Episode 130 Live: Corespun, textured crepe yarn & gradient weaving

Thank you for being here today, especially those who were able to make it to the Live Stream. I appreciate your time spent here in this place and me. I hope you feel most welcome because you are welcome here.

In today’s show, we chat about some making that I’ve been working on these past few weeks, including a finished woven gradient scarf for Norah and two skeins of textured yarn. I also started a new spin with my distaff and am loving it! Enjoy the show!

Welcome & general chatter (00:20); mail-out (06:02); special offer – free ebook & softcover copies available (08:02); intro video (13:14); reflections on ebook (13:50); breed & colour study discussion – graffiti scarf, handspun skeins & beginning shifty cowl (15:32); spinning growth (26:17); expectations & ‘Instagrammable’ items (33:55); finished objects – SweetGeorgia Yarns SW BFL corespun (38:20); crepe yarn (45:17); handspun, handknit Hyssop shawl (49:55); sweater fit & reflections on Shoreline Vest (ripped out) (52:53); gradient handspun, handwoven scarf (1:02:10); playfulness (1:09:45); handwoven Gingham tea towels in 2/8 cotton (1:11:01); goodbyes (1:13:31); credits & co-executive producers (1:14:05)

Live Chat Assistance here.

Giveaway

Post no. 17 – jem13 (Eileen): The hardest thing for me ,is being consistent, start out fine, I test all along the way, but when I knit with it it feels different. Not by much but different. So I knit Shawl’s or things that doesn’t matter so much. I have spun a sweater ,and love it but not quite consistent.

Send me your address Eileen and I’ll pop one of those batts in the mail for you – tell me which one you’d like! For our giveaway for December, there’s a Special Offer running on Patreon throughout this month – it is for a free ebook from me to you! It is all the How I Spin: A Sock Study PDFs that I have written over the past couple of years, compiled into one place for you to enjoy. Check out the landing page of Patreon for the tiers in which the Special Offer is listed! For current patrons in the Spinning Circle or higher, please check out this post here.

We also have a giveaway on the show this month – the second batt to giveaway! Please post on the December Episode Thread something that you would like to spend a few months learning – like we did with the sock content. It can be anything from spinning consistently to textured yarns. I value your ideas!

On Wool n’ Spinning Radio, a giveaway was announced as well — please remember to have a listen to Episode 45 to enter! It will be released later this week to ALL patrons of the community!

Breed & Colour Studies

Megan (@lykkemeg) posted her finished project! And wrote:

Here’s the project! My graffiti scarf! yarns are in post #45. It was fun to weave an “art scarf”. I ‘ve never done that before. I didn’t set the yarns until after i wove the cloth. they were a little twisty to work with, but not too bad. I am not sure it made a big difference in the final scarf, but it was fun to experiment. The Polwarth is sooo soft!

Maggie (@Nestingmag) posted in no. 55 her finished yarn of the white & brown and said:

I finished spinning the braid with white and brown and am so thrilled with my finished yarn. I still have to spin the other braid and then see how they knit up in a project but I just wanted to share. I’m in love with this yarn!

Sera (@sera) posted her finished yarns and has started knitting on the Shift Cowl. She wrote:

I’ve finished my Yarn B from my breed and colour studies that I’m planning to use in Andrea Mowry’s Shift Cowl. It is basically a white version of Yarn A and then Yarn C will be the brown version. I’ve been doing them as traditional 2 plies because I wanted a 2 ply yarn and also I wanted to take advantage of optical mixing in the colours. I don’t have combs or anything to blend the sections together with so I have been splitting each ‘chunk’ vertically within each section of shade/colour, attenuating them a wee bit, and then combo spinning them with the ‘top’ of one and the ‘bottom’ of the other to blend them as much as possible within each chunk. I was definitely glad to have chosen the optical blending advantage of the traditional 2 ply once I got to plying Yarn B. There were several plain white sections in each area and they luckily didn’t ply with plain white at any point from the other bobbin so it evened things out. I must have mis-weighed (can i use that as a word?) the yellow, though, because I had a lot more yellow (and total fiber) on one bobbin, so I had to break it and wind into a center pull ball to ply the yellow in, then join back in with the green that followed and it finished off fairly matched up! On to Yarn C! Loving this little play with colours.

Thanks so much for sharing!

Spinning Growth

Reminder to share your yarns and projects that you want to ‘reflect’ upon – it is an opportunity as a community to learn from our ‘mistakes’!

Wendy (@WMcN) posted:

Here is my spinning growth. I bought a beautiful gradient skein from hilltop cloud… I wanted to make something really special for it, for myself, showing off the beautiful colour changes.

I split it in 2 and spun both halves to a bobbin and then plied them together to make a 2 ply gradient yarn. (I didn’t take a photo of the yarn) and then searched for a pattern for a scarf. It needed to be just right…

I choose this one Dreambird KAL

And cast on…
It was my “train work” for knitting on the train on the way home so took me about 10 months though it did go on hold for a short while to make some baby cardigans.

And I just don’t like it. I know the photo is gorgeous.

What happened?? It starts with the plying… I wanted the colours to match up but they started to drift apart from each other in plying. Rather than break the slow changing ply and lose some yardage, I carried on… And on… Still unhappy about the matching up of the colours (yes, I know the scarf still looks great but it’s just not quite the vision).

Then, having found the pattern, I jumped straight in and started knitting. No swatching. The pattern didn’t help as the way it’s knit doesn’t lend itself to understanding how the final project will end up. You knit feather section by section gradually moving around the curve. I thought from the start that the scarf was going too be too narrow but couldn’t quite work out how wide it would be… So I carried on..

It seemed to take forever to see the colour changes but I kept on going… And going until I used up all the gradient yarn so it’s really a bit long for what I tend to wear too (dangles in the water when I wash up). Added to that, about half way aroun I decided that the inner edge knits with too little give in it… The edge is made up from cast off stitches which don’t have much give and that’s the bit which is next to the neck, so if you pull it, it’s like cheese wire. Something like an I-cord would be nicer but the cast-offs are done as you knit the feathers so no way to go back.

Looking at the pics of other people’s projects, I realise that largely my expectations of width were wrong too. They are not that wide.

What did I learn… Pay attention to colour changes and break a ply if needed. Swatch – even if it’s hard to analyse the pattern. Really study other people’s pictures for the aspects you’re interested in, and listen to your instincts… I knew the pattern wasn’t working for what I wanted quite early on but convinced myself it would be fine.

It’s still a lovely scarf and I have had compliments in the supermarket on it… But I don’t love it and will probably rehome it.

These are some incredibly supportive words from the community:

Susan (@knitnskate) wrote:

Thank you for sharing. It’s beautiful, but I totally get your disappointment. However, it’s heartening to me to hear someone else say, “So I carried on.” I do that thinking that somehow things will magically work out… the uneven color in the ply will even out, the cast-off will loosen up, the size with somehow just adjust….

Congratulations on persevering. Someone will be very lucky and appreciative when and if you do rehome it.

Tessa (@TessaW) wrote:

I can identify with your challenges here – I see the issues developing but nevertheless I persist when stopping and reconsidering would be my best course of action… What stops us from stopping, I wonder?

I try to remind myself not to be like Homer Simpson chasing his roasted pig through Springfield – “It’s just a little slimy, it’s still good, it’s still good!” If I’m starting to make excuses I need to stop… really… like, it’s time to stop… I know I should be stopping now!

Sigh. I often fail to follow my own advice and end up not as happy with a project as I could have been.

At least you have a beautiful scarf to show for it!

Thanks so much for sharing and for the support you showed one another!

Finished Objects

SweetGeorgia Yarns spectra six-pack Corespun yarn

• Colours include: juicebox, orchid, persimmon, lemon curd, melon, glacier
• Blended on my drumcarder with undyed white, washed fleece and sparkle
• Corespun over commercial yarn
• Fibre was from Spinzilla 2016

Homemade batt with gold, sparkle, silk noil crepe yarn

• Broke down and spun end-to-end, then 2-plied
• Crepe plied with gold thread – sort of thick and wirey but perfect for my wreath display
• Not quite finished yet! Reveal soon!

Yarn Ink Gradient Scarf

• Gradient singles spun in 2017, largely matted and fulled fibre – difficult to spin at the time
• Made thick n’ thin singles without meaning to but had two gradients
• Kept in stash all this time – pulled out and decided to weave up a scarf!
• 5EPI on Ashford SampleIt 10” Loom – used about 2/3rds of the width

Works in Progress

Hyssop by Leila Raven

• Ripped out a previous knit to re-claim this yarn
• Was torn about which pattern to choose out of Leila’s new book, To The Point: The Knitted Triangle.
• Wanted to knit something that would really showcase the yarn because this is still to this day one of my favourite yarns! Chose the pattern with the wrapped stitches
• Pattern calls for aran weight yarn – substituting sport/light DK and downsizing my needles to 4mm from the called for 5.5mm for a slightly smaller shawl

Weaving

Tea towels & bath sheets for the girls (Norah & my niece) – 2/8 cotton and cottolin

• Will discuss them when I am finished – weaving at 18EPI
• Have not had a chance to really work on them over the past couple of weeks
• See The Wool Stream for more!

Housekeeping

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Unbraided – EBOOKS available here & book orders can be made here.

Changes to the publishing schedule means a steady drip of content all month! Please watch your Patreon emails for content that you are subscribed to as the month unfolds. At the moment, patrons of Wool n’ Spinning Radio EARLY RELEASE is available, as well as the monthly teaching content for ALL patrons! This month, our 51 Yarns SAL this month is all about cabled & boucle yarns!! Please check out this post for the intro VLOG.

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Thank you so much for joining me today! I hope you enjoyed it. I look forward to seeing some of you next week in our Bi-Weekly Wool Stream – I hope you are able to join us. Until then, Happy Spinning!