Hand over the Wool!

Thrummed Me Some Mittens

I'm ready for nice 50 degree weather, not this 22F stuff, how 'bout you? It looked nice today, but the wind was CHILLY. Grabbing my mittens before heading out to work today I realized they'd not been blogged about. Poor mittens!

I can totally blame Sarah for inspiring me into Thrummed Mittens. She showed up at Knit Night with some cute black mittens with pastel thrums and I was hooked. Looked up the pattern I'd seen on the Yarn Harlot's blog years ago on my iPhone right there in Barnes & Noble, and knew what yarn I was going to use before I was home that night. Before bed I had a few rounds of the cuff knit for each mitten.

That reminds me: here's my Public Service Announcement for today. If possible, always try to knit both socks, mittens, gloves, whatever is paired, at the same time. Unless your memory is stellar, you never have second sock syndrom, and you have no distractions in your life. I cannot in good faith affirmatively identify with those three criteria, so, I knit in twos.

 Stephanie's blogged pattern was easy to follow and the knitting was fun. At first it was fiddly to knit the thrum into the fabric, but with a bit of practice you'll be thrumming along. I actually did make one mitten a bit too long initially.

Outside:

Inside:

Cool, huh? I used US 3s and leftover Romney, Silk, Bamboo and Merino for the thrum fiber.

Yay! Drive-by posting tonight. This past weekend I finished (again) Garrett's Shetland cap and this time it fit. Success! I'm still working on the purple socks and have cast on the cat-fur scarf. More on those later.

I'm also working on some new art batts for the shop, I might need to "test" the batts. hee, hee.

Prayer Socks

I've been working on a pair of socks for a friend. The problem is I dyed the yarn just for her and want to keep them for myself. And the dye job turned out fantastic so I hope to get more of this yarn in the shop soon.

For the pattern I'm doing 52 stitches around in basic K2P2 and stockinette sole. The yarn is a superwash Merino 4ply in worsted weight and is knotting up nicely onUS 3s. It's a nice quick project.

I did finish spinning the singles for the Mystery Fleece Epaulet Jacket. Before I finish knitting the jacket I need to finish a few WIPs so I should have some smaller FOs for you in a few days. Sit tight!

Hand Over The Acrylic Giraffe?

A long time ago, in a land not so far away, a Wool Princess's mother crocheted a lovely giraffe blanket for her little princess. She then sewed and hand-tied a soft cotton backing to the blankie and it was the little Wool Princess's favorite blankie ever. When she grew up and had little princesses of her own, the Wool Princess gifted the giraffe blankie to them.

Yes siree, that there is a 35-year-old acrylic blankie. And it is still my favorite. Even though it's not wool. ;-)

On to woolly things. I'm still carding and spinning the Mystery Fleece I started working on a year ago, but have started knitting it into the Epaulet Jacket from Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Knitting Around". For a $6.00 investment, this is the most lovely fleece to work with, soft and shiny, and the perfect gray.  The pattern is worked top-down, and the first bits are engineered more than I'm used to, so this was supposed to be finished a week ago, but I'm only mostly done with the first sleeve and starting the second. Have a look:

I'm knitting a firm garter stitch for the back and forth knitting (firm per EZ instructions) and optioned to knit the sleeves and body in the round using stockinette stitch. No purling allowed! I'll cast on a few extra stitches for the front steek when I'm down with both sleeves. I won't actually finish the sleeves completely but will leave them on cables until the body is ready for a hem, that way I can decide later what I want to do with them, and make sure the lengths are even. I find it's a good idea to let the knitting age for a day before hemming as the knitting does need to contract to it's normal resting state, unblocked. At least this method works for me. See, I can learn from my past experiences!

Hand Over The Cat?

This past Fall my DH and I started holding Bible Study meetings in our home. The decision to do so was hindered by many factors, including what I was going to do about all the wool paraphernalia in our dining room/wool studio. You see, the men were to meet in the family room in our basement and the ladies would meet around or dining room table. While I don't like housework I don't hate it either, but the stress of cleaning our home for the meeting on a weekly basis was going to be tricky if I had to remove all the wool too.

I managed to corral most of the wool on the built-in china cabinet, hoping it would pass for "organized". I've always been disorganized so this was a huge step for me. I worried and fretted about what the others would say, and then DH said to let it alone. So I did.

Well, we had  a fine meeting, it was our first so we discussed what we wanted to study and had prayer time and some fellowship (Lutheran-speak for coffee and bars). No one asked what the fluffy stuff on the china cabinet was or why there was so much yarn about. And then Cindy handed me a plastic grocery bag and said, "Can you spin this?"

"This" was a bag of cat combings, soft white and fluffy, about a 2.5 inch staple. It was clean, so I informed her I could, but it would need to be blended with wool to make it something I'd want to spin. She thought she had a wool allergy so I hand carded up a batt containing 50/50 by volume of the cat fur and some CVM I had stilling around (remember the china hutch?) and spun it up into a quick 2-ply yarn. I had her wear that yarn around her wrist for a couple days to see if it was going to irritate her skin. She was still wearing it weeks later, loving the feel of the soft yarn! Wool allergy, hah! 

Here's a couple shots of the project so far:

The bobbin has singles on it, which I plan to ply for a lace-weight yarn. It's sitting on a batt of the blended white cat fur and gray CVM fleece, blended at a loosely 60% cat fiber / 40% CVM wool by weight. I have drum carded the fibers twice with splitting the first batts to blend the fibers for the 2nd batts.

The second picture shows the approximate staple length I'm working with, a little more than 3 inches. Because of the arrangement of the fibers I'm able to so a sort of long-draw drafting method. Hopefully I'll be able to finish spinning the yarn this week. I plan to knit the yarn into a scarf from Arctic Lace for Cindy, who is patiently waiting for her cat/wool project to be completed.

So far none of the Bible Study ladies have mistaken my spinning wheel for a loom. I think they might be afraid of the drumcarder, its a Supercarder and all the "Danger" stickers are a little scary.