Because I can...

I've been musing lately on the reactions I get from people who see me spinning or knitting.  Most folks know what knitting is and what it looks like when people do it.  The oddity seems to be that people are somewhat uncomfortable that someone would have the audacity to do such a thing IN PUBLIC!  My goodness, what would become of me if people saw me doing this?

I can tell you what happens... because I do it in public all the time.  People stare for a while, and if they get bold enough, they start asking questions. 

• "What are you doing?"  Spinning wool into yarn, or knitting socks....
• "Can I touch it?"  Of course....
• "What are you making?"  Yarn, or a sweater, or whatever it is that I'm working on.

and my all time favorite question:

• "Why would you want to make yarn when you can buy it?"  This gets interesting, if the person seems to be of the artistic nature, I can explain the colorwork or the blending of different types of fibers to get precisely the yarn I want.  If the person isn't the artsy type, it can be a lot of fun, but I usually end up answering simply: Because I can.

Most of the world is all about hurry up and get everything done as quickly as possible. The very nature of spinning singles, plying them into yarn and then knitting with what I have spun sets up all kinds of quandries in people's heads.  Most cannot even fathom making anything from scratch, be it a meal, clothing, furniture or what have you.  They think it is quaint and old-fashioned to make things.  Perhaps it is... but it is a skill all the same. 

I cherish the beauty of the things I create with my mind and hands.  I'm delighted that I've been given the gift of creativity, and the sense to use it.  I learned how to do most of this in my college fiber art classes, and have refined and improved my techniques over the years since then. 

So when the world and society whirl ever faster, I choose to slow down, deliberately and happily.

Because I can.

Finished yarn... love this one!

This is the finished yarn that I've been working on for a while.  The blue variegated ply came from Frene Creek Farm and is one of her lovely handpainted BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) rovings.  Since it is only four ounces, I wanted more possibilities, so I spun two extra plies to show off the variegation better and also to have a solid color yarn to go with the boldness of the pattern yarn.

For the solid plies, I wanted softness and blackness. That made alpaca my first choice.  A black that gobbles up light would showcase the brilliance of the blues.  So I started spinning.... and discovered that pure alpaca top doesn't agree with my spinning style all that well. I dug into my stash for the finest, blackest wool I had on hand.  It is a Corriedale fleece from my favorite Colorado shepherd, from her sheep Dusty.  Nearly as fine as Targhee, so delightfully soft.  I washed up some of the fleece and blended it at the drum carder at a 50% alpaca and 50% Dusty Corriedale wool.  It spun like a dream, and is nearly indistinguishable from the pure black alpaca.

The first shot was color corrected but not corrected for anything else.  This shot shows more what the yarn really "looks" like.  Cameras can be unkind at macro focal lengths... The dark yarn is a Navajo plied skein of my leftover black.  I can always spin more if I need to, but I wanted to have plenty for finishing up the variegated ply work.

The vital statistics on the finished yarn:

Variegated: 4 skeins of 3 ply yarn, total weight 291 grams (10.3 ounces) and 736 yards.  This yarn is about 1143 yards per pound... I think that lands it somewhere between DK and worsted weight.
Solid: 1 skein Navajo plied yarn, total weight 52 grams (1.8 ounces) and 176 yards.  This yarn is about 1564 yards per pound... a little finer, looks like about sport weight to me.  Haven't washed or swatched these yarns yet, but I'll bet they'll get even softer!

Spinning more yummy stuff... sampling the plies now.  I'll shoot pictures for next time.


Oooooooh, messy, messy, messy!

Decided that I'd had enough of the ribbing on the kilt hose so I took the plunge, got out all the bobbins I posess and started winding them with 5 yards each and started the intarsia.  I had no idea that it would take all thirty (Oh my gosh - THIRTY!) bobbins to get started on these socks!  As I'm not really crazy about weaving in ends, I use Kaffe Fassett's method and bind them in as I go.  Messy looking while it is happening, but no ends to weave in for later.  I call that a win!
I decided to take some pictures - even though it looks pretty messy at this stage...

Those little triangles will be diamond shaped as the knitting progresses.  This shot shows both the front and back.  Here's one of just the front...

And here's one of just the back side of the knitting.  You can see the woven in ends... not the prettiest finish, but I think it is one of the most flexible, since it is done as the knitting progresses.  Oh, and did I mention, no ends to weave in later?  That's my favorite part!

Once again, I'm very glad that I'm doing both socks at once.  This is really slow going, but they will be lovely when complete... I'm thinking ten years or so (not really, it just seems that way right now).

Next up, pictures of the finished yarn I've been working on!

The brothers three...

Over the last month or so I've been busy with another order.  This time it was hats for three brothers to match the Buchanan tartan.  Similar to the first one, but a tartan with a lot more color.  So I began...

I added a few rows to show the narrow bands of black and white in the tartan (Buchanan #151 on www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net)  This is, of course, an interpretation since this relatively narrow band can't duplicate an entire tartan pattern.  Lots of fun to do though, and I had the opportunity to make three of them!

As I was finishing them up, it was fun to see how they felted.  It only took 13 minutes of sloshing around to get them to the proper size.  Then the sewing up... Called the customer, one of the brothers three, and he was delighted with them.

He even posed for a couple of pictures:

Then I got the rest of the story behind these hats.  This brother has had some significant health issues and is doing this batch of hats for a "bucket list" adventure with his brothers.  They are going out to Oregon for some kind of a fishing trip together and this is one of the gifts that he dreamed up to give to his brothers.  I'm grateful and humbled to be part of such an adventure.  I hope they find happiness and joy in their time together!  He did promise to bring back pictures of the whole clan wearing their hats... I'll share them when they arrive!

Real horsepower!

Independence Day... one of my favorite holidays of the year.  Not for the fireworks - but for what it means.  Freedom isn't free, it was purchased at great cost from the blood, sweat and tears of soldiers, sailors, airmen and other people who have served in this great country's military forces for the last 200+ years.  God Bless America!

My celebration includes the annual horse pull in Edgerton whenever I can make it to the event.  This year was one of those years and my little phone video camera was able to capture this video of one of the heavy class competitors (these horses often weigh over a ton apiece!)

Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the competitors or their horses, but it was nice to see a Percheron in the mix this year.  Usually it is all Belgians.  I've got a special place in my heart for Percherons, since that was the breed of my first team - Dick and Dan.

Finished skeins of Alpaca blend...

Finally got a couple skeins done of the Alpaca/Dusty/Blue Faced Leicester.  Thought you might like a peek:

Back in January I finished the BFL handpainted roving and I remember not liking the magpie nature of the other handpainted singles that I Navajo plied.  So I sampled it with some pure black alpaca (back on 5/25/2011 in Next Up... Alpaca!)

I finished maybe a quarter of a bobbin of the pure alpaca and decided I was tired of all the drifting apart, it was forcing me to spin singles heavier than I really wanted for this yarn.

Having just washed Dusty's fleece, a lightbulb lit in my brain (don't worry, there wasn't too much smoke) and I decided to blend the two fibers and see what the result would be - sure couldn't be any worse to spin!

 

Here's a reminder shot of the original skein where the two black plies are pure alpaca:

Those two up above are the blended plies - the smaller one has one ply of the pure alpaca and one ply of the 50/50 blend.  Visually, they are identical.  You might be able to enlarge the pictures enough to tell the difference, but I really doubt that I'd let someone close enough to me to do that kind of visual inspection of any finished garment of this yarn!

These new singles are a lot more fun to spin, I can draft in my usual way and spin it up as fine as I want.  No slipping, no drifting apart and lovely fine singles so that the three ply finished yarn will be more like fingering or DK weight when it is finished.  Best yet, this is some of the softest yarn I've ever spun.  The fine wool and the alpaca seem to be made for each other!

Finished one and started another...

Here's the finished shots of the navy blue tam that I finished on Friday.  It worked out well, a little different from the first one, partly because it is all one color and partly because the single color band felted far differently than the multicolored band of the one I did for George.  Evidently the second layer of wool in the Fair Isle dice pattern makes for a more rapid and firmer felted band on the finished hat.  I'll keep that in mind in case I ever do another one in a solid color.  Felting certainly is full of surprises and isn't an exact science!

The next one I've started is for another order - this time three matching tams for a group of three brothers.  This set matches the Buchanan tartan #151 (if you want to look up tartans, here is a great site to do it: http://houseoftartan.co.uk/house/tfinder.htm)  Could not find a way to cut and paste the image of the tartan, but it is a lot of fun to look up family tartans on that site.


Tam to match Buchanan tartan #151

Here's a shot of the work in progress: 
This is one of the most complex tartans I've ever seen.  Not only is it asymmetrical, it has more colors than any other tartan I've found.  There may be others - but I did the best I could to match it.  Missing the blue in the original, but this was getting pretty busy with color already.  Vertical lines are tough in this kind of knitting, I think duplicate stitch would be the only way, and I'm not sure how the extra layer of yarn would behave in the felting process, so I'm not taking any chances.  That is an experiment for another time - when I don't have a tight deadline to meet!

I'm up to the point where I knit even for 20 rounds or so, which forms the outside edge of the turned edge before the tam begins to flatten out across the top and the decreasing rounds.  These are a lot of fun to do, even with all the surprises that happen in the felting process.

Onward and upward...