mumblings.

Dad's Fair Isle Mittens

2012-01-30T20:05:00.001-05:00

During the holidays, I managed to knit and delivery a couple of Christmas presents. I had planned to make my dad some Fair Isle gloves for sometime now. I've had the yarn hanging around for a few years now but somehow never got around to it. But this was the year! I had kind of been waiting for Elliphantom to release a pattern for these Snorri gloves she knit back in 2010. Instead I grabbed some chart paper, zoomed in on the few pictures available and made a chart of the main motif for my own use.

I've been knitting my own mittens since I was a kid. I've been a process knitter from a very early age. Most of my projects were grabbing yarn my mom had lying around, some needles and a pattern that I found intriguing. Making it for someone to actually use was beside the point. Except when it came to mittens. Nearly every winter, I'd end up knitting myself a new pair of mittens. In high school, I even knit some for my classmates. Mittens are fun, fast & practical.

My mom had an old Patons toddler's mitten pattern book I used to follow every time. Though I'd have to invent some numbers so they'd fit my hands. I would figure out the next set of numbers in the series of sizes to end up with something big enough for my hands. Maybe not the most precise method, but store bought mittens never fit very well either. The mittens in this book were pretty basic and all were seamed. I found out about knitting in the round when I discovered a pattern for socks in my mom's collection in grade 6. Once I had a handle on that, all subsequent mittens were adapted to knit in the round.

1. Snowflake Pattern, 2. Top Decreases, 3. Mitten Side, 4. Mitten Texture

All this is to say that I'm pretty comfortable with how mitten knitting works. And pretty comfortable with gloves too. I ended up inventing my own pattern based on the measurements I had of my dad's hands and the Snorri glove chart. Since I was knitting on the fly, I wrote a pseudo-pattern for myself so that I'd know what'd I'd done once it came time to start the second mitten. It's a new habit I've developed for the past few sweater patterns that I've heavily adapted.

I started knitting these mittens a week or so before leaving on holiday. I ended up making the switch from gloves to mittens as a time saver. I like them better as mittens (always a better choice for a prairie winter). I had the almost one complete mitten done. (Probably should have taken a picture at this stage).

The mitten seemed too long to me and I wasn't super thrilled with how the top decreases were working out. The usual Fair Isle triangular top wasn't working for my so much. While on holiday, I took it out and redid the decreases, changing out paired decreases with single double decreases at each side of the mitten. I played with them a bit to get a nice rounded top. I'm pretty happy with the result. I'm pretty pleased with the resulting contrast between traditional colourwork in a non-traditional mitten.

1. Dad & Mittens, 2. Dad & Mittens, 3. Tut & Mittens, 4. I think he likes them

I think my dad likes them a lot too. He got pretty silly posing in them. I hear that he's been wearing them every day since my parents returned home from the holidays.

Pattern: Dad's Fair Isle Mittens (with snowflake pattern from Eliphantom's Snorri Gloves).Materials: Drops Alpaca in 0607 & 2020
Purchased At: River City Yarns
Start Date: December 12, 2011
End Date: January 5, 2012

Finished in 2011

2012-01-26T19:48:00.000-05:00

I'm late posting this, but I'd rather post late than not at all. Here's all of 2011's craftiness in one mega-photo mosaic:

1. Baby Llama cowl, 2. Clover Walk 2-ply, 3. Goodale Sweater, 4. Pua Kenikeni Block, 5. Kukui Block, 6. Cross-stitch Floppy, 7. Joe's Floppy Disk, 8. Nini's disk, 9. Susie's disk, 10. Silk-tacular skein, 11. Skew Too, 12. Dainty Flower Embroidery, 13. A disk for me, 14. Handspun Fingerless Gloves, 15. Clumsy Beret, 16. Spriteling Mystery Shawl, 17. Personalised Cassette Tape, 18. Madeleine's Quilt Folded, 19. Kyr's Quilt Folded, 20. Entrelac Baby Blanket, 21. Instant Baby Sweater, 22. Handspun Stack, 23. Banana Split Singles, 24. Pea Vines Shawl, 25. Teddy Rhino, 26. Poignant Elephant (with a dress), 27. Charity Twig Gloves, 28. The Mock-up Fairy™, 29. Mom's Thanksgiving Shawl, 30. Celes Shawl

So that's 14 knitted projects (1 cowl, 2 sweaters - adult & baby, 1 pair of socks, 2 pairs of gloves, 1 hat, 4 shawls, 1 baby blanket and 2 toys), 2 Hawaiian Appliqué blocks, 5 cross-stitch diskettes, 1 cross-stitch cassette, 5 skeins of handspun, 2 baby quilts (group projects!), and one dress (FINALLY) finished.

Surprisingly productive for how busy a year it turned out to be. I really didn't think I got that much crafting done.

2011 Catch-up: a couple of shawls

2012-01-26T15:53:00.000-05:00

Both of these shawls got pushed aside at various points for other more pressing projects (usually things to make for other people) and took way longer than they should have to finally block and photograph. You can see the creases in the photos as proof of how long they hung around before I finally took pictures.

Finished Pea Vines Shawl

1. Finished Pea Vines Shawl, 2. Shawl Detail, 3. Pea Vines Detail, 4. Finished Pea VinesPattern: Pea Vines by Anne HansonMaterials: Tosh Merino Light in RosePurchased At: Purl SohoStart Date: May 14, 2011End Date: September 16, 2011There is an error at the beginning of the Pea Vines, but I didn't find it worth ripping out most of the border in order to fix it. I really enjoyed knitting this pattern, but it did take lots of concentration. Also, it took me WAY too long to start writing down what row I was on. I lost my place so many times that I lost count.

Finished Celes Shawl

1. Celes Shawl, 2. Center detail, 3. End bit, 4. Finished Celes ShawlPattern: Celes by Jared FloodMaterials: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in 1294 (blue-green)Start Date: September 18, 2010End Date: November 6, 2011This shawl sat dormant for a long time because I ran out of yarn once I reached the border. I continued on almost immediately after getting another skein. The border is a very slight different shade of teal as the new skein was a different dye lot from the first. I don't find it bothersome as the entire border is knit with the new lot. If I had started the new skein partway through knitting the border, it would have been far more noticeable.

2011 Catch-up: Twiggy Fingerless Gloves

2012-01-23T11:58:00.000-05:00

Every year at work we have a charity auction to raise money for Centraide/United Way and every year I offer to make a custom knit accessory for whomever wins the item. In the past I've made a scarf and a knitted bunny. This year, I was asked to knit some fingerless gloves for a co-worker as her office gets rather cold in the winter.
For the 3rd year in a row, I've offered my knitting services to my co-workers to raise money for the Montreal Centraide/United Way as part of our annual work Charity Auction.
I grabbed some yarn and decided to finally try the Pomatomus stitch pattern as translated into fingerless gloves. The yarn for this was not super exciting when it was in the skein, but was much more exciting once knit up. I enjoyed the stitch pattern so much, that I quickly started another pair for myself!

Pattern: Nereid Fingerless Gloves (based on Pomatomus Sock Pattern)
Materials: Knit it Up! Vivacious in Chocolate Covered Gobstoppers from Sock Yarn Cinema Club: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Start Date: September 16, 2011
End Date: October 16, 2011

2011 Catch-up: The Mock-up Fairy™

2012-01-20T13:15:00.000-05:00

Yup. Hallowe'en. I wasn't planning on dressing up but a conversation with co-workers while leaving work one day gave me the most perfect idea. Our office social committee came up with the theme of Fairy Tales so I figured I could dress as I wanted, slap on some fairy wings and be a sarcastic fairy. And that's pretty much all I had to do was buy wings.

I work as a Graphic Designer here in Montreal and I'm often asked to make "maquettes" or mock-ups for different client presentations. Over the years that I've worked for my company, I've gained the reputation of being the Queen of Maquettes. I've built prototypes of milk cartons, juice boxes, die-cut what-have-you, boxes with drawers and inserts from scratch. All kinds of things. So once I thought a bit more about my costume concept, I realised I had recently completed the perfect dress to become The Mock-up Fairy.

Remember a million years ago when I declared I was going to make an army of dresses but somehow didn't even finish one? Well, I finally finished it a week before Hallowe'en. I decided to postpone its debut until I would wear it as my costume. And it fit the bill perfectly.

I spent sometime researching bee-hive hairdos because what else goes better with my new pair of retro glasses?

Though all I had to do was buy some wings, I waffled about whether it was worth it. But I made myself go out and ended up getting the biggest, most ridiculous wings I could find. I got in the spirit of things (finally) and bought as many sparkly things to go with: make-up, nail polish, giant plastic ring. I used a tiara I got as a joke V-day present that lives on my desk.

The costume was widely well received, though I was better recognized as the Fairy Godmother in Shrek. Not quite what I was aiming for, but not a bad serendipitous result.

Oh and no one could really believe that I was able to work with my big ass wings, but as you can see from this re-enactment when I got home, that they are quite office chair compliant.

Mom's Thanksgiving Shawl

2012-01-12T13:16:00.000-05:00

So I'm home, but still playing catch-up I'm afraid. In all sorts of ways.

I finished this shawl back in November. Managed to block it quickly enough. But then it sat around waiting for me to mail it to my mom.

The yarn is Drops Alpaca and this was my first time working with it. It's an awesomely soft yarn that was incredibly lovely to work with. Hopefully it wears well.

The pattern was really quite fun, though the central graft has some funniness I couldn't quite block out. And I kept getting questions about the points at the start of each side. Just a side effect of the central cable business I'm afraid.

Pattern: Autumn Arbor Stole
Materials: Drops Alpaca Sport Color 7323
Start Date: September 25, 2011
End Date: November 3, 2011

The Elephant wearing a dress in the room

2012-01-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

In the spring (last time I had a haircut) my hairdresser announced she was pregnant and asked if I'd knit something for her bun-in-the-oven. She wanted to make sure that the baby would come home in nothing but handknit items. How could I refuse such a request?

Back in September I knit up this practically instant baby sweater out of some impossibly soft handspun and later (on the day of the baby shower) finally added the buttons.

Pattern: Baby Sweater on two needles by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Materials:
2-ply
'Collision Course' Pigeonroof Studios
100% Superwash Merino
4.2 oz.
Start Date: September 4, 2011
End Date: September 5, 2011
Buttons added: October 23, 2011

I also decided to throw in one of the toys I knit while tech-editing the new Fuzzy Mitten Savannah Chaps pattern. I decided to knit a dress from the Well Dressed Bunny Pattern for the elephant even though I wasn't sure of the baby's gender. I thought about knitting overalls, but thought the dress was cuter.

The blue balloons on the front of the house were a clear enough sign once we arrived at the shower. The theme of the shower turned out to be blue. Well the elephant in a dress got a big laugh when it was opened. Though it didn't end up being a big deal. Since this baby has two moms, it would be a crime that he didn't have an elephant in a dress.

Pattern: Savannah Chaps by Fuzzy Mitten
Materials: Rowan Yorkshire Tweed - Limeleaf
Start Date: September 22, 2011
End Date: September 25, 2011

Someone had to balance out for all those trucks/cars/blue onesies. Even if it was by accident.

HNY!

2012-01-02T02:07:00.000-05:00

I'm behind. I've been behind for a while on the reportage of craftiness. I'm so behind that I can't even use the holiday break to catch up. I'm away on vacation and there are projects (at home) that still await their time in front of the camera. So I'm postponing it until I get back. I'm also postponing my usual pictorial posts of the year in crafts. I'll get to it. In the meantime enjoy this picture of my dad with half his Christmas present. I'm almost finished it's friend.

There goes November too.

2011-12-02T09:10:00.001-05:00

Whoosh, there goes November. In the first week I was even planning on posting everyday. That didn't pan out very well did it. Hrm. This is the time of year that work starts to get nuts. Everyone starts their Muppet style freak outs (running around with arms flailing in the air). Again, there has been plenty of crafting and I've been working on the photo backlog. There's no excuse really, just need to make the time to write.

I leave you with a pretty picture of the first snow of the season here in Montreal. It has since melted but there will be more someday soon.

Where did October go?

2011-11-01T19:10:00.000-04:00

I know I've been slacking in posting (Heck, I haven't even uploaded any pictures since Thanksgiving), but to miss October entirely? Hrm. Not cool. Rest assured there's been plenty of crafting going on. And I even dressed up for Halloween this year and it only required the addition of fairy wings and sparkly make-up.

Accidentally on purpose

2011-09-23T13:07:00.000-04:00

I'm helping a friend by checking over a pattern she's just finished writing and knitting up some samples. Just last night I finished putting together this lovably lumpy Teddy Rhino specimen.

And as it turns out, it's just in time for World Rhino Day (which I knew nothing about until today, I swear).

September Spin-in

2011-09-12T12:48:00.000-04:00

I realised during Labour day weekend that I really haven't spun very much yarn this year. Other than this, this and some other non-documented singles, I really haven't spun at all this year.

And those rolags were made in March. I'd STILL NOT finished spinning them up and they are only half the bump of fibre. So I got to spinning.

And managed to finish up spinning the rolags (2 oz. down, 2 oz. to go).

Then I remembered that I had a acquired quite a number of mystery cakes of handspun singles in need of plying:

And realised that now I have a wheel so these will be relatively quick work. Suddenly I had a stack of skeins all ready to wash.

I missed out on the Tour de Fleece this year. I forgot all about it until it was basically over. So I'm declaring September for spinning!

My September Spin-in is already begun. I'm going to try and spin everyday, weather permitting. Fiona and I better get to work.

Thread reaload

2011-09-07T12:23:00.000-04:00

My needle has been reloaded.

After finishing my previous spool the other day, I decided it was time for a new spool. A notions sale at Fabricville led me to a load up on thread, including this 1,200 yard wonder should get me pretty far in hand piecing this beast. It should last a bit longer than it's predecessor at least.

Instant Baby Sweater

2011-09-06T13:04:00.000-04:00

There are another batch of babies coming up this winter and I decided to get my needles started for them during my last 4-day weekend of the summer. I had started knitting something else with this skein of last year's handspun but decided what it really wanted to be was a baby sweater.

Or more precisely, a February Baby Sweater (a.k.a. Baby Sweater on Two Needles). This is the first time I've knit this sweater, and the second time I've actually followed an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern all the way through. Last time didn't end so well.

But fortunately, I've knit my way through all the bad sweaters. Also, the baby who's going to wear this is still in utero, so no one can say that it doesn't fit. The baby will grow into it and guaranteed won't care about gaping necklines (or about much at all).

P.S. This sweater is impossibly soft.

Unexpected Treats

2011-08-31T13:00:00.000-04:00

My roommate and I finally had our housewarming party this past weekend and we were very please that the Fuzzy Mitten family were able to make their way into the city to attend. Barbara was kind enough to give us some gifts as well. I'm very tickled pink with what she brought me.

We each got a copy of this fantastic doodle book and do-it-yourself sticker kit for hours of our own entertainment. I also got this lovely package of precious fabric scraps curated especially for the ever-growing-beast.

Check these babies out. A couple of awesome vintage fabrics (appeals to my history crush), some fantastic small scale Japanese fabric prints including awesome awesome wolves (I don't have enough small scale prints in this quilt, mental note when next I refresh fabrics), and finally some of the most excellently named goldfish. I'm going to do my best to fussy cut the fishes into their own hexes.

I have to work up the courage to cut into these precious scraps. So far all I've done is take them out of the bag, look and stroke them, then put them back again. I think I'll get to it this week. I'm getting close to needing a full hex recharge (by which I mean baste a bunch of hexes onto papers). I have to remember to take some pictures. The scale of the recharge is kind of impressive.

International Baby Friends

2011-08-29T12:57:00.002-04:00

There have been some cryptic sneak peeks of this project over the past year, but FINALLY I can share the things for reals. So last fall, a couple of friends announced they were pregnant so a group of us decided to make them some quilts. This scheme was initially thought of to reduce our individual efforts, but in the end, the quilts had about the same gestation periods as the babies themselves. Amanda posted the timeline of events over here.

The jumping off point was receiving a parcel from one of the international baby's mother-in-waiting over in Amsterdam. She sent us some fabric and other goodies, so this that was our starting point.

These babies are destined to be friends, even if at the moment they are only quilt buddies at the moment. But as you can see, Professor Hammy Cheeks has already put his to work in his mobile satellite office.

P.S. These are officially my first ever finished quilt projects. I was surprised at how little fabric was needed for the binding. It's quite magical.

The slowly growing beast

2011-08-22T13:05:00.000-04:00

This past weekend I finished and added another section onto the slowly growing beast that is the Hexagonal Quilt.

I've highlighted where the new section and I'll explain a bit my process. It's become fairly systematic to achieve a seemingly random quilt. I really started this project with random evenness in mind. I started with a small smattering of fabrics and repeated them randomly as I was piecing.

The piece of quilt top started to become somewhat unwieldy so I stopped working on the main piece, and begun working on smaller sections that then get added to the "big piece". As the chunk of quilt top grew, I started to become aware of how many hexagons I would need to get a quilt that would fit my double bed.

Each section has 126 hexagons. These sections are attached together side by side to make a larger strip. Each strip has 707 hexagons. I figure I need about 5 of these 14 hexagon-tall strips to get the quilt size that I want. That's 3,535 hexagons folks. That's a lot of hexes.

I have about 50 fabrics from cut up fat quarters that are included in each "repeat" of a section (2 repeats per section) plus a smaller selection of "wild card" fabrics that there are 4 per repeat. 4 each of solids, random scrappy hexagons and Liberty hexagons (as begun by the kit of hexes I got in awesome swap). The wild card fabrics are pulled out of some individual zip loc bags (only the highest of technology here) and then added to the randomizer (a smaller empty plastic container) where the hexes get tossed for a bit before being laid out in their final configuration.

There are a few rules. I try to keep the fabrics from lining up or being to close to themselves in other repeats. This is much easier now that I have an army of hexes to work with. The polka dots are not allowed to be next to each other. And I try to keep from any one dominant colour to be too dominant in a specific location. Sometimes it takes a surprising amount of time to arrange the hexes to my arbitrary tastes but I try not to be too fussy about it. Once they're arranged, I start sewing the gazillion seams.

There are so many seams. But I kind of like the mindlessness of taking a stack of 63 hexagons and sewing them together. It's most satisfying to finish up a section and sew it to the big piece. So satisfying. Especially now that I've just about finished the first spool of thread that was dedicated to this project. Very satisfying indeed.

And the hex continues

2011-08-20T12:30:00.013-04:00

As an omni-crafter with a penchant for starting (too) many projects, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with concurrent projects. As I work full time, I tend to start a bunch of projects when work's especially busy, but without the energy to advance them as much as I'd like.

So lately I've found myself drawn to the simplicity and methodical practise of the slowly growing hexagonal quilt. I work on a relatively smallish section at a time. Here I've just laid out one repeat of hexes in anticipation of getting stitched up. I do two of these sections before I attach it to the larger pieced top. It's getting quite sizeable and tricky to document.

For several days, there was a quilted coffee table in our apartment. My roommate commented that it would be really cool if it were REALLY a quilted coffee table. But that project will have to wait for another time.

Bye bye t-shirts

2011-08-15T12:51:00.001-04:00

Things kind of got paused craftwise lately. My parents came to town. Whenever they come for their summer visit, there is a rash of home improvements that go on. Previous years have involved painting my kitchen and putting up many shelves. So it naturally follows that new apartment means new opportunities for home improvements. Especially if I hadn't quite managed to unpack everything since moving. My brother even got in on the home improvements and had my dad finish up some final details in his bathroom. Home improvement for everyone!

My mom ~~made me~~ helped motivate me to finish unpacking. Including sorting through my clothes, shoes and some of my fabric into "keep" and "donate". She must have started watching that show now that I think about it.

This is my stack of old t-shirts. I used to be a real t-shirt fiend, but about a year and a half ago I switched to dresses and haven't really looked back. But I had an idle plan to use these shirts to make a quilt. Like simple squares combining all the lovely shades of grey that I loved so much. But my mom had none of it as I have much more fabric with quilt plans than finished quilts. So away the t-shirts went.

I took some pictures before the shirts disappeared forever so at least I can recall the lovely colour combinations.

Another few days, another few letters

2011-07-27T11:45:00.013-04:00

So it hasn't really been so long since my last post about this Daisychain Sampler business, but it's chugging along at a nice pace. Here's a few more letters I've finished up since Monday.

I wasn't so sure about this K, but now I think it's super cool. It took me a little bit to figure out how this long & short stitch thing worked but I think it worked out pretty well.

I realised partway into stitching this L that I was using the wrong colour of yarn. So I kept with it and used a lighter shade for the center French knots. It's a little more delicate this way. Yeah, lets go with that.

This M is pretty marvelous if you ask me. I'm tempted to extrapolate a bunch of letters and make a header graphic of it (finally, a header graphic). Or something. We'll see how things develop.

Kewel Crewel Continues

2011-07-25T08:16:00.000-04:00

So my stamina on the Daisychain Sampler is continuing rather unabated.

I think I like this sampler business with different stitches being used for different letters.

There's enough variety to keep things from being monotonous and each letter is completely quickly enough that I can't really get bored.

So yeah. I've already got a whole much more letters done since last week.

Though stem stitch hasn't really been a favourite stitch, I do quite love the ropey effect it has here. Plus I think I like stem stitch more now that I know how to stitch it properly (reading instructions is a good idea).

Even this K was finished by last night. I'm sure I'll have more to show before long.

Crewel is kewel

2011-07-21T11:54:00.001-04:00

So I've been reading the blog Posie gets cosy for quite a while now. I'm not much of a commenter on other people's blogs. Mostly I read things through Google Reader and all in a batch so it's extra effort to click through and comment (especially frustrating to do on mobile readers). And to be honest, I don't always feel like I have something to add what people are posting about. But whatevs.

What was I talking about? Yeah, so I read Alica's blog. And when she posted a while back about these Daisychain ABCs Crewelwork Sampler Kits she was going to put together, I figured I'd give it a try. I'm quite enjoying the embroidery these days and crewel has interested me in theory but there aren't a lot of cool (or kewel) projects kicking around in this old school technique. I have a couple of modern takes on it but have yet to jump into the wool & needle thing until now.

My sampler kit arrived in the mail last Thursday. Despite working on other ongoing projects I immediately started playing crewel embroidery after opening the package.

And I kept stitching.

And stitching all weekend in a variety of air conditioned locations.

And stitching my way through the weekend.

I finished up H last night. I have a whole slew more photos to take of the letters. I especially love the E which I opted to make REAL puffy. I like to thing that it's so puffy, it's in 4D (or at least IMAX 3D).

Oh and the question that I've been asked a few times now. The kit was a pre-order sort of thing and there are no more to order BUT you can buy the PDF of the pattern (which includes the outline guides for all the letters.

I think I'll embroider the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" next. Why yes, I AM a graphic designer. How'd you guess? ;)

Hex-a-still

2011-07-18T11:03:00.000-04:00

It's probably been a while since I've mentioned this hexagon quilt I've been working on for a while now. Wel it's still going. I work on it here and there.

I really love when I can fit in another little Liberty hexagon into the piece I'm working on.

Officially Finalized

2011-07-11T22:03:00.000-04:00

A very good friend of mine just became an aunt. I decided to send along some baby goodies. But procrastination and a Canadian Postal strike has meant that I just sent out the package today (shh, don't tell San Francisco).

In digging for suitable baby things, I came across a looooooong languishing unfinished project. An entrelac baby blanket I knit during a holiday break back when I was in University. I knit the whole blanket, and the whole border (with improvised mitered corners!) but never quite made it to finishing it. No ends had been worked in and the border was only attached with safety pins. And it sat in a box pretty much since then. Likely 6 years or so. And maybe the reason it stayed unfinished was mostly because I thought it was maybe kind of weird to be a 24 year old with a finished baby blanket that had no baby causation.

But the opportunity of being able to send this blanket to a real live human child in a far off distant land became too appealing. Especially since the recipients will really enjoy it. So I made myself finish it off during the postal strike.

And this is the only picture I managed to take of the blanket during its life with me. Partially obscured by Diva, a friend's cat who merely sat on it long enough to pose for this picture and then wandered off.

Hurray for finishing long long long overdue projects! It feels super awesome to have this thing finally finished and on its way to getting drooled on! Huzzah!

Anyone else have a scary old thing lurking around in the back of their mind/knitting basket?

Ceçi n'est pas une diskette

2011-07-05T15:02:00.002-04:00

Back in February I got a little focused on cross stitch. Particularly in stitching personalised cross stich floppy disks for all my geeky friends. Well one friend got left out. She's not as big a technology geek as the rest of us. Though she was excited about having a personalised cross stitch, a floppy disk really did not suit her. She's much more into music than computers.

It took me a while to figure out what object would work better. Then longer still for me to finalise the cross stitch chart and finally start stitching. But I managed to find the perfect musical equivalent to a floppy disk. A cassette tape.

I even managed to cryptically get her to finalise the colour choices without revealing what I was stitching. She really liked it (and maybe even squeed a little?). It currently lives in a prominent place in her living room.

It turned out so cool that I want to stitch one for myself maybe. But I'm still excited about this quilt thing, so it might wait.

Unicorn! UNI-CORN!

2011-06-28T13:59:00.007-04:00

Though I've being playing around the idea about quilts for a couple of years now (have started several projects and managed to accumulate quite the fabric stash), it's only in the past few weeks that the full impact of making quilts has hit me. And hit me hard it has.

Due to an undisclosed communal quilting project that has recently been completed (don't worry, I'll show pictures once the time is appropriate) I have finally realised how fantastic making a quilt is. And also how nice it would be to have a home made quilt. For reals. This is the closest I've come to owning a home made quilt.

I've had quilts before. Even had baby quilts. But they were mostly of the "pre-quilted fabric, just add binding" variety. The closest I ever got was a "home made style" quilt that was heavily discounted in the bedding department one year. Now that I've encountered a real, honest-to-goodness homemade quilt, I realise how poor a facsimile it is.

K. Now I'm getting a tad off topic. Sort of. Quilt = Great. Me. Want. Own. Quilt. So I could barely contain myself while finishing up this secret mysterious non-disclosed communal quilt project, and keep from starting another one right away. But I was good. I waited 20 whole minutes after finishing stitching down the binding before whipping out the fabric for the next on.

After seeing and suggesting the latest in the Old Red Barn Quilt-a-long to a friend who wasn't inspired, I realised that this pattern would work wonderfully for my stash of thus un-planned Far Far Away fabrics.

Early Saturday morning, I started fussy cutting unicorns while chatting with my sleepy roommate. We were up early as we had plans for dim sum with friends. While ironing and slicing fabric, I kept singing "unicorn, Unicorn, UNI-corn!" in the style of King Haggard in the Last Unicorn.

By the end of my awesome 4 day weekend, I had a nice little stack of fabrics going. 4 blocks done and a general strategy for the quilt. As you can see, the plan of attack involves diving into my box of 1930's reproduction fabric scraps. The purples used are the most perfect match to the pinky/purple in the one Frog Prince fabric from the Far Far Away collection.

I do have enough of the Far Far Away to make the entire quilt, I do really like idea of the borders using one colour, but many different fabrics. It would have been nice to have a cosy quilt entirely made of double gauze, but I plan to get a nice Nani Iro dot or floral print for the backing. Maybe some nice cotton lawn for the binding. Hrm. That would be a nice touch.

A Mystery Shawl: begun & finished

2011-06-17T10:45:00.000-04:00

Um, hi. I'm not feeling too verbose about this shawl that I finished back in May but we'll see how this goes. The pattern for this mystery shawl caught my eye in my friends' activity stream one day. I grabbed some yarn and got to knitting.

While I'm kind of blasé about writing about this shawl, please don't make the assumption that I found the knitting boring. Or am even blasé about the resulting shawl. I could barely contain myself while waiting for the next set of instructions.

I think I finished this shawl only a couple of days after receiving the final clue. But I don't have the ideal set up for blocking shawls. Considering that I've knit almost 10 shawls, it's kind of silly that I don't have a proper blocking set up. None of those interlocking foam blocks to put on the floor and pin into. No blocking wire set. I just have about a million pins that I use.

Fortunately I have an awesome friend with a spare bed and all the necessary blocking devices. I was over at her place one day playing Xbox (my roommate's died from the dreaded Red Ring and I had some games on loan that needed 'testing' before being returned) and we blocked out the shawl (it was a combined effort).

The blocking was actually kind of challenging for this shawl. The elaborate border and loopy crocheted bind off made the blocking quite confusing. We consulted pictures from others completed shawls to see what the resulting shape should be. There was much pinning out of loops, readjusting of loops and scrounging for more pins before this shawl got to its final blocking state.

I really love how the shawl turned out. The colours of the Archangel have this unearthly glow to them. Somehow the red emanates from the core of the yarn. I'm not sure how well this is evident in photos, but trust me, in life this shawl is slightly on fire. Maybe more like slow burning hard wood or liquid hot magma. Either way, I very much enjoy and have worn this shawl on every available chilly morning since its completion.

Alright, so I guess I was more verbose than anticipated. One day I shall be up-to-date with my completed projects.

One more picture of the big fan bit at the center of the shawl.

Clumsy Beret

2011-06-16T14:19:00.001-04:00

Hey, so I finished knitting these handspun gloves and still had plenty of yarn left over in the skein and so decided to make a beret out of the leftovers. Initially, working with my gauge information and having knit many a Le Slouch in the past, I was going to just getting knitting some ribbing, do a bunch of beret increases and switch to moss stitch for the body of the hat.

But after working the ribbing, there was something just not quite right about the hat. I couldn't put my finger on it. So I set it aside and got caught up in mystery shawl knitting (the subject of another post) and traveling down to NYC for an Easter Weekend trip. Oh and I also moved for the first time in 5 years in there somewhere.

After things settled down a little, I found myself stuck at home with a cold and in between mystery shawl clues, I decided to pull out the ribbing and start again. This time I opted to follow the Purl Beret pattern. I liked the idea of having less noticeable decrease rounds in striping handspun instead of a star pattern of paired decreases.

I had to adapt the numbers slightly (as I usually do) to match the gauge of the yarn I was using. Somehow I never end up using yarn that is a straight across replacement for what's called for in the pattern. But it's an easy enough thing to fix. Knitting math is pretty easy most of the time.

The knitting went really quickly once it was restarted. And suddenly I had another hat. Just in time for warm spring.

And eventually I took some more official pictures of this hat.

Though I really haven't worn it yet.

It quickly became to warm for hats.

Oh, and there's still a sizeable amount of yarn left over from this skein. I guess I might be starting a scrappy crocheted blanket at some point.

A Tale of handspun gloves

2011-05-22T19:06:00.002-04:00

Here I am about to report on a project I finished over like a hundred thousand years ago and am just mentioning it for the first time now. Sorry about that. Sometimes life gets in the way of reporting on the crafty things. Though I really don't let it get in the way of the crafts if I can help it.

There's been a lot going on in the past couple of months chez mumbles. I decided to move (and moved) for the first time in 5 years. I'm still in Montreal. Still in the Plateau too. But even a short distance move takes a lot of work when done in a short amount of time. Especially as work is busy as usual AND I went to NYC and New Jersey with a small group of friends for Easter. But everything's moved. My roommate and I are still unpacking, organizing and somehow managing to relax, settle in and play video games on her Xbox (the only part of our entertainment area that has been set up is the Xbox and TV).

Alright so back to the gloves alreadies! A million years ago when I first started knit blogging, I made these Endpaper Mittens. But as I was not in the fashion of actually ever checking my gauge, they never fit very well. They were way too big and I would end up tucking the fingers of one hand into the giant gapping opening at the top of the other hand and vice versa. Finally after seeing some yummy handspun fingerless gloves on Ravelry earlier in the spring, I decided that it was finally time to do something about this fingerless glove business. So I grabbed one of my favourite handspun yarns that I've spun (and apparently never blogged) and got to work.

I found a couple of patterns, printed them out, made a gauge swatch and was starting to adapt the numbers when I realised that mittens and gloves are the garment I have knit the most in my life. I used to make my own mitts when I was a kid and just learning, adapting little kids' mitten patterns that my mom had to fit my hands and even adapted them to work in the round once I learned how the 4 needle thing worked. So what was I doing following and modifying a pattern when I could just make one up that would fit properly?

So I worked out some numbers and got to knitting. I took lots of notes along the way to remember what I had done on glove n°1 when it came time to knit glove n°2. I also have rather narrow wrists compared to my forearm or hand measurements, and thus ended up doing some wrist decreases (same idea as waist decreases) so they wouldn't be all baggy and gross when I wore them.

The other that bothered me about that first pair of mittens was that there was one big opening for all the fingers instead of having each finger in a separate compartment. This makes for chilly fingers/hands. Thus, these new awesome mitts were going to have individual fingers. I know it's more work, but I tend to put in the extra effort. Especially if it will increase my enjoyment of the final product.

I am super happy with how the fingerless mitts/gloves turned out. As you can see, they are more of a fraternal pair than matching. And I prefer the colours in glove n°2 compared to glove n°1. Each glove was worked from a different end of the yarn ball. I ended up deciding that I'd rather not knit a third glove. Already after living with them for over a month, I'm totally used to them not matching.

I have been toying with the idea of writing up the pattern for these mitt/gloves. But there are so many patterns out there and they are kind of simple (well in my mind anyways) that I'm not sure the world really needs one more pattern for such a garment. Is this something that people would be interested in? I'm still not really sure.

Oh and as you can see there was a substantial part of the skein leftover after making these gloves. I ended up making a cute beret out of it and STILL had yarn leftover. But I'll leave that for another post.

I'll do my best to make sure it won't be a month from now. There IS this kind of ominous mountain of boxes in my apartment right were the epic crafting space should be...

And finally one for me.

2011-04-26T15:17:00.002-04:00

I finished this back at the end of March but I seem to have neglected to mention it around these parts. Sorry about that. This is the final diskette in the series that I made for myself using my nickname (Locks).

I really wanted to make a disk that has the name in white against another colour. It may have been a better idea to start with this part of the cross stitch, but I'm still pretty happy with it. Though the green on green makes it seem a little TOO green somehow. I probably won't re-stitch this though. I think it's time to stitch something new.

ETA: FYI, Joan of Locks or Locks is a nickname I earned after a comedic evening out in London a while back. It's my all time favourite nickname I've ever received and use it as much as possible.

Embroidery therapy

2011-03-31T11:20:00.001-04:00

It seems like almost everyone I've been around in the past few weeks has been sick. First my brother, then girl's night is postponed a week due to communal illnesses, then multiple co-workers pass around some germs. I've been out running the germs for, I guess, a month or so.

Well, they finally caught up with me on Saturday. And I was bored of it as soon as it arrived. But I managed to find a project to get me through the tissues, lemon tea, juice and pudding.

Back in February, an embroidery blog I read: Feeling Stitchy, held a stitch-a-long. I was too busy with floppy disks and work to really jump into the project, but it sat in the back of my mind. I'm kind of still in the thinking phase of some of my other projects and wanted some embroidery to jump into.

So I printed off the pattern, traced it onto some muslin and got to stitching.

Clearly I liked the colour palette used for the example stitchery and used it for my own. I thought about changing out the aqua blue for mint green, but the blue of the washable pen I used looked so good with the carmine pinks that it had to stay. I also used some of the same modifications, such as adding French knots, but was a little more liberal with them.

But I guess I did it a little differently and really like what I came up with.

So much so that I traced another mirror image that I'm working on right now. I guess the idea is to frame them and have them as visual "bookends" in some fashion.

Skew too.

2011-03-29T10:07:00.002-04:00

Almost immediately after finishing up this pair of "perfect" socks, I cast on for another pair using some sock yarn I've had around for ages and love to bits. But this project fell to the wayside. Maybe it was all the spinning I did last year. Maybe it was the quilt-fever I caught. But they sat around for a year in roughly the same state.

Until earlier this week I picked them up again and went to work. Suddenly without warning, I found myself with a finished project AND another pair of practically perfect socks.

I think knitting the same pattern twice in a row is the reason these socks sat around for so long. And we had a nice warm spring last year, so another pair of cosy socks were far from my mind. Let me assure you that these socks have scarcely left my feet since being finished.

Sure I'm stuck at home with a doozy of a cold, but still these socks have been right there, keeping my tootsies warm. And though it seems impossible, this pair is more perfect than the last. The slightly larger gauge of yarn makes them slightly looser and easier to slip over the heel (the only down side of the previous pair). But they're not so loose as to fall off or get too slouchy.

I leave you with the random heel shot.

Finally blocked & v. useful

2011-03-28T17:07:00.001-04:00

So I finished knitting myself my very own handspun Annis back in December, and never managed to get around to blocking it. In fact, I never blocked it.

Instead, a friend blocked it for me. She has the benefit of a spare bed on which to block shawls and I'm very lucky that she offered her services or this would have stayed lumped on a chair in my living room indefinitely (along with a sweater in need of blocking & buttons).

Since getting it blocked, I have made this my new spring scarf. Nice, light, crunchy but quite warm. It's a most welcome change to my winter scarves. I definitely foresee more such shawl-scarves in my future. And out of handspun would be just divine.

Though I've been wearing it this way more than the other. Thanks so much Amanda for blocking this for me! I know I have some overdue cross-stitch to get to.

Next up: I finally finish things I started ages ago.

More Cross-stitch Floppies

2011-03-21T15:23:00.025-04:00

Two more cross stitch floppy disks that I made for friends recently. As it happens it seems that these days I hang out with many people who deserve and would love a personalised cross stitch floppy disk, including my friends Janina and Susie.

Janina is a programmer. She (like me) used to run around with a pocketful of diskettes. She was trying to remember the colour of her favourite disk, but I ended up going for mauve/lavender land because it's a colour palette she loves. I don't recall ever seeing a lavender diskette, but I'm not too concerned about these being historically accurate.

Susie's managed to be finished around her birthday which was most fortuitous. I went for decidedly Susie colours. She works at a video game company here in Montreal, so thought it would be a nice way to personalise her desk. She can't take pictures of it in its new home, but I'm assured that it has made her the Queen of her workplace.

There are a few more of these disks in the works (including one for myself) and another mystery personalised item for a friend who is decidedly un-computer-geeky. I've taken a small break from these in favour of some languishing knitting projects and a sewing project or two. Oh yeah. This weekend I also had a LOVE affair with Rolags. I'll tell you more about that later.

Revenge of the Super Silk-tacular Hankies

2011-03-19T15:18:00.001-04:00

When packing for Christmas vacation, I really wanted to bring some spinning with me, but wanted to keep my luggage to a minimum. So I opted to pack this Silk Hankie burrito and my drop spindle. I really haven't used my drop spindle much since buying my wheel almost a year ago, but as I was already going to be bringing a sewing machine back with me, I thought packing a wheel was a bit much.

Over the holidays, I did start working with this fibre. Separating and pre-drafting the hankies into little fibre nests was actually quite fun. But spinning on a drop spindle has definitely stopped being so fun after working on a wheel. Especially spinning silk. Especially spinning this silk. I don't think there was anything actually wrong with the fibre I purchased. I'm sure it's entirely user un-familiarity more than anything.

I ended up packing up all the nests in a complicated saran wrap dealie and bringing back home. I took what I had started on the spindle, transferred it to a bobbin and continued the spinning on my wheel. It was still kind of a bitch to spin which is why it's taken me two and a half months to finally finish up this skein.

Chain-ply
'n° 2457–Navy Blue, Gold, Plum' Fiber Cottage
100% Silk Hankies
1 oz.
approx. 325 yards

I've been REALLY wanting to start spinning something new, so forced myself to finish spinning up the silk already. And after a week of spinning for a bit in the evening, it started getting easier to work with (Much MUCH less swearing). Last night I FINALLY finished spinning the singles and COULDN'T wait to be done! So I immediately begun plying the singles.

I must have developed some kind of Stockholm syndrom with this fibre or something because as soon as I finished plying and saw how nice the yarn was, I almost convinced myself to get started on the other batch of hankies in my possession.

Luckily I got a hold of my senses and begun plying the other singles that have been sitting around for months. I can't believe that this is actually the first yarn that I've spun this year. It definitely won't be the last.

Introducing Black Beauty & the Big Green Meanie

2011-03-10T16:08:00.000-05:00

Though I usually prefer to attribute human names to my inanimate objects, it seems that my sewing machines get more elaborate monikers.

I brought a sewing machine when I came back from my Albertan Christmas holidays. This little Singer Featherweight rings in at 20 lbs and fit nicely into my smaller suitcase with all my socks packed in and around it.

I finally took it to Monsieur Machine à Coudre a few weeks ago and he was able to fix it right up. As soon as I started using the newly serviced machine, I started calling it "Black Beauty".

Now I've been searching for a name for this Mint green machine that came to me through the crafty grape vine. It's a temperamental fella and nothing I thought of seemed to fit. Until last week when writing an email that never got sent, when the words just rolled right out of my finger tips. The Big Green Meanie. When I used the machine later that evening and it didn't mis-behave in anyway, I knew I found the name that fit. (Though Black Beauty was a little miffed that her name wasn't quite as 50's gangster, but she'll have to get over it).

Ladies & Gents, allow me to introduce you to my sewing machine line up. That's Black Beauty on the top weighing in at 20 lbs. And secondarily (though not in our hearts) is the irrepressible Big Green Meanie!

Currently Cross-stitch obsessed

2011-02-24T08:16:00.000-05:00

I begun cross-stitching floppy disks on a whim for my assigned valentine at work and have been stitching ever since.

I've completed three so far and have started number 4. There's still 2 more in the plan.

Plus a mystery object for the non-geeky inclined (trust me, it's going to be equally awesome).

And yes, there's one for me in the plan too. And I have other plans for this cross-stitching business. Oh indeed I do.

Postage Stamp Madness?

2011-01-11T16:50:00.000-05:00

We've been having rogue Girl's Nights while the usual hostess is away. Rogue also means the meals are NOT vegetarian (we're REAL rebels). Last week's instalment turned in Quiltie Fun Time chez moi and ended up spilling over to a Sunday Crafterday.

Much silliness. Lots of music and pleeeeenty of quilting (well, piecing as it were). Here's what I got done:

Yes, that's about a half a million 1.5 inch square pieces for some patchy postage stamp blocks. I REALLY went overboard with the rotary wheel and ruler once I realised that each block will use 64 of the little squares.

This inspired us for something really fantastically great. Ugh. I kind of really want to put things in motion to get it going, but should finish off some existing ongoing projects first.

I'm excited for the next Rogue Girl's Night at the next venue.

Super-soft-baby-llama-cowl-for-my-mum

2011-01-07T10:15:00.027-05:00

Inevitably when I hang out with my family, I end up knitting something for my mom. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. And though I've knit her many things, I do know that she loves them and wears/uses everything I've made for her.

While I was home for Christmas, we went to River City Yarns' South Side location and fondled pretty much every skein they had on display. It's really best to have her pick out something that she finds soft and cosy. My mom said she wanted something chunky, and I knew already that she likes soft things so I directed her attention to the Alpaca yarns they had.

She ended up picking out the Mirasol Miski Baby Llama that was on a stand right next to the door. Actually I think I started off carrying a skein of it around for a bit, but something else drew her attention at some point. Needless to say that this yarn is SUPER soft. The light amount of twist really keeps it at it's absolute softest.

My mom kept looking around for some arresting pink handpainted yarn, but I was able to convince her that I could make something interesting with a solid yarn and that really she should be considering the softness at the priority since she'll be wearing it around her neck.

Next we looked through hundreds of cowl patterns on Ravelry until we found a handful that grabbed her attention. #125 Luxe Infinity Scarf by SweaterBabe was the finalist, though she wanted it a little closer fitting, but still be able to pull it around her shoulders if cold enough. I eliminated a pattern repeat (36 sts), cast on and got to work.

Pattern: #125 Luxe Infinity Scarf by SweaterBabe
Materials: Mirasol Miski (100% Baby Llama)
Start Date: December 29, 2010
End Date: January 2, 2011

This yarn was such a pleasure to knit with. I just wish that there was more yardage in each skein. I ended up going through 4.5 skeins to get a nice sized cowl, finishing off at the end of a pattern repeat.

Such a nice cosy cowl that's sure to help her survive many an Albertan winter. I'm sure it will serve her well.

Fear Factor Fibre - Seacell

2011-01-05T10:18:00.001-05:00

I was a bit over zealous when acquiring fibre for the Tour de Fleece this summer. My Fear Factor Fibre challenge really had too many freaky fibres that I was interested in trying to spin. I've been slowly working my way through the basket I've accumulated while allowing myself to spin other things in between.

I spun the first bump of seacell some time during the fall. There's a haze of fibre in my mind, so I'm afraid that I can't be much more exact. The singles were spun and sitting on a "spare bobbin" (read: toilet paper roll) for a while before I spinning up the other bump.

I decided pretty early on that I would ply the 2 bumps together as there's a small amount of fiber in each braid (about an ounce each). I guess that I was procrastinating the spinning of the yellow bump because I wasn't sure how nicely the resulting yarn would be. The colouring in each braid was so subtle that they're easily lost once plied together. It probably would have been good to consider the colours a little more when choosing the fibre in the first place. But it's still pretty nice yarn.

For spinning, I took the braid of seacell, split it several times lengthwise into smallish slivers. I think I pre-drafted the first bump before spinning it. The second one I spun directly from the divided pieces of top (I was much more cavalier the second time around). The pre-drafting definitely made a difference. Seacell definitely has a tendency towards the immovable velcro-ness of silk at times. Pre-drafting makes a real difference in making it more enjoyable to spin.

All in all I like this little silky skein of seacell. The natural silvery grey colour of the seacell is really unique and intriguing. I would spin it again if I came across another nicely dyed braid. Though I think I'd buy a larger quantity so I could make a usable sized skein.

2-ply using 2 bumps of Seacell:
'Clover Honey' PortFiber
100% Seacell
0.7 oz.
&
'Moonlit Walk' PortFiber
100% Seacell
1 oz.

Handspun Annis of my own

2011-01-04T16:46:00.002-05:00

After seeing a friend's Annis knit from her own handspun I decided that I needed one of my own. The amazing 6-day shawl put me in a knitted-lace-from-my-handspun kick. One I have yet to recover from. Almost immediately after finishing the Echo Flower Shawl, I grabbed some appropriate handspun that I really love, and cast on for Annis.

Somehow this shawl magically took 3 days to knit. But somehow is taking much longer to block. I'll take some better pictures after I finally do block it. It's a high priority on my to-do list. But I figured since I included it in the 2010 photo mosaic, I should probably post a little something about it.

Pattern: Annis by Susanna IC
Materials: 2-ply
'Breaker Pigeonroof Studios Polwarth
approx. 397 yards
100% Polwarth
4 oz.
Start Date: December 16, 2010
End Date: December 19, 2010

The whole idea of starting from the bottom edging and working one's way up is really intriguing. No need to freak out about not having enough yarn for the border, it's the first thing knit! A person could get used to this.

Knitting Finished in 2010

2011-01-02T19:56:00.000-05:00

It seems like there was a lot less knitting in 2010. But I think it's more a matter of a lot less finishing of things. There are plenty of sleeping projects, awaiting projects and things in the works in various places around my living room. And there are some projects (like the tea leaves cardigan) that are basically finished but need final blocking or buttons and photographs to REALLY be declared done, but there's time for that.

1. Dress for bébé chat, 2. Bunny front, 3. Dodecahedron, 4. Bunny for me, 5. Matching rainbows, 6. Rainbow dodecahedron, 7. Ta-da!, 8. The tea is brewing quickly, 9. Finished Oyster Pie Blanket, 10. Socks for Grumpy, 11. Shawl blocking, 12. Handspun Annis

Sewing 2010

2011-01-02T19:54:00.000-05:00

I don't think I managed to actually finish any sewing projects this past year, but I did have a lot of fun playing around. Here's what I was working on:

1. Ulu Block, 2. Cathedral Windows Test Block, 3. Purple Ginger block, 4. Final layout, 5. Blueberry centers, 6. Hexagon Progress, 7. Dress in progress, 8. Check it, quilt block, 9. Hex-a-flower

Handspun 2010

2011-01-02T19:05:00.001-05:00

I'm a little late posting these 2010 reflections, but I was on vacation which included one from computers (iPhone doesn't really count).

2010 was the year I bought a spinning wheel, some hand cards and started playing with some freaky fibres. I even got some spinning tools for Christmas: 2 more bobbins, a flick carder and some more wheel ratios. Fiona and I are going to be busy.

1. Pandamint, 2. Crocodile Tears, 3. Glenda, 4. First handspun using the wheel, 5. Chain-ply it is then, 6. 2 scratchy skeins, 7. Juciy yarn, 8. Stormy yarn, 9. Cove skein, 10. Squishy starfish, 11. Silky skein, 12. Blue-green skein, 13. Impossibly soft yarn, 14. Soft super soft super small yarn, 15. Clumsy close up, 16. Breaker skein, 17. Locks skein, 18. Ice Mermaid Darling Queen skein, 19. Milky skein, 20. Finished Skein, 21. Skein of cotton, 22. I spun cotton sliver!, 23. Seaweed skein, 24. Nini's Martini, 25. Clover Walk 2-ply

The Amazing 6-day Shawl

2010-12-13T11:04:00.000-05:00

A family friend is giving me her mother's Singer Featherweight Sewing Machine. I'll be picking it up when I go home for Christmas. In exchange, I knit her this shawl out of some of my handspun yarn. Despite the amassing of large quantities of handspun, this is only the third project where I've used my handspun and the first one that's handspun only.

Pattern: Echo Flower Shawl by Jenny Johson Johen
Materials: 2-ply
'Pinot Gris' Girls like Boys like Fiber
approx. 304.75 yards
100% Cormo
4 oz.
Start Date: November 21, 2010
End Date: November 27, 2010

This handspun was so nice to knit with that the shawl was finished in 6 days. I was very focussed. Though I still need to re-block it. I set it up to block on my bed on a weekend, and it wasn't dry by bedtime. I think I'll use steam for the next blocking. But still I'm declaring this shawl finished.

I am a quilt machine

2010-11-24T10:53:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, my group of Montreal ladies and I headed over to my brother's place (aka - the House of Quilt) for an Intro to Patchwork. It was super fun! Though some ladies left earlier, Amanda and I hung out and played Quilt Machine until 11pm or so. It was epic!

I (of course) chose a complicated, advanced block and spent the entire time cutting out the fabric pieces for my blocks. I originally intended to cut out fabrics for 2 blocks. Due to some confusion and the fact that the cutting instructions were for cutting out for double blocks, that, er, became fabric for 4 blocks. Er, yeah.

After cutting out a bazillion pieces of fabrics for these blocks, I also had to mark little dots on each piece. By the time I finished marking pieces early Sunday afternoon, I REALLY wanted to sew them together.

So I did. The blocks aren't perfect, but the block design is kind of forgiving? I like to think that it is.

These are really the first "real" quilt blocks that I've pieced since beginning quilting.

My machine was mostly co-operative about the piecing. Though I can't wait to get my hands on the Singer Featherlight from my mom's friend. It will be so nice to have a machine that sews straight lines (don't tell Greenie that I said that).

Mixed Bouquet Block from American Patchwork & Quilting, December 2009. Issue 101

4 blocks down, 6 more to go. I think I want to make some of those crazy itty bitty square blocks I've been seeing around. And maybe some of those asterisk blocks I've come across.

Spun Seaweed

2010-11-23T10:39:00.000-05:00

I have been a big fan of CosyMakes dyeing since I started getting her Falkland Fiber Club earlier in the spring. I think there's an entire cubby worth of her fibre in my new shelving unit. I ended up buying lots from her Etsy shop in addition to my fibre club instalments over the summer.

When I saw one of the instalments of the Farm Wool Club, I switched over. Who could resist fun fibre blends like Alpaca, wool or Angora, Shetland? Not me it would seem. I got the first instalment of my new Farm Wool Fiber Club from CosySpins with the last instalment of her Falkland Fiber Club.

As soon as I unwrapped this fibre, took photos and added it to Ravelry, I started spinning it.

I spun it long-draw. It may have been a good idea to pre-draft or "pop" it a bit before spinning. It was a bit of a forearm workout as it was. I finished the yarn over the weekend and it's super lovely! That little bit of mo makes all the difference.

Chain-ply
Farm Wool Fibre Club for September
'Seaweed' CosySpins
50% Wool, 50% Alpaca
4 oz.

Now to think of what I want to knit with this. I think I need a LOT more lace in my life.

Nini's Martini

2010-11-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine fell and broke her face walking home from work on the Friday before Hallowe'en. She expressed an extreme love of this fibre when I received in during the summer so I decided to spin her up some yarn.

At her request, I spun this Noro-style. I separated all the colours and spun them up "in order" from the green to the maroon then chain-plied it to keep the colour transitions. It worked out pretty well, though in future I think some drafting of 2 transition colours together would be wise.

I think I'm a long-draw convert. This spun up pretty quickly even if it's a tad underspun in areas. I might need a smaller ratio for my wheel. Further investigation required.

Chain-ply
'Olive Martini' Sweet Georgia
June Fibre Club
100% Falkland
4 oz.

Oh and it's SUUUUPER soft.

Fear Factor Fibre - Cotton Sliver

2010-11-21T13:54:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I posted any updates on the whole Tour de Fleece thing. And to be honest, I haven't spent any time at the wheel for a while. But the past few weeks I've been ploughing through the fibre that's been half spun on the wheel for months.

Here's the first half of the cotton sliver spun & plied.

Ravelry

'Leaf' Blonde Chicken
100% Organic Cotton Fiber
2 oz.
Chain-ply

For the record 4 oz. of cotton sliver is a HECK of a lot to spin!

Socks for Grumpy

2010-11-20T16:32:00.002-05:00

I was chatting with a friend earlier in the summer and she was feeling down. So I knit her some socks. She was quite pleased to pick out the yarn even if it was from photos of my stash. I'm mailing them today.

Ravelry

Pattern: Cubist Socks by Cookie A
Materials: Trekking XXL
Start Date: May 30, 2010
End Date: October 23, 2010

Oyster Pie Blanket - Finally Finished

2010-11-19T16:51:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling rather laconic at the moment so here we go.

My best friend got married in October so I made her a blanket. I finished all the blocks a week before leaving and finished mattress stitching them together on the plane ride down to SF (where she lives with her new husband). They love it.

Pattern: Sunny Spread
by Ellen Gormley
Materials: Louet Gems Bulky in 7 colours + cloud grey
Start Date: March 23, 2010
End Date: October 9, 2010

Mattress Stitch Marathon

2010-10-04T21:29:00.003-04:00

So I'm nearing the deadline of this dotty blanket which I now realise I really haven't mentioned before. It's been hanging out on my Ravelry page since March and I've been working on it in the background while getting on with all sorts of crafty shenanigans.

It's now reached the point of putting together and it's really coming along. Here's a photo I took for my own reference once I finished the layout one morning on my kitchen floor:

This project is really making me fall in love with mattress stitch all over again. As nice as it is with knitting, I find it even awesomer with crochet. I especially love how the blocks will really smoosh up to one another and give this great square delineation from one block to another.

I did make one of those 5 min videos of me working on it, but somehow YouTube magically turned 5 min into 1:34 but strangely the soundtrack is fine...weird.

After my tech support helps me figure out what happened and how to fix it, I'll be sure to let you know.

ETA: Here's the non-smushed version of the video:

Hiya

2010-09-18T20:01:00.000-04:00

Yikes. Sorry kids. I didn't mean to be gone for so long. Things have been quite busy at work. Not so busy that there hasn't been any crafting. Just busy enough that spending more time in front of a computer isn't terribly appealing when I get home from work. That and I feel like I have to finish spinning the cotton sliver before moving onto another fibre. For future reference 4oz. is a HECK of a lot of cotton to spin up. But I'm definitely getting better at it. Much less swearing and breakage is happening.

But lately the hexagon quilt has been revived in a big way. And apparently the hex is really quite contagious.

I've had quite the stack of fat quarters waiting to become hexes and finally got down to adding them all in. Add in some fabulous Liberty hexagons and the hex is back on folks! I have one last "small" section to add on to the "big" piece and I've reached the width I was aiming for. It's very exciting to see the progress. Though it's going to have to go on the back burner for a bit while I finish some other secretish projects.

I'm also faced with a bit of a quilting mental block going with my box bag. At a recent group patchwork day, we all selected fabrics to combine with some sent from one of the homegirls in semi-permanent absentia abroad (the Matryoshka dolls and the colourful apples as seen below).

I have to say I had a REALLY hard time selecting these fabrics. Once Janina brought out the irrepressibly fantastic rainbow fabric (exclusive for Fabricville) I got started. Every once in a while I would get up. Look at all the fabrics and make some selections. Stare for a while. Get frustrated and then sit down and baste more hexagons. I added the red/pink polka dots after I got home and those fantastic rainbow stars a week later. The stars are from my mom's 80's fabric stash that Mr. Peabody recently brought back with him. They're SO Rainbow Brite, I love them!

Now I'm not sure how I want to piece my fabric. I was originally thinking strips. But that was before getting the fabrics together. Now I'm thinking diagonal strips would be better. But I'm not entirely sure anymore. And the fabric has been hanging out on this chair in my living room for a few weeks now I feel like I should do something with it. I should just jump in and do it already. I'm not sure what I've been waiting for.

Non-spinning update

2010-08-16T13:47:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to pop in and let everyone know that my old cranky sewing machine and I have seemed to make up with one another. I managed to work for most of the day on my scissor shirtdress with minimal complaints. I think his bobbin cartridge needs a tune up but other than that he was very well behaved. It would seem that he likes his new more permanent home beside the refrigerator instead of the more temporary digs in front of the stove/washer/dryer/fridge. I guess being in the way made him nervous.

I think my sewing machine is definitely a he though I'm not entirely settled on his name. Edmund jumps to mind but I'm not sure about it. Ooo, or Oliver? Any thought? I'll have to get a photo so you can be properly introduced.

Since I believe in posts having photos, take a gander at what happend at the last session of Les Courtepointistes:

Mr. Peabody's tumbling blocks quilt is coming along REALLY nicely. We decided that he was about halfway through making all his blocks and it looks FANTASTIC. Don't you agree?

Super Awesome Hexagon Swap

2010-08-14T14:56:00.000-04:00

While browsing through my groups on Flickr, I came across many packages of lovely little hexagons for this swap called { Handsome } Hexies - THE SWAP and decided I REALLY wanted to play along. They were in the middle of the first round so I had to wait ever so patiently.

But then round 2 came around and I finally got to play!

I was to prepare a package for Flickr user wishes, true and kind.

In her questionnaire, she mentioned that she liked Amy Butler, Heather Ross, Heather Bailey and Anna Maria Horner. As it happened, I had just received a scrap bag as part of my pattern order from Anna Maria Horner's website. I decided to start making hexagons from the scraps. I then proceeded to dig through my growing stash of fabric for suitable matches.

I find that the resulting grouping of hexes is a nice range of reds, oranges with some touches of green and blue (heavily favoured in my stash). I added a piece of the Kokka strawberries I bought at Purl Soho on my trip to NYC and put it all in an Amy Butler zipper pouch. I added some goodies and sent it away. And waited.

I waited patiently for my partner to get her parcel and not-so-patiently to get mine in return. I keep prowling the Flickr group, at first to see what other people were sending. But then people started getting their parcels and this is where I started to get antsy. I had favourited so many of the parcels and they were arriving in other people's mailboxes. Mine stayed annoyingly empty for the better part of the week. This clearly was the way to madness. Thankfully a busy work week and many evenings out with friends kept me from getting to obsessive and start making charts (yes I had considered it).

But then something magical happend on friday. I came home from work to find something in my mailbox. It was down in the bottom so only reaching in did I get my parcel. It was from the UK! Only now did I dare to think, did I get it? Did I get THE LIBERTY package I had seen posted to the group?

Well, yes indeed I DID get the Liberty package from I'm a ginger monkey (from her Flickr id I thought it was imaginer monkey, funny how the mind is?). I kind of feel like I won the lottery or something. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Liberty. I have loved Liberty ever since I lived in London and would often go there with my friends to browse around in the fantastic Tudor-style building. I think I bought some loose tea there once to send to someone, but never bought anything for myself. And I wasn't quilting or sewing at the time so definitely didn't peruse the fabrics. But of course now that's where I would spend my time.

I love ALL the hexagons that I got. How could I not love 30 some hexagons of different Liberty fabrics. Heck, even if they were the same fabric I would love them. It's Liberty!

In addition to the mind blowing fact that I got 30 some charm Liberty hexagons, I also got 2 pieces of Liberty oil cloth AND a very very lovely zipper pouch also made from oil cloth. I plan to leave the hexes in the pouch and pick them out one at a time when it's time to pick one for the quilt.

Here are some hexagons that particularly stuck out when I first opened the package.

Beautiful little pansy flowers!

Fabulous fussy cut mint green geometric! (mint green is my favourite colour).

And dancing fruit! How could anyone not love getting dancing fruit? So fabulous.

So this swap was a great experience. I had fun playing and will definitely be playing again. But I don't expect to be getting Liberty every time. Wouldn't a full on Liberty only hexagon quilt be fantastic? A beautiful dream.

Fear Factor Fibre - Cotton Noil

2010-08-12T08:15:00.001-04:00

I bought this noil because the colour really struck me. I had never heard of noil before and realised after I bought it that there would be a need for some fibre prep before I could spin this. I knew I was going to have to bite the bullet and get some hand carders.

Up to this point, I have been resistant to getting into the major fibre prep thing as I knew it would be a slippery slope to drum carders, buying whole fleeces and generally turning my apartment into a wool mill. But my I was foolish enough to fall for some pretty pretty fibre in need of prep, so hand carders were in my future.

Luckily for me I wouldn't have to shell out for a brand new set of hand carders just yet. On a trip to Quebec city with my parents, while visiting the antique shops on Saint-Paul in Old Quebec, my dad pointed out to me this lovely set of hand carders. I looked at the price and pretty much squeeeeeeed in delight. A decent pair of hand carders for pretty much half the price of new ones. SCORE!

Yes, I know they say "N° 5 Wool" on the back, but I figure it's close enough for me to try things out without too much of an investment. And as my dad said, if they don't work out, they're still antiques. He spent the rest of the trip pointing out loom bobbins, flax combs and any kind of spinning wheel he came across. A side note, there are several shops on the way to Quebec along the 20 with a great selection of wheels. You can get a wheel in good condition complete just needing a belt for around $300. But of course you'll only be getting 1 bobbin at the most.

I've been studying up with my spinning fairy godmother, Ruthann Macaulley and researching making punis is no different. So following her demonstration in this video:

I went to work.

After a few awkward attempts, I really started to get the hang of things. Passing the fibre from one card, back to the other almost like a pro. Wouldn't you know it, but this fibre prep thing is kind of fun! Before long I had quite the stack of hand rolled goodness to spin up.

I never thought I'd like the fibre prep—lord knows I abhor doing hours of predrafting—but working with hand cards is a lot faster than I thought. And I guess add some technology/toy to the equation and it's party time!

Can I just tell you right now how much I LOVE the word puni. PUNI! P-U-N-I! I love that when spoken, it kind of sounds like a swear or something dirty but it's totally not. No really, it's ok to say puni at the top of your lungs PPPPPUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIII! Puni. Love it.

K, onto working with the punis (...puni). Spinning from punis is pretty cool. Much easier than working from the cotton balls. At least at my level of experience with spinning cotton. I found that they were somewhat easier to work with when rolled a little bit tighter around the knitting needle. A firm puni makes for happy spinning. The fibres are more inclined to stick together when somewhat strongly encouraged. Plus I found that working with slightly felted fibres when I was first learning to spin helped me feel like I wouldn't "break" the fibre while I was spinning it.

There was some breakage here and there when spinning the singles and overall they came out somewhat slubby and quite neppy. I think the nepps are mostly because I was working with noil. Overall there wasn't nearly as much swearing and heart break as I had when first playing with the cotton balls.

I was quite concerned about getting a lot of breaking when plying the singles so I kind of left it for a week or two. I even started spinning some of the cotton sliver (is it pronounced sliver or sl-eye-ver? anyone know?) which drafts like a dream. I just have to watch that I get enough twist to keep it from coming apart altogether. The twist in the singles was very well and set once I did get around to it. And the breakage was minimal thought swearing was heard when it did happen.

I decided to go chain-ply because I didn't bother to do any kind of puni counting (sounds kind of like cheating at strip poker doesn't it?) while I was spinning and just filled one bobbin. Ruthann advises against plying from the inside and outside of a center pull ball when working with cotton and I'm very inclined to believe her.

Overall I'm very happy with how the yarn turned out. I like the neppiness. I like how subtle the colour shifts are. The weight is nice. One comment from a fellow spinner "It feels like Rowan cotton." Not so bad for my first completed skein of cotton. It's challenging but rewarding enough that I will definitely be playing with cotton more in the future. And not just because there's a ball of sliver (sl-eye-ver?) on my coffee table.

I also plan to play more with the handcards. There will be punis and rolags and all sorts of hand carded fun in my future.

Fear Factor Fibre - Soy Silk

2010-08-01T11:35:00.004-04:00

Alright, I'm back from playing with my parents in Québec city. I've been back for a whole week. But turns out I'm kind of a busy girl during the week and wanted to finish spinning this up before posting about it. So here we go, I give you Soy Silk:

I did some internet research before attacking this bump of soy silk and came across a mention in the intro to this Knitty Spin article on Spinning from the Fold that it's a good method for spinning soy silk. The article has pictures of Lee Juvan spinning long draw from the fold with soy silk, so I thought I would give it a go. I figured it would be good to practise long draw with something easier to spin like soy silk instead of waiting for my cotton to arrive (this was before I bought some cotton balls to play with).

It's weird to try a new technique, almost like learning to spin all over again. Things break. The yarn ends up all slubby and weird. Generally feels strange. But it's good to learn new things. I like learning new stuff. And that's kind of the point of this challenge.

Breaking the top into little fingers definitely makes the spinning seem faster. Though I had to put them in a shoebox to protect them from the ceiling fan set while spinning. The soy gets really fluffy when drafted.

Overall, I went easy on myself, aiming to get a good spin rather than go for speed right out of the gate. The singles were pretty even I was able to get nice control and towards the end of the spinning, I was actually getting pretty quick with my long draw. I think I'm going to try long draw for the next bump of wool that I spin. Mostly for practise, but it's also kind of magical. And I like that my fingers don't get as numb or sore as usual.

2-ply
'Pink Granite' Chimera
100% Soy Silk
4 oz.

The soy silk was pretty nice to work with. It's a little grabbier than the milk fibre which I might make it easier for someone starting to spin or who is used to spinning wool. Spinning from the fold definitely made the fibre draft easier though long draw isn't entirely necessary. I just wanted the practise. I would definitely spin soy silk again if I came across some nice colours to play with.

Next up: I play with punis while spinning up some cotton noil.

Yes, I know I haven't finished my complete list of Freak Fibres and July/Tour de Fleece is over. But I'm going to keep spinning through the list as I'm still interested, have the fibre and have the time to keep spinning.

BRB

2010-07-21T10:37:00.000-04:00

The recent radio silence is due to a awesome long weekend trip to NYC. We took the train down and talked most of the way. It was awesome even if it took all day. Much more civilised than taking the bus and less of a hassle than taking a plane. We hunted for vinyl, found great books and visited craft mecca. There's pics on my Flickr if you're bored/interested.

I won't have much to report on until sometime next week as my parents are in town visiting. But on the upside, my mom is actually letting me use her iPad. I know, I'm surprised too.

Fear Factor Fibre - Cotton Balls

2010-07-13T07:48:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I was doing some research on how to approach some of the upcoming fibres when I came across these wonderful YouTube spinning tutorials by Spin2weave. I started off watching the cotton prep video, then intro to spinning cotton, then any of the other videos she has of any interest. I really like her presentation. I love when her dogs come a sniffing when she's working with dog hair in one of the videos and there's something fabulous about her spinning wheel/chair set up. The big fairytale wheel didn't appeal to me until I saw hers paired with the beautiful chair she uses with it.

In her second intro to spinning cotton video, she mentions that you can spin cotton balls. Yes. From the drugstore cotton balls. She even has some colourful ones and SPINS THEM RIGHT THERE FROM THE BALL!!! My mind exploded a little bit when I saw this.

So I of course stopped at the drug store yesterday and of course HAD to pick up some cotton balls to try. Extra bonus of learning by playing with cotton balls is that I don't have to feel bad about "ruining" my nice cotton when it arrives.

They look really fun to spin, like little marshmallows to spin and play with rather than eat.

But man, cotton is HARD. I've been practising a supported long draw while working with soy silk and I've kind of gotten the hang of it, but clearly cotton is a whole other animal. I had ALL kinds of breaking issues. I was getting into some decent long draw rhythms but then it would break or separate (not sure which) and I'd have to start again. I think I may have to go up a whorl but that's pretty scary too. I'm already using a higher ratio than I'm used to. I even swapped out the wheel ratio pieces when plying the milk.

This is my initial progress of spinning cotton balls:

As you can see I didn't get very far into it. I stopped after maybe 3 balls. I was tired and getting pretty frustrated. I'm going to try some more tonight. Or I might give up for now and go back and finish the second half of the soy silk.

Fear Factor Fibre - Milk Fibre

2010-07-11T09:47:00.000-04:00

Next on the Fear Factor Fibre list is Milk.

I found this very lovely braid of Milk Fibre on Etsy from Moonlight and Laugther. After buying it, the seller started a conversation with me and sent me a link to this post about working with milk.

After reading up on it, I tried just drafting straight from one end. It seemed to draft really quite easily. Especially compared to the issues I was having with drafting the silk so I decided to treat it as usual and spin from one end.

I found that the milk didn't like to go too fine or it would break so I left it a little thicker than I've been spinning lately. Also the milk has a tendency to slip out if there's not enough twist so I made sure I was getting that bumpy appearance to my singles before moving on. I've been using a higher ratio on my wheel lately, so this didn't slow things down much.

I originally planned to 2-ply this but after loading up my bobbin with all the fibre, I REALLY wanted to ply straight away. I just couldn't wait a day for the twist to set and then fight with a center pull ball so I changed my mind and chain-plied instead. I think it turned out really nicely.

Once done plying and off the niddy noddy, the yarn was perfectly balanced. That NEVER happens to me. Milk is some kind of wonder fibre. I wonder if I even need to wash and finish it. I might anyways just to be safe.

Chain-ply
'Faerie Dust' Moonlight and Laughter
100% Milk Fiber
approx. 189.8 yards
15 wpi
3.75 oz.

I REALLY liked working with the milk, especially with all the difficulties I had with the silk roving. The yarn has this nice cotton-y/silk blend sort of feeling and is nice and shiny. I will definitely be spinning this fibre again.

Fear Factor Fibre – Silk Roving

2010-07-10T08:47:00.001-04:00

Next up on the Tour de Fleece Fear Factor Fibre challenge is working with pure silk roving. As it happens I already had 2 pure silk rovings in my stash. Since they're both sort of in the same colour range, I decided to spin them separately and ply them together.

'Ice Queen' Space Romantic
100% Mulberry Silk
2 oz.

I bought this Space Romantic mulberry silk this year shortly after buying my wheel, when I was sampling from various indie-dyer types. It's very pretty, soft, silky (of course) and was pretty straightforward to spin.

I spun directly from the top, no pre-drafting. Once I figured out the optimal drafting zone size (large), things went quite smoothly.

'Mermaid Darling' Ozark Handspun (my name for the colourway)
100% Silk
1.75 oz.

This silk has been living in my stash for a few years and for some reason was super difficult to draft properly. Early in my career as a spinner, I did work with another bump of Ozark silk roving and remember finding it pretty tricky. But as I was a new spinner, I figured it was me and not the fibre. I'm not sure if the issue was that it's been sitting in a bundle for 2 years, or that it's just tricky to work with. Whatever the reason, there was a LOT of swearing while spinning this up.

Randomly, there was a large piece of blue/aqua silk and this smaller piece of green/brown. Totally strange. I alternated a green piece with an aqua piece when spinning. For some reason, the aqua was more cooperative than the green/brown.

I tried a few things to try and get the silk to draft nicely.

I tried teasing open the roving before spinning, which didn't always help things. While spinning, if I got a largish lump, I stopped, teased it open and was able to draft out the extra fibre.

What I found helped the green/brown be somewhat cooperative was lightly pre-drafting the piece before taking it to the wheel. Really, just breaking things open a bit here and there so that it would actually draft. Still it was not nearly as nice to spin and the Space Romantic.

Look! Pretty singles:

Plying was pretty straight forward. The skein has a largish section with the Ice Queen plied back on itself near the end—I used an Andean plying bracelet for this which was kind of a bitch in places.

The finished yarn is very nice. The green has mostly disappeared making the blue more turquoise in places. The areas of brown seemed to have softened to a tannish. Overall the skein is very pretty.

2-ply
'Ice Mermaid Darling Queen'='Ice Queen' Space Romantic + 'Mermaid Darling' Ozark Handspun
approx. 385.3 yards
100% Silk
3.75 oz.
19 wpi

I'm now partway through spinning the milk fibre and its a dream to work with. Drafts like nobody's business which is REALLY nice after all the swearing-inducing Ozark silk.

The Fibre has arrived

2010-07-08T21:06:00.000-04:00

1. Hankie mixed pack, 2. Gray Overdyed Coopworth Locks, 3. Clover Honey loose, 4. Guanaco, 5. Pink Granite loose, 6. Urban Decay Silk Hankies, 7. Moonlit Walk loose, 8. Locks goodie baggie bonus, 9. Faerie Dust loose

Most of the fibre I ordered for my Tour de Fleece – Fear Factor Fibre challenge has now arrived. Isn't it pretty? I just finished plying the silk that seemed like it took forever to spin/ply. One of the bumps was much less cooperative for some reason plus it turns out I'm a busy girl during the week so I haven't had much spinning time. Add in a bout of 30-36°C (86 - 96°F) weather around here and my free time has been spent with my feet in a tub of cool water rather than treddling away with Fiona.

So enjoy the pretty pictures of the pretty pretty fibres. I promise I'll have the silk report properly set and documented tomorrow. I have it set up so I can soak my feet like I'm 90 while on the computer.

An army of one

2010-07-05T13:08:00.001-04:00

I have begun my army of dresses with McCall's M4769. After playing fantasy seamstress and as the patterns begun to arrive in my mail box, I took them with me to my regularly scheduled crafterday at Effiloché and continued to play the game.

Turns out adding fabric makes the game more fun, but hard to stay reasonable. I was going to start with getting fabric for one dress and it quickly became fabric for 5 dresses. In the end I kept things reasonable and only bought fabric for 2 dresses. Very restrained I think.

Daniel helped me fit the pattern in the style of Fit for Real People. There's a bit of a learning curve with these techniques but I think it's worth the pay off to get a dress that actually fits properly.

The last time I sewed garments was back in the summer between grades 6 and 7 when my mom decided my brother and I would learn to sew. Our aunt, a self-taught seamstress and my mom showed us how the basics of making clothes. I ended up with a closet full of dresses and my brother got a complete wardrobe of colourful vests (it was the 90's after all). That year my mom bought a serger for us to use so I'm learning about "properly" finishing the inside of a garment. French seams, bias tape and all that jazz.

It's coming along quite nicely. Well at least between fights with my vintage free-to-me sewing machine. I try to show reverence and respect. I even recently moved it to a more permanent part of the kitchen so it may feel more cooperative. I've been giving it some personal space for a while, but I'll try it tonight and see how hospitable it feels. Fingers crossed that it goes well.

I have had some difficulty fitting the sleeve cap into the armhole. Our adjustments to the sleeve seem to have added an awful lot of fabric to the top. I hand basted it into the dress. The effect of a 19th century sleeve in a 20th century dress design really doesn't jive.

So I rebasted the sleeve into position, taking the excess fabric into two pleats near the top. It's still not quite right. I think I might have to adjust the pleats a bit to get them to sit nicely. There's a lot of fabric in each pleat so I might try splitting 2 pleats into 4: two smaller ones on the front part and 2 on the back part of the sleeve.

I'll keep you posted.

Oh and don't these shoes look cute with the dress?

Fear Factor Fibre – Mohair Locks

2010-07-04T17:45:00.001-04:00

I decided to begin my Tour de Fleece Fear Factor Fibre challenge with something that has been sitting in my stash taunting me for years. I've wanted to spin locks since I started spinning because it's one of my nicknames from my group of girlfriends that lived together in London. Locks for Locks. It's just too much isn't it?

This little baggie of Mohair Locks was brought back as a souvenir from someone's fibre tour of New England and has been just waiting for me to get on with it already and just spin 'em! Apparently I needed to wait a few years, get a wheel and spin a bunch of wool before I could attack the locks.

But these locks have been tamed.

1. Mohair Locks, 2. Single Lock, 3. Teased Lock

Someone told me about how to work with locks. At least I think someone did. Or maybe I read about it somewhere. Anyways, you can see above how I teased open each lock so that it would draft nicely and then spun each one from the fold like so:

Again this is something I read/heard about. But of course being who I am, I had to try out the alternatives. I tried spinning from either end of the lock. It's a little easier to spin from the one to the other.

Of course it's tricky to tell which end is which, especially once they're teased open. So spinning from the fold makes sense. Half of the fibre is "the right way" and the other half is pulling the other way, averaging out the difficulty. And you don't have to pay attention to which end is which. These locks were kind of greasy which I hear makes them better to work with but I found that sometimes I was really fighting with the stickyness.

It took me a while to get used to spinning from the fold. I've never done it before and learning any new technique is bound to feel strange at first. By the end of the baggie, I got the hang of it. I'm ready to tackle the next bundle of locks once it arrives. I have some Merino and some Coopworth locks making their way to my mailbox.

Overall I really liked working with the locks. I teased a bunch, then spun a bunch, then teased some more and spun some more until they were all done. The variations of green really evened out in the spinning. But the resulting yarn has this nice semi-solid quality without being splotchy like some kettle dyes can be.

Tour de Fleece—Fear Factor Fibre

2010-07-01T11:51:00.001-04:00

Amanda and I were discussing our plans for the Tour de Fleece during our last St-Jean Baptiste Spin-in and came up with what I think is a pretty fun challenge.

Introducing Fear Factor Fibre!

Here's the idea. We're both going to take the plunge into spinning things all those freaky fibres that intimidate us to spin.

My list includes: locks, pure silk, silk hankies, pure alpaca, cotton, flax/hemp, milk fibre, soy silk, sea cell, guanaco.

Both of us have travel plans during the traditional Tour de Fleece dates so have extended the challenge to the full month of July. We've also relaxed on the whole spin everyday thing. I kind of went overboard ordering things on Etsy, so there's a whole lot of freak making it's way to me.

I figure if I can get 2/3 of the list accomplished during July, I will have achieved the challenge. Plus I'll have the rest of the freaks in my stash to continue playing with.

Happy Tour de Fleece to all those spinners out there.

I have awesome friends

2010-06-28T20:51:00.000-04:00

My best friend (the one who's getting married this fall) decided to go on a impromptu trip back to London. I was excited to join her but then hemmed and hawwed long enough for the airfare to go from $700 to $1500 (turns out it just takes a week). I REALLY couldn't find any way to justify that.

But she was terribly nice enough to send me some requested goodies from the fabulous V&A show: Quilts 1700-2010 and I am eternally grateful. These fat quarters are ENORMOUS. I'm talking fat quarter meters, giving a piece that measures 21"x26" or so. Those must be some wide fabrics!

The book is fantastic and Mr. Peabody borrowed it almost immediately (it's ok, I know where he lives). The fabric is in a special quarantine until I figure out what great amazing project is worthy. I'm thinking something traditional.

Thanks again Miss Pie!

Project Hexagon Re-activation Complete

2010-06-24T11:05:00.000-04:00

So this was the last picture I showed about the Hexagonal quilt I started last summer.

Initially started this quilt with some fat quarters and fabric scraps I had kicking around from some old sewing projects. It's a slow project but has been progressing off and on since I started it.

Here's an update. It's grown a bit:

I've dusted off the project and brought it back to life. Mostly as a portable project to have with me at the Salon 2010 and have been working on it in the weeks since the show. In fact I've been working on it during my lunch break at work. EVERYONE who comes into the kitchen while I'm stitching says something about the quilt, the most hilarious being "are you decorating easter eggs?!?" These reactions are almost more fun than working on it again. Almost.

So when I'm working on this quilt, I put together smaller sections like this:

You may notice that there have been some additions to the fabrics used for this quilt. Truth is that I don't have enough of the original fabrics to make a quilt of the size that I want. Originally I planned to make this quilt for my double bed. That's still the plan, but if I get bored with it (doubtful) it could become a lap quilt or something.

When each smaller section is done, I attach it to the larger piece:

The arrangement of the hexagons is a kind of planned randomness. Here's how that works. I have a group of fabrics that I have larger quantities of and others that are truly scrap hexes that I have say 1 to 20 of. In each "repeat", I include one of each of my regular fabrics plus a number of my scrap fabrics. They all get arranged in a pleasing random-esque order and get stitched onto the working piece.

Now I've even started paying attention to the orientation of the hexagons. I like it when the shapes from the print on one hexagon can be arranged to line up and blend into the shape on a neighboring one. I'm sure no one will notice these little things but me. They're my little quilting secrets and I find them infinitely amusing.

Oh and if anyone has any fun scraps of fabric they don't know what to do with, I'd be more than happy to take them off your hands. They might make it into the quilt or even for future scrappy projects.

Fiona and I have been busy

2010-06-22T10:26:00.000-04:00

I have been becoming very familiar with my spinning machine, Fiona the ladybug. We've been playing with lots of pretty fun delicious fibres and suddenly I have developed a bit of a handspun stash.

This yummy BFL silk blend really liked to stick to my clothes while spinning. What is it about silk blends that make the fibres stick to everything?

I love the barber pole effect that happens even in the singles of this yarn. And they made a nice squishy 2-ply yarn.

2-ply
'Delish' Pigeonroof Studios
75% Blue Faced Leicester, 25% Silk
4.5 oz.

Next I got the next installment of the always fabulous CosySpins Falkland Fibre Club. I'm really developing a fondness for this fibre. No matter what, the yarn stays squishy, springy and awesome. It always plumps during the finishing and even sometimes during the plying.

The club offering was 2 related colourways braided together. I was really excited to spin it up but had to think of how I was going to treat the colours.

I ended up spinning each colour as a separate single, then plying them together.

2-ply
Fibre Club for May
'Pacific mixed match' CosySpins
100% Falkland
4 oz.

The colours really blended together nicely in the plying. In some spots are pretty much solid. The green ended up being longer than the blue, so I Andean plied what remained on the bobbin. I like how well that works out and that you still end up with one skein. The yarn is squishy and soft and super pretty.

As soon as this delicious superwash merino showed up in my mailbox, I knew I had to spin it right away. Soooooooo soft. And I was really interested how the colours would work out in the spinning.

Turns out they turned out to be awesome! Again with the super cool barber poling in the singles. This time creating really interesting blends of colour. This would make a very interesting singles yarn—if you're into that sort of thing. I have yet to try making a balanced singles yarn. Maybe one of these days I'll give it a shot.

2-ply
'Collision Course' Pigeonroof Studios
100% Superwash Merino
4.2 oz.

This yarn ended up being the most squishy and impossibly soft yarn I have made yet. I think I've reached the point of the ideal amount of twist in my singles so I end up with these deliciously soft yarns. It's so deliciously tasty that I immediately cast on for a lacy baktus. Super squishy and delicious in garter stitch.

For my latest spin, I decided to try and see how fine I could go with this cormo sliver.

Turns out I can go preeeeeetty fine. The colour transitions in the singles made me want to chain-ply but I stuck to my guns of super fine yarn so stayed with the 2-ply plan.

2-ply
'Pinot Gris' Girls like Boys like Fiber
approx. 304.75 yards
100% Cormo
4 oz.

This yarn is laceweight in places and fingering in others. It's super soft, quite squishy and definitely plumped in the finishing. I'm going to try a Citron from this. Though I'm going to hold off the cast on until I've finished a few other projects.

Lately I've been trying a different method for finishing my yarns. Instead of simmering on the stove, I wash them in increasingly hot water (start with lukewarm and add hot gradually so that the fibres aren't shocked into fulling themselves). It works well for my attention span and the result seems to be equally set as the simmering method. That way I only have to wait for the yarn to dry. With the summer heat we're having, things are drying MUCH faster.

Check it: more knitting!

2010-06-21T10:18:00.000-04:00

K. So I've been neglecting the knitting talk lately. So here's a status check on what's active on the needles these days.

Immediately after seaming up my recent sweater victory, I cast on for this beauty:

And it's been progressing at a nice clip ever since. I think I like this idea of having a sweater on the needles to work on now and again when taking breaks from other projects.

One of my girlfriend's has been a little down due to romantical situations lately. In an effort to cheer her up I'm knitting her some socks. She picked out the yarn from my Flickr and I immediately cast on:

I really was excited by this pattern, Cubist Socks by Cookie A as soon as I came across it and was happy to have someone in mind as the recipient. My bin full of hand knit socks is quite full and I really only wear them when it's super cold in the winter. I have hot feet. Maybe I should get cotton sock yarns to work with at some point, but it's hard to justify when I have such a large sock yarn stash.

This pattern is super interesting and works up fast without much effort or project monogamy, I found myself at the heel flap:

I really like how the leg chart is integrated into the heel flap pattern. I love how Cookie does that in most of her patterns.

Lastly, I have finally cast on with some of my handspun:

This deliciously impossibly soft superwash merino is from Pigeonroof Studios and as soon as the yarn was finished and skeined I wanted to knit something with it. I was originally planning on making socks with this as it's superwash — REALLY want to knit some handspun socks for some reason — but as it's soooooooo soft it would be better appreciated nearer to my face. Ergo, a scarf was in order.

Amanda suggested a Lacy Baktus (Ravelry link) and upon seeing it, I completely agreed and cast on as soon as I could. Turns out to be a very addictive pattern and I quickly had progressed quite a lot.

But I sense the knitting will be a little slower.

This delicious and irresistible fibre arrived on my doorstep last week and I REALLY want to spin it up ASAP!

Check it: knitting!

2010-06-19T10:39:00.001-04:00

It's been seamed. Buttons are on and it's all done.

Amongst all the non-knitting crafting I've been blogging about, I have been knitting behind the scenes. And I've made my favourite sweater to date. It's been a great success!

Generally I usually have much angst when it comes to knitting sweaters. I try to be good. Measure. Swatch. Gauge. Blocking. I have a sweater that taught me the importance of each. The hard way of course. Even as recently as November I had my heart broken by another sweater: the mis-behaving Girl Friday.

But (finger's crossed) I think I've knit my way out of it. Like with jazz improv solos or abstract paintings, I have knit my share of bad sweaters so (knitting goddesses permitting) it should be smoother sailing from now on. And my most recently completed knitting project has me believing again that a wearable sweater is possible to make.

Originally I cast on with this yarn for a Lady February Sweater. After knitting the yoke and just about starting into the gull lace section, I decided a pattern change would be a good idea. The February Lady sweater is a great pattern which I really like, but it's super boxy and as it's based on a baby sweater, kind of a young, little girl in pink-pinafore kind of look. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in my family, we all have super young looking faces (again, not necessarily a bad thing) so wearing young clothes perpetuates people thinking I'm in University or sometimes even high school. It's only in the past year that I've stopped being carded everywhere I go. So I thought a more grown up sweater pattern was in order. Enter Oblique by Véronik Avery.

Now the Pingouin Grège that I was using is not the same gauge as the yarn used in the pattern. Pretty standard for my knitting, which is likely while I usually run into trouble. But I swatched. A few times. And blocked THOUROUGHLY. Then I did math. Yes, I did the math to figure out what number of stitches would correspond to the measurements I wanted. Oh yes! I also did lots of measuring of sweaters I already have, comparing them to figure out what measurements would give me the fit that I wanted. After all the measuring and the math, I was able to work out my plan for attack: use the stitch counts for a larger size to account for my smaller gauged yarn WHILE following the length measurements for the smallest size (I have a short torso). This worked out super well.

I cast on a started knitting. I usually try to take notes about what modifications/gauge things I come up with into a knitting notebook, but it never works out. It's one extra thing to deal with so somehow I always loose track. Recently what I've started doing is making my notes on the actual printed pattern. I mostly work from patterns printed off the computer so this works out pretty well. I know I need my pattern, so I know I'll always have my notes at hand. It's only taken me 20 years of knitting to figure this out. Sometimes I'm just smart like that.

I worked on this sweater here and there in the evenings when tired of spinning/~~fighting~~ working with my sewing machine and am watching tv. So while I wasn't really paying attention, I finished a sweater! And then seamed it. And then bought buttons. Then it sat for a while as I figured out what to use on the inside to reinforce where they'd be attached. The weather turned quite cool and rainy again so I decided the universe (or knitting goddesses) were telling me to just be done already and I could actually wear it.

And I love it. It fits a little bigger than I planned, but close enough for me to call it a success. I can actually see myself wearing it (and I have) to work without feeling like the usual jeans + t-shirt sloppy self I've been for the past while. This sweater, while being big and cosy definitely isn't in the sloppy category. It's also super warm. Gotta love that alpaca content.

So TA-DA! I can knit a sweater! That I like! And that fits how I want! And isn't a big silly hoodie!

Pattern: Oblique by Véronik Avery
Materials: Pingouin Grège
Modifications: Working larger size for gauge. Following length measurements for smallest size.
Start Date: November 23, 2009 as February Lady Sweater. Made pattern switch April 12, 2010.
End Date: May 21, 2010

Needless to say that immediately upon finishing this sweater, I promptly started another. More on that later.

Baby steps

2010-06-18T15:35:00.000-04:00

I've never been up for a full-on design re-hauls. So much work and I'm my own worst client when it comes to these sorts of things. But check the new gingham background. I think it's pretty kickass and it was a super easy change.

Maybe one day I'll even make a craftacular banner.

I'm with the band

2010-06-18T13:42:00.001-04:00

At the end of May was the Salon 2010 Quebec Quilt show which Mr. Peabody and I have been looking forward to for quilt a while. Really since getting super geeky with the whole quilt thing. So naturally when his boss decided to have a booth at the show, we both were excited to help man it.

I was super excited getting my special pass. I kept saying to everyone "I'm with the band! Here's my backstage pass to the Quilt show!" and felt SUPER COOL flashing at the front tables each time I breezed past. There may have been the odd wink thrown into the mix as well.

Of course the best part of working the show is getting to see what all the other quilt shops are and what they carry. The side benefits of working the show are vast and plentiful. You get to know some of the other booth keepers and hear everyone's favourite techniques, tricks and gadgets. Plus Mr. Peabody went to scope things out on Thursday evening during our usual appointed Courtepointistes timeslot. We did a round of all the booths, checking out their wares. Then went back around and picked up the things that caught my eye.

On Saturday, we met up at the Metro and headed up to the quilt show with our various provisions. Both of us brought a plethora of healthy snacks, 2 huge bottles of water and some craftivities to keep busy during slower times.

The general strategy: sit when you can. If seated, take a sip of water and have a snack. I was pretty eager to start selling fabric and talking quilts from the get-go, but most people were just checking things out for the first hour or so. I ended up hanging out and working on my hexagon quilt so I wouldn't be that crazy super eager (and annoying) customer service person that I hate when I go shopping.

Then things started to pick up. I'd say we worked in equal parts French and English which can be a challenge for me. I can speak French quite well having lived in Montreal for almost 4 years now, but would not consider myself Bilingual by local standards. But of course, it's practise that causes improvement which I don't get so much at my day job. I like that I can work in English, as mostly I deal in French at shops and such. Of course a Quebec Quilt show has quilts and people from all over Quebec, especially smaller communities with much less English inclinations than here in Montreal. There were also some booths and quilters who came in from Ontario. So both ends of the language spectrum were represented.

It was super fun to work the Effiloché booth at the quilt show. Everyone was super excited about the fabrics we had. And I got to help many quilters with fabric choices and colour combinations. The part I like most of working with fabric: picking it all out. There was one lady who got super excited every time I found a fabric that worked well with the other choices she had already made. Talk about job satisfaction!

Mr. Peabody and I each took breaks to breeze through the quilts on display. He has all the pictures on his camera and has yet to upload them onto his computer. There's lots, so they'll have to wait for another day.

But here's my goodies from the quilt show:

Awesome fat quarter pack of 30's reproduction fabrics (my absolute favourite fabrics).

Some more small scale Japanese prints to add the ones I bought at Christmas time. I have to start thinking of a pattern for that one.

More 30's reproduction fabrics, this time the über awesome Judy Rothermel Aunt Grace fabrics. There was a shop from Ontario that had a quilt kit with all of them and a box full of fat quarters. We opted to pretty much one of every fat quarter they had, minus some I already have in my box of scrap.

Here are the fabulous books I found. The Cathedral Quilt book I found while browsing around. It has pretty much every variation possible with this construction method. Some really fantastic ideas in there. I was walking around after buying it and had instant street cred with the quilters. Many booth keepers and quilters stopped me to tell me how great a book it was.

The other book was recommended by a booth owner that Mr. Peabody chatted with for quite a while. They were talking about their preference for working by hand instead of by machine and how great it was to see how many people still did all their quilting by hand. He took over my Hexagon Quilt and his Tumbling blocks to show her. Apparently she has made 8 paper-pieced hexagon quilts and ONLY hand quilts all her projects. This book on hand quilting was recommended by her. I had a browse through and it's pretty mind-blowing!

She also recommended the Roxanne n°10 brights for quilting with, so I picked some up. Numerous quilters recommended this jelly sided Clover thimble to us so both Mr. Peabody and I bought one. And all of my seam rippers have managed to disappear on me so I bought a new one recommended as the Cadillac of seam rippers. I'm going to keep my eye on this one!

Overall a super fun quilty time and I can wait for next year. Maybe if we work at it, Mr. Peabody and I could have something exhibited in the next one.

The Little Shop of Wonders

2010-06-14T12:13:00.001-04:00

Hi Jill, here's the post you've been waiting for.

There exists in Montreal a fabulous hidden gem of a house stuffed to the gills with fabulous old things. I mean full. Basement and both floors. FULL of wonders. Mr. Peabody found out about it from a customer at Effiloché and has been pretty much once a week since discovering it. Every time going home with bags full of treasures which he has been very gracious to show off and share.

One Saturday afternoon just as I was having lunch, Mr. Peabody called to see if I wanted to accompany him on his weekly visit to the Little Shop so I could finally see his new found wonderland of stuff. And wonderland it truly is! Full of everything and anything you'd like. This is the place that set dressers and costume designers dream of. Vintage everything all in one place.

Jill pointed us to the basement suggesting I take a look at the rack of dresses down there. It was hard to make it past all the fabulous vintage fur coats and get to the dresses. Once there, I spent a good hour looking at each dress, picking out what caught my eye and moving on to the next. I made quite the stack and found some awesome things. Meanwhile Mr. Peabody looked through the boxes in the back, going through boxes of hats, kimonos, linens, what have you.

When Jill came to check on us, she looked at what I had picked out and suggested I come look at her vintage dress gems upstairs. Again a fantastic range of dresses, styles and eras in great condition. There were a couple that were impossible to say no to.

Mr. Peabody found a few boxes of vintage patterns which we both looked through. As you can see, we found some keepers. This shopping trip has jump started both my vintage dress and vintage sewing pattern collections with some really awesome pieces of both.

And then we were out of time. Well over time. But Jill was very kind to let us hang out some more. Letting Mr. Peabody show me upstairs. Then we hung out chatting about quilts, tops and fabulous old things. We didn't have the chance to take a break for tea. Maybe next time.

On the topic of comments

2010-06-14T10:55:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note on the subject of comments. I (of course) LOVE getting comments and do my best to reply to them. My preferred method is by email, but Blogger doesn't always let that happen. So if you prefer to keep you email private (something I completely understand), please note that I will be replying to your comment in the comments of the post on which your comment originated. It might be useful to check that little "Email follow-up comments to" box or check back.

Cool? Cool. Have a good day.

Fantasy Seamstress

2010-06-10T11:03:00.001-04:00

My best friend lives in LA, so we very rarely get to go shopping together. Instead of giving up on it entirely, we sometimes play fantasy wardrobe and send each other things through iChat or email. Recently my friend got engaged and was stressing out about finding a dress. In comes fantasy wardrobe to the rescue!

Disclaimer: I'm not a big super girly, wedding-planned-since-I-was-5 kind of girl. It's taken nearly 20 years for me to get back into wearing dresses voluntarily since my pink lace pinafore ridden childhood. My dad was a sucker for pink. And lace. And cute dresses. I still can't stand any kind of barrette or headband in my hair and regularly cut my own bangs.

But to my surprise, it's super fun to pick out wedding dresses—for someone else—online. Lisa's a good sport and didn't seem to mind that I kept emailing her all these dresses that I found for her, including potential bridesmaids dresses. I even spent some of my lunches at work on the hunt. Then I realised this might not be the best of ideas. I could be starting some interesting rumours as everyone can see my computer screen as they walk down the hallway. Either I'm getting married and am an insta-bridezilla, or that I've snapped and started planning a fantasy wedding to an imaginary groom to keep from feeling sad and alone. So I decided to keep this activity at home.

At some point, my fantasy-wedding-dress search turned into a fantasy-I-have-a-wedding-to-go-to dress search. I found some very lovely dresses in the not-so-lovely $300 range and I suddenly recalled the difficulty I had finding a dress for the last wedding I went to. It was expensive, took 5 hours of shopping to find and still needed a safety pin to keep from showing my bra. Then it occurred to me, I could MAKE a dress.

So Fantasy Wardrobe turned into Fantasy Seamstress. All the fun and excitement of Fantasy Wardrobe, yet with the added super fun benefit of being closer to becoming reality. Pair this up with my recent discovery of A Dress a Day and I've got a new mission: convert my wardrobe of jeans + t-shirts into an army dresses!

I scoured the McCalls/Butterick/Vogue Pattern sites for stuff I liked/would suit me and have started accumulating patterns. Right now I'm working on a Scissors dress. A scissor dress (in this context) is a shirt dress made from Momo Wonderland Snip Snip in blue. Daniel from Effiloché has been helping me fit the pattern and teaching me some proper garment making tricks. In exchange, I have been knitting a dress for a project of his.

A trip to an amazing vintage shop has jump started my vintage pattern collection. But that's a post all in it's own.

Waiting in the wings are some pretty fantastic patterns and fabrics.

On tour with the ladybug

2010-05-26T14:12:00.002-04:00

Where I work is pretty awesome. Throughout the year, they give us some bonus days off added onto various long weekends making it a super weekend (4 days) instead of the usual long weekend (3 days). This past weekend was one of these super weekends. And I used my Friday having a spin-in at a friend's. This meant taking the ladybug on tour.

I like to say on tour cause it evokes the whole musician-with-a-gig instead the usual fairy tale associations with spinning and spinning related activities. In fact, the whole musician/instrument thing is why I chose the ladybug in the first place. That fabulous red wheel reminds me of Meg's drum kit in this video:

I love the ladybug because it's like I'm playing an instrument instead of whiling away the hours and supporting myself in my medieval crone's shack, biding my time until the next maid comes along for her true love potion.

To further the whole spinning machine-as-instrument thing, I used the strap from my dad's old guitar to help me carry the ladybug to my gig. There was the necessary amount of maniacal laughter as I gathered my things and set off down avenue Mont-Royal. I'll have to get a picture of the wheel with strap. It's pretty kick-ass.

ETA:
Needless to say I got a certain amount of attention while walking down the street. Much more than if I was carrying a real instrument. In fact, just after crossing the street, this man came after me and asked me all about my wheel, if I taught lessons, where I got my wheel. Turns out he has a hobby farm with a couple of sheep (he showed me pictures, the baby sheep is super cute) and currently needle felts sheep with the resulting fibre. This is the longest conversation I've had in French for a while.

Once I got to the venue, I got myself set up, some coffee and fibre talk, then we got spinning. Well Amanda got spinning and I got drafting. Earlier in the week I had received my fibre club bump from Sweet Georgia. Almost immediately after seeing it, I knew I wanted to draft out large sections of colour from the complete roving to preserve what was there. Little did I know that it would take me all morning to do this. But draft I did. Into a HUGE mountain that was hugely tempting to the resident cats. Fortunately they are well trained to stay away from fibre when under supervision—and that the room had closing doors when the supervision was elsewhere.

We spun all day and into the evening. There was discussion of all things spinning, fibre and music. We watched Polyester, which is quite something even without participating in the complete odorama experience. By 10:30 I left with a couple of bobbins full of fibre and some new spinning thoughts.

Such as letting the singles sit for a day before plying. It's something I've read about before but usually my impatience gets the better of me and I want to have my yarn now! It's the Veruca in me. But for these two, I did bother to wait a day before plying and I did notice a difference. Much less fighting with little little tangles while chain plying. Two-plying from a cake was also less of a headache, though it still makes me slightly cranky that the outside wants to unravel so much more than the inside one, causing little yarn traffic jams. It really cramps my style!

I guess I'll make the conversion to waiting before plying. I think I'll empty the singles into cakes while waiting for them to set so I can still spin. I might even develop some spin today/ply yesterday's singles strategy so I can still have yarn now! to satisfy my inner Veruca.

Look squishy yarn:

The grape juice totally plumped up during the finishing.

The super cool thing is my plying is now fast enough that I've graduated to a faster whorl. How great is that?

I may have decided on a name for the ladybug. I think her name is Fiona. It's old worldly and fairytale-ish while still being quite feisty. Yes, some points off for being used for a recent animated character, but should I use it anyways? Or does someone have any other suggestions? There may be some handspun in it for you...

A sheep's worth of fibre

2010-05-25T13:15:00.003-04:00

Now that I've acquired a magical spinning machine, I've started to accumulate somewhat of a fibre stash. This is the sheep's worth of fibre that has recently made it's way into my abode. But don't fear that I shall soon be crushed by my growing pile of fluff! Three of these have already been spun up. Have a look-see:

2-ply
'Grape Juice' Space Romantic
100% Superwash wool
4 oz.

Chain-ply
'Cove' CosySpins
100% Falkland
4 oz.

Chain-ply
'Starfish' CosySpins
100% Falkland
4 oz.

Unicorn vomit makes pretty yarn

2010-05-19T13:29:00.001-04:00

During the weekly family phone call with my parents, my dad suggested that I spin and knit something for my mother for mother's day. My "official" gift was finally finishing some blueberry placemats for her but as I'm now a big time spinner, I was happy to rise to the challenge. While we were chatting about it, my eyes glanced over to the bags of fibre I had bought from Loop sometime ago. I was humming and hawing over whether my mom would like the pink/orange/sparkle combination or if I should stick with the safety of mint green/aqua/sparkles. I sent her an email and while waiting for her reply I started on the orange/pink (just in case). Since I'm loving the spinning right now, having to spin more is not really a bad thing.

So I took out the spontaneous spinning cloud in Tea Rose and got to work. The "cloud" is a nebulous as working with cotton candy (I presume). I kind of separated the chunks, or took the already separate chunks and carefully drafted them into more of a roving preparation. Once I got to the larger portions, I split them roughly into largish strips before drafting them into roving. Similar to how I dealt with spinning a batt.

While working with the fibre I decided this is exactly what unicorn vomit would be like: super soft, luxury fibre with sparkles. Everyone knows that unicorns poop rainbows and marshmallows, but few know of their vomit. Unicorns eat nightmares, bad days (hair included), insecurities and mean people. Hence they need to release extra hair via vomit in a cat hairball/owl pellet sort of way.

I prepared a bit of fibre, spun it up and then prepared some more. I prefer to alternate rather than prepare all the fibre and then spin it all up. I like having a break from each of the activities but still advancing things.

I was originally thinking of 2-plying this bad boy. Spinning the singles, I noticed there were pretty large sections of fairly distinct colour changes which would be very difficult to control in the fibre prep (they're barely perceptible in piles of pure unicorn vomit). So I did a plying test. I worked up a bit of 2-ply and knit a swatch.

Though the feel of the yarn was right, the colours were too muddy indistinct and truly vomitous.

I thought maybe knitting with the singles could work but really there's just too much twist. It could be a thing, but not what I was aiming for.

So the answer was chain-ply. I was hoping to get a finer yarn out of this fibre, something much more laceweightish but I think it's near worsted weight. I really have to work on being able to control that better. And I should start measuring WPIs and all that. But I think the yarn turned out quite nicely and I think there's a decent amount of yardage to make a scarf of some sort for my mom. I was originally thinking the Morning Surf Scarf but now I'm wondering if this would make a nice Queen Anne's Lace Scarf. I have to knit some swatches before settling on a pattern.

Chain-ply
'Tea Rose' Loop
Alpaca, merino, llama, faux cashmere, nylon, ecospun, silk, bamboo, banana silk, and angelina
4 oz.

Needless to say my mom will love and brag to everyone she comes in contact with regardless that the yarn isn't exactly what I planned.

Falkland Fibre Club - April

2010-05-17T14:34:00.001-04:00

This lovely fibre arrived on my doorstep last week and I was sure I'd have it all spun and yarn finished by the very next day (spinning machines are super fast, I'm so glad I moved ahead to the middle ages with my spinning technology), but alas, I got partway through dividing up and drafting and it stayed like that aaaaall week. Taunting me in little wispy drafted piles.

But on the weekend I managed to get some time to spin it up! And I luuuuuuuuuuuve it. It's SUPER soft and pretty and awesome. I did my usual split it in half, then divide into reasonable lengths and keep half of each length for each batch of spinning. The fibre was pretty dense in the braid so I did actually pre-draft before spinning.

I loved spinning this fibre so much and the resulting yarn that I'm glad I impulsively bought two more braids of a some of her other colourways in the Falkland. Yes it's dangerous to have fibre people in my google reader list, but I'm glad that I do!

Chain-ply
'Croci' CosySpins
100% Falkland
4 oz.

Oh and a shout-out to Xime in Uruguay! She's the first comment I've had from South America. Thanks for the compliments on my yarn, I really appreciate it. I don't sell my handspun as of yet. I still consider myself as a beginning spinner, especially since I just got wheel last month, but I'm very flattered. Maybe I'll sell some when I find myself buried in piles and piles of yarn. We'll see.

Field Trip to the Church Bazar

2010-05-14T10:16:00.001-04:00

We had a very special meeting of les courtepointistes last week. We went on a field trip to a local church bazaar. Man did we have a fun time! Needless to say we found many many awesome things and somehow managed to close it out.

Here's what we found:

Awesome linens including some beautiful hand embroidered pillow cases, fantastic wool baby blanket, and an old top sheet that will become the backing for my hex-a-long quilt.

We also happened upon the glassware table. Let me tell you I have a weakness for vintage everyday use glassware. When I first saw the green mugs I quickly bought them. Then Mr. Peabody showed me the fantastic white mixing bowls and while the bazaar lady was wrapping those up, we spotted the awesome white mug and fantastic little dessert cups. I already have a few sets of cute small dessert friendly bowls, but like mugs, a person really can't have too many right?

Mr. Peabody has been going to church bazaars for a while and picking through all the men's shirts as a fabric source for quilts. Though he already has quite the stack, he's always on the hunt for more awesome finds. He's become quite strict in his search and will only accept 100% cotton shirts from now on. So those two in the bottom left are the start of my men's shirt stash. They were too pretty to be rejected for being poly-cotton blends. That green one might make it's way into the hex-a-long quilt too.

Among the stuff we bought were some fantastic labels. So pretty. I love vintage labels! Well I love a well designed label, most happen to be on vintage items where they weren't trying to cram 7 languages and too much information into the tiniest label possible.

Among other things we found were silk scarves, crochet cotton, a dollar's worth of saints and an apron 3-pack. I likely won't wear any of the scarves. Not that they're not super pretty (cause they are) but I'm really not an accessory person. I very very rarely even change my earrings. The scarves were just too pretty to be sitting in a box in the church basement and it is kind of an extension of my vintage handkerchief collection isn't it?

Silk Scarf Tip: You can tell that you've chosen the correct scarves when the elderly ladies ringing you up start oooohing and aaaahing over what you've found.

Bookbinding with Molly

2010-05-13T15:21:00.000-04:00

Um. This post has been living in draft mode for about a month without me being satisfied with the writing.

Here's the jist. Mr. Peabody teaches knitting to Molly. Molly used to work for a book binder. In exchange for super delicious Tunisian stew (which Mr. Peabody made), she taught us how to bind books.

These are the different books/bindings she showed us.

It was pretty awesome to learn. I've wanted to since University but unfortunately my University didn't offer their Bookarts course in the years I was there (there was renovations and stuff). I'm sure I'll be making more books some time in the future.

This old quilt: Help! Nicotine Stains!!!

2010-05-12T11:43:00.000-04:00

I got this question from Ali P in the comments of the first installment of This Old Quilt:

I am in need of advice from you and Mr.Peabody: I have been laundering 2 of my grandmother's quilts. One is looking mighty fine and does not smell like cigarette anymore (my mom and Dad are big smokers). The other is terribly stained by nicotine. I have tried washing soda soaks, long sessions in the front loading washer, laundry bar soap applied to the stains and then soaking again, and today's stinky and futile treatment with Lestoil. Next attempts will be with peroxide applied to the stains.

HELP!! Do you guys know of a way to get out nicotine stains???

Well that's quite the pickle. I personally don't have huge stain removing experience, especially with nicotine being a non-smoker. Consulting with Mr. Peabody we came up with suggesting visiting a dry cleaner with the quilt in question, or leave the stains as they are. I wouldn't want to use harsh bleaches or peroxides on a quilt as it will deteriorate the fabrics and damage the long term life of your quilt.

A little google-fu has turned up this ehow suggestion:

Thing you'll need
Sponge
Wet spot cleaning solution
White vinegar
Cotton pad or cloth
Laundry detergent
Rubbing alcohol
Castile soap
Making Dry and Wet Spot Cleaning Solutions
Make a dry spot cleaning solution to remove nicotine stains by mixing one part coconut oil and eight parts liquid dry-cleaning solution.
Mix one part glycerin, one part white dishwashing detergent and eight parts water to create a wet spot cleaning solution.
Store your dry and wet spot cleaning solutions in tightly capped bottles to prevent evaporation.
Removing the Stains
Remove nicotine stains from rayon, acrylic, nylon, polyester or spandex clothing by dampening the stained area with a sponge, applying gentle strokes beginning at the center of the stain and working outward. Apply a few drops of wet spot cleaner and a few drops of vinegar directly on top of the stain. Cover the stain with a cotton pad or cloth and allow the pad to set, picking up the stain. Keep the stain most until it disappears, then flush the area with water and wash as normal.
Clean nicotine stains on "dry-clean only" clothing by using a dry spot cleaning solution. Dampen the stained area with a sponge and dry spot cleaner, applying the same gentle outward motion. Allow the solution to set for five minutes. After five minutes, dab the area gently with a cotton pad or cloth, repeating until the stain is removed. Hang the clothing to dry thoroughly.
Combine 1 qt. of warm water and 1/2 tsp. of liquid laundry detergent to remove nicotine stains from cotton or linen clothing. Soak the clothing in the mixture for 15 minutes before ringing out the excess water. Sponge the stained area with rubbing alcohol until the stain is removed, and launder as normal.
Mix one part liquid castile soap and four parts warm water to remove nicotine stains from leather or suede. Stir the soap and water mixture briskly until it forms a heavy foam. Apply the foam only to a sponge, and gently rub the stained area, beginning at the center and working outward. When the stain has been lifted, hang the clothing to dry thoroughly.

I think with a lot of patience, these instructions could work without compromising the integrity of the quilt's fabric. Though the rubbing alcohol makes me a little wary, I think I'd use it with a very light touch as a last resort.

I hope that helps!

The ever-changing algae

2010-05-11T12:07:00.001-04:00

Bundled in with my fantastic spinning machine was this very lovely fibre from Spunky Eclectic (from whom I ordered my wheel). I was kind of afraid to spin it. Not because I really loved the colours. More because of the alpaca content. I've NEVER spun alpaca as I hear it's kind of slippery and tricky, not for beginners which is where I figure I am on the scale of spinstertude. I mean I did (sort of) spin some silk and I've spun some bamboo but that doesn't make me an expert by any means.

But after looking at it longingly a while, I decided that the 80% Correidale probably keeps the alpaca from being a tricky spin so I decided to just jump right in. Plus this is a colourway that Spunky Eclectic repeats so I could always buy more if "needed."

I split the length of roving in half, divided it up into manageable lengths and split those in half longways so that I could spin in 2 batches and have even colour changes in both halves. So I think each half of the total roving had 4 half strips. I then divided each of these half strips into eight (I think — I go more for nice smallish size of strip so I can draft + spin directly without too much fuss). As I divided up a half strip of roving, I interspersed it in between the previously divided pieces (ie. A B C D A B C D A B C D...), the idea being to end up with colours evenly distributed along the skein and not ending up with drastic colour changes like this. I even tried to keep the strips in a specific order to try to get the colours to match up once plied.

When I was starting to spin I was pretty sure I was going to chain-ply this. But partway through I decided it might make a nice 2 ply. So it was a good thing that I kept my half roving strips in order so I could spin both halves in the same order to get things to match up when plying. I'm a little more organised about these sorts of things now.

2-ply
'Algae' Spunky Eclectic
20% Alpaca 80% Corriedale
4 oz.

How has my fibre prep changed now that I've moved onto a wheel? Well I prepared all I needed to spin the 1-ply of singles (so half the total fibre), spun it up, then prepared the other half. I kind of find the fibre prep somewhat tedious, though of course it is necessary to achieve the yarn envisioned. I do what I need to get a decent yarn. However, I aim for fairly even and good colour distribution not factory perfection so I tend to take shortcuts in the fibre prep department.

Also I've only actually used 1 or 2 of my handspun yarns since starting to spin. I could learn more about how my yarns turn out by actually using them I'm sure. For me, I enjoy the making more than I'm concerned about getting a perfect-to-knit with yarn. I spin because I like spinning not because I want the perfect yarn to knit with.

I'm really happy with how the yarn turned out. There are lovely bits of the solid colours and these really gorgeous parts where the colours transition. It's delicious. But something kind of sad happened.

I guess the dye hadn't quite been set on the roving. And when finishing the yarn, the yarn over dyed itself in it's own juices and got a green overcast. It's still really nice, just not what I had originally spun. When I look at it, it's like I need to adjust the RGB balance on my eyes. I think I need to not look at it for a while so I forget what I think it's "supposed" to look like.

NB: I'm NOT dissing Spunky Eclectic or any hand-dyed product. I've dyed fibre/yarn myself and it is entirely possible for something not to completely set. I've spun other Spunky fibres and have had no such issue with them. And I'd gladly spin Spunky fibre again.

New Spinning Machine

2010-05-10T12:07:00.003-04:00

After waiting somewhat patiently (somewhat un-patiently), my new Ladybug finally made its way to my doorstep. Well really to Mr. Peabody's café door. And then to the post office. Then his apartment. And I went to pick it up on the day is snowed slush ALL day. I walked so much in the slush that my sneakers were soaked, hung out while Sylvain closed the café and accompanied him home only to find the wheel NOT THERE! Mr. Peabody phoned me while I was standing in the doorway to ask me about the surprise in my kitchen...he had walked the box over to my apartment for me. Super nice eh? Only he had no idea that I had been emailing Sylvain ALL DAY to arrange to pick it up. Hilarity. This is the stuff of comedy.

So I walked home in even MORE slush to find a ladybug sized box in my kitchen. I (of course) spent the rest of the evening unpacking, assembling and spinning on my BRAND! NEW! SPINNING! MACHINE!!!!

This is my very first ~~crappy~~ slub-fabulous handspun on the wheel. There was lots of swearing for the first hour or so until I finally got the hang of what the hell was going on. In the weeks of waiting for it to arrive, I did study up on YouTube various "learn to spin on a wheel" introductions so I kind of knew what I should be doing. Really it just takes some fibre you don't care too much about, some patience, your sense of humour and maybe some alcohol to get started properly. After spinning singles for a while, I decided to try plying. I'm not sure why exactly I chose to chain-ply, but that was a whole other hilarious-heart-breaking-swearing experience. But I chalk this up to first handspun experience. And there are people that would pay good money for yarn like this (even if I wouldn't).

For my next handspun, I took the rest of the bump of organic wool I had and went for an epic spin. I think the whole bump might be a whole pound (minus what I spun first). I divided it in two. Spun two bobbins worth of singles and plied them together. I think they were pretty evenly unevenly spun. That is to say that when plying them together, there was a small portion left on one of the bobbins which I Andean plied to itself.

Thanks to my years of spinning on a drop-spindle, my learning curve on the wheel was not heartbreaking at all as you can see from the change from skein n°1 to skein n°2. I'm sure a person could start spinning straight on a wheel. But there's A LOT going on in a short period of time. At least with the drop spindle it's possible to make awesome yarns while keeping things real slow — good for the old self-confidence.

I've signed-up to the Spin-Off website, subscribed and have at least 1 sheep's worth of fibre making it's way to my doorstep.

Oh and here's where the ladybug is on my fantastic new spinning machine.

Still hexing

2010-05-04T14:46:00.001-04:00

I very patiently awaited the next step in the quilt-a-long all week. Turns out it was instructions to make the blocks I was already making. So I took the opportunity to refine my steps and make another set of 5 fabric combinations.

Looking at them all on my kitchen floor made me realise that there wasn't enough green and blue combinations to make this a green/blue quilt.

I remedied this by making another 5 fabric combinations featuring blue and green.

Looks like a pretty good start to the quilt doesn't it?

I like this width. I just need to fill it in the spaces and add to the length. I think I'm about halfway to having a quilt top.

Oh and I may have bought a bunch more blue/green candidates for this quilt this past weekend.

This old quilt

2010-04-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

Mr. Peabody found out about this amazing shop in Park Extension that sells all sorts of "soft goods". As in old fabrics, clothes, curtains, quilts, etc. He's been at least 3 times by now and over the past few weeks has been bringing over his wonderful show 'n' tell items for me to peruse. One such show 'n' tell had this amazing quilt in it. After much conversation about how wonderful it is, I told Mr. Peabody if he felt like he had too much fabric piling up over at his place, I would more than happily take this wonderful quilt off his hands. Apparently he was just as happy to have me do so.

The quilt itself is likely from the 1930's given the fabrics. There are a variety of blocks that are all pieced onto foundation fabrics and then joined together. I really get a sense that this was a scrap quilt, made out of whatever was available. The fading and wear suggests to me that this quilt was well loved and used. There's no batting, just top and backing fabric which is nicely intact but still is somewhat stained and has some holes.

The thread used for quilting has been pulled out or disintegrated over time. At some point hand ties were put in some places, I think to repair the damaged quilting. I suspect that the thread used for quilting was a type of nylon. Every so often I came across some fluffy quilting thread remnants that were very nylon looking. You can see here the leftover tracks of the quilting, diagonal from corner to corner of the blocks.

It looks like someone started the rather large task of repairing this quilt. There are a few spots where patches have been removed. Last week, while sick at home with Tonsilitis, I took of the backing fabric and tidied up the front/back of each block going square by square, trimming excess threads, removing handties, any residual quilting threads, and some of the more heavily damaged patches.

This was the one spot where the binding had been left. I carefully picked out the seams and saved the fabric. There are several patches in the quilt that use this same fabric. It's nice to know what was used and what it would have looked like in it's original state. I'm also keeping these fabrics as a reference for replacements. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to try and stay true to the original choices, or go with a new look. I suppose it depends if I like the fabric or not.

The edge of the quilt is all ragged. And from the appearance of the remnant binding, I'd say someone cut it off. It's really a shame. Now some of the nicer blocks that really have no other damage are left ragged at their edges. I think I'm going to extend the foundation fabrics to square out the edges. When I place the new binding, I think I'll make it wider to compensate for the raggedness of the quilt's edge.

Even the foundation fabrics vary from one block to another again making me think that the quilter used whatever she had at hand, even flour/sugar sacks. This block still has the printing on the back of it. How cool is that? Some of the foundation fabrics have held up better than others. Many of them will need to be replaced, while much of the front of the blocks are in decent shape.

I was left with this pile of threads when I was done going over the whole quilt. Those little strips of fabric are what's left of the binding, and some selvedge pieces of fabric left over from long gone fabric patches.

These are the most damaged blocks that I very carefully removed. Because I'm a big giant nerd, I've preserved them in page protectors and taped them into my quilting notebook. I've also put the selvedge and binding remnants into an envelope taped into my notebook.

I'm so excited about this quilt. With a little repair, new backing fabric and some binding and I'll have a beautiful finished quilt. I don't think I'll add any batting to the mix. I'm going to use it as my summer bedspread.

Replies to previous comments.

Ali P - I say dust away! You are more than welcome to join Mr. Peabody and me in our little quilting bee. We have many a quilt started between the two of us, but have yet to finish any of them.

Craftivore - Thanks so much. I'm having a lot of fun with all the fabric combinations in this quilt. I think it's my favourite part. The construction is actually pretty smart and there are yet to be any yucky seams. I think it blocks will be pieced together in strips and only once the whole top is finished will all the hexagons be complete (sounds a little Tolkein-esque non?).

Hex-atagious

2010-04-18T13:01:00.000-04:00

After seeing Maritza's version and reading all about the accompanying quilt-a-long, I began obsessing about the quilt all day at work on Friday wanting to have the time to figure out on paper how to make it work using my growing fat quarter collection.

I got home friday night and started cutting according to my initial calculations. It turns out my initial calculations were a tad off. But after making triangles that were too large, I played around with some paper and came up with new calculations and used this to make the rest of my triangles.

I had a ton of fun yesterday coming up with fabric combinations, sewing them into strips and cutting out triangles and piecing them together by machine. I could easily spent the entire day working on this quilt. But I decided to respect the quilt-a-long and stick to the schedule. So I limited myself to 5 sets of fabric combinations and sewed all their halves together.

I really can't wait for the next step. WANT IT NOW! In the meantime I'm working up the back of my former Februrary Lady sweater in it's new incarnation as an Oblique.

I'm still eagerly awaiting my ladybug. I think that the strength of the loonie is causing a backlog at the border. I joined Cosymakes' Falkland Fiber Club and the Funky Carolina Fiber Club and was also considering her scraps club, but we'll see how much fibre I work through. I dream of being in the Hello Yarn Fibre Club, but there's quite the waiting list.

Spinning up a storm

2010-04-14T17:09:00.000-04:00

I love a long weekend. It's nice if going out of town is possible but sometimes even nicer just to stay home. My super-fun good friday activity was spinning. I haven't spun for quite a while and really felt like picking up the spindle again. In one day I spun up and plied 6 oz. of yarn. That's definitely a record for me.

I started by finishing up the spinning of some Pandamint BFL leftover from my Pamplemousse en caoutchouc days. I spun and plied the first half of this bump last fall and even started knitting a beret with it. I wasn't loving how the hat was coming along so the motivation to finish spinning it quickly left. But since I have just the one spindle and I had a hankering to spin, this is where I got started.

The nice thing about going back to fibre already half spun is that I had already divided the roving into smaller strips and arranged them in an order to keep the colour changed balanced along the skein (as opposed to spinning one half, then the other and ending up with two related colourways. Plus my spindle was already half loaded with singles so I was finished this yarn in no time!

Next, I moved onto some roving I bought from A verb for keeping warm, starting with some very lovely purple named Glenda with Crocodile Tears as a chaser. Both of these were quite densely packed so needed quite a bit of teasing and drafting.

The colours are great, but I found my hands getting slightly green when spinning up the Crocodile Tears. And the purple bled a bit while finishing the yarn, making the Pandamint ever so slightly tinted. I was also kind of put off that these both were only 2 oz. but I understand why. Natural dyes take alot more dye than synthetic reactive dyes, raising the price per unit of fibre and one way to keep prices more reasonable is having smaller bumps.

I kind of wish that I had chain plied Glenda rather than making it a 2 ply. The lighter parts of the roving kind of disappeared into a medium purple yarn.

But I was pretty sold on the idea of making a 2-ply of the Crocodile Tears until I saw how the singles were spinning up.

So last minute chang-o to a chain plied yarn.

I'm very happy with how it turned out. Subtle colour changes intact.

So one day. 3 skeins of yarn. 6 oz. of entertainment.

Oh and my ladybug is making her way as we speak. In celebration of making the leap to a wheel, I decided to spin up all the fibre I have. Don't worry though. I've signed up for a couple of fibre clubs to go with it.

Thursday nights are for quilting

2010-03-18T11:06:00.000-04:00

Another week, another evening of quilting. Les courtepointistes have been pretty reliable with quilting on Thursday evenings. Last week was Mr. Peabody's turn to come to my place.

Mr. Peabody has been working on an English Paper Pieced tumbling blocks quilt for quite some time now, almost a year I think. It's very interesting how he's chosen to divide up his process for this quilt. Since he started it with scraps and leftovers, he's been in the habit to spend some time putting new scraps onto the piecing papers and loading them into his travel case for piecing into blocks later, slowly accumulating finished blocks.

As his collection of fabrics has grown, this process has understandably expanded in scope. He's spent a few weeks cutting, and prepping lozenges from all the fabric he's accumulated in the past few months. Now he has a cardboard box filled with a spectrum of lozenges to work with. Last Thursday he brought the box out to play.

He spent about a half an hour un-packing his box of fabric scraps prepped on papers and organising them by colour (all over my coffee table and onto the floor).

Grouping his lights on my floor.

Then he spent the rest of the evening making selections, while I finished working on my rainbow dodecahedron. Yes, it's bad form to be knitting on quilt night, but sometimes I quilt on knitting night so it all works out. In this case it worked out pretty good for me to be knitting something pretty simple while he was selecting his fabric combinations. Every few minutes he'd ask me what I thought of such 'n' such fabrics together. I'd have a resounding "oh yeah!" in reply, or we'd find another lozenge to perfect the quilting illusion (insert waggling fingers here) for the block. By the end of the evening he I think 6 pins worth of selections made. Should take him a while to finish them all off.

By Sunday's family dinner, he already had 5 blocks finished.
\
Pretty nice huh?

One of these days he'll get around to start putting the blocks together. Don't worry, I'll take some pictures when that happens.

Can't have enough dodecahedrons

2010-03-17T15:35:00.000-04:00

After finishing my new favourite socks, I found myself with two partial balls of rainbow Regia sock yarn in addition to the extra ball I had originally bought. Clearly that meant that I had to make another dodecahedron. Especially since I wanted to see if there was enough yarn in each stripe for one point. Turns out there is! With maybe a half a metre left over before the next colour change.

As you may have guessed, I really like this pattern. Though there's no crazy folding, I find it's the closest equivalent to origami in knitting. Precise stitch numbers, decreases and division of stitches gives you a perfect geometric shape—very origami-ey to me.

I wasn't too sure about this dodecahedron as I was working on it's deflated self. The idea of knitting a rainbow child's toy seemed brilliant to me, but really in practise it seemed like I was recreating any generic toy available at nameless-giant toy store. It wasn't until it was stuffed and finished that the magic really happened.

Pattern: Celestine
by Norah Gaughan
Materials: Regia Nation Color 5399
Start Date: March 6, 2010
End Date: March 11, 2010

Instead of working as stated in the pattern for the last point (stuffing the toy, picking up stitches along all sides of previous points and knitting the last point), I cast on 11 provisionally, picked up stitches along the 4 other sides of the previous points and knit it un-stuffed. Trying to knit something already stuffed was no fun last time, so I thought I'd try something else.

This worked out pretty well. One side gives a decent enough gap to stuff, grafting's not such a big deal as it's not such a big seam and it's kind of like when sewing a stuffed toy where you leave a little gap to stuff through and stitch it closed after. I dare you to try and find the grafted seam. Actually I don't even remember where it is any more so if you think you've found it, I couldn't tell you if you were right or not.

The biggest challenge working with a rainbow of colours was making sure I didn't end up with two points of the same colour next to each other. Originally I worked in the usual rainbow order: red, orange, yellow, etc. But when I got to the 3rd level of points, I ran into trouble. I ended up knitting and ripping 3 or 4 points before finally figuring out on paper what colour should go where. And at this point I switch to reverse rainbow sequence (purple, blue, green, etc) to get things to work out properly. This yarn has 7 colours in its rainbow, so there's only one red and one purple point. It's still sufficiently rainbow-ey for my tastes.

I'm not sure exactly how this worked out, but somehow the points on this dodecahedron are quite noticeably pointier than the first one. It could be that my stuffing skills were better this time around. I really spent time stuffing each point individually before stuffing the center of it. Or it could just be a gauge thing. The Regia is quite a bit finer than the Opal I used before.

Have I mentioned yet that I have a bobbi bear in mind for my next toy project? Who wouldn't want (to make) a 2 foot teddy bear? I think it would be fun in some Cascade Eco Wool...

Hooping it up

2010-03-16T12:31:00.001-04:00

This past weekend, I got together with some friends and had an embroidery themed crafterday. It's the earliest I've been up on a Saturday in many many months. And I may have over packed. Especially as we trekked out to West Montreal. I went a bit nuts buying veggies at the grocery store. But those pre-cut trays were just too sad!

So after some high test tea, delicious pastries, cheeses and digging into the mountain of veggies, we started in on the embroidery. I've managed to accumulate quite a bit of embroidery materials without having done any since customising my back pack free hand in grade 8. In addition to the many books and patterns, I somehow have a pretty decent stash of embroidery floss and fabrics for embroidering.

I ended up picking a pattern from my Aunt Martha's Hot Iron Transfers, The Mystic Mermaid 3984. Aunt Martha still print some of their designs from the 40's/50's/60's and I just LOVE these mermaids. For some reason I'm a big mermaid fan.

The fabric I have is mostly freebies, leftovers and charity shop finds. For this piece, I picked some leftover muslin from when I finally hemmed my Ikea curtains. It's fairly open weave so easy to stitch I guess.

Since I've never officially embroidered anything (other than some bad cross stitch when I was a kid that never got finished), I was a bit intimidated with where to start. I opted to make some small decisions with stitch choice and colour on some of the smaller details so there wouldn't have to be too much backing up and re-stitching. I started with the bubbles.

Moved to the fishes and mermaid scales. This is where I decided to do some statin stitch practice on the fins.

Then I decided to try a big part: the hair. For most of the embroidery, I used 2 plies of floss, but I wanted a bold outline of the hair, so went with 3 plies in a stem stitch. I did the big outline first, carefully. Then did the detail lines with 1 ply also in stem stitch. I'm really very proud of how it turned out.

Another fun detail was the mermaid's tail. I found this fishbone stitch in my stitch bible and gave it a try. Some how my stitches were more horizontal than they should have been. And the transfer was too light in this section so I kind of made up the outline on the fly so it's not as nice as I'd like. But I'm happy with the effect.

The very last part that I worked on were these fish hooks. They were fun. Because of the scale, I worked them all with 1 ply of floss with various stitches. Though I think that fuschia one is a bit wild for the rest of the calm colours in the rest of it.

This project has made me all embroidery crazy. I've already got a bunch more planned. Even some cross stitch. But what should I do with all those small leftover pieces of floss? It seems such a waste just to toss a perfectly good length of it. I'm conceiving of some kind of ziploc system or something. Now I wish I saved all those little jewelry/spare button/teeny ziplocs a person gets in life. I might have some kicking around somewhere.

Mr. Peabody on the radio again.

2010-03-12T19:50:00.000-05:00

So I went to the radio-canada headquarters, and was interviewed once again about knitting. follow the link here, and scroll forward to about 17 minutes into the segment for the beginning...

for your listening pleasure

- Mr. Peabody

Perfect socks

2010-03-08T12:11:00.000-05:00

I rashly cast on a pair of socks last week. It couldn't be avoided. As soon as I saw this incarnation (Ravelry link), I just had to dig out my Regia Nation Color and cast on right away. As the pattern is written as toe-up, I decided to make them Magic Loop too.

The toes look a little strange once started. My knitting curled as I was working on the toes reminding me of that iconic image of the Wicked Witch of the East from the Wizard of Oz. The very beginning part is really just to fit your big toe (purple stripe) and then as you start up the bias increases, you make the part that will fit the rest of your toes (teal stripe). And there's really a right sock and left sock simply from this bias shaping. Though the instructions are the same for both socks until you get to the beginning of the heel instructions.

These socks never got boring. It might seem like the increase on one side and decrease on the other would become second nature, there's so much more to do in this pattern to make them into socks. Increases to make the gussets leading up to the heel. All kinds of extra increases to make the fabric for the heel which is then grafted to itself. Then once you've grafted, you work decreases to get back to your original stitch number. Work straight for a bit (if you want longer socks) and then work short rows to straighten things out before you start up on the ribbing. Never a dull moment.

Pattern: Skew
by Lana Holden
Materials: Regia Nation Color 5399
Modifications: Magic loop baby.
Start Date: March 1, 2010
End Date: March 6, 2010

Oh and can I rave a bit about the resulting socks? They are awesome! If the fit works out well like mine did, then you might find you have the perfect pair of socks. Yes, I'll repeat that. Perfect pair of socks. I do find that putting them on is on the tricky and snug side, but once they're on, they're awesome. Because of the strange slanted toe, there's no seam to restrict foot movement. And the stretch of the fabric compliments the stretch of the toes — sideways. It's all the beauty of bare feet, but like warm.

The bias of the fabric on the foot and leg and close fit of the sock keep these socks from having the usual handknit sock slouch that I usually get. You know what I mean. Socks are normally tugged up nicely for photos, but when worn, especially as you walk, they start to slouch and look sloppy. Lastly these are one of the few pairs of handknit socks that I have that will actually fit into my favourite sneakers. Needless to say, I've been wearing these socks for 3 days straight. I think I should cast on another pair right away. I think I've found my go to sock pattern.

Happy Birthday Scraps

2010-03-06T11:48:00.000-05:00

Yes another birthday related post. Last one for like a whole year. I'm pretty sure about that.

My birthday present from Mr. Peabody was this awesome 5lb. box of scraps bought on eBay. Apparently he's really bad about keeping secrets and told me all about it minutes after he won the auction during a family dinner evening. For the record, I would never have know anything about it had he not flat out told me about it. I just thought his constant checking of his computer was just plain old technoholic behaviour.

What made this box of scraps absolutely the perfect gift is that it's scraps of 1930's reproduction fabrics including a bunch of awesome Aunt Grace fabrics. I have been known to randomly blurt out in a loud tone "Aunt Grace!" during various online fabric perusing Les courtepointistes evenings. "AUNT GRACE!"

When the box finally made it's way to Montreal, I spent a good 2-3 hours taking out each individual scrap and sorting it according to colour. This categorising of fabric appealed to Mr. Peabody's natural tendencies so he quickly took charge of defining the individual colour categories. It was good times.

This is how the box has sat on a bookshelf in my apartment since. Sorted and waiting. Until this past weekend when I finally got around to washing the fabric.

I was advised not to use my washing machine because of the scrappy nature of the scraps and wanting to preserve the fabric as much as possible. Don't want to lose fabric to the usual edge unravelling that happens in the spin cycle. So into the wash tub they went.

I split the box into 2 batches and transferred the wet fabric to drain in my colander before they met with the iron. After spending several hours ironing and trimming off the ravelings, Mr. Peabody came by and was concerned with me leaving the fabric in big wet piles as I made my way through the trimming and ironing.

His first objection was how wet my fabric was while I was ironing it. Pshwa. There was no scalding of fabric! But whateves. Next he told me that my fabric would mould by the time I got to ironing all of it. So he went to work hanging up the scraps on my laundry rack. Quickly the rack filled up and we moved onto filling up the backs of my kitchen chairs with the rest. Just hanging up fabric took us nearly an hour to hang it all up!

Next I'll be re-sorting, re-folding and re-packing my box of scraps. Then it will be time to start imagining future projects. Postage stamp charm quilts. String pieced quilts. Any suggestions?

Green stripey dodecahedron ball

2010-03-05T09:19:00.000-05:00

Sparked by my recent rediscovery of how awesome origami is and making awesome bunny toys, I couldn't resist casting on to make my very own dodecahedron star ball.

Before I knew it I was ready to stuff the star and add the last point.

My only modification to this pattern was to start with a crocheted provisional cast on instead of the usual long tail. This isn't a huge change, but since stitches are picked off each previous point when starting the next one, it just makes sense. Why not use a provisional cast on? There were some resulting holes at the edge of the picked up stitches but the yarn ends from the cast on were nearby and put to service when they were worked in.

Pattern: Celestine
by Norah Gaughan
Materials: Opal Rainforest 6-ply
Start Date: February 21, 2010
End Date: February 26, 2010

I found knitting the last point was the least fun. Once the bulk of the star had been stuffed and the stitches were picked, it became quite difficult to manoeuvre and knit. I'm quite sure that the knitting became distorted as I was working on the point. Especially when I was knitting around the stuffin. When making this again, I'm going to do the crazy, more work thing, knit the last point separately and graft it to the rest of the stuffed star, stuffing the point as I finish the seam of the last side. Maybe it's a bit overkill, but I swear the last point is a bigger than the rest.

I see more of these knitted shapes in my future. The next one will likely be out of my rainbow striping regia nation color. Hopefully it would work out that each point is one color. That would be awesome.

Miffy for me

2010-03-04T10:32:00.001-05:00

So I while I was able to part with the first bunny I knit, it was only possible because I immediately cast on another one for myself. Here she is an (almost) exact replica of bunny n°1.

Pattern: Well-Dressed Bunny
by Barbara Prime
Materials: Tongue River Sock Yarn in sheep's brown
Briggs & Little Sport in light green
Modifications: Worked with smaller yarn. Knit dress in the round with fewer stitches in the body and bib of the dress.
Start Date: February 8, 2010
End Date: February 27, 2010

When knitting this bunny, I used a crocheted provisional cast on for each piece. Since the pieces are seamed up and the pattern has you make a shoulder seam of the cast on, I decided provisional would be the way to go. Then I could graft instead of seam, reducing some bulk. For the tops of the feet, I used scrap yarn instead of casting off. Later I grafted these stitches to each other for a nice finish to the top of the foot. Since this is the visible part of the foot I think it's worth the extra effort.

In the end when seaming up, I opted to string the yarn through all the held stitches twice and pull them snug together and worked the ends in. It worked pretty nicely on most of the pieces. When I get to bunny n°3, I think I'll repeat this on all pieces except for the feet. I think grafting is the better call for both the top and bottom of the feet.

I used the same modifications for the dress as I did for bunny n°1. Casting on 54 sts and working in the round for the specified number of rows. Then working K2tog, K2, SSK as the decrease round before the garter waistband. The bib was worked with 4 less stitches.

The embroidered X mouth is inspired by the Miffy books that I had as a kid. If you want an actual Miffy pattern, they do exist. I might have to make a proper Miffy for myself.

The eyes and mouth on this bunny didn't turn out quite as great as on bunny n°1. Well I'm actually pretty happy with the eyes. They're almost a proper satin stitch. The mouth on the other hand. It's crooked. The gray thread I chose makes the X seem slightly more sinister and I'm not entirely sure about the stitch I ended up using (kind of a ghetto improvised back stitch).

Oh and the head's a bit more cockeyed and floppier too. Maybe that's why Mr. Peabody suggested that this bunny's name should be Flopsy. I'm not so sure though. I already had a fish called Flopsy, part of a Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail school of tetras. Any suggestions?

Thar she grows!

2010-03-03T12:08:00.000-05:00

The Hawaiian Appliqué quilt continues to grow one block at a time. Here's the latest blocks done by me and Mr. Peabody:

by Mr. Peabody

Ti leaf Hawaiian Appliqué Pillow Block by Mary's Treasures
Start Date: December 30, 2009
End Date: February 12, 2010 approximately

I work on my blocks a bit here and there. I think if I worked on nothing else, I could finish appliquéing a block in about a week of evenings. But the current pace of a block every few weeks suits me just fine at the moment. I feel no pressure for a finished quilt just yet.

White Ginger Block by Pokilani
Start Date: January 3, 2010
End Date: Mid February 2010

It's a nice background project. A little bit of appliqué here and there finishes each block. Then it's time to prepare another appliqué snowflake and get going again. Before I know it, all the blocks will be done and it will be time to quilt the sucker. I have all that echo quilting to look forward to. I think it's going to be a blast. But for the moment, I'm enjoying the rather mindless needle-turn appliqué. Doing it by hand gives a much nicer result than by machine, no question.

Origami obsession rekindled

2010-03-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

I blame it all on this post from Design*sponge. If I didn't recently subscribe to it, my origami obsession would have stayed dormant for who knows how long. But it's been rekindled as it were. And I spent a weekend building many a icosahedron of various sizes.

Let's get back to the inspiration. I am in absolute awe of what Fracisca Prieto has done with somewhat simple modular origami forms. If you are at all interested, please go take a look in the graphic art section with particular attention to her Shakespeare, Between folds/envelopes, The Antibook and the anti-poster projects. I totally dig the obsessive collecting of envelopes to create a larger composition. I'm all over the taking an old found book and reworking it. But what really sparked my interest to start off was her antibook/antiposter projects. I just HAD to make me one of those crazy icosahedrons.

After searching You Tube during lunch at work I found this tutorial.

Once I got home from work, I busted out my Muji origami papers and got to work. The Muji squares are about 6 in. so the the pieces for making each of the interlocking units are 3 x 6 in. This makes an icosahedron that measures about 5.5 in. across.

I was pretty good at getting one of each colour on every side. There's one side that has double red and another that has double green. I figure it's not too bad for a first time making this shape.

But of course I wasn't satisfied with just having one icosahedron. I HAD to make another one. A bigger one! The biggest size paper I have is 11 x 17 in. so I took 11 in. sqaures, divided them in half and went to work. Here's the resulting ginorma-icosahedron. It measures about 10.25 in. across.

You're probably wondering about the colouring. Well Francisca's antibook and antiposter add printing to the blanks to make this shape. So I started to analyse the shape itself. There's numbers on each facet (3 facets make up each face). There's one facet of each colour on every face. As you can see I started to match up the facets of the same colour for each point created and alternated the neighboring points, but this doesn't quite work out with 3 colours. One colour for the central point, and two alternating colours doesn't work out because there's 5 neighboring points. I might redo this model with more colours. Like one colour per point.

You can also see my hairy marks at the intersection of facets marking the number of sides. All this analysis is so I can figure out how the pieces relate to each other. Necessary information if like Francisca, I want to map some artwork onto this shape.

I also have visions of making a room sized version that people can go inside and maybe even make it move around like a giant hamster ball. Wouldn't that be rad?

Mr. Peabody on the Radio

2010-03-02T12:30:00.002-05:00

On the weekend Radio-Canada was at Effiloché talking about the 'new' knitting craze. Mr. Peabody was quoted. You can listen to it here. Please note that Radio Canada is the French CBC radio. You can hear Mr. Peabody speaking French on French radio with French people. It's all official and everything.

Good job sir!

The Year of the Elephant

2010-02-22T21:55:00.000-05:00

Another year, another birthday. This year I went out for a family dinner at an Indian place up on St-Laurent. It was super filling and super yummy. I ate a whole bunch of naan due to it's high deliciousness content. After dinner we hung out at my apartment and had a DQ ice cream cake—a tradition in my family. I haven't had an ice cream cake for many (too many) years so was super happy that they found one. So so good. And check out the awesome My Little Pony on top (yes I'm really a 5 year old girl inside stuck in the 80s).

One of my Christmas presents from my parents was an elephant cream and sugar set. So for my birthday they bought me the matching tea pot. Here's the herd in it's natural habitat. They already look super comfortable don't they? What I really love about this tea set, besides the elephants, is that piece is a slightly different kind of elephant. The tea pot is clearly very Babar, the creamer is all psychedelic Dumbo elephant and the sugar is, well like a real elephant.

Continuing the theme of fabric gifts from Christmas, I got a lovely array of fat quarters from Mr. Peabody and Ginette featuring the new fabrics they've got in recently. I super love all of them. The graphic designer in me especially loves the grid and dashed lined fabrics. I see some embroidery in my future.

And finally a copy of Piecework. Their historical knitting issue as you can see from the cover. I'm super stoked about it. My favourite Interweave articles are the historical knitting ones. They always focus on the coolest stuff.

The best part about it being my birthday is I get to host the leftover cake. I've been having a slice here and there since last week. Yum.