FO: Shattered Sun Shawl

On Thursday, on a trip to Catherine's house to pick up my wheel, I managed to get some good pictures of my latest sample knit for Allison before I handed it over (sob!).


Pattern: Shattered Sun Shawl by Felicia Lo, of Sweet Georgia
Yarn: Sweet Georgia CashSilk Lace, 45% cashmere/55% silk, 400 yds/50 g, in (I think) "Summer Skin"
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm
Start/finish: 17 Oct - 21 Oct 2013
Comments/mods: no modifications. Love the yarn (!!!), gorgeous, fun, fast pattern to knit. Um...that's it. Have some more pictures.



Obligatory blocking shot:


I enjoyed every minute of knitting this, because the yarn is glorious, the pattern was complicated enough to be interesting, and intuitive enough not to need vast reserves of concentration - just the thing I was looking for last week. It was very, very difficult to hand over the finished shawl, but I feel confident that Alli will come back with something equally luscious for me to knit up for the next sample.

Instead of what I'm supposed to be doing

I've got a couple of samples for pattern releases that desperately need to be knit. However, somehow all my yarn and needles and whatnot ended up in the bag with my spinning wheel after the Small Wool Gathering, which got transported to Basingstoke so that we could fit a fourth person plus luggage in the car on the way back to London. So...instead of working on knitting that needs to be done ASAP, I've been enjoying doing other thing.

Things like a little shawl sample for Allison out of Sweet Georgia CashSilk Lace (quite possibly the most gorgeous yarn in the world, just FYI).

I was also very eager to jump into a new sweater project for me - a few weeks back, Knit Edge 4 came out, with the fabulous Ruth Garcia-Alcantud on the cover in her newest gorgeous sweater design, Automne. I'm usually pretty good about not buying yarn on a whim, but I have to knit this sweater. Immediately. My mother had given me some money for my birthday, which I promptly dropped on a sweater's worth of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in a dark green. It arrived with my parents the week before SWG, and when I got back I started to swatch.

Here's where things went wrong: the yarn that Ruth used is very weird in terms of grist (i.e. how many yards there are in a pound). She used Cephalopod Yarns Beastie, which is listed as aran weight, but comes in at a chunky 140 yds/100 g. And the pattern calls for 3.25 sts per inch on US 10.5/6.5 mm needles. Ultra Alpaca is 215 yds/100 g. Somehow I didn't notice the vast discrepancy in grist when I was in the throes of my MUSTBUYYARNNOW!!! fit (bad spinner! No new sweater!). In any case, there was nothing else to do but swatch. So I did.

I was hoping that blocking would cause the alpaca to bloom, but sadly it didn't work out that way. My stitch gauge is spot on but the fabric is really thin and flimsy - not what I want for a sweater-coaty type thing. Bah!

The following days saw much searching of yarn databases and looking for more appropriate substitutes. Sunday saw a trip to John Lewis for my mother to get some yarn for a new sweater for her, and I grabbed a ball of Debbie Bliss Rialto Chunky to swatch with - at 66 yds/50 gr it is much closer to the yarn used in the original.

Much, much, much, much better. Still drapey, but much more substantial. But I'm not buying 24 balls of DB yarn at £6 a pop because, you know, my husband would divorce me. After several more days of searching and banging my head against the computer screen I finally pulled the trigger on a sweater lot of Elann Highland Chunky (76 yds/50 g) in Spiced Wine. Sadly, shipping to the UK was almost as much as the price of the yarn, so it's going to Maine and I will have to wait (sob!) to knit my gorgeous new sweater until after I go back to my parents' house. Which is likely to be next August (woe!).

So. Now I have a sweaters worth of dark green yarn to figure out what to do with . Therefore, I have been swatching...

This is only the first swatch. I've got about 7 more stitch patterns to go. I do not think this is going to be done by November. And I get all my deadline knitting back tomorrow. Guess I'd better keep swatching!

Fiber Friday: Porpoise Fur Socks

So, those socks I started at the Small Wool Gathering last Sunday evening?

Finished. I know, right? There are bonuses to knitting worsted weight socks...but here they are, all done,

with almost perfectly matched stripes (pats spinning self on the back),

a great fitting heel,

and absolutely no yarn left over.

Pattern: Autopilot Socks by Amy R. Singer
Yarn: handspun Porpoise Fur Cheviot in "FRET BFP-RFP". I split the length of fiber down the middle vertically, spun the singles with a short forward draw, and chain plied.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm circular needles, magic looped
Gauge: dunno. I just started with a smaller needle size then I would normally use to get a tight fabric, cast on a bunch of stitches for the toe and increased until it was big enough.

Now I am very sad because I can not find my matching skeins of Turkey Day Cheviot which are also going to be turned into matchy matchy striped socks. Also for me. Bliss!

SWG Recap, in brief

This past Friday I hopped in a car and drove with Alli and Karen to Peddington Manor near Berkeley, for The Small Wool Gathering, an event that grew out of the cancellation of this autumn's Plug-and-Play Pembrokeshire retreat.

I picked the girls up just before lunch and we headed westward, with stops at Avebury,

and a lovely shop in Bath, called (appropriately enough) Wool.

Finally we arrived at the SWG, to be greeted by handknit washclothes and big fluffy beds,

not to mention divine food in copious amounts.


Saturday morning, after a much-longer-then-planned-or-anticipated run (10K does not equal 5K in any universe),

I sat down to Amy's latest sock class - Autopilot Socks (pattern here).

Yarn and fancy Alice in Wonderland stitch markers from Inked Yarn on Etsy, one of the fabulous GLYC sponsors

I've knit a lot of socks, in a lot of different ways, and I think I have a new favorite go-to pattern. This is a toe-up recipe that you knit to your own specific measurements (determined mostly by trying the socks on as you go) and uses a new-to-me short row technique that I love. On Sunday afternoon, I cast on for a pair in handspun worsted weight (more on those later).

Saturday afternoon we had a class on photographing your knitting, aka digital cameras for non-photographers who use macro all the time. Part of the class was lecture, part was practical, which had us wandering around the grounds of the Manor draping knitwear over walls, fences, plants, horses, and (in my case) recycling bins.

Then there was more glorious food and hanging about with yarn. By the end of the evening on Saturday I had a sleeve and a half done on my sweater project:

Sunday morning was spinning, more specifically spinning silk. Aka: porpoise's spinning kryptonite. We learned all about where silk comes from and how it is commercially farmed in China. Then we got to dive into some silk hankies. I've played a bit with hankies before, but this is the first time I've ever gotten real live yarn out of them.

There was also some gorgeous tussah silk top from Sweet Georgia in the goody bags, which is going to be next up.

Sunday afternoon was all about the hanging around and knitting/spinning/napping. We had grand plans to go for a walk with Jacqui (who lives nearby), but come time it was pissing down rain and we all just hung around instead. I cast on a sock, and by the end of Sunday, this is what I had completed:

Sweater for Mom, spindleful of silk hankies spun up, 4 oz of Hello Yarn Finn spun up, and most of a sock. I finished the sock yesterday and am most of the way through sock two, thanks to an after school Year 4 music concert and hanging about watching Harry Potter movies with Boo, who was home sick. Sadly most of my good pictures are on my real camera, which is somewhere in Basingstoke with my spinning wheel, and I had to abandon it to Catherine's mercy when we needed to fit a fourth person in the car on the way home. Plans are afoot to sneak down her way and retrieve it soon.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, with a chance to catch up with a number of P3 almunae, meet some new folks who were brave enough to join us, great classes from Amy, and wonderful catering/organization from Catherine and Jenny. Thanks so much to all of you - I had a blast!

Fiber Friday: A different sort of Panda-Cam

Since the US Government shut down has axed the National Zoo's Panda-Cam coverage of their newest addition, I've decided to try and make up for the deprivation sweeping the Intarwebs by presenting my own interpretation: the fibery Panda-Cam.

Fiber: Spunky Eclectic's Panda (SW merino/bamboo/nylon), in "Winged Insects", 6 oz
Spun/plied: since it was a 6 oz braid, I did it all on the miniSpinner because I wanted a single skein. Chain plied the singles.
Stats: 370 yds/6 oz, about DK weight, 10-12 wpi, 990 ypp.

This was a challenging spin for me. Maybe it's because I've been spinning so many toothy wools of late, but the Panda was INCREDIBLY SLIPPERY!!!!! It was real work to keep focused enough to maintain any semblance of consistent wpi, and it shows in the yarn (damn you chain plying!). However, these colors could not be more me if they tried, and I'm desperately in love with this yarn. So much so that I'm greedily keeping it for myself and not sharing it with anyone.

Now I just need to figure out what pattern will fit for 370 yds of DK weight yarn...anyone have any suggestions?