around here there’s been…
Each Wednesday, I post little snippets about the projects I’m working on.
: knitting – I finished the neckline of my purple sweater. And then ripped it out and finished it again. And then ripped it out and finished it yet again.
: spinning – I started spinning a yak/merino blend of fiber.
: sewing – I started sewing my first pair of jeans!!!
Finished: handspun yarn – a red & purple, 3 ply, worsted weight yarn
Yarn!
This particular yarn has been a long time in the making. I originally spun the Redfish DyeWorks (bright red) fiber with the intention of making my standard 2ply – upon finishing the singles I realized that would be a damn intense yarn.
So the singles then sat on my desk for months* waiting for something.
*not a good spinning practice – but they didn’t end up too much the worse for it.
Turns out they were waiting for these 2 ounces of fiber from Wooliebullie (the darker purple-ier) – I originally thought about spinning this up on it’s own but that wouldn’t have yielded as much yardage as I would have wanted, and then when I held it with the bright red it seemed like the perfect match.
Fiber A (bright red): 4oz Redfish DyeWorks’s in an intense bright red
Fiber B (darker purple-ier): 2oz “Beaujolais” on Velvet from wooliebullie.etsy.com
(Both fibers are a 50/50 silk/merino blend.)
Yardage: 260 yards & 165 grams
Weight: somewhere around a worsted weight yarn
Spinning details: I spun the fibers worsted* and did a traditional 3 ply. The singles are spun with a Z twist, and plyed with an S twist. I also ended up with 15 or so yards of 2 ply from the singles that were left after the first bobbin ran out.
*for the non spinners – this is a spinning method and (just to be confusing) has nothing to do with producing a yarn worsted weight yarn.
Knitting plans: I don’t have any exact plans for this – but it’ll be something beautiful.
Spinning Yarn for a Sweater
It wasn’t actually too long after I got into knitting that I also took up spinning. There’s something immensely satisfying about knitting with handspun yarn, it’s so much more “alive” than most mill spun yarn.
Though unlike knitting and sewing, my spinning mojo seems to come and go more with more frequency.
Because of this, I tend to spin accessory quantities of yarn, and I’ve never knit a sweater entirely out of handspun before.
*the main exception being the yarn I knit the swatches for the first Shawl Geometry book – that was about 1,000 yards of spindle spun lime green light fingering/heavy lace weight…
This sweater started when Michele offloaded a a giant ball of camel colored alpaca fiber on me – I figured it was about 8 oz or so and started spindle spinning it into a 2ply lace weight – which is my favorite yarn to spin (as well as knit).
3 oz of lace weight spinning later, I hadn’t made a dent. I was sick of the project, and it turns out that ball of fiber was closer to 12 oz.
(I know, I should have weighed it.)
Thankfully Michele had recently gotten a Hansen miniSpinner and she let me use it to finish spinning the last 9 oz. (Which I don’t have photos of – booooo!)
So, I have 3 oz of very thin spindle spun camel colored alpaca (about 250 yards/228.5 meters), and 9 oz of much thicker miniSpinner spun camel colored alpaca (about 500 yards/457 meters).
750 yards (686 meters) total – not enough for a sweater, and too much for most accessories. At this point, I kind of had my heart set on knitting a sweater out of this handspun yarn.
So, enter 2 oz of beautiful grey BFL,* which I spindle spun into 250 yards (228.5 meters) of lace weight yarn.
*BFL is short for “bluefaced leicester,” which is a type of sheep.
All together everything added up to approximately 1,000 yards (914.5 meters) and 14 oz of handspun yarn. I would be cutting it super close, but I might have just enough yardage for a handspun & hand knit sweater.
In the end, I cut it super close, I only had a couple grams left over, but I knit a sweater out of handspun yarn!
Since this post is already getting a little long, I’ll save the nitty-gritty sweater details for tomorrow.
