Grace

Alas for my knitting addiction! Just when I thought it was safe to start knitting again, I find that I have pushed my still-healing elbow to hard, and it has gone back to excruciating pain. Luckily, I got a present made for my FIL, which is what I felt I really had to get done, so now I'm going to have to hang up my needles up for another several weeks and hope this time my elbow heals properly. I'm really quite sad, as I have so many exciting things on the needles right now, including a hat made out of Louisa Harding's new hand-beaded yarn, Grace. I love this yarn. With more yardage than the Artyarns hand-beaded and sequened range, and a quarter the price, it's a very attractive yarn from a financial angle. Add the range of colours and the fact that it's more readily available in the UK, and you have a winner.

Yarn Review: Because I can't knit right now

I have been banned from knitting. It's a self-inflicted ban, at the behest of my left elbow, which is currently suffering from an RSI. I haven't knitted since the pain started, and while I tried a little crochet, I soon realised that I twist my arm far too much to be allowed that either. Spinning seems to be ok in small amounts, but it still hurts three weeks later, so I'm going on a yarn-fast. I did make some interesting yarn this past week. I got a mixed bag of colours that included blues and purples, greens and yellows. One of the green/yellow colours was multicoloured with white, so that's where the white comes into this ball. I spun the different colours, then plied them all together. It's three plies, but measures up as more of a worsted weight. They're not colours I would wear, but the yarn will be nice to knit with (it's merino) and might be nice for one of the men in my life, or one of the women who's colour palette doesn't tend toward the blues and purples I usually buy.

Since I can't show you any of the things I've finished recently, I thought I would review a few of the yarns I have WIPs going with. Most of my yarns come from independent dyers, who take luxury fibres such as merino, silk, camel and cashmere and dye them amazing colours. While I like and appreciate cheaper yarns such as acrylics, I was drawn to the finer things for the first few years of yarn buying. Then, I found Sirdar Simply Recycled.


I fell in love. This stuff is half acrylic, half cotton, and is £2 a ball. It comes in a DK weight, and has a very generous 142 yards per 50 grams. It has enough cotton that it keeps the cotton characteristics, and the acrylic is a nice acrylic, unlike some of the horrible stuff you find in those big box stores (Michaels or Hobbycraft, for example.) While it is a little splitty, it's not so bad as some of the pure cotton or other plant fibres (bamboo, are you listening to me?) that I've worked with. It drapes nicely and is great for most temperatures. I've bought a bunch of it and worked with it enough to know that I will buy a bunch more. The only downside to this yarn is the fact that the colours are fairly limited. Sirdar, we want more colours!

The Natural Dye Studio has always been at the top of my list for yummy yarns. I like several of theirs, including their 100% silk laceweight and their BFL range. This review will be for their Angel, which is a mix of  alpaca, silk and cashmere. It's probably the softest yarn I've ever held, and the silk in it makes the colours more vivid than they would otherwise be, but not too bright. This yarn comes in laceweight, 5-ply and DK and is pretty standard for yardage, with 262 yards per 100 grams in the DK. What sells this yarn for me is the colour. The husband-wife team behind NDS do amazing work, and everything is environmentally friendly. They're based in the UK as well, so buying from them makes me feel like I'm being green.

My final yarn for this review is Sublime's Organic Merino DK. I find the idea of a wool yarn being organic a bit funny, but I guess it means that the sheep the fibre comes from eat only organic grass. This in turn is better for the sheep, so they produce nicer wool. That's the hypothesis, anyway. Awhile back, my LYS had a sale on it, and I got 10 skeins for a steal, then bought a few extra in anticipation of making a large wrap thing. I started on the wrap, and quickly found out that the yarn didn't suit it at all. Said wrap was all cables and the merino just kind of lost the cabling in a lot of fluff. It didn't look anywhere near what it should have. I ripped it back, and eventually decided to get the yarn out again for a cardigan. While I've had all kinds of trouble with the cardi, I do love the yarn. It's soft and warm and the colours are muted. It's a pleasure to work with. The yardage isn't as generous as the Sirdar,  at 113 yards per 100 grams. For some reason, I thought this was discontinued, but the Ravelry page says nothing about it, and no one else seems to think it is, so I'm going on the basis that it's still widely available.

So far behind!

I know. I know. I haven't posted for aaages. That's mostly because I haven't really been up to much craft wise. I've had a lot of problems with pain getting in the way of the work, and have had far to many evenings distracted by writing for the play by email I'm involved with. Having not written for something like 2 years and thinking I was never going to be able to again, it's nice to find that lack of concentration, memory, and overall unhealthyness of my brain doesn't mean I can't write. I've been making up for lost time as a result.

Unfortunately, this means my Christmas knitting has fallen way behind schedule. In an effort to fix that sorry state of affairs, I've decided to crochet a few gifts instead of knitting them, and plan on buying some presents as well instead of making something for everyone in my family. With any luck, I'll get all the presents on my list finished, but only time will tell for certain.

First, a few ta-das! I made a few snoods for wearing as one of my larp characters. The setting for this larp is Regency England, with a smattering of fey and magic thrown in, as well as a bit of steampunk. As snoods were often worn during this time, I figured making a few would be nice and fun. I made a blue one first to go with the dress I had intended to wear as the character, and then at the event things happened that meant my character changed costume - and began to show a hidden side that I hadn't really thought out in character creation, so I made a black

one after the event to go with her new costume.
I'm very pleased with how they both turned out. The pattern is by Brigids Hearth and is in her blog. She is a fabulous designer, and I'm using her pattern for armwarmers to make gifts for my Mom and sister Laura, as they have both requested armwarmers. I've also made the armwarmers for myself.

In addition to knitting things for larp, I've also been working on a scarf for my Dad. I had no clue what I was going to make him, so when I decided to do some crocheted projects, I first looked around for something for him. I found this really easy pattern for a scarf, and had some yummy microfibre yarn that was in mannish colours, so I took hook to yarn and came out several days later with something quite nice. It was crocheted long way, and I wasn't happy with how long it was. I had intended to pick up the stitches on the short side and make it longer by adding a fancy end to the short ends, but I had trouble picking up the stitches and figuring out how to crochet them, and was tired of messing with it, so I simply fringed it instead. While I like how it looks and the colours, I wasn't happy with the yarn. It was extremely splitty and a pain to work with. I'm sure it wouldn't have been any easier trying to knit it. After I finished the scarf, I crocheted a Christmas ornament, as that's what my Grandma asked for as a birthday present. Her birthday is next week, so I had to get it done and in the mail asap.

Now I've just got to get cracking and knit as much as I can. I have to take frequent breaks because of the pain, but I still love knitting, so it's worth it.

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.