Visit with a Friend

I met my friend M for coffee yesterday afternoon. It's been a while since we caught up. I've been getting messages from her about how much she's enjoying knitting the wool-silk yarn I spun for her. Yesterday she showed me her progress: Sorry about the pic--phone camera inside a cafe doesn't provide the best clarity. It's definitely looking like a baby blanket and I'm pleased with how the stitches are holding the pattern. M seems particularly happy with how it feels in her hands while knitting--it's soft! and it's not splitting. She's about half way through the knitting, so I'll try to get an update when it's all done.

Worth the Ouch

I've been spinning away at the Merino fleece which I flicked out earlier this week. Yesterday's post emphasised the "ouch" factor with my flicker. Today I've decided to feature the product: This is my left hand holding the last of a handful of fleece. It's behaving beautifully and I'm finally getting into a rhythm that I feel I can maintain. That's just as well, since I'm not quite half way through this sample and I'd like to do more with this fleece. OK, enough gloating, I'd better get back to some spinning before the day heats up too much. We've been promised 33 degrees today and 37 tomorrow--not good spinning weather. As soon as it warms up I'll head to the airconditioned library with my knitting.

A Bit of Ouch for My Trouble

This little instrument of torture is my flicker: You can see it lying on a bed of white fluff--that's my reward for a couple of hours of effort with it. I am bearing a few wounds for my effort as well. Those little bent wires are quite sharp!

To use the flicker I have to hold a small amount of fleece in my left hand and flick at it with the brush held in the other hand. I have to hold the fleece fairly hard between my thumb and fingers. Inevitably the soft part of my thumb sometimes gets in the way. Did I mention those little wires are sharp! I don't want blood on my lovely fine white merino wool, so I'm taking a break before I start spinning. Then the challenge is to see how finely I can spin. I chose the flicker because it prepares the fibre quite well, even though it's a little torturous.

Another Craft

As if I need another craft!

I spent a day last week at the Handweavers and Spinners' Guild Summer School learning some basic Kumihimo. It's a Japanese braiding technique, and like most of these traditional crafts, has infinite possibilities. When my friend A heard I'd signed up for this class, she bought me this wonderful book for Christmas:So I have plenty of scope to explore and learn. The day workshop gave me a feel for the basic equipment, as well as a bit of practical experience and inspiration. One of the other women from my Weaving Certificate class was in the workshop too. Since the tutor kept referring to the thread as "warps" and the braiding stool as a "loom", we decided to subsume this craft into our weaving--neither of us felt as though we had room for another craft, but the fascination was there.

Exhausted

A dye pot is said to be "exhausted", when all the colour has been taken up by the fibre and virtually none remains in the water . . . A textile artist, on the other hand, is said to be exhausted when surrounded by colour and texture, but unable to take up anything at all.

I dropped this skein in the dye pot several days ago. I'd already dyed a few other skeins in a previous batch and this one finished it off. The dye pot is exhausted: And I couldn't be bothered rinsing it out, or retaking the picture to get the yarn in focus, or combing out the merino I have washed, or even knitting a few rows. I think I'll put on a DVD: I borrowed the Buena Vista Social Club from the local library. That sounds like a happy way to spend a slow Australia Day afternoon.

Identity Crisis

Here's what I'm spinning at the moment:It's a Corriedale fleece, and there's nothing really wrong with it. The trouble is, I've been told to spin it into a fine yarn. This is basically an exercise in contradiction--and therefore, an exercise in frustration. This fleece, by nature, wants to be a medium yarn. The fibres are not particularly fine, they're just not. You can see my attempt at a fine yarn: the strand immediately above the clump of fleece--it's not particularly fine either.

This exercise for my Spinning Certificate Folio is to spin a fine, medium and bulky yarn from the same fleece. It made sense to start with a medium fleece and try to push it to the extremes on either side. All the time my fingers are reinforcing the message, "spin to suit the fleece". It's hard work trying to make fleece spin into something it really doesn't want to be. I have yet to try to make a bulky yarn from this fleece. I'm hoping that will be less frustrating. And I'm so looking forward to the next exercise when I will do my best with a fine yarn from a fine fleece.

Next Morning

Well the shelving project didn't quite get finished yesterday, and my visitor was so worn out this morning that doing any more work on it today was out of the question. Instead we took a slow start to the day. While we were in the sewing room using the computer, my friend noticed a box labelled, "Jeans, Small sizes for Bags". She was interested, so within an hour or so she had this to take with her:The coke bottle should explain how she got through the morning, as well as giving a size perspective on the bag. In fact, the bottle fitted easily into the bottom of the bag with room to spare--and then there are all those handy pockets. It was a fun and quick project to do together, a nice balance to yesterday . . . and one less thing in a box at my house waiting to become what it's intended to be.

Watch this Space

This is the space above my washing machine and laundry tub:It didn't look like this a few hours ago. I had a set of shelves there, but they were fiddly little decorator shelves and weren't working for me. I've been meaning to get rid of them and install something more substantial, but it was one of those projects I kept putting off. This weekend I have a visitor--yeah I know I had a visitor last weekend too and I don't usually have so many visitors, but there you go. My visitor wanted a project to get stuck into and she's competent with power tools. I pointed to the shelves and a pile of timber and told her to go for her life. My only requests were that she keep herself and the rest of my house reasonably intact.

She had the old shelves cleared off and dismantled much faster than I'd expected. Now I can hear her in my shed with the power saw. I've got a good feeling I'm going to have new shelves by tea time. Meanwhile I'm getting on with my spinning. I have to resist the urge to keep checking on her--I'm not used to people working independently around my place. I reckon I could get used to it, though!

Drying Rack

Here's a worm's eye view of my shower recess:. . . maybe that should be a daddy-long-legs' view. I don't have worms in my bathroom, but I do get the occasional spider.

I built a drying rack over the top of the bath and shower some years ago--part of my getting used to a climate in which clothes don't just dry on the line outside in a few hours! Now there's usually a skein or two or three of fibre hanging there. My friends are often amused when they go to use the bathroom, it's often messy, but never boring.

Today it's a batch of merino wool which I washed yesterday. The fleece is sandwiched between layers of gutter guard--a fine plastic mesh. The edges are tied down, so the fleece won't move while I wash and rinse it. I left it in the laundry tub to drain overnight. The forecast for today is 36, so I'm expecting it will be dry by tomorrow. I'm hoping for a cooler day tomorrow, so I'll have lovely clean dry fleece ready to spin.

Detail

Here's the neck edge of the hood I posted yesterday:I started by picking up stitches along the bottom of the hood. First I knitted a few rows of 1:1 rib; then I progressively increased--alternating between the "hills" and "valleys" of the rib--until I had a 4:4 rib. I'm part way through casting off--still in the rib pattern. As you can see, it's given me a slightly flared edge, which I think is quite cute. Functionally the rib pulls in the bottom edge of the hood--I used a size smaller needle--and then the flare covers the top of the shoulders. That's the plan, anyway. I guess I'll confirm it when it comes off the needles.

Rainbow Hood

I've been knitting up this hood since the weekend--making it up as I go along and seeing how far the yarn will go. It's the Rainbow dyed skein from our dyeing day in the Spinning Certificate. It's always fun with these random dyed yarns to see how the colours will knit up. In this case the lengths of each colour are relatively short. I love watching the colours appear on my needles stitch by stitch. These colours remind me of finger painting: simple primaries with just a bit of mixing. Actually I'm happy with how much of the blue, red and yellow are coming through compared to the more muddy colours.

Adding Colour

My skein of Finn-cashmere spindle-spun yarn has undergone a transformation in the last week.I've been progressively adding colour--five related blue-greens to be precise. The photo doesn't quite pick up the subtleties of the variation, but it's definitely not white any more. Now that it's dyed and rinsed and dried, I can think about knitting it up. First I need to make some decisions about what I'd like to make. Then a bit of sampling will be in order. I also need to document my process, since I'm planning to include this article as part of my folio.

Meanwhile, I've been working away at different preparation methods for worsted spinning. More of that to come.

My friend D is safely home, having flown from about 15 degrees in Melbourne in the morning to something like 36 in Brisbane by the time she landed. I must say, I'd rather be home, wearing a sweatshirt and spinning away!

Feathered Fancy

The ducks are a major feature of any trip to Warrandyte for me. Their antics on the water are lots of fun. I particularly enjoy wathching them swim around in the currents. And their water landings are superb.

Another duck specialty that often catches my attention is the colouring and patterns of their wings. The more I look at the way their feathers are aranged and the depth of colour hidden under the brown, the more fascinated I am.

Style

Walking down Sydney Rd with my friend D yesterday afternoon. She needed shoes, and we had a very successful shopping mission. On the way there were all sorts of things to admire in the shops. This one in particular caught my eye:The shop was full of red and black! lace and ruffles with a lot of attitude, including several full-skirted Marilyn Munroe style dresses, one of which D is threatening to wear to her daughter's wedding. As you can imagine from the decor, not traditional Mother of the Bride style.

I love it when shops and people can put their style out there. The chandelier is 100% plastic, but really says it all!

Riverside

Yesterday afternoon's excursion offered a great opportunity for some relaxed knitting. We drove to Warrandyte--one of my favourite spots. After a lovely afternoon tea at a local cafe--such a counterful of homemade cakes that choosing was difficult--there was time for a couple of hours of relaxed knitting on the riverbank before it was time to eat again. . . . my right hand isn't on my knitting because it's holding the camera!

When a decent interval had passed, there was room for fish and chips to share between ourselves and the ducks. Then home and an early night.

Guest Appearance

My friend D is visiting for the weekend. The plan is to enjoy a quiet crafty weekend together.

D's main craft is embroidery, particularly silk ribbon embroidery. Just now she's exploring stumpwork. This 3-D embroidery uses incredibly fine thread. Here's one panel of her sampler: That's a single strand of embroidery thread you can see draped across her fingernail. Here's the sort of thing she does with it:

The petal is "painted" in on fine fabric with a single strand of thread. It's then cut out and applied to the main piece--Wow!

Gratitude of a Camel

My friend L dropped in this morning. She came to share a delightful card she'd received in the mail. This is one of five equally bright faces of the card, plus it comes with a laugh out loud, multi-lingual sound track. This is one of those anoying occasions when the program that drives this blog insists on placing my picture on its side--please don't do damage to your neck trying to look at it--but Matthew Flinders (Camel) is healthy, happy and grateful. I'm glad!

If you missed the camel repair story, here's the link.

Happy Spinner

It's been a while since I gave you a nice piece of spun fibre to enjoy. Here's the Finn-Cashmere I've been playing with this last week: I spun it up on my drop spindle earlier in the year. Now I'm dyeing it to make a scarf for myself. I'll include it with my Spinning Folio, so that's two benefits from the one skein of yarn. And I loved every minute of spinning it. That makes me a happy spinner.

I'm also a happy spinner because I've got far enough with sorting out the box of bits that will comprise my Spinning Folio that I'm back to actually spinning. I've sorted out where some of the main gaps are in the work that I've done. Now I get to fill the gaps one skein at a time. Right now I'm working on a sample of worsted spun merino: one small bobbin spun, one to go. Then I'll ply, wash, sample and knit a swatch. It will have it's moment of glory with a page in my presentation folder. There's not that much of it, so that will probably be all it will ever be. But it's so nice to spin that I don't mind.

More Christmas

They say, "Christmas comes but once a year". Somehow this year mine is extending beyond the usual limits. One of my gifts on Christmas morning was a bright, original, creative gift voucher. It was so nicely done that it would have made a gift in itself, but it actually had money in it too. My friend A knew that I would like a textile book as my gift, but they don't have a good range of those where she lives. Since she's only 16 and works hard for her money, I particularly appreciated her generosity. This week the Guild Craft Supply is open again. The voucher felt so special, that I took the whole thing along with me to chose a book. I'm not sure that the women on duty quite knew what to make of it: it's big and bright and was quite obvious in my hands. I found this book on sock knitting: It fits all my criteria for a good textile book: clearly and attractively presented, with lots of principles and techniques and a few good examples of work. It seems to cover all the basics of knitting socks, plus contains lots of scope for exploring and designing my own.

I've been wanting to learn to knit socks for a few years now. The major impediment--apart from my usual preoccupations and distractions--is the fact that I normally knit with a needle under my arm. That just doesn't go with the 4 double pointed needles required to knit a sock. I've gradually been getting used to using circular needles and am just about ready to try the double pointed ones again. Of course, my usual preoccupations and distractions haven't gone away; and I do have the work for my Spinning Certificate folio to get done, but now I have one more valuable resource to help me, and the added motivation of a happy Christmas gift to encourage me on my way.

Breakfast

Last night was Melbourne's hottest night on record--equal with a night in 1902!--with the temperature staying above 30.something degrees all night. It was already up to 34 by the time I got out of bed at about 8.00 am after a hot and not very restful night. When I went shopping on the way home yesterday all I could think of was icecream! I compromised and bought a box of these fruit-frozen yoghurts. I made a meal last night out of a couple of them, plus a big bowl of pitted cherries. This morning I ate a few more. Here's my breakfast plate: The forecast maximum for today is 40. Hopefully we won't get there. There's a cool change on the way, but it probably won't reach us until this afternoon.

I still have a table covered with spinning stuff and I have a friend coming to stay in a couple of days time. I'd like to have things a bit more ordered to welcome her. So, some more tidying up is on the agenda for today. When the cool change comes, I'll be able to do some spinning. I am sooo looking forward to that cool change coming!

Mobius with a Twist

I didn't get to the library yesterday. I was so engrossed in my knitting that I sat in front of my evaporative cooler throughout the afternoon until I had it finished. Here's what I made: It's a little neck warmer. It's hard to believe I'd ever want one of those with the temperature forecast to go up to at least 43 this afternoon. The basic design is a mobius--that's a cylinder twisted on itself. I used the samples from my dyeing, so the colours change from blue through to magenta The added twist is the turquoise coloured flap at the front. That wraps around the front of the little neck roll adding a splash of contrasting colour and texture. I'm playing with the idea of adding beads.

I was pleased with my progress yesterday. As well as knitting up the neck warmer, I sorted my notes for the wool classing session of the course. They're all nicely displayed now, along with the fibre samples. I just need to buy a binder today and then I can tick that off my list. My big table still looks like a disaster area, but it's organised chaos as far as I'm concerned. Now today, I am definitely going to seek out somewhere cooler than my house. 43 is too hot to be knitting.

Uh Oh!

I declared in yesterday's post that my next task was to sort the Spinning Certificate box. This big box of spinning stuff had been lurking under my weaving bench. In it were a variety of fleece samples, skeins and swatches from the early months of the Spinning Certificate course. Problem: like most neglected piles of stuff it had become a bit of a monster in my mind.

Well, I tackled the box. Here's some of what I found: The good news: a lot of the bags and skeins were nicely labelled. I can tick those straight off my list of requirements.

The bad news: there are a couple of skeins there of lovely spinning that I didn't label at the time. I can just imagine that after working on them for hours I would have been so familiar with the work, that the thought of ever confusing it with anything else was incredible. Incredible, but true! I had no idea at the time how the skeins would multiply over the months until one day's work is hard to recall amongst the many days of concentrated spinning I've done over the year. After doing a bit of detective work: matching fleece samples and skeins; I think I've come pretty close to identifying most of what's there. Some of it I'll have to just write off or use for sampling. Uh Oh!

Today's going to be another scorcher. Thankfully it cooled down enough overnight that I've been able to enjoy a couple of hours of knitting this morning. This afternoon I'm planning to retreat to the Brunswick Library. It's in the old Town Hall building, with great thick stone walls. I'm hoping they do a good job of keeping out the heat. The library doesn't open until 1.00 pm. Between now and then, I'm going to tackle the pile of stuff that came out of the box. I'd like to get as much of it as I can into it's final state for presentation. Then I can tuck it away safely and reclaim my big table.

Tidying Up

The year is already more than a week old and the festivities are well and truly over. Now I need to get into some sort of rhythm to achieve the things that are important to me in the next couple of months. One major task is my Spinning Certificate Folio. I did lots of work for that as the classes and workshops happened last year, but there's also a fair bit that needs to be completed and tidied up.

Yesterday was a hot day--the first of several forecast to culminate in the low forties early next week. That's Centigrade, by the way. My personal take on hot days is that if the outside temperature is below body temperature I cope OK. So anything under, say 36 I won't really complain about--well not much! But if I'm spinning or knitting, it's a different story. The rate limiting step there is sweaty hands. I can't spin effectively if my hands are sweating. Anyway, yesterday was too hot to spin, but I really wanted to do something constructive for my folio. So I tidied up my dyeing samples. Here they are all nicely arranged and labelled:I also put together a few pages of notes on colour theory and colour mixing. That's one unit I can tick off the list. I've done all that's required. Of course, looking at the material makes me want to research and experiment a whole lot more, but that wouldn't count as tidying up. So I'm not going to go there. My plan is to complete each unit--there are 11--to the required standard. Then I can play around with extras. I also need to plan and complete a "major project". At the moment my main trouble there is too many ideas. I might solve that by doing a collection of smaller pieces. That way I can just keep adding to it, or stop when I have to.

OK, next lot of tidying up: there's a box full of fleece samples and partially labelled skeins stashed under my weaving bench. I really need to start to sort that out.

Zipper Knitting

Last week I started to explore entrelac knitting. I soon got side-tracked. Entrelac consists of rows of blocks which appear to interweave diagonally. The initial row of blocks is a series of triangles and the subsequent blocks are small rectangles . Each small rectangle is knitted in turn. The result, in the example I was trying out, is lots of blocks of 12 stitches each, with a turn a the end of each row of each block. That's lots of turning, and turning never was my favourite part of knitting. What to do?

Enter the zipper knitting technique: knitting to and fro without turning the work. I found this technique on a number of sites. It seems like the perfect solution to my problem. So for the last couple of days I've been knitting a stocking stitch sample: knitting right to left as usual for the knit row, then knitting left handed from left to right for the next row--instead of turning and knitting a purl row--like this:
It feels awkward at first--as most new techniques do--but it works. When I'm feeling a bit more confident with it, I'll get back to the entrelac. I'm hoping to just zip through the small blocks then. I'll let you know how I get on.

Knitting Like Dr Seuss

As mentioned in previous posts, I've been knitting face washers as Christmas gifts. Since yesterday, January 6th, was the Twelfth Day of Christmas, I've decided to stop now. This morning I gave my friend V a couple of the washers I'd knitted. Since she's a knitter, we discussed some of the technicalities. Here's a pic of two of the washers I've made:
The blue washer at the bottom is one of the first ones I made. The orange one above is one of the more recent ones. The original pattern calls for a yarn-over increase two stitches in from the beginning of every row for the first half of the face washer. To achieve a similar appearance for the second half--with the little eyelet which results from the yarn over--the pattern calls for two decreases plus the yarn-over increase. The result is the right number of stitches, but a slightly distorted shape. I didn't like it much. My friend M, laughed and said it was a bit of a Dr Seuss shape. I had to agree. So I decided to change the pattern. Instead of doing the second half with the decreases, I knitted the first half according to the pattern and left it on a needle; then I made a second one the same. A three-needle cast off joined the two triangles and finished off the washer with a knitted in ridge at the fold-line. I liked that a lot better--hence the washer on the top is rather more square than the Dr Seuss version below. However, I'm planning to keep the Dr Seuss version. I am very fond of The Cat in the Hat and other slightly off-centre stories and the thought of a Dr Seusss version of knitting makes me smile.

Adventures of a Camel

Meet Mathew Flinders the camel:He was a birth gift to a friend of my friend L, and after 25 years of loving, he was looking rather tattered. L brought him along yesterday afternoon to see if I could help restore him. He is very precious, despite his age, so I wanted to makes sure he looked right as well as getting him back to a more secure state. In the top right of the pic you can see the length of strong cylindrical bandage that had been holding his neck together. When that came off, his neck was definitely floppy and there were several large holes where the fabric had completely worn away.

First of all we raided my doll and bear stash for camel-coloured materials. Despite my ongoing attempts to sort and reduce my collection of stuff, it's moments like these I'm so glad of my stash! As it turns out, I had some thick felt and some beige corduroy which looked like they would do the job.

• I worked the felt in through the holes to pad out the stuffiing and covered that with the corduroy.
• The new fabric extended well beyond the holes in the camel fur fabric.
• I then ladder-stitched the small openings.
• There were a couple of places where I wasn't sure that I could get the edges of the holes to come together, so I stitched the edges of the camel fur fabric carefully down to the corduroy in those spots.
• When I knew it was all secure, I was willing to risk a bit more, so I started to pull the fur fabric together over the patches--again using ladder stitch.
• In the end it all came together--no holes and original camel fur fabric covering the whole of Matthew Flinders well-loved neck.
• There were a couple of other holes where the legs join the body, but they were easy enough to stitch closed.

So now Matthew Flinders the camel has gone home to the ones who love him, ready for many more years of happiness.

Christmas Cuteness

I'm at that post-Christmas stage where little gifts occasionally catch my eye and make me smile. This little cutie was in my Christmas stocking: Now, as you can see, it's in my sugar jar, so I get an extra bit of sweetness every time I scoop out a little spoonful of sugar for my coffee. And of course that sweet cup of coffee is essential fuel for my creativity! I'll make myself another one soon and then see about getting some work done.

Double Dip

I'm quite enjoying the dip dye technique. it seems to be an easy way of getting a reliable variation in colour across the skein. And I don't have to worry too much about when rinsing happens even if the dye pot isn't exhausted, since there's always a nice section of yarn kept out of the colour.

This skein was left hanging in the dye pot while I went away over Christmas. I'd dyed the teal colour you can see in the top left section. I know the dye was still active because when I went to rinse it out yesterday, the remainder of the skein picked up a pale version of the same colour. That's the colour you can see in the centre of the skeinBut I wanted more! So when I'd done rinsing, I mixed up a small amount of another blue colour, "sky", and dipped the other end of the skein in that for a good half hour before heating up the dye pot again. I left it overnight, just because I couldn't be bothered finishing it off. So now I have the intense blue that you can see at the lower right of the pic. I think that's enough.

Sorry, I didn't iron the white cloth before taking the pic, but the colours show up better on a white background, whether it's ironed or not.

Now What?

I'm still slowly sorting my way through years of accumulated stuff in my sewing room. Every now and again I come across something like this:

Hand-stitched heart blocks, left over from a long-ago quilting project--lovingly designed and prepared at the time, but now what?

• I could just chuck them--seems a pity, though;
• I could keep them in my teaching stash just as they are--they demonstrate several useful points;
• I could find some coordinating fabric and finish them off--I just happen to know I have some; and I might even know where it is;
• I could pack them away with various other strays that seem too good to get rid of and hope to do something with them sometime . . . ummm, that's how I got where I am in the first place!

So, I smiled at myself, took a photo and blogged about them. Now at least I can tick "blogging" off my to do list for this morning.

Now what? How about making myself another cup of coffee and hoping to find something easier to dispose of?

New Year, New Knitting

What better way to celebrate the beginning of a new year than with a new style of knitting. My knitting adventure for New Year's Day was to start to explore entrelac. Here's where I'm up to:I found entrelac in the last chapter of my knitting encyclopedia. I've looked at it before and been put off by the apparent complexity. But yesterday I had time to attempt it with no demands and no looming deadlines.

I've been knitting face washers as Christmas gifts--I'm working on the 12 days of Christmas principle, which means I have until January 6 to complete my gift-making. At first I appreciated the simplicity of the garter stitch squares, but after making several I was well and truly over it. So it was time to try something new. I'm still using the bamboo-soy yarn and aiming at a small square, so the adventure is nicely contained. If it works out, there'll be a maverick face washer amongst the group.

A Space Odyssey

Odyssey (n): any long series of wanderings (Macquarie Dictionary)

In the spirit of renewal, I prepared for 2010 by clearing a small area of floor in my sewing room:

I hadn't seen these floorboards since just after they were laid down as part of 2009's great flooring project. The sewing room has been the most difficult room to recliam, partly because of the sheer volume of stuff, and partly because I have yet to replace some of the furniture I got rid of before having the new floors installed. Those two factors combined have made it hard to move in here.

Yesterday I dealt with one box and one bag full of stuff. The result is the area of floor you can see in the pic. You can also see that there still a way to go before this room is fully sorted, but it's that much easier to get to my shelves and cupboard. And the room feels that much lighter when I walk in. So, my aim for 2010 is to continue to wander along the path of getting things sorted. I don't expect it to be a quick journey, but I do expect to make some interesting discoveries along the way.