The Bliss socks (lacy baby alpaca) are finished. No, there’s no photos of them yet, because I’ve been too busy to get the camera out, but I am looking forward to a cool autumn weekend afternoon, and putting them on and curling up with a good book… of course, I have no idea when I’ll be able to stop long enough for that to happen!
Maybe after our groups’ Open Day and Grand Opening on Saturday. Arrangements are coming along well and I hope it will be a good afternoon.
While at the Armidale Show last weekend, I was spinning some brown carded fibre I’ve had for quite a few years. We used it for folks to have a go at spinning, and wound off what they’d spun as their momento, but in between I kept spinning it, and filled a bobbin. So, this past week, I’ve spun another bobbin, and I finished plying them tonight while watching the news. Spinning is soooo much quicker when you’re not spinning lace weight!
These skeins aren’t anything fancy, but since I haven’t spun simple coloured wool for a while, it’s been a nice change. I don’t have a lot more of the carded fibre, so I think these skeins will ultimately be a pair of socks.
Now, I’m off to watch Murphy’s Law and Spooks on TV – I enjoy Friday night British crime shows! – so I’ll be working on the second bliss sock while I’m relaxing. Only another few rows before I start on the heel 🙂
Not much craft work lately, owing to other pressures. However, I finished weaving a warp off my table loom that a student in a weaving workshop had started, and then decided she didn’t want to continue. So, it’s been sitting on the table loom for a while, and we’ve occasionally used it as a loom for demonstrations for people to have a go on, but I finally decided that I’d weave off the rest of the warp and use the cloth to make a jacket or vest for our raffle dolls.
The warp was actually sett a bit too far apart, which made beating evenly something of a challenge, but the finished cloth actually came up very nicely when washed.
So, all my looms are currently empty. I’ll hopefully get a warp on at least one of them soon, but this coming weekend is busy with the Armidale Show, so it may not be until after that. I’ve spent the last couple of evenings finishing the fringe of the rainbow scarf to enter into the Show – I started twisting it last weekend, and did one end entirely, but then decided the ‘twists’ were too narrow and tight, so I had to undo the lot, and then redo them. But it’s currently reclining in the display case at the Show, and I’ll find out tomorrow whether it got a place in the contest. I also put a pair of socks in, and a skein of fine yarn, since there were hardly any entries in most of the classes.
The bliss socks are progressing, but I had to frog an entire pattern repeat as I stuffed it up. Now that I’ve finished twisting (and untwisting, and twisting again…) the scarf fringe, I can get back to the socks.
The first alpaca sock is finished. I’m going to call these my Bliss socks, because even better than handling this yarn while knitting it, is pulling it onto one’s foot. Absolute, indulgent, bliss.
These won’t be going-to-work socks, or bushwalking socks, because they won’t be hard-wearing enough. Nope, these will be ‘curling up on the lounge on a wintry Sunday afternoon with a freshly-made Earl Grey tea and chocolate fudge’ socks.
Of course, given that it’s still summer here, I’ll have a little while to wait for winter, but I’ll finish the other one soon so that I can practice wearing them during autumn 🙂
I kept working at the loom yesterday. I decided to take a holiday from all the long list of Should Be Doing things and weave for a couple more hours instead. And then the end of the scarf was near, so I had to finish it, didn’t I?
I had about 8″ less of the red warp at the end than I did at the beginning, so the scarf is not symmetrical in terms of mirror repeat at each end. (Long story about how that happened that I won’t go in to here.)
However, despite the fact that I’m normally into balance and symmetry, I’m comfortable with this asymmetry. Not that I have much choice to be any other way 🙂 But this whole project was to stretch me into doing some new things, so being asymmetrical is one more new thing.
There it is, as far as I could go!
Off the loom at last. I still have to hem stitch one end, finish the fringe, wash it, and cut off all the loose ends, but the weaving is finished, and yes, I’m happy with it!
Hmm… I wonder what I will weave next…
The loom has been silent for well over a week, due to the demands of other aspects of my life, not to mention the heat in the sunroom the couple of times I’ve contemplated taking a few minutes to weave. However, this morning was overcast, I didn’t have to be anywhere else or have urgent deadlines, so off to the loom I went.
From the dark blue of the last photo, I’ve shaded into the jade green – not quite as smoothly as I’d like, but even though I tried dyeing a blue in between the dark blue and the jade, it didn’t come out quite the right intermediate shade to blend the two. However, it’s smoother than the first scarf’s transitions in this colour of the warp.
Then came blending into the green, and as with the first scarf, the two shades I have work wonderfully with the warp colour at this point, so that the transitions are very smooth and almost invisible.
Being up to the green means that I’ve only got a few centimetres to go before I’m half-way through the scarf 🙂 The second half should go more quickly, because I don’t have to experiment with and decide on colours, just work in reverse what I’ve done in the first half.
CĂ©line 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!
