A bit of a spree

As those of you on Ravelry know, a number of designers chose/are choosing to donate some of their proceeds from pattern sales to various organizations offering aid to Haiti. Using their nifty "Help for Haiti" tag, you can browse the patterns, or filter the results to patterns that you've already favorited or queued.

The ease with which I was able to find patterns that I had already noted down meant that I dropped quite a bit of imaginary PayPal money on patterns. Including:

Snow White
Gosport
Honeybee Cardigan
The Manzanita Collection
Francie
Northman Mittens
Triskele Mittens

And I don't think I'm done yet. A number of designers (including me) are extending the donating period well into February and even later. So get out there and start buying people!

The next question, of course, is what do I cast on first with my four sweaters worth of stash (at least). Any suggestions?

Handspun stash

Since I'm working on a large spinning project, I decided on the spur of the moment to pull out the handspun stash and take stock of what's been marinating in there.

It's not a bad pile actually.

That's everything right there from the past 2.5 years that hasn't been knitted up into something or given away (there are some scraps and leftover bits of skeins floating around that didn't make it into the picture).

Far and away the largest portion of my handspun stash was dyed by Adrian.

Click on the photo for notes including colorways.

I feel very lucky to have gotten in to the Hello Yarn club right at the beginning, but I feel like the pile should be bigger. May 2007 - Dec 2009 is a lot of months. But I guess I'm not showing you the fiber stash...there's a lot in there that hasn't been spun up yet.

Then there are my first skeins of hanspun, done on a Golding spindle.

And my first dyeing experiments with Wilton's dyes.

Then there's the stuff from Yarn School Fall 2009.

Click for notes and details

What's left of Devil's Merino and the mystery fiber from Diane that I spun recently.

And finally, the few skeins I've bought or been given.

All in all, somewhere north of 4100 yds of handspun yarn. Hmmm....might be time to get cracking, no? Although I seem to be in the process of adding to the handspun stash instead of reducing it. But that Buckland and the YS Corriedale are pretty tempting, not to mention Peat. And Hooray Sheep might make a nice Lacy Baktus... Where to start?

Two socks at a time

A couple of years ago, there was a very cool article in Knitty about knitting your socks two at a time. And not just the usual two at a time, but double knitting your socks. Otherwise known as knitting two socks inside each other using two balls of yarn and alternating which set of stitches you're working on. I was intrigued by the idea, and even had some yarn that I'd mentally tagged for some socks for myself knit this way, but never got around to doing anything about it.

Over the holiday, I realized that Devil was sorely lacking in the handknit sock department. We picked through the bags of scraps I've got for the SYB, and she pulled out several that appealed to her (distinguishing characteristic: pink). I wound each scrap into two balls, and set off.

To simplify things, I knit the cuffs separately so I didn't have to worry about purling in double knit, and then put all the stitches onto one US 1/2.25 mm circular needle. After a few rows, the double knitting seemed pretty straightforward - this was greatly assisted by the fact that I didn't try to match the repeats on the yarn (which was a mix of variegated and self striping), so the two sets of stitches were largely different colors.

I made sure to check every couple of rows to make sure I hadn't totally screwed up and knit the two socks together. There were a couple of bobbles, but nothing too dramatic or messy.

Then I reached the heel. I must admit to having a mental block at the idea of trying to double knit the heels, so I took a page from Elizabeth Zimmerman's book and decided to do an afterthought heel.

Instead of cutting the knitting after picking up the stitches, I knit in a piece of scrap yarn, similar to the way the stitches for a mitten thumb are set aside. It's hard to see in the picture, but the scrap yarn for the heel is there (click for note). I knit a bit past that point, and realized that in order to get the foot length right, I really needed to put the heels in now. I picked up stitches on either side of the scrap yarn in the outside sock,

unraveled carefully,

and started knitting again with the heel yarn.

I did decreases at the edge of the heel every other row until I had about 16 stitches left,

and then I grafted the remaining stitches together. Ta da!

Then I did the inside sock. Each heel added about 1.75 inches to the length of the foot, so I now know how far I have to go before I can start the toes. Of course, with the advent of the massive sampling/swatching project of the last week, these poor things have been neglected in my bag for a while. Hopefully I'll get them done before half-term so Dev has some cozy socks to wear.

Sampling? I got your sampling right here.

OK, one week later and five samples later, I think I've pinned down how I'm going to spin the yarn for the Vine Yoke Cardigan.

Plan A was to try a 3-ply versus a four strand cabled yarn. I spun up a bunch of singles at about 32 wpi. I was trying to spin my default yarn, and spinning from the fold at 7.5:1, that seems to be 30-32 wpi singles. Before a fulling finish, the 3-ply was ~14 wpi - after finishing it plumped up to 10-12 wpi, so right in the range for heavy worsted weight.

The grist on the 3-ply ended up at 1067 ypp - way lighter then the required 840 ypp - but I swatched it anyway to see how it knit up. I did the same type of swatch as I did for Manon, using US 7/8/9 needles (pattern calls for US 9/5.5 mm needles). I liked the fabric I got with US 7s, but the gauge was 20 sts/40 rows per 4 inches*. Gauge with the other two needle sizes was 19/38 and 18/36. I'm aiming for 16 and 32, so this was out. On US 9s there were lots of gaps between the stitches, particularly in stockinette, which would be problematic for the yoke detail. So...the 3-ply is out.

The four strand cable - I used the same singles (~32 wpi), and plied two 2-ply yarns at 9.25:1, aiming to overply quite a bit. Then these two 2-ply yarns were plied together again, in the same direction the singles were spun. The resulting yarn was ~12 wpi before washing, and about 10 wpi after a fulling wash.

Here's a close up of the sample card I made: sample of singles with ratio, 2-ply sample, and the final yarn in washed and unwashed states. I did the same swatching, same needle sizes. Stitch gauge for four inches with US 7/8/9 was 18/17/16 respectively. The fabric that I got with US 9 needles was just about perfect. The garter stitch was squishy and cozy, the small bit of stockinette in the swatch was nicely filled in. All was looking good. And then I figured out the grist - 800 ypp. I've never been this technical about my spinning or tried to match a commercial yarn before, so I don't know if this is as good as it gets or not. Could I get a perfect match? Or is a 40 yards per pound difference close enough? One thing it does mean is that I'll need 1.56 lbs of fiber instead of 1.5. Since I started with 2 lbs and ended up using maybe a quarter of a pound for my sampling, I've got plenty of fiber. But let's move on...

Inspired by my getting as close as I did to the target grist, I went a bit hog wild and decided to do a straight 4-ply with lots of plying twist. Somehow I convinced myself that more plying twist (and consequently less yardage per unit weight) would get me closer to 840 ypp. For those of you playing along at home who may have picked up on my error in logic, you can go ahead an laugh. I dutifully spun up my singles at 12:1 (~30 wpi this time), plied the everliving crap out of them (also at 12:1), and got a 10 wpi yarn before washing. I finished the yarn by soaking in hot water and letting it cool down before squeezing out the excess and letting dry. The finished yarn was also 10 wpi.

Strangely enough, adding more plying twist and thereby getting less yardage for the weight of fiber did not result in getting closer to my magic 840 number. This yarn weighed in at a hefty (aka dense) 700 ypp. Ooops! My swatch bore a striking resemblance to EliCa's Kevlar socks. Stitch gauge was 17/16/16 spi, but the fabric was stiff and the antithesis of drapey. Porpoise-spin-zen fail!

After much searching of the Spin Tech group on Ravelry, I decided to see if I could salvage the 4-ply. I ran it back through the wheel and took out some of the plying twist. The yarn loosened up quite a bit, and after a soak in hot water, I knit (yet) another swatch.

This time I ended up with 17/16.5/16 spi, but the grist was 768 ypp. Going in the right direction, but I didn't think I could take out any more plying twist and have the yarn stay together. So fabric/squish win, but the cabled yarn was still closest.

Emboldened by my success with un-plying the overdone 4-ply, I decided to try overply the original 3-ply I started with to see if I could alter the grist just by changing the plying twist.

After a fulling wash, I ended up with a yarn that was probably about DK weight, came in a 1093 ypp, and probably needed a US 4 or 5 to get a nice fabric. It also bore a striking resemblance to wire. Any spinning masters that might happen to read this are welcome to weigh in on their ideas about what the crap happened here. Just I cannot explain why adding more twist (and presumably shortening the yarn) ended up increasing my ypp.

In any event, I think I have a winner. I really like the way the 3- and 4-ply yarns look knitted up, in terms of how the different purples blend together, but the cable feels that much better knitted up. So that's what I'm aiming for.

Singles spinning has already begun...

* I admit that I didn't actually measure row gauge. One of the very nice things about garter stitch, however, is that the row gauge is twice the stitch gauge. I may not be very good at math, but multiplying by 2 I think I can handle.

How did this happen?

I realized the other day that, according to Ravelry, I've only got two active knitting projects on the needles at the moment. It took me about four hours and much mental anguish to acknowledge that this is, in fact, true. There's the double knitting socks I'm working on for Devil, which are mere rows away from being separated so I can do the toes (I'm definitely not brave enough to try and do those both at the same time). The only other thing actively being worked on is the Sock Yarn Blanket (the crowd goes wild).

To say that it's been a while since this baby got any play is a major understatement. The last blog post about it was here, but no pictures have been posted since almost a year ago. A few nights ago, as I waited for the most recent sampling to dry, I picked it up and got back to work.

A bit of garter stitch was just what I needed after all the math involved in spinning to match a commercial yarn*. The only strenuous bit has been trying to pick out colors, and I'm getting to the point where I'm just going to grab things at random and throw them in. Anything to get this puppy done by the end of February.

The status of the SYB has now gone from this

to this.

There's a chance I might be done by 28 February, but I still haven't figured out how I'm going to fill in those funky little triangles around the edge. Or what to use for the edging. Or the backing, because Boo will be forty two before I finish weaving in all those ends. But the light at the end of the tunnel, if not getting closer, is at least visible from here. And that's progress.

Now I just have to gear up to finish up my Hurricane Vest before spring hits and I'll really feel virtuous.

* If I had had even an inkling of the number of times I would need a calculator for this project, I never would have started spinning, much less spinning for this damn sweater. Never.