Thursday, October 13, 2011

Spinning Frantically

Lately I haven't been doing a ton of knitting. Well, I should amend that. I've been knitting a lot (and crocheting really) but not finishing anything. It's very difficult to have anything interesting to talk about when you don't have finished objects.

I did manage to finish my Travelling socks though.

They are VERY fraternal but I love them anyway. I knit on them over about a year whenever I was in the car (as a passenger) and whenever I was out somewhere that wasn't home. I didn't work on them with any sort of speed because I love that they travel with me and get knit in all kinds of interesting places. They were knit in Duluth while camping and at the Air show last year, again in Duluth for our Knitting class with Three Irish Girls and in Wisconsin. Then this year they spent a good deal of time in the armrest of my hubby's car and finally made another trip to Wisconsin where they were finished. Lots of memories and beautiful socks at the end too! Really they should have their own post, of all the amazing places they've been but I really want to talk spinning today.

I've been doing a bunch of spinning lately and almost none of it has been posted about.
This is the lovely Spin-Along with the Zarzuela group. It started like this:

(This picture is awful because it was taken with flash at night) You can see though that it's 3 braids of 2 ounces each. Two are semi-solid and one is made to stripe. You chose your colors and your fiber, mine is BFL, and the lovey Zarzuela dyed it for you. I have a purpley-pink with a lovely grey. I spun and spun and spun. (This took a good long time!) Then I plied it up and ended up with this:

A lovely 3-ply yarn, the color is much more accurate in this picture. The goal was to spin each braid onto one bobbin each and then ply the three together. That's what I did. I really love the look of the finished yarn but I'm a little disappointed in my spinning. I only got about 366 yards out of 6 ounces! I can usually get much more yardage but I love it anyway.

After that, I needed to get my Plurk Swap fiber spun for my swap buddy.
If your name is Sairy, look away!

Last Chance.....



I chose a lovely (BFL again) fiber in Wisconsin and set about spinning it. I ended up with this:

A beautiful laceweight yarn. It's a two-ply and I got about 600 yards. Now I need to find a pattern and get knitting it! I'm so excited about it and this yarn is so pretty I'm so tempted to keep it for myself.

Finally, I took advantage of CJKopec's Free Shipping sale and made a couple of purchases. One of them was this beautiful Superwash BFL. It was a little different than I was expecting when I got it and I just wasn't sure how it would spin up.

I know fiber can look way different after spinning though so I took a chance and set to work.
I made a two-ply because I thought the yarn would look lovely with the colors all blended together.

It came out lovely! It's somewhere between a sport and a worsted weight at 280-something yards. I'm not sure what it wants to be yet but I think it's gorgeous!

I did start on my Christmas knitting but I haven't gotten very far. Good thing I decided not to do a whole lot of Christmas knitting this year!

Here are some socks for my Dad, knit two-at-a-time with some lovely Regia Kaffee Fassett Design Line. They are going to be fraternal though because they started at a different place in the yarn which I didn't realize at first. Oh well, he should enjoy them anyway!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks again for being such a lovely hostess and fixing such a wonderful lunch.

I can testify as to the gorgeousness of her spun yarn -- I got to hold it in person! *drool*

Karen