Life – Page 18 – Fiber Musings

Recovery

On 5 Aug, 2007

After weeks of waiting, the surgery is finally behind me. No more second guessing if this is the right thing to do. The post op report says that it’s way past time. They call it a bikini line incision, but I have to tell you, it’s just where that tummy fat pack lies, and it’s not pretty. Besides, I haven’t worn a bikini since I was a teenager, and I doubt that I’ll start now, even if I’m in Rio. It’s amazing how much you use your abdominal muscles for, even if they are out of shape. Getting in and out of bed is a big show. Getting in and out of my leather chairs are also a big deal because I can’t use my lats.

All in all, not much knitting nor spinning going on. Vicodin takes care of most of the complicated patterns (no Mystery Stole knitting), and concentration is crap.

I’ve been working on the Pinwheel Blanket as a baby blanket for a friend. Should be easy, right? Increase every other row, knit around the next. Every section should have the same stitch count. Continue until you’ve achieved the appropriate diameter or until you are sick of it. Well, somehow, I ended up with 3 different stitch counts in the segments on a single round. Yup. 44, 45, and 46. How the heck? 2 different stitch counts, I can understand, but 3???? Anyway, instead of ripping back, I did a clean up round, and now everything is all lined up at 45 stitches per section. The blanket is at about 30″ in diameter. I’ll continue a bit longer and bind off using a knit in lace border. Hopefully, the clean up row won’t be too noticeable.

Imagine, being able to plan vacations without thought about the monthly cycle. Still trying to get my head around that.

Life & Spinning

By Ann

On 21 Jun, 2007

In Knit, Life, Spin

I’ve been exhausted for the past several months. I thought it was burn out from work coupled with lots of traveling and lack of sleep. It turned out that I’ve been severely anemic for the past several months. It’s amazing what a few units of blood will do for your body.

Needless to say, I haven’t felt much like all the activities of blogging: taking pictures, cropping, formatting them for the web, and posting. I’m still taking things easy for the time being.

Hopefully, that will all turn around soon. In the meantime, I’m playing it safe and cancelled my excursion up to Eugene for the Black Sheep Gathering. I’ve given up my class slots and cancelled my flight. What am I going to miss the most? Hanging out with my friends.

I’ve been spinning quite a bit though. I finished the fractals spinning, but I haven’t finished the yarn. (There are 2 spendid articles on both of these techniques in the current issue of SpinOff!)

I also finished a Swallowtail Shawl (Fall 2005 Interweave Knits) in a hand-painted baby alpaca/silk yarn from The Artful Ewe. That was a joy to knit. The fiber and colors were a joy to work with. The pattern was simple for kept my interest. I can understand why everyone in blogland seem to not able to stop at one. I have to admit that immediately upon completion, I wanted to look for more stash yarn for another. It’s a fast knit. I finished mine in under a week of sporadic knitting.

Finishing the spun yarn and blocking the shawl both takes energy that I haven’t had. Hopefully, I’ll get to them some time in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’m busily spinning up some Crown Mountain Farms superwash wool for a baby blanket. The baby is due in September.

Looms

By Ann

On 18 May, 2007

In Life, Weave

I was chatting with a couple of girl friends over email about what size looms to buy. Since they both said that my rationale was helpful, I thought I’d post an excerpt here:

As for the 22″ vs. 25″ weaving width. I took a long hard look at the projects that I thought I was going to do. In the near future, I saw myself making mostly “simple” plain weave items, such as scarf/stoles. And because of my size, my ideal stole depth is around 20-22″.

I may want to have the occasional foray into lap blankets, place mats, table runners, or maybe even a small rug. But for lap blankets, 25″ width isn’t all that much anyway. You still have to seam. Or use a double weave to double the width of your loom. So, I didn’t see much of a difference between a 22″ and 25″.

I didn’t think I was going to go as far as making cloth for clothing (yet). I also remembered the kimono class that we took a couple of years ago. She said that the kimono were made in panels because the looms were 11-16″ wide (can’t remember, but it was small). And they were boxy because they maximized what they had without cutting. That created a whole new perspective for me. I started to think about all those sewing patterns. Each individual piece of the pattern is rarely wider 22″ — think about it, the bolt is usually 44″ wide, and you usually fold it in half to cut 2 of everything. Occasionally, you need to put something on the folded edge and create a wider piece. Most of the time, a seam at that location would not make a huge difference to the finished garment. Or, for those pieces, you can use the double weave technique again.

Again, I couldn’t see much of a difference between a 22″ and 25″ width loom.

So, there you have all of my justifications. The real ones are of course: (a) if I get a larger loom, I have to consider myself a “real weaver”, and (b) I don’t have the space for a larger loom, or any other loom, for that matter.

Huge news on this end. Today is my last day of employment. Yup. I quit. I’m going to take the rest of the year off, sail, play with fibers, travel, contemplate my navel. I’ll also spend some time to figure out what’s next for me. I still need to work, but I’m not sure that I want to continue to work in high tech.

Random thoughts of a fiber enthusiast - mostly fiber related, sometimes coherent

Category: Life Page 18 of 30

Recovery

Life & Spinning

Looms