more attempted long-draw

It looks like I will have to break down and actually find out how to do this long-draw thing. I tried it again last night with the grippy gray wool, and it would go along real nice for a while, but then I'd end up with this knotty pile of mess in my hands that wouldn't draft itself into anything but a big fat rope. When I was reading about this technique on the internet, everyone was saying that it's an act of faith to just let it go and assume that your spidery-thin wafts of fiber won't just drift apart. I did have that problem once or twice last night, but mostly I had the big fat rope problem. Also, you're supposed to hold the fiber in one hand and just use the other occasionally to block the twist from travelling. I definitely needed both hands to try to spread the fiber out (in attempt to prevent the rope effect). I do have two books at home about spinning, but neither one seems to cover this. (One is The Whole Craft of Spinning: From the Raw Material to the Finished Yarn, which is a fine book but very short. It's a handy quick reference for a broad overview, but at only 48 pages, it simply doesn't go into detail about anything. The other book is The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning, which a lot of people love but which seems to dance all around the things I want to know without ever actually giving me what I seek. What do you do when your 2-ply yarn breaks while you're plying? No answer. Pages upon pages of right and wrong ways to ply, yarn-storage packages to ply from and not to ply from, the history of plying, and misconceptions about plying, not to mention a warning that your yarn may break while you're plying, but nothing about what to do about it. Similarly, does the book ever actually say how to draft? Probably, but its organization and presentation style seem to be incompatible with the structure of my brain, because I haven't seen anything on this. And let's not even discuss the chapter on firing up your forge and making your own spinning tools. Whatever!) I believe my next book purchase should be Start Spinning: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great Yarn by Maggie Casey. It sounds like it covers what I want to know, with lots of pictures. Every single reviewer on Amazon gave it five stars, and the author has quite a following on Ravelry--there's a special group just for people who learned to spin from her!
Anyway, I ended up with some madly uneven yarn until I gave up and intervened with the inchworm whenever things got too out of hand.


I was so absorbed, I spun up two big bobbins of singles but ran out of time before dinner to ply them. Also, I've once again made enough singles that it's unlikely to actually fit on a bobbin together as a 2-ply. Argh! I always do this to myself! Which is why I'd really like to know the proper way to join two pieces of 2-ply handspun. I guess that's what the internet is for. I have figured out why people recommend not trying long-draw with combed fiber, though: the fibers are too lined up. The twist just wants to travel down the fibers along one side of the top, leaving the rest of the width of it behind. At least, that's my theory on part of the problem I'm having.
Also, am I crazy? I just stumbled across some single-ply sock yarn called Durasport. Huh? Single-ply, the least durable, weakest yarn format...for socks? But everyone on the internet seems to love it. I agree that the colors are pretty, but what am I missing? (Socks are still on the horizon for me, but I'm getting closer: at least now I know how to decrease and bind off!)

spinning pretties

I'm proud of myself. Last night, all I wanted to do was spin, but all these other priorities tried to interfere. I got home a little late, had to make dinner, husband and cat wanted attention, etc. This is the way things typically go when my husband is in town: I talk to him, I make dinner, we eat, and then it's bed time and I never get to crochet or spin. So last night I spun first! Not only that, I managed to make dinner quickly enough that we still had time to eat and get to bed early. Yeah!
I'm feeling really good about everything, so I decided to spin one of the treats from the gift fleece stash.


This is (half of) an ounce of combed shetland top. (I forgot to take a picture until I had already spun half of it.) It's very interesting wool. It seems to be medium staple length (at least relative to what I've been working with), and it's grippier than BFL or merino but less grippy than the gray mystery wool.
Instead of trying to do anything fancy, I decided to just split the top into two pieces of equal length, spin singles from each half, and then ply them. It seemed like the colors were very uniform throughout, so I figured this would make a yarn that was pretty uniform over its length. It was a little deceptive, though: one end had more white than the other. But it still made a really nice yarn.


It's a lot less consistent than my yarn has been lately, and it's not because this is bad fiber. It was a lot of fun to work with. Actually, I had been reading on Ravelry yesterday about long-draw drafting, and it seemed like this fiber really wanted to do that, so I decided to try it. I'm not sure if I was doing it right--when I've seen people do it, I was generally in the midst of such information overload that I really couldn't absorb anything beyond "Wow! That looks like magic!" But there were some points when it really seemed like it was working. Of course, there were other points when the twist just decided to travel up the whole big fat top and take over the entire thing, thank you very much. That was easier to undo than I expected: I just pinched the yarn at a point before everything went nuts, held it up and let the rest untwist (which it very obediently did), and then inchworm drafted that part into something more reasonable. I picked up again later with the attempted longdraw. There were several points when it seemed like it was really working. I definitely want to play with this more. I think my bobbin tension should have been tighter--as I went, I would get this long, twisted section of singles and then kind of shove it toward the wheel to get it to take up onto the bobbin. I want to try it with the gray wool, too--that stuff seemed like it really wanted to play this way.

I won!

Dudes! We now interrupt your regularly scheduled work day for a bit of internet squee. I won Yarns to Dye For: Creating Self-Patterning Yarns for Knitting on Kathleen Taylor (the author)'s book drawing! She held three drawings in celebration of her blog receiving 100,000 hits. Look! That's me! Yay!!!!!
She had some really awesome prizes, and there were also drawings for yarn and fiber, but I was really hoping to win this book. I can't believe I did! It's been on my wish list for months now. How cool!

knitting night

Last night was knitting night. I missed three weeks in a row between working on the taxes, working on the scholarship application, and I don't remember what, so I was really excited to go and see my knitting buddies. They're really a fun group. I had an incredible headache when I left work, but I decided to go anyway. Also, I felt weird going when I don't have a current knitting project or even a baby blanket going right now. (The hat just needs the last few stitches bound off at the top and a seam.)




I still can't quite decide whether I like the knit side or the purl side better. If I make it again, I think I'm going to make the whole thing rib instead of just the bottom inch or two--the ribbing is actually my favorite part.
As you can see, I learned to decrease. It's so easy! (I did k2tog, which is just grabbing two old stitches instead of one and otherwise knitting as usual. The directions I was using were for a hat knit in the round, so they didn't say anything about what to do when you got to the purl side, which wouldn't happen in the round. I've never heard of a p2tog, but that's what I did. It seemed to work fine. If I ever do something with more normal yarn, I'll have to find out whether the p2tog slants in the opposite direction or anything, but for this hat, it matters not in the least.) The funny thing is, I was in the car at a stoplight trying to explain to my non-knitting husband how you decrease in knitting, and just as I was making knitting gestures, two of my buddies from knitting night pulled up next to us at the stoplight, honking and waving!
Anyway, since the hat is basically done, there was no point taking that to knitting night, and I finished the baby blanket for Project Linus. I pulled out a piece I originally started for the contest at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival, but there was absolutely no chance that I would finish it by then. (That was back in February.) Apparently most other people had the same problem, because the contest ended up getting cancelled. So here I am still working on it.


As with most things I start when I'm not really paying attention, it is bigger than I intended. I like how it's coming along, though.
It was originally going to be much more flamboyant, but it evolved into more of a fairy tale sort of thing. I didn't really plan it, just picked a yarn and started crocheting, then picked the next one when I had a few rows of that done.


When I finish the gold chenille, I'm going to do another yarn in about the same color as the beginning (neck) part, only it's not faux suede, it's a soft rich base yarn with a few very long eyelash things. A lot of people really hate novelty yarns, but I think they can be a lot of fun if you put them together well. I bought a whole raft of novelty yarn on clearance last summer when Michael's and A.C. Moore started dumping it, specifically for the purpose of making things like this capelet. Honestly, I miss being able to wander around looking at all kinds of crazy colors and textures of yarn, but that fad is clearly over. The local yarn stores here only have serious yarn, and Michael's cut their yarn stock about in half and quit carrying anything except boring stuff and fun fur. The Hobby Lobby near me carries a lot of weird yarn, but it's mostly garish and crappy, and anyway it never changes. I miss going to A.C. Moore during the fad yarn heyday. It's a good thing I stocked up when I did!

ah, spinning

Last week was crazy. I'm Eastern Orthodox Christian, and for us, Easter can't fall before the start of Passover. Passover started on the 19th, so last week was Holy Week for us, which meant basically all church all the time. This is the most important and most joyous feast of the year, and I love it. I love all the services leading up to it, and I love the celebration.
On Sunday, after the festivities were over, I was back at my spinning wheel, and that felt incredibly good, too. It was like coming home. That seems outrageous considering that I've only been spinning on a wheel for about three weeks even if you include last week, but it really did feel that way. I have got to find a way to get more time to do this.
Anyway, I started with some of the gray fleece that my friend sent me. It's very grippy wool--the fibers are long and really like to stick to each other. It's not like any of the other things I've worked with so far. It's pretty easy to spin, and I suspect this yarn would felt like a maniac.


I also spun a little of the roving I bought in Asheville. I chose that particular one because its colors are very soft and subtle. I wanted to try one of the techniques from Lynne Vogel's class: splitting the roving lengthwise, spinning both halves the same, and plying them together so the colors line up. I tried this in class and made some gorgeous yarn in which the colors did not line up at all. I figured if I got some subtly colored roving and that happened, it would still make a beautiful, subtle yarn. Just not in the mood for anything resembling a barbershop pole right now.
Well, I spun two bobbins of singles, and when I plied them together, the ends were within six inches of each other! Holy cow! I have never achieved anything remotely close to that before.


The colors lined up pretty well, too. They're just different enough to be really interesting and nice. I am so pleased.
This roving is a dream to work with, too. It's a merino blend with some sparklies. I'm not sure if there is any other kind of wool in there or not; my guess is not.
I've heard opposing things about merino: some say it's the best thing ever and any beginner will be in love with it by the end of an hour, and some say it's the last thing you'd want to give a beginner because it's so fine and short-stapled and non-grippy. I wanted to try some myself before ordering a whole raft of it from Sheep Shed Studio next paycheck.
The verdict? It's like butter. It's so soft. I love it. More more more!

much-anticipated yarn

So I was poking around on Discontinued Brand Name Yarn and I found South West Trading Company's Bamboo on sale by the bag. This yarn is normally $13.50 a ball, and they have it for $42.50 for ten! I cannot tell you how excited I was about this yarn. I was thinking of a nice, soft summer top. Here's what Yarndex had to say about it: "Often compared to premier ramie, it's cool and silky to the touch and works up beautifully in sweaters, tops, dresses, skirts, and anything else where a flowing drape is important." Between the mentions of "ramie" and "silky" and my own mis-memory of two very soft yarns that I own being bamboo (they're not. One is soy and the other is banana silk), I was expecting something super soft. Here's the flawed logic: If the Bernat Bamboo I own (wrong) is so incredibly soft and I got it on clearance for $2 and it's half acrylic for heaven's sake, just imagine how soft this expensive famous brand yarn must be! Yeah.
So the yarn arrived last night.



It's beautiful. It's not soft, though. It's more silky like raw silk than how I think of silky, which I guess would more accurately be called "satiny."
What a disappointment. And it's a discontinued color, so I can't send it back. I probably wouldn't anyway--in fact, if it was an option, I doubt I'd even be thinking about it. But knowing that it's not an option gives it that perverse appeal.
Anyway, it's still really beautiful yarn, and if people are willing to pay $13.50 a ball for it, there must be lots of really great things you can do with it. I need to start making swatches and see what works. It may still be soft enough for a nice summer top. The color is perfect: dark enough not to be too pastel insipid lilac, but light enough not to be too hot for summer. It was actually the color that I was most concerned about when I ordered it, but the color on the store's website is actually pretty accurate. (It's the same hue as the bottom picture above but a bit lighter.)
Anyway, it's really nice yarn and a great deal, just not what I expected. This disappointment is amplified by the unusually long wish list I have right now--this yarn would not have been such a high priority for ordering if I had known what it's really like. Instead I probably would have gone for KnitPicks CotLin, which I've also been obsessed with lately. They have this light, almost-drab green that I'm suddenly seeing everywhere; they call it Kohlrabi. I never wear this color and thought it was ugly until about two weeks ago; now suddenly I must have it! The Lantana also looks very nice. And this yarn explicitly says over and over in the description that it's soft.
But then again, I have a spinning wheel now, so of course I have to pine for unspun fiber, too. Consider for a moment FiberLady's OMG gorgeous Stormy Night bamboo top (which also says explicitly that it is soft) or Squoosh's Lately Merino and Bamboo.
I'm sure you can understand why I resent the SWTC Bamboo for misrepresenting itself in order to cut to the front of the line. However, the reality is that I have a whole raft of new, beautiful yarn! This is a good thing! I can't wait to start playing with it.

trying out my new spinning wheel

Last night I set up my new spinning wheel and used it for the first time. Well, ok, I tried it in the store, but I don't count that because I wasn't really trying to make anything then (except a decision).


I'm really astonished at how huge it is--I guess I got used to the size of the Little Gem. I don't have a picture of it from the same perspective--it's so small you almost couldn't see it from that perspective!--but here it is with the same chair.


Anyway, I got it all set up, which won't be any big deal the second time I do it but took a while this time because I kept stopping to read the directions. Then I decided to finish off the last of the cheap wool while I got a feel for it. Apparently I didn't learn anything from being frustrated with the Little Gem while spinning this wool--the wool didn't suddenly get smooth and lose all its fuzzes and lumps in the past week, and I didn't magically become a better spinner. I spent a fairly frustrating evening with it and ended up wondering if I shouldn't have just bought the Little Gem. It's so discouraging to spend all this money on something and then have it not seem all that great after all. And the Little Gem was so smooth and so tiny, and I really made friends with it by the end of the two weeks. Oh yeah, and I was spinning gorgeous long-staple well-prepared fiber. Wake up, self! Start spinning nice fiber, and in a few days you'll be just as much in love with this wheel. (I hope so!)
Anyway, here's the yarn I made. It's natural mystery wool plied with gray mystery wool (also natural, just naturally gray).


Hopefully tonight will be better. Meanwhile, something incredible happened: one of my high school friends sent me wool! Apparently she had tried spinning but didn't take to it, so with unbelievable generosity, she sent me this:


For the past two weeks, every day I've eagerly checked the mailbox for it, and every day I've been disappointed. When the mailbox was empty again yesterday, I thought it must have gotten lost and I'd have to go on some hopeless quest to try to have the post office locate it. But when I went in the house, there it was! Beyond all expectations, it was way too big to fit even in our industrial-size rural mailbox, so the mail lady had delivered it and my husband carried it inside. That is a whole lot of wool, and better yet, it's colors and fibers I wouldn't have picked. That is so awesome. A lot of it is shetland, which I don't think I've seen around here (she lives in Pennsylvania). I'm really excited to try it out, especially the big bag of red blend. Also, the orangeish bundle must be a batt, which I've never worked with. All kinds of new adventures await.