Moving

Hello all! I know it has been more than a month, but things have been so crazy in other parts of my life I haven't had much time to even think about crafting. Along with the normal stress of the fall holidays, this year we bought a house, moved, and put our old place up for sale.

Spare moments at home have been spent unpacking, cleaning the old place, getting the new yard in some shape before winter hits, and getting used to the new routine. And of course now that I have hit the third trimester, just getting the normal things done takes more out of me than usual.

On the crafting front, most of my supplies have been packed away in boxes, but I have been steadily working on the baby blanket. It looks like it will be fairly long and narrow (as blankets go) but I'm definitely pleased with how it is coming out. It should be done this week or next week, depending on how much I nap and how much I knit on my commute.

Today though, I finally unpacked all of my yarn and fiber stash. I have some nice new plastic crates to keep things organized, and a shelf set up for my crafting books. Everything is in the closet of our new guest bedroom/library. Unfortunately, I can't show you any of it because I can't find the thing I use to transfer pictures to my computer (the hazards of moving).

Here is a nice picture of a sheep doll to make up for it:

Easy sheep doll, made circa 2006

Yarn and fiber is unpacked, but tools are mostly still in boxes. They are almost all in the right room, at least.

My main concern is that the new space I have for crafting storage is smaller than my old space. Our new place is a bit bigger, but one of the bedrooms has been designated the new baby's room. It is also the place with the litter boxes currently, so I don't want to store knitting things there if I don't have to. The guest room, which has the yarn and such, also has a lot of bookshelves, as well as being smaller than the old guest room.

The place does have a very large shed in the back yard that would be perfect... if it were at all climate controlled. I don't want to store fleeces in an airless, hot room if I can avoid it. We could add electricity, basic heating and cooling, and make it a perfect storage space or even playroom. But that is a project for the future, I am afraid.

Whelp, nothing to do but get crafting and try to work my way through the stash!

Baby Blanket for January

Happy September everyone!

With the upcoming move to a larger place, and an exhausting trip to see the U.S. eclipse, I haven't had much time for knitting or spinning recently. And I'm not looking forward to packing up all of my stash either (and, you know, other things too), so this might be the last post for this month. But I did want to share my newest knitting project with you all.

I'm making a baby blanket for the little one we are expecting in January.

New baby will probably look something like this.

It's been awhile since I made a blanket, since they are so large. I'm generally a fan of working with smaller needles, and a blanket takes forever with small stitches. So I'm pretty sure that the last time I made a blanket was in high school.

My version of the Sunny Days Throw in blue and purple from Knitting Digest Magazine

I'm actually using the blanket to warm my toes at this very moment, so I've gotten my time out of it. I vaguely remember that I wanted to use the blue yarn from my stash (Wendy X-treme, a gift from someone else's destash) so I bought the lavender yarn to match it. I'm pretty sure the purple is wool, and it has shed like no tomorrow (it's a bulky single ply), but the label for it has been lost to the mists of time.

So, onto my current project. My husband picked out the yarn so that he could participate. I told him that he should get:
1) acrylic yarn, so that it is washable,
2) bulky yarn, so it won't take too long to make, and
3) one or two different colors, since most patterns are written for that.

Unfortunately, while his color sense is ok, he knows absolutely nothing about fiber arts. The yarns were both acrylic and bulky, but one was super-bulky, and one was just regular bulky/chunky. He got me Lion Brand's Hometown USA in silver and Big Twist brand's Chunky Yarn in blue-green. Beautiful together, both soft, both large and easy to knit up, but very different weights.

Well, crafting is nothing without a little challenge, so I went looking for a pattern that would combine the two in a nice way. I figured that a mosaic pattern would be great for two colors, not too difficult to remember (I'm still coming off of my lace shawl and wanted something a bit simple for now), and might even be better with two different weights. If I used the bulkier one as a highlight on the other, it might "pop" out of the fabric and give it a nice texture.

For my pattern, I decided on the Two Colour Slip Stitch Throw by Sandra Oakeshott. I kind of wanted to give a little love to a pattern that hasn't been done too often (according to Ravelry) - maybe someone will decide to try the pattern that I wrote as a cosmic payback. I hate the colors that she used for her example blanket, but I will be using turquoise and silver, so that part doesn't matter.

Anyhow, how does it look so far?

About 6" done on the blanket - a little more than one repeat

I think it is coming together nicely. The silver certainly pops out of the fabric, and the pattern is very easy to remember. I am out of practice with knitting using large needles (size 11, in this case) so it is a tad bit awkward, especially to purl. But it is going very fast with the easy pattern and the bulky yarn, so I am pretty sure that I will be able to finish in time.

One more look at the pattern close up and stretched out a bit:

Close up of the pattern

Woolen Spinning

 Back in April, I dyed some roving that I was not a huge fan of. I was not much of a fan of the dyed version either: that "kelly green" dye is so bright! I feel like anything I knit with it will make me look like a crossing guard.

Dyed ramboullet roving in a bowl to dry

But I didn't want to waste it. It was my first time dyeing roving. Well, what do you do with fiber you don't like very much? Experiment and practice new techniques!

And this roving is getting that treatment twice. First, dyeing practice, then a new spinning technique: long draw.

For those of you who don't know, long draw is a technique where you pull the fiber, one-handed, away from the orifice of the wheel. In short draw, where your second hand is pinching the fiber so that there is no twist in the drafting area. In long draw, the twist goes into the drafting area. But the twist will travel to the thin parts of the fiber, so pulling on it will only draft the thicker parts (this won't work with long stapled fiber, or if the fibers are aligned - like with top). In short draw, you smooth the wool with your second hand, but in long draw you let it stay "fuzzy". This will create a woolen yarn - airy, fuzzy, and warm, with poor stitch definition.

Now, of course, the spinning I'm doing can't be a "true" woolen prep if I am not using rolags from my hand carders. But this kind of narrow roving is pretty similar, and the fibers are certainly not aligned like with top. I do think that it would be easier with rolags though: this fiber was really "sticky" and hard to draft, so I couldn't do a pure long draw either - I kept needing to tug on the roving with my second hand to free it. It probably doesn't help that my wheel has very little "pull", even after tightening it quite a bit.

My final tally was over 600 yards of long draw singles, and I was definitely getting the hang of the technique by the end. So, as a practice yarn, it was a success. How did it come out as a yarn for knitting though?

300 yards 2-ply woolen ramboullet yarn

It could be a lot worse. 

Looking at the singles, there were several parts of the color that I really liked, and it might have come out better if I had left out the yellow dye. The yellow just made the neon problem in the green worse.

Singles on the bobbin

When I was about to ply, some of the color was so nice that I was tempted to just do an n-ply to preserve the color progression. But the yarn was pretty uneven, which would only be exacerbated by an n-ply. And I was hoping that the uglier parts of the color progression would be tamed by the prettier colors.

2 full bobbins, ready for plying

I don't know how successful that was. It is so hard to tell in the skein. I guess I'll have to wait until I knit it to see if I like the finished product.

Blending colors at the beginning of plying

The end of the second bobbin of plying

Sheep to Shawl: Part VII

Whew! It's been awhile since I posted! I've been resting my shoulder, taking it easy, and working to finish up some big projects. Well, I did start a bit of spinning on my wheel, but I'm waiting until it is finished to do a full write-up. For today - I've (almost entirely) finished my shawl I started spinning just a bit more than two years ago.

If you are interested in my progress up to now, in Part I I covered washing the fleece, in Part II I covered prepping it, in Part III I covered spinning singles, and in Part IV I covered plying and finishing the yarn. In Part V I covered starting to knit the shawl and in Part VI I covered the detail work that I did for the neck band.There have also been two other progress reports on the shawl here and here.

Today I will cover all of the little finishing touches that it takes to complete a shawl. I weaved in the ends, blocked it, reinforced the "button" holes where I will be tying on the tassels, and sewed on the neck band. I still have to tie on the tassels, but since that is a religious task, I figured it was outside the scope of this blog.

First, I needed to finish knitting it. It looks about the same as it did the last time I showed you a picture, just bigger:

Finished shawl, before blocking

After casting off, I spent a bit of time weaving in ends. Because there wasn't any colorwork, the only ends were where I switched skeins, and where I had to make spinners knots (because my singles snapped while plying). I find that the easiest way to weave in ends is just to do a duplicate stitch for a bit, then snip off the rest. If the remaining end is long enough, I use a darning needle. If it is too short, I use a crochet hook. Either way, after a few stitches, it is very unlikely to come undone.

Next, it was time for blocking. In the past, I have just used t-pins on a towel for all of my blocking, or just the towel for a light blocking. 

But I wanted this to come out very rectangular and even, and it is very large. I had heard good things about blocking wires, so I figured I should try them. I also bought some interlocking foam mats to pin to. 

The mats I bought come in sets of 9, and can be arranged in any configuration. This gives them more flexibility than a blocking board - if I had a 6-foot scarf, I could block that by setting them up end-to-end. They also store easier. I got two sets of them, but 18 still wasn't large enough to completely block this very large shawl, and some of the t-pins were pinned to the floor.

Interlocking foam for blocking surface - not quite large enough

The blocking wires were really easy to use, but 1) they weren't quite large enough for the whole shawl, so I had to overlap them and 2) setting them up with the damp shawl on my lap was quite tedious. They did give a nice even block, even if I only used them on the sides of the shawl.

Damp shawl stretched out and pinned to the foam blocks

When it was dry, I pulled it up and took out the wires. This part was quite easy.

Next, I wanted to reinforce the holes that I left to tie the tassels onto.

Corner of the shawl, with hole for tassel

I saw several options for reinforcement. The most common was whip stitch, but I wanted something really strong. There was also blanket stitch, but that looked like it was more to reinforce a hem than for a small hole like a button. I ultimately went with buttonhole stitch. It makes a series of knots around the edge of the hole, which are less likely to fray. And it is called buttonhole stitch, so it must be good for buttonholes.

Reinforced hole for tassel

After watching a video, I picked it up pretty easily. It's always good to have another tool in the toolbox, even if I don't make things with buttons very often.

The last bit of finishing was to sew on the neck band. I folded the shawl and the band in half and pinned it, so that it would fall in the right place. I used the t-pins to pin it up and down, because sewing on a stretchy fabric without bunching up is tricky.

Neck band, pinned and ready for sewing

Then I just used some more of the same yarn for whip stitch all the way around. Unfortunately, it seemed to be sagging and uneven, but I was able to mostly fix it by lightly sewing around the letters.

Neck band, all sewed on, mostly evenly

All that is left is to tie on the tassels! I am so excited to have this shawl. Remember, it started out with this:

Leicester sheep

Which became this:

Locks of leicester wool

Before I spun it into this:

Strands of yarn, with quarter for scale

Finally, after many months of work, I have this:

Shawl, being folded as it is meant to be worn, on my shoulders.

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2017

Currently in sensory overload. We saw so many bright colors at the festival, so many textures, touched so many soft things. Basically, by the end we were starting to get indifferent to beauty. That's when we left.

This is pretty much my mind right now

I went to the annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival with my mother-in-law, who knits and crochets a bit, but doesn't spin. This will be my fourth time going - I missed last year because I was graduating. This year we got to the festival at around 10:30 (two hours after opening) and it was drizzling and cold. The rain eventually let up, but it was still pretty cold when we left at 4.

The first place we went was the fleece sale.

Fleece Sale

Grouped into categories, they had bags of fleeces on tables, with a tag giving the type and other details, and stickers indicating whether they were Maryland local sheep and whether they were from 4-H. The fleeces that won ribbons had been auctioned off the day before - we were picking through the ones that weren't submitted for judging and the ones that didn't win. Still, there were a lot of people looking through them, and it was first-come first served.

This was my first time buying a fleece. I have processed bits of fleeces before, and I got one for free through Craigslist, but this was different. I knew that I wanted a longwool, or at least a fleece with longish locks, since I have been doing a lot of carding recently, and my combs are getting dusty. I don't really like processing fine wools like merino, because I am afraid that they will felt. I also was leaning toward a conservation breed. I like the idea of helping keep a rare breed alive by buying their products.

After I had looked at and touched a bunch of fleeces, with my handy Field Guide to Fleece providing insights, it was down to two fleeces (or none. I still hadn't committed to getting any at all). I asked a volunteer to unroll a perendale fleece for me. He took it to a table and helped me test some locks for soundness. It was remarkably free of grass and other VM, and the locks were sound and quite long. The only problem was that it was pretty greasy, and yellowish.

Perendale fleece from Lucky Lane Farm, rolled out

Well, long story short, I bought it. I'm hoping the yellow is just the lanolin mixed with dirt, but we will have to wait until it is washed. Early experiments look promising. I have separated out the finer back wool to process separately, but scouring will have to wait a few weeks.

Unwashed perendale lock.

Picking out the fleece took us over an hour. We spent most of the rest of the time looking at yarn and roving among the many many many vendors at the festival. As usual, I bought too much, although I don't think there were any really bad purchases. 

Cheviot sunset gradient roving - so pretty, I couldn't resist.

I have been noticing two trends, however. A much larger percentage of the yarn for sale has silk blended into it. I like the feel of it, but it is too expensive for the kind of knitting I do. It does make it a lot easier to avoid buying too much yarn. The other trend I've noticed it that there is more roving and raw wool for sale in the booths. Now, maybe I am just noticing it more, but maybe handspinning is catching on?

We also spent a bit of time looking at the skein and garment competitions. They were... incredible. 

There are so many pictures I could show. But I'll let this one speak for the rest.

Although we were there for most of the day, there were parts we didn't go to this year: the craft demonstrations, the sheep-shearing, the sheep demonstrations, and the fiber animal barns. I did get one really cute animal picture though, from one of the booths:

Yes, it's a rabbit and not a pile of fluff. If you are having trouble seeing the rabbit, the pink is the inside of the ear.

Whelp, I'm tuckered out after a long day. Good night to you all!

good night

Injured

Unfortunately, there will be even less progress on my projects to report than usual: I've managed to injure my shoulder, and I'm resting it from knitting and spinning for 2 weeks.

First off, I don't know how I injured my shoulder. But my spindling form couldn't have helped. I have been trying to avoid lifting my elbow above my shoulder and stick to "butterflying" the singles: winding them onto my thumb and forefinger by twisting my wrist back and forth. But oftentimes I am lazy. I think, "it's only a few inches," or "I should give the spindle another spin," and I just lift it up. There's a good chance that this is what is causing the pain and immobility in my shoulder. But if not, it could, so I really do need to work on my form.

So, despite wanting to finish my shawl, and having a lot of free time on my commute, I'm stuck longingly staring at pictures of homemade yarn. If you spin, I hope that my mistakes can help you to avoid them. And this update will be a bunch of small things that I haven't gotten around to reporting yet.

First, some purchases:

Rainbow masham wool braids from Edgewood Garden Studio

I was just too tempted not to buy these rainbow mini-braids from Edgewood Garden Studio. Each is two ounces, and they are perfect for playing around with different ways of doing color combinations. The wool is masham, which is an interesting cross-breed of teeswater and swaledale. The wool is not as soft as many, but it seems to have a lot of luster. Unfortunately, when the braids arrived, they were very compacted (probably from the dyeing process), and I am worried that they will be difficult to spin. They might just need a little predrafting, or they might need a lot of predrafting. Either way, it's not ideal.

My second purchase was a swift.

Peg swift

I have already tried it out, and it makes balling yarn soooooo much easier. No more tiring myself out moving my arms around the chair or over my head. Storing it is the only problem, since it is a bit bulky.

Yarn swift in action

Along with my purchases, I had been feeling like it had been too long since I had processed any fiber. With one spinning project and one knitting project, I wanted to card something. I can't do it on my commute (needs too much room, too messy, etc) but it is a nice project for evenings and weekends. A chance to get back into the feeling of raw wool.

Ryeland rolags

Before I hurt my shoulder I was making rolags out of the ryeland wool I bought at the Maryland Alpaca Festival. It cards wonderfully, and it has a nice, soft, grayish brown color. Some of the locks are more brown, some are more silver, but I am just mixing them all. I have heard that the wool is incredibly stretchy and springy, and so far that seems to be true. I don't know when I might have a chance to spin it, but I think I will use the wheel to make sock yarn.

One lock of the ryeland wool

This week I have been going a little bit crazy with no spinning or knitting. So I started to organize my fiber stash and realized that I have half a pound of white rambouillet roving. I also have a lot of other white wool, and I'm not particularly fond of the rambouillet, so I decided to try dyeing it.

Rambouillet roving, pre-dyeing

While I have dyed wool before, I always did locks. This time I decided to do the roving in different colors. I spread it out on a tray covered in plastic wrap, then got it very wet. Then I poured dye on top and poked it until it soaked it up - Navy blue, kelly green, and yellow. I then baked it in the oven for an hour. I'm still waiting for it to dry, so I don't know if it felted yet.

Rambouillet roving, dyed

I am really not liking the dyes that I got at the alpaca festival. They are really bright and ugly. Oh well, maybe it will look fine spun up.

Maybe.

Gradients

I'm not usually up on the latest trends, but I hear that gradient yarns are "in" right now. I've made a couple of gradient yarns recently, but it seems more like a coincidence than anything planned on my part. Or maybe I am just seeing gradient roving and top at the fairs, so I jump on a trend unknowingly.

Anyhow, for those who don't know, a gradient yarn is one that shifts gradually from one color to another (to another?), creating gradual changes. Unlike ordinary variegated yarns, which have generally short repeats of the same few colors, a gradient yarn has either much longer repeats, or no repeats at all.

I am not an expert on dyeing, but I suspect it has a lot to do with how and when the fiber is dyed. Ordinary variegated yarns are dyed in the skein, making the parts that line up the same color, and causing repeats. Gradient yarns are either made up of several mini-skeins that are each dyed with different mixtures of two colors (or going from dark to light of the same color), or they are dyed in the wool and spun as a gradient. Because I have never dyed yarn, I will be talking exclusively about the last process.

First, an old project that I have mentioned before:

Single-ply gradient in the skein

I loved the colors on the luxury top that I bought, so I spun it up for a shawl.

Silk-BFL blend, gradient braid

As you can see, the fiber was dyed by painting it various colors in the braid (it's not actually a braid - there is only one strand). This creates a continuous movement of color from one to the next. Moreover, if there are any strong divisions, the process of spinning will generally muddy it, as fiber is drafted from both colors for a little while.

As a spinner, there are a few different ways to maintain that gradient. The first, and easiest, is to keep the strand as a single, which is what I did with this project.

Wingspan Shawl, using single-ply gradient yarn

However, if you want to do a multi-ply yarn, you have a problem. If you do the regular thing and spin from one end to the other of the braid over two or three bobbins, then ply them together, you will mix the colors, getting a barber-pole effect. Not necessarily bad, but often not what you are looking for.

Not from a gradient, but the result of a mixed-color batt plied in the regular way

You can (though I haven't tried it), split your braid of roving or top lengthwise, then spin it separately. If the singles are not exactly even, there will be some barber-poling at the edges of the colors, but it should look like a continuous gradient. Unfortunately, this technique requires planning ahead, which I almost never do.

The third way to do it is to Navajo-Ply. This technique involves making a loose crochet chain stitch with the single and spinning it to get a three-ply yarn that preserves the colors of the singles. The main drawback is that if you have uneven singles, Navajo-plying will tend to enhance them, rather than balance them out like regular plying. This is the technique that I used on my most recently finished spinning project.

For this project, I used roving from The Yarn Mission which I mentioned in another post.

Braided Roving

You can tell that this was dyed before it was braided, and the colors repeat a bit. The roving was probably laid in a zig-zag-like way and painted.

The fun thing about spinning roving like this is that you can see the gradient emerging on your bobbin, but you know that you won't see the entire color progression stretched out until you knit it (or if you make a yarn cake. But I don't have the equipment or the desire for that). I took some pictures as it appeared over time, but this doesn't really do it justice.

I quite enjoy Navajo-Plying, and it goes pretty fast. My 110 grams of fiber made 140 yards of aran to bulky-weight yarn. I haven't yet knit anything, but I am thinking a scarf for my husband. You know I will be sure to post pictures whenever it gets made.

N-Plyed skein on the niddy-noddy

Another view of the finished skein

Sheep to Shawl: Part VI

Part I covered washing the fleece, Part II covered prepping it, Part III covered spinning singles, and Part IV covered plying and finishing yarn. Part V covered starting to knit the shawl. There have also been two other progress reports on the shawl here and here.

The end of this project is firmly in sight now.

Current state of the shawl as of late March, with final ball of yarn above.

The plan is for the shawl to be as wide as my arms outstretched, so I have a bit more to go. I will finish off that last ball of yarn, and that should be it - I also don't plan on blocking it too much, because I like the texture. If I knit for my entire commute, I can do 5 to 6 rows (120 stitches each) a day, and each repeat of the pattern is 32 rows. There are already 11.5 repeats finished. So, if I don't get roped into doing another project, it should be finished in a few months.

I have also been working on some of the detail work. This shawl is actually a Jewish prayer shawl (tallit or tallis; pl. tallitot or tallesim). Although there are no real requirements beyond being wearable and having 4 corners to attach special fringes to, tallitot traditionally have a neck band so that a) you know which side is the front, and b) it doesn't fray as easily. 

Often these neck bands (atarah; pl. atarot) have Hebrew writing on them. The prayer you say when putting it on is a very common one - it's right there so you don't forget! But I wanted to do something a bit different. Of course, usually the writing is done with weaving or embroidery, but since I don't do those crafts, I was stuck with stranded knitting. Much slower.

I started out by creating a chart of the writing. I found a font I liked from a needlepoint site and copied the letters into my charting program. The nice thing about using the program (over graph paper) is that it will automatically resize to account for the fact that knitting stitches aren't square. The finished pattern looked like this:

The pattern (with a few mistakes)

It says "bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth," which is the phrase that you say in the morning service right before you gather the four corners of the shawl together in your hand. I did have to do some adjusting on the fly when I noticed some mistakes as I was knitting: two of the letters were out of line with the others, and the automatic resizing made some choices that I wouldn't have. 

I knit the band with blue letters on white, using the flicked, hand-dyed yarn that I have mentioned before, and the first mini-skein that I made for the shawl project (it is a bit rougher, so will have a bit of a different texture than the rest of the shawl). I also increased at each edge, to make a slanted corner, as well as put in a line of blue at the top and bottom. 

There was also another major change on the fly - I finished the bottom row of text and realized that it was plenty wide for a neck band. So I cast off. Now it just says "from the four corners of the earth," which I think is just fine. It gives it a "we're all in it together" vibe, I think.

Well, enough stalling, here's the final product:

Neck band, pre-blocking

Well, that's how it looked before blocking. Because it will be ultimately sewed onto the shawl, I wasn't too concerned with curling. And, since it was knit tightly with small needles (2.75 mm wide), it curls a lot. 

Here's a picture of it getting blocked:

Much better

 Because it is pinned to a white towel, you can really see how off-white the wool is. You can also see that the edges continue to curl a bit, but I am sure that it will go away when I sew it on. I think it came out pretty great, though maybe a variegated blue wasn't the best choice. One more picture to show the edge:

Neck band, sloping edge