Experiments--socks and egg biscuits--and a Wooden Quilt

Years ago I spun a variegated purple roving into a two ply yarn by splitting down the middle to make two similar yarns.  I thought that I was going to make mittens, and I tried once!  But the mittens were ripped out and the yarn has sat in my stash for a long time!  I decided to try some toe up socks with the yarn and I had just enough!

These were knit from Wendy D. Johnson's Toe-up Socks book, and if you look closely at my toes you can tell that I didn't follow the pattern very well!  I'm not a big fan of toe up socks.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe it's just because I don't have much experience with them.  At any rate, given how little yarn I had, I knew that toe-up was the way to go.  I'm pleased that they worked...I'm still not a fan of the technique.

Here's another experiment....eggs in a biscuit.  For those of you familiar with Scotch eggs (hard boiled eggs in sausage), this is the same idea, but with a biscuit around the egg.  The idea was from one of my co-workers....she was super excited to try this with soft boiled eggs.  I don't like runny yolks, so I used medium boiled eggs.  The end result...they were yummy, but not yummy enough to make them every day!  They were a lot of work!

And, lastly, a hearty congratulations to one of my associates at Athens Art Gallery.  Ben Wilson is a woodworker at the gallery and was commissioned to make this quilt from wood.  It is beautifully done!  If you are local, it is on display at the gallery for most of April.

Dragon Skin (aka textured yarn and knitting)

It all started with a stop at my local yarn store.  Really, that's all it was--a stop to see what was new and what was pretty!  I came home with something only a bit unusual.  It was a length of wool roving dyed in beautiful fall colors.  There was no makers mark on the label, just the type of wool and the weight.   I thought I would look at it for a while and then put it it my stash.

But I didn't. My oldest came down with a bug that kept her home from school for two or three days.  What did I do while taking care of my sick one?  I began to spin.

This lovely merino roving was irregularly dyed.  There was no true repeat of colors.  The colors did not extend across the width of the roving.  It was very random!  I finally decided that the best way to show off these beautiful colors would be to spin the roving into a thick and thin yarn.  (This decision was heavily influenced by Sarah Anderson's book The Spinner's Book of Yarn Design, where she starts her students off by spinning thick and thin as an exercise for learning control over drafting....It's a cool trick!)  I split the roving lengthwise into strips and spun my colorful singles.  It was so much fun!  It was just spinning for the love of it! 

To keep the colors separate, I plied the thick and thin single with a thin single of black Polwarth yarn.  My friend Wendy Feller gave me this fleece and I am slowly combing through the wool.  It spins beautifully!

Here's the yarn in it's thick and thin glory!  The thick parts aren't 100% evenly spaced, but they are regular and I was pleased!

Deciding what to do with a thick and thin yarn came next.  I ended up using a Ravelry pattern "Baktus" as my starting point.  To make the piece more textured, I used stockinette stitch for the bulk of the work, but for the thick sections I purled making a pronounced bump in the fabric.  :)

Here's the scarf and a skein of yarn:

The headband is knit as a moebius strip.  I followed Cat Bordhi's cast on technique (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVnTda7F2V4 ) on a circular needle (us#5).  The piece grows from the center width-wise towards the edges.  It was a fun knit.  I had to shift from mostly knitting to mostly purling at the half-way point around the loop in order to keep the fabric all (mostly) stockinette.  The transition is just visible in the band.  My finger marks the transition point--to the right are purl stitches (the back of the stockinette fabric) to the left are knit stitches.

 By twisting the headband at the transition, the band appears to be all stockinette stitch.

Lastly, I made a pair of fingerless mitts to complete the set.  I didn't follow any one pattern to knit these.  They start with  k1 p1 ribbing at the wrists, then shift to stockinette stitch with an increase for the thumb.  After I knit enough to get to the base of the thumb, I bound off the stitches I had added in to make the hole for the thumb.  Then it was more stockinette stitch and a little bit more of k1p1 ribbing around the fingers and Ta-Da! they were done!

This seems like a lot to get from one bit of roving!  The dyed merino roving was 6 oz.  I didn't weigh how much Polwarth I used, but I'm guessing it was 3-4 oz, maybe even 5oz. For 9-12 oz of yarn, it seems more reasonable to have been able to make so much.  The best part is how much I enjoyed the making of each part!

PS.  My oldest daughter really likes dragons.  She has a few figurines, she draws them in her spare time...When I gave her the scarf and made the headband she was trying to come up with a name for them.  After a few false starts (including "sparkles"--blech!), she said "Dragon skin" and the name has stuck.  The pieces are bumpy, yet smooth and mottled, but coordinated.  And, because they are 100% wool and wool is self-extinguishing, they are partially fire proof-- definitely Dragon Skin!  :)

Quilt Top #2 and Knit Socks

A few years ago, I started a major Christmas Quilt project.  For years my family has snuggled under a Christmas Quilt and read advent stories during the month of December.  At some point I noticed that we were outgrowing our quilt.  We didn't all fit under it, or on the couch!  So, I dug out the instructions for the family Christmas Quilt and began making squares for three more quilts. I finished one last year and gave it to my oldest daughter.  As of today, quilt #2 is on the frame and is being quilted.  Whew!  I have one more top to finish piecing and then I'll quilt that one and call the project done.  This year's top is for my son's quilt and I invited him to decide how to place the blocks.  He was thrilled about the assignment and talked to himself as he made decisions about where should this block go and what about these two...  It was fun to watch!

It turns out that this pair of socks are also for my son.  His favorite color is yellow.  Check out how well the stripes matched on the cuffs!  I was impressed!  Unfortunately, the yarn had four or five knots (yikes!) after I hit the heel on the second sock.  But, as my son says, "that's ok, Mom".

The socks are a simple knit 2, purl 2 rib from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks.  They are knit from the top down on double pointed needles.

Color Work--Photo as Inspiration

The new hat in use with the brim turned up.

 This past spring I taught a color blending class at "The Fiber Event" in Greencastle, IN.  The first part of the class was mixing a 12-color color wheel from three primary colored wools (red, blue, & yellow).  The second part was blending colors taken from a printed/photo source.


My inspiration was a postcard from Kenai Fjords, Alaska.    After identifying the various colors in the photo (I ignored the text colors), I discovered that there were too many colors and narrowed my focus on the seals and the rock where they are sunbathing.

At this point, my notes become extremely sketchy!  The basic process is that I used the colors I saw in the photo to choose my rovings, blended the rovings into rolags and spun them into the yarns I used.  My choice of knitting patterns (this is based on the "Golden Pear" baby hat from ravelry) adds some extra blending as two colors are used to knit a transition area between the single color segments.

Going mostly by memory and what I see in the yarn, the rocks at the bottom of the photo are represented by the dark brown at the band of the hat. They are a combination of a natural brown wool, Romney wool dyed black, and maybe some grey wool. The mossy rocks above the seals were interpreted by blending the same natural brown wool used for the previous rocks, but blended with some green dyed wools (and maybe other colors...I really don't remember the details as well as I would like!).  The seals in the sun are represented by the copper and cream band of the hat.  I blended copper colored mohair top with cream colored fibers, probably undyed Romney.  I intentionally limited the amount of blending so that the resulting yarn has lots of color variation, mimicking the dappled effects of the light on the seals

 

For me, letting go of the literal imagery of the photo was a challenge.  I wanted to create seals and rocks!  It was hard to let go of that and I know that no one else will see the seals on the rock in this hat, but when I look at it, I remember the source for the color combination and I can see the seals. 

Projects--a collection

Blocking lace.  I love the effect of blocking pieces of knit lace.  The yarn over holes open up and the stockingette stitch areas become smooth...  I love it!

 Fixing mistakes.  Sooner or later I usually fix my mistakes.  It wasn't until I began to weave that I finally understood that if I could see a mistake then I would always be able to see the mistake.  More often then not, there is no effective cover-up for a mistake.  This one was a denting error, ten threads in from the edge on a warp that had already given me fits.  I tried to brush it off..."It will never show with the thick weft..."  It showed.  So, I stopped weaving, pulled out the weft, fixed the denting error and began to weave again.  It looks much better without the error!

Sewing.  My daughter decided that she needed a new dress.  She did some shopping and came home empty handed.  She went through my pattern books and found a dress design she liked.  I slowly began to work on it.  This pattern is from a collection by "The Golden Rule".  Each pattern is printed in miniature and the seamstress enlarges it based on the measurements of the wearer.  So I measured.  I drafted.  I made a muslin (I knew I would need it!  The pattern was older and I was sure the fit would be different from my daughter's preferred style....) I modified the pattern and finally made the dress.  I had to promise to not put her head in the final picture, but here it is.  The collar is gathered at the neck and comes down to a point at the center front and back.  The purple is amazing with her reddish-blond hair!

Knitting, frogging, and knitting again.  I would like to knit shawls.  I have a little "shawlette" that is wonderful to wear around the house.  It's just enough to warm my back and shoulders, but not enough to get in the way of doing things.  I have a new shawl book, so I found a pattern I liked and cast on.  Of course I modified it...and in the end, I didn't like it.  This is a traditional triangle shawl with a point at the center back.  I'm not fond of the style (why did I cast on?) and I didn't like how stiff the finished fabric felt.  I kept going, hoping that things would get better, but they didn't.  In this photo, the shawl is off the needles and on a string so I could wrap it around me and see how it worked.  It didn't.  It got to sit on the table for a few hours while I did some research and chose a new shawl design.  Then it got frogged.

This was one of the reasons I frogged the shawl.  I knit a sample with an extra ball of the same batch of yarn on bigger needles.  It was so much softer and had much better drape.  I tried one more needle size after this picture.  Swatching is really helpful!

In my research to save my shawl, I discovered a new webpage:  Laylock Knitwear Design.  The shawls are fun, but scroll down and look on the right hand side for the "Shawl Knitting Cheat Sheet".  Wow!  It's a single page pdf with instructions for make five different shapes of shawls all from the same three stitch cast-on!  I've decided to make a "heart-shaped" or crescent shawl because it will have longer ends for tying.  And, I made some swatches:

Neither of these have been blocked, but they are here anyway!  On the right is the pattern as written by Laylock Knitwear.  On the left is my modified version--no yarn-over holes and a three stitch garter edge.  The knitting is progressing.  I hope there will be another shawlette in my drawer soon!

Dog Sweaters

 A fellow I know from church needed a new sweater for his little dog.  He knows I am a fiber artist and spoke to me at one point last year, but nothing came of the idea of making a dog sweater.  This year, however, we connected and I have made two sweaters.

The green sweater is an old one that the dog has worn for years.  The special part is the sleeves for both the front and back legs.  The replacement is the blue one.  The yarns are 100% acrylic (blue) and an acrylic/wool blend (grey). The sweater was knit in 6 parts--4 legs, the back, and the chest--sewn together and stitches picked up to knit the ribbing for the neck.

If I were to redo the sweater, I would change the sleeves.  I used stockinette stitch for them and they have a tendency to curl.  I used a broken rib stitch for the body and it doesn't curl.  The broken rib stitch would have been better for the sleeves.

I made a second sweater for the dog.  This one is the one I really wanted to do!  It has a woven back piece with knit sleeves, neck and chest.  I was surprised that it took just as long to make this one as it did to make the knitted one.  

I crocheted around the top edge of the woven piece.  The piece has been felted so I don't think it would have frayed, but the crochet gave it a much more finished edge.  I sewed the underside of the piece rather than crochet on both sides of the edge.

I am hoping to get photos of the sweaters on the dog when the weather is cooler.  I'll post them here if I get them!

Contiguous Sleeve Top Down Knitting Project

 Look at the smile on my girl!  She finally got to wear her new sweater today!

This is one that we designed together.  It is based on the Tomboy Cardigan by Elena Nodel, but has been modified.  The vertical ribbing was removed, a garter stitch waist band was added as well as a lace pattern for the bottom half of the sweater.  I was hoping to make this long sleeved, but my co-designer definitely wanted to keep them short!

The yarn is 100% mercerized cotton "Saucy" by Reynolds.  From a spinner's point of view it is an interesting yarn because it is cabled--three two-ply yarns were twisted or cabled together to make the final yarn.  It's roughly a worsted weight yarn and it knit well on US7 needles.

The neat thing about the construction of this sweater is that it is a top down knit (the cast-on edge is under the collar), but it has set-in sleeves.  By the time I got to the bottom of the sweater all that was left to knit were the two garter stitch bands on the sleeves and the collar.  That was it!  Top down knitting is GREAT!

I came across this type of top down knitting on ravelry.  Susie Myers developed it and a number of designers are making use of it.  Susie has a tutorial available if you want to try the method and make a doll sized sweater. 

I love the fact that this means I can use top down knitting techniques and NOT make a raglan sweater!

Progress--Knitted Lace Blanket Edging

Remember this piece of handspun knitted lace?  It just got a new home--on the edge of the handspun, handwoven blanket I made! 







I machine stitched two rows of straight stitching across the top of the blanket, cut the fringe close and carefully turned it to the back and sewed it down.  Then I added the knitted lace and carefully sewed it to the seam, making sure to cover the trimmed warp ends.

The blanket is pinned to the ironing board cover and each of the tips of the lace have been stretched (2.5" from the blanket) to show the pattern.  I had sprayed the lace edge with water before I pinned it out and sprayed it again once I finished pinning.  Now it's back to knitting while the lace dries.  I have a bottom edge that needs covering too!

Hanspun Wool--Bits and Pieces

 Summer is in full swing here at my house.  My kids are staying up late and getting up late and my quiet project time seems to have disappeared!

This bit of lace edging is one of my new projects.  I was able to knit during an episode of StarTrekVoyager last night (we've been watching them regularly as a family.  It's kind of fun to watch a show like this all together!).  I have to keep track of my progress row by row or else I get distracted and am lost.  I've also been using a "life-line" (it's the blue cord in the photo).  At the end of every complete pattern in the lace, I pull out the cord and thread it back into the new starting point.  So far I've only had to rip back to the life line once!

The edging pattern is from the book "The Best of Knitter's Magazine, Shawls and Scarves".  It was designed as part of a christening blanket by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.  I'm using handspun, brownish-grey wool on Brittany 3.5 mm straight needles.  The lace is springy, stretchy, and as you can see in the photo, shows the lace stitches beautifully (even without blocking!).

The goal is to knit two forty inch long strips of the lace and use it as a blanket edging.  I wove two greens and a grey into some striped yardage recently and want to turn it into a throw blanket. 

The plan is to cut the yardage into two strips and to piece them together (dark green as the outer edges).  The knitted lace will help hide the raw warp ends at the top and bottom edges of the blanket.

We'll see how it turns out.  Right now they are just bits and pieces of a project in the works!

T-shirt neck Ribbing Removal

My great aunt loves t-shirts, but hates the ribbing around the neck. It used to be that she would take her shirts to a seamstress who would do the work for her. This week she brought her new shirt to me.

In theory, I knew that this job could be done. --Remove the ribbing. Turn the neck fabric under twice and sew.--But, I had never done this before and I was full of trepidation! After all, this was my great aunt's recorder orchestra t-shirt and I didn't want to mess it up!

A quick google search was unfruitful. Lots of people showed how to add a contrasting neck after removing the ribbing, but I didn't find any that just turned the t-shirt fabric under.

Out came one of my old and almost dead t-shirt--the '93-'94 MHC physics t-shirt that features "Fred the scary grad student" on the back. I used it as my test. I was pleased to see that there was enough stretch in the shirt fabric that the job was pretty straight forward. I took a deep breath and proceeded to cut and sew my aunt's shirt. And it worked! Now to get it back to her so she can wear it! :)

The details: I cut the ribbing off close to the stitching on the back of the neck. At the front center I cut ~3/8" below the lowest line of stitching and curved it to meet the cut at the back. I then used pins to mark the fold line, 3/8" from the cut edge, and ironed the fold. From the inside, I made the second fold to hide the cut edge and pinned it roughly every inch or inch and a half. The blind-stitch foot with its center vertical part made it easy to keep the stitching straight. I used a long stitch--3.5-- on my wonderful, old elna supermatic.


And, I finished the hat for my son. I think that his choice of using the dark green and variegated green yarns in an alternating pattern worked great! I love how these worsted weight yarns knit up so quickly! This hat was on and off the needles in less than a week. That is amazingly fast compared to the months of sock knitting for my husband's size 13 feet!

A little bit of this...

A little bit of this...a little bit of that...

One of the discussion groups I follow recently touched on the topic of French Spindles. A few youtube videos later and I went off and whittled myself a spindle. This particular spindle is very light weight and doesn't spin very well. Maybe I should invest in better tools!














With my husband's socks finished, I have started (and finished) some other knitting projects. This one, in worsted weight acrylic, went on and off the needles last week. It's a "slouch" hat for my oldest daughter. She loves yellow. She hates wool. I had this yarn in my stash--it's leftover from my niece's Harry Potter scarf years ago!--viola! One hat ready for winter!











Here's the hat on my head. I think it looks better on my daughter, but she was already in bed by the time I took this photo!

















And here's the next hat. This one is a simple k3, p2 ribbed hat for my son. The neat thing is his choice of colors. He told me he wanted a turquoise colored hat. I had him point to things that were in the right color range and then went to my stash to see what I could find. After a few false starts, he chose this very dark green and very light variegated green. When I started talking about how to use the yarns, ie. what kind of striping he wanted in the hat, he very clearly told me how he wanted the two colors woven together one after the other. I was skeptical, but knit a little color swatch. It looked great! Now the hat is underway! Hooray!

Tactile Projects

This is one of those moments when I wish photos allowed for tactile experiences. This terry cloth/pile sample has been washed and I love how it feels!








And this is my latest, finished knitting project: "The Proverbial Cap" by Meg Swansen. It is an exercise in twisted stitch knitting where the knit stitches are knit backwards or twisted and there are many single stitch cable-type crossovers. I've wanted to try this for some time and finally got a copy of Interweave Knits Fall 2010 magazine which has the pattern for this cap and a number of different suggestions for working this type of knitting. The yarn is Cascade 220...I know, I know...it's a commercial yarn! However, I really wanted a solid color yarn to show off the texture of the patterns and I needed a yarn that I didn't care about ruining in case I had to rip it out multiple times. It took me about 10 rows to try a non-cable-needle assisted cable, but I did it and enjoyed it!

A Plethora of Projects

My blog posts have dwindled due to the nature of much of my projects lately. There was a pair of pants for my son (a Christmas present), a set of Barbie clothes for my daughter (a Christmas present), a wall hanging made of t-shirts and machine quilted for my husband (a Christmas present), and a pair of socks for me (a Stocking stuffer)....There seems to be a theme here!

I'll start with the socks because I have a photo of them. This is yarn that I dyed in the workshop with Rita Petteys back in May. It is a 100% merino wool, lace weight yarn. I'm not used to knitting with lace weight yarns, and these socks had almost 100 stitches per round! Needles to say, it has taken a long time to get these done! The socks were knit with two different patterns from Sensational Knitted Socks by Schurch. I knit the lace pattern first. After I got it done, I paused my sock knitting to work on my mittens for Alia (that eventually got frogged and sewn out of non-itchy polyeseter fleece) and I got a lesson in color/pattern combinations. So, by the time I came back to knit sock #2, I tried a different pattern (the basket-weave pattern in the top left sock in the photo). I liked the effect of the basket-weave pattern better than the lace. I thought that it showed the colors of the yarn better. But, when they are on my feet and I am looking at them from about 5' away, they both look just fine. Go figure! ;)



Here's the wall hanging for my husband. A friend of mine makes quilts from t-shirts and she is often sewing on the binding during storytime at the library. I love her sense of design and the way her use of scraps and pieces in between the big blocks of t-shirt art unifies her quilts. (Check out the 4th picture down on the link) Needless to say, I wanted to try my hand at this. I rescued two t-shirts from the rag bag, figured out how to prepare my machine for free motion quilting (actually, I knew how to make my machine ready...It's just that this time when I tried to make the feed dog covers go on, they actually did! Hooray!), and did some quilting. It was fun and I'm looking forward to doing more!

Frogged Mittens

I used to knit regularly and I thought that I remembered how to knit mittens. The mitten on the right looks ok from the backside, but it was too narrow across the hand and the thumb opening was huge!!

I admitted defeat with the mittens and got out a knitting book, made some calculations and started again--this time with a pattern and a decorative stitch. That's the mitten on the left. I like the decorative stitch, I really do, but it doesn't show the colors of the yarn very well.

Both of these mittens got ripped out or frogged and I started again. I got the body of the new mitten (knit with a pattern, but no decorative stitch) done and had my daughter try it on for size.

The first words out of her mouth were, "Mom, it's itchy".

Argh!

At which point I gave up knitting these mittens for her, and found some scraps of polar fleece and made this bright pair of non-itchy mittens:


Hooray for non-itchy fabrics!

Pirate Patches

A couple of weeks ago it was my turn to teach preschool. The letter of the day was "P" and we went with a pirate theme. These cute eye patches are made from felt and some knitted "i-cord". They were a big hit!
















Arrrgh, Matey!

Surprise! Knitting Content!

This was a great photo shoot! My six, almost seven-year-old was thrilled to get new mittens (especially wool ones--they are good for keeping the hands warm while playing in the snow!). Here he is expressing mock surprise. I haven't knit for months!

The yarn: hand-dyed, handspun wool, Navajo plyed into a three-ply yarn.

Gauge: 5 sts/inch
Pattern taken from Ingrid & Inger Gottfridsson's The Mitten Book. (I used their directions for making the mittens, not any of their beautiful two color patterns.)

:)
Happy New Year!
Fibertwist

Misc. Fiber Things

My friend was given some llama fiber by her neighbor. She was so excited!! We picked out the longer locks, washed it, carded it, and blended it with some wool roving. I was pretty tired by this point! But the fiber nests spin beautifully!












This is my great aunt modeling her new vest. It's an 8-harness diamond huck lace pattern with bamboo warp and weft.
















This was my "short vacation" project. A pair of mittens for my growing three-year-old. The yarn is a commercial wool/silk blend.













And this is a project for a friend. She won some alpaca fiber at a fiber festival last year--it is beautiful and soft!! The goal is to spin the fiber into a yarn that can be woven with the two blue yarns. What kind of yarn will that be? At this point I haven't decided! It may be a straight two ply alpaca; it may be cabled with the blue yarns...