Beginning Roving

I finished spinning the same fiber I started drop-spindling with just a few months ago. It turns out the more pre-drafting you do for sticky fiber the better the finished product.

(My singles; with Mum's help holding the bobbins)

Before washing and thwacking.

386 yards of a 2 ply lace weight from what I would guess to be around 2 ounces!

The left-most skein is what happens if this fiber is plied back on itself...

The second skein was created when I couldn't get the fiber to wind properly on the bobbin. I believe that my problem was too little tension in my drive band because I didn't have any problems once I tightened that up.

Was much more fun to spin on my wheel...

My Experiment

This is the edging from one of the shawls in the second Jane Austen Knits by Interweave; which I modified to suit my purposes.

I decided that not only did I want to knit a bottom-up shawl; I wanted to do one where you knit the edging first and pick up the body stitches. To make things harder on myself I also came to the conclusion that I needed to write the pattern for a variant of my Pretty Picot -bottom up. Luckily, this turned out fine and was a fairly quick knit.

Two different colors of Knitpicks Stroll -Wine Tasting and Waterlily-(discontinued) on size 3 needles. I had quite a bit of the red left over and just a small amount of the green. It blocked out well and I might make another out of laceweight at somepoint in one color.

 I won't be posting the direct pattern for this because I didn't come up with the edging. I'll post the bare instructions for my pattern once I get the Pretty Picot up in just a few weeks.

Warm Day

Lovely warm snap which is helping me to get into Spring Cleaning. I'm almost caught up with posting my projects; just a few left to go-that aren't currently inprogress... Hope the weather is great : )

Alpaca Handspun

These aren't colors I'd normally choose but turned into a beautiful yarn.

This is 4 ounces of 100% Alpaca by Midwest Fiber Company.

I like the finished product but while spinning I did get black fingers.

732 yards of a 2 ply laceweight!

I'm so glad I washed it with some Soak and then rinsed until the water ran clear.

I can't wait to find a project to knit with it...

Best color; though my lighting is once again a fickle, fickle thing. I had bits of floating alpaca fiber everywhere while I was spinning the roving. I finally got myself in gear and finished the singles once I found it incorporating itself into all of my knitting projects.

Once I finish plying the two bobbins, I sometimes have a bit left over which I wind off into a center pull ball and ply it back on itself.

Peacock Wool & Silk, 4 oz

An ounce of my singles before plying...

2oz plyed up and ready for soaking...

812yard of a 2-ply laceweight!! I got this roving from a show near Dayton this fall from Valhalla Acres, which has just opened an Etsy store. This roving was very elastic and wanted to bunch up so I spun it more in a woolen fashion....

(at it's basic form as I understand it, woolen spinning has more trapped air and the fibers aren't smoothed down and compressed like a worsted yarn) I tend to prefer a smooth yarn so most of my other spinning has worsted tendencies.

 

The finished yarn still has the coloring of the singles but the sun was actually out and so the color trueness is a bit off.

Picking Up Garter Stitches

I know there are lots of ways to pick up stitches, but I thought I would share what I pick up because it creates a pretty seamless join.

 Along the edge of the garter stitch there will be little ridges with two sort of loops if you hold your work like the photo above. I pick up the front loop of the ridge with my left-hand needle through the back of the stitch & knit into it as a normal knit stitch.

My experiment in-progress; more photos upcoming : )