Thanks everybody for your nice comments about the yarn I made. I’m very happy with it. As to what I’ll knit with it? I don’t know. I haven’t really spun up that much yarn, and only once did I have a project in mind while I spun. When I was spinning up the yarn that became my Seraphim Shawl, I absolutely KNEW the yarn would be a shawl. It made the spinning much different for me, honestly. But the yarn I just made? It almost feels like it’s finished – I don’t need to knit it up. In fact, when I was done smelling it and loving it, I threw it on the top of this basket:
This lovely basket sits utop my yarn bureau and it’s got mostly handspun in it – not just my handspun, but all of my Sock Hop yarn as well. And maybe a half a skein of STR. It’s a beautiful burst of color in my otherwise neutral bedroom. Eye candy in every sense of the word. I like the idea of yarn as the finished product – yarn as art. Maybe I’ll submit it to The Yarn Museum.
Anyway, I have no plans to knit with it just yet. I will, of course, show it to you if I do. In the meantime, I’m looking for yet ANOTHER sweater project. I think I had a dream last night that I was wearing Short Rows and someone complimented me on it. I’ve had incredible luck of late in picking sweater projects – Ariann, CPH – but I don’t feel like I’m done yet. I’ve been knitting away on the mates to the J-One/G-Rocks socks but I’m not feeling the sock love. I need something to SINK my teeth into. It’s funny – I’ve read like five books since I started Ariann and knit two sweaters – and now I’m on the look out for another book AND another sweater.
I actually started a swatch for Am Kamin. But I haven’t gotten farther than the twisted ribbing. Although I did make beautiful copies of the charts and such. I just need to start knitting the actual cables. Most likely this won’t be my last swatch for this project so I better get going. I just want to be IN THE MIDDLE you know? All this prep work can be so tiring. It’s why I don’t like to cook. I’m too impatient for the prep.
I wouldn’t be surprised if another sweater bites me in the ass before this swatch is off the ground. Just sayin’.
You’re handspun is so beautiful! I, with my mild obsession with them, would knit it into a scarf, but that’s just me. Have a great day!
Hey Cara! Sweaters are addictive, aren’t they? What kind of project are you looking for – cardigan, pullover, cables, lace, etc? Give us some more details on your current preferences and/or styles you’ve been coveting (we all have them…haha) and I’m sure this huge group of commenters will give you some awesome suggestions.
I just started Glee, a pullover pattern from Zephyr Style with a long hook-and-eye placket down the front, and I am really enjoying it. They have quite a few cool-looking patterns.
Good luck and happy knitting on whatever you select! Really, you can’t go wrong. 🙂
~gabriella
I have been feeling the same need to knit a sweater. Your Ariann really spoke to me so I’m planning and thinking. I can’t wait to see what you decide on. It’s bound to end up on my to be knit fantasy list.
Ha, on the same wave length! My pile of handspun maybe knit for charity someday, but just seeing it and how my spinning has evolved is enough for now. Art (even sucky art) for arts sake.
Ribby Pulli has been patiently waiting. I just need few things off the needles and then I’ll jump in. I’m so ready for a good sweater project!
Ummmmm yarn candy…. It all is so pretty!!
I still haven’t knit a sweater for myself. One of these days it is going to happen. 🙂
What a beautiful basket! I’d love to use yarn as decoration, but having two cats makes that proposition…unwise.
I am working on my first sweater right now – the Central Park Hoodie. I am loving the knitting process of this so much more than I expected!
One sweater that I have my eye on and hope to make next is Serrano at knitty:
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall06/PATTserrano.html
I love the lace!
i have caught the sweater bug Real Bad… with Leaf Lace and CPH and now i’m on to the sleeves for Cherie, I cannot stop! I’m just loving it… next will probably be Glee and then who knows what else… your yarn is gorgeous! i love that burst of color. you just want to look at it alll day don’t you!? 😉
How about Stephanie Japel’s fitted cable sweater in the Spring IK? Some moderate cabley goodness before all the twists and turns of Am Kamin.
Beautiful basket of yarn!
Looking for love, eh? It could be that you’re looking in all the wrong places…
I have no sweater suggestions for you, as my head is filled with something entirely different than what you’re looking at–something with [gasp] crochet. I think it will make a perfect spring/summer sweater.
As for books, I have to suggest _Peace Like a River_ by Leif Enger. Good one.
Cara – If you want a really fun knit – check out the Cocoon sweater by Annie Modesitt. The sweater is a big circle with sleeves that uses a twisted float stitch. The pattern was on the cover of Vogue Knitting a year or two ago. I’m sure you’ll get a lot of other ideas from your readers!
Your handspun is beautiful. I like your idea of yarn as art. The January issue of Traverse Magazine (the Northern Michigan area magazine) had a Home and Cottage insert and a basket full of beautiful balls and skeins of yarn was their decorating idea. My husband actually noticed it and said that he thought that it made a beautiful still-life. He even thought that if the phot had not had writing on it (being a full page with the article printed right on it) that it would have made a nice framed print. I think that I am training him well!
The yarn candy looks delicious – it would look great as a framed picture or card too 🙂
Doris is right! Artists should be doing yarn still
-life work. Forget the fruit, yarn is where it’s at!
I feel as though, if I am very very good, when I die I might come back as your yarn. That is seriously a gorgeous skein of handspun goodness. I love the way the colors dance with each other.
Have you seen Stefanie Japel’s “Fitted Knits” yet? There are some preeeeeettty sweaters in there. 🙂
I’m working on Lace Leaf for my DD. It looked like a simple sweater. But no! It’s knit from the bottom up AND the top down and grafted together. Beautiful, though.
The last sweater DD chose (Reynolds Mandalay)started with 8 stitches on double pointed needles. The front and back was knitted all in one piece and grafted together down one side. She can really pick the patterns! Anyone else try this one??
I’m not a spinner so I have no idea how you make such incredible yarn. I love all those colors and colors on top of colors! I think it would be joyful to knit with. Book recommendation: Have you read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger? It’s not new but loved by me & my girls.
I recommend _The Sparrow_ by Mary Doria Russell, if you’ve never read it. I’m not sure why I’m thinking about it today, but I am. Maybe it’s time for a re-read!
Sweater… hm. Your last two were cardigans, so how about mixing it up a bit with a pullover? Say, something v-necky to enhance the bust, with a buttload of waist shaping to make you feel all curvaceous? Maybe with a little lace edging around the hem? Or you could knit another cardigan, like the top-down v-neck from Pure & Simple. Also easy to modify and figure-flattering.
I swear, coming up with the project is almost the best part, for me.
I loved reading The Sparrow – what an awesome book that was and I’m so happy Amy recommended it. I think about that book all the time; it has just stayed with me.
I would also recommend Triptych by Karin Slaughter; I couldn’t put it down, and The Empty Chair by Jeffery Deaver. I love Deaver’s Lincoln Rhymes novels.
such a delightful bit of eye candy – with that as inspiration, you’ll be sure to find the next sweater project in the very near future !
Your photos are so incredible.
Cara, your latest plied yarn is so achingly beautiful. I keep coming back just to look at it again. I want to possess some of that gorgeous stuff.
Books – I really enjoyed “Reading Lolita in Teheran”. There is also a wonderful new novel by a brilliant Somali writer, Nuruddin Farah, called “Knots”. I’m normally a non-fiction fan, but this one is so beautifully set with a fictional character in a very real Somalia, as it was and as it is now, that I learned a lot.
I’m not a knitter, but I LOVED reading your blog. Your sweater is gorgeous, your basket of yarn is gorgeous, and the person I met through your words is gorgeous. I hope you don’t mind if I come back for a visit often.
This morning as I was waking up, I thought “I wonder what my friend on the ‘net is doing?”. That ‘friend’ is you. Never thought of this lurking I do as something that would turn into a friendship, albiet – one-sided. But I wanted you to know that I appreciate the time you spend writing, sharing, showing. I’d miss you if you didn’t show up.
Thanks for the friendship.
I can so relate to wanting to bite into that sweater… just make sure it’s one you stay in love with the whole way through. I keep letting myself be distracted by small projects, but have been trying to “wrap it up” as Dave Chappelle would say, and make room for a spring sweater or two.
kinderwhore at your service.
Have you thought about knitting “Rogue”? You mentioned in another post that you had bought quite a bit of yarn from Beaverslide Dry Goods, and maybe that yarn would work for that pattern. (That’s one of the projects I’m considering for my yarn from BSDG, anyhoo.) As for your handspun, have you seen these Weavette looms? I have some, and it is cool to see how your handspun looks in a woven fabrc.
http://www.weavettes.com
Am Kamin really does fly once you get into the cables . . . We must have similar taste in sweaters, because Ariann and CPH are both on my list now.
You’re right. Just looking at that yarn is rather theraputic. That yarn bureau of yours is amazing, I’ve never seen it before. ahhhh
I found some Springsteen love for you – something that I really must send on to you. Can you send me an e-mail? Oh, and the important question – what are your favorite Bruce albums? Or are they all good?
(I know, it is an off the wall request. It isn’t like we are the best of friends or something, but I’m always here blurking and I just *knew* I had to send this to you when I saw it!)
YUM! A basket full of the fruits of spinning labor…
I have a big bowl I fill and enjoy – especially the handspun yarn. Simply looking and savoring its textural goodness and color is treat for the senses. You get tone and an implicit warmth as well by virtue of the fiber. We still need a littly toasty over here in the Big Windy.
I just have to tell you that my 2.5 year old son was sitting on my lap and, looking at your yarn said, “Oh! That’s cute! That’s really cute yarn Mom!”. I’m training him well!! 😉