Emily’s Knits

Stale singles are definitely a common occurrence in my world.  I get halfway through something, stop for a day or two, finish it up, wait a day or two, and then ply.  Even worse, sometimes I don’t wait the second day or two and then half my single is fresh and the other half is two days on the spindle.  Either way, my approach to finding balance in plying has up to this point been haphazard.  I’ve had very few balanced skeins, but hadn’t taken the time to fully understand why.

Why did the first spindle-full work out just fine but the second looks terrible and stringy?  Why do they *always* twist slightly to the right?

And answers, in order: Because the first one you plied directly after spinning and the second sat on the spindle for a week – and you used the ‘it twists slightly left’ method of balancing both times!  Because you’ve underplied slightly, likely because of twist loss during the winding, unwinding, and skeining.

For now I’ve decided that the ‘make a sample by letting a fresh single ply back on itself and compare to that while plying’ method is probably good enough.  I’ve been working with fibres and at weights that don’t lend themselves nicely to the ‘make sure the fibres all align straight down the yarn’ method, but I’ll give that a go when/if I have something appropriate.

I’m also looking forward to seeing if this is easier with a wheel than a drop spindle.  Theoretically in that case I will be able to count treadles to keep a constant plying twist throughout the skein.  I won’t be able to give it a try this weekend (I should try to be polite and avoid boring the friend who’s visiting), but I’d like to soon!

In non-fibre news, it’s been a pretty good day.  I tried visiting a chiropractor for the first time to see if he had anything to say about the chronic pain in my hands or the tightness in the top of my neck – an interesting experience, and I think altogether a positive one.  I lunched in the park with a close friend who’s currently living out of town while we listened to some beautiful live music.  At work I was placed in charge for Q4 of a project I find really interesting.  And finally I ended the day with dinner at the same friend’s house with her dad and a number of mutual friends, followed by singing.  I could definitely handle more days like this!

P.S.  Still having issues getting WordPress to upload my photos.  So I’ve been faithfully taking ones that I’ll have to edit back into their respective posts later.

I just couldn’t help myself and bought this new spindle from (you guessed it) Dragoncraft Spindles last week.  As with the previous four it is delightful both to look at and to spin with.  The whorl on this one is a bit thicker than the other two I have, but it’s still under two ounces.

It also came with a delightfully soft bumblebee fibre, which the spindle is shown sitting on above, and which is much, much prettier than my camera decided to show.  The fibre on the spindle is a mill end sample sent by carly*original with the Enchantress roving I purchased.

I tend to purchase my fibres in big batches, so for now I think I’ll showcase them as I use them rather than when they arrive.

I just finished my second spindle of Fairy Wings singles.  The last one was ~81 yards when plied and I expect this to be around the same.  We’ll find out tomorrow.

We seem to have matching colours at the moment!

We’re working on Missy being able to control the entire drop spindle by herself without having the weight of the yarn changing so much.  She’s getting there, and we’re both having lots of fun :)  It seems the biggest rough spot left is grafting on a new piece of fibre.  Today she learned to wind an Andean Bracelet, and then did the second two all on her own perfectly.  She’s still stopping the spindle to draft, but I think she’ll get it all working together soon.

Missy is using the Royal Gem spindle I bought her from Dragoncraft.  In these pictures she’s spinning SarasTextureCrafts‘ merino/tussah mix in the Dawn colourway.  It’s beautiful to work with, though perhaps not the easiest thing to have started with.

Today was also a siblings-lunch-out after her orientation program ended.  I’m around so little (which definitely makes me sad) that I treasure all my time with my family.  It can be very tempting to move back to the east coast just to be closer to everyone.  Well, all except my friends, who are steadily immigrating to the Bay Area.

After my long nap this morning to recover from a mostly-sleepless overnight flight cross-country, we had a nice afternoon.  My little sister and I played with drop spindles for a while – turns out an elementary school teacher of hers is a knitter and had brought in some spindles and wool to show them earlier this year – and she made great progress.

Then most of the house headed out to a local deli to pick up subs (they were delicious, I’ve missed them) and eat them in the park behind the library, where a group of local college students was performing Shakespeare’s As You Like It.  We showed up a little late so luckily I already knew some of the plot…  They did a great job, though the littlest one was frustrated by her lack of ability to understand them and headed into the library to read.

Even if she’s not into Shakespeare yet having a little sister who wants to read all the time still makes me tremendously proud.  She’s headed into 6th grade, and read over 150 pages during my video conference with work this afternoon!

Tonight I fly back to the East Coast to see my family for a week and a half.  Some time off work sounds just about right right now.  I’ve been missing them a lot – 2 weeks a year isn’t nearly enough vacation with my family all the way cross-country.  I look forward to a great trip.

I also forsee a trip to Halcyon Yarns on our drive from Boston to Maine (not that I don’t already have plenty of yarn and fibre…).  I’ve had my eye on a weaving kit I saw there last time.  I think it might help answer the question of what to do with all the yarn I’m spinning but not yet knitting.  If only I could get the hang of enjoying less glitzy/fancy fibres so that it were easier to make mundane items out of the results…

No pictures again, but I promise some of the new spindles and their recipients when I get home.

I wonder what the flight attendants would make of me spinning on the plane.  I do have an aisle seat this time.

My birthday was Sunday, and tonight I headed out with a group of friends and coworkers to celebrate.  We went to Roy’s which is delicious and conveniently near work.  It’s pricey, but the food is hard to beat.  Pork ribs, kobe beef meatloaf, and to finish it off the most melty chocolate souffle you’ve ever had.

Unfortunately this left me just time enough to pack for my trip tomorrow.  I bought beautiful drop spindles for my mom and sister.  This of course meant that half of my packing time was spent deciding which ‘teaching fibres’ I’d bought I should take home with me.

The Fairy Wings yarn I finished yesterday turned out wonderfully, and the empty pill container I hung on the bottom as it dried even kept it from twisting up again.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but there isn’t much progress to show today :)

They say you learn things every day and I’ve always found that to be true. Some days I learn more interesting things than others. Somedays I learn things that are more applicable than others.

Today one of the things that I have learned is ‘when spinning variegated fibre don’t spin one dark section, one light section, and then a second dark section, 2-ply with an Andean Bracelet, and then expect it all to be roughly evenly coloured!’  Next time I will remember to try to setup my single so that I ply light with dark most of the way along it, rather than dark with dark and light with light.

I’m currently working with a Merino/Tencel blend called Fairy Wings from Spincerely‘s etsy store.  Doesn’t it look just luscious?  It feels that way too!  I love the feel of the drop spindles I’ve been using recently, from Dragoncraft.  They’re about an ounce and a quarter – just the right weight for me.  This one they made just for me!

[ravelry link]

The plan is for this yarn to be made into a Beach Glass shawl for my little sister.  At the moment I probably have 1/3 of the yarn I need.

Wow, there’s so much to update that I don’t know where to start. So tonight we’ll just keep it simple and over the next few days I’ll work on noting down all my recent fibre accomplishments and lessons.

Part of the reason for the looooong gap was that my web host company moved my hosting account to a nice new server (quite sweet of them), but along the way managed to get the contents of the account nearly FUBAR’ed. At first I thought they’d just deleted all my data. I didn’t have time to look into it for a few weeks, so the knowledge that all of it was potentially gone just sat there festering in the back of my mind. Tonight I finally got a few hours to poke around, and seem to have unravelled the issues (many) and gotten this one segment back up. I’ll have to take the time to fix my wiki and a few other sections in the near future.

I’ve got a long and exciting weekend ahead of me, including my birthday, so this will have to do for tonight. It’s to bed for me, and tomorrow I try to pack in 5 or 6 days worth of things I need to do into the single day. Should be exciting :)

It’s been a week of learning new things, and tonight’s accomplishments were heel-turning and Kitchener’s stich.  I made one pair of socks (soft, fluffy ones for my Mom) partway through college, but other than that haven’t really attempted the ‘complication’ of them.  Yes, I’ll knit lace, but socks have been a little daunting.  Plus I tend to abuse my socks and have trouble seeing myself wearing hand-knit ones.

Tonight I overcame this fear and I’ve now finished my first of two in a pair of socks for my sister’s Samantha doll, following the American Girl Sock Pattern by Judy Gibson.  I must say that my first adventure into grafting has gone exceedingly well, and I’m now on my way to starting the second sock.

For anyone else out there overwhelmed by the mysterious techniques surrounding sock-making, I heartily suggest this quick and easy to follow pattern.  The first sock took me about an hour, and the instant results are very gratifying.

I’m wearing a shawl that I made myself in public!  I finally blocked Calypso on Saturday (my first real wet-blocking as well) and am wearing it to work today.  Pictures to come (posted already on Ravelry).  I’m so proud!

I also swatched Mystic Waters, which I’m really loving so far.  The tencel dries so quickly and looks so perfectly delicate when blocked!  I’m working on a miniature version of it (just the first 40 or 50 rows) from my Pound of Love ball as a shawl for my little sister’s American Girl dolls.  Nearly done, I have to figure out how I’m finishing off and whether I want faroese-style extended shoulders.