Spindlitis

I’ve not had time to sort out the posting issues, but will try again this weekend. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas. It’s been a tough year.

I haven’t been working on a lot of things, but did finally take a few pictures of finished projects.

I finished PNW by Bonne Marie Burns. I love the collar on this sweater! This was done with West Yorkshire Spinners Roving yarn. It’s fairly soft but doesn’t pill. I used butternut buttons on this one.

The second is a Faroese style shawl out of Classic Elite’s Wildwood. This is a natural thick/thin yarn. I went a little crazy and ordered one of each of the colors. I happened to order two skeins of the darker blend, which allowed me to do a gradient. It’s a great shawl. I have enough of this yarn to do a sweater in the all brown color.

I’ve done two Flindras, same yarn, different colorways. I used West Yorkshire Spinners Illustrious, which is a wool/alpaca blend. It’s an odd shaped shawl, but I love the pattern. I need to reblock them.

And that’s really about it. I hope I can get something new started but haven’t really felt like knitting or spinning.

Still working on a project. I’ll have more to say after the weekend, when I have more time to work on this.

I was over deleting my projects and stash from Ravelry yesterday. I had some thoughts about it. To be honest, I was a bit embarrassed by what I had up. Most of it was “popcorn” knitting. That’s the simple, mindless stuff you to when you don’t want to have to think too much about what you are doing. And I know how that happened. I sometimes get into a cycle where I’m interested in new commercial yarns. In this case, I was fascinated by chainette yarns. So I did a lot of projects in commercial yarns. Now, commercial yarns are designed, for the most part, to make the yarn the centerpiece. They don’t lend themselves to complicated patterns. Look at projects with cables done in hand dyed yarns. The yarn design overwhelms the pattern. I had a lot of commercial yarns, so I wound up doing simple stuff. What happens next is that I get bored with commercial yarns and want to knit with handspun. And that’s where I am today. There is a liveliness to handspun that you don’t get with commercial yarns. And I can create simple, single colored yarns that let the design stand out. And one last note, I am really disappointed in how badly some of those commercial yarns held up. I’m not going to name company names, but I really should not have a hole in the sleeve of a sweater I’ve worn less than a year.

If you pack away my craft books, I will simply buy more!  I recently picked up Deborah Newton’s “Finishing School”.

I liked her book on design, although I didn’t do any of the projects. If you want to get better at something, the best way to do it is to treat it like a class in school. Get textbooks, study it and test yourself.

And there’s this one:

Reading Sarah Swett’s blog has made me want a backstrap loom. I saw this book and found it interesting. Reviews were good too. The loom she recommends is inexpensive. I am holding off on this for now, but I may play around with it next month. Bands like these can be used on Norwegian style sweaters. And that’s one of the styles I’ve wanted to knit for some time now.

Back to work on the baby sweater. Gotta get it done this weekend as his birthday is the 3rd.

Since I do not discuss politics on this site, those posts are over at my other blog.

When I have time to work on it this weekend, I will do a post about how to replace the functionality you had on Ravelry, after you delete your account. I’ve been considering an actual project notebook, because there are physical things you can’t include in a digital format. But digital has great advantages for searching. It requires a bit of thought. And I have not worked through the  Stash Fit workbook yet https://www.infinitetwist.com/shop/stashfit-workbook

I also have a nice spinner’s template that I was given. I am trying to document my spinning, which is just hard for me. My struggles might be useful for others 🙂

Your comments will be deleted as spam. Continue to harass me and I will lodge a complaint with your ISP. I do not tolerate bigots.

And, although I’ve made no political posts on Ravelry, I’ve been banned for 10 days. I called them out for smearing people as bigots. It is a shame. There are good people, torn up by this. We should be able to discuss our craft, without it being politicized. My concern is for the vendors. Folks trying to make a living should not have to worry about attacks by the SJW mob. But that is the country we live in today.

I am secretly doing a second shawl for my friend. I was going to replicate it, but if it does turn up, she’d have identical shawls. So I am using a different yarn, same colorway (as much as possible). I ran out of two of the colors, so have a few more days of down time, waiting for more yarn.

So I started another project. This will be for a co-worker. I am close to retiring and she has done so many nice things for me. I’m doing the Hap for Harriet pattern by Kate Davies.

It doesn’t look like much yet,but will be a lot more interesting when it’s done and blocked. And I bought more of that dual coated Shetland fleece. I had one ball of dark moorit and one that was lighter. The second pound of it is the same way. I’m not sure if I want to ply the two different shades together or keep them separate. For now, I’m just spinning it and setting it aside.

I really love dual coated fleece. They are tricky to process and spin. You don’t want to just spin the long fibers and have a bunch of short stuff left. And you always wind up with clumps of the short stuff that won’t draft out. It’s never smooth and always a bit hairy.

This is a nice dual coated moorit Shetland fleece from Lost Acres Farm on Etsy.

It will be another hap. I also have some darker moorit to use. Way back when we were leaving California, I knit Jeffrey a sweater from some Norwegian wool. It was 4 ply moorit with the lanolin still in it. I always loved that yarn and it’s probably why I don’t care for yarn from fine fibers. It would probably be worthwhile to try and replicate it.

We have been very busy, trying to work on the house and also work on the place at the river. Not a lot of sewing, although I have several projects I really need to do. I have another treadle. This is a Wheeler and Wilson from the late 1800s. I have been too busy to try it out, but it is a nice machine.

I have a new dog! Jake was 10 months old when we got him. His owner was in a bad motorcycle wreck and this is a very energetic dog to say the least. I have a short video of him on the notsothoreau site.

Haven’t been spinning much, but am reknitting some Cascade 220. The original sweater just didn’t work for me. This is the White Gansey from the Knitting Ganseys book.

And that will have to do for now!

This is what I’ve been doing today. Green cotton on the akha. Dyed yellow cotton on the Spindlewood akha and dyed pink on the takli

Today’s spinning

Then there’s this project:

This is mainly spindle spun yarn. I believe it dates back to 1995, when I got heavily into spindles. I can tell it was plied from a center pull ball and it’s much too small an amount for me to have done on a wheel. I’m using the browns for the Milk Run Shawl off Ravelry. Any left overs will go with the greys and whites. I want to try and make a blanket for the bed, using the same pattern I used for Lon’s blankie. I want to use all this stuff up. I have been going through the bins that have been stored for about 8 years now. I’ve washed up the fleeces that hadn’t been cleaned. I’ve even combed a bit up and have spun it on the Lark. I’ll ply it and do a test knit to find projects for it. I’m pulling out the commercial yarns and trying to sort out some projects for the stuff I want to keep. I am seriously in a spinning mode right now. And I really don’t want to work with anything but handspun for a bit.

This should have gone on my other blog, but I have all the pictures loaded here. To open the CD tray on a Mac, you press the F12 key. There’s no button up by the actual tray. And Fanny did not like it at all!