Signs of fall

Today was the first multiple handknit day (Rumpled and Aestlight).

There's that little chill in the air in the mornings that means autumn is just around the corner.

The chestnuts are lying in prickly heaps on the sidewalk.

I saw red ivy leaves from the train this morning.

There wasn't a cloud in the incredibly blue sky as the girls and I walked to school.

This is the kind of weather that means only one thing in my knitting world - sweaters. Cozy, comfy sweaters. Warm toasty sweaters. Piles of knitting on my lap in the evening. It's a good time. My dilemma now is what sweater to do.

It's not like I don't already have a list* of projects for the next few months. Including projects that require dyeing and spinning in addition to the knitting. But I'm itching to cast on for a sweater for memememememe! I even know what sweater I want to do - Pas de Valse by Marnie MacLean, from Twist Collective Fall 2009. And I've got the yarn picked out - a pile of gorgeously soft baby Alpaca that Ironman picked up for me in Peru several years ago. There's only one problem:

I don't really want a tan sweater.

So I've spent the last week throwing little 5 gram skeins of tan alpaca into a crock pot with various colors of dye, just for the heck of it. It's been great fun!

The original color is at the bottom, and dyed with (going clockwise) sun yellow, golden yellow, deep orange (0.5x), deep orange (1x), fuschia, burgundy, periwinkle, brilliant blue, turquoise, emerald, brown and gun metal Jacquard Acid dyes

And I'm surprised with the way I'm leaning color-wise - I think this sweater needs to be orange. I am not an orange person. I have one orange t-shirt that I love, but it's a paler tone then this orange. I'm a bit dubious that this color will look good on me at all. But, as I've said before, it's time to break out of my sweater-color-rut and try something a bit different.

I'm leaning towards the darker of the two deep oranges, which makes me think of pumpkin pie, and fall leaves, and chrysanthemums. What could be better for a fall project? But what do you all think? Too dark? Too orange? Let me know your vote in the comments, and we'll see which one comes out ahead.

*List update: #1 on the list is now 1/2 done - one project knitted and done, one into the third reknit, but should be done this week, and one...still in mental stages. #4 is finished, blocked and needs to be stuck in the mail. #2 - I wound up Devil's yarn last night, so incremental forward progress there.

Fiber Friday: A pile of Clown Barf

Before we went off to the States, I managed to finish up most of the singles from Boo's dyed top.

A few days and some chain plying later, and I have three skeins of lovely squooshy yarn in the "Clown Barf" colorway.

Spun at 9:1, short forward (worsted) draw, plied at 7.5:1.
Total yardage: 381 yds/8.2 oz, 8-13 wpi, ranging from 700-800 ypp. Hopefully enough for a wee Boo sweater sometime this fall (as per the list). After ending up with some 4 Ounce Challenge yarn that was a bit too overplied, I made a conscious effort to chain ply this only more loosely. Going down to the biggest whorl on the flyer helped a lot too.

I have a new toy to play with in spinning. I discovered (probably through a post on Ravelry, but I honestly don't remember), plans for a PVC skeiner/swift. I was all fired up to build it, but realized that, instead of the $10 quoted in the plans it was probably going to cost me £50 to build. Umm, no. So I tabled the idea until our trip back to the States. A $20 trip to Lowes and some fun with a pipe cutter later, I had a lovely skeiner that wound off the clown barf in expert fashion. A far cry from my cobbled together 2x4 and CD swift that I never, ever use. It's all I can do to keep from winding all my yarn into cakes and then back into skeins.

So the girls' sweater yarn is done, just in time for school to start next Tuesday. It's pretty exciting. The girls even think so too!

Dyelot paranoia

I've recently come to the conclusion that I like the yarn I make myself much better then I like the yarn I buy. And I like being able to come up with my own colorways a lot. This is all well and good when I'm dyeing yarn for socks. Or a hat. Or mittens. Or anything small and one skein-able. But sweater lots? Sweater lots are another story entirely.

I have dyelot paranoia. So when I decided that this holiday's dye project would be the ~1700 yds of fingering weight wool/tencel from Green Mountain Spinnery, I had a bit of a dilemma. How to get all the skeins the same dyelot?

The last time I did this, I had the benefit of a very hot Houston summer to help out with the dye setting. Not being sure whether or not a London summer would have the same effect, I set out to do what I get paid to do: experiment.

First the soaking:

I soaked the seven skeins in plain water (aka no citric acid). Because I didn't want the dye to strike too fast and give a mottled/variegated look, I decided to soak the yarn alone and add the CA with the dye.

We (I) mixed up the dye stock, and waited anxiously for it to cool off a bit before adding it to the bin.

It all got mixed up, along with 1 tsp citric acid, and left alone. After four days, the dyebath was still pretty dark, so I added another tsp of acid.

On day 7, I got sick of waiting and hauled the yarn out.

There was a bit of purple left in the bin, but I liked the yarn color, so I took it out.

Then there was the heat setting of the dye. Everything went in to a garbage bag and into the microwave. Three minutes on high, three minutes rest, three times seemed to do the trick. Several rinses, a spin in the washing machine and voila!

1700 yards of periwinkle colored yarn, destined for Sprossling. Someday...

FO times six: Annis

Pattern: Annis by Susanna IC
Yarns: hand-me-down turquoise wool from my grandmother, teal handspun, Malabrigo lace in pink and blue, dyed-by-me coned silk.
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm and occasionally, US 10/6.0 mm.
Started/finished: 11 June - 6 July 2010.
Comments/mods: I picked this pattern because I wanted something that would go pretty quickly but not be too boring. I chose so well! The pattern is very simple, but the resulting shape is just gorgeous. It's also vastly adaptable - I forsee doing a number of these with various edgings from my stitch dictionaries, and there's at least one mega-version in Jaggerspun wool/silk on the list for me somewhere down the line.

Since I did something a bit different for each one, I'm going to go in order.

Annis #1 - by the book.

I did this one as written, with the exception of using US 8/5.0 mm needles and a backwards loop cast-on to start with (same cast-on used for all). Finished this one in three days when Himself took off for his bike ride. For Boo's Mon/Friday nursery teacher/girls' occasional babysitter. Details on Ravelry

Annis #2 - handspun, shrunken

This one is for Boo's main nursery teacher, who earned the only handspun version by being a knitter herself, and complimenting me on Boo's Nemo set early on in our relationship. Sadly, she is not coming back next year, so I wanted to make her something really nice. I cut out two of the 12 stitch repeats and the nupps because I was worried about running out of yarn. I had plenty left (which, of course, I have no idea what to use for now), but so be it. Did some work on this on the beach in Cornwall while the girls climbed on the rocks. Six days - clearly I was too busy eating ice cream and lying in the sun. Ravelry details here.

Annis #3 - pink Malabrigo

For Devil's teaching assistant, a lovely young lady who is also leaving at the end of the year. I went back to the pattern without mods for this as well. And as I slogged along, I threw out the idea of doing any more nupps on these things. Too slow! Four days to finish, 32 g of yarn, Ravelry.

Annis #4 - beads!

For Devil's main teacher, whom she has absolutely adored. Mrs. A is having her first baby in October, and I wanted to make her something nice for the fall. Pale blue Malabrigo, blue seed beads instead of nupps, correct number of repeats, but I made the short rows longer (fewer of them) to try and speed things up. Three days, 30 g, details.

Annis #5 - red dyed coned silk

Several years ago I ended up with a lot of coned machine knitting yarn. I got rid of most of it when we moved, but held on to one cone of natural colored laceweight that was labeled silk. I'm not sure it actually is silk, but it dyed with acid dyes, so it's some kind of protein fiber. In retrospect, I should have used smaller needles for this one, because it ended up pretty holey on the 5.0 mm needles. Oh well. No time to go back and redo! No nupps, longer short rows. For Boo's other nursery teacher, who is also not returning. Five days, and I think I may get rid of the rest of the cone, even though there's a ton left. I didn't like knitting with it. On Ravelry.

Annis #6 - mini-version

I had 22 g of blue Malabrigo left, so I decided to try and squeeze out on more mini-Annis. Took out four repeats, yarn overs instead of nupps, and I still had to bind off a few rows early. But it blocked out to reasonable size. This is for Dev's reading teacher, who broke her foot very badly a couple of weeks ago and has decided to retire. Three days, 20 g, Ravelry.

Blocking: all of these were soaked in cool water and Soak, and spun out in the washing machine before being pinned out. I threaded blocking wires through each of the points on the bottom edge, pinned the top two corners and stretched the whole thing out.

I tried pinning the top edge on the first two, but found that it was unneccessary - just stretching out the lace part smoothed everything out. They do tend to be a bit on the narrow side however, so I probably could have gotten a bit more width if I'd futzed around with the top edge. So be it.

I'm hoping that the vast exodus of teachers has nothing to do with my kids, but it is unfortunate that it's all coming this year. The girls have loved the school and, while they're looking forward to summer break, I suspect they're going to miss everyone a great deal.

Fiber Friday: The end is in sight

A few days ago, I snapped. Really snapped. I couldn't face the prospect of anything more having to do with purple cabled yarn. So I turned on "Gladiator" and spent the next couple of hours turning this

into this.

That's the top that Devil dyed over Easter break. I'm calling it Mermaid yarn, in an attempt to get her more excited about it, and I'm planning a mini-Tappan Zee, maybe with a fish scaley lace pattern to complement the yarn.

But just to prove that the purple yarn is being finished up:

I've got four skeins finished, two more bobbins full, and 2.5 bobbins of 2-ply left. I can bang out a full bobbin of the cabled yarn in less then an evening, so I'm hoping to have it done by the middle of next week. And maybe the Mermaid yarn will be done as well!