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!

My Stripey Hat

I finished knitting my new hat on the drive to our backpacking trip.  The first night, we camped by the cars and my hat fell off multiple times in the night, so in the morning I quickly added braided ties.  Those worked well to keep it on the rest of the trip!

I don't have a super clear picture of the hat in action, but this one shows the hat okay and the beautiful lake where we camped our last night backpacking.  It was a wonderful trip!

Pattern: Lil' Midi Bean pilot cap
Size: midi
Yarn: grey fingering-weight yarn left over from this sweater, held double, and my Wensleydale handspun, not doubled
Needles: Size US5 bamboo DPNs
Started/Completed: August 2015
Modifications: I'm pretty sure my gauge was different from what the pattern suggested.  Also I added the stripes and used symmetric increases and a centered double decrease.

Striped hat - with Handspun!

Robert and I are planning a backpacking trip soon, and I decided I want a new hat.  I don't usually like to wear hats, because I don't like the feeling of having something touch my eyebrows (and any normal hat that comes down far enough to cover my ears seems to touch my eyebrows). I decided a long time ago that what I need is a bonnet or pilot cap of some sort.  Robert suggested that I should use my handspun, so I decided to knit this pilot cap in stripes, using leftover yarn from this sweater held double for the grey and my Wensleydale handspun for the stripes.

So far it's working pretty well.  I had to start over, because I initially started knitting the larger size (starting with 139 stitches).  It quickly became clear that it was WAY too big for me.  Now I'm using the "midi" size instructions, and it seems like the size will probably work out okay.  If it doesn't, I still have the dorkiest hat ever (an orange and red Klein bottle hat) to fall back on.

Spinning along

I've been spinning at least one day a week since the Tour de Fleece ended.  I still have a ways to go on these singles, but I am making good progress.  It's good to keep the spinning in my fingers - I had a really great groove going by the end of the tour de fleece and was hardly ever breaking my singles, even though I'm spinning this as finely as I can manage.  Now I'm having a few more breaks and it's a bit frustrating, but I'm still enjoying it.  I can hardly wait to see the shawl that this is going to be!

Tour de Fleece Finish!

Here is what I accomplished during the Tour de Fleece, which ended on Sunday.  I finished spinning the singles, plied, and washed my green gradient shetland.  I ended up with about 468 yards total, including both skeins (the larger, darker skein is about 357 yds and the smaller, lighter on is about 110 yds).  I think it's approximately sport weight, but I haven't checked.

The third skein was 2 ounces of Wensleydale wool, which I bought on vacation in Vermont six years ago from the Wool Shed at Frostbite Falls Farm.  I spun it sort-of long draw and plied it into a 2-ply.  I'm not wild about the finished yarn.  I don't love how the colors work together, although I do think it's better in person than in the photo.  It's not that soft, and there's not that much of it.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  The skein is about 64 yards.

On the bobbin is almost half of my Hello Yarn Portuguese merino in the colorway "Furry Paws" from Yarn School in October 2012.  The plan is to spin two equal bobbins of singles and then ply them to end up with lace-weight two-ply finished yarn.  This might be my ongoing spinning project for quite a while!

All in all, I consider my Tour de Fleece to be a success.  I spun just about every day - the Tour has two rest days, so even though I missed two days I made them up by spinning on the official rest days.  I feel like I got a good rhythm going with my spinning, and I really do enjoy spinning.  I'm going to leave my wheel in my living room and keep spinning at least once a week - my plan is that Tuesdays Are For Spinning.

White yarn finished!

My UFO list says I started spinning this yarn in November 2011.  I finally finished it last week.  I bought a pound of un-dyed blue faced leicester to practice spinning on.  I spun the whole thing on my wheel, using a short backwards draw and the slowest ratio on my ladybug.  I plied it into a two-ply yarn and got two skeins: the one with green ties is approximately 270 yds and the one with brown ties is about 240 yds.  I could definitely see when I was plying it that the earliest singles were much less uniform that the more recent ones.  That was pretty gratifying!

I decided to use this yarn to knit a cardigan version of this sweater.  I have 4 oz of Hello Yarn hand-dyed roving that I got at yarn school two years ago, which I'd like to use for the top part of the sweater.  I'm not sure if it's enough, or if I have enough of the white yarn to do the body AND sleeves, so my plan is to start the sweater body from the bottom and see how it goes.  If I have enough to do the sweater body and sleeves as in the picture I'll do that, and if not I'll just do the body in white and then either spin something else for the yoke and sleeves or buy some Noro for it as the pattern suggests.

What I've been working on lately

I've been spinning a lot more often lately, and I'm really enjoying it!  It's very relaxing to sit and spin while Robert reads aloud in the evenings.  We've both been impressed by how "productive" wheel-spinning is.  It's really gratifying to see the singles accumulate on the bobbin at what seems like an incredible rate.  I've been spinning some undyed white BFL (I bought a whole pound to practice with after I got back from yarn school 18 months ago!) but recently I've started reading a few spinning blogs and have really wanted to spin some of the gorgeous colored fiber I have.  So I started spinning a lovely custom carded alpaca and tussah silk batt that I bought two (I think? maybe it was three) years ago.  It's a lot of fun to spin - pretty easy, and it's fun to see the interplay of the different colors.  Here's the rest of the batt:

My plan is to ply this with some of the white BFL singles I've been spinning.  I only have two ounces of the alpaca, and I want to stretch it into more yardage - also I think I will like the candy-cane stripe effect.

My other new project is these toadstool socks in fancy self-patterning yarn.  This yarn was given to me at yarn school, and it is a pain to work with!  You have to get the tension EXACTLY right or the mushrooms will be all messy and ugly.  Also, the pattern is written pretty terribly (and apparently not tech-edited?), which is a shame since the kits are so incredibly expensive.  The pattern calls for casting on 56 stitches, and says that if your yellow and green stripes work out to almost exactly two rounds, you'll be good to go.  I did not find this to be the case.  After starting over on the toadstools about 5 times, I finally looked at the chart and realized that the pattern is for 52 stitches!

I started over a sixth time with the right number of stitches, and I've been following the chart religiously, adjusting my tension stitch by stitch to make sure I have the correct number of red and white stitches in each section.

I'm glad I kept working on these - I'm finally getting the hang of it (I've knitted another one and a half repeats of the toadstools since this picture was taken) and the socks are going to be really cool when I'm finished, but I'm also glad that I'm not the one who paid for this yarn.

Both the purple yarn and the socks count as new starts.  I've also finished a quilt that I haven't blogged yet, so I'm at six finishes and three starts since I started counting in February.  I want to finish some more things so I can sew myself some clothes!

Handspun mitts finished!

I finished these fingerless mitts about a month ago. They're made from this handspun yarn.
They are very cosy and nice in symphony rehearsals, and they don't impede my cello playing.
The first time I wore them to rehearsal, some people were telling me when their birthday is ... unfortunately, I don't usually knit for people I don't know that well.

Now I just have to figure out something else to make with the rest of the yarn!

Fingerless mitts from my handspun!

I finally got around to finishing the yarn I was spinning on my birthday (except for a bit of singles that I still need to ply). I put it on the niddy-noddy and washed it in Eucalan ...
... then hung it in the shower to dry.
The yarn looked pretty balanced when it was hanging on the hanger, but when I went to wind it into a ball, it seemed woefully underplied in a lot of places. I'm really not sure what is up with that, but I guess when I ply the rest, I'll try to put a bit more twist in it. Maybe it means my singles didn't have enough twist?

Whatever the cause, I'm not that worried about it. I'm a new spinner, so hopefully I'll get the hang of things as I do more spinning. I decided to use the yarn to make fingerless mitts to wear during symphony rehearsals. The hall we rehearse in is absolutely freezing cold, and I feel like I need something to keep my hands warm. I'm kind of making the pattern up as I go along, since I didn't really know what my gauge would be, and I didn't love any of the patterns I saw online for handspun mitts. Here's the first cuff: