][ Stuff I made!

Just dropping by to show off a few things. First up, I finished that little green bump I've been working on forever:


Eventually I'll try to figure out what to call it weight-wise (it's very, very light. Shockingly light. Must learn to spin bulkier yarns, stat,) and what to make with it. Something a little lacy would be nice. Something not too complex. There's not that much.

I've been putting in a lot of work on that green cloche, which is officially the longest day of the year, but which I am colloquially calling The Great Hatsby.


This is basically my favorite picture ever.
I spent a lovely evening with it in our backyard, and today I'm taking it out to Long Island, as seems appropriate. I'm currently picking up stitches for the second concentric circle.


And finally I made....


I swear I'll find a method of spinning hemp that doesn't make me completely batty, someday. I couldn't even tell you why I'm so determined, but I am.

][ But myself keeps slipping away...

The other day on the train I was... well, call it what it was, I was swatching. Not exactly for a particular project, because I just grabbed some handy yarn without a particular destiny and a convenient pair of circulars, but because I wanted to test out a stitch pattern I’d been reading about.


It’s a linen stitch, worked flat here across a 30ish stitch swatch, tho the pattern is written with an odd number in the round. (There are purl-side instructions for the short row sections, I just followed those.)

I am in love.

But that aside, it made me think about the ways in which I learn. By preference, I have never been the sort to just dive in and get my hands dirty to learn to do something. I find it wasteful. (Actually, that’s why I don’t like swatching to begin with, even if rationally I know it’s not wasteful, but that’s a whole other debate.) I like to have a conceptual understanding of what I am trying to do before I do it... and though I don’t always meet instant success, generally I do better if I have it than if I don’t. I need to grok it first.

Which brings me back to the linen stitch. (Linen stitch. This is a swatch of maybe an inch knit in old, not terribly soft acrylic, but I like it so much I want to rub my face all over it. Hnnngh. Sorry. What were we talking about?) I’d never encountered this stitch til I bought this book (as a side note, I also love this book so much I want to rub my face all over it, and the pattern I’m toying with is the fabulous hat on the cover,) but the basic building block that makes it go is something I’ve encountered before in pattern reading: slipped stitches.

Seriously what the hell is with slipped stitches?

I have been trying to wrap my mind around the idea, mainly in the context of slipped stitch or mosaic colorwork, and I never could get it. I mean, I think I understand the procedure, but not the why? (This is the exact opposite of my problems with calculus, where I could understand the concept perfectly but could never manage to do the math. My teacher was encouraging because the conceptual part was the “hard” part. I was inconsolable because I had never gotten grades that terrible in my life.)

As I understand mosaic knitting, you knit across a row with one color at a time, knitting the stitches that should be color 1 and slipping the color 2s, then knit across again with color 2, slipping the stitches you just did and knitting the ones you slipped last time. Okay. I think I see how that would make the pattern, but why? Is it just that it’s easier to handle one ball of yarn at a time? On the reverse side, wouldn’t it look the same as fair-isle style work with the floats hanging around in back? (This is something I try like mad to avoid in colorwork, so I don’t see the appeal. I twist on every stitch even if I’m not changing colors. I like the thickness of the fabric it creates, I like the look of the wrong side, and I like that I’m less likely to catch my scarf on everything around me.)

The linen stitch made a little more sense to me, because all the carrying of yarn for slipped stitches takes place on the right side of the fabric. It’s a little like seed stitch, but smoother, with minute floats across the front instead of purls. It looks pretty. It feels lovely. It makes sense, even if it takes twice as long to knit a row, or at least feels that way. (Since you’re knitting or purling the slipped stitches on alternate passes the length doesn’t increase as quickly as my hands want it to.) Hooray for slipping stitches!

That said... I still don’t understand the advantage for colorwork.

Which maybe means it’s time to accept I won’t grok it any better ‘til I get my hands dirty. Hmn.

At any rate, my plans for my next project had been up in the air-- either the Shipwreck shawl I’ve been yarn-hoarding for for literal years now, or the big gray and green checkered blanket that this Billow I bought on a lark wants to be. (Possibly it wants a few skeins more to go with it. I want a big damn blanket. I should see how I feel about knitting it, though, and how far a skein goes, before I invest tons more.)

All that said... every time I looked at this linen stitch, with its charming texture....

well.


The yarn is totally wrong and the gauge feels insane (though the circumference doesn’t seem unreasonable) but I’m going to soldier on a while and see if I can swing it.

][ a wild post appears!

I sort of conceived blogging about my textile adventures as a way to keep myself honest about how much I was (or wasn’t) doing, though of course on the wasn’t side that’s a bit self-defeating... since if I’m not spinning and knitting I have no spinning and knitting to talk about. But I’m doing some things and dreaming of some other things so I figured, may as well talk about that. And then eight months from now when I’ve finished my current project and not touched anything else-- or maybe worse,

On the spinning front: soon I need to make a post documenting the state of my stash, but for now I’ll tell you I am still working away on that green roving. I decided to, as best as I could manage, measure and re-wind the leftover bit, spin an equivalent (re-measured and rewound) bit on the second bobbin, then split the rest of the roving and hope for the best. I think it’s going..... terribly, to be honest. I don’t feel like the second bobbin’s going to have enough and I’m worried the yarn is too thin to stay together to be plied. But I’m soldiering on because I don’t really have a lot of options, and hoping I’m wrong about the various issues. At any rate, all this is a learning experience, which is why I’m using the little curl of kool-aid dyed fluff I got for a couple bucks instead of the huge (and not inexpensive) braids of hand-painted merino or the limited-edition tussah roving or the hot pink bamboo.

That said I’ll still be really depressed if it turns out horribly, or doesn’t turn out at all and just dissolves in my hands when I go to ply it.

After this I think I am going to play around a bit with the interminable bag of hemp roving, and... I don’t know what I will do with it. Yup. I’ve never loved spinning hemp on a spindle, though I sort of had a breakthrough last time I tried, but this roving is a safe “learning” fiber for me, because I won’t cry if I totally ruin it. And I can always get funky and ply it with something else if I really want to in the end. Or dye it. And anyway I’ve never knit with hemp yarn, it’ll be an experience.

It’s not that I believe I will fail, I just don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Some things I have learned, which I will put here so I might actually remember them:

- if the yarn is drafted too thin, don't overcompensate by following it with a thick chunk. That won't help, it will just give you a thick chunk. If the twist hasn't gone into the fiber yet, keep it pinched out and reach back for more fiber. If it has, and you don't want to pause and untwist a couple inches and fix it, giving it a little extra twist to keep the thin spot from unwinding and slipping apart might do the trick.

- slow down. The most important thing is to stay steady. It's not a race, and just like on a bicycle, if you go too quickly you will get out of control and veer off and crash into a fence and mangle your leg and die horribly. Or probably just make some crappy yarn. But! Slowing down means more time to put the twist in, make sure you're pleased with it, and feed it on in to wind on the bobbin. Do that too quickly and you end up way overspun.

- you will overspin things. Plying will take a lot of that out, setting will help even more, and it's handspun. If you wanted perfect yarn you should've bought it at the craft store. As my cousin says, the imperfect spots show where the love is.



I bought some plain white roving too, because I have terrible self-control and when I was trying to buy some extra cables for my interchangeable needles I... well, there were four skeins of chunky cotton, some lace-weight wool, the roving, and a few other bits and pieces in my box, let's just leave it at that.

Anyway. In the name of keeping myself honest here's a knitting to-do list of sorts:

- That Green and Grey Thick Cotton I Bought in a Moment of Weakness: I am envisioning a perfect little checkerboard throw thingie. This means I will need to learn intarsia.

- Socks. Socks socks socks. I might be working on a little something right now (more about that later no doubt,) but I want to knit myself some socks. And I want to knit my mother some socks. To start with I have two skeins of yarn in the closet that want to be socks for me, I think I'm ready to let that happen

- Something Dramatic: every time I go to a fiber festival I'm depressed that I have nothing to wear, as all my knits are pretty... well, warm and wooly. Even the non-woolen ones. I'm eyeing either the shipwreck shawl, which I have been hoarding a skein of Lorna's Lace for, or a sweater... which doesn't help the summer issue, but I think the next thing I might go to is Rhinebeck and that's october so it's okay.

- Other Things.


I wanted to be more verbose but I think I've lost my thin thread of conversation, and I'd better go get dinner started, ooghhh.