Through thick and thin.

It's funny how all this time I tried to get my spinning as thin and even as possible just to realize that I've completely lost the ability to spin thick yarn. Well, I say lost. While my first skein was considerably thicker than what I do now, it probably wasn't very even either. However, I clearly remember it being better than this:

Fiber: Süddeutsche (South German) from Wollknoll. Yay for local products!

If I were a whimsical Etsy seller, I would now write something about how the yarn has retained a lot of the sheep's character and that I've created an interesting organic texture to bring out the natural colour. No. It just turned out very wonky. I wanted to try fulling a single, so I thought it would be better to make the yarn thicker. No wonder most commercial yarns are plied rather than singles! Still, the fulling was fun and not too bad, BUT even though every tutorial said not to be scared and that the individual strands wouldn't felt together, they slightly did for me. Not too badly, just enough to make them stick a little to one another. Maybe I overdid it? It does make the yarn soft yet very sturdy though, so I'll definitely experiment some more with it.
Characterful yarn aside, I did spin up some BFL that I'm very pleased with:

Pink and purple BFL from Das Wollschaf.

I had 100 grams of each, yet for some strange reason I was left with quite a bit of purple after plying. If I wasn't so lazy I'd meassure the WIP, but it's approximately a light fingering weight. ... Sometimes I wonder who came up with these names, frankly that sounds more like foreplay than fiber. But I digress. Aaaanyway, I had both singles wound on knitting needles for a while before I plied them, only to find that the yarn on the inside had already set and lost all its twist. Is that a normal thing to happen? So while plying I had to add a lot of extra spin again, which I couldn't entirely get rid off during finishing. It was mostly even, just had a few twisted bits. So against my usual preferences, I wound it into a ball in the hopes that it would set some more, much like the singles did:

I've very much taken my cue from the Zauberball school of yarn winding here.

Maybe I just tend to wind my yarn too tightly, but that 200 gram ball is only very slightly bigger than an average 50g ball of sock yarn. I do like the colour and it's as even as I've managed to spin thus far. It'll probably become a shawl in the future, something simple since the colours would probably eat up any intricate lace patterns. I quite like The Age of Brass and Lazy Daisy. Or I could just make a Baktus or one of its many variations, which have the advantage of rows that don't take half an hour to finish. Herbivore looks lovely as well, but I've grown a bit weary of shawl shapes that aren't just plain triangular.

The Discworld Bag.

Just because it took so much trial and error (mostly error), the Discworld Bag I made for the swap package gets its own damn post. You see, I had this beautiful vision in my head of a fully formed, perfectly detailed Discworld. Except it would be a project bag. How clever am I? ... yeah, not very.
People make Discworlds all the time. They crochet them, they sew them, they even bake them! They do not, however, assume that a good idea is an appropriate substitute for experience and/or talent in their chosen craft. I'm not saying that I'm horrible with a sewing machine, but working with fabric has one disadvantage that knitting usually doesn't: you just cannot fix some mistakes. This means you generally should know exactly what you want to do. Once the pieces are cut, you cannot undo them. You can only redo a seam so often before it looks shabby. That's fine for bags, which are usually simple geometric shapes. Tiny plush elephants? A bit more challenging. I sewed about 10 of them, ranging from horribly disfigured creatures of the night to the stuff of nightmares. And there are lots of cute elephant patterns to use for reference! The problem wasn't so much the technique as it was the size. I'd already bought an adorable turtle plushy so I couldn't just make the elephants bigger. In the end, I did something I'm more than a bit embarrassed about: I just glued shit on. There, I said it. I believe glue and fabric aren't two things that should go together, ever. But I was starting to panick and had a deadline and decided the elephants would just have to be 2-dimensional. Oh well. At least that meant that the bag was resting on the turtle itself, which made it a little bit bigger. It's still tiny, but maybe just big enough for a pair of mittens in progress. Maybe.
The inside of the bag has two pockets for needles and various stuff, plus the planet XXX on the bottom. I only later realized that it's actually XXXX. It really helps to look up book references if you read said book 2 years ago...

It's just about impossible to make a round map fit on a long square with any accuracy at all. I meant to sew the mountain range to the blue part as well, but then noticed I kind of like the 3D effect of it standing up even when the bag is closed. It's made from felt so there should be no fraying:

I couldn't bring myself to take photos of the disfigured elephants. These ones only have 2 legs each, but at least the ears make them somewhat recognisable. I experimented with horns, but they looked kind of odd. This is definitely the evil one, just look at that evil eye:

Maybe he's just grumpy. And this is my favourite. He looks almost like I wanted them to look originally. You know, just slighty worse:

I had planned to embroider the map onto the green part. I have access to a cheap Singer Edition which I believe was purchased at Aldi. Which really tells you all you need to know. Suffice to say that didn't really work out either, so I drew stuff on with a pen. I try not to think about it too much.

It still turned out alright I guess. The recipient seemed to like it, which is really the only thing that counts in the end.

Nerd Wars Swap.

Yep, more Nerd Wars. What can I say, my non-competetive crafting has been a been a bit lackluster this summer. The NW swap was great fun and small enough for me as a first time swapper to test the waters. I'll be honest, when I first read that my swap partner was KokoCat, all I could think was: "I can't possibly spoil this woman! For Bob's sake, she has her own yarn store! She's been knitting for longer than I've been alive!" But that's what happens when you hang out with a bunch of knitting nerds, they are awesome and you just have to deal with it. This is what I ultimately came up with:

I actually had to buy the seeds and sweets to get above the minimum amount to spend. Thrifting, Ebay and handmades are real budget savers. I included three knitted items, although I had a lot more ideas (but not the time).

Crivens!

A tiny Nac Mac Feegle. Incidentally, I finally bought a copy of I Shall Wear Midnight which arrived yesterday. The Tiffany arc is one of my favourite since Wintersmith was the first Dicworld novel I read.

It's the Doctor's name. We think.

A cowl inspired by Doctor Who. Not a Doctor Who scarf, though. I may be an ambitious swapper, but I would have needed a Tardis, time-turner or other nerdy device for time travel to pull that off. I wasn't a bug fan of cowls before, but now I can see the point of them. Well, at least the longer ones you wrap around once or twice.

Mio pattern.

These didn't come out as nice as planned. It's a cute enough pattern, but in 100% cotton (Schachenmayr Cotton Eco) they lacked a bit of stretch and the rolled-up thumb edging is a bit bulky for my liking.

I was alternately hating and loving the colours as well, but didn't have a suitable backup yarn. I hope it'll wear better than the first blocking suggested. Argh! This is why I don't gift hand-mades! (That and I've embraced the principles of selfish crafting(tm).)

Nerd Wars Projects.

The 3rd Nerd Wars round is almost upon us, so it's high time I shared last round's projects! I have yet to find a better way to stash-bust and get motivated than these challenges were. All in all I completed 12 out of 18, which seems like a good if slightly obsessive quote. Some of them were really boring, but the results I quiete liked are:

This lightning scarf wouldn't have come out half as nice
if I hadn't run out of red yarn halfway through! (Pattern)

Bookmark. Although spinning plarn makes it a lot nicer to work with,
crocheting is still easier than knitting. (Pattern)

It may not be the cutest kid's set out there, but I love the hat pattern.
I should make one for myself some time.

These are easily my favourite two projects.
Plarn Cthulhu and Tiny Old Spice man.

Starting Saturady, I'll play for team Shady Cells (comics, animation, etc.) which should be fun because there's very little in popular culture that hasn't had its own comic at some point.

Stimulating the economy.

I certainly did my part last week. Other than swap goodies, I also went on a shopping trip extravaganza down south. First stop: Wollmeise summer sale. I really was a picture of restraint; the plan was to get two or three skeins.

The colours are really much brighter but hard to photograph.

From what I gathered, it's important to know which colourways you have. I haven't really checked, I just call them Shiny 1 and Shiny 2. Or the green one and the blue one. Really, if you only have two skeins, a nominal system isn't necessary. So now I know what that particular craze is about. Kind of. The lace was pretty tempting as well, I figure I'll try to get a skein of that once I'm finally able to make cardigans that fit. There was a whole shelf of some lovely lavender sockweight as well, but I just keep chanting "stick to colours you'll wear" over and over. Well, not out loud, just in my head - I'm not that crazy. Same for the very colourful skeins. "Yes, it looks lovely in the skein, but will it still do as a scarf?" So I went for a very subtle semi-solid and a slightly more colourful skein to test the waters. It's odd, it feels both very underwhelming (because by definition, if *I* was able to aquire it, it can't be that terribly rare or special) and daunting (you need to think of something extra special for these immensely precious treasures) to have they laying around. Also, it's the most expensive yarn I've ever bought. Don't get me wrong, 13€/150g is good value for money, especially for handdyed yarn on what feels like a very high-quality base. It's certainly crazy cheap for such a popular product.

Since it wasn't a huge detour, I also visited the Buttinette store on my way back. Last time I was there with my mom for a birthday present and I forgot half the stuff I wanted to buy. So this time I had a list with article numbers and everything. It'd probably have been cheaper without, despite the many bargains they have.

I got some fabric, party swap related - I especially love the dark green one at the bottom. I found it at the bottom of the leftovers bin and it has lovely drape. I'm worried the crappy sewing machine won't be able to handle it though. Also some embroidery thread and a hoop. No, I don't know how to embroider - yet. If my mantra in the Wollmeise shop was to stick to my favourite colours, here it should have been to stick to crafts I know and have the necessary equipment for. Which really only leaves knitting. I got a skein of Opal Regenwald in Caterpillar (did I mention I love the Regenwald line?) and Addi lace circs in 2,0. Yay! Can't wait to try them out. Finally some fabric paint and plastic buttons so I can have matching buttons for that cardigan I shall knit someday which will actually fit.

All in all, a very successful trip and certainly a good investment of my birthday money.

Handspun Hat.

I'm currently busy with my first swap, so there hasn't been a lot of other knitting this month so far. I did finally get around to using my own handspun in a project though.
I used the very first yarn I ever made, which presented two challenges: There wasn't a whole lot of it, and it was really uneven and bulky. I'm not good at bulky, I never know what to do with it. A hat seemed a logical choice though, because it requires very little yardage and you can adjust the size if it turns out there isn't enough. It still took a bit of trial and error and playing with different patterns, but here we are:

Shiny!

Seriously, taking a photo of my own head was almost as difficult as knitting the thing. I've never had a MySpace, so never perfected the art of taking photos of myself from slightly above (duck-lips optional).
I started out with the idea that somehow, lace and eyelets were a good way of saving yarn, which is very much not true. What does work though is knitting with a larger needle size. This hat was done on 4,5 needles, which is the biggest I own.

In the end, it became a very simple top-down stockinette hat, no pattern and no fancy bits. Surprisingly, I like it quite a lot. I used up every last bit and it fits perfectly. Surely, that's a sign that I should keep it for myself!

After a half-hearted attempt at blocking - how do you actually block a hat? - the stitch definition is not that bad and it's certainly not as uneven as by rights it should be with such a thick-thin yarn.

My only concern is that after that first blocking, the hat took almost three days to dry. So probably not a good hat for rainy weather, but we'll see how it goes. It might be fine as long as it isn't soaked completely.

Taking Stock.

I'm currently in the rare position where all the stuff I own is in the same place. I also feel there's too much of it. That also goes for my stash, although I realize it is tiny compared to a lot of people. Still, it was time to take stock. As of yesterday, I own 7.3 kg of yarn and fibre. It's not as much as I'd feared, but it's still a lot. This lot:

Click on image for bigger view.

On the left: Fibre, reclaimed yarn and a bit of Tshirt yarn.
In the middle: Sock yarn on top and inherited acrylic in the bottom. I've already knit up a lot of the acrylic, especially really small amounts, for some charity-ish baby clothing.
On the right: Assorted other yarn on top and cotton bits in the bottom. The huge white cone is crochet thread I'd like to make shawls of and dye them. The orange cone is the still very much unfinished Dragon of Happiness. That one alone is more than a kilo...

I can't remember the site, but I recently read another blog with a neat system of stash reduction: 2:1 - for every 200 grams used up you're allowed to buy 100 gram. I think I'll stick to that, roughly. Except for next week, when I reaaaaally want to visit the Wollmeise summer sale. I'm not a fan (yet), I'm just curious. I already have a couple of pattern ideas if I end up buying a skein or two.