Micro Sweaters

Let me tell you a tale of happiness and woe. The happiness? Simple! The cat and the dragon, united at last, sitting around playing WoW and knitting during our vacation. LOVE IT. Perfect. (The knitting, the playing, the vacation, and definitely my dragon!) 

The woe? Knitpicks is no longer my go to place for online yarn shopping. Why? Because the yarn is gone.

"But WHY," I hear you ask, in your best Jack Sparrow voice, "is all the yarn gone?"

Aren't those gorgeous? [sob] Shadow Shimmer, RIP

Beats me. But Knitpicks, in their recent revamp, has axed almost all of the lace weight yarns I used to buy. Specifically the Shadow line, 100% merino in lovely colors, including some tonals which are hard as heck to find in lace, much less find reasonably priced. I am a sad cat. SAD, I tell you. SO SAD. Fortunately I have a stockpile of the decommissioned yarn lines, but I am still so sad that when I use those up they will be GONE.

This is the Bitlet, my Hujoo Nano Freya. She's itty bitty - fits neatly in the palm of my hand, and therefore took up no room at all slipping her into my carry on luggage to come on vacation with me. As you can see, it's hard to knit anything for her that doesn't look bulky. Fortunately, I also brought a ball of the KP Shadow Shimmer in the orange-brown spice, another in the blue-green bayou, and some US #0 DPNs.

The first attempt involved a simple tube dress - about the size of my thumb - with some eyelet holes that I threaded a sparkly yarn through. The second attempt I got more ambitious - sleeves! and little bits of colorwork, alternating the bayou and spice yarns. Completely knit off the cuff, I just kept holding it up to her and guessing if I needed less or more stitches. It came out pretty cute for an impromptu attempt at knitting in micro size. :)

Scrap Yarn Sweater Dress

What do you do with your beginner sample works? You know the things I mean - the lumpy swatches of awkward knitting or the even lumpier over and under twisted chunky bits of homespun yarn, the mangled bits of jewelry wire, and the tensionless bits of weaving. All the things that scream "Hello! I just started this craft and I'm not sure what I'm doing and I'm making a lot of mistakes!" Yeah, those bits.

Trash bin? Usually. But in the case of spinning, well, I'm loathe to discard any actually useable bits of yarn. Even if it's overspun chunky.

Fortunately, there's always uses for scrap yarn. Even better, dolls will never complain that you've dressed them in something that looks like your first knitting project! Particularly not when the doll in question has been sitting around naked for months because nothing I have in doll clothes will fit over her abundance of curves.

Shadow: Finally, clothes!

Shadow again, my Iplehouse EID 1/3 girl, and the scrap yarn sweater dress made entirely of bits and bobs handspun from roving by yours truly. At the top there's what I call "Alliance Boyfriend" (being a handful from my "Heroes of the Alliance" roving bag mixed with a handful from my "Boyfriend Sweater" roving bag). Around her waist is some "Alchemy Flambeau", and the skirt part is "Optimus Prime". Optimus and Alliance Boyfriend were spun around the same time when I first got my spinning wheel, with Flambeau coming several months later when I had learned some better technique.

Alliance Boyfriend - merino/silk/bamboo

Here's "Alliance Boyfriend". It's made of rovings from Paradise Fibers - Ashland Bay Merino/Silk in "Autumn" and Ashland Bay Bamboo in "Aegean Blue". It's a chunky worsted weight, 2ply, about 16 yards.

Alchemy Flambeau - polworth/BFL

Swatched on US3

This is "Alchemy Flambeau". Still a bit on the thick and thin side, but look at the weight difference! 2ply sock yarn. The roving is a mix from BlueMoon Fiber Arts - a handful of the "Flambeau" in Polworth (the grayish side) and "Tea and Alchemy" in Bluefaced Leicester (the reddish side).

Optimus Prime - silk

OP again

Lastly, there's "Optimus Prime", which was the first thing I spun on my wheel. It's pure silk mawatas, Knit Picks Hanks in the Hood in "Warm Spring". I peeled each layer apart and spun them together with the colored ends butted up against each other (blue to blue, red to red) so that the color gradations were longer, and then I plied it to itself into a 2ply chunky worsted. Having tried several cheaper silk hankies from other places, I definitely recommend trying Hanks in the Hood - the brilliant color and smoothness is to die for. Excellent quality, and at that chunky weight I got 26 yards from it.

Cast on and free form knit with US8 needles, and viola! Something useful out of My First Spun scrap yarn.

Tiny Balls of Yarn

So last time I raved about the itty bitty mini Turkish drop spindle. The real question is, of course, how much yarn can such an itty bitty spindle make? And what do you DO with it?

This is the ball I pulled off of the spindle - I could have kept spinning, but I was curious how much I already had. It was probably roughly the size of a dollar (US) coin. No bigger than a cat toy.

Since it was a center pull ball, done in a few different stretches of roving, I took the center and the end of the yarn and tied them back on the spindle, then plied the single of yarn to itself. This gave me a tiny ball of roughly sock weight yarn and I thought to myself, well, why not knit something for one of the dolls?

This is Shadow. She's an Iplehouse EID 1/3 girl, Asa sculpt, and currently sans faceup/eyes/wig in prep for doing some major mods to her, so please excuse the bare bones look! I cast on enough stitches to go around my smallest circular needle and then just did four rows of random yo/k2tog lace to make a little cowl scarf. I actually could have done another round or two - I had yarn left over.

So, THAT's what you can do with a itty bitty ball of yarn. I'm suitably impressed with the mini spindle, and hey, now Shadow has a totally hand made, handspun and knit, cowl scarf! ^_^