Snuggly Warm

The kids and I felted up some scraps of Cowichan wool the other week. I brushed it all up nice and fluffy with a metal hairbrush and then we put the scraps in some ziploc bags with some hot water and dish soap and the kids rolled and smashed and mushed until we got this lovely warm fire for Bunny.

On another note, I finished up these slippers, another Mohair Ballet Slipper from Beverly Galeskas' book Felted Knits. I have made several of these, but this was the worst one so far. I spun a really bulky yarn for the cuff and we died it with orange Kool-Aid, but it was tooooo bulky and the stitches did not felt nicely the first time round. Also the slipper cuff was stretched way out of whack in proportion to the slipper body. So, I cut out notches from either side of the heel, similar to how you would stitch a moccasin heel and stitched up the sides with wool and the joined the cuff with matching sewing thread (the original yarn was no good at all for sewing the cuffs back together). All in all, it went really really well. The seams disappeared, even on the cuff and we now have slippers for a small human that really likes orange and red.

Mittens Schmittens

There is a mitten conspiracy that is working against me. I have lost the first and only pair of mittens that I have ever made. I dyed the wool, spun it, and knitted up a pair of super cute mittens for my kids. Some of the yarn was purchased, but about half was my own. We call them Fish Mitts because they remind me of parrot fish. In any case, they are LOST. I have to check at the lost and found every where I go. Because of this sin, I cannot knit mittens. The first pair was a disaster of loose ends and poor tension. Frogged to the cuff and reincarnated as Dizzy from the same pattern book, they were splattered with coffee. I persevered. This is what I got for my efforts:


Do you notice that the bottoms of the cuffs are level? Can you see that on the bottom mitten the green begins well above where it begins on the top mitten? And can you see how my medium sized hand fits into either of these mittens????? They are wet, washed, and clean. Mostly, I couldn't get all the coffee out. They are made of superwash wool for Pete's sake!! I can't even shrink them! The smaller one is at least useable, but the larger one is enormous. I will have to frog it to the cuff and start all over. Next year.

ps Let's not discuss the fact that I had four extra stitches on my needles, okay? Or that I knit them in the round, rather than flat where I could have knit two at the same time and had the same gauge. Okay?

pps I forgot that I was wearing a Playmobil crown as a ring. . . isn't it beeeeauuutiful?

Wooly Loveliness

Here is some lovely BFL that just arrived in the mail from Margaret at Celeigh Wool in Millet, Alberta. I already have some here that I am spinning (slowly) into what will hopefully be a sport-weight 2-ply, but after the success of the Mushroom Cap Hat, the kids and I decided to do a little project. We are going to dye this loveliness with Kool-Aid, split it into manageable strips and the kids (4 and 6) are going to spin it with my wheel. I figure that I can set it to pretty much just wind-on and that will give it enough twist for a 3 wpi singles. That is what I did for part of the Mushroom Cap and so it should work again. (Famous last words, says the little sniggering sheep on my shoulder.) Once it's ready , I can knit for the 4 year old and the six year old can knit for himself (sort of). He's been practicing.

We have a little rhyme that I got from a blog I found one day, Food & Family, which roughly goes:

In through the door,
Around the back,
Peek through the window,
And off jumps Jack!

It is in her June 2006 archives in a post called Knitting. I tried to link to it directly, but couldn't for some reason.

I posted a while ago about spinning exotic fibres and some silk/merino blend that I found. This is more of the same and the green is even the same colour as what I had before, so now I will have some to match what I had leftover. In the back is some Shetland in a dark dark brown. I have never spun Shetland before (which is odd, because you know, having been spinning for soooo long, a whole two years now, you'd thinkI would have done everything by now, hey?) I am feeling very sarcastic today, I must have eaten something odd.

Smittens

This pattern book by Mission Falls has five takes on the same basic mitten pattern. I saw the Advika pattern in an ad somewhere and thought it was super cute, so I snatched it up when I saw it at my LYS. I decided to start with these (Hena).

Of course, not being content to do the smart thing and follow the pattern, I decided to convert it to be done in the round, rather than flat. So far so good. Chart reworked and off we go. Never mind that I forgot to remove the selvedge stitches before hand and that I actually have two extra stitches on my needles. Well, actually four, because as written the ribbing didn't workout and so I added two more. Hey, I said, NEVER MIND.

Oh, did I mention that I've never done intarsia before? Oh. And did I mention that knitting intarsia is one thing, but doing it in the round is another, perhaps best left for your second intarsia project, rather than your first. Especially when you have no real idea as to how to weave in ends? Because, other than stripes done flat, you've never actually done any colour work before in your entire life??

They are no longer Hena mittens. I ripped them back to the cuff ribbing and have started a much simpler version (Dizzy), which I would show you except that this happened.

The aftereffects of a two year old running down the couch and slamming into a newly filled mug of steaming goodness. Normally I would say coffee is a wonderful thing. I love it. In the morning, I steal a few precious moments out of the day just to sit in my chair in the corner and relax. Sometimes, if I am lucky I get to do it again in the afternoon. Or, sometimes not.

Well, there is a picture of Dizzy after all. Such as it is. Fortunately, of two patterns still discernable, Dizzy is one of them.

Mushroom Cap Hat

So here is the skein of the wool I spun the other day. Silly me, I thought I wouldn't need all the fibre . . . but that turned out to be a good thing. I did much better prep on the remaining fibre and used my wheel instead of my spindle and got a much more consistent yarn. And as for designing the yarn for the project, well, three tries later I finally had the colour pattern that I wanted! Of course, I had to knit the hat three times anyway. I used 15mm needles the first try and I had a hard time getting the tension right, so I tried again with 12mm and decided that the fabric was too stiff. In the end I went back to the 15mm needles and had a much easier time, I guess it just takes practice to use such enormous needles!

In the end I ran out of yarn and had to borrow some strips of Blue Faced Leicester sliver that I am using for another project. I didn't bother spinning them, I just twisted them as I knit the last couple of rows. Probably if I had been more consistent with the first batch of yarn, I might have had enough. Who knows!

Here is the finished hat. The pattern is my own, such as it is. Cast on 30 stitches, knit plain up to about 12 cm, then decrease 5 times every second row until there are 5 stitches left. Pull the yarn through and voila! — a new Mushroom Cap Hat. The yarn worked out to about 3 wpi and Barb, one of the owner's at River City Yarns, where I picked up the fibre, says that she is certain it is Merino. It is definitely soft!

Ultra Bulky

On the weekend, I saw a woman wearing a toque that had a stitch gauge of 4 stitches per 10 cm. Yes, I am not kidding, a stitch per inch. It was very cool. The hat was all about the stitches, the colour didn't really matter, although it was a lovely blue and the hat was entirely done in stocking stitch to more effectively show off the ridiculously huge stitches. I loved it and since I am totally sick of frogging my cabled hat, I decided a new project was in order. So with kids in tow today, I headed to my LYS and picked up this lovely bit of top and tried my best to spin an ultra bulky yarn with my Ashford Turkish spindle. I haven't really used it before and the yarn was obviously too heavy for the spindle since it was backspinning on me all the time. But I ended up with this . . .

It is my first truly planned yarn, as far as colour goes. I split the fibre into colours and chose the sequence. It has been shocked and whacked and the twist has set with not really any extra twist in the skein, which is nice. It has a very sheepy smell, which I am enjoying, oddly enough. I have no idea what the fibre is, other than that it is wool. It seems as if it is naturally coloured as opposed to dyed and the shades of cream through grey to walnut are really lovely. Hopefully tomorrow I will get a good photo of the skein and maybe, if I am very blessed with a peaceful house, even a hat!

Exotic Fibres

Click for bigger image.

My favourite yarn shop, River City Yarns, was hosting an evening session on spinning exotic fibres the other week and I got to go! Yay! We spent three hours playing with all kinds of fibres new to most of us: cotton, bison down, silk, ramie, alpaca, bamboo, llama, and soy protein. Birgit Rasmussen guided us all along the way and was a fantastic instructor. Very patient! Above is a shot of my mini skeins from the session.

The alpaca blend was definitely the softest. It is verrrry cuddly. I have no idea what it was blended with however. We were just given a sample to spin and it was a mystery to the instructor as well as she had been gifted it earlier by the class organizer.

The bison down and cotton, both raw cotton and prepared roving, were definitely the most challenging. My drop spindle had quite a few crashes during those experiments, poor thing. The bamboo was quite lovely and the regular bamboo had a really nice sheen. The carbonized bamboo was interesting and still quite soft, though without any gleam at all. I didn't like the ramie and found it more difficult to spin than either silk or any of the other more slippery fibres.

All in all, it was a very interesting evening. I will definitely consider incorporating some of the nice shiny fibres into my spinning. Of course, since I have no way of blending the fibres, I am probably stuck with whatever I can buy for now!

A couple of years ago, I bought a beautiful merino silk blend and spun it into a thick and thin bulky weight two-ply yarn and knit a head-band for my sister-in-law. (No pictures sorry - we were on vacation during the knitting and gifting!) I am using her spinning wheel on indefinite loan ;-) and thought she deserved a gift. It spun up very nicely and I didn't find it too difficult. It ended up being a very pretty yarn.