Time for cozy toes

If you're in the UK you will be well aware that we are currently the hapless victims of "Siberian snow showers", in the grips of the "Big Freeze" and experiencing "positively Arctic" weather conditions.

If you're in the rest of the world it's currently -2 degrees C and six inches of snow in London (accurately measured and documented by my sister, with a ruler, on her balcony) was enough to throw sufficient spanners in the inner workings of the train companies to make getting to work more trouble than it was worth. Today has been a quasi-snow day. Quasi-snow because I can access everything except my actual hard copy papers over the wonders of the internets so I have actually been working. Just with an uninterrupted view of snow falling. I love watching snow falling and I'm a little sad that it's dark now because it's been so much fun.

Weather being what it is, namely a force determined to frustrate the amateur photographer, the heaviest snow landed after it got dark but I did pop outside this afternoon with the camera for a little tea-break photography.

I love that it snows horizontally here, just as it rains horizontally on the coast!


H spotted these icicles forming on our shed roof - we're gathering quite a collection


All of this chilliness has called for a maximum application of knitwear, including - my latest finished socks:

Handspun socks.

Gorgeously soft and warm socks!

They started out life as 100g of Blue Faced Leicester combed top from Lime Green Jelly who are usually on Etsy although I bought this in person at the Iknit Day in September.

The first sock is toe up using barberpole three ply until the ribbing at the top, at which point I switched to the chained three ply to finish it off. I started the second in similar style and it quickly became apparent that the yarn was getting thicker, the fabric was getting thicker, and I was running out of yarn, as I knit through the second sock. I got half way up the cuff before the barberpole three ply ran out. (Eeek)

I tried knitting on with the chained three ply but either because it was made from my final bobbin of thinnest singles, or because I haven't figured out chain yarn yet, and probably a bit of both, the chain three ply was much much thinner and it really showed. (Double eeek)

My solution was to double up the chained yarn to try to create more barber pole yarn of about the right thickness so that's what I did; the yarn is doubled up until just before the ribbing starts, at which point there are a couple of rows of one strand of chained yarn to make sure that there was enough yarn left to finish the sock.

Both socks had a nice bath in some Lavender Eucalan and dried out on the sock blockers which I think helped to even out some of the slubbier bits of knitting, although when they're not on my feet you can see the lumps and bumps.



The final prognosis: I'm sat here with wonderfully warm feet - I'm a complete convert. I really like the way that the barberpole gives such gradual colour changes but I think I need to learn how to chain ply properly too! How terrible! More spinning!

Oatmeal

Porridge, flapjack, that slightly weird Scottish pudding that tastes like cold porridge with lots of whisky, fruity crumble topping, more flapjack - all good, all oatmeal.

You may not be able to make flapjack with the kind of oatmeal that I've been playing with recently (and woe betide anyone who tries) but it is none the less gorgeous for that:


This is the first of my 'practice' fibre that I got from Wingham Woolworks at the same time as my wheel, 100g of Blue Faced Leicester combed top in a natural oatmeal colour. They had white and cream and things like that but I fancied something a little different.

The aim was to spin a two ply of whatever came out of my fingers and to try to get to know the wheel a little bit in the process. In practice it turned out to be wonderfully easy to spin into what for me is a remarkably fine singles. I think that the fact that it is undyed does make it easier to spin because there's no dye clumping bits together so it spun up with minimal pre-drafting.

The other wonderful thing is how much faster it is to spin on the wheel - it would have taken so much longer by spindle!

Anyway, I ended up with these:





I plied the two bobbins together until the shorter one ran out - my spinning has got finer as I worked my way through the 100g and it shows; and then I wound the remains of the second bobbin onto my ball winder and plied the two ends together to use up the rest of the yarn. Both skeins had a good soak in some Eucalan and a snap and thwack against the kitchen door. Et voila:

530 ish yards of 2ply that falls somewhere between laceweight and 4ply - it's 20wpi.

It's soft and squishy and I still have to run around the house squeaking "LOOK what I made!"


And of course the obligatory penny shot!



I've been eyeing up potential patterns and I need to have a good look through my lace books but the current front runner is the Flutter scarf which I think would show off the yarn to best advantage - it has a subtly shifting brown/grey mix - and also allow for some of the more slubby bits of yarn to be a feature rather than a mistake.

If you can think of anything else that would look just perfect in 530 yards of grey/brown laceweight let me know!

September Strawberry

Do you remember that merino that was calling my name? There really was only one way that that was going to end, and here it is:


50 grams ish of Strawberries and Cream handspun merino. The next step is to wind it into a centre-pull ball and then go for the plying but for some extraordinary reason H just didn't seem that keen on the idea of holding onto the spindle while I wound - who would have thought it?

Luckily for me, ingenuity is not an alien concept, nor is construction of anything out of plastic boxes, loo roll tubes and sellotape - as evidence I offer you (a) the niddy-noddy, and (b) the fact that my sister had a working lighthouse made out of a washing up bottle which my father made when we were small - you squeezed the sides to make it flash, it was very cool.

So, here is how you make your very own Lazy Husband (who was Kate anyway?):

First you need a plastic tub. This one has in its lifetime encountered both Cornish ice-cream and patchwork pieces so clearly yarn was the next logical step.

To that box, I sellotaped half a loo roll tube to each side

And my spindle slots in perfectly.



There are two tiny hitches with my otherwise perfect plan. Number 1 is that you have to keep a foot near the end of the spindle to stop it sliding too far and falling out and number 2 is that it spins a little too easily so sometimes it is best to let the yarn run through your fingers to stop it looping up on the ball winder.

Until it looks like this:


And with a 10p for size



All plied up it went all stripy and swirly



And now, I have real yarn - yippee





I have 135 metres of what I think is about 4ply and I'm longing to knit with it. This spinning malarky is getting serious. Run, run while you can.

Can't stop this thing we've started

In which our knitter realises that she may be heading towards the title 'fibre artist'

I cannot say that I did not know, that I was tricked into spinning, slyly passed handspun to pet, or that passers by put spindle and fibre into my hands as I dozed on the train and I woke up with half a skein of singles. I knew that spinning was something that would chime a chord with the part of my soul that responds to the call of the yarn and needles. And yet it is more, an addictive, hypnotic trance brought on by watching the spindle twizzle round and round while you desperately wonder whether you've put enough twist in.

Spinning is responsible for at least two late nights in this household (and certainly not the last) as I got to grips with my class homework (I'm very conscientious about homework; particularly if it's knitting related). On Wednesday night I finished spinning the singles and, without pausing to run up for the camera to record the full bobbin, I enlisted the trusty H to let the spindle turn through his hands as I cranked the ball winder.

This means that within a week or so he will have either (a) found some clever spinny tool on the internet that holds a spindle or (b) rigged up a Heath-Robinson contraption for me. For now though I had a sizeable ball of handspun and I even managed to unite handspun and camera in one place.

I did go to bed when I realised that I wouldn't be able to ply it all that night but as soon as I got home on Thursday the pyjamas were on and the spindle was plying [NB - I got home late, the PJ thing isn't that odd].

I was surprised at how much more space the plied yarn seemed to take up on the spindle but I suppose that it makes sense geometrically. The spindle seemed pretty full by the time I was finished so I'm a little nervous at spinning a whole 100g on it if it's full at 50g - are there any cunning tricks that I don't know about yet?

The next stage in the sheep to stash process is to wind the plied yarn around a niddy noddy (spinning has such great words). This looks a little bit like a wooden anchor and logically the structure would help to even out the twist as it can't just curl up on itself like it could if I went straight to the swift. I have no idea whether I've got that right, it's just what makes sense to me.

Anyway, I don't have a wooden niddy noddy. I found some instructions on how to make one here (from PVC pipe) but sadly we had no pipe, or wood. H offered to make me one but the craving to skein up the new yarn and bask in it's soft glory was too much so we set too with ingenuity and the contents of our house.

Now all you need to come up with a solution like this is a childhood spent making Blue Peter projects out of shoe boxes, loo roll tubes, egg cartons and washing up bottles and a husband with a Masters degree in Engineering.

You need:

~ the tube from a roll of wrapping paper
~ a craft knife
~ sellotape
~ a pair of metal knitting needles

1: Cut about 6 inches of tube off either end. If you want to be precise about the size of your skein then measure the centre length you want and cut the remainder in two.

2: In each of your short lengths cut a rough circular hole, slightly smaller than the diameter of the tube.

3: Pinch each end of the long tube and slot into the holes on either short piece.

4: Sellotape in place, taking care that you have one end running up and down and the other, side to side.

5: For stability insert a metal knitting needle down each of the end tubes, squashing it in next to the end of the centre tube so that it stays in place and doesn't jiggle about. I used 5mm but as long as it's sturdy I doubt it matters.

Finito. It looks a bit like this (with pleading not to notice the bits of cardboard and fluff on the carpet)

I finished it off with a little dip in some lavender Eucalan and then blocked it out and gave it a few whacks on the kitchen cupboard. And now it is dry:

If the last effort was Carie Big Wool then careful examination of the stash cupboard tells me that this is Carie Warwickshire Tweed - a southern cousin of the sadly discontinued Yorkshire Tweed. It is about 12wpi but I don't know what that really means in practice - I just have a little Karatstix measure from Socktopus to play with.

It's certainly thinner than the first iteration:

but I don't know really how much yarn I have in terms of length. I'm just really pleased that it looks like a real skein; see:

I even managed to find a penny for the obligatory 'money shot' (yes, you may come and hit me now)

If the last mini skein that I showed you was First Handspun then this is Second Handspun, first Knittable Handspun, and as such is equally treasured. If I can find the right pattern then I'd love to knit with this - any suggestions?

In the meantime, some Strawberries and Cream coloured merino is serenading me from the basket with promises of reclaiming summer, so if you need me I'll just be over there.