Osborn Fiber Studio

It’s a hazard of blogging that when the time comes to write about something, you might be in a mood that does not at all reflect what you have the task of writing about. For example, right now Casa de Osborn is kind of depressed because Jared is out of town and someone has been sick for at least four days now, we’ve all been stuck in the house and stupid little things keep going wrong. But I finished my PUFFIN over two weeks ago – I have in fact knit a whole other sweater since I finished this one – and I think writing about it will cheer me up. Last week I set up my tripod and Dooner helped me do a little photo shoot, so here we go.

Is this another almost decade-long story? Yes, yes it is.

This project started as my first-ever Breed and Colour Study with Wool n’ Spinning, the summer after I Got Serious about spinning again, found Rachel’s Patreon, and never looked back. The breed was Gotland, the study was carded Split Complements, and Katrina made these beautiful batts.

I thought it was super-interesting how the yellow of the split complement was almost completely swallowed by the grey of the Gotland, which was only altered by looking a little greenish. So I asked if Katrina would consider putting the same colours on a white wool, and she kindly offered the same colourway on BFL as well.

I spun these up very quickly during summer vacation of 2017. You can read about the BFL spin here and the Gotland spin here.

The plan to use these beautiful batts was hatched before I even started spinning. My mom had acquired a copy of the Colours of Shetland for me, at great cost, not knowing it was still available from the author. I wanted to see those different shades and tints juxtaposed against each other in stripes, and to me, the most elegant showcase for such yarns is in a yoke. So I hatched a plan to knit Puffin, from the above book.

I also needed a contrast colour to knit the body and sleeves of the sweater. I hemmed and hawed for literal years over whether to buy some DK-weight Gotland yarn or spin some fiber. The opportunity presented itself when Rachel was getting rid of a pound of Gotland combed top, and she generously agreed to trade me for some qiviut. I spun this wool up quickly into a fairly well-matching 2-ply DK-weight. It only made about 800 yards, so lesson learned: long wools spin up more densely, even when spun properly (more on which below), so you will need more by weight than you would of a fine wool.

I swatched thoroughly, like a good little knitter, because I knew I would have to alter this pattern drastically. The original was in fingering weight; I converted it to DK. The original was bottom up; I converted it to top-down to use up all the colour study yarn. The original yoke was garter-based; I switched it to stockinette. The result was a sweater that was inspired by Puffin, but really has very little of the maths from the pattern.

I came up with a different design for the chevrons. With the thicker, denser long wool yarn, which I also wanted to stretch as much as possible, I didn’t want the extra bulk of garter stitch, which also chews through more yardage. Being top down stockinette with increases instead of bottom up garter with decreases, it’s not even based on the same multiples. I’m a bit proud of myself for figuring it all out so cleanly.

Then there was the problem of the rest of the yarn. When I spun all these yarns, I just plied them to my usual twist angle of 30-40 degrees. This is fine for most medium to fine wools, but long wools like Gotland and BFL do not like being so tightly twisted. The individual fibers are not crimpy; they’re more wavey, so they don’t push against each other. They compact together and make rope. Plus, this overtwisted yarn biased noticeably, as you can see above. I got away with so much twist in the colourful yarns, partly I think because they were carded into batts which added some air. But the MC yarn was Not Nice. So I took the time to put it back through the wheel the other way, re-skein it, and re-block it. The resulting yarn was nicer to work with, matched the rest of the fabric better, and stretched longer.

Then a tiny little collar, and on to the sleeves. I didn’t exactly knit the sleeves two at a time, but I did go back and forth between them, finally knitting from the inside and outside of the last ball to get as far as I could. The final twist of leftover yarn sits on my desk smaller than my thumb.

I used twisted rib for all the ribbing. Want to know why? I go into WAY too much nerdy detail here. TLDR: when dealing with longwool, or other fibres that don’t want to bend, I much prefer how they look in twisted rib!

Since the whole point was to see the colours juxtaposed, I should say a word about that. What I did when spinning was I spun the three colours in different orders: yellow, purple, and green in the BFL, and purple, green, yellow in the Gotland. That way the hues would play against each other, not only the values. They were each spun as traditional 2-plies, so there’s also a little marling at the colour changes.

The yoke starts with the highest contrast of both value and hue, with yellow on BFL against purple on Gotland. At about the same rate, the yellow transitions to purple on BFL while the Gotland transitions to green, which in context just looks like a slightly darker grey. But this creates a sort of optical illusion that the purple stripes keep going down the yoke. The bottom pairing is green on BFL with yellow on Gotland, which is almost indistinguishable from the undyed Gotland. In context, this makes for a nice transition into the straight undyed Gotland of the body, but any distinction in the yellow-dyed Gotland is lost.

It would have created a different effect if I had spun the two batts the same way, lining up purple with purple, yellow with yellow, and green with green. I didn’t do that because I was concerned there wouldn’t be enough contrast. I think that probably would have been true, at least with the purples. Anyway, I couldn’t do both, and this is what I did! As a sweater yoke, I think it is unique and successful. The whole thing sort of shimmers, and while the low contrast in the middle of the yoke is kind of unusual, it at least looks balanced.

To see this plan realized seven years after dreaming it up is… truly wild. I should not have the ability to plan this well. I should not be allowed to make plans that will take this long, even if they are good plans. Success is oddly terrifying. But anyway, I am very thankful for and pleased with this sweater, and motivated to plow through all the sweater-quantities that have been waiting for attention in my stash. Onward!

Oh, and a last little shout out to my photographer, who wanted a turn to pose in her sweater when I was done. She’s wearing the largest of the Bluebells sweaters I made for her and her sisters years ago now.