Friday, March 20, 2009

The Eyes have it


The Eye of Jupiter took on a bit of a life of its own over the past few months, and has left me with much yarn and fiber to play with.
First, my socks (which for some odd reason, I just can't get done! Perhaps in subconscious protest due to the fact I don't want the show to be done?). Briefly, I am knitting them in the Classica merino/nylon base, they were started over a year ago (I'm just not a quick sock knitter), toe up, plain foot, scrap yarn for afterthought heel, Crusoe pattern for the cuff, two-at-a-time, magic-loop. And I somehow managed, once I picked them up again for "karate knitting", to knit the two socks together. See those little crossed over threads?

Yeah, not good. So a-tinking I went. How on earth did I knit 4 rows without noticing the socks were joined?
Then, there was the tam from my last post. It will be winging its way overseas to a friend who will get a kick -- and hopefully a lift -- from the bright colors.
Lastly, while vending at Spa, a customer in my booth pointed to this colorway stating that, "yeah, but when you spin it, it will look like mud." Being the obsessive person I am, I had to spin some for myself.
As with most space-dyed tops, the spinner actually has many options. The preparation can be stripped out randomly and plied together with little forethought, which may result in "mud" or can create a pleasant blending of colors, depending on the colors present in the top. It can be spun as a single, chain-plied to preserve stretches of color, or stripped in a conscious effort to manipulate the colors. I took a small length of the colorway and broke it out into color sections in an a-b-c-d fashion (yellow-red-orange-blue) as it was painted. Then, I took one length and split it in quarters and spun them in the same a-b-c-d order. Then I took another section and spun without splitting a-b-c-d fashion on a seperate bobbin, and then plied these together.
The result?
No mud!

I knit a fairly large swatch to show all the color shifts.

I do think if I were to make a larger garment, I would only strip the top in half, rather than quarters, to get longer sections of color, but I do think this technique would be great for entrelac. I am debating frogging the sample to make Quant. Or I just may have to spin out some other colorways to play with. What a hardship, huh?
(oh yeah, and guess what? I have a new wheel!! more on the next post)

2 comments:

Kathleen C. said...

Just a suggestion... maybe you should keep the swatch as is and dispplay with the roving in your booth? Just to show that the spinning does NOT make mud.
It can be inspiring to the visualizing challenged consumer see what the roving (or yarn) is going to do when done up... especially when it makes up so nice!
I'm not visualizing challenged and yet I still find it helpful (maybe because I'm such a begining spinner?).

Marion said...

Another Conery commenter. A late one at that, but I had to say, you are so talented with color. i never see anything you do with fiber that I don't love and want to have. Even the things you knit for kids and I'm not a kid.