awayuq

interlude

Where does refreshment come from? For me, from sleeping in a place like this from which you can feel the night air and see the moon huge and glowing. In the morning the stars appear between tree branches and you can lie there in the soft breeze watching them grow fainter. The house is the house I grew up in, but the porch is new, built by a long-time friend. After experiencing it, none of us can quite believe we waited so long for this luxury! New requirement for my someday dream house: screened in porch. At least one.

The only disadvantage of sleeping out on the porch is that you get woken up by creatures like these. The white one is particularly raucous. I've never heard such a loud rooster! And he looks funny too, with an ugly naked head and neck but fluffy feather pantaloons growing over his legs and feet. Quite a character. The hens do lay, though. These are prettier and oh SO soft! I don't know what kind they are or where they came from, but they are the softest rabbits I've ever touched. One for each of the two local grandchildren. Wouldn't it be great to have grandparents with rabbits and chickens, if you were say 6 years old, and in that state of eager curiosity about the world...

After visiting the animals, you can rest in a place like this a truly lovely retreat, here shown in early fall exuberance. It's quite peaceful, in fact there's a pool that makes a soothing sound, when it hasn't been rearranged by raccoons during the night. Two fish live there: a white one and an orange one. They have survived several Ohio winters, and no-one knows quite how they do it. My Dad and I also saw a frog in there one afternoon. A big green one.

Since I was on vacation, I had time to notice things like this

and I learned that my Dad's favorites are these
Dad also told me that my Grandfather kept a Victory Garden, and always loved growing things. I didn't know that, and I wonder if that's where I get some of my insatiable desire to put seeds in the ground.

A few years ago our village (less than 5,000 people) made a Women's Park alongside the biketrail. The biketrail was built where the railroad tracks used to be and yes, I am old enough to remember the train coming through town. The whistle could be heard in my first grade classroom and sometimes on warm afternoons we'd be playing outside and wave to the caboose. It's a wonderful experience to wander through this little park, reading the paving stones. The beauty of living in a small town is that many of the names are recognizeable. And, this being a very unique and wonderful village, you might find a tile with the name of a nationally famous author next to one for a grandmother unknown outside the county.

I indulged in quite a bit of shopping, wow it was fun! Lots of colorful new clothes. The advantage of it being the end of summer is that they were all on sale; the disadvantage is that I might have to wait until next year to wear them. But at least I'll have something to look forward to. I also visited this tree
which was planted when I was... well, not yet 10 anyway. For a long long time it seemed to be a short tree, just about my size, and now all of a sudden! Being among all the flowers and fields and woods made me realize once again how much I love the countryside. It's easy to idealize a rural life, and I try hard not to do that; I know there are lots of problems with small town existence. I lived it for quite a while. Even so, I do find myself longing for more space and the smells of a place where healthy live things grow.

Not pictured, the most romantic canoe trip possible in Southwestern Ohio... late evening on a tiny lake fringed with trees. The sun a throbbing orange ball going down on one side, and a brilliant almost-full harvest moon coming up on the other. We stayed out paddling softly until it was fully dark.

another sample

After finishing a bobbin of the green-blue flax and mulling things over, I created a small sample warp using my handspun and some off-white linen singles from stash. The singles are about 20/1 I think-- I have so many unlabelled cones it's not even amusing. That's what comes from accumulating mill ends. Anyway, that yarn is about 52 wpi, and the handspun is much thicker. The idea for this warp is to create a fabric with solitary threads of the handspun against a background of the finer linen. The handspun will be sleyed by itself in an 8-dent reed; each thread of handspun will be surrounded by 20 threads of plainweave, and inbetween the plainweave sections will be stripes that can be plainweave, basketweave, or twill. I'm aiming for a little bit of laciness around the handspun, perhaps even enough to let the kinky energy play, and some laciness inbetween, with the basketweave.

This warp is still on the warping board, and I might not get it beamed too soon, because I am going to Ohio this weekend to visit family. Short trip-- fields! Flowers! Woods! Each time I go back I am apalled at how many more strip malls there are, but my father's house is in an area still relatively unscathed, and in any case it's much much much less crowded than the city where I live now. (Why am I living in the city again? Oh yeah, I have a job. I keep forgetting.) Besides all the perks of a home visit, such as spending time with my Dad, seeing old friends, taking walks in the woods, taking naps, and breathing clean air, I hope to visit my favorite clothing shop. It's downtown in the village where I grew up-- you might not expect such a lovely and fashionable boutique to be located in such a tiny midwestern town, but over the years I've gotten clothes there that I love until they wear out. With luck there will be a nice infusion of new spice into the wardrobe for fall. And a friend offered to take me canoeing! Don't let me forget my swimming suit.

cherry shoulders

Here's the cherry fleur shoulders, just before casting on for the front neck. You can see the sleeves starting to grow at the sides. I was reminded of one more little thing I did this time which I want to remember in the future:

When knitting down from the shoulders, before picking up for the sleeves, I leave one edge stitch at the armhole to have someplace to pick up from. When picking up for the sleeves, knit along the front, knit the last body stitch together with the edge stitch, pick up the sleeve sts, knit the back edge st together with the first back body st... etc. I think this helps make turning that corner a little smoother.

Oh, and yes, this is meant to be a wide scoop neck.

linen to linger by

It started getting a little chilly this weekend for the first time, so what do I do? Pick up the flax roving I got out oh these many months ago. After that freezing cold July August journey I am not ready to let summer go. I am really enjoying this spinning. It's a thick singles, and I don't intend to ply it; I'd like to weave it up, perhaps as accent stripes on a ground of commercial linen. It may have enough energy that it could affect the cloth if I leave enough space around it; we'll see.

This roving was dyed (by me) several years ago, and from that and being wound in a ball it's gotten quite compressed. Splitting and extensive predrafting is essential for me to make any sense of it at all once the wheel starts turning. It's quite irregular in places, but for what I want it for that doesn't bother me unduly.

I've never put my handspun on my floor loom before and I'm wondering if I should put texsolv heddles instead of metal ones. Anyone out there used texsolv on a baby Mac?

setting a difference

The wool samples are off the loom. I am definitely a wet-finishing woman: it's not finished until it's washed. Even things that will be treated as dry-clean only get washed when they come off the loom. Here you can see what a difference a few ends per inch can make. And what a difference a rainy day makes for photo colors--weird! The colors below are much more accurate. All the pieces above are from the same warp. Left to right, 15 epi, 12 epi, 10 epi. Unwashed, the 15 feels like a scratchy board; the 12 feels itchy but hopeful; the 10 feels like a window screen.

Washed, each one starts to charm. The 15 is still rather stiff and dense; I'd use the twill fabric for a heavy jacket or a blanket. I might try a 3/1 twill too, rather than 2/2, or an 8-shaft crepe at this sett. The 12 is a nice all around wool tweedy twill. It could be used for a skirt or jacket, but I wouldn't try welts or lapels. The 10 is soft and cushy and delicious. I wouldn't sew anything out of it, at least nothing that needed much cutting, because it's too loose. But as a shawl or a scarf, it would be wonderful. It was the last piece I tried, and I had some warp left over, so I did some experimentation. This is a nice exercise, to try to come up with different treadlings directly at the loom, rather than playing with drawdowns. I did some standard crepes and twills, but my favorite is this one:

The colors interact well, and the stripes form a nice change in texture as well as color. This fabric would be wonderful as a shawl (if only I had a wider loom!)

There is color-and-weave in all the twill sections of each sample, but you can hardly see it, the values are so close. I don't think I'd spend the effort to weave yards of the color effect in these shades; the pattern is lost. From a distance the twill lines are more prominent than the colors. The yarns, btw, are from WEBS.

cherry fleur

My alpaca lace sweater is hereby dubbed "cherry fleur", because of its brilliant cherry pink color and the so-called fleur-de-lis eyelet pattern I chose. It's at the stage where the sleeve caps are slowly growing out of the armholes. One of the things I love about knitting is the ability to create complex shapes as you work, without cutting and seaming. This simultaneous armhole-sleeve trick still seems magic to me each time I do it.

And speaking of that, I've added a few personal refinements:
--I like to use a firm cast-on for the shoulder edges rather than an invisible cast on, so that the shoulders don't stretch out of shape.
--For the same reason, if the neck does not have to be very stretchy, I like a firm cast-on there.
--And for those neck cast ons, instead of the wimpy e cast on, if you reach the end of the row and turn the work around so the other side is facing you, you can work a cable cast on. Then reverse the faces again and continue as if nothing happened. I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out--some mental block about switching sides I guess.
--If you want a little extra shaping in the sleeve cap, you can work short rows on the sleeve caps the row after you pick up the sleeve stitches. This makes the sleeve shape closer to a knit-flat sewn-in sleeve.

If none of these suggestions make sense, Barbara Walker's description of the seamless set-in sleeve sweater will put it all in perspective.

why

Mothheaven has a post in which the question came up, “why knit?”

For me, this question naturally proliferates into “Why weave? Why spin? Why sew?”

My first answer: intellectual challenge.

We all know there are challenges in creating things, through knitting sewing spinning crochet macramé kumihimo or whatever medium. There are challenges of fit, of proper use of fiber, of gauge or sett, of design. In addition to all those though, there are many other largely unrecognized problems in the field of textiles. I use “problems” here without negative connotation, but in the mathematical sense, to mean some sort of question or situation in which the answer or resolution is not immediately clear.

Did you ever wonder why woven fabrics stay together? Or did it ever occur to you that there could be interlacements that could fall apart? There’s a mathematical algorithm for determining whether a fabric will be whole. It’s not out of reach, but it’s not trivial.

Are weaving drawdowns alluring to you? Some mathematicians have studied the geometry of common weave structures (see for instance The Geometry of Fabrics, Branko Grunbaum (With G. C. Shephard) in "Geometrical Combinatorics", F. C. Holroyd and R. J. Wilson, eds. Pitman, Boston-London-Melbourne 1984, pp. 77 - 98. Google Grunbaum for more). It turns out that from a mathematical point of view, one can ask questions about weave structures that are not easy to solve. You may have wondered too why so many supposedly brand-spanking new cellular automata designs look like—weaving patterns! A fact which I believe the author of this book overlooked. Compare some of these to crepes in Oelsner.

How many different kinds of braids can you make with 15 strands? How do you measure the energy in a piece of yarn, and is it possible to calculate what effect this will have on cloth? How do you cut a piece of cloth most economically to make a garment? How do you cut a given garment from narrow cloth? How many color and weave effects are possible using plain weave with two colors and a 10-end repeat? How do you create all the plane symmetries in a woven or knitted cloth?

If mathematics and geometry and symmetry leave you cold, you can find innumerable historical, anthropological or ethnographic questions. What happened in the New World when sheep were introduced? How did the desire for certain colors of dye fuel the passion for exploration? How was the thread for Columbus’ sails spun? How did guilds form? What happens when two different textile traditions meet? How did weaving technology influence the development of computers? If you don’t care about the past and only look forward, you might be interested in questions of how to spin spider silk , or how to develop a loom that will produce triaxial weaving, or what kinds of new fiber combinations will allow devoré.

And these are just a sparse handful of the myriad of questions surrounding textile techniques and practices. Making and researching textiles requires intelligence, dedication and skill. The truly great textile workers I have known are people with all these traits and at least one more: they love a challenge.

why not.

Some things which are not reasons why I weave/knit/spin/sew:

--“It saves money.” You must be laughing already.

--“To make money.” Good luck.

--“It’s such a spiritual experience.”
Yes, it can be, just as chopping wood can be, or doing dishes, or walking or painting or making clay pots. I’ve certainly been hit by profound experiences while creating something. But, like any other creative endeavor, textiles require practice to achieve technique. Practice is just that—practice. Repetition, experimentation, failure, redesign, struggle to capture an idea. Practice can be spiritual, but it can also be immensely frustrating. Weaving or knitting or spinning does not guarantee a spiritual experience any more than sitting on a zafu guarantees enlightenment.

--“I feel so connected to all the women through history who wove/knit/spun/sewed for their families…”
Bogus. The idea of women as domestic decorations who do handwork while sitting by a cozy fire is surprisingly recent. Women have most often been excluded from the organizations where textile innovation was taking place. Much of what we perceive as women’s work probably wasn’t, for large portions of history. And when it was women’s work, it was *work*. Strenuous, dull, never-ending every daylight moment work. The personal touches and beautiful stitching we love to admire on old textiles were probably far rarer than we’d like to believe. Feeling connected to other textile producers in whatever era is wonderful, but in my opinion should be based on respect for execution and technique, rather than misconceptions about gender and the reality of trying to clothe a family with one’s own hands.

--“It’s so basic, it really reconnects me with the essentials of life.”
With all the faddishness, high fashion patterns, outrageously expensive yarns and fabrics and trinkets out there, I find it hard to sustain this argument. How far removed is the yarn in your LYS from the back of an idealistic sheep in some scenic field? Is large-scale sheep farming or cotton agriculture really a simple thing in our culture? If it makes you feel connected, I suggest this is because of attitudes you bring to it, and not inherent in the practice itself.

--“It brings me in touch with the indigenous people of (your favorite third world area) and how close to the earth they are; how whole and pure their life is.”
I don’t know why I find this so exasperating—I hear it quite often and it almost always irritates me. I don’t know a lot about third world cultures, but I do know that the dirt, squalor, disease and poverty are things that few of us would choose. They may be close to the earth, because they have to be, but they are not therefore immune from alcoholism, political scandals, or other detritus we may abhor in our own culture. I think it’s wonderful that by weaving or spinning we have a better understanding of what skills are required to survive, and can better appreciate the expertise that goes into indigenous dress of all kinds. But fondling a ball of cashmere in a warm well-lit yarn store is a far, far cry from walking barefoot on a steep dusty rocky mountain path with a child on your back, spinning dirty fleece while you climb, not because you want to but because you have to. Well-intentioned as we may be, sitting at a nicely polished loom in our leisure hours doesn’t give a very accurate picture of sitting day after day in the dust, manipulating a set of sticks and string. Being a knitter or spinner does not give us an automatic understanding of a foreign culture and the complexities it contains.
I think it’s wonderful and entirely appropriate to learn about indigenous techniques and to honor them and value them. But the comparison to western fiber workers stretches a bit too thin for my comfort. Our assumptions about the purity, simplicity and pleasures of a subsistence lifestyle tend to be way off the mark. Even our appreciation of their work brings thorny issues—should they then change their designs and colors to be more attractive to our eyes? Should they make cheaper, coarser things so that they can produce more? Once we know about them, they are already facing pressures from a larger world, pressures that threaten the very lifestyle we idealize. The wholeness we love to find begins to erode the moment our culture touches theirs.

And by the way, the “you” above is a purely fictitious non-specific you. No offense intended to anyone. My day to be opinionated.

photo catch up

I love these frogs. I love them so much that I once bought several yards of this fabric and took it home and found out I already had a length in my stash. They are waiting to be made up into a sundress. Another recently finished sundress is made of this rayon
it doesn't really flatter my figure; I think it falls under the Useful Clothes heading. The kind of thing that is handy to have as a beach coverup, or to run out into the garden early in the morning to pick peas, or to lounge around in after a hot day when you don't feel like putting on anything constricting.

Big Blue Orenburg continues; he is not forgotten, but since recording progress on that bundle of dark lace isn't very interesting I bring you some recent swatches:
one of some fair isle patterning in traditional shetland-like wool yarns and one aran swatch, also in wool. The top cable is one I think I'll use as the center cable in my sweater. And speaking of sweaters, here's what a top-down sweater looks like at the very beginning:
Hard to imagine that this curly fiddly bit of short rowing and staggered cast ons is going to be a lovely smooth shoulder portion of a lace sweater. Over the weekend I started this three times: the first time I didn't like the width I was coming out with, even though I'd measured gauge carefully. The second time I made it smaller but still didn't like it, so I recalculated everything and this time I think it is just right. One nice thing (or not, depending on what you want from your knitting) about top-downs is that most of the fiddly stuff is at the beginning. You figure out the most difficult parts, the neck shaping and shoulder shaping and armhole calculations at the start, and then you can just knit gaily along in your desired pattern, making such sweaters very good meeting knitting or commuting knitting. Last night I reached the pick-up for the sleeves, so once I center the lace pattern over the shoulder all fiddlies will be done for a while. This is a good thing, since I find that I tend to make mistakes on Big Blue when I bring it to knitting groups and such.

Moving back for a moment to the fair isle swatch, here's a photo of a sample tweed warp with the same yarns: warping only 100 threads is amazingly fast! It's easy to forget how quick warping can be, when you work with threads at 30 epi and up. I threaded a straight draw and plan to experiment with a color-and weave effect from Ann Sutton's Color and Weave book... the goal here is not innovation but to get a nice, workable tweedy cloth. Oh! And the reason there's room for this warp on the floor loom? China Leaves is done! Front
and back
The fabric has a nice hand, I just wish there were slightly more of it, because with only two yards I'm not sure what to do. I could always weave more fabric of a coordinating design, but I'm not sure I can count on getting around to doing that. It might be fun to have a sort of swinging vest, with the sides of the front using different faces of the fabric.

a little list

I've been lazy about taking pictures lately, but that doesn't mean nothing has been going on.

First, I did my talk on gauzes-- with, I dare to say, moderate success. I was very impressed by the weavers in the class; they asked sophisticated questions and it was clear that they have a lot of weaving experience and expertise (probably a lot more than I do). As a bonus, I got to attend the rest of the guild meeting-- the lunch and afternoon lecture-- and it reminded me how much I enjoyed being in a weaving guild when I was able to attend. I'm dismayed that I haven't joined the local guild since I moved to Boston. I think I will, now that I've seen what quality weavers are there... but it's still frustrating that I can't participate because of the scheduling. They meet during the day, in a place with no commuter rail access. What'a a working woman to do? One of my big gripes with the weaving world is that every so often the big discussion blows around--you know the one, it goes Why Don't We Have Any Young People In Our Guilds? Why Don't Young Women Weave? But the scheduling continues to be during the day on a weekday, in places inaccessible to people without a private vehicle. I'll save the full rant for another time.

The long weekend was gorgeous, and in a desperate attempt to hold onto summer I made a sleeveless sundress for the last few warm days. The fabric is a batik rayon in dark red, with some beige and brown, an appropriate summer-into-fall scheme. It's very comfortable, but alas! Because I made it so simply, just a straight cut tank top with a skirt, I look like I'm wearing a flour sack when I put it on. I've been wearing clothes long enough to know this-- however dissatisfied I am with my shape, shapeless clothes do not help. So I think I'll insert a drawstring, or a sash of some kind to cinch in the waist at the back; that improves the silhouette dramatically. I cut out another one, of a green cotton with frogs on it maybe I'll get that done and wearable before the temperature drops too far.

And as for knitting, you can take it as given that Big Blue O continues. I've reached a point which may prove to be difficult; a place in the middle where I'm past the midpoint but not close to Almost Done. The pattern has nothing new, it's now mirroring itself around the center, so there's no change in stitches to look forward to... the milestone of the middle has been passed, but I'm not near enough to the end to gain eagerness from imagining how soon I can start the final border and what it will look like when it's finally off the needles. This is the grim, grinding stage where only patience and perseverance will help.

While I gather those resources, I did a few other samples: one of some cables in crunchy cream wool, one of fair isle patterns in shetland from some cones on the shelf. I have always had a dream of weaving tweed for a skirt and jacket, and knitting a fair isle sweater out of matching yarn. You can ask me about it after I meet the patron who will obviate the necessity for the day job. Until then, swatching does no harm, right? Both samples turned out lovely, and I've spent several evenings deciding on which cables to put together for a sweater, and charting out the pattern. This will be a top-down aran, and before I begin the sweater I will make a big swatch of all the cables together, so I can see better how to place the neck and all that.

Which brings me to another point... I realized recently that just about the only sweaters I finish are those I do from the top down. I've never been the kind of person who can follow a recipe without tweaking. Seaming isn't a problem for me, I don't mind doing it, but somehow I just can't follow most patterns, it drives me nuts. Maybe because I'm always trying to take yarn off my overflowing shelves, and make it get the same gauge as something with quite a different character, which inevitably leads to frustration. Maybe too because so few patterns are sized for petites, so I have to do length adjustments on everything no matter what gauge I get. And partly because, sorry, but so many patterns are written so poorly, and the flat pieces don't seem to me to take advantage of the shaping possibilities inherent in knitting. So for now, instead of forcing myself to follow a pattern, I've decided to allow myself to be inspired by published things I like, but to be realistic and design my own top downs if it's something I really want to finish and wear. To that end, I did some calculations for a lacy sweater in fuschia alpaca... the bottom back has been languishing for many months now. I just can't see putting a seam in the middle of a lace motif when it would be so easy to do the thing in one piece and make the pattern continue without a break under the arms! My design is clearly based on the pattern I was unsuccessfully trying to follow, but in the process of sketching it out I made some alterations: set in sleeves instead of dropped shoulders, a deep scoop neck, maybe even frills on the cuffs. This is the sweater on which I'll figure out how best to place the pattern on those initial shoulder rows, to make it come out nicely at the neck, and how to manage the sleeve cap as the stitch pattern progresses. Things which, come to think of it, will be very good to figure out before attacking the aran.

And by the way, if I never finish any of these sweaters, I'll still have learned something, and the swatches were fun, and that's fine with me.