More complicated than anticipated
May 11th, 2013 by swatchlessHave you ever started knitting something on a whim, not really anticipating how it will turn out, how much yarn is required, or the amount of time it will require? I usually have a good sense about gauging what is required, specially for something that I have made before, like socks.
This project is something that just caught me off guard for some reason. It started last Friday night, with an incredible urge to knit a pair of socks for a new friend. This is where the weird begins…I usually only knit socks for myself, or for other knitters who will appreciate the thought and the time invested in the gift. Perhaps this new friend will need a knitting lesson in the near future.
The next weird was that I could only find one set of double pointed sock needles, and they were in use. I had half a sock (a second sock), that had slowed as I got into the ribbing at the cuff end. I know that I have more needles, but they were not to be found. So, with great haste, I finished knitting the first pair of socks, because that seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

These socks are knit from the March instalment of the Spunky Eclectic fibre club. The roving was 4 oz of Romney wool in the colourway “Lightning Strike”.
Once these were off the needles, in the wee hours of Saturday morning, I cast on for the next pair of socks that I felt driven to make. The next weird was that I started to knit, from small balls of leftover yarn, which added up to way less than 50 g. I knit and knit, and ran out of yarn, so then I unraveled another sock experiment that was less than satisfactory. I rarely unravel old projects! This gave me enough yarn to knit up the long leg of one sock, and the toe of the second, in absolute record time might I add, this is a very tall knee sock that was completed by Sunday evening!

I hadn’t really been concerned with the second sock, or finding more yarn…I was just intent on the knitting. This pattern involved a new technique, slipped stitches to add vertical ridges to the pattern.

Unfortunately, I did run out of yarn, so I headed out on Monday afternoon, with a small sample, to KnitTrader’s of Kingston, my local yarn store, from which I must have bought the yarn originally. I didn’t have the ball band, but I deduced, by feel, that the yarn I was searching for was Sisu. Unfortunately, the colour was no longer in stock locally. I bought another colour of blue that was close but not quite right.
I thought it would be close enough, but in daylight, it’s really not close at all.
Then I started to search online for the right colour. I found that Sisu yarn is stocked by Wool Tyme in Ottawa, so on Monday night I ordered 2 balls of, what I hoped was, the right colour blue. Since shipping was equivalent to the yarn price, I decided it made more sense to buy more yarn to balance it out a bit…for some reason paying $9 for shipping on 7 balls of yarn is much more palatable than paying $9 for shipping on $10 of yarn. And sock yarn is always useful….right?

So yesterday the package arrived (only 4 days since it was ordered!) and I’ve already joined up the next ball of yarn. I’m debating the merits of knitting this evening instead of doing the work that I really should be doing. Maybe I’ll just get the heel turned and save the rest for later…but these socks seem to have a mind of their own…they warp time and space!
The good thing is that the socks are turning out exactly as planned. Their full awesomeness can’t be revealed yet, in case the pictures get leaked to the recipient. Does anyone out there recognize the pattern?




This farm has around 1600 sheep, and the plan was to shear half of them and keep them inside the barn until it gets warmer. It was a very cold day on Thursday, and the wind stripped the heat out of us and out of the barn we were working in.
There were three shearers who kept up a quick pace, shearing 452 sheep over the course of the day.
I am impressed with how well the shearers calmed the sheep down and kept them still while artfully removing the fleece and keeping it all in one piece. Their shearing follows a rhythm…belly fleece goes first into a separate pile because it is really dirty. Then the fleece comes off the back and finally the hind legs.
After the fleece is removed from the sheep, one of the other workers picks it up and spreads it out like a blanket on the skirting table. This is done by the very skilled, by holding on to the fleece that had come off the rear legs, one leg in each hand, and unfurling the fleece with a quick arm movement.
If done correctly, it will spread out completely. Who knew that sheep were so big!? I tossed one or two fleeces but never did it perfectly.
The next jobs that happen require less skill, and I got to be pretty good at them! This is where dirty pieces get pulled off, and the fleece gets inspected to see if there are coloured fibers in the mix. It takes fairly good eyesight to distinguish whether a discolouration is due to dirt or coloured fibers. The fleece is then folded over and rolled just like a sleeping bag. The far end gets twisted and then tucked in to keep the fleece in a tight compact roll.
The roll is then tossed up to a person waiting by the 7 foot tall burlap sack. The fleeces are compacted in the bag by someone jumping up and down on them. I don’t like heights, so I was not keen to take on this job.
After the bag is full (40 fleeces or so I was told), it gets stitched up with twine, and then heaved onto a pile of other bags. I am not sure how much they weighed, but it took 3 people to maneuver into place.
Sometimes there are runaway sheep that need to be wrangled back into a different pen. This is also a job for those who know lots about sheep. Noa’s a natural!
I spun late into the night, watching and waiting for the snow to let up and for the plows to get to the smaller streets. This morning I got up early and enjoyed the warmth of the February sun and the brightness of all the snow outside. I plied my two bobbins of singles together.
Then I took pics on my fresh balcony snow.
I’m thinking this might make some pretty interesting socks.
Hope everyone else has been safe and warm for their snow day!
My combs are from 
The small amount of fleece remaining on the first comb gets discarded because it is mostly the short pieces and felted bits that will not spin smoothly anyway. Sometimes it takes a few passed through the combs to get the fleece tangle free.
The next step is to turn the combed fleece into roving. I don’t have a diz (a small object with a hole in it meant for turning fleece into roving), but I do have a button that works just as well. I carefully pulled the combed fleece through a button hole to create soft fluffy roving.
I wound up the roving into balls, ready to spin. I did all that combing over the span of 2 or 3 evenings! I look forward to spinning it into yarn. Right now it’s not about the finished project. It’s all about the process, the learning, and the experimenting.
For me, socks, and particularly striped socks hold a particular memory for when and where they were knit. I will be able to recall with each change of colour what was going on at the time, who I was with, and those memories stay lovingly locked away in those stitches.
It turns out that blue is a bit of a tricky colour, so I added some yellow to make green, which seems to be pretty potent! The big trick is to add acid to the water (I used vinegar). I don’t know how much I used, but I think it’s enough, since the colour stuck to the fleece!
I also read that the temperature of the dye pot is important. I used my candy thermometer to make sure that the temp got up to 180 F. This yarn was once dyed (rather unsuccessfully) using black beans. I’ve re-dyed it with a LOT of food colouring, making it a combination of reds and oranges.
I rinsed everything and now it is drying in my bathtub. I’m looking forward to making some interesting things out of this!
The blue one was started on Christmas day, but not quite finished in time to be under a tree. It has already been delivered to my sister in law, and the orange one will be given in the near future to a very big fan of orange who needs a bit of extra warmth and encouragement this winter, specially since we’re finally getting lots of snow.
Here’s a closer look at the pattern. I bet you can’t make just one!
To thank him for going above and beyond, and making a young rower’s Christmas wish come true, I gave him a hat that I’d knit this fall. It is the 
