As things happened, I finished the scarf yesterday morning rather than sometime early last week. Decided to add just a couple more inches, and then…well, it took a while. I cast it off yesterday, wove in the ends, and promptly put it on. And then I didn’t really take it off, which means that it didn’t get blocked. Oops.

I have replaced it with another (also very warm and soft) scarf for now, and the new one is finally taking its bath in preparation for blocking. Unfortunately, that means that photos come later. But it is very warm, and soft, and I don’t really want to take it off, which is a good sign. I think we’ll call that one a success.

After casting off yesterday, I immediately started casting about for some new ideas. So far, nothing is coming, despite a dive deep into the stash proper in search of inspiration. Instead, I finally sat down and worked the sleeve cap shaping for the sweater, and am now working my way down the length of the first sleeve. I wasn’t excited about starting it, but now there is hope that the sweater is actually coming back to life!

In other news, I spent this morning playing around with just one needle instead of two:

This Peaches and Cream cotton is destined to be a new Swiffer cover, as our old one has now officially given up. The crochet is thicker than knitting, and a little bumpier, so I think it will do a better job as a mop. A little humdrum, perhaps, but absolutely the best thing I’ve found yet to clean my kitchen floor!

So that’s about it…this weekend has been a little humdrum in general, but also pretty productive, and I guess you can’t ask for more than that.

Despite continued blog silence, there has been lots of progress on crafty things lately. I finally got around to finishing my latest weaving project on Saturday.

I love the way it came out. It’s made from the same warp as the last scarf (I am quite sure that I blogged about the finished project, but I don’t see it in the archives, and I don’t want to get caught hunting around forever, so an in-progress shot will have to do.) This time, instead of weaving the teal warp with the Malabrigo sock yarn, I wove it in plain weave with a royal blue bamboo yarn, which gives it a beautifully iridescent look.

When I got to the end of the scarf, I realized that I still had some space left, and so I got out some other colors of the bamboo and did some sampling.

It’s really fun to see how all the different colors interact with the teal, and how the different textures show up. My favorite (much to my surprise) is the yellow “hopsack” at the far left in the picture above. I have visions of a teal bag with just an inch or so of trim in the yellow. Someday, perhaps.

In other news, the sweater has reached the vest stage; I grafted the shoulders on Saturday, and am ready to pick up for the sleeves.

The knitted scarf is also nearing a finish; it may even be done tonight, if I manage to tear myself from the computer before bedtime. I did run short on yarn. The second ball got me within about a foot of the length I was hoping for, but Becky saved the day by finding me another skein in the same colorway (the shop where I got it is a 45-minute drive from the house, but she just happened to be stopping by and picked some up for me). I knit happily away on it at the knitting guild meeting on Monday, and it’s pretty close to finished now. Pictures soon!

Both of these scarves fit into the “dressy” category, too. I’m trying to fill in that area of my wardrobe in anticipation of having a “real job” sometime soon. And it doesn’t hurt that they’re also in one of my favorite colors, either.

As so often with 2010, I find myself finally getting time to sit and actually think about the new year after it’s already zipped past. This was a year of just keeping up, of turning inward and focusing only on the most elemental and essential of things. It was a year of simple stockinette sweaters, of small projects that I can’t even really call to mind now, a year of getting lost in the rhythm of fiber turning to yarn, yarn into cloth. This was a year of entering into the fabric of life, of being more about process and less about outcome. 2010 was a year of preparation; it was spent laying the foundations for new projects, setting the stage for new directions to open up, a time to till the soil in anticipation of life springing forth again. It’s often felt like things are going nowhere, but a lot has happened. Sometimes the quiet and subtle times are the ones that nurture the most change, even though the shifts don’t become apparent until much later.

So it was with this past year. There is a sense of quickening as the new one begins, an acceleration toward new frontiers emerging. If 2010 was a year of preparing ground, I think 2011 will be a year of blossoms.

As the year finishes, I find myself looking around, taking stock of things on and off the needles. The handwarmers were duly finished in time for gifting, though I completely failed to take a picture. They were by far the most elaborate handwarmers that I’ve made so far, with flaps that convert them to mittens and buttons to hold back the flaps when fingers need to be free. They were well received, as was the flower hat. My inner designer was right (as usual)…this was a Sarah hat, and it will be well loved.

I have begun a new hat, to match the first piece of lace I ever knit (in the background of the picture below). It’s a simple stole, knit from Cashsoft DK, and has somehow become my single most used piece of knitting. It’s wide enough to be a plane blanket, just long enough to wrap around when I’m cold at the office, and wonderful as a winter scarf. It has worn beautifully, despite almost 5 years of being carried around in my work bag (winter and summer, because it’s so good in an over air-conditioned office); the fabric is in very good shape and shows almost no pilling.

Since I wear the scarf so often, I decided to make a matching hat. I was so pleased with how the yarn had held up that I bought a few more skeins on super clearance a couple of years ago, so I have a few to spare. The lace pattern is not complicated, but is proving surprisingly hard to convert to a simplified version for the hat. After a couple of setbacks, I think I’m finally on the right track, but I still need to pull out a repeat to get back to the correct pattern.

Since that wasn’t very good conversation knitting, I brought along a couple skeins of Louet Gems in Teal, for my own version of the Drishdi scarf. This one is wider, and will probably be shorter because I’m running a little short of yarn, but it will make a good shawl-scarf.

The yarn is absolutely beautiful in this stitch pattern. It’s a superwash merino, and it’s very shiny. I loved the shine of the Cascade Venezia in the original scarf, and when I saw the Gems I knew that this was what it wanted to be. Isn’t that an incredible texture?

Sadly, the sweater is still sitting neglected. I’m almost done with the body, and I’ve apparently run out of steam. It was too big to take for holiday knitting, and the gauge is too small to make for instant-gratification knitting, so it’s lain untouched for well over a week now. It is calling, though.

And so we begin 2011. Welcome to the new year!

Branden and I spent last weekend learning how to silk screen.

The “why” is kind of a long story, but it has to do with a new, non-knitting project that’s been going on in the background lately. It all started a few months ago when Johnny* (a blog writer I follow) was bored and felt that things needed some shaking up.

*Warning: Johnny likes to swear. That’s not the tone of my site, so I want to give fair warning before you go clicking over there and being shocked. Photos to follow also include edgier language than you usually see here. If at work or otherwise in public, consider yourself forewarned.

So, Johnny had a project in mind to get things moving. He’s generally in the business of inspiring people to set out on their own and create their dream business, and runs into a lot of “I would, but…” kind of excuses. He’s also run into some people doing incredible things despite the odds. There’s Jon Morrow who became a real estate tycoon, despite the fact that he’s in a wheelchair and can’t even enter most of the houses he buys and sells. There’s Warren McDonald who climbs mountains despite the fact that he lost both his legs in a climbing accident, and there are lots of others. I’ll bet you’ve even met a few of these people, the kind that Johnny calls “badasses.”

So the question is, if they can do it, why can’t the rest of us? Just think of how much the able-bodied world has to learn from those who have seen life’s challenges and then raised the bar. He wanted to get their stories told, both to honor them and to inspire the rest of us to get out of our own way and just do the things we’ve been dreaming of. And so, the Badass Project was born. (Johnny explains the project in full on his blog, if you’re interested.)

Honoring and enabling excellence is something I believe in. I’ve known a few badasses of my own, and I am excited to help bring their stories to light. So I stood up, and I got involved.

You’ve probably been around long enough to know that “I got involved” is often a bit of an understatement for me. I’m now officially running the fundraising effort for the first year of the project, among other things.

One of my various jobs is the task of obtaining t-shirts and other merchandise for the project. I’ve been poking around online, noticing how expensive it is to get t-shirts printed (did you know it costs $5 more per shirt if you want black instead of white??). We have ambitious fundraising goals, but nothing’s in the bank yet, so that first run of orders for a hundred t-shirts is a bit steep to start out.

And then, last week, I ran across this post, and my brain went “click.”

Clearly, the solution is to learn a new craft.

We bought some silk screening supplies, and spent Saturday morning coating the screens with a light-sensitive paint, which we then cured under a very bright light. We had printed text for the shirts on overhead transparencies, and laid these over the screens while they cured. After a few minutes, we washed out the undeveloped paint, and we had a silk screen:

Then, we taped up any areas we didn’t want to print right away

and filled the rest with fabric paint.

Then, we washed out the screens, retaped them, and applied the second color.

And finished the printing

We have a long way to go to get to expert, and we need both a coarser-weave screen and some alignment tools before we’re in business, but we’ve learned the basics, and we had a really good time.

I don’t know if we’ll actually end up making the final set of shirts, but it was fun to learn a new skill. I’m not sure yet exactly what will come of this collision of crafting with the non-crafty areas of my life, but I can see all kinds of ways that this could come in handy.

And even if it doesn’t, at least I know how to silk screen.

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? We’ve gone from first snowfall to third snowfall, and nary a post. Unfortunately, all of this fluffy white stuff falling from the sky has not inspired the usual amount of knitting. I’m not sure why, really…just a lot going on, I suppose.

The sweater is still stockinette, on small needles, and hasn’t really changed much. I did at least pick it up for an hour or so last night.

The hat now has a companion of (almost) one handwarmer. Theoretically, the other will soon follow. Theoretically. (It had better, as this is definitely on the Christmas list, headed for my sister. I like it, but it’s just not me, and it’s 100% her.)

There is a new hat, which barely made it past the ribbing before screeching to a halt because I need to think about it for a few minutes to figure out what’s next.

And yesterday, I realized  that we’ll be leaving for Christmas in 8 days, and I have no idea what I’m bringing for knitting, and none of the current projects are good candidates.

Well, then. Guess that tells you what I’ll be doing, huh?

When the whole world turns white outside…

….it’s time to make some color.

I took advantage of being housebound by yesterday’s snowstorm and used up some dye solutions that were starting to get a little old.

I’ve just finished washing the skeins, and now they’re hanging up to dry. Can anyone guess which ones are my favorites?

Remember the acid green yarn?

With some help from Branden, I finally finished getting it onto the loom last weekend, and wove a sample. I then cut the sample into three smaller samples, and have been playing with different ways of finishing the fabric.

On the left is the fabric as it comes off of the loom. It actually looks a bit thin, with distinct gaps between the individual threads. I was a little worried that I’d woven it too loosely, until I washed the second sample. The piece on the right is shown after simple washing. The wool bloomed beautifully, and makes a good, firm fabric. It also feels completely different; softer and more stable.

I saved one large section of the sample for “fulling” (the weaver’s version of felting). I’ve actually tried pretty hard to full it already, but have not succeeded yet. I transferred it back and forth between boiling and cold water 5 or 6 times, agitated by hand in warm water for about 15 minutes, and generally did all the things you’re not really supposed to do to wool. It hasn’t really changed much.

It’s always reassuring to actually try to felt something. It’s a lot harder than it seems, and it reminds me how overly careful I am with most of my woolen goods. (Except roving. You can never, ever be too careful with roving.)

The big sample is waiting for laundry time, when it will probably get tossed into the washer for a while to finish the felting process.

Unfortunately, I put this fabric on the big loom that I’m borrowing from a friend. I spent several weeks this summer cleaning the reed (the metal piece that all of the threads go through), but I apparently didn’t get enough of the rust off. I stripped it 3 times with vinegar, filed both sides of every single one of the 480 slats with an emery board, carefully brushed it out with a toothbrush, and then buffed between each of the slats with a piece of oiled yarn to get out the extra dust. And still, there is enough rust left to break my warp threads. I lost 6 threads just weaving the sample, and the yarn is thick enough to be difficult to repair, since any knots catch in the teeth of the reed. So, I think I will be moving this warp over to the smaller loom when its current project is finished, rather than trying to limp my way through on the rusty reed.

Despite the setback, I’m looking forward to finishing this project. The green yarn that was far too bright on its own really makes this fabric into something interesting, and I’m looking forward to getting it finished so that I can make things with it. Cutting up that sample confirmed for me that I really want to weave for sewing, rather than just working toward a project that comes off the loom already finished. Call me crazy, but I really like making a fabric that I can chop up and turn into other things.

The hat probably doesn’t look all that different in this photo. I ripped back to decrease the diameter, switched to dark brown yarn for the lower half to cut down on noisy color overload, and did a little bit of fiddling to make the points slightly less pointed.

It still looks like a flower. I still love that.

It no longer looks like a Mario Brothers mushroom, and for that I am deeply grateful.

However, I still do not like it on me.

It fits well.

It’s comfortable, and has even gotten fairly good reviews. Branden says it looks like a hippie hat, my neighbor says it’s super cute. Unfortunately, I’m not a hippy, and I am not generally inclined toward cuteness. Even worse, I’m afraid I’m still not a hat person.

We also noted that it must be a good color, as it matches some of our strongest accent pieces in the living room quite nicely.

(Hopefully matching with the decor will make up for the fact that it doesn’t match my sweater today. I had the right sweater on yesterday, and then we didn’t take pictures. Best laid plans and all of that…)

And the hat is warm; we checked.

In short, the hat is perfect, but it’s still not me. I’m going to give it a few days to see if things change. If all else fails, it just screams to be given to my sister; it would absolutely work for her.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! (Or a great Thursday, if you’re not in the U.S.) We had a perfectly quiet day; just the two of us, a little crafting, a lot of turkey. A good way to celebrate Branden being home.

I promised to show you the yarn I got at the mill, so let’s start there.

My stash is at full capacity right now, so I was working very hard to keep purchases to a minimum. I’ve been watching this yarn for a sweater for a year now, but I also have four sweaters lined up in the queue, and so decided to wait on sweater quantities. Instead, I found these beautiful skeins of laceweight in the sale bin.

Plenty for a large project, and how could you resist that color?

I also bought some of their handpainted yarn, which has a really interesting texture when dyed. It’s 100% wool yarn, and they use the same dye for the solids, but the handpaints all look like chenille when they’re knit up (And the solids don’t). I asked, and they don’t really know why this happens with the handpaints, but I’d love to find out. It’s a completely unique look as far as I know, and I really like it.

This yarn is destined to be a hat. I think I’ve complained here before about the sad fact that I am not a hat person. I can’t recall ever having a hat that I liked, and so I have spent years and years going around with a cold head in the winter. This doesn’t really bother me, but now that it’s getting nippy outside in the mornings, it would be nice to have a hat that I can at least stand to wear on the really cold and windy days.

So, I sat down on Saturday night and cast on for this:

It’s a simple tam style, which I’m completely making up as I go (I’m sure you’re surprised). I love how it turns the handpaint into a flower, and I really like the strong radial lines popping up in the center. As a knitted object, I like it very much. As a hat? As in something I would actually wear on my head? That’s a little harder.

Part of the problem is the color. I love the handpainted look and I definitely want to keep it, but I think there’s just too much of it. When the flower part was small, I was completely in love. As it grew larger, it just got too busy. Also, the points. Love them as an abstract knitted object, but on my head, they make me think of the Mario Bros. mushroom cap. Not exactly the look I’m going for.

It’s also turned out too big. I blocked it on the needles last night, and I definitely overshot the proper radius of a tam. And so today I rip. Not all the way, but back far enough that I like it again, and then I’m going to start over from there. The good news is that I kind of like the way it feels on my head, so now we just need to work on how it looks.

So, progress. And ripping. They seem to go hand-in-hand, don’t they?

One of my friends from the spinning guild just happens to own a small-scale woolen mill, and yesterday was their fall open house. We went down to take a look, and Branden took a few photos on his phone, as we both managed to forget to bring a camera.

The wool is washed, picked (to open up the locks), and then fed into the machine for carding. Here it is, waiting to drop into the carding drums.

It passes through a long series of drums, getting more and more finely carded along the way.

The center drum is taller than I am, to give you a sense of scale.

At the end of the first carding series, the wool is bundled into roving by gathering it all together and drafting gently.

Then that roving is laid out and fed into a second set of finer cards (this helps it to become a completely uniform thickness).

At the end of the second set of cards, it gets run through a series of little grooves, which turn the batt of fiber…

…into 60 separate threads of extremely fine pencil roving. This gets wound onto a big roll for spinning.

Here’s a close up of that pencil roving coming of the machine.

And here are a few rolls waiting to be spun.

Next, the rolls are put on the spinner. One roll goes on the top of the machine, and all 60 of those ends get threaded down to the holding bobbins (at the very bottom of the picture), which are constantly spinning.

The singles can be wound onto cones,

Or they can be plied using another complicated machine that we didn’t get a picture of.

Then, finally, all of the bobbins are lined up, and wrapped onto a barrel frame to make skeins.

Wool mills like this are apparently pretty rare, so we were lucky to get a chance to see inside. Most of the equipment is more than a hundred years old, and was bought at scrap metal prices when a mill in Massachusetts was closing down. It’s been running here for 22 years now, and they say that it’s still going strong. Every other year, the owners drive out to North Carolina, where another farmer raises the wool that they use to make their yarn (I think it was 500 sheep’s worth). Then, they haul it all down to Texas to go through the one and only scouring plant left in the country. After washing, it’s shipped to Wisconsin, where it goes through these machines and becomes the wool that we buy. Every skein is hand-dyed, in batches of about 10 at a time. It’s a pretty amazing process, and they make some pretty amazing yarn. I’ll show you some of that when we’ve had some sunlight to take pictures.