Creeker

When I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in the wagon train days of the late ’70s, I knit a scarf that I adored. It was knit from handspun singles as thick as your thumb. Sort of an oatmeal color. What a great scarf. Maybe I can find a picture of it. I wish I still had it around, but I don’t. In 1982, I left it at in the changing room at a ballet class. The next week, I had an injury that took me off my feet for a year and a half. By the time I went back to ballet class, my favorite scarf had been found by someone else.

So, here we are. I’m trying to spin fat enough to recreate that little piece of art. Woo! Fun! Here’s the process…

Not Thumb-Sized Singles Yarn 

The great thing about my Fricke is that the orifice (see that triangular loop in the lower right?) is completely non-restrictive. I’m using the standard flyer, here, and still, am able to spin fat. The flyer hook and the loop are about 1/2″ in diameter, so these become the limiters in the equation. So…starting with ultra-pre-drafted handpainted roving (I found some nice mohair blend in the chest, and I still had a couple jars of acid dye from a session a few decades back), very low tension, and a very slow foot, I managed to spin 60 yards of pretty darn fat and fluffy singles yarn with that 4 ounces of roving.

Soft

Doesn’t this look soft? Well, it is. Like a powder puff. Remember powder puffs? Anyway, this is one bobbin full…about 2 oz, and 30 yards. I spun the second half of the roving and then, yes, knit the scarf.

Creeker Scarf

This will be embellished just a little bit. Some felt balls on the end, I think. Fancier than my old Boulder Creek scarf, but just as light and lush and warm. Don’t you want one?

Red Hot Hatter

Red Hot Funkyfur

Any idea how hard it is to take a picture of a bright red hat with turquoise blue chenille blobs in a funkyfur band? You wouldn’t believe. With my Olympus, anyway, it’s not easy. So…that said…here I make the disclaimer that the color of the hat in person is way different than the color on the blog. IRL, the hat is vermilion. Big fat vermilion handspun.  Here? Well, heck, you can’t even see the decrease swirls. It’s a cute hat…a hexagon top, fake fur band, with totally over-the-edge fur I-cord on the top. There’s a vintage look here…reminds me of 1955…for some reason…or other.

Hatting it Up

Funky Hat in Border Leicester and Alpaca/CVM

Inspired by Ray’s Hat, which spontaneously burst from my needles a few weeks back, I wanted to knit a hat that had plush warmth, weight, and a flat top. HA! Okay. That wasn’t hard at all. Here’s the five-sided top of a Funky Hat knit from a super-bulky 2-ply Border Leicester yarn. The breeder of these BL sheep sent me samples of her CVM fleece. I bought the softest, darkest fiber…one that wasn’t actually for sale – but was an example of her finest fleece. Fortunately, the shepherd was as overcommitted as I am, and she let “Gracie” come home to me.  The very dark CVM was blended with black alpaca (ply #1) and plied with a thick and thin Border Leicester single. This “beginner’s mind” yarn “outlines” this hat in more ways that one. This hat is a paean to all that shepherd love at Pheasantfield Farm in Chestertown, Maryland.

Here’s another view…not the greatest picture…I can’t get that lovely outside light, because, well, I’m a wimp. It is too cold for me to be staging hat photos, today.

A bit too soft-focus, but you get the idea.

This morning, I knit another hat using this model. It has a “fur” yarn integrated in the band, and the crown is six-sided. It’s vermilion. You’ll have to wait til tomorrow for a picture. Sorry.

A pdf of the pattern will be available for sale on etsy in a day or two. I want comments back from my testers before it’s released.

Fiddler’s Mittens – Rose Quinn

Fiddler’s Mittens for Rose Quinn

My grandmother, Rose, came to America on a ship at the end of the 19th Century. The little Irish girl grew into a short narrow woman with thick auburn hair and light blue eyes. She bought her clothes in the children’s department. She was small in stature, with size 4 feet, but her hands were as big as mine. Her hardworking hands were knobby and strong, but softened by creams and lotions. These mitts, she would have loved. Rose mittens for Rosie. Yes, these would have sent her over the moon. 

Rose Quinn Mittens: 82 yards of mohair/wool blend handspun singles, acid dyed, 12 wpi, and a few yards of a similar weight yarn handspun from a handpainted roving. Size 6 and 5 dpns.

Chiengora a la Bronson

Unadulterated Great Pyr

A few years ago, I was asked to spin some Bearded Collie. I had never spun dog hair before…but agreed wholeheartedly. The dog papa never came through, and I held, in the back of my head, a fantasy of Bearded Collie yarn. Then an issue of Spin-Off featured chiengora spun by readers. Mmm. I wanted to spin some puppa dog! Buy my dog is an Australian Cattle Dog who, apparently, doesn’t shed.  What to do?

Within 2 weeks, I was handed 3 gallon bags of Great Pyr. One from a fellow musician who has a horse hobby farm and 2 Great Pyrs as LGDs, and two from a fellow musician and artist whose Great Pyr, Bronson, protects their critters on their 100 acre farm.

The other day, I pushed my way through bags of fleece and samples looking for moths and striving to organize the chaos in the studio. There I found a list, “Bags 7 & 8, Bronson, Great Pyr.” Mmm. With the goal of finding Bags 7 & 8, I did an amazing job in record time. I just really wanted to check out that Great Pyr fiber.

The contents of Bag #7 were clean, but I gave them another rinse in 7th Generation Lemongrass & Clementine zest dishwashing soap. After spinning Reggie in the morning, clean previously washed alpaca fiber, and coming up with black fingertips, I wanted the experience of soft, smooth, clean fiber between my fingers. The Great Pyr fiber dried very quickly. I carded it using my Howard handcards, dividing the bag into 8 piles of 6 batts. I pulled a roving from each pile, ending up with 2 piles of 4 rovings each. I was aiming at a worsted-bulky 2-ply yarn…something that would be a joy to knit.

Using a low ratio on the Fricke, I spun 2 lovely, hairy singles from 4 rovings each. Plying them with low tension, made for a fabulous yarn. The resulting yarn, shown above, is heavy and luscious.

Reggie Redux

“Reggie” Fine Alpaca Singles

Here’s a puff of alpaca…105 yds of medium/fine weight singles. Alpaca makes a tender yarn, so these singles are a bit overspun. When knit, they relax.

The first of a pair of fingerless fiddler’s gloves. Very fuzzy, very cozy, yet, knit from fairly thin singles on size 7 needles.

Spinning Winter Yarns

Gulf Coast Native Thick & Thin with Natural Dyes

This is a skein of extra special EXtra soft GC Native yarn. An ounce and a half and 46 yards. Outrageous.

Purple Ruffles Basil meets Mohair Blend

We had an outstanding year in the basil garden. I grew both Genovese for the farmers markets and for our own pesto cravings, and Purple Ruffles Basil for dyeing. I sold some of the purple basil plants, and kicked myself after I found out what a great dye it makes.

This is a 2 1/2 oz, 74 yd skein of Mohair/Wool blend handspun. The locks were dyed with Purple Ruffles in an acid bath. This is a heavy lustrous yummy yarn. This skein screams “HAT.”

I found, quite by accident, that a pH shift makes for interesting changes to the color. This steely gray shifts right over to a dark celery green with an alkaline rinse.

A Funky Hat Yarn

Kinda gorgeous, n’est-ce pas? This is 4 1/2 oz and somewhat over 200 yd of Gulf Coast Native/Mohair blend. This was spun from a handpainted handpulled roving, plied with natural brown and cream GC fleece. This cbp is destined for at least one more hat…tho this ball of yarn is definitely big enough for 2 hats.

I’m out of hat kits, and figure that after knitting one more hat (O the Holiday Season!), the 2nd half will go into a funky hat kit. I have a new pattern that is pretty exciting…a spin-off of Ray’s Hat. This yarn would be stellar. Then again…a 1 x 1 ribbed elfish hat would be outrageous, too.

Gulf Coast meets Marigold

Here is a 3 1/2 oz/174 yd skein of natural brown GCNI and cream GC singles, flecked with marigold. A big soft hearty skein. I find myself not putting it in my etsy store, not taking it to the farmers market. I love this skein of wool.

Fleece Study – Navajo Churro

This began as 3 1/2 – 4 oz of raw Navajo Churro that I received as part of a fleece study. I spun this yarn in the grease. What a lot of grease. This would be the perfect fleece with which to start an FSM (fermented suint) project.

The final clean yarn weighs in at a bit over 1 1/2 oz and 200 yd. This is a soft yet hairy fingering weight yarn. Ooo La Laaaaaa!

Florida Buttercup Meets GC Ewe

This dye job was a complete surprise. About a month ago, the fields were just full of masses of a tall weed with teeny yellow blossoms. The golden fields were too pretty to cut. At the end of their blooming, I decided to throw some in a dye pot to see what would happen. This intense cinnabar green is what happened. A dusky yellow verging on green. Oh Yum!

Here’s the start of something good…I’m thinking a fine 2-ply would be just the ticket. And what’s left will get spun into some bulky wacky hat yarn!

Autumn Yarn

“Autumn” – 2-Ply Bulky Naturally Dyed Gulf Coast Native

Here’s a sweet skein of yarn. This is destined for a hat kit. I’ve been tweaking the “Ray’s Hat” pattern. It looks great on all kinds of heads. This yarn is spun from Gulf Coast fleece dyed with roselle, basil, cosmos, coreopsis, and some natural brown is in there too. This will be an amazing hat.

Ray’s Hat

Ray’s Hat

The task was to knit a fast, easy hat from a typical skein of chunky handspun. This started off as a gauge swatch for a sweater being commissioned from a yarn I spun last April (Ray’s). Of that skein, this hat took about 60 yards and 2 hours on size 9 needles.