More Hexipuffs!

It has been a while since I've made some hexipuffs, and I've received some generous and very purple RAK's.  I have not had the chance to knit with many of these yarns yet, but I hope to very soon.

I made a hexipuff from the yarn that I used in the first sweater I ever made (In high school - see middle puff below.)  The puff is a tad bit bigger than some of the others, but I think that this will be okay in the end.  I'm not too worried about it in any case.

I did not finish quite as many hexipuffs as I had hoped for this update.

SO I did a "measurement" and found that ~30 hexipuffs (5x6) makes 1 square foot of quilt.  A full mattress (double) is 54" x 75", or ~ 4.5' x 6.25'.  28.125 square feet, which means that I would need around 900+ hexipuffs.  At the rate I'm going, this should take me around 25 years.  Do you think I'll ever make it there?  (I only have 36 completed right now.)  

Art yarns luxe cowl

When my mom gave me a coveted skein of ArtYarns, I wanted to do more than just a tiny one skein projects. I realized that I was dying to make a second Luxe Cowl from the  Luxe Accessories set, and that the limited artyarns yardage would pair perfectly with some Aloft I had in my stash already!

I started off with a 49g, 114 yard ArtYarns Beaded MOhair and Sequins skein and 24 g of the Aloft in Tranquil.  I knit the cowl on size 8 knitting needles.   In a slightly creepy fashion, the project required 18 g of each type of yarn... IDENTICAL to what happened the first time I knit the Luxe Cowl.  This is especially odd because I used a completely different yarn for the contrast color this time.

I considered making this cowl double size so I could wrap it around my next twice.  Therefore, after the 5th repeat, I measured the amount of yarn used again.  Unfortunately, after the 5th repeat I only had 9 g of Aloft left.  This is enough to finish this cowl, but not enough to make it much larger.  There was plenty of ArtYarns left over, so this would be enough for a third cowl (or completely different project) in the future.

The kitchener stitch is much harder with a beaded yarn than it was with KnitPicks Capra from my first version.  I quickly got the hang of it, and the grafting is nearly invisible.  

I have 31 g of the Luxury ArtYarns remaining.   What do you think I should use it for?  

A "Real" Crochet Project

Time to do a new years resolution and make a REAL crochet project!  (By REAL I mean not just the border or something... and something that is not a granny square.  I want to try increases!)   I decided to make a baby hat because it is a small and fast project to create... not to mention that my back up baby show gifts have all disappeared in recent months.  I selected the Bev's Newborn Roundie Hat for this project.  I used Lilly Sugar'n'Cream Ombre 02223 and Size G (4.0 mm) crochet hook.

So I'm not sure what it means by make 14 DC's inside ring.  Am I supposed to go all the way around the chains or pick up a loop from the first chains?  I'm going to figure to go all the way in because I couldn't fit 14 trying to pick up from the edge of the frist loop.  I picked up from inside the circle and it was MUCH easier.  The hole in the center was a little big, but I was able to tighten the tail and it brought it closed.  I'm crocheting!!!!

Knitting Round 4, I think that this isn't any where near big enough with 35 sts.  Maybe the hat would fit a DOLL head but not a baby.  I frogged this row and decided to add an increase stitch into every 3rd stitch rather than every second stitch.  (New Round 4 had 48 sts.)  Continue as written.  (Look at me, modifying a crochet pattern!)  

I knit a total of 10 dc rounds, and then did one sc round.  32 g in the hat.  25 g remain.  Completed in an evening!!  The final hat is 5.5" long, 6" wide.  What should I crochet next?

This project would not have been possible without the help from my Encyclopedia of Crochet (seen in some of the above pictures.)  

Trying for Less Spin

My last two skeins of hand spun yarn have been a little rougher than I would like.  I've been getting more consistent with my drafting, so this was causing me to try to spin and treddle faster.  More twist in the yarn = more rope like.  It is time to try to slow things down and get less spin into the fibers.  (Hopefull with less breaks!)

I'm using some natural colored Montadale Combed top that I  received as part of my generous gift. The fiber has a LOT of crimp to it.  It is a really pretty color, brown flecked with white.  The fiber is a bit slippery and it is hard to re- join if I break the continuous flow.

A bit too late (30 g into spinning), I decided I wanted to make this a 2 ply (rather than Nply) yarn.  I zeroed the scale with a blank spindle and leader, and then split the rest of the yarn to make two 39/40 g bunches.  Hopefully I will get close on yardage.  (With what remains, I can make a mini 2-ply skein from the center pull ball method.  This yarn is so fuzzy that I didn't want to do this with the entire thing.)

I'm really concerned that there is so little twist that I am going to break the singles a ton when I ply.Before I ply the yarn, I weighted the spindles.  Both weigh 95 g.  (But, of course, this is what I had planed on when I divided the fiber with weighting hte spindles)

So far so good.  No breakage of the singles and the plying is going easily.  The yarn is really soft and yarny (not ropy) so I think I achieved my less twist.  However.... some of this may be due to the crimpiness of the fiber itself and not my spinning technique.  i will need to try this "less is more" twist action in a different fiber as well.

There was only a little yarn left on the second spindle, so I wound this into a center pull ball and then used both ends to create a 2-ply miniskein.

So just after writing this I had my break.  Rather than adding a knot, I just have a small region of 3 ply yarn.  No harm no foul.  Right?   This is why it is better to make this a 2ply yarn than single ply.  Stronger is much better!

Big Skein: 196 wraps = 261 yards 2ply   76 g

Mini Skein (not pictured): 8 wraps + 1 ft = ~11 yards 3 g

17 WPI = Sport weight

Finished in Jan 2013.  

Behind the Design of the Denise Shawl

Denise Shawl Knitting Pattern PDF - $5.00 

Now I've shared with you my notes from the actual construction of the shawl, but I also wanted to give you some sneak peaks behind the design of this shawl.  I started out with the idea that I wanted to use a twisted braid lace design.  I did some sketches on how I could orient it into a triangular shawl.

Next I started drawing out the lace pattern in excel.  I drew out a skeleton of the YO's that I wanted and then added decreases around the pattern.  

I wanted to check out the decreases were working, so I knit a swatch of each of the three sections.  You can see my markings and corrections in the paper above.  

Finally, I knew that I wanted there to be some fun points at the end of the shawl.  I also wanted to fill in the end with a bit more design for the edging.  In the following swatch, I tried out some additional "V's" versus diamonds.  (I ended up going with the V's.)

Of course, Indy was very interested in every step of this process.

This shawl was really fun to design, but it was even more fun to knit.  Why don't you purchase the knitting pattern and try it out yourself?

Breaking Delphinium Blue

Ever since I read that Wilton's Delphinium Blue Food Coloring is composed of both Red and Blue food coloring I wanted to try breaking it.  I used some unknown wool that was part of my generous gift.  I space dyed the roving and it resulted in some stunning color separation from teal to a magenta.  (See the below video.)

The finished unspun wool:

 

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to spin this up.  I could have randomly chosen sections and then gotten random stripes, or I could make a gradient.  In the end, I separated the most purple parts from the blue parts. I thought it would be fun to spin this one as bit of a gradient.  There will still be a lot of variation within the blue section, this is super fun and pretty!

I think that I still have an issue with over spinning.  I'm not sure how to go about this or how to make a softer yarn.  I would like to make this a 3ply yarn again, but we will see how long it takes me to spin it.  It isn't as thin as the previous 3-ply that I created, so it may not have any where near as much yardage.  But I am still excited about the prospect of a multi-ply gradient. 

There was some debris in the fiber, and also some really short pieces of wool.  I am not understanding why good picking is important!   This doesn't spin as easily as some of the other fiber I've spun, but the experience is REALLY good because I'm learning about what I want for when I prepare fiber.

After the first bobbin was basically full, I decided to switch to a second bobbin.  I know I will need to eventually, and I want to make some 3 ply yarn with the gradient intact.  (I was afraid that there would be only blue - med mixed and I wanted no knots with all three colors.  This makes it more like a single yarn rather than two different of different colors.)  

I n-plyed the yarn, and you could see the deeper purple sections as I went towards the center of the second spindle.

The yarn is a little rough.  I really need to stick with the slowest whorl and try to add less twist to the yarn.  I need to treadle slower and to draft faster.  This is something that I will work on more in the future.

There are two skeins that are technically very different, but are part of a matched set.  I haven't yet decided what I would make with this, but maybe some kind of bottom up shawlette starting with the purple.  

In the end I had 100 wraps of the more multicolored yarn, or 133 yards.  There are 117 yards (88 wraps) of the more solid blue skein.  

Finished January 2013.  

Guy Knits

The patterns in the book Guy Knits: Sweaters &  Vests (Best of Knitter's Magazine series) are by a variety of designers, including the Knitter's Deign Team.  The book contains a short how-to section and then is divided until multiple sections:

• Accessories (4 patterns - hats, mittens, ties, blankets)
• Sweaters (11 patterns)
• Vests (12 patterns)

The Reversible Hat, Mittens set is pretty cute, although it should be noted that the mittens are not reversible!  (The pattern is for a reversible hat and then matching mittens.  Take care on how you read the title!)  There are stripes created from garter stitch. Bold Zebra is a lovely sweater with a herringbone type pattern formed by slipped stitches.

The sweaters have a lot of color and texture, enough to inspire you. I love the look of some of the shawl colors (I think that is what they are called, I'm not a fashion student so I'm not really sure.)

I'm not a huge fan of the vests by Herz & Baum is lovely cabled and looks really expensive looking. Cecropia has stunning colorwork with subtly contrasting colors so it is a big pattern but is quite soft at the same time.

I love the book sections on fit, but my FAVORITE part of the whole book is the color preview. They show samples of the different sewaters knit up in different colors. This will help give you an idea of how the different colorwork patterns will look using different kinds of contrasting colors without you having to knit a swatch up yourself!