Horizontal Chain and Miniature Mosaic Afghan Squares

I've finished two more afghan squares for the Covered in Sheep project.  Both are from the mosaic section of the Barbara Walker  Learn to Knit Afghan book. My favorite of the two is #9, the Horizontal Chain pattern, which uses slipped stitches to create an unbroken chain of colored squares:

Close-Up of Horizontal Chain Square

I knit this out of Wensleydale I had spun up into a nice two-ply yarn from the fleece samples that came in the March breedbox. The brown Wensleydale was particularly nice, but I had to cheat a bit with the white as I did not have quite enough fiber, so I spun up some Bond and plyed it together with the Wensleydale to get 30 yards. 

If you watch my latest podcast, I show the drapey nature of the Wensleydale fabric. The 8" square used about 60 yards of yarn in total and weighs in at 1.2 ounces. It was really a fun knit and I've been contemplating developing a cowl pattern of some sort based upon it.

The next square. #11 is the Miniature Mosaic pattern which also uses slipped stitches, but is garter stitch vs. the stockinette of the Horizontal Chain. In addition, I knitted this square out of the same brown Wensleydale, but also a very coarse Lincoln that was more suitable for carpet and made my hands itch while knitting it.

From Top: Wensleydale, Wensleydale-Bond and Lincoln 

The combination of a denser yarn and a denser stitch pattern produced a hefty square that weighed 1/3 more, at 1.8 ounces, for the same 8" size. 

From Top: Miniature Mosaic and Horizontal Chain

My next square is going to be knit out of a lovely Romney fleece I have in my stash, so stay tuned!

Episode 19 - Sit'n'Spin

Episode 19 - Sit'n'Spin (Show Notes)

In this episode, I've got a couple of finished objects to show you - a cowl from chain-plyed handspun and a felted bag of enormous proportions. I investigate different methods for adding beads to a shawl and talk about which is my favorite. More fleece and fiber join the stash, including locks I am planning to use in tailspinning. Two more blocks are done for the Barbara Walker afghan project - knit from Wensleydale and Lincoln - and I show you a ton of finished handspun from BFL, Romney, Cotswold, Tunis and more.

What's New

Spinning Rare Breeds workshop recap
Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber festival
Great Lakes Fiber Show

Finished Objects

Honey Cowl by Madelinetosh in handspun from a Loop batt
The Cinch by Noni Designs

WIPs

Sweet Dreams by Boo Knits in Verdant Gryphon Mithril

Stash Flash
Washed fleece in lock formation from Fiddlehead Fibers
Dyed mohair locks from Namaste Farms

Covered in Sheep Project
Blocks #9 & 11 from Barbara Walker's Learn to Knit Afghan Book

Workshop Recap: Spinning Rare Breeds Wool

Part of my spring break vacation was spent at a two-day workshop at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The topic was spinning rare breeds wool and it was taught by Deb Robson, the author of the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. I had tried to get into this class last year, but because there were more people that wanted the class than available slots, the organizers held a lottery - and I didn't get in - but was lucky enough to secure a spot this year.

So I packed up my wheel, wool combs and other tools and headed off to Maryland. This is what the fairgrounds look like before any of the vendors show up for set-up - so empty!

MDSW Fairgrounds Before the Festival

We covered 13 sheep breeds in the two days, including: Black Welsh Mountain, Cotswold, CVM/Romeldale, Gulf Coast Native, Jacob, Karakul, Lincoln, Navajo Churro, Santa Cruz, Shetland, Southdown, Tunis and Wensleydale. For each sheep breed, we received a one-ounce package of washed fleece prepared by The Spinning Loft, and in a few cases, an extra sample of fleece or roving from other sources.

Packets of Fleece

The fleece samples ran the gamut from fine to coarse, clean to full of vm and short to long staple length. Some of the breeds like Santa Cruz are so rare (less than 100 sheep) that getting high quality fleece is a challenge. Combing through some of the dirtier examples made me A) appreciate why coated fleeces cost more and B) reaffirmed my love for combing, with piles of vm falling onto the floor.

Deb presented the information on each breed, telling us not only factual details, but providing a lot of anecdotes that helped give more color to the sheep described (no pun intended - lol) and she spun each breed along with us, sharing information. She even taught us how to spin directly from the comb, which I had never tried before.

Deb Robson Spinning from the Comb

Her teaching style was wonderful, very informal and relaxed. Even though I own the Interweave DVD set on Spinning Rare Breeds, I picked up a ton of new information in this workshop.

A huge bonus was the interaction with fellow classmates. Everyone was so willing to share their knowledge, and some classmates brought in examples of other rare breeds, ranging from fleece to yarn to knitted items, including a fabulous shawl made out of Border Leicester that was so unbelievably soft. I also got to meet FiberQueen, one of my fellow Ravelry group members who had participated in a recent swap from A Spinner's Study forum.

Rare Breeds Workshop Classmates

I've already plied up some of my spun samples, most of which are destined to be part of my Covered in Sheep Afghan project.

Cotswold, Tunis, Black Welsh Mountain, Navajo Churro and Southdown

I'm so glad the festival committee decided to offer Deb's rare breeds class again this year. Next year I will try to arrange my schedule so that I can stay for the actual festival, but this year I had to choose between the workshop or the festival due to work constraints, and even though I have a pang of regret at missing the shopping, I made the right choice.

Updated - April Breedbox - Karakul, Navajo Churro, Shetland and Racka

I got my box a little later than usual this month and I've been travelling all week, so this is the first chance I've had to sit down and look at the fleece samples. I'll start washing them tomorrow, but thought I'd post some pics and my guesses based upon the raw fleece samples.

Like last month, I will update this post with the correct/incorrect answers once I know the official score on these.

☑CORRECT BAG A --- My guess is Karakul. These samples are very coarse feeling and are quite long, about 7-9 inches. The beige feels like it has a high micron count and the black sample feels the most coarse. The reddish sample in the little bag in the top right is shorter stapled and finer.

BAG A

☒INCORRECT BAG B --- My guess is Racka, which is a Hungarian sheep and not a typical fleece one sees outside of that country.  Aren't they cool looking sheep?

Racka Sheep

It feels a bit like Shetland to me, double coated and more fine on the inner coat than the outer, but with less lanolin than I usually feel in Shetland.

This sample was Shetland! It was from a ram ...

BAG B

☑CORRECT BAG C --- I think these samples are Navajo Churro. They are similar in looks to the fleece in Bag A, but have a much softer handle.

BAG C 

BAG C - Extra sample

I had to get out my Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook to compare pics:

☒INCORRECT BAG D --- These seem the closest to Shetland, with the one on the bottom right being a single coat and the darker one on the left being a primitive, double coat. Shorter staple length than the other samples. The dark fleece has a rough handle which has me worried about being wrong - I've never felt a Shetland this coarse.

HaHa - these samples were Racka! I should have trusted my instincts - I knew that dark fleece did not feel like Shetland.

The one on the top may be an intermediate coat. It's very dirty and feels slightly felted. This would not be a fleece I would buy - we'll see how it washes up. Lots of lanolin in these, which has been my experience with Shetland fleeces.

BAG D

☑CORRECT BAG E --- I think this is another sample of Racka, it looks and feels very similar.

SAMPLE E

Afghan Square #48 - Vine Leaf Pattern

I finished the first square for my Covered in Sheep project last week (link to Ravelry project page). And instead of going in numerical order, I started with #48 in the Learn to Knit Afghan book, which is the vine leaf pattern because it looked like an interesting knit.

I used the Teeswater samples from the February box from Namaste Farms - it was a total of five samples - three adults and two lambs. All of the samples were very nice and washed up easily.

Unwashed Teeswater Sample

Washed Teeswater Lamb Locks

I thought that I might have enough for a square with just the adult samples, which were 2oz of combed top combined. I spun it up at a 7.5:1 ratio and then Navajo plied it. I only got ~50 yards at 10 WPI which I had a suspicion would not be enough for the 8x8 square.

So I spun up the lamb samples together for a total of 35 n-plyed yards out of the 1 oz of fiber, which came out a bit thinner (13 WPI) than the adults and much softer too.

I started knitting the square on US6 needles while watching television one evening and got to the end of the ball of yarn with the adult samples about 2/3 of the way through the square. The next day when I went to pick it up, I noticed that the yarn had a grey hue until about the 1/2 way mark. Why hadn't I noticed this beforehand - grrr! I decided to keep knitting since I didn't have any more Teeswater to work with.

Here is the finished, unblocked square - notice the color variation as well as the gauge variation when I switched to the lamb fleece yarn and another little grey area about 1/3 from the top.

Unblocked Vine Leaf Panel w/ Unexpected Striping

As you can see in the picture of the lamb locks above, the fleece samples were not exactly the same shade of white, but there is no grey. The only thing I can think of is that  must have inadvertently gotten some dark fiber into those samples, either from the table or leftover fiber on the wool combs. A picture I took of some combed Teeswater seems to confirm this - if you click on the picture below to enlarge it you can see a few dark fibers in there.

Click on Picture to Enlarge and View Dark Fibers

I likely will come back and re-do this square at some point, but for now I'm calling it done and moving on.