sweetgeorgia

Keeping Warm. Keeping it Simple.

It’s getting cold in Vancouver. I know, I know, “cold” is relative since it’s not cold like Vermont… but hey, I just got back from sunny California. My hands and feet freeze up in my office because I’m mostly sitting at my computer, moving at the absolute minimum, typing away. Last week, the handspun yarn that was sitting in my office with me was taunting me, _”I’m warm, you know? You could knit something from me and you’d be warm…”_ So I pulled the Blueface Leceister handspun from the shop and knit this:

It’s basically 56 sts on 10.5 mm needles, knit for 6 inches, then decrease every other row (i.e. Row 1: \*k6 k2tog, repeat from \*. Row 3: \*k5 k2tog, repeat from \*. etc.). The ultimate no-brain knitting (NBK). I knit the entire hat in about two episodes of “House MD”. And I love this hat. So warm. I wore it out grocery shopping and looked at every person on the street _not_ wearing a hat and thought “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

Here’s the start of Ron’s Animal Cracker Hat:

Again, super simple. 56 sts on 10.5 mm needles, 4 rows of 1×1 ribbing in dark green, 2 rows of stockinette in lighter green, 2 rows of white and then a little zig zag pattern in fair isle. Knit for 6 inches and then decrease as above. I’m wondering if I should do the ear flaps and make it more “authentic” _a la_ movie costume. I kind of like it without the ear flaps. Simple.

And oh, BTW, has everybody rushed out to see the new Harry Potter movie yet? The DH and I saw it at the Metreon on San Francisco on Saturday night — waited in line for 1 1/2 hours for the 9 pm show and got out at 12 midnight. Love love loved it and I’m going to see it again this weekend!

Fondant Hat!

_Lookie, lookie!_ Mari designed an earflap hat and knit it up in my handspun yarn! See it here: So fun!

I’d love to see anything you guys make with my yarns (so curious!)… and if it’s ok with you, let me know if I can post a photo of it in the new “The Sweet Shop Gallery” here:

Thankspinning

There has been much spinning and much dyeing. How can you not be thankful when you wake up in the morning and see this in the living room:

I’ve decided that I love, love, love Blue-Faced Leicester (BFL). It’s said to be the softest of the long wools and takes up dye beautifully. It’s much less prone to felt than merino and fluffs up amazingly when you pre-draft it. Awesome, I say. The top-left and bottom-right corners of the photo are BFL. The pink/brown and the red/orange/brown fibre is Superwash Merino — another new favourite. I love things that don’t felt!

And yes, there’s more sock yarn in the shop… along with some new handspun yarn. Like this merino wool that was dyed by the Fleece Artist:

Singles are crazy when they come off the bobbin — then you set the twist and they straighten out and behave themselves nicely! I’d love to keep this skein, but I know, being a “Winter”, it’s just not my colour!?! sob…

I need to get these yarns off the bobbins (or buy more bobbins!). The multicoloured bobbin at the bottom is the above merino bulky singles. The two orange/gold coloured bobbins are also Fleece Artist merino (courtesy of my brother!) and I might ply the two together. In the top-right hand corner is a bobbin of superwash merino that I dyed blue/navy/brown. I’ve since Navajo-plied that one for socks!

And finally, that’s my spinning class homework. That’s right. _Homework_. It’s a four-ply cabled yarn and took about 6 or 7 hours to spin! Crazy. I spun four very fine singles in “Fleece Artist 70% Kid/30% Silk”, then two-plied two singles, then two-plied the 2-plys together! _Phew_. It’s about 12 wpi which is now “worsted” weight. Wow. I think this week, we are spinning merino/tencel in class!

Oh yeah, there was knitting this weekend too — I am 3 rows (and a bazillion ends) from finishing Electra.

The man they call Jayne…

Here’s the finished Jayne hat!

I used 10.5 US (6.5 mm) needles for the hat and definitely got 3 sts per in for gauge. I loosely followed one of the Firefly hat patterns and cast on 64 stitches. It’s a BIG hat with a circumference of about 21-22″ around. I think this is too big and if I was really really OCD, I might actually rip the hat and re-knit it at 56 or 60 stitches. But I won’t. I also thought about felting it just slightly or trying to block it a teeny bit smaller, but I’m still unsure about that action. I don’t want it to end up being a thick felted fabric. Ugh.

This hat was super fast to knit — I had already cast on before we sat down for the Firefly marathon, but I think I finished it around the fifth episode.

__Kaylee:__ _I think it’s the sweetest hat ever._

Smooth, even and perfect

Wednesday night was the start of my new ["Spinning & Dyeing"](http://www.placedesarts.ca/visualadult.html) class at Place Des Arts. There’s quite range of experience in the class from people who have never seen a wheel or spindle before to those who are spinning and plying silks and wools. I assume this is because it’s kind of a continuous class…

But for this first class, Irene passed out some batts of washed and drum carded Romney wool — some of us started spinning right away while others learned to pick, tease, and card the wool with hand carders. The beginners then tried some drop spindles and by the end of the class were practicing treadling on big bulky spinners. To those of us that were spinning already, she encouraged us to spin _”smooth, even and perfect”_ yarns — for now — because it is the jump point for learning to spin more experimental or novelty yarns.

In the same vein, I just received my copy of Pluckyfluff’s (Lexi Boeger) book ["Handspun Revolution"](http://www.pluckyfluff.com/yarn.html). If you haven’t seen her yarns yet, take a peek — they are fun and inspired! (I love one skein that she made a while ago called “Koi Pond” that had orangey-red nubs spun into a turquoise base single yarn — it looked just like little goldfish in a stream!) It’s easy to pass this off as “bad” spinning — a lot of it is overtwisted, uneven, kinky or even felted — so I was delighted to read at the start of her book, _”Challenge yourself to spin perfectly straight, even and balanced yarns. This is the only route to truly creative spinning. You have to understand the rules before you break them.”_

She also encourages all spinners to do all their own fibre prep — learn to wash raw fleece, pick, tease, and card it yourself. This is to appreciate not only “what yarn _is_, but what it _was_”. The idea that if you only explore the narrow window of commercially and perfectly prepared top, you are missing out!

I also love her concept of how using handspun is a collaborative project or play between spinner and knitter. It seems so very… organic. But it also empowers spinners to make their yarns creative projects in their own right, rather than spinning soley to match commercially prepared yarns for use in knitted projects. Anyhow, I quite like this book (slim as it may be — although Mabel Ross’s “The Essentials of Handspinning” is even skinnier) and it gives new respect to cult spinning!

Here’s some of my own, not so cultish, spinning from this week:

And here’s some merino/tencel blend that I dyed up — this stuff spins up so shiny!

Happy Friday everybody!