Fo: Live Oak Shawlette

Hey, would ya look at this:



Wow.  There was a whole grove of these trees blossoming in Regent's Park.  It was lovely.  It's February, I'm still in my winter coat, but it's warm enough here for some confused trees to flash some obscene shade of pink.





For serious, guys.  It's pretty much springtime if you squint.

I'm getting my life together here and meeting some fab people.  Meanwhile, I've finally got a new-ish laptop to work with and I'm getting caught up on the backlog of pictures I've taken over the past six months or so.  So, I present to you this lacy little number that I made last fall, took pictures of on the banks of the Seine one sunny day, gifted and forgot all about.





It's the Live Oak Shawlette by Romi Hill.  It's a gorgeous half-circle shawl.

My only real regret was not to be able to block it out properly.  You'd need about 740 pins, but it would make it oh-so lovely.  I only had about 8 pins and some scrap yarn, so the edge isn't as lovely as it possibly could be.




I did get a bit cocky with my yardage and did another lace repeat, and had to find a contrasting color to finish it off.  I actually kind of like it with the contrasting stripe.  The yarn is Madelinetosh Merino Light in "Thoreau" and the contrast is "Rosewood".



It's totally wearable and sweet, and I gifted it to a chic newly-minted Parisian friend.

FO: Spectra Scarf

Some things are set aside while the stress and the constant battle of moving is going on. Knitting was one of them.

I haven't really had the mindset to sit and do something quietly for a while now. It seems like a luxury and I just can't bring myself to splurge. I'm hoping that once I get settled next month, and the shipment box with a tote of crafty supplies shows up I'll be a little more inspired.

I did recently finish the Spectra scarf I started way back in March. Everyone loves Westknits right now, and I couldn't resist his designs either. Even here in France, several knitters I met were sporting his goods. Well, Paris probably does have more scarfs per capita than anywhere else in the world, so I'm sure obsessively stitching away at one of his patterns is a good move all around.

I loved this pattern muchly. It used up a skein of Noro Kureyon Sock (which you couldn't pay me to knit a pair of socks out of) and two skeins of Knit Picks Gloss sock. I ran out of the Gloss first and that was where the scarf ended. It's a combination of short rows and simple intarsia that makes it shape the way it does.

And what better way to celebrate the status of a newly minted Parisian than a picnic on the Champ de Mars?

I couldn't think of one. The lawn was surprisingly filled with few tourist and lots of like-minded picnickers.

When the sun comes out in Paris, the masses head for the parks and the lawns with wine and food and friends. It's a very good idea.

I do love my new scarf. It keeps me just toasty enough and it drapes elegantly. It needs a good blocking as I just hung it up on hair clips on the curtain to stretch it out a bit- the bottom edge would ruffle less if it was really bocked. The pattern is simple and it only took two repetitions before I had it memorized. It really shows off colorful yarn nicely.

Making Time to Spin

That's really my biggest spinning challenge now. It takes me so long to set myself up and sit down in front of a wheel that I need to commit time to it. Also, it's bad to run back and forth from spinning to cooking dinner, as no one wants chunks of alpaca in their kale and bean soup.

So here we go.

I'm still trying to consciously control my spinning and not just zone out and make laceweight like I do when I'm on autopilot.



4 oz of Spunky Eclectic Corriedale/Alpaca blend in "Thunderstorm".

Singles:



Plied:



Fin:



At 62 yards, this is not my personal best yardage-wise, but it is a true bulky weight yarn, and I managed to keep the singles even enough so that I don't have to call this a thick-and-thin yarn. Whoo hoo! My first bulky yarn that I'm happy with. Sweet Victory.

Here's another one. This one started out as a Spontaneous Spinning Batt from Loop.



Holy Tinseltown. This was ridiculously fun to spin, but I have sparkles everywhere now. I mean- it worked its way into everything I own, to the point where complete strangers would stop me on the street to point out the big clumps of tinsel attached to my tail. I just cooly and calmly smiled and pretend that I wanted it there. I'm sure there's been a fair amount digested as well. Actually, I'm positive.



I also had an assortment of purple babycakes that I've been collecting. Ever since Loop opened up a studio close to NYC, there's been a pretty hefty trade in these going on. I felt like the don of purple babycakes.



I striped the babycakes (which are just 1oz mini-batts) into the big 4oz batt so I have a nice variegated skein of purple yarn. This was my try in spinning artsy imperfect singles.


The results:





Squeeee! It's so girly and pretty. I'm thrilled with it. It needs to be knitted up ASAP.

On the other end of the spectrum, here some of the fleece from Muriel the Moorit Merino.



Which was processed into this by the mill:



And which I spun into this:



330 yards, woolen, dk weight. It's so soft. I have oodles of this stuff left- I'll never be able to spin through the pounds of this that is in my spinning basket, so I'm selling off some of it on my Etsy Store. For the rest of the month, it is 30% off.

Also on the wheel is some Merino/Tencel blend from Silver Moon Farms. I got this at Rhinebeck ages ago...even though pastel rainbow isn't really my color scheme, I decided to give it a try.



I've never spun tencel before. It wants to be lace and it's a bit slippery, and I'm finding that it wants to be spun worsted rather than woolen. It drafts out like butter and I'm enjoying it immeasurably.



It's shiny! The tencel is almost luminous. I'm thinking of making a delicate lace scarf with it.

Enjoy your weekend, and get some spinning done!

FO: Chutes and Ladders Hat

A couple weeks ago it was sofrigginhot out and it felt as though winter has never existed anywhere ever. How could these waves of oven-like heat come from the same planetary weather system that did this to my car just a few months ago?



I spent the heat-wave week working from home in my little office with no air conditioning. That's how dire my work life has gotten- I would rather spend 8 hours in an airless sauna then make my way into the city with a crush of humanity to sit in a chilly icebox for the day. It actually ended up bring quite entertaining- just when I couldn't bear the heat another second, I would run into the kitchen and cook a big dinner. Corn on the cob, wonton soup, stewed chicken thighs over fresh pasta. Basically, standing in front of the oven and cooking made it so much easier to bear the oppressive heat and humidity because as soon as I stepped away, it magically felt 10 degrees colder. Also, because I couldn't drink water fast enough to stay hydrated, when I drank something with alcohol in it, i was tipsy and having a riotous good time right away. The fact that I spent several occasions over the winter dishing out huge amounts of cash to sit in a sauna or steam room, I had to embrace the heatwave as a way to cleanse my pores. My skin...it's fabulous.

It got so hot in the kitchen, a bottle of homemade beer exploded and shattered into a million pieces. I was kind of proud of the fact that I was tougher than the beer, but cleaning up all those sticky shards was not how I wanted to spend my morning.

The other thing I thought would make me feel nice and cool was to whip up some handspun hats. Oodles of them. As many as I could find odd balls of handspun in my stash. I've been spinning for, oh, 6 or 7 years now, which equates to a whole lot of 2-4oz skeins of oddballs of yarn. I'm on a lot of conference calls and webexes all day, and I find if I don't knit to keep my hands busy, I'll just start click-clicking away on the internet or tap-tapping away on the keyboard, answering emails and stressing about all the tasks that I could be doing. So I knit, and try to pay attention to the call. It's nice.

Here's the first one I spun up:



It started as a 2oz bump of Merino/Silk fiber from Capistrano Fiber Arts in the "Etoille" colorway. It was as soft as anything and the 20% silk content made this just a little shiny. I had acquired this at the Yarn Tree in Brooklyn ages ago...I actually bought two bumps and made a scarf out of the first one I spun up. I love the color on this so much- the combination of the moody dark purples and blues with yellow really made my heart pitter-pat.

I spun this up on my Kromski Minstrel into a big, bulky thick-and thin single.





I tried to keep it as lofty as possible. I had some thin spots where a whole lot of twist accumulated, but for the most part, I was happy with my non-lace spinning. It was fun, and making a bulky yarn takes a fraction of the time than cobweb lace. I got about 70 yards.

I found a hat pattern that I wanted to try.



It's called the Chutes and Ladders hat from the "Handspun Handknit" book. It's a perfect fun little hat to eat up a skein of handspun. It's just a ribbed brim, cables with double yarn overs that you drop on the next row. Or, at least that's how I did mine. The pattern had some ambiguous instructions, so I chose to ignore them and just knit on. It was probably just the heat messing with my head. I don't see any scary killer clown faces in this, so I think I'm okay.





It's not the most tidy hat, but I had a lot of fun making this. Also- it took maybe an hour and a half, and that was even with a good chunk of multi-tasking thrown in. I keep meaning to pick up some round balloons at the dollar store. I've been blocking hats over a mixing bowl for years and they all kind of have a flatter top that what I'd like.

Size 11 needles.

Wensleydale Singles

...as in "a single ply of wensleydale yarn", not "bachelors from a small area of Yorkshire".

The weather cooled off a bit after the heat wave so now it is comfortable and breezy, which is perfect weather to get a little spinning in.



(This is actually a Leicester Longwool sheep, but they have similar fleeces to Wensleydale.)

The fiber was 1 oz of Tussah Silk and 2 oz of Wensleydale, dyed with madder and called "Cardinal". It was a club shipment from A Verb For Keeping Warm.



I spun it as a continuous single. It's so hard for me to resist the urge to ply. Plied yarn is so neat and tidy and balanced and everything else just looks odd to me.



It was interesting- both fibers like to be spun worsted and the staple length is incredibly long, but they are so different from each other. The silk is smooth and slick; the sheep is hairy and slippery. It's not unpleasant to spin, but it has almost no memory or crimp to it. Long draw worked well.

Finished, after a nice warm bath to set the twist and a healthy glug of vinegar to stop the dye from bleeding:



488 yards of lace singles. Which I'm trying my best to leave as singles. I love how the reds marled to a pretty valentine pink.



The Wendsleydale has a nice hairy halo. I'm not sure what I have in mind for a project with this yet.

As soon as this was off the bobbin, I started a polar opposite spinning project:



Cashmere and Silk blend! It's lovely. I have 8oz of it, so it should spin up to a decent amount- I'm aiming for sport-weight. I'm finding it really easy to put too much twist in this- it's so fine and slippery, and it likes to fall apart on you. Hence the over-twist. I'm really happy when I'm spinning this, and plying it will take out some of the kinked-up overtwist. The one bad thing about this fiber is that I have to commit to it when I spin it- the cashmere is so light and flyaway, I end up with a nice head-to-toe coating of fuzz the not even the bravest of lint rollers might be able to tackle.

FO- Republic Hat

My A-Z stashdown continues! Now with even more Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky!

Anyway.

I had what I thought was a full skeins of Lamb's Pride Bulky in a pretty light gray. This yarn was re-claimed from my most fantastically ugly fair isle skirt:



Then I skeined up the yarn and gave most of it away. Half of it was Renyold's Lopi Icelandic yarn, which matches the brown sheep perfectly when it comes to gauge.

I cast on for the Republic hat. Just as I was decreasing for crown, my yarn ran out.



I had to make some emergency calls, but a friend who I gave some of the skirt scraps to still had some on hand. I finished the hat in Lopi, which matched color-wise perfectly. The only thing is that the lopi has a lot of dark black wiry guard hairs that bloomed up, while the Lamb's Pride has more of a silver mohair halo. I trimmed up the guard hairs with a pair of sharp scissors and I can't even tell where one begins and the other ends.



I got the giant button at M&J trimming.





This got wrapped up and shipped up to Northern Maine for my Grandma's birthday. She's a pretty classy lady, and her mother used to own a hat store in Rochester, NY. She still loves hats.

The Specs:
The Republic Hat, which is a knock-off of a Banana Republic design. It's also a free pattern on this blog. I used about 100 yards of bulky weight yarn on a size 10.5 needles.

FO- Snappy Hat

I grew up in Maine, and I still have quite a few friends and family who still live there and spend the winters there. I do my very best to outfit them with overly warm accessories to make the long winter months a little more comfortable.



This is the Snappy Hat, a free pattern from Picnic Knits. I had a skein of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky to use up as part of my A-Z stashdown which paired with this pattern perfectly.



The yarn contains 15% mohair, which is warmer than wool. Cables gather the fabric and create more bulk, making a warmer hat. Plus, I made the bottom band twice as long as the pattern called for in order for the wearer to fold the brim over, keeping the ears super toasty. This might be the Perfect Storm of Warm Hats.



It's a unisex pattern, but the brown yarn makes this more XY.

Naturally, this is part of my self-imposed A-Z stashdown.

The Specs:
The Snappy Hat by Corrina Ferguson (picnicknits). I used almost a full skein of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky (125 yards) in Sable. I used US size 10 needles. The only mod I made was to make the bottom ribbing twice as long as the pattern called for (I knit for 20 rows). I was able to finish this in just a few nights of casual knitting.

FO: Architect's Hat

Last Sunday morning, a bit of a chill was in the air. I sat down with a cup of coffee, a pile of scraps of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky, and The Knitter's Book of Yarn. In a couple hours I had this:



It's the Architect's Hat. It's a top-down hat: it has a short-row cap, then stitches are picked up around the edge and the rest of the hat is knitted. It has a fun slip-stitch pattern and really took no time at all. It was quite useful when it came to using up odd lengths of yarn. I think this Lamb's Pride Bulky has been in my stash for at least 7 years now, and I was going to throw it in the garbage if I couldn't come up with a project soon.



B is for Brown Sheep...this is part of my A-Z Stashdown Challenge.



It looks a little lumpy, but I took these pics pre-blocking. A bath really evened out the slip-stitch sections.

I will totally call upon this pattern again. It would be great in quieter or natural fleece colors, or even solid colors.

The Specs:
I used US 10 needles. I'm guessing my yardage is about 130 for the whole hat, but since I was just grabbing random scraps, I have no real idea. Lamb's Pride Bulky is a bulky weight single that is a 85/15 blend of wool and mohair.