A little fibery goodness

Just so that you don't think I'm making up all the stuff about finishing socks and spinning yarn, here are a few pics of what I've managed to do.

First of, I really want to make C. a pair of handspun socks. I've gotten confident enough now with my knitting that I'm sure they'll fit right. Spinning up some good yarn for the project is the real challenge. The March fiber from Spunky Eclectic's Spunky Club was just the ticket. Base fiber is a dark Blue Faced Leister (BFL) with dyed segments of teal, green, red and brown. A very manly set of colors on an easy to spin roving.

Since it's for socks, I wanted a true 3-ply yarn. That meant tearing the roving into three equal parts. I then split each part into four strips and spun each onto a bobbin. Finally, I plied the three together. In the "good karma" department, two of the three bobbins emptied out *at the same time*. There was not more than 10 yards of single left on the third bobbin, so there was almost no waste. Finished product looks like this:



Spun S, plied Z. Final size around 16 WPI. Just about 375 yards. I think the initial weight was a little low, but I'm still quite happy with the yardage.

Today, hot off the bobbin, is a 100% Merino superwash roving from Zen Yarn Garden's Spin Art Fibre Club. It's the April colorway, inspired by Georgia O'Keefe's "Red Canna" painting. I did this one as a chain ply (just because I need to get better at it) and because I thought the colors would be more interesting if I could preserve them. Anyway, yarn looks like this:



Once again, spun S, plied Z. Final WPI again around 16. This time, it's just *over* 400 yards - plenty for socks for me (yeah, we just talked about not chain plying for socks) or maybe a nice scarf.

Both these yarns go on vacation with me this week. Woot!

Where did April go?

So there I was, intrepid readers, poised at the brink of April, ready to get back to a life of knitting, spinning and blogging. Now here I am, a full 23 days later, with nary a post to show for it.

First of all, a big "I'm a knucklehead" to Tina. Yes, I did get your email. I even marked it as "unread" so that I wouldn't forget to respond to you. I shall do so, this weekend.

Second of all, I did get a lot of spinning and knitting done. I finished 2.5 pairs of socks, am about halfway through a random scarf with my virtual friends from The Unique Sheep and have spun up singles for a scarf, a true 3-ply for socks for the hubby and am madly working on another chain-ply for socks for me.

What does all this lead to?

Vacation.

We're about to set off on a 3-week odyssey to points south and west. There's a 10d trip onboard a catamaran with 3 other couples (this will be excessively fun) as well as a few days in New Zealand, and hopefully some in Australia. Basically, the month of May is "out the window".

But, with three weeks of time on my hands, along with 2 18h+ plane flights, I hope to get some serious knitting done. This will include the aforementioned handspun socks (hopefully) and I'm also eyeing the Botanica Medallion Cardigan from the Spring/Summer 09 VK. Ravelry link, here. This one'll be a stash-buster and perfect for those warm nights on the boat. Assuming it gets done in time.

Fine. I'll try this again.

June will be a month of posts. I hope it includes my classes for SOAR, some pictures of spinning/knitting (if I can *EVER* find my camera!) and a nice talk about my trip. Time and internet connections permitting, I may blog from the southern hemisphere.

Cheers!