Spinningchallenge results, part 8

Kategoriassa Uncategorized by merinelle

Aprils assignment for spinningchallenge was navajo-plying, with or without beads. Here are the results:

Rukkikuiskaaja: She used finnish alpaca with 3mm beads. She let the single rest for a week before plying and thought that plying was easy but quite slow.

Rukki ja rautapata: Sanski spun her yarn from mulberry- and tussahsilk, using 2-2,5 mm beads. 2 50 gram skeins with over 200m of yarn and 13 grams of beads in each.

Kehruuttaa: Chiengora yarn (Estrela Mountain Dog), 108g/250m (in last picture). He thought of spinning another yarn with beads but ran out of time – maybe we’ll see it next month?

Elämää ja elektroniikkaa: Another chiengora yarn: samoyed/falkland-sheep -mix, 180g/250m before washing.

Talvi knits (and spins)

Beate

And then some pictures:

Susikehrääjä’s first ever navajo-plied yarn:

Alicia’s yarns. White one is rose fibre, others are finnsheep with beads.

I chose green merino and brown finnsheep:

Brown yarn was spun first, as a practice. I spun 50 grams of merino with beads, 50 grams without, planning to knit a shawl of somekind some day. One more item to my to-do -list. There’s 100g/565m of merino and 50g of finnsheep before adding beads.

14Huh2015

Handspun chiengora yarn

Kategoriassa handspun by merinelle

(Note: there’s some new yarns listed for the spinningchallenge here.)

I’ve been spinning every day for a while now. My yarn for the spinningchallenge is ready but I’m not going to show it now. Here’s some chiengora yarns instead, commissioned work.

About 800g, don’t know how many metres. Spun longdraw with Ladybugs medium sized whorl.

Handspun yarn; Norwegian Elkhound

Handspun yarn; Karelian Bear Dog

Next I’ll spin my yarn for April challenge and start planning for the May challenge – what will it be this time…

30Maa2015

Jemmarit (aka leftoveryarn socks)

Kategoriassa knitting, patterns by merinelle

When going through my leftoveryarn stash, Jemmarit came to my mind. I made socks with this pattern several years ago but forgot it for a long time as there weren’t any leftoveryarns to be used. But now there was so I decided to make another pair of Jemmarit just for myself. What on Earth is she talking about?

There’s the process in one picture.

If you’d like to knit your own Jemmarit-socks, the pattern can be downloaded from here or from Ravelry.

And because I love so much of binding of yarn ends (not!), I already started another pair (with same yarns, in different order):

30Maa2015

Spinningchallenge results, part 7

Kategoriassa spinningchallenge15 by merinelle

No, I haven’t forgot you, it’s just life – hectic at times. Here’s the results of March assignment of spinningchallenge so far:

Tilkkuiita, February yarn: 100g 2-ply finnsheep.

Rukkikuiskaaja: 140g of alpaca. She carded it with drumcarder, made rovings with diz and spun them. Singles were around 30 WPI, plied yarn 14-15 WPI. She also told an interesting history fact. There’s a thesis by Veera Vallinheimo from 1950’s (called Das Spinnen in Finnland) where’s a story about a spinning competition held in 1956. You had to spun 50 grams of wool to 50 grams of singles in 50 minutes. Matron Hilja Markkula spun in total of 369,5 metres of yarn ie. 719 cm’s of yarn in a minute.

(No, I’m not planning to include that as one of the assignments to this challenge, don’t worry about that. )

Rukki & Rautapata: Sanski spun alpaca too, which she brought from a Finnish alpacafarm ’Villitarha’. Her previous record was 940m of singles from 40g of mohair (from her own goat). After 32 hours of spinning and 5 hours of plying she had 117g /921m yarn ready. Her friend Miirma then knit the yarn to a beautifull shawl, telling that the yarn was unbelievably strong and it has beautifull color and shine.

Kehruuttaa: Tuxu spun 171 grams of shetland wool to 1055m of yarn (= about 615m/100g). Plying was the hardest part for him as singles were so thin.

EDIT: Elämää, elektroniikkaa ja näpertelyä : 400+m of shetland/silk.

EDIT: Beate’s yarn: 120g/900m falkland

EDIT: Tilkkuiita, March yarn: 420m/100g, her previous record was 250m/100g

Then pictures:

Alicia’s yarns: white is finnsheep, grey is kainuunharmas (ie. kainuu grey, rare landrace). Each skein weights 50g, 248 metres in total:

Minsku’s yarn: 100g of masham, 229m.

25Hel2015

Girasole

Kategoriassa handspun, knitting, spinningchallenge15 by merinelle

Yesterday I finally finished a project, after two weeks of strugling with it. Girasole (aka sofa’s warmer – my daughter came up with that name). I spun those yarns of February challenge with this project in mind. It was easy enough to knit while watching TV but still it didn’t go as smoothly as it could have. It was quite a stashbuster, requiring more yarn than I planned. Near the end I made a huge mistake which I noticed after 5 rows (=3200 stitches) – luckily I managed to repair it without frogging all of it! And finally, when I was 20/640 from finishing the edge, I ran out of yarn. That wasn’t funny at all. I’m afraid to look at a mirror again, I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of grey hair growing because of this project.
But hey, those pictures you’re waiting right?

At this point I was slightly annoyed…

I finished those last 20 stitches with different yarn (wich I spun for February’s spinningchallenge: there wasn’t enough of it to made the border, that’s why I used that another one here)

In this picture you can see (if you look closely), the difference between yarns spun during my ”career” as a spinner. From bottom to top: 3 pattern repeats made of the yarns I spun for the challenge, next 2 repeats: 2nd year and the white border: 3rd year as a spinner. (7th year with this wonderfull hobby started now in the beginning of February.)