Friday, October 9, 2009

I Only Knit Tiny`s Sweater

Fall is here, and I must say I have never been so excited by the season! I have always enjoyed fall, I love the crisp air and how everything manages to smell clean and delicious, even in the city. But this fall in particular I am excited about. This fall I am a fully addicted knitter and spinner and I am nesting. What a perfect combination for the season. Lately I have been knitting a lot, spinning often and gotten back into dying now that it's not so hot that the dye pot turns my house into a vinegary sauna.
Tiny's sweater is coming along slowly. I knit the first ball of yarn in one day and that was a huge mistake. The yarn I am using is called Samband. It is a discontinued Icelandic Lopi. It is incredibly inflexible for a few reasons a) it is single ply so it doesn't have the boing of a 2ply. 2) It is Icelandic wool that hasn't been dehaired so the hair holds it together more than straight fleece does (think mohair). iii) This wool is at least 3o yrs old. Stored very well, but despite that it is very, very dry-which obviously lends nothing to the elasticity of the yarn. Add into that that I am knitting it at a firm gauge and it has cables...well that spells pain. The 2 subsequent balls of yarn have taken nearly a week each to knit. I can't do more than 4 or 5 rows at a time because it hurts.
Now I had vowed that I would knit NOTHING else until I was done this sweater. This is not an entirely unreasonable goal for me, I have knit other sweaters to the exclusion of all else. So while I was knitting only Tiny's sweater...I was knitting very little because I could only knit 10-15 rows day at most, and that was all I knit. That drove me pretty batty for awhile until I realized that spinning is not knitting. (C'mon...it's SO not cheating...) so I did a bunch of spinning. Then I realized that dying is also not spinning, so I did a bunch of that too. Soon I was nearly in the full throes of fibre induced euphoria, and still not knitting very much. it was great for a few days, until I got to the point where I realized that i was significantly increasing my yarn stash (good) but not decreasing my stash at all because I wasn't really knitting (bad..ish).
I knit an alpaca scarf out of roving. That doesn't really count, because it only took an hour and a half to knit, and everybody know that if you don't reach that critical threshold of several hours, it`s not really knitting.
Than I knit a pair of mittens. This also didn`t count because I knit it out of handspun that I specifically spun for mittens and I was experimenting with mitten design- i am trying to design a better fitting mitten both in the the thumb and the top of the hand. It`s going very well so far. It fits my hand fabulously...although apparently not everyone has hands shaped like mine...
Right now I am knitting a hat from some red and plum colour Blue Faced Leicester wool that is plyed with sky blue bamboo. this also doesn`t count because I am knitting it to donate as a door prize for the Kamloops Arts Council AGM on Tuesday.
So really...
I have only knit Tiny`s Sweater...

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