Ehem. Now back to your regularly scheduled knitting content.

Sorry about that (both the long blog break and the excessive political wanking). I have been knitting, even if I haven't been posting about it at all.

I finally broke down and busted out the Noro sock yarn. Say what you will about the feel of it, the thick and thin nature, the VM, but the colors are absolutely To. Die. For.

I'm moving to a new office, which I was cleaning out today, so I took advantage of a window (!) to take some pictures

Pattern: Stripey Noro Socks, by yours truly (pattern now available for download here)
Yarn: Noro Kureyon sock yarn, colorway S40
Needles: Knitpicks Harmony dpns in US 1/2.25 mm
Start/finish: 10/3-10/17/08

While harsh in the skein, the yarn feels fine on my feet. I haven't tossed these babies in the dryer yet, but I've heard that makes a grand difference in the feel. I originally meant these for a Christmas present but they ended up being too big. If they do shrink or shift around in the dryer, I will gift them. Otherwise, I'm keeping these things for me me me.

I love the striping on the heel. I kept the heel flap in stockinette so it would work out, and I managed to get everything to line up just right. Hooray!

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I guess it's now November so it's time to take stock of October's accomplishments:

Knitting
Ummm...Noro socks. That's it.

Spinning:
Cotton Candy
Superwash merino, as yet unblogged because I need to unload a cubic buttload of pictures from our camera.

Other:
Halloween costumes! (see above disclaimer on superwash merino)

What was I doing last month?

FO: Gathered Pullover

The nice thing about having a number of ongoing projects is that every so often, you get to indulge in a massive spurt of FO generation. Which means lots of fun, "look what I made!" posts on your blog, thereby boring the bejeezus out of your readers (all 6 of you!). But tough noogies my friends. Here's another one.

Pattern: Gathered Pullover, by Hana Jason, Interweave Knits Winter 2007 (Rav linky)
Yarn: recycled from a sweater I found at Goodwill. Some kind of multi-plied red wool, in copious quantities. Someday I will either purchase or borrow a McMorran yarn balance, and figure out exactly how much yarn this took.
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm
Start/finish: I made the 40.5 size, 6/12/08-9/24/08.
Comments: I read the thread about this sweater on Ravelry before I started, so I knew at the beginning I wanted to do a bunch of modifications. My gauge was slightly larger then called for (5 sts/7 rows per inch instead of 4.75 st/6 rows) and picked a slightly larger size to compensate. I added ~2 inches of waist shaping, and left out the increased/decreased stitches in the middle of the cable motif. I also knit a bit longer after finishing the motif before starting the neck.

I was a bit worried that it was going to end up too short, but blocking fixed the hem curl admirably.

For the neck, I knit it in the round with a centered double decrease (slip 2 tog as if to knit, knit 1, pass two slipped stitches over) in the middle of the V. Finally I bailed on knitting the sleeves on their own and messing about with setting in sleeve caps, and knit them from the top down as instructed in this genius tome.

The finished product is nice and light and flowy, thanks to the larger-then-recommended gauge, and fits perfectly (bad Photobooth picture not withstanding). And I will never fit another sleeve cap again in my entire life.

The End.

FO: Summertime tunic

OK, it's time to get some of these FOs blogged before the new year. First up is my modified version of the Summertime Tunic.

Hideous picture, but you get the idea

Pattern: Summertime tunic from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 (Rav link)
Yarn: Classic Elite Premiere, colorway 5295, 50/50 cotton/Tencel, 108 yds/50 gr, every single inch of 5 skeins were used (size 37.5 with modifications)
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 3/2/08-9/22/08 How embarrassing is that? 6+ months! Phbbbt.
Comments/modifications: The first thing to say is that I absolutely love this yarn. I don't usually really like knitting with cotton, but the 50% Tencel in there makes all the difference in the world. It knits up fluid and drapey, and in the wearing doesn't stretch out quite as quickly as 100% cotton would. Gorgeous stuff.

I did a few mods on this pattern. To wit: 1) I only had about 500 yds of the yarn, so I started at the top and knit down. Then 2) instead of doing the ribbing and continuing down past that as in the magazine photos, I pulled a lacey ribbing pattern out of BW Vol 2 and used that as edging.3) I bought some ribbon to use for the straps and then when I got to that point, couldn't find it, so I worked a 3 st I-cord with the last remaining scraps of yarn and used that instead. That's it. I lucked out on the fit, and after a couple of wearings, most of the stretching was width-wise not length-wise, so all's well.

Thankfully I finally got all the finishing done before "winter" arrived. I've worn this a couple of times and gotten compliments on it, which definitely qualifies as a success.

Fiber friday: Worsted vs. semi-worsted

So last week I showed you the yarn I spun up at Yarn School. One of the things that we discussed was the difference between woolen and worsted spinning, both in terms of fiber prep (which seems to be most important) and spinning technique (which is where you get the "semi"). Woolen yarn is only produced when you start with a carded fiber prep, worsted yarn comes from combed prep. Since most of the commercially available fibers come in top form (even if they are referred to as roving), 99.9% of the spinning I've done has been worsted or semi-worsted. Until I went to Kansas.

The purple and black mini-skeins were spun from hand carded rolags. The brown single was spun from a batt. The major difference between these two preps is that hand carded rolags force you to spin a woolen yarn with the fibers more or less traveling in a circle around the circumference of the single, rather then longitudinal along the single. Batts can also be spun with circumferential fibers or longitudinal. Both preps give you a yarn that is fuzzy because the ends of the fibers are free to stick out rather then being smoothed into the single and caught by the twist. You can see the fuzzies in the above picture.

This is an example of worsted spinning. The fiber prep was combed top, which I spun with a short forward draw, smoothing and compressing the single as the twist entered. The fibers in this yarn run parallel to the axis of the single, so the ends are trapped and the yarn is smooth. This is a good way to get a very strong, durable, hard wearing yarn, which was perfect for this stuff, which became my first pair of knee-socks.

On the right is the yarn I spun at Yarn School - this is a semi-worsted yarn. The prep was combed top, but I pulled off chunks and spun them long-draw from the fold, thereby jumbling the fiber orientation. On the left is the yarn I spun up from my H^4 swap fiber: spun with short forward draw, worsted yarn. Nice and smooth, no fuzzies. I'm calling it Cotton Candy for the colors, and I think Devil has designs on it for something.

Cotton Candy stats:
Domestic wool combed top from Poppy Flower Fibers, 4 oz
Spun/plied 10:1
Spun worsted style, 2 ply, ~12 wpi, 183 yds/4 oz.

One other point about worsted vs. semi-worsted. Worsted style spinning got me 183 yds from 4 oz. Semi-worsted at a similar wpi got me 83 yds/1.1 oz. So the semi-worsted spinning gets you more yardage since the yarn is less dense due to trapped air. So now I'm on the hunt for some commercial roving to buy so I can get going on some sweater yarn!

Hey, it's Friday, here's some fiber

The lovely Corriedale fiber provided in our goodie bags at Yarn School, dyed by Adrian, colorway "Hooray Sheep"

I wanted to try a fluffier yarn then I usually spin, so I spun the singles from the fold with long draw at 10:1 on my Lendrum. The big skein at the top (3.1 oz, 272 yds, 11-12 wpi) was plied on the Lendrum at 10:1 with a fair bit of twist. The smaller skein (1.1 oz, 83 yds, 14 wpi) was plied on a DT folding Fricke that was sitting all alone in the gym, and happened to have a Woolee Winder on it. I have no idea what the ratio was for plying that one, but the tension was stronger then on my Lendrum, so it ended up having quite a bit less twist. When I held up both skeins, the Lendrum one was overplied, but not dramatically so, and the Fricke skein was balanced.

Finished them with a soak in hot water and hung to dry. It's very interesting to me to see how much of a difference the plying made in the wpi. Same singles, same number of plies, both are pretty soft, but the lower-twist skein has more squish to it, while the high-twist skein is more elastic. Next week I'll post about the differences between spinning from the fold long draw and spinning worsted short draw (which is what I subjected my HHHH fiber to after I got back).

I've definitely got my spinning mojo back - two nights this week got me through 3.8 oz of this

Superwash merino

which is destined to become some 2-ply sock yarn for a Christmas present.