I decided to conquer a second project for the Silk Hankie Along. I received these lovely hankies (and a set of orange hankies) from Sue and Sophie as a birthday gift. Sue dyed them herself.

I found the silk a bit hard to deal when knitting the unspun mittens because of the state of my hands (think sandpaper), so I decided I’d try and spin these hankies. I attenuated the silk just as I did last time, then spun them on my wheel at a 10:1 ratio. Once the single were spun, I made a centre pull ball using my ballwinder, and plied the singles back on themselves creating a 2ply yarn.

I got 69 metres of DK weight yarn. Here it is all caked up and ready to be knit:

I knew that 69 metres wouldn’t be enough for a pair of mittens, but that was okay since I wanted stripey mittens anyway. I paired it up some 100% wool:

I used the wool for the cuffs, using the mitten pattern that lives in my head.

The mittens fit wonderfully, and I find that because the silk has been spun it is less likely to catch on my sandpaper hands. I also adore how the colours worked together. I love these mittens.

The details:

Cast on: January 25th, 2012
Cast off: January 26th, 2012
Pattern: from my head
Yarn: Toppull 100% wool from Sandnes Garn
Fibre: Silk mawata squares dyed by Sues Crafts
Needles: 3.25mm needles for the cuff, 3.5mm needles for the rest

My cruiser mittens are done!

I wanted a fitted mitten, so followed the pattern for the small sized mittens, and other than using a smaller needle for the cuff, I only deviated thrice. The first was to use a two stranded tubular cast on for the cuff (excellent video demonstration can be found here ).

The second was to help alleviate the ‘dog ears’ at the top of the mitten. I simply passed the first stitch of each side over the second, and the last stitch of each side with the penultimate stitch, before using the Kitchener stitch to close the top. To be fair, I prefer a rounded mitten. If I did it again, I’d sub that in instead.

Speaking of the top of the mitten, I continued the cable into the decrease section. I found that the decrease section of the mittens became a bit pouffy without the cable. I simply started the decreases on round two of the cable chart.

Here is a look at the yarn and fibre:

The details:

Cast on: January 17th, 2012
Cast off: January 24th, 2012
Pattern: Cruiser
Yarn: My handspun. 3ply DK weight Lincoln longwool.
Fibre: Dyed by Sue’s Crafts, currently available at the Knit Studio

A couple notes on the pattern. Firstly, it isn’t charted. Then again, it isn’t a difficult cable and really doesn’t need to be charted. Secondly, were I to do it again, I’d likely use a sore thumb (where the thumb gussets cause the thumb to stick out to the side). This pattern basically uses an afterthought thumb, and unlike norwegian style mittens there are no increases to the thumb hole. I found the palm of the hand to be a bit tight and the cuff too loose, but I didn’t want to go up a size as the finger section would have been oversized. A sore thumb would have solved this dilema. Then again, I have wide palms and small fingers. However, they still fit well and I’m looking forward to seeing how they wear.

Progress on my pi shawl is going about as slow as molasses in a Canada in January. At 1152 stitches per round, it was slow going for a while, especially as I made a few minor errors that required some tinking back or dropping down a few (or 18) rounds.

That isn’t to say I’m not enjoying it. I am. It is lovely nighttime knitting that I can do whilst watching M*A*S*H.

I’ve just started the edging. I’ve chosen to go for the knitted on garter stitch edging. I’m using a 15 stitch row for the edging, with two rows per stitch, at 1152 stitches. That’s a lot of edging stitches.

I really wanted to keep the edge all in red. I’ve been hoarding red to the side just for this reason. In the 1152 stitch rounds I needed 3 sections of the gold to make a decent colour section. I broke the yarn at each colour change so I could continue on in the gold whilst simultaneously hoarding the red for the border. It worked out perfectly.

Or it’ll work out perfectly as long as I don’t run out of yarn. I calculated the amount of yarn I needed and gave myself a 10% margin of error. Let’s hope my yarn agrees with my math. :)

If all goes well, I’m hoping to have this shawl off the needles by the end of the month. I’m hoping all goes well. I can’t wait to see this blocked.

Back in October, I talk a bit about some fibre I was spindling. It was the September club fibre from Wildcraft, ‘Studland Beach’, dyed on Falkland top.

I finally finished it this week!

I always forget how lovely spindle spun yarn is. I find it has a wonderful bounce and hand to it that I don’t always get with a wheel. It is yarn that says, ‘I am yarn that was spun with love, time and effort’. This yarn is no exception. It is delightfully soft and springy.

Now, the discerning readers amongst you might notice that I said I was finished, and yet there still appears to be a braid of fibre sitting there unspun. And my friend, you would be correct. I usually spin up all 200g (or 600g or 1kg, or whatever quantity it is that I have) up at the same time. I spin all the singles, then do all the plying, and then wash it all at the same time. I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive like that. However, last week, in a sleep induced idea came into my head at 3am whilst I was feeding the baby, I decidedI was going to make coordinating yarns out of the same colourway.

This skein produced 263 metres of a lovely sport weight 3ply yarn which I’ll likely use for either a hat or cowl. Likely a cowl. As is obviously apparent, I have yet to pin down a pattern. The second (coordinating) skein is going to become mittens.

I’ll divulge more of the plans with you next week once I have some photos to share. :)

Thing 1 requested a scrapbooking day, and since Thing 2 was relatively happy so play on his mat, I was happy to oblige.

It has been a while since I’ve done any scrapbooking. I think I’ve managed it once since we’ve moved. But then again, there are a lot of things that have hit the back burner in the last several months. However, it is something I enjoy doing, and I do want to get back into the habit of doing a little bit every week.

This morning I managed two layouts. The first is entitles ‘Week 1’. I now have a whopping 2 layouts about Thing 2.

The second layout is of a trip we took to the beach in Tynemouth, but more importantly how rare it is to actually get a proper summer day in the north of England.

Here’s hoping that Denmark gets better summers. :)

The mawata mittens are finished!

I’m really pleased with how they turned out. I still had a wee bit of silk left over which I’ve spun on my spindle, but the mittens did eat up most of that bundle of silk. If I wanted to do an all silk mitten with long cuffs (as I usually like), I think I’d start with 50g of silk. I know that I ended up using more silk than might have been necessary as I like a firm fabric and thus likely knitted a heavier strand of silk using smaller needles, but I like the feel of the finished fabric.

The pattern is just a basic mitten pattern out of my head that was knit to fit, with short fingers and long thumbs, and they fit perfectly. My only complaint about them is the unspun silk in conjunction with my hands. My hands are very dry. They are always dry. However, we’ve recently moved from a very damp climate to a drier climate and my skin hasn’t quite adjusted yet. As a result my hands literally stick to the inside of the mittens.

I’ll put away my mittens for this year. I suspect this is a temporary issue and I can delight in wearing lovely silk mittens next year. It isn’t like we have any snow anyway. :)

~ Previous entry for this project and information on knitting with silk hankies can be found here. ~

The January club parcels have been arriving, and I’m quite pleased to have received mine. I love getting squooshy parcels in the post.

This month’s club colourway was ‘Snowstorm’ and it was dyed on some really lovely Suffolk top.

We were all really excited about this month’s club as we were told that it would be on a fibre that she’d never seen done as a top. Usually, if you can find Suffolk as a top, it is grey. Suffolk sheep are white. Deb Robson even makes a statement about this in The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and that the grey ‘Suffolk’ top does not have the same characteristics as fibre from (white) Suffolk sheep.

This top is soft, fluffy and bouncy. Like other down breeds, the fibre is also durable and thus it’ll make great socks, mittens and other everyday items. I’m very torn between spinning for socks and spinning for a bag. I have 200g of fibre, so either is doable. I may just have to sit and pet it for a little while to decide.

Amongst the squishy fibre was also a spindle. This is actually one of the extra spindles from the November 2011 club in the theme ‘Last of the Sunflowers’. I love this spindle and am very much looking forward to filling it up with fibrey goodness.

A few weeks ago I shared a holiday swap gift I received:

The fibre was originally from Hilltop Cloud and it was a Merino, Finn and Firestar blend that came in little nests like so:

It was a very pushy fibre and insisted on being spun up (I think it was that firestar. Firestar has attitude.) I gladly obliged and spun it up on my Louet Victoria as a laceweight single. I have to admit it took me a little while to get used to spinning Merino again. Once I got the feel, it spun beautifully. My biggest problem was finding the end of the fibre nests so I could start spinning. Not entirely a problem, except that I often do my spinning first thing in the morning before my second cup of tea. So really, the problem was likely tea deprivation.

Out of the 100g of fibre, I ended up with approximately 675 metres (a conservative number), which should be just enough to knit a Bitterroot shawl in the large version.

I’ll need to find some beads. I usually don’t add beads to a lace shawl because I’m just not a bead type of person. However, I think this time I should add the beads if for no other reason than having never done it on a shawl before. And the yarn wants beads. Did I mention that Firestar is pushy?

Many thanks to my secret santa for my lovely fibre gift. I’ve really enjoyed it thus far. :)

Over on the Wildcraft Woollies forum on Ravelry we are having a silk hankie along. Anything goes, as long as there are silk hankies involved.

My experience with hankies is limited to a little bit of dabbling, but not much real practical experience. For my first project I’m using 30g of Silk Mawata squares from Wildcraft and I thought I’d share how I’m doing it.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I’m in love with the colour.

For my first project I’ve planned to do a set of mittens using the unspun silk. It is a simple technique, with the hardest part being a trip to the manicurist. Silk, in most forms, likes to catch on anything, and this is especially true with the hankies.

The first step is to separate out the hankies. Looking along the edge of the silk, you’ll see the edges of the squares and the idea is to try and pull a square (or a couple squares) off the pile.

A square(s) pulled off:

There are several ways to attenuate the silk. I prefer poking a hole in the centre and pulling it out in a loop:

Here is my loop, only pulled enough to make it roughly even:

If I wanted aran weight yarn, I’d stop here. If I wanted something thinner, I’d keep drafting. Here it is all drafted out:

I then break my loop. I do this as the last step as it allows me to either pick a particular spot, like a colour change, or a thin area to break it.

One word of warning, the silk is deceptive. It’ll knit up to a much finer gauge than you may think. If I pull the silk taught, you’ll see the difference between how it will knit and how it looks at rest.

My final step before knitting is to roll the silk on to a toilet roll liner. This step is optional. You could make little nests out of the silk instead, or you can draft as you knit. It is up to you. I wanted to knit with a continuous strand of yarn, so I wound it on to the rolls. At the join, I simply lay one end of silk over the other and twist is slightly to hold it together before wrapping the rest of the silk on.

I decided to use a wool-based yarn for my cuffs for two reasons. One, I was worried about running out of silk, and two, I wanted a cuff with some elasticity. I’m using a camel and merino blend from Onion Knit. This stuff is a gloriously soft single and perfect for that sensitive bit of skin on the inside of the wrists.

I also decided to use two ‘strands’ of the unspun silk. I ended up drafting out my first bit of silk too much, but I’m really glad that I did. I’ve found that I’m getting a much more consistent gauge with two strands, much like what happens when you ply yarn when spinning.

I’m really loving how the mittens are working up and how the colours are coming through even though I’m not giving much thought or effort to keep them from muddying together.

And those are the basics. I’ve started knitting my second mitten already and will be back to show the final results as soon as they are finished.

After finishing the Hippocampus mittens and thinking my stranding could be better, I decided to do another pair of mittens with the leftover Kauni and try out the Philosopher’s Wool techinique for stranding. It’s basically similar to regular stranding, except that you don’t go more than one stitch in either colour without catching the other colour. In regular stranding I’d usually lock my floating yarn (the yarn not in use) every 5th stitch.

This endeavour was a trial. I wanted to try out a new technique, I wanted to try the yarn at a different gauge, and I wanted to try out a mitten with a different stitch count. I was not concerned about the final size or how the colours worked together. Essentially, this was about knitting practice and discovery.

If you look inside the mittens you can see the difference between the length of the floats in regular stranding (left) and the Philosopher’s Wool Method (right). The Philosopher’s Wool Method looks and feels almost woven:

These mittens gave me a really good feel for this technique. In the areas where the floats would be longer, I think the result is much better. However, I noticed that there was a certain area on the palm of the mitten where my non-dominate yarn (green) is too loose and pops out. In this case, because of the pattern, it looks okay, but it is obviously something I need to work on.

I also need to loosen up in the first 5 rounds of the thumb. There is a noticeable change in tension on the face of the thumb, though funnily enough, not on the inner side.

I think this was a great experiment and well worth doing. I’ve learned a great deal from doing it, including that if I were to do it all over again I’d go up to a 2.5mm needle. That would be the same size needle I used on the Hippocampus mittens and thought was too loose. It’s amazing how a simple change of technique can alter one’s tension.

In the end, the mittens don’t fit. The width is about right (though I couldn’t go any smaller), but the length of the fingers and the thumb are about four rounds too short. Also, I would like an extra six rounds between the start of the thumb gusset and the thumb hole. Since this pattern was designed for a heavier weight yarn, I’m not surprised at this outcome. A pattern for a fingering weight yarn would have accommodated this as it is simply a matter of a difference in row gauge.

I did really enjoy working this pattern. I’d suggest that a familiarity with a selbu-style mitten would be useful as the pattern is not long on verbiage, but all stitches in the mitten are charted. For the most part, it is a simple matter of knowing how to deal with the thumb hole and what decreases to use where at the top of the thumb and fingers.

The details:

Cast on: January 6th, 2012
Cast off: January 10th, 2012
Pattern: Rigmor’s Selbu Mittens (free Ravelry download)
Yarn: Kauni Effektgarn 8/2
Needles: 2.25mm
Mods: other that using a lighter weight yarn, none.