Mother and daughter spinning wheels

My current work schedule gives me Sunday and Monday off and has me working a mix of morning and evening shifts the rest of the week. This does not make it easy to find the time and motivation to blog twice a week. I will keep trying, though.

Despite the weird work hours I am getting knitting done. I finished the last pair (for now) of ankle socks but then gave them away before I got a picture of them. D'oh! I'm also about two thirds of the way through my flutter scarf. I promise to take a picture of it tomorrow; it might be finished but it probably won't be blocked.

I did take time, yesterday, to take some pictures of my old Canadian production spinning wheel and my mother's even older Canadian production spinning wheel.
Mine is the one on the right. One of these days I will do a proper post about these wheels. They are fantastic machines. I really want to find the time to figure out their dimensions and ratios. Until then I will just say that there is a good reason that this was the wheel that I packed up and moved across country with me, despite the fact that it is much larger and less collapsible than the Lendrum that I parted with. To spin on a CPW is to never want to not spin on a CPW.

200th post

My second post of the week, like my first post of the week, is mostly socks. I've finished the pair of ankle socks I was making with my leftovers from the Monkey Rooster socks.
I used a short row heel for these socks. I discovered that I prefer the fit of heel flaps to the short row heels on these short socks. I find the short row heels cause the back of the sock to ride a bit too low.

So for my next pair I went back to heel flaps:
I used some Trekking leftovers for these and let the self striping yarn make them look interesting. My next pair will be knit out of a solid coloured Opal yarn so I'm going to knit them in the Monkey lace pattern to make things interesting. After they are finished I may take a break from ankle socks for a while.

Also on my needles is a nice straight forward lace project, the Flutter scarf:
I'm using the leftover Habu silk laceweight from my first lace project, the Icarus shawl. It should make a lovely scarf. It will have to wait until I finish this last pair of ankle socks, though...

Still more socks

Here I was thinking it had been a couple of weeks since I last blogged and that I should get back to it only to discover that it has been more than a month. When I think back to all of the things I planned to share I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. From now on, though, I fully intned to blog at least twice a week. With any luck this will also motivate me to knit more than just plain mindless socks.

When last I blogged I was half way through a pair of Wanidas. After I finished the second of the pair (which I still haven't photographed) I cast on for a pair of Rick socks from the same book.

This pattern makes a beautiful pair of socks (again, only one of which I have managed to photograph). All of the twisted stitching make it a more time consuming knit but well worth the effort.

The Rick, Wanida and Grey and Blue Monkey socks were given to my mother for her birthday. I managed to finish the Rick pair the night before her birthday, much to my relief. I was also relieved that she hadn't guessed that the socks that I was knitting and she was admiring were in fact for her. So you can blame at least some of my lack of blogging on my mother.

The next pair of socks on my needles was another pair of Monkeys. These were comissioned by my mother for one of her friends. They are knit mostly out of Kroy sock yarn, but since I ran out before the end of the second sock I had to employ another bit of stash yarn. Had I been making these for myself I would have ripped out the first toe and knit it to match. My mother has an odd penchant for asymmetry so the socks don't match. I've been thinking of these as my 'toe the line' monkey socks.
Lest one get the impression that all of my sock knitting was for gifts, here are a couple of pairs of ankle socks I have been working on (one pair finished and one half done):
Since I am wearing shorts at work a lot I decided that ankle socks would come in very handy. Of course, since I finished the first pair the weather has become cooler and I have been wearing pants and full sized socks but the theory is otherwise sound. By the end of the summer I hope to have quite the collection of stash busting ankle socks (just in time for winter).

Socks, socks and more socks

Having not done a lot of knitting in the past couple of months, I am now on a sock knitting jag. It started with the pair of Monkey socks I cast on at the end of the month. I chose to knit them because I was in need of a pattern I could knit easily and I had some stripy yarn in my stash that I thought would work well. I'm quite happy with the result as is my mother who has claimed them for herself.

I planned to follow the pattern as written but I forgot a couple of the plain knitting rows in the pattern. I didn't feel like ripping back so I knit both socks with a slightly compressed lace pattern. They are knit out of the Austermann Step sock yarn that contains Aloe and jojoba. It is nice soft yarn but it makes my nose run when I knit with it so I don't think I will be buying more of it.

I finished the Monkey socks on the fourth and immediately cast on for a pair of Angee socks from Cookie A's new book. I used the Louet Gems yarn that didn't work for the Intertwined Leaves socks and a 2.5 mm set of needles. I'm much happier with how the yarn worked with this pattern. I still found the fabric a bit loose and when I knit with this yarn in the future I will try to remember to go down to a 2.25 mm needle for the heel and sole of the sock.

I was far enough into the foot of the sock when I realized I wanted the fabric a bit tighter that I didn't want to rip back. Since the yarn is super wash I simply put the finished sock in the dryer for a little bit and that tightened everything up just enough.

I finished the Angee socks on the seventh and the next day I cast on for the Wanida socks from the same book. By tomorrow I should have the pair finished. I hope the next picture I take captures the colour of the yarn better. It is Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra in Pumpkin, though I find the colour much more coppery in person. It has a lovely shine that is really hard to photograph.

The Wanida pattern is a much quicker knit than the Angee but that might be in part because I have already knit a pair. In fact I knit the pair that appears in the book.

The sample knitting was fun and the fact that a pair of socks I knit appears in a book makes me happy. It doesn't hurt that I also get my name in the acknowledgments. I would jump at the chance to sample knit again.

Finally, while I am on the topic of socks, I should share a pair of socks that I knit just before my life got turned upside down. I knit these out of yarn I spun up back in October of 2007 (and blogged about in November 2007). Since I only had 200 yards, I knit them toe up and finished them with a picot edge. They fit much better than my first pair of handspun socks and I only wish I had had more yarn. Still, having ankle socks can be quite useful in the warmer months.

Stress relief

There's still time for another blog post before May turns into June (!!!). In keeping with the end of the month I have the end of a project to share. Unfortunately it is not a finished object but a frogged object. I'm trying to avoid thinking about the theme of unraveling.

I originally cast on the Interlocking Leaves sock pattern on April 22 using 2.5 mm needles. I found the fabric a bit too loose so I ripped out and started again with 2.25 mm needles. The fabric was perhaps a bit too dense but I persevered during the times I felt like knitting. I got the lace pattern more or less memorized and I started to make actual progress.
At this point I stopped and tried it on only to discover that the heel was uncomfortably tight. I could have just ripped back and reknit the heel but I wasn't happy enough with how it was turning out to make that worthwhile. As of this evening the sock has been frogged.

I still really like this pattern and would like to knit a pair of socks from it. First I need to find another sock yarn (I was using Louet's Gems super fine.) Then I need to find another pattern to use with this sock yarn.

In the meantime I have cast on for a pair of Monkeys in one of my stash yarns. I think I can handle Monkeys. Maybe casting on will act as some sympathetic magic to help me find and start a new job.

Maybe I should also cast on some lace, and maybe a sweater,...

I should have been blogging

May is almost over and I don't want the whole month to disappear without a single post. It has been a very eventful couple of months since last I blogged. I kept meaning to blog but I was too caught up in what I was doing to sit down and type about it.

The first thing I should have blogged was my return to crochet. I learned to crochet when I was 12 or 13 but never learned to follow patterns. Mostly I made slouchy hats following my mother's instructions.

Early April found me wanting to learn how to make one of the many wonderful hexagon blankets to be found on Ravelry. I tracked down the great instructions on attic24 and re-familiarized myself with the names of the stitches. After a couple of mistakes I had the hang of it. I practiced with leftover yarn I had and was completely hooked (pun intended?)
I've got a small pile of hexagons started using leftover bits of my hand spun. I especially love how hand spun singles and crochet mix to produce shapes with lovely drape. Branching out I also found simple instructions for granny squares and started making them with hand spun too.

I should also have blogged my adventures in woolen spinning. I recently bought some hand cards and I finally sat down and started making rolags. I'd done a bit of long draw spinning with some commercial Shetland roving but I'd never tried with hand carded rolags. My first attempt was with some old fleece my mother passed on to me. I eventually made it into a bulky three ply to hide some of the unevenness that comes with learning a new technique.
I kept practicing with various bits of fleece and left over roving and I now feel quite comfortable spinning this way. I also feel comfortable doing some colour blending with the handcards. I also tried spinning cotton from a rolag with some success.

The crochet and woolen spinning all took place in early and mid April. At the end of April Ken and I broke up and I moved back to Regina. I found new homes for my Lendrum and the old non-functional spinning wheel but packed my old Production wheel. Most of my stash is now stashed in with my boxes of books and other possessions. But I have my spinning wheel and spindles out where I can use them regularly. I find spinning to be a relaxing and calming thing to do while I try to find a new job and place to live.

The last week or so I've been practicing spinning on my top whorl Forrester spindle. I've now got the hang of rolling it off my thigh for speed and I've been spinning lace weight pretty consistently. My favorite result so far is a silk single and a merino single plied together. I don't have much of it but I'm sure I will find something nice to do with it.
So that's what I've been up to in the last two months. Fingers crossed that things settle down and I can find a job, unpack my stash and get knitting again.

Sweater pictures

So apparently it takes me as long to get around to photographing a sweater as it does for me to knit it. Last Thursday I finished the last of the knitting on my handspun yoke sweater and now I finally have pictures to share:

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, though it is a bit loose in the yoke at the back. I was worried that it wouldn't have as much ease as I wanted but it relaxed when I washed it and now it fits just as I wanted. I'm glad I washed my gauge swatch else this sweater would have been much too large.

While I'm at it I should share some pictures of my Juno sweater:


It is the leftovers of this sweater that went into the body of the yoke sweater. I finished it at the end of January but only took pictures of it today. Sigh.

Maybe now I'll get around to finishing and photographing my Tempest.