My first handspun handknit-blast from the past

These mittens were my first ever handspun handknit project. I bought the purple merino roving at the Black Sheep Gathering, and spun it on my wheel. (Have I mentioned lately that I dislike spindles?)

Since they are not superwash, they are now pretty felted from snow and wear. That's ok, they were meant to be used.



I finished Essential Stripe, and will take a picture of it the next time I'm home in the daylight, i.e. this weekend. It has cap sleeves now.

I'm carrying around the black sweater as my portable project. It's going MUCH better since I switched from straight needles inherited from one grandmother or the other, to Addi Turbos. The straight needles had too pointy of points, and I couldn't knit without looking at it. That's very annoying to me. I want to be able to multitask. So anyhow, much better now.

My second bobbin of the forest merino is getting fatter. I'm spending way more time spinning than I used to. Probably about 3 hours a week. Some mornings if I have time, I'll squeeze in five or ten minutes of spinning.

I have a new reader, Hi Mom! I'll give you a pharmacy update: I started this week at a compounding pharmacy. It's different than I thought. I'm used to working with a clientel from the lower economic range, and this definitely is more the upper middle class. I'm not so fond of that. And, I'm not allowed to do anything but watch yet.

I'm looking forward to knitting tomorrow night, and to seeing who all shows up!

Socks and a knitting group!

These are not new, but they're still pretty. Trekking XXL. Ann Budd's basic sock. I'm posting this to motivate myself to keep working on the Faroese Footlets.



I ran into a spinner today who can't spin because of carpal tunnel syndrome. Bummer! I'm going to take a moment and appreciate my physical abilities.

(Moment)

And in breaking news: We had FIVE knitters on tuesday! My dream of a knitting group is coming true! (Remember, we're doing Wednesday next week)



Yup, that's Essential Stripe, still on the needles.

No Pictures

The hardest part of this blogging thing for me is writing. I can post pictures and tell you about them, but I'm not much of a creative writer. Science writing I can (finally) handle. I tend to be terse to a fault. And I don't tend to ever write in a conversational way. So this is all a challenge for me.

But, hey, I am occasionally up for a challenge.

My other challenge at the moment is yarn stash overload. I have too many projects in plain sight. I need to hide some so I don't feel as overwhelmed. (Yes, or I could finish some, shhh!) I'm almost done with Essential Stripe, because of the sleeve issue.

The sleeve issue: It's too wide. At the top of the sleeve, it is about 15 inches in diameter. My arm is closer to 13 inches at the top. And I want it down to 10.5 inches at the bottom. If I decrease that much, it'll still be loose at the top of the sleeve, and I don't want it loose. I had envisioned a tighter fit on the sleeve to go with the negative ease in the chest.

So, I'm going to cap the sleeves. A little rib and that's it.

I don't want to go to all the work to design my own sweater pattern yet. But if I do this pattern again (which I will) I'll figure out how to start the sleeves with fewer stitches at the top. I can see the math and where it needs to be done, I just don't want to do it. Whine whine.

In other news, it sounds like tomorrow night might have several knitters! Yahoo!

DNA scarf better pic

Not new, but I finally got around to taking a better photo of my DNA scarf.

See June at twosheep.com for the pattern.


I'm still planning on making a matching hat someday.

New Years Eve

It's never too late to recap New Year's Eve. We tried to play Mah Jong. We even tried to read the rules.



I started Faroese Footlets. From handspun, no less! They are a little further along now. It's like knitting socks with no top, and starting with the heel. Hopefully to offer to guests to keep their feet warm. They are a good portable project.

And a gratuitous stash picture:

The green Noro was a gift from Uncles (Thanks, Uncles!) and the dark green Manos de Uruguay is from my lovely husband. The brown is my handspun that is being wrought into footlets.
Ahhh. Yarn! (I feel this is somehow a wholesome type of hedonism.)

Old bag

I was pointed towards a blog today of a middle school/high school acquaintance. She has some great embroidery, updated for the 21st century. See if you can find the airstream tea towel!

I am inspired by her to tell you all (I know who my two readers are!) about my sewing bag. The designs are from Sublime Stitching. The bag pattern is from Amy Butler, and is the pattern that I modified for the poodle purse.

The fabric is a cotton velveteen, and has interfacing up the wazoo. The interfacing doesn't feel quite right for this bag. That's my main gripe on this project. The lining is skirt fabric leftovers, diamond quilted just because.


(Let's just pretend that I didn't futz up the color balance on this one.)

Spinning in Chair Colors

As I was spinning, I remarked a similarity between my roving and the chair:


This wool (superwash merino from Fantasy Fibers in forest ) was picked out by Hans at the Black Sheep Show last year. It is intended for a hat for him, although it would make lovely socks. And it's so beautiful as singles that I'm a bit loathe to ply it.


I'm spinning from the fold for the first time. I thought that it would help add a little spring and loft, as I tend to spin hard and dense if I'm spinning worsted. It has the absolutely superb side effect of keeping the colors separated enough to save them from a muddy brown fate. (That's what happened when I spun it thicker and worsted. Ick! Somewhere near the color of flood waters.)

(I'm very pleased with how this is spinning!)

Chukar Arm Warmers

For those of you who don't know (I was in this group until this year), a chukar is a game bird that looks like this:

And here is what Wikipedia has to say about chukars:
"The Chukar, Alectoris chukar, is a gamebird in the pheasant family Phasianidae of the order Galliformes, gallinaceous birds.

"This partridge has its main (native) range in Asia and southeastern Europe, and is closely related and similar to its western equivalent, the Red-legged Partridge, Alectoris rufa. It has been introduced widely, and became established in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Hawaii. In Great Britain, hybrids between this species and the also introduced Red-legged Partridge are common.

"This is a resident breeder in dry, open and often hilly country. It nests in a scantily lined ground scrape laying 8-20 eggs. Chukar takes a wide variety of seeds and some insect food.

"It is a rotund bird, with a light brown back, grey breast and buff belly. The face is white with a black gorget. It has rufous-streaked flanks and red legs. When disturbed, it prefers to run rather than fly, but if necessary it flies a short distance on rounded wings.

"It is very similar to Rock Partridge, Alectoris graeca, but is browner on the back and has a yellowish tinge to the foreneck. The sharply defined gorget distinguishes this species from Red-legged Partridge. The song is a noisy chuck-chuck-chukar-chukar.
"This species is declining in parts of its range due to habitat loss and over-hunting."

My mother-in-law is helping expand the range of chukars to Alaska.

Since Alaska is known to have the occasional cold snap, arm warmers were mentioned by said mother-in-law as a useful knitted item, for the express purpose of reading in bed.

In a daze one night, I somehow confused the two items and ended up with Chukar Arm Warmers.

They are made with Elizabeth Lavold Angora (60% angora, 20% wool, 20% polyamide). The angora is not quite as soft as I would have imagined.

Let's look again:

The chukars look a little bit like dinosaurs, but considering their phylogenetic ties, I don't think it's entirely inappropriate.

New Post buried in December 27th

See December 27th for a new post. Apparently if I start a post and then finish it later, it hops into line by date started, not posted. That's kind of annoying.

Essential Stripe Frogging

After much frustration, I have decided to make this a cap sleeve sweater. I was shooting for 3/4 length sleeves, but the pattern calls for very gradual arm shaping and the arms were baggy. I just couldn't deal with that. So I ripped out most of the sleeve and put in more aggresive decreases. Worse. So I ripped again.

Now I just need to decide on ribbing color. Dark brown to match the neck? I think I'll decrease a needle size for this ribbing.

I was afraid I was going to run out of dark brown, since I was using that for the ribbing, so I ordered another ball. The only place I could find the color had a two ball minimum. I may have enough yarn left over to do another one.

Pattern (of sorts) for White Hat

Six-Seven-Eight Hat

2 Balls (50g?) Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Bulky
1 Ball Debbie Bliss Astrakhan

This hat was made for my neighbor with a brain tumor. The name comes from the number of stitches in and between the cables (6 and 8) and the number of repeats (7).

Gauge 14 st (of 6 st cable and 8 st purl) =3 inches (rows not too important for gauge but mine came to 22 rows/4 inches)

Size 10 needles, 5 dp and 16” or 24” circular needles

Cast on 98 st, arrange on 3-4 dp if using instead of circulars

Cable pattern 1: every 5 rows hold 3 st behind on cable needle

Cable pattern 2: every 7 rows, alternate holding in front and behind.

Repeat pattern 1 at end (1 2 1 2 1 2 1)

Work in pattern for 4 inches

(Next round decrease by p2tog after every cable,

Work 1 round in pattern), repeat 5 times.

Next round, on all “cable 2”- k2 tog, knit 2, ssk, and last “cable 1” ssk every other round on last stitch of cable.

Brim in Astrakhan:

12 st/2.5 inch or 5 st/inch, I used size 6 needles.

Work 19 inches in garter stitch (k all stitches), bind off and sew ends together, or bind off while picking up end stitches. Sew brim onto hat, with seam on right side (the brim will fold up and over the seam)

Comment with questions, this was a quick and dirty pattern, and probably not the clearest.

White hat finis!

Back from my travels. On with the good stuff in life, i.e. knitting!

Ta-da! My own design, I am even working on getting a pattern written out. The only tricky part is how to decrease at the top. And no, it's not perfectly symmetrical. I was going to do all 7 cables the same, but after I started, it just seemed boring.

Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Bulky (2 balls) with an Astrakhan brim (1 ball).

I'm feeling less than verbose right now, so I'll post and wait for a more loquacious moment.

No pretty pics today

Well, I'll be MIA for some days. I'll be knitting though! There is a present on its way to someone, and when it gets there I'll post about it. I've also got pics of the finished white hat, and a new spinning project. I figured out spinning from the fold. On the fold? Something in that vein. And slippers from handspun on the needles.