The Plan

The Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow, so it's time to set out some goals. Mine is to spin up all my Hello Yarn Fiber Club fiber that's been sitting around for almost three years. On the list:

1) 8 oz of Wensleydale in the colorway Mollusc - this was the September or October club fiber in 2007. It is going to become 8 oz of laceweight singles.

2) 8 oz of BFL in Insect Wings - February 2008, and destined to be a 3-ply of some kind.

3) 4 oz of BFL in Norway - This is a relative newcomer to the stash, arriving in January 2009. I've spun up half for the Norwegian Snail mittens, but this four ounces is going to be pulled apart into different colors and spun up into a two ply as I did for Air.

If I manage to get all that done, I'll move on to May 2009 (Five Plum Pie), but I suspect this will keep me busy for the Tour. It's only 1.25 lbs, right? Even Boo can carry that much.

FF: Okey dokey

That birthday post was kind of hanging over my head, but now that it's out of the way, I can get back to the actual knitting/spinning content.

These are my new socks, and are appropriate for a Fiber Friday post because a) I spun the yarn and b) um, I spun the yarn. The yarn was my first "real" fingering weight, discussed in some detail here, and the socks are the first pattern for Sock Madness IV. I'm not participating in Sock Madness, which is a truly diabolical knit-along/caffeine-fueled knitting group hallucination in which the first knitters to finish the newly released pattern advance to the next round and ultimately the winners get some fabulous prizes. However, I did have a sock I designed accepted for the competition, and as a bonus, I get copies of all the patterns.

OK, the details...

Pattern: Simple Side to Side socks by Deborah Swift
Yarn: Fingering weight handspun Corriedale, colorway "Lantern Moon", dyed by the fabulous Adrian.
Needles: US 1.5/2.5 mm circulars (I seem to be doing everything magic loop these days. What's up with that?)
Gauge: ~8 stitches/11 rows per inch)
Start/finish: 17 March - 25 March 2010 (hooray for fast sock patterns!)
Comments/mods: I found the construction of this sock interesting. The top of the foot/front of the leg are knit first as a single panel, and then you split the stitches as needed (depending on size of your foot) and knit two separate sections for the sole and the back of the leg. After finishing these, the sock is grafted together along the length and you pick up stiches for toe, heel and cuffs from the appropriate places.

Hooray for stripey heels! There was much discussion on the Ravelry Forum about the fit of these socks, with those gifted with high arches having some serious trouble actually getting them on their feet. The designer has plans to release the pattern to the general public and will probably incorporate some modifications to make them fit better. Since I've got lovely flat feet, I can get them on (although it's a tight squeeze over the heel!). They're perfectly comfortable once they're on, so the pattern works for me.

As always, it was a thrill to knit with yarn I'd made myself. I used up maybe two thirds of the skein, so I've got plenty left for a girl pair or part of the Sock Yarn Blanket. I'm hoping they will wear okay too - my biggest concern with handspun socks is the possibility of it wearing out instantaneously.

I've started the second sock of Sock Madness, which pays homage to The Nectar of the Gods*. And I'm thinking that it would be fun to actually compete next year.

Using only handspun. Tee hee!

* For the uninitiated, that would be coffee.

Fiber Friday: Oh. Oh my...

Some of the goodies that Adrian has sent to my mailbox in the past few months...

Pallid Rambouillet,

Parritch Targhee,

Loch kid mohair/nylon/merino.

I'll be in my bunk...

FO: Homage to Hello Yarn

Of all the Christmas presents, these were the hardest to give up, by far!

Backs

Palms

Pattern: Norwegian Snail Mittens by Adrian Bizilia
Yarn: Handspun BFL in natural brown and "Norway" (dyed by Adrian as part of the Hello Yarn Fiber Club)
Needles: US 00/1.75 mm (hoo boy!)
Gauge: ~ 9 stitches/inch
Start/finish: 8 November - 6 December 2009
Comments/mods: I've blogged about the spinning here. The 2.5 oz of brown BFL I originally spun up ended up being too thick as a 3-ply, so I spun up another ounce quickly and 2-plied it, getting ~70 yards. That worked perfectly. I ended up having to spin up another ounce later (72 yds) but didn't finish it all off. Let's say ~120 yds of the brown.

I didn't use up all of the Norway I'd spun either. As you can see, the stripes didn't match up as well as I was hoping, but I refused to let that bother me. Otherwise, I would have been splicing and swearing about small bits of handspun gone to waste and so on. I think I probably used two thirds of each skein, so maybe 3 oz total? Again, since I didn't measure the yardage, I have no idea how much I used. I'll have to measure the leftovers and weight them to get an estimate.

The pattern was great fun to knit, although I have issues with using sport weight yarn on miniscule needles. My bright blue metal size 00 dpns are now bent and tortured from the effort of trying to knit with this stuff. I adore the stripes on the palms. Maybe even more then the snails...

It's a very good thing these were a bit tight around the hand, otherwise my mother-in-law might be going home with very chilly fingers. I hope these beauties enjoy life in Vermont!

ETA (30 Dec): my MIL wore these yesterday on our poorly planned hike in the rain/sleet/snow and her hands stayed dry and warm enough that she had to take the mittens off. There's something to be said for teeny tiny needles I guess!

Non-striking postal service

A few weeks ago, I packed up some parcels and took them off to the post office to ship to the States.

In spite of various and sundry postal issues, I now am the proud possesor of this pile of September HYFC fiber:

I don't know why I so fell in love with this stuff (pink, green and brown? Seriously?), but I did, and was desperate for more. By the time I got ahold of her, Adrian was cleaned out, so I posted on the HY forum swap thread looking for more. A flurry of Ravelry PMs later, I divested some Hive, Mollusc and Sour Fig (a borrowed picture from the HYFC flickr group), and ended up with twelve more ounces of Winter Storage (September Club fiber) and some lovely merino in Harmonia (the purpley-brown one).

I'm hoping to have enough to make myself a sweater out of the Winter Storage. Which will require some super fluffy woolen spinning to stretch out 20 oz to enough yardage to cover moi, size Large. But between this and the purple stuff, it's looking like January is going to be a happy sweater spinning month!

In other news: today I hit a new knitting milestone - I walked out the door wearing three handknit items: this, this and these. There was frost on the Combat Zone car, so more wool seemed like a good thing. Toto, I don't think we're in Houston anymore!