Beggar's Bag (click to enlarge)

CNCH starts tomorrow. I’ll provide a report next week. In the meantime, here are some eye candy on a few of my submissions. Drop by the gallery and take a look if you are in the Bay Area this weekend!

The bag on the left is the Beggar’s Bag for the Traditions and Innovations Gallery.

Draft: Floral Dance Star Variation (Anne Dixon)
Warp: Borgs 22/2 Cottolin (natural)
Tabby Weft: 8/2 cotton (natural)
Pattern Weft:  assorted handspun handpainted BFL singles (purchased at 2011 Whidbey Island Spin In from Island Fibers, I think)
Construction: all hand pieced, even down to the zipper and  lining.

I definitely learned quite a bit on this project. Even after re-sleying, I think the sett is still too close. I found out later in my research that I should have sleyed it for a loose plain weave. This is why I had to go to a 8/2 cotton instead of cottolin for weft. It’s a good thing too since I ran out of natural cottolin.

Return to Sender Yarn

Return to Sender Batt

On the left is my Return to Sender skein, blocking on the skeinwinder. On the right is what the batt looked like before I started. The fiber is 85/15 BFL/tussah, dyed with natural dyes by Mary Finley and Roger Salter of Dreamy Goat Design Studio.

I split the batt into pure colors, and stripped out the mixed bits as my “in-between”. Spun the colors in progression as a fine single and plied it with an 80/20 “black” BFL/tussah (SOAR 2009 ? special — Bend, OR). You can see that the black BFL toned down the colors quite a bit, but still quite nice.

Weight: 4 oz. (2 oz. RTS, 2 oz. black BFL)
Yardage: 1,012 yards
Plies: 2
WPI: 44

I have one more gallery submission for the Return of the Return to Sender (yarn spun for the 2010 CNCH), but I forgot to photograph it before sending it on. I used an alternate treadling to Floral Dance with my 2 ply yarn and turned it into a sketchbook cover. Probably subliminal. I’m not that happy with the cover. I will likely re-do it after the conference.

Summer is upon us. Summer means lazy outdoor meals, including meals in the marina with my friends. And after the sun goes down, we scramble for blankets and wraps. These “baby” blankets will be fabulous as a shoulder wrap. Even better, all that mindless knitting is perfect for social knitting.  I think I may have have some yarn around here that might work. snerk.

* The reason I was looking through the stats wasn’t due to vanity, but security. Last week, I installed a Word Press plug-in that limits failed login attempts. It’s completely configurable, but I have it set to 4 failed attempts before it locks that IP out from further logins for 20 minutes. I can not believe how many people / robots / what-have-you have attempted to log into my WP installation as “Admin”, which is the default administrator account. I have since (a) created a strong password for all of my WP accounts, and (b) changed my default administrator account to another account name. All this is in addition to the plug-in.

It’s scary out there! How about you? What are you doing to protect your blog?

I tend to cycle through a limited palette: teal, blue, purple and red. I was on teal for quite a long while. I made some short excursions into reds, purchased some purple, but no finished projects with those colors.

So what is the fiber for? It’s for a Friendship Coverlet Exchange. I dyed 1 pound of brown BFL yesterday. The second pound is cooling in the turkey roaster right now. It’s been a while since I dyed a full pound of fiber at once and there are definitely spots that will need to be re-dyed.

I wanted slight depth of shade variability in the roving so that, when spun, the yarn will have some gradations to keep it interesting. However, I have spots that just didn’t have any color on it. I changed my dye application method slightly for the second pound. Let’s see if I get better color saturation with this batch.

Next up, spin all two pounds of this teal BFL into fingering weight singles then skein them off into 250-300 yard skeins to give to the other participants.

I don’t always wear clothes with a pocket to put my iPhone in while I’m out and about. So, while I was cleaning up after my CNCH gallery submissions, I had one little scrap that was just the size of an iPhone pouch. I stitched it up and added some of the cord I made for one of the gallery bags.

On other news, all my promised gallery submissions are finished. I have one more bag waiting to be pieced and a yarn ready to put on the inkle for a strap. If I finish it in time, I might put it in the gallery too. Although my submissions may be a bit too predictable … they are all overshot from the same warp threading (different treadling though!).

Barbara and I were chatting about band weaving and she mentioned that she wanted to weave her own labels using the instructions from Weave-Away’s post. Armed with that information and a copy of Linda Hendrickson’s tutorial, I pulled out my Palmer Tablet Loom, tablets, and some spools of polyester interlock thread.

What you see above is the result of about 6 hours of weaving with 24 cards. What you don’t see are the warm ups (aka false starts) that I cut out. I had modified the alphabet Linda provided in her tutorial a bit to better match the font in my blog masthead. Letters are a little lighter weight and the “g” is a bit more stylized. The graph was still not perfect but it was enough to test it out and see how it will work.

Anyway, it’s an interesting idea, but I can think of much better ways of spending my time. I can weave a towel in under 2 hours, probably closer to 4 towels in 6 hours. Even if I get faster with more experience on the tablets, it’s just not the best use of my time. I can’t imagine weaving these labels for all of my projects.

My current method works okay — just okay, but it works well for towels. I don’t like labels on scarves (they always show no matter how artfully you arrange it) nor clothes (they always itch and scratch in the most uncomfortable places). If I were to ever sell my handwoven goods, I will order some woven labels. Until then, I will continue to use my little iron-ons on twill tape. If I have something really special that I want to label, I might, just might, pull out the tablets again and weave my own labels. Before I do that though, I will need to tweak the letter templates a bit more to better match my masthead font.

In any case, I am ready for my tablet weaving class with John Mullarkey at CNCH next month!

Length: 136″
Diameter: approx. 3/32″
Warp: 8 ends of 2 ply black silk, 4 ends of 2 ply blue silk (12 total)
Weft: 2 ply black silk (same as warp)

I had about 5″ of waste on each end of the cord. So, about 10″ of waste from the Large Gilmore Wave. Not bad. A bit more than from an inkle loom but I can put on a longer warp. Not a bad trade-off.

The cord has a mat finish from the spun tussah silk, but it sparkles when the light hits it. It’s definitely different from a cord woven from reeled bombyx, but I like it. I think I am going to have to try to spin more for a kumihimo project and see how that transforms the silk.

Silk Cord

Remember the spindle spun silk? Now it looks like this. I’m weaving a cord to use as a piping for the bag.

It’s my first project using the Gilmore Wave. So far, I’m enjoying it. I can’t wait to try a ribbon with this.

By the way, if you are on the CNCH 2012 mailing list, there was a mistake in an email sent in March. It contained incorrect dates for Return to Sender and Return of Return to Sender dates. The corrected dates and links to the submission forms can be found in this CNCH blog post.

Are you planning on going to the conference? Or just visit the gallery and vendor hall? CNCH 2012 is looking for volunteers to help sit at the gallery, check tickets, and assorted other small jobs. In exchange for two hours of your time, they will give you a free day pass. What a deal! See the Volunteers page for a list of all the open positions and time slots.

If you can’t volunteer but still want to make a day of it, the Day Visits page has a $2 off coupon for the vendor hall.

Now I have to see if there’s something else I can wrap up in time for submit to the gallery. I’ve only submitted one out of my allotted three entries. (Return to Sender and Return of Return to Sender do not count in the allotment.)

Hmm. Is there enough time for a piece of yardage?

I have a few modifications to her method as described. I used an end of Zephyr about a yard long to bridge the gap. I pin in on the fabric in the front, just as Laura describes. However, I use a pair of hemostats to clip the back end to the surrounding warp threads. This ensures that your repair thread maintains the same tension as the rest of the warp. I also clip the broken warp thread to this bundle so I don’t lose it.

Once I’ve woven far enough past the break, I bring in the original handspun back through the heddles, pin it in place and away I go. Because my handspun yarn was placed randomly in the warp, and was mostly black with just patches of color, the repairs are indistinguishable once the fix is in.

Where do you find hemostats? Would you believe beading supply shops?

click to enlarge

I never thought that I liked overshot. Really I didn’t. They’ve always seem so fuddy duddy, dull colored. Well, just boring.

I never liked the large patterns where you have to have an entire heavy coverlet before you can see the pattern.

And why did they all have to be brown? And scratchy?

The last few weeks have really changed my mind about this weave structure. I am absolutely loving this right now, even the two shuttle dance. The foot work is still a bit awkward because it’s not my normal walking treadling sequence — more like a double tap.

So why the change of heart? One word COLOR! I love how the variegated yarn moves through the fabric. I love how the colors make the patterns pop. And such an easy thing too.

I think the other is reason that I am enjoying this is because I have chosen small patterns. (They are called miniatures in the pattern books.) I love them. They remind me of the mosaic tiles that I saw while in Turkey. Lots of small repeats for a big impact. Love it.

Both of the overshot pieces in the past couple of weeks have been woven with my own  handspun yarn. The Beggar’s Bag was woven with BFL singles. This one here was a 2-ply (merino/bamboo and silk). Both were spun into fingering weight yarn. Both yarns have lovely shine and drape to them. And what a difference that makes.

Okay. I guess that makes three things that make this different from my imagined dated overshot pieces: color, pattern, and fiber.

You will see some inconsistencies in the fabric. They are not weaving mistakes (I cropped those out of the photo). They are where my handspun got a little too thin/skinny, thus did not fill the space as they should, even after wet finishing.

There’s nothing like actually using your own handspun yarn to know what you need to improve upon!

By the way, the yarns were produced by following the advice from two spinning teachers: Kathryn Alexander on how to spin singles for weaving and Deb Menz on how to spin and ply (choose fibers to ply with) to get the yarn/effect you want. Deb will be teaching her Spin for Color workshop at SOAR this year. I highly recommend it.

I’m using the CNCH 2010 Return to Sender yarn for this variation of the same draft. It will be submitted as Return of Return to Sender for CNCH 2012.

I’m loving how the colors flow from one to the other. I wound off the entire skein onto bobbins, preserving the order. I am weaving with the bobbins in reverse order to maintain the color progression.

I’m pretty happy with the even beat. See the nice straight diagonal lines?

I will have a lot more fabric than the intended project so I will likely make 2 or 3 somethings out of this. We’ll see which gets entered into the gallery.

Clockwise from top: silk hankies, tussah silk, and bombyx silk brick.

I’ve been spinning different types of silks on my drop spindles for the past few weeks. I spin silk a lot, but normally, I stay pretty monogamous with my silk spinning projects. But this time, due to spinning for several different projects, I had been mixing it up. Sometimes in the same evening.

All I can say is, wow. What a difference.

With silk hankies, it’s a bit like ripping fabric as you spin. You get lumps and bumps as you go. If you want perfectly smooth yarn, this is not for you. If you want a bit of texture like in a raw silk fabric, then this is for you. And it is just darned fun ripping into the silk hankie.

Tussah silk has a bit of a tooth to it. It’s a bit easier for new spinners because it isn’t too slippery. It’s not as shiny as the hankies or the bombyx. Natural tussah is typically honey colored so the dyed fiber has a bit of depth to it. This is because

Bombyx? It’s very very slippery but oh-so very lovely to spin. I find that bombyx needs a bit more twist in the singles than tussah requires.

You can read more about silk at Silk is the Bomb(yx) in Knitty by Michael Cook.

Working like mad on the first of my gallery submissions for the the CNCH Galleries. I’ll mail off the entry form today, but there’s still a lot of hand finishing work to be done. The photo above are mini skeins of spindle spun silk that will be transformed into a handwoven piping. I’ll be pulling out the Gilmore Wave loom for this.

Why not use an inkle loom? I want to wind on a warp that is slightly longer than the longest warp I can put on my Schacht inkle loom.

Fresh off the loom -- before fulling

After fulling, before pressing

Amazing the difference wet finishing* makes, isn’t it?

* Washer on hand wash mode and dryer with towels  for 10 minutes.

I don’t have enough yarn to weave the entire bag with any one of these skeins. I will be combining something with the blue skein. But which one?

I really like the brighter of the two skeins with the orange and green, and wasn’t too impressed with the other one while I was spinning it. But there is something about the pink that really makes it pop. It’s more subdued but I really like the combination. And there was a blue that I didn’t even realize was there until it was placed next to the blue skein.

In the left two skeins, the values are similar. I worry that the colors compete too much.

In the right two skeins, there is a subtlety that doesn’t show up in the photograph. I worry that it’s too subtle.

What are your thoughts?

(Click to enlarge)

I re-sleyed the warp at 18 epi. It’s a bit better and closer to square (14 pattern shots per inch) using 8/2 cotton. I might get there using a 10/2 cotton.

From the bottom:

• Mountain Colors Silk & Ewe (multi)
• Henry’s Attic Pony (red)
• Handspun BFL (variegated brown)
• Koigu (blue/turquoise)

All except for the handspun were scrap yarn. I didn’t weave very much with the Pony because it looked so puny on the loom, but it fulled up quite well in the wash (sink full of hot water and squeezed and wrung for about 5 minutes by hand). So did the handspun.

I was ready to give up on the handspun idea until I saw the finished fabric. If you ignore the mistake in treadling, it has potential. I’ll have to see what it looks like dry tomorrow (this) morning.

What really struck me about this sample is that it is starting to look like one of  my speed swatches from Janine Bajus‘ Fair Isle workshops! I really like how the little bit of Pony made the bottom half glow. Somehow the 3 different yarns at the bottom pulled together into a cohesive whole.

Remember the Monk’s Bag? That was my muslin for a handwoven version. The draft is called Floral Dance from Anne Dixon’s The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory.

I put on 7 yards of unbleached cottolin, which should be enough to make 2 bags plus lots of sampling.

Believe it or not, I got the 30 end per repeat threading correct on the first try. I’m really really happy about that. What I’m not happy about is the sett. I started with 20 epi and it’s just too dense. My pattern isn’t coming out square unless I use a cobweb tabby weft (the top half of the top repeat). So, I have cut the sample off the loom and will be re-sleying it at 18 and see how that works.

I’m also not happy with my pattern weft. I just grabbed a partial bobbin of leftover yarn from another weaving project that approximates my hand spun yarn. In fact, I used it as a spinning guide. You know what? It’s gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. So much so that I’m tempted to buy more of this yarn to make a bag out of it. Why am I unhappy? It’s Handmaiden’s Sea Silk. Outrageously expensive for a bag that has an alternate name of “Beggar’s Bag.” Who uses hand painted silk for a Beggar’s Bag?

And guess what? It’s primarily a plain weave. Yup. Plain weave. Okay, a bit of skip dent in there and a few floats. A bit of cotton slub and pops of pink really brightens this jacket. Not too girly, but just a hint of pink.

Hey, I can do this! The jacket isn’t too different from the basic Daryl Jacket. Unlined. No pockets. What could be simpler?

Famous last words…

So, while waiting for the plumber, and while he did his thing *, I pulled out the big drill (pre-drill the holes) and the materials for the new raddle that I have been meaning to make for the Gilmore Gem II. It will have 1/2 spacers. I am using screw eyes for my spacers so I can slide a rod through the eyes to keep all my threads in place. I’ve even sanded down the piece of wood, rounded out all the sharp edges and put a boat of orange oil wax on it.

It’ll take me a while to put all 45 screw eyes in. So, for now, I think a margarita lunch is called for. No?

* It was a giant root ball in the main line to the street.

I spun from a large bag of Polwarth Luxury Blend (Polwarth blended with cashmere, baby camel, yak and baby alpaca) from Spirit Trail Fiberworks. I didn’t split the fiber into piles. I didn’t weigh the fiber nor the bobbins. I just spun until I thought I was about half way through and switched bobbins.

What you see on the left is what was left on one of the bobbins after I finished plying — about 30″.

I can’t get this close when I try to split the fiber evenly into 2 batches. Perhaps I should just stop trying so hard, eh?

I’ve wound off both ends from the Kuchulu onto a small ball before plying from it. As you can see, the ball is too big. I will have to find something smaller.

Just for scale, here is my plying ball sitting next to a regular sized tennis ball that I use in the dryer to fluff things up with. (Excuse the fuzz that is stuck to tennis ball.)

What is that thing? It’s a little catnip infused “tennis” ball I picked up at the pet store. I was desperate while traveling at one point and went into a grocery store and picked these up. They were so cheap that my catnip addicted cats weren’t even interested in them. It’s a good thing since I don’t want them to play with my fiber tools.

I think I will have to use some of the same fluff and make a small felted ball for this.

Ah-ha! Says I. I have two little Kuchulus. I can do this too! And in under 5 minutes, I spun and plied that little bit of red floss you see below.

Spinning Floss

I took some scrap watercolor paper I had sitting around for wrapping samples and cut them into little floss holders. The cards are about 1.5″ x 2″ (35 cm x 50 cm). That’s how small these little Kuchulus are.

Turkish Spindles

I had been spinning on my Turkish Delight and Kuchulus for some socks. But it’s been taking a while. I’ve been working on the above on and off for a couple of years now. It’s slow because I’ve been doing other things along the way. And I was a bit disappointment because the singles spun on the Kuchulu were much finer than those on the Delight (duh!). I kept those on the smaller quills so I will remember that they are different.

Now I know what to do with them. I’ll wind them off color by color, and then onto plying balls and turn them into embroidery floss. I’ll keep the stash of Delight spun yarn for the socks that I will eventually get too. I’m in no hurry.

And hopefully, the small quick spinning tasks will help me work through this bottonless bin of merino scraps!

Lots of Fluff!

By the way, I tried two slightly different wind on methods on the Turkish Delight and on the Kuchulus. Here’s a close up. Can you see the difference?

2 wind on methods

They are both under 1, over 2. But on the Delight in the background is the method that I had been using. Quick and efficient. The Kuchulu in the foreground is a method that I had seen floating around on the web. I call it the anal method. You wind on precisely next to the previous thread. It’s pretty on the spindle, but slow going.

I may ply the yarn on the Kuchulu exactly as it. After all, it should be fun to take my needle for a walk, with no destination in mind, using a randomly colored floss.

* Why form a plying ball from a center pull ball? It’s all about control. If you wind it off with even tension all at once, you won’t have to deal with a snarly mess as you get toward the end. You will have a nice consistent plying twist all the way through. And you know what? She’s right. It was easy peasy.

Then we were off to start our sketches. We were to sketch with our needle and thread directly into our new sketchbooks. No pencils allowed.

Want to see the results of my class exercises?

Warm up: Taking our needle for a walk.

Sketch of my scissors (a leatherman).

3 items I never leave the house without.

Portrait

The last exercise was to be a portrait. I chose to do one of Sarah (note the signature glasses!). I decided that it would be perfect for the cover of my sketchbook so I added a sketchbook, Madrona and (20)12. My entire workshop “notes” all bound up and labeled!

This was a fun way to create quick “sketches.” I definitely will be adding this to my bag of tricks!

And after your visit, you can walk across the street for a margarita at Milagro’s. <grin>

The red skeins you see on the right are from my earlier post on all the red silk blends I found in my stash. Well, actually, not all. I kept back a single braid of warm red to use as weft. (It’s probably the center braid in the photo.) There’s a hair over 1 pound of yarn there.

The 2 ply yarn ranged from 36 to 44 wpi, before washing. The ones with camel and cashmere were the 36 wpi. I will have to remeasure after they dry. I am sure they will have fluffed up even more. I didn’t shock the yarn; I just whacked them on the edge of the sink after squeezing the water out of them. I will full them a bit more after the fabric comes off the loom.

There is 1 skein of 50/50 cashmere/silk, and 1 skein of 25/25/50 baby camel, merino, and silk (50/50 camel silk  plied with 50/50 merino/silk). Those 2 skeins make up a bit more than half of the finished yarn. The other 2 skeins are all 50/50 merino/silk. I plan to alternate every other thread of the merino/silk with the exotic. Since the color is different between the camel and cashmere, I will likely have the cashmere straddle the camel on the outside.

The warp will be 50/50 merino/silk singles that you see on the right. The singles are about 75-80 wpi. Thus far, I’ve spun up about 2 oz. of the red and 1 oz. of black. I have 2 more oz. of red that I will spin if I need more.

Why didn’t I spin all of it? I want to put the warp on and try out what I have thus far. I’m holding the other 2 oz. back in case I have to do something slightly different. And if I’m really far off, I still have about 8 oz. of plain white 50/50 merino/silk roving from the jacket project that I can dye up and spin.

Click through to see the full album

I’m back! Fabulous Trip. Catching a cold half way through the trip? Not so fabulous. But wow, it’s gorgeous out there!

Remember the Monk’s Bag? Perfect. It became my day bag while I was on the boat. It held all the little stuff that you need through out the day: lip balm, hair clip/band, Kindle, dive notebook, camera and swimsuit wrap. It allowed me to  carry it around in a nice neat package instead of stuff hanging out all over.

It also saved me because I made a slight miscalculation in my packing and needed to check my carry on rolling bag. I was able to pull a few necessities out of the bag before checking it and put it into the Monk’s Bag.

And a slight clarification on the length of the strap…it’s too short to wear it across your chest, a la messenger bag, but perfect length when just slung over one shoulder.

Instead of collecting all my gear, sort through them and start packing for vacation, I decided to take a bit of time out over the weekend to make a Monk’s Bag to take along with me to carry all the little things.

I had the rough plans from a weave-along project that the Fiber Artisans are working on this spring.

It’s made with some dupioni remnants I had sitting around. Believe it or not, the remnant was almost exactly the dimensions of the fabric requirements — roughly 11″ wide and 92″ long. So, I trimmed it to 10″ wide (some areas were 10.5″ and some were 12″ so it needed to be trimmed) and then cut it into 1 28″ piece and the remainder evenly into 2 pieces, roughly 30″ each. I used a 1/2″ seam allowance all the way around. It’s unlined, but the silk is pretty strong so I don’t think it will be an issue. Besides, this folds up nicely and can be stuffed into my backpack or purse to be used as an extra shopping bag.

(And no, no Hong Kong seams on this baby. Just a zig zag on the edges before I started sewing.)

I opted not to have a seam at the bottom of the main bag portion because I didn’t want a weak spot at the bottom of the bag where the seam is. I don’t know if this will bear out or not, but that was my theory.

What I learned.

• This bag ended up wider than it is tall. Duh. 20″ wide and 13″ tall.
• I would make the straps a bit longer. The top of the bag hits me right under the boob area. Not bad, but another 4-6″ might have been better.
• I could make some hidden pockets in the top part of the strap by sewing across and put a zipper in.

I consider this as my “muslin” for the real bag.  I will take this with me to Thailand this week and use it as my day bag. That should tell me how well the dimensions work for me before I put on a warp.

Very appropriate, don’t you think? A bag make with silk remnants from Thai Silk to make a Monk’s Bag (aka Beggar’s Bag) to go to Thailand?

There’s a set of instructions for a Monk’s Bag at The Purl Bee. I didn’t follow this one. As I said, I just the rough dimensions from somewhere else and made it up as I went along.

Tang Yuen. Photo by Bok.

What is Dong Zhi and what do these little morsels have to do with it?

Dong Zhi is the Chinese Winter Solstice celebration. Winter Solstice has been observed in China as early as 2500 years ago. Tang Yuen are little glutinous rice flour dumplings, served in a sugar syrup. Yum!

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!

Square Alpaca Hats

Have you heard? Black Sheep Handweavers Guild will be taking donations of handmade items for the Shelter Network during our annual Holiday Potluck on December 15th.

I thought that I would whip out a few quick and easy hats to add to the donation pile. I found a collection of odd balls of handpainted alpaca and this fun and easy hat pattern — Round Head in a Square Hat. It’s a fun pattern all knit on 16″ circular needles with quick grafting job to close the top and Voila! A hat. And the alpaca is very soft and squishy.

My yarn is a light worsted weight so I had to adapt the pattern to match my gauge to the rough final dimensions of the original hats.

The blue hat is baby sized, and the pink one is somewhere between child and adult sized. I have a lot more of the alpaca to make up several more hats.

So…what are you making for the donation box?

"Duet for a Silk Brick" in Interweave Spin-Off's free eBook "A Guide to Spinning Silk Fibers"

Have you ever had the experience after you buy a new car or coat or whatever, then you see that exact same item EVERYWHERE? Apparently, that’s called “Perceptual Vigilance.”

What does that have to do with a free eBook? The photo on the left is a from the article “Duet for a Silk Brick” from Interweave Spin-Off /Spinning Daily’s free eBook, my jacket. When this article first came out (yes, each of the projects in the eBook is a reprint of past Spin-Off articles), I was inspired, but I didn’t really weave then, so I only skimmed the weaving part of the article. My brain looked at the fabric and thought that it was just a weft faced fabric, not satin. Now, with my jacket fabric under my belt, I think I am ready to tackle this one.

Point Twill #94 Straight from Carol Strickler’s 8-Shaft Patterns. Same threading as before, but different tie ups and straight treadling.

Reversing Point Twill Flowers from Handweaving.net. I’m not having much fun with this. There are several treadlings that require lifting 5 shafts. I think I’m getting a blister on my foot.

It’s not coming out quite as the I would have thought from the draft. It looks right. And threading and tie ups are right. It’s still pretty, just not quite what I was expecting. I wound out enough for two scarves. Perhaps I will change the treadling for the second scarf.

Did you know that there is a “grain” to sewing thread? Yup. According to Daryl, you should always knot the end that you have just cut off the thread. That, along with waxing your thread, will minimize tangling while you are hand sewing.

And yes, I’m finally getting around to finish the hand sewing of my jacket.

Wash Station

Here’s my setup, clockwise from upper left:

1. 1.5 – 2 cups of hot near boiling water * with ECOS Free and Clear Laundry Detergent (I used the #1 mark for HE washers. I don’t know what that translates to in cc or cups.)
2. Bar of soap (from the laundry aisle).
3. Rinse water #1. Again, near boiling water.
4. Rinse water #2. Again, near boiling water.

* I kept a pot of water simmering on the stove and used it to fill my bowls. Then I added a small amount of tepid water to bring it down from boiling temperature.

Method:

1. Dip one end of the lock in station #1. Swish it around. Pull out. Gave it a light squeeze. Repeat for the other end.
2. Rubbed the lock into the bar of soap. Repeat for the other end.
3. Swished one end of the lock in Rinse #1. Squeeze. Repeat for the other end.
4. Rinse #2, same as Rinse #1.

I had 2 rinses because there was a lot of suds after the soap bar, and my water was pretty soapy after a few locks, hence the second rinse bath.

Soap Scrub

Why both a ECOS bath and the soap bar scrub?

Margaret Stove showed 2 methods for washing fleece. First method was lock by lock on a soap bar. The second method was a packet of locks in a soapy bath. I thought I would just swish my locks in a soapy bath and call it good.

Actually, it was good. It came out quite clean. (Sorry, forgot to snap a picture.) But, I still had the dirty tips, so I scrubbed the tips of a couple of the dirtier ones on the bar of soap after the soap dip. After rinsing and squeezing them dry, I thought that the locks that went through both washing methods were just a smidge whiter. It could just be my imagination, but it was there. And it only added a few extra seconds to each lock.

I replaced all the wash bowls with fresh hot water every 10 locks or so, as Margaret suggested. How well did this work? I’ll let this picture speak for itself.

Washed Locks

Clean weight is about 1.5 oz. (40-45g). It took just a bit over an hour to wash these locks this way. 1.5 oz. will take about a week of evenings to spin into lace weight yarn. So, that’s a lot of fiber in a small amount of time.

Unfortunately, Solomon (cormo fleece) is northward of 6 pounds, or 64 hours of washing up. That doesn’t count preparing the locks for washing. (Separating into finger sized locks. Stacking them neatly.)

Incidentally, I bought a stack of those green baskets that the locks are resting in for washing fleece. The holes allow the water to move through the locks and drain freely. I fill one basket (single layer) in the basket and put it in the sink with hot soapy water. I nest an empty one on top when I plunge it in the bath so they don’t shift around. I may plunge it a once or twice this way to make sure that the dirty water moves out. Be careful to not create too much suds!

It’s definitely faster this way than my lock method above, but it also uses a whole lot more water. I think the lock method used 1/3 the water that the bath method uses. Also, the bath method doesn’t get the locks nearly as bright and clean as the lock method. Speed vs. water conservation. Speed vs. bright white locks. Did I mention 64 weeks? Yeah. It’s a difficult choice.

To see the difference between washing bulk vs. lock by lock, go back to my August post.

I almost forgot to register. Thankfully, I got all the classes I wanted. Only one class has filled thus far. (That’s quick for CNCH!)

Congratulations to the CNCH 2012 team! The online registration was quick, easy and painless.

So, what did I sign up for? Tablet Weaving Basics with John Mullarkey and A Sewer’s Perspective: Instructional Tour of the Juried Fashion Show with Daryl Lancaster.

I have the basics for tablet weaving but I haven’t done anything with it since my one and only class. I need a refresher! And Daryl? She has such fabulous insight into why a garment works or doesn’t and how to improve the finishing details. It’s fabulous to have her walk you through all the fashion show garments and their construction.

So, what are you waiting for? Go sign up!

What I’m finding interesting is that while Ellie has shown absolutely no interest in my fibers in the past, she seems to think that the shawl is the cat’s meow. She loves jumping on my lap and knead the heck out of the shawl before taking a nap on it. While I would like to think that it’s me that she’s showing some love for, but unfortunately, it appears that the shawl is the draw. Ah well.

Yet another fabulous SOAR. And again, there appears to be no photos on my camera, save this. The Circle of Life Shawl at the SOAR gallery. I didn’t get to the edging, so I just finished it with a crochet bind off so it can make it into the gallery.

And here it is on the hotel bed for scale. It’s a queen sized bed.

After much consultation, I have decided to skip the medium brown that just started to appear in the progression and jump straight to the dark brown for contrast, and a wee bit of drama. However, I won’t start it for a few weeks. After a summer spent on 2 major projects, I feel a need for a few instant gratification projects.

So far, I’ve finished a sock, singular. I need something a bit more frivolous. Suggestions?

The Area 3 guilds have put together a fabulous program. I’m really looking forward to taking some classes this conference. You can be sure that I will take Daryl Lancaster‘s Jury Tour of the Fashion Show Garments, if I can get in, that is. And my good friend, John Mullarkey, will be there to teach card weaving as well. So many fabulous teachers to choose from. There’s a little something for everyone.

And throughout the meeting, I was able to knit on my Circle of Life Shawl. I’ve made good progress during the luncheon and continued on once I got home. I was able to zip right through Chart 9. Granted, Chart 9 is the smallest chart in the entire shawl (only 4 pattern rounds). But 8 rounds is 8 rounds, right?

So, as of tonight, I’m at 80% completion of the main shawl pattern. My goal at this point is to finish the main shawl before I get on the plane on Saturday. And hopefully, during my long flights east, I’m be able to make significant progress on the border, and finish in time for the SOAR gallery.

Yardage in daylight (Click to enlarge)

Here’s a picture of my yardage in daylight — just before I cut into it. I don’t have a picture of myself cutting into it. I procrastinated as long as possibly could. I love the way the fabric turned out. The color stripes remind me of a cascade of colored ashes from a fireworks display. Oh, and the actual fabric. It has absolutely gorgeous hand and drape.

After all that work on the yardage, I walked into the workshop and then dropped my jaw. It bounced a few times. I had forgotten to bring my yardage. Yes. After months and months of work, I forgot it.

I had packed the car with all the equipment, tools, and food for Daryl’s 3 day Jumpstart Jacket Workshop the night before. I left the yardage for the morning. I didn’t want to leave it in the car overnight. And the next morning? I drove away with the yardage still sitting by the front door. Sigh.

(Click to enlarge)

Okay. Onto the class. We only had 8 people in the class (instead of the typical 15). This meant that Daryl had more time to work with us individually to alter the pattern, not only for fit, but style that we want — casual, fitted, buttoned or open front, length, ease, everything. It was fabulous. Daryl was fabulous.

After all that stress about mistakes in my treadling and whether I had enough usable fabric to cut my pieces from, I had. And I have plenty to spare.

Once we got to sewing, she taught us how to apply a Hong Kong finish to all the raw edges. The finished garment will have no exposed raw edges. How fabulous is that?

I chose a fuchsia raw silk fabric from Thai Silk to make the pocket lining and bias tape from. Look how well the fuchsia matched the accent yarn.

It was a very intense 3 day workshop. I was able to finish all the major sewing by 5 PM on Sunday, but just barely. I still need to apply the bias tape to my shoulder seams. The rest of the work is handwork. I need to remove all my basting and marking stitches, hem the sleeves, and tack down the jacket hem and front band. A nice pressing and it will be done. There’s probably about another 3 hours of work remaining.

This old thing? It's just something I whipped up over the weekend.

Here’s the jacket in its current unfinished state. There are things that I would do differently, but overall, I’m very happy with how it turned out. The colored wrap threads kept it from a boring man’s suiting fabric.

Jumpstart is right. This jacket presents a great jumping off point for a lot more ideas and jackets. I’m already planning my next yardage and jacket!

Photo from de Young Museum website. Click through for exhibit information.

Wish you could have seen those gorgeous Turkish Kilim rugs first hand? Well, you have a chance to see some fabulous examples of Anatolian Kilims at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The exihibit opens this weekend! The exhibit runs from September 10, 2011 through June 10, 2012.

The Textile Arts Council will be hosting a corresponding lecture on Saturday, October 15, 2011, Discontinuing Wefts: The Brilliance and Beauty of Anatolian Kilims.

Click for larger. Really. You need to click.

Because some of you asked…

Warp Length:

• Wound on 10 yards
• Wove 9 yds according to my on loom measurements while under tension + 1 yd of color sample
• Off loom measurement: 8 yds of fabric; about 7 yards usable

Width:

• 30″ wide at the reed
• 28″ wide at the fell
• 28″ off the loom

More Stats:

• 30 ends per inch
• 900 ends + 4 floating selvedge ends
• approximately 40 picks per inch
• 18 total failed handspun; 4 while threading the loom; and the rest during weaving
• no broken warp otherwise

Click for larger. Really. You need to click.

Either Zephyr is really, really stretchy or I measured incorrectly on the loom. I believe its the latter. And the 7 yards usable? Well, I had some treadling mistakes that I didn’t catch. Because I was weaving with the wrong side up, I couldn’t see them. I knew the first 20″ or so were riddled with mistakes, but there were a few scattered through out. I suspect those were at the end of a long weaving session.

The handspun fails were due to bad joins at the color change. I didn’t feather the 2 ends enough when I changed colors and they separated right at the joins. Or, the joins were too fat and the abrasion of the reed scraped them apart. Again, a better feathering job may have prevented them.

How did I fix them? The ones that failed while warping, I just replaced with black Zephyr. I just didn’t want to deal with an unplied yarn dangling off the back of the loom. Chances were good that they would unspin and drift apart. For the ones that failed during weaving, I put in a rescue warp with Zephry about 3x the length of the failed join area. Wove on the rescue warp for a length before re-joining the original handspun back into the warp.

It’s amazingly difficult to take pictures of a black fabric at night, but you can see in the above pictures that I mostly achieved the look I set up to make. The color runs are longer than I liked, but I like the effect. It looks like wet paint dripping down the length of a black ground. Jackson Pollock it’s not.

And just for fun and for my sanity sake, I played a bit for the last yard. I used some of the leftover Zephyr I had from sampling, and found the colors that most closely matched the colors I had dyed and spun into my yarn to see what it would look like with alternate weft colors.

Back of Sampler (click for larger)

Kind of fun, isn’t it? The back is a weft faced fabric. I had thought that it might be fun to weave a self lined fabric with COLOR, instead of a lining. The far right is the indigo that I used for my fabric. Next to it is the same black as the warp. The remaining were colors that were found in my hand dyed / hand spun yarn.

Front of Sampler (click for larger)

Unfortunately, the idea was prettier in my head than in reality. The color bled through to the front too much and had a much stronger impact than I thought it would. Still, it has potential. I just need to figure out what that is.

The yardage is done. At least, it’s been woven. I stopped at about 9 yards, by my calculations. I wove a sampler with different weft colors, leftover from the original sample. I probably could have woven another 15″ or so, but I am done. I was so sick of weaving this yardage right now, I couldn’t see straight.  Apparently, I can get tired of weaving.

So for now, the yardage sits on the cloth beam for another day. I’ve poured myself a glass of wine, and am tuning in for some mindless television. I am exhausted. Done in. Done for. Just, DONE!

Circle of Life Shawl Progress

I’m now half way through Chart 8 (of 11). Round 195 of 223. Just shy of 70%. And yes, this is all before I start the border. Each round is taking more than an hour to complete now. I have serious doubts as to whether I’ll be able to finish this in time for SOAR.

6 yards

I have woven the minimum required yardage for the jacket workshop with Daryl Lancaster. I have 3 more yards of warp. I want to weave as much of it as I can as “backup” yardage — just in case.

31. The number of quills used in a 3.5 hour session. (That equates to about 2 yards of fabric.)

Washed Cormo (Solomon) Locks

Clockwise from left:

• Fermented Suint Method (FSM): grabbed a handful and left it to soak in the FSM bath for about 7 days. (More about it here, here, and here.)
• Finger sized locks placed in a small plastic mesh bag (like garlic bag) and washed in hot soapy water (Ecover dish soap) and  rinsed twice, a la Margaret Stove.
• Finger sized locks washed one lock at a time by rubbing each end against Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil Bar Soap, a la Margaret Stove.

I’ll give you one guess which one I like best.

I don’t know that FSM is that much easier or less water intensive. That bundle is part of a larger handful, and it received about 6-8 rinses.  It no longer smells, but it’s not as white as the others. (I actually think it got dirtier!) It definitely still has some lanolin left in it. I will likely wash it again in a weak soap bath, but the tips are not clean. It’s a bit messy because I didn’t bother to separate it into locks before putting it in a mesh bag and into the FSM bath. I also wasn’t gentle with it while rinsing — I tried to squeeze out as much of the filthy water as possible before moving on to the next rinse bucket. The good news is that I used the rinse water to water my lawn. I’m sure I’ve confused my dog as to his favorite pee spot.

Margaret suggests that you pull locks out that are about the diameter of your finger and wash them. She teaches both methods — washing one lock at a time by rubbing each end against a bar of soap or bundling them together and putting in a mesh bag to preserve lock structure and putting the bundle into hot soapy water.

As you can see, the bundle still has dirty tips, even though I tried to rub the tip end while the mesh bag was in the hot soapy bath. I washed it twice and it still is not as clean nor as white as the locks washed singly.

But, you can still see the crimp structure in the locks washed in the bundle. And the tips will likely open up when you flick the locks before spinning. Margaret says that you can just pinch off the tip because they are likely to be brittle anyway. Others advocate just cutting them off. Based on a couple of tests with mine, these tips are just lightly matted and not brittle at all. So, check your own wool and make the call yourself.

Since I want to spin and knit Margaret’s Filmy Fern Shawl with this fleece, I will likely process it lock by lock.

I’ll leave you with this photo. It smells worse than it looks.

Suint Bath

I am keeping a notebook while I weave yardage for the jacket. I’m keeping track of time spent, amount woven, things that work and what don’t. How the handspun is (or in most cases not) holding up and why.

I auditioned nearly all the shuttles I have in the house. The Bluster Bay Swedish-Styled Shuttle won the day. The low profile allowed the shuttle to pass under my floating selvedge without any manipulation from me. All the other shuttles were just a little too tall, and skimmed over the floating selvedge threads. My Schacht Mini-Boat Shuttle came in a close second. But the open bottom dragged on my warp. Given how quickly the Zephyr and my handspun fuzzed up, I didn’t want to put any more stress than I absolutely had to.

I’ve heard complaints that the shed is small on the Fireside Looms. The shed seems perfectly adequate to me, but I have only woven on one other loom — my Gilmore Gem II. It’s possible that it has a small shed too, given that it’s a workshop loom, but it works for me. Without the floating selvedge, every single one of my boat shuttles fit through the shed with plenty of room to spare.

Here’s what the fabric looks like. The color runs are a bit longer than I originally envisioned. My dyed black is a little bit less saturated than the Zephyr Ebony, so it is still visible. And the “random” didn’t turn out to be quite so random.

I sleyed the handspun through the reeds first. I had planned on 2 handspun threads per inch, so I just pulled them randomly through the reeds, 2 per inch. Sometimes they were next to each other, sometimes several dents apart. However, when it came to threading the heddles, it seemed that most of them ended up on heddle #5. It almost became a game while I was threading the heddles. I needed something to amuse me for 900 threads! Because they were 2/dent in the reed, I could fudge a bit and move them to either 4 or 1.

So far, I’m pretty happy with how the yardage is turning out.

click to enlarge

There’s been almost no progress on the Circle of Life shawl. I have been focused on warping the loom and weaving yardage for Daryl’s jacket workshop next month. The yardage is progressing, but not very exciting. So, I’m here to give you more eye candy from my trip to Turkey.

While there, I noticed a signage in the big palace across the street from our hotel. A special exhibit on 17th-19th Century Anatolian Kilims! I took one afternoon off from my friends and took my time going through the museum. It was fabulous!

You can see a few of the rugs in my photo album. I wasn’t allowed to use a flash in the museum so some of the rugs are a bit fuzzy. I used Photoshop to adjust the lighting, but that is it. I did not do any color adjustments. So yes! The colors in those rugs are just that vibrant, even after all these years!

While you are in my photo album, you can take a look at the rest of the photos from my trip to Turkey, including more photos from the Ethnography Exhibit blogged earlier. I haven’t finished processing the rest of my textile photos. Stay tuned!

Isn't that hand carved beater bar a thing of beauty?

10 yard warp with Jaggerspun Zephyr and handspun. 900 ends + 4 floating selvedge ends at 30 epi using a 15 dent reed. 60 of those ends were handspun. “Were” because 3 of them broke (drifted apart) while warping. I replaced them with Zephyr because I didn’t want the singles to dangle, unspin, and drift apart. Okay. I was lazy. I had wound extra Zephyr just in case, so they were handy. There was only 1 threading mistake that I found so far (the pin in the photo). Hooray!

It only took 25 hours to dress this loom. 25 hours to go from bare loom to this point. Sigh. I sure hope it gets faster as I gain more experience with this loom!

Many firsts with this one:

• First time weaving yardage
• First time using floating selvedge
• First time weaving with the Fireside Loom

I’m still getting a feel of this loom. It’s so much larger than my Gilmore Gem II. I’m finding that I need to work on putting a bit more oomph when I throw the shuttle to make it all the way through (30″ width at the reed). The Bluster Bay shuttles are a bit too tall to get under my floating selvedge so I switched to my pretty Schacht one. The outside treadles are just a wee bit further than my normal seated leg span so a bit more scootching is required. I might swap out the weaving bench for my task chair that I use with the Gilmore. We’ll see.

I’m still trying to find the sweet spot on the tensioned brake so that I can advance the warp easily. Too much tension, I can’t advance it without manually loosening up the back beam. Too little tension, the warp advances by itself with every beat. I feel a bit like Goldilocks right now, except I haven’t found “just right” yet.

I will never ever warp Zephyr front to back again, especially not at this epi. The yarn is soft and fuzzed up and quickly adhered itself to its neighbors. Beaming on took a lot of patience.

The handspun single is working. I need to weave a bit more before I call it a success. The color runs are longer than I wanted them to be, but it works. You can’t see the spots of color from the handspun in the picture because I’m weaving with the wrong side of the fabric facing up. This allows me to just raise one harness instead of 4. Much easier to treadle this way, but difficult to see what you are doing. I have a hand mirror that I stick under the fabric every once in a while. That doesn’t work very well because it’s dark. And if I put the light on it, it glares and I still can’t see.

However, I must admit that the handmade cherry futon frame (made for Martin’s dad and stepmother back in the 60s) and the cherry loom look very nice together…

Back to the loom. Here’s the back side:

And look, the back beam folds up so you can get closer to the heddles while warping front to back!

Yes, those are double back beams you see. And here’s a view from the front:

Not a fan of front to back? Well, here’s something for the back to front…the front beam lifts off so you can get closer to the heddles from the front.

Here’s a detail of the dove joint for the front beam:

What about the beater bar? It lifts right off. I forgot to take a picture of that, but just take my word for it.

Best part of all this manipulation? No tools are required. Just lift or turn. That’s it. Everything is set up perfectly!

And while you are sleying the reed, they’ve drilled a hole through the beater bar and into the frame to hold the beater in an upright position.

Yes, that’s a nail you see where the peg should be. That, apparently is a part that I didn’t pay attention to when I picked up the loom. I’ll ask Rachel about it, but I doubt that she still has it. The nail is utilitarian and jars with the beauty of the loom. I will go to the hardware store and buy a piece of brass and cut it down to size, one for each side. I can probably stick one end into a small piece of cherry block to make it look a bit better, and less likely to get lost.

I pretty much bought the loom based on Fireside Loom’s reputation and my lust for the cherry and hand carved beater bar. I know Rachel (the previous and original owner) walked me through the loom, but I must admit that I didn’t comprehend much of it except some of the highlights — primarily the story of how she came by the loom and had it made.

There are a few things that I didn’t pay attention to…like what dent reed (10. I bought a 12 and 15 last weekend), how many heddles (still need to count, but I think 1000). I will likely add to or swap out the heddles for texsolv. I also don’t like the cords used for the treadles so will likely swap those out too.

Funny. I didn’t think I bought a project.

Last round of Chart 7 means 178 of 234 rounds complete. A whole whopping 58% of the main body of the shawl is now finished. Sigh. I still have a long way to go.

I learned something else last night too. It’s not a good idea to knit when you are exhausted and falling asleep at the needle. I spent most of this morning trying to fix the errors I made last night without unknitting 4 rounds of lace, at 728 sts/round. I think I was mostly successful. It will take quite a bit of careful examination to find the errors (I hope).

This past weekend, I got down to the business of dyeing the fiber. For the most part, I used Ashford Wool Dyes from Amazing Yarns. Andrea had just finished a dye day with the study group. I looked at some of her results and realized that they were exactly the colors, or at least in the right range, that I had selected in my samples. She sent me off with the leftover dyes and another small jar of hot pink, and off I went.

On the right shows the dyed merino/silk next to the original color cards I wrapped using Zephyr. Pretty close, wouldn’t you say? I am replacing the turquoise with the teal and the green.

For the red, I am using the red merino/silk from The Artful Ewe (far left in the picture)  that I’ve been spinning. Good thing I haven’t finished spinning it because it’s almost an exact match.

I had settled on using the ebony warp and indigo weft. So the base of my accent yarn needs to be black. I dug in my dye stash and found my Mother MacKenzie’s Miracle Dye kit that I purchased years ago (so old that she sold them in little zip lock bags instead of the pretty tins). I used the Prime Black for the base.

I started spinning last night. (Please excuse the fuzzy bobbin. I had to pick either the color card or the bobbin for my focal point.) I’m very pleased with the results. The color stretches are a bit longer than my vision, but that’s the way it is, since the staple length is 2-4″ for the merino/silk. I can’t get it much shorter and still spin worsted.

I chose to leave the violet out of my spun yarn. The violet disappeared into my fabric sample. In fact, it’s hard to pick it out of the sample card too. I also left out the hot pink. It wasn’t necessary.

In order to not dilute the blips of color even more (from the weft), I will leave the yarn as a single. I’m making extra sure that I have good joins that will hold up to warping. Of course, this is for the full length too, since I don’t plan on finishing the yarn before putting it on the loom. I want the yarn to bloom along with the rest of the fabric.

View from the roof top of my hotel. Blue Mosque in the background and Turkish Museum on left.

One of the boutique hotels I stayed at in Istanbul was across the street from the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum. We walked by it often in the first few days. The banner showed an exhibit of 17th – 19th century kilims. But it was closed on Monday. (I arrived on Sunday evening.) Tuesday afternoon, I ditched my friends and indulged in a long visit to the museum.

The first exhibit I went to was the ethnography exhibit. The majority of the exhibit was about the nomadic life and rug making.

Left is what the interior of the typical yurt. According to the plaque, it is the women’s responsibility to put the yurt together as soon as they make camp. It takes them about an hour to put the yurt together before they get started on their chores.

Huh? Chores? I’d be ready for a nap if I put that together in an hour after a full day of traveling. And what were the men doing?

On the right is the frame for the top of the yurt. If I remember correctly, they put brush up against the outside of the lattice frame before covering it with carpets to shield them from the elements.

On to chores. The women would then settle down and get to the business of spinning wool and the weaving of rugs. (See gallery at the bottom of the page.)

There were a few things that struck me. First is that they really do use Turkish Spindles! Lots of them. There was a picture of a smallish spinning wheel that looks more like an upright charkha, but there were a lot of spindles. I assume that it was something they can do while they are on the move.

What was interesting is how they wound the spindles. It was up and over/under 2 arms, a la Amelia of The Bellwether, instead of the way I was originally taught (over 1, under 1), or a la Wanda (over 2, under 1). Of course, I don’t know if this is just the way the curators chose to wind and display the wool on the spindles or if this is really how the spinners really wind it on. However, as you can see in the gallery photos below, there were enough spindles in the display of various age to make me think that this might be authentic.

More on the actual Kilim exhibit later.

Click on any of the thumbnails to enlarge the photos. Click again on the new page for even larger photo.

So thank you, everyone, for putting that question back into the equation.

I will finish the shawl as the pattern is written and make something out of the remainder. I should have enough to make a smallish stole. Perhaps a variant of another Eugen Beugler pattern, Lace Dream. I can do it lengthwise and see how deep I can make it before I run out of yarn.

black line as of 20 July (grey line shows progress as of 16 July)

As you can see, I’m making slow and steady progress.

But I’m at a crossroad.

I have just finished the last round of the last chevron increase at the edge of each panel in the pattern. I need to make a decision on whether to continue with the pattern as written, which sets me up to the finish line.

Or, I start another chevron set to make the shawl larger.

The shawl will already be fairly good sized. Making it larger will make the finished shawl huge. But, I also have a lot of yarn left. I hate to see any of this yarn go to waste.

Just how much yarn do I have left? I used up 2.25 oz of the 9+ oz of yarn to date. And based on my calculations, I’m just shy of the half way point (49.1% for those who must know), sans edging. I don’t expect the edging to take up a huge amount of yarn — an ounce at most.

So, I ask you, should I start another chevron? Or should I just head for the finish line? Please leave your vote in the comments. I have guild today so I will not likely get back to the shawl until Friday.

as of 19 July

Finally enough rounds on the shawl to see the color change instead of just looking like I was knitting with very dirty hands.

I bought a convertible Meadowlark, aka Lark. When converted, it becomes a Jay. The photo on the left is the Jay conversion with a Bolivian Rosewood shaft. The crossbeams are made of Pistachio.

Jenkins provided a picture of the difference between a Jay and a Lark. Really, it’s a line up of all of their Turkish Spindles.

With the addition of the Lark/Jay, I now have one each of the Turkish spindles they make. Yup. I’m a sucker for these little cuties.

Photo on the right is the Lark with the Jay shaft next to it. And in case you are curious, the Lark comes in at 18g. It should spin laceweight yarn beautifully.

Hmm. I may have to take a bit of time off from knitting the shawl to playing with my new toy. I’m curious what difference the different shafts will make to the feel of the spindles.

Yeah. I’ll call it research. It’s not playing if I’m doing research, right?

In the meantime, I’m moving right along on the shawl. I’ll post a picture of the color change tomorrow.

No matter. I was too distracted to spin more than a token amount to say I did it. Not a huge loss from a progress perspective.

As soon as I returned home, I emailed Wanda and requested a replacement.

Here’s a picture of the broken shaft (center) and the new replacement (left), and my pitiful Tour de Fleece progress.

While I have spun a little bit on my little Turkish Delight upon return, there’s not much to blog about. I also haven’t spun for a week because I’ve been knitting away on the Circle of Life Shawl. So, I officially bow out of the Tour. No surprise here.

Incidentally, I queries several people and search high and low for fiber that I could spin in the Aegean that wouldn’t become a wet soggy felted mess in the heat and humidity. The fiber I chose was a merino/bamboo blend from New Hue Handspun. It was/is lovely fiber to spin.

While in Turkey, I became a carpetbagger. This tote made good recycling use of an old kilim rug. I adore it. It’s a generous tote bag, capable of holding a long weekend’s worth of clothing, electronics and all my fiber projects for the trip. While cavernous, it doesn’t hold a candle to Mary Poppin’s carpet bag.

Finally!

I’ve made it to the first color progression! It’s the marled of the white and the lightest brown. Looking forward to this color change propelled me on a knitting marathon to get to the point that I’m no longer knitting with white yarn.

Looks good right? I’ve finished 138 rounds of 234 before the edging. It sounds like I’m half way through, doesn’t it?

Don’t let that thought fool you. Since it a circle that grows by 16 sts every 4 rounds, I have a long way to go. Just how far? Grace was very helpful with the following formula:

% complete = (current round / number of rounds) ^ 2

So, in my case, (138/234) ^ 2 = 0.347797502. That’s 35% complete, less the edging. (I actually jumped 2 whole % since I chatted with my sister. Woohoo!)

Sigh. I have a long way to go.

Moral of the story? Don’t discuss progress with a mathematician unless you want to get severely depressed. <grin>

Right now, it’s taking me about 50 minutes to work 2 rounds (pattern + plain). I estimated this to be about 12 sts per minute. So, based on these calculations, it will take me about 1 hour 20 minutes to finish the last pattern + plain round set. If I take an average of 1 hour per pattern round set, it will take me 48 more hours before I start on the edging. I’d better stop here or I’ll really depress myself. This is what happens when you start focusing on the numbers. (Just for the record, it is only 12 weeks to SOAR.)

On to a different set of the numbers. I’ve only used about 20% of the yarn by weight. I will definitely have enough to finish the shawl. The real question at this point is whether I will have enough of whatever color I start the edging with to finish the edging. I want the edging to be a single color without a color transition. I don’t want there to be a color shift when I join the start of the edging with the end.

Oh, well. I figure it out when I get there.

Spinning some merino/bamboo fiber in the Aegean color way with my Aegean Turkish Spindle while sailing in the Aegean Sea.

I brought the spindle and fiber for my Tour de Fleece effort on my vacation. Unfortunately, I broke the shaft of the spindle shortly after this photo was taken. But it was for a good cause — I was having too much fun playing cribbage. Alcohol may have been involved…

I’ll get a replacement shaft. In the meantime, I’ll need to find another spindle to play with for the duration of the tour.

Circle of Life

I’m now part way through Chart 4. It is about 16″ in diameter, unblocked. this may be the last time I can photograph the full circle, since these are my two longest US #1 bamboo needles. I have longer metal ones, but I’m sticking with bamboo for travel reasons. According to my scale, I’ve only used up about 0.75 oz of the 9.5 oz of yarn. There is still quite a bit of white left before I get to the first color change.

Part way through Chart 2

I casted on for the Circle of Life Shawl last night. I forgot how frustrating it is to work with 8 stitches on 4 double pointed needles. I think it took me longer to get the 4 needles to lay down in the correct order in a manner that I can knit the first row than it did for me to knit the next 10 rows.

Pattern: Circle of Life Shawl by Eugen Beugler, published by Fiber Trends
Needles: 2.25mm
Yarn: Hand spun Polwarth/Silk. Details on the yarn can be found here, here, and here.

Posing with the yarn cake

I started this for my vacation knitting. I wanted it off of the dpns and onto circular needles before I get on the plane. But I have to say, this is really addictive. I just want to keep working on it, instead of finishing my featherweight cardigan, which I want to take on my trip with me — as a finished garment. Better put this down and walk away while I still can.

The Polwarth/silk lace yarn is lovely to work with. I can’t believe how soft it is. And the silk really shines through. I can’t wait to see how the color progression works out in the knitted fabric. And how it compares with my imagination.

By the way, while looking up knitting needles on the Turkish Airlines website, I came across this short history of Anatolian socks and mittens. Not much content, but nice eye candy!

On the go spindle box

My spindle box is filled with random scrap merino roving and 2 of my Jenkins Turkish Spindles, a Kuchulu (left) and a Delight (right). Don’t the colors on the Kuchulu look like a Turkish mosaic? Or do I just have Turkey on the brain?

Close up of the Kuchulu

This is a Jenkin’s Aegean Turkish Spindle in Oregon Myrtle (15 g). It’s she pretty? I think I’m going to call her Myrtle. I know. Completely original. What can I say?

This spindle is different from the other Turkish spindles made by Ed because one of the cross arms have a stopper cut out. I don’t know how else to describe it. It prevents the cross arm from sliding all the way through. See?

Oh, and of course, there are the ideograms that he carves into each of the cross arms. Very cool. It’s not as fast as the Kuchulu nor the Delight, but it might speed up a bit with some fiber on it.

I can’t wait to spin on this little baby while I’m sailing in the Aegean Sea in next month!

I finally made it to the Legion of Honor yesterday to see Isabelle de Borchgrave‘s Pulp Fashion exhibit. All I can say is, “Wow. Wow. Wow!” Her body of work is absolutely amazing, as is her attention to detail.

In one dress, she hand painted in the lines for a pin striped walking dress. The stripes are about 1mm wide and 3mm part. For the entire dress! The pleats. The flounces. Wow. I was just blown away.

For the fichus and other lacework, she painted in the lace designs on photo lens cleaning paper (in giant sheets) and then carefully cut into the paper with a scalpel. Absolutely divine.

Hurry. The exhibit has been extended through June 12th. There’s one more week to view this fabulous collection. I don’t believe it’s being shown anywhere else in the US.

Pulp Fashion
The Legion of Honor
Lincoln Park, San Francisco
Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 am – 5:15 pm

A drawing (watercolor pencil) of the first bobbin of the merino/silk from The Artful Ewe, instead of the usual, but oh-so-boring, photo.

Take a look at Elizabeth Perry‘s woolgathering for her daily sketch journal. It’s full of every day things but so inspirational.

As I mentioned before, I am thoroughly sick of teal. In fact, I was looking at someone’s absolutely gorgeous yarn last week, but it triggered an almost gag reflect. Yup. It was teal. Definitely time to work with another color!

While I was up on Whidbey for the Spin-In, I dug around for something to spin and came across some merino/silk dyed by Heidi at The Artful Ewe. I have no idea when I purchased it, but it was perfect. I needed something other than teal to play with. I’m not sure how much I had but probably somewhere between 4-6 oz. I’m spinning it to my usual lace weight, with nothing in particular in mind.

Once I returned home, I looked in my stash and found several more 4 oz. braids of assorted reds in merino/silk, cashmere/silk, and camel/silk *. The common elements are red and silk (and they are all from Jen at Spirit Trail Fiberworks). That’s all I need!

Plan is to spin them all into 2 ply lace weight and then weave them together into a scarf, shawl, stole — something rectangular and light. I’ll likely use 3 of the colors as warp and 1 as weft.

I also want to try something Sharon Alderman showed us in our workshop last month, which is to wind the warp with all three as a bundle and then thread them in randomly within the bundle.

Don’t hold your breath. This may take a while. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, you’ll see it in the SOAR gallery come October…if I’m really, really lucky.

* Disclaimer: There are probably more reds in the stash but those were what I found without spending a lot of time looking.

We created a study group to keep the workshop attendees on track for finishing the cloth by the September workshop. A new website and blog was created for the study group to share information and progress with each other and with Sharon & Daryl. You’ll find the link to it on the left under “guilds.”

I’ve posted pictures of my class samples over there.

And whose idea was it to use the card woven bands? The co-author, Eleanor, not the weaver’s own husband. Hmm.

If you wonder what card weaving has to do with Quantum Computing, the answer is nothing. Eleanor just thought they were pretty and would soften up what would otherwise be a dry book. It’s nice when your work is appreciated, isn’t it?

By the way, just flipping through the book gave me nightmares of my senior year in college. They lied on the cover. There’s nothing “gentle” about the book. But if you feel the need, here’s the full link to Quantum Computing, A Gentle Introduction.

Specs:

• Fiber: Foot Notes Unspun! from Fiber Optics Yarns
• Colorway: Stormy Monday Blues
• Fiber Contents: 80% superwash merino, 20% nylon
• Weight: 3.25 oz (package was for 4 oz, but part of it was used for Batts in the Belfry)
• Yardage: 396 yards, pre wet finishing
• Plies: 2
• WPI: don’t know. Didn’t measure, but sock weight.

This was fun to spin, but the fiber blend was slick. Slick as butter left on the counter on a hot August afternoon. But on the other hand, the fiber just flowed straight from the pencil roving and onto the bobbin. The resulting yarn is nice and squishy.

Photo on the left is what the pencil rovings looked like. The big ball of roving is the fiber for this yarn. The greenish bit on the bottom is what remains of the roving from the Batts in the Belfry entry.

The pencil roving was perfect for the challenge since all we had to do was to shove it in the orifice, but that team name was already selected.

80/20 Cormo/Bamboo

I bought this from Morro Fleece Works at Retzlaff Winery. When? I’m not sure, but at least 2 years ago. Maybe 3. The photograph doesn’t do the color justice. It’s a much deeper teal color.

Stats:

• Source: Morro Fleece Works
• Fiber: 80/20 Cormo/Bamboo pin drafted roving
• Yardage: 1198 yards (pre-finishing)
• WPI: 24 (also pre-finishing)

It poofed up a bit after wet finishing, but I haven’t measured it yet.

I’m loving it now, but I have to say, half way through the plying session, I was thoroughly sick of this color. It seems that I have been working in some variant of this color for one project or another this past year. It’s time to put this aside and let it marinate while I work with some other color. Red maybe?

It only took 4 months, but I finally added a panel and re-seamed the hat Team Batts in the Belfry made for the Batts to Hats competition. (I needed the spinning bobbins that the rest of the yarn was on.) I first wrote about it here, and the full article at Interweave’s site.

We will be donating it to the auction at the next SOAR. Proceeds from auction go to the scholarship fund.

Here’s a picture of the “orchard” area of the yard. The tree in bloom is the italian plum tree. I never get anything off of this tree because the darned squirrels always get to them first. They seem to take one bite out of each plum then proceed to throw it away. In late summer, that corner is a minefield of plums with a bite taken out of it. The Meyer lemon tree is showing the winter bounty. I get 2 crops a year off of this lovely tree. I normally leave the lemons on the tree until I need one. Of course, this often means that I will still have the previous crop on the tree when the new crop shows up. To the left of the lemon tree is a little apple tree. And no, I don’t get anything off of this tree either. Yup. The squirrels again.

Old (L) vs. New (R)

But believe it or not, this post isn’t about the season spring. It’s about the spring on the HansenCraft miniSpinner brake. Did you know that there is a new spring in town?

The miniSpinners have always had a fairly strong pull while spinning, especially with the Woolee Winder. There has been many creative ways of countering the pull, from lacing the yarn around the opposite arm to installing a cup hook on the flyer, opposite of the stationary eye of the Woolee Winder.

It would appear that Kevin has fixed this problem by changing to a smaller spring. You can see the 2 springs side by side in the photo on the right. The old spring is about 1″ long and the new one is only half the size. This lighter spring has made all the difference in the world. It is like a new machine and I have fallen in love with my miniSpinner all over again! Is it possible to be even more in love? The answer is a resounding YES!

I’m not quite sure when he made the change, but you can tell by comparing your spring with the 2 shown. If you have the old spring, you can contact Kevin for a new one. They are $15 each.

Now, I’m going to show you how to change out the spring. It’s easy, once you’ve figured it out, but it’s not entirely intuitive. Hopefully, the next series of picture will help walk you through the steps in swapping it out. Click on any of the thumbnails to enlarge.

Spring Detail

First, I’m going to show you the detail of the spring. Take a close look at end of the spring that is not tied to the fishing wire [Spring Detail]. There is an open end. This is how you will slip it off (and back on later) of the eye on the miniSpinner. My needle threader is pointing at the open end. (Please ignore the ugly cuticles. I really need a manicure.)

Loosen the tension on the brake completely. (Turn the knob on the right of the miniSpinner toward you and gently keep tension on the brake band. You will be pulling more of the white string out of the base of the miniSpinner. You won’t be able to pull it completely off, which is good because you don’t want to. Just loosen it so you have more room to work with.

Lark's Head Knot

Now, take a close look at how the brake band is attached to the white string. I’m sorry, but this is a very fuzzy picture. The brake band is attached to the string with a Lark’s Head knot. You will need to open the Lark’s Head to remove the old brake band.

1. Pull to open

To open the knot, pull on the end of the knot (the end loop) [1]. And slide the eye down the length of the white string until the loop is large enough to pull the rest of the brake band through [2].

2. Pull through

Here’s what it looks like once you’ve pulled the spring though. The white string is threaded through one of the eyes of the fishing lure doodad [3]. (Since I don’t fish nor make lures, I don’t know the name of that fishing part. Now, slip the old brake completely off the white string.

3. Unknotted

Congratulations!

You’ve just removed the old brake. Installing the new brake with the lighter spring, you work in reverse.

4. Thread

Now, you need to thread the white string through that little eye. I’ve found my needle threading to be really handy here. Poke the threader through the eye, insert the white string and pull the string through the eye.

Photo 5. Pull through

Slide the eye down the white string until the loop is long enough to pull the spring end of the brake through. Now, snug it up until it looks like the Lark’s Head Knot photo above.

Now, attach the spring to the eye at the base of the miniSpinner.

Voila! Easy, no? Yeah, I say that now. I spent 15 minutes staring at the loosened Lark’s Head Knot and couldn’t figure out how the heck to remove the brake. Kevin had explained it to me at Madrona. It was so clear then, but once I got home, I couldn’t for the life of me figure it out.

My friend Gail gave me a hint — “pull through” — that rang a bell and I was able to change it out in 30 seconds. Sometimes, you just need a mental picture.

I hope this little pictorial helps.

So I went home to pack up the supplies necessary to keep me occupied at the Super Bowl Party at the club.

I may have over packed.

Projects packed:

• Metro: I was half way down sleeve 1
• Current sock in progress: toe up, just missing the cuff of one sock to complete the pair
• A couple of Kuchulus and some fiber, just in case I got bored with knitting

What I actually worked on:

• a couple of rounds on the sleeve before I deemed it too hot to have a full sweater in my lap
• a few yards of spinning

I am almost finished with the Metro now. The sleeves are complete. The collar is knit and grafted together. I just need to attach it to the neckline and weave in the ends.

I’m quite happy with the yarn that I spun. I spun up all the singles first. I labeled all the bobbins in numerical order, divided them into thirds. I then plied 1 bobbin from each third in order. This resulted in a nearly homogenized yarn in terms of both yarn size and color.

Can you tell what the difference is between the 2 pairs of socks above? Hint. It’s not the fact that one pair is handspun and the other is commercial sock yarn. The difference is 4 YEARS vs. 4 DAYS. Yes. The pair on the right took me over 4 years to finish. The one of the left was started on Friday night and was finished last night.

Let’s back up. The pair on the right is knit from Trekking XXL. I love this yarn. This is the 3rd pair or so I’ve knitted with Trekking. But this pair was always in my travel kit, along with 20-thousand other projects. And based on the picture in this post, it would appear that I’ve frogged it at least once, since they are anklets no more. I don’t know why or when I made this change, but it no longer looks like it used to.

But it’s more than just the fact that it was in my travel kit that it languished. I lost interest in it. The yarn looks like handspun. The yarn is 4 ply with each of the plies slowly changing in color at different cycles, hence a handspun from handpaint look. But the similarities end there. Whereas my handspun sock yarns are super squishy, bouncy and soft, this yarn feels like steel wool in comparison.

I used to love Trekking, but now I’m spoiled by my own handspun sock yarn. Like the one on the left. These were knit from some handpainted merino top I purchased from Bee Mice Elf (colorway Veranda). It was a leftover from Deb Menz‘ workshop. For some reason, I really really wanted some sock yarn with pure colors, so I chain plied these. The yarn is super bouncy and a joy to knit with.

I also have to admit that I was a captive audience to this pair of socks, since I was in a shuttle bus for most of the weekend. (Wine tasting weekend with my SCUBA diving group.) After finishing this pair, I pulled out the Trekking socks and finished that last couple of inches this afternoon.

Trekking Socks (right)

• 2.0 mm needles
• 72 sts around
• 2×2 rib top and cuff
• Elapsed time to completion – 4 years

Veranda Socks (left)

• 2.25 mm needles
• 56 sts around
• 2×2 rib cuff
• Elapsed time to completion – 4 days

I still have enough yardage in the handspun to make a pair of anklets *. Let’s hope that it won’t take 4 years to finish the anklets.

* One of the joys of having small feet…I can squeeze 1 pair of socks + 1 pair of anklets out of 3.6 oz of fiber.

Foreground: 2-ply tussah silk. Background: 1 ply tussah silk, 1 ply baby camel down.

Done. I plied the leftover silk singles from the baby camel project on the miniSpinner. There is approximately 460 yards of lace weight 2-ply silk. I will put this aside with all the other handspun silk yarn. Eventually, I will use them to weave some silk ribbons.

Just for fun, here are the silk singles on paper quills, waiting to be plied. They are resting on a Jenny Plyer. I haven’t quite got the hang of plying from the Jenny Plyer when the singles are threaded through the pigtails without making a huge tangled mess, so I bypassed them completely.

I’ve been turning my office waste paper into paper quills. Why? Because I wanted to use my Swedish-Styled boat shuttle a month ago and found that I didn’t have any quills. I made some larger ones to test out my method and found that they were perfect for winding my stash of singles. Each quill holds one spindle full of singles perfectly!

Quill Specs:

For general spindle spinning/plying use, I cut a 8.5″ x 11″ paper in half width-wise into 2 8.5″ x 5.5″ sheets. For my Swedish Styled boat shuttle, I cut them into 3.5″ widths. Check your shuttle size, if you plan to use it for weaving.

I rolled it around a 1/4″ dowel and glued the edge. I’ve since shifted to a 3/8″ dowel since the shuttle rod is 1/8″ diameter. (The dowels for all of my assorted kates are 3/8″.) When you are talking fine yarns, 1/8″ diameter difference can turn into quite a bit of yarn. And since I changed to a smaller dowel, I also changed the paper blank size to 3.5″ x 5.5″. Why? I found that you lose some of the extra diameter gained to the additional layers of the paper as it is wrapped around the dowel. (Yes, I do have AR tendencies.) I can now get 4 quills out of each sheet of paper.

Helix Scarf

The Helix Scarf is finally done. I took this along with me to Hawaii dive trip as my mindless knitting. Who knew that I’d be too exhausted on the trip to knit? So this became my on-the-go and mindless television knitting. Even so, it took me 2 months to finish this scarf.

I finally got into the rhythm last week and was able to zip along to finish this scarf. In this green, it actually looks a bit like sea kelp, doesn’t it? I think a bronze colored one to wear with it will make a nice kelp bed effect. Of course, I’ll look like I’ve been strangled by the sea kelp.

I knitted the scarf as a much denser fabric than the scarves on Interweave’s website. I wanted it to be drapey, not limp. The silk content gives it the crispness it needed and the yarn has quite a bit of bounce. I’m very happy with this scarf. And, yes, I would like to make another one.

Cabbage Rose

Here it is, all rolled up. Doesn’t it look like a cabbage rose? In fact, I’m thinking about dyeing some yarn (or fiber) that slowly gradates in a single hue to white. When rolled up, it really will look like a cabbage rose that slowly fades to white. Wouldn’t that be pretty? Yes. I am easily amused.

Details:

• Handspun from Abby’s Batt Club October 2007: First Frost (33% extra fine merino/33% baby alpaca/33% silk/1% firestar)
• According to the McMorran Balance, I used about 325 yards.
• Finished length along the spine, relaxed: 34″
• 2.25 mm needles.

I still have a little over half of the skein of yarn left (about 350 yards). I’ll be digging around for another little scarflet/shawlette pattern.

I love notebooks. I love all the possibilities that a new blank notebook represents. When it comes down to actually writing in a new unblemished notebook, well…I get performance anxiety. What if what I put down doesn’t meet the expectations I have of all those possibilities? What if my ink splotched on the first page? And a misspelling or grammatical error on the very first page casts a pall over the rest of the pages? It’s better to leave them blank and dream of the beautiful notebooks that they will become…someday.

I started to use the little Moleskine Plain Cahier Journals for my project and class room
notebooks (4th one from the top in the photo). I take a new one of these each time I head for a retreat (SOAR, Madrona, CNCH, etc.). Notes from all my classes go into these, along with random thoughts or phone numbers that I pick up along the way. At $8 for 3 notebooks, they aren’t too expensive. They are plain. Very plain. You can decorate it as you wish. Or glue the name tag from the retreat on the front as a momento. Whatever. There is no anxiety involved in scribbling in these.

I started to use these for projects too, but I find that there are too many pages for a single project. I can collect multiple projects in a single notebook, but I often can’t find the most recent working notebook so I start a new one. The cost for the project notebooks can quickly start adding up.

There was a discussion at Janine Bajus’ Feral Knitter about Project Journals that got me thinking. I like the idea of using blue books. There are only a few pages so that it’s extremely conducive to tracking a single project. My only problem is, aside from being to lazy to head down to the University Bookstore, that I really like grids, not lines. I like grids because I can use the grids for designing color work or weave structures and scribble and color away. I looked at how blue books are made. Have you? It’s just legal sized paper, folded in half and stapled in 2 places. I’ve got some legal sized paper in the house. So, I present to you my version of mini project journals.

My inaugural use for one of these was for the yoked sweater sloper, based on notes from Janine Bajus‘ Fair Isle Yoke Sweater Design class at Madrona last year. It seemed fitting, doesn’t it? I’ve created a little tutorial on how to make these mini-journals, including a template for the grids. (You can also get to the tutorial from the Tutorials tab above.)

Baby Camel plied with Silk

I can’t think of a better way to close out the year with a completed skein that’s been on the spindles for 3 years. Can you? Whew. I’m glad this is finally done. It’s not the best spinning nor plying job I’ve ever done, but I can cross the camel off the list.

Stats:

• Fiber: Baby Camel Down Top and Tussah Silk from Earthues, colorway “Cypress Grove”
• Yardage: 576 yards
• Weight: 2.25 oz (70 g)
• WPI: varies GREATLY. Currently, it’s anywhere from 24-28wpi. I haven’t wet finished this yet. I expect it to bloom significantly.

I still have a bit of the silk to spin, but that should be finished up quickly. It will be plied with itself for a 2 ply and likely worked into a silk band.

Have a fabulous New Year!

Huckaback Towels

I made huckaback towels for Christmas. I started with the towels on the left. They were based on the Keep It Simple towels from Top Ten Towels On Four Shafts, I made some slight modifications. I decided to make sibling towels for when I wanted to give a set instead of a singleton.

Huckaback Border

While weaving Keep It Simple, I kept thinking that it would be pretty as a horizontal border. I redrafted it and  created a 8 thread selvedge in plain weave, so this turned into a 6 shaft pattern instead of four.

For the huckaback border, I started with 2.5 repeats, but switched 3.5 repeats because I think it looks a bit better.

The strangest thing happened in the wash with the huckaback border with plain weave. The plain weave section had these really weird crazed lines all over them. (click for bigger)

I’m not sure what caused them. Perhaps they creased up in the washer in the initial wash and I didn’t take it out fast enough. I was out running errands while it was in the wash. I doubt that it will shift anymore since the spinning oils have been washed out and the yarn has bloomed.

I wonder if this wouldn’t have happened if the sett was a little bit closer (24 instead of 20 epi). I have woven several sets of 8/2 cotton towels at 20 epi and not have had this problem, but then, they’ve always been a twill variant.

Oh well, these towels definitely have a “homey” feel.  I hope the recipients enjoy using them.

I kept one towel back for myself. Again, while weaving the 2nd set of towels, I wondered what it would look like if I did the border in color and wove the rest in the same color as the warp. I really like the contrast. I would definitely do more of these. The only problem with this one towel was that it was the end of my warp. I had to really work at getting the shuttle through the shed. In the end, I had to finally call uncle at an inch or so short of what I needed to keep it symmetrical. But really, I doubt that my dishes will notice the difference.

At the Sun's Edge. Credit & Copyright: Catalin Beldea (Descopera Magazine). From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Click through for more information.

Happy Winter Solstice! And we get to celebrate it with a total lunar eclipse. It will last a whopping 72 minutes! It starts at Monday night, December 20th, 10:33 PM PST (or 1:33 AM EST on Tuesday morning, December 21st).

How rare is that? The last total lunar eclipse was February 21, 2008. We have one in 2010 and two in 2011 (June 15th and December 10th). But the last time a total lunar eclipse that occurred on Winter Solstice? 1638 (*). And the next one will be 2094. So this definitely falls in the “once in a lifetime” category, if you are lucky enough to witness it.

For more information about the lunar eclipse, check out the article at Science.com.

(*) There is some confusion out there as to whether the last winter solstice total lunar eclipse occurred in 1378 or 1638. See the update at the bottom of the page for more information. There is also a Facebook page with discussions on the confusion. The confusion seems to stem from conversion from Julian to Gregorian calendar.

The plan was to spin a 2 ply yarn, one ply will be a hand painted silk seen here (hmm, this post says 3 years ago), the other will be some baby camel down that I picked up somewhere along the way. Still is. That hasn’t changed.

Baby Camel Down

I love spinning silk, so that wasn’t the problem. The problem is that I didn’t enjoy spinning the the baby camel down. I had planned to spin the entire project on the top whorl spindle (bottom right), but spinning the camel just wasn’t fun. Not impossible, just not enjoyable. I spun one spindle-full on it (paper quill next to the spindle) and stopped.

Fast forward 2 years. Last week, I decided to have another go at it. After all, I have Stephenie Gaustad‘s cotton spinning class behind me. The baby camel staple length is about the same as the cotton, so, why not? Nope. The top whorl drop spindle was still a pain in the tush. I switched to a supported spindle that I made* this summer from a stone bead I found in Anacortes.

Unfortunately, I was having problems drafting the baby camel down top. I tried it straight from the top, fluffed up, but it was still a struggle. It was better when I used my Strauch cotton/fur hand cards to create little rolags, but still not great. I needed more twist and I was too impatient to twirl, twirl, and more twirl.

This weekend, I finally caved in. I pulled my Bosworth Book Charkha out. The experience is much more enjoyable. The singles are more consistent and finer, both with the top and with the rolags. As soon as I finish spinning the rolags I already prepared, I will spin the rest of the fluff directly from the top.

As you can tell, I gave up on the idea of a completely spindle spun project. But no matter, I just want this done! The silk will still be spun on the top whorl spindle. I am more than 50% finished with those. When I get too frustrated with the camel, I switch over to the silk to work the stress out. <grin>

Needless to say, camel will be in my “been there, done that; don’t want to go back” category.

* Stone bead, rubber grommet, chopstick. I found these neat chopsticks at Daiso. It is tapered to nearly the top, and then it reverses the taper to another point. This makes it very adjustable to nearly any size bead. The points on both ends allowed me to make a very simple support spindle without any additional work.

A few photos in my Picasa album.

Shelia, Stetson, and I were sitting at the lunch table when Linda announced the Batts to Hats contest. First statement out of our collective mouths were, we aren’t really contest entry type people. But we talked about how it could be done. Next thing We knew, we were checking out collection of tools for the largest knitting and crochet needles. I had seen the perfect pencil rovings in the market that we could just shove it up the orifice with the miniSpinner set at the lowest twist setting and fasted whorl.

And the rest is history. Amy wrote a nice summary of the Batts to Hats contest. She neglected to note that we won the “Technical Excellence” award. That’s a shocking thought since the hat started to unravel the first time Stetson put the hat on.

So, when’s registration? Online registration opens sometime during the day of November 1st. Yup. One week from today. Get your selections ready!

This year, SOAR is in Delavan, WI. I’m flying out to Chicago to meet up with Kathleen, and then we’ll drive from Chicago to Delavan. I will not bring a laptop this time, since I don’t have to do anything silly, like set up the CNCH registration site.

But Gudrun posed another double weave scenario and challenged me to create a draft for it for next month’s meeting. So what’s the puzzle? It is double cloth but the weft intersects at the center. So while weaving, you will have 2 open layers of cloth on each side, but the center is enclosed. And it’s woven with a single shuttle — a continuous weft weaves through all the layers.  If you were to take a cross section of the woven piece, it will look like an “X”.

Left: Top View; Right: Bottom View

And here’s what the cross section looks like.

Not great pictures, I know, but I only wound a 1 yard warp to test out my draft. These are really really tiny samples. And yes, I screwed up with sett. I didn’t double my thread count for the double cloth, so this is a weft faced weave and obscured the warp colors. But the point is made.

In case you are curious, here’s the draft. It requires 8 shafts and 4 treadles. Sorry, no WIF file since I only have the demo version of PixeLoom. And second apology for not using the same color order as I did in my sample.

So, how does this work?

Treadle 1: You are weaving the first part of the tabby for the bottom right layer (blue) and the top left layer (green)

Treadle 2: You are now returning on the second part of the tabby of the top left layer (green) and starting the first part of the tabby for the top right layer (red)

Treadle 3: 2nd part of the top right layer (red) and 1st part of the bottom left layer (yellow)

Treadle 4: 2nd part of the bottom left layer (yellow) and 2nd part of the bottom right layer (blue) that you started on Treadle 1.

Still confused? Perhaps this diagram of the shuttle path might help.

Shuttle Path

Of course, after I finished testing out my sample, I found a Double Weave Workshop (pdf) by Winifred Tonkin over at Glenna Harris Guild website. See exercise J. She provides instructions on how to weave this on 4 shafts. it’s a bit fiddly since you weave all 4 sections separately (top right, bottom right, top left, bottom left).

Note: Pardon me if I don’t have all the terminology correct. Please let me know how do describe this more correctly. I really do want to know.

I came across my first Turkish spindle at Sherpherd’s Extravaganza. Kurt Ocker made these spindles for his sister, Kat Dobroth.  Kurt was so passionate about his woodworking and the spindles were gorgeous. I started to collect these little babies.At each Shepherd’s Extravaganza or Black Sheep Gathering, he would seek me out and show me the latest woods he used. His enthusiasm was contagious. Next thing I know, I have a small stable of these lovelies. Unfortunately, they no longer make the rounds of the shows and their spindles are no longer available.

But then, I found Jenkin’s Turkish Spindles. They look very similar. There is just a wee bit difference in the way the notch is cut on the tops of the spindles. Otherwise, they are identical, and they both love their exotic woods. Now, my stable is a mishmash from both woodworkers.

L-R: Standard, Delight, Lark, and Kuchulu (as named by Jenkins)

Here is a picture of a representative sample of the different sizes I own. The standard sized one on the left is actually one of the first Turkish spindles I purchased, and it’s crafted by Kurt. Believe it or not, the Delight is actually much lighter than the Lark, due to the wood.

Here’s a close up of the Standard and the Lark. Would you believe that they are both Pink Ivory? The Standard, while it has not been in the sun, has aged somewhat on the mantel over the course of the past 6-8 years or so. The Lark was purchased this past August so the wood hasn’t darkened yet.

I just have to say, these are a blast to spin and are the perfect traveling companion. Why? I can just stuff these in the bag with a bit of wool and not have to worry about damaging the hook on a top whorl spindle.

Want to see one in action?

Iris spinning on the Lark while we were waiting for our meal in La Push, WA.

Edited to Add: There’s a little write up on Kat and Kurt here. It’s in the last segment.

I wove a couple more skip dent scarves last week. They are the same structure as this one. I used Henry’s Attic Alpaca Lace this time (sett at 20 epi). Yum! The first one is a 10″x76″. This was my sampler to make sure that I had the sett and beat correct. The second one was 19″x76″. This was woven as a present for a friend’s daughter who turned 19 last weekend.

Look at the difference a bath makes to the fabric. Top: hot bath in the sink followed by a light tumble in the dryer, followed by a pressing. Bottom: straight off the loom. The yarn around the space moved in and the bloom of the alpaca helped make this a much more stable fabric. The yarn also had quite a bit of spinning oil in it, which came off in the wash. The resulting fabric is light and airy, just as I wanted it to be. The larger size is perfect for the Seattle chill, where Lisa goes to school.

Sorry for the out of focus shot, but I just love how the pattern appears to undulate due to the spacing.

Aren’t they pretty? You can see my contributions here.

It’s another Artisan’s Vest from the Green Mountain Spinnery book. This time, I knitted it with Tai-Chi from Artfibers, color #3. It doesn’t seem like they carry this yarn anymore. My sister, Grace, gave it to me years ago, and I finally decided to do something with it.

Tai-Chi is 50% silk, 35% bamboo, and 15% cashmere. It’s a knitted tube type of yarn and has fabulous drape and hand. The photo just does not do the color justice because it has soft variations of greens, bronze, and gold highlights in it. I found some silver celtic knot buttons for it, and it’s perfect.

I used a little less than half, so I need to figure out what to make with the rest of the yarn. A good dilemma.

Polwarth Lace, after wet finishing

I lost about 60 yards in the finishing process, or about 0.2%. Completely reasonable. And the yarn has poofed up immensely.

In cake form, you can see the gradation better. It’s definitely not in the even steps as I had hoped, but this was what was available from Rovings. Ideally, I would like more contrast between the 2 medium tones and another step between the 2 medium tones and the darkest.

No matter. I’m still in love with this yarn. It will be fun to design something for this yarn!

That’s 9.5 oz of Polwarth on the bobbin. As you can see, that darned bobbin is still not full! I can probably pack yet another couple of ounce or so on this bobbin. Someone posted on Ravelry that they were able to pack 15 oz of fiber on there, but wow! I don’t know if I can top that.

Wait! This is white! The last time you saw the Polwarth singles, they were dark brown. This is the “other” end of the yarn. As I said, I was aiming for a gradated yarn from the lightest to the darkest, with some marling in between each color changes to soften the transition. I succeeded, but a mistake I made early on helped the matter a bit.

What was the mistake? I had originally planned to spin & ply each color separately. After I started spinning a bit (just a few minutes, really), I thought about spinning it all as a long single, one color after another, and let the color changes happen in the plying. So, I set about to split the colors evenly in half. But I was way off on the white, because some of it was already on the bobbin. I thought I accommodated for what was already on the bobbin. Perhaps I over estimated, or under. I don’t know which, but one bobbin definitely had more white than the other. It was evident while I was plying. One bobbin changed colors in a fairly consistent length earlier than the other.

Specs:

• Fiber: 80/20 Polwarth/Silk from Rovings, purchased at SOAR 2008, in 4 natural colors from white to dark brown
• Weight: 9.5 oz
• Yardage: 3,070
• Plies: 2
• WPI: 42
• YPP: 10,341

As you can see, I was a bit off in my earlier estimate of 1,500 yards of singles on the first bobbin!

I had intended this to be my submission to Team Footloose‘s longest single from 1 oz of fiber, but I didn’t finish in time. But how did I do? 6,140 yards of singles in 9.5 oz means 646 yds/oz. This wouldn’t have won the category since the longest single from 1 oz went to a wetspun tow linen, 692 yds for 7/8 oz. (That’s 790 yds/oz.)

Now, I sit down with my lace references and design a shawl!

Finally! It took me about 4 days to spin the first bobbin (approx. 140 g) of lace. The second bobbin? Over 10 days. That’s the difference TdF made in my spinning time. Now, the plying can begin.

A few towels for towel exchanges and gifts...

And a few to keep...

This all started when I bought my cottage a few years ago. I wanted a mishmash of handwoven guest towels in the bathrooms, just like Suzanne. I love all the different towels she had accumulated over the years from various guild sales that she used as guest towels. There’s a fresh pile every morning in the bathroom during the classes taught at her house.

I’m impatient. I want that pile now *. The only way I could see that happening is if I start a towel exchange. Get the maximum variety out of each towel warp by exchanging one or two towels from each warp.  Either that, or spend a lot of money at the Whidbey Weaver’s Guild annual sale, which I also did.

So, I proposed a little exchange with a Laura and Donna in my guild. That was 2 years ago. I bought a kit from Halcyon, and then it sat. That is, until this summer. I put it on the loom in June and wove it off. It was another month before I pulled the sewing machine out and finished them.

The kit came with yarn and a draft pattern — Four Thread Herringbone from Davison’s book. I had a lot of fun playing with the different treadling. Each towel uses a different treadling. I may have repeated one or two of my favorites.

This was fun. Changing out the weft color and the treadling order, I was able to get very different towels off of the same warp. I might get that mishmash sooner rather than later!

Sampler Towel

But for this one, I mixed it up. I inserted all the different treadlings into the towel and used all the different colors in the weft. This also helped me finish up all the partial bobbins of yarn. This will be a fun reminder of the project.

Specs:

• Halycon Tea Towel Kit in Driftwood colorway
• Yarn: Cottolin, 1 spool each of white, natural, blue and brown
• Weave Structure: Four Thread Herringbone; p.25 of Davison’s book
• Shafts: 4
• Reed: 10 dent
• EPI: 20
• Warp Length: 8.5 yards
• Ends: 384 (ends and color order provided in kit instructions)
• On Loom: 18.9″ W x 34-35″ L for each towel; 7 towels plus a partial (square towel in picture)
• After Finishing: 17″ W x 27.5″ L (includes 1/2″ rolled hem, so 29.5″ long before hemming)

* Yes, you can stop snickering. It took me two years to make these, so “now” is relative.

P.S. This is likely the last time that the towels for keeping will see an iron…

Tour de Fleece 2010 Results

Here are the all the fibers that I spun during Tour de Fleece. Not too shabby. The final tally?

Breeds Spun: Merino, Targhee, Clun, Border Leicester, and Polwarth
Finished Yardage: 3,852 of assorted 2 and 3 ply.
Singles Spun: Over 5,000 yards of singles, without counting the Polwarth. There is likely to be another 1,500 yards of singles in there.
Weight: 40 oz. (2.5 lbs)

The Polwarth is the one still on the bobbin in the basket. Here’s what the other half looks like.

80/20 Polwarth/Silk

I am spinning it continuously from white to the dark brown.  I am feathering in the last few inches of one color with the new to soften the transition. And with the inconsistency of the splitting the fiber into halves and spinning, that will soften the transition even more. The colors should more or less flow into each other. The singles are approximately 60-70 wpi. It’s slow going. I only just finished the white. It will take me the rest of the week to finish spinning the singles and ply it.

]]> http://www.fibermusings.net/archives/2184/feed 0 http://www.fibermusings.net/archives/2181 http://www.fibermusings.net/archives/2181#comments Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:29:50 +0000 Ann http://www.fibermusings.net/?p=2181 Not a whole lot of progress over here. I’m still working on the Polwarth/Silk blend. I went camping for the past 3 days and forgot to load the mSpinner in the car, so I am far, far behind. I’ve only started the second bobbin this morning. The first bobbin had about 155 grams of fiber — about 5.5 oz. The single is coming in around 72 wpi.

This yarn would definitely qualify for the longest single in a single ounce, but I can’t prove that until the second bobbin is spun and the 2 plied together. I definitely can’t do that before end of today.

So, I will have a leisurely spinning day to wrap up the day.

To give myself a break from that rough scratchy rug yarn, I moved on to some 80/20 Polwarth/Silk from Rovings in natural colors. I had purchased 4 – 2 oz bits of combed top from Rovings 2 SOARs ago with the intention of spinning it from white to chocolate brown, with 2 other light browns in between. The resulting yarn will be knitted into a shawl of some sort with gradated colors. These 8 oz. in lace weight should take me through most of the rest of the Tour.

I may take a break from the Polwarth/Silk for some naturally dyed BFL from Tactile that’s been sitting around a while. It looks like my tally for breeds spun will be around 6. I might dig into my bins and card up a bit of CVM and/or California Red. There are a few batts of Romney in the stash too.

You see, Kathleen knows that I’m a wimp when it comes to wool. It’s next-to-skin softness or nothing at all. And my standard for next-to-skin softness is pretty high. In fact, Kathleen thinks that I’m a wuss. So, when she saw me with a package of long wool, she snickered.

But what she doesn’t know is that I’ve been mentally planning a punch rug, made with handspun wool. I have some Lincoln X Corriedale rovings in a variety of natural colors all ready to go. The Border Leceister will be a nice addition to the mix.

I have the basic shape and dimensions — an irregular pentagon (2 sets of 2 equal sides and angles, with one set of right angles) to fit in front of the double french doors up at the cottage, but I don’t have a design as of yet. I want it to be of some sort of Native American/Puget Sound theme. There will be some subtle marking to note the 4 compass points. But that’s as far as I’ve got in terms of design.

Yardage: 1,342, before wet finishing
Weight: 15 oz.
Plies: 3
WPI: 16-20, before wet finishing; about 12-14 wpi after wet finishing

The yarn poofed up nicely after a nice soak. It’s about a DK weight yarn. I’m waiting for it to dry before re-skeining to find out exactly how much yarn I have. I think there is enough yardage for  a nice lofty sweater, although a side trip to a dye bath might be in order.

I finally finished spinning the Targhee/Clun Forest singles. It took 6 days to spin a pound, but it’s finally done. I spun a bit on the Rest Day as well. I can now finally move on to the plying.

I started with the Judith Kate by Will Taylor, but the weight of the bobbins (these jumbo tigerwood bobbins are heavy!) and the angle, it was just too much grab for my softly spun singles. I kept breaking one of the singles. (Okay, it actually was drifting apart.) So I moved them off onto the kate that came with the Schacht. All 3 large bobbins will only fit if they are offset in the kate. It wouldn’t work well if these bobbins were completely full though, because there’s a bit of an overlap.

Hopefully, a couple of days of plying and I can move on to the next fiber!

Tigerwood on the Front Nine.

Yesterday was our club’s annual Golf Scramble (aka Tin Cup). I have to admit up front that, while I own my own set of clubs and golf shoes, I don’t play. Or rather, I do, but really, really badly. Scramble is my kind of golf, since the rest of the foursome isn’t waiting forever for me to actually get on the green. Last time I played was at the Tin Cup 2 years ago. And the time before that was probably back in the early 90s. So, I was really happy when I won the Women’s “Closest to the Pin” shot on the last hole!

Back to the Tour de Fleece…Since I was going to be on the golf course, I thought it was appropriate for the new Tigerwood miniSpinner to be out on the course.  I brought the spinner along with the portable battery, and did a little bit of spinning while we were waiting to T up.  Too bad the golf carts don’t have cigarette lighter adapters. That would have been even better!