Posts Tagged ‘Grafton Fibers’

Hooooooray for Friday!

{ 2 October 2009 @ 8:43 am } · { knit, spinning }
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It’s 8:30, and although I’ve been up for several hours, I’m still in my jammies. This is partially because none of the places I need to go today are open yet, and mostly because my hair is being so evil I can’t imagine actually going anywhere.

So instead, I’ve been taking glamour shots of my yarn & knitting. My artistic director is Max. He was jumping on the bed (where I normally take my pictures) in order to encourage me to take advantage of the much better light  (and the cleared-off table) in the kitchen. I whipped the boy up some pancakes and raspberry jam, and Bob’s your uncle, here I am.

First up, I plied the singles I showed you in Monday’s post and this is what I got:

And here is the recently spun skein along side the one I spun right after I received my wheel, with some baby alpaca on top for decoration.

And finally, I have for you the Willoughby Scarf, posing seductively in the big red bowl (this bowl has a story; anyone wanna hear it?).

I love this scarf. The bobbles are a little frustrating (I’m beginning to have strong negative feelings for rows 5 and 7), but there are only three per pattern repeat, so I just suck it up when I get to them. They’re not hard… I think the issue I have is with turning my work back and forth in the middle of a row. In this photo, I’ve finished 18 pattern repeats, and the scarf is a little more than two feet in length. I’m only half way thru the second ball of yarn, and I’ve allocated 3 balls to each half. I’m going to finish this ball, then switch to the other side (where the blue yarn is now; this scarf is knit from the middle) and do two balls of yarn. Once I reach that point, I’ll measure and decide how to proceed.

I’ve been a bit preoccupied

{ 26 July 2009 @ 9:32 pm } · { knit, spinning }
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Since my manic posting on Thursday, I’ve been a bit preoccupied. I just couldn’t stop spinning!

Here is my first skein of yarn, spun Thursday afternoon after about 2 hours of practice and reacquaintance:

It’s a little uneven, but overall I’m pretty pleased with my initial efforts. This is a mixture of the batt that I purchased from Grafton Fibers (Corriedale, color 411 Blended) and the wool that came with my wheel from Louet. Here is skein number two:

This is just the wool from Louet, and I got 33 yards of two ply before the constant gray bored me to tears. This wool is significantly coarser than the stuff I purchased from Grafton Fibers and overall I’m not very impressed with it. Here, then, is my third skein:

This is my favorite. I managed to spin 56 yards of two ply yarn, although I couldn’t tell you what the weight or wraps per inch are. This is only from the batt that I purchased from GF, and it was really quite lovely to work with.

With the loveliness of that wool in mind, I just can’t wait to start in on this:

But first, guess what’s back in my active queue…

Yup, the orange shawl of doom! Even though I showed my poor math skills the other day with the sleeve of my February Lady Sweater, I am going to tell you that, according to my calculations I have 30 rows left to go on this shawl. You may want to check back on Wednesday, though, to see if I have fewer or more rows at that point. My bet would be more.

Here are some final notes:

Bea, I hope you’re feeling better. We missed you at knit night!

I did finish Sami’s costume on time, and I’ll let you know tomorrow how it went at ComiCon. It fit her (which was a major accomplishment) and she looked very cute (which was the easy part).

Finally!

{ 3 July 2009 @ 11:23 am } · { knit }
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No, I’m not done with the orange monster. But I did manage to knit to the point where I don’t have enough yarn left to finish the next row! Observe, and marvel at the great pile of orange string that I’ve arranged!!

Finally, a reprieve!

You know what this means, don’t you? This means that I get to work on something else. I cast on the Meandering Vines Shawl last night . However, I’m making into more of a scarf. I have some Manos del Uruguay that has been languishing in my stash since last December. I was having problems with it. Nothing I knit came out right. But last night, I tried it one last time. I cast on 40 stitches with my lovely green yarn on size 17 needles.

It’s working! Look (I promise, not a speck of orange in this picture):

Ahhh, a change of color

In other news, I thought my spinning wheel would be shipping out to me today. Alas, it is not to be. Apparently the boat from Belgium was delayed, and they don’t anticipate shipping it out to me until the end of next week. This is especially painful because the roving I ordered from Grafton Fibers arrived today.

Isn’t it beautiful!!??

Wait…it gets even better (if you can believe it).

If only I had a wheel.