WIP Wednesdays 2: BFL Breed Study

Handspun BFL combo, a photo by kpetra on Flickr.

Hello all! I have kind of a WIP. Well, it’s not casted on yet, but I had to spin the yarn for it.

I have been part of Breed Study with Willow Glen Farm for some 3 years. Very rarely do I spin my samples, let alone spin it on time. But I did it this month!
We were studying BFL or Blue Faced Leicester. I really like this breed. I used long draw and a very light hand to make sure to end up with nice lofty yarn.
Since I am on the roll, I would like to have a two-color hat with the yarn by the end of the month. (I did not give myself much time, did I?)
The dark brown is the current breed study, the blue is a BFL batt with bits of cotton from Willow Glen Farm as well. Both skeins are little heavier worsted. Since it is only 2-ply, I will pretend they are regular worsted in my knitting.

Check what is everybody else working on at tami’s amis.

 

FO Friday #2: Albuquerque Mitts

DSCF3426, a photo by kpetra on Flickr.

Happy Friday all!

These mitts were my summer project. I am usually a magic loop knitter. This time, I decided to challenge myself and try DP needles again. I don’t have many stranded knitting projects under my belt and the few I made were more or less a struggle. I am a Continental knitter, tensioning my yarn with my left hand. With stranded knitting, I tried to balance both yarns on the same finger. Not a very pleasant experience. This time I tried to get a little help with KnitPicks stranded knitting guide. That did not work much either. Definitely not KnitPicks’ fault. So I did what I wanted to try for a long time. I did combination of Continental and throwing, each hand controlling one of the colors. I am still not fully proficient, but getting better at it.

As with any stranded knitting, weaving in the ends is tedious.

After finishing the mitts, weaving the ends in, soaking and blocking them, my daughter pointed out I’d goofed up. Can you see where?

Yeah, I messed up the colors on the top of the mitts. Again. I made the very same mistake on the bottom, had to rip it out. Did not occur to me the mistake got ingrained in my brain. There was no way I’d be redoing the top after I proclaimed the mitts done. I call it a design element!

Stats: used KnitPicks Palette in 6 different colors:

1981 Whirpool – 19g ~ 88y
C821 Blue Note Heather – 9g ~ 42Y
6882 Sky – 4g ~ 19y
C707 Golden Heather – 5g ~ 23y
C809 Salsa Heather – 8g ~ 37y
C843 Garnet Heather – 6g ~ 28y

DP needles US1

Pattern: Albuquerque Gloves by Cailyn Meyer

Please, go over to tami’s amis and check more FOs.

 

FO Friday 1: Mini Bubbles

Mini Bubbles, a photo by kpetra on Flickr.

Summer is technically over, kids are back to school and I am trying to get back to the swing of things. Tami’s amis is hosting FO Fridays and this is my attempt to be part of it.

We had a great summer, went on a cross country road trip and then spend half of the summer in Europe. I have a tendency to overpack my knitting and spinning supplies (forget the clothes as long as mommy has something to keep her hands busy) and as usual I did not disappoint. I did a quick math, well over 60 hours spent in the car driving should push me well into FO territory on a good number of the projects. Yeah. Not so true. I did not account for my share of driving, planning the route, demands of the kids and such.

At least my Mini Bubbles got well under way. I continued working on it in Europe, brought it back and finally finished last week. It’s a fun shawl pattern by Kieran Foley using dropped stitches.

I used my handspun in Gale’s Art colorway Scarab and Coctail on variegated BFL. It is spun as singles, slightly fulled. The finished yarn is slightly fuzzy, which made dropping the stitches major pain. Instead of goind “whoosh” and dropping the full column in no time, I had to manually go stitch by stitch and undo them. I love the final effect though.

Now hop over to tami’s amis to see what others have finished this week.