Fledgling Spinner

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 still haven’t wrapped my head around how much yarn is a good amount from roving. I would imagine it depends on how consistent and large around your singles are….then the number of ply can eat up a goodly amount of yardage. I have never wrapped my finished yarns around a ruler and am not sure what that would show me anyways…..but I was pretty thrilled by my progress with the first braid of Tuscany.

One of these babies is 83 yards and the other is 64 yards, based on the careful, albeit primative, counting done while wrapping them on a niddy noddy off the bobbin. Now I just need to find the right pattern to make what I want out of them, when I am done petting, photographing, and admiring them of course.

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.

The wrapped sweater was much faster to pull to pieces than it was to knit….and somehow more satisfying….like I was conquering a foe.

While I wound the balls of yarn (with a little help from an extra pair of hands), my mind began to wander as I imagined other amazing projects I would make with this yarn. I have decided it is in my best interest to let this rest, however, and am trying to avoid a rebound situation in which I end up with a cabled sweater or cardigan that does nothing for me in an effort to prove my worth as a knitter and the yarn’s worth as a pretty woolen thing.

In other news, I have been having a fierce craving for candy that cannot be purchased in obvious and inexpensive places in sunny Florida. I was honestly considering using one of the sites which sells Canadian candy to try to build a stash of sweets in case I get bit by the bug to have Smarties or Coffee Crisp. This is not a sensation wholly unknown to me and it is usually aided by family visits and subsequently flavors-of-the-homeland. However, sometimes these cravings can be so violent and nagging that hours of conversions and contemplating the merits of internet candy orders will fill the time until it fades. This house was blessed with a keen eye at the grocery store which led to a surprise:

Yum.

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.

I have been “spinning” for over a year now. I cannot say that I have accomplished much. I can honestly tell you that I retain the fledgling part of my name. What I have learned is to just go with my gut…….and assume that if it was really that hard, all those people who developed it independently across the globe, well, wouldn’t have.

Basically, I press the treadle on the wheel and let the fibers go when I think they have whirled around on each other enough to not fall apart completely. I like to imagine there is instinct for this. Planning helps too. If I pull apart the fibers in a long strand (so-called pre-drafting) then it is already mostly there…..they just need the twist and a little help pulling apart along the thick bits.

The first full spindles of single ply fiber are so rewarding. It has all the potential wound up in there. There are no final ply issues or yardage concerns but the whole color palette of the fiber is laid out, plain as day. Singles are terribly romantic to look at. I think that this roving suits the color on the wheel very nicely.

I have not been spinner only – my spouse has also helped me to properly merchandise my latest etsy products. He created an amazing wee box for Caution: Live Yarns!

So I recently ordered some delightful dyed superwash and it arrived yesterday. The colors were even better in person!

KnitWitch Roving

They are the “Tuscany” and “Vatican” colors from the Knit Witch’s shop. I saw the Knit Witch at SAFF last year and loved the sock yarn I bought, so I have been coveting more of her things since then. So fate was kind enough to step in and make me the lucky winner in a random drawing for a gift certificate to her shop!

So confession time – after the alpaca I have spun (I am almost done with the third fleece – the fawn colored one),  the Louet merino silk bag I spun up (pictures coming soon), some merino/silk roving my mom gave me that started the whole “want to learn to spin” thing in the first place (yes, those pictures coming soon too!) and a couple of random samples and one BFL braid from SAFF, I have never actually knit with any of my finished yarn.

There. I said it.

I am so scared that:

- whatever I make will fall apart if my spun yarn turns out to be subpar.

-  that I will run out of wool for the project and can’t get more of it.

- that the yarn will split and be awful

I am also reluctant to part with the cuteness of the finished skeins!

Last night I changed all of that. The rovings were so yummy that I put what I have learned thus far into play.

1. Break off a manageable length of roving.

2. Split it lengthwise to a workable thickness.

3. Predraft the fibers, being careful not to pull them apart.

(that’s the spinning “predrafteddon’tmesswiththis” basket)

4. Relax and spin, being careful to test it to make sure it won’t break.

5. Stop before you get too into spinning the singles.

6. Navajo ply a sample because you remember somewhere reading that a three-ply was good for socks. Oh, and it is supposed to preserve color changes a little better?

7. Wind off the bobbin. Make a skein. Knit on needles……

I am the happiest spinner, ever.

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.