Koolhaas for Johanna June 7, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in Knitting - FOs, fo, hats, knitting, koolhaas.1 comment so far
My fabulous cousin reminded me (mid-move, sorry that it has been so long between posts) that I have never knitted her anything. A horrendous oversight! After all, knitters are always looking for people to unload bless with yarny goodness. Think summer and one too many zucchini plants in the garden.
Now that I have moved away from Orlando and put many miles between us once again, it is good to know that she has something with her that I made with my own hands… an object that is literally stitched together with love. Of course, I still owe her a scarf. I am not a miracle worker. I got about halfway through the scarf which, considering all the moving madness, I’d say is a win. I loathe moving! The organizing, the purging, the boxes… the humbling love of your housemate who graciously models your knitted hat once again even though you have been cranky all day!
Devorah is full of grace. Those who know her know that well. Look at that photo, she is even smiling while wearing a hat made for someone with a bigger head. Patience, she has it. Koolhaas, this lovely dome of buttery soft cables, was designed by Jared Flood. Ravel it here. The yarn is 100% baby alpaca (Miski, by Mirasol) and therefore the cables do not pop as much as some other koolhaas’ I have seen. But the color was perfect (she asked for blue or purple) and the softness is not to be believed.
This was a lovely pattern. A bit hard on the fingers (what with the all over cabling), but if you are looking for the perfect reason to learn cabling without a needle, this one is more than worth it.
The Sheep Shed Studio May 11, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in Ravelry, dyeing, handspun, spinning, stash enhancement.3 comments
So I finally (ok a month ago) entered into the lovely fiber artists’ world of the Sheep Shed Studio. This wonderful business in Wyoming provides all kinds of rovings, mill ends, rugs, mysterious bales of fiber and various other adventures for the fluff lover in us all. If you haven’t tried them out yet, I would highly recommend it. I decided to start small instead of ordering a 15 pound bag of yummy dyeable fibers. Hmmm… maybe after I move. Anyway, I asked for cotswald curls, some beautiful forest green roving, and a pound of soft grey roving that a number of dyers on ravelry had been raving about. Carol (bless her) added a little thank you sample of some black wool that you see nestled up there on the top. That grey fluff is super soft! I was ready to try my hand at dyeing greys but… first things first.
By now some of you will know that while on occasion I will accept the role of pink in gift giving, it is not a favorite color of mine. That has a lot to do with trauma overdoing the pink in my early childhood years, but that is a story for another type of blog. See that pile of pink? I think we can all agree that Carol did a lovely job with a variegated dye on those curls… sure to produce some lovely depths of color. However, pink does not go on my wheel for fun so after opening my box of goodies and cackling with glee, I pulled every pink or almost pink curl out of that back and threw it straight into one of two dye pots.
After some time in a marine blue dyebath and a high acid (for fast color striking) dyebath with blacks and mustards this is what our culprits turned into. Mwa ha ha. Soon there were batts to behold:
I did eventually get to play with some greys. I did a free form dye bath just as an experimental starting point. Whoops! Caught myself in that photo. The sun has been tricksy of late…
Here is a close up to show the color variety.
I still have a lot of fiber prep (and spinning) to do, but so far I am delighted with my Sheep Shed Studio experience. Definitely the go to fiber option for my upcoming grad school years. Hmmm… I wonder what my advisor will think of me buying fiber in bulk?
New Spinnings May 5, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in drop spindle, fo, spinning, spinning - FOs, spinning fo, yarn.3 comments
I have been watching with some envy the gorgeous rovings arriving at the homes of those participating in the Grafton Fibers Colorways club. I was proud of my resistance against joining immediately when I saw the pretty colors. Instead I do what I usually try to do. I ordered some of their fiber to experience it before jumping into any rash decisions.
Gorgeous. Soft, delicious corriedale wool in such lovely batts. I ordered three (as can be seen at the bottom of this posting) in what I hoped would be complementary colors for a nice three ply yarn.
bobbins
On the bobbins the variegations of color are nice and clear. These were jewel-like in tone and so easy to spin. The smooth softness was a joy to the hands.
I absolutely love how the colors complement each other. I wanted something with depth that resisted the traditional barber pole look. I think this suceeded nicely.
The shifting hues of color definitely keep my interest. This yarn has an overall blueish cast but mainly whispers lush, rich tidings at you quietly. This is about 3.5 ounces of corriedale, 162 yards of three ply yarn. Yum! That Colorways Club may well be in my future once I land at my new address.
Finally, I picked up a Ringspindle much more suited to my spinning style than the ponderously heavy Schacht drop spindle I was (attempting to use) using before. At 0.84 oz of weight this ebony wood spindle spins fast enough to create the types of singles that I adore without crashing to the floor. Much better for my ego than the clangs and bangs of my earlier attempts. My only remaining challenge is convincing myself that spinning 50 yarns of laceweight at a time makes any kind of logical sense! Oh well. Travel spinning. Yes. Um… I’ll keep you posted on that one.
Berries on Beltane May 3, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in dyeing, fo, natural dyeing, pokeberries, spinning.3 comments
POKEBERRY MADNESS!
This glorious tale owes its wonder to the unbelievable patience of Devorah. You are looking at three gallons of pokeberries. Three gallons! Talk about days and days of fuschia fingertips. We live in Florida (for another month anyway). The pokeberry bush in our yard got so big that it has an honest to goodness trunk at the moment and would have to be taken down with a saw. Devorah, who has long loved making ink from pokeberries, took it upon herself to find a way to dye with them. Well. For me to dye with them. But check out how many berries she picked! Two pots full over time. I helped. A bit. Such a wonderful adventure!
Devorah found this article by Carol Leigh for a nonfading pokeberry recipe. Scroll down a bit on her site to find it. Pokeberries are very tricksy about refusing to be colorfast and people have to go to extreme measures to get nonfading colors. See below.
The most important thing in dyeing with pokeberries (aside from a ridiculously high pokeberry to fiber ratio) is high acidity. These pots were prepared using 56% acetic acid. The mordant pots and dye bath both steeped overnight. There are Teeswater locks, Superwash Merino, and Bluefaced Leicester in those pots. Wool fumes! On that note. Boiling pokeberries stink. Really stink. Did I mention stink? Wow.
After a night in the acid the dyebath was intense. It is almost as black as that crock pot. Wow. There was so much dye! Magenta was everywhere! But soon wool and dyebath met in that heavenly combination that leads to spinning happiness.
It was hard to set that in the garage and walk away for a few hours. I kept wanting to poke it! Amazing how you can already see differences in color uptake between the merino and teeswater (on the bottom of the photo) and the BFL at the top.
After two and a half hours of heating in the crock the fiber sat in the dyebath overnight. Then out it came to rest on this fabulous screen set up (thanks again to Devorah) to oxidize for several hours. Can you see the cute binder clips holding the screening on this clothes drying rack? She is the best.
Later that afternoon when the sun was streaming into the garage I had to take another pic. No flash on this one, no adjusting to correct the color. This really is what that rack looked like during the afternoon on Beltane.
This was a fabulous adventure. It was well worth doing. The photo above shows the final fibers. This is after several rinses in water (no soap!) and includes the two fibers that got dyed in the pot on round two. I have no idea if they will be lightfast given that they went through the dye on the second round. The tussah silk (pink draped across the whole thing) was only in the crock for two hours. The Leicester Longwool stayed in overnight. But the crimson colors from the first fibers are not to be believed. They are just so rich and lush. While I hope that these will stay colorfast for years to come as Carol’s have, I can understand why people were willing to redye their fabrics with pokeberries once a year to keep them a brilliant red.
To think they call this plant a weed….
Small Cabled Tarot Deck Pouch April 20, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in Knitting - FOs, Paganism & witchcraft, fo, handspun, knitting, pagan.1 comment so far
So what do you do when your first attempts at long draw spinning result in all of 50 yards of green three ply yarn? I decided that my little nubbin of fluff and need for a pouch for my new tarot deck were well matched.
See that ridiculously small tuft of green on the side? That is how much yarn I had left over when I was done. I even used the tail from the cast on to sew up one of the sides! Still I am supremely pleased with this little pouch. It features a cable from Viking Patterns for Knitting by Elsebeth Lavold and is just about the sproingiest twist of green goodness that I ever did see.
We are very pleased.
Shetland Triangle April 13, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in Knitting - FOs, evelyn clark, fo, knitting, knitting lace, lace knitting, shawl, shetland triangle.1 comment so far
Welcome to my 100th blog post!!!!
Finally we have celebrated Kierstin’s birthday so I can show you the big project I was working on in March. This super bright swath of pinkness was in all truthfulness a joy to knit. This is the Shetland Triangle, by Evelyn Clark which many have knit before me.
The lace pattern is deliciously repeated and actually is the only lace project I have seen that lends itself well to airplane travel knitting.
Normally this is a shoulder shawl, so I added an extra four repeats of the body pattern to make it the size I was aiming for. When I saw two skeins of Zephyr Wool-Silk in Dianthus (about as close to Kierstin’s favorite color of pink that I have seen in a lace weight yarn) I knew that a shawl had to be the birthday offering of choice.
The shawl was a pile of pink wavyness when it finally came off the needles (as I continually eyeballed the yarn trying to gauge how many repeats I could really coax out of it… 12 was easy and stress free, I am not sure how some folks on Ravelry have gotten 15 out of these skeins!).
This was my first time knitting lace weight yarn held double. It made a glorious fabric, with wonderful drape. Part of that, of course, is the Zephyr Wool-Silk. Yet I really do love how it feels doubled on itself. But the blocking! Arrgh the blocking!
I have never had a shawl come so close to winning. I swear I was breathing heavily by the time I was done and the next day my arms were sore! It is just a different thing to stretch out doubled yarn. I had no idea. It is gorgeous, sadly none of these pictures really do the shawl justice. But wow that was an experience to behold.
Yarny Goodness March 25, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in dyeing, fo, spinning, spinning - FOs, spinning fo, stash enhancement, yarn.4 comments
Hooray for the first yarn off of my new wheel! This is just over 540 yards of DK weight three ply yarn. The wool roving (breed unknown) was dyed by dudleyspinner. It started as 24 times more than this little nugget of fluff. About eight ounces.
Sorry for the blurriness. Cell phones just arent the best. I took the original roving, divided it randomly into three (by length) but then carefully separated each third into eight repeats. Happily, my attempt to balance out the rich colors seems to have worked. All suggestions about what to make from this are welcome!
I also had a ton of fun doing natural dyeing using beets. My housemate loves them, sadly enough, yet after boiling a pile in the crock pot I had a fabulous dye bath to work with. I used two different mordants on wool: alum and copper sulfate.
Here is the dyebath:
The cheesecloth was for straining out the beet bits. The pot below has wool mordanted in alum. That riotous orangey color definitely stuck! Fabulous! Time will tell if it will be colorfast, etc. I am thinking these rovings need to be turned into something that gets washed a bit less often.
Mordanting the wool in copper sulfate was beautiful! Aqualicious…
What happens to the color of beets once the copper sulfate is in the mix though… well, maybe greens should not be brought out of oranges. Lol. This looks a little too much like intestines. Ick! But the roving really is lovely. I cannot wait to see it spun.
Rinsed, dryed, and ready to spin! Both of these rovings are actually a bit darker than in the picture.
And finally I ordered some batts from Grafton Fibers! These are GORGEOUS! I am going spin them together. About one and one third ounce per batt… this is a three ply waiting to happen. We love the fibers!
HONK! March 15, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in Rhinebeck, fo, handspun, spinning, spinning - FOs, spinning fo, stash enhancement, yarn.1 comment so far
I want to begin with apologies for the lateness of my honk, and yet honk I must for I was one of the many caught off guard by this latest revelation. Fluffy, delicious batts. They are so much fun to spin! We all want them. Let’s be honest… making fiber potions of fluffy goodness is the main reason why any of us owns a drum carder in the first place. For example, I can’t wait to card some milkweed into… well, that is a story for another time. For now, suffice it to say that when I read on our beloved YarnHarlot’s blog that wool fibers should be loaded onto a drum carder sideways I was as stunned as most of the rest of you.
So here I am honking because yes, I was told to load my fibers facing toward the drum and yes, even my written instructions say to do the same. In fairness, I have an amazing drum carder. I got fluffy batts the other way… but nothing like this. The one drawback is that so much less fiber fit into this batt of lusciousness. Here is the story.
I started with this beautiful mass of wool locks that I purchased at Rhinebeck this fall. The vendor never told me the breed of sheep, and the locks were already dyed. While one of my friends tells me this looks a bit lke a diseased brain, I see only fibery goodness waiting to be spun up into something heavenly.
From this mass of potential I separated out the individual locks (above) and teased them open with my fingers (below).
I then did what I think we all ran to our carders to do (if we were lucky enough to have a drum carder. Mine was a gift for which I am constantly grateful). I loaded up my carder with overlaping locks laid sideways so they would be pulled at from their sides by the rows of tiny metal teeth.
Even the sound was different! I could almost hear a chorus of young girls complaining about their mothers being too rough with the tangles in their hair. It takes focus and grim determination sometimes to keep that handle turning. Oh the flashbacks of it all! As the fiber started teasing apart between the almost touching metal I could instantly see the depth of color that would be in the final batt. Lustrous. I don’t know what breed of sheep this is from but I wish I did.
The full drum looked like this after the first pass. It took three total passes through the carder to make the batt above.
By the time the batt was really finshed it had an even color, great loft, and a wonderful shine. I did a test twist that doubled back on itself into a two ply just to see what the fibers would do. Though in truth I really just have a hard time keeping my hands off of the wool.
I made three batts in all just 15 grams of wool each. I only purchased 70 grams to begin with… just pulling a bit out of the basket of fluff to try on my carder. I still have some wool in glorious reds from the same basket. I will have to card that into a blend with something fun. In the meantime I decided to start learning to spin using the long draw technique. It is humbling, and a good reminder, to start learning to spin all over again in a sense. So different from a nice (read control freak spinner) worsted method. The result is 50 yards of three ply. A happy and fuzzy green ending to my story.
A Quick Little Knit March 11, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in Knitting - FOs, fo, free knitting patterns, knitting, lace knitting.add a comment
Valentine’s Day saw me wanting to knit something for my sweetie. Something fun, a bit naughty, and of course red. Had to be red. This FO is super hard to photograph. Apologies for not getting a clear, logical shot for you. But it was super fun to knit and really well constructed!
This is a great pattern from Interweave Knits by Laura Rintala. And it is very well constructed… I was impressed. The one change I made was suggested by another raveler, and that was to use elastic ribbon which makes the wearing of this lacy thong a lot more comfortable. This pic has a clearer shot of the lace in front. I will warn you that this is a ~small~ pair of undies, even for small undies. I did expand the waistband a bit.
Hooray for Valentine’s Day (and the great blog catch up which continues).
Knitted Votive Holder March 6, 2009
Posted by lunarawe in Knitting - FOs, Ravelry, fo, knitting.1 comment so far
Just a quickie for another update blast. This holiday season (yes… we are doing the catch up thing still) I made a votive holder for my grandmother. There is not a lot that she wants at this venerable and wise stage of her life, but lighting a regular candle for Santa Marta matters to her. So, knitting with wire it was. What a strange and different thing to do. All blessings upon Ravelry for being the place where I could get advice on how not to totally trash my fingers while doing this knitting.
28 gauge wire turned out to be the trick.
It was pretty easy! And Devorah, may she be forever blessed, was a huge help when she strung over 300 beads on this wire for me in advance so I could simultaneously work on knitting another (probably not to be pictured here) knitted gift. Time was tight. And she, as always, was a saint. Maybe next year she can have a votive holder of her own!
I decided to use Christmasy colors for beads and a red votive just to be festive. The doily in this picture was crocheted by one of the women who cares for my Grandmother. She is forever stitching… woman after my own heart.
I love you, Grandma.
