At the movies

Do you knit at the movies? I do. I don’t actually go to the movies often but when I do I want some big ole fat idiot knitting with me. This usually means a felted bag or something similar. I don’t even know how long ago I started this bag using Plymouth Outback wool and mohair yarns. I love these because you can get the wool and mohair in the same colorways. I’ve made a purse using both together with the colorway synced up which was lovely but for this one, although it started with both strands together became stripes of the wool and mohair.

A while back I got the book called Andean Folk Knits by Marcia Lewandowski. One of the big pattern elements for bags is external pockets. This got me thinking about how I could incorporate these into this bag. As I started those, then I suddenly thought this must actually need to be a felted backpack. It all just sort of happened organically until I ended up with this:

I really like it but I don’t know how it will felt. Guess we’ll find that out this weekend!

Surprise!

I’ve been wanting to do the Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise sweater for the longest time. I even started it once a while back but didn’t concentrate enough to get the hang of it. If you’ve never heard of this baby sweater, it’s a little origami with knitting. Here’s a picture of the finished piece before it’s folded. Looks like a lot of nothing, doesn’t it?

Then, with just a flick and a fold, it becomes this:

I tell you the woman was a bloomin’ genius. What sort of mind comes up with this? Genius.

I got my new fiber from Halcyon. The same UPS guy delivers to my office that delivers to my home so when he came to the office Friday, I asked him if he’d delivered back here yet. He hadn’t but he was able to go ahead and give me my box so I wouldn’t have to try to get to the office before they close.

It is the darker color like what I’m working with now but it has more lighter color blended in so I think it will look really nice plied with the current color.

The Call of the Wheel

I’ve finally succumbed to the call of the wheel. It’s been quite a while since I’ve spent a solid amount of time spinning and I’ve found it so relaxing. A few years ago I started spinning for a gansey. I bought some roving from Halcyon Yarns in Bath, Maine, but didn’t really have the ambition to spin something for a big project so didn’t get enough of the color. Once I’d made the decision to work towards the gansey yarn, I ordered a new allotment of the “medium” mix of their domestic wool blend. I knew it would be different from what I originally had but reasoned that I could perhaps ply the 2 together and be okay but when I got the second lot, it was actually a dark brown (the first was a brownish-grey). I’ve actually ended up with 3 different shades now so I’m wondering what to do with it.

I’ve got about 750g of the single ply yarn spun and about 650g of raw fiber left to spin. I’m trying to decide whether I’ll ply it with 2 or 3 strands. The impatient part of me wants to do 2 ply but I know that 3 ply will provide better stitch definition as well as cover up my less than perfect plies!

I think I’m going to order a pound or two of the medium mix again and see if it will help the blending process. If I use the medium and darker versions, plied together, it will make a very pretty tweedy yarn.

In case you’re wondering what the single plies are on, those are spools of my own making. I took those swimming pool noodles, cut them down and hollowed out the part where the yarn is to make a spool. They already have holes in the middle which can be loaded on a dowel, making plying a breeze and storage easy peasy.

P.S. If you ever get a chance to visit Halcyon Yarn, jump at it. When I lived in DC, I went up for a weekend for a spinning with Shetland wool class and fell in love with the shop, the area and Shetland wool! If they would give me a job, I would move there in a heartbeat!!!

Yupo, Ipo, Wepo

I had my last watercolor class on Tuesday – which ended with us being in the basement of the Hogeland Center for 30 minutes with the rehearsing cast of Hello, Dolly. Very cosy.

But before the tornado sirens started, our teacher brought samples of a new sort of ‘paper’ being used by lots of watercolorists right now. It’s called Yupo and it’s basically like a thin plastic sheet made, I believe, from recycled goods. The thing the artists like about it is because it doesn’t use any tree pieces. Which means it also doesn’t soak up the paint which means the paint just gets sort of pushed around the surface which is a whole new way of working with watercolors.

Here’s the first thing I did with it. One of the fun things is that, if you don’t like what you did, you can just take it over to the sink and wash it right off! Yep, wash it right off with the water and the soap (I believe the Windex worked, too). Can you tell it's supposed to be dark waves crashing on a rock shore?

You certainly can’t do layers very well and you have to work with much less water than you might otherwise do. I liked just being able to go over and over it until you get the interaction of the colors right.

Evidently watercolor painters are doing weird and wonderful things with it. I don’t know if I’d like it for a steady diet but it was certainly fun to play with. It also comes in transparent form which could be very, very interesting, don’t you think?

On the knitterly front, my fingers haven’t fallen off since finishing the Balmoral so I’ve got the border started on the Saltire and Thistle Shawl. I bet you don’t even remember it. Well, it’s back up to the top of the list and the pattern is working out terrific. I’ll soon be starting the little leaf pattern for the corner sections and the thistle leaf border pattern is working out nicely. After I fixed the western side, that is. I started out with 101 stitches on each side, as I should, but somehow by the time I’d gotten to the 3rd round, I’d inherited 3 extra stitches. Don’t have a clue where they came from, just showed up for the party but I dealt with them (after I’d counted 8 times and redone the section 3 times and finally realized that I hadn’t counted the actual total number of stitches – 104. Yeah, that’d be it.) But now it’s working along nicely.

I’m also about 1/3 of the way through my ponchette. I’ll post pictures of that tomorrow but changing the pattern to stockinette stitch created some space I hadn’t anticipated but I couldn’t bear to tear it out again so I’ve just soldiered on. I did decide that I would embroider some beads onto it and I have some shell beads that I think will look fab. I’ll get those out for the pics and show you on the next post.

For Mom

It's not finished yet but I've been trying to describe this project to my mother. It's one of my watercolor projects from my current class. I think I'm kind of liking it. The scanner pulls the colors apart a bit but it'll give you an idea of what we're doing. This is all done with just 2 colors - yellow gamboge and thalo violet. Interesting.

54,180 Stitches

Hee,hee. I’ve finished it! It’s not blocked yet but it’s finished. I figured out that I knitted 54,180 stitches doing this doily. On size 10 crochet cotton. On US size 0 needles. That’s a jolly awful lot of stitches! Unblocked it measures about 30 inches so should be about 32 once the blocking is finished.

I think I’ll wait a little bit to start the smaller thread.

Take me out to the ballgame...

St Louis has some wonderful yarn shops. Multiple wonderful yarn shops. Yesterday was Stitch and Pitch day at the St Louis Cardinals baseball game so several of us took the day to shop, knit and watch baseball. It was my first trip to a major league game and, although it wasn’t what I expected, I still enjoyed it a lot. It brought back some lovely memories of all the hours I spent with my grandfather watching Atlanta Braves baseball when I was in high school. We watched every game that we could and I loved that time spent with him. It reminded me how much I enjoy baseball.



Of course, the biggest event of the day was the shopping! And shopping means yarn shops. Kirkwood Knittery and Knitorious were the main stops on the tours and we all were all pretty good because both shops did have stock remaining after we left. Both of them. How’s that for being good!

My main purchases were at Kirkwood where I got 3 types of yarn that I’ve been anxious to try since last August when I saw them at Stitches. They’re all 3 from Habu, a Japanese yarn manufacturer with the most unique yarns imaginable. All 3 yarns are ultra thin – almost like thread – small thread. One of them is silk, one merino and one wool stainless steel! Yes, the yarn is actually made from 75% wool and 25% stainless steel. They also have paper yarns and copper yarns and all sorts of other weird and wonderful things. I’ve got a few ideas on what I’m going to do with them so watch this space.

Here’s view of the Habu wool stainless steel, the size 10 crochet cotton, lace weight yarn and fingering weight yarn just to give you an idea of scale.