09.26.06

Unexpected Time

Posted in Knitting, Photos, Socks, Spinning, Yarn at 6:48 pm by delipics

Nothing like a bout of food poisoning — yargh! — to give you unexpected free time. During recovery, in between gingerly eating a bagel and sipping seltzer water, I tackled my knitting and spinning.

I finally finished spinning my Kool-Aid dyed, merino/tencel fiber. I had divided the fiber in half and carded them differently so I could see if there would be a difference. The skein on the top was carded on a drum carder, and the skein on the bottom I carded by hand.

Visually, I don’t think you can see a difference. When I touch them separately, they both feel soft. The difference was in the spinning. The fibers carded on the drum carder were easier to spin. My hand carded batch, not as smooth going. Contributing to that may be how I hand carded the fibers and the fact that I use a pet brush. What does this mean for me? Well, I am not going to go out and buy a drum carder but I will invest in real hand carders. I am also wondering how they will knit up - swatch time!
See this?

I look at this and hope it will end up looking like something a baby can wear. When I was moving the stitches onto the stitch holder (those are going to become the sleeves), I wondered how did knitters fifty years ago do this? Did they have nifty knitting gadgets and hardware (aka reason to spend more $$$ on anything fiber-related) to attach/weave/tangle into our projects? And what about patterns? When did people first start writing commercial patterns? Once I read somewhere that when a crocheter saw a stitch pattern they liked, they crocheted themselves a sample to keep, this way they always had it. I imagine it was the same for knitters.

Lastly, the Kauai Tropical Blue socks are moving along. I can’t wait to turn the heel!

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