Fiber Fool

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.

Unfortunately, errata happens from time to time. The following are for Guided By Love. If your PDF reads “ver 1.0″ in the lower right corner of the pages you will want to make the changes listed below. There are currently two files residing on Ravelry. If you are purchasing the pattern you’ll want the one with “ver1.1″ in the file name and in the lower right corner of the pages.

To the Abbreviations section, add:
kwise - knitwise, as if to knit
pwise - purlwise, as if to purl
w&t (right side) - bring yarn between ndls from back to front, slip st kwise, bring yarn back to original position (back) and slip wrapped st back to left needle pwise. Turn.
w&t (wrong side) - bring yarn between ndls from front to back, slip st pwise, bring yarn back to original (front) position and slip wrapped st back to left needle pwise. Turn.

For clarification, to the end of Sock One (right) Heel Set Up, add:
[ndl1: 13 (14, 15, 16) sts, mrkr, 19 (21, 23, 25) sts, 9 paw print panel sts, mrkr, 13 (14, 15, 16) sts; ndl2: 29 (31, 33, 35)]

Replace Sock Two Heel Set Up Round with:
Sock Two Heel Set Up Round: Place mrkrs as indicated, removing old ones as you reach them. K4 (5, 6, 7), pm, k13 (14, 15, 16) onto ndl 1. Knit next 29 (31, 33, 35) sts onto ndl 2. Slip rem sts on ndl2 to ndl 1, placing mrkr to right of paw print panel.The working yarn should now be at the end of ndl 2 which now holds the heel/sole sts. [ndl1: 13 (14, 15, 16) sts, mrkr, 9 paw print panel sts, 19 (21, 23, 25) sts, mrkr, 13 (14, 15, 16) sts; ndl2: 29 (31, 33, 35)]

In the Heel section, replace Row 5 (RS) with:
Row 5 (RS): *Sl1, k1; rep from * to to 1st wrapped st. **Cw; rep from * until 1 wrapped st remains, cw/ssk, turn.

I am still awaiting to hear if you can follow the link of your receipt and see both download options or not (if someone can check and get back to me I’d appreciate it). Regardless, I’ll be sending out e-mails over the next several days, with updated PDFs if needed. I want to be sure the e-mails don’t land in SPAM/Bulk mail folders and don’t want to get blacklisted so I’ll be sending out the e-mails in batches.

You can aid the arrival of the e-mail by adding kurki15 AT yahoo DOT com and patterns AT designedlykristi DOT com to your address book of the e-mail account you used with PayPal to purchase the pattern. If by July 7th you have not received an e-mail with either new download instructions or a new PDF file attached, please reply to your Ravelry receipt so I have your transaction information.

This is what I hope to play with over the weekend. If I’m lucky it’ll all be yarn by Sunday evening. Wish me luck as it is going to be hotter than you know what and we didn’t cool off last night. DH stayed up until around 3am when we could *finally* open windows. That isn’t good sign for comfortable spinning. *sigh*

These batts total a tad over 6 ounces from Terrabellaspun. Glitz/angelina/firestar free! Renae gave me stellar service, I can’t recommend her enough! I messaged her about a custom order and asked how quick I could have it. It was on my doorstep in something like three days. With a custom order!

I should have had it spun up already. Shoot, it should have been knit already. However a design emergency landed in my Inbox about the same time as the fiber that has pushed my schedule off by at least ten days if not more like two weeks.

Fortunately for me, this is a commission project and the yarn I need to knit with is bulky, not at all the number of hours that went into the Journeymen yarn. I did do a little practicing of my bulky spinning as I haven’t done any since my Earthy which I used to knit my Urchin. Ultimately I’d like this new yarn to be a bit bulkier than that was. But, if it matches the Earthy yarn it’ll do. I’ll have to check what I plied a couple days ago and see how it looks.

Have a good weekend everyone!