This One Time, at Spin Camp
To jump to the punch line: I've been spinning yarn (drop spindle; wool, silk, cat hair) in drips and drabs for a few years now, and have accumulated decent yardage of 2-ply yarns. Some bits of yarn have gone on to permanent existence in weaving projects, and some are waiting patiently for me to get around to their One Thing.
Other bits of yarn were just novelty purchases that never told me what they wanted to be when they grew up. It was fine when spinning was my focus in its own right - I had an overall yardage goal based on weaving, and anyway, hoarding "fresh" yarn is pretty rad! But then I started having other ideas for my time, and now I need to find space for the next round of projects.
I'm stuck in this corner:
If I talk about how I don't particularly love this yarn that I spun, I get lots of offers to take it from me. I've been that person, and I don't trust past-me to actually use the yarn in a way that current-me would appreciate.
And: I know for-sure that not-me-at-all will not appreciate my homespun yarn the way current-me does, warts and all. For example, at one point, I seriously got teary-eyed over this yarn's potential, like it was a kid growing up. Ludicrous, but it's my ludicrous. Call it "personal investment."
When yarns have been clear with me about what they want to be, the whole work is a joy, even when we disagree about a particular nuance of technique.
In the meanwhile, this yarn didn't know its own mind. When I started pushing the issue, it pushed back. "Bad as a kid," as my mom would say about any little thing (including the cats) pitching a fit about not getting its own way - especially when it doesn't want to clarify what it DOES want. Oy.
This yarn collection spans traditional gauges from
superfine lace to super bulky, and I want it ALL to leave yarn storage and move into fabric storage. My summer "spring cleaning" plans this year include reimagining my living room blanket storage. I want more blankets/shawls for my living room - it's drafty in the fall/winter/spring ie knitting season, and if I can find them reliably, I can also grab them for events, etc.
In the meanwhile, I started being more consistent in taking photos of my projects on
January 14, 2018, as part of an arts and sciences challenge you're welcome to join, with no commitment:
100 Days of A&S - take/post photos of your arts/sciences every day. It's surprisingly difficult!
One of the complications in finding 100 things to photograph over as many (or maybe more) days is making visible progress in anything. That's especially tricky when I keep ripping things apart! Midway through this exact project, my sister mentioned that she liked seeing all the iterations - my tenacity in trying to get it "right" and the variations I've explored. And it occurred to me that I have a blog already set-up that I could use to collect those thoughts. So. Here we are.
Round 1: House Coat. FIGHT!
Theory #1: Looong Jacket
2016 - January 2017
"This one time," I surveyed my holdings and discovered plenteous yarns I loved, but that were without purpose. And I wanted them to reach their full potential.
Or maybe more truthfully, I wanted more space to buy or make yarn a la the model:
Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make Do, or Do Without.
I routinely disallow myself to buy yarn when I've got a backlog I don't know how to use. A few years prior, I used momentum from a similar review to purge all the "weird" yarn from my house. I ended up evicting 10 full tall kitchen trash bags. Yeah, not kidding.
Mission:Use Up the Yarn. Challenge Accepted!
I considered making a huge drapey coat, in garterlac. That would use up lots of yarn in a way that was functional and so pretty. I started, using only what I knew in my head. I had a nice entrelac pattern from my sister:
Criminy Jicket's Garterlac Dishcloth. And I've successfully knitted a sweater (I like the shaping quite a bit, but I don't love how I did the color-work, so I rarely wear it). And I do some clothing-sewing, so I understand how garments come together (in theory).
But, the more I worked on this stash-busting project, the more we fought, the yarn and I. First, it made me decide whether I wanted to use my homespun yarn, or if I wanted a more uniform texture. Grudgingly, I settled on using store-bought yarn. Even then, it didn't want to conform to my expectations of being a jacket - it wanted to be a flat blanket, possibly for taking a luxurious nap on the couch. And then it wanted to have opinions about every color change. It did let me talk it into accepting one white strand of acrylic with a silver metallic thread spun in. Self-contained, non-shedding glitter.
Look how pretty that is!! It's long and narrow and squishy - oh yes, and drapey. And it used up a significant pile of yarns. We get along so well, since January 2017 - now that it's all done and functional and unique, and even visually striking.
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| Garterlac blanket, mostly using Hobby Lobby's "I Love this Wool," from back when that yarn was actually 100% wool. |
And then it was summertime in Oklahoma, when it's too hot to live, and when it's really hard to imagine wanting to touch things that make you feel WARM. It's not unheard-of for temperatures to reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit in high summer. Ew.
And then fall again: the crisp bite in the air that says that textiles could be lovely and decadent - even the wool ones.
Theory #2: COAT!!!1!1!
Fall 2017
This time, when I evaluated my remaining use-up yarn, most of the collection was yarn I'd spun. And I still wanted a jacket-type something that would hold itself in place regardless if I hopped up to switch laundry, or whatevs. And I thought I'd learned lessons from the blanket, on how my next try could be a coat. And I ran with it.
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| Maia claims all warm and well-trafficked areas as her own, regardless of season. I'm pretty sure this is the only actual photo I have of that house coat. |
Notes so You can Imagine the Shaping
I started with a longtail cast-on, measured to span my shoulders across my back, amounting to 7 squares of 8 stitches each, in super-bulky. I consciously started with the thickest yarn I had - both because I had the smallest amount of yardage in that weight, and because I wanted the structural stability at that load-bearing point. (Seemed reasonable at the time.) I worked the back panel for a decent span, being careful to reserve yarn so the front could match the back.
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| Cat feets!! And, starting this thing again. |
From there, I picked up stitches along the cast-on, and added two 2-square front panels, with a gap for the neckline. I don't remember if I included a bit of stockinette before adding those panels - I remember having a little bit of neckline shaping, but I'm blanking on how that worked.
After an entrelac row or two, I added the other three panels to the front, so the two panels would meet - off-set from front-center because of the odd number of squares.
When all three panels were long enough, I joined the sides to the back panel, leaving arm holes. Then I knitted this many-stitch section as a single panel. It was bulky and awkward, but it went much more quickly since the finagling was over. Well, and not too bulky, since I was all out of the heavier yarns.
After the first few times I wore the coat, I picked up stitches in the arm holes and added shaping to make them a little less drafty. At that point, the only yarn I still had on hand in good quantities was my favorite of my first home-dyeing experiments: a deep raspberry color, in fine-weight plied Merino.
Then, I added front button plackets in the way I'd buttoned up the front of my rainbow shawl, a few years ago.
I don't have photos of that front closure, but look how pretty this shawl is! It uses the shaping and one motif from the
Lafitte Shawl from Lost City Knits.
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| On a Disreputable Sunday in April 2014, I blew off four separate responsibilities and made something fun for my-own-self. Yarn is Hometown USA acrylic, super-bulky (I buy this yarn for Monmouth Caps). |
The new house coat was ham-handed compared to this, of course. But it was functional: it stayed in place, and was less bulky than a shawl or blanket, and kept me from catching cold during my (occasional) sedentary days in winter.
Conflict:
Using any length of my Raspberry Merino on this project was an uneasy compromise: I wouldn't have to cut short lengths here, unlike in a longtail cast-on that I kept rethinking. But I _did_ have to cut it after the arm hole shaping was "good enough." Gulp. When I added shaping to the arm holes, I never wove in the loose ends, and they snagged and unraveled a smidge. It was never pretty.
In the meanwhile, I brought the house coat to show my Mom over Thanksgiving 2017 weekend - seven of us (three sisters, two* brothers, Mom, a family friend) hunted Black Friday sales at quilt shops. I didn't have anything specific in mind, but I wanted a little piece of fabric to line the neck to make it less itchy. I found a piece of flannel, and put it someplace "safe" in my yarn corner where I've been able to ignore it ever since. *missing a brother for extenuating circumstances
On that shopping excursion, my sister dubbed it the Hair Shirt - "Let me get this straight, you took yarn you hated and made yourself something ugly and uncomfortable to wear all the time." In the immortal words of Peter Faulk: Yes, you're very smart. Shut up.
And then seasons shifted toward spring again, and I wanted to start a new project. I still had a decent length of raspberry Merino available, and my husband was starting to sound envious of my lighter-weight long wool socks, also made with fine-gauge homespun wool. So I started those, despite anticipating that I would need more yarn. But! I didn't want to cannibalize the coat if I wanted to keep it for any length of time. But, why would I keep a coat I was unwilling to photograph? Oy.
Reset:
I wore the house coat though the end of my winter knitting season. I wasn't willing to lose the warmth before then. But then Gulf Wars was coming. On a day that felt auspicious, I frogged this iteration and documented it as a part of the
100 Days of A&S challenge:
Day 39, March 3, 2018.
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| Maia, guarding the yarn hoard, as is her right and duty. |
Round 2: Cardigan. FIGHT!
Early March 2018
Looking at discrete balls of yarn all over again, I started to think in terms of showcasing the individual fibers. I've got some cool stuff here!
I found a cardigan pattern that had ribbing, then entrelac at the base, and then stockinette for actual shaping at the torso. Let's do it!
Pattern Rows and Fibers, starting at bottom hem:
- Plain ribbing - white MAC wool, black sheep from a coworker's family farm, Fluffy Goat from Belgutai, raspberry Merino
- Entrelac - modern-dyed mixed-brown, alternating squares with one row of color: green is cheviot; MAC white in a finer ply; blue-pink on the needles is also from the MAC.
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| Bottom hem of a new "Cardigan." I started with the same number of stitches as I had in the house coat, but this time constructed from the bottom, up. |
- Ribbing at waist line - "hotchpot" spinning (re-spins from pencil rovings, roving yarns, first-round spinning projects), red/white MAC wool
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| Waist line of the "Cardigan," with ribbing inspired by two of the ribbing panels on the Eleanor of Toledo stockings (because I had it in my muscle memory and wanted something prettier than the bottom hem). |
Conflict:
I undermined this project before I even started. It wanted me to make three panels and then sew them together. I thought that sounded like "effort," so I cast-on the number I needed for the bottom hem, and ran with it.
After the waist-line ribbing, I was going to have to figure out where I needed to bind-off stitches to get back in line with the pattern. That would have been easy enough, but I kept putting it off. And then one day, I found (or maybe made up) an excuse, and assertively frogged the poor thing to put it out of its misery - while happily partaking of a Yuengling imported from Mississippi.
Reset:
And in this moment, it occurred to me that I've recently "discovered" light shawls. Shawls are so pretty, and they're ubiquitous on the "now what??" recommendations for knitters looking to expand skills past knit/purl design.
My rainbow shawl was a present from me to me. I even have a photo of me wearing it in public! It was my yarn-corner warmth for a few years. But it was bulky and not-subtle. See previous about complicated feelings toward homespun yarn - I'm not getting rid of it, but it's not my end-all. It's fine resting in the blanket storage for a little while. (Like how a parent will rotate toys for little kids - sometimes a project needs to "go away" for some time, and then it can be new and exciting again later.)
I made the rainbow shawl after a disastrous attempt to complete the Lafitte Shawl on lace-weight wool, complete with recommended beading. (Yeah, I picked something with beading and complicated charts as my first lace shawl _and_ first beading project. Fight me.) It was a beautiful mess - it was a clear fail because didn't lay out flat at all. But! It caught and threw light so amazingly. So Texture! Much Wow! I have no idea how I so brutally mangled that darling. Maybe I'll revisit it again someday.
More recently, I have started to consciously carry a lace-weight shawl when I'm not sure what the weather will be, but I anticipate a chill (ie not summertime). I wore it as a scarf at Crown Tourney in January 2018 and Gulf Wars in March 2018 (I have a photo somewhere from Pyro/ Caelin). And lately, it rests near my yarn corner, where it has been grabbed for this exact purpose a few times, now, too.
I don't have a photo of it by itself (yet), but here are its specs:
Seth Shawl pattern, lace-weight alpaca from M. Xene (I might still have the tag somewhere - I try to keep them until I record the info somewhere re-findable,but I'm still hit-or-miss about both of those things).
Anyway: So. If I make a shawl/ infinity scarf, I _could_ plausibly use it in real life, based on real-time past behavior. Alright, that's a decent bet.
Round 3: Scarf/ Loop/ Whatever. FIGHT!!1!!
Theory #1: Flat Scarf
Late March 2018
With the yarn all disintegrated from fabric again, I considered dividing the really heavy yarns from the really light yarns. Maybe make two scarves-?. That thought didn't last very long - I have bulk in the thick yarn, but not much yardage. So, I went up a needle size (5mm to 6mm), and jumped back in.
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| Oohhhh, man, that's pretty. Isn't that pretty?! |
Conflict:
So Many Conflicts!!
I figured I'd work the squares in stockinette (and the triangles in garter). But, stockinette by itself is boooring! But, what pattern for the lace? I improvised one design and liked it well enough, but I didn't like it repeated exactly on the next row.
In the meanwhile, I'd started the
Nakia shawl, which starts with a Provisional Cast-on. If I did that, I wouldn't have to play "yarn chicken" and risk having leftover yarns. If it came down to it, I could scrounge (or spin) more homespun for the graft if necessary. Great!
And finally, I had a color crisis: I didn't like the red/white in the same square as the brown/maroon. So, that row, i.e. more than 2/3 of the completed fabric here, was already "dead to me."
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| Anyway, I didn't like the thought of picking-up stitches from a longtail cast-on pulled that taut. |
Reset:
I think the width was okay (3 entrelac triangles at base, 24 sts). Maybe use a lighter yarn for the base triangles, so the heavier cast-on isn't overtaxed-?
Theory #2: Infinity Scarf
Started: Early April 2018
Frogged: Late May 2018
Restarted with a Provisional cast-on. Alternated light-and-heavy strands in the entrelac rows - I did that last round, and liked it. And, from my experience on the blanket, I really liked the effect of changing one color every row to create a gradual color shift across the whole piece.
Ha. EUREKA! The cast-on row (green, acrylic) is over-taut, but that'll get fixed in post (hopefully, I'll have thick enough yarn at that point to do that smoothly).
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| Double garter entrelac rows alternating with lace (stockinette face) entrelac rows. The triangle rows and ends are all garter, for stability and simplicity. I'm "back burner" considering adding a crochet edge when this is all done, like I did on the blanket. |
So far so good! (Famous last words.)
It occurs to me that I really want to map out the colors/fibers I'm using on this round, since I'm finally liking how this is working - and I still do want to track the unique yarns I have going on here. Text colors obvs don't strictly match the colors represented (but I did vaguely try to make it visually track). Rows, starting after the green cast-on, are:
Row 1:
- White MAC wool (2-ply sport)
- Home-dyed brown Merino (2-ply worsted)
Row 2:
- White MAC wool (2-ply sport)
- Black sheep (2-ply sport) from a coworker's family farm; the black ran out at the end of the row and was supplemented with brown/pink MAC (4-ply sport)
Row 3:
- Brown/pink MAC (4-ply sport)
- Pink re-spun Bernat (8-ply worsted) roving yarn (mostly wool; some other yarns in red/orange tones)
Row 4:
- Pink re-spun Bernat (8-ply worsted)
- White MAC (2-ply bulky/super bulky)
Row 5:
- White MAC (2-ply bulky/super bulky)
- Home-dyed brown Merino (2-ply worsted) I have a _ton_ of this yarn.
Row 6:
- Home-dyed brown Merino (2-ply worsted) I have a _ton_ of this yarn.
- Home-dyed denim-blue Merino, plied with white (8-ply sport)
Row 7:
- Home-dyed denim-blue Merino, plied with white Merino (8-ply sport)
- Wool of the Andes, "Firecracker" (2-ply super bulky)
Row 8:
- Wool of the Andes, "Firecracker" (2-ply super bulky)
- Home-dyed raspberry Merino, plied with home-dyed yellow Merino (8-ply sport)
After another two-ish hours of knitting, it's still panning out the way I need/want it to - yay!
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| Infinity shawl, covering the yarn I've set-aside for growing it, in the flat-bottom bag I've allotted for corralling all of it. This is the "RS" - the stockinette lacework is facing up. Maybe that'll be more apparent in later squares with better matched yarns. |
Conflict:
I've been double-wrapping my yarn-overs for the lace squares. Someone with fancy credentials once wrote on a pattern that doing so makes for a bigger lace opening. I have never found that to be actually true - the extra slack does the opposite, in my experience. But, I ran with it for this iteration in case maybe the yarn gauge would make a difference. Yeah, no, you can barely see the lace holes. I'll see if there's a difference in the rows after the yellow/red I'm working on right now.
I've debated frogging this back, to correct that one point, but at the same time: I've already "killt" a few yarns in just this bit of knitting - and in at least three cases, the length that ended managed to do so at a convenient place in the pattern. So, frogging it now would disrespect that yarn's valiant closure. In the meanwhile, I have enough yardage in the finest yarns that I am able to hold plied yarns doubled and quadrupled where it needs to compete with my earlier spinning work with the heavier gauges.
Picking up on Row 7 because I frogged Row 8 after that last photo:
Row 7:
- Home-dyed denim-blue Merino, plied with white Merino (8-ply sport)
- Wool of the Andes, "Firecracker" (2-ply super bulky)
Row 8 - new:
- Wool of the Andes, "Firecracker" (2-ply super bulky)
- White MAC wool (2-ply sport)
Row 9:
- White MAC wool (2-ply sport)
- Yellow and Raspberry home-dyed Merino (4-ply fingering)
Row 10:
- Yellow and Raspberry home-dyed Merino (4-ply fingering)
- Green Cheviot (4-ply fingering)
Row 11:
- Green Cheviot (4-ply fingering)
- Purple/Blue MAC unknown fiber (oily) (4-ply fingering)
Row 12:
- Purple/Blue MAC unknown fiber (oily) (4-ply fingering)
- Pink re-spun Bernat (8-ply worsted) (4-ply fingering)
Row 13:
- Pink re-spun Bernat (8-ply worsted) (4-ply fingering)
- "Hotchpot" plied - whites and pastel tones respun from short bits (4-ply fingering)
- "Hotchpot" plied - whites and pastel tones (4-ply fingering)
- "Hotchpot" plied - dark tones respun from short bits (4-ply fingering)
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| Thick yarns are bunchy-looking: red and white square is the thickest. Thin squares are stretched all out: pink and purple, and squares on the needles, are the finest. |
And Then!!
I was starting to not be in love with this project. And then:
I found a cute pattern for a bottom-up tank-top, and it's super dorbs. And the lighter weight yarns (purple, red, yellow, green) would all be perfect for that.
And I have enough of my modern-dyed yarn to do something small-ish...
Updates as I come up with the next plan.
Next scheduled update will happen when one of the following is true:
- I frog this whole thing again, or
- I get to another serious debate point, or
- I get to another significant milestone in completion, or
- It's complete
So Say I: Elsa von Snackenberg. 05-21-2018.
