merino – Enchilada Sunrise

Spinning again

As well as not having blogged since July, I haven’t done any spinning since then either. During the blogathon, I posted that I was spinning some gorgeous merino fibre. I got maybe 10g of the 100g braid actually done, and the spinning wheel has been in a corner ever since. I suppose I sort of lost my spinning mojo / motivation, then I was busy with other things. But I’m now feeling much more motivated, and I suddenly felt like actually finishing that. So, yesterday I hoiked the wheel back out of the corner, sat it in front of the telly, and spun all through Strictly Come Dancing and Casualty. And then, because I was on a bit of a roll, I put on the last two eps of Flash Forward which I still had to catch up on, and kept going. I’d split the braid into two approx 50g sections so that I could spin two roughly equal bobbins full, and I’d been aiming to finish the rest of the first 50g. In fact, I finished that first bobbin, and now I’m half way through the second:

I’m going to see if I can get a bit more done tonight before I go to bed. I’m still on a little bit of a sci-fi high from the new Doctor Who episode / special tonight, “The Waters of Mars”. Can’t wait til the next one at Christmas! But I need to wind down a bit more, so a bit of podcast listening and spinning should do the trick. Hopefully, I’ll get these singles bobbins finished and then plied within the next couple of days. I might use the remainder of my birthday money to get a niddy noddy, too. That’ll make winding the finished yarn back off the bobbin much easier.

Insufficient Yarn Error

The main project that I’ve been knitting on recently has been the Ishbel scarf, and I was using some really lovely soft, squishy yarn for it: some BFL sockweight by Nimu.

[thumb:1150:c:t=]

Isn’t it preeeeeeeeeetty? I know you can’t see it terribly well in that picture because it’s only some of the stocking stitch portion. But trust me, it’s lovely – the colour of ripe blackberries. The pattern calls for 300m of yarn, the skein was 365m. I used the suggested needle size because I liked the drape of the fabric that gave me, although it put my gauge a little bit off. That’s not important in a scarf, triangular or not, right? Well, I knitted all of the stocking stitch section, and thought I still had plenty of yarn. The I started on the lace charts: chart A, then B, then as I started A again I began to get a bit worried. I kept going though. Right up until I ran out of yarn with essentially 8 rows to go. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Has my dodgy gauge has eaten more yarn, or something? I’m not sure that makes sense – I haven’t knitted more stitches, after all. I’ve got more stitches to the inch than I should have: that means that to get suggested gauge, I’d have to go up a needle size or two, thus making larger stitches, and therefore less per inch. My stitches are smaller, so they should be using less yarn, right? The resulting scarf must be a bit smaller than intended, that’s all.

As I see it, I have a couple of choices: rip out the whole thing (noooo!) and start again with different needles or yarn, or knit the remaining few rows in something else. But what? I only have this one skein of lovely Nimu ‘Striding Edge’ BFL, and I love the way it’s feeling so much that I do want to use if for this project. Bah. My first instinct is to edge it in a black yarn, since it’s such a dark colour to start with. But the only black yarn I have in what to my naked eye looks like a comparable thickness (I mentioned that it’s a very squishy sockweight, and it’s relatively loose-spun) is acrylic DK. No. I also have some similarly squishy sock yarn by the Yarn Yard – their merino ‘Hug’ yarn, in a couple of colours that might do:

[thumb:906:c:t=Mysterion][thumb:612:c:t=Damson][thumb:823:c:t=Damson knit up]

I don’t know which, if either, would be better though. So I’m posting a poll. Help meeeeeee!

[poll id=”3″]

You know what’s really annoying, though? This is the fourth time I’ve run out of yarn on a project recently. I must be doing something wrong.

7: Merino soffffft

I’m still working on the bipolar topic post, so I though that this half hour I’d show you what I’m currently spinning. Well, not currently, since I’m typing right now, but you know what I mean ;-)

I am, by the way, very much a beginning spinner, so my results aren’t fabulous, but the whole two skeins I’ve produced so far are nice enough, and definitely usable. Which is the point, right? The fibre I’m spinning now is really really lovely, so I hope I don’t make any horrible messes with it. It’s 100% merino from Limegreenjelly in “Take Me Out”, and it’s really beautiful – see:

Charcoal, hot pink, deep jade green, and flashes of purple. Yum!