What the...?

This winter has been fairly mild in London, mild enough that the daffodils have started poking out of the ground, and snowdrops have made their appearance. That mildness came to a crashing halt this week (snow shower on Tuesday? Really?), and culminated in the dire information that it was -4 degrees Celsius this morning when we woke up.

Now, those of you living in places with actual winter (I'm looking at you Chicago!) are saying "Minus 4 degrees? Pah! (after quick Google conversion) That's only 25 Farenheit! You're not even below zero. Suck it up cupcake!" Please grant me a bit of leeway, seeing as how I've spent the last 22 years not living in New England, and indeed almost 9 of those years living in southern Arizona and Texas. In any event, it was freaking cold. It made it very difficult to get out of bed, but getting out the door was easier because I had a new snuggly scarf to hide in.

Yet another Lacy Baktus, this time using some Finn handspun in "Shaking Leaves".

This is one of the few times I've ever spun a yarn for a specific project. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make this scarf from these colors, so I split up the yarn so that I would get more-or-less even width stripes across the entire length of the scarf. I started off, and things were going well...

Stripes are looking good so far. I knit to the middle of the scarf (by weight) and started the decreases. As I got closer and closer to the end, I started thinking that perhaps I hadn't been spinning as evenly as I might have hoped - the yarn was thinner, and there seemed to be alot left in the ball. I got to the end and had a big chunk of yarn left - riiiiip. Back to the middle, knit up half of the leftover yarn length, then start decreases. Rinse, repeat.

Finally I ended up using up most of the yarn,

but the even stripes thing? Not so much...

Bah!

I am comforted by the fact that no one will ever notice this except me (unless I point it out), and by the incredibly warm squishy goodness around my neck. Since I'm off to go take a bunch of photos outside today, this should help!

Technical details: more details on spinning the yarn are here. I used US 8/5.0 mm needles.

The trick is to start them young

Tuesday night, the principal at the girls' school called to say that Devil's teacher wanted to talk to me the next day. After some gulping and panic, I went in to Dev's classroom Wednesday morning to discover that her teacher wanted me to brainwash indoctrinate demonstrate weaving to the class. They are learning about materials, this week textiles, and Dev had mentioned that I had a loom. I said I would be happy to show off my new toy, and she said "Do you knit too?"

Hahahahahahahaha! Yes, I knit. And spin as well. Over-the-moon teacher + captive audience of 6 year olds = a porpoise with a golden opportunity.

I must admit, I may have gotten a bit over-excited: Himself came home last night to a table piled high with fiber and spindles and yarn...I ended up bringing the following: unwashed and washed fiber samples, of various sorts, two spindles, a bright orange skein of handspun, a just barely started hat so I could demonstrate knitting, and the loom with Boo's christmas scarf on it. Everyone got a little chunk of fiber so they could try twisting it into yarn. I talked about washing fleece, and carding before spinning. A bunch of them had Grannies who knit (why is it always grandmothers?) they smelled unwashed fleece with suitable expressions. And finally, everyone got to take a try at the loom.

Which is why Boo's scarf has a nice tight spot in it now. Easy enough to fix, but boy did they have a good time. As did I. A good morning all around!

Teasers

For tomorrow's update...

Fibers this time around include BFL Wensleydale, Shetland and Texel. Mmmmmm....

Something's different around here...

Last night, in response to being stressed out by events more or less beyond my control*, I started playing around with the blog layout. It is still a work in progress, but I'm liking it so far. I am going to move all my patterns to a separate tab along the top, and off of the sidebar in the next coupld of days. I will eventually probably customize the colors a bit more, maybe change the background picture to something more fibery or (gasp!) put together a real header for myself one of these days. It's a work in progress...;-)

I'm also prepping an update for the shop. It's been grey and cold, and I think that influenced my color choices quite a bit this time around...both sympathetically and in rebellion against. Update should be live tomorrow sometime, but you can check out a teaser post on the blog here.

And do I have knitting to share! There's a finished shawl, a handspun scarf, and a couple of cute critters. A few need to be held back until they reach their destinations, but there should be something new and off the needles on here this week. I have also firmly committed myself to sitting down and spinning tomorrow (more Falkland for the handspun-colorwork-sweater-that-will-never-end) because, well, March is coming, and I need to get cracking now that I've run out of yarn halfway down sleeve 1!

Let me know what y'all think of the new design, and what you'd like to see more of - I'm always open to suggestions, and I love knowing that you're out there!

* Nothing of health or job or family concerns, more along the lines of if-I'd-been-an-actual-adult-and-taken-care-of-this earlier-we-wouldn't-be-in-this-unfortunate-but-thankfully-only-potentially-disappointing-and-not-dire-predicament.

A finished present, only 6 months after the fact

My lovely mother-in-law turned 70 last August, and as a present I gave her the choice of any knitted item she might like. After a bit of hemming and hawing, she said she wanted a sweater. Off I went to Ravelry to search for a pattern. After a bit of back and forth, she settled on a lovely pattern from Artesano Yarns. And now, several months later, it's all done.

Pattern: Rachel by Ros Wilson
Yarn: Bartlettyarns Fisherman 2-ply in midnight, just under 5 skeins for the 43" size
Needles: US 10/6.0 mm
Gauge: 15 stitches/20 rows per 4 inches
Start/finish: 4 November 2011 - 23 January 2012
Comments and modifications: Of course I changed things up - it's what I do after all. Can't leave well enough alone...

First off - the arms. The sweater is knit from one cuff to the other, casting on stitches for the body when you get there. The pattern calls for some seriously belled sleeves, but Mermaid wanted normally shaped sleeves, so I did a bit of math and off I went. Not a terribly difficult change, all in all, but I did have to take some careful notes to make sure the arms matched (since they were knit 2 months apart!). The only other change that I made in this version was to work a slightly deeper collar, to match the cuff detail.

However...the pattern, as written, is quite compressed, and I found what I interpreted as a number of errors. Nothing too egregious - mostly around the shoulder shaping and the number of rows that needed to be worked to get both sides to match. And a couple of instances where it seemed like an extra row was thrown in that would mean working things on the wrong side. It's entirely possible that it was operator error, so take that critique with a grain of salt. It's hard to complain with a free pattern after all.

If I made this sweater again (which I'm considering - it's nice and cozy), the only additional mods I would make are as follows: make the body a bit shorter - it's quite long in this version. Might be my gauge at issue, but when I tried it on, it came down way past my hips. I'd prefer it a bit shorter. I'd also change the hem. This has a double thickness hem around the bottom which I'm not a real fan of. I'd add a few of the same ridges that are around the sleeve cuffs and neck to make it a bit more cohesive.

The overwhelming upside of this project was the glorious yarn I used. Bartlettyarns are one of the last mule-spun yarns made. This results in a rustic, nubbly, almost-handspun feel that was a pleasure to work with. And as I was seaming up the finished item, I noticed an interesting thing about the yarn after blocking.

See that? The strand on the left is the unwashed yarn I used for seaming, the one on the right is the end of my blocked swatch. There's a bit of difference, no? I love how much the yarn poofs up after finishing, and I'm really glad I washed my swatch before I checked the gauge and cast on. Imagine the disaster otherwise!

So Mermaid: the sweater is finished. It needs one more bath to even out the seaming, and then it can be on it's way to you. It might go via the Far East though, depending on how organized I get. Hope you can wait! But I'll need some better pictures once it makes it to its new home, ok?