Mostly Knitting

In Which Sarah Tries to Catch Up on a Whole Month of Blogging in One Post...

Posted by on Monday 17 December, 2007 12:56 PM

You know the old saying "it never rains but it pours"? Well they forgot about lightning.

After being ill for 6 weeks and taking another week to recover from the medication, our power and phone lines were hit by lightning. Luckily most of our electrical gear was unplugged but we still lost a LOT of gear, including 2 computers and our network modem (an xbox, tv set top box, vcr, a couple of power boards and the network card in my computer), which is why I've only just got back to blogging.

After all that here I am, healthy, online and with a whole lot of stuff to blog about :)

Here goes.

I found these at the op shop:

and bought this pattern to use some of it :)

I spun these:

Fingering/sport weight 22 micron merino. The fibre was from Margaret Peel's Fibre Supplies which is now closed, but I'm very grateful my sister taught me how to hand paint roving before she closed the business :)

I also spun these from some silk/merino batts that I blended. The fibres are 52 percent silk and 48 percent wool. The top one is 2 ply fingering weight, which I have spun for weaving and the bottom one is 2 ply laceweight which I spun for a friend of mine.

This one actually has more purple than shows in the photo.

The laceweight is 120gm, balanced 2 ply, 30WPI, unknown yardage because it's too light and fine to measure accurately on my McMorran yarn balance

I made my father in law a watch cap using the pattern from The Any Yarn. Any Size Knit Hat Book.
The yarn is dk weight wool, the beige is a discontinued commercial yarn and the blue and orange are my handspun :)

I liked knitting him the watch cap so much that I knit him a beanie from the book too. The main yarn is a lovely handspun merino in brown with tiny flecks of other colours. I spun it from a bump that I bought from Virginia Farm Woolworks. I love Virginia Farm, their prices are amazing, the quality of their fibre is superb and I'm VERY fussy about both. The beige is the same yarn from the watchcap.

Our car broke down and I took photos of my Dad's dog for a future project :). His name was Gizmo but my Dad changed it to Rusty because he already has a cat called Gizmo and the poor little buggers were getting very confused. He's a pound dog, which is why he already had a name.

Why did I take photos of my Dad's dog? I'm going to knit him a David Brown tractor for his birthday and I thought it would be cute to make a little needle felted Dad and his dog to sit on it. Dad takes his dog for rides on his tractor in the grand parade when they do open days at the Steam and Machinery Museum that he belongs to.

There were happy tears when Rusty's previous owners saw him on the back of the tractor at one open day. They were really pleased to see that he's thoroughly spoilt by his new owner.

I had planned to knit the tractor for Dad for Christmas but nausea and trying to design and write a complicated pattern just don't go together so I bought his Chrissy present and put the project on hold.

I made two Extermmiknit daleks but I forgot to photograph them before I wrapped them up so I'll have to click some snaps on Christmas day when they're unwrapped. The pattern is utter genius. Everyone who likes Dr Who should make one :). I found that using a couple of magnetic strips and board to keep my place in each row was essential. I tried charting it but the chart was just too big to use effectively. I hate knitting bobbles but I really like this pattern. Besides, the bobbles are done in no time and the result is so worth it.

Finally (for this post), I made Chauncey by Dee Brown. I added the hat myself and I'll post the pattern when I can find out where I put the notes. The colourwork bits are a little tricky but you can fix any mess on the back before felting. When you felt it all the mess disappears.

Aside from the hat I also added little flower-loom flowers to the eyes with a button in the middle.

I have made some other things but they're not photographed yet. I'll try and get photos this afternoon!

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What a Hoot

Posted by on Wednesday 26 September, 2007 09:48 AM

Much website coding has been going on at chez knittingand when I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to blog a little project that I made the other day!

I made this little owl from leftover handspun yarn, following the pattern from "Have You Any Wool?" by Jan Messent. He's 9cm or 3.5 inches tall and those little flower buttons I used for the eyes make me really happy :)

I love Jan Messent's books. They're totally the kind of knitting books I wish I had as a kid, with all the wild ideas for knitting sheep and people, covering boxes, making pictures. All that creative discovery that wasn't present in patterns for knitting jumpers back then. Of course, we now have Horst Schulz, Debbie New and Australia has finally discovered Elizabeth Zimmermann so now those types of cool creative discoveries **are** to be found in knitting patterns for jumpers.

I've also started spinning one of the the merino/silks that I blended. I'm spinning a 2 ply laceweight yarn that will be a present for a friend.

This is two out of the eight balls of fibre (about 30gm out of 120gm) and it's taking ages but silk/merino is so lovely to spin laceweight that I don't care. The yardage is probably going to be enough to knit something quite substantial because of the amount of silk that's in it too.

Now I'm off to plan some video on making hairpin lace and then if I have any time left, I'll be scanning some vintage tatting patterns!

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DIY Yarn Design

Posted by on Sunday 16 September, 2007 11:43 AM

Before I go and finish the housework (I'm even bleaching the kitchen counters!), I wanted to show you how my last fibre blend turned out.

First of all I grabbed everything that was blue or green room a box in the living room (some of the fibre my sister gave me for Christmas last year) and came up with:

100gm blues & green kid mohair
25gm powder blue angora (I have more but 25g was enough for this blend)
150gm of kettle dyed kelly green merino
145gm dyed tussah silk

I divided everything into 12 and put them in little bags as "batt kits" so they'd all be approximately the same.

Here's what's in each batt kit:

Clockwise from the bottom middle: wool, turquoise and green kid mohair, coloured silks, blue kid mohair, powder blue angora.

I wasn't too sure about the angora at first so I took one "batt kit" and carded it up. I knew the colour was right but I wasn't sure whether the fluffiness of the angora would work with the sleek shine of the silk.

Still not sure, I took a bit and spun it up.

and got just the effect I was after (phew).

When plied and finished I'll have 420gm of fingering weight yarn. It's a shame I have no idea what I'm going to make with it. I don't plan on carding and spinning it just yet because I have other projects to finish first but it's all ready to go when I want to start it.

When it's dry I'll post a photo of the sample skein.

Now I guess I'm off to hang up the 3rd load of laundry, bleach the kitchen and clean the toilet (ewwww).

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Fluff

Posted by on Saturday 15 September, 2007 09:18 AM

In strict disregard of my promise that I would work on the website, I spent yesterday preparing fibre for spinning.

7am found me carding this silk and merino:

into this:

It's 58 percent silk and 42 percent merino with a total of 120gm. I've named it "Woodlands" because it makes me think of the colour of the trees at dusk. In fairytales :) I'm going to spin a 2 ply yarn. One ply has the colours blended quite well and the other will have them still quite distinct, but blending here and there.

I also predrafted 480gms of baby alpaca. I like to draft when I spin so my predrafting was just to add a little air and make it into balls of fibre so that it's easier to spin. This photo shows just a little of it.

I also stripped 100gm of hand painted merino into pencil roving (or thinner) so that I can spin it fingering-laceweight but still keep the colours clear.

I never thought I'd use the stash page on ravelry, but I figured that since I'm taking photos for the blog anyway I'd add the fibres and yarns to my stash page and I must say it's proving quite handy! Since I know at a glance what yarn and fibre I have I find that I have more ideas on how to use it instead of always going and buying yarn for new projects. I won't be adding all the stash as it's mostly oddballs from the op shop, but anything that gets snapped for the blog will go in :)

Here's a peek at my stash page for those who are patiently waiting for their ravelry beta invitation, or aren't interested in joining ravelry (click the image if you'd like a full size view):

Now, I fancy blending some more stash oddments into usable amounts. I think I'll tackle a pile of kid mohair, merino and silk in greens and blues. Hmmm, I wonder how some powder blue angora bunny would look with that...

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Yarn, Yarn, Yarn

Posted by on Sunday 9 September, 2007 05:41 PM

It will be no surprise to my regular readers that my pledge to craft from my stash for 2007 went tits up at least a couple of months ago, so I have absolutely no guilt about showing you my new yarn :-)

Firstly, because it's the most important, some handspun!

I spun this from stash roving so it wouldn't have counted as a purchase anyway :-P

It's 168 grams of 2 ply, 12 ply weight corriedale and it's so soft and bouncy that I love it. There's also a huge amount of yardage so it will make a nice watch cap for someone.

Yesterday we went to Reverse Garbage in Marrickville and I picked up some fabric (also sending the stash challenge boobs skyward), and I found some cool vintage yarns at the Bower, which is another shop in the amazingly cool Addison Road Community Centre.

Two one ounce balls of Patonyle in a lovely light orange

One ounce of another unnamed sock yarn in a cool vintage brown

and

50 grams of Villawool Tivoli in pink. Cotton/Viscose/Linen mix.

I'm thinking the orange and brown should be stripy fingerless mitts for me and the pink maybe doll clothes for a rag doll I want to knit. Either that or an accent yarn for a hat.

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to craft only from stash materials when you buy 99.9 percent of your supplies from recycling centres, bric-a-brac stores, op shops and garage sales. I mean, if you don;t buy it right away then it's gone and you'll probably never see it again, right? So I'm not going to bother trying any more. Besides, I found a really cool quill patchwork technique in one of the Weldon's reprint books that will make an amazing cushion front. It uses a lot of fabric so that will put paid to a sizable chunk of the fabric oddment stash!

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Eyecandy!

Posted by on Tuesday 16 January, 2007 11:56 AM

3 ply variegated wool for a knit and felt hat.

First I drum carded the individual colours, then made them into batts with one big stripe of each colour. I made a total of four batts.

Then I broke each batt in half widthways and predrafted it from the sides to keep each colour distinct. Finally, I spun the singles (they fit onto one bobbin) and then navajo plied.

I haven't weighed the skein, but it's enough for the hat :-)

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Knit, Spin, Shop, Squee!

Posted by on Monday 15 January, 2007 01:45 PM

A few different updates today (most of the photos tomorrow)!

Knit

I have been working on the raglan jumper whenever some "grab it and go" mindless knitting is required and I'm up to the armholes already! I'll probably start a sleeve tonight and post a new progress pic when I have something a bit more interesting to show than just a tube. You have to love kid's jumpers for a quick knitting fix :-)

Spin

I have fnished the yarn for one of the hats for my book and have spun all of one of the plies for the other one. At first I was spinning yarn for two hats, then three, and now I'm back to two because I found the perfect yarn to use for the other one in my stash and will be using that instead. I can't wait to get the book finished and into the market. It's been such a long project but I know that incorporating what *was* going to be volume two into the second edition of volume one and making it a single volume was the right thing to do.

Shop

Much unpacking has been done and we came to the realisation yesterday that we desperately need more book cases. We have destashed several thousand books*, but since one book case was destroyed in the move from Victoria, we still don't have enough shelf space to keep all the books off the floor.

Squee!

So we took our limited budget and went op shopping, where we found four good bookcases (goddess I hope they're enough), and most of these:

I say "most" because I ordered Oma's Strickgeheimnisse from "Caryll Designs", where you get excellent service, even in the middle of Christmas!

:-)

I'll be putting the public domain stuff on the website one day (I have hundreds of booklets to put online, so "one day" is as definite a date as I'm willing to make), but the Burda insert is obviously not in the public domain and I doubt Kunststrick Muster #29 is either. I'll be researching the latter as much as I can, to make sure.

Well, that's it for today's exciting news! I'm off to find something to ply one of my hat singles with, and have some lunch.

* A conservative estimate...

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The Right Tools Can Make All The Difference in the World

Posted by on Saturday 23 December, 2006 07:46 AM

Over the past year or two I had become extremely frustrated with my Majacraft Suzie Pro spinning wheel. Whilst I could spin a lovely 2 ply dk weight, and even a nice fingering weight 2 ply, I just couldn't get enough twist in my singles for what I really love to knit with: laceweight 2 ply and thinner.

I finally decided "damn the cost" and asked Jenny from the very fabulous Virginia Farm Woolworks how much a high speed kit for my wheel would cost and she told me about something I'd never heard of before: the high speed whorl! At about 1/6 the cost of the high speed kit, I decided to try it (and some cotton carders and the new Ashford carding book, but that's a review for after Christmas)

:-P

My lovely new little whorl arrived yesterday morning, so I put it on my wheel, which was incredibly easy to do with just a twist of an alan key (which you get with the whorl). I really like the ease of changing the whorl because I definitely still want to spin the occasional dk and heavier 2 ply, and you can't do that very easily with the high speed whorl.

My heart's desire is to spin a 2 ply yarn akin to a commercial 2/22. Yep, that stuff that lace knitters love. Curious to see if it was possible with the high speed whorl I decided to pick up a bit of fluff and have a go. (It isn't possible to spin a usable yarn that fine with the regular whorl no matter how fast you treadle, unless you're using a very long staple fiber).

Here's a photo of me plying the yarn:

At the top is my handspun single, the bottom ply is a commercial polyester machine embroidery thread.

The finished yarn, sort of life size (on my monitor anyway). The green yarn is an Aussie 8 ply weight commercial yarn (dk weight to the non-Aussies).

My rating of the high speed whorl? Absolutely brilliant!

My next spinning project will be the same weight as the above thread, one ply a lavender wool/silk mix and the other ply a bright white mulberry silk. I want to knit something fabulous using my skull and crossbones lace stitch.

In knitting news, I finally got around to blocking the "No Longer Badly Written Doily". I changed the colour in the first photo so you could see the pattern better.

and here is it's real colour.

I didn't need to use pins to block it because it's mercerised cotton and this particular brand (Coats Petra 8) seems to block out nicely without pins. The difference in lace knitting after blocking will never cease to entertain me. Before blocking it always looks like something the cat hacked up, after blocking it's always gorgeous.

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Woops!

Posted by on Sunday 19 November, 2006 02:10 PM

Whilst checking my blog, I found the following pictures were in an unpublished post*, so I thought I'd better give them their moment of glory! They are a closeup of a hat that I knit, showing the variations in colour on one of my "plain" green handspun yarns.

I'm pretty sure that the purpose of these photos was to introduce the technique that I use to make my "scrap batts" more interesting, ie: carded batts for spinning that I make with lots of leftover bits of roving and felting batts & various fibre oddments.

I hope to get my drum carder out of storage next week, along with some fibre oddments so I can add the article soon!

*This post was started 11 months ago. Better late than never

:-)

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Lots of Pictures, Not Much Talking

Posted by on Monday 30 October, 2006 06:33 PM

Since pictures speak 1000 words and I'm in a hurry I'm going to let my pictures do all most of the talking.

Clown-in-a-blender singles:

I had to hand card the red and blue with horrible old hand cards because my drum carder is in storage until we find our own house. I'm so dedicated...

:-P

Stuff I've finished spinning:

The top is the blended clown, the bottom is some laceweight green/blue merino plied with sea green machine embroidery thread. You can see I spun far too much blue and green for the clown blend. As yarn I must say I think it's quite disgusting but I spun it so I could make a tweed-look knit and felt hat and I think that it will work well. My favourite from the clown blend is the plain green.

:-)

Now for some closeups:

And finally, here's a design I'm thinking of embroidering on a table-runner/doily in case I ever get a nice dressing table, or to look good on my 1950's kitchen cabinet that I have for my studio. If I ever get a studio...

So, what do you think? :-)

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Insects and Mice and Mogs, Oh My!

Posted by on Thursday 5 October, 2006 03:38 PM

First, the mog (who until 30 seconds ago was stretched out behind me, trying to push me off the bed. I had to give him a cuddle and move him because he was doing such a good job...)

That's "Mr" Apricot, my little strawberry blonde buddy. He'll be 5 years old in early November, but he still doesn't look fully grown. The receptionist at the vet dubbed him "Mr" Apricot (instead of just Apricot) because he's never been the most masculine of kitties (especially since he was there to have his pockets pinched <G>) and they all thought he was a girl with a name like that. Hell, with a name like that, EVERYBODY thinks he's a girl...

Now everybody go "awww" and we can move on to "ewwww"...

Have you ever been happily playing with fibre and found "evidence" among the lovely coloured fluffiness? No, not moths, mouse poo! Ewwww.

This is what one of my garbage bags full of stash oddments looks like now that I've washed it:

and from the other side cos it's so pretty now there's no mouse poo in it!

Had it been an unwashed fleece (of low quality, cough), I would have just thrown it away. Possibly.

OK, probably not.

But with all those pretty colours, 22 micron merino and silk and everything, I DEFINITELY wasn't throwing all this away (except for the bit with the actual mouse poop in it. That went straight in the bin!)

What am I going to do with all of these luscious oddments you ask? (Sure you did, I heard you).

Well, as soon as finish carding it by hand (because my drum carder is still in storage), this bit

is going to be a nice multicolour clown-in-a-blender yarn, complete with tutorial. The colour scheme was inspired by a cool bug my Dad pointed out to me in the petrol station carpark yesterday. Inspiration really can come from anywhere!

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Book Review

Posted by on Thursday 5 October, 2006 10:21 AM

Before I tried it, I wouldn't have thought that hand spinning yarn is something that can be learnt from a book, but that's exactly how I got hooked 10 years ago*!

Spin to Knit by Shannon Oakley (AUD$34.95) is a new book published by Interweave Press that aims to get more knitters addicted to knitting with their own handspun yarns.

Not a pretentious tome that aims to be the difinitive guide to spinning, Spin to Knit aims to get you started so that you'll want to explore what handspun yarns can bring to your knitting.

The first half of the book covers the very basics of learning to spin with a drop spindle and wheel, what the different qualities of wool are, how to wash and prepare that "free fleece" you just couldn't say "no" to even though you don't know how to spin yet (if you read the spinning livejournal you'll find that happens more often than you'd think!), and the names used to describe it.

The second half of the book is dedicated to knitting with your handspun yarns. It not only has an array of patterns using some very different yarns (from gorgeous laceweight airiness to Pluckyfluff art yarn), but also covers some of the aspects of knitting with handspun that isn't quite perfect: how to balance and overspun yarn with a careful choice of stitch pattern being one of the most important to new spinners.

This isn't a book for those who already know a great deal about spinning, but that isn't it's purpose. Those of us who already enjoy knitting with our own unique handspun yarns want the rest of you to join us!

But, as with all books you have to check it out for yourself to see if it suits you, so visit the website at http://www.spintoknit.com for more info.

*The book that got me hooked was called "Homespun, Hand Knit", also published by Interweave.

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Goodies!

Posted by on Monday 8 August, 2005 02:35 PM

I just got these in the mail! They are from the left: Sari silk waste. Top right: Ecospun recycled plastic (it's as lovely and soft as the description implied), and denim waste. Now I just have to decide how to spin and dye it...

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Latest Spinning

Posted by on Tuesday 21 June, 2005 04:56 PM

Regular readers might remember this travesty that I posted about a while ago.

Well, not only did I find a loving home for those mega bright skeins (in exchange for some lovely sedate sage green wool), but I also finished spinning the rest of it the way I should have spun it in the first place.

11 skeins of 90% mohair/10% trilobal nylon, 2 ply, fingering weight, waiting to be knit on teeny tiny needles.

I had 3 skeins each of the light and bright blue so I overdyed one of each with yellow to make the green skeins, since I had wasted all my green on the travesty, and I overdyed one of each with a mix of Ashford scarlet/purple and hot pink to make a dark bluish purple skein and a dark reddish purple skein.

Each skein is about 28gms (an ounce) to 40gms (about an ounce and a half) so there should be plenty to make a really big entrelac scarf on 2.5 - 3mm needles. Or something.

:-)

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The Cool Kids Are Knitting With Handspun

Posted by on Monday 11 April, 2005 11:32 PM

Sure, you don't *have* to knit with handspun to be cool, but it helps!

:-)

I like to read knitting blogs, but I'm always "extra" interested when the knitting being done is with handspun yarns. It's probably because I live in Australia and the largest percentage of knitbloggers are from the US using yarns I've never seen, or couldn't afford. I just can't get terribly excited over yarn I can't relate to.

On the other hand, I can relate to handspun yarns. I understand wraps per inch, the importance of how much twist or the number of plies to heat retention and wearability, the reasons for using particular breeds of wool, and even though my "cute" threshold is low (and usually reserved for felines or my sister's bottle fed goats), I have even been known to go "Awwww" over photos of the occasional lamb or cria.

Handspinning is also becoming much more popular, now that the new crop of knitters from 2001 onwards are discovering the joys of making their own yarns, and the old crop of knitters (ie: everyone else) have been conned into trying spinning by those of us who have known it's secret joys for years.

For those of you who haven't yet learnt that making your own yarn means you can have any yarn you want (!!!), check out what some of the cool kids are making. Then go and get yourself some nice Australian merino roving and a nice spindle and see if you'd like to learn to make your own yarn too.

The very cool Joe is making a classic crew neck jumper.

The revolutionary (yet still cool) Mon is knitting a nifty winter vest with her tres chic designer spinnage (check out the March 28th entry). You can see a better pic of the yarn on March 20th because her camera isn't feeling well. I couldn't cope if my camera became ill, but Mon seems to be dealing with it quite well...

Claudia made the world's coolest pockets for her handspun jacket.

Wendy couldn't possibly spin fast enough to keep up with her knitting output, but she recently finished a very pretty mohair scarf and this beautiful shawl.

I could go on forever, but in the interest of sleep, I'll leave you to explore the world of spinning for yourself.

:-)

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Spinning Stuff

Posted by on Thursday 7 April, 2005 11:16 AM

I did a bit of spinning last night while watching Battlestar Galactica (please tell me I'm not the only person who's favourite character is Starbuck?)

Anyway, here's what I've done so far out of what I think is 400gm rainbow coloured handpaint.

It might be more than 400gm, I forgot to weigh it.

I'm going to ply this with the same 22 micron merino in a solid blue and it's going to be another jumper for Miss Brittany. I don't know whether it will be a jumper this year or next year, but it will be one eventually!

If I get it done quickly and it knits to gauge, I'll use the Moggy Mania pattern without the colourwork. If it doesn't knit to gauge I'll use the same raglan jumper plan from Knitting in the Old Way and work it up in the proper gauge to suit the yarn.

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