In lieu of photos of the CNCH projects, let me leave you with a close up of the balance single.

It lost a few yards in the fulling process, but still a hair over 300 yards. I’m quite happy with the results and still think it’ll be fabulous for the yoke of an EPS yoked sweater.

Fiber: 100% Blue Faced Leicester (mixed black/white, over dyed)
Source: Butternut Woolens
Colorway: Sea Glass (purple, green and blue — think I’m in a color rut? It’s just like the Peacock hankies from yesterday’s post.)
WPI: 22
Plies: Single
Weight: 4 oz.
Amount: 308 yds.

Between Janine’s class on yoked sweaters and Kathryn’s class on energized singles at Madrona, I have been dreaming of a colorful yoked sweater with balanced singles. And when I found the last bundle of this BFL at the market, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

I split this once length-wise before spinning. So the color repeats are not as long as they could be, but still of a decent length. After spinning, I left it to sit in a very hot bath (near boiling) and then pulled it out and dunked it several times. That bit of agitation allowed the twist to migrate/even out, set the twist, and full it lightly. I think it will be lovely. I just need to spin the singles for the main color/body of the sweater. I have plenty of light light brown merino-x wool in the house. I think any of them will do.

CNCH 2010 Return to Sender: 80/20 merino/bamboo

Now, I’m facing down the week before the deadlines for CNCH entries — Return to Sender (RTS) and Gallery.  I have committed to RTS — I bought the fiber. Yes, it’s true. I don’t actually have to submit it, but I feel obligated. The roving has been sitting on my desk. I look at it every so often and think, “Oooh, look how purdy!” But what do I want to do with it?

After Deb’s class, the thought to ply it against itself no longer has appeal. With Kathryn’s class under my belt, the thought of a balance single also crossed my mind. But I’m not confident enough of my singles to submit. There are going to be some spectacular entries, so I need to think a bit outside the box.

I pinged Amy & Carolyn on what they thought I should ply with this. I’ve been on a green kick lately. I thought of doing something with the olive. Amy suggested something warm. Caroline says to just go for it, but the olive might be too yellow. So I sat on it a bit more.

Chasing Rainbows Silk Hankies - Peacock Colorway

Due date is next Monday. The next committee meeting is on Saturday — a perfect time to deliver it in person. But it means that I’d better get cracking. And I really started to work on the color options. Suddenly, I remembered some silk hankies that I’ve been playing with.

As you can see, I’ve made one scarf with it and made a weaving sampler with it. Do I have enough? I highly doubt it.

I looked up my fiber database. Yea! There’s one more package in a bin in the garage. Hmm. But was that this package or another package? This morning, I went to the bin, and there it is. Another full ounce of hankies in the same colorway. Thank goodness for databases and marked bins!

Aside: I have Sheila to thank for the database thing. When she first told me about her database/spreadsheet, I just thought that she was even more of an OCD than I was. (That reminds me, I need to mark the new package as consumed!)

See how pretty they look together? My plan is to spin a fine single of each and ply them together. The RTS fiber will not be stripped because I want long repeats of the colors. And no, I don’t think I will separate out individual colors to make longer repeats. I’ve tried that in the past but it loses the subtle color shifts. I’d like to preserve those if I can.

As for what I think will happen, my guess is that the purple and olive sections of both the silk and the merino/bamboo will blend and the silk will disappear. The sections of red/orange/yellow will pop out. That’s my guess. We’ll see if I’m right when I’m done plying.

I think they would make a really pretty weft yarn for a scarf at the next CNCH Gallery. What do you think?

Warp: Gold handspun in 50/50 merino/silk; approx. 40 wpi.
Weft: Olive handspun in 50/50 merino/silk; approx. 40 wpi.
Loom: Gilmore Gem II
Sett: 20 epi
Pattern: 2/2 twill
Width: 8″ on loom, 6.75″ after finishing
Length: 70″ on loom plus hem, forgot to measure after finishing

Yarn spun February 22-26. Warped the loom on March 5. Wove on the morning of March 6. Scarf presented to birthday girl at dinner on March 6. It was a sprint to the finish.

Why so long between spinning the yarn and warping? I had a wake to plan and attend to. Then it was a week on hand wringing on whether it should be plain weave or twill. And if twill, what I should do about the floats on the edges and whether I wanted a floating selvedge or not. Yes, I was over thinking it. I think it is because it ishandspun and a birthday present that gave me so much stress. Thank you Amy for much hand holding throughout the project!

Here are a few more pictures of the project:

50/50 merino/silk top from The Artful Ewe. 3.5 oz each. As soon as I saw the colors, I just knew that it was destined for a scarf for my friend. It scream her name from all the way across the marketplace at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

Yarn sample card. The gold is straight off the bobbin. The olive has been wet finished.

Ellie (not) helping. In retrospect, I think she was trying to tell me she was hungry and I should be attending to her, not the loom.

Scarf finished. Starting a sampler for my records. 3/4" plain weave on each edge for a rolled hem.

Tonight, I broke down and bought a matching set of stylish wrist braces. (not!) These are make in anti-microbial grey fleece that is supposed to be soft. Guess what? They itch like crazy. Definitely not the polwarth I’ve been knitting nor the merino/silk I’ve been spinning. Yeah. Those 2 activities aren’t helping my wrist any either. I’ve changed from picking to throwing. The minute twist/flick of the wrist when you pick gets painful quickly.

Back to the itchy wrist braces…I think I’m going to have to make some fingerless mitts as brace liners a la Knitsarina.

Unfortunately, the euphoria wears off. For me, it’s on or about day 10. The memories recede and the projects are less vibrant and clear in my mind.  And that’s too bad. I mourn that loss after each event. And even though I know it’s coming, I am still surprised when I wake up one morning and can’t remember that fabulous project that occupied my mind for so many hours just days earlier.

This year, I’m going to try something new. I’m going to apply a bit of my project management background to the creative side. I know. It sounds totally anachronistic to the creative process. But here’s what I’m thinking.

In David Allen’s Getting Things Done, David introduced the concept of creating a list called “Someday/Maybe.” In this list, you place all the things that you might want to do someday. Maybe. It’s in this list so you don’t forget it. But it is not in your everyday task list to mock you for not doing it. You can go back and reference the list when you need to.

Since I usually come home with at least 20 (or more) projects of dramatically different types (spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting, you name it!) that I want to explore. Each project has probably 3-5 variations that needs to be experimented on. There is no way that I can get through them all before the memory fades.

The Someday/Maybe list is perfect for these types of ideas. Jot the ideas down, with as much information as I have. Attach photos, yarns, and whatever other inspirations that I have gathered to propel me toward the finished project. File them away in the Someday/Maybe folder.

Periodically, peruse the Someday/Maybe folder for inspiration. Who knows, perhaps I’ll have another burst of creative euphoria as I look through them.

As I near day 10 of the post Madrona creative euphoria, I’m going to spend an hour or so to gather my notes, thoughts, and samples; write them down and save them for a rainy day.

Ask me in a year how well this worked for me.

* Those more observant might also have noticed that I tend to post more in this blog during the days after the retreats.

Case in point. I measured; I swatched for yoke sweater. All good. 8 sts to 2″. Easy. Just plug that number there into the EPS worksheet. Yup. Plug it in. Okay, pull out the calculator and see how many stitches to cast on. Hmm. 289 sts. Odd number because I wanted a non-thinking seed stitch edging. Just plain old knit/purl all the way around. No need to do anything different at the end/beginning of each round. Easy peasy. I’m so clever.

That should have been my first clue. 289 stitches. I cast on using a needle 2 sizes larger because I’m heeding Janine’s advice of creating more of a bell shape by using larger needle sizes near the hips and shift down to the correct needle size for gauge for the body.  No complicated math for determining K’ (dubbed K-prime — secondary K number) and then figuring out the decreases back down to my K number. I knitted a few rounds. All the while, thinking, dang! That’s a lot of stitches. I knit on. There appears to be quite a bit of extra fabric here. Hmm. I knit on. Finally, after 3-4 rows, I go to bed.

This morning. I took a look at it. There does seem to be a lot of extra fabric. I did a quick measurement. 3.5 sts/in. That doesn’t seem too far from my 4 sts/in of the original gauge. As a matter of fact, it should provide the ease I wanted around the hips. I plugged it into the calculator. 82.5″. What? I double check. Yup. 82.5″. How could I have gone so wrong?

I looked back at my notes. Yup. 8 sts/2 in. My brain figured out that this is 4 sts/in, but I plugged the darn 8 into the worksheet instead of 4.

Moral of this story? Don’t do math, especially simple math, when you are tired. I can’t even blame alcohol since I didn’t have any. Just plain old exhaustion. Maybe alcohol would have helped.

Okay. got to get back to casting on 145 sts. A much more sane number of stitches. Although 144 pleases me better (12 squared), but I still want the brainless seed stitch edging. But 145 is better than 143, because it’s divisible by 5. Yes, there’s a little bit of Monk in me.

Janine’s Fair Isle Yoke Sweater Design class got me all excited again about fair isle.  I will finish Anne Boleyn this year. I will finish the sampling for the fair isle sweater that I developed during my 3 day class with Janine 18 months ago.

A single day of energized singles class with Kathryn Alexander only whetted my appetite for more. Her discussion on energized vs. balanced singles make me really want to spin and knit another sweater using balanced singles. I am also determined to spin my own energized singles for the Energized Vest. There’s no photo of it on the web, but you can find the pattern in The Green Mountain Spinnery Knitting Book. You can only purchase the yarn from Kathryn, but she no longer has the natural grey/brown produced. Only the white is available. In order to make the vest, you will need to dye it yourself. And the instructions for dyeing it while preserving the energy? Wow. A lot of work. Hence the idea that I will spin my own. It may be faster/easier. Maybe.

Down Breeds with Judith opened up my eyes to down breeds. As those who know me, I’m a delicate flower. I want/need soft-soft-soft! fibers. I’ve always poo-pooed any other sheep’s wool aside from fine wool class because they are the only thing I can bear against my skin. I have allowed Blue Faced Leicesters into my repertoire, but I’m extremely picky about those too. Not all pass muster. But the down breeds? Wow. An eye opener. The loft! The sproing! And the fabulous hand once I blend mohair, silk and/or angora? Oh. My. Word!

How much do I like it? I like it enough to fly home with a 5 pound bump of a clun/mohair/silk blend roving from Kathleen. I like it enough to ask Kathleen to hold back a clun lamb fleece or 2 at shearing next month. I like it enough that you may find me trolling the websites for a suffolk lamb fleece this spring.

The full day class that I only attended 1/2 of? It was Charlene Schurch’s Komi Knitting class. I was interested in the history of Komi knitting, the stranded color work, and how it relates to fair isle.  I also purchased her recently republished mitten book for more stranded pattern inspirations. I only stayed for the morning part of the session? My brain was full. If I crammed more in, my brain would have exploded.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I will cast on for a plain jane yoked sweater, a la Elizabeth Zimmerman, to test out my measurements. I’ll be using the blue spruce yarn that I just finished. Handspun and EZ’s percentage system are a match made in heaven.

Fiber: Rovings Polwarth Export Fine
Colorway: Semi Solid Blue Spruce
Weight: 735 grams
Yardage: 1,544 yards (before fulling)
Plies: 3
WPI: 10-12

This was spun and plied on the Butterfly. I’m still getting used to the eSpinner. The yarn is not as consistent as I would like, and some areas are over twisted. The yarn is destined for a sweater or a vest. Haven’t decided yet.

Huh? Create UFOs yet not start on new projects? How does that work?

Case in point. I mentioned that I would have liked the new vest to be a few inches longer? I had another skein of the pink yarn, so there really wasn’t any reason to rip out the old waist and re-knit.  Now, it’s 2″ longer and my lower back is much happier, thank you.

Another vest on my vest shelf that hasn’t gotten a lot of wear because something was always “off” about it. That’s the Timber Frame vest from 4 years ago.

See all that rippling around the neck and armholes? Barb always said that I should rip them out and re-knit. She’s right. But I’ve never done it. But since I was in a ripping mood, I pulled it out and started to work away at it.

The neck? I reduced the neck ribbing by 1/2″. I probably should have ripped it all the way back and reduce it by a few stitches, but I thought to try this first.

The armholes? I ripped it back and reduced the number of stitches by about 10% (1 stitch for every 10, or there abouts) and knitted a much shorter ribbing.

Here’s what it looks like now. I only finished right armhole (left side on this picture). See how much better it looks already? I really think I can live with the neckline. But the other armhole? I’m thinking that my neck is off centered and I may have to redo that arm steek. But if I cut more, then the arm scythe will be much deeper on one side than the other. Dang. I knew I didn’t like that willy-nilly steek method! Looks like there will be something wonky no matter what.

Hmm. Maybe I can re-cut the neckline wider toward the left, thus centering it. Worth considering.

Finished.

I finished this over a week ago. It’s the first time we’ve had sunshine for picture taking in weeks.

My mom has been complaining of cold shoulders. I saw a couple of people working on the Truly Tasha’s Shawl at the last guild meeting, and I thought, that would be just the thing for my mom. I consulted Grace about colors. I was thinking a nice red, but Grace mentioned that mom liked Iris’ Golden Braid, but said that she likes a deeper gold. Thus started the search for a good gold.

Grace went to Twist, and found some gorgeous Malabrigo Worsted. After much discussion by phone, we agreed upon Pollen. I happened to be at Uncommon Threads the following day and came across the exact same yarn and panicked. It was the color of butter creme. A very washed out version of what I envisioned by Grace’s description. More phone calls ensued. Grace assured me that it was a deep gold yellow. I had my doubts.

The package from Twist arrived on Boxing Day. I opened the box and came across the most beautiful deep gold. Whew! Grace said that even within the bag containing the same dye lot, the depth of shade varied greatly (see Pollen link to see color variations). Grace and Cathy had carefully selected only the deepest colors within the same dye lot. I am here to say, they did a fabulous job. I am on my third skein right now, and it is barely discernible where I changed skeins.

No pictures right now, but just imagine a big giant-sized diagonal garter stitched washcloth, before you start decreasing. As I said, I just started the 3rd skein. Once I’m done with this skein, I can start the lace border. Whew. I can’t wait.

On the positive side, this yarn is absolutely luscious. The pattern calls for a dense fabric. The yarn in this pattern is soft and squishy. Just the thing for cold shoulders.

I smiled when I saw these LunchBots at the health food store today.

Why? They reminded me of the metal bento boxes we had while growing up in Taiwan.

Each evening, leftovers are packed in tight into these metal boxes and tied with string.  There’s usually some sort of tag (think dog tags) tied on with the string. Then they are placed in the refrigerator.

In the morning, we would carry our boxes to school. Once at school, we would toss them in a pile outside of the class room. Yup. Just tossed it in a pile.

After school has started, the janitor would come by and pick up all the bento boxes and they would disappear until lunch time.  At lunch, they would magically reappear, steaming hot.  I’m not sure where he took them, or what kind of device he used, but I imagine that it was some sort of large steamer. All the metal boxes would be tossed in, steamed, and brought back in time for lunch.

As lunch time progresses, our ears are tuned for the sound of the janitor coming by and the clatter of metal boxes. The sound of lunch — better than the bell! And the aroma of steamed food.  It’s an odd, indescribable smell of all sorts of leftovers being heated up together.  Not exactly harmonious, but not unpleasant either. But, perhaps it’s just olfactory memories tied with hunger and the promise of food.

At lunch, there’s the big scramble to find your own lunch box (this is where the dog tags come in), and you would have a nice hot lunch.*

LunchBots would like you to think that they are into something new, but to me, this is old technology at its best. And lots of pleasant memories to go with. I may have to buy one just for that!

* And this is why, to this date, I can’t face a cold sandwich or salad for lunch. To me, lunch is supposed to be hot, darn it!

So what else can you do with 8 oz of 3 ply sock yarn? Make a vest, of course.

Except, of course, a scant 8 oz (less whatever I used in the anklets) isn’t enough for a full vest.* So I dug into my stash to see what other handspun, superwash, sock weight yarn might be around. Lo and behold! Another skein of CMF superwash in “I Feel Good” colorway, spun in an effort to get into speaking terms with the Lendrum (post here).  The grist is vastly different than from the main yarn, but the pink worked well with the purples in the main yarn.

The vest pattern was based on Barbara Walkers “Knitting from the Top.”  This is the second time I attempted to follow her directions for a top down sweater. The first one was frogged. I’m still not 100% happy with this one.  The problem isn’t with her instructions, but my measurements.  I can’t seem to get my measurements down right. Then there’s the fact that my swatches lie.

The first time, I measured my shoulders from the outside edge to edge instead of at the shoulder bone. So the top was about 3″ too wide. And when you add the fact that my actual knitting was looser than the swatch, I had a sweater that was about 5″ too wide at the shoulders.  Hmm.

This one was better, but still not what I wanted.  Let’s start with the swatch. My swatch said 6.5 sts/in on 3.5 mm needles.  Actual knitting ended up being 6 sts/in.  This vest was designed to have negative ease because I wanted it to be a snug middle layer for winter walking. Instead of negative ease, I have no ease, neither negative nor positive.  It fits, but still not quite what I was looking for.

I would like the shoulders to be a bit narrower. This will reduce bulk when worn under fleece jackets and/or rain coats.

Also, because of the difference between the actual gauge vs. swatch, the neck is too wide. I fixed it by knitting a generous ribbing at the neck to pull it in.

I tried some shaping at the sides, but I think I will forgo that in the next go around. Instead, I will use the staggered 4×1 rib instead to pull it in as needed.

All in all, I’m happy with it, but I’ll likely make another one in an attempt to make it “right.”

* So just how much yarn is needed to make a vest for me? This one weighs out at a generous 8 oz. But I would like it another couple of inches longer (to keep the lower back warm). That plus spinning waste, I would plan at least 10-12 oz for a vest.

** There are a couple of places where the yarn was chain plied in my attempt to squeeze every last yard out of what I spun; once in the pinks and once in the green/purple. They really stand out from the surrounding yarn. Having seen how they pop out, it is unlikely that I will do this again. It may not matter much in socks, but in a larger project, it’s an eye sore.

Two pairs of anklets. The yarn is 3-ply handspun.  Both are spun from Crown Mountain Farm’s Superwash Merino Handpaint and knit on 2.5 mm needles.

The green should be familiar.  It was first used here as a 2 ply; and 3 ply sock yarn here, and again here.  As you can see, 8 oz go a long way on my small feet. 1 full pair of socks and 2+ anklets. (And yes, all the yarn, except for 2-3 yards, has been used up. Whew!)

After the current set of footlets, I still had about 25 g of yarn left, so I dug out the second color way, “The Beat Goes On”, spun 2 years ago, and patched together another pair of anklets.

They are siblings, but wow, can I tell the difference between the 2 yarns!  The WPI on both yarns is similar — about 14-16 WPI.  But the grist is a completely different story.  The green is lofty and a joy to knit with, but the multicolor one was super dense and the resulting fabric is stiff as a board. (The difference in weight between the 2 pairs is just under 5 grams.)

Unfortunately, they were both spun 2 years ago and I don’t remember the details.  But I think the difference might have been the way I spun the yarn. I may have spun with my variation of long draw for the green and inch wormed the multi. I have to say I really like the green much better. And the loftier yarn doesn’t seem to have made much difference in the wear since it’s close on to 2 years since that first pair of socks were knitted, they still look like new.

I may have to find a different project for remainder of “The Beat Goes On” 3-ply, since knitting on itty bitty needles with it was definitely not a pleasant experience.

Knitting Specs:

• Yarn: 3-ply handspun from Crown Mountain Farms Superwash Wool
• Needles: Knitpicks 2.5 mm needles (2 circs)
• Cast on 12, using Turkish Cast-On
• Increased to 56 sts
• Short row heel (I experimented with 3 different short row techniques over the 2 pairs)
• Cast off using Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind off method.  I came across this recently and am absolutely enamoured with this method.  I can finally forego the darn needle and the sewn bind off!

I wonder if I have anymore superwash wool roving left in the house. I feel the urge to try spinning some more and see if I can perfect that 3-ply sock yarn.  Of course, now I also want to try a cabled yarn for socks.

Hand carved beater bar! (click for bigger)

I made it 8″ long instead of 6″ before starting the crown, so I can have enough length to turn a cuff.  I have a big head and I’m not that fond of the beanie look. But because I have such a big head and so much hair, I barely have enough to turn. Sigh. 9″ or even 10″ would have been better.

Size 6 needles instead of the size 8 because I’m such a loose knitter.

Yarn? 2 oz of a 2 ply handspun rambouillet (purchased the roving at SOAR) instead of Noro.  Much softer on the ears. I like the soft lavender blue variegated color.  Very much like a well worn pair of jeans.

So, I guess it wasn’t really much like the original pattern.

A little about the yarn.  I arrived at SOAR with plenty of vests, scarves and shawls, but absolutely nothing to cover my head with. It rained. It snowed. It was frigid. As soon as the market opened, I went in search of something that could be spun up quickly and turned into head coverings. I bought 4oz of Rambouillet rovings (I can’t remember which vendor). How long could it take to spin a hundred yards of yarn for a quick hat?

I didn’t factor in all the distractions. Nor the fact that I decided to use a drop spindle (Forrester, also purchased at SOAR) instead of one of the 2 spinning wheels.  I didn’t finish spinning and plying the yarn until the week after SOAR.

It wasn’t until the weather turned arctic in California that my mind went back to the hat.  Of course, now that the hat is finished, the weather has turned a nice balmy 60F…

I have 2 oz left. I think there’s enough for a neck scarf or a pair of fingerless mitts to keep me warm while walking.

This picture was taken the morning of the 2000 Winter Solstice near Ames, Iowa. The halo is made by sunlight shining through millions of ice crystals.

Yesterday, I went to the Y and hopped on the treadmill to get a baseline. I wanted to find out where I am before I start training. I don’t do treadmills in general. If I want to walk, I have plenty of built-in loops around my neighborhood in 1, 2, and 3 mile segments. But I wanted to get a baseline that didn’t include stopping at intersections and waiting for traffic (or waiting for Waldo to sniff and water each blade of grass as we walked by).

What did I find? I finished a 5K in 54 minutes. That included a few slow downs to set my iPod into the treadmill, re-plug my headphone cord into the treadmill after my wild arm swings pulled it out of the socket, and general playing around with the interface.  Not too bad, but could be better.  My goal is to finish the 5K in 45 minutes. I have 3 weeks to shave 9 minutes. I should be able to do it.

Back to the title of this post. I wore one of my handknit socks. Regia Jacquard, to be specific.  It was a plain vanilla sock, top down with a heel flap, knit in plain stockinette. These socks don’t look much different from when I first knit them. And according to my project notebook, that was in July 2001. 8 year old socks that still look new.

Yup. Wears like iron. Unfortunately, they also felt like sandpaper after mile 2 (3K mark). During that last mile, I could feel every purl bump. And my feet were sensitive for a couple of hours after.

I will go through my entire sock drawer and give each sock an audition. I’ve heard that wearing the socks stockinette side in may feel better than purl side in. I’ll try that. Handspun as well as commercial. Nylon enhanced or not. Superwash or untreated wool.

So, the quest is on for a pair of perfect handknit socks that can withstand a half marathon.  Comfort, wicking ability, cushion, and just as importantly, durability.  Ideally, it would be something like the Smartwool hiking socks. But that would entail creating little terry cloth like loops on the inside for cushioning. Not in this lifetime. Life is too short. If it comes down to that, I’ll buy the darn socks. It’ll be cheaper.

Stay tuned.

I culled through my past blogs and compiled a list of knitting recipes that I’ve sort of written in the past. A little more than scribbles on whatever is handy in the kitchen, but falls (very) short of the neatly typed up 3×5 recipe cards.  These are now available from the menu under the masthead.

(Yes, we are short on blog fodder around here lately. Nothing exciting happening here other than trying to stay warm.)

There has been several requests in the past for the pattern, but there really wasn’t one. As I mentioned in my original post, I made the pattern up as I went along, using my favorite cotton Benetton sweater/shrug as my guide.

Instead of providing the pattern, I provided the generic pattern recipe that can be adapted to any size yarn, any size person.  With the recipe, at least one person from the guild has been able to reproduce the shrug for herself and as gifts.

While at SOAR, I was asked again for the pattern.  Again, I gave the generic recipe, but Sarah & Beth were most insistent. I said that I’d write it up when I had the time. I have a bit of down time right now and need some blog fodder, so I present you the shrug pattern in 2 parts: generic recipe with design considerations; and, as Elizabeth Zimmermann would say, the pithy directions for this particular shrug.

Generic Recipe

I had this lightweight cotton Benetton sweater shrug. I loved it. I wore all the time.  It was slouchy and had bat wing 3/4 sleeves.  I wore it over everything whenever I needed just a little bit more. It ended at the waist. The bat wing sleeves allowed me to wear it with baggy t-shirts or fitted shirts.  It was a bit blousy and buttoned up in the front, but I rarely wore it buttoned up.  In fact, I lost a button several years ago and didn’t notice it until months later.

With this in mind, I made two measurements:

1. depth: neck to waist
2. length: wingspan for 3/4 sleeves

I didn’t want a fully rectangular sleeve, so I decide to make a slight taper in the sleeves, beginning from the cuff. The finished circumference of the sleeve is the depth of the sweater, minus the ribbing.

The shrug is knit from cuff to cuff.  Sort of.  I wanted the 2 cuffs to be identical. I didn’t want a cast on edge on one cuff and a cast off edge on the other.  So, I knit 2 separate and (nearly) identical pieces and kitchener stitch the 2 pieces together.  You can knit it either as a single piece or as I did, 2 pieces.

Recipe:

1. cast on stitches for the cuff; place marker, join and work in the round
2. work in ribbing for 1″
3. change to st st
4. increase one st on either side of the marker every 1″ until desired circumference
5. work even until desired sleeve length
6. remove marker and work flat until 1/2 the length of the shrug
7. repeat steps #1-6 for the other half
8. kitchener the 2 pieces together
9. pick up and knit around the center where you knitted in the flat; pick up in multiples for the ribbing you choose (I used 3×3 ribs, so I picked up in multiples of 6.)
10. knit in ribbing for 3″, or more
11. cast off

The Pithy Directions

Finished Measurements:

1. depth: 24″
2. length: 45″

Yarn: handspun 2 ply blue faced leicester from Dicentra Designs; 12 wpi. The shrug weighs 335 g / 12 oz.
Gauge: 5 sts/in, 8 rows/in
Needle: 16″ and 45″ circular needles in whatever size that gives you gauge
Schematic:

Directions:

1. cast on 75 sts, place marker and join
2. knit 3×2 ribbing for 1″
3. knit st st for 1″
4. k, inc 1, k to last st, inc 1, k
5. repeat steps 3-4 5 times (85 sts)
6. continue until work measures 8″
7. remove marker and work flat in st st until piece measures about 22″ (I worked until I finished a skein around the middle of the piece)
8. repeat steps 1-7 for the second piece, but until both pieces together measures 45″ (e.g. 20″ and 25″)
9. kitchener the 2 pieces together
10. pick up and knit 2 sts for every 3 rows around the center opening. Pick up extra stitches around the corners where you changed to working flat to eliminate any holes.  I didn’t predetermine the stitches I needed.  Instead, I counted the stitches that I had and increased to the right number of stitches I needed for my ribbing.  For example, if I picked up 178 sts, but needed 180 to make my multiple for the ribbing, I would increase 2 sts in the next round.
11. work in 3×3 ribbing for 3″
12. cast off
13. weave in ends

That’s it.

Variations:

• As I said, you can work from cuff to cuff as a single piece. Just take notes of the distance from the last increase to where you start working in the flat, and reverse the decrease to the cuff.
• Deeper ribbing around the center.
• Short row the center ribbing around one side for a shawl collar. Although this would create a definite neck edge.
• Full length sleeves.
• Fitted sleeves.
• I’ve been toying with working a center back rectangular panel and pick up from the edges and knit toward the cuff. This allows for design features like cables or lace inserts.

The possibilities are endless. Excuse me while I dig in my stash for more yarn.

Pattern: Hiker’s Waistcoat
Yarn: Cascade Rustic (3.5 skeins), purchased from Island Wools, Friday Harbor, WA

This was a quick knit.  It took less than a week. The neckline didn’t quite work out as the pattern stated so I winged it a bit.  Otherwise, I followed the pattern exactly as written.  The problem was that the vest came out really baggy, especially at the underarms. The fabric was also sleazier than I liked.  Today, I fixed that sucker by tossing it in the washer with some hot water and soap for 5 minutes.

Yup. I fulled it.  I like the fabric much better now and it fits snuggly.  I like.

Hmmm. Looking at this picture, the left underarm looks kind of funny — curvier than the right. Perhaps I should go back and revisit.

The only thing missing is a zipper.  (I guess that’s a mod. I wanted zippers instead of buttons.) That may be a while.  I hate installing zippers.

Deadline is February 28, 2010. Lots of great prizes too.

Grace — There’s plenty of time for Iris to fire up her Cricket Loom and enter!

I started the Hiker’s Waistcoat with Cascade Rustic from my stash. I’m going to put in a zipper instead of buttons.  This should have been a quick knit except I keep thinking I know where the pattern is going and knit merrily away, only to find out several inches later that my interpretation was off. Waaay off. So, I’ve done quite a bit of unknitting.  Why not just rip? I’m trying to keep track of row numbers so that the seaming will go easier.

The wool/linen blend is amazingly soft. I’m loving it so far.  The soft flowing of pure white to gray is mesmerizing. I can’t wait to wear it. I should have enough for a hat or something to go with.

Maybe some pictures after the most recent unknitting session.

What’s best about SOAR? Hanging out with old friends, some you only see a few times a year, or once a year at SOAR. Getting to know some of them better. Getting under the covers and learning the thought and design process of the mentors for their various projects: Sara Lamb, Deb Menz, Stephenie Gaustad, Sarah Swett to name a few. (Go ahead, click through to their site and tell me you aren’t inspired.) Meeting new best friends. Seeing all the fabulous projects that everyone has been working on during the past year. Creative juices are flowing.

Unfortunately, creative juices aren’t the only juices that are flowing. I arrived still recovering from the ravages of a 2 week old cold (just sinusitis and bronchitis at this point, and cleared by my doctor as not contagious), there were others who arrive while contagious. Sorry, people, cold/flu while you are contagious and in small hotel meeting rooms/suites and lots of other people is just not a good idea. Several of the mentors came down with the crud after the 3 day workshop and had to suffer through the remainder of the week feverish and loss of voice. Not cool. Some think that the SOAR crud is the price of admission; I’d rather not.

The cold dry air of the Oregon High Desert triggered a severe asthma attack for me. That on top of weakened lungs from the bronchitis made it ugly. Very ugly. So ugly that I barely made it to Whidbey Island. So ugly that my doctor put me on a course of prednisone. So ugly that I’ve decided to stay put until this is fully under control instead of returning back to the bay area and some commitments I have down there.

Now that the asthma is better controlled, I have the sniffles. Damn! And a winter storm is now scheduled to arrive tomorrow and stay through the window I am thinking I’ll be able to head south again.

On the positive side, I love a good winter storm when I tucked in the cottage with a fire blazing. Plenty of hot tea and my spinning wheel. I might even break out the Cricket and weave a scarf!

And even better, I will be able to go to the Whidbey Weaver’s Guild’s Annual Sale on Friday!

I leave you with some images of the week. Click through for full size.

23 Dec, 2009: Edited to use YouTube instead of the local QuickTime movie for improved page loading and throughput.

On other news, I’m home safely. Except for the cold I seem to have caught somewhere along the way. I’m taking these few days easy, drinking lots of fluids, chicken soup, vitamin C, zinc, and plenty of rest while catching up with my Tivo.  All this provides some good knitting time.

The diving was good. I can’t say great because I don’t think it was as good as the Solomon Islands last year. But who am I to say? It’s only my second diving trip. The weather was hot, humid, and unpredictable.  We had residual rain, wind and cloud cover from the never ending Typhoon Parma during the early part of the week. It finally calmed down for the last day or so of the trip.  The waters were murky. But the murky water also brought the corals out for feeding, which we wouldn’t see otherwise.

There was a lot of surge and it took me a few days to learn to not fight the surge and current and go with the flow. I got comfortable enough to play with my underwater housing for my point and shoot Canon.  You can see some of the pictures in my Picasa album.

I’m in Makati, outside of Manila right now. While the areas that I’m seeing look back to normal, I was told by my driver (hotel car service) that the outlying areas are still under water and without power.  They are not expecting to have power restored for at least 3 months.  It means a dark Christmas.  In order for him to get to work, he first has to catch the raft from his home and help push the raft for an hour to get to dry land, then onward to the hotel for a shower and start his day.  He plans to be here by 5:30 am tomorrow to take me to the airport, which means that he needs to be up by 3 or so.  They can’t leave their home for fear of looting.  They can’t cook at home so he needs to buy food for the night on his way home.  (I’m trying to be liberal with my tipping while here in Manila.)

So, yeah, don’t ignore the requests for donations from MSF, Mercy Corps, Red Cross, or your aid relief organization of choice.

And the blanket? It’s finally getting past the “placemat” stage.  It’s almost pillow sized.  It’s another way of say, I have a lot of knitting ahead of me.  It may be a sleepless flight back to California.

Next on the agenda — family time during the next 36 hours, which may stretch into 48-72+ hours.  It all depends on what Typhoon Parma decides to do. As it stands now, Parma is due to be in the sea between Taiwan and the Philippines come Sunday afternoon through Monday morning as a Category 2 storm.

Although my final destination is Panglao Island, which is several hundreds of miles south of Manila, I have to connect through Manila.  I am due to fly out to Manila on Sunday evening.  I am prepared for a flight delay.

Super Typhoon Parma bearing down on the Philippines. (Graphics courtesy of examiner.com)

]]> http://www.fibermusings.net/archives/1572/feed 0 http://www.fibermusings.net/archives/1563 http://www.fibermusings.net/archives/1563#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:41:55 +0000 Ann http://www.fibermusings.net/?p=1563 I’m going Pink for October. I’m not doing anything fancy except changing in the background color because I just don’t have time right now to build a new template around this. Perhaps next year.  In the meantime, read up on it and click on through to give free mammograms.  Which reminds me, I’m due for one this month. How about you?

For more information:

• National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
• Pink for October

I took a look at all my Turkish spindles.  Yes, all.  I found that I have about 8 here (there may still be 1 or 2 hiding in a bag somewhere).  I know I have at least 1 or 2 more up at the cottage.  I took them all out.  Gave them a nice rub with beeswax polish, and set out to weight them.  My spindles range from 20 – 80 grams.  Most of them are in the 55-65 range, but there are a couple of really heavy/dense exotic wood spindles.  I picked the single featherweight spindle (20g) for my singles, and the lightest of my large spindles (40g) for plying.

So I set out to audition fibers to take on the trip. I tried an Abby batt. Nope. It didn’t tickle my fancy with this spindle. I found a little 1 oz. braid of Falkland wool that came in an order from bee mice elf.  Yum. This is a lovely fiber to spin on the Turkish spindle.  Not too slippery, nice crimp, and very soft for a medium wool.

I separated the roving into 2 equal sections for a 2-ply yarn.  I started spinning the first bump and looked down at the spindle. Hmm. It doesn’t look anything like a yarn turtle.

This is the way I was taught to wind a Turkish spindle: over and under alternate arms.  When enough builds up, skip 2 arms and repeat.

I looked at Syne’s turtles and reviewed Amelia’s directions and saw that they wind in a much different way than I’ve been taught.  So, I thought I’d give it a try.

Hmm. Perhaps I’m just not used to it, but I think it looks funky.  It took a while for me to get into the groove of winding it this way.  I’m not too happy with this method because I think that the spindle gets a wee bit unbalanced while winding on.  The old method of over/under builds the yarn evenly around the shaft.  This method builds the yarn parallel to the shaft.  There’s a moment in time each time you switch that the fiber is evenly distributed, but the next wind-on changes the balance again.

And the wind-on feels awkward.  It did feel better toward the end, but still not great.  It may just be the awkwardness one experiences when learning something new.

Here are the 2 nests side by side.  The old method on the left, and the new on the right.  The new one doesn’t look anything like a nest nor a turtle.  It looks more like a giant Chiclets.

And the biggest downside I found is that I can’t find the center!  The old method keeps the shaft area clear, so I can track the starting thread.  When I slide the shaft out, I can pull the start out a bit so I can use it.  The new method completely covers the starting thread.  I couldn’t find it, even when I followed Syne’s method for finding the beginning.

Instead of plying from the same end of the spun singles, I’m plying one from the center and one from the outside.  Darn.

Anyway, after going through all of this auditioning, I’ve decided not to take any spinning with me.  Sanity returned.  There are 2 reasons for this:

1. I really need to finish the Deb Menz Patchwork Throw/Blanket. So, I’ve packed that, along with all the millions of little balls of yarn.

2. I took some fiber and a spindle with me once to the British Virgin Islands.  The heat and humidity did not make it a pleasant experience.  I don’t think I ever finished spinning that beautiful wool/silk blend.  It was also a sailing vacation where we spent 10 days on a sailboat.  That may have had something to do with it.

So, the spindles stay home.

Sorry if this post is a little disjointed. I’m trying to stay awake all night so that I will fall asleep as soon as I get on the plane in 11 hours and counting. Hopefully, I’ll fake my body into the new time zone and have minimal to no jet lag at the other end.

So what’s the deal?

Because I’m making it up as I go, and I’ve been working at it very sporadically, I can’t seem to remember how I was doing things so that they look consistent from previous work.  I’ve made notes, I seem to interpret my notes differently each time I pick them up.

How is that? Well, I tried half a dozen methods, if not more, for how to attach the working strip to the blanket edge.  I came up with a way that gives me a seam that I can live with.  One that looks similar from the front and back.  Most attachment methods will have a right and a wrong side of the fabric.  That won’t do for me.  I don’t want to think about right and wrong side when I throw a lap blanket over myself.  Even if there’s no one around but the cat and dog to see it.

And because I’ve made this up, and because I don’t work on this blanket regularly, I forget my chosen method.  Then, I’d pick up the project and knit merrily along.  18″-24″ later, I look down, turn the blanket over, and do my Edvard Munch’s The Scream imitation. Rip. Rip. Rip! I’d try another method. Nope. Still not it. Rip.

After the 5th or 10th ripping session, I got smart. I wrote down my instructions.

I still get it wrong.  Huh? Back to being lazy. I wrote shorthand for my attachment method, thinking, I’ll know what I mean by “twist the pair of sts and p2tog.” After all, how many different ways can there be? Apparently a lot.

So, I got anal.

I took step by step pictures. I took notes. I combined them into a series of reference/flash cards. Of course, now that I’ve done this, it’s fresh in my memory and I haven’t needed the cards.  But it hasn’t been a total waste.  The hand, eye, note taking memory is serving me well for now.  I still remember after 24 hours.  But then, I’ve also been actively knitting.  So, the jury is still out on these cards.  We’ll know one way or the other next week.  I need to punch a hole and put it on a ring so I don’t end up doing my version of 52 card pick up.

Now I want to know how far along I am on the project.  I am aiming for a 30″x48″ blanket before I get started on the edging. I have no idea what my percentage of completion is or if I have enough yarn spun up. I didn’t want to fall into the trap that The Harlot fell into. But the project manager in me really wanted to know where exactly I was every step of the way.

So…I created a spreadsheet.

With periodic measurements, I’ll be able to track my path to completion, based on square inches.  A quick trip to the scale will tell me how much yarn I have used. Based on estimated yarn requirements for the finished blanket and how much I have used, I can see if I’ll have enough yarn to finish the project.  Since this is all hand spun, spun over the course of nearly a year, the grist isn’t the same, so this calculation is a way to periodically verify my yarn quantity.

Yeah. I’m a geek and I’m anal.

So, where am I?

The blanket is currently at 12″x18″. According to my spreadsheet, I am about 15% done with the blanket, sans edging.  I have ample yarn spun to finish the blanket.  See?

I really hope I didn’t make a mistake with my formulas…

The big giant ball of yarn in the upper left corner is designated for the edging. It most likely will not be enough. I have another bobbin of mixed colors spun up, but it’s sitting on the bobbin to rest before I wind it up into a ball.  And if I that’s not enough, I still have some fiber that I haven’t spun up yet. (Stop laughing. I meant fiber designated for this project. I know I have a garage full of fiber.)

Wait! How is that? You have a spreadsheet that tells you exactly how much yarn you need. I just saw it!

Ah. That was for the base blanket, sans edging.  I have no idea how much yarn I will need for the edging since I haven’t measured, weighed and calculated how much that will be.  Oh, and more importantly, I haven’t decided what the edging will be yet.  Most likely, it will be an i-cord edging since it is easy and takes less yarn than a crocheted edging.

My biggest problem is that it took me months to get to this point. SOAR is less than 4 weeks away. For 2 of those weeks, I’ll be on vacation. In the topics. I really was not planning on bringing a wool blanket with hundreds of tiny balls of wool with me to the tropics. The idea of the lap blanket on, well, my lap! has absolutely no appeal. Nor does the idea of chasing little balls of yarn down the airplane aisle on an international flight.

But, if I want to have this in the SOAR gallery, I’m going to have to just suck it up and take the whole kit and kaboodle on the trip with me.

Wish me luck.

(Of course, I could just bind off and show it in the gallery without the edging. No one would be the wiser. Right?)

This is the first year that I’ve been involved in the conference from something other than an attendee.  I have to say, these ladies are amazing. The committee has been busily working away for over a year.  Yes, a year.  This means each conference takes over 18 months to plan and execute. These women worked tirelessly to create an exciting slate of teachers and classes, activities, and events. And with grace and respect for each person’s expertise.

These ladies also had the courage to make some significant changes.  One of these exciting changes is to put the conference materials and registration online.  This is how I became involved. With the help of all the ladies on the committee, Kris Peergand, and Suzanne Pedersen, I pulled together the conference pages on the official CNCH website.

Who’s Kris? She is one of the driving forces behind the rebuild of the CNCH website. Take a cruise through the rest of the site while you are there and see the amazing changes she has made. The website is clean, easy to navigate, and makes use of the available technology to allow all the member guilds to update their own areas.

Suzanne has graciously and openly shared all her experiences with the online registration process with me.  She has been a wonderful resource for all my questions. She guided me through the selection process of the online registration software. We’ll see how well I followed her advice when the registration opens on November 1st!

By the way, did I mention that this committee is an all volunteer organization? Yes, everyone worked on conference (including Kris for her work on the website) without monetary compensation. Why? Because they have a passion for textiles and want to share that passion with all of you. That’s the compensation, the reward: sharing the passion.

I am proud to be part of all of this. Thank you, Nancy and Kathy, for inviting me along for this amazing ride!

Even though I’ve known about this for a while now, and blogged about it, there’s still something magical about seeing your project and name in print.

Eh-hem. This time, Kathleen turned the tables on me. Hmm. “How many looms do you have, Ann?” Huh. I stopped to count…then I asked, do you count rigid heddle looms? Of course. So, here it is:

• 1 Cricket Loom (Rigid Heddle)
• 1 Flip Loom (Rigid Heddle)
• 2 Gilmore Gem II Looms (1 each in California and Washington)
• 1 Fireside Floor Loom (still at Rachel’s)
• 1 Marudai
• 1 Homemade Triangle Loom

That’s 7 looms.  And these don’t include the old Leclerc Dorothy Table Loom that is on permanent loan to Deborah, the navajo weaving frame, the inkle/card weaving looms, nor the miscellaneous hand held looms.

Yikes! As Kathleen said, I can’t say I’m not a weaver anymore.  Or maybe I could. I don’t weave. I just collect looms.

Sigh. Just call me Ms. Pot.

I’m also battling the calendar to finish the CNCH 2010 website before the unveiling in 2 weeks.  So, more sporadic postings, I’m afraid.

P.S. My copy of the Fall 2009 Spin-Off is still MIA, but I saw a copy of it yesterday.  My scarf is in it! It’s such a thrill to see your work and name in print.  (I won Best Use of Sheep Wool category.) You can download the All Wrapped Up in Natural Fibers gallery from this page.  This PDF also includes a few scarves that didn’t make it into the magazine.  I’m so tickled!

Riiiiiight. Time for a reality check…So far, I’ve finished one pair of socks.  I can’t take a picture of the pair together because Kristine has the 1st one.  I lent it to her as shop sample for Sock Summit, but had to leave early due to an emergency back on the island.

So what took up all of my time?

A sliding hillside (imagine a 30′ drop 5 feet from the end of your deck and water seeping/flowing out of the hillside at several locations), HOA politics from hell, county permitting process. To be clear. The slide itself wasn’t the emergency that took me away from the Sock Summit.  The repair was already underway.  It was the nasty neighborhood politics that took me away. The emails that flew made me a miserable companion to those around me at the Sock Summit, and I felt that I needed to be back in person to defend myself.

But, we are once again back on track…3 weeks later than originally planned.  Last I heard, they removed approximately 430 cubic yards of yuck, and will be putting in 62 tons of rocks in its place.  Now that the work has restarted, we hope the major work will be done by the end of this week, then on to the replanting. Unfortunately, because of the politics, the project won’t be fully complete before I leave.  I hate this. But it can’t be helped. I’m backed up against commitments back in California.

Oh, then there are the new septic system inspection requirements set out by the county.  I still have that to look forward to. I hope to finish that by the end of this week as well.

On the bright side, I had a marvelous week with my niece Iris. She even finished a scarf on the Cricket Loom!  It’s really sad when your 8 year old niece accomplished more than you did…

Well, I did paint one wall…out of 5 or 6 that needed repainting and stair railings, and trim and, and, and…

Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly from this point on.

I got lucky and made it on the Port Townsend ferry without a reservation. I made the decision to try for it, since I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of trying to get through Seattle during rush hour. Whew! Now to find some coffee.

Next stop, Portland and Sock Summit!

A quick post to show you what I’ve been up to.

From this…

Curious Creek Fibers assorted rovings. These were Kristine’s samples.  She has new packaging now.  I’ll see them this weekend in Portland.  The idea is that you will get an assortment of colors in each package. You decided on how you want to spin it up into yarn.  What great fun and full of color possibilities.

To this…

Spun on Spindlewood drop spindle. I randomly spun the colors together in short and medium lengthed sections.  This creates really short and random color repeats.

To this…

Wound off to weaving bobbins (6 total) and 3-plied, again using the same Spindlewood drop spindle because I didn’t have a plying spindle with me.  (This will be rectified this weekend.)  This was my first 3 ply on a drop spindle. It really wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. It helped that I rewound the cops onto weaving bobbins so the tension is even on all bobbins. Having the 3 strands come under the bobbin winder provided just that little extra bit of friction for extra tensioning.

To this…

Really squishy and yummy sock weight yarn.  I didn’t measure the WPI on this yet.  Estimated yardage is about 250 yards.  In fact, I’m already 1/3 way finished with the second sock. I just haven’t gotten around to taking a picture.  I’ll take one on the ferry and post it tomrrow.

I’ll be showing the single sock to Kristine tomorrow and let her decide if she wants to display it with her packages as a sample. In any case, I’ll have a great new pair of squishy socks by the end of weekend and some really fond/fun memories.

Here’s the view from my spinning wheel.  Needless to say, I’ve been a little distracted.  Aside from looking out at the water, watching the sunset, planting herbs, putting in some shrubs, I’ve also been busy picking berries and making jam.  Posting might be a little sporadic as I get back into the groove of island life.

Barb

I hadn’t been to Artfibers since they moved out of San Francisco, so this was my first visit to the new location.  All I can say is, “WOW!” It’s lovely.  It’s on the ground level of a house.  There are 3 rooms full of luscious yarn.  Roxanne’s office and patterns are located in the converted detached garage.

Comfortable chairs are scattered inside and out for you to sit and sample with all the yarn in the shop.  You can opt to sit inside, on the covered patio, or in the gazebo.  Outside the window, between the gazebo and the house, is a lovely organic garden.

On the 4th, Roxanne had an Open Studio/potluck. Everyone brought a little something to share.  There was lots of food, a beautiful berry covered velvet cake, and wine.  We sat around the garden, chatted and played with yarn all afternoon.  I may have bought a little yarn.

I had a great time.  Thanks, Barbara, Roxanne, and Nyles!

Straight edges. 90° corners (T-Square provided as proof). Tidy attachments.

This is probably the 3rd iteration of this attempt because I wasn’t satisified with variations of attaching the live knitting to the knitted piece.  The one I finally settled on is: sl last stitch as if to purl, pickup edge stitch from the back, purl 2 together. On the next row, slip the 1st stitch as if to knit.  It’s a variant of Vivian Hoxbro’s method.  I found slipping that last stitch as if to purl provides the edge I like the most.  Your preferences may differ.

Attempt 1 has been ripped. This is the one I will be going with. (Although, I do miss the movement in the diagonal lines…)

I wrapped them onto old business cards*…

Then I took the leftover bits and started a project…

Pretty, isn’t it? Too bad it’s on hold right now.  The rippling edges are bugging me.  It took me a while to figure out why they ripple.  And to explain, we have to go back to high school geometry.

The strips are knitted on the diagonal with 15 stitches.  Since that edge is basically the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle, from geometry, we know that the width of the strip is 15 / sqrt(2), or approximately 10.6 stitches wide.

But when I do short rows to turn the corner**, I have a block that is 15 stitches wide.  15 is definitely wider than 10.6.  And this forces the triangle created by the short rows to bulge out.  The bulge disappears when you work the next strip outward because the elastic garter stitch allows the diagonal strips to be pulled out.

So, why am I abandoning it? While the inside strips will be straight, the edges will always be wonky.  Since I don’t intend to block the blanket, the wavy outer edge will always remain.  Will that be a bad thing? Will it be noticeable when I’m curled up on the couch? Or can I just call it structural interest?  The answer to the 2nd question is no. I don’t know the answer to the other 2 questions yet. I also don’t know if it will bug me forever or if I will get over it. Until I figure it out, it’s going to stay at this stage. Or until I come up with another design.

So, Attempt 1 is on hold. Yes, Attempt 1.

Attempt 2 has already been ripped. It was based on Vivian Hoxbro’s domino theory. But I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory layout that satisfied one of my primary goals for this project: No snipping of already short skeins. Keep using the skein until it runs out and splice/darn in a new mini-skein. The project needs to be continuous. Domino knitting can be done with a continuous yarn, but I wasn’t happy with how the diagonals of the blocks are lining up.  (After the first few blocks, I went to paper and pencil and diagrammed out to a 5×5 block and it sucked royally.) So, it has been ripped.

This brings us to Attempt 3. Just a normal garter strip of 12 sts wide.  Since the piece is knit straight, the short row corners will maintain the lines of the fabric, thus, no bulges.  As with Attempt 1, I will work this in a spiral from the center out.  This will satisfy my other goal: a design that allows me to keep going and stop (almost) anytime I want. No pre-planning required, except to save enough yarn for an i-cord edging.  But the good news there is, I can always spin more.

Why didn’t I go with a log cabin blanket? While the center of these blankets start with a small/narrow strip of knitting, the subsequent rounds create wider and wider strips of knitting.  With my tiny sample skeins, some of them may not even span a single row before I have to start a new skein.  This will dilute the colors too much.  This brings me to another goal: highlight the individuality of these skeins by concentrating them into small blocks of color.

When this last sample is the same size as Attempt 1, I’ll do a side by side comparison before deciding on which design to continue with.  Or to come up with Attempt 4.

(You know, I’m beginning to know what Charlene goes through when she is designing by the seat of her pants.  Or skirt. Or something.)

In the meantime, I’m practicing my knitting and purling backwards.  By the end of this, I should be quite ready to work on my Kathryn Alexander kit.

* Why business cards? Because I have a lot of old business cards.  These business cards are of good quality cardboard and of a great size for wrapping yarn samples.  I used to trim my own from art boards, but that got old, and they aren’t always the same size.  At my last couple of jobs, each time I moved offices, I had to order new cards. And we played musical offices every 6 months or so. They finally got wise and started to use standard mailing address on the cards.  But then I changed job titles…Anyway, the bottom line is that I have a large supply of these things.

Why save wrapped samples? I have a couple of reasons for doing this. One is record keeping. I wanted to be able to reference back to what A looks like as a single and what happens when A is paired with something of a different hue, value, and saturation.

The second reason for these wrapped cards is for play. When I took my color workshops with Michele Whipplinger, I loved playing with her hundreds of yarn/thread wrapped cards.  We spent hours just rummaging through these cards and pairing them together in different combinations. The idea of building hundreds of these cards at a go is a daunting one.  This is why I still don’t have any.  But I’m changing that, starting now.

Yes, Michele’s cards were mostly solid colors, but no matter. It’s still fun to play with these.  Each time I look at a plied sample, I get a different impression, depending on my mood.  What I didn’t think was working in the sample yesterday isn’t the same as my thoughts today.  It’s still a good color exercise.  Having the singles to refer back to allows me to figure out what I need to do to replicate, or change a single aspect of the plied yarn.

** Turning the corner for working on the diagonal is really the reverse of a normal short-row corner. You start out knitting 2 sts, turn, and start nibbling back, working 1 more stitch with each subsequent row. Once you reach the full width, you have essentially put a square edge to the diagonal piece. Now, you have to get the new side back on the diagonal by working wrapped short rows.

Ed. Note: Fixed a few typos (knibbling indeed!) and light balanced the yarn cards.

Meet Cola. (Get it? Coal…Cola.)  Black merino fleece from Janet Heppler, purchased at Retzlaff Winery Spin-In a few weekends ago.  Isn’t she gorgeous?  I grabbed her because I was there with a checkbook at the right time. There was someone else interested in her, but they walked away to look for a friend to share the fleece.  If you are that person, I’m sorry (not really). But you walked away. And there I was, with checkbook and pen at ready.

It came home with me because Shari is doing pure white right now.  It would be months before she cycles around to black again. So, if I don’t process her by fall, I can still slot it into Shari’s schedule.

Tactile Fiber Arts April Club

Fiber: 50/50 Angora/Merino
Weight: 2 oz
Singles: 60-68 wpi
2-Ply: 36 wpi, pre-fulled; 28 wpi, fulled
Yardage: 438 yards, pre-fulled; 426 yards, fulled.

Singles spun on Reeves Frame Wheel. Plied on Schacht Matchless.

I firmly plied this yarn so that the bunny fur will stay put instead of shedding on my clothes, once knitted.  Then I fulled it by shocking the yarn in alternate hot/cold soapy baths, and generally bashed the yarn around with a water bottle in the hot soapy bath. After pressing out the water in a towel, I thwacked it several times while rotating the skein to ensure that the entire skein has received “the treatment.”

“Thwacking.” Someone asked what this is in one of the Ravelry discussion groups.  You take the wet skein on one hand and swing it from the back of your head against a sharp edge (the edge of a table or your kitchen counter).  This does a couple of things.

1. It loosens up any felting of strands that you may have done in the hot/cold, bashing around process.
2. It fluffs up the short fibers and helps it bloom.  The yarn now has a lovely halo, which it didn’t have when it first came off of the spinning wheel.
3. It helps even out your twist by shifting it a bit.

Remember how I mentioned in my original Spring Cleaning post that I had an idea for an unspun silk project?  This is what I wanted to play with. I wanted to see how unspun silk would work woven. I don’t think it will work with plain weave, but a weft face weave? It’s got possibilities.

But plain weft weave got boring very quickly. A bit more free-form weaving to concentrate a color kicks it up a notch. What you can’t tell here is that by drafting out the silk hankies into different thickness will change the texture of the woven piece. For example, if you don’t draft out the blue/purple section as much, that area of the woven piece will be thicker.  Therefore, it will sit higher than the surrounding weaving.

I know. It’s obvious when you state it like this, but it was a bit of an “a-ha!” moment while playing with this.  You can create textural interest within a single hankie by changing how you draft the hankie.  Leaving some slubs in? Even more excitement.

However, it’s still a bit flat, and not very interesting as a whole piece.  I think what I need to do is to use the unspun silk within a larger piece of tapestry. The unspun silk then becomes accent (or even background to highlight another yearn).  The effect is flat and fuzzy.  Yet another tool for the tool box.

I’ve also been playing with my inkle loom and some handspun. I had been struggling with with edges. I played a bit with different widths. Not happy with it, so I asked John for some guidance. We discussed the use of handspun vs commercial yarns for weft and how to vary the hand of the ribbons.

During our email discussion, I came across the article by Gwen Powell on an inkle woven purse in the Summer Spin-Off.  Gwen’s ribbons were woven at approximately 2x the WPI as her EPI.  What I was weaving was much sleazier than that.  So I played with different EPIs and the effect on the ribbon.

What I found is that the higher the EPI, the easier it was to keep an even edge.  But, I didn’t much like the fabric because it was so stiff.  Of course, it could have been due to practice, practice, practice. By the time I finished these samples, I was getting fairly good at creating an even edge.

Then I tried using different weft: different sizes of crochet cotton, commercial silk.  Using crochet cotton definitely changed the hand of the fabric.  Using a finer weft yarn than the warp created a more supple ribbon.

John also mentioned that after washing, the hand of the ribbon will change. Gwen mentioned keeping a notebook of all her samples.

So, there you have it. The above photos show the first few pages of my inkle sample notebook. As John said in his email, until the computer offers a tactile option, there is a place for a physical notebook.  I have 2 of each sample: before washing (just pressed) vs. after washing and pressing.  Top of each page is also a sample of the unwoven weft, anchored at each end with a bit of weaving.

Just in case you are interested, the silk is spindle spun. 40 wpi. 5,050 ypp.

Did I mention that I have anal retentive tendencies?

I came home today to my copy of the Summer Spin-Off. What do I find but an excellent article on CVM by Robin Russo? It was good to see that my washing and combing experiences were fairly on target with Robin’s. I found that I had to have 2 soap washes (2nd wash had about 50% of the soap of the first wash) and 3 rinses to get all the suint and lanolin out, as opposed to a single soap wash and 2 rinses for the California Red.  The soap washes and the 1st rinse were top tap water augmented with boiling water, resulting in baths of over 130-135F.

But her article did not mention anything about the double coat I noticed.

However, while on island, I had a nice long chat with Camille over dinner.  Based on my descriptions and the pictures she saw, Camille concurs that what I saw was the lamb fleece vs. the incoming adult fleece.  In her experience, the lambs are shorn in their first fall. Had that happened with Badger, the fall fleece would have been primarily white. Then the second year’s shearing would have provided the grey that I saw in the same locks.

So, mystery solved!

For those interested, the skirted fleece I purchased was a hair over 6 pounds. After scouring, I have about 4.4 pounds of fleece fleece.  This is about a 25% loss due to grease.  Robin’s article said to expect 35% loss to grease and vegetation.  Since my fleece was coated and already skirted, I think my net is completely within the range.

Tomorrow is Spinning in the Winery. See you there!

Dear Ann,

Thanks so much for entering our “All Wrapped Up In Natural Fibers” contest. Congratulations—your scarf has been selected as a finalist for the Fall 2009 Handspun Gallery!
…

Best wishes,
Amy
Editor of Spin-Off magazine

This is Badger. Badger is a CVM from The White Barn Farm. This is Badger’s first shearing.

The fleece is about 6 pounds. As you can see from the above picture there are dark areas in addition to the grey. In the picture at left, I’ve pulled out 3 different locks (washed).  Yes, the colors are that different.  The light grey with creamy tips make up the bulk of the fleece (back).  There are also some dark brown/near black and somewhere in between.  The are even more variations in the fleece, but they fall into these 3 general color groups.  If I try to separate them all out, I’ll go mad.

And if you look at picture of both front and back of the fleece from The White Barn Farm’s website (first link), you’ll see that the front/back are 2 completely different colors.  What’s interesting is that those are not bleached tips.  There are 2 staple lengths in the fleece! (see photo at right) The creamy tip is actually a white all the way through. It is about 6″ long. The grey is much darker, once the white fiber has been pulled out. It is about 2.5″ long.

I have never worked with CVM before, so I have no idea if this is normal or if this is because it is a lamb’s fleece and it is unique to Badger’s first shearing. My copy of In Sheep’s Clothing doesn’t mention this at all. If anybody has more information, I’d love to hear from you.

When combed, the white pulls out first, leaving the short and mostly grey behind on the comb.  If I try to pull it all out into a single top, I will have long fibers at one end, and all the short fibers at the other, instead of nicely blended grey.

So, I think the best course of action for this is to pull off all the white and break the top.  Then pull the remaining grey fiber off into a separate top.  This way, I’ll have 2 completely different fibers from one combing.

In the picture at right, the lower right nests are the first pull of primarily white.  Some grey fibers came off with the white, but it is mostly white.  The left are from the second pull. See how much darker it is without the white? The color is nearly black!  The little grey nest at the center top is an “in-between.” I broke off the white because a lot of grey started to come out.  In this one, I played with pulling the fiber off the comb in 3 steps: white, blended, and black.  I don’t think I’ll be going this far with the final preparation, but it was an interesting experiment.

As a side note, the 2 different staples have the same hand.  They are both lusciously soft.

Also interesting is that the browner locks didn’t behave the same way. (see left) Yes, there were some slightly longer staples in the locks, but the difference between the staple length was not as dramatic. When combed, I wasn’t able to separate them out, so I just pulled them all off in a single top.

What is surprising is that the dark brown and the white/grey are all very soft. I would not mind wearing it against my skin. In fact, I wouldn’t mind rolling around in it! But the one on the top right? It feels very coarse to me.  I will be separating this out when I sort out when I do the fiber prep.

So at least 3 different colors from one fleece that is next to the skin soft. More if I take extra time and effort. I think this would be really interesting for a color work sweater.

Bottom line? The fleece needs to be combed.  I haven’t tried it on the big combs, but it may be necessary to use the hand combs to maintain control over the colors.  And the final color sorting will need to happen after the combing.  I’ll need to figure out a way of keeping the nests separate and uncompressed until I’m ready to spin.  Yes, that means I need to figure out how to keep Ellie out of the combed fiber.

I’ll need to think about this more before I get started.  But you know what? I can’t wait!

(Hmm…Does this count as sampling? I never realized that sampling was so much fun!)

I finally finished spinning and plying the moorit merino/silk roving. There are 1,460 yards of 2-ply yarn here. It’s approximately 18 wpi off of the wheel. I haven’t wet finished this yarn yet. Once I do so, the fiber will bloom quite a bit. Why haven’t I wet finished it yet? I would like to over dye this yarn. I think color on the light brown will be very interesting. And the silk will really pop out. The question now, of course, is what color or colors. Until I do, they yarn will stay as it is. There’s no need to wet/dry the yarn twice. Lazy? Probably, but I prefer to call it efficient. Or better yet, more environmentally responsible.

The edging on the pinwheel shrug is finally done. I stayed up until way past midnight to finish off the last panel. Waldo really wanted to go to bed and was very vocal about it. As a shepherd, he needs to be in the same room as I am in order to keep an eye on me. He can’t go to bed in the bedroom with me still in the living room. He was getting quite cranky when I wouldn’t play along.

Anyway, next step will be to unpick the white waste yarn and pick up for the sleeves.  The edging is approximately 6″ wide.  I’ll work the sleeves to about elbow length in stockinette, then finish it off with the lace edging.  That will make the sleeves just shy of wrist length.

The sleeves will have to wait until I return from Washington.  Besides, I don’t have 16″ 4.00 mm needles.

I’m embarrassed to say that I think this one languished only because I forgot about it. I pulled it out to as a trip project. On return, it got put away. Out of sight, out of mind.

I don’t remember the name nor the colorway of the yarn, but it is a 2-ply hand painted lace that I bought from Full Thread Ahead in Los Altos.

Decision: Back in the queue. It’s a good travel project. (Gee, where have I heard that from?) There are lots of short trips and cruise outs coming up this summer.

There has been other fiber activities around here, in addition to the spring cleaning.  I’ve been working away at 12 oz of pin drafted roving from Morro Fleece Works.  I bought this from Kristine via Carolina Homespun back in March. Kristine was clearing through her stash.

Although I have several pounds worth of Morro’s pin drafted fiber in the garage, I just couldn’t resist.  This was a luscious moorit merino with streaks of tussah carded into it.  The blend was a lot of fun to spin with long draw into a slightly slubby yarn.  I have 3 very full bobbins of singles.  I’ll be randomly plying from the bobbins into a 2-ply yarn.  Randomly breaking off a single and joining in from another bobbin.  Why? This will help even out the final yarn.

Amy told me that she is enjoying the Spring Cleaning series, but wasn’t sure that she’s ready to share with the world her stash of UFOs.  First off, I’m not calling these UFOs — just projects that have been neglected.  Semantics, I know.

In revisiting these, I realize that some of them are a lot of fun.  I don’t know why I ever stopped.  Something along the way made me put them on hold.  Revisiting gives me a chance to re-evaluate the situation and determine the path forward.  Or in the case of the Anarchist Sweater, abandoning it was the right path forward.  (Incidentally, Grace, the short pieces from each of the squares would actually be great for weaving.  A perfect project for Iris and her Cricket Loom.)

And the other reason for going through these is partially in response to “I’m bored. I want to cast on a new project” feeling.  It’s sort of like the kid standing with the refrigerator door open and saying “Mom! I’m hungry and there’s nothing to eat!” when the refrigerator is full of food.  There are lots of projects here that fit the bill for my need for lace, something warm to cuddle up to, something small and transportable.

Besides, I’m running out of knitting project bags.

I had resisted when this was all the rage.  I had continued to resist even after seeing a few first hand.  It’s nice, but I just wasn’t interested.

However, once I saw Penny’s Clapotis, I fell in love.  The drape of the Koigu in this pattern is wonderful, and the subtle variation played well. I wanted one, 4 years after the fact.

But it sits unfinished. Why? It’s boring. I can’t believe how boring this project is.  Even the occasional drop lost its appeal after the nth one of these. On top of that, I lost track at one point and now I’m slightly off in the pattern.  It’s not visibly noticeable, but I know it’s there and it bugs me.  But not enough to rip back to find it. I just need to adjust it somewhere to get it back on track.

Decision: Back into the queue.  I’m about 60% finished, so a week or so of knitting should get this finished and off the needles.  Perhaps I can finish it in time for the 5th anniversary of the pattern.

I started these in the fall of 2007 and abandoned it on November 21, 2007.  How do I know the exact date? It was the date that I IMed with my sister about this project.  I had intended this to be mittens for Iris.

Obviously, it won’t fit her now.  She’s been growing like a weed.  Thankfully, Martin’s family is providing me with lots of little ones that I can give these to.  I just need to figure out what “year” to put on it.  My original intent was to put the Iris’ birth year on this, but I think I’ll just put the year that it is finished, so it can be passed between the cousins.  I’m hoping it will say 2009.  (At least I’ll have a chance to finish it in the correct century.)

The yarn is hand spun merino.  I believe at least the dark brown is from Nebo Rock, processed by Morro Bay.  I was aiming to replicate Koigu. I’ve mostly succeeded.  The yarn is a bit thicker, but, oh-boy, I think it is much softer and springy-er than Koigu. Yes, it’s that yummy.

Decision: In the queue after the shrug.  And give it to one of the Woolsey/McDonough kids, just in time for high summer.  But because they live in the Pacific Northwest, they may need it to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July!

Project Updates:

• Circular Shrug: I have 3 more panels left on the edging before I can start the sleeves.  The project is getting too large for dragging around, so it has been relegated to TV watching project. I think this will be done just in time for the cool summer evenings!
• Anarchist Sweater: Grace has offered to take the project off my hands.

Specs:

• My own design: from the neck down; finished off with 3 st i-cord bound off/edging all the way around
• Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Sock, 1+ skein each of White/Natural (S269, Lot A) and Reds (S84, Lot A)
• Needles: 3.00 mm
• Back Length: 15″

I had originally aimed for about 20″ depth, but I was so darned bored with this, that I opted to keep it short.  And it works.  At the arms, the shawl ends right at my elbows, which is perfect for wearing around the house — nothing to drag into whatever I’m working on.

Lessons learned?  My design was based on measurements right at the neck.  Instead, I should have allowed for the fact that shawls, like sweaters, generally sit about an inch or two (or three) off of the back of the neck.  So, the shoulder shaping is too far back, which compounded the problem of minor slippage.

In addition, I should have stopped the shoulder shaping about 1-2″ shorter.  As it is now, I have a bit of a David Byrne thing going on.

All in all, I’m happy with the results for a first attempt at a faroese shawl. I definitely would do this again. I don’t think it would have been quite so onerous if I didn’t have to drag 2 balls of yarn around all the time. As it was, I had limited mobility with this project.

I honestly don’t know what to do with this.  I seem to pick this sweater up about once a year. Work on it a little bit, and then abandon it.  My heart just isn’t into this sweater.

I had already woven in all the ends in the main body of the sweater. I experimented with a lightly ribbed roll collar, but I’m not thrilled with it.  The collar and bottom hem would have to come out.  Then there are the sleeves.

I think there is just too much guilt in the sweater.  I originally bought the yarn for a vest for my step-mother. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with leukemia and died from complications shortly after the diagnosis.  (From first feeling that something was off to diagnosis to death was less than 3 months.  It was quite  a shock to everyone.)  After decades of resentment, I finally got to know her as a person, and found that I really liked her.  I was hanging on to so much teenager angst that really had no bearing.  So, each time I work with this sweater, there is the guilt, of things that might have been.

Last week, I had decided that the best thing is for me to rip it all out.  The question of course is what to do with all the little tiny skeins of yarn.  I had thought of re-purposing the yarn for a color block blanket.

Then, when I took it out this morning for its photo shoot, I thought, hmm. This isn’t a bad sweater. It would be nice as a layer on those cold days when I am just hanging around in the office in front of the computer or on the couch knitting.  At one point, I thought of just plow through the sweater and donate the completed sweater to a homeless shelter.

But, as I write this post, I wonder if I would ever get past the guilt associated with the yarn to (a) complete it, or (b) work it into another project, or (c) even if I completed the project, if I could wear/use it without guilt.  But neither can I just throw it away.

So, I offer it up to anyone who might be interested in taking this over, along with all the remaining Jaeger Matchmaker DK that I have associated with this project.  I don’t care what you do with it. If you decide to take it off my hands and put it into a garbage can, I don’t care. I just don’t want to know about it.

Project #2: Circular Shrug

I started this back in January. I was always cold while sitting in my home office for hours at a time. I was thinking shrugs. Then my mind went to the circular baby blanket I made a while back. I used the dimensions specified in Elann’s Pinwheel Sweater for the sleeve placement. I chose to use the same edging as the baby blanket — Godmother’s Edging.

The yarn is Araucania Nature Wool. The kettle dyed yarn makes really pretty subtle variations, which gives the fabric some depth.

I stopped after working 2 repeats of the edging. I remember thinking that the edging took more mental power than I had remembered. I don’t know why I thought this because it definitely wasn’t hard before.

The other night, I sat down with an Agatha Christie DVD and got to work. Again, I have no idea why I had problems with the edging. It’s going very quickly right now. But quickly is relative. It took about an hour to finish the edging for one panel. There are 8 panels, so 7 to go.

Then there are the sleeves. I knitted in some white waste yarn where the sleeves should be. I need to unpick those stitches and knit the sleeves before adding the lace edging. This will take a bit longer than the last project to finish.

The cottage is finally nearing completion.  The new French doors are in. The cabinets are getting their finish this week.  The new sofa and chair are in the warehouse, waiting for the construction crap to be hauled away. It was time for me to dig my rugs out of storage.

Today, they came out of the garage and onto the front lawn for a hose down. I first vacuumed them out with the vacuum beater brush, then used the strongest spray I could get out of my garden hose.  After spraying the first side for about 30 minutes, it was time to turn them over.  Guess what? They were still dry on the underside.  I’m never going to worry about the wine soaking through to the floor again!

All the rugs are wool. Left to right:

• Room sized kilim, approx. 8′x10′ or 12′, purchased about 15 years ago. Provenance unknown. Purchased from Bloomingdales (yes, how authentic is that?)  This will go in the conversation area with my new conversation sofa. It’s possible that natural dyes were used given the variations I see in the rug, but I don’t know for sure.  Woven on cotton warp.
• Area rug, approx. 2′x3′. Gift from Ian & Sandy. Purchased from Mexico. Handspun, dyed, and woven.  Natural dye.  I even have the receipt somewhere with the plant material used for each color!  Warp and weft are both wool.
• Area rug, approx. 3′x4′. Purchased from Mexico. I doubt that natural dye was used here since the colors are so even, but I could be wrong (and pleasantly surprised). Warp and weft are both wool.

Having taken a navajo rug weaving class after acquiring these rugs, I have a new appreciation for the amount of work that went into weaving these rugs, natural dye or not.  The ones with natural dyes? Wowza! Even more impressed, given the number of times the yarn had to be put into dye baths to get the saturation you see here.

They are still damp, but I’ve since moved them from the front lawn to hang on fences and tables in the courtyard. I wouldn’t want these babies to disappear before they dry and repacked.

I’ve been thinking a lot about projects that have been languishing in various knitting bags around the house, and it’s time to make some hard decisions about these projects. What caused me to stop working on them? Are they worth reviving? If so, what do I need to do to get them going again?

Project #1: Unspun Silk Scarf

I actually don’t have a picture of the state of the project before I picked it up. This is a picture of it after I started working on it this week.

Last spring, I had an urge to play with unspun silk hankies, so I dug up a package of Chasing Rainbows hankies in Peacock colorway. I chose a simple 5×5 rib for a quick scarf. I casted on 40 stitches and worked about 4″, then stopped. I don’t know why I stopped. (Maybe I needed a manicure?) In any case, I stuck the whole thing back in a bag with the silk hankies and forgot about it.

This past week, I had an idea for working with unspun silk again.  (Hmm. There seems to be a theme here.  Looking back, it’s always spring when I want to play with unspun silk.  There was at least one other instance of this to support the theory. If it’s May, it must be time to play with silk hankies.) Anyway, back to today. I pulled out a bag of silk hankies and found the knitting with it.

A few hours of knitting over the course of 3 days, and it is finished. I don’t know if I intended one of those long and skinny scarves, but I chose to finish it off quickly by making a slotted scarf instead. Many, many inches shorter this way!

The finished scarf weighs less than half an ounce, between 10-15 grams. (I really need to get a better scale!) So, one package of hankies (Chasing Rainbows put up is 1 ounce) is more than enough for a scarf.

Knitting notes:

• 40 stitches in 5×5 rib with 2.25 mm needles
• at approx. 24″, knit 20 sts, attach new strand and knit the next 20 sts
• continue working 2 sides separately for 2″
• join the 2 sides again to close the slot
• continue knitting as a single piece for another 4-5″
• cast off

I like the sewn bind off, but it’s a bit difficult to work the sewn bind off with unspun. I worked around this by compressing the unspun a bit by rubbing the unspun between my palms, as if I was washing my hands. Do this all along the length of the unspun.

It’s not spinning because the twist goes every which way. But because the silk is so sticky, it stays compressed.  Now, the silk strand is ready to be used for the sewn bind off. The rest is history.

On to the next project!

Google is celebrating one of my favorite Impressionists today. Mary Cassatt.

Mohair/Silk: 1 ply each
28-32 wpi (minus the halo)
852 yards

I finished spinning this yarn back in February, but I never got around to finishing it until this week.  After washing the skein, I whacked and thwacked it around to loosen up the mohair.  Once dried, I wound and rewound the skein/ball on my ball winder while passing the strand of yarn through my boar’s hair fingernail brush a total of 6 times to bring out the halo.

You can’t really tell by the picture above, but the halo is really there.  This sample card on the right shows the halo a bit better. The sample on the right (blue/green) was brushed once.  The sample on the left (lavender/blue) was brushed 6 times.  I forgot to keep back a sample before the wet finishing to show off how different it really is.

It’s not as soft and hairy as Rowan Kidsilk, but I don’t think it would have been possible with this fiber for several reasons.  The primary reason is that the mohair was combed, so it was spun mostly worsted.  This compressed the fiber somewhat, and doesn’t have the loft.  Kidsilk must be spun woolen, though I can’t confirm this.  Also, I don’t think my mohair was kid mohair, but most likely adult mohair.  (The package didn’t say.)

But the drape of this yarn is fabulous!

I moved on to the metal cable needles with a little hump in the middle, like an elongated omega (Ω). This wasn’t bad. You can knit directly off of the needle, but my stitches were always in danger of slipping off of the needle.

Then I found the wooden cable needles with the little grooves in them. I thought I was in hog heaven. Everything is staying put. I even progressed to using whatever random DPN I had laying around. I learned this trick from Eva. Don’t know why it never occurred to me until I saw Eva do it when she was making the DNA scarf for an auction.

I knew about cabling without a cable needle, but the thought of leaving live stitches hanging out there, flapping in the breeze, was enough to give this control freak a heart attack.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t attempted it. I just wasn’t comfortable with it. And it took just as long, if not longer, than it would for me to execute the cable with a cable needle.

This year at Madrona, I took 2 classes that worked on my fear of cabling without cable needles: Lucy Neatby’s Even Cooler Socks and Elsebeth Lavold’s Viking Knits and Mitered Corners in Cabling.

Lucy showed me why I was having so much difficulty with my earlier attempts at cabling without a cable needle — I was manipulating my stitches too much. All that movement allowed the stitches to be stretched and ladder.  She showed me how to minimize the gymnastics and get the stitches mounted quickly and easily.  Elsebeth’s class allowed me to practice the technique over and over again until I was comfortable with it.  I, unknowingly, had the classes in the correct order.  Lucky me.

This week, when I picked up the yarn leftover from these socks to make a wrist warmer, I thought I’d spice it up and add some cables to it and practice my cabling without cable needles.  Of course, to fit the cables, the wrist warmers became fingerless mitts/gauntlets.  The good news? The immediate and repeated practice at Madrona was enough to imprint the methodology into my brain. There was the barest hint of a hiccup before I was zipping along. Before I knew it, the mitt was done, and nary a cable needle in sight.

Now, I just need to remember what I did so I can make the left hand mitt.

This is what happens if you don’t secure your skeins well before wet finishing. Unlike Alexander the Great, I persevered and found one of the ends. (Are you kidding me? It’s 3-ply alpaca!) It took me about an hour to find an end and 6 hours to wind it into a ball.  The trick is to not pull on any ends, but gently shake the wad of yarn to loosen the strand of yarn as you wind it off.  It’s tedious, but I didn’t create any knots this way either.

This is one skein of 4, and the only one that endured tie failure in the wash.  Approximately 1.5 pounds of 3 ply alpaca, DK weight.  It should make a nice sweater or blanket.  I’m thinking blanket since alpaca may stretch too much for a sweater.

Thank goodness I have lots of other spinning wheels.

This week, I had an epiphany. It was a really stupid rookie mistake. Since I got the Butterfly, I wanted to go FAST. So, I put on the high speed whorl on my Matchless.  Guess what? I don’t have a high speed bobbin for my WooLee Winder. I’ve been trying to get the high speed whorl to work with the regular bobbin. Just let me tell you, it doesn’t.

I swapped back to the fast whorl and now everything is happy again.  I’m back in the saddle.

This post is a result of discussions I have had with several people in the recent past on this topic. The intent of this post to clarify some misconceptions about whether to split top or not. Actually, this post has been ruminating in my brain for quite a while now.  While I was cleaning up my hard disk, I came across notes for this post dated back in July 2007! I’ve decided that it’s time to sit down and just finish it.

Poor Judith*, and any other spinning instructor who has the misfortune of teaching to someone who worships at the foot of Judith. Why? Judith has got to be one the most often misquoted or quoted out of context instructors out there. You can spot newly minted Judith disciple by how often they utter “Judith says…” I know. I’ve been there. There are many evidences of it here in this blog if you care to search the archives.

I’ve often sat in on spinning classes where well known and respected spinning instructors will split a top lengthwise, and immediately give the class a long stare and state, “I know what Judith says, and here, she and I disagree,” before any of the Judith disciples gasp and faint dead away from seeing someone split the top in preparation for spinning.

Let’s backup a bit. You will often hear Judith say “Don’t split your top.”  (Often followed by “You may if you wish.”) And this is repeated often and vociferously by her disciples. And that statement has gone viral to the point that most people miss the original point.  I hope to clarify that with this post.

First, let’s get some terminology out of the way.

Top: This is fiber that has been combed so that all the fiber are in perfect alignment with each other.  Not only are all the fiber aligned, they are also of the same length.  Combs will remove all impurities, weak and fibers behind on the combs. Top can be commercially prepared or prepared by hand using hand combs.

Batt: This is fiber that has been carded and pulled off of the carding machine in a large rectangular batt.

Roving: This is fiber that has been pulled off of the carding machine into a long rope like strand. You can create rovings from batts or directly off of the carder through a diz.

Abby has a great in depth discussion on the different fiber preparation.

Worsted: This is yarn that has been spun in which all the fibers are in alignment with each other.  Worsted yarn, typically, are smoother and has more sheen because all the fibers are going in the same direction.  So, you want to use worsted yarn when you want showcase fabric texture.  Worsted yarn tend to be more dense,  shed water better, and resist wind more than woolen yarn. True worsted yarns can only be spun from combed top.

Woolen: This is yarn that has been spun in which the fibers are laying in all different direction.  Because woolen yarn consists of fiber laying every which way, there is a softer appearance that doesn’t show stitch definition as well as worsted.  Woolen yarn are used when loft is important.  Woolen spun yarn has a lot of air trapped in the strands, because the fiber is going in all different direction.  This makes woolen yarn warmer and lighter than worsted yarn.  Typically, carded fiber is used to spin woolen yarn, but top can also be used.

“Top can also be used.” Remember that statement. That’s the most important statement to keep in mind when you are talking about whether to split the top or not.

But let’s start with the question, what do you want your yarn to be? A worsted or a woolen yarn? For a true worsted yarn, you need to start with fiber preparation where the fiber is already aligned. The top. For woolen, you want a fiber preparation where the yarn is already in disarray. If it’s not, in the case of top, you want to take the fiber out of alignment before you spin.  (I’ll save semi-worsted and semi-woolen for a separate discussion.)

Now, back to Judith.  Judith says that you should never split a top to make it thinner and easier to spin. Let’s take that statement apart and examine it. What happens when you split a top lengthwise? At the point of separation, fibers on either side of the separation continue to cling to each other until they finally pull away from each other.  At this point, all the fibers at the edges are out of alignment. You no longer have perfectly aligned fibers nor can you spin a true worsted yarn from this fiber.  You can use a worsted spinning method (e.g. inch worm), but you still won’t have true worsted yarn. This also only applies to top, not roving, because the fiber in the roving is already out of alignment.

But is the “do not split” a hard and fast rule? Even Judith will say “no.” If a top has been dyed, the fiber has already started to move out of alignment in the water bath.  So, once the top has been dyed, you can no longer spin a true worsted yarn from the preparation. Now, the split rule no longer applies.  In fact, splitting may be desirable.  I almost always split dyed top.  Why? Some felting may have occurred during the dyeing or washing process. By splitting the top, you have the opportunity to open up the fiber and make it easier to draft.

I’ve already hinted at another exception to the split rule. If your intent is to create a woolen yarn, by all means, split it.  Splitting alone, even with a long draw, won’t allow you to create a lofty woolen yarn.  You will need to either re-card the fiber or spin from the fold.  They will help introduce pockets of air into the yarn.

What about top that has been compacted either in shipping or while stored in your stash? I find that a good shake along the length of the top will loosen it up again for spinning.

The bottom line on whether you split a top for spinning or not depends on what you want to spin.  Is your intention to spin a true worsted yarn? If so, then don’t split the top. The “never” part of the statement “never split a top” applies only if your intent is to create a true worsted yarn. If you don’t care about a true worsted yarn, then, by all means, do whatever makes it easier for you to spin.

What if you want color in your worsted yarn? You have two choices.  You can spin the yarn au naturel, and then put the finished yarn in the dye pot.  Or, you can dye the fleece and then combed the dyed fleece into top for spinning.  There are lots of exciting reasons for doing it either way. But that’s another discussion.

* I love Judith. I worship Judith. I will gladly drop everything to take a class from Judith. Since I’ve started to spin, I have spent several hundreds of hours in classrooms with Judith, learning everything from dyeing, spinning, plying, and weaving. As many would say, I would even take a class on how to boil water from Judith. I’m sure to learn something new.

Once I started knitting, it went quickly. Of course, I didn’t do much all weekend except knit.  The only outing was to a boat chistening and a Floato-de-Mayo party at the club (something about not saying “sink” around boats).

I didn’t like the first blocking attempt, so the scarf is back in a nice warm tub while I get ready for another round with pins and wires.

There will be no more posts on the scarf until after the submission deadline has come to pass.  I’ll leave you with this little teaser.

It’ll be nice to get back to normal programming around here. I haven’t spun since I left Wisconsin! Can you believe it? And there’s a new baby that appeared on the scene while we were in Wisconsin, 3 weeks early. I haven’t worked on a baby anything. His older brother received this as his welcome, so what will I need to do to top that? Maybe something woven?

(I understand the toddler still sleeps with his blanket every night. It’s always gratifying to hear that.)

Yes, it’s knitted lace. Not much of a surprise there, is it?

The top of the diamond is darker than the bottom. This is because the color of the fleece varied lock by lock.  The swatch shows definite bands of color, creating a variegated yarn. I like it.

The swatch was pro forma. It didn’t really tell me much, since the sample already told me most of the information I needed. The yarn I chose to work the sample in is approximately the same size as the yarn I spun, so the gauge and needle size has already been determined.  The swatch just confirmed that I was still on target.

So why swatch? It’s one of the contest requirements. The swatch ate up another 5 grams of yarn.  This leaves me approximately 35 grams of yarn for the scarf, or about 145 yards.

On the positive side, I was able to test out the cast off method I chose on the swatch. All is good.

Above: Skein 1 (lower) & 2 (upper) on silk handkerchief, all dyed with hazelnut leaves. (See Progress 3 for details.)

Left: Before and after dyeing. On the card: left is before washing/dyeing/fulling; right is after. In skeins: before is the bottom skein; after is the top skein.

Yarn Specs (skein #2):
Weight: 40 grams*
Yardage: 170 yards (1925 ypp**)
WPI: 20***

The color shift is very subtle. Overall impression of sage green and deeper in tone. It really highlighted the light/dark moorit variation in the yarn. It’s not as green as the un-mordanted sample. I don’t know if it’s due to the alum or the proportions, since I didn’t weight the original sample: a skein and a handful of leaves.

I have taken to dropping a silk handkerchief into every dye pot so that I can keep a record of all the dye experiments.  I purchase the handkerchiefs from Thai Silks/Exotic Silks in Los Altos. Now, I just need to get around to labeling them.

The yarn spun from the combed preparation (skein #2) is much more consistent and has more bounce. It just generally feel better.  This is the yarn that I will use for the contest.

* Yes, I seem to have lost 5 grams between the time it came off of the spindle and when it came out of the dye bath.  A few reasons for this. (1) My scale only records to the nearest 5 grams. (2) I took several yards off for record keeping: before/after dyeing for card record and skein for submission.  Between the two, I must have teetered from closer to 45 grams to closer to 40 grams.  One of these days, I’ll spring for a scale with better accuracy.  For now, it gets me in the ball park.

** Measurement taken by the McMorran Balance. For some reason, it was really static-y when I was doing my measurements. I had to spray the outside of the balance with water to prevent the yarn from clinging to the balance and throwing off  the measurements.

*** I did a little bit of fulling while washing the fiber, hence the change from 24 to 20 wpi. It bloomed a bit. Yes, it was intentional.

This is where I spent my long weekend. 2.5 glorious days of playing with wool with Deb Menz.  This all started at SOAR last fall.  I had the 3 hour Plying for Color workshop with Deb and 3 hours just barely scratched the surface.

I would have just left it at that. Wishful thinking for things that can’t be. Or can they?

Over the course of the weekend, Amy talked about setting up an extended workshop with Deb for herself, Carolyn and John. My ears perked up. Then I put on the longest puppy dog face I could muster and invited myself along for the weekend. It was pitiful, really. But it worked.

It was a great weekend. Deb was wonderful: a great teacher and a great hostess.  We laughed the entire weekend. Saturday night, we laughed so hard, I cried, then my stomach muscles hurt.

Oh, you want to know about the class? It was an extension of plying for color. I arrived with 4 bobbins of singles from different colorways. I only got around to playing with 3 of them: pairing them with different colors/colorways to see how I was able to make that handpaint sing.  Or, in my case, some handpaints just aren’t meant to be the diva, but make great chorus.

(Sorry, no photos. Deb is shipping my spun samples back along with some books I purchased.)

We did a little dyeing to see how we can create our own handpaints to pair with a specific handpainted roving. (John and Carolyn went from “no, we don’t want to do dyeing” to “we want another weekend!”) We did a little carding to see the impact to the colors based on the number of times we put the fiber through the carder and how to pull rovings off of the carder. (John fell in love with carding.)

So, yeah, there’s another weekend in Wisconsin in my future. That is, if Amy invites me to join their little group again.

And if you are curious, taking a class with Deb at her studio is a wonderful experience. She has all of the supplies and samples right at her fingertips. If you have a problem grasping a concept, she’s got a sample that demonstrates it. No kidding. Want to see the samples from her books, she’s got them. Want to try a color that you don’t have in your spinning stash? She’ll dig in her stash. Not in her stash? She’ll fire up the dye pots or the drum carder. The small group (4:1) makes it possible to have lots of 1:1 time to answer all of your questions.

If you have the option, it is infinitely better than taking a class with her at one of the conferences.

This is not to say that the conference workshops aren’t good.  But it is like comparing a Snickers bar to a handmade turtle.

P.S. Amy is the greatest fiber travel agent. I think she has a new calling. And, yes, I’m brown nosing. I really, really want to be invited back.

I started to scan Ravelry’s Plants to Dye For discussion group, and I came across an intriguing discussion on using soak water from black beans to dye fabric. Hmm. But is it stable? I didn’t think it could be. I’ve seen the purplish water that I strain off. None of the books I have talks about it (not that it’s definitive, but it does provide some jumping off points). My guess is that it is transient at best. But what do I have to lose?

I started a pound of beans to soak as I finished spinning up my yarn. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish before the bean water started to ferment just a little. (It was left out on the counter because I didn’t have room in the refrigerator and the weather got HOT!) I wasn’t too worried. But I decided to strain it off and heat it up a bit to stop the process of whatever it was happening in the solution. That was my first clue that the dye isn’t stable. The starch and protein in the soaking water starts to break down, and that lovely dark blue purple also disintegrated into a dull brown.

I still wasn’t willing to give up on it. I put a skein in (alum premordant) and brought it to a simmer then let it sit over night. The results were extremely disappointing. Brown. And it rinsed out. I think I had to rinse it about 10 times before it rinsed clear. And now it’s back to the same color as it was before.

For which I am glad. Now I can start over without the need to spin up more yarn.

The skein is sitting in yet another alum bath right now in preparation for a hazelnut dye bath.

I gathered about 150 grams of hazelnut leaves and shredded it with my hands, as I would with salad greens, and let it sit in water yesterday. Since it was over 90+F yesterday, and the pot was in the sun, it got pretty warm in the pot. The whole pot was simmered for a couple of hours last night and let cool overnight.  It’s strained and now ready for the fiber.

Dye Notes:

• alum: ~30%
• hazelnut leaves: 2:1 wof

Progress Report:

• All yarn spun.
• First skein: spun from flicked locks on drop spindle, plied on Schacht Matchless. 30 grams/154 yards. 32 wpi.
• Second skein: spun from combed fiber was spun on my Bosworth Featherweight and plied on a larger spindle.  45 grams/170 yards. 24 wpi.
• Sample knitting still progressing well, but not yet completed. Put aside for now to focus on spinning and dyeing.
• Deb Menz workshop spinning: 60% complete.

Now, on to the homework spinning for Deb Menz class next weekend.

I grabbed my garden snippers and a small dye pot.  I chopped up a handful of leaves and set it to simmer for a couple of hours. I plopped a small skein of the merino that I’ve been spinning into the dye pot with the leaves and simmered some more. Since I was interested in seeing if I get color, I didn’t pre-mordant my skein with alum. I just plopped it in.

A couple of hours later, it was a grey green. Not very exciting. I left the whole thing to cool in the pot. Next morning, I rinsed and plucked all the leaf bits out of my skein <grin> and hung it up to dry.

It’s not red (it’s so not red), but the pale olive green grows on you, doesn’t it? The bobbin above it is the merino singles for color comparison.

There’s definitely potential here. I have to try again with the alum mordant to see how the color shifts.

It came from this…

Which came from this…

And look what’s across the street…

You think they’ll notice the missing blooms when they wake up some morning?

After a few rows, I found one design flaw that was easily fixed. But the problem with the yarn wasn’t so easily fixed. The needle I chose was too small for the DK weight yarn to show the details. It was difficult to see how the pattern will unfold.  Besides, the scarf was becoming alarmingly large. Attempt #1 abandoned.

Attempt #2: Found some lace weight alpaca/silk that I spindle spun last year.  It’s still much thicker yarn than my final product, but it is much closer to what I’m aiming for. Casted on again. This time, with the size in mind, I reduced the number of stitches casted on.  Finished half of the 1st repeat and I realized, no, I didn’t count correctly. I doubled my intended cast on.  (Don’t ask.)  Ripped. (It was about here, when I had a pile of yarn in one hand, and a gordian knot in the other, that my phone rang. Isn’t it always the case? Penny had a knitting emergency.) On the glass full side, the pattern is working out exactly as I planned. I figured out another design issue that I was able to easily fix. And I’m loving this alpaca/silk yarn.

Attempt #3: Casted on the requisite number of stitches. Counted twice. Started the set up row.  Hmm. I seem to be missing a stitch. Recounted thrice. Still missing a stitch. Okay, I’ll fudge it and add a stitch. It’s just the set up row, should be easy. Wait, somewhere along the line, I twisted my tube so that it’s completely screwed up. I can’t straighten it out. Rather, I probably could, but with the miscount, it was faster to start over. Ripped.

Attempt #4: Casted on the requisite number of stitches. Counted thrice. Started set up row. Again, I’m missing a stitch in the exact same place. What are the freaking odds? Feeling punchy, I just added the damn stitch where it needed to be and proceeded. Set up row complete, now on to the 1st pattern row. I zipped along to the end of the 1st row. What’s this? An extra stitch??? Where the heck did that come from? Ripped.

How difficult is it to count to 12 10 freaking times? I obviously need 2 more toes to make this work.

I’m having a time out from the knitting right now. I know the pattern works, as evidenced by attempt #2. For now, I’m consoling myself with some very pretty hand combed top and a Bosworth Featherweight.

But, last week, while I was waiting for an amazingly long download, I decided to take out my Forsyth mini combs (double row) and play with it a little bit. Just a little bit, you know, just to see how the merino would be like with combed. A few hours later…

Disclaimer: This basket was the result of 2 evenings worth of combing. I spent less than 3 hours to produce 50 g of combed top.

These were combed twice: Charged, combed off onto second comb and then transferred back to the original combs before pulling the top off. I just used hand over hand method instead of a diz. Twice also meant that the tip end is set at the correct end for spinning.

Who knew combing would be so addictive? Or that spinning from hand combed top would be so luscious? Okay, I knew the latter, but not the former. I’ve had my mini combs for over 3 years now. I’ve only played with it to comb some lincoln x corriedale that wasn’t gummy only on the warmest of all days. While it was pretty, the long locks were too much for me on the mini combs. It was also before my wool combs class with Robin Russo. (She’s teaching it again at SOAR this year. I highly recommend this class!)

So, now, I am faced with the dilemma of whether to ply up the 40 g of singles already spun and use that for my project. I think it will be enough for the scarf I designed. Or, do I spin up the 50 g of the combed top? And use the combed top in my final project instead? There is a third option, which is to ply the 2 singles together. Then I definitely will have enough yarn, and plenty leftover.

Actually, I’m going to spin the top anyway because I can’t resist them. And I need to spin them up before Ellie finds the basket and takes a nap in it and squish all the lofty goodness out of them…not to mention the nicely aligned fibers.

First, I rarely buy sock knitting books anymore. When I started knitting socks the second time (the first time was based on a basic recipe from an 1980/1981 issue of Vogue Knitting by Elizabeth Zimmerman, I think), I bought several sock knitting books.  The one I used the most on my bookshelves were:

• Folk Sock by Nancy Bush
• Socks, a special compilation by Spin-Off Magazine
• The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook by Lynn Vogel

After buying the Folk Sock book, I went through all the different heel and toe variations until I found one that worked for me. It wasn’t your generic heel flap sock. Those bugged the bejaysus out of me. The heel flap was too thick to fit comfortably in my shoes.  But Nancy guides you through a basic sock recipe so you understood all the different parts of the sock and then where you can make your adjustments.  It’s a thinking person’s sock book.  The rest of the book is filled with lots of wonderful, mouth watering designs with historic and ethnic relevance.

Spin-Off’s Sock book was an inspiration for me, since I had just started to spin at that time. It gave me hope that I can spin a yarn worthy of socks, and it didn’t need to be machine spun perfect. The most helpful bits were the line drawings of the yarn used for each pattern. I believe they were actual size renderings of the hand spun: lumps, bumps and all. For a beginning spinner, it was great to be able to hold my yarn up to the drawing and figure out if I was close or not.  The other great thing about the book were the yarn and gauge charts. On page 41, there are a couple of charts that lists the patterns with the type/weight of yarn, wpi and gauge.  You can pick up any yarn, measure your wpi, and see what gauge/pattern you might be able to use it with.  That’s a lot of encouragement for a new spinner.  Something that guides you into something you can make with your yarn.

Lastly, The Twisted Sisters…What can I say. I love that book, but when you ask me about the sock patterns in it? I won’t remember a single one of them. Sorry. For me, that book was more about the dyeing and spinning and use of color (and white space) than about the socks.  Grace asked me about their sock recipe and I completely blanked out. I almost asked…there was a pattern in there? But honestly, in relation to actually knitting socks, the most useful bit for me was how to measure your foot for socks that fit. I already had the information, but I liked it because they had pictures on what and where to measure and how to use the information.

There were several other books that I found useful for the bits and pieces here and there. With Cat Bordhi’s Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles, I learned that I hated the way she manipulated the stitches around the 2 circular needles for the heel, then back again. I like my very simple, top/bottom method, thank you very much. No moving of stitches around necessary, even when working with a heel flap. Lucy Neatby’s Cools Socks, Warm Feet taught me that you can use the yarn from the opposite end of a center pull ball for the short rowed heel so that you don’t disrupt the pattern in self-patterning sock yarn. It has the added advantage of minimizing holes on the sides, but you have 2 additional ends to darn in. That may have just as much to do with the non-existent holes.

Back to my current sock knitting. As I said, I rarely buy sock pattern books anymore. Sure, there are some truly beautiful sock patterns out there and well as some truly innovative sock construction ideas. But I like my socks plain. My basic recipe fits and serves me well.  My basic sock recipe is an evolutionary process. If something comes along that works better, I’ll switch it out, and replace it with the new. Last year, I knitted nine pairs of socks was because I was revisiting some of my basics. Do they still work? Is there another way that would suit me better? Is one method of short rows better than the other? I’m back down to a basic recipe. It may have been tweaked a bit here and there, but it’s still my mindless recipe.

Posts from the past year on the evolution of my basic sock recipe:

• Toes
• Heels, some history on my basic recipe and a bit on why I changed my toe cast on from Figure 8 to Turkish
• More heels
• Even more heels
• And the last bit on heels

Everyone will have a different basic recipe that works for them. I highly recommend the process to figure out your own. If nothing else, it was entertaining and it filled my sock drawer.

Toe up vs. cuff down? That’s a whole ‘nother discussion. For me, it depends on how I feel. It’s normally because I’m too lazy to do a swatch. With toe up, I can skip that step.  Just keep increasing until it fits. It also delays patterning decisions until the toe is finished. Procrastination is good.

Now double points vs. two circulars vs. magic loop? There are diehards each side of that fence. I like both dpns and 2 circulars (sorry, Sarah, you’re a great teacher, but I’m not sold on it). But when I’m doing toe ups, I always reach for the 2 circulars.  I like the flexibility of the cable for the first few rounds.  I know Maia disagrees, but there you are. We’re still friends.

So, Grace, when are you casting on for your socks?

Yarn: KnitPicks Essential Kettled Dyed Sock Yarn, 2 50gm balls
Color: Eggplant
Needles: US #1 / 2.25mm
Construction Notes: Toe up from 12 to 64 sts; blueberry waffle on instep; short rowed heel; continued pattern on top while worked back of heel approx. 1″ in st. st. before working pattern in the round.

KnitPicks is having a sale on these yarns right now. Their statement on the reason for the sale:

These items are on sale because we are replacing them with 100 gram balls. We will continue to carry Essential Kettle Dyed sock yarns but in a larger put-up to avoid potential differences within dye lots.

I say this is a very good thing. You can see the color saturation differences in this pair of socks.  The top sock is very very much lighter than the bottom one. They are socks. I don’t mind. But I still have to tell you it was a shock when I saw the variation between the 2 completed socks.  (Since I work my socks one at a time and don’t look at the finished one while working on the 2nd sock, I didn’t notice the variation until I was nearly finished.)

Now, back to the yarn. It’s a lovely yarn. I love the subtle striations of a kettled dyed yarn.  The yarn itself is soft and squishy. And it’s machine washable. The sale price makes is over $1 less for 100gm (2 balls) over the new put up (100 gm in 1 ball). So, if you have a project where color variations don’t matter, it’s a great deal, and I wouldn’t hesitate to jump right in there and buy some closeout yarn.

I can think of some fun projects that this would be perfect for: baby clothing (did I say it’s machine washable?), color work blankest (log cabin, mitered square, etc.), any color block type work.

I’m tempted to stock up, but I’ve taken a vow of project based purchases only.

What do you think?

I won this basket of goodies from the raffle at the Whidbey Island Spin-In on Saturday.  On Saturday, I won both a door prize (a “handle” for my ball winder in cocobolo and padauk) and the raffle.  My friend, Karen, walked away with both raffle prizes on Sunday, along with the door prize on Saturday.  We had quite the bounty.  My basket contains 3 skeins of yarn, shetland roving, finger roving, a big ball of handpainted fiber, the navajo spindle, and a large bar of dark chocolate.  Yum!

165 yards of lace weight yarn that I spun with my new Watson Wheel.  I spun this over the course of the weekend as part of my “get to know Marie” spinning.  I have no idea what the fiber is because I just dug into my spinning basket for something, anything, and something that I was likely to finish over the course of the weekend.  It’s a longhaired something.  BFL?  I split it in approximate half, lengthwise, and spun them up separately before plying the 2 bobbins together.

I arrived on the island on time. Thank goodness for priority boarding for the shuttle, or I would have been delayed and missed my dinner engagement.

Karen & Barrie met me at the shuttle stop. We dropped by my little cottage to drop off my things and pick up my car.  But the cottage was littered with construction crap.  They took one look at it and said, “the guest room is made up.”  We then proceeded to Toby’s to meet up with another couple for dinner.  Fun and frivolity.  Good friends. What can I say?

Next morning, I drove off to Blaine to meet up with James Watson.  We’ve decided to meet half way to take delivery of the wheel.  No UPS involved this time.  The weather turned gorgeous.  Once I had taken possession of the wheel, I took a leisurely drive back to the island.  I stopped off at Deception Pass Park and walked the length of the bridge.  I saw swirling eddies (current change occurred during my walk), 2 bald eagles, Navy test flights, but no grey whales.  The greys are in Saratoga Passage right now, but I was too far north.  The decision to stop and look for them was just an excuse to enjoy the glorious sunshine.

Yesterday and today are for the Whidbey Island Spin-In in Oak Harbor.  I won  a door prize and a raffle yesterday.  More later today.

Whidbey Island Spin In is this weekend. I should have a bit of time to bond with my new spinning wheel.

Wish me luck!

The pouches are full of colors and each pouch is different.  It’s a bit like finding the toy at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box.  You don’t know what you’ll find in there. (Okay, you do, since they are in a clear cellophane bag.) Kristine was spinning from her pouch with her drop spindle, grabbing whatever bit of color that she touches first. This provided a completely random assortment of colors and lengths of singles.  When plied together, you get even more surprising combinations.

I couldn’t resist. I immediately started spinning from my own pouch. I’ve also experimented by pulling several short lengths of fiber of different colors together and drafting them together for a marled single. Intermixed with straight lengths of a color, the marled single keeps things shaken up. Between Jill and this pouch, I haven’t touched my spinning wheel for quite a while. It’s addictive fun!

Blog Note: After the blog move, I’m no longer getting email notifications that a message has been left on the blog. I have to physically visit the blog to see the messages. This also means that I can no longer reply to you via email regarding your posts. I will be leaving my replies here on the blog.  A search shows that this appears to be a common sporadic problem with the current version of WordPress. It may go away on its own. I just won’t know when that might be.

I’m flicking the locks and spinning directly from the locks.  After showing Judith last weekend what I’ve been doing, she immediately said that my Strauch Flicker was much too much for the delicate fleece. So, I pulled out the cat brush instead.  Much easier on my hands too!

So, there you see it. Very basic. A cat brush and a drop spindle.  (Don’t ask which spindle because I don’t know. I typically lose my tags as soon as I get fiber on the spindle, which means as soon as I get it in my hot little hands. They are meant to be used, n’est pas?) I can tell you that it’s very light. Less than 1/2 oz. (10 grams, perhaps?) What you see on the bobbin is my first spindle full. It has about 15 grams of singles on it. More than the weight of the spindle. But the spindle wasn’t even half full. But I will not be filling my spindle that much from now on. It really affected the grist of the single. I wasn’t able to draft as fine as I did at the beginning, when the spindle was still empty.  The single had to be a bit fatter to support the weight of the spindle toward the end.

I want consistency more than I want to try and pack as much as possible on the spindle. After all, it’s all about the process, not speed nor efficiency.

Oh, I wound off the single twice. Once on the first storage bobbin, and then onto a second one.

Why? Judith suggested spinning from the tip (as it grows from the sheep, or as if you are spinning right off of the sheep), and plying from the butt end.  If I only wound off once, then I would be plying from the same end that I spun from, the tip.  Twice, I get the butt end out and ready to ply. Make sense?  (And of course, we all do what Judith says, right?)

And one last photo for you because it tickles me.

This is the plastic zipper cover that came with the flannel sheet set I bought for the Point Bonita retreat last week.  In it, the remainder of the washed locks that I have yet to flick.  Two neat little walls of locks, tip to butt.

I don’t know why it pleases me, but it does. The locks were a bit messy after they came out of the wash and dryer, so I gently pulled them apart. Of course, at that point, I loathed to put them back higgledy-piggledy. And so, here we are.

Jill in a bag.

My hair stylist has been telling me for years that I should shampoo less.  I used to shampoo my hair daily because my scalp gets oily and itchy. And, yes, I know what she’s saying. The more I wash, the more I strip the good oils from my scalp, the more my scalp generates oil. And round and round we go. Intellectually, I know all of that. But I just can’t do it. I bought into the whole marketing of hair products into thinking I need to wash daily to have the perfect hair.

Over the course of the past year, I weaned myself off of products containing Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and/or Laureth Sulfate and onto shampooing every other day. Still my stylist would like to see if I can go down to twice a week.  (We just had this discussion in January.  I was so proud of the every other day business when she dropped the twice a week bomb.)

A few months ago, I was talking with the ladies at the club about dry skin and what soaps do to our skin. I mentioned that, even if you use minimal soap, or only the mildest of all soaps, you still use shampoo. And if you shower, all that crap ends up on your body. So, to take care of your skin, you also need to look at what’s happening with your hair.

Last week, I heard a news story on NPR on shampooing less. Americans have been brain washed by Madison Avenue into shampooing every day. Less than that, you are not clean nor sexy. Hair limp and lifeless? Try this shampoo! Guaranteed body!  Dry hair? This shampoo will repair damaged hair!  Oily hair. Straight hair. Dull hair. There’s a product out there for every kind of perceived wrong with your hair. What they don’t address is that the root cause (no pun intended, but very appropriate in this case) is the crap you put on your scalp.

A few days later, at the weaving retreat, Judith mentioned a story she read about Meryl Streep’s guide to beauty, which including washing your hair only once a month. This led to a whole series of discussions over the course of a few days about the grease factor and how it’s done.

What exactly does it really mean when someone doesn’t wash their hair? They don’t wet the hair? They don’t use commercial products? They use commercial products, but just not “shampoo”?  Or perhaps they use shampoo that does not contain SLS.

I have done some research over the past several months on this whole “no ‘poo” (no shampoo) thing, and I’ve been very confused about it all. It seems that there are several different definitions of going no ‘poo. Here’s a quick run down on my interpretation of the various methods out there:

1. Don’t use products with SLS or any products with silicone (no ‘cone movement is another subset), but mild products are okay. The premise is that you are reducing the dependency on the chemicals.  I’ve already done this by switching to various non-SLS products.  Current favorites are Giovanni 50/50 Balancing Shampoo/Conditioner, and the much cheaper alternative, Trader Joe’s Nourish Spa Shampoo/Conditioner.
2. Don’t use shampoo, but use conditioners in place of shampoo (as long as it’s non-SLS). The premise here is that all conditioners have mild surfactants, which will clean your hair but won’t strip the oils out.
3. Wash your hair with baking soda wash and follow it with an apple cider vinegar rinse. The premise is that baking soda acts as a mild cleanser and the vinegar rinse will restore the pH balance.
4. Really hard core — nothing but water. The premise is that your sebum will do all the work that’s necessary to keeping your hair healthy. Water will rinse out all the dirt and sweat.

So, my question is, just what is ‘poo free? I know that Wendy has gone ‘poo free, but she replaced shampoo with another commercial product.  As far as I can tell from the website, it’s a shampoo alternative.  It’s not what I think of going ‘poo free. I think it fits definition #2. This actually has been suggested by at least one stylist in my past.  I have never tried it.

So, bottom line, I don’t know what the definition of “no ‘poo” is. What do you think? What does it mean to go “no ‘poo”?

How will you spend it?

Although, I do find it a bit odd that they suggest on their front page that people upload things to the internet during Earth Hour. Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose to turning things off? (After a bit of digging around, I found someone else already made the same connection.)

I think the ideal way to spend Earth Hour would be to have a Block Party. Get to know your neighbors and spread the word. 2 birds, 1 stone.

The first few days were windy, cold and drizzly, but then the sun came out.  The last day or so was down right balmy.  Coats were definitely optional.

Everything was wonderful except for the bunk beds. I forgot to bring a foam mattress to put on top of the camp styled bunk beds.  This body has gotten soft and missed my pillow top mattress.

Here’s a picture of my project sample.  (We wove another sample in the class, but it was just a 10/2 cotton sample and nothing spectacular.)

My warp consisted of Mountain Colors Silk and Ewe (50/50 wool and raw silk/noil, red/blue handpaint) and Mountain Colors Winter Lace (50/50 wool and silk, blue/green handpaint). The weft is 20/2 Redfish silk in charcoal.

I’ve decided that I really dislike the Silk and Ewe.  The noil was all over everything like bad dandruff. Albeit, colorful dandruff.  No, thank you.

But I really like the way the Winter Lace looks.  I’ve sampled with Winter Lace as both warp and weft and hated the pseudo plaid look.  It was too much like a school girl uniform.  But the Winter Lace with the 10/2 silk. Sigh. Absolutely lovely stuff.

I purchased enough to weave an airplane blanket. Something to snuggle up into on the plane without using the icky airline supplied nylon thing.  Something wide enough to cover me at the shoulders, with extra to tuck around, and long enough to cover me from chin to toe, including the extra cinch in at the seat belt.  Something light and squishable to tuck into any carry-on bag, but substantial enough to keep the draft from the overhead vents out.

Oh, and see that mis-threading of the Silk & Ewe just off to the right of the center band?  I really like how just that single line “pops” in there and gives the fabric a little oomph. (Yes, that’s a technical term.)  I have some more of it leftover to randomly tuck into my warp to give it a little extra zing.  Just to keep it from getting too boring.

Unfortunately, I have to wait until I get new heddles.  I have some regular old steel stamped heddles that came with my loom and it shreds my warp like nobody’s business.  I have ordered inserted eye heddles from Morgaine.  I’ll have to wait for it to arrive before I can put the warp on.  I need 800 heddles.  And I really need to replace the heddles for the other loom as well. Yikes!

I agonized over what I was doing that was causing my warp thread to shred, even while working on the  baby blanket. I was convinced it was something that I was doing.  I broke it down to how I was throwing the shuttle to the way I was changing my shed. But nothing seems to fix the problem with my shredded warp threads.  Judith took one look at what I was doing and immediately said it was my heddles.  Months of agony identified by Judith in under 1 minute.

Have I ever said how much I love Judith?

While waiting for a new build from the development team (of one), I decided to poke around a bit. I’ve been meaning to move the blog off to its own domain for years. Why today? Don’t know.

A quick whois shows that fibermusings daht anything is wide open.  I quickly registered it and added it to my hosting service account. Within 5 minutes, the website is up. I started to research how much work it is to move the blog from the old domain to the new. The answer, not much.  Since it’s all on the same hosting account, I don’t need to do a new installation.  I just needed to move it from one directory to another.

Huh. Really? That easy? Let’s try it…

Yeah, that’s all the thought I put into it. Not much. No planning. No thinking through the possible issues.

Things start to fall apart after that.

WordPress encodes full URL to all image links. Yup. All posts with pictures have to be changed. Manually. A quick Google search shows that I can do it via a SQL command to the MySQL database. Here’s the nail biter. You’re changing a live database. Yeah, I can do the whole backup and restore business. But I usually have DBAs who do this sort of stuff for me. I decide to go for broke. I’ve done everything up to now half assed, I might as well continue.

Here’s the appropriate MySQL command:

UPDATE <wp_prefix_posts>
SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘old_url‘, ‘new_url‘)

For example, if your WordPress database table prefix is wp_, then in place of <wp_prefix_posts> you would enter wp_posts.  I did try it out on a single image heavy post first to make sure it worked before applying the script to the entire table. (Add ‘WHERE post_id = <some_id>‘ to the end.)

You need to apply this to the <wp_prefix_postmeta> table as well. A little more care is required here since this contains file system path instead of just URI.

Then there was the matter of redirecting the old blog location to the new.  More Googling shows a nifty trick with the .htaccess file with the following line:

Redirect permanent /<old_blog_directory_location> <new_URL>

Place the .htaccess file in the root directory of your website.  And voila! Everyone going to the blog in the old location will be automagically redirected to the new location.

Of course, this only resolves the issue of when someone actually visits your website. Anyone reading the blog using an RSS feed is hosed.  The feed is broken and I don’t know how to fix it.  They have to re-subscribe.  But then, it’s the age old question.  “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  The equivalent here is, if everyone is using RSS Feeds (Bloglines, Google Reader, what have you) to be notified of new posts, and you’ve stopped publishing feeds at the old location, how will they ever know that you’ve moved?

The correct answer would have been to make a post announcing the up-coming move. Wait until the aggregators have received the feed, then make the actual move.

Yeah, that would have been smart. But I didn’t think of it until it was too late. Now it’s broken.  There’s a new feed and no way to push that out there.  Idiot.

Then, I come to find out that by moving it the way I did, I broke the smart upgrade system that my service provider provides.  It’s their system for one-click upgrades for installed software packages. I have no clue what I’m going to do about that. I’ve sent off an “I’m an idiot. Please help me.” message to their support.  We’ll see what they have to say.

Moral of the story? Don’t do as I do. Do as I say. Don’t do things half assed. Think it through first. I know better, but still didn’t follow my own advice. It may be a case of the cobbler’s children have no shoes.

For now, I’m okay as long as WordPress doesn’t come out with an urgent patch.

Update 1: The .htaccess hack appears to do the trick. The old RSS feed pings bounced off of the .htaccess file and onto the new feed. So the old feeds will continue to be updated.  Hooray!  This is confirmed with both Bloglines and Google Reader.

Update 2: My hosting service replied with, “If you’ve gotten this far with your blog move successfully, you have the requisite skills to upgrade WordPress manually.” And followed it up with atta-girl.

I guess I got lucky.

A quick call to Kathleen convinced me that there was no hope for it. I needed to buy another fleece. The problem? It’s too early in the season for 2009 fleeces. Most small producers are sold out of 2008 fleeces. Those that still have inventory are likely to have the dregs. What to do?

Janet Heppler of Nebo-Rock Textiles (no website) to the rescue. I have purchased several fleeces from Janet in the past. Her fleeces are absolutely gorgeous. I have never seen a bad fleece from her. And she has a barn full of them.  There are very few people that I would buy fleeces from, sight unseen. Janet is one of them. I tell her exactly what I’m looking for; she’ll find something that absolutely meets my needs.

I had to sit on my hands for a few days because she was out of town — I assume for ASCH. When we finally talked, I asked for a smallish colored fleece.  She provides.

Here’s Jill.  A light moorit fleece. All 6 gorgeous pounds of her.

Her staple length comes in just a hair over 3″.  Above the ruler is a lock as it came off the fleece.  The bottom is a lock that I did a quick kitchen-sink-swish ™ with hot tap water and some dish soap.  She’s a beautiful taupe color and wonderfully soft.  I can’t wait to play with her.

2 weeks of the contest have come and gone and I’ve only just received the raw fleece. I’ve been day dreaming about the scarf pattern. I think I have a small glimmer of an idea. More paper, pen, and swatching required.

What about the California Red lamb fleece? I’ve got half of it washed. I flick carded some of it using the tap and brush method.  The tap opened up the locks, and the brush separated the guard hair from the fleece.  If I had only tapped, I would have been left with the scratchy guard hair in the final yarn.

The downside? The guard hair is where the red in the California Red are located. I’m now left with a cream colored fiber instead of rosy tinged fiber.  One or the other. You have to choose.  I chose no-itchiness over color.

Clockwise from top left:

1. Unwashed lock
2. Washed lock
3. Drecks from the flick carder; mostly guard hair and some second cuts
4. Beautiful creamy fiber after flick carding
5. (center) a sample spun on my little Golding spindle

I think this will be perfect for a small woven lap blanket.

Not all of the 2 weeks was wasted. I’ve found that washing the fleece by locks and flick carding wasn’t so onerous after all.  And with the lock structure intact, I can spin from the lock for a true worsted yarn. That is, if I can prevent laziness and impatience from over taking me and go back to my semi-long draw.

Rick Reeves Frame Wheel, in walnut.

I haven’t seen any like this one before, where in place of dowel joinery, this has knobs.  The knobs can be unscrewed and the wheel can be taken apart.  I’ve taken all the knobs off, not to take the wheel apart, but to clean and oil/wax the parts underneath.

I bought it from someone in my guild, who purchased this wheel from Rick Reeves when she was still living in the midwest back in the 70s.  However, she never actually spun on it.  I’ve been spending the past few days breaking the wheel in.

That’s TWELVE weeks from now, folks!

If you follow the guidelines set forth by both Spin-Off and Keep the Fleece, you can enter your scarf into both contests.  Two birds, one stone.  Or rather, two contests, one scarf.

So, are you in?

I have a raw lamb’s fleece and a couple of alpaca fleeces in the garage.  I have some silk cocoons in the storage bin.  I have some brand spanking new Forsythe 4 pitch combs (just came in the mail last week).

Okay, it’s time for this project manager to start building a project plan and get this going!  There’s lots to do. Decide on a theme.  Scour the fleece (or degum the silk cocoons?).  Decide on how to process the fleece (comb or card or spin from the lock, a la Stove?).  Create a new scarf design.  Spin some samples (wheel or spindle?)  Do a swatch (knit or weave?)

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Gotta run. Lots of things to do!

P.S. $5 per entry? Who are you kidding here? What over achiever will be able to submit more than one entry in this amount of time?!

I was in trouble before I even stepped foot into the market. I bumped into Marguarite, who was wearing a beautiful woven scarf, using a painted skein from Interlacement. So, of course, it was on my list of vendors to visit.

A few hours later, I was only able to check one item off my list, and a large bag of other purchases. And no, I didn’t find the Noro. I’ll have to order it online. I should have done that to start. I could have saved myself a lot of time and money.

On the positive side, I think I finally found the weft yarn for the painted warp I did in Sara Lamb’s class at SOAR.

(This is my first attempt at posting via the Wordpress iPhone app. See failed technology last year. Don’t know how to link from this app yet, if it is even possible.)

12 bobbins of singles? 6 down. So far, over 1400 yards of light worsted weight yarn. I think I will have well over 2400 yards by the time I’m done. More than enough for a sweater.

Do you know what this is?  This is the bottom of a capacious Rovings bag.  It seemed bottomless while I was spinning it.  Now, it looks like this:

12 bobbins of singles.  I spun all of the singles on my Schacht Matchless with the Woolee Winder.  All on the same bobbin, and then wound off onto cardboard spools.  Alden would have been so proud.

The bag contained 6 color repeats (brown, chartreuse, blue, pink, grey/white).  Each repeat filled about 1.5 bobbins.  I labeled them 1-6, and A & B.  I will be finishing off the yarn as a 3 ply, plying color repeats 1, 3, and 5 together, then 2, 4, and 6 together.  This should nicely balance out any inconsistencies in the singles.

The singles are approximately 32 wpi.  The sample shows that the 3-ply yarn is about 12 wpi, pre-washing.  Yeah, a huge difference.  The reason is that the singles are softly spun with a long draw, and measured under slight tension. The yarn poofs up quite a bit in the plying.  After washing, the yarn should bloom to a nice worsted weight yarn.

Specs:
Fiber: Rovings polworth
Colorway: Rocky Mountain High; last seen here in the upper right hand corner
Weight: 925 grams
Purchased: Soar 2006 (Lake Tahoe)
Singles: 32 wpi

If you are interested in perfecting your long draw, I highly recommend getting your hands on some of Rovings rovings (not their combed top, but their rovings).  The fiber is wonderfully prepared for long draw.  You’ll find that it’s very easy to find your rhythm.

All of my reference books are back in California, but I want to cast on now.  Thankfully, there are a lot of excellent references on the internet.  I have always wanted a Faroese styled shawl.  Something that will sit and stay on my shoulders, no matter what I’m doing.  I found this excellent reference on shaping all manners of shawls from simple triangles to faroese styled shawls with should shaping.

I grabbed a piece of paper and sketched out the schematic of the shawl that I want to make.  I made a swatch in pattern.  I like the way it looks.  I like the fabric.  So, now for a quick bit of math.

My swatch is 11 sts over 2″ on 3.00mm needles.  The row gauge doesn’t really matter here because I’m working neck down.  I’ll keep working until I get to the depth I want.  I’ll continue to try it on as I go.  If I were a taller person, I would worry about the row gauge and yarn usage.  But for my purposes, I’m 99.9% sure that I will reach my desired depth before I run out of yarn.

Design considerations:

• From the shawls I’ve seen at Madrona, I didn’t want a “bend” created by the yarn over increases n-stitches in from the edge.  So my shawl will have an invisible increase on the first and last stitch created by knitting into the front and back of the edge stitches.
• Since this pattern changes color every 2 rows (single garter ridge), the old yarn will be carried up the outside edge.  I will apply an I-cord edge at the end to hide the floats.
• My increase lines will be created by adjacent increases: knit into front and back of 2 consecutive stitches.  This will be nicely hidden in garter stitch.  If I were to make this shawl in stockinette stitch, I would consider some decorative increase options.

My schematic has 4 lines of increases at the top of the shawl, and it divides the work into 5 sections with increases at each edge of the sections.  A quick measure (and a sample) shows that the start will look something like this:

1. right front panel: it starts at a point, so only 1 outside edge stitch is required, plus one shoulder increase stitch
2. right back (from right shoulder to right edge of center panel): 2″ to lay over the shoulder; 11 sts
3. center panel: 2″; 11 sts  (because I don’t want the back enter panel to be too wide after increases)
4. left back (from left edge of center panel to left shoulder): same as the right; 11 sts
5. left front panel: 1 outside edge stitch plus one shoulder increase stitch

Again, since I am not knitting an edge as I go, I can go directly to the cast on.  For my shawl, I need to cast on 58 stitches.  Since the cast on will be hidden by the applied I-cord, I will cast on using the yarn that will be used for the I-cord edge.

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Sock, 1 skein each of White/Natural (S269, Lot A) and Reds (S84, Lot A)
Needles: 3.00 mm
Gauge: 11 sts/2″

So, here are the pithy instructions for my yarn, gauge and sizing:

Cast On: With color A, cast on 32 sts (I used the knitted on cast on)

Neck & Shoulder Shaping

• Setup Row, Row 1 (RS): with color A, (kfb) 2x, pm, kfb, k9, kfb, pm, kfb, k4, kfb, pm, kfb, k9, kfb, pm, (kfb) 2x
• Row 2 (WS) and all even rows: with color A, knit across; slip markers as you come to them
• Row 3: drop color A, do not cut; with color B, kfb, (k to 1 st before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb) 4x, k to last st, kfb
• Row 5: drop color B, pick up color A, kfb, (k to 1 st before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb) 4x, k to last st, kfb
• Repeat rows 3-6 until desired shoulder depth; approx. 3-5″.

Stop increases inside the center panel when the center panel reached desired width.

Remove outer stitch markers (and stop increases at these points) when you reach the desired shoulder depth, or slightly short of it.

Bind off.

Aside:

This has been an interesting exercise.  In addition to pen and paper, I used the draft of this post for keeping my notes of design, modifying it as I go.  Hopefully, this will last longer than the little pieces of scrap paper that I design on and disappear in the way of all things you want to keep.

As for the Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn…it doesn’t take to ripping very well.  It’s extremely sticky.  When ripping out your knitting, it just gets more and more sticky.  After several frogging, the yarn gets pretty difficult to work with.  Hopefully, I’m done with all that and we are on to easy sailing from here on out.

Why so many restarts?  Well, there was the swatch.  Then, my initial design was too large.  (It was what I designed, but I didn’t like the way it sat on my shoulders.)  Then, I didn’t like how wide the center panel became after a few inches.  First design attempt had my center panel as the widest part of the cast on.  Second attempt had them all the same width.  The most current version, has the center panel as the smallest set of increases.

I’m still not 100% happy with the current one.  I think the next time I make this, I will start the shoulder increases after an inch of shoulder work.  Yes, I said next time.  I’m not ripping this yarn out again for anything.  It’s difficult enough to work as it is.

Why not just cut it off and start anew?  Well to find out whether it sits well or not, I have to knit about 5-6″.  That’s a lot of garter stitch.

The word “lemming” came up late one night after the nth glass of wine this weekend.  There is a lot of pattern-du-jour lemming effect out in the knitting world.  The internet, blogs, and Ravelry has made this a world-wide phenomenon instead of small localized clusters.  I’m not a lemming.  There are patterns that I absolutely love, but you won’t see it on my needles while the throngs are knitting it, blogging about it, and wearing it.  But that’s not to say I won’t make the said item, or something similar.

I love Joan’s spin on this, not that Joan would ever use the word “lemming.”  She’s much too polite for that.  Last year, while the universe was making The Kauni Sweater (non Rav link), and before Ruth offered other patterns for use with her yarn, Joan was off knitting a stranded color work sweater of her own design.  (You can see it in her profile picture on Ravelry.)  And this year?  While you see The February Lady Sweater everywhere you turn, you will see Joan wearing what she called The August Sweater.  Why? It’s as far away from February as possible.  Instead of a cardigan, she made it into a pullover.  Instead of a square neck, she made hers into a V-neck.  Instead of 3/4 length sleeves, she turned into a full length sleeves.  She changed the lace pattern in the bottom half of the sweater and added a lace shawl collar.

She’s like that.  She takes a great idea and make it her own.  Now, there’s something to aspire to.

So, with a nod to Joan, I’m going to sit down and design my own not-so-lemming Silk Kerchief.  I saw several of these at Madrona and was instantly smitten.  One woman couldn’t quite bring herself to be a lemming and took the idea and made the Simple Garter Shapely Shawlette.  I’ve always liked the shape of the Shapely Shawlette.  It hangs much better on your shoulders than the straight forward triangle shawl.  But I want her to retain her uniqueness , and make something similar but not the same. (And thus, my own uniqueness.)

Yvonne made a collection of small handmade bags to hang on your spinning and capture all the small crap that you pull out of your fiber.  She handed them out to friends that she sees only once a year at Madrona. (What a wonderful idea!)  Mine was a crocheted cotton bag in purple with lots of pretty iridescent beads.  Eat your heart out, Eva!  (There was a reason that I didn’t show it to you yesterday.)

Believe it or not, I was fairly restrained at the market.  I have fiber and yarn to last me through the next ice age, so I vowed to not go overboard and buy everything in sight.  I fell off the wagon a little bit at Dicentra Designs because Lisa has such a wonderful eye for colors.  A few drop spindles also fell into my bag.

I have a few more appointments with the workmen tomorrow before I wend my way south again.  Here’s to hoping no snow in the passes! I’ve planned ahead and purchased the chains for my car at the dealership in California last month.  It’s my insurance.  If I have them, then I won’t need them.