Fiber Fool

Well, I didn’t mean to be away from the blog, but it kind of happened. I worked the entire holiday weekend - not as hard as a normal weekend, but I specifically set some time aside each day to get some work done. I did read some good books though!

Anyway, I’ve been spending a ton of time on the computer which doesn’t have my shoulder/neck very happy. I’ve been drafting patterns and charts. (And wasting some time on Plurk.) But, I’ve also been doing a bit of housecleaning here on the blog.

• Changed the front page of the “Fiber Shop.”
• Added a page about my history and philosophy. Check out, as I’m pretty sure everyone will learn something new about me/Designedly, Kristi.
• Added a list of retailers of Designedly, Kristi patterns.
• Updated the Frequently Asked Questions.
• Updated the Fiber Art Classes page to reflect upcoming classes I’m teaching here in Fort Collins.
• Added a page with more info on Private Knitting and Spinning Lessons.

I’ve got some interesting posts percolating in my head, but not the time or energy to pull them together as I would like them to be. I’ll be back more regularly next week, but probably not on my former daily schedule.

Design: Wuxi Wanderer (Ravelry) by Kristi Schueler
Size: Women’s Medium (fit everyone at SnB thanks to the biasing of the fabric)
Yarn: Textiles A Mano Wuxi, 50/50 Wool/Silk fingering weight yarn
Yardage: ~165 yds (roughly 1/4 of the hank)
Needles: 5″ Bryspun US2 (2.75 mm) DPNs (set of 5)
Gauge: 8.5 sts and 11 rnds/in in stockinette stitch knit in the round
Knit For: Textiles A Mano Shop Sample

These are the gloves that were nearly lost at Estes back in mid-June. I’ve had them done for a while but hadn’t gotten a photo shoot or the paste-up completed until this weekend. There are several things I really love about these gloves. I love the cabled cuff. Gloves *need* longish hugging cuffs to keep the cold and snow out, right? But my absolutely favorite part of these gloves is that single cable on each that arches delicately towards the little finger. It is so graceful and really stands out thanks to the sheen of the silk content of this lovely yarn. The colors are fantastic as well. Notice how it doesn’t pool/flash/stripe? That is the magic of Laura’s yarn. I did nothing fancy like knitting from both ends of the ball or anything!

The cable movement on the back of the hand is accomplished by shifting the placement of the thumb gusset stitches. The idea to try moving those gusset stitches around came to me while knitting my Tall Tibetan Flame socks back in October. I only just got around to giving it a go here in June. I really like the effect. In addition to moving the cable, it creates a slightly biased fabric on the hand. Due to this the glove stretches and hugs the hands without the bulk of having ribbing on the hand. Everyone at Monday night knitting (and Monday afternoon knitting as well) who tried it on had a near perfect fit and there were a wide variety of hands between those two groups. A few could adjust the finger length, but the circumference fit all the women who tried it on.

While the pattern contains only one size, there are also suggested alternate gauges and corresponding circumferences included in the pattern should you fall outside the norm in hand size. This yarn will stand up to any of the gauges suggested in the pattern. It was kind of magic that way and made it a tough decision to decide which gauge I wanted to use. The pattern also includes guidelines for custom finger length so that is easily accomplished.

If you aren’t near St. Joseph, MO or can’t get to any of the shows Laura goes to there are several other yarns that are more widely distributed that should work as well. I recommend a yarn with some sheen to add that extra touch of sophistication to the gloves. Anything with silk, bamboo, seacell, tencel or rayon content should work well. There is a list on the pattern info page of ones I feel will substitute quite easily. But for those who’ve lost their sock mojo lately this is a great pattern for using some of that sock yarn piled up in the stash without knitting socks!

I’m sure the link won’t work before too long, but the local paper did an article on the fund raising efforts of my Guided By Love pattern. It even included a (rather large) photo of me at My Sister Knits where I tend to go hang semi-regularly and teach classes from time to time. They also carry my patterns in print version, though Guided By Love is an on-line exclusive.

As of this morning $729 has been raised! You guys are awesome! The orders are down to a small trickle now (which was expected to happen sooner than this really) but it got me to thinking about sending a $4.50 check to Seeing Eye every quarter a year from now is probably bigger pain to both me and them than what it is worth. So, the pattern is only going to be available until December 18th (6 months from its release). I’ll post a reminder as that date nears in case some of you have tucked away the pattern link for “some day.”

The top photo is mine of Gaston (dog #2) and the bottom is from my sister. BTW, she is looking for caption/title suggestions for the photo with the little boy and calf in the portfolio at that link (hit pause when that photo comes up). If you have suggestions, leave them here and she’ll read them.

I did get my goals met over the weekend. After I got the yarns in yesterday’s post off the wheel I went to town on the gorgeous batts from Terrabellaspun. I spun up all 6 ounces on Saturday and plied and soaked on Sunday.

It was dry by Monday afternoon for the Avo’s knitting group. I was running behind on getting out the door so I brought my nostepinne and wound one hank into a ball while there and started the swatching process. I got a nice fabric on US11s and about the gauge I was hoping for too.

Yesterday I crunched numbers and last evening I knit the final project up. It was a 3 Buffy project (that was with some sizeable breaks to snack and/or give the show my undivided attention), LOL! :-) It took less than one hank of the handspun. I haven’t weighed the leftovers or the hat yet, but I’m guessing it took 50-60 yds. It’s a titch smaller on me than I like that sort of project to fit (but I can wear it), which is perfect.

I just can’t believe that even with the spinning it really only took about 5 hours or so total! That doesn’t count the swatching and number crunching or the drying time of course. But from batt to FO in 5 hours? Why didn’t I embrace bulky earlier? LOL!

Alas, I can’t show you the project for probably at least a year! You’ll have to suffer with not knowing what it is while I suffer with not sharing it with you.

Before I could spin up the lovely batts from Friday’s post I needed to pull some yarn off the wheel. This is 260 yds of handspun singles of roughly the same size as went into the bulky 2-ply handpsun that I used to knit Urchin. I still need to spin another skein and together they will someday become thrummed mittens to go with Urchin. I love how the singles fabric contrasts with the 2-ply such that things knit from the different yarns will match without being too matchy. This was however spun up in Nov/Dec sometime shortly after completing Urchin.

I also wanted to reacquiant myself with bulky spinning before working with the gorgeous Terrabellaspun batts. My default singles are definitely laceweight so I knew a warm up of spinning some bulky 2-ply would be a good move. I fortunately had some batts I had ordered some time ago lying around with no real purpose. It was about 3 ounces of a wool alpaca blend if I recall correctly.

The yarn is okay. Not great, but it did serve as a good warm up. I was not terribly pleased with these warm up batts. It seemed as though the maker was in a big hurry when they were made and the fiber not fed onto the drum slowly enough or evenly. I ended up with huge blobs of fiber and then hardly anything and the blobs just wouldn’t draft, not even during pre-drafting. I think it wouldn’t have been quite so problematic for a less bulky yarn as you could have pre-drafted more and thus been able to draft out those blobs a bit more, but it really didn’t suit bulky spinning.

This made me sad, as batts are one of the most luscious ways to get bulky yarn because they already have a ton of loft in them. This means you can get really decent yardage for little weight when you ply it and it opens back up all those fibers you compressed in the singles. It’s amazing! I didn’t record details on this handspun, but if I recall correctly the singles WPI was near 14, but the plyed yarn is only ~3-4 WPI! And, of course trapping all the air into the handspun makes it not only softer and loftier, but also a better insulator!

Needless to say I was more than a little disappointed in these batts. Generally I buy the fun batts from Etsy with the idea of spinning at least a worsted, if not a bulky yarn. I’ve heard reports of this seller’s other batts and all have been glowing so I think I’ll chalk this set up as not her usual quality. Given that, I won’t divulge whom I purchased them from. I’m still unsure whether I’ll order from that seller again or not. It would take a spectacular blend I think to get me to do so. There are so many different options (though why does almost everything include glitz/angelina/firestar????).

If you *really* want to know who the seller was, I posted about the batts on here when I first got them so you could figure it out if you want to fish through the archives.