Sylvi Update

According to my project details in Ravelry, I started Sylvi on November 28th last year. I’ve made steady progress. The sleeves and fronts were relatively simple to knit.

Then I started the exciting part – the back:

Which is taking quite a bit of concentration. Definitely not good tv knitting and constant checking of the pattern isn’t great for my back, so I restrict myself to ten rows a night (just over an hour). The photo above shows where I’m up to – about a fifth to a quarter of the back (since I’m leaving the hood off) – and it’s taken me nearly five hours to get this far. And I’ve discovered that the big flowers on the back are knit later by picking up stitches and knitting each petal separately, so even when I finish the back there’s more work to do.

But I’m loving the way it looks. I’ve always wanted to knit a big coat, and this one is going to be glorious. (I hope.)

Denim Rag Rug

After spending a couple of hours sewing in the ends of the denim rag rug it became clear this finishing technique wasn’t going to work. It tightened up the header so much the rug was drawing in. So I pulled out the ends and tied them instead. A fringe may not be the most hard-wearing of finishes, but it looks like I’m gonna have to stick with it.

Still, tying was a lot faster than sewing and I was finally able to get the rug off the loom and onto the floor.

I haven’t washed it yet – I’m hoping that washing will tighten up the fabric a little more. Not that it’s overly loose.

I’m pretty happy with it, and want to try dyeing the remaining denim to make a colourful rug. Though I have to admit the rya rug technique also looks like a fun one to try with denim.

There’s some prep to do before I decide. I’ll sample rya rug weaving on the rigid heddle loom and, of course, I have to find time to dye the denim. In the meantime the table loom is free for another project. Hmm, which to try? Here are three ideas I’m considering:

1) Twill blanket with warp of leftover 8ply yarns (need to buy a black weft yarn)
2) Wine bottle cosies using double weave
3) Using rag rug method to make a shawl/blanket out of black and red velour strips

I’d like to something a bit more advanced than plain weave, but it may depend on whether the weekend’s weather turns my head to mush. Mind you, velour might not be the best material to work with, especially as it needs to be cut outdoors as it’ll produce a lot of dust. Saturday is forecast to be 43 degrees. I may just sit downstairs under the aircon and knit.

CCCK

My Aussie publisher, Bernadette, is in town this week, and she’s a knitter, so when she suggested lunch I rang CCCK in Northcote for suggestions on where we could get a nice meal nearby. After eating we had a little yarn store exploration.

There was less range than I was expecting, but it was a case of quality over quantity. Lots of Rowan, some Jo Sharp, some Cleckheaton/Patons, some Naturally, and some handspun and handdyed yarns. Not to mention big inviting couches and a friendly shopkeeper.

I admitted I was on a yarn diet so I wouldn’t be buying anything. Bernadette (after giggling at the term ‘yarn diet’) said she wouldn’t be buying anything as it wouldn’t fit in her suitcase. So there we were, two knitters in a yarn store, not buying anything.

Somehow I came out with this:

The black is to go with the alpaca I bought in Lakes Entrance for the weaving project in the book I bought at the Jolly Jumbuck.

The red… I told myself it’ll go with my small but growing collection of red odd balls for a weaving project. (But in the back of my mind there’s a voice saying it’s too nice to be lost in among a whole lot of other yarns, and it goes with that coconut button so nicely…)

Bernadette bought one ball of lemon yellow Jo Sharp cotton (after I pointed out that yarn squishes down and can be stuffed into other things in your suitcase – like shoes). I think she was delighted to incorporate some knitting fun into a work trip.

Here’s one for the commenters – the felt buckets. The big orange one is from AK Traditions. It has knitting needle and balls of yarn shapes as well as yarn appliqueed onto it. My companion versions just have yarn and a few pockets sewn on. I made them back when I had a modest stash and I thought these, and a few baskets, would be all I needed for yarn storage. How innocent and naive I was…

Now they’re used to hold projects and, in the case of the big one, all my knitting bags. (When the girl in CCCK said she had five knitting bags I said ‘only five?’. It’s amazing how they accumulate. Hmm, maybe I should do a post on knitting bags.)

A Great Idea: The Personal Sock Club

I’m getting pretty close to catching up on all the blogs I read. It’s interesting reading three or so weeks of blogs in a few days. You see ideas blossom and then spread. One idea I liked I first read about on Rose Red’s blog. The idea of a personal sock club.

I’ve never signed up to a sock club, mainly because I’m pretty fussy about sock yarn. I prefer ‘mostly solid’ colourways, or stripes, and I’m also a bit particular about colours and patterns. So participating in a sock club in which I’ve already chosen the yarn sounds pretty good to me! And it fits in very nicely with a stash diet.

But there were a few down sides that made me hestitate:

a) I’m a bit over socks. (Shock! Horror!) I’m not over knitting socks, though. They’re great travelling projects. But I have so many socks now that I can barely close the drawer. Still, I have the yarn and it’s gonna turn into socks at some point.

b) Complicated sock patterns stop socks from being good travel projects. If I’m going to put that much effort into a project I’d rather it was one of the many garments in my queue. But that’s easy to fix: I’ll just knit plain or simple socks.

c) I, um, actually don’t have much sock yarn. Well, I do and I don’t. This is my stash, starting with the Patonyle:

Then there’s the fancy stuff and the leftovers I reckon I can make socks out of. Two lots of yarn for scrappy socks, two self-striping yarns I had enough left over to make a second pair from (and the originals wore out), and two lots of untouched sock yarn.

Okay, so there’s plenty of Patonyle, but if I’m going to knit with plain yarn I need an interesting pattern, and that isn’t going to fit with my current need for simple patterns. So the fancy stuff and the leftovers are all I have to work with.

But you know what? That’s fine with me. I love knitting scrappy socks, I want to replace the socks that wore out, and I’m dying to knit those the last two fancy yarns in the stash. That makes six projects worth of personal sock club goodness. To add an element of mystery and surprise, I put the six sock projects into paper bags:

And popped them into one of my felt buckets.

They’ll be a kind of lucky dip, except all the prizes are mine, and I know I’ll like them all. I’m not going to set a time limit, which is never a good idea if you’re prone to RSI, though I tend to get a pair knit a month anyway. I’ll just dip in when the last pair are finished. And since I still have the Smoke Sock on the needles, I’ll time my first ‘delivery’ for the day I get those done.

I may never sign up to a non-personal sock club after this. I’ll be totally spoilt!

Faux Noro Stripe Scarf

I think I may be suffering from a new malady. I call it ICWTI or I Can Weave That Instead. I see something on the Friends Activity page in Ravelry, or on someone’s blog, and start thinking about how to do it faster/better/prettier on a loom.

A few months back the Yarn Harlot recently went on a bit of a Noro Stripe Scarf thing. Now I do like the pattern, but I hate the yarn and don’t fancy doing that much plain ribbing when there’s a faster alternative.

There just happens to be a reasonable substitue for the yarn locally, which I picked up in a friend’s stash busting sale:

So I warped up the loom with some Bendigo 3ply in purple – a colour common to both skeins of Vintage Hues. Then after some cursing over knots in the yarn (it seems it suffers from ‘Noro knots’ as much as the original, but at least it’s not scratchy, contains no mohair, and doesn’t grey out from time to time) I had two shuttles wound and ready.

I started weaving. Two picks of each colour made stripes a little narrower than in the knitted version of the scarf, but I found I preferred it to three.

Watching the colours shift and interact was addictive. I didn’t stop until the scarf was finished.

I love it. The colours are so vibrant and quite lurid together in places, but the effect over the whole is harmonious and beautiful.

After a wash it bloomed and little and smelled deliciously sheepy. A lot of dye came out in the water, but the scarf didn’t appear to be affected by bleeding or the colours fading.

So if you have a loom and fancy a Noro Stripe Scarf, but don’t fancy all the ribbing, try replicating it in weaving. It works just as well as on the needles.

In other weaving news… I’ve decided to sew in the warp ends on the denim rag rug. It’s tedious and time-consuming, but I think (and hope) it’ll look and wear better.

It’s gonna take a while, though. Once I’ve done the first edge I’ll cut it off the loom completely and be able to warp up another project. But for now it’s easier to work on it in place.