Sweater Harvesting

I am cheap. The "frugal" meaning of the word, mind you, but I prefer the negative connotations cheap has. "Frugal" gives a feeling of distinction to one's penny pinching ways. It portrays you as the sort of person who purchases the things they want in life, they just find good deals, or save up for them. Nope, I'm not that kind. I'm the kind that will go without purchasing clothes for a year, because the ones we own only "have a few holes", or "are just a bit faded". If my shoes are not LITERALLY falling off my feet, I don't feel I need them. A can of soup is a viable dinner in the middle of summer, when I won't turn the air conditioner on, if it's at the end of the month.

I believe that if you won't pay for things, you should find an alternate way. With many things, it is simply to give them up. For things like food, have a garden and harvest your own. That being said, I crave yarn. I can't own sheep so, when I just can't get myself to buy yarn, I go to the thrift store to find my harvest.

I found a lovely merino sweater the other day:

I ripped open the seams, and started pulling.

I'm quite happy with the result at the moment. It was knit double stranded in a lace weight. I've ripped both sleeves and a good portion of the front. However, I'm putting it on hold until the husband returns and he can wind one of the strands and I the other. I tried it my self, but the strands are twisted just enough that slowly pulling one side, then the other catches the fuzz into a ball and makes a lovely felted knot holding them together. I hate leaving the hard work for last and I'd rather unkink the yarn after I did the horrendous task of separating kinked lace weight.




And now to contradict myself. I am TOTALLY buying myself yarn if I won anything at the fair.

Allow me to boast a tad

I have heard, on occasion, of some lucky person finding a treasure at a thrift store or garage sale. In fact, the nearly weekly trips my father made in the non-rainy seasons were called "Treasure Hunts." I myself have found one such thing; a set of four coffee mugs in my mother's Mikasa pattern (I still look at the mugs every time I go in.) However, this was years ago, and nothing spectacular has happened since. In literary terms, this is called foreshadowing.

Yesterday I went to a local thrift store for some sweater harvesting. I found a lovely cream (read dyeable) cabled wool men's sweater (Pretty much a trifecta), but low and behold upon further inspection, it was sergered and cut. I did find a merino wool ladies sweater, but I fear it may be too fine a gauge to be successful.

However, I did go and check the bin with the lumped together yarns. Mostly it is all acrylics or crochet cotton. One bag caught me eye. It contained two large skeins?/balls? of crochet cotton. One was unopened and 1000 yards, other had to be at least 500. More than enough to make one of the doilies I've been eyeing. There were a few other things that were interesting, a skein of Christmas acrylic, a smaller ball of size 30 cotton, and a few balls of some fuzzy stuff. 2.29 and Wednesdays are 20% off.

I had to rip it open as soon as I got in the car. The loot:

The fuzzy stuff was incredible! So soft and I had about 2.5 balls in white and 2 mildly matted balls in camel. There was no ball band, but inside was an odd hexagon cardboard with tabs to give the ball something to wind on. All it said was Belangor Made in Belguim.

And on to Ravelry I flew. The Christmas acrylic was not on Ravelry, which I quickly corrected, but the sinful fuzziness was a bit harder. I assumed "Belangor" was the city, as the husband said as much. No tags. So to yahoo I went.

With just Belangor yarn I found my answer. Joseph Galler Belangor French Angora. Angora. 100% French angora! Almost $50 of angora yarn! I can't believe it. I just have to find something to do with it. I only have 145 yards of it, but I am most grateful for it.

The tiniest of scarves

I couldn't just let my handspun sit there. I had to do something with it. It is VERY scratchy, and is making my hand eczema flare like nobody's business. (Did I never mention the eczema? Had it for years, went into remission for as long, then came back with a lovely friend for my knitting hand. I suspect I don't react well to cotton (?) and lanolin.) So this made the option of fingerless mitts a torture devise. Home items, such as a satchel were possible, however partially due to the eczema, I am not a fan of scenting anything. *

So a scarf it was. Being the math master that I am (sarcasm is one of my favorite flavors of humor to employ. As is mixing metaphors.) I tried to figure out how long I could conceivably make it. Watch as logic slowly gets twisted to my reality of how things should be. The longest I could make it would be 97 yards, meaning a string of yarn wrapped about my neck. If I divided it in half, it would be two strings wide, and 48.5 yards long. Now if I turned it on it's side, making it 48.5 yards WIDE, I could begin to fold the yarn upon itself making it narrower and narrower,, but longer and longer. SO, if I wanted a 5 foot long scarf, (97 yards x 3 ft/yd= 220 ft; 220ft/5ft= 4.4ft) I would need to use 4 feet a repeat.

Do you see the problems?

First off, dividing a piece of yarn in half does reduce the length, and make it twice as wide, but the width is increased by the width of A SINGLE PLY! Did I measure that? No, so all of my math was completely arbitrary. Second, notice the last math step? 220ft/5ft=4.4ft. I obviously didn't write any of this down before hand, because as any fourth grader can tell you, when you are dividing with lengths, the length is canceled out. ft/ft= no ft! And it's wrong!! I didn't hit the 0 on my computer calculator. (Twice I might add, because I do always check my numbers. But apparently never the logic.)

So how did I find out my 97 yards was becoming a 20 inch scarf? I started knitting, noticed how slowly it was growing, measured it, frogged it to see how much yarn I had used and did some GOOD calculations. In the end, what did I do? I swatched. All that math, All the fiddling with the concrete laws of mass conservation and what did I learn?

Swatching is there for a reason.

* As an aside to this, the husband visits friends once a week and when he returns I immediately make him take off his shirt. Am I just so filled with longing from his absence I am reduced to a frantic animal? No. He smells like the detergent they use, and I can't stand it! Detergent was the original trigger for my eczema and I didn't find out until I left for college. I now have a gut reaction to detergent smells. I almost always hug him when he gets home (if I'm knitting then he has to wait until I finish the row), and every Wednesday I hug him, then forcefully push him away. Mixed message sent, I make a disguised face and demand the removal of the offending shirt before it sinks into his skin. I have a more sensitive nose than he, so he never notices.

True success

I made quite a few goals for myself this summer, many of which will not be completed. I am ok with this. I knew that it might be too much, and I was distracted by some other projects. It's not to say I won't have some others of my goals finished before my summer is officially over, but the most important one is.

My Cable Net socks. I spoke on length about this projects in this post, so I won't go into too many details. The point is, they are done. DONE Done done-y done done done. I am happy with them, they fit extreamely well and are not completely itchy like my last (and first) socks. These are my fifth completed socks and the second for me. My plans for these: never wear the until next year!

What! you say. How can you say such a travesty? Do you know how many knitter's families would like a completed pair of socks, instead fo having them be WIP set aside for more interesting, popular projects?

I am tremendously proud of these socks, and want as many people as possible to see them. I want to submit them into either the state fair, or the local county fair. Since the deadlines have past for both, I have to wait for next year. I also want to see what kind of things get submitted. I put in a few things for the county fair this year, since it was cheaper, and I was less intimidated by the local fair. I'll find out how I did by the end of the week, and maybe I'll go see the state fair so I can better judge what I should put in next year.

Adventures in spinning

A week ago Saturday I want to Dixon's Lambtown. It is a fairly small festival, but I wanted the opportunity to take a spinning class. The only spinning class given in my area requires owning a spindle and a set of carders on top of the fee for the class. So, after two hours with my small spindle I had a tiny ball that I plyed on itself.

Two spindlefuls later I tried plying. I got this:
I still had quite a bit of the first ball of roving, but I was tired of poorly spinning plain colored, ugly yarn. I decided to try dyeing the roving, hoping color would detract from the poor spinning. After WAY too much research, I started to dye.

I set out the saran wrap on my table, while my roving soaked. I prepared two colors. The first was two packages of Ice Blue Raspeberry Lemonaide in a lot of water. I added a sprinkling of Grape, and another half package of Ice Blue. I made a batch of dark red (two packaged Black Cherry), with only 7 tablespoons of water. I was afraid the blue was too thin, so I boiled it a bit to get some water out. Of course I then had to let it cool. I layed the roving out, folding it four times. (unfortunately I did not do this with the ends at the ends of the bends, and this caused some potential problems later, which never came up since I didn't ply it.)

I dyed the red first in patches. I worked the dye into the roving. It took a lot more dye than I thought, but didn't realize that the dye would spread later. I did the blue and lightly worked them together. I rolled it up and started to steam it. Here came the unexpected complications.

The water was too high and leaked into my steamer, and in turn into the roving. This caused the dye to blend more. I had to empty out some of the water and I turned the roving sausage over. It continued to steam, and the dye continued to leak. I didn't need to use so much. The steaming process would have spread out the dye to the undyed fibers. Or, maybe if I had wrapped the sausage tighter to prevent water/steam from getting in.

After 30~40 minutes I put the sausage into a glass brownie pan (8X8 Pyrex) and microwaved it for about 1 minute to make sure the dye was set. (I didn't do the whole 2 minutes recommended because the sausage was puffing up to the point I was afraid it would burst.) I set the whole thing into the sink to cool. It expedite the process I filled the bottom with water until the touched just the bottom of the pan. I added some ice to help out too.

After it cooled I rinsed it, and set it out to dry. I was happy to see that almost no dye came out from the roving. The whole process made the house smell fruity. It reminded me of getting snowcones with my family in the summer. The only flavor I could remember was "Tiger's blood", so that was what I named it.
I spun it, but figured out I would only get 35 yards if I plyed. So I decided to make it a one ply. Of course, it was terribly over spun.I washed the yarn, set the twist, then "blocked it" out. I dry it with a 4 pound bag of sugar hanging from the bottom. The finished skein, dyed, spun and set by me:
97 yards of somewhere between a fingering and a lace weight. And I have no idea what to do with it.

Lambtown

I am heading to Lambtown! Hopefully the spoils will be up next time.

My inspired Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet

A few weeks ago I was cleaning out the craft room and found a bag of acrylic I had purchased for gifts about a year ago. I had the intention of knitting scarves for Christmas gifts, but I was too busy and I was not interested as much in knitting at the time. (I know, the HORROR!) Well, it didn't take too long for me to be hit hard by the knitting bug, and to find I preferred nicer colors, and thinner yarn. I knew I had this yarn somewhere, but never could find it.

Now that I have, my stash has gotten bigger, and I would like to rid myself of the bulky stash filler. I had queued the Anthropologie-inspired capelet awhile ago, and I had a quiet enough bulky weight, so casting on I went. The knit went pretty fast, but I could see that I would have a lot left. Now lately I've been finishing off skeins with about 11 yards left. (This is called fore-shadowing) Too much for me to throw away, but not enough to find a project. I had incentive to try to use up as much as I could. So I decided to add a lace edge.

A few months ago I had seen a lace cover-up that I loved. I charted the pattern as best I could (and I'm sure weirded out the kid wearing it). Of course, I left the pattern at work so, I used A Gathering of Lace to look for an arrow-head like pattern. I had 89 stitches on the body, and while there was a 12 stitch repeat pattern I really liked, I found a nice 8 stitch. With 11 repeats this would make 88 stitches. I decreased on in the middle of the back, and I began to plot.

The sleeves only had 38 stitches, so I would need to increase somehow. I decided a simple row of eyelets would not only make the increases on the sleeves invisible, but would allow me to add a decorative ribbon. This turned out the be the hardest part. An eyelet every 8 stitches would make an even pattern. The FIRST time I knit on the body, I had the incite to make the first eyelet only 4 stitches in so they would be even in the front. Unfortunately I actually made them every 9 stitches, so I was completely wrong. The SECOND time, I found out I had an odd number of eyelets and it would make the ribbon come out on the inside of the capelet on one side. For the THIRD time, I made them every 4 stitches (thus doubling the number of eyelets and ensuring the ribbon came out right), but found out at the end that I had forgotten to make the first eyelet at half the repeat. This made the first one three stitches in from the "buttonband", but the last one right on it. I couldn't let that go, so I knit it a FOURTH time. The lace went easier. The only other real "fub" I had to fix was that I originally cast-off with a picot on every stitch. It reminded me of a cheap fringed jacket from the 70's. I decided to make one at every point in the lace.

I messed up a bit on the sleeves. I made one eyelet a stitch off, but it ended up matching up with the lace. Unfortunately I didn't notice until after I didn't get the same result on the other sleeve.

I then killed it so it would drape. I am currently adding some embellishments to the picot points. While this is a potentially reversible knit, the lace and the soon to be added extras will make it a preferred stockinette side. I haven't been able to look for ribbon, but I hope to fix that soon.
PS: This is what I had left:
Yep. 11 yards.

Pictures galore!

So, I was properly shamed after the last post and I immediately got dressed and took pictures of all my projects.

I finished a pair of hats and a pair of fingerless mitts. (Although, when I described them as such to my family, they didn't really get the picture. A better description became wrist warmers with a thumb .)

First up:Pattern: Odessa by grumperina
Yarn: Crystal Palace Merino 5 in white
Needle size: 6
Started: June 20
Completed: June 22

After I made my mother's Odessa, I knew I wanted one for myself. I bought two of these skeins, but found that the hat as written would take a little of the second. I decided to end the hat a little early to save the entire second skein. The hat is a little small, but I think I can live with it. It yarn did break A LOT as I threaded the beads. One ply would break, then the rest would quickly follow. But don't worry, the yarn got it's revenge. I actually broke my big eye needle too working on this .

Next:
Pattern: Black Sea Hat by; grumperina
Yarn: Most of one skein of Frog Tree Pima Silk in purple
Needle Size: 4
Started: June 22
Completed: July 1

I had purchased two skeins of this yarn at the closing of Knitter's Playground in Davis, in order to make a hat for my mom. I did make the hat (the Odessa), but it only took one skein. I decided to make this hat for myself with the leftovers, but couldn't find the beads. So I used the extras from MY Odessa.

Then:
Pattern: Fetching
Yarn: Crystal Palace merino 5 in white
Needle: 5
Started: July 2
Finished: July 4

I am working on stash busting as well as my summer goals. Since Odessa only took up one skein, I decided to make these out of the second one. I still have 11 yards left, but I consider it used up or all intents and purposes.

And because I never can be idle:

This is Anthopologie-inspired Capelet. I added a few modifications, and since this is a long enough post (although slightly dry) I'll post about it tomorrow.

Confessions

I have not been blogging for two reasons, and I am going to be perfectly honest here. One, I have been busy outside of the house for the last week, and time in the house without the husband has been limited. Let me clarify that. I do not blog when the husband is around. Why you might ask. "Are you making a concerted effort to spend evenings together?" No. In fact, it is a normal occurance for the TV to be on, and both of us to be on our laptops all at the same time. Usually one of us is watching the TV and surfing (me) or writing (him), while the other watches a show on their laptop (some anime for him, and Doctor Who for me). The fact I don't write the blog in front of him is because I don't really want him involved. He has to deal with my knitting obsession every other time of the day and the blog is so I don't have to tell him EVERYTHING. Bottom line, I blog to save his sanity.

Reason two, and here is where the ugly truth comes in. I have been knitting, and in fact have finished a few projects, but I refuse to call them finished on Ravelry, or talk about them here unless I get a picture. I have not taken pictures of my FOs because I would like natural light to have good pictures, but to get natural light you have to go outside and to go outside (here's the kicker) you have to get dressed. And I don't want to.

It is hot here in my little part of the world, and I won't turn on the air conditioner. (I also can't, but that's another story.) So getting up the effort to put on jeans in 90-100 degree heat is just not worth it, especially if I'm only going to have to go out in the horribly smoky heat, just to come in 5 minutes later, strip off the heavy clothes and return to my cotton jammies. (You might be able to guess where abouts I live from that.) I will get pictures soon. Maybe even today. After reading that back, I'm a little ashamed of myself. I'm an adult, I probably should make an effort to get dressed when I'm not sick.


Oh, in case you're all wondering what I do when it comes to work, I'm on vacation. So it's not like I'm walking into an office in bunny slippers and a robe or anything,