Signs of fall

Today was the first multiple handknit day (Rumpled and Aestlight).

There's that little chill in the air in the mornings that means autumn is just around the corner.

The chestnuts are lying in prickly heaps on the sidewalk.

I saw red ivy leaves from the train this morning.

There wasn't a cloud in the incredibly blue sky as the girls and I walked to school.

This is the kind of weather that means only one thing in my knitting world - sweaters. Cozy, comfy sweaters. Warm toasty sweaters. Piles of knitting on my lap in the evening. It's a good time. My dilemma now is what sweater to do.

It's not like I don't already have a list* of projects for the next few months. Including projects that require dyeing and spinning in addition to the knitting. But I'm itching to cast on for a sweater for memememememe! I even know what sweater I want to do - Pas de Valse by Marnie MacLean, from Twist Collective Fall 2009. And I've got the yarn picked out - a pile of gorgeously soft baby Alpaca that Ironman picked up for me in Peru several years ago. There's only one problem:

I don't really want a tan sweater.

So I've spent the last week throwing little 5 gram skeins of tan alpaca into a crock pot with various colors of dye, just for the heck of it. It's been great fun!

The original color is at the bottom, and dyed with (going clockwise) sun yellow, golden yellow, deep orange (0.5x), deep orange (1x), fuschia, burgundy, periwinkle, brilliant blue, turquoise, emerald, brown and gun metal Jacquard Acid dyes

And I'm surprised with the way I'm leaning color-wise - I think this sweater needs to be orange. I am not an orange person. I have one orange t-shirt that I love, but it's a paler tone then this orange. I'm a bit dubious that this color will look good on me at all. But, as I've said before, it's time to break out of my sweater-color-rut and try something a bit different.

I'm leaning towards the darker of the two deep oranges, which makes me think of pumpkin pie, and fall leaves, and chrysanthemums. What could be better for a fall project? But what do you all think? Too dark? Too orange? Let me know your vote in the comments, and we'll see which one comes out ahead.

*List update: #1 on the list is now 1/2 done - one project knitted and done, one into the third reknit, but should be done this week, and one...still in mental stages. #4 is finished, blocked and needs to be stuck in the mail. #2 - I wound up Devil's yarn last night, so incremental forward progress there.

Weekender scores

I managed to make it out of the weekend with only one skein of yarn:

Artist's Palette Smoothie Sock, to make some socks for Himself in gratitude for taking over when I abandoned the family for two weekends in a row. Not bad, right? Only one skein. Well, only one skein of yarn. There was a bit more rampant consumerism on the fiber side of the equation:

Superfine alpaca/BFL top from Fluff-n-stuff

Natural dyed pencil roving from Artisan Threads

Cashmere waste (!)(Like anything cashmere could be waste!!!) for £5/bag, also from Artisan Threads

1 kilo of raw Gotland Fleece from Well Manor Farm

I managed to resist buying "The Haapsulu Shawl" after my Estonian Lace knitting class, but only because I couldn't find any yarn in the entire marketplace that was fine enough. However, I now think that I have enough wool-based items to play with for a long, long time. Thank goodness I'm not going to any more knitting events until (maybe) April!

Information overload

I've spent the last 36 hours comfortably ensconced in the joy of my first big knitting event - the iKnit Weekender. I've taken my first knitting classes (!), and learned a number of new things. For example, I can now knit Fair Isle with two colors held in one hand. I've learned that all the math I ever needed for knitting I learned in grade school (yeah geometry!). And I've learned that Estonian lace knitters are supremely talented, supremely tenacious, or supremely nutty (or maybe all of the above). And that nupp rhymes with soup. It's been great fun, but I'm going to need a bit of time to process it before I can be coherent about it.

So instead, I'll leave you with some of the fiber I've been playing with of late - I went to Spunky Eclectic while I was in Maine for a dyeing class, and I came away with a new spindle and some Corriepaca fiber to play with. I don't do a lot of spindling, but I've been thinking about doing a bit more of it, just to fill in the spare seconds in my day. I finished up the first half of the top last night:

New spindle!

It's an interesting spin - the staple seems to be quite long, but I'm having a bit of trouble getting the single to stay together. Not enough twist seems the obvious answer, but I can't quite figure it out. Time to sit down with Abby Franquemont's DVD I think. I'm going to spin the other half on the spindle and ply them together in the same direction, so hopefully the colors will line up well. Then I'll have to go trawling the 4 Oz Challenge patterns to find something to make with it!

New projects

Writing down a list has definitely helped me prioritize my knitting activities. For example,

The finished prototype for the hat in my three piece collection. I did this a bit differently from my usual design process, which is think up an idea and knit it, then go back and try to write it up after the fact. That procedure usually results in my having to knit another item after I've finished writing the pattern, just to make sure I've got it right. This time I put a bit more thought into the pattern ahead of time, did the chart and then knit from that. I've still got to finish up the pattern writing, but having the chart done ahead of time meant that I could knit the hat as a test knit of the chart.

Priority #2: Ironman's Aran. When I went back to my parents' a few weeks ago, I scored a huge stash of new needles. My aunt, who has previously sent me destash stuff in a potting soil bag, had brought up a bunch of needles and yarn she wanted to pass on. None of the yarn was particularly useful for me, but the needles...

Oh yeah...in addition to this absolute honking pile of straight needles, there was a bag of circulars and crochet hooks. And stitch markers. And stitch holders. Etc, etc. You get the idea. As a result, I now have a new favorite type of needle.

Nylon. Molded in one piece, with no joins at all, bendy, flexible, comfy. My only complaint is that they're not very pointy, but I was so enamored that I immediately used them for a swatch.

Drops Karisma, on US 7, 8 and 9 needles. None of which are quite right - 7s give me 5 sts/inch, 8s and 9s give me 4.5 sts/inch, and what I'm supposed to get for the pattern is 4 sts/inch. However, given that Mr. Fussy Mc-Wool-Is-Itchy-pants has okayed this yarn, I think I'll just knit a bigger size on smaller needles and hope for the best. Good plan, right? Right...(famous last words).

I also threw design-work to the wind last night, and started a birthday present for my Mom. I'm one third of the way into the first of two, and it's cranking along. Hopefully I can get them finished up by the end of next week and send them off. Should be do-able - school starts tomorrow, so my commuting time is about to take a drastic leap upwards. Hooray!

Fiber Friday: A pile of Clown Barf

Before we went off to the States, I managed to finish up most of the singles from Boo's dyed top.

A few days and some chain plying later, and I have three skeins of lovely squooshy yarn in the "Clown Barf" colorway.

Spun at 9:1, short forward (worsted) draw, plied at 7.5:1.
Total yardage: 381 yds/8.2 oz, 8-13 wpi, ranging from 700-800 ypp. Hopefully enough for a wee Boo sweater sometime this fall (as per the list). After ending up with some 4 Ounce Challenge yarn that was a bit too overplied, I made a conscious effort to chain ply this only more loosely. Going down to the biggest whorl on the flyer helped a lot too.

I have a new toy to play with in spinning. I discovered (probably through a post on Ravelry, but I honestly don't remember), plans for a PVC skeiner/swift. I was all fired up to build it, but realized that, instead of the $10 quoted in the plans it was probably going to cost me £50 to build. Umm, no. So I tabled the idea until our trip back to the States. A $20 trip to Lowes and some fun with a pipe cutter later, I had a lovely skeiner that wound off the clown barf in expert fashion. A far cry from my cobbled together 2x4 and CD swift that I never, ever use. It's all I can do to keep from winding all my yarn into cakes and then back into skeins.

So the girls' sweater yarn is done, just in time for school to start next Tuesday. It's pretty exciting. The girls even think so too!