Postcard: Spinning Samples – Knitted

For more information on the samples read TomofHolland’s post on Wool Types and Heather’s post on her Fibrary. More photos on Flickr.

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Knitting and Spinning from 2013

I find it useful to write a wrap up to see what I made in the last 12 months. It looks very impressive this way.

Project 1: Wild Color Hunter Mittens

Yarn: Made from hand-spun. The fiber was purchased in 2011 at New Hampshire Sheep and Wool from Mad Colors in the Wildside color way. I spun using my Bosworth’s mini making a 3 ply light weight fingering yarn.
Needles: 2.75 mm
Pattern: Self designed
Finished: Feb 2013

Project 2: Touch of Silk 3 ply skein

Yarn: Hand-spun from silk cap from Touch of Twist in Blue
Spindles: Sinlges Jenkins Kuchulu; Plied: Bosworth mini
Finished: March 2013

Project 3: Twisted Stitch Socks

I don’t actually have a finished photo of these, even though I have been wearing them fairly constantly when the weather has been cold enough.

Yarn: Mountain Colors Crazyfoot in Portland Rose
Needles: 2.75 mm
Pattern: Self designed with a knit two (twisted approximately every 3rd row) purl 3 rib
Finished: April 2013

Project 4: Red Pei

Yarn: Abstract Fiber Alto in Red
Needles: 3.5 mm
Pattern: Pei by Michele Wang
Finished: May 2013

Project 5: Dyeing and Carding Jacob

Still working on the fleece I bought in 2010! This is hopefully the last stages of fiber prep and spinning:

For TDF 2013 I dyed and blended secondary colors.
For the rest of 2013 and going into 2014, I spun/am spinning singles on my Sunflower Breeze spindles.
Hopefully the yarn will be completed by the end of 2014.

Project 6: Silkie Pear Drop Shawl

Yarn: Sheepy Time Knits Silkie in Berry Pie colorway
Needles: 3.5 mm
Pattern: Pear Drop by Ysolda Teague
Finished: August 2013

Project 7: N. Ronaldsay Singles

Fiber: Colored from Liz Lovick; Natural from New Lanark Mills
Spindle: IST
Finished: August 2013

Project 9: Mostly Hebridean Yarn

Spindles: Wingham Spindle and IST Spindle
Yarn: 3 ply mostly New Lanark Mills Hebrideanroving (with some silk, banana silk and other stuff tested on spindle).
Finished: August 2013

Project 9: Marin

I’ve since been sent enough yarn to redo the corner but I kind of like it being a different color. One of my Doylestown friends calls it my Clorox shawl!
Yarn: La Drogourie Surnaturelle in Cape Horn (mostly)
Needles: 3.5 mm
Finished: Sept 2013

Project 10: Shortening socks originally knit for Mum

No pictures. But Mum’s feet were 1″ longer than mine and I couldn’t bear to give these socks away. So I have adjusted two pairs and still have one left to go.

Project 11: Pei for Jessica

Yarn: Sheepy Time Knits Polwarth and Silk DK in Wonderflorium
Needles: 3.25 mm/US 3
Finished: October 2013

Project 12: Christmas Washcloths

When my brain really isn’t able to work, I found wash/dishcloths very soothing. I must have made five or six different washcloths.
Here are two:

Also one Nanayaya dishcloth takes me about 90 -120 mins. So I do it during meetings!
Yarn: Lily’s Peaches and Creme
Needles: 4 mm
Patterns: Various

Project 13: WWKAL 13: Erica Hat

Yarn: Sheepy Time Knits Panda Worsted in “Am I Blue” (merino and silk)
Needles: 3.75 mm
Pattern: Woolly Wormhead’s 2013 Mystery Knitalong, which turned out to be Erica
Finished: December 2013

Project 14: Dreaming of Shetland Shawl

Yarn: N. Ronaldsay Singles (Z spun) dyed by Liz Lovick.
Needles: 3.5 mm
Pattern: Shetland Handpaint by Donna Drachunas in Dreaming of Shetland
Finished (sans blocking): Dec 2013

Project 15: Dad’s Cardigan

Yarn: Garnstudio Drops Delight in Green-blue (colorway 16)
Needles: 2.5 mm
Pattern: Self designed with extra space in the back for widower’s hump
Finished: Dec 2013, with help with sewing in zipper from SIL

Ongoing but Unfinished Projects

Project 16: England Sweater

Working on the sleeves. Then I have the front steek to open up. Buttons with band up the front.
I only work on this project in England, so I might not finish it this trip!

Project 17: Never-ending Blanket

Project 18: Abbysilk

Fiber color is Fade to Pink
I also have some Autumn on a Thread’s Thru Time Tiny Turkish.

I have other spinning and need to get better about recording my hand spun. I do label it all and keep small samples.

Tour de Fleece Days 1-3

Well actually it is Day 2 -4 but I can’t be bothered to change it now. I’ve been spinning Jacob fiber and slowly seeing some progress. It takes me about an hour to spin 10 g, so that is my target each day. I hope to get faster as the tour goes on. So this is white, light gray, gold self-dyed.  The spindle is now as full as I can cope with so it will be emptied tomorrow with the three colors being wound into their own little pre-ply ball. Then I think I will get out my drumcarder and do some blending of colors.

Oh, a couple of firsts:

There is ~64 g of singles on this spindles.  That is the most I’ve put on a spindle at a time (I think).

I spun ~20 g of fiber today.  Again, IIRC, I have never spun that much in one day before.  Perhaps by the end of the Tour, I can spin more than 50 g/day!  I’m taking it slow as I don’t want to hurt my shoulder and not be able to spin at all.

Tour de Fleece Plans

Plans are to spin the Jacob fleece I bought back in 2013 (one of these days I’ll have a finished project from this fleece):

After the first day, I have some singles, mostly spun before the tour started:

Alpaca

TDF Days 5 – 9

I got a little bit behind with posting pictures of my Tour De Fleece progress.  I finished spinning the singles for the Babydoll Southdown and I am now half way through the singles for the Dorset Corriedale X.

Babydoll Southdown Singles

Dorset Corriedale X Singles

On the carding front, all the turquoise Jacob is done!  I have now started on the magenta Jacob.  This time I am trying to make fluffy rolags and see how differently they spin to the punis I prepared from the other fibers.

Turquoise Jacob Punis

Rolags of Magenta Jacob

Tour de Fleece Day 4: Punis

I’ve been trying to roll my carded yarn into punis every since I saw one of my Ravelry spinning friends show off hers. I finally managed it:

Punis

I also started on the second half of the spinning my Babydoll Southdown fiber. I might even have yarn by the end of the week:

Ball of singles and spindle

TDF Day 3: More of the Same

Here is the progress I made as of this morning:

Spinning Babydoll and carding Jacob

The spindle is now empty again as I am half way through spinning the Babydoll-Southdown and I want to make a 2-ply yarn. I also realized that I might be nearly half way through carding the torquoise Jacob too. Which is about on target as each are 1/3rd of my target, so being 1/6th of the way through by the end of today would mean I might even get everything done!

My spinning of the Babydoll had definitely improved; either that or the rolags lower in the bag were better prepared. Babydoll is different to any other fiber I have spun before and I am excited to see what the final yarn will look like.

TDF Day 2

More of the same really:

 

I need to do more spinning and, therefore, less carding.

Tour De Fleece Day 1: Prologue Day

Despite being completely exhausted due to catching the red-eye back from Vegas Friday night, last night I managed to do a little towards my TDF goals.

Fiber was carded:

Torquoise Jacob Rolags

And a tiny sample of yarn was spun:

Babydoll singles on IST Spindle