February Wrap Up

 I guess I forgot to hit publish on this.  Oops. 

Fiber Prep

• As noted in my mid-month check in, early in the month I did play around making some batts and combing some of the Corriedale.  

Spinning

Flatiron

• The blending board sweater project occupied the wheel almost the entire month.  The first half was spend spinning the singles and the second half was spent plying.  An additional 8 skeins came off the wheel to complete the project.
• As a palette cleanser and a chance to play, I spun up one of the drum carded batts.  I got the Slow whorl for my birthday and then I bought the Extra Slow whorl.  I played around spinning at those lower ratios and ended up making a single-ply mini skein as a result.

Kiwi 3

• I am still slowly spinning the Stroll roving that I dyed.  I'm spinning very fine so it is slow going, but most of my spinning time was spent at the Flatiron working on the blending board sweater project.

Knitting

Finished

• The Jacob sweater!  I have post about this, but this was for the SE2SE Save Our Sheep Sweater Challenge.  This is my first handspun sweater.
• A pair of World's Simplest Mittens for my middle child.  I added in striped cuffs and a very basic stranded color motif to make a warmer pair of mittens for the snow.
• A second pair of School Mittens with 3 strands of leftover sock yarn.  These were for my youngest.

On the Needles

• Newleaf by Jennifer Steingass.  I put this back on the needles and picked up one of the sleeves rather than continuing down the body.  I am ready to do the colorwork at the cuff of sleeve one.
• Festive Sweater KAL Pullover by Skeindeer Knits. I have a few inches done on the body after the sleeve division.  This is the easiest thing to pick up if I want to knit and don't want to have to think or pay attention at all, but I still have quite a way to go on it.  
• Purse Socks.  I am working on the heel. I need to put some concentrated effort into these to finish that and then they can be mindless again.
• Cottage Garden Hat by Jennifer Donze.  This is my Woolly Thistle Colorwork Accessory KAL project.  I am using 4 shades of Marie Wallin's British Breeds yarn that was in my Selection Box from TWT.  

Frogged

I had a couple other things going this month that I just frogged or cut off the loom.  Life is too short to work on things that aren't bring you joy.  

• Harlow Worsted.  This one was bringing me joy, but I had made some mistakes that I couldn't seem to fix correctly.  I had already frogged at least an inch once and so when I made another mistake that still looked wonky after attempting to fix it I just decided to frog the whole thing.  I am chalking this up to being a first lesson in brioche.  I am definitely getting the hang of it, I just need to pay attention and scan for mistakes more often.  Part of the reason I frogged this is also because the yarn is higher contrast than what I think I want to use for this pattern.  I am going to come back to knitting this hat, but with two colors that have lower contrast.  I was using Brooklyn Tweed Shelter and I loved it in brioche, but I think would rather use it down the road in a brioche hat that has more going on.  The higher contrast of the colors will shine be better in a more complex pattern.
• Handspun mini skein rainbow fade scarf.  I was just playing around with an idea of how to use all my mini/sample/leftover bits and bobs of handspun.  I just can't get into garter stich scarves anymore.  Between the scarves I knit early on and then all the baby bibs and washcloths I knit, I just don't enjoy knitting garter stitch much.  Plus, the yarn weights varied enough that this scarf wasn't working.

Weaving

• I had started a scarf on the RH loom.  I was just using up yarn I didn't have any desire to knit with.  It turns out I didn't have any desire to weave with it either.  I cut it off the loom and tossed it.  

Blending Board Sweater Spin

I finished another big project this month!  I am not finished spinning the yarn from my blending board sweater project.  

I spun the first skein at the beginning of the project to be sure I was getting what I wanted, and I also wanted to swatch a little.  I was happy with the results, so I kept spinning, but I completed spinning all the singles before plying any more skeins.  

I rewound all the singles on to storage bobbins.  I wasn't too exact about numbering bobbins, but I did try to ply from first and last spun and work my way toward the center.  I think that I ended up with fairly consistent results from approaching it that way, the grist is all in a similar range.  

I was swatching with my first skein, but I ended up pulling that out.  Remember how I said that one was done first before I had spun the rest?  It doesn't look vastly different than the other skeins, but it has a lower grist than all the rest.  I think I could still use it with the other skeins without a lot of trouble, but I don't think it is the best skein to use as a gauge swatch for planning a sweater since the yarn is a slightly heavier weight than the other skeins turned out to be.

I ended up with 9 skeins weighing in at 877 g total (1.9d lbs) and adding up to 2,066 yards.  I'll have enough yarn for whatever I knit!  I think next time I want to spin for a sweater, especially if I am going to spin woolen, one and half pounds will be sufficient.  

Jacob Sweater - Shania

It all started last March when I bought a fleece from Kingsfold Jacobs. The fleece weighed 2.5 lbs and was from a ewe named Shania

Her fleece was soft and fine enough that I thought it would be ok for next-to-skin wear and I decided right away I wanted to try to spin the wool into yarn for a sweater.

I started by separating the fleece by color. Some of the wool was easy to sort into light or dark. It gets harder around the borders of the spots. The locks stick together (especially when they are still full of lanolin) and so I made a third pile that would be more of a gray tone.

I kept these three piles separate through the scouring and carding process so that I would end up with three different natural shades of wool for my sweater.

I did do a little sampling to determine how to process it. I knew from the last Jacob fleece that I had that the drum carder would likely create a lot of neps with this fleece. The locks of Jacob wool are triangular and the tips can get tender. They will typically break off in processing, but in the drum carder (unless you pre-flick the locks to remove the tips first) they are really hard to pick out and end up creating a tweed effect. That can be cool if that is what you are going for, but it was not what I was going for this time. The raw fleece was only 2 1/2 lbs, I think it was a little under 2 lbs after scouring. I wanted to be sure to have enough yardage so I really needed to minimize waste in processing: that meant that combing was out. The locks were about 2-3" so theoretically I could have combed it, but I prefer combing slightly longer locks. I tried out carding and was happy with the results. The fleece was very light on vm so I didn't have to worry much about that, and I found I could usually pick out the tips or just pull them off the lock before loading up the comb if they were especially tender. These were usually easy to spot because they tended to get a bit cotted. Carding was also a win because I really do enjoy woolen spinning and that method was going to give me higher yardage as well. I used my 72 tpi hand cards and they were a good match for this wool.

The next step was to actually spin the yarn on my spinning wheel. I spun this on my Kiwi 3 on the 7.5:1 ratio. The Kiwi was my only wheel at the time and this spinning project is what really spurred me to get serious about acquiring a saxony wheel for this type of spinning. As I mentioned, I spun a 2-ply woolen spun yarn to get a light airy yarn. Then the yarn sat waiting for several months while I finished other things and thought about what I wanted to knit with the quantities of the three natural shades I had.

As you may know, I've been participating in The Livestock Conservancy's Shave 'Em to Save 'Em initiative to bring awareness to rare and endangered sheep breeds here in the United States. On January 12 they kicked off a sweater challenge and since Jacob is one of the conservation breeds, it was a perfect time to actually get to knitting the sweater.

One of the reasons I had been slow to actually get knitting was that deciding what to knit was really hard! At first I envisioned a colorwork sweater. The yardage required for some of the patterns I was considering gave me pause. Finally I decided that a colorblock sweater would probably be the safest bet. I initially planned to use something like Ann Budd's book of Top Down Sweaters to plug my gauge into and knit something up, but I encountered a problem when I knit up my gauge swatch. On US 7 I was getting 17.5-18 stiches per 4 inches. That is about 4 1/2 sitches per inch, and the book only gives numbers for a whole number of stitches per inch. I wasn't about the change my needle size because I really liked the fabric I was getting, so instead I searched my library for sweater patterns with a gauge of 18 stitches/4". It was Tin Can Knits to the rescue! They provided me with two options. The first was Flax. I had already knit a Flax a few years ago and knew it could work as a good basis for a raglan. The second option was using the aran-weight numbers from the Strange Brew guide to make a yoke.

I decided to go a the raglan instead of a yoke. There was already going to be enough going on with the color changes so I eliminated the garter panel on the sleeves as I knit the pattern this time. The advantage of having knit this pattern before is that I knew how it fit me and I was able to make some choices about how to knit this sweater based upon that. I choose to add short row shaping to raise the back of the neck and although it is the more annoying way to knit the neckband in my opinion, I did choose "option 2" in the pattern to pick up stitches for the collar from the cast on rather than beginning the sweater by knitting the neckband first.

I finished it with a week to spare in the challenge! It is my first handspun sweater and it was really amazing to go through the whole process from fleece to garment!

Mid-Month Check In

 So it really snuck up on me that we are half way through February already.

Spinning

On the Kiwi

• I am slowly working on spinning up Knit Picks Stroll roving (actually it is top, despite how it is labeled) that I dyed red and black.  I am trying to spin a sock yarn and therefore am spinning fine and it is just taking awhile because most of my spinning time has been spent on the Flatiron.

On the Flatiron

• I am still working my way through the blending board merino sweater spin project.  I just filled up my 8th bobbin.  I have 16 more little rolags to go, that is about another bobbin's worth of singles.  I have been spinning at least 4 per day, so by the end of the week I should be on to plying.

Knitting

Sweaters

• Flax in handspun Jacob a.k.a. the Shave 'Em to Save 'Em Sweater Challenge project is in the homestretch.  I have already knit the sleeves so now I am just working on the last few inches of the body.  I have about 3 more inches of stockinette to go and then the ribbing and it will be ready to cast off.  I want to cast off no later than February 17 mostly because the next KAL I am joining begins the next day.
• Newleaf: This week I pickup up a sleeve and am working down the arm.  When I am done with the Jacob Flax sweater this will become the top priority sweater.  It is a lot of stockinette except for the cuffs of the sleeves were I will get to do colorwork then.  I have an inch of so of the body done.  I would like to finish the sleeves this month and then in March I can concentrate on finishing the body.
• Festive Sweater:  This is definitely on the back burner, but still has WIP and not UFO status.  I knit a little on the body every now and then.

Socks

• The only socks I have going at the moment are the purse socks.  I know I've said I am in no hurry to get those complete, but I do want to move them along a little.  I am planning on putting some concentrated effort into getting the heel done this week.  Those parts require paying a little bit of attention so I need to get through it and then I can go back to mindlessly knitting the foot.
• I do keep thinking about casting on another pair of socks but it hasn't happened yet.  I might before the month is done

Hats, Scarves, everything else:

• Harlow Worsted: I cast on for this yesterday and am now knitting my first brioche project!  I made it a goal for 2022 to finally learn brioche, so here I am, working on that.  I have about an inch of it done so far.  I am getting the hang of it and enjoying it, but it isn't a fast knit for me.  
• Handspun Mini Rainbow Fade Garter Stitch Scarf:  yep, that is what I am going to call it and it should be self-explanatory.  I am trying to use up scraps and little bits and pieces, so this is just a project to do that.  I have a lot of little samples and leftover bits and clearing some of them out by putting them together in a project is bringing me joy.

Weaving

• I have a scarf on the rigid heddle loom.  The warp is tan and gold wool and the weft is a single ply aran weight yarn.  Again, this is just playing around and using up stuff from my stash that I might otherwise just destash.

Fiber Prep

• Last weekend I combed some more Corriedale nests, this is ongoing...
• Then I had some fun with the drumcarder.  I took some of the clean combing waste and made a couple batts blending that with some sari silk. 
• I also took out a bunch of small mill ends, colors I would probably never put together intentionally, and ran it through the drum carder several times and produced a few batts.  It blended up into something that was interesting rather than hideous.  It was completely play, but it turned out to be a good learning experience.
• I ended up blending one of the random mill end batts with some of the Corriedale sari silk batts just to see what would happen.  It was ok, but the results were less interesting than the two individual batts were.