Tying up loose ends

Well, at least some of the ones from last week. Here's the finished yarn I was spinning from Knitted Wit.

This was a dream to spin; it easily drafted into very fine singles, the colors are soft, and there was absolutely no bleeding dye when it was set set. I got 506 yards of 21 WPI out of 4 ounces; a light laceweight. I'm thinking it will make a lovely light shawl for spring.

"I'll sit here with your yarn, Mom. Every yarn picture is better with a dog in it."

I finally made it to Westside Wednesday this week, after missing two weeks in a row. Kathleen and I got to finally compare our shawls. Back in September at OFFF, we purchased 8 ounces of Bearfoot Blend in plain vhite and then gave it to StitchJones for a custom dye job. She gave us a colorway called "Blackberry Sage" with a deep purple, her fantastic cobalt blue, and a light sage green. When Sharon said it always amazed her how different spinners made different yarns from her roving, the lightbulb came on for us; we decided to spin and knit triangle shawls without talking about how we were spinning or what pattern we used. Here are the results:

While we both stripped the combed top lengthwise, how we spun was completely different: Kathleen made a woolen spun single, light and lofty and then navajo plied to keep the colors intact; while I made a worsted spun single, thin and tight, then reversed one single to get tweed colors all the way through. The result is that in Kathleen's shawl, she still has all three colors, while in mine, I have almost none of the original colors but have a whole new set of colors related to the original colorway. Surprisingly, we both chose the same pattern, the Simple But Effective Shawl by CosmicPluto Knits; but while Kathleen faithfull followed the pattern of stockinette and garterstitch, I chose to do it all in stockinette.

And lest you think that Westside Wednesday is limited to knitters and spinners, just look at what showed up this week!

This picture is really terrible; it doesn't show how lovely this quilt really is. I didn't get all the details, but I think it's destined to be under somebody's Christmas tree in a few weeks.

And this afternoon was the second meeting of Portland Spinnerati.

We had some familiar faces and some new ones this week. And we managed to get a little more organized, planning for some lessons next month and trying a new meeting place for February. Best of all, we had a few "muggles" drop in and ask questions about spinning!