Today the beau and I spent a busy morning shifting the stuff that didn’t sell in the garage sale to either the op shop or home. On the way back we dropped by The Purple Onion in Heathmont for their yummy award-winning pies. As we were feasting in the car I heard a woman in the car next to us declare in a loud voice.

“Oh, knitting was done exclusively by Egyptian soldiers and no-one else!”

“That’s crap!” I said to the beau. “That’s the sort of thing that evolves out of the inaccurate pseudo-history you get in naff magazine articles or knitting book introductions.” (Actually, I didn’t say the second bit, but I thought it.)

Well, give her a break, I told myself. Not everyone who knits is as nerdy and obsessed enough to read knitting history books. (If you’re interested, Richard Rutt’s A History of Hand Knitting is an excellent book which neatly and affectionately dispells all the urban myths.) She believes this nonsense because most people will only encounter pseudo-history. And isn’t it amusing how the myth about the Egyptians knitting has evolved – kind of like Chinese whispers?

But then I looked across and realised that this woman and her elderly companion were sitting in their SUV with the engine running in order to run the aircon – with the windows open.

No, I decided, it’s more likely she believes this because of an incurable case of stupidity.

Yesterday turned into an unexpected crafty Sunday. We had a garage sale on Saturday, and the next day I was too exhaused to do much more than weave. Which was just as well, because I needed to clear the small loom so I can start a project for the Ashford Knitters Loomies challenge on Saturday.

The Wavy Scarf, woven on the Ashford Knitters Loom using sock yarn scraps and the 12.5dpi heddle, and the ‘clasped weft’ technique.

I like these colours together so much I’m going to knit some scrappy socks with them next.

I’ve made good progress with the Peri Peri floor rug, having fixed the disasterous unwinding of the warp. By weighting the loose warp ends with paper clips, I was able to unweave all my work, retie the warp at the front, then start weaving again.

I’m about two thirds through now.

There has been knitting, but no matter how much I throw myself at each of the three wips none of them are getting to a photo-worthy stage.

Last week I sold off most of my spinning stuff to the local s’n’b girls via Ravelry. Even the wheel. Harvey deserves to be used, and he will be going to a talented new spinner.

The only things that didn’t find new homes were my turkish spindle and half a brown fleece that came with the wheel. The fleece had become compressed and I didn’t feel I could even inflict it on anyone for free.

So between weaving yesterday, I washed it, dried it in the sun, combed a bit of it and tried spinning some.

Ironic, isn’t it? Me spinning in order to get rid of spinning stuff. Well, the fleece isn’t all that great. I suspect most of the good bits of it had already been spun into the skeins that came with it. The rest is knotty and when I comb it about half ends up in the bin.

I might see if I can get a skein out of it, but the combing is really a bit too tortuous and I should probably just throw it out.

The two nights ago I was winding on the fabric I’d just woven on the Peri Peri Floor Rug when the back roller, pulled by the weight of the blind backing fabric I use instead of paper for separating the warp, unrolled itself.

When I wound it back on the tension was all wrong. I tried cutting the warp at the back and tying it on but, while the warp is closer to even than it was, there are loose ends and the fabric is now wonky:

I’m having to unweave about 2 hours worth of weaving. And it seems like unweaving is slower than weaving, as you have to wind the yarn back onto the shuttle as well as manhandle the loose ends.

This next weaving experience wasn’t so much a disaster as an interesting discovery. The pieces of cloth I’d woven out of roving a few weeks back needed to be felted. They were a bit too fragile as they were. I tried felting by hand but wasn’t making much progress, so I threw them in the front loader. While we can’t ‘interrupt’ the cycle on our machine, you can simply turn it off and on again then change to a spin cycle to drain the machine.

The woven roving felted very well, but boy did it shrink!

Down to two-thirds it’s initial width. A bit small for cushions now, so I’m going to have to think of something else to make out of them. So far I’m thinking of crocheting a strip of cream wool between them, then a border all around, and make it a lap rug.

Note for the future: woven roving shrinks a LOT!

Back when I first looked around Ravelry I found the page where your friends’ most recent blog entries are listed and I thought this was a neat idea. I’d tried signing up to Bloglines, but found it didn’t find most of the blogs I read. The Rav feature showed all of them, but was always a day or three late in showing new blog entries and I was too much of a blog reading junkie, so I stuck to listing blogs in my sidebar.

Now Rav seems to update faster, and switching to reading blogs there appeals because I don’t need to go to the blog to find there are no new entries. This morning I compared my blog’s blog list to my Rav friends list, hunted down a few of the bloggers I hadn’t found on Rav yet, and separated my blog’s blog list into two categories so I can keep visiting bloggers that don’t appear to be Rav members.

Though this will make blog reading faster and less frustrating, I can see it’s of limited usefulness. I read more than just knitting and crocheting blogs, and it makes sense that some of the weaving bloggers I read aren’t on Rav.

Ironically, this move was spurred by the new Blogger ‘following’ feature, which I started using only to find that it was a bit buggy and I had to install a whole new stylesheet or something in order to get the full benefits. Forget that! Then I remembered the Rav feature and decided to check it out again.

Well, that’s what they’d effectively be, if I worked here:

New Melbourne Yarn Store Seeking Staff

This past weekend was big fibre craftfest for me. Saturday I went to the local s’n’b to knit and chat, Sunday I went to the Handweavers and Spinners Guild to weave and chat.

I found myself telling the lovely spinners at the Guild how all my craft obsessions tend to last about seven years. At six I took up pottery and lost interest at about twelve. In my teens I took up sewing and in my twenties I did a pattern design course before losing interest. Silk painting overlapped the sewing thing, which then petered out when I took up oil painting in a serious way. Oil painting ‘classes’ (which were more like workshops where you painted what you wanted with an expert on hand to advise you) continued for about seven years and though I swore painting was ‘art’, not a ‘hobby’, and didn’t fall into the seven year craft cycle, I haven’t been able to rouse the enthusiasm after the classes were cancelled.

Knitting came along about five years ago. As always, I can’t help thinking that surely this hobby will last. Especially considering it was such a great activity to do while watching tv. But complicated knitting that might keep me interested in the craft is too attention-demanding to do while watching teev.

And now there’s this weaving thing.

Looking back, from silk painting onwards there was a strong social element to the hobbies that became obsessions. A friend introduced me to silk painting and we used to get together on weekends to experiment. Painting classes were very social and we inspired each other constantly. Knitting blogs and forums encouraged me to try new techniques and yarns.

The silk painting friend moved away, the classes were cancelled. The slow-down in knitters blogging has been disappointing but Ravelry, which isn’t a great replacement as it isn’t as personal as blogs, did lead to other social ways of interacting with knitters (s’n’b).

I remember there was a similar problem with getting too skilled in pottery – the only way I could advance was to start wheel-throwing, but there was only one wheel in the classroom and having to take turns meant I spent most of the class frustrated.

Sewing was a lesson in knowing when to stop. I forced myself to continue long past the point I lost interest, mainly out of guilt at the huge fabric stash I had, and now I dislike sewing. I’m not going to force myself to knit if I don’t feel the love, no matter how big my stash has got.

Fortunately, if I do end up losing interest in knitting in a few years, weaving has two big advantages as a replacement. I don’t have to lose the social side of knitting – it’s not like I’d have to stop attending a class, and I can bring the portable loom along to s’n’b meets. And I can still use my yarn stash.

Unfortunately, the Ravelry bods don’t want members to add non-knitting projects in the database. They’ve hinted weaving will be included in the future, but if that doesn’t happen there’s a new site called Weavolution that aims to work in similar ways. I’d rather weaving was included in Ravelry, so I could continue interacting with the same people and there are lot of cross-pollination possibilities with weaving, knitting and crochet.

But I haven’t quite lost interest in knitting, or crochet, yet. Who knows, maybe I’ll keep on with the tv knitting. My current projects have been good for that:

While looking for a Yarn magazine pattern in the Ravelry database, I saw a fair isle yoked cardigan in similar yarn to the Cleckheaton Country Silk I bought recently. I’m making lots of changes – waist shaping, jumper rather than cardigan, narrower sleeves.

I finished the first Rainforest Sock and started the second.

Slogging away at Summer Nights. I like the yarn but knitting in 4ply is sooooo sloooow. After this is done I reckon I’ll start something in 12ply, just to take the edge off.

But now that I’ve warped up the loom for the second time, I’m itching to weave. I have to wait until the weft yarn dries. It’s some of the same handspun I wove the Eucalyptus Placemats out of, but in a different colour, and had a fair bit of grease still in it.

What’s on the loom so far is just scrap yarn woven in to even up the warp, and some of the linen warp woven in as a stable edge for the rug.

I have to resist slipping down to the laundry and blowing on the yarn in the hopes it’ll dry faster.