Silk spinning

You know the drill. Summer, distractions, etc. I'll just sheepishly (HA!) say sorry and pretend there wasn't an enormous lapse in blogging, mmkay?

So, to distract you from my distraction, here's a fibershot!

Shiny.

Last night I finished spinning singles from a cashmere and tussah silk blend I picked up at Rhinebeck last year. This stuff is pure luxury, and I felt entirely NOT up to the task of spinning it how it deserves to be spun. But I was determined to learn to spin non-wool fibers, and there's no way to learn to spin these luxurious fibers without, well, a learning curve. So. Off I went.

Silly as it sounds, at first I found it terrifying. I mean, it isn't like the silk was suddenly going to turn into a spider web with a giant Vilde-eating spider attached. But that's what I was feeling: terror. My good, old wool had become so comfortable to spin that I completely forgotten the feeling of being out of control of my fiber. And I swear this silk just wanted to jump out of my hands and dissolve into a million pieces. (all of which, by the way, would go right up my nose and start a sneezing fit.)

One challenge of this particular blend is the mix of staple lengths. The silk has a staple of around 7 inches, longer than any wool I've spun. The cashmere? Less than an inch. Finding a drafting technique that suited both of these fibers was my biggest challenge, and eventually I ended up with a super light gripped short forward draw.

Another challenge is the fluff/shine balance. Should I be smoothing down the cashmerey fluff as much as possible to let the shine of the silk come through? Or keep a light touch to give a halo to the yarn? I don't know! I ended up feeling lucky just to have relatively even singles on the bobbin, even if the fluff/shine balance is extremely UNeven.

By the end I felt confident in how I handled the fiber, but I'll withhold any declaration of success until after plying. There's time to screw this up yet!

The natural color of this blend is luuuuucious. Sort of a steely gray with caramel undertones. I love it, but I'll love the yarn even more after dyeing it and I'm curious to see what my colors look like on this new-to-me fiber. So tonight I ply, and maybe tomorrow I'll dye.

This all started as an experimental kick, but now that I'm ten hours into this spinning project I'd be lying if I didn't say I really really really want pretty yarn when I'm done with it. But I'll try my best to remember I'm a beginner, and keep this in mind as I poke my nose back into the "non-wool" box of fiber in my stash to see what new challenges await me.

Breathess post from the road

I'm traveling but just popped my head into the fall Twist Collective and nearly fainted. There are so! many! beautiful! sweater! patterns!!!

Swoon.

Best of all there are some great colorwork sweaters, and guess what I've been craving?

FO: Easy baby cardigan

Pattern: Easy Baby Cardigan by Diane Soucy

Yarn: My handspun/handdyed in Daydreams of Spring, 100% merino

This was a quick little knit and such a great pattern. The construction is delightfully almost seamless (just the top of the hood) and so easy you hardly have to pay attention.

And that simplicity suits the handspun yarn, allowing all the nubbly variagation to shine through.

Man, I love knitting with handspun.

The toggles come from The Hickory Tree shop on Etsy. Check them out if you are looking for wooden buttons that look straight out of nature.

A return to Dyeing

I've taken most of the summer away from dyeing, partially because it's been hot and working over a hot dyepot does not sound appealing, and partially because I've had a lot of other fun stuff going on.

But this week I dipped a toe back into the world of color. A friend of mine had gotten two large cones of undyed sock yarn and asked if I would dye it for her. She wanted blue and green (hurray!) and here's what I came up with:

I was aiming for a yarn that would be largely blue with small patches of bright green and larger swaths of a kind of aqua. I think she liked it and I certainly enjoyed the process! It made me think about the differences between dyeing yarn and dyeing fiber and it turns out that there are many - both in the design process and the execution.

Tomorrow I hope to have a FO to show. Finally something finished from the castonathon!

Cast-onathon

Ahem.


Things have gotten a little cast-on happy around here lately, so in the interest of accountability I'm reporting in for a works-in-progress roundup.

Let's look at them individually, shall we?


Everyone knows socks don't really count as a WIP, so I hardly need to defend these. That said, the observant among you will notice that I've stopped right at the point when I need to turn the heel, which is really the only time that sock knitting becomes an actual project. So! The heel must be turned.


The back of the equestrian blazer has grown a bit, but it has been benched for now. It was born of demand (no easy knitting on the needles!) and supply (hey look! a sweater's worth of yarn in my stash!). But this is a cool-weather project and since fall in Virginia is still many months off there's no rush to finish it yet. And it's not like I don't have other things to keep me busy...


Oh right - lace.
I'm knitting a few rows here and there, but my favorite place to knit lace is on airplanes and for the next few weeks I'm not traveling. So progress has stalled.


New project #1! Some yarn never sees the inside of the stash bins. The Rowan silk-wool yarn that I got at an unbelievable sale price is such a yarn. And now that it is becoming a summer cardigan it has become priority knitting #1.

Or at least it was until this happened:

New project #2. Yesterday I realized I have some gift knitting to catch up on. So I opened the stash closet, picked the happiest color of handspun I saw, and got to work. This itty bitty hooded cardi is about the most mindless thing I have ever knit, and it is flying by, so hopefully I'll get back to my turqoise summer cardi soon enough.

Let's not talk about spinning projects in progress right now, okay?

Yarn call!

This weekend I went away to the most fabulous weekend of fiddling and dancing EVER but this is a fiber blog, so I won't bore you all.

Instead, here are some things that came in the mail while I was away:

Four skeins of goooorgeous naturally brown yarn from Topsy farm in Canada. It's far from next-to-skin soft, but it'll suit the project I had in mind perfectly. Very happy with this purchase!


Ten skeins of Rowan Classic Silk Wool DK in Porcelain, which just happens to be my very favorite color. This was an unplanned purchase, but the price was just so good that I jumped on it. Very happy I did.

And with all that yarn arriving I'd better get knitting! Here is the start of the back of Kate Gilbert's Equestrian Blazer which I'm knitting with the yarn recycled from my very first (and rather bad) sweater. So far, so good.

Distractible

I am without a chugalong knitting project right now and as a result I'm bouncing around and dabbling in several different things.

This weekend I...

...started spinning a cashmere and silk blend...


...fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with the tension on Margaret's Matchless that she has kindly lent me (I got it worked out last night! Let the production spinning begin!)...


...frogged my very first completed sweater and soaked the yarn for reuse...


...and cast on for a sock.

The brown yarn conundrum has been solved (I hope) and when the yarn comes in the mail I'll report in. Hopefully this means that I'll be casting on a sweater soon, which should help focus my fiber play time.