Monthly Archives: August 2010

More Trouble in Paradise

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Many apologies to anyone who has had trouble accessing my site the last few days.  I was hacked again, and a malicious script was added to my site that would download malware to your machine.  This one was way more of a pain in the ass than the last stupid hack was.  So, please if you visited my site anytime this week, just to be safe and especially if you were using IE (which for some reason didn’t seem to catch the problem as quickly as Firefox and Safari), PLEASE run your antivirus scans.  The malware was downloading some sort of trojan horse, but my virus software found it without too much hassle other than running the scan.

My blog has been upgraded, and I’m in the process of making even more security changes to try to prevent this from happening yet again.

Designing in my sleep

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Since I am still only spinning the lace yarn for the shawlette I’d like to design, I have been lying awake in the dark thinking of how to execute said design.  Some things have been hard to figure out just in my head and will need to be put on paper to see how the mechanics will actually work out.  Some things I think of then forget as I drift off to sleep, leaving me only to wake up in the morning knowing I had a solution and it’s gone.

One of the mathematical things I’ve been working on is the fact that the lace pattern I have chosen is an even stitch number stitch pattern.  Most shawls started at the top, as I want to start this one, tend to have an odd number of stitches in between the edge stitches and the center stitch.  Last night, I believe I worked out how to jigger it, now I just need to find out if it’ll look alright.

Meanwhile, the sock design I began working on in June is slowly making progress.  I finished the first sock only to discover that even though I had gotten gauge in my swatch, I lost a whole stitch per inch when knitting the sock.  Eight stitches per inch is quite a bit different that 9 stitches per inch, especially in stretchy 2×2 ribbing.  So, I’m working the second sock on needles that are half a millimeter smaller.  The unfortunate part is I really liked how the color of the yarn worked out in the larger gauge, and in the smaller gauge it’s spiraling.  The little bit of fancy stitch patterning it has is an 11 stitch repeat, so not much I can do there to play with fit.  Just have to live with the change in color patterning.

Selfish Spinning

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New niddy-noddy was obtained on Friday, and there was much rejoicing.  I decided to go with the fancier, albeit more expensive, Schacht niddy-noddy because I loved the idea of being able to create either a 1.5 yard skein or a 2 yard skein with the same tool.  I was also a bit put off of the Ashford niddy-noddy because my old one (the one that was eaten by the pup) was an odd length — 1.66 yards (otherwise known as 5 feet, don’t know who thought that was a good idea).  It was a bit of a pain to remember that when figuring out yardage.

I actually managed to begin spinning the Selfish Shetland over the week, but only just got half a layer on the bobbin before things like errands, laundry, and cleaning crab (tasty, tasty crab) got my attention.  This is my first time spinning Shetland, so it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

One of the things I’m going to focus on while spinning this 2-ply laceweight will be the plying.  I think I’m doing okay with the amount of twist I get into my laceweight singles, but the finished yarn still comes out a bit… um, what’s the word… not fluffy at all, sort of rope-like.  The singles when I test them with ply-back are as I want them.  So, it must be that I’m over-plying; I tend to add plying twist to my singles so that they look they way I want them as I feed them onto the bobbin.   But, I think I read somewhere that twist continues to be added until the yarn actually winds around the bobbin shaft.  Several of my early yarns are nicely balanced and fluffy, and they are from the time period when I just let the wheel pull the plied yarn in as it went.  I wasn’t overthinking things or trying to control how the plying twist entered the yarn and put the singles together.  I may need to try that again.

4 Ounce Challenge

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Having too many options always seems to make decisions more difficult.  The days are ticking by on the 4 ounce challenge (deadline is Sept 30).  I don’t have any fiber from Hello Yarn or Southern Cross Fibre, but I do have plenty of Spunky Eclectic fiber to choose from.  That’s part of the problem.  Well, that, and not even being able to decide what kind of pattern I want to try to come up with.  Socks are always fun… so is lace… ooo, what about a cowl?  If I can’t even settle on what it is I’m going to make, how can I pick the right fiber for the project?

The top fiber in the running is a Spunky Club offering from last year – Selfish in Shetland.  I’m also considering the newest shipment, which I can’t give details on yet.  The nice thing about the Selfish is that it’s all set to go.  When I received it last year, I split it up and pre-drafted it.  So, it’s ready to spin.  I’m also finding the maroon, orange, and green combination appealing.  I think I’ll aim for a 2-ply laceweight yarn as I’m considering knitting something like a cowl or shawlette.

Off to ponder…

A Niddy-Noddy Problem

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I was hit by the oddest fever in the middle of the week.  No other symptoms, just a fever and all its fun side-effects like aches, chills, joint pain, and sore neck.  Thankfully, it only lasted a few days, and by Saturday morning I was feeling much better but still not up for much.  So, I got out the spinning wheel and sat down to plying.

Plying up 4 ounces of wool into a approximately fingering weight yarn (I’ll know more details once it has finished drying from its bath) went a lot quicker than I expected.  I am so used to spinning 2-ply, laceweight yarns that take forever to see a finished product.

On Sunday, I wanted to see about getting the yarn into a bath to see how it looked finished.  Go to pull out my niddy-noddy only to remember that the pup chewed it up a couple weeks ago.  *sigh*  I also remember that my LYS is on vacation, so no quick dash to the store to save me.  This is when I recall that I have a back-up niddy-noddy.  It’s a handmade piece that I bought from The Rug & Yarn Hut years ago.  I also have a spindle made by the same guy.  It took me a little while I find where I stashed it and to get it back together into one piece (it splits in the middle for storage and it held together by a wooden pin, which has a very tight fit).  I gleefully proceed to winding the yarn off the bobbin into a 2-yard skein for washing.  I tie up the ends and go to pull the skein off, when it dawns on me why this is my back-up niddy-noddy.  I can’t get the yarn off, at least not easily.

Now don’t get me wrong, it is a beautiful piece of wood and craftsmanship.  A dark hard wood with a lighter wood inlay.  The maker thoughtfully put a slot in one of the arms to hold the end of the yarn as you beginning to wind it.  But, and it’s a bit of a but, he left all 4 arms of the niddy-noddy swooped up in a pretty little design.  A pretty little design that does not allow the yarn to slide off the niddy-noddy.  My now gone Ashford niddy-noddy had all 4 arms smoothed in a downward fashion making slipping the skein off a breeze.  I have seen more ornate niddy-noddies such as mine with the decorative ends, but they usually have one arm left smoothed down for yarn removal.

This beautiful niddy-noddy took me a good 15 minutes to get the yarn off as I slowly slipped small sections off at a time, hoping that doing so wouldn’t hurt my newly-minted yarn.  So, unless someone can recommend a way to make this tool work more easily for me, I am now on the hunt for a usable niddy-noddy or skein-winder that doesn’t cost too much.

Meanwhile, the yarn came off the niddy-noddy looking extremely excited.  It’s gotten a nice soak and several thwacks.  I can’t wait to see how it looks once it’s dry.

August Whirlwind

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Am I going crazy?  I feel like I’m trying to do too many things at once.  I have a baby blanket to finish.  I’m working on a pair of socks I’ve designed as well as working out another design that’s come to mind.  I’m thinking of participating in the Spunky Eclectic/Hello Yarn/Southern Cross Fibres 4 Ounce Challenge! (spin 4 oz. of one of their fibers and design something using the yarn in 2 months).  And I may be about to join a KAL knitting the Annis shawl from Knitty with some of my handspun (this one is crazy cause you have to cast on 360 stitches).

I keep wanting to work on all sorts of different things, and yet, I’m not knitting very much.  In the evening, I sit on the couch catching up on the TiVo, and I think to myself that I should knit or spin.  Do I do either?  No.  I continue to sit there just watching TV.  Then, of course, when there are things I have to do (e.g., work), I just want to go home and knit.  It sort of feels like my internal clock is off, like jet lag.  As if I’m hungry and sleepy at all the wrong times, but for knitting and spinning and work.

I guess I’ll just try to buckle down and see if I can get something done, anything.

Tour de Flop

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The Tour de Fleece began July 3, and I happily sat down in front of my spinning wheel with the hopes of seeing it through to the end.  This was my first time doing the Tour de Fleece, and I signed up with Abby Franquemont’s Team Suck Less because I wanted to focus on improving my technique as well as Amy King’s Team Monkey Farts because I planned on working my way through some of my Spunky Eclectic Club backlog.  I spun on Saturday.  I spun on Sunday.  I spun on the Monday Holiday.  On Tuesday I had the beginnings of a bad headache, which revealed itself on Wednesday to be something wrong with my back, right between my shoulder blades.  I felt like someone was ramming something into my spine.  My shoulder hurt.  My head hurt.  Spinning was not going to happen.  Thankfully, my chiropractor got me in for her last available appointment Wednesday afternoon, but I was instructed to ice and take it easy for a few days.  That’s all it takes to fall off the wagon.  For the rest of the tour I found excuses not to spin.

On the upside, I did manage to fill 3 bobbins with singles on their way to becoming what I hope will be a sportish 3-ply.  I tried to spin so that the yarn would have a bit more loft, thus make the final yarn more fluffy.  I have such a bad habit of making smooth dense yarns that are all thinner than I want.  So, this yarn is an experiment.  I have no idea if I did the right things to get the yarn I’m hoping for, but I’m willing to accept that.  (I still have another 4 oz. of this fiber/color combination, so I still have a chance to make a gorgeous, usable yarn.)  I had discovered when I took Janel Laidman’s spinning class at Stitches West 2010, that if I draft faster, I get yarn that’s fluffier.  Now, granted, I was doing that on a spindle.  But, I gave it some thought and tried to apply what I did with the spindle to my wheel.  Like I said, I have no idea if I did it right; for all I know I did the complete opposite.

I wanted to ply faster.  But, plying faster means nothing if the yarn is sitting around waiting to move onto the bobbin.  I also figured that a fluffier yarn needs less twist to hold it together (this may be one of the places I’ve gone completely wrong and find myself with singles that just fall apart as I try to ply them).  I was basing this on thinner yarn needs more twist, thicker yarn needs less twist.  So, I turned up the uptake on my wheel and plied like the wind.

Who knows, maybe the bobbins of singles sitting around while I do nothing with them for 3 weeks will work in my favor allowing the twist to settle in a bit.  Or I might just be on my way to ending up with a huge mess.