Knit, knit, spin, spin
There hasn’t been a huge amount of knitting going on. Partly because it has been so hot, and partly because I’ve mostly been spinning (at leas that’s what it feels like).
The Not Quite Argyle Sweater, the shawl with 8,000 beads, Ghosts & Mirrors, and my purple Zodiac le Plume have all gotten a row or two added to each of them, but certainly not enough to be very noteworthy. The two projects I have been working on however, have seen a tremendous amount of progress since the last time you saw them.
The first, which was only just started the last time I photographed it, and now fits comfortably around the 40″ circular that I have it on.
The lace patterning isn’t super clear in this photo, but it’s interspersed with sections stockinette stripes. Sort of potato chip knitting, because I love getting from stripe to stripe to stripe, and it would be complete potato chip knitting if the rounds weren’t beginning to get really long.
I was going to spread this out once I transitioned into the second skein of yarn, but before I knew it, I was a few rows away from binding off. So now I’m in the middle of the bind off and that little ball at the top of the photo is the yarn I have left. Fingers crossed it lasts, and we’ll see how it goes.
The singles I was working on the last time I talked about spinning are done and plyed, but not washed yet.
I 2 plyed them to preserve the color transitions. Since it just came off the bobbin, I haven’t counted final yardage or weight yet, but it’s a decent amount of yardage, in I would say a lace weight.
I also plyed the Fibernymph dyeworks singles that I was contemplating last time. You can see the color progression better in the photo below. It goes from the blue-purple, to the light purple to the grey-purple.
I ended up n-plying it, first to keep the colors together, second to make the yarn a little bit heavier, and I’m really glad I did because it’s very thin even with the three plys. It also hasn’t been washed yet, so I don’t have exact weight, but there are certainly parts of it that are lace weight. No idea what it’ll become but probably a shawl (shocking I know.)
Maybe the weather will get less gross soon, and I’ll want to knit more. Probably wishful thinking, but I can still wish.
Mittens For Spring
Honestly I thought I’d have more time to devote to, well, everything once the performance was over. Knitting, blogging, sleeping, the important things. But now I’m laughing at myself for even thinking that thought, and with us heading towards the end of the semester alarmingly quickly, I can’t see The Busy stopping anytime soon.
The written portion of the thesis is demanding time and attention at the moment, and funnily enough, it doesn’t get any closer to being finished if I don’t work on it (crazy thought), so it’s been getting lots of love, and a bit of swearing. Seeing as I haven’t perfected knitting and typing at the same time, that means I haven’t been doing much knitting. But I did manage to weave in a couple ends, which mean…
I have mittens!
Just in time for spring. Oh well.
Pattern: my own. It’s just a basic mitten pattern in a 1×1 fair isle check to make the extra cozy, and a Latvian braid around the cuff to keep them from rolling.
Yarn: Classic Elite Ariosa. 1 ball of each color, 90% merino, 10% cashmere, colorway: grey-4814, light blue-4809
Fiber Source: Knitty City (I got the yarn at their sale last summer, so I’m not sure if they still carry it or not)
Needles: US 9s DPNs
Maybe they’ll end up in the back up gift pile.
Post Thesis Haze
Things have been sort of (read: completely) crazy around here. My thesis performance went up Wednesday night, so that’s now finished. And the next couple days I’ll be focused on relaxing and picking up all the balls I dropped over the last few weeks. Including, but not limited to, laundry, cleaning, knitting, blogging, and reading for other classes, before I start focusing on the written portion of my thesis.
I think, I’m going to try and gather a bunch of the photos of the performance and accompanying exhibit into a post, probably early next week. Even though there’s no knitting, there are pretty dresses, and who doesn’t like some pretty every now and then.
Anyway, even with the thesis monopolizing my life I have gotten some knitting done mostly in bits and pieces, a podcast here, 15 minutes there. (Much like this post in fact, a sentence here, a paragraph there, so if it sounds a bit disjointed and abrupt in places, that’s why.)
Both the “Big Orange Blob” and the second pair of potato chip mittens are off the needles.
I’m going to try to weave in the ends, wash and block them both over the weekend. Since I spent the morning cleaning, I now have the floor space to block a shawl again.
Ghosts & Mirrors is coming along. I’m finding that it takes a special level of concentration, so I’m not spending much time working on it. But since it’s only 100 stitches or so across, the small amount of attention I have given it, really shows.
I’m into the bust increases on my Not Quite Argyle Jacket. Even though I probably won’t get to wear it until fall at this rate, it’s still a fun, and semi-brainless knit that I can pick up and put down easily, which I exactly what I need right now.
And finally you haven’t seen this before, but I’m probably about 2/3rds or maybe 3/5ths through this braid of Fibernymph Dye Works BFL, colorway “Incarnation, the lighter.” I’m planning to do a gradient two ply, so I’m spinning all of the colors separately. I’ll then ply each one from a center pull ball, probably with a section between each color where one ply is one color and the other is the other color to smooth the transition.
Well, that’s all for now. I’ll try and get the thesis post up, and maybe FO posts for the mittens and big orange blob next week.
