Still Life With Yarn

To-do list

2011-08-22T05:34:00.002-05:00

Holy cow! No posts since February? I don't know how my loyal readers have managed without me.

My children start school again in a couple of days, and I have been making a mental list of all the things I plan to accomplish once I have my days free:

Clean the whole house
Go through all the closets & send mountains of things to Goodwill and Freecycle
Paint the woodwork in our bathroom
Finish George's Bayeaux Tapestry sheet
Make Charlotte another nightgown
Weave a couple of dozen scarves
Make sock monsters
Overhaul our financial accounts
Make another set of Viking clothes for each of us
Knit that gray cabled sweater
Knit Charlotte's ballet wrap
Spin, spin, spin
Knit a dozen pairs of socks on the CSM
Sort my photos

..... and that's just my plans for the first week.

A day to myself

2011-02-12T22:51:00.003-06:00

So yesterday, when I had the house to myself for a day, I decided that what I wanted most to do was to card. I haven't done any carding since before Christmas. That means I can't do any spinning, because the one bobbin on my CPW is half full of the carding project I was working on back in December, and I don't have any more to spin and don't want to wind off the singles and spin something else on it. And I can't spin on the Lendrum because the CPW is in the living room and the sock machine and its associated boxes of tools and yarn are in the family room and swap packages have taken over the dining room and if I pull the Lendrum out and unfold it the whole family might rise as one and say **ENOUGH!!**

So like I said, I wanted to card.

First I had to get to the wool room.

You can see the box of soap-making supplies that has been sitting in front of the door since we made bath bombs for Christmas presents in early December. Through the open door you can see why the soap box hasn't gotten back to its proper spot.

The only reason I've come in here is to throw things into various piles. These are the boxes I pulled out last weekend -- you can see I just shoved them back through the door. Lots of other things have ended up on my carding work table.

So I spent a while sorting and organizing and putting things back in their places. Not too much, though, because I could spend forever in there, and what I really wanted was to card. And I did:

Here's a shot where you can actually see the floor:

It's still crowded, and I've got lots of pink left to process, but I have the space to do it again.

After a lunch break, I made the mate to this knee sock, the one on the right:

I like almost everything about it except the toe. The toe is too big and twists funny so that I am walking on the short row joins and the excess fabric. The sock on the left is a commercial sock; I want to make toes that fit like those ones. The second sock, which I have not yet tried on, has a stubbier toe that I hope will fit better.

Why have I not tried it on yet? Well, after the sock knitting, Me Time was over, and today has been a Not Me Day from the get go. I've helped Charlotte make a teddy bear from a kit she got for Christmas, I've mended holes in t-shirts, sewed badges onto tae kwon do uniforms, made pizza, ferried kids, ridden bikes to the park, watched a family movie, made dinner, read books (separately) to both kids at bedtime, etc., etc., but I haven't tried on a sock. Maybe tomorrow.

More socks

2011-02-02T22:25:00.004-06:00

I have been spending as much time as I can manage with the autoknitter. The basic operation is not too difficult, although I still have the occasional surprise non-knitting needle (pesky), dropped stitch (peskier) or totally jammed ribber (disastrous). But the real challenge, surprisingly, has been making a sock that fits my foot and that has a dense enough fabric to suit me. I like a nice firm sock fabric and a tight fitting sock; I think both of those make a sock last much longer. And getting the fabric I want from the autoknitter has been more difficult than I expected.

I've made a second pair of socks for myself, using the same yarn as the first, but in a different color. These were knit toe-up, which meant I could make the legs as long as the skein held out. In this case that's almost knee length -- not really high enough to stay up for sure, but warmer than the first pair.

This pair has a ribbed foot -- you can see how much narrower it is than the first, unribbed pair. I like the feeling of it quite a bit and it certainly does hug my high arches. The leg doesn't look much longer than the first pair's, although it's actually an additional 40 rows. Here's another view:

That's more like it. Here you can also see that the foot is longer -- oops. It sure didn't need to be, but I lost count of rows and then made the second sock to match rather than start over.

Both pairs of socks have been through the washer and drier a couple of times. The yarn has softened up and gotten kind of fuzzy but they haven't shrunk much at all. I know that's how they are designed but I would like it if they'd get a little smaller. Perhaps I need to investigate non-superwash yarns.

I've made a few non-sock items -- legwarmers for Charlotte out of thicker yarn, which my ribber didn't much care for, and wristwarmers for Charlotte out of sock yarn (these started out as my first experiments with the ribber). I don't intend to do much more, though, until I've got the sock fabric worked out. I'm just past the toe of a pair made out of Kroy, which I'm hoping will make a denser fabric as it is a thicker yarn. I couldn't face putting in the ribber needles this late at night, though, which is why I'm blogging instead of knitting.

My 30 slot dial arrived from New Zealand and turned out to be completely useless. The metal had swelled -- a known issue with the low-grade pot metal from which they are made -- and the slots are now too small to hold a needle. The seller is going to replace it but I am so disappointed; I was really looking forward to being able to do 1:1 rib. Why? Because it doesn't unravel, so you don't have to do anything to finish the edge. I'll be able to in time, I guess, but not for another few weeks while the crummy dial wends its way back to NZ and then a good one makes the return journey to me. I hope the 80 slot cylinder is in better shape! I'm counting on that to make a nice dense fabric out of regular sock yarns.

The children have been out of school for the past two days and my husband is working from home, all due to the storm that swept through here Monday night/Tuesday morning. They'll all be here tomorrow, too; the university has specifically told people like my husband that they are not allowed to come in even if they are perfectly comfortable driving on icy roads. "Work from home," he was told, which is easier said than done when you are Fun Dad and the kids are home, too.

When I imagine snow days they involve lots of yarn, a fire in the fireplace, and general cozy hanging out. In real life there are a lot more loads of laundry and washing of dishes. I still hope that tomorrow I can make those Kroy socks.

My first CSM socks!

2011-01-25T11:03:00.003-06:00

Here they are -- the first actual socks I've made on the sock machine. Before these I made a bunch of plain tubes, about a hundred heels, and several ribbed tubes -- all pulled back and reknit over and over.

My, it's hard to take pictures of your own feet. I did want to show the height of the leg on these socks. They come up to mid calf, which is 100 rows of ribbing. I kind of wish I had gone whole hog and made knee socks, but I wasn't sure about the tension. Tension is the bugbear here -- it's hard to know what tension you're getting while the work is on the machine, because there's between 5 & 10 pounds of weight hanging from the bottom of the sock at all times which as you might guess affects stitch size. So you knit, take your tube off the machine & let it relax, then measure & assess & so forth. Really you should wash it, because that's when it really reveals its true nature. But I'm still at such a basic level that I'm skipping those niceties.

So these are okay socks -- acceptable but not fabulous. The tension in the feet is looser than I like, about 7.5 stitches per inch when I would really rather have 8.5 or even 9. I don't think I can get this particular cylinder to knit tighter, so I'm going to throw the socks in the dryer and see if they'll shrink up just a bit.

Also they slouch down a little, which is just what you'd expect for a ribbing that hits at mid-calf. I do wish I'd had the courage of my convictions and had made them with about 150 rows of ribbing. Doing the same thing for another 50 rows is no big deal -- it's changing from one thing to another (say, ribbing to stockinette) that takes time.

Clearly I'm going to buy my sock yarns in batches of 150 g, not 100 g. This is yarn that came along with the machine, and I had 4 skeins (this used two). I suppose I could cut off the leg at the ankle and knit up from there ... or just wear them and move on to the next. Because if I started fiddling with these, I'd have to make the stripe pattern match, and I just don't want to do that.

One CSM knitter said she tends to knit socks in groups of three -- she knits one, figures out what she should have done differently, knits the second that way, then rips out the first and reknits it to match. Others find a favorite yarn or two and work with them over and over again, because they are so predictable.

The surprise with my machine was discovering that the cylinder - ribber combination was not a standard one. Usually your ribber has half as many needle slots as the cylinder, so you can half half the stitches knitting on the cylinder and half purling on the ribber. You can do other combinations as well, such as 2x2 or 1x3 (or 4 or 5), but the 2:1 ratio is pretty standard.

But my machine came with a 60 needle cylinder and a 40 slot ribber. It also came with notes from the previous two owners showing that these are what the (nameless) restorer supplied in the first place. I wonder why? I was fortunate to be able to locate a 30 slot ribber dial for this brand of machine and it is on the way to my house. It's coming from New Zealand, though, so I don't know how long that will take.

Then a couple of days ago I found an 80 slot cylinder on ebay. This would match up with my 40 slot ribber, so I was quite interested. The seller was clearly parting out a machine and had four different cylinders for sale -- it was surprising to see the variation in the selling price between the four. I think I was very lucky since I won the auction for $26 + $24 shipping -- that seems exorbitant but it's coming from Canada. At any rate, $50 seems like a good price for a cylinder; a newly manufactured one that will fit this machine is $235. (Have you noted all the conditional words I'm using -- "I think" "seems like a good price" etc.? I won't really know if this is a good deal until it arrives and I can assess its condition. But $50 seems like a reasonable gamble to me.)

My current project on the machine is a pair of legwarmers for Charlotte to wear over her ballet tights. I am using a sport weight craft store acrylic and I guess am following the 3-for-a-pair model -- I made one to figure out how long to make it and where to set the tension, and have made the second which I think is a keeper. I hope to do the third today, but not if I don't get off the computer!

Another new toy!

2011-01-13T22:04:00.002-06:00

Look what's in my living room:

Two darling kittens! Oh, and also a circular sock machine ....

Pardon me while I go make another dozen practice heels. I think I've made one perfect one so far, and only one that sort of exploded and fell completely off the machine. The rest have been somewhere in the middle.

Hold onto your hat, Martha, we're going to town!

2010-11-24T06:12:00.004-06:00

There's a new spinning wheel at my house -- new to me, anyways. This is my Canadian Production Wheel (CPW), made in Quebec around 1920, give or take 20 years.

It's huge (that's my Lendrum behind it), with a 29" drive wheel (the Lendrum's is 18"). It doesn't have the versatility of the Lendrum, but it should help me spin fine-to-medium, smooth-to-slightly-slubby yarn extremely quickly. That's what it was designed to do -- these wheels were for women spinning for income, and there was quite a little industry producing them.

I became intrigued by these wheels a while back, and started thinking about them more and more. There's an online discussion group for them, which just added fuel to the fire. A couple of months ago one turned up on Craigslist up in Edmond, but by the time I had noticed it, it had been sold -- to someone else in that group. You've got to move fast, I realized.

Many of the wheels that people find need a lot of rehabbing, which is not what I wanted. So I was really excited to see on Craigslist that looked good, was reasonably priced, and was only about half an hour away. I emailed the seller and made an appointment for the next morning; by lunch time it was in my living room.

It's in very good shape, considering. The seller had it for decor only; it had come from an antique show in Minnesota about 10 years ago. It has obviously seen a lot of use at one time (oil stains) but probably hadn't spun in decades.

There's some damage to the wheel rim, but nothing that will affect spinning:

And the footman is wonky; I'm still bending it in different ways to get it to the right height and to try and resolve a click:

The flyer assembly was the only real source of trouble. It looks great:

but the bobbin and flyer would barely turn independently due to decades of solidified gunk inside. I spent Monday evening cleaning the bobbin out with alcohol & q-tips, and polishing the flyer shaft with steel wool. I thought I had done a pretty good job, but it still jammed going back on:

Not good. If the bobbin doesn't rotate freely on the flyer, your yarn won't wind on. So I did some reading Monday night & Tuesday morning, and got a lot of helpful advice from the Ravelry CPW Lover's group, before I turned my attention to preparing for house guests. I picked up a few supplies on my way to get the kids after school, and Tuesday night I polished the shaft with a hand drill and some Turtle Wax car polishing compound, using the bobbin as a polishing tool. (CPW bobbins have metal bushings, so they can take this. Most don't, and couldn't.)

Then I reassembled the wheel, oiled everything with high-viscosity gun oil (another afternoon purchase) and ....

... started spinning. It's a blast! I haven't cleaned out the metal bits you see below the flyer, so I can't control the tension with any finesse. It's either too-light-to-spin or 20-mule-team, not much in between. So this yarn is hardly my best, or even my usual. But I foresee a lovely future with this wheel, turning the pile of fleeces in the garage into yarn.

Assessing fit

2010-11-15T21:39:00.005-06:00

As it turns out, once I counted stitches and rows I realized I had shaped the front piece exactly the same as the back. I think the difference in the way they looked comes partly from the bust shaping, and partly from the greater weight-per-stitch of the hem on the narrower front piece. Blocking helped a lot. So I knitted up the right front. (Actually, first I knitted up a second left front, but with buttonholes. Then I ripped that out and knitted the right right front.)

I whipped up a sleeve to see if there was enough yarn to make the whole sweater one color (there is) and to test my ability to draft a set-in sleeve on the first try (not there yet). The armhole is deeper than I intended -- it turns out my gauge is just slightly different from what I expected -- and I am not willing to reknit the sweater to make it higher. Although I don't know why not, really. Will have to sleep on this.

Anyways, I basted the whole thing together today, and realized that the sleeve is too big. So I pinched out the amount that seemed appropriate and rebasted. What do you think? (Funny pucker in the middle of the back is just wonky basting. Peculiar expression on my face is nearsighted attempts to aim camera. Wallpaper is unspeakable.)

It's still pretty big, but the whole sweater is roomy, and I think if I tighten the arm up any more it would look peculiar. Other than the low armhole and a bit of residual hem flip, I think it looks pretty good. Or should I rip out all three body pieces and redo them with a higher armhole? I don't think this sweater deserves that much fuss, really; if I just finish it off the way it is I'll have a nice, warm, well-enough fitting sweater. And given the fact that fall has finally arrived in Oklahoma, I'm eager to have this done and ready to wear.

A slight problem.

2010-11-12T22:23:00.003-06:00

The sweater has been progressing -- not at quite the pace of day 1, but pretty fast. I finished the first half of the front yesterday (Thursday) after dinner and was quite pleased until I realized that the front was much longer than the back. This worried and confused me, since my plan for the front was basically "knit half a back, only with bust darts, a lower neck, and a front facing." How could that go wrong?

I did actually write out a pattern for the front, complete with row numbers, although the bust darts make those all wonky. It did seem while knitting that there was a long stretch between the end of the armhole shaping and the beginning of the neck shaping, and then really quite a bit of space between the end of the neck shaping and the start of the shoulder shaping. So I thought I should probably just rip out a enough rows to match and then redo the shoulder shaping.

I had gone so far as to take out the bindoff and rip back a couple of rows before I remembered that machine knit fabric needs time to assume its final form after coming off the needles. The weights that make knitting possible also stretch the fabric. So I set the piece aside to wait for morning, sure that all would be well.

In the morning, although the front was still too long, I was glad I hadn't gone any further. I don't have a good track record with sweater revision concepts developed after 10 p.m., and just whacking off a chunk of the shoulder seemed, in retrospect, to be a bit chancy. So I counted rows between the end of armscye decreases and the beginning of shoulder shaping, and was stunned to find that they are the same on both pieces.

That was as far as I could get before breakfast, and afterwards the day was eaten up with teacher conferences, errands, and kid wrangling. They had the day off school but my husband was at work, so the opportunities to sit and think about pattern issues really never came.

I did manage to knit the second front up to the start of the bust darts, since I'm pretty confident all is well up to that point. Then I pinned out the first front and the back to look at them again:

And now I noticed something that completely escaped me before, who knows how: the armscye shaping isn't the same. I think my extra length might be all right there, in the more gradual slope on the front. My row gauge is 6 rpi, so a couple of extra rows makes a big difference.

I think, then, that I will have to rip back to the armscye and make the pieces match. I'm not sure at this point which decrease curve matches my original instructions -- and since it's long after 10 now I think I had better wait until morning to figure it out.

A day's work

2010-11-10T21:34:00.004-06:00

Last week it dawned on me that yet another winter (or at least the Oklahoma approximation thereof) is on its way and my grey cabled cardigan is still a goal rather than something I can wear to keep warm. Rather than beat myself up over this, I decided to make a sweater on my knitting machine -- something nice and cozy, something that will keep me warm and be fun to wear, but that won't take up too much of my project time.

I decided to use some yarn that was given to me back when I lived in Michigan. I was told it was handspun but I'm not sure about that. If not handspun, it might be small-farm spun. It's a fairly coarse wool with more bits of hay than strictly necessary, in a nice dark sheep's brown. It's a heavy worsted two-ply that knits up at 4 stitches to the inch. It would make a lovely jacket if I had two more skeins of it. Because I don't, I've done nothing with it for about 14 years. There's plenty for a nice vest, but the yarn is too coarse and too heavy for a vest. What to do? Last week I suddenly thought of Scandinavian women's wadmal jackets with knitted sleeves. I'd make a solid colored body and completely different sleeves.

I retrieved the yarn from its storage location -- inside an old picnic basket in the garage. This turned out to be a less than ideal storage site; at some point insects have been having their way with the yarn, though half-heartedly. I could only find two spots that looked chewed on, so I washed it up and hoped for the best. Then I waited until today -- Wednesday is my least-scheduled day.

My day in pictures:

6:30 a.m . : looking at inspirational pictures:

9 a.m. : time to get started. It helps that years ago I made a large swatch marked with key plate sizes:

10 a.m. : pattern for the back has been written:

10:45 a.m. : yarn has been wound (also, dishes done, beds made, cats fed, etc.):

You can see how much debris flew off in the winding. One skein ended up in five small balls but the rest seemed pretty sound. The proof is in the knitting, though.

It took me a while to find all the bits of the machine and get things set up. I started knitting around 11:30, then spent about an hour doing a hem because I really like a purl folding row. A picot hem is much faster but seemed inappropriate for this project.

2:30 p.m. : by the time I had to go get the kids; I was up to the armholes. After school we went to the library but did get home in time for me to knit a little more before dinner. This picture is at about 6 p.m.:

8 p.m. : after dinner I finished the back. Just as I was finishing the bindoff, Charlotte came out to investigate and fell in love with the claw weights:

She spent about 20 minutes moving them here and there! After she went to bed, I took the back off the machine:

So here's the back. I am bothered by the way the hem flips up, and there's a break in the yarn that needs to be darned, but all in all it looks pretty good. I didn't expect it to take me 12 hours, but still -- a good day's work.

Tomorrow: the fronts. I wish I had the energy to write out the bust darts tonight, but I'll be lucky if I can stay awake long enough to do the dishes.

Ballet wrap yarn samples

2010-10-22T09:06:00.005-05:00

I've been sampling for my proposed ballet wrap.

First I dyed fiber. I looked through books of color samples and decided on a pastel pink with a little bit of black to tone it down. Unfortunately I didn't check my calculations carefully enough, so I dyed it at 1% DOS when I had intended to dye at .1%. Just a simple decimal point, but oh, the difference! You can see the oh-so-vibrant results here:

This was all in the same dyepot. Clockwise from upper right: Superwash merino wool, tussah silk that was interleaved with superwash, merino wool (not superwash), angora, tussah silk that was interleaved with the regular merino. You can see that the superwash merino took the dye more readily than the regular merino -- that's to be expected, since the superwash process removes the little scales protecting the outside of the wool fibers. I thought it was interesting to see the difference in the silk as well, since they are both the same fiber from the same coil of top.

This was my first attempt at dyeing silk interleaved with wool as described by Deb Menz in Color in Spinning. (Why, yes, I've had the book for 12 years. I'm slow.) I'm not sure I like the final results -- it was pesky to do, and the silk is in a thousand bits right now -- but I need to try it a few more times before deciding if it works for me.

Even though this is not the depth of shade I wanted, the basic color is what I had in mind. So I decided to concentrate on developing a blend of fibers before worrying about the color. So I carded up a batt of each fiber and went to work.

I decided not to use the superwash since it was so much darker. I made blends of merino / angora and two different proportions of merino / angora / silk.

Then I spun them up and knitted them, and showed them around to friends.

The merino / angora (center nest) had the highest percentage of angora, and we liked that. But it has a matt surface; I liked the shine that the silk gave to the other two samples.

So I decided to try another blend of equal parts of merino / silk / angora, and to start fiddling with the color. I'm very happy with the fiber blend, but not so much with the color change. I thought that if half the angora were gray, the whole thing would get a sort of silvery sheen. Instead it just looked dirty. It is starting to match Charlotte's ballet leotard, but that's not necessarily a good thing. I hate that color!

(Swatches start at the bottom with merino / angora. Then two merino / angora / silk blends, with a lower percentage of angora. The light swatch in the middle has the gray angora.)

Then I made two more blends. I blended the pink superwash with black wool from a local fleece -- considered medium by the breeder, who specializes in Merino, but which feels pretty soft to me. I then blended the pink/black wool with white superwash merino, and blended that whole mixture with the silk & angora. I made a second version of this blend in which half the angora was pink and half was white.

I fully expected to love these last two yarns, and especially the lighter one. Unfortunately, the black wool makes the whole thing look dirty again, although for a different reason than the angora. With the angora, I think the grubby effect comes from the gray haze over the clearer color of the base knitting. With the black wool, I think it's just uneven blending. Because the black wool is so much darker than the pink, even three passes through the supercard wasn't enough to thoroughly blend it and eliminate streaking.

So today I'm going to make another couple of blends. First will be pink wool / white wool / silk / pink angora / white angora, with the proportions of both whites upped, to make a pale pink. Second will have some camel blended in, to brown it up a little. I don't think there will be as much trouble blending this because the values are similar.

I know this is a lot of trouble for the yarn for one little cardigan. But I'm finding it very educational, and fun if also frustrating. And I'm planning a nifty scarf out of all the little balls of leftover yarn -- I've knit up less than half of each sample.

To the wool room! It's carding time!

Little girl fashion HELP

2010-09-29T12:59:00.003-05:00

Hey, there --

I am planning a sweater for my six year old and realize that it would be more likely to turn out well if I were not so fashion-oblivious. I have in mind something like this - a v-necked wrap around, probably with elbow or 3/4 length sleeves. I want to make it in pink, out of an angora/silk/wool blend yarn, so it will be fluffy and make her feel like a ballet princess.

So far, so good. But the details have me stumped. I see a lot of variation in how these things fasten. Some (the traditional ones, I think) have ties on each end and holes in the side seam to thread them through; they tie in back or have long ties that wrap all the way around and tie in front. Some have little short ties on the left hip; closure on the other side is not visible but presumably is either short ties on the inside or a button. Some have a button on the right side. One was a sort of false wrap -- the two fronts were fastened to the same bottom band, so the sweater was really a pullover.

So how important is the wrapping function to make this feel like a Real Ballet Sweater? I think the long ties might be so cumbersome that she wouldn't like the sweater -- though she does like to tie bows. Buttons wouldn't allow for the same amount of customization -- will that matter to a first grader? I don't think she'd like the pullover as well as a wrap.

And what of the length? The Sirdar pattern shows it as waist length, but I wonder if slightly shorter wouldn't be more fashionable now. Though of course if it's waist length now it will be higher by next winter, more of this effect.

And what about stitch pattern? I love this eyelet patterned one (Rav link) but all the capezio type sweaters are plain. Will she know? Care?

I've promised myself I won't start this until I finish my current spinning project, but that will probably only be a few days. So help me think this through!

Finished shawl, with pride.

2010-09-12T13:58:00.004-05:00

I finally finished my Pi Are Squared shawl! I can't remember when I first decided to make this, but I think it was while I was living in Chicago which means before 1989. (Coincidentally, I bought this yarn while living in Chicago, too.) I cast this on in July or August 2005, for something to knit while taking a long car ride. It has lasted me through many of them, but it is finally done.

My biggest holdup has been the final edging around the neck/front opening. I started making an applied I-cord edging but didn't like it, and ripped it back in favor of a very plain, very simple single crochet edge. I might put something fancier on later, but I doubt it -- there's enough going on everywhere else.

Here it is blocking:

I just used t-pins stuck into the carpet. I should have vacuumed first; I had to pick quite a few fuzzy bits off the back after it dried. See the tape measure in the middle? I used that to make both sides approximately the same.

Here it is from another angle:

Note the fan in the background? That's because my final impetus to finish was the local county fair -- I pinned this out at 2 in the afternoon and entries were due by 9 p.m. It was dry in plenty of time.

I don't know where the time goes. I decided in early summer that I would finish this in time for the fair this year, and I never really lost sight of that .... but I still ended up weaving in ends up until the last minute (after blocking; you can see some loose ends here). But I love going to the fair and looking at others people's items, so I always try to enter a few myself.

I tell myself that I don't really care if I win or not but it turns out I lie. Because this didn't win ANYTHING and I was really, really grouchy about it. I know it's hardly a masterpiece of design but I think it's quite nice and it is also a huge honking piece of lace. Given our bizarre classes it had to go into the "knitted coats, sweaters and capes" class, and it lost out to a couple of sweaters that really didn't seem all that special to me. But maybe that's my bitterness talking.

Really, I don't think I'd mind nearly as much if there were any explanations at all. There are never any comments on the judging, plus they don't reclass if they think you've entered something in the wrong class. (I think third place in this class went to a baby sweater which IMO should have been in the baby sweater class.) I want to know if the judges really thought this wasn't as well done as the items that placed, or if there was some other reason for their decisions, or (honestly) if they ever even unfolded it.

I also entered a couple of scarves -- knitted and woven -- and a skein of handspun which had to go into "any other crafts". Both scarves placed but they're nothing special.

I do have to say that the woman who knit the winning sweater was there when I was, and she was really really excited and proud, and also seemed to be thrilled with the small cash prize that goes with the ribbon. So that's pretty neat. I'll try to think about that and not about my (apparently wildly overinflated) expectations.

Modeled shots next week, after I reclaim it and bribe my photographer.

Styling help!

2010-08-25T12:45:00.005-05:00

Hey -- I have a Completed Knitted Garment to show you!!! Now if I could figure out how to wear it ...

This is Watershed, which I planned to finish before our trip to Colorado, so I would have a nice little coverup for those cold mountain evenings. Needless to say, I knitted it while in Colorado, and it did indeed keep my lap warm on those cool evenings.

All is not lost, however -- I will be going to the library this afternoon, where the temperature will be about 20 degrees cooler than the outside air. Usually it's about 30 degrees cooler, but we are having a rare spell of moderate weather, so the outdoors is not as furnace-like as usual.

But how shall I wear it? Specifically, would you leave the collar flat, as in the above picture and this next one?

Or would you fold it over?

I like them both.

We have had Big Changes around here:

These guys were about 5 weeks old at that point. Unfortunately the smallest one (in the middle here) died overnight. We were all shocked and saddened, and fearful for the others. But they have been fine -- energetic, healthy, and eating well. It just doesn't make sense.

And now I must go give the remaining two baths (fleas) -- wish me luck!

Summer cardi

2010-06-16T11:36:00.003-05:00

My eye has yet again been caught by a summer cardigan, this time by Watershed. I like the way the fronts are designed to hang open, although I think I'd like the back a little longer -- probably to my natural waist.

The problem, though, is that I don't really have any appropriate aran weight yarn. I am swatching with La Laine, but it's really a light worsted and I can't imagine making it stretch to 4 st/in. But I have an enormous amount of yarn in the house & I don't really want to buy something new.

At the same time, I'm wondering why the designer and almost all projects on ravelry call for woolly yarns. I want to wear this in the heat of summer, over tank tops & dresses. Stores and restaurants are kept at meat locker temperatures around here (in summer; in winter they are overheated) so I need a little sweater but I am imagining a wool one feeling hairy and sticky. I'm thinking maybe Cotton Fleece, except that it's a worsted weight, too. (And of course, I don't own any.) What if I rewrite the pattern for 5 st/in? And make it longer? And change the yarn? And maybe the lace stitch? Hmmm.

colors

2010-05-07T16:50:00.005-05:00

Well. Here's the two rovings, plied. Pretty, but browner than I really expected.

Although here it is on a sheep brown, and it does make a nice contrast:

Years ago I fell in love with the colors of paint on a bridge on the University of Minnesota campus -- the school maroon, but very weathered & sunbeaten. This reminds me of that bridge (in a good way) but it's not at all what I was setting out to make.

I make a quick additional roving of turquoise, fuchsia, hot pink & bright blue, and spun that along with the second roving, then plied it with the original roving:

It's certainly perkier but maybe too much so. This is the second yarn with the same sheep brown. I think those blue bits are too bright.

I wish I had enough free time to wallow in sampling. Right now it's just making me grumpy. And tomorrow I will be going to the only fleece fair I'm likely to attend this year, so if I want to be looking for something in particular I need to know what it is!

My daughter has just learned to tie her shoelaces (so I will buy her a pair of Sketcher Twinkletoes) and wants me to make a video of it. How can I turn that down? But I want to fool around with wool, too. Here's hoping the responsible mama side of me wins.

update

2010-05-03T17:08:00.003-05:00

I've been carding the supplement to the fabulous-but-limited roving.

The largest bump is the original roving. Below it are two items I pulled from stash that I have been carding together to produce rovings like the two smaller ones. One has an outer layer of purple, the other of red, but both are a mix of approximately one part purple to two parts red.

You can see that the original roving is much brighter. My plan is to spin the two rovings (old & new) separately and ply them together. That will give me about 24 ounces of sportweight yarn.

But is the new roving too dull? I am about halfway through carding, and I don't want to recard & get it too blended -- this is one pass through the supercarder and I think another pass would give me very bland results. I could make another thin roving, though, and hold it together with the new roving while spinning. Hmmm. Or maybe this is just fine as it is.

I think a few more samples are in order.

Two by two

2010-04-27T11:17:00.002-05:00

Things seem to be lining up neatly around here:

Two spinning projects:
gray Corrie/Churro fleece
red/purple roving

Two knitting projects:
purple Pi Are Square shawl
blue & white socks

Two beading projects:
flowery t-shirt
seed bead necklace

Two weaving projects:
overshot on the Baby Wolf that has been untouched since early November
sampler band in doubleweave tablet weaving

Oh, and
TWO children
TWO stories to the house now
and
TOO MUCH to do!

Matching?

2010-04-08T13:57:00.003-05:00

As I've thought about the roving I wrote about yesterday, I remembered another fiber that has been languishing in my stash. This is the one on the spindle below; on the bobbin is yesterday's fiber:

It's a dark picture, but you can see that the spindle fiber is more orangey while the bobbin fiber has more purple.

Here's a picture with fill flash. Surprisingly the colors are fairly accurate:

I could use one fiber for one ply and one for a second. I could recard the spindle fiber with some purple, then use it for a second ply. I could spin them separately but use them in the same sweater -- this is my least favorite option because the bobbin yarn is so much more beautiful, with all its different shades. At the same time, I don't want to dilute its splendor by plying it with something too mundane. But I think I'd really like to have enough yarn for something like the Giant Latvian Mitten cardigan (rav link).

Must run to the grocery store before it's time to get the children -- but wanted to get this up so I can get the opinion of those of you on the other side of the world. Would you keep yesterday's fiber pure? Ply them together? Modify the spindle fiber, then ply?

New spinning project

2010-04-06T19:36:00.005-05:00

Last Saturday I went to a craft night at a friend's house & couldn't bear to take the same old pair of socks I've been hauling around everywhere. So I packed up my wheel and grabbed some fiber that has been calling to me. Not that I've responded all that quickly -- I actually bought this about two years ago from my friend Twosheep:

Here it is in my front garden. The many shades & tones make me swoon with delight. It's the perfect companion to the endless bumps of gray that I've been spinning this winter.

(If you follow her links you can see it in many earlier stages as well. She dyed gray/brown fleece in purple and red-orange, then had it carded together. Lovely!)

I am loving this, even though I do have to pick out a bunch of neps. (I think Twosheep was right & they are weak tips. That makes me feel better about the endless trimming of tips for my gray sweater project.) It's spinning up quickly and I am daydreaming about potential uses. I only have 12 ounces, so it can't be a sweater on its own. But I want it to be something that I can wear a lot because I love it so. I'm thinking colorwork, maybe on a black background? deep blue? I don't think I have enough to make the Giant Latvian Mitten cardigan. I don't think I want a yoke sweater because they don't really flatter my shape. I have about 9 ounces of pondering to go.

The only fly in the ointment is a shortage of bobbins for my woolee winder. I have four, on the theory that I never make more than a three ply, so this gives me three & one for plying. In reality I often ply on the big head of my Lendrum, which leaves me with an extra WW bobbin, now almost full of this roving. I think I need to spin enough gray to be worth plying, then I can have one empty bobbin for this wool, ply the two together, spin more gray, etc., etc. I'd order another bobbin but I think Nathan Lee is still catching up after the fire. Oh, what a pleasant fix to find myself in.

Hoard or squander?

2010-03-24T10:13:00.004-05:00

The children and I got back from Florida last night and I now have TWO DAYS to prepare for the Medieval Fair. Last year I had big plans but the remodel swallowed up so much time this spring that I have done almost nothing up until now.

The weather report promises low 60's & pleasant on Friday (day I can go by myself), mid sixties, breezy & rainy on Saturday (day I was planning on taking the kids), and 58 degrees with a north wind on Sunday (only day we can all go together). I am thinking that we need better cloaks:

Mine is a nice piece of handwoven fabric destined for chair cushions but doing just fine as a cloak. It needs hemming, though. George's is his favorite fleece "robe", carefully folded to hide the head-hole. He might want to wear that again because he loves it so, even though it's very inauthentic. I love the look of Dean & Charlotte in plaids but those are blankets! Dean's in particular is very heavy and far too short.

So I am thinking of running up some quick cloaks. Standard Viking cloaks were just plain rectangles of cloth, so it wouldn't take long, just a little hemming. I was ready to head off to the fabric store when I remembered a stash of wool fabric passed on to me by my mother 10 or 15 or maybe 20 years ago when she decided she wouldn't use it in Florida.

Oh, these are lovely fabrics! Wool flannels in various dark colors, a couple of tweeds, a lovely blue herringbone, and a pretty little pink plaid that Charlotte would love. Several have price tags showing that they cost $6 per yard; I can't quite imagine what they would cost now but I have a feeling it isn't anywhere close to that.

Part of me wants to save them -- I am finally sewing more, and wouldn't these make wonderful jumpers / vests / pants???? Part of me wants to use them --- they've been in this cedar chest for umpteen years, wouldn't it be better to be using them, even if they get dragged in the mud? And all of me needs to decide by tomorrow!!!!

While I'm thinking, I'm also planning on making undertunics for Dean and myself, and maybe a hood for Dean. Oh, and some more trim, and Charlotte needs a belt ......

Applied i-cord

2010-03-11T13:56:00.002-06:00

Fooling around with methods of applying i-cord as edging for pi are squared shawl. Color sometimes contrasts but usually doesn't. Needs to stay stretchy for blocking. Want to have this ready to take on vacation with me, don't have much time to spend on it. Anyone have suggestions?

Am currently using three stitches: k2, slip one knitwise, pick up & knit one stitch, psso, pick up stitch for next row, slip to beginning, repeat forever.

Tried the version where you slip a stitch, then yarn over, then knit the body stitch & pass both slipped stitch & yo over knitted-up body stitch, but it is very difficult to do with lace weight yarn -- that yarn over won't get on the needle. I cannot fight my way through a million rows, I want to do this on vacation while chatting. Bad enough that I need to keep picking those stitches up.

Geek hat

2010-02-18T09:55:00.004-06:00

I recently had the very enjoyable experience of knitting a hat on commission. A friend liked my robot hat and wanted a duplicate for her husband, until we started talking about other possibilities. This is the design we worked out, using Christine Dumoulin's lovely charts from her Binary scarf.

The hat is just a basic toque, with a turned up ribbing & eight decrease points forming a swirl.

You can see the round ends -- it also shows you where to start reading, if you can read bits. Probably I should have done the green lines jogless, but that's not a technique I've used much.

Here's the hat flat:

I would make a few changes if I were to do this again. I'd either eliminate the plain rounds between the ribbing & the green line so it could be worn with the ribbing down, or I'd put in a fold line. I think the turnup isn't crisp enough. And if I did plan for a turned up ribbing I'd use one or two more plain black rounds, because the ribbing is just slightly longer than the black stockinette section as it stands.

Here's the hat with the ribbing down -- sadly droopy looking.

Much better, but it would be nice to see the bottom green line.

I used June Hiatt's Double Needle Cast-on (p. 133 in Principles of Knitting) which was pesky to do but just wonderful once finished. There's no constriction in the lower edge at all. I'll be using this on my next pair of top-down socks for sure.

quick project

2010-02-01T16:24:00.003-06:00

Quickie hat for someone who needs a warm head now! That someone has a much bigger head than does my model, but if I made this again I'd make a smaller brim, and probably not switch to maroon until I started the robot chart. I'd also use a different yarn -- this is red heart (black & white) and walmart house brand (maroon) but I was housebound by an ice storm & needed to start Right Away. It'll do to be getting on with.

Back in October ....

2010-01-11T19:08:00.005-06:00

... Charlotte decided that her sixth birthday party would be an homage to Spirit : Stallion of the Cimarron. I modified a simple fleece balaclava pattern from Anne-Mette Hermansen's so-useful book Happy Hats & Cool Caps: To Sew for the Whole Family by adding horse ears & inserting yarn along the back seam:

(There was a reason why the little horses were riding stick horses, but it only made sense if you were six.)

I made tails by making large, simple tassles & pinning them onto party guests' pants. These were less successful; several just fell apart. But they lasted through the party, at least.

I don't know what traditions are elsewhere, but around here when your child has a birthday party, they receive presents from the guests and hand out "goodie bags" full of edible treats and junky toys of dubious amusement value. I don't like to pass them out and I don't like to have my kids bring them home -- the contents are usually junky but the cost adds up surprisingly quickly. So whenever possible I like to make something that our party guests can take home & play with later. The horse hats seemed just right this year.

Charlotte's birthday is only a week before Halloween, so as soon as I finished the horse hats I moved right on to make George's mummy costume:

(This is his favorite lurching undead pose.)

Here it is with the headpiece:

It's made of strips of muslin, sewn and/or hot glued to a pair of pajamas. (My sister made a costume like this on a sweatsuit base, but she lives in a colder part of the country.) The headpiece is built on a balaclava with the nose bit cut out.

It was a hugely successful costume, and very durable, too -- George spent a lot of the evening hiding under one of the cars, then "rising from the dead" as trick or treaters passed by, and the costume showed hardly any wear & tear at all.

Given the amount of sewing her party had required, I was kind of pleased that Charlotte decided the PERFECT costume was a $6 Target witch outfit:

A New Year

2010-01-11T13:56:00.003-06:00

Where does the time go? It slips by so quickly -- the hours, days, weeks, months. It's the same for all of us, I suppose.

I have been very busy with our remodeling, the holidays, daily life, and even fiber pursuits. I've actually gotten quite a bit of weaving, knitting & spinning done, but haven't taken the time to blog it in months.

The last time I wrote was just after the November art market, as I was planning the things I would weave for the December market. As it turned out, the December market was much like the November one --lots of interesting things for sale but not very many shoppers. It was held indoors, in a space that would be lovely for a wedding reception but which was too dark & too far off the beaten path to make a good marketplace. It didn't help that there was a big craft fair going on about half a mile away, just as there had been in November, AND a big arty/crafty market up in Oklahoma City. Too many venues for too few customers.

I sold two more scarves, several bookmarks, a couple of lavender sachets, and several tree ornaments. Again, it was enough to cover my costs but not much more than that. It was interesting, but I'm not sure whether I will do it again. On the other hand, I have more than 100 of these little tree ornaments on hand so perhaps I have a headstart on next year:

The big surprise for me was how much I loved the overshot that I turned into lavender sachets. I've never been particularly drawn to it in weaving books / mags, but I loved weaving it and loved the way it looked finished. I need to explore this more!

And now it's time to go pick up the children.

Weaving & selling

2009-11-21T21:56:00.004-06:00

Here's the one and only photo of me & my booth at the Downtown Arts Market last month. You can clearly see two things: it was very windy, and I didn't have much to sell. The only reason I had such a big space was that I couldn't figure out how to display the scarves except by hanging them from the canopy, which we already had. Dunno if you can tell, but in the back two corners I had skeins of handspun yarn hanging from poles; I didn't really want to sell it but I needed it to beef up my display! So I priced it very high & no one bought it.

The two scarves that sold are actually on the same hanger, in the right corner of the photo. One is a tiny pale blue undulating twill in wool & silk, and the other is a longer one in jade green & pale blue, wool & alpaca in a tiny zigzagging twill. Unfortunately this is the only picture I seem to have taken of it. But here are a couple of the undulating twill:

This is it on the loom -- you can see how open the fabric was.

This is the fabric after wet finishing. It closed up a lot, much more than I expected, in fact. The warp was a stretchy wool knitting yarn, and the weft was a handspun silk single. The finished scarf was only 4.5 inches wide, and curved due to tension problems. I really didn't expect it to sell. But it was so soft & the colors so pearly, I really liked it.

This is an unflattering picture on my nondescript carpet. I need to work on presentation, huh? I managed to convince myself that the curvature made it more organically shaped, more suited to a human body! The woman who bought it wrapped it around her neck a couple of times with no tails left to hang down; it looked great.

The scarf that got the most attention was the odd bumpy caramel & jade one just to my left.

Lots & lots of people looked at it, talked about it, even took pictures of it. But no one bought it -- probably because the colors are so odd & also it's a little short. I intend to make more like it, but better, before the next art fair.

Yes, the next one. I decided I might as well do the December fair. But I also realized that instead of weaving as many scarves as possible, I needed to diversify. The market was very slow, but the things that sold were mostly smaller items. I had no smaller items, which was a problem.

So I cast around for things I might like to weave & hope to sell. So far I have made two batches of inkle bookmarks, and am working on some funky little Christmas trees for ornaments, based on a description I found in one of Harriet Tidball's old monographs (Merry Christmas, Handweavers). I am hoping they will be charming and retro instead of kitschy and weird. Of course I warped up enough to make about 150 before I will actually get to see a finished one off the loom, so I hope I am right! There's a lot more figuring-out during the weaving process than I expected, but it's still going pretty fast. My biggest problem right now is finding enough scrap fabric to weave into the fringe between the rows of trees. Oh, and I would have been a lot better off if I hadn't insisted on warping the full width of the loom. My baby wolf is so narrow that I always want to get as close to the full width as I can, but everything seems to work so much better at 22 inches wide than at 24 inches wide. Supposedly you can weave 26 inches wide on one but I am not capable of that, at least not yet.

There are three more weeks before the next fair, which is also the last of the year. Those weeks do include Thanksgiving, with out of town company, and a potluck which we host the first week of December, and the ongoing remodeling and of course regular old daily life. But I think I can get some these little trees woven, and some more inkle bookmarks, and some overshot for lavender sachets, and maybe even a few more scarves. Wish me luck!

Gone pro!!

2009-11-08T11:53:00.001-06:00

Sold two scarves at an outdoor arts market yesterday -- enough to pay my booth fee, cover material costs, & still make about a quarter an hour. More details to follow, and maybe even pictures.

Weaving a garment?

2009-10-06T10:39:00.003-05:00

I want to weave a vest. I want it to be something I can wear and enjoy. And I am torn between two paths:

I could choose a pattern, sew it out of a handwoven-ish commercial fabric, evaluate it, and go from there.

Or I could throw a warp on the loom and wing it.

On the one hand, I suspect that most basically boxy vests wouldn't be so very flattering on me.

On the other hand, my favorite cardigans are big boxy things.

How many hands can you have?

I'm intrigued by this pattern:
http://www.kwiksew.com/catalog/cat_detail.cfm?pid=2882

which has bust darts and an assortment of necklines and a pieced back so I could make it from one relatively narrow strip of fabric, assuming I want to cut it.

On the other hand, I do really like this simple vest, too:
http://www.weavingroom.com/OvrwWeb.pdf (have to view the pdf to see the photo; it's from Clothing from the Weaving Room.

Clearly I'll have plenty to think about while I do my chores today.

The end is in sight!

2009-08-31T10:17:00.004-05:00

Way back in 2005 I impulsively cast on for Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi Are Square shawl, thinking it would keep me busy on a long car trip. Well, it did, and it has. Here it is in 2006 and 2007. I set it aside shortly after that because I needed to make some decisions, and didn't pick it up again until July of this year, when I was anticipating another long car ride. Here's what it looked like then:

It took me a while to remember where I was and what I was trying to do. I had run out of the two purples I was using for the body of the shawl, and needed to decide how far to go with the gray and what to do about an edging.

I decided to push the gray as far as it would go, to give me more length. I may regret this when I block it. During our car trip (from Oklahoma to Michigan) I finished the body of the shawl and started the edging. As it turns out, a lace edging is not really the best sit-and-chat sort of knitting, so I didn't get much done during the non-driving parts of our vacation. But there was lots of driving, and once I memorized the pattern I started really making progress. Here's where it is today:

And here is a closeup of the patterning:

I'm not entirely happy with this. In case you're not familiar with the pi-shawl concept, you double the number of stitches at intervals that themselves double. So every line of simple holes you see there is a doubling row -- except maybe the last one, I can't remember if I doubled there or not. There's no puckering (the drawback to this method) so I might not have doubled. I'll figure that out later, when I write the finished shawl up.

Anyways, my overall concept for this shawl was "pi are squared, purple, lacy" and so I just picked patterns at each doubling, and I don't really think my choices were all that felicitous. The first pattern is a madeira fan that was hard to do and will be invisible under my hair. I like the next zig-zag one, and think it works well with both the fan and the pattern below, although I don't think I'm wild about all the faggoting on the third pattern. But my real concern is the print o' the wave. What was I thinking? It really has nothing in common with the others. I think I thought it would further develop the faggoting, but looking at it now I don't think that the visual connection really happens.

And I was intending to use an edging designed by Sharon Miller to coordinate with print o' the wave, but decided not to after all. Both are a stockinette fabric, and on a sort of cardigan shawl the edging needs to look good on both sides. The edging I chose has a double zig zag, which I hope will tie it in with the various other patterns once the shawl is blocked and you can actually see it, but that leaves the print o' the wave flapping alone in the breeze. I'm not going to rip it back, though! I just hope I remember this the next time I think, "oh, it will be a quick knit, I don't need to plan it." And also that very few things in laceweight are a "quick knit."

I am still pondering the front / neck edge. I had planned to just continue the same edging all the way around, but I wonder if it will be too floppy & lacy. Maybe I'd be happier with a plain edge? Maybe I am thinking this because it would be a lot faster? Oh, and perhaps this has something to do with the deadline for county fair entries in 10 days? I had thought it was in three days and was resigned to missing it, but then I learned I had an extra week. I could certainly finish the bottom & do a quick crochet around the inside edges .... but what a stupid reason to make a design decision. So -- things to think about while I knit.

(Another one is -- will I ever wear this? More than once?)

Off to Kazakhstan!

2009-07-19T09:09:00.004-05:00

A couple of days ago I sent a package off on the first leg of its journey to Kazakhstan. This is part of an annual project to provide warm clothes for children aging out of two orphanages. What you see here is a gansey-type sweater, balaclava hat, mittens & scarf, all for the same boy. He'll also be getting a couple of pairs of socks (knitted by someone else) and a blanket; the orphanage provides him with a winter coat.

About a hundred years ago, my grandfather aged out of a similar institution. We don't know too much about his life at that time, but I hope people were kind to him. I have enjoyed making these things & thinking about orphanages, charity, family and warmth.

I've also enjoyed it on a more personal basis. I finally had a reason to knit Robin Hansen's Big Waves mittens. They sure are big! I liked knitting mittens with a different pattern on the palm than on the back of the hand; it makes me want to put a pair of Selbu mittens high on my to-do list. And I'm really pleased at the way the woven scarf echoes the waves -- it's made from the same two yarns as the mittens, and I think they look like a set even though they are in different techniques.

Weaving the scarf was fun, in part because I got to use some new equipment:

This is a floor-based inkle loom (a Leclerc Cendrel) which can also be used as a warping board. When I was deciding to buy this loom I liked the idea of having a warping board with a 10-yard capacity, since the one I already had can only manage 6 yards. But I hadn't even thought of the difference FEET would make! This warping board does not need to be leaned on a chair and doesn't fall over -- such a delight! Someday I think I would like to have a warping reel, but for now this is a huge improvement.

I still ran into trouble with my squirrel cage swift. This is a homemade one that I picked up secondhand for only $20. The reason why became apparent when I started to use it -- it spills yarn off the end, like this:

It went from unusable to barely tolerable when I replaced the axles (right word?), which had become bent. But it was still dumping yarn off the outside of the cages unless I repositioned the yarn every few revolutions -- very frustrating. This is worsted weight knitting yarn which can handle some tugging, but I want to make some warps out of much finer yarn. This sort of tangle would be a nightmare then.

Finally I thought to prop the whole thing up on one side, so the trunk was no longer completely vertical. This seemed to really help; once I had wound off the tangled bit there were no further problems. But I still don't feel confident enough to wind, say, a laceweight warp using this swift. It's frustrating. This swift and the picker I used to own have really turned me against equipment homemade by amateur woodworkers. They are almost just right -- but it turns out that those tiny details make a huge difference.

Despite these difficulties, winding the warp & warping the loom took only a few hours. I started winding on Saturday morning and finished the second scarf Monday afternoon -- very satisfying.

I'm also pleased to have used up almost all of a box of yarn. I bought an armload of Germantown worsted for almost nothing in a thrift store about 12 (14? 15?) years ago, back before I was married. I intended to use it for a sweater for the man who is now my husband, and even swatched a few times, but it just never seemed like the right project. And then a few years back I used some of the yarn as the shag for his father's mittens (apparently never blogged but you can see them on Ravelry if you care to) which pretty much put an end to that project. But there was plenty left for a teenager's sweater, and hat, and mittens & scarf ... and there's still one skein left over. That will go into the "misc. worsted" box, or maybe the "blues" box. I'd show you the empty box, but it has already been filled with handspun that used to be spilling out of a basket on the floor. And the basket? Well, let's just say that the floor is more visible now.

The joke's on me!

2009-05-27T06:46:00.002-05:00

The point of my post yesterday was not "poor me, no time" but rather my capacity for self-delusion -- that I would imagine a whole empty day stretching out before me, when really what I had was about three hours.

You'll note, however, that I imagined I could get quite a lot done with those three hours. In truth, by the end I had a reasonably clean kitchen, a couple of loads of laundry, and this shirt cut out & two pockets made but not applied. No weaving, no writing, no shirt for George to wear today. By the end of the afternoon I had gotten more done on the shirt while the children played with their friends, but I'm still halfway through the collar. And really, that's a reasonable amount to have accomplished. The amount I thought I could get done is the real joke.

So today I'm trying to be more reasonable in what I expect of myself. But I sure would like to finish that shirt -- and I need to do the writing project, and my loom is calling to me. If I want it badly enough, surely I can squeeze it in?

A day to myself?

2009-05-26T07:45:00.004-05:00

My children are in two different school systems. My son, just finishing second grade, is in the local public school, while my daughter still goes to the preschool that is really a laboratory for the education students at the local college. The preschool is on the university schedule, and shuts down before finals so the ed students can study, so she has been out of school for several weeks already.

Today her summer session begins. Today is also my son's penultimate day of second grade. So yesterday, when Charlotte's best friend's mother invited her over for the afternoon, my first thought was, "Hooray! A day to myself!"

And I could use one. I am just a wee bit over committed right now. I have a couple of writing projects due in the next few days; I am weaving my first-ever commission (!), also due shortly; and I am making George a shirt which he would really like to wear to school tomorrow. And there's the laundry and the disgraceful state of the bathrooms -- I've been spending a lot of time gardening, so the house has gone to pieces. And speaking of the garden, while the most urgent tasks (transplanting) have been finished, there's lots more that needs to be done asap if the plants are going to have the strength & root development to survive the hell that is July and August around here. Not to mention some brick-laying projects I have in mind, and the capping & removal of the old gas grill, and talking to roofing contractors, and, and, and....

So I was really excited about a whole day to myself. Then this morning I really thought about it. Here's my day of wide-open possibilities:

7-7:40 breakfast for kids & husband, packing lunches, shoving people out the door.
8:40 - 9:20 taking Charlotte to preschool
11:10 leave to pick Charlotte up at 11:30, taking picnic lunch along (looks like rain, can we eat in van?)
noonish: after picnic, drop her off at friend's house, get home about 12:30
2:40 leave to get George, then Charlotte. Probably too rainy for park -- ask friends over?

And so my Day to Myself has really dwindled to two chunks of time:
9:20 - 11:10 (minus time to make lunches)
12:30 - 2:40

It's nothing to sneeze at, but I had better use it wisely. Writing in morning, shirt in afternoon, weaving tomorrow? Weaving in morning, shirt in afternoon, writing while kids play with friends? (ooh, that won't work!) Shirt in morning, writing in afternoon, weaving while kids play with friends? Shirt in morning, interrupted by mad dashes to computer as I think of something to write, and then some weft fondling on my way back to sewing machine? I think my breakfast eggs must be done by now, so I'm signing off. Wish me a productive use of my day!

PS Must remember to pick up ice cream for Cloverbuds fishing / root beer float party tonight or kids will be very disappointed.

Grrrr!

2009-05-25T22:17:00.002-05:00

Once again I have wound a perfectly fine warp and then introduced tangles while sleying/threading. It comes from putting multiple threads in a single dent without any way to keep them straight.

Fortunately this warp is pearl cotton which could stand the strain & should be just fine. But I think I need to try warping back to front.

Preschool weaving.

2009-04-27T10:54:00.002-05:00

Hey, I'm back! I spent half of my free time last week weaving with the kids at Charlotte's preschool and the other half playing Pet Society on Facebook. In fact, last night I sewed the final seam on this pillow WHILE playing Pet Society. I think this might explain why I am not as productive as some people ....

This was a very fun project. I warped up my two-harness table loom (seen here) with orange and yellow pearl cotton, and took in an assortment of yarns for weft. They included lots of novelty fringe & fuzzy yarns, some soft worsted wools, and some sport weight cotton left over from the Blue / Magenta vest.

It was interesting to see what the kids picked. Many liked the eyelash & furry yarns, and expressly commented on the changing colors. Others wanted a smooth yarn in a solid color. Some really liked the soft, soft, soft purple acrylic. Not one child chose the exact same fuzzy yarn in white.

I did this last year as well, though I see I never blogged about it. It was a wonderful experience for me and a lot of fun for the kids, too, as far as I can tell. Last year we wove a scarf-sized piece of fabric -- 6-8 inches wide is plenty for little hands -- and I turned it into the bag that goes home with a school puppet every night. This year I thought we might make a pillow for their library corner.

Each weaver signed the back (some added drawings as well). The kids range in age from 3 to 5, and their manual skills vary pretty widely, too, but all of them were able to weave successfully. In fact, when I took the loom to a park playdate on Friday to finish up the warp, I wove with a not-quite-two year old, who was then able to explain the process to someone else ("turn this").

In general, 3 and some 4 year olds need a lot of assistance -- steady reminding about the next step; many 4 year olds can chug along fine with only the occasional reminder, and five year olds and older just need help changing yarns and advancing the warp. But that's a broad generalization. Helping the individual kids was just fascinating; they all approached it a little differently. Several had woven last year and remembered it well. Some kids wanted to weave for a few minutes and were then done with it; others came back every day for another turn.

Here Charlotte demonstrates the size of the finished pillow.

The color interactions really intrigue me. I like to use two different colors in the warp to help the kids know whether or not they have changed the shed, but it can make for a speckledy result. Here, though, the orange has receded in most places.

And all those fuzzy, furry, hairy novelty yarns are pretty tame in the final product. That bumpy blue yarn adds the only really contrasting note; without it I think the pillow would be kind of boring.

Off to school -- where I hope to get a picture of me with the weavers!

Back from Planet Viking!

2009-04-06T09:09:00.008-05:00

Final tally: 9 garments in 11 days, plus one inkle belt woven, one batch of sculpy brooches made, four bead necklaces assembled. Other belts / trim / bottle holders were made in advance, some specifically for the fair but most not.

Pretty much everything I made for myself was a bit too big.

So was George's neckline, which is why I made him an undertunic as well. Unfortunately I have no pictures of that. Fortunately I am sure he will be happy to put it all back on again.

Love the eye roll!

Doesn't she look sweet? She wishes her dress was more swirly, but likes the swirl in the back of the apron dress. I think the difference between front and back is interesting but I think she would rather have it swirly all around.

Here you can see the gores in both Dean's tunic and her apron dress -- they were twirling.

What I learned: Lots! First of all, I have to abandon my image of myself as someone who "can't really sew." There's lots of room for improvement, but standing there surrounded by my family entirely dressed in clothes I made within the last couple of weeks really made an impact on me.

It was amazing to me how much confidence I gained in the course of this project. The first couple of garments took a long time -- partly because I was figuring out the patterns (see my post on Charlotte's dress) but also because I kept sewing things together wrong way out. I ripped a lot of seams. Partly that was because these fabrics look the same on both sides, but partly it was because I couldn't keep track of what I was doing. And I had to measure, and study, and draw cutting lines, and measure again. But by the end of the process I was proceeding much more confidently. In fact, I made George's pants and undertunic on Saturday, before we went to the second day of the fair. The tunic is made from scraps of Dean's pants (big scraps because I bought too much fabric), and I was able to bind the neck entirely by machine.

I learned or relearned a lot of sewing techniques, and put into practice many things which I have read about but not done before. I was very pleased to finally figure out machine blindstitched hems. Unfortunately my machine refused to disgorge the zigzag cam in favor of the blindstitching cam until after I had done almost all of my hems. It's working smoothly now -- I guess it took a couple of days for that drop of oil to soak in! As it turns out, you can fake a blindstitched hem with a zigzag, but it won't be nearly as invisible. It still looks better than a hem sewn on top, in my opinion.

Here are the two hems side by side.

On the inside you can see the difference: the blindstitch has four or five straight stitches before the one zigzag reaching over to the outer fabric. The zigzag worked okay, though, and there's no way I'm going to redo the hems. They are very, very long.

My "cloak" is just the handwoven yardage that I haven't yet turned into cushions for my rocking chair. I cut it in half & machine feather stitched the panels together. This is so cool! I just butted the pieces together, irregular selvages & all. In my test swatch, it was very easy to rip the seaming out without damage. I think if you did this before finishing it would be almost invisible afterwards. One of my many unfinished projects involves sewing five blanket panels together by hand; this really has me thinking!

Another technique that enchanted me was french seams. I used them on Charlotte's dress only; after that I abandoned finished seams in favor of finished garments. I hope I don't regret that after washing the clothes! But I am definitely going to experiment more with finished seams.

I also really liked the experience of working with rectangles of fabric. The apron dresses in particular are cut from one long rectangle, cut apart and reassembled without scraps. That is so cool! Of course, there are no sleeves or shoulders in them, which helps. But it was very interesting to compare the scraps from the tunics & underdresses (mostly small or large & square enough to be usable) with the scraps from the pajama style pants I made for the guys (curved, tapered, and often unusable). If I were spinning the yarn and weaving the cloth I'm pretty sure which style of pattern drafting I'd favor!

And I learned a lot about Vikings and about clothing & cloth usage by trying to make semi-authentic costumes instead of something that just looked "Viking-y." I was particularly interested in all the discussion I found online about aprons, apron dresses, and possible reconstructions. I owe a real debt to all the reenactors who have made garments, worn them, thought about them, and written up their experiences. Really this is one of the wonderful things about the internet. And how cool to be able to find detailed diagrams of Viking shirt seams?

Notes for next year: Start sooner! The garments themselves are of course essential, but what was really fun to make & to wear was all the accessories and details. I wish I'd had time to trim many more of the garments, and to make undertunics for all of us, and better cloaks (instead of blankets!) and pouches, etc., etc.

Dean wants an undertunic (so the weather will be warmer!) and trim on his tunic.
George wants a belt to match his sleeve trim, maybe another pouch. He would like to be in the costume contest next year; plan on this. His tunics will probably fit, his pants will probably be too short. Make real viking pants?
Charlotte wants to be a princess. Start Really Early!
If Charlotte's a princess, maybe I should match? I'd love to make a kirtle for myself ....

... but for now, it's laundry, bill paying, grocery shopping and cleaning -- all the stuff I've ignored since before our trip to Florida.

ETA: Thanks to Iris, whose Halloween costumes really inspired this whole project!

Endless sewing

2009-03-31T17:34:00.003-05:00

I must have been out of my mind to think I could outfit the whole family in a week. Still, some semblance of Viking-hood has been created. Miles to go before I sleep, though.

Just a few quick notes:

* Fabulous guides exist on the web. In particular, Hefdharfru Vidgis Vestfirzka's underdress page and accompanying apron dress page (doesn't show diagrams in Firefox, works fine in IE) are what I've used for Charlotte's & my outfits. For the guys, I've relied heavily on this overview, Christina Krupp's guide and Cynthia Virtue's tunic worksheet.

* One garment a day is ambitious but doable. Two a day is madness.

* There appears to be no limit to the number of times I can sew seams wrong side out.

* As a corollary to that, the real secret behind the Damendorf Trousers is clearly someone who cuts fabric like me: cut it too small, sew bits and pieces onto it to make it bigger, cut it again, repeat.

Time to put dinner on. After dinner: pajama style pants for Dean.

Tally sheet:
Charlotte's dress: done
My dress: done except for sleeve hems
Dean's tunic: done
George's tunic: done except for sleeve hems
George's pants: may be able to use existing pair
Dean's pants: not started
Charlotte's apron: not started
My apron: not started

We plan to be at the fair in approximately 70 hours.

Miscalculation

2009-03-27T07:58:00.004-05:00

I don't think these sleeves are going to fit!

Maybe if she just keeps her arms inside ....

In case you were wondering ...

2009-03-13T12:33:00.003-05:00

... the maximum length of an inkle band I can weave on my Ashford inkle loom appears to be 3 yds., 5 inches. (Minifigs included for scale.)

I assume my crummy selvages will improve with practice.

5/2 pearl cotton, 106 threads, about 2 1/4 inches. This will probably be George's belt / sword belt, but I might cut it up to trim our outfits.

More about weaving.

2009-03-11T09:36:00.003-05:00

Here is my scarf, hanging to dry. It is Rowan Botany in two lights, one dark. You can see that a) I did not record how many dark rows I did at the beginning, and so didn't match it at the end, and b) there's a spot where I did two rows of light instead of four. But I like it anyways.

This shot was taken outside, and shows the colors better. It also shows the problematic selvedges. I'm thinking about using a two color blanket stitch around the edge to neaten it up some -- what do you think?

Here is my temporary weaving studio:

Charlotte was weaving just where her loom is sitting now, which gave her a pretty good view of the mechanics of the floor loom.

Here are some closeups of the loom (since you asked, Caroline). It makes more sense when it is threaded but that's some days off yet. Looking from the front:

and from the back:

There are some pictures of the loom threaded here and especially here.
But I am on a different tangent right now, having just realized that the Medieval Fair is only 10 days after we return from next week's vacation. We are planning on going as a Viking family but nothing more than planning has occurred to make this happen.

Some fast research has revealed that the most distinctive thing about Viking dress is a lot of decorative banding around wrists and neck openings. So I have warped up my inkle loom:

and started weaving:

This long band ought to be enough to make George a belt & sword belt, if he wants one. I'm going to take some tablet weaving on vacation with us. Then I can sew like crazy after we get back & with luck get it all done in time. I'm trying to forget that last year's "fast research" got me to the fair dressed as a barmaid instead of a merchant's wife.

A totally unrelated picture:

Who on earth would offer a disposable (manual) razor as an incentive for buying batteries? This makes no sense to me at all. The batteries were on sale, so I bought them, but I am very puzzled.

Weaving has occurred ...

2009-03-09T07:47:00.005-05:00

... not that I can prove it, given the mysterious lack of all AA batteries in the house. But I have woven a nice houndstooth scarf. Well -- nearly houndstooth, at any rate. More about that when I have pictures.

I spent much of my weaving time planning my next warp, and hope to spend time at the warping board today. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a few knitting pictures.

Here are the two pairs of mittens that I sent off to Akkol (two pairs on right) and a pair I knitted many years ago, to reassure me that the lumpy tips will even out. The far right pair is my favorite Chipman's block. The middle pair is Salt & Pepper, i.e. two colors, alternated. I was in love with this while knitting because the fabric is very smooth and dense, but once I looked at the finished object I was bothered by the way every little variation in tension shows up. Perhaps it will even out over time.

The yellow pair was worn by my nephew K. when he was about Charlotte's age (and size). He loved them and wore them years after they actually fit. They appear to have been run through the washing machine but I haven't asked. Aside from the perpetually wide ribbing, they've survived just fine, and Charlotte wears them now. They are in Mattie Owl's Patch (or Compass) which is an 8 stitch variation of Fox & Geese & Fences. I like it much better, although it's more trouble to knit.

Hmm. It appears I don't actually have the knitting pictures I thought I did, so here's my one weaving photo:

These are the ends after I wound on the warp. Look at the differences! I think I need a raddle, so I can warp back to front. Front to back on such a stretchy warp (Rowan Botany) seems problematic. It worked out fine in the scarf but I hate to see it so uneven here.

And giving up all pretense of fiber content, here is Charlotte's portrait of her best friend:

Let me tell you, the hair and the smile are pretty accurate!

Here's hoping your Monday is going well. I had better get mine underway.

Mitten books

2009-02-27T08:57:00.003-06:00

It looks like I will only be sending two pairs of mittens off to Kazakhstan on Monday. I'm just not willing to turn my whole weekend over to knitting furiously. It's taking me about 3 days to make a pair without thumbs, so I can easily finish up the fourth mitten & make four thumbs in the next three days, but doing that AND making a whole third pair seems like more than I want to tackle.

While I've been knitting these mittens I've also found myself looking through lots of my mitten books. I thought it might be fun to write a roundup review.

As I mentioned before, the mitten books I turn to most often are Robin Hansen's Fox & Geese & Fences and Flying Geese & Partridge Feet. Over the years I've made several dozen pairs following these instructions, usually the two color Maine mittens (rounded tips). Oddly enough, there are quite a few patterns I've never tried, since a few have become my favorites. I make Chipman's Block, Spruce / Jacob's Ladder, and Mattie Owl's Patch / Compass over and over again. I wrote about these mittens last year, though, so I won't say more now.

One of the first mitten-specific books I bought was The Swedish Mitten Book : Traditional Patterns from Gotland, by Inger & Ingrid Gottfridsson. (Lark, 1984) I was a new knitter and unnerved by the fine gauge -- the "bulky" version of the patterns uses fingering weight yarn and #0 or #1 needles, so it was quite a few years before I actually made anything out of this book. The patterns vary widely, from small allover patterns with short floats to large, multicolored florals with very long floats. As with much Swedish knitting, practicality takes second place behind beauty. This made more sense to me when I realized that the Gottfridssons were recording traditional patterns on the small canvas of mittens, rather than specifically recording traditional mitten patterns. Mittens really do need to be practical, and long floats are more of a problem in mittens than they would be on a sweater. I've made a couple of pairs of mittens from this book and have used the patterns on other garments as well, which I think is what they had in mind.

A little while later I bought Lizbeth Upitis' Latvian Mittens : Traditional Designs & Techniques. (Dos Tejadoros, 1981) This is a fantastic book, full of astonishing patterns, knitting techniques, and Latvian folklore. At the time I was floored to read that she was not Latvian, just married to a Latvian -- and here she was, publishing a book about his ethnic heritage, in Latvian (and English), no less. Now I'm married to a Norwegian, and I get it, at least a little. (I haven't learned Norwegian, though.) I have the first edition -- have wanted the second ever since it came out, but just can't bring myself to buy it when I have so many charts in the first that I've yet to explore -- but I think my comments would apply to the second as well. There are detailed instructions for a simple child's mitten and four full-fledged adult mittens from various districts, along with photos of another 48 (the second edition has twice as many ) and charts for 103 mittens which of course could be mixed & matched to make a gazillion different mittens. There are several interesting techniques including a knitted-in fringe and a sort of wrapped stitch that looks like braiding; I've seen these elsewhere since then but this was the first place.

I've made a couple of Latvian mittens and have used the techniques elsewhere as well. I love to look at the color combinations. The mittens I like best use at least three colors at a time, though, and I usually only want to knit with two. So I haven't made as many of these as of the Maine mittens.

A couple of years ago (or maybe longer, time blurs) I bought a lovely little book called Cimdi. Durani : Savpatna Vertiba Latvija / Gloves. Mittens : Unique Heritage of Latvia. It's a tiny little book (about the size of a mitten when open) published by the Dept. of Ethnography of the History Museum of Latvia. It has no knitting information per se, but lots of beautiful photographs and interesting historical information. I'm not sure whether this is still available; I think I got my copy from Schoolhouse Press.

Homespun, Handknit was another purchase fairly early in my knitting life; I bought it when I still thought handspinning was crazy. I don't think I've ever knit a mitten straight from this book but there are lots of interesting patterns. I find it very stimulating to read about other people's handspun projects. I also wonder why I've never made the darling sheep mittens -- Charlotte may need a pair for next winter.

Marcia Lewandowski's Folk Mittens : Techniques and Patterns for Handknitted Mittens is a very nice overview of many different mitten traditions, from Northern Europe to South America. Several patterns from different regions of North America are included; oddly enough, Maine & the Maritime provinces are not included. But this book would be a very good starting place for someone who wanted to explore different traditions. Lots of different thumbs and cuffs are included, though as part of patterns rather than in a separate discussion. Almost all of the mittens tips are decreased at the little-finger & thumb sides, rather than in a round; there's no real discussion of the choices you make in shaping a mitten tip. My only quibble is with her statement that twisting yarns while doing tvandstickning is old-fashioned and "rarely done today." Well, tvandstickning is rarely done today, but there are plenty of people who believe you can only really call it tvandstickning if you do indeed twist the yarns.

Anna Zilboorg's Magnificent Mittens (XRX, 1998) is a real gem. It is not a record of any particular ethnic tradition; instead, it's her distillation of many mitten traditions. She relies heavily on Scandinavian and Baltic traditions but also includes lots of Turkish patterns which shakes things up a little. She offers mittens with thumb gores, mittens without thumb gores, mittens with cuffs, mittens with enormous gauntlets, many, many fabulous cuff treatments, and lots of information on combining all of the above. She knits her mittens from the tip to the cuff, and has very clear instructions on how to do so. She also dyes all her own colors and includes the color formulas for replicating them using Washfast Acid dyes from ProChem. The book itself is beautiful, and it lies flat and stays open. Yeah, XRX! Some of the photography is a little too self-consciously romantic for me, but that's a small price to pay for a durable, well made book.
I have made a couple of pairs of mittens from this book. They were fun to make and fun to wear.

Charlene Schurch's Knitting Marvelous Mittens : Ethnic Designs from Russia was published in 1998 but I didn't buy it until a couple of years ago. I can't imagine why not; it's right up my alley. She has documented the knitting of a rapidly disappearing culture in Russia's northwest. There are some very interesting reticulated patterns in here that look like a lot of fun to knit. She says they are easy to remember but look complicated. Since I haven't knit any yet I can only say that they do, indeed, look complicated. The how-to section is basic but functional; the point of the book is clearly to reproduce the pattern charts.

Last winter I was thrilled to discover Terri Shea's Selbuvotter : Biography of a Knitting Tradition. This wonderful book includes detailed charts and information on more than 30 Selbu mittens and gloves from the collections of the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle and of Annemor Sundbo. They demonstrate what a wide range of designs, from geometric to pictorial, are included in the Selbu visual vocabulary. There are also very thorough chapters on techniques and materials that enable the knitter to recreate any of the historic mittens or to create her own. I love Selbu mittens and have knitted a few from other sources, but the wealth of information contained here is just amazing. I can't explain why I haven't knitted anything from this book yet. (Hey, look, I reviewed ths one already, too. I guess I'm just repeating myself today.)

Another recent purchase is Nanette Blanchard's Glove Knitting. This is a short, self-published booklet (unpaginated, but about 36 pages, depending on whether you're counting pages with information, or pages inside the covers) that is chock full of information on thumb gores, methods of finger construction, dealing with holes between fingers, and so forth. The only gloves I've knitted were the hands & feet of my giant gorilla (Rav link) and they didn't have to fit, just look right. I really enjoyed knitting them, though, so I leapt on this book when I found it. Haven't ever knitted from it, though. Do you see a pattern emerging?

I was very excited to order Carol Rasmussen Noble's Knitting Fair Isle Mittens & Gloves. I've read her writing for years with enjoyment & enlightenment, I love her Orenburg shawl book, and I love Fair Isle knitting. So it is with heavy heart that I tell you that I just don't like this book. Or rather, I don't like the hand coverings in the book. The book itself is well written, well charted, and well illustrated. It has a crummy binding that won't stay open and will probably shed pages if I ever start knitting from it, but that is unfortunately a fairly common flaw. But for whatever reason, the designs just don't speak to me. This makes me so unhappy that I haven't really tried to analyze why I don't like them; I just put the book back on the shelf and hope I'll like them better next time. (I just see that copies are listed on Amazon for $133-190; maybe I shouldn't just be putting it back on the shelf!)(Does anyone really pay these prices?) I think perhaps that my dislike stems from the way the patterns look like they are applied to the mittens rather than that they are the mitten -- in most of the examples the color patterning ends when you get to the fingers (on gloves) or the fingertips (on mittens). Maybe I just like allover patterning better. Hmmm. Will think about this.

In the meantime, here is a quick picture of the mittens I've knit this week. I've shown one of each pair inside out:

They are knit in Classic Elite's Tapestry, a worsted weight & worsted spun wool & mohair blend. The red and green pair are in Chipman's Block (surprise) and fit my son; the tan & brown pair are in Salt & Pepper and fit me. Salt & Pepper was a surprise for me. I usually avoid it because it looks so boring but I love the way the fabric is turning out. It's very smooth and dense and of course there are no ends for even the most contrary fingers to get snagged on.

finished .. sort of

2009-02-24T08:41:00.002-06:00

I went ahead and finished the frill -- after all, it's just crochet & easy to take out if I change my mind. I think I like it but we'll see.

No photos because I still need to get buttons and because it went and got cold again here. I'm on to the next thing, anyways. Mittens for Akkol is running a quick campaign due to the unexpected availability of a shipping container. I need to send my things out next Monday and am trying to knit up a stack of mittens before then. The group leader was at the orphanage in December and said there were kids playing outside with bare hands when it was -20 F. That's far colder than my deep freezer which is blowing my children's minds.

As always when I'm turning out lots of mittens, I'm using Robin Hansen's wonderful books, Fox & Geese & Fences and Flying Geese & Partridge Feet. They are both out of print as far as I know, but a lot of the patterns have been reissued in Favorite Mittens. There are lots of other mitten books, many of which are functional and fun to make, but these are fast & sturdy and utterly reliable.

I'm using Classic Elite's discontinued wool/mohair blend Tapestry for the mittens. It's a heavy worsted so all my mittens are coming out a little bigger than the patterns suggest. That's no problem since I'm not knitting for a specific person as long as I remember to use the next measurement up when the pattern says "knit for x inches." Otherwise I get a stubby little mitten!

Off to the doctor's to get my clean bill of health (I hope) -- almost done with ribbing, must pick a pattern before I go!

another question

2009-02-20T12:15:00.002-06:00

I've crocheted all the way around the bottom/front/neck opening, and put on half of the frill. What do you think? I love it on the pattern photo but I worry that it's too frilly on me.

Here's a blurry photo of the armhole. (Can't retake because a child is hanging on me as I type, saying, "Please can we eat lunch SOON, I'm starving" and I feel bad asking her to wait even longer.) Anyways, it's frilly. I like it but I suspect I might feel Too Old For Frills -- or even worse, I wouldn't feel it but everyone looking at me might!

Or am I overthinking this? I do appreciate the comments on the bust darts and am just not looking at them now.

setback

2009-02-14T16:41:00.004-06:00

Here's my Beech Leaf vest, partially made up. (The right side seam is pinned, not sewn, which is why it is saggy. ) I am happy with everything except about six stitches on each front ....

... can you guess which ones?

The wrapped stitches seem very visible to me, like an arrow pointing to my bust. I guess cotton shows the slight unevenness more than wool. Also my placement ended up a titch high, so the stitches are on the upper curve of my breast; perhaps they would be less noticeable if they were on the underside & somewhat in shadow. The decreases & increases I did for a (very) little waist shaping show a bit, too, but because they are not in such a prominent spot they are less noticeable.

I'm really not sure what to do. I'm afraid that if I leave them like this, I won't like the way the vest looks & I won't wear it. So I'm considering ripping back the top half of each front. It would mean taking out the shoulder seams and about 1/2 inch of the side seams; the knitting itself shouldn't take too long. I could be back at this point in a few days ... though blocking would be pesky.

But look at how nicely it hangs on the side! No pulling up in the front! I really hate the way that looks. So if I take out the bust darts, then maybe I won't wear this because of the way it hangs!

Ideas? Suggestions? Chocolate?

Blocking!

2009-02-09T11:17:00.004-06:00

Here is the Beech Leaf vest, blocking at last!

It looks a little wonky, because I knit in some bust shaping and of course that means the pieces aren't really flat. Also I spun the pieces out in the washing machine which left some wrinkles. If they don't disappear as it dries I will have to steam them, and I may need to steam the bust darts over a tailor's ham. But the pieces match each other in length and width and the scallops are pinned out to the same dimensions. I can't wait to seam it up!

And I know it's silly to be so impatient when I have been knitting this for a year, but look:

Do you think it will be dry by the time the kids have gone to sleep?

Sock surprise

2009-02-06T13:17:00.002-06:00

I have finished the Lang Jawoll socks that I have been knitting since approximately before the flood. They have lived in an inner pocket of my purse as my "emergency knitting" for many, many months, so many that I was quite astonished to finish. But.

They are not identical. The sock on the left has about four more stitches than the sock on the right -- I must have stopped my gusset decreases sooner. So it used up just a teeny bit more yarn with each round, just enough to make the toes mismatched. (Notice, though that BOTH SOCKS have just a tiny bit of white right at the bindoff. Cruel.) Also, the lines on the sock on the right slant up, as if the fabric is being stretched more. They feel the same on my feet, so I plan on ignoring the difference in size.

Unfortunately they are extremely ugly. I don't like the contrast between the dark colors and the white, and I think the speckles just make it worse. They are headed for a dark blue dyebath. Or maybe black. Unless I get lazy and just wear them like this.

I do think this is the last of the self-striping speckledy sock yarns in my enormous bin. I bought a lot before I realized that I don't like them. Or maybe I bought some after I realized that, because they were a good deal. (Note to self: don't do this.)

This is the first time I've knitted with Lang Jawoll. I liked it just fine. I used 2 mm needles (size 0), as I do with most sock yarns I've tried. It's not particularly soft but not rough, either. It feels sturdy. The socks are boring -- 2x2 ribbed legs, gusset heel, ribbed top of foot.

Here's a picture showing one sock off my foot. It's hard to believe it fits:

Charlotte looked at it the other day and said, "You started those back when your feet were smaller." I do love the stretchiness of 2x2 rib.

Must start another pair of socks for emergency knitting purposes. I'd like to make them fancier -- except then they might not qualify as emergency knitting, they might be a Real Project. Which means I'd have to remember what I was doing instead of just letting them languish in my purse. Not that these turned out to be totally foolproof ...

Solution

2009-02-03T16:48:00.004-06:00

I talked to Dorothy Siemens, who designed the Beech Leaf vest, and she encouraged me to reuse my swatch yarn. Since I was just starting the second front piece, I used new yarn and knitted up yarn in alternate pairs of rows, to minimize any differences. I also used the yarn straight from the swatch, without ripping, skeining, steaming & winding, on the theory that the crinkles would put a little extra yarn into the stitches just in case. Or maybe I was lazy. We'll see if I get a boucle effect.

I'm up to the armpit & bust darts, and even thought to measure the other front up against myself to see if the bust dart placement looked good. It does, although it's perhaps a little high. Since I expect a cotton lace vest to stretch, I think I'll leave them there. (Laziness clouding my judgment? I hope not.)

So if I can get knitting instead of spending my evenings playing Lego Star Wars (hey! I blew up the Death Star!) I might even have a vest next week. Although there is far too much two-steps-forward, one-step-back going on. I was wondering about it to my son -- I didn't make nearly as many mistakes on the first two pieces of this garment, and I've pretty much memorized the pattern, so what's going on -- when I realized that I had stopped looking at the pattern. Unfortunately "pretty much" memorized doesn't quite cut it. I've pulled the pattern card out of my knitting bag, and soon I will have the pattern page there for tallying decreases as well. This garment has reached the stay-at-home stage, just as I'm getting out and about again! But I'm excited to have the end in sight.

Since no post is complete without a picture, but I have no fiber related ones to share today, here's one of my kids at Wall-E's home away from home:

Restrictions

2009-01-26T08:48:00.002-06:00

[Warning: this post is just grumbling, not even any pictures.]

I had some surgery a couple of weeks ago. Actually, two weeks ago to the minute, now that I think about it. It wasn't major surgery, but it wasn't exactly minor although I don't know how you classify that sort of thing. I spent one night in the hospital, and several days on the couch without moving much at all. Now I feel almost normal, except that I tire easily.

But apparently inside me things are not yet mended. I keep visualizing the surgery as the sort of mending I do on clothes -- stabilize the edges, sew on a patch, cut out the weak bits, tidy it up, and put it back in the drawer. I gather that this, instead, is more like building an artificial reef: the doctor put in the framework, but my body must do the coral's work, building a strong and solid repair layer by tissue-thin layer. My conscious self's job is to not interrupt that process.

So no lifting. For the past two weeks, I've been unable to lift more than 10 pounds. Today I graduate to no more than 30 pounds, but the sudden change seems odd to me and I'm going to try to go a little more gradually. No exercise -- including no yoga, no tai chi, no Wii bowling. For the past two weeks I haven't been able to drive, but that's over with just in time for the start of Charlotte's preschool (and for a threatened ice storm).

In practical terms, this means I have to plan ahead and have my husband strategically place the heavy things I will need during the day -- laundry hampers, my sewing machine, the enormous box of white-clothes-for-dyeing that just might hold the garments George needs to make his clone trooper costume.

But it also means that when George suddenly wants to try needlepoint, I can't move the 20 boxes of yarn that are in front of the one labeled Needlepoint. It means I can't overdye the screaming blue Ayany yarn, because I can't lift dyepots. And -- worst of all, I think -- I'm pretty sure "no exercise" means another four weeks before I can spin with a wheel, which of course is now what I want to do Most of All.

Hence this whine. But at least I am comforted by the thought that all bets will be off at the end of February. I'm going to try to use this time to imagine what it would be like if this were a permanent situation, say due to a heart condition -- and then use those imaginings to fuel both my own attempts at better fitness, and a little more sympathy for the apparently unimpaired folks using handicapped parking spaces.

In the meantime, I guess it's back to the Beech Leaf vest.

A little miscalculation ....

2009-01-24T13:32:00.003-06:00

I am making lots of progress on my Beech Leaves vest. In fact, I've finished the back and one front piece. But I have a problem. Here is the finished front piece:

Here is my remaining yarn:

That's not even enough to finish the front, let alone work the edgings.

I had a lot of trouble getting gauge -- don't know why, since I ended up using the recommended needles (!), but because of it this yarn shortage doesn't surprise me too much. Look at this:

But I'm not sure whether I can use the yarn from these swatches. The yarn shrinks a fair amount when it's washed, so it seems to me that knitting with it in combination with unwashed yarn is just asking for wonky results. I might be able to use it for the edgings, if I washed the individual pieces first. Has anyone used Fiddlesticks' Ecoknit cotton? What do you think?

I also think there's about half a skein somewhere in my wool room / office, because when I weigh everything I come up about 20 grams short. But I've been keeping an eye out for it for the past six months and it hasn't shown up, so I'm trying to track down another skein. I'm looking for Fiddlestick's Ecoknit cotton in Coffee, lot number FSEK05. Chances are slim, I know, but it's worth asking.

Despite the yarn shortage, I'm very pleased with the way the vest is turning out. The same can't be said for my Ayany vest, though. I don't seem to have posted about it since that entry a year ago, but in the meantime I fixed the bust shaping placement (I thought) and came very close to finishing it. Then I tried it on one more time and discovered that the armholes were still gappy. I set it down in disgust for, oh, six months, then tried it on again and discovered the armholes hadn't fixed themselves. So I was planning on ripping the whole thing back and doing it over, but couldn't really work up much enthusiasm. Last week I tried it on and realized that the real problem was my total lack of interest in the finished product. I can't ever imagine myself choosing to wear it. That really doesn't seem right, does it? The garter stitch is too rustic and the blue is too bright -- they don't match, and neither is really quite to my taste. So I ripped the whole thing out. Now I wonder if I was a bit too precipitous -- I wish I'd taken some notes on exactly what I did, so that I don't do it again -- but I'm sure I made the right decision. Maybe I'll overdye it and start again, or maybe I'll just let the yarn age for a while.

(P.S. Sorry for the long silence. I'm back.)

Rant

2008-11-03T06:21:00.003-06:00

I hate time changes! Even this one, which is supposed to be the "easy" one. Yeah, I guess so .... if you can sleep in. But my body wakes up at the same time every day, so now I'm awake, but I can't get my day started because we have arbitrarily declared that no, it's not the same time anymore. And of course I'm extra tired because I forced myself to stay up late last night so I would be tired so I'd sleep in ....

... but I didn't. And for the next week I'll be hungry at the wrong time and tired at all times and have cranky kids who are going through the same thing, and an overtired husband who could sleep an hour (or two) later any day you mention and in about four months we'll do it all over again, in reverse.

Grrrr.

Halloween madness

2008-11-02T19:05:00.003-06:00

This is our house on Halloween. It's modestly decorated, because I don't want to scare away small children. (Also, I'm lazy.) We have a slew of pumpkins, the strings of ghost lights, one tombstone, a couple of bat & skeleton yard stakes in a purposely disheveled front garden, and a few odds and ends like the skull you may or may not be able to see near the tree stake. I had intended to make giant cheesecloth ghosts with the kids this year but couldn't really figure out how to hang them, plus I still think they might spook the teeny ones.

But we did make one major addition this year. Can you see the spider web in front of the window?

Last year I bought a package of "cobwebs" with which we decorated the yard. It's just some synthetic fiber that you can pull out into filmy shreds. I've seen it around forever but never used it before. As a spinner I should have realized that this fiber would be incredibly strong; when I went to remove it I had a hard time getting it off the bushes, and I realized that a bird could be in real trouble if it got tangled up in the fiber. I just don't feel right about using it. But my kids really enjoyed the idea of webs.

So this year I bought one made of clothesline. It's not very well made but I think it will last for quite a few years if we are careful. But a web needs a spider, right? And I just didn't like any of the ones I saw at stores ....

so I made one:

dorsal surface

ventral surface
(string is for tying her to the web)

Here is Charlotte to give you the scale
(gloves for spider handling safety? I didn't ask)

I wish this had audio; she was advancing upon
me and saying "Aaaahhhhgggghhh"

The pattern is this one from Caron but made out of Red Heart supersaver acrylic (used double) for durability exposed to the weather. It's stuffed with gray wool to avoid show-through, and I didn't use the crocheted eyes. There are two 6mm pipecleaners twisted together inside each leg but the wire really isn't sturdy enough. Next year I might do something about that ... or I might not.

I chose the pattern because it seemed to be a much more realistic shape than most of the patterns I found on the web -- the ventral surface is flat, all increasing occurs on the dorsal surface. However, I didn't really notice until I had finished the body that it was more of a garden spider shape than a black widow shape. My husband convinced me that I shouldn't remake it and really I'm glad he did. My kids loved this, most trick or treaters did, too, and it was finished in time. What more could you ask for a holiday project?

My eyes cannot perceive brown ...

2008-10-22T14:23:00.003-05:00

... or why else do all the firefighter outfits I dye turn out orange?

This week I am attempting to turn a velour shirt and pants into a Scooby Doo outfit for my daughter. We had a great time dyeing them yesterday, but my carefully mixed dyebath produced what this wikipedia page calls burnt umber or possibly even maroon -- brownish red, or very reddish brown. Scooby Doo, of course, is more of a raw umber color, with a very yellow undertone.

I don't actually like this color, which might be why I can't seem to figure out the dye ratio.

After giving it much thought, this morning we overdyed it screaming lime green (about 3 tsp. of yellow & 1/4 tsp. blue, for 200 g. fabric). Once rinsed, it looked EXACTLY THE SAME to me, though of course since I hadn't matched it with anything ahead of time, I had no basis of comparison. I think it was a little less red but perhaps more orange.

On reflection, I decided that I had added too much yellow and not enough blue. So this afternoon I overdyed it a deep spruce blue (about 1 tsp each blue and yellow, although by now I was not measuring with any accuracy, just spooning and looking at the dye liquor). I was worried about making the outfit too dark, but I really had to get away from the red.

The result is beautiful (I think, it's still wet) but not quite Scooby colored. On the wiki page, it's sort of russet or sepia rather than raw umber, but it's definitely brown, and has a slight yellow undertone (which it certainly should, given how much yellow there is in it!). So I'm thinking this will pass muster.

As an aside, this is my first experiment with Dharma's velour clothes. They are really nice, but unlike many of Dharma's blanks they seem to run true to size. Unfortunately that means that this Scooby outfit is unlikely to fit even through the winter. What do you suppose the odds are that I'll be able to recreate the color?

Next up: Making a Scooby Hat.

A study in contrasts

2008-10-14T13:25:00.002-05:00

Outside: bleary

Inside: dreary

Instead:

Per her request, mittens (or maybe gloves) for C. in "rainbow pink" yarn that she helped card. It's a mix of fuchsia, red, black, maroon, white, blue, and turquoise wool (mostly fuchsia), lavender mohair, and bright blue Samoyed. It's lumpy, bumpy, and emphatically not dreary. Thanks, sweetie!

That train done gone ...

2008-10-14T09:52:00.004-05:00

... and my sweater's not on it.

I've finished so many things for afghans for Afghans at the last minute, but I just couldn't get this one done. Shame on me; I started it in July and got much of it done in August, then turned to other things.

As I've said before, I like knitting with wool, and I like finding charities that want wool garments for people in cold places where machine washability is not an issue. Fortunately (or not, depending on how you look at it) there are plenty of places like this. I think this sweater will be going to Kazakhstan, where winters get to 40 below, to an orphanage called Akkol. So it will be keeping someone warm. But I'm still annoyed at myself for not finishing.

Just to make myself feel better, I'll show you the shawls I did finish in time, for afghans for Afghans summer shawls-for-new-mothers campaign.

Why, yes, these photos were taken in a public park across from the post office in a small town in Iowa. I finished them on our drive to Nordic Fest and mailed them off just before the deadline. Are you implying something?

Decisions, decisions

2008-09-29T09:37:00.004-05:00

As I think I have mentioned before (translation: I am too lazy to check) my big project right now is to spin & then knit myself a cardigan. This was supposed to be my big project last winter, but it didn't get very far. But a winter's worth of wishing I had a nice gray cardigan might be the impetus to get me to actually make one this year.

I am using a Churro-Corriedale cross fleece that is nice to the touch but not the softest thing ever -- good, because I want this to be durable and long lasting. What passes for winter here is not all that cold, and I wear a wool cardigan as my outer coat through much of the long fall. When it gets colder, I just put a coat on top; I wear a wool cardigan almost every day and I want this one to be around for a few decades.

Last week I experimented with fiber prep. First I carded a batt, elongated it, & spun it supported long draw from the end for a semi everything style single, which I then made into a 3 ply with a fairly high angle of twist.

Next I combed yarn with both my English combs and my Viking combs, and spun them pretty much the same way.

(For comparison purposes, I noted that there was twice as much waste with the English combs but prep time was a little faster with the English. I also felt they were easier on my wrists, but harder to use in that I won't get them out when my kids are home. I'm afraid I'll stab myself in the thigh due to a sudden shriek or racing child. Prep time with the combs seemed about comparable to carding, though I didn't keep records when I made that batt, either of the time spent teasing or the amount of waste (considerable as there were lots of second cuts).)

Here's the swatch knit up from those three yarns:

On the bottom is the carded fiber. The middle bit is Viking combs & the top is English.

In person the yarn made from carded fiber is much fuzzier. I'm not sure if the difference will persist through many washes or wearings, though. (And in all honesty, my husband says the differences are all but imperceptable to him.)

Here they are knit into a cable (with peculiar errors, but it was knit at a child's birthday party):

The bottom half is carded fiber. Then there's a garter stitch break; next comes the fiber prepped with Viking combs; after a faint black line comes the English comb version.

Here I see little or no difference -- do you?

Then I decided to try worsted prep & worsted spinning, again for a three ply. Because I'm hoping to do this sweater fairly quickly, I spun the singles at an easy size, which was a little finer than the easy size for the long draw. Also, of course, the yarn didn't bloom as much (or really at all). So I knitted this swatch separately, on 5's instead of 7's:

Here are the two yarns that differ the most, the drum carded & the worsted spun. Even though my scanner couldn't quite focus on them you can still see the difference in fuzziness:

Here are the swatches side by side:

Now you can really see the difference. They are both very appealing to me. I like the clarity of the worsted yarn, but I like the fuzziness of the semi-woolen. Should I make a fuzzy-cable sweater if I'm thinking I might also make a twisted-stitch sweater, so that the contrast between the two will be greater? Should I choose the woolenish yarn because the worsted yarn takes twice as long to spin?

Also, and perhaps more seriously, I am planning on knitting as I spin, not spinning all the yarn first and then knitting. This means, of course, that I can't spin all the singles before plying, and so will need to stay pretty consistent as I go along. You can see in the photo of the two yarns that the woolen style yarn is much more consistent than the worsted. I wasn't really concentrating on either yarn, but to be honest I don't think I can maintain concentration across a sweater's worth of yarn, so I thought I might as well sample the way I would probably spin the real yarn.

Comments? Things I should be taking into consideration? I'm going to stuff the swatches into my pockets and carry them around for a week while re-reading all my books on Aran design. Then I will probably knit the Must-Have Cardigan (Ravelry link) except I have to fix that neck. The way that cable gets cut off drives me crazy which is why I've never knit this even though it has been catching my eye for years. Plus I like it in oatmeal, so maybe I shouldn't knit it in gray because I certainly don't want to knit it twice. So maybe I should make Norah Gaughan's Tweedy Aran Cardigan (Ravelry again) which would totally require the worsted yarn except -- hello? Norah? what's with the hip-enhancing band? -- it calls for a different sort of redesign. So like I said, I have some planning & thinking to do while I let these swatches age. But not for too long ... it may be getting up to 90 today, but fall is surely coming.

How not to spin a novelty yarn:

2008-09-24T11:14:00.003-05:00

Step 1. Spin a lovely natural colored batt blended from silk, fine wools, and down fibers.

Step 2. Decide, as you are spinning, that you will ply this single with silk, in order to extend the yardage. Consider both 2 & 3 ply yarns. Consider final usage; decide tentatively on lace scarf or stole.

Step 3. Begin spinning tussah silk singles.

Step 4. Get busy. Stop spinning much.

Step 5. During visit of small child, place kate holding filled bobbins up on the mantelpiece.

Step 6. Spin silk occasionally. While spinning, glance up at kate to see how current bobbin compares to bobbin & 1/2 of blended fiber and bobbin of silk.

Step 7. Spin more silk. Get very bored with silk. Decide (by glancing) that you must certainly have enough silk by now.

Step 8. Set wheel up for plying in front of the TV. Start plying with two bobbins of silk and one of blended fiber. Ply merrily along while watching Genghis Blues.

Step 9. After 45 minutes, glance down at the strands passing through your fingers. Think, "Wow, that singles looks like a 2-ply!"

Step 10. Realize that once upon a time you decided on a 2-ply, and actually plied half a bobbin full before deciding you really needed to spin up more silk. Realize that you have been plying that 2-ply along with another two plies of silk. in the same direction. Realize that this yarn looks very strange.

Step 11. Consider unplying bizarre yarn. Give it up as impractical. Head off to pick your kids up from school. Try not to cry.

Step 12. Ply rest of singles as two ply. Love it. Try not to think how much more of the 2-ply you would have if you had actually looked at your singles before starting to ply.

Step 13. Try to imagine use for bizarre yarn and regular yarn that will be a Good Thing not just a salvage operation. This is where I am now.

Here are a couple of other yarns I've spun recently, with less drama. Both of these skeins were spurred by the shelving project; I've been finding lots of neglected treasures.

This is superwash BFL, dyed by Caroline of Wool For Brains. It was very nice to spin -- not as slippery as superwash merino -- and I look forward to knitting with it. It's a 3-ply, intended for a hat for my son. But as my champion skein winder was finishing winding it off, she said, "What's this for? Can I make something with this?" So my plans might change. It doesn't particularly match anyone's coat, so perhaps whoever wants it the most should have it.

This is a 2-ply of superwash merino, dyed with leftover Easter egg dyes. The roving has been sitting on my dryer ever since, for no discernable reason. Most of the yarn is one ply of greens & one ply of blues; at the end I ran out of green so that bit is two plies of blues/purples. Despite plenty of acid at the time of dying, this ran like crazy. I soaked it in vinegar water & washed it with synthrapol and all seems to be well; probably I should have simmered it with the vinegar but I didn't. I may regret this. Plans are for a baby surprise jacket, since somehow I've never gotten around to making one, but since there's no recipient in sight this will be on a back burner.

Jerseys, guernseys, ganseys, and knit-frocks

2008-09-18T13:44:00.006-05:00

Once again I am trying to avoid putting pictures in the center of the screen and having a hell of a time with it. For some reason I can't seem to get past the very basic stages of composition in blogger. Bear with me.

Early in my knitting career I became quite taken with the fisherman's sweater -- gansey, guernsey, jersey, knit-frock, call it what you will. I think of it as a solid dark colored textured pullover, with knit-purl patterns and small cables.

Probably the first book published on this topic was Gladys Thompson's Patterns for guernseys & jerseys, later revised to add Aran patterns as well. This is also the first book I bought on the subject. It's a great book, a wonderful book, and it probably has all the information you need, but it's not much of a hand-holder. I knit my first gansey using the sport weight version of Sugar & Cream and Seahouses Pattern I / Mrs. Laidlaw's pattern (p. 68 in the inexpensive Dover edition, which has held up well for all these years). Unfortunately this pattern, like most in the book, is not charted and I did not realize that it needed to be centered -- you can see here that it is off center:

The book is a classic and inexpensive & really a good addition to any knitter's library but not the first I would buy on the subject.

I think the next book I bought on the subject was Rae Compton's The Complete book of traditional guernsey and jersey knitting (1985). I love this book; it's the one I turn to the most on this subject. It has lots of contemporary photos of fisherman wearing ganseys, and charts of the designs on those sweaters. It has a great chapter on designing your own gansey that walks you through the concepts and the math. I used this to design my second gansey, a sweater for my father. The only thing missing in this book, IMO, is a statement to the effect that underarm gussets were used to allow someone wearing a very tightly fitting sweater to move his arms and that therefore they would be unnecessary in a sweater with plenty of ease. It took me years to knit that sweater, and when my dad put it on he grabbed a big handful of excess fabric pooching out at the armpit and said, "What's this for?" He wears it anyways, and I've stopped cringing, but it took a while.

Two other tightly focused books came my way at about the same time: Mary Wright's Cornish guernseys and knit-frocks (1979) and Henriette van der Klift-Tellegen's Knitting from the Netherlands : traditional Dutch fishermen's sweaters (1985) (a translation from the Dutch). They are both interesting but perhaps not essential books, certainly not the place to start. Both have a wealth of old photos, many of which I've seen nowhere else. The Dutch fisherman in particular are very cute and goofy; their sweaters are a little more elaborate than those from the western side of the Channel.

I've run across a number of survey books that cover or attempt to cover all types of traditional knitting from Great Britain & associated islands. Most of these were published in England; many are neither thorough or inspiring. But some are quite nice.

Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the old way (1985) introduced me to ganseys, as to so many other traditional sweaters. The section is brief (7 pp., plus another 3 on Dutch fisherman's sweaters) but enough to give you the basic idea.

Michael Pearson is (was?) apparently a famous British knitter of whom I had never heard before I ran across his book Traditional knitting (1984) at a library sale. It's full of fanciful tales of drowned sailors identified by their sweaters and the Spanish Armada as the origin of Fair Isle patterning and so forth, but it also has some very nice patterns, interviews with aged knitters, and lots of good photos. I tend to think of it as a Fair Isle book but actually half the book is fisher ganseys (100 pp.) with the other half evenly split between Aran & Fair Isle. Some of the photos are the familiar Polperro ones which appear in Compton's & Wright's books as well, but others are unique to this book.

Gwyn Morgan's Traditional knitting : patterns of Ireland, Scotland, and England(1981) is less substantial. She gives a small amount of historical information (3 pp.), followed by patterns for a dozen traditional-style sweaters. Each is named after a town. I think I keep this one partly because I can't stand to get rid of a book and partly because it has several children's ganseys, in several different weights of yarn. I wouldn't search this book out but if it turns up you could do worse than to pick it up.

Of course the master of the "inspired by" sweater is Alice Starmore, and I love her Fisherman's Sweaters (1993) even though I've never knit anything from the book and probably never will. Most of the sweaters are lovely, most of the photo styling is lovely -- it's lots of fun to daydream over.

Also, of course, there's this photo, which is a very useful reminder that some designs are just not flattering. If this sweater can make this willowy model look hippy and frumpy, imagine the effect it would have on me.

I can't end this essay without mentioning a book that I've never owned, and never even read all the way through: Beth Brown-Reinsel's Knitting ganseys. By the time it was published I thought I knew all I needed to know about knitting ganseys, so I didn't buy it. But I've heard wonderful things about it over the years.

If you are just building a knitting library on this subject, I'd start either with Rae Compton's book or with Beth Brown-Reinsel's. (Although if you don't have PGR's Knitting in the old way get that first, it's a must for anyone who is interested in knitting traditional sweaters.) And if you know of others I haven't mentioned, I'd love to hear about them.

Why, yes, I do have a book or two ....

2008-09-17T20:49:00.004-05:00

I guess when you come right down to it the most distinctive thing about me as a knitter is my extensive library. I've been collecting knitting books & pamphlets & magazines for 25 years, and I've always thought that if one is nice, a dozen are much nicer. In addition to the bookshelves in my last post, I have about 9 linear feet of pamphlets & magazines stored in another room. Back in my single days I pored over them and found many patterns I wanted to knit "when I had time." These days, though, it's pretty clear that there will never be enough time to knit all the cool patterns. But I thought it might be a fun use of my library to share some of these wonderful ideas with you all, and maybe also to write some review articles of (for instance) the 5 or 6 books I have on any particular subject.

So here we go. This Missoni cardigan is from the Spring/Summer 93 issue of Vogue Knitting. I have loved it from the very beginning, and I still love it. Looking at it makes me want to cast on for it right now and to hell with the other projects I've got going.

I love how the solid colors and the typical Missoni tweeds work together. I love that black & white band. I even love its drop-shouldered shapelessness.

What I don't love is the yarns. Most of it is cotton; the tweeds are a viscose/cotton/poly blend. I bet the finished sweater weighs 5 pounds. I would like to make it in wool. Several times I've collected yarns to make it with, but they've always been of varying weights & qualities, and I've always chickened out, afraid (with reason, I think) that the final product would not be wonderful.

The obvious answer, of course, is to dye the yarn myself and to spin the tweeds. I hope I will someday. Maybe next winter? Not this year, anyways. (I just checked on Ravelry -- no projects, and in nobody's queue, except mine.)

Off to do some real-life knitting ...

Out from under

2008-09-16T11:02:00.004-05:00

My husband put up a couple of shelves in my wool room / office last weekend. Somehow we managed to live here for six years without noticing that this wall was perfect for shelves.

I am especially pleased to have found a spot for the cumbersome homemade electric bobbin winder which used to live up on top of the dresser to the right. I never actually dropped it on my head while getting it down ... but I knew I was living on borrowed time.

Here's a shot of the floor level. All of those bags and boxes used to cover the floor out to about where I was standing to take the picture. This made it a wee bit difficult to get into the bookcases at right.

You'll notice that the shelves are not really packed tight. In part that's because I want to be able to get to to the things stored there ....

.... and in part it's because this stuff still has to be sorted, stored, and shelved. Much of it belongs in the closet (did I mention there's a closet full of yarn in this room?) but has gotten into bags and baskets and boxes, all marked "misc. yarn and supplies" because I haven't been able to get to the closet for a while now.

This is so wonderful that my next project (for him) involves shelves right here:

He's more than willing to put them up since not too long ago the whole stack tumbled down, blocking the doorway to the room. I had hoped to get to the hardware store today during my 90 minutes of kid-free time, but I don't think that will happen. My daughter woke up complaining that her tummy hurt, and she has been lying listlessly on the couch all morning:

I think she's on the mend (note the fake smile she assumed when I pulled out the camera) but I don't think she'll be going to school today. And if she's too sick for school it seems a little heartless to haul her out to the store. Besides, I've got a table full of who-knows-what to organize before dinner, which of course brings me to the eternal question: what can I make for dinner?

But I digress. I'm sure you all know the thrill of finding out for sure that there really is a floor under all those stacks of stuff. And I've regained access to my bookshelves -- really I haven't seen some of my knitting books for a couple of years. I mean, I knew they were there, and if I needed a particular one I could move things around and get to it, but just to sit and browse? No way. So for a bit of inspiration, I leave you with these:

If you're curious, click for big. You can read most of the titles. But do it quietly -- I'm reading!

Beech Leaf vest underway

2008-09-08T17:00:00.004-05:00

A year or so ago I was searching for a nice summer cardigan, and instead fell in love with the Beech Leaf vest from Fiddlesticks (see it here ). I bought the kit, which is so unlike me, and started swatching.

And there it stopped. I had a little trouble getting gauge, and since the instructions stress that it has to be a finished swatch I couldn't just make a series of swatches in one night -- I had to wash them and let them dry and then measure them. Really you wouldn't think this was a big deal but for whatever reason it was. I made a whole slew of swatches, didn't label them, let them sit for weeks, forgot which was which and what sizes I used, started over, etc. Rinse, wash, repeat.

But now I'm knitting. I'm a little nervous, because while my gauge was spot on this time, I forgot to measure the unwashed swatch, and so I'm not sure how much it changed, so if I'm getting gauge as I'm knitting, is that a problem or not? I should make another swatch but I can hardly bear it. Here's what it looks like now:

I started with the back, even though it is the biggest piece, because I want to add some bust shaping and maybe some waist shaping and I need some time to think about it. If I do waist shaping of course I will need to do it on the back as well, but what I really need time to think about is how big I'll make the bust darts and if I'll only do horizontal ones or add vertical ones as well or will the waist shaping take care of that, oh, and how does the v-neck fit in with this?

The lace pattern is very nice -- not hard, but not too simple, either. It's a little tricky for park knitting but mostly because I don't have any way to mark what row I'm on, and figuring out which row I left it on is a little tricky if I'm trying to watch the kids and also carry on a conversation. If I take care of that it should be pretty smooth sailing.

no knitting

2008-04-27T21:59:00.002-05:00

... because it is George's seventh birthday on Thursday and I am tracing an episode from the Bayeux Tapestry (the siege of Dinan) onto a bedsheet as a surprise present. Shockingly, I have underestimated the time required to do so. Also the markers I bought, although a good color match, are far too thick. I'm using Sharpies right now but don't have all the colors I need and am worrying about permanency; I might have to go over them with other markers. Will I get done in time? Stay tuned. Fortunately I know he would be thrilled if I handed it to him as it stands right now -- pretty much the center bit shown here, but with outlines only, no fancy bits.

Of course, I also need to pull together some other presents, bake a cake, and plan and organize his party which fortunately is not until next Sunday as I have quite a few things to do before then. We are having a tournament in the back yard (along the lines of this) which exists mostly in my head at this point, although I've bought some little plastic jewels and glue dots, and have made a giant banner for the front yard. I don't think this is quite enough. But hey, I've got a week! I think that really I will have so much extra time that I could make some hangings for the portable gazebo-cum-pavilion (like this but plain blue) we're going to set up in the yard ....

oh, and I need to get my vegetable garden cleared and planted. But surely I can fit it all in. Right?

Choices

2008-04-21T08:48:00.003-05:00

I recently received two skeins of Noro Transitions as an unexpected gift. This is not the sort of yarn I would buy for myself, so I'm pleased to have the chance to try it out. At the same time, I want to knit something satisfactory out of it -- something I will wear or give away with pride & pleasure. I'm not very sure how to do that with a yarn that changes so drastically throughout the skein. The color is the not-so-evocative #8, a pleasant enough mix of marine blue, olive green, teal, grape, lavender, and brown. The colors work pretty well together, but not so well that straight stripes would look good, IMO. So I'm looking for something that will mix it up a little.

The obvious choice seems a scarf. But (heresy) I don't really wear knit scarves, except for my fabulous Orenburg scarf. In Oklahoma's not very harsh winters I like thin scarves with good drape, and that usually means a woven scarf. It certainly doesn't mean a bulky wool scarf. But if I did choose a scarf, I'd be choosing between the ubiquitous multidirectional diagonal scarf or this pretty one, which has a nice star-stitch pattern that breaks up the stripiness.

I also found a few hat patterns. Again, bulky yarn is not my usual choice, but I like the Topi hat from Knitty. Question -- would I wear a wool hat without ear coverage? Maybe I should make this hat in cotton for summer. Maybe I could leave the crown off and just make the stand and brim. Hmm.

Here's another brimmed hat, this one in crochet. But it isn't a free pattern and don't really want to figure it out myself.

Any other ideas? I've thought about a vest, but I don't have nearly enough and I'm not going to buy more. The colors actually go well with the screaming blue of my Ayany yarn. I could mix the leftovers with it, or I could rip out the vest (which is in timeout right now, while I figure out how to deal with gaping armholes) and redesign to include the Transitions. Hmmm.

Clearly this all needs to percolate a little. Has anyone worked with Transitions? How well does it take ripping out?

Vanished!

2008-03-29T13:10:00.002-05:00

Just kidding. I haven't vanished, I've just been swamped by a project. Which is kind of fun and kind of overwhelming -- I'm sure you are all familiar with the feeling.

Next weekend is Norman's Medieval Faire, which is one of the high points of my year. I just love it. And for the five or so years that I've been going, I have wanted to dress up. Every year I chicken out, or I leave it too late. Last year I wore some odd combination of garments scrounged from my closet; this year I was determined to do it right.

Unfortunately my research has been kind of haphazard, and has led me to select the name Ford Prefect .... I mean, to select Butterick 6196 as an appropriate outfit for a nice middle class lady (view on left) except I know there weren't middle classes but still ... I don't want to be a princess. That's Charlotte's job. I'd like to imagine myself a cloth merchant's wife, or maybe the wife of some small-time knight, running a little estate in the country.

As it turns out, I'm going to look like a nice, middle aged barmaid. I was dismayed by this at first, but what the heck. It helps that I have a pirate-themed banquet to attend a week later, and I figure I can use the blouse and the bodice over again. Next year -- who knows?

So far I have made the blouse and the skirt. This afternoon I am going to tackle the bodice which looks complicated but do-able, even by a sewer of limited skills (me). It helps that it doesn't have to fit perfectly due to the lacing. I am hoping to finish it by tomorrow night, which would give me four days to make an apron, a coif, and what I really want to work on right now -- a pocket. A tie-on pocket with crewel embroidery. I probably don't have time, and they're 18th century anyways .... but I really want one.

Oh, and I might need to help the kids with outfits, too.

Sweater in a week

2008-03-21T08:15:00.002-05:00

About two weeks ago I read an appeal from afghans for Afghans. They had an unexpected opportunity to send a load of clothing for children to Afghanistan with Roots of Peace. The kicker was that the items had to be in California by March 18th. Could we help?

Really, the answer was no. I was busy, we had plans for the weekend, it was my birthday (which now involves a surprising amount of planning on my part, so that there's a cake for the kids to decorate and time for them to make me a present, and so forth), and we were leaving town on the 13th. I'd have to let this one pass me by.

But somehow I couldn't. What if Roots of Peace told these kids they could expect warm clothes, and then there weren't any? So I decided I could just whip up a sweater on the Bond, no problem.

Well, it isn't as simple as that. It has been a couple of years since I used the sweater machine, so I had to remind myself how certain operations work. And the calculations for sleeve decreasing were rendered extremely complex by the relationship of my expected gauge (ball band) compared to the actual gauge I was getting. Since I wasn't knitting for anyone in particular, I didn't do a gauge swatch, but I did want the finished sweater to have a good chance of fitting someone.

And actually, I wanted it to fit a big someone. The call was for clothes to fit kids up to 14 years old, and I figured that more people would make small sweaters than large ones, especially given the quick turnaround time. Knitting a bigger sweater on the machine takes very little more time than knitting a small one -- most of the time is in the setup, at least for a plain stockinette sweater. So I planned a largish sweater.

Because we had several hours in the car (on March 9th) I started by casting on for the bottom ribbing. I knit all of the back ribbing and half of the front, planning to hang the ribbing on the machine and continue on from there. (Usually I do the ribbing last, but I wanted to get started that day.) It was a great idea, but I cast on as many stitches as I wanted for the body, and also used the size needle I'd use for the body if I were knitting by hand. So then in order not to end up with flaring ribbing I had to make the body even bigger.

But that was okay. I had 5 skeins of Patons Classic Wool Merino in a very pretty pumpkin shade, and Ravelry shows several adult sweaters made with 3 1/2 skeins, so I didn't worry about running out. I just made a bigger sweater; some 14 year old boy will fit into it.

I knit the back Monday morning, finished the ribbing for the front Monday afternoon, and knit the front Monday night after the kids went to bed, and connected the shoulders with a three needle bindoff. Tuesday (my birthday) all I could manage was one sleeve. Wednesday I knit the second sleeve. I had picked up the sleeve stitches from the sides, so all four pieces were attached to each other. We would be traveling all day Thursday, so I could sew the side and sleeve seams and knit the neck & wrist ribbings on the plane, and mail it from Florida on Friday.

Hah! I always forget how long finishing can take. I did sew the seams on the plane, but that was all I managed to do. And knitting the wrist ribbings and the enormously long turtleneck that I really wanted to make took quite a bit of time, too. I wasn't willing to ignore the parents I'd traveled to see (or the pool in their backyard), so I didn't finish until after the post office closed on Saturday.

Oh, and those 3 1/2 skein adult sweaters? They must have been for some pretty small women. I might have had enough to finish the ribbings, but probably not enough for a turtleneck. I had noticed, though, that the wine-colored waste yarn I was using looked very nice with the pumpkin, so I striped the ribbings with that.

I mailed it out on Monday the 17th. I hope it got to California in time; if not, I'm sure it will get to Afghanistan sooner or later. And on the way back from the post office ..... I realized I had forgotten to take a picture. So imagine here that you see a pumpkin colored stockinette sweater, with square set-in sleeves, short-rowed shoulders & back neck, and a wine & pumpkin striped turtleneck.

Cozy, isn't it?

Woven, but not finished.

2008-03-05T10:24:00.004-06:00

The cloth is off the loom! Here is all four yards of it, stretched across the overgrown bushes in our raggedy front yard (nothing like photography to make things obvious, is there?):

Here is a closer look at the fabric:

The 3" edge sections are dyed the same color as the weft. Then there are warp stripes: 2" A, 2" B, 6" A, 2" B, 2" A, and then another 3" of edge.

The central stripes were supposed to have distinct stripe patterns, but as you may recall, things didn't quite work out that way. I like the shifts in color, though I wish the grayish patches weren't there. Those areas are almost the original color of the warp yarn, which is mysterious considering the quarts of excess dye we used. Perhaps I didn't mist those sections with vinegar? Next time maybe I'll mix the acid with the dye.

But that's okay. The fabric is destined to become cushions for this rocking chair, and I can use the less-spectacular bits for the backs of the cushions:
My brother bought it, broken and battered, and repaired and refinished it as a graduation present when I got my master's. My now-sister-in-law took a class to learn how to weave the seat. It is lovely ... but the back is a little uncomfortable. I've been looking around for cushions for a while (19 years). (Actually I made one once before, from commercial fabric, but it didn't age well.)

The cluttered photo includes a corner of a stand for a fish tank, painted the same red as the walls. Eventually there will be doors on the stand, painted the same red. I hope (and expect) that the brownish red fabric will go well with this color, which matches the wall that you can dimly see behind the chair, between the fish tank and the piano, the bench of which his holding some weaving tools (yes, the house is full!).

The fabric is not done. Here's a close up of what I guess is called the web:

You can see spaces between the threads; they are interwoven but not yet locked together. I need to wet-finish this. I am currently reading and asking questions and trying to figure out how to do this. I wove extra to allow for some sampling, but I'm not sure a little bit will react the same way as a big long piece. Stay tuned.

Warp painting: a family affair

2008-02-29T13:19:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago I started getting the itch to weave. It came over me that what our house NEEDED more than anything RIGHT NOW was some cushions for a beautiful but uncomfortable rocking chair. And they needed to be made of handwoven fabric. And probably some handspun yarn, and I could dye it, and it could be a family project .....

Next thing you know, I had my family out on the back porch, painting warp chains. This is something I've never done before, and I've only painted yarn or roving a couple of times. So obviously it was a great thing to take on with a couple of little kids!

(we have all chosen our own "dye day" clothing)

Actually it worked out fine, despite a few hair raising moments. I wound the warp into several chains, then split them into two groups which were painted separately. I mixed up many little cups of different colors of dye, and we poured or spooned them on in different sections. I was hoping for vertical stripes from the two different sets of chains, and horizontal stripes from the dye. We used far too much dye, though, so most of the horizontal detail was lost.

You can see that the kids were very serious about their painting. Charlotte really only painted about 10" of warp but boy did she get it all! She must have used about a quart of dye!

My husband was also painting; he took all the pictures so he's not in any. I wish I had taken one of him; it was really nice to all work on a project together. It would have been nicer if it wasn't 40 degrees with constant wind gusts. In fact, it was chilly enough that the kids only made it through one set of warp chains. Then I sent them inside and did the second batch myself.

Next I wrapped the chains in plastic, trying to ignore the excess dye that was running out. THEN I realized that I hadn't spritzed with vinegar or added any acid to the dye cups, so I had to unwrap everything and spray. We had used up all the plastic wrap, so I would have to steam them in ziplocs. As long as everything was so screwed up, I decided I might as well wring out the skeins to get rid of excess dye. After all of this I was pretty sure the chains would come out uniform colors; I only hoped that the two sets of chains would be different colors, so I could at least get vertical stripes.

To my cautious relief, they looked pretty good after steaming, cooling and rinsing. The next day I dyed the weft (handspun shetland) and the edge warps a single coordinating color.

You can see the stripes better in the warp than in the web. There's a three inch stripe of solid red on each side, then stripes of warp chains A-B-AAA-B-A and more solid red to finish it off. It's much more subtle than I had planned but still very nice (I think).

I had hoped that the kids and I could weave this together, but the warp -- a millspun wool & mohair blend -- is too sticky. I'm raising each shaft separately and having no trouble, but I really couldn't get Charlotte to treadle that way, and she says it's no fun if she can't step on it! So the next project will have to be more kid-friendly.

The warp is 5 yards long and I've woven perhaps three of those without incident. Now I'm developing loose selvedge threads -- I guess I'll have to rig up some weights. My other concern is that this fabric might not be sturdy enough for cushions in which case I might be forced to make a garment out of it. With a silver lining, maybe.

Fleece in a week, and other tall tales.

2008-02-25T10:11:00.002-06:00

Hey -- I spun a whole fleece in a week! Am I a great spinner, or what?

Of course, it was the Icelandic lamb fleece last seen on my back porch last June:

It took me the intervening seven months to card it -- or rather, to get around to carding it. Actual carding only took a few days, spread out over about three months.

And I did really spin it in a week -- into 15 ounces of low twist, bulky two ply:

(That isn't a stripe. I separated out the darkest wool and spun it by itself. This is just all twisted together for storage; I couldn't be bothered to redo the hanks for a picture. Hey, it's Monday.)

But since less than a pound of bulky yarn in seven months doesn't sound very impressive, I'm going with fleece in a week!

Presenting Charlotte's scarf!

2008-02-07T08:10:00.000-06:00

The Emperor's fleece

2008-02-05T16:27:00.001-06:00

You may remember that yesterday I had found some substitute fleeces that I thought would do for my dyeing/blending project.

Today I took a closer look. Oh, dear:

This is a fleece that I bought in 2000. Not only did I buy it, but I imported it. I had it sent all the way across the ocean, I paid duty on it. In fact, I bought three. When I opened the package I was disappointed. I had been buying raised-in-America shetland fleeces for five or six years by then, and they were very nice.

These fleeces were not very nice. But I had paid, and shipped, and so forth, and I really had no recourse, so I packed the fleeces back in their bags, sealed them up, and put them away to think about Later.

Since then I've moved them twice, stacked them with the other fleeces, even inventoried them (without opening the bag), but I never really thought about them. So when I opened them up today to look at them, I was coming at them with an unbiased eye.

The emperor has no clothes!

This fleece is coarse, the staple is short, and about 1/2 the length of the staple is sunburned. Furthermore, take a look at the tips:

That's them, a couple of inches to the left of the rest of the staple. They just snap right off with a gentle tug. Imagine what professional carding machinery would do to them!

The second fleece was pretty much the same, with the addition of this:

Scurf. Also known as dandruff. And it doesn't wash out. I might be willing to deal with scurf in qiviut or cashmere, but I'd have to think about it. In this case there really wasn't much of a decision to make.

Here is the third fleece, displayed on the same horrible sheet-cum-dropcloth. It has a more primitive coat, with triangular staples. The staple length is longer, and while the tips are sun-bleached, they don't snap off.

It is clearly the nicest of the three, but then that's not saying much. I've thrown the other two away (thereby meeting my Getting Rid of Stuff quota for the week) but for the moment I'm keeping this one. My plan is to give it another hard look this evening or tomorrow. If it passes that, I'll dye some up, card a batt, and spin it.

If it doesn't, there are some other fleeces in the garage. I don't know how many, and I think maybe I ought to know, but there are certainly more than six and probably fewer than, oh, twenty. There are two more brown fleeces, but one has too much VM to be carded and the other is too pretty to overdye. There are two black fleeces, and -- shockingly -- only one grey, which is earmarked for another project. Oh, wait, there's another grey but I love it too much to overdye it. There are white fleeces in a range of fleece types (Shetland, Polypay, Polwarth, Corriedale, Rambouillet, Columbia, maybe some more) -- but it would certainly change the project to use white fleece.

Onwards and upwards, I guess.

Misfit

2008-02-04T11:04:00.001-06:00

I am making myself a fitted vest out of my screaming blue Ayany yarn, using guidelines from Barbara Walker's Knitting From the Top but adding bust darts to accommodate my superstructure. Sounds good, no?

As I knit, though, I remembered that I haven't actually made a garment for my torso since before my son was born, almost seven years ago. The relatively modest bust darts I used then and the really rather alarming bust darts I need now are vastly different; it's like learning the whole process over again.

Here's the vest just after the finish of the darts:

The markers show where my short rows start, both horizontally & vertically. Vertical placement is fine, but the horizontal placement is way off.

Here's how I think it should be fitting (note safety pin-created tucks near the shoulders). I should have started the darts almost two inches higher so that the short rows are centered across my bust. Instead I started them at the center point. It's all very obvious to me now which I guess means it wasn't all for naught. I think I can now create bust darts that really do fit my shape. Unfortunately that means ripping way back; even in this bulky yarn I've lost a day's knitting.

On the plus side, this will let me fix the armhole shaping which I had been trying to pretend was Just Fine.

In other news I have been unreasonably excited by some roving June describes here and have been ripping apart my garage searching for fleece to treat the same way. I knew just the fleeces -- two brownish gray Shetland fleeces that produce drab brownish gray yarn that would be just wonderful overdyed red and gold and brown. I spent quite a while looking for them last night until I remembered that I sold them. Seven years ago. (Yes, I have a Fleece Problem.) Poking around a little further, though, I found another brown Shetland fleece or two (I collected them for a while, trying to find the Perfect One) that will probably do. The plan was to sort, re-skirt, and pick them today, while it's 70 degrees, and then dye them the rest of the week, while it's 50. My daughter threw up at one in the morning, though (and at two, and four, and six) so plans for the day are somewhat sketchy. Wish me (and her) luck.

Starting young.

2008-01-25T10:53:00.000-06:00

For Christmas Charlotte got a simple Learn to Sew kit (from Aunt Nancy & Uncle Con). It had some pre-punched felt pieces, a plastic needle, and precut lengths of yarn for sewing. She wanted to open it RIGHT AWAY, but it just never seemed to be the right moment. One morning I promised her we would do it in the afternoon, but the day got away from us and soon it was time to pick George up from school and head off to the library for his very favorite, can't-be-skipped after school program. Charlotte was very upset until I said she could bring the kit with her.

Here she is sewing at the library:

[here you must imagine a charming picture which I can't figure out how to get off my camera phone]

After dinner she wanted to do the second piece in the kit. Her enthusiasm was contagious:

She really caught on quickly, and could spot and correct errors on her own. They didn't seem to frustrate her, either, which might be part of the reason why she learned so quickly; she wasn't wasting time and energy fussing or wailing.

Since then she has also made some Dora finger puppets from a similar kit. I think she's probably ready to move on to something more complicated. But what?

How about weaving? This is a two harness Lily table loom that I bought expressly for the kids to use. We fooled around with it some when it arrived (warped, with newspaper from 1973 separating the warp layers) but some threads had gotten broken in transit, there was rust on the reed, and a few others things didn't seem to work right. After Christmas I found the time to cut off the old warp, clean the whole thing up, and figure out the source of the other problems (missing cords). Now it's working great, and Charlotte can weave by herself, at least until she wants to change colors or advance the warp.

A pinch of this, a dash of that

2008-01-25T09:37:00.000-06:00

With the new year and the Christmas pressure mostly eased I've been doing lots of little things, finishing up projects, trying out new ones, and just fooling around.

I am so proud of finishing the kids' stockings:

Here they are with the stockings my sister has knit for her family. They are very sweet but I really wanted to make ones that would match the stocking my mother made for me when I was small (and known as Cindy). The stocking that's between my angel and my father's Santa (subtle, huh? but I never thought about it until just now)(I am not suspicious or quick to pick up on things) is the one that started it all. Someone gave it to my mother when she was a teenager; I believe it came from a craft fair.

Aren't my sister's stockings great? She has done very clever things with the motifs -- everyone in the family shares one motif; all the boys have a matching motif as do the girls; everyone shares at least two motifs with everyone else; and everyone has one of their own. She'd really be in trouble if she had another child, though! My sister-in-law knit stockings for her family using the same pattern, and feels a little betrayed that I haven't. But although it might be heresy to say so, knitting isn't always the answer.

I've gotten back to spinning with great delight. Here is a lovely merino/silk blend that was a gift:

I plan to use it as weft for a scarf, so I left it as a single. I hope I weighted it enough; it looks a little kinky:

I have about 650 yards and it weighs about 70 g. I think I will use zephyr for warp but I want to talk to a real weaver^TM before taking this on.

I have also been catching up on batt club spinning. This is from August. It's 40% fine wool (a mix of white & brown), 40% tussah silk, and 20% camel/yak -- very pleasant and a little different. I'm going to ply it with tussah to make a laceweight yarn. Then I hope to dye it a deep red; all those different creams and browns ought to give it real depth.

I say "hope" because sometimes my dyeing doesn't turn out the way I plan. Take a look at my Ayany yarn:

This was supposed to be a medium-pale periwinkle. I used Jacquard acid dyes, .5% DOS, 70% brilliant blue,30% hot fuschia. Obviously I should have ~~done some samples~~ gone with something like .2 DOS, but what I'm really wondering is what happened to the fuschia? While I was dyeing the dye liquor looked too pinky-purple for my taste but there's really no hint of the color at all in the finished yarn. Instead it's Brilliant Blue all the way.

I've thought about overdyeing, either with the fuschia, or with some orange to tone the blue down, but it is really a pretty screaming blue and I'm afraid I would make it too muddy if I tried to change it. Also it matches my winter coat exactly. So I think I'll just knit it up and see what it looks like.

And here's a little something I noticed while hanging the yarn to dry:

I thought the soap was just called cashmere, but then I noticed the statement "with cashmere extract." Sure enough, the ingredients list "Hydrolized keratin (cashmere extract)." Isn't that a hoot? I'm washing my hands with the carding waste from cheap cashmere sweaters!

2000 : Summer of Mittens

2008-01-17T19:18:00.000-06:00

In the summer of 2000 I decided to knit mittens for all of my nieces and nephews. At the time there were seven of them, and that didn't seem like too big a project. I knit up a bunch of single mittens in varying sizes, and took them on our summer vacation. I gathered the kids together, handed them the mittens, and told them to pick one that fit and that they liked, or to find one that fit and tell me what one they wished fit. I had lots of interchangeable colors of sportweight yarn and Robin Hansen's two wonderful mitten books. It was great fun. We were all staying in a cabin together and they carried the mittens around for a couple of days, choosing and changing their minds and choosing again. Later that summer we saw the kids on the other side of the family, and I had them pick as well.

Of course I didn't finish all the mittens by Christmas, but I did get many of them done, and the rest soon after. Because I was in a rush, though, there are no pictures of the mittens as a group. There are quite a few glimpses of them, here and there, on one child after another. Here are some that we gathered up five years later:

Yes, Chipman's block is one of my favorite patterns, how could you tell? It's so easy, and so pretty, and such a short repeat that you can modify it to fit anyone.

The mittens on the right are Mattie Owl's Patch, which is very similar to Fox & Geese but in my opinion much prettier. Knitting both mittens the same summer led me to compare them as I hadn't before. Mattie Owl's Patch is an 8 stitch repeat which is less convenient than Fox & Geese's six stitch repeat but it's worth it. I'm not sure I can find a picture of the two to show you, though.

The mittens in the center come from Rose W. Anderson's Mittens pamphlet, published in 1939. I made one cross country skier and one downhill skier, sometime around 1990. There's a lot of weaving in to make all that white space around the skiers, but I think it's worth it. The palms have a small all-over pattern. I'll never again knit a cuff with narrow stripes of color on a white background, though; it reminds me too much of athletic socks. Fortunately my sister wears the cuffs folded up.

Those mittens are still in use, as are the yellow & purple Mattie Owl's Patch pair. They were made for my nephew who is now 12; my 4 year old daughter is wearing them this winter:

(She looks bemused because she's not sure what this white stuff is.)

And the red and white pair saw some use, too:

To be honest, I like knitting mittens more than socks. They last longer and you don't need a new pair every day. If only I lived someplace where they weren't an optional winter accessory! Perhaps it's time for another Summer of Mittens.

It just about killed me ...

2008-01-16T21:14:00.001-06:00

... but I didn't give this to my husband until it was finished. I am the queen of wrapping up an unfinished object and giving it to someone along with a promise to finish it "soon." And I usually do, but it just takes some of the oomph out of the gift-giving experience. Watching me knit and maybe grumble at the chart and bind off and weave the ends in and then catching the scarf as I toss it from across the room just isn't the same as opening up a package to find a lovely, soft, finished DNA Double Helix scarf:

As Maggie Righetti would say, note the hand position. My husband has carefully smoothed the scarf to display the cables, and he is HOLDING IT DOWN because this thing is alive. It would twist and turn and flip to the backside in seconds if he let go, which I guess is not inappropriate for DNA or any kind of helix. But it's frustrating. I don't know if a different yarn would behave better; this is Berroco Ultra Alpaca (50% wool, 50% alpaca) which you would think would have enough wool to be stable.

It was a fun pattern to knit, though one that required some concentration. The sides of the helix are not parallel; sometimes they both move in the same direction but at different speeds, sometimes they move in different directions, and then there's the ridges in the center of the cable to keep in mind as well. By the last go-round I felt like I had some idea what would happen in the next row. I still had to check, but I didn't find myself with too many center stitches and not enough outside stitches, or vice versa, which happened fairly frequently on the first half of the scarf. (No, I didn't rip back. I decreased the excess stitches and added new ones where they were needed. Can you spot where? I didn't think so.) (And even if you can, my husband can't.)

I wish I could say that I was done with my Christmas knitting, but I'm not. Nearly done, though.

Last minute indeed!

2008-01-04T10:44:00.001-06:00

For weeks before Christmas I had been saying to myself, "I'd really like to knit Clarinda a scarf." That sort of morphed into, "I'm knitting Clarinda a scarf" without any actual scarf knitting taking place. Then the ice storm wiped out a week of shopping and crafting time and pretty soon I found myself packing for our trip without even the slightest semblance of a scarf at hand.

At the mall the night before we left (to buy another present that I had crossed off my list without actually buying it) I saw lots of mannequins draped in crocheted scarves. After the third or fourth the light bulb went on.

Clarinda is wearing the scarf that I cast on (chained on?) as we left the house at 4 p.m. December 20th and finished (except for weaving in ends) during a heavy snowfall in Colorado Springs at about 5 p.m. December 21st. In the intervening 25 hours I had also stopped at McDonald's 3 times (oh, the horror), slept, showered, herded kids around, and read out loud the entirety of Junie B. Jones, First Grader : Shipwrecked (very funny). I didn't look at much scenery -- the downside of crochet, for me, is that I have to look at even simple patterns -- but I took time out to goggle at the pronghorn antelope we passed in New Mexico. I can see why people say crochet is faster than knitting.

The yarns are both clearance yarns from Hobby Lobby, bought with my daughter in mind. The white is Moda Dea Dream (nylon & acrylic). It's very soft and fuzzy without being overwhelming. I don't know how it will hold up but I'd use it again. The pink is Moda Dea Zing (all polyester) and I hated it. It's almost scratchy. It looks okay, but it just doesn't feel good. But it's what I had, so I used it. The scarf is five rows of filet squares, and then an all around scalloped border (sc, dc, tc, dc, sc in each square, ch 3 going around the corner).

It was fun to do something so quickly for a change. I may have to pay more attention to those "last minute gift" books. But first I think I hear something from Knitting New Scarves calling my name.

Sock Project update

2008-01-03T10:51:00.000-06:00

I have finally finished my first pair of handspun socks. I discussed the yarn here; as you can see I decided to make one pair of socks from the three ply.

The shape looks a little wonky -- they have not been blocked -- but they look nice enough on:

I followed the suggestions in a recent Spin Off article (too lazy to go look it up, ask if you want details) to spin one ply with slow color changes and another with quick color changes, to get a sort of fractal color change. I think I did two slow plies and one fast, but it might have been one slow, one fast, and one random. I like the effect, so I might try to do it in a more controlled way next time.

The socks were knit in an odd order. I wanted to knit toe up, but had to just Get Started (maybe I was heading to the park? or my husband was waiting to watch a movie?) so instead of doing a short row toe, I just cast on provisionally and knit for a while, then made a heel. That gave me some trouble until Caroline suggested a gusseted short row heel. That worked a treat. Then I continued up the leg until it seemed time for some calf increases; I kept increasing and knitting until it looked like yarn might be running low.

Then I used the purple end of the second ball to pick up the provisional cast on and knit a toe. I used a star toe just because I never had before; I probably never will again because I think it looks like my socks are on crooked (see lower foot in picture above).

I couldn't figure out how to start at the toe and still make the second sock match, so I cast on provisionally, knit a star toe, and then picked up the provisional cast on and knit up towards the heel. Then I made the heel, etc, until my second sock matched the first (still on the needles).

At this point I weighed the remaining yarn. I had 4 g. left on one sock and 9 g. on the other, so I ribbed until I used up the 4 g., switched socks, ribbed to match, did a few more rows, and cast off. I took the remaining yarn, went back to the 4 g. sock, added the same few more rows, and cast off there. In the top picture you can see the tiny ball I have left for repairs or whatever.

I think the picture makes it look like the socks are knee length, but they are not. They come to the middle of my calf, not the most practical length. They are very cosy, though, and I guess if the ribbing won't keep them up, they'll just be slouchy socks. I used Elizabeth Zimmerman's brillian sewn bind-off for the first but certainly not the last time, so the cast off edge won't cut into my calves.

(Excuse me, I have to turn down the music my daughter's computer, which is playing the theme song for Maisy's Playhouse over and over and over and over and over again .... I know from bitter experience that it will never stop without intervention.)

SO .... some six months ago I started spinning yarn that is now socks which are on my feet. Nice, but not exactly efficient. Way back in April I announced that I was going to try and knit a dozen pairs of socks for this winter. How have I done? It's January, and I have knitted seven pairs, six of them short. That's not really good enough.

Fortunately, I found Sock Dreams. Their $10 O Woolies are warm and comfortable (to me; some might find them itchy) and looooong. I don't think they will be durable; the cast on is provisional over elastic, which stretches very nicely but will probably break at some point. But they are getting me through the winter with warm feet and right now that's all I ask.

I'm going to keep knitting socks, but I don't have the same desperate urge that I did last spring. And that's just as well.

A toast to the new year: may your feet be warm and your fingers busy! Happy knitting!

-- Cynthia

We interrupt this broadcast.....

2007-12-15T14:49:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately our Christmas prep was rudely interrupted by a destructive ice storm. We had a lot of tree damage (detailed here, if you're interested: http://cynthiadean.blogspot.com/2007/12/ice-storm-2007.html) and a relatively brief loss of power. The kids have been out of school for a week, though, and that has really put a monkey wrench in my shopping / knitting / mailing / planning for the season.

Ah, well. We'll muddle through somehow, and the fun memories will probably be the ones that last.

Here's one in the making:

The snowman stocking is for George -- he drew the snowman; I appliqued it. It is hanging in front of a stocking my mother made for me some 40 years ago. I've been "meaning to" make a stocking for George for six years; for the last four I've been "meaning to" make one for Charlotte, too. This year I decided it was time to get down to business.

Charlotte and I haven't begun the design process yet. She doesn't make representational drawings, so we might choose a picture from one of our Christmas books. We'll see. I'm limited by the colors of wool felt I have on hand. In fact, George and I started out to make a nutcracker, but I don't have black and George couldn't accept boots & hat of any other color. I was really proud of him for suggesting the snowman instead of pitching a fit.

Of course it then turned out that I didn't have any black seed beads to be the lumps of coal. I went to Michaels to find some, only to remember that they have a crummy selection of seed beads, mostly giant bags of one color. Since I didn't have time to go to Hobby Lobby where I could get a small tube of black that I might possibly use up in this lifetime, I opted for this assortment:

24 colors, 8 grams of each color -- it seemed like a pretty good choice to me. And in fact it still does, but when I went to open it I found this:

which really bugs me. The label was obviously designed to hide the giant gap in the middle -- it was even taped down so you couldn't possibly shift it and notice that the bead containers were about 25% smaller than the package implies. I kind of think that if they felt they had to pad it that much, maybe it wasn't a good deal after all.

I'm trying to get past it, though. Merry Christmas!

Christmas is coming .. now in double-quick time!

2007-12-05T06:39:00.000-06:00

We just decided that instead of staying home for a low-key Christmas we will drive 13 hours to Colorado for Christmas with both sides of the family ...

and that we will have an early Christmas here (to save hauling big presents for the kids to Colorado and back) ON THE 15TH.

So I just lost 10 days of Christmas prep time, and added all the packing & planning of a big trip.

We must be out of our minds. But Dean's brother and my sister live 10 minutes apart, and both sets of grandparents are traveling there for the holidays --- it just seems like the right choice.

Gotta run -- I've got things to do!

... and spinning ...

2007-11-29T19:18:00.001-06:00

or spinning-to-come. This is a beautiful black fleece, breed unknown, that I bought at my local farmer's market! Actually I fell in love with it at a small fiber fest but managed to resist it. Truth be told, while I was saying "No, no" at the fiber festival I was already planning to buy it at the farmer's market. The very patient vendor was Wayne Jesko. It's a medium wool in a lovely deep black to which this picture does not do justice.

Here's some wool spun from his wool & mohair roving. I used two slightly different shades to get a heathered look, although the pictures are a little washed out. I think this will be socks, one of these days.

Here is a superwash merino roving that I painted, and some singles spun from it. I really hadn't expected it to be this green, and I tried to persuade myself that the yarn wouldn't end up green.

Obviously, I was wrong. I was planning to spin a three ply sock yarn from this roving, but as I spun I started worrying about the durability of a merino sock. And I just wasn't happy about that green.

So I decided to dye some silk a coppery brown, and spin a third ply from that. I used sabraset dyes for the first time, and came up with this:

Not very lovely, is it? The dye penetrated unevenly, and the top got stiff and icky. Here's a close up:

Just calls out to you and makes you want to spin, doesn't it?

Here's an end fluffed up. It really wasn't horrible to spin, and it looks nice finished. But I've got to work on my silk dyeing technique.

Here are two coordinated yarns, from Abby Franquemont's August batts. I spun them with the idea of weaving a scarf with weft stripes, but I've been too chicken to actually weave it. Also I'm not quite sure what I'll use for a warp. I'd like to weave several scarves for Christmas presents -- so I had better get a move on, hadn't I?

Should I show it to you from another angle? Can you tell I love this yarn? or at least the fiber -- the yarn could be better. But it'll do.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to spin next. I have too many wonderful possibilities calling to me. Also I have just a little of the green top left -- two small partial bobbins. I could spin up some silk to finish it off, but I don't want to. But if I don't do that, what will I do with the wool singles? Fortunately I don't have enough bobbins for my woolee winder to be paralyzed for long.

Thanks for the suggestions for sister-in-law socks. I am waiting for something to grab me. If nothing strikes my fancy soon I'll just pick one at random. Hey! Maybe Ravelry could have a random pattern picker! So you could just say, "pick a sock pattern for me" and it would send you to someone's project page.

Of course, I would cheat if I didn't like the one it picked.

Still knitting ...

2007-11-28T07:55:00.000-06:00

just not blogging about it. My computer woes have abated but blogging is still very pesky. Knitting and spinning, however, are not, so I've been doing lots of that. With luck I can add some photographic evidence of same.

Socks (1): I continue to knit the tweed socks from handspun last seen two posts and four weeks ago,
I love the yarn, the short row heel with gussets is wonderful, and they are going to be a good length for the chillier weather we are having. But whaddya know, longer socks take more time to knit.

As the earlier picture shows, I started with a provisional cast on because I didn't know what kind of heel I was going to do or even whether I was knitting toe up or top down. Once I figured out the heel, I knit until I had almost finished half the yarn. Then I decided that I had better finish off the toe and knit the second sock. I split the yarn in half by weight but since it's handspun that doesn't mean the yardage or the resulting socks will be the same. I'd rather have the length match visually so I'm going to get them both almost done and then figure out what to do.

So I picked up my provisional cast on, using the purple end of the second ball of yarn. I really wish I had taken pictures when I was trying it on for length since I had needles and yarn attached to both ends of the sock. I didn't, though, so you'll just have to imagine it. I finished off with a star toe just for something different. I decreased on every round because otherwise it would have been too long, so it went very quickly.

As I knit the toe I tried to figure out how I would knit the second sock. I really wanted the shape of the two socks to match, and I tried to figure out how I could do that toe up. Maybe if I had been decreasing every other row, I would have had time. But I failed. So for the second sock, I cast on provisionally and knit the star toe. Then I picked up the provisional cast on and knit in the other direction. I'm adding gusset stitches now and should reach the heel soon.

Socks (2): while I was futzing with the heel on the handspun socks, I needed some park knitting. So I cast on a plain old top down ribbed pair. I am not at the heel of the first sock but I keep thinking I am. More measuring than knitting is taking place.

Socks (3): My sister-in-law has asked for handknit socks for Christmas. In fact, she asked right after last Christmas and has reminded me of it several times. However, in the meantime she has knit herself a pair of socks (her first). They came out great and she loves them, but she is sure (she says) that my socks will be much more wonderful. Now I feel pressured to make wonderful socks. What counts as wonderful? Her first socks were of Regia, but now she's making some out of Lorna's Laces. Do I need to do colorwork? Fancy stitches? Do I need to top her? Can't I just make a pair of pretty park-knitting socks?

I need to make a decision on this pretty soon.

Sideways vest: I am not feeling the love. But maybe if I just keep knitting it will get wonderful again. I sure would like to finish a garment for my torso sometime in this century; I haven't yet and all my favorite sweaters (handknit and store bought) are starting to fall apart.

Oops, gotta run. There's a birthday cake that needs to go in the oven.

Rejection.

2007-11-08T05:24:00.000-06:00

I hate time changes. It's just not natural -- and in fact the only positive thing I can see about them is that it certainly helps me explain the artificial nature of "clock time" to the kids.

The fall one is supposed to be the "easy" one, because you get to sleep an hour later. But what if you can't do it?

For the first few days of the new time, we all slept in just fine -- even my early bird. I don't know why he was suddenly able to sleep an extra hour or more. Perhaps it was suddenly staying up an hour later that tired him out. Whatever the cause, he was more than willing to sleep until six fifteen (new time) which would have been seven fifteen last week. And where he goes, my perennially overtired husband and daughter were more than willing to follow.

And so was I -- for a few days. But by Tuesday night my body was tired of all this foolishness of staying up late and sleeping late. For the past two nights I've been so tired my eyes were watering by about 9:30 (new time). So I've gone to bed, and woken up refreshed at 5 a.m. (new time).

Guess who usually goes to bed at 10:30 and gets up at 6?

Unfortunately, I can't just stick with my old schedule until next spring. (And how ironic is it that we now spend more time saving daylight than we do on "standard time"?) So how to adjust to the new time? I think I've got to stay up late somehow. Sitting on the couch knitting isn't doing it. Perhaps a gripping movie?

What a pain in the neck.

Hurrah!

2007-11-01T14:05:00.000-05:00

I am so proud of myself! What you are seeing here is two needlepunched Halloween creatures -- one started last year and finihshed a few weeks ago, the other dreamed up the next day and already on the wall!

This is so unlike me. Far more typical is the way I did the witch -- buy the materials, start immediately and with great enthusiasm, then miss my deadline and let the project languish for months or years. But George was so pleased when I asked him to draw the Frankenstein that I really wanted to finish it. I was afraid that if I waited until next year he would think his drawing was too childish, and he wouldn't be thrilled to have it on the wall.

Here's a closeup. Isn't it sweet? I used a 6-strand needle so it went really fast. This guy is 3" x 5" and took between 5-6 hours to punch. I'd like to try using a 3-strand needle for details, like the teeth. Next year I plan on asking George for a mummy, which might need some detailed lines.

And Caroline, you are a genius! The gusseted short row heel is just what I needed. Thanks so much.

Here's a closup. Must go knit more now.

More finished stuff

2007-10-26T16:25:00.001-05:00

I have actually accomplished a few things in the last month -- it's just so hard telling anyone about it that I haven't bothereed. But here goes.. (and remember I can't see what I'm typing until about 3 minutes later, so don't expet proof-reading!)

I decided to try making socks with a little pattern to them. I'm not sure it was worth it. They took a lot longer than a pair of straight stockinette socks, and while the chevron is nice, it isn't fabulou8s. It's 15 stitches wide, so I only did two repeats across the foot, and I think that's too narrow. Also I hate the big old stripes on the heel. But I don't like how short-row heels fit me. Does anyone know how to adapt them for a high instep? I usually do a standard heel across 60% of the ankle stitches, if that helps.

Here's one of the new socks (Cascade's Simple Stripes) with an older one (KnitPicks Simply Stripes, or whatever, in Snapdragon). They aren't all that similar but they aren't all that different either. I don't know how I got on this green and orange kick. I don't even wear green or orange.

And here is my latest FO -- a punch needle embroidered witch, started last year and abandoned right after Halloween. I'm really pleased with her and am planning a companion Frankenstein piece (designed by George). No doubt I will abandon it next Thursday, but I hope to have it on the wall next year.

Hmm. I thought I had finished more than this. I have a few projects underway that SHOULD be done; that must have been what I was thinking of. Must go work on them. Or maybe make dinner. It's a tossup.

Deaccessioning.

2007-10-12T11:11:00.000-05:00

I've been sorting out extra printed materials to sell at a little spinner's retreat tomorrow. I'm quite pleased to have identified 18 books, 9 back issues of magazines, and 94 pamphlets that I can live without.

The kicker here is that they are all DUPLICATES. Can someone tell me how I ended up with three copies of Sheila MacGregor's wonderful book on Fair Isle knitting? Actually, I know how it happened, and it all made sense at the time, but what it boils down to is about 3 linear feet of duplicates. No wonder I have piles of books sitting on the floor.

Wish me luck selling these. If it goes smoothly, I might start looking at some of the rest of my library with a hard eye. As in, getting rid of things WITHOUT keeping a backup copy. Oh, my. I don't mind cutting up knitting, but getting rid of a vintage pattern or book that I might never see again? That's scary.

Finished!

2007-10-10T19:05:00.000-05:00

I have finished the Afghani sweater, with seconds to spare. I was looking for the address on their website when I saw a note saying things could arrive on Monday or Tuesday of next week instead of this Friday, so I haven't actually mailed it yet -- Thursday morning would be much more convenient than getting it in the mail today -- but I am DONE.

On the downside, I don't think this is fitting a seven year old. Here it is on my almost-four year old:

(Please pardon the sideways picture. I am struggling with a new-to-me operating system and the loss of most of my familiar programs. Also the computer is moving at the speed of molasses so that I can't see what I'm writing while I'm writing it, and going back to proof anything is like pulling teeth. Sort of the computer equivalent of purling in Fair Isle, my least favorite part of this sweater including the cutting up parts.)

The sleeves don't match, and it's too short as well as being too small. Also I didn't line up the stripes on the sleeves with the stripes on the body very well.

But I do like the colors, and it was very nice to knit with lovely warm sturdy wool instead of soft delicate smooth wool for a change. And did I mention that it's DONE?

A small problem.

2007-09-27T13:47:00.000-05:00

As you may recall, I am knitting a sweater for a 7-14 year old Afghani child. That's a pretty big range, so I didn't worry about gauge or fitting or anything. I just picked out some yarn and a stitch pattern and cast on what seemed like "enough" stitches. I was wrong.

Here is the sweater body being modelled by my almost-four year old daughter. (It's a tube without armholes, so she can't put it on.) I don't care how skinny those Afghani kids are, this isn't going to work.

Now of course I noticed almost immediately that it was pretty small, but I kept on knitting while I wondered how small was too small, and by the time I worked that one out, I had gone too far to think of ripping it back. So then I had quite a while more to think about how I was going to deal with the problem.

First I thought I'd just make a little sweater and send it. But that seemed like giving up, and I thought of some cold 8 year old shivering in the brutal Afghani winter (cue Dr. Zhivago theme) and I just couldn't do it.

So I decided to slice it up the sides -- that's why I didn't bother with armholes -- and insert these:

Basically I'm making a square set-in sleeve by widening the body under the armholes instead of by decreasing the body width at the armholes.

There was one hitch:

Because I hadn't planned on cutting this sweater open, the end of round was not in a convenient place. (A convenient place is the middle of your cutting lines, so that you have solid fabric on each side.) So I sewed it one stitch over (after darning in the ends) and sewed it twice; it seems like it will hold well enough.

Here are the front and back, separated, and one of the side inserts. I'm sewing those in now. They're live at the top so I can make them longer or shorter as seems appropriate.

Looking at Charlotte, I wonder -- is that sweater too short? It's 13" (33 cm) which I thought was pretty good since my measurement chart gives armhole depth and armhole to waist both as 5 1/2" for a size 8. I picked size 8 because that has a cross-shoulder width that approximates the size of this sweater. So then I figured this would give me shoulder to natural waist plus a couple of inches of ribbing.

I could make it longer by adding a little at the shoulder but then the neck would dip down pretty far. It's already 3" deep because I wanted to make sure it would go over someone's head easily. Should I add a little at the shoulder? What do you think?

Oh, and while I've been knitting this sweater I've also been reading Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top Down. What a great book! I can't believe I've never read it before. I had no idea how much it covered. I can't wait to knit something -- anything, really -- from the top down. Except of course that I'm busy knitting from the body up and then cutting it into pieces.

Style or substance?

2007-09-17T10:28:00.000-05:00

I'm not much of a charity knitter. I'm picky about what I knit and especially about what I knit with. If someone wants acrylic sweaters for babies, I'll send them a check, but I won't knit those sweaters! And I always have so many things I want to knit that squeezing in another project and meeting a deadline is hard.

But I have knitted (a little) for Dulaan and for Afghans for Afghans, because I was persuaded that handknit wool garments were really wanted and useful in those places. I particularly enjoy the little lecture on the Afghans for Afghans site about Why Wool is Best.

I had, however, pretty much forgotten about Afghans for Afghans until I read that they were moving the due date up this year, to October 12th which is pretty soon. So of course I decided I had to make a sweater.

I'm using some Icelandic wool that I bought in 1986, enough for two or three sweaters. I only made one, and the rest has been languishing all this time. I've moved it from Chicago to Vermont to Michigan to Minnesota to Oklahoma. (Yes, I am a packrat.) It's a sturdy wool -- some might even say a little harsh -- and the sweater I did make looks brand new. Surely this wool is suited for Afghanistan.

It was purple, teal, and white -- you could date it to 1986 even if you had no idea when it was from! I dyed the white red, orange, fuschia, and yellow. The yellow was supposed to be gold but instead is a screaming lemon, so I might not use it. But the rest are nice.

I'm using a pattern from Anna Zilboorg's book on Turkish stockings -- not even close to Afghanistan but I wanted something a little different. Of course, now that it's knitting up, it looks sort of like a Sanquhar check that wasn't alternated, if that makes any sense. What I mean is, it doesn't look all that unusual to me. But at least the pattern has a cool name: Well Buckets. Makes no sense to me, either.

We were asked to focus on 7-14 year old kids. Unfortunately this looks more like about a 5 year old at best. I'm going to make it long and hope there's a skinny Afghan kid who needs a new sweater.

So here's the thing: if I hadn't given knitting for Afghanis a thought until I saw it on someone else's blog, and I'm all excited about using up my ancient yarn, etc., etc., am I really being generous? Or am I just amusing myself in a trendy way? I am reminded of some very uncomfortable passages in Angela Thirkell's novels, about do-gooder Englishwomen selling Eastern European handicrafts to raise money for refugees. But I tell myself some kid is going to be warmer, right?

Fuzzy worsted?

2007-09-11T19:05:00.000-05:00

Take a look at this yarn:

It is Corriedale x Churro fleece, combed with English combs, and spun worsted. I am not all that great at worsted spinning but I was very careful to keep the twist from running up into the fiber.

It is fuzzy!

I didn't even think that was possible. As I spun I could see that the yarn was fuzzy, but somehow I thought that might change with plying and finishing. It didn't.

So this morning I sat down and re-read big chunks of Teal's book (yes, that's why the laundry isn't done and the packages aren't mailed or even, for that matter, packaged up) and it seems to me that I might need to make a roving out of my sliver, by inserting twist before spinning.

I tried that way back when I first started combing a million years ago but abandoned it almost right away, and really, I've never seen fuzzy worsted before. Has anyone else? Does anyone else go through an intermediate "roving-making" stage after combing and before a final spinning?

I'm hoping to make a sweater for myself out of this wool, this winter. Last winter I spun up some woolen yarn and knitted swatches out of it; they are fuzzy and lovely but I think they might pill up quickly. That's why I tried the worsted spinning -- to see if it would make a more durable yarn. I can't wait to knit up a swatch and compare it with last winter's (except that I can't find them right now). Maybe this wool just wants to be fuzzy?

Also, this is a low twist yarn. But I should be able to make a smooth low twist yarn, right?

Variations

2007-09-07T12:52:00.001-05:00

I've finally finished a spinning project I've been working on for a couple of months: 5 batts of Abby Franquemont's superwash / alpaca / nylon sock blend in Tiger Lily. It has been a pure joy to spin, so I don't know why it has taken so long -- life just gets in the way sometimes, I guess.

The top skein is a three ply; the bottom one is Navajo plied, although not with any great attention to color changes, so there is some barber-poling. The first skein should give me a tweed fabric, the second one, a striped fabric.

Following some interesting posts of Abby's on twist I decided to spin a soft single and then ply it up harder, without worrying about a balanced yarn. Looking at it, I almost wish I had put a little more plying twist in. But first I'll knit it up and see what it's like to work with and how it wears.

I love this yarn & can't wait to start knitting with it. But I do have some decisions to make. I have about 375 yards of each yarn. I haven't figured wpi yet, but I think it's a little heavier than standard sock yarn. So maybe I have enough for two pairs of short socks. But maybe I don't.

I think the safest bet would be to make toe-up socks, and to plan for them to be knee-high. I need some longer socks for colder weather when my standard short socks just aren't enough. BUT the question is -- do I make one sock from each yarn? Or both feet from one yarn and both legs from another? Or mix & match? Maybe I will just start knitting one sock and see where it takes me.

Here are a couple of closeups. Don't the colors just make you want to sing? Part of me wants to use the yarn for something more "special" than socks but another part of me (my feet) wants cozy warm socks to cheer me up in the middle of winter. Not that we have winter here, but that's another story...

Isn't it interesting how some of the alpaca fibers aren't dyed? (At least I'm guessing that's what they are. Click for big if you can't see them. ) They make a little shaggy halo that might or might not affect the final socks; we'll have to see.

So the real question is: do I finish my current socks before casting on for these?

Gotta knit!

2007-09-04T14:18:00.000-05:00

It is September and I want to be knitting something Substantial. Enough with the socks already. I want a Garment.

So if I were to work a quick and probably inaccurate gauge swatch with some bulky handspun (last seen here) and cast on without any more planning than I can do while packing a lunch for a sideways, randomly striped vest, what do you suppose the odds are that it will turn out to be something I can wear and enjoy?

Just asking.

Know thyself.

2007-08-27T11:29:00.001-05:00

I finished my Sidewinders:

They're .... okay. They are a little tight at the ankle, because my instep is so high. They're a little baggy in the leg. But they'll do.

If I made another pair, I'd use Maia's modifications for a high instep, and to eliminate the toe graft. But I won't make another pair, because I learned something.

Turns out I don't like fancy sock construction methods. I want a plain old sock that goes from top to toe, or toe to top. Heel variations are fine. But I just did not enjoy making a peculiar piece of fabric that eventually turned into a sock.

(What do you think this means about my planned Baby Surprise Jacket? I am curious, myself.)

The two things I didn't like about it:

you can't try it on.
something's happening all the time, and you need instructions to know what to do.

Socks are my carry-around project, and if I have to carry around a 28-page book of instructions (really! though I'm sure it could be condensed to about four pages, but I don't want to take the time) and then actually LOOK at them while knitting, it kind of defeats the purpose of a carry-around project.

Of course, I might not actually look at them, as shown by these toe grafts:

Following instructions

Winging it.

The same sort of thing happened at the center back. The second sock has one too many rows, or perhaps one too few, so that the graft is visible in the garter stitch section. I realized immediately what was happening but I just Couldn't Be Bothered to fix it.

So I'm thinking I won't be knitting Debbie New's fabulous garter stitch swirl socks. Too bad, because they've been in the back of my head for about 10 years now, but there you go.

What happened to summer?

2007-08-25T11:37:00.000-05:00

My, the time has flown. First Ravelry sucked up my time, then we went on vacation, and then, and then ..... and now summer is over. Or at least, school has started, which seems like the end of summer even if it's still hot out.

What did I accomplish over the summer? Not much, as it turns out:

I have a pair of socks almost done, and another pair coming along nicely.
I have a lovely sock yarn almost spun up.
I have a lot of pictures on Ravelry.
I've acquired a 2 harness loom for the kids that almost works.
I've agreed to teach a tatting class in October, so I'm madly trying to increase my tatting skills.
I tatted a bookmark but gave it away without taking a picture of it. It could have been better, so I think I'll make another one. And take a picture of it.
I've done some gauge swatches for my Falling Leaves vest.

Almost, almost, almost. Lots of fooling around but no real results.

But now that Fall is Here, I'm sure I'll accomplish lots! Or at least take some pictures.

Old friends

2007-07-10T09:23:00.000-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time putting projects onto Ravelry. It has been loads of fun -- I've dug into both cedar chests and the coat closet and pulled out stacks of things I've knitted over the years. I've gone through old photo albums, looking for pictures of knitting. It has brought back a lot of memories, most of them good. Even the frustrating projects are funny after a while.

I have a stack of old photos that haven't been scanned yet, but I can't resist sharing one project with you. It's my Gray Vest, which has seen steady use for almost 20 years.

The only pictures I can find of it date from about the same period in the mid 90's. That's my then-boyfriend, now husband, and me, first at my aunt's house where he first met the family, and later at a fish show where we were both judges. It doesn't look like either of us got a haircut in between!

The vest was really not terribly successful, considered objectively. The pattern is written in one size, 36 inches at the chest and 24 inches long, and I remember thinking, "oh, if my gauge is a little off, that will make sure it will fit." (Ha, ha -- guessing to make sure, get it? Oh, what a precise thinker I was!) The sweater is 46 inches at the chest and 26 inches long. This was my first inkling that gauge matters. On the positive side, I liked it baggy, and I can still wear it now although I am 40 pounds heavier than when I made it.

I know neither photo shows much detail, (gives me a new respect for those Polperro photos) but can you see the horizontal bands of garter stitch? Can you see how they bend at the chest? This was before I learned about bust darts, too.

The yarn is a superwash wool (from when superwash was kind of new and exciting). I can't remember the name right now, but I'm working on it. It has held up okay although there are a few odd worms where the sweater has been snagged. I think this is the kind of superwash where the scales are filled with some sort of resin, because it doesn't really feel wooly. It doesn't feel like plastic, either.

I don't wear the vest as much as I used to, partly because I live in a warmer climate now where I don't automatically put on a turtleneck & wool vest every day in the winter. (In the second photo I am wearing the vest over a Pendleton wool shirt over some sort of t-shirt -- winter in Minnesota.) Partly I don't wear the vest because I'm so much heavier that I don't think it looks as good. And partly, it just looks old.

I would make this vest very differently today. I have, in fact, tried to replace it three times, with a gray alpaca/silk shawl-collared vest, a big boxy black one, and a closer-fitting purple cabled one. Two of those vests have been quite successful (the black one was a mistake), but neither have replaced this vest for day-in, day-out comfort and ease of wearing.

Maybe this winter I will try again. Maybe I should just make the same pattern again (it's from a wonderful compilation of old patterns, Classic Knitting Patterns from the British Isles: Men's Hand-Knits from the '20s to the '50s, currently available on ebay.) (Not from me, I just love this book.) Or maybe it's time to move on.

Rest in Peace

2007-07-02T10:09:00.001-05:00

A couple of months ago I signed up to be part of the Mother's Day Project (and see the main project site, too). I guess you would call it a protest against the Iraq war. People are embroidering the names of the female soldiers who have died in Iraq. The embroidered names will be assembled into tote bags, and each person who has embroidered a name will use a bag for a while.

I've had a lot of ambivalent feelings about this. I have been opposed to the war in Iraq from before it even started -- I wrote President Bush in October 2001 when he first started conflating Iraq and al Qaeda, asking him to please exercise restraint. It's pretty clear how much influence I have in the White House. But then I've been a liberal who votes Democratic or Independent for my whole adult life. I've watched the war turn into a worse mess than I ever imagined it could be, but I haven't really seen anything I could do about it (except vote, which I've certainly done, to what avail I don't know).

I'm not sure what good this project will do. And I wonder about using the names of women soldiers only. How is the death of a woman worse than that of a man? I suppose that most of us embroidering are women, and perhaps might be able to place ourselves a little more in the shoes of a female soldier. Really, though, I think it's just that the number of dead women is more manageable than the number of dead men. Horrible, isn't it? And who is embroidering the names of the Iraqi civilians? But in the end, I kept on thinking about this project, and so I volunteered.

In due time I got my name, but I didn't start embroidering. I put it in the back of my mind, and let it float to the surface every once in a while. I wondered about her, and her family, and I wondered what it would be like to be a soldier. My father was in the Army in the 50's, but he was a lifeguard at White Sands Proving Grounds. My uncle was in the Navy, I think, but we've never talked about it.

It wasn't until I moved to Oklahoma that I met very many military families. And I'm sure that the people I know aren't typical of the Armed Forces -- or at least aren't representative in any statistically valid way. But they sure have put a personal face on it for me. And it makes me wonder what the family of this soldier might feel about the Mother's Day Project. So I'm not going to use her name here. I just don't think my feelings have much to do with her, or her family.

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling discouraged and low, and decided to pick up this project, I guess as a way of reminding myself that hey, at least I'm still alive. Then that struck me as a pretty self-centered way of approaching this. So I spent some time googling the soldier and reading and thinking about her life and death, but I didn't start stitching.

For whatever reason, today seemed like the right time to get started. I had been thinking about thread colors -- black for loss? camouflage for the Army? red for blood? something else? -- when I remembered reading about her new car. I checked again and sure enough, her car was red. So I went with red for the car she loved, and red for her death.

I used some thread I had on hand. As I started work I realized it wasn't the best quality, but I decided to keep using it; it reminded me of stories I've read about the unarmored vehicles that soldiers were reinforcing on their own with whatever they could find in Iraq. And some of my stitching wasn't the best -- I'm not a very experienced embroiderer -- but I decided I didn't get any do-overs. She didn't. And it didn't take very long to do, which also seemed appropriate; she didn't have a very long life. I don't want to belabor this too much. What I'm doing doesn't have much to do with the soldier whose name I embroidered -- the choices she made, the things she was proud of, the way she voted. But I hope it's at least a small way of saying I hate what has happened -- is happening -- in Iraq, but I respect the soldiers who are victims of these terrible decisions.

It has been a surprisingly moving experience for me to embroider this one small name. I'm glad I did so.

What I meant was ...

2007-06-29T20:31:00.000-05:00

I guess I wasn't very clear in this post. I was trying to say that, much as I admire the works the artists have produced, I'm glad I don't have that single focus. Or maybe I'm glad that I have the family that doesn't let me have the single focus. Or maybe just that, while I love to look at their work, I wouldn't want to be them.

But speaking of obsession, I'm spending way too much time with Ravelry. Because hey! I can make lists! And better yet, I can edit patterns! Oh, I should have been a cataloger.

Some knitting is occurring, and even some spinning. But not much to talk about yet. I'm too busy taking a trip down memory lane, pulling old sweaters out of my cedar chest.

Sidewound

2007-06-20T18:36:00.001-05:00

I've finished my first Sidewinder sock. Here are some not-so-pretty pictures:

The toe is a little blocky but comfortable.

I like the vertical construction. I sort of thought the stripes would go straight up but they wobble over my instep. I have very high arches, and the sock is a little tight over the top. Normally I do my heels over about 60% of the stitches and that takes care of it. I can't quite figure out how to do the same thing here. At first I thought of doing fewer heel decreases/increases, but doing the same number of rows. But that would just change the bend, which I don't think is the issue. Short rows across the top of my ankle? It's not tight enough to make the sock uncomfortable, but it's noticeable.

Here are the decreases in the inside of my foot,

and here are the increases on the outside. They're much less noticeable. On the next sock I think I'll try to match up the increase (K in the row below) and decrease better. I might even follow Nona's suggestions; I was worried about them being too tight but it might look better.

I have enjoyed knitting this, although I'm not sure I'll make another pair. I think I like a more traditional construction better because you can adjust the fit as you go. It's a well written pattern for a nicely made sock, but I think Nona must be more adventurous than I am!

The jury is still out on the wool (Reynolds Swizzle). It seems kind of scratchy right now but we'll see how it wears.

Badge of honor

2007-06-19T14:08:00.001-05:00

The kids and I have dyed some t-shirts and shorts gray to serve as pajamas. The idea is that we will paint them to look more armor-like. But on Saturday I decided to embroider some sort of badge on Charlotte's shirt.

I really enjoyed doing it, although it's clear I should have spent a little more time in planning. The sequins are oddly grouped on the right, and there's an unexpected gap between the rows of chain stitch there. But when we add metallic paint I'm sure it will all work out!

Focus, obsession, and interruptions

2007-06-15T07:22:00.000-05:00

I love my family. But before I got married I lived alone for 15 years, and I was shocked to discover how much time it took to have a day to day relationship with someone. Although Dean and I had courted for five years, we had been living in different states the whole time so there was none of this "Morning, honey, did you sleep well" chitchat.

Now, as it turns out, I like that sort of chitchat. But it does eat up time.

Then we had children. Talk about a time sink! Not only do they want me to do things with them -- read books, play games, go places, talk -- but then there are the things I need to do for them -- the laundry, the dirty bathrooms, the clothes they keep growing out of, the meals they need, you name it.

They have seriously cut into my fiber arts productivity.

A digression: I have always been intrigued by people who focus on something to the point of obsession. I was bowled over the first time I saw James Hampton's Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly
at the Smithsonian:

It's very hard to get scale from this, but this collection of altars and other furniture fills a garage. Every time I see it in person I am bowled over; it makes me think about the time he spent and the focus he maintained over about 14 years -- with no feedback from anyone else.

Just the other night I watched a documentary about Henry Darger, who makes Hampton seem like a trifler. (It's called In the Realms of the Unreal.) He spent over sixty years working on one major book? piece? story? artwork?, as well as many related materials, an autobiography, and other odds & ends. He lived in one room, had very little human contact despite working steadily, and left about 30,000 pages of illustrated manuscript. Here are a couple of pictures from it:

I also met someone rather Darger-esque when I volunteered at the Brautigan Library. A young man came in with a hand made, hand sewn book. The pages were flattened out grocery bags -- he worked as a bagger -- on which he had spent the previous winter writing a sort of autobiography that seemed to revolve around his birth. (It reminded me of Tristram Shandy.) There were many collage pieces on the pages to illustrate the story, and the text and the collage interacted in fascinating ways. I tried to convince him that his book was art as well as a story, and ought to be shown to art dealers or rare book dealers as well as to the Brautigan -- a special place, indeed, but not one equipped to deal with that sort of manuscript. He was unwilling to leave his manuscript at the Brautigan (and who could blame him); I never knew what happened to it or to him after that.

My point? Cut off from much of normal human social interaction, these people achieved a lot. Their productivity was pretty impressive.

Gotta go now. My kids need breakfast -- and boy, am I glad.

(P.S. In the interest of accuracy I should point out that I didn't achieve anything very impressive or meaningful in my 15 years of solitude. But I sure did get a lot of knitting & spinning & reading done!)

See you later ....

2007-06-14T16:41:00.000-05:00

Here I was, pouting because my Netflix movie hadn't arrived for tonight and the projects I'm working on do not absorb my full attention, and my husband is out of town so I can't go to knit night, when my Ravelry invitation arrived.

I guess I know what I'll be doing with my free time for a while. I'm really looking forward to sorting out my needles -- pathetic, but true.

Jumping on the blogwagon

2007-06-11T20:20:00.001-05:00

Yes, I'm making Sidewinders, too. Not much I can add to the general discussion -- they are interesting, it's unnerving to knit socks without being able to try anything on or measure anything as you go. But I'll tell you this:

Oh, how I hate the join on the Inox 2.25 mm. needle.