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Céline asked for more progress photos – so here it is, into the blue shades:
The warp dyeing was a bit blotchy at this stage, but I’m telling myself that adds character!
I’m pleased with progress, even though it will seem painfully slow to some weavers. If I was able to sit down for a full day, or even for hours at a stretch, I would get it down very quickly, but as it is I get half an hour here and there in between all the other work I should be doing – PhD and writing have to get fitted in, in addition to my job. Weaving is my ‘play’ time.
I’ll start shading in the green next – but as today and tomorrow are all-day work days, it may not be until later in the week.
The weather’s been quite hot lately, which makes our sunroom too hot to work in except in the mornings – and I haven’t had a lot of free time in the mornings. It’s a bit too dark at night, when it’s cooler, so progress on the second rainbow scarf has been slow. However, this morning I’m working on it! I’ve even done a little more since this photo was taken, so I’m up to the purple part of the warp, and about to go into two threads of dark blue for the weft. The colours in this photo are a little ‘out’, but convey the general idea. The colour transitions are going more smoothly than in the first one, due to the extra colours and the more gradual shading over more pattern repeats.
I’ve been planning for ages to weave a blanket for my friend’s baby, who was born in August. It took me a while to settle on colours and order the yarn – I finally got the yarn before Christmas. I’m planning on doing twill blocks in the three colours, but want to do a sample first. So, I wound a warp last night for the sample and, as I’ve done several times before, I made the ‘sample’ warp long enough to be a scarf. It’s a 5-ply Bendigo yarn so it won’t take too long to weave, and this way I get to get a reasonable idea of how the yarn, structure and colours will work, and all going well, my friend will get a scarf to match her daughter’s blanket 🙂
I’ll weave this one on the big loom that I’m hoping to sell. I’m sure that once I get the blanket warp on it, someone will decide they want to buy the loom right away!
I watched an episode of Taggart last night, so the alpaca version of theLatvian sock has grown by a couple of pattern repeats. The yarn is pure bliss to handle.
Now I’ve had my cup of tea and blog break, it’s back to the loom.
I finished knitting the first blue lacy sock about a week ago. Since I think the yarn’s a bit heavy for the pattern, I thought I might knit the pattern in the soft alpaca I bought the other week, and not rush to finish the second blue sock.
So, I’ve started the alpaca ones, and the yarn is gorgeous – a luscious treat to handle. The blue bluebell isn’t in the same league, but you know, it’s growing on me. It might be just as well that I’ve got two sets of needles – I can see both on the go at once!
(Yes, yes, so my leg is not a Barbie doll! Memo to self: next time, wear something slightly more respectable than ancient track pants.)
I’m also knitting a little hand-spun jacket from a white merino-cross fleece for our group’s doll raffle. I’m making it up as I go along, with twisted cables on the fronts. I hope I’ll have enough yarn – it’s stuff from the stash – if not, it will be a waistcoat 🙂
The doll project is taking up some of my thoughts just now, as we made the dolls last weekend, and now have to dress them. I still have a little handwoven fabric left from the last time we raffled dressed dolls (see below); there’s enough for a waistcoat. It’s a plain weave with small checks of slightly thicker yellow on a background of fine black. I loved the fabric so much that I’ve woven a length with mauve on the black – I just have to find the time, courage, and pattern to make it up into a jacket for me!
I plied the very fine merino yesterday, in several hour-long stints. I used the lace flyer’s 20:1 ratio to make the process a bit quicker, but it still took about 3 hours. That’s with a reasonable speed of treadling, but not super-fast manic.
That’s the trouble with fine spinning – lots of effort and it doesn’t look like much (until the very final stage when you have a completed lace scraf.) Anyway, 3 hours of plying and the bobbin was nowhere near half-full, but that was all I’d spun. I wound it off into a skein and weighed it – 30 grams.
I’ll need more for the project I have in mind – probably about the same amount again. However, this time I’m going to weigh out the fibre beforehand, put it in two labelled bags for each ply, and then I’ll know as I’m spinning how much I’ve done.
I’ll wash the skein this morning and hopefully it will dry in the sunroom during the day, then I’ll photograph it.
After that effort, I got out the silk caps that I bought the other week, and spun some of them (while watching the episode of Taggart about the community devasted by foot and mouth.) The spinning of the caps went better than the couple of previous times I’ve done it, so I almost enjoyed the process!
Hmm… not a whole lot of the progress stuff. I watched a DVD the other night, so that was spinning time – and I think I’ve done about 25 or 30 grams of the fine merino, so next time I watch some TV I’ll start plying that. I did find the lace flyer in preparation for the plying, as the higher ratios will speed up the process.
The first blue lacy sock is almost done – about one more pattern repeat before I start on the toes. I might get it finished tomorrow night. I’ve done no more weaving since the weekend, but hopefully I’ll get the second rainbow scarf finished this weekend.
I’ll have to decide what I’m going to do for the Armidale Show. I’m not competitive at all, but I feel strongly that I should enter something so that there are at least some entries in the various spinning and weaving classes. The pavilion contests will just die if there are no entries, so I try to do my bit. But it’s a bit tricky when I haven’t actually made a whole lot in the past year! The second rainbow scarf will go in (that gives a deadline for it to be finished by!) and I’m thinking that I might dye some handspun yarn this weekend and knit either socks or mittens.
I’ll have a look at my fibre stash and see about spinning a skein or two for the spinning sections. Yes, I could enter the white merino I’m spinning now, but since one of my skeins won the fine spinning section two years ago, and the resulting scarf won last year, it might be regarded as overdoing things 😉 So perhaps I should challenge myself and do a fancy skein, or a medium-weight blended skein or something.
I think I’ll need to watch a few DVDs in the next couple of weeks, to have some spinning time 🙂 However, I have to fit all this in plus finding the pattern for the dolls we’re going to make and raffle, organise our group’s move to new premises, do a demonstration on Australia Day, and make some hand-spun and/or handwoven clothes for the dolls. Oh, yes, and go to the day-job, do some work on the PhD, and get some writing done.
I wove some bookmarks on my larger inkle loom a couple of months ago, but ran out of the silver beads to put on the ends, so only two out of the five are finished so far. However, just before Christmas I found some more of the beads at the markets, so now I can twist the fringes on the others. I sent one of the finished ones to a friend; I’ll probably use the others as small gifts here and there. I’ll probably weave some more at some stage, as it was a quick and easy thing to do, and I can have the loom at the computer and weave while I’m thinking of words to write!
The pattern was a very sinple one – quick and mindless to weave! – and the yarns were fine wool yarns from my stash. I wove these ones in black and purple for a halloween theme, but if I weave another lot they’ll be in different colours.
On Friday, I went to the local wool shop, and bought an extra ball of Bluebell for the blue lacy socks, and two balls of a luscious, soft, alpaca yarn. I’m going to finish the blue lacy socks, even though the yarn/pattern combination isn’t perfect – they’ll be okay, just not my favourite pair! However, I’m also going to knit a pair in the alpaca. I’m not sure how well it well wear, though, but I guess I’ll find out. Worst case – well, I have a darning needle, and I know how to use it!
The wool shop also has some spinning supplies, and some silk caps came home with me, as well. I don’t actually really enjoy spinning silk caps (although I love spinning silk tops!), but I’d like to have some slightly slubby silk yarn for weaving, which is how my spinning of silk caps turns out.
Speaking of spinning, on Friday night and last night, the DH and I watched DVDs – rather than knit, I did some spinning. I’m spinning some merino very fine, for a lacy scarf. The trouble with spinning very fine – and we’re talking finer than cotton thread fine – is that it takes so long to get much done. After a 2-hour DVD, there still didn’t seem very much at all on the bobbin! I started this spinning about two months ago; since I only spin when watching DVDs, and I do very little of that these days as I spend most evenings writing, it’s taken me all this time to spin probably about 20 grams of yarn. There’s a lot of meters in that 20 grams, but it still doesn’t feel like a great achievement… and I need at least 50 grams to make a decent length scarf. The small triangular one I made last year took about 20 grams, and I want the next one to be rectangular and much larger. However, I don’t think, at this rate, that I’m going to get enough spun AND knit it up in time for this year’s Armidale Show – so last year’s achievements there has little chance of being equalled this year!
I painted a warp for the first time a few months back as part of our groups Something New Challenge. The warp is a fine wool, sett at 36epi and threaded in a combination of straight and advancing twill, and I wound sufficient length for two scarves.
For the weft of the first scarf, I used some fine Toorallie wool yarns from my stash – I didn’t have exactly the right colours, though, so it was definitely an experiment and learning experience. Because the weft yarns were finer than the warp, I used two strands and could therefore mix colours to assist with the shading from one to the next. Although the greens in the middle of the scarf came out beautifully, with the shading progressing without lines, it’s not so smooth in other areas – partly due to my limited choice of colours to use, and partly to using two picks at a time of each colour when changing, instead of one alternating.
However, I’m quite happy with the result of the first scarf, as it was quite an adventure for me, and I’m looking forward to weaving the second. In the stash sorting the other day, I came across a couple more shades of fine wool yarn, and I have dyed a small skein of yarn to a dark mauve, so I will have more colours to blend, as well as the knowledge of alternating single picks for a couple more pattern repeats for each colour change.
I found the pair of socks I finished a month or two back 🙂 The yarn is a Patons yarn, with the heels and toes done in a Bendigo 5 ply. I have some more of the Patons; I like this colourway, and the texture of the yarn, so I’ll knit another pair, this time with purple heels and toes.
The blue lacy socks (from a couple of posts ago) are progressing, but I’m not 100% happy with the pattern and yarn combination. I’ve knitted the first sock past the heel, but when I tried it on it’s a bit tight around the leg. I think it will be okay, but if I’m going to continue I’l need to get another ball of yarn. If the wool shop is out of the yarn, I’ll take that as a sign, undo what I’ve done and maybe knit some mittens with that yarn instead. And of, course, buy some different yarn to knit the lacy socks with – something a little softer 🙂
Twisted and Warped 