From the Jack Frost Blouse Book Vol. 44, copyright 1945 Gottlieb Bros.

V Neck Blouse

(more…)

Don’t blame me for not blogging - blame the almighty Wheel! I’ve caught the spinning bug, and ever since I started a little more than a week ago I’ve been unable to stop myself from spinning, even to knit or blog. Both my knitting and new entries have just had to wait. But hopefully I can make it up to you with some yarn pr0n.  Homespun yarn pr0n no less!
The yarn I enjoyed making the most was the one that came out the most primitive - this plied yarn from Lorna’s Laces top:

Here’s what else I’ve been up to on the wheel:

The two grey are Corriedale - one plied, one a lumpy but more passable single (and the first since my last post), then the brown is this lovely alpaca and the white is my first attempt at a Merino single. The next experiments were much better, and led to this:

The merino is plied with a teensy strand of thread-thin silk, which was a royal PITA to spin but which came out nicely.
This would normally be the part where I’d put in a disclaimer about how I’m really knitting, but that would be a lie, and my mother told me that lies are wrong even in cyberspace. My knitting has spent the last week sitting forlornly to the side, totally untouched. Today, as I realized that my thumbs hurt from spinning and that I had started to spin in my dreams, it occurred to me that knitting again might be nice too… but I haven’t detached myself from the wheel just yet.
I won’t bore you with the other thing that’s been on my mind - how to deal with gummint bureaucracy - but suffice it to say that Hell is most certainly a crowded waiting room in which your name just never seems to be called.

More later as I peel myself away from my preciousssss and give my poor thumbs a rest… I owe you people another vintage pattern, tout suite!

It’s official - spinning has the addictive power of crack.  I’ve been busy spinning away - okay, I admit it, the spinning wheel has eaten virtually all of my knitting time (and for that matter, virtually all the time in which I have not been eating or sleeping.)  The new wheel is a joy to use, and it’s certainly getting a workout.  Here’s day one’s output, ordered first to latest from top to bottom:

Yes, it does all look like yarn barf, but look how much more even and how much thinner that yarn barf really is after a little practice!   On day two I had a revelation - using a death grip on the roving = bad - and my spinning immediately got better.  I spun two bobbins’ worth of singles and plied them together to make this bulky but surprisingly passable two-ply:

And here, much less artfully done, is some Lorna’s Laces top I spun up (badly) as well:

I have to say that the LL top, while fun to see spun up, was a bit of a PITA - I think it felted a little during the dyeing process, and on top of that it’s a very short stapled fiber.  I just went to pick up our order the other day at the Lorna’s Laces factory, and given how hot the dyepots looked, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit!  (Pity those people, my friends.  It was 100 degrees plus outside with 70% humidity, and there they were standing over twelve dye pots in their unairconditioned environs.  They suffer to make us such pretty yarn, I think.)

Finally, I gave into temptation and wound a little of the silk I had.  Sure enough, it was easy as pie - spinning into a  lovely dk/light worsted weight I will actually be able to use!

Needless to say, I’ve found a friend in my lovely little wheel.

More later (and, possibly even a return to knitting…)

Sorry I’ve been a bad blogger - it’s been too hot to think, let alone post. The heat has reached 100 degrees here in Chicago, and I haven’t touched a stitch of knitting since. But there’s been something much more exciting afoot here at Kitchener Bitch headquarters - namely, a spinning wheel!

I bought myself an Ashford Traveller, and it arrived yesterday - or rather, what seemed like a tree trunk, a whittling knife, and 10,000,000 screws arrived yesterday. Here are the cats, surveying the daunting task on my behalf:

I won’t get into the details, except to say that three hours, much swearing, and a bottle of wine later, Mr. KB and I had it up and running - the second time WITHOUT the treadles backwards:

W00t! I have already spun one bobbin’s worth of yarn and it’s a lovely thing - although it’s about as thick as BurlySpun, it’s amazingly even (compared to my drop spindling, which looks crazy and Rastafarian.) I’m astonished by how smoothly the yarn spins on the wheel as compared to my crappy drop spindling. Even in my untrained, skill-less hands, the yarn comes out much more even and consistent.

I promise I will knit again. In fact, here’s a current project which I swear is not a voodoo doll:

I’ll just leave the explanation for that to your imagination for now, and sign off with the promise of more actual content tomorrow!

Yes, it’s yet another woven scarf. Truth be told, there’s not much else you can make out of a 14-inch loom, but if I always had yarn as beautiful as this I would never tire of it:

It’s lovely handspun and hand-dyed yarn, from Froux2zj on Knittyboard. I’m not sure what kind it is, although if I had to hazard a guess I’d say Corriedale. Froux2zj gave me three skeins, but I was so anxious to use it that I had it on the shuttle before I could take a photograph, so this is what’s left. With a little Cascade for the warp, it worked up beautifully into this candy pink scarf:

I know, I know, scarves are EXTREMELY low-hanging fruit. But I needed a break from knitting after my latest travails with The Very Contrary Argyle.