Socks of Joy and cleverness!

I'm slightly obsessed with socks.  I think they're somehow the epitome of knitting.  As if, once you knit socks, you've finally arrived.  Keep in mind I only started to feel this way after I figured out how to knit socks, but I digress...

The benevolence and patience that is my husband, tells people he knows when I'm knitting socks because my language takes a turn for the worse.  Heels in particular make me cuss.

These are some of my early attempts.  They all have their little flaws, but I love them because I made them.  All by myself!  The obnoxious pink and purple one is from my very first pair.

Now, this next pair is a stroke of self-proclaimed genius on my part.  I won't tell you how much I paid for the sock yarn in question, because you will fall over.  What I WILL tell you is that I will never buy this yarn again.  I walked through the heels of these socks on their very second outing.  Since this is some of the prettiest yarn to which I've ever succumbed, to say I was upset doesn't quite cover it. 

Enter Handspun Yarn ex Machina!  The new heels on these socks are handspun, navajo-plied Wensleydale.  Wensleydale is a coarser wool than you'd ever buy in a commercial garment.  Its staple length (the length of the individual hairs) is roughly 8 inches, categorizing this as a longwool.  Merino, by comparison, has a staple length of around 1-1.5 inches.  The long long staple length of the Wensleydale means that it will wear like iron.  The heels of these socks will probably be unearthed, in totally wearable condition, by archeologists after Battlestar Galactic becomes our Bob Dylan soundtracked future.   In short - I'm awesome and these heels please me to no end.  

Lastly, we have a heavenly slice of someone else's genius.  These are knit from self-striping, self-patterning yarn, handdyed by The Painted Tiger.  They are brilliant!  I'd lost my knitting mojo (knit-jo?) for a couple weeks, until I saw this yarn.  It's so not me, I tend to hate self-patterning sock yarn, but I could not resist this particular siren's song.  I took this picture approximately one and one-half days after the yarn arrived at my door.  Bliss.

Now, tell me, doesn't that make you want to knit socks, too?  

Sampling

I'm usually too much of a weenie to do any sampling when I spin.  I don't want to waste a single gram of my delicious handdyed fibers.  Ironically, fabulously handdyed fibers are generally the ones that would benefit the most from sampling.

As I'm still learning how to photograph things before I start deconstructing them, there are very few beginning-of-this-project pictures in this post.

If you'll recall the singles mentioned in THIS post however, we'll get off to a decent start.

These singles are Targhee wool in "Garland" from my Hello Yarn fiber club April shipment.  They are bright and happy and wonderful, but I only have 8oz. and I'd really like to stretch it as far as possible.  

My May shipment of club fiber is a luminously sinister set of colors in "Cauldron," also 8oz.  

I really wanted to combine the two - mainly because that way I'd end up with almost a pound of the same yarn, but also because I've been dying to blend up two colorways and see what happens.    I asked the wise yarn sages over at ravelry and was informed that it would either be a brilliant pairing or a muddy mess.  Ugh.  

I braided the two colorways together (you're going to have to take my word for this as there were no photographs taken,) and asked the long-suffering Mr. YarnMadeMe for his opinion.  His answer of "I have no idea, you're the yarn expert" was both flattering and totally unhelpful.  

This is where sampling comes in.  I split each long strip of roving into six (more or less) equal widths and spun one long strip of each color, plus another half ounce of "Garland" on it's own.  

The horribly edited photo above is fairly representative of the outcome.  The skein on the left is 1ply each of "Garland" and "Cauldron."  The skien on the right is "Garland" alone.  While I'm completely in love with "Garland" all by its vibrant lonesome, I love the blended skein enough that it's where I'm headed next in the particular yarn adventure.  

Stay tuned for picture of a POUND OF SUUUUUUUUPERYARN!!  Dun dun dun!

Batts in the Belfry...

I have not been able to get these batts off my mind.  Apparently, this state of affairs gives me corny post titles.  I'm going to run with it. 

I'm hoping to participate in this years Tour de Fleece on Ravelry.  The basic premise is to set a spinning goal for yourself, and spin towards it every day that the tour rides - ostensibly watching the tour now and again.  There are teams to join.  I'm on Team Rookie and Team Monkey Farts, which is the Spunky Eclectic team, named after a favorite colorway.  The entire endeavor is basically a loosely organized, free for all, with prizes.  

In any case, I would like to try my hand at laceweight yarn, having never spun it on purpose.  I have big plans for a ginormous circular shawl, on which I can knit all summer, that will be light enough knitting for when it is 100 degrees outside.  We all know what they say about good intentions, so let's just watch this particular project out of the corners of our eyes, shall we?

The idea for this shawl was born of the most spectacularly blue fiber ever, dyed onto one of the scratchiest fibers ever.  So, I purchased a much softer blue fiber to go with it, hoping to end up with a heathered yarn that wouldn't tone down that magnificent cobalt too much.

Yes, intrepid readers, we're back to night-time photography!  The big twist of fiber in the foreground is the beloved blue.  The mess in the background is my concession to wearability.  In more technical terms, the cobalt fiber is 8oz of Norwegian Wool in "Violet Beauregard" by Spunky Eclectic, and the lighter fiber is 4oz. of Corriepaca (corriedale/alpaca blend) in "Blue Moon"  

I hated to tone down the brilliance of "violet" too much so I split up the fiber into 2:1 ratio and prepped it for the carder.  Each batt is two layers of "blue moon" alternated with 3 layers of "violet."  Nevermind the seemingly incompatible math, the fiber ratios are the same, I promise.  The "blue moon" layers are just thinner than the "violet" layers.  See?  My brain isn't completely gone.  

For a truly heathered batt, I'd need to run these through a couple more times, but now I'm looking forward to a bit of striping.  We'll just have to see.  

Don't check back for updates, just let them flow.  We don't want to jinx it.  Y'all know you're just here for my fabulous photography anyway.