The Autumn Leaves cardigan

Carl Sagan once said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe." I felt a little like I'd just invented the Universe with my most recently finished sweater. Two years in the making, the roving from which the yarn was made was dyed a couple of summers ago, the yarn was spun on a drop spindle over the course of those two years, and then the whole sweater was knit in less than a week.

In the beginning, there was the dying:

As I wrote in a previous blog post (unfortunately, all of the image links are broken), this roving was dyed with acid dies in the summer of 2012 during a very fun afternoon with Joanna. This is what the roving looked like after it was dry and all nicely braided up:

I spun the whole lot (I'll admit that I never weighed the whole mess, so I'm not entirely sure how much there was) on my cut acrylic drop spindle from Seven Yaks Design. I chain plied it so that it would be a 3-ply yarn with a roughly DK to light worsted weight. Of course, it was closer to fingering in some spots and aran in others, but I think the average thickness was about DK. Here's some of it on a niddy-noddy:

From how many times each skein wrapped around the niddy-noddy, I estimated that I spun approximately 588 yards of the stuff. Here it is drying after I washed all the yarn:

And finally, here's the sweater!

I loosely followed the Ruby Tuesday pattern by Ewa Durasiewicz, a round-yoke top-down design, but because I didn't get the same gauge with my handspun as called for in the pattern, I didn't do the third set of increases. Somehow, I managed to do the right calculations and end up with a sweater that fits me perfectly. The buttons don't match, but I kind of like it that way. Best part: I used up all the yarn!

As a first experience knitting with hand-spun yarn, I've gotta say, it's pretty amazing. The knitting experience felt so natural and organic, it was like nothing else. I would recommend it to anyone. I can hardly wait to finish spinning up my next batch of yarn to knit with!

A Pilgrimage to Yarn Mecca

Folks, I have been to the place all fibre enthusiasts hope to someday visit: The Duchess County Sheep & Wool Festival, more colloquially known as Rhinebeck. I'll admit that it was everything I could have hoped for… Hundreds of yarn and yarncraft-related vendors, lots of adorable fibre animals, a ton of delicious foods to sample, not to mention the thousands of knitters to chat with and whose knitwear I could admire.

For my first trip to Rhinebeck, I went the easy route and joined a busload of Toronto-region knitters, including my good buds Joanna (see her blog post here), Erin (who also wrote a blog post about the trip), and Kate. It was a long bus ride, but I got a lot of sleeping, reading, knitting, and drop-spindling done. Here's an action shot of the bus drop-spindling action:

After a long bus ride from Toronto, we arrived at our hotel just outside of the town of Rhinebeck in the early evening. I felt I had to take a picture of my knitted outfit, which included knitwear from three generations of knitters: the socks were made by my grandmother, the sweater by my mom, and I knit the Lanesplitter skirt back in 2012.

The next morning, we arrived 30 minutes before the opening of the festival only to find the mother of all lineups (and some beautiful fall colours).

Fortunately, it didn't take long for everyone to get in once the gates were opened, and we were soon greeted by some cute furry friends! In fact, the whole festival was full of adorable fibre animals, and I more than once considered taking one home with me… Here are a few of them:

For me, the main draw of the festival was the demonstrations. I figured, since I'd come all this way, I should learn something more about my craft or about fibre-related things in general. Seeing all the different types of fibre animals helped with that goal, certainly, but there were also a ton of other interesting things to watch. I just missed the sheep-shearing demo I'd hoped to see, but I got to watch a canine frisbee demo (adorable!):

The Fleece-to-Shawl competition took place on Sunday morning, and there were more spinning wheels and looms in operation than I'd ever seen in one spot. The idea is, in three or four hours, to prepare the fibre from a fleece, spin it into yarn, and then weave it into a shawl:

The ultimate high point for me was the Leaping Llama competition! I would have loved to watch the whole thing, but our tour bus would have left without us… The place was so packed that I didn't get any good photos, but here's a proud-looking fellow about to show us all what a good leaper he is:

After all is said and done, one of the highlights for most visitors to Rhinebeck is the shear (if you'll excuse the pun) volume of vendors at the festival. There were at least 10 huge buildings devoted to shopping, with some vendors spilling out onto the pathways between buildings. I showed amazing restraint, and somehow managed to spend less than $100 (USD) on goodies. There was so much I could have brought home with me! First, here's Joanna enjoying the view of some award-winning handspun:

A whole room devoted to fleece:

The best-tasting apple cider donut you'll ever have:

Some expensive spinning fibre (Qiviut, $60 for 1 oz):

And some very pretty spinning fibre and tools:

Last but not least, here's the obligatory loot shot. Surprisingly, I didn't buy any yarn! Clockwise from the bottom left: Official Rhinebeck project bag and zipper dangle, Goat's Milk soap from Cat's View Farm, Forbidden Fruit apple wine from Pazdar Winery, Maple Syrup from a New York sugarbush, Shetland roving from Autumn House Farm, cotton roving from The Wool Room, a "Susan" lightweight drop spindle by David Reed Smith, and "Second Quality" (which I had to card to make spinnable) angora fibre from Cozy Rabbit Farm.

I was so inspired by the whole trip that I'd love to make another pilgrimage next year! (And we're already looking at nearby B&B's!)

Knitter's Frolic Goodies!

Ugh... Yes, I know the Knitter's Frolic was almost a month ago, but as mentioned in my last post, I've been a terrible blogger of late. Part of it can be attributed to two major public outreach events only a week apart, and the other part can be blamed on committee meetings, paper deadlines, and all that other graduate student stuff. Anyway, let's put that all aside and think about the fibery goodness from the Knitter's Frolic instead!

I was actually quite restrained when it came to buying things. I really wanted to get an ornate drop spindle from Gemini Fibres and to buy ALL THE CASHMERE from Roving Winds Farm, but I was a very very responsible shopper.

My first purchase was these gorgeous handmade buttons from the woodlot. I totally can't remember what kind of wood this is, but I just love the pattern that the wood grain gives. You should check out some of their other buttons in their Etsy shop... so pretty!

I also got a big fat bag of fibre from Hopeful Shetlands. The mix I got has a lot of lamb's wool in it, so it's veeeeeerrrrrryyyyyy soft. It was a pretty good deal too...

Speaking of fibre, I also got a Fleece Artist braid from the Rose Haven Farm Store. I just couldn't resist the colours. For some reason, my palette preference is moving more towards the greens and yellows, where I've always preferred blues and purples. At any rate, I have a lot of fibre to spin with... and I guess it's time for a fibre diet too, until I get around to spinning up what I have.

Finally, as an early birthday present (and it's my birthday tomorrow, so I get to open it!), my Mom bought me this delectable sock kit from the SOAK booth. It includes a jar of Peppermint Heel Foot Cream and a skein of Lorna's Laces Solemate sock yarn. It's so luxurious, I'm gonna have to find the perfect pattern for it...

Other highlights included the Fleece Artist tasting booth, where we were allowed to knit with all sorts of crazy beautiful and luxurious yarns, and strange bacon and egg yarn (found on the internet here) and textured felted weirdness from The Black Lamb's booth:

Goodies!

I have been extremely well behaved of late when it comes to yarn purchases. I haven't bought anything new for myself since November, when I went to Victoria. And really, that was travel yarn, so it barely counts. At any rate, I certainly deserved a treat. My friend Sherry pointed me towards a few Etsy shops that sell gorgeous hand-painted yarn, and I couldn't resist buying a few things from Fiber Charmer's shop. I mean, the yarn was on sale, and the roving was fairly cheap... totally justified.

Impatiently, I waited a week for my goodies to arrive, but finally yesterday they did! I was so excited that as soon as I got home, I just ripped open the oversized envelope without even looking at the custom's label. Had I done the latter, I would have realized that I got a little bit more than I paid for...

It turns out I had been lucky enough to be Fiber Charmer's 300th sale, and so she included a lovely hand-written note, and a few extra little goodies! First of all, she gave me this adorable little hand-sewn pouch from Etsy seller Hot4Handbags.

It's the perfect size to fit all my notions, and so I immediately transferred them from the little crochet pouch I was using to this one.

She also sent along some mini skeins of Shangri-la yarn in Emerald and Black & Blue. I'm not sure what I'll use them for, but they're so cute!

Ok, on to the juicy stuff. I'm sure you're just dying to see what I actually ordered. Well, what attracted me to Fiber Charmer's shop was that she had tons of beautifully hand-dyed yarns for extremely good prices on sale. Like a $12 4-oz skein of sock yarn kind of extremely good price. I narrowed my choices down to two skeins of sock yarn, the first of which was this absolutely gorgeous hank of Chris Sock in "Green Progressions Dye's End". I was just swooning over that blue melding into the green and into the yellow...

Next up I got a skein of Chris Sock in Mood Ring Red Brown. It looked a little redder on my computer screen than it does in real life, but it's still super gorgeous. I'm thinking a sock with travelling stitches would be perfect for this one.

Last but not least, I couldn't resist ordering some spinning fibre. Fiber Charmer's hand-dyed fibres are amazing (seriously, check them out), but I was attracted to this lovely braid of 70% silver alpaca and 30% silk. Oh man it's soft... I just want to rub it against my face all the time. I don't know what it's eventually going to become when I spin it, but I'm sure it'll be gorgeous.

And because I'm a fibre nut, here are some more close-up shots:

Spinning straw into gold

Or in this case, spinning clown barf into beautiful variegated yarn. While at the Creativ Festival this year, I picked up some roving from a huge grab bin that was really really colourful.

Actually, I mostly got it because I thought it would be hilarious to spin up some really weirdly colourful yarn, and I didn't think too much about how the spinning process would change the colours. As it turns out, the process of drafting it causes the colours to mix together in the most wonderful way, so what I got was a lovely gradual blend of colours. Here it is as a single ply:

And then when I plied it, my little skein of rainbow yarn became a thing of true beauty. All of the different colours melded together, and the strands change colour at a different rate. Come to think of it, it's probably the most evenly-spun yarn I've done to date...

I can hardly wait to see how it knits up!

Spinning away

Again, I'm sorry for the intermittent posting. It turns out that the end of term is kind of busy. Fortunately, my scholastic responsibilities are now finished for the year (you know, except research, but that never ends) since the AST101 final exam was on Monday. That means I get to go home! I'll be heading to Montreal for a few days tomorrow and then I'm off to the Townships! WoooOoooOOoo!!

In the meantime, here's an update on what I've been doing with my drop spindle. I finished spinning all the samples I got in the kit from my spinning class. First was the tussah silk. It was pretty hard to spin because it's so slippery and so the yarn ended up being kind of uneven, but the end result is pretty shiny.







Then I spun up some superwash wool in lots of colours. It was actually really fun to spin. It sticks to itself quite well so it was easy to get an even strand going.









There was also an alpaca silk blend, but I forgot to get pictures of that. All I have left to spin up now are those little balls of fluff I got from the Creativ Festival. After that, I suppose I'll have to buy more roving. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with the yarn I spun. I thought it would be cool to make a garter stitch scarf with a stripe for each of the samples, but that might be a bit boring to knit. It would be kind of cool though. Some of the yarn, like the very first skeins I spun, aren't really good enough to knit up, so I'll probably just keep them as they are.

In other news, I've just about finished my Christmas knitting. It pays to start early! That means I'll be able to start knitting something for myself soon! Oh boy oh boy! I think it's about time for a new sweater...