Crafting updates

I made the Radiata shawl as a surprise gift for my grandmother, who used to constantly knit sweaters and scarves for the family. She had to stop due to arthritis.

As a silly project for myself, I made an amigurumi globe:

I finished spinning up and chain plying a merino/silk braid from Greenwood Fiberworks. This was my first chain plying project. It's not totally even but it's worth it to preserve the color changes of the original braid. The yarn came out about fingering weight and 290 yards.

I have a couple of big projects on the needles that will take a long time to finish (a fingering weight sweater and a double knit scarf). So I haven't done nearly as much crafting so far in 2019 as usual. (I've also been spending more of my free time reading.)

Spinning yarn over Christmas break

I'm glad that I splurged on a folding travel wheel with my Louet Victoria. I spent most of my free time over Christmas break spinning yarn. I finished up the targhee gray/orange/yellow top, which I named "matchstick."

The top unbraided.

First single.

Finished three ply!

Practiced chain plying with a leftover single. That is HARD.

When I was doing the third section, I spun it from the wrong end. I coerced my dad into holding an empty bobbin on a skewer while I spun it by hand and guided the single onto it. Time to order some Bobbins Up storage bobbins that you can wind on a power drill.

Transferring a bobbin by hand.

I received two braids of merino/silk top by Greenwood Fiberworks, my favorite source for roving. I had picked these out while my mom and I were at Lambtown in October, and she bought them and then took them away to be put under the Christmas tree. I told her that I would probably forget about it in the meantime, and yup, I was surprised to see them again!

I immediately started spinning the green/red/yellow one (the label was missing, but I'm calling it "spring"). I forgot to take a picture of the braid, but here it is spread out horizontally to unsmush it..

I decided to spin this top end to end and then chain ply it to preserve the color changes. Here's the first part.

I decided to do less thorough pre-drafting lengthwise before spinning, to challenge myself to learn to pull out the right amount from the top. Last time I was at a spinning circle, another person was spinning straight from her braid with no pre-drafting and I was impressed. However I made the mistake of leaving the wheel set on the highest speed ratio (13:1), and my hands were slower so it's way overspun. On the bright side, that's easy to fix by running it back through the wheel in the opposite direction at 6:1. It's also going to be sitting on that bobbin and relaxing for a while before I finish it.

The 50% silk content makes it so shiny and the colors are gorgeous. I was practically drooling as I worked on it.

The other braid's colorway was labeled as "crocus."

Spinning targhee braid

My next spinning project is this oh-so-fluffy targhee braid in gray, yellow, and orange.

First step is to spread it out.

Then I divided the entire braid into three vertical sections.

I pre-drafted one of the sections for spinning immediately and curled the other two up for later.

Four hours later, here's what I have!

I wasn't specifically aiming for lace weight again but that's what I came up with. I'll spin the other two sections using the same technique and then ply them together.

First real handspun yarn!

It took a few years, but I did it! I spun an entire 4 oz braid. It's sometimes under or over plied, and the weight varies between lace and super thin cobweb, but I did it! I'm super proud of myself. Here is what the roving looked like:

Here it is being spun up:

Wound onto the niddy noddy:

Setting:

And voila!

It's really hard to capture the colors just right on the finished yarn. It's so pretty in person. I plan to make a lacy shawl from it. (It's 763 yards.)

I had initially planned to do a 3 ply, but I didn't like the way that looked. You couldn't see the variation between yellow and pink and purple as well. So after a quick test, I ditched that plan and decided to leave it as a single.

My next spinning project will be a super fluffy targhee braid, which should actually be much easier for a beginner compared to merino and silk! I'm looking forward to it. I've blocked off time in my calendar for the monthly spinning circle at The Black Squirrel, so I'll get it done much more quickly this time.

PVC niddy noddy, ChiaoGoo Shorties needles

I recently purchased a 1 yard niddy noddy cut from slim wood, but I decided that a stronger, 2 yard one would be useful as well. The wooden one would bend if I pulled too much while winding onto it. This when I hung my yarn to stretch and set:

The hanks with more yardage weren't stretching evenly and still had curly bits.

Here's the new niddy noddy with the problematic hanks rewound:

In other fiber news, I ordered a set of ChaioGoo Shorties (mini circular interchangeable needles). They're hilariously tiny:

Ready for socks! And also just lace any weight projects, as I hadn't had any needles smaller than 2.75 mm.

Yarn spinning progress

I don't spend as much time at my spinning wheel as I wish I could. On Sunday I drove down to the Black Squirrel for the new monthly spinning circle. It turned out that the group is meeting on the second Sunday of the month, not the first. I stayed anyway and got 3 hours of spinning done. I'm finally close to finishing the "MLP" roving I bought two years ago. I think it will only take 1 or maybe 2 hours more.

Once I'm done spinning up the roving, I will ply the three spindles together.

NOPE hat take 2, Stitch & Bitch spinning

I was excited to try my hand at both fair isle and intarsia with this pattern for a hat that says NOPE. I followed the pattern exactly, and this was the result:

Okay, my head is small, but seriously? The upper part before the brim comes all the way down to my eyebrows. And the brim, even folded in half, would cover half my head on its own. So I took out the bottom row of hearts, shortened the brim, and made a few other minor changes. Take 2 is much better.

Chase reminded me about the Stitch & Bitch at her store every Thursday evening. I used to go sometimes when I lived in Oakland, and I miss it. Yesterday I didn't have any evening clients so I decided to make the drive down. Rachel joined me at the store. Instead of working on my endless queue of knitting and crochet projects, I brought my neglected spinning wheel and continued with the pink/yellow/purple/silver merino and silk roving. I've always called it "My Little Pony roving" and multiple other people referred to it as "unicorn hair." It took about ten minutes to get back into the groove of spinning, and a few hours before I was back up to my previous speed. The time flew by. I finished filling up a second spindle. One more to go, and then I'll ply all three together.

I told Rachel not to let me buy anything unless I had a very good reason. Well, Chase had yarn spinners/lazy susans, which I've been coveting for months. I've been having major problems with my yarn twisting up as I knit when using center-pull balls. So I had to get one.

I also picked up another little project bag. It was too funny to resist.

Yarn is packed

Found 3 skeins of a yarn I hadn't input into Ravelry, and so had forgotten about. It was like a present to myself!

This isn't quite all of it - most of the roving is stuffed into the spinning wheel's carry bag.

Yarn spinning progress

It took a few months of on and off work, but I finally finished spinning one third of this merino/silk blend that I call "My Little Pony colors."

No promises that I'll get the next two sections done any more quickly. It will be a 3-ply yarn when it's done.

EDIT: Crap, I just realized that this spindle is less than a third, because I'd already spun a single ply of this roving during my intro to spinning class. Um. I guess it's time to finally buy a kitchen scale and work out how to divide this up evenly...

Setting yarn singles

After procrastinating for months, I finally got around to setting the yarn singles I'd spun up during my introductory class.

Here they are hanging with weights (mugs) to stay stretched as they dry:

The really curly one (second from the right) was the first one I'd made, when I was having trouble with the twist getting away from me and making lots of little curls in the yarn. The left-most single is the most straight, as it was the last one I made from that braid of roving. Here are close-ups, from first to last:

And twisted back up into hanks:

I have much more of the pink merino/silk blend (on the left above) to spin up. The blue/purple one is all gone. I want to use this yarn for something, but it wouldn't do for a fancy project where the uneven twist and width would show. No ideas yet.