DesigKnit

On Tuesday, I finished the second sleeve of the sunset sweater. After doing a little happy dance, I tried it on and promptly realized that I’d decreased a few too many stitches in those last 6 inches, and that the cuffs didn’t match.

After a few minutes of pouting, complaining, and unsuccessfully trying to convince myself I’d never notice, I tore back and began knitting the last 6 inches again. 

Later that night, I snipped a stitch about an inch from the hem, and spent Wednesday evening in the basement sitting out our first-ever tornado warning while steadily unzipping a row of stitches. (Photo was taken on the porch after dinner on Tuesday, not in the basement on Wednesday…)

Then on Thursday and Friday, I added an extra 2 1/2 inches, and grafted it back on. I’m happy to say that the graft is all but invisible on both the outside:

and the inside:

I can feel the slight difference in tension where the graft is, but I can’t really see it, even on fairly close inspection.

Yesterday, I blocked.

Today, I tried it on.

And I now declare it perfect.

Feels like the summer is just flying along. I had a bunch of blog posts to write this week, and they just didn’t happen somewhere in the time warp that is the workweek.

I usually try not to cram too much into a single post, but let’s get caught up, shall we?

I’ve been hesitating to start spinning for the new sweater before getting a really good idea of how much yarn it was going to take to finish the current one. I’m closer on yardage than I’d like, so I wanted to make sure that it was going to be enough before forging ahead on the next.

Finally, I can say out loud that we’re going to make it. In fact, I’m going to have a skein (or two!) left over. I reduced the sweater length pretty dramatically, so I’m thinking that I’ll probably snip a stitch near the hem and graft on a few more inches with whatever yarn is left over.

But before that, I have to finish the second sleeve, which is currently killing me. Somewhere around the elbow, I was suddenly done with this project (I think it’s the weight of the sweater pulling on the needles that’s getting to me). There are only a few inches left, so it should be finished soon, but I am counting the stitches, which is entirely unlike me.

While I was dithering about how best to spin the next sweater, I shook things up a bit and spun up the 8 oz of Finn that I bought at the Shepherd’s market. (Shook up as in the amount of fiber was less than enough for a sweater…that is fast becoming a rarity in this household…)

I ended up with two large skeins of very soft two ply yarn that total about 500 yards, and one very small one that should be just perfect for a swatch. I’ve been browsing stitch dictionaries for the past couple of days, wondering what it will be.

I figured that I’d have plenty of time to whip up a scarf or a stole before the next sweater was spun, but it’s beginning to look like that won’t be the case.

I started spinning on Monday night, and today I plied the first set of three bobbins:

Which marks the halfway point in the spinning.

So maybe that’s how it got to be Saturday. Either that, or for a single moment the time warp was operating in my favor. Think spinning a wheel might be able to create eddies in space-time?

It never ceases to amaze me that this much fiber:

Fits on one little bobbin.

Two nights, two bobbins. Sailing toward a sweater.

An unfortunate side effect of finding moths in your needle basket is the absolute requirement that said basket be thrown away, or at least immediately repurposed.

This leads to questions about how best to organize the needle collection, which has been a carefully avoided problem for well over a year now.

I have been storing all of my needles in their original packages; small ziploc bags for circs, tiny cardboard and plastic sheaths for dpns. The ziploc bags work reasonably well as long as I keep them in size order, but the cardboard sheaths are a disaster. They split and spill the needles all the time, and most have lost the tabs that say what size the needles are, so there is no good way of identifying what’s what.

Having to rehome the needle collection made this into a slightly higher priority issue, so I pulled out the sewing machine and did what I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

A few scraps of fabric and an hour or two later, I had a needle case with pockets for all of my dpns.

And I even got to play around with some of the fancy stitch functions on my machine.

Sometimes all it takes is a little kick to get things going.

Now if I could only muster the energy to deal with the circs…

As you well know, Branden is fond of playing enabler when it comes to fibery things.

Of course, this means that he gets reciprocal enabling where appropriate. (Though I must say that I have the easier job…enabling him mostly involves not saying “no” and telling him to go play in the basement on occasion. Not exactly challenging work.)

In the past few months, he and our neighbor have been building a milling machine in the basement so that they can cut parts for whatever nefarious purposes arise.

A few weeks ago, I was at the spinning guild meeting, and one of the members was using English wool combs to prepare a fleece.  It was a funny coincidence, because I’d just bought a fleece and had been wondering how I was going to make a semi-worsted roving out of it.

Well.

Once I’d seen the combs in action, I had my answer. The next day, we went to the (somewhat) local fiber shop that sells spinning supplies, and looked at what they had. Wool combs are pretty expensive (I think the cheapest pair was $79), and the ones I liked were on the more expensive side.

Branden got that look in his eye that says “I could make these.” It was promptly followed by the grin that means he wants enabling.

So, he went to a hardware store, disappeared into the basement, and in a day or two I had these:

They’re not quite perfect yet, but I’ve been told that version 2.0 will be appearing soon, with pointier tips, closer-spaced tines, and possibly a nicer handle (if he manages to construct his new wood lathe in time, you see…).

In the meantime, I’ve been pre-combing the wool and preparing to use the new combs when they arrive. Turning this:

into this:

I love the roving that I’m getting; the combs clean out the nupps and vegetable matter so much better than my hand cards, and even this early version leaves the fibers nicely aligned for worsted spinning.

Synergy is a beautiful thing.

The title says it all, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not quite all…

My lab went to a conference in Minneapolis this week, and my labmate Mariko and I managed to sneak out of the networking dinners long enough to get a tour of the city with Ellen on Thursday night. Unfortunately, I brought my camera to the hotel with me, and then promptly forgot to put it in my purse, so there are no pictures. (Ellen, being better prepared, has a couple of pictures of me on her blog.)

Considering that we were together for just a few hours, we made quite a tour of the city. We stopped at the Textile Arts center, where they had beautiful handmade garments, quilts, and crafted items on display. It’s probably a good thing that they were so expensive (and rightly so), or I might have ended up with a much heavier suitcase on the way back! No pictures were allowed, but I wish I’d thought to at least sketch some of the shapes of the garments; most were a little too haute couture for me, but the lines were good and could easily be modified to fit simpler pieces. The detail was amazing, and all hand-done. The textile center itself was pretty amazing, with space for several guilds and a library, as well as a small gallery and shop. It seemed like a real center for the crafting community, and a great place to hang out.

After we’d had our fill of high fashion, we headed over to StevenBe, which has to be the funkiest yarn store I’ve ever been in, and one that’s truly a reflection of all that’s unique about its owner. His exuberant personality is everywhere you look, from the full-length mirror and the chandelier hanging from the rafters to the cassette tape sweater and handspun art yarn that grace the display hooks. It’s so refreshing to find a place that is unabashedly unique, simply doing its own thing and trusting that everyone that comes in will be charmed (as we were). Definitely a must-see if you’re ever in Minneapolis.

We finished off the evening at the Birchwood cafe, another cute little establishment that apparently doesn’t mind its patrons sitting at tables and painting (as the guy next to us was doing) or knitting while waiting for their food.

In all, it was a very fun evening, and it was great to finally meet Ellen in person after commenting back and forth for something like 3 years. And now that we know it’s only a 4 hour drive separating us, I can imagine that there might be further exploits in our future.

( certainly hope so, and, I will try very hard to remember the camera next time!)

It’s that time of year. Fluttery, soft creatures thump against the windows like tiny bits of feather floating uncertainly through the night air. Moths by the thousands flock to the light, desperate to get in.

And sometimes they do.

I went to get a pair of needles from my basket yesterday, and noticed that some brown dirt fell out of the bottom when I moved it. I stopped to investigate, and found a single skein of leftover alpaca yarn serving as an unintentional banquet.

Alarms sounded, lights flashed, security walls dropped. The needle basket is well separated from the yarn baskets and the stash proper, but no chances can be taken. The entire stash was gone through, piece by piece, checking for evidence of more intruders.

I found none.

But I have seen a few adult moths in the house since then, and some of them were in the closet where the stash is stored.

Thankfully, there is a system of plastic bins and separate bags and a semi-strategic dispersion of the stash throughout the house, so any infestations tend to be fairly well contained, and can be rapidly dealt with.

But still. Moths in the stash a day and a half before I leave town is really just bad, bad timing.

We’ve spent several hours in the past day and a half pulling apart closets, locating every possible food source, inspecting and enclosing. Putting things in small, sealed containers where they can’t contaminate one another. Trying to find the source.

I think it’s under control. Everything is hidden beneath the frail protection of plastic, waiting for its turn in the freezer. There is no evidence of damage in anything beyond that one small skein of scrap yarn. The adults killed are roughly the same number as the casings found, and they can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. The alert level may be down to orange.

Here’s the community service announcement of the day: Check thoroughly, check often.  It’s easy to forget in the heat of summer, but this is the best time for invaders to sneak in undetected, and they multiply fast.

So for the love of wool, go check your stashes.