Time is flying... or standing still?

The last few weeks my life was a high speed train, buzzing from one topic to the next.
Somehow we have arrived in November now and it feels like I did a non-stop trip from summer to autumn... Now let me write a blog post to summarize what happened in the last couple of weeks (or better months?).

 Time is flying...

In August I was busy searching a new appartment. My renting contract was running out by end of September due to a planned demolition of the building. Luckily, I found a new place in a nice calm area, well connected to public transport. Finding affordable appartments to rent in the city of Zurich is a really hard and tiring thing.


By the beginning of September my boyfriend arrived. We haven't seen each other for eight months (long distance relationship), so this was quite a change (a good one though!)

Right after he arrived, we had to start packing boxes and getting ready for the move. Luckily it went all very smoothly, thanks to my great dad, brothers and friends!

One secret truth was revealed to everybody who helped though: I own more wool than shoes, clothes and bags all together...

my life in boxes (half of them contain wool).

Soon after the move we travelled for a weekend to Stresa, Italy to attend a wedding. This place was just amazing!!

Borromean islands in Stresa, Italy.

The weekend after that I had to leave for a conference to Rio de Janeiro to give a talk about my research project, and all the weeks before this trip were already filled with a loooot of work, "last" experiments, more last experiments, confusing results, burning fuses in my brain, ....until I was ready for the talk.
The trip itself was also quite exhausting... 15hours of flying, commuting from hotel to the conference and searching food in a bustling city....

View from the roof top of my hotel in Rio.

I was glad to be back home in the end!
And then October was here... no crazy travels anymore this month, but still a lot of work while starting to set up the new home and enjoying times together with my boyfriend :)
This is how we finally arrived in November.

(photo taken by my adorable boyfriend)

Time was standing still 

... when it came to my crafting activities.
I am so sorry for everybody who is waiting for something they ordered from me :(

Somehow I just couldn't move on even with the most simple projects, and I was too exhausted in my free time to pick up spinning or knitting. I think every crafter knows these phases, don't you?

There was this short-sleeve raglan jacket I finished already in August. It is technically finished, but I should secure all the ends of the stripes with sewing thread, because unfortunately i cut the threads too short :(
Promise to myself: leave enough thread for darning ends in the future!!!

The yarn I died myself with indigo, and the jacket will be for my mum:

indigo cardigan

Then there is this "birch tree" shawl I am designing, using yarn died with birch leaves and indigo. I made quite fast progress in the beginning, but the last weeks it was just lying around. It travelled to Italy and to Brazil with me, but I didn't even pick it up once!!!

birch tree shawl

birch tree details

Then there was an old friend of mine asking me to make a hat for him and one for his daughter. He wanted simple, stockinette stitch hats, in greens or browns. Simple and fast, you think? It took me weeks to get it done, I really don't know why... But finally I managed to finish the second one and then I shipped them so quickly that I even forgot to take a picture :D

hat knitting

Spinning projects.... My wheel was just turning just a veeeeery little bit.
There were these gradient rolags I handcarded myself out of a kettle dyed Merino roving. In July I spun more than 3/4 of the rolags on one weekend, but since then I could never do more than one rolag a day (about 1-2g). So it moved on veeeeery very slowly.
It is the bobbin on the right, and I hope to get to ply it soon (I honestly forgot which colors are hiding under the purple):

spinning

(The bobbin on the left shows the single spun from a handcarded tweedy batt back in July. I didn't get to ply it yet.)


I don't want my crafting timeline to stand still anymore, and hope to be able to put more work into my wooly projects in the next couple of weeks!

Happy autumn to everyone!

Bulky Mini Poncho

And another update today :)

This is what I made from my first handcarded batts using my new drum carder...

 100% fine Merino wool, dyed in a rainbow gradient by myself

then carded, first each color separately, then blended to get a striped batt

These are the batts, which were spun into thick slubby singles

The bobbins before plying

And the yarrrrrrn, 2ply colors a bit random... 

And this is what I knit out of it: a cute mini poncho with strings for size adjustment.

Below are two pictures of me showing to different ways to wear it:

The wonderful texture of the knitted fabric

Soo this was a quite fast project compared to others, as it was spun very thick (100g, 216 m) and then knit with 10 mm knitting needles. I cast on 66 stitches and knit in the round until I almost ran out of yarn. Then I added one row of purl, on row of *k4, yo, k2tog* and another row of purl stitches. Afterwards I bound off loosely. Through the holes created in the yarn over round, I put a string with two wooden beads. Finished!

Hope you like it and it inspires you. Knitting bulky is so much fun!

Winter Swap/KAL Chantimanou Group

Ohh I didn't write a blog post about this yet? So it is about time.

This project is a fiber swap including a KAL (knit along) in the chantimanou group on ravelry.
Every participant sends 100 grams of dyed fibers to another spinner and keeps 100 grams of the same colorway for herself. In this way you receive 100 grams of "random" surprise fibers that shall be spun and then used together in the same project with the fibers that were kept for yourself. Everyone will have a different combination, and we will all knit the same shawl in the end.

The shawl knitting pattern is Wave After Wave which has been designed by group member Cordula just for this swap (it is available to other knitters too, of course).

So here are some pictures of the progress so far...

These are my 2x 100g fiber (100% Polwarth). I dyed it myself and called the colorway "Ubatuba", which is a coastal town in Brazil where my boyfriend lives.

My cat Leila was quite sad that one of the two braids had to leave us...

... but not for long, because soon afterwards we received a huuuuuge box that looked very promising.

The contents of the box! 100g Merino/Soja dyed by The Spinning Cat accompanied with wonderful gifts - chocolate, tea and a candle :)

This is the combination of the gifted fibers together with my own. I like their contrast, and how they still go very well with each other. 

Now some pictures of the spinning process... :)

I have finished spinning and plying the yarn, and the balls are waiting to be knit into the shawl.

I am planning to cast on during my 12hour flight to Brazil, which is on Sunday.

Camel/Silk Artyarn Shawl

Last week I could finish a project which I am really in love with...

More than a year ago I got this fiber from Sidi. It is the "waste" that is produced during the industrial combing process to make combed top. It is a mixture of camel and silk. Camel naturally has a very short staple, but it is extremely soft and light. Silk is a long and sleek fiber, but as this here is the "waste" of the production, there are a lot of knobs, short pieces and also pieces of silk cocoons in it.

Camel / Silk "Bandabgang" (waste from the industrial combing process)

I decided to dye it in some colors that remind me of a beach in Ubatuba, Praia Vermelha.
I chose the colors green (for the jungle), brown yellow, orange, red, and different shades of ocean blue. One part I left undyed, it should be the color of the sand :)
The red comes because on that particular beach you can find many many red and orange shells. Also the name "vermelha" means red.
I apologize for the flood of pictures that coms now... but there are just too many good pictures of that beach :)

the fibers after dyeing

So much to the colors :)

Then I took my hand carders to prepare the fibers for spinning. This has two effects - to make the fibers more organized and easier to spin, but also to mix and blend the colors and to make transitions...

fibers are spread on the hand carder while blending different colors

when finished carding, the fibers are rolled u with the help of two sticks (knitting needles)

Like this I made about 100 fiber rolls, called "rolags". Unfortunately I don't have a picture of all of them together, because I started to spin some, before I finished making all of them :)

The nice thing about these little fiber packages is, that you can build up a gradient or stripes, by spinning them in the order you like...
And then came the spinning wheel!
Due to the knotty fiber the thread became a bit uneven and has a lot of texture.

 

How to ply this single?
This question was in my head for many weeks... I wanted to keep the gradient, but a navajo ply would just look weird... Then I came to the decision to take a thin silk thread that is usually used for sewing, and to ply it with this. I chose a natural beige color. While plying I held the silk thread tight and let the camel/silk thread go on it loosely with a slight angle. By this I obtained a funny spiral yarn, with many bobbles and knobs in between:

Almost at the end! :)
For almost half a year I had the yarn and didn't know what to knit from it... it should be something special. But there were just not the right knitting patterns out there for this yarn...
So I have decided to just cast on 3 stitches and start to increase in a regular way to make a semi-circular shawl. Along the way I picked up some shell beads and knitted them in.
And for the border I got an inspiration at my yarn shop, a pretty wave pattern...

I love the scarf! It's so soft and light and warm... incredible. And with all this story behind it, it really is something special.

Danke, Sidi, für dieses Geschenk. Ich hatte so viel Freude damit :)