You are the boss of the yarn.

Remember: You control the yarn, not the other way around.

I bought a ball of self-striping yarn - I can't remember when I picked it up, but it was obviously an impulse purchase. It's Opal Schafpate in the colourway Kate.

Schafpate is a wonderful sock yarn - I've knit a pair of socks in it before and I love them. It's got the sturdiness I expect from a no-nonsense German sock yarn, and just a bit more softness. The wool comes from a German flock and the project is specifically aimed at supporting local shepherds - more on the Schafpate project here.

There have been dozens of colourways of Schafpate - they seem to drop like seasonal fashion, passing quickly in and out of the range. And they're all self-striping 'faux Fair Isle' style, for better or for worse. I happen to like this yarn so much that I would be very happy to have a range of solid colours to supplement the striping ones, but ah well.

So here is the manufacturer image of the yarn I bought:

The purple? Love it. The green? Love it. The gentle, pale gradient between the two? LOVE IT.

...The bitty bits of blue and white speckles? Do not love it.

This ball sat in purgatory in my stash for a long, long time. Why was I so foolish to buy a yarn with a fatal flaw? I knew I could never love socks that interrupted a beautiful colour gradation with those loud, rude speckles.

And then I remembered that this is not buying a whole sock out of a catalogue: This is knitting. I control the yarn, the yarn does not control me.

I started knitting, and when I hit a section with speckles, I simply cut it out. Then I wound a new ball of the colours I wanted.

This had the fun side-effect of parcelling my yarn out into pre-defined repeats, allowing me to pre-wind the balls for the second sock and know exactly how much yarn I'll need.

And now I'm knitting socks that I love. All is as it should be.

~Joyuna

My 2:1 stashdown challenge

I bought a lot of sweater-quantities of yarn last year. I won't say how many, but it is significantly fewer than the number of sweaters that I actually knit during the year.

The problem is, it's much easier to plan a sweater than it is to actually knit a sweater. I get the thrill of finding the perfect yarn for a pattern, I click "buy", and I quickly move on to the next shiny object. It's not a character trait I'm particularly proud of, but there it is.

My last yarn purchase of 2018 - soft and snuggly Blacker Swan

This year, I aim to practice some self-discipline. No more impulse buys, and I will keep my stashing to a net negative: For every 2 yards I knit, I can buy 1 yard of yarn. If I want to buy a 400yd skein of sock yarn, for instance, I need to have already knit 800 yards of yarn.

And if I want to buy a sweater's worth... I need to finish two sweaters. Or the equivalent yardage on other projects.

I think this will be a motivating challenge for me - I'm not going "cold sheep", but I'll still be working down my stash overall. I have to earn my yarny treats.



Here's to a productive 2019!

~Joyuna

Bonus: More fun with the 700g yarn ball

I mentioned in my last post that I wound my latest spinning project into one giant ball for plying.

The great yarnball

I have some extra photos of the massive ball that didn't fit in the last post. Because of course, if I'm going to have a 700g yarn ball, I'm going to have a photo shoot.

Cat for scale

The three plies of yarn

Winding the very, very large plying ball. Yes, this took ages, and yes, my hand was aching by the end.

Was it worth it? Probably not. But it was pretty funny having a basketball-sized ball of yarn.

One sweater-to-be, balanced on my head

~Joyuna

The one-ball sweater | Combospin and embracing chaos

I've been working on a really interesting project for the past several months - a Combospin. I'm a little late to the boat on this method, but I was so excited when I found out about it, and saw the amazing results of other people on Ravelry.

Combospinning is a way to combine individual braids of hand-dyed fibre into a cohesive yarn for a larger project. If you have a habit of stashing 100g here and there that you never know what to do with, this is an ideal way to turn them into a sweater-quantity of yarn.

The process is very simple: Take all your fibre (in braids, in batts, or any other put-up) and break them up into smaller pieces. Mix them up in a big bag or box, and just spin one piece after another.

So I shopped my stash, and I filled in the gaps with some extra purchases, and found 750g of fibre along the yellow-orange spectrum. It wasn't an exact process, and in fact, having a few braids that don't quite 'fit' added more interest to the project.

This is spinning by embracing chaos. You do not plan out a sequence of stripes, you do not (need to) match up colours or fibres or even drafting styles - you can combine combed top and carded batts, and no one will arrest you. The spinning police aren't coming for you.

The resulting yarn is perfectly "conspicuously handspun". The plies blend together in some parts, toning each other down, while at other spots a stripe of bright colour will pop out when the plies align. It's a similar effect to fractal spinning, on a large scale and more random. Embrace the barber-pole.

This is a sort of polar opposite project to my just-finished handspun sweater. In that project, I was focused on consistency: all the same fibre, all the same spinning technique, all the same thickness. I was, more or less, trying to imitate a factory-produced millspun yarn. In this combospin, I am letting go of consistency and order, and creating something that you couldn't ever buy in a shop.

I spun them up, and the spinning process was addictive - just one more length of fibre, just one more bobbin...

Each one of my three plies nicely filled up my set of 5 bobbins - very satisfying. When I mixed up the bobbins and wound them off, I decided to wind each ply into one continuous ball. Why? Just to keep things organised, really.

And when I finished each ply, I thought I might as well wind them all into one big plying ball...

Why? There isn't a good reason. I just felt like being extra. I wanted to see what it would look like. It was glorious!

Yes, that's nearly 750g of yarn in one ball as big as my head.

Of course, I had to break the yarn into separate skeins when it came to plying. And just like the spinning, the plying process went by very quickly because it was so gratifying to see the colours combine in such interesting ways.

And then I had this yarn: yellow and orange, but also flecked with lengths of red, and brown, and green and even purple. Crunchy downs wool and silky rayon and buttery-soft merino. A fabulous buffet of colours and textures. View my stash details on Rav.

This is my third handspun sweater project. I've enjoyed them all, but I've definitely had the most fun with this one.

I've already cast on. Now, I just have to keep on knitting!

~Joyuna

A swatch is a start

My knitting mojo has been in... a bit of a slump lately, to say the least. There are a lot of reasons for this: my job, other hobbies, the feeling of creeping dread every time I discovered another moth-eaten skein in my stash... For one reason or another, I just didn't have the opportunity or the inclination to pick up a set of needles for several months.

At Fibre East last year, I picked up some Excelana yarn from the John Arbon booth on offer. I was thrilled; I couldn't resist - I had admired this yarn every time I had seen another person in my knitting group working on it and I had always wanted a sweater out of it. It's a lovely "woolly" yarn with just the right amount of fuzz and just the right amount of sheen.

So naturally, when I had the opportunity to pick up a sweater quantity of this yarn, I jumped at it. And when I got home, other things came up, and it just sat. The yarn sat, lonely in its bag, my initial excitement depleted.

Months went by. Every once in a while, I would see the bag of yarn lying in the corner, and feel a twinge of guilt. I had my excuses: I'm too busy, I'm too tired, I'm doing something else. One day I finally decided to pick out a pattern, pick up some needles, and just work a swatch.

I looked at it. I ran it through my fingers. I remembered what I loved about knitting, and why I had been so excited about this yarn.

A swatch is a start, and it was enough to get the ball rolling. I was so impressed by the hand of my swatch after it was blocked that I was inspired to cast on right away. (Blocking can do magical things sometimes - it can be a subtle difference, but it just made the fabric lay nicely flatter and feel more cohesive and finished)

It's a simple pattern, a striped stockinette cardigan - but it's just the pace I feel like going right now.

~Joyuna

London Fun

Last weekend I met up in London with some delightful people from the Tiny Owl Knits group on Ravelry. We had a blast, wandering around the city getting up to mischief with a tiny viking.

I also have just realised that I never blogged about when I went on the Great London Yarn Crawl last fall! So, let's kill two birds with one stone, and show off all the great fibery goodies I've gotten from London in the past few months :)

The yarn crawl was an amazing experience, not only because I got to visit a bunch of new-to-me yarn shops, but also spending a day with some very fun knitters and crocheters.

I got a little something from each of the shops, but managed to come home with only one skein of yarn (some Malabrigo sock from Nest) - at the other shops I picked up notions and bits & pieces, including some Lego stitch markers from Prick Your Finger and some much-needed darning thread from Loop. There were also loads of goodies provided by generous sponsors in our goodie bag :3 I can't wait for the second yarn crawl later this year!

Returning to the present... Last week's TOK adventure reminded me of the crawl because I ran into a few of my fellow yarn-crawlers, and we visited two of the shops that my group had crawled: Loop, and Nest.

Loop in Islington is the London yarn shop that I have visited most often: it's easy to get to, the staff are friendly, and they have a beautiful selection of yarns. Loop is one of just a few stockists of Wollmeise, brightly coloured German yarn in generously-sized skeins. I picked up a skein of Twin (wool/nylon) in Stromboli, a cheerful mix of bright blue, green, and a touch of brown. I have a specific project in mind for it, but it's a secret for now :)
I also got a beautiful wooden shawl pin and a set of Addi circular needles - flexible cables, sharp tips, and smooth nickel-plated finish - what are marketed as "sock rockets" in the US. The tips are respectably pointy, though not as lethal as my HiyaHiya sharps. Time will tell whether these become my new favorite needles.

After Loop and a pub lunch, we visited Nest, which I might go so far as to call my favorite London yarn shop. It's small but manages to pack in a wide range of yarns and notions, and the atmosphere is very inviting. The only downside is it's a bit difficult to get to, tucked away in Crouch End. However, it is well worth the journey!
This time around at Nest I picked up another beautiful skein of Malabrigo Sock (likely to become a shawl), in the devastatingly beautiful colorway Archangel - a gorgeous layered blend of red, orange, and purple. I also got some clear snaps for cardigans, some KnitPro cables, more darning thread (can never have too much, nor in too many colors), and a sweet bluebird tin to keep it in.

After Nest, we still had some time before shops started closing, so we headed off on foot towards the Handweaver's Studio in Seven Sisters. I had never visited this shop before, but wow, am I glad I had the opportunity! When you first step into the shop, you are surrounded by bags overflowing with combed top, in all manner of colors and fibers. There's an extensive selection of spinner, weaving, and textile-related books on the shelves, and that is before you even reach the shelf upon shelf upon shelf of coned yarn of just about any sort you can imagine, and a few you couldn't (paper? glow in the dark? rubber jelly cord?).
I could have spent hours wandering around, and certainly hundreds of pounds, but seeing as my yarn budget was running low I left the shop with just one precious book - Margaret Stove's book on spinning merino - which is out of print and which I've been wanting for quite some time.

I returned home on the train, exhausted but very satisfied - with my purchases, with my experience being in London again, and with spending time with some lovely Ravelers.

~Joyuna

Tour de Fleece: Angora/Merino blend

Tour de Fleece seemed to have gone by in a flash. It's over now, and I didn't finish everything I wanted to, but I did finish quite a lot and started on other things too.

One of my projects for the tour was this braid of Angora/Merino blend, which I dyed myself.

I plan to knit this gradient yarn into a shawl. The spinning isn't going quite as smoothly as I'd hoped, however. First, this top is quite a difficult spin. The fiber got compacted during dyeing, and the angora is very slippery, so even after fluffing it up it's tricky to draft. I pull at it and before I know it the fiber has slipped away and my spindle is on the floor. Ack.


My dye job wasn't super-even, either - it's blotchy, resulting in areas of super-saturation next to long lengths of pale pink. This yarn won't line up as evenly as the gradient I spun before, I can tell. It's going to be a little wilder, a little more rustic, a little more "conspicuously handspun". But I'm making peace with that fact. It's not perfect, but I do like the yarn I'm making.

And it's so, so soft.

I'm spinning it with a woollen-ish draw, and a tight twist - I did several samples and that's the combination I liked best. The yarn doesn't have much of the characteristic angora halo, yet, but that will develop with time. Hopefully the tight twist will reduce the risk of major shedding.

The shawl I'm planning to knit is a pretty simple half-circle shawl, mainly stockinette, which will allow the yarn to take center stage - it's going to be the star, without anything complex trying to compete with it. But before I think about that too much, I need to focus on getting the spinning done!

~Joyuna

Open Letter to Wensleydale Sheep

Dear Wensleydale,

I'm sorry if I've ever said bad things about longwools in the past. I didn't understand you back them. You don't act like the wool I'm used to, and I was prejudiced, and I regret that. You are really something special.


Before, I didn't understand what to do with you. But now I recognize your true beauty. Combed out into little nests, spun fine, something magical happens. It's like if wool and silk and mohair had a baby together. Lustrous and sleek, and no, not an all-rounder, not good for every project, but more of a specialized fiber. And I feel like I've finally hit your sweet spot, and it's glorious.


Plus, you're like the Komondor dog of sheep.

Odelay!
(source)
~Joyuna

Tour de Fleece!

It's the most spinning-y time of the year! Tour de Fleece has started, and, while I tend to treat every day as if it's a TdF day, I look forward to some serious spinning.

Sorry if you're bored by my spinning posts :) I seem to write about spinning a lot more than knitting lately. I think it's because with spinning, I'm constantly learning something new. Knitting another pair of socks or another hat, I'm probably not learning much unless I'm specifically trying out a new technique. Maybe my knitting has fallen into a rut. With spinning it seems like I'm always learning about a new fiber, or improving how I ply, or trying a new prep... There is no such thing as a ho-hum, boring spinning project. It's constantly exciting to me.

The first few days of the Tour, I have some plying planned to ease my way in before starting any new projects. Here's my results of the first day:

It's three different colors of Romeldale/CVM, spun about sportish weight. I'm hoping they will make a nice hat (it would certainly never stretch out of shape!). I'm absolutely in love with that caramel color - I haven't seen very much sheep wool in a shade like that. I did have some Manx Loaghtan once that was a similar brown but a touch darker.

More plying is on the schedule for tomorrow: I have some Oxford Down sock yarn, and a few small skeins of Shetland to ply up.

~Joyuna

Finally a Niddy Noddy

Lately I've been investing in proper fiber tools (like my combs, which I now cannot do without) and it is well worth it.

Up until now, I've been skeining handspun yarns on chair backs, books, or bits of cardboard (which does have the advantage that you can take notes on it). But I figured I was well past due to get a proper niddy noddy.

I got it from Lazy Kate, who have a selection in a few different styles.

I have to say I'm impressed. It's a functional, reasonably priced niddy noddy with several thoughtful details. The wood is smooth and nice to hold (no splinters here!). It's made of pine so it's light and easy to manipulate. The arms come off easily for storage. And, most ingeniously, three out of the four arms have a knob on the end - to keep your yarn from slipping off - and one is missing a knob. Not only does this make it super easy to slip the skein off at the end - it also makes it super easy to count the wraps! Every time you wrap over the arm without a knob, that's 2 yards.

At first I wasn't sure how to wrap the yarn, but it's really very intuitive when you get going. You just go around and around, up and down. The very day it arrived I wound three hanks, no problem.


My hanks look nicer, my yardage calculations will be more accurate (cardboard can bend as you wrap), and it's easier to wind them, too. This is definitely an improvement to my workflow.

~Joyuna

Koigu, I love you

Sometimes hand-dyed yarn can be a disappointment. Sometimes it looks so lovely in the skein, but you just can't capture that magic on the needles.

But sometimes, a very special yarn knits up exactly how you expected it to.

The good people at Koigu are color alchemists. I've had this yarn for a long time, afraid that I'd ruin it by knitting it. I've always known I would knit it into Pomatomus socks, a pattern that somehow does wonders with hand-dyed yarns, no matter how chaotic they seem.

There are so many distinct shades in this skein of yarn - I've tried to decide how many, but I always lose count - but they all come together in perfect harmony. I just love this project.

And yet, I'm apprehensive - no matter how enchanted I am by the colors, by the yarn and the pattern, the yarn is 100% merino and I'm knitting socks. Historically, 100% merino socks have not done well on my feet. Koigu has a tight twist, and I'm knitting a firm fabric, but I don't know if that will be enough.

I long for the magical colors of Koigu with a bit of nylon - better yet, a many-ply yarn structure (Koigu is only 2-ply) and maybe not even merino. Short color repeats, nonpooling, myriad colors, hard-wearing sock yarn - any suggestions?

~Joyuna

Romney lace, hot off the spindle

An FO! An FO! It feels like I never finish anything these days, just start new things and leave the old to the wayside.

Does it count as an FO if it's only yarn? I don't know. I don't care. It's a spinning FO to me. It's a finished object, and that object is a skein of yarn.

2 skeins for one project. The white is locks from my British Romney fleece. The grey is Romney, too - American Romney leftover from the American breeds workshop I went to. It's just a tiny bit, 5g or so, but I thought it would be nice to use the two Romneys in a project together.

I am totally jealous of all these American colored Romneys, by the way - practically every American Romney fleece I see on Ravelry is some beautiful shade of gray or brown! I only ever see white around here.

The gray locks were markedly different from the white - I don't know how much of it is the US/UK difference, and how much is just variation between fleeces. The gray wasn't quite as long, and with not as tight a crimp. The gray Romney was thoroughly scoured, while there was still some lanolin left in the locks that I processed myself - so the spinning process was also different.

I plan to use these two cousins together in a shawl - Emanuela is my current top choice - striping the gray & white for the body portion, and the lace border being all in white.

~Joyuna

Epic Ball Winding

I just wound a 300g skein of Wollmeise lace...

(that I picked up at Knit Nation - the colorway is Dora, a lovely deep true blue)

...into a ball. By hand.

I put the massive hank on my swift, but this incredible chunk of yarn, 3 or 6 times the size of the average ball of yarn, simply wouldn't fit on my ball winder in one piece. I didn't want to break the yarn if I didn't have to, and I quite like winding balls by hand, so that's what I did.

Wollmeise Lacegarn is much thicker than your standard lace yarn, really more of a light fingering. Still, a 1740-yard ball is nothing to sneeze at. I was very careful in my winding, focusing on the geometry of the ball, making sure the center was clear, to avoid any yarn-barf situation.

Some people watch me winding my balls like it's witchcraft, but I really find ballwinding soothing and enjoyable. The feeling of the yarn running through my hands, the opportunity to catch any knots in the skein - I like it much better than the sometimes floppy, half-hearted cakes that come off of my clunky 20-year-old ball winder.


At the start of the winding, I keep my fingers in the center of the ball to function like a nostepinne or a ball-winder core, giving space for the yarn to relax in the middle of the ball. After I take my fingers out there's no need to wind loosely after that - because once I've knit past the point I wound with my fingers as a core, all that middle yarn is gone, giving space for the tighter outer yarn to relax. If you wind everything too loosely, the whole thing would collapse either from the inside or the outside.

I wound in layers evenly around the ball. I don't generally have much trouble with yarn barf, or with collapsing balls until near the end, so I think my ball-winding method is solid - but I've never wound a ball this big before, so I guess we'll see!

~Joyuna

Sheep in my Heid

I'm dreaming of sheep in all sorts of colours.

I've decided to spin some yarn for a Sheep Heid, a colorwork beret in 9 natural sheep shades. The nice thing about it is it only needs about 10g of each color. So, it was the perfect opportunity to dive into my spinning stash and pick out some great British wool.

My nine shades are -

White: Shetland, from J&S
Cream: Kerry Hill, from Rosewood Farms
Beige: Boreray, from Spirit Trail (RBST 1 - Critical)
Grey: Bluefaced Leicester, from Wingham
Light Moorit: Castlemilk Moorit, from Spirit Trail (RBST 3 - Vulnerable)
Dark Moorit: Manx Loaghtan, from Parvabrook (RBST 4 - At Risk)
Brown-Grey: North Ronaldsay, from Scottish Fibres (RBST 2 - Endangered)
Very Dark Brown: Soay, from Parvabrook (RBST 4 - At Risk)
Black: Hebridean, from Parvabrook

Everything is from my stash except the 3 breeds from Parvabrook. They offer whole fleeces, prepped fiber, and yarn from several different breeds, and purchasing from them was a smooth process. The Hebridean and Manx were both smooth and great to spin. I especially liked the Hebridean - it's somewhat scratchy, but something about it makes it really pleasurable to spin. The Soay is more of a challenge, being shorter, more bitty, and having more veggie matter in it. I don't mind, though - for such a hard-to-find breed, I will take what I can get!


A couple of the other breeds I'm using were sourced from Spirit Trail Fibers during my last visit to the US. It did feel a bit silly bringing home British wool from America, but I was placing an order anyway and these were some breeds I hadn't encountered in an already-prepped form back in the UK. (I also picked up some of their Hog Island, Gulf Coast Native, and CVM roving.)

The spinning is going quickly, but I'm not sure when I will actually be able to cast on. I have a lot of projects on at the moment, and a lot more I want to make... It's only a hat, so hopefully it will be pretty quick, but it is an intricate stranded colorwork hat, so maybe not.

~Joyuna

One fleece, Three ways

Recently I got a kilo of shearling Romney fleece from Pippajo123 on eBay (recommended!). eBay can be a gamble when it comes to fiber, but I've been lucky and gotten some great stuff, and this fleece is no exception. Lustrous, long, fine, and a lovely crimp too. Before this I wouldn't have described longwools as 'versatile' - but I'm spinning this fleece in three different ways.

The majority of the fleece is getting spun worsted style into a DK/light worsted 2-ply yarn, tightly plied. This yarn has the best of both worlds - luster and bounce.

I'm hoping I will end up with enough yardage for a vest (I will probably dye the yarn before knitting). I've knit up a tiny swatch and I really like the fabric it's making.

Next, I took some dark grey mohair and blended it into the Romney, and I'm spinning this (chain-ply on the fly) into some sock yarn.
The mohair and wool don't draft together evenly, so this will actually knit up stripey as well as heathery.

Finally, I've given some locks the individual hand washing treatment and flicked them out into beautiful smooth handfuls. I'm spinning this finely into a gorgeous lace yarn. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm really excited about it.

Basically, this fleece can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't even sure if I was going to love it, when I made the purchase - I mostly favor the springy bouncy wools. But this stuff is just divine. It definitely warrants a different kind of spinning than a downs breed - namely All Worsted, All the Time. I did spin up a little sample in a more woolen draw... It just took all the magic out of the yarn. It definitely wasn't what this wool wanted to be. So, I obeyed the wool, and am spinning it all strictly worsted to bring out the gorgeous pearly shine of these locks.

~Joyuna

Getting Technical

Since I'm spinning up (another) sweater from my big load of Polypay, I want to make sure the yarns I'm spinning are consistent. I have a problem with consistency - not so much over the short term (my yarn isn't necessarily thick-and-thin), but more over the long term. That is, the first ball of yarn I spin can be very different from the last ball I spin - in terms of thickness, as well as amount of twist.

One way to deal with this is to spin all the singles first and then ply the thick ones with the thin ones to help with consistency. Another way is to pay more attention as I spin - it's time to get technical.

I've always been a very 'seat of my pants' spinner - I enjoy the state of flow that I can get into while spinning, and I care less about the results. But, I know I will grow as a spinner if I learn to pay closer attention to the yarn I'm making. The numbers have always frightened me - twist angle, wpi, tpi, ypp?!

Luckily, there is help out there. Ravelry, of course, is a wealth of information - some of my favorite spinning groups are Spin Tech, Advanced Spinning, and Spindlers.

But one thing that is really helping keep me on track is an app I just discovered - it's called iSpin Toolkit, and it's available for iOS. I wish it were on Android too, since I would love to have it on my phone, but luckily I do have an iPod Touch.
The app has a few different features - the most useful of which for me are the twist angle measure and the wpi gauge.

I do always measure wraps per inch when I'm skeining up a finished yarn, but I don't measure singles and it would break the flow of spinning to take out a ruler and wrap yarn around. This is more like those spinner's control cards - a series of horizontal lines and their wpi equivalent (white lines with a red border - when you can just see the red but can't see the white, you know you've got it right). It only takes a second to check that my single fits the same bar as it did at the start of the project - perfect!
There are also a bunch of different spinning-related calculators included in the app, but apparently many of them are based on an erroneous formula so I would take them with a grain of salt. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the developer is working on the app anymore. However, the twist angle and wpi tools are useful enough that I still think I got my money's worth, even without the calculators.

So between the app, spinning all the singles before plying, my effort to increase my focus, and a little card with some samples to refer to, I'm hoping to keep this project consistent over the course of nearly 800g of fiber. Time will tell!

~Joyuna

Polypay sweater! (I'm getting crazier by the minute)

I'm just back from visiting the USA to see my family - it was a great trip, albeit rather last-minute. Right before I set off, I decided to order a few things that would be hard to find back in the UK. And by 'a few things', I mean two pounds of wool...

The majority of it is Polypay wool roving (actual carded roving, not combed top - I'm not sure why so many Americans can't tell the difference) from Shady Side Farm. I was absolutely thrilled to find this shop - you might remember I encountered Polypay before at a workshop. And I quote...

"I would love to make a nice cushy (but still sturdy) sweater from this stuff. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get ahold of more Polypay in the future..."

Well, I did! Shady Side's Polypay is softer than the fleece sample I worked with, better reflecting its Targhee ancestry. I cannot say enough good things about this wool - soft, bouncy, very easy to spin. And yes, I'm planning to spin a sweater out of it, so it's a good job I'm pleased with it!


I have a pound of natural undyed roving and three balls of dyed wool in teal, yellow, and brown. I think it's a really nice combination (for a striped or colorwork yoke). I haven't decided yet whether I'll dye the white yarn or leave it natural. Another color would be hard to coordinate with the set I've already got, but I don't wear white or cream very well. We'll see...

~Joyuna

Sweater Crazy

I'm not sure what's come over me lately - all I want to knit are sweaters. I haven't finished any yet, but they're going quicker than I expected.

Sweaters, for me, are always more of a product knit than a process knit. I soon get bored of long stretches of a single stitch pattern, so for anything larger than a pair of socks, I need to motivate myself with the fact that it will be a really useful finished product.

There are practical considerations too - I don't really need more shawls or fingerless gloves. Even though I like knitting them, I already have more pairs than I will ever wear. A bunch of sweaters are more useful in that regard, plus the fact that since they're slower to knit, they'll pile up less quickly.

So a combination of those reasons, the stashbusting I'm taking on this year plus cleaning out my queue, and a general mood I'm in, has caused me to want to knit sweaters. Lots of sweaters.

Layter is coming along well. I've started the first sleeve, but I needed the tips for another project so it's temporarily on hold.

Katie is a quick, simple pattern with a beautiful colorwork band. It's an ideal way to use up leftover yarn that isn't enough for a whole sweater - the colorblock look is in, but I like how the simple stranding in this pattern softens the transition.
I'm knitting it in Ethical Twist, a sadly discontinued wool-alpaca blend that is beautifully soft, organic, and naturally colored. I got a few skeins each of white and brown - I've already knit a few stripes of my Layter with it, and I'm hoping to make a matching hat for Katie with my leftovers.

I've also cast on my first all-handspun sweater from some bouncy and soft grey wool. It definitely has a rustic feel, but I don't mind. I'm alternating two balls via the helix technique so that inconsistencies between balls are less noticeable.

~Joyuna