Google is celebrating one of my favorite Impressionists today. Mary Cassatt.
Month: May 2009 Page 4 of 6
Mohair/Silk: 1 ply each
28-32 wpi (minus the halo)
852 yards
I finished spinning this yarn back in February, but I never got around to finishing it until this week. After washing the skein, I whacked and thwacked it around to loosen up the mohair. Once dried, I wound and rewound the skein/ball on my ball winder while passing the strand of yarn through my boar’s hair fingernail brush a total of 6 times to bring out the halo.
You can’t really tell by the picture above, but the halo is really there. This sample card on the right shows the halo a bit better. The sample on the right (blue/green) was brushed once. The sample on the left (lavender/blue) was brushed 6 times. I forgot to keep back a sample before the wet finishing to show off how different it really is.
It’s not as soft and hairy as Rowan Kidsilk, but I don’t think it would have been possible with this fiber for several reasons. The primary reason is that the mohair was combed, so it was spun mostly worsted. This compressed the fiber somewhat, and doesn’t have the loft. Kidsilk must be spun woolen, though I can’t confirm this. Also, I don’t think my mohair was kid mohair, but most likely adult mohair. (The package didn’t say.)
But the drape of this yarn is fabulous!
When I first started to knit cables, I used those metal cable needles that looked like a shepherd’s crook. I hated it. Moving stitches around the crook was a PITA.
I moved on to the metal cable needles with a little hump in the middle, like an elongated omega (Ω). This wasn’t bad. You can knit directly off of the needle, but my stitches were always in danger of slipping off of the needle.
Then I found the wooden cable needles with the little grooves in them. I thought I was in hog heaven. Everything is staying put. I even progressed to using whatever random DPN I had laying around. I learned this trick from Eva. Don’t know why it never occurred to me until I saw Eva do it when she was making the DNA scarf for an auction.
I knew about cabling without a cable needle, but the thought of leaving live stitches hanging out there, flapping in the breeze, was enough to give this control freak a heart attack.
This isn’t to say that I haven’t attempted it. I just wasn’t comfortable with it. And it took just as long, if not longer, than it would for me to execute the cable with a cable needle.
This year at Madrona, I took 2 classes that worked on my fear of cabling without cable needles: Lucy Neatby’s Even Cooler Socks and Elsebeth Lavold’s Viking Knits and Mitered Corners in Cabling.
Lucy showed me why I was having so much difficulty with my earlier attempts at cabling without a cable needle — I was manipulating my stitches too much. All that movement allowed the stitches to be stretched and ladder. She showed me how to minimize the gymnastics and get the stitches mounted quickly and easily. Elsebeth’s class allowed me to practice the technique over and over again until I was comfortable with it. I, unknowingly, had the classes in the correct order. Lucky me.
This week, when I picked up the yarn leftover from these socks to make a wrist warmer, I thought I’d spice it up and add some cables to it and practice my cabling without cable needles. Of course, to fit the cables, the wrist warmers became fingerless mitts/gauntlets. The good news? The immediate and repeated practice at Madrona was enough to imprint the methodology into my brain. There was the barest hint of a hiccup before I was zipping along. Before I knew it, the mitt was done, and nary a cable needle in sight.
Now, I just need to remember what I did so I can make the left hand mitt.