Thrumming, and cutesy kid knitting

Last week one of the Knitting Daily posts was about thrumming.  When I read about it, I realized it's what I want to do to make slippers for my mom, who has diabetes and needs warm foot coverings.  If you haven't heard of thrumming, it's a very pioneer concept -- using all of what you have and not wasting anything.  Thrums are the trimmed ends off of weaving.  The wool was looped and knitted into the stitch on the inside of mittens, and provides extra warmth.  The technique was also used with the locks of wool from sheep shearings, when the lock was not acceptable to go into the carding to be spun.  I decided to try the technique with some roving I had on hand, and this is how it is turning out:

I think I got a little carried away with the fleece!  Luckily, what I've read says that the wool will felt with wearing, so it won't look like a wooly mess forever.


I think I'll save my first effort for myself, and make my mom another pair.  I'll put some puff paint on the bottom, and have some no-skid snuggy slippers for myself.  I live in Wyoming, in a house that my husband likes to "comfort" to temperatures he likes: 65 degrees in the daytime, and 55 degrees at night, so I'm always cold.

Grab bag

I've been working on a lot of fun and new (to me) techniques, so I decided I would just put the projects in a grab bag for my kids to go through at Thanksgiving.  If they like them, they can take them.  If not, I can donate them or give them to somebody I know who would like them.

I have been learning fair isle knitting with two hands at once (how lucky that I learned how to continental knit, as well as English knit that I have always done).  Two hands at once is a huge time saver, rather than dropping and picking up strands.  I love snowflake patterns, but couldn't find a fair isle snowflake hat that I liked, so I designed one myself. 

 

 

 

This cowl was the October KAL from knitpurlhunter.  I didn't have any Simpliworsted when I got the itch to start the mystery KAL, so I grabbed a skein of Bamboo Ewe that was in my stash, and got to work.  Luckily the yarn lasted just long enough (it called for 2 skeins of Simpliworsted and I only had one skein of Bamboo Ewe in Grape, but there was more yardage in one skein of Bamboo Ewe than in Simpliworsted.  I don't know what I would have done if I had run out!)  It was a quick knit and I liked the two pattern stitches it used.

 

On a lighter note, I think I need to take this head to an art student I know and get her to draw features on the face!



 

 

This scarf is the Pioneer Braid pattern in Crystal Palace MiniMochi (at least I think it was MiniMochi).  There is a young woman in our neighborhood who is learning to knit, and decided she didn't like the yarn for what she had bought it for.  Karessa is a sweet girl who comes over once every couple of weeks and I teach her something new about knitting.  She gave me two balls of the yarn as a thank you, so I went to the LYS where she got it and got another ball to try this scarf.

 

 

 

I wanted to try the Susie's Reading Fingerless Mitts pattern, so I grabbed a ball of Paton's Lace out of my stash and got busy.   There's a lot of yardage in one ball of that stuff, I can tell you!  So I had a lot left over after the mitts, and wanted a project to learn provisional cast-on with a circular needle cable, so I did the slanted stitch in an infinity scarf with the 3-needle bind off.  Karessa liked the slanted row stitch so much that she decided to do one herself.  Hers is coming along very nicely.

(The head looks a little less creepy when covered, don't you think?)

Wow, has it been that long?

Just realized it has been almost 8 weeks since I last posted.  Since then I have been working on lots of projects, and doing a bit of spinning.  I'll give a quick update tonight on what I've been up to, and more updates tomorrow.

Halloween day my LYS had a sale -- 40% off all merchandise between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m.; 30% off from 7:30-8:30; 20% off between 8:30 and 10 a.m.; and 10% off the rest of the day.  There were about 15 of us in the store between 6:30 when I got there and 7:15 when I left.  The shop owner said her husband wanted to know if she thought there'd be anybody there.  I told her it was Black Friday for yarnies!  Here's the picture of my haul -- $87 at 40% off.  John knows the credit card showed $87 -- I just don't think he knew how small a bag would hold the $87 purchase! (Maybe I should try to impress him with my wise spending, since the bill would have been $215 without the discount!) For some reason, I was drawn to muted and neutral shades. Maybe it was the hour of the morning, and I didn't want strong "wake me up" colors

The variegated colorway is Ella Rae Lace Merino (2 skeins I've been coveting for a while).  I don't know what lace I will knit with it, but I'll hold onto it for something special.  The 3 balls of beige are Sublime baby cashmere merino silk.  I'm thinking a very elegant style of scarf for that, maybe an infinity scarf, because I love those.  The 3 hanks of lavender are Kollage Corntastic.  I couldn't resist knitting with corn!  I've got some socks on needles right now from a corn/elastic blend that I can't wait to try on!

And for another update -- a few months ago I posted a picture of the football baby cocoon and hat that I knitted for a friend to give to her younger brother and his wife for their newborn.  The anticipated delivery has arrived, and they sent a picture to me today.  So here is Warrick in his cocoon.

Slouchy cowl

As the temperature dropped into the 50s today, it reminded me that winter is on the way to Wyoming (and other places as well!) and reminded me that I have never posted my simple cowl pattern.  The sample pictured here was knit in a 5 Bulky yarn on size 9 needles, but it has no gauge and is totally adaptable to your taste.  If you want a drapier cowl, use a lighter weight yarn  or larger needles to make a looser fabric; for a more stiff fabric, use smaller needles or heavier yarn.  You can also change the appearance by adapting the number of stitches in the pattern repeats.  If you want a very cowl-y scarf look, cast on more stitches and use more stitches in the repeats so that the fabric "stacks"; for a more neckwarmer look, use fewer stitches in the repeats.  The pattern below is to get the effect of the sample pictures.  The first number in parentheses is for a cowl look, the second for a neckwarmer look.

Hope this works well for anybody that might try it.


Slouchy cowl by Joanna Perkins

Cast on 80 (88, 80) stitches, and knit in the round in the following pattern:

*Knit 10 (11, 8), purl 10 (11, 8)*.  Repeat stitches between ** to the purls at the end of the row for a total of 4 (4, 5) sets of ** stitches.  Purl 11 (12, 9), attaching round as you go.  Continue pattern, which essentially is 81 (89, 81) stitches in each row.  This will cause the stitching to slant, creating the "stacking" fabric.  Continue until cowl is 9" (12", 8").  Bind off, weave in ends.

Another baby present

What is it with everybody having babies?  Our neighbors here in Cheyenne just became first-time grandparents, so I made the Puerperium baby set for their new granddaughter.  Laurie was kind enough to provide me some pictures of the little gal, who apparently liked her outfit and made a face when they changed her for baby pictures!   There is a pair of booties and a diaper cover that go with the outfit, but they don't fit quite yet.  This set was knit in Bernat Baby Jacquards yarn in apple blossom.

Happy notes .... and sad

I got a text from Dani, whose husband works with John, with a knitting job to commission me for.  She had seen on Pinterest a baby cocoon and hat made like a football.  So we got some yarn, and below is the result.  I will post a picture of her nephew in his cocoon whenever he arrives.

On the sad note, I have been harvesting fur from our akita, Kuma, for 2 years, so that I can spin his fur into yarn.  Last Thursday, I got the last of his fur, as we had him put to sleep,  He was 14 years, 9 months and 28 days old, but he began suffering from canine cognitive dissociative disorder (doggie dementia) and the meds for his dementia made him ill.  So now I have to learn to spin dog fur, to have that part of him still.

Kuma in his prime, posing for his mama in front of her handiwork

 

 

On the happy note, 2 weeks before Kuma passed, we adopted another akita who needed a good home.  Her name is Seiya (SAY-yah) and she is 2 years old.  Having her for 2 weeks was good for Kuma (who ate better when he had to compete for food) and for her (who learned the rules at our house from the big guy).  She has been a big comfort for us, and she already loves us and we love her.  I will miss Kuma every day, but Seiya fills some of the empty hole after almost 14 years with Kuma.  But her fur is different than Kuma's (much shorter shaft), so I'm not sure about spinning it.



Seiya insisting on some attention

Where has the time gone?

Just saw that it has been over 6 weeks since I posted, so here I am again.  I have lots of things on my needles right now. I just finished and sent off to my friend in Florida another Summerflies shawl, this one bigger than the one I did for myself.   I have been doing the knitpurlhunter KAL Independence pillow.  I also have a pair of 2-at-a-time toe-up socks on the needle to try the Fleegle heel.  Just about ready for the heel, so I'll let you know.  I also started another Ashton shawl (my 5th) in worsted weight black sequined yarn for my daughter Liz.  I have been knitting more Puerperium sets (see previous post) for more friends with babies or grandbabies on the way or just arrived. I also have a Garn studio top-down sweater/smock for myself, that I get too bored to do for very long: about 250 stitches per row in garter stitch -- man, that's mind-numbing!  But it's so much better than the about 400 stitches it was before I put the sleeves on waste yarn!

I am here today to report on my newest spinning try.  This time I separated 12 ounces of raw undyed fiber (Colonial sheep) into three 4-oz batches.  I dyed two of the batches in sapphire, and the third batch in a higher concentration of the same dye.  After this adventure, I have decided John and I need to build our garage in Colorado with the apartment above it, so that I have a dyeing studio.  John hates the smell of hot wool, and the mess it can make is stupendous!  I won't be able to do much dyeing in the house, so I'd better have someplace to do it all.  So I spun the three batches of wool and plied them together, and this is the result:

The lighter patches are from the light coming through the trees, but the color is a pretty close match.  I'm pleased with it.  I got about 400 yards of 11-12 wraps per inch yarn.  Hopefully it will yield enough yarn to make a substantial item for me.

Gerri:  Since you're the only person who follows my blog, I should let you know.  The Hot August Knits yarn crawl starts next week, and I'm planning to get registered for the grand prize, which means visiting (and buying at) all 9 shops.  The participating shops are in Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming, and in Fort Collins and Estes Park Colorado.  I thought of you when I saw the newest participant in the crawl:  The Loopy Ewe!  I'm planning to make my first visit there in a couple of weeks.  I hope there's some money in my bank account when I leave!

Summerflies shawl

Knit up this quick-knit shawl in Caron Country yarn.  Unfortunately I ran out of yarn 2 yards from the end.   EEEK! but I got onto knittingparadise and sent out my emergency call, and my new bff :-) from Overland Park sent a skein of the yarn and bailed me out.  Really love this pattern because you can add more length very easily.  The pattern sections are very simple.  However, blocking this puppy was a nightmare!  195 points .... and each one was pinned to the blocking board.  Took forever!

Blue boy layette

We are close to a young couple who are expecting their first child any day now (and he can't come too soon for Dani!) so I spent the weekend making a layette set for him.  The sweater is the Puerperium (newborn) cardigan that allows the baby to be half dressed before you have to pick him up to get his second sleeve done. I love top down raglans!  They knit so quickly.  The diaper cover is from a soaker pattern, but I don't expect Dani to use it as a soaker, only to go over the diaper.  The buttons are cutest little bears.  They cost more than the yarn did, but I couldn't resist!

UFOs -- we come in peace

I've been feeling guilty lately about the number of UFOs among my projects (UnFinished Objects, for the uninitiated). I  get all excited about new things to try, and put down the old things.  So in a brief moment of sanity, that happened at 4 in the morning as I couldn't sleep, I began going through bags of UFOs, seeing what I could easily finish and pat myself on the back over.  And I came across this sweater, started 2 years ago, right before we left Missouri. It got packed in boxes for the movers to bring, and I never got into the boxes to see what was there.  So I pulled out the rest of the yarn (Caron Country), flipped through my pattern binder for the pattern, got out my Hiya Hiya size 8 circs and started picking up stitches for the trimwork.  The body and both sleeves were done; all I had to do was sew everything up and do the blackberry stitch on the front and bottom hem.  Did I say "all" I had to do?  Man, I'm glad I learned to "read" my knitting, because that blackberry stitch was getting to be a pain!  And voila!  2 days later, I don't have to be afraid of little green men on this one!  Needs to be washed and blocked, but that's another day's post.  I haven't yet made it to the toy store to buy the jigsaw-shaped puzzle mats to do blocking.

More fun with dying

With Easter being just over, I had the brilliant(?) idea that a perfect way to control dying larger lots of yarn would be to use Easter egg dye.  Get it from the same company, and each color is going to be about the same from package to package.  So I gave it a shot.  Certainly dying same-tone yarn will be about the same, as long as approximately the same amount of yarn is to be dyed.  Variegating the yarn was harder to control, but fun!  The picture below is 120 yards of Lion Brand Fishermans Wool in the beginning of a Baby Surprise Jacket, and an attempt to duplicate the dying.  The pink/purple section is not the same, but I think it's probably closer than exact dye lots of Noro!  (Noro not being my favorite color combos!)

I'm in Colorado as I do this experiment.  After dying the yarn, I put it on the clothes drying rack out on the deck about 8 o'clock .  I came back 1 hour later to check on the state of drying, and discovered it frozen stiff!  Who knew wet things would freeze at 32 degrees!   ;-)

This has been so much fun, I think I'm going to try some tonal dying next.  And I realized, if you want a bright yellow, use Easter egg tabs!  The yellow I got here is vivid, and I had a lot of trouble getting a vivid yellow with KoolAid and other food-safe dyes.  Next I think I'll take a couple of the pink tabs and try graduating the depth of color from deep at the ends of the hank to less intense at the middle of the hank.  Should be fun .. or at least my idea of fun!  Many of my friends (and my husband, probably) don't understand my fascination with playing with fiber.  Oh well, they're the ones missing out!

Surprise!

I made my first foray into the world of Elizabeth Zimmermann, a knitting genius often called the Knitting Goddess.  She was an impressive and analytical mind, a true knitting engineer.  She designed a concept known as the Baby Surprise Jacket, which has been adapted for adult sizes.  Those who have done the jackets always recommend starting with the BSJ, to understand the concept and for ease of scale before moving on to the ASJ. For Christmas, I got the Elizabeth Zimmermann book, The Opinionated Knitter (go figure me wanting that book!) which is a reprint of her newsletters from 1958-1968.  The newsletters were a quarter, back in the days of mimeograph machines, not blogs!  Her daughter took over her mother's legacy, and edited the book for republication. 

I started knitting the sweater Monday night, and finished it Thursday night.  Since it is all garter stitch, it's fairly mindless, and now that I know the concept, I'll be making this "car knitiing."

The sweater, before it is sewn up

Add 2 seams at the shoulders, and voila! Instant sweater.

Spinning and dying fun

After spinning a bobbin full of fiber and still having 4 ounces left out of my pound of roving, I decided to spin this up in a hurry and try some jacquard acid dye.  This is kelly green and I had such fun playing with it.  Now I have to  think of something to knit up with about 120 yards of worsted weight wool.  Any ideas?

After spinning up this fiber, I've decided I feel similarly about Romney in sheep and in candidates:  It'll pass in a pinch, but not my first choice!

My first lace shawl project was so fun, I've done three of them!  This is the Ashton shawlette, available at knittingparadise.com, where I ran into it.  The first was shawlette size in a sportweight handspun in bronze; the second is almost finished, but I need to find a little bit more of the sequined worsted weight yarn I found at Hobby Lobby in brown (or I'll finish it up with a matching or contrasting color on the points). I figure a more substantial weight shawl is good for Wyoming.  The third is my favorite, because I made it a full-sized shawl rather than a shawlette.  It is 52" wide and 26" top to points.  The yarn is Crystal Palace Panda Wool, in Bluebell.  I wanted to make something that will go with a lot of clothes.  However, I liked it so much, I'm likely to make it again in something where the yarn stars.  It truly knits up quick.  I started it at 1 p.m. on March 17, and finished it at 3 p.m. on March 25.

Stretched out so you can see the pretty pattern.  I need to get it blocked, but I couldn't wait to get the picture posted.

 Here I am modeling my newest creation!

Haven't been here in a while

March was a hectic month, and I feel like I missed it entirely!  However, I do have some fibering updates.  Today's helpful tip is about keeping track of rows in pattern repeats.  I just finished my third Ashton shawlette (pictures later, after they're blocked) and realized that it's incredibly easy to forget which pattern row you are working on, especially if you set the work down for some reason ... and who doesn't have a spouse, kids, the phone, or something that causes you to leave your work and have to pick it up and say, "Where in the world am I in the pattern?"  So here's my hint, complete with pictures:

Using the "safety pin" style stitch markers, I count how many rows or pattern rows are in a complete pattern and count out that number of safety pin markers.  When I get ready to start a new pattern row on a shawl, or a new row on socks that have a pattern, I move a marker from the "waiting to be knitted" marker to the "already been knitted" marker. When I have finished the complete pattern, I shift all the markers to the "waiting" spot and start again.  It has been hugely helpful on the Ashton shawlette (to which I added extra patterns to be a full-sized shawl) which has a 12 pattern row repeat.  On these socks, that have an 8-row pattern that rows 1 and 5 are different from the rest, I use the orange marker to designate row 1 so I always know which of the unique rows I'm doing.  On these socks I am supposed to increase one on each side of the sole every other row, so the markers also help me keep track of which one was an increase row.

(Obviously the flash was on in the top picture, which is closer to the color.)  You can see the orange marker all by hiimself, showing that I'm ready to start row 1 of the pattern, then there is a green marker joining him to remind me that I'm doing row 2.

Random handspun experiments

I picked up some wonderful alpaca to spin up.  It came out sooooo soft, I think I don't want to take a chance on messing up the softness by dying, so I'm trying to decide what to knit in the natural shade.  Since I tried various plies and various sizes, I'll have to knit something that will incorporate the variety.

During open spinning time at the shop where I bought my wheel and took a class, a lady showed me her locally grown (Fort Collins) and locally processed (Laramie Wyoming at UW) wool that was "rough processed."   I was so interested in trying other fibers that I bought 5 ounces from her ($1 an ounce, what a deal!)  In spinning it up, I had my first encounter with what is colloquially known as "vegetable matter" -- translation:  We didn't take too much time picking the leaves and thorns out of the fleece before we carded it.  This explains why at $1 an ounce, she was clearing profit on it -- they didn't spend much time on it.  It spun up fairly easily, but there's not much of it, so I'll probably use it to experiment with dying processes. ...... which is a blog for another time.

And here's my recliner, full of handspun.  Lots of fun with small samples.  So now I've begun a larger spinning project.  (more later)

What 4 ounces of fiber makes

In attempting to improve my spinning skills, I bought roving (carded fleece ready to spin) at the only place in Cheyenne that sells roving.  It was a limited selection, but it gave me the opportunity to get some success under my drive belt.  These, as well as the green hat posted earlier, are each from 4 ounce balls of Targhee sheep roving.  All the colors are more vivid in real life.  I can tell I am going to have to take my work outside to photograph!  So far I love spinning Targhee wool  It gets really good reviews as a beginning spinner fiber, because it drafts (pulls the fiber out in preparation for spinning) so well


 Bulky weight, pretty consistent. This was my third roving to spin up.

Thick and thin - my second spinning try

This is probably my most consistent fiber to date.  It is a lace-weight.  The knitting done there is on size 0 needles.  The color is much brighter red than the pic.

What's new, section three -- SPINNING

For my birthday last year, John got me a Lendrum spinning wheel.  I've always wanted to learn to spin.  One of my dear friends out here looked at it and said, "You know, they sell that *#%* in stores!"  And I do know that (as you can tell from my stash room!) but for me the interesting part of any of my crafting is in the creation, and the way you can make something totally different by changing one little aspect of the design.

I am enjoying learning to spin, but I'm still not very good at it.  My control of the size of strand (ply) is improving.  I can now spin medium-weight (sport to worsted sizes) fairly consistently.  I'd like to try now to do a thick-and-thin yarn, which is all I could manage in the beginning!  It was accidental then, so I'd like to try to do it on purpose.

This hat was knitted with my first handspun yarn.  It was spun on a drop spindle, then wheel plied.

What's new, section two -- NEEDLEPOINT

I found these quilt top patterns at my LYS, and really loved the spring and fall ones, not only because they're very pretty, but also because spring and fall don't last very long out here, and I really miss those seasons.  Once I had finished those two, I decided to do a four-season display of my work, so I got the winter quilt top design.  I decided that summer would be well represented by a patriotic themed quilt design.

KNITTING, part deux

I recently joined a knitting forum, knittingparadise.com, which has a lot of projects posted by members, including the Kansas City Cowl, whose name (obviously) caught my interest.  I have knit two of these, and I still have no idea what the significance of Kansas City is!  However, the cowl is a great size for a shrug, a scarf, and a double-wrapped-and-over-your-head scarf, which is incredibly useful here in Wyoming!  This is a Caron website pattern, with Caron Country being the recommended yarn. This one is knit from BambooEwe yarn, which is one of my favorite mass market yarns, now that I've moved to a place where you bundle up all the time.  It is very soft, but warm.  This is an incredibly fast knit, and is great for car time.  The center cable is knit, then stitches picked up along the side.  Once the stitches are picked up, you do a yarnover after every 5 stitches, then knit plain stockinette.  When it's the appropriate length and is ready to finish, you drop a stitch after every 5 stitches, then finish the piece.  I join back to the cable inset by picking up statches and doing a 3-needle bindoff, because I hate sewing seams.  When you're through, you "runner" the dropped stitches, exactly like getting a run in your hose.  When you get to the end of a run, you encounter the yarnover stitch you added (if you counted correctly!)

I have several friends whose lives have been impacted by breast cancer, so I have begun making pink keyhole scarves shaped like a memory ribbon.  I also need to make one in gray for my college roommate, whose teenage daughter was taken from us by brain cancer in November 2010.  I found a great blog (frogiezplace.blogspot.com) with a pattern for a cancer ribbon bag, and a list for what colors go with what variety of cancer.  Many of them made sense once I thought about it.  Gray=gray matter=brain. pink=girls, blue=boys=prostate cancer.  Our son-in-law now wears an orange remembrance bracelet in honor of his brother who is suffering from leukemia.  I don't know the significance of that one. 

.....back to my knitting.  I have made several of these keyhole ribbon scarves, and they are great doctors office knitting, as they take up very little space in a purse, and are absolutely brainless knitting!

What's new, section one: KNITTING

In trying to decide what to post to show what I've been up to lately, I decided to post in 3 parts: knitting, spinning, needlepoint.  So the topic of the day is knitting.  Many friends and acquaintances have begun reproducing, so I'm going to be busy making baby gifts.  I did prototypes of a few pieces that will knit up quickly. The entire group was done from 2 balls of baby yarn.

The sweater is the 5-hour baby sweater, apparently world-famous on the web. (Little did I know!)  Although I consider myself a pretty fast knitter, it's more like a weekend sweater.  I knit it on size 5 needles with baby yarn, and it has come out 0-3 months size, I think.  I may need to take it to a store and compare with standard sizes.  The original pattern uses worsted weight and obviously knits up bigger.

The booties are a design that supposedly are nearly impossible for babies to get off, because they use the quaker rib stitch.  They were knit on size 4 needles, and I'm guessing they are toddler size.  They are made with an eyelet stitch at the ankle to thread ribbon through to tie them on without hurting the baby.

The baby blanket with the hole for the carseat strap (supposed to keep the baby from kicking off the blanket, good luck with that!) is a great pattern.  Pick your yarn and needles, so the fabric created can be as loose or as dense as you want, knit up a swatch and insert the gauge numbers into the pattern, and go to town.  It was my car knitting on the trip back to Missouri for Thanksgiving.