Knitting Battlemaidens

So Gorgeous it Gets its Own Post

M hand-dyed and hand-spun this for my birthday:

Jealous yet?  How about now:

I have to figure out something to make that will be worthy of this loveliness.

S

Santa Did Good This Year

Look what Santa (well, M and my mom) brought me for Christmas!  Isn't this just the most wonderful yarn you've ever seen?  It's handspun superwash merino from Tanglewood Fiber Creations.  The woman who makes this yarn is an incredibly talented spinner - her eye for color is remarkable.  I started a scarf from this hank and will post the pattern soon; I have plans to make a matching hat and gloves if I can track down a comparable hank or two.  I don't know how much variation there is from one ball to the next in the same colorway, though there are so many expertly blended colors in each one that I suppose it wouldn't matter.

Santa also brought me Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's At Knit's End: Mediations for Women Who Knit Too Much, and two hanks of Mountain Colors Bearfoot in a dark colorway. 

But the best presents, by a long shot, were from my husband and M.  My husband got me a Pfaff sewing machine!  I love it and can't wait to try a quilt (yes, that's just what I need - another hobby to obsess over!).  M loaned me her Schacht single-treadle spinning wheel and gave me some lessons, then sent me home with big bags of wool to play with!  I can't wait to get a spare moment so I can see if I can duplicate any of the things she taught me while I was over in her town last weekend.  I may end up with a nasty, tangled mess (like all my attempts with a spindle) but I guess I can't expect perfection on the first...or twenty-third...try.

S

The two Jamieson Shetland wool companies

M asked in an earlier post if I had ordered the  Jamieson & Smith Shetland wool color card from Schoolhouse Press.   I didn't; I ordered it from the company's wool broker in Scotland because I didn't think to look for US companies that would send me one!  But I'm glad to know now that I can get the same brand with cheaper shipping through Schoolhouse Press.  I went to The Weaving Works the other day to buy a few balls of Shetland DK in various colors for some gloves, and I didn't realize until I brought it home that it was from a different company with a very similar name, Jamieson's of Shetland.   No wonder the colors in the store weren't matching up with my color card!  So there are two Shetland wool companies with nearly identical names and product lines.  =)  I guess I'll have to order some Jamieson & Smith now for another project to compare which one I like better.

More silk options

Another option for vegan silk substitutes is soy silk.  It's been available as fiber for spinners for several years and now you can probably find soy silk yarn at your local yarn store.  Be sure to look up bamboo fiber, tencel and ingeo (corn fiber).  There is also a silky fiber made out of milk protein (silk latte) but I don't know if it's being spun commercially yet.     -M

p.s.   S- I can't believe you posted your cat's picture already!  The blog is going straight downhill from here.  Nothing's going to stop me from posting pictures of kittens and babies in knitted attire now.

It's here and it's lovely

Look what I got in the mail!  This silk is so shiny that it practically glows from within.  It's the color of a very milky latte.  Just beautiful.  Thanks Aurora Silk!

S

New socks in Mountain Colors Bearfoot

Tonight I started the first project I've ever made from Interweave Knits magazine.  It's a pair of Rib and Cable Socks, designed by Nancy Bush (p. 134 of Fall 2005 issue).  Last week at the yarn store I made an impulse buy of some Mountain Colors Bearfoot yarn without having a specific project in mind.  I was flipping through magazines tonight and found this pattern for lovely cold-weather socks using exactly one skein of Bearfoot.  I have never used this yarn before, and it's a bit daunting to be using tiny size 1 dpns for the first time, but so far so good.  Here's Flashy McFlash snoozing with the yarn (M and I are both knitters who live with cats . . . it's such a rare thing, who would have guessed?) :

And a closeup of the Mountain Tango colorway - looks so good you just want to take a bite!

After creating a frustrating, tangled mess while attempting to hold this long hank of fine yarn on my feet and wind it into a center-pull ball (husband wasn't home so I couldn't enslave him as usual), I vowed to purchase a swift.  If I get out of work early enough tomorrow, I am going to swing by the yarn store on my way home to get one.  I haven't bought one yet because I thought I could do without, but it's really a small price to pay for the huge convenience of not having to use my own legs as a holder!

S

Cruelty-free silk

M loaned me her copy of Folk Shawls back in August, and ever since then I have been drooling over the Kimono Shawl pattern.   The book calls for 100% silk yarn, but because I'm a vegetarian I wanted to avoid killing silkworms if possible.  I thought about substituting a fine wool (this lovely Kimono Shawl was made of Koigu merino), but this pattern is so unbelievably gorgeous that I wanted to make it as posh as possible. 

Lucky for me, today I found a company called Aurora Silk that sells vegetarian/eco-friendly Tussah organic silk, gathered after the silk moths have abandoned their cocoons in the jungles of Asia.  I can't wait for it to arrive!  It won't be an exact match to the yarn used in the book (Henry's Attic Cascade was recommended), but very close and certainly good enough for a shawl in which exact gauge doesn't matter much.  I ordered the Tussah Smooth Singles, which come in natural beige colors depending on what types of leaves the moths ate.  These little bugs are so cute and their wings are a creamy, silky color when they turn into moths - check out these photos.

S