Tour de Fleece: Day 1
I have put together A Plan for the tour; I suspect I won’t really follow it all that much and there might just be a wrench wheel thrown into them at some point, but everyone else had gotten so organized that I felt kind of silly just saying “I’m going to spin! Um, a lot!” and leaving it at that.
I think first-up is going to be the bottom right, a tsock batt with my .7oz polymer clay spindle. Two-ply, laceweight, should take me a week or so. I hope. We’ll see. For all that I can knit like lighting, my spinning speed seems very slow. Maybe I just need to spin more.
Oolong doesn’t want to be woken up until the madness is over.
Swatch
My fibery plans for this summer are starting to look awfully familiar. First I decided to take on an epic spinning project and now I’m planning a lace cardigan. Of course, me being me, I’ve upped the challenge a bit this year. I’m not just spinning and knitting up one skein of yarn in two weeks; I’m spending three weeks trying to work through the majority of my fiber stash. And I’m not just knitting a cropped, worsted weight cardigan from a tried and true pattern; I’m test knitting a full length lace cardigan in sock yarn. This should prove interesting. At the very least, it’ll provide me with plenty of blog fodder!
In other news! Have you taken a look at the shop lately? I’m almost back at full stock and with some new supplies coming in this week I should have some interesting new stuff to show you soon. In the meantime, Tour de Fleece participants get 15% off with a mention of their team name.
Singles
Mmm, handspun goodness!
I’m really not sure why I don’t spin singles for laceweight more often—I like the look, I hate having to ply, and I have a bunch of small bumps of fiber that do well when spun like this. I think maybe a part of me is always worried about the strength of my singles, nevermind that a well spun and well finished single will probably hold up just fine in handknitting. I hope.
Fiber is 1.5oz of 70/15/15 merino/cashmere/silk from Redstone Yarns, spun on a 1oz spindle. 720 yards.
It is becoming clear that I’ll need to step up my game to compete with Team Suck Less, though, since it took me most of the week to finish this. Fortunately we have new kittens who have offered to, um, “help.” We’ll see how that goes.
Training
The Tour de Fleece is rapidly approaching and I’m totally playing this year. Not entirely sure what my challenge will be, other than spinning every day, although I seem to have gotten sucked in (pun totally intended) to Team Suck Less, in which a bunch of spinners more awesome than I will attempt to spin a mile of yarn in one day. I’ll be lucky if I manage half that.
So, of course, just like the cyclists, I need to train.
This is a 70/15/15 merino/silk/cashmere blend that’s an absolute dream to spin, but unfortunately with it I’ve discovered that I spin very slowly. Right now I can manage about 75 yards in an hour, which, for those of you reaching for your calculators, would mean 23.5 hours of spinning to reach a mile—so technically I *could* do it in one calendar day, but spinning for nearly 24 hours straight sounds rather unhappy-making.
Clearly I need much more practice over the next week and a half. Sorry, big pile of half knitted socks. I’ll get back to you eventually, I promise.
Pillaiyar
Pillaiyar: Tamil for Ganesh; (literally) little or noble child
I have to say I think I’m really going to like knitting for this kid. Already I’m thinking of vests and sweaters and hats and socks and wondering if he’ll look good in green or if blue would be a better choice or maybe red will be his favorite color and maybe I should just knit everything in every color so he doesn’t have to choose.
Sheesh. He’s got me wrapped around his little finger from 3000 miles away.
I hope he likes his elephant. (Why yes, wild elephants can be found roaming the untamed hills of stash yarn with their giraffe friends.)
Pattern: Elijah by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Knitpicks Swish DK in Mist, a little more than one skein
Needles: US2.5/3mm Addi Turbos
Notes: Mine came out tiny! Instead of the recommended 6.5 sts/inch I got 8.5 sts/inch which made for a teeny elephant—he sits in my palm quite comfortably. Still, I think he’s a good size for a newborn to hold onto/play with/chew on, and I can make a bigger one as Kyan gets older. It’s a fairly quick knit, as well; I could’ve finished it in two days if not for the Great Elephant Yarn Shortage of ‘09, which slowed me up for a week.
On Ravelry here.
(PS it’s Caturday! Ewok’s still here. Still causing trouble. Still squeaking up a storm.)
This Just In!
No, not the yarn for the elephant. But fortunately the baby decided not to wait for his toys to be finished…
Kyan Andrew was born yesterday at 5:35am, ten fingers, ten toes, all cute. Good job, kid. Keep it up and you may just earn yourself an elephant.
In non-baby news! You all have seen this before but now you get to see it with my face—Yarn Forward, Issue 14, page 32 (also on page 13 with a teenier picture and a blurb):
In honor of both of these events, there is free shipping in the shop from now until Thursday! Anywhere in the world. I’ll even ship to the moon, although I bet it’s hard to spin with low gravity. Go shop!
Speed Knitting
I think I’ve mentioned before that if I could have any superpower in the world, it would be speed knitting.
I think I got it. The only thing slowing me up now is that I’ve run out of yarn, but once my knitpicks order comes in I’ll get some legs on this guy and send him off to California where there will hopefully be a baby to greet him.
In Caturday news, Wookie got adopted! But we’re still stuck with Ewok for another couple of weeks. Anyone need a cat?
Overdue
My sister-in-law is now more than a week past her due date, which must clearly be my fault because
I still have gifts unfinished. Oops. Must knit fast.
Home Again
And I didn’t even manage to get any pictures. (That’s not entirely true—I took two pictures. But both of them were blurry.) I’m fairly certain some other people got some shots of me at the show itself, so I can at least prove that I was there, and I picked this up from tsock.
And I may have tstolen a tspindle from her as well, ahem.
(Hatchtown production low whorl, 1.2oz of awesome)
And I got through a sock leg on the car ride, 7 hours each way (!!).
And now that I’m home, the shop is getting updated, slowly but surely.
