I have been on a roll with the stash scarves, and have completed #4 and #5.
Scarf #4 is a favorite, being a remarkable shade of bright orange. I also used a skein of yarn that was part of a gift bag at a fiber conference, in a colorway called “Spring Break.” This was an appropriate name since the skein seemed a cautionary tale about the evils of dyeing while drunk. The yarn incorporated bright orange, black, blue, and who knows what other oddments, and it has always fascinated and horrified me. By using it sporadically throughout a scarf with a very strong base color, the clashing, chaotic hues have been tamed, or at least given equally exuberant company:
After all that relentlessly giddy color, I needed a return to staid middle class respectability, so I knit a scarf with various shades of brown. This combination reminds me of dignified tweed coat from another time:
After five of these scarves, I still have not made an appreciable dent in the stash. I have swatched scarves #6, #7, and #8, and as long as these continue to amuse me, there will be more to come.
Twisted fringe is probably not something that most knitters are familiar with making. It is much more common for weavers, who regularly end up with scarves sprouting a forest of loose threads from either end. And while I haven’t encountered a knitting pattern for any item other than the scarves I have been obsessively knitting that might require such a thing, nevertheless, I thought I would introduce you to a handy tool – the cord twister.
A cord twister is a smallish battery powered device that twists threads into tidy little units. While it is probably most commonly used for twisting fringe, it can also make twisted cords to be used as drawstrings or what have you. Since I was planning to make a lot of these scarves, I went ahead and ordered a cord twister manufactured for the fabled Berkeley shop, Lacis. While the Lacis website retails this item at $48, I ordered mine from Amazon and it cost around $30. The cord twister looks like a cross between a manly power drill and a vibrator for aliens. But maybe that’s just me. Here is my cord twister:
First off, it’s a good idea to trim the threads of your soon-to-be-fringe to a length somewhat longer than you want your finished fringe, but short enough to be manageable. I trimmed my yarn to a 6 inch length for an intended 3 inch finished fringe. I think it’s a good idea to mete out the yarn into bundles before you start so you don’t end up with a tiny cord or a gigantic one once you arrive at the end of the line, and bundling also keeps the threads not in use from becoming unruly. Thus, I divided the yarn into bundles with a slip knot.
Now it’s time to use this strange-looking gadget. Press on the bottom of one of the prongs to open up the clamp, and insert half of the bundle.
Repeat the same process with the other half of the bundle on an adjacent prong. Once the yarn ends are secured, push up on the power button, and each of those individual units of thread will twist round themselves.
When each half is a bit over-twisted, push the power button down, and the entire head of the device spins, twisting the two halves together:
Again, it’s a good idea to overtwist the fringe a bit, since once released from the clamps it will loosen up. Here is what you end up with:
Tie a knot in the bottom of the fringe, measuring to make sure the length stays consistent:
Perform the same procedure for each of the bundles, trim the fringe one final time, and voila. You have a fringed scarf:
Of course, you could twist fringe or cords by hand, but a fringe twister is so much faster and gives more consistent results. This is one tool I’m happy to have in my arsenal.
I went stash diving a couple of weeks ago, looking for a specific yarn with which to knit a long-admired pattern. Perhaps this was a mistake.
I encountered an impressive store of “just-one-skein” oddments – yarns I had coveted and justified purchasing because it was “just one skein” and that doesn’t take much space to store, right? This is a compelling argument, until you take all of those single skeins and pile them in the middle of your living room, as I did:
Ahem.
(Note: If your reaction to the above photo was “that’s not so bad,” or “you call THAT a stash?” your own day of reckoning may shortly be at hand. Suffice it to say that the photo actually minimizes the volume of the large pile o’ wool on my living room floor.)
The embarrassment of riches is made even worse if you are a handspinner (as I am) and you attend fiber workshops (as I do). Then, you end up with samples from spinning classes and single skeins given in goodie bags, and the whole thing starts to look overwhelming and threaten to take over every spare nook and cranny in your house (as mine has).
I did, in fact, find the sock yarn I was looking for, and I knit Jane Cochran’s “Hedgerow Socks” with the mystery skein while I pondered my excesses:
Relief for the problem of Too Much Yarn came in the form of a simple scrap scarf pattern. This is a scarf knit lengthwise in linen stitch, allowing for endlessly enthralling combinations of colors and textures. For this pattern, I have found it to be crucial to swatch and wet block the swatch to get an accurate finished gauge. Then it’s just a matter of multiplying the gauge per inch by the desired finished length, casting on, and amusing yourself with color variations and effects.
The first scarf I made was a fingering weight knit on size 4 needles, with a total cast on of 320 stitches. The colors are mainly warm neutrals with some greens and an occasional dash of a coppery metallic yarn:
I found that with this pattern, the scarves grew in length and shrank in width with blocking, so my bind off ended up being too tight and needed to be ripped and reknit. For future scarves, I am putting the last row knit on waste yarn, wet blocking, and then doing the bind off and twisting the fringe as the final step.
Encouraged by my success, I proceeded to do another scarf on size 10 needles using bulky weight handspun samples, casting on 150 stitches:
And a stitch detail:
Scarf #3 is wet blocking, awaiting the final bind off and fringe twisting, and scarves #4 and #5 are swatched. They will make barely a dent in the pile of wool. They will, however, make a handy collection of potential gifts or charity donations, and they are serving the all-important goal of keeping me productively entertained. The one-skein-reckoning was a bit of a shock, but ultimately served a positive purpose.
I have a hard time asking for help, probably because it has been my experience that when I do ask, what I get isn’t very helpful. But that all changed this past weekend.
I had finished a new hat and was completely stumped about what to call it. I haven’t been inspired by a particular theme for a couple of months, so I couldn’t rely on a theme-based name. In fact, I’ve made 3 hats recently and have been very uncomfortable with the names I had settled on for the first two.
In desperation, I put up a couple of pictures of the third hat on Twitter and asked for help. The lovely and talented Cally Booker came to my rescue with not one, but two themes!
I’m keeping one of the themes, which I’ll use for the Fall collection, a secret for now. But she suggested that the hat-in-question looked like a Viennese Truffle, which meant that “Sweets” will be the theme for the Spring hats.
Here is Viennese Truffle, a confection of nuno felted silk with a stone bead and a handspun bombyx silk tassel:
Of course, this meant that I had to rename the two previous hats. This next hat is really beautiful in person, and is also nuno felted silk. The silk reminded me of the honey glaze on a piece of baklava. Unfortunately, baklava is not a good hat name, sounding too similar to balaclava, which is a very different style of headwear. Therefore, I settled on Honey Cake:
Of course, we can’t have sweets without chocolate, so this is Chocolate Decadence:
I really prefer working with a theme, and I’m so relieved to finally know what I’m doing this year. Many, many thanks to Cally for the inspiration! And while I’m on a roll, what are your favorite sweets? More hat name suggestions are always helpful!
I had a long, lovely weekend, thanks to Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays falling conveniently to give me a nice stretch of days off. I had plans. I had groceries. I was ready.
Then, the unthinkable happened – I got a Very Bad Cold.
I’d love to take the optimistic view and see it as lucky that I had time to get better before my regular schedule resumed. But at the same time, there I was, inebriated on Nyquil, watching my holiday slip away. I couldn’t let that happen, so I chose a very simple pattern and made a pair of socks while I convalesced.
This is the Dash pattern by Krista Werbil, and it features slipped stitches that create almost a basketweave effect. I used some Paton’s Kroy sock yarn that I’ve had sitting around for a while. I know Paton’s isn’t exactly a small local yarn producer or a fashionable indie brand – they’ve been around forever – but I like their sock yarn. It feels like actual wool, and wears like iron:
I’m glad to have something to show for my unexpected hiatus, and knitting a comforting pair of socks is probably a fitting tribute to Dead Presidents.
My ruminations on strong color have continued, and I have come to the conclusion that the colors people like and the colors they wear are sometimes very different. We have all been subjected to some 15 years of color tyranny, of the concept that some colors are Right For You and others are not.
There is something to be said for this – indeed, some colors are simply not flattering on a particular person. But there are other ways to use colors besides wearing them.
So while thinking about colors I like but do not wear, I made a piece of felt that incorporated just those colors – orange, gold, chartreuse, anything in the warm-toned family, anything with a yellow base:
Those are some seriously strong colors! This piece reminds me of a Picasso-esque portrait of a face. And while it’s probably a little too loud for me to hang, I do plan to cut it into smaller pieces for needle cases to have a little punch of color when I need it.
The colors I like but do not wear also made a guest appearance as I dyed a new batch of linen table runners for the gallery:
I like having strong color accents around me in my home, and even (gasp!) sometimes wear strong colors in places where other people are not likely to see them, just for myself. My friend Jill unknowingly aided my mission to secretly sneak strong color into my wardrobe by presenting me with a most remarkable pair of socks this weekend. For me, she made lace patterned socks from a merino/cashmere blend in a sprightly shade of spring green. Probably because I would be highly unlikely to knit lace for myself, to splurge on such a luxury fiber blend, or to choose a yellow-based green, I absolutely adore these socks:
This was the very best kind of gift – a treat I would probably never give myself, but one that a friend thought I deserved enough to plan and make for me. I shall wear these often, enjoy them thoroughly, and may even revise my notions of what colors I will and will not wear accordingly!
I needed to make some flat felt, and had a couple of new colors of wool to try. I thought (erroneously, as it turned out) that a shade of purple and a shade of pink would meld into a sum greater than the two parts. As soon as the wool was laid out, I quickly saw my mistake:
I haven’t seen a color combination this hideous in quite a while – My Sick Little Pony.
Could this wool be saved? I took a time out and pondered, calling on my design education to stage an intervention. There was too much contrast, and the layout was too directional. I needed to add some warm midtones and toss in a little chaos:
Grudgingly, I admitted that it was better, and the felting process blended things even further:
Even though the finished felt wasn’t quite as awful as it had been, it still had limited applications. I have a fairly high tolerance for crazy color, but the impact of a wild pattern is actually heightened when it’s used with restraint. By cutting the felt into small units, I made felt roses as accent pieces that will not overpower the wearer:
The moral of the story? A whisper can be louder than a scream, and strong color gains importance when used in small doses.
A much-loved pair of socks became sadly worn, but I could not part with them. Instead, I recinarnated them into fingerless gloves, much as I did last year with another pair of socks. However, this time, I documented the project.
To bring about this transformation, first I cut off the toes. Although taking scissors to handknits makes some people squeamish, after cutting steeks, I have no qualms and actually enjoy the carnage:
The cut edge is then picked apart until the yarn end is found. Then it is a simple matter of unraveling and skeining the yarn:
To turn socks into gloves, I needed to unravel about 75 yards per sock, or 150 yards total. Once I had enough yarn, I ran waste yarn through the live stitches and tied off the skeined yarn:
This whole bundle went into a warm bath to un-kink the previously knitted yarn. Once dried, I wound the skein into a ball, put the live stitches on needles, and created a thumb gusset.
For the thumb gusset, I placed a marker about halfway into the round, between two pattern repeats, made a stitch, and placed another marker. I finished the round and then knit a round in the pattern stitch with no increases. After that, I made a stitch on each side of the center stitch every other round until I had 25 stitches between the markers.
Once the gusset was long enough to cover my thumb, I put the gusset stitches on waste yarn and rejoined the knitted tube, continuing until the glove was the right length. I bound off the top of the glove, picked up the gusset stitches, and knit a tiny tube for my thumb.
Voila, socks became gloves:
The socks-that-were had been favorites, so it is no surprise that the gloves-that-are have become favorites as well!
This year’s Studio Yule seems to be all about tying up loose ends, finishing things off, starting with a clean slate. And while I had hoped for a burst of creative energy and some fresh and interesting projects, I’m trying to be okay with clearing out past projects.
Take, for instance, Pam Allen’s Falling Leaves Bag. I started this bag in January 2009. Now, if this were a complicated project, that wouldn’t be terribly shocking, but it’s a very simple bag, knit flat and felted. I finished the knitting and felting in short order, and the completed thing just sat … and sat … and sat.
Turns out that flat portfolio-style shape just isn’t very functional for me. I finally got tired of tripping over this languishing project and started playing around with the shape, poking in the corners to give it a boxier profile:
Still not convinced, I mattress stitched the gussets and blocked the bag over a box before really committing to the new shape:
I liked it, and made the change permanent by cutting the excess fabric from the inside gusset:
Voila, an actual functional finished bag:
With one item checked off my to-be-dealt-with list, I turned my attention to making a holder for tea bags that I could carry with me. If you are a tea drinker, you already know that most tea options available in the U.S. are absolutely vile, and you probably carry your own supply as I do. A portable container for tea can be elusive, and a plastic ziploc never seemed suitable for the exclusive, expensive French tea that I favor.
(Yes. I am an unbearable tea snob. I admit it.)
I repurposed a hinged metal tin, covering the top with a Victorian print paper, ending up with a something more worthy of my beloved Mariage Freres:
So far, my Studio Yule accomplishments have been sporadic and small. While these projects have been unplanned and somewhat unexpected, they have nevertheless been satisfying, and I’m having a pot of tea to celebrate.
I am in the midst of my annual foray into studio immersion, which I call Studio Yule. This is my third version of using this one time of the year, when typically I have no obligations to anyone, to goof off in the studio and make whatever strikes my fancy.
One of the rules of Studio Yule is that I cannot make things for sale. Another rule is that I am strongly encouraged to try new techniques or materials, free of any pressure to produce something useful or even good. Resulting from experimentation, not to mention my very strange sense of humor, I often do get useful ideas or master new techniques that I will use in my business, but that’s not the point. This is my annual personal reminder about why I love what I do.
This Studio Yule has had a slow start, owing largely to the fact that after finals, I still did have immediate obligations that needed to be addressed before I could relax. I had to write an academic conference paper, and in response to an invitation to submit feltmaking class proposals for a conference next year, had to write up some workshop descriptions. Plus, I was accepted as a member to the California Fiber Artists, an organization that produces 3 group shows per year all over California, and was very pleased about that. But it also meant I had to give them a bio and some photos of my work for their website, and that couldn’t happen until there was a lapse in my teaching schedule. The first week of potential Studio Yule-ness got eaten by writing projects.
Food is also a crucial component of Studio Yule, and after a holiday cooking extravaganza, the larder was sufficiently stocked with delectibles, allowing me to turn my attention to the studio.
Oh. Dear.
After the frenzy of producing two gallery shows in 12 months, plus another group show, all on top of my regular production schedule, the studio was an absolute disaster area. I couldn’t see the floor. I couldn’t find anything. I winced every time I looked in there. The Muse threw an operatic fit, screaming, “How can you expect me to work under these conditions ?!?!” before collapsing in sobs on her fainting couch. This did not bode well.
I’ve spent the past several days tidying and reorganizing. I’ve ordered some new storage, I’ve gotten rid of things that were unnecessary and took up space, and it’s starting to look workable. I still have a few minor adjustments to make, and a few more once the new fabric storage bins arrive. There has been progress, and my new systems will be much more efficient in the coming year. I’m considering that Studio Yule preparation may be an important preamble, thinking about when and how I can work in the sort and purge ritual to the annual festivities.
While I don’t have anything brilliant to show you after a week and a half of official Studio Yule, the celebration always starts with tea tins and I did manage to make those in fairly short order:
Just as with last year’s tins, I decoupaged translucent fabric onto recycled tea tins. There are a couple of bubbles in the fabric this time, which isn’t exactly what I was going for, but I like the textural element and am thinking about how I could include that purposely next time. Since coming up with new ideas is exactly what Studio Yule is all about, maybe I’m off to a good start after all.
|
|
