Oooo! I'm famous! I submitted a picture of Emma's gansey to the Yarn Museum, in the "Yarn FOrward" gallery. Lots of pretty yarns at that site, lots of good links to other people's fibery doings.

I made a decision today. I can no longer live with my fiber closet looking like this:



It's not just like this because of moving. My fiber closet in the last two places I lived looked virtually the same, though even more crowded becasue the closets were smaller. After five years, I decided to do something about it.

A trip to the Empire of Evil (aka Wal-Mart) and $15 gave me this:



It's amazing what just getting rid of the boxes does to make it look better. Now I can actually see what I have, and am able to access it without unstacking all the boxes and rummaging through each one when I'm trying to find something. I even labelled all the different pillowcases of wool, so I will know what's in each without opening it. How very organized of me.....

The spinning wheel will not be perched there on top permanently, as I'm going to try and sell it (love my Schacht!), and the same with the rigid heddle loom that is tucked in the corner behind the shelves. I'm not a multiple wheel/loom kind of person.

I had fun going through all the boxes and seeing what's in the stash. I did discover, though, that I have way too much wool. I know- is that possible? But, yes. I don't really like having a big stash. I have four whole fleeces (two wool, two alpaca), and a bunch of bits and pieces, each around a pound of fiber or less, and all very nice things I will enjoy working with. I need to card up some of these so I can spin them, rather than just have them sitting in the closet. The two wool fleeces need another wash before they can be carded, though. I didn't get all the grease out the first time and they still feel a bit sticky. I also have a whole pile of handspun that's waiting to be made into several somethings. Most of the yarn I have is handspun, which actually surprised me (I don't know why, though, since I've been doing so much spinning the last two years!)

I'll leave you with a cutie-pie picture. Remember the hand spun handknit sweater I made last year? Well, I found it in the box of entries from the Fair, and Emma had to try it on right away. It's still a bit big, but with the sleeves rolled up once, it's not too bad. I'd forgotten how yummy the yarn feels. Love that Ashland Bay top!

Whee!!!! The Fair is on, and....



I won!! Blue ribbon, Best of Class, and BEST OF SHOW for the sewing thread daffodil filet crochet panel, and.....



blue ribbon and Best of Class for Emma's handspun gansey, and.....



blue ribbon, Best of Class, and the special Mary Fox Award for Handspun Yarn for my laceweight tussah silk two-ply!!!!!!

(Mary Fox was a local handspinner/knitter/weaver/shepherd who was very active in the San Juan County Textile Guild, and had this award named after her when she passed away several years ago. I never knew her, but have seen some of the yarn she made, and have spun wool from the decendents of her flock of sheep.)

So exciting!!! More later!!! I need to stop using exclamation marks!!!

Finally, pictures of the finished gansey! I finished this Wednesday night, after knitting the collar three times. First I did it with neck gussets, but that made it too small, then I did it without the gussets, and that was fine, except that I didn't like the transition between the body and the collar. I frogged it again, and added a round of purl between the body stitches and the collar stitches, and that finally looked right to me. Luckily, the yarn held up really well to being frogged that much!



You may notice that there is a slight difference in the overall look of the patterning in these pictures, compared to the last picture I posted.



After I had finished the entire front and back and joined the shoulders with the straps, I realized that the proportions were all off. There was too much space above the underarm gusset for the armhole, and the area below the gussets looked stubby. So, I took a deep breath, frogged the shoulder straps and an inch and a half of each of the front and back, and snipped one of the stitches in the stockinette portion. I picked out one complete round of the stockinette, and put all the stitches back on the needles. I used the yarn unravelled from the tops of the front and back to knit another inch and a half of stockinette into the middle of the sweater. Then I spent two hours kitchenering the whole thing back together. Whew!

I am, however, very glad I spent the time to do this. The sweater looks better, it will fit better, and I won't have the problem of wonky proportions staring at me every time Emma wears the sweater. Best of all, you can't even tell where the kitchenered row is!



(It's at the red arrow...)

So the sweater is done, I like it, and I only had to use three skeins of yarn. I got both sleeves, the cuffs, and the collar from the third skein! There isn't an appreciable difference in the feel of the fabric between the body and the sleeves, despite using a slightly thinner yarn.

Here's what I have left over:



Ten yards! I was getting a little nervous toward the end of the second sleeve!


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A shameless plug- I put the last two skeins of this yarn up for sale in my store, if anyone's interested.

Another few hours knitting last night, and the sweater is now an inch short of a finished back. I was pleased to see that you can't tell where I joined the second ball of yarn, except that there are still two floppy loose stitches because I haven't woven in the tails yet. It's about 2/3 of the way up, towards the right side.

I purposely picked out the two skeins that were closest in grist to knit the body with. The first was 58 yards per ounce, and the second was 59. This measurement was pretty quick and dirty. I took the length measurement from my niddy noddy, which is only approximate, because yarn stretchage (I just made up that word) and yarn piling up will both change the length of the yarn travelling around the arms of the niddy noddy, and my scale only measures to tenths of an ounce, so there could be as much as two tenths difference in weight between the two skeins depending on how the scale rounds off.

I get the impression so far (less than a quarter of the way into the second skein) that the second skein is very slightly thinner than the first. However, you can't tell the difference in the knitting, and the gauge didn't change. I have these first two skeins that are nearly identical for the body, and a third that is a bit thinner (61 yds/oz) for the sleeves. Hopefully I can get both sleeves from one skein. The cuffs and collar (and any remaining sleeve area) will be from the fourth skein, which is about 65 yds/oz. I expect that the little "leftover" skein, Navajo-plied from the last bobbin, will not be used on the sweater, and maybe I can use it in a hat.

This will make the body of the sweater the warmest part, since it has the thickest yarn. The sleeves can be lighter weight, which also allows for easier movement. I'm hoping that the gauge won't change too much with the thinner yarn, but if it does, I'll just pick up a few more stitches and go down a needle size.

I also discovered last night, when I put the front and back stitches on separate needles, that the circumference of the body is 30 inches, not 28. I guess having something on one circular needle so it can't really lay flat isn't the most accurate way to measure. That's OK, though, because I actually planned the sweater around a 30" circumference, based on my swatch gauge, and thought that it was just coming out smaller due to the swatch lying to me. Either way it's still big enough for Emma to grow into, and I'm happy with the fabric.

Well, after finishing all ten of the hardanger tops, I was feeling in need of a bit of a change. I was longing for the feel of wool in my fingers. I've done so much fiddly lacy stuff recently, that I wanted a project on a larger scale.

So I thought about what I have in my fiber closet, and remembered the pretty turquoise yarn I spun last March that was slated to become a sweater for Emma. I pulled it out and dutifully swatched:



That's size 4, 5, and 6 needles, bottom to top. Size 5 seemed to be the one to use. The 6's gave a fabric that was a bit floppy, and while the size 4's gave a lovely thick swatch, but I was afraid if I made a whole sweater with them, Emma wouldn't be able to move her arms! Gauge with the 5's is 6 stitches and 7 rows to the inch.

After swatching, it was 9:30 pm, and I had to get up for work in the morning. The logical, responsible, adult thing to do would be to take myself off to bed, happy with the knowledge that I was all ready to cast on the next night and dive into the sweater. And still able to get up in the morning and be coherent enough do things like actually feed my daughter breakfast.



I never said I was logical.

I stayed up until 3:00 am, knitting. Stupid, stupid me. The bright side is that I really like the way the yarn is knitting up, the size is working out the way I planned, and I think I'll have enough yarn to finish the whole thing. That's about 4 1/2" there, and I'm almost ready to start the underarm gussets. This is going to be a gansey-style sweater, with braided cables and ladders up the body, shoulder straps with braided cables that continue down the arms, and a rolled collar. The body is about 28" in circumference, and this will be for Emma next winter. She already has a sweater for this winter.




Channel Island cast-on gives such a pretty edge that it's worth the pain of actually doing it.

I finished the second sleeve last night. Tonight I will redo the calculations for the raglan decreases and start knitting the yoke. The end is in sight! At least I don't have to do the calculations from scratch- just plug in new numbers to the write-up from the first time around, allowing for a deeper armhole. Thank goodness I kept good notes!



I spun the rest of the Colonial roving this morning while Emma was napping, and plyed it all up while she was engaged in transferring Cheerios from bowl to bowl after lunch. (Putting little things in containers is really big with her right now.) This is 15.5 oz. and 1020 yds of three-ply.



Love it. Love the colors, love the softness, love the squishability. I was browsing around the web the other day, and I'm reasonably sure this was Ashland Bay Trading Company top. The colorway looks just like the "Teal Multicolor Top" shown on their website. I s'pose I could call the store I got it from, to be sure. I would definitely buy Ashland Bay top again, if that is indeed what it is. Great product, super easy to spin.

The little skein farthest away in the picture is the "leftover skein," Navajo-plied from the last bobbin that had singles on it. It's only about 100 yds. I was surprised at how well it matches the other skeins. It's slightly fuzzier and slightly more uneven since it wasn't made of three separate singles smoothly run together all in the same direction, but really, it doesn't look bad. If I run short of yarn on Emma's sweater, it will do fine for cuffs. I was also glad to see that Navajo plying "clicked" for me this time. Last time I tried it, about a year ago, I couldn't keep up and got an overtwisted mess. This time my hands just seemed to know what to do.

I had another productive fibery weekend. I was eager to spin some of the bluey-greeney top I got last week, but I made myself finish the first sleeve of Dad’s sweater first. Actually, I don’t have to make myself work on it, I really like it.



I finished this on Saturday morning. Turns out I misread my own directions, and there are really only 7.5 cable repeats up the sleeve, not 9, so I didn’t have as far to go as I thought I did. Not sure why I though there were nine- I quite clearly wrote 7.5 when I was doing the calculations. It came out the dimensions I was aiming for, the revised and hopefully accurate size this time. It fits on my husband’s arm fine, so I have high hopes.

After I finished the sleeve, I wanted to spin, but before I started I made a lapcloth. I put a piece of white duck cloth and a piece of dark green together, rounded the corners, and sewed bias tape around the edge. Simple and non-bulky. I did light and dark sides so I can use the white side when I spin dark or colored fibers, and the green side when I spin light fibers. I’ve wanted to make one of these since I started spinning, but obviously I’m a procrastinator.

Anyway, after I finished sewing, I started spinning. This stuff is dreamy. It flows through my fingers and basically spins itself. I love the way the colors play off and blend with each other, though the turquoise comes through more strongly than I thought it would. I spun two bobbins full on Saturday, staying up much too late. I’m spinning medium fine, and the three-ply comes out about sport-weight, maybe a little thinner. It’s 16 wraps per inch after washing. The singles (33 wraps per inch) look so cool, all stripey and swirly.



The lapcloth really makes a big difference in comfort of spinning. I don’t have to move my head around to try and get the wool against an appropriately colored background so I can see what I’m doing.

Yesterday I spun up another full bobbin, rewound all three, and started plying. I did one full bobbin of three-ply, but then Emma woke up and wanted to play, so that was it for spinning. The finished yarn is lovely. I spun it fairly firmly, smoothing in the twist with a worsted short-draw since I want a durable yarn that won’t pill and will show crisp cables. Even with the firm twist, it’s still soft and feels good.



This skein is 235 yds. and 3.7 oz. I still have enough singles to do at least another full bobbin of three-ply. I love the way the colors look in the plied yarn. It reads as solid dark turquoisey-lavender from a distance, but up close you see all the sparks of purple and blue and green.



I’m quite pleased with my spinning on this project. The top is so well prepared that my singles are very consistent. I’m pre-drafting it first to loosen it up, and then just spinning. There’s no vegetation in it, and no neps, and I can spin without breaking the rhythm at all. The Colonial wool isn’t as soft or crimpy as Merino or Rambouillet, but it is a good sweater-type wool, if it’s not a next-to-the-skin type sweater. The whole time I was spinning, I was daydreaming about what I’ll knit this into for Emma. What cables should I use, cardigan or pullover, ribbing or straight hem, lacy eyelets or not- all the fun choices that go into sweater design.

As you can see from that last picture, spring is in full swing here. Around town I’ve seen daffodils, crabapples, cherries, hyacinths, late crocus, early tulips, camellias, rosemary, heather, and pansies blooming. In the yard, only the daffodils are blooming so far, but the tulip and allium leaves are getting big, and I noticed lily stems about 5 inches out of the ground yesterday. Emma and I went to the garden center and got some pansies and lemon thyme to put in the planter on our front porch. She picked them out- it seems she likes purple pansies better than yellow!



Speaking of Emma, we had another milestone yesterday, one I would rather have waited on. She climbed out of her big crib by herself. Oy. I knew it was coming, but I really wish she would have waited. She’s such a little monkey. I was spinning and all of a sudden I heard a small thump. It was small enough that I thought she might have just thrown one of her stuffed animals out of the crib, but I went and checked anyway. She was sitting in the middle of her room looking at a book, and when I opened the door she looked up and said “Hi!”

I put her back in the crib and left the room, but kept the door cracked open so I could see how she climbed out (to make sure she wasn’t going over head first or anything). It was amazing. She grabbed the side rail of the crib (which is at chin-level) with both hands, put her left foot on top of the rail and hooked her ankle over, then just heaved herself out. She hung on with both hands until she was fully over, then let go and dropped to the floor. It’s incredible that a little girl only 18 months old can do all this reasoning, problem solving, and gymnastics. She only started walking full-time seven months ago!