Spinning Rainbows

I did it right this time. I remembered to take pictures of the roving prior to spinning the yarn! Yeah! This is beautiful 100% merino superwash roving dyed by a member of my guild, Twisted Threads Fiber Arts Guild. The roving was much wider than the picture shows as I split the original handpainted roving 8 times lengthwise. I then rolled 2 strips of split roving into balls.

My aim was to spin a single yarn thin enough that when I Navajo plied, I finished with a dk weight yarn. I wanted to keep the colors as solid as possible with only a little bit of overlap. Navajo plying is a good technique for this as I can control how much overlap of each color I get by varying the size of my loops. I love the way the yarn came out and it is so soft. Some of my best spinning yet!

A great website that has nice images of Navajo plying, check out Blue Moon Fiber's Navajo plying tutorial. Blue Moon Fiber also has some dreamy fiber. I purchased some merino/tencel a while back dyed by Blue Moon Fiber. Yummy!

A few tips when Navajo plying:
1) Twist control and Tension are very important! -- When you Navajo ply, you are making crochet loops that are then twisted, so the yarn is 3-stranded. Tension and twist control are very important. If you are not careful and let twist in too early (i.e., before you applied tension to the next crochet loop and straightened out your loop), you may end up with lumpy joints (where you created the new loop) or gaps among the three strands. Control the amount of twist that goes into the loops with the hand closest to the orifice of your wheel (usually your drafting hand). Press your fingers close to where the joint is on the next loop, make sure the next crochet loop is straight and reasonably taut before letting in twist, then let in twist. Stop the twist midway down the loop and create a new loop, repeat. I usually treadle once or twice per loop or before I stop and make a new loop.

2) Have patience, this plying technique takes a while to learn.

3) After getting the hang of the technique or even while learning, have fun with the loop sizes! No one says they have to be one size only and consistent along the yarn. I sometimes make very long loops and sometimes very short loops. It depends on the roving and what effect I want.

Happy treadling!

Patricia's Feather and Fan Shawlette

Here are some pictures of my mom's shawlette. I will have more information with the pattern as soon as I write it up (probably not for a couple weeks though).

slow slow slow

Okay, I'm slow over here and I know it. Robin has been so busy lately with moving and whatnot, er, life, that she hasn't had a chance to post yet. She plans on it, but unfortunately, it hasn't happened.

Me, I finished a beautiful little silk shawl for my mom (aka Patricia), called Patricia's Feather & Fan Shawlette, and I hope to post the pattern for it soon. Very soon.

The shawlette was orignally to be my mom's, um, Christmas gift, which changed to Mother's Day gift, which got moved back some to birthday gift. Phew! Did I mention that I spun the yarn, hence the reason it kept getting moved back so much. I'm not that fast a spinner yet. I started knitting the shawlette, then ripped it out after 10 rows and decided to do the neck a bit differently. So, I started to knit it again, and I even finished it (bound off and everything).

Sigh, but it had problems. The neckline shaping was wrong. I had 1.5 inches of extra fabric sticking up around the back of my neck. Grrrr. So, I ripped the whole thing out. Yup, the whole thing. I was so mad at that point. It was for my mother's birthday and it would have been on time too. She lives over 2000 miles away, so I have to take into account mail time. I had a week at that point before her birthday. I was definitely not going to make it, but my mom's a sweetheart and she said that was okay, not knowing yet why it was late, only that I botched something and had to redo it. Sigh, go figure! I finally finish the project and it wasn't shaped right. I even checked the shaping too as I knit it. Live and learn I guess.

So, I changed my shaping entirely, and reknit the shawlette. The pattern is definitely from scratch now. It was a bit longer than I wanted in the back, but I have an idea on how to fix that. I'll write up the pattern soon, including some pictures I took prior to sending the shawlette off to mom. I ended up sending the shawlette along with a Father's Day gift for my dad, ony two weeks late! And mom loves it!

Finally, the Maryland Goodies!

Okay, so I have to be the slowest person lately when it comes to showing what I purchased at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I bought quite a few goodies as you can see below in the picture.
Starting clockwise on the top row, I purchased 3 oz of some beautiful kid mohair locks from Dry Creek Naturals from Georgia. Beautiful mohair locks. I bought them to spin up some boucle yarn like I made in class. I'll explain and show that in a moment. The next item is 4 oz of merino/cashmere (I think a 70/30 blend) purchased from Carolina Homespun. They were having a Maryland deal and the fiber called to me. It kept saying take me home and pet me. Sigh, I'm a real sucker for soft fibers. Robin didn't help either! She convinced me to only take 1 bundle home, but I wanted 2 of them. She saved me money though!

The next item is a big package of Ashland Bay blended merino wool in several different colors (1 oz each of 8 solids and 8 multis), purchased from The Fold, one of my favorite fiber stores. I always buy things from Toni.
This year Robin and I dropped a vest and its accompanying pattern off at The Fold for Nancy Shroyer of Nancy's Knit Knacks. Nancy is a member of our guild and designs some really wonderful sweaters. Anyways, she designed a vest for Toni of The Fold, and I liked the pattern so much I had to spin the yarn to make it myself, so that is what this bag of fiber is for. I don't see the pattern up yet on The Fold or Nancy's website, but I'm sure it will be soon.
The next bag of cream roving is some superwash merino I wanted, just in case something strikes my fancy.
Starting on the left of the bottom row, the first item is from The Good Shepherd in VT and is a dyed silk cap, a very huge one too! The item next to it are some silk caps I purchased for the purpose of dyeing them. The last bag of fiber and the first item I purchased the day Robin and I went to the festival is a pound of a Finn fleece. You can't see the color so well, but it is a lovely grey color with a touch of brown and is so soft. I can't wait to clean it up and spin it!
Robin and I enjoyed the festival and our visit so much. We took a class with Judith MacKenzie McCuin that Saturday morning for 3 hours. We learned how to spin beads into our yarn, shown in the bottom of the left picture below. We then learned how to spin a very light and lofty boucle yarn using mohair locks, shown at the top in the left picture below. I had a horrible time learning how to spin the boucle as well as the beaded yarn as I ply with my right hand holding the yarn on my left side. Odd I know, but that is me. I got it sooner or later though as you can see from the pictures below. We then plied the beaded yarn with the boucle yarn, the middle yarn in the left picture.

The picture at the right shows my attempt at what Judith referred to as "Push and Pull" yarn, top yarn. The boucle is shown again at the bottom and the middle yarn is the two plied together which I kind of like and have plans to try more of in the future.
Robin and I really enjoyed Judith's class and maybe in the future I'll take a different course from her.
Okay, that's it for my Maryland trip. Oh, I guess not since the Koigu I bought isn't in the picture I took. It isn't in the picture because I was already knitting with it and working on my Charlotte's Web Shawl, pattern from Koigu. I started on the Tuesday after Maryland and finished the following Wednesday, really enjoying the lace pattern and the colors of the yarn. The pattern is one of the easiest lace patterns I have seen in a while and I am pretty familiar with lace patterns. The 8 row and 8 st pattern is wonderfully easy for a lace beginner, of which Robin was and she enjoyed the pattern as well and wants to do another one!
So, below is a picture of the finished shawl and an up close look at the colors as they don't come out so well in the picture. I used the following colors, starting from the neck: P 107B, P706D, P513, P714, and P531 on the bottom. The little black kitty is Snowball. Yup, Snowball! My husband named her and she has to be where the action is always!

Okay, that really is it for this blog.
Happy fibering!