Yarn!

I have been spinning. I had a bunch of little tops of about 20 grams each, given to me when I first expressed an interest in spinning with a spindle this past spring. One is a black shetland, another a white shropshire, and two are blue and purple merino. They were a nice little project I could do in an evening, so for the last few days I have been spinning them, and decided based on length that I would ply together the white, blue and purple, and ply the black with itself.




As it turns out, I had a little more blue and purple than I had white, so I did a little bit of those two colours as well as a skein of the three. They all turned out to be really pretty. I will say that I loooove spinning merino as much as I love knitting with it. It's so soft and gorgeous.  The shropshire was also pretty nice, but the shetland has spun up very coarse. It feels a lot like the aran yarn I've been working with from Sheepfold Aran. The aran is known for its felting properties, so I imagine this might felt well also. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to make with the yarn yet, but when I know I'll be sure to post it here.

I'm very pleased with how much better my yarn is looking. It's getting to the point where I can do create yarn that's pretty even, for the most part. They aren't kidding when they say practice pays off.

Working up a storm

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I've gotten over the problems with my thumb now, and am in the process of working my fingers off to make up for the 3 week lack. First, I decided I'd get back into knitting with a simple little pouch. I'm going to be starting up larp (live action role play) again in October after a 4 year break. A few months ago, I had decided that I was never going back because of my health, so I sold or gave away all my stuff. I don't have tons of extra money to buy more, so I decided to make some things. I started a crocheted bottle holder, but crochet was still a little painful, so I started a knitted belt pouch instead. Using some yarn that will felt nicely, I knitted up a little bag, then decided to make one for my friend Katherine Last as well. She chose red for her colour, so it's being made from a Cascade 220 skein that I've had floating around for awhile now. I've also promised Peter Godfrey one, which will be black and white and not felted.

I did eventually get that water bottle holder done, a few days after my pouch. It's all chain and single crochet, so it's very easy and quick to make up. I had thought I might attach a loop to it so it will go on a belt too, but I'm worried the weight of a water bottle might pull the belt down, so I might just put it on a strap like the pattern has.

I've also done some more work on a shrug I'm making, and almost have that finished. I don't have any pictures yet, so I'll blog about that more later when it's done.

Last, but certainly  not least, is the spinning. Spinning hurt my hand after both knitting and crochet ceased to, so it was the last I got back into after the injury. I was running low on the BFL I had been practising with, so I sat down one day and spun the rest of that, then over the course of that and the next day plied it. One thing I've noticed with this particular fibre is that it's very, very fluffy. When I was spinning it, little bits of it would refuse to spin and just be piles of fluff attached to a nice bit of spun yarn. There were also places it just would not spin nicely, and was really quite underspun. It's funny, because on the spindle and on the wheel I tried before, I was overspinning. I've since played a bit with the tension on my wheel and figured out how to spin it more evenly, but for this fibre, it turned out to be very thick-thin, with bits that weren't even spun very well in there. It makes for a very strange looking finished project. It's still on the bobbin; I really need to wind it off and wash it, but I was so eager to get started on this lovely blue stuff that I left it, and haven't gotten back to it in the few days since. Isn't it gorgeous though? I was buying fibre at Forest Fibre and saw this and just *had* to get it. It's a combination of merino and silk (80/20%) and is proving just divine to spin with. It's not quite so fluffy as the BFL, but I think that may be down to the fact that it's dyed. I'm enjoying working with it more than the BFL though. I wish I'd gotten more than 100g. I've already done 50, and can't wait to do the other 50.  Tomorrow, I will start spinning the rest, then ply it. Already, it's more even than my last batch of spinning, with no little fluffy bits to mar the look of the final product. I'm planning to make a hat out of it. It looks just as stunning spun as it does in fibre form:

I shall leave you with this amazing image.

The Dreaded RSI

I have encountered the bane of all yarnworkers - the dreaded RSI. I've done something to my left thumb, which makes it impossible to knit, and for a few days, it was impossible to use at all - no crochet, no spinning, no moving. I can crochet a bit now, thanks to some lovely pain gel the doctor prescribed, but knitting is probably out for a few more weeks at least. I tried spinning the other day and it was also painful, so I shall put off doing that until I'm sure healing has progressed.

This is very sad, because I have just joined a fibre club and gotten my first instalment of the lovely stuff. The club is Thylacine and the fibre is Corriedale. It's so pretty! I can't wait to spin it.

Spinning!

I've gone and done it now. I got a wheel. Sure, I told myself, I'll do a bit of spinning. Some lovely friends gave me spindles, and I got some fibre, and went at it. And enjoyed it. But spindling is so slow. I had all this lovely fibre I wanted to spin, and wasn't getting anywhere fast. Given practice (years of it) you can spin in very large quantities with a spindle, but me being me, I couldn't wait. Besides, I had planned to get a wheel eventually, and when I got a little extra one off chunk of money, I decided now was the time.

All this was helped along by Claire, a friend who takes me to knitting sessions, offered to let me try out her wheel. After spinning a rather bad example of the art (left), I was hooked, and started looking for wheels immediately. Ravelry has a wide variety of destash and for sale boards, but getting one there is problematic for three reasons - 1) they're often in the States, 2) they're very often out of my price range and 3) they often get picked up before I even know they exist. Claire had suggested ebay, so I went and had a look. I found a few that I liked the look of, and after a couple days of looking focused on two. One had a "buy it now" option and was selling for £110 (I wanted to spend no more than about £100) including 2 carders, 7 bobbins, a lazy kate, and a few books on spinning. They're very old books, but they look fairly interesting. It turns out the seller was getting rid of a wheel her mother had when she passed away, and from the looks of the yarn on the bobbins, she spun up until the day she died.

I ended up having to pay a fair bit extra for shipping, but even with that added on, the wheel was a steal. I got it this afternoon and spent a few hours getting acquainted with it; how it works, how to get everything sorted so the fibre will twist and go on the bobbin, and what kind of tension system it had so I could adjust that, and finally getting to know what kind of speed it had. Claire's wheel was very fast, and I ended up overspinning badly because I wasn't used to spinning slowly. (On a spindle, you have to go fast if you want the fibre to turn into yarn - otherwise it just drifts apart.) My wheel, on the other hand, seems a lot slower, and I'm having no trouble with overspinning. I'm so in love with my little wheel. It's not like many out there for sale today, and took me awhile to find out how to work it. Most have what we call scotch tension, which uses a spring, and are a single drive, with the drive band from the wheel to the spindle going around the spindle only. Mine is a tilt wheel with a double drive, where the band is made into a figure 8 and spread between the spindle and the bobbin. The angle of tilt provides the tension.

I've decided wheels can be complicated little things.

The spinning wheel

This is the bobbin, which sits on the spindle. Those hooks make sure the yarn is distributed evenly over the bobbin. Extra bobbins are stored nearby, on pegs next to the wheel.

The spinning area from the back. This shows the bobbin on the spindle.  The little lever below is how you twist the  peg around which controls how far back the wheel tilts.

The spinning area as looking at the wheel from the front. See the way it's tilting back?  That's how the tension is controlled.

Watch this space for more yarn-y goodness! As soon as I have pictures, my knitting wip and my crochet wips will be going up. And more handspun, if I have any say about that as well.

Crochet Creativity

The last few months have seen me very busy, which is the main reason I haven't posted here. When I had a chance to stop, I didn't really have much energy to write anything, and for the majority of that time, I was away from home and my computer, using my brother's computer instead, which didn't really lend itself to blogging.

I didn't really get much knitting done while I was in the States. I found that having people around all the time to talk with, along with all the busy-ness my family gets up to, makes for enough distraction (albeit not bad) that I can't really focus on knitting. I did get a fair bit of crochet done, however. I took with me a large granny square that I had started the week before I left, and when I ran out of yarn for it, it was large enough to turn into a fringed triangle shawl. The yarn is Araucania Ruca, which is very pretty but splitty. I actually found it easier to crochet than to knit, and will probably work with it again.

Once I finished that, I found myself at rather a loose end. I'd gotten ahold of some pretty blue and white cotton and the Harmony Guide to crochet (in card form - 101 motifs and patterns), so I put those together with a little creativity and settled on a book cover. While I call it my design, it is based entirely on two stitches from the guide. You can find my write-up of how I did it here.

Once I finished that, I started playing around with single and double crochet in the round, and ended up with some hair accessories. I think I made 4, but they are all like these two. I'm enjoying designing crochet, and find it to be pretty easy despite my relative newness to the craft. I also got the outline of a purse which unzips flat, and plan to turn the original leather design into a knitted one. My designing life has begun, if rather tentatively.

Exciting knitting

I have a lot on the needles right now. So much for my resolution to have 2 things on the go at any one time - a lace project and a sock project. But I'm really enjoying almost everything I'm working on, with the exception of the test knitting project. The yarn for that is simply awful, and I am getting to the point where I simply can't work on it. I really should just frog the whole thing and start over in a different yarn - something animal instead of vegetable this time. Warning: doing cables with very splitty yarn is not a good idea! Said splitty yarn is very gorgeous however, so  I've been using it for other things. I decided to try it out crocheting, and found it to be surprisingly easy to work with. I actually finished this scarf, called Queen Anne's Lace (ravelry link) at the beginning of April, and was so pleased with it that I'm considering making another. I have enough yarn for it, certainly. It reminds me of ocean waves, with the blues and the greys seeming to crest together.

But I digress. What I'm really enjoying making is my second pair of socks, after the first turned out so well. I've chosen a pattern from Knitty called Spring Forward, a lacy sock that is proving easy and fast to knit. I'm breaking one of my sock rules and using a luxury yarn - merino and silk - with no nylon in it. Nylon is supposed to make the sock wear better and last longer. Heaven only knows how well these socks will wear, but I'm really enjoying making them. Pictures to come later, when I'm done with one of them.

Another surprise on my needles was a KAL called Morganna. It's a shawl designed by an Irish woman, and I bought the pattern as part of a charity drive to raise money for the Japanese disaster. It's a little slow going, since the rows are over 300 stitches long and there is cabling involved, but I love the yarn, a Blue Faced Leicester. It's a little darker than the picture shows, and will make a lovely shawl.

I'm making a long visit to my parents' home starting next month, and have planned out what I will be taking. I've put the patterns on my new Kindle, for ease of having them all in one place without papers getting all messed up while travelling. The Kindle is great for that kind of thing. I have one shawlette to work on, and several pairs of socks - I'll most likely take the lace project I started awhile ago. It's a stole that's knit in the Orenburg tradition, and while it's dead easy it's going to be absolutely gorgeous. You can see, even unblocked, how intricate it's going to look. I think the cobweb yarn that I picked rather because I liked the colour and the yardage was right is going to make another impact I hadn't thought of in making it look more delicate and airy. This makes me happy.

Gee, you think I like knitting lace? Oh yeah.

Dye

I was winding a ball of yarn from http://www.thenaturaldyestudio.com/ and when I looked down at my hands after finishing, one looked like this! It was highly amusing. I was able to wash it right off; I think it's probably the bit put on to keep the dye from washing right out, since the yarn is much lighter in colour than this.