Introducing Espada Posted by Kristi at 8:13 AM (Comments: 10)

I have been very fortunate over the past year to get to know some wonderful knitters in the Boulder area. One of those knitters, who is also a spinner (she got me involved in the Sheep to Shawl contest), is Judy, who owns theknitter.com. Judy has a long-running sock club over at her web site; 2 actually! There is the regular club, which is monthly, and the luxury club which is quarterly. One thing I find really neat about her club is that the people in it get to try all kinds of different yarns from different manufacturers. The June club shipped early last week, so I'm now free to show you the sock I designed for the club ...





... Espada.

Espada is named after a mission in the San Antonio, TX area because I thought the columns and arches on the sock looked similar to those on the mission. There are a few fun extra details on this sock that I think are fun.



Toe



Heel



Cuff


Espada is knit toe-up with a gusset and heel flap, and the pattern calls for Cascade Heritage sock yarn. This is a really nice sock yarn for the money and they have some really great colors.

For now, Espada is exclusive to the sock club, but will be available for sale near the end of September.

While you're patiently waiting to buy the Espada pattern (Ravelry link), allow me to direct your attention to a couple of projects by friends of mine that you could knit.

Kristi, aka the Fiber Fool, released a great sock pattern with a neat story and an awesome cause. Kristi's mother is blind and uses a guide dog, so Kristi wrote up the Guided by Love pattern with all proceeds going to Seeing Eye. It's a sweet pattern with paw prints and braille and uses a new type of construction. Besides the links above, read more here. Ravelry link.

My good friend Debbie released a shawl pattern today at the Sweet Sheep, Marjolaine. I've seen Marjolaine in person (to those of you who recognize me, that is obvious since I am modeling the stole in her pictures), and it is beautiful. Ravelry link here.

There, that should keep you busy!

Did you know the 7th anniversary is wool? Posted by Kristi at 1:32 PM (Comments: 15)

A and I just celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. Hard to believe that our wedding day was that long ago!

The exciting thing about the 7th wedding anniversary is that in the list of traditional gifts, the 7th anniversary is for wool. I've so been looking forward to this one.

The long-time readers/friends amongst you may remember that I was similarly excited for the 5th anniversary, which is wood. That one isn't quite as obvious maybe, but I managed to get a spinning wheel out of that one :)

So, what did Andy get for me?

Raw fleece from White O' the Morn farm -- a merino/rambouillet cross named Madeline's first shearing

Roving from LambSpun - alpaca/merino/cashmere

Roving from Spunky Eclectic - BFL

Dream in Color Smooshy in Chinatown Apple

Fearless Fibers sock yarn in Gluttony

And, to top it off:

"For taking pictures of wool."

Excellent. Well done, I say.

p.s. Special thanks to Cookie and Debbie for their input. It's good to have friends who know you well. And that your husband isn't afraid to contact.

Sheep! To! Shawl! Posted by Kristi at 8:29 AM (Comments: 14)

As I mentioned last week, last weekend I was a spinner in a Sheep to Shawl contest at Estes Park Wool Market. Our team, Team Chutzpah, is a group of women from the Longmont area who have entered the contest for I believe the last 7 years. This year, it was starting to look like there would be no team, but we pulled it together. I was one of two newbies on the team.





Judy and Debbie untying the shawl from the loom

At the Estes Park Sheep to Shawl, the shawl is to be an adult size shawl (no specific measurements given). The team can wash the fleece, spin the warp for the loom, and then warp the loom all in advance. This means that "all" that's left to do in the 5 hours of the competition is prep the fiber for the weft, spin the yarn for the weft, and weave it into the finished shawl (Oh! And wash and dry it!).





Rebecca and Debbie drying the shawl


In this year's competition, for the first time, the 10% other fiber that we used was allowed to be dyed. Our team decided that a nice black shawl with jewel tones would be nice. The black is a Wensleydale fleece from Black Pines Farm, and the jewel tones were a Cotswold fleece that Debbie spun and hand-dyed for the warp.

During the competition itself, part of the judging is based on your interaction with the crowd. Our team did a great job of this, particularly Debbie, our weaver, who overcame some loom issues and talked to lots and lots of people and still managed to finish weaving the shawl in time, and Rebecca, our spinner-at-the-end-of-the-row-and-thus-closest-to-the-crowd.





Debbie doing the hem stitching

In the end, we won the People's Choice ribbon (this was a new part of the competition this year), and took the second place ribbon in the judged portion of the show.





Team Chutzpah with the finished shawl

I had a great time, and look forward to the possibility of more Sheep to Shawl contests in my future!

I should really recap the rest of the Wool Market and Alyson's visit, but that should probably wait for another post (hint: we bought a fleece).

For more pictures of Sheep to Shawl, check out Alyson's Flickr set! I didn't get as many pictures as I might have liked, because I was busy prepping fiber and plying the yarn ...

For now, I'll leave you with a picture of where that sock that I ripped out so many times is now. I'm happy with how things are looking at this point, so it's just a matter of finishing it up and writing it up. I only ripped back a few more rows when I changed my mind on the heel flap :)

Houseguests Posted by Kristi at 9:01 AM (Comments: 4)

June has been and will be a busy month here. Last weekend, Teenuh came to visit, which was perfect timing because we got to celebrate her birthday ... by making her stand for 6 hours and dye yarn :)

So today we have yarn for Friday dyed by me! Also, some roving. I won't show them all, I mean, how much time do you have? But if you want to see what I dyed, check out my Flickr set from dye day.

















This weekend is Estes Park Wool Market. Alyson and I should be at the blogger meetup at 11 am by the barn on Saturday. And if you want to find me on Sunday, I'll be in my first ever sheep to shawl competition. Go team Chutzpah! As you may have surmised by my saying Alyson would be with me, we have visitors from Florida for wool market, and they even came bearing gifts of yarn ...

Both handdyed by Alyson.

Eloping! Posted by Kristi at 9:21 AM (Comments: 1)

No, I'm not eloping, I'm already married ... but the new Knitty is up, and the garter that Abigail and I made for Hannah, Eloping is in there!

I'll add more pictures later, I'm having some technical problems!

New yarns! Posted by Kristi at 9:43 AM (Comments: 4)

More new yarns to show off today. I did some spinning this week -- it's just been a spinning kind of time for me lately.

Last Friday night, I spun up some batts from TerraBellaSpun called Esmerelda. These batts were bunches of this that and the other, making for some fun yarn!





Then, I got it in my head that I really wanted to make a larger skein of yarn, so I pawed through my Yarn Wench stash and found two that I thought went really well together, called "Duck" and "Pelt". I know, the name Pelt makes it sound unappealing, but it was an awesome colorway. See how nice they look together?





It's about 8 oz of yarn and about 280 yards. It's a worsted-bulky weight, I'd say.





More pictures of this one in a Flickr set.

That's it for the handspun this week. But look at the nice box I got from Shelridge Farm! Some of it is for samples for their booth at shows, and some of it is for me -- yay!





To see what all was inside, check out the Flickr set.

Oh, and I made some headway on the sock from the last post. More on that later!

Lots of ripping ... Posted by Kristi at 8:51 PM (Comments: 1)

I've been working on a sock design using the Brooklyn Handspun Soft Spun Plus. I have to say, this yarn is nice and soft and squishy. My planning on this sock has not been so great. I've ripped back 3 times now. The first attempt I didn't get a picture of, because I was in the car. Here's the next attempt:

There were some problems, so I decided to try again:

That's getting ripped back a few rounds, and I have a new plan. We'll see!

I've finished up a couple of yarns this week too, but I'm saving those for Friday!