Pattern Release: Itty Bitty Kitty

Unless you've been living under a rock this year (which, given how the year has been going, might not be such a bad idea), you're likely aware of a bit of a knitting phenomenon that took the world by storm. Yes, I'm talking about the Pussyhat, that ubiquitous pink cat hat that so many people were knitting and wearing at marches and protests earlier this year. Regardless on your political leanings, I think we can all agree that they made a very strong visual statement. And from a knitting perspective, I thought they were very clever because they were so easy to execute, even for a beginner.

Flash forward to this past summer, when I was knitting up preemie hats to take to SSK and donate. I knit several from a random skein of sock yarn I'd picked up somewhere using a beanie pattern I found on Ravelry, but then I happened across some bright pink leftovers from some socks I'd knit and I immediately thought that they would be great to use for a teeny tiny kitty hat. It turned out so well that I decided to write it up as a proper pattern, so I'm pleased to present to you today the Itty Bitty Kitty hat.

Modeled by a lemon for scale

I only decided to publish this as a pattern when I couldn't find any preemie-sized version already available on Ravelry. I'm not trying to make any sort of political statement with this hat -- I only used the pink yarn because I thought it was such a great bright color, but my testers used all different colors, including some self-striping. Rather, this is meant to be a very quick-to-knit hat that is very easy to execute. There is no shaping involved, just some ribbing and stockinette that is finished with a three-needle bind off. I wanted to make this pattern as straightforward as possible so that it would be easy to churn a bunch out and donate them to the tiny babies most in need of warmth.

To that end, I am charging a very nominal fee of $1 for this pattern (which, I should add, has been graded to five preemie sizes), and I will be donating the entirety of the proceeds to the March of Dimes. I'll even be making up the difference once PayPal takes a cut to ensure that the organization gets the full dollar from every pattern sold.

Really Late -- or Really Early

I figure I'm only about six or seven months late with this promised hat. Or, I suppose, I'm several months early, depending on how you look at it.

Pattern: 1898 Hat by Kristine Byrnes
Yarn: Youghiogheny Yarns Yough Worsted (100% superwash merino) in Submerged, approximately three-quarters of a skein
Needles: US 6 (4.0 mm) 32 in. Addi Turbos, magic loop
Started/Completed: September 20/September 25

I knit this delightful pattern exactly as written, with no modifications. As with the first time I knit it, I found the finished hat to be a snug fit, but as Rainbow's head is slightly smaller than mine and I have a feeling it will grow a bit when I block it, I think it will be fine. She was so thrilled that it was done this morning (I finished it last night after she went to bed) that she promptly put it on and wore it all during breakfast. Were it not for the fact that the high temperature was supposed to be near 90 today, I think she might have even tried to wear it to school!

Rainbow picked out the yarn (and bought it herself!) at the Indie Knit and Spin* show this past February, and it's been sitting and waiting for me to knit it up into the hat she requested ever since. I enjoyed working with the yarn, for the most part, though it didn't feel as soft as I would expect a superwash merino to feel. I'll be interested to see if it bleeds at all when I wash the hat, as sometimes a bit of extra dye can leave the yarn feeling crunchy, for lack of a better term. Plus, it's a dark blue, and we all know how blues love to bleed.

I'll readily admit that I completely ignored my Rhinebeck sweater last night in order to finish up the hat, but seeing her reaction to it this morning made it all worth it.

There was so little time left before bed after I finished the hat that I figured I'd cast on my new lunchtime project, for which the yarn conveniently arrived earlier this week. I'm designing a new pair of socks for the Knit Picks IDP program in their new(ish) Hawthorne Tonal Hand Paint yarn. The colorway I'm using is Ashland, a pinky purple.

It's been a while since I knit socks with any sort of pattern, and I'm enjoying this one (and not just because it's my own design). As relaxing as it is to knit a mindless stockinette sock that allows you to zone out while you knit, there's something to be said for an engaging pattern that requires a bit of attention. I'll be making these a little shorter than my usual socks due to the relatively low yardage in each skein of Hawthorne, but I think that will probably work to my advantage in that I'll get these finished up and get the pattern off to my tech editor that much faster.


*Incidentally, have I mentioned that I'm vending at Indie Knit and Spin this November? It looks like a fantastic lineup of vendors -- I'm going to have a hard time not spending all my money!

Cousins, Not Twins

Some time at my wheel on Friday night and yesterday was enough to finish up my FatCatKnits combed top/batt combo spin, and today I have two lovely poofy skeins to share.

I spun both skeins more or less the same way (short forward draw) and chain plied them both. Obviously there's a bit more variation in the skein spun from the batt, as the fiber was more textured. I will say that I ended up pulling out and throwing away a lot of white shiny stuff -- I think it was tencel -- as I was spinning the batt because it just got tangled up and would not draft. Rather than spend the time to fight with it, I just yanked it out, and that made the process of spinning much more pleasurable.

You can really see the similarities and the differences in the skeins when you look at them close up. The same colors are all there, but the batt skein reads very green overall, whereas the top skein looks more blue/purple. The skein spun from the batt is also slightly thicker, on average. While both skeins poofed up nicely in the finishing (thank you, Polwarth!), I'd say the skein spun from combed top is a heavy fingering and the skein spun from the batt is more of a sport.

My plan for these is to use them together in some sort of colorwork, either stranded or perhaps mosaic. I think that although they're close in color and value, the fact that the batt skein is a bit thicker and more textured will help it to stand out a bit.

Meanwhile, I have technically started a new spinning project, although it's technically nothing formal, as Spinzilla starts a week from tomorrow. I decided to pull out the remainders of the batts from the class I took with Jillian Moreno at SSK and just spin them up. I'll fill up a bobbin and chain ply. I started with the one that was mostly blue and smooth.

Speaking of Spinzilla, I have my fiber all ready to spin, thanks to a package that arrived from HipStrings earlier this week. When Jill posted this sampler set on Instagram, I just knew I had to have it.

These are all unicorn-themed blended tops, all different fiber combinations, and I'm planning to spin each one up separately to perhaps be combined in one project. I haven't weighed the fiber yet, nor is the weight marked on the packaging, but I'm guessing I have about half a ounce of each color. I think if I spin each one fine and chain ply (just to keep things easy), I should have a nice collection of mini skeins at the end of the week.

A Beginning, a Middle, and an End

I probably should have put the things in the title in the reverse order, because I'm going to start with the end -- I have finished my socks.

Pattern: a variation on my vanilla sock recipe (using a simultaneous heel flap and gusset) worked over 70 stitches
Yarn: ONline Supersocke Cotton Beach Color (45% cotton, 40% wool, 15% nylon) in color 945, one skein
Needles: US 0 (2.0 mm) Addi Sock Rockets, magic loop
Started/Completed: September 5/September 19

I'm glad to have these off the needles. They aren't anything special, and I'm sure they'll be perfectly serviceable socks. As you can probably see on the sock on the bottom in the photo, the spot where I cut out the knot is rather obvious because it not only disrupted the striping sequence, it actually reversed it. So the foot of that sock looks like a reflection of itself. Normally something like that would bother me, but I was so ready to be done with these socks that I really didn't care.

Meanwhile, my Rhinebeck sweater has grown a bit, and as soon as I post this, I'll be pulling it out to finish up the underbust decreases.

Before I put the sweater away last night, I measured the length from the back of the neck -- just to get an idea of how much more there was to do. It looks like I have less than 10 inches left of the body to knit, which really isn't all that much. I know the sleeves are bound to go much faster, given that they're worked in stockinette in the round and don't require me to check two charts every row. I plan to put in some serious time on this sweater this weekend, so I predict that there will be much more of the body the next time you see it.

As to the beginning, I have cast on a new project for my lunchtime knitting. I decided that the design project should probably wait a bit so I can do some proper swatching, so instead I pulled out one of the skeins of yarn that Rainbow bought earlier this year at Indie Knit and Spin that I said I would use to knit her an ear flap hat. I never got around to doing it when it was still winter, so I figured I'd get a head start on it for this coming winter. I haven't gotten very far (this is just one day's worth of knitting), but I think this should come together rather quickly.

This is a worsted weight from Youghiogheny Yarns in a colorway called Submerged that's very much a colorway I would have chosen for myself. I'm knitting the 1898 Hat, which I knit once before this year and very much liked. It has a clever but easy construction, so it's good for some knitting that's relatively mindless.

The weekend ahead looks fairly restful. Rainbow's got a birthday party on Saturday (which I'm hoping I can get the Mister to take her to so I can get some extra sweater knitting time) and then the Mister and I are running the 5K in the Great Race on Sunday. I expect there will be some naps taken on Sunday afternoon!

It Might Actually Happen

I know that, relatively speaking, I'm a pretty fast knitter. But my knitting time is usually limited, what with a full-time job and a small child and all the demands of life. When I decided to knit a Rhinebeck sweater, I knew it was a big proposition and there was a very large chance I wouldn't finish it in time. But, lo and behold, my sweater is actually starting to look like a sweater!

I'd added quite a bit of fabric since joining the fronts and backs at the underarms and am now halfway through the underbust decreases. Once those are done and the knitting reaches just above the narrowest part of my waist, I do a series of waist/hip increases and then work even until the body is the right length.

Now that I've done a good amount of rows involving both front bands, I've gotten into a good rhythm. I won't say that I've memorized those stitch patterns, but I'm beginning to get a rough feel for where the increases and decreases lie, and I'm also less confused about which chart to refer to (they're side by side on the page, so which one you refer to first in a row depends on whether you're working on the right side or wrong side).

The further I get into this pattern, the more impressed I am with it. It's not exactly a difficult pattern in terms of the knitting skill needed, but it is an involved one in the sense that there's a lot to pay attention to. There's the two charts for the front bands, for starters, which are symmetrical, plus the shaping, plus some short rows on the edges that you do every time you repeat the charts to keep the I-cord edging from pulling too much. And while I was worried that the sweater was running small while I was completing the first parts, I've tried it on and it looks like it will fit perfectly.

Aside from the sweater, which has been my main focus, I'm also trying to finish up my current socks. I'm about an inch away from starting the toe of the second sock, so a completed pair will soon be in the offing.

The second sock has gotten me a bit annoyed with this yarn, to be honest. I was already not a huge fan of all the cotton because of how hard it is on my hands, but for some reason the skein decided to start knotting up as I was pulling the yarn out on this second sock, resulting in a lot of yarn barf. As if that wasn't enough, I encountered a knot, and after cutting it out, I found that the self-patterning was completely disrupted, as you can see from the photo above. I'm not terribly concerned, as it happened on the foot of the sock and that part will be hidden in my shoe when I wear these, but it's rather irksome that it happened this close to the end of the sock.

To avoid having more ends to weave in on these socks (because I'm dealing with enough ends on my sweater), I used a clasped weft join after I cut out the knot. I think I've used this join once before, and I really like it. It's very easy to do, and although the join feels a bit bulky for the first round or two after you do it, it seems to blend in very well after that. I can feel where the join is on this sock, but I can't really see it from the outside (the bits of ends sticking out on the inside are a dead giveaway). I did do the join on the instep of the foot rather than the sole, just to be safe, because although my feet aren't as sensitive as other parts of me, I have some other socks where there was a join in the foot due to a knot (where I did a normal join and wove in the ends later) and I can feel it every time I wear them.

I may try to finish the socks up tonight, if I can, so that I can start something new at lunch tomorrow. I have yarn support for a new design on its way to me, but in the meantime I have a hat design I've been meaning to cast on for months now that I think will finally get its turn.

Same but Different

I haven't gotten as much spinning time as I would have liked in the past week (Rhinebeck sweater knitting is taking priority at the moment), but the time I have spent at my wheel has been very enjoyable. I've been working on the FatCatKnits top/batt combo that I bought a few weeks ago, and it's been such fun. I started spinning the batt yesterday after finishing the 2 oz. of top, and to say that the experience spinning the two is like night and day is a bit of an understatement -- and it's all the more interesting given that the two preparations are, at their core, the same fiber.

The fiber that was carded to create this batt was combined with silk, silk noil, angelina, and some other fun stuff, so it's creating a wonderful texture in the singles. While I'm trying to end up with singles that are more or less the same thickness as the singles I spun from the combed top, all these add-ins make it virtually impossible to have a completely even singles -- and I'm just fine with that. For comparison's sake, here are singles from the combed top:

My plan is to chain ply both bobbins, with the expectation that the yarn from the combed top will be slightly thinner and much more even that the yarn spun from the batt. I'm planning to knit something with colorwork with both finished yarns, and I think the differences in thickness and texture should have a really interesting effect.

In other spinning news, I am happy to share that my Flatiron is finally all together and working (though I haven't actually spun on it yet)!

I had so many issues getting this wheel together that I was really starting to think it was cursed -- first half the parts were missing, then some of the bolts didn't work, and then I finally got it put together but I couldn't seem to get the flyer to move when I treadled. Thanks to some very helpful folks on Ravelry, I finally figured out that my bobbin needed to be turned the other way to spin in double drive and all I had to do to get it to work was flip the bobbin around. I expect that I'll be giving this a go as soon as I finish up the singles that are currently on the wheel, so I'll be able to give a full report then. I definitely want to spend some time spinning on it before Spinzilla (which kicks off in about two weeks) in case I want to use it for some of my spinning then.

Join as One

I'm happy to say that I've reached a rather momentous stage on my Rhinebeck sweater: I am ready to join the fronts and the back to start the body.

(Apologies for the crappy photo -- we're dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Irma here, and any light is coming from a lightbulb at this point.)

I finished up the left front last night, just before bed, and put all of the live stitches on the needle this morning. The joining row will be the first order of business this evening when we're back from Curriculum Night at Rainbow's school. After I've gotten a few rows done, I plan to pause and weave in all the ends that I can so I can stop fighting with all those dangling bits. I shouldn't have any more ends on the body until I'm done with it or I have to introduce a new skein, whichever comes first, so it should help to speed things along a bit -- because don't you just hate it when you finish knitting a big project only to realize that you have to weave in all your ends?

I've definitely gotten the hang of the front bands by now, so those are going much quicker now that I'm not constantly stopping to double check the charts. Of course, now I will have to pay attention to two charts and remember which is which, but I think I should be okay. I just need to remember to only knit on this when I can pay attention to it -- sleepy knitting is a no-no for this project!

A Ticking Clock

When I started my Rhinebeck sweater, I knew I was likely cutting it close (not that I had much of a choice given how quickly the plans came together). But yesterday I looked at the calendar and realized that I had even less time than I thought. Although it's a bit less than six weeks until we leave, one of those weeks is Spinzilla, so I will be spending ever spare moment spinning. That means that I've got less than five weeks to finish my sweater, and I have a feeling I will need every moment.

Still, I've made some decent progress. I'm two rows away from finishing the upper part of the right front and then I'll tackle the left front. As you can see, I've started the decorative band, which is a lot of fun (though it does require some close attention, as the right and left are a bit different).

Although I was alternating skeins in the back, I've been using just one at a time for the band and fronts so far, simply because the rows are so short and involved that I thought adding a second skein would make things completely crazy. I think I will be okay -- there's enough variation within the skeins that it almost looks like I'm alternating -- but I'll resume using two skeins at once as soon as I join the underarms and start working the entire body.

I am enjoying this sweater so far and the unusual way in which it's constructed, but my one complaint is that there are tons of ends to deal with due to the fact that you knit pieces in different directions and different sections. I have been trying to weave them in as I go wherever possible, but at the moment I've got a couple dangling (along with the ends from waste yarn holding live stitches) that can't be woven in just yet and they're driving me a bit batty. I really think a lot of this annoyance will go away once the body is all joined up as one piece, but for now, I find I'm spending more time that I would like untangling and generally moving ends out of the way.

Meanwhile, my lunchtime socks are a lot bigger than they were the last time you saw them -- I'm nearly finished with the first one!

I'll be glad when these are done, as they're still not super comfortable to knit, but I think they will feel nice to wear -- and it will feel even better to have knit up a deep-stash skein of yarn.

Soft as a Bunny

Another skein of yarn is fresh of my wheel; I finished plying Friday night and skeined and washed it yesterday. I'm glad to see this one done!

This yarn was spun from some 80% merino/20% angora fiber that I won earlier this year as part of the yearlong knitalong happening in the 90% Knitting Ravelry group. The colors weren't really me, but generally I find that even if the fiber doesn't appeal, the finished yarn often does. That was certainly the case with this spin. The colors softened and blended as I drafted the fiber, and they're very attractively autumnal in the finished yarn. The finished skein ended up being in the range of sport to DK weight and 308 yards of two ply.

I didn't entirely enjoy spinning this, in part because of the angora content. While the fiber was extremely soft, as you would expect, I found it tricky to draft at first and during the whole spin had to deal with those angora fibers coming off on me and occasionally getting up my nose. I tried to encourage a bit of a halo when I finished the skein, doing some hot/cold dunks and then snapping and beating it a bit, but there's only the slightest of halos in the dry yarn; I suspect my usual high amount of twist is to blame. I would run the yarn back through the wheel to remove some of the ply twist, but it seems to be pretty well balanced and isn't really kinking up on itself, so I will likely leave it as it is. The lack of halo may also be an indication that this won't pill up as badly as it might if it were more loosely plied, too.

Given my feelings toward the angora content, I'm pretty confident in saying that this yarn will be available for sale in the Fluvial Fibers booth at Indie Knit and Spin in November, so if you love it and will be there, it could be yours.

I received some fiber in the mail earlier in the week after finally succumbing to something that had been tempting me for quite a while. One of the cool things that Ginny of FatCatKnits offers is a braid/batt combo. She dyes up 4 oz. of combed top. Half of it she leaves as is, but the other half she throws on her drum carder along with add-ins like sparkles and silk noil. So you end up with two preparations of the same colorway. I've been wanting to spin up one of these combo for months, and I finally splurged and bought one in a colorway called Arcadia, which, as someone on Instagram pointed out, looks a lot like a Monet painting.

I couldn't wait to dig into this package, so I started to spin the combed top yesterday while I was washing the finished skein. It really did not disappoint.

I've decided to spin the braid from end to end as a thin single and then chain ply it. For the batt, I'll work from one side to the other by tearing off thin strips and spin it more or less the same way. I'd like to use both skeins together so that the subtle differences in the preparations are apparent. These colors are so gorgeous that I have a feeling it will be hard to tear myself away from the wheel to work on my Rhinebeck sweater!

Trying to Extend Summer

I must start out my post by admitting that while I have made a bit of progress on my Rhinebeck sweater, it's only a very little bit because I have been cheating on it with my spinning the past couple of nights. I was very anxious to finish up some singles and then ply, so that meant a few hours at my wheel. But I'll be giving the sweater my full attention tonight and try to get in some extra time over the weekend so that I don't feel quite so guilty.

Meanwhile, I have started a new pair of socks for my lunchtime knitting using some extremely deep stash. I bought this skein of ONline Supersocke Cotton Beach Color (now discontinued) at Knit One at least a decade ago, likely when I was living in my apartment and it was my LYS. It was likely before my former LYS, Natural Stitches, opened and before the Mister and I moved in together (we were living together for a bit more than a year before we got married, and we just celebrated our 10th anniversary this past weekend, so that should give you a sense of the timeline).

I am not sure what caused me to buy this skein, although I know I did knit the Mister a pair of socks in the same yarn at one point, so perhaps the two skeins were bought at the same time. Regardless, it's been sitting in my stash ever since. The yarn is a blend of 45% cotton, 40% wool, and 15% nylon, and I suspect that high cotton content is what has kept it in the stash. I don't usually knit with a lot of cotton or cotton blend yarns because their lack of give tends to make my hands ache when I work with them. I am managing okay with this sock, but I'm definitely slower than I am with pure wool or mostly wool. I do like the feel of the fabric I am getting, though, and I think the socks will be good for times like now, early fall and late spring, when there's a bit of chill in the air but it gets warm enough over the course of the day that wool socks are a tad too warm. And the colors make me think of the colors of Cape Cod, where we just were on vacation, so working on the sock makes me feel a bit like it's still the middle of summer.

The weekend coming up should be a fairly busy one, but I'm hoping to find time to finish plying that distracting skein of handspun, get in a run, and get in some decent knitting time on the Rhinebeck sweater. I hope that whatever you have planned, you enjoy it!

An Unexpected Development

The long holiday weekend that has just passed was a good one, filled with a lot of crafting time and an exciting development in my plans for the fall. I'll get to that in a minute, but first I have an FO!

I finished up these quick socks for Rainbow on Sunday evening and left them by her bedside so she would see them when she woke up on Monday. I was very pleased to find that she had put them on almost as soon as she got up -- clearly she likes them! I used the Fish Lips Kiss Heel pattern and worked them toe up using the foot template process described in the pattern. I did make them a little bit big (maybe a quarter of an inch longer than her actual foot length) so that she won't outgrow them too quickly; she's planning to wear them mainly around the house, so a bit of room isn't an issue. The yarn is the My First Regia that I picked up when we were on vacation last month, and I used US 1/2.25 mm needles. Amazingly, Rainbow's feet are only an inch less in circumference than mine and only two inches shorter in length, so it almost felt like I was knitting socks for me! I'm usually not a fan of toe-up socks, but it worked well in this case to use up almost every bit of the yarn. I ended up with about 2 g left from both of the original skeins, and it felt good to be so efficient without playing yarn chicken. I didn't do anything special to get the colors to end up like they did -- I just started with the yarn on the outside of the ball regardless of where it fell in the color sequence -- but I'm tickled that the two socks ended up like complete opposites.

Though I spent a lot of the holiday weekend spinning, I did take the opportunity to cast on a new project. And I've got a deadline for that project. Why? Because, dear readers, I AM GOING TO RHINEBECK! Attending the New York Sheep and Wool Festival has long been on my knitting bucket list, and I honestly thought it would likely be several years before it was a possibility. But on Saturday evening I got a text from Amy at the Ross Farm asking me if there was any way she could convince me to come with her and Scooter Pie to the festival and help out in their booth. Honestly, it didn't take much convincing! As soon as I knew it would work as far as my family's calendar and my available time off from work, I was in! But of course going to Rhinebeck means that I really must take part in the annual Rhinebeck tradition: knitting a Rhinebeck sweater. I started mine last night.

The pattern I'm knitting is Copperplate by Elizabeth Doherty, for which I'd swatched (and gotten gauge) months ago but never gotten around to casting on. To give you a sense of how long I've been planning this sweater, I bought the yarn at my former LYS, Natural Stitches, long before they announced they were closing but when I found out they were no longer going to be carrying that particular vendor. The yarn is Yarn Hollow Tango, an absolutely luminous blend of Polwarth and silk, in a deep red shade called Garnet. As you can see, I haven't done that much yet, but that's mainly because I screwed up at the beginning and had to do a do-over pretty much right away (I blame the headache I had last night). I'm sure this small piece will be growing much more quickly now that I've read the pattern correctly and know what I'm doing, and the deadline to get it done is surely going to keep me on track.

I unconsciously made a smiley face with my yarn and sweater!

I'm very excited about my first Rhinebeck, though I'm sure I'll be just as overwhelmed as I was for my first Maryland (this time I'll know to bring extra allergy meds just in case my body decides to have the same reaction as well). If you're a Rhinebeck veteran, please feel free to share any bits of wisdom you'd like with this newbie!

Dusk to Night

After playing a lot of catch up on my spinning when we got home from vacation, I finally finished my spin in progress this weekend, and I am so pleased with it! It turned out exactly as I'd hoped -- but let me backtrack a bit to remind you. I was spinning these two colors of Falkland from Fibernymph Dye Works that I received as the second shipment of Lisa's Barberpole Fiber Club:

Because the colors were meant to represent the colors of the sky as the sun set and the daylight faded, I though it would be interesting to spin them in such a way that the lighter color slowly faded into the darker color. I knew I wanted a three ply, so I split each braid into six pieces (about half an ounce each) and made myself a chart for how each of the three plies would be spun. Each ply would use up four of the little bundles. The first ply went light, light, light, dark. The second was light, light, dark, dark. And the third was light, dark, dark, dark. If it plied up as I envisioned it, the yarn would gradually fade from all light to light with a bit of dark to dark with a bit of light and finally to all dark. I'm happy to say it worked out exactly that way.

The finished yarn is probably a light fingering weight and in excess of 600 yards, so plenty for the shawl that I'm envisioning (which will start out light at the top and fade into dark at the bottom). I don't have a particular pattern in mind at this point; I suppose if I can't find something that seems to work, I'll just have to design my own!

The colors in the yarn, as they were in the fiber, are definitely on the muted side, but now that I've seen that this method works, I'll definitely be trying it again with brighter colors. I think it would be really interesting to do a combo spin with two much more colorful and vibrant braids!

I decided to throw something a bit quicker on the wheel next to cleanse my palate, so I got out some merino/angora that I won in as a prize from a KAL through Lisa's podcast earlier this summer. There were two bundles of fiber (2 oz. each) in the package, so a two ply was an obvious option. I wasn't wild about the colors in fiber form, but they are blending really nicely in the singles.

I've never spun an angora blend before, and it was a bit tricky at first, but now I'm getting the hang of it. I do have to clean myself off with a lint roller after I finish each spinning session, though -- this stuff sheds like nobody's business! From the plybacks I've been doing with the singles, it looks like the finished yarn will probably be in the sport to DK range, and I'll likely beat the skein up a bit when I finish it to encourage a halo.

If the yarn/singles pictures look a bit better than my recent photos, it's because they were taken on my brand-new camera! My trusty Nikon DSLR bit the dust a couple of months ago, and while the Mister attempted to fix it (it was an issue with the shutter, we think), he was unsuccessful. I'd had the camera for probably nearly a decade by that point, though, so he decided to get me a new one for our 10th anniversary, which we celebrated yesterday. I still have to learn how to use most of its bells and whistles, but I seem to have managed okay to take a few decent pictures for the blog -- and it certainly does a better job than my camera phone!

Keep On Keepin' On

Despite the fact that I am coming off a four-day weekend and only had to deal with a three-day work week, it has been a very long week. The Mister has been away since Saturday morning for work, so I've been solo parenting since then. Every time he has to travel, I gain even more respect for single parents and how they manage to do it all. The Mister will be back late tonight, and there's a holiday weekend coming up, so I expect I will recover rather quickly.

But you came here for the knitting, didn't you? There has been some, though not as much as I would like. I have been working on Rainbow's socks during my lunch break, and I'm quickly approaching the end of the first sock. I'm trying to use up as much yarn as possible without playing another game of yarn chicken, and I think I will likely start the ribbing soon.

I am using the Fish Lips Kiss Heel for these -- my first time using it since the first pair I made with it -- and I think I may have messed up the template a bit, as the foot of the sock is turning out a bit big, but that actually works out for the better, as I was planning on putting in a bit of extra room so she won't outgrow this pair as quickly. She likely won't be wearing them anywhere but around the house, so a bit of extra fabric shouldn't bother her.

I've been working on my Wonder Woman Wrap most nights after I've gotten her to sleep, and it's finally started to get interesting now that I've added in the contrast color.

The pattern is very clever and quite simple once you see how it works, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I have a feeling a second one is in my future, as a certain kid in the house is planning to dress up as Wonder Woman for Halloween and has requested her own shawl. Fortunately, the pattern has been updated and now includes directions for a child size, so all that remains is to rummage through the stash and find some appropriate yarn.

Speaking of the stash, I am happy to report that it is finally back home! After living in a basement closet for months while we were working on a renovation project on our third floor, I finally got around to moving it back upstairs to the "stash room" on Monday (it also served as my workout for the day -- it's not so easy to move all that yarn and fiber up three flights of stairs!). I have to work up the energy to dig into it and organize it a bit better, but that should happen soon.

Rainbow and I also got a little crafty earlier this week. We went to Michaels on Monday to pick up some jump rings and beads, and then on Tuesday afternoon, following her first (half) day of school, we made some stitch markers.

The clay ones might look familiar; we did a bunch of them for the stitch marker swap at SSK earlier this summer. But I thought they might work better as progress keepers because they're so long, so I made a bunch of plain jump rings with seed beads (my favorite type of marker) to go with them. I still have to glaze the clay and add the lobster clasps, but very soon we'll have some swanky stitch marker sets!

Easy Choice

After finishing my sweater, I did have a brief period of not knowing what to knit next, but it didn't last long. I remembered that I wanted to cast on the Wonder Woman Wrap and that I'd specifically bought yarn for it at SSK. So I got the yarn out, wound it up into cakes, and promptly cast on this weekend. As of last night, I am one row away from finishing the second section.

I even have the stitch markers to match the project!

You may have noticed that this project is living in a brand-new project bag. That's right, I now own a Fringe Supply Co. Field Bag. It was not a purchase I was planning to make, but when I saw that the company was donating its sales to the Southern Poverty Law Center in the wake of the events in Charlottesville, I decided I was happy to support the company. I'm still breaking it in, and obviously it's in need of a little bling, but those issues will be resolved in time.

I'm still working on Rainbow's socks, and every time I pick them up, I am amazed at how huge her feet are. Would you believe the circumference of her foot is only one inch less than mine?

The yarn is knitting up in a way I didn't expect, but I'm liking it (and, more importantly, so is Rainbow). I'm planning to put in a Fish Lips Kiss Heel in and then knit up the leg until the yarn runs out. And I'm sure she'll have outgrown them by the end of the year, but at least she'll have a few months of colorful feet in the meantime.

A Bit of an Overestimation

I think when I predicted I'd be plying my gradient yarn this weekend, I forgot that I was spinning a total of 6 oz. of fiber rather than the usual 4. So I'm not quite there yet -- but I am getting close!

I'm now spinning the final bit of fiber for the final bobbin. You'll notice that I am using all of my Akerworks bobbins for this spin; the one on the wheel is the one I bought at SSK. I had intended to get a WooLee Winder bobbin, and the label said that's what it was, but I think it must've been mislabeled because it does not have the WW gear at the end. No big deal -- this one is certainly coming in handy, and I can always order a WW bobbin online. I will say that having these colorful bobbins makes spinning all that more fun, especially when the fiber is fairly monochrome as this fiber has been.

I'm hoping to finish up these singles this evening and then start plying tomorrow. I'm taking off the next two days to take Rainbow to the dentist and her first day of school, and I've got an eye doctor appointment on Tuesday morning, which means I will likely be useless for the rest of that day -- and spinning is the perfect thing when your eyes can't focus enough to read a knitting pattern!

At a Loss

After all the knitting I did last week to finish up projects for Stash Dash, I started the week without much direction as to what to do next. I knew that I needed something for my lunchtime knitting at work, so I grabbed some Fibernymph Dye Works Cozy and started another Rainbrioche hat, this time for Rainbow (using the leftovers from my version, with the colors reversed).

She had tried on mine when I finished it and claimed that it fit, but I could tell that it was a bit big. So for hers, I went down one needle size to make the circumference a bit smaller and also eliminated the first pattern repeat so it's not quite as tall. I'm nearly finished, probably because it's been going a lot faster than the first hat thanks to my increased familiarity with the pattern and the technique. It looks like I should have some yarn leftover, which means that there may be some pompom making in the near future.

I also decided to cast on a new pair of socks last night -- and these are for Rainbow as well. I bought the My First Regia specifically for her while we were on vacation, so after dinner last night, we traced her foot and I made a template to make her some toe-up Fish Lips Kiss Heel socks. It's been a long time since I last made her socks (I did it once when she was little and swore off them because her feet were growing so fast), and it's amazing just how big her feet are now.

I haven't done much so far, but I think these should be pretty fast once I've finished the increases. I plan to pretty much knit until I run out of yarn or she declares them tall enough, whichever comes first.

Aside from those two projects, I'm feeling kind of lost as to what to cast on next. I would like to start a sweater (perhaps the Copperplate that I swatched for months ago), but I'm not sure I'm ready for sweater weather just yet and may not want to tempt fate. I know I probably should do some swatching for some design projects in the pipeline, but then swatching delays the instant gratification of casting on right away. In lieu of actually making the decision, I've just been spinning and catching up on video podcasts the past few evenings, and really that's not a bad thing. I'm sure I'll get over this indecision soon enough, especially as I have a long weekend coming up -- I am off Monday to take Rainbow to the dentist and then a parent/teacher conference with her new teacher, and then I'm taking off Tuesday as well to take her to her first (half) day of school and then go to the eye doctor. I'll be pretty useless for most of the day due to getting my eyes dilated, so I'll have to knit or spin something simple. I suppose there are worse ways to spend a day off!

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.

Back to the Routine

We arrived home from our vacation yesterday evening, and once everything was unpacked and we got some food in us, we all promptly passed out for a good long sleep. Today was a whirlwind of cleaning, grocery shopping, and laundry, and while I did get some good knitting time in, there was unfortunately no time to get reacquainted with my wheel -- which means there has been no further spinning beyond the bobbin you saw a week ago. Our schedule returns to normal tomorrow, however, and I have quite a few video podcasts to catch up on, which means I will likely spend several of the next few evenings at the wheel.

I may not have any new spinning to show you, but I do have some pretty fiber to share! For a while now I've been admiring the beautiful fiber and handspun from Wound Up Fiber Arts on Instagram. Shortly before we left for our trip, I happened to spot that Trisha was having a sale to clear out her shop -- all braids were $15. Did I need more fiber? No, not really, but I couldn't resist her bright colors and ordered three braids. They arrived while I was away, so I had all this color to come home to:

Squander on superwash merino

Wild Thing on superwash merino/cashmere/nylon

Bittersweet on superwash merino

I may end up spinning and keeping one of these for me, but the others are likely to show up in the Fluvial Fibers shop or at my booth at November's Indie Knit and Spin!

Adventures in Yarn Shopping

Our vacation is starting to wind down (we leave on Saturday), and after a very active first few days, we had a relatively quiet day today. We all slept in and then took a trip to the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory. It's a quick self-guided tour, but it was something we'd never done before. We had lunch at "home" (the rental condo) and relaxed a bit, and then this afternoon I convinced the Mister to take me and Rainbow to the nearest LYS, Adventures in Knitting, which I'd spotted the very first day we arrived when we went to the local supermarket to stock up on food for the week. Don't let the fairly mediocre Web site fool you -- it's a great shop!

There was a wide variety of yarn to be found -- Berroco, Plymouth, HiKoo, the Fibre Company, Swan's Island, Madelinetosh, and other more mainstream yarn companies in addition to some more rustic yarns spun from sheep from farms in Brewster, Mass., and Nantucket.

They also had a large selection of buttons, needles from Addi and Knitter's Pride, and a sizeable wall of tools and notions. I petted and squished many skeins but was determined to buy something local that I couldn't get at home or online. This fit the bill perfectly:

This skein of 90% superwash merino/10% nylon is from the Cape Cod Yarn Co. and is exclusive to this shop. The colorway is called Seaweed, and it's a generous 480 yards -- plenty for a decently sized shawl or a pair of socks. I also bought a little something for Rainbow:

We found these teeny skeins of My First Regia in the back, with the sale yarns (they're marked $4, but they were actually $3 each). Each skein is 25 g and about 115 yards, so that should be plenty to make Rainbow a pair of socks -- something she's been asking me to make her for a while. I think when we get home, I'll make a template of her foot and make her a pair of toe-up Fish Lips Kiss Heel socks. They'll probably only fit her for a month or two, but at least they should be fun to knit!

I'm moving right along on my projects. I now have one sock done and am well on my way on the leg of sock number two, and I'm more than halfway through the sleeve increases on my tee. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be not so great, so perhaps it will be a good excuse to get in a bit of extra knitting time. If not, we have the long drive back to Boston to catch our flight home on Saturday, plus the flight, plus the drive home from the airport. I'm determined to meet my Stash Dash goal, even if I have to spend every last minute knitting!