Sweater Project 2012: Complete!

It is done! Just in time for 80 degree weather, too. ;-)

Pattern: I Heart Aran by Tanis Lavallee
Yarn: my handspun three-ply heavy worsted weight Romney from fleece purchased at MDSW 2011
Needles: US 6 (4.0 mm) and US 7 (4.5 mm) Knit Picks Options
Started/Completed: February 23/April 26
Mods: bound off all stitches and seamed rather than grafting at underarms and shoulders, added an additional inch of length to body

I am thrilled with how this turned out. The start-to-finish time span is not quite representative of how long it took to knit, because I was working on other projects at the same time and thus was putting it down and picking it up during that period. The front, with all the cabled details, probably took the longest of all the parts, as you would expect, but even that didn't take more than probably a couple of weeks' worth of knitting sessions all told.

The one minor modification I made to the pattern was to bind off underarm and shoulder stitches and then seam them; the pattern called for putting these stitches on holders and then grafting them at the end. I love to graft, but I felt that because this sweater was so heavy (handspun is generally a lot denser than commercial yarn), the added stability of sewn seams, especially at the shoulders, would help this sweater to keep its shape and wear better over the long run.

One shiny button purchased at my LYS!

I found this pattern to be generally well written, and when I did run into one area of difficulty, I was able to PM the designer and get great help. (For the curious, the difficulty came in the form of the word "repeat." When I see repeat, I always assume that you do something once and then repeat -- do it again -- x number of times. In this case, "repeat" was used to mean do a direction x number of times total.) Tanis double checked the numbers on the sleeve shaping for me and even sent me the pattern again just in case I had downloaded before an update had happened. She even acknowledged that the way the directions were worded was a little confusing. Turns out, the numbers were correct and it was just my interpretation of the directions that was at fault. The experience was great, though, in that I got an excellent example of what customer service and good pattern support should be.

One of the things I was most worried about was having enough yarn. I selected this pattern first and foremost because I loved it but also because all the cabling was only on the front -- as you can see, the back and sleeves are in stockinette. Of course, I still worried that I wouldn't have enough, especially as I only had about 150 yards more than the yardage specified in the pattern. As it turns out, I shouldn't have worried. I have two skeins completely untouched, one of them with fairly high yardage, and according to my calculations, that means I used approximately 925 yards for my sweater, including a swatch and these leftovers (with iPod for scale):

All in all, I can say with certainty that this year's Sweater Project was a huge success! The sweater fits really well and is not nearly as scratchy as last year's sweater, meaning I will wear it often when the weather is amenable. I still have a fair amount of fiber leftover and am thinking of spinning up matching yarn to make Rainbow a coordinating sweater for next winter. Plus, even though I didn't set a specific time frame for completing the sweater, I happened to finish this a week before Maryland Sheep and Wool -- which means I feel completely okay with bringing home another fleece!

Deep Stash Spin

After I dug out some very old fiber from my stash for my corespun yarn, I figured I'd might as well finish spinning up the rest. I haven't devoted very much time to it in the past week because I've been so focused on finishing my sweater, but I'm slowly but surely adding to what's on the bobbin.

This is colonial wool, meaning it's likely a mix of a number of domestic wool breeds. From far away, it looks like a dark green, but you can see from this detail shot that it's a mix of dark green, red, blue, and yellow. The plan is to spin all the fiber that's left into a fine single and then chain ply. It should come out approximately fingering weight, but because I don't know how much fiber I started with, I have no idea what kind of yardage I'll end up with. I imagine it'll be enough for a pair of socks or a small shawl at the very least.

In the meantime, just as I'm trying to reduce my stash, some new fiber has arrived. My May shipment from the Crown Mountain Farms fiber club came in yesterday's mail. This is Jacob top in a colorway called Season of the Witch (yes, I have had the song stuck in my head since I opened the package):

I'm excited to spin this because I've never spun Jacob before. It's on the scratchier side (I would not make this into something to wear next to my neck!), but it has a good body to it and should make a fairly bouncy yarn, I think.

Positive Outlook

Things are looking good on the sweater front, and barring any unforeseen emergencies or complications, I should be able to finish it this week. I seamed the shoulders and picked up for the collar on Sunday evening and then got through the short row portion last night. Tonight or tomorrow I'm hoping to finish the collar off, and then all that will remain is seaming, which should be able to be accomplished in an evening.

I think I am going to cheat and wait to block until after I've seamed; usually I block the pieces first to make seaming easier, but it'll be more complicated with this sweater because the front and back are already attached, so I think I'll just suck it up and deal with some curling edges. I would normally block the whole thing again anyhow, so I'm only saving a little bit of time and effort by skipping that one step.

I'm really amazed by how well my yarn supply has held out given that I only had a little more in the way of yardage than the pattern specified. Clearly the yarn requirements were a bit inflated, which I really like -- always better to have too much yarn than not enough. Once the sweater is done, it looks like I'll only have used about five of my seven skeins.

It seems rather apropos that I will finish the sweater this week given that it's been unseasonably cool -- cold, even. We were under a winter weather advisory yesterday and were supposed to get snow, although it seems to have skipped the city (we just got rain) and landed mainly in the higher elevations. In any case, I may not need the sweater once it's done, but it'll certainly be cool enough that I won't be sweltering when it comes time to take a modeled shot of it!

Sensing a Theme?

I have two spinning things to show you today, and until I sat down to start this post, I didn't realize that they kind of go together.

First is the most recent yarn off my wheel, which I finally finished nearly a year after buying the fiber. Last year at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, I picked up a 4 oz. bundle of Cormo top. I started spinning a tiny amount of it on the Jenkins Turkish spindle I bought there as well but never got beyond what you see in this photo:

A couple of weeks ago, as was starting to mentally plan for a return trip to the festival, I realized I'd never finished spinning this and decided it was high time that I did so. So, in a fit of "git 'er done," I spun up a two ply as fast as I could -- and that means I was a little lackadaisical about my consistency.

You can see there are some thin sports and some thick spots, but overall it's about sportweight and around 325 yards. What it lacks in consistency it makes up for in softness -- it's divine! I haven't even begun searching for a pattern yet, but this is definitely destined to become a cowl or shawlette -- something to wrap around my neck (that is, if Rainbow doesn't steal it because it's her favorite color!).

Meanwhile, I finally got my Lendrum out again this weekend; I'd moved it up to the stash room when we were having our bedroom painted back in, oh, December, and it'd been neglected there ever since. But yesterday I had a special spinning class at my LYS and my first love had to come with me. I was learning how to spin these:

Frabjous Fibers Silk Hankies

The class was a lot of fun. As it turns out, they aren't that difficult to spin -- the hard part is prepping the silk (you have to predraft this fiber) and getting it not to stick to you and everything else. Actually, the spinning is the easiest part because all you have to do is add twist. After about an hour and a half of spinning time, I had a good layer built up on my bobbin:

Although it's almost impossible to get a perfectly consistent yarn with this type of prep, my singles are, for the most part, the diameter of thread. It also looks like I've barely made a dent in my supply, too. I'm planning to do a two-ply, but I've got to do some serious exfoliation and moisturization before I sit down for another spinning session on these!

Inching Along

I am getting closer and closer to a finished handspun sweater. I completed the front over the weekend and cast on for the sleeves on Sunday (I'm doing both at once in the interest of both getting them finished faster and having two sleeves that match). Thanks to knit night with the Hurricane Knitters last night and staying up to watch the end of the Pens game, I now have sleeves that need just five more inches on them before the sleeve cap shaping starts.

I had run into a bit of trouble with the pattern instructions for the increases on the sleeves that had me scratching my head for a day or so, but I PMed the designer on Ravelry and she was super helpful. Seems it was the term "repeat" that was the cause for confusion for me -- a general theme when it comes to my not understanding something in a pattern! Fortunately, thanks to some great customer service/pattern support, I had it figured out so fast that there was no delay in my knitting time.

It may be a bit unrealistic, but I'm hoping to have this thing wrapped up by the end of the month. I really don't have that much left to do -- I have to finish the sleeves, seam the sweater, and knit the shawl collar. Provided I can put in some serious knitting time this weekend, it just might be doable.

Speaking of this weekend, my trunk show opens at my LYS tomorrow. If you're local, I hope you'll stop by sometime in the next couple of weeks to see it. All of the designs you've seen on the blog already will be featured, but there are also a couple of items in the show that you haven't seen yet that I'm prepping for a fall release.

A Study in Stripes

It took about six weeks, but it's done!

Pattern: Stripe Study Shawl by Veera Valimaki
Yarn: my handspun -- polwarth from All Spun Up in Goldfish Wearing a Tutu and Koi Pond
Needles: 32" US 3 (3.25 mm) Knit Picks fixed circs
Finished dimensions: 66.5" wide by 26" tall
Started/Completed: February 26/April 13
Mods: added almost (see below) two additional stripes to maximize my yarn usage

If you're on Ravelry with any regularity and look at the patterns that are available, chances are you've seen this pattern -- as of this writing, there are 2,275 projects logged on Ravelry. I'd had it in my favorites for some time before I finally got around to buying the pattern a couple of month ago. I knew I wanted to use these two yarns for it as soon as I finished the second skein during last year's Tour de Fleece and discovered that the two skeins had nearly identical yardage (not to mention that they both shared that beautiful goldfish color!).

The pattern is actually very simple but also very clever. It starts as a typical top-down triangle shawl, but it quickly becomes asymmetrical through the use of short rows. In essence, you work increasingly longer sections of each stripe at a time, adding more stitches each short row, until you're back at the beginning. It's quite smart, I think, and because of the way it's constructed, it's very easy to add or subtract stripes to accommodate your yarn supply. In my case, I tried to add two additional stripes (for a total of 14), but discovered that my GWAT was going to run out before I finished the full last stripe (I needed five more short rows to finish it), so I just knit to the end of the row. That means my 14th stripe is a little uneven, but frankly I don't think you can tell.

The only other mod I made was to go down three needle sizes from what was recommended in the pattern. My yarn was closer to laceweight than fingering, and I knew if I used what was called for, my shawl would be really flimsy and would probably stretch out a lot. I was worried that it might end up a little on the small size, but as you can see, it's plenty big.

You might think that after spending six weeks on this shawl I'd be sick of garter stitch, but apparently I'm not, because I bought the pattern for Color "Affliction" (as my friend Anna has named it) today. There is lots of garter stitch in my future!

For the Heck of It

One of the podcasts I listen to regularly is the SpinDoctor podcast. Sasha's 'cast is great for new and experienced spinners alike, as it's filled with great reviews as well as discussions of her own spinning. So when she announced that she was hosting a spinalong of art yarns to go along with Jacey Boggs' book Spin Art, I thought I'd spin along for a bit.

Normally, I'm not that into art yarns; I can appreciate how interesting and pretty they can be, but I've never spun any myself because I don't know what I'd knit with such yarns (not that I end up knitting that much of the yarn I spin anyway!). There were a few yarns in the book that I wanted to try however. The first was a cabled yarn, which I did last month with a Crown Mountain Farms club shipment. Another was a corespun yarn, which is the most recent thing off my wheel:

The core was a bit of fiber leftover from last year's sweater project; I spun it, with lots of extra twist, in the direction I normally ply so that I could do the wrapping in the direction I normally spin my singles. For a corespun yarn, you hold the fiber perpendicular to the core so that it can literally wrap around the core. This means that some twist is introduced as the core is wound on, so you need more twist than usual in the core so that the yarn is balanced in the end. For the wrap, I dug deep into my stash and found some colonial wool top from Paradise Fibers that I bought for practice (and evidently never used) when I first got my Lendrum four years ago.

This skein is about 111 yards and pretty wildly inconsistent -- not surprising, given how awkward the process felt the whole time -- but it's pretty well balanced and fairly soft, so I'm pretty happy with it. I still, however, have no idea what to do with this yarn! I didn't love corespinning, but I suspect that's mainly because it felt so awkward; it's hard to love something that's hard. I'd be willing to give it another try -- eventually. For now, I am spinning up the rest of this colonial top into my usual yarn (I started with 8 oz., so this'll make a good dent in my stash).

An End in Sight

Thanks to those of you who chimed in on the decision of what to do with the edging on my Stripe Study Shawl. I have decided to knit to 4 inches or as much as I can by Friday night, whichever comes first, so that I can weave in the ends and block it in time to show it off at my LYS on Saturday for their annual Show Us Your Shawl event. As of last night, I had 3 inches done, so I think that's a reasonable expectation. It looks like I will use up most of the yarn, too, so I won't have to worry about what to do with a lot of leftovers.

In the meantime, look! I finished a blanket!

This is my Gothic Leaves Baby Blanket, knit exactly as specified in the pattern with Cascade 220 Superwash in a cheerful lime green color. If you recall, I gave away the original earlier this year as a baby gift, so I needed to whip up another for my trunk show at my LYS later this month. This was a very fast knit (started one weekend and finished the next) and fairly mindless except when I apparently stopped paying attention and forgot yarnovers only to put them in the wrong places, resulting in a couple instances of required tinking. Despite the amount of time I've spent with this pattern, I still enjoyed it, and I especially love how easy it was to block -- I took advantage of the yarn's tendency to stretch and just smoothed it out on my drying racks. While this is going into the sample pile for now, it'll be good to have on hand should I need a baby gift in a hurry.

I've also given my I Heart Aran sweater a bit of attention this week; one front is now complete and the other side is partially done. I'm still amazed by how well my yarn supply is holding out -- I haven't even gone through three skeins yet! Assuming the shawl is off the needles by tomorrow night, the sweater will get my full attention this weekend.

This Is the Shawl That Never Ends ...

I have just about reached my limit on my Stripe Study Shawl. I'm a little more than 2 inches into the border (after working on it for nearly a week and a half) and my progress is moving along at a snail's pace. The rows are so long now that I can only get about two done during my lunch break. The thing also has overgrown its project bag and has been relocated to a gallon-sized ziploc bag.

As you can see, there's still a good amount of yarn left, and I could conceivably knit until I run out of yarn. The question is whether I want to. I spread the shawl out after taking this photo, and it appears to be pretty big. Some gentle encouragement in blocking will make it bigger.

So, dear readers, what do you think? Should I knit the requisite 4 inches and call it a day? End the misery now? Or bite the bullet and use up the yarn?

Leftovers Spinning

Maryland Sheep and Wool is now less than a month away, and I'm planning on buying some more fiber to spin there (mostly in the form of a fleece), so I thought it would be a good idea to finish spinning what I bought at the festival last year before I acquire anything additional. For nearly a year, I'd had a bundle of Cormo top shoved in the back of my closet; I'd started spinning it at the festival on the Jenkins Turkish spindle I bought the same day but never made much headway. This week I put it on the wheel.

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but this is some pretty uneven yarn. Cormo is a very fine wool, so it gets neppy and felty easily. I thought the fiber was a real steal at $4/ounce, and I'm seeing that you get what you pay for. The prep on this fiber wasn't great, meaning it was difficult to get a really consistent yarn, but it wasn't horrible either. I decided to go with the flow and enjoy the experience as much as I could. The color is great and it's very soft, so the finish yarn should be nice. I finished up the second bobbin this afternoon while Rainbow was napping and will ply later this week.

While the singles are resting on the bobbins, I decided to challenge myself and spin an art yarn. I had a small amount (probably less than an ounce) of fiber leftover from my sweater spin last year that I knew I was never going to use for anything really because it was so rough. I hate to waste fiber, though, so I figured it would be perfect for the core of a corespun yarn. I spun the singles up quickly last week with lots of extra twist, and this afternoon I started "plying" with some Colonial wool top I've had for probably as long as I've been spinning.

Apologies for the dark photo -- using the flash was the only way to get the camera to focus and really show the yarn! This is definitely a spinning technique that's outside my comfort zone, but I'm enjoying it!

A Replacement

Although I'd really like to finish up my handspun sweater (and my shawl, which needs at least three more inches of border), I've been spending the past week mainly focusing on knitting a Gothic Leaves Baby Blanket for my collection of samples. My LYS is hosting a trunk show of my designs later this month, and as I'd given away the original some time ago, I needed to knit up a replacement!

I'm using the same yarn (Cascade 220 Superwash) that I used for the original, but this time around I chose a bright springy green. I'm into the seventh repeat and am hoping to have this wrapped up and blocked this weekend.

I am still working on the shawl, primarily during my lunch break, though I got in about four rows today while I was home with Rainbow. It's gotten to be a struggle to get it to fit in my Stitched by Sasha project bag, so it needs to get finished soon!

Finally, a bit of housekeeping. You may have noticed that the pattern images are gone from the sidebar. There's now a tab at the top (it's marked Patterns) where you can see all my original patterns. I'll add to the list as more come out and I may put a photo or two up in the sidebar from time to time, but I felt that all those images were starting to clutter things up. If you have strong opinions about them being there, they can always be put back!

Minor Adjustment

The opinions in the comments of my last post on my Stripe Study Shawl seemed to be pretty unanimous, so I plowed ahead and started a 14th stripe. Unfortunately, because the rows were getting so long, my yarn supply did not hold out. I was hoping to just eke out that last stripe, but I got to the point where I had five rows left to finish the stripe and only a small ball of the yarn (smaller than a golf ball) remaining. I decided to just knit to the end from where I was when I realized this rather than risk running out somewhere in the middle, so I have a last stripe that's a bit thin on one end. I'm hoping it's not too obvious.

So now I've started the border, which I may or may not make wider than the pattern specifies. I have plenty of yarn to do it, but the rows are also now 400+ stitches, so it takes a good 10-15 minutes to finish just one row. I'm not sure I have the stamina to keep going past the specified 4 inches, but we shall see!

More Poof, Fewer Yards

The latest yarn off my wheel is the February 2012 shipment from the Crown Mountain Farms fiber club, 4 oz. of Debouillet roving in a colorway called Trinity. Here was the fiber:

I decided to do a traditional three ply fingering weight (usually my "default" yarn) with this, so I split the roving into three roughly equal sections and spun up each of them. It was not, I am sorry to say, an entirely enjoyable spin. I encountered a fair number of neps and bits of VM, so I was stopping frequently to pull them out. This isn't what you want to deal with when you want to get into the rhythm of spinning and just relax.

In spite of the frustrations, I got the yarn I wanted, for the most part. There are a few thick spots where I encountered a neppy or felty bit of fiber, but overall it is fingering weight.

The color in these photos is really not at all accurate -- in real life, it's much more of a pinky orange, almost like what you might see in rainbow sherbet.

The yarn did fluff up considerably in the finishing process, which I was happy about -- it's now a lot more light and airy. But that fluffing up did come at the cost of some yardage, so I have only about 318 yards in this skein. That's probably not enough to make myself a pair of socks, but that's probably for the best -- I don't think this fiber would make great socks anyway.

Indecision

I am still plugging away at my Stripe Study Shawl, but I've come to a bit of an impasse. I was planning on making it bigger (i.e., adding more stripes) because (a) I had much more yarn than called for and (b) because of my smaller gauge, it was going to turn out smaller if I knit it as specified in the pattern. So now I've done 13 stripes (the pattern calls for 12) and there's still a decent-sized ball of GWAT left. I could do another stripe and then the border, but the rows are getting really, really long, and the border rows will only get longer.

The way I see it, I have two choices: do one more stripe in GWAT and the normal border or start the border now and make it wider if I want. Okay, technically I guess there's a third option: do the border now and make it the normal size. Thoughts?

A Sunday SIP*

After finishing my last two spins, I decided to go back to my spinning roots, so to speak, and do what is generally my default yarn. Most spinners, when they're not trying for a specific style and weight, find that their fingers automatically spin the same kind of yarn over and over. For me, it's a three-ply fingering weight. I had this vibrant roving from Crown Mountain Farms -- 4 oz. of Debouillet in a pink/orange colorway called Trinity -- ready and waiting by my wheel, and a semisolid colorway seemed perfectly suited to the yarn I usually spin.

It's a bit toned down in person, but the colors are pretty vibrant. I split the roving more or less into thirds and started spinning up the singles last Sunday, I believe. I didn't spend a huge amount of time on it this week, but I'm working on the third bobbin now.

As you can see, I have about half a bobbin to go, so I will finish tonight or tomorrow, most likely. Unfortunately, it's not going as quickly as it could (despite the fact that I'm spinning on the miniSpinner) because this is roving, not combed top, and thus more susceptible to neps. There's also a fair amount of VM in it, so I'm stopping roughly every 30 seconds or so to pull out a piece of hay or a fuzz ball. It's mildly annoying to have to stop so often as well as to think about the waste stuff I pull out of the yarn. For instance, here's the pile of stuff I've removed just from the first half of the third bobbin's worth:

This doesn't include the small bits of VM that have fallen out on their own and onto my lap while I've been spinning, either. It's annoying, yes, but it's also part of dealing with wool. I think I've realized, though, that I really prefer a combed prep (combed top) to a carded prep (roving). I guess it's as good to know what you like in spinning as it is to know what you like in any other aspect of life!


*Spin in progress, that is

More Cables

In spite of the fact that is most definitely summery outside (I've been wearing capris and sandals to work for two days!), I am still chugging right along on my handspun sweater. I know there's probably a snowball's chance in hell that I'll actually be able to wear it when it's done (at least, not for anything longer than the photo shoot needed to prove it's actually done), but I'm not the sort of person who usually leaves projects unfinished*.  So I will finish this sweater this spring. I will admire it and then pack it away until the weather is appropriate for it.

Last night at Hurricane Knitting, I got through another repeat of the cable chart on the front, which was what I had calculated I needed to do for it to be the proper length to start the underarm shaping. I measured before we left and I was about half an inch short of where I needed to be, but holding it up against the back this morning, it looks like I might just be there:



I will do another comparison to be sure tonight, but things are looking promising. The front should go much faster from here on out, as the neck shaping starts at the same time as the underarm shaping (or very shortly after it) and I'll be working on the front sections separately. Then it's just the arms, which I'm planning to do at the same time, and the shawl collar. And, of course, there's the making up, but that shouldn't take me more than a solid evening of work. I'm fairly confident that this sweater will be done before it's time to head to Maryland Sheep and Wool -- which means I will give myself permission to buy another fleece!


* That is, except for my Noro Lady Eleanor stole; it's languished for a good 2+ years. But I have a good excuse for that -- I did start it just before Rainbow was born, so I was a bit distracted for several months. I swear I'll get around to finishing it one of these days!

Studying Stripes

For about three weeks or so, my lunch break knitting has been Veera Valimaki's Stripe Study Shawl. This pattern had long been in my favorites/queue, and this past Valentine's Day, I decided to buy it as a gift to myself. I'm not sure what took me so long, because I knew exactly which yarns I wanted to use for it -- these skeins of All Spun Up polwarth that I spun last summer and the summer before:


Goldfish Wearing a Tutu


Koi Pond

These were part of the summer 2010 spinalong that Kristin of ASU ran; the three colorways all had something to do with fish, and they were all stunningly gorgeous. These two were probably destined to be together because they both contained that stunning orange-y gold -- goldfish color, really.

I spent several hours over the course of a weekend winding the skeins up into balls (yes, I could have used my winder, but there's something to be said about handling your own handspun as often as possible!) and cast on while watching the Oscars. Once I got into the rhythm of what to do where, it grew quickly. Here it is as of late last week:



My yarn is a little lighter than the fingering called for in the pattern (really it's more of a heavy laceweight -- both 4 oz. skeins are 550+ yards), so I went down to a US 3 from the recommended US 6 to get a fabric that wouldn't be too flimsy. I am now approaching the end of the 11th stripe, I think, but I have pretty much decided to do more than the 12 called for in the pattern. I have a fair bit of GWAT left, and I've barely touched the ball of Koi Pond, so there should be plenty for maybe two or three more stripes as well as a generous border at the bottom. The challenge is figuring out just how much more to add, as I can't really tell just how big it is now, when it's still on the needles!

Double Your (Handspun) Pleasure

Two yarns for you this week, mostly because the first one took so long that I needed a little instant gratification after it was done and spun up the next one in two evenings.

First is the December 2011 shipment from the Crown Mountain Farms fiber club, 4 oz. of 74 Organic in a colorway called Lemuria. Here was the fiber when it first arrived:

I really have not been able to capture the colors very well; in reality, it was a slightly orange pink (almost a salmon color) and pale green running into brown.

The fiber itself was very soft and seemed like it wanted to be spun fine, so I decided to use it for my first attempt at a cabled yarn. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular technique, a cabled yarn is achieved by spinning two 2-py yarns and then plying them with each other in the direction the singles were originally spun. Because any plying takes out twist, you need to have more twist than usual in the first plying so that your yarn holds together. Fortunately, I like a high amount of twist in my yarns normally, so while many instructions for cabled yarns tell you to run the first plied yarns through the wheel to add extra twist before plying them together, I just skipped to the last step. Here's the result:

I suppose I was in laceweight mode after finishing my Millifiori, because the singles I spun were so fine, the finished yarn (which is effectively a four ply) is still fingering weight. The skein is approximately 348 yards, so a good amount for some project or other. I think this fiber is a bit too soft for socks -- unless I want them to be felted socks on the first wearing -- but it would be heavenly around the neck, so perhaps a cowl or shawlette is in order.

After all that plying, I knew the next yarn had to be a singles yarn -- one step and done, in other words. Remember that fiber that showed up in my mailbox by surprise about a month ago? I'd been staring at that green the whole time I was spinning singles and plying, so it practically leapt onto my wheel. I ended up with a skein of fingering-weight singles that is just as pretty as the original fiber:

I think this just has to be knit into something for the classy lady who sent it to me, but only about 288 yards, so I'll have to get a little creative in picking a pattern. I am not sure how sensitive she is to wool (Wensleydale isn't exactly merino, either), so at this point I am thinking a lacy scarf or shawlette that she can wear outside a coat or over a sweater if it's too scratchy for her. Any suggestions are welcome!

Did I Jinx Myself?

Sometimes it really seems like Mother Nature is plotting against me. Don't get me wrong, I've really been enjoying the mild winter we've had this year (particularly days like today, when it was sunny and in the low 70s!), but it always seems to get warm just as I'm working on a sweater I'm really excited about.

Last week I had Thursday and Friday off from work, so for much of those two days, I parked myself in a comfy chair at my LYS and worked on my handspun sweater. As you can see, I made very good progress -- the back is complete and I'm a good way through the front.

The front is going rather slowly -- as is the nature of all that cabling -- but I love how it's turning out.

This piece will definitely take the most time, but it's at least quite engaging to work on. It's never boring because every row is just a little different, so I do need to pay attention to where I am on the chart. My yarn supply is also holding out well, too; I'm close to finishing my second skein, and I still have the three largest skeins (yardage-wise) left to knit.

I highly doubt I'll be able to wear this when I finish (too warm!), but it'll be really nice to have a new sweater to look forward to come fall.

Pattern Release: Teleidoscope Tam

Three patterns in three weeks! I swear I am not that prolific; by some happy accident several patterns that were in the works for several months all were ready to be published at roughly the same time. After this one, there are more in the works, but you won't see any of them for a bit.

In any case, the last of this bunch of three is another stranded colorwork pattern (I'm addicted, I'll admit it), the Teleidoscope Tam. This one is a great first project for someone who's just getting their feet wet with stranded colorwork, because there are only two colors and no long floats involved.

This is knit from the bottom up, starting with some simple 2x2 ribbing that transitions into the stranded part. There's some simple shaping on top of the crown, and the tam ends with a little nub of I-cord.

The "magic" here is in the yarn; I again used Knit Picks Chroma fingering, but any sock/fingering weight yarn with long color repeats (Noro Kureyon Sock or Silk Garden Sock, Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, Wisdom Yarns Sock Poems, etc.) would work just as well. The long color repeats make it look like you're changing colors when in fact you're only ever using two yarns the whole time, meaning just four ends to weave in.

The tam is finished with a little gentle blocking -- over a small dinner plate, if you like, but I found that I could obtain just as good a result by laying it flat on a drying rack and patting it into shape.

I had such fun knitting up this hat -- I'm only sorry that the weather seems to be improving and I don't need to wear it to stay warm!

Pattern Release: Gothic Leaves Baby Blanket

I've been a busy knitter/designer lately! I had a bunch of things in the works in the fall and early winter, and as luck would have it, they all seem to be ready at the same time. So here's my second pattern release in as many weeks, the Gothic Leaves Baby Blanket.

I originally designed this as a gift for a friend who was expecting her first baby earlier this year. While flipping through one of my Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries, I came across this stitch pattern and thought it would look lovely in a blanket. When Rainbow was born, I knit her a lace blanket that was used constantly during those first few months -- when you have a newborn in the winter, it's a bit impractical to get a winter coat, but you need something to keep them warm on those trips to see the pediatrician and the grandparents!

The lace stitch is framed by garter, which I always like in children's knits. The blanket's also very easy to upsize if desired; as written, it comes out to a pram-sized blanket (approximately 23.5 in./60 cm wide by 30 in./76 cm long), which I found to be just the right size for covering Rainbow up when she was in the carrier as a newborn -- and now is the perfect size when she wants to put her dolls and stuff animals to bed.

The lace pattern is both written out and charted, and what I really like about it is that, unlike a lot of lace, it doesn't need an aggressive blocking to open up. In fact, I worked the sample in machine-washable Cascade 220 Superwash, and although I handwashed my sample and laid it flat to dry (just smoothing out the lace a bit to open it up), you could easily throw this in the washer and dryer. Because this was designed for new mom, I wanted the care to be as easy as possible.

The blanket was a big hit with my friend; I hope you like it as well!

Millefiori

This yarn has been done for most of this past week, but it took until this weekend to get a decent shot of it (though I still couldn't seem to get my camera to do it justice). It started out as this twist of fiber, 50% merino/50% silk from All Spun Up:

I set out to spin this a medium weight (sport to DK), but with such a high silk content, it really wanted to be spun ultra fine. So I went with it and ended up with two-ply laceweight.

The final skein is approximately 796.5 yards, so plenty to do a large shawl.

Trust me when I say that it's a lot prettier in person -- for some reason, my camera either wants to capture the color accurately or the shine accurately, but not both. The colors are rich and the shine factor is high. I'm extremely satisfied with this spin, and once I finish the current projects, this just might be the next thing on my needles.

All Handspun, All the Time

Although in truth I haven't been doing a whole lot of knitting lately (I've been too seduced by spinning while rewatching Downton Abbey season 2), the two current projects on my needles are, somewhat amazingly, being knit in handspun.

The first is my I Heart Aran sweater, which is being done in the Romney I just spun up in the last couple of months. I started with the back, which is plain except for the requisite ribbing at the bottom, so not very exciting thus far.

I'm just past the waist shaping, so now it's just knit and purl until I reach the length to begin the underarm shaping. Before I cast on for this, I was a good knitter and remeasured, and as it turns out, my bust size is a good two inches less than I thought it was -- which means I can knit a smaller size sweater and be sure that I have plenty of yarn. I might even add some length. Of course, the finished sweater will have zero ease (I was worried two inches of ease would be too much), so I might have to be a bit heavy handed when it come time to block.

My other project is a lot more fun to look at. I had two skeins of handspun in my stash that were just begging to be knit up together, and for months now I'd been intending to turn them into a Stripe Study Shawl. This past weekend, I decided the time had come to cast on, and I'm really glad I did -- this pattern is addictive! I partially blame it for the fact that I stayed up to watch all of the Oscars on Sunday night (and then was really, really tired Monday morning!).

The colors are not quite true here because of the flash, but you can see the nice contrast I'm getting as well as how there are stripes within each stripe from the gradient in the yarn. My yarn is closer to a laceweight than a fingering, so I'm using considerably smaller needles (US 3 rather than US 6). I have way more yardage than the pattern calls for, though, so I can easily do more stripes to get the shawl to be the right size. This is going to be so cozy and bright when it's done; I have a feeling that it's going to be a regular accessory to my work wardrobe.