Experiment

[affreca]

Stab number whatever on trying to blog. As I get close to starting my sixth month of teleworking and social distancing, it might be worth admitting that I'm not very social. I do attend some spinning and/or knitting zooms, but otherwise, I am pretty content with sitting by myself, watching streaming shows and playing with fiber. So, for practice, I can trying writing about what I'm doing. With pictures, because I finally figured out how to embed images hosted on google photos.

Around the start of the year, I signed up for yet another fiber of the month club, Paradise Fibers. I was pretty pleased by their store when I stopped by it on my Northwest road trip last fall, and I'm a sucker for their themed sheep stickers. July's theme was mermaids, so the sheep sticker was immediately added to my tea mug.



The two fibers included in the box were white seacell (type of rayon with seaweed) and a blend they called mermaid. Basically, merino with various types of silk and other addins. I wasn't to sure, but I kind of like how the yarn ended up. It reminds me of the top of water with lots of glints and other colors reflected, but with an average blueish hue.

I ended up with a little under 300 yards. It's sitting next to some green/blue merino silk I spun last fall, and I like how they are close but not exact. I'm skimming ravelry for patterns that I think would work. So far, Morning on the James is my favorite.



I'm currently spinning a merino silk blend in rainbow gradient. I bought two four ounce lengths that go from pink through orange all the way to purple. I'm spinning both end to end, and will ply such that the colors stay together (hopefully). Not sure what I'll do with it, but I'm currently spining more for fun vs. defined projects (as I have multiple projects spun waiting to be knit).



Knitting, I finally finished my night shift shawl. Well, except for weaving in the ends. It's corriedale, so a little scratchy. That's even by leaving out the one skein that started the whole project. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, I don't want to make socks out of it. Throw in the stash and learn not judge a breed by one braid.



I've now started one of those planned out knitting projects. I spun four of the colors last summer, but something was missing. One of my Paradise boxes in late spring was four ounces of white rambouillet top, and since that was the same breed as these others, I decided to dye it to tie the other existing colorways together. That's now the yarn in the top of the picture. I'd fought trying to get gauge for the Maema pattern, and finally dropped down to a 1.5 size needle. But between the time I knit my gauge samples, and starting to knit, I'd forgotten that I wasn't making row gauge, so I ended up recalculating the raglan increases halfway through them. I've split off the sleeves, so I should probably try it on. I'm also not happy with the color jump with the third ball of yarn, so... haven't knit much today as I'm stuck in at the decision point.




Note: I know I have strong color habits. Basically, cool jewel tones.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

These are really lovely, especially the night shift shawl and the skeins in the last photo.

[affreca]

Thank you. Your posts on knitting often make me think about how I choose projects, and I appreciate that.

(Also please tell me if the pictures are oddly formatted in your views. I'm relearning how to add pictures to my posts).

[thistleingrey]

For my part I always enjoy your spinning-related posts--spinning is something I will never undertake, I think (shaky hands), and it seems like magic to see how the colors combine.

The pictures look reasonably formatted to me!