Wednesday, February 27, 2008

About the Same as Last Time

It seems like I've been busy, but when I went to get pictures together for this post it didn't seem like I'd accomplished much this week. I did take the remaining scraps from hubby's socks and knit a square for my blanket. Hopefully I'll eventually have enough squares, but at the rate I knit socks it's going to be awhile. I did figure that some of the yarn from his first hand knit socks deserved to be in the blanket. The socks were also a mental victory for me, so I saved some yarn to make this square. Although it may have cost the socks about an inch or so in length, I'm glad to have the square to remember the socks once they are gone.

Halfobi is more that half done now. I'm in the home stretch and knitting the second side. I'm hoping to give a really good try at finishing up the knitting this weekend. I know need to decide what to use to seam it up and to use for the edging. The pattern calls for a crochet edging around the outside. I've always been led to believe that Noro isn't that great for seaming because of the strength. So I'm going to need to haul this thing to the LYS or something to find something appropriate.

I have done some spinning too. I spun the batts from Loop into two singles yarn. I original decided to spin half of the fiber and mix the colors and spin the other half with the colors separate. So, I started the first bobbin by mixing the colors and decided that was really the way to go. To make the separated colors work well, I thought that each color would have to be its own separate ply in the finished yarn because each color is actually a different fiber. I don't think that would have worked well with the quantity I had.

So, I decided to just spin it all mixed up and make my standard two-ply yarn. The colors are beautiful but I'm not crazy about the idea of plying the singles. Maybe I'll like the finished yarn better once I'm finished. I think this fiber really wanted to be spun in different way. After I was halfway through the second bobbin, I realized that the fiber shouldn't be so tight, but more lofty and bulky. Hindsight is 20/20 and I can't redo this, but I am thinking of buying another set of these batts to try again and compare the two.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems like you've had quite a few blocks done for the blanket. Anyway you'll like looking at the block of hubby's socks as opposed to the actual socks. The Halfobi is really coming along great. I still love the colors. I think the color mix on the bobbin is really nice too!!

The Kelly Green Rogue said...

you're making a lot of progress!

Zonda said...

Yeah, that square needed to be done..to um..remind you ;)

Halfobi is looking good. Nice colors in the handspun. Sounds like you are learning a lot! :)

cpurl17 said...

You knit circles around me!
Halfobi is looking great!

IrishGirlieKnits said...

The Halfobi is looking fantastic! Can't wait to see it all done!

Anonymous said...

The Halfobi is looking great!

I think the spinning looks really nice; I like the colors.

mel said...

Your Halfobi is going to be awesome :)

And I love all the detail that you share on your spinning projects and process - I'm living and learning vicariously through you!