Through The Yarny Curtain

Tour de Fleece 2015, Day 1

Saturday, July 4, 2015 is the first day of the Tour de France. This means it is also the first day of the Tour de Fleece. The latter is a (yarn) spinning event that takes place each year on the same days as the famous bicycle race. The bicycle race is obviously a challenging event, full of world-class athletes. In that spirit, participants in the Tour de Fleece set their own challenging goals.

The Tour de France starts on July 4 and ends on July 26 this year. There’s two rest day during which the racers do not ride. This year, those dates are July 13 and July 21. There’s also one day that is particularly challenging. This year, that day is July 23. On that day, the racers will climb 5 mountains. The Tour de Fleece encourages participants to follow a similar schedule. Spinners don’t spin on the Tour de France rest days, and set a particularly difficult personal goal for the most challenging day of the Tour de France.

This is my first year participating in the Tour de Fleece. I only started spinning in late April 2014, six weeks before the Tour de Fleece started. I knew about the Tour de Fleece because I have friends who take part every year, but I didn’t feel ready to participate last year. I’m excited about this year!

Goals

My personal Tour de Fleece will be cut short this year. July 21 to 26 I will be in San Diego for The Knitting Guild Association Conference. I’m not bringing a spinning wheel with me, so won’t be able to spin while I am away. Since I’ll miss those dates, I’m not going to take any rest days for the rest of the tour. I’ll also miss the challenge day. I’m not worried about that though. I think it’s apparent to anyone reading this blog that I tend to challenge myself every day 🙂

My Tour de Fleece goal is to spin at least 30 minutes each day from July 4 through July 20. I hoped to finish the cormo before the Tour started, but I did not. I’ll work on the cormo until I finish it and then I’ll start on 3 Feet of Sheep in Colors of the Capital. I also plan to ride my bike at least 3 miles a day for each day from July 4 through July 20.

Today’s Progress

Since today is the first Saturday of the month, it was the regular meeting day of my local spinning group. I started the day by spinning with them.

Then I came home and spun some more. At the beginning of the day, my bobbin of cormo looked like this:

When I finished spinning for the day, my bobbin looked like this:

I spun for about 7 or 8 hours today, far exceeding my 30 minute goal! I also rode my bike for 3.12 miles this afternoon. Since it’s the summer in Florida, we had our usual afternoon rain showers. Chris and I managed to sneak a bike ride in between two separate storms. Despite the ominous hue of the clouds, we made it through the entire ride ahead of the second wave of storms!

I’m spinning the cormo very fine — it’ll definitely be lace weight 2-ply — which means it takes a long time to spin. In fact, it’s taking 2 hours to spin 0.5 ounces. I have about 0.75 ounces left, and I’m hoping to finish spinning it tomorrow so I can ply on Monday. I can’t wait to see just home much yardage I get. I think it’s going to be ridiculously high! On Tuesday, I’ll start on Three Feet of Sheep.

Grisou Scarf

This is the third test knit that I finished in June.

Official Stats

Date Started: June 17, 2015
Date Finished: June 24, 2015
Pattern: Grisou Scarf by Solène La Roux (website, Ravelry)
Yarn: 181 yards Gynx Yarns (website, Ravelry) Gynx Aran in Ocean
Needles: US 10.5 / 6.5 mm
Finished Dimensions: 13″ x 19″
Made for: test knit
Ravelry Project Page

About this Project

This is a quick little project. It’s called a scarf, but it’s intended to be worn like a neckerchief. The designer used Cascade Eco yarn when designing. I used yarn from my stash. I had a hard time matching gauge. I actually knit 3 swatches — something I never do, and probably wouldn’t have done if this wasn’t a test knit — and chose the largest of the three sizes as that was the closest to the designer’s gauge.

I ended up cannibalizing all three swatches to finish the scarf; I used every inch of the skein. Despite using all the yarn I had in the skein and pinning the scarf out to the designer’s intended dimensions of 14″ x 22″, my scarf was too short. When I unpinned it, it shrank down to 13″ by 19″. This proved to be too small for me to wear. In order to take pictures wearing the scarf, I pinned it with one of the shawl pins I got at the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival. It is really tight on my neck! Since it doesn’t fit me well, I’ll gift it to someone else, but I’m not sure who yet.

It’s a well-written pattern. The cables look fancy, as they always do, but they are very straightforward cables. This pattern is a good choice for someone new to cables. I worked from the written instructions, as I always do for cables, but the pattern also includes charts.

As I mentioned in the Sand Tracks Scarf post, I almost always form cables without using a cable needle. I use a cable needle if the yarn is very slippery, e.g. the Cascade Pinwheel I used for the Palindrome Scarf, Palindrome Hat, and Irish Hiking Mittens last year. I might use a cable needle for something like the Sand Tracks Scarf, which had purl stitches in the cable, since it’s easier to drop those stitches.

Before the Grisou Scarf, I had formed 2-stitch, 3-stitch, and 4-stitch cables without a cable needle. The Grisou Scarf cables are 6-stitch cables. I decided to knit the Grisou Scarf without a cable needle, just to see if I could. For the first 3 pattern repeats, it did not go well. I dropped stitches on every cable row. I still don’t know how I was dropping them. I was carefully counting to make sure that I got them all back on the needles, only to find that I was missing a stitch. The scarf took many hours longer to knit than usual as a result of my stubborn refusal to use a cable needle and the resulting need to rip back to fix stitches dropped from the middle of cables. Finally, I decided to record a video demonstrating cables without a cable needle. Miraculously, I didn’t drop any stitches in the making of the video, or in any of the cable rows after that! I’m not sure what made the difference.

The video is 18 minutes long because I recorded two full rows of cabling, one with stitches held to the front and one with stitches held to the back. I planned to edit it down to just a couple of examples, but decided to leave the entire thing so that if you are watching the video while working cables, you don’t have to stop and rewind to watch the demonstration again. The video starts with stitches held to the back. After two examples, I added a note in the video telling you the time stamp where stitches held to the front starts, so you can fast forward if you are ready to do so! I hope you find the video helpful, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have.

Raindrops on Roses Shawlette

I’m going to start with this: I love this shawl. The pattern is beautiful. The yarn is beautiful. This pattern and this yarn were a perfect combination, and the results are spectacular.

Official Stats

Date Started: June 3, 2015
Date Finished: June 27, 2015
Pattern: Raindrops on Roses Shawlette by Assorted Musings (Ravelry, blog)
Yarn: 495 yards Nice & Knit Fingering in Peony
Needles: U.S. 5 / 3.75 millimeters
Finished Dimensions: For blocking, I pinned it out to 19.25” deep at the center and 47” wide at the widest point. When I took the pins out after it dried, it shrank a little to about 17.5″ deep and 45″ wide.
Made for: Test knit; I think I’m going to keep this one 🙂
Ravelry Project Page

About This Project

In early May, I flew from Orlando to Hartford, Connecticut. From there, I was driving to Vermont to attend my cousin’s college graduation. This is the cousin for whom I wove the Dr. Who Scarf. My father also flew into Hartford from Ohio. His flight didn’t arrive until four hours after mine, so I googled yarn shops near the airport and found Creative Fibers (website, Ravelry). This is a great yarn shop, located only 10 minutes from the Hartford airport. If you ever find yourself needing to kill time waiting for a delayed flight, I highly recommend visiting this shop. When I went into the shop, I asked if they had any local yarns. The woman working that day directed me to this yarn from Nice & Knit.

Nice & Knit (website, Ravelry) is yarn hand-dyed by two sisters, not far from the Creative Fibers shop. They have four yarn weights — fingering, sport, DK, and worsted — all in 100% superwash merino. The yarn was a dream to knit. It’s so soft and smooth, with no hint of splitting. Their colors are amazing. In addition to the skein of Peony that I used for this project, I bought a skein of fingering in Seagrass, a stunning bright yellow-green. I haven’t knit anything with that skein yet, but after knitting up the Peony I’m dying to find the right pattern for the Seagrass. The label says the skein is 490 yards / 100 grams. My skein of Peony was a little overweight, at 103. 8 grams, and that turned out to be a good thing because I added 1.5 lace repeats to the border. I used 100.3 grams (495 yards) of yarn. If my skein had been right on the nose or a little under, I wouldn’t have had enough yarn to make the shawl larger!

The pattern was well-written and a fun knit. I followed the charted directions, as I always do with lace, but I did read through the written instructions and found them easy to understand. I think it would be a great first lace project. If you look closely at the picture above, you may be able to see that a 2-stitch garter column separates each repeat of the lace pattern. This feature is helpful in keeping track of the repeat, even if you aren’t using stitch markers. There’s no lace work on the back, but it’s also not a straight purl across because you knit the stitches for the garter stitch columns. I found myself automatically counting stitches between the garter stitches as I worked across the back, and this helped me as find any yarn overs I accidentally omitted in the preceding row. The pattern calls for 3 repeats of the lace. I wanted to use as much of my skein as I could, so I asked Assorted Musings if it was okay with her if I made the shawl bigger. She said yes. I was able to get 1.5 more repeats out of my skein. It’s a fun pattern, and a relatively quick knit; I knit it in about 30 hours, including the extra lace repeats. Assorted Musings plans to release the pattern on July 15. You should get it and knit the shawl!

A Year of Projects 2015, Week 26.5

For the past week, I’ve been crafting like it’s my job. I also had an unusually high number of fun activities. I had lunch in Diagon Alley with Ravelry friends who were in Orlando on vacation from Massachusetts.

Of all the items listed for sale here, I most want the never-tangle wool.

I went to my first ever professional soccer game. It was my cousin’s wife’s birthday and that’s what she wanted to do.

My husband and I bought tickets to view last Sunday’s SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from the NASA causeway. We didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn and drive over, so we drove over Saturday night and stayed in a hotel.

If you look closely, you can see Launch Pad 40 and maybe the rocket on the pad. There’s 4 objects that look like buildings. Pad 40 is between the two right hand buildings. There’s 4 lightning towers surrounding the pad; the rocket is in the middle. It’s a slightly thicker line than the 4 surrounding towers.

Here’s the video I took of the launch. The vehicle failed 139 seconds after launch. I stopped recording two seconds before that because I was using my phone to record video and could barely see anything at that point. It looked like a beautiful, perfect launch with nothing more to see. And then the Liquid Oxygen tank exploded.

I still managed to get quite a bit of crafting done! Let’s review the ridiculously ambitious list of goals I wrote:

Goals for June 21 to 30, 2015

Finish Raindrops on Roses Shawl (Headmistress Challenge)
Finish Grisou Scarf (homework, but which class?)
Finish Solid / 1×1 Scarf (OWL)
Three more color and weave scarves to meet OWL 50% (highly unlikely to finish)
Finish current Heart Illusion Dishcloth, plus 4 more (COMC?)
Tier Scarf (Charms or Potions)
Crochet Dishcloths (Transfiguration)
MHK1 swatches (Divination and / or Charms)
Small stuffed bird (DADA)
Cast on Sweet Summer Shawl (Quidditch Round 3; due July 8)
Liquid Silver Swatch (OOTP; due July 19)
Cast on Begonia Swirl Shawl (Headmistress Challenge; due July 28)

Fully Accomplished Goals

I finished the Raindrops on Roses Shawl. I absolutely love it. I test knit this for Assorted Musings (Ravelry, blog); the pattern will be released on July 15. I plan to publish a detailed blog post for FO Friday on July 3.

I finished the Grisou Scarf. I test knit this for Sasoolero (Ravelry, blog) and I’m not sure when she plans to release the pattern. I will publish a blog post on this project for FO Friday on July 3.

Partially Accomplished Goals

I started the Solid / 1×1 Scarf. I’ve woven somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of it. I have the hardest time taking pictures of weaving in progress. Since the finished work gets wound onto the cloth beam, it’s difficult to see progress!

I finished the Heart Illusion Dishcloth that I had in progress, plus two more.

I started the tier scarf and knit about 1/3 of it.

Knitting while waiting for the rocket launch.

I crocheted one dishcloth. In my goal, I didn’t say how many I wanted to knit. I need 18 for the Dishcloth Advent Calendar, but didn’t expect to get them all done this month. I was hoping for 9. I learned how to single crochet increase, single crochet decrease, and crochet through the back loop.

I knit the first 3 swatches for MHK1. I still need to weave in the ends and block them. I also wrote answers to several more questions.

Unaccomplished Goals

As expected, I did not weave the 3 additional scarves for my OWL. I did not make the stuffed bird. I decided to submit the Grisou scarf for DADA instead, and didn’t need the bird for anything else. I have not cast on the Sweet Summer Shawl. I will be doing that today. I have not swatched for Liquid Silver. I will be doing that today. I have not cast on Begonia Swirl Shawl. I think I’m going to wait a couple of weeks and cast on before I go to TKGA in San Diego. It will make excellent travel knitting.

Other Projects

I made a felted cat bed for Tiger. I managed to knit 1,047 yards worth of garter stitch in less than 3 days, felt it, and stitch it together! It wasn’t on my goal list because I hadn’t decided to do it until after I wrote that list. Tiger’s been sleeping on an alpaca blanket my father bought me when he was in Peru and I didn’t want it ruined. I needed a quick replacement.

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’m tempted to write more, but I think this is more than enough. My husband is off on Friday and Monday for the July 4 holiday. I will have less crafting time than usual because I’ll be hanging out with him, and we’re going to the beach for at least one day!

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
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
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
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

A Year of Projects 2015, Week 25

It’s been a busy week around here, and this coming week will be busy too. However, there’s always time to craft!

Here’s the list of goals I wrote last week:

Goals for the Week of June 14 – 20, 2015

Finish the Sand Tracks Scarf.
Finish the Raindrops on Roses Shawlette.
Finish half of the questions and swatches for MHK1.
Finish at least one color and weave scarf on the rigid heddle loom.
Cast on the Liquid Silver Shawl.
Knit the Grisou Scarf (another test knit).

I’ve finished the Sand Tracks Scarf.

The Raindrops on Roses Shawlette is a stockinette stitch body with three repeats of a lace pattern. I finished that, but did not bind off. I have enough yarn to knit at least one, possibly two, more repeats of the lace. Since this is a test knit, I e-mailed the designer and asked if she preferred that I bind off now, per the pattern, or if it was okay for me to knit extra repeats. She said she’d like to see the shawl in a larger size, so I’m going to knit the additional repeats and expect to finish early this week. Here’s how it looked on Wednesday, 4 rows shy of finishing the first three lace repeats:

I haven’t done anything with MHK1 this week. I need to make this a priority as I want to finish before I go to TKGA’s Annual Conference in San Diego from July 21-26.

Yesterday, I tied on a color and weave scarf. This is a solid red warp. The weft alternates one pick of the same red as the warp with one pick of a tweed. I’ve woven perhaps 1/4 of the scarf, and plan to finish it early this week.

I looked at all the crafting I plan to finish this month and decided to move Liquid Silver to early July. I do want to swatch for it by the end of the month.

The Grisou Scarf is a test knit. I am using a different yarn than the designer, so swatched for it. I ended up knitting swatches with three different size needles! I’ve just got to finish the border, and expect to finish knitting it today.

While I was waiting to hear back from the designer of Raindrops on Roses and for the Grisou swatches to dry, I cast on another Heart Illusion Dishcloth. I got about 1/2 of it knit.

Finally, though this has nothing to do with knitting, I wanted to post a picture of me with my father, since today is Father’s Day in the United States. I often say that I’ve birdwatched since I was 6 months old. My father started birdwatching shortly after my parents married, and once I came along, I was in a backpack on his back. This morning, my father, mother, aunt, uncle, and I went birdwatching for Father’s Day. We went to a newly opened 11 mile drive that skirts along the northern edge of Lake Apopka, not far from where we live. We only saw 22 species of birds, all of which are common in our area, but we saw many, many individual birds of most species. Here’s a picture my mom took of my Dad and I, looking at birds: