New Year Projects

The first scarf woven on the rigid heddle loom is done.   I'm super happy with it.  This photo doesn't quite show the colours accurately, but it's a denim or greyed blue in several different tones and some rusty oranges and reds.   It's quite pretty and wove up even nicer than I expected.   It wasn't quite what I was going for when I dyed the yarn, but I used a warm colour tone set, rather than the cool colours that I normally use.     The colours were a warmer blue, which I adored and a soft red, rather than the cool fuchsia.   The denim blue is a great colour, soft and warm.     The scarf is long enough that I can double it and weave the ends in the resulting loop, for a cozy and fancy scarf tie.   It has enough drape to make it hang nicely, but not so much that it scrunches into a scarf that won't keep you warm.  It is wool though, so I'd expect that.    Being that it was $12.99 for an 8 oz ball, with 465 m, it's really cost effective for a single scarf.   And it was unexpectedly soft for the double win!

These are the mittens I knit from the fibre exchange.   I got some shetland/blue faced leicester cross and some of the same blended 50/50 with alpaca.   I'm still of the opinion that crossing the shetland and the BFL doesn't make a nicer fibre.  However, blending it with the alpaca blend did improve it a lot.

The shetland/BFL was a very, very dark navy.   The alpaca blend was a natural colour.   It was all carded into rolags, although the natural coloured rolags were quite fat and didn't hold together in the roll.   As I was going to re-card the natural anyway, I took both colours and randomly added them to the hand cards and carded them.   If I'd wanted a homogeneously coloured yarn, I would have weighed out the rolags and divided them up with exactly the same weight of each colour in each rolag.   Because I wanted some variation, I just put a bit of each colour on the cards and went to town.    I'd card up about 5 or 6 rolags at a time and then spin.    I did divide the yarn on to two bobbins, partially filling them up, making sure that one had more yardage.   Then I plied them together.  When the bobbin with the lesser yardage had emptied, I wound the rest of the singles from the 2nd bobbin into a centre pull ball or cake, and plied the ends together.   I knew I would need most of the yardage to make a pair of mittens for me, and I didn't want to waste any.

I knit it up using needles a size or two too small.   This took extra time to knit, but the tight stitches make them more wind-proof, so well worth it.   It also uses more yarn, but I have small hands so just had enough.   The mittens are warm. They are thick, stop mos of the wind and are great for hauling buckets of water and food out to the barn.   They have also become my go to mitts for our walks.

These are this year's festive Christmas socks.   This was just when I'd finished the second sock and they haven't been blocked or washed yet.   They knit up quickly and easily.   I was quite happy with them.   The price was good too, as it was just under $10 for the 100g skein, which is for 2 socks.   Considering I was also knitting a pair of socks from a skein which cost $35, I was quite impressed.  

Yes, the expensive yarn is softer.  It was a fancy hand dyed yarn.  Plus the yarn, while stunning in the skein and most alluring, knits up to a pooling pattern.   The colours which took centre front in the skein are not the ones which really show up much in the knitted fabric.  Not only that but I couldn't find any pattern which would work.   My first two socks were in my standard 3/1 ribbing pattern, and even that was too much for the pooling.  

  I ended up knitting most of the second sock before I realized (yes, tried it on) that it really wasn't going to fit.    I had to rip back almost two full socks.   The third sock I started using plain stockinette stitch, works better with the pooling, however that sock is too big.    Right now, the yarn is in a time out, in a ziplock and going into the sock yarn bin.   I won't let myself be lured in by spectacular dye jobs anymore.