Ready? Steady? Go!

And we're off!

45 min to spin, 5 hand-carded Gotland rolags on the bobbin. This is going to be some rustic yarn y'all, as I keep coming across undraftable tangles and neps. Clearly my carding techinique needs work! I'm trying to pull out the little bits of second cuts that made it through the sorting/washing/carding process, but it's slow going!

Please to be ignoring the inappropriate sport in the background - I got distracted by Ms. Williams!

Syringa Tank

Today, Issue 10 of Knit Now hits the newstands, and I can share with you my excitement at having one of my patterns included in the magazine.

Photo credit: Tim Bradley for Practical Publishing

Syringa is a girl's A-line tank knit in Rowan Amy Butler Belle Organic DK, a cotton-wool blend yarn with great elasticity. The tank is sized from 2-8 years old, and is worked at a gauge of 21 stitches/36 rows per 4 inches/10 cm. Worked from the bottom up, the hem has a graduated lace pattern before working the body in stockinette (or stocking stitch, if you prefer).

That's a photo of my original swatch, worked in Rowan Calmer which has sadly been discontinued. I hope you enjoy the pattern, and anyone who has any questions should please contact me (email on About Me page).

I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with the staff of Knit Now - the process was smooth and stress-free from beginning to end. The whole issue is packed full of great patterns, so if you have the opportunity to grab a copy, I recommend it!

Between extremes

My "relaxation knitting"* these days is vacillating between opposite ends of the spectrum. First up is the fiddley-beyond-belief category:

A pair of socks I actually started almost a year ago. I pulled them out of the Works in Progress Bin at the beginning of this month, thought "hunh...", ripped them out completely (I had a toe and about 2 inches of instep done) and started over again. The worst part was trying to start entrelac on US 0/2.0 mm needles with a provisional cast on and splitty yarn. Fun!

Then there's the mindless end of things...


That is the Garter Yoke Cardi by Melissa LeBarre, which I have wanted to do every since I saw Caro's version (Rav link). The yarn is the whack-load of Hello Yarn Romney in Timber that I spun up during the TdF last (hooray for casting on one of my handspun sweater lots!!!), and I am operating under the deluded hope that I can finish it before the Tour de Fleece starts. On Saturday.

Oh well. At least there's always (always!) coffee.


* The "work knitting" being my hat project: 2 of 7 prototypes done, one almost totally tested and one about to go to testers. I am on track**. Woot!


** So far. Famous last words and all that...

End of school = OMG panic!

Yet again, I have been surprised by the end of the school year. You'd think that, as a relatively intelligent, clearly overeducated, almost 40-year old, I would realize that if it's getting warmer out and the sun is up at 4:30 am and sets sometime after 9:00 pm, I would clue in to the fact that my kids are going to be on summer holidays soon. The panic results not from the imminent prospect of spending loads of time with my kids, but from the fact that yet again, I have neglected to plan ahead on teacher gifts, and I am looking at trying to knit six shawls in three weeks again.

Actually, this year I am bowing to inevitability, a bit of laziness and the need to keep some sort of grasp on my sanity over the next few months, and only making presents for the girls' main teachers (each has a main teacher and 1-2 assistants). And I'm not knitting.

Now that you've recovered from that last breathtaking statement, rest assured that there are wooly presents in the offing. I spent the weekend spinning up some Porpoise Fur.


These are two practice dyelots from last summer, Xylene Cyanole and Coomassie Blue, both on Targhee. I spun the singles at a much thicker wpi then my usual default; I want to take advantage of Targhee's tendency to expand dramatically after washing, so I aimed for a worsted weight 2-ply.

I haven't spun Targhee in a while, and I really enjoyed it - so springy and soft!  Singles were spun at 9.25:1 and plied at 6.5:1. Today, when I get home, I'm going to skein up the Coomassie Blue (XC is already off the bobbin), figure out the yardage, skipping the yarn finishing step (! - I love this about weaving!) and start warping.

This is the CB scarf I did for Carroll a couple of months ago, using BFL. I'm going to use the same weft yarn (some pale blue light fingering wool recycled from a Goodwill sweater and dyed with same dyes as the fiber), so that picture is probably fairly representative of what the finished project will look. For the turquoise, I'll use the same weft as well, although in the undyed state. I'm thinking about dyeing that as well, but I will probably try it without first to see how it looks.

So...four days to the start of the Tour de Fleece, and I need to weave two scarves, post a shop update and finish washing my fleece. Good thing Himself is away this week - I can take over the entire ground floor of the house with wool!

O Hai!

Didja miss me? Hunh? Didja?

Did you even notice I was gone is probably a more relevant question...no good reason for absence, just not having the energy to put fingers to keyboard or camera to FOs, as the case might be. I do have three finished objects to blog about at some point, but I've spent a lot of the last week washing fleece.

After my initial attempts at fleece washing in the upstairs bathtub, which resulted in still slightly greasy fleece, I took a step back and scaled down a bit.

I took the organic Hebridean fleece I have for the colorwork part of Stasis, and weighed it - a whopping 69 gr (2.4 oz) of unwashed fleece. I split the fleece in half and washed about an ounce at a time - my rational was that since I didn't get all the grease out last time, I would measure out smaller amounts to be washed and make sure I had enough liquid.

I did the same sequence as before: two hot washes, two washes with soap, two rinses. The other major change I made was to keep the water temperature a bit higher then last time, definitely above 50 degrees, and usually closer to 60 degrees C. This was much easier to do in the kitchen, with easy access to the stove and kettle. I also did only one batch at a time, so I could really keep an eye on the thermometer.

In washing this fleece, I came across some "interesting" bits.

I think this is scurf, aka sheepy dandruff. It was definitely not vegetable matter, and it was seriously stuck to the fleece. Once the stuff was dry, I weighed it again - 51 gr instead of 69. So about 26% weight loss due to grease/muck/VM. Then I broke out the handcards. The scurfy cruddy fleece I put to one side, in case I ran low. A few (ok, many) passes with the cards later, et voila:

A kid's shoe box full of handcarded Hebridean rolags, ready for the prologue. If I were smart, I'd do a bit of sampling before I start, just to make sure I've carded enough and that I can get a fingering weight yarn that I like. But...you know what I'm doing instead?

I'm washing more fleece. Only a week to go in prep time, and I've got a big bag to go!