Fiber Musings

While Mom was over the other day, she asked if I could make her a hat. It’s been COLD in California. There are now 2 hats for her choose from (or both). Unfortunately, she will have to wait until after I return from my Color Institute Workshop at Earthues before I can give it to her. I’m leaving on Thursday. Know what’s strange? Earthues is less than 1 mile away from our old house in Seattle. Half way between our house and our boat marina. A block away from our health club. And nope. I’ve never been there before. Now that I’m hundreds of miles away, I’m going to take my first class there.

Work’s been crazy so I haven’t had time to finish the sock yarn.

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Title says it all. Singles on the left (approx. 45 wpi), and 2 ply on the right. I’m in the process of respinning the 2 ply to add more twist to it before I ply it again to make cabled yarn.

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There’s been much talk on Spin-List about Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Pi Shawl. Predictably, a knitalong was started. Not quite so predictable, gasp!, I joined. I don’t do KALs in general, because I don’t like to be a crowd. But, I saw this as an opportunity to give myself a kick in the butt to finish the Pi Shawl that I already started. It’s currently waiting for me to brave the storage unit to find the alpaca rovings, and spin up more yarn.

And, predictably, I got sucked in. Big time. All that talk about what yarn to use, what fiber to spin up, how it should be spun, which pattern to use. Which pattern, you ask? Isn’t there just one? Wow. I never realized how many shawl patterns are out that that use EZ’s formula for a pi shawl. Way cool. Way too many choices.

Then, I heard about the half pi. Yes, half pi. I have no idea where to find the pattern, but I’m intrigued. I didn’t have the patience to spin anything up. The only things I have at hand that I would want to use are silk, and I just don’t have the patience to spin up 3,500-4,000 yards of silk singles and then ply it up.

Ah-ha! What about that beautiful lace weight singles I got as an exchange from Amy? So, I casted on 5 stitches on US Size 6 needles, and got going. I made it to the 5th increase round, and saw how much the edges are curling. It wasn’t noticeable at the beginning because of the increase rows. Once the increase rows started to spread out, all those st st rows started to curl under.

Some sort of edging is required. What it needs is a garter stitch edge. I didn’t want to pick up the stitches along the top edges (diameter) at the end to knit an edging. An edge that is knitted along with the body of the shawl.

So, I picked up some scrap yarn, and tested out my theory.

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After I read about cabled yarn for sock knitting in Spin-Off, I tore through my stash looking for appropriate fiber to turn into socks. For the first time, I made a sample card that I referenced while I spun. My goal is to make sock weight yarn, similar to one of my favorite sock yarn, Trekking. I love the subtle color shifts.

While spinning, I noticed that the dye in the roving was less saturated on one end than the other. So I started alternate which end I pull off of while spinning. I pulled about 10-15″ hunks. I think the finished yarn will be pretty even.

These Schacht bobbins are huge! When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I wound the singles off into a center pull ball, weighed it (4.5 oz), measured it (45 wpi), and started to ply, and ply.

I will be re-spinning this 2-ply to give it additional twist before I cable. At the rate that I’m going, it will be a while before I have sock yarn.

There should be plenty of yardage since I only use about 300 yds of sock yarn per pair of socks for me.

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I finally finished the second sock of the pair I started back in November. No long car trips nor (non-work) meetings, so these sat in a corner of my WIP shelf. When I pulled it out this weekend to work on, I only pulled out the working sock. I didn’t pull out the finished sock as a reference.

How hard is it? I’ve got the formula: 5-60-10-55-10, in 4×1 rib. After I grafted the toe, I pulled out the first sock to put them away. Alarm bells went off. Something’s wrong.

I’ve heard horror stories about mismatched socks, but they generally are issues with matching self-patterning yarn pattern. Those I don’t generally fret about. But this is more than a color mismatch. For whatever reason, in the first sock, I decided not to continue the rib down the top of the foot, which I normally do.

The sock has been frogged back to the heel and reknitted. The matching pair is now sitting happily together in the sock drawer.

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