DesigKnit

Despite the fact that I am a mere 4 days from moving, it hasn’t really hit me that I’m going yet. You’d think that a month and a half of climbing over and living around boxes would have clued me in by now. Or all the goodbyes and “last times.” Or having half our stuff disappear on the first of June. Or maybe the actual, physical act of moving all that stuff into the new place might have given it away.

But no. All I can see are boxes, and yet my brain hasn’t quite latched onto the fact that we’re leaving. On Saturday.

This past weekend, I packed the stash closet, and it only half registered. I don’t think it’s denial, really; I think I’ve just been too busy to actually notice what’s going on.

Tonight, though, I think it may be beginning to sink in. You see, tonight I started to pack what’s left of the kitchen.

When we move, the kitchen is always the last thing to be packed, and the first to be unpacked on arrival. Everything else can wait, but the kitchen must be functional as soon as possible. Tonight, I am packing up all but the dishes I need to eat from for the next few days, and my brain is suddenly starting to accept that maybe, just maybe it’s getting to be time to go. An empty cabinet speaks volumes.

Moving is always an interesting experiment to me. It’s amazing how many things you really can just pack away in boxes for a few months and still keep on living just about the same. There really aren’t that many things that I need to feel “at home.” There’s a subtle feeling of disorder and displacement when everything is piled up or stuffed in cardboard, but it’s only a few very basic things that keep me feeling grounded. Sure, take all the furniture. Move all the books. Empty out the closet, and put away the fragile decorations. Just don’t touch the current craft projects or the spice cabinet, and it will all be perfectly fine.

So now I’m curious: what keeps you feeling grounded in your home?

The secret weaving project has been safely delivered, so now I can show you all what I’ve been up to. (It’s a good thing, too…not blogging about this project was killing me. I’m not sure I could have held out another week!)

Sometime this spring, Becky and I were at a knitting guild meeting, and one of the vendors had a very pretty laceweight yarn. It was a handpaint, with vibrant colors and abrupt color changes. It’s Schaefer Yarn Andrea, in colorway Jane Addams.

The colors were definitely Becky’s colors, but really, what kind of lace could you knit with that and manage to avoid pooling? And what but lace would you knit with a yarn that has 1100 yards in 3.5 ounces? Becky asked me “what would you do with this?” My immediate response was that I would weave with it.

That planted a thought. During the break, a small paper bag was carefully slipped into my backpack.  I was planning to weave it up for Christmas, but then I decided that it would make a good going-away gift, too. And so, I began some deadline crafting.

I had two cones of green yarn that would go with the laceweight. One was a shade or two darker than the darkest green in the yarn, and the other was a couple of shades lighter. (Sorry for the flash…I was in a hurry to get the skein wound into bobbins and couldn’t wait for daylight.)

As you know, I decided on the lighter color, thinking that it would help the colors to “pop.” Instead, it completely overwhelmed them:

So I took the light warp off the loom, and put on a dark one instead. Can you believe the difference?

I finished weaving the scarf on Wednesday, washed it Thursday, and gave it Friday. Again, the photos are a little dark because we took them at night, but I think you get the idea.

Even in weaving, the colors did pool quite a bit, but I really like how they interacted. I’ve found that this is consistently true for me; yarns that I would normally avoid knitting with because of pooling make excellent weaving yarns. The uniform width of the piece and the alignment of the color repeats makes the color changes much more acceptable to my eye, and usually makes a beautiful fabric. In this case, I had to be extra careful to line up the color repeats when I switched from one bobbin to the next so that the pattern didn’t shift, but that wasn’t very hard because it only took two and a half bobbins to finish the scarf. Because the width doesn’t change, I was able to keep the same color repeat all the way through the scarf, giving it an interesting zigzag look.

I wove the scarf in a 3/1 twill (the weaving yarn goes over three threads, then under one), so the front and the back look a little different. The laceweight weft is dominant on the front, and the warp is dominant on the back.

The warp is tencel and the weft is silk, so the piece has beautiful shine and drape. The fabric is quite light because the laceweight is so fine, and the twill pattern gives it a little extra texture, too. See all those little diagonal lines? That’s the twill pattern. (It’s in your jeans, too…they’re a 2/2 twill, where the weaving yarn goes over two threads and then under two threads all the way across the fabric.)

As it turned out, Becky wasn’t the only one getting surprised on Friday. She gave me this beautiful project bag:

…filled with Pygora fiber! I’ve never spun Pygora, but it is wonderfully soft, and very warm. I’m looking forward to spinning this one; it’s staple length is so short that it will be very different to spin than the longwools that I’ve been using. It will probably become a laceweight, just enough for a small and special project. Another experiment awaits!

If I had only one word to sum up the experience of spinning Polwarth, it would be this: Loft.

Fortunately, I have many more words, including soft, and squooshy, and bounce, and…did I mention soft?

This is definitely going on my list of fibers to spin again. The yarn ended up heavier than I’d expected (diameter-wise), in part because the fiber bounced back so much with plying. I ended up with a little over 600 yards of heavy fingering (10-11 wpi?) from my 8 oz. of fiber.

The unbloggable project is coming on apace, and it’s making me crazy that I can’t talk about it! Fortunately, it’s on track for delivery late this week rather than next, so hopefully there will be pictures to show soon. For now, let’s just say that sometimes “frogging” is so worth it.

I pretty much know how to use color in knitting, but in weaving I am still very much feeling my way. It’s an entirely different way to use yarn, and colors can interact in very unexpected ways.

I spent a lot of time last weekend dithering over a light warp or a dark warp. The light one would brighten the yarn that I want to highlight, and I was hoping that it would make things “pop.” The dark one was subtler, but also a good match.

Since I know that I tend to be overly conservative in my color mixing, I compensated and went with the light warp. Today, I finished putting it on the loom (all 300 ends of it).

…and it’s not the right color. It pops alright, but so much that it overwhelms the yarn it was intended to flatter.

Unfortunately, there’s really not a good way to swatch with weaving, besides putting on a full length of warp that’s a few inches wide. I generally find it better to just do the whole thing at once if it’s a narrow piece like this one, rather than winding on part of a warp and then having to go back and add on another, shorter part later. It makes for a lot of up-front investment that’s riding on your guiding vision.

And, frankly, my guiding vison is a bit…fuzzy where this is concerned. I’m afraid we missed the mark this time.

But, better to be late and perfect, so off it comes tonight, to make way for a darker one.

Fortunately, I have lots of other things that will go with this warp, so the yarn won’t be wasted. I’ll lose only the time it took to put it on the loom, and I gain a sample for future reference.

A sample, and a little more experience in color and weave structure. At least I’m learning, yes?

Off to wind another warp, and begin plotting other uses for this one…

Between the move on the first weekend of June and a conference on the second, this month is just flying past. Suddenly there are only three weeks to go in Madison, and then I’m off to Chicago. It’s craziness, I tell you.

Since the weeks are slipping so quickly past, I am suddenly facing a rather tight deadline on a weaving project that I’d like to get done for a friend before I go. I’m not big on deadline crafting, and I’m even less inclined to secret projects, but if I show you the yarn she’ll know who it’s for. So I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait until later for full details. Fortunately, “later” really won’t be very long in this case (I hope).

I really, really need to get this project on the loom soon, which means that I’m currently pushing hard to get the potholders off. They’re almost there:

I think I should be able to finish them tonight, if I push hard.

Since I can’t show you what I’ll be putting on the loom next, I thought I might show you some recent acquisitions from a foray to the LYS on Sunday. Perhaps it’s ironic considering the subject of my last post, but both purchases are for weaving this time. They’re shown below with their partner cones from the stash.

The skeins are from Sun Valley Fibers, a local farm and dyer that makes beautiful yarn. I’ve often been tempted, but haven’t actually given in until now. (I need to round off my frequent buyer card before I leave, you see.)

So there you have it. I had enough yarn before, and now I have enough plus three skeins.

Now if I could just find some time to use it in, I’d be all set…

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been noticing a slow quieting down of the knitting world lately. A shop closes. Someone stops posting to their blog. People stop showing up for knitting groups, or stop working on their projects altogether.

It may be that there just isn’t money to spend on hobbies. Or maybe there isn’t time to sit and knit. But it feels like more than that, to me. People seem restless, eager for something new, almost…ready to move on.

More and more people are talking about weaving, or spinning, but I don’t feel the same excitement surrounding knitting lately. Maybe I just don’t get out enough?

It seems impossible to say this in a city that has the biggest knitting guild in the country, a steadily growing 500+ members, but I see it here, too.

There will always be Knitters, of course. The ones that knit on regardless, just for the sake of making cloth through the magic of two sticks and some yarn. Those of us for whom knitting is a way of life.

But I’m wondering if knitting as a fad is passing on, and if so, what that means for all the people who rely on this robust community for their livelihood.

I have to say that I am the world’s worst supporter of yarn commerce. I don’t want a big stash (though the one I have is plenty large, let me tell you). I haven’t been knitting as much, partly because there simply hasn’t been time, and partly because I find it so hard to sit still in what little time there is. When I do knit, I knit with what I have, and I really haven’t been adding much for the last year or two. It’s not that I’m on a stash diet. It’s just that I have enough.

But I’m wondering how long this bounty of choice will continue. And I’m wondering if maybe, just maybe I should pick up that extra skein of yarn that calls my name; not only to support the businesses that I value, but also to ensure a steady dose of yarn in times of dwindling supply.*

How about you? Are things slowing down in your corner of the knitting world, or are they as bustling as ever?

*Yes, Branden, I know that this is prime enabler material, and that you are reading. I may regret these words the next time I am tempted to buy and self-discipline says that it knows better.

On Saturday, we loaded the truck. On Sunday, we unloaded it. Today, I am sore.

Since we have now covered all of the important details related to moving, I figured I’d show you some pictures of the house.I apologize for their quality. I realized as we were finishing the hauling that it was getting dark and I’d better take some pictures before I forgot. Some of them are crooked, and a little bit blurry. That pretty much sums up how I was feeling at the time, so there you have it.

I may have mentioned that this house is really too large for just two people? Well, if anything it’s gotten bigger since the first time we looked at it.

It’s hard  to see here because of the trees, but there’s a large porch, with a swing that would be wonderful for spinning outside on summer evenings.

When you come in the front door, there is an entryway with a set of stairs on the right, and the dining room on the left.

The stairs have become something of a joke for me. When the landlady posted the apartment on Craigslist, she included only two pictures of the inside of the house, and one was of just the stairs. Forever after, this became known as “the one with the stairs” while we were trying to keep apartments straight during the house hunt. They are lovely, though.

Here’s the dining room:

All of the stuff that we brought with us on this half of the move fit comfortably behind me while I was taking this picture. You know when you go to a furniture store and the couch seems small, but then it’s huge when you get it home? Our pile of boxes was like that, only in reverse.  Except for the fact that it was just as heavy and we could still count up all 24 book boxes, I’d swear that pile shrunk between Madison and Chicago.

The dining room unexpectedly came complete with a table, which is much larger than the one we have now, and should be just about the right length for a table runner made out of the purple cloth I took off the loom a couple of weeks ago.

And then there’s the kitchen (most important room in the house, and therefore the first to be unpacked):

And it even has a pantry. (See all those boxes? I think I know what I’ll be doing with all this space, at least!)

There’s a finished basement downstairs, which even has a sink and counter (and a handy drain in the floor in case of spills). Besides needing to be careful of the linoleum, this will make a great dye studio.

I really wish that we had this house in Madison, because this basement area would be perfect for hosting the spinning guild for our monthly meetings. There’s another half that you can’t see here, and that will probably become the guest room.

Upstairs, we have the master bedroom, which, as Branden puts it “has a closet that’s big enough to have its own closet” in the back. I have my eye on that “closet” for a yoga studio.

One of the smaller bedrooms will be Branden’s office/workshop, with ready access to the attic upstairs for things involving sawdust.

And the other will be my craft room and the library.

Don’t you love that color? I am constantly finding that I absolutely love colors on walls that I really wouldn’t like anywhere else. Go figure. This will be a wonderful room to sit in in the middle of November, won’t it?

We debated who would get the orange room. It has a great closet, which would be good for either Branden’s office or the craft room, but Branden’s office is really going to be more of a workshop, and we eventually decided that this room should probably be able to be shown off a bit, and so a craft room/library it became. Won’t it look great with a wall of bookshelves, and a comfy chair? (There may or may not also be a soft pillow…)

Outside, there is a small perennial garden in need of some TLC. If it got more sun, I’d be pining for some vegetables, but maybe I’ll look into herbs and dye plants instead.

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There’s also a fairly large backyard.

And that’s about all there is (ha!).  We will be swimming in space here, but it does mean that we’ll have lots of places to put people who happen to stop by Chicago for a visit (hint, hint). And I have a whole month to dream up uses for that craft room and dye studio…

I’ve been thinking for a while now about adding different breeds of wool to my Etsy shop staples. The last time I dyed, I ran out of BFL. And that means that it’s time to place a new order for fibers to dye.

And so I’ve been pondering: what other fibers to add?

I am loving the Polwarth that I just dyed up. I made it through the first 4 ounces of the spinning, and it is turning into the lightest, loftiest fiber I could have imagined. I’m trying to spin a laceweight, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it, just because the wool is so fluffy. So that’s on the consideration list.

Last weekend, Ellen casually asked in an email whether I’d ever considered dyeing rare wools. Why yes, I have, but I’ve just never gotten around to it. Actually, I haven’t even gotten to trying them out in the first place. Her question (and recent experiments, here, here, and here) moved this up the priority list in a hurry. Clearly, some research was needed.

On Monday, I ordered a sampling of fibers from International Fleeces. They were out of stock on lots of things, so I didn’t get many of the rare breeds, but I found plenty of things to play with anyway. And today, I got a box:

These are all fairly small quantities, with the exception of a pound each of Whitefaced Woodland, Portland, and Cheviot. In smaller samples, I have Manx Loaghtan, Black Welsh Mountain, and Norwegian Top. And then there are a couple of exotics, too: Banana Viscose, Soybean silk, and Ramie. Lots of things to play with!

Do you have a favorite fiber to spin? Are there others that I absolutely must try?