Spinning in the New Year!

I've been doing some playing on the spinning wheel this year.  At some point I got a fiber sampler kind of thing from Hipstrings.  It has about an ounce each of six different tops, all from their sparkly, unicorn based colorways.  They are all slightly different fibers, but all of them have merino and some sparkles.  Some have a bit of silk or viscose or alpaca too.  I'm spinning each sample onto a single bobbin (a single bobbin for each sample, not one bobbin with all of them), and I'll chain ply them.  I'm spinning the singles between 40-50 wraps per inch so I should get a fingering weight finished yarn.  There might be some differences due to the different fiber content, but they should be fairly similar.  I think.  Who knows?  This is exciting!

The first sample is Unicorn Seeks Soulmate.  Here is the fiber.

And here are the singles.

Next was Unicorn Dance Party II (which implies there was a Unicorn Dance Party I, which I was not invited to).  The fiber.

The singles.

Narwhal Pool Party was the third sample.  Here is the fiber (which looks a lot like the singles from Unicorn Dance Party II, above.)

And the singles, which spun up much darker than I was expecting.

The fourth sample is Space Unicorn (do you think they're friends with Pigs In Space?).  Only the fiber for this one, it's on the wheel now.

There are two more samples after Space Unicorn and I'm going to spin all of the singles before I start plying.  I don't have any definite plans for the yarns, I'm just enjoying playing with them.  Also, I should add that I'm not sure that all of these are currently available, because I bought this a couple of years ago and I'm just now getting to it.

Brioche

The first quarter Craft-A-Long for ESK this year is brioche.  I've started with The Tourist Shawl, knit in Malabrigo Lace.  The main, lighter color is orchid and the darker, background color is Holly Hock.  Malabrigo Lace is already super soft, but combined with a fluffy stitch like brioche, it's into baby-bunny-belly levels of softness.

Also, brioche is three dimensional and can reach very fluffy levels of thickness very quickly.  Laceweight and fingering weigh yarns are about as heavy as I can use and still have a wearable garment here in Texas.  Especially if it's all over brioche.  This should be just about perfect!

A New Pair of Socks

I have been drooling over some colorwork yoke sweaters lately, but it's been years since I did stranded colorwork.  Clearly, I need some practice before I dive in to a sweater.  Fortunately, I ran across the Imber Socks pattern last fall and I decided to try a pair this year.  There are three slightly different designs in the single pattern and I'm working the Imber Stripes version (houndstooth colorwork on the leg and stripes on the foot).  This is actually the second time on the colorwork because I frogged back to the ribbing and restarted after the first time.  It's going much better now, but I'm still very slow.

The last time I worked stranded colorwork, I held both colors in my left hand (I'm a Continental knitter).  It worked well, but I felt like I was constantly re-tensioning the yarns in my hand as I would use one color more than the other.  I decided to try knitting with one color in each hand this time.  This meant I had to figure out how to knit English style.  Thank you, You Tube!  I still don't know how to purl English style, but I'm not sure I need to know this, at least right now.

The yarns I'm using are Cascade Heritage Sock in Snow and Riveria Heather (the houndstooth portion), and I'm using a bit of Dream in Color Smooshy in Milky Spite for my cuffs and possilbly a few stripes in the foot.

I'm trying to work on it a little every day so I can teach my right hand to carry the yarn.  I'm also trying to keep my tension balanced, so when I finish these socks I can get them on.  So far, this is not a TV kind of knit!

New Year, New Projects, New Photos, No Words