So many hobbies!

A breather

Sock knitting has been more frustrating than I had anticipated.  So, I'm going to take a bit of a break and do some spinning.  These rovings came this week from Twisted Fiber Art.  The one on top is a merino/mohair blend in the Sherwood Forest colorway and the one on the bottom is a merino/tencel blend in the Secret colorway.  Last Saturday's spinning day with Rita got canceled so she's coming this Saturday instead.  Woot!  I'm not sure which roving to try first.  They're both so beautiful.

As far as the socks go, I'm changing tactics.  I've bought bigger dpns (double pointed needles) and I'm going to do a trial sock in worsted weight yarn.  I think this time I'll try it top down.  All that practice doing the top of the sock should get me used to the fact that there are NEEDLES EVERYWHERE!  Hopefully once I get to the heel, I'll be used to dealing with the dpns.  I've also ordered some sport weight yarn from The Loopy Ewe and I can transition down from worsted to sport weight to fingering.  It seems like a good plan in my head.  Let's see how it works in reality.  Wish me luck!

A Revelation

So I went out to dinner tonight with a couple of friends I hadn't talked to since starting my blog.  I never know quite how I come off when I write so, silly me, I asked.  Mo tells me (yes, Mo, I'm calling you by name) that my blog has a lot of good explanations of the projects I'm working on and that some people like reading boring writing.  Barb and I look at each other and start laughing hysterically and I say, "So I'm boring!?"  Mo kept trying to explain how she didn't mean it in a bad way but by the end of the night, she'd said "boring" four times.  I know she didn't mean it the way it sounded but, for the life of me, I still don't know what you meant Mo.  Hmm, maybe I should start telling jokes, or limericks.  There once was a man from Nantucket...

Off the bobbin and skeined.  I have GOT to buy a yardage counter so I can figure out how much yarn I'm making.  Mostly I guess by counting the number of times the yarn wraps around my niddy noddy, doubling it and subtracting a few yards.  The distance around my niddy isn't quite two yards so I end up guessing on the final number.

The second sock toe is going slowly.  I'm still figuring things out and I've already made mistakes that annoy me enough to rip out the toe and start over.  Again.  I'm curious to see how the colorway plays out so I'll keep knitting for a while.  Plus I want to see how it fits my foot.  (Yeah, I know, should have done a gauge swatch.)  Turning the heel by the weekend was overly optimistic as it turns out.  It's definitely a new skill working with five needles at once.  They're always getting in the way of the working yarn and I end up moving them around enough that I stretch the stitches between the needles.  Very irritating.  I haven't been able to figure out how I'm supposed to pick up the stitches from the crocheted chain as I unzip it.  In fact, I can't get it to unzip at all, which means I'm picking up the initial stitches from the chain wrong.  Aahhh!  Wendy's instructions didn't clarify either of those parts so it must be something obvious that I'm missing.   I'm sure I'll get it eventually but if anyone has any tips...

The yarn is plied!

This bobbin is the final result of almost 4 hours of nearly continuous plying.  It turned out pretty well but it's still not fine enough for sock yarn.  I think I'm going to go back to spinning worsted weight since the whole reason I started spinning in the first place was to spin yarn for sweaters.  I certainly have enough purchased sock yarn in my stash to keep me going for a while.  And I keep acquiring more.

My next project will be to make a cushion for the wooden spinning stool I use.  Despite the fact the my butt has more than enough padding, by the time I was done plying, it felt like someone was driving spikes onto my butt bones.  (Would someone tell me what those bones are really called.  Dad?)   I know I said I probably wouldn't get to the plying until tomorrow, but you know I couldn't wait.

Tomorrow I start my first sock.  The second time the toe will go much faster since I'll be using size 2 needles and I've been through it once already.  There shouldn't be any surprises.

Purple Weekend

My weekned started on a very welcome note when I saw this growing in my front garden.  I didn't think winter was ever going to end but the blooming crocuses officially make it spring.

I made my first attempts at sock knitting on Saturday.  I started with a top-down pattern but found trying to transfer cast on stitches to two other needles to be extremely irritating.  On my second attempt, I pulled out Wendy's directions for short-row toes and her "excrutiatingly detailed" directions for toe-up socks.  While the directions were cryptic to this knitting novice as I was just reading them, when I pulled out yarn and needles they made perfect sense and I knitted this...

a toe.  It took me probably 4 hours to knit just this little bit and I'm pretty sure size 0 needles and I will never be close friends.  I followed Wendy's suggested needles size just for sake of the learning and found that I knit very tight:  the toe is too small.  I pretty much planned on ripping it out anyway and it means I can start again with larger needles.  Size two needles will seem huge in comparison.  The second start of the toe will probably take me half the time (at least in part because I won't be using toothpicks) and when I finish the toe again, I'll understand short rows and how they work.  They're pretty cool, actually.  If you want to see Wendy's directions for short-row toes, I found them here.

I also did some spinning of the Midnight roving.  I should be finished with the last of the roving tomorrow.  The plying will take me at least two hours so I expect I won't get to that until Tuesday night.  I'm eager to start my toe again.  Who knows, I might even turn the heel by the weekend.

While typing this post, Seli, who was on the bed, took up residence here.  That's my pillow!

Bits and pieces

No project picture tonight.  I'm still spinning the first 4 oz. of Midnight roving and I'll finish that tomorrow night.  Saturday my friend Rita (the giver of my spinning wheel - thanks, Rita!) is coming for a spinning and knitting day.  She's taking a lace knitting class and I can't wait to see what's she's making.  And I can't wait for her to see all the yarn I've made.  Sometimes I still can't believe I've taken to spinning so well.

One thing I never counted on when I started spinning was the fuzz.  There are little bits of unspun wool all over my condo.  It's everywhere!  It's on my clothes, on the couch, the rug, the fleece blankets Seli and I use on the couch.  I get to work and find it stuck to my pants or my knitting bag.  I find annoying little strands in my mouth or my eye.  I would need to vacuum at least once a day to keep it in check.  Those of you who know me know I don't vacuum anywhere close to that.  So... I pick off a lot of fuzz.

This is where Seli is most of the time.  Fortunately, she doesn't try to "help" me when I'm spinning.  She does, however, think the knitting needles waving near her are there for her benefit and she's constantly trying to scratch her chops on them.  Silly kitty!

Midnight single

As promised, the first bobbin of singles from the Midnight Hour roving.  This roving is a little bit tougher to spin thin than other Merino I've tried.  It seems to slip a little too easily sometimes and I end up with too thin a spin.  Still, it's beautiful.

I received my latest order of sock yarn from The Loopy Ewe today.  Yet more beautiful yarn to add to my stash.  More yarn to taunt me in my ignorance of sock knitting.  It got me thinking:  why not start a top-down sock and just stop when I get to the heel.  I certainly can do a simple ribbed cuff and the part above the heel I can do in simple knitting.  Brilliant!!  Unfortunately, while I have a great toe-up pattern, I found I didn't have a simple top-down pattern that called for any of the fingering weight sock yarn I have amassed.  Bummer.  I spent the rest of the night working on my scarf and started a second ball of yarn.  Tomorrow I'll search the vastness of the Net for a simple sock pattern.  I predict being hip-deep in partially knitted socks within a month.  Well, knee-deep maybe.  I'm not the fastest knitter off the block just yet.

Midnight Hour roving

Another roving from Crown Mountain, this time in the Midnight Hour colorway, is my current spinning project:  8 oz. of incredibly soft superwash Merino.  I started it but didn't get much spun tonight.  Mondays I have a very hard time adjusting from the weekend to another work week so by the time I get home at the end of the day I'm pretty pooped.  I don't doubt most everyone can relate to that.  So, with that, I'm calling it a night.  I promise I'll be more energetic tomorrow.

Vegetable Garden yarn

This was my biggest spinning project yet.  It took almost two hours just to ply and I ended up with about 300 yards of beautiful yarn.  Between this and my Royalty yarn, I'm starting to think no matter how bad the roving looks, the plied yarn will always look great.  The VG yarn is almost all worsted weight.  I was hoping it would be thin enough to knit socks but it looks like it's still going to be too thick.  Well, too thick for socks just to be worn with a pair of shoes.  I have no idea how people spin thin enough singles to ply into fingering or sport weight yarn.  If anyone knows how, some tips would be appreciated.  I'll have to try to knit with the single and see how that works.

I discovered a few weeks ago, and remembered when my yarn was drying, that I Iove the smell of wet wool.  There's something warm and earthy about the scent.  It's probably what sheep smell like but I don't recall ever being up close and personal with a sheep.

In dealing with my problem of not diluting my dye stock solutions enough, Georgia of Yarn Pirate suggested I get the book The Dyer's Companion.  It was exactly what I was looking for.  Thanks, Georgia!  I have all these ideas for colorways I want to try and the book will help me get them out of my head and onto some wool.  But first I'm going to have to do a lot of experimenting.

Vegetable Garden singles

I finished the last of the first 4 oz. of VG roving.  I can't wait until the second roving is spun so I can ply.  Judging by the singles above, this is going to be a beautiful yarn.  The rest of this evening I spent knitting my scarf.  I needed a bit of a break from spinning and I realized if I didn't spend some time on my scarf, it would take me 6 months to finish the darn thing.  My spinning has gotten so fine, between the pre-drafting and the spinning, I probably spent 6 or more hours on the above singles.  I'll have more to show by the end of the weekend.

It's starting to grow on me

This colorway is starting to grow on me.  The photo above is pretty close to the true colors.  On my monitor anyway, the purple looks purple instead of blue.  I kind of wish I'd spun up and plied the rest to make a bigger skein.  Hmm, I may have to revisit this colorway some time in the future.

I spent most of this evening spinning up the Vegetable Garden roving.  I dyed about 8 oz. and I'm almost done spinning the first 4 oz.  I'm spinning my finest yet so it's taking me a long time.  I think once it's plied it may be fine enough and I may have enough yardage to knit a pair of socks.  I'll post pictures of the first set of singles tomorrow.  Then I start on the second 4 oz.  I should be ready to ply sometime Saturday.  There's a company called Crown Mountain (I bought the Happy Together roving from them) that sells skeins of handspun sock yarn.  I don't know how they do it.  It's taken me hours to spin half of the wool.  How do they make a profit on a skein of yarn.  Okay, I know I'm new at spinning.  I would love to have a spinning lesson from one of their spinners.

This is 4 oz. of Superwash Merino roving I dyed in the crock pot.  With this method, there's very little control over how the wool will dye so it's always exciting to lift the lid and see how the colors blended while cooking.  I'm still learning at this method, too.  A good deal of the wool in the middle is still white because the dye didn't move into the center.  Am I putting too much wool in the cooker?   I'll have to fiddle with it more next time I try it.  I'm starting to get bored with primary and secondary colors.  The real fun in dyeing is mixing colors.  In my blue/green roving, also dyed in the crock pot, I squirted some green dye over the blue and it mixed into a beautiful blue-green color that I want to try and reproduce.  I'm going to have to buy more wool soon.