sweetgeorgia

So handspun it hurts

Use your handspun. It’s the only way you can determine if your spinning is any good. I read that somewhere and it’s stuck in the back of my mind all the time now.

Last May, I bought 1/2 lb of Ashland Bay merino roving from Penelope Fibre. It sat in the stash for a few weeks because I was intimidated by it and worried that I might ruin it. I sucked up the courage to start spinning it laceweight. Finally, in January, I finished all the spinning and started knitting the Lotus Blossom Shawl.

This is my real first, large-scale handspun and handknit project… and here it is off the needles:

Lotus Blossom Shawl

• Pattern: from Fiddlesticks Knitting, designed by Dorothy Siemens
• Yarn: Handspun Laceweight Merino (I have about half of my spinning leftover! So I must have used about 100 g)
• Needles: US 6 / 4.0 mm Addi Turbos
• Changes: I used a smaller needle size just because I didn’t have any other needles handy, so I had to knit chart 2 twice to give the shawl extra length
• Finished Measurements: 70″ x 35″ (definitely smaller than the pattern specs, just slightly bigger than my blocking board).

What are things that people always say about spinning laceweight… the singles need lots of twist to hold the finer diameter, take all the tension off so that you can get lots of twist in, blah blah blah. This handspun is irregular in grist because I spun it over such a long period of time, was still getting a hang of spinning fine and also because I switched wheels part way through! But in some places, I think the yarn had so much twist that it became wirey and dense. If I were to do it again, I would spin it all a little softer.

This leads me to sampling. What a good idea. It’s like knitting a gauge swatch (which we always do, right?!). How does the fabric feel knit at that tension with those needles. How about going up a needle size, going down a size? Is the fabric too dense? Too drapey? When your knitting with commercial yarns, the yarn itself is taken out of the equation — it’s your job to just pick the most appropriate needle size for that yarn (ok, I’m oversimplifying). But when you are making the yarn, you need to look at how your yarn works up as fabric and if it is appropriate — will it be hardwearing? Will it pill or fuzz? All those variables are under your control now. So, spin a little bit, knit a little bit. See if you like it.

That’s what I’ve done with this new project:

There’s about 2 oz of Cashmere/Silk 50/50 top that I bought from Deep Color Studio this past November… Again, nervous about spinning it up and ruining it. So I tore off a little piece and spun it up laceweight using my new highspeed bobbins and whorl (I’m using 19.5:1 for spinning singles “from the fold” and 17.5:1 for plying). I washed the yarn and have started knitting it up in Evelyn Clark’s “Trellis Scarf” pattern from the Spring IK magazine. I figured if I liked it, I could keep going. If I didn’t like it, I could just go back and modify how I’m spinning it. As it turns out, I like it.

Light at the end of the freaking tunnel.

Could it be? A day of actual sunlight to interrupt all this glorious greyness? Lucky for us and my friend, stylish Jen, that she is getting a day without rain for her house moving this weekend.

But how about this for an even better light at the end of the sucky grey tunnel: the new Spring Rowan preview!!!! Gah!!! This may not be meant to be public yet, but hey, the files are on their server so… this is what I like:

It’s so Spring-y, ruffle-y and girlie… It’s something to look forward to. If you want to see the previews, click here, here or here… And you can also see the official Rebecca preview here… Oh, it’s all making me inappropriately happy for an ugly Vancouver winter…

And finally, this is what is consuming my current Buffy-watching time: Lotus Blossom Shawl in my handspun. Finally, from this…

…to this…

Of course, I was a silly, silly, silly girl and didn’t swatch for this. Since all my US 7 and US 8 needles were occupied, I picked a US 6 needle… And of course, the shawl is so far so tiny, it might end up as a neckwarmer… So, to hopefully remedy the situation, I’m knitting Chart 2 (stems) twice to make it nice and long…

From the fold

I’ve been spinning. On Sunday, I refused to go into the office and instead spent a couple hours outside in the backyard spinning up some silk that I bought in Salt Spring Island. I bought a number of different fibres during the SSI Fibre Fest (angora, alpaca, soy silk, ingeo, bamboo, mohair, bombyx silk, tussah silk, Border Leicester, and more…) and thought, why am I spinning yucky felted stuff when I have some nice fibre lying around? What am I saving it for? And like June said, “Life’s too short to spin stuff you don’t enjoy!” So, here’s what I’m working on:

It’s tussah silk, hand-painted by my festival classmate, Cheryl, from Treenway Silks. After a bit of experimentation, I found that spinning this stuff from the fold works best. During particularly brilliant moments I can just spin from my left index finger — it’s nearly effortless! I had tried spinning from the fold with some wool fibre before and it didn’t flow as nicely. Spinning like this with silk gives a beautifully fine and shiny thread.

I only bought 2 oz of this stuff but I’m trying to spin it up for the Fiddlesticks’ Lotus Blossom Shawl. Lotus Blossom is knit with one skein or 800 yards of “Country Silk” which is slightly heavier than laceweight but lighter than fingering. So my current plan is to dye and spin up an equal amount of merino that I have stashed and ply it together, hopefully ending up with at least 800 yards. Spin girl, spin!

Edited: Oops, Laura and Erin are right about the weight of Country Silk. It’s heavier than fingering and is actually classified as “sportweight”, 25 sts / 4″. My bad.