Pal Progress and a Sock Dilemma

Last month I bought my One Skein Secret Pal a skein of yarn. She wanted Rowan or Karabella, and I found her the most luscious skein I could, which turned out to be something soft and fuzzy from Rowan. For some reason I've been shy to spin for her; what if she doesn't like it? But on the other hand, I can send her a lot bigger skein this way, and it'll be something unique! I almost NEVER knit with commercial yarn because I can never find anything that's just right. So I took the plunge.

This is a merino/silk blend dyed in heirloom tomato kinds of colors, spun and plied. Here is the last little bit of roving being spun into singles.

And here is the finished skein. Its a hefty one; this will be more than enough for any one skein project.

Meanwhile, my own Secret Pal, whose identity is unknown to me except that she's a spinner and sends me gorgeous hand spun yarn (remember the crocheted pillow?) sent me rainbow colors of alpaca. Yum!! Its a singles yarn, and fairly fine. I wanted immediately to make two color Fair Isle or Norwegian mittens from it, but needed some neutral color(s) to knit as the second strand. I got busy right away; I really wanted to cast on with that soft, cheerful alpaca!

Those rainbow balls are from my Pal, and the darker colors (three shades) are the ones I made to go with them. I cast on originally with 000 needles, but it was way too snug for fun knitting, and the alpaca was weeping for space to bloom, so I went up to size 0. Its going much better now.

The gorgeousness of the rainbow colors is hidden by the way the balls are wound, but trust me. The colors are fantastic, and I'm so excited about this project. I've been dealing with a series of huge family emergencies, and this soft, bright, fuzzy stuff was just the thing to take my mind off of it all. My pal also sent me some soy silk top, which I'll spin up one of these days soon. What a pal!! More on the soy silk later.

And now for my dilemma; the toe up socks are on hold until I figure out what to do with them. As you can see here, I'm knitting these simultaneously, from two ends of the same ball of yarn so as not to get the unfortunate surprise I surely WOULD have gotten of running out of yarn halfway through the second sock.

It has become apparent that I only have enough yarn for a couple inches of ribbing. Should I dye/spin some more yarn to coordinate with this, and make regular length socks with some stripes in the cuffs to blend in the other yarn? Or is there some use in the world for short-topped socks? Please advise, oh wise knitters.

Big Blue Fuzz, or (Gasp!) a Finished Object!

You heard it here first; Martha has actually finished something. Not just a pillow, either!

This is my first-ever handspun sweater! Big Blue Fuzz!

I spent quite awhile trying to figure out how to make fuzzy, light, mohair yarn. In the end I core spun it. This is the core: black merino/silk blend, drafted as finely as possible. After drafting, I wound it into little balls that I could spin directly from.


I dyed the mohair roving with a blue-purple progression, and allowed it to not penetrate evenly to the center of the tight roving. After dyeing, this stuff was frightening; you can see it on the right in this photo. I had to rip it lengthwise to get it to open up again, but then I was able to fluff it up, until it became just a bowl of total fluff. The center was lighter, brighter shades due to the imperfect penetration of the dye. I liked the effect, and will do it on purpose next time!


As I fed the black roving into the wheel (on the lowest twist whorl) I allowed it to pass through some fluff, which I tried to control to some degree. I didn't try to do any further drafting at all, just concentrated on getting the mohair on there before all the twist was in, so as to discourage shedding later.


Then I set the twist in the singles, and knit with that. I began to knit when I had maybe three skeins done, and I had completely figured out how to make the yarn. I am a big girl, and this sweater took 6 good sized skeins of yarn. Its a top-down raglan from Barbara Walker's book, and its boxy, with a lot of ease because I wanted it to fit easily over baggy long sleeved shirts. Knitting in one piece enabled me to make the variation in colors match up along the front of the sweater.

I thought I was going to make this cardigan with buttons, so I knit in buttonholes, but then I found these clasps and they gave just the right nordic touch...a tailored veneer to a big cloud of blue fuzzy soft stuff.

So to make the fabric have enough stability for clasps, I sewed grosgrain ribbon to the inside fronts and for good measure, also the neck edge just below the rolled collar. Then I stitched the clasps on, making sure they were attached to the ribbon, not just to knit. The buttonholes disappeared entirely in this process.

For the record, I strongly recommend the spin-as-you-knit method! You get to start knitting sooner which helps prevent boredom spinning, and you get to spin just the right amount of yarn! Perfect! Then the leftovers are still fiber, which you could use for just anything at all.

The trick of course is to buy plenty of fiber to start with and dye it all. I'm sure I can find tons of things to do with leftover blue mohair, unspun, right?