My last several posts have featured my adventures in spinning and dyeing my own yarn. And that has been a marvelous, and educational process. I've loved some of my results, and not loved others so much . . . But, the one thing I haven't done -- yet -- is to knit with my own handspun yarn.
Oh, I have been knitting. The latest grandbaby is due at the end of October, or thereabouts. So, my, yes indeed, I have been knitting. But NOT with my own yarn. Above the is baby cocoon I just finished.
Below is a finished hat.
And an unfinished hat . . .
There are some sad things about this little hat . . .
Which brings me back to "do," as the song says. When I finished as much of the sad little hat as I could stand last night, I decided I'd try my new, large Hiya Hiya interchangeable circs, and some of my handspun. I have a little hank of something between chunky and ridiculous in plied weight, and thought . . . I'm up anyway, let's see how quickly I can knit a hat out of this. Do you remember that I mentioned being mathematically challenged? Well. Away I went, casting on size 10 needles with the super chunk yarn . . . and it didn't go so well for me, needless to say. The length I frogged would have easily accommodated Godzilla (if I could catch him to try on a chunky hand-dyed superwash hat!).
This morning I went to Ravelry and found a recipe for a hat, in fact, two hats, one adult and one baby. I'm sure there's enough in this hank to do an adult, and possibly enough to do two baby hats.
I'm thinking that knitting my own handspun is ultimately going to make me a better spinner. This hank represents one of my first Navajo plying attempts . . . and it's pretty awful. I hope that when it's knitted up, I won't be ashamed to wear it. Or maybe I'll knit a baby hat for winter, and hope that the weight of it won't collapse the baby's skull! And if all else fails, I can frog it and combine it with a complementing color and make a seriously funky scarf!
More about that later.
And on the subject of more later, I was looking on the Ravelry used tools forum, and found a person looking for some Addi Clicks. Well, I had a set of the lace clicks, and I have tried to love them. You have no idea how much I've tried to love them. And I do love some things about them. The certainty of the "click" join. I love that. The smooth, relatively sharp tips. I love that. The lack of swivel cable, I don't love. The "bump" at the join, which always seems to snag my yarn no matter what I do, or what I'm knitting; I really don't love that. So long story short, I traded my Addis for two sets of Hiya Hiya Interchangeables.
Below is a finished hat.
- It may be too big for the baby, but not big enough for an adult. What can I say . . . I'm mathematically challenged.
- Although it's working up beautifully with the tag ends of two skeins of yarn, I'm just not going to have enough yarn left to finish it. So . . . either frog it, rewind the yarn and do something else, or bust open a new skein and have not enough of it left to do a full pair of anything other than anklets, or YET ANOTHER baby hat in this color . . . (yikes), or abandon the project.
Which brings me back to "do," as the song says. When I finished as much of the sad little hat as I could stand last night, I decided I'd try my new, large Hiya Hiya interchangeable circs, and some of my handspun. I have a little hank of something between chunky and ridiculous in plied weight, and thought . . . I'm up anyway, let's see how quickly I can knit a hat out of this. Do you remember that I mentioned being mathematically challenged? Well. Away I went, casting on size 10 needles with the super chunk yarn . . . and it didn't go so well for me, needless to say. The length I frogged would have easily accommodated Godzilla (if I could catch him to try on a chunky hand-dyed superwash hat!).
This morning I went to Ravelry and found a recipe for a hat, in fact, two hats, one adult and one baby. I'm sure there's enough in this hank to do an adult, and possibly enough to do two baby hats.
I'm thinking that knitting my own handspun is ultimately going to make me a better spinner. This hank represents one of my first Navajo plying attempts . . . and it's pretty awful. I hope that when it's knitted up, I won't be ashamed to wear it. Or maybe I'll knit a baby hat for winter, and hope that the weight of it won't collapse the baby's skull! And if all else fails, I can frog it and combine it with a complementing color and make a seriously funky scarf!
More about that later.
And on the subject of more later, I was looking on the Ravelry used tools forum, and found a person looking for some Addi Clicks. Well, I had a set of the lace clicks, and I have tried to love them. You have no idea how much I've tried to love them. And I do love some things about them. The certainty of the "click" join. I love that. The smooth, relatively sharp tips. I love that. The lack of swivel cable, I don't love. The "bump" at the join, which always seems to snag my yarn no matter what I do, or what I'm knitting; I really don't love that. So long story short, I traded my Addis for two sets of Hiya Hiya Interchangeables.
I admit, I was a little alarmed by the trade prospect. I've done a lot of buying and selling on eBay, and really like PayPal buyer protection. So this was stepping out on a kind of faith I've been quite short of for a while now. Fortunately, my trade partner is possessed of a high degree of ethic. I took a bit of a loss on the trade, looked at monetarily. The Addis were barely used, and I paid full retail. However, the "I don't loves" about them outweighed the "I loves"; and I really love everything about the Hiyas, including the beautiful cases. I'm trying to discipline myself this summer to sell or barter that which no longer "grows corn" for me . . . get rid of the old and make room for the new. But that's another whole separate rant.
In the meantime, I'll be knitting.
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