August 31, 2011

Tog and Thel Together


Well, if the merino from yesterday was like handling tissue paper, this unseparated* Icelandic wool was like 30 lb bond.

It sits, untouched, because it came out differently than I intended and came out unsuitable to the purpose I'd picked for it.  These things will happen.  I spun it into strands that are too thin to have any loft or softness.


*Icelandic is dual-coated, so if the tog is not separated from the thel the results are hairy.

August 30, 2011

Combing and Salvaging Merino


Yesterday I told you Targhee wool has too little luster to suit my taste.  You may be wondering why I'm showing you a box of combed merino wool today since it has even less.

I bought the wool a couple of years ago before coming to grips with my predilection, before realizing how much a glossy sheen is necessary to my happiness.

I also didn't know at the time how much I prefer to spin well-prepared, lofty fibre without noils or sections that resist drafting.  When I bought this merino, the roving was the very opposite.  The seller told me so and showed me a sample of the rustic yarn the roving would make.  I said, oh, that's fine, and bought a pound because while I was informed my powers of discrimination were as yet unformed.  My fault and a forgivable one.

Now I have combed the merino.  I'd been meaning to do so for ages and it's good to have gotten that task off the "to do" list.  I feel like I've salvaged the purchase.

Sixty-one grams, or just over two ounces remain.  The matte texture remains.  The waste might be good for stuffing.  The combed wool is definitely going in the category of "wool with which to make gifts for family" not "wool for selfish knitting."  The preparation is good, the wool is fine, and only the longest fibres are left.  This combination would lend itself to an experiment in spinning extremely fine gauge yarn if I want.

The colour is a natural brown and the wool was probably raised in Alberta, both plusses in my book.  Natural colour in general, I mean, not this particular shade of warm brown.  I can see other people going crazy for it.  Me, I like natural wool colours in the clear grey range.

August 29, 2011

A Cuff to Test Wool


I knit a cuff out of a little leftover Sweet Grass Targhee wool top I spun into yarn last year.  The cuff was meant to show me how it wears and how I felt about wearing it.

This yarn was spun thicker than the fine fibre really calls for.  You could dispute that and say I just want every yarn I spin to come out fine and you might be right.  I untwisted a small piece and checked to see how comfortable I was drafting a thin strand.  I found I could get quite a fine gauge, so that was good.

The wool has a lot going for it: softness, attractive colour, traceable to a region and to a breed, North American origin meaning less distance travelled, that sort of thing.

I found myself looking at the cuff and reproaching it for having a surface that was matte, not lustrous like the wool from longwool sheep is.  The Targhee breed was derived from 3/4 finewool and 1/4 longwool sheep.  No matter how much I want to believe it will, the matte surface is not going to suit my taste.

August 27, 2011

Sheep Spotting


Saw some local sheep while on Vancouver Island.  I am looking up pictures of breeds, trying to identify these two.  Strikes me this exercise is something akin to bird watching.  Hampshire Down sheep, probably?

Back in Virginia, I amused myself by trying to identify breeds as assorted sheep milled around in a temporary corral and ring set up for a Mutton Bustin' event.  I recognized the distinctive Roman nose of some sort of Leicester and a curly topknot that looked like Cotswold.  Mutton Bustin' is part rodeo, part kiddie ride: a child in a vest and helmet holds on to the back of a sheep as long as possible.  Have a look on YouTube for videos if you like.

August 26, 2011

Shibori Wet-felted Bag


Here is my first wet felting project, a felted bag.  I was surprised how much I enjoyed scrubbing away at knitted fabric and making it change.  This bag works as a cover for a stainless water bottle.  It's just sturdy enough to stand up on its own.  It has bobbles where I did some Shibori.

To start with, I knit a tube.  Made the fabric more loose than I normally would because I read that as a rule you go up two needle sizes for knitted fabric you're going to felt.


I gave the fabric four unusual columns of stitches, creating the effect of squared-off corners.  The phoney seam technique comes from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Without Tears, where she drops a stitch, then does the ladder back up again by successively pulling one strand through the open loop as for normal knitting, then two strands through the loop just formed.  She uses it to create the appearance of a seam on a sweater knit seamlessly in the round.  I know I've said so before, but it's good to take a technique in a book that you understand intellectually and actually try it out.  With practice, I got faster at making the ladder run and doing up the stitches, and that was satisfying.  I like the appearance of the column of stitches, the way it stands out.


I didn't know it at the time but there really wasn't any point dropping the stitches and making phoney seams.  Wet-felting obliterated all traces of them.

Here is the Shibori I did, tying buttons under the fabric.  I forgot to cover the surface with plastic wrap to keep the surfaces from felting.  While felting, I had to rescue popped buttons and tie them back in.


The yarn that I made the felted bag out of was a skein I spun a couple of years ago.  I used hand dyed wool roving from Scarlet Fleece, a piece of roving she tested colours on and not a particular colourway.

I gave the skein away, then got it back, and then it lingered around because there was such a small amount of yardage and I couldn't think of what to make.  I even set the ball out at a guild meeting with a plea for suggestions but even though the ideas were well-considered, I felt fussy and disinclined to go with any of them.  I made a few false starts with the handspun but nothing stuck until now.

August 25, 2011

Mothproofing Pervasive in Commercial Yarn

I am not surprised by this.
Nowadays, most commercially spun knitting yarn contains a mothproofing ingredient.
–Margrit Lohrer, Morehouse Farm Merino Knits (New York: Potter Craft) p 33  
Makes me think of some vintage Mary Maxim wool yarn I saw in a Nanaimo, B.C. thrift shop.  The label said it was treated for moths.  I hardly ever look at commercial yarn but I was struck by the strangeness of a yarn label announcing the wool was treated with chemicals.  Lohrer's point, I think, is that you need to be told what's on the yarn because mothproofing is unadvertised today.  She goes on to say that her yarn is untreated.  The unspoken conclusion is that she believes untreated wool makes for a better product.

I like for information to be on the label.

August 24, 2011

Roundup Weed Killer and Sheep Fodder

I had no idea.
In Australia when a forage crop is close to maturity, producers apply a dilute application of Roundup to "freeze" the crop to retain protein quality.  They then turn the sheep in to graze.  Once the crop is harvested, the animals are moved to a different pasture, and the crop grows back.  Gary says the Roundup makes the plants "sick," but does not kill them.
–Tracie Roeder, "Where is Boddington, Western Australia?" Targhee Talk: The Newsletter of the U.S. Targhee Sheep Association, Vol 11 No. 3, July, 2011, p. 5

August 23, 2011

Rebecca Burgess' Fibershed Project

I am reading this blog, http://fibershed.wordpress.com.  Rebecca Burgess has set herself the challenge of only wearing clothing sourced from 150 miles around her.  That's fibre, dyes, milling or prep, fabric construction, tailoring, everything done close to home.  She aims to promote and reestablish local custom milling in her area in order to restore jobs, give artisanal fibre growers a place for processing material, and divert local meat sheep wool from the waste stream.  She demonstrates a high level of understanding of the local materials available to her through her use of natural, local dyestuffs and naturally-coloured fibres.  Examples include brown alpaca fibre, fennel or oak gall dye baths, and coloured cotton varieties from Sally Fox, breeder of Foxfibre.  By wearing unconventional clothing, Burgess opens a conversation about water pollution and occupational hazards from synthetic dyes, something she says she saw first-hand while travelling in Asia.

The results look stylish and her many collaborative projects make for vicarious thrills and aspirational reading.  The public reaction she gets is really something, both in comments posted on the website and from passersby in real life.  About a felted alpaca coat, the author posts on 2nd March, 2011, "it seems everyone dies for it when I'm walking down the street...there is some longing and pain involved when they realize it is not off the rack."

If you like to listen to podcasts and streaming audio while you spin yarn, Burgess has given some interviews: "Radical Ideas: Grow Your Own Farm-fresh Wardrobe," Crosscurrents from KALW News, June 8, 2011; "The Fibershed Project: Living One Year in Locally Grown Clothes," Sustainable World Radio, Oct 28, 2010*; and "The Fibershed Project," Cultural Energy, April 19, 2010.


*click on the little POD icon at the top left to stream audio if you don't wish to download the mp3 file.

ETA: the new Fibershed website is http://www.fibershed.com/.  Burgess also has a lot of online content at http://ecologicalartist.wordpress.com/.

August 22, 2011

one hundred twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh skeins


Spun a couple of skeins of Gale's Art Blue Face Leicester in a blue that was not named and was not a repeatable shade of hers.  One skein is 2 ounces and about 138 yards; the other is 1 1/3 ounces and about 112 yards.

Wasted 20 grams by combining three strands for a 3 ply and running out of one bobbin before the others.  I expected that would happen because my fingers just couldn't seem to keep the gauge fine on the first spindleful, not as fine as I meant it to be.


I began by spinning wool on my laceweight spindle.  I measured out the wool into three parts, spinning one and one-third ounces at a time.  Once the spindle was full, I transferred the singles to a bobbin and continued until all four ounces of wool were spun.  I plied using another spindle from The Spanish Peacock that I bought this year to use for plying after my old no-name spindle (the broken one held together with tape) finally had the biscuit.  It weighs twice as much as the laceweight spindle and has a deeper hook to hold thicker yarn.  Both are made of cherry and walnut.


August 20, 2011

Kitschy Vintage Plaques and Missing Wheel Pieces



Bought these two plaques at a thrift shop in Parksville, B.C.  Jenny Jones, above is spinning flax from a distaff, and the Welsh Woman is spinning with a great wheel.  There were some other plaques for sale as well, of ships or tavern scenes.  The hook at the back showed they are made in England.  A friend of the family tells me that these things were popular in B.C. for home decor in the 1920s.  I find them amusing, with their rough patina, inexpensive metal, and coarsely realized images.

Strangely, the great wheel is depicted without a spindle or maidens nor a bat head as an alternative to maidens.  I don't think this is a limitation of the medium, more likely a lack of understanding on the part of the artist regarding the way a great wheel should look.  And to have the Welsh woman holding out a rolag on top of a wool handcard with one hand and putting her other hand on the wheel, that pose is completely staged.

Around the same time I found these plaques, I drove through Ladysmith, B.C. and saw a great wheel set outside an antique shop to serve as as advertisement.  I was going down the highway at 70 km/h, so I can't be sure, but it looked as though the spindle and maidens were turned at an odd angle.

In an antique shop down the road in Chemainus, B.C. I saw most of a Canadian production wheel.  I say most because while the bobbin and spindle were there, the flyer was missing.  Imagine if you didn't know any better and thought you were getting a complete, functioning wheel.

August 19, 2011

Knaut-Rhuland House in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

What do you do when you go to a designated world heritage site in a really old part of Canada?  Go looking around town for evidence of handspinning.

I found it at the Knaut-Rhuland House museum in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.


The textile room at the back holds a comprehensive collection of tools and supplies that museum interpreters must find well-suited to teaching the public about hand methods of fabric production.  There is a great wheel with bat head, loom, inkle loom, warping board, spinning wheel, line flax, baskets of wool, basket of spindles and roving, swift, skein winder, hand cards for wool, handwoven fabric samples, a crude Turkish spindle made from twigs, and an enormous rustic forked distaff whose practicality I question.  I was interested the line flax, of course, but sadly wasn't able to find out where the flax came from.

bat head on great wheel
The Saxony spinning wheel had paint on the wood to highlight its turned details, a touch I've read is characteristic of wheels from French-speaking cultures in North America.  There was a similar wheel in the front room.
decorative paint on spinning wheel; line flax
Upstairs were the beginnings of socks on double pointed needles.


Also upstairs was a very old set of table linen labeled as a flax linen centre and serviettes.  (Canadians say serviettes, Americans say napkins.  I remember my Canadian-born grandmother once defended the word serviette, clinching her argument with the fact that napkins, nappies, go on babies' bottoms.)  The set was made locally by hand at every stage from flax seed planted by a settler who came to the area in the mid-1700s.  I won't post a photo of the linens because they are from a private collection on loan to the museum, but I will describe the workmanship.  The material is fine, even, and smooth.  Extensive embellishment was done in cutwork; that is, small holes were cut out in patterns and the edges bound with embroidery in the shape of leaves and flowers.  Vines and blossoms are embroidered on the solid parts.  I can't imagine anyone daring to wipe a greasy mouth with one of those serviettes.

In the narrow garden around the house were small sprouts, identified by the museum worker as flax, as well as dye plants at the back.

August 18, 2011

Acadian House Museum in Nova Scotia


Went to the Acadian House Museum in West Chezzetcook, Nova Scotia.  The kitchen is restored to look as close as possible to traditional Acadian life in the area, which lasted hundreds of years and ended around 1970.  The other rooms contain artifacts and exhibits that interpret Acadian society, religion, education, genealogy, and economic activities.  

The economic activities stood out for me.  Our guide stressed how many things the people put their hands to in order to make their livings and how marginal the profits were.  She also said they were canny folks.  The people around West Chezzetcook would buy goods one day's journey to the east from the people they knew there and then they would take the goods a day's journey west to the market in Halifax and sell the goods there for twice the price.  The Halifax customers (who were English-speaking) didn't know any better, and it sounds like the French-speaking Acadians relished having the advantage.  This makes sense in light of the British earlier having tried to expel the Acadians of the region.  The West Chezzetcook Acadians escaped expulsion by hiding inland with the First Nations there.  However, I think the Acadians at the Halifax market weren't the only ones getting the benefit of their horse trading and carting; the Halifax residents got convenience and that's worth quite a lot.

On a wall of the museum there is a newspaper clipping about an Acadian woman who knit traditional socks for the Halifax market and sold them up through the 1980s.  There's a photo of her in the article, knitting away at her stall.  The museum has some thick socks on display and some enormous sock blockers make of wire, with the thick wire bent into an outline of a sock.  

There is a swift and on it is the coarsest yarn I've ever touched.  No spinning wheel; the guide says the museum has artifacts that are donated by area families and I guess a wheel hasn't come along.  Someone had made and donated a small, handwoven child's coat, though, to show how children used to dress.

We ate lunch at La Cuisine de Brigette on the museum grounds and the women who ran the cafe told us that handspinners came to an Acadian conference one year to do demonstrations.  

August 17, 2011

Stack of 19th C and Early 20th C Books


One of the great things about a trip back to Canada is getting to scout the shelves of used bookstores and thrift shops.  Here's a stack I selected.

Roughing It In the Bush, The Backwoods of Canada, and A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada are all either epistolary or autobiographical, each written in the early 1800s by a British immigrant woman about her life as a settler in the British colony that would become the province of Ontario.  The Imperialist is a novel set in Ontario and written by a Canadian woman in the very early 1900s while an expat in Britain and India.

I read Roughing It In the Bush in university and I'd meant for a long time to get around to reading The Backwoods of Canada because I'd heard the authors, who were sisters, present dramatically different perspectives on much the same experience.  Frankly, Moodie's writing is painful and I wanted to read Parr Traill to wash the taste out of my mouth.  This second go-round, though, I feel more compassion for Moodie given all she had to put up with, and I find Parr Traill to be precious and unreal.

I have a hard time forgiving Parr Traill for evaluating the great wheel's value for settlers on the basis of how charming a young woman looks while walking back and forth spinning yarn.  Moreover, I find her meeting with the good wife who spins and outfits her family in homespun to be rather flat and static, like a catalogue description.  Compare that to Moodie's stories of the rascally, independent old handspinner neighbour who tries to cheat a young man by selling him re-footed socks.

The quaint title of A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada made me want to buy it, along with its self-portrait of the author looking someone on the front of a Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer novel.  I like Langton.  I can't decide whether she comes off well as a person compared to Moodie and Parr Traill–Langton strikes me as having been much better adjusted to the life of a settler–or whether I prefer Langton to them because she is a much less self-conscious writer.  Her letters and journals are directed solely to family members back in England and she never revised their pages for publication.  What I am trying to say is, she hasn't got an axe to grind.  She get on with things.  She writes:
One of the novelties John saw on his late trip was a lady knitting a pair of stockings in one, that is, doing double knitting from top to toe, and after taking off the latter, having the one stocking completed within the other.  This will be more interesting to Cicely than to you. The lady thought it saved time, I cannot understand how it should do so.  I do not, however, comprehend the performance exactly; perhaps I may be able to obtain some further information through John.  
She relates the information because she thinks this Cicely will find it interesting and possibly helpful, not because it will serve to dissuade would-be settlers from emigrating (Moodie) or prepare them (Parr Traill).  Langton finishes up by describing her current knitting project for her brother, a "pair of mitts for driving in, having a forefinger as well as thumb distinct, with space, however, for it to join its three companions, when not requiring its own separate home."  (Anyone driving in 1838 would be driving a team of horses.  Although I've gone by sleigh I can't remember how a driver holds the reins, but the shape of the mitts must make practical sense somehow.)

Duncan's The Imperialist is absolutely brilliant.  The author takes ordinary things and turns them into subtle commentaries on character, often as complete zingers.  This excerpt about a bachelor's housekeeper (where the omniscient narrator illuminates the bachelor's point of view) is better when read in context but I think you will get the gist: "Mrs. Forsyth was an excellent hand at pressed tongue [food] and a wonder at knitted counterpanes, but she had not acquired tact and never would."  Another character's industrious nature and perpetual state of indignation is established early in the book when the hired girl takes the May 24 holiday off without permission:
"I believe I know the reason she'll say," said Advena.  "She objects to rag carpet in her bedroom.  She told me so."
"Rag carpet–upon my word!" Mrs. Murchison dropped her knife to exclaim.  "It's what her betters have to do with!  I've known the day when that very piece of rag carpet–sixty balls there were in it, and every one I sewed with my own fingers–was the best I had for my spare room, with a bit of ingrain in the middle.  Dear me!" she went on with a smile that lightened the whole situation, "how proud I was of that performance!  She didn't tell me she objected to rag carpet!"
"No, Mother," Advena agreed, "she knew better."
I like how ridiculously unaware the mother is that she's advancing a specious argument.  Having a rag carpet in your spare room is not exactly the same as using a rag carpet yourself and it doesn't give you the moral authority to insist your employee like the rug as a hand-me-down.  Power relationships underlie the entire book, between people, town and country, Empire and Canada.  The narrator lets the reader in on all of it while the characters move between obliviousness, recognition, and epiphany.  It's done with a wonderfully light touch.

I read these books hoping to find clues about how handspinners used to fit into Canada's history and how they might again, and I found some.  You can't get away from imported cloth and Manchester gets mentioned quite a few times as the source of industrial production.  The settlers depended on their relatives in England purchasing and shipping goods to them.  Still there is some hand knitting locally, for personal use or for pay, and quite a lot of clothing and household textiles constructed on the spot.  The Imperialist is very good for getting an idea of how farmers' markets operated a hundred years ago, something that relates to the post I will do next.

August 15, 2011

one hundred twenty-fifth skein


My one hundred twenty-fifth skein is more superwash BFL spun to match the last couple I made out of this fibre.  Looks nice and glossy.  Right after I took the photo, I wound the skein up into a ball so I could get the mittens finished.

I may have mentioned that for a while now this gauge, this size has been more or less what I've spun.  My next skein will be spun the same size for singles but I will ply three strands together, not two.  I want some variety and I want the drape that 3 ply is supposed to give to knitted fabric.

August 13, 2011

Old Songbook with Turn, Turn, My Busy Wheel

I bought an old songbook published in 1940 for use in Canadian schools, A Song Book compiled by Ethel A. Kinley, because I liked the looks of it and wanted to learn some old-fashioned songs.

The book contains English words set to the music for Gluck's Dein Leben Sei Begluckt (Turn, Turn, My Busy Wheel).  I tried picking out the melody on a piano but found the words more interesting.  The spinner sits by firelight as she spins yarn, dreaming of her past when she was crowned Queen of May and wondering about her future.  "Will the frail thread of life I twine run as smoothly as thine?" she asks her wheel.

August 12, 2011

August 11, 2011

Sheep Beads


I bought these cute sheep pendants from Sandra, a glass bead maker and handspinner.  I got to choose from the many in her box of lampwork beads when I met her near Parksville, B.C.

It took me a while to pick the ones I liked best.  The beads are all a little different.  There are various colours, including colours never found on sheep in nature.  Each sheep has a unique expression that comes from the placement of the head, ears, and so on.  Some are round rather than flat in shape.

Sandra also had orifice hooks with sheep bead handles.

It was fun to listen to other handspinners pick over the beads and make jokes like, "This sheep is such-and-such a breed because its ears go up."  What was it, Cheviot?

As always, I need to disclose anything that might influence my opinion of an item: Sandra gave me a price break on the white sheep when she heard I was taking it back to my guild at home to put into our holiday gift swap in December.

Sandra can be contacted through her blog, sueze.wordpress.com; expect a bit of delay in reply.

August 10, 2011

Daring the Yarn to Run Out

The yarn stretched longer than I thought, reaching almost to where the pinky finger tip goes in the mitten.  Have dug out the remainder of the wool and started to spin more yarn.

August 09, 2011

Knitted Increases and Angles


Have finished the first white mitten and gotten part of the way through its mate.

This photo shows quite clearly the lines of increase stitches along either side of the thumb's base.  I think increase stitches work very cleverly to make the fabric go off at an angle.  Reminds me a little of those faces of forming crystals we had to learn about in introductory geology.  Something about a particular angle depending on the molecules and the structure, I think.  In this case the angle depends on how many increase stitches you insert over however many rows.

This is the fourth pair of mittens I've made and they've all had increases placed like this.  With the next pair I should try forming the thumb a different way, one where it doesn't angle out to one side, so I can broaden my experience.

I expect I'm going to run out of yarn before I get much above the mitten's knuckles.  Need to spin some more.

August 08, 2011

one hundred-twenty-first through -twenty-fourth skeins


Yarn spun from some dyed bits of wool roving marked "local" at the Loom, a supply shop near Duncan, B.C.  Must be from a down breed because the wool has a lot of springiness.  Squish it and it bounces back.

I find this wool more interesting after it's spun.  Spinning down breed wool is more of a chore than with other types of wool.  I have to tug at the roving in spots as I go because it won't draft smoothly, and I have to accept slubs.

The colour is what induced me to buy it.  The bin of wool also contained strips of roving in muddy dark colours.  It was fun to hunt for the bits of intense, clear colour that I liked.

One of the spinners I talked to when I visited Halifax, N.S. said that when she first started spinning she spun with down breed wool raised locally.  She switched to more conventional breed wool for handspinners afterward but she got the warmest, most durable socks out of that yarn.

August 06, 2011

Mitten with Just the Thumb Left to Finish


The first white mitten is almost finished.  Just the thumb to go.

The intended recipient likes to garden.  The puckish part of me wants to knit the thumb using green yarn.

August 05, 2011

Handspun in Newfoundland


Meet Bill.  Bill is from Newfoundland.  Up through his late teens, Bill wore handspun, homemade clothes exclusively.  His grandfather kept sheep and made Bill's mother a great wheel so she could spin yarn, and that's where the family's clothes came from.  He thinks he remembers the sheep breed was called Shetland.

Bill says other people he knew in Newfoundland at the time wore handspun too.  They did it out of necessity.  People kept their spinning wheels until the late 1960s when Americans came and paid five to ten dollars a wheel.

Bill is wearing a handsome fisherman's sweater he knit himself with commercial yarn.  It has honeycomb cables in the middle, seed stitch at the sides, and what he calls "some sort of cable" in between.  He enjoyed doing the math to change the pattern from a crew neck to a shawl collar, which he likes better.

Bill learned how to spin yarn with his mother's great wheel when he was young.  Mine was the first drop spindle he'd seen.  I showed him how my drop spindle works and he could see the similarity between its action and a great wheel's.

Newfoundland and Labrador's tourism site is here.  If you need some orientation, the province is Canada's easternmost.  I'm from the westernmost province.

I wonder what they thought, when they sold their spinning wheels.  Maybe they told themselves they didn't need spinning wheels anymore and it would be good to have the money.  Maybe they figured they could always build another.

August 04, 2011

Quebec and Spinning Wheels


Quebec was once so closely identified with spinning wheels that the province put one on the front of this vintage tourist map.

Photo taken with permission at John W. Doull, Bookseller in Halifax, NS.

August 03, 2011

"Can I Play With You Guys?"


Remember when you were young and you approached a bunch of kids you didn't know and asked if you could play?

I did that, more or less, with a World Wide Knit in Public Day event in Halifax.  A group that meets regularly got use of a public library lawn and posted the details on Ravelry which is where I, the tourist, found out about them.  They were great.  I found a place at the edge of the group and spun on my spindle and said hello.  Everyone was knitting.  They talked to me about yarn they spin, fibre they dye, and fibre that's locally available.

August 02, 2011

one hundred-nineteenth and -twentieth skeins


Nothing special.  Two ounces of BFL superwash spun up into yarn.  Spindle-spun, as usual.  Destined to be mittens like yesterday's grass-green ones, except white unless I recklessly throw them into a pot of hot KoolAid and make them some other colour.

August 01, 2011

Grass-green Mittens


Finished knitting the grass-green mittens out of my handdyed handspun.  Quite satisfactory–apart from the width being a little narrow–especially in light of how little I've made in the past while.