I have a very reliable habit of finishing a heavy sweater just as summer begins. I don’t know why, but it seems to happen every year that I am casting off a thick wool sweater just as temperatures soar into the 80’s.

And so it was this week.

My first handspun sweater is completed.

I constantly have trouble with my sweaters growing once worn, so this time I knit it tight. Really tight. So tight that I had to keep reminding myself that “it will stretch, it will stretch, it will stretch” to get through. There was not a centimeter of positive ease anywhere. It fit like a (snug) glove.

And then I blocked it, and magic happened. It went from really a little too close for comfort to just exactly the right size.

I may have had to knit it roughly three times to get it right, and there is still a tiny, tiny bit of bunching at the front shoulder where I should have taken out an extra 1/2 inch, but I love it. Completely.

I also finished a pair of socks. Actually, I finished them something like a week ago and just haven’t gotten up the momentum to take photos and blog. (That’s not completely true…we did try to take photos once, and the lighting was just horrible, so we gave up).

These are knit from Socks that Rock in colorway Fall on Tap. I pulled the stitch pattern out of one of my Japanese stitch dictionaries, and knit from the cuff down (also a first for me). I love the way the chevrons work with the color repeats of the yarn, and how the twist-stitch ribs help to keep the socks from slouching at the ankles. I used my own made-up variant of Cat Bordhi’s “Sky” architecture, adding increases at the top of the instep rather than at the sides, which allows the pattern to flow uninterrupted to the floor. Combined with an absurdly long decrease section (is that the heel gusset? I’m never sure…), they fit my high arches very nicely. And somehow, the combination of upper arch expansion and complex pattern manages to make my feet look relatively small, which is really nothing short of magic.

As always, I love the Socks that Rock yarns. I don’t know of any other yarn that I can count on to have this many colors and pool only once per sock, in precisely the same spot on each one. I just have to say that I am always impressed with this yarn.

Seasonally appropriate or no, these are two projects that I am happy to add to my “finished” list. I can’t wait for fall!

I learned quite a while ago that I don’t need to be excited about a project for progress to happen. I simply put the knitting by my chair, try to ignore it, and wait. Inevitably, the fingers twitch and it gets knit up.

I have known this for a long time, but lately I have failed to act on it. This is partly because we don’t have the right setup in the living room yet, and partly because I’ve been better at avoiding things lately.

A week and a half ago, I decided to try it again. I had no home knitting going except the shawl, and it’s hard to pull over a 125-stitch chart and just knock off a few rows while waiting for water to boil. I needed something simpler.

I didn’t have to look far. You may or may not remember that I have technically been “working on” a handspun sweater for over a year now. My guess is that you don’t remember, as it has only made one or two casual appearances on the blog, and I was hard put even to find a picture of it on my computer. I had finished both sleeves and cast on and knit about 6 inches of the body, at which point I stalled.

The sweater came to Germany with us, taking up a good half of a suitcase along the way. I figured I’d have plenty of time to work on it, and since it was one of the few large projects I brought, I thought it would be done in time for me to wear in the fall. I barely touched it. It took up the same half suitcase in all its unknit glory on the way home.

The problem was that there were too many options. There were two (or three. or maybe six, depending on how you count) different options vying for dominance. There was the open-front jacket, and the comfy raglan-type pullover. There was an indeterminate amount of colorwork, in an indeterminate pattern, to be placed in an indeterminate place that would depend entirely on the not-quite certain overall shaping. Oh, the dithering.

So, I knit to the point where I needed to make a decision, and I stopped. For about 9 months.

But then I had no knitting. And it was sitting right there.

My neighbor and I had a very serious and rather long conversation about the state of the colorwork about a week ago, during which conversation Branden was amused and perhaps a bit horrified to hear just how much thought can go into the amount, placement, character, and meaning of color in a knit garment. In the end, we decided that the colorwork had to come out.

Once that was out of the way, I cast on for the body, made a few major and not horribly overprocessed decisions, and ended up with an entire sweater body knit up in just a few days.

There are times that I love bulky yarn.

On Saturday, I looked at the sleeves that I knit a year ago. If I just grafted them on, I’d be done.

But they were sleeves knit to fit a different sweater. And there was still red colorwork in them, all the way at the beginning near the cast-on cuffs.

So, out they came, and I began again. I didn’t end up with a sweater finished in a week, but after a month of no knitting, I’ll take what I can get. It’s amazing what happens when you combine twitchy fingers and some bulky yarn.

So often, inspiration comes from something subtle. A mistake. A tiny speck of color. A path that must be followed, a pot of gold that must be chased.

When I made the samples for my dye set, I placed a blue and an orange next to each other.

When I wrapped them up, they touched, ever so slightly. The blue turned green, and brown.

Now that you can see where it is, here’s something closer to the real color:

I loved the reds and black. I was planning to dye the fiber in those colors. But this green caught my eye and held it. Blue and orange are two colors that I would never have thought to mix, but I was intrigued by the sample. Intrigued enough to take a risk.

I took some reds and blues, and mixed in some orange here and there. Threw in a little black to tone things down a bit, and steamed it to set the dye.

I washed the fiber out last night when I got home, and hung it up to dry. I could tell it wasn’t as saturated as I’d hoped. I think my fear of felting led me to leave too much of the soak water in the fiber, and that it diluted down my dyes. I liked the colors, but they were a pale version of what I’d had in mind. I was ok with them, but I wasn’t sure that I would love them. Honestly, I was a little disappointed. But then, a risk is a risk, and I was glad I’d taken it.

When I got home, I decided to blog. I needed to pull the fiber out into the light. The only light that had a prayer of working was the grow light over the workbench in the basement. It wasn’t the prettiest environment for a new roving, and they aren’t the best photos, but taking them helped me to really see it.

And the fiber isn’t quite the pale, dripping mess that I hung up last night. In fact, it has transformed into a rainbow.

(This last is an unflattering picture, but the colors are pretty accurate, and it gives you an idea of the magnitude of this roving. That’s an office chair under there.)

I finished taking photos, and sat down to try spinning it. As the fiber opens up, more and more colors keep coming, from bright oranges to soft shades of grey and mauve. I think I might be in love.

It’s hard to hold a grudge against a rainbow, even if it’s not the one you thought you were chasing.

Look! Spring!

I love it when green things pop up in the garden. It’s still a little cold overnight for these little ones, so we’ve been ferrying their pots in and out whenever it’s below 40. Well, to be fair, Branden has been ferrying them – I haven’t had to do much pot-slinging lately. But they’re up! And they’re happy! I did the first divide today, and we should have real leaves in no time. This never ceases to delight me.

I also finished some yarn.

This is the first real laceweight that I’ve managed to make. It’s a little closer to sock in a few places, but 8 oz gave me 950 yards, plenty for a good-sized lace project. And the color!

This might be as close to perfect as it is possible for a color to be. I love it. Completely.

Want a closer look?

I bought 2 lbs of Corriedale roving to dye for a sweater, and it’s been very, very hard not to decide that I have already achieved the pinnacle of perfection and to dye it the same colorway. I would be happy to wear nothing but this color, but I also think it’s important to have variety. It’s hard for me to choose to be creative in the face of perfection, and sometimes I need to remind myself to find the unexpected rather than simply resting in the safe choice that I know I love.

To help me remember that there are other beautiful colors, I dyed up some samples.

All of these colors came from 5 dye solutions; one red, one yellow, one green, one blue, and one black. Different dilutions, different combinations. So many colors. I only scratched the surface.

I also dyed some samples of roving to see what they would look like spun up.

And I surprised myself by loving them all.

And then I picked none of them.

Because the one sample that was perfect was the one where two strands touched accidentally during wrapping. Coincidence. Blind chance. Two colors that I never would have mixed came together and made something beautiful. Sometimes the magic of the process teaches you more than all the thinking and planning in the world.

The roving is in the dye pot now, steaming away. I hope it’s as perfect as I think it will be.

Thanks again to the resident photographer for making my yarns look much, much better than they otherwise would.

No knitting of much significance occurred in the month of March. I’m still working on the socks I started at the end of February, and other than that I’ve only knit about 4 rows on the shawl. This is very strange to me, but I’m going with it for now.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel, though. I have an urge to cast on a sweater, but no brain cells with which to design it (or even to pick out a yarn). I’ve decided that the urge itself is a good thing, and that the brain cells will come back online one of these fine days. (Probably when I stop feeding them endless amounts of other complicated stuff to deal with…)

In the meantime, I have been contentedly spinning away. It doesn’t look any different than the last picture I showed you, except that there are now two bobbins instead of one, and the second is well on its way to becoming full. I still love the colors, and I am excited to see the yarn.

My neighbor and I are going to have a dye day sometime in the next few weeks, and I have enough Coopworth top for a sweater. I am seriously tempted to dye it green and blue and black, just exactly the same as the laceweight I’m spinning now. Did I mention that I’m in love with these colors?

I’m also telling myself that it’s good to have variety rather than just sticking with one thing that I like.

It’s hard to argue with perfection, though.

Deep reds overdyed with black might also be nice. Dither. Dither. Where did I put those brain cells?

So, more yarn. Coming soon. Spinning wheels make stash enhancement far, far too easy.

Now, if only I could manage to wield some pointy sticks…

Sorry for the long silence. There have been some delays getting pictures off of cameras and onto the computer, and then some problems with life being busy and me not sitting down to write, and suddenly here we are with almost three weeks of news to share.

Not much has happened on the knitting front. I’m working on a pair of socks that I’ll show you next time they’re out and the camera is handy. I have finally gotten past the huge tangle that results when you block Misti Alpaca on the needles, rip out six inches, and expect to make a ball out of permanently crimped, felty alpaca yarn.  Thankfully we’re past that now, and the shawl is beginning to creep slowly toward actually being an active project again.

But spinning is where the action has been lately. I am making yarn way, way faster than I can use it.  I finally finished spindling the rainbow roving that I got in Germany. I plied it up a couple of weekends ago, and then hung it out to dry in the springtime sun.

I love the range of colors that I got from this fiber. All of the bright colors mixed gently at the transitions, making a smooth change from grass green to ocean blue to sunset. (Here’s what it looked like before spinning, just as a reminder).

And now:

I ended up with about 475 yds of fingering-to-DK weight yarn. I was hoping for a slightly finer yarn and more yardage, but decided to Navajo ply to keep the colors together. I have no idea what it will become. Right now, I am just petting it.

You may have noticed an improvement in the photos lately; Branden is back in his position of blog photographer, and is very happy to take 20 minutes to get the lighting and angles just right. It’s amazing what a good camera and a little patience will get you. He is also, of course, back in his position as full-time enabler, too.

On a possibly related note, I slipped and bought a new, lighter spindle a few weeks ago. I’ve been spinning up some of this:

It’s a merino/silk blend, and it’s currently looking like it will be a heavy laceweight. I have 2 oz. of fiber, so it should go quite a ways.

Unfortunately, all of this spindling was irritating my shoulder, which is already cranky from the bad ergonomics of my desk at work. I mentioned to Branden last Saturday that I kinda missed my wheel, and the enabler kicked in immediately (he’s been waiting for that moment of weakness for several months now, and didn’t hesitate for a second before jumping on the opportunity). On Sunday, we went to “look” at wheels again, and ended up bringing this one home:

It’s a Kromski Sonata. I liked it a lot the first time that we went looking, and it has stuck in my mind as the “right” wheel for the past few weeks.  I thought I wanted a Lendrum, so I was surprised that I liked the Kromski so much. There were some other wheels that I wanted to try before making any final decisions, so we’d put off the buying for a while longer. When we went back, I ended up at the Kromski again, and so it came home.

I’ve always spun double-drive rather than Scotch tension, and I missed the double drive when I wanted to transfer yarn from one bobbin to another*, but all of the folding wheels are Scotch-only, so that’s what I got. I’m still working on keeping enough tension on the yarn to avoid getting twists in the singles while winding onto the bobbin, but that will probably come with practice.

All in all, I’d say we’ve had a pretty productive first week:

That’s the blue faced leicester that I dyed with my leftover dyes just before leaving Seattle. I love the way the colors are working out, and I think I might just get laceweight this time, if I double- rather than triple-ply. I have 8 oz of fiber, so it should make a good amount of yarn for a project. I’m almost halfway through the spinning, though…I think I either need to slow down the yarn production, or increase the knitting!

*With a double drive you slip the drive band off of the flyer and onto the drive wheel, and then you can wind onto the bobbin without adding twist. There has to be some way to do this on Scotch tension…maybe if I just run the yarn through the orifice and keep minimal tension on it I can avoid adding twist??

I have been pretty successful at avoiding stash enhancement lately. There’s no particular reason, except that I have a lot of yarn, haven’t been doing as much knitting, and just don’t really need more.

But a couple of weekends ago, I did need more.

I bought one skein of bare (undyed) merino to round out my collection of yarn for dyeing.

Donna Brown was in Madison, and gave two full-day workshops on natural dyeing. I couldn’t make it to both (silly things like having a job got in the way…), but I did go to the weekend one, and it was a lot of fun.

First, we started out with silk and cotton fabric samplers:

And then, I played with yarn. This one is dip-dyed in Logwood, Brazilwood, and madder (left to right).

This is my favorite. It was also dip-dyed, in osage orange, brazilwood, and logwood. (Turns out that orange and purple make green…go figure.)

More logwood and osage orange. I wasn’t sure if I loved or hated this one when it came out of the dye bath. Turns out I love it.

Then, I tried some “tie-dyeing.” I had two skeins of laceweight, and I wanted a semi-solid color. I took the yarn, wound it tightly into skeins, and put it in the dye pot. After a few minutes, the outside of the skein was dyed, and the inside was still white. Then, I opened the skeins, and dyed them again for a very short time.

Logwood (again…can you tell I liked this one?)

And Lac.

I also tried some handpainting. This is the only skein I am disappointed with. The others were all immersion-dyed, and all took the dye really, really well. This one was a different brand (that one skein that I bought to add to the collection), and I steamed it to set the dye. I either didn’t do the steaming well, or the yarn was resistant to the mordant/dye for some unknown reason. So, unfortunately, these colors leak like crazy, and have faded significantly in the wash. The dyes, for the record, are Logwood, Fustic, Madder, and Pomegranate.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with this. I might try remordanting it and overdyeing, or I might leave it as is and let it bleed.

Since all but one of the skeins have been in the stash for about a year, this does not count as stash enhancement. More like stash conversion. But the end result is the same…I now have a lot more yarn to use!

I did notice that the yarn feels a tiny bit rougher after dyeing than it did at the beginning, and I think it leaves a small residue on my hands. I think this probably means that it just needs another long soak to finish washing out the alum mordant….it feels a little like your hair after a day in the ocean or a chlorine pool – a ,little dry, perhaps, but my guess is that another wash would take care of that.

Overall, I really liked the natural dyeing. We used natural dye extracts rather than the raw materials (the extracts come as fine powder, so it’s really just like working with synthetic acid dyes). They were simple and easy to use, with no stewing and steeping before the dyeing can begin. The only extra step was the mordant, and that was really no different than the usual “presoak” before dyeing.

I liked the fact that the dye bath actually exhausts and the water runs clear before you throw it down the sink. As someone that thinks daily about which chemicals are and aren’t safe to wash down the drain, I really, really hate throwing dye molecules down the sink. I can’t imagine what kinds of fines we’d get slapped with for doing that same thing in my lab across town, so I always cringe when I do it at home. Yes, I know that it’s about the scale of the waste – there’s a difference between telling a chemical lab that it’s ok to throw bleach or acetone (nail polish remover) down the drain and using it for household purposes – and the chemical dyes are reasonably safe, but still. I liked the fact that the water I threw out was clear.

I’m not sure where I stand on the “safety” of natural dyeing vs. dyeing with synthetic chemicals. I appreciate the tradition, I think it’s fascinating to get dye from everyday things, but I’m not sure that natural dyes are any safer. Nature produces the best poisons, so it’s hard to argue that natural is inherently safe. And, as a chemist, I recognize that many (if not most) of the synthetic dyes are either the same chemicals or closely related to their natural cousins. There’s a good reason for this…nature generally does a much better job of thinking up cool and complicated molecules than people do, and it’s a lot easier to copy and riff off of a natural product than it is to invent something entirely new. So, ambivalent about the safety thing.

On the whole, I like the process, and I like the results. I don’t think I will throw over my acid dyes completely in favor of their natural alternatives, but I can definitely say that natural dyes will make a welcome addition to my fiber toolbox. A glance at the teachers’ color cards is enough to convince me that the palette is anything but limited.

There’s going to be a bit of a frog party ’round here.

Why?

Because I have avoided the shawl for an entire week now rather than just pulling it out and working back through the join, and I am realizing just how silly it is to spend a whole week not knitting because I don’t feel like ripping back and working through the problem.

There’s no need for a week with no knitting. It’s two or three hours to rework the join, and only a little bit of recharting. All I need to do is stop pretending that I’m still undecided and just pull it out, already. So that’s what I’m going to do.

I also realized that the Kauni sweater needs to come out. I’ve been working on it here and there, in guild meetings and knit nights where lace is a little too complicated. Lately, I only knit on it when I don’t have a sock or anything else to work on. In short, I knit it when I’m desperate to knit on something, not when I want to work on this project. I took the sweater on the bus last week, and it hit me that I really just don’t want to knit it anymore. It has slowly slipped into the lost cause of not-fun knitting.

I think I’ve been avoiding the ripping just because there are lots (and lots, and lots) of stitches in this piece already. And, in principle, I still like it. I love the color, I like the stitch pattern, and it’s making a pretty nice fabric.   I’m not absolutely sure that the fit is working out, but it can be tweaked later. And I’d really like to finish a sweater. (It’s been a year since I finished the last sweater that I knit for myself. ) But I don’t want to finish this sweater, so its time has come.

I started a new sock this week. It’s been frogged and re-started three times now.

Seems to be a theme lately.

I’m actually looking forward to the frogging, despite the loss of stitches. I’m ready to be done with the things that aren’t working out, ready to clean the slate and start again on something I’m excited about. Maybe it’s the spring in the air, maybe it’s just my mood at the moment, but I’m ready for a fresh start.

I think it’s time to party!

Blocking on the needles feels a little like opening presents early, doesn’t it? Even if it is a very casual blocking, laying the lace out really does help to see how the patterns are working together.

You’ll note that the purl columns are now hardly visible from a distance, though you can still see them a little bit if you look from an angle.

That abrupt transition is not as noticeable, and the patterns merge into one another nicely, though there’s still a tiny hiccup where the diamonds change into the pendant lace.

And, as usual, the lace has changed from a shapeless blob into something light and airy.

I’m still pondering whether to rip back and fix the transition now, or whether to leave it and worry about perfecting the charts in the second half, but at least I’m not ripping all the way back to the cast-on! Thank goodness for blocking.

The shawl has been progressing nicely after last week’s repairs. I’ve transitioned into the third stitch pattern, and am coming close to finishing the first half.

Except that I’m not sure I like it. I really like the transition from vines to block lace, and even the transition to the pendant lace is working pretty well. But I really don’t like those purl ribs, or how they end abruptly at the beginning of the pendant lace. They were fine in the swatch, but they establish a lot more visual continuity in the real piece, and their abrupt end is bothering me.

I’m also worried that I’m going to run out of yarn.

I’m only two repeats into the center section, and I’m really just not sure that I’m going to make it another three. This is 437 yards of yarn in one half of the shawl, and I’m running out!

I knew that the solid lace would eat yarn, but I thought I’d be ok, since I was starting out with almost 900 yards for a shawl. Well, now I’m starting to think that I won’t make it. If I pull back, I can decrease the number of repeats in the vine lace and get back more yardage for the openwork. I could also eliminate some of the extra width in the border, and remove those rib columns. But that would mean tweaking the design and starting completely over. Or, I could pull back to the end of the rib columns and figure out something interesting to do with them, rather than just cutting them off at the transition. This would save on the ripping back, but wouldn’t get me any more yarn, and I’m quite frankly stumped on how to make those look any better.

The jury is still out, but right now I’m not so sure it’s working. I’m going to block this half on the needles and see how it turns out before doing anything too drastic. Fingers crossed that blocking does the trick!