Category Archives: Knitting, Spinning, & Weaving

Swatch #2 With Two-Ply Handspun

One and a half repeats, half-width swatch of the pattern for my eldest goddaughter’s Yule gift, a convertible wrap/scarf/capelet/hood, knit with the two-ply sample of my own handspun yarn:

To my surprise, the difference in softness isn’t as drastic as I thought it would be. Yes, the two-ply is softer than the Navajo-plied yarn I used on the first swatch, but it’s not the absolute deal-breaker I expected. It will be a factor, though. What is astonishing is the difference in stitch definition. The n-ply is so much more crisp and even. The two-ply has the thick-thin yarn thing going on; it isn’t as evenly plied as the n-ply, and so the pattern sort of bubbles in places. Now, theoretically this is the sort of thing that could adjusted with blocking, which we will try next.

Also, the swatch knitted with the Navajo-plied yarn has more body and integrity. The sample knit with the two-ply drapes a bit more. This is what produces the degree of stitch definition, I suppose. I’m not too worried about the wrap being too stuff, as it’s going to be bigger and the weight will make it flow more than the small swatch does.

(I see that despite my notes, I did twice the amount of garter stitch on the n-plied sample than the two-ply. That’s why the bar of non-lace stitch in the middle looks different.)

A photo of both. The two-ply swatch is on the left, the Navajo-plied swatch is on the right:

If I had to decide between the two samples right now, I think I’d go with the Navajo-ply, because the two-ply swatch just looks… messy. But I’ll wash and block the swatches properly, and we’ll see what happens to the pattern once they’re dry.

And in other mostly unconnected news, I messed with red and purple dye today. Displeased with the violet dye alone, I mixed it with a bit of brown and got an old red wine colour (not the dried blood colour the picture suggests), and blended my own purple from equal parts of red and blue (more of a grape-popsicle colour than what’s here). The red on its own was a control experiment, as I hadn’t tried it yet. The fibre was natural BFL scraps.

(I’m hating my photos lately.)

Weekend Roundup

My fibre arts stuff is detailed elsewhere, so this will be brief:

Saturday:
AM: Awful cello lesson. It’s been a while since I almost broke into tears. I’m at the I-can’t-do-anything-and-I-don’t-understand-why point.

PM: Shopping: Errand-running after the boy’s nap, mostly for Hallowe’en related itemry. We get a turtleneck and tights for the boy’s Superman costume (pattern plus fabric = more expensive). No rainboots, but we do buy him a new pair of winter boots he needs (size 11, yikes).

Night: I finish my green lace scarf after much hair-tearing, rending of clothes, and gnashing of teeth.

Sunday:
AM: Another shopping run. I become very annoyed when the kitchen scale on half-price at Zellers is nowhere to be found in the store. We do the groceries, then head out to the farm stand on the south shore to pick up our pumpkins and a whack of veggies. The farmer slips the boy some Hallowe’en candy, and a pair of the best apples ever to HRH and I. On the way home we periodically exclaim anew at how awesome these apples were. Seriously; best apples ever.

PM: I knit up the first swatch for my goddaughter’s wrap. Then I have to flee for my monthly group cello class, where I have fun but yet again can’t play to save my life It’s not even the playing that goes wrong; it’s intonation, timing, trying to figure out where I am note-wise and how to fix it so I can blend, and I can’t. I know this must mean my brain is working stuff out, but while it’s happening I can’t stand a single sound I make, and so I’m not terribly inclined to make sound at all.

In Which She Chronicles Her First Time Knitting With Her Own Handspun

One and a half repeats, half-width swatch of the pattern for my eldest goddaughter’s Yule gift, a convertible wrap/scarf/capelet/hood, knit with the Navajo-plied sample of my own handspun yarn:

Notes for the record (because my journal is mostly for my reference, after all): Swatch measures 6.25 inches wide by 3.75 inches high, pinned out (4 x 6 unpinned). There’s a bit of variation in the thickness of the yarn used, which is understandable; this is the first fibre I’ve spun of this type, and the n-plying was a bit tricky to get used to. But the pattern forgives a lot of the variation. Overall the yarn is pretty even, nice and solid, and knits decently. It’s not as soft as I wanted it to be; I suspect the two-ply will be softer once knit (it’s certainly softer to the touch in the skein), and that may end up being the element that decides two-ply vs. n-ply in the end. I want it to feel soft against her throat. If it’s beautiful but a bit scritchy, she’s not going to want to wear it. As for the pattern, easy-peasy. The hardest thing is going to be remembering which row I’m on of which repeat. I will make a list and check off every row as it’s completed.

(Gentle readers, you’ll have to bear with me as I publicly natter and keep notes about this project for the next two months. I can’t write about the other Yule gifts I’m making since the recipients read the journal. Someday my goddaughter will be old enough to read it, too, and then we won’t be able to squee about the cool stuff we think up for her any more. Speaking of which, I could have sworn we capered about in words and photographs regarding the truly stunning wand HRH made for her this last spring, complete with stunning storage box, but I can’t find it anywhere. Hrm.)

Okay, I have to admit, this particular swatching was a total spinning geek thing. Most knitters hate swatching, especially because swatches aren’t one hundred percent reliable (it also slows you down, because everyone wants to jump right into the Exciting Making Of Things!, and knitting a swatch is the equivalent of checking your materials and measurements sixish times before starting [needle size correct? yarn weight correct? yarn composition correct? affected by washing? stretch? definition?] and of looking both ways fourteen billion times before you cross the street). But swatching a handspun to make sure it behaves the way you need it to (before you spin/ply it all up and discover that it’s useless for the purpose for which it was intended)? Crucial. Because otherwise you not only waste your knitting time, you waste the fibre you’ve spun and the time used to spin it. Also, I’ve never knit with (a) a handspun yarn, let alone (b) a handspun yarn I produced myself. So yes, this was a total spinning geek thing.

I’ve been spinning with the wheel since I got in a third week of September, but the fibre has been for experimental purposes only, or for other people. It wasn’t until I couldn’t find the right yarn with which to knit my goddaughter’s Yule gift and realised that I could spin the yarn I wanted to knit with that I really, truly understood how spinning and knitting were going to work together for me.

I don’t think of myself as a knitter. I’ve finished all of nine things in the past year since I began knitting, mostly hats (two) and scarves (three). Things beyond simple knit stitch scare me. I’ve only just mastered yarn overs and k2tog. I can’t purl to save my life unless I do a bunch of them in a row; alternating purl and knit breaks my brain. Ribbing makes me suicidal or homicidal, depending on the day.

But spinning? Love it. The problem with spinning is you end up with yarn, and you have to figure out some way to use it up. Offloading it to friends once it’s good enough is one way. (Gods bless Ceri, who cheerfully supports this method; so much so that she buys me fluff to spin up so she gets yarn at the end of the process. If anyone else wants in on this, let me know; I am not kidding. Fully serious. You want handspun yarn? Ask; we can work something out where everyone benefits.) The other logical way is to use it up by knitting with it myself.

This was always going to be a problem for me, because as I pointed out above, I don’t think of myself as a knitter. Someone needs a hat or a scarf, so I make one. My office is cold, so I make a lap blanket. I need slippers, so I knit a pair. The boy falls in love with Star Wars, so I knit a lightsabre. (Just work with me on this one, okay?) I don’t stash yarn the way other knitters do; I go out and buy what I need when I need it.

So yes, it took me this long to figure out that I could actually spin a specific yarn for a knitting project I wanted to undertake. Because for me, it’s primarily about the spinning, not the knitting.

(Except in this case, where I decided to make something special for my goddaughter because I remember how I felt when one of my relatives gifted me with something grown-up around this age. I decided to knit a beautiful wrap for her, but I couldn’t find the perfect yarn for the project. Enter spinning as the solution. In this instance, I worked backwards: a knit project needed a handspun yarn, instead of a handspun yarn needing a knit project.)

Anyway, despite my thick skull and amusingly slow connecting of the dots, I here demonstrate my first knitted handspun sample. I’m really extremely proud of it, and I think I have every right to be. Because I not only knitted that swatch, I spun the yarn with which it was knitted. And it acts like real yarn. I can’t get over that bit.

Of course, swatches lie like lying things, so I can’t trust it fully. But I can admire it, even before washing and blocking it. And I invite you to admire it, too, if you like. Really. I’m horrible with compliments, but I’m so thrilled about this particular accomplishment that if you want to compliment it or me, I won’t stop you or duck it, I promise.

Next up: Knitting the same sample with the two-ply made from the same handspun singles I did the n-ply with. Ceri has confirmed that the two-ply is softer to touch and the colours seem brighter, so we’ll see how it behaves when knitted with the same needles in the same pattern. I suspect it will be a bit splittier, but the way it feels may make up for that.

In Which She Is Pleased, Then Despairs, Then Demonstrates Genius

So, this lace scarf I’ve been knitting.

You are not going to believe this.

I get to the end of my scarf, which was essentially defined by how much yarn I had in the skein of Koigu KPPPM. I look at what’s left of the lovely Koigu yarn I’m using. “Oh, I shall do my knit row, and then cast off,” I think. So close! So exciting!

I do my knit row.

I start casting off.

And realise that I’m not going to have enough yarn to do more than a third of my cast off.

I MEAN SERIOUSLY.

I can’t tink or rip back because it’s lace and I don’t have a lifeline. I’m certainly not going to buy another $14 skein of Koigu just to use less than a yard to bind off. So I need to use a length of another yarn to complete the bind off. Do I have anything of the right weight or colour? No!

Hang on. Wait.

Last March I bought a nice fingering weight superwash yarn in an Irish Cream colour with which to knit some fingerless gloves. The ribbing on tiny tiny needles drove me nuts and the project is in hibernation. I never even opened the skein, because I started the cuffs with a brown yarn instead. So I dig the Irish Cream skein out, cut off a yard, and try to dye it a colour at least somewhat similar. I mixe up some kelly green Wilton’s with a touch of brown to tone it down. It works on white paper brilliantly, and the dyeing process works equally brilliantly. It even has a mottled effect, like the original Koigu has! Once it’s dry, I compare it to the Koigu and see that the brown has been unnecessary, because the yarn I used wasn’t pure white: the result is a bit more olivey than the green of the Koigu colourway, and less variegated than the wet strand had suggested. But it’s certainly close enough to use in a pinch. However, I decide to try with another yard, just to see if the green alone matches.

But either way… I just unlocked the Dyeing Yarn achievement. Go me. (Yes, yes, it was pretty much a given once I figured out how to dye fibre, but you never really know till you try.)

ETA: The green alone was too bright, so I overdyed with a touch of brown; the result is toned down and more variegated, which better matches the original yarn. The green bits are very, um, emerald green, though. Still; no one will notice, as it’s just the bind off. (You hear that? NO ONE WILL NOTICE. Or else.)

Come on, yarn. Dry fully already, so I can cast off and be done with the damn scarf.

ETA: And DONE!

And here’s a look at the colour-matching dye trials. The one on the left is the second attempt and the one I used; the one on the right is the first attempt.

Yay!

Look what’s all spun up:

Now the burning question: Do I two-ply it, or chain/Navajo-ply it? (The sensible answer is to try both. And because even though I weighed it before spinning it up [I swear, I did] there’s more on the second bobbin than there is on the first, so I can try chain-plying from that one.)

(Hmph. Not sure why the picture isn’t displaying vertically like it’s supposed to. Tilt your head to the left.)

ETA @ 16:50: Oh my gods. Navajo plying with a thread-thin single of my own spinning. I may weep with joy. It’s so smooth.

ETA @ 17:25: Wow. So very different.

This is the Navajo/cable-plied yarn:

This is the two-ply yarn:

Here they are side by side:

To touch, the cable-plied feels more solid. I want to say harsh, except it’s still soft, just less lofty than the two-ply. Oddly, I think the colours are a bit muddier in the cable-ply than the two-ply. I expected the opposite, since cable-ply is touted as a great way to preserve colour changes. Maybe on a coloured single that changes less frequently than this stuff.

Now I get to wash both, dry them, and knit a sample in the stitch and pattern I’m going to be using it for to see how each sample handles, and how the colours are best shown. I’m kind of excited about swatching with them.

I suspect that I’m going to need Ceri’s in-person input on the samples this Saurday when I swing by her place to pick up my new ball winder and needles.

In Which She Natters About Everything For A Bit

Oh, Mr. Mailman, you do love me. I was beginning to think you didn’t care. I know I don’t order stuff any more — I’m not writing a contracted book and so I’m not ordering used books I can’t get through the library, and I don’t have the money to buy fun stuff. But today you brought me a little freelance cheque. This was a pleasant thing to offset no mail at all this week so far. That was sad. Although no mail means no bills, so there is an up side to it all.

My current freelance assignment is going swimmingly. It all flows and mostly lacks spelling and grammar errors. It’s refreshing to be able to read a story that hangs together with well-written characters and dialogue. The last little sixty-page one that was supposed to be easy after the four-hundred page disaster ended up being just as much of a disaster, as it wasn’t even an outline. It’s really, really hard to supportively review something that essentially isn’t there.

Because work was going so well yesterday I had the opportunity to knit the boy a hat. This was supposed to be a Yule gift, but we discovered yesterday morning that he has no hats that fit him beyond his ball caps, so it got a bit more critical. I knitted the whole thing before he got home, tried it on him to size and place (somewhat, er, freeform) earflaps, and he fell in love with it. He kept thanking me and running to look at himself in the mirror. What I haven’t told him is that I found an excellent web site that turns pictures into knitting charts, and I had planned to double-stitch the Autobot symbol on the front for him before I gave it to him. As he has absconded with the thing, I shall stitch it Friday night after he’s in bed, and leave it for him to find Saturday morning.

Orchestra was good last night. At least, it sucked less that it had for the past three weeks, so things must be better. I still need to work on some of the Beethoven trouble spots. Some I have down, others I don’t (which is an incredibly helpful statement, I know). We got to play the Schubert, which was nice because I could play it with no trouble even without practice, and we sight-read the first movement of the second Weber clarinet concerto (well, it shouldn’t have been sight-reading, because I’ve had it for two weeks) and that wasn’t as much of a disaster as it could have been once I remembered that we were in E flat major. It always sounds so wrong until you hear everyone else playing.

Today is laundry and bread-baking (both already on; the freelance work-at-home life is such a glamorous one), and then when I’ve polished my report on this latest ms. I’m going to finish spinning the singles for the wrap. I have about a half-ounce of fibre left, and I’m so close to being done. Of course then I get to ply it, which is another kettle of fish entirely. I discovered last week that I need a second swift, because having a skeinwinder is all well and good, but once you’ve washed a skein you need to unwind it and wind it on again to measure the length properly. The good news is I can build one with jumbo TinkerToys, so I don’t need to buy one. (Now we just need to find the TinkerToys and convince the boy it’s Not To Play With once it’s built; he can have the bits I don’t use. Or, you know, I could ask the husband to knock one together in his copious spare time at work. Along with those extra bobbins.)

Actually, I’ve been wondering if I can’t use the old textile mill quill-style pirn bobbins for storage of singles and plying, assuming I can get a bunch of the inexpensively at flea markets or some such place. I know the holes don’t go very deep, but HRH could drill them a bit deeper. The trick would be winding the singles onto the quill bobbins, but if one located an old manual bobbin-winder, one could do it. Theoretically. (Oh, look, they make new ones, but good grief they’re expensive, even the manual ones. Wow. And new storage bobbins, too, but those are much less fun. )

Which brings me to the discovery that the great wheel my mum owned for years and recently placed in Ceri’s sunroom was retrofitted to be a bobbin-winder. The spindle doesn’t extend out to spin off the tip; it’s been hacked so that it lifts out of the brackets to enable a bobbin to be slipped on, and the drive band runs the spindle/bobbin combo to wind yarn on. Apparently it isn’t uncommon for great/walking wheels to be kitbashed in this way. Gods, I love the Internet. People can share so much information.

Right. On to that work thing. After another load of laundry and punching down the bread.

Weekend Roundup, Thanksgiving Edition

Friday night I had a good cello lesson. We cleared up some fingerings in the Beethoven symphony, then I said I wanted to work on recital stuff instead of my lesson stuff. I’d been playing on Thursday night with the practice mute (a good hour and a quarter of practice, hurrah, although it meant I didn’t sleep well) and was struggling with making an Air by Bach sound properly smooth, and I’d worked on the Mozart duet and Ashokan Farewell too. I also finally said I needed to walk away from the Berceuse, because I was fighting it so much that it was causing more problems that it was solving. My teacher said that leaving it wasn’t a problem; we’d revisit it later. Although, she added, I’d been making progress on it, even though I couldn’t tell. The Mozart duet had good parts in it, and I have notes to help me focus on string crossings and smoother shifts. We worked out better fingerings for the Bach that made it so much easier, so I’m feeling better about that too. I don’t feel as overwhelmed by it all any more.

Saturday morning I took the boy out to run errands with me. We dropped some books off at the Melange and bought two candles, one for Thanksgiving (the boy chose ice blue) and one for Halloween (the boy chose orange, naturally). Then we went to our local yarn shop, and I’d mistimed travel slightly; we arrived just on the stroke of eleven, and it hadn’t opened yet. The boy stood there and burst into tears, and wouldn’t listen to me when I said the we’d just sit and wait; he thought we were going home. (Yes, my son gets upset when the yarn store is closed. Of course, there is a toy fire truck there, and he loves the spinning wheel and the containers of yarn, but still.) I’d managed to get him to sit on the step with me and look at the new drawing app on my iPod when MA arrived with her keys and let us right in, bless her. “Are we going to be here for a long time, Mama?” he asked hopefully at one point. I told him that I hadn’t brought knitting or spinning to work on, and that we’d have to go home eventually for lunch anyhow, but I love that he was hoping we’d be there for a while. (It may have been directly connected to the fun he was having pushing one of the wheeled storage containers of yarn around like a train, of course.) We got all the fibre I needed to spin for various projects, plus a skein of yarn for another Yule gift and one to knit a hat with earflaps for the boy. Somehow my list of things to make for Yule has tripled in the last two weeks. I officially have what Ceri calls a Knitlist. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Saturday morning was overcast and gloomy, but the clouds were swept away for a bright though windy afternoon, beautiful weather for the wedding we were to attend on the south shore. Weddings of friends are always wonderful, because you get to see people you love in formal dress, something we don’t do enough of. I had the pleasure of handling the cufflinks for both the groom and best man, and assisted Jan with boutonnieres for the wedding party. (We were both on site early because t! was celebrating the wedding with assistance from HRH.) Lovely ceremony written by t!, sat with excellent people, touching speeches made by the best man and the maid of honour, and generally an all-round pleasant time. I want copies of the pictures others were taking because my own camera sat in my bag under the table. I think I was photographed more than I’ve ever been photographed at a wedding that wasn’t my own. Or maybe I was just standing with members of the wedding party a lot. We left around nine once the lights had gone down and the loud music had begun. There had been somewhat loud music throughout the meal as well, and I found myself kind of shouting to people across the table. Something irritated my throat in the middle of the meal and I had a coughing fit, which ruined my voice for the next day. All in all, though, we were with excellent friends celebrating a wonderful day, and it was a good time.

Sunday morning went out to Chapters to pick up the new TMBG kids’ album. I had deliberately waited a month and checked stock online to make sure it would be there. Well, it wasn’t. They looked on shelves, they looked in back, they finally concluded that it was somewhere in one of the ten pallets in back that had technically been received (i.e., someone had entered ISBNs, titles, and quantities from an invoice) but not unpacked. And the senior clerk I spoke with admitted that they were behind, and that it would take some time before those pallets were opened and shelved properly. I was thoroughly unimpressed. This isn’t the first time I’ve run into the “in stock but not on the shelf” issue at this shop, but it’s the first time they admitted to being so far behind that they couldn’t find it in the warehouse.

So the boy was disappointed (as were HRH and I, because we love TMBG’s kid stuff, too). Another book I wanted was also not on the shelves, despite there being twelve available according to stock check. I did pick up the copy of Amy King’s Spin Control I’d intended to come home with, though. From now on, I will call in advance, as much as I hate phones.

We did the grocery shopping, then I chatted with my mum and spun up another ounce of the yarn for my goddaughter’s Yule gift. We made cookies late in the afternoon, then I put the tiny cross-rib roast we’d bought in the oven for a somewhat unplanned Thanksgiving meal at home. It turned out perfectly, meltingly smooth, served with roast potatoes and carrots from the garden, drizzled with a separately-made onion gravy. Before we began to eat we lit the ice blue candle the boy had chosen for Thanksgiving and I asked if he wanted to say anything special. “No,” he said, “just Happy Thanksgiving.” I said I was thankful for food on the table, family and friends, and the roof over our heads, and the ability to enjoy our many hobbies and activities. And then we swooned with yum at the incredibly delicious food on our plates. The boy patted my hand during dinner and said, “I love you, Mama. Thank you for making this dinner for us.” He had seconds of potatoes and carrots, and ate every single piece of roast beef on his plate, impressing both of us. Oddly enough, he refused gravy. Once upon a time he wouldn’t eat anything unless it had gravy, so lo, we have come so very far. We’ve also come far in the successful roast beef department. Pretty much every roast I’ve done in the past few years hasn’t turned out the way I wanted it to for some reason. In fact, this one nearly didn’t; after roasting it for twice as long as I was supposed to it still wasn’t cooked through, so I hacked it into three pieces, laid the less cooked sides up, and roasted it at a higher temperature for ten minutes. The result was sheer perfection, so hurrah for my experience and instincts working together to actually get dinner on the table.

Once he was in bed I checked e-mail and discovered that I’d won… a copy of Amy King’s Spin Control in an online draw. (Insert whacking of forehead here. I am very pleased, of course, but also abashed.) So I will be returning the copy I bought and using the refund against the purchase of The Intentional Spinner, which they’ll need to order in for me. Not only that, I got a message from Aurora saying that she’d been in Vermont for Thanksgiving and had found a case of Vanilla Coke, and was bringing it home for me. An embarrassment of riches!

Monday we lazed about in the morning. HRH and the boy built a fort with a quilt and some chesterfield cushions, and the boy set up a Thanksgiving dinner inside it for all his stuffed animals with great enthusiasm. While he napped I spun up another ounce of yarn for the wrap. After his rest we went to HRH’s parents’ house for the official family Thanksgiving dinner, where I got another six inches of lace scarf knitted before dinner. Dinner itself was spectacular. The boy ate a staggering amount of turkey, half of it from the carving board before dinner itself, and the other half from drumsticks that he brandished like a pirate. He tried the stuffing and the purple cauliflower and passed on both of them, but ate several carrot sticks.

All in all, a lovely holiday weekend. Now we turn to winterizing, putting plastic over the windows and making things as efficient as possible. HRH put in the second outside window in our bedroom, and took out the screens in the boy’s room. We’d turned the central kitchen heater on last week and used the ceiling fan to circulate the warmer air when it went on, but yesterday we set all the room thermostats at 15 degrees, just to make sure things didn’t get too chilled. The outside gardens need to be fully cut back, and the compost spread over the beds, too. Snow has been spotted in the air not too far north.