Blocked and ready to give...

Front view - Annis shawlette for Mom

Mom's shawlette is done and ready to give for Christmas.  This was a relatively quick knit.  I loved working with the Malabrigo yarn, beautiful color and wonderfully soft!  Way out of my price range, so I really enjoyed working with this fancy yarn.
I've done this shawlette before, and so I was familiar with the pattern.  That certainly helped me get through the nupps - which are not my favorite things to do - but the effect is very nice.  The method I use is not the knitting purist way of doing things.  The nupps on this shawlette are one stitch to seven stitches on the first row and then back to one stitch on the next row. I use a tiny latch hook, I got mine from a knitting machine supplier a long time ago.  Not entirely sure if they are still available, but it is about half the size of the standard rug making latch hooks I've seen in craft stores. The way I use it goes like this: the first row I do on the knitting needles in the normal way, knit one stitch without removing it from the left needle, go back into the stitch and do a yarn over. Repeat until the required number of loops are on the needle. Knit on in the pattern to the end of the row.  When I get back to the nupp on the next row, I slip the loops onto the latch hook and lay the working yarn in the hook, close the latch and draw it through all the loops and re-hang the yarn I drew through onto the right needle.  Then I tighten it up to match the gauge of the rest of the knitting.  Works better for me than trying to use a knitting needle or a crochet hook to capture the yarn without losing all the loops.

Back view - Annis shawlette for Mom

This shawlette has the lace done first and then short rows of stockinette to the top edge.  It is crescent shaped, and was a very different looking thing on the needles as it was being worked.  This particular piece didn't get quite as large as the pattern suggested for blocking.  The pattern suggested fifty six inches in width, I got about fifty two inches, and I blocked it out about as far as I could.  The yarn was beautiful, but it did lose some color in the wash water, but the finished piece doesn't look any lighter, so the color was probably excess dye on the fiber of the yarn.  I put it through several hot water rinses to be certain I got all the detergent out of the fiber, and to rinse out as much of the dye as would come out so that the shawlette wouldn't lose color onto any garment it would come in contact with when worn.

I do have a set of blocking mats from Knit Picks that I shot a picture of this piece on before washing so that you can see how much knitted lace changes from the needles to the shawl.


Before blocking - notice the size

This picture gives an idea of the size before blocking.  The tape measure shows about twenty eight inches, I thought I'd have plenty of space on these nice blocking squares. Not in real life though... I blocked the wet knitting out to the fifty two inches and it took my other set of squares, an alphabet play set that I bought at Walmart for about twenty bucks a few months back.  I knew I'd need them for the Shipwreck shawl I'm planning - I'm sure glad I had them for this!  Hideous colors, so I won't blind you with a photo of the lace being blocked, but they worked very well to hold the pins in the points of the lace.  I do have blocking wires, but they are not the super flexible ones, so I only used them for the ends of the lace where it is flat.  I used extra fine sewing pins for the points of the lace, being sure to catch at least two strands of yarn in each point.

Close up of lace before blocking

The process of blocking is pretty simple.  Take the wet knitting and stretch it out, using pins at all the points of the lace to pull them out and lay the knitting very flat and allow it to dry in that state.

 

The reality is a little more involved. 

 

1. Take the sloppy looking mess of knitting and soak it for a half hour in hot, soapy water remembering not to agitate it at all. 

2. Become horrified by the dark purple water under the suds.

3. Bundle up the knitting and squeeze out still more dark purple water and suds.

4. Remind myself to relax - there is still purple yarn in there.

5. Refill the bucket with more hot water and push the tiny bundle back into the water.

6. Become alarmed again by the dark purple water.

7. Repeat the hot rinse a couple more times, carefully watching to see if a white shawl will remain at the end of this process.

8. Relax a little when the color bleed slows down after the fifth rinse.

9. Take the little bundle out of the water, squeeze out most of the water and carry the tiny bundle down to the blocking board.

10. Start pinning it out after threading the two straight edge bits onto blocking wires.

11. Discover that the fancy branded knitting blocking squares are not even close to being big enough to do the job, no matter how cleverly configured.

12. Move the whole shebang to the kitchen counter and retrieve the other set of mats - the hideous bright colored alphabet set mentioned earlier.  I am NOT shooting a picture of lovely lace on those ugly things!

13. Start over, pinning the knitting out and re-pinning as it grows, and grows, and grows!  This piece more than doubled in size from the needles to the blocking.  I was amazed!

14. Wait for the thing to dry, finding somewhere else to prepare and eat my meals so I don't have to disturb what now looks very fragile, airy and light.

15. Remove a couple of pins after about 12 hours, gasp with delight that the lace holds the shape.  Then remove the rest of the pins and wires and let the knitting rest for a couple hours.

16. Prepare the dress form and shoot some pictures!

 

Even though I did this before with my first shawlette, I didn't use such fine yarn and didn't block it out as far.  I really was not prepared for the beauty and diaphanous quality of the finer yarn made into knitted lace.  I can hardly wait to begin the Shipwreck shawl.  That pattern is a very large circular shawl - almost six feet across when blocked!  Glad I had this experience first to prepare myself for that, although I love to be surprised by beauty like this.  I think Mom will be delighted with her pretty shawlette, and I hope she gets a lot of use out of it.

 

Next on the needles is a heavily cabled sweater for myself.  I'm already started on it and I'm enjoying this knit a great deal.  I like to keep one project in heavier yarn in progress for when I just want to knit something that I can really see progress on. Finer yarns are great, but the projects seem to go so much more slowly...

 

Still spinning on the singles for the Shipwreck shawl.  I've got about 600 yards of the sequined yarn and over 400 yards of the yarn without sequins.  I'm into the last ball of the Louet Northern Lights pencil roving in the Violets colorway and I've got a full bobbin of the purple recycled yarn ready for plying when I'm done with the LNL singles.  I'll probably cast on the shawl and get started on it so that I'll have some idea of how much more of the yarn I'll need of each style.  The sequins are in the netted part out toward the edge, so I expect that I'll need more of that.  The total shawl takes about 1600 yards, so I'll have plenty of knitting to do.

Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival 2012

Amazing weekend!  Took some vacation time and had a wonderful time at this fiber fair.  Probably the best and largest one that is close to me.  It runs from Friday to Sunday and just finished up its eleventh annual event.

As I think back on it, this festival started as a sheep show and has grown into the amazing event that it is now.  It has a full livestock show, fleece show and auction, vendors in two large barns, a sheepdog trial that runs all three days and classes from nationally known instructors.

This year I entered the Open Handspun Skein Competition in two categories.  Experienced adult spinner class - fine yarn lot, and Drop spindle class - medium lot.  The entry for the first one was a yarn that I just finished, I called it Deep Blue Sea and my plans for it are a very large shawl called Shipwreck so I still have a lot of spinning to do!  The shawl requires 1600 yards of fine yarn.  The skein I entered will be used for part of the beaded netting that the pattern calls for out near the edge.  I may alternate the sequined rows with the regular yarn, I'll sample it and see.  Here's what the yarn looks like:


Deep Blue Sea

Deep Blue Sea - swatch

It is a three ply yarn, one ply is a varigated wool from Louet called Northern Lights in the Violets colorway.  It shades from purple to lime green through several shades of blue.  One ply is a lambswool, angora and nylon blend in purple.  The third ply is sewing thread strung with 3mm amethyst iris sequins.  As I plied the yarn, I pushed in a sequin about every 3-4 inches so they would appear about once every knitted inch.  The Shipwreck pattern calls for beads at random intervals, so I thought this would work for me since they sequins are already in the yarn.  Beads strung on yarn have a number of concerns for me.  Sliding the beads along the spun yarn abrades the yarn unless the beads are very large.  If the beads are smaller there is the problem of a thick spot in the yarn that the beads might not fit over, and that is always possible on handspun.  I also made a small swatch, the competition required it to be quite small, so the motif from the shawl pattern was much too large.  I chose a small eyelet pattern from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury.

Blue Neon 3 ply and extra black chain ply

Blue Neon - swatch

The other yarn I entered was also a three ply.  Spun on a drop spindle, this yarn was one ply of a handpainted BFL (Blue-Faced Leicester) roving from Frene Creek Farm my favorite local shepherd.  The other two plies were made from a 50/50 blend of "Dusty" a fine wool covered Corriedale fleece from a shepherd in Colorado (no longer has a web presence) and some black alpaca roving. This photo shows the extra black yarn chain plied on top of the Blue Neon skeins.  I called this one Blue Neon because of the way it worked up - the skein showed brilliant color against the black background which was the look I was after with this combination of fiber.  The swatch shows a nice, shadowy stripe of the varigation of the handpaint.  I did like the swatch at this weight the best.  This one was done on size 4 needles and had the suppleness I'd want for a sweater or vest.  I had also done a swatch for socks on size 2 needles.  It is also pleasing to me, but I think this will probably become outerwear.  Might use some as an accent on socks, but since there is no nylon in this blend, it might not wear well enough for socks.

The skein competition was interesting to watch.  The instructions were that no talking or questions would be allowed, and the judge worked in silence.  Disappointing to me, after listening to the wool judge on the prior day.  He chattered away as he judged the fleeces.  Talked about what he looked for and what he was finding as he worked his way through the many fleeces in that show.  Just a difference in the way the two judges worked.  Perhaps there is a tradition there as well... I don't know, but I did enjoy the way the talkative judge worked.  I think I learned more from that method.

The results were available after the judging and I was allowed to keep my score sheets, which I appreciated.  Sadly, there were no comments on the papers, just the numerical scores.  The nice thing was that I was permitted to speak with the judge when she was finished.  The standard calls for perfection, and appears to compare the handspun skeins to millspun yarns.  I fared pretty well, my Deep Blue Sea got 96/100 points and the Blue Neon got 100/100 points.  Both were awarded second place ribbons.  Deep Blue Sea was topped by a bamboo/silk 2 ply that was perfectly even.  Not as pretty, in my opinion, but it was perfect.  Blue Neon was beat by a beautiful heavier weight two ply, that again, was perfectly even.  That skein also won Best In Show.  I'm content, my scores were very good, and I still love my yarn.  Actually, the judge did too, as I learned in our conversation after the judging was done.  She told me that she knew how difficult it is to ply with sewing thread and that she just LOVES sequins.  So..... I think she liked my yarn - quite a lot.

Will I do another competition?  I don't know.  I learned a lot, but I also know that my yarn scores very high in such a competition.  That part was quite satisfying.  The payout isn't really enough to make me want to do very much of this.  Each of those skeins represent many hours of work, and though the booth was attended, I was uncomfortable leaving my hard work out there for the whole weekend.


Tour de Fleece recap...

It seems that I go through phases in my fiber art life. Right now I'm in a spinning phase and having a wonderful time!  Just finished Tour de Fleece, which I have never done before.  I had not heard of it until recently, but it is a self-directed spinning challenge that runs at the same time as the Tour de France bicycle race.  Having no interest in sports, I did the challenge for the personal satisfaction.

I participated in three teams, the first one was Knit Picks and I chose to spin a three ply yarn to complete the singles I had spun of "Blue Fleck" colorway from AlohaBlu that I received in a spinning swap a while back. 

Spin swap from AlohaBlu, the Blue Fleck custom dyed roving is in the middle

When I get those precious braids of handpainted roving I like to plan a yarn around them to show their beauty. This particular roving was about two ounces, and I like to have more yarn than that in the event I want more than an accent of the handpaint.  So I made up more batts to match. In this case, I wanted a subtle blend of blues and teals so I combined these fibers into batts: some gray Corriedale from a sheep named "Sierra", some wool top in a colorway "Bluebell" and some hand dyed Firestar in blue and teal.  All of this came from my stash (how cool is that!) so it made me feel extra good about the yarn I was making!  Here's the picture of the finished "Blue Fleck" singles and the stash of the other fibers.

Blue Fleck singles, Bluebell top, Firestar in blue and teal

Sierra Corridale

The finished batts looked like this:

I made four of these at 33 grams each so that I would have two bobbins with well over two ounces each for plying.  I prefer not to have to try and match batts after the fact, because it seems to be like dye lots, where even if I use the same materials and in the same ratios it never looks identical.

Then I started the spinning.  It seemed to take forever since I wanted the final yarn to be pretty fine.  I finished a bit early, which was a relief and did the plying and got this yarn:

It ended up being 600 yards, 160 grams or 5.6 ounces!  No wonder it felt like I had been spinning forever!  I ended up with quite a bit of the blended singles left, so I did an experiment with embellished yarn using sequins strung on sewing thread.  I chain plied it with the two strands held together, very fiddly and time consuming, but I really like the resulting yarn:

It is 36 grams or 1.3 ounces and 92 yards.  At this point, I'm planning to use this yarn set for some kind of outerwear with the sequined yarn for trim.  It isn't soft enough for next to the skin, but it is gorgeous and will wear well.  Haven't decided on knitting or weaving yet, or even what form of garment.  So into the stash it goes for the time being.

New stash...

Gosh, it has been a while since a yarn grabbed me like this.  I found some really pretty ruffling yarn advertised in a catalog from Mary Maxim.  Most of their things are way to cutesy for my taste, but they had several varieties of this self-ruffling yarn that I wanted to have a look at "in person" to see how they worked.  I went to every craft shop in town, and of course, none of them had any of the types - not even the Red Heart version. Sigh....
So, I went back to the catalog and tried to place an order for the least expensive version - Red Heart Sashay - and it was out of stock!  Bigger sigh...
So, I went for the higher priced version and placed an order.  Hope it arrives soon... it looks so nice in the pictures.
Of course, with all that yarn shopping a few skeins followed me home.  I found this lovely, fuzzy Patons Lace with Sequins in the Amethyst colorway:

Pretty stuff, but as with most sparkly yarns, this one is a bit camera shy.  The sequins are a deep color that shimmers between red, fuschia and violet.  Very pretty indeed!  I'm thinking of a shrug or a vest with this, the balls are lace weight, and with all that glittering, I'll want a smooth knit to show it off to it's best advantage.

I'll swatch it later on, since I seem to have caught the "cast on" bug in the last little while.

Here's the beginning of my next sweater - at least I hope it is, the swatch is feeling a little light and loose and it isn't at gauge yet.  But here's the picture of what I'm planning for the next sweater.

The pattern is from Sunday Knits and is called Tapestry.  Very romantic, lots of cables and lace and knit in the round up to the armsceye.  I especially like the way the buttons are nestled into the cables on the front.  I chose a superwash fingering weight yarn from Knit Picks called Stroll in the colorway Twinkle Heather.  I'll keep going on the swatch and see if I like it better as it grows in size.  There are some people that say superwash wools don't feel good to them.  I really rather like the soft hand that this treatment gives the fiber.  Some wools feel a bit scratchy to me - even Merino sometimes.  I typically wear pure regular wool sweaters over a cotton turtleneck for comfort.  The superwash I can wear in socks on my bare skin without a problem.  For instance, those new slippers I made have both kinds of wool in them, superwash on the tops and feltable wool for the soles.  I find them more comfortable if I wear thin socks inside the slippers.  Doing this should also help improve the wearing life of the slippers as well, so it becomes a win-win situation.  This being said, I've started another pair of slipper socks since I adore the first pair and needed another "easy" knitting project for when I'm somewhere that I can knit on something simple and still be able to pay attention to other things going on... like at church.  So here's a work-in-progress shot of the slippers:

Since it takes two strands held together for the tops, I wound off a small ball of the sock yarn, trying to match up the patterning so there are some coherent stripes on the tops.  I like the effect I'm getting so far.  The match isn't perfect, but with two yarns running together the stripes are softened a bit.  So far, so good.  I'm just starting the top of the foot on the first slipper.  These take me about twenty hours from start to finish.  The yarn is Wisdom Yarns Phoenix in the Hayden colorway.  Superwash wool and nylon blend.  Cast on with size 7 needles and switch to size 4 for the tops.  I'll use my leftover Wool of the Andes Worsted in Fairy Tale for the heels and soles - I had a few balls left from the sweater and they match this yarn pretty nicely.