Summer Project - Scarf

Scarf on Dress Form

As my last project this summer, I decided to make a scarf from one of the One-Skein Wonders books, using a skein of Blue-Faced Leicester handspun yarn that I had spun on my Schacht DT Matchless spinning wheel from a a roving I had purchased last October at the Fiber Arts Fiesta held at the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum in Vista, CA.


I interrupted this project several times to finish up other projects, like a baby sweater for a friend whose daughter was pregnant with her first child, so it took awhile to finish.

Scarf with Remaining Ball of Handspun Yarn

This is one of those patterns that begins with a provisional cast-on, so I just crocheted a chain with a contrasting smooth yarn and picked up the little bumps on the crocheted chain.  I chose that method because it is easy, meaning I do not have to look up any instructions, and because it is very easy to remove when you need to place the stitches back onto the needle for finishing up the other end of the scarf.

Nancy Roberts Knitting To Dye For II

Machine Knitted Blanks and Hand-Knitted  Socks

My followup project for Nancy Roberts' Knitting to Dye For workshop at Convergence in July of 2012 in Long Beach, CA, was sock blanks, which I knitted the first day of her workshop but did not have time to dye in the workshop.  So approximately a week or two following the workshop, I went to my friend Lori Lawson's home to do the dyeing.  She has an entire workroom set up for this for her business, Capistrano Fiber Arts, and allowed me to use her facilities to dye my sock blanks.  My heartfelt thanks to Lori.

I had intended to do an Arizona sunset colorway, purple to orange in three steps, so purple, red, orange, but when the colors dried, I had purple, orange and gold.  Next time I will test the colors, let them dry, and then make my choices, since the colors have a way of changing slightly upon drying.

I dyed these blanks from the purl side, but I should have flipped the blanks over and added dye on the knit side of the fabric.  However, I like the slightly heathered effect I got by not doing that.

Nancy gave the class a sock pattern which called for 8.5 stitches per inch on No. 1 double-pointed needles, but since I knit a bit loosely, I would have had to go down to a No. 0 needle, and the resultant fabric was just too dense, let alone the fact I was having trouble with my fingers going numb while trying to hold such tiny double-pointed needles. So I opted to make my favorite sock pattern from the Socks Socks Socks book, Retro Anklets, elongating the leg a bit.  I actually think I have enough yarn to make another pair.

Next time I try this process of knitting blanks, dyeing them and knitting this particular sock pattern, I will make fewer machine knitted rows on my blanks in between the marker rows - roughly half the number, so that I get shorter stripes on this pattern.  Nancy's pattern called for 72 stitches to cast on, whereas this pattern calls for 60 stitches per row, thereby making deeper stripes.

Nancy is a wonderful teacher, and I learned so much - not about the knitting machine, but about planning a project to dye for and about dyeing with colors of vastly different values.  I think next time around, I will use more gentle graduations between colors.

Summer Knitting for OC Homeless Shelter

Hats for the OC Homeless Shelter

Hats for the OC Homeless Shelter

This summer I started knitting hats for the local homeless shelter to bring to the South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild meeting in September, where we put together all of the hats our members have knitted or crocheted over the summer months.  I had so much fun knitting these hats that I just kept going until I got to ten of them and then made one more for myself because they were just so cute.

The one on the far right-hand side is for me, not that I will need it very often, since I live in Southern California, but I just loved this one-skein pattern.

Our guild does this project every summer and a bit all year round, I believe, but I am usually doing other projects the rest of the year.

I had a bit of an unusual health issue this summer that prevented me from doing strenuous exercise, so it was the perfect time to knit up all these hats.

Not to worry, as it seems the issue is resolving itself, and I had fun doing all these hats.

Machine Knitting to Dye For Workshop

In July of 2012, I attended Convergence, a biannual fiber conference, this time held in Long Beach, CA, about an hour north of where I live.  I chose two workshops, both with Nancy Roberts, one being Machine Knitting To Dye For and the other was machine knitted edges on woven fabric.



Nancy Roberts' Exemplars
 

In the photo to the left, you can see what a wonder color sense Nancy has.  It was like eye candy.  She had everything from sweaters and vests to gorgeous hats, machine knitted scarves and handwoven scarves.

As part of the Machine Knitting to Dye For workshop, we machine knitted blanks, using several different techniques - one where you knit so many rows at one tension and then one row at a much looser tension, then resume the first tension, etc.  There were variations on this theme, but I opted for using this method and knitted up 2 blanks for her Ventanitas bag pattern, which was on the cover of the Fall 2006 Spin-Off Magazine.  Had I decided upon machine knitting the bag, I would have needed 4 blanks, 2 for each side of the bag, since you cannot fit the entire width on a knitting machine.  So I opted to hand-knit this bag.

Ventanitas Bag

Day 2 was spent dyeing our blanks, and I chose a lavender to gold colorway for one blank and a shading from dark teal to medium yellow green for the second colorway.  It got a little tricky getting the lavender grayed, then adding more gold for a gray-gold, and finally the gold. We steamed our blanks overnight and picked them up the next day.

 As soon as I got home, I washed out my steamed blanks, rolled them in towels for about an hour and then laid them out on my sun porch until dry, after which I, of course, had to start knitting them right away, as I was anxious to see how my color choices turned out.



Finished Ventanitas Bag

When I was all done knitting the body, there was the interminable I-cord edging to go around the handle holes and the edges.  I don't think I've ever done so much I-cord edging.  That being said, I love the result, even though it was tedious.

Note Nancy's Alhambra Vest directly above (Knitwords - Summer '08)

Nancy's Handwoven Scarves

Last but not least, I fulled the bag by throwing it in a gentle washing machine cycle in my frontloader washing machine for about 8 minutes, per the pattern instructions.  I used little dryer balls to agitate it slightly, since the frontloader does not really agitate much, and I didn't want terry towel or anything else adhering to the finished fabric.



Here is another photograph of my finished Ventanitas bag:

Completed Ventanitas Bag

Handwoven Overshot Table Runner

A couple of months ago, I was browsing through Cotton Clouds' website, especially the lengthy section of their weaving kits.  I kept coming back to one in particular, a kit they'd made up for a pattern that appeared in the magazine Handwoven, the November-December 2010 issue, beginning at page 38.  Having subscribed to that magazine for years, I looked for that issue and immediately read the article and looked through the weaving draft.  It is amazing to me that you can weave so much patterning with so few shafts on your loom.  This very intricate and very old-fashioned design uses only four shafts.

Completed table runner

I thought about it for a day or two and, then, ordered the kit.  Since I already had something on my loom, it took a little time for me to begin this project.  So began my journey to completing this pattern reminiscent of 18th century bed coverlet patterns, only in miniature.  It's only 17 inches wide after finishing, and 35 inches long.  But to get this amount of detail in so little space took 577 threads, at 30 epi (ends per inch) and, thus, for a balanced weave, about 29 threads of the pattern weft (raisin colorway), and the same for the gold colorway or, combined, 58 ppi (picks per inch).  I was using my 40-inch Norwood floor loom, and it took some work to get it packed down that much, as the pattern called for.

I always use my AVL warping wheel to warp sectionally.  What I neglected to think of is that for every 2-yard crank of the warping wheel, I am actually using an extra 8 inches.  If you multiply that by 577, you end up needing an extra 128 yards, so after almost completing winding on the warp on the rear sectional beam, down to the last section (2 inches), I ran out of one of the warp colors and would've run out of the second one before I finished.

copy of the pattern with threads and treadling draft

Completely frustrated, I ordered another two mini-cones of the 20/2 cotton for the warp from Village Spinning in Solvang, CA, only to find out that Cotton Clouds had substituted one color in the warp in making the kit.  Frustrating!  After very little thought, I completely removed that warp and threw it away.  It didn't amount to even $10 worth of yarn, so that was an easy decision.  I rewound with my newly acquired mini cones of 20/2 cotton and started the process of threading the heddles.  I don't know about other weavers, but overshot is tricky to thread because the pattern blocks overlap, so sometimes it's difficult to remember where the heck you are, even though I put this pattern into my Fiberworks program and printed out a large scale threading plan and carefully (I thought) marked off where I was in the threading pattern, then sleyed the reed, being careful to get two threads into each dent of the reed, tied onto the front beam and began to weave.

runner folded back to show the back side

Hmm, something wasn't right.  In two places there appeared to be errors. More frustration.  I hadn't made a threading error in many years.  I rechecked the threading pattern, from the right-hand side, carefully, to catch the two misplaced threads which, of course, were on the last third of the threading pattern.  I use flat steel heddles on my loom because I often weave with very fine threads, and the inserted eye heddles that came with my loom would, by friction, cause warp thread breakage.  Anyway, I cut out the "bad" heddles and made string heddles to fix what was wrong, resleyed the reed, only to discover at the left end of the reed that I had one thread left.  Having started with one thread on the right-hand side, I knew something was wrong in the reed, since it was an uneven number to begin with, 577.  I literally looked for 3-4 hours.  Talk about frustration!  I ended up tying on and beginning to weave again, so I could find the error, which became obvious immediately then.  So I had to untie the warp, fix the reed threading, which was close to the right-hand side, fortunately, and began weaving again.  I kept thinking this project did not want to be woven, but I'm not one to give up on something I really want to do,   As you can see, it was worth ALL that effort.  The weaving went fairly quickly, even with two shuttles, one for the raisin colorway, and one for the gold.  Color me happy.

finished runner

Huck Lace Scarf in Trendsetter Cash-Woole

I was perusing Yarn Barn of Kansas' website recently and saw this kit they call "Soft Merino Petals," a huck lace scarf in a very soft 2/30 laceweight wool by Trendsetter Yarns.  It's 100% extra fine merino.  I just had to order it, partly because I love huck lace and partly because I figured if I picked a light blue, it would be gorgeous on my daughter-in-law, so I ordered it.

This was the first time I've ever woven with a hand-knitting yarn, especially one as soft as this very lightweight wool.  Turns out it was nearly impossible to have clean edges, even when I tried holding them, and because the wool was so soft and breakable - yes, two warp threads actually broke, something that almost never happens to me - I could not use the temple I would have chosen for this item, one made by Jo Dendel of Denwar in Costa Mesa, CA, which holds the fabric from the sides but has these big claw-type hooks on them.  Lo and behold, I was visiting a weaver in Temecula, CA, with a friend who wanted to purchase a Loomcraft loom the woman had for sale, and I noticed how she was handling something she had on her AVL, so I asked her about it.  She'd jerry-rigged some tarp clips to lines, then attached fishing weights off the sides of the loom.  Interesting idea, and it sparked a thought in my mind.  What if I took off the ends Jo had put on his temple and attached tarp clips, which would be very gentle on my fabric, so ran off to the camping section at our local Walmart and purchased a pack, came home and attached them to Jo's temple.  Wow, what a difference.  I still had to be very careful to not get wavy edges, but it was easier now.

The other thing about this warp was that I had to beat it oh-so-gently.  It was threaded, per the kit, at 24 epi, so for a balanced weave, I had to beat it at about 24 ppi, which meant, as it turned out, that I had to beat completely differently than I usually do.  I had to throw the pick, close the shed, beat very lightly, change treadles, open the shed and throw the next pick.  Slow going compared to my usual method of weaving.  Note how huck lace looks completely different on the loom per the photo below.  The lace doesn't open up until you take it off the loom, where the threads can relax and open up.

I did not do this scarf completely per the instructions.  For instance, I prefer to hemstitch my weavings unless they are going to be hemmed, and I planned on twisting the fringes, so I had to be careful that I had an even number of groups in my hemstitching.  Once the scarf was completed, I cut it off and twisted the fringes in groups of six on six warp threads, then washed the scarf in Eucolan to protect it from critters, wrapped it in a towel for a bit and put it in the dryer for two minutes.  The instructions say three minutes and call for nontwisted fringe and no hemstitching.  Three minutes would have felted it way too much.  Two minutes for my scarf was just about right.  It ended up being 9-1/4 inches wide and just about 60 inches long plus fringe, so it shrunk more than I expected even with two minutes in the dryer on extra low heat.  Then I hung it to dry and ironed it this morning.

Pretty scarf, and even if the edges are not absolutely perfect, I still love the end result.