Not for lack of trying

I got some pictures taken finally yesterday and tried to get them posted but there was some problem with Blogger. 

While I was working on some stuff yesterday, I was watching some old movies.  One of them was a really weird movie called, "The Villain Still Pursued Her."  Came out in 1940 with people like Alan Mowbray, Buster Keaton, and Margaret Hamilton (the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz movie).  If you click on the link above, you'll see a plot description but the better description is at the bottom of the page with the User Review.  This is a satire on the melodramatic dramas out there and is so bad that it's hysterical - by the way, it's bad on purpose.  Basically, every moment that could be overacted is overacted and every contrivance is used, all the way from the beginning of the movie which finds a newly widowed mother and her beautiful daughter discussing how their husband/father had left them with little money and the mortgage is coming due.  The slimey lawyer tries to convince them that the land owner is going to kick them out.  In reality, he is trying to get the beautiful daughter to marry him.  Fast forward to the daughter finding out that the handsome young land owner is kind and marries him.  On the wedding day, the young man declares that he never drinks and the new young wife says, that's great because no lips that have touched the demon liquor will ever touch my lips.  The lawyer realizes this is his in and tricks the young man into taking a drink, which turns him into a raging alcoholic.  And it continues from there.   Definitely worth a viewing if you're up for a laugh.

In getting ready for the Heritage Knitting Retreat, I decided I should probably get my silk beaded purse finished.  This is one of those projects that started out just to try out how the Gudebrod silk would work in a 19th century reproduction purse that would have originally used silk thread.  I learned a lot experimenting with the materials for this project.  Things like sizing for silk thread.  A is small, FFF is large (FFF is like smaller fingering weight).  "A" is thin, like thread thin, really thin.

I love the feel of the silk with the beads and would highly recommend you trying it if you have any desire to knit a beaded purse.  The thread is softer than mercerized cotton and accommodates the beads much more easily, although it will go a little hinky if it snags on a bead.  It only happend to me once and I used almost an entire tube of 11/0 beads.  It wasn't too bad, just not something that happens with the mercerized cotton. 

I've been working for quite a while on spinning a truely lace-weight yarn out of some Blue-faced Leicester.  It was my first project on my Fricke wheel and it's been a whole lot of spinning.  A.Whole.Lot.of.Spinning.  Now part of this roving has been spun on my Ashford drop spindle (which I've currently lost sight of - I know it's here somewhere) but the majority of it has been worked on the wheel.  I have no idea what the yardage is going to be but I suspect it's going to be in the neighborhood of about 1,200 yards.  1,200 yards is actually 2,400 yards plus plying so it's really 3,600 yards of spinning.  Like I said, a bunch of spinning. 

It's also been quite the learning experience.  Even though BFL is a longer stapled wool, when you're spinning this finely, it takes a whole lot more twist in the singles than you realize.  I've hit patches where I obviously didn't have enough twist in the singles.  It would be interesting to know what happened during those periods of spinning to make me not be paying enough attention. 

I haven't posted anything yet about the cotton roving I bought from the Woolery booth in Lexington.  The color is called Terra Cotta.  It's dyed, not one of the natural colors, but I'm thinking I may ply it with the natural coyote color.  The natural colors darken when you finish them and I think it might look nice with this.  I've been spinning this on the fastest whorl of my Kromski Minstrel using my own modified version of the long draw.  I find this modified version to be much easier to control than a proper long draw.  I'm sure it's just because I haven't practiced enough with it but this seems to work fine for what I'm doing.  Here's the start of the bobbin.  I'm not spinning it super, super fine but it should work out to a heavier lace weight sort of yarn.  I'm wondering if I can actually get enough spun for a summer top before it gets cold again.  That's my challenge, should I choose to accept it.  And will I accept it?  I'll let you know along about September time : ).

Spindle Spinning

When I started spinning, I started with an Ashford top-whorl drop spindle.  I learned with it and all the early stuff was done on it.  In fact it was about a year before I moved on to a spinning wheel but I've always kept my love for the drop spindle. 

Recently the spindle has come up again and I decided to spin some dark blue fiber I got on one of my trips.  I'm amazed at how quickly the first skein worked up.  Have a look:

It's not a hugely soft fiber, more along the lines of Border Leicester, but it's a pretty color.  This skein is a little over 200 yards for 2 ounces.  I have to admit that it took me a little while to get the rhythm again for the spindle but it was a lot of fun.  I still have a couple more ounces to go then I'll need to do some white because my thought is to do a pair of fulled blue/white fair isle mittens.  There was a pattern in a recent PieceWork that I would love to try.

In other news, I've hit a milestone with the Amish Center Diamond afghan.  I've finished the 3rd side!  Whoohoo!  Now I'm in the process of picking up the 252 stitches for the final side.  I have to admit, it's a little daunting, knowing how long the 3rd side took.  But it is cozy and I love it so I guess I'll just pull up my thick, felted socks (did I mention it's been cold here?) and get on with it.

I've also got a progress pic of the beaded purse.  Not much to say at this point except that this is it.

Cranberry and Gold

I thought I might have a silk beaded purse by the end of the weekend. Alas, I don't.  But I do have one in progress.

I looked through my 19th century pattern books and some more modern ones and just couldn't find a pattern that seemed right.  I cast on several of them but ripped them out again.  Actually there was one that I liked but I need to try the pattern on something a little larger than this silk thread to get the hang of it.  So I decided on the pattern above.  It's a repeat over 6 stitches that calls for K3, slide 1 bead, K3, slide 5 beads.  On the next round you K3, slide 2 beads, K3, slide 4 beads and so on.  On the first section you slide more beads until you get to 5 and on the second section until you get to 1 and then you go backwards. 

See what it's doing?  Making little diamonds and because over the 6 stitches you always slide some combination to make up to 6 beads, the shape of the purse is preserved.  Otherwise you would have a weird pulling and pushing according to whether you had more or less beads.  Determining the number of beads to slide is a way of increasing or decreasing the overall size of the tube.

I have to say, I'm adoring working with this silk thread and the feel of it is just wonderful.  Of course, it's very stong, too, so the sliding of the beads has not harmed the thread at all that I can tell.  I will probably just continue this until I run out of thread, since part of this experiment is to find out how much you can work with the 92 yards of thread on the spool, but I think it will work out wonderfully for a decent sized coin purse.

Silk of my dreams

If you've ever looked at 19th century patterns, you've seen a purse pattern calling for purse silk.  I've often wondered what the purse silk was and have always substituted perle cotton crochet thread.  I was cruising through the online catalogue for Fire Mountain Gems and Beads, one of my favorite places to be.  If you're into beading or anything in that line, these are the people to know.  I started thinking about the silk thread I'd seen before and wondering how it would work for purse silk.  But I had no idea how the sizes worked.

I ordered 2 spools, one is sized "FFF" which is the largest size, and one is "FF," the next smallest size, to test it out.  The gold is the FF and the orange is the FFF.   I loaded each of them with 11/0 beads and knitted these samples.  I have to say, the handle of the knitted pieces is so luxurious I can't even describe.  The thought of having a reticule knitted out of this stuff is taking me over and I suspect that I will have one before the weekend is out.  I don't know that's the case but I have very, very strong suspicions.

In case you're wondering, the beads on the orange thread are turqoise and the palest of yellows.  The interaction of the beads against the color of the silk has really affected the color of the beads and I think I kind of like it.

In other things going on, I've finally gotten back to working on the 1923 pattern for the Crocheted Pond Lily Breakfast Cloth.  I've finished the second middle piece (you can follow the link for a picture) and started on the 3rd.  I didn't take another picture because, believe it or not, it looks exactly like the first one!  Nevertheless, I have determined that if I follow the pattern exactly and make 6 middle pieces, I'll never own a table large enough to ever use it or display it.  And I've used just the thread it calls for - size 60 cotton.  So I"ve decided that I can probably make 4 of them and it might be a little more manageable.  Also, that means that I'm halfway done with the middle section and that sounds a lot better than 1/3 of the way done!  Once I finish these, the very center will be linen and then there are crocheted place mats that fit in between each of these "tongues."  Very pretty.  Very vintage.

I have encountered one problem though that means I really shouldn't be spinning in the same clothes that I work the crochet in.  It seems that no matter how careful you are when you're spinning, small bits of fiber stick to you.  And when you're crocheting with size 60 cotton and a size 12 or 13 crochet hook, the cotton picks up those little bits of fiber and works it right into the fabric.  I think I've got most of it out but now I have to either crochet first, spin later or crochet all night and not spin at all.  Rough.

Live and learn, right?