I took a lot more photos in February, and it was actually a very productive month for me. I got some quilting repair done, but there wasn't enough progress to photograph; its very visually boring repairs. Things go from "slightly loose and floppy" or "you can see the quilt batting between those two patches" to "normal looking blanket" so I wasn't very motivated to photograph them. To be honest, I did a little bit of quilt repair this morning too and I still didn't photograph it because it's just not that interesting to look at. But here's some stuff that is, at least for me.
Spinning
I filled up my yarn scraps jar; it can hold no more. I save yarn scraps all year long from things like the bits left over from weaving in ends for a couple of different purposes. The main reason is to use as skein ties for newly spun yarn; 11 months out of the year, this jar sits on my coffee table and as I generate scraps they enter the jar and as I spin new yarn, they leave the jar. But during the Tour de Fleece, I card these yarn scraps back into fiber, a process called garnetting and spin a commemorative yarn for the year past, which I add to a scrap blanket I've been working on since 2020. I should probably do a photo update on that one soon, it's a little over 50% complete, so maybe by 2030, I'll be able to use it!
For the first time in a few years, I have generated more scraps than can fit in the jar before the year was up, so I put them in this bag and as of this writing, the jar is already pretty full again. Obviously nowhere near as full, but yarn is nearly fluid in it's ability to take the shape and size of the container it's in, so it seems more full than it really is. Last year I separated out the yarn by color and created a warm, a cool, and a neutral yarn, but this year, the neutrals seem to be dominating, so perhaps this year I won't separate them out at all and instead allow for little pops of color in an otherwise neutral gray to charcoal colored yarn? Could be cute. I've still got time to think about it, we'll see I suppose.
This is the beginning of the calico-inspired yarn, and you can see why I thought it would look more variegated than it ended up being. I think early on in the carding I did a better job of keeping the two fiber types separate, but I got in the zone and started blending more evenly, which is the usual way I'd be doing it. Ah well.
This is where that project is now; I wound the copp off the spindle, then chain plied it into a plying ball. It's just waiting now for me to add the twist, but of course, I can't find my plying spindle anywhere. I genuinely do not know where the fuck I could have put it, I live in a very small apartment and there really isn't many places it could even be, but it's in none of the places I've looked and at this point, I'm planning to just go to home depot and get some new dowels to cut myself a new plying spindle with. Of course, once I've gotten it all nice and carved out, assuredly that's when I'll find it. But until then, I can't get any plying done at all, so I guess that's how it'll have to be.
Knitting
In February, I finished a vest for my daughter, and just in time, because like the week after it was snowy and chilly and perfect weather for layering with a vest. It looks wrinkly and scrunched up here, because the shaping did not allow it to lay flat, but it fits well on my daughter and that's what matters.
February also saw the completion of this scarf, also for my daughter, and the pattern is of her own selection. She chose the colors from my stash, and chose their placement herself, and I found this a really fun collaboration. I never would have thought to combine the blue and pink in this way, but it is a really inspired choice, and I loved the chance to get out of my comfort zone and find some other really cute design options. Honestly, she has a great eye for combining color and pattern and I can't wait to see how that develops as she grows up.
I forgot to take both before and after shots of this repair, so please enjoy this in-progress pic instead. Honestly, February was the month of constant, never ending sock repair, because it was bricks enough that I was never not wearing socks, and the carpet in this apartment is rough on both socks and our feet equally. We're considering investing in some house slippers, even though we have never been shoes-in-the-house kind of people, because of how much this carpet sucks.
Another before and after. The heels and toes of this sock are made from a worsted weight yarn, a trick I saw suggested on social media, so I gave it a try. It does work, I will give it that; the soles, worked in fingering weight, have been repaired multiple times over the last year, but the toe and heel are only just now starting to wear thin. That said, I will never ever again work worsted weight yarn with size 0 needles. There is no reward on heaven or earth nor any punishment available in hell that would motivate me to strain my hands and wrists that way. I would rather darn these socks a thousand times than go through that again. But, it does work and the stitches themselves very pretty, if a bit stiff.
Look, I fully understand how goofy this looks. I see it. But the part that wraps around to the top does not do that when on the actual foot, and the extra layer keeps the foot warm. The Mac and Cheese Yellow remains looking as goofy as it seems, but these were never fancy going out socks anyway, I don't care how silly I look washing dishes or going to bed as long as my toes don't feel like icicles.
I redid the toes and heels of this one's mate, and now this one popped a hole as well. It's mate also had some spots that were wearing thin, so I decided to patch them up at the same time:
This photo makes it look like the sock on the left is shorter, but that's just how it's folded. I make all my socks two at a time, so they are the exact same size, I promise.
Sadly, this kerchief was moth attacked, and after washing, several holes became evident. There's only one that's really visible in this photo, but there were several smaller ones nearby it as well. I decided the best thing to do would be to frog it, put the lengths of yarn surrounding the holes into the scrap yarn pile, and then figure out what to do with the rest. Since this kerchief was fairly small to begin with, and now there's even less of it, what I mostly have planned for it is to use it for sock repairs.
I also made this swatch, trying to see if there was a striping pattern I liked, and also maybe a knit-purl texture pattern that worked with the stripes, in hopes I could make a portion of socks or something, but this is all samples from my first round of spinning the alpaca, and there's just way too much guard hair in it to use it as a garment, so instead, I consigned it to the scrap yarn blanket, which they've all been added to already. I really do need a photo of it, the next strip is already something like 18 inches long.
And that catches us up to today's knitting progress. I'm very nearly at the central point of the kerchief, which means I'm very nearly at the halfway point. It's progressing pretty quickly because each row is pretty short, so it shouldn't be long now. I'm pretty excited!
Crochet
A friend commissioned a crochet scarf, in these colors, striped vertically. I don't usually do commissions, because I'm definitely not ready to do my crafting on anything like a professional level, but for friends and family, I'll do the cost of materials plus fair retail value for something similar to what I'm making. How to determine what's "fair retail value" is more art than science, but I figure I'm definitely above Walmart, Zara, and the like - not because I'm better than their garment workers, in all honesty, I'm probably not nearly as skilled, but because those brands are paying slave wages and accepting big losses in order to make bank on volume. I'm not doing volume sales, however, so the cost per unit must be higher. I don't have the kind of pull of a big brand like Burberry or something either, so I definitely keep my costs below the several hundreds to thousands that they charge for similar items, even though if I was giving myself a fair hourly wage, it would definitely approach those prices. I have seen discourse on social media about how fiber artists *should* pay themselves an hourly wage similar to other skilled laborers like electricians or mechanics and I definitely see the appeal in that. However, I think there's a difference between taking whatever time it takes to solve whatever problems come up and producing something from scratch. Gallery artists, authors, and musicians don't price their work based on the time it took to make each piece, because it's not about the time spent, it's about the expertise and thought that went into it, and there's a lot of intangible elements to the work. I'm not saying there isn't intangibles at play in other skilled labor - a big part of why plumbers and the like get the big bucks is because they have the intangible knowledge to know what's wrong and how to fix it - but the process is different, reactive versus creative. I don't know, that sounds kind of dismissive when I put it down on paper like that, but I don't mean it to be, I think both processes are valid and important, they just work differently so the compensation has to be different. I could probably prattle on about this for ages longer, but I don't know that I would really learn anything more, so I should probably stop.
The first step, of course, is to swatch, and it's a good thing I did. The hook recommended on the ball band probably would have been fine for a sweater, though I personally would have gone down at least one size because I don't love the recent trend for looser stitching on sweaters. I ended up going from the suggested size G all the way down to a B, because I wanted the scarf to be relatively wind proof, but still flexible. I think the B achieved that. This was also a chance for my friend to see if they liked the line up of the colors they chose, and they ended up making a few tweaks. I know a lot of people hate swatches, but I love them. I would have hated to get this far into the scarf itself and have to rip all the way back to make the changes in stripe pattern my friend requested, and I'd also hate to be several hundreds-of-stitches-each rows in before realizing the hook is too big. I know people complain that the swatch feels like a waste of time, but I'm seeing nothing but savings, honestly.
It's not easy to see in this photo, but it's about here where I realized that my starting chain was too tight, and it was causing this curve in the scarf. Each row was 70" long, which was about 375 stitches. I was pretty mad at myself for even using a starting chain at all, the longer I thought about it; I used the chain because I thought it would look straighter, and I guess if my tension was perfectly even on the whole chain, it might have been, but foundation DC is much stretchier, and while I don't really think of scarves as something that need flexibility, it does and the foundation chain was never going to provide that. So back to the drawing board I went, and this time to restart with foundation DC. What a fucking bummer. But, I bounced back fairly quickly, so it wasn't that bad of a set back. The weather was gloomy and cold, and my apartment is not well insulated, so I had plenty of days where the best use of time was just sitting on the couch under a quilt, so the work got done quickly.
Phew, so that's all of February! We're not too, too far into March, so next time there shouldn't be such a massive post, and from there on out, posts should be much more manageable and take much less than an hour to write, I hope!
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