Fiberistas

Choosing the Right Knitting Pattern for Hand-dyed Yarns

By Stephanie

Note from the SpaceCadet:  My friend Abigail of TAAT Designs is a wonderful knitter and real connoisseur of hand-dyed yarns.  And I am delighted that she agreed to share how she chooses the right pattern for each unique yarn…

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By Abigail

In a recent post on my blog, I was reflecting on my relationship with yarn and I realized that it’s not just about the yarn, but also about the potential contained within it. When I see a skein of yarn, I see more than just the yarn itself. I see the twist of the yarn, the way the colors blend together and how the fiber appears. From here, however, it’s not always straightforward to picture what the yarn will look like when it is knit up, which makes it hard to choose a pattern. Especially with handpainted yarns, there’s always a bit of uncertainty. How long is each bit of color? Do the colors repeat in a systematic manner, or are they completely random? With experience, it becomes easier to predict these things without knitting a swatch, but even a prediction is still no guarantee of what the finished product will look like.

Most handpainted yarns do have a predictable repeat. This means that they will tend toward pooling or striping, depending on the length of each stretch of color. The best way I have found to determine this is to unwind a length of the yarn – two yards is usually enough. If the entire length is all one color, then the yarn will stripe in many usages (socks, children’s sweaters, hats, mittens – anything that is less than about 2 feet in circumference or width). If the length is multiple colors, then you can try to predict whether it will stripe or not by estimating how many stitches you can get out of each color section (a good rule of thumb is that it takes 3x as much yarn as the length of fabric you are knitting across).

Once you know roughly whether the yarn will stripe or not, it becomes easier to choose a pattern. My preference is for yarns that do not stripe, or have minimal striping – I like a new color in every row of my knitting. I’m also a big fan of knitting socks with handpainted yarns, so that’s usually where my mind first goes.

When I received my skein of SpaceCadet Creations’ Cold Waters earlier this year, I wasn’t sure at first what it wanted to be. The colors were so subtle and yet striking all at once, and I wanted to choose a pattern that would really show off the colors. From looking at the yarn, I was able to predict that it would stripe slightly, but not be too overpowering. There was also not much chance of pooling (which I do my best to avoid). This told me that I didn’t need to choose a pattern that would actively reduce pooling, but I didn’t want to choose a pattern that was too busy, either, so that I didn’t overpower the yarn. Because Cold Waters uses tonal shading rather than lots of different colors, however, I knew the pattern could have a little something going on.

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The stockinette portion of the sock clearly shows the beautiful, subtle, not-quite-single-row striping of Cold Waters.

Around the time I received my Cold Waters, I also received a gorgeous pattern from Yarnissima (through a monthly sock yarn club I belong to), The Portland Gussets. I had been looking for the perfect yarn for this pattern, and Cold Waters seemed like it would fit. It had everything I was looking for: medium-length color repeats (too short, and the pattern would be lost in the yarn), not too much color variation (any more, and the yarn would obscure the pattern), but enough visual interest (not enough, and the pattern would be boring).

ColdGussets

I quickly cast on, and the socks just flew off my needles. The pattern and yarn were a great fit!

When you’re knitting hand-dyed yarns, each skein is a unique adventure.  With a little practice, it becomes easy to match a yarn to pattern.  If you take the time to examine the yarn and read its color repeat, the yarn will help you decide which pattern to choose for it.

TAAT Designs is a newly formed design group created by four friends — Trisha, Allison, Abigail and Tesia —  to combine their love of knitting with their desire to create unique and fun patterns for knitted objects of all types.  Read more about their adventures on the TAAT Designs blog.

Essential Items for Good Spinning

By Stephanie

What do you need for successful spinning?  What is essential to produce a gorgeous, soft, lofty yarn?  Well, you start with beautiful fiber that runs through your fingers like butter, and you spin on well-made equipment that you love and that loves you back.  But that’s not all you need…

Spinning can be done in isolation — and there’s something really lovely about the meditative aspect of spinning on one’s own — but, in my opinion, spinning is most enjoyable when it’s done in the company of other spinners. Other spinners inspire, they teach, they encourage, and — most of all — other spinners understand.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine invited to me come to her spinning group.  It was some considerable distance away and, when I realised how long the drive would be, I had second thoughts.  But I decided to go anyway, and I am so glad I did.   I met a wonderful group of women who welcomed me warmly and whose company I thoroughly enjoyed.  And they were knowledgeable — so knowledgeable, years and years of collective experience all gathered up together and shared out, happily, freely.  It was an absolute pleasure to spin with them.

If you are a new spinner or wanting to learn to spin, seek out the company of other spinners.  It will enhance your experience and your learning immensely.  It will inspire you.  And I’ve never once met a group of spinners who didn’t welcome with open arms a fellow fiber-lover!   So don’t be shy — you can find other spinners through your local yarn shop or knitting group, by looking up spinning guilds, or searching on Ravelry.

And if you happen to find one that meets in a beautiful rural setting on warm summer afternoons, cooled by shade of tall trees and a breeze scented by a garden in bloom, then you will be as lucky as I was.  There simply cannot be a better way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Getting Started in the Tour de Fleece

By Stephanie

Note from the SpaceCadet:  My friend Natalie (npeace on Ravelry) is a prolific spinner who creates her wonderful yarns almost exclusively on spindles.  With the Tour de Fleece coming up, it felt natural to ask her to share her thoughts on the best way to get started…

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By Natalie

July 3rd marks the start of one of the biggest events of the spinning year – the Tour de Fleece.   For 3 weeks, spinners everywhere will spin along as the cyclists in the Tour de France work their way across France.  During this time, gorgeous handspun yarns will be popping up all over the internet as spinners show off their tour projects on their blogs and on Ravelry.

It was actually all this frenetic tour-based posting of handspun that got me interested in spinning a few years ago.  If you find yourself drooling over yet another absolutely stunning barber-poled yarn or wondering how it would feel to play in a big pile of cloud-like merino… well, that’s a pretty common side effect of the Tour de Fleece.

Natalie spinning SpaceCadet Creations BFL combed top in Garden in Spring, on a Butterfly Girl spindle

It used to be that people felt they had to invest hundreds of dollars in a wheel in order to do “real” spinning.  This often seems like too daunting an investment to make just to give something a try.  Fortunately, with the current resurgence in popularity of the humble spindle, spinning is becoming ever more accessible.  If you get all fired up by the Tour de Fleece and want to give this spindle thing a try for yourself, here’s a list of resources to get you started:

Books:

Respect the Spindle by Abby Franquemont – If you’re only going to buy one spindle resource, this is the one to get.  It starts with the basics but will continue to be useful as you gain competence and experience.  There is also an accompanying video available as a DVD or as a video download from the Interweave online store.

Productive Spindling by Amelia Garripoli, also known as the Bellwether.  This book covers a lot of the same material as Respect the Spindle, but the approach is different, and it is an equally valuable resource.

Internet Resources:

Both authors above have informative blogs.  Abby Franquemont’s is http://abbysyarns.com/ and Amelia Garripoli can be found at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/.  Both have extensive archives of general spinning and spindle-specific information.  Abby Franquemont has also posted a number of fabulous instructional videos to you tube, which you can find here.

Also invaluable to the new spindle spinner is the Spindlers group on Ravelry.  The “Stupid Questions” thread is full of answers to every beginner question imaginable, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for there you can post a new question.  Many experienced spinners generously spend their time monitoring that forum and answering all manner of questions for the new and confused.

There are many, many more resources out there, but starting with the list above will have you up and spinning very quickly.  Have fun!

How Much Yardage to Expect with Handspun Yarns

By Stephanie

A customer recently wrote to ask me how much handspun yarn she could expect get from a braid of my hand-dyed fiber and, to be honest, I was at a bit of a loss.  How much yarn you’ll get varies from spinning style to spinning style  …and from spinner to spinner.  The thicker the yarn, the less yardage; the thinner it’s spun, the more yardage.  Beyond that, it’s a very hard question to answer.

Hand-dyed BFL Combed Top, in Garden in Spring

And especially for me, because I hardly ever calculate the yardage on my handspun.  I have no idea why — I just never do!

So I turned to my friend Natalie who is a more experienced (and excellent) handspinner and posed my customer’s question to her.  She replied, “It’s usually 20 – 30 % less yardage than you’d get from the same amount (grams/ounces) of commercially spun yarn of the same weight (worsted, dk, fingering etc) because handspun tends to be denser. From 4oz, I’d expect 300-400 yards fingering; probably 200-300 of a dk/worsted range.” A much more technical and useful answer than mine!

The yarn spun by my friend from the Garden In Spring BFL

And then she added, “Hard to judge though… It’s all very variable.” Which made me feel a bit better!

Inspiration: Fellow Fiberistas

By Stephanie

I was standing at a booth at a knitting festival, admiring the handspun yarn and trying to figure out why I hadn’t spun in so long.  It’d been since we’d moved the year before…  No! It’d been longer — since before the babies were born!  New babies and major house moves can push lots of things off the rails — even stuff that a girl really loves, like fiber arts.

The lady running the booth came up and asked me what I was interested in, and I explained that I was a spinner but my wheel was in storage,buried amongst all the unpacked boxes in the garage, but looking at her spinning was… Oooh! Oooh, it was inspiring me!  I was going to go home and dig out my wheel and get spinning again.

And just like that, she invited me to come round to her house for a spin-in.  She didn’t know me from Adam but she didn’t hesitate for a moment.  That was well over a year ago and, through her, I’ve met a whole group of incredibly inspiring fiberistas — women who have taken their passion and really built it into something.  They spin and dye and knit, they sew and felt, and make bags and buttons, art, images, and jewelry…  Most of all, they inspire, they inspire, they inspire.  Without them, I never would have believed that I could take this love of fiber that I have, and all these years of experience from doing it as a hobby and turn it into something real.  All they did was be their fiberista-selves, but they were encouragement to me the whole time, and I don’t think they even know it.  I’d like to introduce you to them.

Cosy is the lady who first invited me to come spinning.  She is a full-time fiber artist, spinner and dyer, knit designer, teacher, and published knitting author.  More than that, she is laid-back, fun to know, and generous with her time and expertise.

Gwen has fabulous style, tells mad and hilarious stories, and  dyes the most sublime colours.

Lauren is an artist who does beautiful felted jewelry but, mostly, she just totally cracks me up.

Ana makes fabulous things out of gorgeous fabrics — bags, bracelets, covered button hair accessories.  And she and I always seem to have so much to talk about — I love chatting with her.

Behind Julia‘s quiet demeanor is a hugely talented knitter and dyer, whose self-striping sock yarn has been featured in Vogue Knitting.

And Alex is an amazingly talented photographer who has just launched her own business.  She took some shots of my family recently, and she was brilliant — so full of energy and ideas — and the results are fantastic!