Author: denisemor

Been itching to get something substantial on the needles for a while.

I really thought it was going to be a Cali project, as I’d been really focused on spinning her fleece for a while now, and have almost 800 yards of 3 ply DK-ish weight yarn finished.

So I’d been hunting for a pattern. I have so many “favorites” saved on Ravelry, and checked through them for inspiration, but nothing was striking me quite the right way. After much browsing, I finally decided that I was in the mood to do a loose-fitting, solid color vest with a traveling, twisted stitch pattern- for a cable-y effect without as much bulk. And this seemed to fit the bill

There wasn’t much pattern info in Ravelry, but I bought it anyway, since I’d finally found a photo that looked like what I wanted to make. And upon downloading the PDF, I found that it is entirely written out line by line instructions. Not a chart in sight.

Ugh.

Not entirely unexpected. But Ugh.

I know there are people out there who prefer written out directions. But I guess I’m more of a visual learner. And since I knit backwards, conversion of these instructions to something that I can work from directly is a bit of a challenge.

At first, I thought that the answer was to make my own charts from the directions. But in order to do that, I had to try and think like a right-handed knitter. What does T2B or C2B mean to a person working from right to left, rather than left-to right? Made my brain tired, so I set it aside to let me unconscious mind work on it.

And once I stepped back from it a bit, it came into better focus.

I realized that, with the help of the photo, which thankfully shows all the different patterns in their entirety, after carefully casting on to the specified counts, placing markers and doing the first (set-up) row, I could ignore most of the written details, and use the photo for most of the cues about which way the twisted stitches are travelling, and where they are crossing.

I swatched with my Cali yarn, but it turned out that the yarn was a bit to light to get the desired gauge. But thankfully, I had just the thing in the stash, waiting to become a garment! Griff to the rescue!

Now that I’m through a couple of repeats of each pattern, I feel like I’m cruising. And I’m relived to have something on the needles that I can just pick up and work on.

So now I find my mind wandering to different types of necklines/collars. The crewneck isn’t bad, but would v-neck be better and most versatile? or even a shawl collar? Hmmm.

And an update on the lanolin experiment- Found info online about refining lanolin and applied it to my tiny sample

It did separate as they said it would- we’ve got olive oil on top, lanolin in the middle and dirty water below. But now my challenge is figuring out how to get the lanolin out of the middle layer without losing most of it. Haven’t been able to find any guidance on that step yet. My current thought is that perhaps if I freeze it it will be more manageable.

Have a good week-

One question I get quite a bit when talking with folks about processing raw fleece is “do you do anything with the lanolin?”

And the answer has always been no. Because washing the wool has always been a bit of the process that I’ve always been happy to try and get through as quickly as possible. Never really felt like retaining the wash water for further use.

But roses really love fleece tea. So when I decided to wash up the last third of Cali’s fleece (rather than continue to spin it in the grease), I thought I’d save the leftovers for a couple bushes that could use a boost. Of course, the water needs to cool off before you let the roses imbibe, so I poured it off into a bucket to sit overnight.

And the next morning, it looked like this

That off-white stuff floating on the top of the fleece tea is lanolin. There isn’t a whole lot of it in this batch, as Cali’s fleece was a fairly low-grease, and this was maybe just a third of of the whole thing.

But when I saw it floating there, I thought- maybe I should skim it off and see if I can do something with it.

So here we are, skimmed

Don’t know what the next step is yet, but there has to be some info out there in the big wide interwebs about refining lanolin at home, right? Will keep you posted 😉

Some highlights from this week’s harvest-

Delicata squash from the volunteer plant

My one Rouge de Temps pumpkin

compost!

and one fall fleece, from baby Fiona

Short clip of the girl showing off her back to school haircut 🙂

Have a good week folks-

First batch of Cali yarn

Notes to self: raw locks flick carded.singles spun in Moto (speed 5), true three-ply Moto speed 4.

Approx 5 oz, 350 yards

WIll soon be shopping for a sweater pattern. Not sure of exactly how much yardage I can expect to get in total, so some sleeved and unsleeved options

Fall Day Vest

Wake

other ideas?

That’s all I got. Have a good week-