Month: March 2012

Peacock

Published on by kountingsheep1 Comment

I have such a backlog of finished projects from over the past couple of months that have yet to make it up on the blog. So since I’ve been in such a mood to spin yarn, I figured I’d start catching up by talking about a Christmas present I made for my best friend and soon-to-be-roommate.

In September last year, I spun up this yarn, as hinted at here. It was my first time spinning Blue-Faced Leicester, and it definitely was a very pleasurable spin, only taking 3 days to make the singles and 2-ply. I always love to see how different the spun up yarn looks compared to the fiber. In this case, it ended up brightening up the colors a bit.

{Peacock
4 oz BFL
Fractal Spun
2 ply, 32 WPI
516 yards
Started 21 Sept 2011
Finished 24 Sept 2011}

I knew that I would be knitting a shawl with this yarn, something with an Estonian pattern to it. I had several in mind, but ended up choosing the Echo Flower shawl, mainly because of the blossom stitch (makes up the main body of the shawl), which I love. It’s the same stitch that can be found in the Laminaria pattern, which was the first shawl I ever made and still to this day my favorite shawl. My bestie always compliments me on that shawl, so I knew I had to make hers with the same stitch.

{Peacock Shawl
US Size 5 Needle
Modifications include leaving out the nupps in the border pattern,
and doing a normal knit stitch down the spine instead of a twisted stitch
Started 24 Dec 2011
Finished 31 Dec 2011}

I used up every last yard for this shawl. I left the nupps out of the border pattern (I dislike nupps, and besides they are yardage pigs [aka use up a lot of yarn]). I was a bit worried as to how the colors would do with this stitch pattern, but I was pleased with how the fractal spinning helped create a nice graduated color effect. And I love how the edging border came out at the end of the triangle! Love that contrast of tight blossom stitches and more openwork lace.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I started this project with my best friend in mind, and that she is indeed my best friend, I would NOT have been able to give this beauty away. The softness, the slight sheen of the yarn, the shawl pattern, everything came out better than I had even imagined.

Up until yesterday, Peacock had been my best spun yarn. More to come on what yarn I now consider my best ever!

PS>We move into our new apartment tomorrow!!!

The Stash

Published on by kountingsheep
This will be my new front door in two weeks! I’ll be moving out of my parents’ house into my first apartment with my best friend at the end of the month. We are extremely excited, especially since this place will be much closer to our respective jobs for both of us, not to mention it’s exciting to be out on my own for the first time.
And on a yarn related note, I finally can say that my stash is officially Red Heart yarn free! Yes, I am a yarn snob now (no surprise, it’s been for several years now), and especially with living in an apartment, it was time to purge the yarns I wasn’t going to use anymore. This included all Red Heart and Caron Simply Soft; these yarns were what got me started into all this craziness that is fiber arts, but it’s time for a parting of the ways. I know these yarns will be moving to a happy home, just not mine.
I knew that my yarn stash was large, but there’s nothing like boxing it all up to show you just how large it truly is. Okay, so it’s not the largest stash in the world, nor is it large compared to a knitter who owns a house, but for someone in her mid-twenties with only one room to call her own, it could be considered on the large size. And there’s a reason why it’s called “stash,” because I literally had yarn stashed in every available nook and cranny. I tried boxing up all the yarn first, but every time I pulled out something else to pack, I’d find another spot where yarn was just sitting there, waiting to be found, which would then be followed by me saying, “Oh yeah, I remember putting that there!” 
I can say that the upside to having a large stash (well, I don’t really consider downsides to having a large stash either, only upsides, but I digress….) is that now that I’ll be living on an extremely tight budget, I can start working my way through all my wonderful yarn. As I was pulling out every skein of yarn I own, it was fun to think about all the projects I have planned and all the beautiful skeins that I’ve purchased over the years. I very rarely buy yarn just to buy it, I usually have a project in mind, so it definitely brought on a case of “KNIT.ALL.THE.THINGS!” The good news is, my new room will have 2 closets, yes read that, 2 closets! So now I can have one for clothing and one for yarn (and maybe that will help with keeping the stash all in one place). 
And although my roommate is aware of my fiber obsession (more aware than some of my other friends), I’m not sure she will truly realize the full extent of it until she actually lives with me!