When I decided to participate in the Tour de Fleece this year I knew that setting up hard and fast goals would be a recipe for failure. With wedding planning getting intense and everything else going on I just didn’t need the pressure. So instead I just had some ideas of what I’d like to do during the tour. I thought that I would like to get some old stuff off the bobbins (and you’ve already seen that I managed to do that) and my other thought was that I would really like to spin some angora considering how much of the stuff I have around the house. To illustrate:

Those bags and boxes are all full of bunny foof. And there’s at least one more box and possibly another bag not in that picture!

Little did I realize that I would spin an entire fleece!

(Skeins reclining on HWJF’s 30 birthday present, a digital piano that he isn’t allowed to use until his actual birthday next month! Yes I am evil.)

That’s about 700 yards of corriedale from “The Fleece I Did Not Buy at Rhinebeck 2009″. It’s so yummy and fluffy that it’s actually quite difficult to make nice pretty skeins of it! Now this was a small fleece, only around 3 pounds, but still! I spun up the whole thing!

On major conclusion from this: If someone else processes the fleece I actually do spin it. Perhaps it’s time to turn over the 5 or so fleeces that are sitting around here waiting to be processed to the professionals?!? We’ll see what the bank account allows come Rhinebeck….

I do believe that I will be pairing that yarn with the BFL I previously showed you into a sweater like this one for myself. Instead of colorwork I would just use the contrasting yarn for the yoke. Or maybe a Cobblestone with a contrasting yoke. We’ll see.

In between working on spinning up that fleece I did work with some angora. I decided to blend it with some undyed merino top that I have for the shop. I took my drum carder and carded up a batt of merino and a batt of angora. I then divided each batt into quarters. I took one quarter of each fiber and further divided the merino quarter in half again to sandwich the angora in between two layers of merino. This worked out well and kept the angora contained nicely in the yarn while making it a little easier to spin. I didn’t weigh anything and while there was probably more merino per initial batt than angora, you can bet that there is a LOT of angora in this yarn. My final four batts before I would sit down to spin looked like this:

I think each bobbin took 8 of these smaller batts. I made a two ply yarn and ended up with this:

There’s just over 400 yards between all three of these bobbins. As I type, the yarn is getting the spa treatment and I’m trying to decide how I’m going to dye it. The two different fibers will each take the dye differently, the angora being less likely to take up the dye readily, so the final product could be really interesting color wise. And I’m just too happy that I actually came up with enough to do something with! I’m thinking some kind of cowl or maybe fingerless mitts right now.

So how was your Tour de Fleece?

I hope not! I’ve got plenty more to show you. And since the stealth knitting will be gifted this weekend, I can finally start showing you what I’ve been knitting on Monday!! Woohoo!

But first, I’ve received some very kind gifts lately that I wanted to share. First, Lisa (dude, she’s knitting her daughter a wedding dress! Go look!), who was one of the winners during SOS had joked at the end of it all about sending me a tiara. Since I’m not much of a tiara girl, I’m glad she sent this instead!

Check out the “knitted” mug from Starbucks! And do you see the stitch markers?!?!

Bunnies!!! How cute are they?!? This all came when I was having a bit of a tough day and couldn’t have been timed any better. Thank you again Lisa! They are all wonderful!

Last weekend I also had another little spin in at my place in which we decided to do a little Secret Santa dealio. HWJF was kind enough to make the matches so that I got to play along, which I thought was very good of him to do (yep, keeper! I know!). My Secret Santa was Anne and look what she made for me!

A new box bag and storage pouch in blue silk (hello! Yum!) and a shopping bag all wrapped in a fabric bag (yay for eco friendly wrapping!)! The current stealth knitting quickly went into the box bag. And look what she made for the tree!

Isn’t it cute! Stuffed with Romney fiber *chuckle*! And yes, that is my Christmas tree and it is so small no one could find it when they came over. Thanks again Anne for all the great goodies! And thanks again to everyone who made for a great afternoon!

And now, on to the yarn. Back when I was developing my Seascape colorway, I dyed and spun up some superwash merino with the intention of doing my first large navajo plying project. The fiber got spun but sat on the bobbin for a bit while I took care of other spinning orders. At one point recently, in a fit of “I need that bobbin!” I finally did my plying. Here’s how it turned out.

I’ve been practicing navajo plying on the small bits of leftover fiber at the end of a bobbin for a while now and I think I’ve pretty much got it down pat. I’d like a little more twist control then I’m getting, but it isn’t terrible.

I think HWJF wants this yarn, but I’m not sure what I’ll do with it since it’s only about 250 yards.

I also recently finished my last DC sunrise order.

That’s about 500 yards of fingering weight in merino. This colorway still brightens my mood on a dark day. I may just have to spin some for myself at some point.

And since that was my last spinning order I’m available for custom spinning. Leave a comment for info.

On Monday, KNITTING!

Tags: kindness, Spinning, yarn

{I’d just like to take a moment to thank all of you who left condolences and kind words on the last post. I’m sorry that I can’t get back to each of you, but I want you to know that it is very much appreciated.}

It never ceases to amaze me how fiber can bring people of all walks of life together. There are so many very cool people I might never have met without this shared fiber addiction. How sad would that be? Luckily there are awesome people like Tina to bring us all together!

On Saturday I attended the Hudson River Knit and Spin, up in Catskill NY. In under two hours drive the Ladybug and I were out in a lovely little park under the shade of a tree, overlooking the river and spinning along with some wonderful new and old friends. What could be better?

[And here I should be inserting a spectacular picture of said venue, but alas, camnesia has reared it's ugly head again!! Check the others blogs linked within for many better pictures.]

The only slight bummer was that around 3pm, the Jessalu early warning system (aka Crackberry) alerted us that we’d better seek shelter or we’d all be getting wet shortly. I reluctantly left our sublime little spot and headed to the local coffee shop with most of the attendees.

At least I managed to snap a couple of pics there!!

Kim and I represented well for the NJ crowd I’d say. After the coffee shop, I went off to dinner with Tina and her wonderfully fiber-tolerant husband, Jessalu and Michelle. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer ending to a lovely day (although some of our conversations might have been frowned upon by the locals seated nearby ). Thanks again to Tina for her organizational prowess!! And I *so* can’t wait for WOOL!!

I got a ton of spinning done and I even got through some plying during the weekend.

Better pictures of that soon too.

I seem to buy a good deal of my yarns either at fiber festivals or on vacation. There’s just something about having a great yarn to be a great reminder of a fun day or trip that holds memories for me, almost better than photos. I can relive some of my happiest moments as I knit my next garment and continue the flow of memories as I knit new memories into that garment. It seems that wool is a good holder for my thoughts these days, so I did a little bit of stash enhancement on the trip.

As you can imagine, my happiness with last year’s Bovidae yarns and the resulting sweater necessitated a new purchase.

The colors you see from left to right are Wild Grape, Thistle, Natural Light Gray (there are actually 5 skeins of that), Wild Aster, Rosebay and Peacock. The Gray will be the background color of what I hope will be my first steeked cardigan with some sort of fair isle yoke incorporating each of these colors and perhaps some that were left over from last year’s sweater.

On the same day as the trip to Bovidae my compatriots and I also made a quick stop at Yummi Yarns in Burnsville. This is another lovely shop, packed to the gills with amazing yarns. One of the members of my party was a new knitter who hadn’t quite seen anything like it before and the enabler in my loved watching her glee as she petted lovely yarns and oooooed and ahhhhed. I managed to restrain myself enough to only pick up a bottle of Eucalan (you wouldn’t believe how hard it’s been to find that locally) and this:

I have succumbed to the Noro bug. There are just too many gorgeous pairs of socks out there knit in this yarn, knots or not. I consider this my little indulgence.

On my trip to Earth Guild on our day off during camp (which really is a fantastic store that must be experienced in person) I picked up some wheel oil and a copy of Traditional Fair Isle Knitting by Sheila McGregor. I had purchased Traditional Scandinavian Knitting by the same author last year and can’t wait to use this book in much the same way.

After we left camp this year we actually were able to take our time getting home. We definitely took the scenic route, winding through some of the back roads around tight corners and some steep slopes until we made our way into Blowing Rock, NC. It’s a cute little touristy town with some nice little shops on the main drag, although I wouldn’t actually recommending going to the actual “Blowing Rock” because it’s a bit of a let down after the brochure hype (trust me on that one). While we wandered the shops we happened upon Dee’s Yarn Nook which was a cute little store with a nice variety of products and a nice little seating area on the porch for boys-who-tolerate-yarn-stores-but-maybe-need-to-make-a-phone-call-or-something. That’s where I finally broke down and bought one of these:

Yep. That’s my first Barbara Walker bible. They didn’t have the first one or I may have bought that too. I think this book could be really dangerous. I already have several ideas for sock patterns.

After Blowing Rock it was a short drive to Boone. By this time it was getting pretty hot and sticky and we were in search of relief in the form of ice cream. [side note: those of you in the north east who have been dealing with this wicked heat wave- you totally have my permission to blame me for the awful weather. It was perfect the whole time we were away except for one day of rain and the last couple of days we were down there. I fully believe it hitched a ride on the back of our car as we made our way home and we couldn't defend ourselves since we couldn't see out the back of the car. Mea culpa.] Our faithful GPS (a.k.a. Gromitt) lead us to a Marble Slab (apparently the southern equivalent of Cold Stone) in a mall in which HWJF suddenly noted a huge sign for YARN right next door! I love that we found yarn even when it was the furthest thing from our minds! Turns out it was Laura’s Yarn Tastic which was another lovely (air conditioned!) store full of fantastic yarns and even a little bit of spinning fiber. I resisted the urge to buy a sweater’s worth of Blue Sky Cotton and instead ended up with…

more sock yarn! Miss Babs Hand-Painted Sock and Baby to be exact. The colors in this one just couldn’t be ignored.

I definitely thought I was pretty restrained with my yarn purchases this time around. Perhaps the new wheel had something to do with that. Speaking of which, that isn’t all the yarn I came home with! Some of the fiber I brought with me actually turned into yarn too. For instance, remember how I saw some tulips and hydrangeas in the park one day? I dyed the fiber before I left.

And made it into my first spin on the ladybug.

That’s 360 yards of BFL goodness at about fingering weight. The purple needed to be a bit bluer to match what I was going for but I’m pretty happy with how the colors played out in the finished yarn. And I totally loves me the Ladybug!

I also brought a pound of some wool from sheep named Khalu I had purchased from a local farm with me and spun it up into this:

All told there is about 542 yards of this Rambouillet/Columbia/Dorset cross in this lovely dark chocolate brown. I spun it to a good worsted weight and after washing it bloomed really nicely and has a great bounce to it. It isn’t next to the skin soft, but it isn’t super scratchy either.

Finally I also spun up another pound of something that definitely isn’t for me.

All together there is about 696 yards of this 100% merino in a nice bright orange. I tried to spin this with a little less twist in both the plying and the spinning to retain it’s lovely softness. I picked this up at Rhinebeck last year from The Sheepshed with HWJF in mind. It definitely isn’t going to work for socks, so we’ll have to figure something else out.

Well I hope you’ve gotten your fill of delicious yarns with this post today. On Friday I’ll prove that I really did do some knitting. Honest!

Tags: Handspun, Spinning, Stash, Travel, yarns

So I fear that I haven’t got much in the way of interesting today. I’m at my conference and I haven’t planned ahead very well and quite frankly I’m a bit tired. I shall distract you with yarn.

Oooh! Pretty!!! Yes?!?!

That’s about 188 yards of yarn from the stuff I dyed recently. I guess I just couldn’t wait to spin it up and see how it would come out. I did, in fact, decide to ply the “mistake” with the good stuff and I think I like the combination. I just hope there isn’t too much white in this yarn for a baby thing. Thoughts?

And just so this isn’t a total cop out entry, how about I answer a question from last week?

Kristy asked:

Have you always loved blue, or was there some turning point when it became your favorite color?

I honestly can’t remember a time I didn’t like blue. It’s always been blue for me. But there may have been some conditioning involved. You see, *both* my parents? Their favorite color is blue. So I guess it just runs in the family! And incidentally, I’m the only one with blue eyes, although if I remember my high school science well enough that actually isn’t surprising since blue eyes are a recessive trait. My maternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather had blue eyes so it kind of makes sense that I would come out with them too. Hmmm…. that was probably more information than you needed wasn’t it? Blame it on my being surrounded by librarians right now.

More knitting content on Friday! I’ve already met another knitter and she recognized me from my Ravelry pic so I’ve already been told where the LYS is located. And there is going to be an MLA SnB at some point so there is bound to be plenty o’ fun in the next couple of days to report back on!

Tags: MLA, Spinning

…begins with a swatch. After my recent success in spinning I’ve finally gotten up the courage to take the leap and start spinning my own yarn for a sweater for myself. Not an entirely monumental task, but not a small one all the same.

I surveyed the fiber stash and remembered two different 1 pound lots of merino fiber that I bought at this year’s Maryland Sheep and Wool. The first is from the “Toney road collection” and was purchased from The Little Barn (a favorite fiber supplier of mine thanks to an introduction by Risa last year at Rhinebeck). There is blue mixed with several other colors in this fiber. While it’s very pretty as roving and also very pretty spun up, I thought it might be a bit too dull for my tastes by itself.

Enter fiber that I bought from Ohio Valley Natural Fibers. A lovely royal blue that would coordinate quite well with the Toney road and brighten it up a bit.

I want the yarn for this to be near a worsted weight and to be nice and round and warm. That all means three ply is the way to go. So I put a plan in action. I’ll spin two bobbins of the Toney road fiber and one of the Ohio fiber and ply them together. I decided to do a little test before I jumped in with both feet. I took a small length of each fiber, spun it one night, plyed it the next and gave it a wash. When dry, I knit up the swatch below. I used US size 7 Crystal Palace Bamboo circs and did some garter stitch on the edges to eliminate some of the tendency to curl.

At first I thought the yarn might be too thick, but the more I worked with it the more I liked it. I have been knitting socks all summer after all (and even before the summer!) so just about anything would feel thick right now. The fabric is flexible, which I thought was important, and the yarn has a nice spring to it. I have a small fear of it getting to be too heavy in a large garment, but once again, I don’t have much to go on right now. I mean, even the current sweater in progress is dk weight, not worsted!

So what do you think? Does insanity reign here at Zarzuela Knits? On second thought, don’t answer that.

ETA: This is a long term project and most definitely *not* being considered for Rhinebeck. I may be crazy, but I’m not suicidal!

*I have no idea how many stitches are really in a sweater my size and honestly, I don’t think I want to know! I just thought it would be a catchy title.

Not that you would know from the blog lately. In fact, I haven’t even posted two skeins that I did while I was on vacation yet! Here’s the first

and the closeup

I finished the spinning while I was at camp. I spent most of one day plying it up. After doing this it became real obvious that I needed another plying solution. I started with 8 oz. of fiber and the skein ended up being over 800 yards, so I’m thinking a large version of the Swallowtail shawl might be interesting. For now it’s marinating in the handspun stash.

The second skein came from fiber HWJF bought me one day at Woolbearers. It’s a romney/mohair blend that was dyed by the store.

and the close up

I spun and plyed this during the last couple of days we were at camp. It dried out on the railing of the porch on the last day. It seems kind of far away now…

The latest skein, came from fiber I dyed in my dyeing class. It was pretty badly matted when I got done with the dyeing. Luckily, Risa had some hand cards that she let me use so I was able to straighten it out a bit. I ended up spinning and plying it in a single evening.

It’s only about 40 yards, but it might make the beginnings of an interesting hat or something when paired with some commercial yarn. Not terrible for a quick and dirty spin, not to mention I probably haven’t spun from a rollag since my spinning class last fall!

I’ve also finished up the blue stuff I was working on when the Jersey Spinners got together before the 4th. I’m hoping to ply that up real soon and see what I end up with. Perhaps there are merino/tencel socks in my future? Time will tell….

Have a great weekend!

Especially when they are knit mostly from handspun yarn!

Handspun Socks

Pattern: My usual toe up pattern with the exception of the use of an afterthought heel

Yarn: Dale Baby Ull for toes and heels, my own handspun for the rest (dyed fiber purchased from the Little Barn during Rhinebeck 2006)

Needles: size 1 addi turbos

Knit: 1/28-4/25/2007

It certainly took me long enough to finally finish these, but it still feels like a good accomplishment. My yarn works!! These are the first thing I’ve ventured to knit with all the yarn that I’ve been making and they came out pretty well. It is amazing how knitting at a tight gauge makes the yarn look better! I still decided to play it a bit safe and used commercial yarn for the toes and heels since the heels especially seem to get felted quickly on HWJF’s socks. We’ll see if that was a wise decision as time goes on. The fabric on these came out nice and cushy while still appearing to be fairly strong, so I’m hoping these will be enjoyed for some time to come.

The afterthought heel was new for me. I’m not particularly in love with the technique, mostly because taking out the waste yarn to open up the seam where the heel will end up is a bit of a pain, but I’m glad I gave it a try. It also amounts to a short row heel which is also not a favorite for me, but the recipient doesn’t seem to mind.

More on the Entrelacs

In a somewhat related topic, I wore my Entrelac Socks extensively and in shoes on Sunday. I’m happy to report that the patterning on the soul of the foot really wasn’t troublesome. I half expected to get huge blisters or something, but that wasn’t the case. While I did notice the texture, it didn’t make my feet sore or bother me. I didn’t exactly walk 100 miles in them, but I think they do pass the wearability test. I also think that a loftier yarn than the Dale Baby Ull might have minimized the feeling on the bottom of the foot even more. Maybe I’ll have to knit another pair sometime in another yarn to find out.

And more spinning

I also thought I’d share the results of sending my finished but not very nicely plyed yarn back through the wheel:

Definitely better. Not perfect, but better.

There is more sock knitting news on my needles right now but you’ll have to wait on that. Expect a big announcement in the next couple of days. See you then!

Thanks again everyone for your comments on the socks in the last post. They definitely seem to be a real crowd pleaser.

Today, I’ve got another finished spinning project to share. I am *much* happier with the results this time around. This is another bunch of fiber from Lisa Sousa. This time it’s the superfine merino in the Elektra colorway:

This was definitely some beautiful fiber to spin and once again, the dyeing made it all the more interesting. Unfortunately my camera and the lighting when I took the pictures didn’t really seem to want to cooperate with me for showing off that beautiful dye job, but you sort of get the idea here.

Most importantly of all, thanks to comments by several people my plying worked out much better this time:

You can always click to make the pic bigger.

I’m so much happier this time around. I’m not sure if it was just the fact that I was paying more attention, leaving the drive band on the same whorl, or the series of whacks against the wall as suggested by Beth and Jess, but the results are definitely more pleasing to me. The spinning could be a bit more even, but I can’t have everything I guess.

Incidentally, last night I put the last huge skein that I wasn’t happy with the plying on back through the wheel. I also gave it another wash and a few good whacks and it seems to be better this time around. Hopefully it will be dry over the weekend so I can see the final result and share it with all of you.

If the sun ever comes out again (seriously, could someone please send the rain to Georgia where they *need* it!), there might even be more finished objects to share next week.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

It was a busy but nice weekend in my world. On Saturday I had to go into work for a few hours in the morning to make up for my day off thanks to the great flood of ’07, so I took a few pictures of all the blooming trees in our area on my way:

At the train station

At our apartment complex

On the way to the train

HWJF and I have a theory. You see, there was so much water that the trees drank so much that they got *really* drunk. And now they are throwing up, only when a tree barfs, it comes out as flowers! Yes. Well. Perhaps we are not exactly mentally stable. Moving on…

Since I was done with work by noon I decided to take a trip down to Purl in Soho. It’s rare that I actually get to do anything fun in NYC, so I take my chances when I can. It was a nice store, with a very small but very well stocked storefront. I fondled some of the softest cashmere ever, but at $40 a skein managed to put it back on the shelf. I also resisted the wall o’ koigu and came out having only purchased one of the new addi lace needles (Maryland is in two weeks, I’m on a budget!). On first inspection they really don’t appear all that much more pointy then the old ones, but the chord does seem a lot more flexible. I’ll be sure to tell you more when I finally get to use them.

When I got home, HWJF managed to get out of work early so we could go make some spring purchases:

I haven’t lived in one place long enough to make this kind of investment in years, but seeing as we’ll be in NJ for at least another year, the time was right for making a container garden on our balcony. Obviously we went with two railing containers. The first is for edibles and has peppermint, lettuce and basil in it with a few marigolds thrown in for fun:

The second is for flowers and contains mini impatiens, dahlias, a begonia and more marigolds (can you tell I like marigolds?).

There were a few leftovers:

We plan on finding a big pot for these. Maybe we should have gotten this one that we saw at one of the garden centers:

A tea pot flower pot! Genius! I happen to love tea pots too.

We also got one other food plant:

I sure hope this guy grows up to give us some fresh tomatoes!

Finally, for the first time since we moved in, we had dinner out on the deck:

Gotta love the self portrait with the glowing red eyes!

By the time we were really moved in last year, it was way too hot to be able to enjoy it out there. I think this year, we might do this more, especially now that we have some nice plants to admire! Or at least I hope we will all summer. Besides knowing how to plant something, I seriously have no clue when it comes to gardening. I’m sure that probably shows in the pics.

On the crafting front I spent Sunday teaching crochet, trying to finish a sock and plying up some new yarn. The teaching was exhausting, but a lot of fun. The socks didn’t quite make it and the yarn is drying. Thanks again to all of you that weighed in on the plying situation, even if it was just to offer encouragement! I always appreciate the conversation that goes on here between us. It’s very inspiring.

Hopefully there will be more fiber-related content next time. Until then, enjoy the beautiful weather if you can!