Fiber Musings

I still can’t get gauge for the Rowan felted tweed. Instead, I will make the sweater in the next size smaller, and hope for the best. I really like how the sweater looks with the 1″ ease (fitted). Using the next size smaller, and my bigger gauge, I should get about a 0.75″ to 1″ ease.

So, in lieu of actually knitting, I will show you a picture of a shrug I made last month.

I made up the pattern as I went along, using my favorite shrug-like sweater (old Benetton cotton sweater) as a basis. The yarn is handspun Blue Faced Leicester from Dicentra Designs. I can’t remember the colorway off hand, and I’m too lazy to go looking for the fiber band. The spun yarn is a 2-ply of approximately DK weight.

The picture washed out the colors a bit. The BFL has a wonderful sheen and drape to it. It’s absolutely lovely.

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I love Tangled Yoke in the Fall Issue of Interweave Knits.  I love it enough to actually buy the yarn used in the project.  I sat down and swatched tonight, and for the life of me, I can’t get gauge.  I’m down to 2.00 mm (US #1) needles, and I’m still not getting gauge.

I’m going to put it down and pout for a while.

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Fiber: 4 oz. Superfine Merino from Lisa Sousa, colorway Bird of Paradise
Plies: 2
WPI: 22
Yardage: approx. 558 before finishing

This was my on the go spinning that I’ve been working on and off for the past 18 months or so. After the surgery, it wasn’t comfortable for me to sit and spin at my spinning wheel, so I dug this up and finished spinning it and plied it.

While the time span is 18 months, I spun about half of it in under a week, post surgery. Plying took about 2 days. I had wound the singles on my nostepinne. I ended up with about 5 balls of singles in varying sizes. I plied them together by holding 2 balls at a time in my left hand. When it came down to the last partial ball, I used it as a center-pull ball and plied from both ends.

I used Judith MacKenzie-McCuin’s wet finishing technique (in other words, I abused the heck out of the yarn) to finish this yarn. I don’t know if you can see it, but the skeined yarn is much puffier than the yarn on the spindle. The spindle is my plying spindle. It’s the first time I’ve used it and wow! it holds a lot of yarn!

I thought I’d take this time to show you my on-the-go spinning kit. These are two wine gift boxes that I picked up on sale at a stationary shop.

Before I found these, I would put my spindle, fiber, and whatever else in the nearest handy bag and stuff it in my purse, tote, backpack. And I would hope that I don’t damage the spindle hook and mess up the fiber or accidentally sit on the whole thing.

These were perfect. The cardboard box was large enough for some fiber, the spindle to stand up in, and keep everything from getting seriously damaged. The one on the left is a one-bottle gift box. The one on the right is a 2 bottle gift box with a center divider.

On the left are the contents of my on-the-go spinning box: spindle, nostepinne, fiber, and a ziplock bag of spun singles (wound into center pull balls with the nostepinne).

And on the right, all packed to go!

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I made a lavender/flax pillow for my tummy and a few eye pillows with the extra filling. I bought more flax and lavender to make another tummy pillow and a couple of smaller first aid ice+heat packs.

The blue ones were made with muslin with blue flannel pillowcases. The print one was made with silk charmeuse that I had in my stash.

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As I (and Grace) have written in the past, I don’t blog about anything other fibers here. Every once in a while, life catches up and consumes you, and you can’t think about anything else. My hysterectomy is one such event. For this reason, I want to put a plug in for a great resource. No, I have not been approached by the site to write a plug for them. (Read last paragraph of Grace’s rant here.)

HysterSisters is a wonderful site with lots of information for someone who, for whatever reason, is facing a hysterectomy. Here, you will find a lot of information about what you (or someone you care about) will experience, the various issues that led up to this point, information about your specific condition, what your surgical and non-surgical options are, and what to expect before, during, and post surgery/recovery. There’s also a community that you can ask all the questions that you either forgot to ask your doctor or need an answer to earlier than your next appointment.

Once you create your profile, the site will send you periodic updates during your recovery to remind you of what you should and shouldn’t be doing at each stage. It was a great reminder for me to take it easy, even though I feel much better.

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