Knitting [& Knit-a-thon!] Update

First, the knit-a-thon update. I got a very nice thank you letter from McConnell Library with the final tally (at least the current final tally) on knit-a-thon goings on:

• 450+ balls of yarn were donated,
• 260+ finished items were donated to the Clothe A Family campaign and half a dozen tiny caps were taken to the premie ward at the hospital,
• over $900 was raised to support the children's lit programs at CBRL,
• hundreds of knitting needles were donated, and many are still waiting to be given to new and aspiring knitters,
• 30 door prizes were donated and then won by very happy knitters,
• and lots of good [donated] food, fun and conversation were had by the many many knitters who participated in both locations.

Isn't that great? Congrats and thank you to everyone who donated and/or participated. And hey, guess what! It's only 11 months until the next knit-a-thon!

I was lucky enough to win a door prize myself and, although there were tons of beautiful kits to choose from with enough yarn for e.g. an afghan, a lace shawl or even an entire sweater, I was a good little girl and picked the one, scrumptious ball of Noro you see above. I just loved the colours and one of my knit-a-thon objectives was to destash, not restash. Well, at least as far as yarn goes. I got heaps of new needles - everything from size 2 dpns up to 25 mm needles which are presumably meant for broomstick lace but won't ever be used for that by me! (At least, not unless someone tells me what broomstick lace actually is...)

I also scored a whole whack of needles for my friend Amy, who knew how to knit in theory but hadn't done it in practice for a long time. She came to the knit-a-thon to lend her support and keep us company but had zero (0) intention of knitting anything, but I bunged a pair of needles in her hands and a ball of yarn in her lap and she was away! She left with left with many balls of yarn and a hat under way and has since started another. I can be very persuasive!



Knitting continues apace on my March socks. I was really hoping to knit some monkeys for March since they're having a March Monkey contest on Sock-A-Month but, alas, I don't think I'll have time so I'm sticking to my original railroad rib socks. I knit the leg of both socks first and then intended to knit the heel flap of one and then the other so that they'd be exactly the same but I really like doing the heels and just couldn't stop! As you can see, they've gotten a bit out of synch so now I have to decide whether to just finish #1 and then go do the heel and foot of #2, or whether to play catch-up so that they're the same length. Tricksy! I must admit I'm not loving the colours quite as much as when I started. The pooling makes them look like camouflage socks - NOT the look I was going for. Oh well!

Another piece of knitting news: you may recall from my Feb 8 spinning pics that Sidney was knitting (yes, that's Sidney. Now You Know.) She had with her that day a really neat little book of Luxury One-Skein Wonders. This little gem was filled with tons of patterns for things you could knit out of a single skein of yarn. Now, this is perfect for me in many ways: 1) I really only get one or two skeins of yarn spun at a time before I get distracted by doing other things, so projects to use up these orphan skeins are much appreciated, 2) I can't knit anything very heavy without the ol' CTS acting up, so lightweight projects that use only a single skein are easy on the wrists, and 3) my attention span lasts about one (1) skein. Granted, my handspun is not anything luxe, but the idea was a good one.


Turns out there are a few different books in the series, so I am now the proud owner of 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders, which you can see behind that yummy Noro above, and I got a copy of One-Skein Wonders: Yarn Shop Favourites from Coast to Coast for Chris for her bday.¹ AND Donna has a copy of one of the One-Skein books - not sure yet if it's a fourth one or one of these three, but at any rate our little spinning/knitting group is well covered by wonders of one-skein or less! So now I need to pick a lovely pattern to use my new yummy Noro on!

Incidentally, I see that Chapters has all three titles on for 34% off right now, and a 20% discount on their irewards memberships. If you buy a lot of books, I heartily recommend it - it's not nearly as good as it used to be but nevertheless Ron and I always keep our membership current and get loads of coupons in the mail.

Only other thing to mention knitting-wise is that I finally finished that blue feathers and fan scarf but I think it's a bit short, so I'm going to take out the casting off and make it longer. I was worried about the length so I never cut the ball off, which means I can take out the CO and then just keep knitting until the ball is consumed. Which it will be before long!


Oh, and I was also given this totally fab vintage knitting bag that I'd been drooling over during the entire knit-a-thon as a thank you for helping to organize and get the word out. It came in as a donation, completely filled with needles which were divided up for door prizes, gifts and general use during the knit-a-thon and on Fibre Fridays. I told Chris that she ought to put the bag out for a door prize itself but she played skeptical - I think maybe she was saving it for a gift all along, the sneaky bugger. Not that I'm complaining: I. Love. This. Bag. It's vintage, it's my favourite colours, it's plenty long enough to fit a pair of straight needles into with knitting still attached, and it even matches my current project of that description. What's not to love? (Those are my new enormous 25mm broomsticks needles and my yummy Noro in there with the fan scarf, by the way.)

Okay, that's it for me for another week or so. I think I'll try to post something worthy at least every weekend since Scarf A Day is taking up my weekday blog-energy. Hopefully by next weekend I'll be able to impress you all with pics of the blankets I'm weaving on Mabes right now. :)


1. I tried to get pics of them all lined up side by side, but just couldn't figure it out. This has caused me grief in the past and will no doubt continue to do so in the future. Any Blogger users out there who can help me out?

Scarves today, scarves tomorrow

Okay, so here's the deal. I've been toying with the idea of a Scarf A Day blog for a while now. Then yesterday I wanted to learn something about the way Blogger blogs are set up and I created the Scarf A Day blog to test my idea, figuring I'd use it when the time came, if it came. Silly me, I thought it could sit there, unnoticed, until I needed it. Here it is, mere hours later and, lo, it already has a follower!¹ Which is GRATE, and exciting, and inspiring -- some of the reasons I was considering the project in the first place, so it's all good. I just wasn't ready to actually do anything with it yet. Now I figure I'd better post a little bit of expo to explain, to tantalize, and to cement my intentions to go ahead with this beastie.

The basic idea is pretty simple: I'll weave a new scarf every day and put pics online. Beyond that, the details and ground rules still need work. Am I really going to do this every single day, or just on weekdays? For how long a period? Do I have to warp the loom every day, or am I allowed to weave more than one scarf off a single warp? If so, how many from one warp is okay and how dissimilar should they be? Am I allowed to wind a bunch of warps ahead of time or does the entire idea have to happen in a single day? Does the scarf have to be finished (i.e. fringes done, wet finished, pressed, whatever) the same day that it's woven? Do I post the hot-off-the-loom scarf before finishing, or the finished scarf, 'cause that can take overnight. Do I post progress shots so people can see the scarves under way or just finished product shots? Etc. etc.

There are other kinds of questions that need answering, too, like how do I manage this project with the other production and guild sampling that needs to happen on the same loom? How do I manage this project with all the other stuff going on in my life, like getting ready to open the shop in four months, or the other people in my life? My husband has said, "I don't care if you do a scarf a day, but I don't want to have to," meaning that he doesn't want to be pressured into keeping me company as I desperately try to finish a scarf by midnight or when I get tired of the idea but feel like I have to keep going. Fair enough. He's also worried about scheduling - what if he wants to go on a trip, what then?

At the moment, I'm thinking of these answers to all those questions: I'll just do the month of February, and I'll only commit to doing week days. I will try to put on a new warp almost every day, or every other day, but won't make any promises in that regard. I'd rather warp for three or four scarves at once and I'll still have blankets and other production going on the big loom, so it might take me a couple days to get four scarves off the small one. I'll make sure that every scarf is unique but it might just be a change in weft colour that sets one apart from another. And, if something really important (family is important!) comes up, I'll just miss a few days. Big deal. As for the other stuff, I'll make up answers to those questions as I go. I'm making the rules here, after all.

And now, since a post sans pictures is boring, here are some shots of the scarf anna half from yesterday. Guess which is which!



As you can see, another really critical question I have to deal with is "how the heck do you take good pictures of scarves?" Here's a better close up of the fabric:



1. Hi, Laura! Thanks! :D

Scarf and a half

So it turns out there was only half a scarf left on Joey, which means I now have about 40" of narrow sample fabric to turn into ... something, and 6 yards of crackle warp on the loom!

Since I'm thinking of using crackle for the rocking chair fabric, I figured I might as well make some samples that will give me an idea of what that'd be like. I chose four colours that are reminiscent of the colours in our drapes (natural, blue, green and yellow) and rotated them through the warp stripes: NB, BG, GY, YN. I'll change threading blocks at the colour boundaries but will rotate through them in a way that will keep the same colours from appearing in the same blocks every time. Or something - I'm making this up as I go along.

Still trying to decide whether to stick to a 4 shaft threading to begin with or try an 8 shaft threading. Will probably go with the 4 and try some of the traditional tie ups and treadlings (overshot, summer & winter) as well as the style I'm thinking of for the chair - the point of the exercise is to learn about crackle in all (well, many) of its permutations. I can always do an 8 shaft threading on the next warp.

Ooo, the dryer's buzzing. Time to go see how my scarf and a half turned out!

Never a dull moment

The rosepath is done! Not cut off the loom yet but the weaving is finished. I decided to use a temple after the first yard or so just to speed things up a bit.


I'm not sure why I hesitate to get the temple out so often - I guess I feel like it's going to slow me down so I'd rather avoid it if possible. I must admit, there's also a sense of guilt, like I ought to be able to weave without one and I'm faulty some how for needing one. Where does that come from, I wonder? At any rate, I got out the temple and that sped things up quite a lot, as I didn't have to fuss so much about draw in, just about beating too hard.

Incidentally, in spite of my hang ups about temples, I have a lot of them and really like them all. The one in the pic is a wooden one from Glimakra that I got along with three or four others from Madelyn Van der Hoogt when I took her Weaving II course (including one for the Centre where I teach). It's the kind I use for delicate fabrics or narrow warps. I've also got two heavy metal Toika temples that I got from The Weaving Works to use on blankets and rugs.

Anyhoo, the rosepath. I realized today that I've been referring to it as "the rosepath" even though it's really bits of point twill on a basket weave ground. The treadling, though - that's rosepath. I like this angle because it shows off the stripes down on the cloth beam. Pretty, huh?


Not sure yet what this fabric will become - depends on what happens in the fulling, really. I'm still thinking some kind of cocoon but it might also be hats or pillows or something else entirely. I'm sure it'll let me know what it wants to be eventually.

I also wove a scarf on Joey this morning, so now there's only one or two left on that warp, too. Haven't posted a pic of that warp yet, so here you are:


I wove some scarves in this palette for the show I did last November and it was quite popular with the gents, so I put it on again. I hardly ever repeat warps like that but hey, rules are meant to be broken, eh wot?


I've also neglected to post pics of the socks-in-progress, so here they are as well:


This is my second time using this sock pattern and the first using my new needles with the more flexible cord - definitely an improvement! I've realized lately that I don't like my socks to come very far up my leg, so I made the tops of this pair shorter than the last. I'm afraid they might be just a bit too short, but this is a learning process. Eventually I'll figure out The Perfect Sock and then I can make loads of them!

I'm anxious to get these done so that I can try a new pattern that my mother's friend Peggy sent me. I used her instructions for Kitchener stitch to graft the toes of the blue and brown pair and they worked a treat, so I'm really eager to try out the entire pattern. I think Peggy's considering selling this pattern but she's given me permission to share it with my local fibrous friends as long as each person who gets it donates a pair of handknit socks to a local charity. Isn't that lovely? :D


In other knitting news, now that I've given away the gift, I can show you pics of the silly doggy shrug I made for my friend Marg and her dog Millie for Christmas:


The only explanation I have for this is that it seemed like a really good idea at 3:00 aye em. I hunted around online for a dog coat pattern that I could make pretty quickly and found this really cute one on knitty.com. Of course, with all those cables and bobbles, it wasn't a quickie so I just figured out the basic outline of her 10 lb dog pattern, did a ridiculously small tension swatch and then cast on what seemed like a reasonable number of stitches and knit a rectangle. I got a bit sneaky and used the casting off to sew up the legs and even used a version of the beaded cast off from splityarn for what I thought was going to be the neck. The legs turned out long enough that I didn't pick up any stitches to knit down cuffs and, in fact, turned up the cuffs a bit to shorten them. Even though the shrug is supposedly exactly the same top and bottom, I think the beads will work better at the bottom edge rather than the neck - maybe the cast off stretched the width?

I didn't have a dog handy to try this out on and our cats all objected strenuously, so I have no idea if it's anything even approximately Millie-shaped. I'm really anxious to learn whether or not it fits her and to see pictures if it does! Are you listening, Marg?

So now I have a date with a roast and the enormous new slow cooker that Ron got me for Christmas but then it's back to the looms - want to get Joey naked ASAP so I can dress him up in crackle (ooo, crackle for rocker upholstery - woot!) and I need to make some design decisions about the blanket for Letitia so that I can get that yarn ordered toot sweet. As I say, never a dull moment!

Gonna Get My Fibre On

Woosh. Okay, so 2008 did not go quite as imagined fibrologically speaking. It ended well, though, and 2009 is looking very rosey indeed!
So here's a sampling of what I'm working on now.

First, some sewing, which is very exciting because I'm finally starting to feel like I'm figuring it out. I got Amy Karol's book, Bend the Rules Sewing, from a friend for Christmas, which is totally cool 'cause I've been reading Amy's blog for ages now unbeknownst to my friend. Anyway, in the book Amy suggests using cotton flannel fabric for interfacings, which got me thinking of cotton flannel in a whole new way, i.e. as more than my favourite sets of sheets. I had a chunk of handwoven fabric that I'd planned to turn into a baby blanket, so I got some flannel am edging it with that. Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself!



I had a few tiny scraps left over from making the edging, and I've been cursing the lack of unpinned real estate in my tomato pincushion, so I whipped up this little guy, too.



Maybe it's just me, but I think it's almost unnecessarily cute. Plus I'm quite taken with the way that the pins coordinate with the fabric, without any planning whatsoever on my part. It is also the first thing I have ever made in a totally spur of the moment, "Huh, I could use one of those, I think I'll make one. Oh, look, it's done and now I've got the thing I wanted and hey, wasn't that easy!?" kind of way and also without any kind of adult supervision. Very exciting! AND it's the first pic I've taken using my latest camera/lighting/backdrop scheme which I am quite pleased with, so what's not to like?

There are some full sized (24") pillows as well, which I may try to take some pics of later but they won't fit in my new photo setup and I'm too lazy to take the camera off the tripod and make the bed and all that.

Lest you think that I'm only sewing with commercial fabrics, here are a couple more recent projects. A stash of new eyepillows for a local yoga teacher...


...and a little drawstring bag that I actually made a few months ago and have been using ever since.



I'm not totally happy with the interfacing in it - used the heaviest iron on stuff I could find, which turned out to be fusible fleece, so the bag is pretty stiff and the cord doesn't pull up as it should. I'll use flannel in the next one and see how that works!

So that's the sewing. I am also knitting, for the first time in years. I am quite enjoying myself and it's lovely to have some little thing to do while e.g. waiting for my honey at the doctor's office. I have also found that I am no longer horrified by the thought of using little needles; used to be that anything smaller than a size 7 was simply Not Worth My Time, but I've just ordered some size 1 needles for socks and am quite anxious for them to arrive. Here are the socks I'm working on now, using needles much too large with coils that simply won't unbend, so there's been a fair amount of swearing involved:



There were also a couple of hats knit for Christmas presents, one for my father in law (the first thing I'd knit by hand in 15!! years!!) which required zero (0) swearing at all, and another for Ron that I've dubbed the muffin-top owing to its rather bizarre design. That one required a small amount of swearing when it became clear that the hat was too big so I had to tear out all the ribbing at the bottom, pick up the stitches and knit it back down. Still, not so bad. Now if he'd just wear the darn thing, I'd be happy.


Oh, and there's a scarf on the go as well. It was the first thing I started (on a lark, at the Unspun Heroes Christmas potluck, 'cause someone had decided we should all knit that evening rather than spin. Hmph.) Of all my projects, this one has required the most swearing because I keep forgetting to pay attention during the lace-making row and wind up with less stitches than when I started. Still, I am persevering and have about 30" done.



I think I'll have to slow down on the knitting front, sadly, as I have definitely noticed a return of the ol' carpal tunnel syndrome which I got in the first place when I added knitting to my signing-all-day and typing-all-night routine back in the early 90's. I'd hoped that it wouldn't bother my wrists now since I'm neither signing nor typing nearly as much but it does still seem to aggravate it. So... I either have to slow down and work at it a little at a time or binge-knit (my usual MO), blow out my wrists and then give it up entirely for another 15 years. That doesn't appeal, so I'm going to try to take it easy. I'm sure there's a new year's resolution in there somewhere.

So that's sewing and knitting. There's been a fair amount of weaving in the past couple months (and the past couple days, for that matter) but I'll save that for my next post. Trying not to binge and fast on the blogging, too!