Four pounds

That, my friends, is four pounds of yarn.  I sent off all the roving I had plus unravelled the hats I tried to make from it (below), and thanks to a talented spinner, got back what you see above.

I think the tiny baby skeins in front are what's left of the original spun thread that did not get plied (twisted with a second thread to make the final yarn).  I'm sure I can put that to use.

Now the trick is to turn it into hats that Stony Brook Meadows farm can sell at farmer's markets in October and November.  Crochet is quicker than knit, so I sat down and cranked out a few double-crochet hats, plain or with earflaps. I don't think plain gray hats will be in much demand, so I found some other wool I had on hand and added some colored embellishments.  Unfortunately, the colored wool is DK weight, thinner than the gray, so it's not exactly what I had in mind, but it helps.  I need to go out and get some Cascade 220 in a few colors.  Maybe I'll brave the condescending attitude of the Princeton store to get it.

This is what I managed so far, since the yarn came Thursday.  I had some of it already started using the test skeins, so I don't really work as fast as it might seem.  First I had to roll all of the skeins into balls.  If you're used to buying Red Heart or Vanna's Choice, you don't ever have to do this because it is already wound into balls, but this came as big loops of yarn that were twisted together.  Once you untwist that, all you have is a big loop of loose yarn, and you can't work with that easily, so I brought out the swift and hand-cranked ball winder and went at it.  Now I have 3 - 4 oz balls to work with.

The blue-edged hat still needs a tassel.  That loopy thing up top is my attempt at making a sheep hat using loop stitch.  I don't think I'm doing it right - I get loops, but the stitches are much looser than my usual gauge.  It also takes forever and uses a lot of yarn, so I might unravel that.  But I went on Ravelry to see what I could find that makes more interesting crocheted hats in just one color, and I found this lamb hat and a few others, so although they might not be as quick to make they will be more interesting and might sell better.  Definitely going to make the lamb hat.  The original idea was to make hats that looked like or suggested farm animals, but I may try other things that are more likely to attract adults.  

And I'm still working on stuff for the fundraiser, but I think I'm in a good place with the number of items so far.  Today I'll drop off some yarn and patterns to the farmer (who also crochets) and we will spend September building up inventory for her.  I'll let you know what she thinks about my ideas.

New things

Just to post a few pictures of new stuff.  Like this little guy:

Cute, huh?  And it looks so simple, yet finishing it and putting all the pieces together took a ridiculous amount of time.  See the tiny claws?  I used very small hair clips and forced them through the ends of the arms from the inside, so you can pinch the arms and open them up so it can hold things.  So I made it a heart to hold, and a baby (or maybe it's a monster's teddy bear).  The whole thing is about 4" high.  Instead of making separate arms and legs for the little one, I made a triple crochet for each limb, which then sticks out like an elbow from between all the single crochets.

Next up: a hat that's a little oddly sized when made according to the pattern.  It needs more stitches than are usual in worsted weight for a hat in order to get even repeats of the key pattern - if I left out one repeat of the pattern it would have been too small.  It fits without having to stretch, so it's only slightly too big, not outrageously too big.  And I think the designer realized that it would be too tall if decreases were made as usual with a plain K row between decrease rows, so at a certain point the decrease rows just come one after the other, which flattens out the top instead of making a gentle curve.  But somebody will probably love it.

Biohazard sock 2 is still in progress, and I have the body and 2 legs of a sloth done and a pile of patterns waiting.  I got small ceramic pots at Goodwill for planting crocheted cacti - my frugal side approves.

I made this hat out of a very thick chenille yarn with no stretch whatsoever, and it has a tendency to completely flatten out, and not be very hat-like.  I don't really want to put that in the fundraiser and find the recipient disappointed in how it performs, so I started another in something that is probably Wool-Ease Thick and Quick (no label with it).  What a huge difference.  The stretch makes the yarn so much easier to work with, it maintains hat shape, and I didn't have to use bad words.  Novelty yarns may be interesting, but not very useful.

No, you can't return it

Knit Picks has some labels for those of us who give our yarn creations to others as gifts.  Check them out:

I have Restless Hands Syndrome - I can't be without a project, and old ones are boring.  I still have a biohazard sock to finish, but I felt compelled to start new things.  Like these bunnies:

The white bunny (inspected by Selena) needs an angora tail that I haven't made yet, but the bunny lovey (ignored by Not) is done.  Eventually a brown bunny with floppy ears will join the white one, but I'm thinking of presenting them separately as items to bid on, to increase the proceeds, rather than having them as a pair.  Evil of me, I know, but it's for a good cause.

I also made a baby hat with bear ears out of some random thick chenille yarn, which is miserable non-stretchy stuff, started another hat, and started a smaller version of a monster I already made.  There's only so long I can work on one thing before needing a break, apparently.  I woke up at 5 am yesterday, feeling like I wasn't going to get my remaining hour and a half of sleep, and had a mental argument with myself over whether this was found time for knitting or whether I should try harder to get back to sleep.  Sleep won.  But I don't have a problem.

Familiar sheep

That bag of wool in the last post?  And those abominations of hats I tried to crochet from said wool roving?  All that wool is on its way to a very nice lady who spins, who kindly did some test spins for me to see whether I liked 2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-ply yarn.  If you're not familiar with that, all of the wool was spun into one thread of fairly even size.  Plying is when you twist 2 or more of those together.  If you take apart almost any yarn, you'll see several strings twisted together.

In this case, the 2-ply was about the thickness of #4 or worsted yarn, with the others being bigger as more plies were added.  

I rolled the 2-ply into a ball and sat down to crochet a simple hat  using double crochet to get an idea of how it felt.  A little stiffer than commercial wool or acrylic, little bits of straw here and there entwined in the yarn, but not bad.  The next morning during the summer intern presentations at work (it's okay, they know me and my peculiarities there) I rolled the rest of it into balls and worked up another hat using the 3-ply.  More of a job, and stiffer - I could pull the first hat over my head (it was a little small for an adult) but although the second hat was about the same size (using fewer rows of stitches) it wouldn't stretch that much.  Considering the effort it took, working with the 4- or 5-ply would be just too tiring, and the 3-ply is stiff, so 2-ply it is.  Also considered that for a given weight of wool, the more you ply it, the shorter the final yarn will be.

So I stuffed the roving into two vacuum storage bags and sucked out all the air.  On the package, you see blankets and pillows in nice neat flat bags, but these bags had the shape and beauty of a crumpled tissue.  No matter - off to the post office, where the woman at the counter found me a much smaller box than I would have thought possible to fit it into, but with pushing and grunting we got them packed, sealed, and mailed.  So somewhere around 4 pounds, probably, with the disassembled hats, at $15 a pound to spin.  When you consider that 3 or 4 ounces is a typical skein and the cost of those is at least $3 on sale, more for wool, that's not bad.  

I plan to make hats for the farmer to sell at farmer's markets where she sells her other products.  After discussion with the spinner, it didn't seem like we could do much in the way of dyeing, so the hat base will be this gray, but then I can accent with purchased colored wool.  Add ears and a mane, it's a horse hat.  Add a red comb, a yellow beak, and eyes, it's a chicken hat.  Add tassels and braids, including other colors, it's a nice earflap hat.  Once I figure out loop stitch, sheep.

While I wait for the yarn, I continue working on projects for my fundraiser for Mercer Street Friends.

You'll notice that I have apparently very little control over how these pictures are placed. Yarn I can handle, computers not so much.