Colorful?

I like colors. My wardrobe may offer examples to the contrary, as it is predominantly black, but there are several things I like colors in:

-- Socks. I'm a sucker for self-striping sock yarn (in case this wasn't obvious).
-- Nature. I've lived in a rural area all my life, and every year I am struck by how vibrant spring and summer can be. Trees, flowers, birds, fresh produce...it's all beautiful, and I look forward to all of it no matter how many times I've seen it before.
-- Guitars, particularly Gibson. 'Nuff said.

Despite this, I've never been very enthusiastic about experimenting or playing with color. I always felt that I didn't have an eye for it, a belief that the Circus Sweater drove home rather painfully. Lately, though, my thoughts have been turning to serious dye projects. Experimenting with Kool-Aid is great, but I want to be able to have more control over my dyes. I want more vibrant colors, in something that isn't going to leave my yarn smelling like lemonade and fruit punch. I want...a dye studio.

I know a have a lot to learn before a studio setting could pay off for me, so I've been doing the logical thing: reading up on dyeing and color! I recently perused several such books, including Deb Menz's Color In Spinning, Linda Labelle's The Yarn Lover's Guide to Hand Dyeing, and, most recently, Elaine Eskesen's Dyeing to Knit. I found the latter two especially to be great sources of inspiration. I've learned a lot about the color wheel that I never managed to pick up on before, and tonight I did some experimenting:



I had to darken the image a bit to make the colors stand out properly. It's still not exact, but it's close to the way the design looks in real life. It's in a book of black-and-white, color-them-yourself line designs I got when I was much younger, and I colored it in while referencing a small color wheel in Dyeing to Knit. I even laid the crayon colors out to correspond to the wheel, so the right colors would be easily within reach. I tried some work with complementary colors, color triads, and color harmonies. I think it came out good! I'd like to do a few more, both referencing the color wheel and freehand.

I'm finding some of the information hard to retain, probably because I've never been artsy in that sort of way, but I'm liking what I'm learning. It's fulfilling to feel like I'm finally getting in touch with a side of my creativity that was previously closed off. I'm beginning to feel a little more adventurous where color is concerned, and I think that's the first step towards being able to do the dyeing that I want to do in the near future. I have colorways in my head, inspired by everything from movies to books to RPG characters. I want to continue learning as much as I can in regards to color and dye techniques so that I can make these ideas a reality.

Also, I have discovered the work of Kaffe Fassett. Talk about delightfully insane...

Mood: tired & distracted
Music: Left Bank - Just Walk Away, Renee

The computer and the blog both need attention

Here I am, playing catch-up again. I was doing so well for a while there! I definitely need to get back into the blog groove.

My laptop has started sneezing on me every time I try to scroll through a large amount of files that are also of large size. Read: Explorer crashes. This is decidedly annoying, especially since I don't know what's causing it. It's making it quite hard to transfer large files between the desktop and the laptop. For now, I'm defragging the hard drive and letting Avast AntiVirus do its thing to make sure all's well on the software front. I'd forgotten just how long defragging takes.

While all of that is going on, and Pandora serenading me in the background, I'm going to bring this blog up to speed!

First off, the spinning:



This is one skein (approximately half) of the merino I spun a while back. Before I started some socks with it, I decided to do a little dyeing experiment. No pictures from that, but it involved five jars, some Kool-Aid, and a bit of steam! The colors didn't turn out as vivid as I wanted, but the result was a yarn with a somewhat tie-dyed appearance, so overall it was a good result.

The first sock, done toe-up to maximize yarn usage:

The ball of yarn next to my foot recently became the start of sock #2.

The yarn has more variation in thickness than I thought, and far too much twist in places, but it's knitting up fairly well. I may have to block the socks when all's said and done. It's a learning experience. As I knit, I find myself thinking about things I've read regarding spinning, and considering how to apply them in future spinning ventures. In my experience, this sort of learning takes a little longer and incorporates more trial-and-error than being taught in, say, a class setting, but it works just as well. I'm really enjoying learning new techniques and how to improve what I'm already doing.

Remember the Eastside Weavers roving? Here's what it became:



Thick-thin yarn, predominantly purple, of all things. I didn't realize just how much purple was in the color scheme until I started predrafting and spinning the roving. This led me to think (don't laugh) of Barney, of all things. Which, in turn, led me to think of the Garfield & Friends parody of Barney, Sidney the Pink Dinosaur (Season 7, "The Beast From Beyond"). Which is why this yarn is called "Sidney".

Okay, now you can laugh.

This yarn is available for purchase at my Etsy shop, The Casimir Sheep (formerly Northeast Knits).

Now, the knitting! Excuse the crappy webcam pics; I don't currently have my good camera on me.



I knit the majority of this pair while watching Lost and House, and got a bit more work in while reading extremely long discussion board threads on Ravelry and fighting the Morphing Bacterial Infection of Doom.

The yarn is Trekking XXL that I picked up on that road trip to Pennsylvania, colorway 312. As you can see, I made no attempt to make them match.



First picture of the elusive Phoebe Pullover! This is sleeve #1, attempt #3. The pattern isn't difficult, but it requires more concentration than a lot of what I've been knitting recently (read: socks). My brain keeps trying to convince me that it's mindless, really it is, and I believe it until I find myself three-quarters of the way through a round and realize that I have no idea what stitch I just did, or if it was the right one. I'll have to keep re-training myself to pay attention, I guess!

With the exception of what's on the drop spindle at the moment, that's it! Catching up has been achieved. I can only imagine the chaos that's going to bloom around here when I start on my next endeavor: stash reduction...

Mood: cold
Music: Jim Croce - Dreamin' Again

Twisty tales

Oh hai, I've been spinning again.

I can tell you're not surprised.

On Saturday, my mom and I ventured to a small fiber arts/craft fair and sale in Clifton Park. The main thing I had my eye out for was a drop spindle, and sure enough



that's what I walked away with. The spindle is from Millpoint Emporium, and the fiber I'm spinning was from the table Eastside Weavers had set up. I also got this



from their table, and can't wait to spin it. I'm not usually one for purple, but I thought the overall effect of the colorway was very earthy and pretty. As you can see, I've already isolated the color repeats and am storing the fiber like that so it'll be ready when I am.

I really enjoyed the Millpoint Emporium table. I wish I'd been able to afford more! Among their other beautiful products, they had hand-turned nostpindes, as well as some lovely niddy-noddies. I could easily have bought half the contents of the table!

As it is, I'm loving the drop spindle. It's done its share of dropping, due to my being rather clumsy with the process, but I'm getting better! I've spun a fair amount of the black/red/blue fiber these past few days, mostly while watching the 50th Anniversary Collection of Perry Mason. (Incidentally, I thought I'd take a look yesterday and see if anyone writes Perry Mason fanfiction. Apparently so! Most of it is Perry/Della. How cute is that?)

And...it's starting. I barely have room for my yarn stash, and yet I've begun to amass a fiber stash.



Meet Ex-Parrot (100% Corriedale), and Rufus Lupus (100% Bluefaced Leicester), both from SakinaNeedles. I ordered these for two reasons. One, I like the colors, especially in Ex-Parrot. Two, both of them have, either in the name of the colorway or in the product description, references to British humor.

Ex-Parrot:
"For some reason, all the "weird" kids in my grade at school took Latin instead of Spanish or French. While we were all sitting around one day before class, we realized that with everyone having memorized their favorite scene, and everyone having different favorite scenes, our Latin class could collectively quote our way through the entire script of Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

Rufus Lupus (this is from the merino version of the colorway, which I looked at first):
"My mom claims that I'm turning away customers with names like this because not everyone reads Latin. But I have faith in you. Most of you might not read Latin, and most of you may not have even read Thomas Hobbes, but I have noticed a distinct tendency among spinners to like Terry Pratchett."

If Rufus Lupus is still available in 2009, I'm totally bringing some to the North American Discworld Convention and spinning it while walking around. Stop looking at me like that; the idea wasn't the only reason I had for buying a drop spindle.

Seriously, it wasn't. Stop staring.

In addition to all this fiber acquisition, I've been reading up on hand-dyeing, both yarn and roving, in books like Deb Menz's Color In Spinning. Plus, I'm still working on the Phoebe Pullover, and have cast on a new sock to knit while watching things like Lost and House. How one pair of socks is going to last me until the end of the season for both shows is beyond me. I may have to cast on another before finale time rolls around!

No wonder I want to spend all my time doing fiber-arts-y things rather than working. I need to put some more thought into how badly I want to pursue the possibility of making fiber arts a paying gig.

Is that nuts? >.>

Mood: full o' ennui
Music: CCR - Who'll Stop the Rain

Patience has her perfect work

Yep, more spinning talk!



These are singles spun from just shy of 5 oz. of merino that I picked up on a recent road trip to Pennsylvania. My mom and I were driving along 202 on our way to Blue Bell, and came upon Twist Knitting & Spinning. Seeing as we haven't ventured into PA since I was extremely young, and I'm a sucker for any LYS wherever we happen to be, we stopped and took a look around.

It's a really cute shop. They have a lot of well-known names in yarn, including hand-dyed/handpainted, as well as a diverse selection of fiber. I had the pleasure of sticking my hand in a bag of 100% cashmere, which was, unfortunately, far beyond my budget. There was also merino, angora, camel, and all manner of blends! I settled on the merino, it being both reasonably priced and amazingly soft.

It took me nine days of diligent spinning to get it all done. I spun the singles very thin, with sock yarn in mind, and Navajo plied them.



Then, with the help of a postal scale, I split the yarn into two skeins, roughly 2.5 oz/each.



I haven't swatched yet, but I think I managed to get sock yarn, or very close! I don't know how much it amounts to, yardage-wise. I really need to invest in a yardage counter, or something of the like.

Though it's very pretty as is, I'd like to dye both skeins at some point. Problem is, I've put so much work into them, that the blue and yellow Kool-Aid I bought yesterday somehow doesn't seem like it will do them justice. I'm pondering making concentrated dyes and hand-painting the yarn blue, yellow, and green, but I'm not sure. Having spent 30+ hours spinning and plying this, I don't want to ruin it with a bad or substandard dye job.

I have, however, been practicing dyeing techniques!



I had some KnitPicks' Bare Peruvian wool left over from making Inishmore, so I skeined it up yesterday and goofed off a bit with Kool-Aid and food coloring.

My original intention was to make a colorway with blue, black, red, yellow, and orange. A shortage of red food coloring and a miscalculation in color mixing had me end up with the blue, rose-pink, yellow, and brown in the picture. Despite the difference from what I was picturing, I like it! It's kind of psychedelic. I don't know what I'll do with it, but I'm thinking it'll become a hat for a baby and/or small child.

In case you're wondering, I hand-painted using concentrated Kool-Aid/food coloring dyes mixed up with water and a teeny bit of food coloring. Being unable to locate the sponge brushes I know I have, I ended up cutting a bit off an old sponge, cutting the end at an angle, and using that to dab the dye on. It worked quite well! Then I wrapped the whole thing up and steamed it for about 45 minutes in a strainer suspended over a stainless-steel pot. One thing I learned during the whole process is that I definitely need to hit the discount and thrift stores and get myself a full set of dyeing equipment.

In the near future, I would like to embark on adventures in dyeing with something like Jacquard acid dyes. Perhaps I'll get some practice in with that before I try to dye the merino. I know I want to do some more reading on the subject, especially on making self-striping yarn!

Tomorrow, I'm off to a local fiber arts and crafts fair. I think the world of fiber arts has truly eaten my brain, and I'm not upset about that in the least.

Mood: tired
Music: Michael Nesmith - Rio

I can has handspun?

Yes, I can has handspun!



The picture's a little blurry, but the color is fairly true to life.

This psychedelic yarn started out as hand-dyed wool top from Uniquely Yours Design, in a colorway called Flav-Or-Flav.



The bits of red really caught my eye, and I was pleasantly surprised by the vibrancy of the colors when it came in the mail. I split it up into color repeats:



and split those further in order to spin stripes in succession.



The singles I made from this are the best singles I've spun to date, which makes sense, I guess, seeing as practice has a tendency to beget better results!

Speaking of, I thought about Navajo plying the singles, but decided to go for two-ply this time. I've only practiced Navajo plying once, and didn't want to risk screwing up the process and ruining this great colored wool. I went for two-ply, which resulted in the groovy, Froot-Loop-like effect in the final skein. Thusly, I'm calling it Fruit Loop! I'm not sure exactly what I'll be making out of it yet. I might just let it sit for a while and admire the colors.

I continued my adventures in color yesterday by taking the time to do some dyeing in the kitchen. A little while back, I spun the rest of the natural-colored wool into some two-ply:



Still kind of slubby, but a lot more even than the first batch! I took that, along with a recipe for food coloring dye from Linda Labelle's The Yarn Lover's Guide to Hand Dyeing, and went to work.

I was going for a teal, which turned out as a somewhat muddy green at first, so I tossed the yarn in a second dyebath that was just plain blue, and ended up with a neat ocean color.



If I had to give it a name, I'd call it Under The Sea. (That was always one of my favorite songs from The Little Mermaid. I mean, really, how can you resist a singing crab with a Jamaican accent?) It's destined to become a thick-and-thin garter stitch scarf. Boring as that sounds, I think it'll really show off the color, and the simple stitch won't suffer from the unevenness of the yarn.

The Phoebe Pullover is still underway. But I've really been in a spinning mood lately, so I think I'll wind up posting more about that than knitting over the next couple of weeks!

Mood: distracted
Music: Kate Blain - The Good Life

Felting and Fitzcarraldo

I've really got to stop with these huge gaps between knitblogging. This has become my primary hobby blog, since my interest in Lost blogging has been replaced by extensive post-episode chats, and yet here I am, finding myself in catch-up mode after another month-long gap!

It's been a good month for knitting. I finished Inishmore, but have yet to procure a good photo of the recipient modeling it. I'm quite proud of the way it came out, and she loved like crazy. There's nothing quite like enthusiastic appreciation of a FO!



In the "knitted for friends" department, I present this adorable machine-felted market bag. (Pre-felting on the left, post-felting on the right). I love making felted things, but so rarely have any use for them that I don't bother to do many felting projects.

I especially don't need bags, which is a shame, because bag projects are quick, easy, fun knits. This particular bag only took six days from swatching to felting. A friend of mine knew exactly what sort of bag she wanted, and pointed me toward a pattern that replicated what she had in mind. The handles and bottom are stockinette, and the bag body is garter stitch in the round. The bottom is technically supposed to be all one color, but for some reason I didn't have enough black, and so had to improvise. I think it looks cute, personally!

The primary-colored socks are done, too, as predicted. They're fun socks, although one seems to be a bit too small. I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to pop the kitchener stitch, unravel the toe, and knit a few more rounds before the decreases. I've done that before with other socks, but it's always a bit of a daunting prospect.

Once the socks were done, I cast on for the Phoebe Pullover. I'm--gasp!--using the yarn recommended in the pattern: Andean Silk, except I went for navy blue instead of chocolate brown. Given my small budget, it was a splurge even at the very reasonable KnitPicks price. Totally worth it. Holy crap, is this yarn yummy.

The sweater interests me in several respects. The sizing is very flexible, meaning that, for once, I'll have a finished products that fits without having to make a bazillion little adjustments along the way. Also, everything is knit in the round. The body is done in the round, the sleeves are done in the round and joined to the body...everything. That means practically no seaming, which makes me a happy Sammie. Seams continue to be the bane of my knitting existence.

In between (and sometimes during) all this knitting over the past month, I consumed far too much Monster, co-wrote a massive Lost/Discworld crossover fanfic with a close friend of mine (more on that in future posts), and devoured several albums by the Frames.

My latest love? Fitzcarraldo. It is an amazing album. I can't stop listening to the title track; it's six minutes of pure awesome. If you love the Frames (or Glen Hansard), try and get your hands on a copy. If you've never heard them...start here. Seriously. I'm not plugging this for any other reason than the fact that I love it to bits. There is real beauty here, and not nearly as much of the anger that crops up on later albums like Burn the Maps.

I'm off to knit more on the pullover and probably make myself cry re-watching "Goodbye Radar", parts 1 & 2. I love M*A*S*H.

Mood: headachey
Music: The Frames - Monument

The semi-secret sweater project

It's not actually a secret. It's Alice Starmore's Inishmore.



I'm knitting it for a fellow Wrimo who wants a big, comfy fisherman's sweater.

I officially started it (read: finally stopped screwing it up after the ribbing) on Jan. 26th and have been zipping along ever since. Well, for a given value of "zipping".

There are good things and bad things about this pattern. The good thing is, the cables aren't difficult to memorize and it's easy to start working with only a cursory glance at the pattern once you've knit a few repeats.

The bad thing is...the cables aren't difficult to memorize. Even mixing it up--back, sleeve, front, sleeve--the pattern starts to become tedious. I'm now about halfway through the second sleeve and am alternating between finding the speedy knitting enjoyable and wanting to throw it out the window.

I'm using KnitPicks Bare Peruvian Highland Wool, and oh boy. Never again, at least not for cable work. It had a terrible tendency to split or untwist when the stitches are moved, which can spell disaster for the look of a cable if the knitter isn't paying enough attention. Fortunately, I haven't had any mishaps that are 1) too hard to fix or 2) grossly noticeable.

Another good thing about the cable pattern? It's easy enough to work on while on the computer. Or, in my case, while playing the new Sims 2 expansion pack. What's not to love about Sims who go to a secret Arts & Crafts lot and talk about knitting? (They do, if you watch closely enough!)

The second primary-colored sock is still on the needles. I finished the gusset during last night's Lost, and will probably end up finishing the sock sometime during the gap between the pre-strike 8 episodes and the post-strike 5, at which point there will be more pictures. (Does anybody else put their knitting down when something pivotal happens to Desmond?)

That's it on the knitting front for now. I shall return, sooner rather than later.

Mood: hungry
Music: The Frames - Sad Songs

Spinning, spinning, spinning (and socks)

That crazy-colored wool I mentioned buying?



Spun like a dream.



Plied like a dream.



And made one really awesome-looking skein.



I'm so proud of this yarn, probably more proud than I should be. It's soft, bouncy, and looks much better than my first couple batches of handspun. I have plans for it to be a funny earflap hat, probably with a pompom. Whatever it ends up being, I'm thinking it'll end up on Etsy.

I ended up plying the plied yarn again because I wanted something thicker, and it made me realize that I need to learn more about plying. Thank God for libraries and Google!

On the knitting side of things, I've been making socks out of the Sockotta yarn I picked up in Kaleidoscope Yarns over the summer. It's been a nice break from all the color work, cabling, and general frustration I've had with my other recent projects.

I didn't like the extremely primary colorway at first, but the little flecks of white in the colors give the finished product a muted, heathery look that's grown on me. Plus, the heel flap on this one looks kind of like an ear of corn, which I found oddly endearing. Sock #2 is on the needles for knitting in lines, in the dark, and whenever Lost is on. (Is anyone else crazy excited about the season 4 premiere next week? Furthermore, has anyone else been playing with find815.com? It's like crack for Lost fans.)

Also on the list for knitting:
-- gloves for my brother, on the needles but the size needs checking
-- the Phoebe pullover for me, sometime in the future
-- a pattern as close as I can get to Marketa's gloves in Once
-- a super-secret design project
-- a semi-secret not-for-me sweater project

I'm about to be a very busy knitter!

Mood: hydrated
Music: Dan Fogelberg - Make Love Stay

Two birds with one stone

Tuesday afternoon, I got to make use of Mike for the first time!

I made a brief sojourn to A Touch of Twist (during which it started to snow like crazy, but I was too stubborn to turn back), bought some fairly inexpensive white wool and some slightly more expensive crazy-colored wool, and returned to the house to spin!

I've only seen someone else use a spinning wheel up close once. The other times I caught glimpses were all through crowds at Rhinebeck. So, being the way I am and liking to teach myself how to do things, I got a stack of spinning books out of the library last week. Before I sat down with Mike and my wool for the first time, I spent a bit of time flipping through them and reading the bits that were pertinent for someone just starting out.

Of course, there's a lot I still don't know about spinning. There's a lot I have to learn and there's a very good chance that I'm doing something wrong. (Did I ever mention that I purled the wrong way for about the first year and a half of my knitting life?)

That said, I really enjoyed myself and produced this:



My first crappy handspun!

So then I had this handspun. It was white. It looked funny. What to do with it? Why, get some Kool-Aid, of course, and make it my first dyeing project!

I had to hunt around to three stores for the Kool-Aid I wanted, which is kind of sad given that I grew up drinking the stuff and every store used to have scads of those little packets. But I did finally locate the colors I wanted.



Lemonade and tropical punch, respectively. It only occurred to me after I made a complete mess of the stove that I probably should have suspended the yarn over the pan on a spoon handle or something. Ah well, live and learn!



After the obligatory rinsing and drying, the yarn miraculously looked less odd, at least to me. To me, it suddenly looked less like crappy, over-twisted first handspun and more like some of the deliberately uneven yarns on the market.

I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. I'm thinking a hat, if there's enough. If not?



There's always batch #2 from today!

Mood: accomplished
Music: The Frames - Your Face (live)

New Toy

This is Mike.



Mike is an Ashford Traveller, purchased last week from The Woolery and assembled this morning with a little aid from Dad.

The decision to buy Mike was a fairly easy one, despite my dinky budget. I've found spinning fascinating for a while, having seen someone in the local Stitch 'n' Bitch spinning llama yarn, and watching a friend learn to use a drop spindle a couple years back.

But the thing that really caught my interest was reading Barbara Albright's The Natural Knitter. It was the first book I ever read that specifically discussed fibers and their characteristics, and one of the few non-fiction books I've ever read with enthusiasm. The focus on natural/organic fibers and dye processes fit with the mindset that my entire family has been moving toward in the last few years, and the idea of getting back to nature with knitting made me seriously start to contemplate learning to spin.

I didn't want to start small. I wanted to pull out the big guns, so to speak, and learn to spin on a wheel. Thus, after several weeks of frantic saving and budget readjustment, Mike was purchased.

I am so. So. Excited. As soon as I can, I'm going to go out and visit A Touch of Twist in Pattersonville and get my very first fiber. I know there are places on the internet that I could just as easily order from without leaving the house, but I want to be able to see and touch the first thing I'm going to spin before I buy it.

In other awesome fiber news,



the Red Sweater of Doom has been vanquished! Here it is, blocking a bit to even out the seed stitch. Seventeen months of agonizing knitting, frustration, and setting it aside and trying to pretend it didn't exist...and now it's done! I'm glad I listened to my whim and picked it up again. It's nice to have it off my back, and Mom will finally have her sweater. Honestly, that's the only reason I kept plugging along with it at all. Had it been for me, I would have given up and frogged it long ago.

A word on the yarn: unless you don't mind tough, non-elastic yarn that has a tendency to split, I suggest staying away from Saucy Sport. It has wonderful strength, I'll give it that, but it feels and behaves rather like twine.

As for the pattern...if you're a knitting masochist, give it a try. If you value your sanity, stay far, far away!

Onward and upward to other things! *bounces away*

Mood: excited
Music: They Might Be Giants - Feign Amnesia