FO: Briar Rose Pullover

While it doesn't get cold in Paris like it does in Maine or even New York, it's nice to have a few really heavy-duty warm sweaters to keep you toasty on the rare day where the temps do dip below freezing.

I reached for a bag of Lousia Harding yarn called Thistle. It's a Suri Alpaca and Merino blend. I took to heart how Pariseins love to wear all black with a bright pop of color and I choose a rather stunning shade of sunshine yellow.

I cast on for the Briar Rose Tunic, a cover girl from Interweave Knits:

I made a couple modifications as I went. I took a full 8 inches off the body, but still ended up with what one might call a rather immodest dress. I decided to put my decreases in the ribbing section on the side instead of in front of it to give it more of an hourglass illusion. Finally, I reversed-engineered the sleeves so I could knit them from the sleeve cap down, and just stop when I run out of yarn. It worked out brilliantly, and I ended up with a long-sleeved sweater with just a couple of yards of yarn left over.

It's so warm and cozy. Once blocked and worn, this yarn blooms and sheds like crazy though, so this is a decidedly outdoor sweater.

I am hoping the shedding stops or slows up eventually. Everything else I wear with it ends up looking like a giant yellow cat has used it as bedding.

I love wearing it though and have done so several times already. It was fantastically easy to make and the cabled yoke detailing makes the pattern.

Corespun yarn

I'm a plain vanilla spinner. There. I said it.

I like myself a nice balanced 2-ply, and sturdy round 3 ply, and the occasional even lace singles. Not that I don't admire crazy art yarns. I look on, green with envy, when friends make piles of chaotic gorgeousness. I took a 2 day class that was nothing but freeing your inner anarchist at the wheel. It was fun, but I'm still not convinced that I could ever make anything useful.

Then, last month, I got a weird urge to corespin. After a few yards of trial and error, I found my rhythm and could. not. stop. It was addictive.



I started out with batts from Butterfly Girl in "Rocky Road". It was a soft, luxurious blend of merino, suri alpaca (the best kind of alpaca in my opinion), silk, bamboo, and a little bit of glitz. Corespinning lets you stretch out a small amount of luxury fiber- because you are wrapping it around a core yarn, you will end up using less. This is a perfect technique if you only have a couple ounces of fiber, but you still want the yardage to actually make something.

For my core, I chose some dk weight wool.



This was some yarn that I had frogged from a hoodie years ago. It is still too painful for me to knit with it. I didn't check to see if there was a pattern errata and followed the pattern with blind faith. I didn't question things at all, even when it had me put the hood where one would logically put a second arm hole. I just kept on knitting. Very painful memory right there.

Anyway, I found that hiding the yarn makes me feel better.

I ran the core yarn through my wheel and onto a bobbin, adding more twist. That way, I wouldn't end up with an over-twisted mess once I started the core spinning process.

Basically, you are taking your pretty fiber and letting it wrap around the core yarn. The Bellweather has a great tutorial (as always) on corespinning. She can explian the process much better than I can.

Here are the results:







Parts of the silk were a little tough to draft out evenly resulting in lumpy thicker sections, but I thought I got most of the skein fairly even. It was so fun, once I sat down I couldn't really stop if I wanted to, and it only took me a couple hours to complete.

I ended up with about 160 yards total. I'm planning on making a hat from this- I think the yarn will give it a fun, funky texture.

Seven bucks later...

Sunday a carload of Brooklynites piled into a car and drove out to the Garden State Sheep & Fiber festival. It was a pretty sweet little event. It was very small but it had some quality vendors- lots of small farms from Jersey and PA that don't make it to the big festivals. Attendance wasn't really high so it was nice to be able to stop and chat and not feel rushed.

There were lots of sheep:



Icelandic and Shetlands made up the majority of the breeds, but there were also some BFL, Cheviot, Romneys and CVMs. This moorit CVM caught my eye:



And there were alpacas:



That's a Huacaya on the left and a Suri on the right.

And there were bunnies. Fabulously soft angora buns:





These are like human babies, but softer and cuter. Added bonus that you can spin from them. I'd like to see you try and do that with a human baby.

There were also mini-donks, which made me think they could flap their ears and fly away:



I can not resist the power of cute.

They did have fleeces for sale. The one that spoke to me was an 11 lb white cormo. Long staple, super crimpy, free of VM. I kept going back to it trying to justify it, but I still have a whole lot of my MDSW cormo fleece at home needing a good spinning, so I walked away. They had a few nice Shetland fleeces, and I do have a weakness for Shetland. It's the opposite of cormo- straight and silky, and the colors in each fleece are pretty amazing.

What was surprising was the amount of crap fleeces I saw. The majority of fleeces up for sale there were dirty, full of second cuts, matted and felted, not skirted (!), sunburt or worse. Granted, most of these fleeces were priced accordingly, I found the fleece auction to be underwhelming.

My sole purchase for the day was some angora fiber, which set me back $7. I have never been able to get to a fiber festival and come home just seven dollars poorer. Also, instead of spending my Sunday night washing fleece in the bathtub, I went for a walk, knitted in the park for a bit, made dinner, spun, caught up with a friend.

Maybe I'm just atoning for future purchases.