Osborn Fiber Studio

I went to bed last night and realized, I meant to do a round-up blog! I gotta admit, having multiple avenues to express oneself is awesome, but I’m still learning the rhythm of it. Not all of y’all have subscribed to the Wool Circle, and even though it’s easier and faster in some ways to share things on there, it allows me some deeper reflection to gather my thoughts and post things here. Blogging doesn’t give quite as much immediate feedback – though I appreciate every single comment you lovely people leave! – but writing does leave me with a deep sense of satisfaction that is itself an act of self-care.

September has been all about re-adjusting from an unpredictable, flexible life on the road to a life where I’m in my house 98% of the time. Thanks to all three kids being in school all day for the first time, I even get to be alone for a big chunk of that time, and I love it. I usually get a huge burst of energy in the fall, and I would say that’s been the case. But those of you who are homebodies like me know that these days can easily turn into a blur. So, even though I haven’t taken the time to do many nice “big camera” photos of finished projects, and most of the photos in this post have already been on Instagram, I want to take a moment to myself to reflect on everything I was working on in September.

Knitting (and Crochet)

Jethro Cardigan

If you haven’t heard of the Jethro cardigan, it’s having a huge moment. Crochet has been on the rise for a while now, and Jethro is this hugely approachable cardigan pattern for the crochet-curious sweater knitter. When I went to Knit City Calgary at the end of August, I got to hang out with Rachel and Norah. Norah wore her Jethro, Rachel finished hers while we were there, and seriously like six other people were wearing their own interpretations.

After that weekend, I caved. I jumped on that Jethro bandwagon so hard.

I had this huge bag of scraps from my Skep blanket, almost 8 ounces! And I collect my other handspun scraps as well. I spent the next three weeks or so converting those scraps into 36 five-round granny squares. They were completely addictive and so much fun, and I was actually sad to have to stop, as I don’t have a main colour yet to finish the project.

At least, I didn’t then, but I do now.

This really belongs down in Fiber Prep, but this is going to be the main colour for my Jethro. It’s about equal parts Clun forest, Romney, Merino, and Alpaca, all from a destash with a long story I’ll share later. About half the alpaca – so 1/8 of the total fiber – was a gorgeous chestnut brown, which should give the finished yarn a heathered cream appearance. I’m so excited to start spinning this, but I have a couple other spins to do first. More on those below!

Big Finishes that Deserve Their Own Post

I had a couple really big finishes this month, which I have not yet taken the time to properly photograph and write about. I want to tell their story more completely, but just letting you know they exist will help motivate me to get on that task.

This is the Goff Place Mystery Knit-Along by Kate Davies, a truly wild mystery shawl that I knit all during our travels. I actually finished it in August during the trip to Calgary. I am still toying slightly with the idea of adding some embroidery to that big blank square, but let’s be honest: I probably won’t. I kinda like the mixture of busy, patterned areas with a chunk of negative space. Maybe when I get around to reading Hide My Eyes, the book that went with this knit-along, I’ll get some inspiration. I got through about six of the books involved with this book club, then I got deep into a podcast rabbit hole that I don’t know when I’ll climb out of. But even a small motif in the middle there would add a little something, don’t you think? Like a flower made out of cross-hatching woven through the garter ridges?

This is my interpretation of Port Charlotte, another KDD pattern, but this one from quite a while back. I changed it drastically to suit my handspun, making it top down and extending the necklace of patterning into a full yoke, and pretty much making up the numbers as I went along. It’s too warm to wear inside, but it’s just the right temperature to photograph this outside, so I’ll try to get that done next time there’s like sun in the sky.

Afloat on the Needles

The big work in progress I have on the go right now is the Afloat pattern in Norah Gaughan’s latest book, Knit Fold Pleat Repeat. I’m a little obsessed with this book, which is all about WEIRD constructions and superfluous folds of fabric. Afloat got me super intrigued, especially when I realized that the huge panels of stockinette required could be made on a knitting machine. I had this pattern in mind when I acquired a huge cone of Milarrochy Tweed oiled and ready for machine knitting. I knit this panel at my mom’s house, using a solid half-kilo of yarn, and here it is after I washed the oil out of it.

With the oil removed, I could properly measure the gauge. I did not have the pattern with me when I was at my mom’s, so I had estimated the size of the panels I would need. The width I could not control, but the length I could. It took a good bit of work, but I split the huge panels into four smaller panels, added garter stitch borders to three sides, and aggressively blocked the bias out of them.

I handknit the super-fun drop-stitch lace panel for the front. This was addictive and fast – I am not into doing a whole sweater full of intense chart-following textured knitting, and it would have made me bonkers to knit this as a small central strip in the middle of massive rows of stockinette, as the pattern requires. but knitting just this was super entertaining for a couple of days.

All that remained was to hand-knit the sleeves. I really like knitting sleeves flat 2-at-a-time, because even though it takes a while, when you’re done you’re done, and if you mess up the increases, you can at least mess them up in a synchronized fashion so the sleeves match.

The pattern called for these elongated raglan sleeve caps, and while I get it, these blocked sleeves are much too long for me. I’m going to have to rip out the sleeve caps and redo them with normal raglan decreases, because I am not ripping the whole thing out to make the body of the sleeve shorter. Will be doing the math on that this afternoon.

There has been a lot of knitting this month. I’m a little bummed at having to redo those sleeve caps, but it does help to look back and see how much I’ve accomplished.

Spinning (and Fiber Prep)

Stage 2 Complete of the Qiviut Blending Project

I spent all summer spinning these ten blends of qiviut with five different breeds of wool. When I finally get around to knitting them up and analyzing the differences, it’s going to be a BOOK of a series of blog posts, man. Six of these skeins were spun on supported spindles, and I finished up the last one at the beginning of September.

If you’re curious, the five wools here were Rambouillet, Targhee, Tunis, Cheviot, and Romney. The previous batch had Cormo, Icelandic Thel, and BFL. Each wool has a skein done with 50/50 qiviut, and 75/25 wool/qiviut.

Part of me is really sick of all the grey, but another part is really excited to start the next phase of blending, because I’ll be adding other mix-ins like silk, cotton, alpaca, and mohair. And I still want to spin all the wools on their own. But I do need to wait for spring for a new harvest of qiviut, since I didn’t get any new qiviut this year. And there’s so much more spinning to do!

Washing Bits of Fleece

I washed three big half-fleeces at my mom’s house this year: a Clun Forest, a Tunis, and a Wensleydale. They’re gorgeous and I can’t wait to get my hands on them to dye and blend and spin. They also motivated me to wash up all the bits of fleece that have fallen into my hands in the last while. I’ve already washed some BFL from Kelly a few years ago and some Corriedale from Dionne a couple years ago. This is some Corriedale I pinched off Rachel from a fleece she just bought at Knit City:

And this is some gorgeous CVM/Romeldale that Greta gifted me through Pedro last year.

There was also some fleece I was gifted that was labeled Clun forest, but I’m not so sure about it; it needed rewashed. Anyway, for a couple weeks there, I just had some fleece going in the sink every day in small batches. It’s quite rewarding to be able to say that all the fleece in my possession is clean. And now, when I need a little snack spin, I’m hoping I can reach for one of these gifts from my friends and spin a sweet sample.

Tundra Chain Ply

Speaking of snack spins, this was one from last week. We had such a good time digging into chain plying in the last episode of the Wool Circle, and I got so much feedback and new ideas, that I decided we weren’t done workshopping the topic. I needed more singles so I could play with more chain plying techniques. So I reached for this braid, which I had acquired in a fiber swap and didn’t have any idea what to do with. It was the perfect braid to sacrifice in an experiment.

I split it into three strips, dizzed it off a drum card, and spun the singles over the course of a few days. It’s superwash Targhee, which POUFS like you wouldn’t believe.

The day I finished these singles was one of the rare days this September that it wasn’t raining. The dogs and I went on a walk, and I realized that these colours that had seemed so odd in the braid were a pretty close representation of fall tundra colours. The chestnut brown looked like jewel lichen, the pale sage looked like the reindeer lichen, the mint was in the sky, and the greys are in the rocks and (on overcast days) in the water.

Having finished (I thought) knitting on Afloat, I cast this right on for a hat toque yesterday. I don’t need another toque, but ooooh it’s going to be hard to give this one away. I’m hoping it comes out as a nice man-size and that it sells at the craft sale in October.

Sock Spins Begin

It feels surprisingly amazing to be spinning for socks again. I spun for socks a ton in 2021 and 2022, and I’m almost ready to write about the results of the first round of that handspun sock experiment. (You can see preliminary findings in ep. 125 of the Wool Circle.) I’m ready to start the next stage of that experiment by spinning for six or seven pairs of socks out of the same fiber: a blend called “Panda” made of superwash merino, silk, bamboo, and nylon. Thanks to a shopping spree during the weirdest days of 2020, I have six of these braids.

This month, I spun the first of these, a traditional 4-ply from the colourway “Tapestry” from Sweet Georgia Yarns.

I chose to attempt to line the colours up in plying, but without doing any editing of the singles to make sure this worked out. The results were interesting: early on in plying, one single got quite off from the others, so throughout the finished yarn, three singles mostly line up while one gives some contrast. I really like this effect, and it’ll be very entertaining to knit up the resulting stripes.

The second sock spin, following along with the ply structure work we’re doing at Wool n’ Spinning, will be a Hawser yarn. This is a Craftyjaks colourway called “Graffiti,” originally developed for a WnS breed and colour study that I did not participate in, so I’m pretty stoked to finally spin this colourway.

I chose to break this colourway down into a fractal. This is proving an even faster spin; I’m almost done the first bobbin. I do assist myself in these sock spins by peeling off about 1 oz from the braid before I start; 3 oz is plenty for a pair of socks, and then I can get an extra pair or two at the end with all the saved bits.

This has been a month with a ton of spinning! I haven’t even told you about the yarns I spun at the beginning of the month for the Wool Circle, because of course I want to keep those quiet until each episode comes out, but they were delightful ply structure samples that I look forward to knitting up. I’m spinning way more than fifteen minutes a day, which of course will not remain sustainable throughout the year. But I’ve been doing very little of other crafts, which is how that works out. Speaking of which…

Sewing (etc.)

I did have a few moments of sewing in September, as I was in a finishing-things-up sort of mood. The real big finish was MiniMighty’s quilt top. I had made all these little Star Wars themed frisbees before vacation, and all that remained was to topstitch them to black squares…

… and assemble those black squares into a quilt top. MiniMighty and I are both thrilled with how it came out, and I’m so glad there was enough of the specialty fabric left to make a border. It really ties it together.

I now have three completed quilt tops, one for each kid, that all need to be turned into quilts. They all want minky backings rather than the pieced backings I have planned. That’s why I’m selling a few things a the craft sale in a couple of weeks, so I can justify buying that much minky. So, brace yourself, sewing machine, you have some work ahead of you!

While in finishing mode, I finished a couple of embroidery designs that were lying around. I had impulsively started an embroidery class on Craftsy last year, and these I finished nicely into ready-to-hang decorations, again hoping someone at the craft sale will want to adopt them.

One more bit of sewing happened this month, and that was to make Bible covers for the girls. While I was in Calgary, Jared got them reading their Bibles every evening. Pretty special, eh? So I found a tutorial that would work for us, they designed the colours using entirely stash fabrics and a roll of zipper I had lying around, and I made them. (Dooner’s is not pictured as I made it a bit later.)

I admit to being amazed with how well they turned out. Thank you Jesus. The girls still reach for their Bibles every night and every time they go to church. We started them at the Baptist Sunday School as well, where they are learning more about how to use them. I pray they’re absorbing God’s word as they continue to grow inside and out!

Well, I really need to wrap this post up as I have to go pick the girls up from school, but here’s one last bit of news: my first batch of Kombucha is on the brew. Yes, I have joined the ranks of SCOBY parents. I’m unreasonably excited about this. Between shrub beverages, the Nespresso machine Jared bought, and the unreasonable amount of very nice tea Pedro gifted us, it’s beverage city up in here. But the Lord knows we need all the help we can get to stay hydrated.

Time fails me to tell of the actual work work I’ve been doing: still doing my very part time admin job, recording the Wool Circle, going through the tech editing and chart-making processes for my book, dehydrating tea for Pedro, and readying two single patterns for publication. I haven’t gotten outside much, and we still haven’t gotten to the cabin, so that means I’ve had more down time than might be usual. Also, evening activities haven’t really picked up yet; they tend to really get moving in October. So I’ve been making hay while the sun shines, the sunshine in this phrase being entirely metaphorical. I’m thankful to be home, to be with my little family, and to have good work to pour my heart into. How is your fall going?