awayuq

ruffles revisited

Remember the little white ruffle posted a few days ago? And the green leafy lace gauge swatch which was testing out the pattern? And how happy I was that I got gauge? What was I thinking!

Gauge in book is 28 st/4 in. I put my little ruler on the swatch, and 4 inches is exactly three pattern repeats, and each repeat is 8 stitches, so I am exactly on gauge, right??

Remember that a fascination with mathematics has nothing to do with arithmetic ability.

Luckily I discovered my mistake before I'd gone too far-- as in gee, this looks *very* wide, even for my hips. A quick reevaluation of the stash turned up, miraculously, some mercerized cotton in a size that really *does* get gauge, with a very similar light sage green color. Some natural white silk and rayon floss will do for the ruffle. It took me all weekend to cast on for this sweater, and already I'm not thrilled about working zillions of centered double decreases. It is very pretty though. We'll see.

cheery cherry charka

A delayed introduction, and also an inebriation test. If you ever find yourself in doubt about your state of intoxication, you can try saying the title twelve times fast while spinning soy silk on a spindle. Anyway-- at long last, I get around to posting a picture of my new (as of February) Bosworth Attache Charka.

I love it.

There is something about doing long draw off a spindle that mesmerizes and comforts me. I love the high ratio of this little machiine (rumored at 110:1). Every time a length of yarn is formed it seems like magic. Wool is wonderful but in my Real Life I find I reach for cotton every day. I hope someday to be a good enough spinner to use my cotton thread to make real things to wear--shirts and sweaters and whatnot. Right now I'm working on weft for a scarf, and using natural "green" cotton roving. Of all my fiber endeavors I think I am least adept at spinning, but this fine tool is certainly an inspiration, and a pleasure to use.

Yes, that is a peruvian manta on which it is resting.

ruffles!

It's hot all of a sudden! My office is sweltering. Last week it didn't feel like spring at all, and now I feel that I am way behind on the spring fling thing! Here's my humble beginning:

the bottom back ruffle of the Alice Cardigan. Because the green I chose for the sweater is a rather neutral color, I opted for a natural-colored ruffle, rather than zingy yellow or flashing pink, thinking that this will make the sweater more versatile. The ruffle technique is rather neat-- you knit a few rows of a very wide piece of stockinette, then knit 3, cast off 5, knit 3, cast off 5... so when the remaining stitches are drawn together, it creates a series of loops. It's somewhat laborious, but whimsical and I like it.

And why Alice? Well, I'm still ruminating on the color scheme for Tipsy. Here's another incarnation of ruffle:

Last week I got enough done on the Orenburg shawl to consider that I've really begun. That's the bottom border, and just over half of the bottom frame. Just to show that I really am working on it. This shawl will be over a yard square when blocked, and here it is all bunched up softly on one short needle... I adore fine lace.

bubbles, briefly

Are bubble hems on the way to being A Big Thing? One of the Burda Magazines in the past several months showed a dress with a full skirt and bubble hem, and a local store window is displaying skirts with hems that are, if not definitely bubbled, at any rate not smooth.

Also noted:

--hip yokes on skirts, with fullness below. (Yikes! Who can really wear a bunch of gathers starting at the fullest part of the hips without looking like a dumpling?)
--tulle overskirts, green, over floral print. Pink tulle princess line jacket. To be worn over... ??
--a tiny little sweater ending just below the bust with a wrapover closing, and long sleeves with a lace motif. Kind of intriguing, and definitely useful if you are in the habit of dressing like a Jane Austen heroine.
--silky lime green pajamas with ruffles on the collar and lapels.

lacewood

I can't seem to get away from the idea of lace even in the tools I choose! This is my new lacewood shuttle, made by Johnathan Bosworth. I got it at the beginning of February to go with my new attache charka (about which much more anon). The cloth on which it's resting is the first one in which I'm using my handspun as weft. The nifty thing about this shuttle is that the spindles fit directly into it-- straight from the spinning to the weaving, no additional winding required. I love it. I'm very interested in using the energy of yarn for special effects, so being able to take delicate singles from spinning to weaving without intermediate steps will be a great advantage to me.

The warp is commercial two-ply cotton from various natural colored cones. Mostly 20/2 but some 30/2. There are 3/1 twill stripes set at 48 epi and plain weave sections set at 24 epi. I'm hoping the plain weave areas will be loose enough to allow the weft some expression of energy. We'll see. Right now I'm just getting used to the new tool, practicing my spinning, experimenting.

flinging swatches

To tell you the truth I haven't felt in a very springlike mood this past week. But I have made a couple of swatches for when the inspiration strikes again. This one is for the Alice sweater from Rowan-- a simple, easily memorized lace pattern. If you notice a difference in the middle, I was trying out some alternative decreases. The color is not as bad as it appears-- a sort of mint green. The sweater as written has an interesting little ruffle around the bottom and cuffs. This swatch got gauge, so it may well become a started project before long. This one I'm less happy with:

It is so bright! I've kept it pinned to my wall for the past 5 days or so to see if it grows on me. It's not the brightness I mind so much as the extreme contrast in values. As I feared, the dark green just doesn't seem to work... between that and the pale blue (not my favorite, what was I thinking?) this swatch just doesn't do it for me. Thank goodness I didn't embark on the sweater, right? I'm considering doing the whole thing in a blue theme to cool it down, or maybe I'll get courageous and try to keep some of these colors, perhaps add another pink and get rid of the green. We'll see. One thing I decided, if I ever make this sweater, I'm going to steek it. I don't mind purling in fair isle, but the loose ends at the edges drive me nuts.

What I'm actually knitting now is my shawl for the year: the medallion shawl from the Orenburg pattern book, in very fine dark teal blue merino wool, size #1 needles. I'm only about 2/3 of the way through the bottom border so there's not much to see. Somehow lately I've been drawn to the fine repetitive detail of this soft wool lace. Knitting for me is much about comfort these days.

Easter Egg

Is finished! I spent Friday night finishing the bottom and weaving in ends. It's bright and cheerful and comfortable. The yarn is Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece. I would use it again, although I did notice some uneven dyeing in the lighter pink skeins. It's not noticeable in the finished sweater. (This sweater used 3 skeins of each of the pinks and one of the yellow for a size which in a store would probably be classified as petite).

The sweater is knit from the top down following Barbara Walker's simultaneous set in sleeve method. I made just a few changes: because it is mostly cotton and will stretch with its own weight, I used a long-tail cast on for the shoulders at the very beginning, rather than an invisible cast on. I picked up for the front right through the first row of stitches. For the back neck, I attempted a shallow shaping rather than making it straight across from shoulder to shoulder. It worked fine, but were I to do it again I'd use a real cast on rather than an invisible cast on, to avoid stretching. I started my rounds at the left back sleeve seam, and decided I could live with the jog in the stripes, because the method I read about for avoiding the jog also moves the seam over by one stitch each time you have to use it. Maybe I'll figure that out on another sweater.

There are darts in front and back and the side seams are shaped too. The bottom edging is seed stitch rather than ribbing, so that it hangs gracefully and doesn't hug the hips. All cast offs are tubular--cool! The first project on which I've used that technique. Because I use what Mary Thomas calls a "combined" method of knitting, my purl stitches face a different way on the needles than my knit stitches, conveniently situated for easy needle movements during the cast off.

Ironically, the sky has just dumped a load of snow here. But I expect I'll be able to wear this sweater soon enough.

glorious

This afternoon I saw some fabulous pre-columbian gauzes. A gauze is a woven cloth in which the warp threads cross each other and return to their places (they do not twist around each other as in warp twining). Ancient Peruvians were masters of gauze weaving. Most of the gauzes I’ve seen are made of cotton singles in both warp and weft, very finely spun, often with so much energy that the yarn corkscrews. Because of the energy of the yarn and the crossed structure of the warps, a gauze when left to itself will collapse. It has amazing elasticity for a woven fabric, and you have to stretch it out to see the patterns. Patterns were most often created by varying the density of the gauze structure—some crossing patterns pull in more, others less, so essentially you are playing with varying opacity in the fabric. You can see a typical example here. Here are a few ideas that might be useful for new textiles:

--One very simple gauze crossing, say 4 over 4, with 6-8 picks of plain weave in between, can give a surprisingly complex look to the fabric, almost like round medallions linked loosely together.
--Try shibori over gauze.
--Sometimes gauze cloths begin and end with a complementary weft-faced band in bright camelid colors. The weight of the band, very different than the delicacy of the gauze, gives some heft to the edge and also keeps the warps spread to the proper width, at least near the beginning.
--One fabric I saw today used 1 over 1 leno, the simplest possible gauze, as a basis for weft-faced color work. It is described as tapestry, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if it could be embroidered… at any rate, the ground cloth is leno, and woven or embroidered into that are cross shapes in different colors of camelid. Again, the weft-faced areas add brilliancy and weight to what might otherwise be a flyaway fabric.
--Spinning for gauze… wow I wish I could replicate those yarns. Some of them are astoundingly fine.

hatching...

This is the sweater I've vowed to finish before starting anything for the spring fling (which starts on Monday)! It was very close to being done, but when I tried it on after finishing the sleeves I found that body was too long-waisted, so I ripped it out back to the waist-- my real waist. There are darts in front and back, so the discrepancy would have been obvious. It's knit from the shoulders downwards all in one piece, no seams anywhere. I've been using tubular cast off on the edges, a wonderful technique-- but it doesn't rip so easily! The other problem I had with the lower body was that single rib drew in too much for my liking-- I wanted a body skimming sweater, not one that hugs my hips. Finally I decided to use seed stitch for the bottom edge. I hope it won't look too out of place with the ribbing on the collar and cuffs.

And here are the colors I'm planning to use for Tipsy... I'm a little worried about the darker green; I hope the value doesn't prove too strong with the others. We'll see-- I hope to get to swatching this weekend.

unusual tools

Not fiber related. I am interested in how things work and how things are made. They're doing a bunch of construction outside my office-- ripped out walls, are re-plumbing and re-wiring everything across the hall. A few weeks ago I saw them trundling in a cart with a big heavy machine of some sort.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Pipe threader."
??
"It threads pipe. You know, so they screw together."
Oh! of course. Today dodging a ladder I ran across one of the pipe guys.
"You want to see how that thing works? Come on back here, I'll show you."
It's sort of like a lathe, I guess, the pipe is turned between four vicious looking toothed things that scrape out the threading. It gets so hot they have to pour oil on it as it works. Pipe threader. Wow.