Marnie, speak! Good girl.

Not very long ago, Wendy spun up the most beautiful orange roving. You can see it in all its splendor here.

If you swing by my blog, with any regularity, you know that I'm not terribly drawn to warm colors, as a general rule. Blues, greens, and purples dominate over all other colors. It's not that I don't love a wide variety of colors, its just that, given a choice, I stay in my color comfort zone and stick to shades I know look good on me and that I love looking at. But this orange had me smitten. So I headed on over to Nistock Farms, where Wendy had gotten her roving, and I got myself 8 delicious ounces of Autumn Spice.

It arrived last night and I didn't even shed my heels and suit before I was spinning away. We reached the front door at 6pm, by 7:30, I had spun, plied, washed and set to dry 26 yards of handspun.

Since these pictures were taken around 3:30 AM (I'm having me a little bout of insomnia, thanks for asking) there is no proper lighting. I think, all things considered, the pictures are fairly representative of the color overall, but they don't really capture some of the beautiful subtleties of the shade. It's mostly a lovely pumpkin color, with shades of a soft pink, some grey and yellow. The overall effect is amazing.

The wool is definitely not as soft as, say, a merino or alpaca, but I love it and it spins surprisingly easily on my little 0.9 oz spindle.

In addition to the 8ozs of Autumn Spice, I also got myself 4oz of the Fudge Brownie shade you'll find on the same page. I haven't even begun to spin that.

To all of you spinners out there, I'm starting to find myself overflowing with roving. I have absolutely no issues with this. I am wondering, though, what is the best way to store the stuff to avoid any problems with it as it waits for my little spindles to spin it up? It's relatively warm and dry here in LA, though I live within a very short distance of the ocean.

I snapped a quick picture of my roving, basking in the sun at work.

Just thought I'd share.

I just love my Autumn Spice Cotswold. I think about spinning it when I'm at work and it's become increasingly hard not to burn dinner while I try to work spinning into my nightly routine.

Here's a bit more of it spun up and plied. Why do I love this yarn so? I don't know. It's not the softest yarn I have, but it's certainly soft enough to be knit into a nice wrap or a cardigan. The little halo of fuzziness delights me. At first I was thrown by it, but now I love it more and more. I pre draft the roving and the yarn just seems to spin itself. It's nearly effortless.

But I also got myself some of the Fudge Brownie roving. This stuff is gorgeous. The color is dark chocolate and the feel is silky, dense and smooth. Fudge Brownie is the perfect name for it. I find it harder to spin though. Instead of long snakes of roving that I can predraft, this tends to want to fall into clumps. It's smooth but the fibers like to grab ahold of each other in unexpected ways so I end up with more thick and thin areas than I'm used to. I tried my 0.9oz and then my 1.3oz spindle. The extra weight seemed to help. I decided to try spinning it a bit thicker than normal, and this is the result.

On top is both of my skeins of Autumn Spice held together in a single skein. You can see that the brown top is much thicker. Spinning thicker yarn is turning out to be challenging for me. I did notice, in the process, that I like the way the yarn looks when it is really tightly spun. It loses some of it's softness but it picks up a sheen that's decadent. I think my next skein will err on the side of overspun, to see what happens.

Here's a close-up of the two yarns. You can see that my brown yarn is not very even.

MJ has been trying to spin more thickly too. A lot of people feel that spinning fine weight yarn is harder than thicker yarn. But I think most people acclimate to spinning a certain weight of yarn and need time to learn to control other weights. It's not a matter of "this weight is good" and "this weight is bad." I'll consider myself a good spinner when I can spin many weights well. For now, I proudly wear my "novice" crown, with my head held high. No shame in it.

There's just one thing that bothers me. Do you hear it? I know I do. I hear the sweet song of the wheel calling me. I'm trying to be strong and, luckily, I do not think I could reasonably justify the cost right now. But that doesn't mean I'm not haunted by the thought of spinning all my gorgeous roving in a couple days instead of needing months to do it. I can't deny that seeing huge skeins of continuous roving, wound off a bobbin, doesn't make me drool a little. I'm counting on a certain friend of mine, to keep me sane. And if I happen to visit this site several times a day, it's only for research purposes.

Before I bore you with more of the same, how about a little something new?

I finished my stealth knit a little while ago, and it's awaiting whatever fate the yarn gods have in store for it. That left my needles free for other things.

I begin teaching some classes at the KnitCafe, starting this week. The owner asked me to come up with a simple eyelet scarf pattern and the above image shows the results.

I'm relatively picky about scarf stitches. I don't believe they have to be completely reversible, but I do feel that, if others are respecting your personal space, it shouldn't be apparent if the back and front don't match. So my quest was for a stitch pattern that used only knits, purls, k2togs, ssks and yos, and did so in a manner that was very simple, basically reversible, and would lie flat without any additional edge stitches. I couldn't find anything that entirely suited my needs, so I modified a stitch pattern and came up with what you see above.

Here are some close ups.

There isn't a front or back, per se, but let's call this the front.

And here's the back

The yarn is the leftover Karabella Aurora 8 from Hopeful. I used exactly 2 balls with less than a yard left over after I wove in all the ends and cut the fringe. The scarf blocked out to about 6 feet long. The stitch pattern is a modified 5x5, with a 3 stitch selvage on each side.

I will post the pattern, for free, sometime soon.

And now, some entirely unnecessary images of my Cotswold as it basks in the California sun, after the bump.

I'm back to trying to design a shawl with my handspun, and once again, I'm starting from scratch with a new design and new yarn.

For those of you who visit regularly, you are probably well aware of my current fascination with my Autumn Spice Cotswold from Nistock Farms. It will then come as no surprise that I want to actually knit what I've spun.

This is what I have so far.

I like it. So why am I reluctant to post this? Because I'm a bit worried it will go awry, as my previous attempts at a shawl have. I'm not terribly fond of repetitive knitting. I'd much rather work something with an intricate stitch pattern or lots of shaping, than something that's very repetitive. I can manage a scarf or sock, here and there, but it's hard for me to keep my interest. So will this piece ever be anything more than a glimmer in my eye? Time will tell.

Even more questionable, though, is whether or not I'll ever spin enough of the roving with my spindle to have a shawl large enough cover my shoulders. I suspect I’ll need quite a bit once my rows get a bit longer.

More spicy goodness, after the bump

I haven't had as much time to knit as I'd hope, so the shawl is going slowly. Admittedly, that's partially because I don't consider it a traveling knit. I really have to focus on it pretty well to make sure I don't mess it up and that means it's hard to work in poor lighting or while commuting. But, I am still really happy with it and am channeling all those words of encouragement from folks.

Wanna see more?

It kind of looks like it did in the previous post, huh? But I'm not just knitting for it, I'm spinning for it too.

Here's everything I've spun to date. It comes out to about 74 grams sock weight yarn.

My most recent batch is 67 yards and weights 20 grams. Anyone have any idea how many yards/grams I'll need to make an averaged sized shawl?

It's only about 4 feet wide, so it's a mini-shawl, but it's my first and it's made from my handspun so I'm as happy as can be.

Leo said "It looks like it could fall apart, like it could break." I informed him that the term is "delicate" and that, for lace, that's a good thing.

It should be dry tonight and I'll be able to get some better pictures, but for now, this will have to do.

And boy, Panda has been in belly rub heaven. She loves the love, so thanks to all of you who sent her some. For those who asked, yes, she is getting cuter and yes, I'm a complete sucker for her big brown eyes and yes, she knows she's working it.

All the notes after the bump

I have been working on the trim for my machine knit cardi, for a couple of days. I started by trying to pick up stitches around the whole piece but found that none of my circular needles were long enough. Next, I tried crochet, but I couldn't quite get the effect I wanted. Crochet just tends to be denser and less drapy, and I wanted to keep the trim soft.

So today, I went to an LYS and picked up a longer circular needle. It's funny, really, while it only took me a couple days to knit the piece on the machine, it's taking me much longer to actually finish it.

Not much to look at, really, though I tried it on before picking up to knit and I am very happy with the fit.

When I'm not working on the cardi, I've been spinning up more of my sunflower colored roving

I've spun just over half of the 4 ounces that I bought. The left skein is my first and the right, my most recent. It's a little finer than the first round but not by much.

I've also made one last addition to the shawl.

It's a little rose crocheted from the same yarn. I think it'll be a nice way to close shawl without tying or holding it.

With my first skeins of yarn completed, I'm ready to expand my wheel horizons. Thanks for all the encouragement and kind words towards those humble skeins. I have no idea what I'll knit from them (too much deadline work right now to think about it) but whatever it is, I expect to cherish it for it's significance. In the mean time, when I'm not knitting away on my projects, El Matchador and I are making sweet whirring music together. First, I attempted to spin a few thicker skeins of yarn. Admittedly, my first roving choice was poor. It was a Merino blend that, I think, had felted ever so slightly, making it a real bastard to draft. The result is the beautifully dyed but poorly spun specimen on the right.

My second attempt was with more of the roving I spun up recently on my spindle. The results (on the left) are still a little rough, but much improved over the first skein. Both are relatively balanced and neither has been washed and hung to dry, which would probably smooth out their appearance a little.

I used an Andean Ply for both so I could spin up a small amount and not waste any trying to get two bobbins perfectly matched.

After remembering that I don't like knitting with thick yarns and so should probably focus on worsted or lighter weight yarns, I opted to pull out an old favorite
and finish off my stash of it. It's weird to me that my spindle spinning is so much more controlled and even, but this practice is good for me.

I spun up two bobbins, partially full and am plying them now.

And because you can only look at so much yarn spun up by a novice, Panda wanted to give you a little pearl of wisdom. She says:

"If your parents take forever to unpack your toys, you must play with all of them at once, when you finally get them back.

I never cease to be amazed at how very spinable the Cotswold is that I bought from Nistock Farms. Cotswold is not a very soft fiber. It's certainly not as rough as some wools, but I wouldn't make a bikini out of it, that's for sure. But there's something about it that really appeals to me. It's got a soft halo with just a bit of sheen and the way they dyed it (the color way is called, Autumn Spice) is simply spectacular. I love this yarn. Spinability wise, I think it bears a bit of resemblance to the A type Pygora, though, of course, the Pygora is much softer.

Much like Julia felt while spinning her first skein on her gorgeous Rose, I wasn't so sure this skein would live up to my expectations. It seemed a little flat and blah and perhaps a bit too thick and thin, while plying up. Then when Laura (alas, no blog) pointed out that in my complete newbie haze I'd used my bobbin backwards, I though for sure I'd blown it. But beginners luck shined down upon me and this is what I pulled off the niddy noddy.

I don't know if it counts as "balanced" since it doesn't twist as a whole, but it does have little kinky bits in there. I would guess it'd be considered unbalanced in its constituent parts yet oddly balanced overall. But man, this is 152 yards of lofty goodness. At this unwashed state, it is just a big poof of orange yumminess. Do you see that other mini skein in back? That's the leftover Cotswold and the leftover BFL/Alpaca, plied together to clear off the two bobbins. There was more of the brown than the orange, so after I exhausted the Cotswold, I Andean plied the remaining BFL/Alpaca into the same skein. It's a pretty unattractive little skein but I just couldn't bring myself to simply toss the leftovers.

The big skein though? She is one sexy mama. I'll let the images do the talking. Just try not to love these.

Thank goodness I have an extensive stock of unspun fiber right now because if I didn’t I’d be buying up a whole bunch more of this roving.

I've been posting a lot of dog photos lately, mostly because I can't post much else, but look. I have crafting!

Remember those motifs I crocheted? I have been playing around with how to use them. I knew I didn't have enough of the motif yarn to make a whole garment, but I realized that the September Glow Cotswold and Silk yarn I spun, would look nice with the muted peach color of the motifs.

I think I want to make this into a skirt. I have quite a bit more of the Cotswold, that I can spin. I've played around with knitting and crocheting the skirt portion. Right now, the motifs are joined in such a way that they make a natural chevron, which is great for this subtly variegated yarn. I tried crocheting the skirt, but I wanted it to be a little softer and drapier, so I switched to knit instead.

It's actually really hard for me to post a this point, because I'm not totally sure I love it and I might very well rip the whole darn thing out if I'm not satisfied with the results, still, so far, it looks good enough that I feel I can share.

And aren't I doing well, not a doggy in sight.

Urm, well, yes, Thea did sneak her paw into that shot. You can see her little goth pinkie nail. But we aren't looking at puppies in this post, we're looking at handspun yarn working up into a skirt.

*Sigh* I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself. I mean, come on, that's funny, people. Even if you hate dogs. Plus, I think the color really brings out the pathetic expression plastered on Panda's face. Don't you agree?

A couple of my online friends have already sent me congrats on my shawl write up in Spin Off. In fact, Deb saw it before I even got my copy.

When Interweave contacted me about including my shawl in a "gallery of shawls," I imagined a couple of page of a dozen or more baseball card sized boxes with a photo and a short description. Even after filling out the questionnaire, I simply assumed they wanted enough material to be able to cherry pick what they printed. When I saw that I got a whole 2-page spread I was floored...and pleased.

One thing I discovered, while filling in the details, is that I am still a real neophyte at this spinning thing. How many twists per inch in the singles? I dunno. What drafting method do I use while spindling? Anything that keep the spindle from going plummeting to the floor, I'd say.

But still, it was fun to revisit this piece and I'm still proud, of the fact that I produced so much yardage on a little hand spindle.