My spinning is about to get faster…

Last weekend was the NH Sheep and Wool Festival. I went with one mission: to try out some spinning wheels and hopefully decide which one I wanted to buy. I wasn’t sure if I would actually buy one while I was there, not knowing for sure if the vendors selling them would actually have any on hand to sell. At one booth, I tried a Lendrum wheel. It was a good wheel and seemed to spin pretty easily. At another booth, I tried an Ashford wheel (the Joy model, I think, which is a compact, portable wheel). That one seemed too small; I kept hunching over. I was thrilled to see at least 5 wheels on display (and ready for trying out) at The Elegant Ewe booth. I tried a Kromski Sonata and immediately loved it. First off, it’s a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Second, although it’s a portable wheel, it’s not miniature. Still lightweight and easy to set up, take down, and carry around, though.

I immediately bought it! Fortunately, the wheel also came with samples of various types of fiber in assorted colors (4 different ones, 1 oz. each I think), along with a small niddy-noddy. That fiber assortment has come in handy for learning to use the wheel, so I don’t have to dip into my fiber stash. I’ve already finished spinning one of the balls of fiber that came with the wheel. Took me between 5-6 hours to spin the singles.

Here’s a glimpse of the wheel… and the Little Diva on my lap.

My friend and coworker Becky, an experienced spinner, was a big help in shopping for my new wheel and pointed out what to look for. In fact, while I was trying out the Ashford wheel, she asked me how the height of it felt – and until that point I hadn’t realized how hunched over I was!

After buying the wheel and taking it out to my car, I wasn’t as interested in shopping for fiber and yarn as I usually am. I just wanted to get home and spin! Plus, I couldn’t stay at the festival as long as I would have liked, so I wasn’t able to get around to all the booths I usually do. I did buy 4 oz. of beautiful, multicolored silk/merino roving, though!

More spinning…

This was definitely the fastest I’ve spun fiber on a drop spindle so far. I’m not sure if it’s because of the fiber (100% alpaca), or because I was spinning slightly heavier this time (about a fingering-weight single). Or maybe I’m just getting faster with my spinning? Took me a total of 6 days, spinning between 1 to 3 hours per day (I think). I just finished the second spindleful last night, so I’ll let it rest another day or two before plying it.

Here’s how it looked at the start:

(It’s the fiber all the way in the front there — violet and black alpaca.)

Each hank weighed two ounces. I rolled each into a ball, and without predrafting any of it, began spinning:

Hard to see the color in this quickie cell phone pic — sometimes it looks more charcoal but in natural light you really see the violet.

Here are the finished singles:

I love this yarn!

I’m knitting the Niche sweater from Norah Gaughan Vol. 12 using Berroco’s Maya yarn, and I absolutely love it! (Both the yarn and the pattern.) We’re having a Maya KAL at Patternworks right now (or at least I hope I’m not just knitting along with myself – ha!) I posted an update on the Patternworks Blog yesterday. Hop on over there and check it out! Here’s a progress photo from Saturday (as of today, I’m about 6 rows further along):

The yarn is heavenly. It’s 85% Pima cotton and 15% baby alpaca, so it’s unbelievably soft. And it’s just the perfect weight for springtime. It has just a little bit of crinkly texture, but still has excellent stitch definition. The cables really pop! I’m pretty sure as soon as I finish this one, I’ll be living in it all spring.

Ooooh, sparkly!

Last May, at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool festival, one of the things I purchased was some gorgeous green merino/silk/nylon roving with bits of silver fiber in it. I also bought a KCL Woods drop spindle with three interchangeable shafts. I just had to start spinning it as soon as I got home. That was May 12, 2012. It’s now April 2013, and I finally have it all finished and even started knitting with some of it.

Here’s how it looked at the start:

Divided the roving into thirds to spin the singles.

The spinning took a while, since drop spindling puts one heck of a kink in my neck. And then there are all the intervening knitting projects. I finally got around to spinning the last third starting on March 24th, and finished that up within a few days. Here are the finished singles after spinning:

I think I got them pretty fine!
(That one in the bottom right corner is the final third, which I wound into a ball the day after I finished spinning it. It had waaaay more energy than the other two that had been chilling in my project bag for a very long time, which is why the center of the ball looks more filled in. It sprung back as soon as I took it off the ball winder, and there were lots of pigtails sticking out. Not so with the other two.)

Here’s a close-up:

One third of the fiber came out just a wee, wee hair thicker than the other two, not noticeable until I started plying.

Plying took another several days, and I ended up with about 350 yards of a three-ply sport-weight yarn. I attempted to Navajo-ply the leftovers, but it wasn’t cooperating with me. So I two-plied those instead and got about 11 yards of fingering-weight.

Green, sparkly goodness!

Fiber: 63% superwash merino/20% silk/15% nylon/2% silver from Holiday Yarns
(purchased at NH Sheep & Wool 2012)

Started: 5/12/12      Finished: 4/4/13

Spindle: KCL Woods, maple shaft (3 shafts) and finial, sycamore whorl with mosaic shell inlay, 1.71 oz.

Finished yarn: 350 yards 3-ply sport weight and 11 yards 2-ply fingering weight

I had immediate plans for that teeny-tiny skein. It wasn’t enough for a sock-yarn blankie square on its own, so I alternated two rows of green sparkly with two rows of KPPPM and I absolutely love the result:

The 350 yards of sport-weight will become a long cowl. Already have a pattern picked out.

The shoemaker’s kids have no shoes…

…or something to that effect!

Work has definitely interfered with my personal blogging. Since I’m doing a lot of writing for work now, I tend to avoid it on my time off (which I’d rather spend knitting, anyway). But 2013 is looking like it will be a sweater year. Back in January, I finished Vivian…

I love my Vivian hoodie! Thanks to photographer extraordinaire, Evelyn Lamprey, for the pic!

• Pattern: Vivian by Ysolda Teague
• Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Taria Tweed (color #2761)
• Needles: U.S. 7 (4.5mm) for body and hood; U.S. 8 (5.0mm) for sleeves
• Started: 8/28/11, then ripped out and restarted 12/24/12 after I noticed 3 errors I couldn’t live with
• Finished: 1/19/13 (yeah, I can’t believe I finished all that cabling in less than a month either!)
• Notes: My gauge was off (I’m a loose knitter, heh.) so I followed the instructions for size 38 to come out to roughly a size 42 with very little ease. I also had to seriously modify the sleeve length. Further details are on my Ravelry project page. I still need to buy some clasps (not doing the zipper as the pattern calls for), but for now I’m fastening it with a shawl pin.

Immediately after finishing Vivian, I cast on for a February Lady Sweater. I bought the yarn well over 3 years ago, it was about time! (Heck, I still have a sweater’s worth of yarn from before we moved nearly 4 years ago that needs to be knit up.) Finished knitting that on 3/1/13, but I still need to sew on the buttons. Why does it always take so long to get around to that one last little step?!

I’ve now started my third adult-sized sweater for the year, Niche from Norah Gaughan Vol. 12. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it, and we have a knitalong going on at Patternworks right now using Maya yarn. Yellow is totally not my color, though, so I’m using #5630, Lagoon. Once again, I’ve had to go down two needle sizes to get the correct stitch gauge (measured after washing and blocking a swatch, thankyouverymuch), so my row gauge is tighter than the pattern specifies, thus I’m making some modifications. Fingers crossed!

New sock pattern!

Just uploaded to Ravelry today, Leaves and Climbing Vines Socks.

Leaves & Climbing Vines Socks: Toe-up on left, Cuff-down on right.

• Pattern: Leaves and Climbing Vines by me
• Yarns: Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks #1272 Berries, on left; Lang Yarns Jawoll Superwash, #98 Grapeleaf, on right
• Needles: U.S. 1 (2.25mm)
• Started: Red, 8/12/12; Green, 8/16/12…not yet finished
• Links: Pattern page, Red socks project page, Green socks project page

The red one was knit toe up; the green one was knit cuff down. I’ve finally started on the second green sock!

Pattern includes both toe-up and cuff-down instructions. The toe-up version has gusset increases on the bottom of the foot and a slip-stitch heel. The cuff-down version has a slip-stitch heel worked in the round with gusset increases worked at the same time, no picking up stitches down the side of a heel flap.

Breaking the silence…briefly

Things have gotten busy at work in the past year, and a small part of my job now is contributing to the company blog. So things have been very quiet over here! I did write up a new free pattern, which was posted last week on the Patternworks Blog. Here’s my most favorite picture of it, modeled by the Little Diva:

Scarf-A-Licious Wrap Pattern

Get all the details and download the pattern on the Patternworks Blog. And here’s the pattern page on Ravelry.