It's Hip to Be a Square

Good news -- by the time I go to bed tonight, I should have one completed blanket square!

Here's what it looked like when I put it down last night. I need to knit about four more rows on the border on the left and then all that will remain is the final side of the border. I don't think I'll have any issues doing that tonight. It's still looking a little wonky, but I know that most of that will be resolved with blocking.

As I've been working on this square, I've come across a few inconsistencies within the pattern. I've been making notes to myself so that I'll have an easier time when I knit the second square -- something that I hope will happen this weekend.

This square is really all that I've been working on this week (at least that I can show you); to be honest, it feels like I haven't gotten much crafting time this week, despite having two days off. The Mister has been on a work trip since Sunday, so that's left me to do everything around the house, do all the child wrangling, and do all the drop-offs and pickups. I'm thankful that there's a long weekend coming up with only a few obligations.

Seeing as my knitting content is so sparse, how about a reading update? I've finished a few more books since I last talked about what I'd been reading.

• Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler: I borrowed this from the library (digitally) and read it over the course of two days. I think I heard about it because it's now a Starz show, so I looked it up. For some reason, for most of the book, I had it in my head that it was a memoir -- this despite the fact that it clearly says "a novel" on the front cover. Once I realized it wasn't, I think I liked it less. I gave it 3 stars. I enjoyed the parts that were actually about working in a restaurant, but I lost interest when it got too deep into relationships, drugs, and drinking.
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: I read this after Kat recommended it, and I'm so glad I did. It reminded me a great deal of Roots, but with a twist that it followed two branches of what is essentially the same family -- one side ends up in America via the slave trade and one side remains in Africa. It was a really unique take, I thought, and I really liked that each chapter told the story of a new generation. I gave it 4 stars.
• The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley: I read the first book in this two-book YA series last year and really enjoyed it, so I was happy to find the sequel available from the library. It was a quick and easy read, as you would expect from something intended for kids, and I gave it 4 stars. I felt that it tied up the story nicely while still leaving room for the story to continue.
• Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner: This book had long been on my "want to read" list, so when I got one of those wonderful e-mails from Goodreads that the Kindle version was on sale, I snapped it up. I devoured this book -- I found it absolutely fascinating. There have been so many books written about true stories of WWII, but I don't think that before reading this I'd heard much of anything about what it was like to be behind the Iron Curtain when it fell. This book is part family history, part memoir, and I found it to be really well written. I gave it 5 stars.
• We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter: This was the only one of this handful of books that I read in hard copy, and that meant that it took me quite a bit longer to read it (mainly because my hard-copy reading is usually limited to about 10 minutes each night before I go to bed). This book follows a Jewish family from Poland just prior to WWII through a year or so after its end, and each chapter focuses on a different family member or two. Unlike many of the books about the era that I've read, it didn't have any story line end up in a concentration camp. SPOILER ALERT! Everyone in this particular family survived, some by leaving Europe altogether and some by hiding or living as gentiles in plain sight. What makes the story even more extraordinary is that it's largely true; while certainly the author had to make up some things, all the characters are based on actual members of her family. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading only one book while I wait for a couple of holds from the library. I'd long wanted to read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, even before he died, so when I saw it on the book table at Costco the last time we were there, I didn't hesitate to buy it. I'm only about 50 pages in (nighttime reading strikes again!) but am enjoying it so far and hope to squeeze in some extra time with it this weekend.

If you're here in the United States, I hope you have a wonderful long weekend! If you're elsewhere, enjoy the first days of September!

A Pause for a Good Cause

While secret knitting continues in the background, I have paused some projects to work on a bit of charity knitting. About a month ago, my friend Kat put out a call for some knitters to contribute some squares toward a charity blanket (inspired by the call on the Mason-Dixon Knitting blog). Soon there were about a dozen of us, and one woman even took it upon herself to order yarn that we could all use and distribute it to us. So now I am knitting squares -- well, I'm starting with the first one, anyway, but eventually there will be two.

The pattern is Kay Gardiner's Mitered Crosses Blanket, which I'd actually bought way back when she first published it as a charity fundraiser. The yarn we're using is Berroco Ultra Wool, a 100% superwash worsted weight that I was not familiar with but that I'm greatly enjoying (I expect Rainbow will be getting her next school sweater in this yarn). We're all using the gray as the corners of the miters and the log cabin frame, but there are a handful of inside colors being used. I've got this lovely mossy green, which is the very descriptive color 33118.

I am nearly finished with the mitered squares in the center and will finish that up and get started on the border tonight after I put Rainbow to bed. I think my first square looks a bit wonky, but I think I also know why and how to fix it on the next blanket square. Aside from the rather large number of ends to weave in (and I am weaving in some as I go to make things easier on myself), I'm quite enjoying this knitting. There's just enough pattern to be engaging but not so much that I can't knit while watching TV or having a conversation. I expect that at some point I will get out the many skeins of Noro Kureyon I have from a frogged entrelac stole and use them for a blanket for me.

Thinking of the Beach

Spinning has very much taken a backseat to knitting over the past week, but I've spent a bit of time at my wheel here and there. I have no spinning deadlines at the moment, so I'm okay with that. The project I am working on now will be yarn that will be good to knit when summer finally fades away and the days are getting shorter and colder.

This is Cheviot from Fibernymph Dye Works in the colorway Beach Wedding (inspired, I assume by Lisa's own wedding on the beach a couple of years ago). I am once again trying for fingering weight, so I split the fiber in half lengthwise and am going to chain-ply when I'm done. My plyback tests look good so far, so fingers crossed! I just started the second half of the fiber today, so I'm a little more than halfway through spinning the singles. I am taking the next two days off from work (Rainbow starts school on Tuesday and has a half day, so we'll spend some extra time together) and hope to sneak in a little more spinning time. And if that's not enough time to finish, there's another long weekend coming up!

Pattern Release: Deco Lace Mitts

I am very excited to release my newest pattern today -- it's one that's been in the pipeline for a long time!

Way back at the beginning of the summer, my friend Lisa, the dyer behind Fibernymph Dye Works, asked me to design something using one of her Inversibles sets that was not socks. If you're not familiar with these sets, they're two skeins of self-striping yarn that are basically mirror images of each other. One skein has wide stripes of color A and narrow stripes of color B, while the other skein has wide stripes of color B and narrow stripes of color A. While they're great to use for socks, Lisa wanted to give her customers some other ideas of what could be done with them. Of course I immediately agreed, and when we went to TNNA together in June, she brought a big bag of sets for me to choose from (let me tell you, it was hard to pick just one set!).

My first thought was fingerless mitts, because it's only fitting that such beautiful yarn be shown off on the hands. I experimented with a few things before I realized that a lace pattern adaptation I'd wanted to use for several years would be perfect for this yarn. The stripes in the yarn are simple enough that they add interest without obscuring the pattern, and I knew as soon as I was a repeat in that I'd made the right choice. These are my Deco Lace Mitts.

The lace stitch used on the back of these mitts is adapted from my Corbusier Socks and is sort of a hybrid of lace and 1x1 ribbing that flows out of and into the 1x1 rib at the bottom and top of each mitt. It's very simple to work and becomes very intuitive once you've worked a couple of repeats. It's both charted and written out in the pattern.

To make things easy, the two mitts are identical except for the placement of the thumbs for right and left mitts. The thumb gussets are worked using lifted increases, which create a really lovely and gentle line without the pulling that you sometimes get from bar increases (m1R and m1L). As with the top of the hand, the thumbs are finished with a bit of 1x1 ribbing and a stretchy bind off.

I've graded the mitts for three sizes, to fit a hand circumference of 6 (7, 8) in./15 (18, 20.5) cm, and you'll need 130-170 yds./119-155.5 m to knit up a pair. I had some very enthusiastic preview knitters for this pattern, and all of them were happy with the fit.

As we head into fall, I know that my mitts are going to see a lot of use -- they're just perfect for those early fall mornings when there's just a hint of a chill in the air and you need a thin layer to keep your hands from going numb. I'll soon be casting on another pair as well, because Rainbow has asked for her own pair, and how can I not oblige her? After all, I think I can credit her as being the inspiration for this pattern, as a pair of mitts I knit her a couple of years ago was the original prototype for this design.

The Miracle of Mindlessness

Summer is winding down, Rainbow starts school next week, and the Mister is about to start several months of regular business travel -- needless to say, life is getting crazy. At times like this, I'm thankful for knitting that doesn't require much thought, especially when some of my knitting requires a lot of it. The latter kind is the kind I can't show you (sorry, secret knitting is very bad for blogging), so here's what I've been working on that has required very little mental energy on my part.

This new shawl design is another collaboration with my friend Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works using  two sets of mini skeins, one speckled and one semisolid, with the colors in the semisolids being used as the speckles in the corresponding skeins. The shawl will alternate between a speckled mini and its corresponding semisolid, with a little bit of special something-something on the transition between skeins. The beauty of this design is that aside from a bit of counting on those transition rows, the rest of the knitting is mindless -- it's all garter stitch, with standard crescent shawl shaping, and you basically just work with each mini skein until you're almost out of yarn. I expect that this shawl will be on the needles for a while, given that I have something like 960 yards of yarn total to work with, but I'm hoping to have the pattern ready before Rhinebeck.

I have not yet cast on my Floozy cardigan, but I have decided what to do as far as needle size. My gauge with a US 2/2.75 mm was still off (about 24 stitches/4 in. as opposed to the 27 called for in the pattern), but I looked at the pattern and the stitch count for the size smaller than the one I was going to make, and it looks like the sizing should come out just fine with my slightly larger gauge. I may also use a US 2.5/3.0 mm for the sleeves, as I know that my gauge in the round is a bit tighter in general than my gauge flat. I'm using this sweater as my proverbial carrot on a stick to motivate me to finish up my commission projects -- once they're done, I'll allow myself to cast on. There's nothing like a good selfish knitting project for motivation!

The Poof Never Gets Old

On Friday night, as per usual, I sat down at my wheel to spend some time spinning before bed. It's become my weekly ritual, mainly because by the time I get to Friday night, my brain is thoroughly friend and not fit for counting or following a pattern. This past Friday's spinning was even more mindless than usual because I had two bobbins of singles all ready to be plied, so I didn't even have to think about drafting. Thanks to my WooLee Winder, I was able to ply up both skeins before it was time to call it a night. I let the yarn rest overnight and then skeined and washed it Saturday morning. It turned out just as I was hoping -- all fluffy and springy.

The fiber was superwash Targhee from HipStrings that Rainbow had picked out at their Small Business Saturday sale last year (yes, it's been marinating in the stash), and she requested that I spin it up to make her some legwarmers, so I split the top down the middle vertically. I didn't do such a great job of it, which is why one of the skeins has some darker purple that the other one does not (I tore off some of the purple from one bunch of fiber and added it to the other to even out the weight). In the end, it seems I did a pretty good job because the skeins are extremely close in yardage. I ended up with approximately 320 yards of chain-plied fingering, which should be plenty for legwarmers. I was a bit worried that the yarn was on the thin side when I first skeined it up, but I was soon reminded by how much Targhee likes to poof up in the wash. Freshly plied, the yarn was a little limp and stringy, but a hot bath was all that it took to get the bounce back. I just love that.

Meanwhile, I've put some very new stash on the wheel in the form of a Tour de Fleece prize I won from Lisa at Fibernymph Dye Works. I had a choice of several fiber selections and chose this braid of Cheviot in her Beach Wedding colorway.

On this attempt with Cheviot, I'm really trying to get three-ply fingering weight, so I split the top down the middle and am again going to chain ply to some stripes. So far, it looks like a proper fingering from my ply-back test, but time will tell. I do love these very beachy colors, though, so I'm sure that I'll be happy with the yarn no matter what.

Preparations

While design knitting is still happening during my lunch break (some of which will be frogged today), I've spent the last two evenings working on a swatch for my Floozy cardigan in preparation for the pattern's release tomorrow. Normally it doesn't take me quite that long to knit a swatch, but there have been other things taking up my time this week, so I haven't had as much knitting time as usual.

The swatch was still a little damp this morning, so I haven't measured it yet, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that I'm close enough on gauge. The top of this swatch was knit on a US 2.5/3 mm needle and the bottom on a US 2/2.75 mm. I measured the top before washing and I was far enough off that I didn't think it would work, particularly as I expected the yarn to bloom a bit when washed. The recommended gauge for the pattern is 27 stitches and 37 rows over 4 inches, and the pattern recommends a US 4/3.5 mm needle. I normally get about 24 stitches over 4 inches with a US 4, so I knew I'd have to go down in size, but I'm surprised that going down even two sizes might not be enough. I know that a US 1 will be too much, but if the US 2 doesn't work, I do have a US 1.5/2.5 mm to try. The idea of knitting an entire sweater on that small of a needle gives me a bit of pause, though. It's not that I'm uncomfortable using small needles; I just worry that a sweater might be doomed to become a slog because of the slow progress. So please send good thoughts that the US 2 gives me gauge (or at least close enough to it to work)!

While the knitting hasn't been prolific, my reading has been lately. I've been devouring e-books (mainly because I'm able to read them on the computer at work when it's slow) and have finished quite a few in the past week or so:

• The White Queen: I'd bought this Kindle book a while back, likely when it was on sale, because I'd watched the Starz miniseries a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. Like all Philippa Gregory books, you have to go into it knowing that while it's based on history, it's highly sensationalized. It's not fine literature, but it was an enjoyable and easy read. I gave it four stars.
• The Miniaturist: I'm fairly certain I'd see the cover of this book and heard the name a few times in the past year or so, but I never looked into it until I heard that it was being made into a PBS miniseries that will air later this year. I was intrigued by the summary, so I borrowed it online from the library. I was fully absorbed by it almost as soon as I started it and read the entire thing in two days. It's a very original story that is beautifully written. My only complaint is that the true nature of the miniaturist is never fully explained (though perhaps that's intentional). I gave this book five stars.
• Sing, Unburied, Sing: This book won the National Book Award and got a lot of buzz when it came out, so naturally I wanted to see what all the buzz was about. I should have known that I would have issues with it after reading the first scene, which involves the slaughter of a goat. While the book is well written and emotionally moving, I found it really hard to read. The subject matter is not easy to take -- there's drug abuse, incarceration, physical violence, child neglect, and illness running throughout the book -- and I found it really unsettling. I gave the book three stars because of this.
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis: This was another much-talked-about book and one that I'd been meaning to read for some time. It was a really thought-provoking read, a combination of memoir and sociological study, and really well written. I gave it four of five stars, mainly because while I really enjoyed reading it and how much it made me think, it's not a book I could see reading more than once.
• The Orphan's Tale: I just finished this book yesterday, and it was another quick read. I picked it because it was on my Goodreads "want to read" list thanks to a recommendation from a friend a couple of years ago. I have read a lot of WWII/Holocaust fiction over the years, but this was a very different take on the genre, and I enjoyed it. I gave it four stars.

This weekend, in addition to maximizing my crafting time, I'm hoping to spend some extra time reading the hard-copy book that I'm currently in the middle of: We Were the Lucky Ones. It's taking me longer than I'd like to get through this one, not because the book isn't a good read but because I can only manage a handful of pages each night before I go to bed. If only I could read it during the day!

Twofer Tuesday

As of just a little bit ago, I have two finished hats on this gloomy Tuesday.

This is a new design using one of my favorite breed-specific yarns, the Ross Farm's Shetland Sport. I didn't think I liked Shetland as a wool breed until I knit with this yarn. It's incredibly soft (the previous Shetlands I'd knit with were decidedly scratchy), and because it's yarn from the farm that's minimally processed, there's still a bit of lanolin left in the yarn, which has an added benefit of softening my hands as I work with it. The other thing I love about working with this yarn (and really any yarn from the Ross Farm) is that it's not only breed specific, but you know the actual sheep who supplied the fleece for the yarn -- the sheep's name and picture appear right on the label! The sheep who had a hand (hoof?) in making these hats are Marigold and Nassau. Marigold, the lighter of the two colors, actually supplied the yarn I used for my Smithfield Scarf, and it's interesting to see how she's gotten lighter in color as she's gotten older.

The pattern for this hat is in progress and (fingers crossed) should be on its way to my tech editor soon.

I've got more design knitting ahead, including some that I won't be able to show you, so would you settle for seeing some yarn that's recently joined the stash?

First, last week I finally got my very first skein of Voolenvine Yarns, and it was one I was really coveting. If you are a fan of indie-dyed yarns, then you've likely heard about the recent Tits Out Collective that many indie dyers were participating in. I tried to get my hands on a skein of Kristin's first batch but was too slow, and miraculously, I was successful in my second attempt. So now I have a skein on her Blitzed base (superwash Merino, nylon, and gold Stellina) to do something fun with.

I also received yarn late last week from an order from the Woolly Thistle for a Floozy cardigan. I decided to try out some Blacker yarn for this sweater (in part because I'd gotten a discount code from the Woolly Thistle that was good on some of their yarns) and picked out three colors of Blacker Classic 4-ply. The main color will be Pale Blue:

And for the contrast colors, I'll be using Mid Blue:

and Mustard:

While most of the yarn has been moved up to the stash room, I've got one ball of the Pale Blue patiently waiting in the bedroom to be used for a swatch. The pattern drops this Friday, so I really ought to get onto that!

Spinning the Sunset

I haven't been spinning as much this past week, what with the rush to finish up Rainbow's socks and the excitement of casting on new things, but I did manage to finish spinning up the superwash Targhee singles from the fiber Rainbow selected.

This colorway is called Tropical Sunset, which certainly is fitting for that lovely pinkish orange at the end, but I think the blue-purple that's underneath looks rather like my favorite shake of hydrangeas.

I'll be letting these singles rest and then chain plying each bobbin separately for two skeins of yarn that I hope will be relatively equal. I originally thought this yarn would become socks, but Rainbow has requested legwarmers instead. I can work with that!

Meanwhile, I did spend a little time today playing with some other fiber. I pulled out my washed Romney/Romeldale fleece and carded up a little batt.

This fluffy pillow is only about 25 grams. But it's very fluffy, after three passes through the drum carder, and I think it will be nice to spin. Obviously there's still a ton of the fleece left to card, and I'll have to devote some serious time to get that done, but it's a start, and I like the direction things are heading.

One Satisfied Customer

My baby girl is back home! Tuesday turned out to be an exhausting day -- I actually walked between my house and my office four times over the course of the day -- but it was good to have her home and to go to sleep knowing that she was sleeping across the hall.

I had Rainbow try on the knee socks once she was settled so we could determine the correct finished length, and she said they needed about half an inch more to be (in her words) perfect. That was a very easy fix, so I was able to finish them up that night.

Please note that she posed like this on her own, with no direction from me.

Pattern: Toe-up stockinette, worked over 60 stitches, with a Fish Lips Kiss Heel
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (80% superwash Merino, 20% nylon) in Martini Bar (club colorway), 0.84 skeins
Needles: US 0 (2.0 mm) Addi Sock Rockets, magic loop
Started/Completed: July 21/August 7

When I started these socks, I knew I'd want to have the ability to knit until I ran out of yarn, so I wound the yarn into a cake and then put it on my scale so I could wind another that was half the weight. Because of the long stripe sequence, I also didn't worry about getting the stripes to match (though they did end up close). I used the template I'd made of Rainbow's feet for the FLKH method, giving her just a bit of extra room in the foot so she won't outgrow them right away. I didn't increase at all in the leg, either, counting on that negative ease to help keep them up. They're entirely in stockinette, finished with 2.5 inches of 2x2 ribbing at the top. Easy-peasy -- just a lot of knitting. Amazingly, I have yarn leftover, which is surprising given that these aren't all that much smaller than the socks I make for myself and have legs that are 11.5 inches long.

Rainbow is thrilled with them, and that means so am I. I'm not sure how much she'll actually wear them, though, so I will wait a bit until I knit her another very large pair of socks.

Because I finished these on Tuesday night before bed and didn't have more time to knit until my lunch break yesterday, I had a brief period of time yesterday when I had nothing -- literally nothing -- on the needles. It was pure torture, let me tell you. Fortunately, I had yarn and needles with me to cast on for something new, so the torture didn't last too long. I am knitting up a new hat design using yummy Shetland yarn from the Ross Farm. It doesn't look like much now, but I'll be adding in a bit of colorwork soon using another color.

All of the farm's yarns are breed specific, undyed, and minimally processed, so while that does mean that I'm pulling out a bit of VM here and there while I'm knitting, my hands are also getting nice and soft from the bit of lanolin that's still in the wool. This Shetland is so soft, too! One of these days, I might have to knit myself a sweater out of this stuff.

Mission Accomplished?

Today is the day: Rainbow arrives home from camp at about noon! I can't wait to see her and hear all about her week at camp. Plus, I have some almost-finished socks for her!

I know I said that my mission was to get these finished by the time she got home, and I very well could have, but I realized last night that I didn't have a measurement of how long her legs are and thus didn't really know where to stop knitting, so I pretty much need her to try them on so I know where to bind off. I was hoping that I would have run out of yarn by now, solving the problem for me, but I think this must be some kind of magic ever-lasting skein of yarn because those legs are 11 inches long already and I still have a bit more than 20 grams of yarn (or roughly 80 yards) left. So we'll have to see where they're hitting at this point and determine whether or not I'm done.

I have no other projects on the needles right now, but I do have two skeins of yarn all wound up for a new design project, and then this pretty stuff arrived on my doorstep yesterday:

This is Stranded Dyeworks Oasis, Amy's superwash merino/nylon fingering weight base, in the colorway Four Two Two Four. It was her SSK colorway for this year, and as I never made it in off the wait list, I figured I could do the next best thing and order the yarn from her. I ordered this intending to use it for a single-color Archer (apparently 2018 is my year of pullovers), and it's really hard not to cast on immediately, but I have other stuff that has to get done first -- and of course there's swatching to be done before I can actually start. Still, it was a nice treat to get home yesterday after a long day at work and find some yarny goodness waiting for me!

Mashup

Last week I showed you my leftovers bobbin, a Lendrum bobbin that I've been using for the past several years to hold little bits of singles leftover from other projects. Occasionally I've spun some singles directly onto it when I've gotten a small sample of fiber with a fiber purchase or something. After finishing my last Tour de Fleece spin, I couldn't decide what to spin next, so I pulled out that bobbin and some small fiber samples from a fiber "tasting" I went to a number of years ago and decided to add onto it until it couldn't hold any more. This is what it looked like when it reached that point:

I spent two evenings chain-plying all these singles earlier in the week, and the resulting skein was positively humongous. I was hoping for somewhere between 400 and 500 yards; I ended up with a bit more than 600.

The skein is a little messy (that's the problem with winding huge skeins -- there's a difference in skein diameter between the earlier-wound-on strands and those wound on toward the end), so I'll have to reskein it, but I'm quite impressed with myself. I'd been gathering leftovers so long that I genuinely have no recollection what most of these fiber bits are. All I know for sure is that there's wool throughout, but there's also likely some alpaca, some silk, some bamboo and/or tencel, and some sparkle. This skein would make a great stockinette or garter shawl, one where you want the yarn to do the work for you. Once I reskein and take some decent photos, this will likely be going up in my FiberCrafty shop.

Did I mention that I now have a FiberCrafty shop? I can't remember. I closed my Etsy store when they raised the fees and moved my handspun skeins over. I'll be adding to my inventory there as I have time to photograph skeins and put up listings, so if you're interested in getting your hands on some of my yarn, that's where you'll find it now.

I still couldn't make up my mind about my next spinning project, so I let Rainbow make the choice for me. She'd picked out some superwash Targhee at the HipStrings studio when we went for their Small Business Saturday sale last year, and she pulled it out and asked me to spin it before she left for camp. Originally she wanted me to spin for fingerless mitts, but when I told her I'd have enough yarn leftover from the pair I just made to knit her some, she decided on socks. The fiber was a lovely gradient that looked very much like a sunset, so I split it in half lengthwise to do two chain-plied skeins.

I've just started into the coral color on the first bobbin. I've switched over to my standard Lendrum flyer and Akerworks bobbin to change things up a bit. It's actually quite a bit quieter than my WooLee Winder, which is nice, but I've gotten so used to spinning on that flyer that it's been a challenge to remember to stop every now and then and move the yarn guide. I suppose in terms of ergonomics it's a good thing, as it's keeping me from sitting in one position for too long, but it also feels a bit slower. Fortunately I haven't set any sort of deadline for this spin, so I'm taking my time with it and savoring it. Targhee is one of my favorite wools to spin, and I'm glad that when this one is done I have several more braids in my stash that I can spin!

On a Mission

Yesterday morning, the Mister and I put Rainbow on a bus to overnight camp. She's there for a week for her first overnight camp experience, and while I know she'll have a fantastic time, I also know it's going to be a hard week for me without her. So far I've held it together, but I'll admit that the house feels weirdly empty.

I only have one project on the needles at the moment (don't worry, I'm sure I'll be casting on one or ten new projects any moment), so I've decided to channel most of my energy into it. That project is socks I'm knitting for Rainbow, and I thought it would be great if I could have them finished in time for her return home next Tuesday. I think it's a realistic goal, particularly if I can hold off the urge to cast on new projects and focus solely on this one.

Meanwhile, I had a nice little surprise waiting for me when I got home (to an empty house) yesterday evening. I found out late last week that I'd won a prize via the Yarn Harlot's annual tradition of Karmic Balancing Gifts for those who contribute to her team's fundraising efforts for the bike rally she rides in. It was here in yesterday's mail:

This is Isager Spinni Wool 1, a lovely laceweight singles yarn from Denmark. I already have a pattern in mind for this yarn: Budburst. I have a little less yardage than the pattern calls for, but given how it's knit, it should be easy to make it slightly smaller with the yardage that I have. I'm tempted to cast on -- but the socks must get done first!

Hello, Mojo

An intense three weeks of spinning is officially over, and while I'm not burned out on spinning, I have noticed an increase in my desire to knit. I want to cast on all the things! But before I do that, I figured I should finish what's already on the needles, so last night I sat down and finished up the fingerless mitts. Rainbow was kind enough to take some photos for me today -- I think she's got a lot of potential as a knitwear photographer!

I'm very happy with how these have turned out, and thanks to being home with Rainbow the past two days (she leaves tomorrow for her first stay at overnight camp, so I wanted to spend some extra time with her), I've managed to get these and the pattern done and off to my tech editor.

So now the only project on the needles is Rainbow's socks, which are moving right along.

I took the first sock to a movie over the weekend and finished the foot, so I figured I'd cast on the second and get it to the same point. I rarely knit my socks in tandem, but considering I'm planning to knit until the yarn runs out, I thought it might be useful to have both socks going at once so I can make them match as much as possible.

I have a feeling more projects will be cast on by the time I post again. I've gotten two skeins of yarn out of the stash to wind for a new hat and I've also got an idea for a shawl for some yarn I picked up at TNNA in June. The mojo is back, big time!

Spin, Span, Spun: Tour de Fleece 2018

It's been a wonderful and productive three weeks and now I find myself on the final day of the Tour de Fleece. I look forward to this event every year because it's such a wonderful motivator to get my spinning projects done. I have probably spun more in other years (like years before I had a small person taking up a good deal of my time), but I'm extremely pleased with what I accomplished this year. Here is a shot of all the finished spinning from the past three weeks:

Three of these skeins have been completed in the past two days. I finished plying up the second chocolate Bond skein yesterday, for another 277.5 yards. When that plying was done, I decided to start spinning some mini batts I'd made with some of the leftover Buoy fiber from my Boxy spin and a bit of silk. I ended up spinning up all the singles last night (yes, I stayed up a little late), and then this morning, I wound off all the singles on my ball winder, so that I could ply from both ends. Here's the resulting skein, prewashing:

It's in the bath now, so I won't know final yardage until it's dry, but I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 yards. I also Andean plied the leftover singles of the Bond for the mini skein you can see in the above photo.

I'm not sure what I'm going to spin next -- frankly, there are several projects I'd like to start and I'm having a hard time deciding -- so I pulled out my bobbin of leftovers and some fiber samples, and I guess I'll try to fill it up before deciding on the next spin.

When I can't get any more singles on this bobbin, I'll chain ply everything. I've been accumulating little bits of singles so long that I have no recollection what's underneath what you see here (nor, for that matter, do I really remember the content of what I can see).

In looking at all the spinning I got done over the past three weeks, I think what's most notable is that with the exception of the one skein of sock yarn, all my TdF spinning this year was done woolen. It's something I am not so good at, so it was really helpful for me to have all that practice. I've definitely gotten better and certainly more confident at it, and boy does it ever go quickly! The skein I spun yesterday and plied today was 99 g/3.5 oz. of fiber, and it all got done in just a few hours. I have a feeling there is a lot more woolen spinning in my future!

Winding Down

It's almost the end of the week and almost the end of the Tour de Fleece, and I am more than ready for the four-day weekend I have ahead of me. Rainbow leaves for a week of overnight camp next Wednesday, so I thought I would take off a couple of days to spend some extra time with her, especially because this is the first time she'll be away from us for more than an overnight trip to her grandparents'. I'm looking forward to getting a little more sleep, a little more cuddle time, and of course a bit more crafting time.

Tour de Fleece officially ends on Sunday, so I've spent much of my crafting time this past week trying to finish up my second skein of chocolate Bond from Southern Cross Fibre. I finished up the second bobbin last night and got just a bit of a start on the third and final bobbin.

These bobbins were much easier to spin that the first three, and I think my singles have gotten a bit more consistent as I've gotten used to the fiber, so perhaps my yardage will be a bit better on the second skein. I will say that I'll be glad to be finished with it, though, because as lovely as the fiber is, spinning dark fiber at night is not the best experience.

While I do enjoy all the spinning I do this time of year, it's served another function in getting me excited about knitting again. I was a bit bored with knitting after finishing up my handspun Boxy, understandably, and didn't feel much like starting anything new (I'm sure the hot, humid weather didn't help). But suddenly I feel like casting on All The Things, so clearly my mojo is back. I finished up the first of the fingerless mitts during my lunchtime knitting today.

This knit up so quickly that I'm fairly confident that I can have the second one done by the time I go back to work next week if I just focus on it. Good thing, too, because I have a list of new design ideas I want to tackle!

It's FDW Week, Apparently

Without intending it, I've apparently been working with nothing but Fibernymph Dye Works yarn over the past week or so. First, I finished a pair of socks for me:

Pattern: Non-Euclidian
Yarn: FDW Bounce (80% superwash Merino/20% nylon) in Winter Critters
Needles: US 0 (2.0 mm) Addi Sock Rockets, magic loop
Started/Finished: July 1/July 21
Mods: adapted the pattern to 68 stitches

As you can see, I didn't even bother to try to match up the stripes on these. The repeat was so long that it wasn't worth it to me for all the joins and extra ends I'd have to deal with to try to get them to match. The only adjustment I made to the pattern was to use a stitch count between two sizes because I realized I wanted a bit more negative ease than I was getting from my original pair.

As soon as these were off the needles, I almost immediately cast on another pair -- this time for Rainbow, who's been patiently waiting for her next pair.

Is it just me, or does this picture remind you of Hei Hei from Moana?

The yarn is Bounce again, this time the final shipment of the Happy Hour Yarn Club in a colorway called Martini Bar. I divided the yarn in half when I wound it up and am knitting these socks toe up so that I can knit until I run out; the hope is that I'll have enough to make the socks knee-highs. I'm not feeling too rushed on these, as Rainbow isn't likely to wear them anytime soon, but ideally I'll have them finished in the next month so that I can count them for Stash Dash*.

Meanwhile, I have a new lunchtime knitting project in -- you guessed it! -- FDW yarn. Lisa had asked me earlier this summer if I could come up with a pattern for her Inversibles yarn that wasn't socks to give people some other ideas of what to do with it. I'd been meaning to make a pair of fingerless mitts using the stitch pattern from my Corbusier Socks, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I'm maybe halfway through the first mitt and I really like how the striping pattern is playing with the stitch pattern.

I'm knitting these on size 1/2.25 mm needles, and it's so strange to me how big they feel! I am so used to knitting on size 0's that the needles themselves feel huge and the gauge I'm getting feels incredibly loose, even though I know it's not. It's hard to be believe that I used to knit socks on needles even larger than these! I guess I'm getting more relaxed as I get older -- not entirely a bad thing!


*I'm already a smidge over 12,000 meters in my Stash Dash total, so I guess I'm going for 15K! The spinning is definitely helping, so if I can spin up a few more skeins before the end of the summer, I should be golden.

What Can Brown Do for You?

There has been a lot of spinning happening this weekend, and to be honest, it's a bit boring. But first, here's my most recent finished skein, the HipStrings Tour de Fleece colorway:

I am absolutely in love with this skein. It's the kind of spinning I used to do all the time -- three-ply fingering weight for socks -- but have been out of practice on for a while. I was a bit disappointed with the yardage (382 yards when I was hoping for 400+) but I can't be unhappy with it when it came out so nice looking!

Once that skein was done, I set my sights on the Southern Cross Fibre chocolate Bond I wanted to spin to go with the Charollais I finished up earlier in the Tour. I was hoping to be able to spin it the same way (long draw from top) if I could so that I could use the two colors together. I mostly succeeded, though this fiber didn't cooperate as nicely as the Charollais did, so there was a lot of starting and stopping and pulling out slubs of fiber. But at least it was fast: I spun up these three bobbins in the span from Friday night to Saturday night:

And earlier this afternoon, I plied most of the singles into another giant skein:

I've since wound it on my niddy noddy and put it in to soak. I hope that it'll be dry by tomorrow so I can measure the final yardage. The good news is that the plied yarn looks about right, so I'll be spinning up the remaining fiber to match. I've got a week left to finish it, and if I can spin at the same pace, that should be no problem. By next week's Sunday post, I should have a nice pile of finished Tour de Fleece spinning to show off!

Simplicity

It's been a busy week, perhaps no busier than usual, but it has felt more tiring and chaotic than normal. Part of that is probably that I've been much more active due to a slight change in Rainbow's schedule. She was pretty miserable going to the after camp program we'd signed her up for, so I talked to people at work and people at camp, and she's now coming to my office for a little bit at the end of the day. That means more walking for me, because I now have to walk to the bus stop to meet her at the bus and then walk back to the office with her. On the plus side, I have been hitting and exceeding my daily step goal every day this week, but that's also meant some very sweaty ends to my days. So it's been good to have some simple pleasures to indulge in this week.

Now that my handspun Boxy is officially done, the only project I have on my needles is a simple pair of socks for me that are just about complete. I turned the heel yesterday, so now I'm just cruising down the foot. I'm only about two inches away from starting the toe, so I expect they'll be done by the weekend.

I'm also working on plying up my skein of the HipStrings Tour de Fleece colorway into a three-ply fingering weight yarn for socks. I started plying last night and actually did quite a bit of work on it, but it's not done yet. I'll aim to finish it this evening; with any luck, I'll finish the actual plying with enough time to skein and wash the yarn before bed.

Reading has been good for me as well this week. I finished up an amazing book on Tuesday, The Song of Achilles. I had bought it several weeks ago when it was a Kindle deal, mainly because I'd heard of another of the author's books getting a lot of buzz and wanted to check this one out first. I was not disappointed. The writing is beautiful and the story gives an entirely new perspective to an ancient tale. If you're interested in ancient Greek history (perhaps, like me, you studied some classics in college), it's a must read.

I'm also in the middle of a book I got as a hand-me-down from my mother: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. It's written by Fredrik Backman, who also wrote the very popular A Man Called Ove, which I read in just a few days last year while we were on vacation. This one is just as good. I found it a little hard to get into at the beginning, mainly because it's told from the point of view of a 7-year-old girl and there are a lot of questions that aren't answered until later in the book. I have less than 100 pages to go and hope to be able to finish it up this weekend.

I'm looking forward to another low-key weekend here. The weather is supposed to be hot, humid, and rainy, so it will be yet another good weekend to lay low and enjoy the extra crafting time.

Eight Months, Three Days

In case you're wondering, that's how much time it takes to spin for and knit a fingering-weight oversized sweater.

Yes, that's right, it's done!

Pattern: Boxy by Joji Locatelli
Yarn: handspun from four colors of HipStrings Buoy fiber (BFL/Shetland/Manx Loaghtan)
Yarn Started/Completed: November 11, 2017/March 31, 2018
Sweater Started/Completed: May 1/July 14
Mods: added length to the body and sleeves

This FO is a long time coming. It was a monumental project, really. I have spun for sweaters before, but I'm fairly certain this was the most spinning (and knitting, for that matter) that I've done for a sweater before. And I have to say that I am very happy with how it all worked out.

To recap, I bought fiber for this last fall during a HipStrings open studio even for Spinzilla. I originally bought two braids each of three colorways: Mussels (the dark purple), Bay (the medium blue), and Sky (the lightest blue). I later bought three more braids of fiber, thinking what I had wouldn't be enough. I inadvertently bought a fourth color, Depths instead of Bay, at this point, but because my plan was to do a fade, I made it work.

The fade was done in the spinning. I spun one skein of each of the three main colors alone using about 6 oz. of each color. Then I did two 8 oz. skeins in which I gradually faded from one color to the adjacent color. I did this by changing the makeup of each of the three plies of the yarn. There were four sections of each fade skein. It started with three strands of color A. Then it moved to two plies of color A and one of color B, then one of color A and two of color B, and finally three of color B. The only place I had to manually fade the colors is the area just below the bust, and that was in the transition from Depths to Bay. You can see it if you look really closely, but I don't think it's terribly obvious.

When I got to the yoke, I divided each section of the remaining skeins in half so that the front and back would match. I finished up the sleeves with the Sky-only skein (also divided in half).

I ended up using much less yarn than I spun. I eliminated the entirety of the Bay-only skein, and I also omitted the Mussels section of the Mussels-to-Depths skein. The sleeves used only about half of the Sky-only skein. In total, I used approximately 1,615 yards, leaving me 700-ish yards of the total I spun.

My only modifications to this pattern were adding about four inches of length to the body (I wanted this to be big and cozy and didn't see the point of making the body cropped) and continuing to work the sleeves until they came down to my wrists, incorporating four additional decreases.

So it's done. Do I love it? Hard to say. I think because it's so hot outside, I'm having a hard time thinking about wearing it. But I think it's going to get a ton of wear this fall and winter, and I'm pretty sure I'll fall in love with it then. For now, I'm very happy with it. I love how the yarn turned out and how it knit up as I planned. And I'm certainly happy to finally be done with such a huge project!