][ Like a broken top

So maybe I was a little wicked the other week. And last week. And this week. And always, really.

I’m not on Tumblr, but from time to time I do glance at various people’s various tumblrs, and I happened to see a reblog of these really cool sheep. As much as I would like to imagine myself some kind of sheep-savvy fiber goddess, I’m really not (yet), but I like Jacobs enough on principle to know them on sight, evidently. And, you know how it is, one thing led to another, and I bought some roving from their etsy store, and it came last Monday (my sole qualm with the long weekend, I could’ve had that Friday if it were a normal week... not that I am really complaining...) and I love it.


Baaaa
I got 3 oz of each color, and they’re really pretty and wonderfully soft. It’s all I can do not to ruin them by over-fondling.

I kept from starting by making deals with myself that I won’t start spinning it until I do something with the hemp disaster currently on the bobbin, which is halfway because I feel this weirdly dutiful urge to make myself enjoy spinning hemp, and halfway because I’ve got company this week and I really shouldn’t start a big new project when I ought to be cleaning stuff instead. Besides, I actually had a brainstorm about something I might want to knit with hemp yarn-- even my weird, overspun, not quite even hemp yarn-- so if I could work up a bit more before I surrender and start on my Jacob adventure, that would be best.

But. I’m not that good. And she threw in a little sample of stripey roving. And I have spindles, many of which aren’t even currently in use, so.


Oops.
I need to be a little more careful drafting so I don’t get too much striping, I like the marled look so much, but it’s pretty lovely to work with so far.

And on that topic, this is the first time I’ve really played around with this spindle. I bought it at Maryland Sheep and Wool last year because I wanted a second heavy spindle (my first was an Ashford beginner spindle of some sort), and because I really liked the vaguely menacing cabal of sheep on the whorl, who are clearly about to perform some arcane ritual. (It’s a Louet Beginner High Whorl Spindle, for the record. Not all that fancy.) And man do I love it. I knew when I got it that I really wanted that-- a heavy, no-nonsense spindle-- but I’ve done a lot of my admittedly limited spinning on lighter ones, and I forgot how much easier a good chunk of weight makes it. This baby spins forever even if I just give it a little flick-- on the lightest spindle I have, even thigh-rolling doesn’t always make it to the floor without untwisting. I find that getting a fast/long enough spin is difficult for me so having that to babysit me helps quite a bit. If I get too risky and thin it’s gonna be trouble, I’m sure, but I find that easier to fix than insufficient twist problems.

I really do think the fact that I know the basics of both drop-spindles and wheels has helped me improve as a spinner in general; the spindle gives me a better sense of appropriate twist, and the wheel helps my drafting skills. (Though I want to stress again that I’m not all that great at either, but I’m getting better all the time.) Right now what I think I need is to keep practicing, practicing, practicing. Which shouldn’t be a problem because holy crap do I have a lot of fiber.

Anyway, the bulk of the Jacob is getting tucked away for at least a couple more weeks, but I’m ruminating on making a drop spindle bag so I can start spinning on the go a little without worrying about messing up my roving. Guess we’ll see how my time looks, but it’s on the long-term crafty to-do list, for sure. (Then again, what isn’t?)

Right now I’ve got the whole kit and caboodle wrapped in a bandana, and I’ve been doing a couple feet here and there during lunch. It’s also surprisingly popular; several of my coworkers have asked for a demonstration, and of course I’m always pleased to oblige.


Lunchtime spinning adds up, there's even more now!
I wanted to ply it, because I’m fundamentally happier with plied yarns, but I think I might have to keep it as singles just because there’s so little. I don’t even know what I’ll make with it... a wristband? A headband? Hrmn. The current plan is, I think, to finish as singles and check length on the niddy-noddy, then go from there and either ply or set it and start knittin’.

It’s fun, though, and surprisingly portable-- maybe it’s time to dig out that green roving and the Ashford spindle, once this batch is done. The spindles are nearly of a size so the bag I want to make should fit either....

][ 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.

][ Up from the depths

Hi, blawgh. Remember me?

I'm that chick that used to spin and knit and stuff sometimes. And sometimes I used to talk about it. And then I stopped, oops.

SO, superquick catch-up time.

Not too long after the last post-- February 2012, yikes!-- I went to Maryland Sheep & Wool again, where I bought way too much fiber and...

An Ashford kiwi spinning wheel. w00t!

I went in intending something completely different-- in spite of the allure of a classic spinning wheel, I wanted to try a Road Bug because they're so small and cute and portable, but I could not for the life of me get it to go the right direction and it wasn't comfortable and then. And then. The shop owner shook his head, put a Kiwi in front of me, and I started making yarn.

Oh, yarn.

Anyway, that was May 2012, and later that summer I had the good fortune to get myself hired... which significantly cut down on my free time for messing about with crafting, though I did do a good spate of knitting early this year. And, you know, the occasional bit and piece before that. I finally finished my scarf, which is a million years old but eminently satisfying.

SKIPPING AHEAD to May 2013 when I... didn't go to Maryland S&W, which is probably for the best. But I did go to the Long Island Fleece and Fiber Festival out in Riverhead. Which should be another post of its own, because it was awesome, but suffice it to say I bought too much fiber again, and realized I better start clearing a little of the backlog.

So I pulled the wheel out of my closet-o'-yarn, and sat down to sweet talk it.


also pictured: giant storage bag of gorgeous fiber, edge of laundry hamper, sock drawer. So sue me.
And there I went, remembering the five minutes or so they spent showing me how to use it, doing my best to replicate those motions, and googling as necessary. The bobbin on there was already pretty full of random yarn that had been spun by people trying the wheel all day, so I just used it as a leader and started spinning the cheapish green roving from my last post.


Not pictured: my ridiculous heart-pounding excitement when it started coming out even.
It was rough at first, but then it all started going right. I settled into the rhythm of it and soon enough I was getting a fairly even twist. It's a bit tighter than it should be, and especially on the early end of things there are some big fluctuations.

But, wow. Once I finally came back to my senses-- it's shockingly easy to fall into a trance, breathing in and out as you pedal, even and quick-- I could not for the life of me believe I hadn't started out with this sooner. Spinning on a wheel felt much more intuitive and natural than drop spindle work for me; not having to worry about the whorl running out of steam and starting to spin back was a relief, and taking care of the twist with my feet meant I could devote more attention to drafting.

I also tried spinning from the fold, in spite of the fact that it went against every gut instinct I had about fiber. I can't really explain how it works or why it was easier for me but damn it felt good.

Anyway, soon I decided I'd gotten a good start and wanted to set up to ply so I popped in a fresh bobbin.

Well, no, actually. I looked at my wheel, realized I had less than no idea how to change the bobbin, googled it, tried it, panicked when I couldn't get the whorl off the assembly, experienced brief but impassioned buyer's remorse, kept at it, and finally managed to get it off, changed the bobbin, reassembled it wrong, took it back apart and fixed it and then I was ready to spin.


Look at that. JUST LOOK AT IT.
The second chunk of roving went well, and once I judged them to be about even I plied them. And totally neglected to take pictures.


shut up, it was exciting.
From there it's business as usual-- off the bobbin, onto the niddy-noddy, dump it in a sink, hang it to dry. Wheee! It didn't even need a weight, it didn't curl up on itself after I blotted the worst of the water out.



Glamorous bathroom shots
I also split and plied the leftover scrap yarn on the bobbin-- waste not, want not. I actually think I did a reasonably good job of judging an equal quantity-- I did have to split the leftover on one bobbin to finish it off, but it was only some ~20 yards, which considering a total lack of ever doing this before seems like a good bet-- and I set those too.

The grayish yarn is oddly pretty, but it smells like the fleece was treated with some kind of chemical... I don't know what it is, but I'm not a fan. I don't know if I will ever use it for anything but, well, there it was.


closeup!
The color's a little washed out because I can never camera, blah blah blah. BUT YEAH. It's damned satisfying.

I still have a good length of the very fine, gorgeous yarn on the second bobbin, and I'm not one hundred percent sure what to do with it. Right now I am leaning toward trying to spin a roughly equivalent length on another bobbin, then splitting the rest of the roving as evenly as possible and hoping for the best when it comes to plying. I could also set this as a single and split the remainder and hope for the best, but I don't think there's enough to use for anything.

After this? Might play a little with hemp-- I hated spinning hemp on a spindle but I think the wheel might be a better fit for me. I also have a ton of wool, a nice length of hot pink bamboo top, and several other new and exciting fibers, but I don't know if I'm ready to tackle the stuff I am really looking forward to knitting up just yet.

I'm also thinking I... should get a book, or take a class, or something. I feel like I've done fantastically well thus far, but I have no idea what I'll do when I inevitably hit a snag of some sort. I'd also like to pick up a few more bobbins, because I know I'm notoriously indecisive and I'll be happier if I can switch up what I'm doing without having to do it in chunks.

Still, looking at my hank of wool, I feel pretty awesome.

Awww yeah.

UPDATE: not enough to warrant a new post of course, but I thought the finished result was worth seeing:


There's 44 yd of the grey, 28 of the green, and 10 of the brown. I was actually surprised by how much that adds up to. No idea what I can ever make but whoooo yarn!

Also, the weird chemical sent of the gray stuff seems to have faded out as it dries, now it smells like clean wool. (Mmm, clean wool.) Huzzah!

][ Fighting hemp fiber

I left off my last post with a minor moral crisis: what to spin next? 

Ultimately, I decided it was worth the effort to try something a little tougher, so I steeled myself and start spinning the hemp.  It was tough, and not always fun, but I made a deal with myself: if I finished the little puff of roving I'd been playing with ages ago I could stop and try something else. 




 And boy, did I fight.  My resolution to spin fifteen minutes every day became every weekday, then for a time each week equal to fifteen minutes every weekday, then finally, well at least i can work on my knitting.  Aside from the fact that spinning is just hard for me to keep up with, the hemp didn't want to cooperate. 

But it wasn't without its upshots and epiphanies!  Within a couple of days (and some frantic googling, trying to figure out why it was going so badly,) I did start to get a feel for it.  I realized a few important things:

★ Hemp needs a lot of twist-- much more than the wool did-- not to fall apart.  However, once it gets that twist, it stays together really well. 
★ Using my smallest, lightest spindle might have been a mistake.  Actually I think that spindle is just a poor fit for me-- it never seems to spin enough.  I think I might just be more comfortable with ones that have a larger (in diameter) whorl.

★ Though it's harder to control, rolling the spindle off my thigh is a lot more effective-- the hard spin keeps it going longer, where doing it by hand I had to be really careful to catch it before it started spinning the other way.

★ Thin doesn't mean weak-- in fact I suspect the thinner parts of this hank are actually the strongest spots, since the twist is higher.  When I realized this and started just twisting harder when I felt the yarn slipping, instead of trying to even or thicken the fiber, I saw a lot less breakage!

★ Carrying around a bag of this roving allows you to make a lot of inappropriate and hilarious jokes.

That said it takes a lot of attention-- not good T.V.-watching occupation-- so I let it languish a lot.

But then today happened.




I said to myself, you have to get this stupid stuff spun, or else.  So I sat down to do it.  And suddenly-- I don't even know how-- I was on a roll.  Seriously, it went so well, I hope I can replicate that next time I sit down to spin. 

I think the difference was actually doing less pre-drafting of the fiber-- and by rolling off the thigh instead of with my fingers, I was able to keep both hands on the roving to shape and stretch it as needed.  Still not perfect-- keeping it even is so difficult!-- but it went much better, and I swear I blew through the rest of the roving so fast it made my head spin.  Which is good, because I'm sick of looking at it right now. 




Looking at it is kind of funny-- I can see how at the beginning, making it fatter seemed like the only option, but by the end I was being much more daring and stretching it as thin as I could.  Anyway, I wet it down and it's hanging now-- I've read that's less necessary with non-wool fibers, but it seemed like it might help even out the kinks a bit-- and we'll see how it looks when it's dry and done.  Next up is... either more cheap-o wool, or maybe (if i feel brave) some silk hankies. 

The next few posts, though, will probably be about my knitting; I have been working more on that lately. 

][ More spinning stuff

 While I'm not doing a great job of sticking to my "SPIN EVERY SINGLE DAY!" plan, I am definitely being better overall-- so I wanted to share a little of my progress! 

For starters, I took the green wool I was working on, blocked it, and wound it up into a little ball.  I don't have a nostepinne (though it's on my shopping list for this year, assuming I make it to MS&W again,) so I made my own simple ball-winder out of a scrap of tightly-wound wrapping paper.  It's not nearly as satisfyingly pretty but it'll do!





 The ball band is a little scrap of wrapping paper, it happened to be at hand and I think it's cute.  I'm tentatively going to call all my work "Hannah's Hopeless Handspun" because I like alliteration and self-deprecating humor.  Really I think it's going better every time I pick the spindle up, so I can't complain. 

Anyway, of course I did realize after I'd used a bunch of my nice roving that I had some slightly less fancy stuff lying around from Sheep & Wool 2010, so rather than keep making a mess of the gorgeous merino I decided to have some fun with the little bits, figuring I'd feel less awful if I wrecked those.  So I picked up the little purplish 'tail' here, which I think cost me a dollar, maybe two....



And then I split the piece, because my understanding is that with wool dyed this way, that's how you get some repeats of the color changes.  Also it made it much easier to work with!  I think all told I split it into five sections, maybe?  And spun each one in turn, joining it to the end of the last. 




It was a great success!  Though there are still some thin spots and some thick spots, overall it's much more consistent than the other stuff I've been doing and I love how the color came out.  Interestingly there's not much white to it-- even though there was a lot of seemingly undyed roving, the color spread out quite a bit, though it is still quite variegated.  I didn't try too hard to make it a consistent pattern in spite of having split the roving,  I just wanted it to have more color changing than I thought it would if I spun it out as it was.  So it's pretty cool! 

The pictures don't quite capture the color-- there's more red to it in places than my camera really acknowledges-- but I think it's gorgeous.  I just wish I had more, I don't know what I can make with such a darling little skein!






Next up... well, it's a tough call.  I've got the big green coil of wool in the first picture here (cheaper than the nice green stuff from last post,) which I think should produce a reasonably big skein and keep me occupied for a while.  Or I could push myself and try one of the trickier fibers-- I've got two bags of silk hankies I'm a bit nervous about starting with, or a big bag of hemp fiber which I don't mind messing up, but which is really tough to spin, as I remember from  previous attempts.  I'm leaving the nice merino and the gorgeous silk roving in reserve until I feel like I won't totally destroy it. 

I guess we'll see how I feel!