Wool For Brains

I have tried solar dyeing before, sticking the yarn in a jam jar with some dye and acid and leaving it in the greenhouse for a while. I can report that the much worn socks that I used that yarn in are still as colourful as they started out, none of the dye fell off in the wash despite the yarn never being cooked as such. I don’t know whether it would work on a larger scale and the british summer is renowned for being unpredictable (and wet). My larger scale process involves a steamer (Argos £9.79) and a 3kwh solar panel (free). Total cost £9.79. Those of you that don’t look at the husband’s blog (that would be all of you because he doesn’t show you wool) now know what the scaffolding was for.

I don’t think I have a jam jar big enough for 200g of fibre so it’s altogether a different process but the end result is the same. Yes, a 3kwh panel is overkill for running a steamer and that’s not what we got it for but you should know that I can convert just about anything to a textile use. It does have other uses during the day running the kettle, coffee machine, toaster, microwave, fridge, freezer, vacuum, iron and washer. Not all at once of course because it’s only rated at 3.3kwh and the kettle eats power like you wouldn’t believe. There’s something wrong when the steamer cost me more than the panels but that’s because the panels aren’t mine, I didn’t pay to put them up and I don’t have to worry about maintaining them. There’s a grant for microgeneration and the people that own the panels are claiming the grants and getting their money back from that. We’re just providing the roof space for their panels and using what comes down the wire before it goes off to the national grid.

So far it’s a win with the glass roof (at least when it’s not raining which it seems to be doing a lot of the time now) but the jury is still out on the steamer. It clearly works because the dye didn’t fall off in the rinse. My first run had liquid all over the newspaper I’d thoughtfully put it on. I’ve not worked out why it is that the condensate didn’t all run back into the base, I’m guessing that it was because it couldn’t drip back through the centre because it was full of plastic bag rather than vegetable. My second attempt left plenty of clear space around the plastic and that worked much better. I’m not sure yet whether I’d have been better spending an extra £4 for a hotplate because I know what I’m doing with a pan and there’s less chance of leakage.

Since the panels went up we’ve had a day of black cloud and rain and two days of sun and white cloud. On the days with sunny intervals the roof generated enough to power the house for the day. Should we get a day with no cloud (possible but becoming more unlikely given the time of year) then we should be a net daily exporter of power. At the moment I’m spending a lot of my time peeking in the meter cupboard seeing whether the house is running on sunshine or the bought stuff but the novelty should wear off soon. We’re moving towards the season of grey wet miserable days so I suspect that soon the roof will have all on keeping up with the ironing and the kettle but there will be sun again next summer, and the one after that.

Carolyn asked whether the dog had vanished with the shop. He spends most of his day being asleep in various places as befits a sofa dog but in the evenings he comes alive for a spot of wool mangling, spider chasing or playing with squeaky toys. There is a rubber chicken somewhere off to the bottom left of the photo but really that was just an excuse to jump all over Dan and make him squeak. He’s only small but he’s sturdy and 8kg of charging fluffball still packs a punch when he lands in your midriff.

I didn’t go to Woolfest this year, it’s too far for the day and a weekend away was a bit silly when we were away on holiday again six weeks afterwards. The attraction of the event is the people, the inspiration and the shopping opportunities. Well I’m not a people person and would walk past people I “know” on the internet without introducing myself, I can see pretty photos of exciting colourways all over the internet and I’m a boring shopper. I would have bought the same as the last two years, a kilo of superwash bfl and a shetland fleece and that’s not much of a haul for all that travel.

My stay at home haul was much bigger and more exciting than anything I would have bought in person. This involved no travel at all because it came to me in the post in a really big sack the week before Woolfest. It looks like a wall of wool but appearances can be deceptive, the majority of it is silk. There’s camel, cashmere and orlon, a tussah brick, a mulberry brick, silk noil, throwster’s waste, cotton, angora, some mohair and alpaca but no wool (not other than mixed with silk or cashmere). It was a surprise parcel in that I didn’t know what was in it (”mostly exotics”) but as I was only paying the postage it seemed worth the gamble. Some days you just get lucky.

It was all natural colours but I’ve been working on that. The samples I spun as they were, there was under 20g of each so that didn’t take long. The top skein is flax/silk, I can’t think of any use for such a blend and I’m no wiser now that I’ve spun it. The dark one was cashmere/merino/silk, then tussah and 50/50 merino tussah. The dayglo orange is a silk cap (like a hankie but formed into a different shape), the bits at the bottom are silk noil and will make lumps in batts, the sea of green at the top is a tussah silk brick. There was some cotton and flax too, the bulk of the flax has been rehomed but I kept the cotton because I’ve not spun that before. I still haven’t spun it because I can’t think of a use for the yarn and I have more exciting things lined up to spin.

I got the pile under control by making it into smaller piles. All the silk (and there was a lot of silk) went into the newly created silk bag, the protein-but-not-silk went into a bag for dyeing but the odd stuff is still roaming the front bedroom looking for a permanent home. My plan for sorting it out was derailed by having the drive band on the carder break off, I still haven’t got that replaced. That was the same weekend I decided to take out the slack on the stretched stretchy drive band on the spinning wheel. That didn’t go well, I’ve joined one before with no trouble but this one would not fuse. After four failed attempts I was worried that it would be too short to do anything with if I failed again and I went for the desperate measure of sewing it together. It’s not ideal but the first join lasted for seven bobbins of single and three bobbins of plied yarn which in my book is better than not having a working wheel at all.

(You would be correct in deducing that I have no knitting – I’m in week two of recovery from a knitting related injury and I’m hopeful that normal service will resume shortly)

I had thought that last week would have been all weaving all of the time but the wheels fell off the cart when the endless cone of grey yarn that I’ve been using for weft since last summer came to an end. After that I needed to think about what I was doing, the third scarf made itself and then my plans for the next were scuppered by there being not enough of one of the yarns. I could have sorted it out easily enough but my lack of enthusiasm for doing so told me that I’d had enough. (Left to right, bag, bag, scarf, all have handspun warp, scarf has handspun for warp and weft)

The reason that I expected it to be a weaving week is that this is the view from my usual knitting spot.  They did a fantastic job putting the scaffolding up without interfering with access to the door or garage and we can still park as usual. It totally blocks out satellite tv reception but we can all live without the box for a week. I spent a few days attempting to not look out of the window but it was surprising how quickly I got used to it and then it was back to knitting as usual. (Check for positive language and lack of moaning – PASS)

This is the start of Amalia, it’s another crescent shaped shawl that starts with the edging and is shaped with short rows. The yarn is thicker than the pattern calls for and so I’ll need fewer repeats to get the same length of edging. I’m nearing the point where I should really work out just how many repeats that is before I overshoot, make it huge and run out of yarn before I finish.

I’ve been dyeing too, there’s a bit of a theme here caused by me having recently been on holiday although I have to confess that the sky was not that blue and the sand was not that golden. Front to back this is Dorset horn, Wensleydale, superwash merino lace and silk brick. The silk brick is staying home as it has a bleeding turquoise issue but the rest will be shop-bound when I manage to resurrect it. The shop went in holiday at the same time as we did but didn’t come back. I imagine it out there somewhere lazing on a beach, sipping cocktails and watching fantastic sunsets. It could at least send a postcard.

I really dislike having work done in the house. It doesn’t matter how much of an improvement there will be after everyone has packed up and gone, it’s the process that bugs me. I’m tied in while people come and go, the dog wants to drive them all away or have a sneaky sniff in their pockets, there’s usually dust and noise and it’s all just pants really. Previous home improvements have included having the fence removed and then the fence team vanishing for two weeks, having the shower ripped out and then finding that the specialist manufacturer of odd sized shower doors had stopped making them. There was the excitement of the replacement double glazed windows that were the wrong colour and the new oven that was white instead of stainless. I could go on but that’s enough to show that my experience of having work done on the house has not been totally positive. It occurred to me that even if the builders were busy putting in a dedicated wool room with voice activated tea production, a moth annihilator and an automatic wool desiccator I’d still whine about it. I am trying to be positive, to focus on the outcome rather than the process and to believe that this time things will go well. I am also trying to give myself something to think about if it all goes wrong. Not that it will of course, I’m being positive remember.

These are not colours I would have put together, it’s the pink that I’m not enamored of. To be truthful I don’t much like the green either. Happily these aren’t for me and the recipient likes them so all is well. These are Opal, wool with cotton for summer socks, and I bought the ball because there was a choice of two colours in cotton rich and the other was even less appealing. These will forever be holiday socks and you have to like them for that.

Guess what – I don’t like the colours of these either, all Finding Nemo with added pink. The selling point with this one was that it was cheap, when it’s £3.50 a ball it can be whatever colour it likes. I did plan on overdyeing it but when I was packing for my holiday it was close to hand. We will get to see what it looks like after a dye bath because I bought two balls (it was cheap remember).

I can’t rely on socks to keep me in a positive frame of mind this week so I’ve turned to weaving. This is a selection from the big black sack of yarn that periodically I feel ashamed about. I’m hoping that the feel good factor from using up stash yarn will see me through the week. I’ll weave until I’ve run through this pile of yarn or until I’ve had enough, the idea is that they’ll all be about 80″ long and 6″ wide and I’ll make them into one piece bags (like this one). If I was organised enough I’d wind the warps and bag them up with the wefts but I’m capable of changing my mind at any time about what goes together.

If that’s not enough to keep my mind off the noise then I have a fallback. Yet again I’m not sold on the colour but as it’s foster knitting and not mine that doesn’t matter. This is lace in superwash sock yarn again and I think I’m forming an opinion. More about that another time..

My plan was that you wouldn’t notice that I was away because the blog was left home alone to update itself in my absence. This worked faultlessly but seeing as the router went into a terminal sulk hours after we left on holiday no-one could see the blog, updated or not. I couldn’t see it anyway because there are still areas of the country where you can’t get a mobile signal (not on any of three networks) and that’s where we were. (If you are marvelling at the accommodation I should add that it wasn’t all ours, it has been divided into four.) Some of us learned how to read a tide table and had a demonstration on why it is important to know which way the tide is running. Get it wrong and it’s worse than just getting your feet wet because there’s no beach left at high tide and no way of getting up the cliffs. This is why there are tide tables posted here, there and everywhere except this is not effective if you don’t know how to read one. We met one lady who got it exactly wrong and thought that the height (larger figure in metres = high tide) was the amount of beach you could see.

This was the state of my holiday knitting at the end of the week, I’d planned to put beads on the lace except they hadn’t come by the time that I left. That means that I now have 40g of turquoise beads to add to the 40g of red beads that I put aside the other week. The socks still aren’t finished, they only need the toes grafting but I haven’t got to that yet. I could blame the mountain of laundry that I’ve been working on since getting home but that is clearly not an explanation as I managed to find time to block the lace.

This is Merope in some sort of cashmere/silk from the back of the drawer. I overdyed it but I think that it originally came in robin’s egg blue with big patches of undyed yarn (yes, it was cheap, that was why I bought it). It’s the same yarn as I used for the little flippy thing and I had no idea how much of it I had left. I made the small size (27″ by 58″) because I was worried about running out of yarn but I suspect that I had enough to make the larger size. I made life hard for myself by leaving the second chart at home, giving myself a choice between putting it aside or working from the written instructions. It took me a day to ponder it but the written instuctions saw me through to the end. I didn’t like it though and grumbled my way through each line but I can do it if I have to

I haven’t sewn the ends in, I know that I’ll not wear it so it has a future as a gift or a swap item. I’ve learned from experience that if I leave the yarn tails hanging it means that I can be certain that it’s not been worn and then there can be no confusion at some future date. (Modelling services again provided by Helga the hanger, it beats trying to get the junior photographer to photograph the things that I want him to)

I just have one more holiday photo to show, there’s no sense of scale on this so I could pretend it’s a fossil of huge proportions but it’s really small enough to cover with the tip of my index finger. It’s still a fossil though, even if it is tiny.

There’s still no hot knitting but the moderately boring stuff is moving along nicely. I will admit that these have some good points. They look ok from a distance, they fit well enough and their owner thinks they are fantastic. I’m just glad they are finished. It is a lovely pattern (Musica) but should I make these again I’d use thicker yarn. You can see his arm through the cuff, it’s a loose fabric and just not right. That put me off them right from the start and as a result I didn’t take as much care as I should have done with the floats and the pattern. There are mistakes front and back and all in all the quality is poor. When you are ten you don’t notice these things. I am not ten and I do.

I need not have worried about running out of the lime yarn, there was enough and to spare. I have a satsuma sized ball left over which is good because I have a plan for that already. I had bought the the main colour because it was bright and zingy, well it looked bright in the ball but after I’d worked the cuff it wasn’t looking zingy enough. I did think about making inch wide stripes but couldn’t face the joins so a spiral it was. They are another pair until wash day or a replacement for an eight year old pair (I had a recount, the oldest ones are eight not six as I’d first thought) Not even hand knit socks last forever.

I gave this a fair chance, I knitted on long after I knew that it was destined to be a flop in the hope that it would magically redeem itself. The pattern was just right for tv knitting, minimal beading, minimal lace but the yarn was all wrong. Schaeffer Anne is a lovely sock yarn, high twist, superwash and shiny but it’s not speaking to me as a lace yarn. Actually it was speaking to me, it was saying “I’m all wrong for this, I’m making a bouncy springy fabric that is never going to hold a block and I need to go back into the yarn drawer.” I did eventually see the light and slipped it off the needle and back into the ball. I now have 40g of silver lined red 6/0 beads to add to the bead box.

What am I knitting? It looks like it will be socks, socks and socks for a while because there’s less chance of messing up with those.

Sorry – blog has been broken this week, fixed now, more details (and knitting) next time

This is what you get when you check in to a £280 a night hotel. That’s not quite right, that should read “this is what you get when your husband checks into a £280 a night hotel”. There was one more, a cocoa covered truffle but that evaporated before the camera saw it. While I was walking the dog I was considering a blog post comparing my life to a box of chocolates but decided that the comparison was way off the mark. There are lovely choccies (cocoa truffle), average choccies (orange cream) and those that I will throw in the bin if I can’t find a taker (turkish delight). Over the last couple of weeks my life has been heavy on the turkish delight but where the comparison falls down is that some people do like sticky pink sickly sweet jelly, it’s just not to my taste. I don’t think there’s anyone who would like dog poop on their sandals, a blocked toilet and the dreaded “engine fault” light appearing on their new car all in the same afternoon.

My turkish delight moments are behind me now (or so I dearly hope), my knitting is picking up but I’ve still not hit form. I’ve only had three ripped projects this week so it’s better than last week anyway. Spinning is off, weaving is off so it’s knitting or bust at the moment. You might expect then that there would be rather more of it to show but there’s nothing in the knitting bag that I have a lot of love for so progress is slow. I don’t have anything that can’t be put down but I have a few things that I don’t want to pick up.

The toes still don’t match but at least now they aren’t two inches out. They fit and when they are on feet you can’t tell that one is two rows longer in the foot than the other. I’d love to tell you what the yarn was, something from a Ravelry destash that was cheaper than I can buy undyed, but the ball band went the way of all good things. These are husband socks because some of the six year old pairs really need to be retired now.

These are still not finished, I really dislike knitting them and they are probably the poorest quality knitting I’ve produced in years. This is all because the sock yarn I used doesn’t want to be knitted to the tension needed for the pattern. If I was to knit them again I’d probably use dk weight, I’d also lose the notes on the cuff because they are longer than I’d want to wear. There are mistakes front and back but if I’d taken the needles out to fix it I would have ripped them all the way back. The pattern is lovely, it’s a well balanced treble clef, but I’m not convinced that sock yarn is the best choice for it. Daniel loves them and that’s what matters.

These are not finished but have passed the point where I might have ripped them. I can’t decide whether I like them or not, I wanted something bright and cheerful and this had the added benefit of using up scraps. It shouldn’t be possible to make the snarled mess that I did working both socks at once from two centre pull balls but if they’d been any longer I might have had to cut the working yarn just to be able to sort the tangle out. I knew when I started that I’d rat it all up but I convinced myself that this time would be different, this time I’d keep everything separate and not make a mess. (Why did I set myself up for a mess? Well I wasn’t sure that I’d have enough lime to reach the toes so by working from a centre pull ball at least I’d run out in the same place on both)

I’m undecided on this too, I might like it when it’s done but at the moment it’s not guaranteed a future in the knitting bag. This is the start of the Maia shoulderette in Schaeffer Anne sock yarn. It’s a blood red colour rather than the pinky red my camera is showing me and there are beads on it, not that you can see them. My issue with it is that (again) I’m not convinced that this is the right yarn for the job. I haven’t knitted lace with sock yarn before and it feels all wrong somehow. It’s too slick and springy and I’m not feeling the love. I like the pattern though so that’s something. I suspect this might have a test block in its future, it’s always a dangerous place for a project to be because it’s vulnerable when it’s off the needles. It has to convince me that it is worth the effort and at the moment it is not trying hard enough.

Hopefully by next time I will have knuckled down and knitted some fingers as I’m running out of excuses for not doing it. “I don’t want to” is the real truth but that’s not good enough is it?

No doubt you were expecting to see a procession of new wips now that I’ve allowed myself to start some. I know that’s what I was hoping for but we don’t always get what we wish for. I’ve started and ripped so many things this week that by Saturday I was seriously wondering if I’d only dreamed that I could knit because clearly I was rubbish at it. Three projects have been ripped without photos, two were a clear mismatch of yarn and pattern and the other was just a “what was I thinking?”.

This little thing will probably be back in the yarn drawer by the time you read this. This is the start of a Pimpelliese, started from both ends with the plan to graft it in the middle and make best use of the 600 yards of yarn. The yarn is not the silk I showed before, that was mulberry brick and this is all sorts of tussah odds and ends. It’s not as shiney and I don’t feel the same love for it as for the other, this is just yarn. It’s been ripped once already and I don’t think that this incarnation will last the day. There’s nothing actually wrong with it except for that first repeat where I charted what the pattern said except that it didn’t say that at all and I created three stitches that had to be lost somewhere. The advantage of working both ends together is that they match so now it’s a feature.

I don’t like this either. This is the first of a pair of Musica handwarmers and the fact that it’s been blocked whilst still on the needles tells you a lot about my feelings for it. The only reason I haven’t ripped it is that Daniel has seen it, it’s for him and if I ripped it I’d have to leave home. The basic thing wrong with it is the tension. I cannot knit sock yarn to 7 stitches per inch even on 3.25mm needles. The black yarn is very slightly thinner than the white, they’re both slippery superwash so there’s no fluff to fill in the gaps where the stitches should be. This was the main piece of evidence to support my theory that I haven’t a clue about knitting, I have ladders, uneven tension, short floats and I can’t believe that I knitted it. Daniel will have to be coached to say “No, mum bought these in a shop and she says the quality is pants”. The terrible thing is that I have to make the right hand next. If I was making another pair I’d use smaller needles to get a fabric that looked right and then add the necessary extra stitches to the pattern. I thought about that whilst on the ribbing but of course I didn’t listen to me.

Fortunately when all else fails there is still a sock. What can go wrong with a sock? Don’t answer that, I already know. I am just surprised that I can still find new and inventive ways to mess up my knitting. I was knitting away on this last night (because of course I didn’t have anything else on the needles that was worth knitting) and thought I’d better check the length. I was pleased to find that I’d checked just in time, I was exactly at the point where the yarn changed to black and the toe shaping started. I hadn’t realised that I was that far down the foot, another row and I’d have been tinking back. This morning I’ve finished the toe, cut the yarn and noticed that the foot looked rather short, exactly one pattern repeat short in fact.

Hello. my name is Caroline and I used to be a knitter.

I’ve not eliminated the pile of wips but good enough will do. I managed to get the four small bobbins into one big skein, 1400 yards of skinnyish polworth. The bottom braid was dyed in beautiful British Columbia and came to me from a swap on Ravelry. I had plans for something huge and lacey, changing colour along its length. Unless I concentrate my standard skinny yarn runs around 700 yard/100g and that isn’t going to knit up huge. I got an undyed braid from the same person in a later swap, dyed that in vaguely similar colours with the aim of plying the two together to double the yardage.

I also finished up the baby jacket. This is Phazelia’s mitered baby jacket again with the same level bottom mods as last time. With this one I knitted the body before the sleeves thereby committing myself to knitting the sleeves in the round. The one good point about that is that when you reach the bottom of the sleeve you need to work each side seperately when knitting flat and if it’s in the round you don’t. Should I knit another I’d knit it flat because I dislike purling on dpns even more than sewing a seam. I think I’m done with these now, two was enough.

I did slack off on Sunday and play with some silk with the able assistance of my son. We made three pieces of silk paper (aka silk fusion), two of which I let dry flat for another day’s play. This is basically papier mache using silk fibre and glue (I do have photos of the process if anyone is interested). I haven’t tried it yet but it’s supposed to soften again when wet so it can be shaped at a later date. The third piece, in teacher’s favourite colour, is now a pen pot for her desk. The jam jar gives it some stability because otherwise there is no weight to it at all. There will be some more of this coming along because I have 200g of throwster’s waste to get rid of somehow and I’m not planning on spinning it.

The last piece of knitting in the pile (socks don’t count) was the toddler sundress. This is now in time out because although I’ve thrown lots of knitting time at it it is still many inches short. It’s not done but I am. If it hadn’t been in stripes I would have ripped it by now just to see it gone but I’ve plodded on (and on and on). It will lose 20% of the length in the first wash so although it looks a good length already it isn’t really. It is now going in a bag under the stairs for a month while I try to forget what it is I dislike about it.

I am now going to cast on for something fun. I’ve been a good girl and worked hard on the work in progress this week but I’m over it now.

After I’d trawled out the various bits and pieces of work in progress I decided to work hard on reducing the numbers. Every knitter has their own views on what constitutes an acceptable level of work in progress, it varies from one person to another but the number that they feel happy with is the right number for them. For me, at least this week, that heap is too big. It’s not just about the numbers either, I know that the reason that some of those things are not finished is because they are stuck. I need to decide whether the sock needs a toe and as that is not knitting it’s not happening. The blanket needs some sort of edging and I can’t decide what. The baby jacket ran out of interesting yarn way too early and the sundress is just no fun. If I cast on for something else then they will linger longer so I’ve put the silk out of sight for now. I decided to chip away at it, one win a day and by focussing on what I have already started I might take my mind off the silk.

Day one of the new wiploss programme (Tuesday) was a clear success by anyone’s standards. I measured the length of fabric, cut it into three and sewed it back together again. The reason it had been sitting about was that I couldn’t decide how to finish the edges, satin binding, candy cane binding, something with prairie points? In the end I did none of those and just hemmed the ends, leaving the sides as they were. I’ve pressed it, sewed the ends in from stitching the seams and it’s as done as a baby blanket needs to be. Final measurements were 36″ by 31″ wide, it’s a scrap sock yarn warp with superwash laceweight weft. It’s a clasped weft which means that it’s doubled and the doubled laceweight is just about the same weight as sock yarn. I used the 12.5 dpi reed, I started off with the 10 but it didn’t look right. It’s just as well that it came out narrower than I’d planned because otherwise it would have been huge.

Day two – there was measureable progress in that I filled a third bobbin with green polworth. The rest will fit on the very last bobbin and then I’ll have a massive plying session. I had this set aside for a Tour de Fleece project but I’m not much of a joiner and I’d filled the first bobbin on the Friday before the start. I watch the cycling every day and I spin most days but that’s as far as it goes

Day three – one sock down, one to go. This has been sitting on hold for a week because I needed to make the decision of whether to start the toe and that seemed to be too taxing in an evening. I spent five minutes during the day doing the measuring and then that got me past the stage that I was stuck on. The second sock is always easier because all I have to do is make it match the first, no thinking about “is the cuff long enough?”, “what heel should I make?”, “is it time for the toe yet?” just match and knit.

Day four (Friday) – The last bobbin of Polworth is done. I’ve gone right off green which is a bit of a shame because I have 8oz of it to ply now and by the time I’ve finished that I imagine that knitting it would be out of the question. I don’t really feel like plying it but it’s filling four bobbins and I don’t feel like winding it off for storage either.

That seems to be the right place to stop because if I continue I think I’ll be looking at a fail for day five. If I give myself the weekend off then there’s a chance that something might be finished by Monday but there’s no realistic chance of a win for tomorrow.