FO Friday - I was in need of a quickie...

I was staring at my "needs to be sorted" stash last night and felt the need for some instant (almost) gratification.  My family's been going through a bit of a stressful period lately, and despite the good work that I'm doing with my WIPs, I really needed a quick fix of a completed project.

So I pulled out the 2 hanks of Katia Iceberg that I picked up at a warehouse sale 2 months ago and set to work on a big chunky cowl. I always find it fun to use my 'comically oversized' needles and they were the perfect fit for this project.   I improvised the pattern (the kind of knitting that I find most relaxing) and here it is (albeit in a really, really rough format)!

Kirsty's Relaxin' Chillaxin' Mobius Wrap

Yarn: Katia Iceberg (or a similar Super Bulky Yarn), 2 hanks (200g/66m)

Needles: 19mm/US35

Gauge is not important for this pattern.  Have fun with it!

Abbreviations:
Sl1K: Slip 1 stitch knitwise
YO: Yarn over
sl1 k1 psso: slip1 knitwise, knit1, pass the slipped stitch over
k2tog: knit 2 stitches together

Pattern:
Loosely cast on 16 stitches.

Row 1: sl1k, [YO, sl1 k1 psso] to last stitch, K1
Row2:  sl1k, [YO, k2tog] to last stitch, K1

Repeat these 2 rows until you've only got enough yarn left for one more row to bind off leaving a long tail.  Around about 50 rows.

Bind off loosely.

Block the piece as a flat rectangle.  Once dry, giving the  piece a single twist, sew the ends together using a mattress stitch.

That's it.  Easy-peasy lemon squeezy!

Weekly WIP(s) - Week 1

I always seem to have multiple projects on the go, but rarely do I document it.  When friends ask how long it took to create something, I usually hum and hah before making a very non-committal answer.

That being said, I really enjoyed documenting my dyeing experience on the weekend, and even though I may be the only one reading and re-reading my blog entries, I'm going to start to measure my progress a couple of current projects (mostly of the knit variety) here.

Current Project #1: The 7 Year Sweater
I could probably create an entire separate blog just for this sweater!  When I picked up knitting 11 or so years ago, I promised to (one day) knit a sweater for my husband, once I felt more comfortable with my skill set.  I had knit him a sweater before we were married, but something happened with the neck hole and, well, we nicknamed it 'El Grosso'.  (Hey, you never know, the off the shoulder look may come back into style!) So, after 2 babies and many, many baby sweaters to hone my craft, I decided it was time to knit a man-sized sweater.  Yarn was purchased, a pattern was picked out and stitches were cast on.

But they were all wrong for each other.

Two years later, I purchased the Patons Men pattern book with the intention of knitting the Top Down Fair Isle pullover minus the fair isle, but I couldn't wrap my head around the wrap technique and after 3 attempts gave up.  I convinced my husband that a Guernsey would be a better choice.

The Guernsey pattern was easier, but boring.  I dropped that one after 12 inches of the back was complete.

After another year, I decided that despite my husband's protestations, that a cable knit sweater would be the best thing to keep me interested in knitting the darn thing.  The albatross of sweaters!    But with the complex pattern not something that I could easily take with me to the soccer field or on long car rides, it was tucked away and forgotten.

So, finally, the guilt of so many birthdays and Christmases without a sweater wrapped up for the love of my life,  I cast on the Top Down Fair Isle again about 2 weeks ago.  I've made several projects with wraps and short rows in the years since I last attempted this sweater, and get past them this time around as a breeze.  The sweater is coming along quite nicely.  I've only got about  rows to go until  I can start to separate the sleeves and the body.  I'm adding stripes instead of the snowflake pattern and  the seamless, in-the-round pattern will be a perfect project to bring along with me to a Spring and Summer full of soccer.

Current Project #2: The Lonely Tree

Loving my newly dyed worsted, I sought out a shawl pattern last night and came across the Lonely Tree Shawl on Ravelry.  I cast on last night and have already finished Chart A of the pattern and I just love, love love it! The leaf pattern is showing off the delicate variations in my hand dyed yarn so nicely.

Current Project #3: Entrelac Bag

I love the look of entrelac and it's been years since I've worked anything in this basket-weave effect in the past (I've made a cushion cover and a little purse),  but I've never felted entrelac, which is the aim of this project.  I'm working with Patons Classic Worsted Wool and I've completed the first two tiers.

Adventures in Dyeing - Part 1

Two summers ago, I had some success dyeing wool with Kool-Aid and Wilton food colouring.  I wasn't too impressed with the results from the Kool-Aid (and BTW I will NEVER let my kids drink that dye source ever again), but the results from the Wilton gel dye were pretty impressive.  I needed to use quite a lot of the drink mix to get an intense colour and I just could not stand the fake, fruity smell.

Grape/Lime Kool-Aid

Grape/Strawberry Kool-Aid

Wilton Blue/Purple gel dye

I've been pretty fascinated with the concept of dyeing my own fibre ever since, but have been a nervous about experimenting with the process beyond popping a bowl of dye and yarn in the microwave.

I've finally built up the nerve to start experimenting with colour and have stockpiled about a dozen or so hanks of bare wool from Knit Picks.  My initial plan was to dye the yarn in the heat of the summer in the back yard using a variety of colour sources: plants, veggies from the garden, food colouring, and eventually commercially prepared dyes.   But we've had a really long winter here in Eastern Ontario and with the temperature hovering about 4 degrees above 0C today, the warm, sunny days of summer seem really far off and, well, I can be a pretty impatient person when it comes to wanting to try something (especially when it comes to crafting!)

So, today, I am trying my hand at dyeing some yarn with beets and tumeric, hoping for a peachy colour when all is said and done.  The beets should provide a pink base and the tumeric will (hopefully) add a tinge of gentle orangey-yellow.  As I said, I like to experiment.

I took a 2lb bag of beets, removed the root base and quartered them.  I covered them with just enough water and brought the stainless steel pot to a rolling boil.  They are presently simmering away on the stove in a stainless steel pot with about 1Tbsp of tumeric.  The smell is so earthy and much more bearable than the Kool-Aid.  I'll need to let that simmer away for a while before straining and adding the wool.  In the meanwhile, I'm going to soak the wool for a couple of hours (and decide which weight to use).  The wool needs to be completely wet and saturated before it can take the dye.

Later...

Using Earth Guild's general rules for mordanting as a guideline, I prepared an alum and cream of tartar mordant for the wool. I decided that I would use 2 hanks of Bare Wool of the Andes Worsted Weight from KnitPicks, and soaked them in water ("wetting" the wool).

As the guideline on Earth Guild's website is for dyeing 1lb of wool, I adjusted the mordant recipe as follows.

Earth Guild:  16oz fibre (dry) : 3oz alum : 1 oz cream of tartar

Me:  200g fibre : 37.5g alum : 12.5g cream of tartar

(At this point I was grateful for my mad math skills and my digital scale.)

After removing the beets from the pot, I added the mordant and stirred to dissolve it.  I then allowed the pot to cool down to room temperature as not to shock the wool (I do not want felted fibre!)  

I also dipped a square of paper towel into the dyepot to test the colour.  Pinky-orange as expected.

The wetted wool was added and the pot was then brought back up to a simmer.  My intention was to allow it to simmer for an hour, but life and chores got in the way and I left it for about 1h20m.  No harm, no foul, right?

The dyepot was then removed from the heat source and I put a lid on it.  The colour at this point was more pinky red than anything else.

Out of the dye bath, however, it was showing hints of yellow.

After letting the yarn cool and soak in the pot over night, I was surprised to see much more yellow than pink in the pot.

And the liquid was not a clear as I expected.  Hmm.  All the info I read had stated that the all of the dye should be absorbed into the fibre and the remaining liquid should run clear.  Hmm.  I know that with some acid dyes (eg. food colouring) vinegar and another 30 mins of  heat could take care of this problem, but as I hadn't read anything about mixing vinegar with alum, that was not an experiment I wanted to do.  So after dumping the remaining dye outside on the driveway (we're on a septic tank, so I didn't want to send any leftover mordant down the drain). 

As I rinsed the yarn, it seemed to lose all of its pink from the beets and only the yellow remains.  So what went wrong?

I can only guess that I either didn't use enough alum in the mix for the mordant, that the mordant reacted with the turmeric before the beets, or that there was a conflict of sorts between the beet colorant and the colour in the turmeric.  I suppose that I really should have started out with only one colour source as my first attempt at natural dyeing.  Live and learn, right?  (If you have any idea why the beet colour didn't take, please comment!)

The yarn is now out on the deck drying.  I'm actually really pleased with the final colour.  It's consistent in tone and I have no other yarn in my stash remotely close in colour or tone.  I'm not sure how colour-fast it is, so the next step will be to wash it with Soak and see how much more dye comes out of it before I knit it up.  I'm going to earmark it for a shawl to showcase the colour.

Spring is Full of New Beginnings and a Trip Back in Time.

Well the sun is shining and it looks like Spring is finally on it's way.  Woo hoo!  Despite all of the blog entries that I've written and not posted or shared, Spring is a great time for re-birth and restarting things such as the blog.

So what have I been up to...

Knitting.  Teaching. Weaving,  And not as much spinning as I'd like.

I've also been working on designing.  Designing knits for dolls of all things.  It's like I've gone back in time, reverting to my grade 7 self and creating clothes for dolls again.

Back then, it was mostly for the Barbies that I'd stopped playing with.  I'd already given them all punk rock hair cuts and was adapting whatever I could into high fashion clothing for Barbie and (yes, that's right) my sister's old Donnie Osmond doll (he was so much cooler than Ken).  I converted mini gloves into short-suits, socks into skirts and, my fave, an umbrella sleeve into a gorgeous halter gown.

So, here I am, X number of years later and an avid knitter making doll clothes once again, but this time on a much larger scale - for 18" dolls.  Now, keep in mind, this isn't something I'm doing for my own kids; these dolls really creep out my boys.  But, when a friend's daughter started obsessing over American Girl and Maplelea dolls just before Christmas, a seed was planted.  With my short attention span, I've stayed away from garments - just ask my husband and his 10+ year sweater that's still in the works.  Knitting at the scale of an 18" doll is much more workable for me.

I started with this simple red version of Susan Seffknit's Top-Down Cardigan  in worsted weight Red Heart for my friend's daughter. It knitted up so quickly and simply.  I'd had a taste and needed to try more.  I've since created vests, cardies, and skirts for these dolls, getting more and more adventurous with each item.  I'm just loving knitting up ruffly skirts with scarf yarn - a much better use than scarves if you ask me.  I've even invested in an Our Generation doll of my own (her name is Kaylee and she has FABULOUS hair) for modeling and sizing of the projects.

I have so many ideas swirling through my head for future projects.  The next step, of course is translating my chicken scratches in my little notebook into real live patterns.  I've toyed with writing patterns before (although most are locked away in my mind), but I've never been this excited about the process.  It's a step in a new direction, back into my past.  Perhaps I did know what I wanted to be when I grew up back in Grade 7, but I just didn't know it yet.

Lace and ruffles short sleeved cardy made with hand dyed wool.  My favourite so far!

The Queen of the Land of Half Done

The slipper I'm knitting for my son is just sitting there.  Sitting there staring at me.  It would only cover about half his foot right now.  It's been there for about 2 weeks now.  I feel sorry for the poor thing;  even more so for my boy's cold feet.  The first one of the pair wasn't so difficult to complete. It never is because I am the Queen of the Land of Half Done and my subjects are single slippers and single mittens, and projects still on a set of needles scattered here and there throughout my stash.

On Friday last week I whipped up a mitten.  Just one.  There it is on the laptop. It is yet to have a partner.  I've started its match, but I've already lost interest.  Poor, poor, lonely mitten.

I've been trying to sort out how I ended up ruling over this land.  It comes down to my knitting style.   I like solving puzzles.  I also like to create and not necessarily following all the rules, or for that matter a pattern.  I alter patterns all the time.  Take the little yellow lovely to the left.  I referred to a pattern for the base of the pattern (how many stitches to cast on, how to set up the gusset.)  But the 6 stitch cable up the front was my own improvisation.  It was pretty successful. But now what challenge to add to for the left.  I need to think about that one... and I have no pattern to refer to make the match.  My mistake not to write any of it down.  Now I'm afraid that I won't be able to replicate the mitten with the thumb reversed.  The perfectionist in me coming out.

This is a pattern that rears its ugly little head over and over again:  I improvise or alter a pattern as the creative side of me takes hold and then I find I can't duplicate it and the perfectionist in me just can't be satisfied with the second version.  This is never an issue when knitting a hat or scarf or cowl.  Once those items are finished, if I can't duplicate my changes, then I simply have a brand new, one of a kind item.

So, lesson learned.  I need to start to jot down any changes that I make to the base pattern as I go.  But what about the mitt and that poor little slipper?  The mitten will soon have a left hand partner, but I'll make it without the cable so I still can have a "one of a kind" project, and a completed project at that.  The slippers are almost done.  I'm deconstructing the completed slipper as I go.  I'm nearing the toe shaping, and it's going to be a challenge, but it's getting colder and my boy's feet need to be warm.

Back at it again and why

So, instead of constantly composing blog entries in my head and never actually entering them, I'm going to try this blogging thing again.

I make an effort to knit every day.  Why not write about it?  Why do I knit? Honestly, for my mental health.  I need to create every day.  I need to use my hands.  The patterning and repetition lends comfort and reduces my stress.  There have been so many studies and articles published on how beneficial knitting is to one's health.  I agree wholeheartedly with that notion.

My Mum, who was a very accomplished knitter and crocheter and taught me to knit, passed away last year after a two year "battle" with lung cancer.  When we found out that she was sick, I turned to my needles for comfort.  At times I wish I could have just stabbed something with those needles, but I didn't.  I created.  I developed a need to knit.  A drive to knit.  Mum lived a 5 hour car trip away.  If I wasn't driving, I was knitting.  It helped to focus the anxiety and the panic of what was inevitable.  Much of what I knitted was frogged.  The process of knitting was tantamount to any resulting product.  It helped to keep me focused, calm, and, most importantly, I think that it gave me a sense of control.  When someone you love is sick and you can't do anything to make it go away, you have a need to have some sense of control.  For some, it's keeping an immaculate house (not me), for others, it's becoming an organizer or tossing themselves into their work (again, not me).  For me, it was honing my skills as a knitter.  I went through phases of focusing on types of stitches.  Cables, then wraps, then lace. And I'd take my knitting everywhere with me.

My Mum couldn't knit when she was at her worst.  The pain in her left side from the cancer made it difficult to hold the needles. I so wish that we could have knit together.  I so wish that she could have gained as much comfort from knitting as I do.

I miss my Mum.  Every day.  I desperately try to find comfort in the sense that creating something from some string and a couple of sticks is a gift that she has given me.  And now I have taught my 10-year-old son to knit.  Neither of us have the speed and consistency in our stitches that my Mum had, but she leaves us with something to inspire to.  And that is a wonderful gift.

Lesson Learned

A Happy New Year to you all.

As you can see, I haven't blogged in a while.  It's amazing how discouraging messing up a pattern can be; it's not  something one generally wants to report on.  I think that's the main reason why I didn't keep the updates coming on the mitts. (Not to mention the holidays consuming me). 

Yes, the mittens did NOT quite work out.  The error came with the shaping at the tips.  I knitted, I looked, I tried them on,  I frogged.  I do plan to pick them up again and resume my efforts in design, but now is not the time. Jumping gung ho into the world of design - especially mitten design after not knitting any mittens for 2 years - is not a task to be taken lightly.  I'll need to practice knitting a few pairs from established patterns before resuming the red mittens.  I tucked the mitt aside, needles and all and moved on to other things.

Ah, the other things.  I first knit a 'lacy hat' in Malabrigo worsted.  I just love how the needles slide through the wool like a warm knife through butter.  I find it so difficult to pass by the cubbies of Mal at my LYS without at least touching, squeezing, the hanks.  I love the colourways, too.   This little hat knit up quite easily and the pattern is the Lacy Hat from Classic Elite Quick Knits.  Although the pattern suggests a plain, single coloured yarn, I used the variegated Plena  and I think that it looks nice, though it does look much more pink knitted up, which is not so nice for me!   

The photo (right) doesn't really do the colour any justice.  I blame the camera phone.  

I've also been working on a tea cosy and just finished a silk shawl last night, but I'll blog on those later.

Cheers.