I started this project a week or two ago inspired by the KnitWiki to create a SpinWiki. On the Spindlers Ravelry group, I find myself and other members explaining the same concepts over and over. I personally don’t mind this, and consider it a part of forum culture. New people arrive and need the same information as everyone else. However, I thought that perhaps having a place online with answers to their questions might help some people. I know there will always be those that need direct help and answers to their questions.

So I’ve finally opened up the SpinWiki publicly after spending quite a bit of time getting the basic structure up. I wanted to have all the policy, copyright, and help information all ready before opening things up. I also wanted to make sure I understood how things worked, and that I had some idea for a system in place for a community to form. I’ve had a little activity from others, but so far not a lot of information being added. I’ve been doing what I can when I’m feeling reasonably intelligent, but the articles I’ve added will definitely need more. Hopefully I can slowly build up a steady number of contributors so we’ll have one place where we can learn more about spinning.

I had a wonderful time on Saturday shopping at my local fiber store. Thanks to my awesome husband I got a lot of nice new fibers to try. One of them I chose specifically for the Spindlers group challenge on Ravelry, so I had to start spinning it right away. This is some beautiful hand-dyed silk cap that I thought perfectly fit the theme “Stirrings of Spring”.

If ever you have been told by your fiber or spindle just what you are going to spin, then you will know what it was like for me to start this “yarn”. I pulled out all my available spindles, which were all fairly light weight. I like spinning lace so this was fine with me, but I was not intending to spin quite as fine a yarn as I got. I tell you, as I was drafting out these long silk fibers I felt almost as if the spindle and silk were conspiring against me to do as they wanted. I thought to myself that even if I were to ply this thin-beyond-laceweight yarn it would be too thin to consider knitting. I like lace but geeze!

Another thing that makes this yarn unique is that it’s a very low twist despite being so fine. The fibers are so incredibly long (6″ and up, you can imagine how far apart my hands need to be to draft it) so they hold together very easily. This is perfect for embroidery thread, because I won’t have to ply and it will retain much of its sheen. It’s a very unique spinning process, I must say.

I’ve done some embroidery in my time, and in fact embroidery was my craft of choice for a good year before I decided to learn how to knit. I don’t like it as much as knitting as it doesn’t have that same meditative quality. However, it does satisfy my need to create, and I can get a bit more artistic with it than with knitting or spinning. It was decided then; this “yarn” that I was spinning officially became thread.

I’ve completed what seem like one or two layers of silk cap into what you see above. I leared my lesson with this first length of thread, and taped a tube of cardstock to the shaft of the spindle before starting the second batch. Winding all that thread onto a more manageable cardstock bobbin took forever, and I wasn’t planning to do it again.

I’ve been plotting, and scheming, and thinking about what I’m going to embroider with it. I’m thinking a mostly monochrome piece with some leaves and stems. I have some nice even weave linen that’s easy to embroider on, and we could use another decoration for the wall. Hopefully I can get some pictures up of my embroidery doodles as I tested out this thread. It works great! There is lots of shine with just a hint of texture.

I finally brought out the hat tonight, hoping it was going to look penitent. I’m not sure whether or not it did, but I certainly had more motivation to put time into fixing it. I’d originally started this hat bottom up, cut off the ribbing to pick up stitches and knit down again. I wanted a hemmed bottom with some short row shaping to bring the hem around the ears a little lower. Well I fudged that up by making the hem too high after already sewing down ripping back up and sewing down again. It was at this point that it went into the basket for I don’t even remember how long.

Another 2am finished object, and it always seems to be on Saturday night. Anyway, I started undoing my sewing to an old production of Sense and Sensibility, and got to working on a ribbed edge. Back to the beginning again. I don’t know why this hat should have been so much trouble, because there really isn’t much to it! I’ve done all manner of complicated knits, but this is my third and only successful attempt at knitting a hat. I think the one thing I should have done different was to knit the ribbing on a needle size smaller. Glad to have this one done and off my needles!

Oh yeah, and the 2am part explains why I look so horrid in the picture. I just wanted to get it over with!

Time and swatching have really paid off. A lot of times when I’ve got an idea for something I want to knit, I try to go the quick way out. I knit the piece just how I think it should work, and there’s always something off or something I need to creatively work around. I have a hard time making myself just swatching multiple times before I get it right. This time I took the time I needed to look at stitch patterns, and wait until I found just the right thing. Yesterday I decided to try to work up something on my own based on some of the stitch patterns I’d been looking at. After several swatch attempts, and a few charts and re-charts I finally worked out a stitch edging that I really really like.

The first (green) scarf will be based on a stitch pattern right from an old book, and the second one (as seen above) will be based on something inspired from similar stitch patterns. I really wanted something simple, and different enough from the first one. While doing this I learned a really cool technique that makes those little loops on the very edge. At the start of every row you do a YO, K2TOG to create the loop and keep the same number of stitches. It’s a bit tricky to figure out how to do a yarn over at the beginning of a row, but very easy once you see it.

I just can’t wait to finish these! I’m totally enamored by the simplicity and texture, and they’re damn easy to knit.

Because of a new scarf idea, I’ve been scouring the internet and what books I have for old lace patterns. I should be more specific and say that I’ve been searching for garter stitch lace edging stitch patterns. During my search I’ve realized that I don’t have nearly enough old publications about knitting. The little taste I got from the library book sale isn’t enough, and some of the internet sources I’ve found have really inspired me. Some were new to me, and others I’ve gone back to many times before.

I’ve looked through old knitting patterns, and pictures of “vintage” style patterns but the vast majority of them really don’t excite me. Anything post-1930s is just too recent, and the styles of the clothing really don’t suit me. Who am I kidding, the style of any non-contemporary knitwear generally doesn’t appeal to me. What really gets me interested are the stitch patterns, knitted household items, clothing accessories, and the very way in which they write the patterns to begin with. If you browse through some old knitting publications you’ll see how far we’ve come in standardizing how we describe these stitches we work. Even today there’s a small learning curve (although sometimes not so small!) to reading a pattern. Imagine the learning curve in days past! Old patterns have no gauge and sometimes have a yarn specification such as “Berlin, or any other soft wool”, refer to “make one” which can sometimes be a yarn over and sometimes a closed increase and the pattern will not explain which it is. Fortunately some people have helped interpreting some of these old patterns and put them online.

• Knitting-and.com’s Free Patterns

• Antique Pattern Library - Scanned public domain full publications!

• The KnitWiki

• The Art of Knitting 1897 - Rewritten and swatched by Cindy

• And a bunch more

I’m not going to go into too many details about this project I’m working on, because I kind of want it to be a surprise. I’m going to make a couple of different versions. The first version I’ve already started knitting away, but I still need to figure out what lace edging I want to use for the second. When I’m done I’ll write up a little pattern for them and post lots of nice pictures. It’s funny because this pattern idea really goes back to something I tend to do time and time again: stuff that you can do with any yarn, and any sized needles.

The more I knit on this scarf and the more I look at it, the more I just love the textured simplicity.

I am really proud of myself. I have only done colorwork in knitting two times, and you’re looking at one of them.

I’ve been wanting to knit a Christmas stocking for a while, and got the motivation to swatch out my ideas last week. I sketched out a few potential charts and liked this one enough to try it. It’s quite simple, but the colors and the contrast really bring it out. While I was knitting I was a bit worried about my tension because stranded knitting is so different and awkward. I struggled with whether to hold my two colors in two hands, or in one and in the end it was much easier to use one hand with them separated a bit.

A few of the stitches are either too loose or too tight, but for the most part I got a pretty even tension. It’s amazing what blocking will do to remove puckering too. I’m excited now to soon start the stocking, and I don’t care that Christmas is ten months away. I think I’ll start at the toe and go up as I don’t know how big I can get it with the yarn I have. Now I’m all excited to start sketching out charts for other colorwork ideas!

I’ve got lots of things to say today so let’s see if I can’t get them out in a clear and concise way. First, my new toy…

I have been wanting one of these Turkish spindles for a long time. It’s from Jenkins Woodworking who did an amazing job on this handcrafted work of art. One of the draws to this type of spindle (aside from it’s stylish look) is that by winding your yarn between the cross arms you get a center-pull ball instead of a cop. They are designed so that you can slide the arms (and yarn) up the shaft and pull the arms apart while your ball remains in tact. However, I have found out a few more things about spinning with this type of spindle.

1) It’s not a space saver when in use. Of course while you don’t have yarn in progress going it flattens quite nicely. When it’s assembled for use the cross arms seem to take up about 4 inches in diameter, and can make it difficult when I sit and spin. 2) It tends to spin slowly despite what it says on the Jenkins woodworking page. It’s a hell of a long spinner, but it takes a good bit of force to get it going. Perhaps there’s a technique that I’m unaware of, but for now I have to be content with what I have. I’m having to spin counter-clockwise (unlike normal) because it’s easier for my fingers to put more spin into it that way. 3) It’s so fun to watch it spin!

I started off spinning the Turkish with this little bit of corriedale sent in the packaging. This is the first time I’ve ever spun this type of wool, and it really is beautiful stuff. It’s soft and fluffy, and I have a finished skein of navajo 3-ply hanging in my bathroom to attest to it. The fiber I’m currently spinning on it isn’t nearly as cooperative or nice to spin though.

It turns out that I just don’t have the knack for spinning alpaca. This fiber is a beautiful natural brown, and really quite soft. I have a bunch of it that was given to me as a Christmas gift, and I had almost given it up for good. However, I got some great advice from some over in the Ravelry Spindlers group that has helped me a bit. Some of the things I’ve learned lead me to start this alpaca on the Turkish spindle.

1) Alpaca becomes really wiry with too much twist, and the window between too much and too little twist is very small. This means that I have spindle droppage quite often, and for a fairly intermediate spinner this is frustrating. Using the slower (but long spinning) Turkish spindle makes it hard for me to put too much twist. 2) After dropping my spindle and the yarn breaking, I find it very very difficult to join the already spun yarn to the fiber. I have absolutely no problems doing this with wool, but for some reason the efforts with alpaca often elude me. I hate that it takes so much more time. 3) Some have recommended spinning from the fold. I haven’t been doing so for this yarn because I find it much more difficult to draft that way. However this yarn is turning out to be very directional, and fuzzes a ton when I slide my hands up it.  That may be why. Aside from these few difficulties, so far so good as you can see.

Sometimes I just get the desire to spin away into the night.

I’ve got a lot of progress on the hat I swatched for a few days ago, but it’s in the corner right now. I’ll write about it later when I’m not sick of it. I’ve got more fun things to show you today.

I’ve been wanting to knit the Knitty pattern Square Cake for some time now, and even started it a while back in this same handspun yarn. I decided the large was too big, and I didn’t like all the purling in the original pattern. Yesterday I finally decided to retry it with a few modifications that I’m really excited about. You can see the beads that I’m putting in the vertical stripe every 4 rows, and I get to use one of the cutest little crochet hooks I’ve ever seen to put them on. Unfortunately what you can’t see is the beautiful cabled braid on a stockinette ground. I love this technique of cable; it creates such a soft texture.

I tried to do the braid with one of my new cable needles, but unfortunately the smallest is a little too big…

I couldn’t resist these two little purchases, even though both of them will probably not be much use to me. The crochet hook fits in my notions tin, but I use my needles to pick up dropped stitches. The cable needles are stained a beautiful dark color, but the smallest is too big for most of the knitting I do. However, I don’t regret buying them for one second!

Hopefully when I’ve got more done (and there’s more sun out for better pictures) I can get a picture where you can see the cable better. I love this pattern, and the way one of the straps can slip over the other as a closure. I think more little bags like this are in my future.

OK so it’s totally wierd showing a picture of my ass on the internet, but it’s totally covered and it’s for a purpose. That secret newly completed project I mentioned in a previous post is indeed the Mon Petit Chou from Knitty. I spent all day Sunday finishing it, finally got some elastic and ribbon for the finishing touches so I could get some photos. This was the best way to show off the lace (otherwise it looks like a lump of yarn) without showing off my ass.

Some of this was a bit of a pain to knit, like the short-rows on the back piece. For some reason I didn’t get the right alignment of stitches on each side, had to rip out and fudge it a little. I didn’t bother going back to see if it was the pattern or me, but if you knit this and find difficulties there don’t say I didn’t warn you. This yarn was a bit difficult to get used to at first due to the stretch, but I kind of like how it knits up. It’s also nice and soft too.

All in all a fun knit, and I’m glad I did this just to say I could.