Spinning 4 | Through The Yarny Curtain

Tour de Fleece 2015, Rest Day 1

During the Tour de Fleece, spinners rest on the days racers in the Tour de France rest. July 13 was the first rest day for the Tour de France, so most spinners rested today. I am not resting on the official rest days as I won’t be able to spin for the last week of the Tour since I’ll be in San Diego for the TKGA Annual Conference.

Since I finished plying the cormo yesterday, today was the day to start something new! The next fiber in my spinning queue was 3 Feet of Sheep. This is 8 ounces of Blue-faced Leicester hand-dyed by Frabjous Fibers. The colorway I have is “Colors of the Capital.” It is 10 bumps of fiber, each a different color and each weighing 20 to 21 grams. The fiber comes packaged in a long tube:

I toyed with the idea of fractal spinning this fiber, but decided to spin end to end so that when I knit it I’ll have a gradient. I plan to Navajo ply to maintain the color sequence. I didn’t do any pre-drafting, but I am splitting each color into multiple strips and spinning from those. The colors aren’t solid; they are tonal and look like they are probably space-dyed, with concentrated dye applied in certain sections and then wicking out into the rest of the fiber from there. The result is subtle striping within each color. I spun each strip starting from the same end so that this subtle striping happens multiple times throughout that color.

My goal is to spin 1 color per day until I’ve spun all the fiber. I’m spinning this fiber about twice as fast as I spun the cormo, so I had time this evening to spin up two colors. Here’s how my bobbin looked when I stopped for the night.

Looks like I’ll be spinning yellow tomorrow 🙂

A Year of Projects 2015, Weeks 27 & 28

I didn’t write a Year of Projects post last Sunday, so this post covers the last week and a half of progress. Saturday, July 4 was Independence Day in the United States. My husband had Friday and Monday off, and we planned to go to the beach at least one day. We didn’t go because I wasn’t feeling well on Sunday and Monday. On Friday, my family got together for lunch:

Chris and I hung out around the house for the rest of the long weekend. The rest of this week was our usual routine. Today we did some yard work. The aloe plants in our backyard are blooming. I love their flowers!

I’m also happy to report that while Tiger seemed suspicious of his cat bed when I first made it, he’s decided he quite likes it. It is now his favorite place to sleep — if no human lap is available, that is!

Let’s review the goals I set when last I wrote a Year of Projects post:

Goals for July 1 to 5, 2015

Knit at least 1/2 of the Sweet Summer Shawl
Cast on Miranda Shawl
Swatch and Cast on Bubbles Baby Blanket
Swatch and Cast on Liquid Silver Shawl
Finish spinning and plying the Cormo I’ve been working on since February
Start spinning the 3 Feet of Sheep (8 ounces BFL) on July 4 for Tour de Fleece

I finished the Sweet Summer Shawl on July 8.

I cast on the Miranda Shawl, knit 8 rows, discovered that my mistake on the cast on row was going to be a problem, ripped it all the way out, and cast on again. I only cast on again yesterday and I’m now making excellent progress.

Since I’m working on the Cormo as part of Tour de Fleece, I’ve been writing regular updates about it (Stage 1, Stage 3, Stage 6, Stage 7). Today I finally finished plying it! The bobbin on top is the one I finished plying for Stage 7. I finished the other two bobbins today.

I have not started the baby blanket, Liquid Silver Shawl, or spun any of the BFL. I didn’t include anything about the Master Hand Knitting swatches on my goal list, but it is an ever-present goal. I knit one more swatch in the last week:

Goals for July 13 to 19, 2015

The next two weeks I will be very busy. My cousin is in town next weekend. I’m also taking a three-day weaving workshop from the 17th through the 19th. On the 21st, I head to San Diego for The Knitting Guild Association Annual Conference, and I won’t be home until the 26th. I have a long list of things to do and little hope that everything will get done! I’m trying to write a modest list of goals, and it’s taking every bit of restraint I have to keep it short.

Finish the Miranda Shawl
Knit all the homework swatches for TKGA classes
Finish knitting the MHK1 swatches
Spin 1 color of the BFL / day (there’s 10 colors / 8 ounces total in Three Feet of Sheep)

On Deck:

Mittens for MHK1
Liquid Silver Shawl
Bubble Baby Blanket
Weaving with VCR tape
Color and Weave Study scarves
Begonia Swirl Shawl

Updated List of Goals for 2015

Knitting

Knit myself a sweater
Improve my finishing techniques
Finish MHK Level 1
- First 3 swatches finished by June 24, 2015
- Swatch #14 finished July 11, 2015
Dishcloth Advent Calendar
- Tribbles, finished January 18, 2015
- Leaves, finished March 30, 2015 but never blogged
- Heart Illusion Dishcloths (in progress)
Charity Knits
- Mock Rib Scarf, finished January 18, 2015
- Emergency Scarf, finished June 1, 2015
Do some test knits
- Sand Tracks Scarf, finished June 16, 2015
- Grisou Scarf, finished June 24, 2015
- Raindrops on Roses Shawlette, finished June 27, 2015
- Miranda Shawl (in progress)
Finish or frog all UFOs
- Traveling Scarf
- Bigger on the Inside Hat
- Evenstar
- Quinn Bag
- Baby Blue Monster
Socks
- Wearing o’ the Green(e) Socks, finished February 14, 2015
Other Projects
- Clapotis, finished June 1, 2015
- Liquid Silver (remaking from scratch, since I frogged it!)
- Fountain Pen Shawl
- Begonia Swirl Shawl (remaking from scratch, since a friend accidentally felted the first one)
- Felted Cat Bed, finished May 16, 2015
- Tiger’s New Bed, finished June 30, 2015
Design at least one project from scratch
- Super Secret Shawl, finished June 1, 2015

Crochet

Learn to read crochet patterns
Learn all the basic crochet stitches.
Make at least one non-granny square crochet project
Dishcloth Advent Calendar
- Diagonal Crochet Dishcloths (in progress)

Spinning

Breed Specific Spinning
- Cormo (in progress)
Learn to spin on a drop spindle

Weaving

Continue playing with color and weave drafts
- Ravenclaw Houndstooth Scarf, finished January 19, 2015
- Solid Warp, alternating picks, one of which matches warp, in progress
Learn pick up stick drafts
Learn Inkle Weaving
Learn Kumihimo braiding
Explore Twill weaves on the floor loom
Make items for the Guild Sale
- Slytherin Houndstooth Scarf, finished May 1, 2015
Other
- Woven Doctor Who Scarf, finished May 7, 2015

Dyeing

Finish dyeing the MAPLE LEAF Shawls
pH / water source experiment
Return to dye triangles project

Tour de Fleece, Stage 7

Today I continued plying the cormo. While plying is faster than spinning, it still takes a long time when your singles are like thread! I finished the first bobbin and barely started on the second bobbin.

I haven’t mentioned this before, but I a towel under my spinning wheel to protect our hardwood floors. The small movements the wheel makes while I’m spinning scratched my floor the first couple times I used the wheel. I usually pick the towel up at night to keep it away from the cats. I forgot to pick up the towel last night and someone puked on it during the night, so I put a different towel on the floor today. Fortunately, the guilty feline missed my wheel and my bobbins of spun yarn. I would not have been happy to find dried up cat puke ruining my beautiful singles!

Tour de Fleece 2015, Stage 6

Since I only had 0.06 ounces of cormo left to spin, I finally finished it. Then I started plying. And plying. And plying some more. Plying is a lot quicker than spinning, but with yarn this fine it takes a long time. I’m about halfway through the first bobbin of finished yarn, or one-quarter the way through the singles.

My husband walked through the room just as I was getting set up to ply. He looked at the spinning and said, “Do you still call this yarn? It looks like thread to me!”

Sweet Summer Shawl

I finished this shawl yesterday, and I’m super excited because it’s the first time I’ve knit with my handspun!

Official Stats

Date Started: July 2, 2015
Date Finished: July 8, 2015
Pattern: Sweet Summer Shawl by Michelle Krause (Ravelry, website)
Yarn: 383 yards of my handspun Cotton Candy Corriedale, purchased from SassyBee Fibers at The Fiber Event 2014
Needles: US 6 / 4.0 mm
Finished Dimensions: 52″ x 13″ at longest point
Made for: Me! I’m not giving away my first handspun project 🙂
Ravelry Project Page

About This Project

I loved knitting this project. I’m happy to finally knit with my handspun. This yarn is a massive improvement over my prior handspun, but it still has some anomalies. The Sweet Summer Shawl pattern is forgiving of yarn anomalies, since it is mostly garter stitch. The shawl is knit from end to end not top down or bottom up. I was looking for a pattern knit in this manner to maximize the yarn I had. I managed to use all but 6.9 grams of the yarn.

The pattern suggests knitting 10 repeats of the increase section then 10 repeats of the decrease section. I started weighing my yarn after the 8th repeat and every repeat after that. I ended up with 11 repeats. I knew I didn’t have enough yarn to knit a 12th increase repeat plus a 12th decrease repeat. Now that I finished the pattern, I wish I’d knit one repeat without either increasing or decreasing. I had enough yarn to do so, and I think I would have been happier with an odd number of points. Since there’s not a central point in the pattern, it ends up slightly asymmetrical and I would have preferred symmetry. In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor quibble. It’s a fun, easy pattern to knit and I KNIT WITH MY HANDSPUN!!!