Lies on Knitting

Things that make me go mmmm

Wandering around Gent, in Belgium with my daughter last week, we encoutered De Gouden Pluim, a very nice store packed with all kinds  of craft supplies. But the icing on the cake was the roving. It was kept in a room by itself, in hundreds of colours, and boy, it made me greedy! Daughter helped me to pick a perfect combination of greens and blues. And she payed for it as well! Thanks, love!

I took home 650 grams. It is Australian Merino wool, though, and I am well aware that it is not the best choice, considering the wellbeing of the sheep. But I could not help myself. I will make an extra donation to some animal charity to redress the balance.

Clap Clap

What is it, that makes some knits super-superfast? A Clapotis, knit exactly according to the pattern is a big hunking piece of knitwear, yet it flies off the needles. This one here is the third one I knitted, and I still like the pattern. I DO love this Clapotis! It goes wonderfully with my new grey jacket: A really satisfying F. O.

yvonneP designed Charli's Angels, the socks for the March-April knitalong in our Dutch Socknitting group. Being not the fastest participant, I casted on only last week. Because I had a mild case of sock-blah's lately, I decided to keep myself interested by knitting two Charli's Angels at the same time, on two circulars. It is an interesting process indeed! Not the least because the length of my 2.5 mm circulars is 30 cm. But Charli and Charli are growing steadily. I might even finish them in time to join in all the fun of the Sock Knitters Pentathlon.

Knitting cobblestones

In spite of what this blogtitle suggests, this is about spinning. No, don't leave! I promise there will be some knitting content in the end.

Yarn Harlot blogged about a spinning class she took at Madrona, in which she learnt to make cabled yarn. Cabled yarn, so the story went, is perfect for socks, because it makes a very smooth fabric in stocking stitch. This effect is caused by the yarn acting as (I quote) "interlocking cobblestones". Now this made me mighty curious. Time to start  an experiment: Knitting cobblestones.

I took two colours of roving, a grey Corriedale and a bit of auburn Merino and spun them according to the instructions: first singles, then ply them, then overply the twoply, and then ply it again onto itself in the original spinning direction. It really made a pretty, somewhat pearly yarn, though  far from sockweight. Not that I tried to make that, but still... to make a cabled sockyarn a spinner would probably need some other equipment than my old Louet S10.

Anyway, I knitted up a swatch. And though it does not resemble actual cobblestones, it is -unblocked- a very smooth, dense fabric indeed: Myth confirmed. I like it so much that I started spinning all the grey Corriedale and auburn Merino I have left, to make more cabled yarn, some 150 grams I think. I am not sure what it wants be when it gets knitted though... any ideas? maybe a hat? It needs needles 3.5 mm.

Today I browsed Grumperina's, and found her singing praise of the cabled yarn as well, she stated it was really good for knitting structures and cables. Oh well, I might knit a binary hat, like José has done. They are pretty!