Knitting Patterns Free

Shetland

Today I bring you Shetland! The Shetland fiber is the second fiber I decided to spin after reading the great book In Sheep's Clothing.
I picked the most luscious, richest, sensuous chocolate color that Shetland sheep come in.

Isn't nature amazing? As a color lover, I am simply in awe...

I spun the beautiful roving over the fold into singles, and then plied two singles to create a light worsted weight, which I think has become my favorite weight.
I love the density of the Shetland fiber. Shetland has more body than Romney, less crimp, and therefore seems to be less fluffy, and a little rounder. I find it easy to spin, fluid is a word that comes to mind.

I was holding the yarn in my hands, pondering what I should knit, when Mr. SockPixie said: "Hum, nice, I would like socks..." One quick smile was enough to convince me...I grabbed my Us 5 dpts and took my new yarn to knit night. In my bag was some leftover Romney from the mittens, so I decided to stripes the socks. Mr. SockPixie deserves a little whimsy!

This is the progress I made at knit night, and during homeschooling today. If I can finish the sock tonight I might be able to reclaim the needles to do EZ's thumb trick on the mittens. Wouldn't some mitten surgery make a fun post!

More Romney Mitts

Meet Mitt 1 and Mitt 2...

Oh what fun we will have making the thumb trick too!

Turquoise is the Color

Why can't I photograph turquoise well? I've never understood it but when I photograph turquoise yarn it always turns more blue. This is even more important now that the Pantone Institute has named turquoise the color trend of 2010. They state that turquoise evokes feelings of escape to tropical waters and that it is a restorative color. I associate it with warmth and sunny days as I see lots of turquoise jewelry here worn in the summer.

Today's Color Links

Susan Pandorf's free pattern Christmas in the Country is a pretty colorwork cowl knit in 3 colors of sport weight alpaca.

Your word for the day: Feeling or tasting a color is called synesthesia and it is much more common in creative people.

Here's a new booklet of Estonian Mittens (in Estonian). If this message thread is correct, it is a bit pricy at $35 plus $18 shipping.

If you are like me and enjoy seeing beautiful crafts rooms, check out the wonderful design site Houzz. I usually just put crafts room in the search engine although that also brings up photos of Craftsman style rooms. I like this room because of the wonderful wall color but I'd have to add a rug.

Romney Mitts

I was at a bookstore in Cambridge the other day, and found a great book In Sheep's Clothing, a Handspinner's Guide to Wool, by Nola and Jane Fournier. I got home and started reading...So many sheep... I thought wouldn't it be fun to spin yarn and knit projects from as many kinds of sheep as possible?

So here we are with candidate number 1: the Romney Sheep.

I wont bore you with a dry technical description, I will just say, that like so many great things, The Romney Sheep came from England, and a British colony, New Zealand improved the breed to produce a lustrous fiber with a tight crimp with a medium staple length of 5 to 7 inches, making it an ideal spinning fiber for the beginner. Best of all, the Romney comes in beautiful natural colors.

I purchased 16 ounces of silver Romney roving.

I hugged and smelled the soft, fuzzy roving. I set out to spin it over the fold using a short forward draw for a semi-worsted. (But between you, and me, the fiber just told me what it wanted me to do!)

I plied 2 singles together to get a light worsted yarn. I love how the lustre of the fiber expresses itself gently in the spun yarn and still has a soft halo.

I never spin with a project in mind. I prefer to let the fiber, and its yarn tell me what they want to be. I had barely spun 4 oz, that I heard the yarn calling for mitts.

But which Romney mitts? When in doubt, I always turn to one of my favorite EZ books, the Knitter's Almanac. In the Mittens for Next Winter chapter, I went right to the mitered mittens. I did a quick gauge, 5 stitches/inch, not a problem. If EZ has taught us one thing it is to work with the yarn. I changed the total number of stithes to fit my plans, grabbed my mini chop stitcks in US 5 and started knitting this delightfully mindless pattern thnumbless, as my plan is to do EZ's thumb trick (snip a stitch, unravel a few stitches, pick up, and knit a thumb.)

Before I knew it, mitten 1 was done.

I can hear the word embroidery, there, can't you?

Here is what is waiting for me tonight, fun with my other mitt!

A Handspun Shrug for Little Miss SockPixie

Remember a few weeks ago, I spun this beautiful yarn from some stunning Wensleydale, and beautifully muted lavender Merino.

I wrote a post about it, but was unsure what I would do with it. I weighed the skeins and had a total of 4.7 ounces... The skeins sat next to me for a few days. I balled the first one... I knit a gauge... Yum...Just delicious...So soft... A soft shrug for little Miss SockPixie...

I started at the neck with garter stitch, increased with yarn overs at the raglan sleeves, keeping a neat garter stitch edge, when done with my increases I put the sleeves on hold, and finished the body. I knit till I thought I had just enough yarn left for the sleeves.

I knit a couple rows for the sleeves, and a garter stitch edge. I added the buttons, and actually turned them wrong side up as the wrong side seemed to match the colors of the shrug perfectly.

Little Miss SockPixie of course knew the whole time that the shrug would be for her for Christmas, but pretended to believe me when I told her it was for Valentine the Chihuahua!

She loves it!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!