8 posts tagged “yarn”
When I was at the Autumn Home Show last month I was tempted into buying some dyed and carded polwarth fibre from Sharon of Jumbuck Carding. There was only 85 grams left of the heathered sliver (top-left), so I nabbed that, and a quantity of a solid purple.
I didn't have a plan for them when I purchased (no surprise, I'm sure), but got spinning pretty quickly, at first on my old Traveller (now gifted to Mum), and then on my new Joy.. Soon I had 170 grams of about a sport weight yarn (plying together a single of each sliver), ready to knit. But what to knit?!
Not a scarf, or a hat, or a fraction of a jersey. So, mittens or gloves it was. I did eventually settle on a fingerless glove pattern, but given that I had no real plan before, I saw no need to stick to it. As you've probably gathered from the title of this entry, I made mittens!
Call me a heretic, but I didn't work them in the round, preferring to use straight needles, and then seam. I do dislike rangling dpns for fingers and thumbs.
Anyway, the mittens are nice and soft, and a pretty heathere colour! I'm very pleased with both my spinning, and my knittings. And that my fingers are warm!
A little over a week ago, I made what could be labelled an impulsive purchase. One I really never thought I would make. I bought a (second hand) spinning wheel.
I've maintained for several years that I would never take up spinning - rather like my assertion that I will never take up quilting (but not quite so emphatic as that one).
I'm not the most coordinated person in the world (unless you're talking matching shoes to an outfit), and in the couple of times I'd tinkered with my Mum's wheel it was plainly obvious that my usual inability to do use my hands and feet at the same time with purpose (I usually only swing one arm when walking) and complete lack of patience and dislike at not being good at not being good at things, all meant that spinning and I would not gel.
So, why do I now have a spinning wheel? I'm not really sure. But I can report that with a little perserverance, and rather a lot of swearing, I'm actually spinning yarn that looks like yarn. Knitting it, even (a cushion cover and hat, so far). I'm seeing improvement, and that's enough to keep me going!
It's been a while since I updated, and I will blame work busy-ness, parental visits, the resealing of the footpath making my floor vibrate, lack of knitting progress, and laziness. Feel free to determine for yourself the ratio of laziness to other factors.
Anyway, since I last updated here there has not been a lot of knitting going. My red jersey is still sleeveless, an may stay that way as I'm revisiting the idea of a vest (and feeling lazy). I attended the Knit Out my my parents (my Dad and my sister mostly along for the lunch beforehand), and enjoyed it (and expressed interest in helping out next year). Mum had a good time, bumping into the president of the Creative Fibre organisation. At Knit Rangers the next afternoon she was helping both with crochet and knitting tips - she's good like that! :-)
I particularly enjoyed meeting Mel Clark at the Knit Out (and getting my book signed) and purchasing some lovely Koigu yarn from her. Definitely looking forward to purchasing more from her range when she's all set (and her card is tucked away safely if I can't wait)! That's one of the three skeins in the top right there. I've not settled on a project for it yet, but that's hardly matters!
A pair of brown merino/angora socks is half done, largely thanks to my neglecting to take any wool to enable me to work on my blanket at Knit Rangers last weekend. If you're lucky enough to be in Ravelry you can check out the not terribly exciting project here. As I've now worn a whole in the heel of my blue pair, I should hurry up and finish these so my toes will be toasty in bed again!
Also Ravelry related is the swatching that I've started for a scarf exchange that's going on. So far I've got the red rib and reversible cable idea (see left) going on, but I do have other ideas to play around with before I decide on what my pal will get.
Yesterday I wandered down to Wild & Woolly Yarns and picked up two balls of Noro Silk Garden (one skein is shown above), and some Sublime Merino/Cashmere/Silk in a complimentary blue with visions of a scarf for me. More projects to contemplate, and no knitting! When the wool shop owner remarks that you've spent a fortune, and are a "very good customer" you do have to wonder if maybe it's time to take it easy. ;-)
Now for more swatching!
Spurred on by Ravelry, and some wonderful efforts spied, I decided to give dyeing yarn/hand painting a go. Too impatient to wait for an online order of dye to arrive, I opted to use food colourings, as suggested on Knitty. I grabbed my cheap paint brushes, covered the table with rubbish bags, and readied the microwave (as per Justine).
Not too long after finishing work for the day, the three balls wool I ran out to buy in my break (a light grey washable deal) were skeined (an activity that drove Maddy wild) and being coloured with abandon. Each is different, and I'm looking forward to them being dry so I can ball them up and knit! (Update: They're dry now, and you can see the finished skeins to the left.)
I bought a few more different balls of light coloured wool to experiement with, which should be fun. Now that I've done one lot, I can see how vivid the dyes are and can adjust accordingly for my future efforts, and hopefully end up with a (two) sock quantity of custom yarn!
I spent the evening planning my bus route, checking maps, plotting a mission out west (West Auckland, that is) to check out a couple of yarn shops. I woke early on my one day off, glad it was not raining, map in bag with knitting supplies and a book, and ventured over on the ferry to the city, and headed for the bus.
I was still nervous of getting on the wrong bus, and getting stuck in some unknown part of the sprawling city, so checked with the driver that he was heading where I was. Of course! Absolutely. Only, he really wasn't. I don't know if my questions were wrong, or if he was just a bit mental, but I did indeed end up in the wrong place.
After sitting down with my map, I figured out I was defintely so far off track that I couldn't walk to my original destination, or figure out my way there without the aid of the trusty public transport planner site online, and so crossed the road and caught the next bus back into the centre of the city.
So traumatised by these events, and my apparent failure to get from A to B unaided, I retreated to the one yarn shop I've located in the (cold, but still beating) heart of the city, Masco Wools in the Downtown Shopping Center (one of those monstrous Westfield deals). Spotting some Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in RED, it was easy enough to decide that this was meant to be. There were a few other selections made (how could there not be), and order was restored to my unbalanced world as I hatched a not so evil plan for yummy red socks.
One of my purchases was a hank of JJ's Montage Collection Mohair in "Karamea", that is pictured up there. For now, it is a scarf in progress, but as I've unravelled it twice already, I'm not completely confident it will stay that way (at least in its current form).
And I'm sure that I'll get to those shops eventually - perhaps next weekend. I'm going to endeavour to head out West again next Sunday after work for a knitting meetup. Hopefully getting lost two weeks in row is something even I can't manage!
Paton's Inca yarn is a blend of wool (50%), acrylic (30%) and alpaca (20%). It's chunky, warm, and quick to knit - the perfect follow-up to my stripey socks.
The colourway I've chosen is 7020, and is comprised of three strands of blue in varying hues. It reminded me of work socks, for jamming into gumboots and heavy work boots. But whereas they were coarse and prickly, this is soft and plump - ideal for someone who works from home and hardly wears shoes!
It's toe-up again, because I have no idea how long I want them to be, and frankly, I quite like doing the provisional cast on, and making sure I get a good fit around the foot. Especially as I'm knitting this on a 5MM ciruclar needle, with a gauge of 4 stitches/inch!
Right now I have 28 stitches, an am contemplating whether I'll need 30 or 32. We'll see, I guess. At least with so few stitches, pulling it undone will be quick...
Once I've got the toe sorted, I'll be casting on the other sock, so I can work them together/alternately as I did with the stripes. Given that I still haven't finished the second of another pair (done to the leg, mind!) I think this way definitely works best for me (in my quick experiments I found working two on two circular needles together too messy/tangling). Still, I'''d best take the unfinished sock to my WW meeting tonight and get it done while I wait. Or I'll still be talking about it next month!
I'm about to become a grand-aunt. Or is that great-aunt? One of my nieces is expecting to pop out her first baby in a few days, and so I've been busy doing aunty things - like knitting booties. Ha! My brother will be a grand-father!
She'll probably get a bunch of them, as I know my Mother has knitted a few, and I believe my eldest siste was going to as well. Still, winter is almost upon us, so she should get some use out of them.
She had the foresight to let us all know she's having a boy, so we could make suitably coloured things. I decided to go with only one blue pair, and green and a natural brown colour for the others. The yarn is Cleckheaton Baby Cocoon, a 4ply 70% merino, 30% nylon blend that is machine washable, and lovely and soft.
The booties themselves all follow the same basic pattern, each slightly bigger than the other. They all have a different cuff, and the brown ones have a raised diamond on the top of the foot. I'd never knitted booties before, and was surprised how quickly I churned them out.
The patterns are from this book by Zoe Mellor that I borrowed from the library. It has, as the title suggests, 50 patterns, and most of them are quite cute. These aren't all unique patterns, though, many are simple variations on others, but the bonus with that is that you can easily see how to adapt the patterns to suit you yarn and needs.
It was quite funny, when I went to visit my parents a wee while back, my mother had been working with a pattern ripped from an old magazine for kids dotted socks that she'd found in a bottom of a bag of yarn odds & ends given to her by a friend. Turns out it was a excerpt from this very book!
My brother's step-daughter is also expecting (a girl) in August/September, so I'll probably borrow it again to make some more girly styles. I've already bought some more of the yarn in various shades - I'll have plenty with which to make myself a snuggly pair of socks or two as well.
It was suggested to me that my newly discovered passion for sock knitting might be some kind of foot fetish. I declined to comment, and continue to knit round and round. I've always preferred smaller projects to big, or at least projects that can be worked on in smaller bites. And there are only so many peggy squares and scarves a girl really needs (no comments on how many socks a girl needs, please).
So, socks it is. With the aid of this fabulous book from my local library (now on its way from Amazon with its sequel), I've been experimenting with different needle techniques. I'd struggled with double-pointed needles in the past, but couple with socks, it was kind of fun. For speed though (especially when ribbing), I think I prefer one or two circular needles.
My collection of yarns has grown considerably in the last month or so, as I've looked at wools with a different eye, finding new potential. Much to the delight of the the few wool shops within my little world. Even odds and ends from my Mum are now becoming socks!
Purposefully mismatched stripes, and a selection of quite differently textured yarns are coming together rather nicely. I decided, rather sensibly I thought, to work on both socks at the same time, so as to avoid finishing one and then moving on to the next exciting thing.
That's worked quite well, as I feel like I'm competing against myself to keep one up with the other! I have to admit, I'm not in a hurry to go back and weave in all the ends though - that's the drawback with lots of stripes, I suppose. Still as we're heading into winter here, these warmers will be great, coming quite a way up my calves, so far.
Anyway, to the sock knitting end, I decided to start a Sock Knitting Group to hopefully show off and share my sock sucesses, stories (and possibly frustrations) with others who are this way inclined. So, if you're a knitter of socks, please think about joining me. I'd love to see your creations, and pick up some new skills and techniques.
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