Doily Land

I had someone ask me to make some crocheted doilies and, you know, it was exactly what I was wanting to do.  You know I love to knit. And I love to spin. But every once in a while I just have to crochet.

And one tatted doily for good measure!

Time to tat

You know I'm going to be talking tatting for a while, right?  Whoever thought it would be so much fun?

Variegated bedspread weight edging:

White, size 30 thread, doily:

I really wish my Grannie could see this.  She'd love it!

Look Ma, I'm Tatting!

The 2 crafts I always wanted to learn but which seemed out of my grasp were spinning and tatting.  Tatting patterns are so often included with crochet patterns and all my life I've seen them, thought they were so pretty but, as they say, a lost art.  I've tried over and over to learn to tat from book instructions but I don't do so well from books.  Let me see done and I can do it but books - not so much.  My mother is great at picking over a book until she understands and can do it.  I'm not that smart.

Several years ago, I got to check that spinning box (although I would only just now really feel like I could justifiably say I was a spinner) but the tatting eluded me.  Until yesterday.  It all started one afternoon a few weeks ago when I was at my Mom's in North Texas.  I went over to the local JoAnn's Fabrics and found a tatting book with a dvd included.  Score.  But I've been so busy since I've been home that I hadn't had a chance to look at it.  Friday night I pulled it out and started watching the dvd and it just all made sense.  In the first 45 seconds, all of a sudden, in a flash it all made sense. 

But it was late and since I never stay up late (cough, cough), I put it away and picked it back up yesterday.  And it still made sense.  The book is "Learn to Tat" by Janette Baker.  It says this is her first book and, if that's so, she done good.

I've since been practicing and am feeling almost comfortable with it now and am beginning to pick up some speed.  That's one of the things about the video that I really liked - she shows everything very, very clearly but then she makes the stitches at speed.  That helped me understand what she was doing when she wasn't thinking about it and showed me how to make the stitches come together.  If you've ever wanted to learn to tat, you should get this book.  It's published by American School of Needlework and I saw it yesterday at the local Hobby Lobby so you should be able to find it most places now.

If you don't look too closely, it looks like the real thing!

So, the score is:

Spinning - check
Tatting - check

Ha!

Doing what I've never done before

We spinners tend to stick to 2-ply yarns.  Not always, not everyone, but I bet most spinners you talk to will say the same.  And there's a good reason for it.

When you spin and spin and spin your singles, it takes real heart, real courage, real grit to use more than 2 plies in a yarn.  The more singles you ply together, the less yardage you'll get out of all that spinning.  With a 2-ply, you get the maximum output from the effort. 

I've done a few 3-plies because I wanted the effect Navajo plying would give the yarn.  I've even done a little dab of cabled yarn using 4 singles (plying 2 2-plies).  But I've never given my effort to a true 4-ply yarn.  Up to now, I've not had the guts.  But with the package of Louet Northern Lights roving (colorway - ocean waves) I felt it was going to be worth the effort. 

First, I divided it into 4 2-ounce sections and then I started spinning, each to its own bobbin.  I knew I needed to spin it fairly fine because I'm not a huge fan of the bulky yarn. 

Once I got the 4 bobbins done, I even tried a little bit of it as a 6-ply by holding 2 strands together and Navajo plying.  Worked quite well, although I got a little too much twist into it.

As I was finishing with the 4th bobbin, I realized I was going to need to do something about a lazy kate - the thing that holds the bobbins for plying.  Mine on the wheel only holds 2 bobbins.  My clothes drying rack was folded up and propped against the wall and I realized it would work perfectly as a lazy kate.  Just stick the dowels through the racks and through the bobbins and, voila, a lazy kate.

Worked like a charm.

When I bought this fiber, I liked it because it had a demin look to it.  But as I spun the singles, it began to look really purple.  Now, I'm all for purple but it's not what I'd hoped for.  The fascinating thing, though, is that when I plied it, it got the denim look back.  It was fascinating to see how the colors in the 4 strands blended into almost a different color.  There's something about the structure of the 4-ply that fascinated me.  Instead of wrapping around each other, it was like the 4 strands wrapped around something else.

I ended up with almost 700 yards of DK weight yarn so that's not so bad (even though it would have been 1,400 yards of 2-ply).  I'm not sure what I'm going to make with it but the 2 things that crossed my mind as I was spinning away are:

1. Socks - that will only take about 200 yards.
2. Vest - I'm thinking I might like the knit the front vest pieces from this and the back either from fabric or I have some nice black merino that would make a nice fabric for the back.

About finishing (or trying to finish)

It's been quite a wild week since I got back from vacation.  I mentioned before about the Sebu mittens.  Here's the finished pair.  Can you tell which one was the goof?

I haven't blocked them yet but I'm happy to have them finished.  They were ready just in time for 80 degree temps!

The other thing I was eager to finish was another version of the Berroco Cosima.  I do love my Berroco yarns.  But this time I wanted to spin a yarn comparable to the Berroco Cuzco the pattern calls for.  I have to admit my early efforts weren't completely sucessful.  Spinners always say it's harder to spin a chunkier yarn.  For some reason, the inclination is to spin an ever-thinner yarn.

Cuzco is 50/50 wool/alpaca so I had this big plan to get 8 oz of silver gray wool and 8 oz of silver gray alpaca, pull them into strips and spin them together.  Probably not the "right" way to do it but I did it that way on purpose.  I wanted to see what would happen.  I spun about 2/3 of the yarn and put it away because it wasn't being much fun to spin.  There it sat until I went on this vacation.  Since I didn't have anything else to be knitting on (mittens, notwithstanding), I decided to take this along and see how far my 2 skeins would take me.  The yarn wasn't perfect but it worked up fine and I was able to get the back, 1 front and part of the second front done.  And I still had at least 1 skein left to spin.

I came home and got spinning.  There's something to the thing about practice, because when I came back to this project I found that I was much better able to control the diameter and make the yarn look like what I wanted.  Here's what I mean:

The dark gray is the Berroco and the silver gray is mine.  Pretty darn close, don't you think?

I got this washed up and ready to go and started knitting.  The next challenge is a very small issue - having enough fiber to spin to make the yarn to knit the sweater.  Sigh... 

Almost but just not quite. 

Now I just have to wait for more Colonial wool to come in.  Guess I learned one lesson out of this:  it takes more than 1 lb of fiber to make a sweater!  Everyone's always asking me how much fiber it takes to make a sweater.  Now I know what to say - more than 1 lb!

Something just didn't seem right

You know the feeling when something just isn't right?  You can't just put your finger on it but you know something's off.

Take my Selbu mittens for instance.

Here's the first one.

I got started on the second one and knit right along until I'd almost finished the main part.  I proudly held it up for my Mom to see when I had one of those moments. 

See anything wrong?

See it now?

I could have cried.  Instead I laughed.  Know what I did?  Let me 'splain.

I don't like to work charts from the book.  Too hard to keep track.  I prefer to make a copy and use my metal sheet and magnets.  Now, I'd changed the initals and dates so I had to chart those out on a separate chart, tracked on a different metal sheet and different magnets.  Then the little band at the bottom was an easy, peasy little chart so I just used the book for that.

Somehow, in the resulting jumble of charts, I got ahead of myself.  The really weird thing is that I'd done the first little section of the book chart but not the rest.  I plead insanity on this thing because I have no recollection of the thing.

While I was laughing/crying and admitting to the universe that it got me good, I realized that I only had to pull out the first 3 rounds and I could pick up the stitches and knit the book chart down to finish off the chart.  No one will ever know.

So I ripped out the 3 rounds of ribbing.






Then picked up the stitches...

Then started knitting.

Hopefully I'll be able to get it all finished tomorrow night and I'll let you know how it goes.

I found my mittens

I had a real life mystery going on all winter long.  Two years ago I knit some Norwegian mittens from a Nancy Bush pattern published in one of the magazines.  I loved them and wore them all the next winter.  Spring came and I put away my woolens.  I knew where my woolens were packed away so when this winter came, I pulled everything out and was cozy warm.  All except my hands which sorely missed my mittens.  I looked high and low, in where the woolens were stored, in drawers, in boxes in my craft room, in my box of samples, in closets.  In short, I looked everywhere I could think of - even the freezer.  (Well, you never know, do you?)  I couldn't find them anywhere.  I knew they weren't lost because whoever lost both gloves at the same time?

I didn't panic but I stayed confused all winter, every time I put on mittens or other gloves.  Where, oh where, could they be?

I was getting ready for my trip to my Mom's the other day (that's where I am now and why no pictures).  I washed the car, got the insides all vacuumed out and took one of the storage boxes I keep in the trunk out.  It's where I keep various things including an extra coat (don't ask).  I took it in the house and happened to notice that the pockets looked like they had something in them.  And there, where they had been all the time, were my lovely Norwegian gloves.  Found too late to use this year but they will be carefully put away this year in a much less logical place so I'll be sure to have them for next year.