Rainbow Shawl

A while back, the Yarn Harlot blogged about a shelf-striping yarn made especially for triangle shawls.  And I HAD. to. have. it!

The crazy-brilliant people at Caterpillar Green Yarns have dyed a yarn specifically for triangular shawls.  When you make a top down shawl, you start in the middle and work your way out to the longest edge.

Diagram from here.

That means that rows get longer and longer as you go.  You need more and more yarn to complete each row.  A stripe at the start of the shawl would take much less yarn than a stripe at the end of the shawl.  The stripes in typical self-striping yarn has equal length color repeats.  The stripes would get narrower and narrower.

Caterpillar Green has done the math to make each of the stripes the same width.

The purple stripe is the same width as the blue one at the bottom even though the blue stripe takes a lot more yarn to knit.

The colorway is Concrete and Tulips.  Pretty, right?  And so soft....

The pattern isn't really a pattern at all.

I just added increases at either edge and on both sides of the center stitch.  Nothing fancy.

Now if I can just figure out how to put it on.

From the Land of Sheep

The in-laws went to New Zealand this spring and brought back a number of amazing things.  While they won't let me practice the didgeridoo or the giant hunting boomerang they bought back, I did get to keep this:

 A sheep pelt, two balls of Ashford worsted weight yarn, and some spinning fiber.

Ashford is a New Zealand company...the wool is from New Zealand sheep (because there are so many of them there).  My spinning wheel is an Ashford Kiwi (similar to this one).

I have mixed feelings about the sheep pelt.  If I had a sheep farm, it would be a no-kill operation: wool only!  But knowing that a lot of the sheep in New Zealand are raised for meat, I guess I am glad the pelts can be used, too. And it is very soft on my feet when I sit and knit....

Different Strokes

Let me be clear: I am really not good at this whole spinning wool into yarn thing yet.  And since I only have a drop spindle (i.e. no spinning wheel), I am excessively slow at the whole process.

But this, of course, does not stop me from feeling immensely clever every time I make something.  Take this for example:

Close-up. Single ply, fat/bulky 100% Merino from Abstract Fiber of Portland, OR in colorway "Snapdragon"

This past weekend, I took some roving of the same color way...

This is roving....essentially a long, dense, prepared strand of fiber that you use to spin with.

and spun it slightly differently.

First ply done and waiting on a paper towel tube.  Second ply being spun on my crappy, crappy, needs-to-be-replaced-with-this spindle.

Look what happened!!!

I'm a friggin' genius!  Or at least as smart as a gifted seven-year-old.

See how even though I started with the same raw material, it came out utterly different. 

This is not something new to spinners.  Had I plied it differently (perhaps a chain ply, that I am going to pretend I already know how to do for the sake of argument), it would have looked even different still....actually I am tempted to go back for a third round of this fiber to do exactly that. 

Thrilled, I tell you!  Thrilled!

Emails Only Knitters Get

I got an email from my roommie apologizing that he had gone in my room, but I had left my yarn in the shower and he wanted to return it to me.  He, of course, hung it in my closet where it belongs.  Initially I felt bad that I had inconvenienced my roommate by adding a step to his morning routine.  And then I stopped, reread the email and considered writing him a thank you note for not ending his email with "you are a crazy, crazy lady with too much wool and why do you keep yarn in the shower/closet anyway, you wacko mishugenah?!?!"

The answer is that I finished spinning the (boring) brown two-ply this weekend (about 250 yards, fingering-ish weight).

It was boring to spin, but actually I like the way it turned out.  It's fluffy and not over-plied.

I let it soak, had given it a good spin in the shower to get some of the water out, and then hung it in my closet to dry.  Five minutes later I heard a disturbing people-can-lick-too-my-friend dripping noise coming from my closet and discovered that I had not, in fact gotten all the water out.  Instead of going ALL THE WAY downstairs to the washing machine to spin it dry, I just hung it in the shower to drip dry.  And apparently GNP did not want a wool loofah this morning (oh gosh, doesn't a wool loofah sound amazing?!?!).  Oops...

Now I am working on this pile of what looks suspiciously like dryer lint.  (Side note: I seriously considered trying to spin dryer lint, but it isn't sticky enough....maybe if I am ever in a desperate situation...don't judge...).

I swear it is NOT lint and actually 10 ounces of wonderfully springy Merino that looks a little less crazy when spun....I think....

I am going to try another two-ply, but with fatter singles this time (making it closer to a worsted), assuming my spindle doesn't fall apart (again).

Weekend Update: Work that Spindle

I am not entirely sure what I did this weekend; it just ended very abruptly without me actually accomplishing anything.  I went to try outs for the DC Vagina Monologues on Sunday.  The rest of the weekend I spent spinning all kinds of crazy.  I am most in love with this:

Hand spun on my spindle.  I am going to pretend that I MEANT it to be "thick-and-thin" instead of me just not being able to spin it very evenly.

The wool was 100% Merino from Abstract Fiber of Portland, OR in colorway "Snapdragon" (the prettiest thing I've ever seen, I think)

4 ounces as fat as I spun it only came out to 80 yards, so there aren't a ton of amazing things I can knit with it. Maybe more of these??

But I have this belief that maybe I could use handspun yarn to make something else.  I am trying to figure out how to combine it with the silver/glass jewelry work that I usually do.

Bad pictures (my camera hates night-time) and not quite what I was thinking, but it's a start...

I Did A Bad Thing

I started out the New Year on the wrong foot.  See, I promised myself I would be good.  I promised myself that I would always do the right thing and use up my (already prolific) yarn stash before getting anything new.  And for the most part, I followed that rule (well....almost) and.....just got some new knitting tools instead!  Oops...

So for you viewing pleasure, and explanation of all these weird freaky tools that (I think) round out what I need to spin and knit (at least until I have an extra $400 to spend on a spinning wheel...ha!).

A spindle (I had this already from my spinning class): This is what I spin the yarn with.  Mine is cheap and light and wood.  I keep wrapping the yarn around the bottom of the stick until I have spun as much as I want or it is full.  But then what?  I have two options.

Yarn I'm spinning.  More on this later.

A toilet paper tube (not even joking):  If I am going to ply the yarn, I roll the two plys off onto separate toilet paper tubes.  When I go to ply them together, I take the two ends, hold them together and spin them into a two-ply yarn.  Once I have the yarn that I want, I go on to the next step which is a.....

A niddy noddy:  If I am ready to set the yarn (by soaking it in water to make sure the twist stays the way I want it to), I wind the yarn off onto a niddy noddy.  It wraps the yarn into yard-long loops that, when removed and twisted together, become a skein.  You store yarn in skein form (not in ball form) because it allows the yarn to stay loose and fluffy instead of stretched and compact as in ball form.  But to knit you need your yarn in ball form so that it doesn't tangle up.

niddy noddy is the best name for something EVER

A yarn swift:  To get your yarn into a ball, you stick it on the yarn swift.  It is a big umbrella thingie that clamps down on the table.  You put the yarn around it

and open it up until it is taught.  It spins around.

A ball winder:  You then set your ball winder up next to the yarn swift (or hold it in your hand if you want).  Hook the yarn to it and start cranking. 

This is the most satisfying thing.  You spin the handle and the ball of yarn grows.  It's like magic...

 You end up with a ball of yarn like this:

I want to find a video of someone REALLY having fun with this, but all I could come up with was this very silent lady.



I might have to film something for yo, 'cause this thing is just too much fun :-)