Early Winter?

Here's what it looked like coming home from church this morning:

It's still dark when I do my morning barn chores now, so the sheep content themselves with hay from the summer harvest until I get home, and then they are happy to head out to pasture:

There is still a lot of grass left in all the paddocks so I hope I can keep the flock grazing for quite a while yet. If not, no never mind as the hay crop this year was more than generous.

But what to do with the rest of a wet, cold, blustery, muddy Sunday?

I knit myself a new pair of light weight work socks that I'll wear til the really cold weather sets in.

I used my Columbia lambs wool (75% blended with 25% nylon) for this project. Its a single ply that runs about 400 yards/ 120g. The coloured yarn is a light variegate grey on my monitor it shows a bit of a reddish tinge which is inaccurate - its like a mouse grey. For the topper, heels and toes I used natural of the same blend.

The single ply has virtually no twist in it, since its not plied. Twist provides strength, but in this case the nylon content takes care of that. The non twist makes this a lofy yarn - so it has a good insulating value, and a softness under foot.

I've got two pair of these in natural that I've been wearing for several years farming. They are getting pilled from the felt liners in my barn boots, and the heels are starting to thin a little. Mostly they are starting to look like skanky man socks, so this first breath of winter inspired me to make myself a new pair.

They are size Large (for my 11 EEE foot). Knit with the 72 needle cylinder and 36 needle ribber on my Verdun 47; a reverse e-wrap selvedge on 1 x 1 ribbed top, and the rest of the sock in stockinette.

I expect the snow will be gone in the next day or so, and I'll be left with ....mud.

I hate mud!

Out and Over

I sprung Little Wee Ewe 314B and her lamb from the barn this morning and they rejoined the flock out on the pasture.

I checked on her a few times this morning to make sure her lamb was keeping up, and then checked again at lunch time.

There she is, and this is just what I like to see - the lamb right with her. She may be wee but her mothering skills are BIG.

With that, I declare Lambing 2015 officially over. According to my records there is one yearling left un-lambed but she may not have been bred, may have had a lamb and escaped my vigilant eye, and may lamb some time later. I'll presume she's not bred and will carry on as if.

In celebration, I knit some socks.

I've barely been out in the wool shack during lambing season and am anxious to get back at it. And not just a little surprised that several pair flew off the knitter in short order without any train wrecks.

The above pair is size XL (Men's 13 - 15) knit with double strands of my 70/30 Shetland/Nylon lace weight yarn. The cuffs, heels and toes are in double Fawn and the body in one strand of Fawn plus one strand of Brown. I knit a bundle of these socks in Small, Medium, and Large until interrupted by lambing and now I'll top of the set with some XL and XS before moving on to other projects.

In between lambing checks, puppy training and Easter singing I manged to do a rebuild of my website. Goodness knows I was happy with the old site, but the code it was written in needed updating to keep up with internet security specs and it was actually easier to do a total rebuild than to try and adapt.

I'm not a coding person. I just pick away using the monkey-see monktey-do method and slowly things take shape. Hey - just like knitting!

The new site is a work in progress. The deadline for code update was last week and I was able to get far enough along to launch but I've still got a lot of content tweaking to do, and my photo formatting was all lost so I'll have to start re-shooting photos. Ugh.

On nice thing - the new site is responsive - it can detect if it is being viewed on a desktop, tablet or phone, and even if the phone or tablet are being held in portrait or landscape position. I had a bit of a dummy-up version of this with the old site that recognized phones, but this is a more savy rendition.


There are over 2500 code files in the web site, many with thousands of lines of code.

 I can't believe I ate the whole thing!

Double Shetland Sock Yarn II

I've been knitting more double strand socks with my Shetland 70/30 Wool/Nylon 1 ply lace weight.

To feed my yarn I drilled a few holes in one of the wood boxes I use at my market stall, so I could place one cone under another, and feed the yarn from the lower cone up and through the center of the upper cone. In the photo you can see I've got two cones of fawn on the left that I use of the topper, heels, and toes, and on the right a cone of moorit feeding up through a cone of fawn for a blended colour on the body of the leg and foot.

The set up shown is with my Legare 400, 54 cylinder, knitting size Small. The yellow yarn on the knitter (and in the garbage) is my scrap yarn.

To begin I've done a reverse e-wrap selvedge, and have just begun lowering the needles into work position to knit the selvedge round.

Then I put on the ribber and swap every other stitch from a cylinder needle to a ribber needle to knit the 1 x 1 cuff.

With the ribbed cuff complete I knit some more rows in the double stranded fawn before switching over to the fawn-moorit combination. Below I have just made the join in the yarn change and am just beginning to knit the first row.

WIth the two tone leg completed I break the yarn to splice on the double-fawn for the heel.

 

With the heel complete I go back to the two tone for the foot, then back to the double fawn for the toe.

Toes closed, scrap removed, socks washed and blocked:

Double Shetland Sock Yarn

Playing some more with my Shetland Sock Yarn - 70/30 Wool/Nylon, ~400 yards/55 g,

For this pair I knit the yarn double, using two strands of the fawn colour for the topper, heels and toes, and one strand of fawn plus one strand of dark brown for the main body of leg and foot.

This is definitely a more substantial sock, yet still under 100 grams for the pair. Size Large, knit with 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47 at a tension about 1/4 looser than commercial grade sock yarn.

The looser tension was to accommodate the loft of the two separate strands, rather than the weight of the yarn. I'm knitting straight from the cones (unwashed after milling) - so I want to allow the yarn a little room to bloom when the socks are first washed. I'm not certain that my reasoning is sound, so I may try a pair at normal tension and see if there is a difference.

It's nice to work with the two different colour strands and see how they randomly pattern. The strands do ply a little as they are feeding in.

Shetland Sock Yarn

The Shetland fleeces I was having spun have returned to me from the mill. I've got many colours in the flock, but my numbers of any one colour aren't high enough to process such a variety yet, so I divided the fleeces into white-ish and brown-ish.

From 90 lbs of skirted fleece I got 71.5 lbs of finished yarn (which includes 30% nylon added at the mill). So, about 68.5 lbs net fleece. This means I did a good job skirting to get such a high yield.

The yarn is a single ply lace weight, 70% wool 30% nylon. It is actually a single ply of what would ordinarily be plied double to make a sport yarn.

It gives about 23 wraps per inch. This is a little finer than my Columbia lamb 1 ply which runs around 21 wpi. 

Now for the test drive:

Here is a pair of Size Large, knit for me with the 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47. I knit is a quarter turn looser on tension than my typical sock yarn setting - because this is the setting I use for the 70/30 Columbia lamb. The knit was a little looser than I like, so next pair I will use my standard tension setting.

With the lace weight yarn, wearability is always my concern - which is why I had this spun with a nylon content. I'll wear these socks for a while and see how they hold up or if I need to add wooly nylon to heels and toes, or whatever else presents itself in the trial.

This pair of socks weighs only 46 grams. Yikes! That's fine. Typical sock yarn would be ~90 grams in this size and pattern.

This is actually the first pair of socks I've knit since Christmas. Puppy training is my full time distraction at the moment, and the wool shack is definitely not the place for a teething mid-training puppy.

I am excited, however, to finally have my first pair of natural coloured home grown socks!

Oops

Made this pair a little big! Better than a little small I guess. I think they will fit better next Christmas!

Knit with my own 75/25 Wool Nylon fingering weight in Spruce Green and Bright Red. Accented with red and green 'miracle' beads. I knit these with the 54 cylinder on the Legare 400 with pico/beaded hem and a 1x5 ribbed foot. Size XS.

Alpaca Blend

This is an Alpaca Blend in a heavy fingering weight; 60% Alpaca 20% Wool 20% Nylon; in natural and home dyed Rusty-Red.

This pair is Small and a bit, EEE, mid-calf. Knit with 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on Verdun 47 with a reverse wrap selvedge, 1x1 topper and 5x1 leg and instep.

Small-and-a-bit EEE originated as a bespoke size but it turned out I had a number of regulars that exact size, so I make a few ahead on spec.

Purple Lime

Here's a pair of vibrant socks knit from my own 75/25 Wool/Nylon fingering yarn.

Rich Royal Purple accented with stripes in two tones of Key Lime, and heels and toes done with the darker value of the Key Lime.

Size Medium, knit with the 76 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47.

I wonder if Donny Osmond still wears purple...