FO: Summertime tunic

OK, it's time to get some of these FOs blogged before the new year. First up is my modified version of the Summertime Tunic.

Hideous picture, but you get the idea

Pattern: Summertime tunic from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 (Rav link)
Yarn: Classic Elite Premiere, colorway 5295, 50/50 cotton/Tencel, 108 yds/50 gr, every single inch of 5 skeins were used (size 37.5 with modifications)
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 3/2/08-9/22/08 How embarrassing is that? 6+ months! Phbbbt.
Comments/modifications: The first thing to say is that I absolutely love this yarn. I don't usually really like knitting with cotton, but the 50% Tencel in there makes all the difference in the world. It knits up fluid and drapey, and in the wearing doesn't stretch out quite as quickly as 100% cotton would. Gorgeous stuff.

I did a few mods on this pattern. To wit: 1) I only had about 500 yds of the yarn, so I started at the top and knit down. Then 2) instead of doing the ribbing and continuing down past that as in the magazine photos, I pulled a lacey ribbing pattern out of BW Vol 2 and used that as edging.3) I bought some ribbon to use for the straps and then when I got to that point, couldn't find it, so I worked a 3 st I-cord with the last remaining scraps of yarn and used that instead. That's it. I lucked out on the fit, and after a couple of wearings, most of the stretching was width-wise not length-wise, so all's well.

Thankfully I finally got all the finishing done before "winter" arrived. I've worn this a couple of times and gotten compliments on it, which definitely qualifies as a success.

Learning from my past mistakes

Please note

This is not happening again.

Just heard

Levi Stubbs, of the Four Tops, has passed away.

Which made me think of this song, by one of my most favoritist musicians ever.

Fiber friday: Worsted vs. semi-worsted

So last week I showed you the yarn I spun up at Yarn School. One of the things that we discussed was the difference between woolen and worsted spinning, both in terms of fiber prep (which seems to be most important) and spinning technique (which is where you get the "semi"). Woolen yarn is only produced when you start with a carded fiber prep, worsted yarn comes from combed prep. Since most of the commercially available fibers come in top form (even if they are referred to as roving), 99.9% of the spinning I've done has been worsted or semi-worsted. Until I went to Kansas.

The purple and black mini-skeins were spun from hand carded rolags. The brown single was spun from a batt. The major difference between these two preps is that hand carded rolags force you to spin a woolen yarn with the fibers more or less traveling in a circle around the circumference of the single, rather then longitudinal along the single. Batts can also be spun with circumferential fibers or longitudinal. Both preps give you a yarn that is fuzzy because the ends of the fibers are free to stick out rather then being smoothed into the single and caught by the twist. You can see the fuzzies in the above picture.

This is an example of worsted spinning. The fiber prep was combed top, which I spun with a short forward draw, smoothing and compressing the single as the twist entered. The fibers in this yarn run parallel to the axis of the single, so the ends are trapped and the yarn is smooth. This is a good way to get a very strong, durable, hard wearing yarn, which was perfect for this stuff, which became my first pair of knee-socks.

On the right is the yarn I spun at Yarn School - this is a semi-worsted yarn. The prep was combed top, but I pulled off chunks and spun them long-draw from the fold, thereby jumbling the fiber orientation. On the left is the yarn I spun up from my H^4 swap fiber: spun with short forward draw, worsted yarn. Nice and smooth, no fuzzies. I'm calling it Cotton Candy for the colors, and I think Devil has designs on it for something.

Cotton Candy stats:
Domestic wool combed top from Poppy Flower Fibers, 4 oz
Spun/plied 10:1
Spun worsted style, 2 ply, ~12 wpi, 183 yds/4 oz.

One other point about worsted vs. semi-worsted. Worsted style spinning got me 183 yds from 4 oz. Semi-worsted at a similar wpi got me 83 yds/1.1 oz. So the semi-worsted spinning gets you more yardage since the yarn is less dense due to trapped air. So now I'm on the hunt for some commercial roving to buy so I can get going on some sweater yarn!

Excuse me for a moment

There are many reasons (too numerous to list) why I'm not going to vote for John McCain (Exhibit A: a VP candidate with a belief in creationism is not conducive to my productive life as a scientist), including but not limited to his inability to be on stage with his opponent for 90 minutes and keep a straight face*, but this right here pretty much sums up another good reason.

Regardless of how you feel about abortion, his cavalier attitude and dismissal of a scenario that could have killed me and my first child, and his attempt to portray exceptions to a late-term abortion ban for the health of the mother a "liberal" plot to plant a Planned Parenthood with a drive-through D&C window next to every Starbucks in the nation**, makes me want to throw up. And then hit something really, really hard. And then maybe scream a little.

I know that everyone is sick to death of the election, and it's not something you want to read about on a putative knitting blog. So I'll stop the rant here and we can move on to something more productive.

(Please let the next 20 days go by quickly!)

* Seriously dude. You'd have a better chance of convincing people you're ready to be President if you stop rolling your eyes and sneering. That's all I'm saying.
** No, he didn't actually say that - please grant me a little license here.