Fiber Friday with Small Girls

In my frenzy of stash organizing and decluttering I came across quite a lot of undyed fiber in a box. A couple pounds of Falkland, some merino/tussah silk, a pound and a half of Targhee. There was also a pound of domestic wool that I received when I bought my wheel way back when. It occurred to me that the girls might enjoy dyeing fiber for their own sweaters for next winter. The fact that the activity might eat up an afternoon was also quite popular with the holiday-parental unit.

I pulled out my sample cards and showed them which colors I had. They each picked four (both, strangely enough, went for fuschia) and I sent them off to watch Tom and Jerry while I made up stock solutions. And then the fun began.

We started off by soaking the fiber in a big plastic tub - I added some citric acid to the soaking water to be sure that the dyes would strike - and once the fiber was wet, the painting started.

The girls had to be convinced to part with their top.

Devil did hers in the crockpot with brilliant blue, fuschia, turquoise and scarlet Jacquard Acid dyes.

We cooked it on high for about an hour and a half. I was kind of worried that there wasn't enough liquid in the pot, so I added about half a cup of water. The end result was that the bottom layers of the top ended up much darker then the top layer or two.

I'm not sure how it will spin up, and she's not all that thrilled with it at the moment, but we'll see how she feels once it's yarn.

Boo chose yellow, orange, green and pink. And then used all the colors I'd made up instead. Her top was done in the oven in a roasting pan, and the colors that came out were, um, a bit bright.

Thirty minutes in the oven at 190, the kitchen smelled like wet sheep, and we had this:

Boo is pretty thrilled with this, when I can get her to stand still long enough to venture an opinion. We'll see how the yarn ends up, but I suspect it will be quite cheerful (if nothing else!).

The final results:

This dyeing session and my recent organizing made me appreciate even more the talents of the dyers I get fiber from. I put all of my Hello Yarn Fiber Club unspun tops together. There's quite a bit...

That's something like 5 or 6 pounds of fiber. And if I get really brave, I might even be able to combine some of those colorways to get some interesting yarns for larger garments.

A room of one's own

When Himself and I moved to Houston, we bought a house. A house with a lovely two car garage. Which was promptly rendered unfit for motor vehicles.

Some wood

Some more wood

Some tools

I can't really complain about this since I've ended up getting some really really really gorgeous furniture out of the deal. And I was not surprised when one of the criteria when we were looking at places to live in the UK was "where am I going to put my workshop?" Our current adobe has a garage, something not very common here, and it is also blessed with off street parking. So...long story short, part of our container shipment of "household goods" included a router, a drill press and a whack-load of hand tools. And our car sits happily in the driveway.

The bits and pieces of my hobby have been scattered around the house for quite a while. Most of the stash was in the gear room upstairs (the ridiculously small fourth bedroom that held all our camping stuff, skis and most of my yarn), but there was a big box of fiber under Devil's bed, and an ever-growing pile of stuff in progress next to the couch by the TV, and a spinning wheel and fiber all over, dyeing equipment in the laundry room... You get the picture.

A few weeks ago, I decided that Something Needed To Be Done. I have an inherently greater tolerance for clutter then my husband, but every so often I get a bug up my ass and Must Clean Immediately. The result of the most recent bug (and yes, this was inspired by the discovery of M*(&*@)#^$ in my yarn), was the movement of all yarn and fiber, as well as some fabric, down to the empty room in the playhouse at the foot of the garden that was being used as tri bike storage. When I was done hauling boxes down there (and putting yarn in the freezer), it looked like this:

There was shit everywhere. However, a few afternoons while the girls played "Butterfly Catcher" in the garden and a £75 trip to Ikea and it now looks like this:

The yarn stash. All of it. Doesn't seem so bad, does it?

Fiber stash and fabric, miscellaneous project bags on wall

I sorted yarn, I threw out (gasp!) things I was never going to do anything with, I put all my leftovers in one bin so I can use them up in little things. I also got a desk which is not yet quite cleared off, and there are a set of drawers next to with stitch markers, measuring tapes, my hand combs, sample cards and various other miscellaneous bits and pieces (where the heck did all those beads come from anyway?) The last thing to do is hang up a cork board. I envision using this as a lovely escape to design, work on projects, etc, but I suspect it will really just serve as a repository for all things wooly that aren't being worked on this month. Even so, it's so nice to have some space for my hobby.

Plus, I think Himself appreciates not having it spread all over the house. At least not quite so much as it was!

First quarter report

I realized belatedly last year, that having a monthly update on finished items didn't workout so well - I kept forgetting to post at the end of the month. So in 2010, I'm going to try quarterly rundowns and see if that works better. Here's the list for the first quarter.

Knitting:
One hat
Three pairs of socks
A wee vest

Spinning:
Some mystery top

What isn't listed here since it's not yet done, are the miles and miles of singles I've been spinning. I'm now on my thirteenth bobbin. And I still think it's going to be twenty before I'm done. So hopefully the next quarter's list will have the NSPoD on it.

Easter holiday

The girls have been on spring holiday since the end of March, and it has seriously cut in to my blogging time and/or blogging energy. In the past two weeks we've been to a farm, a castle, the swimming pool several times, a zoo and multiple playgrounds. Despite that, I've managed to get some spinning and knitting done.

Well, not done, but at least moving forward. Last night I watched Brokeback Mountain and wound off 8 full bobbins of singles in the Neverending Spinning Project of Doom (NSPoD).

I can't believe I even entertained the idea that I could spin up all these singles in the month of January. At the rate I'm going, I may be done (with the singles) by the end of May. And then there's two rounds of plying to be done. Heck, when it's time to start knitting wool sweaters again, I'll have all the yarn done!

Winding them off on to toilet paper cones does show off the gradiations of the dye job though. It looks pretty cool from the bottom.

I have been doing some knitting as well. The most recent issue of Knitty has a cool pattern by Amy King using handspun. I pulled out the yarn I spun during the move last year that I'd been holding on to for another Knitty pattern, and decided this one would work better.

After some swatching (holy biasing stockinette Batman!) and a trip back through the wheel to take out some plying twist and make the yarn less wire-like, and I've been working my way through the yoke.

I'm now about an inch into the body, and facing endless stockinette. The pattern calls for about 650 yds of yarn, and I've got about 1000 yds of this, so I'm thinking I might put sleeves on. Instead of binding off the cap sleeves, I put the stitches on waste yarn, so when I'm done with the body I can see how much yarn I have left and do some sleeve if I can.

So...a new wool sweater in progress and it was short-sleeve weather today. My timing, as ever, is impeccable!

FF: Okey dokey

That birthday post was kind of hanging over my head, but now that it's out of the way, I can get back to the actual knitting/spinning content.

These are my new socks, and are appropriate for a Fiber Friday post because a) I spun the yarn and b) um, I spun the yarn. The yarn was my first "real" fingering weight, discussed in some detail here, and the socks are the first pattern for Sock Madness IV. I'm not participating in Sock Madness, which is a truly diabolical knit-along/caffeine-fueled knitting group hallucination in which the first knitters to finish the newly released pattern advance to the next round and ultimately the winners get some fabulous prizes. However, I did have a sock I designed accepted for the competition, and as a bonus, I get copies of all the patterns.

OK, the details...

Pattern: Simple Side to Side socks by Deborah Swift
Yarn: Fingering weight handspun Corriedale, colorway "Lantern Moon", dyed by the fabulous Adrian.
Needles: US 1.5/2.5 mm circulars (I seem to be doing everything magic loop these days. What's up with that?)
Gauge: ~8 stitches/11 rows per inch)
Start/finish: 17 March - 25 March 2010 (hooray for fast sock patterns!)
Comments/mods: I found the construction of this sock interesting. The top of the foot/front of the leg are knit first as a single panel, and then you split the stitches as needed (depending on size of your foot) and knit two separate sections for the sole and the back of the leg. After finishing these, the sock is grafted together along the length and you pick up stiches for toe, heel and cuffs from the appropriate places.

Hooray for stripey heels! There was much discussion on the Ravelry Forum about the fit of these socks, with those gifted with high arches having some serious trouble actually getting them on their feet. The designer has plans to release the pattern to the general public and will probably incorporate some modifications to make them fit better. Since I've got lovely flat feet, I can get them on (although it's a tight squeeze over the heel!). They're perfectly comfortable once they're on, so the pattern works for me.

As always, it was a thrill to knit with yarn I'd made myself. I used up maybe two thirds of the skein, so I've got plenty left for a girl pair or part of the Sock Yarn Blanket. I'm hoping they will wear okay too - my biggest concern with handspun socks is the possibility of it wearing out instantaneously.

I've started the second sock of Sock Madness, which pays homage to The Nectar of the Gods*. And I'm thinking that it would be fun to actually compete next year.

Using only handspun. Tee hee!

* For the uninitiated, that would be coffee.