Hawaii Socks - A Personal Best

Hawaii socks
Originally uploaded by sapoague

I finished my entry into the Ravelympics 2010 Sock Hockey event last night. It was a long haul, two solid weeks of knitting nothing but socks, but I made it before the closing ceremonies with time to spare.

I cast on during the opening ceremonies on February 12. (Okay, I was out for the evening and cast on during my lunch hour that day, but it still counts.) Each row had 72 stitches. There were 12 rows to the inch. Each sock is roughly 16 inches from cuff to toe. That works out to (sacre bleu!) a whopping 13,824 stitches per sock!

Using size 0 needles! When I go back to knitting the sweater I'm working on size 7 needles, they will feel like knitting logs.

I am wearing these Hawaii socks (so named by Lorna's Laces yarn and it seems to me extremely appropriate in this awful winter which isn't over yet) as I write and they are quite comfy in my Crocs slippers.

A technical conundrum: I grafted the toe on the first one and decided I hated grafting so much that I would try the three needle bind off on the second one. Hated that too. I found a third alternative in Knitty in an article extolling the virtues of just knitting the toe to about 8 or 10 stiches and then cinching it closed. A most elegant solution and one I will certainly try next time!

Big Foot

Having read about and admired a knitting pattern for felted slippers, aptly titled French Press Felted Slippers, I decided to give it a try. This pattern is one of the cutest examples of felted footwear I've seen and I had to try it. I used wool that I reclaimed by raveling a sweater I purchased at the Salvation Army. A huge sweater. Size XL and a tunic style to boot. I have a gigantor ziploc bag full of skeins of wool from this sweater, and for these slippers I used only a small percentage. But, my felted slipper career is still just getting started...

Anyway, this is what the felted slippers look like before felting:

They look like something Sasquatch could wear.

But, after throwing them in the washing machine in a zippered pillowcase with some towels and hot water and detergent, and agitating for about 18 minutes, they came out looking like this:

Or this:

What Happens When You've Woven Way Too Much Chenille

So I had this great idea to break out of the chenille rut and weave some placemats for daughter and her husband in Louisville. They have a new (old)  house with a newly remodeled kitchen, and a dining table that just cried out for new placemats. They had recovered the seats of the chairs with some really interesting fabric, and I thought I would try to weave something to coordinate with the chairs and the colors of the kitchen. Well, I tried anyway. Here's a photo of the chair seat fabric and the pattern yarn:



I drew inspiration from a draft in Kathryn Wertenberger's book 8, 12...20 An Introduction to Multishaft Weaving. The pattern is a double two tie unit weave using supplemental warps and wefts. I used 3/2 cotton for the pattern yarn and 20/2 cotton for the tabby ground. I had lots of mini cones of 20/2 cotton on the shelf. The 3/2 cotton had to be ordered and dyed  in colors to suit. It was sett 20 epi and 20 inches wide.

Here's  the draft that I used:

I love this design. You can combine blocks of color in the warp or weft. And it weaves more efficiently, since you weave two shots of pattern, then two shots of tabby, rather than alternating one and one. I did find, though, that I had to struggle with warp tension. I really wished that had a temple small enough for a 20" wide warp.

I wove a header at the top and the bottom of each mat. Then, not wanting to be bored by having to weave six mats all the same (the horror!), I kept trying new combinations of blocks and colors.  After washing and line drying and and pressing the cloth I cut them apart and turned up the hems, sewing them by hand.

I wanted them all to be done by Christmas, but alas, only two were finished to wrap. I got them rest of them done in the aftermath of the holiday.

 Voila:





 

Out with the fruit, in with the checks

New curtains
Originally uploaded by sapoague

When we moved to this house in 1991 one of the features that drew me to it was the yellow/green formica topped kidney bean shaped table. This table had been custom built for the kitchen circa 1950 and was still in great condition with shiny chrome pedestal legs. We found some chairs at the local antique mall that didn't exactly match, but went well in tomato red 50's chrome and vinyl.

I had begun a fruit fabric binge. My sister found some dynamite fruit fabric for curtains. I sewed them up and they have been in the kitchen -- until 2 days ago.

The fruit curtains were getting faded. We replaced some of the windows in the kitchen last summer. And frankly, I was over the fruit thing. So I started looking for curtain fabric, not an easy thing in the middle of Iowa where the only places to find curtain fabric are the Hobby Lobby or Jo-Ann. (blech)

After a lot of interwebs searching I found some linen check fabric on ebay. I love it because it looks handwoven even though it is not, and the colors go really well with the formica table and counter tops (did I mention the counter tops? No? Well the yellow/green formica is pretty much everywhere - kitchen, bathroom, mudroom. The former owners were on a roll.)

I had some blocks of time to devote to sewing the curtains this past week, and here is the result. I am very pleased. Plus, I discovered curtain clips for hanging them. Way cool!

Coming soon - knitted hats and handwoven placemats! The Christmas gifts can now be revealed!

The lovely Stella is modeling this black chenille scarf...

Black Chenille Stella 4.jpg
Originally uploaded by sapoague

A couple of weeks ago I finally did the finishing on a "batch" of chenille scarves and sent them to a gallery in Iowa City. I sent two narrow ones and three wider ones, really a small amount for me, but I had so many distractions this year ;--- )










Anyway, that's how this warp eventually turned out:







A good way to use up yarn odds and ends.

Handpainted Wool Color Progressions

So I recently started handpainting tencel yarn for sale on etsy again. I hadn't done much of this for a few months and I felt that for these new batches I should try to be more systematic about it. My color choices have been pretty random -- blues and greens and purples one week, oranges and reds the next. And I hit on this notion that if I started with a four color combination, and then changed out one color at a time for each batch, that I would have an interesting body of yarn at the end, and the skeins would work together if one chose to use them in combinations, either knitting or weaving.

Well, kinda.

I've done three batches now with this idea in mind. The first batch was a fall colors combination:

The next batch I called Rainbow Sherbert:

I changed out the gold and burgundy for plum and raspberry. So my theory was already losing steam, having changed two colors instead of just one.  The third batch I called Northwoods:

And, again I changed two colors instead of one -- brown and green for plum and red.

At the end of each "dye lot" I painted some Lamb's Pride worsted yarn I had on hand, and I was very satisfied with how these turned out. The colors are more subtle, yet very warm and rich. I will definitely try to put them all together in a knitting project and I'm sure the progression will work well.

Voila (click to go the Flickr image):

Another WIP Done! The Mixed Up Venus V Cardigan

I started this cardigan back in May. I started going through the stash, picking yarn colors and textures that I thought might work well together in (roughly) the same guage.  I worked on it off and on during the summer, even knitting a bit on my lunch hour in vendoland. I made some progress as you can see here. Thennnn... I kind of let it go for a bit as summer got in the way. I finally finished all the pieces. This is the first sweater where I knitted the back, front and two sleeves, and then stitched them together. Had to learn mattress stitch, which works quite well. Had to learn how to set in the sleeves. The first one is less than perfect, but I decided that I wasn't the kind of knitter who rips stuff out if it isn't spot on. The second one is better, taking a page from my sewing days, and finessed and eased until it was done.

I really like this basic sweater pattern. It's boxy and comfortable and very cozy. But the thing is, it has a big design flaw in that it is stockinette stitch on the front edges and around the neck, which means it curls naturally, and that was driving me crazy. I looked at examples of the sweater on Ravelry (all 2 of them), and they both had added ribbing to the front and neck to finish the edges. So I did the same, with the same color yarn that I used for the cuffs and the bottom. Added buttonholes using Elizabeth Zimmermann's 3 row method, and that was just what the sweater needed. I blocked it and it turned out just the way I wanted.

Voila:



and voila: