Summer Roundup (pt.2)

Whaddya mean I never wear pink?

So due to the uncooperative weather conditions that were this past weekend (gloomy, overcast skies that prevented me from doing self-portraits in my room), I decided to push the WIPs/FOs/almost FOs roundup post to the third instalment instead. In their stead will be future WIPs/FOs/almost FOs! Also, a list of and small discussion about the titles I've been reading and the movies I've been watching.

Just a little forward to this stash enhancement. I think I can justify myself: if any of you live around town and are up-to-date with the LYS happenings hereabouts, you'll have heard the news that Lettuce Knit is closing. Not moving, like Eweknit and Knit-O-Matic, but closing. They'll still be around as a brand, which I'm glad to hear, as I've noticed them over the years through projects like their gay sweater and the fact that they addressed body image issues by actively started stocking larger quantities of yarn in the same lot. Now. While I'm sad to see them go, I'm also perfectly willing to help them clear their shelves a bit in the closing weeks (see their site for details). Which leads me to this little stash update.

The shockingly pink yarn above is madtosh tosh dk (having just finished the Orne Cardigan, I am pretty pleased with the thought of having more tosh dk in my stash) in "torchere", a scorching shade of pinkish red that borders on profanity. Just my type of pink. No moderate baby pinks for me, no. (I don't even wear pink! At all! I cannot properly recall the last time I wore pink... except for those overalls/jumpsuit I used to love as a child, which was either bright pink or bright orange. I don't remember. But does it really matter? There will be pink in my wardrobe once again, in the near-ish future!) I'm seeing it as a boxy cardigan or jacket without much shaping. Cables or some sort of texture, and dropped sleeves, perhaps? Definitely positive ease. I only have the 6 skeins, though, so I'll have to think hard about how to make them work into a positive ease cardigan/jacket with possible yarn-eating cables!

Endless potential.

On the other hand, I snatched 3 skeins of Cascade Ecological Wool to knit myself a Maple Shade Coat, apparently errata-laden as it is, but now that I've looked through my queue and library, I'm wondering whether this might be the time to knit up a Belfast Hoodie for myself (it's been in my queue and Patternfish cart for years). Or even, in the event I can't do cables due to yardage restraints with my hot pink SQ above, an Aidez. The possibilities are endless! And as for motivation, in case I needed it, I know whatever I choose to knit will practically knit itself, considering the bulky/aran weight of this yarn.

I forget how many blue-gray/blue-brown combos I have in my stash.

And as for these two lovelies... I'll admit I kind of went on automatic and put them into my basket without much thought as to what they'd become. I'd be more than happy to use them singly for maybe shawls (or a Hitofude Cardigan, as I see someone has made one out of one skein), but I did get these two thinking of stripes or colourwork of some sort. Forgetting entirely, of course, that I have also the blue/grey pair of Americo Sedoso, as well as the blue/grey pair of SMC Select Highland Alpaca Fino. Oh, and, to some extent if I so chose to use it like that, the blue/grey/other grey pair/trio of madtosh lace. Am I overdoing it a bit?

Now as for the reading list, since I don't have any pictures of these books - I've returned them to the library, which I'm finally making good use of, despite having worked there for years - it'll just have to be a list. I tried to get my act together in July, when I figured my lack of general motivation was getting a little too far ahead of where I could feasibly control it, so I turned to books. I'll list them in order of the month.

July

1. Thermopylae: the battle that changed the world (Paul Cartledge)
2. Thermopylae: the battle for the West (Ernle Bradford)
3. The First Clash (Jim Lacey)
4. First Love (Turgenev)
5. Dracula Untold (movie)
6. Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: why the Greeks matter (Thomas Cahill)
7. Mr. Selden's Map of China (Timothy Brook)
8. Olive Kitteridge (BBC miniseries)
9. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn)
10. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne)
11. A Student of Weather (Elizabeth Hay)

Some burgeoning interest in classical times.

August

1. A Fraction of the Whole (Steve Toltz)
2. Goodnight Mommy (movie)
3. What Maisie Knew (movie)
4. The Iceman (movie)
5. Compliance (movie)
6. Deadfall (movie)
7. House in the Sky (Amanda Lindhout)
8. Alone in the Classroom (Elizabeth Hay)
9. The Greeks: portrait of self and others (Paul Cartledge)
10. Beyond Good & Evil (Nietzsche)

Nietzsche was a pain to get through, I must admit. I read a quarter of the way through Thus Spoke Zarathustra and gave up after finishing BGE, which was infinitely more readable. I'll pick it up again someday. A lot of movies.

September (so far)

1. Night Film (Marisha Pessl)
2. God Against the Gods  (Jonathan Kirsch)
3. Ernest & Celestine (children's movie - I would recommend it* edited to add that I find the attitude towards atonement for their crime towards that family, whom they did in fact harm financially if not bodily, is rather ambivalent and sends somewhat mixed messages. Somewhat like the way Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't really teach any lessons in morality. I do find it odd that there was that loose end though, in this case.)
4. Mommy (movie)
5. Into the Woods (movie)
6. The Spartans (Paul Cartledge)
7. A Short History of Myth (Karen Armstrong)
8. Late Nights on Air (Elizabeth Hay)

I feel as though Into the Woods could have been so much better! So incredibly much better! I've got no idea how, exactly, but the beginning was very promising. As for the books, you can see I'm slowly making my way through Cartledge's books. I think I'm very lucky in having chosen to read his Thermopylae first, to get myself started back into reading: he has a very easy-to-read style of writing, almost casual and very amusing, and one of the things I really look for is whether I get along with the author in terms of the style of writing. If I can get into a good rhythm reading a book, regardless of whether I like what they're saying, I'll probably finish it. On the other hand, even if you make a perfectly good argument, if it's written horribly and I can't make head nor tails of it, or even if it's simply not engaging due to its style, I'm sorry to say that I would put it down. As I did Nietzsche, from whom I know I have so incredibly much to learn. It'll happen someday.

And here's a list of books I'm working my way through as of right now:

1. Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises (Xenophon)
2. Scaramouche (Sabatini) - haven't really made much of a dent in this or the ones below just yet, but I've borrowed them, so it's just a matter of time.
3. The Rise of the Greeks (Michael Grant)
4. Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things (Randy O. Frost) - is it of any significance that this is making it into the post about adding to my stash? Oh, and see also my hunt for a loom.
5. The Rome that did not Fall (Stephen Williams) - have not yet borrowed this due to the number of items I have out already, but again, on my list.

That's all for now. I think I'm keeping along at a good pace, yeah?

Summer Roundup (pt.1)

Moon cactus flowering!

I feel as though I haven't really posted much at all over the summer - I haven't posted any in-progress updates of my WIPs (of which there seems to be a never-ending perpetuity), for one - so I decided to round up a couple of those things that had gone on thus far without making it onto the blog. To be honest, though, I haven't done much this summer. Certainly nowhere near as much as I had originally planned on accomplishing. Not that I felt I would, from the beginning, to be fair: I burned out last September-December (most likely from being a little too ambitious in all my printmaking adventures) and have basically been trying to recover motivation for doing anything since. I think I'm ready for the new semester now. (Well it's going to start either way, so thank goodness for that.)

One of our two moon cacti flowered this summer, which was a pleasant surprise. I didn't even know they flowered! They also don't seem to perish even if you don't water them for half a year, so they're pretty low maintenance. (Nobody really knew who was watering them when, so nobody watered them for that time for fear they would drown, thinking someone else was taking care of them, until Mom finally took them under her wing - they blossomed soon after.) That being said, one of them hasn't moved or otherwise changed in appearance even after the watering resumed, so perhaps they do. Or maybe this one just doesn't flower? I really don't know.

Treasure hunting at the thrift store

In textile-related (not-so-new) news, I found a wooden umbrella swift at the thrift store for 7.99! Apart from the missing bottom peg, it was in perfectly serviceable condition, so I got it, went to Home Depot to get a nut and bolt to replace the peg, and now it sits merrily atop surfaces while I wind in my room. The verdict? I actually like winding from my knees over using the swift! I could totally understand using it for slippery yarn - silk, maybe? - but for regular ol' wool, knees are the bees' knees, so to speak.

On the subject of yarn, I tried out dyeing over the summer months, very enthusiastically at the beginning (although I have no photo evidence of all the little mini skeins I've dyed with food colouring), and producing some success, even going as far as to purchase Greener Shades dyes from Knit Picks when it went on sale a couple months ago because I realized that food colouring was incredibly inexact and presented numerous difficulties when trying to reproduce the same colour in the mini skein in a full skein, but I have nothing to show for it at this moment, still. I used the Greener Shades dyes to dye up 3 mini skeins a beautiful deep red-purple colour at 5% dos, but I have yet to take the plunge and dye up a full skein of anything. As dyed fibre is one of my proposed goals for the fall/winter semester, that will have to change. Sooner rather than later.

Pile of woven pieces, waiting to be cut & sewn.

There's a pile of woven fabric that's starting to look as though it has the potential to loom over me in the future unless I actually go about using it up or otherwise getting it out of the house (takers, anyone? I would gladly sell the red-and-white one! It's a lovely check pattern, but I haven't a clue what to make with it.). The mouse and champagne were supposed to become a simple a-line dress, but now that mouse has been finished and washed, I'm just not feeling it. Maybe a top? I'm thinking maybe striping them together or something to make it a bit more interesting. The red-and-white check? I can't imagine it as anything other than a flat piece of fabric! Besides, how many patterns do I wear on the regular? I can count them with one hand. Two fingers, really.

The black one I have no excuse. The pattern has been drafted (although it needs to be pieced together) and I know how to lay them out on the fabric to use the most fabric possible and finish the least possible seams. I wove it specifically for this purpose, and it has been languishing beneath those other pieces. In other words: I've just been procrastinating.

In other weaving news though:

New project on the Nilec - sampling.

I'm using my Nilec as a sampling loom! Just like I said it was perfect for! And guess what yarn I'm using for it? It's some undyed BFL I purchased for the dyeing venture! Just knowing my dyeing experiment fizzled out (died, perhaps?) over the summer despite all my forced enthusiasm gets to me. After some reflection, I've realized more or less that I actually really like the look of undyed yarn. I also like the dye jobs other people do. Apart from wanting to have tried it out, I don't see much reason to continue doing it. Maybe that will change when I have more solid plans in terms of dyeing.

Despite everything though, like I said, I'll have to produce some sort of dyed yarn to use in my weaving this coming semester. Perhaps this more directed approach will be more enjoyable? I was rather aimless in my attempt to dye, my goal simply being to learn how to dye yarn and fibre.

New notebooks, and my favourite pen.

Ending on a completely unrelated note: I got two new notebooks! My brother gave me a moleskine for my birthday last year, and much to my own surprise, I've already filled up half of it or so! So I figured maybe I would benefit from having some thinner notebooks to do more focused studies or notes and scribbles of things. Instead of doodling possible knitting designs and ideas, loom building plans, thoughts, school stuff, etc. all in one notebook, in other words, I would separate those all out to make some more sense of everything. This works in theory. Well, there might also have been a back-to-school sale at Aboveground, and you can never have enough notebooks, right? These Fabriano Ecoqua notebooks have blank pages (yay!) that are slightly thicker than those in the moleskine, and have a bit more tooth to them as well (boo!). They feel pretty nice though, so I'll probably get used to them.

Part 2 will be a roundup of my knitting. There's the Orne Cardigan and two linen cardigans that have somehow not been finished over the summer, and the pair of finished linen stitch/linen weave blankets, which have been finished for a while but have remained unblocked for no good reason really, as well as possibly additions to my stash that have happened? (I know, I know.) Also, I've been doing a lot of reading, to get me back to actually doing. It worked, I think. So, note to self: even if you can't get yourself to do anything else, read. A list might be forthcoming.

On the Hunt

For a loom. This is going to be a long, word-heavy post, so beware.

I want to be able to weave twill. Without having to fiddle around with two heddles, having a very limited upper limit for the sett (which is kind of something I don't appreciate too much about the rigid heddle loom: with my Nilec, I can add as many heddles as I want, limited only by the physical inability to put more heddles into the harness), and also the much smaller shed created by the use of two heddles.

Beloved Nilec, I am not hoping to replace you, per se...

In hindsight (although also, to be honest, in retrospect), I probably should have waited around for a 4-shaft loom to pop up in the used loom market instead of hastily calling dibs on the 2-shaft Nilec. Which is not to say I don't love the Nilec, because I do, and I enjoy weaving on it, but it does have its drawbacks:

• It only has 15" of weaving width. Not including shrinkage, of course. Which means around 12" or so of finished fabric?
• 2 shafts. While there are plenty of combinations I can do using just 2 shafts, and while I have not yet exhausted them by any means (in fact I haven't really gotten started on them with the Nilec, having only woven champagne on it! I have warped on a sampler though, for a bunch of different 2-shaft drafts), I'm really hankering after twill.
• The beater doesn't line up straight. When pushed back against the castle, the left side touches the wood, but the right side doesn't. I haven't noticed any detrimental effect this might have had on weaving, but it bothers me. I'm thinking of taking everything apart once and putting it back together.
• I also have some trouble moving the lever from left to right - there's resistance on the right side preventing smooth transitions. Not all the time, but I haven't quite figured out the magic trick to make it go smoothly.
• It's a lot louder and squeakier than I thought it would be. This was my own fault for neglecting to read reviews on the Dorothy (or any other Leclerc loom, really). It's not actually an issue, but something to keep in mind.

Despite all the above though, the Nilec does fill one of the spheres of my weaving needs: it's a great little sampler loom, as well as being quick and easy to use. It's also light, and it's small enough to fit on both of the tables I have set up for weaving. No worrying about tie-ups, and if I make a mistake threading, at least there's only so many threads I have to undo to get to the error, given that the entire loom is only 15" across! (I'm speaking from experience.)

And so this time, I think I've narrowed down some of my criteria:

• It has to fold up. Or be otherwise compact.
• 4 or more shafts. 8 would be optimal, I think, but I would definitely consider a 12 or 16 (although it would probably violate the first condition: space).
• Anywhere between 20-36", although I'm starting to think 36" might be too big to fit anywhere. 24-30" is most likely what I'm looking for.
• Floor loom if possible, but I will of course consider table looms.
• Consider texsolv or string heddles: quieter.
• Under 100 lbs. Preferably under 60 lbs.

I've seen two Harrisville 22/4s for sale that fit the bill. A 24" Dorset popped up in my feed, but by the time I got to it, it had already disappeared.

And then I dug up the research I had been doing on building my own loom. The most favourable contender was Travis Meinolf's 4-shaft counterbalance collapsible floor loom. It looks very promising, and I had even made some calculations as to how much everything would cost from Home Depot. Under $100 if I use the cheapest wood (and assuming I can get all the cuts for free), but no more than $350 even if I get maple. It fits all my criteria.

Then I did some more research and happened upon this free pdf on how to build a 2 harness table loom. The photo is misleading, but it does list out all the parts you need. But here's the goldmine right here: Weaving with Small Appliances. While it doesn't lay out step by step how to build a table loom, it describes all of the parts and the mechanisms I need to know in order to build one (in theory). The University of Arizona actually has a bunch of resources on looms, including loom plans with teeny tiny diagrams, so I would recommend a visit. The only thing that would make the potential future 24" 8-shaft table loom (of the Small Appliances) better is if it could collapse as well, with warp in place. I can probably figure something out. Maybe just use wingnuts to secure the castle, so I can loosen them and push the castle down for storage.

Orne Cardigan (and Stash Enhancement)

madtosh tosh dk in "sugarplum" - incredibly beautiful colourway (as per ushe)!

Has anyone seen the Orne Cardigan design from the new Knitscene issue? It came out a little while ago, but the moment I laid my eyes on it, I knew I wanted to knit it, so I got the issue, which features many other lovely designs I'm interested in (the Allotrope Pullover,  Canted Pullover, Caldwell Pullover, Maduri Sweater, and Williams Cloche, to name a few. What do you mean I've listed just about half the designs?), and then did something that didn't make much sense given it was just after I posted about how I was maybe in danger of actually achieving SABLE: I went to a LYS that was having a sale at the time to 1)satisfy my desire to go because I knew about the sale and have that little self-restraint, and 2)find yarn for this cardigan. At least I went with a goal in mind. I also went on the last day of the sale because I figured it would have been scoured by all the other knitters in town and there wouldn't be much that would appeal to me by then (this part of the plan failed miserably: there were about 4 sets of sweater quantities I wanted to get). Also to give myself some time to think over my plans walking into the store (so that I would have some goals and not get those 4 sweater quantities, which I didn't).

Riverside Studio Merino Singles Lace (Superwash) in "Mushroom"

I walked out with the above madtosh tosh dk in Sugarplum, as well as 4 skeins of Riverside Studio Merino Singles Lace (Superwash) in "Mushroom". Ever since I saw this yarn a couple years ago, I've been wanting to try it out (Canadian company!), so even though it wasn't on sale, I went for it. I was originally thinking of using it for mokoshi, but after much swatching, I do believe I like the look of it knitted singly on 2.5mm needles better. Possibly I'll make a dress after the style of mokoshi?

Louet Euroflax Lace in "Goldenrod" & Misti Alpaca Lace

One more thing. Prior to the two aforementioned additions to my stash, and also after the post about SABLE - in fact I think it may have been the day immediately following that post - I went to Romni's to pick up some extra wire heddles for my Nilec, bringing along with me some stash yarn that had been sitting around forever, just in case. I may have gotten three more sweater quantities of yarn (the last one, not shown, is a dress quantity of more Elsebeth Lavold Eucool, in black this time). Just possibly. In my defence though, the yardage in my stash went down after this acquisition expedition, as I returned a set of alpaca lace (8 skeins) as well as 5 skeins of Araucania Botany Lace that had, like I said, been sitting around unused for years. So I'm actually further along in reducing stash than I was before! That's the way it works, right? Right?

Summer Skin Spun

Finally finished spinning this SweetGeorgia merino braid (colourway "Summer Skin": how appropriate)!

Finally! Just short of a full 2 years later and I have finally (finally!) finished spinning this SweetGeorgia merino braid! That feels good. (For the time being, let's just forget about the other braid I got at the time, which remains quite unspun.)

This colourway is beautiful, and I'm really wondering why it took me this long to finish it up. Everything spun up very easily, and any globs that stuck together were very likely my own fault. I had a very short learning curve with this on the Lendrum after the coopworth - thank goodness - so that probably contributed to how little time it took me to spin up this half of the braid. Very little colour came out in the finishing soak (very glad, after what happened with the shawl).

Spun on my new-ish Lendrum!

I divided the remaining fibre (I spun about half of it on my drop spindles last year) into three parts, then plied the 3 strands together. The larger skein (36g) is the result of that; it's much more balanced, hanging straight down even before soaking. Then there's the mini skein on the left, which was navajo-plied using the leftovers from the two other bobbins. I really need to work on my n-plying skills. I don't know if you can see, but I can't seem to get the hang of coordinating my speed of making those loops (quite slow) and my speed of treadling (much faster) to get an even yarn. Before soaking, snapping, whacking, and hanging it with a couple of hanger weights, it kinked in on itself a lot right after removing it from the chair (my makeshift niddy-noddy). It should be interesting to see how it knits or weaves up though!

And just to wrap up, here are the skeins I spun up last year or so using my spindles:

Handspun on Houndesign spindles (Dali laceweight)

These two are going to a dear friend of mine who has just started knitting. I said I'd knit her gloves (many moons ago) using this and some of the silver SweetGeorgia, but given how long it took me to spin this braid and the fact that she took up knitting, I think it's a safer decision to just give her the handspun.

Test: Under the Same Sky

First knit-on edging!

 That knitted border felt like forever! And it ate up so so much yarn (I actually ran out and had to improvise a bit to be able to finish it off unnoticed)! But the finished product is well worth the effort. Another lovely lace shawl from Nadia, Under the Same Sky is well-written and features easy to memorize stitches (garter stitch, a lace stitch, and the wave edging) that come together to form a beautiful wrap.

Bleeding

I'm not sure how apparent it is in these photos, but one thing I am a little unsatisfied with is that the Love Spun bled. It's a beautiful colour, and I will definitely use the other Love Spun I have (except for the Fresh Moss, which I am offering for sale at $21/skein or $40 for both, plus shipping! PM me if you're interested), but maybe soak the skeins before knitting with them? In hindsight, I should probably have expected it to bleed: it's a pretty saturated colour, one; I keep reading comments on other yarn pages that blues are pretty prone to bleeding, two; and three, it crocked on my fingers whenever I knit for extended periods of time. So maybe I should have gotten a dye magnet or something. Well I didn't. And it bled. Right into that beautiful ivory Shibui Sock. It's not too too bad, but something to learn from.

4/12 tops done for the year! I'm not going to make it in time...

Did you also notice that tank top under the same sky shawl (see what I did there? Eh?)? It's the free Notched Hem Tank by Purl Soho! A really quick and simple knit that is very satisfying. I knitted it up in Elsebeth Lavold Eucool, which I thoroughly enjoyed working with. Pity it's discontinued. Or not, since I got to snatch some up at a discounted price? (Another post related to that, later, though. And right after I posted about the possibility of SABLE, too...) Anyway, the fit of this tank top is perfect, though I did lengthen it a little bit to 17" total from the armholes. I also changed the decreases so they pointed toward the edges rather than following the contour of the edges, since I like the look of that better. The notched bits are just right at the spot where pockets would go, so you don't have to hitch up your shirt any to put your hands in your pockets! So convenient. I would love to make this again!

Coopworth on the Lendrum

Lendrum-spun Louet dark Coopworth, navajo-plied.

It's my first Lendrum-spun yarn! Note that I got my Lendrum in March. Note that it has also not yet made an appearance on the blog. Which is not to say that I don't love and that I don't enjoy spinning on it - I do! - but I haven't been spinning as much as I should have, given that it's new equipment in the house and also given that I had so much time when I purchased it (strike! no class!). I blame the fibre. It's a 1/2lb bag of Louet dark Coopworth.

There's technically nothing wrong with the fibre. I just didn't enjoy spinning with it as much as I expected. And disappointed expectations are so much worse than simply having a sort of meh experience with something because you thought it was going to be the sort of amazing that makes you fall in love with it. It's much rougher than the merino I'm used to spinning with, for one, and I knew that going in, but the staple length was also much shorter than I thought it was going to be. I compared it against some merino and it was pretty similar! Which explained why the singles kept breaking while I was spinning at first: I was using the largest whorl and treadling really slowly because I was scared of going fast. Once I caught on to that, everything spun fine save for some knots I created in the fibre because of the way I handled it as I spun.

I didn't want to spin any more of this after I filled a bobbin to about 1/2 - 3/4 full, so I navajo-plied what I had, skeined it up, soaked it in water and beat it against the bathtub (so satisfying!) and hung it to dry with some hangers to weight it down. I feel like it softened up a bit after all that, so maybe I'll have the motivation to spin the rest of the bag sometime down the road?

As for right now, the rest of my SweetGeorgia fibre in Summer Skin (here and here) is being spun. Two out of three bobbins done. Much more enjoyable. Which means it should be done in much quicker fashion.