All done, with this part of it

I have finished spinning the Alpaca for my cardi!

I woke up at 4 on Wednesday morning, and since my family was still asleep and I didn't have to be at work until 7, I decided to spin. I hadn't been doing much spinning as I have just started this job and often go in at 5 am (hence the waking up at 4).

I got so much spinning done! I sat at my wheel, started listening to some music, and set a timer on my phone. Before I left for work I had finished that bobbin and was starting the next one.

Since I was so motivated by getting so much spinning done in the morning, I was able to finish the singles on Wednesday and ply it all on Thursday.

My yarn is currently drying in the bathroom. Hopefully it'll be enough to finish the cardi...

Size 7

It seems as though lately I have the uncanny ability to gravitate towards patterns that are knit almost exclusively on size 7 needles. Here's a list:

1. Kaleidoscope Cardi
2. Moscow Coat
3. Alcazar Sweater from Malabrigo Book 4

There are more, but as this list accounts for about 4000+ yards of yarn, I think that is a sufficient point.

At first, I just took this as a sign that I needed more size 7 needles, but then I took it as inspiration to make sure I actually finish projects.

At the moment I am working on the chest increases for Kaleidoscope, but what may not be known (I don't remember if I wrote about it already) is that I have the yarn for my Moscow Coat, and as it has been recently and will be in the single digits again soon, knitting a giant wool coat sounds like a pretty good idea.

But where would that leave Kaleidoscope, my lovely, hand spun, undyed, alpaca, sweater? Sitting in a bag somewhere. I think that is far too cruel a fate for  any of the above mentioned projects.

So for the time being, I am still knitting inch after inch on Kaleidoscope, and my Moscow yarn is sitting on my dresser, the skeins too big to fit in my current stash (I'm subbing Cascade Ecological wool, the ones that are over 400 yards of chunky yarn in a skein). I see them every day as I go through my room, and hopefully the thought of them sitting there lonely and unused, will help me keep knitting all those rows of stockinette stitch when I am so tired at night after work and homeschooling, trying to finish a project just so I can start a new one...

Don't even get me started on the reality that I have to finish spinning the yarn for Kaleidoscope first.

Spinning Alpaca

This is what happens when I spin my grey alpaca for my cardi...

Progress and new Goals

I've been working on my Kaleidoscope Cardi for about 12-15 hours and I am almost ready for some increases. I tweaked the pattern a bit, starting one size up at the hips and moving to my regular size by the waist. I had to do some math to accommodate the  additional decreases, but it did help make those 8 inches go by a bit faster.

My yarn is working out really well. I am using my own hand spun alpaca for this project and I really like the way it is coming together. The weight is nice, though I can tell the difference between different skeins, but it's one of the differences you can only see if your face is less than 6 inches from the fabric (and nobody over 6 years old should be that close to my hips or waist). I figure it all works out and will be quite nice when it's done.

This pattern was made for amazingly dyed yarn, which I've mentioned before, but I really like it in my natural yarn. It makes it much easier to see the actual yarn, which given how long I've been spinning, and the results I have been getting, I quite like.

So that's my update on the Cardi.

I've been watching "Spinning Hand Dyed Fiber" on Craftsy, and I have a few new goals:

1. Mixing colorways
2. Spinning from the fold
3. Gradiated spinning (I don't know if it has an actual name, but I want to take a colorway and make a continuous colorway that goes evenly from one color to another instead of multiple sections of colors)

I think that's all for now, and the mixing of colorways certainly gives me plenty to work with. :)

Tablet Dyeing

Ok, here we go!

Last Easter, when everything was on sale, I grabbed about 5 boxes of tablet egg dye. I had some preliminary dyeing on my Cotswald and liked the results, for the most part.

So a few weeks ago, I was thinking about how to create an original and unique color way and my stash of dye tablets popped into my head.

Here was the idea: Ball or cake the yarn and slip tablets into it along the way. Heat up just water and vinegar and hope it soaked all the way through. Wait to see what would happen.

Questions: Would the vinegar soak all the way into the ball? Would there be giant white spots inside, on the left, right, etc.? Would the dye reach the outside of the ball and dye all the yarn? Would there just be too much dye leaving you with a strange combination and not sections of colors?  How long would these sections be?  How long would I have to leave it in the bath? Would I end up with a felted ball?

I had no idea.

Here's what I did:

I gathered all my supplies: my pot, my dye (I used 2 tables of each color I wanted to use), my yarn (some unknown yardage of Bella singles), and some vinegar.

I balled up the yarn slipping tablets in along the way.

I heated up my water and vinegar and slipped in the ball.

I let it roll around in there for quite a while. I think I had heat on it for about 40 minutes to an hour and then let it sit with the lid on for another three hours while my daughter and I went to visit a friend. Then I pulled the ball out of a sea of blue and put it in a small bowl to finish cooling (yes it was still a bit warm, but really I just didn't want blue fingers), and then let the ball sit overnight in cool water. I woke up to a lighter sea of blue in my fiber bowl, drained that, rinsed the ball again, drained, unwound the  ball and rinsed the yarn. I just let it sit, no squishing or squeezing since the yarn wasn't organized in any way and I didn't want a tangled mess.

 A few more rinses, then onto the Niddy Noddy for skeining and drying.

Answers:
Would the vinegar soak all the way into the ball? 
Yes. I was concerned I would have bits of my tablets still in the ball as I unwound it, but I didn't.

Would there be giant white spots inside, on the left, right, etc.? 
Sort of. There were white spots, but not huge ones. I did use way too much dye, that may have played a factor, or it could have just been that the tablets were inside, more experiments will be needed to find a conclusive result.

Would the dye reach the outside of the ball and dye all the yarn? 
Yes. It was so fun to watch as the vinegar soaked in to the top few tablets and I could see the bubbles coming out. The sea of blue was conclusive with regards to the dye reaching the outside though.

Would there just be too much dye leaving you with a strange combination and not sections of colors?
Sort of. I did get a nice mix on the outside and first few layers of the ball (this is one technique where color theory plays a bit role), but on the inside I did get good sections of color.

  How long would these sections be? 
Varied. Of course the outer sections of the combined color were longer, but once inside the ball, the sections got quite small. It would be interesting to see how the section length would vary with a larger ball, a cake, and more deliberate tablet placement.
 
 How long would I have to leave it in the bath? 
I don't know how long I needed to leave it in the bath, but I left it in there for about 4 hours, and that worked out fine.

Would I end up with a felted ball?
No. This will, of course, change with the heat and type of wool you use, but everything stayed separate this time around.

500+ Yards

I've spun 8 ounces of the 16 that my mother-in-law bought me of BFL. I have over 500 yards of a roughly sock weight yarn. This is a nice change, although my weight isn't changing too drastically, I am getting more yardage out of my fiber, hopefully that means when I knit with it it will be more consistent too.

I've said before I don't like pre-drafting, but I do like  pulling off the vertical sections. The result was some nice color match-ups while plying. Sure there were sections of barber poles, but there were also some decent sections where everything was all one color. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was fractal spinning, but I am excited to see how it knits.

Also, I love this colorway! I liked it as fiber when it was blue, green and brown, but now that it's spun it just kind of blends to an all over teal with brown accents. Again we'll have to see how it knits, but in the skein this yarn is gorgeous!

I still have 8 ounces to go, and I'm hoping I can get similar yardage. I had planned to do my Enrejado with this yarn, so we'll see how it all works out. I'm sure I can be short one repeat or something if I'm a bit short on the yardage. If anyone out there has made this pattern, let me know if you've used all 1050 yards.

America's Next Top Yarn Model

She finally put on something without sleeves, a big deal considering it was a whole 3 degrees out today. But eventually I did get my picture, even if my model didn't quite hold still.

"First project" of 2014

Here is a picture of the first project I finished in 2014.  It looks like a scarf or something, but it's actually a sweater I made for my daughter to wear to dance class, hopefully I can get an action shot of it at her class this weekend.

Details
Yarn: 3 skeins of Plymouth Yarn Royal Llama Silk in three colors
Needles: Size 5 dpns for the sleeves and 6's of the back
Time: About 3 weeks between other projects

This is the second shrug I've made with this concept. I modified it from a free pattern that was on a yarn label. Maybe, after a bit more math, I can figure out how to write the pattern for multiple sizes, and then I can post it.

I'm not going to call them Resolutions

Happy New Year!
 So I thought a bit yesterday about how much I learned last year, and I have to say I was a bit impressed with myself, but now we have a new year and a chance to start over, or at least continue some nice trends of stretching out of our comfort zone. So here are a few goals I have for the new year, at least the fiber-y ones...

Things to Knit

1. Kaleidoscope by Sarah Sutherland
2. Moscow Coat by Vladimira Cmorej
3. Enrejado by Kirsten Kapur
4. Tapiz by Spilly Jane
5. Pi Scarf by Christina J
6. Cotswald Bag

I'm sure there will be other things that come up during the year. I'd like to get a few pullovers in there, but that Moscow Coat is huge (though the yarn is on the way!) and I need to finish spinning for Kaleidoscope (which I technically started last year, but oh well), and the Pi scarf could literally go on forever, so that is all I feel I can commit to right now, but I'm sure you'll hear more about everything.

Techniques to try or learn

1. Felting/fulling
2. Chain Plying
3. Get better at processing
4. Tablet Dying

I need to get The Knitter's Life List to see what else I need to know. There are all sorts of individual patterns that I want to knit, but I'm not sure exactly how they play out with new skills. The tablet dying is an idea I have, but I need to get through a bit more of my Bella Wool so I have something to try it on, but believe me, you'll hear all about it.

Spinning

1. More
2. Finish all of the current fiber I have
3. Get more consistent

I have a lot of spinning to do. I am spinning alpaca for the Kaleidoscope cardi, and hopefully the pound of BFL my mother-in-law got me will spin out to enough for the Enrejado shawl, but I also have another pound of pure white alpaca (!) , four ounces of Malabrigo Nube (!), and the rest of my Bella Wool, and shearing season is only 5 months away...

Other Fiber Related Goals

• Blog more

•  This is to be a chronicle of what I learn, the things, I try, mistakes, successes, and all the steps in between. I won't get that if I don't stay consistent with what I am working on, even if I post shorted updates more often, and then a few or my more meditative responses when I can. So in the future, hopefully still a focus on pictures, but more updates, even if they are just a few sentences, and then a longer post every couple of weeks or so.

• Enter a Fiber item in a Festival
• I am hoping for something spun, but I'll take whatever. I have a great resource in my Knitting group about what to enter and where, so hopefully that will work out!
• Sell Something
• I don't care what really, a pattern, a finished product, yarn, anything, I just want to sell something, but I guess I need to start by making things available for sale first...
• Get in my hours!
• I think I probably have more hours than are reflected in my count, but while I do need to do more, I also need to keep track better. Either way, I would like to hit 800-1000 hours by the end of the year!