Spun-while-walking on a Caroline Hershey medieval-style spindle with the technique called "in-hand" or "grasped" or what I call "twiddled." It never leaves your hand--I can only describe it as support spinning with nothing to support it but physics. It's a relaxing way to spin, if you keep your fiber on a distaff (I use a hand ring distaff). Both shoulders are down and relaxed and there's no spindle swinging around to be grabbed by cats (or, on one memorable occasion, a peacock).
The pattern is a lace leaf pattern by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer. For copyright reasons I can't show the charted lace pattern here, but for me it's a real bugger. I've knit a lot of lace, but it's always been the kind that has one row with lacework followed by a plain row, which sort of helps lock things in. This one has patternwork--and a lot of it--on every row. So if you drop a stitch, mayhem occurs.
My first leaf took four hours.
My eyeballs crossed trying to look from chart to needles every stitch--too easy to go up or down a row. So I transcribed it (fortunately it's only 56 rows). That helped. A bit.
My usual knitting time is in the car when Bob and I are running errands. I thought this would be too complicated for that. My other knitting time is in the evenings, watching TV with Bob. This didn't exactly work--I really have to focus on the knitting. Sometimes I would knit and rip a row two or three times before I got the count to come out correctly. I developed a bad case of what Bob has named "Project-Induced Tourettes".
It helped to count the stitches after every row--so I could fix mistakes before I discovered them knitting the next row. It also helped to buy new needles. I had been using my Knitter's Pride needles (my favorite brand), of a dark multicolored laminated wood.
Pretty--but they were also pretty close to the colors in my yarn. I was having enough problems with this pattern without having problems seeing the stitches themselves. So I ordered another set of needles of laminated birch. Funny how being able to see what you're doing helps.
I say needle sets because I'm knitting these with three sizes of needle (small size 2, bigger size 2, and size 3) so the leaves will be slightly different sizes.
And one day, errand running, I decided What the Heck and tried knitting them in the car. Turns out that not having a TV on to distract me, and working in natural light, actually worked quite well. So now this project has officially become a multi-task project, being spun while walking and knit while riding.
I finished spinning the first braid. That one I had opened up with my combs--which worked, but left me with a lot of leftover smaller pieces. For the second braid I used my drum carder to open up the fibers and keep the various lengths (which ranged from 2" to 8") mixed together. I also decided that it needed a contrast color--not the weird blue of my inspiration picture, but green, for the leaves that haven't turned yet. Fortunately I had a couple of ounces of BFL roving so into the dyepot it went (Kelly green with about 10% added black). The second round is ready to go.
It's also going on the back burner. I'm in no rush to finish this, as I won't be able to wear it until November or so. So it will get knit in the odd moments (probably mostly in the car) and just sort of simmer along until done.
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