Rozetti Polaris Shawl

Shawl wrapped on dress form

On a recent trip to Tuesday Morning, I rummaged through their yarns, which was interesting, since they were in the bottom-most shelf - a very deep shelf.  So I just sat on the floor of the store and reached in, turning things over, moving skeins and balls of yarn all around.  And then, all of a sudden, I spotted a very pretty ball of Rozetti Polaris yarn - a soft and squishy ball with a lovely hand.  It is 65 percent acrylic, 31 percent wool and 4% sequins.  It feels a little like a wool and mohair yarn.  That particular ball was in a green and white colorway, Pisces, No. 71007.  I fell in love with it almost immediately.

Shawl wrapped differently

Knowing that I could not do much with one ball, I searched and searched for another but could not find one, whereupon I enlisted the aid of a worker at the store. She unearthed one more, at which point I noticed another colorway, the rust and green, Virgo, No. 71008.  Again, only one ball.

For those who are not familiar with Tuesday Morning, it is a retail liquidator of household items.  I immediately purchased the three balls of yummy yarn for about $3 apiece.  They sell for about $8.50 apiece at retailers who carry them.

I immediately went home and looked up patterns for this lovely yarn, thinking perhaps a pair of socks or a hat and fingerless gloves or a scarf.  But what I found when I Googled the yarn was this lovely shawl in two colors.

Hmm, I needed more balls of this stuff.  One more Pisces and one more Virgo.  Lo and behold, Jimmy Beans Wool in Reno, NV, had both.  I live in Southern California, so the closeness of the Reno store appealed to me and I immediately ordered the two balls of yarn and, then, sat down and sampled the lovely lace pattern in this shawl to decide on needle size.  I usually have to size down one size, but upon making my sample, I ended up using the recommended US Size 8 needle, a 42-inch Hiya Hiya metal needle.

This pattern has a multiple of 10 stitches plus 1, but it is knitted horizontally, meaning I had to cast on 291 stitches.  That is a ton of stitches, but the shawl worked up fairly fast, and the pattern became quickly memorized and was easy to follow.

When I was finished with it, I began to wonder how the heck to block it.  Should I block it like an acrylic or like a wool yarn.  I decided to put it on a blocking board (half of it, that is - it is about 77 inches long) and spritz it with water, pinning out the one edge that wanted to curve, just a bit.  I patted the water into the yarn, smoothing out the decrease bumps, and left it to dry.  Hmm, the wool part was still pretty bouncy and the bumps were too noticeable. So I pulled out my steamer and carefully steamed half of it - steaming and patting, then left it to dry again.  Success!  I repeated that process with the second half, after which my shawl had grown a bit to just under 80 inches, but I had expected that, since I was trying to relax the yarn and open up the lace.

I am not sure the rust and green (same green, mind you) really works in this, but I like it anyway and will use it on my next cruise.

6-Shaft Flowers in Slubbed Tencel and Rayon

If you read my last post, you will know that I have not been weaving or spinning for a bit, but I finally managed to finish a project I started last summer, that had been sitting on my loom being ignored or, rather, just admired.

This started with a draft I downloaded from www.handweaving.net, Draft 49712.  It is only 6 shafts, in an advancing twill pattern, which I changed very slightly to make it work for me.



The next step was deciding what colors to use and what yarns I could use from my stash.  I was determined not to purchase any new fiber, since I have way too much for my own good.  I settled on a slubbed Tencel I had purchased some years ago to make some yardage for a top, which I have not worn in a while.  While making that project, I actually had to purchase a little more Tencel to finish all the yardage for this top, so I was left with one large cone and one medium-sized cone.  I had two colors of turquoise and one of rust, the latter of which had not been used in the top.  I decided to use one of the turquoises and the rust for the warp and decided to use an off-white 10/2 smooth rayon yarn, that I also had in my stash, for the weft.

I tweaked the pattern in Fiberworks until I had it where I wanted it and to an appropriate width for a scarf at 24 epi, using a 12-dent reed.  Because the weft was not quite as hefty as the warp threads, I ended up weaving it at somewhere around 28 ppi, which gave a fairly balanced weave.  I call this draft 6-shaft twill flowers, because it reminds me of the little flowers on my tea trees in the backyard.

It never ceases to amaze me how much patterning one can get from so few shafts. Of course, this is especially true of crackle weave and summer and winter, not so often true of twill.

Once done with the weaving, I hemstitched the end, twisted and tied the fringes and put the scarf on a delicate cycle in warm water with my wool wash to help settle all the threads, so I could cut off the ends where I had started and ended the second pirn in my shuttle.  I did not completely dry it in the dryer, but hung it to dry the rest of the way, then ironed on a low setting but with steam, to bring out the silk-like sheen, bringing it back to its original width with only a very slight loss in length. It is about 66 inches end to end without the fringe length, which adds another 10 or 11 inches, and just shy of 7 inches in width.

Now I have to think up another project!  Maybe it is time for a 16-shaft pattern, since my 16-shaft table loom has been sitting idle too long.

Huge skein of 2-ply yarn on one gigantic bobbin spun on Hansencrafts Mini Spinner

I have been going through a dry spell regarding spinning and weaving.  Purchased a new Bernina sewing machine last summer and have been exploring all of its many possibilities as much as I can.  Updated my Bernina software about a month prior to that and had many, many lessons to work through to get the hang of it.

Remaining Fiber with Inglenook Fibers Label

However, this past week, with sewing machine in the shop for an update and upgraded part, I returned to spinning and weaving.

To begin, I had purchased a couple of beautiful rovings from Inglenook Fibers, one of my favorite Etsy shops.  The first was almost entirely rust-colored, a Fawn Alpaca/Silk, 70/30 combination.  I plied that with a multi-colored singles yarn that was Merino/bamboo/tussah silk, 50/25/25 combination.  I used all 4.1 ounces of the alpaca/silk and about 4.2 ounces of the merino/bamboo/silk to create a 2-ply yarn that is 7.2 ounces - I know that does not compute, but after washing, that is the final weight of this skein of yarn.  This skein is about a DK weight of 562 yards, the longest skein I have ever spun.


This was a bit of an experiment, because my wonderful hubby purchased an electric Hansen's Mini-Spinner in walnut last summer at Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR, much to my surprise and delight.  He purchased it with their new lace flyer assembly, which has wonderfully lightweight draw-in. However, being used to my WooLee Winder on my Schacht Matchless wheel, I almost immediately contacted Nathan Lee of WooLee Winder, to see if he had one available in walnut for the Mini-Spinner.  He immediately shipped me off one.  When I received it, I was amazed at the size of the bobbin's almost 10-ounce capacity and decided to put it to the test, which is how this project came to mind.  I had about a fourth of the bobbin left that I could have filled with even more fiber and had absolutely no issues with plying from start to finish.  My only issues were actually since I hadn't spun much in a while, re-educating my hands to the art of spinning.


Now I have to find a project to use this yarn!





  

Finished Skein

For those who do not spin yarn, it is very Zen-like and meditative.  This skein, while not perfect, is so amazingly soft, and I have a feeling that it will bloom because of the alpaca fiber in whatever project I use it in, developing a soft halo of fiber over time.

Crackle Weave Scarf

Sometime ago, I downloaded a crackle weave draft from www.handweaving.net and played around with it a little bit, by changing the colors, adding a thread or two to balance the draft, etc.  Periodically, I would pull it up in Fiberworks and look at it, think about what fiber to use to make a scarf out of this rather interesting draft.  Trying to be a bit frugal, I looked at all the cones I had available to me at home and decided upon two chenille cones I'd purchased quite a few years ago, that I thought might work for this pattern.

Draft with Yarns

Now, this draft looked gorgeous on paper, but I had never woven crackle before, nor tried it with chenille, which I hadn't woven with in years.  This was a 1300 ypp rayon chenille from Webs.

As I began to weave this drawdown, I was really disappointed, because it was quite difficult to actually see a pattern in the fuzzy chenille, but I decided to finish up the scarf and, then, maybe try this drawdown with a different fiber, like cotton or silk or a wool/silk blend.

Closeup of Scarf - Note Collapsed Structure in Center

I also forgot to weave an inch or two of plain weave that I could have picked out after wet-finishing, so I gently tied the fringe ends in several overhand knots for wet-finishing and put it in my front-loading washer on the handwash cycle and then into the dryer for about 15 minutes on the lowest setting.  To my surprise, the weave structure collapsed.

I liked the new texture, a little like seersucker, but I was surprised, since both the warp and weft are the same fiber, although different colors.

Then, I had an "aha" moment and realized the reason I'd created a collapsed weave structure was because of the different lengths of the floats, much like waffle weave.

Scarf on Patio Chair

At any rate, I decided to gently press the entire scarf on a low heat setting of my iron.  After finishing that process, I noticed there is still a slightly collapsed structure, but the pattern is much more readily discernible.  So I'm happy with it, after all.

Weaving is so fascinating, because there is always something you learn from every project.

Field trip to Kingman, AZ

Upon reading the last issue of Spin-Off Magazine, I noticed a listing for a spinning, weaving and knitting store in Kingman, AZ. I made the decision that the next time I got out to Lake Havasu, AZ, I would make a little field trip to The Spinster, in Kingman, about an hour from Havasu.

Today was my chance to get there. What a lovely little shop! Of course, I had to purchase a little more yarn and a couple of buttons, but I managed to not go home with more spinning fiber, although a beautiful curly maple drop spindle almost attached itself to me.

This is a very friendly yarn shop, and I had fun talking with the owner while I perused all of her many yarns, beautiful drop spindles, spinning fiber, etc.  She had a really beautiful one-off spinning wheel in the store window, which we discussed because it intrigued me.  And it even came with several extra bobbins and its own built-in lazy kate.  This is a very inviting shop.

Yarns I purchased at The Spinster

Even my husband enjoyed visiting in this shop with me.  As I said, it was a very friendly shop, and the drive up Highway 40 from Lake Havasu was lovely, especially the area just before you arrive into Kingman from the west - truly gorgeous rock formations.

If anybody is out near Kingman, they should drop by this very friendly little shop in the Old Town section on 4th Street

Beautiful buttons purchased at The Spinster

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.

Naturally Vienna Draped Vest - FC 56

I saw this really cute draped vest pattern somewhere online - cannot remember where, unfortunately.  Just had to make it, although finding the yarn was difficult and, again, I cannot remember where I purchased it but probably from New Zealand or England, but it could have been from Elann in Canada.  This a Naturally branded yarn by the name of Vienna, in an Aran weight.  It is a tweed that is 67 percent wool and 33 percent acrylic with a luxurious hand.  It requires hand-washing and drying flat.

This was a very fast project to knit.  It has only 3 pattern pieces, since it's a vest.  The fronts are the main parts, since they wrap all the way to the back, under the arms, and then connect to the center back panel.  The colllar has extensions; the pattern says to make them 5.5 inches for a medium.  That is an error.  It would make an 11-inch back neck.  I made the extensions 2.75 inches each and grafted the stitches together at the center back of the neck, reversing the grafting for the rolled edge, then attaching the extensions to the back neck.

The colorway I chose was Shade 608, which is tans, browns and off-white.