I've Been Nupped!

Seriously, people. The next time I offer to write up a tutorial on anything, will you remind me to shut the hell up? Because honestly, no good deed goes unpunished. Offering to write up a tutorial on how to make sure you have enough yardage is really just a fancy and foolish way of asking, no begging, to run out. (Declaring that you have spun koigu probably doesn't help, either. I have a lot to learn from koigu.) So here it is, in pictoral format, my tutorial on how to ensure that you have enough yardage:

Look familiar?!

Go back to the freaking wheel and spin some more. Even if you have to order $2 worth of roving to do it. Suck it up, stop being such a scrooge, and for gosh sakes throw away that damn spreadsheet. Just make (or buy) enough yarn.

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, it was the nupps on the Swallowtail Shawl that got me. I am pretty confident that for the most part, my intricate spreadsheet that indicated I would have enough yarn if I made only a few little tweaks and cut out two of the initial repeats was right. The thing is, that even that estimation told me I was cutting it very, very close. And each nupp requires about 5 more stitches than the average stitch - 4 extra go-rounds and another stitch to account for the fact that you have to make them loosely and the stitch that brings all the yo's together is a fat one. And 5 stitches times 5 nupps per branch times about 40 branches (or something like that - I'm done counting!) is, well, a lot. It takes up some yardage.

I don't want to admit how much time I have spent tweaking this pattern and crunching numbers to somehow try to get a Swallowtail Shawl out of 290 yards of fingering. And what for? It is a small shawl to begin with. Why make it so tiny that I can't even wear it?

I realized that I had a problem the other day when my best friend and I were discussing knitting the Marseilles Pullover together. I was going through my mental rolladex of stash and trying to figure out which yarn I had exactly enough of, and eliminating any possibilities that would leave me with too much leftover yarn - say, 25 yards! And I do this all the time. When I make a scarf, I cut the fringe near the beginning of the project, so that I can knit, knit, knit until the bitter end. I weigh my socks in progress, so that they use up as much of the yarn as possible. I did this with the River Stole, too. For many of my projects, I end up making modifications so that I can use some stash yarn that I don't have quite enough of. When the lace leaf pullover was done, I had a four-inch tail left. Almost scary, isn't it?

The thing is, I know myself well enough to know that I will never really learn my lesson. I like spreadsheets, and I like having inches of yarn left when I finish a project. It's just the way I'm wired. But I am going to give in and do the sensible thing with this shawl, because it is my first handspun project and I want it to be great. And I've chosen another yarn for the Marseilles Pullover, so I'm pretty sure that I have plenty of yardage for that. I may even have just enough to eek out a coordinating hat. Hmmm. Maybe I should make a spreadsheet....

Knitting, Spinning, Family

The Knitting:

Swallowtail shawl in merino tencel handspun: far and near.

It's going well. I thought that I might be a bit short on yarn, so after I finished the tenth repeat, I weighed the yarn I had used (40 grams) and the yarn I had left (75 grams). Then I made a spreadsheet to determine how many total stitches a full swallowtail shawl would take (18,583), and how many stitches I could expect to get out of 115 grams of yarn (~15, 900). I determined that if I took out two budding lace repeats I would have enough yarn, and that if I simply added two rows with 4 yarnover increases before changing to the next lace pattern, I would have the correct multiple of stitches for the following lace patterns. This shawl was actually pretty ammenable to tweaking, so I really lucked out. I'm sure that what I wrote here sounds pretty complicated, but it's doable. If enough people are interested, I'll write up a tutorial on adjusting this type of shawl sometime. You never know when you'll need to double-check yardage and re-adjust. It sounds dull as dust, but I'm happy to forego the excitement of running out of yarn close to the end.

My adjustments may very well make the shawl too small to be practicable to wear, but I've decided I'm enjoying it so much that I don't really care. If I can't wear it, I'll frame it. It's a lovely pattern and a really nice use of the yarn. I'll let you know if it's wearable or not, though, just in case someone else has 290 yards of fingering that they're considering using this way.

The red sparkly Christmas beret is almost finished, right on schedule.

This is an easy knit. No thinking, no tweaking, nothing. Perfect for a gift, and completely season appropriate. Normally I shy away from sparkly, but this really appeals to me, and the person it's for does sparkly quite well.

The Spinning:

Heart's Content: 80% merino, 20% bombyx silk from Chameleon Colorworks.

I spun this at the spin-in at my house on Saturday. It's only 57 yards, but I should eventually be able to incorporate it into a project with some other handspun. I love the colorway, and especially after washing, it is really soft.

The Family:

The crew, hanging out in bed the morning after the spin out.

We never used to allow the dogs (we had two) in bed, but now that Caia is an elder, we just put an old quilt on top and let her sleep wherever she wants. The night of the spin-in she insisted on sleeping with me, and when I finally woke up, exhausted and dazed, I found that I was under a pile of furry love. I slept in that little corner at the top! It's amazing the way the kitties pile on when Caia is in the bed. They find the tiniest crevasse and wedge themselves in. Not much sleep, but a lot of love.

I Have Spun Koigu

I know. It probably sounds a bit boastful, and when I say it, I don't mean that you should all turn in your KPPPM and start begging me to spin for you. My yarn definitely has some "features" that you won't find in koigu, but that said it is shockingly similar. The funny thing is that it wasn't intentional, and that I didn't even notice until I started knitting with it. I just had a strange sensation of deja vu. And then it came to me. I had managed to spin something a lot like my absolute favorite yarn for socks. Happy, happy co-inckie-dink!

I cast on for the Swallowtail Shawl last night. Love it.

I think that the beginnings of the swallowtail shawl look remarkably similar to the beginnings of Charlotte's Web.* Oh happy, happy days. And can I just say that although I am only a wee bit into this Swallowtail pattern I am already hooked on it. It's totally fun, pretty and really easy to memorize. Now I just have to pray that I don't run out of yarn. It's going to be a very, very close call, but I'm optimistic. And I'm so into this shawl that I can't stop. May the knitting gods be with me. Tiffany, my spinning mentor from afar (Marnie was my spinning mentor from anear), is spinning and knitting this one with me. Tiffany, hon, you better spin fast. I'm so excited I may whip through this one despite all the other crap I should be doing.

Here's one last close-up for the knitters out there who are sick of all this spinning content:

See guys? I do still knit! Just with my own brew.

I have several other things on the needles as well, including another handspun project (check the sidebar if you're interested). I've just been so stoked about my handspun that it's been hard to make myself blog the knitting. In this case, it's two for one.

The State of the Koosher
I know that several of you have sent well-wishes to Caia, and I just wanted to let you know that she has improved a lot since last week. Caia is old enough (almost 14) that improvement means we may be able to give her a good quality of life for weeks, or if we're really lucky, months, and that is what we're going for right now. She's not in any pain, and she is still able to enjoy belly and ear rubs, chomping on a bone, and her favorite pastime, naps with Townes. I snapped this picture of them early this morning, before we headed in for her check-up with the vet:

Townes is obviously having blissful dreams of his true doggy love.

I love the way that these two often sleep in similar positions, or even mirroring each other. If there is anyone Townes is more devoted to than he is to me, it's Caia. It's a little bit like watching Pepe Le Pew and that poor black cat. Undying, almost suffocating, interspecies devotion. When we took Caia to the vet last week, we were very afraid that we were at the end, so we brought Townes along. He curled around her head on the exam table and stayed with her throughout everything - shots, having blood drawn - everything. Even the vet was surprised. He said he'd never seen anything quite like it.

*Okay, so that was a crappy Charlotte's Web picture, and never let us mind that I didn't ever get further than that on Charlotte's Web. That was what it looked like before I ripped it out!

Raspberry Merino Tencel

Last week was rough. I pulled some pretty long hours preparing for a presentation in SF that I gave yesterday, and taking care of our sweet Caia girl, who is succumbing to age, despite our valiant efforts and her own. During the week there were only stolen moments of knitting and spinning here and there to maintain my sanity. So on Saturday, I allowed myself to have a complete and total Julia day. I spun the rest of my second bobbin of raspberry-colored merino tencel, plied the singles, spun another skeinlette on my maggie spindle, plied that on my pilchuck spindle, returned to the wheel to spin a wonderful thick and thin chocolate covered cherries singles, knit on one of my gift berets, and then knit some of my handspun for the first time ever. We take our Julia time seriously over here at chez MOW. It was blissful.

Two bobbins of merino tencel, side by side.

Although I know I'm famous for my long-ass windbag posts (and this will no doubt be one, too!), I'm not enough of a windbag to cover everything I did and saw this weekend (Sunday was another Julia day, spent in SF with Emily at the DeYoung Museum, but that, too, is another post), so I'll start with telling you about the raspberry merino tencel here.

The plied singles on the bobbin. This made me soooo happy.

As I've said before, the raspberry merino tencel project was my first somewhat longer-term spinning project on the wheel. Before this, everything that I've done could have been accomplished in a single day, albeit a long one. For this project however, I was going for a finer plied yarn than I've created in the past. The singles were so fine that it took me about 6 sittings to spin each bobbin, and I'd estimate that each represents about 8 hours of work at a minimum. The plying took me about 2 hours, and I was afraid that it was going to take a heck of a lot longer.

Moxie played the role of Margene (of whom he is completely and totally unaware) while I was plying. I was so excited to see the finished yarn I was almost jumpy - chomping at the bit. He kept reminding me that I was supposed to be enjoying the entire *process* and that I shouldn't be concerned about getting to the end product as much as enjoying the spinning that I was doing. I knew he was right, but I thought I was going to kill him. I wanted to see the yarn!

When I was finally done plying, I was left with less than two feet of unplied singles. This made me insanely happy, as I have an obsession with using every little bit of yarn - to the point where it is not unusual at all for me to come very dangerously close to running out of yarn on a knitting project. It's stupid, I know, and I always counsel people to buy more yarn than they need when asked, but I can't help it. I save everything, and I can't stand to have half-skeins of unused yarn hanging around.

Plied singles on my brand spanking new niddy-nosty from Amy at Spunky Eclectic. A truly wonderful tool.

I wound the skein onto my niddy-nosty (love this!) and ended up having about 290 yards of yarn. To be honest, I was hoping for closer to 400 yards, but still, this was almost three times as much as I've ever spun in a single skein, so it was still really impressive to me.

Here's the skein right off the niddy-nosty.
For a zoomed-out shot click here.

Because I had spun the singles over the space of two weeks, there was no way to tell whether the skein was balanced right off the niddy-nosty. (I warned Moxie of this, and his disappointment was palpable. He revels in the fact that I make him guess whether each and every skein is balanced, just prior to niddy-noddy removal. It is prime entertainment for the entire family.) Here it is all curly, but after wetting it hung straight, and is still straight after drying (I thwacked the hell out of it, but did not weight the skein). It looks balanced to me, though I'm sure that there are more experienced spinners who could chime in and let me know how to be sure. (Hint, hint - chime in!)

I love this skein. There are still thick and thin points, but overall, it represents the most professional-looking yarn I've made to date. I'm hoping to knit a shawl from it. I'm not sure that I'll have enough to make Evelyn Clark's Swallowtail Shawl (I've been drooling over Jared's since he finished it), but I'd like to give it a go. If anyone has a good approximation of how much fingering-weight yarn it would take to make the swallowtail, or even exactly how much lace-weight it took, I'd love to know. In the meantime, here are the stats for the yarn:

Fiber: Raspberry Merino Tencel (70/30)
Weight: 4 ounces
Source: Carolina Homespun
Wheel: Majacraft Rose, fastest ratio on the slow whorl
Yards: 290
WPI: 16-17 (fingering weight)

Some Help for Achieving a Balanced Ply

The other day, Marnie wrote about how to check to see if your plied yarn is balanced while it is still on the spindle (or wheel). I found this really useful, and was suprised that I hadn't thought of checking my plies this way, especially since I know a similar trick for checking to see what your plied yarn should look like before you actually ply it. Sometimes the rudimentary things just don't filter down! Anyhoo, along that line of thought, I'm sharing the trick for checking to see what your plied yarn should look like in advance. For most, this will be old hat, but perhaps it will help a relative newbie (like me!).

Check your ply in advance in four easy steps.

1. Hold a length of yarn out taut from either your bobbin or your spindle shaft.

2. Place a pen (or any other lightly weighted household object with a hook) over the yarn.

3. Allow the yarn to spin until it slows and begins to spin in the opposite direction - don't let it actually backspin, or if it does, let it go back to "zero" where it isn't twisting in either direction.

4. Take a look at the twist - this is what your yarn should look like when it is plied!

The roving that I've been working with is a merino/tencel blend from Carolina Homespun. It's a little more slippery than what I'm used to, but oh, so nice. No pre-drafting is necessary with this stuff - just grab a hunk and spin.

My individual plies seem very fine, though, in fact, I think the yarn produced will be a DK weight when plied - we'll see. This is a longer project for me. Most of the rovings I've spun up thickly enough that I could easily spin and ply two ounces in one sitting. This roving will take 4 to 6 sessions, depending on how long I spin each time. It's a real exercise in patience, as I am dying to see the finished yarn.

Here's the roving in its original state, with my patient little boy in the background.

This was a long spinning session for the Nounie as well. He loves to sit close by and watch the wheel spin. (When I knit, he sacks out on my lap.) This morning, I spun for so long that he fell asleep at his post by my flip-flops. He is so sweet it hurts my heart a little to look at him.

"You're hurting my heart, little boy."

Townes, on the other hand is completely un-sentimental and non-plussed:

"I'm asleep mom."

"No, really. I am."