DesigKnit

The nice thing about small projects is how quickly they fly off the needles. I finished the colorwork hat last weekend. It’s a semi-slouchy hat, with lots of room to keep the warm air in, and hopefully that extra space will also reduce hat-head. The pattern was completely unplanned; I cast on with 6 stitches and went from there, changing the colorwork pattern as the mood hit me. I stuck with fairly simple, geometric designs rather than traditional colorwork patterns, but there weren’t really any rules.

It looks absolutely gigantic when it’s laid out, but it slouches nicely when worn.

I have said before that I am really not a hat person, but this one seems to work.  Much to my surprise, the slouchy style seems to agree with me. (I think Ellen suggested such a thing quite some time ago, and she was definitely right!)

I’m not sure that I’m going to become a frequent wearer of hats, but it’s nice to know that there’s one I can stand to put on when the weather drops into the negative digits.

Of course, the speedy end of the hat project meant that I had to find new knitting that much sooner. I cast on for about 4 different projects this week, but nothing really clicked. One by one, they were all frogged and returned to the stash. As I was rummaging around for something else to try, I ran across my “weave knitting” swatches from a couple of years ago. Looking back at the original post, I realized that I never put up a picture that shows the stitch pattern very well. I started out the series with a variation on linen stitch; just a simple knit-slip stitch pattern that looks a lot like plain weave.

Then I played around with two colors to see what that would do to the (same stitch) pattern. These are the front and back of the two-color fabric.

That was kind of fun, so I tried another variation as well:

This one looks almost the same on the front and back. It’s not quite reversible, but almost.

Then I put all of the floats on the other side of the fabric, leaving a smooth knit fabric on the front and purl bumps and slip-floats in the back. I think this pair is interesting because the only difference between the swatches is which color is in the foreground and which is in the background:

Then, I played around with longer floats to make a knitted twill:

I think that there’s a lot more to be explored in these stitch patterns, but I need to sit down and figure out a charting and classification method that will help me design new possibilities. (I also need to find the enthusiasm to knit more foot-wide swatches…) I do want to get back to them someday, but for now they’re hibernating in the stash. Seeing them again got me thinking about how the stitch patterns might work in a more complicated colorway, though. Some more rummaging turned up a singleton skein of handspun yarn that I’d spun from the fiber inspired by our trip to Campobello Island a couple of summers ago. I pulled out the skein, crossed my fingers, and cast on. I didn’t have much yarn but I wanted a fairly wide fabric, so I cast on enough stitches to get about a foot of width and hoped that I’d get enough length to do something with the fabric when I was done. And then, I knit. Here’s the front of the fabric:

And here’s the back:

Subtly different, but close enough to be reversible. I love how the colors blend together. (This is the same stitch pattern as the light green and tan at the end of the “plain weave” swatches above.) I didn’t get much length, but I got just enough for a wide cowl when the two ends were seamed together. I didn’t think to snap a photo before I seamed it up, but here’s one half of the color stripes.

And here’s the other half, along with the photo that inspired the colorway.

I like to think that this might bring a little bit of summer into the winter, though I can’t say it worked when we went outside to take a photo. (This is my “did you take the picture? I’m cold!” face.) Still, it’s thick and warm, and can tuck into my coat and cover the lower part of my face, even when it’s folded in half.

For a small and unplanned project, I’m calling that a win.

And now, I am facing empty needles once again. I think that one of my “failures” from last week might have iterated into a successful project this morning, though. Time will tell, but at least it’s enough of an idea to give me something cast on.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been slowly working away at stash conversion over the past few years; transforming fiber into yarn, yarn into projects, and adding less and less back into the stash. I shop for yarn at fiber festivals, but I can’t think when I last purchased any online, and I haven’t really established a new LYS since the move. I do feel kind of badly about not supporting local business, but I do go to local shops first when I need something, and right now I don’t need more yarn. I’ve tried to keep my purchases reasonable at festivals, and have done pretty well at reducing stash growth. This is especially important lately, because my knitting output has slowed significantly since I started teaching.

Lately, some of the bins had started to look a little empty, and others seemed to be overfull. It had been a while since I did a stash toss, and I was having trouble finding things when I wanted them. I was also feeling low on inspiration, and needed to spend some quality time with the fiber. So, just before the end of break, I made an unholy mess of my office for a few days and completely resorted the stash.

The clear bins are all of my knitting yarn. There are also two bins of woven fabric and loom waste, and one of tools like spindles and hand cards. There are lots of lone skeins leftover from bigger projects, and quite a few solo skeins purchased for small projects I later abandoned. The things that filter to the bottom of the stash are almost always the small projects, it seems. I do have quite a bit of Cascade 220, but other than that there are only two yarns with enough to knit a sweater in there. One of those is the three-ply yarn I spun up from shop leftovers earlier this year.

One ply is teal, another is lime green, and the third is olive. I had my doubts about the olive from the beginning, and thought that I really wanted more of a deep spruce green for the third ply, but I wanted to work with what I had on hand, and I didn’t want to turn a simple spinning project into a dyeing project that would languish for weeks. I thought the olive would blend in when the yarn was plied and knit, but I don’t really like the color of the final fabric. There’s nothing specifically wrong with it, but it just doesn’t speak to me, somehow. I think this one probably will turn into a dye project after all. I’d need to do some testing, but I’m thinking that I’ll probably end up oberdyeing it with a complimentary color to unite those hues a bit more.

After all of the reorganizing, I ended up with five empty bins, and many of the full ones have room to spare. This feels like quite a lot of progress, considering how little knitting I have been doing of late. Still, it’s good to know that things are going in the right direction, albeit slowly. (It’s also good to know that there might be some room in the stash for a few of the irresistibles next time around. But only in sweater quantities, since that’s apparently all I use.)

The weaving stash is still in growth mode, though I am nearing a stable state and trying very hard to reduce new acquisitions there, too. I have a nice rainbow of cones on the shelf, as well as a couple of bins of cones that need to be protected (wools, etc). I’m hoping that the new color gamps will help to inspire many more projects now that I have a strong base palette to work from.

The spinning stash grew unexpectedly a year or so ago when all of my shop inventory became part of my personal stash, but I’ve been working my way steadily through that and am beginning to see reductions there, too.

There are another two bins of undyed shop fiber in the back there, on hold for when I eventually find my way back to the dye studio (soon, I hope, soon…), and there are a couple of bags of washed fleece in the top of the closet awaiting their turn, too.

One of the front bins is all bits and bobs waiting to be blended into batts or felted. I have a huge range of colors in there, and am thinking that there will be some fun spinning to be had in 2014. There is also fiber set aside in the shop leftovers for a couple of larger projects. I need to get busy soon, spinning my way to a new sweater.

In the meantime, I am out of knitting projects again. I don’t know how this is possible with so much yarn, but somehow my brain just can’t get over the hump of figuring out what to do with it sometimes. So, in the spirit of just getting started, I cast on 6 stitches and started a hat. I’ve had 4 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed in the stash since the very early days; I know I bought it at the Weaving Works in Seattle, so it has been at least 5 years, and probably longer. I’ve pulled it out here and there for a couple of projects, but they’ve just never taken off. This time, I think it might stick:

I was in the mood for some colorwork; simple stockinette with a simple pattern to keep things interesting. I’m designing this one completely on the needles, one color motif at at time. I have no idea what I’m going to do next, until I get to the transition and find out. It’s been fun watching each unrelated pattern take its place in the whole, and I’m really liking how it is coming out. This one step at a time approach is reflective of a lot of things in my life right now, and I can only hope that I end up liking the results of those as much as I do the hat!

I’m also spinning up this fiber that I discovered while tossing the spinning stash. There were 8 oz of it, so I must have dyed it for myself, but I have no memory of it now. It was probably something I dyed to use up leftovers just before we moved, and then never got back to after the interruption. Fortunately, my taste in color hasn’t changed, and I was thrilled to find it waiting for me in the stash. Doesn’t it match my office chair well?

I’m almost halfway through the 8 ounces, spinning fairly fine for a 2 ply fingering weight yarn. I’m not sure yet what it will be, but at least it will be one step closer to useful.

I posted a few weeks ago that I don’t have a lot of knitting intentions for this year, except simply to knit more. I think this is a good start, even if most of the yarn needs to be spun before it can be knit! I’m also finding myself leaning heavily toward colorwork, so maybe there’s some of that in the cards as well. In the meantime, I need to start dreaming up another project so that it’s ready to go when I run out of hat!

I pulled a rainbow off my loom this weekend:

The two basic color gamps are done. One is woven in plain weave, and one in twill. Here’s the plain weave version:

And the twill:

It’s kind of fun to compare the two pieces, because you can really see how weave structure changes color dynamics in the finished piece. It’s not as obvious on the screen as it is in person, but the warp stripes (horizontal in the pictures above) are much stronger than the weft stripes in the plain weave version. The twill gamp has much more defined vertical stripes. The plain weave has a beautiful iridescence to it that I couldn’t quite capture with my camera this time (I’ll try again once it’s wet finished – the weaver’s equivalent of blocking), but it’s the glow of the dark purple section in the twill gamp that really caught my eye. It looks like sunset, especially when viewed at an angle.

You can really see the difference in how the colors play together as you get closer to the fabric (again, plain weave on top, twill on the bottom).

(You can’t really see all of the little color squares in the zoomed out pictures above, but the whole fabric is made up of 1 to 1 1/4″ squares of different colors crossing. For each stripe that you see in the warp, there is another of the same color in the weft, so that I have a sampler that mixes all of the colors in my stash…a practical reference piece as well as a decorative one.)

I finished the ends of both samplers last night, so they’re all ready for a vigorous washing to settle the threads into place, and then I need to figure out how I want to mount them for display. I also need to figure out how I want to weave the rest of the warp.

I immediately gravitated toward the twill sampler when I took the cloth off the loom, but I was surprised to notice that the fabric really felt like it should be two separate pieces; the primary rainbow stripes on one side, and the darker purples and browns on the other. I had more similar colors in the purples/brown section, and I really like the more subtle gradient that the closer shades produced. I spent quite a long time walking around the office looking at the pieces from different angles, and I think I want to split the warp into two separate projects rather than finishing it in a single run. This is kind of a pain in the neck, since it means that I need to take all of it off of the loom, chain one of the halves for storage, and then re-thread the one I want to use.

I’m a little disappointed about splitting the warp, since one of the things that I liked best about this project was the width. It feels better as separate pieces, though, so split it will probably be. I suppose I could add in extra threads on the re-warping to make the piece wider again, but I’m not too excited about that option.

I feel like the primary colors section needs something different to make it work as a fabric instead of a sampler, but I’m not sure yet what that might be. Black stripes to offset the colors, perhaps? That would be even less fun than adding extra width at the edges, but sometimes the finished object is worth the price. I think I have between 3 and 4 yards of useful warp left on the loom, so it’s enough to be worth doing well.

For now, the project is waiting. I want to wet finish the gamps first to see how they look when everything has settled into place, and then hopefully the decisions will be clear. There must be something that will make those primary colors dance…

At the beginning of every year, I try to stop and take stock of the projects I’ve done and I make a list of the things I’d like to try in the coming months.

This year, I have no list. There are no long lines of projects waiting, no techniques dying to be explored. This year, my goal is simply this: to knit.

2013 has been a long and difficult year, with old health problems cropping up in new ways and lots of challenges at work. Most nights, I am simply too tired to knit even plain stockinette.

I swatched for a sweater just before Thanksgiving. The stitch pattern was chosen, I knew which needle size I wanted, and all I had to do was cast on at the neck. Somehow, even casting on for a simple raglan was too much to think about.

Instead, I knit a hat. Since the hat was the only project I had on the needles and I didn’t have the brainpower to come up with another, I stretched the knitting out over several weeks, a row here and a row there. I finished it while we were visiting with friends a couple of days after Christmas, which left my needles empty.

In the lull between the holidays and heading back into preparations for the new semester, I picked up that swatch again. It took about 10 minutes to cast on, and about 5 days to knit the sweater.

The yarn is Briggs and Little Heritage, the yarn I picked up this past summer when I was on PEI. It’s a heavy weight, 2-ply wool, spun in a small woolen mill in New Brunswick and lightly heathered. The main body color is called Seafoam, and there are 4 other accent colors, too (I seem to have lost the labels for most of them, but one is green heather and one is natural white. Looking at their color card, I think the others must be fern and light blue or peacock).

The knitting was fast, at about 4 sts/in on a size 5 needle. I switched up to a size 6 for the shoulder color pattern, since it’s a slip stitch pattern and I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t pull in. The narrower bands near the cuff and hem use 2 of the more subtle accent colors to help balance the visual weight of the yoke.

Yesterday, I found the perfect buttons in my button box:

And with that, the first sweater of the new year is done.

(Of course, now I need to come up with a new project to cast on…)