JenLa

Stats:

Pattern: Kriya Yoga Mat Bag (Ravelry link) or direct .pdf download.

Needles: US 8 (5.0 mm)

Yarn: Cascade 220 Wool, 1 skein pink, 1 skein brown (most of both skeins was used)

Mods: Erm. No, I guess not.

Thoughts: Combining cabling and stranded color work isn’t hard, per se, but it’s a little like learning to drive a stick shift. You know how to do the things, but putting them all together at once feels a little confusing at first. It flowed into a very simple rhythm after a short period of time, though. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about colored cable work and am definitely pleased with this, so I’m sure that there is more of this type of knitting in the future. My little swatch even got some use.

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Remember when I mentioned getting stuck rubbernecking in the drama threads on Ravelry? For a short time after that they seemed to subside, which was nice because I got a lot of gardening done. Well, they’re back and they’re bigger and better (worse) than ever. I know it’s sort of idiotic to read those things, but I’m coming to terms with it. I love gossip and drama when they have nothing to do with me. There, I’ve admitted it. I don’t participate, I just lurk and secretly pick sides and sneer and snort to myself about the ridiculousness of it all. I was speaking to a friend about this and she feels the same way-as long as it doesn’t touch her, she likes to watch it from the sidelines. We got to talking about how much of it there is lately (a seemingly inordinate amount, but not as much as some other fora, I suppose.), how to find it (You know the person who deals with all the big trouble? Read all their posts.), and how wouldn’t it be nice if there was some central collection place for those of us who like to silently read up on the latest dramatic offerings like cheap pulp fiction. Admit it. You do it, too. I know that when there are 40 voices and 602 readers that there are a lot of people doing it besides me. So I got to thinking that we need a Ravlery Rubberneckers Group for staying abreast of the latest melodramatic offerings from the amateur actors, devising RavDrama drinking games and to discuss the basics of surviving the marathon reading required. This was a joke, but I get closer to actually doing it with every passing hour. EDIT: I did it. Join, you know you wanna.

I started my new job, which was basically the same job but a new location and more working, but might be morphing into an actual new job. I expect to be very busy for the next couple weeks at least. I’d like to call it yarn money, but the lack of knitting time and abundance of stash and queued up projects really probably means it won’t result in yarn collecting. Or at least, that’s what I thought until I caught wind of a new yarn shop IN. MY. TOWN. This may not mean much to you, but we don’t even have a liquor store here, only one grocery store, one fast food restaurant and a whole lotta farms. I will make time to install myself in it and report back.

Meanwhile, I’m stitching away productively on the Wank It! and soon I’ll be beginning Moroccan Days/Arabian Nights. Just the process of choosing yarn and beads has been epic so I can only imagine what I’ll be putting myself through with the execution. Another “Jen takes the hard route for the sake of a wild idea” project. There’s also a little Hyrna Hergobar in the very near future-and that is one that I’ve been absolutely dying to knit ever since I saw Claudia’s. It’s one of those things that has stayed with me, haunting me all this time. I keep changing my mind about the yarn, though, so it’s anyone’s guess right now what it’s going to look like. I’m more excited about my upcoming projects than I’ve been in a long time.

If you did something dumb, I mean REALLY stupid, which of the following attitudes would you choose to represent the incident:

OR

???

Why, yes, I did forget to take the basket of hand spun yarns off the wood stove while enjoying a nice hot fire, some Deadwood and a glass of wine. Either I’m dangerously retarded or I’m going to take the gold in the Creative De-Stashing category for 2008. Luckily it was only my early, shitty attempts at spinning that got ruined. And luckily, all of my recent spinning was stored elsewhere. (not to mention luckily I didn’t burn my house down.) Thank gourd for small favors because my recent spinning is all Mission: Possible 2008 related, and I finished my first goal, which was to spin up all in-progress spinning.

See how I made five projects look like a lot more there? The purple is a 100% wool roving that I got from Little Barn at SAFF. I bought the roving with someone in mind, but it seemed very compressed and possibly slightly felted and I didn’t think she’d enjoy spinning it after all, so I pre-drafted it and began to spin it for her. It turned out to be awesome to spin and I’m very happy with the end result. It’s a fingering weight 3 ply and it has loads of loft and squish even though it was navajo plied. The green and pink is Luxe superwash in the Petals colorway. I had such good success with the purple, I navajo plied this, too. Another three ply fingering weight, I’m FINALLY going to be able to knit socks from my hand spun! After that is the tussah I showed you last week all spun and plied. I divided each color in half, spun them onto two bobbins in the same sequence, two plied them together so like met like and got a slightly heavier than lace weight yarn-700 yards! Don’t know what I’m gonna knit yet. After that is the completion of my color spinning class from SAFF, the color of the roving was Fiesta from Gale’s Art and the close up shows how I navajo plied the leftover after two plying the pink to the other colors. The last one is the ultimate completion of the blue merino/silk from ashland bay married to the mohair/merino from a mysterious land. I still think sock monkey… And so completes my first goal of MP08.

I’ve also been owing shots of some prizes and a gift for a very long time.

I won grand prize in the Mochimochi Land Photo contest, thanks to all of your votes!

And boy, Anna does not disappoint! In addition to all of the craft books, toys and other nifty little prizes, I got a $20 certificate to use in her store and I’ve already bought this pattern. Thank you so much for all of you who voted for me and thank you very much indeed to Anna!

And Stacey sent me these:

A really long time ago. Aren’t they cool? They’re for knitting Cat Bordhi socks. Hey, Stacey thank you! I’ve been thinking about you lately, not just for those markers, but also because I broke my swift the other day and my husband used glue, wires and tape to fix it.

Remind you of anyone? Anyone’s arm, maybe?

I never showed you my blue/brown yarn that I plied up:

The brown was one of those multicolored tops and was merino/mohair. The blue was Ashland Bay merino/silk. I actually shouldn’t be showing this like it’s a finished thing because, well, it’s not. That’s half of it. I still have to finish spinning the blue singles and ply them with the 2nd bobbin of brown, but today seemed like a day when the universe could use some soothing pictures of blue fiber. You know how it is, sometimes the cycle is just kick, kick, kick and all you can do is hang on until you’re to the smooth part again. Blue fiber HAS to help restore balance, I firmly believe it.

Anyway, I know this may sound dumb, but I kind of want to make a sock monkey out of that yarn. Originally I thought socks, but now I’m not so sure. I don’t really know if I want a bright blue sock monkey, so I may change my mind on a whim. I had to laugh when I snuck that picture into my flickr a week or two ago and La saw and asked me, “Is that YOUR handspun?” I chose to take it as the compliment it was. I don’t know how clearly I can say this to make novice spinners believe me, but hours logged at the wheel will improve your spinning. All that corriedale for the SAFF-off made an enormous difference because I sat at the wheel in a determined effort to spin a consistent single using a consistent fiber and prep. The large amount I did combined with the forcing myself to do it daily until it was done also factored in.

However, instead of finishing that, I wanted to work on some of the SAFF loot. This is romney wool, silk and mohair blend. RoSiMo? It’s a silvery sort of pale blue:

I spun the singles fairly thin and then 2 plied it, getting 378 yards, 21 WPI [fingering] for a finished yarn. For scale:

That’s actually done-done, though. I spun the first 2 oz of singles the first night home from SAFF and then in typical fashion, the second 2 ounces took what felt like a lifetime, but in reality was a few days. I really like it. I am starting to feel like my spinning is getting closer to where I want it to be. I might be thinking wrist warmers for this, but again I’m not married to the idea.

My last bit of calm blue energy comes in this form:

I promised myself I’d be knitting this from SAFF to Christmas or its completion, whichever comes first. It probably won’t be the only thing I knit because it’s not going to be good public knitting and I do have some homework still to do for my Cat Bordhi class, but it will be my main focus. What I’m trying to say is that you can expect to see a lot of it. As long as I’m calm, I might as well tell you that I did not do a UFOR for October. My major focus for Oct. centered around the toys for the baby who was expected [and who came a whopping seven weeks early and who is still in the hospital though he's quite functional, happy and smiley and should be home soon], and SAFF. So I guess I’m officially out of the running for the contest, but it has been the best KAL I’ve ever done and this will not force me to drop out of resurrecting my UFOs for the rest of the year. I have to give focus to this sweater, so it may be that the other two projects in my UFOR basket get pushed over to early 2008 resurrection, though. And I’m okay with that.

So, universe, do you see? All your attempts at making me stressed out and unhappy? They aren’t working. You can stop now. Thanks!

SAFF handspun sweater challenge sweater: DONE. Whew. And yes, I put the damned zipper in myself. By machine. And it could be better-WOULD be better if Jared had done it-but it’s in, it functions and now certain people are going to have to expend their energy finding something else to rag me about. I guess I could have at least ironed the zipper bands before taking the photos, but the REAL photos don’t come until SAFF anyway.

Specifics:

Pattern: Ribby Cardi by Bonne Marie Burns.

Yarn: 100% hand spun by me. The sleeves are a merino/mohair/alpaca blended pindrafted roving from Ozark Carding Mill, bought last year at SAFF and spun up immediately afterwards. It was the first yarn I ever made that I was truly happy with. The body is from a corriedale roving Sandy gave me, purchased at MDS&W from Copper Moose. All over dyed with procion dyes. I’d call them both heavy worsted yarns.

Needles: US 6 and 7 clover bamboo circs.

Mods: none, but there are mods I will make when I knit it again.

Thoughts: The sweater is not terribly photogenic, I need to get someone to take outside pics of me wearing it [when it cools off again, not before!], because it’s quite pretty and I can’t seem to capture it on a dress dummy or in my bathroom. I made the sleeves too long. I don’t really mind, I like having long sleeves and I can fold the cuff up and that’s fine. If they grow more with wearing, I will probably perform surgery, though. I also should have made a smaller size. I like a generous fit on a sweater, but I think I could have afforded to go down one bust measurement-even though I knit the size that is my exact bust measurement. If I were doing this one color, or if I hadn’t been spinning the yarn for the body while knitting the sleeves, I think I would make this all in one piece and just end up grafting the armpits closed instead of seaming the whole sweater. Overall, I’m extremely pleased. The pattern is super easy and knits up fastfastfast. I had a few days of mild resentment about accepting this challenge while I was endlessly spinning the corriedale, but I’m so very happy that Elizabeth came up with this idea. I canNOT believe I spun the yarn for this sweater. Furthermore, I cannot believe I made this sweater from the twist of the hairs to the zipper. I actually think I have amazed myself. I am amazed I was able to do this, amazed I made yarn good enough to knit a sweater, and amazed I had the fortitude to see it through. I am flabbergasted that I have a month to spare.

I have loads of thank-you notes to post here, but due to a super long, tiring day at work, I’m limited today’s thanks to Elizabeth for giving me this push. Who knows when or if I’d have ever knit a whole sweater out of my hand spun if not for this? Thank you, Elizabeth!!! Can’t wait to see yours and I know you’re getting there.

And where the hell did my autumn go?? Summer, I thought we talked about this.

Today is a local fiber holiday. The Yarn Harlot is coming to the south east, finally. Hundreds of people are skipping work-or half a day of it anyway. My group is meeting at a tavern near there at 11:00 a.m. for lunch and an afternoon of knitting that will last late into the night. They are expecting over 700 knitters. I had no idea we even had that many knitters in the region. Should be fun! So if nobody from the south is around today, you know where we all are. I put off seaming ribby to knit a couple hats to give to ESC later today:

Top down hat.

A slightly pointy Tychus knit from Muench Bergamo.

—– Spinning content only behind the jump.
(skimmers, pay no attention to the content behind the jump … )