Summer Spinning

It is hot.

Really hot.

And I don't have air conditioning.

I wouldn't mind so much except for that most of the things I like to do require a cooler atmosphere; knitting and spinning is hard to do with sweaty hands and fingers, and cooking or baking is no fun because it makes the apartment even hotter... Hmm, what to do...

Well, I was home alone the other night and bored and just needed to make something. I got out some wool, hand carders, and the spinning wheel. Then I directed both of my fans directly at my body and got to work.

I pulled out some bright rainbow merino wool I bought and experimented with a while back. The yarn I was getting from this wool was pretty but just too bright for my taste and it's just been sitting in a basket. You can read more about it here.

Then I found some alpaca that I had forgotten about. I decided to try blending it with the merino to (hopefully) create more pastel-type colors.

My mom gave me some hand carders for christmas and they're really fun for this sort of thing. And when I use them I get to feel all old-timey. I laid strips of the white alpaca down first and then layered the rainbow merino on top and got to carding.

The result was these lovely pastel fluffy puffs. Cute!

They kind of reminded me of little sea creatures. Then it was time to spin them up! I love working on the spinning wheel...

Here's the thin single I spun up first. I used all the fiber on this single then wound it into a center-pull ball. I love this technique when spinning small amounts of fiber because nothing goes to waste. You do this by taking the yarn end from the center of the ball and spinning it together with the outside yarn end from that same ball (and don't forget to spin the wheel in the opposite direction of the single). Does that make sense? If you want to try this you can email me and I'll explain it better (the heat is frying my brain a little bit right now).

And here it is! A soft and squishy 2-ply merino/alpaca yarn. And it's in sweet pastel colors that I'll actually want to knit with! Hooray. I'm thinking I'll use it to make part of a hat but we'll see. I'm excited to see how it knits up.

I hope you enjoyed seeing how I made this fiber into yarn... Because I really liked doing it.

Sick!

I'm sick. I had a bit of a cough all weekend and by Monday morning i just had to call in sick. And then again today. And tomorrow too.... Ugh.

Yesterday I tried to convince myself i wasn't really sick by being productive. I made a big pot of black bean soup from scratch with some vegetable stock i made over the weekend. Then i spun up some merino. The colors of the wool are pretty bright and i wasn't sure what kind of yarn to make so I spun three singles. Two of them i plied together and one I plied with rainbow thread. Then I knit a couple of swatches:

The 2-ply is on the left, the thread plied is on the right. I wasn't really into either one. The 2-ply is a little too muddled and the thread plied feels insubstantial and looks a little odd.

So then I made a three-ply yarn by navajo plying. Here's the swatch:

I like this one the best. Navajo plying takes the longest but there's no sense in making yarn I won't use. And it's good practice; I'd really like to start putting some hand-spun yarn in the shop.

I've been working on the giant granny square blanket a lot. It's a good thing to work on in bed. I'll show you my progress tomorrow.

Granny Snow Day

Hi!

Are you having a nice weekend? I am.

It snowed all day Thursday and Friday.

I didn't have anything to do on Friday (well, everything I had planned was canceled due to weather) so I stayed in and learned how to crochet granny squares. Yes!

I used Pip's lovely tutorial. At first it was tricky and I started, ripped out, started, ripped out a few times. It seems to be how I usually learn things... After a few false starts I was off and running! And then it seemed I couldn't stop...

I started this one with some of the organic cotton yarn I use to knit my horses for the shop. After using this yarn to make the same things over and over it was really neat to see it turn into something totally different. I think this will become a giant granny square afghan inspired by the one over at the Purl Bee.

Riding the wave of granny square love, I dug some junky acrylic yarn out of the closet and whipped up a couple of pot scrubbers too.

Also, some pretty merino wool arrived in the mail today. I bought this at Halfday on Etsy. Oh, I love merino...

La Dee Dah

I cast on for some fingerless mittens a couple days ago with the new yarn and they are turning out really pretty so far. I finished one this morning and cast on for another one just now. I'm designing as i go so they fit perfectly! I'll post the pattern here when they are both finished (I write the pattern as I knit the first one and then test it's accuracy by knitting the second one).

In other knitting news, I finished the Haruni and also a hat. I've gotta try to get some good photos though because they deserve it.

And here are a couple photos I took (with my new camera!) as I walked from Harlem to the Upper West Side the other night. Central Park looked so pretty and spooky and deserted in the snow.

I Love Merino

This past Saturday I sat myself down with 4 ounces of beautiful merino wool from Halfday. A couple (maybe more) hours later, I had in my hands the best and prettiest yarn I've ever made. It's squishy and soft in pastels and light browns and I'm kind of in love with it.