Maia Spins

Special Requests

I love knitting.  It has always been my sanctuary, someplace I can slip away to one stitch at a time.  For this reason I try to stay away from obligatory knitting (read: no holiday knitting).  Nothing harshes my knitting mellow more than knitting something that doesn't inspire me and has a deadline.  I am very happy to make things for friends and family as long as I get to make it on my time schedule.  Sound selfish?  Maybe, but it keeps knitting fun for me.  Plus, I prefer to think happy loving thoughts about my loved one with every stitch rather than think about how much I would rather be knitting something else. 

Every rule has an exception.  When one's 90 year-old grandmother requests a handknit garment, it is best to get to work right away.  She saw me wearing a shawl and admired it.  It was a chilly day and we were out and about so I lent it to her for the day.  It was just the thing to keep her warm on a blustry day.

Blue is her color.  I have been lusting after some black Blue Faced Leicester I indigo dyed.  This was the perfect project.

Six ounces of black Blue Faced Leicester in the Indigo colorway yielding about 380 yards of 2-ply. I spun it modified long-draw.  The singles were about 24 wpi; the 2-ply yarn is 15 wpi before washing.  I spun the singles with moderate twist and plied with a bit more twist to make a squishy yarn. 

I love how the yarn has depth and color texure.  Dyeing over colored wools is so satisfying.  I can't wait for the yarn to dry so I can start knitting it.  Do you think it will dry faster if I check on it more often?  We celebrate her 91st birthday in less than 2 weeks.  It would be wonderful to have it done by then.  I better go check and see if it is dry yet.

In my last post I showed you the yellow and red fiber from my Happy Accidents dyeing.  Here is is spun up with a few friends.

Orange: 15.5 micron Merino

Red: Alpaca-Merino-Tussah Silk blend

Purple: Targhee (love how springy it is!)

Tannish: fawn Alpaca-Tussah Silk dyed similarly to the orange only less saturated.

All are chain plied and about a DK weight. I am thinking of making some sort of modular knit.  A scarf or shawl maybe.  The idea is still perculating.  More yarn will be required for anything other than the smallest of scarves.  I'm thinking of yellow and maybe something dark like a natural black or dark brown.  What do you think?

Happy Accidents

Sometimes the dye pot plays tricks on me.  Most of the time, these tricks turn out to be happy accidents.  A chance blending of colors or colors behaving in ways I didn't predict.  Recently I was finishing up a long dyeing session and wanted to use up some dyes.  It was a case of toss them together on top of some extra bits and see what happens.

Yellow with splotches of red.  Be still my heart!  The colors are brighter in real life (my pictures always look washed out when I post them to my blog - so vexing!).  The fiber is 15.5 micron merino.  That is squarely in the cashmere range for softness with a 3 inch staple length.  Hubba hubba!  This fiber may be my latest BFF (Best Fiber Friend).  I think it will take a trip through my wheel tonight.

Another Happy Accident came from a large dye pot full of fibers.  I had intended to get a red, a nice semi-solid.  Instead I got a variegated red to peach blend.  A new colorway, called Winesap, was born.  (This may help to explain why I have over 100 named colorways.)  On my way past the spinning wheel I tripped and 14 lovely ounces of BFL got spun up into a 3-ply worsted weight.

Fiber (again with the washed out picture issue):

Here are some singles yarn:

I am knitting it into a thick shawl to warm me on cool evenings.  So far it is all garter stitch, lacy goodness coming soon!  (Can't wait, garter bores me to tears!)

I love the way the yarn has stripes and the colors shift from light to dark.  Though the camera does imply more contrast than my eyes perceive in real life.

That's all I've got for now.  I'm working on some fun things I can't blog about yet.  Stay tuned!