Got through the next orange bit on the Wensleydale:
And finished the second single of the Targhee, plus braided up the rest:
Tour de Fleece 2014
Thoughts about reviving the blog have been bouncing around
my head for a while, but what better to actually get my butt in gear but an
event that I’ll be taking daily pictures of and posting anyway? That’s right,
I’m talking about the Tour de Fleece!
The Tour de Fleece (TdF) coincides with Le Tour de France
(bet you didn't see that coming). In short, spinners spin yarn for every day of
the Tour that the cyclists ride. Spinning and spinning. That’s all there is to
it.
I sort of participated three years ago (ie I did it for two
days and then forgot about it), but this time around, I’m all in. Since the
goal of the TdF is just to spin every day, I’ll be going with a bunch of WIPs
(works in progress). Therefore, today's post is the tare post:
From left to right, top row then bottom row, we have:
2oz of 100% Wensleydale; colorway: No Pulse (Nerd Girl Yarns
Fiber of the Month Club March 2014)
2oz of 100% Targhee; colorway: Wilderness (Mountain Colors)
~0.4oz of 100% BFL (Jen gave this to me for Christmas in… 2012?
Yeah, Christmas 2012)
2oz of 85%/15% Polwarth/Silk; colorway: Spirit of the Hero
(Nerd Girl Yarns Fiber of the Month Club April 2014)
From here on out it’s mainly going to be pictures. A summary
collage every day mirroring that first one, and then the things I actually
worked on get their own pictures (the picture in the collage blown up). I’ll
probably give details on the drafting method, spindle, ply structure, etc. when
I post pictures of the finished yarn.
Oh, and I also finished this on Thursday:
437.3yds of 3-ply heaving fingering, chain-plied
85/15 SW BFL/Nylon, Colorway: I Am Divergent (Nerd Girl Yarns Fiber of the Month Club February 2014)
Happy Spinning!
IDP
Part of the beauty of the Knit Picks IDP program is that it functions solely as an outlet for designers. There are no exclusivity contracts, fees, and, most importantly, no oaths of secrecy. I am free to display patterns-in-progress as much as I please.
Now, I've had a couple designs in the back of my head for a few years. This is not one of them:
This one popped into my head one day about a month and a half ago, when I realized just how poor I'm going to be as a grad student (more on that later), and needed to supplement my income. Luckily, it was a slow day at work, so I spent an hour sketching out designs and looking up stitch patterns. This was followed by obsessive swatch-knitting, and the whole idea-to-proposal process was done in record time.
Knit Picks loved it, sent me the requested yarn, and I got to work. This is where the process slowed. I thought, "I'll bang out this knee sock in two weeks!". Well, life happened, and a month later there is still no sock. I'm close to done - I'm in the perpetual plateau where all long projects end up. When the day started, I was a half inch away from the ribbing. I knit for two hours. I'm still a half inch away from the ribbing. Alas, there is nothing I can do but keep knitting, until suddenly the thing is two inches too long and I have to rip back. Any knitter can attest that this is how these things work.
P.S. For anyone who reads this blog that isn't a family member or a close friend (in which case you already know this), I'm moving to Atlanta, GA to start grad school in two weeks. I'm doing a MS/PhD combo in neuroscience, working Chuck Derby's lab at GSU. I'll be studying cephalopod chemical defenses and their effects on the neurosensory systems of associated predators. The email I got today also suggests that I'll be working with the olfactory systems of various crustaceans as well.
P.P.S. Hopefully, I'll get (and keep) this blog up and running again. It's one of those things that I don't realize how much I enjoy doing it until I do it again after a long dry spell. Plus I actually have ~things~ going on in my life of general interest, which is an excellent literary motivator.
Now, I've had a couple designs in the back of my head for a few years. This is not one of them:
This one popped into my head one day about a month and a half ago, when I realized just how poor I'm going to be as a grad student (more on that later), and needed to supplement my income. Luckily, it was a slow day at work, so I spent an hour sketching out designs and looking up stitch patterns. This was followed by obsessive swatch-knitting, and the whole idea-to-proposal process was done in record time.
Knit Picks loved it, sent me the requested yarn, and I got to work. This is where the process slowed. I thought, "I'll bang out this knee sock in two weeks!". Well, life happened, and a month later there is still no sock. I'm close to done - I'm in the perpetual plateau where all long projects end up. When the day started, I was a half inch away from the ribbing. I knit for two hours. I'm still a half inch away from the ribbing. Alas, there is nothing I can do but keep knitting, until suddenly the thing is two inches too long and I have to rip back. Any knitter can attest that this is how these things work.
P.S. For anyone who reads this blog that isn't a family member or a close friend (in which case you already know this), I'm moving to Atlanta, GA to start grad school in two weeks. I'm doing a MS/PhD combo in neuroscience, working Chuck Derby's lab at GSU. I'll be studying cephalopod chemical defenses and their effects on the neurosensory systems of associated predators. The email I got today also suggests that I'll be working with the olfactory systems of various crustaceans as well.
P.P.S. Hopefully, I'll get (and keep) this blog up and running again. It's one of those things that I don't realize how much I enjoy doing it until I do it again after a long dry spell. Plus I actually have ~things~ going on in my life of general interest, which is an excellent literary motivator.
A Couple of Socks
I had every intention of taking pictures of our semi-annual UMAC tie-dying session on Tuesday and then blogging about it. I even brought my camera. But people came waaaaaaay early, which made us not ready for them, and instead of being a planned, orderly meeting, it was more fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants meeting. It did go well, but no pictures. Instead have a couple pairs of recently-finished socks:
Green Tomatoes
Pattern: The Universal Toe-Up Sock Formula, by Amy Swenson
(using Cat Bordhi's Sweet Tomato Heel)
Yarn: Conjoined Creations Flat Feet, color #63
Kai-Mei
Pattern: Kai-Mei, by Cookie A
Yarn: The Yarn Yard Toddy, in Vibrant
The green ones are leftovers from the tail end of my summer internship; the reason they took so long is the heel. I really don't like it. It's not hard to execute by any means, but the fit's wonky, and it took me three times to get the proper placement for it on the foot (first the sock ended up far too long, then too short, then OK, rather than just right - at that point I just went with it because I was tired of knitting the thing). Let's just say that after I finished the first sock, I kind of ignored the second one for a while, hoping it would go away. It didn't, so I knit it, and it'll probably be one of the lesser-worn pairs in my drawer.
Kai-Mei was lovely, and intriguing. While the loose gauge I had to knit at to get these things to fit makes me nervous, they knit up exceptionally quickly (interesting stitch patterns make you knit into the wee hours of the night wanting to see how they turn out) and came out beautiful. They're probably going to be house socks, or emergency footies, because of the looser gauge, but that works just fine for me.
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