She Was Twisted

I finished my first purple cable sock and have about 3 inches done on the second sock.  Woot, woot! I am very proud of myself for actually starting the second one. I have the worst case of second anything syndrome. After I’ve done it once, I’m usually bored and ready to move on. But these socks are keeping me going. Here are some goody shots:

First up, the finished sock. And yes, this photos turned out terribly blurry, but they will do. I love the way the cable show up against the yarn – something that I see get lost all the time with handpainted yarns. But this rainbow dyed yarn from Fearless Fibers is the best. Love it.

And here are two photos showing that I really and truly have begun the second sock.

Maybe I can get these finished before the blistering Arkansas cold is over? Now wouldn’t that be something….

I almost forgot to post that I updated the shop the other day with new Handspun Yarn goodies. Here’s a sample preview:

(click on any photo to be taken to the Handspun Yarn page.)

Yummy! All are family-friendly and potty trained. Go have yourself a gander.

Anyone else majorally disappointed with this book?
(Harmony Guide: Lace & Eyelets by Interweave Press)

Two major complaints:

1. There are no charts!
   Who heard of knitting lace without charts? In my opinion, you need both the written out and the charts to knit lace. Sometimes one works better than the other. Seems very lazy of them not to include charts.
2. The photos really tick me off.
   O.k. yes, they are all colorful and glossy and an improvement from the old guides, but…. They are cropped in too close, so you can’t see the edges of the lace, or how it is supposed to look as a row or column of lace. The beauty of the lace stitch gets totally lost. And some will show 2/3 of the stitch, then the other 1/3 is to the side. Sloppy work.

I can’t decide if I want to keep the book, or ship it back. I wish I had had the chance to see the book in person before ordering it online. (Bad me.) But to find out if I like a stitch, I’ll have to knit it up myself. But what would I replace it with? I was really excited about having a lace reference book for designing my own stuff. It is hard to find books with JUST lace. (and 250 stitches to boot!)

I’m curious to see what others think..

I’ve been a very bad blogger and I haven’t updated in a long, long time. I blame it on the holidays. It’s been busy, busy for the past 3 weeks, as I am sure it is for everyone this time of year.

But….now we can get back to the grind. Spinning and knitting! Yay!

So let’s start with my new obsession. FINE spinning.

I usually get frustrated with spinning fine because it takes forever and I usually end up fighting with the fiber and throwing it across the room. Well, I decided to give it another go. And it was great!

So here is the roving. It is Faux Cashmere roving (nylon) that I dyed with Lanaset Dyes in the microwave. Purtee. I’m going to call this fiber Faux Silk from now on. To me, it is not like cashmere at all, but everything like silk. Sue me.

I started by dividing it up into super, super thin strips so I wouldn’t have much drafting to do. I figured that would be a good way to get my hands into the groove. Since the fibers are so fine and long, I found that you have to keep your hands firm on the fiber and never, NEVER let the twist come anywhere near the drafting triangle. (Just like when spinning silk.) If it does, the whole thing will get choked up and it won’t draft at all.

LOOK! Oh my, it’s so fine! Weeeee.

The more I spun, the more confident I got, and was able to start spinning thicker pieces of roving. Still split pretty thin, I’d say like finger width. And much to my utter surprise, I LIKED IT.

So here is my bobbin filling up with singles….

And here it is plied on the bobbin. Doesn’t all the color mixing look nice? I just love how rainbow or handpainted rovings spin up. You never get bored with the color variations.

And the final product. (This pic was taken in natural light, so it is a better representation of the true colors.) I ended up with a fine, sock-weight 2-ply yarn. Yippie! I’m so proud of myself! Since then, I’ve spun one more Faux cashmere and 2 Merino yarns. The Merino did not come out as thin because it likes to pop out of itself when plied and the twist is set. Sneaky.

I’ve got another Merino ready to spin that I will start tonight most likely. It does take a long time to spin fine and 2-ply, but the results are worth it!

…for knitters and spinners.

Ravelry is what I’m talking about, as if you didn’t already guess that.

And to think I almost missed it.

My computer blew up right before the holidays and my mail program did a weird thing where it re-imported all my mail, including deleted mail. So I had like 200 “new” emails in my box. (I get a lot of spam.) I started going through all the recent crap to try to clean it up a bit. And low and behold, there was my invite from Ravelry from Dec. 9th! Oh my god, how did I miss that??

So I flew on over to the site and hooked myself up. OH MY it is cool. I love it, love it. Finally, one single place, online where I can keep track of what the heck I’m knitting these days and see what everyone else is doing. Lots of inspiration, tons of ways to get yourself in trouble. I am soooo glad my computer decided to play tricks on me or else I might have missed that invite forever and gone boo-hoo, boo-hoo.