simple gifts

I've been knitting a lot lately, and it feels so nice to have some finished objects to share. I'll keep it to the two that are gifts, and going out in the mail today.


First, there are the legwarmers for a wonderful kid who just turned four, and who needs something stripey and soft and funky to add to her wardrobe. Her mom often lets her choose her own outfits, and her style leans toward eclectic and layered, so I have confidence that these legwarmers will fit right in.





These things are super simple -- cast on, work 2x2 ribbing for a bit, and then bind off. They yarn is my own handspun, from a BMFA Sheep 2 Shoe kit in the lapis colorway. It's a worsted weight yarn, and a superwash merino, so it should be soft on her legs, and easily washable. I spun and plied it fairly tightly, so I think the legwarmers should wear well. And I think I managed to cast on the right number of stitches so that they won't slouch too much now, but enough that they will grow as she does. I can actually stretch these over my legs, though of course they're pretty short on me.

I'm hoping there will be some modeled shot to link to soon, when super four year old receives her somewhat late birthday gift.


My other finished project is actually a commissioned project, as a gift for a friend of my mom.



This is the Shetland Triangle, designed by Evelyn Clark, from Wrap Style. I've been eyeing this pattern for a long time, and finally bought the book during the last Interweave Press hurt book sale. It's the only pattern in the book I knew I wanted to make, and the book was discounted to less than the price I'd pay for a copy of just one pattern, so I figured it was definitely a good time to buy!

I used Reynolds Whiskey for this pattern. It seemed like a good match for the pattern, not only because I happened to have some, but because like the pattern it's a yarn I've been wanting to work with for a while. It's a fluffy and light sportweight yarn that comes in deeply heathered colors. I really liked working with it, and am probably going to use what I have leftover for a big EZ Pi Shawl, at some point.

What I really love about the Shetland Triangle is the background. For me, this lace pattern isn't about the holes, but about what the increases and decreases do to the flow of the stockinette background. I think I captured that pretty well in the above photo. I just adore how the stitches gently curve in and out. I think I'm eventually going to have to make one of these for me. If you want a couple more photos, you can find them here and here. The second photo shows the entirety of the shawl -- not a great photo (it's hard to artfully capture such a large thing in one shot), but I'd feel bad about not having a shot that isn't a closeup.



That's about it for now. But I have been doing a lot of fleece washing, and have a lot to talk about at some point. I've learned a ton, and can't wait to share my learning process with you guys. I've also been doing some spinning, including some new to me fibers. I have a gorgeous skein of loosely spun thick Wensleydale singles, and just started on some bombyx silk top this morning. yum. Great things to come!

Gelukwensen!

Congratulations to wiscjennyann, who won the contest!

I am so glad that I decided to do a random drawing from the get-go, because it would have been awfully hard to choose my favorite contest entry from the bunch. You guys are a creative, ambitious group of people, and it was inspiring to read through your contest entries. Our lovely contest winner actually decided to write an entire blog post about her creative ambitions for the next year, and you all should read it. She writes very eloquently about why learning Dutch will be a creative process for her -- something which I really admire, because I've always found learning languages to be incredibly difficult. (And, uh, I hope the title of this post actually means "congratulations", and not something dirty or mean or weird. I'm trusting Yahoo Babelfish on this one...)





I have been working on two knitting projects as of late. Both of them are gifts. The first one is a Shetland Triangle (by Evelyn Clark), which is a birthday gift for a friend of my mom's. I'm knitting it on larger needles, in Reynolds Whiskey (a sportweight yarn), and it's going to be a beautiful and cozy fall and winter shawl.




I don't have photos of the actual knitting for my other project, but I do have photos of the handspun yarn:





The yarn is about a worsted weight, from a Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sheep 2 Shoe Kit. It's superwash merino, and chain (Navajo) plied. I don't have exact yardage or wpi counts, because I was in a hurry to cast on, and didn't bother. But I'm very happy with the yarn, and only used half of the kit, which means I have more of this lovely fiber to work with! (For the record, this kit was over weight. I'm guessing that my first kit being under weight was a fluke. And again, the fiber is really lovely, comes relatively uncompacted compared to other merino top I've bought, and in my experience so far is very color fast. I really love these kits.)

I'm about halfway done knitting a pair of legwarmers for an almost 4 year old little girl. She's the kind of little kid who I think would happily make such a fashion statement, and I can't wait to see photos of her in them. The legwarmers are very simple -- 2x2 ribbed tubes. They should be small enough to stay on her right now, but will definitely grow as she does. I tried the first one on, and while it's obviously short for my leg, it stretches to fit my calf. Talk about flexible sizing! I'm sure there will be modeled photos when she gets them, and I'll make sure to link to them for you. But more on this project when it's done.


I suppose that's all for now. I'm not sure if it will be in the next blog post or not, but I have been delving into fiber processing, and hope to write a blog post (or ten) about that. It will all be from a beginner's perspective, because I only got my hand carders this summer, and have yet to even receive my combs. But let me know if you have any questions, and I'll either try to answer them, or find links to answers. There are tons of great resources out there on the internet, and between blogs and youtube videos, I feel that I've received a pretty good beginner's education in how to use all of these funny looking tools.


time to knit...

If nothing else, it will look cute on your head.

The first issue of WeaveZine is out!

A few months ago, Syne told me about starting up this new fiber arts magazine. Not being a weaver, I felt bad that there wasn't any way for me to contribute. Then we realized that I could contribute by helping combine knitting and weaving. We devised the basic project idea, and then I immediately got the cold sweats when I realized that I have very little lace design experience, and struggled a bit with the ins and outs of the one and only lace edging I'd done before.

Needless to say, I was as nervous as I was excited, at first. I mean, Syne is a superstar. I'm fairly certain that all of the Chuck Norris facts apply to her as well, with the bonus that she knows a lot more about weaving and knitting than Chuck ever could aspire to. So I looked through a bunch of edging patterns, to get my bearings. I didn't want to copy or emulate anything, but just get a better feel for my options in terms of construction and attachment to a piece of fabric.

I ended up going with plain and simple, with a design that looked nice with (I think) the woven fabric Syne whipped up. (And if you've never handled handwoven fabric, you don't know what you're missing. It definitely has magic in it, just like handspun yarn does.) Here's the result of our combined efforts:






The pattern for the weaving and the knitting can be found here. We used a 20/2 silk yarn, but if you don't have access to that, just think laceweight. If you aren't lucky enough to have access to hand woven fabric, you can still attach the edging from something store-bought.


If delicate white lacy Antimacassars don't interest you, how about some incredibly bright handspun?



85 grams, 443 yards, 22 wpi
2 ply, singles spun at a 15.5:1 ratio

Believe it or not, that's a bit underplied. I've learned that I naturally treadle a bit fast, so I probably added a bit more twist to the singles than would have been ideal. I'd hoped to be able to overply a bit, because I've heard that's good for sock yarn, but I wonder if slightly overspun and underplied (but still tightly plied) works well, too.

This yarn is not exactly what I planned to make with the roving. I had 7 somewhat equal amounts of merino roving in rainbow colors, totalling 100 grams. I wanted each single to have 3 rainbow repeats in it, with the second single slightly staggered (by ripping off a bit of red roving from the beginning and saving it for the very end), so my 2 ply yarn would have 3 rainbow repeats in it, with a bit of barberpoling at the color transitions. Have you noticed that that's no even close to what I got? What I did spin is the result of my second bobbin being slightly thicker than my first bobbin, completely throwing everything off. And I like it. It's a bit more frantic than I would have chosen, but was a great learning experience, and will make some truly funky socks. The yarn also ended up a bit thinner than I hoped, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get a decent sock fabric on size 0 needles. If only I spun that first bobbin slightly thicker! It would have solved both my problems!

And of course I have a bunch of that first bobbin remaining. I'm not sure what to do with it, so maybe I'll wind it off into a ball until I decide. I just ordered a Spinner's Control Card, which I hope will help me stay more on track in the future.


The pattern writing is almost done (just need to do a few dozen more read throughs...), and I have another gorgeous spinning project on the wheel. More to come soon!

blooming

Orchid Lace Mitts (the short version), designed by Anne Hanson (Ravelry link). I knit them using my handspun BFL.



It's a fun and well written pattern, and I have to say that it was really a pleasure to just sit down and follow a pattern word for word, and not even have the urge to think about changing a thing.



I was pleasantly surprised by the striping in the yarn. I made no effort while spinning or plying it to get the colors to do anything in particular. I think this is kind of like the new knitter who doesn't knit a gauge swatch, but ends up with a perfectly fitting sweater anyway. It won't necessarily happen again, but I'll take what I can get!

I made the mitts for the friend who sent me the roving, when I was a wee baby spinner. It's been hard not to blog about them, and even harder to not tell her about them, but she just got the package, so I'm finally in the clear.


And speaking of receiving special packages, look at what I made this morning:



The only word for it is glee. Even though I'm mostly going by trial and error right now (I have a lifetime to learn the technical ins and outs of the machine), wheel spinning feels incredibly natural, and is just about all I've wanted to do since I sat down in front of it for the first time last night.

not being Eeyore

The dark cloud of late-autumnal knitting angst tried to settle over my small New England town last week. First came the reminder of why I just don't do the cables without a cable needle thing. (I don't care how sticky the yarn is, or how careful I am. Every time it turns into a whack-a-mole game, with those damn little stitches dropping their heads out of sight. Not funny anymore.) Then came the top-down hat, re-worked for a lighter weight yarn so inexpertly that I ended up with a 27" circumference. I decided that what I needed to help get me out of the rut was a tried and true pattern that has been knit to completion over 500 times, according to Ravelry. If 500 people can knit the Swallowtail Shawl, then so can I, angst be damned.



It's not done yet, but I'm done with the budding lace part, and have decided to let it rest, pre-nupping. It was even so kind as to arrange itself into a familiar shape when I tossed it on the couch, sparing me the pain of having to try to figure out how to photograph an unblocked lump of proto-lace.

Well beyond the dark cloud of knitterly dread, I felt it was safe to start playing with a new sock design idea.



That's a teaser photo of my design process for this sock. Well, you don't get a photo of the jumbled thoughts in my head, but you can see how they translated into an initial charted out sketch kind of thing, with a peek at a chart underneath. I've already swatched to work out most of the kinks, using yarn leftover from the Anniversary socks. These are going to be really fun socks, and I've just cast on for them in a new-to-me brand of yarn that looks and feels very promising.

I also found the energy to fix the plying on some of the slightly underplied BFL, and to set it. Oh, springful bounty!



One of the skeins turned out better than the others, in terms of plying and color distribution. I have about 140 yards of the "good" skein, and the beginning of a plan for it. It's about 16 wraps per inch, making it a nice fingering weight. I think the other skein is nicer than I want to believe, and at the very least I should be able to pick and choose the best parts of it to up my yardage.

And of course I worked more on the Redwood BFL singles.



It's a gratuitous photo, since there's not much new to see. But it's so pretty! My new spinning method is to ball up my pre-drafted top, set the ball in the top of my scale, and then let the pre-drafted wool drape over my arm as I spin. I used to wrap it around my wrist, but sweat became problematic. This way I can just pick it up and spin for a couple of minutes here and there, which feels like quite a luxury.

There's a sort of hangover feeling I get when I've started too many projects in too short a time. Even though 2 of them got ripped out, it just feels wrong. My usual remedy would be to show an outstanding level of dedication to the projects that did survive, but alas, there are too many new things to start! I have 3 other projects I want to cast on for by the end of the year, two of which have deadlines, one of which is a design project that could be a potentially big challenge for me. (Only one is holiday knitting. I'm not that crazy.) Look for more deer in the headlights posts this winter. Oh deer dear.

Creepy, Crawly, and STICKY

(First off, I must say that I've had the Can Can song stuck in my head since before my last post. And then yesterday, while I was browsing in a bookstore, a jazzy version of the Can Can song came in over the Muzak speakers. Or perhaps I'm just going insane, poisoned by having my recommended yearly allowance of Can Can concentrated into one week. Condensed Can Can! augh! Though it's starting to morph into the Facts of Life theme song, which, while equally horrific, is at least variety...)

The new issue of The Anticraft has arrived, and among its creepy, crawly, and sticky offerings are my lace scarf. Go to The Anticraft to see the pattern, as well as all the other goodies in this issue. But I'll post some photos here, too:









This scarf started out as a brainstorm between me and Zabet. Keep in mind that this is only half of a complete package. There were some technical difficulties with the second half of this project, so the concept won't be truly complete for a little while.

Zabet gets credit for the artistic rendering of "Some Pig". She drew it out, and I translated her stylizing of the letters into lace. Erssie asked about the design of the lace in the scarf. I did not use stitch dictionaries for any of it, though it's simple enough that I'm sure the patterning does exist in stitch dictionaries out there. In fact, I was looking through a book (perhaps Victorian Lace Today?) in the bookstore after I finished the scarf, and I saw a shawl that used what looked like the same stitch pattern as the webby ends of the scarf. Then I looked through another book (Folk Shawls, I believe), and learned that I "unvented" the method I used to start the pointy ends of the scarf. The repeating bug pattern in the middle took a while to get just right, involving a lot of graph paper and swatching. It's amazing how easy it is to inadvertently knit a leaf with lace. No wonder there are so many leaf lace patterns out there! It took a while before I got my bugs to be bugs, and not delicate little leaves. (Spiders don't eat leaves, dammit!)

Do make sure to look at the other projects in this issue of The Anticraft. I think this may be my favorite issue, yet. Some of my other favorite projects from this issue are the Pumpkin Pasties (would look delicious if we hadn't just made FOUR pumpkin pies in the last 2 weeks), Black Widow (what I want to bring to the Pumpkin Festival next year), and Spider's Parlor (I want a pet).

So there's one secret project revealed! Please let me know if you have any questions about or problems with the pattern. None of the lacework in it is difficult at all. If you can knit, purl, yarnover, k2tog, and ssk (or left leaning decrease of your choice), you can knit this scarf.

I'm still waiting to hear back from knitty about my other secret project. It should be soon, either way, since I believe the Winter issue is due out in early December. Keep your toes crossed!