Spinning Lately

Last June, my mom and I took a spinning class at our state's sheep and wool festival.  The topic was color in hand-dyed rovings/tops, and we learned three ways to manage overwhelming or clashing color in hand-dyed braids.  The first (on the left in the photo above) is involves tearing the braid into small pieces to create a gradient.  The second is stained-glass - spinning the colored singles together with a solid neutral singles.  The third was fractal-spinning.  Then, I had a fair amount of leftover colored singles from the stained-glass sample, so I chain-plied that to get the fourth skein in the picture.  My stained glass and chain-plied samples have too much plying twist, so at some point before I use them I'll have to run them back through the wheel to remove some of it. 

This enormous skein is spun from Hello Yarn roving that I brought home from Yarn School in October 2012.  It took me over a year to spin!  I don't remember what my final yardage was, but I'm pretty sure it's over 800 yards, and it's laceweight.  My plan is to knit it into a large square shawl, maybe something like this, or this, or this.  I'll use it to wrap around my head in winter instead of wearing a hat.

Then, I spun up two alpaca skeins to go together.  The white one is un-dyed alpaca that I bought on vacation in Vermont several years ago, and the purple is a sparkly alpaca-merino blend that was given to me as a Christmas gift a few years ago.  They're fingering weight, and I've forgotten the yardage on them, but I'm hoping to knit something with colorwork.  I think the purple skein has a bit too much plying twist, so I'll need to remove some of that before I can use it.

Handspun Neck-warmer

This Fall, I decided I needed a scarf/neckwarmer to go with my purple down jacket.  I wanted something relatively small, and I decided to use some of my handspun.  I decided to use this yarn, which I spun from a batt I made at Yarn School back in October 2012 and apparently never blogged about.    

I turned it into this, which is loosely based on the Red Rasta Cowl, which I found browsing Ravelry for neckwear designed for minimal quantities of super-bulky yarn.  I wanted it to be snug and not mess up my hair, so I knitted it flat.  I used all but about six inches of the yarn.  It closes with three non-matching silver-colored buttons out of my button jar.  The yarn is thick enough that I didn't need buttonholes - I just push the buttons through the knitted fabric wherever seems right.

Here it is under the jacket.  It's very cosy and does a good job keeping the wind out of my neck!

Fixing my socks

In the six years I lived in Texas, I knit a lot of socks and almost never wore them.  When we moved to the Midwest a year and a half ago, I had about 20 pairs of handknit socks, and each of them had only been worn a few times.  Since then, they've all been worn a lot - and I have new opinions about them.  I'm finding that I like my socks to fit with some negative ease, and to be knit at a tight gauge.  I like them to have some structure, so they don't twist around or slide down in my shoes (this problem is worse with boots, which I now own two pairs of (previously, I owned zero)).  In general, I prefer a traditional, top-down heel-flap heel to almost all of the toe-up/short-row heels I've tried. 

With this new knowledge, this Fall I fixed some of the socks in my drawer, to make them more wearable:

This pair, my Deflect socks, were just too long in the foot.  I had knit them long because the cable pattern has a very long repeat, and I convinced myself that it would be okay, but once I started wearing them often they were not okay.  I had at least an inch of extra length beyond my big toe.  So I ripped out the toe half of the feet and re-knit them significantly shorter.  Now I enjoy wearing them!

The green pair (which I apparently made before I started the blog) fit well, and I enjoyed wearing them, but I made them in a very soft yarn.  I wish I had knit them at a tighter gauge - I think they would have worn better.  As it was, wearing them often for a year, I wore a hole under the ball of the foot of one sock.  Luckily, I still had the extra yarn, so I was able to repair the hole with a knit-in-place patch, following this tutorial.   I was somewhat surprised to see how much these socks have faded from wear - the color difference is pretty clear in the photo!  I was mildly concerned that I would be able to feel the patch when I wore the repaired sock, but it hasn't bothered me at all.  I'm glad that I can wear one of my favorite pairs of socks again.

The last pair are my Skew socks, which I knitted while I was on the job market in Winter and Spring 2016.  They were too big, especially in terms of length in the foot.  Unfortunately, because of the unusual toe-up way these socks are constructed, I couldn't just re-knit the toes, like I did on the red pair.  Instead, I frogged the whole pair and re-knit them with the same yarn, but on smaller needles.  It was a little bit time-consuming, but totally worth it.  I love the way these socks fit!  They have a right and left foot, so they fit snugly in the toes across both feet, and the way the heels are constructed, they don't shift around in my boots at all.  They are a little firm to get on and off, but once on they're really comfortable.  This is the only construction I've used so far that I actually prefer to top-down heel-flaps.  I will definitely be making more of these - maybe I'll try to embellish them with some cables of lace, since the pattern is pretty plain.

Deep in the Forest Shawl

I started this shawl in May 2016, right around the time I graduated, and I finished it sometime during the 2016-2017 academic year - I was pretty behind on blocking it (sometime this fall), and I'm even further behind on blogging it. 

The pattern is the Lost in the Forest shawl.  I enjoyed knitting it, especially once I got to the leaf lace pattern (the inner border).  The first long lace section wasn't very interesting.  I used some of the navy blue laceweight that I used for another shawl in 2015, and I still have enough left for another small shawl.  This shawl is joining the first navy one in the future gift pile.

Pattern:  Lost in the Forest shawl by Cath Ward
Size: one size
Yarn: Lanna Gatto Harmony 2/30 in Captain Navy, 40g of a 100g skein (29g remaining)
Needles: US3 (3.25mm)
Started/Completed: May 2016/sometime in 2017
Modifications: none