Month: August 2016

How to make yarn in 13 easy steps

Step 1: Buy a spinning wheel

spinning-wheel

Step 2: Acquire some wool appropriate for spinning yarn

Step 3: Learn to use said spinning wheel

Step 4: Spin. A lot.

Step 5: When you are finished spinning singles, wind your yarn into a cake to be plied with itself

Step 6: Ply your yarn

Step 7: Go to the Home Improvement store for some PVC pipe and T-joints (I don’t know if they’re actually called this). You will need this to build a Niddy-Noddy.

Step 8: Assemble your Niddy-Noddy

Step 9: Wind plied yarn onto your new Niddy-Noddy

Step 10: Tie yarn scraps around your new skein in several places to prevent tangling and take your skein off the Niddy-Noddy. Hooray! You have a skein now!

Step 11: Wash your skein in lukewarm water with wool wash – be sure not to agitate, else your wool will felt

Step 12: Rinse the skein thoroughly (again in lukewarm water and being sure not to agitate), thwack it on a hard surface (this helps to set the twist and is incredibly satisfying to do), and hang to dry

Step 13: Wait an interminably long time for the yarn to dry

Tadah! You have just made yarn! Rejoice! Celebrate! Pet it lots. And then you get to decide whether to keep it as a skein or knit it up. Mine is going to become a Honey Cowl.

Rat Hat

I have a friend. Well, I have several, but this particular friend recently had a birthday. And because she is a special friend I felt that she was knitworthy. Hmm, I wondered, what would she like? Oh, I know, she has asked me a few times about making a black fuzzy hat (apparently she had one 20 years ago and loved it). I’m not a huge fan of fun fur (is anyone?) (actually, I’ve never knit with it before…), but a fuzzy hat requires fun fur. So I bought some fun fur and knit it together with some superwash wool.

The result was surprisingly respectable (and the fun fur was not as hard to work with as I thought it would be).

My friend loves her hat. Her face lit up when I gave it to her.

It was totally worth it.

Moving Right Along

I had a lot of car time yesterday since my fiancé and I drove all over the earth working on wedding stuff. I like to knit in the car, but I tend to get carsick, so I can only knit on the highway when it’s relatively smooth driving.

The vent was blowing too much air. So I stuck some yarn in it.

As you can see, my Wedding Shawl is nearly finished. I am on the last lace section, and once that is done it should be smooth sailing. I hope.

A Happy Tale

Once upon a time a knitter decided she wanted to make her own yarn. So she bought a spindle and some roving and learned to spin.

Pretty soon she got decent at spinning with a spindle and wanted to spin faster. She wanted to buy a wheel, but alas, her yarn budget was small, and if she bought an expensive wheel she would not be able to buy yarn for 8 years. So the knitter contented herself with her drop spindle.

 

But then one day as she was perusing the interwebs she saw something shiny! It was a spinning wheel not too far from her that was much more affordable than usual. Tentatively  she contacted the seller. After a brief conversation they decided to meet to discuss a sale. The knitter and her fiancé met with the seller and the knitter was so charmed that she bought the spinning wheel on the spot.

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She took it home and now she spins on it every evening after work.

The end

Lace

In knitting circles lace is spoken of with reverence. We are told that knitting it is hard and demanding and that mistakes drive one to madness.

I tend to hold the view that a lot of things in life aren’t really as hard as we think they are, lace included. Sure, some lace is harder than other lace, but in the end it is only one stitch after another. Right?

Wrong. Last night I began to understand the reputation lace has earned. It kicked my butt (I would have thrown it across the room, but I was afraid my stitches would come off the needles and make my problem even bigger).

Stockinette stitch is looking really good right now.

Waiting…

Sometimes a project takes a long time. This could be for a variety of reasons, but it usually boils down to 2 main ones: A) it’s a really big project, or B) I ignore it for a while (these can also work in combination with each other). I try to downplay how often the second reason is what’s going on, but I’ve come to realize that that is the case with my Wedding Shawl. Which is kind of bad because the wedding is in 38 days (yay!). I just started the 3rd lace section (for the 3rd time…and there is still a mistake. I’m ignoring it) on Waiting for Rain.

Also, granola bars are a great way to procrastinate. You really should try this recipe!