Last Friday in October

And here we are, at the last weekend of the month. October went quickly.

This weekend is the big Halloween party weekend. Some interesting logistics have been required. We are busy tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night, and all day Sunday, sometimes with different people going in different directions at the same time. Not all of the events are Halloween events.

Usually, we get dreadful weather for Halloween, the party weekend, or both. I'm not sure what will happen this year. We might get some snow tonight and tomorrow, but nothing major (in theory). So far, Wednesday night looks pretty good.




Here is a picture of some pretty yarn. In my last post, I wrote about the virtues of spot-dyeing. The above photo is an example.

I call it "sherbet yarn" because the colors of the roving looked a lot like orange and lime sherbet. A friend and I used cheerful spring-like shades of yellow, green, and orange. We left plenty of white. I don't remember what kind of roving we used, but I suspect it's generic Brown Sheep white roving.

We used our usual method for this kind of stuff. We mixed up dyestocks. We soaked the roving in a mixture of water and vinegar, then gently squeezed out most of the liquid. We placed the roving on a piece of plastic wrap. Then, we dribbled dye all over the roving. We rolled the plastic wrap over the roving, then steamed it for a half hour or so. We use a large canning kettle for steaming, with a steamer basket or rack set above some steaming water.

The dyed roving made us smile. I spun it up and self-plied it, and you can see the results.

As usual, I don't have all that much of the yarn, maybe 200-250 yards and 2 ounces of each. I have no idea what I'll do with it. For now, I take it out when I'm in the mood to look at something cheerful.

I think that warm shades of yellow and green are under-rated, too.

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I am almost done with the Lacy Cables shawl that I started in September. I am ready to be done with it. I decided to make it one repeat shorter than the initial pattern calls for. That's actually one of the variations recommended in the pattern. My reason? I don't want to have to ball up another skein of the yarn. I'm pretty sure I can finish with the ball of yarn I'm using now. If I am mistaken, then I'll go ahead and add that last repeat.

I'm hoping to have photos of the unblocked and blocked shawl by next week.

It's been a fun pattern to knit. I like the combination of lace and cables. I like the way the cables cause the columns of lace to undulate. The rhythm of the pattern made for pleasant knitting. I like my handspun yarn, and I like the way it interacts with the stitch patterns.

I am somewhat dubious about the utility of the shawl. What will I do with a lacy rectangular item that is about 1 foot wide by 5 feet long? It's not really a scarf. It's not really a shawl. I suppose it's closest to a stole. But I do not live the stole-wearing lifestyle.

Some of that is my own fault -- I chose a darker colored, variegated yarn. It may be a bit too informal for the pattern. If I make it again, I'd probably choose a more formal-looking yarn, something that's white or a solid color. And yet, I do like the way the yarn looks with the pattern.

I'll have about 450-500 yards of yarn left, and I'll have used about 650-700 yards. This means that I'll have yet another small batch of yarn in the stash, not quite enough for a major project.

My current plans for the leftovers are to self-ply them and then use them in a stranded-color pattern such as a hat or mittens. But who knows what I'll really end up doing.


I'm having fun dreaming of the next shawl. There are several possibilities. The most likely one is a doily pattern adaptation. I've seen a few different versions of the doily, shown on the right. It's composed of 2 or more square motifs that are joined and then edged with more lace. This particular photo shows a 1x2, but I've seen 2x2 and 2x3. It's pretty in all its incarnations. Yes, it's probably a Niebling design.

I'm going to take a single motif and do only 2 pattern repeats, to end up with a half-square triangle shawl. I thought about doing it as a square. However, I only have about 1000 yards of yarn in the batch I'm thinking of using. A half-square triangle is more likely to fit with that quantity. It'll end up being about 130-140 rows of knitting. That's a bit bigger than the Hyrna Herborgar shawl.

I'll add a narrow garter stitch border for the top edge. It's possible that the half-square adaptation won't look very good. In that case, it's on to Plan B. I'll gather enough yarn to do one full square someday, but won't worry about it for now.

I think this design looks great as a half-square triangle, as a square, and as a multi-motif rectangle. I could do it as a doily, but I think it would look good upsized to a shawl.

There are a few other candidates for The Next Shawl, any of which could be my Plan B if necessary. One is another doily, a circular pattern that is about 120 rounds and has flowers and leaves on a hex-mesh background. The same batch of 1000 yards of yarn would work well for it. Another possibility is a diamond-motif idea I've been wanting to play with. I'm also interested in doing another shawl from the Icelandic lace book, or a Shetland hap shawl using small batches of handspun for color stripes, plus several more ideas.

The yarn is from Robin and Russ Handweavers, a long-ago purchase. It's white, some kind of blend. I can't remember if it's wool/silk or silk/mohair, but something like that.

Although I dream and make plans about my next project, I am often seduced by some totally different pattern without any warning. So don't be too suprised if this shawl idea never gets mentioned again, and I start rambling about some totally different project next time.

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My other projects are progressing. The scarf is past the halfway point. It's good for productive fidgeting in public. I do like the way it looks. It should be a warm and attractive bit of neckwear when it's finished. It has satisfied any garter stitch cravings I might have unknowingly been suffering from. I'm ready to be done with it.

The Azalea doily is slowly chugging along, too. I'm finding it quite tedious to knit. I'm in the third set of petals. Will I bug out after this set is done, or will I find the fortitude to go all the way to the fourth set of petals and round 62? I probably will get to round 62, but it will take a while. Snooze city. I'm definitely not going to do this pattern as a lap afghan. I bet it will be lovely, though. Kinzel's patterns usually are.

The other stuff is still progressing, but I don't feel like writing about any of them.

I am finding it somewhat stressful to have so many projects going on at once. Usually, I have one main project and one smaller project, with occasional quickies in the middle. I might actually finish my sweater before starting another shawl in order to relieve this mild anxiety.

As you may be able to tell, I'm also suffering from a multi- mid-project malaise. I'm sure that will dissipate once I finish something.


I am thinking about doing some braiding and kumihimo posts. I'll need to be organized, though. I want to take a series of photos of the braiding process. We shall see.


(It took a couple of tries to get Blogger to upload my photos. I wonder what's going on?)

The Well-Tempered Drop Spindle

I've been in the mood to spin on my spindle lately. The above is the result. It's the contents of a Snohomish Custom Carding Mill grab bag bought long ago at a fiber fair of some sort. I love these little grab bags. They consist of 6-12 blobs of roving, all somewhat different. There's usually some wool, a bit of mohair and alpaca, and a bunch of interesting blends. The colors are fun. The quality is high. The roving is well blended, drafts very evenly, and has very little VM.

This particular bag had 13 blobs of roving. It tended heavily to blues and purples, obviously. I've been grabbing a bit of roving and spinning at odd moments. Each blob got self-plied into a 2-ply yarn. I have about 30-50 yards of each 2-ply yarn. Dunno what I'll do with them. I have an idea about a hat that these might be used for.

Here's a photo of my favorite kind of spindle. My cats have helpfully moved into the photo to give a sense of scale (and to see if the spindle is secretly a cat toy).


Yes, it's a CD spindle. I love CD spindles. I've been spinning on them for close to a decade.

Why do I like them so much? Two main reasons: balance and momentum. It's a very well-balanced type of spindle. Slight adjustments to the CD whorl can fix any little problems.

The momentum is awesome. One quick whirl down my leg, and the spindle will spin for as long as I need. I reach down and stop it when I've drafted as much length as I can, and it's still spinning. It spins wicked fast, too. Even a finger-twirl will give me enough of a fast spin to draft out a meter or more of fiber into yarn.

Another reason I like the CD spindle is because it seems like the epitome of a modern ethnic tool, something quickly made from materials easily found in one's local environment. Dowels, grommets, screw-eye hooks, and spare AOL CDs are a lot easier to find than traditional ethnic materials such as sticks, carved gourds, big beads, and shaped wood.

True, these are not works of beauty compared to many of the gorgeous and useful spindles one can buy from deserving vendors. However, the incredible functionality of this tool makes it a very worthwhile piece of spinning equipment.

I have several CD spindles. They're easy to crank out. I have a few tucked away with various larger spinning projects. Some are used for traveling (the whorl comes off the spindle for portability). Some hang out with the other spinning tools, ready and waiting to be used for the next spindle project.

A lot of the CD spindle directions I see online and in print look like they make clunky and heavy spindles compared to mine, or maybe it's a difference in spinning preferences. Mine are made from dowels that are about 1/4" to 5/16" in diameter. They are roughly 14" long, give or take a bit. I use two CDs. The balance seems best when the CDs are a few inches below the hook.

Over the years, I've broken any number of whorls. Luckily, my environment provides many replacements. The shafts are getting very smooth, some combination of spinning oils and the polish developed through long use.

In general, if I have a few ounces of roving, I'll use the spindle. If I have more than that, I'll use the wheel. There are exceptions, of course. Also, I spun exclusively on a spindle for many years before I bought a wheel.

Here are some samples of yarn I've spun on my spindles. I'm tempted to call them Yarn Porn.

This first one is finer than it looks. It's Targhee, from Mountain Colors, in the Northern Lights colorway. I bought it and spun it years ago. I have about 2400 yards of yarn. I can't remember if I have 4 ounces or 8 ounces of yarn, but either way, it's relatively fine.

When I decided it was time to spin the roving, I stripped it lengthwise into 16 long and skinny lengths of roving. Each was spun separately. This way, the color lengths were fairly short and each skein had a similar sequence of colors. I wanted to maximize the variegation. I loved spinning it. I love the bright colors.

It's in singles form right now. Some day I'll decide what to do with it... Ply with another yarn? Self-ply into a 2-ply? Navajo 3-ply? Use as a singles? Until I decide, it will sit in my stash. I take it out to admire every now and then.

I have another 8 ounce batch of roving from these folks in the Sagebrush colorway. I'll probably do that one on the wheel. I probably will spin from the one long piece of roving. That way, I'll have long color repeats instead of short ones. I might very well 2-ply it, though I never know for sure until the inspiration strikes.

The yarn on the right is llama. I won it as a door prize at some fiber show many years ago. I only had an ounce or two on a small cone. It was another fun thing to spin. I ended up with over 700 yards of genuinely laceweight yarn. It seems like a shame to ply it. It's enough for a small shawl. The last bits of roving were darker than the first bits, something which was not at all visible when I first started to spin it. I wonder if that's why it was donated as a door prize, but that's a rather uncharitable thought.

I had another photo or two to share, but they're not as well-focused as the above two are. I'll re-shoot the photos and inflict them on everyone in the next Yarn Porn session.


Here are some applicants for my next spindle project -- several blobs of dyed roving. Every now and then I get together with friends and we have a dye day. We take a real Mad Scientist approach to dyeing and end up with beautiful results. Even the un-beautiful results are interesting, and look much better after a dip into a different dyepot. The photo below shows some of the results of our last dye day. The yarn is a light gray Romney. Some of these might be spun on the wheel, though they're about the right size for a good spindle project.

Yeah, we did a lot of red and purple that day. It looks good with the light gray roving. I wasn't sure that yellow shades would work as well. I also like the greens, blues, and the bright orange. Although it's hard to tell from the photo, one of the blobs is a beautiful deep teal. I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks as a yarn. Ditto for all the others.

And now it's time to publish. I have a doily to knit! Not to mention all the other fun fiber projects, plus all the non-fiber obligations.

We shall see if blogger puts the photos in the same place where they appear in my preview. If not, I'll be doing some editing and rearranging.