Beginning Spinner

I finished up the fiber I got to take home for the week, more Coopworth wool:



I very much enjoyed the spinning, but toward the end of the bobbin felt my legs tiring. Does this mean spinning is good exercise? I can't wait to start playing with color.

This left me with two bobbins of spun yarn, shown below as wound balls because I only had one bobbin to work with. We didn't get time to ply in the second wheel spinning class, although we did see it demonstrated. Since I'm currently without a wheel, I think the plying is going to have to happen on the drop spindle.



In the second class, I got to use a Lendrum castle-style wheel. I think I like the Ashford Traditional I used last week a little bit better - I think it's because the Ashford has a larger wheel and so spun a bit faster. But the castle-style wheel is much more practical for storage, so when I get a wheel, I expect it will be a castle-style one. My knitting mentor is going to lend me his castle-style Shacht wheel, and I suspect after that, I will be quite spoiled.

I don't have pictures of the following, but (EDITED to add pictures)

We also got to spin with Blue Faced Leicester (oh, it's so dreamy, and I could spin a very fine single!), and we carded some pre-washed Romney fleece, created rolags, and spun it up too. I spun two rolags on the wheel in class and then finished the other two rolags at home on the drop spindle.


BFL & Merino samples, Romney samples

I learned that I definitely prefer spinning from roving, and I definitely prefer spinning on a wheel.

Learning to Spin

I've been wanting to learn to spin before it seemed like such a bandwagon thing, but the timing of my first spinning classes happens to coincide with half the knitting world doing the same thing. Which just means I have good company!

On June 11th, I took a 2.5 hour drop spindle class. We got simple drop spindles and fiber to play with and take home. It took the whole 2.5 hours to get the idea that you pinch with one hand, draft with the other, and then release the twist to let it travel up the drafted fiber and ta-da - yarn.



I completely overspun the first single I spun, so I actually ran it through the spindle again to loosen the overspin. Which, of course, was overkill - the singles are so loosely plied that they are basically singles still. But it's my very first handspun. I wound up with 1.9 of very chunky two-ply handspun Coopworth wool in natural colors:



Then, this weekend, I started a two-part wheel spinning class. I love spinning on a wheel. It goes so fast! I'm glad I took the drop spindle class first, because I already understood the pinch-draw-release combo move, and it made for a fun class. Here's the bobbin I spun in class:



These singles will probably still make yarn larger than I typically knit with, but it's much more even and thinner than the singles from my drop spindle. And, we even got to take wheels home for the week. (This is an Ashford Traditional Saxony-style. Next weekend I get to try a Lendrum Castle-style wheel.)


(My cat checking things out.)

Last night I subscribed to Spin-Off and then today, I signed up for the Funky Carolina Fiber Club. No going back for me!

Madrona

I know it's been several weeks since Madrona, so this post is a bit overdue. My excuse is that I ended up getting sick right afterwards. And then I had final projects due for the classes of the photography program I'm in, plus a photo show to hang. The final class and the show hanging were both yesterday, so I'm finally able to give a report.

I took the class "Designing Lace Triangles" from Evelyn Clark. We used her book Knitting Lace Triangles as a textbook, and you could pick up most of what she taught from the book, but seeing things demonstrated was certainly worth it. Evelyn also brought an impressive store of shawls that she had designed and knit with her, and they were passed around the room, much to our delight. Her Hyacinth Lace Shawl, Dancing Leaves Shawl, Seafoam Lace Scarf, and the truly amazing Labryinth Lace Shawl are all on my to-knit list now.

And I spent a bit of time (and money) in the market. The rule I set for myself was no buying anything I could get at one of my LYSes. I was on the lookout for something special and unique. From Crown Mountain Farms, a Washington-based company, I bought a collection of leftover handspun Sock Hop sock yarn:



Crown Mountain usually sells their sock yarn in pairs, but the skeins I picked up were orphans and most were less than the standard yardage, so I called them leftovers. The colors look amazing together. (I took lots and lots of pictures of this yarn. More on my Flickr.)



I'm thinking they'll eventually make a wonderful shawl, perhaps the Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl or the Feather and Fan Triangle Shawl (both Ravelry links), although I don't have enough yarn for either. A few more orphaned skeins of handspun in complementary colors would nicely round out a shawl, and looking for a few more skeins is a task I'm happy to take on. ;-)



Heady with the first purchase, I went looking for more handspun. I bought one hank from Tactile Fiber Arts, a two-person studio up from California. The skein I bought was a naturally- and hand-dyed mix of Blue Faced Leicester wool, Tussah silk, Merino wool, carbonized bamboo, and alpaca. I think it would make a lovely hat or neckwarmer.



And there was another shop that I kept going into every time I did a circuit around the market: Butternut Woolens. A one-woman studio from Oregon specializing in angora yarn and naturally hand-dyed yarn and fiber, her yarn was incredibly beautiful. I kept waffling between a blue-green silk/wool blend and a purple-blue-green superwash sock yarn, because I wanted them both. But I don't like purchasing yarn without a project in mind, and I couldn't figure out what the project for either would be. Then I remembered Jeanie and I purchased three skeins of the lovely Indigo-Dyed superwash sock yarn.



Unfortunately, the pattern calls for 1350 yards and my three skeins bring me to 975 yards. So I'll either need another skein or another project.

I really enjoyed Madrona, and hope next year to be able to go for longer and take more classes. The classes fill up pretty quickly, so I missed out on the Weaving for Knitters with Syne Mitchell or the Yarn Harlot's offerings, but hopefully next year...

Knitting Classes

In the last week, I took two knitting classes. First, a Continental Knitting ("picking" rather than "throwing") class at one of my favorite local yarn shops, Acorn Street Shop. Once I got the hang of it, I really liked knitting this way (so efficient! so easy to switch from knit to purl! puts the left-hand to work, giving my right a break!). I'm pretty pleased with how the swatch I knit in class looks - the tension is mostly nice and even, although the ribbing looks pretty bad:



Despite my fondness for the above swatch, I have been a little too scared to try picking with any of my works in progress because I'm afraid my tension may be very different than what I've already knit. Perhaps I can pull out the blanket square that I put aside several weeks back and give that a try. Hmm, or start a new square altogether.

There were only three of us in the class and we progressed so quickly that we were able to try some two-color knitting by the end of the class. I'd never knit with more than one color in a row before - dang, I'm going to want to try Fair Isle now.

Then, I took a morning off work on a lovely sunny Seattle summer day, and took the ferry to Bainbridge Island to take a class at Churchmouse Yarns and Teas. What a fabulous yarn shop! It's fairly large with big windows in front, cozy places to knit, an excellent selection of yarn, and serves and sells tea. Although my commute there was about two hours (drove to work, parked, bus to the ferry, ferry across the Sound, walked up to the shop), I am so in love with the place that I'm sure I'll be back. (I think that they will host tea parties - perhaps for my birthday?) I got there a little early and they let me in to fondle and purchase yarn before the class started.


Handmaiden Sea Silk yarn (70% Silk, 30% Seacell) yarn, which I think is fingering weight? The skeins above are in what I think is the "Lily Pond" colorway, but it wasn't labeled, so I'm not sure.

I've been wanting to knit with Sea Silk yarn for some time, and the opportunity finally arose: a class on how to knit the Tuscany Shawl. Although I'm in the middle of a lace project right now, I'd never knit a triangular shawl before, and since the designer herself, Amy R. Singer, was teaching, I jumped on the opportunity. Amy was quite friendly and fun in person and taught us lots of cool tricks to make the knitting easier - shortcuts so that we wouldn't need the pattern, a way to rip back without things falling all apart (I've already tried this one), and my favorite: a way to loosen then tighten the decreases so that the stitches lay flat. Very cool trick!


The first twenty rows or so of the shawl, which I knit in the class.

Unfortunately, my counts are off right now, and I think I'm going to have to rip back some more...