Failing Faster

A while ago, I put in an order for some repair parts for my spinning wheels.   I ordered through Jane Stafford Textiles, because they are one of few remaining Canadian vendors  who carry parts stock, rather than just ordering from the wholesaler as required.  The parts arrived very quickly, but there was a backorder on one item.  It wasn't urgent so I didn't mind waiting.  I almost forgot about it.

And then, with the threat of a Canada Post strike looming, every online vendor out there is trying to get everything out that they possibly can.  It is these small businesses that will suffer the most in a postal strike. Such a shame.  My back order arrived at Jane Stafford, and they shipped it out.  I went to pick up the mail yesterday and surprise!

I got one of these.

 

A swatchmaker 3 in 1 loom from Purl and Loop.  This little gizmo is cute as a button, but I got it for a reason. 

I am a knitter and I think of yarn in terms of worsted weight, fingering and so on, or at the very least by the number system where 4 is worsted and 2 is fingering.  A weaver thinks of yarn in terms of weight too, but the weights are referred to by the weight of the fibre over the number of plys such as 5/2.  Unless you are in Europe or if the fibre is cotton. I think.   As you prepare for a project, it gets weirder.  They talk in terms of yards per pound, ends per inch, and wraps per inch to determine the sett you require to get a pleasing fabric.  

Honestly it all makes me wonder if it would be easier to just join SETI  and search for extraterrestrial life, rather than try to understand how to get the fabric I want.  8/2, 10/2, and so on and on and on.  What do they mean?

It really doesn't matter so much what they call a yarn, so much as it matters that I know how to use the yarn to get what I want. How many metres of yarn or thread do I need to get what I want and at what gauge do I want to weave it?  All this stuff will become things I know once I weave more but until then, aaaaaaaaaack.

I started thinking about my early days crocheting sweaters.  I learned about gauge through trial and error, and once I got to knitting, that hard earned understanding of gauge and why I needed to care, illuminated the entire craft and helped me to grow as a knitter faster than I ever imagined possible.  But how to get that in weaving?  Weaving demands you set up your loom.  You need to know before you start, and that is not an easy task if you have no idea what is what.

This small loom does exactly that.  It lets you weave a small sample so that you can see if you like the fabric before you spend many hours setting up your loom.   I can see it being useful beyond that.  If you are weaving a pattern, it will give you a chance to see if you really like it or if you like the colours you have picked out.  Just like in knitting, sampling first is invaluable.  

This loom provides 3 different ends per inch, and if you don't mind colouring outside the lines more.  The standard 8, 10 and 12, ends per inch can easily be divided to make 4, 5, and 6.  And so on. I can test out all sorts of yarn so long as it will fit through the holes.

  

This little loom is also large enough to be used for small projects and that is kind of interesting too.

The biggest single reason to get this little loom, is that it is a size and scale that will help me fail faster, learn faster and play chicken just a little bit less.  If I am on hundred percent honest with myself, that loom in my spare room intimidates me.  My hope is that one day soon, there might be something wonderful happening.  

Dressing Up at Night

In the daytime is is pretty rare to find me without a sweater or vest or shawl on around the house.  When I go out, there is always a sweater or two, seasonally dependant.  I wear socks almost every single day.  I think that is pretty normal for an ardent knitter.  

What is a lot less norml about me is the wool I wear to bed. Gotcha. 😇

Socks are a pretty regular thing now that the cooler weather is here. They are getting to be such a regular feature of my night wear, that I am thinking of knitting some socks just for wearing to bed.  They could be a little bit looser than I prefer to wear in my shoes, and it wouldn't really matter what kind of yarn I use since they wouldn't need the constant washing that ordinary socks do.  I usually wear socks for a couple of hours and at some point in the night, push them off my toes and out the side of the covers.  It might be a really good way to use up some of my pile of worsted weight left over bits.

Frazzeledknitter discovered a really interesting Drops pattern, Jupiter 167-34 and I think these look like a really great pair for bed socks.   I know there are two patterns in Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks,  the Heelless Sleeping Socks   and Bed Sock in a Lemon Fancy Pattern.    Any of these look like great socks to knit to beef up my currently non existent wardrobe of just for bed socks.  If you are interested in more patterns a search for Bed Socks on Ravelry, gives me 4 more pages of bed socks in every imaginable weight and size of yarn. 

I also have a shawl that I wear to bed about half the time.  It is one of my oldest and most beloved shawls.  Truly Tasha's Shawl from Nancy Bush and still available on her website, the Wooly West

  

And in my old busy messy sewing, and laundry room too. I learned a lot about backgrounds of photos in that room and try to be much more careful now!  But I do love this shawl. It is such a plain ordinary sort of thing, and yet it is the perfect size for covering chilly shoulders that may stick out of the blankets at night. On the nights when I just cannot get warm, I grab this from where it hangs off the side of my headboard. 

My most recent addition to my nighttime wardrobe is wrist warmers.  Last winter, in my desperation to figure out and resolve my hand troubles, I started wearing the little black set I knit just after Christmas, to bed

  

to see if it made a difference at all.  And it did.  It does. With something on my hands as I sleep, I don't seem to grip my hands into fists or fold them at odd angles. Why I do these things in the first place, I do not know.  I wasn't really aware of it till I started wearing wristers to bed, but I now wake when my hands get too bunched up. It is possibly a reaction to them being cold and if it is, the wristers are working.  My hands don't ache nearly so much now through the day. 

Earlier this summer, I knit the very pretty and fun to knit Log Cabin Mitts

   

  and these have become my most precious things.  I love they way they feel on my hands at night.  I know that for many people, the feel of these yarns, Briggs and Little Regal, Custom Woollen Mills Mule Spinner Two Ply, and a little bit of Patons Classic Wool, would not be the kind of fibre they want next to their skin as they sleep, but oh my how I love these.  I wear these all the time.

I had thought that Martina Behm's Tough and Toasty pattern might work after I added a bit of a cuff to them, 

They were ok, but I found them a bit short and though the 1824 Wool is great around the house during the day, it just isn't enough for a night.  

So I have known for some time, that there would be something simple in the Brigg's and Little Regal that was still hanging around my knitting chair.  

Just  quick and dirty tube of knitting in a 2 x 2 rib with a slit for the thumb.

Just a few rows past the thumb to hold everything in place.  These work up so easily and took only a few hours to complete the pair.  There is enough yarn left in the skein to knit another pair and that will probably happen.

It is time now, to swath myself in my nightly wools, and to crawl into my cozy bed, and tuck me under my wool filled comforter.  I will dream of bed socks yet to be and of all the possibilities of tomorrow.  I am warm.  I am comfortable. I am lucky.  And that is enough.   

           

Things I never noticed

When I was going through the sock yarn bin for colours for Marcus's Paw Patrol sweater, I noticed something odd.  Orange.  I noticed orange.

I don't wear orange at all.  It is probably the only colour besides brown that I don't ever wear not even a little bit.  Makes me look sallow in general. and yet, I have all this sock yarn that is orange.   

I always thought I had a pretty good mix of sock yarns, lots of colour diversity, but it seems I am wrong.  

Is it that I knit up the other colours more readily than these or is it that I bought a lot of oranges because I could wear them on my feet if nowhere else?  Subliminal thinking all the way, of course.  I thought I just bought what I liked.  

So, with all these socks being completed, and with even more heels making socks ready to wear, guess what is going to go on the needles?

Orange stuff! 

Picking You Up When You Are Down.

I may be suffering a bit of a hangover/layover/leftover from having such an intensely busy weekend.  It was oddy intense.  I was working on the stove top and had to watch the temperature constantly.  I was learning something new and I really wanted to have it all work out.  Th result seems to be that I am tired in a different way than sleepy tired, though sleeping well would really help resolve it.  

But besides all the dying adventures, in between them really, there was a lot of knitting.  You know.  Put stuff in dye bath, knit, check temp and so on.  A lot of knitting.

Cassie's purple sweater is complete.

I am very pleased with the way this turned out and I do hope she likes it.  The basic child's raglan pattern from Anne Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Top Down Sweaters and some very pretty Brigg's and Little Regal from my trip this summer.  There is enough left for a vest for me if I use the colours opposite of this, more light than dark, so that is what will be. I still have the zipper to put in.

And when that was done, there was still stuff in the dye pot.  So I knit some more.

I finished the purple socks for me and put in the heel as well, all while waiting for the dye process to be done.  The pattern is the Broken Seed Stitch Socks by Hanna Levaniemi, a really nice little free pattern on Ravelry.  I only had an inch or so of the second sock to knit to complete these.

That pretty much took up the weekend.  Which brings us to yesterdays sort of hangover/layover/leftover thinking and feeling.  

I had dug out the next of the socks waiting for finishing in this sock drought year, the evening before.  It was sitting there so I picked it up to knit with my morning coffee.  It was the second sock but that second sock was depressingly short.  It was barely 2 inches from the toe.  It looked like I felt.  Depressingly...tired in my case, rather than short, and as I knit it, it felt as if that was all I had to give into the world.  Just pain rounds on a plain sock.

I doddered along, digging through my WIP boxes for the other more interesting sock.  There is only one pattern repeat and a toe left on that pair, but I stayed knitting the simple sock.  It was enough. I kept thinking I ought to wind yarn or do something towards the next little sweater but no.  That plain stuff was enough.  I just sort of knit, sitting on my knitting chair, not watching what was happening on my needle, not focusing on anything, not in that zen you can go into, just sort of being, and being very tired. 

This happened.

Which spooked me in a way.  It isn't that I did not notice I was knitting, it was that I was too tired to care a whole lot.  I was on autopilot.  And suddenly it was long enough for ribbing. It felt right to just keep going on them till they were done.  Long before bedtime, the cuff was complete.

I knit these in a monster sock way.  I had  very dull skein of Patons, Kroy and  soft gray Sisu sock yarn and added in pairs of charcoal stripes every so often of from a leftover ball of Elann sock yarn to give it a little bit of punch.  It was a good choice.  These socks needed the punch. 

These are going into the bag with all those waiting for heels and one day, very shortly, I am going to start working on that small task to take them to wearable.  

So that is that. Just a few days ago, I was bemoaning the lack of socks in my sock parade.  Since that day I completed three of the four pairs I had on the go.  I submit I am doing just fine.  The real bonus is that as worn out as I felt yesterday, I feel good to go this morning.  

Socks. Picking you up when you need it and warm to boot.  

Buzzzzzzy

It was such  busy weekend.  It is hard to remember it all. 

Saturday I determined that whatever else happened, I was going to finish the dyeing.  I had the three dye solutions ready and had three dye mixtures ready to go.  The yarn had soaked overnight to open it and prepare it.

 I did the three colour mixes first.  If I had to do it again, I had primary solutions left to work from.  They turned out wonderfully.  

Then I did up the three primary dye colours.

The dyes came out beautifully but two of them were not quite what I needed. In the end, the teal was more ordinary green and the magenta pink was too dark for what I needed.  

These colours,  

along with the blue, 

Are a good start to a Paw Patrol Chase sweater.  Well, except for the magenta which is above the orange. It is just too much, too near the red colour.  

That is enough dye adventures for me for right now.  I need to get started on the sweater, so it is back to the drawing board to see if I can find anything with the 3 colours I need, pink, a khaki green and something close to aquamarine green.  I did not want to have to piece from sock yarns.  That makes socks harder down the road, but I really didn't want to buy more than the cream sock yarn I already bought.  I bought the dye for this adventure but that was money well spent.  It was spent learning the process as much as getting colours and knowledge is always good. Besides, there are some silk hankies I would like to play dyer on...way down the road.

Getting those colours was amazing but that was enough.  Time to go digging in the sock yarn box.

These three have a little of each of the colours I need.  I knit  few sock rounds to be sure the colour runs are long enough.  I know I can get three rounds of 68 stitches of each of the colours runs I need on a sock for me, so it should be pretty comparable to an arm on a four year old boy.  In the blue ball, there is a perfect aquamarine, in the greens, a nice wide khaki stripe, in the pinky orange ball, a pretty good dusty pink.  If the dusty pink isn't right, I have one final, less desirable option, a hot pink from a ball of Regia in those hot colours from a year or so ago. I really wanted to avoid this picking apart sock yarns like this, but so it goes.  This will work and will work well.

That was just one adventure from the weekend.  There were more.  It was good.  Stay Tuned.

Yesterdays Plan

The plan for yesterday was to finish up the things from the day before.  What do you know.  It worked.

I rinsed and rinsed an when finally everything came out clear, I set lovely blue yarn and the vest out to dry.

The yarn turned out really well.  The vest would have benefitted from a larger vat.  But, it looks much better than before with it's wild splotchy bits of red and I am going to try to apply a bit more blue dye to the one small place that did not go quite so blue as I wanted it to.  The yarn is just about as perfect as I could want.

I spent the rest of the day making up the basic dye liquors for the three subtractive primary dyes I have.

The plan is to make the rest of the colours with these three primary dyes.  I'm kind of interested in seeing what happens with this process.  I spent the entire afternoon looking for recipes for combining colours to make other colours.  I couldn't find anything for this particular brand of dye, so I guess I'm going to have to try it the old fashioned way, winging it.

The goal for today is coloured mini skeins of sock yarn.  Perhaps not all the colours I need, but with a bit of luck, most of them. 

I am looking forward to this process, but I am looking forward, wishing that I had brewed my mother in law inspired coffee liqueur before brewing up all these colours.  At the end of this colour adventure, I might just need a bit of a jolt in my tea. 

Can you add coffee liqueur to tea?  It sounds wrong.  I think it will be cocoa.  Much better. I can look forward to finishing the day with cocoa.  

A Chase Colour

Yesterday did not go quite like I planned.

That could be the opening line of every single blog post I ever make if I keep making plans.  I do make plans for every day.  I think that is part of what keeps me right in the world.  But if it doesn't happen, I usually have no one to chide me.   I am just not going to write down my plans anymore unless of course, it helps me actually get things done.  In the case of trying to dye fibre, writing out the pan helped make it real.

There was dye solution or dye liquor as it is more properly called, happening.

Forgive the fuzzy photo.  I have three pictures of this, all bad.

There was a dye bath.

There is about 500 grams of fibre in this bath, the vest as just over 400 grams and 100 grams of sock yarn. I wound a whole skein of  Lion Brand Sock-Ease onto my niddy noddy to make nice loose hank of yarn for the main colour of Marcus's Paw Patrol sweater.  

When I went to bed last night, the vat was still a little warm.  I wanted it to be completely cool before I rinsed, so this mornings job is just that.  Rinsing.  

 

As you can see here, the dye bath looks pretty much exhausted.  The water looks clear and clean and the yarn looks pretty blue. Perfectly Chase  police blue for those of you who know Paw Patrol, 1980s Mother in law blue for those of you who don't.  

I will be rinsing this pretty carefully and thoroughly.  I want this little sweater to be machine washable and easy care because I know the end user won't want to take it off.  I am considering a citric acid soak, but first I have to search for some citric acid.  I'm pretty sure I will find some locally.  It used to be available in drug stores in the same place where you could find alum and other weird household chemicals. 

So that was yesterdays adventures.  It was kind of stressful and kind of fun.  The goal for today is to start some of the other colours needed for this sweater:  olive, pink, bright green, yellow, red, orange and aquamarine.   It's a lot of colour in small amounts!

Different Adventures

Yesterday did not go quite like I planned.   

I ran a few errands.  I stopped to pick up the last ingredient I needed for a long planned recipe to make my own creamy coffee liqueur.  My mother in law used to do this and her versions were always quite tasty.  I am not a big drinker at all, but occasionally, on a hot summer day, a glass of beer or a light bubbly wine is just the thing.  In winter, just a wee dram of Baileys or Kaluha  in a cup of cocoa or Sunday morning coffee turn a regular day into something special.  

But have you looked at the price of Baileys or Kaluha lately?  I bought one bottle of liqueur last winter.  That was it.  One, and it wasn't the big one.  It seemed like a lot of money to invest in something I only wanted to sip twice a month.  So, I decided to make my own, where the base alcohol is a bottle of vodka or a rum. Both still are pricey, but the amount you use in making the liqueur means you double your end beverage.  I would also be interested in trying a non alcohol version just to see what they would be like though I do have to admit, that seems a wee bit pointless in a way.

So while I am in the kitchen today, brewing dye colours and testing yarns, I am also going to be brewing coffee liqueur.  

The next errand yesterday was a stop at the fabric store.  I had to stop to get a longer zipper for Cassie's sweater number two.  I also stopped at some of the vast array of fabric displays and took a serious look at what I liked.

I had not sewn for a few years, when I did that sewing in July.  My fabric stash is just a bunch of navy and black, solid base colours.  Most of what I used to sew was skirts and jackets for work wear and my stash shows it. What I really could use right now, is a few shirts and blouses, with a bit of colour and pattern.   After I got the zipper for Cassie's sweater, I picked out a couple of fabrics for me.

          

Both are just good old fashioned plaid prints, reminiscent of plaid work shirts for guys. I have always liked them and wondered why there was never an equal amount on the market for women.  Plaid, particularly flannel plaids, bring to mind warmth and cozy in the same way that cocoa, and afternoon tea and knitting do.  

And the price was more than decent too.  The full price for the heavier fabric, was 20 dollars a metre, and the other lighter weight flannel was 12 dollars a metre. I bought 3 metres of each so the full price is still what a shirt would cost in a far inferior fabric from the stores I buy from.  By making it myself, it will actually fit in the shoulders and at the hips in a way I cannot get from a store and I do not have to compete with the rest of the market of desperate women for the 2 garments they may have in stock in my size for the whole season, across the entire country of Canada. 

The real bonus here is that I did not pay the listed price.  Both fabrics were half off, so my cost was 30 dollars for one piece and less than 20 dollars for the other piece.  Both shirts, including buttons and other sewing notions, thread, interfacing and the like, I already have on hand.  None of that will add more than 5 dollars to the final cost.

What was the common thinking that sewing clothes was more expensive?  Turns out not so much.  If you have to buy a pattern, perhaps.  Patterns are pricey, but most of the time, you are buying a pattern that can and will be used multiple times, or like mine, and so old but such basic wardrobe pieces that style and fashion don't really count. 

When I started knitting, it was during a huge revival of interest in knitting.  From what I have seen over the last couple summers, there has been a huge revival in sewing practical everyday garments for ourselves.  Perhaps I am riding the cresting wave.  No matter.  I just want clothes that fit.

It isn't that I had no adventures yesterday, it was that I had different adventures than I planned. Today, back to the plan.  Dyeing adventures begin.    

Adventuring

Most people wouldn't put knitting into the same category as adventurous sport, but I sure do.  But then, I am not most people, I'm obsessed by knitting and well, just because.  Knitting is always taking me somewhere different.

Today is a pretty good example.  

This morning I am knitting on the second sweater for Cassie.  The requested purple sweater.

If I was knitting this to a regular sweater length, it would be time to start the ribbing now.  I want something longer.  This sweater is just a wee bit wider than the other sweater, and that is perfect my wee girlie.  She grows like a weed. I want this to make it through grade one and into grade two if at all possible.  It will be a tunic length now and with a little bit of luck, that longer length will mean it is going to fit her longer.

Which means I have knit my girl two sweaters before I get to knitting Marcus his Paw Patrol Sweater.  I feel bad about this but in other breaking news, those adventures will begin today.

This afternoon, I will be taking out all the dye stuff I have accumulated and will be making up the dye solutions for his sweater.  That means today, I will be making all the colours out of only three base colours.  I figure it could be a challenge, maybe a great challenge, but it's worth giving it a try.  The plus  of purchasing dye things is that I can recover a vest, that was badly discoloured when I put it into the same wash as a red sweater.  My vest is going to be the test dye for the main colour of Marcus sweater. It will be a blue of some sort.  I hope.

The knitting adventure, where I hope and plan for future growth , the dye stuff adventure,  both of these happen on the same day as spinning day.  I have red spinning left to finish, I have a bobbin of green to finish, and I have a bobbin of spun in the grease single ready to finish as well.  This is me, still playing with long draw.  Fill all the bobbins!

I know that some people won't see the adventure, the challenge in these small things, but adventure doesn't only lie in the size of the mountain to be climbed or the oceans to be navigated.  Adventure lies in the heart of mankind and there is adventure in everything we try our hand at. Adventure is what stimulates and energises us and these yarn adventures are what lies at the heart of me. 

WWSIPD

This weekend, for no better reason than it is there, I set up a World Wide Spin in Public Day here in Mundare Alberta.  I felt that even if only my self was there,it would be worth doing.  We have wide, lovely sidewalks, and on a September afternoon, it can be some of the nicest weather of the year.

I knew I wouldn't be alone, because my good friend, frazzledknitter said she would love to come.  Another lady who is from a town just a stones throw away said she would love to come too, just to be out in the company of knitters. 

Weather all week has been wet and dreary.  A little snow wasn't helping a whole lot.  Nearing midday, Saturday, there were giant fluffy flakes and snow was falling heavily.  It isn't rare to have snow in September but it is generally frowned upon.  To no avail.  It was going to have to be an inside sort of day.  The little coffee shop who helped us put on the event, cheerily opened their doors and turned up the coffee pot.  It was lovely and a success beyond my wildest dreams!

 

We had 4 wheels a spindle and a couple of knitters and we had a lovely time! 

Several of the ladies had lunch 

The plates were full and tasty by all accounts.  I'm going to do that next time.  It looked so good.  One of the ladies took home supper for her family!

The shop, Baba's Attic is filled with goodies for sale that make a really pretty display.  My own personal favorites were these

But sadly, I could not bring them home with me.  As lovely as they are, I have no room for more.  This picture will have to suffice.  Pretty blue and white in the wild, if you will.

It looks like we will have  local get together monthly, too, which is a real plus. Several of the ladies suggested it and I know that one of the ladies has wanted to get one started for some time. I am so pleased that they are interested. I know knitters are out there, and I do hope that just by us showing up as a casual gathering more will come and join us.  

It was a wonderful day, weather notwithstanding and well worth repeating!   

It's Always a Surprise

It's always a surprise when I get down to knitting on a new project after the doldrums.  I've occasionally been surprised that I bothered at all, that I hate what I ended up doing and I start another new thing. Today it has gone the other way.  

I took out the pretty purple Regal from my trip this summer, intending to start a sweater for me.

I started by winding it all up.  I really do enjoy winding yarn, particularly since I set up my little winding station and it is always right at hand.  As I wound, I thought of what I wanted from these pretty purples.  A gradient of some sort but nothing complicated.  I was thinking about what I would do with all the leftovers.  

I have a sweet granddaughter.  She loves purple.  I had purple.  Lots of purple.  Why wait to knit her sweater with the leftovers of mine?  Maybe I should knit mine with the leftovers of her sweater.  And that is what I decided to do.  

I'm pretty much doing what I was thinking of knitting for me, for her.  It's really cute.

Her version is raglan sleeves and I am just a wee bit past the underarms.  That wide band of stockinette is my probably too wide steeking band.  I didn't want jarring colour changes so I really only had a few rows to get in some stripes.  One row of the new colour followed by three rows of colour one and switch. 

This second colour band will be about as wide as the first band, followed by the darkest purple to finish.  It may be a little thinner because I do want the biggest part of the sweater to settle into the dark purple that she loves. It is a matter of scale.  Too much of the mid purple and the next colour change hits her waist, splitting her in half.  The lighter colours must remain firmly on the top of this sweater. 

I am using the other sweater as a size guide for this one, though this one is going to be longer, more of a tunic length I think.  I have plenty of yarn and her whole sweater won't take much more than 400 metres.  I have lots more yarn than that. 

It's a busy weekend ahead.  I have company for part of it and this Saturday is the inaugural Mundare event of World Wide Spin In Public Day.  I think we are going to have a nice little group of spinners and knitters and I'm looking forward to it.

That Post Sweater Doldrums

I seem to be having a little bit of trouble getting started this morning.  I felt it a bit yesterday after finishing my Easy Bulky One sweater, but I knew that I had all the finishing to do and I did want to rework the sleeves.  I did all that and it is now in service and boy do I like it.  I love this yarn.  It's dense and perfect for a chilly, snowy September morning.

It isn't that there is nothing to do.  I have tons to do.  I have some dyeing to do for Marcus's Paw Patrol sweater but I am waiting for a package from Maiwa.  I have a little carding to do. I do have a little sweater to put a zipper into. There are 4 whole ends to weave in but that won't take long.  And then what?  

I'm not quite in the right frame of mind to knit Hun, and I am not sure about the sweater I am working on with Amy Herzog's Custom Fit.  Or at least I think I m not ready for those things. I really ought to go and pick up the fibre and play with it because it is often just the feel of a yarn that interests and excites me.  

I have a cabinet full of things I pulled out to work on,   I think my move this chilly morning is to go play in there and sort out what is what.  It is filled with yummy and delicious yarns and contains almost everything I really would like to knit right now.

But then again socks?  

You can see how difficult the next project can be when you are in the post sweater doldrums.  And how delightful.

A Series of Amazing Events

Perhaps a pair is a better word, because I have to tell you, that as I sit down here this morning, just past 8:30 a.m. and I have completed two projects this morning.  Not last evening.  Not in the middle of the night, but since I got up and made coffee this morning.

It is possible that I am stretching the definition of middle of the night, though.  I got up at 4:30. I tried to read.  I tried to listen to a book, but in the end, I was wide awake and I couldn't stay in bed.  So I got up and grabbed the pair of socks that was sitting in my bedroom for a while, made my coffee and started knitting.

I was not expecting this when I got up.  It has been a while since I worked on these and I didn't remember them being so close to done. About 8 rows of knitting and sock two was complete.  They are short socks, but considering that I thought I would be wearing them this summer... well so it goes.  They are a bit short for winter wear, but I am going to wear them anyway.

When I went to bed last night I knew I was getting close to the second projects completion.  I had started the ribbing at the bottom of the sweater.  I was three rows in when my hands cried uncle, and I stopped.  I picked it up this morning once the socks were done and gave it a go.  It did not take long before this happened.

By 7:00 the sweater was cast off on the bottom ribbing and all that remained was the neckline finishing.  That was minimal and it took just less than an hour to complete it too.  I give you my version of Joji Locatelli's The Easy Bulky One.

On the pattern page, Joji is wearing it with a lot of ease.  It suits her.  She is a slender elegant woman.  If that isn't the way you want a sweater to be, seriously, do not discount this design.  If you look at the project pages for it, you can see that there is so much variation here, that you can get the fit you want from it.  Close fit?  No problem.  The sweaters very easy shape works.  Large and with lots of ease?  No problem.  It still looks good.

It looks like exactly what I wanted from this sweater.  Big comfortable fit.  Easy knitting.  When I chose this sweater pattern, I was looking for something to knit fast.  I wanted to finish it before the end of Stash Dash and needed a quick knit to get my goal. That meant big yarn.  It also meant it had to be simple plain knitting.  My hope was that in the end it would look least good enough to wear at home alone.  

It looks way better than okay.  It is what it is, a big comfy loose fitting sweater but it has a fit very similar to my Icelandic Overblouse in the shoulders. I wear that one out all the time.  There is some extra fabric, but it just looks loose and casual.  It is better fitting than any store bought sweaters would be that is for sure.  

I am not 100 percent happy with the sleeves.  I did not decrease because it is such a short sleevelet, but I should have. They seem a bit wide.  I also should have knit them just a wee bit longer.  The goal was for a 3/4 length sleeve, and while they look it when it is worn, where they are now, they keep slipping up into the bend at my elbow.  I am pretty sure that I will fix these two things and when I do, I will aim for much more fitted sleeve than these currently are and I will probably knit the sleeves full length. I have lots of yarn. 

So a little bit of work still, to get it just right, but considering that I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this project,  it is not a problem.  What I thought was heading to the wasted knitting pile is going to get a lot of wear.

So socks and a sweater that turned out better than expected. It is a great way to start a day!

Ruminations and rejoicing

Do you ever get dressed in the morning and find yourself jumping for joy, in a metaphorical sense that you get to wear a certain piece of clothing?

I do.  I know it sounds weird, but I do and for more than one piece.  

First off, I love handknit socks.  I love how they snug to my foot and how if they have a heel, they cup it just so.  I love the instant warmth.  There is a sigh of contentment that runs through me when both socks are on.  It isn't loud or big, or weird, and there isn't any dancing.  It is just this sort of there, but it is deep and real and lovely.  I do have favourites of course. I love short row heels the best to wear.  I've been doing them with two strands of wool so they last longer and that gives some extra structure to the shaping. They just cup and fit so fine.  They do seem to be the pairs I grab first when I have a full drawer of socks.  

Linen.  I love wearing linen.  I love wearing unironed linen and how it just kind of adapts as I wear it.  Once you get past the idea of linen needing ironing,and the idea that wrinkles are bad, you come to love linen really fast.  I reached for my linen this morning and it just came to me how comfortable they are and how good they make me feel.

Sweaters.  Everybody in the world knows how much I love my sweaters. I love, love, love how fall is here and that I get to wear my sweaters everyday.  I love the cozy warmth of them, the snuggled feeling like a hug from mom when I put it on.  I love that when I put my sweaters on, I am wearing something that fits not just in the shoulders where I am pretty narrow, but in the hips where I am not.  Or vice versa.  I love that they look good on me, far more than anything I ever purchased in a retail store.  

If there was someone here with me when I woke everyday, with whom morning is a sort of shared conversation but without words, I wouldn't have time to contemplate these things, nor appreciate them so fully.  Perhaps it is more that other things would crowd out my conscious appreciation of them.  C'est la vie.

I have been feeling pretty low since spring.  Summer is not my favourite season.  To be honest it never was, but  these last years, it is something to get through.   I might enjoy particular days and things, don't get me wrong  A lovely summer day with a gentle breeze and sitting knitting is really the perfect thing in its way, but overall, there is a pall that accompanies me all season long.  

Fall feels like life reawakens for me, as if this is my time, my place, where all my favourite things reside.  I wish it would be sunny today.  I wish the snow they have forecast for midweek would not come to be, but even with all this grey weather, I still rejoice that fall is here.

  

Scary but Exciting

This past weekend was very busy.  It was Marcus's fourth birthday.  That is such a big day when you are a little kid.  He is four now and he goes to school and he got the best presents for his birthday according to him. He just kept going back to everybody with big hugs.  He couldn't contain his joy.

Cassie's sweater is complete but for the zipper.   I m so very pleased with the way it worked out.  As I started the first sleeve, magic happened and the colour began at exactly the right place to perfectly match the yoke.  With all the perfection going on, I had to do a little bit of work to find the right place for sleeve two, but I think it worked.

Somewhere here, there are a couple of separating zippers.  I want to see if any of those will work for this sweater.  I have my doubts but if not, I have a stop at the fabric store tomorrow ought to sort that out.

Once that was done, I grabbed other knitting.  Though this sweater is not anything I want urgently, I am really enjoying the knitting.  I am being careful with it though.  When my hands get tired, I stop.

It is getting close to a try on point.  Up till now there wasn't enough bottom to see how the top was going to drape and hang.  There is no doubt that it will be large enough.  The fit problem here, could be that it is just too much, even for a throw on around the house on a pajama day sort of sweater.  My shoulders are relatively narrow in comparison to the rest of me, and knitting to fit hips is usually unwise. If there is trouble, it is going to be right at the underarms.

I have been thinking about what I will do if that is the case and I think I know.  It may be that it will have a  close association to my sewing machine to help narrow it at the shoulders.  It may be that I have to redo the sleeves, but it won't be more reknitting than that. 

Sometime today, I am going to grab the bull by the horns and give it a try on. It is always the scariest place in the sweater knitting process, but also the most exciting.  That is me today.  A little bit excited and a little bit scared.

Worth the Effort

When I was on my vacation, I stopped twice in Saskatoon and managed to be there on Saturday morning both times.  This was very important to me because my family gets together for breakfast every Saturday morning.  Attendance is at our convenience but it is a long standing tradition and long may it continue. Every once in a blue moon, I will drive to Saskatoon for no other reason than to join them for breakfast.  

This year, on my way back home from that long Sunday afternoon sort of drive, they were inquiring about what I brought back.  I mentioned that I had missed a chance of stopping to purchase a fleece or two and my dad looked at me and asked if I had ever taken a fleece from a sheep and spun and then knit a project.  I had to answer no. 

I have washed a fleece before and it was not a thing I particularly enjoyed doing.  I was a newbie and I had never ever worked with a fleece before.  The fleece was free but it had not been stored or even skirted.  In was RAW.  Really really raw.  I cleaned it up before I washed it but it was still pretty awful. I did end up spinning a sample and while it wasn't too bad, it wasn't great and I ended up using it as a groundcover where we wanted to stop a slope from washing away.  I have spun from prepared fleece and I have knit with that handspun yarn.

I accepted that I did not have the gumption that women used to have.  Washing fleece, after that experience, did not seem worth the effort and I wasn't planning on trying it again. And then some stuff happened.

I learned how to spin long draw and magic happened.  I adore watching what happens as twist and fibre draw out into a single.  It is simply fascinating.  I could spend hours a day doing it, and I don't feel the need for perfection that spinning a short forward draw seems to bring out in me.  Spinning short forward felt like I was never going to be good enough.  Learning long draw and woollen drafting has liberated me.  I don't need to worry about perfection.  I am much too busy watching the magic. It moves along so swiftly in comparison to the way I was spinning before, a huge plus.  

The other thing that happened was that I found and joined a Facebook group, Central Alberta Rural Spinners.  After joining that group, my feed started to be filled with suggested pages for different fleece and fibre groups, particularly Fleece Canada - Groomed or Greasy.  When I joined that second page, daily I was confronted with lovely looking fleeces from all over Canada.  

I stood strong for a long time because I was going on a trip and would be bringing back some lovely yarns and that would be enough, right?  It worked too.  I do have some very lovely new yarns to play with.  I enjoy seeing all those fleeces on my feed, but I wasn't going to buy one till I had the three that I already have carded and spun.  Or at least carded. Spinning long draw will be a dream once it is all carded and I think it will go very fast.

But then a local grower posted.  Not drive two or three hours to somewhere local but local. Schieck Livestock is not even half an hour away from me and has several different breeds, many pure bred.  Can you imagine having a really local supplier, somebody you could go to where there is no shopping, no shipping, no long drive away, no additional carbon footprint beyond the gas my car takes to get me there? It is a close as I will ever get to raising sheep myself.  (I was planning on talking Mr. Needles into that but life intervened.) I want this small local agri business to be strong and to be viable.  I want to help all farms be viable and for the farm community to stay small and strong and diverse. 

I can help this farm family with that in two ways.  I can talk about them a lot, and I can purchase fibre. So I did what I never thought I would do.  I went shopping for fleece.  Now it is time to talk.

Two Border Leicester fleece that are stunning.  Here is a little sample lock so you can see up close how lovely it is. 

 

And because it was just too soft too and pretty to leave behind, 

a Southdown Dorset cross.  I think that was what she said.  I have to ask her again to confirm the cross. This sweet little fleece is a virgin fleece, meaning it is from the first shearing of the lamb.  It is the softest wool that any breed can give you and I fell for this one hard. It's like the hair of a baby bunny, that delicate softness that only the very young have.

   

It is short, but whatever I have to do, I mean to make something wonderful from this.  This is probably going to be flick carded only and spun into a very light fine yarn.  Maybe.  Depends what I can get from this short a staple. It would be a crime not to give it my best shot.  

Short staple length is okay because I also have this to practise on.

This is a bag of locks, not really a bag of fleeces. These are also from virgin fleeces but the fleeces were heavily skirted and the seller gave the entire very large bag for 5 bucks.  The locks are from Southdown lambs and if anything, the staple length is even shorter than the wee cross fleece.

It is lovely and soft and though short, gives me lots of chances to learn how to get something from short fibre before I try my hand at that lovely little cross lamb. If I cannot spin with it or if it is not worth the effort, it may be the perfect thing for stuffing for pillows and toys. 

So, I am putting on my big girl panties and facing up to what I have done. I have some fleecy laundry to do today.  It is supposed to be very warm today. No point in waiting and a hot day is a good day to get it dried.  

No matter how well this goes, I still am 100 % positive that my grandmas were women of a sturdier, heartier sort.  I am also positive that the attempt to live up to that 100 % is worth the effort.    

If you are interested in this local to me farm and their products, please contact me at canadian needles (one word) at yahoo. dot the short form for Canada and I would be thrilled to pass it on.  

It's the Season for Socks

It's the season for socks again.  It is one of the first things I put on every single day and it is worn all day.  Sweaters and vests get popped off and on,depending on what I am doing, but socks stay on my feet warm and reliable, the whole day.

I was looking at projects this morning because I don't know what to work on today.  I am just a wee bit bored of the pretty little sweater, though it is close to being long enough and that means, not too far from done. Anyway, as I was looking it, I popped into a few projects to update them and I clicked one my socks 'parade'.  It isn't a parade this year.  It is a lone sock standing in a field.  Alone.

Inconceivable.

And yes, I do hear the voice of Wallace Shawn in the Princess Bride, every single time I say that word.

One sock is it for the entire year.  Who would have thought it could go so low. Sometime soon, I am going to get the feeling that I have no socks.  I do have a bag that are waiting for heels - or not - that I could press into service should the need arise, but still.

Since 2009, when I started tracking my socks enmasse, I have made a parade of socks.  A host of socks. Some, like the first photo in 2009, have lasted for many years.  I think they went to sock heaven the last time I tossed socks.  

In all but one year, I made at least 6 pairs of socks. That one year, I made 5. In two years, I made eleven pair and one other year, seven.  That is a lot of socks.

And then this year.  One pair.  I have got to do something about that. 

Maybe I should make it a small challenge to myself, to finish all the socks I have on the needles right now before the end of the year.  It really wouldn't take long, and it might just be the sort of challenge I would feel good about doing. It is also the kind of challenge where it ends win/win. If all the socks currently on the needles are not finished, who cares?  I have a couple more pair to wear! And if I do finish all the socks?  More socks!   

It is possible that all the digging in the sock stash has given me a desire to start a few new pairs.  There is a new Hunter Hammersen collection out.  It's not about socks, but her name always makes me think of socks. She has so many interesting patterns.  And then as Stash Dash proceeded, I found myself entranced by the patterns in the Knit Girllls Self Striping Socks bundle.  I keep scrolling though my bundle of favourites too, looking at the really lovely things there.

There will be socks soon.  I am certain of that. After all, it is the season for socks.

The Best Way To Spend a Day

I did not quite do what I meant to do yesterday.  It was a kind of a mashup sort of day  A little of this, a little of that.

I did mean to ply the fibre I had already wound into a cake.  It is thick and thin, but never too thin so as to be unusable.   

I may be quite in love with it. This was not premium fibre.  It was a bit neppy, and had quite a bit of vegetable matter in it. I picked some out as I spun but there are a few pieces that made it through, that I will pick out as I knit.

I have an opinion on vegetable matter in fibre and the way some people go on about it.  It won't kill you.  A bit of straw here and there never hurt anyone.  If you are worried about the wool being unsanitary, well, it isn't.  And if you are that worried about it, why are you working with raw wool? 

Wool comes from farms.  Farms are not the picture perfect postcards that some people think they must be in order to be a good farm.  There is hay.  There is straw.  There will be mud and dirt.  There is poop.  It will be skirted off if a farmer wants to be able to send his wool to the mill for a good price and I have yet to meet a farmer who is so foolish as to think he doesn't want a good price for everything his farm produces.  The really really good places will wash the sheep before shearing or will coat them to help keep the fleeces pristine but many times, on many farms this is not practical.   

Sorry/not sorry about that.

I m really pleased with the result from that little bag of fibre.  It was an unnamed source, and an unnamed fibre, beyond that I know it was wool.  The result is a pretty nice little bit of yarn that will make great mittens or a hat for this winter.  And yes, I do mean to knit it for this winter. The last thing I need is for spinning to produce more stash that will sit forever because there isn't enough of it for anything.  The 75 grams in this bag netted me only 66 yards, a small amount to be sure, but the thick sections that consumed so much fibre can only add to the warmth of the end product.   

The part of the day that did not go like I thought was the red Polworth.  I was ready to spin, but after the first plying went reasonably well, I decided to work on the singles spun from 3 small varying sized bags of fibre.  They were different colours and I thought it would be a bit of an adventure to see what happened in the finished product.     

I really ought to have taken the picture of the singles in the cake.  It was very pretty. I spun the fibre as a gradient of light to darkest fibres.  Each fibre was a different amount and I just wanted to get them used up to tidy up my fibre containers.  I cannot stand untidy in stored things, which is weird since in my usual surroundings are fairly untidy.   In  creative way.  Yeah.  That is my story and I am sticking to it.  The bgs are used up in a most delightful way.

The finished 2 ply yarn starts with a section of grey on grey, then slips to a pouffier cream on grey and then punches out an ending with a section of the darkest natural sheep colour.  The cream was a BFL fibre, the grey a shetland bit, and the darkest a richly coloured Coopworth.  

Together, they make a really delightful yarn.  Thick and thin.  That seems to be my go to at the moment.  It's 97 grams might be a mere 67.5 yards long, but every inch was a lot of fun. 

Do you know what the best thing about this yarn is?  Both yarns actually.  They are so much more the lofty airy yarn I wanted to make when I started out.  I wanted to break out of my spinning comfort zone and see if I could go somewhere just  bit different and I did.

It was an adventure in every way and adventures are the best way to spend the days.