FO: Handspun Northman Mittens

I can't remember if I did this last year or not (I don't think I did), but this year I've decided that, in the face of just over three weeks to Christmas, and a lot of gift knitting that must be done, thereby obliterating any other potential blog fodder, I am going to do the FO posts as the Os are Fd (so to speak). Otherwise I'll be forced to post a picture of my narrow escape from Sleeve Island and that will stay at the top of the blog for the next few weeks. And that's not what any of you want to see - grey cables are not very interesting photo montage material. So without further ado...Present #1 (that I'm blogging about in December - some of the others have already been mentioned and won't be revisited).

Pattern: Northman Mittens by David Schulz of Southern Cross Fibre fame
Yarn: For the outer mitts - handspun pencil roving from Artisan Threads, in natural white and naturally dyed teal, approximately 135 yds teal and 80 yds white. Also some handspun brown BFL for the cuffs, left over from the Norwegian Snail Mitten extravaganza last year - no idea how many yards. For the lining - 120 yds of handspun BFL singles that were dyed by me with Burgundy Jacquard Acid dye.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm for outer mitten, US 5/3.75 mm for lining.
Gauge: Outer mitten: 6 sts/inch, lining: 5 sts/inch.
Start/finish: 28 October - 29 November 2010. They would have been done faster, but I had a wait of about a week and a half while I tried to get some more teal pencil roving, and then I had to spin and dye the lining yarn.

Comments/mods: Let's start with modifications: besides using handspun instead of commercial yarn, absolutely none. This pattern was a joy from start to finish - well written, nicely laid out, with gorgeous pictures and fantastic charts.

I like the purled cuff quite a lot - using two strands of yarn for alternate purl stitches creates an interesting texture. The pencil roving had a bit of lanolin left in it, and the rustic yarn made for a slightly scratchy outer mitten, but the lining solved the itch factor. And Gill at Artisan Threads was very helpful in procuring me another ball of the teal roving when I ran out (I may have even gotten some more of the white roving too. Just to have on hand, you know).

I really like the lines and patterning on the thumb gusset.

I even managed to remember to switch charts for the left and right mitten, so the amount of swearing involved in the completion of this project was greatly reduced.

For the lining, I spun a singles yarn because I thought that some feltability might be a good thing for mitten lining. And the Spintelligence Fibre Club has me in a singles spinning mode these days. This yarn was spun at 6.25:1 and soaked in hot water until it cooled (overnight). It then went in the dye crockpot with a 2 DOS burgundy dye solution (volume dye/weight of fiber) for a couple of hours. I let that cool overnight, and the dye bath was largely exhausted the next morning.

The BFL made for a soft and squishy lining, and my inability to loosely tie my skeins led to a Malabrigo-esque kettle dye job. Result! So these are destined for some lucky someone somewhere with cold hands. Any one want to predict who? There might be a prize in it...

FF/S/S: Merino-silk for Nana

I've managed to circumvent my sore ankle (for which I finally broke down and went to the physio - now I've got ankle homework to do and physical therapy twice a week...) and finish off the 8 oz of merino-silk that I dyed for Nana's Christmas present*.

80%/20% merino-tussah silk from Paradise Fibers, dyed using Jacquard Acid dyes (purple, violet, brilliant blue and burnt orange)
Spun/plied at 9.25:1, singles spun long draw from the fold.
Three skeins, at 397 yds/3.9 oz (1616 ypp), 297 yds/3.1 oz (1536 ypp) and 98 yds/1.0 oz (1568 ypp). I didn't measure wpi before finishing, but after soaking in hot water and rinsing in cold, the wpi ranged from 27-18 (in the third, overplied skein) to 20-10 (in the first two squishy skeins). I'll be using the two squishy skeins for Nana's present.

I was a bit concerned about the intensity of the colors in the dyed top (somehow I managed to forget a photo of the dyed top, but here's some of the singles).

The request was for a more apricot-type of orange, so this was definitely too intense. However, there was a bit of undyed top throughout, which managed to tone down the orange a bit.

Plying helped too, pairing some of the orange with blue/purple. I'm hoping that it gets a bit more muted in the finished object too, but we'll see. Note to my mother: you are allowed to complain about how bright the orange is as long as you still wear it!

* A present requested specifically, so I'm not giving anything** away by posting about it here.
** Final FO shots may have to wait until after the holidays however...

FF: One week, two sweaters

Sweater #1:

Sweater #2:

Not surprisingly, Devil was uninterested in modeling her sweater, although I have managed to get her into it voluntarily. But Boo was happy to put her's on for our grey and drizzly Sunday visit to HMS Belfast.

Both sweaters: top down raglans a la Barbara Walker.
Needles: US 10/6.0 mm for bodies, US 8/5.0 mm for ribbing on the Technicolor Dreamsweater
Yarn: handspun from girl-dyed top (colorways Mermaid and Clown Barf). I used all of the Mermaid yarn and 95% of the Clown Barf.

These were great fun to knit, and have only increased my conviction that I will be much happier when I do most of my knitting from handspun rather then commercial yarn. It's so satisfying. I am also pleased that Boo's dye job ended up as a very bright, but perfectly 3-year-old-appropriate sweater. She loves it, and it makes it really easy to keep track of her in a crowd!

I've got to go back and fix the collar I think - add ribbing all the way around instead of doing a little Peter Pan deal - but then it will be time to move on to the next project. Spinning seems to be falling by the wayside these days, in favor of actually using up some of the stash. I think the next sweater should be the IM Aran, but a new Knitty (and a new Norah Gaughan pattern) is very tempting!

Handspun patterns

The 4! Oz! Challenge! ends tomorrow, and I'm happy to say that I finished my patterns and got them submitted before the last day (a miracle in and of itself, seeing as how I am the Queen Procrastination). Here they are*:

Lisbon Cloche**, superwash merino in "Thunderstorm" from Spunky Eclectic

download now

Shelburne Falls Beret, Targhee in "Garland" from Hello Yarn

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This was a really interesting process for me. Usually I spin without much of an end product in mind (although the TdF did change that a bit). For these, I had four days in between trips in August to spin up the yarn, and I knew two things: 1) I was going to chain ply both colorways to keep the colors intact, and 2) I was going to knit hats, but I didn't want them to be really obviously stripey.

For the SE merino, I ended up spinning a really fast, thick single. When it was plied up, the yarn ranged from 6-10 wpi and was super squooshy. I used a slipped stitch pattern (same as in an eye of partridge heel flap) to break up the striping, but since the colors didn't contrast very much, that was sufficient.

For the Targhee, which I spun second, I was a bit rushed - the final yarn was a wee bit overplied. But...there wasn't a lot I could do about that while on vacation, so I soldiered on. Since the colors in that skein were much more contrasting, I needed to take "extreme" measures to try and break up the striping. The stitch pattern I chose has two rounds of slipping the same stitch, which is then crossed over two stitches on the third round. I'm really pleased with how it came out.

The patterns include details about spinning the yarn and a whackload of specs (i.e. singles wpi/tpi, plied wpi/tpi, twist angle, etc). Both hats are knit from the top down, starting with i-cord in waste yarn, and can easily be adjusted in size as you go (patterns are written for only one size). Enjoy***!

* Please excuse the goofy pictures, but it's really hard to take pictures of your own head without looking like an idiot.
** Named for the towns in which the respective dyers (Amy of Spunky Eclectic and Adrian of Hello Yarn) are located.
*** If you knit up one of these in a commercial yarn, please let me know how it works out and I'll add that to the Ravelry pattern pages. Thanks!

Why kids' sweaters rock

You can more or less finish them in three days:

Devil's mermaid sweater, yarn spun from top that she dyed herself. Top down raglan with yarnover increases. I found a scallop-y sort of lace pattern for the hem, and repeated it on the sleeves.

Thankfully she decided she wanted short sleeves, because I didn't have a lot of yardage (~320 yds). I still need to decide what to do about buttons/button bands - it might come down to applied i-cord with a few gaps for the buttons to fit through. We'll see - it's now soaking so I can block it out and figure out how many buttons I'll need. But one more thing can be checked off the list - hooray!