Spinning Molly

If you've been around this blog for a while, you may remember Molly. For the past few years, I've had a bag of her brushed undercoat hanging in a pillowcase in my knitting room closet. Over the weekend, I decided it had been in the closet long enough and began blending it with some combed merino to spin.

I originally intended to use my new blending hackle, but after a morning of utter frustration, I discovered what more experienced fiber artists already know: a hackle is intended to comb out the shorter fibers (here, the dog hair), leaving only the longer fibers behind to become roving. So a hackle is not the right tool if you want to blend shorter and longer fibers. Duh.

Eventually I switched to my hand cards, and things progressed rapidly from that point.

These are my poufy little rolags of fiber, all ready to be spun.

They look and feel like little golden clouds.

And they spin up pretty easily. I am trying to spin fairly thick singles so I end up with a bulky two-ply to use for a sofa blanket. Evidently, I suck at spinning thicker singles. I haven't seen such lumpy, bumpy yarn since my first attempts at spinning.

I'm not sweating it, though. It's going to be an afghan, so however the yarn turns out, it will work. I'll just let the end result dictate the pattern I choose.

And here is the first skein, all washed and pretty. As you can see, it's a fuzzy, thick and thin yarn. What you can't see is that it is incredibly soft. It feels like angora, only denser. Dog hair is supposed to be about eight times warmer than wool, so I imagine it will make for a very warm blanket!

A Different Sort of Dye Job

This is my spinning wheel.

It came unfinished. When I bought it four years ago, I spent a long time standing in front of the wood stain display, debating between China Red and Antique Maple. I love red. Really love it. But I wimped out and went with the more traditional maple.

I've regretted it ever since. Unfortunately, I used paste wax over the stain, so I didn't know how I could ever refinish it.

On Saturday, I went to a local fiber festival and hung out with my wheel in the spinners' circle. There were lots of different wheels, and they were all lovely. But my little Ashford Traveler just looked a little...drab. I thought again how much I wished I had stained it red when I had the chance.

Since Seashells was also there spinning, and since I know she is a woodworker, I asked her if she knew a way to remove paste wax for refinishing. She suggested denatured alcohol or mineral spirits, which is just what I needed to know.

The alcohol didn't work very well, but the mineral spirits was just the ticket--took the wax right off. So I got out the red stain and got to work.

I'd like to say it went off without a hitch. I don't know if any of you remember the paint incident from when I was painting the ceiling of my knitting room, but suffice it to say, we had a repeat, only this time with a full can of red wood stain on the green wool rug in my knitting room. Yes, I was refinishing the wheel in my knitting room. All I can say is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I blame the Knitting Goddess. I was trying to stain the bottom of the wheel, it tipped over on the worktable onto a rag soaked in mineral spirits, and I exclaimed, "Well, that's the worst thing that could have happened!" as I grabbed for the wheel. Then my elbow hit the stain can, knocking it onto the carpet, and I heard the Knitting Goddess giggle, "Uh-uh! This is the worst thing that could happen!" And she was right. Three gallons of water and two hours with a carpet shampooer later, it didn't seem like such a good idea, there is still a pink splotch on the green rug, and my back may never recover.

But look!


A beautiful, glossy red.


Just what I wanted, and no one could ever call it drab! I never named my spinning wheel, but now I'm afraid I have no choice. It's just so obvious. Can't you guess?


Rosebud, of course!

Fiber Tool FAIL

I really did plan to share my newest fiber tool with you, but alas, after finishing, marking, and drilling that piece of wood I showed you in the last post, something went horribly wrong and the thing had to be scrapped. Not to worry--I have already acquired materials for a second attempt. I can tell you, though, that it is not a loom--although the number of people who guessed that makes me wonder if I ought to reconsider my no-weaving stance.

Instead, I have this to share:

This is about 1200 yards of dk weight cashmere. What makes it interesting is that it started out as about 3600 yards of lace weight cashmere. This yarn was originally a couple of women's machine knit pullovers. It was reclaimed by...someone. Not me. Then I acquired it and discovered that knitting with crinkly frogged lace weight cashmere is not part of my skill set. We all know my history with lace knitting. But it turns out it is possible to re-ply an already plied yarn to turn a lace weight 2-ply into a dk weight 6-ply. So after two days of plying and winding and washing, it is now a weight that will actually get used around here.

Now comes the real dilemma. I bought this yarn to knit a sweater for my husband. After a year of not knitting it, I bought him a machine knit black cashmere sweater. I think this gets me off the hook and I can now use this lovely, lovely yarn to knit a sweater for myself. He asserts that the yarn is his, independent of the sweater I later bought, and that any sweater that comes from it also belongs to him. We have reached an impasse. We could resolve it the same way we do all the major issues in our marriage--a game of high-stakes Yahtzee--but I thought I'd appeal to the knitters first. What say you: am I obligated to make him a sweater from this, or can I knit one for myself? And if I am obligated to knit for him, would it be adhering to the letter of the law if I knit a sweater for him that will only fit me?

Spinning My Wheels

I'd love to be able to show you any of the three finished sweaters I have yet to do FO posts for, but alas, it has been pouring rain for two days here--in itself, a very good thing--so decent pictures are out of the question.

Instead, here are some crummy pictures of the yarn I finished spinning and plying yesterday. It looks somewhat better in person, although I'm not thrilled with it. It was prettier in the roving; the finished result is a bit muddy and bland looking to me.

I have two large skeins of this (eight ounces worth), in what I think is about a sport weight. It will probably end up being a camisole eventually. The very blandness of the color, which is actually a combination of silver, purple, and green, will make it a good choice as a layering piece.

I have another project in the works. It's not a knitting project, although it does have to do with yarn. Here's a sneak peek:

(The project is the piece of wood, not the teenager. He is also a work in progress.) Any guesses what it might be?

Summer Fiber

One of the inevitable signs of summer around here is the dog hair. With three hairy dogs, there's always a lot of "free fiber" floating around. We don't have dust bunnies; we have dust buffaloes. But at this time of year, it gets a little crazy.

This is the result of ten minutes of brushing one dog. Bear in mind, that's a 110 pound dog, so you can imagine the size of the pile.

Good thing she's such a patient girl!

Now what shall I do with all this?

Must See

This is the most eloquent explanation I've ever seen of the meaning of handwork.

FO: Petunia Roving

Thank you all for the great dyeing (and clean up!) advice yesterday. I did get the blue dye off the stone counters with Clorox, which also got most of it off my hands. To answer a couple of questions posed in the comments (which I can't answer directly because Blogger won't give me your email addresses):

CraftyLzrd, roving is a long strip of wool that is already washed and combed and prepared for hand spinning. You can buy it by weight from lots of different suppliers in all sorts of fibers and colors, and there are lots of Etsy sellers who offer hand painted roving. It saves the spinner the time and effort of starting with an unwashed fleece. It also creates wool in which the fibers are mostly aligned in one direction, so that you end up with a smoother, firmer yarn than you usually would with hand carded fiber, where the fibers are kind of jumbled.

Tracy, I sprayed the roving with vinegar because that's what the directions I was following said to do. I have found other directions that recommend soaking the roving in vinegar water before dyeing, and still others that indicate you should mix the vinegar with the dye. I'm sure any of these ways will work; the important thing is getting the vinegar and the dye both onto the fiber, since the vinegar (which is the "acid" in my acid dye) acts as a setting agent for the dye.

Here's my dyed roving, all dried and braided (there are seven braids there; I just wound them around each other for the picture). The color looks pretty accurate on my monitor.

I spun a bit last night to see how it would come out. So far I'm not in love, but I'll post a picture when I have some plied up.

Comfort Spinning

While I was waiting for the KG to release my knitting from purgatory (or wherever the heck it was while I was looking for it), I put my usual knitting time to use on some comfort spinning:

This is roving from FiberOptik Yarns. I bought a four ounce braid of superwash merino and a four ounce braid of merino/bamboo, both in the colorway Green Dolphin Street, spun them separately and plied them together. Because each fiber takes dye differently, there is a lovely depth to the finished yarn. This skein is the first half. I've spun up the rest, but it needs to be wound off and washed.

I love the finished yarn so much that I think I may buy more of these fibers and spin enough for a Clapotis, which I've (gasp!) never made before. Or maybe I'll just carry the yarn around and pet it instead.

Swallowing

Could this possibly be?

It looks like...successful lace in progress. I don't want to jinx it or anything, but that is what it looks like, isn't it?

I'm on the first of three border charts. The good news is, I can count the number of rows left to go. The bad news is that every other row requires a truly appalling number of p5tog's. I never, ever want to p5tog again. I had to switch from my KnitPicks Harmony needle tips to my Options needle tips for fear I was going to break a wooden needle. It takes me as long to execute a successful p5tog as it does to knit half a row. Never again.

Here's a close up of the yarn:

I wish I could get a more accurate picture. This is dark teal, not blue. It's really pretty in real life. It's so pretty, in fact, that I want more.

So I've been spinning this:

(Again, apologies for the less-than-stellar photo.)

On the left is some more handpaintedyarn merino roving; on the right is some more hand dyed merino-tencel. Obviously, the merino-tencel is much lighter, but it's the same colors. I think the two will look good plied together, and will give me enough 2-ply to make another shawl or maybe a top of some sort.

Here's a sample of the merino singles:

And one of the merino-tencel singles:

I'm already done with the merino-tencel. It was such a treat to spin that I finished up the entire four ounces in one sitting. The merino is more difficult. I won't order this again; although I love the colors and the yarn from handpaintedyarn.com, their roving is really hard for me to spin. It seems to be semi-felted and is really tough to draft, even with serious pre-drafting. I originally ordered three four-ounce rovings. The first went into the yarn for Swallowtail, I'm spinning this one now, and I have one left. They're all a pain. Not to worry, though; I've already ordered more handpainted merino-tencel rovings from Etsy, so I won't be without lovely spinning fibers for the spring!

The Aran Report

Is anyone else starting to feel that updates on the Aran Cardigan are becoming a regular feature on this blog? Most of my projects don't have such...um...staying power. Here's today's picture:

That's two fronts and an almost completed back. It's possible my love affair with rough brown yarn is beginning to wane. Ten million rows of 3x3 ribbing can have that effect on a person. Since the sleeves--all both of them--are also 3x3 ribbing, I'm starting to play games with myself to keep it interesting. Games like: "How many rows can I knit during the next set of commercials? How many rows can I knit without looking at my knitting? How many rows can I knit behind my back?" [Remember the scene in "Amadeus" where Mozart is playing the piano upside down and backwards? That's next.] But seeing the approach of the end of the endless back is heartening and may give me the strength to tackle the first sleeve, at least.

But while my urge to knit with rough brown yarn is fading, apparently my urge to spin with it is not. Check this out:

That is a lot of roving from my beloved Beaverslide Dry Goods. There was a reason for this, which seemed perfectly logical at the time. I was drooling over the various yarns on their website, as I am inclined to do on a regular basis, when I saw on the sale page that they were offering "natural black" roving for a truly amazing price. Being me, I quickly determined that I could buy and spin the roving and end up with about the same worsted weight yarn that they also sell on the website for a mere fraction of what it would cost me to buy the already-spun yarn. And I would get the added entertainment value of spinning it myself. Although I am (nominally, anyway) in a stash-abatement period, fiber does not count as stash, since I don't have any real fiber stash to speak of. I whipped out the American Express and ordered way too much roving.

Alas, when the roving arrived, I was sorely disappointed. It was a) not black at all, or even mixed charcoal grey, as described on the website, but rather a dark, chocolatey brown (which I love, but dudes, there is a limit to how much brown yarn I can possibly use); b) not even remotely like the the yarn I so love in texture, but instead coarse and very, very springy; and c) well, just too much.

But I decided it wasn't fair to judge it so harshly without even testing it, so I spun up the equivalent of a swatch:

I didn't much enjoy spinning this, truth be told. I am spoiled from spinning commercially-prepared super-soft merino, alpaca, and silk rovings. This is a much-closer-to-the-sheep sort of fiber. It doesn't slip easily through my fingers while I draft, and there is no way I could ever make this stuff spin up smoothly. But after plying and washing it, it's starting to grow on me. Although it's not as soft as Beaverslide yarn, it's no rougher than the fishermen's wool I'm using for the Aran Cardigan. It has a nice springiness to it, and I suspect I will eventually decide it's just perfect for some future project. I'm not in a great rush to spin up this monster pile of fiber, but I imagine it will gradually fill up my spinning basket.

I realize this post is getting much too long, but I do want to show you one more thing before I go:

This is the swatch I knitted up for Wisteria, from the merino-silk roving I've been spinning. You can see that even knitting it didn't completely tame the lumpiness of the yarn. I've decided to call it "character" and move on. The good news is, I am getting gauge! I had pretty serious doubts about that, since the yarn seemed significantly heavier than worsted weight, but perhaps it's just fluffy. The swatch has a nice drape, even worked up on size 6 needles to give me 18 stitches to four inches, so I think Wisteria is a go!

Progress

You know it's going to be a rough day when you awaken to a child standing beside your bed, saying, "Hey, wake up! I have to be at the bus stop at ten 'til!"

I, in my sleepy stupor, could think of no response except, "Ten 'til what?" It seemed a perfectly reasonable question, even though the answer has been "ten 'til seven" for nearly six months.

Unfortunately, this was at 6:42. Fortunately, it was my husband's morning to get up.

The day didn't improve a whole lot after that, but at least I have yarn and fiber to turn to for comfort.

I am slowly making progress on the Aran Cardigan:

I know this looks the same as the last picture I showed you, but this is the second front! I also have about half of the back done. I am working it simultaneously with the fronts because it is flat 3x3 ribbing, and sometimes I don't have the concentration to work these cables, as evidenced by the four separate times I had to rip back the first front.

And I've finished the spinning for my Wisteria. Seven 100 gram skeins of worsted-ish weight two-ply wool and silk:

I still can't get a completely accurate picture of the color(s). It's mostly grey, with a purplish cast, due to the burgundy and green accents in the roving. I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out, although I'm not convinced it will work for the intended pattern. If it doesn't, I have a backup plan for this yarn. It's a couple of projects back in the queue anyway. I need to finish the Aran Cardigan first, and then I have a very simple sweater project in mind for our annual ski trip, which includes 22 hours in the car. I learned my lesson about car knitting two years ago, when I tried to work a lace pattern with two kids and two dogs bouncing around in the back seat. Suffice it to say, I ended up ripping all 22 hours of progress on that one. Now I know: nothing but plain stockinette in the car. The added advantage is that I can knit stockinette in the dark, so even after the sun goes down, I can keep knitting. Obsessed? Of course not. Just...ah...determined.

I did mention that I'm not the driver, didn't I?

Spin Cycle

I've been knitting away on my Aran Cardigan. It's rather slower going than usual, due to the moderate complexity of the cables, but very satisfying. I still have to read the charts as I knit, so I'm only about halfway through the left front so far. That's fine, since the cables are only on the fronts. The rest of the body and the sleeves and collar are all just 3x3 ribbing, which will fly by.

I've also been spinning away on the roving I want to use for Wisteria. I have three 100 gram, 2-ply skeins spun. Here are the first two:

The color is pretty accurate in these pictures. In this closeup you can almost see the green and pink tones in the grey (they're a little bit more noticeable in person):

I'm not the world's greatest spinner. As you can see, even my plied yarn is not especially even. But I've found the knitted fabric disguises a lot of the unevenness. (I tell myself that it doesn't matter; if I wanted perfectly smooth, even yarn, I could just buy machine spun and be done with it. I don't quite believe it.) My yarn may not be perfectly spun, but man is it soft! It's 70% merino, 30% silk. The roving is like buttah, I tell ya. I've spun it fairly tightly to help prevent pilling, but even so the finished yarn is soft, with an itch factor of zero--important for a high-necked design.

I think I've got close to the right gauge. I'm getting 9 wpi (wraps per inch), which is a worsted weight and the same wpi as the yarn called for in the pattern. But common sense tells me this yarn is heavier than worsted weight. Maybe aran? I don't think I've entered into bulky territory, though. I'm hoping I can make this work with the pattern. I wish the pattern had smaller sizing; even the smallest is a little big for me, and if my yarn is indeed heavier, I'd prefer to knit a size down from what I would usually pick. I may have to make some changes to the pattern to accommodate this yarn, but I think I can make it work.

Three skeins down, five to go!

Next Up

I've been having an unusually difficult time choosing a pattern for my next project. I am in a woolly sort of mood these days, probably because the weather is (finally!) consistently in the 50's and 60's, which is as close to winter as we get around here. I have an urge to knit a zippered aran cardigan from some brown fishermen's wool I have in the stash. One would think, of all the thousands of aran sweater patterns, it should be easy to pick one that suits and just get on with it. Not so. After a truly absurd amount of time perusing the options on Ravelry, in my various books, and in every back issue of every knitting magazine I own, I finally found a winner (Ravelry link). Ironically enough, it was already in my queue, which is, of course, the last place I looked. Alas, it is not available for download or individual purchase, and is from a four year old magazine. But, oh, I love the internet! A copy should even now be winging its way toward me--I hope.

In the meantime, I am unwilling to cast on anything else, since I know I will want to start the aran as soon as I have the pattern in hand (yes, I really do try to keep to one primary project at a time). I have been keeping busy instead by modifying some of my FO's to better suit. As I've mentioned before, I've come to realize I like my sweaters a bit longer than I usually make them. So I've been altering some of my favorites. This one, for example:

This is my Not-So-Sahara, knitted from lovely Cascade Eco Wool. I wear it almost constantly. But the wool is springy rather than stretchy, and I find it tends to shrink up as I wear it after blocking, causing me to tug at the bottom and cuffs. So I picked out the bound off edges (just one more advantage to top-down knits) and lengthened them about two inches. Now it looks like this:

I'm much happier with it now.

I also fixed one of my husband's sweaters, which I knitted about three years ago (the yarn is discontinued Cervinia Londra--wool and acrylic; the design is my own).

That's Bertha modeling it. She's smaller than my husband, so it's a little drapey.

This one was done in pieces, bottom up, and sewn together. So it wasn't until the whole thing was done that I realized the sleeves were long enough for an orangutan. He's worn them rolled up for years, but it's always bugged him. So I shortened them. This proved to be much more difficult than I expected. I figured I could just cut the sleeves where I wanted the cuffs to start, pick up the live stitches, and work downward. It works well in theory. It was hugely frustrating in practice. The yarn is slightly fuzzy, and has been worn and washed a lot. It was tough to locate individual rows, much less individual stitches. And then there are a multitude of cables and textured stitches, which complicated things. It ended up taking me several hours to get all the stitches onto needles in a way that made sense. And then I realized that I had made all the sleeve increases below the elbow, so that after cutting off the bottom four inches of sleeve, I had a really, really w i d e cuff to work with. I ended up decreasing a lot of stitches, hiding the decreases in both the last pattern row and the cuff itself. I was afraid I was going to end up with a weird sort of puffed sleeve effect (anyone remember the "puffy shirt" from Seinfeld?), but it seems to have turned out pretty well. Here's a close up:

My husband is happy with it, anyway, which is what matters.

Next up is going to be this:

This is another recent project, my Kochoran Scoop. There is really nothing wrong with this, except that I think I would wear it more if it were longer. Since I have more of the yarn I used, and this one is also top-down, it's a simple thing to add a few inches to the bottom. That should keep me busy for this evening, at least.

And finally, I've set to work on a new spinning project. I have about a pound and a half of merino/silk roving in a silvery-grey with green and burgundy accents that I think would be perfect for Wisteria.

I was pretty ho-hum about that particular pattern, until I saw this version (Ravelry link). I think the stripey-ness of the semi-variegated yarn used in the original turned me off; I love the more subdued look of the heathered grey. I spun up some of my roving last night, and it is coming out a muted silver with a beautiful silky sheen.


Color in spinning is utterly baffling to me. I never have the slightest idea how a roving will look spun up--or if I do, I'm completely wrong. The spun singles here is almost solid, although it's a little darker in person than in the picture. I like Wisteria better in a solid color, so that's okay. I think I'm spinning to get about the right gauge (after I ply it)--although spinning gauge, too, is always a mystery to me--so it may work out. Don't look for an immediate cast on in any case; I'm not a very fast spinner, and a pound and a half is a lot of roving.

There you have it: what a sweater knitter does when she doesn't have a sweater on the needles. I mean, other than sit in a corner, rocking and moaning and sucking her thumb.

Llamas in Cyberspace

The internet is a funny place. I don't mean the Google results you get if you put in a search term like "dirty sheep." I mean, funny in the way it creates such unexpected connections between people. How many of us have become friends with people we've met on line? People who live so far away and in such different circles that we would never have met in real life? I, for one, have traveled to another city to meet up with a knitter I had never laid eyes on, and I'm sure (really sure, because I read your blogs) that I am not the only one.

And what about all our on line relationships? I've never met Becky, or Romi, or Melissa, or Kristin, or Heather, or any of you for real, but I know a lot about you and your families and your lives. More, actually, than I know about most of my neighbors. I genuinely care about my blog friends. I worry about you when you're sick, or having financial troubles, or moving house. I celebrate with you when you get a pattern published, or start a new etsy shop, or have an anniversary. Doesn't that count for something? Doesn't that make for friendship, of an unorthodox sort?

The internet is a funny place. In one way, spending a lot of time on the computer makes you kind of a recluse. In another, though, it opens the door to a whole world of friendship.

The other day, I got an email from someone I've never met. Normally I don't open unfamiliar email (it's taken several hard drive reformattings to teach me that particular lesson). But the subject line of this one read "mini llamas" and there was no way I could resist. This is what it said:

Hi,

I was actually doing a search for a bloodline for a llama stud that I thought was in CA when I came across a blog from a woman who has or had llamas and someone (you) mentioned mini llamas –which is why this blog was in the search. Anyway you commented how you wished someone would “make a backyard mini llama” and I do. I’ve raised them for 9 years now.

Thought you’d like to know is all.

Sincerely,
Julie Chapman

www.minnesotaminis.com

when inches count, count on us

Well, yeah. I would like to know. Because, really, who'd have thought? I certainly didn't! Check this out:

How can you not love a face like that?

Or this. Don't they look happy, enjoying their hay al fresco?

Julie and I corresponded by email a little. She sent me the pictures above, and some others, and I visited her website and browsed around for a while. Sadly, even a mini llama is too big for my tiny Southern California backyard (apparently, they're not big swimmers). But yesterday I got the next best thing in the mail:

Llama fiber! In red and chocolate and tan and white--some 100% llama, some blended with mohair (also from Julie's farm), and some blended with wool. It's marvelous stuff, soft and colorful and calling my name loudly from the yarn closet, where I had to put it in time out until I finished this post. (If you want some of your own, you can order it from her website.)

Yes, the internet is a funny place. Aren't we lucky?

Fiber is Fiber

It's shedding season around here. (Real photo of my real floor--an hour after vacuuming.)

I don't mind, though. I don't think of it as "shedding" so much as "free fiber".

And fiber is fiber (yes, that's dog yarn on the bobbin). Now if I could just figure out how to spin it directly off the dog...