I listened to the latest Yarnspinners tales podcast, and she encourages spinners to issue themselves an Olympic spinners’ challenge (most knit blog readers probably know about the Yarn Harlot’s immortal knitting olympics, which, as far as I know, will not take place this year but only at the next winter Olympics in 2010). The Olympic games will take place from 8-24 August. I’ve decided that my challenge will be to spin up one of the packages from the Fyberspates fibre club. They are about 4 oz each, and my choices so far (by the start of the Games I’ll have received one more) are:

(Supersorted Shetland on the left, superwash merino on the right).

This doesn’t sound like much, but the explanation is that the days of the Olympic Games, 8-24 August, will be the busiest period of my life for several years. I will move into a new home and start a new job. If I manage to spin anything at all, let alone 4 oz, it will be a pretty good indication of how important this new hobby is to me. If I do manage to meet my challenge, I will consider (gulp!) getting a wheel. Wish me luck. If you do decide to make yourself an Olympic spinning challenge, I’d love to hear from you!

Speaking of spinning, I have a couple of new WIPs:

I started this a little while ago, but haven’t posted a picture before. This is Fyberspates silk hankies in plum and gold, on my Bosworth mini (17 g) in zebrawood. Silk hankies are fully drafted before you spin, and require a great deal of pulling and tugging, much more than I’m used to from wool. The colours in this fibre are absolutely glorious.

This is some carded wool bought at a hobby store when I first started experimenting with spinning. It was natural-coloured, so I dyed with some bags of Kool-Aid grape. I divided the fibre, all 250 grams, into several pieces of different sizes, wet them and put them into different microwave bags. I mixed up different amounts of the Kool-Aid, poured into the different bags, closed them and steamed the packages for 40 minutes. I’m very excited to see what the finished yarn looks like. I’m spinning it on my Bosworth midi in maple using what I think is long draw. Since this is a carded fibre, and the dyeing process compacted the fibre a little, I thought that woollen spinning would suit it nicely.

We went on a drive this weekend. Long drives = excellent knitting time, but because I’m the designated map reader/juice dispenser/peace keeper/CD changer the car is not a good place for my Faroese Shawl (Rav link), so I decided to bust some stash and cast on for a top-down raglan t-shirt using my Idena silk yarn.

Now, because this yarn was purchased when I was a very new knitter, this t-shirt will be called “The three-dyelot t-shirt” (yes, really!). I picked a ball and cast on 100 stitches and knit a couple of rounds the night before and packed the newly-cast-on project in a bag for the drive. Settling into the passenger seat with my map book, my bag of juice bottles and CD stack, I pulled out the project and started knitting. I had knitted several rounds of seed stitch for the neckline before I realised that I had twisted the cast-on row before I joined to knit in the round. I thought I had checked carefully before I joined, but apparently not.

I ripped out and cast on 100 stitches again. Five rounds in, I realised that I had two purl stitches next to each other, and in examining how that came about I realised that I had a) placed two knit stitches next to each other at the beginning, and two purl stitches next to each other in the middle of the round and b) twisted the *%&/”# cast-on row again. This is what makes me wonder if I can even sort this blog post under category “lesson learnt” because apparently, it isn’t.

I cast on 100 stitches again, and started knitting, this time in garter stitch, as I didn’t trust myself to manage seed stitch. By the time we reached our destination, two and a half hours after setting off, I had less knitting done on my project than when we got in the car.

Cara has an interesting post up about the change in the knitblog community. I’m not sure I agree with everything she says (for example, I don’t think blog ring memberships is a good indicator, as I think blog rings are largely a thing of the past), but I don’t think there’s any doubt that Ravelry has changed a lot. For those (like me) who use their blog primarily as a project notebook, Ravelry covers a lot of what we want. I stll like to blog, though, because it gives me an opportunity to write more, and more coherently, about every project, and also about projects that are planned but don’t come to fruition, spinning experiments that don’t necessarily result in stash yarn etc. What do you think? Do you notice a change in the knitting blogosphere?

I’ve blogged before about my newfound love of reds and oranges. When I started spinning, I was immediately drawn to a small box of red, orange and burgundy felting fibre at our local hobby store. I started spinning it up, and in those first few weeks of spinning I managed two small skeins. They had all the problems of first yarns - they were thick and thin, had wiry bits where one single had made very tight coils and had big, unspun slubs. The colour, however, was glorious. I started dreaming about a cowl. A long cowl, long enough to cover my ears and the back of my head in really cold weather. I didn’t have enough yarn, and so, after a couple of months of intensive spinning, I tried to replicate those first skeins of badly spun yarn.

I’d read on the Ravelry spindling forum that it is relatively easy to spin thin on a handspindle, but as you become better, it gets harder and harder to spin thicker and to spin yarn with a variable texture. I won’t pretend it was easy - I had some false starts, where instead of spinning a roughly worsted weight textured yarn I spun a smooth, even fingering (!), but I did manage.

(The successful skein is on the left, the unsuccessful fingering weight one is on the right. The two balls are the nøstepinne-wound skeins from my earliest weeks).

How did I do it? I did several things. I spent some time looking at the overall thickness of my previous yarn, to try to emulate the general weight without copying the structural weaknesses. I realised that my heaviest good spindle was too light, and so went back to my earliest homemade CD spindle. After adding an extra CD, for a total weight of 47 grams, the spinning went very easily. The texture I achieved by letting twist escape into the drafting zone and occasionally pulling fibre from inside the drafting triangle. Not too far inside, because I didn’t want huge slubs, just far enough inside that I didn’t draft an even amount of yarn with every drafted length. When you start doing this, you quickly realise how much the exact placement of your fingers in drafting affects the look of the final yarn. By pulling on the drafting triangle just a couple of millimetres above where I usually would, I got a much more rustic-looking yarn. I think realising this will make it easier for me to achieve a very smooth yarn.

After finishing the spinning, knitting up the cowl was but a couple of days’ work. Knitting with your own handspun is so rewarding. I cast on 71 stitches and knit in 1*1 rib for 29 centimetres, then cast off in rib, twisted the cowl lengthwise and sewed up the side to create a “fake” moebius*. And I love it.

It is warm, soft and stretchy, and will warm both my body and my soul come the long, dark winter. That’s why I call it my antidote cowl (Ravelry link).

*Well, it’s not fake, because the definition of a moebius is a continuous strip that’s twisted 180 degrees so it only has one side, but lovers of Cat Bordhi like to claim that this is not the proper way to knit a moebius.

Having received my nøstepinne the other day, I decided to try to use the plying technique suggested by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts in High Whorling, plying from a nøstepinne.
So you wind your single onto the nøstepinne, scoot the ball up toward the narrow end of the nøstepinne, find the two ends and ply them together.

I had some problems, though. I couldn’t get the inside end to feed out (maybe my nøstepinne doesn’t taper enough?) and so I had to remove the ball from the nøstepinne and ply from that.

I don’t recommend it. The whole thing was messy and frustrating, as the ball was slightly too big to control in one hand, and so bounced around on the floor and got very tangled. All my attempts to untangle it resulted in one - or two - broken singles. It got easier as the ball got smaller, but I won’t do it again.

I was really excited to knit the Baby Surprise Jacket with stripes of pink and dark brown (”pinklate”!). But I should maybe have thought this plan through better.

Yeah. I don’t really like weaving in ends. And, if you’ve ever knit a BSJ, you know that this is a very public edge, so I will need to be very, very careful.

It’s worth it, though. I think the stripes show off the ingenuity of the BSJ pattern far better than the Artyarns Supermerino I used for my previous BSJ.

Does knitting on the playground count?

Partly inspired by Stitch It! Meghan (love that podcast!) I’m reacquainting myself with double-pointed needles. For this pattern, a homemade attempt at a better, easier baby hat, dpns are an advantage. Why baby hat, you ask? I will neither confirm nor deny rumours of a niece-baby to be who may or may not need to be clad in wool from top to toe to be prepared for the Nordic autumn she may or may not be born into (I have watched too much US election coverage recently, thanks for asking).

This thing here, which is actually now off the needles but not put together, is also for the niece-baby:

Experienced knitblog-watchers should have no trouble recognising the pattern. I make no apologies for bandwagon-jumping, though. I made one of these for my own daughter, and it is an excellent piece of baby knitwear. Soft and warm, easy to put on and covers newborns all the way down to the toesie-woesies.

“The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.”

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

I had just finished my first year of university studies, and was trying to find a summer job. I had been living with my boyfriend for a year, and we were planning our very first holiday together.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?

Since I’m writing this on a Saturday, not much. We’ll need to do some grocery shopping today or tomorrow, I want to get a few rows in on my Faroese shawl and I may have made a promise yesterday to make some puritan apple muffins (a recipe of my own devising, which perfectly marries the indulgence of muffins with the healthfulness of apples and Graham flour). We try to do something fun for the kids every weekend day, so we may take a trip to the park or the zoo.

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Chocolate - it has to be milk chocolate, preferably with some sort of biscuit. Recently, I’ve had a craving for salty crackers. It’s hard to find ones with no transfat or other dangerous, artery-clogging additives, but I’ve found a brand that will do, and I scoop up a bag or two whenever I spot those.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

I would buy a dream house and a holiday place, maybe somewhere by the sea, and put away money for retirement and the kids. I would probably take numerous breaks from working (but not give it up altogether!) and pursue whatever hobby or academic interests I had at the time. I’ve been a regular donor to MSF for several years now, and I think I would probably make a large donation to them. I agree with their ethos and working practices. Amnesty International is another organisation I support, and which would benefit from my sudden riches.

5) Places I have lived:

I’ve lived in several countries in Europe, but never outside of Europe. I’d like to, someday.

6) Jobs I have had:

Before I left university, I had worked as a verger(!), waitress (shortlived, as I was repeatedly asked by “gentleman” customers if I was interested in joining them in the loo), substitute teacher, and a secretary. At the moment, I’m a SAHM after several years working in PR and will go back to work soon.

7) Bloggers I am tagging who I will enjoy getting to know better:

Actually, I’ve seen this meme on most of the knitting blogs I really enjoy. If you read this and want to answer, consider yourself tagged.

I’m knitting along on my Faroese shawl, and desperately plying yarn to get a new skein finished before I run out of yarn. But there have been some frustrations. The pattern I’m using is Meg Swansen’s “Yellow Shawl” (Ravelry link) from Shawls and Scarves: Best of Knitter’s Magazine. I like the pattern (although the sample in the book is, imho, knit at the wrong gauge), but holy mackerel, the errata! I was a good little knitter and downloaded the complete set of errata from the publishers, XRX books. I went through it and noted with some irritation that there was errata for both the gusset chart and the written finishing instructions. I copied the charts and made the necessary corrections to my working copies. And then (cue ominous, Hitchcock-like music) I started knitting the pattern rows. On the fifth row of the chart, the problems started. I knit the first half, ended up with one stitch less than necessary and noticed that the whole pattern was off by one stitch. Ripped back and started over. The exact same thing happened. I knit and ripped the same row three times before I gave up and went to bed. The next morning, I decided to go through the errata pages again just on the off chance that the answer lay there. It turns out that XRX books, in their infinite wisdom (*sarcasm*) had decided to split the errata into two sections, one for the first printing and one for the fifth printing. Now, both sections clearly apply to my book, which is from the FOURTH printing. The last section contained the crucial errata for the row I was on - and the following three rows. The other shawl patterns that had errata to their charts had updated charts in the errata, but not the yellow Faroese one, so it was a fair bit of work making sure that my charts reflected the poorly edited written errata. It’s a great pattern, but if you’re dying to knit a Faroese shawl: Find another pattern.

“I really can’t say enough about the pleasure of using your handspun. First you have the enjoyment of creating the yarn and then the satisfaction of turning it into fabric. Using your yarn to create a garment or other article of useful beauty completes the spinning process. Just as a chef needs to taste the dish to see whether the ingredients are in balance, using your yarn will make you a better spinner.”

- Maggie Casey in Start Spinning

Being liberated from the Great White Socks has me all giddy with creative possibilities. The little unassuming skeins of handspun BFL called me, and I’ve cast on for my Faroese shawl. Now, I have nowhere near enough yarn spun up (only about 280 metres so far, and part of that is a very inconsistent sample skein), but I figured that starting the project would give me added incentives to finish the spinning, and also, that knitting with the yarn would let me see if any changes need to be made to the spinning. I’d rather have a shawl with changes in the yarn than a whole shawl with crappy, unsuitable yarn.

My thoughts so far: Mostly, I really, really like this yarn. It is VERY soft and just slightly elastic, and creates a lovely, springy garter stitch fabric. I’m knitting on 4.5 mm needles. I want to spin more consistently, not because I mind the occasional fluffy bits, but the slightly stringy bits are a little too thin and detract from the soft springyness. Also, in the beginning I was very careful to split the fibre to maintain the equal blend of all three colours. I now find that I really like the parts where there are slightly darker and slightly lighter stripes, so I will be less diligent about splitting and predrafting the roving into strips with equal amounts of each colour.

A close-up of one striped section:

Speaking of this picture, can I just say how great nøstepinner are? The centre-pull ball on the right is wound entirely on a nice and heavy ballpoint pen that my husband gets at work. Winding is so easy, and at the end you have a nice, flat-top centre-pull ball, which won’t roll around on the floor. Also, I like that nøstepinne is a Norwegian loan-word into English. Usually, it’s the other way around.