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.

Soon with button bands

Not a great picture but I didn't want to wait for daylight. Today I knit a bottom for the sweater and one button band and then I ripped them out. I took time to take the picture between knitting and ripping.

I decided that I wanted the dark collar to go all the way to the end rather than being interupted by the button bands. I also decided that I wasn't completely crazy about the ribbing I was using for the button bands. Garter stitch seemed like a better fit. Since the bottom of the sweater is also garter stitch I decided to rip it out too and have a nice continuous band of garter stitch with mitered corners.

So now I'm working on reknitting the bottom and button bands. Once that is done I'll rip out the current collar and reknit it so that it meets. Then I will have a finished sweater. Hurray.

Now with sleeves

Well the yoke sweater now has sleeves. It took me a few tries to get the sleeve length and shape right which means I now have a couple of extra ends to tuck in when it is finished. I like them as they are now, though.

I decided to do the cuffs using a size smaller needle and discovered that I do have 5.5 mm DPNs after all, but I don't have 5 mm DPNs. Grr. So I knit the cuffs using the 5.5 mm DPNs and slightly fewer stitches. As a result I knit the stockinette portion of the sleeves flat and the garter portion in the round. In other words I unintentionally made sure I was always purling every second row.

Now I'm planning to pick up stitches for the button bands and the bottom of the sweater. I'm still debating whether I should knit these in 2x2 ribbing or garter. There is also a little voice telling me I should skip the button bands and put a zipper in instead. I'll sleep on it and decide how to finish this sweater in the morning.

A slightly strange sweater

I think I'm finally working on a knitting project whose progress deserves to be blogged about. In fact I've meant to blog about it since I cast on on Thursday but knitting kept getting in the way. Luckily I ran out of yarn and had to search my stash which gave me a good reason to set the knitting down, take some photos and write this blog post.

First a bit of background. When I dyed the Falklands handspun blue I was planning to knit it up into a sweater for Ken. To that end I knit up a striped swatch using the Falklands and some aran weight blue tweedy wool I had left over from knitting my Juno sweater (which still needs to be properly blogged). I liked the swatch but wasn't completely crazy about the stripes. The two yarns worked really well together, though, and it was a great way to use the thicker skein of Falklands.
Bumming around Ravelry I discovered these two sweaters (Ravelry links) and fell in love. I decided to knit myself a yoke sweater with the Faulklands for the yoke and cuffs and the navy tweed for the rest.

I had one problem however; the yarns knit up best on a 5.5 mm needle and although I had two pairs of straight needles in this size I lacked circulars and dpns. I didn't want to buy more needles so I decided to stick with straights. I wanted to knit this sweater from the top down so that I could adjust edgings and cuffs and over all length based on how much yarn I had left. I therefore decided to knit a top down sweater with side seams and underarm seams.

On Thursday I cast on for the yoke which I was knitting all in one piece. I started by following Barbara Walker's top down instructions. I wasn't sure whether to change the rate of increase (4 stitches every row) since I was knitting garter stitch rather than stockinette. I knit and ripped several times while adjusting the increases and the number of stitches cast on. By the end of Thursday's knit night I had decided on using the same rate of increases and following the Walker pattern had produced this:
On Friday I ripped all of my work out and started again without the extra neckline shaping. I increased 8 stitches every wrong side row and soon had the yoke portion completed. Part way through the yoke I had too many stitches to fit comfortably on one needle. Since I had two pairs of straight needles, I put half of the stitches on one needle, half on the other and then knit them using a third. It was just like knitting on DPNs while working flat rather than in the round.
Since the yarn is thick, the pattern simple and the needles big this project is just flying along. The fronts and back are basically done and I'm just working on the sleeves. If all goes well (and I don't have to go searching through my stash again for more of the leftover yarn) I think this sweater will be done in a couple of days.
Back to knitting for me.

More handspun

It's Monday again which means it's time for my weekly blog update. One of these days I'll get on a more frequent schedule but until I do Monday is blog day. This last week I did some spinning and finished a pair of socks but I'll stick to the spinning for this post.

My most recent creation is the result of having a few bits of BFL top lying around which had been dyed in various shades of green. I used these bits of fiber to soak up excess dye from some of my earlier experiments with darker greens. Some of the top was a saturated yellow-green and some was a much less saturated blue green. I split these into strips and alternated them as I spun. I then plied the resulting single to itself to get a nice sport/dk weight yarn.

Before I spun it up I was thinking that I would probably over dye the yarn but once I saw how it was coming out I decided to leave it as is. I really love this little skein and I can't wait to knit it up into something. Spring is coming, though, and I no longer feel the need to knit mitts or winter hats. I only have about 170 yards and I'm not sure what to do. I'm thinking I might do something with stripes. Suggestions?

Prior to knitting up my BFL leftovers I was working on a couple of pounds of Falklands. Well it started out as a couple of pounds of white Falklands wool form Hello Yarn. Some of it got spun up as a two ply which I have been making into the wintergreen mittens (the subject of a future post, I promise). The remainder I used getting the hang of spinning on my old Quebec Production wheel (also due a proper blog post). I spun the singles on the production wheel and turned them into a three ply yarn on the Lendrum (with some cursing). A couple of weeks ago I finished up the last of it.

Since it was spun over the course of several months with long breaks in between, the final skein doesn't quite match the previous ones. It is better plied but it is also thicker and stiffer; the last skein is an aran weight and the others are dk/worsted. I'm currently trying to decide if I knit it up alternating skeins or knit separate projects.

I'm getting ahead of myself. After I finished all of the spinning I decided to try dying it (the cat thought it should be left as is for her comfort).
I got the big stock pot and tossed it in with some blue dye and vinegar. Thanks to temperature gradients I didn't get an even colour, but I'm still happy with the results. The final, thicker skein is 350 yards and the others are 126, 260 and 442 yards respectively. The two large skeins are much too large for my ball winder to handle so I've balled them up by hand. I took this picture after the 350 yard skein was balled but before I did the 442 yard one.All of this Falklands yarn has a beautiful sheen. I would jump on the chance to knit more Falklands. It drafts beautifully and produces a really beautiful worsted spun yarn.

Now I just need to decide what to knit.