Tag Archives: cvm

first attempt.

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navajoply attempt1

One of my goals for the summer was to learn how to Navajo-ply. There are a few parts, on the right side, that look alright, but the rest is an overtwisted mess. (I wound this right off the bobbin, so the twist isn’t set at all.) I watched a few more youtube videos, which illuminated some important things to keep in mind:

1. You really do need to pick up the loops with one hand. If you try to use a second hand (like I did, because the first hand was not doing a very good job), you no longer have a hand to control the twist, and you end up with the aforementioned mess. (Unless, of course, you have three hands.)

2. Treadle SLOWLY. Very slowly. If you don’t have a rhythm down for picking up new loops, there are several moments in the process where the twist has nowhere to go because you are grabbing the next loop.

I have A LOT of practicing to do, but I think I understand the concept now. I’m going to practice Navajo-plying with all of my leftovers, so I should have a bunch of mini-skeins that (in theory) chart my progress.

bohinknittingcorner

Here’s Boh amidst all of my knitting projects. He looks concerned. Also, I caught him investigating the other side of the room:

timetoply2

Taking inventory is getting to be a serious task around here!

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treadle, treadle, treadle.

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cvm bob2

I could not stop spinning yesterday. I finished the second bobbin of this gorgeously rich cvm from cosy, and debated plying it right away. Instead, I set this bobbin aside to rest, and dug through my fiber stash.

jacob roving

This is 4 oz. of jacob wool from a farm just outside of town. I picked this up a few months ago at an LYS nearby. (I have the details somewhere in my fiber bin, but I would have to put down my coffee to look for it. Priorities.)

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I sat down to spin this, but oh_my_goodness. This fiber is incredibly soft, and however this was prepared (I’m still learning all my fiber preps/names) left a lot of air in the roving, which made this wool practically spin itself.

jacob first bob

And here’s the progress I made on the second bobbin(!) last night:

jacob bob2

It doesn’t look like I’m going to finish my KAL socks this month, and I think Boh might be okay with that.

bohlayoncouch

I’m interpreting this to mean that he understands that sometimes one has to spend the day (or the weekend) at the spinning wheel.

bohwithsockprog

Here’s my (our?) progress on the emerald city vanilla sock. I’m really getting the hang of the hiyahiya needle, and I’m finding that I can get more done (when I am not forgetting to knit because crazy things are happening on The Wire) because I do not have to look down to either pick up the other circ or rotate to the next dpn. Here’s a close up:

sockwithpaws

Happy weekend, all! I’m going to finish up this cup of coffee, pour another, and sit down at the wheel.

400+.

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soulwindowsplied

drying

Hooray! My math skills tell me that I have at least 400 yards of 3-ply here (426, to be precise). I’ll figure out wpi once the skein is dry, but I am thrilled! There should be plenty here for a pair of socks.

I gave this an extra long soak because of how energized it seemed. (Am I supposed to let my plyed yarn rest, too?) You can see that it is a little curly-q-ish down near the bottom of the hanging loop, indicating some overplying, but on the whole, I’m quite happy about this. I’m still looking for that balance between overspinning/underspinning and over/under plying. (And maybe I’ll be forever looking for it!)

Anyway, I was so excited about how this turned out that I just had to sit back down at the wheel, even though it was WAY past my bedtime.

cvm sunset

This is the first bobbin of 2 oz of CVM from cosy in a colorway named sunset. I just sat down and spun, without a plan. I am already seeing that my default spinning is getting thinner, and that I need to really think about what I’m doing to make a thicker, even yarn. I love the richness of these colors — the perfect antidote to a rather rainy summer?

bohispatient

This guy thinks so (or not). I looked up from plying/spinning several times yesterday to find Boh hinting that he might want more attention. We took an extra walk around the neighborhood last night, and we have plans for either a hike or a trip to the d-o-g-p-a-r-k today.

calendar

Also, it is getting to be that time! I realized that this is the last week of my calendar yesterday, and stopped by the campus store to pick up an 09-10 replacement. I love starting a new planner. (Yes, I am a big nerd.) Yesterday I copied pertinent pieces of the fall campus-wide schdule into my calendar and thought a bit about classes/plans for the coming semester, which felt good to me.

That’s enough school talk for a Friday. Have a great weekend!

spontaneous snail.

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Yesterday I saw this post over at cosymakes, and this post over at knithoundbrooklyn, and decided that my pink cvm handspun (from cosy’s shop, of course) needed to become a snail hat (a la Elizabeth Zimmerman).

snail1

I dug out my copy of EZ’s Knitting Without Tears, and cast on. A few podcasts later, I was ready to decrease. Things may have gotten slightly wonky near the top, but handspun covers a multitude of sins — errr, mistakes.

snail2 above

snail three

Though this looks like a pretty pink snail, it knits up in a manner that more closely resembles the gait of a cheetah. (I’ll stop with the jokes now.)

I have no picture of Boh for you this morning, but as you can imagine, he is worried. Bright pink bulky handspun is NOT sock yarn, and he was glaring at me from his perch on my bed as I worked on this.

Happy Friday!

round and round.

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I did A LOT of plying yesterday, or at least it felt like a lot. See?

fo cvm1

focvm2

This is the CVM in the impatiens colorway from cosy, and the Paradise Fibers oatmeal bfl I began with. Both became much softer with a good soak, and each have a very nice amount of squoosh. I’m realizing that I am that beginner I read about in rav forums (yay ravelry for all of the great info and advice available), and that I need to remind myself that what seems like too much twist to rooster-the-spindler is not necessarily too much to the rooster-at-the-wheel. I’m happier with the amount of twist in the CVM singles than in my last project (that verb corriedale), and my plying is getting tighter and bouncier (I think).

fo cvm3

Boh helped with the math: 190 yds of the BFL, and about 130 of the CVM.  That may be why he is so tired.

sleepydog

Also, I grabbed a book and a dishcloth-in-progress, and Boh and I headed down to a pebbly beach and bubbling creek. He spent a lot of time finding rocks under the water and bringing them to dry land.

sillyearsdog

We had a lovely day. Also, I made some serious progress in the dishcloth department. I realized I needed to knit more than one to fully put my new no-sponge plan into action.

boringdishcloths

There is something extremely satsifying about using up leftover yarn, particularly when it is dishcloth cotton.

On today’s list? Working on ply #3 of this:

2of3ply progress

I know you can’t really see the colors, but they are deep and lovely: blues, deep burgundys, greens. This is Spunky Club dark bfl in colorway Myrtle. I’m aiming to have something that I can make into socks, but we’ll see. I’m looking forward to plying my first 3-ply!

Also on the agenda? A walk in the woods, more reading, and dinner/drinks/live music with a friend.

Have a great weekend!

corrugated ribbing and cvm.

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And cuffs, and cosy (fiber etsy shop here), if that helps to emphasize that somehow the letter C is at play here today.

First, the ribbing. I know I have been going on and on about this sweater, and also that it is a bit unfair that I have been doing so, because you can’t exactly go right out and knit it yet, but I can’t help it. I cast on the first sleeve late last night (after digging through every bin of knitting-related stuff in my apartment to find my size 8 dpns), and I just have to keep talking about it.

cuffs1

cuff2

I love this ribbing, and someday, in the not too distant future, I will be making mittens that start this way. Whitney, are you trying to trick me into colorwork? Because if this ribbing is technically colorwork, it isn’t that scary. (This is how it starts, anyway…)

The next C is for CVM, or california variegated mutant, which, apparently, is a kind of sheep. Cosy’s shop update last week included lots of this stuff, and I needed some. (Needed.) I sat down at my wheel this morning after a cup of coffee with the idea that I would just spin a little bit, see how this fiber felt in my hands, and then move on to other things.

impatienscvm1

impatienscvm2

2 bobbins and 4 oz. later, I realized that I really liked it. (Shocking.)

impatienscvm3

I spun this using my mid-sized whorl, thinking that this might help me to get a bit more twist in my singles, and in this regard, I think I was successful. At the very beginning, I thought I’d aim for a singles yarn, but now that I see my two bobbins, one slightly brighter and one a bit paler, I think they will be lovely as a 2-ply, and maybe even lovelier knit up as the yoke to a garter-yoke cardigan?! I do have some grey cascade 220, and some heathery navy blue as well…