Wool For Brains

Look, more scarves. There will be a blanket coming along at some point when my selvedges are straight enough to sew together but until then it’s all scarves. I’d like to say that this is making a big impact on the yarn drawer but as yet I can see no improvement, mainly because the majority of the yarn in these three scarves was never in the drawer to start with. If I had some space in the drawer then I could put things away, at the moment I have a battle to get it shut and skeins of yarn placed here and there waiting to be put away.

The light one uses the same handspun yarn for warp and weft, this was yarn that I made for a cowl except that then I went on to knit the cowl from something else. I used the 7.5 dpi heddle and it finished to 10″ wide and 57″ long excluding the fringe. Before I started trimming the loom waste it weighed 146g so now we know that 150g of double knit gets you a scarf of reasonable size. I love the way that the stripes come and go up and down apart from one particular stripe that falls at the centre of the scarf. You can see the one that I mean, all the other stripes drift gently from one shade to another and that one jumps from tan to black. This taught me an important lesson about weaving with colour changing yarn. You wind the yarn onto a shuttle to weave with it and that means that the first yarn from the ball becomes the last that you weave. Where there is an order in the yarn such as ABCDEF you could end up with a weaving order of CBAFED. You can see the first join in the scarf but you can’t see the second because I knew then about rewinding the yarn so that it ended up woven in the right order.

The abject failure on the bottom left (no close up for a good reason) used the 10dpi reed with sock yarn for the warp and a handspun yarn for the weft. There was enough handspun for the warp as well but I didn’t think that it would be up to the job. I’ve improved a fair bit since I spun it and although I still don’t put enough twist in the single I’ve got a whole lot better. The yarn was fit for its original purpose but not for warp. Until very recently the yarn had been a shawl but it was never one of my favorites and I’ve been looking at it as a waste of yarn for some time. I don’t do random or asymmetric awfully well so it was a liberating experience warping this any old how from three balls of leftover sock yarn. I will say that it would have been less asymmetric had I not run out of two of the yarns just after the halfway point, you can see that there are narrow vertical stripes on the left and just one feeble one on the right. I didn’t get jumpy stripes with this one because I’d learned my lesson about rewinding yarn to keep the original sequence. It just goes to show that not only am I capable of learning from my mistakes, I can remember the lesson too. That’s just as well because I made a new and different mistake with this one. One lesson per post is quite enough so this failure of a scarf will return when I’ve managed to turn it into something useful.

This is my current favorite. It uses the same weft as the failure but looks totally different. This has strong vertical stripes (leftover sock yarn again, the lighter yarn is the yarn made with easter egg dyes that I made last year) and that has made the horizontal stripes less prominant. This is the first thing I’ve woven where I’ve been happy with the selvedges, they are still not perfect but they are good enough. This will be leaving for a new home on Wednesday, a gift for Dan’s music teacher. I managed to get all the way to the end of the post before doing the proud mum bit – he passed his Grade 4 euphonium exam on Friday. His reward came from ToysRUs and his teacher was going to get the previous blue scarf until I wrecked it. The emergency session of weaving over the weekend resulted in a substitute that was even better so all’s well that ends well.

MAX Payne movie download Unstable Fables: Tortoise vs. Hare release The next post will certainly be knitting, having made a 64″ long 9″ wide scarf in under 24 hours has meant that I’ve done with weaving for this week. The yarn drawer will just have to bulge for a little longer.

Frankenstein psp I was going to wait until this was properly blocked but as I’ve just been out walking the dog in it I thought that I’d better do show and tell now, before I end up with my dinner down the front of it. I had seen myself wearing this over a thin polo neck sweater but as I don’t have such a thing in my wardrobe you will have to imagine that. While you are imagining that you can also imagine that I’ve blocked this and that the hem lies properly.

This is Ophelia by Lucy Neatby, knitted in no-name undyed sock yarn dyed by me. I had two full skeins of yarn left over and numerous part balls, I knew that I would use less than the pattern because I shortened this considerably from the original tunic length. I’m happy with the final product, I’ve ended up with it being a bit big in the body but the sleeves are spot on. The process left a lot to be desired, I ended up with a size smaller than the one that I was expecting and had to correct for that in the side gussets (I over corrected as it happens). It spent most of the ten months of its life stuffed in a bag under the stairs, I realised that there was a problem with it back in August and rather than deal with it then I put it away for another day.

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For anyone wanting the full (long and drawn out) story, just click on the Ophelia category in the right hand side bar. Would I knit a sock yarn sweater on 3.25mm needles again? Yes, I would. It’s a lovely weight and it was worth the effort.

I’m sure that you were expecting a finished sweater today, I certainly was, but there was a slight setback last week. I made the accidental discovery that one sleeve was two pattern repeats wider than the other. It could have been worse, I could have reached the cuff and sewn it up before deciding that there was something odd going on, as it was I only had to rip out 9″ or so.

This was a more successful project, it finished up quickly, didn’t need any ripping and the pattern was well written and easy to follow. This was a family project (although the dog was not a deal of help if I’m being truthful) on a lovely sunny Sunday morning. It was very windy in the night and it has not fallen down or blown away so providing that those leaves at the top continue to grow then I think this can be counted as a success.

The wigwam kit had two varieties of willow, the brown canes are the uprights and they go in first. (The sand is not a requirement, it used to live in the sand pit a long time ago and we never got around to getting rid of it). The kit came with full instructions, a piece of willow for spacing the canes and two bits of willow and a piece of string for marking out the circle. If it had included tea bags and milk then it would have been as complete a kit as I could dream up.

You tie the uprights together near the top and then start with the green canes. They weave in and out of the uprights, for a wigwam you would leave the front opening open all the way to the top but I was after something a bit more enclosed and den like so the first cane made a U turn when it got to the opening but all the others went across it. The final shape reminds me very much of the Gherkin. It’s certainly got more shape to it than the straight up and down of a wigwam and I’d like to say that this was planned from the start but the reality is that we just got lucky.

The kit came with stretch tubing that you cut into short lengths (an appropriate use of child labour) and use to tie the canes together. We didn’t use that much of it because once we’d started the weaving the whole thing suddenly started to become very solid. Once it’s rooted I think it will stand up to being leaned on and thumped into which is good because that’s what it’s probably going to get.

It is an ideal size for a small boy and a small dog. Hopefully over the next few weeks the canes will sprout leaves and the structure will soften. I like it just the way it is but really you need a bit more privacy for a hideout.

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The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh film The long suffering sweater is now starting to look like one. It all started to come together with the first gusset, once I’d sewn that in I knew that it was going to fit which was a big incentive to make the second one. The quick recap for the casual visitor is that when I’d knitted the back, front and most of one sleeve I found that I’d ended up with the small size rather than the medium. This was less of a disaster than it sounds because this is constructed with side panels so it was simple enough to make them bigger. I took off the sleeve and added an inch at the top before the start of the shaping to match the increase in the top of the gusset. That doesn’t sound much but that adds four inches in the body and that was enough.

I grafted the sleeve back together on Tuesday, it took me most of the day on and off to sew my way along the 236 stitches and by the end I was sick of grafting. It was a better solution than ripping back feet of sleeve though. I did consider grafting it in pattern but to be honest there wasn’t a good reason to do it other than the unbelievable feeling of smugness it would generate. The colour changes hide the fact that there is a plain row where a pattern row should be. Eagle eyed readers may have spotted that the first pattern repeat matches and then I was off by one stitch. I got all the way to the centre before I saw it. This is why it took me most of Tuesday, by lunchtime I had achieved exactly nothing because I’d unpicked all that I’d done. I have about 8″ to add to the second sleeve and then both sleeves will have reached the stage where I fiddle with them to get them just the right length. That’s it then, done, finished, the end.

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This came off the loom this week. I’m saving the details for a post entitled “Things I learned from weaving from it coming out wrong even though this time I measured it and tried hard”. Wonky selvedges were the very least of my problems.

Yes, it’s a sock. There’s nothing particularly special about this except that it means that I’ve finished knitting the cardigan. Easter is still a long way off and to start something new I have to finish some other project. I had thought that this would be a handspun scarf or the Nine Tailor’s sock but it has ended up as a sock for my son. On Saturday morning after I’d finished whining on the blog about the endless bands I sat with a cup of tea at music school and prepared to slog my way towards the end. It took less time than I thought and it was lucky that I’d gone prepared with other knitting because I added an inch to Ophelia’s sleeve while having my second cup of tea. I am grateful to have a son who is a musician rather than a footballer. Mothers of footballers get to stand on the sideline in the wind rather than being inside in a warm, well lit school cafeteria, drinking tea and knitting. It goes a long way to make up for having to carry a euphonium to and from school once a week.

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Here is the finished article. This is Sirdar B7145, made in a lambswool and silk blend that I bought on a huge cone from ebay. I got lucky with the yarn, it is a lovely marled grey and the tension was spot on. There is still a huge amount left, there’s enough left over for another garment or two. Mods- none. If I were making it again then I’d change the sleeve shaping to two decreases on alternate rows rather than a decrease at the start of every row because it’s the pattern that I’m used to and that I automatically fall into. I’d also change the button bands because if I knit another one ever again it will be one too many. I have no idea why it feels as if I spent longer knitting those two little strips than I spent knitting two sleeves, two fronts and a back. If doing it again I might have another go at working out exactly what I should have been doing on the second crochet row along the neck. I’m not at all happy with that crochet edge, the directions were somewhat terse. I gathered that it should have been worked in the opposite direction to the first row but that was all. I suspect that it might have been aiming for crab stitch but I might be way off with that. I enjoyed knitting this (apart from those bands), the pattern was simple enough to count as tv knitting but it added enough interest to keep things moving along. When this left me it had no buttons and six buttonholes, now it has eight of each because that’s the number of buttons my mother took off her old cardigan. The other really good thing about this pattern was the tiny little sleeves. You’ve got to love a sleeve where you start shaping after three inches. It has a puffed top, the cast off row is all k3tog psso and I found that entertaining too.

No knitting today, come back next time for something finished and sewn up. I haven’t done that yet of course which is why this is about weaving instead. This is my new acquisition, a 16″ Ashford rigid heddle loom. The reason I want to try weaving is that it finds a use for yarns that I’d like to spin but have no wish to knit with. Many fancy yarns end up plied with or spun onto a fine cotton thread and they look lovely but are inelastic and I find that the pretty features end up on the wrong side of the knitting. Last year I did briefly have a 32″ Kromski rigid heddle and I couldn’t get on with it. I found it to be too big and unwieldy, I didn’t have the room to put it on the stand and it was pretty unmanageable without it. I’m getting on with this much better because it’s smaller and when I come to make a blanket I’ll make it in strips and seam it. The other reason for buying this particular loom is that it cost all of £2 more than the money my beloved husband won at the hockey the other week. I did do the sensible thing and hang onto the cash for a whole week after he gave it to me just in case there was something else that spoke to me more than a loom and then I bought the loom anyway.

I’ve had it all of a week now and so far I’ve finished two scarves and learned the hard way that time spent planning is always time well spent. This is my first scarf. The light pink is handspun merino, I made two

hats from the yarn but the colours never really spoke to me, the roving came sight unseen and it wasn’t something that I would have dyed myself. The darker pink was originally grey, part of the leftovers from Agatha, this is Jaggerspun Maine Line 3/8 and at 14 wraps per inch its main characteristic was that it was about the right weight to work with the 7.5 dpi reed that the loom came with. The lighter pink looked about the same thickness and there was certainly plenty of it. What I learned from this scarf was that if you want to have a stripe at the beginning and end then you do need to have a fair idea of where the end is going to be before you reach it. I was doubly doomed because I wasn’t exactly sure how long the warp was and I hadn’t been measuring the work as I went along. I was worried about the end of the warp surprising me before I’d had the chance to do the darker stripe and as a result I finished too soon. I lost about 5″ that could have been woven, taking the scissors to handspun warp is a valuable learning experience and not one that I’ll soon forget. I washed the scarf on the handwash programme on the washer and when it came out it felt like real cloth. The selvedges are a bit wonky but it feels soft and lovely and I was very pleased with it as a first effort. 7.5 dpi reed, Jaggerspun maine line 3/8, handspun merino, 77 ends. 8″ wide finished and 38″ long. It was a bit too wide and a little short.

The remaining handspun merino went in the dye bath and emerged a bit darker and much less girly. I have two balls of eyelash yarn that need using up (don’t laugh, it was on sale, resistance was futile) so I thought I’d have a go at using it as an accent yarn. I can report that King Cole Magi Colour works just fine in the slots and the eyes of a 7.5 dpi heddle but it’s a real pain to use if it can touch another strand. I had hoped that the fuzzy would pop out of the fabric but that didn’t happen. Next time |(and there will be a next time because this only used about half a ball) I think I should leave a gap in the heddle next to the fuzzy stuff so that it has more room to fluff out. 7.5 dpi, King Cole Magi Colour, handspun merino, 7″ finished width, 60″ long excluding 3″ fringe. This was a good length, it certainly didn’t want to be any longer (Please don’t think of shopping me to the yarn police for the combination of eyelash and handspun in a single project, I spun it so I can do what I want with it which includes cutting it into short lengths and putting it in the bin)

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There are sections where the accent yarn just about vanishes altogether. This is because someone would not do what he was told regarding beating and was altogether too vigorous, making the warp disappear. He wouldn’t do what he was told at the selvedge either which is why the sections he did either pulled in more than mine or wobbled about. He needs to either start following advice or get his own loom – just because he paid for this one doesn’t mean he can muck up my edges.

One of these is growing, one is not. Common sense dictates that if all there is standing between you and a finished item is a 13 stitch buttonhole band then that’s what you concentrate on, especially when the only alternate knitting uses three balls of yarn and has 236 stitches in a row. Button bands are boring and although the rows are short they seem to take a long time to knit so the result is that the sleeve of the sweater is growing by an inch a night and the band isn’t. I’ve sewn the button band on, after all my muttering about how long that had taken I ended up with it being a good two inches too long. After I’d ripped it back, cast it off again and finished the sewing I took a good look at it, unpicked the seam, rejoined the yarn and knitted those two inches all over again. The front looked much better the second time around and after all I do so love seaming.

Adrift in Manhattan the movie I’m hoping to get to the sleeve decreases on Ophelia by Tuesday. The rows are long, my attention span is short and the only thing keeping me going is that it’s a choice between this or that buttonhole band. There are advantages in being limited to two projects, neither of them is at a stage that thrills me overmuch but there’s nothing else in the bag and there won’t be until I finish something or I find myself at the end of Lent. Even the everlasting buttonhole band can’t last out until then.

There is of course some light relief from the knitting that refuses to grow. It would appear that I now have an inner weaver to go with the spinner and the knitter (it must be getting pretty crowded in my head now). It didn’t take long for her to appear, I’m just a bit annoyed that she popped up so early, telling me what to do when I know that she is just as clueless as I am. Needless to say, I didn’t listen and I now get to regret that seven times an inch for five feet. As I was warping this it occurred to me that it wasn’t a brilliant idea to have two strands of the fluffy eyelash right next to each other because they were going to want to tangle and cling. I did stop and think whether to pull it out but I left it where it was and changed the pattern across the middle section so I could see if there was a difference in how the eyelash yarn behaved. The end result has four strands of eyelash near the edge but in the middle there are single strands separated by seven strands of sensible merino. The middle section is behaving impeccably, the edges are a pig. Guess what, eyelash sticks to itself, tangles and refuses to separate. Who knew? Well I did and I should have known better.

Sappho film Once I’ve finished with the exercise in humility that is the weaving of sticky warp I’ll produce the finished article for inspection. If you are on my Christmas list the chances are you’re getting a scarf or cushion cover this year and if you’re very lucky it won’t be pink and fluffy like this one.

I know that this is not the finished item that you may have been expecting but it’s all that I’ve got. I worked hard on this, it represents time spent applying two coats of Colron Finishing Wax and much buffing with a lint free cloth. After I’d finished with wax, buff, wax, buff I then had to assemble it myself because the in house woodworker is in Germany.

You were no doubt expecting some sparkly new knitting as a result of my Sunday cast on, well we had a talk about it and we decided that even though it was Sunday it would still a gingerbread/new knitting free day so I’m still a two project knitter. I suspect that this may change next week if I haven’t finished anything because junior has picked out the yarn for his next pair of socks and he’ll cave before I do.

It turned out that I sold myself short on my February knitting targets, I did get the sleeve knitted to the cuff and not only did I get the gusset finished I sewed it in and knitted the best part of the second one. The next task is to pick up the 220-odd stitches for the second sleeve and start decreasing merrily away except that I’ve got to unpick one side of the gusset first because I didn’t think things through. I’m using straight needles and once the side seams are closed I can’t pick up the stitches. D’oh. Fortunately I didn’t sew the ends in, I have a history of sewing things together twisted, wrong handed or just plain wrong so I leave all the ends hanging until I’m completely sure that I won’t have to take it out and do it again.

Sappho release Not only did I tackle the hated sewing on Ophelia, I sewed up most of the grey lace top. It just has one sleeve at the moment because by the time the second one was dry I’d had enough of sewing up. I will confess that I sewed one shoulder seam with a twist in the front, I was so focussed on matching the pattern on the shoulders that I managed not to see the twist until I’d finished and held it up to admire my work. Pebble was itching to help dry the second sleeve faster, he was asleep on the other side of the room right up to the moment when I put the sleeve on the floor. You will see that he’s not actually touching it, that front paw is curled around carefully avoiding the knitting. I imagine that if I’d left him alone with it he would have been asleep on his back on top of it as soon as I got out of the door. I just have the front bands to do now but they are taking an age. I knit and knit and knit and the band is no longer although I suspect that when I think I’m knitting for hours it’s only really been ten minutes. I am telling myself that all that is standing between me and some new knitting is a few more feet of narrow strip but it’s still not terribly inviting. I would certainly have cast this aside by now if I wasn’t limited to having to finish it before I could cast on something else.

I now have to totally clear off the dining table, I have a loom to warp and I suspect that this will go better without Lego.