Category Archives: knitting

>Let the Holidays Begin

Posted on December 19, 2008 | 1 comment

>This is a wall hanging I did about a decade ago. It’s 24″ x 36″ and hangs in my red kitchen all year long. I had never taken a photo of it until recently when someone asked to have some directions written for doing boundweave….
Guess who finished the nasty Christmas stocking today? That requires some celebrating!….so I immediately grabbed the most luxurious yarn I could — “Sublime” cashmere/merino/silk — and began knitting the “Fetching” fingerless mittens by Cheryl Niamath from the summer ’06 issue of knitty.com.

Little progress made on any tapestries, but the most has been done on this one. I’m ready to start working on Rob’s hand. Challenging!

Time to make the cookies and the toffee and wrap some presents…. it’s almost Hannukah, Christmas, Saturnalia, and, best of all, the Winter Solstice! Let’s all give a howl!

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Posted in knitting, weaving

>What’s going on here?

Posted on November 12, 2008 | 2 comments

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I just returned from a six day trip to San Francisco, where I indulged in a trip to Art Fibers and Britex, along with the typical sightseeing: the seals on Pier 39, Union Square, Chinatown….


Dyeing with weld has been on my mind since early summer when I realized my second year plants were going to flower. This is my first attempt at dyeing weld. It was a multi-day process. First I chopped up the dried branches from plants that I harvested back in July. Immediately after covering them with water I realized I meant to cut the branches into much smaller lengths, like 1″ – 2″ lengths, but it was too late! Sometimes I wonder at my lack of ability to concentrate! The color I got after simmering the weld did not look promising, like weak tea. I let the pot cool and sit for a couple of days and then heated it to a simmer again. I never did let it boil, and both times I simmered for only about 1 hour. I strained off the liquid from the plant material, gave the plant material a good pressing to extract all the liquid I could before disposing of it. The dye liquor was an unappealing dark tan. In went the wet yarns, most of which was my handspun romney and one 250 gram skein of fingering weight Palette from Knit Picks. This simmered one hour for a very awful tan. I then let the yarns cool in the pot and sit overnight for a second try the next day. Still very boring tan. I then resorted to my very expensive, $37/oz. powdered weld from Earthues. I had one ounce which I dissolved in a small amount of water before adding to my dye pot. The color got darker, but no better. Back in with yarn to simmer for about an hour. The color of tan got considerable darker and had an olive tinge to it. I still hated it!

I then consulted the internet on weld dyeing and what could be done to shift the color. The recommended additives were ammonia or sodium carbonate. I opted for ammonia since I could get that locally. I do wish I’d taken a ‘before’ photo! I removed the yarn from the dye pot in order to ‘glug’ in some ammonia, and the color change was instant and shocking! When I added the yarn it also changed right before my eyes to something quite lurid! It’s a lot more yellow now, but that olive cast is still there, making for a bright “French’s” mustard with an olive tinge. I rather like it! It’s certainly shocking.

I’m looking forward to over-dyeing with indigo, though this time I will only dip my little 1/2 oz. skein for a test before submitting all my precious handspun to what could potentially be a really nasty color!

I’m thinking about how to write up what I’m doing with my ‘Cardigan for Arwen,’ but can’t seem to make myself sit down with the graph paper to document my changes. I’m much more of a design-on-the-needles knitter, who struggles to then document what has already been done….

I bought some silk/mohair (76 % silk, 19% mohair, 5% merino) called Sylph at Art Fibers and had to immediately start working on a Clapotis. I was knitting everywhere in San Francisco, and obviously not paying attention well because I’ve now come to the fourth set of dropped stitches and those stitches won’t drop all they way to the bottom. It appears that I did a k2tog quite a fews rows down that is interfering with the dropping. I discovered this last night at almost midnight, while watching tv since I couldn’t go to bed when my body was still on West Coast time. I threw the whole mess into one of my knitting bags and hope not to think about it again too soon!

In the past couple of weeks I have worked on both the historical tapestry and H. Rob, but with no real progress to show for it. Baby steps are better than nothing though, and I have also done a small sample for my Hudson River Quadricentennial piece. Slow and steady…..

I do not understand why certain photos get sideways when the original was not!

Can you see here that I’ve drawn in the shape of the boat that will get woven next?

Ah, and I’ve just remembered that I promised an article to my study group at Complex Weavers….so I’ll sign off now to take care of that!

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Posted in dyeing, knitting, tapestry

>Back to Work….

Posted on September 29, 2008 | Leave a comment

>Here are a couple of things I do when I procrastinate from weaving. This shawl is wonderfully relaxing to knit. Yesterday I spent the entire day knitting this while sitting on my front porch listening to the rain and watching it fall, and smelling the last of warm summer weather.
And this project should start progressing again, now that I’ve dyed some more silk with which to knit the border of the shawl. The body of the shawl is knit from my handspun which was hand painted by the Silk Worker. I knew there would not be enough for the whole shawl, but figured I’d cross that bridge when I got there. The pattern is Swallowtail by Evelyn Clark, published in IWKnits. It’s a super simple, but very beautiful design, so it’s become my favorite for shawls that will be given away. A friend of mine with excellent color sense recommended I try lavender for the border of the shawl. I’m not sure my attempt at logwood will fill the bill, but if I don’t think it’s compatible after spinning I’ll just over dye with either more logwood, or perhaps cocchineal or indigo…or both. I left plenty of undyed white space in this bit of top so that the lavender would be pale when spun. I have a feeling it will be too pale!

Lastly, I need to write up some notes and do some graph paper work on my version of the Cardigan for Arwen (IWKnits, winter 2006) which I’m knitting up in Katia Scotch Tweed. I knitted the back and one of the front/sleeve sections which forced me to make all the design decisions. Now there’s just that last front/sleeve to knit and no reason to do so!….except that maybe I’d like to wear it someday?…..

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>Ta-Da!

Posted on August 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

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Scallopini is done! Part of me thought I was nuts to attempt to complete a sweater while getting ready for my son’s wedding, and part of me thought it might just be the thing to save my sanity while getting ready for the wedding! As it turns out, neither was quite right! I have not even been close to losing my sanity, and there’s been plenty of time to enjoy making this cute cardigan! Thank you MinnowKnits!

I’ve tidied up the gardens this weekend after being in Maine for a couple of weeks. This activity was not just for my own enjoyment, although I’ve enjoyed sitting outside two nights this weekend watching the gardens fade at dusk and glow in the light of candles after dark, but also in preparation for the UN-rehearsal dinner we will hold on Thursday evening. The resort where the wedding will take place does not allow time/space for rehearsals, yet we still wanted to have a gathering of everyone involved in the wedding party. So 30 people will be here to kick off the wedding celebrations! After an 18 month engagement, it’s really hard for me to believe that the wedding takes place this week! I have butterflies!…not from worries, just from sheer excitement!

I will give this little sweater to my niece at the UN-rehearsal dinner, along with her strand of pearls, her gift for being the flower girl. One Sunday afternoon a few weeks back the bride and I made pearl necklaces and earrings for all the females in the wedding party. This is Madison’s.

Let the fun begin!

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>Summer Vacation

Posted on August 11, 2008 | 1 comment

>When I left for this year’s vacation I had visions of writing blog entries, even without photos, to share all the experiences right as they occurred. Didn’t happen! My time on the computer was terribly limited, and even though the ever present urge was there, I did realize it was better to enjoy the great outdoors!

For over a decade now our summer vacation has been sailing in Maine. We’ve spent most of that time in the Penobscot Bay area. This year we started a bit west of that, in Booth Bay. We’ll be back in early September for two more weeks of sailing, and we may take time then to better explore Casco Bay.

This year’s trip was the coldest we’ve experienced, and it rained every day except two! And when I say rain I mean torrents some of the time. It’s not easy being on boat in the rain. No matter how big the boat is (and while ours is not huge it has grown somewhat over the past 30 years) rain makes everything feel damp….clothing, bedclothes, the upholstered settees in the main cabin….all damp…and cold!

I brought three knitting projects, some beautifully dyed mohair top for spindling, and my smallest copper pipe loom set up with a four-selvedge warp for trying a little Pre-Columbian historical study. I did not weave at all. We spent long days sailing, and I can only weave at anchor. I did spend a lot of time knitting, so I was able to complete the cute Minnowknits Scallopini sweater for my niece. Photos to follow soon, I hope! I spent maybe 20 minutes, total, spinning. Still, I could not have gone sailing without the potential for working on these projects. I left the pipe loom and weaving yarns on the boat for when we return in September. Surely, I’ll be more successful then….

Almost every morning I drew for a while, and I did a lot of thinking about weaving and thinking about a design for a Hudson River tapestry to commemorate the quadricentennial.

The highlight of the trip was stumbling on an acquaintance from New Jersey who brings his wife’s horses and a carriage even (!) to Mt. Desert each year. He invited us to go for a carriage ride! The carriage is a beautiful piece of workmanship, hand made by Amish craftsmen in Pennnsylvania. It looked like a carriage straight out of Jane Austen, and I need to find the appropriate name for this kind of vehicle. It was a beautiful day (no rain!), and we drove through the the Rockefeller carriage trails to Long Lake where we stopped for lunch near a scenic view with a boat house. I still can’t believe it really happened.
(Well, checking Wikipedia leads me to call this a Phaeton, although Jane Austen speaks of curricles and gigs as her choice of sleek, light carriages with two wheels pulled by two horses. I need to do more checking.)

To get to Maine, my husband did a Category 2 Ocean race called the Lobster Run with a crew of seven. He spent about eight months getting our boat ready for this kind of race, and he was happily repaid with a wonderful second place trophy! Our older son was one of the crew.

Now that we’re back home, we have a little over one week to get ready for that same son’s wedding. I’m in a constant state of happy excitement now! For over a year now the wedding has been something that has required planning, discussion, dreaming, but actually it didn’t feel REAL…..now it’s about to be a reality!

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Posted in knitting, spinning, vacation, weaving

>The Orkney Pi

Posted on March 21, 2008 | 1 comment

>This is Elizabeth Lovick’s “Orkney Pi” shawl. She made this pattern and is leading a KAL (knit along) for a yahoo group called EZasPi (a play on Elizabeth Zimmerman’s name as well as Pi). I am in the midst of section three, which is the lattice work area. In this section there are 640 stitches per row, and it’s going very slowly for me. The stitch pattern is very regular with a short repeat so that should be easy, and yet I’ve made some mistakes. What is challenging about this section is it gets repeated 5 times. That’s a lot of knitting! The last, outer section with the large trees has 1280 stitches per row and a lot of rows. That will be quite daunting for me, butut I do want to make it to that point! I’ve managed to keep up through this KAL until this week. Well, naturally, it wasn’t that hard when I had 80 stitches per round, or 160, or even 320. 640 has really slowed me down, and I can’t imagine making any progress when (if?) I make it to 1280!

So I’ve been dividing my time between tapestry and lace knitting for the past several weeks. I haven’t taken any photos of the progress on ‘little man in the boat’ (I need a name for this piece!) or H.Rob, and I’m not sure why. I just don’t feel like photographing them yet….maybe that’s a sign that I’m not happy with something about them. I’d better give that some thought!

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>Photos

Posted on March 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

>In a few minutes I will download the most recent photos on my camera. There will be shots from the Philadelphia Flower Show taken during our visit on Wednesday last week, there will be shots of boat projects that my husband is currently doing, and there will be shots from an event we hosted on Friday evening at a restaurant in New York…..what there will not be is my son’s 24th birthday which we celebrated with him yesterday. Ask me if this makes me sad, and I’ll have to say yes. I’m feeling very sorry for myself right now that I let that landmark event go unrecorded. And please don’t ask me how many birthdays I didn’t record as it will just make me sadder still. We had a lovely day at Rob’s house, but today I find myself so sad that I have nothing tangible to mark the event. I took the camera….I just never got it out of the case. Why is it so easy to photograph projects and so hard to photograph my family?

So, as you might guess, I’m in a bit of a funk today. I knitted for a couple of hours, working on the Shetland KAL that Elizabeth Lovick is leading for members the of EZ as Pi yahoo group. It’s my first traditional shetland shawl, and so far, since I’ve only got 320 stitches in each round now, I find the knitting easy. It’s more logical than anything else. Let’s see if I say that when there are 1,000 stitches on the needle and the pattern gets algebraically more complex!

The highlight of my day was spending an hour weaving the clerical stole while listening to an episode of Cast-On. I’m deliciously behind on listening, so I might be able to weave the entire stole while catching up. It’s hard to sit at the loom and mindlessly weave when all the color choices, warping, beaming, threading, and sleying are done. There’s nothing left now but the rather tedious process of weaving off the six yards of material. In my funk it was very hard to go down and do it….but Brenda Dayne made it pleasurable!….and got me out of my funk for a whole hour!

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>Swallowtail

Posted on February 26, 2008 | 2 comments

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The Swallowtail is done! I took a quick photo, and now I’m about to block it. I’m very hopeful it will leave my hands at the end of this week or early next week and finally go live with my friend who should have had it back in Sept. After trying three different patterns for this yarn, this knitted up so quickly it almost makes up for all the other trials (and errors!)

I’ll photograph again in a couple of days when it’s dry from being blocked!
Well, I had to show it being blocked too, didn’t I?

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Posted in knitting, Lace

>Another Eclipse

Posted on February 22, 2008 | 1 comment

>Just a year ago I wrote about an eclipse here, so having another one this week made me realize I’ve been at this for a little over a year. Naturally, I expected to do a lot more with this blog than I have! The photos alone are a big learning curve for me, and I haven’t got the faintest idea how some of the bloggers I most admire do such interesting things with photos!
(Empire State Building with Lunar Eclipse)

It’s snowing hard here, and the birds are singing so it’s quite a contrast. I will have no photos because my camera is on a holiday in Colorado with my husband and older son, the homebrew master. Trust me, it’s beautiful outside!

I have finished the body of the Swallowtail shawl and am partway through the first larger border. The next border is only 10 rows, and then I’ll switch yarn to the violet for the final border. I really, really want this done by March 1, so I can give it away to my friend before she has her reconstructive surgery. I can’t believe I’m not sick of looking at this yarn yet since I’ve been fussing with it in various patterns since August! (from Knitting Daily photo gallery)

Earlier this week I learned that Elizabeth Lovick will be leading a KAL (knit along) on one of the yahoo groups, EZ as Pi. Liz is the woman who sent me the wonderful Ronaldsay which I spun and knit into Chris’s gansey which should show up on the slide show to the right. I’m going to join this one, and have been looking at the Jamieson and Smith site lusting after all the colors and weights of Shetland. The KAL starts next week, so I should just go through my stash, especially since I do have some wonderful lace yarns…..they’re just not real shetland…..sigh…

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>Frogging

Posted on February 13, 2008 | 2 comments

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Almost finished frogging the Muir before I realized that I should at least take a photo. This yarn is Alfabeto from Art Fibers in San Francisco. It is 76% silk, 19% mohair, and 5% wool. It doesn’t rip out easily, and I sure hope I remember that little edge picots should be avoided in future unless I’m working with very smooth yarn! On the other hand, this yarn simply will not break no matter how much tugging I do! Two out every four rows begins in a picot which I have to tease apart with a blunt tapestry needle. I console myself that it is somewhat faster than the actual knitting!

If I need to supplement yarn to re-make this as a Swallowtail Shawl I will buy some coordinating Sylph.

Okay, I’m heading downstairs to start threading the clerical stole warp!

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