The Knitting Pirate

Okay, I did it – I signed up for the Tour de Fleece. I joined three teams: Rookies, because it’s my first year; Kool Kromskis, because I’ll be doing most if not all of the spinning on Grace the Sonata; and Lantern Rouge… because with this mysterious ankle injury, I might not be able to spin every day. But I’m going to try my whole-hearted best, and if I don’t make it, at least I have a good excuse.

I haven’t yet decided what fibre I’m going to spin first. There’s so much to choose from – and that’s the main reason I signed up for this crazy thing, because I’m not letting myself buy any more fibre until I’ve used up some of what I’ve got. July’s challenge in Spinner Central is chain plying/navajo plying, so I think I’ll give that a shot. Other than that, I really have no plans past “spin, spin, spin, and spin some more.” I just want to use up some of the beautiful fibre I’ve got and try some new things in my spinning.

Most of what I produce will probably be sock- or DK-weight yarn, because that’s what I most like to knit with. If I finish up the sparkly blue stuff I have, that’ll be more of a worsted-weight – at least, if I want the second half to match the first. And the finn/mohair batts were never meant to be a fine yarn, not with how chunky they are. I’ve been joking for a while that I want to have a “Drunken Spinning Night” during which I have a glass or bottle of wine and spin completely without any perfectionism. Perhaps towards the end of the Tour de Fleece, I’ll be more than ready to do something like that.

The Tour de Fleece (Ravelry link) is a spinning challenge that parallels the Tour de France. The guidelines – not rules, just guidelines – are as follows:

1. Spin every day the Tour rides, if possible. Saturday July 3rd through Sunday July 25th. Days of rest: Monday July 12th, Wednesday July 21st. (Just like the actual tour)
2. Spin something challenging Thursday July 22nd. (The Tour’s toughest mountain stage from Pau up the legendary Col du Tourmalet)

There are different teams that one can join – some, many, one or none. If I do decide to go for it, I would be eligible for several! Team Rookie is for first-time Tour de Fleecers. Team Peloton is for everyone! Team Lantern Rouge is for spinners who might not be able to spin every day of the Tour, but still want to participate as much as possible. There’s a team for Kromski owners and one for “stashbusters” and one for just about every other thing you can think of, including people who use social media and people who like Doctor Who.

Some entrants are setting specific challenges for themselves; some are just setting the goal of spinning daily. If I do sign up, it will just be for generalized using up the fibre stash. I know better than to get specific! If I try to fine-tune a goal, I’ll want to do everything but that. If I just say “spin nearly every day” then I have a chance of making it.

It really does seem like a lot of fun, and I can probably commit to spinning for at least a few minutes every day for a month. I certainly have no shortage of fibre to spin up… and perhaps it would be good exercise for my sore ankles!

P.S. It’s all Janis‘s fault that I’m even considering this. You evil, evil temptress. :)

When I saw this Corriedale from EthnicityGoddess I couldn’t resist buying it. It’s a six ounce braid, so I thought I’d try spinning a three-ply yarn. I split the fibre into six equal parts, hopefully to end up with two equal skeins of yarn. Here is the first of the six bobbins. Given the overtwistiness of the last yarn I spun, and given that a three-ply yarn needs less twist in the singles than a two-ply, I’m trying to be conscious of giving this one a little bit less. I’m checking it constantly both against my control card (32 WPI) and with plyback tests to get the best consistency I can.

This stuff drafts like a dream. It’s smooth and doesn’t snag or tangle at all, and I’m really glad that I gave in to temptation and bought it.

This Falkland, 4.4 ounces from Bee Mice Elf, spun into 224 yards of two-ply yarn – just a little bit dense, no? I’d wanted it to be extra bouncy, so I put extra twist in. I think perhaps it was a bit much. Every so often there’s a little yarn-coil that snuck into the plying, despite all my efforts to smooth them out. Other than that, I really like the colours and the feel of the yarn, and I think I’m going to make armwarmers out of it.

Four ounces of merino-silk from Cloverleaf Farms spun up into 354 yards of two-ply yarn. I really didn’t like this fibre when I first started to spin it, but we’d gotten to be on more friendly terms towards the end of the spinning. Pirate-Husband says that the yarn has the colours of a scarab; it does have a good sheen in it from the silk content. I’m not yet sure what I’ll knit with this, but I’m sure it will be lovely when I do! A hat, perhaps? The smaller skein is from the same fibre, but it must have caught just enough of the gold to appear lighter in colour. If I use that for the brim of the hat, I bet it would look pretty neat and not out of place at all.

I bought this merino-silk blend from Cloverleaf Farms at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2009. A few months later, I brought it with me on vacation to spin, and according to my notes I finished the singles in September and “set aside for plying some other time,” probably because I had been very frustrated with spinning the singles. The fiber stuck to itself and didn’t draft as smoothly as I wanted. About a month ago, I plied a bobbin full, and was left with quite a lot of singles. Those sat on the bobbin and looked lonely until this past weekend, when I got annoyed at my procrastination and finally finished it off.

There was too much to wrap around my hand and Andean ply, so I used my ball winder to make a center-pull ball and plied from either end of it. It got messy towards the end and I lost a few yards of singles to tangles, but I had it going smoothly for a while. Anyway, now I have a lovely two-ply fingering weight yarn in glimmering greens and browns. Next weekend I will wash all the plied yarns and then they will be ready to knit!

Observant readers will notice a guitar pick in the background of the second picture, but what the picture doesn’t quite show is the toothmarks all over the tip of it! At 2mm, it is way too thick for me to use as a pick, but it is perfect to chew on while I spin. Like Charlie Brown, I have a habit of sticking out my tongue, or sometimes my lower jaw, when I’m concentrating on something. But I also have TMJ problems, which are exacerbated by this habit. The dentist offered me a $500 bite guard, but chewing on a guitar pick does the trick just as well for a lot less money. It keeps me from clenching my teeth or holding my jaw in an awkward position, and so I have tooth-marked guitar picks. I even keep one in my office. The funny thing is, I almost never play my guitar with a pick!

And, a zissen Pesach to all who are celebrating! While I am not very observant, the words of the Seder have always struck a chord in my heart. “…from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festivity,from darkness to great light.” May we all be freed from the things to which we are unhappy slaves, whether we give the credit for our freedom to ourselves or to something outside ourselves. Have a happy and a healthy Passover!

I timed it; it takes 40 minutes for me to spin one ounce of fiber into singles that will make a heavy fingering weight yarn when plied with the other ounce. Not too bad! I could be faster and smoother, but that will come with practice. This is the “Sea Kelp” colourway on Falkland wool from Bee Mice Elf, which I purchased from someone’s destash on Ravelry.

It’s been a cold weekend here in Virginia. Saturday was sunny, but today has been gray and drizzly and not even 50 F/10 C – that’s significantly cooler than our average for this time of year! I wore my Highwayman Armwarmers when I brought my car to get inspected this morning, but then I started thinking that it would be nice to have another pair, perhaps with a thumb gusset, in brighter spring colours. I like the dark charcoal gray of the Highwaymans (Highwaymen?) but it just doesn’t fit with the bright greens and cheerful blossoms of spring!

The singles are super-twisted, which should give me a nice bouncy yarn when I’m finished. This bobbin doesn’t look very squishy, but I let the singles rest for way too long before I plied. When the yarn is washed and thwacked against the wall, it ought to come back to life! I am excited to be close to finishing another yarn that is worth knitting with, and doubly excited because I’m going to make up my own pattern for the new armwarmers, rather than using someone else’s. If it comes out well, I will (of course) share the pattern.

Drumroll, please.

And now, on center stage, the Knitting Pirate is pleased to present, in their debut appearance… HANDSPUN SOCKS!

410 yards of two-ply yarn, spun from 4.4 ounces of BFL from FreckleFaceFibers on Etsy, became this pair of toe-up, short-row-heel, socks for myself! I started them in the end of July, 2009, when Janis and I challenged each other not to just spin yarn, but to actually knit with it, too. We both decided on socks. I decided to go with toe-up, because I didn’t know how far the yarn would go, but I knew I wanted to get as much out of it as I could. I used Wendy’s Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern, substituting a figure-eight toe.

One of the neat things about toe-up socks is that there’s really no need for a gauge swatch; you can just use the toe as a swatch. The yarn seemed thinner than most commercial sock yarns I’ve knit with, so I decided to use size 0 needles. I started with my usual sixteen-loop toe, knit until I thought it fit my foot, realized that it was too large, and horrified my audience by nonchalantly ripping it out and starting over. “But you’ve knit so much already!” they said. “Isn’t it frustrating to have to begin again?” I explained that I’d rather lose an hour or so of knitting, than put in the time it takes to knit the entire pair and end up with socks that don’t fit. It’s possible that my horrified audience didn’t entirely understand.

(Lesson learned: When using a toe-up toe as a swatch, work the increases only to the point where the toe fits over your first four toes. You can leave the pinky out, it’s okay. She won’t mind, because in the end the socks will fit much, much more snugly around your foot.)

The socks do fit perfectly, thank goodness. They are a little tight to get on, but once I have them in place they fit me like, well, like socks. No bagging around the ankles, no sagging around the legs, and no extra material around the foot. I hope they wear as well as they fit!

On Sunday, I brought the second of the handspun socks to a community meeting. The meeting was a nightmare, which allowed me to crank away on the sock until I was afraid that I’d actually knit too far up the foot, and I had to put it away. At that point I actually started to participate in the meeting, which may have been a mistake – I can see now why so many people in my neighborhood just don’t get involved!

Back at home, I measured and was happy to conclude that the foot was still about an inch short. I worked on it while watching the Vikings/Saints game, and then on Monday evening I settled in to knit the short-row heel. Well, I got about eight or ten rows in and something went wrong. I couldn’t tell what – perhaps I forgot to wrap one of the stitches, or maybe I forgot how to count as I knit. Either way, I was tired so I decided not to stress over it; I put it down and went to bed. I’ll fix it up this evening.

On the spinning front, this lovely fiber from LakeHouse Loft was my birthday present to myself. It’s six ounces of Corriedale in randomly-patterned colors, and I’m not yet sure how I’m going to spin it. I could do a three-ply sock yarn, or a slightly heavier weight for a matching hat and fleep-top set. Most of my queue is hats and socks, with the occasional scarf or dishcloth in there as well. What can I say – I like socks!

2009 was a slow knitting year for me; I only completed three projects. (Of course, if I’d been able to keep to one sock at a time, I’d probably have three more pairs to show…)

Pomatomus are the most complex socks I’ve ever knitted. Although they’re rated as difficult, I found that the stitch pattern made a lot of sense and was actually quite easy to follow once I got the hang of it. On the other hand, they’re definitely not a mindless sock that I’d feel comfortable knitting on without the pattern in front of me, checking off rounds as I finish them. I love them, but unlike some other patterns (*cough*Jaywalker*cough*) I’m not tempted to knit another pair. Pomatomus were my introduction to Cookie A.’s designs; this free pattern came from the Winter 2005 Knitty.

I wear my Fleep-Tops more than any other piece of knitting I’ve finished, I think. They are amazingly warm and incredibly comfortable, and not quite like anything I’ve ever seen in a store. I used a combination of Knitty’s Cigar pattern and Sarkasmo’s Gnomittens, with added miniature fleep-top thumb caps. They were a good quick project, finished in only a month. It’s unfortunate that the yarn is discontinued; I would love to make a backup pair, or perhaps some as gifts for people I especially like. Perhaps some medium- or heavyweight Socks that Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts would be a good substitution.

The thoroughly misnamed Quick Toe Up Socks weren’t quick at all, not after I found a knot in the first skein of yarn and had to do some serious futzing to make the stripes line up from one sock to the other. I used Wendy Johnson’s Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern, substituting a figure-eight toe, and made the sock 64 stitches around. It pleases me that they match so perfectly, even if I had to be ridiculously perfectionist about getting them that way! I like when my striped socks match up, especially wide stripes.

While it wasn’t knitting, I did do an overhaul of this site in 2009 to change the look and feel, and I added a Twitter account. I bought a new spinning wheel, a Kromski Sonata in walnut, on which I spun several skeins of yarn, including this BFL two-ply which is rapidly becoming my first pair of handspun socks. I’m considering selling the Ashford Traditional; while I love the way it looks, it doesn’t fit me quite right and I don’t spin on it. Perhaps I’ll give it one last try before I make a decision. Pirate-Husband says that it matches the house, and if I want to keep it around as a decoration, he’d be fine with that… but I think it’s sad to have a working wheel that isn’t ever used.

Also in 2009: I read 26 books, which took up some knitting time, and I finally learned to drive a car with a manual transmission so that I could trade in my old beat-up Cutlass for a new shiny Mazda3.

I am excited about 2010! I have plans to finish up the projects on my needles and start some new ones, to publish a design or two, and to improve my spinning skills. My parents bought a KitchenAid stand mixer for Pirate-Husband and me for our combined birthday and Chanukah gifts, so there will be fresh bread to go along with the yarn. Things just keep getting better and better!

Ten observations about plying yarn:

1. It takes forever.
2. It is a heck of a leg workout.
3. I can totally see why people get jumbo flyers and bobbins for it.
4. I love watching the colors of the two singles come together.
5. The floodlight over my spinning wheel sure does put off a lot of heat.
6. It sure would be nice if I could farm this job out.
7. I think this yarn is going to be lovely when it’s finished.
8. If it’s ever finished.
9. No matter how carefully I split the fiber, the bobbins will never play out evenly.
10. Andean plying is a really neat trick.