Spearfish Socks, Final Chapter

The saga of the Spearfish socks is finally ended.  I cast one on over a year ago, and finished it in not too bad of time, actually.  Then I discovered making socks toe up simultaneously, a la Queen Kahuna .  I wrestled with the decision, but ultimately frogged that entire first sock and recast on for both socks on two circs simultaneously so that they would match in size.  They've been largely ignored for many months, but recently picked back up.  The yarn is 100% wool from Done Roving, a single ply fingering weight yarn with 300 yds/hank.

As I knit this time, I began to panic about the amount of yarn I had.  Normally, doing toe up socks cures this concern, so it was an unfamiliar feeling.  This sock pattern has a lace cuff, which I wanted to complete in its entirety.  While I was haunting Nova Scotia yarn shops, one I spent some time at was Tangled Skeins (no website I can find) where I found some matching Shetland fingering weight for the lace cuff.  Had this pattern not changed to a lace cuff, I would not have worried.  Fortunately, the yarn I found almost exactly matched my favorite color in this yarn.  And so, I finally have completed these socks tonight.

On other fiber fronts, I was busy spinning Saturday. We have to stay in the hospital on first call, regardless of whether we are busy in the OR, so I usually bring some knitting or even a wheel in case we have some down time.  Well, we did have down time, and the spinning worked well for a zen like state to keep me calm.  My two ply is a nice, balanced hank, but I have some really energized singles there, too.  When I started spinning those, I was thinking in terms of plying and needed a bit of over twist to handle the plying.  As I went, I started looking at those as being good candidates for staying singles, but they are really too energized.  The blue (left) and the almost black on the right are from Amy at Spunky Eclectic.  The red & blue in the middle, and the rust/blue/pink to its left, as well as the purple just barely visible in the upper right corner are all Fleece Artist rovings.   I may have to re-think my singles.  My WooLee Winder has really made my productivity jump on the wheel - I had not realized how many tangents and breaks I took when I stopped to move the yarn to a different hook!

A spinning experiment I plan to attempt in the near future is shown in this photograph.  That is a very dense, heavy roll of pure cotton batting from an undisclosed source.  Not the sort of material one finds in quilt shops, but from a very different source.  I'll try it- I kind of had fun with the cotton and linen in my spinning workshop, so I'm psyched for trying some different stuff right now.  (Also searching for a source for Samoyed and Chow fur to spin).  Meanwhile, I am having co-workers save their pill bottle cotton for me so I can try that as well.  Leslie had a sample hank of yarn made from that cotton, and it was surprisingly soft and had an interesting texture to it, so I'd like to try my hand at it.

Comments

[Monica]

That's some crazy pooling on those socks! I can't believe you frogged the whole thing and started over. :)

[margene]

The yarn is fabulous and so are the socks but I'm in awe thinking about spinning that cotton!

[Kelly]

What a perfect match for your socks!!! gahhh if only I could spin during work, wait if only I could spin lol
Can't wait to see how the cotton turns out spun!

[Chris]

Huh - pill bottle cotton. Who'd a thunk?? A friend told me of her adventure spinning her own long hair. Yeah, on purpose after she cut it off. I can't remember if she said she considered or actually spun dryer lint. Your yarns and socks look lovely!