The right tool for the right job

One of my spindles has long been a mystery to me. It's beautiful, but I just couldn't figure out what it wanted to spin. It's not a long spinner, nor a particularly fast one. Everything I tried to spin with it sort of fell flat.

It's about the same weight as my other medium-light all-purpose spindles - ones with which I can easily spin between lace and dk weight. This spindle didn't want to spin thick yarn - I was constantly fighting backspin. So, I tried it with finer yarns... It didn't want to spin sock yarn - it just couldn't put enough twist into them.

And then, out of serendipity, I found the kind of yarn that this spindle was made to spin. Singles!

It spins singles so beautifully and easily it's like the fiber is spinning itself. If I tried to spin these on my Golding, it would be so easy to overtwist them and turn them into a coiled mess.

I haven't actually spun many singles yarns before - I prefer the look and wear of plied yarns. But, there was a neat discussion in the Spinner's Study group, so I decided to try it out. And, a realization dawned on me... Singles yarns are half the spinning of plied yarns! (Duh, right? I never said I was perceptive.)

Then I found a pattern for a beautiful shawl - Dreambird. For the feathers I had some Rico Poems yarn in my stash which would do perfectly, but I couldn't find any yarn suitable for the body of the shawl. I do, however, have pounds of fiber in my stash just waiting to be spun...

With a newfound passion for single-ply yarns, I started testing. I sampled 4 different fibers that I thought might be suitable for the shawl, and the winner was clear - the fawn-colored fiber at the top of the swatch spun into an almost perfect match for Poems (the yellow yarn).

I have been waiting for the right project to come along for this fiber - it is called Haunui, and I got it from Wingham some time ago. It is an absolute pleasure to spin and I love the pale heathered fawn color of it.


The roving (true carded roving, as opposed to combed top) is a blend of Romney and NZ Halfbred (a breed developed from crossing merinos with a longwool). The fiber is next-to-the-skin soft (to me) and has a nice bit of a sheen. I absolutely love it - and I'm so happy to have found the perfect pattern and the perfect tool to spin it up.

~Joyuna

Review: Pure Wool by Sue Blacker

I recently got Pure Wool: A Knitter's Guide to Using Single-Breed Yarns.

As the title suggests, the book is all about knitting with single-breed wool yarns, and recognising the unique qualities of each breed. I've been spinning for a while now, but only recently have I begun really appreciating the wide range of wool available. And recently, mill-spun yarns showcasing individual breeds have become more common, allowing non-spinners to discover the world of wool in the same way.

It's not a massive book - weighing in at 144 pages, it pales in comparison to my Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook, but Pure Wool has a different focus. It doesn't try to be an exhaustive resource for every breed of sheep. Instead, Sue Blacker has chosen 16 breeds found in the British Isles and focuses more closely on their strengths and weaknesses.

The book contains 21 patterns tailored to certain breed-specific yarns. Most of the patterns are quite simple and I didn't find many of them too inspiring - but I didn't buy the book for the patterns. I will say they all look quite knittable and wearable, but many are garments and knit in pieces, so not really up my alley.

I think this is a beautiful sweater, but it's hard to tellHowever, there is a nice Guernsey which is knit in the round, and there is also the Climbing Vine Cardigan which looks lovely, from the one photo of it - though I would have liked to see other views of it. (I find the photo issue particularly concerning because there are photos of garments scattered throughout the book which are not even included as patterns - I would have appreciated a second view of a pattern which is actually included)

This is a nice sweater knit in Manx Loaghtan yarn... but the pattern isn't included (you can find the Chevron Cardigan pattern by Rita Taylor on Blacker Yarns' website)The photos are generally high-quality, and well-composed, though the darker yarns lose some detail which is disappointing. Each breed of sheep has a page showing the fibre in its raw form, prepped, and spun (and sometimes dyed).

My favorite part of the book is the charts in the back - an easy quick reference to the qualities of the wools, substitutions, and the natural colors in which each breed can be found. I'm a sucker for charts and graphs, and these brief charts pack a lot of information into a small space.

~Joyuna

Christmas Pressies

I had the most wonderful Christmas - though I am spending it in the UK, away from my family in the US, I have spent it with my 'British family' - being my partner's lovely parents, sisters, cousins, grandparents, aunts & uncles, all of whom have made me feel so incredibly welcome.

What was on my Christmas list this year? I could have asked for practical things like clothes, toiletries, cookware... nahh. I took this opportunity to clean out my Amazon book wishlist.

I have a lot of reading ahead of me! A fantastic selection of books awaits me, mainly dealing with historical and traditional knitting. I am thrilled. I haven't had time to give any of the books a full read-through, but I have flipped through them. Here are some first impressions of the books:

Creating Original Hand-Knitted Lace by Margaret Stove - What a gem. I actually really like the anecdotes she includes in her writing, taking this journey with her as she converts some native New Zealand flora into lace. I can tell I'm going to really enjoy this book.

Cornish Guernseys and Knit-Frocks by Mary Wright - This is a small book but extremely interesting and full of photographs. The photos are old, of course, but I would've liked to have seen more detail in dark areas (since nearly all the guernseys shown are in navy blue or slate grey) - I think that in at least some of the cases, this is a fault in the book printing, rather than the source photographs. However it's an extremely interesting little book, with some traditional Cornish gansey stitch patterns included (made of knits & purls and some with cables - all both charted and written), and well worth adding to your collection.

Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller- This is a formidable volume - a big, heavy book with nearly 300 generously sized pages. I look forward to giving this one a proper read, because I can see there's too much to just summarize it in a few minutes. There's history, technique, construction, design... Just about everything you need to knit Shetland lace. Plenty of charted stitch patterns and edgings with some explanatory text about each - where to use it, how to modify it, or other useful things to know.

Shetland Hap Shawls Then and Now - Though a much smaller book than its neighbor Heirloom Knitting, it packs an impressive amount of information - dozens of beautiful photos, many pages of text as well as charts (both lace charts and stripe charts). I've been planning to make a hap-style shawl for myself, so I was especially pleased to receive this.

Knitting in the Old Way - A very interesting book that I really need to delve into further. A range of ethnic designs, from arans to Cowichan sweaters to American folk motifs adapted for knitting. All about sweaters, but a good reference to have.

Real Shetland Yarns - This isn't really a knitting book, per se, but I got it after reading Kate Davies' rave review on her blog. I haven't sunk my teeth into it quite yet but it does have some breathtaking photos in it.


An even more special gift also arrived for me recently. I hold the belief that the best presents aren't the ones you ask for, but the ones you didn't even know you wanted. When someone knows you well enough to pick out something even better than you could yourself - those are very special gifts indeed.

I was fortunate enough to receive such a gift this season. A little package from Edinburgh, from my most excellent friend Shobha.
This is a ball of St Kilda Lace, a blend of Boreray and Soay wool - the Boreray undercoat being from the very special project to produce a run of Boreray knitting yarn.

It's the most beautiful mid-grey, and soft, way softer than you'd expect a blend of two primitive rare sheep's wools (and yet, as I explore sheep breeds, I keep saying that - why do I always expect rare breeds to be rough and scratchy? Just because they're not merino?). I have no idea what I will make with it - I have to find a perfect pattern. For now I'm more than content with having it as a pet skein to keep and cherish for a while.

~Joyuna

Review: Knit Your Own Scotland

I recently received an adorable new book - Knit Your Own Scotland. It's just what it says on the tin - a book of 14 patterns for making your own various Scottish things.

The authors, Jackie Holt and Ruth Bailey, are costume designers by trade - and this shows in their fine attention to every last detail in the designs. For instance, each of the humans included goes off of a basic doll pattern (which I may also use for future, non-Scottish projects) - but each has their own face, some have a unique head, and every one of them has several of their own clothes. Take a look at Robert Burns, for example, clothed in the height of 18th-century fashion with his waistcoat, jacket, breeches and boots:

Just about every Scottish icon you could hope for is included: From Robert Burns and Nessie, to a Saltire flag and highland cow, to Scotch whisky and teacakes! They're all really cute and some are just exquisitely detailed.

Can you believe those teacakes are knitted and not real?
The suggested yarns for the book are all quite easy to find - Rowan, Sirdar, Debbie Bliss and the like. One thing that tripped me up at first is that amounts of yarn are not listed unless it requires more than one ball - but this makes sense as a space-saving measure when the toys are small and only need a little yarn. Needle sizes are given in mm and old UK sizes (the smaller the needle, the larger the number).


I've started knitting my own Highland Cow, one of my favorite British animals (fuzzy and ginger and hair all in his face, what's not to love?).
The instructions are easy enough to follow, with numbered rows and stitch counts every time there are increases or decreases, which makes it easy to catch a slip-up. There are a few abbreviations or pieces of phrasing I found non-standard (like 'inc in next' for kfb), but there is a list of abbreviations in the back.

You can purchase Knit Your Own Scotland on Amazon.co.uk, and it has just been released in the US - find it on Amazon.com here.

You can also find additional pictures and a very special add-on to the William Wallace doll at KnitYourOwnScotland.co.uk.

Disclosure: This book was provided to me by the publisher.

~Joyuna

British wool keeps my head warm

My little skein of yummy, bouncy Bowmont got dyed with food colors into a nice turquoise. This was a learning experience, because British food colors aren't the same as American ones and not all of them will dye wool. The I'd Dye for Britain Ravelry group has a thread full of great information on this.

After dyeing, there was nothing left to do but knit! My pattern of choice for tiny amounts of handspun, and also for people with cold ears, is Calorimetry. In fact, I've knit two other handspun Calorimetries this winter as gifts (also hand-dyed, from some leftover J&S superfine Shetland top).
(the headbands were a big hit, and I paired them with handmade keyrings from Le Petit Pois.)

The pink Calorimetries were the standard pattern, knit flat with a button - for my own one, I decided to mix it up. I cast on to knit in the round.

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Knitting Resolutions

Happy new year -- I've got some resolutions to make.

You may not know this, but I started this blog on New Year's Day - so the blog is now 5 years old. Back then, I had only been knitting for 6 months and had just learned to spin -- and as I said in my very first post, "I fear where my fiber obsession may lead me next."

And it has led me many places indeed! I've met so many amazing crafters, visited places I never thought I would, found a fulfilling creative outlet with designing and even had my designs published. What a ride!

There's no question that I've fallen hard for yarn, fiber, and everything woolly (and alpaca-y, angora-y, silk-y...). So of course, over the past 5 years I've accumulated some yarn. A lot of it. And lots of pretty patterns that I "need" to knit.

It's time to knit down the stash.

According to Ravelry, I've got (gulp) 146 yarns in my stash. Now some of those are things like spindles, Tour de Fleece logs, and other non-stash things, but it's safe to assume there is also probably some yarn in my stash that hasn't been put on Ravelry.

I've also got 345 patterns in my queue (whoa). So:
My goal, a fairly modest one I think: at least one FO from stash, per month. Last year, I finished 19 projects, but a number of those were designs and thus not from the stash. In fact, I would say only about 6 of the projects I finished last year were 'from stash' - meaning the yarn was not provided for me, nor did I buy the yarn specifically for the project.


I've set up a personal sock club for myself: 6 pairs over the next year. These are patterns and yarns I've wanted to knit up for ages and ages, and it's finally time. Over the past few years I've come out of my sock knitting phase and leaned more towards shawls, and most of my socks are full of holes or darned beyond recognition now - I need some new pairs!

I also resolve to make more hexipuffs, because I have sorely neglected them lately and my goldfish bowl of yarn leftovers is starting to overflow.

So, by the end of 2013, I will have no more than... 134 stashed yarns and 333 patterns queued. Sigh. Progress is slow. Let's hope I can overshoot my goals!

~Joyuna