Spinning Rope.

Nola's Slippers, [ jenleigh ]'s version.

Nola's Slippers by Nola Miller, published in the Seamen's Church Institute, Christmas at Sea.

Project Specs:

Knit using personal hand-dyed and spun Corriedale, Turquoise and Gold.

Knit on size US 4 circulars.  

*I modified the pattern to be knit in the round.  Nothing really to change, but when I came to the center of the sole I grafted the remaining stitches together. 

In the fall of 2008 I was fortunate to attend a weekend retreat referred to as Yarn School.  It's three days spent with like-minded fiber enthusiasts who drive or fly from all corners of the country and descend upon a tiny (and I mean tiny) town called Harveyville, Kansas.  Yarn School is one small part of a greater good Nikol and her partner Ron have lovingly named The Harveyville Project.  I highly recommend visiting Nikol's profile page on Ravelry which provides both great information on the work they're doing, and links to see how they've managed to establish an artists' colony in a schoolhouse in rural Kansas.  (There are even photos of sheep.)

I posted about Yarn School back in October of 2008, but here I am again.  I still have hand-dyed and natural fibers from Yarn School to spin!  I'm so pleased with how Lu's slippers turned out that I'm looking forward to spinning more of my fibers from Dye Lab.

I love that grubby heel!

Nola's Slippers is such a great little pattern.  Simple and quick.  Perfect for a last-minute gift that's still handmade.  I modified the length a bit and opted to make the cuff only an inch long.  She likes the length better and can slip them on and off easily.  (I know, I find them under the covers while making the bed!)

I also decided to knit the pattern in the round instead of back and forth on straight needles.  I didn't have to change much,  I just grafted the last of the sole stitches when I came to the end of the pattern.

Top Left: Spun Corriedale.  Bottom Left:  Two-ply.  Main: Soaked and ready to knit.

As for my yarn itself, well, I'm still learning!  And sadly don't have as much time as I'd like to devote to the practice of spinning.  This skein, albeit beautiful (I can say that right?), had the consistency of rope!  I plied it at the wrong tension, and then soaked it to death to remove the evidence.  Thankfully rope works perfectly for an eight year old's slippers!  

I wanted to include some photos of an earlier handspun project as well.  As much as I'd love to, I can't take the credit for this dye job.  It's all Adrian Bizila [ Hello Yarn ] and her mad dyeing skills.  I was just fortunate to get some of the fiber.

Main:  Handspun Cowl, [ jenleigh ]'s version.  Upper Right:  One of two singles.  Bottom Right:  Hayride colorway.

I used Elizabeth Zimmermann's gull pattern found in her Baby Sweater on Two Needles.  I believe (double check me) the pattern is a seven stitch repeat.  My handspun (after plying) ended up being a heavy worsted weight, so I multiplied my number of stitches per inch (gauge) on size US 8s by the number of inches diameter I wanted my cowl to be.  I then found the closest number divisible by my pattern repeat and ran with it. 

Looks like this:

........................................

4 stitches per inch [ multiplied by ] 14 inch circumference [ equals ] 56 total stitches.

56 [ divided by ] 7 [ equals ] 8 total pattern repeats.  

Voilà!

Jennifer, Where You At?

...well I'm right here, sitting on a pillow.  And not just any pillow.  A big fluffy please-cushion-my-worn-out-tush sort of pillow.  I have been working for days (and nights) updating and moving files from my old site.  And in the words of Sheryl Crow, "I'm living on coffee and nicotine*..."

I had been severely neglecting things at NIK for the past couple of years.  I had made the occasional post, but with too many other irons in the fire I couldn't give it the attention it deserved.   I'm now looking forward to moving it to the top of my "queue!" 

As I've sorted through everything this week I've been making lists.  All sorts of lists!  Lists that need to merge with other lists, lists that need to be trashed.  I've got lists everywhere!  My dad is king of the LIST.  No matter how great or small the task, you'll get the same declaration from him... "Add it to the LIST!"  (Word is he's been known to even add things after the fact, just to mark them off.)

In making all my lists I discovered I have a pile of knits I have finished and photographed, but never wrote about.  I have them cataloged on my project page in Ravelry, but that's as far as I got.  Above is a collage of some of my favorite knits over the last couple of years, as well as a favorite hank of hand-spun that I dyed as well.  I'm still learning to spin, so needless to say it ended up more like rope than yarn.  But rope works great for slippers!  And Annabelle is still wearing her Slippers from Scratch!

So it's back to work I go.  Thank goodness for fluffy pillows and caffeine!  

Happy Knitting! 

*I can't even pretend to be a smoker.  I never learned to inhale properly and may be the only person alive who knew exactly what the President meant...