The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Winter knit progress report 1
Really, just to kick my own butt in public, I’ve decided I want to make 2 sweaters by end of the year + a hat AND tell everyone how it’s going. Talk about setting yourself up for failure! Are we scared of failure? Hell no! Bring it on…. 😉 In fact, after I started the countdown I never did anything about it for the first 4 days, and I didn’t give a hoot. That bodes well for my stress levels I think?
I’ve started with the blue mix, wanted the green more after knitting the all blue sweater, but was unsure what to do. Now that I’ve progressed I can see how far the yarn type goes, so I think the green will be a jacket with some sort of thin yarn along too, I’ll have to see what I’ve got. In just 5 days I’m past the waist of my blue tunic and have used 2½ skeins of 6, so I think I’m good since I’m planning on short sleeves?
My hands are screaming bloody murder each night, but I haven’t been in the mood for doing something “complicated” the last few days. In keeping with the tradition of both knitting method and of contradicting myself, I’m making it up as I go along rather than use a well documented pattern.
You can see under the arm it looks a bit big on Mimi, and it is, I didn’t pad her yet to match my new dimensions and I also made sure this time that it’s wide enough for me to wear clothes underneath, as I can’t wear wool against my skin. And, well, just in case I keep growing (Heaven forbid, it’s not in my budget!). I just hate the feeling of clothes that are like sausage skins ready to pop. Or if you wear a belt on your jeans the buckle sticks out under the sweater like a huge belly button! And I believe that’s as much of a fashion statement as you’ll ever get from me.
Burnout
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Neapolitano
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you donât try.
Spinning combing waste
This week I spun one of my silly batts, the one from the fluff box.
As I suspected, the really short fibers I carded had a hard time holding together as yarn. I could have spun it slowly and carefully, after all cotton can be spun. But I wanted a robust looking fluffy yarn, not a high twist rope, so I decided to try and spin it with a stronger core. Not actual corespinning, where you paint the fiber onto a thread by holding the two at a 90 degree angle, I just ran the thread along in my fiber supply while drafting.
I tried to take a couple of pix of how I hold the fiber in my right hand, then I do a short forward draw with my left basically pulling at the thread and letting the roving run loosely inside my palm around the thread. When I spindle spin I draft and suspend the spindle with my right, but since the orifice on the wheel is to the left I felt it was more convenient to switch. It didn’t really take a lot of time to get used to, so now I can do both.
I’m keeping it as a single as planned, since the colours were mingled quite well enough on the carder already. And the thread simply keeps the fibers from drifting apart.
I may do another post on spinning short fibers – when I get around to that. After all I have God knows how many pounds of that Dorset sitting around…
Yes, I know that I’m spinning in my riding breeches, I just can’t be having with changing my outfit 5 times a day. I also did not sweep the floor for the photo shoot. I really think there ought to be staff for such things – or is that children?
