Oh no!

Hmm. Finding plastic dpns means driving to yarn store in mad Christmas traffic. Going past Sprogfight on way home. Sprogfight doesn’t have plastic dpns. Has metal dpns. We hates metal needles. But Sprogfight does have plastic straights. Cheap $3 straights. Hmm.

Straights broken into four.

Ends sharpened.

Ends sanded.

New plastic dpns! No need for interaction with crazy Christmas shopping crowds. Yay!

And at same time, bought silly crochet hook that lights up!

Now want to crochet with silly light-up hook, not knit with new dpns. Sigh.

I realised yesterday, while updating the Lime & Violet Raglan entry in Ravelry, that I had noted I was using 3.75mm needles to get gauge, but I had 4.00mm needles on the go. Seems I did go up a needle size for the fair isle bit. Why I didn’t note this on the pattern… well, okay, I did get all distracted by the weaving for a while there.

So when I ripped out the sleeve I restarted by decreasing six stitches instead of ten, using the 3.75mm needles. I haven’t got far yet, but the sleeve is coming out straight rather than ‘puffed’. Lookin’ good!

And I think I might stop and knit the beginning of the other sleeve once I know everything’s working, so I don’t forget what I’ve done… or are unable to interpret my notes.

With the silly season taking up so much and leaving me too tired to think when I do have spare time, I’ve been getting more knitting done than weaving. For the last few nights I’ve flaked out in front of the tv or listening to podcasts, while getting stuck into the Lime & Violet Raglan. I want it done so I can put all my knitting attention into Sylvi.

A bit of focus got the yoke and neck band done, and last night I started on the sleeves. I’m knitting them downward, from the purple stripe. Why it didn’t occur to me that I could have knit the entire yoke in one piece I’ll never know. There have been too many gaps in the knitting of this in which I forget details (including one that had me forget to go up a needle size for the colourwork – but I’m rather narrow in the shoulders anyway, so I didn’t bother frogging and reknitting, and it seems to have worked out okay).

After I’d reached to the under arm I couldn’t escape the feeling there was something not quite right about those sleeves. I tried it on and the sleeve was clearly too big, so I counted stitches at the underarm point and found I had too many. After working out what went wrong, I frogged and started again.

Second time around the number of stitches were right, but when I tried it on this morning the sleeves still seems awfully big. I remember noting this in the pattern photo, too. (Cardigan to the Stars – down the bottom of the right sidebar.) It’s a rather loose-fitting garment, and I anticipated that modifying it this much wasn’t going to be straight-forward.

I’d given the body a bit of waist shaping, and I love how it turned out. The neck band is a bit high, though, so I’ll probably rip it back and refinish at half the size. But big arms on a fitted jumper are going to look odd, so it looks like I’m going to have to rip them out again, then decrease by about ten stitches around before knitting the top of the sleeve a third time.

In retrospect, it probably would have been easier using a top-down raglan method and fitting it as I went. But I’ve reversed and modified patterns this way before, and I wasn’t up to trying something new. Doing something you’ve done before is less intimidating than learning an unfamiliar method. But next time I’m going to ‘bite the bullet’ and try top-down.

Thankfully I’m not planning to modify Sylvi… much. Just remove the hood. I’m resisting the temptation to knit the body in one piece, because if there’s one type of garment that needs the supporting structure of seams, it’s a long jacket.

I’ve avoided challenges for a while now, being too busy to give them the focus they need. I’m also avoiding swaps for the same reason. But there’s been an itch growing somewhere in the back of my mind, partly a growing awareness of where my interests are shifting, partly a familiar guilt over projects I haven’t got to yet.

Today I went into full end-of-year assessment and planning mode. Usually it doesn’t start until after Christmas, but this year it’s got a hold of me early. Work deadlines, house and garden projects, fitness goals, crafting directions… they’re all getting a thorough examination. After considering how much yarn I bought this year, the lack of gift knitting recipients in my life, the abundance of accessories I have, and my shift in interest from knitting to weaving, I came up with this:

Yep. Another stash diet. But with a different set of rules than last time:

1. Knit From Your Stash 2009 starts Jan 1st with the target end date of 30th June.

2. I will not buy any yarn during that period, with the following exceptions:

2.a. Yarn for weaving projects. This is Knit From Your Stash, not Weave From Your Stash.

2.b. If someone asks for a specific knitted gift that I really and truly do not have the yarn for, I may buy yarn to knit that gift.

2.c. If I am knitting something and run out of yarn, I may purchase enough to complete the project.

2.d. If someone takes me to a yarn store not knowing I’m on a stash diet, I am allowed to buy a little yarn to show my gratitude. But yarn for weaving, a magazine or book, a pattern, or tools would be better.

2.e. If I’m away from home and run out of yarn, I am allowed to buy something to ‘get me through’. But ONLY if I run out of yarn.

2.f. If a yarn manufacturer makes a product I’ve been wishing they made for ages (say, red Patonyle) I am allowed to buy ONE ‘encouragement’ ball.

3. I am allowed to receive gifts of yarn.

4. I will knit jumpers, jackets and cardigans in preference to socks and accessories whenever possible. I don’t need more socks and hats, and I suspect I’m going to end up with a lot of woven scarves. The only exception is:

4.a. If I knit gifts or for charity.

On Sunday I had a few hours spare but I wasn’t feeling awake enough to warp up the table loom, so I decided to start weaving on the rigid heddle. I was hoping to make another leno scarf, this time with a coloured warp set up so each leno twist would be a fan of graduated colour.

Unfortunately, I discovered that this yarn (Lisa Souza ‘Sock!’) was a bit too slippery to hold twists of that many ends in place, and if I pulled the weft really tight to compensate the side twists distorted and pulled in.

So I went back to the lace weaves section of The Handweavers Pattern Directory to see what else I could do. First I tried some wrappings. The directions suggested plain weave on either side:

But it was a lot of work and by the time I’d finished this section I knew doing a whole scarf in this way would get old very quickly. I tried wrapping all the way across instead. It looked okay, but I had trouble with the plain weave sections between rows of wrapping. The first and last picks refused to sit neatly (again, the yarn was too slippery). I was going to unweave everything again, but then I turned a few more pages of the book and discovered danish medallions. I figured it was worth seeing if the ‘knot’ that makes the medallion shape would hold the plain weave in place. It did:

The effect was rather pretty. But after doing a few alternating rows of wrapping and medallions I realised this was too open a fabric for a scarf. I decided it would have to be a decoration at the end of the scarf, and the rest be plain weave.

But it didn’t look right. Too dense after the openness of the lace. I unwove the plain weave and considered what to do next. What about rows of medallions without the wrappings between?

Yes, much better. Still lacy, but not so much it wouldn’t make a good scarf. In fact, I like the look of the danish medallions so much I’m tempted to cut off the wrappings and make the scarf all medallions. Guess I’ll have to decide that when I get to the end.

‘Wigglesworth’ is the nickname the blanket’s recipient has for her growing bub.

Warp and weft: Patons Washed Haze Aran
Weave structure: tabby/plain
Sett: 7.5 epi (1+1+1+0 in a 10 dent reed)
Comments: The yarn weaves up well except for one problem – it tends to twist on itself, and I had to spent a lot of time untwisting it.

I gave the blanket to its recipient on the weekend and she was delighted. I also handed out the baby bibs I made earlier in the year to the other friends with babies who were camping with us to test for me. If I get positive feedback I’ll chalk it up as a good, quick gift to make.

Yes, camping. On the year’s wettest weekend. But despite the rain, we had a good time. It was only when the shelter started to leak that we gave in and came home early.

I took along knitting, macrame jewellery and jeans to cut up. I did manage the latter, but then had to hang the strips up to dry when I got home. And I knit in the car on the way home.

Now that I’m weaving as much as I’m knitting, I’ve changed the title of my blog to reflect that. I’ve been thinking of making this a place to blog about a broader range of creative interest than just fibre crafts for a while now. (And I never did write about chocolate much.) In fact, I’ve even bought a domain name where I intended to start a new blog plus gallery, but haven’t had time to set it up yet.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get myself painting again by writing about it, and setting myself challenges.

I’ve been dabbling in macrame again. This time small scale. I have a few jewellery designs going, using crochet cotton and beads. But I also want to make miniature pot hangers out of the linen that didn’t work so well as rag rug warp. While cleaning out my old house I found lots of teeny tiny ceramic pots – the sort sold as souveniers – so I want to make hangers for them. Don’t ask me why, but this amuses me deeply.

That old house? I accepted an offer on it yesterday, and if all goes as planned it will belong to someone else in a little over a month’s time. Since it’s been on the market these last couple of weeks I’ve had pangs of wanting to keep it, yet I’m so excited now there’s a buyer.

I wonder what he makes of the paper mache floor in the hall…

That’s what this post is. New and old. Knitting and weaving.

First up…

Saturday the Eastern suburbs s’n’b group had an end of year get-together and BBQ. I even managed to persude the beau to come. There was much chatting and laughing and eating and knitting and crocheting. We also had a ‘Chris Cringle’, and this is what the lovely Lisa put together for me:

Luscious soap, choccies, a bracelet of yarn, Christmas napkins, a cute container and sticky toffee tea. I just tried the tea. Mmmm – yum!

The next item in the mixed bag is… weaving tools the beau has made me. It is so good having a man about who likes knocking such things together. I describe something, we go look at pictures on the interwebs, and next thing I have exactly what I need. First there were pick-up sticks (bottom right) then the rag rug shuttle (couldn’t find any Aussie shops that sold them) and finally a cone holder for warping with non-slip rubber base.

Which brings me to the slowly growing stash of denim rag balls. It takes about half an hour to cut up a pair of jeans, so I’m trying to do one pair a day. I have six balls now.

Lastly here’s some new weaving stash: the cotton warp I’ve bought recently. The larger cone is heavier yarn for rag rugs made of old sheets and/or fabric scraps, the smaller cones are thread for weaving tea towels.

Which brings me to the question: what next? Well, the baby blanket made it clear that warping up for tea towels is probably going to take many, many hours. It makes sense that if the warping takes such a long time then I may as well warp up for multiple tea towels – which I can do because these cones contain a lot more thread than the linen ones do.

Now, if I’m going to warp up for several towels of different colours the warp had better match all of them. So instead of plain weave check I’m actually better off using one colour warp and then change the weft colour for each towel.

To make that interesting, I’ll set the heddles up 1,2,3,4 (or maybe 1,2,3,4,3,2,1) so I can play with twill patterns as I did with the sampler scarf.

But not yet, because I’m not going to have enough time between now and, well, mid February to set that up. Instead I have three projects in mind to try: the Denim Rag Rug, the Multicolour Leftovers Blanket, and I’d like to try a doubleweave sampler.

Yep, another boring warping and weaving post. Apologies – this is mainly for my own records.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Sleying the reed. Or is that Sleighing? Must be that time of year…

I ran out of heddles on the first two shafts, so had to put about a quarter of the ends on the third and fourth. Which made no difference to the weave, but meant I had to flip two pegs each time I changed the set, instead of one. (It does have me worried if I’ll have enough heddles for weaving tea towels, though.) Once I’d finished I started threading the ends through the reed (at 1+1+1+0), which was quick and the warping was soon finished.

The loom sat untouched for a few days, then today (Sunday) I got stuck into the weaving. I actually found myself worrying a bit too much to fully enjoy it. I was sure my selvedges were pulling in, and that tucking the ends of each colour in would distort the fabric. I began to believe this was going to be a shoddy excuse for a baby blanket, and wondered if a bit of binding tape around the edges might be in order, which got me all grumpy because I don’t like sewing.

When I had woven as far as I could (still worried that I hadn’t allowed for tying the warp on when I measured loom waste) I cut the warp. Before it slipped out of the reed I knotted at intervals along the top so the last pick of weft wouldn’t start to slip out.

Then I pulled it out, finished the knots, knotted the starting edge and finally laid it out on the table and trimmed the fringe. That’s when I realised the selvedges were fine, and there was no distortion. And in fact it was a little longer than it was wide, so I hadn’t miscalculated the loom waste.

It’s a plain blanket, and I was restricted to these colours because of the whole not knowing the gender of the baby thing (which is a pity, because the pink and blue in this yarn are so pretty), but it’s soft, hopefully practical, and I won’t be embarassed to give it to the recipient – well, except for the usual uncertainty over whether the recipient appreciates handmade gifts.

Right now it’s having a quick soak, then I’ll spin it and lay it out on the table to dry. Then I’ll take a final photo for this blog.

I wrote a little list to work out which project to warp up the table loom with.

Unisex Baby Blanket – got yarn, plain weave
Denim Rag rug – got warp, need to cut up more jeans, plain weave
Multicolour Leftovers Blanket – got warp, maybe use Bendy as weft, twill
Tea towels – waiting for yarn, will take ages and need to get baby blanket done

So the baby blanket won. I dug out the yarn:

Then measured the wpi and worked out the sett and reed spacing. Since baby blankets are square, I measured the width of the reed and added 50cm loom waste. I now have a terrible suspicion that when I measured the loom waste and found it was the same as the rigid heddle, I may have forgotten to allow extra for tying on the ends, so this may not end up as square as I intended. But we’ll see…

I wound a warp of 76 ends of each colour.

I’ve never cut so much warp yarn before. The Ashford instructions for warping this loom are similar to the peg system for the rigid heddle. You clamp the warping board to a table in front of the loom, then wind the yarn from it through the reed and onto a lease stick then back to the board. As with the coloured leno scarf, this is fiddly if you have a few colours, so I cut double length pieces of warp…

… and threaded them through individually, making stripes of six, twelve or eighteen ends.

The next step is to pull the lease stick through to the back and tie it on. I’ve taken to taping the yarn to the stick to keep it in place. But before doing any of this I had to untwist all the ends. This yarn has a habit of twisting on itself:

Once I’d tied the lease stick to the back 2 1/2 hours had passed, so I called it a night. The next morning I noticed how the reed was reflecting the colours of the warp:

Then I pulled the ends out of the reed and, in snatches of ten or twenty minutes through the day, started threading the heddles.

This is awkward. My back and calves soon start aching from me bending over the loom. The Ashford instructions have you lock the reed and beater into position to keep it out of the way, but I’ve found the gap is still too small so I’ve tied it to the front of the room and gaines twice as much elbow room.

In the new Weavezine there’s an article on weaving with fine yarn which shows the weaver sitting inside her floor loom in order to be at eye level to the heddles, which she says is a more comfortable position for sleying the reed. I can’t do that, and the reed is right at eye level. But then it occurred to me that I might be able to remove the reed and beater altogther when sleying. I’d certainly want to come up with a better solution if I am going to be sleying 30 ends per inch for tea towels!

Hmm, must go investigate those bolts holding the beater on…