Make no mistake - I still knit

Most of my recent posts have not been about knitting. Should I change the name of the blog? Or does the banner picture say it all?

After a summer (and part of autumn) hiatus, I am knitting again, this time with my own homespun. I knit something up with my first ever homespun, but it was basically what we politely refer to as "art yarn" - big and fat but not on purpose (sort of like my body). Now my homespun is more like worsted, but not consistently so.

Since the diameter of the singles was so erratic, determining WPI (wraps per inch) seemed useless. So I knit up a couple of swatches, one on US7 and one on US8 needles. (And just for fun, I threw them into the walnut husk dye bath.)

Yep, I would call this worsted, or close enough. And I think the Lincoln wool took the dye well. But not as well as what I think is Cascade 220, which I finished the bind off with on one swatch.

Then, since my oatmeal scarf disappeared one day last winter, I decided to knit myself another oatmeal scarf.

Pattern: Easy Mistake-Rib Scarf in Three Weights, more or less
Yarn: homespun Lincoln 2-ply, undyed
Needles: US8
Modifications: not really, other than I slip the first stitch knitwise on each row

The uneven spinning gives this scarf a "rustic" look. For length, I aim for a scarf that is as long as the wearer is tall. Even though the yarn was a bit coarse, the scarf did stretch a bit when soaked and blocked.

Besides this scarf, I have a hat in the same homespun in progress, plus a pair of socks to gift (currently turning heels), and a rug on US17 needles, for my bathroom. So, yes, I still knit.

Spun out for a while

Salomon Farm is a city park that simulates a working farm from the 1930's. During the summer, they host a variety of farm animals, from chickens to heritage breed hogs. I volunteered there for two years and as a side benefit received some roving from one of the sheep. Poor Butterball was literally on her last legs, requiring medication and special handling to keep her weight up. Finally, they put her down. Happily, I received some of her roving, which I recently spun into yarn.

I am not an expert spinner by any means. If you are a beginning spinner, too, I highly recommend you start with Lincoln roving. It has a long staple, so the "inch worm" technique is very forgiving.

I filled up four bobbins before beginning to ply, and was hoping for the amounts on each bobbin to be rather even. The mini-skein at the top of the photo represents the bit that was left over and was plied from a small center-pull ball.

I ended up with over 400g of two-ply yarn. The twists from the spinning and the plying came out looking balanced, although I think the finished product looks rather loose. I'm anxious to knit up a sample.

One area of spinning where it is easy for me to fall down is labeling the product. Ideally, the above tag should also include wraps-per-inch (wpi) and whether it was processed and spun worsted or woolen. If I dye any of this yarn, the other side of the tag would include dye information.