Adventures with singles

No, not that kind of singles.

I have wanted to spin and knit with singles for a long time, especially with Citron. There are so many beautiful handspun Citron knitted with singles on Ravelry that I am really tempted to try. But then I have heard horror stories about working with low-twist singles. They are unstable. They untwist; they bias and so on and so forth. It seems spinners have had a love/hate relationship with singles forever. It's not until the issue was much discussed in the Snobby Spinners group on Ravelry and an article by the venerable Judith MacKenzie McCuin in the latest issue of Spin Off magazine about spinning and knitting with singles that I decided to take the plunge.

The secret to achieving the perfect singles, it seems, is in fulling it! That is to say you spin a low-twist singles. Then you plunge the yarn in hot, then cold water. Then comes the fun part. You beat it a few times! Just whack it against the side of your bath tub if you are doing this in your bathroom or in my case on the countertop in the kitchen. Here is a pictorial:


The roving: Corgi Hill Farm's merino-camel-silk roving. Gorgeous.

Singles spun-up just off the bobbin. Pardon the off-color pic. You get the idea of how twisted and kinky it was:

Into a hot and cold bath it went. Then a few more "twacking" against the countertop. Voila. The magic happened:

Perfect, balanced singles!

Here's a swatch for Citron:

And four ounces of roving will give me plenty of yardage. Yippee!!!

Hydrangea shawl

Proudly present:

The Hydrangea Shawl.

Handspun from eight ounces of Pagewood Farm merino roving. Two ply 12 wraps per inch.

Pattern: Faraway, so close

Couldn't be prettier than this!

Whirring away

I just can't stop.

More eye candy. I finished the Apollo and Starbuck roving that I got from Woolen Mill St. Yarns. Here are the roving and the singles:


And now the finished product:

I ended up Navajo-plying it. I didn't want to at first because I wanted a fingering-weight yarn. But when I started two-plying I saw right away that I was going to get too much barber-poling that it was going to be too muddy for my liking. Navajo-plied it was. As a result I got a thicker yarn -- about 12 wraps per inch making more of a sport/DK weight and less yardage out of the eight-ounce roving. I think I have less than 400 yards. Now the search for the perfect scarf pattern begins.

In the meantime I am plodding along with the Pagewood shawl. Almost done. It is turning out very pretty.

I am not going to have enough yarn for the third drop-stitch section the pattern calls for unless I get another four ounces of roving and spin which I don't want to do. I think it will be big enough with the blocking. I made one small modification.

The changed the second half-linen stitch section to the texture stitch instead.

I am working on the final eging now. It will be the same yarn too instead of a contrasting color as called for in the pattern. Should be done today. Great! Because I can't wait to get this on the wheel:

Eight ounces of falkland roving custom-dyed for me by Diana of Fiber Fancy.

Denim and grey. Two of my most favorite colors. I have never spun falkland before but it is really soft and squishy. I can't wait.

Eye candy Monday

More spinning fun!
I have been spinning, spinning and spinning!

This is Spunky Eclectric superwash merino roving that has been in my stash for some time. The colorway is the perfect storm which I think is a misnomber. It is really pastel and very springy to me. I have 8 ouncs of this and spun up two ounces and Navajo-plied it to keep the color:

About 14 wraps per inch. More than fingering but thinner than sport weight. I think this will be socks.

Then I picked up eight ounces of very pretty merino from Pagewood Farm at my LYS, Uniquities:

This one I did a regular two-ply. I got about 350 yards out of a 4-ounce braid. Because it is not superwash it blooms quite a bit when washed to set the twists. I started a shawl from it:

This is my version of the Faraway, So Close shawl. I am modifying it a little bit. First off the pattern calls for worsted-weight yarn. I am knitting this is a sport/dk yarn so it will come out smaller. It is going really well.

nother in the making is a merino/silk blend from Tempted Yarns that I got from the Loopy Ewe:

I am on a spinning roll. I picked up more roving from Uniquities because I have a birthday coming up and on your birthday you get a percentage off equal to half of your age! So I got -- yep -- 25% off. How could I resist?
Here is the loot:

Top are again Pagewood Farm. The bottom two are superwash Blue-faced Leicester roving from Spirit Trail Fiberworks. I will spin and knit a scarf for Carl, probably Henry. Or some other herringbone scarf.

The last of my roving adventure has not ended there. I made a mistake of roaming the Etsy site. This just jumped into my cart and onto the wheel so fast!

I was super careful stripping the roving and spinning it because I really want to keep the color and minimize the barbar-poling yet I do not want to Navajo-ply it. I think I achieved that with the first braid. I am spinning up the second braid now. I am still debating whether I should Navajo ply it to keep the colors together. I do not want a three-ply yarn. We'll see.

In the meantime I need to finish this pair of socks:

Loksins! In Skinny Bugga

I want to finish these so I can free up the needles so I can try toe-up socks.

I need more time to spin and knit. If only work wouldn't get in the way...

More spinning fun

And more blues, of course.

Remember the blue roving and spun yarn I dyed in the same pot?

I finally spun up the roving. I manhandled the roving too much in the dye pot and it got a little matted so drafting was a little difficult and the resulting singles were not too uniformed. It's so interesting and very educational, thoug, how exactly the same amount of roving, dyed at the same time, turned out quite differently.

It is really a learning process. I have about four ounces of each. I think I will make Andrea's Shawl from it.

I also dyed two skein of sock yarn. One was done using Wilton food coloring colors. I was experimenting the the kettle dyeing method. Not bad.

The other skein was painted. I probably could have done the immersion dyeing and gotten the same result than the time-consuming painting it. On well, as I said before it is a learning process.

I like this one a lot.

And two more roving -- a corriedale and a cormo -- dip-dyed with Gaywool acid dyes.

Do you think I have a prolem with the color blue?

I am getting a head start

Let's see if I can keep this up.

Hey, I've got the first of the 2010 Christmas gifts done!

I decided this year I am going to give give of not only handknits, but handknits from handspun! How ambitious can that be.

Well, I am getting off on a good start.

Here is the fiber from the Yarn Side.


It's four ounces of 80% merino/20% cashmere roving that was just a dream to spin with. It took me no time at all to spin it up. I Navajo-plied it to keep the colors as intense as I could and to minimize barber-poling. It still barber-poled, but I was quite pleased with the yarn I got:

Only then did I realize that because I was doing the Navajo plying -- in essence three-plying the singles -- I ended up with much less yardage than expected! Well, what I got was about 120 yards of worsted-weight (12 wraps per inch) of absolute beauty and softness.

Now what to knit with it. I wanted something simple that would show off the beauty of the yarn. I spent hours perusing Ravelry and finally came up with this:

The Birthday Cowl.

Four stitches per inch on #10 needles. Cast on 77 stitches. I have about three yards of the yarn left. Perfect.

One gift down. How many more to go? I am on a roll!

An experiment in dyeing

A couple of weeks ago I took a synthetic dyeing class at the Mannings, a knitting, spinning, weaving shop and school in East Berlin, PA, just outside of Gettysburg. I learned how to use synthetic dye to dye yarn and roving. There are several methods -- immersion, dip-dyeing, painting. It was a lot of fun. It was amazing how a little bit of dye, vinegar and heat can transform a skein of yarn into some colorful hand-painted skein you could be paying top dollars for.

I decided to apply the knowledge I learned to my handspun and roving. I wanted to see how different dyeing spun yarn and dyeing roving and then spinning it would make. So I started with a skein of merino yarn I spun and the same roving.

After soaking both the yarn and the roving in a vinegar bath, I dunk both in the pot on the stove and pour in the dyes. I was using Gaywool dye colors Indigo and Cornflower.

I let the yarn and the roving simmer in the pot for about a half hour then turn off the heat and let them cool. Then I dumped out the wet matted blue wool in the sink:

Several hours later after they dried:

The roving is more verigated than the yarn. The yarn is more semi-solid. I think it was because the dye striked the roving more unevenly. I will spin it up and see what it looks like plied. More fun to come!

Blue

You can never have enough blues...

Honestly.

Have you seen the latest issue of House Beautiful magazine? It's called "all about blue." That's my next house. I am saving the copy.


In the meantime I am making all the necessary accessories:

A pair of blue socks:

This is Skinny Bugga! sock yarn in the colorway Blue Metalmark. The pattern is Loksins socks.

To go with a blue shrug/cardigan for the upcoming spring --if it ever gets here:

After the intensity of the cables of the Ravelympics cardigan I decided a plain stockinette would be a nice and easy knit, so I cast on the Whisper Cardigan in Madelinetosh Merino Light in denim colorway.

And to complete the blue package I picked up the Swallowtail Shawl that has been languishing in stash for some time.

The first part is now finished. I am on the border now, with the infamous Nupps... Can you spot one?

I did it!

GOLD

And I couldn't be happier.

Seventeen days from cast on to bind off.

Pattern: Fiona Ellis' Gathering Intentions from the book Cables Untangled, with modifications.

Yarn: Have You Any Wool Luxe Worsted, 7 skeins

Needles: size 7

I have about three yards of yarn left.

It's blue; it's cable; it fits.

What more can I ask for?

Another gold medal, of course!

Five days to go

Will I make it?

The back and the two fronts are done and blocking.

And I am half way up the sleeves.

I think I can! I think I can! I think I can!

First medal

I just had to make this.

I had to stop my Olympic sweater and knitted this hat:

This is the hat that the US atheletes wore on the opening night. It was designed by Ralph Lauren and sold for $69. Well, they were sold out within minutes after the ceremony.

No sweat for us knitters. One knitter charted the pattern and posted it on Ravelry for free. Need I say more.

It looks a little dorky, but I just had to make it.
Now back to the project...

Day Four

Moving right along.

I finished the back of my Ravelympics Intentions! yesterday:

This is really fun knitting. It is eating yarn like crazy though. I used more than two skeins (370 yards) already for the back. Good thing I have another skein coming from the dyer (Have You Any Wool).

Now on the the fronts. This is where the real challenge begins. I am alternating skeins throughout the project. I was going to knit both fronts at the same time but juggling four skeins at once might not be a great idea. One at a time.

On to day four.

A sweater worthy of the Olympics!

How many days does it take to knit a sweater?

I hope 17 days. As long as the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

I am taking up a challenge organized by the knitting communiy Ravelry called Ravelympics. It is simply a knitting olympics. You pick a pattern. You cast on as the Games open and you finish before the flames go out.

Sounds like a piece of cake, right?


But this is the Olympics. You don't do something simple. You challenge yourself. You go that extra mile. You push harder.

So I am attempting to knit a sweater in 17 days.


Here is the pattern:

It's called Gathering Intentions by Fiona Ellis in her book Inspired Cabled Knits.

I am knitting it with Have You Any Wool Lux Worsted yarn in colorway lone star. You can swatch to get gauge before the event started.

I got gauge on size 7 needles. Perfect.

But this is the Olympics. You just don't follow the set pattern. You challenge yourself. You go that extra mile!

So I am making some moderations to the pattern. First I am making it into a cardigan. With a zipper.

Then I added two inches ribbing to give it a finished look.

I am also mirroring the side cables.

So far so good. Here is how far I got on day two:

285 yards knitted. Moving right along.

Back to the needles now. Cheer me on!