Finishing frenzy

Well, the Olympics are over, and my goals for the last two weeks shifted from knitting a completely new handspun sweater to finishing off works in progress. I finished some Tour de Fleece yarn. I finished knitting a previously started handspun sweater. And finally, I got around to finishing these.

Pattern: Maggie's Kitchen by Mandy Powers
Yarn: various odd balls of Tahki Cotton Classic leftover from a baby sweater knit years ago in Houston
Hook: US D/3.25 mm
Comments/mods: this is a great first crochet project - easy basic design that is very straightforward, and allows you to switch colors at will. The pattern also gives five different edging options, so you can do all sorts of fancy bits at the end if so inspired. I loved it!

Now with a few potholders under my belt (that the girls have already swiped for doilies), I think I'm ready to take on something a bit bigger, like, oh let's say, a star-shaped baby blanket for which I may have already bought yarn? For the 9-day (!) old baby I was snuggling yesterday who is waaaay too small for his new sweater*?

* 5 lbs 12 oz, which is a quarter of a pound heavier then a week ago. He is eensy teensy and so, so gorgeous. And no, I'm not inspired to have another one: it's the perfect amount to be able to snuggle him while he's sleeping and full and happy, and then hand him off when things go south**.

** But oh my Bob is he beautiful!

FF: The first of the unfinished TdF yarns

Et voila! My second spindle-spun Tour de Fleece yarn is finally finished.

Fiber: Corriedale from Hello Yarn, colorway "Seasick"
Spun/plied: on my Wildcraft spindle
Final stats: total yardage is 170 yds/4 oz (680 ypp), ~7-9 wpi, bulky weight.
Comments: I had two bumps of this Corriedale from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, and when I needed something to take with me to France, one of these seemed like a good bet.

I split the fiber into three different color groups: yellows, browns (with a bit of yellow) and blues (with a bit of yellow). Then I split each piece of top in half lengthwise and spun up two balls of singles to ply together.

I managed to get through the yellow and half of the brown singles before the Tour ended. Over the last couple of weeks, I've spun up the others. And then there was much plying.

72 yds yellow,

27 yds brown,

and 71 yds blue. I have no idea what this yarn will become though, but I like the colors split up like this.

There's always that other bump to play with I suppose...

Button, button, who's got the buttons?

Last night I finished off sleeve #2 of my Garter Yoke Cardigan, out of the Timber Romney I spun during last year's Tour de Fleece (thanks very much BBC online rebroadcast of the men's triathlon!). Today I laid that puppy out on the coffee table and had a good long think about buttons.

I pulled out my (admittedly not very large) button stash and pawed through for some possibilities. First up was the way plain option.

Plain, purple buttons. These look pretty good - they match the darker purple stripes pretty well, and are a good contrast with the more yellow bits.

Choice #2:

Some domed brown buttons with a stripe. Also a good choice, but a bit too big for the buttonholes. Onward...

Some engraved metal buttons. A better size choice, but I don't like the metallic against the handspun. The sweater is such a warm, autumnal palette, that the metal clashes pretty badly. One more option:

These are some gorgeous glass buttons that Mermaid gave me a while back, and they work surprisingly well (at least I'm surprised). They are mostly blue, with bits of pink, purple, green and grey. I really like how these look, and they are the best of the whole lot. However, there is one wee problem...

That pile there is the sum total of these buttons that I've got in my stash. Said button band requires ten, count 'em, 10 buttons. Bollocks! I guess this is a good example of an instance in which blindly following the pattern spacing for buttonholes is not necessarily the best plan if you have limited buttons in your stash.

The upside of this whole fiasco? I get to go back to the local button store tomorrow...result!

FO: Mini-oak cardigan

Pattern: Little Oak Cardigan, by Alana Dakos, from the Coastal Kids collection
Yarn: iKnit or Dye Superwash Merino sock, 366 m/100 gr, 1 skein in "Bachelorette". I ended up using about 3/4 of the skein, so maybe 280 meters total? I'll have to weigh the remainder to be sure.
Needles: US 3/3.25 mm circulars, for a gauge of 28 sts/~40 rows per 4 inches.
Start/finish: 17 July - 2 August 2012 -- gotta love the baby sweaters for (mostly) instant gratification!
Comments/mods: This was a really nice pattern. Worked from the bottom up, easy stockinette body, fun yoke pattern at the top. I like the development of the oak leaf pattern at the top - it wasn't clear to my mind's eye how that was going to end up looking, but I really like it.

The pattern was pretty straightforward, but I did run in to one minor issue (mostly of my own making): the pattern is laid out with the chart on the second page. What isn't clear however, unless you read ahead (which you should always do, and I didn't, so it's my own damn fault), is that there are some shaping instructions for the body before you start the chart. What I did was knit the body and the sleeves, start working the chart, and then discovered the shaping instructions and started doing those. We'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that I didn't actually need to do any shaping for the size I was knitting (6 months) and just say that this is a pattern for which it would behoove you to read ahead and make sure you understand what supposed to happen when.

Yesterday, the girls and I went out on a button-mission. I'm happy to say, I am once again living close to a yarn store, and this one happens to have a fabulous selection of buttons stashed away in the back. They helped me pick out some lovely silvery buttons with red edges, which work really well with the yarn.

The yarn: this was one of my long-neglected club yarns for the iKnit Sock club that I've mentioned before. It ended up as a lovely subtly variegated fabric, nice and soft and cozy, but hopefully washing-machine friendly. I will be recommending the delicate or wool cycle to the New Mum, but I think this is going to be a great sweater for the wee lad-to-be. Who now has full permission to arrive at any moment, because his sweater is done. His blanket, on the other hand, is a big plastic bag of yarn in the attic, but he can't wait until I get that finished, or poor N will explode!

Fiber Friday is back: the Tour de Fleece final report

This year's Tour de Fleece was an unparalleled success! I spun up 8 lbs of fiber, including 3 sweater lots and 2000 yds of lace weight!

Ha ha ha ha ha! Actually, I didn't meet my TdF goal in any way, shape, or form. Here's the final output:

I ended up with two finished skeins and a bobbin and a half of singles of the Gotland fleece.

I'm pretty happy with the final yarn - it's definitely a bit "rustic", as you would expect from inexpertly handcard fiber, and it will definitely end up as an outerwear sweater rather then a next-to-skin cuddly sweater, but I like it. My goal for the weekend is to finish up the bobbin that's on the wheel and ply those up and see what my yardage is. Based on these first two skeins, I'm going to need 8 or 9 to get the yardage I need for the sweater. That shouldn't be a problem unless I get super sick of carding.

I didn't even touch the Hebridean rolags - they went missing! I had several weeks of panic because I couldn't find the box they were stored in, and I was convinced Himself had thrown them away in a fit of tidying. However, when unpacking boxes from the move, lo and behold there they were. Phew!

Since we were traveling, and life was a bit nuts with moving, I did a fair bit of spindling in addition to the fleece on the wheel. I just went in to my stash and pulled out some Hello Yarn fiber (because Adrian's genius makes up the bulk of my dyed spinning stash, and so I could post in their threads!) and threw it on the spindle. 


HY Burnished BFL, 2-ply, spun on a variety of spindles, 177 yds/4.4 oz (644 ypp). The colors on this are gorgeous - it really does look like metal. I think this will become a cowl or a hat or something like that. Maybe some simple mitts? Dunno.

I was planning on the BFL lasting through our trip to the Pyrenees, but I finished it before we left. Back to the HY stash for another spindle project.

This is Seasick Corriedale. I've got two bags of this (approximately 8 oz), so I took one bump, split it into the component colors (i.e. yellows, browns, blues), and then split each piece of top in half lengthwise for two singles.

Here you can see the yellow and brown singles in balls ready for plying. I used my Wildcraft spindle for this fiber, and it was a bit tricky - the Corriedale wanted to be spun a bit thicker then is optimal for the weight of the spindle, which meant I had to be really careful about keeping the spindle going in the right direction - but I'm happy with the singles. I think this will end up being an aran or bulky weight 2-ply, once it's washed.

So there you have it: three weeks, about 550 yds of finished yarn, and a whole load of other stuff going on. So be it! At least all that spindling meant I got some good pictures...


So given that my Tour de Fleece was an abject failure a bit underwhelming, my Ravellenic Games goals have to change as well. Now I'm thinking that I'll hope to finish the spinning of the fleece by the Closing Ceremonies. Then I can get to work on the sweater in September. Which works out well, to be fair, cause it's not really the best weather for rustic-heavy sweater knitting.