Progress Report

New job (temporary) is now official, yay!

I start training tomorrow, also yay!

As soon as jet lag wore off (mostly) I started the Handspun Sweater Project™ (hereafter HSP) and interesting things were discovered.

I had already spun a sample in June or so when I ordered 8 ounces of the fiber for that purpose and entered some 2-ply yarn from it in the Fair (red ribbon).

Here's the 2-ply:

And the 3-ply sample: Nice yarn, but I want a little more twist. Worsted spun, singles 28 wpi.

So I started this time with worsted spinning at 32 wpi, to see if it was too thin at that size or if I could use it and get more yardage out of my 2 pounds of fiber.

Sample skein: Nice yarn, definitely. Would be lovely at 5 spi. But at 4, it's just too thin and floppy.

Here's the swatch on 8's: You can't really see from this how flat the cable is and how airy the fabric. This just would not work at 4 spi, which is the gauge I got with it on these needles.

Next I spun from the fold at 28 spi for the singles and ended up with this yarn: The yarn is fuzzier, as expected, but a really easy spin, very soft and lofty and Aran weight, yipee!

The swatch: The cable stands up very nicely and the gauges is still a bit off, so I will swatch again with the real yarn on 7's to see if it's perfect. But I think this yarn is the winner. And I enjoy spinning from the fold a lot, that will help my process with all this gray.

Enough?

Down to the spinning today, I think.

My plan is to do 6 ounces of finished yarn a week until I'm done. I don't know if that is really possible, but it's 2 ounces at a sitting and then a day of plying a week. The spinning should take me 5-6 weeks at that rate and gets me knitting by March 1. The nice part is the sweater should knit up pretty quickly at 4 spi and I might be able to wear it before it gets too hot here. That would make me SO happy!

Wish me luck at the new job. I'm doing perfectly easy stuff at a perfectly pleasant place with perfectly lovely people. Bummer, huh? Only wish it would turn into something longer term, but you never know.

Peace.