][ 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!

][ So much for regular updates...

Life has been busy, and sadly knitting fell to the wayside with all my other hobbies... so the fact that I haven't updated since last summer doesn't mean you've missed too much.  However, today I did a thing that was so cool I had to share it somewhere.

The other day I decided it was time to get back into spinning, but I'm so out of practice (and I was never very experienced to begin with) that all I can make are short bits of practice yarn.  I realized I was running out of places to stow these scraps, which aren't very good but could be useful, so I decided to make them into tiny skeins and set them so they'd be less delicate.  But, as anyone who's ever had to wind yarn knows, it is an annoying task.  Trying to do it neatly so it doesn't tangle or become uneven is tough-- and doing it on a small scale is even trickier since you can't really use chair legs.  (My grandmother always used my grandfather's feet, but even that would be tricky for these lengths.  My own feet, I mean, not my grandfather's.)

So I did the only logical thing: I took a pair of take-out chopsticks and built myself a tiny Niddy-Noddy.





As Niddy-Noddies go it's not terribly useful-- far too small for a real length of yarn, and not measured to give a length per wrap-- but for my purposes it's just perfect.  And I think the fact that I threw it together in less than half an hour with some sandpaper and hot glue is kind of neat, okay?

I figured I might as well use the rest of the second chopstick, so I smoothed it down and made a crochet hook for kicks.  It's a bit crude but I think it's smooth enough that I could use it to fish up dropped stitches or help cast off, which is all I do with them anyway since I don't really know how to crochet.





And that's been my morning!  Fun stuff.  One of these days I'm going to have to start making my own spindles to round it all off...

][ and now for something completely different

SUP INTERNET??!?  Meet my new friend: 



So I was trying to figure out something I could use to block and hold hats that would be a little bit more head-shaped than the big can I've been using to take pictures.  In  my usual aimless browsing of the web, I came across a cool tutorial on making duct-tape dress dummies for fitted bodysuit costumes, and it seemed like the perfect solution.  So, I bought a roll of (super cool) duct tape, and informed my roommate I was going to mummify her head: 


Believe it or not there's a person under there.
Ideally of course I'd like one shaped after my head, but this will definitely help!  Cutting and re-sticking it was a little tricksy, but it turned out pretty well:




Rather lacking in detail, but much better suited to holding and shaping hats than anything else I had on hand. 

Also, it has flames on it.  How can you not love it?

][ reality knits

I've been working on this scarf a long while now, and it's not... really even close to being done, to be honest.  But that's okay!

I started it because I was really taken with a particular shirt on an actor, in a movie, and I thought to myself, there's no way I will ever find a shirt like a random shirt in a fifteen year old movie.  But, I can definitely knit myself something like it.  (And, as a side note-- since I started this I have seen brown/blue self-striping yarn combinations everywhere.  I'm clearly a trendestter.)

This was my second real attempt at color work, after putting the W onto that doll scarf.  A nice, gradual increase in difficulty.  It's also the first time I've done short rows (to compensate for any change in the gauge; I wanted to make sure the edging didn't pull,) and now that I've finally learned how they work, I'm in love with them. 

For once in my life I at least did some swatches before I got started:



My cat helped.





Satisfied that I could manage the color changes, I decided to complicate things by starting it with a provisional cast-on, so the brown border could be added last, to keep the gauge even-- the last time I tried to mix garter and stockinette like this, the edging hadn't quite worked out evenly.






This turned out to be a disastrously bad idea.  Which sucked, because I really liked how it was going...



I twisted after every stitch, like you would with Tvåändsstickning-- I didn't want big swags on the back that would catch on buttons and such.  It's a little thicker and warmer because of it, and I think it looks pretty cool!


The cat is still helping, of course.


Somewhere around that time I decided I'd better pick out the cast-on and add the border, just in case it didn't work out.

It didn't work out.  So I frogged the whole damn thing and started over from the beginning.



It broke my heart to do it-- I'd accomplished so much!-- but it was the right decision, and though there are still some imperfections, I'm much happier with the new take on it.   I have no idea when I'll finish it, but eventually I'm sure I will.  And then I will wear it everywhere, baby. 

][ doll stuff

A year or two ago, I was inspired to dig out my old American Girl dolls and make some stuff for 'em.  It led to a brief but intense frenzy of sewing, and a passionate interest in doll customization that went nowhere.  Thankfully, I didn't spend too much money on it.  Mostly. 

The one custom doll I put together wasn't an actual brand-name AG, but instead a craft-store knockoff... and true to my dorky ways I decided to turn her into a character from one of my favorite movies.  Knitting an awesome little wardrobe followed suit, of course. 

So here is my doll version of Neil Perry from Dead Poets Society, with a few knit pieces: his green sweater, his school uniform sweater, and a school scarf I designed for kicks. 






The body of these sweaters is knit in one piece, then seamed down the sides when the sleeves are added in. The back is split halfway down to allow it to fit over the head, and a hook-and-eye is stitched in on the top.  I’ve been knitting my sleeves two at a time lately (like one would do with socks,) so assuming you can take the utter BOREDOM of stockinette forever, these come together pretty quick!






The bordering and contrast color in the collar of the grey one is picked up off the edges.  I've also knit a blue round-neck, and a school sweatervest that aren't pictured.  These take... gosh, less than a quarter of a skein I'd say. 

The scarf isn't accurate to the film, but I wanted to make it anyway.  Actually, this was my first piece of colorwork-- not that it's much!-- so I am kind of weirdly proud of it.   Before this, the best I'd done was striped scarves.  Otherwise, it's just a tube, with fringe knotted onto the ends.







And that's my doll knitting.  :D

][ a little about me...

Hello, internet.  What's going on?


I decided to throw together a blog so I can post about my knitting and be able to share it with people-- I've got a thing on Ravelry [same name,] but since you have to log in to view projects there it's not strictly ideal for subjugating all my non-knitter friends to the glories of my textile endeavors.

So, yes.  I am Hannah.  I like dorky things, giant knitting needles, and touching soft, expensive fibers.  I learned to knit when I was... probably seven or so; forgot about it for a long time; then rediscovered it a few years back, and spent half an hour on the phone with my mother making her explain how to cast on because I'd forgotten so I could knit a gigantic scarf.  This time I haven't forgotten about it, at least not yet.

I also occasionally try my hand at spinning, and while I am not very good at it (YET) I enjoy it.  And I sew, and do all sorts of other stuff, and stuff.  I also enjoy costuming.  When I am not doing the things I do in my spare time, I am working to become a teacher.  Or cooking.  I really like cooking.

Anywho, hopefully having made this thingy will inspire me to get off my butt and start photographing projects to post in the coming weeks.  Otherwise, that's about it.