Saturday Spinning: My First Yarn

As mentioned earlier, I’ve really taken to spindle spinning.  A couple of months ago I took my first singles and plied them into yarn.

First Yarn, from Sock Summit Learn to Spin Kit

I am not sure what I am going to make with it yet.

I also bought my self a new spindle and have filled it once with the groovy yarn I bought from Susan’s Kitchen.

Groovy Yarn on Schacht Drop Spindle, used as a top whorl (it can be either)

I have the other half of the groovy yarn to finish and Frog Tree Purple Meriboo, also purchased at Sock Summit:

Frog Tree Meriboo

Then I’ll need more fiber.  Oh wait, there is the Coopworth Wool Roving, Med. Gray that I purchased with the new spindle.  But I need color in my fiber collection.

As recommended by Abby and Denny, ten minutes a day worked to make me a drop spinner.  After Sock Summit for about a month it was all I could do to Park and Draft making fairly thick singles at that. One day, when the cat was on my lap and in my way for Park and Draft, I drop spun off to one side without even thinking about it. For another month, I did a mixture of Park and Draft and drop spinning while sitting down. Suddenly I realized that I was preferring to spin standing up.  For a while I would make the yarn as thin as possible if not thinner (hence the thick and thin effect in the top photo) and drop the spindle.  I now mostly have control over the thickness of my singles and usually catch the spindle before it hits the floor.

I have not worked out how to hold a lot of fiber and spin – I usually pull off a clump and hold it tight in my sweaty hand.  I was having difficulty joining in new yarn, but with practice, using smaller clumps, I overcame that challenge.

I succumbed to temptation and purchased Abby’s Respect the Spindle.   Good thing as it turned out as I needed it.  Abby has exercises to try to improve your spinning techniques.  I tried, and mostly succeeded, to spin while dancing or singing.  One exercise I have not tried, but I want to,  is spinning while higher than standing on the ground, she and her friends did it over a cliff! I thought I would try it from the bed.  I would also like to try the paired spinning exercise.  Oh well, as there does not seem to be an active spinning community here I’ll just have to teach a friend to spin so I have some one spin with.

Spinning

I made yarn!

I’ve really got into spinning fiber this summer.  It started back in May when the Knitting Knutz, my knitting guild, had a two hour workshop about the basics of spinning which spent a lot of time teaching us how to draft.  I practiced a bit after this but not really seriously.

At Sock Summit, I took Abby and Denny’s Basic Spindle Spinning class and that was great.  Before even using the spindle we were shown how easy it was to make yarn from fiber:

Plied Yarn

Denny and Abby are funny together making the class very enjoyable.  They showed us how to make fiber using a spindle by wrapping and turning, it was a revelation as it was so easy. We learned how to adapt that technique to use the spin of the spindle.  It was very interesting to see the twist in a short piece of spun fiber move up into the unspun fiber making a thread.   One of the students near me caught her twist in a whole chunk (technical term here) of fiber and Abby stretched out across the room, the twist traveled up about 6 feet of fiber. It was very impressive and yet,  I didn’t even think of taking a picture.

The key point for me getting hooked on spinning was Abby saying that you would be a good spinner after 3 – 6 weeks if you practice daily. As that is how long as it takes me to learn new scientific techniques, so it really stuck as doable.

I made yarn

The photos are from the first week after Sock Summit and now, three weeks later I have got it and can almost relax while spinning. I’ve even did some spinning this afternoon with the Murphy-cat on my lap.  I’m not quite confident about drop spinning, I like to park and draft especially if I am using the spindle we got in our class kit (and if the cat is on my lap).  I’ve made quite a bit of yarn and I am ready to try plying when I have enough.

I did make some fiber purchases at Sock Summit and I am sure there will be many many more in my future:

Purple Yarn: Merino and Bamboo

I’ve started spinning with this one because I felt with one color I couldn’t really make too many mistakes.

Susan's Kitchen Yarns

Susan was great at the Sock Summit, very helpful in giving me suggestions of starting yarn and I love the colors in this roving.  I was not brave enough to start spinning it two weeks ago but now I wish I had more than two spindles so that I could just try it.  Just what I need, another hobby that costs money.  Especially as I have already been told by a friend who also knits and spins that I must now need to buy a spinning wheel. What, huh? Sounds good to me.

A is for Araucani Alpaca

My first contribution to the ABC-along 2008. The idea is that through out the year, you take pictures and post pictures related to the alphabet and to yourself. This one is sort of cheating as I first posted about it last week, before I knew about the ABC-along event.

I love yarn, and what could be more appropriate for a new year than alpaca at it is so soft. Not sure what I am going to knit with it yet. I never really know when I buy yarn. Ideas come to me in time.

Roses are Orange

My house needed some color soon Friday I got these gorgeous roses from the grocery store. I wanted tulips, but there were not any yet. These roses are almost tulip colored.

Earlier in the day I was at A Gardens of Yarn and bought this yarn:

Are you noticing a color theme here?Then later that evening regular commentator, Lisa, and occasional guest blogger, Hudaa, and I got together and had a make your own pizza party. It was great fun – we made the whole pizza from scratch:

Definitely a orange colored Friday.

The pizza recipe is from Rose Elliot’s The Complete Vegetarian (Amazon), which is the mainstay of my recipe book collection.

Yarn Yarns – Completed Projects and New; Freestyle Knitting Workshop.

Mystery Stole 3 came off the blocking wires last Thursday and I wore it that evening. It turned out even better than I hoped. I am pleased with the color choice and know that I will use it more often than the recommended black or white. I know this as I have a black and a white shawl already and rarely wear them. This stole will go with many different outfits.

The surprise I was hinting at on Ravelry is that the final 15 rows (or so) were knitted using Knit Picks Shimmer:

 

The edge yarn really sets off the pink of the wing. I also think it brings the teal and the pink together.

 

The bedspread is bad as a background, but I don’t have anything better, yet.

This was my first time to seriously block anything and I am really excited about how blocking changed the stole. The points of the wing were stretched and stretched to an inch of their lives and this really helped with their final look:

 

I am now thinking of blocking my other shawls and seeing how they turn out. Finally I know that they will look better blocked.

This is not the only knitting project I have been working on. Another completed project is a baby blanket that I am knitting for my friends, M & R, who are expecting their first baby. I don’t think they read my blog, so don’t tell them as it is meant to be a surprise. If you do read my blog, R&M, skip over the next few pictures. R wanted something in green. Hopefully this is green enough:

 

There is green in every square. The pattern is a mixture of EZ’s mystery blanket and a mitered square. No sewing! Here is an edge detail:

 

I also “signed” one edge:

 

 

Life has not all been finishing projects. I started something new. This is a swatch for a top down skirt I made with Cherry Tree Hill Oceania Bright:

 

I actually finished it today, except for weaving in the ends, but you will have to wait until next week for pictures.

Finally, I have some very exciting news. My local yarn store (LYS), Stitches with Style, has asked me to hold a Freestyle Knitting Workshop/Class. Currently, in the store my Jester’s Jacket is on display as we hope it will persuade people to take the workshop. If you are interested leave a message in the comments and I’ll email you the information flyer.

Previous Mystery Stole Posts

Swatch

Clue 2

Clue 3

Clue 4

Clue 5

Clue 6

I never wrote up Clue 1 – too busy knitting. Pictures of it and the other MS3 photos are in my MS3 set at Flickr.

 

 

Yarn Yarns – Swatch for Mystery Stole 3 Detail

©cdavies 2007

I decided to participate in the Mystery Stole 3 only using yarns of my choice. The recommendation was black or white, but I have both a black and a white shawl already.

So I looked though my stash knowing that I already had some lace weight yarns – which are the pink (Zephyr Wool Silk) and the variegated (Knit Picks Shimmer) and then I bought the jade (Zephyr Jaggerspun) to balance out the pink.

I am concerned that it is a repeat of the color scheme that I did a few years ago for the South West Shawl:

I am also wondering about how to use the three colors. I am still debating whether just to change yarns every other row so it looks part of the variegation or whether to blocks of color. Hopefully I will have a better idea when the first clue comes out. I could get more of Shimmer and use the plain yarns for the border, but I am trying not to give into that temptation.

More pictures of both the swatch and the south west shawl are at Flickr.

Yarn Yarns – New Yarn and Charity Afghan

I haven’t written much lately. Fortunately, I have found time to take photos so that you can still get a daily picture. From these you may have gathered that I visited Halifax, NS. What a nice city; everyone lived up to the friendly Canadian stereotype and I had a great time, mostly hanging out on the harbor front admiring the tall ships and pretending I knew what was what. Amazing what one week of sailing can do!

Obviously, I did get a break and go to a yarn shop. It wasn’t hard to find being about three blocks from my hotel. I shopped at the Loop Craft Cafe where I purchased some of Lucy Neatby’s Celestial Merino and matched it with Needful’s Trillium. I have already started making a little scarf, it is such lovely yarn to knit:

I am using a four by four basket stitch with two rows of stockingette between each row of baskets. Every fourth stockingette is done with Needful’s Trillium. I like the fact that this is orange and stops the scarf being too brown. Oh I am using US#3 needles, but I am a really loose knitter. I cast on 26 stithes; there is a slip stitch and a two stitch garter at the end of each row.

As promised on my previous knitting post, here is a the red log cabin afghan.

 

For this I kept the sizes of the panel always the same. I think the Mother’s Day Afghan was more interesting as the panels were random sizes and there was more color variety. This one is going to be donated to Better Beginnings.

Breaking News

I just found out from Cathy-Cate at Hither and Yarn that the Red Scarf Project for 2008 for the Orphan Foundation of America has been announced.  Visit both sites for more information.

 

Yarn Yarns – Playing with Color

I never should have got side tracked into looking at the Mason Dixon knitting blog because that lead me to January One and her post about using Adobe Photoshop to select colors. She got the idea from Knitting on Impulse. I decided to try this for my Mother’s Day Afghan.

Using a picture of Ruthy of the Mammals (it was already open in Photoshop as I was using it earlier for Ruth’s Wikipedia page):

I filtered it using the stained glass filter (under Textures in the Filter menu) with the cell size set to 10:

Then, using the the dropper tool, I sucked up some of the colors from the bottom left corner and, in a new document, I made a palette:

 

When I got home last night I chose wool based on the stained glass picture as the palette did not print out well. (If I intend to do this a lot, I need a better printer.)

This morning, I redid the palette from the picture. Then I added the yarn colors at the bottom:

Not a bad match?

So I started knitting. I am doing it log cabin style as that is very straight forward. I decided to chose the number of garter ridges randomly. As I could not find any dice, I used a spinning top and a wheel drawn on paper with numbers 1 – 8 in the spokes. For each patch, I spun the top twice and added up the numbers, so I could have everything from 2 – 16 ridges of garter stitch. This is how far I’ve got:

 

 

 

Yarn Yarns

A friend from my local knitting guild sent me this link for a modular shawl which reminded me of my Diamond Cloak. Unfortunately, I only have a picture of the bottom:

Yarn Shopping – Chapel Hill, NC

I had some time to spare so I went to “Knit a Bit”, Chapel Hill’s Yarn store. Conveniently placed, IMO, near a Whole Foods market and a Great Harvest is just up the street.

I can’t say that I bought more than I planned as I had not planned on buying anything. As they had soy silk and bamboo yarns I just had to get more colors in different yarn types to match.

I’m going to knit a modular – freestyle waistcoat. I can just see it in my mind’s eye.

I have not had a chance to knit any of the yarns yet and now I am going to dinner with these guys. Let the science blogging conference begin!