Worth the Wait (or So I Hope)

It's been a while since I last blogged and I've been waiting to post until I had some good material. I've been working on a project that I at least think was worth the wait. So please forgive the large number of photos, but I couldn't resist.

Pattern: Haruni (Ravelry link) by Emily Ross
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy (100% superwash merino), colorway Night Watch, one skein
Needles: 32" US 4 (3.5 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: May 12/June 2
Mods: did not slip the first stitch of the border

When I started this shawl, I was unsure if I could manage to get the whole thing out of my one skein of Smooshy. So I got out my trusty scale and measured the full skein to start. Lucky for me, Dream in Color seems to have generous skeins, so rather than the 113 grams the label said were in the skein, I had 120. I weighed what was left of the skein after each repeat of Chart A, because I had been advised that the border took half of the total yarn. Amazingly after I finished the specified number of repeats for Chart A, I had exactly half of my yarn left. After I bound off, I had only a tiny amount left over -- only about 2.5 grams. Talk about cutting it close!

Blocking was an interesting process. I'm used to knitting shawls that have points along the border, which are really easy to block out with blocking wires. The lovely crochet cast off on Haruni, however, results in a series of loops along the entire edge -- and each loop has to be pinned out individually. It look a lot of pinning and repinning to get things to where I wanted them.

Although I've knit a fair amount of lace in my time, this shawl was a bit of a challenge for me. The charts were a bit irregular in that the repeats aren't always predictable, so this was definitely a pattern that required a fair bit of attention. The border is also an exercise in perseverance, because you increase a huge number of stitches over the first half of Chart B before decreasing most of them in the second half of the chart. Those long rows take a long time!

Overall, I am really, really pleased with this shawl. It was nerve-wracking at the end to see if my yarn would hold out, but the result of all the work is a really stunning piece, in my opinion. I might have to make another one of these someday.

A Striped Shawlette

I'm beginning to realize that my days of blogging two or three times a week have come to an end, at least for the forseeable future. These days, my knitting time is relegated to about 30-40 minutes during my lunch break, and my crafty time in the evening is an hour at my wheel after Rainbow goes to sleep, if I'm lucky.

Because my time with yarn and needles has been so limited, I've been working on things that are interesting -- I just don't want to spend my limited knitting time working on stockinette or garter stitch these days. Specifically, I've been knitting lace. I've been on a real shawlette kick lately. My most recent? Another viral pattern -- Traveling Woman.

Pattern: Traveling Woman (Ravelry link) by Liz Abinante
Yarn: my handspun laceweight Falkland
Needles: 32" US 6 (4.0 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: April 26/May 12
Mods: none, other than blocking a little more aggressively than suggested

Although these detail shots don't quite show the colors accurately, they do give you a sense of the really subtle -- but really pretty -- color variation in the yarn. All the credit goes to Kristin of All Spun Up for that. I thought the subtlety would be perfect for this pattern.

If you look at the completed shawls on Ravelry, you'll notice that most are blocked with a semicircular border or gentle points. I, however, find it practically impossible to block anything gently, so my Traveling Woman has pretty definite points. The lace motifs don't seem to have suffered by my showing this shawl no mercy, though, so I'd say it all worked out in the end.

After finishing this shawl I immediately cast on for another -- Haruni -- in some Dream in Color Smooshy that'd been in my stash for maybe a year. I hope I'll have more time to work on it so that I can show it to you soon.

I'm also working on a little something for Rainbow that I started several weeks ago when we were driving up to Michigan for my brother's graduation. I've made this pattern before, but always for gifts, so it's nice to finally be able to knit it for my own child. It's the (in)famous Pea Pod cardigan. If the yarn looks familiar, it's because it's Cotton Fleece left over from my Mommy Snug. Rather appropriate, I think, that I'm using the same yarn for mommy and daughter sweaters -- both by the same designer, no less!

Where Did April Go?

Ever have one of those months that just gets away from you? That was April for me; it seems like it was over just as soon as it began. The beginning of May wasn't any slower, either. Last weekend, we took Rainbow on her first road trip to go to my little brother's college graduation. Then, as soon as we got home, the Mister left on a two-day business trip, which meant it was just us girls at home (and I crawled into bed just as soon as the wee one went to bed). This past weekend, we were finally able to catch up on errands and chores (including, if my count is correct, five loads of laundry), so this is the first opportunity I've had to get to my computer in a while.

Tonight, you get what I intended to post yesterday for Spinning Sunday, the latest yarn off my wheel, which took pretty much the whole month of April to spin. I have mixed feelings about this. It all started with the fiber, April's shipment from the Crown Mountain Farms fiber club, 4 ounces of Wensleydale in a colorway called Sunrise Over Kangchenjunga.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know why I was less than enthused when I opened the package: Orange is my least favorite color. Still, I hoped that once it was spun up, I might like it more. After all, some of the speedier spinners on the CMF Ravelry board had already posted their finished yarns, and some turned out more of a peachy shade when spun.

This was my first time spinning Wensleydale, so I decided to spin it in a way I knew it would work well -- as singles. We all know that I stink at spinning thicker yarns, so I went for laceweight singles. I ended up with approximately 770 yards:

As you can see, the orange didn't soften or lighten at all in the spinning process. I also didn't particularly enjoy the process of spinning it -- the fiber felt rather like human hair to me. And while I'm pleased with the final yardage, I can't see myself ever knitting with this yarn. I don't regret spinning it, because the reason I joined the fiber club was to get outside my comfort zone and spin new-to-me fibers, but this skein very well might be listed for sale in the future.

I was much more excited about the May fiber club shipment, which promptly went on the wheel as soon as the Wensleydale came off. This is targhee in a colorway called Woodstock (it does rather look like tie-dye, doesn't it?).

I'm spinning it fine and tight for a traditional three-ply sock yarn.

I had hoped to get in some serious spinning time on Mother's Day (I thought it was reasonable to ask for it), but both Rainbow and the Mister had other plans and decided to take naps yesterday afternoon and I was stuck with the laundry. Still, it was a good day. I got lots of funny baby faces ...

as well as a new toy (an iPod Touch!) and quite possibly the most perfect card:

Back on the Bandwagon

In typical fashion, I missed the boat on one of those patterns. You know the patterns I'm talking about -- everywhere you look, it seems people are knitting them. In this case, I'm talking about Ishbel. I bought the booklet containing the pattern a couple of months ago, but I couldn't decide on what yarn to use. Finally, I remembered that I had a really pretty skein in my stash that hadn't been touched since I'd purchased it sometime last year (I think).

The reason this hadn't been used? Well, I tried to wind it into a center-pull ball shortly after I purchased it and found that it was horribly tangled. So I promptly put it in the back of the stash and forgot about it until last weekend. When I rediscovered it, I sucked it up and wound it into a ball by hand so I could finally cast on for my shawl. A week later, it was finished:

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague from Whimsical Little Knits

Yarn: Malabrigo Sock (100% superwash merino), colorway Persia, less than one skein
Needles: 32" US 6 (4 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: April 17/April 25
Mods: none

There isn't much to say about this shawl that probably hasn't already been said. It's a fun, quick little knit, with just enough lace to be entertaining. The fact that I finished it in a week with a baby in the house says a lot.

I'm looking forward to wearing this in the mornings for my walk into work; it's still been fairly chilly here most mornings, and I've been wearing my Swallowtail Shawl to death the past several weeks. It'll be nice to have an alternate.

I also seem to have caught the lace bug again and have become enamored of small, shawlette-sized pieces, so I've cast on for another one -- Traveling Woman in some of my handspun Falkland. It feels good to be knitting productively again!

Seasonally Inappropriate

It figures that I finished a lovely pair of mittens just as the weather is getting really spring-like. That'll teach me to start a project when I'm 39 weeks pregnant!


Pattern: Vespergyle Mittens by Elinor Brown
Yarn: Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift (100% Shetland wool), colors 101/Shetland Black, 28 grams, and 274/Green Mist, 30 grams
Needles: 32" US 0 (2.0 mm) Knit Picks circs, worked magic loop
Started/Completed: December 10, 2009/April 16, 2010
Mods: none

These were a lot of fun to knit. I'd acquired the yarn from Kenny some time ago; he'd started a vest with this yarn and decided he no longer wanted it, so I benefitted from his leftovers. This was my first experience knitting with Shetland, and I quickly discovered why it's so often favored for color work. This stuff is sticky! Several times while I knit these mittens I inadvertently dropped a stitch, but because of the hairiness of the yarn, those stitches went nowhere. This is the stuff you could use for a steek that doesn't need to be reinforced before you cut.

I wouldn't say that this yarn rates among my favorites, though. It's a tad bit on the scratchy side -- enough that I wouldn't use it for anything that's meant to be worn next to sensitive skin -- and I found it to be spun rather inconsistently. And while the finished pattern looks great, this yarn doesn't have the distinctive stitch definition that I usually like.

Still, I'm quite pleased with these mittens and really enjoyed knitting them (don't let that start to completion span fool you!). When I started them, I was sure Rainbow was going to be late and I thought I'd be able to squeeze them in before she arrived, thus giving me something I could actually use during the winter. Instead, these will be packed up for next winter -- something to look forward to!

Before I go, a recent Rainbow shot, by popular demand. Here she is last weekend, expressing her pleasure in having a clean diaper and a cute outfit:

A New Favorite

This was meant to be posted yesterday for Spinning Sunday, but I was foiled by a cloudy weekend and didn't have good light for taking pictures -- at least not pictures that could do this yarn justice.

I haven't participated in the All Spun Up spinalongs for a while because of my limited time to spin since Rainbow was born, but when I heard that the fiber for the April/May SAL was a BFL/silk blend, I knew I couldn't miss it. I also had a feeling that it was going to be in colors I'd like. The fiber did not disappoint. Some people had spots of green in their braids, but mine was pretty much all shades of blue with some white.

I really wanted to spin this into a laceweight yarn, because I knew that the luster of the BFL combined with the shine and strength of the silk would make for a gorgeous thin yarn, but I also knew that I might never finish if I tried to spin lace again (I haven't forgotten how it took me almost a month to spin the laceweight Shetland). Instead, I decided to spin it a little thicker, if only in the interest of getting it done so I could enjoy it. The finished yarn is about sport to DK weight, and my four or so ounces yielded approximately 245 yards. I had a little bit leftover on one bobbin that I chain plied, but I haven't yet finished it or measured it.

The beauty of this yarn is really nearly impossible to capture. It is amazingly shiny and soft, and the depth of blues is just not done justice by these pictures.

It's quite possible that this fiber blend is my new favorite. Next time I have an opportunity to get my hands on some, it will definitely become laceweight. As to this yarn, well, I think it'll make a really luxurious cowl or scarf -- eventually.

Next post: an actual finished knitted project!

The Mystery Revealed

One of my favorite things to do on Ravelry is visit the "fiber to finished object" threads on various spinning boards. I love seeing how the original fiber -- sometimes even in the form of a fleece -- becomes yarn and then a finished project. I have one of those to share with you today, and now I can reveal exactly what it was that you saw in that sneak peek in my last post.

In this case, I started out with this fiber from Sakina Needles that I purchased nearly two years ago from the Loopy Ewe. It was BFL (that's blue-faced leicester, for those of you who don't speak sheep) in a colorway called Smokestack. I started with four ounces.

Because BFL is a longwool, meaning it has a long staple length (that's the length of an individual hair), it works really well as a singles yarn. Singles yarns typically use less twist, because without being plied in the opposite direction with another single, too much twist will cause the yarn to kink up. Shorter-stapled fibers, like merino or cashmere, need more twist to hold them together in a yarn, so they are usually better suited to plied yarns. Longwools, however, can hold together just fine with less twist, so that's what I decided to do with my fiber. I spun a heavy laceweight single with my BFL. To finish it, to ensure that I worked out as much extra twist as I could and that it would stay together, I slightly fulled it by dunking it in hot and cold baths a few times then gave it a vigorous thwacking against the side of the bathtub. I ended up with about 530 yards.

Because I had used Malabrigo Lace as my guide when I started spinning this yarn, I thought it only appropriate that I substitute my handspun for that Malabrigo in a pattern I'd had in my queue:

Pattern: Citron by Hilary Smith Callis, winter '09 Knitty
Yarn: my handspun (details here)
Needles: 32" US 6 (4.0 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: March 13/April 3
Mods: none

This was a really simple knit and fairly fast -- it only took me as long as it did because those last rows are so long (the ruffle at the end has more than 500 stitches per row!), and as you know, I have limited knitting time these days. It was an interesting experience to block, because this is the first shawl I've knit that I did not need to be blocked aggressively. I merely smoothed it out and pinned the top edge of the shawl so it would dry fairly straight, and then I pulled at the ruffle here and there so it would ruffle nicely.

I'm really quite thrilled with this little shawlette. The yarn developed a really pretty halo while I knitted it, and I love how it striped with the pattern. I think the best compliment I received on it was when I was working on it at Natural Stitches and another customer in the shop asked where she could find the yarn I was working with.

Finally I have a couple of questions to answer. Both were left in the comments to my last post. (I try to respond to all the comments I get by e-mail, but sometimes there is no e-mail address associated with the comment and I'm unable to respond.) Samantha, of the Fiber Freaks blog, wanted to know how I spin my yarns. Although I first learned the basics of spinning on a drop spindle, I very quickly moved to a wheel. I bought my Lendrum DT about two years ago and have been using it exclusively ever since.

Liz T. also wanted to know if I had any cute Easter pictures to share. Unfortunately no, because we don't celebrate Easter. But we have gotten some cute shots of Rainbow recently, so I'll try to sneak a few into the next post.

Bannockburn

If you're reading this, I want to thank you for bearing with me while I get used to having a baby in the house, working full time, and still managing to get in some knitting and spinning time. Eventually I hope to get back to my more regular schedule of posting two to three times a week, but for now I hate to post when there's nothing exciting to show you.

But for today, I do have a couple of things. First up is the March shipment of the Crown Mountain Farms Fiber Club, which I finally finished on Friday night after spending most of the month of March on it. It started out looking like this, 4 ounces of shetland in a colorway called Bannockburn (and I'm afraid my photo doesn't do it any justice):

I'd never spun shetland before, but I knew that shetland is often used in lace yarns, so that's what I decided to do. My two-ply laceweight is approximately 595 yards -- not my best lace yardage ever, but it should still be plenty to make something pretty.

I still have the April shipment (Wensleydale) to spin, but because I'm planning a laceweight singles yarn for that, I need a little break with something thicker. So I started in on some BFL/silk from All Spun Up that is the April/May spinalong fiber. It's an absolute dream to spin and should be finished relatively quickly as a result. That's a good thing, too, because I went a little crazy during the CMF March Madness sale, so I have a lot in the spinning queue.

Spinning is easier to do at home because there's no pattern to pay attention to and I don't have to mark my place if I have to stop suddenly, but now that I'm working again, I am getting a little bit of knitting done during my lunch break. I finished something yesterday, but it needs to be blocked before it gets its proper photo shoot, so for now I'll just give you a peek:

The End of the Road

Unbelievably, my maternity leave is over and I have to go back to work tomorrow. Rainbow will be starting daycare tomorrow as well. I'm really going to miss the time I've been spending with her, but I'm also very glad that I took the maximum amount of time off. It's amazing how much she's grown and developed in such a short period of time, and I know I'm going to miss a lot when I'm away from her all day. Luckily, she's going to daycare fairly close to my office, so I can always go visit her at lunch if I really need a Rainbow fix.

Something I'm also going to miss is my spinning time. I didn't do much knitting during my leave, first because I didn't have the energy or the attention span and then because it was too difficult to try to keep track of where I was in a pattern. Spinning was much easier to do because I could start and stop very easily if the little one needed some attention.

I finished one last yarn this week, and it's a beauty, if I do say so myself. I started with 4.2 ounces of superwash merino from my favorite fiber pusher, Kristin of All Spun Up. She usually doesn't name her colorways, but this particular color combination was hugely popular on the ASU Ravelry board and was dubbed "Goldfish Wearing a Tutu" by one of the spinners. Lucky for us, Kristin was able to replicate the colorway, and I was fortunate enough to find a braid of it in the shop.

I spun the entire top from one end to the other onto one bobbin. Here were the singles resting before plying; this is probably one of favorite spinning pictures ever.

I chain plied the singles and wound up with about 356 yards of fingering weight yarn. I'm thrilled with it.

I'm still working on my March Crown Mountain Farms fiber club shipment (in the middle of the second of two bobbins), and I'm hoping to finish that up by the end of the month so I can stay on schedule.

The good news about going back to work? I'll have some regular knitting time again (during my lunch hour), so maybe I'll finish something. Like, for instance, the Citron I cast on for yesterday at Natural Stitches with my handspun BFL singles.

A Needle in a ... Nevermind

Much to my surprise, I finished spinning up another yarn this week -- my third for the month. This fiber came from deep stash; the information with the photo on my Flickr account tells me that I uploaded the picture of it in June 2008, which means that I purchased this fiber right around the time we moved into our house. This was four ounces of BFL from Sakina Needles, purchased from the Loopy Ewe, in a colorway called Smokestack (not "haystack," as I kept thinking).

I liked doing singles so much on the last spinalong I participated in that I decided to do them again for this yarn. Laceweight singles, to be specific. I ended up with approximately 531 yards -- a bit less than I was hoping for, but still a respectable yardage.

By their nature, singles can have extra twist in them because they're not plied, so to make sure I didn't have a twisty mess on my hands, I fulled the yarn slightly by alternating wet and cold soaks and then thwacked the life out of it. There are still some kinks and waves here and there, but because I plan to use this for lace that will be blocked, they shouldn't be a problem.

BFL is great for singles. It has a beautiful sheen and a slight halo. I'm not going to be knitting this up in the immediate future, but I think it might become a Citron one day.

Finally, because you asked, here's another Rainbow picture. This was taken last Saturday after a trip out to the hair salon (Mommy needed a cut badly!) and lunch. She was wearing more handknits than I was!

I thought she looked quite stylish in her Tomato Hat and Socks That Rock BSJ, and her Chalice Blanket was definitely keeping her quite cozy!

Still Snowing

I suppose my slow knitting progress isn't as bad as I thought, at least as far as the usefulness of the projects I've been working on is concerned. I was worried that by the time I finished my Vespergyle Mittens, for instance, the time for mittens would be long gone. Unfortunately, that might not be the case. We're in the middle of of the snowiest February on record here in Western Pennsylvania -- close to 40 inches already! We're also on track for the snowiest season ever as well. The record is 82 inches, and I think we're already close to 70. If I can keep up the pace on my mittens, I might just get to wear them before the snow melts. The first one is done:

I think I managed to finish the second half of the hand in a matter of days when I picked it up again, but for some reason (I think her name is Rainbow!) it took me several more weeks before I got around to doing the thumb. The second mitten is cast on and has about two rows of cuff, so I'm hoping to get in a few rows here and there when I can.

As far as spinning is concerned, I'm nearly done with four ounces of BFL that I'm spinning into laceweight singles. Up next is this beauty, 4.2 ounces of superwash merino from my favorite fiber pusher. One of the regulars on the Ravelry ASU board named this combination of colors "Goldfish Wearing a Tutu," and it caused such a stir on the board that Kristin has continued to dye up a few braids of it every now and then. I've missed many of her updates lately (mostly because I'm just not online as much as I used to be), not to mention the fact that I haven't been buying fiber, but when I happened to catch this update and saw this one braid still in the shop, I grabbed it.

Time has been flying here. Rainbow is now two months old, and I have to go back to work in a little less than a month. I'm going to miss my little one when we're not together all day -- though it will be nice to have someone else change her diapers every now and then!

That's More Like It!

After the last spin took more than a month to complete, I knew I had to spin faster or thicker to make up time and stay on track with my goal of spinning each month's club fiber in that month. Faster probably isn't a realistic option, given my limited spinning time, so thicker was the answer for February. That seemed the right choice, anyway, for this fiber -- take a look at these bright colors!

This four ounces of Finn top from the Crown Mountain Farms fiber club just begged to be a bouncy, tightly twisted, barberpoled two ply. And that's just what I spun.

I got about 206 yards of two ply that ranges from about sport to about DK weight (I'm definitely better at spinning more evenly when I'm spinning thinner). There are spots where both plies are the same color, more or less, but the majority of the skein is nicely barberpoled.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to make with this yarn just yet, though I'm thinking it might make a nice pair of mittens one day. Supposedly Finn is good for felting, so I think a cozy pair of mittens that slowly felt with wear will be just the ticket. This was my first time spinning with this fiber, and I definitely enjoyed it. It's softer than the Falkland I spun last, though not as soft as merino, and has a longer staple length, similar to BFL.

The colors in real life are somewhere in between this photo and the ones above. They are quite vibrant, and something tells me that Rainbow will really like the pinks and purples when she gets a little older.

Speaking of Rainbow, did someone ask for more baby pictures?

This is how the Mister can hold her and be on the computer at the same time. She really likes being bundled up like this.

A Day Late Ain't Bad

Having a newborn around doesn't leave much time for anything other than feeding, sleeping, and changing diapers, but as Rainbow has gotten a little older and we've settled into more of a regular schedule, I've been able to sneak in a little more fibery time on a daily basis. I haven't felt much of an urge to knit, but, as I mentioned in my last post, I was feeling a strong yen for my wheel. I know that this year I won't be able to churn out as much handspun as I did last year, but I'm at least determined to spin the four ounces each month that come from Crown Mountain Farms as part of the 2010 fiber club.

January's shipment was Falkland top, a fiber I had just spun for the last All Spun Up spinalong. This time I decided to go for a chain-plied fingering weight -- chain plying to preserve the colors, because I worried that regular plying might muddy up the colors. In the end, I wound up with approximately 344 yards, which is pretty respectable in my book given my time away from spinning. And it only took me one day into February to finish plying.

I used my usual tight plying twist, which caused the skein to kink up up a little right off the wheel, but a good wash-and-whack caused it to relax nicely. I'm quite happy with this one, but I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet.

Up next: Finn top in shades of purple-y blue and hot pink. I'm doing a thicker two ply, so it should be done well before the end of the month, provided the baby continues to cooperate.