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!

The sock moratorium seems to be over

Remember how I said I was in a sock rut? Actually, it wasn't really a rut so much as a complete absence of any desire to knit socks whatsoever. A sock drought, if you will. Well...I'm happy to say that the drought seems to be over.

I have discovered that there are two solutions to lack of sock mojo: the first is to knit socks with handspun (I've got another batch of handspun yarn ready for the next pair already).

The second solution? Knit a glorious rainbow of mini-socks for samples.

There are sixteen mini-skeins there, and I've done 6 little, itty-bitty socks in the last two days. I. Cannot. Stop. With. Mini. Socks. I am totally enfatuated, so enfatuated that I'm having trouble doing anything else. Which is great for my sense of productivity and accomplishment (1 sock = about 45 min. Result!), but not so good for getting anything finished off that someone bigger then my dog might wear (i.e. the handspun socks are at the exact state seen in the above photo and have been for five days now).

The upside is that I should be done with the minis in a few more days and I will be required to get myself back to human-sized knitting projects. Like the sweater in progress, and the socks, and the hats, and the mittens, plus the deadline knitting that needs to be done...see you in a month or so!

Barter Economy

I have been working on a sweater for someone I've never met. That is to say, never met in person. We've corresponded over email, but the first time we meet in real life will be when I hand this over to her. Isn't barter great?

The recipient of this sweater is an illustrator who's been working on a logo for an event I'm organizing with Alli. But since we, as a pair, aren't able to pony up the big bucks that such a logo would require, we proposed a barter exchange: specifically, she do up a logo and we knit her a handspun, custom fit sweater.

This baby is 70% Shetland/30% tussah silk, in the Magpie colorway from my shop. I spun up approximately 460 yds of bulky 2-ply over the course of a couple of days (love spinning bulky!!!) and started knitting over the weekend. One skein (225 yds) got me through the entire yoke and through the waist shaping decreases.

Think about that for a minute. 225 yards. Only. Ehem...(ponders wisdom of trying to cloth size 16 self in bulky sweaters from now until the end of time) (decides that, at least in my own personal instance, DK-weight or lighter is still the way to go) (weeps for lost yardage...)

The other cool thing is that this baby is knitting up before my very eyes. I was hoping to finish the body last night and get started on the sleeves, but 1) one child on half-term holiday and bored out of her skull because of 2) one child out of school with tonsillitis means that not much knitting has gotten done for the last few days. But child #1 is currently engrossed in the iPad, and child #2 is snoring on the couch, so as soon as I hit the Publish button, I'm settling down for some quality time with my handspun. And that, my friends, is bliss...

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!