Yesterday brought our 3rd winter storm in as many weeks. It’s been a mess of snow days in already shorter school weeks that has knocked my craft life for six.
For several reasons Ty & I have needed time-off for more unstructured time together, however. This boon has kept the cabin fever feeling from setting-in but I hope there are no other Colorado lows on the way!
Prettier than the car
The impact of 24-hour long winter storms hitting mid-week each week aside we are safe & warm through it all, so far.
Ice upon ice this morning
All-over lace shawl update
The Lacymmetry shawl only saw the inside of a project bag between early November and 3 Saturdays ago.
A growing Lacymmetry handspun shawl
The shawl transitions once 2/3 knitted to a ‘diamond’ lace motif that shows strongly with its double yarn-overs. I paused at the transition point, and am now 7 repeats into this second, final section.
Starting at the 2nd of these repeats, I decided to add gold duracoated 8/2 Miyuki beads on a single return row in the ‘diamond’ lace motifs.
Forming diamond lace with beads hidden
The designer is Naomi Parkhurst of String Geekery, and I love how she advances the diamond lace 3 times evenly in each ‘diamond’ lace repeat. The beads are highlighting this diagonal advance sequence. It’s fun to knit!
How I place these beads is with a 0.6 mm metal crochet hook. My handspun BFL/silk yarn is gently thin to thick, and it can be slower to fit the beads. They are getting on there with persistence so far… fingers crossed?
Working with this madder orange dyed yarn is also a push back to the dyepots… hopefully soon!
Another kind of lace update – weaving Swedish Lace sampler
Shortly after my last TKK post, I did wet finish the table loom Swedish lace sampler. I am not quite done gasping but can share the results.
Test of contrast weft in Swedish lace (weft floats)
This 1st section of the sampler is better than I expected while weaving. That said, it is really much more appealing with white on the white warp. They (every book & my workshop teacher) told me so!
Okay, traditional, I see why now
The sampler was not finished schooling my(over-excited)self. Oh no, it was not.
Woah Swedish lace windows, and maybe never with contrast weft then.
Not for napkins was coming through very clearly by this time. This is the section where I wove turning the weft and warp floats regularly in their A-B blocks as writ.
You may notice that I had a warp-wise (threading) mistake. The napkins were to be in finer unmercerized cotton (16/2). I am considering keeping blue weft on white warp but changing to an 8-shaft crackle structure. Exploring crackle is a definite interest.
For now the loom is closed as I dig-out from storms and continue the Jane Stafford on-line lessons when possible.
Four ounces of Norwegian wool top in singles form!
These lessons & outings around town allowed me to finish spinning this other 4 oz of Norwegian top dyed by Mandie of Sheepy Time Knits. The 5 singles balls will probably be chain-plied like the 1st set was.
We are also up a kid-sized Honey Cowl/ down a braid of Rambouillet wool from the 2018 Woodstock Fibre Festival. Ty announced that it would go with him to school this morning, “… Because you worked so long on it!”
We’re fresh-off our Canadian Thanksgiving, which started a little early with my impulse to bake a cranberry/ blueberry crisp and finished with our first turkey dinner at home.
T-kiddo made a good choice on the supermarket cut tulips… they are still fresh & brightening the table runner that I wove in spring 2014, sari silk on 5/2 mercerized cotton warp.
The weft is Himalaya Tibet recycled silk, a long-ago gift that could keep giving – the 14″ x 42″ runner used only approx 80 yards.
As weavers can tell from the I Wove This pic a lot of learning was going on at the time. Up to & including confusion when tying up my treadles for plain weave that worked in my favour.
Our front hall has its 2 handwoven table runners now, and this is the cheery one of the pair.
Not a long-lasting crisp
Thanksgiving being just this past Monday is hard to believe. We ran right into an energy audit + furnace replacement job, and handspun yarn has been heavily on my mind!
Handspun happenings
We are at a 4th handspun knit casted-on since mid-September. That is more than usual & 3 are ready for sharing on TKK. The quartet has 2 things in common – smaller-scale projects; and all existing stash. They are a slice of how leaps in spinning can & do become finished objects.
At the centre is this truth – my handspun was not always flowing into queued projects. This is an almost constant concern in spinning spaces: how do you use your handspun yarns? In these 3 projects today the work is a lattice & not linear.
What is not shown here is that I also will design from scratch for my yarns & work from sampling in a straighter course both for knits and handwoven items. This slice is to show that creativity isn’t always caught in a web of control. Patience, skill and circling back all can be fruitful. In order of last to first the 3 new knits are:
Overall lace shawl
This Lacymmetry by Naomi Parkhurst is 1-day into its progress. It is making me very happy.
This BFL/silk yarn is another 2014 story. In mid-July that year, I used my 127 g of fibre to spin with the newly acquired William MacDonald antique spinning wheel.
Sugar maple cues the shawl this morning
It is 646 yards that I used in a first madder dye experiment later that year. The burnt orange colour was an improvement but what to use it for?
Until Naomi’s release this week I was fairly stumped. The suggested yarn is one I know well, Valley Yarns 2/14 alpaca/silk. My BFL/silk is a pretty good fit, and with that plugged I had to start right away!
Takeaway – you will see curated pattern lists for spinners but keeping eyes forward on new releases lets you find your own gems. This designer also spins, and that right fit for handspun is an excitement she knows well.
Hold the front page – spindle-spun socks!
Before the shawl answer fell into my lap, I started a new pair of socks this month. It is with my most viewed spinning project the Pyrenees Delight Cheviot yarn. The 1,529 views; 26 favorites came after being featured in Ravelry after the 2017 Tour de Fleece.
The 650 yards of 2-ply is not that old at a January 2018 finish. It was a puzzle though… would I split to get the socks I had dreamed about while spinning or should I use all in a weaving project? Here’s my current answer & sock knitting guide.
When I dive into the handspun stash it is a mess of pulling yarns & looking back at the records. This month I was weighing sock, colourwork mittens or sweater. Measurements help but as a starting point. This is part of the note I made when looking at possible mittens:
Thicker than idea in Drachunas (The Art of Lithuanian Knitting, 2015 with June Hall)
Will they look good?
When swatching the Cheviot, I knitted lots and measured twice. The 2.25 mm needle gave a good fabric, 9 stitches per 1″ in stockinette around. The guide is Lara Neel’s excellent “Sock Architecture, 2014. I chose her Strie for its garter rib pattern with my lighter 2-ply.
It is going well up to the heel now. This z-plied yarn is untwisting a bit as I work & I may cross the foot stitches for firmness.
Takeaway – As one who has more socks than she needs, I will just quote Jan Viren (Handspun Treasures from Rare Wools, ed Deborah Robson, 2000, p. 77):
If you want boring, predictable socks, there are plenty available through standard outlets. These [California Variegated Mutant] have character…
The Handspun Treasures book has a highly entertaining & inspiring juried group of handspun projects. I snagged my copy on a trip to the Strand bookstore in NYC.
Headwarming in fall
This Calorimetry headband in Targhee was a 2-day knit of joy.
In this second selfie view you can see the hint of its Corgi Hill Farm gradient, Inverness, properly.
Using a single clay button, I have a 21″ long Calorimetry. It is my 2nd version in handspun. Working 1×1 ribbing helped cinching in areas with thinner yarn.
2015 Wee Peggy spin-along
This was from a 2015 fall spinalong in the Wee Peggy spinners group on Ravelry that went fairly quickly. The blues went to N as a pair of plain mittens this winter.
Made, used but not blogged – N’s mittens
The pattern guide was Knit Mitts by Kate Atherley, 2017 & used approx 170 yards of the blue.
This is what I kept around since February waiting for inspiration. It wanted to be a headband! The orange is still on the couch waiting for the hat-trick.
Takeaway – gradients are not set in stone. The 390 yards has made 2 people happy so far, and I am not sore about giving half to N for mittens.
Last plying of a long merino/silk spin
As I am this close to finishing my 4 ounces of merino/silk with this medium Andean pushka, I have thought of a lace shawl. Which lace shawl will depend on my bandwidth & how much yarn we have here.
There surely are spinners who in Beverley Horne’s words never ever sit with fibre to spin (Fleece in Your Hands – spinning with a purpose: notes and projects, 1979 U.S revised edition, p v):
… without having planned beforehand what you are going to do with the yarn.
Knowing how to do forward planning is important, I agree. If like me ‘what ifs’, new tools, techniques beckon & good yarn results then you can still move forward. Sometimes frustration kicks in, of course. More often you go in a latticework of time spent on the project instead of the good old bossy line.
A side benefit has been letting new skills like weaving catch-up to those good yarns that I still love to spin.
Just think of it as a long run up to the crease (cricket term & to mix metaphors oops)!
