The Knitting Pirate

Because I like to get as much finished before the year ends as I can, I spent some time on December 31st plying and skeining yarn. First, two more skeins of The Fleece:

I tried really hard to match the first set of Fleece yarn when I was spinning the singles for this. The good news is that I seem to be spinning less densely... and the bad news is that these two new skeins don't match the originals. Which means I have to spin even more of the stuff before I can consider knitting anything from it. Sighhhh.

In keeping with the "let's try to spin less densely" efforts, I spun this gray Suffolk from World of Wool to a fine two-ply and while it's balanced, it sure does seem underplied. So maybe it's also underspun? I don't know, and I'm not entirely sure how to fix it, but at least it's not twisting back on itself. I guess that's progress?

My frustration with my lazy kate continues: the spindles on the Akerworks kate that I bought are not quite tall enough for the Kromski Woolee Winder bobbins, and so I cannot tension them. I think the solution here is going to be making my own arched kate. I drew up the plans for a plywood prototype that will fit the tallest and widest of my bobbins, and hopefully will find the time to cut it out and put it together soon.

Happy happy new year!

As usual, this tally is more for myself than anything else, but you may find it interesting as well. If you're coming from FB/Twitter/other social media, click through to see the full post:

INCOMING YARN: 10,661 yards
4 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light (576)
4 skeins of Cascade Heritage Sock (1748)
2 more skeins of Heritage Sock, grr miscalculations (874)
1 skein of Cascade Heritage Wave (437)
12 balls of Cloudborn Alpaca Fingering, for a machine-knit colourwork something (2412)
3 skeins of Berocco Ultra, for new Fleeps (645)
7 balls Patons Classic Wool Worsted, for a sweater (1485)
8 balls Universal DK Tweed Superwash (2272)

OUTGOING YARN: 16,284 yards
I gave the second skein of handspun yak/silk to my mom :) (138)
Plain Pink Knit Night Socks used up a ball of Austermann Step that had been languishing in my stash for years. (460)
The Puppies wrap. :D (8417)
Sapphire Martini Socks, the second in the Twisted Sock trilogy! (436)
I gave some Universal Sock Yarn "Ditto" to Lisa so she could try knitting socks (440)
The machine-knit Sanquhar Scarf used ~5 skeins of Heritage Sock (2185)
Seattle Slouch for MadameBadger (437)
Learning Sweater - my very first sweater! (1378)
Sold a skein of Tosh Merino Light (440)
Frustrated with colourwork, I knit a pair of Plain Blue Socks (460)
My own Buoy Blend Handspun got knit up into a shawl (320)
The first "Watch Me!" armwarmers took up 1.05 skeins of Kroy, so I knit a second pair with the rest and some scraps. (350)
Another pan protector... (153)
Fleeps the Third, to keep my hands warm (220)
Piratical Socks (350 red, 75 blue, 25 white = 450 ish)

INCOMING FIBRE: 0 ounces
Nope. None.

OUTGOING FIBRE: ~36 ounces, give or take - 2548 yards
8 ounces of Mohair/Finn blend, spun into a chain-plied gradient (472 yards)
4 ounces Into the Whirled Corriedale, spun into a chain-plied stripy yarn (242 yards)
8 ounces Southdown, spun into two-ply yarn (652 yards)
8 ounces Suffolk, spun into two-ply yarn (706 yards)
Some Fleece - 222g/476 yards of it, to be exact.

PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR:
Oh, man. I have so many plans. SO MANY PLANS. Trying new techniques on the machine, lined Fleeps, knitting a sweater (or two?), finally finishing and publishing the Twisted Sock Trilogy... It's gonna be a good year for creating things!

After many repairs, my old Fleeps were ready to retire. I had some more of the same yarn (Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed) in a dark blue and decided that now was the ideal time to knit it up. I've got lots of notes for custom-fitting this yarn into Fleeps for my narrow wrists and long fingers, so it was just a matter of following along and knitting exactly the same thing I did last time. (As a side note, I keep thinking I should knit a pair in a more sturdy yarn, but then I wouldn't have these exact notes to work from... maybe I'll do that next.) My Fleeps are a mashup of the Cigar and Gnomittens patterns, both of which are available for free.

I especially like how the stitches for the pinkie finger are set aside a bit lower than the rest of the fingers, matching the actual shape of my hand:

My old Fleeps look so sad with their Frankenstein repairs and threadbare sections (there are actual holes in the thumbs!), but I wasn't going to let them go without rescuing and re-using the magnet snaps.

I like to put a small piece of felt as a backing to the magnet snaps to help keep them from pulling straight through the yarn. For the mitten top, I knit up to the end but didn't graft it together before adding the magnet. I held the felt in place with my left hand while I sewed the magnet on with my right, then kitchenered the top of the mitten, flipped it inside out, trimmed the felt down, and sewed it around the edges.

On the cuff, I pinned a square of felt into place - it was far enough up in the cuff that I couldn't hold it and sew at the same time.

After I'd sewed the magnet snap on, I trimmed the felt to a neat circle, perfectly centered...

...and sewed it down around the edges.

And here is the finished pair! My project page for them is on Ravelry. As usual, I've only left two fingers and my thumb exposed to try to keep my hands as warm as possible. I'm looking forward to wearing my new Fleeps this winter, even if I'm still not traveling far... and I'm also, just a little bit, looking forward to working out the pattern modifications to make my next pair with different yarn.

These socks have been an absolute journey. My first attempt was too small, and I didn't realize it until after I'd knit down past the heel. My second attempt, after recharting the skull and crossbones section to have eight more stitches in it, was upside down - and I still wasn't happy with my fine gauge colourwork on DPNs. (Uneven. Puckery. Not nice.)

I gave up, put the chart into Designaknit, sent it to the knitting machine, and cranked out the cuffs in no time at all. The rest of the socks I knit by hand, because miles of stockinette is perfect for knit nights, car rides, and hanging out with Mom.

The pattern is Buccaneer's Booty and the red and blue yarns are both Lang Jawoll, a gift from my friend Ky. I love the subtle shading in them. Thanks, Ky!

I subbed in Cat Bordhi's Sweet Tomato Heel for the short-row heel in the original pattern. I like how it fits and I adore the look of the dark blue wedges on the red sock. I also added an extra bit of striping at the toe to more closely match the stripe at the cuff.

I've been going out for runs before work, because it's been too hot in the afternoons. The other day I was all dressed and ready to go and... it was only 47 degrees out, so that was a nope. I'm going to need to come up with ways of keeping warm if I want to keep going out in the mornings! Since my hands get cold easily, I thought I'd begin with a pair of armwarmers. The idea of the Watch Me! armwarmers comes from wanting to be able to see and control my sportswatch without having to mess around with sleeves and other layers while I'm trying to run in a straight line.

Look, it's got a little window for my watch! ...which took several tries to size appropriately, but eventually I figured out what I was doing. The part of the armwarmer that goes over the watch band is seed stitch, and then it goes back to ribbing for the rest of it.

Getting the thumb gusset right was another challenge. I needed to adjust several times; I tried different types and rates of increases and liked none of them. Finally, I decided to just let it grow out of one of the ribs, and that worked well.

The next challenge was figuring out how many stitches to set aside for the thumb, and how many to dedicate to the hand - most of the glove/armwarmer patterns that I have in my library have the same number of stitches on the wrist as on the hand, but my wrist is only 6" around and my hand is about 7.5" around, so I needed to come up with some more stitches to keep my hand from getting squashed. I cast on a few extra after I set the thumb stitches aside, but I think if I make another pair of these I'll add even more. (Or knit the hand portion in stockinette, rather than in rib - that would probably work, too.)

And then, of course, the inevitable challenge of picking up stitches for the thumb in order to leave the smallest holes possible between thumb and hand! I used the tail to sew up the little gaps that remained.

I took very careful notes as I knit so that I'll be able to duplicate my work. The right-hand armwarmer won't have the opening for a watch, of course, so I'll probably continue the ribbing instead of putting the seed stitch band in. But the notes will be very helpful when it comes to the thumb gusset!

The Watch Me! armwarmers are knit in Patons Kroy Sock FX, which is a heavier-than-standard sock yarn, on size 2 needles. The colourway is "Cascade Colors" and I absolutely love the teals and grays. I could easily see knitting a whole sweater out of this, actually, though I might try a swatch on size 3 needles to see if I can get a slightly more drapey fabric without it being too loose.

I forgot to write about these socks, but I finished them about a month ago. Oops! After the second time the Pirate Socks went wrong, I angrily cast on this simple pair of socks so that I could knit something that would come out right.

It's a standard 64-stitch sock, with 2x2 ribbing at the cuff, and the flap heel/gusset that I've worked out to fit the shape of my foot. The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit Colortweed, which I bought in (yikes) 2007 when I was first getting into sock knitting - an oldie but a goodie, and I'm glad to have gotten it out of my stash!

I like to make my stripy socks as much of a matched pair as possible. For these, I knit until the leg was "long enough" and then started the heel flap at a convenient reference point: the first stitch of the darkest blue part of the colour progression. The heel flap and turn didn't use an entire stripe, so after the heel turn, I broke the yarn and skipped ahead in the colour sequence. That way, the picked-up gusset stitches would again begin with that darkest blue, and the sequence wouldn't break across my ankle. I also made a note of where I started the toe decreases so that they'd match perfectly at the ends.

Et voilà:

According to my records (haha) I bought this fibre in the summer of 2018...

...and spun it that fall into a gorgeous gradient...

...which I've now knit into the "May I Borrow This, Please" shawl (available as a free download on Ravelry), and I am thrilled with it. The pattern is well-written, and I knit the whole thing in two weeks, even with adding another few repeats of the textured stripes because I wanted to use every last yard of this yarn. (Futon for scale, I guess? It was bigger than my towel when I pinned it out for blocking. Oh well.)

Here's a closeup of the bands of texture:

It's not cold enough to wear it yet, but I can feel that nip of autumn in the air!

It's here, it's here! The Spinolution Pollywog that I won in their Tour de Fleece giveaway is HERE! Read on for lots of pictures and my first thoughts about spinning on it:

Since they gave this tiny wheel to me for free, I thought it only fair to do an unboxing post and a review. Let's dig in! The red bag on top of everything held the warranty card, a ratio guide, and the drive band. Underneath it, the packing list and several bubble-wrapped bundles. One held the flyer with a bobbin installed, and a small bit of yarn that I'm assuming was from a test-spin before they mailed the package. Two more bobbins were wrapped together, and then the main part of the wheel was tucked into the bottom of the box. Everything fit perfectly into the packaging and nothing seems to have been damaged in shipping.

Here are all the parts set out on my coffee table. The two-step assembly process was so simple that they didn't even need to include instructions: the flyer goes on top and screws in, and the drive band goes around the 12" wheel and the whorls on the back of the flyer. The tiny treadles flip up and away from the center cam, so unlike my other wheels, putting the drive band on is incredibly easy.

I named this little guy "Chance," though I might have referred to him in conversation as "Mr. Tiny" - look at him sitting in front of the 30" Schacht-Reeves! He's so smol!

How about a bobbin comparison? From left to right: a Woolee Winder bobbin from the Schacht-Reeves, the new Spinolution bobbin, and a Woolee Winder bobbin from the Kromski Sonata. That Sonata bobbin holds a lot of yarn! The S-R bobbin is a little shorter than the Spinolution bobbin, but its diameter is wider and it doesn't have that extra chunk of wood taking up space, so I think (without doing any math) that they've probably got about the same overall volume.

Spinolution says that their bobbins hold four ounces of yarn - but the only way I'm going to know for sure is to spin and find out. The next fibre on my spinning list is 200g of grey Suffolk that I got from World of Wool. It's quite soft and with a longer staple than I'm used to spinning - nearly 7" (17.78 cm)!

This picture also shows the integrated bobbin holder. Just behind the flyer, there's a slot which holds three metal dowels. It's magnetized, so they won't fall out. You can (just about) see two of them poking up in this picture, and I've got the third in the centre position with a bobbin sitting on it.

So now, of course, the real question - how does it feel to spin on a Pollywog?

It's smoooooth. Treadling with just my toes is more than a little strange, but I'm getting the feel for it. It's easy enough to get the wheel going in the right direction with just a light nudge of the flyer; treadling is incredibly light. The treadling mechanism, and the way the whole thing rolls around, is just so cool to watch. (Spinolution does sell a 3D-printed "flipper" accessory that slides on over the treadle to give more of a platform... for $35.)

After about fifteen minutes of spinning, the wheel started to make a clicking noise. Michael and I watched the video about balancing the drive wheel and then gave it our best attempt. We loosened the cam and the two screws, but the wheel didn't get nearly as loose or moveable as in the video. So we aligned it as well as we could and tightened it up again. It still doesn't seem to be balanced, but it's not clicking anymore, so we'll call that a win. Perhaps the wood will shift a little as it gets accustomed to the humidity in our house, and we'll be able to adjust it better.

The only issue I have so far with this wheel being so tiny is that the orifice is really, really low. I don't spin right up next to the orifice in general, but for comparison, the S-R orifice is 25.5" off the ground and I've got the Sonata raised to about 32". The Pollywog's open hook is just 19.25" off the ground. (They do sell a 3" riser... for $55.)

I do like that there's no need to fish the yarn through rings and an orifice tube, but the large hook they've used sends quite a lot of vibration back up the singles to my hands. It's not the worst thing ever, but there's probably a smoother solution to having an open orifice.

Spinolution's user guide says, "Yarn is thumping as you spin: Be sure your yarn is coming from the center of the orifice hook toward your body in a fairly straight horizontal line. A slight angle is possible, but don’t put the yarn at a 45 degree angle up, down, or sideways from the center of the orifice hook." The thing is, with the orifice so low, there's no way for me not to hold the yarn at an angle from the hook? (They do sell a hook tube orifice bar, which they say is "highly recommended for an ultra smooth fine spinning experience"... for $29. The accessories are where they get you, apparently.)

If you want a larger capacity bobbin for art yarns, plying, or just spinning more without swapping it out, they offer a 12-ounce flyer plus one bobbin for $429, which is almost the same cost as the entire original wheel with the 4-ounce flyer and three bobbins at $440. This seems kind of strange, no?

Anyway, back to the good stuff - tension is managed with a spring-loaded block that screws into the side of the wheel, behind the flyer. Its brake is a felt pad that presses on the flyer's shaft. The user guide indicates that this is a reversible piece of wood, but mine seems to be the updated 3D-printed block. Neat! It's quite sensitive and easy to adjust.

In addition to being super smooth, the Pollywog is very quiet. There's no rattling, squeaking, or shaking. The bobbin has a star cutout which fits onto a nut at the back of the flyer and it's magnetized. It snaps together in a very satisfying way when changing the bobbins, but the magnetism isn't so strong as to make the bobbins difficult to remove. The front orifice piece is held on with magnets as well, and it's shaped so that there's only one right way to put it on.

The Pollywog's ratios are 1:2.5, 1:4.5, 1:10, and 1:14 - which is a great starting range, wider than the Sonata's and just as fast at the top end, and I've never felt the need to get the fast flyer for the Sonata! (For $209 (ouch) you can get an accelerator wheel for the Pollywog that acts as a riser in addition to giving you more speeds.)

I admit that I'm a little spoiled by having Woolee Winders on my other wheels, but the peg system on the Pollywog's flyer is easy enough to use - I just have to remember to stop and change the peg every so often! (I should note that they do sell their own version of an automatic winder. Unlike the Woolee Winder, it doesn't require all new bobbins, which is a plus.)

Anyway, that's probably enough for a first impression. Chance and I are getting along pretty well so far, and I'm looking forward to many happy hours of spinning :)

The surprise part has to come first, because I am just so excited about it - I put my name into Spinolution's annual drawing for a Pollywog wheel and... I won! I got this email yesterday:

And I've spent quite a bit of time since it showed up in my inbox alternating between dazedly commenting, "I won? A spinning wheel? Whoa!" and reading reviews of Spinolution wheels. I don't have an ETA on its delivery yet, but I will be sure to do a review of my own once it arrives! How cool is that!?

Yesterday should have been Virtual Knit Night, but no one could make it - so instead of working on a plain sock, I worked on seaming the Learning Sweater. I stitched up one sleeve and then got some very wise advice that I should quickly baste the rest of it together and try it on for fit. You guys! I've knit a sweater! (Also, just to note, it's very difficult to take pictures of oneself in a bathroom mirror while making awkward poses to illustrate the shape of a sweater around one's body.) Just a few more seams and a neckband to go... and weaving in all the ends, of course.

With Michael's assistance in wielding the measuring tape, not to mention with the gauge math, I was able to convince Designaknit to provide something resembling a pullover pattern. I don't really understand a lot of the UI choices in DAK, but I'm trying to ignore that and move on to just making garments. So! I began with a sleeve...

And then I knit the other sleeve, the back, and the front. Except the directions were really unclear (and I'm new) so the neck opening came out totally off centre. I ripped back to the colour change, rehung the stitches, and reknit the neck properly on my second try.

I've never made a sweater before, so I've never done any real seaming. Last night I watched some videos about how to set in sleeves and then did my best. I got as far as seaming the shoulders together and then seaming up and around the sleeve caps before calling it a night.

The rest of the seaming - up the sides and down the sleeves - should be relatively simple. Then I have to pick up stitches for the neckband and knit a few rounds of ribbing, which I plan to do by hand. Washing and blocking will soften up the wool, and probably smooth out some of my seaming inexperience as well.