Spinzilla Wrap-Up

I survived another year of Spinzilla!  I know, I should have posted this a week and a half ago, but I've been recovering...

Left to right: Unspun fiber; Jack "helping" spin on my Ashford Joy; me spinning on my Spinolution Hopper in the backyard; over 2000 yards of yarn spun and plied during one week of Spinzilla!

I ended up with eight 4-oz. skeins (so 2 lbs.!) of yarn spun, for total credit of 6078 yards (4052 yards of singles plus 2026 yards of plying).  My goal was to beat last year's yardage, which was 2152 yards of singles, since plying didn't count last time.  So I almost doubled my singles yardage from last year, plus I have 8 fewer bags of unspun fiber in my stash, which is a definite "win" in my book.  And the yardage officially puts me in the Monster Mile club, too (I actually got almost 3.5 miles spun!).

The fiber for seven of the eight skeins is from The Dyeing Arts, which I am happy to see is still around, since the fiber I spun this year has been in my stash for at least 4 or 5 years.  I spun up a bunch of Merino Dazzling Duos, which are superwash merino rovings in 2 separate colors (2 oz. of each color), and I plied the two colors together.  The effects are pretty amazing--I call the photo below my "color study" (unintentional, but cool anyway):

Top to bottom: unspun fiber; first singles yarn; second singles yarn; final plied yarn

Left to right colorways: Cheshire Cat (purple/pink); King of Hearts (green/pink); Queen of Hearts (blue-purple/pink); Caterpillar (blue-purple/green)

The lighting on the singles photos is a little weird (because I was just taking pictures as I was spinning, I didn't have time to wait for daylight!), but the pinks are all the same, the blue/purples are the same, and the greens are almost the same.  The effects in the final plied yarn are pretty cool, and the lighting on those is consistent--with one ply identical between the first three yarns (l-r), the final yarns coordinate but are completely different.

I still have to finish the yarn and figure out what my final weight is so I can try to pick some projects... but I've been busy catching up on knitting:

This is the Moera I was having such trouble with in my last post.  I finally successfully cast it on last weekend, and now the knitting is almost done.  I'm trying to finish up this sweater and another one for Jack by the end of the month so I can start my NaKniSweMo sweater on November 1st:

This is my swatch for a CustomFit Stonington in Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in Long Johns.  The color is not quite so bright in person (someday I will figure out how to get reds to look okay in my photos!).

Which brings me to the 2014 Knitting Challenge... it's almost over!  I am currently debating whether or not to start a 2015 Knitting Challenge.  More on that in a future post--but if you're interesting in joining me for a 2015 Knitting Challenge, please leave a comment and let me know.

Until next time, happy knitting/spinning, everyone!

“Wants” vs. “Shoulds”

I recently took a career workshop focused on women and work, and we discussed how we should spend less time worrying about the "shoulds" in our lives and more time worrying about our "wants" (or, at the very least, being able to identify which is which), because things we think we "should" be doing are not our own "wants", but probably someone else’s (or at least what we THINK someone else wants us to do). Bottom line: We shouldn’t be neglecting actual needs, but we should be cognizant of what we actually want for ourselves vs. what we think other people want from us.

Now, despite my having a blog and everything, knitting falls firmly into the "hobby" category for me, and therefore I feel it should be made up of FAR more "wants" than "shoulds" (so when I start thinking about my knitting in terms of what I "should" do instead of what I "want" to do, I need to take a step back and reconsider!) Case in point: here’s an example from the past few weeks of my knitting life…

The pattern is Moera, for a Knits for Boys KAL in October (though it’s okay to start early, which I was trying to do). The yarn is left over from a sweater I made for my husband a few years ago (Berroco Ultra Alpaca). The gauge for that sweater was the same as this new pattern calls for (5 sts/inch), so I thought I could use the same size needles (8) and skip swatching (more on that later!).

Keep in mind: I’m not a huge fan of bottom-up sweaters with one-piece yokes. So I decided to start with the sleeves, since that’s my least favorite part (especially doing stripes in the round). With stripes, I have to do the sleeves one at a time (otherwise the yarn gets hopelessly tangled, especially with 3 colors!).

I got a few inches up the first sleeve before I realized my stripe pattern wasn’t going to work (in terms of having the right proportion of each color, according to the yardage I have available). So I ripped back to the ribbing and tried to start again, then decided to work on this instead (a 2014 Knitting Challenge project, so it’s easy to justify this one):

 

• Yarn: Dream in Color Jilly, in the Finally, Spring! colorway (my Mother's Day present from this past May)
• Pattern: Let your heart unwind, from Joji Locatelli

I finished that shawl (sorry for the crappy blocking photo, I haven't had a chance to get good finished photos yet), then decided that I didn’t really want to do the sleeves of this sweater bottom-up, so I ripped out what I had left.

I thought about re-jiggering the entire pattern to knit it top-down (I’ve actually done this before, so I know I can do it!). I realized that this is probably a silly idea since I paid for the pattern so I wouldn’t have to essentially design it myself. I decided that I could do the body bottom-up, then do a provisional CO for the sleeve stitches, finish the yoke and hood, and then do the sleeves top-down (as a bonus, this should make it easier to match stripes between the body and sleeves).

So I started casting on for the body and ran out of yarn for the long-tail cast-on about 2/3 of the way to the stitch count I needed. I started over again with more yarn, and ran out ~10 sts before the count I needed (and decided I didn’t want to fudge it with a knitted cast on for the last few stitches, because it was enough stitches that you would have noticed it right on the front of the sweater). Then I cast on a 3rd time, and ended up okay, but with a huge length of extra yarn left over (!).

The I knit the body ribbing, and started on the stockinette, and thought it looked a little big. I took a rough gauge measurement and realized I’m getting more like 4.5 sts/inch instead of 5 sts/inch. Then I remembered that my husband’s sweater in this yarn was knit entirely in the round (steeked—which I don’t really want to do with this new sweater), and my flat gauge tends to be a bit looser, so I need to start over and go down a needle size :(.

• Photo of the ill-fated start of this sweater body.

THEN I realized that my needles one size down are busy in another project (for another KAL making ANOTHER sweater for my son)… yes, I have other needles, but my ChiaoGoo Twist interchangeable set is my absolute favorite, and I don’t like using my other interchangeables as much (and size 7 isn’t a size I keep fixed circulars in).

So, the final "Want" vs. "Should" analysis: I’m pretty sure I still want to make this sweater for my son, in the yarn I’ve already picked out (I forgot how yummy this yarn is to work with!). I feel like I should finish it before the end of October for the KAL… and that’s where I need to cut myself some slack (it’s not even the kind of KAL where there are prizes for finishing on time!). Also, we live in Southern California, and my son already has a drawer full of handknit sweaters, so it’s not like he NEEDS more knitwear anytime soon!

So that’s when I decided to cast on a shawl in my own hand-dyed yarn:

• Yarn: my own hand-dyed yarn, in a superwash merino/bamboo blend
• Pattern: At dawn, also from Joji Locatelli (she had a sale recently, so I stocked up on patterns!)

I dyed this yarn awhile back with the thought of making a shawl with it, but it’s been sitting around since then with no definite pattern in mind (mostly because I originally started with 3 colors, and didn’t like the way one turned out with the others, so I scrapped my original plan and ended up with only 2 colors). Then I picked up some awesome patterns on sale in the past few weeks, and found one that would work.

I’ll come back to Moera later (maybe in October for the KAL, maybe later than that). Jack is excited about having a sweater in colors to match Daddy’s sweater, and by the time I get back to it maybe the weather will cool down enough that he can wear sweaters again (though I’m making it big, so it will fit for more than 5 minutes, and there’s no huge rush).

Up next: Spinzilla, October 6-12!

 

 

 

 

 

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