I knit my hand spun Tencel yarn with size 4 Prym needles. I like to do a stockinette stitch with garter stitch border to help it lay flat since stockinette alone likes to curl.
My knitting tension is even, the wonkiness of this swatch comes from the uneven spin of the yarn. Tencel was a tricky fiber for me to spin. It is shiny and lustrous, but likes to clump and doesn’t draft evenly. The finished swatch is soft and has a lovely sheen, but I’m distracted by the strange pooling of uneven yarn.
I stopped knitting and bound off my rainbow brioche scarf months ago, but there were errors at the beginning when I was still getting used to the brioche knitting with multiple colors techniques. I thought I needed to rip out the first few inches and rebind, which is daunting, so I stuck the project in a bag and tucked it into the back of the closet until I was ready.
Months later, when I was on a finishing kick (see yesterday’s post), I figured I was ready to work on the scarf again. I pulled it out of the bag, in all its squishy soft amazing length, and couldn’t find the spots that bothered me before. I looked again and did eventually spot the small errors, but it definitely took over 10 seconds. I have a 10 second rule, that if you can’t see the mistake in 10 seconds, the item passes. If someone else wants to examine an item that closely, they deserve to find something.
I wet the scarf to block it, and noticed that the colors bled.
I rinsed the scarf until I could not see any dye in the water, and hung it up to dry.
The dye colors were taken up by the white yarn as the scarf dried, but it doesn’t distract from the piece. I’m glad I didn’t add fluffy clouds to the ends, they would not have stayed white.
The scarf now has a happy home, two years after I started it.
I completed the fiber page for my spindle spun Ramie top fiber from Hearthside fibers. Ramie was pleasant to spin and has a cottony feel but with a long staple length. I experimented with three and four ply yarns.
My small swatch of hand-spun merino/alpaca dyed yarn experienced a small amount of shrinkage after I rinsed it and let it dry.
The good news is that there was no visible bleed when I blocked the swatch. I was concerned that the beautiful dark red would bleed.
I assembled my banana fiber study page with yarn made from the stems of banana plants and purchased as combed top from Hearthside fibers.
Bananas are believed to have been first cultivated in New Guinea around 8,000 years ago and used for both fruit and fiber. The staple length of the combed top is long, about 8 inches, and the fiber is strong.
The fiber was pleasant to spin. I did challenge myself to spin thicker than my default spin, which resulted in more thickness variation, and also subsequently less length. I used up all my two ply yarn in my swatches, and had to piece together bits for my bobbin on the page because I forgot to set aside some at the beginning.
I made unadorned swatches to show the texture in the yarn that was also a result of the variations in thickness. My sprang swatch blocked well and has a lovely horizontal stretch.
I would absolutely spin banana fiber again, but I think next time, I would spin thin.
Critters and Craft 