Signs of fall

Today was the first multiple handknit day (Rumpled and Aestlight).

There's that little chill in the air in the mornings that means autumn is just around the corner.

The chestnuts are lying in prickly heaps on the sidewalk.

I saw red ivy leaves from the train this morning.

There wasn't a cloud in the incredibly blue sky as the girls and I walked to school.

This is the kind of weather that means only one thing in my knitting world - sweaters. Cozy, comfy sweaters. Warm toasty sweaters. Piles of knitting on my lap in the evening. It's a good time. My dilemma now is what sweater to do.

It's not like I don't already have a list* of projects for the next few months. Including projects that require dyeing and spinning in addition to the knitting. But I'm itching to cast on for a sweater for memememememe! I even know what sweater I want to do - Pas de Valse by Marnie MacLean, from Twist Collective Fall 2009. And I've got the yarn picked out - a pile of gorgeously soft baby Alpaca that Ironman picked up for me in Peru several years ago. There's only one problem:

I don't really want a tan sweater.

So I've spent the last week throwing little 5 gram skeins of tan alpaca into a crock pot with various colors of dye, just for the heck of it. It's been great fun!

The original color is at the bottom, and dyed with (going clockwise) sun yellow, golden yellow, deep orange (0.5x), deep orange (1x), fuschia, burgundy, periwinkle, brilliant blue, turquoise, emerald, brown and gun metal Jacquard Acid dyes

And I'm surprised with the way I'm leaning color-wise - I think this sweater needs to be orange. I am not an orange person. I have one orange t-shirt that I love, but it's a paler tone then this orange. I'm a bit dubious that this color will look good on me at all. But, as I've said before, it's time to break out of my sweater-color-rut and try something a bit different.

I'm leaning towards the darker of the two deep oranges, which makes me think of pumpkin pie, and fall leaves, and chrysanthemums. What could be better for a fall project? But what do you all think? Too dark? Too orange? Let me know your vote in the comments, and we'll see which one comes out ahead.

*List update: #1 on the list is now 1/2 done - one project knitted and done, one into the third reknit, but should be done this week, and one...still in mental stages. #4 is finished, blocked and needs to be stuck in the mail. #2 - I wound up Devil's yarn last night, so incremental forward progress there.

An autumn plan

I mentioned in my last post that I had a crazy list of projects for the next few months. In the spirit of making myself accountable to someone (or something in this case), I'm going to list out my goals for the next little while in the hopes that having it written down will mean that at least some of it actually gets done. Heh. Maybe...

1. Finish, test edit, photograph and publish three winter accessory patterns. One pattern in 90% done (except for reknitting of one of the pair with a different size needle - oops!). The other two are in the mental design stage, but I have the yarn to knit them both - I just need to get cracking.

2. Knit the girls each a sweater out of the fiber they dyed.

3. Knit Himself a sweater for Christmas.

4. Knit a birthday gift for Nana.

5. Dye and spin the fiber for Nana's Christmas present (requested after she saw mine over the holiday), then knit it.

6. Spin yarn for sweater for next March.

7. Maybe knit Pas de Valse for me out of some gorgeous alpaca (same as the yarn I used for the Veil of Isis, only fawn colored), or start on the Vine Yoke Cardigan (since I spent all that damn time spinning the yarn for it).

8. Knit myself an alpaca balaclava/head wrap/scarf thingie for cycling this winter. I'm going to be doing quite a bit of riding over the next ten months, to get ready for my insane venture next summer, and I seem to recall that it gets pretty fucking cold out there in December, not to mention January.

If I had to prioritize, I'd say #1 first, then #4, then starting #5, then starting #3, then #6. #7 is going to happen this fall if I have any spare time - like if I quit working entirely, and #8 can fit in around the others. Maybe that will be my train knitting. Sigh...goodbye socks, goodbye shawls, hello garments and gifties.

The search for the perfect buttons

So I've been wearing my new Tappan Zee around without buttons, but I was very interested in seeing how it looked actually done up the way it was supposed to be. This is a new sweater silhouette for me, and I wanted to confirm that, yes it is quite flattering, before I run out and knit 42 more top-down-yoke-sweaters-that-fasten-just-at-the-top.

After a long day at work (and an Ironman Friday at home, so he could be on Child Duty), I headed over to my semi-local sewing store and spent a while perusing the button collection. After several rounds through the displays (maybe, no, no, no, omg hell no, maybe, no, no, no), I stumbled across these babies.

Dark blue/navy with iridescent green and purple stripes. Just perfect.

And the done-up verdict?

(please excuse the bad T shirt color and the streaky mirror)

Yeah, baby, yeah. Top-down yoke is good. Which one should I do next?

FO: The yarn that was supposed to be Tempest is now something else!

Pattern: Tappan Zee by Amy King
Yarn: Yarn School Corriedale Cross, ~675 yds.
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm bamboo circulars
Start/finish: 26 March - 26 April 2010
Gauge: 20 sts/32 rows in 4 inches
Comments/modifications: What a lovely and quick (despite my time line) knit! A top down circular yoke is not a sweater style I've knit before, but it was really fun. The lace pattern in the yoke keeps it from getting too monotonous, and the yarn colors helped with the monotany on the body. I made one major modification: instead of binding off the sleeve stitches when I got to them, I put them on holders. My thinking was that I wanted to put sleeves on when I was done with the body, and make them as long as the yarn held out. Once I was done with the body, I decided to keep the cap sleeves for the moment, so I bound off in knit from the wrong side. That way, in the fall when it starts getting cooler, I can pick out that bound off edge and knit the sleeves down.

I love the diamond detail at the bottom,

which matches the diamonds in the yoke.

Now for the yarn. I blogged about the spinning last spring/summer, but discovered when I started swatching, that the yarn need a bit of TLC. As you can see,

I was a wee bit tense when I did the plying. Perhaps I was a bit overplied myself, what with the move and all, but there is some serious skew in that stockinette. Add to that the fact that the yarn was not so pleasant to knit with (read: wiry, stiff and scratchy) and I decided that I needed to do something to take out some of the plying twist.

I took the three skeins I'd planned to use for the sweater (based on relatively similar grists) and ran them back through the wheel to take out some of the plying twist. I basically put the brake band on tightly, and re-plied the yarn with the wheel spinning in the same direction as when I spun the singles. I more or less let the yarn run onto the bobbin with only a little bit of tension, but if I came across a section that was really over-plied I held on a bit longer. Reskeined, rewashed, redried, and reswatched.

Much softer, much less noticeable bias, much more pleasant to work with. I've gotten a wee bit obsessed with grist recently, so I noted what these skeins came in at: 253 yds at 1094 ypp, 285 yds at 1140 ypp and 225 yds at 973 ypp. I started with the heaviest grist on the top, since the skein I have left for the arms is also around 975 ypp, and I wanted the lighter fluffier stuff in the body.

So all in all a great success. I desperately need to find the right buttons for it, but that may have to wait for a bit, since we've now entered The Month of Nonstop Houseguests. We currently have four parents and four girl children, aged five and under, in our house. As soon as the extra parents and children leave, we get an old friend from Tucson and his SO for a few days, and then a couple weeks later, Nana arrives. So forgive me if the blogging is a bit hit or miss for the next few weeks. Maybe I'll be able to get back here regularly when we finally have a functioning government!

Easter holiday

The girls have been on spring holiday since the end of March, and it has seriously cut in to my blogging time and/or blogging energy. In the past two weeks we've been to a farm, a castle, the swimming pool several times, a zoo and multiple playgrounds. Despite that, I've managed to get some spinning and knitting done.

Well, not done, but at least moving forward. Last night I watched Brokeback Mountain and wound off 8 full bobbins of singles in the Neverending Spinning Project of Doom (NSPoD).

I can't believe I even entertained the idea that I could spin up all these singles in the month of January. At the rate I'm going, I may be done (with the singles) by the end of May. And then there's two rounds of plying to be done. Heck, when it's time to start knitting wool sweaters again, I'll have all the yarn done!

Winding them off on to toilet paper cones does show off the gradiations of the dye job though. It looks pretty cool from the bottom.

I have been doing some knitting as well. The most recent issue of Knitty has a cool pattern by Amy King using handspun. I pulled out the yarn I spun during the move last year that I'd been holding on to for another Knitty pattern, and decided this one would work better.

After some swatching (holy biasing stockinette Batman!) and a trip back through the wheel to take out some plying twist and make the yarn less wire-like, and I've been working my way through the yoke.

I'm now about an inch into the body, and facing endless stockinette. The pattern calls for about 650 yds of yarn, and I've got about 1000 yds of this, so I'm thinking I might put sleeves on. Instead of binding off the cap sleeves, I put the stitches on waste yarn, so when I'm done with the body I can see how much yarn I have left and do some sleeve if I can.

So...a new wool sweater in progress and it was short-sleeve weather today. My timing, as ever, is impeccable!