Where Did It Go?

Please tell me where the time goes to so fast? I swear I barely get up in the morning and it’s time to go to bed again. Guess I’m not bored, huh? So what have I been doing? Well, on Tuesday I took this old sweater:

And fulled (some people call this felting but really it isn’t) it in the washing machine. Then I cut a little and stitched a little and made this:

A tote bag for my little mini-laptop. The front pocket holds the mouse and my flash drive. See the kumihimo braid I looped through the teeny little black flash drive so I couldn’t lose it quite so easily? I made the pocket from the back neckline. The bag’s height is a wee bit short but I didn’t have any more fabric to play with below the front neck scoop. There was only a few inches of the two shoulder sections left when I was done. I even found some of the original yarn to stitch the handle area with to reinforce it. (It’s handspun - I don’t throw that out without good reason!) A pretty successful exercise in re-purposing I would say. (Is that really a word?) I’m happy with this project that gives new life to an old sweater.

What else have I been up to? I finally printed out all the pages of the digital journal I kept while we were away on our holiday in September. T-Man started to read it and got all nostalgic for our time together in our teensy van. And I realized how much warmer it was only a month ago. I don’t think I’d want to do the same trip again right now. The leaves are turning beautiful colours and some trees are totally bare. We’ve had some light frosts in the mornings. Not precisely camping weather.

Today I was working on my journal for the class that started today. Of course I’m making the book myself rather than just buying a sketch book. That’s too easy! The covers are drying under pressure and I’ll do some Coptic stitching on the signatures when they’re ready. I’ve downloaded and printed out the first lesson. Thanks to everyone for your helpful and encouraging comments. I think I’m going to enjoy this class. I’ll show you the book I’ll be working in when it’s done. Right now I have to go to bed so I can get up at the ridiculous hour of 0-dark-30am. Just because that’s when I wake up. Seriously.

Boomerang

That’s what the weather has been for sure. Yesterday was so sunny and warm (after the frost melted!) that it was shirtsleeves for everyone. Today we’re back to cloudy with a threat of rain and somewhat cooler but there was no frost. I’m dizzy. Though that just might be the migraine probably brought on by the barometer’s speed fluctuations. BTW yesterday’s frost was a record cold temperature for that date.

I spent yesterday afternoon taking the grandkids to the park to play. We had a great time! It’s so much fun to get down to little kid level and play pretend. Later when their parents returned from a much-needed movie date and T-Man got home from work, we all went to our favourite local sushi restaurant for dinner. Believe it or not, Princess Fussy loves ebi and salmon nigiri and especially masago (fish roe). Go figure. Her brother Stargazer at 16 months likes California roll, except the avocado which he hands you when he’s eaten the rest of the piece. Cute! Luckily his grandpa is a big avocado lover. Now that we’ve had a nice baby fix, we’ll be good for a couple of weeks. Heh. Meanwhile my shoulders need to recuperate from lifting cuddly but increasingly heavy weights.

Since I’ve finished the hearts and they’re all ready to be mailed, here’s the FO scoop:

8 Hearts


Begun: April 8, 2008
Completed: April 23, 2008

Yarn: Vippela Raanulanka, 100% wool singles, 400 yds per 100g skein, vintage weaving yarn from my stash, used only a few yards for each heart.
Needles: pair of 2.75 mm bamboo knitting needles, from set of double-pointeds
Stuffing: brown fine wool fleece, washed and teased.
Beads: size 11 Czech seed beads, red AB silver-lined. Small gold-coated glass hearts.
Thread: Nymo size D beading thread, coated with Thread Heaven.
Needles: two size 12 beading needles.

Pattern: Heartfelt by Norah Gaughan for Berroco. Free pattern online.

Comments: My version of the Heartfelt pattern came out much smaller because of the thinner yarn and needles. I stuffed the knitted hearts quite full with fleece which shrank somewhat along with the knitting wool when fulled. I did it by hand using an old washboard and hot soapy water. The beadwork was my own design that came to me when I was half asleep in the middle of the night! I found the best way to work it was to attach the heart bead, thread on 2.5” of beads for the spiral and take a stitch at the top of the stuffed heart, then thread 5” of beads for the loop (go through twice to reinforce), and finally thread 2.5” of beads for the second spiral and secure the second heart bead. Then I went back with the second needle and thread and couched the spiral line of beads down from the top to the heart on both sides, holding it in place with my left thumb as I stitched. I buried the tails in the felt under the gold heart.

You could use this decoration all year, but it’s especially festive for Valentine’s Day or Christmas. Just watch out for moths if you store it away in between! I usually send my wool items for an occasional “Arctic vacation” in the deep freeze which seems to keep the bad guys at bay.

I’m going to concentrate on the Unmentionables and try to get that completed asap. Plus I’ve been plugging away at the Hepburn cardi while TV watching in the evenings and am nearly up to the armhole decreases on the fronts. These are the last big pieces to finish with only the front and neck bands to go after blocking and sewing the main pieces together. Then I can get on to the Red Fields Shawl. I like to have no more than 3 knitting projects started at once but if you’re counting, I’m still at 4. There is no deadline on the A-Maizing socks. They’re just my almost-mindless knitting. Which is about where my head is at today.

April Showers Just Get You Wet

Today is better for my head but not for poor T-Man who spent three hours (and lots of money) at the dentist. I think it’s a good thing to get all our old amalgam fillings replaced and crowns, caps or whatever done before we can’t afford it any more. His extended medical insurance is paying for some of it but apparently our dentists are expensive. But excellent. Sometimes you do get what you pay for. On the upside he gets a day off work!

In a fit of work myself now that I’m not feeling quite so crappy, I got the Sea ‘n’ Sky Socks done. They’re currently drying on the bathroom counter. I need to get an on-the-foot shot because the Synesthesia pattern behaves in a very interesting way and the socks tend to accordion fold up sideways when not being worn. I did remember to take a before-the-bath shot so you can see just how textured it was:

I also found some red wool, an old fine singles weaving yarn from the stash, and knitted up one of the hearts. I stuffed it with brown wool fleece and fulled it as much as I could on my washboard. Because I used finer wool and size 2.75 mm needles (instead of the 9US/5.5mm the pattern called for) it came out nearly half the size at about 2 inches tall. The wool stuffing shrinks somewhat, unlike polyester, and the dark colour doesn’t show through the stitches. You have to stuff fairly fat though or it gets lumpy inside when fulled. Here’s the before and after shots:

I want to add a beaded hanging loop and some scattered beads stitched over the surface front and back. And then make 7 more for the swap that I’m in. It only took about 45 minutes to knit and stuff the first one and once I’ve gotten the pattern down it will speed up some. I hope the beading goes as quickly. I need to complete one all the way before I continue in a more assembly-line fashion with the rest. But first I have to decide which beads to use!

After all that success, I also finished the second leg of the Unmentionables and attached them together so I can carry on up to the waist. Nice plain knitting for awhile with a few decrease rounds thrown in to keep me awake. This pattern keeps the lacy exciting parts for the end. They’re looking big for The Princess but not too huge. That gives her space to wear them for much longer than if I made them in a smaller size.

I forgot to mention the gift I made for Chris of Joybilee Farm for her donation of woad seeds that she sent me. I used 4 of T-Man’s little blue lampworked beads and made a set of 4 stitch markers, 3 smaller and one slightly larger to serve as the beginning of the row marker. The wire loops and spacers are sterling silver and the keeper loop is hammered copper. I always like to have a keeper to save me from fishing around for my markers. You can even “pin” them to your knitting or inside your knitting bag. I had to go to the postal outlet to mail the envelope because it was too thick with the bubble wrap to go regular letter mail and it had to be hand-cancelled. I took the photo quickly so it isn’t the best quality:

Have I made up yet for not having photos in the last three posts?

Why Me?

I woke up today with the return of the labyrinthitis (inner ear imbalance) that I had last winter. Oh joy. Drunk again without the pleasure of having had a drink! Apart from seriously dizzy, I don’t really feel sick and since even my doctor doesn’t know exactly what causes my version of it, we can’t do anything about it but wait it out. It usually only takes a few days before it’s mostly gone. Good thing I have stuff I can do while sitting around. The steep stairs in my house make me nervous and I get tired of bumping into walls and furniture. However I can’t spend too much time on the computer either because the words start dancing on the screen and my eyes get tired trying to keep up. This will be a short post! Then I’ll go back to spinning and knitting. At least I got my Palm refilled with lots of podcasts to listen to and its battery all charged up.

Here’s the final finished group of “peary dustcatchers”. (Thanks, Sharon, for that apt description!)

Wooly Pears

Begun: November 11, 2007

Completed: November 24, 2007

Yarn: handspun wool, mostly 2-ply acid-dyed and approximately worsted weight, some a bit thinner and some thicker. One brown is natural coloured Corriedale. Light green is a singles. The blue-green was the one that didn’t felt at all and was eliminated. A lot of this yarn is very ancient!

Needles: Denise size 7 (slightly smaller than the pattern called for)

Stuffing: dark grey Birkeland Bros coarse wool roving

Pattern: Wooly Pears by Nicky Epstein from Interweave Knits Holiday 2006 issue, cover.

Comments: I’ve been commenting on these in process all along but to recap, four of these were knitted out of the russet/gold yarn (and one of them had the extra hatching in dark rust). Two of them were fulled in Tide Free and they lost the russet dye, turning golden instead, including the one with the hatching. Also the wool I used for the leaves didn’t full properly so I removed them and replaced with a different green yarn in a slightly reduced leaf size. The green pear was fulled twice before it reached proper size and its leaves were also changed before the second fulling. For that one I used Orvus instead of laundry detergent and the second pair of pears didn’t lose colour. They are much darker, looking more like Bosc pears than Bartletts. The stuffing was dark grey wool which also fulled some to give the pears a bit of weight and density that they wouldn’t have with poly stuffing. They’re a little smaller than most real pears, just fitting in my hand. The bowl they are shown in on the photo was turned by T-Man on his lathe.

I’m outta here. My eyes have nystagmus, aka “undesired eye motion” and I need to stop looking at the screen. Argghhh…good thing I don’t get motion sick easily.

Verrry Interesting

Yup, I’ve been somewhat MIA for the last few days. I got rather busy and time flew by with never a moment to blog. My friend Jo did indeed come over on Wednesday for a spinning lesson. She had a lovely and very interesting spindle made by Viking Santa, a name I had not heard of before. Apparently he’s in Delta, BC (not far away) and also makes bobbins for lacemaking. His spindles have a wonderful barley twist to give better grip and his whorls are nicely dished to be rim-heavy for a long spin. Jo had received hers as a gift from a friend. She did quite well at beginner yarn, using the park-and-draft method at first but shifting to free-fall fairly quickly. She emailed me later to say she’d plied a bit up and knitted a wee swatch from it. Her very first yarn! What a treasure!

Meanwhile T-Man is of course very interested in the shape of Viking Santa’s spindles and the barley twist is especially fascinating. Maybe one day I’ll have a T-spindle to call my own. For now I make them out of toy wheels and dowels or buy other people’s turnings. No biggie. I’m patient. At least I have T-made nosties, several of them in fact. And I know how to use ’em too.

Thursday I went to my friend Kirsten’s house for “Spectrum-Lite”, a mini version of our usual once-a-month gathering. Four of us equal half of the Spectrum membership and while they were felting scarves, I knitted like a mad fiend and finally finished my second OXO Cuff:


These are rather teensy but warm. Kind of like wearing wooly jewelry. If I had enough patience I could have repeated the pattern and made them longer but they are cute and fairly functional the way they are. I got very tired of the twisted stitch pattern just about the time that it got to be sunk into my brain. I also had a leetle accidental with the chart I was following. I spilled tea all over it and never noticed until the next morning when it looked like this:


Kind of interesting in a “paper arts” kind of way. But not legible at all. Just shows you how water-soluble my HP printer inks are, eh? I just printed me out a new one and carried on to the end.

Speaking of water, the Wensleydale wool made the most interesting felt. If you layer it very thinly (one ounce makes about 8” x 70” when finished) it develops almost a lace-like texture:


Afterwards, some of the Wensleydale scarves were dyed in an instant indigo vat and some were left natural white:


Very cool. They were also working on nuno felt in patterns over silk chiffon (which in this case didn’t really scrunch up as much as was expected) and also some thin merino-tencel felt (which worked properly). I’m not really interested as much in felt scarves though I have the materials and equipment to do some of my own. Eventually.

On Friday, T-Man had the day off so we walked downtown in the glorious but freezing sunshine to get our passport applications in. It only took one and a half hours in the Canada passport office which apparently is very good timing. It will now take a couple of weeks to actually receive the passports but we weren’t planning on going anywhere anyway. I also found out that my BC-ID is crap and needs to be renewed. It’s tough when you don’t have a drivers’ license. You become a non-person. However my other ID seemed to be good enough for them to process my passport anyway. Whew! I’ll wait for my passport before I go to the motor vehicles branch to apply for the ID and hopefully it will help facilitate things.

Today I finally finished fulling the rest of the pears and guess what? I used Orvus this time instead of Tide Free detergent and it didn’t lose it’s colour like it did last time! I don’t have yellow pears like the first ones. I have gold and rust pears. And one green one that finally shrank almost as much as the others. It just needed more fulling than they did because the wool was Romney instead of maybe Corriedale? Not sure exactly. Might be Perendale. Interesting though hey? In laundry detergent (possibly alkaline with additives) it lost colour but in neutral Orvus (mostly sodium laurel sulphate) it didn’t. I’ll have to remember that for the future. Obviously some dyes are sensitive even after they are part of the fibre. Of course, it was probably not an acid “milling” dye which could explain it. Photo to come when they dry. A couple of days from now. It’s cold outside! But the rain is supposed to be coming back.

Peary Funny

I knitted new leaves for my Wooly Pears, stitched up and stuffed the final two, fulled the leaves for the already-felted ones and stitched them on. Now all I have to do is felt the last 2 and the odd green one again. Then I will have 5: one for my guild exchange, 3 for me and one more to give away to someone. I was really surprised how much of the original dye had come out when I put the felted and un-felted ones side by side:


Yes, that was the same wool! used for both those pears! It might be because it wasn’t fixed properly to the wool when I dyed it or because I used an alkaline detergent on them when I put them in the washing machine. This time I plan to use Orvis and see if that makes any difference. Otherwise I actually like the faded colour better. It’s more pear-ish. I took the photo on my vintage washboard that came with my house. It does come in handy occasionally — but I’m glad I don’t have to use it for the laundry.

I modified the leaves for the smaller pears to make them fit the size better. The wool I dyed was quite thick and the original leaves came out huge. So I left out 4 rows (an increase and a decrease and their corresponding purl rows) in the middle of the leaf for ones that fit much better in scale. They probably don’t even need leaves to look realistic. Or maybe one would do. But I gave every one the two leaves that the pattern called for.

On Saturday when we went for our rather soggy walk to the magazine shop, I got the new Winter issue of Interweave Knits. Why is it that the fall and winter issues are always my favourites of any knitting magazine? This is a wonderful issue with at least 3 or 4 sweaters that I would make, with the cover cardigan my absolute favourite of the bunch. Plus the article on designing sleeve caps was very informative. I’ve already considered armholes and sleeve caps as a dressmaker would but it’s good to have that pattern drafting knowledge translated into knitting. There are a few different aspects to take into account when building a shape with stitches and rows as opposed to just snipping it out of a piece of fabric. You can’t just take in a larger seam allowance or let it out a bit to compensate for bad fitting. And then there’s thickness, stretchiness, drape and a number of other factors to take into consideration. I sure love the way so many sweaters are fitted properly to the body. Too bad I don’t have the body that the models have, darn it! I know I need to learn how to adjust the sweater to fit the body I do have.

Speaking of sweaters, there’s one in IK that might work for my Backyard Sweater. It’s a cardigan with a feather and fan lower section on body and sleeves. The colour changes every 4 rows and it has a lovely bit of curvy laciness that I like and that shows off the different yarns. It will have to be fitted a bit differently though because I need sloped shoulders (the pattern has them straight across) and a somewhat more closely fitted upper arm (they are much too baggy on the model). It seems too wide through the upper chest as well because the armholes don’t indent very much making the top section nearly as wide as it is at the bust line. It shouldn’t be too hard to adjust thanks to that article on sleeve caps. But first I need to have some yarn instead of a heap o’wool!

TGIF

Actually, it doesn’t really matter to me that it’s Friday, only that I don’t have any pressing engagements today. My neck and shoulder hurts. I’m starting to think I may need to go visit Florence the Torturer…er, Physio. I know what I did to me though — on Tuesday I spent the afternoon sweeping off all the stairs, decks and sidewalks around my house. Then I went to see the kids’ new house and carried Stargazer around for awhile. He’s getting rather heavy but since he can’t yet walk and loves to be in your arms, it’s kind of hard to ignore him. Besides he’s so darned cute! Then Wednesday I did a lot of dyeing with my marigolds, plus 4 loads of laundry, vacuumed the basement and changed the bed sheets. Yesterday I spent the early morning dyeing some more and then went to my weavers’ guild meeting. Just too much stress on an already weak part of my anatomy. It didn’t hurt so much yesterday but last night was uncomfortable and today I’ve got the Magic Bag alternating from my shoulder to the microwave and back. Since we have no definite plans for the weekend (yay!) I’m planning to take it easy. And maybe dye some more, this time with the walnut goo I’m creating. Yes, I cannot just sit. If I did, I’d be knitting anyway which also hurts right now. Maybe I can just read?

The Ninja and Family’s new house is perfect for them. It’s older (built in 1925) but it’s been recently completely revamped. The previous owners had kids too so there’s gates at the top of the stairs in the house and on the deck. They have 2 nice bathrooms, one with a shower and one with a an old-fashioned (but new) claw-foot tub, and the laundry is upstairs near the three bedrooms. There’s also a small office on the main floor for the computer etc. The kitchen is big with all new cupboards and counters and good quality appliances and the dining room is right next to it. There are lots of windows in the house and, even though it’s not large, it’s airy and bright. DIL even has space in the long and narrow enclosed front porch for her painting easel. The basement is accessed from outside and it’s too low for living space but it’s high enough to make an excellent storage space. The backyard is small but it’s completely enclosed with a high gate so kids can’t get loose and there is parking for 2 cars in the back. The front street is only 2 lanes but it’s busy and has a bus route which is good. With double windows it’s actually pretty quiet inside the house. Schools are nearby when the kids get big enough and there’s a great park with playground and extensive trails within walking distance. They’re very happy with their purchase and hope to be there for a very long time. Which is probably how long it will take to pay for it! Since The Ninja is a very-small-business owner, he’s a bit nervous about that part.

So back up a bit — back to the Wooly Pears. I was SOOOO disappointed in them. I put them in a mesh bag and threw them in with T-Man’s dirty jeans. The first 2 pears fulled nicely but two things were wrong: a lot of colour came out and the leaves didn’t full. At all. They just got fuzzy and limp. See?

Complete with laundry lint. Believe me it looks much worse in person. Also the last pear that I made from an ancient fat handspun single needs more fulling. I haven’t shown you that one yet. It also suffered from the Bad Leaves Syndrome. I thought I had chucked that particular yarn when it refused to full in my Mitred Shoulder-Bag that I made a number of years ago. Either I didn’t or I threw out the wrong one! Whatever, it was a bad choice. I quickly dyed up some really old handspun 2-ply and yesterday I knitted more leaves. They aren’t fulled yet. I thought I’d do the ones for the 2 small now-gold-coloured pears by hand and sew them on. And replace the ones on the larger green pear and full it some more. I’m also making a couple more of the small pears that lose their rosy blush in the wash and will use the new leaves on them. It’s a brighter more grassy green than the dark teal of the non-fulling wool, which I already threw in the trash before this happens to me again. Not sure I like it as much but since I don’t have any other green yarn that will work, it’ll just have to do. One of these pears (probably the one with the knitted-in “blush”) is going to my guild for the Christmas Gift Exchange. The other 3 without the blush will stay with me. And I’m not sure what I’ll do with the bigger green one.

Next I want to show the lovely colours I got from the marigolds. Apparently a pound of madder-dyed roving wasn’t enough colours for me, so I dug in the freezer for some marigolds that I had picked a couple of years ago. Two quart-sized Ziplocs full gave me enough to dye 5 different colours and another whole pound of Borderdale wool. Here they are:


From right (darkest) to left (lightest) and all with alum and cream of tartar mordant, that’s full strength marigold with iron afterbath, full strength marigold alone, nearly full strength marigold with copper afterbath, exhaust marigold left in the bath overnight and exhaust marigold left in the bath for a short time. I also overdyed a bit of the madder-dyed wool and also put some into to a copper and an iron afterbath. Sometimes it’s hard to stop:


Left to right in this photo is madder with a marigold overdye, madder with iron afterbath and the madder exhaust that had an iron afterbath with a marigold overdye (that was the rosy beige one in last Monday’s post). I forgot to photograph the copper afterbath on madder because it didn’t really change it much at all. As if all this wasn’t enough fooling around, I also took an ice cream bucket full of Persian (aka English) walnuts with hulls still on out of the freezer. We collected them from our monster backyard tree a few years ago during a rare season of overabundance. For once there were so many walnuts the Evil Imported Squirrels weren’t able to take all of them before we got a chance to get a few. I’ve been soaking them for a couple of days and today I heated them up in the pot and slipped off the hulls (wearing gloves of course) and rescued the nuts. I’m hoping there might even be some edible walnuts there but my hands are too sore to crack them. I’ll get T-Man to help me tomorrow and we’ll see. Yes, I too am wondering why they were languishing in the freezer all this time but I guess I really didn’t feel like dealing with them. The dyebath itself is getting lovely and brown and is just about ready to use on my last bag of Borderdale wool. You don’t even need a mordant with walnut since it’s a substantive dye and will fix by itself. There’s a lot of tannin in the whole tree including in the leaves, bark and nutshells. But the most dye is in the green hulls which often cling to the nuts when they fall off the tree. You can stain your hands for days if you don’t wear gloves when handling them. Ask me how I know.

It might look yukky but it sure smells better than the pungent marigold dyebath. In some cases it’s lucky the wool doesn’t retain the smell, just the colour. But I’m very fond of the smell of walnut leaves when I rake them (though my neck says “ouch!”) and the dyebath smells very similar. It’s kind of woodsy with a hint of spice. Heck. Where’s Smell-O-Vision when you need it? Scratch-N-Sniff? It’s nice anyway. Now I need to control my urge to go down and start putting wool in the pot. It can wait at least until tomorrow. It’ll only improve. Which is more than I can say for myself.