What to Do With Lace Weight Yarn

For those of you who know me well, you know that after 20 years of knitting I still don’t have time to knit lace or socks. This should read that I usually need mindless knitting.  So I decided to ply my lace and sock weights yarns into yarn for charity hats. 

An elegant solution to having too much lace weight yarn.  I took 2 skeins of lace weight yarn and did the 1st spin in an S ply. It was still to thin to knit hats with. So I wound the yarn into a cake and Z plied from both the inside and outside together. Tomorrow I will skein it and give it a hot bath to set the twist then track and hang dry. Below is a nicely balanced 4 ply yarn. The sock yarn will only need to be plied once. 

Normally I do my plying on my Louet S15, but in this case I used my Louet Victoria for the second round of plying because it was easier on my right leg.  The S15 is a single treadle Wheel, while the Victoria is a double treadle Wheel.

Project 100

Another charity hat.  Project 100.  Off to do more knitting.

Projects 75 to 99

The next 15 projects include 12 hats and 3 scarfs.  They all went to The Flowing Wells School District Clothing Bank.  There are also 18 pairs of socks that I got from trade in credit at Bookman’s.

Timing

I think my timing is a little off lately. Take today for instance. I spent 3 hours this morning typing up a new pattern and getting it posted to 2 on-line shopping sites. I really thought my timing was excellent with Saturday being National Support your Local Yarn Store Day. My feeling was this would be a great time to post a pattern so people could go and buy the yarn and purchase the pattern.

Not so much. It turns out that the large yarn companies are sponsoring trunk shows across the country and giving away Free Patterns with a yarn purchase. If this is not a head desk moment than I really don't know what qualifies.

I have tried the free route before. It does not work for me, wait for it...I am not a large yarn company that can recoup the free pattern cost by selling the yarn. Even worse when a pattern is given as a small promo, everyone ignores the copyright and makes zillions of copies to give to their friends who were not part of the promo. Thus leaving a whole city of knitters who don't need to buy the pattern. With comments such as if you enjoy what you are doing why should we pay you? Or better yet, it's not like you are doing real work and you owe it to the knitters of the community. I am pretty sure that these are the people who copy patterns and don't pay the designers for their work.

Please remember that small independent pattern designers, who self publish must buy their own yarn to knit the design that pops up in our heads. So for a small item like a washcloth, 2 patterns must be sold to just cover the cost of the yarn. The costs only go up from there. Today's pattern will require 6 patterns being sold just to cover the cost of the yarn. Then there is design time, knitting the sample to see if what is in my head works out. Then and additional 3 to 4 hours to photograph, type the pattern and get it published.

So if you are looking for a moms day, fathers day ( yes, men do knit ) birthday or holiday gift for a knitter please consider this pattern,  2 of 3 A Shawl Study and a skein of yarn to go with it. Thank you and happy knitting.

Old Hands

I think my hands are getting old. After only 4 hours of knitting they are very tired and don’t want to do anything else for the day.  I am not sure how to build my hand stamina up to be able to knit for 8 or more hours per day again. Does anyone have any suggestions?  

Spoiler Alert

This is a spoiler alert for Game of Thrones.  The season 8 episode 1 is so good that it makes knitting and spinning impossible.  What? You were expecting me to give plot information. No way.  Watch it for yourselves.