DroimAnUan

Castletown Helix scarf and little mats

2012-01-18T14:30:00.000Z

This little helix scarf was lost for a while (hiding under the clutter in my son's apartment) then was found - and completed. It's knit from the BFL that I hand dyed and fractal spun last year - some details on a previous blog.

Little mats woven on the rigid heddle. Hessian warp and hand spun wool weft.

Swaldale sunrise shawlette.

2012-01-06T17:55:00.001Z

I decided to make another mini-shawl/scarf from the Swaldale yarn I'd spun. It has many of the colors I like so much - cerulean blue and and a sober orange/terracotta for two. Other colors add warmth and deeper tones.
Knit on size 5 mm's, trhe garter stitich makes rows of different streaks and lines of colr - that remine me more of sunrise on on a brightening ske than sunset on a darkening sky so I'll call it my Sunrise shawlette

Swaldale - these hardy North of England sheep have a long hairy fleece but also a fine undercoat. It's the fine undercoat I was after when I spun up the fiber. That task is not for the fiant-hearted - I had to continually remove coarser finber and even kemp as I preparted, spun, dyed and now while knitting the yarn. The resultant yarn, in the hank and kni up, is denser and heavier than my own little Irish cross bred ewe's yarn but I expect it to be warm light enough when finished and hopefully the size and drape of the shwlette will be as handy to wear as my previous shawlette.

Training Setanta Link

2011-12-05T22:44:00.002Z

The young ram, Setanta, has is own link - www.trainingSetanta.blogspot.com/ included in my Woolie Links list here. But should an Easycare X Wiltshire Horn sheep be placed under Woolie Links seeing as how he sheds his fleece every spring ?? Ah well, he crosses with the woolies to produce a lamb with a nice fleece so he can stay.

Christmas Yarn

2011-11-27T23:38:00.000Z

I loved dying and spinning this fleece into Christmas colored yarn. It's about 9wpi/worsted weight, around 100 yards+ per hank, 4 red, 3 green .

But now what can I make with it???

This was some more UK breed roving I dyed several colors. I just can't remember the sheep's breed right now - it will come to me. Iy might be Swaledale which the book "in Sheep's Clothing" describes as being generally rather coarse with kemp (check) but sometimes has a softer undercoat. I think this must have lot of undercoat - or perhaps be a first shear as it has a lot of soft stuff in it.

Anyway, it's a bit "kempy" and I have to pick these bits out but otherwise it it quite squishy and I think it will be a hat - perhaps a lined one. I need a new warmer hat anyway.

The mobius that's not mobius

2011-11-11T20:57:00.000Z

The "Weaving in the SAORI way" group had a thread featuring a woven mobius.
This appeals to me because - well, a finished garment comes right off the loom (except for weaving straggely bits in, finishing etc) and because the SAORI philosophy about weaving is such a fee one - no major worries about producing something that looks like it was comercially produced - quite the opposite - the freer the the better.
So, eyeing my big stash of handspun yarns in all sorts of colors and weights, I decided to recruit some of them for a mobius.
Except it's not really a mobius - as I , like some others on the list, didn't want to add in the twist that gives the infinity symbol it's shape, rather, make one big loop that wraps around oth shoulders and neck.
I decided to make the warp 120" long to get a finished size around 100" - and 12" wid, aiming for a cloth of 10 - 11" wide. The biggest component of the yarns I choose had about 14 - 15 wraps per inch so I planned to use the 7.5 dent heddle. The narrower yarns could be doubled or trebbled.

The warp yarns are mainily lilac or yellow and lesser amount of grey or black. They are all wool - mostly from my mixed breed sheep with some other UK/EU breeds in small quantity (black Wensleydal and grey Gortland). The dark ones are silkier and very strong, the colored ones are springy. The springiness meant that I knew my hands would be in there separating the warps after each change of shed and that beating with the heddle was out as it would shear the fibers too much. Beating was done with the side of the hand after laying in the pick and with the stick shuttle on the nest shed. I got into this rhythm fairly easily and it was not a problem. In the event, just 2 warps came apart - each time it was a wooly single and I just tied on another warp so it wasn't a big deal. The big deal was waiting for the end!
The weft was laid in at 6 ends per inch - less dense than the warp to make a less dense or less rigid cloth.
I felt quite bold using red yarn where there was yellow and lilac yarn but it didn't look as loud as I feared as the colors of the hand dyed yarn tend to be muted anyway.

The idea with this (or so I gather anyway) is to weave a length of fabric as you would weave a scarf or table runner but leave it less than the desired finished length by an amount equal to the width of the fabric so that, in the end, the fringe from the beginning of the cloth (origionally tied to the front beam) could be freed and woven into the fringe at the end of the fabric - so completing a circular shape (or mobius if you twist the cloth oncce before doing the final cross weave). I weanted 100 inches so I planned to weave about 68" then untie the front fringe and stretch out the fabric, laying it over the front beam, pin the cloth to itself around the front beam and weave the free damgling front fringe through the still tied on back fringe.
I couldn't wait fo rthis end part as it somehow fascinated me. I'd done the maths (being aware that things would not be exactly as calculated owing to draw-in and a host of other imponderables), I'd measured out a 68" lenght of yarn to travel with the fabric and give me an idea how much I'd woven.

All went swimmimgly with bouts of weaving when I got the chance, then I got to the end and - darn! I hadn't left enough beginning fringe to stretch across the fabric and have a fringe too! I went and removed the cloth (bad idea) to think about it but decided well, I want to do that cross weave!! So I unwove a section at the beginning to make the beginning fringe long enough.. But now I needed to replace the end fringe - attach it to the back beam after rethreading each warp through a slot or hole! Grrr - no! so I tied it in bundels to the back beam then stretched it back to the front beam and pinned it around it and - gulp! - threaded a darning needle and over-undered my way across for each of the 150 ends.

Actually, you can get used to that too and it did work out. I tied overhand knots after weaving in 5 picks and had 15 nice knots then I detached it and did the same with the end fringe.
I quite like the look of this wrap on me. If it gets cold ennough, it may replace the knitted sawl I've been slinging around my neck recently.

All folded up

Doubled

No, that's not me - I'm not a weird white plaster boy-head from an auction room in the 1970's

Needs a bit of tlc- next week.

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Boneyard Shawl

2011-10-16T16:32:00.000+01:00

Stephen West has a nice shawl pattern he called "Boneyard" - well best if he explains that name.
I thought I might use it after trying my hand at graduated dying i.e. not fading away from this mortal coil, just dying warn with increasingly more saturated color.
I have a little cuttie hogget who is half Iolo Owens-type Easycare ram (I call them Anglesey easies) and half woolie cross ewe. Her first shearing this year yielded a nice soft little fleece. Yes ther was some coarser hair=like stuff but I was able to flick this off easily while I spun it. I used that for the graduated blue/green/grey food dye experiment and quite like the relult:

So this seemed a good one to try Stephen's Boneyard:

I like this one and it feels lovely.

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A great link - Wild Fibers

2011-09-25T14:15:00.001+01:00

That Bradford Count - Grrr can be so confusing. Much easier to just think of the fiber size in microns - even if I can't really think of a micron!.
The Wild Fibers web site has great information about - fibers of course :
http://www.wildfibres.co.uk/html/fibre_size.html#Micron-Bradford

Thank you, thank you Wild Fibers for rationalising some of the many variable that can get to you when I set about planning some spinning.

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Castletown G and multicolor yarn and fractal spoinning - in theory

2011-09-25T13:32:00.002+01:00

As I went to Castletown Geoghan yesterday with Rosknit to do spinning in the Eco tent at the Green Village ( http://www.greenvillage.ie/ ), I think I'll call the resulting yarn "Castletown. Anyway, the bright multicolors of the roving I dyed remind me of little flags or bunting associated with castle fetes.
I dyed 134 grams (4.8oz) of BFL roving (Wingham Wool Works : http://www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk/ ) with KoolAid colors as folows:
The roving was soaked overnight in tepid water in the sink where the plug with its loose fit, leaked the water away slowly so the roving was just damp next morning. I divided it - unequally as it happens, 55 grams into one roasting tin and 77 grams into the other.

The top quarter or so get 2 packets of Tropical punch sprinkled, next quarter 1 1/2 packets of Orange, next quarter 2 packets of Lemonade and the last got one pack each of Lemon/Lime and Berry Blue.
I left that to soak in then pressed it with a spoon to get the dyes through to the back - but there were through anyway. I added s few drizzles of 1/4 Cider vinegar and water to leave a slight pool of water around the edges.
I placed the tins inside larger turkey roasting bags then they went into the fan over at 160 Degrees for 40 minuets. The water was clear then and I saw it boil a bit (Perhaps less heat next time?).
I let it cool in the oven, then out of the oven then took the bags off and cool to hand-hot. I poured on warm water at about the same temperature and then drained it off (still in the tins). I laid them on towels and rolled dthem up to let the liquid gently soak out of the roving.

I opened the damp roving out flat so it wouldn't dry into a semi-felt and so ti would dry more quickly, then I hung it in the hot press. Next day it was dry.

I stripped the larger part into two and spun that at 12:1 over 1/2 inch (around 24 tpi) on my Ashford Traveller , making singles of 20 wpi. BFL roving doesn't have the spring/bounce that my own sheep fleece has, spun as locks, hand carded or combed, so I find it needs quite a lot of twist to liven it up as the fibers tend to relax to flat. Plus, it does not become too hard even when spun quite tightly.

I finished spinning the longer-color-run single single while wearing two of my knitted shawls as the wind made a B-line for us spinners inside our partial tent. I discovered that drop spindles don't perform very well in the wind (duh..) and that Reggae music suits spinning on a wheel quite well, for short worsted-style anyway.
I was not supposed to spin the second part that evening - but couldn't resist so I divided the second part in two long wise again then each of these halves into three - trying to avoid too much color pooling and to mute the loud colors. This was a sort-of fractal spinning 'though my stuff is not accurate enough to ensure any sort of dependable pattern. I am hoping for some degree of repetitions of fairly solid bits followed by marled bits.
If it were accurate, and the four colors were ABC and D, then I'd expect that each individual color of the long-color-run singles repeats , when plied with the short-color-run singles would have one solid color bit and three marled bits:

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000155 EndHTML:0000001736 StartFragment:0000000475 EndFragment:0000001719

	Fractal spinning: second lot of fiber split in 3 or 3:1 fractal
Long color roving	A	B	C	D
Second roving split in 3	abcd, abcd, abcd	abcd, abcd, abcd	abcd, abcd, abcd	abcd, abcd, abcd
Solid=A. Marled=m	Ammm,Ammm,Ammm,	mBmm,mBmm,mBmm	mmCm,mmCm,mmCm	mmmD,mmmD,mmmD

In my case, A=red, B=orange, C=Lemonade and D=blue-green. So in the first encounter with red on the long-color-run single, the plied short-color-run lined up with it would produce a strip with 1/4 solid red, 1/4/ red-orange, 1/4 red-yellow and 1/4 red-bluie/green.
Yeah, right! :).
Well see when the yarn is finished. I do think I'll not get too much pooling - but will get lots of marled parts.
Long-Color-Run single

Short-color-Run single

Don't treadle with a shoe that has a strap over your instep - no matter how cold it is nor how loose the strap! I did that yesterday and after my compulsion to get all the spinning done (well it was only 4.8 oz) I hobbled away from the wheel as my right ankle was bandjaked! That's an ankle with a somewhat raised instep acquired while doing ballet as a child and not usually a problem but the strap on my shoe must have been aggravating the heck out of it during treadling. While it's way better today, the finished yarn will have to wait a while to be plied:

I wondered where the "inspiration" for this color way came from then I looked out the window straight in front of me:

Sure the yarn doesn't look quite so green in the photos (it is actually a bit more lime green in places and the blue not so obvious as those blowers, but I'd say it directed my selection all the same. Nothing to do with castles or bunting just da front garden.
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Graduated blue green dyed hand spun

2011-09-19T17:15:00.000+01:00

6.6 ounces divided into 1.1 ounce hanks and dyed progressively with blue and green food dye with a vinegar mordant. 350 - 400 yards.

Drafting Lindy's Shetland

2011-09-19T16:59:00.000+01:00

This is just a video of drafting. It surprised me how much it looked like I was doing nearly all the work with the forward hand while in reality the back hand was doing a lot more in the way of drafting back and straightening the fibers.

First Hank. 1.7 oz, 2-ply, 226 yards

That would make it 2,127 yrds/Lb - or Fingering weight and around 16 wpi and actually it is :).
So it's not lace weight when plied, though, of course, the singles were.
It doesn't look terribly impressive but it feels lovely and I think it's the nicest fiber I've spun so far.

Yrds/lb;weight;WPI

2011-09-19T16:26:00.001+01:00

Somewhere on the net, (I'll track it down eventully) is posted this useful information (well, useful if your're toying with weaving patterns and using hand spun yarn anyway):
Yrds/LB                Yarn weight         WPI
2600+                     Lace                    18+
1900-2400              Fingering    16
1200-1800 Sport 14
900-1200    Worsted    12
600-800    Bulky 10
400-500    V. Bulky 8

I think I most often end up with 14 WPI hand spun (Sport) but it might knit better as Worsted. My own sheep's fleece tend to be bouncy and these yarns probably punch above their weight.
That would suggest I'd use the 7.5 dent heddle on my Ashford knitters loom for plain weave - and this is probably true.
Just trying to get a handle on some of the variables I'd met with over the past few years.

Aghhh - look at this dreary background now - where did my design go?

Trying to catch up after confusion...

2011-09-19T16:12:00.003+01:00

Forgot password or user ID or something and got into a mess with logging into this google blog account so now I can't remember quite what I'd planned to put here over the tail end of this summer. So I'm going to make a set of little pages about stuff that comes to mind in no particular order.

Here's a reminder of how lovely the lillies were this year:

Nuala's Flower with Sweet Pea behind. Colors for a yarn?

Maiya knits. Mayhem ensues.: Turquoise Dreams

2011-09-08T12:50:00.000+01:00

Maiya knits. Mayhem ensues.: Turquoise Dreams

Lindy's Shetalnd Fleece

2011-08-23T22:04:00.001+01:00

We had a great time Friday last with Joan, Jennifer, Richard, George and Lindy. We stuffed ourselves as usual. The boys loved making a felted Lions Head with the gorgeous felting materials Lindy brought along. She also brought along some Shetland Sheep's fleece which had been residing with her for 14 years. I think it was a first-shear as it is pretty uniform staple, soft and has delicate pointed tips. ('twould be an old sheep by now!). Anyway, we watched the beginning of Margaret Stove's video on spinning merino for lace where she washes the locks individually. I decided to give this fleece that royal treatment and it seems to be working well.

This lot was done in about 10 - 15 minutes. Should be able to do about 2 per minute if there is plenty of water on the boil. It dried on a mesh on the hot press shelf in about 6 hours. I've spun some already and had to add foam pipe lagging to the spindle to get the tension low enough but it seems doable as a fine 2 or 3 ply without getting too firm.

Paul off work for a few days so we visited Clonmacnoise one day and the Locks Distillery today.
To be continued when photos from phone arrive.
Oíche mhaith.

Jute rug commences

2011-08-19T12:53:00.001+01:00

I may be mad since I want to use some jute string I got in Fairfield mill this summer.
I've slayed the 7.5 dent heddle for the full 20" and made the warps about 60" long, planning for a 50" long rug.
The idea is to use my hand-spun yarn for the weft - doubled in some places. I've chosen the seaweed/dundukedymuck stuff - which I've developed an unexpected appreciation for.
So far, I've skinned only one finger while I fiddle around sampling to see what might work - loops - NO, too unstable, probably will go for areas of plain weave with the jute weft showing among rows of Soumak weaving. This might be a reaction to the somewhat tedious weaving of the soft-spun Wensleydale runner which needed handling with Kid gloves but was extremely soft on the hands. This still needs some edging - probably a chain or two of crochet and something done with the fringe plus matching place mats are in progerss.

A little bit of lace

2011-08-14T18:21:00.000+01:00

A small ball of unwashed lace weight yarn knit nicely into this bit of vine lace:

I love the vine pattern.

Dying Disasters

2011-08-01T12:42:00.001+01:00

First, the bleeding chrysanthemum:

Bought 2 X 50 gm hanks of this BFL. Spun and chain-plied the first hank then - when I went to set the twist, it bled and bled .... Added vinegar to soak - bled and bled. Added washing up liquid - seemed to clear the orangie dye but next rinse, mauve bleed, now more orangie bleed....10 rinses later.....GRRRR.

Next - Seaweed and Dunduckedymuck:

Have two hanks of thick 2-plied hand spun in several shades of blue and a pink. The pink began to get on my nerves so I thought "Over-dye it with a yellow - change the blues to shades of greena dna the pink to brownis green - got the above 2 hanks. Very, earthy - very, very earthy.

Leaning, learning.

Phillippa Joads Hand Painted Shetland

2011-07-28T20:58:00.000+01:00

I spun this 200 gms of top at 12:1 over 1" , twist-assist then chain-plied at 5.5:1 over around 12" to keep the colors relatively unmixed. This hank is about 100 yards:

This hank will be added to the knitted scarf as per Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer's "Morning Surf" scarf - 'though this is more like "Evening on Heath":

Some was combined with my softer ECX first-shear DroimAnUan hand spun to knit a pair of wrist warmers as per Samantha Thompson's Urban Weave wrist warmers.

I used the rest, again combined with the white hand spin, to make a 20"ish X 20" Log Cabin weave which will form the decorative front for a cushion:

Got a lot of fun out of this.

Nest

2011-07-28T19:54:00.000+01:00

Seems this bird likes a bit of hand spun yarn along with the fleece, twigs and moss!

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Cooking reaction

2011-07-03T12:54:00.001+01:00

Despite having some nice meals on my trip to England, I returned home with a cooking deficit and a slight feeling of just too much greasy food (loading up with "Full English" too often?).

So upon return, a cookin binge ensued.

"The Fruitcake", Basil and Parmesan buns, Lemon marmalade (from the skins kept in the freezer).
The basil grown from seed doesn't seem to rot off at the roots like the shop ones I've bought.

Elderflower Cordial . Just caught the flowers before they went over. This is surprisingly nice stuff - poured over ice cream for instance. Surprising to me, as I usually find elderberries have an evil-type taste to them ( perhaps something on the surface of the berries?). Anyway, hurry for screw-top wine bottles!

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Fiber and yarn on the N England trip June 2011

2011-06-29T13:40:00.000+01:00

Fairfield Mill arts and heritage centre in Sedbergh, Cumbria was just glorious!
I want to live there :)!
On the lower floor resides a man setting up reams of yarn on a huge loom for weaving into their plaid and check and other fabric. The atmosphere and smells down there give some inkling of what it might have been like when the whole thing was in full swing - the artistic elements of fabric production subsumed under the practical necessity of commerce.

A beast in the basement!

Then all the fun parts of fabric making lay on the first floor. They were laid out in such a way that a visitor could have a go at weaving on a floor loom (with shaft instrucions and loads of lovely wool yarn to try) or try rag rug hooking or use a French knitting ring - of course, I had a prolpnged go at each. Then there were loads of works in progress and little artists sections where their work was on dispay and in progress - including glass and other media as well as the fabrics. I'll put some of the pictutres I took here:

OK - I have to stop this - there a lots more photos but this page is getting way too long~!
On to my own aquisitions - fiber hoard:
Wensleydale fiber from the sheep of the same name:

Green Wensleydale yarn, muted and slinkey, butterflies in assorted colors, white top.
From Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop, Cross Lanes Farm, Garriston, Leyburn, North Yorkshire
www.wensleydalelongwoolssheepshop.co.uk

Blueface Leicester tops "Chrysanthemum" and Handpainted shetland tops "Heather Heath" (with some greens as well as mauves ) from Phillippa Joad at Wheeldale Woolcrafts, Wayside, Sinnington, York
http://www.wheeldalecrafts.com.uk"

A trip to the North of England June 17 - 22 2011

2011-06-28T19:40:00.000+01:00

We went to Cumbria to partake of the Easycare Sheep breeders meeting - and dinner.
We traveled by ferry and had the luxury of fearlessly carrying all sorts of items in the car with us. A visit to a breeders farm followed an animated discussion along the lines of "where to next" with the breed. The discussion ended before any actual bodily harm was done and the dinner later that night was very amiable.
Then followed a succession of lovely trips across the "green and pleasant land" - dales, wolds, moors and of course, sheep, traveling west to east (Scarborough) and back to the ferry ar

Here's me with my white hair and big ass gazing on the lushness :).

The rockey coast at Scarborough - avoided the tackey part like the plague.

We entered villages and towns on the way, many with long histories and full of character, inland and on the coast:

Here be other half, observing a castle and knowing it's provenance and history - unlike me:

Yes, the weather was often dull - but I don't give a toss about that:

York city is a star - we stayed a while there and I'd have liked to stay longer (not so in Carlyle, where we stayed overnight so as to be fairly close to the ferry going back next afternoon - no siree). The cathedral oozed history and atmosphere.

I have to make a separate page for my "fibery" items - which of course had to be injected into the trip.

A right big=headed one in Durham:

Skills Swap Doolin June 2011

2011-06-28T19:10:00.000+01:00

Skills swap at Doolin -
This was a lovely day - but, stupidly, I didn't take any photos during the event :(.
Anyway, Karen's hospitality was excellent as was her food (especially that gorgeous pizza she made with crém fresh and potatoes etc). We were a group of very happy ladies doing fiber things - spinning - wheel and spindle - examining yarn and dye was set - cooked in the oven to be precise.
I did a bit of rigid heddle weaving but was a bit distracted by the interesting things going on around me.
Of particular importance to me was learning to ply-on-the-fly and use a Tahkli type spindle - and how to make a small, top-whorl spindle. Live demonstration beats internet lessons on several levels, such as ability to keep pace or interrupt and to see corrections done on the spot.
Karen will be returning to the US this year but we hope she makes many a return visit.
Thank you so much Karen!
Self and husband had to leave while others stayed on and we too a detour round the Burren on our way back:

Darn, the internet connection to Flickr is gone flat - will add another photo later - I hope.

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Dye day with Kathleen McCormick

2011-06-10T12:11:00.002+01:00

Recently attended a dye day at Kathleen McCormick's house. Kathleens weaves beautiful atmospheric baskets from her own brown willow and lovely rugs on her loom, often using her own hand-spun and hand dyed yarn. (www.wovenbykathleen.ie). The main objective of the day was to use different pro and post-mordants along with various natural dyes and see the modifying effects.

We had thought of using iron and a post-mordant to "sadden" the colors but omitted this as there were so many pots bubbeling away that there was no space left - any anyway, the colors we got were muted enough. Natural dyes tend to be gentler , more muted colors I think although the yellow I got last year from Buddlea was surprisingly bright and might have done well with some iron post-mordant.
I was delighted to see the effect of copper sulfate on onion skins and Woundwort (Stachys). Máire Ní Neachtain brought lots of onions skins and they made a lovely golden yellow on alum pro-mordented wool. Then the addition of copper sulfate yielded a nice light brown. Kathleen had harvested lots of Woundworth from hedgerows and waste grounds, boiled it, strained it and then added un-mordanted wool to the pot. Un-mordanted - yes!. After that, added copper sulfate yielded a soft, organis green. I really like this one too.
Rothholtz, a red bark dye, gave a unexpected deep maroon on my white alum-mordanted wool though more of a lighter red on others. I think mine had more alum attached as I had steeped it in alum before bringing it along as well as in the communal alum pot at the house.
Pre-mordanting with rhubarb did a good job too. This was perhaps my favorite new piece of information as I grow rhubarb and usually the hens get the leaves (apparently they don't suffer from the oxalic acid within) - but they get bored with them as there is so much to choose from at this time of year. They're not getting any next year!
Here are my little samples;

There was a blue dye too - which worked well on other people's yarn - giving a deep inky blue. I had Kathleen's specimen but it washed out, not sure why.

Third/ plaid cushion front completed

2011-06-10T11:49:00.001+01:00

I like the colors this - and the areas where the colors cross look like little tiny Brigid's crosses to me but it has a rather rough-feeling surfact - so not for a face pillow - good for the back or the rear end ;

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Heleanthum

2011-06-02T23:41:00.000+01:00

A very summery day today -
This Heleanthum seems happy in the toilet cistern - the pink Azalia beside it is making an appearance too.

A third cushion front woven

2011-06-02T18:15:00.000+01:00

This one is a bit too --- staid, so I'll leave some of the fringe exposed perhaps to keep it more hand-made.
Actually, it could not be more hand made - the wool is off my sheep and spun. Some dyed with indigo leaves from the garden, some with Buddlea (yellow) from a tree, some not dyed. The orangie-brown is from an alpaca that lives in Waterford. The back will not be hand made- it's cotton fabric I bought.

I think I have a plan to make it into another 16" X 16" cushion - out with the sewing machine.

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Two woven cushion fronts.

2011-05-25T14:49:00.001+01:00

I fancied using some of my hand-spun yarns to make colored cushion fronts. Made a selection from these:

For a weft-faced fabric, I didn't really care this time what the warp was composed of and since I had a big ball of commercial yarn, I decided to use that:

I warped the full width of the 7.5 dent heddle on the 20" AKL. I left 18" for draw-in and waste and 8 inches between the two fronts I planned to weave.

Some of the yarns were doubled to get a thicker weft.

I made cushion-cover backs using an oatmeal-colored linen blend fabric which I pre-washed. (It didn't shrink at all despite 40Deg C!).I pre-washed the two fronts when they were off the loom - and they didn't change either at 40 Deg C. So what was I pre-washing for? Just in case, I suppose.
I got reacquainted with my 1977 Kenmore sewing machine - and found it's long-lost instruction manual on the net - yeah! After 34 years' I'm going to machine sew button holes in something - have to do a project just so I can sew button holes. These cushions have snap fasteners with a button sewn on top. Sixteen-inch cushions inside.

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Ring Cushion

2011-05-01T18:44:00.000+01:00

I saw a Ring cushion in the supplement for Simply Knit magazine - the last issue before the much-vaunted Royal Wedding (royalty is toxic) - and thought I'd like to make one for my husbands niece's wedding in May.
Lindy suggested to knit a lace edge rather than surround it with factory lace - and I think she is right.

My attempts at embroidery were rather poor - but it was a reasonable attempt and it has found it's wat to the brides mother anyhow.

First-shear spinning

2011-04-26T18:20:00.003+01:00

My little ewe, just 1 year old now, who was too small for breeding last autumn, was kept on as a fleece sheep. I liked the feel of her locks. But with her half-heritage of Easy Care shedding sheep, she began to throw her coat before I got to it this April, so I set out to shear her before she shot the lot!
I selected about 1.5 lbs of her neck and back locks for spinning.

There is a sprinkling of short, very white kemp fibers (Easy Care hairs) in the fleece but it's pretty easy to identify and remove and it tends to hop out during spinning and plying. The vast majority are soft silky fibers. It's a pretty clean fleece, with virtually no VM and only mildly greasy so I spun it unwashed

The fibers were a bit too fine for my flick carder so these mini carders (which has a higher pin density) worked better:

As a first shear (obviously she was not shorn last year), her coat fibers are softer than the mature sheep 'though the locks are quite long - around 6 inches. Also, the tips are soft and best pulled off before processing:

The tips just pull off.

Lashed on but tips not pulled off yet.

Carding - just 2 passes.

Drawn off long-ways.

Ready for spinning

Its being spun on the Traveler, supported tw long draw. Ratio 9:1; 5 treadles out over 18 inches treadle one in - which only comes to 6(9)/18 or 3 twists per inch - a pretty low twist, but it hangs together and I want to keep it soft - plus it will be 2-plied which helps to strengthen it.

Mankey pinney and finger nails !!!

Blurry single on the bobbin.

Well, there's quite a long way to go but it's a nice job.

******

Lamb Gang 2011 and some Gortland roving.

2011-04-21T16:58:00.002+01:00

Experimenting with some Gortland sheep roving I've had for a while.

It's silvery-gray with white mixed in. Very silky coarser outer-type gray fibers and softer, shorter white and light gray fibers. It has a lovely feel/hand. Just spun a little - thicker and then thinner , plyed it once then knit a small swatch.
It's hard to decide whether to go for the slender shiny yarn and perhaps knit on larger needles for a "holy" fabric for a shawl or spin thicker and keep the softer bounce. Doing the latter would probably make a fairly hairy end fabric - but that might be OK on an outer-wear garment. I'm toying with the idea of spinning it thing and tight and then 3-plying it as I expect it would still become soft and blossom again after soaking the yarn.
Then it might rake an over-dye when finished...
Ah decisions ....
Some info on the Gortland breed:
http://www.sheepmagazine.com/issues/26/26-5/Martin_Dally.html

Spun it up anyway: -

On the Traveller: TW short long draw 12:1 over 1/2 inch.

2-plys at 9:1, 9 treadles out, one in.

Ended up with about 91 gms/ 3.2 oz of 2-ply, 12 wpi/sportweight.
It's an interesting yarn - fairly coarse yet silkey .
I saw an Raverly (www.ravelry.com) download pattern - "Treads " by Victoria Anne Baker which I think would work well with this yarn. It's for a pair of open-fingered gloves with a very interesting pattern at the wrist and knuckles.
Now I've written this here i just might got on and knit them.
*****

Lambs are loving the mild weather - going mad at sun-down as usual:
This year's Lamb Gang:

Chronophages

2011-04-18T16:15:00.000+01:00

CHRONOPHAGES.

Monday April 18 2011.

Saw a Chronophage on the TV. I't a time-eating clock, made and displayed by it's inventor.

Got me thinking about time-eaters – as I shoveled another spoonful of Oatabix Flakes into my gob.

Human babies are notorious chronophages – as are other mammal babies. Lambs, for example – and these guys:

Cheeky white out front.

Runner woven, now to give it finish.

2011-04-13T15:13:00.000+01:00

The PATR yarn is woven on the rigid heddle into a table runner 5 ft long and 11" wide, with a 9.5" fringe each end. I meant it to be longer but another pattern repeat would have brought me right up to the heddle itself so I had to finish it off at that length.
The hand-spun behaved well until the last 1/4 when one of the warps began to get shaved by the heddle so I changed to beating it with the weft stick, which seemed to work fine util I took it off and found ti made the cloth narrower. So I had to ease it sidewasy to widen that end while it was wet.

I showed it to Agnieszka (Ravelry's Jagienks ) and Lindy (Ravelry's Rosknit) and we thought it would be better to not twist or plat the ends. I might put some kind of binding round on groups of yarn tails about 1/2" from the ends.
How to soak/wash it with all thise ends? Well rubber bands were handy.:

So it got a soak

Drying. Pins to mark skips and little ends to weave in better:

Yesterday, Myself and Lindy had a great time learning spinning and seeing beautiful yarn and knits at Agnieszka's place.
Anyone wanting to learn to spin or other yarnie things would do well to book an hour or two to do the same.

Some weaving progress

2011-04-09T17:34:00.000+01:00

I'm happy with how this slub- and- noil hand-spun yarn is behaving on the rigid heddle loom.
I did the maths and made a plan to weave it into an 11" X 72" table runner, with a tweedy-plaid effect.

The different shades of yarn lined up for action behind the 8-dent heddle (which the yarn fits through :) ).

The warps in place:

About 1/3/ done:

I can use the heddle to beat the weft in without harming the warp. I wasn't sure this would work out but glad to say it did. Hopefully I'll remember to check my stash in Ravelry to see how that yarn came about.

Lambs 2011

2011-04-09T17:25:00.000+01:00

My little flock has almost completed lambing.
One of the first to lamb had triplets - she needs some peace and quite.

Some lambs take liberties:

Hopping up on mamma's back!
Some ewes are just like their mothers - this one is Divine's daughter - and like her, is fiercly protective of her lambs:

STAY AWAY FROM MY LAMBS!

Blackthorn all around

2011-04-09T17:13:00.000+01:00

Blackthorn seemed to "enjoy" the severe winter - or maybe it feared for it's life so decided to make lots of seeds to survive!

Huddie says - "It's handsome and thorney like me".

Rufus - my sore paw

2011-04-06T12:23:00.002+01:00

Rufus recovering from a mysterious injury to the sking on his right front leg - (Huddie??). Got shaved and stitiched up 3 weeks ago now ready to have the last stitchd removed:

He'll do anything to get to stay in the house.

Rosemary in the Loo; slubs and noils in a yarn - Pools Among The Rushes

2011-04-06T12:18:00.000+01:00

What to do with the toilet when it's been replaced by a newer model?
Plant a low-growing Rosemary bush in it :).

The multicolor batt, made from drum carding blue, green and yellow-green short fibers with noild sandwitched between un-dyed white fleece was spun into singles using supported long-draw at 12:1 using 8 out, 1 in over about 28 inches. It was plied with different solid color fleece spun at 12:1 over 1 inch using twist-assist short-draw . The batt sigles were spun with different solid colors making a bouncy 2-ply at 9 wpi except for one which was plied with brown and light green making a n 8 wpi 3-ply.

A day o remember, a day to forget

2011-03-28T16:42:00.001+01:00

Not much from me on this blog recently, perhaps because I've been preoccupied with Oisin, my beautiful collie. Diagnosed with cardimyopathy 9 months ago, he had 6 good months on treatment - including a visit to Scotland, two so-so months and this past month, failing daily until last night he reached a crisis. I called our vet, Triona first thing (I'm not too sure what time confused enough without the hour change) and very soon two lovely young women, veterinary nurses, came to the house and helped Oisin to rest. They were skilled and gentle and he put up no fight.
This day shows no sympathy, with it's magnificent clear, bright sun and the birds mock me with their chatter. But I am glad to have had the means to end his distress and lay him to rest.
My past twelve years seem to be lying covered in a blanket outside and close by, two singles, one set of twins and one set of triplets gambol about nearby. At least he saw the first of the lambs born and spent his last few days lying by their paddock.
So melancholy am I right now, I'm not sure I should be foisting this on anyone who might happen across it.
Huddie, his adopted brother, seemed bewildered by the change in circumstances. He has a hard act to follow.
The spinning wheel is a good friend at these times. I've plans to spin up these rolags, made from noily batts and ply with another green fiber. That and the lambs should keep me busy.

Shetland Shortie, Cabbage Rose, Unblocked

2011-03-09T11:29:00.001Z

Unblocked - I don't mean I've finally been able to write again, rather I've not wet or dampened the last two wollie things I've made and ironed or pinned them into shape.
The Shetland Shortie. Gudrun Johnston pattern uses Bird’s Eye Lace Pattern from Barbara Walker’s “A Treasury Of Knitting Patterns" to make a very useful little front-tie bolero and it suits my purpose well.

My "eyes" are a bit unruly as is the nature of the yarn I spun for it so perhaps I should block it to even things out.
I should have blocked the individual parts (5 of them) which comprise this lapel pin thing:

but, I made it mainly just to see how the thing worked. Based on Loretta's Starburst Pattern for a hotplate, and seen on Rosknit's Ravelry project page. Used my low-twist space dyed single hand spun wool and a 4 mm crochet hook. Unblocked, it comes out all floppy and like a cabbage rose. I needs support of a little card or plastic disc behind and a pin to wear as a lapel pin.
I'll probably relent and block the first on - but perhaps not the second one.

******

Sage hand spun

2011-02-24T17:38:00.000Z

A friend gave me dried flower heads labeld Rittersporn Buuten (thanks Lindy) - about 6 ounces. These are Larkspur and I found a site that lists the colors you can expect from different plants : http://www.pioneerthinking.com/naturaldyes.html. It indicates I should get a green if using the Alum mordant.

I mordanted 8 oz of fleece with Alum and simmered the Larkspur for 2 hours in water then cooled overnight.
I thought 6 oz dry weight would have coe from about 12- 18 oz of fresh flowers but I didn't know how much fiber it would dye. I gave a very dark liquid which when tested on white kitchen paper showed a faint light green.
I decided to add 4 oz of the fiber, simmered for an hour after which it seemed virtually unchanged :(. I left ot overnight and next day the fleece seemed barely dyed with a very light green hue.
After it dried it appeared a more definite green. When spun it looks like this:

A Sage green. At first I was disappointed as I thought I would get a dark green, then I was annoyed that I had put so much fiber in (perhaps 2 oz would have been better) but now it's growing on me, so to speak - and I've come to really like it's subtle gentle green.

Helebors and Woad Extra color yarn

2011-02-24T15:48:00.003Z

The four Heleborus plants are up and the 2 older ones are giving a good display while the new ones (from last year) seem to be coming on.

They like being under deciduous trees.
The "Fondant" fleece (dyed with the Woad leaves left over from Indigo dying) spun up into fairly interesting colored yarn:

Winter woad

2011-01-22T12:57:00.000Z

That woad "weed" is amazingly resilient. It has withstood the coldest days and nights here (-12 deg C at times) and continued to slowly grow.
It's not expected to give up any indigo dye from it's leaves past the end of summer so I thought to compost it. However, as I have several fleece lying about, I thought it worth having a bash at dying some if it with theses leaves - mainly to see what colors come from them other than indigo.

There was indeed some faint powdery blue left in the leaves, a creamy color and a sort of peachy-orange. It looks very light now but probably will e a bit more distinct when concentrated in the yarn. Planning on combining then some way. Not sure yet.

Some left-over "spring hedgerow" yarn made a reasonable pair of fingerless "Evangeline" gloves and a Waffle beanie:

*************************************8

A hank of twist assist and Rufus presents

2011-01-12T12:23:00.001Z

Finished 568 yards of 2-ply twist assist yarn, 24 - 26 wraps per inch, depending on how tightly it is wrapped on the inch measure. It is smoother and does not have the "drafting jag" that I'm inclined to produce when using either regular or over-twisted short draw.
It measured 583 yards before washing so shrank 2.6% - which would have to be taken into account if trying to spin a certain amount. I'm not keen on dying it as it feels so soft and has a dull luster which I was aiming for and dyes can have such harsh effects.
Attempt at photo on the mobile phone as the camera is on strike:

Red feline Rufus did his murderous job last night.
A mouse was found sitting on the dogs leash as it hung from a hook in the porch. It must have scampered up there to escape the predators living here. It jumped down into a basket of holly branches below and OH placed that outside so it wouldn't invade the house and giving it a chance of escape. But Rufus must have clocked this and next morning:

Poor little thing - but that's Rufus's job - and he does it so well without poisoning the whole place and shares it with us too.

A close up of assisted twist short longdraw

2010-12-28T17:12:00.001Z

OH available so got him to vid the fingers while I tried to spin the assisted twist.
A bit better than the youtube one I made when that I tried to video myself.
The ratio is 12:1 over 1/2 inch - so 24 twists per ince.

This single turned out at 36 wraps per inch. It's pretty robust but still fairly soft. If it works out well as a 2-plied lace yarn (for knitting) I might prefere it to the other ways I;ve tried for that type of yarn.
Snow all melted away Sunday night with the rain. Now all is mostly green again and the sheep are lying about ruminating.

*************

Frozen December

2010-12-21T16:22:00.000Z

The cold has taken hold at last. House cold despite heating on and a frozen water pipe.
Time to wear woolens indoors as well as outdoors

It's got to the fleece and spinning tools too.
Have to put the current washed fleece in the hot press and the metal combs on the radiator to try to warm them. Combing or spinning with cold materials not a nice experience - the fiber just stays stuck together and then suddenly releases itself in a clump. No good at all!
Wish I could light a decent fire like OH. Mostly my efforts result in dwindling flame that then goes out having used up a the fire- lighters. In fact, the only ting I seem to burn is the fire-lighter so better to wait for OH to come and warm the place up. Plenty of warm drinks though and fleece lined boots. Typing this is fingerless mittens of course.

Oh wait - the sun is out - looks beautiful - must go out!

Assisted twist short long-draw.

2010-12-16T16:46:00.006Z

Just a note-to-self on how I'm spinning some of my sheep's longer fibers after combing them.
I want to make thinner singles and then ply for lace knitting.
I find that rather than drafting the fibers out as usual for short-draw where you pinch off the draft until the amount required is presented for twisting, opening them to the twist while my drafting hand twists them clockwise (for Z spin) gives me a smoother and rounder thin single. "Short long-draw" because obviously I'm drafting only about 1/2 inch at a time but it's long-draw in character as the twist gets to it between drafts. "Assisted" as I'm twisting the fibers out in the direction they will be spun
Oh, and the other hand spreads the fibers into a triangle so they wrap round each other easily but not tightly.

Catherine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRNcAr1lwIg

Cold but not hungry!

2010-12-12T17:17:00.004Z

Decided to use some scraps of yarn in white, red and green to make little festive jumpers - pot wraps - for three small patio roses. These are the remains of an patio rose I bought in the autumn - fully knowing it wouldn't last forever - but it flowered for a month. Not bad. When I found it was made of three smaller plants, I potted them up and stood them in the porch - more in hope than expectation. The porch has been like a refrigerator and indeed is functioning as one with food stored out there.
They actually put out fresh leaves despite the conditions and I felt they deserved a reward for bravery.

After I made the first one, I found Rufus, the feline red devil, eating their leaves!

Get off them you rotten, ungrateful, thieving, soft, affectionate, smart, brave, mouser supreme... ah heck what's a few leaves anyway?

A windfall!
A poor young pheasant must have mistaken the white gable end of our house for the snowy sky and knocked himself out against it. They don't usually come this close to our house but perhaps the cold drove him to try and steal from the hens nearby. He may have left in haste as the white hen is no pushover (recall that she scalped the red one when it first arrived) and Huddie (canine red devil) often hides in the hedge and would roust any bird.
Here he is lying in a pear trtee - not a partridge but probably what a partridge would look like in ta pesr tree on the first day of Christmas:(the faint hearted may avert):

He was hung inside a pilliwcase, head up in the garage for 2 weeks (very cold so I guessed he'd need that long)
He did not go to waste (I come from a long line of omnivores) :
After plucking by me, he weighed just under 2 lbs:

After roasting (170 C in fan oven for an hour an 10 minutes, chest covered in foil for an hour, buttered thighs and basted, tray under rack to catch juices):

A tsp of cornflour made into a paste with red win, cooked and more rd wine added then strained juices.A really rich gravy.
Really great! Thank you pheasant!

A little knitted Christmas Bunting:

Time for the full mitt. !

2010-12-03T15:20:00.003Z

Too cold for fingerless gloves - except in the house:

This one has a flip top and flip thumb but still not enough,
Time for the full mittins knit with yarn spun from the longer, thicker fleece - fluffy and airy-fairy won't hack it now.
Helix pattern:

The Alpaca and doggie-down scarf is no longer an ornament - it's a working scarf for sure now.

The hens are confined to their house now as they can't deal with the snow.
They had taken to sleeping in the branches aove their house all summer and autumn:

When they awoke on Tuesday to 8 inches of snow beneath them, they refused to come down, despite coaxing with food. Had to get the ladder to dislodge them.
The sheep need feeding twice a day as their forage is covered up - they seem OK but I worry about the youngest ones as the older ones, especially the young ram, Yobo, push them away from the feed.
The dogs - well they just love it. Makes me shiver to see Huddie lying about in the snow. Comes from having a mad metabolism.

***************

A bit of a tangle - spinning lace weight wool

2010-11-19T20:22:00.002Z

Lace weight yarn - more than 18 wraps/inch perhaps. That's just a few strands of my woolie cross fleece - maybe 60 - per draft (if my wobbely maths is right). Anyway, tried to maintain that with 1 1/3 ounces of the combed fleece, spinning it at 12 twists per inch. All seemed reasonably well and the the resultant single was wound on the skein winder.
I thought I was being very fastidious, tying it off at intervals every 50 turns in one spot on the skein and just doing 3 figure-of-eights elsewhere. The overly curly mass got a wash and rinse and put back on the skein winder to stretch and dry overnight.
It did this - bone dry next day.
Then the fun started - winding it onto the ball winder! Grrr.

Not fastidious enough by a long shot!. The slender little threads seemed to have migrated east and west every chance they got.
I don't mind a few breaks at this point (better now than when using the yarn) but ended up with 2 balls and 6 knots in each.

A charming but malevolent pair, about 570 yards of 27-ish wpi yarn:

Mysteriously, the combed top weighed 1.3 oz, yet the spun yarn weighed 1.4 oz , despite some thinner bits being removed.
Seems one hour of cursing and swearing weighs 0.1 oz?

*************************************

November blows in

2010-11-02T18:23:00.002Z

The Trellis and Rose stole dried to my liking:

Now another lace knit is "on the rack":

Sure looks like it's i a torture chamber stretched out with all those pegs!

The indigo with red after wash over-dye is spinning up fairly well - I'm alternating the purplish parts with the more shocking pink so it is striped. Might ply it with a dark green single.

Bad photo - but might remind me later how the yarn came about . There's quite a few mysterious balls and hanks lying about now.

Rose and Trellis stole and more fleece dyed

2010-10-22T17:53:00.004+01:00

Attracted by a pattern for a Rose and Trellis pattern stole/shawl in "Lavish Lace", I knit something similar - with some variation as I'm using my hand processed and spun yarn and added a lace border each end. I used the yarn in it's natural color and dyed it red when finished. It's just stretched out now, still a bit damp, pinned to a towel on a sweater rack in the porch on this cold wet day. Can't complain though as had some of the most gorgeous weather recently but the warm red wollie is nice to see on such a dull day as this anyway.
However did manage to corral Owen, the ram, to investigate the blood streak on his forehead, put there by his not-so-loving son - well it is tup time and they don't get their jollies until November first. He seems fit and well despite the scars. Phew!

My latest attempt at dying with Japanese Indigo was a flop - big harvest of leaves, seemed to have lots of dye in the pot but the fleece didn't take it up and only partly dyed. So tossed it into the after wash left in the pot after dying the stole/scarf/shawl - (must look up definitions of these things) - and it came out quite interesting:
Looking forward to seeing how it looks after combing - and spinning of course.

Hope to have a dry stole/scarf/wrap.... to try on tomorrow.

*************************************************************************....
Definitions from Merriam-Webster Dictionary
"Stole
1
: a long loose garment : robe .... MAW!
2
: an ecclesiastical vestment consisting of a long usually silk band worn traditionally around the neck by bishops and priests and over the left shoulder by deacons ,,,,,,,,,,YIKES!
3
: a long wide scarf or similar covering worn by women usually across the shoulders
Origin of STOLE

Middle English, from Old English, from Latin stola, from Greek stolē equipment, robe, from stellein to set up, make ready
First Known Use: before 12th century"
1scarf noun \ˈskärf\

Definition of SCARF

1
: either of the chamfered or cutaway ends that fit together to form a scarf joint...NAW??
2
: an in-line joint made by chamfering, halving, or notching two pieces to correspond and lapping them
Illustration of SCARF...WHAAA??

Origin of SCARF
Middle English skarf, probably from Old Norse skarfr butt end of a plank
First Known Use: 15th century

Definition of SHAWL

: a square or oblong usually fabric garment or wrapper used especially as a covering for the head or shoulders
Origin of SHAWL

Persian shāl
First Known Use: 1662 - ...WELL AT LEAST THIS ONE SOUNDS FAMILIAR
***********************************************************************.......

Busy, busy... yawn

2010-10-14T14:51:00.003+01:00

Engaged in spinning a large quantity of black Merino roving.
Bought this because I wanted a softer yarn for around the edges of a blanket I may someday put together (lots of squares, crochet and knit) and also because I wanted a good dense black - and my attempts at black dying on my own fleece have be a bit scrappy with grey bits scattered throughout.

Thing is, there is a lot of it and it lies there - dead. No fight-back as with my own ornery sheep's fleece, no neps, no tangles, no slubs - just plain, straightforward worsted style spinning. It's just what a perfectionist or production spinner wants. Seems I'm not one of those - Is it possible to fall asleep at the wheel?

Anyway - Red dying cheers a person up when it's cold outside.
KoolAid Strawberry came out nicer than I thought it would when I tried one ounce of this years Easy CareXWoolie cross first shear and one packet in the microwave: - it's on the left.
The Landscape Salmon Gum worried me when I tried it inn the microwave - 2.5 tsp for 1 oz - there was a lot of unused dye left even though it appeared well reddened (which cold just it mean it needed less dye powder) and it got about 10 mins high and 15 mins at 30% yet it just kept gently bleeding a very faint red every time I rinsed it - never got completely clear water after rinsing it so i was suspicious it would either fade or bleed later in life. So, back to the pot and stove with it and then I got a clear rinse. It's a deep red like I want for some Christmassey stuff. (middle and right of photo).
Wonder do other have success with microwave and Landscape dyes? Perhpas a query to the dye group on ravely would tell but if it's going to take just as long - well might as well use the stove.
More Buddlia yellow roving being combed (can't really say "Top" as I can't assert all the fibers are aligned just right):

About dogs:
Got an email that one of Oiisn's buddies from NY had passed - Curley, a big black dog - one of the "Blackdogs" that live in Upstate NY with my friend Penny. Curley was of an age with Oisin (he's 12 years old) and they both ran around dog agility courses in all sorts of rural places up there. Both got bad backs as did their owners. Does make for sadness but shear self-indulgence not allowed! Oisin still with us 'though on heart tablets. As long as he's happy I'll continue to sneak in the pills in his grub.
Huddie, aged nine - well as the song said "Still crazy after all these years".
****************************************************************************

September/october catch up

2010-10-05T23:46:00.004+01:00

Annoying the way life gets in the way of yarn projects! However lots of wool and knit stuff went on regardless - perhaps a little guiltily.
Got some photos to remind me of some of the end of summer and early autumn projects and plonked them here.
The garden has been pretty busy this year too so plonked some photos of that below too.
Surprised cat crochet bag:

Neck warmer - my hand spun yarn dyed with Japanese Indigo leaves. The light orange bit is dyed with the Canadian version of Kool Aid

More J. Indigo leaf dyed hand spun:

700 plus yards of lace weight hand spun dyed with Kool Aid Grape; Hoping to knit a lacy scarf from "Victorian Lace Today" by Jane Sowerby on loan from Lindy.

The second self-striping sock got finished - good thing too as the boiler broke down;

The hand spun stash is gretting out of control. A little of it:
, , etc...

But more on the way -
some Buddlia dyed 2 ply hand spun :

A little weaving:

Lace knitting based on a pattern in "Luscious lace":

Plan to dye this red (using Landscape dye "Salmon") when and if completed

When it gets cold and dark and frosty, these photos may remind me that it all grows back again:
The roadside hedge in berry and leaf:

Gigantic mushroom in the field:

A few spuds:

The trees graced us with a few apples this year:

Can't show the rhubarb as it all went down the red land:

A few goosegobs still in the freezer and quite a lotof blackcurrents too

The hens continue to be very productive and have sorted their differences:

They've taken to sleeping side by side among the branches of a tree above their hen house. The hen house roof has become a manure heap.

Huddie says "So what - can't get a tooth on either of them"

Enough, enough!!!

This summer 2010

2010-08-30T13:28:00.002+01:00

Nearly September - must review the things that went on during this summer. It was quite a good one really.
There was the spinning, dying and knitting of a jumper - Aline - which I'm quite happy with.
Raising and trying woad and Japanese indigo - growing the plants went fine but I have not cracked the dying yet. Gotta keep trying - good thing these are cut-and-come-again plants!
A visit to Wales had to be canceled as a family member - and then one of the dogs - became ill - both better now I'm pleased to say. Maybe next year for woolfest there.
A finished a hat and mittens set - Choppy Waters - in shades of blue then added a pair of plain blue fingerless gloves.
Wove a strip of fabric - supposed to be a runner but I needed a letter holder, - it's now a letter holder.
A visit to Scotland - first to the Ravelry weekend at Stirling then to Inverness and round about was really lovely - especially as the weather was gorgeous.
Recently, following the info given in Spin Off magazine on making self-striping socks and knitting socks to any size, I had a great time making excessively colorful sock yarn and have knitted one so far. If the next winter turns out like the last one, these socks will get lots of wear.
A visit to Galway this weekend (28th) was great too - Mairead gave an excellent account of the production of clothing mainly from wool on the Aran island - mainly Inis Mean I think - in Galway museum as part of heritage week. I then went on to Leenane to the Sheep and Wool center and was delighted to see a Great Wheel put to work.
There's been good eating from the garden - gooseberries, black currents, rhubarb, spuds, salad, herbs, eggs, lamb...
Well that's some of it and I think each bit needs it's own space or this will be a big long sausage of a page with photos.

Self-striping socks

2010-08-29T23:46:00.002+01:00

A system based on Paula Egbert's "Dying for Socks"and "Socks at Any Size and Any Gauge" in Spin Off magazine's "Spin Your Socks".

Scotland and Ravelry weekend

2010-08-29T23:35:00.005+01:00

A few reminders of the Ravelry weekend at Stirling.:

I've no photos of the Market place which was great nor the classes I attended - which is a pity as they all deserved one.

I love this place!

Aline jumper

2010-08-29T23:24:00.006+01:00

Hand-spun single dyed faintly and spottily with fresh woad - later over dyed with purple and red.

Aline jumper:

(Based on Sian Brown's pattern in "Knitting" magazine June 2010, Issue 77)

Fine weather, garden, hens and blue yarn

2010-06-25T00:43:00.007+01:00

Warm - hot even- weather for the last 3 weeks and practically no rain- has plants flowering and reaching out to grow but getting very thirsty so a lot of watering had to be done. The bit of rain promised did not really hit us at all while near by areas got a fair share of moisture.

Glad to say the red hen has healed up after her assault bu Atilla the hen and grown a new comb. They are now buddies and seem inseparable. Atilla laid down some rules on the last introduction - she immediately went into the red's house and laid her white egg in the hay there - couldn't be a clearer signal than that :). Red hen continues to be submissive but there have been no attacks in the past 2 weeks - just a brown and a white egg side by side in the nest. Huddie ASBO dog has taken to sleeping in the garden all night so hopefully the fox won't remove my now harmonious pair.

Seeds for woad, madder and Japanese Indigo grew to a greater or lesser extent. Might get some of the woad for dying in mid July.
WOAD

JAPANESE INDIGO

THERE'S MADDER IN THERE SOMEWHERE

After the constraints of spinning even stable singles, it was nice to do some blue woolen and even nicer to spin up some colored noiley stuff for a textured yarn - all fuzzy lumps and bumps. This little lot will probably be woven together - plans are made - maths is done, balls are wound - warp tomorrow - then I'll find out what went wrong with the maths.

Singles warp and more bread - and zeitgeist

2010-06-03T19:52:00.003+01:00

The singles warp experiment went ahead with mixed results and much learning:

I made a big boo-boo!! I beat way too hard on the woolie singles warp but this only dawned on me after I'd already broken several warps! I was inclined to label it a total failure by then - but for how nice the weft felt - just like I'd planned it! So I forged on with the help of patches and pins and finally got there - or therabouts. I actually love the thing despite all it's obvious flaws. I'd decided to go right ahead and warp another one - this time being very careful about the beating and having a better knowledge of how it's supposed to look and what the pattern stick does etc.
Then the zeitgeist thing happened - my copy of Sin.Off 2010 arrived this morning and here it has an article on singles used as warp entitles "Singles as warp? Yes, you can" by Linda Ligon. Well thanks for telling me :). But seriously, the tips she gives very much correlate with my just-past experience. Didn't think of using sizing - 'though perhaps that's only necessary for fairly fuzzy stiff.
So, with the approval of the universe, I'll warp another one soon.

More sourdough bread - I love this stuff:

Must go water the poor thirsty plants.

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Rooing wool, bread and hen update

2010-05-21T16:46:00.012+01:00

As the weather has been very close (humid) this past week or so I've had to get on with shearing the few woolie sheep I have left. They are first-cross, in this case a cross between commercial woolie sheep and an Easy Care shedding ram. They all have their mothers fleece but one it seems is shedding after the first cross (which can happen).This causes a bit of a conundrum as one of the PB Easy Care hoggets sheds later like her mother not finishing shedding until June so that now, in May both she and the woolie cross are both at about the same stage - an look almost identical!!

I did anticipate this an put some blue dye on the head of the woolie one and a short bout of rain immediately all but washed it off. Her twins are quite distinctive though - being the only ones with evident color so I think I'm on safe ground classifying her a first cross. Anxt does set in though and I'll watch the later shedder carefully to make sure she IS the pure bred.

So, keen to protect this valuable mother from fly strike (she has two lambs depending on her) I tied her up for shearing. What I found was that instead of shearing her I had a better time rooing her. Rooing is pulling this years fleece growth off without cutting and leaving just the guard hairs in place.
The nasty leg/rump stuff fulled off easily and added to the mound of daggs in a big bag while along her shoulders back and sides the longer better locks were saved - about 300 grams if it. She became restless for her lambs before I'd pulled off all the side parts so I let her off to finish the process in the field by herself. Her rump, belly and neck are all quite clean

Shetland sheep may roo too so I had a look for info on that and found it on:
http://www.shetlandsheepinfo.com/FLEECE/rooing.htm
This links to some photos of the process too.
I can't add any at present as the camera is otherwise engaged.

This fleece has medium type fibers. I collected some previously from the field - higgeldy-piggeldy - to see if I could spin it. Well of course I could - it's hard to find stuff that won't spin but the yarn produced varied. The stuff I collected early in the year from barbed wire etc was longer and softer and made a small amount of pretty nice 2-ply yarn. The stuff I picked up later was more mixed, some of it very short indeed and some with more guard hairs - probable reflecting it's variable sources - mixtures of older and younger sheep, different parts of the body and some of the rams stuff mixed in too. This had to be hand-carded and spun long-draw really and it made a thinner, coarser 2-ply - but still quite usable . I'm currently knitting a sample - just a little scarf in it's natural color.
Hope to get some photos of these samples to remind me.

Bread
After Anna Browne's bread lessons last Tuesday in Mullingar I've baked (and almost completely eaten) one very nice sourdough round and one no-knead round which is underdone in the mid-to-lower regions and overdone on top (but still almost completely eaten :0 ). I had some assistance with the eating from husband but the eating,like the baking was almost all my own work too :).

Discussion next week with Anna about how to tame my oven to improve the no-knead.

Atilla the hen struck again last month.
I tried to slowly introduce the red hen to her domain bringing with her veggie and other food treats. It seemed to be working so I prolonged the coupling a little more each time. Things seemed to be setting down between them until I left them together for over 20 minutes whereupon I saw Atilla sharpening her beak on the chickwire and scraping her nails in the dirt and before I could react, she'd taken a whack out of red hen's scalp again! Out with the bandage and antiseptic again - Grr. I suppose I'll have to give up the idea of them sharing one nice big open space. They have to stay in their respective runs. The last thing Atilla did after I removed red was to pick up a small red feather in her beak and slowly consume it in front of me!!
Fortunately red is healed up again and is growing steadily so maybe, one day she'll be ready to take on Atilla who by the way does produce an egg or 2 (yes, two) 2 out of 3 days, so she has her good points too.
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Spun single experiment - details

2010-05-15T20:51:00.003+01:00

Frekkie 09 fleece is made of longer (6") fibers, with shorter fibers (3" or less) round the base. It's composed of medium sized fibers (maybe 25 microns average I guess) and pretty white. It's crimp varies but approximate 8 waves per inch (roughly). The individual fibers are rather silky but if spun haphazardly would be prickly.
So - I set about making a system to prepare it so I would end up with two different types of yarn - a worsted spun single that is: thin (fingering or less), doesn't split, strong, has a firm, strong core with a soft outer part, not too scratchy, even - for use on my rigid loom or for lace knitting and a second, softer thicker 2-ply for knitting or as weft on the loom.

SO, I figured both mechanical and chemical manipulation might needed - to make a silk purse out of this sows ear, so to speak.
First step (with the previously washed fleece) was to comb locks to separate the long fibers from the shorter. Combed long fibers were drawn into long strips and coiled for worsted spinning, the short left-over fibers were ut on the drum carder and made into light, open batts.
The worsted spinning was done on the wheel - spinning ratio 12:1 over 1", S direction - this gave a very over-twisted yarn at about 16 wpi. This curly-wurly single was hanked, tied figure-of-eight in 4 places, washed in washing up liquid, conditioned with a little Panten hair conditioner then snapped while wet, then dried on the swift. When dry (next day) it was spun off the swift to the wheel, Z direction, making sure the fiber ran over the edge of the orifice and to add extra untwist to the sections that were over twisted. THEN, it was hanked back again to the swift, tied off as before and soaked in a little warm water and conditioner again. This last effort left to dry and it gave me a nice 18 wpi single without much bias apparently. I'll check for this with swatches later. I now have over 1,700 yards of the stuff.

The short carded stuff was spun soft on the Turkish spindle then plied from the center-pull ball making a chunky white - marshmallow type yarn.

Sacrificed evenness for squishyness!

Sin é go fóil.

I still have more fleece (Frekkie is a generous gal) and I'll probably 2-ply this in a more usual way.
Before embarking on these manipulation, I thought "are you a lunatic?". But then I read several accounts of how people had managed to create yarn from all sorts of unlikely sources such as - well hemp for example and several other plants/weeds and thought "it they can go to all that trouble to get yarn from these difficult sources, why not make the effort with your abundant much-maligned, inferior sheep fleece?
Well so far I'm quite pleased with the result.
BUT - I forgot about the water GRRR. The water here is hard and full of iron. I'm coming to the conclusion this is not so great for wool - I should have used the rainwater from the barrel - ya big twit!
Next time (that's assuming the rain barrel has enough - it's been very low lately.

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Sunsets are back :)

2010-05-14T22:55:00.001+01:00

Welcome back sunsets!

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Mid May - Where did April Go?

2010-05-14T19:44:00.005+01:00

Maybe the less said about April 10 the better. The year of the rotten lambing! Attacks from crows (they deserve the collective - "a murder of crows"!), accidental death, mismothering, poor grass etc, etc. Having said that, the Anglsey Easies were indeed easy with very good performance despite all the adversity - that is until this week when one precocious lamb started leading the flock through gaps in the hedgerow into the neighbors field, gaps that appeared as the weeks and other wild stuff didn't materialise - largely due to the dryness (yes, dryness) of the soil generally.
Some plants died (a constantly flowering Wallflower bush for one) while others benefited - so few slugs and snails that the Hostas are having a holiday.
The raw Alpaca fleece arrived finally due to the good will of Irene, Mary and Joan but it it a daunting project indeed, even more so than last year:

But some progress is made:

And:

This accounts for about 1/2 the usable stuff (a lot is going into the waste) - the rest hangs there waiting.
One good thing - it seems less smelly and dusty this time which is good as I recently had an allergic sking reaction to lamb's pee pee - the little devil relieved herself while I was carrying her across my chest. I suppose this is a form of ammonical dermatitis - aka nappy rash. It's gone now I'm glad to say.

My Falling Leaves shawl returned along with the Alpaca and I was finally able to add a picot edge to the neck and front sides. It works well 'though the photos are not great (as usual :).
:

Rocket flower yarn is back in action as I decided to make the Miss Potter fingerless gloves with it (the rest of this yarn went to a shawl and a scarf). Decided to make them 2-ply so had to run the single back through the wheel - S wise - then ply Z wise;

Only one done so far.

Meanwhile, continue to spin Frekkie 09 fleece - worsted single from the long part and fat 2-ply from the short stuff. Got about 1,600 yards of the worsted, much less of the woolen so far - probably for a woven project - but not sure yet.

Anyway - more stuff later if I get a chance.

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Rustic wall hanging, new animals

2010-03-20T20:04:00.005Z

Wove this with single hand spun yarn for the warp and it punished me as expected, with breaks and sags - but it rewarded with it's softness and pliability - and it is more regular in shape than I deserve.
The colors in the top image are truest to how it looks. It's a very rustic flower not smooth and well finished looking like the one in Betty Linn Davenport’s book, “Rigid Heddle Weaving”, a transparency Inlay project - but it does feel nice.
I've found a spot for it in the hall.

Now, new animal arrivals :

Here's the persian-style ginger cat who showed up in February - stuck up a tree in the garden . He's taken up residence in the garage - so no more rodent problems there - YES!

Here's a hen with a headache - she was attaceked upon arrival by the mature white loghorn and virtually scalped!
She's done well since in the porch with bandages and a bit of TLC@

Strawberry moose, Woven tote, February already!

2010-02-08T16:56:00.004Z

Remarkable stretch in the day and getting time for ewes to come close to the house in case they lamb early. Some have that "saddle-bag" look all right so the ram seems to have got one or two in early (the devil!). Shouldn't be due until April.
Trying out a Turkish Spindle. Seemed like a good idea as the Ball winder is involved with another yarn (using the light-weight top whorl cutie) and the spinning wheel has boring red stuff on it.
Took me a little while to get the idea of spinning with this new one and wrapping the spun yarn around the cross-pieces but I do like it. It's fairly heavy (anout 70 gms/2.5 oz) which is moderately heavy in spindle world but of course it gets heavier as the ball on the end increases. This is not a problem as I've made fairly tight, longitudinal rolags on the hand carders for this Strawberry Moose yarn and it does not pull apart too easily;

Used most of Soft Steel alpaca/wool blend I had left over to weave some cloth which turned into a tote bag.
On the knitters loom complete with T-towel:

Planning to twist the finge as it's a bit too shaggy:

Has a little pocket inside

Not lined, perhaps it should be.
This yarn was the easiest of the three I've woven so far. It's very strong, has bounce (that'll be the wool) but also drapes (that'll be the alpaca) and didn't object to being beaten.
Interestingly, this is a thick 2-ply about 7 - 8 WPI - definitely bulky and ot suited the 7.5 dpi heddle better than the ones I deliberately spun to be 14 WPI and so, in theory, better suited to that heddle. No avoiding the swatch then!

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"Disgusted" of Westmeath

2010-01-21T19:49:00.005Z

Well!
In the tradition of the letter to the editor and later, email to the British Broadcasting Company - I must declare myself as "disgusted of Westmeath".
Having completed several boring chores today, I rewarded myself by having lunch while knitting and watching an episode of "Doctors" on BBC1 TV.
What an affront to the wooly community that was!! Every cliché available concerning our yarnies was wheeled out!
The plot itself is too complicated to go into here (in the crazed tradition of daytime soaps I might add). However, it hinges upon a hand-knit scarf which is described as "horrible" by one of the regulars of the show, turns out to be knit by one of a brother and sister team of mentally defectives who are capable of massive self delusion and cruelty, not to mention nastily eccentric dress sense. The investigation leads to the source of the wool yarn - a repressed cranky old dame behind the counter of her stuffy little yarn store - they stopped just short of giving her a bun - and haven't they seen The Yarn Room and This I Knit and such like?? No nasty old hags in those breezy premises full of imagination and promise. Anyway, the bespectacled old bag identified the breed of sheep which gave rise to the wool (Karakul or some such) and comments on the luster of the fibers but notes the color is not quite good enough (did it come from my stash I wonder?). This expertise is met with a rather impatient dismissiveness by the investigating officer - who is eventually given the vital information required to solve the case (but not without the screen writer giving her a few lines to indicate what an out-of-touch old twit she is).
So there you have it.
We have an image problem, we yarnies - not helped by the BBC I might add.
Signed,
Disgusted
Westmeath
Ireland

Creative changes

2010-01-19T18:07:00.002Z

There seems to be a pattern for me - imagine making some item, get real enthusiastic abut it, spin materials etc., make it - and feel quite ahppy with how it is emerging - then finish it and .... well first it looks fairly good to me, then i start seeing the flaws - technical defects as well as not living up to the original idea - then dislike - nay, loathing!. It sits somewhere for a while and I come upon it - this time with no particular expectations - and actually like it again!
That's what happened with the woven runner of previous post - so much so that I awarded it the 2 red hand-painted buttons Jen gave me this Christmas - to look a bit like this:

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Table Runner

2010-01-10T16:50:00.005Z

Dopey's wool, dyed "Mist" and spun worsted on the wheel and lumpy-bumpy on the drop-spindle, some dyed "Tropical Punch" and spun worsted on the wheel.

I origionallly thought I'd make a smooth "professionsl looking" runner but just couldn't stop myself making it irregular and textured. Not sure why - might have looks better smooth and even but - that just seemed boreing so I had to add in the irregular stuff.

Perhaps it looks more like a scarf or wrap than a runner - but...

Anyway, I learned a lot from it. My worsted spun does work as a warp - good! I could have made it a bit thicker though for the 7.5 dent heddle I have (it's about 16 wpi while it could have been better at 14 wpi). I learned how to make a float using Betty Anne Davenport's book "Rigid Heddle Weaving" that I got as a Christmas present (thanks Jen!) and from the same book, the value of starting and ending the weaving with a few rows of scrap yarn - among other things.
I haven't soaked it, just pressed it lightly - probably should soak it and dry it blocked. Yes, will do that
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Squeaky wheel, silent wheel

2010-01-06T11:20:00.002Z

The Traveler complained a lot recently - squeaking every time I treadled the left treadle. This, despite all the oiling. Eventually I turned her up and there was the culprit, the hinges. These were oiled and violá! squeak gone -

- only to e replaced byt a rattle from the mother-of-all. This turned out to be due to a loose drive band so out with the lighter and shorten the band.
Sweet silent spinning.

Dopey 09, Black Cherry spun at 12:1 over 1".
The color is not good (too dull and spotty) so this will have to be overdyed with a brighter red.

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Dopey's Mist yarn

2010-01-04T19:06:00.006Z

Over December, I've been processing and spinning Dopey's (wether) fleece.
I've a yen for light gray with a red accent so I dyed some with Landscape "Mist" - which is now spun and with Kool Aid "Black Cherry" - below, not yet processed.

The woolen spinning was done with the softer fibers carded and ended up as 3-ply:
A hank drying:

A Hank twisted:

A knitted swatch - from 7 - 5 mm needles :

The vital statistics: 321 gms, 371 meters, 8 - 10 , modal ave 9 wpi, 3-ply.
Singles spun at 5.5:1, with 10 treadles out to 22 inches and 2 in then pyled at 5.5:1.
Very bouncy!
The coarser, longer fibers were combed (but not in tip to bottom order therefore it is semi-worsted). The wheel spun at 12:1 over 1" for this and plied at 9:1 over 1".

It's vital statistics are: 2-ply, 289 meters, 129 gms, approx 12 wpi. Very strong but light.
Suitable for my 30/10 heddle.
The left=overs from the combing are being spun on a spindle to make lumpy-bumpy textured yarn. Real nice to do after the discipline of the woolen and worsted.

An assortment form the same fleece:

The amount of shrinkage after washing the hanks was remarkably consistent - the niddy-noddy winds 1.8 meters and in each of 10 hanks, woolen, worsted or lumpy-bumpy, it was down to 1.68 meters after finishing and drying. The good thing is that if it is knit or woven without undue tension, it will not shrink further when made up.
The misty grey is a little nicer in real life and it should be good when the red is combined in a weave of knit - all I have to do is process the red stuff now. Here we go again!

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Wreath

2009-12-17T17:39:00.002Z

Scrap of bushes this time!
After pruning all round these last dry crisp days. I found the cuttings from that common garden work-horse shrub, Spirea, long and bendy forming the woody basis of a wreath quite easily. I didn't set out to do this but it just seems to transpire, especially since I'd ripped out the dead stems from crocosmia and these make great binders wrapped round the bent wood. (Wonder could I spin them?). The Bay tree had got way too big for it's boots - a harsh frost would burn it's top peeping over a sheltering conifer - so that got incorporated as did an ewe branch and several clippings from variagated Euonymus.
The result:

Of course, Oisin had to get in on the act!

Scraps hat

2009-12-15T13:25:00.005Z

Last year's November was frozen feet month, this year's December was frozen head month so when I saw "Tahoe Hat" by Jill Smith-Mott in Spin.off Winter 2009, and seeing all the little balls of my dyed hand spun all over the place, I thought I'd combine some of them to toast my head. The mag.'s hat is one of those dinner-plate shaped ones which I find a bit tricky to get a to fit snugly so I went for the dome shape instead.

Oisin Investigates!

As worn by a jar of wolly bits.

I'm quite well disposed to this as it was roasting while out at night in the recent frost.

Alpa=Silk scarf

2009-12-15T11:39:00.002Z

Taking some of the alpaca-silk blended and spinning a thin single then 2-ply it then cable-ply the 2-plyd strands together gave a soft medium weight yarn. It doesn't come over as a cabled yarn - i.e. with that twisted cable look and feel - it's too soft for that I suppose. But it gave it enough bulk to do Stormy Rectangle Scarf, a free pattern from Classic Elite Yarns , to make a scarf for my son. It looked like a simple pattern - just series of knit or purl stitched arranged in groups to make the basket-weave type pattern but for some reason, I defeated me several times. Don't know why that is - it just kept "wrong footing" me in some way so I have to write down every row I was on despite the nice little chart as well as worded instructions in the pattern.
It's a ltlle bit - scratchy os too harsh a word, but it's less silky than I thought it would be but it's tolerable and very soft and nice to stroke. It must be very warm.

Hope Mark likes it .

Knit ted complete

2009-12-15T11:29:00.003Z

KnitTed has eyes - acquired at out KnitTea knitting group Wednesday last. Just couldn't stand the yarn in his red and white scarf - too synthethicy - I've become a yarn snob! - but he has a new hand spun one.
Has to be stored up high as red dog has designs on him.

Shibori sample

2009-12-07T22:40:00.003Z

After reading an account of how to place threads during weaving so as to leave patterns on the cloth after dyeing, I thought I had a good use for all that cotton thread I bought in Lidyls over a year ago - just because it was a bargain.
The account is in an old "the Wheel" magazine (issue 18 2006) and it seemed attractive to make suptle patterns on fabric woven using the rigid heddle loom (Ashford Knitteers Loom). It also offered a chance to try using an additional stick to make additional sheds while having just one heddle.
Doubts crept in when I read that mercerized cotton had improved dye absorbency over non-mercerized - so before even planning to spin for an large project, it seemed like a good idea to try it on a small sample of woven handspun wool.

Here is the crumpled little sausage with the in-woven threads drawn tight to make a crumpled sausage and KoolAid lemonLime added. Well - there is no sign of the thread taking up any of the dye though the cloth has slurped up 2 sachets immediately.

Rinsing in the sink - no change

A peek inside the now dry cloth - yes! there is some sign of a pattern!

Another peek ...

Carefully take out the threads - a simple little patter there all right.

What a difference a steam iron makes!
This seems worth doing all right - but will require spin, spin, spin, weave, weave... and fairly boring stuff until the color comes into it.
Will I have the patience? Time will tell I suppose

Eyeless KnitTed

2009-12-06T20:08:00.002Z

So:
Wove some material using handspun - the golden dyed Galway fleece for warp and the brown alpaca from Waterford for weft.
For some reason I thought it would be impossible to cut it into a shape and sew it on a sewing machine. This proved to be dead wrong as it was pretty easy to handle when I cut out a rough teddy shape and sewed it up. It didn't catch on the machines moving "feet". stuffed this teddo with some of the waste fleece left form carding many moons ago. I thought I had a lot, but boy! - it takes more stuffing than I thought to fil out a smallish bear!
It turned into a knitting job 'though - using bits of handspun, to dress him. He, aka KnitTed, is almost done but still has no eyes. Hoping to get good ones form Roseanne Wednesday next - then he can see.

Brooks Bouquet Scarf

2009-11-27T18:23:00.006Z

A very generous lady on the Rigid Heddel Group by the name of Patty Anne has great videos on weaving on youtube and her own website. One of these shows Brooks Bouquet and I just had to try it after seeing it so clearly explained.
I had some oatmeal colored Blueface Leicester roving (from Wingham Wool works I think) and had top-whorled it into a yarn, a 2-py of about 14 wpi. I also had some already spun and dyed with avocado stones in store for a while so what, the heck, I though, I'll use these for a scarf on my knitters loom.
It was lovely to do until I began to get some tightening of the 2 outer warps each side, making the edge uneven and the center sag.
"Uinseach!" I thought (I often abuse myself in Irish), "you've been tightening the first bouquet on either side and it's used up the warp too fast!". So, I had to hang weights off the sagging center ones to even things out. This worked pretty well so at least I learned something out if it (amadán).
The weights were actually dowel rods with a hook at the top which I put CD's on to make spindles but the CD's were gone (smashed - a weakness of the CD spindle) and they were lying there unloved. They now have a new role 'though I hope not to have to use them in this capacity too often.

I really like this scarf. It's very soft and light and long enough to loop 2 ends through (a fashion beloved by the cast of Eastenders las year - and OH found same in Germany while there this month).

A little Tote

2009-11-11T16:36:00.003Z

The Buddleia flower heads and leaves gave various shades of yellow. A fairly strong yarn, so I decided to use it to warp the Ashford Spinners Loom. Used more of the same for the weft plus some soft yarn in blue and some brown Alpaca.

A small thing, but mine own :).

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Not so Slouchy, slouchy hat

2009-11-10T17:57:00.003Z

A ball of 2-ply, light mauve (ish) hand-spun and another ball of off-white (dyed with afterwash from avocado pip dyebath). What to do with these strong, spingy yarns. Tempted by a slouchy beret in Simply Knit magazine so gave it a bash. A couple of rippings later, discovered I need to double the number of stitches (the pattern used a much thicker Debbie Bliss tweed chunky. Wnats more, if I didn't want to cut off the circulation to the scalp, I needed to decrease the last part at a much slower rate. However, I like it's suptle shades and it might suit unsuspecting daughter.

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Center-pull balls for plying

2009-10-18T13:02:00.011+01:00

The Autumn leaves shawl/scarf is slowly progressing with added edging - quite a long process.
Meanwhile, Buddleia dyed yarn has to be plied for use in a weaving project - a very simple one - straight weaving on a Knitters Loom - with stripes of color - but still needed the pencil and paper to work it out. I know where Jacquard was coming from now!
Anyway, needed to ply together 2 lace-weight balls of yarn to make them stronger and thicker for the weave. Fortunately, they are center-pull balls, so can sit on the Lazy Kate of the spinning wheel and I can pull/draft lengths together and ply them (Rem: 9:1 over 18" - 6 out and 2 in)without any shenanigans like winding onto spindles! Phew!

leaves on the line

2009-09-28T14:22:00.003+01:00

Well it's on the line. One good thing about lace knitting is the speed it dries at - and the weather obliged today. The leaves only became really apparent when the shawl was steam-ironed - which flattened and evened out the center of each leaf. Now I've got to add a crochet edge as it's too lightweight as it is. The plan is to add 2 rows of double crochet all around - with an added chain stitch between DC's on the second round and three DC's into each corner.
Another photo hopefully when that gets done - fleece and batts, ya still have to wait!

Buddleia dye

2009-09-27T17:46:00.007+01:00

That great blog http://www.jennydean.co.uk/wordpress/?p=1842&cpage=1#comment-2083 gave instruction on how to dye protein fibre with Buddleia trimmings.
I love the results - soft yellows and citrus yellows. Making batts and spinning - but MUST FINISH AUTUMN LEAVES SHAWL BEFORE I GET TO WORK ON IT.
"Catherine, leave the fleece alone - again!"

Anyway - the important thing is the recipe as follows:
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Done end September 2009 when the tree was pruned and flower heads brown.

1 1/2 Liters Buddleia flower heads
3 L chopped stems and leaves
Heads covered with 5 L water
Leaves/stems covered with 8 L water
Brought to boil and simmered 10 mins, heat turned off then left overnight.
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Next AM, reheat, and stirred.
White kitchen paper dipped into the plant water -
the heads gave a liquid like tea, the leaves gave light greenish color.
Noted oil floating on top of the leaf mixture.
Heating for 30 mins + appeared to deepen the colors.
..
Had ready 400 grams of Greyface 09 fleece - a soft but troubled fleece from a Suffolk X type meat sheep, previously mordanted with alum and Cream of Tartar.

Divided the fleece in 4, 100 gms into each pot and simmered for 40 mins then removed and rinsed,
There was still dye present in each pot so another 2 lots of 100 grams simmered after the first.
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The 2 batts above show the first dying in the flower head and leaf pots respct. - the paler batts will be prepared later as will pics of the spun yarn.
QED

An autumn yarn

2009-09-11T01:02:00.003+01:00

Hanks of Greyface's fleece spun low-twist single for lace knitting.
Landscape dyes of red, brown, yellow-green mix, grey and a little orange Kool_Aid

Not a good picture - best I can do for now.
Hope to make and Autumn Leaves shawl from this soon.

Rock Flower shawl done

2009-09-01T11:03:00.013+01:00

Eruca sativa - this one has a pinkish hue, they are usually whiter but if you look hard at them as I did, you see darker purples in the creamy flower and dark and light geern in the leaves and stems. Tasts good too.

The yarn is fingering weight. Because of it's ability to bloom and stretch, I used 4.5 mm needles to knit the shawl.
It's basically a generic triangle with loops up the middle and by the 3=stitch garter stitich edge.

I like the center part with the swipes of color (like the rocket flower) reminds me of fireworks or a kite. Definitely a summer celebration thing.

The top (where it all started) is inadorned and should sit below the nape of the nexk when worn.

The tip and sides benefit from one iteration from the Luna shawl with scalloped edge (thanks Roseanne aka ZaraRose).

The majority was very easy to knit, with just 4 YO's each RS row. I placed a thread through the stitches before attempting the 12 rows at the end. It took me some calculation to get the right number of stitched to begin the lacey, scalloped edge. I finally realised it consisted of 23 sts to cover the middle and 2 edge sections and the pattern in between was in multiples of 10 so I contrived to have 323 sts on the needle when commencing the pattern. MANY PM's were used. Some fragging - indeed the whole first row attempt - but the thread in place saved me (thanks Lindy). The soft cast off was vital too.
Needless to say, it's a pretty warm, though light shawl - good for over a light dress on a chilly evening - we get planty of these.

The Rocket Flower Yarn

2009-08-17T14:22:00.008+01:00

Tried my hand at low-twist thinninsh single using Greyface 09 fleece.
In some ways, the fleece from hell, not surprising as it came from a crankey little Suffolk cross ewe (who is also a great mother it has to be said). She looks like hell, at first glance her fleece looks like hell - but on further inspection it is fine and soft and I earmarked it for a low-twist single for lace knitting.
Took a while to get the spinning right but it paid off in the end with 1000+ m of 16 wri, 4.4 TPI yarn which dyed nicely with Koolaid.

Hank drying after stove-top drying

The lemon-lime part

Dry, ready to ball-wind

On the ball winder

Shale swatch

Why Rocket Flower? Well, the rocket bolted earlier this year and produced lovely purple/mauve,cream flowers on light green stems.

February Sky Waistcoat

2009-08-15T13:38:00.006+01:00

February Sky handspun turned into a waistcoat.
Another makey-up pattern - this time with plenty of holes.

Looks better oin the door than on me :).
Wanted a tighter rib but it relaxed too much when I steam ironed it. However Lindy told me how to fix that - but not that I can, not sure I want to - tuypical!
Wooden buttons - from a tree branch Paul sawed up - as per Stephanies suggestion - quite like these. Put nail polish on them - don't know how they might wash though.

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Makeyup mitts - with scarf

2009-07-22T16:22:00.006+01:00

Makey-up fingerless mitts mainly on straight single-pointed needles and use DPN's for last bit (the thumbs)
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Draw around hand – pencil on paper.
Mark out area to be covered by glove, including widening from wrist to base of thumb, length of base of thumb..
Measure in inches :
Width of wrist = WW
Length of wrist = LW
Width above wrist = WA
Top of wrist to thumb hole = WTH
Base of thumb hole = TH
Top of thumb hole to tip of glove = THT
If you want and end rib across the fingers, measure it’s depth = RD

My measurements;
WW= 3”
LW = 2”
WA = 4”
WTH = 2”
E = 1”
THT = 5”
Make tension swatch:
Measure stitches/inch (SI) and rows per inch (RI)
My yarn (grey Alpaca):
Spun 5.5:1 over 2” i.e. low twist single
Diam approx 11 WPI - prewash
Swatch (stocking stitch) : 8 stitches and 9 rows per inch on 3 ¼ mm straight needles

Method:
GeneraL:
Cast on 2 X WW X SI stitches
Slip first stitch throughout the work to leave loose edge stitches for sewing together later.
Work in 1 X 1 Rib for LW X RI rows
Another coloured yarn can be added mid-wrist (as in my specific pattern below)
Change to stocking stitch adding required number of stitches across first row (for a less
Sudden/sharp change of width at base of thumb, add stitches more gradually over following rows).
Number of stitches to add = (WA – WW) X SI
Continue in stocking stitch for WTA X RI rows
Cast off SI stitches at beginning and end of next (right side) row.
Purl next row as usual and continue in stocking stitch for (THT – RD) X RI rows
(If no end rib or other pattern, continue in Stocking Stitch for THT X RI rows and then cast off)
Continue in 1 X 1 rib for RD X RI rows then cast off
I changed to another coloured yarn for last 4 rows of stocking stitch section, just below end rib – but it could (and perhaps should ) be added anywhere in this section)
Pick up and knit the 16 cast off sts from thumb hole plus 2 on each side to make a continuous circle for the thumb tube. I used a crochet hool to pick uo 8 sts and transferred them to one double pointed 4 mm needle, then 6 sts and transferred to 2nd dpn, then 6 sts and transferred to 3rd dpn. I placed a marker in the stitch just under the first st on the first needle.
Knit 10 rows of 1X1 rib on the dpns and cast off.
My specific pattern instructions:
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CO 48 sts using thumb method (and number of strands of yarn required to make chosen thickness of yarn
Slip all first stitches throughout
18 rows of 1X1 rib – add red –grey yarn at row 11, all red rows 12 and 13 , red-grey row 14.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 (red added alternate stitch) = right side, keep cross-overs to back /wrong side), 14 (red), 15(red), 16, 17, 18

Next row – stocking stitch and* K3, Make 1 * repeat to end – (64 sts.)
Then cont to complete 18 rows of ss, ending on ws
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 , 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, instead of doing line 18 as before, as I ended on ws and this glove is long enough, on 18 (rs), I CO 8 sts and on next line (19), CO 8 then purl to end. (48)
Cont SS for 8 rows in grey
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Next row – knit alternating red and grey
Next row - purl in red
Next row, - knit in red
Next row - Purl alternating red and grey
K 1 row
P 1 row Done to here.
Next approx. 10 rows – 1X1 rib 1, 2, 3, 4,
Cast off
Bind/sew side seams aligning each side of thumbhole, top and bottom ribs.
Pick up and knit 16 cast-off stitches plus 4 sts on size 3/14 or 4 mm DPNs
10 rows of 1X1 rib (approx)
Cast off.
Weave in the ends.

Killarney weekend

2009-07-16T22:16:00.009+01:00

Stayed in Killarney last weekend and walked the dogs by the beautiful lake.
Attended the craft fair - and enjoyed it despite the rain.

Who cares about the rain? It's very nice inside this yurt with Mairead spinning the fleece.

Finish and start again

2009-07-16T22:13:00.003+01:00

Scarf finished - so now I have to knit some gloves to go with it. They will be stick-out-your-mitt type - i.e. make it up as you go along and rip to fit.

2009-07-16T20:46:00.000+01:00

Yet another scarf ..

2009-07-07T21:08:00.007+01:00

They grey alpaca looked so nice against the food-dyed pink/red wool that I had to knit them together somehow. Grey overcoat needs something bright for winter anyway

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Oisin and Huddie sample their wears

2009-07-07T21:04:00.006+01:00

Huddie "Do I get a cookie for this?"

Oisin "Darn sure we do!"

Looks a bit like wreath on the door - but ...feels nice.

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Fleece sampling time

2009-07-06T16:41:00.003+01:00

Taking samples from my washed fleece and testing them with carding, combing , spinning and knitting.

I thought this would be a real bore but I'm actually enjoying it.
The difference in the yarn made with different spinning techniques and then in the knitting!
A person could go round in circles trying to decide how to use the lovely stuff.
Must try to take photos of different preps - but my photos are pretty bad - all because I've been too lazy to go to another room and plug the camera into a Mac where I could probably get a better result.
Well, I'll give that a try since seeing the differences in plain, undyed samples will be quite a challenge I expect.
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Doggy Down Alpaca scarf

2009-07-06T12:02:00.007+01:00

Drying on the ironing board.

Feels nice.

Give Oisin and Huddie some peace for a while anyway :).

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Slip Stitch neck warmer done

2009-06-28T14:22:00.006+01:00

The neck warmer is done - not that I need it right now.From Spin-off Summer09

Added a tag that Jen gave me Christmas 08.
. It's a neat little thing.

So, next .... Leave the 09 fleece alone, there's a doggie down scarf to finish

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Slip-stitch neck warmer

2009-06-25T14:38:00.004+01:00

A single ball of BFL spun worsted and dyed with dye from avocado stones (thanks Lindy) lay about until I got my (first) copy of Spin-off (09 summer edition). The requirements for a slip-stitch neck warmer fit this little lot (5 sts and 7 rows = 1") and luckily, there is just enough to make the length suggested (about 82 gms).

The pattern seems to suit the slightly strange pearly-pink yarn and I have 3 dark brown buttons to attach when it's ready. Feels nice too.

Almost finished my weird doggy/alpaca multi-colored scarf - just need to rob a little more doggie down - up on the table there Oisin!

Missed WWKIP

2009-06-13T22:50:00.004+01:00

Missed World Wide Knit in Public in Dublin :(.
One of my girls was limping so I had to inspect them all.
After round up, I felt I should give them all their shots etc so by then the morning was gone.
Joined them im spirit by knitting some cabled alpaca later.
It's an add-on to the doggie-down scarf - and I found that the combinatiOn of cabled alpaca and basket stitch gave a soft fabric which does not curl at the edges which is good to know.
Doggies are being brushed to the skin to get more down for spinning and dyeing!
However, they seem to have become competitive about it, one pushing in front of the other
for brushing even though they tolerated it only in martyred silence before.

Hope to add photos when the scarf is finished.

Trying my hand at core spinning - this is really fun!

Meanwhile, ball-making continues.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS YEARS FLEECE - NO! LEAVE IT, YOU'VE NOT FINISHED WHAT YOU STARTED YET!
Catherine

Spring hedgerow almost done

2009-06-09T16:38:00.004+01:00

Don't pick the balls Stella!

These got the ball winder treatment too.

A 6 X 6" swatch on 4 mm needles.

21 sts and 26 rows over 4" in ss.

Just a bit more to go.

Not allowd to try spinning any of the new fleece until it and several other things are done - but it's really tempting to start spinning Jumper's fleece. Jumper is a big ewe with a down type fleece. She's called Jumper due to her superior ability to clear hurdles - even now when she has a full bag. But she is a good natured lady and has nice twins every year. Anyway, I kept and washed about 800 gms of her fleece which should be enough for a ........ jumper of course :).

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Ravelry in Coventry

2009-06-08T23:48:00.013+01:00

Went to Birmingham for the Ravelry wool fest there. Nice hall - a Methodist church hall/ Contianed a very nice cafe and very reasonably priced food (must mention that important thing first of course). Bad weather - rained most of the day. Didn't bother me 'though spoiled it for the outdoor stalls - and the two Alpaca who munched on hay outside.

Went to Spinning for Beginners - with Diane Mulholland for a 2 hour class. Very interested to see how an expert who grew up on a sheep farm in Australia and now gives classes at all levels might handle beginners. I was very gratified that her approach confirmed much of my own instinct about how to broach the topic and proceed - from the finger-tip manipulation of roving to shoe the properties of the fibers, to the use of CD home-made spindles, through the use of part-and-spin on long fibers for the class with a demonstration of using long-draw on short fibers for woolen and plying off the hand. This latter would have been taught in a second session. She chose leicester wool too as the ideal for beginners as I have done.

She showed us how she slips the yarn off the spindle shaft an onto a lorge plastic (McDonalds) drinking straw for later plying. Through her discussion ( and reverse engineering sone of the yarns on display) it appears 3 ply is indeed the best to produce a nice round handspun yarn. I think I'll aim for this in my next project as I now, finally, understand what is meant by a round yarn - one with little or no gaps between the plyed singles over the circumference.

Than I attended Meg Swensen's talk in the main hall. She is on tour , partly a book tour. She is carrying on her mother's (Elizabeth Zimmernann's) business . She readfrom her mother's diaries. This was intitially a little shock for the audience, some of whnom, no doubt, expected knitting needles working on a large screen. However, I do believe she won them over as the content of her readings was very absorbing and hymerous and she was very expert answering knitting-related questions. I think she must have been very inspirational for the knitters there. I as a rang amateur knitter found it fascinating thinking about how the design of knitting patterns comes about.

I attended a class on naturel dyeing which showed many powdered plant extracts and how they are applied. These dyes have a charm about them - the colors ahev a softness to them on wool and cotton. I was pretty wrecked by the time I took this class as it ran from 4 - 6 pm - the last item and I knew I had to hang about an airport until the plane took us back at 11 pm.
It turned out fine though as we had a meal in a reasonable diner in the airport and planty of space to lie about there. I took out my new small spindle and spun away. It didn't seem to bother security - a Japanese man took a photo of this bizzarre activity so I will be held accountable at some later date perhaps.

The dogs, left alone for over 24 hours, were extactic to see us - but had exacted their revenge in the sitting room and little study. Out with the disinfectant.
Of course I got goodies. These are int he form of a small spindle for spinnig short loose fiber (such as doggie down), a Peruvial plying tool to save my fingers fom gangrene, and a wool wonder to go with ---the greatest of all made by my OH just before we left for the show -- a DIY swift! Oh! what an indulgence!! It's like a big treat at the end of the whole process of shearing, washing, spinning, setting twist - to be able to wind the yarn with such ease into nice even center-pull balls!

.

Swift and ball winder and a ball of February sky.
Nice little top whorl spindle and Peruvial plyer.

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