Category Archives: Knitting

August 20, 2013 · 6:21 pm

Revelations at the drum carder

Recently I made good on my intention to properly clean and oil the drum carder.  It meant I had to find the instruction sheets.  And that was when I had the revelation that my drum carder has two speeds.

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Conceivably, this was a selling point when I decided to buy it–that does sound curiously familiar–and I had managed to completely forget.  I have had it on the setting which would be ideal for blending roving for some years.  That’s been good sometimes, because it really does make a great batt for artyarn spinning, and there has been quite a bit of that at my place.  However, I have struggled to make great batts from fleece, sometimes with a lack of patience, I admit.  But there has been plenty of trying and some of it has been patient.  So, I have been applying my newly oiled and cleaned carder to some Polwarth fleece on the correct setting, and wonder of wonders, it actually is better!

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I have also been carding some of the lower quality end of my enormous stash of Polwarth and spinning it fat, soft and three ply with YET MORE Fibertrends Clogs in mind.  The short cuts and brittle ends will never be seen again once they’ve been felted.  And I have to say the spinning is a lot of fun.

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Every time I use the drum carder and pick up the doffer–a long pointed metal tool for removing the batt from the carder–I find myself earwormed with a folk song called The Doffing Mistress.  The link is to the singing of Maddy Prior and June Tabor, two of the shining stars of English folk music over some decades.  The quality of sound is no doubt better on iTunes, but this version comes with a description of the job of a doffer in the period after the industrial revolution.  I am very glad not to be a small child pulling bobbins on and off an industrial spinning machine to earn sufficient to eat…  Instead, I have been hand winding big fat balls of this yarn, since it is a bit thick for my ball winder.  Let the knitting begin!

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August 17, 2013 · 1:10 pm

New socks!

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My beloved brought two skeins of sock yarn home from a trip to Ireland and Turkey some time back. What sumptuous colours!  This is Hedgehog Fibres Sock Yarn (85% superwash merino, 15% nylon) in ‘Pod’.  It feels glorious, but the dye work is especially lovely.  Happily, I still have the second skein to convert into socks… or perhaps gloves.  I’ve decided to reward such excellent choice in sock yarn by giving these back to my partner.

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Here they are in the dyers’ camomile patch, which has started to look leafier since the weather began to turn toward spring.  I love the way that a beautiful yarn can render even a plain ribbed sock lovely.  At present my sock knitting is being done in meetings, on public transport and in the car, so this is the height of sock knitting complexity I’m scaling at present.  These have been a delight for my fingers even when knitting without looking in lengthy meetings, just what I love about socks.

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August 12, 2013 · 1:03 pm

Sharing

Do you remember these red slippers?  I knit them with a friend in mind, but it has been a long while since she let me know she’d worn through the last pair.  I have knit dozens and dozens of these Fibertrends clogs and sometimes I can’t face knocking out another pair!

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Today I took them to the farmers’ market where my friends run a stall selling their locally grown fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs, wine and vinegar.  They are an extraordinary couple whose Food Forest is a wonder and a delight as well as a place of education and inspiration in our local area.  When she saw the slippers, her face lit up!  And an exchange of gifts immediately began.  I love this part of crafting–being part of a gift- and joy-economy instead of one that’s all about dollars.  All this, after a delivery of locally grown greens and delicious tempeh had already been left on our doorstep by our nearest and dearest!

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June 6, 2013 · 4:49 pm

More socks!

More socks off the needles after a long period of being unfinished…

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Long ago I had the opportunity to buy part of a raw Suffolk fleece that had been discarded by another spinner.  I had been steadily reading my way through the Guild’s library, so I recognised this as a breed that was eminently suitable for sock spinning.  At the time, I only knit socks.  They were the whole reason I had learned to knit, and then to spin.

As it turned out, the Suffolk was a very short staple and none too clean fleece.  Never mind.  I gleefully acquired it and proceeded to use my beginning dyeing skills on it.  Four pairs of socks came of it.  One, pink dyed with hibiscus flowers, went to my Mum.  Another was dyed in eucalyptus leaves as fleece and spun up afterward.  I can’t remember who I gave that pair to.  I think they might have gone to tree lovers in the Blue Mountains.  I made my father a glorious pair that were purple and blue, blended rather beautifully after dyeing (and at that stage, their loveliness was an accident!)

These were made from Suffolk blended with tencel, which may have been ill advised–time and wear will tell.  The colour could have been better and the blend is uneven, but a three ply handspun yarn is a work of dedication and there was enough even for a pair of large feet, so I knit these.  They are going to a dear friend who lives nearby, who does indeed have large feet.  Last night he spoke about a pair I made him years back that he is still wearing hiking.  This pair may not last as long but I hope they will keep his toes warm at the very least!

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June 3, 2013 · 12:07 pm

Steeked!

Perhaps you remember this yarn, spun and chain plied from a beautiful blend by The Thylacine.

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I decided on a vest for my fairy godson, an appreciator of handmade items if ever there was one.  He is a not-so-small six year old person growing ever taller and thus, growing out of last winter’s woolies. I designed (I  do realise this is a very plain garment!) the vest based on measurements from one he already has that is a generous fit.  100% handspun alpaca for the band at the bottom, in seed stitch.  When I reached the place where I wanted the neck and armscyes to begin, I cast off a few stitches, then cast them on again on the next round (leaving a slot) to create a steek bridge.

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Here is the upper part a bit closer up.  I have decreased just the way I would have done knitting this garment by any other method, but kept knitting in the round, making sure those stripes are maintained with wonderful simplicity. Knitting in the round feels normal to me, since I took up knitting in order to knit socks.  I much prefer knitting in the round to knitting flat.

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Then came the day of truth, when I stitched through the knitting all the way from one end of the steek bridge to the other and cut, yes, CUT! the neckline and armholes prior to grafting the shoulders together and picking up the edgings.

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Wonderfully simple if you can hold your nerve.  I am so happy with the finished result, I’m on tenterhooks waiting for the intended wearer to return from holidays soon for the handover.  I sure hope he likes it.  I have yarn left over from 100g of fibre. Amazing!

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PS–yes, it fits!

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April 12, 2013 · 5:01 pm

The spinning continues

Unfortunately, it has been a time of illness and low energy round here just lately.  Fortunately, spinning provides solace and the level of exercise I’ve been capable of undertaking.

Here, some delicious black baby alpaca I bought from SpunOut at Bendigo (three plied).  It is called Handspinners Dream and, mmmm.  It was! Luxury fibre with a price tag to match.

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I also finished some spinning intended as sock yarn–the purple yarn in the photo.  It is a true three ply yarn with high twist.  I spun it slowly since it has been on the wheel I take to the Guild only twice a month.  There have been many jokes about frog hair, and more than one person has asked me if I am really spinning, because the singles were so fine they couldn’t be seen from across the hall.  I will be so interested to see how this works out as  socks.  Despite all the joking, this is not too fine for sock knitting.  Since I have three pairs of socks on my needles at present and all three are still in the first sock stage, I may not find out for a while.  I have one still on the leg, one just past the heel and still on the gusset, and one almost at the toe.

Back to spinning though–and that is where my time has been spent lately–the purple sock yarn is from Ewe Give Me the Knits.  It’s her Superwash Merino/Bamboo/Nylon blend, especially for sock spinners.  Another lovely spinning experience.  I am warming up to spinning some of the fleece I’ve washed through summer after all this pre-prepared fibre.

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February 27, 2013 · 9:33 am

Sampling dye plants

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When I started plant dyeing, I used to make a tiny skein, about 1-2 metres long, and try out the leaves of trees around my neighbourhood on that.  In those early days, I tried rue after I found it listed in a book… oh my goodness…  the least said about that smell,  the better.  It almost put me off for good.  (Pale green, if anyone is wondering–not the red I was hoping for in my naivete).  When I had accumulated enough experiments to have identified some trees I wanted to keep visiting and some I would appreciate but not use for dye, I knit the samples into striped socks for a dear longtime friend. So that method had its advantages.  My friend asked for short cuffs (well, I thought he had–), so that’s what he got.

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I may have mentioned my devil-may-care attiutude to matching socks.  Happily my friend shares it, or he wouldn’t have scored this pair! 

Eventually I learned about sample cards from more experienced dyers on Ravelry.

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I use milk bottles to make mine.  We don’t use this kind at home any more, so I raided a recycling bin at a coffee cart during the weekly farmers’ market to get these.

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I keep my samples on a split ring, which I think I also saw on Ravelry, and it’s a great record of plants investigated.  Some have been identified long after being cooked in the dyepot.  A few have been identified correctly after an initial misidentification.  Some have been tried several times.

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And there are still so many to try out!  In the lead up to the recent workshops, I collected leaves fresh and dried: from trees, from the gutter, from fallen branches.  I collected more bark too.  This one is Eucalyptus Forrestiana,  believe:

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And I collected a few specimens I couldn’t identify… This one branched so high I couldn’t pick a leaf, but bud caps were raining down and lorikeets were having a great party high above me.

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This one was a sprawling mallee near the railway line, and came complete with new holland honeyeaters protesting my invasion.  I hope they had chicks in there somewhere, and this was the reason they kept trying to see me off even though they are about the length of my hand.

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This tree has fascinated me for some time: it gives a peach or apricot colour.  But I still can’t identify it.

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So many possibilities for the future….

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February 26, 2013 · 10:31 am

Spinning

I loved running workshops over summer, but it has also been a treat to return to my spinning wheel.  This skein began as grey corriedale fleece.  I dyed it in the grease with Earth Palette dyes, carded, and pulled a roving directly from the drum carder through a diz.  I have seen this technique demonstrated on YouTube, but I was only prepared to try it after someone from my Guild (who is a fabulous spinner) showed a group of us how she does it.

I like the colour, and enjoyed the process of producing roving.  Being able to dye in the grease is one of the things that has me returning to Earth Palette dyes. It improves my pleasure in scouring, and makes me content with scouring small quantities.   Does my impatience show?

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One of the workshops I ran over summer was on ‘fancy yarns’–artyarns to the inhabitants of the internet–and it has been good to come back to spinning the kind of yarns I prefer to knit.  I love the challenge of artyarn spinning, and the results, but I am a plain spinner in my heart, apparently.  This is relaxing spinning for me and I’m enjoying relaxing a little.  The yellow/green/blue corriedale that I dyed at the same time has already become a beanie for a dear friend’s birthday, even though there will be no call for him to wear it for some months yet!

Dyeing over a grey base has pleased me so much that I want to return to trying it with eucalypts.  I guess I’d better get over myself about scouring…

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February 5, 2013 · 3:12 pm

Things I’ve done with with plant dyed yarns…

When I was preparing for the natural dyeing workshop I ran recently, I mordanted a lot of Bendigo Woollen Mills yarn as well as some handspun in small skeins–25g or less.  Having all those small skeins of different colours in alpaca and wool and mohair, activated my imagination. Eventually it led to this…

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These are madder-tipped, logwood-stemmed crocheted coral thingummies, inspired by Loani Prior’s ‘coral punk’.  When I say ‘inspired by’, let me confess.  I bought her beautifully designed and entertaining book Really Wild Tea Cosies with a Christmas book voucher I was given.  So I had the pattern.  But even though only one, basic, crochet stitch was involved, my crochet skills are decidedly remedial and I don’t happen to have a crochet instructor on tap.

I turned to Maggie Righetti’s book Crocheting in Plain English (I don’t have the new revised edition, needless to say).  Apparently sometimes I just can’t believe what I am reading… or perhaps I just don’t understand on the first eight passes.  I see students I teach with the same difficulties!  By the time I had finished this tea cosy and started on the next, I’d managed to figure out that I wasn’t doing what Loani Prior must have believed was involved in the one stitch involved in her cosy.  Luckily for me crocheting badly still produces a fabric of a sort.  I also figured out that for me, improvising a knit version of the pot cover itself was going to beat freeform crocheting one as the pattern suggests with my inadequate skill set.  So that’s what I did, and Loani Prior shouldn’t be held responsible for the outcome.  I like it anyway.

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It has highly entertained people who watched me crocheting coral at parties (as one does) as well as those who have seen the finished object, many of whom thought immediately of a sea anemone.

Let it be said that at present coral punk is not alone.  Here is the present plain Jane of the tea cosy selection at our place: yellow from silky oak leaves and orange from eucalyptus–with the felted blobs spun into the yarn.  Pattern improvised.  Luckily, tea pots are just not that fussy about how you clothe them.

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I’ve been branching out and using up some particularly strange art yarn spinning experiments.  This next one is commercially dyed mohair with silk curricula cocoons spun onto it.  Scratchy for a head, perfect for a teapot!  I was surprised how many people liked the look of the ‘hat’ emerging as I knit this at a picnic, riffing off Funhouse Fibers’ Fast and Fun Cozy.  Once again, that is to say, dispensing with the pattern when it became inconvenient.  I guess the hat admirers hadn’t felt the yarn yet.

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And for anyone who is wondering, I have continued to dye with the logwood exhaust from the dyeing workshop.  I ran out of yarn for a while and dyed two, 200g lengths of merino roving.  This morning I pulled out another 100g of superwash yarn.  I think it might be just about done, and I only wish I had kept a record of the weight of fibre that has been dyed with what was a small quantity of logwood in the beginning!  This weekend, the second in a series of two natural dyeing workshops. I’d better eat my crusts and get my beauty sleep in preparation.

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January 18, 2013 · 11:52 am

Finished objects completed in my holidays

There has been a lot of holiday crafting going on round here.  But this post marks return to my day job!

I made some Thai style fishing pants.  I bought a pair in 2000 as the new century began, and they have finally gone to the worms in our worm farms, the ultimate destination of natural fibres that are worn past the point of repair and reuse around here.  I traced a pattern from them and made this pair from a sarong found at the op shop.  I assume the originals were cut to maximise the use of fabric from a loom that is a standard-ish size in the region, because the sarong was the perfect amount of fabric, with almost no fabric left over to be wasted or used for other things.  Surely this is the goal of all hand weavers, as well as a decent goal for thrifty and green sewers.

I used french seams and then top-sewed them flat, so that I could use only cotton thread and ignore the polyester sucking overlocker.  When commercially sewn garments go to the worms, the overlocker thread is usually all that remains.  The worm farm offers an education in the biodegradability of garments, and I am increasingly aiming for biodegradable.  There is a cotton-polyester t shirt in one of them that has been there since my daughter left home and abandoned it.  Over 10 years ago.  Polyester will clearly survive the apocalypse, along with cockroaches.   Seriously, my everyday garments do not need to live as long as the Gobelin tapestries.

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I made a pair of radmila’s slippers from a new book, Knitting from the Center Out by Daniel Yuhas.  They are knit from handspun merino roving dyed with Eucalypts.  I have to say that I gave up making matching pairs a long time ago and now make siblings rather than twins… further proof lies in the next two images. OK, make that three!

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I took up knitting in order to be able to knit socks, and that is what led me to spinning and then dyeing.  Sock production has slowed down, but I finally finished a pair of Jaywalkers for a beloved friend. She is a lover of bright colours who has appreciated these as splendidly red while they were still in progress.  This yarn was dyed by a fabulous local dyer, Kathy Baschiera.

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Remember the post where I was wondering whether a sow’s ear could be turned into a silk purse (actually, whether I could turn the less exciting parts of a polwarth fleece and some low quality alpaca into slippers)?  Well, the answer is yes.  These are knit using Bev Galeskas’ Felted Clogs pattern and dyed with Landscapes dyes.  I hope Bev Galeskas has made millions from her pattern.  I sure have made tens upon tens of these, though most are a shade less hairy.  Clearly I spun in a fair amount of guard hair, and it won’t felt.  Just the same, the recipient of the red pair at the back was very enthusiastic as he turned 40, and the delightful women who will be receiving a parcel today or tomorrow with the front two pairs are great mend and make-do experts who have darned their previous pairs extensively… they live in a very cold place and will enjoy warm feet and hopefully overlook the odd stray guard hair!

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Ah, holidays.  I hope you’ve had some to enjoy.

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