Color Wrap Challenges and Happier Things

 Sometimes I find myself struggling to make a project work.  The color wrap to the left is like that.  What I think I want, what I see, and what I understand just haven't pulled together right yet.

With projects like this, I have found that stepping away and letting the project rest is good.  So, while I'm resting I'll share some things that have brought a smile to my face recently.

Kumihimo braids.  These two braids were made by my youngest daughter.  Her instructor was her oldest sister.  The yarns are all thrums.  We spent a fun hour one snow day going through my thrums finding yarns for both girls to use.  Oh, and the "extra" loops on these bracelets are for my daughter's thumbs.  Don't ask me why, but that's how she likes to wear them--on her wrist and on her thumb!

While the girls have been braiding, I have been spinning cotton.  This is one of Robin Edmundson's dyed rovings spun and plied into a 2-ply yarn.  I may even have a project for this instead of just a spot in my handspun cotton box!  I love Robin's colors and fiber preparations.  This was wonderful to spin, and I love the bright, cheery greens especially since we are in the middle of cold and snow!

This next photo is a project in the development phase.  I blended some of the bright pink silk with two colors of alpaca and spindle spun it to see if I would like the yarn....I think they are lovely yarns and I would like to weave a shawl with these.  Maybe it would be mostly brown with three narrow white bands at one edge woven in an all-over crepe twill.  Maybe it will become something else!  I need to make final decisions as to how much silk to blend with the alpaca.  I'm leaning towards 20% by weight silk to alpaca.

Dragon Skin (aka textured yarn and knitting)

It all started with a stop at my local yarn store.  Really, that's all it was--a stop to see what was new and what was pretty!  I came home with something only a bit unusual.  It was a length of wool roving dyed in beautiful fall colors.  There was no makers mark on the label, just the type of wool and the weight.   I thought I would look at it for a while and then put it it my stash.

But I didn't. My oldest came down with a bug that kept her home from school for two or three days.  What did I do while taking care of my sick one?  I began to spin.

This lovely merino roving was irregularly dyed.  There was no true repeat of colors.  The colors did not extend across the width of the roving.  It was very random!  I finally decided that the best way to show off these beautiful colors would be to spin the roving into a thick and thin yarn.  (This decision was heavily influenced by Sarah Anderson's book The Spinner's Book of Yarn Design, where she starts her students off by spinning thick and thin as an exercise for learning control over drafting....It's a cool trick!)  I split the roving lengthwise into strips and spun my colorful singles.  It was so much fun!  It was just spinning for the love of it! 

To keep the colors separate, I plied the thick and thin single with a thin single of black Polwarth yarn.  My friend Wendy Feller gave me this fleece and I am slowly combing through the wool.  It spins beautifully!

Here's the yarn in it's thick and thin glory!  The thick parts aren't 100% evenly spaced, but they are regular and I was pleased!

Deciding what to do with a thick and thin yarn came next.  I ended up using a Ravelry pattern "Baktus" as my starting point.  To make the piece more textured, I used stockinette stitch for the bulk of the work, but for the thick sections I purled making a pronounced bump in the fabric.  :)

Here's the scarf and a skein of yarn:

The headband is knit as a moebius strip.  I followed Cat Bordhi's cast on technique (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVnTda7F2V4 ) on a circular needle (us#5).  The piece grows from the center width-wise towards the edges.  It was a fun knit.  I had to shift from mostly knitting to mostly purling at the half-way point around the loop in order to keep the fabric all (mostly) stockinette.  The transition is just visible in the band.  My finger marks the transition point--to the right are purl stitches (the back of the stockinette fabric) to the left are knit stitches.

 By twisting the headband at the transition, the band appears to be all stockinette stitch.

Lastly, I made a pair of fingerless mitts to complete the set.  I didn't follow any one pattern to knit these.  They start with  k1 p1 ribbing at the wrists, then shift to stockinette stitch with an increase for the thumb.  After I knit enough to get to the base of the thumb, I bound off the stitches I had added in to make the hole for the thumb.  Then it was more stockinette stitch and a little bit more of k1p1 ribbing around the fingers and Ta-Da! they were done!

This seems like a lot to get from one bit of roving!  The dyed merino roving was 6 oz.  I didn't weigh how much Polwarth I used, but I'm guessing it was 3-4 oz, maybe even 5oz. For 9-12 oz of yarn, it seems more reasonable to have been able to make so much.  The best part is how much I enjoyed the making of each part!

PS.  My oldest daughter really likes dragons.  She has a few figurines, she draws them in her spare time...When I gave her the scarf and made the headband she was trying to come up with a name for them.  After a few false starts (including "sparkles"--blech!), she said "Dragon skin" and the name has stuck.  The pieces are bumpy, yet smooth and mottled, but coordinated.  And, because they are 100% wool and wool is self-extinguishing, they are partially fire proof-- definitely Dragon Skin!  :)

Color Work--Photo as Inspiration

The new hat in use with the brim turned up.

 This past spring I taught a color blending class at "The Fiber Event" in Greencastle, IN.  The first part of the class was mixing a 12-color color wheel from three primary colored wools (red, blue, & yellow).  The second part was blending colors taken from a printed/photo source.


My inspiration was a postcard from Kenai Fjords, Alaska.    After identifying the various colors in the photo (I ignored the text colors), I discovered that there were too many colors and narrowed my focus on the seals and the rock where they are sunbathing.

At this point, my notes become extremely sketchy!  The basic process is that I used the colors I saw in the photo to choose my rovings, blended the rovings into rolags and spun them into the yarns I used.  My choice of knitting patterns (this is based on the "Golden Pear" baby hat from ravelry) adds some extra blending as two colors are used to knit a transition area between the single color segments.

Going mostly by memory and what I see in the yarn, the rocks at the bottom of the photo are represented by the dark brown at the band of the hat. They are a combination of a natural brown wool, Romney wool dyed black, and maybe some grey wool. The mossy rocks above the seals were interpreted by blending the same natural brown wool used for the previous rocks, but blended with some green dyed wools (and maybe other colors...I really don't remember the details as well as I would like!).  The seals in the sun are represented by the copper and cream band of the hat.  I blended copper colored mohair top with cream colored fibers, probably undyed Romney.  I intentionally limited the amount of blending so that the resulting yarn has lots of color variation, mimicking the dappled effects of the light on the seals

 

For me, letting go of the literal imagery of the photo was a challenge.  I wanted to create seals and rocks!  It was hard to let go of that and I know that no one else will see the seals on the rock in this hat, but when I look at it, I remember the source for the color combination and I can see the seals. 

Bicycle Spinning Wheel

Someday, I would like to have a great or walking wheel.  In the mean time, my husband and I put together this bicycle wheel.  I hope to use it for the 4th Grade Pioneer Day demonstration in May.  

The wheel has a frame built from 2x4 lumber.  All pieces were screwed together using long (~3") deck screws.

The bicycle tire rim is attached to a short section of angle iron which had pre-drilled holes.  Our first version had short (1") screws holding the angle iron to the upright, but it was not stable.  The longer deck screws do a much better job of holding it securely. The axle from the bicycle tire rim is bolted through one of the holes on the vertical side of the angle iron.

The upright is an "L" shaped piece with a slot in it.  It is able to move back and forth and twist a little to tension the drive band.  It is held in place by the wing nut and washers on a bolt that comes up through the 2x4 of the frame.

The spindle is a knitting needle.  I originally used a us#10.5 needle, but recently swapped it for a us#9, because the 9 fit into a straw, which I am using as a bushing to make it easier for it to spin.  The drive band is waxed linen from my leather toolkit.  It does a good job of grabbing onto the slick needle and making it turn.

Many thanks to the following blog posters for their contributions:

 Rosemary Knits --proof of concept that this type of wheel could work!
 Ed Jenkins --beautiful walking wheels, and the idea for the L-shaped upright.
Alden Amos --I discovered Alden's t-frames after constructing the first version of this wheel.  This is cheaper, but I imagine that his require less fiddling! (And they look so pretty!)

Feedback on my Handspinning Skills

Some time ago I purchased the handbook for the "Certificate of Excellence in Handspinning" from the Handweavers' Guild of America.  The first time I read through it, I set it aside on a shelf.  It was way too much work for me at the time.  A few years later, my youngest child went to school, and I pulled the handbook off the shelf again.  This time, I was familiar with spinning almost all of the fiber types required, and was much more comfortable with my spinning abilities.  So, I decided to go through the work.

The work consists of 40  one ounce skeins of yarn, spun from specified fiber types and spun to specified parameters, as well as written work.  There was a group of wool fibers--starting from the dirty fleece, doing the prep work, and then spinning the yarn; a group of cotton, silk, flax...Forty skeins!  I was amazed at how quickly the thick skeins spun and how long (forever for some!) it took to spin some of the extra fine fibers.

Eventually, I got to the point where I had to decide once and for all if I was going to submit my work for evaluation.  I did a lot of hemming and hawing.  Some of the arguments included "but it's expensive!" and "what if they tell me I'm terrible!", but finally it came down to the value of having someone else critique my work so that I would know how to improve.  And so, I finished the written work and sent off my skeins.

And I thought that I didn't care whether or not I passed the evaluation and received the certificate.  But I was wrong.  I didn't pass--I was in the 82nd percentile and needed to be in the 85th to pass--and I was depressed about that.  I think the hardest aspect was that three of my skeins failed to meet criteria and received zero points.  Those failures are still very frustrating!  My hope had been to have no zeroes, but to earn at least some points in every category and that didn't happen.

The positive side of those failed skeins is that dealing with failure, pushed me to read the comments of the reviewers over and over again.  I don't think I would have looked so closely at the comments if I had succeeded in earning the certificate.  I was very pleased with the feedback and evaluations I received on my spinning.  Most of the skeins were scored out of 54 points.  If I earned anything less that 52 points the examiners made sure to provide comments so that I could know where the problems were and what could make the yarn better.  That was worth every penny of the cost of the evaluation.

Would I do this again?  Maybe.  Maybe in a few years I'll decide to see if my skills have improved and repeat the process.  I think I would start fresh, rather than resubmit these skeins. I think it would be nice if I could do well enough to earn the certificate at that time.  Until then, I'll keep spinning.  There's merino wool on one wheel; a bit of a horned dorset fleece to wash up and spin; some Cormo for the Russian spindles...I may be busy for a while just spinning the things I want to spin!

Carding, Crocheting, Lasting Shoes, and Sun bonnet Sewing

 A few of the things I have been doing lately:

Drum carding.  I call this particular blend the "how the leopard got his spots" blend.  It is two different types of wool.  The pale, grey longer wool and the dark brown, short & curly wool.  The goal with this blend was to get spots of color in the final yarn.  I made a sandwich with the grey wool as top and bottom layers and placed the bits of dark brown wool directly onto the large drum of the carder.  The top layer of grey was added via the licker-in drum and a streaky batt  was the result.  The yarn spun up nicely.  I am always amazed at how quickly I can spin two ounces of worsted weight yarn compared to the time it takes to spin two ounces of lace weight yarn!

Spots of brown on the bottom layer of grey wool

Top layer of grey shows some brown streaks,

Two ply yarn from the grey & dark brown wool sandwich.

Crochet Motifs.  I picked up a book by Edie Eckman  called Beyond the Square Crochet Motifs.  I've been using my stash of handspun sample yarns and trying out different motifs.  This is #99.  My first sample of this motif was crocheted in a multicolored yarn.  It's on the bottom in the photo.  It's cute, but it didn't make my socks go up and down (That phrase comes from one of my husband's programming professors at Purdue.  Apparently he would say, "If that doesn't make your socks go up and down..." referring to a particularly wonderful bit of coding.)  At any rate, I pulled some other yarns from my stash and before I knew it, I had four cute little flower motifs with grey centers.  Then I got to thinking that a dark accent at the center would look even better, so I made a few more!  Here they are put together into a headband with a dark, knit underlayer.

 Shoe lasts.  Some of you may remember that I have dabbled in making shoes.  I discovered that making shoes takes work and practice...and there are lots of things I have yet to learn in order to make good shoes! One of the helpful things for making good shoes is a pair of lasts or shoe forms.  I don't have any.  However, today I took a step towards making my own.  I placed a light weight plastic bag from my groceries into an old tennis shoe (it was laced at the time) and poured plaster of pairs into the bag.  After an hour or so, the plaster had set enough to remove it from the shoe.  Voila!  An attempt at a home-made shoe last.  Now to make some more shoes and test it!

Sun bonnets.  I was able to volunteer on the grounds at Conner Prairie recently and got to dress in costume.  From my corded petticoat to my bonnet I was costumed like I was from the 1830's.  It was fun!  I came home and discovered that my oldest daughter had been working on a sun bonnet with the girls at church that were preparing for a pioneer trek journey.  Only the sun bonnet was tiny.  It's little brim would have left my girl's face burnt to a crisp.  So, I went looking for a better pattern.  And found this one at a Mormon Pioneer Trek site (http://www.mormontrek.net/Pack/PDF/Slats.pdf).  The pattern is simple--it's just a rectangle with  one end trimmed to a curve.  The curved edge covers the back of the neck.  The rectangular edge gets stiffened with slats.  Add a set of ties to  the back to keep the neck cover from flapping and a set of ties on the inside to keep the bonnet on the head and it's done!  I must admit that I cheated and used modern materials for my slats.  The pattern calls for cardboard or wood slats.  I had neither.  Instead I used some needlepoint plastic that has been hanging around the house for years!  Hooray!  I didn't have to buy anything new, I used something that I had on hand, and I won't have to worry about ruining my bonnet in the rain!

My sunbonnet.  Now I know the pattern works, I'll help my daughter make her own.

Tail Spun Yarn

 So I have finally tried my hand at tail spinning yarn!  I've read about these yarns in various places--Jacey Boggs has some in her book "Spin Art", and my new book by Lexi Boeger (it's an older publication--just new to my shelf!)"Intertwined" has some--but the reference that really got me started was Sarah Anderson's new book, "The Spinner's book of Yarn Designs".  I love Sarah's book!  It's a wonderful reference!

The white yarn is a core-spun cloud of mohair.  It has a commercial yarn core (a mohair/acrylic blend), loose mohair fibers (pulled out from an old sliver and carded), and a fine strand plying it all together (I think this one has a handspun cotton for the plying strand--it was in my stash and was the right color to blend in well!).  It was fun to spin!  I used my Louet S75, a bobbin driven wheel, so that I could start and stop easily.

Tail spinning is different from cloud spinning.  Instead of a cloud of fibers, it uses orderly locks of fiber.   The butt or cut end of the locks are flicked open and then spun onto the core, stopping an inch or two before the curly end of the lock.  So in my lovely green turban below I have about two inches of wrapped core for every lock end.  It's slow spinning, but so fun in the end that it's fun to do!  The green locks are hand dyed Lincoln that I purchased from Lisa Crawford of "A Rare Breed" at the annual SWIFT meeting last weekend.

What shall I make from these amazing, green locks?  I think I have a whopping 6 yds of yarn.  Gulp.  Not a lot to play with there!  I used one ounce of locks.

Updates...Construction Progress and Russian Spindle Spinning

 Just a few updates in this post.  We are making progress in our remodeling project.  Most of the drywall is up and we are starting to mud.  The electrical outlets are live and we have lights in the new rooms!  In some ways we have begun the slow slog to the end, and as my husband notes, we just "put up one more sheet of drywall, do one more layer of mud..." and eventually we'll discover that we will have finished the project!

In the mean time, the kids have discovered the stack of cardboard boxes and have been having a blast making forts and castles!

My first skein of yarn from the Russian spindle is finished--not only am I finished spinning the fiber (alpaca in this case), but I've washed and dried the skein of yarn.  It is beautiful--soft and drapey--and I can't wait to spin some more!

Special Russian Spindles

I volunteer at the local art gallery.  One of the wood turners there was watching me spin and we got to talking.  I mentioned that I was interested in Russian spindles and he offered to turn some for me.

He turned the prototype at the end of the spring. (It's at the left in the upper photo.) I tweaked the sketch some and took it back to him.  He has since had a stroke, but he still turned out four new spindles for me to try.  I've sanded them to get a point at both ends.  My husband showed me how to use a brillo pad as the final round of "sandpaper" to make an almost polished piece.  Each spindle has been wiped with mineral oil.  They spin beautifully!  My favorites are on the outer two edges of the photo--the long, yellow-ish one on the left and the rosy-er wood on the right. Both of these are denser woods and spin longer than the others.





Here's an overview of the sanding I did to finish these:

COE Handspinning--Silk Noil

I am forging onward with my efforts to complete the COE in Handspinning.  This week's fiber is silk noil.  My goal is to spin a one ounce skein of singles that is "extra fine" or greater than 50 wraps per inch.  I've tested the fiber already.  Now it's time to prepare the fibers, spin the fibers, spin the fibers, spin the fibers ...  You get the idea. 

The silk noil is short--about 1-2" long.  It is very soft and spins up slightly fuzzy.  I'm using my cotton cards and doing a single pass of the silk noil on the carders, then rolling it off on a thin dowel to make a silk noil puni.  It took 20-30 minutes to make ten punis today.

I'll be spinning the singles on my Bosworth book charka. I have no idea how long it will take me to finish this project!  One ounce of fiber isn't a ton (literally), but when it is being spun very fine like this it can take a while.  My test puni (just like one of the ones in the photo) took about 30 minutes to spin.  I wonder how many punis it will take to fill a spindle from the charka.  (FYI, and just so I remember, I am starting with 36 grams of silk noil.  The finished skeins are to be 1 ounce or 28.35 grams.  The extra is for the wraps per inch card--every skein needs one--and in case I run into waste in the carding process.  So far, the waste has been minimal.)

Ply, Spin, and Warp (All in one day!)

 A while ago I spun some naturally colored cotton on my Akha spindle.  Now I'd like to use it for one of the entries in the COE in Handspinning that I am working on.  Unfortunately, my skeins need to be 1 oz and the original sliver I purchased was 1 oz....which means that I probably had less than a full ounce of spun fiber. 

No problem!  I just pulled out another sliver that contained the same color (it happened to be a tri-colored sliver, so I pulled out the desired color) and started to spin.  Today as I got started plying I noticed something--the newly spun "red" is redder than the older spun "red".  Oh dear.  I went ahead and plyed the original red...0.93 oz.  Not enough!

I do have a back-up plan.  "Mocha" has a similar history--some already spun, some sliver picked out of a tri-colored one.  I'll try spinning some of the new mocha and see how it looks compared to the old.

 In other spinning news, I finished carding my yellow cotton into punis.  This is ginned cotton that I dyed.  There was a lot of vegetable matter in this cotton.  To remove it, I passed the ginned cotton through the drum carder which loosened the fibers and got some of the trash out.  Then I tore the batts into manageable strips and manually picked out the rest of the junk.  It was slow and tedious work, but it was easier to do that then to stop my spinning every few moments to pick out the rough and scratchy stuff!  The punis were made on my cotton hand cards.  The cotton was first carded, then rolled onto a dowel to make the punis.

 Here's a bobbin with the first few punis' worth of spinning.  I'm getting ~38 wpi which is considered a "fine" yarn.

And, I got my test warp on the loom and started today.  This is a fine cotton/poly yarn with some sportweight knitting yarn stripes.  The weave structure is from Strickler.  If this test works then I hope to repeat the scarf with a silk/yak yarn I bought a year or two ago.

Tunis Preparations

 This bundle of fluff is some Tunis wool.  The tip ends were a bit matted, so I flick carded the locks (both the tip and the cut end) and then hand carded them into rolags for woolen spinning.

Here are my flick carded piles ready for hand carding into rolags.  Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photo of the rolags.  I made two different types--the first was from the flick carded locks and they were very even and clean.  The second type was from the waste off the flick carder (see the messy pile at the lower left corner of the photo?).  The second type of rolag was more irregular, with odds and ends to pick out.

Here's the resulting yarn.  It is a fine (32-45 WPI) woolen single.  It's pretty and it is soft and cushy.  The white card at the top is information for the Handweavers Guild of America (HGA)'s Certificate of Excellence program.  I have 40 or so 1-ounce skeins to spin for the program.  I am learning "gobs" as I go.  My only hope at this point is that I don't get to the end, look back at my early work (like this skein) and say, "yuck! I can't turn that in!" and have to respin a bunch of these!

Skeinsgiving -Strauch Petite

This "red, white, & blue" batt was my favorite.  The main fiber is a super soft wool.  It came out of Beth's huge fiber baskets and I didn't ask what was in it.  It is soft enough to be merino and I wonder if it has some angora in it.  I blended it with a tiny bit of white silk and added a touch of a blue wool and a touch of a pink/maroon wool.  It was so pretty!

The carder that I used was my favorite too: a Strauch Petite.  It was easy to crank, easy to clean, and made lovely batts (I fed the blue and pink through prior to adding them to the blend).  Ahhh.  It was very nice.  Guess what I've added to my wish list?

Thanks again to Beth at the Spinning Loft in Howell, MI for "Skeinsgiving" and the "Batt Bar".  It was great fun!

Skeinsgiving-Fancy Kitty Drum Carder

These photos are from the batt I carded on the Fancy Kitty drum carder up at The Spinning Loft at Beth's "Batt Bar".   The dark green fiber is bamboo.  The glitter is firestar and there is a tiny bit of pink wool.  The bamboo behaved very differently than the wool that day.  When I pulled off pieces of the bamboo roving the ends splayed out away from each other (like fine hair with tons of static electricity).  The wools didn't do that!

I used the Fancy Kitty drum carder at the table.  It wasn't my favorite of the three drum carders, but it worked just fine. (Sorry.  I know that's not a great endorsement....but, it worked.  It didn't wow me. It just worked.--Go to Beth's and try it out.  And then check out the Ravelry Fancy Kitty Lovers group because they are having a drawing for one of their carders for Christmas.)

This is how the mini-skein and tiny bit of reserve batt looked on Monday after I finished spinning.

 This snarl is what it looked like today (Wed) when I found it to take more pictures!  What happened?  I think the fiber and the skein got pushed aside together and the staticky bamboo fibers had a party.  (I also think I got a lesson about the importance of putting things away and not leaving them out on the desk to be pushed aside by the next person who needs the desk.)

The skein is now wound up nicely and the bit of batt tucked into a tiny ball.  One more fluffy batt to spin! (Thanks again, Beth.  The batt bar was loads of fun!)

Skeinsgiving Batt--Cotton Blend-Louet

 The day after Thanksgiving, Beth at "The Spinning Loft" in Howell, Michigan had a sale on fibers and a "batt bar".  At the bar were three different drum carders and four huge (bigger than bushel size!) baskets of fiber to play with. The name "Skeinsgiving" is what Beth called the day.

This batt was my third dip into the baskets.  It is mostly cotton--a blue turquoise and a darker blue turquoise--with some dark green bamboo and a bit of firestar/nylon and pink wool.  I carded it on the Louet carder that Beth had out.

 I played around with the batt a bit as I spun it.  The cotton was not well carded prior to my blending everything else with it.  I tried putting it through the carder first (so it got at least two passes) but it is so short that it didn't get carded very well!

The Louet carder did have a very nice adjustment knob for the licker in drum that made it very easy to adjust!

I ended up just attenuating or pulling on the batt to make it spinable.  Spinning it without attenuating left too much texture for my taste.  Hand carding it blended the colors too much for me. When I spin dyed cotton slivers I usually do this same sort of attenuation.  Pinch the fibers with the pinching fingers about 2" apart and pull gently.  Do this along the length of the fiber prep.

 Here is my very pretty, very nicely textured three ply yarn.  I like this!  It does a good job of showing color and texture and looking like a solid yarn.

Here is the two ply yarn.  I ran out of one spool of singles before the other two, so I made a two ply.  I don't like it as much as the three ply.  It looks scrawny--kind of underfed--compared to the three ply.  The bumps in the singles stand out more in the two ply than in the three.

It's too late to spin any more tonight....but I have two more batts to play with...Thanks for the Skeinsgiving, Beth!

A little bit of this...

A little bit of this...a little bit of that...

One of the discussion groups I follow recently touched on the topic of French Spindles. A few youtube videos later and I went off and whittled myself a spindle. This particular spindle is very light weight and doesn't spin very well. Maybe I should invest in better tools!














With my husband's socks finished, I have started (and finished) some other knitting projects. This one, in worsted weight acrylic, went on and off the needles last week. It's a "slouch" hat for my oldest daughter. She loves yellow. She hates wool. I had this yarn in my stash--it's leftover from my niece's Harry Potter scarf years ago!--viola! One hat ready for winter!











Here's the hat on my head. I think it looks better on my daughter, but she was already in bed by the time I took this photo!

















And here's the next hat. This one is a simple k3, p2 ribbed hat for my son. The neat thing is his choice of colors. He told me he wanted a turquoise colored hat. I had him point to things that were in the right color range and then went to my stash to see what I could find. After a few false starts, he chose this very dark green and very light variegated green. When I started talking about how to use the yarns, ie. what kind of striping he wanted in the hat, he very clearly told me how he wanted the two colors woven together one after the other. I was skeptical, but knit a little color swatch. It looked great! Now the hat is underway! Hooray!