I Knew I Was Having a Slow Year….

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Rayna

I really had no idea how little I had accomplished from a crafting standpoint until, on a whim, I looked at my FOs for the year.

Considering I have, for the past several years, completed in the neighbourhood of 25 knitted projects over the span of the year, I’d say calling this one slow is a massive understatement.

I have, to date in 2015, completed exactly five projects. This is unheard of. I should be at a minimum of 14 by now, if I were on track for a “usual” year. And in fact, two of these five are not even officially in the FO list because they have not been blocked and photographed.

Now, in my defence, there are other things I have been doing from a creative point of view.

I am in the midst of a sooper seekrit project that I cannot talk about for another while yet.

I have taken up hand dyeing and have dyed up about 20 skeins (plus a single braid of fibre) this summer…plus I have more undyed yarn winging its way to me as we speak.

I have done some spinning (although no plying and as such have also added almost no spinning FOs to my list, either!). This is a lovely indigodragonfly braid I started for Tour de Fleece (don’t even get me started on how badly I did in keeping up with TdF this year! Downright embarrassing…)

I took a sewing class, although, if I am honest I haven’t done a whole lot of that either.

And I sure as heck haven’t been blogging!

I wonder where my year has gone….? Looks like I am going to have to get a severe case of finish-itis if I am going to make any progress this year at all.

The other option, I suppose, is to stop forcing it and just craft when I feel like it. That’s a valid lifestyle choice, right?

Is it just me….?

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Rayna

Or does summer crafting just seem to go a lot more slowly?

Admittedly, this summer in Toronto is uncharacteristically cool…but I still can’t seem to find the energy to do much in the way of, well, anything, to be perfectly honest.

I have been doing bits and pieces of a scarf for my mom, and last week I cast on a hat in MadTosh Vintage for a colleague at work. He has proven himself knit-worthy by wearing (and gushing repeatedly over) a cowl I made him last year.

Watch Cap in Madeline Tosh Vintage in “Baltic”

I did put a new braid of fibre on my wheel – a braid of SweetGeorgia BFL in my favourite of her colourways, “Stormchaser”. (I also have this colourway on Tough Love Sock which I will eventually get to.) I am alternating this with a bobbin of the Humpspun that I started during Tour de Fleece, and my spinning progress seems to be much slower. That is to say, it seems to take a LOT longer to get through a braid. This might be a symptom of finer spinning.

“Stormchaser” BFL

In any case, I am not even through the “fractal” half of the braid yet. But I love the colour so much that I don’t care how long it takes. I want this on every base!

So even though this looks like I am doing a lot, I am really not. My heart’s not really in it and when I am too warm, my energy is just tapped out.

Maybe this boredom is what’s feeding my start-itis that I am fighting, quite valiantly, I might add. Something to consider. What do you do when summer is here or your mojo is just plain out of whack?

Tour de Fleece 2014 Draws To A Close

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Rayna

I have officially completed my first Tour de Fleece.

I am pretty happy with how it went, overall. I didn’t spin as much as I had hoped. Actually that’s not true. I spun more than I thought I would at the start, but after finishing a whole braid in my first 8 days, I had thought I’d get more done.

However, it seems that spinning progress got a lot slower in the second half. Maybe because I spun less, time-wise…maybe because the fibre was different and it just took me longer. I am still not sure.

In any case, I turned a 115 gram braid of merino bamboo into 300 yards of gorgeous yarn,

Colourway: “Cast On Couch”

and a 62 gram braid of merino cashmere into 230 yards of delightful squooshy-ness,

Colourway: Flamingoes Are Not Munitions Experts"

Colourway: “Flamingos Are Not Munitions Experts”

and I made some headway into a third braid of camel/silk.

Colourway: “I Am A Drinker With A Spinning Problem”

I spun indigodragonfly only…being their team captain and all. The only untouched indigodragonfly fibre I have left is some merino/seacell…but I have 300 grams of that so I am keeping that until I figure out what I want that to become.

I will keep on keeping on with the Humpspun…and maybe alternate that bobbin with some other fibre that has been languishing in my stash. I am looking to learn some woolen techniques and I may have to break into some batts for that.

Tour de Fleece: Rest Day 1

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Rayna

It popped up on my calendar today that this is the first of the two Tour “rest days”. We don’t spin our wheels when the riders don’t, so to speak. I had not planned to actually take a day off today, but I think I will because I am getting some aches and pains in my right hand. Considering how much time I have spent at my wheel these past 10 days, I suppose that should not be surprising.

My current project is another indigodragonfly fibre. This one is a camel/silk blend, creatively named Humpspun, in a colourway named, “I Am A Drinker With A Spinning Problem”.

Humpspun Fibre

This name might be more a propos than I care to admit. This yarn, when finished, is going to be a great many things. It’s going to be ultra-soft, and very warm. It’s also going to be very pretty, with some blue-green silky bits strewn in amongst natural/beige coloured camel fibres.

Know what it’s not going to be? EVEN.

I have been spinning this fibre for a few nights and my relatively inexperienced hands just cannot get the hang of drafting this. At. All.

Single Progress after 3rd day

I am fairly certain this single runs the gamut from laceweight to worsted, depending on where you look. I am not sure if this is just a “harder” fibre to spin, or if it’s different from the usual merino or BFL blends I am accustomed to. But in any case, I suspect this is going to take the rest of the Tour to spin because I am spinning way more slowly than with the PandaBaa and I can’t spin as long because my hands hurt.

I am still loving working on it though, now that I have decided to let it be what it wants to be, and I think the yarn is going to be lovely and original when I am done.

Which is to say, “lovely and original” sounded much nicer than saying “it will look like it was spun by an untrained four year old who drafted with her left foot”.

Spinning FO: Indigodragonfly PandaBaa

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Rayna

Two years ago, I started Tour de Fleece, armed with nothing more than a few braids of fibre and my Houndesign spindle. I got about 9 days in, and a few things came up, and that, as they say, was that.

Two years later, with my trusty Lenrdum wheel, I decided to give it another go, and while I was at it, I thought I’d head up the indigodragonfly TdF team. I had a single braid of PandaBaa (merino/bamboo) and if I managed to finish that one, I figured, I had another couple I could work on. Truthfully, I was not really expecting that to happen, but a girl can hope.

PandaBaa in “Cast-On Couch”

I had not at all figured on the addiction-inducing properties of this fibre. So soft, so lustrous and it, as I have said before, drafts like butter. I had half the braid done in the first weekend, and then spun the other half over the next four days. Plying always takes longer than I think it will (this is in no way aided by the fact that I have had to ply my last two skeins twice) so I saved it for a peaceful Sunday morning activity.

Finished Single

There’s a saying…”Man Plans. God Laughs.” I am guessing he had a mighty chuckle at me yesterday morning.

After the recent success of plying from both ends of a centre-pull ball, that seemed like the most reasonable way to go. I wound the single off the bobbin and settled in, not knowing the horror that awaited me.

Ready To Ply!

This time, something went horribly awry, and even now I can’t say what exactly. The strands doubled back on themselves and each other. They got twisted and tangled, and the strands were almost sticky….keeping them apart proved to be impossible and in one case, no matter how hard I tried, scissors were required. The air was positively blue from the language that erupted as I’d untangle one bit, only to hit two more.

The only thing we could see that would work would be to have the ball spin so that the strand on the outside never had a chance to wind itself around the middle one. My darling husband was good enough to hold the ball, slowly turning it to keep the strands apart while I plied. (As I write this, he is busily trying to invent/MacGyver something to help me with this in future. If he fails this will NOT be a method I am idiotic enough to try again. Fool me once….)

90 or so minutes later, the yarn was plied, but I could see, like last time, that it was too loose for me to be happy with. So after some coffee and pancakes (yes, I was also stupid enough to try this un-caffeinated) I settled in with the plied bobbin and ran it through the wheel again. I mutter as I do this, but I have to say, for the second time now, the second pass made all the difference in the world. Actually, since the last skein had already alerted me to the fact that I ply loosely, I suspect that this one would have been tight enough the first time if not for the unanticipated snags I hit, as the closer I got to the end, the more nicely plied the yarn was already.

In the end…just barely shy of 300 yards. It looks like fingering weight but might be sport – I haven’t had a chance to do a WPI test on it yet. But no matter what, I absolutely love it. So soft and squishy and such lovely colour. I am seriously contemplating using it to warp my loom and then wefting with just a plain natural colour lace or fingering weight to keep the colours from being obscured.

And now back to the Humpspun I started last week.

Spinning FO: Blooming Bougainvilla

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Rayna

Remember this?

Last week I decided that the spindle spin I had started during Tour de Fleece two years ago was never going to get finished unless my Lendrum got involved.

I am pleased to report it’s all done! And it turned out remarkably well, all things considered, although it’s not as even as my most recent spinning.

The Woolee Winder I purchased is a miracle worker. I easily got the single onto a single bobbin.

The Finished Single

Then on Monday evening, I “Shireen-plyed” my yarn. This is a name I have given to a faux-Andean plying method that Shireen came up with last week. 4 oz of single is a bit hard to Andean ply without cutting off circulation to your fingers, so Shireen wound it into a centre-pull ball, and then plied the two ends of the ball together. A small downfall to this method: towards the very end, the ball collapses and gets a bit tangly. The up side? You never have mismatched single from having two bobbins that don’t quite match. In this case, I did it to ply older, thicker, spindle spun yarn with newer wheel spun yarn in an attempt at consistency.

Certainly not perfect, but I am actually pleased with the result, regardless of the thick and thin quality.

Next up…the second half of my Friends in Fiber BFL/Silk fractal spin! Have to clear my bobbins for next week’s Tour de Fleece!

Where I’d Rather Be Today…

Image

Where I'd Rather Be Today...

Caught the spinning bug

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Rayna

Two years ago, when I started spindle spinning, I signed on for Tour de Fleece, a Ravelry event that takes place during Tour de France where we spin the same days that the riders do. I got through a 50g merino sliver in the first three days, and started on a 115g braid of Mixed BFL from Two If By Hand in an interesting pink and gold colourway called “Blooming Bougainvilla”.

I got 9 or 10 days into TdF and fell off the wheel, so to speak, with about a third of the braid on my spindle.

My Houndesign spindle…as pretty as the fibre!

And so it has sat in my crafting cupboard for the past two years. With my renewed interest in my wheel, I decided I’d probably never finish this on a spindle. But why couldn’t I finish the braid, but on my wheel? Since there’s only a third on the spindle, if I spun the other two thirds on the wheel, the amounts would be uneven and make for weird and awkward plying. So what’s a girl to do?

I’ll tell you…she spends an entire episode (and then some) of Scandal winding the spun yarn off her spindle onto her wheel, then attaching some new fibre to it and continuing the effort.

And off we go, albeit a little blurry!

The yarn is significantly thicker than my current spinning so it will be a task to keep it that way. And if I choose to chain ply, that resultant yarn is going to be quite thick.

Here’s the most interesting part…looks like I spin in the opposite direction on my wheel than I do on a spindle. With the spindle, I push off the inside of my left leg, this causing the spindle to go counter-clockwise, resulting in an “S” twist. With the wheel, I default to pushing the wheel clock-wise, resulting in a “Z” twist. So for the next few days, I have to remember to spin my wheel as though I were plying, instead of my usual way.

But at least a two year old spinning project will get finished.

What old projects have you resurrected because you got tired of knowing they were just sitting there?

Chain Plying for Newbies

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Rayna

Last night I bit the bullet, so to speak, and decided to try my hand at chain plying. I had a single that I had spun from this superwash merino and I was intent on trying to preserve the colours.

Needlework’s Pleasure Handpainted Extra Soft Merino Wool Roving

The single sat for a few weeks while I balked at the idea of trying a new technique, and a few nice spinners on Twitter recommended this video to help me along.

Last night I pulled out some bits of singles that my friend, Val gave me and made an interesting discovery. Chain plying is not for the faint of ~~heart~~ yarn. A few of her singles were good and sturdy and plied beautifully, but several others were softer and finer snapped at every single attempt to ply them. As luck would have it, my single was either sturdier, thicker or both because while it snapped twice in two very very thin spots, overall, it plied well.

I also noticed something else that, as a newbie, is likely not unusual but for experienced spinners is not an issue. As I plied off the bobbin with the finished single, my yarn got increasingly less “nice”. It got thicker, and slubbier and had more underspun spots, the closer I got to the start of my spinning. Since this was the first thing I had spun in over a year, this is not really surprising. In fact, it’s sort of motivating as I could see, in the span of an hour of plying, just how far I had come in the week or so that it took me to spin that single.

Since I could not sleep this morning, in the quiet of my 6 AM apartment, this:

The single

became this:

The finished skein!

Overall, I am pretty happy with it.

Certainly I am happy with my progress towards spinning that looks like real yarn 😀

World’s Craftiest Weekend

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Rayna

It’s always fun and relaxing to spend the majority of the weekend crafting, but those full weekends come along far less often than I might like. Getting to spend half that weekend with like-minded friends? That happens even less often again.

Saturday saw all sorts of fun things, including spinning, knitting, weaving and dyeing.

Weaving…where shall I start? First off, I blame Shireen, The Enabler. She has been posting some of the most beautiful FO shots since acquiring her 20″ Ashford Knitters Loom about a month ago, and she has been regaling me with tales of how quickly these lovely items are going from skeins to wearable items. I have a rather substantial number of single skeins of sock yarn and Kim at indigodragonfly has also been telling me for a long time that a great way to use some of these up is to get a loom, but I wasn’t sure weaving would be my thing.

Then, Shireen brought the loom over on Saturday and let me weave some of her leader, so as not to spoil her actual project. I have to say that while I am sure that producing really nice clean looking edges and such takes some practice, the motions of weaving in and of itself really is pretty easy and the little bit I did led me to believe it could almost be as “zen” an activity as spinning. (Disclaimer: I may be somewhat delusional!)

She has enabled me into looking seriously at acquiring a loom…so much so that I got a line on a second hand one by posting on Ravelry to see if someone had one to destash. I will know more next weekend.

Shireen showed up at my place like she was moving in…there was the aforementioned loom, and wonderful Indian food, and decadent chocolate birthday cake for Leslie, but she also brought with her an entire set up for dyeing yarn. I had a skein of yarn that I got in a swap that I was very unhappy with and I decided to overdye it to see if I could improve it. I won’t mention the dyer name because it’s irrelevant and seems kinda uncool. As it was, it took me a while to reconcile myself to doing it as it feels rather like defacing someone else’s art, but I digress.

The photo made it look pretty nice, if not insanely bright. It was at least enticing enough to make me want to claim it in a Ravelry swap.

Original Skein

What was not clear in this photo was that the yellow-y lime sections had navy blue “smudged” over them, almost like the navy bled and stuck to the lime, rendering it sort of “dirty looking”. I figured that perhaps overdyeing the skein with some blue might render the lime colour a darker green and I was right. I kettle dyed the skein in a Crock Pot, using Jacquard acid dyes in a mixture of Sapphire and Turquoise (I didn’t bother to measure as I knew it wasn’t a recipe I’d ever need again). I let it simmer away until the entire dye bath was exhausted, and hung it to dry. Sunday morning, this was the result.

The “After” Shot

I still don’t love it, per se…but I sure like it a whole lot better. Perhaps I’ll knit socks out of it, and then if I don’t love the colourway knit up, I’ll overdye the socks to make them even more green. We shall see.