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Dec. 17th, 2004 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenI spent way too much time last night on spinning, washing, and knitting. I got the cobweb stuff skeined, washed, and blocked for drying. Jet loved the blocker and spun it really hard and fast and flung water in all directions, but that was okay, as that just got more water out of the yarn. It's pretty amazing stuff.
Wednesday night Aunt Walt came by and bought us dinner and stayed the night. It was really good to have him and just talk over dinner. While we were relaxing a bit after Jet went to sleep, I was skeining the cobweb stuff and he asked me if it was hours of work I was winding up. I thought about it and replied that it was something more like years of work as it was just way too fine, and I don't think I explained myself that well about it but hadn't meant to see rude about it. It's weird, though, to think of it that way. It's just yarn/thread, just that years of my life and hands went into it to make it exactly what it was... way too much time, to some reckoning, but just the time it took to my way of thinking.
I got my silk and mohair with Border Leicester yarn all plied together. The mohair and Border Leicester was in rovings that were dyed red, gold, pinks, and were all carded together, and I spun fine singles from it that I then plied with gold, raw tussah singles. It's really stiff yarn, but as fine as the other sock yarn I have (super wash that's about 7 sts per inch, recommends US 3 needles, but I'm using 2's to get the gauge) and I'm intending it for heels and toes. I stopped by the spinning shop that had sold me the single batt a long time ago, and when I went to get more I found out that it's actually baby mohair in it... Hm. I'm not too sure that's good for socks... but the fire colors of the batt really compliment the gold tussah and dang it's silky to touch and hard as iron so it should wear exceptionally well.
Bonnie, my massage lady, doesn't like the cold that much, and often comments on how Rosty dresses, saying that she'd freeze if she wore as little as he did. I thought it would be fun to give her a pair of wooly socks for Christmas, just for the fun of it, so I stayed up way too late last night getting halfway through a sock in that 7 st/in gauge. Purples, blues, and greys, it's a multicolored sock yarn that's just so nice to work with. I know, I could pay far, far less than $8 for a pair of wool socks, but not in these colors with precise personalization of the size. :-) At least that's what I tell myself.
What I really can't believe, though, is how much happier I am now that I am actually doing anything having to do with fiber arts again. It's MAKING something, again, something real and concrete and solid. Mmmm... nice.
Wednesday night Aunt Walt came by and bought us dinner and stayed the night. It was really good to have him and just talk over dinner. While we were relaxing a bit after Jet went to sleep, I was skeining the cobweb stuff and he asked me if it was hours of work I was winding up. I thought about it and replied that it was something more like years of work as it was just way too fine, and I don't think I explained myself that well about it but hadn't meant to see rude about it. It's weird, though, to think of it that way. It's just yarn/thread, just that years of my life and hands went into it to make it exactly what it was... way too much time, to some reckoning, but just the time it took to my way of thinking.
I got my silk and mohair with Border Leicester yarn all plied together. The mohair and Border Leicester was in rovings that were dyed red, gold, pinks, and were all carded together, and I spun fine singles from it that I then plied with gold, raw tussah singles. It's really stiff yarn, but as fine as the other sock yarn I have (super wash that's about 7 sts per inch, recommends US 3 needles, but I'm using 2's to get the gauge) and I'm intending it for heels and toes. I stopped by the spinning shop that had sold me the single batt a long time ago, and when I went to get more I found out that it's actually baby mohair in it... Hm. I'm not too sure that's good for socks... but the fire colors of the batt really compliment the gold tussah and dang it's silky to touch and hard as iron so it should wear exceptionally well.
Bonnie, my massage lady, doesn't like the cold that much, and often comments on how Rosty dresses, saying that she'd freeze if she wore as little as he did. I thought it would be fun to give her a pair of wooly socks for Christmas, just for the fun of it, so I stayed up way too late last night getting halfway through a sock in that 7 st/in gauge. Purples, blues, and greys, it's a multicolored sock yarn that's just so nice to work with. I know, I could pay far, far less than $8 for a pair of wool socks, but not in these colors with precise personalization of the size. :-) At least that's what I tell myself.
What I really can't believe, though, is how much happier I am now that I am actually doing anything having to do with fiber arts again. It's MAKING something, again, something real and concrete and solid. Mmmm... nice.
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Date: 2004-12-17 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 09:08 pm (UTC)My hands are a bit stiff this morning, but no buzzing. I just have to heed the warning signs and be nice to them when I'm done with this pair. Spinning the tussah was a bear, though, as I'm not that used to the "new" wheel and it's ratios. Still, it was nice to do all the silk and mohair in one evening and to be able to do all the finish work on the yarn in another evening. Much easier than the cobweb laces... I just have to adjust my scope. Yay!
But, yes, it's amazingly satisfying again.
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Date: 2004-12-17 09:22 pm (UTC)And I'm imagining you transforming spider-silk-thin yarn through all kinds of complicated processes with interesting names like blocking and plying and spinning, and the end of the yarn running into a beautiful multicolored sock, knitting itself into the sock and making it longer.
Not knowing very much about the wool -> knitting process makes the images more fanciful. :)
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Date: 2004-12-17 09:36 pm (UTC)The spiderweb thin yarn will probably end up in some kind of web-like scarf/shawl or something, it wouldn't wear at all well...
Instead I had, on one hand, a very fluffy batt of fire-colored soft stuff all brushed in the same direction that went through spinning, then plying with a spun thread of gold tussah silk (from fat, soft bundles shedding soft veils of shimmering fibers), then washing and blocking, that then gets knit into that multicolored sock (at the heel and toe, the rest is actually commercial yarn, dyed to make a facsilimie of what would happen if I'd taken four skeins of white, blue, grey, and purple yarns and did the appropriate stitches in the appropriate colors) which is good and long at the leg end and fits like a glove at the foot end. :-)
But then William Gibson was always more poetic about the things he didn't really, fully understand... so I like your image better than the reality. :-)