After a challenging and somewhat hectic first quarter of fiber crafting, I fully planned to come here and tell you that Q2 was going to be much more mellow. I was maybe going to do one or two group challenges, but was otherwise planning to work independently on WIPs and other skill building projects. Sounds great, doesn't it? And then folks started announcing the Q2 challenges and well, so much for that plan. The good part is that the inherent nature of the Q2 challenges are laid back, so it shouldn't get too crazy.* All of the challenges I'm currently working on (or will be working on) started on April 1st, so I will tell you about them all now.
Spinning Challenges
While spinning is a year long activity, there is often a greater emphasis on spinning when the weather starts to warm up and folks are less inclined to knit (well, some folks--the rest of us pull out our cotton, linen, and bamboo yarns and keep on knitting away). So you will see a lot of spinning out of me this quarter and into the summer. I have two current challenges that are specifically for spinning:
Spin Your Stash Q2: Spin Colorful
From the group that brought us the "Spin A LOT" challenge comes the "Spin Colorful" challenge. And it is basically as simple as that--we pick some colorful fiber and spin it and share our pretty pictures. And natural colors count also, so if I wanted to spin some grey or brown fiber, I could do that and still be participating. As quantity is not an issue, I plan on spinning various things as the mood strikes me, but I will primarily focus on the golden Muga silk we talked about back in January. See, I told you it would get some attention this year.
Woolery/Louet Spring Training
I believe this is a brand new event. It is being hosted by one of my favorite stores, The Woolery, which is where I purchased my looms and the Muga silk among (many) other things, and Louet North America, distributor of many wonderful yarns and fibers (including the Shetland and, I think, the Muga silk). The idea is to practice spinning in anticipation of the big annual events that occur in the summer and fall, specifically the Tour de Fleece in July and Spinzilla in October. We'll talk about those later in the year when they come up, but for now just know that they are BIG EVENTS for the online spinning community--to the point where, as you can see, people begin training for them months in advance.
Anyway, the quarter-long training is broken up into suggested monthly challenges. And they truly are suggested--we are invited to make up our own challenges if the suggested ones do not inspire us. The suggested challenge in April for intermediate/advanced spinners (if I may be allowed to label myself as such) is to practice spinning different breeds of sheeps' wool and compare them. Since I like the suggestion, that's what I plan to do. The breeds I have picked out to spin (all from stash, of course) are Wensleydale, Polwarth, Bluefaced Leicester, Lincoln, and the Shetland (as an excuse to keep the momentum going with it--I will have my coat!). I'll provide details about each of the breeds in later posts as I spin them up.
Open Challenges
The next couple of challenges are based on inspiration from a theme and are not craft specific. In fact, they are not really even challenges--they are really just fun "craft alongs."
Folklore and Fairytales Spring Read/Craft Along: Sleeping Beauty
There is a wonderful group on Ravelry called "Folklore and Fairytales." It is sort of a combination of book club and fiber arts group. I first found them a few years back when they decided to start a Tour de Fleece team, which they called "Team Tale Spinners." I originally joined purely for the name, but as luck would have it, they turned out to be a lovely group of people and I have continued to spin with them every year. I also joined the main Folklore and Fairytales group, but have mostly just been a lurker and have never participated in their quarterly craft alongs. That changed this quarter when I saw that Sleeping Beauty was one of the themes they were voting on (it just barely beat out "Rabbits," which for many would have meant re-reading Watership Down, I imagine). Sleeping Beauty has always been one of my favorite stories and was my favorite of the earlier Disney princess movies. And, of course, the most popular version has a spinning wheel in it, so what is not to love?
As you can tell from the name of the challenge, there is a reading element as well as a crafting element. We don't all read the same book. Instead we choose our own reading material and share our thoughts about it. For the read along portion of the challenge, I am focusing on three books: While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell, which is one of those novelized retellings that are so popular; the Sleeping Beauty section of Sleeping Beauties: Sleeping Beauty and Snow White Tales From Around the World, edited by Heidi Anne Heiner; and the Sleeping Beauty chapter in The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim.
For the crafting portion, I was actively looking for an excuse to work the Muga silk I'm already going to be spinning into this challenge as well and was excited to find in the Sleeping Beauties book that there is a sleeping princess tale from India called "The Petrified Mansion."** Of particular interest, the prince finds the princess lying on a bed of gold and SPOILER ALERT wakes her by touching a gold stick to her forehead. Since Muga silk is a gold-colored fiber from India, mission accomplished! So for my project I will be spinning the Muga silk and will weave it into a golden shawl.
Birthstone/Birth Flower KAL
Once upon a time (i.e., February of this year), in the wilderness of the Cold Sheep and Friends group, a voice called out, "Hey, do you think it would be cool to do monthly KALs using that month's birthstone or birth flowers as inspiration?" And the people cried, "Yeah, sure, why not?" And thus was born the Birthstone/Birth Flower KAL. (Even though we call it a KAL, it is really just another any fiber-craft along.) I skipped February and March in favor of other challenges, but I'm hoping to start participating regularly because it really is a fun idea. For April, our inspirations are diamonds, daisies, and sweet peas. I will use some of my handspun, pictured below. (The fiber was dyed by Twisted Sunshine Design.) The colors remind me of the various colors of sweet pea flowers.
I will use the yarn to make a scarf with a lacy diamond pattern.
Miscellaneous (a/k/a "The challenge that I am not particularly enthusiastic about but feel I must do anyway")
Yarnathon Q2 Team Mascot Challenge
The second quarter challenge for the Eat Sleep Knit Yarnathon is to make your team mascot. I am part of Team Octopurls, so we each are supposed to make an octopus. We can't do something octopus inspired--the project has to either be in the shape of or include an image of an octopus. And it must be made of yarn purchased from Eat Sleep Knit. As I previously mentioned, usually you earn points in the Yarnathon by buying yarn. Since I am cold sheeping, I am a bit of a liability to my team and am trying to make up for that by faithfully participating in the challenges. Here's my issue. Sure, it's a cute idea to have us all knit an octopus (or a monkey, or a robot, or a dinosaur, depending on the team). However, ESK sells higher end, mostly handpainted yarn. I have plenty of ESK yarn in my stash, but I promise you that I did not purchase any of it with the intent to make an octopus out of it. So I am a tiny bit miffed, but still want to support my team. I haven't totally figured out what I'm going to do, but I'm leaning toward an octopus finger puppet or pencil topper, because that is about how much yarn I'm willing to sacrifice for this silly endeavor. We'll see though. Maybe I'll end up deciding that I need a handpainted octopus stuffed toy or an octopus lap blanket (not likely).
In the background
In addition to the challenges, I have various things I'd like to accomplish over the next few months:
- Finish the Precious Hoodie
- Finish my three sleeveless top WIPs from my February 2nd post
- Build my weaving skills
- Practice colorwork techniques (such as double knitting, mosaic knitting, and other techniques I'll discuss when/if I get around to practicing them)
Special Feature: A Study of Plying and Color
I'm currently working on a spinning project that I thought I would share with you all in a little more detail than usual. I am spinning some multicolored blue fiber that I hand dyed myself, as pictured below.***
When you spin yarn, you spin one strand at a time. This strand is called a single. It can be thin or thick or both thick and thin--whatever you choose to get the yarn you want. Sometimes your single is your finished yarn (which is then referred to as a "singles" yarn. I do not know the etymology that is behind "single" being made plural, but that is what it is called). There are many reasons for choosing to make a singles yarn: It often feels softer than a plied yarn; it is rounder than a two-ply yarn and results in nice plump stitchwork and cables made from singles "pop" very nicely; it is half the work of a two-ply yarn. And so on. For this particular variegated fiber I am using, the advantage of a singles yarn is that it has really nice long runs of the individual colors of the fiber, as you can see from the picture below:
The disadvantage of a singles yarn is that it is structurally weak and easy to break. It is also more prone to pilling and otherwise becoming quickly worn. So a singles yarn might work well for a scarf or a shawl that will have light use, but you might not want to make a sweater or gloves or anything else that may experience a lot of wear or friction. (For example, I made the moebius scarf with a singles yarn.)
With respect to weaving, a singles yarn can be used for the weft, which is the yarn that runs horizontally across the woven item, but it is challenging to use it for the vertical threads, or the warp. While on the loom, the warp fibers are constantly under very high tension and are also subject to abrasion, particularly with a rigid heddle loom.**** So there is a great potential that a singles yarn would break or shred (and then break) if used as a warp.
So this is where plying comes in. Obviously, a two-ply yarn will be stronger than a singles yarn (and a three-ply will be even stronger, and so on). However, when working with a variegated fiber, if you just ply two singles together you will most likely sacrifice the long runs of color and instead end up with a barber pole effect as shown below:
That's my little discussion of color and plying. I am looking forward to getting all of the blue fiber spun up. As you may have guessed, I am planning to weave with it, so I will let you know when that happens.
Precious Hoodie
Here is the progress on the Precious Hoodie:
It is just pinned together for photographing (and I also tried it on--it's fitting just fine so far), so I still need to sew the front and back together, and make the hood and sleeves.
Weaving report
I have been wanting to practice making patterns in my weaving, so I made myself a cotton hand towel:
I almost forgot--my final yardage for the Mad Dash was 5,395 yards (3.06 miles) because I got a good start on my towel before I ran out of time. Not bad for six weeks of work.
Well, that's all for now. Hopefully this made up for last week's "too short" post!
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*I would question my self-control, but I know about the many, many challenges going on that I'm not participating in. For example, I skipped Malabrigo Madness, which is a mass cast-on challenge held every March (Malabrigo is a brand of yarn (of which I have a whole bunch in case you wondered--the moebius was made from Malabrigo yarn)). The goal is to cast on (i.e., start) as many projects as you can during the month--not to complete projects, just start them. So you end up with a bunch of WIPs at the end of the challenge. Yikes. And I don't participate in the HP Knitting/Crochet House Cup, which is an ongoing challenge in homage to the Harry Potter books where you are sorted into a "house" and you earn points for your house by taking up to 6 "classes" every month with themed homework assignments. You can also do advanced quarter long projects to earn "OWLs" or semester long projects to earn "NEWTs." Et cetera. You get the idea--I have actually been showing a great deal of restraint!
**It is available online if you would like to read it for yourselves: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sleepingbeauty/stories/petrifiedmansion.html
***I used a fun technique: you take a very long length of white wool and powdered dyes of various colors and you coil a section of the wool into a dry stock pot (that you never plan to cook food in again) and lightly sprinkle the darkest of the dye colors you have chosen over it. Then you add another coil of wool and the next darkest dye, and so on until you reach the top of the pot. Then you gently pour water that has been mixed with a weak acid (i.e., vinegar or citric acid) over the contents of the pot, cover it, and slowly heat the pot over low heat to set the dye. You end up with wonderfully variegated fiber.
****I am not going to go into the mechanics of a rigid heddle loom (at least not at this time), but if you'd like to read about it, here is a link: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-rigid-heddle-loom.htm
*****Also referred to sometimes as "Navajo plying."
