Wool For Brains

I need to show some finished things before I start trotting out the new starts because otherwise it will look as if I’ve been madly casting on left, right and centre. This would be totally the wrong impression, left, right and centre would only make three starts and I think the true number is five. It would be six if I hadn’t had to order beads and seven if I could have forced the yarn I had to fit the pattern I’d bought. I think it’s fair to say that I have rediscovered my love of knitting.

These socks were long overdue for finishing. This has been the pair that go with me to swimming classes and plod along at the rate of half an hour a week. I was disappointed with the yarn to start with, I was expecting a slow and gradual colour change that never came but I was so long finishing them that my disappointment had plenty of time to wear off. They fall in the category of functional but uninspiring. It doesn’t matter how many arty photos I take of them they are never going to get any better as they have no outstanding features other than being finished. They are the standard husband sock, 72 stitches, heel flap and gusset, plain stockinette, in mystery yarn that came from the back of the drawer.

This little scarf was more fun. It takes only half a ball of Tolcarne Angora’s mohair silk. There is 300m in a ball and I did set off with the intention of seeing what a full ball looked like as a scarf but, as is usual, I lost interest half way through. This kicked off in the week where all knitting was boring and I had a few false starts with it before settling on a pattern that I liked. I still do like the pattern, it’s simple and I liked the in and outs along the edges. It would easily adapt to be wider in which case you’d have more freedom to play with the changes in the width. I can see it as a stole in this yarn because the drape is lovely. I didn’t note what needles I used (I think I resolved always to do this after the last time I didn’t and then had an urge to knit something again) although I think they may have been a US8. I sort of wrote the pattern down, I could follow it again but anyone else would need the ability to read my mind. I did plan on writing it as A Pattern and that might happen when the knitting frenzy settles down.

I did also play with making a beaded wrist thingy. The fun thing I learnt is that with garter stitch if you use a crochet hook to attach the beads then you get a reversible fabric. I can’t think why you’d want one but it’s one of those things that might come in handy to know one day. This should have been a fun fast knit but I hated it with a passion and I couldn’t bring myself to knit the second one, I had to grit my teeth to get as far as the sewing up. I think the problem was that as soon as I started it I thought of umpteen ways to make it better, it was fast but it wasn’t elegant and that was what I was really after. In addition I’m old enough to have watched “Steptoe and Son” and that has given the fingerless glove some definite associations (you can just see a pair near the horse’s mouth). I look at it and think of the line “You dirty old man” so the whole fingerless thing is just doomed for me.

I’m sure you’re itching to see the new starts (humour me please, you can pretend) and you are no doubt hoping that they are more interesting than the imaginatively named “black socks with bits in”. Should project seven ever get off the ground there will certainly be interest, it will be edge of the seat stuff. The burning questions will be “will it fit someone she knows?”, (I’d like it to fit me but given the level of substitution I’d settle for it fitting some hypothetical normally built human), “should she have tried harder to get the right tension?” (perhaps by, ooh let me think, using the right yarn), “does she have a chance of having enough yarn to finish it, given that she doesn’t know how much to dye?” and “exactly what colour was she aiming for?”. If I can’t be a good example then at least I can be a terrible warning.

It’s the school holidays so there has been colouring in. That’s normal enough but the shrinking of coloured items is not. The itty bitty socks would make stitch markers except that I don’t use them for socks and I’m not good with wire and beads. All the items are pierced and to be honest getting the hole in the right place was the hardest thing. You do the drawing on a larger scale because the stuff shrinks drastically when you bake it, hopefully hiding your mistakes. If you are in possession of junior family members then you will have access to coloured pencils and that’s all it needs.
 (If you want to make your own, you want some Shrinkles from Hobbycraft. This is the white and I got the small sheets, they are about £2. Draw it, colour it in, attack it with a hole punch and bake it at 170 for a couple of minutes)

I’ve been spinning a lot of rubbish yarn lately, uneven and lumpy. Part of this is because I’ve been clearing out unloved fibre from my stash and part is just plain learning experience.

The yarn on the right was planned to be socks with mohair and romney in one ply and merino in the other. They would have looked just like my favorite socks because I made those from the other half of the fibre ages ago. I carefully spun the mohair but when I came to the merino it all went horribly wrong. It was without doubt the worst fibre I’ve ever had in my hands. When I came to predraft it I found that there were lumps of short fibres like foxes’ tails all along the length. I tried to take out the tufts but I didn’t get them all as I found out when I came to spin it. I did seriously think about junking it but then there was the mohair waiting to be plied.. I did my best for a while and then realised that this was a total waste of my time. It was useless for spinning, only fit for felting. At this point I started flinging it on the bobbin any old how because now it wasn’t going to be sock yarn, it was going to be for a felting project. It didn’t need to be smooth and even, it just needed enough twist to make it hold together for long enough to knit. The short tufts of fibre make the lumps and fluffy bits. I could have carefully removed them all, or maybe carded it to get the short bits mixed in with the rest but it just wasn’t worth the effort. I’ll spend the time making good yarn when it’s worth it. After the frustration I had with this I wish I had thrown it in the bin to start with. When knitted it’s not so bad.

The yarn on the left was the pink shetland I carded last week, the lumps (noils) in this are from the base of the locks where they’ve not opened up and they’re still fastened together in a little tangle. When I hand carded the sample for Eggbert’s blanket I carefully pulled out the tangles at the base of the lock and picked out the little bits of sheepy dandruff. I did consider doing that before I put it through the carder but decided not to, so that I would know what my new toy could do. It picked out a lot of lumps, but not all. I picked out a lot more on spinning but if I’d picked them all out I’d still be on the first bobbin. In this case it wasn’t worth the effort, this was a teaching project and I knew that the yarn would probably end up in a scarf (after several washes). I have more shetland already dyed and I now know that I have to deal with the base of the locks before I feed them in to the carder. I have more shetland to wash and now I know that I need to see if I can improve my washing to open up the base of the locks and get the dandruff to stay in the water. I also know that the drum carder makes for a lovely spinning project but it can’t work miracles. Spinning this has taught me how to make the next batch better but I won’t learn any more by picking out each and every lump. Although it was a quick and dirty spin with less twist than I usually go for, it is soft and sproingy and a pleasure to touch.

I now have both wheels empty so I’m deciding what to spin next. I have an urge to spin something worth spinning, something worth taking the time over so I’ll be having a rummage through my stash. The other requirement is that it not be pink.

I have spent the morning putting my toys away after having had them strewn around the house for the week. I picked up the layers of alpaca off the bedroom floor (300g of shiny, silky, softness), skeined up the last of the pink shetland (400+ yards, double knit), put away the two skeins of dyed kid mohair and silk (2% wallaby and 2% plum) and packed away the drum carder. (Not for long, I think that will be back soon to practice blending the turquoise shetland with something shiny) I’ve caught up with the laundry and the ironing ready for the transatlantic laundry delivery and there are signs of a spark of life on the knitting front. It’s all good news then. I didn’t get done as much as I’d planned but looking at my wish list for the week it would really have only been achievable through cloning or warping the space time continuum.

As the chief wool mangler is off school next week I may not be around much as I shall be Doing Things. It’s quite possible that he will have me slaving over the drum carder, I can but dream. I’ll leave you with the nasty surprise I found under the drum carder when I came to put it away. Anyone for navy dandruff?

Yesterday I spun half of the 8oz of pink shetland I’d carded earlier this week and it was surprisingly good to say that I’d started from the sheep’s back. I’m not smitten with the colour but that is easily changed. This illustrates the storage issue with fibre, there’s the same amount on the bobbin as there is in the pile on the floor (foot intentionally added for scale). I’ve also made some yarn for a felting project which showed me just how little twist you need when you just want it to hold together for long enough to knit. It looks awful (it is awful) but it was fast and it’s good enough to be knitted and shrunk.

The spinning is fine but the knitting is not so good this week. The knitting bag is running on empty and the excitement level is low. I have two pairs of socks, both nearly black, which I can’t see to knit at night and the blue cashmere cape. That’s hiding in the bottom of the bag, well away from me because it knows what’s coming. Projects for which I am not feeling the love have a short life expectancy. I’m not showing it because then you’ll see just how little I’ve worked on it since the last time I showed it.

I cast on for an Etheareal Fichu and ripped it after a few rows, I’ve been all through my lace patterns and can’t see anything that I might possibly want to knit. The only thing that’s calling to me is wildly inappropriate and something for which I don’t have the right yarn. My stock of sock yarn, although machine washable and therefore ideal for baby clothes is somewhat inappropriately coloured. That’s the one thing that’s stopped me from casting this jacket on. (As an aside if you click for yarn alternatives and follow the link for the sock yarn…£3 for a pair of socks! Yes, there’s postage on top but even so…). I do have something else planned but the yarn for that is drying, blah. The alpaca that I want to spin next has defeated the drum carder, more blah. (Really I’m quite smug about that because it means that there are some things that I can do better than it can)

Thinking about it, it’s not just knitting blah, more of a universal blah. I’m generally a positive person, I usually have a glass that’s half full, although more truthfully it would be “I know I had a glass somewhere, now where did I put it?”. On the positive side this week I’ve planted out the runner beans, sweetcorn, purple sprouting broccoli and half of the calabrese (which is supermarket broccoli, big and green) and erected pigeon proof netting. I’ve culled the remaining leeks, evicted the next set of plants into the cold frame, cut the front lawn, potted up a tomato plant (it only took me two weeks to get around to it) and grubbed about in the bottom of the compost bin for some lovely muck for the squash plants. The one thing I can grow well is summer squash but the price of good eating is fighting with the compost bin. They are all small achievements but they’re not giving me much of a buzz. Cutting the front grass is usually good for a whole day’s self congratulation but today, well the edges need strimming and it could really use some feed on it – all very negative. The coffee machine has behaved itself and the internet is still working but again they’re not things that get a response when they work, only when they don’t.

Now I don’t know about you but my solution in this situation (and I’ve been here before) is to cast on something simple, something that can’t possibly go wrong, that doesn’t need a huge decision making process on matching the yarn to the pattern. The way to change my attitude to life, the universe and everything is to start by loving my knitting and a nice simple scarf would seem to fit the bill. My first attempt was seafoam stitch, 4mm needles, Carolyn’s mohair/silk yarn. I would have probably liked it more if I’d taken the time to block it. Blah, ripped. It was next (briefly) Branching Out from Knitty. Blah, ripped (twice, because of my inability to count to 25). I didn’t think that the soft and fuzzy yarn would stand ripping but it has, after three false starts it’s a bit more fuzzy but it’s still ready to go for attempt number four. Needless to say I do not feel good about my inability to find a simple scarf pattern that I like. I think that I have finally got there at the fourth attempt although I keep looking at it and thinking that I should have stuck to the 4mm needles. In the interests of full disclosure, it didn’t look like that as I was knitting it. I dunked it in the sink and pinned it out on the bedroom floor overnight to check that the edges would lay straight even though that meant that I had to move the drying alpaca to clear some floor space. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there’s fibre all over the house but it’s certainly in a lot more places than it usually is.

Can we see a pattern of overcompensation? The last time the husband went away I bought a loom. I didn’t plan it, it just happened. This time I bought a drum carder. Now I’ve been thinking about one for a while, ever since I came back off my spinning course to find that I could spin carded fibre. Up to then my performance with lofty fluff was dire and there was nothing I could have done with a carder. My plans for this week were carding alpaca, carding pink shetland, and washing fleece, which would then need to be carded somewhere down the line. If I was ever going to buy a drum carder, now would be a good time.

This was not the planned treat, that’s with the husband. The three skeins are cashmere/silk, the cone is Jaggerspun Zephyr silk/wool laceweight and there’s a sample of some kid silk and a colourcard. All from Sarah’s yarns, I’ve had yarn shipped directly to the UK before and the postage was reasonable. I did tell someone that I’d ordered two cones, I did have two in the shopping cart before telling myself firmly that it was Too Much and I put one back. There’s just over 5000 yards of yarn in a cone and I know from experience that you run out of love for the colour before you run out of yarn. I’ve a cone of Peacock at the back of a drawer because after knitting two big shawls (one here) from it I don’t want to knit it again for a while. I can now knit five shawls and have them all in different colours if I want.

The carding is fun in a tedious and boring sort of way. It actually works much better if you have three hands, two to prepare the fibre and one to turn the handle. When the third hand went to school this morning and I had my first chance to use it on my own I found that I missed my little helper. Usually when you have small people helping it takes you twice as long to do the job half as well but this is an exception. He likes doing it too, I had to promise not to use it while he was at school yesterday so that he didn’t miss out. The basic idea (as I heard him telling someone at a party) is that you put the wool from a sheep in at one side, turn the handle and then it comes out at the other end ready to spin into wool. It’s not quite that simple, you have to do it over and over, just like hand carding, to get the result that you want. The pink shetland went through five times (it might have been four, but not six). The best guide I found to using a drum carder was this one, which was far better than the sheet that came with it. What they didn’t tell you is to have a bin handy. As you pick the bits of hay and odd knobbly bits out you can guarentee that the safe place you choose to put them in will be the same place you decide to put the fibre down on five minutes later. I swear that I picked the same bit of hay out over and over again. I wouldn’t have felt so bad about that if the hay had been in the fibre to start with but it came courtesy of the Gpigs.

So far my ideas revolve around blending commercially prepared fibre so I can have my own alpaca, silk and shetland combo if I want, or socks that start orange at the cuff and shade gradually into brown. Whole new avenues of thought are opening up but, as usual, the starting point is socks.

I do have other dyes, really I do, but I must admit that I’ve been caught up in a bit of a bloodwood phase. This is nearly the last of the pink photos, honestly. I can’t guarentee that there won’t be more in the distant future, I do have 90% of the dye left after all, but it’s not going to be anytime soon. The next thing I want to dye is Ferdinando the alpaca and he wouldn’t look right in pink since he’s starting from brown.

This is an old picture, it’s the shetland fleece that I washed and dyed the last time the husband was away. I was intending to wash some more this week in his absence but decided against it because I really need to clear some fibre out of stash before adding to the heap. The pile of pink, blue and rose locks on the left now looks like the pile of fluff on the right and is another reason why I’m now tired of looking at pink. There’s 8oz here and I think I’m going to spin it into something resembling double knitting and knit a scarf. I may spin it and put it away for a while while I explore the range of colours that are not related to red in any way. I can’t put it back in the heap because it got bigger and is now roughly four times the size of the bag it came out of. So much for stash reduction.

As a result of the dyeing last week I decided that I did indeed like the Landscape range of dyes and I’d buy another colour more suited to dyeing light brown alpaca. While I was hanging my nose over the colour card in a crisis of indecision I found that they do sample packs, 15g of six colours of dye. One of these is bound to suit my alpaca and it means that there’s less likelihood of me going off on a single colour kick again. 15g may not seem a lot but all the dyeing in the first photo took only 10g of dye so it’s a really good way of getting a range of colours. While I was buying the dyes I bought something else too, also pink, at least in parts. You get to see the bigger picture tomorrow (after I’ve cleaned the pink off it and cleared all the debris off the counter behind it).

The final pink photo is for my husband who is in North Carolina (and my yarn was waiting for him on arrival and none of it is pink. Yet.) Laura is obviously destined for a modelling career, of the four photos I took she was looking at the camera in every one. This is the best one I could get of Daniel though.

Although our internet access has been really stable since the purchase of the last black box on there is no guarantee that things will remain that way. The home network administrator and blog resuscitator is off across the Atlantic just about now and I will then be at the mercy of anything with a microchip. The router in particular has a tendency to pine for its master and usually waits until he’s at the airport before going belly up. This blog’s physical location is next to the desk in the study (it’s a room that has never had a bed in it so it’s more properly known as the computer room. The book room would work just as well) so if our connection with the outside world goes down then you can’t see in. It would be a productive week without blogs, email and the internet but I’d rather keep my time wasters. I’m already predictng a productive fibre week as a result of not cooking a meal (the freezer is my friend and in need of a clear out) and due to the big reduction in the washing.

The last time the husband left the country I bought a loom. I didn’t exactly sneak it into the house because it lived in the kitchen for a few days. My son managed not to notice a 32″ rigid heddle loom propped up against the cabinets, he stepped over it and around it seemingly without seeing it so I didn’t have to worry about him spilling the beans on daddy’s return. I did choose my moment to admit to the purchase of a large piece of woodwork and there was a pause followed by “That’s nice dear, is it a big one?” He’s probably a bit concerned as to what I might get up to in his absence this time but he has no need to worry as my treat is already behind the front desk of his hotel waiting to be collected.

Hopefully there will be a post on Wednesday, sooner if I need someone to show and tell to. If I vanish then I’ll be back in a week. You can imagine me washing fleece, I have a pile of alpaca, a Shetland and a bfl cross all in need of a bath and this is the week I can have them laid out to dry all over the bedroom floor. I really know how to have a good time when home alone.

The key thing about a fichu is that (sometimes) it only uses a small amount of yarn. If you knit you’ll know about that single precious skein that you once bought in a yarn shop on holiday. It’s full of memories and there can never be any more of it. If you spin you’ll know about that small bag of silk and yeti down that you once bought at a show from a yeti breeder. There are no contact details on the bag, you can never get any more. If you dye you’ll know about the time you tipped the leftover dregs of dye in a pan and came up with a truely wonderful combination that can never be repeated. The quantity is small and limited so what can you do with it? You could knit it with something else to make it go further, this scarf is a result of not having enough of either colour to make anything of. That dilutes the wonder of your precious yarn somewhat (both of my yarns are as far from precious as it is possible to get) so you may just want to find a pattern that will work with the yardage you have. Lace is good for this, you have a limitless number of holes to make the yarn go further. My starting point of late has been this list. It’s organised by yardage so if you know how much you have then you’ve an idea as to what you might make.

This is the Oak Leaf Scarf by Margaret Anne Halas, pattern from the Yarn Barn. This can be knit from one skein of expensive arty sock yarn or half a skein of inexpertly dyed (by me) mohair/silk because it uses less than 200 yards. The shaping at the front is exactly what I wanted, the back less so. The pattern is a thing of beauty despite not having either tension details or finished measurements. I started off in a sulk because the back was all wrong and I didn’t know what size needles to use but as soon as I read the beginning of the pattern I began to warm to it. What I really liked was that it was full of hints to make knitting easier. It’s more difficult to identify the right side with garter stitch lace and I already knew the trick of using a different coloured marker close to the start of the right side row. This pattern is written around the use of a red and black stitch marker so if you do what you are told you should never get lost. The double decreases that shape the collar are properly paired with a left and right leaning decrease and the start and finish are really, really neat with short rows used to make the points. It was altogether cleverly written and I loved it. I suspect that mine has come out smaller than the pattern, looking at the photo the wings should be longer but as there are no finished measurements it’s difficult to tell. The depth of the back is 10″ and the length from front to back is 22″.

The thing that started me smiling – the pattern comes with the two coloured stitch markers so there is really no excuse for messing it up. You will notice that I only have one marker now and as I vacuumed today I suspect the other has gone for good

I’m having a bit of a fichu moment. You don’t know the full extent of this yet because you’ve only seen the one but I’ve been doing extensive pattern research and so far have bought three patterns (that’s “bought” as in “paid money for”). I think the fichu could be the answer to my developing collection of small single skeins of exotic hand spun yarns. Knitting a small triangle and calling it a fichu is not on, what I want is some shaping and that eliminated two of the patterns straight away. What I learned from the harebell fichu is that I want more shaping than comes by bending a lace edging onto a straight tie. My ideal pattern would have all the shaping in a plain section at the neck edge onto which I can hang any lace pattern that takes my fancy. I did briefly draw out a design with a crescent shaped garter section from which the lace hangs unrippled and easily attached. I can think of several ways to develop the shaping, short rows, paired increases but I don’t really want to design it, I just want to knit it. I thought that I’d found the right pattern and rushed Cecil off the needles ready for the big cast on of the small item.

I was initially unimpressed when the pattern dropped on the mat yesterday. No tension, no measurements and no indication of what the back will look like. It turns out that the back will be triangular rather than having the curve I was after and the edging is knitted at the same time as the body rather than added at the end. It also has double yarn overs which I’ve never been that taken with. All in all it was not a good fit to my ideal pattern. So why is it then that I can’t put it down? The edging was strangely familiar, I recognised it as being similar to that on the Diamond Fantasy shawl which is also knitted along with the body of the shawl. We will pass over the fact that I can’t remember to bring in bread when we have none but I can remember the details of a shawl I knitted seven months ago. I think that we’ve established that despite my attempts to pass myself off as a well rounded individual certain aspects of my memory and other faculties are better developed than others. We will also not discuss how it is that I can never find my car keys yet I could put my hand on the Diamond Fantasy pattern within twenty seconds.

I’m too busy knitting this to blog about it. I have to finish it, I am a driven woman. I have to know whether the finishing of the front is half as elegant as the start of the back (it can’t be, nothing can). It’s just the same as when you start a book and can’t put it down until the last page is turned. Come back tomorrow because unless my arms have dropped off this will be done. (Carolyn – if you’re reading this, your yarn is fantastic, tell the goats that they did a good job)