project shift

I caved yesterday and bought roving. Hand dyed roving at that. This entry is about various developments in my slate of projects.

Given that I had, basically none of my own fiber in the house¹, and that I get a hefty discount on stuff at the yarn shop I’ve been working at, and the fact that this fiber has been sitting on the shelf staring me down for weeks, and so I got it. The color name is Blueberries and Cream, it’s Merino, I got 8 ounces. Wait, I’ve found a picture that I’m stealing from the companies website

I think the blues are a little bit brighter in real life, but that’s pretty clearly a flash effect.

Anyway this morning I spun the first third of the roving. My plan is to have a DK/Sprt weight 3 ply. The first strand I’m broke the colors up pretty well and spun them in the order that they came on the roving. The next strand I’m going to intentionally mix up the colors, and the third strand I’m going to figure something else to do, I might break up the fiber and then spin a regular sequence, but we’ll see.

My hope is that I’ll be finishing up the plying right as my shetland roving arrives. I hope the spin that the same way as this (3ply DK/Sport weight,) even though it’s all one color.

Also, I’ve finally reached the point in the Latvian mitten Sweater where I have to unzip the provisional cast-on and knit the hem facing. Ugg. This is a two-or-so inch long piece of fabric that is… 110 inches wide. It has to go up and down the cardigan opening, around the neck opening, and all the way around the bottom edge of the sweater. This is the third sweater where I’ve had to do this massively annoying procedure to this year. And while I’ve been leaning towards not doing cardigans for a while, I’m swearing them off for the next several garments.

But because the knitting is so tedious, and so large (because of course the whole damn thing has to fit in your bookbag/lap, it’s not really feasible to work on this “here and there” like you might with most knitting. Anyway, because of this, I’ve cast on for the ribbing of my next sweater.

I reason that this is acceptable because:

• I hate knitting corrugated ribbing.
• I haven’t chosen the charts/pattern for the body of the sweater, just the stitch count.
• If I cast on now, I won’t be tempted to turn the border into some sort of provisional cast-on that will require unzipping/hemming later. Judge for yourself.