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