Pillow talk

A while back I posted some pictures of some pillows I had made using Kaffe Fassett's "magic Ball" technique. To make a magic ball, collect a lot (at least 20) colours of yarns in some sort of related or gradually changing tones. Break off an arms-length of a couple of colours, tie them together at one end with 2-3" inch tails, and then add another length, and another, and so on.

The goal is to make a big ball of yarn in colours or tones that change gradually from one to another, and then back again, on and on through the whole ball. When knitting with this magic ball your colours will shade throughout your knitting without having to stop and decide which colour to use next (if this is confusing, see Kaffe's first book, Glorious Color. Examples of his style, and a description of this technique, are all there.)

At any rate, when I last made one of these magic balls I got carried away and ended up making almost 600 yards of blues, purples, and burgundies. Most of the yarns are hand-spun odds and ends, mostly from my early days of spinning when my technique was a little less refined, and I experimented a lot and had oodles of bits and pieces that wouldn't or couldn't be duplicated again. I also had some beautiful, almost-black dark brown llama yarn that was a recent gift. While I had made some pillows using the magic ball on a light mottled-colour background I wanted to see what the colours would look like on a solid, very dark ground. So it was time to make a new magic ball pillow.

I came up with a zig-zag design of three stitches in the magic ball yarn, and three stitches of the brown-black. The diagonals moved one stitch to the left every row for 7 rows, and then back again. I knitted my pillow in the round so that I could always work from the right-side rows. As can be seen from the inside view, all the knotted yarn ends just are left to dangle inside.

The pillow was designed to be 16" square; I provisionally cast on to start; once I got to about 10" up I put half of the stitches on a string to hold them, and provisionally cast on the same number right above to make an opening on the back, and then finished knitting the pillow body. I did a 3-needle bind off on the top and bottom edges to close each end, then picked up the held stitches and knitted an overlap on the top and the bottom of the back opening, with a small hem to finish each edge.

I washed the pillow and let it dry flat to block it, which evened out the knitting beautifully. To finish the whole thing off I knitted a striped, 5-stitch I-cord which was sewn on after completion, with an overhand knot in each corner.

Five vintage mother of pearl buttons and crocheted loops were added to the back flap. I added the pillow insert, which I had made form cotton batting and stuffed with a whole lot of yarn and spinning scraps (thanks to everyone who donated their yarn ends!) And now I have
one beautiful pillow, and enough of my magic ball and black-brown llama yarn to make another one to match!

Just a thought.

I've come to the conclusion that good finishing skills are a mixed blessing. It seems to me that the better job I do of finishing a newly completed knit the more likely I am to later decide to unravel it. So here I am in the midst of unraveling a lace tunic that I knit earlier (pre-blog) this year. To add to the fun of picking out the seams and the woven-in yarn ends was the fact of it being in 2 different yarns that I alternated with each other throughout the lace pattern.

So as the picture shows, as I unraveled I wound each yarn into a separate ball, using used my ball winder to wind the larger quantity (a hand-dyed silk noil yarn) and a nostepinne to wind the lesser quantity (a hand-dyed, cotton/rayon slub). I have learned the hard way not to just unravel the whole thing and then wind back into balls, unless I want to make a hopelessly tangled rat's nest out of my beautiful yarns.

And why am I unraveling this sweater? It was a 2nd attempt at making something with this silk noil that I bought at Pine Tree Yarns in Damariscotta, ME several years ago. The skein was about 800 yards but is a one of a kind item - if I need more yarn I need to add something else. So I added this Blue Heron cotton/rayon yarn that is beautifully blends in without exactly matching. They do look great together. But from there it went downhill, and while the sweater looked nice off of my body it didn't look so wonderful when I had it on. It was much too long, for one thing, and being lacy it felt summery but was heavier than I wanted to wear in the summer. So I'd been thinking about unraveling it to turn it into something like a shawl, but I couldn't decide what exactly I wanted.

And then I found the Pasticcio Circular Vest by Shelley Mackie at elann's website (look in the free patterns) and there it was. Something fun to wear, sort of shawl-like but different, lacy, and a good choice for variegated hand-dyed yarns. This vest is by the same designer as the children's circular Pinwheel cardigans I was making a while back, the difference being it uses a cotton yarn in an easy mesh openwork stitch, and has no sleeves.

So I've just gotten past the stage of needing double-pointed needles and have switched to a 16" circular needle (Knitpicks Options size 5 US). The beginning was hideous with all those points, stitch markers, and lace patts to manage but once I got a couple of repeats underway it got much better fast. As I had done on the now-departed sweater, I am alternating the 2 yarns - on the 4-row lace pattern repeat I'm using the silk for rows 1-3 and the cotton/rayon for row 4 (there's less of that yarn than the silk so I have to use them in different proportions). The pattern is written for a heavier weight yarn on size 9 US needles but I'm going on the philosophy that the shaping to keep the circle flat works equally well at smaller gauges. If I'm wrong there might be more unraveling to come but for now the future of this yarn is bright again.

Since I've beenhome....

After coming home from my wonderful Wyoming trip had some vacation time to spend at home before I had to go back to work, which I put to good use by getting back to knitting and so dispelling most (if not quite all) of the nagging doubts about my sanity. I was able to finish up a few almost completed projects that had been hanging around since before the trip, such as the Pinwheel sweater for Madi (for the pattern look in the free pattern section of elann yarn's website.). I had planned to do the loopy I-cord border shown in the pattern, but failed to actually read the directions thoroughly before I completely bound off the outer edge, only to discover that the loops actually were the bind-off. Rather than unravel the bind off I settled instead on a pretty crocheted scallop border to make it girly for my very girly-girl niece. It will be her birthday sweater for her 2nd birthday in September.

As part of my project clean-up mood I also did a stash clean up and found some stuff to give to Goodwill as well as a few items to knit up quickly into projects - the kind that could be done in an afternoon and use the whole ball up as well. So I got a bunch of hats done to be donated to something or other; probably Afghans for Afghans but I haven't decided yet for sure. In the picture one hat is still on the needles but it's done now. (Not all the hats have been done since I came home - some were in progress before the trip).

I also made a quickie felted box based on the pattern in the Mason Dixon Knitting book. I knew the yarn I was using (a one of a kind skein purchased at the Bath, Maine farmer's market a few years ago) didn't felt completely but it was sturdy enough that even partially felted it would work for a box. It was knit with a double strand on size 10 US needles by the pattern instructions, with the only changes being that I put handles on 2 sides instead of all 4, and made all the sides a few rows shorter, as I ended up running a bit short on the yarn. I felted it inside a pillowcase cover by running it through the washer and dryer once, and then a second wash before shaping it to air-dry. While the stitches are still quit visible it did get a nice soft texture but firmed up enough to make a great project box for all the little balls I'm using for my mom's vest (see below).

Let's see; what else have I gotten done? I finished the Sockotta socks I started right after getting home. I used the Ripple Socks pattern from Not Just More Socks. I like Sockotta because of the high cotton content but the yarn colours bled quite a bit in the warm water I soaked the socks in before blocking them, and now the background colour is a light blueish grey instead of cream. I don't really mind but I'm sure glad I pre-soaked them before tossing them in with a load of light coloured laundry. It seemed to be the purple that bled the most.

And last but not least I've made progress on mom's vest. It starts in the center back and is knit from side to side rather than bottom to top, and I'm finding it trickier that expected to work in all the shaping, the stripe patterns, and the limited quantities of the yarns. But I'm finally happy with how it looks and am almost done with the back. All the little markers in the photo are my tracking method for the decreases, increases, dart shaping, etc; it's proving to be much easier to use the markers than to try to make notes of what I've been doing. This is a design that will never have a chance of being replicated, to say the least.

Back home again

I'm back in my own home sweet home after a simply wonderful trip through Yellowstone Park, Jackson, and Wapiti Valley. I am so grateful for Thomas and I to have had this chance to spend such a luxuriously long time together, just the two of us. We saw geysers, a grizzly bear, mountains, rivers, trees, pronghorn antelopes, elk, and lots of bison (is it any coincidence that my favourite animals were the fiber-bearing ones? I think not.) I hoped to find some bison fibre for spinning, or at least some bison yarn, somewhere on my travels but alas, did not, so I will order some from somewhere (once I remember where I saw the information about it.)

As any self-respecting knitter would, I took multiple knitting projects with me. I had enough sock yarn on hand for at least five pairs of socks and all the accouterments necessary. But.....gasp.....dare I say it? I did not knit a single stitch. Every day was so full, and I was enjoying my time with Thomas so much, that I didn't need to, or want to, knit. This of course brings my sanity into question but I plead in my defense that since Thomas left his golf clubs at home (and golf is to him what knitting is to me) for the first vacation ever we just spent time doing things together instead of our own activities. And we liked it.

Of course, this can't continue. Since returning home we've each rectified the situation by (for me) immediately starting a sock out of a self-patterning Sockotta yarn in black, white, and purple (it's in the lower left corner of the photo; the ball that looks like it got started as something and then unraveled, because that is what happened to it some time ago) and Thomas has been on the golf course three days out of the four we have been home. My knitting habit is actually cheaper than his golf habit, but the evidence of my stash acquisitions does have a way of hogging up closet space, while golf doesn't leave a lot of traces around the house, if you don't count all those tiny golf pencils in the laundry.

And even if I didn't knit, at least I did buy some yarn! There's a very nice small needlework shop in Cody called The Iron Kettle, and I wanted to get a little something as souvenir yarn. I must admit to not paying as much attention as I normally would, and thought I had purchased some Wildfoote sock yarn, but after returning home I realized I had in fact bought Cotton Fine from Brown Sheep. This comes from not actually reading the label, but simply thinking I recognized the style of the lettering on the label. This turns out to be a happy accident as I have been wanting to try Cotton Fine (80% cotton, 20% merino) as I have really liked Cotton Fleece yarn, which is a worsted weight version of the same blend. I love the deep red colour (sorry for the blurry photo) and now am not sure if it will still be socks as I had planned, or if it will become a lace scarf or something of that sort.

As I had planned to knit on the trip, and had planned to knit socks, I purchased a Knitpicks complete set of sock needles, along with two skeins of Gloss (80% merino, 20% silk) in Grape and two skeins of Palette (heathered wool) in a deep blue. I'm using the needles for the first time on the Sockotta socks, and am loving them. I chose the 6" length which is so much easier in my small hands than 7 or 8"ones, and even though I knit loosely the slick metal is not sliding out of my stitches as I feared they might - maybe the shorter length helps there, too. The Knitpicks set is great because it contains 2.00 mm through 3.25 mm sizes, which in US sizes translates to size 0 through 3, with two variations of sizes 1 and 2, giving a complete range of choices. The set comes in a neat clear plastic envelope with a secure snap.making it perfect for carrying around. Now if only it fit into the Knitpicks Options inter-changeable circulars binder.

I'm on vacation!

I'm off on a road trip to Yellowstone National Park and environs to celebrate my 50th birthday and my 10th anniversary with my main squeeze. I've got enough sock yarn and patterns to keep my busy for a month, the Yarn Harlot's new book, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off, my camera, my suitcase, my sweetheart, and a Mustang convertible to ride/drive. I'll spend 3 nights in the Wapiti Valley visiting Vickery and I'm planning on a great 10 days altogether! See ya!

Sheep to Shawl (again)

Yesterday was the final day of the Alameda County Fair, which means it's also the day for the annual Alameda County Sheep to Shawl competition. The competition is open to anyone who wishes to join, not just Alameda County residents/teams, and the Silverado Spinsters team I participate with always looks forward to this low-key event. This year we had a whopping 7 teams in the competition. So often we find that there are only 2-3 teams in the competition, and while this guarantees every competitor a prize-winning competition, it does take a little of the glow off of one's sense of accomplishment.

The Silverado Spinsters team has worked really hard over the 2 years plus that I've been competing with them to improve our skills at spinning to a standard. This means finding some way to accurately compare the yarns each team member is spinning to be as sure as possible that we are all spinning the same yarn. We've made great strides in achieving this skill and decided to put it to the test at Alameda.

In recent competitions we had developed a shawl design that has become an almost sure-thing winner, so rather than rest on our laurels we determined to design a shawl that would challenge our abilities to spin to a pre-determined standard. We had beautiful white and champagne coloured fleeces, and selected a block lace design using primarily the white, with accents of the champagne colour.

The lace pattern meant that the body of the shawl needed to be in a plain weave, which not only doesn't drape as well as a twill-based pattern, but also makes every flaw more visible. Especially in the very fine, tightly spun yarns needed for a lace pattern to show off well it can also look a tad on the , shall we say, cheesecloth-like side? We knew careful design and good, consistent spinning would be critical to making this shawl a winner.

As usual, we spun like crazy, and wove like fiends, and got the shawl off the loom and to the judges in time to get the bonus points for finishing in the early time frame. Then the long, tense wait for the judging began.

This competition doesn't hire an independent judge but asks each team to nominate a member (or 2, this year) to participate in the judging. Each 2-person panel judges all the shawls except its own. So the final results are more of a judging by our peers rather than from a single expert. I must admit, I really like the feedback we usually get from the independent judge, who more often than not discusses each shawl and explains why he/she made the prize decisions that were made.

By the time the final decisions were announced we were very pleased to be voted the 2nd place winners, with the Spindle and Flyers team from Berkeley taking first place. We knew we'd taken a chance with our simpler (in appearance, if not in actual production), less colourful shawl and we're very happy with the results. And we each have beautiful red ribbons to add to our collections!

More catching up to do

A continuation of the cotton/elastine socks from my June 17 post.... I had ordered 3 balls of 2 different colours of elann.com's Esprit cotton and elastic yarn to make socks for my Mom a month or so ago, and found that the yarn makes a lot more socks than one might think. I made her one pair out of the lighter seafoam green colour, and used 1 1/2 balls total. So I made a second pair using the darker teal colour, and still had enough to make a 3rd pair, this time in a stripe sequence that is identical for each sock but with reversed colours. The first 2 pairs were in a feather & fan lace pattern on size 6 US needles, which made a fairly airy fabric. I used size 5 US for the striped socks, which I like better. The only downside I really see is that I got a definite line that appeared in the gap between my dpns. I don't usually have a problem with this so I wasn't looking for it, but it does show up even after blocking. It appears faintly in the lighter coloured sock in my picture. However, the yarn is soft and cushy, and is definitely a good choice for wool-phobic people, or as a gift for someone who's foot size is not well known.

Other topics... I finally finished plying the first wool that I carded in my new drum carder, which I use primarily to blend fibres and/or colours. I had a partial, pre-washed polwarth fleece that was a variety of silver-grey shades that I blended with undyed silk noil. The noils clumped much more than I expected, and while my goal was to produce an oatmeal-y sort of colour there were larger lumps of silk than I planned, but the finished product is still pretty much what I wanted.

While I finished spinning the singles some time ago I had delayed completing the plying; I have found that the plying head on my Lendrum wheel is challenging to treadle; it puts a real strain on my lower back, and I pushed too hard and plyed more carelessly than usual. I finally got it done by spending only 30 minutes at a time maximum , and slowly but surely finished it. Once I had finished plying the 2nd skein I realized the 1st skein was really badly done, so I ran it through the wheel a 2nd time to tighten it up. I now have about 750 yards of yarn that looks great, but let's face it, each skein is a little different. Not my finest spinning job, but I was a bit distracted by admiring the beautiful wool/silk mix.

I will knit the yarn in alternating rows from each skein to help blend the 2 different skeins; it will need it. I'm not sure yet what I will make with it, but since I know it's not enough to make an entire sweater I'm picturing doing some sort of round-yoke pullover that will allow me to work the body and sleeves before committing to the yoke, where I can introduce additional colours in the yoke as needed to make the yarn go further. I haven't made a sweater like that in years and it sounds like fun to try it again.

My Mom's vest is going slowly, as in I'm unknitting with as great or greater speed than I am knitting. This is where I was a few days ago; the center back is the lower edge of the photo (a bit of the provisional cast on is showing there) and the top edge of the picture is the armhole edge.

While I do like the colours and textures, I feel like the squared-off zig zag in the chenille is much stronger than the narrower rows of darker colours. It's also a bit wider than I want for the center back to armhole measurement, so I'm going to rip back and rework it. I like the chenille zig zag, but I think the other stripes need to be beefed up a bit, and perhaps have a little more texture added. The chenille has plenty of texture and visual weight and I want the other yarns to balance it, not fade into the background. At least I know know exactly how many rows I want from center back to armhole and can work out a more pleasing stripe sequence based on a known number rather than flying blind.

Once I get this first half of the back into a satisfactory state I'm going to go back and work from the center back out to the other armhole so I won't forget what I've done. I've included lots of shaping to fit my Mom's body that is proving to be challenging to write down as I go, so if I don't wait too long to do the 2nd half I will be in a lot better shape down the road.