I finished this skein of yarn during the Closing Ceremonies. (And, IMHO, the most boring Olympic ceremony EVER. Good thing I was multitasking.) But, was it really ”finished”?
As I said in my last post, nothing is constant except change, and even after I wrote that post I changed my mind about this spinning project. It was last Friday and I still had to finish the 3rd bobbin and also the 4th bobbin, 50g, of very thin singles to spin, and then ply. I wasn’t going to make it by Sunday. I had a brain wave! I love 3 ply yarn. So, why not 3-ply those first 3 bobbins and be done! Then later I can spin 3 ply yarn again with a different set of 3 colors, and again with yet a DIFFERENT 3 colors. I’ll end up with 3 slightly different colored skeins of about 125g each, which will be enough for a light weight sweater. And that is what I did. (Skein 1 using colors 1,2,3; then skein 2 using colors 2,3,4; then skein 3 using colors 1,3,4)
Back to the ”finished” question. Here is a photo of the skein of yarn on Sunday, just after plying it and skeining it up.
Unwashed
And here is a photo, taken in similar light, in the same spot, after washing and drying.
After washing and drying
Here is a close up side by side, unwashed left, washed right.
Can you see the difference? When I finished plying it I was kind of disappointed. It was not very soft and not at all fluffy. It didn’t look overspun at all so I guessed it was just the type of wool and prep (commercially dyed and prepared Corriedale top, fiber from New Zealand, 25-30 microns). BUT, after I soaked it in very hot water and some wool wash, let it hang dry, it’s much softer and is even a little fluffy. NOW I consider it finished. NOW I like it a lot! And I’m enthusiastic about starting on those other bobbins for the rest of the sweater quantity of yarn.
This photo shows you exactly where I am with my 4 ply 200g spinning project. Not as far as I’d hoped, but not bad considering all the things going on around here. The top 2 bobbins are done (50g each). The lower bobbin is almost done and the fiber on the left has to be spun. And then ply them together. The plying will be quick and easy. I love plying.
I’m very happy with the consistency of the singles I’m spinning. This is Corriedale fiber that I bought from World of Wool (in the UK). It’s lovely to spin. I find I can spin it very fine or thicker with ease. I highly recommend this fiber for beginners and advanced spinners alike, plus it comes in a huge range of colors.
Speaking of consistency, there seems to be a serious lack of consistency in my life! Change is the only constant, which is something my husband is not always happy about. He longs for more consistency, less change. I seem to attract change like a magnet.
One change is that we are now the proud parents of 2 great big 9 month old Ragdoll cats. Their previous owner couldn’t keep them and we jumped at the chance to bring them home. They are the biggest cats I’ve ever owned, and the fluffiest. It’s taken a little adjustment on all our parts but Jake and Frank are settling in well.
Jake & Frank
The biggest news is that I have a new job. I’m pretty excited about it. I didn’t realize how excited I would be about working again. As my husband said, “you aren’t the retiring kind”. I guess he’s right. I missed having extra money for fun things. I missed using my brain to work out problems. I missed colleagues (ok, only the good ones 😉 ). And then this job fell into my lap and I’ve grabbed it up. It’s only 3 days a week so I still have time for fun things too, like my craft projects and accordion playing. But, it’s a change and requires finding a new routine. I’m suddenly busy. I’m suddenly having to plan my days. The consistency of our household is going through a period of inconsistency and change until we find a new rhythm and a new consistency.
I will still keep up this once a week posting, and I hope to still have enough interesting things to show you. I still have big plans for Experimental Spinning. I might expand the blog topics to include not only what I’m working on, but places that I visit that are craft/design related. Writing this blog will be a consistent thing in an ever changing world. 🙂
The Olympics have started and so has my Ravellenic Games spinning project.
There is a group on Ravelry that organizes the Ravellenic Games (which used to be called Ravolympics until the Olympic Committee threatened Ravelry with a lawsuit and shutdown if they didn’t change the name. Which pisses me off to this day.) to coincide with the games. There are “events” for types of knitting/crochet projects, and spinning. You pick your own goal and work towards it from the Opening Ceremonies to the Closing Ceremonies.
For my Ravellenic Games project I chose to spin 4 ply yarn, matching the 4 ply swatch I made in Experimental Spinning 1. I really thought that I could spin 540g of lace weight singles and then ply it all in 3 weeks. I was silly.
Opening Ceremonies spinning with the Dutch team.
I started spinning during the Opening Ceremonies and after Day 1 realized that there was no way I was going to get all that done. So I’ve revised my plan. I’m now going to spin 50g of each color and ply them together and then see what day it is. It might be Day 21! We’ll see.
This first color took me 4 days to spin. Here’s the finished 50g bobbin.
pinky finger size comparison
I’m spinning this project on an Electric Eel Wheel 6.0, which I really love. I can set it in front of the TV and spin away.
I’ve also been working on my cardigan. Here’s a photo of the body (mainly the back). I’m knitting the body in one piece, flat, up to the armholes and then I’ll split and knit the fronts and back separately.
The yarn is actually more brown than this, but you know, photos in winter light….
Part of the slowness of the spinning and knitting is that I don’t have good light at night. I would normally knit while watching tv but my husband complains that my lights disrupt his tv viewing with a big blob of light reflected in the tv.
I’ll have to see if my NEW JOB seriously impacts my craft time. I’m starting a new job next week but it is just 3 days a week so I still have plenty of time for spinning and knitting and writing here. I’m pretty excited about working again and it really seems like the perfect situation.
Next week I’ll have another finished bobbin to show – maybe 2! Are you watching the Olympics. I’m watching every day. I love the Olympics.
In the first part of ES2 I explored blending opposite, complementary, colors by plying them together. In this additional post I’ll take that one step further and blend those same colors on a drum carder, spin the fiber and knit swatches.
Subject – Blending complementary colors on a drum carder
Hypothesis – Taking the same colors that were used in ES2 and blending them on a drum carder will result in colors that match the Photoshop color blends created from photos of the plied swatches. i.e.
red + greenblue + orangeyellow + purple
Methods – I used the same fiber from the ES2, 50% color1 + 50% color2, and put them through the drum carder. I used 15g of each color for each batt. Every time I ran the fiber through the carder I took a photo of the carder and of the batt after taking it off the carder. For each color combination I ran the fiber through the carder 6 times. The difference between the 5th and 6th time was pretty minimal, but I was aiming for a “solid” color so 6 times seemed the most thorough test. That gives me 12 photos for each color combo, which is more than I want to put up here on the blog, so I’ll just use one color combo as an example. In addition, I made a sample using all colors together to see what that would look like too. Therefore, there are 4 samples in total.
For the photos off the drum carder I’m going to show the most striking example – yellow + purple.
After I created the batts I spun singles from half of the batt. I then chain plied the singles, soaked and hung them to dry. I knit swatches from yarn; 4 swatches in total.
When I finished the swatches I took photos (doing my best in this winter storm weather to get good light!) and then used Photoshop to blend the colors there to see what those color blocks would look like compared to the blends from ES2.
Testing – Here are the yellow+purple drum carder blend photos:
first pass carder
first pass batt
second pass carder
second pass batt
third pass carder
Oops! No photo.
fourth pass carder
fourth pass batt
fifth pass carder
fifth pass batt
sixth pass carder
sixth pass batt
Here are the finished batts next to their plied swatches from ES2. You can already see how much impact blending the fiber has on the resulting color that your eye sees.
I think that the last photo above, with all 4 batts and swatches together, is the best color representation of the photos. I am not a professional photographer and all I have is winter light and a few floor lights to work with. But this one is pretty darned close to reality.
Here is a photo of the finished yarn, balled up and ready for sample knitting. Again, this looks to me, on my computer, pretty true color.
Here are photos of the finished swatches, next to their matching plied swatches from ES2.
yellow + purpleblue + orangered + greenall colors
I then took those photos to Photoshop, cropped just to the knit swatches of the blended fiber, and blended the colors into one. Here are the results of that, compared with the same method used on the plied swatches in ES2.
yellow + purple carded
yellow + purple plied
blue + orange carded
blue + orange plied
red + green carded
red + green plied
all colors carded
all colors plied
Results – First, I’d like to say that I was most surprised by the purple and yellow combination. Carding those colors together created a green that was nearly impossible to know which colors were responsible for it! Comparing the 2 swatches side by side shows what a striking difference thoroughly blending fibers together can make. Your eye is completely tricked into not seeing any yellow or purple at all when the “pixels” or pieces of color are so small. Maybe if we had eyesight like an eagle the blended swatch would look like a smaller version of the plied swatch. I don’t know. But human eyes are not up to the task of teasing out individual color once they are so completely combined.
The red and green blended swatch came out darker than I imagined, but when I think about it, it makes sense because both of those colors have such dark values.
The blue and orange carded swatch looks very purple, which also makes sense considering how much a strong orange is composed of a lot of red.
The swatch of all the colors combined is really interesting. Does it remind you of anything in particular? A field of flowers from a distance? Ground sausage? The planet Mars? I think the yarn is really lovely, but my husband doesn’t like it at all. I think it’s a love or hate or too weird situation with that one. What do you think?
The results of comparing the Photoshop blurred images is not really conclusive to me. I think I need to spend more time to understand the algorithm used or find another way to blur the images to “see” the colors really combined. Actually, if you look at the Photoshop blurs of the carded swatches compared to their actual swatches, the colors are very close! I think probably the more “blurred” the image is in the first place (i.e. the carded swatches) the closer the Photoshop “blur” can represent it. When the image has such big color blocks to start with (i.e. the plied swatches), Photoshop cannot really represent it as a good average. Maybe I’ll investigate that further.
Summary – This has been a very enlightening and interesting set of experiments in this edition of Experimental Spinning. I have learned that
Blending complementary colors can give you very different results depending on HOW they are blended (plied together vs. carded 6 passes)
Combining complementary colors does NOT necessarily create brown colors. Even combining all primary colors and their complements doesn’t necessarily create brown. Brown is more complex than that!
Fooling your eyes into thinking you see a certain color is not hard to do. This opens up a whole can of worms – or roads to explore – in regards to color blending.
Blending colors on a drum carder is something I want to take to the next level of precision! Stay tuned for more on this topic!
In the first Experimental Spinning post I used shades of purple to demonstrate the effects of multiple plies and multiple colors on the final knitted fabric. In this post I will continue with the theme of using plying to play with color, this time working with opposite colors on the color wheel. Again, I am using a somewhat scientific structure to organize my method from start to finish: Subject, Hypothesis, Methods, Testing, Results, Conclusion
Subject – Plying Opposite Colors
Hypothesis – Plying so called “complimentary colors” from a color wheel will result in muddy brown color in a knitted swatch.
Everyone knows that mixing blue and yellow will give you green. blue + red = purple. yellow + red = orange. I have heard and read and found in dying wool, that mixing complimentary colors will often end in mud. If you’ve done any painting or fabric dying or fiber dying, you may also have had this experience. But does this always hold true? Will it hold true with simply plying them together?
First of all, what is the definition of “complimentary” color? Using the most common generally accepted color wheel, complimentary colors are those found directly opposite on the wheel. The compliment of blue is orange. For red it is green. For yellow it is purple.
Methods – I began by spinning singles in each of the 6 colors needed: red, blue, yellow, orange, purple, green. Your basic rainbow.
I used European Merino (27 micron) that is inexpensive and readily available from a local shop. It is commercial dyed. I didn’t need a lot so only spun 20 grams of each color. I spun everything for this experiment on an Electric Eel Wheel 6.0.
I then plied HALF of the amount on the bobbins with their compliments.
red + greenblue + orangeyellow + purple
Then I knit swatches with the yarn.
red + greenblue + orangeyellow + purple
I then decided to ply the rest of the singles together into 6-ply yarn to see what that would look like. My additional hypothesis was that all 6 colors together would look muddy. I had never made 6-ply yarn before and was a little nervous about handling all those singles, but it was actually pretty easy.
bobbin layout6-ply yarn6-ply yarn, primary and secondary colors6 color yarn swatch
Testing – Testing the hypothesis is a very subjective process. Do these colors look muddy to YOU? Do they look muddy to ME? With this method, only the green/red combination looks muddy at first glance. I think this is because the value of the colors are very similar. Meaning, they are equally dark. Mixing yellow and purple in a 2-ply yarn only looks like a marled yarn because the value of the colors is so different. The yellow is so bright compared to the purple. To test this further I took a black and white photo of the yarns together. Here you can see what I mean.
from L to R: yellow/purple, blue/orange, red/green
It’s clear from the photo above that the red and green colors are very similar in value and thus more easily fool your eye into thinking they are blended together.
What if you would see the effect of the color mixing more obviously if the pieces of color were tiny pixels instead of large chunks of yellow and purple? I decided to look at the photos of the swatches in Photoshop and see what I could do there to blur the image and see what color would result.
I used the Blur filter on the photos and came up with these results. The algorithm finds the average color from what it sees in the image.
red/green blurblue/orange bluryellow/purple blur6 color blur
Results – Mixing complementary colors via plying does not create a stark or obvious mud color to MY eyes. Possibly the result would be more mud colored if I had spun very fine singles and knit a swatch with 2mm needles the stitches would be small enough to make more of a muddy impact.
However, if you visually mix the colors fine enough it is clear that a muddy color results. So, if you are painting, or mixing dyes, the Photoshopped blur colors are likely what you will get as a result.
Summary – I consider my hypothesis proved right, even though my swatches were too large in their pieces of color to see the effect at first glance. Blurring the images shows the true mix of the colors when the size of each “pixel” is inconsequential. But this leads me to sub-hypothesis, and the next episode of Experimental Spinning…. what happens if you blend these same combinations on a drum carder? How many passes on the carder are needed before you see the complete blending of colors, matching more or less the blurred images above? Do we still end up with mud? Does blending on a drum carder mimic blending dyes in a dye pot? I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks.
Side note – I have fallen in love with the 6 ply multi-colored yarn. I was surprised how easy it was to ply so many singles together and I’m very happy with the result. It’s not ropey. Not terribly bouncy, but not hard either. I’m very tempted to spin up some more singles and ply enough to make a hat. I think it would make me smile every time I put it on. My advice to spinners – go for lots of plies and see what happens! It’s only wool after all. You are the boss of your spinning.
In this year of stops and starts, ups and downs, open and closed, left and right, here are my best 9 projects of 2021. All of them are on Ravelry if you are interested in more details. From top left:
374 grams, 2670 meters of Shetland lace weight, spun on a Schacht Matchless; knit into 9.
Shark tank baby blanket made for the newest member of the family
920g of 2-ply Aran weight, 70% Shetland fiber, 30% sparkly merino/sparkles, spun on an Electric Eel Wheel 6.0
Canal Poncho, pattern by the fantastically talented Nancy Marchant
Exploration Station shawl, pattern by the also fantastically talented Stephen West
Sweater Spin 2021, knit with yarn from 8.
Best Vacation Ever sweater, my own pattern, knit with 10 colors of Holst Garn Tides
450g 3-ply BFL, fiber dyed by me, knit into sweater 6.
Shetland christening shawl, 140cm / 55“ square, 291g final weight, knit from 1.
If you know me, you know I’m a planner. On 1 January 2022 I’m planning my projects for the coming year…. Finish the 3 projects that are in progress. Make yet another baby blanket. Spin the next episode of Experimental Spinning. Send an article proposal to Ply Magazine. Knit another version of the Best Vacation Ever sweater and write up the pattern. Sew a dress with my own designed fabric. Sew a dress with all of our cast off jeans. And then we’re up to summer and I want to do some dyeing outside……
I have also been thinking about this blog, and Instagram and FaceBook and Twitter, and how to make this all work together and create things that others find interesting enough to come back to. I have re-opened the Under Dutch Skies FB page. I’ve linked Instagram to that page and also to my Twitter account. Today’s blog post will be a test to see if the link between WordPress and those accounts play nicely together and will post simultaneous updates.
That’s the technical side of things, but what about content? What am I trying to do here? What keeps the blog from becoming a chore instead of a fun creative thing? I have found that trying to write a blog post every week with a “big story” is really difficult. I am not that fast with my projects! I really want to write about the start, middle and end of a project every week. But, starting in 2022, as you are seeing here, I’m going to write more often, smaller posts, and at least once a month write a longer complete project (or technique) post.
I’ve been blogging for a long time (those old years are archived now) and I found that when I wrote something every single day for a month, my readership went way up. People have the attention span of fleas and if you aren’t creating, they aren’t coming back. I’ll start writing more. Please come back!
What are you planning for 2022? Are you planning ahead or do you just pick up what feels good in the moment?
For the past couple of years I’ve been thinking about writing a book. About spinning. Because I have so many questions and I want to take readers on a trip with me to find the answers. Writing a book feels very daunting so I’ve decided to take it in pieces, starting with blog posts, and starting with this one today, which is why it is titled with the number “1”. There will be many more of these spinning experiment posts, put into a separate category on the blog called “Experimental Spinning” so as not to confuse it with just every day normal spinning. 🙂
I’ve already got many topics outlined and summarized like chapters in a book and I hope that they will fit nicely into blog posts. Otherwise I’ll chop them up to fit.
The format for each topic will be the same: Subject, Hypothesis, Methods, Testing, Results, Conclusion. For anyone who has taken science classes in school this should look familiar. It’s a way to structure this work and make it easy for someone else to follow the steps and see if they get the same results, or to modify the experiments to test a similar hypothesis. I hope this will make sense as we go down this road together, my readers and I.
OK, now that I’ve set the scene…
Experiment 1 – Effects of multiple numbers of plies on color and texture
Hypothesis – 3-ply yarn is the best for knitting/crochet. It is round and bouncy. Colors play well together in 3’s. 2-ply is less round, 4-ply is ropey and 5-ply even worse. More than 3-plies in multiple colors is just not pleasing to the eye. Therefore, 3-ply is the best yarn to make when planning to make garments from spun yarn.
Methods – As you can see from the photo above, I have 5 similar colors of fiber. This is Corriedale that I bought from World of Wool (WoW) in the UK. The colors range from dark to light, blue-ish to red-ish and a basic purple. All of the colors are listed in the “purple” category by WoW.
Create 4 yarns, from 5-ply to 2-ply. 1. Create 5-ply yarn: Spin 5 x 10g bobbins, 1 of each color, as lace weight, and ply them together. Wash and set the yarn. Look at the yarn created and choose the 1 color that stands out and remove it from the next round of spinning. 2. Create 4-ply yarn: Spin 4 x 10g bobbins of the 4 remaining colors and ply them together. (I chose to remove the lightest color from this round, using purple, red-ish, blue-ish and darkest colors.) Repeat the washing, setting, reviewing and deciding which stand out color to remove for the next round. 3. Create 3-ply yarn: Repeat step 2 for the 3-ply spin. Spin a little thicker single to try to keep the total grist the same. (I chose to remove the blue-ish color from this round, using purple, red-ish and darkest colors.) 4. Create 2-ply yarn: Repeat step 3 for the 2-ply spin. (I chose to remove the darkest color from this round, leaving the purple and red-ish colors.) At the end of these steps there should be 4 skeins of yarn, a 5-ply, 4-ply, 3-ply, 2-ply, all different combinations of colors, as close to the same grist as possible.
Testing – The best way to test the results of the method is to knit swatches of each yarn. The photo below shows the swatches from 2-ply on above, to 5-ply at the bottom of the photo. I used size US4/3.5mm needles for all the swatches. Each one measures about 6″ x 5.5″ (15 x 14cm). They were all knit: CO 32 sts; knit 4 rows; (seed st 4 sts, stockinette for 24 sts, seed st 4 sts) for 4″/10cm; knit 4 rows; bind off. Weave in ends and steam block.
You can see that from the 5-ply I removed the lightest color. From the 4-ply I removed the blue-ish color. From the 3-ply I removed the darkest color. What remained in the 2-ply was the purple and red-ish colors.
While I knit the swatches I developed a ranking/testing method that will hopefully show the “winner” of this test and whether or not the winner is the 3-ply that I hypothesized it would be. There are 8 categories and each one will be ranked from 1-5, 5 being best.
Test
5-ply
4-ply
3-ply
2-ply
ease of spinning
2
3
4
5
enjoyment of spinning
2
3
5
5
efficiency of spinning
1
2
4
5
pleasing color result
3
4
5
4
enjoyment of knitting
3
4
5
3
ease of knitting
3
5
5
4
hand of fabric
3
5
5
3
visually pleasing fabric
2
5
5
4
TOTAL
19
31
38
33
Below are close up photos of the swatches, from 5-ply to 2-ply.
5 ply – All 5 colors used4 ply – Darkest, blue-ish, red-ish, purple colors used3 ply – Darkest, red-ish, purple used2 ply – Red-ish and purple used
Conclusion – Obviously this is not empirical testing and the results are subjective. These are my opinions about my own spinning and knitting and color choices. According to the ratings, the hypothesis holds and 3-ply is the best yarn for knitted fabric and mixed colors (of similar hue).
What surprised me? I was surprised by how nice the 4-ply yarn is. I think that apart from the extra time to spin an extra bobbin (as compared to 3-ply), it would have rated right up there with 3-ply yarn. It is NOT ropey, but still soft and bouncy and the chosen colors look nice together. It is not too busy in my opinion.
An observation about the 5-ply yarn – I found that it felt ropey in my hands and the yarn was kind of splitty, meaning that it was easy to split it with your needle while trying to knit. If you have ever knit with Wolmeise sock yarn, you know what I mean. That yarn is 6 plies of wool, however it is so ropey that it feels almost like cotton. Based on that yarn knitting experience, and this spinning experiment, I am coming to the conclusion that anything more than 4 plies is probably not going to be bouncy and lofty.
An observation about 2-ply yarn – The 2-ply yarn is rated so highly in the testing mainly because it is very efficient and easy to make. If I were to give a weighting factor to the table, I would weight the resulting fabric higher than efficiency (I’m spinning for myself after all, not for money) and maybe the 4-ply would have come out with a higher ranking than the 2-ply. The 2-ply fabric is nice, but not as bouncy and kind of boring in the depth of color. I also made a 2-ply using the darkest and lightest colors together to see what that would look like (bonus testing) and it’s really your typical marled effect.
marled 2-ply (darkest and lightest colors used)
In summary, if you are looking for fabric with nice depth of color and nice round crisp stitches, go for 3-ply. If you are just a little more adventurous, try a 4-ply.
Want to play along with my spinning experiments? Please do! I hope to share an experiment per month or two. I’m starting with the most simple and moving on to more and more complex. Next up – Experimental Spinning 2 – Plying the Color Wheel.
Here are some more photos of Experiment 1 results. Enjoy and til next time!
5 ply4 ply3 ply2 ply – similar colors2 ply light & dark colors
Since I started spinning I have always had at least one “big” spinning project each year. Some years it was yarn for a sweater and some years it was at least 200g of lace weight yarn for a large shawl. Since the pandemic, and not working (and since I wrecked my shoulder with too much knitting), I’ve spun about 3 times that much per year. This year I finished spinning lace weight Shetland for a ginormous shawl, plus 2 sweater quantities of yarn. And some other spinning tests (more about that next week).
Last week I talked about sewing seams in sweaters and this week I’m going to show you my handspun seamless top-down sweater. It’s good to have options in your knitting!
I had been meaning to spin up this fiber since I dyed it a couple of years ago. I just love red and bright pink together. This is BFL (Blue Face Leicester sheep breed) fiber. I think BFL comes in a close second to Shetland wool for my favorite to spin. It’s very soft, but not as soft as Merino, which means that, for me anyway, it’s an easy relaxing fiber to spin. I’m not constantly fighting to keep it under control. It’s happy to be spun very fine, or thicker – whatever you want, it will oblige.
The fiber itself had to be pulled apart a bit and fluffed up before spinning. I didn’t do the greatest dye job and it was a little bit flat and matted. But with little effort I had beautiful little nests (nests on the left, matted fiber on the right).
I grabbed random nests from my bag to spin the singles. I made 3-ply yarn because that is my favorite yarn to spin and knit and wear. Those 3 plies together also hide any imperfections in your spinning pretty well. I ended up with about 455g/16oz of sport weight yarn. I hoped it would be enough.
I went looking for a super simple, plain raglan sweater pattern. You would think that after all these years I would have a go-to pattern like this all ready to cast on. But I rarely make something simple and plain. 🙂 I do have some books that have calculations for sweaters (“All Sweaters in Every Gauge”, “Knitting From the Top”, “Designing Knitwear”) and I did look through them but I was feeling lazy and just wanted someone to have done the work and figured out the numbers for me. I chose “#265 Mid Weight Neck Down Pullover” by Diane Soucy. Lots of people on Ravelry love this pattern so I felt confident it would work for me too. And it did! Super simple, straightforward no-nonsense pattern. I highly recommend it.
I was happily knitting away (see my previous blog post about fit) when I noticed that my yarn was being eaten up pretty quickly. I hadn’t planned to use the solid colored bits of my yarn because the blended yarn was so much prettier, but I HAD to use it to have any hope of finishing with long sleeves. The length of the sweater was plenty long, so in the end I had to go back and unravel part of the bottom and use that yarn on the second sleeve! I unraveled a row, knit it onto the sleeve, unraveled another row, knit some more sleeve, and on and on until the second sleeve was the same as the first. I ended up taking out 5 body rows.
Since I wanted the body ribbing to be a good length, I unraveled the rest of the ribbing and then 5 body stockinette rows, then knit the ribbing again and bound off. I was left with less than an arms length of yarn. WHEW. The sleeves are JUST long enough. The sweaters weighs in at 453g. I need to remember that number so that I spin at least 500g of sport weight in future to be sure to have enough for a plain sweater. And also measure the length of the yarn, not just the weight. (eye roll here – silly beginner/laziness not to have measured the length)
I’m really happy with the sweater and the yarn and the pattern. It took me exactly one month to knit. Almost-instant gratification! It was a cold grey day when we took outdoor photos.
I also want to share how IMPOSSIBLE it has been to capture the colors of this sweater. In the end, YOU pick which color you like best and I’ll say that’s what it looks like. I tried to take photos in all kinds of light and it was never just right. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Any of them are good. 🙂
Do you plan out your projects, months ahead? Do you fantasy knit or spin? I sure do. I’ve already started another cardigan, I’m planning to make mittens starting the end of this month. I’m going to start a new spinning project the end of this week. I have a sweater planned for January, a baby blanket in February, and maybe a handspun sweater in February too. If I was smart I’d make seasonal items the season BEFORE I want to wear them, but I feel like I’m always running to catch up. I’ve just cast on a winter cardigan but I want to be wearing it now. Maybe I need to just skip a season and jump right into lighter weight sweaters to be ready to wear them in the summer. If I was smart.
Under Dutch Skies 