Summer Colds Suck, Or, Why I Am Knitting a Wool Scarf When It's 98 Degrees Outside.

I woke up this morning feeling even more wretched than yesterday, so I called in sick and settled in for a fun day of coughing, being painfully hoarse, drinking tea for my sore throat, and having the cats follow me around.

I was pretty curious to see how it would knit up, so I estimated the amount of blue and purple handspun I'd made by putting it on my swift, running a tape measure around the swift, and then counting the number of wraps. Multiplying the wraps times the inches gave me a conservative figure of 98 yards, which isn't very much, so I plugged some parameters into the Experimental Search on Ravelry to see if there were any decent free worsted weight patterns for so little yarn.

I came up with this ribbed mini-scarf pattern, which is actually useful and something I would use, and got started on it. Based on a couple trips to the kitchen to weigh the remaining ball on my food scale, I should have enough yarn to finish. Knitting this stuff is more fun than I expected, since the colors are basically completely random and I have no idea what's coming next.

I also finished spinning 2oz of the generic domestic Potluck roving from Paradise Fibers. I did a WPI count and found that yeah, it is really thin. Like 28 WPI thin, with some slight variations. I had no intention of spinning this fiber to any particular size, especially not this skinny, but I'll run with what I have so far. I have another 2oz to spin, and then I'll see what I end up with once it's plied. If the finished product is sport weight or thinner I may even try making socks from it, since I'm putting a pretty tight twist in it. It's not a very soft wool, so presumably it should be reasonably durable if knitted firmly.

I read about a new local company called Spoonflower on one of the quilting blogs I subscribe to. They're planning to offer small-run fabric printing services to individuals, which sounds pretty cool if fairly expensive ($18/yd). The management team is apparently some ex-Lulu folks. There's a Flickr Pool showing some of the designs they've produced for customers. There are so many cool things that could be done with this (happy grass!).

I'll be at work tomorrow, since otherwise I'd have to spend a vacation day, so hopefully an early bedtime with a NyQuil nightcap will help get me over this creepy virus.

Weaving update

Jag spent a good deal of time working on crafty stuff this weekend, too. After being inspired by the ideas in Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving, he decided to try out tapestry weaving, which involves multiple shuttles and small bundles ("butterflies") of colored yarn. It seems sort of like intarsia for weaving. He used a printout of a Thor's Hammer as a template for a sample project. It's much slower going than doing plain weave, but it turned out pretty cool. I think he'll be making his first weaving yarn purchase this weekend for some further tapestry projects.

Wheel in my house keeps on turnin'...

This weekend has had its positive and negative aspects.

The Good:

UPS came through for me on Friday, and I had a large package waiting on my front porch on Friday night! Meet my new spinning wheel, a Kromski Sonata in the walnut stain.

Side view:

Hefty, padded backpack for carrying the wheel when folded:

Since the wheel was made in Poland and all, I figured it needed a nice Eastern European name, so I named it "Danica", after my Croatian great-grandmother. (This is pronounced "Da-NEETZ-a", not the same way as the English version, "DAN-i-ka". Because when you meet my wheel, you won't want to be embarrassed by mispronouncing her name. Or something.)

Jag and I put the wheel together in about an hour; the directions were a little unclear on a few things (or they assumed prior knowledge of spinning wheel anatomy that we lacked), but we managed to get it all figured out and assembled. It worked like a charm from the first treadle. After oiling the heck out of all the oil-able parts, I started by feeding an old partial skein of crappy yarn onto the bobbin to get a feel for how it worked, as Michelle had told me she had done with her first wheel. Jag and I succeeded in unplying a good bit of yarn in the tryout phase.

(It's clear that Jag would not be able to spin comfortably on a wheel of this size; the treadles are too close together for him. I'll have to get him a Mach1 instead. )

After prepping a little roving, I took it out for the first "real" spin.

My first yarn on the new wheel. sniff

The next step was spinning up some more of the black/brown/white mill end fibers I had spun on Michelle's wheel last weekend. When I had enough singles to match the amount I had spun before, I plied those bad boys together in my first plying experiment. Talk about fat yarn. This stuff is counted in inches per wrap, not wraps per inch.

It's also very squishy and soft, and will probably make a nice super-bulky hat to go with a neckwarmer made from the birthday alpaca that I have in these same colors.

I moved on to the blue and purple hand-dyed singles I've been spinning on my drop spindle for the past few weeks. I was about 80% done, so I went ahead and spun up the rest of the roving on the wheel. Then I (under-)plied the singles together. The result:

This is about 8-10 wpi, ranging from light to heavy worsted, I'd guess. Should make a cute hat or maybe a nifty accent stripe in something larger. While I was plying it seemed like it was over-plied, but after washing and drying, the plies are pretty loose. I'll keep this in mind for the future.

My third spinning experiment is some inexpensive Potluck fiber from Paradise Fibers, in "Granite". It's a nice neutral gray/brown/pink combination. I get tired of seeing all the coins used to show scale in pictures of handspun yarn, so I threw in something a little different. This stuff is pretty thin, but I'm going to ply it with itself or something else.

I can't say enough nice things about this wheel (or The Woolery, where I bought it). It arrived in perfect condition, the double-treadle is extremely easy to use, and it's generally non-intimidating for a total newbie. The portability is great, too; I've been moving it from room to room all weekend.

The Bad:

For the past 2 days I've had a horrible sore throat, I can't talk without it hurting, and I'm tired and achy. If I feel this crappy tomorrow, I'm staying home.

Had we but world enough, and time...

...this coyness, UPS, were no crime.

The tracking info on The Wheel is inconclusive at this point, even though in theory delivery tomorrow should Just Happen, so I'm trying to distract myself with lots of drop-spindling. I've pretty much filled this sucker up, and it's getting wobbly and slow. Time to wind off onto my swift. I like the barber-poling effect I'm getting from the stripe of dark yarn. The shape of the yarn on the spindle reminds me of a chrysalis, for some reason.

I had meant to post pictures of my Eno loot before now, but here's one bit of it, a bowl made by potter Marston Blow. The bowl cracked when it flew off her work table while she was trimming the edges, but was rescued from being discarded by one of her colleagues. You can see how she worked the flaws into the design.

When I bought it she pointed out to me that turned one way, the motif at the bottom is a tree, and flipped around, it's a Green Man. Pretty nifty.

YIPPPEEEEEEE

Email from The Woolery this evening:

"Hi Heather,

Your wheel is packed and ready to ship tomorrow via UPS. Since you are in NC, you should receive it on Friday!"

I did it

I ordered a walnut-stained Kromski Sonata spinning wheel.

It will look like this:

I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. No ETA on arrival as of yet. There's a possibility it may be in by the end of the week, since it's shipping in-state, but I'm trying to assume that it won't be here that soon so I'm not disappointed. After all, I still have my drop spindle and I'm more than halfway through my blue and purple dyed roving. But it sure would be nice to FINISH IT OFF ON MY BRAND NEW WHEEL YIPPEEEEEEEE. Ahem.

I'm already thinking about a name for it. Am I sad or what?

One is the loneliest number..

...at least when you're trying to warp a loom. Last night I did my first independent weaving project, from warping all the way to finishing. The total time was 4 hours from start to finish, but that also involved the following sequence of events:

1.) Attempt to warp the loom. Realize that you somehow completely forgot to loop the yarn around the back beam. Um, DUH. Rip out yarn, start over.

2.) Attempt to warp the loom. Realize that you skipped a slot in the heddle and can't figure out how to fix it. Rip out yarn, start over.

3.) Attempt to warp the loom. Realize that you've finished a skein 1/2 way through. You have no instructions for this eventuality and only a vague idea of what you're doing. You spit-splice the wool together at the warping peg, realize that this won't work, cut the yarn in a different place at the back of the loom, re-spit-splice, dither around for a while and then finally figure out how to make it act like one contiguous piece of yarn.

4.) Realize that you've double-fed one of the heddle slots. You're about 4 slots from the end. Say, "oh, screw it" and just keep going.

5.) Prepare a quick dinner of 2 slices of oatmeal bread from the farmer's market with a little butter. Take 2 bites and then completely forget about it.

6.) Since you can't "ask a friend to hold the warp threads under tension and walk slowly towards the loom as you roll up the warp" as Ashford recommends in the manual, jerry-rig something with canned goods and a plastic cauldron. It sort of works.

Despite the many issues, I managed to get it all tied off and finished last night. There are definitely flaws, mostly due to my unconventional tensioning method, but I'm still really happy with the final product. I used 1 skein of Plymouth Boku (95% wool/5% silk) that I got on clearance at WEBS long ago, and 2 skeins of Elann Peruvian Highland Wool.

Thanks to Michelle, I also got to try spinning on a wheel for the first time yesterday. The hand/eye/foot coordination thing will definitely take a while to develop. I spun up 1.5 oz of morbidly obese singles, which look a lot like my first spindle-spun yarn, except softer and sproingier for some reason. I learned 2 important lessons during this little training session:

1.) A wheel will let me spin up crappy yarn at greater speed than ever before!

2.) As Michelle stated so pithily, "The twist is your bitch." Even though it feels the wool is being sucked through the orifice like water through the drain of a 10,000-gallon pool, it's not true. The control of the yarn is in the spinner's hands. Once she knows what she's doing.

Craft Update 308,292,523

First up, Jag finished up the table runner he was working on. The actual weaving was done a week ago, but there were some ends to darn in and the edges to tie off and trim. I think it looks really fantastic. Can you tell I'm very proud of him? He just bought a copy of Betsy Davenport's "Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving" and is reading it like a novel, so I look forward to some truly awesome new projects from him in the coming weeks.

A closeup:

I want to weave a runner for myself now, but the handpainted light sportweight yarn (see below) I want to use is going to need a smaller reed than the 7.5 and 10 dpi ones we have now. So that'll probably be pushed back til next weekend, once the new reed arrives.

My mom has started crocheting washcloths recently, and I claimed these two. It's so nice to get these from someone else instead of making your own all the time! These are the perfect size for using in the shower.

I'm still drop-spindling like crazy. The roving I dyed last Sunday survived the process just fine, and I divided it into a plain blue-purple heap and a blue-purple-with-a-dark-stripe heap. The two heaps are about the same weight, and I'll spin them separately and then ply them together to see what happens. My second spindle of this fiber is the first I've been more or less happy with since I started spinning 2 weeks ago. It's still not completely consistent, but it's within a reasonable range now (no swooping from bulky to laceweight and back again).

I'm still knitting on the Dad Secret Project, but more updates when I'm further along.

July 4th weekend roundup

This weekend seemed to fly by.

On Friday, Jag and I headed to Fayetteville to see the fireworks at Fort Bragg with his parents and also his stepbrothers, sister in law and niece, who had made a rare trip to town from Oregon. There was a band playing the 1812 Overture with cannon accompaniment and a great fireworks display, one of the best I've ever seen. Got back to Raleigh at around 12:30am.

On Saturday, lots of crafting, plus putting together the floor stand for the new loom and hanging up some shelves and artwork at Jag's house. More on that below.

On Sunday, Festival for the Eno. The humidity was a total killer, but at least the rain held off. I managed to restrain myself and only bought some really exceptional pottery pieces, a couple of Eno t-shirts, and some cast concrete wall hangings from our old friend Terry. Oh, and I got an Obama bumper sticker from the friendly Durham County Democratic Party booth. The Republican booth didn't seem to be getting much business, and they had no campaign materials for McCain, just for the local/state races, which I thought was odd. It was also interesting that the Democrats were all female and mostly young, while the Republican booth was staffed by two older guys.

I spent a lot of the weekend practicing with the drop spindle. I feel like I'm improving and making yarn of a more consistent thickness, but it's still way fatter than I'd like. On the other hand, I've only been spinning for a week and I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself.

Here's my first attempt at plying; it's such a tiny amount of yarn that what I have here is basically a stripey wooly stress ball.

And here's 1/2 oz of fiber spun up (the roving is black and brown, it's not plied yet):

I started knitting on a Secret Project for Dad during the Wednesday Craft Night, and got more done on the drive to Fayetteville. Everyone but Dad can look here.

Jag warped up the loom with some variegated brown and tan yarn, and then used the same yarn as the weft.

It turned out to have a really cool plaid effect that fades in and out of the fabric.

He finished the weaving on this in less than 24 hours, including the warping. It's around 7 feet long and 12 inches wide, and will make a great runner on the dining room table. I'll post pictures of the finished product later on.

I also decided to try dyeing up some of the roving from Michelle. I had dyed some Knit Picks sock yarn with Kool-Aid about a year and a half ago, and while I was pleased overall, there are some colors, like clear bright purples, that are really hard to get with Kool-Aid. I bought some "real" acid dyes several months ago from Pro-Chem, but haven't been able to justify buying sock yarn to dye when my stash is overflowing its storage bins. So I got the blue and purple dyes out, along with around 3oz of white roving with a dark stripe in it, and gave it a whirl.

I tried to be extremely gentle when handling the wet fiber, and to not shock it with water temperature changes or do anything that might felt it. It's hanging from my dining room chandelier to dry, and I'll check in the morning to see how it survived.

Heathbar, Eco-Warrior

I finished up the knitting on my Everlasting Bagstopper (Rasta Edition) Tuesday night and sewed on the same folded-fabric handles that are used on the quilted bags I've been making. The cloth handles on my original quilted bag are really sturdy and are holding up great after a year and a half of steady (ab)use, so I'm confident that they should work well on this bag too.

I proudly took my bag with me when me and Jag stopped at Whole Foods to pick up drinks and snacks for craft night. I hadn't even remembered the part about getting a refund when you bring your own bag, but I saved a whole $0.10 by cramming a 4-pack of beer, a 22 oz bottle of Scrumpy's, and a container of 2-bite brownies into it. It stretched down to my knees, but held firm, and there was plenty of room for more stuff. It's definitely going to come in handy, especially since I can just toss it into the washer when it needs it. It took about 1.5 balls of solid red kitchen cotton and an entire ball of the variegated (the variegated ones have a smaller yardage).