Chugging Along

I'm still here, folks, still alive! I've been steadily working behind-the-scenes to develop my new blog at Wordpress. It's coming along quite nicely but these things tend to take much longer than I anticipate. I'm hoping I can finish the crossover by next week. Yay! It's always a strange feeling when I sit down at 9pm and the next time I glance up, I find that it's nearly 2am. Woops. According to a documentary about happiness that I watched, I believe this state of unreality is called "achieving flow" and it's supposed to make me super happy in the long run. Right now, though, it's only served to make me sleep so here's just a bit of quick proof that I'm still keepin' it crafty:

Spinning during dinner making-- HOLLA!   (...did I use that correctly?)

One last thing: I'm going to skip my Inspiration Saturday post tomorrow because I've already transferred old posts to the new blog and don't want to add lots of new material here while I'm cleaning things up over there. If you want to get a jump on adding my new blog to your readers, you can find it here, just remember it's still a WIP and might look a bit wonky for a while. Hopefully I'll have it all ready in time for a new IS post next week!

Dappled Shade

This colorway is so aptly named, it makes me happy inside.

This lovely braid of top from Miss Babs was a complete impulse buy since Miss Babs was one of the sponsors for Tour-de-Sock and there was a discount. It was a 'babbette' colorway meaning it was a one-off, not regularly produced, which are easy to fall in love with...like the Apple Blossom colorway or the Don't Stop one. So subtle and pretty!

I've apparently gotten hooked on this spin-a-little-bit-every-day thing and started spinning this Merino/bamboo/silk blend up almost as soon as I finished my Tour de Fleece skeins. I had no plan when I began, just enjoyed the feel of the silky-soft fiber in my hands, but now I've come up with an idea!

I'm going to make some art yarn with it! Specifically, I'm going to try a crepe yarn, like the ones featured above in this photo from The Spinner's Book of Yarn Design, which I wrote all about for one of my Inspiration Saturday posts. I have a bunch of merino/silk top that will pair nicely with the single I'm spinning now. Exciting!

In other news, today was the Fiasco's birthday. He unfortunately had to work all day (and it was a terrible day at work) so we only had a small bit of time to spend together. Then he conked out to Kermit the Frog singing "The Rainbow Connection" in Jason Segel's The Muppets. He might get old but I'm pretty sure he won't grow up. :)

Hope you're having a wonderful week! I'm hoping to catch up with blogs again soon. I'm linking up today with Sarah's spinning post at Crafts from the Cwtch, if you'd like to read more fiber-y goodness.

I'm Counting It

At 12:23 am I finished plying this beautiful blue gem of a skein:

This is the second skein of Bluefaced Leicester wool from the June Pryce Fiber Arts gradient-dyed kit I've been spinning for Tour de Fleece. It worked up to a DK-ish weight 3-ply with 270 yards, which is exactly the same as the first skein! So that worked out nicely.

I love love love  the blues in this skein and the way they swirl together when laid like this. Love. The colors are just beautiful. Even better, they were dyed by a woman who is practically my neighbor and is part of my spinner's guild and knit night! I had lots of fun with this kit and feel like I've finally gotten good with chain-plying on the wheel and fixing problems (like when the single breaks). Two braids (8 oz.) were dyed in complimentary gradients with the idea that they would then be knit into something like the Noro striped scarf.

The blue skein still needs its bath, you can see how much longer it looks than the green/purple skein. It'll spring back a bit after a wash. I'm thinking I might use my skeins for Lee Meredith's Waving Chevron Scarf, I like the shape of it, but I'm not sure how it'll look with using 2 colors instead of 3.

Copyright leethal, from Ravelry pattern page

I'll have to swatch and see. :) But that's getting ahead of myself. For now I'm just happy that I made 8/9ths of my Tour de Fleece goals! Even though I finished a few minutes past midnight, I'm still counting it! I'm sad I didn't achieve my extra-special-gold-star-challenge of spinning an ounce of my still-currently-unwashed fleece, but I just did not have a free weekend with good weather to do the washing. Hopefully one will come around soon. For now, yay for Tour de Fleece!

Plying Is Magic

Every time I spin, I am delighted by the magic of plying. You take this weird, lumpy, wiry little single of spun fiber and transform it into beautiful, fluffy, real and usable yarn.

This is the BFL fiber I've been working on for Tour de Fleece. I spun the gradient-dyed braid worsted style and chain-plied it to preserve the color changes. It's about 270 yards of DK-ish weight (I always forget to measure wpi before I skein it up... woops). I love the way the colors blend into each other and am excited to see it knit up. This skein represents about half of my TdF goals. I've been spinning up the second braid of the gradient kit, as well.

I only have about 2 oz of fiber left to spin. That bobbin on the left is driving me crazy: I can't find the end of my yarn. The single broke during spinning and the end concealed itself most thoroughly on the bobbin. I was so frustrated I just started a new bobbin but I'm going to have to find the end eventually! Any tips? I already resorted to taking packing tape to the single and trying to lift the end up like lint. It didn't work.

Darwin approves of the new yarn. This is his stealthy "I look all innocent but turn your back for a second and that yarn will be mine" attack mode. Little devil.

WIPWed #29: Treadling Along

I am happy to announce that while my spinning and knitting lately have not been very speedy, they have been fairly steady. I made a good bit of progress on my Tour de Fleece spinning, 4 oz of the BFL gradient kit I'm working up have been spun into singles and I'm ready to start the second half of the kit later tonight.

Ah, I love a full bobbin!

With all my home time taken up with spinning, my knitting has been fairly monogamous. I've only really been working on my travel knitting (sock) and meeting knitting (shawl).

CY Skinny Bugga

I'm still slowly striping my way through the Tour-de-Sock pattern from the last round. I was nearly finished with it last week but started the band of colorwork on the foot too late so it was all the way down near the toe and I hated it, so I frogged back. Nothing like making the sock foot slog last twice as long! It was worth it, though.

BMFA Socks That Rock Mediumweight

My sweet and spring-y Budding Lintilla shawl is nearing its end. That little ball on the left is the last of the original skein. I will continue through the end of it then use the additional leftovers that a couple of lovely Ravelers sent me to work the edging of the shawl. I'm excited to see how this will turn out!

Finally, I just wanted to say that I apologize for not being around to comment much lately. I'm working on transferring my blog from blogger to Wordpress as I dislike the changes blogger has been making and I want a fresh start. Much of my limited inside-time has been and will be spent on setting up the new blog for a little bit. I hope you'll come visit me at my new place when it's ready!

Also, check out more WIPs by clicking below. 

Progress and Surprise

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend! Mine was very busy and full of sun, waves, and family (as it should be). It also involved a wonderful surprise as I found this little beauty waiting for me in the mail:

That's a handwoven wool shawl that I had entered a raffle ticket to win way back in March when I went to Woolapalooza at Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, Massachusetts. To say that I was excited and that I love this thing are understatements. It's fabulous! The tag doesn't specify what breed of sheep the wool is from but it is bouncy, lightweight, a little bit 'crunchy', and warm. The woven pattern is just gorgeous, too.

It reminds me very much of the mitered squares that you see in sock blankets everywhere. I love it and wish very much that I could thank the weaver personally.

I've been doing more than just basking in the glow of unexpected woolen finery, however. I've been working on spinning up my own but of beauty, too:

I'm making steady progress on my June Pryce Fiber Arts gradient-dyed BFL kit for Tour de Fleece. I started with purple, have progressed through the purply blue, finished the blue, worked through the blue-ish green bits, and am now beginning the final solid green third of the braid. I am really loving working with BFL wool. It's been light and lofty to spin and as a longwool has a nice silky hand while remaining very soft. It's also the first fiber I've been able to spin worsted-style successfully, letting the twist pull just from one end of the top. I've always had to spin top over the fold to get a consistent single (not sure why, it always felt like it got 'stuck' in my hands any other way) but with the longer, silkier fibers of BFL I haven't had any trouble drafting in the more controlled worsted style. I've found my spinning groove again and am excited to see how this plies up!

IS #25: The Ultimate Book of Yarn Design

I've posted about being inspired by an excellent spinning book before, but MAN this one is fabulous, too.

This textbook-like tome will not teach you the very basics, like fiber characteristics and exactly step-by-step how to add twist to fiber, it assumes you've done that once or twice before. However, it does detail nearly everything else in a very simple and straightforward manner. Great information on washing fleece, using handcards and combs, using a drum carder, the differences between worsted and woolen yarns, different kinds of drafting to achieve those yarns, and (finally!) descriptions of Z/S twist and twist angle that I actually understood are all provided.

The basics are followed up by separate chapters on every conceivable type of yarn you can make. And I do mean every. I can't imagine any other yarns existing, truly. These crepe yarns are ones I'd really like to try out, they look so interesting and are pretty similar to the cabled yarn I'd made before, except they are 3-ply instead of 4-ply which creates a neat effect.

The book also covers the really crazy novelty yarns with very simple, easy-to-understand instructions. Best of all, it shows photos of nearly every yarn either knit or woven up so you can get an idea of what the yarn might look like in a finished fabric, which is super helpful with crazy yarns like the beehive pictured above.

And as an added bonus, the instructions for all of the different yarns are provided on little notecards that you can punch out and keep near your wheel or take with you for reference. As I hope you can tell, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can't wait to try my hand at all the crazy yarns within. Here's a review from the Knitty blog that I think is pretty accurate and shows additional photos from the book. It also reminded me that the author also did a sock knitting experiment to figure out which yarn construction formed holes the slowest, which was super interesting! As you can see in the first photo, I've marked many many pages that I want to refer back to, so this book was well worth the money for me. You can also see my spindle, I've been doing my best to spin for a few minutes every single day this month. I missed 2 days out of 8 so far... hopefully I'll be less busy in the coming weeks!

What books have been inspiring you lately? And are you spinning along this June?

IS #24: So Many Tours!

Something very simple has been inspiring me lately.

Ahhh, the humble spindle. I feel like I haven't spun in ages-- in reality it's probably been more like 6 weeks, but that's pretty long! There has been much talk of spinning on blogs and Ravelry lately and man oh man is it getting to me. My fingers are itching. My wheel is waiting. My spindles are dropping. Yes, I'm joining the tour.

In a previous post, I had mentioned how I wanted to spin a little every day starting in June. Well, turns out my spinner instincts must've been buzzing because June 30th is the start date of 5th annual Tour de Fleece! The idea is to do something awesome and challenging, perhaps not quite as awesome or challenging as a crazy long-ass bike ride, but cool nonetheless. The main guidelines are as follows:

1. Spin every day the Tour rides, if possible. Saturday June 29th through Sunday July 21st. Days of rest: Monday July 8th and Monday July 15th. (Just like the actual tour.)
   
2. Spin something challenging on the challenge day (usually the toughest high mountain stage: this year, it’s Stage 18, on Thursday, July 18th, when they climb Alpe d’Huez twice).

There are a few others but those are the big ones. You can join teams or not, spin a little or a lot, whatever your personal goal/challenge might be. I joined a team of fans of Verdant Gryphon yarns, even though they don't sell any fiber, just because people on the VG boards on Ravelry are always so fun, friendly, and knowledgeable. And there are prizes, always prizes. As we all know how I love to plan, I've been having fun thinking up things to do. Unsurprisingly, I have a few ideas.

1. Spin for at least 15 minutes every day (which I will begin practicing starting tomorrow because I already said I would).
2. Finish two skeins (8 oz) of gradient-dyed BFL from June Pryce Fiber Arts on my wheel (which I've barely begun but won't touch again until the tour starts).
3. Finish 3 more breeds (3 oz) for my Ongoing Spinner's Study.
4. Extra-special-gold-star-challenge: Wash, process, and spin 1 oz of wool from my first fleece.

Yeah, you heard me: my first fleece! IF I mange to get to the farmer's market before my yoga class today, I MIGHT be able to get a hold of a Southdown fleece for a pretty reasonable price. I've never used Southdown wool before but I'm itching to give this whole fleece-to-spun thing a try and don't mind practicing on one I'm not totally invested in. For those keeping track, I've planned to spin 12 oz. of fiber in 3 weeks. That's 4 oz, or a typical braid of fiber, every week... while simultaneously knitting a boatload of socks. And trying to fit time in for designing. And, you know, work. And life. This is my way of declaring: I am pretty crazy and all of these plans will probably never happen so please don't be too disappointed when the beautiful socks and fabulous handspun yarn that live in my head don't quite make it to the blog. A girl's gotta dream, right?

What (crazy idea) is inspiring you lately? 

SS: Cheviot

Ready for another installment of my ongoing Spinner's Study?

My thoughts on Romney align with what I wrote in my last post, which is that it's known to be an all-around good workhorse of a fiber that plays nicely, and that definitely seems to be true. It drafted smoothly and easily and made a nice, strong-feeling yarn with just a little bit of shine to it (from its longwool nature).

The wool from the next breed, Cheviot, feels somewhat similar.

Photo from wikipedia

The Ceviot is a dual-purpose sheep, raised for both meat and wool, and comprises its own 'family' within the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. It is the dominant breed in the Cheviot Hills area on the border between England and Scotland.The sheep themselves have 'clean' faces free of wool with dark eyes and noses and their origin is something of a mystery (rumors of sheep escaping from Spanish ships) but they've been around since sometime in the 15th to 17th centuries.

Long staple length with '3-dimensional crimp'

The book describes Cheviot as a neighborly fiber known for durability without harshness. It has a micron range between 27 and 33, which lands it squarely in the medium softness category, edging towards coarse. The book also calls the fiber 'chalky', which is kind of a strange word to apply to wool, but I think I get it. 

The fiber I have is almost fluid in how it drafts, there is no luster or silkiness but the fibers aren't 'grabby' either, they don't grip each other very tightly. Even though it has a long staple length, I have to watch that I don't draft out too quickly and create thin spots in the yarn. That said, it's been very easy-going to spin, and I could see how it would make a great rugged sweater or blanket, since I imagine the fabric wouldn't pill much with wear.

If you like learning about different types of wool, I highly recommend you check out the free Craftsy mini-class "Know Your Wool", taught by Deborah Robinson (one of the authors of the Sourcebook). I watched it the other night and thought it was a great summary and introduction to some of the key concepts in understanding the differences between types of wool.

You can also find info on the other breeds I've already spun up here.

Great Rhody

Things I learned over the weekend: for a small state, Rhode Island has a great fiber community. It was the 3rd annual Great Rhody Yarn Crawl and although I worked late Friday night and couldn't get to any stores on Saturday, I spent a nice Sunday afternoon driving around to as many local yarn stores as I could while making up for a stressful work week with gratuitous amounts of yarn.

The grand plan.

That's the route I took (starting at point A) as well as the list of stores I visited plus the farm where the 'culmination' was held. I ended up skipping Love 2 Knit since it was the one store I'd been to a few times already and I was running short on time.

The stores I visited.

The idea behind a yarn crawl is the visit as many stores as possible, get your passport stamped, bring canned goods for donations, and enter into raffles to win prizes. Most stores run special deals as well. I really liked Eneri Knits, it was a decent size (the other RI yarns stores I've seen have been tiny!) and stocked a nice mix of yarns, including Malabrigo (how can a store not carry Malabrigo??) as well as some fiber. The Mermaid's Purl was definitely the cutest of all of the shops, it's located in downtown Wickford which is fun little town with lots of great stores selling unique gifts and trinkets. The Mermaid's Purl is a small space but it is stocked floor to ceiling with yarn and the owners are very friendly. Manmade By Jonne was an interesting place, as suggested by the name it is owned and run by Jonne and it almost feels like walking into his own personal stash. There were yarns I'd never seen or heard of before as well as handspun yarn and numerous handknit items for purchase. Bella Yarns was a more spacious store but it didn't feel that way because it was packed to the brim with shoppers. I almost felt like I was at a yarn festival, chatting and making friends with the other knitters while we waited in line.

Mount Hope Farm 'culmination ceremony'.

It turns out it was a good thing I was running short on time because I think I've determined that 4 yarn stores in one day is my limit. By the time I got to the culmination ceremony at the farm I was quite tired and in a state of sensory overload: too many colors and textures to experience and decisions and rationalizations to make in too short a time! This led to fiscal weakness on my part when I encountered Play At Life (the dyer is in my spinning guilt!) and Stitchy McYarnpants at the mini-fiber-festival in the barn. Speaking of, here are the goods:

Darwin approves of my stash enhancement.

My goals during the crawl were to buy one thing at each store (it's only fair!) as well as to try to find unique things, things that were unlike anything I already had. Starting clockwise from Darwin we have:

• Frabjous Fibers merino top and Ella Rae Lace Chunky (superwash Merino) and a free measuring tape from Eneri Knits.
• Two skeins of Berrocco Flicker (a really neat yarn that is mostly baby alpaca with a bit of acrylic and sparkle knitted into a tube) that will become a cool ruffly scarf from The Mermaid's Purl.
• The colorful fabric is a project bag from Stitchy McYarnpants (love that name) and the equally colorful yarn on top of it is a merino/bamboo/nylong gradient-dyed sock yarn from Play At Life that I purchased at the farm.
• The red skeins on the armrest are some worsted-weight mohair (which I've never used before) that is actually pretty soft from an unknown company that doesn't make it anymore, purchased at Manmade by Jonne.
• The brown skeins are pure alpaca from Juniper Moon Farm and are going to be sent to my mom as a get-well-after-surgery gift (she loves alpaca). The purple skeins were a $5 impulse buy: another 'knitted tube' type yarn from Araucania consisting of cotton and a touch of baby alpaca that I thought would make a cool summer accessory. Those came from Bella Yarns as well as a small sample of Eucalan wool wash.

Not a bad haul, eh? I love the yarns I have in my stash (primarily STR, VG, CY, Malabrigo, etc.) but sometimes it's nice to branch out a bit and try different things, which was basically the point of this crawl. It would've been nice to get to more stores but my Saturday was taken up by the RI Spinner's Guild meeting, which was great. It was an art yarn workshop which was rather difficult to participate in because my wheel isn't equipped for art yarns (the orifice is too small) but I tried my best. This is what I made:

Meet Fugly.

I present to you 42 yards of ugly-as-f*#k. The instructor had us tear of bits of fiber into a big pile and then just grab big hunks of the mixed-up pile and start spinning it and let it sort of do what it wanted without trying to smooth anything out or make it neat. Then we tried corespinning, autowrapping, and adding locks of mohair and other curly breeds. At the end I couldn't resist plying my art-yarn single with a commercial yarn just to try to tidy it up a little bit. I don't know if art yarn will be something I spin often (especially since I have no idea what I'd really do with it) but at least I tried a few new things!

I hope you had a fiber-filled weekend, as you can see, mine certainly was. What's the best thing about your favorite local yarn store?

IS #15: New Fiber Friends

Happy Saturday! The purpose of this week's inspiration post is primarily to gush about some new spinning fiber, because I'm in love.

This is 8 oz. of Bluefaced Leicester fiber dyed in two gradient colorways to make a Noro-style scarf.

The Noro Scarf - Copyright Brooklyn Tweed

The fiber was dyed by Cheryl, a dyer/spinner I met at the RI Spinner's Guild meeting who happens to live right in my town! She is a co-owner of June Pryce Fiber Arts, and has an Etsy shop with some lovely and reasonably-priced dyed yarns, fiber, and knitting notions.

One braid of the fiber is a monochrome gradient from palest blue to a rich teal.

The other braid proceeds from purple through blue to a bright, spring green. The idea is that you spin each braid into separate chain-plied skeins (to preserve the color sequence) and then you knit the Noro-style scarf, alternating the dark and light sections of each skein for a nice contrast.

The fiber itself is lovely, fluffy, and soft -- one of the benefits to having it dyed to order and not sitting for a while all compressed in a shop. I absolutely cannot wait to start spinning this up! They're hosting a KAL this month in the June Pryce Fiber Arts group on Ravelry, if you're interested in joining along.

Plus, one of the best things about new fiber arriving is the motivation to finish current spinning projects that follows:

Yay for plying!

What's inspired you this week?

 

Happy, Happy Spinner

Folks, you're reading the words of an exceptionally happy spinner right now.

Tiny, twirling vehicle of happiness.

Yesterday afternoon I attended my first meeting of the Rhode Island Spinner's Guild... and it was fantastic. I always get unnecessarily nervous before these types of unfamiliar social/crafty gatherings... you'd think I would've learned from the last time I went to a meeting in Connecticut, but I didn't. The Fiasco still had to literally force me to leave the house and I'm ever so glad that he did. It turns out that Rhody spinners are a warm, welcoming, enthusiastic, and talented bunch and I absolutely cannot wait until next month's meeting, during which we will be learning how to spin art yarns! Plus, I got a whole bunch of spinning done on my little neglected spindle:

Pencil included for scale.

If you remember, I began this spinning project way back in October when I bought the spindle (a Golding purpleheart tsunami) at Rhinebeck. That nearly-full cop represents only a tiny fraction of the Merino wool/silk blend top I have stashed so I'll probably be spinning it forever, but I will get a ton of yardage and the fiber/spindle combo is so pleasant that I really don't mind.

I have a second Golding spindle and another bit of fiber that I feel like I've been spinning forever (well, since August):

Woolgatherings 100% Polwarth wool

There is only one explanation for why this yarn hasn't been finished over the past 8 months: I have not been spinning it. Over the fall I didn't spin very much and then since December I've been spinning mainly on my new wheel. I'm fine having works-in-progress, but in this case it caused a problem because the finished yarn was intended to be a birthday gift for my very good knitterly friend, Katy, whose birthday was waaaaaaay back in December. It got to the point where I would walk past my spindles and feel extreme guilt as I sat down at my wheel and spun away on other things. Then inspiration struck-- I had a second braid of the same fiber!

Duh.

Rather than force myself to find spindle time, I started spinning the second braid on the wheel and am making excellent progress. Katy's favorite color is purple so this yarn is literally made for her. I'd say I have about a third of the fiber left to spin and with any luck will finish it soon.

Now, back to that spinning...

SS: Romney

It has been ages and ages since I wrote a Spinner's Study post. The last time I did, I gave a quick rundown on some of the fascinating history of the Merino breed. Here's the plump little skein I finished:

As you might image, the Merino wool made a lovely, soft, and squishy single. If I had plied this, the resulting yarn would've displayed a lot of elasticity and bounce, which is characteristic of the fine crimp pattern in Merino staples. Its elasticity is one reason why Merino wool is so loved for fabrics and for socks in particular. However, the fiber's fineness works against it for socks, making it prone to pilling and wear, as seen in the pile of socks waiting to be mended. However, for me, the bounce and softness of Merino is worth a few minutes of darning every now and then.

Onto the next breed! We took a brief look at Romney wool when I described the For the Love of Longwools class I took at Rhinebeck. Now, we'll dig a little deeper.

This handsome devil's photo came from Wikipedia.

The Romney sheep is a dual-purpose meat and fiber breed that is grouped with the English Longwool Family in the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. It was developed from crossing a breed native to the Ronney Marsh coastal plain in southeast England with longwool Leicester bloodlines. This imparted a long staple length and luster to Romney fiber, while still maintaining the breed's unique adaptations allowing the growth of quality wool in boggy, marshy environments.

According to the FFSB, "Romney fleece is most likely to be voted president of the Wool High School senior class. It can't do everything, but it's an all-around good citizen and extremely versatile, with personality and charisma. It's a classic." Romney fiber can range in quality and fineness depending on the particular sheep and location (North American and British are somewhat finer than New Zealand Romneys), but in general it ranges from coarse to fairly fine (micron count 29-37) and is usually finer than other longwool breeds (but you still might not want to wear it near sensitive skin).

I am enjoying this bit of Romney I am spinning much better than the first Romney I tried during the longwools class.  This is perhaps due to the preparation (carded roving vs. commercial combed top) but it could just be nicer fiber. This bunch is drafting very smoothly and creating a strong-feeling, even single. The roving I am spinning here is from Alder Brook Romneys in Connecticut. A friend of the Fiasco's also raises Romneys, shears them herself, and sells handspun yarn from her flock in her Falling Star Fibers Etsy shop. I purchased some fiber from her at a festival that I still have stashed but I'm tempted to skip ahead and just buy some of the lovely finished yarns she has in her shop!

Have you used Romney fiber/yarn? What did you think of it?