Saturday, January 24, 2015

Where’s Noah When You Need Him?

We need to build an ark. It’s been raining hard for several days and although our city sewer system is built to take a lot of water, there are some quite amazing puddles out there. Big enough for ducks! Good weather to stay inside methinks.

So what have I been up to? Not a lot actually. The usual walking, knitting, a wee bit of spinning and a whole lot of reading. I’m making some headway on my Little Black Cardi and the Emerald Socks for Thom are cruising down the feet. I only have 2 bobbins spun for the Sweater Project so far though and only enough fleece for maybe 2 or 3 more bobbins-worth. I see more teasing and carding in my future. I’m going to need maybe 7 skeins though it depends on the yardage I’m getting. I haven’t calculated that yet.

I haven’t done any sewing or weaving yet. However The Hand is finally starting to improve. It still looks somewhat lumpy and scarred but the extra-sensitivity is reduced quite a lot. I actually ironed a shirt and some table linens! Whoot! It’s been nearly 3 months since The Incident With The Bed Frame. Man, it feels like forever.

I know this is a short post but really there isn’t much exciting to discuss! I’ll leave you with an action photo of the Littlest Grandbeastie, age 4, who decided that granny’s rocks (the ones I use for pattern weights) were too plain and needed some decoration:

ColouringRocks

I think the electric tea lights are for creating an artistic ambiance? Anyway, I wasn’t sure I wanted my rocks coloured at first but they’re growing on me. Hopefully the pencil crayon doesn’t come off on anything! At least she hasn’t done the whole basket full. Yet. Obviously, encouraging creativity is an important priority.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Finally Finished

We’re in the middle of January and I don’t have much to show for it, except this:

Silken Haruni

Pardon the “mood lighting”! As I said, it’s January. Anyhow, this is my Silken Haruni Shawlette. Haruni (“grandmother” in Elvish) is a free pattern by Emily Ross and Ravelry’s knitters have recorded nearly 9,500 of them! As always, I’m a day late and a dollar short but I finally got this one off the needles. I started it lo, those many months ago in September while we were away on our desert holiday. The yarn is silk (yes, I did a burn test to prove it!) from my deep weaving stash and the muted colours totally remind me of the Southwest rocks, sand and sage. The only mods I made were to go down to a 2.75mm needle for the very fine silk and knit the first chart to 14 leaf stems instead of the recommended 12. I also used a crochet hook and doubled yarn for the bind-off which took me about 2 hours to accomplish. The shawlette blocked out nicely (I mostly used pins and only used wires on part of the top edge) and is quite a reasonable size to wear as a spring or cool little summer shawlette or scarf, which is the way I usually wear these things. Check out the pretty 4-leaf tip:

Silken Haruni det

I’m particularly fond of leaf patterns! One thing I have to say about the pattern is that it is much too detailed, at least for a knitter of my experience. It even includes written instructions for those who are chart-impaired which is unusual – though I can’t imagine preferring many pages of line-by-line instructions to a few symbols. (I’ve been known to chart a pattern myself if a chart doesn’t already exist!) I personally would prefer to have more detailed charts instead since I had to refer too often to the wordy bits to find out how to interpret these ones. YMMV as they say. Obviously enough knitters have managed to follow the 14 pages of instructions successfully!

I have 2 versions of this pattern and there are actually 6 revisions in total. The final one has you bind-off using knitting needles which I attempted at first but found really awkward and confusing. So I went back to version 1 and followed its advice to use a crochet hook. So much easier! The technique I used is more common for lace doilies and uses the hook to “knit” a group of stitches together and then to chain off a loop before the next group. Doubling the yarn makes these loops a little more substantial. You can see how nice this looks in the detail photo above. I wonder why the designer chose to eliminate the crochet hook version in her last revision? Are knitters somehow afraid of The Hook? It’s only another yarn tool. Gee.

So now that I have an FO, of course I get to start a new project. Yay! Last night I just began a Little Black Cardi using the Trellis pattern from Lili Comme Tout (aka Julie Partie). The yarn is those infamous 6 puff-balls of Elann F05 sock yarn that I dyed semi-solid black. So far it’s going well after casting on 283 stitches, which I did right first try! Whoot! I’m going with a straight size L since that fits my measurements except that I’ve refigured the sleeves which are 3” too long for me. Hopefully the shoulders won’t be too wide. There are quite a few nice fitting instructions in this pattern including at bit of waist shaping, a wider front at the bust area and short-rows at the back neck. Also it’s all one piece from bottom up and then the inset sleeves are picked up and knitted down. Very nice.

I’m beginning to avoid pieced instructions when I choose my patterns. Not that I don’t like seaming but why bother when I have had good experiences with one-piece construction? I haven’t been convinced by any of the arguments for knitting a sweater in pieces. I’ve done them every which way over the years so I think I’ve given each method fair due. The only reasons I would knit a completely pieced garment is if it was very large and I couldn’t manage the weight of the whole thing at once or if it had unusual construction such as pieces knit at different angles. Otherwise, either top-down or bottom-up works for me.

Interestingly, pieced construction harks back to garment sewing where you have a flat length of fabric off a loom and need to shape it to a decidedly not-flat body. (Ignore the fact of machine-knitted yardage for the moment. I’m trying to just focus on hand-knitting.) Unlike woven fabric a knitted sweater or other garment can be fitted to the body as you knit. Of course you can’t cut knitting without securing the edges or it will unravel hence the reason for knitting each piece to a specific shape. But furthermore, yarn can be manipulated in many different ways on the needles to conform it to tubes, curves and extremities. That’s such a big advantage over cutting and sewing that it seems silly to ignore the possibilities.

In my opinion, knitting in pieces was encouraged by pattern publications in the past because the editors didn’t understand what knitting could actually do differently than sewing. People pretty much followed instructions slavishly without really understanding it either. Elizabeth Zimmermann reported that her circular patterns got rewritten to flat in spite of her protestations. Her books were the first I ever read that showed me that there even was another way to knit a sweater! Another big thing was the invention of good functional circular needles. The ones I bought when I was young (and still have in my collection but never use!) sport stiff plastic wires that never lose their coil no matter what you do. Today you have any number of choices in wood, bamboo, brass, chrome, carbon fibre and even Lexan – all with flexible cords and smooth connections. No wonder one-piece knitting is becoming commonplace! Really, who uses those long straight needles anymore for any type of knitting anyway? Mine are all languishing in a box, the poor neglected creatures.

OK, off in a different direction. No new news about The Hand. I think I’ve hit a plateau in the healing process which is a little lot frustrating. Still too tender to hold a weaving shuttle or do much ironing (which kind of stymies sewing for now) or basically any time I have to grip something with my palm. (Who knew grinding pepper was difficult?) However, otherwise it’s mostly functional and I can knit and spin. With Thom’s help I’ve got quite a lot of the RomneyX wool carded and ready to spin up. Maybe not a whole man-sweater’s worth yet but a good start. We’ve also been getting out for walks as much as possible when the weather permits which doesn’t leave as much time for moaning. Yeah, life’s tough, eh? At least I’m not bored.

Friday, January 09, 2015

Gone Fishing

OK. Not really. But we do have fish!

fish

My Spectrum Study Group worked on these fish at our meeting yesterday. Mine’s the green one on the right (metallic fabric paint and beads and sequins). The fish bodies originally come from Japan, made by women displaced by the tsunami. (Yes, many still aren’t settled!) The decorated fish are being collected by our friends at the Silk Weaving Studio and will eventually be auctioned off to provide funds to help these people. I was trying to find the correct informational website but it’s not turning up for me. Sorry about that.

Meanwhile, I have a huge pile of half-carded wool on my work table. Thom was helping wind the drum carder for me. Since the proposed sweater is for him, his assistance is very welcome. It’s like having a motor on the carder! I’m not sure this will be enough for his sweater yet though so probably more teasing and carding will be needed. There’s lots of this RomneyX fleece left anyhow. However this will fill my basket enough so I can get to the spinning before I forget how. I’ll figure out how much more is needed when this is all spun up. Slow clothes indeed! He’ll likely be wearing this sweater next winter instead of this one. Oh well. At this point we can’t even decide on which pattern to knit!

I also overdyed the black sock yarn skeins again. Third time was the charm! After the last effort they still had too many areas that were close to white instead of darker gray and since they were in skeins by this point anyway it was just as easy to give them another soak in a 1% black Telana dye. I have no idea what the total dye percentage is! So much for accurate dyeing, huh? Anyway now they are the slightly uneven black that I wanted in the first place. Lesson learned. Don’t try to dye those little poofy Elann yarn balls without skeining them up first! Got it. I may not get much chance to dye them anymore anyway since Elann’s new sales fulfillment plan, Amazon.ca, isn’t turning up any more of the F05 sock yarn at the moment. Figures that I just discover a yarn I want when it becomes unavailable. Pfth. Yeah, there’s some on Amazon in the US but I’m not going there when our Cdn dollar is so low against the US one.

Now I can’t start the Little Black Cardi that I want to knit with this yarn until I get at least one of my current knitting projects off the needles. I’m nearly at the heel flaps with the Emerald Socks for Thom. Good thing they’re too big for me or I’d commandeer them for myself! I love the greens and purple. And there’s still the Silken Haruni Shawlette that seems like it’s been going on forever and a day. I started this one waaayyyyy back in September when we were still in the desert. Then I frogged it when we got home and started again. I’ve only got about 14 rows to go before the bind-off but they are very long rows. Takes me about 45 minutes to knit one pattern row. Purl rows are slightly faster. The most I end up doing in one sitting is about 4 rows before my attention wanders.

Since my work table is inundated with wool fluff I haven’t been tempted to sew anything right now. Even though I have a huge pile of patterns and fabric! I don’t know if I’m really avoiding sewing or just currently more in the mood for playing with wool instead. It’s not like I don’t need more clothes! I certainly have been discovering where the gaps in my wardrobe lie this winter. As usual, I probably won’t get around to filling those gaps until spring and then I’ll have different needs. Why am I always a least one or two seasons behind? Yeah, I do have an excuse this time, don’t I?

The Hand continues to heal though slowly. At least it feels slowly to me! I can do a lot of things again anyway which makes me very happy and grateful. I just have to be patient and wait for further improvement. I need to tackle the ironing mountain, for one thing, and that still hurts somewhat.

Friday, January 02, 2015

Flowing Into A New Year

Hope everyone had a lovely peaceful New Year! Ours was fun but not particularly peaceful as spent with an 8- and a 10-year-old. We (that would be me, Thom, and the Biggest Grandbeasties) played Snakes & Ladders, built with K’Nex, watched movies (my favourite holiday show “Nightmare Before Christmas” plus parts of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and “Back to the Future, pt. 1”, decorated ourselves with glow sticks and finally made it out to the front porch on time to yell Happy New Year and bang on pots and pans. We listened to the boats in the harbour (very loud!) and watched the neighbours’ fireworks (very pretty) and rather swiftly took ourselves to bed thereafter. We were all a bit groggy the next morning but revived somewhat after platefuls of my blueberry pancakes.

Then Princess Silverfang decided that Stargazer’s moon bears needed a baby so asked if we could make one. The original bear, Snuff, was a Gund “Snuffles” that their dad had since he was a boy so it’s 35 years old now. Stargazer asked for a wife for Snuff this Christmas so with the magic that is eBay they added Jessie to the family. She’s from 1989 so is 26. Obviously they’re both old enough to be acceptable parents, don’t you think? The creation of the baby was quite a production! Princess SF drew the original design and cut out the pieces from some fake fur I had in the stash. It was too hard for her to sew this stuff so I did all the sewing. We decided to use some shorter velour fur to make the ears and legs (much easier to sew) and Stargazer cut the moon out of some white fuzzy stuff. After sewing all the parts together, some machine-stitched and some that I had to hand-stitch, PSF stuffed it and I sewed up the tummy gap. She picked out beads for the eyes and I embroidered on the nose. Somehow it ended up looking more like a guinea pig than a moon bear but it’s cute!

SarahMoonbear

For a team effort and an improvised pattern, not bad. Princess Silverfang named her Sarah:

Sarah2

And here she is with her family:

Grandbeasties

Priceless!

I also worked my newly-functional hands faster than the wind and actually finished Nana’s Blodgie Sweater in time to give it to her yesterday evening:

NanaBlodgieSweater

Because I didn’t have enough time to wait for it to dry I wasn’t able to give it a proper wet-blocking but settled for a thorough steaming and dried it in place on the hot water bottle. That seemed to work pretty well though it’s still a bit on the funky side. I’ll blame it on the hand issues, shall I? To say Thom’s mom was thrilled to receive her blodgie would be an understatement! She could hardly wait to try it out on her cold feet. Success. Oh, and just as I was typing this she called to thank me yet again and to say that it stayed amazingly toasty all night long. Yup! Sometimes the best gifts are the simple ones, huh?

Meanwhile, now that I’ve cleaned up all the mountains of fuzz from the creation of baby Sarah Moonbear, I can make some new messes in the studio. I have a whole basket of teased wool to card next. And there’s still two current knitting projects to peg away at. I’m sure I’ll dive back into sewing more garments again soon but right now I’m just going with the flow.

It’s a whole new year, after all! More soon. Naturally.