FO- Oatmeal Cardigan

Last year at Rhinebeck, I found the most beautiful Romney fleece from the Prebles farm in Maine. I washed and processed this by myself.

Fleece:


In January, I started to make the Batts:


Laceweight Singles:


Which 3-plied up to a DK weight:


Which gave me a fabric that I was happy to work with:


Which then became my Oatmeal Cardigan:


I love it. It's by far my favorite handspun garment that I have made.

I started this on the train on my way down to DC for a weekend but worked on it in fits and starts as it soon because way too warm to touch a big woolly mess. I finished the sleeves when I was up in Maine this summer and the rest of the sweater just flew along.



I'm finding it the perfectly casual fall sweater that cuts the chill nicely.

I did do some modifications. Most of them had to do with the fact that I spun this yarn up woolen- light and lofty- as opposed to worsted, which would have given me a denser, heavier yarn with less drape but more stitch definition. There is a cable on the yoke but my yarn is really too fuzzy for it to pop the way I would have liked it to. The pattern called for a small cable detail on the sleeves, but I left that out after I realized that it looked like a fuzzy mistake. I did another modification on the sleeves as well- the pattern called for increases every 4 rows, and I changed that to every 6 rows to get a more fitted sleeve.





I also decided not to use buttons, but I found these delicate little pewter claps at M&J trimming on 6th ave.







I'm pretty much in love with it.

The specs:

I used about 1000 yards of handspun DK weight yarn for this project. I actually have another 300 yards leftover as well as I'm terrible at guessing how much I've actually spun. I used US size 6 (4mm) needles to get the gauge of 18 stitches per 4 inches.

I made the 40" size thinking it would be roomy, but ya know, with the variations of the handspun,the actual size was more like 38", which gives it some negative ease. The pattern was the Oatmeal Cardigan by Amy King from the Winter 2009 Spinoff magazine.

Spinning Work in Progress

I'm finished spinning all the singles for my fleece-to-sweater project, the Oatmeal Cardigan. I just have to ply a bit more and set the twist. The whole process took a couple months to complete...I don't get a chance to sit down at my wheel and spin every day. If I did, it would probably have taken me a week or so.



I love this yarn. Every time I sat down at the wheel with a fistful of soft gray Romney, I gave a blissful sigh that is normally reserved for when I get a deep-tissue massage.

I've been spinning the singles on my Kromski Minstrel (large wheel diameter means you can spin faster) and then plying on my Majacraft Gem (which has bigger bobbins so I can fit more on there).

Based on weight and guesstimation, I should end up with over 1300 yards of 3-ply worsted weight. That's a lot of singles! A bit mindless perhaps, but every fleece to sweater I've done has been a huge improvement over the last. I sampled several times (sampling is the spinner's equivalent of swatching) and knitted several swatches before finding the right spinning technique and settings to get the end result sweater that I want.

My first fleece to sweater was a bit of a crapshoot.







That was from a Shetland fleece from Wild Apple Hill Farm in Hudson, NY. His name was Perry.

Shetlands are great fleeces to start with. They are on the small side- usually 2-3 lbs, so won't be overwhelmed with fleece. They have little lanolin and very strait, silky locks so any dirt and grease comes out easily instead of hiding in the crimp. They usually have a very long staple length as well. As an added bonus, you can also get several colors in one fleece. This one was white, gray and reddish-chestnut.

I had the idea in my head that I wanted to make a cable sweater, but ended up with a chunky weight two ply and not nearly enough yarn for something cabled. The fact that I didn't sample at all and just jumped to the spinning part probably was a good indicator that I wouldn't get exactly what I had wanted. I abandoned the idea of cables and ended up with a simple rustic-looking pullover, which I love and wear all the time. Not exactly what I had in mind, but I think that this is a lemonade kind of sweater. As in, I made lemonade when I made myself a lemon of a yarn. But lemonade is good, regardless if you made it intentionally or not.

Lesson learned. Sampling good.

Spinning Romney

I'm starting to really revel in the winter weather. When I see the temperature plunge into the single digits I start squealing with glee. What other time of year encourages you to stay inside more than winter?

All those fleeces that I packed away after Rhinebeck are coming alive once again. The Romney fleece is coming along nicely. So far I've got 3 bobbins spun up and ready to be plied, and I'll probably need at least 3 more bobbins of singles. I've been carding more fleece as needed, so I'm always spinning from these ethereal fluffy batts. It makes the task at hand much more enjoyable.



Would it be asking for trouble if I started knitting before I was completely done spinning?

Baby, it's Cold Outside!

I welcomed the cold this year with open, albeit well-bundled, arms. It's the only excuse I have to motivate myself to stay inside, not get frostbite, and make a dent in my Romeny fleece from Rhinebeck.



It was the first really nice fleece that I got my hands on at the mad rush of the fleece sale. It's a silver-gray color and super clean. It has the big, open crimp typical of romney, but it's so soft. I always thought of Romney as a long-stapled, coarse easy-to-spin beginner's wool, but some of the fleeces I saw and touched at the sale have convinced me otherwise.



I can't find the farm tag, but I remember it came from a farm in Maine that doesn't have a website.

I flicked each lock open and ran it through the drum carder, and carded the resulting batt three times.



It was a lot of work, but in the end, i had a basket full of this:





drool

I spun up some samples before I settled on a 3-ply. I'm getting about 13 wpi.



Which, incidentally , is a good weight to try for the Oatmeal Cardigan from the Winter Spin-Off:



Fleece to Sweater projects are real time commitments, but they are a perfect long winter project. I'm having so much fun spinning this, I'm really looking forward to the next day where it's too cold and snowy to deal with going outside (unless it means going outside will get me some cantonese noodle soup).