She spins, she scores!

At least that's what it feels like given the rate at which this bag of fiber got spun up (I didn't even manage to take pictures of the fiber before it got thrown on the wheel).

This past Tuesday was my monthly spinning group, and since I hadn't done any spinning since Wool House, I spent a fair bit of time on Tuesday afternoon frantically pawing through the fiber stash looking for something to play with. I chose this colorway (Fiber Club flickr group photos) on one of my favorite fibers, Shetland. I decided to spin this up super quick to get a bulky 2-ply, and boy howdy did I succeed.

Hello Yarn Fiber Club January 2013, Mouse Ears Shetland.
90 yds/4.2 oz, approximately 325-400 ypp, 3-5 wpi, 4 tpi, super bulky squoosh-gasm
Spun on Hansen miniSpinner.

Details: I split the bundle into two halves, and then split each piece in half lengthwise. Each half was spun drafting against the twist (semi-woolen), and the singles were about 10 wpi.

Started Tuesday night, finished Wednesday night, blocked on Thursday. I love these subtle neutral colors. Adrian doesn't often do neutrals, but when she does, they are absolutely spectacular. This yarn is going to end up as a cozy cowl somewhere along the line. For the moment, I'm just going to cuddle the skein to my bosom whenever I feel the need.

I'm off to Wonderwool Wales this afternoon, and may be enhancing my fiber stash dramatically in the shape of a fleece, if I can find one that I like. Keep your fingers crossed!

Finis

My first pair of socks in just over a year (last pair were finished 20 March 2012).

Pattern: no pattern used, just started at the toe, increased till it seemed about right, knit the foot for a while, did a short row heel over >50% of the stitches (for extra heel room), knit the leg until I ran out of yarn (Sock A) or it was the same length as the first one (Sock B).
Yarn: chain plied handspun, "Gobbler" Cheviot from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, 95 yds for Sock A and 130 yds (not all used) for Sock B.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm and US 3/3.25 mm. I should have gone down one more needle size for Sock B, as the fabric is a bit too loose for socks IMHO, but c'est la vie.
Start/Finish: 11 March 2013-20 April 2013.
Gauge: yes
Comments: so...I love this colorway beyond all imagining, and am very happy with the socks except for one thing: clearly my winging the pattern (i.e. not using the Sock Fitting Bible*) has resulted in socks that are too big for me. The heavier weight (thicker yarn) sock is better, but I got a bit too caught up in making the stripes line up perfectly (mostly) and ended up with a second sock that is just a hair too loose. So be it - these will be lovely around the house socks when the cold weather shows up again. In June**.


My next pair of handspun socks (handspun skeins in this post, also with a large edible bird-inspired name) will be done a bit more mathematically, and so hopefully will fit a bit better.

* any and all books about socks written by Cat Bordhi.
** a certain fatalistic British-ness is infiltrating my attitude towards the weather. I suspect this is completely unavoidable. My apologies!

When life hands you a sick child, make yarn

Last weekend, for the second time in 16 days, my youngest child managed to run a fever, thereby ensuring 1) a low key weekend, and 2) no school on Monday. Since Monday, she has spent about 1.75 days at school, as apparently this particular virus has a very long recovery time (which would explain my lingering fug as well...). So I've spent most of the week, cuddled up with Boo and the Wee Dog on the couch, watching 101 Dalmatians (the Glenn Close version - so fabulous!) over and over and over and over and...and spinning. Lots and lots of spinning.

First up: you've seen this yarn before, but now it's had a bath and I have stats.

Dirty Porridge Portuguese Merino/Targhee combo (from Silt PM and Parritch Targhee, Hello Yarn Fiber Club offerings), 3-ply, 1210 yds/20.3 oz (plus 38 yds in the mini skein for swatching), 10-14 wpi, 947/925/990 ypp for the three big skeins. So approximately aran weight. Destined for a big, squooshy, wraparound sweater for me, me, me.

This week, I managed to ply up the leftover singles from each colorway.



I ended up with 130 yds of Parritch Targhee, and 27 yds of Silt Portuguese Merino, both chain plied and approximately aran weight. The Parritch might even be enough for a hat or something, which is a very exciting prospect...

My most recently finished spin for the week (i.e. still drying!) is also from Adrian at Hello Yarn: Gobbler Cheviot.

I started this on the miniSpinner at spinning night on Tuesday, finished the singles while home with Boo on Wednesday afternoon, and chain plied (for the first time on the miniSpinner) last night while watching Game of Thrones season 1.

I want matchy-matchy socks from this fiber, so I split the top in quarters lengthwise and spun two pieces end to end, added a bit of waste yarn in the middle to mark the split between the two skeins, then spun the other two pieces. I also tried chain plying on the miniSpinner, which I hadn't done before, and it went pretty well, once I figured out the right speed to set.

Final yardage is 95 yds and 130 yds, so either I split very, very poorly or I'm going to need two different needle sizes for each of the intended socks. Hmmm. I love the colors though, and my goal is to finish the socks by our next spinning night a month from now. Initially I intended them for me, but I suspect Himself might decide these need to be his....good thing his birthday is next month!

However, I didn't limit myself to Hello Yarn fiber in this spinning frenzy. There was also a bunch of Porpoise Fur. I finished (i.e. fulled) the Parakeet singles I spun up last week,

I ended up with 100 yds/2 oz (800 ypp, about worsted weight), with only a few spots of overtwisting and no breaking when skeining - result! I was hoping for a bit more yardage so I could whip up another singles hat for myself, but this may end up as a kid-sized version.

Finally: the fastest sweater lot (I hope!) ever.

This is a pile of Magpie Shetland-silk that I've spun up for a sweater for barter as part of mine and Alli's SSP*. Started the singles on Sunday afternoon. Finished singles Monday morning. Finished plying Tuesday night. Finished yarn by Wednesday. 480 yds/16 oz, 8-5 wpi, 480 ypp, super bulky (At least in my eyes. In fact, it's so bulky I'm not sure I have needles big enough to get a nice fabric!). I spun the singles on the Lendrum at 12:1, doing a backwards draw to keep them light and airy (and superfast to spin). In essence, I let some twist into the drafting zone and pulled backwards against it - kind of a long draw, sort of, maybe**. I plied it on the miniSpinner trying to keep the plying twist low to maximize the yardage. We will see if I have enough once I swatch and do some number crunching!

And...I think that's it for me. One week, 705 yds of yarn from scratch, 157 yds of newly-plied, and 1348 yds of newly finished and measured yarn. Which makes a total of far too many 2210 yds of finished yarn for the week. Basta!

No more spinning for me for a while - with all this fresh new yarn around, I've got to get knitting!

* Sooper Sekrit Project.
** I can hear the screams of the true long draw spinners from here. Sorry!

Get a miniSpinner, if only for the plying

This week I learned the true value of the Hansen miniSpinner: super amazingly fast plying.

Sometime in November I started spinning 24 oz of fiber (first blogged 23 November) - 16 oz of Portuguese Merino in the "Silt" colorway,


and 8 oz of Parritch Targhee.


Last Friday, I finished the third and final bobbin (the Targhee), making it just about 2 months for spinning the whole 24 oz. Yesterday, I finished plying the last of the combo, making it less then a week for plying 24 oz of fiber (!):

Here it is in all its glory:

And in extensive, close up detail...




Clearly the miniSpinner is da bomb (and speedy!) for plying. Truly!

These big squooshy skeins are still a bit damp, and the small final leftovers/swatching skein still needs a bath. I'll update with yardage/wpi/grist statistics when I've figure it all out. Have a good weekend!

The Ubiquity of Jane (i.e. Selfish Knitting, Part 3)

I think I may have talked once or twice before about my enduring love of Heather Ordover's Craftlit podcast  - it's like going back to school with the coolest English teacher ever, and getting all sorts of cool background and context and detail that is so important to really understanding and appreciating some of the greatest works of literature ever. Over the past three years or so that I've been listening, I've "read" a bunch of books I managed to avoid (or never got exposed to) in school. Books like The Scarlet Letter, Gulliver's Travels, Wuthering Heights, Flatland, Woman in White, A Tale of Two Cities, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Turn of the Screw, Little Women...the list goes on and on. And then there are the books that she's covered that I have read: Pride and Prejudice, Tristan and Isolde, A Christmas Carol and the current book-in-progress: Jane Eyre.

Heather is also the creative power behind a series of books with patterns inspired by characters inspired by classic literature, What Would Madame Defarge Knit? And when she started Jane Eyre on the podcast in November, she also started a KAL for Jane's Ubiquitous Shawl by Erica Hernandez. This shawl is amazing, with a specific reference from the book for each of the four sections.

You may have noticed, if you've been reading here for a while, that I tend to make things more complicated then necessary when it comes to these knitting projects. Not content to search through my stash for approximately 1300 yds of DK yarn, I decided to spin my own.

I choose to spin up some Hello Yarn Fiber Club fiber*, Shetland in the "Minerals" colorway. I only had 8 oz, so I traded for three more bags. I ended up with just over 1300 yds for the 20 oz I spun up. I did a 2-ply, and it ended up being somewhere between DK and worsted weight.

The shawl starts from the center out, and I used a little i-cord trick to do the starting cast on. If you're interested in the details, I talked about it in the KAL thread on Ravelry. I made it through the first 2 sections with my first skein of yarn (~560 yds), then through the trinity stitch section and part of the border with the second skein (488 yds), and I've probably got 50-70 yds left from the last skein.

Details ad nauseum:
Pattern: Jane's Ubiquitous Shawl by Erica Hernandez (Ravelry links)
Yarn: ~1300 yds of handspun Shetland, Hello Yarn Fiber Club, colorway "Minerals", DK- to worsted weight. Final "shawl"** was 54 inches square.
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm needles
Start/finish: 8 Nov 2012 - 19 Jan 2013 (actual blocking day)
Comments/mods: only modification was using handspun rather then commercial yarn. The pattern has a couple of errata that have been posted on the KAL thread, but other then those, it was well written and easy to follow. I loved Erica's exploration of the role that shawls play throughout the book, and how she used inspiration from the different stages of Jane's story for the different sections of the shawl. It doesn't hurt that the finished project is gorgeous...***

So, from here on I have some deadline projects: one secret from everyone, one semi-secret wee person present, and one handspun sweater for barter for a sooper seekrit exciting project that Alli and I are working on. So from here on out, things may be a bit sparse on shareable knitting content. But I do have some more handspun yarn coming up, fresh off the miniSpinner!


* You're shocked, I know...
** It's a shawl, but really it's going to be used as a blanket. So. Big.
*** And many thanks to the weather gods on Friday for providing an appropriately seasonal backdrop for the photo shoot!