Yarn in my Pocket

88) F is for...

Finished!

The Rampton Bag gave me fits as I was finishing it up.  I went through all kinds of phases: I loved it, I hated it, I thought it was awesome, I thought it sucked so badly...  I thought the weaving had let the spinning down; I thought the spinning was badly suited to the woven cloth; I thought the making up was letting the weaving down!

I hadn't really thought too hard about how I was going to sew the seams up, and I certainly didn't make the fabric wider at the edges to allow for a regular seam allowance (duh!!).  I ended up making an overcast edge, sewn up by hand with the very yarn used to weave the fabric:

Originally, I intended to have the overcast edges turned to the inside, but the stitches looked too visible 'in the ditch', even in the same colour as the warp, so I decided to keep the ridges on the outside.  Then, I decided it would be fun to have each seam stitched up in a different colour:

The jury's still out on this idea.  I think all the same, low-contrast colour would have been good, or possibly, all different, high-contrast colours.  Given that the first seam was supposed to blend in, having the others be contrast-y probably didn't give it an ideal balance!I will admit to some concern that if I ever wash this bag, the sewing thread will be very keen to full and the seams will pucker.

The silk lining was sewn up in the same way, and the two layers are held together by more overcasting all the way round the strap:

I'd learned my lesson by this time, and used the warp colour for the overcasting along each edge!

The lining was cut just a little shorter than the main fabric, so that the edge of the lining could be enclosed in a folded over edge of the body fabric:

I originally meant to fold the edge twice, but I decided that this would be too bulky in the end, so I'm just hoping the wool fabric is fulled well enough that it won't fray too badly.

I thought about adding a button and loop closure to help the bag stay closed, but it doesn't really hang right for that, so I didn't!

Knowing how this bag would be constructed, as a single strip folded back and forth, I wanted the horizontal colour bands to match up at the seams so they would run right round the bag without interruptions.  To do this, I figured out where the strip would be folded, and reversed the order of the weft colours at those points:

I wove each colour band to have the same number of picks (weft throws), and tried really, really hard to keep the beat the same throughout.  It worked!!

I am *very* smug that this aspect of my fabric design worked as well as it did.  I didn't dare mention this whilst I was weaving it, for fear I'd jinx it, but it all worked out fine in the end.

And after finishing and pressing, I can happily say I *love* this little bag!

I actually have quite a lot of the yarn left, so I will be knitting some happy, stranded fingerless gloves or something.  The weaving might have worked out fine in the end, but I think this yarn will work really well for a knitted fabric, too.

87) E is for...

Extreme spinning!

This is the title of the workshop I'm currently following with the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.  In a way, this workshop is oriented towards spinning finer yarns (everyone seems to want to spin finer!), but really, it's about control and awareness and pushing your boundaries as a spinner.

The first exercise was to take a handful of prepared fibre, and spin part of it as thick as you can, then part of it as thin as you can (on the same wheel, no switching of accessories to be used), and ply each sample back on itself.  Then, various instructions were given for playing with the resulting two-ply yarn, to investigate various properties.  Here's a photo my first three attempts (thick, fine, finer):

I had a second 'go' at the fine spinning, because it was obvious to me that I hadn't put enough twist in the first lot, and I thought I could do better!  I did.

It's amazing how much more twist a fine yarn needs than a thick one; I think the third lot could still have taken more.  I've also found it's much harder for me to spin a consistent, thick yarn than a consistent, fine yarn.  I'm really not used to trying to spin thick!

The stats:

Fibre: brown and black fine wool from Texere, carded together (by me!).  Looks distressingly like hair, but I promise it isn't.
Thick yarn:  4 - 5 wpi
Thinnest yarn: c. 30 wpi

81) Off the loom!

Another real 'quickie' today; I cut the bag fabric off the loom this morning!

I brought it to work today, and will be knotting the warp ends at lunchtime so I can safely wet-finish it tonight, and start sewing up the bag at the weekend.

I would have finished a day earlier, but due to my own stinginess I ran into two problems....  Firstly, I tried to use the dodgy bit of yarn at the end of the ball for one of the warp stripes, and it gave out when I had about 10cm left to weave.  And secondly, I didn't *quite* put enough warp on the loom to give me the fabric length I wanted.  I got there in the end, but was reduced to needle-weaving for the last few rows, because my shuttle wouldn't fit through the remaining shed any more!

And finally: an apology.  I have been unbelievably remiss in replying to comments and keeping in touch generally, recently.  I no longer have regular access to my personal email at work (though sometimes I sneak a peek), and combined with the recent Typepad comment-weirdness, a new job, the fact that the last thing I want to do after sitting in front of a computer all day is boot up my laptop when I get home, and just Life In General, I have been pants.  I am just about managing to work, walk the dogs, feed myself and J, and occasionally play with wool in my minimal downtime.  Sometimes I go for a run, or brew beer.  I have about 300 posts to read in Google Reader.  I owe so many people blog comments, emails and/or phonecalls, it's just not true.  I'm sorry.  All I can say is, "Be glad you're not coming to stay with me any time soon", because the astute will have noticed that 'housework' did not feature anywhere on that little list.

And I *will*, at some point, get back to you.

76) All spun up

The lovely, blended rainbow I blogged about three weeks ago has become a lovely spun rainbow:

I'm really proud of myself for getting it all spun up so promptly, and also of Woody for being such an awesome yarn-model.  Marnie's pups (especially Panda) are so hilariously accommodating in this regard, I just had to try it for myself.

I've only just noticed I've got the two rightmost skeins of yarn the wrong way round.  *How* I managed to take a photo like that without noticing, I've no idea.

Next phase: wash and block the yarn, then warp up the loom and weave!  I'd love to have the loom warped by the end of the week, which pretty much means I need to wash the yarn tonight.  But I haven't managed that, because I've been cooking soup.  It's soup season again!!  Tonight's special: Spinach, lentil and yoghurt.  Yarn blocking tomorrow, then.

There has been a lot of spinning round here lately; far more spinning than knitting, truth be told.  Katarina has been finished and worn, and even got her final blocking yesterday, and I have swatched for and started a new project (a variation on Moor [that's a Rav link, folks], from Rowan's "Yorkshire Fable").  But the knit-lust is notably absent.  The long, pressing queue of Things I Must Knit seems to have evaporated.  The Things I Must Sew list is even shorter.

I'm cool with this.  I think I have sufficient sweaters - or at least, enough that it's not worth starting a new project without thinking how it's going to fit into my wardrobe.  I do need some new skirts/trousers/shirts, but again, I need a Plan first.

Recently, I have been thinking more and more about self-sufficiency. Sufficiency, as in 'sufficient'.  Enough.  I don't need a wardrobe stuffed to the gills with sweaters, however well made they are.  Stashing vast quantities of yarn that I don't have an immediate need for is not in line with my light-consumer ideals.  I am currently losing weight (there!  I said it!); with any luck, I'll be down to my pre-shingles weight by Christmas, and maybe my optimum weight by my birthday in March next year.  It doesn't seem like a good idea to invest loads of time into tailored garments that I'm going to grow too small for in a matter of months;it certainly isn't a good idea to make garments that are currently too small in the hopes that they'll fit correctly 'eventually'.

I'm certainly not going to stop knitting any time soon (or spinning, or weaving!), but I think this might be a good time to think about what I want to achieve, as well as how I want to be spending my time.

Meanwhile, isn't Woody a doll??

74) Again with the blending! Also, comments.

Remember the grey?  It's happened again:

But more colourful.

Inspiration for this year's Rampton challenge has finally struck.  We're supposed to be blending this little lot:

Then creating a bag out of it.  And we're supposed to be finished by November.

The inspiration has really been a long time coming.  Last year, I b!tched that I don't really *do* scarves.  Well, I don't really do bags, either.  And the colours??  Ewwww.  OK, I know we're supposed to be blending them, and colour blending is some serious magic, but... not inspiring.

Recently, though, I've been seeing a lot of colour gamps around.  Well, heyyy...

So, the plan is: blend fibre into rainbow hues.  Weave colour-gamp yardage (hence extending the colour blending theme further). Make bag.

This rocks, because weaving is faster than knitting, and I'm seriously late starting.  Also rockin' the show is my drum carder, because it's a heck of a lot faster than hand carders.  A heck of a lot faster.  And it still took me upwards of four hours to card up this lot.

Still, though, it's magic, right? (confession time: the yellowest yellow is a cheat, from another pack, and I haven't used the white at all).

 

Oh - and Typepad fixed the comment issue!!  It's not back as it was, but it's workable.  I believe TheNorma is almost singlehandedly to blame responsible.  Yayyyy TheNorma!

73) Fibre Clubs

As I may have mentioned, I joined SweetGeorgia's fibre club fairly recently, and received my first 'installment' two weeks ago.  I decided to spin it according to the suggestion on the packet - a fractal two-ply - and finished the first half, spun as long, slow colour sections, at Rampton, last Saturday...

...then came home and spun up the second half, into shorter, choppier colour changes on the same day.

Plying, however, had to wait until Tuesday, and winding till Wednesday...

...but I still think this is some kind of record for me.  Ten days from the fibre hitting the house to finished yarn!

I have about 190m of somewhat-chunky two ply, though I do want to wash it and see how it settles after that treatment.  I really do like the way the colours have mixed and blended, and the shine on this stuff is luscious.  That'll be the silk and bamboo, then.

My original plan for this yarn was fingerless mitts/gauntlets, but I'm not really sure it'll stand up to the rigours of hand-wear for long.  It has relatively little bounce and I don't think it'll be very abrasion resistant.  Someone at Rampton was trying to persuade me to leave it as singles, and use it for a shawl.  I resisted like crazy, because I already had A Plan, godsdammit, and because I'd already put way-y-y too much twist into the singles for them ever to be stable anyway.  Mind you, I kinda wish I'd thought of that beforehand.

But that's OK, because....

I now have the first delivery from my *other* fibre club, Grafton Fibers!  More on this later, hopefully, but I'm thinking low-twist, softly fulled singles from *this* batt.  And a shawl.

66) Good grief

It's over three weeks since I last posted.  OK, quick round up:

• Fake Noro spinning: FAIL. Pictures later
• Tour de Fleece: wasn't going to join in, but ended up spindle spinning silk from day 10 onwards. Pics later
• Knitting: finished Revontuli in the graduated handspun yarn.  Looks great; needs blocking. Pics later.
• More knitting: Started Katarina in the blue/green handspun.  The back and both fronts are done, and I've started the second sleeve.  However, cuffs, and a really, really wide collar have to be knit on later, so it's not so finished yet.  Looking great; um, pics to follow.  Spotting a theme here??
• Job: today was the last day of working for my current job.  I start my new one on August 17th.  That's nearly three weeks to myself!  Awesome!
• Freelancing: Too Much is going on right now.  No details, but I can't do this and everything else.  So, sadly, just as I was getting into the swing of things, I have to put this endeavour on hold.  For now.
• Dyeing:  Nothing has happened.  See above.  However, I'm not giving up on this one, I'm hoping that the next three weeks will see some Real Progress there.

cool, now we're all caught up.  Now I can stop avoiding the blog because of the backlog, and get on with regular updates again...  What, huh, pictures??  OK:

63) Not-ro

Posting in advance...  woooo!!!

As this arrives publically on the Interwebs, I will just about be arriving in Cockermouth, avec parents, to visit the utterly inimitable (though there have been attempts) Woolfest!

I had hoped, before I left, to finish the Noro-like spinning experiment.  Well...  I have spun one bobbin full of singles, and a second is on the wheel:

The singles are looking a lot like genuine Noro singles, too:

The biggest question in my mind is: how are the singles brought together to look so much like a single ply?  Normally, the two plies of a yarn do not merge into each other so well as they do in Noro Kureyon, which I think is the single biggest reason people have for failing to believe it's a two-ply.  It just *looks* so much like a single.  The ply angle on Kureyon is very shallow, so it is only lightly plied; I think the singles must be correspondingly lightly spun, but how that can be done without the wheel pulling them apart, I don't know.  It will be very interesting to see how my plied yarn stacks up.

58) Quality time with the drumcarder

Sunday saw an unexpected lull in the crazy merry-go-round that has been my life over the last couple of months, so I spent much of the day lazing around and playing with wool

The dyed fleece from a last week made a whole bunch of fluffy batts, which co-ordinate very well with the lusciously flowering lavendar bushes.  The waste from the drum carder was incorporated into a final mixed batt, somewhat neppy and badly photographed:

But where's the pink, you ask??  Ah, yes, the pink:

It really is quite pink, isn't it?

You see, this is my first attempt at using Rod, Jane and Freddy to re-create a Noro-Kureyon style yarn, all of my own.  And it seems traditional - if not downright mandatory - to include a somewhat crazy colour in each skein - why not pink?

I have, actually, spun most of a bobbin full of loose, fluffy singles already, and have started on the second.  Kureyon, despite popular received wisdom, is actually a two ply yarn, so I'm weighing carefully, and hoping that my colours will line up when I come to ply the stuff.

53) New paths

This is a time of change, excitement, sunshine and darn hard work.  It turns out that picking up freelance knitting pattern checking and grading work can seriously eat into your actual knitting time - who knew?

In addition, I'm working hard on Something Else, which I am very, very excited about and which I will tell more about next week.  It involves dyes.  And yarn.  And a launch party, scheduled for the end of this month.  It's making me giddy with excitement but also strangely reticent...  and busy.

The result is that Eloise - the sweater I started and almost finished at Easter! - is fully knit and the seaming is about half done, though I haven't found buttons for her yet.  Maybe tomorrow.  The graded yarn I spun is turning itself into a mini-Revontuli, but very slowly.

The garden is growing, also.  Miraculously, I have real plants in the ground, which are not dead, and even ate my first proper harvest (salad greens) yesterday - more to come today, for my lunch.  Yum!  More on that later, though.

More posts.  Definitely.  Though, if you'll excuse me, they'll probably be rather photo heavy and light on the words for a while.