Fiber Musings

I made myself a triangle loom this week, and wove a shawl with handspun this weekend. I am so tickled! It was a lot of fun to both design, build and weave.

I made it out of 2″x4″ oak strips. The weaving dimensions are 180 cm across the hypoteneuse, and 134 cm along the sides. I set the pins 1 cm apart along the hypoteneuse and 7 mm apart along the sides. This left me with about 2.5 cm extra on the sides, so I just pounded in a couple of extra nails to fill the gap. I just skipped 2 pins on the sides as I wove. I put a coat of orange oil/wax on it, but couldn’t wait for a second coat before I started weaving.

The yarn is handpainted merino that I spun up and navajo plied last winter. I had over 300 yards, which I thought was enough for this shawl, but I ran short by 9 pins. (See the gap? That was all that was left to go before I ran out.) So, I dug through my stash, and found some dark blue/turquoise wool/mohair blend that I had been spinning on my turkish spindles, 2-plied a ball of it to finish up the shawl. That’s the darker stripe down the middle you see.

Off the loom, the long edge measures 163 cm. Not a huge amount of take up. It’s now sitting in the washer to full. I’ll measure it again tomorrow to see what the final measurements are. I’ve decided not to edge the first shawl. I wanted to see what an “unfinished” edge looks like. In the future, I think my preferred finishing technique would be a crocheted/scalloped border. I’m just not a fringe kinda gal. Besides, fringes look natty after a while. Especially with wool.

This was a lot of fun, and I can definitely see me making several more of these. (I should hope so, after all the work into building it!) I made the loom so that it comes apart easily into 4 pieces with 2 allen key wrenches. This is good, since I’ve already stepped on the nailed edges once, and christened it with my own blood when I bumped my elbow into the nailed edges. Oh, well, no woodworking project is complete without some bloodshed. At least, not in this household.

Tooting my horn a bit. I designed this, made up the parts list, cut and pieced this thing together myself. I ran my plans by Martin (I flunked Statics and Strengths of Materials in college, and my balsa wood construction was the first to crush under pressure in high school). He helped hold the wood strips while I cut with the miter saw. And he helped with pre-drilling the 550+ nail holes and hammering them in. Otherwise, I’d still be driving nails (and my neighbors nuts).

Oh, and here‘s a picture of the donkey pieces on the blocking board, waiting to be pieced.

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It turns out that that portion of the donkey is knit in 3 separate sections. The upper back piece of the donkey is now done. I’ll be casting on for the underside tonight, and 4 ear flaps, and I can start piecing it together. Did I mention that is a fun project?

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Just a quick note to say that I’m taking a page from Wendy. I’ll keep comments on for a few days after the blog is posted, and then turn it off after a week. The spammers were only hitting the old entries (so far). I’ll see how this works (and whether I remember to go back and turn the comments off).

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Help! Has anyone made the donkey in the Debbie Bliss Toy Knits book? (yes, the secret is out) At the top of page 54, middle column, it reads as follows:

Next row K twice in first st, k30, turn. Work on this set of sts only for side of

Next row P to last st, inc in last st.

I kid you not. The line ends mid sentence, immediately followed by a blank line. A blank line. WTF?

I’ve checked the Debbie Bliss Errata page, and this book is not listed. I’m going to assume that she means for me to just work that side of the piece until the end, and then come back to finish the rest of the stories.

Wish me luck. And if any of you have made this before, drop me a note, will you? Pretty please? I just want to confirm that I’m on the right path. But I suppose that I will either be done or be ripping by the time I get your note.

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Time sure flies when you are total self absorbed. We didn’t even realize that Thanksgiving was next week until we checked the calendar this weekend — and someone wanted to know what my scheduling looks like for next week. Huh? What’s so special about next week? Oh, Thanksgiving. Yikes! Thanksgiving!

I don’t know what we are going to do. All I know is that we are not heading back to Seattle for the weekend. Maybe a nice relaxing 4 day weekend with just the 2 of us.

Today is the day that we sever the last of our ties to Washington. The house sale closed today. No more mortagage payments (and simultaneous rent payments down here).

So, with the count down starting, I thought that I’d better get cracking on the Christmas list. The only person that I had presents picked out for is Ian. And on top of that, he requested a repeat of a Christmas present from 2 years ago – another pair of Fiber Trend’s felted slippers. In the two years, he has nearly worn them through. Last time we saw him, he kept harping on how much he loved them and how well they fitted.

But, that doesn’t count, does it? When someone requests something specific for a present, that is. Where’s the surprise in that? I’ll have to find something else.

I found the cutest item from Debbie Bliss Toy Knits. Right now, it’s in the “pelt” stage. I’m doing it blind. I did not read the pattern all the way through. I have no idea where I’m going, but it’s been fun seeing it unfold. Something different is happening on every row, so it’s definitely not mindless knitting. You have to follow the pattern line by line. So far, I’m intrigued and thinking that I just may have to do a few more of these lovely toys. Perhaps a snuggly teddy bear or a sheep.

I’m using Baby Ull from Dalegarn (what lovely, beautiful and soft yarn!) for this toy (no word on what it is for now, it’ll be a surprise when I get closer to finishing it).

I put up a freeze dried indigo dye bath this weekend. I wanted to overdye some yarn that I dyed and spun up last year for Martin to be knitted into a pair of Duck Socks. But the color was way too obnoxious for me to look at for very long. So, I’m aiming for some more soothing blues and greens. We’ll see.

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