Finished the Blues

Finally, I am back behind the spinning wheel on a regular basis and not only 5 minutes here and there!
After 12 months of issues with my back I feel reborn:-)

The one I just finished last night is from a merino/silk batt hand carded by All the Pretty Fibers that I spun into a super soft and squishy 2-ply yarn.

 
The first yarn I worked on after the break is made of beautiful Superfine Baby Alpaca, hand dyed by Amanda.from www.MandaCrafts.co.uk.
I spun it into N-plied, sock weight yarn.

Since it has been dreadfully grey and dull here in Rotterdam for weeks, I next grabbed a very colorful club shipment from Spunky Eclectic, colorway Field of Dreams.
I split the tops lengthwise for a 2-plied yarn without mixing colors. As you can see that only worked for one of the skeins :-)

Reversible knitting

Cowls, cowls, cowls....

I recently made my first Moebius cowl following Cat Bordhi's Moebius Cast-On instructions on Youtube.
What a genius technique!

The pattern for this cowl was Sivia Harding's Harmonia's Rings Cowl, a beautiful cowl pattern using the Moebius Cast-on method.

I used some worsted weight yarn, which I had handspun from handpainted Targhee top.




Even though the pattern is absolutely wonderful, I did want to make a few changes to the fit.

So I cast on for another Moebius cowl, shaping it slightly differently and trying out different stitch patters.
Since these cowls show the 'right' and the 'wrong' side of the knitted piece a reversible pattern is required.

Unfortunately I do not own any of the Reversible Knitting books available, for example Lynne Barr's Reversible Knitting - which would have sped up choosing stitch patterns, I guess - but I still came up with a few stitch patterns that work well.

If you want to try this too, my tip is to use ribs; ribs in many shapes or formats. The cowls in the picture at the top all look quite different but the patterns are all based on ribs - alternating knit and purl stitches or rows.

From left to right:
1: 1x1 rib, broken up by a few garter stitch rows
2: simple 2x2 rib
3: horizontal ribs by alternating a few rows of stockinette stitch with a few rows reverse stockinette stitch
4: simple 1x1 rib in chunky yarn
5: 2 rows of 2x2 rib, 1 purl row, 1 knit row
6: simple 1x1 rib in worsted yarn
7: reversible cables combined with 1x1 rib


My latest one is a more refined reversible cable pattern - in progress here:

I now have far too many cowls for me to wear, so some of them are available in my Etsy shop :-)

Spinning disaster and spinning delight

My recent spinning adventures were a mixed bag.
Strangely enough I love the spindling results, but the yarns I spun on my wheel are a nightmare.

So first the nightmares:

4oz Falkland roving dyed by Spunky Eclectic. I  love Falkland because it is soft, spins easy, usually provides instant gratification. Well, I overspun this - which seems to be my major problem at the moment, after skeins and skeins of low twist yarns....
And I didn't only overspin but also split the roving in a way that the beautiful fall colors into a muddy mess.

4oz Merino/Bamboo roving, also dyed by Spunky Eclectic. Again I wanted to give this a little more twist than I usually do, and .... a rope. A rope in pretty colors, but a rope nonetheless.

The worst of all:
100% Pygora. You might remember that I spun Pygora twice before, one beautiful silver colored yarn and an ivory white fuzzy shiny beauty. The third lot I had was the largest, more than 4 oz, and it seemed as if this was the softest lot of the three. We will never know because - again - I overspun. You would think I would learn, no? This is the real nightmare, nothing I can do with this camel colored wire...

 

Now to the delights (thankfully there were a few, otherwise I think I would have tossed my equipment)

2 of 4 oz pure tussah silk, hand dyed by Squoosh fiberarts in colorway Fraises.

 

This is the second lot of Pygora. Absolutely gorgeous, I think. It's shiny and fuzzy and soft. The fiber was by Shaggy Bear Farmd in Oregon, sorry, I don't have a website link.

And some spindling in process that seems to turn out OK:

SW Merino/Cashmere blend on my Golding ringspindle hand dyed by Corgi Hill Farm, and

Merino/Bamboo blend, hand dyed by NewHuehandspuns, spun on my new Jenkins turkish spindle.

And I am trying to take the curse off my wheel be feeding it some beautifully soft Merino/Angora blend.  I will let you know how that goes...