Summer Spinning

During the summer months some of the members of the Chilliwack Spinners and Weavers Guild gather together during the day, on a weekly basis, to spin and enjoy each other's company. This week we were in Agassiz spinning in Lynn's beautiful garden.

Lynn has a gazebo that provides some shade even if we end up chasing it around the yard. The shade that is, not the gazebo!

It only looks like Lynn's beautiful dog is about to eat Bunny. He is just watching intently for his favorite toy to be thrown.

In an effort to escape the heat and burning rays of the sun I have backed myself into one corner of the garden where I'm combing and dizzing hand dyed wool in preparation for spinning.

Hand-me-down Knitting

Way back in March of 2005 I posted this picture of my Great Niece Isabella on my blog.



She was the recipient of the "Beribboned Eyelet Baby Sweater" and the matching accessories that I designed myself. Of course babies growing as they do, she wasn't in it for long before it was outgrown and had to be tucked away.

The outfit is enjoying a second go-'round, this time on Isabella's baby sister Olivia.



Isn't she sweet? And looking so much like her big sister did as a baby!

Masters Monday - 2.25

DONE!

I've finished the vest for my second level of the Master Knitters' certification.

I chose this Plymouth yarns pattern as a basis for my vest. I even purchased the pattern, but then found that my chosen yarn was not a good match even though the stated gauge on the ball band claimed it would be. I ended up completely reworking the pattern with Sweater Wizard software so that I could use the basic style of the vest but with my own gauge.

I finished the button band yesterday and did the long, long stretch of tubular cast off today. That done, I sewed in all the ends and then headed out for matching buttons. She's complete and I love her......except for one little annoying detail......the collar seems odd to me. It is really tall and left as is it won't lay nicely.

BUT, all is not lost. When I fold the collar once to the inside it lies nicely, like it was made to be worn that way. It's warm and snuggly.


Of course it's summer here right now and the weather has been beautiful. Much too nice to be wearing an extra warm vest. That's actually a good thing. I won't be tempted to wear it before I have a chance to hand it in for evaluation.

Upper Fraser Valley Knitters

Yesterday was the second meeting of the Upper Fraser Valley Knitters. After sending out a meeting reminder the previous day I was a little concerned when a large number of emails came in from members saying they couldn't be there due to other commitments.

I thought I would be sitting there all alone in a great big meeting room so I invited (okay, begged) my daughter to come even though she didn't have a babysitter for Kaylen. Officially children are not allowed at the meetings (unless they are old enough to be knitting), but I felt this one time was an exception.

After a while ladies started to trickle in, a few of them stopping by on their lunch hour from work. Eventually we had 8 members and one little pint sized "visitor" present. We chatted, knitted, and passed around our latest finished creations.

The next meeting won't be until September when everyone is back from vacations and summer commitments.

Masters Monday - 2.24

It's been a very busy week! I had hoped that I would have the finished vest to show this week, but I just didn't have the time. I did get most of the collar done though.

That is a whole lot of ribbing! 14 inches of it with short row turns at the ends of each row.

I'm finished the actual collar section so the short rows are behind me. Six more full length rows remain, each of these going from the bottom of one front edge all the way around the collar and back down to the bottom of the other side. Long, long rows with five buttonholes that need to be evenly spaced. I'm still working out what the exact spacing needs to be.

In preparation for that spacing I knit Swatch 20 last week, which focuses on spacing buttonholes evenly. I still have to sew in the ends and tag this swatch.

The remainder of this week was caught up in a whirlwind of activity. Besides babysitting our granddaughter, shopping for a new fridge, and doing some sewing for a gift that needed to be mailed, I spent the better part of weekend with the Chilliwack Spinners and Weavers Guild at Minter Gardens. The first day I spent combing wool. Although I would have liked to continue with that on the second day, it's tiring work and my shoulder had had enough. I switched to spinning for the second day.


Our location was shady and comfortable on an otherwise hot day. We were part way up a beautiful meandering path through a serene section of the gardens. The small brook behind us provided peaceful background music (in between the more rowdy jazz numbers performed closer to the gates).

I did find the time to walk around and take a few pictures. The big attraction at the gardens on Sunday was the Car Show. Hundreds of unique cars nestled into a scenic background.


It was a lovely weekend. I was very glad to hear that the guild has been invited back to demo again next year.

Masters Monday - 2.23

Although it may have seemed like I neglected working on my Master Knitters project last week, I actually did do a bit, but I never had time to blog about it. So today we have a 2 for 1 feature.....two weeks of Master Knitter, Level II progress in one post.

In the first week I struggled mightily to do the side seams. I ripped those seams out so many times that I frayed the length of yarn used for seaming.....twice. I kept having troubles with the mattress stitch going astray and being off by a half stitch.

Eventually I made sure I had it all lined up first by basting it loosely at the obvious design elements using a smooth crochet cotton. After that the seaming was easier and when I was done the smooth cotton was easy to remove, although I had to pull it out one stitch at a time.

I'm not completely happy with the seam. The pattern all lines up perfectly, but the 2 knit stitches that are seamed together are kind of flattened looking compared to the other ridges. For the patterned section this was the best I could do. When I did my preliminary swatching I determined this was the best location within the stitch pattern for the seam. Otherwise I would be seaming a changing stitch arrangement which would be way harder! In "real life" knitting (as opposed to having to design according to the course requirements) I would have done this vest back and forth from front opening to front opening, eliminating the side seams all together.

Same sort of problem with the 1x1 ribbing seam. It looks flattened compared to the other columns of knit stitches. This was once again unavoidable if I wanted to use a tubular cast on. Ideally 1x1 rib would be seamed between a knit and a purl stitch so that the seam would be hidden "in the ditch", but tubular cast on results in an odd number of stitches making it necessary to seam the ribbing using half of the selvedge stitch on each side.

The remainder is THIS week's progress. I've seamed the shoulders using short row shaping and then a 3 needle bind off. I have also picked up the stitches around both armholes and knit the armhole bands ending in a tubular bind off.

I'm now working on the shawl collar. It will be a very deep, warm, neck hugging collar that is shaped with short rows and ends below the bust line. It is consuming alarming amounts of yarn!

If I don't run out of yarn I'll be back next week with photos of the finished vest.

What type of buttons do you think I should use?

Oh. Which reminds me. I also did one of the required buttonhole swatches this week. I wrote up the pattern and everything. I just have to make up it's tag. Photos of that next week too.

Just Like

Simple pleasures.....

......sharing a love for simple, comfortable footwear with a wee little granddaughter.

A Bloggable Bit

You would think from the lack of activity here on the blog lately that I haven't been involved with creative pursuits that were worthy of blogging about. In actual fact I have been so busy creating that I haven't had a moment to blog about any of it. Several of the projects are top secret for now so I can't reveal them yet, but this one is bloggable. (Spell check says "bloggable" isn't a word. What does it know, hmmm?)


This bright splash of yarn is the beginning of an afghan for my 24 year old son. He will be moving out of our home in a few months and I wanted to give him a house (apartment? Condo? Basement suite?) warming present.

This will be a tartan afghan in the "Cunningham" plaid from the Australian Woman's Weekly book, "Easy-to-crochet Tartan Rugs". Our name is not Cunningham, nor are we of a heritage with customary family tartans, but it will make a beautiful afghan and a bright yet masculine spot in a bachelor pad, and quite possibly an extra blanket when needed. My son picked the particular plaid himself. He liked the simplicity of this one and it's primarily red and black colour scheme.

This is only the beginning of the horizontal stripes in the mesh portion. When it is done I will be crocheting 128 afghan length crocheted chains. They are woven through the mesh portion to form the plaid.

I made one of these for my daughter and her husband years ago, but in a different plaid.

Finally Modelled

Finished and blogged about in early December of last year, I finally have the weather to show a modeled shot of Coachella.

Still haven't totally eliminated the visible bra strap problem. *sigh*

Look! We Made The Local Paper

Chilliwack's little rendition of World Wide Knit In Public Day managed to catch the attention of our local paper. Thank you Adian Chafe of the Chilliwack Times for stopping by to see what we were up to. And thanks for granting permission to use your photo here.

The overcast day turned out to be the perfect temperature for sitting around outside knitting. Not too hot, not too cold, and thankfully also not wet.


Although our local gathering was organized by the newly formed Upper Fraser Valley Knitters, announcements were placed in the local papers and we managed to attract a few knitters who had not yet heard about our group. In all we had about 14 knitters drop by throughout the day.

Thanks to Angie for generously providing the photos. I had quite typically brought my camera and then neglected to take any pictures.

We also had "branch" of the group gathering indoors as an alternative in case of rain, and for those who preferred to knit indoors. Louise not only headed that group, but kindly provided a photograph.

This is the project that will eventually be my souvenir of the day. A pair of cotton/wool blend socks knit toe-up, two at once, on one circular needle.


The stripes don't match despite my extensive efforts to make them line up. I'll get over it.

Mystic Forest Finished

(click picture for close-up)

27.85 ounces (797 grams) and 1663.5 yards of "Mystic Forest" my own custom blend of black superwash merino, bright green merino, and green firestar. It should be enough for an entire long sleeved sweater. The five skeins range from just under 5 ounces to over 7 1/4 ounces. Gotta love those giant Majacraft bobbins!

Newly Plyed

Four ounces of 2 ply laceweight spun on a spindle and plyed on a wheel. Roving hand dyed by Fleece Artist.

Masters Monday 2.22

This week my progress toward Level II of TKGA Master Knitter certification consisted of finishing the knitting of the right front and then blocking the back and both fronts of the vest.


Although I'm sure I'll have no problem doing the front bands and buttonholes, I'll be a good girl and halt the vest project for a bit while I dutifully do the buttonhole swatches that I haven't yet tackled. Several of the swatches in this level have to do with finding the best buttonhole for various situations.

I don't like overly large buttons on anything so I have always preferred the YO, K2tog buttonhole. I find it comes out a nice size no matter the thickness of your chosen yarn. However, as I'm finding out with each step of the program, you never know what you could do better until you give everything a fair try and do some experimenting. So experimenting with buttonhole options and doing the related swatches will be my self-inflicted assignment for the week.

Masters Monday - 2.21

No pictures. Brief post.

Working on right front of the vest. Looks the same as the left front did only "reverse shaping".

Being distracted by spinning and weaving.

Spindling Project

While I'm primarily a wheel spinner, I always have a project in progress on my one good spindle. It's almost always 50/50 merino/silk which I like to spin at a laceweight.

This is hand dyed fibre from "Fleece Artist". The spindle is bloodwood and ebony from "Spindlewood Co". Although I had just gone through a darker bronze bit which you see on the spindle, the braid is mostly the golden to rosy colour.

Masters Monday - 2.20

Level II vest, left front complete.

Last week I stopped short of the neckline/underarm decreases because I was having second thoughts about my chosen method for decreases. I was particularly concerned about the way the diagonal line of the V-neck would be crossing various areas of the stitch repeat. I figured I'd have to vary my decrease method depending on whether it would land on a purl or a knit in each row.

Yesterday it suddenly dawned on me that I really didn't need to obsess over the front neckline as much as I at first thought. The whole neckline will be covered by a shawl collar! Duh! The decreases still have to be neat and correctly formed so that they pass the committee's inspection, but they don't have to follow the stitch pattern as closely as I was thinking. Next up: right front.

Woven Baby Blanket

This little blanket was woven on a Beka rigid heddle loom using a 10 dpi heddle. The woven part is variegated Bernat Softee Baby in the "pink parade" colourway. The crocheted edge is made in the same yarn but in the solid pink colour.

The woven portion has a beautiful, soft drape. To improve the drape of the edging I used a relatively unknown technique for blocking acrylic yarns. I "killed' the finished edging by blocking it with steam before it was machine sewn to the woven section. Now it's as soft and flowing as the woven part.

Weaving Samples

I purchased Betty Lynn Davenport's revised book, "Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle" and have been exploring some of the learning experiments.

My first 11 samples are done in worsted weight wool with the 8 dpi heddle. The first 10 are experiments with creating varying lengths of floats using a pick up stick.




Before reading through the instructions in the book I never realized how EASY it is to weave using a pick up stick. I always thought that for every row a pick up stick was used you had to go across picking up all those threads each and every time. NOT SO. For the first 10 samples I picked up the warp threads ONCE. The pick up stick is then left resting, in place, behind the heddle until it is used again.

For the last sample, a 3/1 lace, it required a different pattern of threads picked up, but after picking them up once I was able to weave it off, just bringing the pick up stick forward when needed. Fantastic! I love my little rigid heddle loom.

Masters Monday - 2.19

I've finished the back of the Masters Level II vest, and I'm working on the left front piece.

It's up to the neckline shaping and underarm now. The way I have the neckline shaping written out doesn't look as good as I thought it would so I have paused for a bit while I consider the alternatives.

As I show this as a work in progress keep in mind that these pieces are not blocked. Hopefully any irregularities will be reduced in the blocking.

Masters Monday - 2.18

Just when you thought I had been reduced to a crawl with the TKGA Master Knitter program, I rallied this week with a sudden burst of speed.

Frustrated with last week's yarn purchase I did some checking and returned to my original yarn choice for the Masters Level II vest. I had abandoned it before, thinking that it was too thick for the program's requirement of double knitting to worsted weight yarn. I considered the yarn I had to be more like an Aran weight. I went back and double checked the TKGA directions and then went to the Yarn Standards website and discovered that there are two weight classes that are considered to be "worsted weight". The one I normally associate with worsted weight is actually "#3, DK Light Worsted", but there is a second category "#4, Worsted, Afghan, Aran" and I am well within the stitch gauge range for the #4 class. The definitions at the Yarn Standards website are accepted by TKGA so this yarn will be fine.

The yarn still doesn't work for my selected pattern though so I had more than a little additional work ahead of me. First off I had to do a large amount of sampling. I started with the attempt to find a nice gauge for this yarn. On the left in the above picture I started with small needles and worked my way up (the swatch is actually upside down....the pattern stitch section should be at the top) to larger needles until I found a gauge that gave good stitch formation and the required fluidity in the knitted fabric. I then made sure that needle size also looked good in the pattern stitch.

The second rather sloppy looking swatch is a variety of tests I needed to make before rewriting the pattern to suit the yarn. I checked that the yarn looked okay for my planned tubular cast on and that I was able to neatly seam tubular cast on. I also experimented with various selvedge treatments and with moving the stitch repeat to different sections to find my best seaming options. These swatches are for my own benefit and don't have to be handed in so I placed some seams on one side and some on the other because I was also checking to see which side of the pattern stitch I liked best.

Then I came to my next hurdle when I wound the skeins into balls.

This WAS 5 skeins of yarn. EVERY single skein had at least 3 knots.....meaning for each skein I ended up with 4 mini balls rather than the one large, 4 ounce ball I expected. Some of the knots were only a few inches apart! VERY unacceptable. I will be writing a letter of complaint.

Despite fears that I may run out of yarn (all those extra yarn joins are going to really eat up the yardage) I have decided to get started. What I can't show here is all the hours I spent rewriting my chosen pattern to reflect my change in gauge, centering of the pattern, cast on, and personal sizing. My new custom pattern is a reflection of the design elements in the original pattern reworked with Sweater Wizard software, and then copied into a word program where I redid and expanded upon the wording for clarity.

I will likely be finished the back piece today.

Masters Monday - 2.17

This yarn has made me very angry, very angry indeed!

Another attempt at buying yarn for my Master Knitter Level II Vest...

~~~~~Kaploooeeee!~~~~~

I thought this yarn would work. The gauge was right. The colour was right. The price was right. But the feel......~~shudder~~.....how did I overlook the feel of the stuff? In the store I managed to convince myself that the feel was "rustic", perfect for the casual vest I have in mind. After getting the yarn home, washing it, (yup, I washed it....not returnable now!), and knitting up a swatch I realized that knitting with this stuff would be like spending hours and hours (many days actually) scraping my fingernails down a chalkboard. The feel of this "Briggs and Little, Regal" running through my fingers makes me cringe. While I wouldn't say it's actually scratchy, it feels dry and ...... raspy?

I could cringe and bear it and suffer through the knitting if I thought it would otherwise work up nicely for the vest, but look at those stitches! Horrid. They don't nestle into each other nicely or plump up. No "bounce". The knitting has uneven gaps and misshapen stitches. It looks about as lovely as knitted twine. Ugh. Must find something else.

This crud will be set aside for a weaving, most likely something that will be fulled or felted. At least with weaving you don't have to actually touch the stuff as much as you do with knitting!

Excuses

Okay, okay. So this photo of an old, old finished project (the wall quilt is almost 20 years old!) Is just an excuse to get my cute little granddaughter's photo on my blog.


And speaking of excuses, a quick comment about the recent lack of Masters Monday posts.

• I've been very busy organizing a knitter's group in my area.
• I HAVE done a bit of work on the requirements each week but it hasn't been knitting or worthy of a photo.....(answering questions, researching techniques).
• I've had a migraine headache on both of the missed Masters Mondays (no, really!)
• I've been sidetracked trying to finish a sweater I shouldn't have started in the first place.

Good news though. I bought yarn for the Master Knitter's Level II vest today.

In The Beginning

Woo Hooo! The first meeting of ..... um .... um .... well we didn't actually take a final vote on a name or anything so I'll just call the group the Upper Fraser Valley Knitting Group for now and shuffle through the questionnaire again in search of what the alternatives were so we can make a final decision.

Now. As I was saying. The first meeting of the Upper Fraser Valley Knitting Group was a great success. 17 knitters in attendance. Much enthusiasm and friendship and a whole lot of knitting going on. Plans are in the works to meet locally for WWKIP day, (World Wide Knit In Public Day), on Saturday, June 14.

I brought my camera to the meeting, got permission from all but one of the participants to occasionally post photos of the group on my blog, and then wouldn't you know it.....I forgot to take pictures! The inaugural meeting and I didn't get a single picture. BAH. We will need a group photographer I think.

Fine Tuning

I've made a few small revisions to the way I warp my rigid heddle loom. First, for wider warps I'm now using 3 pegs for the continuous warping.

I had my husband secure the pegs into a board which I can then attach with C-clamps to my warping table (an old door he uses as a work bench). Using 3 pegs seems to make for a more even warp while at the same time eliminating the pile up of warp threads that happens when trying to put them all on only one peg.

For this stage of the warping (beaming the warp), I've done away with the heddle blocks and I just clamp the heddle securely with strong clamps.

Then I turned the C-clamps sideways on the board for added weight and let it drag along the table as resistance as I wound on the warp. I liked having the warp ends still looped around the pegs. It really helped to keep things even. At the bottom of this picture you can just see the burgundy coloured vinyl venetian blind slats I use as warp spacers.

Nice and even!