Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Bits & Pieces

On the train, I finished the back piece of my very first cardigan. Then proceeded to cast on one of the front pieces. As it's an asymmetrical front, I have to do it piecemeal versus steeking it.

I'm sorely missing having a pair of socks on the needles, and will probably cast on a pair tonite at one point.



This past weekend, I dye'd up some superwash roving that I had. And discovered that the crock pot is *just* a wee bit small for 2 oz of largish dth wroving. The coloration wasn't as consistent as I wanted (being white splotches in places), but still the final product looked kinda neat, and should spin up nicely.

What's nice about crock pot/kettle dye'ing is that once the dye is mixed in and the roving added, you pretty much leave it alone until the dye is completely absorbed, which can take several hours.

It's like a stew you have to only check on every now and then to make sure it's going well.


The mohair I started spinning last week was starting to become a severe PITA, and I haven't even gone through the first 2 oz! It's starts out nice to spin, and then it turns on me, and I start not to like it as much.

I had to put the project down and started spinning the sky blue roving I dye'd last week JUST to give myself a break from the mohair. I finished the sky blue roving this past weekend, and am going to trudge back into the mohair.

I think that while I kinda like mohair, it'd be better for me to have it in a blended roving with a lot of wool.

Once I'm done with spinning the next 2 oz of mohair, I will probably ply it with either alpaca or merino. I keep waffling between the two.


For fun, I took apart the sweater I picked up at the thrift shop last week. It took a while to pick out all the seams, but it wasn't too bad. Then I discovered that it was knit double-stranded.

The yarn is a beautiful soft chocolate tweed. The back piece, I simply kept as two strands and will knit something out of it like that, but I'm trying to separate the two yarns on the arm pieces (each strand is probably a fingering - sport weight) and being a swift PITA.

I finally put it down after a bit of frustration.

The sweater was *huge* and I will hopefully get a thousand yards of the yarn out of it. Unfortunately, I accidentally cut outside of the seam, so there's one skein that has a whole bunch of little knots that I'll spit splice later.

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