Project Spectrum 3: Fire

Over the past couple of years, I've noticed these cool Project Spectrum buttons on numerous blogs, and thought it sounded like a pretty interesting idea. As someone who has 1) trouble deciding what to knit next and 2) has a pretty limited color "safety zone", the idea of theme knitting/crafting appeals to me. Wandering around Ravelry about a month ago led me to the PS3 group, and here I am, working on my first PS3 project.

Yarnissima's Firestarter socks. I picked this yarn up in my falling-off-the-Yarn-Diet-wagon splurge and started the socks this weekend. It's lovely and soft, if a bit splitty. This is my first experience with twisted stitches, and at 4 chart repeats (of 5) into the foot, I think I'm finally getting the hang of them. There have been many dropped stitches and vulger epithets thrown around in the meantime.

Being as it's now "spring" here in Houston, I've started work on a summery-type sweater - the Summertime Tunic from IK Summer 2007. I'm using Classic Elite Premiere, which is a 50/50 cotton/tencel blend. It is gorgeously soft, but I am again reminded of why I like wool better then cotton - it hides my tension changes so much better! Hopefully blocking will solve the problem.

The yarn is a gorgeous deep blue-purple. Unfortunately I've only got 5 skeins, so I'm adapting the pattern to knit top down. It remains to be seen if I have enough yarn to get the ribbing, etc done.

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February Progress report

Finished:
Secret project sock design
Ivy (hooray!)
Frosted Forest
Cricket

In progress:
Duck blanket for Devil, somewhat stalled
Verdant - my first attempt at laceweight

Toxic finally finished

Fiber: Superwash corriedale top
Colorway: "Toxic", Hello Yarn Fiber Club November fiber
Specs: 3-ply, 14 wpi, fingering weight, 515 yds in this skein, not sure of the weight
Spinning: singles spun with short forward draw, worsted style, at 10:1. Plied at 5:1 (this was my first "real" 3-ply (i.e. not chain plied), so I did it slowly.

I actually had a plan when I started spinning this fiber (more details here). I wanted to end up with a yarn that had two plies more or less the same color, and one ply of a varying color throughout. I'm not at all convinced that it worked out terribly well, but I like the finished product.

A couple of notes about the plying: usually I end up over-plying to some degree. I don't mind overplied yarn, and it's never bad enough to be an issue, but this time I decided to do something a bit more technical. I counted treadles for each length of yarn, putting in the same amount of twist for each length. I think the end result is a bit underplied - it doesn't obviously twist in the skein, but the plies look a little loose to me. It also doesn't seem as round as the chain plied yarns I've done previously, but that may just be due to there being less plying twist. While I didn't mind the treadle counting (much), next time around I will use a higher ratio so I can get more twist with less treadling.

I've still got some singles left, which I'm going to chain ply in sequence for a little mini-skein. No idea what yardage I'll get, but it will make a fun stripey something. The intensities of the colors are just amazing!

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I stumbled across Deb's blog recently, while looking for sock patterns, and I've been inspired by her monthly tallies. Well, it's more like I've been amazed by her monthly tallies - talk about production! - but it struck me as a good way to keep track of what's in progress and what's actually been finished. So here are my stats for January:

Finished:
Rainbow socks for the gift pile
Toxic superwash sock yarn

In progress:
Ivy - I started seaming this up last night, hoping to finish it in January (and completely forgetting about the whole knitting the neckband issue...), so it's going to be done soon. I only hope it's done before it warms up to 75 degrees for good.

Started:
Blanket for Devil - to replace the precious blanket lost at the Houston Marathon Expo
(planning stages) Sock submission for summer Knitty - waiting for the Blue Moon fiber goddesses to ship out my goodies.