it at night, when it's dark outside and the lighting inside is fairly dim. I can see that the sweater is growing, but the fabric looks the same to me because the color change is so gradual and so subtle. I had to take a photo in bright light in the morning to really convince myself that the colors are, in fact, shifting.

See those little pops of blue? That's the beginning of the first color fade. I spun the yarn on purpose to gradually shift from one color to the next. This is a three-ply yarn, so the faded skeins start out with all three plies being the first color, then they move to two plies of the first color and one of the new, then to one of the old and two of the new, and finally to all three of the new.

The last time I measured the fabric, I was somewhere between 9 and 10 inches of body done. The pattern calls for 16 inches of length for the body, but that is also supposed to be a somewhat cropped length. My plan is put half the stitches on another circular needle when I get to that length so I can try it on. I suspect I will want to add additional length, as I have plenty of yarn and am not generally too fond of cropped sweaters anyway.

My other current project is anything but subtle, and it's getting surprisingly close to completion.

This is the second sock in the pair from my sock blank; I've just started the heel flap. If the first sock is any indication, I should be in that hot pink section on the blank when I finish. I think I could easily finish up this second sock this week, but I think I will probably put the project aside when I get to the toe so I can save it for Stash Dash, which starts next Friday. I hit my 10K goal last year, and this year I am hoping to at least match that. There may be a potential change in the calculation of spinning yardage, and if that happens, I may increase my goal. Regardless, I hope to use the event as good motivation to be productive and get things done.

The Clincher

I'll admit that when I was packing my knitting projects for my vacation last week, I was a bit dubious that I would get both of them done by the end of the week. I figured the socks were a safe bet, as I could take them along wherever we went, but the sweater still had a lot of work left on it. I needed to finish both to make my Stash Dash goal, however, so both went into the suitcase and I hoped for the best.

The socks were no problem. I ended up knitting the entire foot and toe of the second sock on Saturday, during our drive from the Cape back to Boston, on the airplane, and on the ride home from the airport. They just about match, too.

Pattern: my basic cuff-down recipe, worked over 70 stitches
Yarn: ONline Supersocke 4-fach Season Color (70% superwash wool, 25% nylon), color 2081, 83 g/381 yds. used
Needles: US 0 (2.0) Addi Sock Rockets, magic loop
Started/Completed: August 10/August 19

The bigger challenge, of course, was the sweater. When we left, I had completed the back and a few inches on the front. That left the rest of the front, seaming, the neckline, and whatever I was going to do to fix the bottom hem. I pulled it out of my suitcase after we landed in Boston and worked on it in the car on the way to our final destination on the Cape. I worked on it just about every evening and here and there during the day. The one bright side to a gloomy, rainy last day of vacation is that I got a couple of extra hours to knit on it during the afternoon. By Friday night, the night before we left, I had finished the knitting and the seaming. And finally, on Sunday afternoon, just before the end of Stash Dash, it was finished -- and it was the project that pushed me over the edge to my 10K goal.

Pattern: Driftwood Tee by Mercedes Tarasovich from Interweave Knits summer 2014
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Woobu (60% merino/40% bamboo) in Bleck, 1.47 skeins
Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm) and US 3 (3.25 mm)
Started/Completed: July 20/August 20
Mods: added two inches in length; added an additional garter ridge to the neckline; and added bottom hem after the fact, with short rows added to the back

As written, this pattern is very straightforward. There are only two pieces, a front and a back, which are identical save for the placement of the eyelet detail. There is no waist shaping, so really once you've finished the eyelet pattern, you just work in plain stockinette until it's the required length to start the sleeve shaping.

Unfortunately, though I did read through the pattern and highlight the numbers for my size, I missed a very important instruction to work a set number of rows of garter stitch at the beginning, so that necessitated an adjustment later on. But I'll get to that in a minute. First, let's discuss my modifications.

To begin with, I misread the gauge information and swatched with the smaller needle specified in the pattern. I didn't quite get gauge, but it was close, and I liked the fabric I was getting. So I did a bit of math and figured out that I could knit a size smaller than the one I was planning and have it come out more or less the measurements I wanted using my gauge on the smaller needles (US 3). And that did go as planned, I'm happy to say. I also added an additional two inches in length to the body because I knew, looking at the schematic, that if I knit to the specified measurements the sweater was going to hit me at the most unflattering spot, even allowing for the drape of the bamboo content in the yarn and its ability to stretch when blocked. In hindsight, I probably could have added another inch or more, but it's fine where it is, too.

I used a US 1 needle to do the neckline, and while the pattern called for adding two garter ridges before binding off, I did three to complement the three stitches on the edge of the sleeves that are worked in garter.

Then I tackled the bottom edge of the sweater. I had contemplated doing something like an applied I-cord edge or some other treatment to keep that bottom edge from rolling upward, but in the end I decided to stick with the garter stitch that was originally specified. I picked up stitches all around the bottom edge of the sweater with my US 1 needle and then, using the US 3 needle, knit down to add length to the bottom of the sweater. As long as I was adding extra rounds, I decided to throw in some short rows on the back. I mentioned earlier that the two pieces that make this sweater are identical except for the eyelets, and I knew I'd never remember which side the eyelet detail was supposed to be on, so in addition to adding some additional posterior length, the longer back makes it perfectly clear to me which way the sweater should be worn.

Other than my than the one mistake due to user error, I did discover some minor issues that I was able to correct fairly easily. The first was in the stitch counts given during the shoulder shaping. On the first row of this shaping, you bind off a certain number of stitches at the beginning of a right side row, knit across the remaining stitches for that shoulder, bind off stitches for the neckline, and then knit across the stitches for the other shoulder. I don't remember the exact numbers, but let's say that after I bound off the initial shoulder stitches, it told me to knit 25. The problem is that this number doesn't take into account the one stitch that's already on your right needle from the last stitch you bound off, so I actually had to knit 24 (or one less than whatever the number was) for the numbers to work out correctly for the rest of the row. In addition to that, the instructions for the front tell you to work the shoulder shaping as you did for the back (the two pieces are identical, remember) -- except that you need to reverse left and right with regard to the shoulders to do the shaping correctly. (I also noticed that the designer's last name was spelled incorrectly in her bio, but that is neither here nor there -- noticing things like that is kind of an occupational hazard for me.)

Overall, I'm very happy with this top, and as luck would have it, we've got a bit of a cold front coming through tomorrow that should allow me to wear it to work one day this week without being too warm. The yarn, which I picked up at my former LYS when it was closing, was a delight. It feels like wool but with a touch of smooth coolness. I wouldn't hesitate to use it for another sweater, and I really feel like I have to find something nice to do with the leftovers.