So many hobbies!

Only a little spinning

Drafted and spun this tonight.  It took longer to draft than it did to spin.  There are a lot of areas in the roving that didn't take color and I'm starting to wonder now if it was the angora and not the silk that wasn't getting friendly with the dye.  I find clumps of white angora while I'm spinning. 

I'm looking forward to the long weekend.  Aside from doing some spinning, I need to make a book to take with me to Italy.  The books is still in the design phase but I know I'm going to use green paper for the cover (I'm pretty sure there's green in the Italian flag).  I have yet to decide on the size and number of pages.  The book will be my scrapbook from the trip and I'll be working in it while I'm there, adding ticket stubs, post cards, sketches, thoughts, places for photos, etc.  I need to think about what journaling supplies I want to take with me.  I'm limited to a 50 pound suitcase and a very small carry-on so space in the suitcase is at a premium.  I usually don't start packing until the night before I leave but this time I'm going to have to start earlier to make sure I can fit in all that I'll need.  My parents will be thrilled.

This is why I spin

It was me, the couch and the cat tonight.  I was coming down off my mitten-knitting jag and all I was capable of doing was laying on the couch watching The Dresden Files.  Before turning on the telly, though, I was eagerly flipping though my newest acquisition:

Oh, bugger!  I've already typed this post once but when I went to save it, Typepad crapped out on me and lost it.  Sorry, but I really don't want to type it all out again.  Here's the bottom line:  the vest I love (the Adobe Brick Vest on page 43) would cost me $168 to make, before taxes and/or shipping, using the yarn listed.  I wanted to make it into a sweater - that would cost me $264.  I won't be making the vest as shown in the book.  I'm going to have to look around for other yarns or combine my handspun with the expensive stuff I can't make myself.  I'll make something - these sweaters are too beautiful not to - but I'm going to have to be more creative about the yarn I use.

The first post I wrote sounded better.  I'm going to bed.

My first mittens!

These are quite possibly the finest pair of mittens ever knitted.  A thing of beauty.  (Stop laughing, Beth!)  Of course, I might be a bit biased.  Actually, they're a little big.  The pattern gave sizes but no measurements so I had to guess that the adult medium size would fit me.  I might make the next smaller size and see how it fits.

Now that I've satisfied my obsession with knitting mittens, at least for now, it's back to spinning for my shawl.  I haven't touched my wheel since last week and I think he's starting to feel left out.  Unfortunately, that makes for boring blog fodder:  watching the singles grow on the bobbin each day isn't terribly exciting.  I'll see what I can do to make things more interesting.

I get it!

The Yarn Harlot wrote of a time when she showed a hand-knit sock to someone and didn't get the response that this wondrous item deserved.  I get it now!  I, too, have experienced the complete lack of enthusiasm from a non-knitter when presented with the miracle of a hand-knit mitten.  My co-worker responded with a polite, "Oh, really?"  Doesn't she understand?  Doesn't she get it that I took fluff, used some spinning wheel magic and made yarn?  I made yarn!!  Then I took two magic wands, waved them over the yarn... alot... and made a mitten?  A MITTEN for crying out loud!  She should have whispered an amazed and reverent, "Wow!"  I pity the poor non-knitters who don't get how truly COOL making a mitten is.   Anyway, here's mitten #2.  I'm ready to put the thumb stitches on a stitch holder and continue with the rest of the hand.  Aren't the colors beautiful?

Mittens!

Well, mitten.  I cast on for this mitten Thursday night and worked on it all weekend.  I'm starting to feel more like a knitter now that I'm trying other patterns.  Granted, mittens aren't that difficult but I get to add another project to my Ravelry page.  Woot!  The yarn is Superwash Merino that was my 4th or 5th handspun yarn.  This picture doesn't do the mitten justice.    I haven't washed and blocked it yet, nor woven in the ends, but you can see how beautiful the splashes of color are.  If you haven't yet looked at The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, I highly recommend it.  Handspun yarns from handpainted roving have a beauty and richness that you just can't get in any other yarn.  I've already cast on for mitten #2.  I was very monogamous to my mitten this weekend so I have nothing else to show.  The sock is ready for its toe to be knitted but all I want to make are mittens.  The sock will have to wait.

Progress

I haven't mentioned my sock lately.  When you don't actually knit on things, I've noticed you don't make much progress.  Funny how that works.  During my long weekend, I made pretty good inroads on the foot and I'm almost ready to start on the toe.

I also got a bit of spinning done for my shawl.  Let me tell you a story that shows how dim I can be.  I was afraid to tell my parents because they might feel I was too dumb to be their daughter and take steps to disown me.  When they couldn't see where I'd gone wrong either, I didn't feel too bad.  Do you remember my great idea to dye the roving in gradually darkening shades of blue?  And do you remember that the roving for each darker shade would get a little bigger than the roving before it?  I dyed those blasted things twice and each time every length of roving was more or less the same shade as every other length.  There was much muttered cursing.  Thursday night as I was dropping off to sleep, it suddenly hit me why nothing was getting darker.  The roving was slowly growing larger and the amount of dye was also slowly growing.  If I wanted the wool to get darker, the amount of dye I used needed to grow exponentially.  As it was, I was only adding enough extra dye to account for the extra wool.  In essence, the ratios were staying the same so the shades of blue were always staying the same.  I had one of those "Doh!" slapping-your-forehead moments.  For the love of Pete!!  I really don't feel too bad about it and I'm rather impressed with myself that I figured it out.  My strong suit are words, not numbers, so math and logic problems I'm terrible at.  This was definately a math and logic problem.  So, the bottom line is I decided I rather liked the sky blue I ended up with and I called it a day.  I still have the Merino/kid mohair roving that I may use if I try the dyeing experiment at some later date.

I bought a simple mitten pattern and I cast on for mitten #1 tonight using some of my handspun.  If I remember correctly, the yarn is my third or fourth spinning and it has lots of thick and thin spots.  It's Superwash Merino so it should hold up okay to lots of wearing and washing.  Not much to show tonight.  I've only got three rows knitted so far.  I'll have more to show on Sunday.

Shopping and family

What could be better?  The Michigan Fiber Festival was so much fun.  There was shopping, visiting with friends, and of course, the skein contest.  One of the first booths I visited, Wild Meadow Angora, had lovely batts in various colorways.  A woman standing next to me turned to me, offered me a batt and said, "Touch this!"  That was all it took.  The batts were 60% Angora, 20% Cormo and 20% Bombyx silk.  I bought two.

In addition, I bought the most luscious, soft and squishy skein of 100% Cria Alpaca (the white one in the middle), a lovely skein of Mountain Colors, 4 oz. of Angora (top right) and, oh my God!, an ounce of Qiviut (bottom right)!  Beth was goading me to buy it and I folded like a house of cards.  It wasn't really a hard sell.  I also bought some back issues of Spin-Off magazine. 

Here's Kate, myself and Beth right after I bought the Qiviut.  I'm grinning big because, well, I have qiviut!!  Beth is still looking naughty.

Next was the skein contest.  There were chairs set up so you could watch the judging.  Listening to the judge's commets was very educational.  I learned that even if only one skein is submitted in a category, it doesn't automatically mean it will get the blue ribbon.  If the skein has flaws, the judge may award second or third place.  In this competition, it was almost as important that the end use be as appropriate to the yarn as was the skill of the spinning.  In the end, this is what I came home with:

Once again, I was floored... and grinning like a complete fool.  When I went to pick up my skeins, some of the staff wanted to meet me and congratulate me.  It was a fun and heady experience.  There was more of me grinning like a fool.

After I left the fiber fest, I drove north to my parents' cottage where I spent three and a half days with my family.  It was relaxing and wonderful.  I got to see my youngest nephews, who are 3 and 5, and my oldest niece and nephew, who are 19 and 22.  My 22-year-old nephew is heading out to California to start an assistant teacher position.  I'm so proud of him.  My niece is starting her second year of college and my two young nephews are starting pre-school and kindergarten.  I got to spend time with my sister which recharged my batteries.  There was much talking and laughing.  My brother-in-law a jokester who needs to be watched!  We had such a good time.  I love my family!

The Experiment, Part II

I wasn't happy with how the roving dyed when hand painted and steamed, so I took another tack.  On my way home from work, I stopped and picked up a dozen quart canning jars.  (If you like to can and live near a Big Lots, they have the cheapest prices around for quarts, pints, and jelly jars.)  Each plastic package of roving was unwrapped and left to soak in plain water.  I wanted to wash out the vinegar I'd sprayed the wool with before I wrapped and steamed.  Then, to double up in the net amount of dye, I added one drop, then two, then three, etc. to each jar and added the roving.  The seventh jar wouldn't fit in the canning rack and in any case the roving was too tight in the jar, so I cooked it in the slow cooker.  I was careful to not let the water get hotter than 185F to avoid damaging the silk.  When the water was clear, indicating the dye bath was exhausted, I added white vinegar and let the jars (and crockpot) cook another 20 minutes or so to set the dye.  Both jars and crockpot are now cooling.  The extra roving I ordered didn't arrive today but I couldn't have dyed it anyway so it doesn't really matter.

I don't think I'm going to achieve the gradual change in intensity from white to dark blue that I was planning on.  In order to get to a dark blue, I should have made the change in the length of each consecutive piece of roving more gradual than I did; they got longer too fast.  I still have the Merino/kid mohair roving to play with.  I have a large black walnut tree outside my back door and if I can manage to wrestle some of the nuts away from the army of squirrels that live in my neighborhood, I want to cook up some black walnut dye.  (Actually, I only want the hulls and they can have the nuts but I don't know how to explain this to the squirrels.)  Black walnut dye is the only natural dye that doesn't require a mordant (white vinegar in the case of acid dyes) to make a dye that's washfast and lightfast.  Other natural dyes require the roving or yarn to be pre-cooked in a mordant before then cooking in a dyebath.  Dealing with mordants is a little more fiddly than I want to get into.  If you have too much mordant, your yarn or roving will end up feeling tacky.  Not enough and the dye won't take well or evenly.

Saturday, I'm off to the Michigan Fiber Festival (woot!) and then I'm out of town until Wednesday.  My next post will be Wednesday evening.  By the I'll have lots of pictures and stories, no doubt.  Have a good weekend everyone.

The dyeing part

Well, I'm definitely flying by the seat of my pants on this one.  At the rate the roving is getting darker, by the time it's a nice dark blue, the shawl will reach the floor.  I'll see how they look after they've been steamed and cooled but I may redye them using 2 drops of dye, then 4, then 6, etc. so the gradations aren't quite so gradual.  The first seven shades have been hand painted, wrapped and are, at this moment, being steamed to set the dye.  Another thing I'm uncertain of is how the silk will take the dye.  Silk is harder to dye by hand painting than wool and can take the dye unevenly.  The longer pieces of roving I may dye in the slow cooker.

Sampling results

As I suspected it would, the sample skein that free-styled in the bath bloomed and the sample wrapped around the credit card didn't bloom at all.  Dang that Beth is a genius!  And ever so wise.  So, my Merino/cashmere/angora yarn (if I can manage to spin the batts without ripping all my hair out) will get its bath wrapped around my plastic niddy and will dry on said niddy.  That should set the twist without all the unexpected and maddening blooming.

The Dyeing Experiment

Here's my thinking on dyeing the wool for my future Faroese shawl:  I want the yarn to very gradually shade from white to very dark blue and I want to spin the yarn myself.  Since the shawl starts out with a smallish number of stitches and grows with each knit row, I needed to start with short lengths of roving (about 6") and with each darker shade, the lengths of roving grow by two or three inches to match the growing width of the shawl.  Does that make sense?  The palest blue roving is about 6" long, the next darker shade is about 8" long, the next darker 10", etc.  In the photo above, I've got the first seven lengths soaking for their dye bath tomorrow night.  The roving is a Merino/silk/angora blend and silk takes a long time to become saturated so having 24 hours to wet is a good idea.  (I love learning new things, like the fact that wet silk REEKS!  My whole dang livingroom stinks of wet silk! Gah!)  Because I'm paranoid, I ordered two more ounces of roving which should arrive Thursday or Friday.  (Hopefully on Thursday so I can get it soaking for dyeing on Friday.)  I want to complete my first shawl with yards to spare, not run out half way through the knitted trim.  If that were to happen, I think anyone within a 100 mile radius could hear my screams of rage and despair.  There would most likely be foul language.  We all want to avoid that.

I'm starting to get a bit excited about my first Michigan Fiber Festival (although my checkbook is starting to whimper in fear).  I hear it's huge and a wonder to behold.  I'll be entering two skeins of my yarn:  the much-maligned (by me) skein of 2-ply Border Leicester that won me a blue ribbon at the Great Lakes Fiber Show and a singles of Merino/tencel.  The Merino/tencel I spun at about my 3-months-spinning mark and I'm surprised at how even it is.  If anyone is going and wants to have a meet-up, let me know and we can arrange a time and place.