Fiber Friday: Tdf Yarn #3

Hooray! The huge whacking pile of Romney is done!

Fiber: Hello Yarn Fiber Club September 2010 offering, "Timber" Romney
Spun/plied: 9.25:1/8.5:1, 3-ply (and chain ply for the leftovers)
Stats: 1087 yds/23.5 oz, ~10-12 wpi, ~730 ypp, about DK weight.

My first experience spinning Romney was not terribly successful - it was fun to spin, but the finished product was scratchy and not so pleasant. I suspect that spinning from the fold was the culprit, leaving all those coarser staple ends to stick out. This time around I spun worsted style, and the finished product is a win.

I had six bags of fiber, and I wanted to mix up all the colors as much as possible. I split each 4 oz piece into fourths, then strip each length into four pieces. I lined up the six bags and put a strip into each one sequentially. I won't know until I start knitting it up how well the mixing worked, but I'm pretty certain there won't be a predictable stripe sequence!

Given my prediliction to overtwist, and the tendency of coarser fibers to get wirey with too much twist, I choose to spin this on a lower ratio then I usually use, and to ply on an even lower ratio. This is the first time I've used the plying head for my Lendrum in almost 4 years, but it was perfect for this yarn (and gave me 8 oz skeins!). I tried to be sure I wasn't putting in too much plying twist especially - I wanted the yarn to be nice and loose and drapey. The first skein is perfect, but the other two might have a bit too much plying twist. I debated going back through and taking out a bit of twist, but decided to leave it for post-TdF.

I had 0.5 oz of singles left over which I chain plied - I don't know the yardage yet, as they're drying on the back porch as we speak - and I hope there's enough there for trim on something. It's kind of neat to see how the chain ply compares to the 3 ply in terms of how the colors play off each other. The 3 ply looks pretty garish up close, but from farther away (or on the spinning bobbin as I was skeining it) the colors blend really nicely.

Now I've got to decide on a sweater pattern. I'm thinking something with garter stitch because of the 3 ply, maybe Cobblestone, but I need to go do some pattern searching on Ravelry. After the Tour finishes however...there's about 12 oz to go on my list!

Day 14: 32 oz of a proposed 44 finished. I only need to do another 8 oz to beat last year's total!

TdF Yarn #2 and a Rest Day

My second TdF project was/is 1.5 lbs of Romney from Hello Yarn.

So I started in on the spinning. And I spun. And spun. And spun. And all my bobbins were filling up, and it didn't really feel like I was getting anywhere. Here's a photographic rundown of multiple days of spinning:

Day 5:

Day 6:

Day 7:

By Friday I was over the Neverending Romneying. Over. It. So after I finished that third bobbin, I totally jumped ship, threw the plying maiden on the wheel, and banged out this.

1.5 hours, 227 yds/4 oz of my first attempt at thick and thin singles. The fiber is Amy's Corriedale in the "Twenty Ten" colorway (from my 4 Oz Challenge prize last fall). Fun colors, quick yarn, end product is soft and squishy. Love it.

And then it was back to the Romney, Day 9:

Today is a rest day, and so far I have: read on the porch with the girls.

Played with (and bathed) the dog.

Gone raspberry picking.

Made raspberry chocolate chip ice cream.

As yet, there has been no spinning. I suspect that won't last, as I'm on a tear to get all these singles done so I can start the neverending plying. The extra special good news is that I've cracked open the last bag of fiber, so the end is in sight!

Now I just have to decide what's going to be next...

The last day of school

And the teacher gifts are finished. Blocked even. I have got to start doing this earlier next year!

Patterns: Lacy Karius, Lacy Baktus, Mezquita Shawl (from left to right)
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Aguas (which is mostly green), Cote d'Azure and Playa (again left to right), less then a full skein for each
Needles: US: 3/3.25 mm, US 2/2.75 mm and US 5/3.75 mm.
Start/finish: 6 June - 27 June, 5 June - 1 July, and 2 July - 4 July
Comments/mods: I started off with the middle scarf, but then thought the variegation of the yarn might look better in the stockinette version (Karius), so I started the left hand scarf and finished it first.

I worked the first and last stitch of every row in garter, hoping to keep it from curling too much, and after blocking it seemed ok. I love the drape of the yarn in stockinette at a larger gauge. I also love this colorway - I'm desperate for a sweater in this yarn, but as the rotational speed of the Earth has not yet slowed, I'm kind of out of luck for the immediate future.

When I went back to the garter stitch version (Baktus), I had more done then I remembered, so I kept on in garter stitch. And it works quite well too, although next time I think I would use a US 3/3.25 mm needle instead of the US 2/2.75 that I started with.

By scarf 3, I was tired of the Baktus/Karius deal, so I found a lovely shawl pattern with a construction similar to the pattern I used for last year's teacher gifts. I cast on with a needle 3 sizes smaller then called for, and the scarf was still going to be monstrous (and take forever!), so I cut the number of repeats almost in half - from 36 down to 20. I should have done something in the middle - maybe 27 - because this mini version is really mini. Blocked out, it sits very nicely over my shoulders, but there isn't really enough extra to wrap loosely. I'm hoping the fact that the recipient is smaller then me will help that problem.

Right, now that the pesky deadline knitting is done with, it's back to the spinning wheel! WIth assistance from my little buddy of course...

Tdf Yarn #1: SCF Cairns Polwarth

Fiber: Southern Cross Fibre's Polwarth, in the Cairns colorway, 115 gr
Spun/plied: 12:1, 15:1, short forward draw (worsted)
Stats: 3-ply skein: 168 yds/3.5 oz, ~10 wpi. 2-ply skein: 49 yds/0.7 oz, ~14 wpi.

This was my maiden voyage spinning Polwarth, and I wasn't really sure what to do with it. Out came my handy dandy copy of "In Sheeps Clothing", which recommended worsted-style spinning. Okey dokey. I prepped the fiber Saturday night while the girls were having a bath: I split the entire length of top into three equal pieces by weight (40 gr, 40 gr, 39 gr). One length I left alone, one I split in half and one I split into fourths - hello fractal spinning!

Spinning on back porch while girls/dog played in sprinkler = win/win

This particular braid of fiber was also my maiden voyage into David's world, and was part of my prize pack from last year's 4 Oz Challenge event. I enjoyed every single moment of this spin, and it went by far too quickly! I managed the to finish the three bobbins by yesterday morning, and started plying last night. Finished off the plying today - I ended up with extra singles from the half-width and quarter-width bobbins, and put those into a 2-ply mini-skein.

3-ply

2-ply

I wasn't sure as to the provenance of the colorway name - living in the UK, all the cairns I've ever seen are mostly rock colored. Or covered in moss. But a quick Wikipedia glance reveals that Cairns is actually a city in Queensland that serves as a starting off point for going to the Great Barrier Reef (among other things). So the images of coral reefs and gorgeous blue and turquoise oceans that were floating through my brain while I spun this weren't far off. Well done David!

Fiber Friday returns: Devil's Sprout

Fiber: Hello Yarn Fiber Club April 2011, "Sprout" Targhee
Spun/plied: 15:1, 12:1, 2-ply
Final stats: 946 yds/~8 oz, around sportweight.

I knew as soon as this fiber darkened my doorstep that it was destined for one person, and one person only:
Is there any way that could match her eyes better?

 

I split each 4 oz piece of top into three pieces, then stripped those down to 4 pieces each. I threw it all in a bowl bag (the Wee Ridiculous Dog LOVES fiber, and I had several heartbreaking instances of finding him on the floor gnawing on a large hunk of Targhee - wretched creature!) and spun the sections at random using a short forward (worsted) draw.

I was hoping to finish all the singles before RAB, but such was not to be. The day we got back from Cornwall, I started back in, and managed to finish up the plying by this past weekend. I tried to ply a little more loosely then I usually do, hoping for a less dense finished yarn. It seems to have worked out - almost a thousand yards from half a pound is pretty good!

I think Dev is pretty pleased with the result. She wants a simple crewneck cardigan out of this stuff, which I think will be gorgeous. Although the prospect of a sportweight cardigan for a 6 year old who will grow out of it nano-seconds after it is finished is a bit daunting. Thankfully Boo's eyes seem to be tending towards a similar color, so maybe she'll get some use out of it as well!

I can't wait to start. Maybe by September - there are too many projects already in the works! Like this pile o' wool:

This is my pile for the TdF (detailed notes on the Flickr page). It works out to 2.75 lbs total, which is just over last year's total (39 oz vs 44 oz). That is, provided this plan doesn't get completely thrown out the window because of a super secret handspun project(TM) that may be in the works. We'll see...but a weekend with Wimbledon and Le Tour? Bliss!