Historic Fibers

Weaving Woe

I finished weaving off the blue cotton warp, but it seemed like I was fighting with my loom the whole time. I put new treadle tie ups on the loom because the old cotton ones kept slipping, and it took some trial and error to get them adjusted correctly so I was getting a good shed. In the process, I ended up with some skips, and my tensioning on the warp was not as even as it could have been. In other words, the finished product had some issues. Here is part of the woven cloth:

Can you see the twill pattern? Nope, I can't either. That is because the weft yarn was too close in color to the warp yarn, and the pattern got lost. So as you can see, I had a lot of lessons with this warp. And it reminded me over and over again that I am a beginning weaver, and it is hard to be a beginner. It takes perseverance and the ability to pick yourself up when the project doesn't turn out as well as you would like, and sometimes the learning curve is pretty steep.

I remember feeling like this when I started knitting, too. I look back on patterns that seemed terribly hard then, and now they seem very easy. I imagine with experience, weaving will be like that too. Originally I had planned that this warp would make three cotton baby blankets that I could keep on reserve for all the various babies that keep getting born (incidentally, my friend Lacy had her baby boy, Jakob, last week. Mother and baby are doing well). The warp was only long enough for two blankets, and there are mistakes in the weaving. The mistakes can be fixed by threading a tapestry needle and setting to work, whispering incantations over the fabric while correcting the errors, but it would have been nice to have it turn out right the first time.

The saving grace of this project is that the fabric feels wonderful. The 2.2 cotton warp and the cotton flake weft softened up beautifully in the wash and it is a perfect blanket fabric. I chose a good sett for the threads so it is soft and drapey, but not too loose. So I did do some things right! And the rest, I know, will come with time and experience.

Soggy

My project monogamy on the Lace Edged Raglan is paying off, and it is beginning, just beginning, to look like a sweater:

The back is done, and over half of one front is done. I hit a snag this week when I had a clumsy moment and upended a cup of tea into my knitting bag, resulting in a soggy sweater. The back is still damp, and I couldn't work on the front that evening because I was afraid of stretching out the damp yarn. The jury is still out on whether there will be staining, but it is looking hopeful at the moment that there is no lasting damage. Note to self: always choose yarn colors that coordinate well with spilled tea. I think the front has dried well enough that I can work on it tonight.

In other more exciting news, I got a note from Jane Waller that she is definitely planning, in conjunction with Knit on the Net, to republish her fantastic book, A Stitch in Time. In fact, it will be a new and improved Stitch in Time, since rather than publishing facsimiles of the original patterns, she is redrafting the patterns and also knitting new versions of each item. So you can see actual examples of the wonderful sweaters and such in contemporary yarns! This is very good news, and I can't wait to see what the new book looks like. I think it is so wonderful to preserve our knitting heritage in this way, and so many of the designs from the past still look contemporary and fresh.

Happy Medium

I spun up the batts from last week, with some nice results. If you recall, we had the horizontally dyed batt:

and the vertically dyed batt:

Which I spun up into two separate plies:

The top bobbin shows the horizontally dyed batt spun.

The bottom bobbin shows the vertically dyed batt spun.

The plan is to ply these two together, and see what we end up with. I really like the way the heathered colors in the batts produced a yarn with some sparkle and variation. Single colors tend to look a little flat, and having the various colors really does add depth. The question is whether this will translate into a nice looking plied yarn, or whether all those colors will get lost, or worse, look too busy. I'm hoping for a happy medium!

Cable Guy Renaissance

Several years ago, I wrote my first ever pattern for a pair of men's felted slippers with cables. It didn't exactly take the knitting world by storm, and that was fine. But one day, I decided to add the pattern to Ravelry, and when I went to do that, someone had already added it! Not only that, but a few people had actually used the pattern and there were some really nice slippers out there!

I can't tell you how excited I was that people were actually making the pattern - okay, not a lot, but still I had pretty much assumed that no one knew the pattern existed and I was the only person on the planet who had ever made it before. There is a particularly nice pair on Ravelry made of Cascade 220. And people have been visiting the blog looking for the pattern, so I moved it to the top of the sidebar to make it more easily accessible. I may even make a pair out of Cascade 220 myself - the cables show up much more nicely in that yarn than they do in the lopi yarn that I originally used.

This discovery was  extremely encouraging, and it really made me unreasonably happy.  So happy that my fiber life became invigorated, and I have posted to the blog every day this week. I seem to have a lot to say about fiber lately, and that is good. I can't guarantee that it will last, but for now, it's all good.

Magic Man

Since I can't make the Bellatrix socks right now, I've been looking at the queue (which is holding steady at 2 WIPs) and trying to figure out what small project I can make while I'm simultaneously working away on the Lace Edged Raglan sweater.

I've been meaning to make a small felted bag for my bike, just big enough to hold my cell phone and my keys when I go out for a spin. And I already dyed one skein eons ago - a chocolate brown that used to have pastel colors sprinkled throughout (I know, yech) which I overdyed with lemon-lime Kool-Aid. I found a pattern I could adapt for the bag - Miriam Felton's Retro Wedge Felted Bag, and I found a couple more undyed balls of this yarn:

The skein to the left is already dyed, and the skeins to the right are the "before" shots of the extra yarn I found languishing in the stash.

You may be wondering why on earth I am dyeing brown and lime green yarn, and I can only explain by noting that my bike looks like this:

This is a seriously tricked out  lime green Schwinn Varsity that Dan "accessorized" for me with wooden fenders stained a dark brown, and brown leather handlebar wrap. He really knows how to add bling to a bike. People stop in their tracks and gape at the bike when I ride it (but this is a bike-loving town, so that isn't really unusual). Dan has had people in cars pull him over when he was out riding on some of his creations so they could get a closer look. I would show you pictures, but unless you are a serious bike geek you probably wouldn't get it - half the time, I don't even get it.

Anyway, the bike bag is the final thing I need on this bike to make it really comfortable. Riding with keys and phone in your pocket is unwieldy. So I have the pattern, I have the yarn, and all I needed now was more lemon-lime Kool-Aid, which of course became the only flavor of Kool-Aid that my local stores seemed not to have in stock. I have been haunting the grocery purveyors for weeks trying to find lemon-lime, with no luck.

Dan was going to the store last night, and I asked him to check for lemon-lime Kool-Aid, since he seems to be on a roll with finding things I need (contracters to finish the back yard, belting for my drum carder). And wouldn't you know, he found it:

That is a box of 50 (!) packets of lemon-lime Kool-Aid, which he obligingly brought home for me. The scary part is that I'll probably use it - not necessarily all of it for this project, but lemon-lime Kool-Aid does give a particularly vivid lime green than is somewhat difficult to obtain with any other type of dye. If you mix the lime Kool-Aid with a little bit of orange Kool-Aid, just a touch, you get a nice olive-y green too.

Finishing up dyeing the brown yarn will be a weekend project, and then I can start my bag. This is another project I have been contemplating for several years now, and I'm excited that it is finally coming together! Thanks, Dan!

Batt Grrl

Ready to see some batt action? Here are some experiments I did with the drum carder. I had two 1-ounce pieces of BFL that I had dyed with the exact same colors in two different ways. I had been wondering for a while why people dyed roving with the colors going in short horizontal stripes. It kind of makes sense when you are dyeing yarn, if you are looking for short color repeats. But for roving? I wasn't sure I saw the point.

As I said, I decided to do an experiment dyeing two 2-ounce pieces of roving in exactly the same colors, one set with horizontal bands of color, and the other with vertical bands of color. As far as the dyeing goes, it's easier to put the dye on horizontally (one reason why people probably do it that way). Here is the roving:

Here we have vertical bands of color. Note how some of the dye bled - into horizontal bands! Reason #2 why people dye in horizontal bands!

Next, we have the same BFL roving dyed  with the same colors in horizontal bands:               

Nothing too dramatic about that. It looks like most handdyed roving.

Originally, I wondered if it would make a difference in spinning. I figured I could break off the same-colored horizontal hunks and get long repeats that way, or break the roving down the length and get short repeats that way. On the vertical dyed roving, same thing only reversed. But I never got around to it, so now we're going to see the difference when you drum card the roving.

Here is the roving dyed with vertical stripes run twice through the drum carder:

We have a purple background with streaks of the various colors running throughout. It is soft and fluffy and just begging to be spun. I could have blended the colors more by putting it through the carder a few more times, but I liked it like this.

Here is the roving dyed with horizontal stripes run twice through the drum carder:

We have a lot more variation in color, and if you were looking for long repeats of colors, this would be the best option. I could make this more uniform by taking pieces from all the batts and carding them together,  but I like the variation.

Of course, the colors are going to mix even more when I spin them. I'm thinking I'll take one batch of batts and spin a single, and take the other batch of batts and spin a single, then ply them together, just for fun. I'll bet I end up with an interesting yarn that probably looks a lot more uniform than the unspun batts would suggest. It will be an adventure to find out for sure!

Meant To Be

Some things are just meant to be, in their own time and at their own pace. I had two long-term projects that had been on hold for years - literally years - that got finished up last week because apparently, the time was right.

Long-term project #1 was my backyard. I have a tiny backyard, that used to have a cement pad which left a rather large margin of heavy clay soil left to be planted or covered in some way so it wasn't just dirt. I spent a few years after we moved here trying various plants and soil amendments to no avail. I could get a few things to grow, mostly in containers (did I mention that the yard only gets sunlight a few hours a day?). I learned all about shade plants, but another limiting factor was the fact that there are huge redwood trees surrounding our tiny plot of ground that continuously drop pine needles and cones and little crunchy bits of plant matter all over the yard at all times.

Dan and I finally decided that the only thing to do was to rip out the cement and install a brick patio over the entire yard, a patio that could be frequently swept free of all tree offerings, and then my gardening career could turn entirely to container plants. Dan saw a load of brick being offered for free on Craigslist, and he hot-footed it over to pick up the bricks. Free bricks! What a great deal! We were so excited.

So I looked around, and found a contracter to come and rip out the cement pad. With a great flourish of jack hammers, the deed was done. Then I contacted a couple of landscape contracters to get bids on laying the brick, and just about fainted dead away at the bids. This was a couple of years ago when the economy was doing well and everyone and their brother was doing improvement projects on their homes. One contracter wanted $4,000 and said it would take 6 weeks to install my tiny patio. I sadly closed the curtains on the window that faced the backyard (which looked, incidentally, like a bomb had dropped on it, with rubble from the cement and dirt and piles of bricks waiting to be laid) and just ignored the issue, because it only made me unhappy to contemplate how awful it looked and how we couldn't really do anything about it:

This photo is really only an approximation, since you would also have to imagine in the great pile o' bricks and the cement rubble to make it truly accurate. And by the way, this is the scene that I got to enjoy while working at my loom. Bleh.

That was the sorry state of affairs until a neighbor had a brick patio done by a contracter who a) didn't charge her an arm and a leg, b) was prompt and brought the project in on time and on budget, and c) was available to look at our yard. He came and was pleased that we had the materials already and had the cement removed already, and he gave us an affordable bid, stating that the project could be finished in 3 days. So we went for it. And now we have a lovely brick patio:

We didn't have quite enough bricks to cover the entire area, but the strip around the edges is, I believe, manageable. I'll dig up the soil, amend it, and try planting some nice ferns. And we're happy.

Long-term project #2 involved the drum carder that I got at an estate sale a couple of years ago. Somehow we managed to get it home without the drive bands, and when I called the manufacturer, they told me that they had changed the specifications on that drum carder a few times, and since I didn't know when my drum carder had been made, that I would have to measure for the drive bands, send them the measurements, and they would make a drive band. Each drive band (I needed at least 2 and potentially 3) would cost $25 plus shipping, and if they sent it and somehow my measurements had been off, I would have to order a new drive band and no, I couldn't return the one that was the wrong size. This seemed somewhat unhelpful to me, and I wasn't willing to throw away my money on the potentially wrong sized drive bands. So I waited and contemplated alternatives to ordering the drive band from them.

Finally, Dan came up with the right solution. He found a mail-order hardware company who offered urethane belting, and he ordered 10 feet of it. It arrived last week as the patio was being completed. He cut the belting to length, lit a candle and melted the two ends of the belting, and fused them together. It worked:

He ordered "urethane solid cord round belting, clear, 3/16" OD, 1-1/2" min pulley diameter" (that is the exact wording on the invoice) from McMaster-Carr just in case anyone is in need of affordable drive bands for their drum carders (mine is a Patrick Green Beverly). The belting cost $7.83 with $5 shipping, and I got exactly the right size drive bands on the first try.

I spent part of the weekend drum carding up a storm while gazing happily at my new patio. And I thought about how sometimes, perseverence and dedication are needed to get things done, and sometimes you just have to wait long enough and things will fall into place. The hard part is figuring out which kind of a situation you are dealing with!

Enforced Project Monogamy

I finished up the Serpentine Mitts last week, and added half fingers to them:

I hadn't made gloves before, so I turned to Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns to figure out how to divide up the stitches for fingers. I knit the mitts up to where I wanted the pinkie to start, and then set aside 10 stitches for that finger, putting the rest of the stitches on waste yarn so I wasn't juggling a handful of double pointed needles. I made 2 stitches to cover the gap, and knit the pinkie to the length I wanted. I did this on both gloves before moving on.

For the ring finger, I had to knit the overall length of the remaining hand stitches up a few rounds - funny, I never noticed that the pinkie sits lower than the other fingers before! I set aside 12 stitches for the ring finger and made 2 stitches to cover the gap. For the middle finger, I set aside 12 stitches again, and made 2 stitches on each side of the finger since their were 2 gaps! And then the index finger took the remaining 14 stitches, with 2 stitches made to cover the gap.

I had set aside 21 stitches for the thumb, but had a dilemma - the K2P2 rib pattern required that I either make 3 stitches to keep in pattern, or decrease 1. I chose to make 3, but the thumb ended up being rather loose, so I probably should have decreased. Live and learn! Wouldn't you know, I finished these gloves during the first week of temperatures that nearly got to 90 degrees this weekend! Oh well, I will enjoy having them when it gets cold again.

I started the Lace Edged Raglan, and I am really enjoying the pattern. Since I now had my project list down to 2 works in progress, I thought I would also start another pair of cotton socks using the Bellatrix pattern. I got a perverse thrill picking the yarn for this pattern, since I had some distinctly "clown barf" sock yarn that I needed to use:

Yes, I dyed that yarn, and I actually liked it when I dyed it! It looks better in the skein. But I'm kind of enjoying the idea of making a pair of socks named after the evil villainess, Bellatrix, out of clown barf yarn! It will either be a brilliant tour de force or it will be a heinous mistake. Time will tell.

Unfortunately, I am being held to project monogamy at the moment since I had not downloaded the Bellatrix pattern, and the link is now broken. Apparently the author is migrating files to a new server, and there is no way to know when the pattern will be available again. If anyone has the PDF file for this pattern, I would be most obliged if you could send me a copy. This is a free pattern, so there shouldn't be copyright issues. Edited to add: Apparently the designer of the Bellatrix pattern passed away recently, and knitters are being asked not to pass her patterns around since there ARE copyright issues with this. The pattern may be available at some later time, but for now I suppose I'll choose another pattern. Thanks to Britt for sharing this information!

In any event, I'm virtuously knitting away on the sweater until the Bellatrix pattern becomes available, and I love the way this sweater pattern and this yarn (Rowan Calmer) are working together. When it starts to look more like a sweater, I'll post pictures. And since I'm not working on anything else right now, it will hopefully look like a sweater sooner rather than later!

Needles on Fire

The incentive of finishing one large project in order to be able to cast on the Lace Edged Raglan worked like a charm. I finished not one, but two projects this weekend!

I really hunkered down and got Lacy's Baby Blanket all done. Putting the lining on was time consuming, and so was the finishing embroidery. But I'm very happy with the results, and have sent off the blanket to its new home:

I mailed off the blanket on Friday, so it may not have been received yet. I must say that the lining is flat and perfect - no puckering or wrinkles! - and the embroidery looks pretty darned cute. This will be a great "photo opportunity" backdrop blanket for the new little one, who should be arriving very shortly.

Once that was done, I still had 4 works in progress, and my goal was to get the WIP list down to 3. So I turned my attention to finishing the Fawkes socks:

While my last socks were not a good combination of yarn and pattern, these socks are a happy marriage. The cotton sock yarn really shows off the pattern, and while the colors looked blindingly bright to me in the skein, knitting the yarn blended them brilliantly and they are much more subtle than I had expected.

I have earned the right to cast on my new sweater, and will begin that this week. But only after I finish the Serpentine Mitts! I felt so great about finishing two projects that I started finishing up the mitts, taking a deep breath and diving into putting half fingers on them rather than casting off at the knuckles. I've never made gloves before, so it was a bit of a plunge. I have the pinkie, ring finger, and middle finger done on both gloves and have only the index finger and thumb to go. Then, of course, I'll have lots of ends to weave in and gaps to tighten up, but they are going well and I should be ready to show them off in a few days. It was a very productive weekend, and my only regret is that I didn't have an extra day to finish the last project! Now I'll have to decide what to make once the mitts are done!

Insidious

Last night, husband Dan, the bike geek, pointed out to me that there is a Canadian bicycle company building bikes that might appeal to us fiber people. Called Steelwool Bicycles, the bikes feature a logo of a stylized sheep. And the frames have a decal that states "Pure Laine," (that's pure wool in French). After I informed Dan that I was hardly likely to buy a bike based on the logo, I still couldn't stop thinking about the bikes, and the logo, and the pure wool decal. It's just insidious.