Fiber Friday: A different sort of Panda-Cam

Since the US Government shut down has axed the National Zoo's Panda-Cam coverage of their newest addition, I've decided to try and make up for the deprivation sweeping the Intarwebs by presenting my own interpretation: the fibery Panda-Cam.

Fiber: Spunky Eclectic's Panda (SW merino/bamboo/nylon), in "Winged Insects", 6 oz
Spun/plied: since it was a 6 oz braid, I did it all on the miniSpinner because I wanted a single skein. Chain plied the singles.
Stats: 370 yds/6 oz, about DK weight, 10-12 wpi, 990 ypp.

This was a challenging spin for me. Maybe it's because I've been spinning so many toothy wools of late, but the Panda was INCREDIBLY SLIPPERY!!!!! It was real work to keep focused enough to maintain any semblance of consistent wpi, and it shows in the yarn (damn you chain plying!). However, these colors could not be more me if they tried, and I'm desperately in love with this yarn. So much so that I'm greedily keeping it for myself and not sharing it with anyone.

Now I just need to figure out what pattern will fit for 370 yds of DK weight yarn...anyone have any suggestions?

Those pesky leftovers

While rushing around collecting yarny goodies for the GLYC folks, I came across a conundrum: what to do with mini skeins of yarn? That is, what to do with them if you aren't hoarding hexipuffs...

So I pulled out the vast quantities of leftover balls of sock yarn that I've got lying around and started playing with stitch patterns. About a week later, I had these:

These little beauties knit up super fast using tiny amounts of yarn (at most 30 yds), and are the perfect quick easy gift. Because Christmas is coming...

Les Petits Bracelets - $3.00



Pattern includes all three bracelet patterns, with charts.

Skills needed: knitting, purling, yarn overs, decreases.
Gauge: 12 (13.5, 12.5) sts per 1 in/2.5 cm after blocking, in pattern.
Final measurements: 0.75 (1.5, 2) in/2 (4, 5) cm wide, length as desired.

And now for something completely different

So over the last few weeks, I've been noticing a particular hashtag floating through my Twitter feed - #yarnpadc. This is a photo-a-day-challenge started by princess deia, and has resulted in some really cool yarny photos. So when Ruth tweeted a link to the list of prompts for October, I thought - why not? I don't usually go in for things like this, but I'm looking forward to taking the opportunity to look around a bit more and use the prompts for inspiration.

Tomorrow's prompt is "on the needles" - shouldn't be too hard to cover that one! I'll be posting the photos on my Twitter feed, and do a roundup every week here. If you get inspired, come join us!

Not dead yet - aka Spun up Colourways: Blue Jay

When I was in high school (that's the last four years of secondary school before going off to university for those of you unfamiliar with the American school system), some friends of mine and I were huge Monty Python fans. Such huge fans that we decided to recreate the "Bring out your dead!" plague scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail in our Advanced Placement French class. All of this is just a long way of apologizing for the long blog absence of the last couple of months.

There has been dyeing though, and packaging, and sending off of samples to box schemes in the UK and the US. All the dyeing has left me with a pile of scraps to spin up as samples.

This is my Blue Jay colorway done on Corriedale. I love Corriedale for a couple of reasons: 1) it's lovely to spin, and is a great beginner fiber, and 2) the wool has a bit of a sheen to it so that the final yarn has a lovely lustre and shine when spun worsted.

Blue Jay on Corriedale

I spun up the scraps three ways: standard 2-ply, standard 3-ply and chain ply.

2-ply

The scraps for the 2-ply didn't have much of the darker reddish brown section, so it's a mostly bright blue sample. 

The 3-ply had more of that darker colored top, and came out a gorgeous blend of blues and burgundies. I can see this as a great stockinette sweater, or a cabled cowl - something with a bit of texture that won't get lost in the variegation of the yarn.

3-ply

The chain ply gave a lovely rounded yarn that I suspect will knit up with some lovely stripes. The colors are fairly close in hue, so it won't be an extremely contrasty striping pattern, but I think it will end up being pretty nautical!

Chain ply

Finished Objects

A number of things were finished over the last week or so. The biggest and best of those was Yarn in the City: The Great London Yarn Crawl (V1.0). It was a fantastic day, with ample stash enhancement of all sorts and loads of yarny goodness displayed at the pub afterwards. Our amazing volunteers shepherded their teams around London, despite the vagaries of London transport (I'm looking at you Central Line...), and kept everyone together and happy throughout what was a very long day. And Alli and I are pretty sure that we will be doing this craziness again next year, so if you didn't manage to come this time around, keep an eye out for V2.0 next autumn!

In the final run-up to the Crawl, I spent what precious little free time I had frantically finishing up my Christmassy-cowl, out of Romney Ridge Farm yarn I purchased on my Downeast Yarn Crawl over the summer.

I tend to find entrelac too fiddley for my taste/patience level, but it was just the right thing for me to knit last week - mindless but requiring a bit of focus. I kept going until I was almost out of yarn, and then did a 3-needle bind off using the last scraps and then a bit of leftover yarn from a different project when I ran out.

After the crawl, I spent most of Sunday morning spinning, but then turned to my wee baby cardigan - I finished the knitting on this more then a week ago, but (as always happens) I stalled out putting on the buttons. Not because I didn't have buttons, but just because I couldn't be arsed to pull them out and sit down and sew them on.

Now the buttons are all sewn on, and it's ready to go. Sadly, there won't be FO photos on the blog for quite a while because it's a Christmas present*. Here are the pertinent details:

Pattern: Right as Rainbow Baby Cardigan by Stephanie Lotven
Yarn: Spud & Chloe Sweater, very small amounts for the stripes and edging (Firecracker, Grass, Aqua, Lake and Grape Jelly), Brown Sheep Cotton Top (discontinued) in Natural for body and Brown for last stripe.
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 4 September - 14 September for the knitting, 22 September for actual sewing on of buttons.
Comments: This was a lovely, straightforward pattern, with the only complicated bit coming in the decreases in the yoke to make the nine points. Otherwise the perfect TV-watching, stressed-out event organizer knitting. I may or may not have piles of worsted/aran weight yarns decorating my office, waiting for me to cast on the next one.