robknits

Progress

So after several false starts, I am making progress on the Fay shawl. 

Most shawls are started at the neck and worked down, or are started at the bottom and worked up -- that is, they are knit horizontally.  This pattern starts at the leftmost point of the shawl and is worked by increasing til you have the widest point of the shawl, and then decreasing back down to the rightmost point.  There are several new patterns that do that, including this one, the Westport Shawl,  in the latest Knitscene magazine.  As you can see from that link, knitting a shawl that way does nice things to variations in the color.

So why the false starts?  After so many years of knitting, I know various ways of casting on and their benefits and weaknesses, and I know how to produce various edges... I just tend not to plan.  I decide what to knit and dive in.  So first I started this with a different yarn, but decided I would rather use this lovely silk and seacell blend.  Then I realized that I had used a cable cast on, but that creates a firm edge.  Not the best for a light lacey shawl or scarf.  So I ripped out the 10 or 15 rows I had knit, and cast on with a long-tail cast on, which is more elastic.  But then, after I had about 20 rows knit, I realized something was really wonky about the outer edge.  So I frogged it one more time, and started it AGAIN.  This time, fortunately, all is going well.  I am through the first repeat of the chart, and as you can see am about halfway through the second repeat.  5 repeats gets you to the halfway point, and then you do another 5 repeats as you decrease in the stockinette area.  When I finish the second repeat, I am going to put in a lifeline, so that if I screw up I do not have to start again all the way at the beginning.

In the spinning class I took on "Spinning Old and New Rayons,"  we started with samples like these:

We spun singles and then plied them to see what the yarn would be like.  I got small samples like these:

I don't have my notes with me, but I am pretty sure this was an old-style viscose rayon.  It was very very slippery to spin, and while the results are nice, it is an environmentally costly fiber to produce.  So I won't be spinning with this stuff.

I also produced this:

I believe the lightest one on the left was pure tencel, and the stripey one was a tencel and merino blend.  Or was it the other way around?  I will check my notes tonight and confirm.  I liked spinning this stuff, and the tencel is produced via a more environmentally responsible procedure.  I already have more tencel blends to spin, and I bought that braid of pure tencel after taking the class. (That really shiny one in the last post.)

So I am both knitting and spinning at the moment.  I am spinning the lovely merino on spindles, and eyeing the other fibers waiting to play. 

 

Off on an adventure

Months ago I agreed to go with a friend on what seemed like a crazy adventure.  But it was going to happen so far in the future.  Turns out the future is Monday, when I am heading to Beijing.

Yes, Beijing.

I have always traveled by the seat of my pants, figuring out every step myself, getting myself out of the airport and into strange cities, staying as inexpensively as was safely possible.  This is a different experience: I am going with a tour sponsored by Texas Public Radio.  So far, that means all I have had to do is pack for myself.  Someone else arranged for the flights, the hotel, and transportation from the airport to the hotel.  So far it has been great... though of course I haven't left yet.  We'll see what it is like traveling in a group. 

So, the first leg of the flight is 5 hours to San Francisco.  We have a four-hour layover there, and then a 12-hour flight to Beijing.  I think it is 12 hours.   I am hoping to survive that many hours in an airplane via movies or tv, lots of books and magazines on my Kindle (I probaby don't need to have 34 books with me, but I CAN have 34 books with me with a Kindle), and, of course, some adventure knitting.

A simple narrow scarf in linen stitch.  It should be narrow enough to be comfortable to knit in an airplane seat, just interesting enough to keep me going, and with an interesting yarn that will slowly change color.  No need for a pattern. 

Now all I have to do is figure out where I put that new hat I knit just for this trip....

Making yarn

Spinning

The spinning bug re-bit hard, and I have been spending a lot of time trying to improve my spinning skills.  If you put too much twist in the yarn, it looks like, well, technically it's called yarn barf. 

But too little twist in the yarn and the fiber drifts apart.  When I sat down with this fiber that I had started spinning years ago, I ended up with a considerable amount that I can't ply -- it is underspun in spots and so it comes apart in my hands.  So I began paying more attention, and sure enough, I now have a sizable hank of two-ply yarn:

 

Still a little thick and thin, but usable. 

I plied another bobbin's worth and have a lot more of the fiber to spin too.   

I also started spinning the silk and tencel fiber on the new Turkish spindle, both purchased, as I mentioned in my last post, at the Kid n Ewe fiber festival last weekend.  This fiber, instead of being combed "top," that looks like this,

 

is a "carded batt" and looks like this:

 

They are produced differently.  Top is produced by combing the fibers so that they lay parallel to each other.  A bat is produced on a carding machine and is lighter and full of air.  The fibers are not all lined up either.  This batt, made of silk and tencel, is so airy.  I grab a handful to spin and it is truly like grabbing air.  The only difficulty I am having is with the joins.  When you join one handfull of fluff to the end of the yarn on your spindle or wheel, the unspun fibers at both ends grab each other as you draft them together.  This stuff is so slippery that the joins are a bit trickier.  I am really enjoying this and am sorry I didn't buy a lot more of it.  I bought 2 1-oz packages -- and I will learn soon how much yarn I managed to make from it.  That is always hard to estimate, especially if you do not do a lot of spinning.  It depends of course on how thick you make the yarn.  You can see that I am going for a thin single, and will double it (ply it). 

 

This spindle, a Turkish style spindle, is neat because if you wind the new yarn around it properly as you spin it (under one arm and over two) when you are done you can pull the arms out and have a ready-made center-pull ball of yarn.   Sorry about the dark pictures of the silk and tencel -- we are having one of San Antonio's few gray days.

I discovered that my right hand got tired using the Turkish spindle.  You have to spin it like a top from the top of the shaft.  So yesterday I pulled out another spinning project which uses a top whorl spindle.  I get that spinning but using a thigh spin -- rolling the spindle up my right thigh.  Much less tiring, and I got a lot done last night.  The fiber is merino wool, in a color called Morning Glory from Spinnerette.

The spindle is one I bought at last year's Kid n Ewe.  Unfortunately the maker is no longer making spindles, because I would have bought another this year.

 

Knitting

I am still hung up on the button bands on Laura's baby cardigan, but I did buy buttons yesterday.  I am going to try to finish the button bands today. 

 So the next knitting project for me has to be chosen.  It might be the Quercus cardigan, because that is also top down, though more complicated than the baby sweater.  The baby sweater is top down with raglan sleeves, which is very easy to do top down.  Quercus is top down with set in sleeves, which doesn't appear to be difficult but I think will take a bit of attention. Plus, I will have to follow charts for the cables.  So it will be a mindful, not a mindless, knitting project.  But I sure do want to wear it.  Of course, I might also turn to finish the knit kimono I put aside last winter and finish that up fast.  That'd feel good.  That and the alpaca shawl, assuming the moths haven't gotten to them.  I am afraid to look.

Reboot

I have returned... full-speed, to knitting and spinning.  The change in temperature could be a factor, but it started when it was still warm.  Now of course I am sorry I haven't finished all those cardis, because even here in south Texas it has gotten cool

Blog as log

I am going back to my original idea of this blog as a log of my creative project.  It is also a way of organizing all of that as well.  So I am putting myself on a blogging schedule, and a blogging format with subject headings (spinning, knitting, art).  New posts will go up each weekend.

Knitting

Top priority:  A friend of mine suddenly has a new baby.  It was not sudden for her, but I learned about it suddenly.  So  I found a top down raglan baby cardigan with a hood.   This has been a very efficient pattern.  I downloaded the pattern from Patternfish.  I found machine washable yarn (the gorgeous Dream in Color Classy) in my stash.  The first day I knit down from the neck past the armholes.  The second day I finished the body.  The third day a sleeve was finished.  The fourth day the second sleeve was finished.  This weekend I will pick up stitches at the neckband and knit the hood. ( Voila! Hood almost completed.)  A baby sweater that will need buttons and a button band.  I cannot let that stop me.  This baby is growing rapidly in Buffalo NY.

This color is actually Deep Sea Flower, from Dream in Color, a gorgeous color that my camera refuses to capture correctly.  Here is a professional picture of it on the right.

 

This project helped me rediscover my love of knitting sweaters from the top down.  All in one piece with no seaming is good.  Top down is even better.  Unfortunately most top-down sweaters have raglan sleeves, which is not a good look for me.  But not all of them, and I am collecting how-tos and patterns for top-down set-in sleeves.  One new pattern (for which I have already purchased yarn) is Quercus, in the first fall Knitty online magazine. (First fall always sounds like the hobbits' first breakfast.)  This sweater is knit from the neck down, and the stitches for the sleeves are picked up and knit down as well.  I do have to figure out how to modify the front, since I want to add a way to close this cardi with something other than a shawl pin, and I think lengthen the sleeves.

Other knitting: The knitted kimono jacket. I put this project away last spring when I had already finished the back and both fronts.  My goal is to finish this as soon as I get baby Laura's sweater done.

Spinning

I was suddenly thinking about spinning again, so finally, 3 and a half years after moving to San Antonio, I sat down at my Columbine spinning wheel and went back to spinning this fiber.  Now I can't stop.  I have filled a bobbin and started on a second.   The fiber, bought years ago from the Copper Moose, is a combed wool top with bits of different colored thread in it.  Here it is before it is spun,   and in a spun single.  My final goal is a two-ply yarn. 

 

 

 

Still unable to stop thinking about spinning, I sat down with the lovely spindle I bought last year at the Kid n Ewe festival in Boerne TX, and some gorgeous merino top, and began spinning that as well.  Just in time for this year's Kid n Ewe festival to be held in two weeks.

Art

I am taking another beginning drawing class at the Southwest School of Art.  This is the third time, so at some point I am going to have to decide to move on to another course.  Most of the other courses in the drawing/painting tracks move on to other media, like pastels or painting, so I might move on too.  I am finally seeing a change in my drawing but of course the most important part of developing that change is also the most difficult -- drawing a lot, every day.

Weaving

I have a design for a tapestry that I did as a collage.  It involves a lot of sky, and that is tricky, since you have to decide what is going to make up that sky, in terms of color and weaving techniques.  The first idea I had is based on circles but circles in tapestry are very very difficult.  So I may have to come up with another idea.  And "sample" it -- weave a little bit of it to test the technique and the colors before actually trying to use it on the tapestry itself.  More to come.

Flu-ette, flu-illa, une petite flu

Actually, I think it is a cold with ambitions.  I got little baby versions of flu symptoms -- a low fever for just a couple of hours, achy bones but only for a day -- but boy do I sound like I have a cold.  I spent the weekend in bed, and now apparently my ears are filled with cement, but my energy levels are already back up.  Last night I tried collapsing on the couch after work and got bored.  Not bored enough to pick up any of my WIPs though, but I think that is because they would have required some thought, to remember where I was and what I was doing.  I am going to try to go through them tonight, figure all that out, and have them ready and waiting for some knitting urges.

I straightened out all my weaving yarns, so I am ready to get going there as well.  I was just going to improvise something but might need a bit more of an idea to get started.  Today as I left the house for work there was a brilliant blue sky, spring green leaves on the trees, and a brilliant red bird on a wire.  So tonight I might start weaving something like that.  Just to play.  Or maybe I will make a collage of it, play with it on the computer, and then play.  But then it is no longer improvisational, is it?

To keep me honest, here's a list of the WIPS to get to:

• the Featherweight cardi.  I recently got an update to the pattern from the designer, which might have served as a push to get this done.
• the kimono cardi in the scrumptious yarn.  As usual, I got through it very quickly until I hit a spot that required some other kind of effort, in this case sewing two teeny tiny shoulder seams.
• I suddenly remembered Sausalito.

So with not much effort I could have 3 cardis done.  Yeah, well.  We'll see what happens, OK?

 

 

 

 

 

Addictive knitting

I switched projects from the Knitted Kimono to the Arwen wrap, supposedly because I was traveling and the kimono would have been too bulky to take with me.  I say supposedly because I am at the point where I have to sew the shoulder seams, and as usual, that is where I stopped.  But now that I have gotten going with the Arwen, I can't stop!  That is good news, in that I am making rapid progress, but not good news for the kimono cardi.  Here's a (foggy, early morning) shot of Arwen:

 The bottom actually does lie flat.  And the repeating pattern is still interesting enough that it keeps me going.  Nevertheless, I am going to try to get the shoulders done on the kimono cardi this weekend.  Once the shoulders are sewn, you pick up live stitches that are on holders (up the front and down the back), knit the border, bind of some of the sides together, then continue to knit the sleeves.  It will be a quick finish... once I get past sewing the shoulders.

It would be timely too, since the weather reports are predicting an "arctic" air mass reaching San Antonio by Monday.  Apparently "arctic" around here means the temperatures during the day will be about 40 degrees.  NIghts will be cold, down in the 20s.  But still, after spending the blizzard in New York, 40 doesn't sound scary.  The problem is actually greater indoors, since my 1950s San Antonio home has no insulation, and it will get pretty chilly in the house.   So I should finish the kimono cardi. 

What working on these two projects has shown me is that I am NOT an ADD knitter, jumping from project to project.  I am, instead, serially monogamous.  And if I leave a project behind, I often don't return.  I could make up for 2010 being a year of only 2 or 3 finished projects very quickly if I go back to, oh, the Featherweight and the Sausalito.  I could finish those, and actually wear them the rest of the year.  I am not making any promises though, because when I do that I run for the hills.

Blizzard (additional pic added)

I spent Saturday night packing for my trip, preparing travel knitting and waiting for the airline to cancel my flight.  After all, I was doing something very stupid: leaving San Antonio for New York as a blizzard hit.  Continental, though, took great pleasure in putting us on the Newark landing strip just as the first snowflake hit.  We drove to my mother's past all the cars that had slid off the Jersey turnpike, and one overturned pick up truck.  A quick visit, and then a slow but steady return to NYC.  This is a Monday morning view of lower Fifth Avenue on Monday morning.  Hint: There are usually people on Fifth Avenue.  Lots of them.  This is the block between 13th and 14th Sts.  There are ususally LOTS of people.  But not only are there blizzard amounts of snow, there is a current wind chill of 14 degrees F.  Seriously, what was I thinking? But  wait, I just checked the temperatures in San Antonio, where it is 36 degrees.  Oh well.  I am warm and comfy in my sister's apartment.

That newly empty lot, by the way, is going to be a new building for the New School.  We are enjoying the temporary absence of a building in that spot.

The travel knitting project was a good choice.  The pattern is very well written, and I love the yarn -- Alpaca with a Twist Baby Twist.  I do have to be careful not to spear this very tender alpaca single with my sharp Knitpicks needle, but other than that it has been a pleasure to knit and is going very quickly.

  It is very portable, fitting easily into my tapestry fabric Knit Knack sack, which makes it good travel knitting.  I do need to follow the written pattern or chart for each row at this point in the project, but that has not been hard to do.

Since it appears to be cold just about everywhere in the US, I hope you are all staying warm.

 

 

PS. A picture of the corner of 14th St and University, looking toward Union Square Park.  And, oh yeah, that's a car under that snow drift.

Interruptions

Interrupting a project is usually a major mistake chez Rob.  I tend not to go back to it.  But the kimono knitting project and the calendar both hit significant points at the same time.

I have completed knitting the fronts and back of the kimono cardigan.  I now have to sew the shoulder seams.  Normally I do a real quick three-needle bind off and voila!  Shoulder seams.  But this cardigan is knit sideways, so the shoulder seams have to be sewn the way you would sew the side seams of most cardigans.  So of course I procrastinated for a couple of days (and whined.  And though about how sewing seams is Not Knitting. And ate.  And read some mysteries.) Then last night I sat down with it and decided to try a slip-stitch crochet seam, which I liked a lot.  Except it didn't work out.  The relaxed gauge at which I knit this yarn lets me pull and push it as I please, and so the fronts got stitched to the entire back, leaving no neck.  Hmmm.  Not gonna work.  I measured all three pieces, and they are knit to the proper dimensions.  So I think I really should block the pieces before stitching the shoulder seams.  Which is what all the instructions say anyway.  I was reluctant, since there is more knitting to be done.  Once the shoulder seams are sewn, the provisional stitches up the sides are picked up and a border is knit on, and then the sleeves.  So I really didn't want to block it.  I think what I will do is pin the fronts and back to my blocking pads, spritz just the shoulder seam area, pin it, let it dry, and then use my slip-stitch crochet seam.

Except I fly to New York before dawn tomorrow morning.  'S okay, I will do it when I get home.  Finishing this sweater can be the New Year's weekend project.  But there is no way I am traveling without a knitting project, which means that , YES, AGAIN, AS ALWAYS, I am running around waving my arms screaming "I have no knitting to take with me."  And I am not leaving without a knitting project in hand.  Especially since some weather reports are talking about as much as 10" of snow in New York by Monday night.  If I don't have my knitting with me (and the iPod, the Kindle, and my cell phone) we all KNOW I will get stranded someplace.

So I took a look at the stash, and once again tried to find a project for the two mega-skeins of Alpaca with a Twist Baby Twist that I bought during the 2010 Central Texas Yarn Crawl.  I had bought it thinking of making a rectangular stole, but never found a pattern I liked.  Today though I found the Arwen wrap.  And while I am not sure it reminds me of Rivendell, I do like the pattern.  It would be really good if I could cast on, and mark the repeats, before getting on the plane tomorrow.  But if not, I will just make sure I have what I need to get started on it.  Following charts in airports is not the best situation, but then again, I only need to carry knitting projects with me on planes, I rarely actually knit while on the plane.  But if I get stuck....

Starting a new pair of socks would probably be more portable and doable, but I wasn't in the mood.  I may take a sock knitting kit with me though, just in case.  Because my travel knitting has higher priority than clean clothes, washing the kitchen floor, getting the trash out of the house, showering, etc etc.  Which is why I figure that This is why I will never be an adult is really about me. 

Merry Christmas to all of you celebrating the holiday!

Progress

Lots of fiber focus means lots of blogging.  I have finished the left front of the Knitted Kimono jacket:

 I really like the look of the charcoal seed-stitch trim. You can click on the picture to embiggen it.  I also set about doing what passes for higher math chez Rob.  Knitters are told to estimate that sleeves use about one third of the yarn for a cardigan.  So I figured that meant the back=one third of the knitting, the two front pieces=one third of the knitting, and the sleeves=the final third.  The back is done, and one half of the front is done.  I pulled out the fractions, and apparently I am halfway through the sweater.  More probably, since the sleeves on this will probably not be full length.  I started this on Thanksgiving weekend, and reached this apparent halfway mark on Dec. 15.  This is warp-speed knitting around here.  Apparently stockinette in a worsted gauge in lovely soft yarn is the way to go for fast knitting.  Who knew?  I am going to cast on immediately for the right front.  You then sew the shoulder seams, bind off together most of the provisionally cast on side seams, and knit the sleeves in the round right onto the body of the sweater. 
 

I admit it: it's the weather

Next summer (which starts around March here in south Texas) remind me that I knit with the weather.  We are having beautiful cool days (though the temperature bounces between about 45 and 75) and clear cool nights and I cannot get my hands on enough wool.  I have finished the back of the kimono cardigan and started on the left front.  I can't WAIT to get home from work to knit. 

The back of the cardi doesn't look like much, since it is just a stockinette rectangle, but you can see how the yarn works up.  I like this yarn -- Queensland Collection Rustic Tweed -- very much.  I knit loosely, and am getting 5 stitches to the inch on a #7 needles.  That is making a rather loose drapey fabric. which was my goal.  My experience with the swatch was that it filled in a bit when I washed it.

I am not 100% sure that it is necessary to alternate skeins with this yarn, but I decided better safe than sorry.  With some yarn, there is a very obvious change in color from one skein to the next and alternating skeins prevents any sudden visible shifts like that.  It has not been any big deal to alternate.  I have high hopes of finishing this cardi very quickly and wearing it as a jacket here in the San Antonio (ahem) winter.