From Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia. Knit with handspun yarn from organic merino/silk/firestar Abby batts, spun on a 0.4oz Greensleeves Ethan Jacob spindle. Still a lot left over from my two ounces.

The organic merino makes for a fabulously soft and squishy yarn. Plus, it's a happy, happy orange. :)

As usual, I've been doing lots of knitting and spinning, and not nearly enough photo-taking. But I shall leave you with some shots of my most recent spindle, a Bosworth Moosie whose whorl is made from moose antler.

Mouse nibbles!

This month marks the first anniversary of my spinning endeavors.

Laceweight. Fiber: Merino/bamboo batts in Walnut from Juliespins. Spindles: 0.5oz Bosworth featherweight for spinning, 0.6oz Tracy Eichheim ultralite for plying.

I spin pretty much every day on my spindles--I prefer them for spinning laceweight, which is (surprise!) my favorite yarn to knit with. The wheel is often neglected for long stretches of time, but I do like using it for heavier weight yarns, like this sport-ish weight 3 ply:

Fiber: Finn in Acadia, the September '08 Spunky Club offering.

Come to think of it, I think February 2008 was also the last time I bought commercial yarn (gasp!). I have more than made up for that in fiber purchases, though. (My Enchanted Knoll Farm collection is becoming epic....)

Pattern: Peacock Tail and Leaf scarf from Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia. Yarn: handspun laceweight from Orange Blossom organic merino/silk/firestar Abby Batts.

Because when there's handspun (possibly sparkly) around to be knit, nothing else feels quite so nice and special....

Hello, again!

The camera, sunlight, and I reconnected yesterday, so I have something to show. As noted in my last long-ago post, this is the Gibbie Shawl by Gladys Amedro. Yarn spun from 8 ounces of Enchanted Knoll Farm batts in the Fern colorway on my little Bosworth featherweight spindle--though I used less than 6 ounces for this project. Meaning I have lots of lovely Fern laceweight yarn left over. :)

In other news, I can't blame schoolwork for my blogging absences anymore:

!!!

See? I actually haven't disappeared off the face of the earth. :)

I have been pretty wrapped up in these Fern batts from Enchanted Knoll Farm, though. They're a blend of superwash merino, tussah silk, and angelina dyed up in a fabulous array of greens.

Since I'm spinning these into a laceweight yarn on a featherweight spindle (Bosworth birdseye maple, approximately 0.5 oz), I've been spending a lot of quality time with this fiber. I started out with 8 ounces and am now down to less than 1. I'll miss it when it's gone, though....

My goal with this fiber was to spin enough yarn to knit a square Shetland shawl. I'll probably end up with about 2100 yards, which should be enough for the Gibbie Shawl from Gladys Amedro's Shetland Lace.

My photography hasn't quite caught up with my progress, as I've already finished the edging and have started the center portion of the shawl. I love the way that the color variations in the fiber are working up in the fabric--interesting, but still subtle enough not to overwhelm the lace patterning. Even with the sparkly gold angelina popping up all over the place. :)

And so I finally get around to posting photos of my completed Icarus shawl.

To recap, the yarn for this project was spun on my Bosworth midi spindle from the incredibly gorgeous Lady Starlight batts from Enchanted Knoll Farm. Four ounces of this fiber yielded about 1,000 yards of two-ply laceweight, so I still have a bit left over. Perhaps more Orchid Lace Mitts are in order?

This is one of my favorite projects to date. Fun to spin, fun to knit, and the finished shawl turned out just as I had hoped. I've also found that I really like spinning laceweight on my spindles (and have recently acquired a few more for that very purpose). Soon I will have to spin some crazy amount for a nice square Shetland shawl of some sort.... :)

While I wait for my completed (!) Icarus to dry, I offer you some photos of the project that resulted from my first sparkly batt.

This is where my sparkly fixation all started--the batt is called Glacier Lake and comes from the fabulous Butterfly Girl Designs Etsy shop. It's a 70% superwash merino, 20% bamboo, 10% nylon firestar blend with a bit of angelina thrown in.

Spun on my beloved Bosworth midi spindle, the yarn ended up somewhere between a heavy laceweight and a light fingering weight. I'm not a bamboo spinning convert yet--I thought it was a bit tricky--but I'll give it another try eventually.

And then I made up a simple scarf pattern using a motif from the Estonian lace knitting book Pitsilised Koekirjad. Shiny!

I didn't mean to be gone for so long, really. But now that the Long National Nightmare of my summer classes is finally over, we can get back to the business of talking about making stuff.

I have to admit right up front that the other thing I've completely neglected this summer is the Princess shawl. I finished the center and started the top border (the homeward stretch!) and promptly lost all steam. It's waiting for me patiently, and it will probably continue to do so for a bit.

Meanwhile, I've been spinning. And also experiencing some sort of personality shift where I now think that spinning sparkly, shiny, angelina-filled yarn is the best thing ever. Me, the smooth and subtle laceweight purist.

Take, for instance, the Enchanted Knoll Lady Starlight batt above. It's a fluffy, gorgeous blend of hand-dyed merino silk in a range of blues with sari silk strands and lots of angelina thrown in for good measure (sigh... the pretty....). I've been spinning a laceweight yarn on my spindle and started knitting it up this weekend.

I'm completely enamored with the colors and textures. And sparkles.

This is the beginning of Icarus, a striking pattern that nonetheless has enough stretches of plain stockinette to showcase the yarn, I think. In the past, I shied away from this pattern because I was afraid I'd get bored with that stockinette. But working with handspun seems to provide excitement enough on its own.

Way back when, at the Connecticut Sheep and Wool Festival, I bought a pound or so of Shetland fluff to play with.

Courtesy of a sheep named Roger.

I've spun up a bit of laceweight, and am testing the waters of another Gladys Amedro shawl.

It's a bit hairy, though--so I'm not sure this is the yarn's ultimate fate. Or if I want to commit to spinning this much cream-colored laceweight all at once. Maybe I should concentrate on one monster project at a time (yes, I'm looking at you, Princess).

I've been getting a lot of spinning practice in, to the detriment of the knitting. Silly scant 24-hour days. (Although I did start the final center repeat on the Princess shawl! Soon I'll be back to that exciting edging again!)

Anyway, the above specimen is from four ounces of handpainted Blue Faced Leicester in the Raspberry Sherbet colorway from Lone Star Arts. Spun on the wheel--315 yards at 16 wpi.

One ounce of handdyed Shetland roving from The Secret Pocket. Spindle spun--135 yards at 14 wpi. So springy and nice!

Undyed merino laceweight spun on the spindle. 296 yards at 20 wpi.

Fiber festival madness starts here this weekend! However. I must stop thinking about sheep and study for my final exam in cataloging. Must. Study.

But it's so hard with the new toy sitting across the room....

Another small project--A Stork's Nest Scarf by Nancy Bush from the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Piecework magazine. I used a merino laceweight from Fearless Fibers in the colorway Rubicund. Such a pretty and squishy yarn....

Still with the spinning:

The spindle-spun Coopworth from the last entry, plied and finished at approximately 14wpi (fingering weight).

And a pretty Romeldale/CVM blend from a sort-of-local shop (Mocha's Fiber Connection), spun on the spindle, also approximately 14 wpi.

And, as some of you may have anticipated, I was unable to resist aquiring a wheel. It's the folding single treadle, and I bought it from Spunky Eclectic, along with some fabulous fibers that you'll probably see around here in the near future. :)

Hello again!

It's been a while, hasn't it? I've been working on a lot of little projects in addition to the Princess behemoth--above we have the Orchid Mitts by Anne Hanson of Knitspot. These were really fun and they've kept my hands nicely warmed in the chill of the library. I used some leftover KnitPicks Shadow laceweight and knit the shorter version. An excellent pattern, and I expect I'll knit more in the future.

In Princess news, I'm about 80 rows away from finishing the center of the shawl (!). My progress has been a little slower than usual, because I rediscovered my spindle a few weeks ago and have been pretty obsessed with the spinning thing:

The Coopworth roving and spindle were given to me by a very lovely person a while back. It only took me three years or so to get around to using them. :)

And now I can't seem to stop....

Something finished, finally: the South Seas Stole by Laura Patterson. Knit with Heirloom Knitting merino lace yarn on 2.75mm needles. Embellished with size 8/0 silver-lined glass beads from the local bead store.

Even the knitted-on edging was enjoyable with this--I think beads add greatly to the fun. :)

Since I used a finer-than-laceweight yarn, the stole is much shorter than specified in the pattern--about 60 inches rather than 72. I could have added more pattern repeats in any of the lace sections, but I'm just too lazy, I guess.

Now, back to Princess knitting....

I've been knitting from this cone of yarn for over three months, but you'd hardly know by looking at it.

Instead of placing all the live border stitches on holders, I decided to leave them all on the needles and knit back and forth, short-row style. Excellent for picking up and attaching stitches, not so great for progress photography. I think I'm on the seventh repeat of the center motif, but I haven't really counted lately. All I know is, there's a lot there, and there's a lot to be done. :)

At this point in the project, I'm suffering from a lot of yarn envy. Every pretty skein I see for sale on the internet, I want to possess, particularly if it's handpainted, variegated, or striping (hello, Kauni). Normally I would stay away from these kinds of yarn for lace knitting, but I think the endless sea of pale blue has triggered an unexpected rebellion in some part of my subconscious....

So knitting the practice swatch for the laurel leaf insertion was a bit...fraught. I'm not sure how many times I knit it with unsatisfactory results before realizing that the problem was not my tired brain, but rather an error in the chart. For those of you planning to knit the insertion as charted in the 2007 version of the pattern, be warned that there are two extra rows in the chart--I could only make the laurel leaf tips line up properly by skipping from row 7 directly to row 10.

Usually I'm one for charging right ahead in my knitting, but I'm glad I took the sensible swatching route before attempting this seemingly harmless chart over 600+ stitches.... In the end, though, I am very happy with how elegantly this little insertion has turned out.

After the laurel leaf incident, I was a bit cross with the Princess for a couple of days. But now I am well into the center portion and all is forgiven, and sweetness and light have returned. Although I am back to resenting work and classes for getting in the way of my knitting.

Thanks to the three-day weekend bonus knitting time, I completed the Princess border charts. Now for six rows of plain knitting (ew) and the insertion before figuring out the best way to hold all those live stitches while knitting the center.

The South Seas stole is shaping up to be a lot of fun. The beads are nice and shiny, which pleases both me and the little magpie who lives inside me.

This freewheeling knitting pace will surely slow a bit since my spring semester classes start tonight. I've been in denial.