Where are they now? Part two...

Mom in her socks

After writing the bit about Mom's socks, I thought I'd check on them.  I found that she still has them and was willing to model them for me:

They were made of some self-striping yarn, I don't remember what brand, but I do remember really liking the yarn and the pattern it made.  Bright bands of color, these socks just scream out "FUN!" to me.

Busy with the tam and washing up a new fleece.  It isn't turning out the way I thought it would - but I can fix that - I'll dye some of it and see what happens.  More on that later on.

I've finished up all the pieces of the sweater, just need to block them, assemble them and pick up the stitches for the front band and the collar.  Probably take it to the LYS and hunt for some gorgeous buttons before I start on the button bands.

I'll keep you posted...

Felting of the swatch...

This is so cool... I'm amazed every time I do felting.  All the things you are NEVER supposed to do to wool, doing them and coming up with the most amazing and dense fabric you can imagine!

Hot water, strong agitation  with a pair of old jeans and extra laundry detergent.  After five minutes, I got this:


Five minutes



Still some small "holes" in the fabric, this photo is shot with the swatch very wet and plopped on top of the washing machine lid with most of the foam blotted off.  Not much shrinkage yet, but the yarn is starting to fuzz out a little. 

The measurements at this point were 6 3/4" wide by 6 1/2" high.

Back into the washer it went for another five minutes of sloshing around in hot water.  As an aside, trying to find the little swatch in all that foam and the wet jeans was a bit of an adventure.  That water is HOT! Thank goodness for rubber gloves!

After another five minutes, ten minutes total now,  the swatch was 6 3/4" wide by 5 1/2" high.  Interestingly enough, the knitted fabric was pulling in more in length than in width.  I guess I hadn't expected that.  Back in to slosh for another five minutes, fifteen total, the swatch measured 5 3/4" wide by 4 1/2" high.  Finally starting to pull in widthwise and firming up in texture.  Fewer holes in the fabric.  Back in for another slosh, after 20 minutes the swatch was 5" wide by 4" high.  Back in again, after 25 minutes the swatch measured 4 3/4" wide by 3 1/4" high.  One more time and after 30 minutes total the swatch measured 4 1/2" wide and 3 1/4" high and looked like this:

I've got pictures of the whole progression for my own files, but I noticed that the garter stitch edge behaved differently than the stockinette center.  The main difference can be felt (I couldn't help myself - sorry!) in the density of the fabric.  The stitches are no longer visible anywhere, although the garter stitch ridges are still there with a very firm touch.  The fabric got quite "hairy" and dense.  Very little drape so the tam should hold its shape well as long as it is blocked properly.

Now that the swatch is done and felted, I spun it out and rinsed it twice in the washer with the jeans.  The swatch is sitting out on the counter to dry, the jeans went into the dryer to await their duty as companions to the tam when it comes time to felt it.

All that being done, I started knitting on the tam.  Patterning is from Piecework magazine's feature on kilt hose and bonnets from the Royal Highland Regiment Black Watch.

Balmoral Bonnet to match Wallace Tartan

Some part of me recoils from calling a hat intended for a very large man a "bonnet" so I've been referring to it as a tam.  Although not technically correct, it sure beats the mental image of said big man wearing a frilly Easter bonnet.  So, it remains a tam for the purposes of this blog.

I'm pleased with the way the color work is going.  I haven't done any Fair Isle color stranding in a long, long time.  I knit with one color carried in each hand and the stranding almost happens without me thinking about it much.  I remember that tip from Alice Starmore's fantastic book on Fair Isle.  The long rectangles of color will become square in the felting process and, of course, much smaller.  I like the look of the brilliant yellow with all the dark colors.  The tam will be trimmed out in a black grosgrain ribbon edge with swallowtail ends in the back.  There are adjustment ties concealed in the ribbon edge that will adjust the fit.

Back to knitting!

Swatching for the Tam...

Swatch for tam before felting

Ahh, the joys of felting... I think I'm one of those oddballs that actually enjoy the swatching process.  I've done up the swatch in Firecracker Heather Wool of the Andes Worsted from Knit Picks (find it at: http://www.knitpicks.com/ ).

Before felting this swatch measures 6" wide by 6 1/2" high across the full swatch.  Just the stockinette portion measures 4 3/4" wide by 5 1/2" high and is 19 stitches by 28 rows.

The tam is an historically correct version from Piecework magazine (love that historical knitting!) and will be paired with a set of kilt hose done in intarsia.  I dyed the yarn for the yellow in the Wallace tartan since it wasn't available in both of the yarn types I was using and I wanted the pieces to match as much as possible.  The kilt hose will be done in a lightweight two ply yarn called Palette (also from Knit Picks).  Here are the shots of the yarn with the magazine photo so you'll have some idea of what I'm talking about.


Yarns and photo of kilt hose

Here are the kilt hose, very interesting pattern.  These are knitted flat and seamed, that will certainly make the intarsia easier, but I'm thinking that I'd be supremely irritated by a seam on the foot of my sock, so I'm going to modify the pattern to do the foot in the round so that there will be no seam to irritate the foot.  The tartan is Wallace, red, black and bright yellow although the photo doesn't show it well.  The yellow yarn is hand dyed by me in Brilliant Yellow acid dye from Dharma Trading Co.  It is a great way to get the colors I want for this project.  Fun to do too!

Then there is the photo of the tam along with the yarn, tartan and photo from Piecework - interestingly enough these both came from the same issue of the magazine, how cool is that?

Yarns and photo for tam

So, next thing is to go and felt the swatch and to re-measure and adjust the pattern for size.  Then I can start on the actual tam, I haven't done felting like this in years and I really enjoyed it in the past.  Did a pair of slippers as a gift for my brother years ago - styled like chukka boots, the two eyelet ankle high style.  Remember those?  The felted "fabric" turned out so thick and soft - the knitted stitches became nearly indistinguishable.  I have also located a neat felted pattern for slippers for myself.  It uses both a superwash and a feltable wool... more on that later since it is quite a way down the knitting queue.



Finished!

Well, finally got one of my Works In Progress done!  The "Pretty Thing" for Janet is knitted, washed, blocked and delivered.  Couldn't get a picture of her wearing it though. : (

Pretty Thing being blocked

This is a shot of the wet cowl on the blocking board and pinned out.  Wanted to pull out the scallops - might as well do that so she could see the most extreme version of her cowl.  Since it is a superwash wool I'm not sure how well it will hold the blocking, but it sure turned out to be a very "pretty thing" indeed!  One new thing I learned while working on this project is the sewn bind off.  Very slick, and very elastic -  I like it very much!

Here's a shot of the stitches close up and personal.

Pretty Thing stitch close-up

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the color changes, but I find that I really rather like the small bursts of color and the definition of the stitches where they occur.  I think I have enough of this yarn left over to make one of these for myself too.  Not right away though, too many other projects already queued up for the time being.

Next up on the needles - the tam to match the Wallace tartan - there is a Renaissance Faire coming up where it could make a grand entrance.  The kilt hose will come later, that is intarsia, which I haven't learned how to do yet.

Where are they now? (K&C Blog Week - Day 4)

Knitting for other people isn't something I do very often - the legendary boyfriend sweater is most of the reason why.  And in my experience, exactly that happens every time I knit someone a treasure.

So this post will be mercifully short - I've done such knitting only a few times... twice for husbands that ended up being ex-husbands and then a couple times for my Mom, who, bless her heart will keep them forever.

The first one was a pair of socks - pretty good, I think they were my first pair, but they were in DK which was heavier weight than I wanted to wear.  So I gave them to my husband at the time.  Now he's gone and so are the socks.  But that's okay, I have one of his funny sweatshirts, so I suppose it was a fair trade in the end.

The second one was my first sweater - done in the round from the top down.  Lion Brand Wool Ease in a wonderful deep green.  I gave it to my husband (a different one) and he wore it a lot, not just because I made it, but because it fit well and he genuinely liked it.  Now he's gone, and so is the sweater.

I was beginning to see a pattern here... so I don't often do such things anymore.  I did knit my Mom a pair of socks for a Christmas gift.  I think she wears them with her clogs sometimes.  I knit her a pretty swirled tam in a yarn she picked out to match her winter coat.  Delightful stuff, and she's gone on to learn to knit things for herself.  She's decided that she's a yarn snob... cracks me up to hear her say that.

Somehow knitting for Mom is different.  She knows what she wants, and yet she will wear anything her kids make for her.  I remember when I was little, I made some dreadfully garish jewelry for her from little plastic shells and electric pink gimp.  And bless her forever, she wore them!

Tidy mind, tidy stitches (K&C Blog Week - Day 3)

Hoooooo boy.  This is the tough topic for me.  In many ways, I'm very organized and in many more I can't begin to claim mastery over my stash. 

A number of ideas leap forward:

-I tend to buy stash in bunches, with long spaces in between.  For instance, my last buy was on my birthday last month.  Had a wonderful time, and didn't plan on buying anything except the green yarn for "Pretty Thing".  My prior buy was a Knit Picks order for yarn to make a Tam and Kilt Hose for a match to a Wallace Tartan kilt.  Before that, a couple fleeces from my favorite shepherd (one of them was a 13 pounder from a Corriedale ram named Jake, the other was a pale silvery blue-gray from a sheep named Sierra, whose fleece I'd bought the year before).  As I look at it, and think about it some, the sequence seems to repeat itself.  I'll buy fleece for a while, then some rovings or top in fun colorways, then yarn.  I love to spin and knit, but I tend to do a little of each, rather than long marathon runs of either one.  Hmmm, hadn't thought of that before.

-My stash includes yarn, of course, as well as roving, top and fleeces in various stages of processing.  If you've been following this blog, you've read about my adventures with the Nasty Romney fleece.  It is, at last, all washed and dyed.  Some left white, just for fun, but I've been picking and starting to spin the stuff.  I can't say that it has been purely wonderful to work with, but I am finding that I enjoy the silky nature of the Romney.  It really wasn't what I had expected, and that is part of the fun of spinning.

-I do tend to work through a fleece, start to finish.  Rather like I've been blogging about with the Nasty Romney and Dolly Dorset in earlier posts.  Instead of leaping from one fleece to another, I notice that I try out a lot of ideas with the fleeces I'm working with at the moment.  I do a lot of swatching and small batches and I really enjoy the process.  This way, I get to find out what I like about the fiber.  Like the Louet Northern Lights top in Wild Berry Jam.  Spun up the singles in January, tried doing a Navajo ply of it and just didn't like the visual overload.  So I backed up, spun some dark gray Dorset and did a two ply, then a three ply sample of that.  Preferred the three ply and made up the rest of the LNL in that configuration.  Incidentally, I have another colorway of the LNL called Violets that I'll probably process in a similar fashion.  Probably with a white wool, since there is a little white in the Violets colorway.

-I've noticed that I like to look at my singles for a while before I charge into plying them into yarns.  Sample a little of this, a little of that.  Find a yarn I like, knit up a small swatch and live with it a while.  If I still like it, I'll spin off the rest and stash the yarn.

-I am also starting to catalog my stash in Ravelry.  Since I didn't know that it existed until recently, this is an ongoing work in progress.  But I'm pleased to have found a system that is workable.  I may develop some kind of scrapbook to show the start to finish nature of fleeces to fabrics.  I do enjoy the process and being able to keep shreds of evidence along the way is a nice little bit of personal history.

-Once I launch a project, I'm pretty organized about keeping the whole package together while it is in process.  I dislike the waste of time when things I need aren't in my working bag.  At the moment my knitting bag has a couple projects in it.  The instruction/pattern sheets are all on a clipboard together.  Swatches and extra balls of yarn are there along with my plastic zipper bag of tools - crochet hooks, needle tips and cables, cable needles, yarn darning needles, gauge measuring tools and such like.  I've got a separate bag that I take to work, single project, idiot-proof stockinette.  I work on it until I get to a part that requires a lot of attention and switch it out for another piece of idiot-proof stockinette.

-I've got a lot of patterns and books, but I don't carry them around with me.  I make a copy of the page I'm working on, and then I feel free to write on it, mark it up and use it to work the piece.  When I'm done, some of those pages go back into the original book - notes about what worked, what didn't and where the pattern had things that didn't seem clear - those things are VERY useful if I ever use that pattern again.

So, overall, I may not be completely organized.  But I'm getting better all the time!

Skill + 1 Up (K&C Blog Week - Day 2)

The new things I've learned this past year could fill pages!  It seems that most anything I attempt, I jump in with both feet and lots of ambition - and sometimes very little sense.  For example, I never knew about all the video help available online until my Mom decided to start knitting.  She thought I could teach her, and I was flattered, and gave it a shot.  But.... she's left-handed.  I thought (all this thinking - I smell smoke!) that it would be easy - just have her sit across from me, right?  Well, maybe not, since not only are the hand positions reversed - the good thing.  The stitches are also reversed - not so good.  I also learned that it is far more difficult to teach things that sound so simple in a book.

With that experience crawling through my cranium, I started digging for more technical information about why knitting "works" the way it does.  I found it in books by Cat Bordhi, Barbara Walker, Elizabeth Zimmerman and one called Knitting in the Old Way by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and Deborah Robson.  Being rather designer-minded since childhood, these things flooded into my brain and did their own version of the hula in there, showing me possibilities I hadn't thought about for designing my own knitted things.  Only trouble - finding time to knit the samples and (of course) the finished things!

Specifically, I've learned entrelac, which has led me out to the land of madness in terms of picking up stitches and knitting off in other directions - what a design possibility!  Those ponderings led to cables combined with knitted lace patterns, mosaic knitting, really cool Fair Isle ideas and more!

In the last year I've also discovered knitting groups, Ravelry and Etsy.  These are wonderful, each in their own way.  Knitting groups allow me to knit (and spin) in public (not that I was ever opposed to doing that - I don't care if people think I'm weird - I AM weird, and I'm okay with that).  They also challenge me to look at what I'm doing in new ways - other people do different things with their knitting than I do.  The Brain hat comes to mind here... no, I don't have pictures (sigh).

Ravelry..... what a great concept!  I don't even really know how to describe it.  Part pattern library, part social network, part project journal and stash organizer.  I'm still learning my way around in there - so much to see and do!  Might be able to catalog my stash, but that will take a while methinks!  I've found patterns and lots of inspiration in that wonderful electronic environs!  Wandering through French patterns (wishing I remembered more of my high school French so I could use them!) marveling at the differences between designers.  Rediscovering yarns, sources of supply and designers that I'd forgotten, and finding some I never knew before.

Etsy is also a great online venue for all things artsy.  I can look for (and find) most anything I could desire for my fiberish life.  I also have a shop there where I sell my handmade pens www.etsy.com/shop/krwizwork and even though I haven't really talked about it much here on the blog, it is one of the ways I feed my inner artist that actually makes me a few bucks.  People know what to do with a pen.  Hoping to save up the sheckles to insulate my wood shop so I can work out there year around.  But I have had a wonderful time inside with my wool this winter.

I used to joke that I could spin, weave and dye without strong drink.  I finally did more serious work on dyeing this past winter.  I've documented a lot of that early learning here in this blog, in fact, that's why I started the blog in the first place.  Most people get a glazed look when I start talking about fiberish things - and invariably ask "Can't you just buy yarn?  Why would you spin it yourself?"  To which, I have learned to answer "Because I can."  So, in this format, I don't have to encounter the glassy stare.... I can prattle on at length about what is important to me.  So, for the first time in my life, I've found a place to say the things that are "all about me".  Selfish?  Maybe a little, but I've found that there are people who are enjoying my little flight of fancy here.  Maybe not too many, but enough to keep me writing.

Thanks for the challenge Renee Anne, this is FUN! (wink!)