Fiber Friday: Messier 51

At the beginning of the year, I made myself a really quick and fun hat from some gorgeous handpainted singles.

I'm pleased to say that, not only have I finished working up a handspun version, but the pattern is just about ready for release this evening.

 This version was worked up in 100 yds of Corriedale singles in the "Parakeet" colorway (spinning and prepping of the singles was blogged about over here at the Porpoise Fur blog). With that minimal amount of yardage, I ended up with a hat that is slouchy on Dev, but a closer fitting toque on me. Perfect!

The pattern for this hat, Messier 51, is going to go live sometime this evening. Shortly thereafter, the next issue of the Porpoise Fur newsletter will go out, and will include a coupon code for getting that pattern for free. In addition to the actual knitting pattern, the file also includes instructions and tips on spinning singles. If you're interested in getting this little beauty for yourself (it's perfect for holiday knitting!), please go over to Porpoise Fur, and sign up on the right sidebar for the newsletter to get your free copy. Happy November everyone!

21st century problem

Our router died last week. Just up and died without warning - no green lights, no yellow lights, no red lights, no nothing (certainly no Internet!). And since it's Himself's name on the account and we do not share a surname, he has to be the one to get the broadband company to replace the router*. And since he's been away at his college reunion and at a course for work over the last week, that has not happened. So I've been World-Wide-Web-deprived whilst at home. Hence the lack of posting.

Now that I've got some spare time and a handy dandy wireless connection (thank you London coffee shops!), I can catch up on the blogging. Today's news is a catch up of all sorts of useful and/or useless tidbits of Porpoise-related information.

Item the First: YitC: tGLYC (previously known as the Sooper Sekrit Project, aka the Great London Yarn Crawl) - we have just released the list of participating shops for this year, and I'm really excited about their involvement! We have visited a truckload of shops in the last 6 months, and this list includes some new venues as well as some very well established shops. There's a broad range of products represented and I hope that the Yarn Crawlers have an absolute blast! You can check out the list of shops here, and join the conversation on the GLYC Ravelry group here.

We also have posted about our charity partner, Refuge. Since Allison and I are organizing this thing as a community-building exercise (and perhaps as a way to justify our weekly trips to yarn shops to our other halves), we are not looking at it as a money-making venture. So any and all net proceeds from the ticket sales for the event will be donated to Refuge this autumn. You can read more about Refuge on the blog here.

Item the Second: Porpoise Fur has again been reviewed in Knitty, and the website has been totally redesigned and updated with a metric crapton of fiber. The fact that this happened at all this week is totally due to Allison, who fed me lunch and let me use her wi-fi. I am really excited with the redesign (which is 99% organizational, so the website looks the same - don't be surprised if you don't notice anything different!), and with being able to list so much product. Go check out the shop and see if there's anything you can't live without.

Item the Third: I have one stuffed toy, two successful sweater surgeries and some handspun to share. Stay tuned!

*Mental note to self: research routers and buy one of our very own so I can tell the broadband company to suck it.

Falkland Fiber Friday: BRCA

I was going to blog about some more Hello Yarn Fiber Club that I've spun up, but I'm so in love with this sample of fiber that I listed in the shop today, I had to share it.

This is my test run for the new BRCA colorway, which is available on BFL and humbug BFL. This little sample was done on the last bit of Falkland I had leftover, and it is super soft and bouncy.

The starting fiber looked a bit like this:

I spun this fractally: split the entire top into three pieces, then split each third into 3, 4 and 6 strips respectively. Then plied them up, and I'm in love.

I've got about 50 yds of approximately worsted weight yarn to do something with. What, I have no idea, but something. And even though I'm not really a pink kind of girls, but I love the combinations of dark red, purple, pale pink and bright fuschia in the final yarn. I am really pleased with how the colors blended, and I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with it!

Easy sweater gratification

Sweaters are so satisfying to knit and wear, but at some point in the process, things definitely start to drag, and it seems like you're a) not making any progress, and therefore b) never going to finish and get to wear the beautiful creation you've been slaving over. In the last two weeks I have discovered two solutions to the problem of sweater doldrums.

Solution #1: Use bulky yarn.

Pattern: Top-down raglan, a la Barbara Walker
Yarn: Handspun Porpoise Fur Shetland/silk in "Magpie", approximately 500 yds/1 lb of bulky, squishy 2-ply.
Needles: US 11/8.0 mm and US 10.5/6.5 mm
Start/finish: I started spinning on 10th Feb, finished the singles on the 11th, finished the plying on the 12th, and started knitting on the 13th I think? Stalled out on the 19th by running out of yarn, but finished up yesterday and blocked it last night. It's still drying...

This is my barter sweater, and it was started and finished (spinning and knitting) in less then two weeks. It would have been done in about 9 days, but I ran out of yarn and had to spin up a bit more, so that stretched it out a bit longer. Still, 9 days for the whole project, and about a week to actually knit the sweater, is pretty hard to beat for almost-instant sweater gratification.

I wanted to get it blogged today, so the pictures are somewhat less then stellar. I'll try for some better ones tomorrow if the weather cooperates...

Solution #2: Knit baby sweaters.

Pattern: Henry's Sweater by Sara Elizabeth Kellner
Yarn: Adriafil Duo Comfort Classic, 131 yds/50 gr, the 3-6 month size used less then two balls.
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm
Start/finish: 15th Feb - 18th Feb 2013
Comments/mods: talk about instant gratification! My new nephew arrived on Valentine's Day, I started on Friday after some frenzied stash diving, and the knitting was done on Tuesday. Boo and I bought some buttons yesterday and I sewed on the snaps and buttons today.

I did a few mods. First, I did fewer short rows on the shawl collar because I didn't want it too get too long and floppy. I like this mini-shawl alot.

I worked the garter stitch edging on the sleeves back and forth instead of in the round. It was only 5 rows or something, so sewing up that tiny bit on the end of the sleeves wasn't a big deal.


I also skipped the buttonholes, choosing instead to sew on the buttons on the outside as a decorative element, and using snaps to hold it closed. I think this will work better for getting the sweater on quickly and for keeping it closed.

I'm sorely tempted to put leather elbow patches on, since the baby's Dad is a professor. I think in the interests of getting it sent off to the States quickly, I'll forgo that, but wouldn't it be adorable?

Barter Economy

I have been working on a sweater for someone I've never met. That is to say, never met in person. We've corresponded over email, but the first time we meet in real life will be when I hand this over to her. Isn't barter great?

The recipient of this sweater is an illustrator who's been working on a logo for an event I'm organizing with Alli. But since we, as a pair, aren't able to pony up the big bucks that such a logo would require, we proposed a barter exchange: specifically, she do up a logo and we knit her a handspun, custom fit sweater.

This baby is 70% Shetland/30% tussah silk, in the Magpie colorway from my shop. I spun up approximately 460 yds of bulky 2-ply over the course of a couple of days (love spinning bulky!!!) and started knitting over the weekend. One skein (225 yds) got me through the entire yoke and through the waist shaping decreases.

Think about that for a minute. 225 yards. Only. Ehem...(ponders wisdom of trying to cloth size 16 self in bulky sweaters from now until the end of time) (decides that, at least in my own personal instance, DK-weight or lighter is still the way to go) (weeps for lost yardage...)

The other cool thing is that this baby is knitting up before my very eyes. I was hoping to finish the body last night and get started on the sleeves, but 1) one child on half-term holiday and bored out of her skull because of 2) one child out of school with tonsillitis means that not much knitting has gotten done for the last few days. But child #1 is currently engrossed in the iPad, and child #2 is snoring on the couch, so as soon as I hit the Publish button, I'm settling down for some quality time with my handspun. And that, my friends, is bliss...

Singles!

My post-Winter Holidays spinning frenzy continues, this time with some Parakeet Corriedale.

This 2 oz took me about an hour to spin on the miniSpinner. I've been letting it rest since then so that it's not too energized when I take it off the bobbin and finish it, but I'm not sure how much longer I can wait! I'm hoping to have enough yardage to do a retake on my top-down hat that I made over New Year's, and then I'll be able to get the pattern out to some test knitters and get it released.

Leaf Peeper Cowl

Some of you may know this already (ha-bloody-ha!), but I really, really like knitting with handspun yarn. I mean really, really like it. If given my druthers, I'd probably never knit with commercial yarn again. So it seems only reasonable that I might start designing some patterns for handspun yarn, right?



Meet the Leaf Peeper Cowl (attractive posed amongst the dead ferns in Richmond Park). Knit from side to side out of just under 100 yds/92 m of bulky weight handspun yarn for a cowl that is about 18 inches in circumference unstretched. If you want a longer cowl, simply keep going until it's the desired size. When it's long enough, graft the ends together and voila! Instant neck cuddles.

The sample was knit out of 3-ply BFL from my shop, in the Leaf Peepers colorway. The fiber was split into three equal lengths before spinning, and then two of the pieces were split further lengthwise. Final yarn was 95 yds/3.5 oz, or approximately 450 ypp.

This is the perfect quick cowl for holiday presents - I think mine took me a couple of nights to whip up, and the stitch pattern, while it may look complicated, is pretty easy to follow once you get going.

Pattern can be found on Ravelry in my store, or you can get it here for $5.00.

Shades of things to come

I've been doing a bunch of dyeing of late, getting up to speed for a shop update in September after school starts, and I found one of the new colorways irresistable.


There was a chill in the air this morning that means autumn might be just around the corner (although given the weather over the past few months, it will be 35 degrees by the end of the next week). Sadly, here in the UK we don't get the same brilliant colors that cover the trees in New England, but this fiber is a pretty close match!

I couldn't help myself - BFL is totally one of my favorite fibers!

Most of the 4 oz became a three-ply, but the leftover singles from two bobbins went together pretty well too.

This was the first non-natural colored spinning I've done in quite a while, and I whizzed through it. The singles were all spun up in one evening (fractal spin: I split the length of top into three equal lengths, then spun one from the entire width, one split in half and one split into quarters). The plying was done the next day (gotta love summer holidays!). I've got about 100 yds of bulky 3-ply that I think is going to become a cowl of some sort. Gotta go crawl through the stitch dictionaries...

Here comes the sun

It has been an absolutely spectacular week here in southeast England, which has lifted the spirits of all concerned. Except for on the way home from school, when the girls moan about it being "Toooooo hoooooot Mummy!" The poor things, you'd think they'd never lived in Hell Houston.

Anyway, the improved weather has inspired me to do two things. One: to finish the knitting part of my Gemini tee...

Still needed: weaving in of many ends (damn stinkin' hemp yarn with lots of knots!) and a good wet blocking. Maybe tonight.

I've also gone on a total run and done a bunch of dyeing.

That's four out of six colorways drying in the glorious sunshine. The other two will be joining them in the next few hours, and I'm hoping to get an update posted on Sunday afternoon. As long as the weather and the photography gods smile on me!

I hope everyone has a glorious, sunshine filled weekend!

Something's different around here...

Last night, in response to being stressed out by events more or less beyond my control*, I started playing around with the blog layout. It is still a work in progress, but I'm liking it so far. I am going to move all my patterns to a separate tab along the top, and off of the sidebar in the next coupld of days. I will eventually probably customize the colors a bit more, maybe change the background picture to something more fibery or (gasp!) put together a real header for myself one of these days. It's a work in progress...;-)

I'm also prepping an update for the shop. It's been grey and cold, and I think that influenced my color choices quite a bit this time around...both sympathetically and in rebellion against. Update should be live tomorrow sometime, but you can check out a teaser post on the blog here.

And do I have knitting to share! There's a finished shawl, a handspun scarf, and a couple of cute critters. A few need to be held back until they reach their destinations, but there should be something new and off the needles on here this week. I have also firmly committed myself to sitting down and spinning tomorrow (more Falkland for the handspun-colorwork-sweater-that-will-never-end) because, well, March is coming, and I need to get cracking now that I've run out of yarn halfway down sleeve 1!

Let me know what y'all think of the new design, and what you'd like to see more of - I'm always open to suggestions, and I love knowing that you're out there!

* Nothing of health or job or family concerns, more along the lines of if-I'd-been-an-actual-adult-and-taken-care-of-this earlier-we-wouldn't-be-in-this-unfortunate-but-thankfully-only-potentially-disappointing-and-not-dire-predicament.