Comparisons between 1st and 3rd batch, HAH!

Okay, still working on the Verdant colorway. As my ability to draft Jenny's technique (pretty much a standard technique you see in experienced youtube videos) gets better, my yarn gets thinner.

I wanted to check this as I went, so even though I'm no where near through that 4 oz. of roving, I've done it in three batches.

First batch and the Third batch, side by side.



Here's just the third.

A Thinner Spinner - Verdant Merino

Well, Jenny's drafting technique has gotten some practice, and it does make you tend to spin finer, which I'm just wanting to do with this spin anyway. I'm learning the yarn plumps up when it's off the spindle, plus plying it seems to make it do that more because, as Jenny said, plying takes some of the spin out.

I wasn't too sure about this colorway once I got into it, it seemed all I was spinning was dark blue. I wasn't sure, either, about spinning quite as fine a thickness as this was turning out to be, so stopped at just under an ounce, plied the yarn (amazed... 90 yards of singles, 45 yards of plied obviously, but all that out of less than an ounce?)

This time I used the expected penny reference. This yarn looks a lot like the Printemps EXCEPT it's a whole lot darker and more intense hues, through and through. It does not feel like I'm duplicating, at all. I'm really liking it!

The thinnest (plied) seems to be 14wpi. A super thick stretch comes out to 8wpi. I'm likely to average it out for purposes of patterns, etc. at 10-12. Or, as a lot of spinners seem to say, "Somewhere between DK and Worsted Weight."

I STILL don't have consistent thickness, but waaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAY more so in this spin than before. At least that's how it looks to me when I go through the 22 strands I have on the niddy noddy in various places in the skein.

So that's progress!!

Ta Daaaa.... My First Cowl

This is my first try at a simple pattern modification. I loved the stitching in the cowl designed by NovaMade, but she has the neck for a bulkier cowl (plus finer yarn) so I tried my hand at some changes...

1. Less bulk under my chin, so closer fitting there;
2. Yet a little spread out as it went down toward my chest so it would lie flat;
3. I wanted the scallops that her pattern creates to be at the top edge; and
4. Since I would be knitting this on bigger needles with fatter yarn, I didn't want the larger size holes from using a Yarn-Over.

At first I was clueless where I'd plug in increases as the cowl progressed, but my gut said to leave the straight stitching alone and put the increases in the diagonal ribby-sort of stitching, so I put them in the center of that, switching WHICH center-ish stitch each time. As for the holes, I tried what I THOUGHT was a M1 instead of the YO on a swatch, and got a nice smaller hole. Well, it turned out I made a mistake in "M1" but that mistake is actually a real stitch, called an "Eyelet." So that worked out.

As for the RATE of increase to get the right spreading out over shoulders, measuring my body's rate of increase there with a tape measure was next to impossible, so I just winged it. I'm going to try it like this a couple of wearings, and if I decide it "must" lie flat, it'll be a little frogging time, that's all.

So here it is on the table...



And here it is on me with nostrils cropped out because this was definitely an up-the-nose shot (easy to get when you're photo-ing yourself).



Now looking like an "angry Arab" from self-shooting (hence concentrating), these photos were as good as I could get under the circumstances.



And a sorta side view. I discovered two things here -- if you stand in front of a mirror and point the LCD screen at the mirror, duh, you can see what's in the LCD screen; and (2) is it reeeeeally necessary to concentrate on the LCD screen to THAT degree?



Okay now HERE is the original idea of what I was aiming for. (I had to hold it stretched because since I started the increases so late, it won't lay this way naturally.



As for the stitch pattern itself? I really love it! Here are some shots of its construction that show off NovaMade's design. And, of course, that neat bind-off that Jenny showed me.



Here's a shot of the increases I added. As mentioned, I picked the slanted part rather than the straight stitching part of the pattern. I have a feeling that turned out to have been the right choice.



And here's what it looks like overall when it's first being started. I'm only including this WIP photo because it just looks like it could spark the imagination of more experienced knitters... for something. The main imagination it sparks for me is back in grammar school we starched things with a strong sugar-water solution. Since this looks like a Queen's Crown AND all that sugar would surely attract bees, it made me think if you were to make a crown and starch it that way, you'd have to name it the Queen Bee crown.



So hopefully it'll lie right under jackets as is, in which case I'll give up the original plan to have it spread out because that many increases would once again be total guesswork.

Now back to that hat shown below, and trying to make it look less like a fancy toilet paper roll cover.

2nd Hat, 3rd Spin (Will partially frog, but learning!)

Hats go fast once you know what you're doing. (I say that on blind faith because I don't yet.) The way the swatch from this spin knitted up though, I figured I'd get this same distinct striping on the hat, but that was a different part of the spin, it's less distinct on the hat.

First, here's the swatch, it's a BIG swatch, knitted on 10.5, 11 and 13 needles, a couple inches each. So is this kickass yarn or what!! The fiber I spun it from is Printemps colorway, hand-dyed by Erica (Squoosh is her store name on Etsy). LOVE that colorway!!



Okay, as for the hat. Bear in mind that I'm not going off a pattern with my hats, but from a general design-your-own guide that touts it's for "knitting any hat, any yarn, any size needles." Since this guide prescribes knitting from the top down, you really can design and size it as you go. That really appealed to me.

It would help to know what I'm doing, but I don't have the experience for that yet, so I've become very much at peace with serious swatch knitting AND with frogging.

Anyway, the general instructions say that for a pullover Beanie, stop the increases that happen in the top circle at about 5-10% less than your head size. For a Pillbox design, make the circle the same size as your head measurement. And for a Tam a/k/a Beret, make your top circle 2-4 inches bigger.

Beyond that, you're on your own. I'd ORIGINALLY planned on a beret for this spin because that would show off the yarn variations best. However, after 40 Ravelry pattern search pages of "beret," only one looked like I'd like it, and there was no pattern. The rest all hugged around people's foreheads with no hair able to be showing (NOT a look I can wear!) I got the feeling that all berets are going to do that though, so figured, "Pfffffft. Abandon the whole beret idea."

So not knowing which of the other two I'd want to make, I tried to straddle the middle of the two remaining suggested circumferences (beanie calling for 20" and the pillbox calling for 22"). I settled at 21" in hopes of ending up with a "convertible" hat that I could wear as a beanie OR as a pillbox.

First, here's the hat modeled on a 21" tube-shaped bowl. It's to show the 3 rows of garter stitching I threw in after I stopped the increase circle. (This was meant to be a design element if worn as a beanie AND to enhance the pillbox effect if worn as a pillbox hat).

But Voila! I now know how to make a toilet paper roll cover!!


Okay, so here it is as a pillbox hat, with a cuff.



Another Pillbox shot...



And if it gets pulled a LITTLE downward more, it would be a semi-pillbox.


Now for what it would look like with that garter stitch "design element" left in if pulled down more and worn as a beanie...


Another shot...



And a shot that shows the 3 rows of garter stitch (which I'm not yet sure about at all)...



So if I keep this design, I'm going to frog UP TO the decrease row and remove half the decreases because the hat's just a TAD snugger than I like.

I'm also considering two other changes. One is ADDING a single row of garter between the 2" of stockinette and where the ribbing starts. (This "design your own" idea is both a good and a bad thing. Good once you know what you're doing, but frog-prone if you don't. Like me.) The other possibility is to frog all the way up to the 3 rows and just remove them.

I'm waiting for Jenny to get back from their kickass sounding vacation in California to give me her opinion on several questionable elements, which opinions are almost always right. Meanwhile, though, any modifications whatsoever will get parked until I spin the rest of this fiber and make sure I have enough yarn for a cowl because I'm thinking the cowl Peggy found takes priority. If it needs enough yarn so all I can get for a hat is the barest minimum beanie with no cuff, then I'm willing. I want the cowl.

Peggy is a fierce researcher, and she went on a hunt for cowls, I think just because we were emailing about them and they seem like a super neat thing, except so many of them look like the neck pieces of moon walking astronauts! She landed on a blog where not only did she find some neat cowls, but the one that really caught my eye was this woman's own design, and she was nice enough to post her pattern! The one Peggy favors is much more plain, but it very well might be the best one for this yarn, because anything that'll show off its natural variations... that's ideal.
___________

I'm now test-knitting the cowl I liked with a skein of cheapo Walmart acrylic. (Very harsh color changes but at least it shows the general idea.) I'm hoping that the softer color changes in my spin will look better in this design, but it sure is smacking of a pattern that lends itself to a solid color yarn (sob, sob, sob).

Fourth Spin (3rd got parked, a "WIP")

I was dying to get my hands on this roving, just because of the multitude of colors and not yet being able to predict (at all!) how something might spin up. Way more than halfway through it, I had Jenny demonstrate, yet again, how she holds the fiber and drafts. This time I thought I saw an "A-hah!" in there somewhere, and tried how far away she holds her fiber hand. Well, lo and behold, that actually creates a clear cut drafting zone triangle. She's been saying she has trouble spinning thicker than what seems to be her default weight, and of course I've not been too adept at spinning finer because my default weight has been thicker. Trying her way of drafting, mine became thinner also. But there's no REASON why it should, I just haven't figured out yet how to modify the hold so I get a little thicker single, and so far she hasn't seen any need to.

But I sure do like her way of drafting, it's faster for sure. So now it's like learning something all over again. I see where I'm getting slubs built in, but that'll come with practice, I'm just counting on that with blind faith.

Here's what's left of the roving, as it came.



Here's the single on the ball, being plyed onto the spindle using both inside-pull and outside of strand. This worked pretty darned well, despite much grumbling regarding this method generally. The trick was having a core in the center of the ball. I mounted it onto a plastic spindle that I borrowed from a bulk-purchase package of 100 blank CDs, and set it onto the seat of a camp chair. Worked great.



I processed the yarn by soaking in "Soak" wool wash, somewhat hot tap water, then spun it in a salad spinner, whacked it bare (without wrapping into a towel) onto a flat surface about 5 times each end, and all the cursing I'd done about it not plying up well... you have to reserve judgment.

This is the best shot, and my favorite. Looka all da colors!! Yeoowwwza, this is going to be one interesting skein! (Photographed right after processing, not yet dry). Click to enlarge.



Another shot, showing the inconsistencies in finished yarn thicknesses. Again, can click to enlarge.


And a close-up. I just can't get over all these colors and especially the way they happen out from the plying.


NOT shown, because a couple hours later, having checked my "crop" again, I see several strands that have super-thick (good 3-inch lengths) of spread out slubs, and I mean big. But I lost the good light for photographing and just when I thought I had it, my camera battery died. I'm half awake from a nap that blew off my day (yet again) and didn't get a photo of it. Later or something. I'm just blown away by the color combinations in this colorway, which is Printemps hand-dyed combed top of BFL purchased from Squoosh on Etsy.

And Blogspot is not letting me add a link right now, so it's etsy.com--> click on "Sellers" in search by, type in Squoosh, click on that solo choice, then click on combed tops.

Whining and Complaining Again

Well, I'm getting to the point where I want to be DONE with this blue and red spin. And I'm pretty sure the rest of this yarn wants me to be done with it also, because I'm embarrassed to say I can't seem to get a stupid simple scarf made. One that will go with the hat, but also just be a comfy, wumfy neck warmie scarf on its own.

The thing is, I hate wide scarves because my neck isn't any six inches long and I don't like stuff doubled up around it. Reminds me waaaaay too much of when I was little, and in those days the favorite remedy for EVERYTHING was that your mother would smear greasy Vicks Vapo-rub, still packaged in the dreaded cobalt blue jar, all over your neck, THICK! And then she'd cover that with a flannel rag that she'd wrap around your neck a zillion times and secure it with a couple of diaper-sized safety pins, and then feed you Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup (or Chicken Noodle if you were really snargly), and then put you to bed where you'd lie there as stiff as a board, terrified to go to sleep in case one of those safety pins came undone and stabbed you in the neck or throat.

The other reason I hate wide scarves is that they never fit under my coat collar without bunching everything up. My collar sure can't lay over a fat, thick, bunchy scarf. The ONLY thing I do like about wide scarves is in case I were to be driving home from somewhere on a freezing cold, dark night with high, icy winds, and run out of gas or something and not have my cell phone or be able to get reception, and have to get out of the car and walk to somewhere, and need it to wrap over my whole face like they do in the Middle East. But that just doesn't ever happen.

The original scarf (a twisted drop stitch) was way looser knit, but Jenny said it looked too narrow next to the hat, and Peggy said the kind of stitch was too different from the hat, and they were both right. Either it had to be wider (in that loose weave drop stitch pattern) or narrow would be okay in the ribbing that the hat's made of. I opted for the latter.

Well, I've tried close to TEN different combinations of ribbing, in size 13 needles and even tried a 15 to make it a relaxed scarf. They all sucked. I even tried the same pattern my first spin's scarf was made in, and that sucked also. All of them were just too tight and stiff and stuffy feeling. And THICK!!!

Finally, I kept looking at the hat and IT didn't bunch and curl, and IT was 2x2 ribbing! So the only difference was, IT was made with size 11 needles. Well, I was under the distinct impression that the smaller the needle, the tighter and bunchier would be the knit. But the hat isn't bunchy. It's floppy and relaxed. So hell, why not frog the thing a 9th time and try the size 11 needles. So that's what I did this morning.

STILL!!! It's STILL thick and bunchy! This ribbing is just three freaking blobs of thickness that curl up on themselves, each rolling into a tight wad of snitty annoyance.

Here's what I mean.


Okay, here's a view of it from the side, standing on edge. I mean, even the fact that it WILL stand on edge tells you what's hate-worthy about it. Would you want something wrapped around your neck that will stand on edge?? Well, after I took this picture, I laid it flat on the table and stood the ruler on end, and the thing is 3/4-inch thick!!



Nothing floppy about this scarf. I keep thinking if I get more length knit onto it maybe it would become more floppy. But I don't think so. I also thought maybe if I were to wet it and block it on a big cardboard box with a zillion pins pulling at it all along its length, maybe it would stretch out and be floppy. But who wants to go through that? And I don't think it would stay floppy anyway. It would just BOING BOING BOING back to its snitty tight little self. And I'd hate it.

Well, I don't know how many more times I can frog this same yarn, because it's been a good eight times for sure (probably more) already, but that's what's going to happen to it yet AGAIN!

Crap.

The Hat Knitting Spirit Guides were kind to me

Well, when I got my first attempt on this hat off the needles and measured it? Hah! It was well beyond the 28" I'd previously thought. I have a 22-inch head.

This time I decided to do the obvious, and measure. I'd read to make a hat two inches smaller than my head to account for stretch. So now I had something to go by, because while other people can apparently tell by plunking a yamulke-sized start on their heads, obviously I can't.

So I frogged the whole cow-sized thing all the way up to the square. Now, I always have a problem frogging "up to" somewhere, because I can NEVER pick up all the stitches, let alone how they're supposed to be. Sure as shit, I'll get all the stitches onto my needle, and be missing at least one or worse yet, have more than I should. I'm just now getting to the point where I can see what's not right, but even then, I usually don't know how to fix it. Well, this time I not only had the right number of stitches, but they all looked right on the needle. The creepy part though, is that I'd somehow stopped frogging at the exact same square corner where I'd started the increases on in the first place.

That's when I first started thinking, maybe the Hat Knitting Spirit Guides had congregated, because... well, luck like that just doesn't happen to me. And that's not conceited either to think that ANY spirit guides would care about a newbie knitting a hat. I mean, they're called Hat Knitting Spirit Guides for a reason.

I'm figuring it went something like this. Way back when, one of them was floating by, and I caught her attention when I was sitting here at my computer, knitting by the pictures on a website. She'd noticed the unmistakable telltale kink of multi-time frogged yarn heaped into my bowl on the floor, and then noticed me snag the yarn into the wheel of my chair before I did. At that point, she decided to stick around and watch what promised to be a really funny show. So as I was holding two hands worth of very tight knitting in one hand (really tight so those crammed Ocker cast-on stitches wouldn't burst off the needle while I hit the down arrow key to see the next step), she put out the call that summons the other Heavenly Yarnies...

"Hey, Yarnies! If you can break free, you just gotta zap on over here and watch this. I got some idiot who's sitting here, and she has newly spun frogged yarn trailing all over a dirty, dried-mud floor with bits of hay in it. So now she's unwittingly rolling her chair around on it. Back and forth, over and over... Omigod! Now one strand has worked its way up into the wheel, and on top of that, she's doing the whole freaking thing wrong! Arrrrgh, you gotta watch this!"

So always up for a good laugh, the other yarnies checked their own charges, still listening. "Okay, she's done this Ocker cast-on okay so far, but now for some unknown reason, she's trying like all hell to shove her crochet hook through these crammed stitches around the hole. Like Hellllo? There's no room! Wait, WTF??? Eeeyyowwww! Shit, she's trying to dig out the freaking loop itself! Sheeeeeeeee-ut! "

Whereupon, the other Heavenly Yarnies now heard that she'd actually summoned up her earthly energies because she's transmitting. "Hey there! PSSSSST! You don't want the freaking LOOP! The LOOP is what makes the damned circle! Omigod, STOP pulling on that loop!" (Later I found out you're supposed to pull on the tail.)

So at some point, a couple other yarnies flitted on over to watch, whereupon the most recently departed (hence the most earthly-relating) probably said, "Awwwwwwwwww? She's trying so... HARD!" [sniff sniff, snort, chortle]. "You guyyyys, I mean, look at the 24-hour rollback, this is her 4th try. Awwwwwwww."

I'm guessing that after watching me coax the yarn out of the chair's wheel, and gather up all the yarn that had been merrily sweeping the floor and picking out bits of hay among the dried "mud" (okay, prolly some dried horse shit cooties in the mix) and other stuff that you track in from a barn, maybe one of them took pity. Because, fast forwarding to now, when suddenly I was winding up with the original 48 stitches exactly? AND they all looked like they came from the same row? AND finding myself at the exact place where I could just start knitting again??? Well, something was just not normal about that.

So that's what I think happened because the hat went fast from there. I brought it to Jenny's so I could knit it while we talked and though I was planning to do a cuff, when I tried it on after more rows at her place, she said, "Oooo, it looks really cute as it is! I'd stop right there!!"

I went into the bathroom and looked, and it really did look pretty cute! Well, I'd already learned you can't tell with the needles on, or at least I can't, so she showed me some new bind-off that's good for stretch, and assured me that we could undo it if the hat had to be longer. So I did that.

Back into the bathroom only this time sans the needles which really don't let you see what's real. It actually fit! But what I was really interested in seeing was if all the things I'd hoped for in this hat would also be there because (a) this is my first hat, (b) I spun its yarn; and most importantly, (c) having gone from a "guide" and not an actual pattern, I had specific criteria. I wanted it to NOT be so tight that it smashed down my hair. Yet I wanted it tight ENOUGH so it wouldn't slip around. I wanted it NOT to scoop up the bottom of my hair since my cowlicks win out in any kind of scooping. But I especially wanted it not to scoop at the bangs either because that makes me look like the Village Idiot cartoons in Mad Magazine. Last test, I wanted to be able to bend my head waaaaaaay back and not have my collar shove the whole hat forward over my eyes. I just hate that!

So now, really thrilled because it passed all those tests, I was pissed that I hadn't brought my {ta daaaa} "highly pocketable, brand new Canon SD990IS camera that I gave up features for, specifically so I could have it on me all the time." But never do. Jenny had Ken's camera though, so she took a series of bathroom shots of my brand new, multi-frogged, kickass hat. We laughed at most of them because... (okay, Jenny just admits this straight out without trying to say consoling things when you know they're not true)... I photograph horribly. I mean, horribly! I either look like a drunk Mexican hooker or an ugly Arab. {PC explanation called for here}, Arabs aren't ugly, a lot of them are absolutely gorgeous. But photos make me look Arab, and they make me look ugly. That's an ugly Arab, any way you cut it.

So here's the hat, finally, FINALLY finished!





Now, on this next shot, the odd looking placement of a straw was because that's what was holding my half-finished scarf together.



So that's my first hat. And it's the first time everything just kept going right. So I'm convinced the Heavenly Yarnies took pity on all the problems I'd had. I love this hat though. It's actually starting to look a little ratty already because I've been wearing it to do feeding/barn chores. And just the way it works out, I'm often right under Cloud's face when I'm ducking under her strand of fencing, so two things happen. A little hay falls out of her mouth onto my head, and she crowds me so I bang into her chest, head first. So I think I'll have to make another hat like this just for barn chores because should I ever get invited to the Oscars, I'll want to wear this hat. And if they ask me "who" I'm wearing, I can say that it's a Heavenly Yarnies creation.