A short update

It has been a quiet week on the fiber front. I decided not to do anything on the loom while I caught up on knitting. And I've done some of that. I also have been spinning

I had made triangular pockets on the sweater. As a reminder, here is the last photo I posted of the pocket.

The issue here is that things can fall out of the pocket since it has no depth. For Cross Pockets, the designer has you knit a pocket extension that hangs behind the bottom band. However, that is a wide bottom band. I am just doing an icord at the bottom. So I needed to do something different to make the pockets functional.

I decided to add 2 inches to the length (pocket and body) where I would sew up the side of the pocket so it was vertical. That would achieve the same result as the pocket extension. In order to do this, I had to lengthen the pocket I was knitting, put the sts from the body and the other pocket on to the needles and add the length, and then go ahead and join them. 

So that is what I've been doing. I just finished the icord BO on Monday. I was going to graft the beginning to the end and then finish the pocket area to make sure it all lays flat and neat before I move on to the sleeves. But I have been having itchy eyes due to allergies. I scratched at them on Monday night and they are all swollen. It is better today but I couldn't see very well yesterday. So there was no fine finishing work going on yesterday. I hope to get to it today and will have photos in my next post.

In the meantime, I have spinning photos. I have been spinning the stretchy 3-ply sock yarn in a full project quantity. In the process, I realized that you only really see the colors in a braid when you are spinning. Looking at the braid only lets you see the large color blocks and not the lovely transitions that occur between colors. 

This was the braid. As you can see, it is mostly blues with some yellow and bright green in it. It looked pretty monochromatic to me. When I opened it up, I realized that most of the yellows were concentrated in one area of the braid. If I split it vertically into 3 as I usually do, there would be  only one section of the yarn that would have the yellow. So I split it horizontally into 3. This way the yellow would be predominant in one ply and be spread across the whole length of the yarn. 

However, as I started spinning, I realized that there are sections of green in other areas. This is from the first ply.

And some lovely violets and ceruleans in the second ply. The cerulean is hidden under the very light blue layer on the left of the bobbin. The violet was surprising. After I spun this and I looked back at the original braid, the green and the violet jumped out at me. But when I first looked at it, they were overwhelmed by the blue and the yellow-green. I am really looking forward to this yarn and I may not use it for socks after all. The colors would make a very wearable shawl with my usual uniform of blue jeans and T-shirts.

This is the first bobbin, all spun up. You can see the green in the single here. Of course, when it is plied, it will also have the colors from the other plies at that point but the green will show up as blips of color and will get accentuated by anything I wear that will is green. 

My recent scientific sampling (from the previous posts) has also led me to actually make a control card for this yarn. I have samples of the singles taped on to it and a plyback sample showing the amount of twist. You can see that in the bottom right of the card. A plyback sample is just letting the singles ply back on itself when it is freshly spun and the twist is active. I do plyback samples a lot but I never keep them. I just look at them, undo the plying and wind them onto the bobbin. I am doing this temporary plyback a lot while spinning this to make sure that I am maintaining the under-spun low twist desired state. I plan to put samples of the washed and unwashed 3-ply yarn on the card also. But I am not sure what I will do with it. This is why I don't usually make cards. Let's see. Maybe it will come in useful.

The low twist has resulted in a few times when I didn't have yarn. The singles just came apart and I had to go back to a spot where there was enough twist and then add more to the part that was falling apart. I hope the plying works because if it doesn't, it will be a pain to recover. This is why I started with a braid that I wasn't too enthralled by :-)

I am almost done with the second singles. I have about 8-10" to spin which is a couple of hours at most. The third one is the one with all the yellow-green, so I am looking forward to that and saved it for last as an incentive. 

Progress on a lot of fronts

I went on a trip to San Diego to see my daughter over Christmas. I was hoping for 70s and sunny weather but instead we got 50s and 60s with rain and wind. It was C-O-L-D because we didn't have all our gear with us and we were outside a lot.
I saw a few old favorites - the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park - and a lot of new things. We went to the USS Midway museum. I teared up during the movie on the Battle of Midway, for which the ship is named. It was amazing to see how it all worked and how the sailors and airmen lived. We also went to a few of the Balboa Park museums, a Christmas Day outdoor organ concert at the Spreckles organ in Balboa Park, the Birch Aquarium, did some hiking and then went to the Cabrillo National Monument and Point Loma lighthouse. The best part was spending time with my daughter.
I took along some knitting and got some done. I am up to the lace border on the Shleeves. i stopped because I didn't have enough yarn in the ball I had with me to finish the border and I'd rather join the yarn in the solid stockinette than in the lace. Silk doesn't wet splice so ends will have to be woven in and I'd rather do it in stockinette. I anticipated this so took along the yarn to make a new pair of wrist brace liners. I wear wrist braces at night for carpal tunnel syndrome. They get sweaty and disgusting pretty quickly and many years ago, when I first started wearing them, I made liners from Cascade Fixation that absorbed the sweat and could be washed regularly. That made a huge difference. I made a second set a number of years ago and those are wearing out. It is time for a new set of three pairs.
I was smart enough to write down the pattern the last time I made them. This was an improvement from the first time when I didn't and had to recreate it. I was so proud of myself that I just took the pattern and started knitting. After I finished the cuff, I looked at it and realized it was rather long. Yup, long. The row gauge on the Fixation and the CoBaSi that I am using now is way different. So I ripped and restarted and it still didn't work out. Finally I took out the worn liner and started to recreate the pattern but with an idea of the difference in the row gauge. It is 4 rows on the Fixation to 3 rows on the CoBaSi. The st gauge is the same.

The CoBaSi is 55% Cotton, 16% Bamboo and 8% Silk with 21% elastic. I need a yarn with elastic so it doesn't keep stretching and stretching and wool is just too hot in the summer. The braces are warm to begin with and I need something that will wick away the sweat and let it evaporate, not hold it like wool does. The yarn feels very nice.
I just finished the first liner. I was so bummed at having to rewrite the pattern that I didn't feel like knitting as much as I should have on the trip. I did that cuff on the flight back where I lost a dpn and the little toddler behind me found it. I had extras as this is a common occurrence. I usually use magic loop on flights but I didn't have a 3.25 mm circular needle long enough for magic loop. It is not a size I use a lot. When I go to buy yarn for the remaining liners, I'll pick up a needle also. The other 2 pairs will be knit on my next trip which is in 2 weeks. We are going to Tanzania for a safari vacation.
On my return, I finished up the shawls. I had completed the weaving on two shawls and realized that I didn't have enough warp for a third one before I left. I think I stretched the yarn too much when I warped the loom and therefore didn't have enough length. Oh well. I made a small rectangle that I used to test out the finishing process. I completed that as soon as we got back and took it off the loom to see if my finishing would felt the yarn. It didn't. In the meantime, as it dried, I cut apart the two shawls and worked on their fringes. Yesterday I wet-finished both shawls and pressed them before laying them flat to dry. Today I trimmed the fringe and they are complete.

And this is the bit that was left over on the warp. It is a rather large coaster or a table scarf.

I've also been spinning and am almost half done with the light gray merino/Rambouillet/sparkle top. It is spinning up as nicely as the dark gray.

The reason I've made so much progress is that I am on vacation. It is amazing how much I can get done when I don't have to go to work!

Today I wound the second skein of silk so I can continue with Shleeves and also wound the yarn for the next weaving project. I may try to warp it before I have to go back to work on Tuesday. I have enough for a scarf I think.


It is also some vintage Lorna's Laces in DK that is no longer made. The yarn was called Swirl. I have some partially used skeins and then the 4 that are still intact. I think I will make a checkerboard design with the solid as thin stripes between the multi-colored one.
Happy New Year to all of you and I hope 2017 is a good year in many ways for all of you.

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More spinning!

I have been spinning about an hour a day and it is amazing what one can get done by doing just that.
I finished the merino/yak.

I haven't plied it yet because I started spinning the dark grey and I am loving it.

 This is a dyed merino/Rambouillet/sparkle nylon top.

 Beginning the spin and without the flash...

With the flash to show the luster of the fiber. I am almost done with the first singles. I have 4 oz of this so each bobbin is slightly longer. I am spinning a light fingering weight to fingering weight and think I will use it in a weft.

I wound off 2 skeins of plied yarn but i haven't washed them yet. I still need to wind off the larger bobbin of the beaded Gotland yarn.

 That is the beaded yarn.

This was the pretty sample that came with the Hansen Pro.

These are the possibilities for the next spin. Weigh in if you have a preference on what I should do.

 This is from Into the Whirled. I am thinking I might do this as a fractal because the colors are so bright. It is a club shipment that I got as a gift.

 This is the Autmnal Dawn color way from Fiber Optic. It is easier to see the colors in the link because I photographed these at night and they are still in plastic.

 This is a One-of-a-Kind dye from Fiber Optic.

 A Chocolate Alpaca/silk from Gale's Art.

 Two bags of random odds and ends from Into the Whirled. These are fun to spin. I would have to decide if I was going to spin them separately, sort them into similar colors and spin or just spin them into one long yarn. I tried to pick two bags with similar color and Chris (of Into the Whirled) sorts by  colors that go together anyway. So they will all go together.

A Espresso-Crimson-Gold gradient from Fiber Optic. Again, better picture at the link.

Decisions, decisions. I want something bright but I was picking variegated fibers. I have some semi-solid in a pretty bright red. I also have a couple in spring-like colors so maybe I will do those. They are the Cyprus and the Wild Thyme colorways from Fiber Optic. The purple and the blue are slightly different on the two but I thought I could blend them as I moved from one to the other and spin them as one big gradient.

Lastly, I wanted to show you what I did with the basil salt. I've given away most of it but I packaged it in bottles and decorated it with washi tape and a label.

I ended up with two different bottles because I bought some and then went back to get some more and they were gone. I've been using mine a lot and love it. It is going to be a standard summer product from now on.

A textured yarn

I finished spinning the Gotland and plied it. This is only the combed part. There is a lot of combing waste - shorter fibers - that I plan to card and make another yarn. What I did with this one is to ply it with the beaded thread that I showed you earlier. Wow! I have a lot of yarn. I am not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I was trying to emulate the curl of the Gotland locks so I did a spiral ply where the thicker yarn spirals around the finer beaded thread.

I ended up with 3 bobbins full of singles. At this point, I've plied 1 but left the other two so you can see how full they were. The Tina II bobbins are small.

Part way through plying.

A close-up of the yarn so you can see it better against a dark background. It varies in thickness but most of it is a fingering weight.

This is the beaded thread on its bobbin. I have a lot of it. I bought out everything they had when I went on that yarn crawl in Shanghai. It didn't unwind very easily. I had to pull it with a lot of tension and periodically, the beads would get caught on each other. Then I had to go and jiggle the thread to get it unhooked. It was impossible to see how it was actually caught.

And these are the two final bobbins. 2 of the singles bobbins are plied onto the bobbin with the larger quantity and the one remaining bobbin of singles is on the second, smaller bobbin.

Finally, a closeup of the yarn with a bead visible in the middle near where the 2 strands cross. 

I am not sure what I'm going to do with this yeat. I am not sure how it will knit up. It might work better in weaving. Also, the featured breed at Rhinebeck next year is Gotland so maybe I should plan on submitting a skein and a finished object from the yarn in their contests. Let's see. I will wind it off and finish it and I will sample a bit in knitting. The advantage of having so much yardage is that I have plenty to play with.

Over-due update on fiber activities

I have been very negligent in reporting on my fiber activities. I've been very negligent in blogging and that is mostly because the travel related stuff takes a lot of time. I take many hundreds of photos on a trip and sorting through them to tell the story takes time.

Fiber stuff is easier - or so I think. :-)

Spinning

If you remember, I bought part of a Gotland fleece at Rhinebeck last year. I washed it over the winter and am now combing and spinning it. There is a decent amount of waste from the combing but it looks like excellent carding fiber for future use. I am spinning this on the Jensen Tina II and falling in love with the wheel again. I had not spun on her since I left for China.

 That was the dirty fleece.

 This is the sample skein I spun

Next up fibre combed and spun into a single. I have a little left to comb and finish. It is hairy but quite soft. I am trying very hard not to add too much twist as it can get wiry if I do.  I made a 2-ply sample which I really liked. But I am thinking of plying with this beaded thread that I bought in China.

It looks like this when unwound from the bobbin.

I will sample and see if I like it. In any case I am spinning onto 2 bobbins so I can do a 2-ply like my original sample. 

I finished spinning a Lisa Souza alpaca/silk on spindles and plied it on my Hansen e-spinner. That is it on the bottom. 

I combined it with most of the yarns on the top (I removed the bright yellow and the one on the extreme left which is my 3-ply sock yarn sample) and made a shawl. I just finished it. Pictures are in the knitting section. 

I started spinning a roving from Handspun by Stefania on a larger spindle to practice long draw on the spindle.

That is on a new Snyder Spindles 3-D printed spindle. I bought 2 just to try them out. The other one is a small Turkish spindle. I finished the cop on that one and started another one on a Forrester spindle that I bought at Rhinebeck. I thought it would be good to have a couple of less expensive spindles for travel.

And last but not least, I got another Hansen e-spinner. This one is the Pro model and I haven't even had a chance to try it out yet. I've been busy with vacation and business travel and garden work along with putting away CSA produce each weekend.

Isn't that wiggle in the grain cute? 

I didn't participate in the Tour de Fleece this year. There was just too much going on so I sat out.

Knitting

The aforementioned shawl. I had to knit most of it twice. This was the first attempt. I thought I would make a curve to sit on the shoulders. I made it on the wrong side. So I ripped it out and re-knit it. 

This is the second version. Much nicer but it is very long. I wore it and it wraps nicely around the neck and shoulders. I love the way the colors ended up on the final shawl.

I also started and ripped out half a sock. A friend gave me 2 skeins of Drops Delight to sample. It is too loosely spun for socks and I had a tough time with it. I started them 2 at a time and the tip on my Karbonz needle came off. That should have been an omen. But I had dpns and switched one sock to the dpn and knit it to the heel turn before I decided I really hated it and ripped it out. The yarn has become this.

It is a narrow but long cowl to wrap around the neck a couple of times. You could also call it an infinity scarf.

I have also been venturing out into jewelry making and photography. 

Jewelry

The jewelry making started innocently with this.

And then the following materialized

The next one was created to showcase the fabric flower that I got in a swap. It was a pin but I rarely wear pins. I found a tutorial for an Anthropology knock-off and used it for inspiration. The other two items are buttons layered on buttons.

I also played around with the chains I bought in China and made this one

And lastly made this for a friend. The other two pearl items and the peacock feather one also ended up as gifts.

We were in Prague on vacation and I had some time on the last day. I found a bead shop and bought some Czech glass beads to make a couple of necklaces and I have some more ideas in the works. But it has to wait for winter when I have more time.

Photography

I bought some photography classes from Craftsy. I haven't watched them all yet but concentrated on the mobile photography ones. My album of trial pictures - homework as well as learning to use my iPhone camera are here. I learned about a lot of apps that can help mitigate the effects of the fixed focal length lens in the phone. I also invested in a good lens system for it. I had bought a cheap macro/wide angle lens combo but hated the photos because the lens quality was not good. The new lens system is made of high-quality optical glass. I have a 2x telephoto, a super wide-angle and a macro. I mostly use the 2x telephoto but occasionally the wide-angle. The macro is seriously neglected because the built-in phone lens works well in macro mode. 

Next up I am going to work on the DSLR and learn to use it properly instead of just in automatic mode or with a manual focus. It also has a lot of features that I don't know how to use and practice is the only way to learn.

That is a quick catch-up on hobbies. I am pondering my next knit and I will probably do a post a week on my antics from now on. Next up is probably recent acquisitions. Fiber, yarn and the beads.