Project 3: CBG hat

This is project 3 for the year and I'm ashamed to say that I made it one day two weeks ago and it's taken me this long to post it.

This is a spiraling hat out of my handspun corriedale. See the little yarn tail near my nose? That's exactly how much yarn I had left over.

This is a gift for a friend's Birthday, which will be late by the time it gets overseas. I like it, it has some personal jokes made out of shrinkie dinks spun in, which is fun.

Pattern: Spiraling Hat

Yarn: Spiraling handdyed hanspun, 100% corriedale in cbg

Needles: 10mm dpns, made by pants

Made for: Comic Book Guy

Ravelry Details

Project 2 - Handspun Mitts

The thing with knitting with handspun, for me at least, is that you never know if you're going to have enough to finish your project.

I was convinced, making the mind's eye hat, that I would run out and have to use something else for the very top, but miraculously, I managed to eke a pair of fingerless mitts out of the yardage.

Very basic, made-up pattern, 7 rows of ribbing, stockinette to the thumb hole, which is bound off, then re-cast on the next row, then stockinette for a bit, then seven rows of 2x2 ribbing and a sewn cast off. Voila!

I knit these on the 4th, during a road trip to Camden for the opshops, down and out to a place I can't spell near Woollongong to buy a couple of surfboards (more projects - one has a giant crack and one is missing a fin, but I have plans for the missing fin board).

Again, any project I can finish in a day is a winner, as far as I'm concerned.


Here's a closeup of the fabric. This is a very thick and thin singles yarn that I spun very early in my spinning career. It's been sitting in my spinning closet for years and in that time, it's managed to lose it's singles bias. Interesting.

Pattern: Improvised

Yarn: Spiraling handdyed hanspun, 100% merino in Smoothie

Needles: 5mm circ

Made for: The present box

Ravelry Link

Project 1, Book 1 - Mind's Eye Hat

As part of my resolution to make one project from each of my knitting books, I cast on this simple handspun hat from Spin to Knit by Shannon Okey.

This is the Mind's Eye Hat, with a few minor modifications. I added an inch or so of 2x2 ribbing and continued to decrease into a point rather than drawing the yarn through the stitches at the crown and cinching.

It's a good pattern, I finished it in an afternoon and an evening, which is a requirement in a hat, for me, but I think in the future I'll just stick to my spiraling hat.

Spin to Knit is an interesting book, written by Knitgrrl Shannon Okey. I picked it up in the US early last year and it's taken me until now to read it. It's quite a good resource for utilising handspun, but I'd probably only recommend it to new spinners. It's interesting, but there's nothing new in there.

There aren't many projects from it that I would make, but one day I'll tackle the faux fair isle raglan pullover (ravelry link).

Pattern: Mind's Eye Hat from Spin to Knit

Yarn: Spiraling handdyed hanspun, 100% merino in Smoothie

Needles: 5mm circ

Made for: The present box

Ravelry Link

think pink

think pink
Originally uploaded by wearespiraling

I managed to do a little spinning last week, after my card-a-palooza.

This one is hand dyed merino, spun on the Roberta and navajo plied.

It's for my partner in the Think Pink swap (ravelry link), and will be sent along with some hand dyed Spiraling Sock, a strawberry freddo, strawberry timtams and whatever else pink I can find.

Card-a-palooza 07

Pants and I have some fairly inflexible financial goals at the moment, which have resulted in our jumping at any overtime or extra work we can get.

A consequence of this is that I've been travelling quite a bit and working most weekends and that Pants has also been doing the occasional weekend and a couple week nights a week.

He worked one evening earlier this week, which I designated CARD-A-PALOOOOOZAAAA!!!!, wherein I take a giant basket of fibre, generally consisting of bits I couldn't fit on a bobbin, dye trials, bits I use to exhaust dye pots, samples of fibres and generally anything interesting I find in my studio.

Then, I throw handfuls into my drum carder, roughly card them and see what happens.

I made 19 batts in this bunch, 3 for me, 15 for the store and 1 for my new friend Miss Vicki.

They're so much fun to spin, because you never know how it's going to turn out. No two are the same, but each of the 15 for sale all have at least 10 fibres in common, so they would make a giant, coheisive yarn, if all spun together. This lot all have silk, mohair, merino, angelina, corriedale and a bunch of other things.





I really love making these, it's always a surprise to see how they will come out and I'm really happy with this batch.

Now, to find enough time to list them on etsy and eBay.

Dead Spinning Wheel

Dead Spinning Wheel
Originally uploaded by wearespiraling

For the record, I hate the Ashford Traditional. In fact, I hate everything Ashford makes, I hated the Ashford 'villiage' in Ashburton, NZ, and I hated that all of their salespeople knew nothing about fibre or spinning.

I look at the ashford wheels and wonder why they decided to forget aesthetics and produce wheels with function and no form, especially when their function isn't so hot and their prices don't reflect their ugly.

That said, I've managed to pick up a cheap Traditional somewhere along the way (in Canberra, actually, it came home in the backseat of the land rover) that I pretty much hate.

MItzy is pants' wheel (though I use it overwhelmingly more), the Peggy is mine, but lives in my mother's living room and the Roberta is my workhorse, production wheel.

That said, I'm excited now, because we're modding (or as Pants says, Rodding) the crapford into a super spinner. It involves welding, checkerplate and detatchable parts, which is kind of exciting.

I hope pants finishes up today, or at least next week while I'm in Qld again for three days.

Poor old Mitzy

Mitzi spokes
Originally uploaded by wearespiraling

I've been neglecting my beautiful Mitzy terribly.

I'm all about the sock knitting these days, to the detriment of my other crafty persuits.

Tonight, though, I have to get cracking on soft toy Christmas presents and my contribution to Softies for Mirabel.

I'm thinking monkeys.