Fledgling Spinner

So I have been really lazy lately. Lethargic. No real new spinning or knitting since Christmas. I have been very active though. Passively. We found out around Christmastime that we are expecting our first munchkin and are now embarking on BellyWatch 2010. We got to hear the heartbeat for the first time this week and hubby was able to catch some of it on his phone. There are definite heartbeats at the beginning and the end, interrupted by my non-stop giggling that jiggled the doppler. For now, this is the best impression of what the belly bean is up to:

I am fortunate to have a visitor coming soon, one who will explore the world of felting with me. Despite its popularity, I have never really dabbled in felting but was nearly immediately stuck with an idea for an experiment. A year ago, Interweave had this unusual pattern for bags, the Ravelry folk can follow this link – Dumpling Bags. Basically, it looked like a round bag once felted and I thought a quick bit of red eyecord to capture the idea of the optic nerve and a few needle felted pieces for veins post-wash, and it would look just like an eyeball. So I set about with my Patons scraps to felt an eye for carry oddments.

I played in the stash for color scraps and basically knit this monster without buying anything new. Even though the pattern calls for size 13 circular needles and double pointed, I only had straights and improvised. This was, after all, just an experiment. And here is the giantess eye prior to felting:

The pattern also calls for a couple of lucite rings to act as closures on the bit of I-cord at the end. I skipped that too! Apparently I also overlooked one more thing: the green iris yarn wasn’t wool.

When I plucked the eye from the washer I was so tickled at my first felted object I nearly overlooked the fact that one row was loose and….NOT FELTED!!

I was sure it was wool. I just never tested it…..to make sure. But! You can teach an old knitter new tricks. I am making it again and this time I might buy the circular when I go to buy green or blue yarn. Stay tuned.

I might have already mentioned, but I know myself and my craftitis pretty well. When I wanted to learn how to spin I bought a copy of this book and tried the “first spinning” techniques suggested in the book. I got a hooked piece of a clothes hanger…the wire ones. I just made a tangled worm of roving. I tried a dowel and CD contraption and ended up with rubber grommets all over the garage trying to get them over the dowel.

Somewhere between off-center cup hooks and twirling fiber in my hands, I got a small bonus and decided that if I liked spinning, I would want a wheel. If I was really bad at it or hated it, the Ashford Traditional tends to hold value enough to find it a new home…

I have never tried the drop spindle until this past Saturday. My mom, the original craft loving enabler constant support of my hand crafts sent me two drop spindles in a goody bag with my visiting sibling:

I must admit – not as tedious or frustrating as I feared! I translated the drafting techniques I am trying to practice and manage some decently even singles on both. The Ashford top whorl on the left holds practice wool of unknown origin. The lovely dark wood spindle has a  50/50 merino & soysilk blend that is a bit too fast for my fingers at my present learning curve, but I love the colors. This roving is from SugarBee Art & Fiber Studios and I found it in She Sells Yarn, my nearest LYS..

I can’t decide if the dark wood spindle is a top whorl on account of the notch/turning details on the end of the shaft. However, there is a hook on the same side as the whorl.

New toys need new homes so I repurposed what I would consider a modern day “train case” for makeup. Those square bags are cute, but I love the rigidity of this MIL b-day gift. Plus there is a wee pocket for my cell phone or scissors.

I knit a little more on my Sideways Spencer, practicing my first I-cord bind off. I still need to do the button band and collar, but after that I can move along and block it….if I am not too busy spinning.

My progress on the Very Tall Socks is not what I hoped, but nonetheless they are progressing. I am also about halfway through my Sideways Spencer.

Unfortunately, I am not sure about either one. The quietly deflated skein attached to the sock suggests to me that I may not make it all the way to the toe without running precariously low on fiber.

The sweater isn’t ready for its close up but investigations on Ravelry suggest to me that it may have been a too small choice. Is it possible to be bitten by a knitting pessimist bug?

Is it too soon to cast on something else instead?

It always seems like there is a universal joke in which all patterns have gauge to show you what you should do, and hardly any knitters actually test with a swatch first. I have maybe three or four swatches for every dozen things that get cast on. Like most people (I imagine….or I could just be projecting on the needlework masses) I kinda measure when I have knit on a piece for a while or if something appears to be going hideously wrong.

So it is with the hopes of the magic of knitting and yarns that I keep my fingers crossed that the Very Tall Socks I cast on which are written in a pattern for worsted will work in the fingering I am actually knitting them in. I have done several rows already and put them on waste yarn once to see how they fit…..just in case.

In other size news, I have also been playing with some 7mm drop stitch markers….something which required some tiny hand/eye coordination to get miniature stitch markers. I think they worked out okay – I still love the brains the best.

Those are Size 2 needles, for reference.

I also broke down and pre-drafted some of “Vatican”, I couldn’t help myself. I still haven’t given the Merletto Mitts to the intended wearer, but I figured they might motivate me to make my own.

Halloween knitting somehow feels more appropriate with the yarn I spun from the Knit Witch roving. I am embarking on a small lace project and loving that the colors in the yarn worked out just like my handspun sample. Here’s to hoping I can draft the next one just as well. For now, I am trying to put aside that strong desire to see what “Vatican” roving looks like spun up. I might finish one half of this project and then reward myself…..a wee treat with a spinning trick or two.

I have been playing with Ravelry far more than is likely healthy. It is kind of like an accomplishment to list all of the knitting projects I have on hand. However, there are far too many knitting skeletons that come out of the yarn stash too. The green sweater front and back are just one of the projects that haunt me. The other is a blanket I have been meaning to do for a few years now. Every time I think about it I remember how scratchy and unyielding the wool is. If having good “hand” is what one says when a yarn feels good and soft and pleasant to knit than I would say that the basic workhorse yarn I made the pieces from is not only possesed of bad hand, I would say it has foot. Dry, old, cracked heel foot.

But I digress – I have knit so many pieces that it would be impossible – nay – sacrilege to frog. It also looks mighty handsome in the images I snapped this afternoon so I could add it to the Ravelry pile, thus guilting myself towards eventual completion (hopefully).

Oh – and I finished my Spring Forward socks finally.

Note the mosquito bite – Florida can be cruel…even in October/November.

Sometimes you know your knitting has gone horribly wrong. You can check gauge (or wing it), you can understand the pattern and have no issues with it, but still – there it is…..unfinished in the stash. I present to you my wrongness, all two years, several donegal tweed skeins, and three to four sewn-seam jobs later:

It isn’t really ugly, the sleeves are only slightly longer than I would like. It’s just wrong. I can’t put my finger on what I hate about the neck opening on my frame. It isn’t a bad design, just not what I imagined when I saw the picture. It is this pattern from a Vogue knitting magazine. They don’t even have it where I could find it on their website anymore, hence the Ravelry link.

So I am consigning this sweater to the frog pond as I believe it is called. I am ready to rip it out and try something else, because despite the two or three weeks I spent knitting it, and the fact that the cables turned out rather lucious, and regardless of the fact that it is nearly there and might work the eleventh time I sew the twisty front panels, it kinda pissed me off.

Spring cleaning is a quaint notion – I am here to advocate Fall Finishing…mostly for myself. I know it is okay – even encouraged – to have more than one WIP, but that is only acceptable if you have intentions and a finish line in sight. See, there is this really horrible thing that haunts my knitting stash – the Infamous Green Sweater.

This sweater was borne of a desire to have a cable knit sweater, but before I knew about cool yarns and patterns and sleeve styles. (And also those websites and places to find the same) I kinda made it up as I went and knit it from a hideous acrylic and tried to do it as a raglan. Green sweater has tried on many sleeve styles, and none of them fit quite right. When the sleeves have a cable pattern like the ones on the body, they look like military or armored scales. Green sweater wants to be a cable knit with a lovely draped cowl neck like in one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I am sure I haven’t decreased properly….and it won’t work with the sleeves…..

Green sweater might live in the wool box forever unless I make a solid effort to finish all the other projects that I have started in and around it. I will also spin more alpaca.

As surely as one will eventually lament the speed of their needlecraft, one will automatically begin to question their genetic destiny towards things like arthritis and carpal tunnel. I decided that I needed a night off spinning, carding and knitting. I have managed a sweater back in the impossible to remember basketweave pattern and one and a half spools of single ply yarn in the black fleece. I have quietly nursed a desire for a drumcarder to increase my spinning productivity and decided that first I must make the hand carders worth their weight in credit card spending. Although I fear for the overall size of the sweater and wonder at its likely stretchiness and my inability to knit a swatch to check for guage, I also remember the most important thing:

If I finish this sweater and it doesn’t fit Richard, I can always give it to a smaller man for christmas.