(no subject)
Below the cut: A hat knit from handspun, the first project where I put some thought into the yarn design before spinning. Some talk about the spinning and yarn-design process.
The hat:
The pattern is Sugar on Snow, from the fall '06 Knitty.
The yarn:
These 10-20 yard bits came from handpainted roving that the woman who sold me my wheel included in the box. I liked Sugar on Snow and thought the green would work well as the leafy drawstring after I spun it. Since I-cord isn't particularly gauge-dependent, I just went with a size 5US needle which worked all right with the yarn and didn't worry about it.
I wanted to be more careful with the body of the hat, which in the pattern is knit on size 9US needles, just shy of 4 stitches per inch, with doubled worsted-weight yarn. I thought that some charcoal gray alpaca top from the stash (from Alpaca With A Twist, which I bought at a LYS) would be lovely and warm.
3-ply alpaca, spun about as thickly as I could consistently manage (not very thick). Ended up 10 or 11 wpi--it's a bit loose knit on size 9 needles. A 4-ply might've been better if I'd had the bobbins, or a 2/2 cabled yarn. The sample was perfect with 3 plies, but since my instinct is to spin thinner, I would occasionally fall back on that habit, resulting in an overall thinner yarn. A good consistency lesson for me.
I spun this with a short backward draw--I'm not quite sure why that worked better, but with a forward draw the slippery fibers were much less in control, and once I started pulling back with the fiber-supporting hand things got much more even and unscary.
Also, I found that holding the top on a heavy plastic bag on my lap prevented the fine flyaway fibers from getting caught on everything. Before this, not only was my couch fuzzy, but when a few fibers would catch, sometimes a big chunk of the predrafted top would come loose. Fixable, but annoying.
When I finished this yarn, I had about 5 yards of singles left on one bobbin, and 15-20 left on the second. My concern with this yarn/pattern combination was that the alpaca was going to stretch out and get all loose around the bottom of the hat. So I decided to ply the leftover singles with some wool and use that part for the brim, which might give that part of the hat some spring, while still retaining the softness of the alpaca. I used gray Shetland top from Halcyon yarn, and just eyeballed the amount of yarn on the bobbin compared to the bobbin with the most alpaca, adding a good amount of wool to the first (completely empty) bobbin, and just a little to the second (little bit of alpaca left) bobbin. There was only a foot or two of singles left, in the end, an amount small enough that I don't mind tossing it.
This yarn bloomed and softened considerably in the wash, was VERY springy, and was the perfect thickness for the size 9 needles. About 2/3 the yarn was 2 plies of Shetland, 1 ply alpaca, and the remainder was reversed.
(Incidentally, the question I asked on this community about yarn springiness was mostly due to seeing how different the 66% alpaca yarn was from the 100%. I hadn't realized what a huge effect one little ply would have.)
The color difference between the Shetland and the alpaca wasn't super strong, but enough to be noticable. So when I cast on the hat I made sure to start with the 2 Shetland/1 alpaca ply end of the yarn, to give a shaded effect as I worked up the hat.
I'm really pleased with the final result. The body of the hat is a bit looser than I planned because the alpaca isn't as thick as the wool/alpaca yarn on the bottom, but my plan is to use this around my neck more than as a hat, so that works fine. I also really love the shading effect obtained by playing with similar-colored fibers, more than I thought I would. To me, it gives a more obviously handcrafted effect--I can't think of any commercial yarns you could do something similar with, unless you were holding several thin strands together. I'm definitely going to have to experiment further with that shading thing in the future.
The hat:
The pattern is Sugar on Snow, from the fall '06 Knitty.
The yarn:
These 10-20 yard bits came from handpainted roving that the woman who sold me my wheel included in the box. I liked Sugar on Snow and thought the green would work well as the leafy drawstring after I spun it. Since I-cord isn't particularly gauge-dependent, I just went with a size 5US needle which worked all right with the yarn and didn't worry about it.
I wanted to be more careful with the body of the hat, which in the pattern is knit on size 9US needles, just shy of 4 stitches per inch, with doubled worsted-weight yarn. I thought that some charcoal gray alpaca top from the stash (from Alpaca With A Twist, which I bought at a LYS) would be lovely and warm.
3-ply alpaca, spun about as thickly as I could consistently manage (not very thick). Ended up 10 or 11 wpi--it's a bit loose knit on size 9 needles. A 4-ply might've been better if I'd had the bobbins, or a 2/2 cabled yarn. The sample was perfect with 3 plies, but since my instinct is to spin thinner, I would occasionally fall back on that habit, resulting in an overall thinner yarn. A good consistency lesson for me.
I spun this with a short backward draw--I'm not quite sure why that worked better, but with a forward draw the slippery fibers were much less in control, and once I started pulling back with the fiber-supporting hand things got much more even and unscary.
Also, I found that holding the top on a heavy plastic bag on my lap prevented the fine flyaway fibers from getting caught on everything. Before this, not only was my couch fuzzy, but when a few fibers would catch, sometimes a big chunk of the predrafted top would come loose. Fixable, but annoying.
When I finished this yarn, I had about 5 yards of singles left on one bobbin, and 15-20 left on the second. My concern with this yarn/pattern combination was that the alpaca was going to stretch out and get all loose around the bottom of the hat. So I decided to ply the leftover singles with some wool and use that part for the brim, which might give that part of the hat some spring, while still retaining the softness of the alpaca. I used gray Shetland top from Halcyon yarn, and just eyeballed the amount of yarn on the bobbin compared to the bobbin with the most alpaca, adding a good amount of wool to the first (completely empty) bobbin, and just a little to the second (little bit of alpaca left) bobbin. There was only a foot or two of singles left, in the end, an amount small enough that I don't mind tossing it.
This yarn bloomed and softened considerably in the wash, was VERY springy, and was the perfect thickness for the size 9 needles. About 2/3 the yarn was 2 plies of Shetland, 1 ply alpaca, and the remainder was reversed.
(Incidentally, the question I asked on this community about yarn springiness was mostly due to seeing how different the 66% alpaca yarn was from the 100%. I hadn't realized what a huge effect one little ply would have.)
The color difference between the Shetland and the alpaca wasn't super strong, but enough to be noticable. So when I cast on the hat I made sure to start with the 2 Shetland/1 alpaca ply end of the yarn, to give a shaded effect as I worked up the hat.
I'm really pleased with the final result. The body of the hat is a bit looser than I planned because the alpaca isn't as thick as the wool/alpaca yarn on the bottom, but my plan is to use this around my neck more than as a hat, so that works fine. I also really love the shading effect obtained by playing with similar-colored fibers, more than I thought I would. To me, it gives a more obviously handcrafted effect--I can't think of any commercial yarns you could do something similar with, unless you were holding several thin strands together. I'm definitely going to have to experiment further with that shading thing in the future.