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Fiber to Yarn

Roving1

I have a lovely little stash of unspun roving, both Merino and BFL, in my studio.  As much as I always thinks I'm going to find some time to spin, it never seems to happen.  My sweet friends at Hyena Cart, one of my favorite places to buy hand-spun and dyed yarn and other handmade goods, suggested a number of spinners to me, so I'm sending some of my fiber off to be turned, as if by magic, into yarn.

Roving3

This first batch is going off to the lovely Laura at Splendor.  Her yarn is so beautiful and I hear such nice things about her, that I can hardly wait to see it!

Roving4

Roving2

My fiber is off to Washington state, one of my favorite parts of the country.  I can't wait to see what it is going to look like when it comes back to me!

 

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The Drop Stitch Scarf

As a knitter, I either have a dreadful case of attention deficit disorder or I am a highly efficient, multi-tasker.  I'm never sure exactly which one it is.  I do seem to have a knack for working on multiple projects at a time though, and just this weekend, as I'm working steadily on my cabled afghan and almost ready for the finishing ruffle on my Far Away So Close shawl, I suddenly became infatuated with Christine Vogel's Drop Stitch Scarf Pattern.

I've actually been intending to knit this pattern since the first time I stumbled across it.  I like the airy look of the dropped stitches.  Last night I printed out the pattern and this morning I looked through the stash for a likely yarn.

Dropstitchscarf

I ended up pulling out some Elliebelly Basilisk in the Cleo colorway.  The yarn is similar to the pattern yarn in blend — 50% silk and 50% merino wool, but is a somewhat heavier weight, more of an aran than the DK weight Lady Godiva yarn from Handmaiden that the pattern was written for.

This scarf looks gorgeous in every photo I have ever seen.  But, I'm having my doubts as to whether Cleo was a good colorway choice.  I understand that this scarf requires significant blocking when finished to open up the pattern, so I'm keeping an open mind.  I'm worried that it needs more of a rainbow colorway though.  Before deciding on Cleo, I looked at some handspun that was in my stash and considered both  some of my own Alpaca that a spinner did in a DK weight for me and some unknown handspun, but rejected them both because I thought it might be too much color and pattern all at once. Now I'm wondering — did I pick the wrong yarn?

I'm going to go forward with Cleo.  It's a fun and simple pattern to knit and I need something easy and portable for travel the rest of the month.  The Afghan has become too big for a travel project and I need a break from the Barn Raising Quilts squares.  So Drop Stitch and I will travel together, and we will see how it turns out in Cleo.

 

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Afghan Progress

Progress…

Afghanollie

I've made it through two full repeats of the 14 row cable pattern, and am into the third.  I've used about four of the 16 balls I dyed for this project, so based on the size I'm feeling increasingly confident I have enough for a good sized blanket.

Afghanollie2

I tried tarting up the contrast on this picture in Photoshop so you could see the cables a little bit more distinctly.  I've chosed to do a very basic eight stitch cableover reverse stockinette, with four stitch bands of stockinette separating the cables.  Although I had a little bit of cable anxiety, this patterning is so easy that after the first repeat, you can just read the stitches and put the pattern away. 

Afghanollie3

The yarn is wonderfully soft.  The Merino content is giving it good stitch definition, but it's warm (I'm guessing the Alpaca) and very soft (must be the silk).  I could have knit this on larger needles to get a loser gauge I suppose, but I'm fairly enchanted with the firm, structured fabric flowing out of this uber-bulky yarn on size 11 needles.  As it gets cooler here, I'm trying to knit faster.  This is a piece of knitting that is definitely going to get a lot of love and use.

 

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Finished, With A Little Help From A Friend

After a lot of "I hate finishing sweaters" procrastination, I finally sat down to finish my Manos Silk Shrug before Christmas.  And, I ran into a problem.  No matter how carefully I thought I had blocked it, it really didn't look at all neat when I began seaming.  The yarn was a pretty silk/merino base yarn I've knit with before, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was.  I finally decided to take it to my favorite local yarn store to have them give it a good blocking and do the seaming for me, before I did the ribbed trim.  It seemed like a decadent escape from work.  In the pre-Christmas frenzy, I decided it was worth it to get it done just right, because I loved how the pieces had turned out.

I picked it up this week.

 Frontfinished

Not only had it been seamed, but they had done the ribbing — you can see it around the edges, you pick up the stitches and rib for several inches.  It was all done.  I put it on and haven't taken it off since.

The Manos yarn is really pretty and nice to work with, and the Debbie Bliss pattern is simple, with some interesting shaping, but other than the finishing quagmire I let myself get into on this one, it's an easy and rewarding knit.