Progress

Just a quick post today, I have to return to work tomorrow, at which point I will find out what the timetable looks like for nest year. I left with concerns about the delivery of the courses I teach, in particular the 'theory' course which had been relegated to a finish time an hour latter than the other courses. I was 'strong' during the week I was on leave and didn't check my email, if you hear a frustrated cry from this side of the globe tomorrow - it might be me in response to the proposed timetable.

Contiguous tempest

Meanwhile I have been knitting, spinning, and sewing, first the knitting. I restarted my top down contiguous cardigan. So far so good, I am well into the sleeve head and so far the shape of the shoulder and sleeve looks promising. I have tried the yoke on, but the addi circular needle i am using has a twisty cable and there is not enough weight in the yoke yet to make the cable behave. When blocked this yarn blooms amazingly, the effect of the possum, so I am expecting the shoulder 'seam' to I prove when blocked.

Spinning on the Pipy has gone well, and one thing I really like about spinning woolen and being home on leave is the speed at which fibre can be spun. I am near the second bobbin of 220 grams of fibre. Friday Judith Mckenzies plying DVD arrived, courtesy of the recent interweave sale. I thoroughly enjoyed watching, as i spun, she has a lovely clear manner, nice voice and explains and shows why she does what she does. If I had watched the DVD before spinning this I might have planned a three ply, but as I am planning a lace shawl this two ply is probably best.

Tambour

The other thing I have played with this week is tambour chain stitch. I decided that it was best to stop stitching random patterns. The issue with random unplanned stitching is that it requires no precision in forming stitches, so I want searching for a pattern to chain stitch, well first I went searching for thread. I'm using heavy polyester thread made for quilting, as that is the kind that local shops have in stock. Having found thick thread, i went looking for a pattern to stich for practice, In one of my William Morris books, (William Morris by himself, designs and writings edited by Gillian Naylor - an amazing treasure of images and ideas), I selected 'design for bayleaf', and slightly simplified the lines to suit the chain stitch. Once I have the outlines worked, the next stage is to add shading with a slightly lighter colour green, and I have a dirty yellow that I hope to use as well. All the tambour hooks I ordered arrived, and yes the ones from Brodely.com are much much nicer finished and balanced than the lacis.com offerings. Review and update to tambour info page shortly. For now my practice is on white cotton lawn, I prepared the pattern the old fashioned way by pricking the design onto paper, rubbing powdered charcoal to transfer the pattern to the fabric, then I finished by outlining the charcoal dots with water colour paint. Time consuming but no more so than using tracing paper, or a pencil and light box, plus really really effective, and fairly easy. I used a sticky roller to remove what charcoal remained after a good shake outdoors, once the watercolor lines were dry.

Next stage in my tambour learning, once the leaves are complete is to move to working with organza and sequins and beads! What fun .... I even have sequins coming from Brodely.com and a wonderful book to guide and inspire.

Take care,

Na Stella

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Finished object, and returning to things left unfinished.

What happened to the past week, forgive me, it has been a week and a half since I last blogged. Things were busy, I suspected I was getting a cold, still do, the preliminary symptoms have come to nothing. Last week was the last week of term so there were things to do. I had a constant stream of students making enquiries about when they would get their marks back. My standard reply was that mine were done (true)' and that I was waiting for the rest of the teaching team to finish (true), and that organizing other adults was at time like herding cats ( all to sadly true). They took it well, the students, and on Friday I handed back what's could, including the three as yet unmarked, with what marks I had and a note that they had passed, one mark was still to come, the so the total would go up.

Then Bear came home, from two weeks in Christchurch helping with the 'rebuild', and the cubs started their term break, with birthday part invites, so the past few days has been a whirlwind of finding appropriate presents, within budget, and ferrying cubs to and from. In amidst all of that I knitted some, not a lot but I finished a sock, and spun, and distracted myself and little cub with sewing a new dress. Today I am indulging in finishing two books for bear, ones I printed out way back in march 2012. Feels nice to have them finally being works on.

Alien pirate socks

Little cubs pirate socks are done, not blocked in water, but blocked on feet, immediately. Being pale green, and with the eyes the skulls have a slightly more alien feel than a pirate feel, I imagine in blood red, white or black these would be spectacular.

Close up of alien eyelet

My change, was to knit the heel flap in eye-of-partridge, and to bind off with Julie's magic stretchy bind off. Oh and to add eyelet eyes to the skulls on thleg section. I knit the medium size, to fit a 9" foot, and have 18 grams of yarn left over. Not bad considering with all the twisted traveling stitches this is a dense sock. I am having thoughts about how I could make use of the skull motif with the eyelet eyes in a more floating alien way on another pair. The pattern is Pirate Danger by Jeannie Cartmel, a well written pattern as far as I could tell. I don't always follow instructions ... so can't be totally sure.

New green dress

Here is the little cubs newest sewing effort, the green floral hidden behind the sparkly silver number. If it were not for the sparkly silver, black jeans, purple shorts and leggings covered with hearts also in her wardrobe I would wonder about the image she presented to the world. Taken on just her preference in dress fabrics, cuts and lengths, she seems to lean towards the uber conservative small town girl. Still that is better the if she were to lean the other way.

Today I am sewing, books this time, guitar chord books for bear. These are two blanks I printed off for the bookbinding class I taught at unwind earlier this year. No one wanted to bind guitar chord books, the class preferred grid, knitters graph, lines, dot grid and plain pages. No worries I knew Bear would want these, and today seems a good day to complete both. Once the stitching is complete, the blanks get a good press to set the stitches, and then I will cut, cover and assemble the covers. I

Book binding, guitar chord books

And finally spinning, I am on leave this week, taken as the cubs are on rearm break. Bear is on leave next week, to cover the other week of the term break. Because I would be at home, and able to spin a lot, I decided to spin on my Philip Poore Pipy wheel. This came after a conversation with Bear where we were discussing how 'full' the house is, how much 'stuff' we both have. I suggested that a traveling wheel in bag plus three other wheels in the back room, and the big Grace wheel in the living space was part of the clutter and I should maybe sell one or more. Bear was horrified, and said no, I should use them. So this week I am using the Pipy, and I am loving it. For some reason I thought woolen spinning was best on a scotch tensioned wheel, but the double drive Pipy is a dream to spin woolen on.

Phillip Poore Pipy

Perhaps once the tension is set to a beautiful delicate pull in, any wheel works well for most spinning? The blend is a carded batt, or batts from Do Arnot, in Oamaru. In the past I have spun Do's batts worsted, short draw and found them not as smooth as the combed top that others sell. This time around spinning fine supported long draw woollen I am really enjoying the carded batts, the fibre flows easily and the prep is fantastic for woolen. What was difficult for worsted is perfect for wollen. The blend is 'Lichen', and a mix of merino, alpaca, and silk with the proportions not identified. The colors are amazing, fawn, gold, green, brown, purple, silver .... all in a combination that works and has life without drama.

Time to go and finish the stitching on the books, and see how little cub is doing with making butterscotch cookies (all on her own - I like this side of growing up).

Cheers, na Stella

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Spinning

and not the wheel and fibre spinning, but the kind that my head does when there is almost to much going on to comprehend.
I got tagged, or bombed, or graffiti-ed, I'm not sure which, but it is fabulous, and I'm honored and surprised and an awe. And I have an answer to a question on how I fill my bobbins so evenly when I have a flier with hooks (spinning terms - that might confuse non spinning knitters)

At our house we have a gate, well two gates and an opening between the end of the hedge and the garage. The two gates are simple ones, a square frame made of bent tubular metal, and filled in with wire mesh. The two gates in themselves are humble, galvanized, so silvery-dull metal in colour, plain and functional. In short the main gate was plain and not very exciting to come home to every day.

Look, now I have a wonderful lace gate, white and yarn-ey, and lovely. This weekend we held our annual mid winter Thursday Night Knitters swap ... and this was gifted to me. Of course I didn't find out about it until I got home - at the end of the evening. Bear drove home and as we swung into the wee private street that leads to the garage at the back of our section ... I spotted something on the gate. A closer inspection revealed yarn bombing, and fancy yarn bombing at that, there is lace at least nine different knit lace structures, and then crochet lace as well. I know there isn't much or even any crochet here on my blog ... but I can crochet, and I do like crochet very much.


and look, every single section of lace was made to fit the grid of the gate, and then laced into place. If that doesn't impress you then knowing that the average temperature in Dunedin the day it was installed was 7.9° Celsius, and that would be 46° Fahrenheit, and Bear tells me installation took a few hours.

Jenni - you are amazing! I love you and your knitting, and I love what you did to my gate .....


and there are other things that made my head spin, I've been away at two day workshop that focused on alternative approaches to pattern cutting. Pattern cutting being the term used to describe the art of generating shapes on cloth that can then be cut and constructed into garments. The workshops, there were several options, brought together at least four 'zero-waste' designers, and offered workshops to allow participants to understand their different approaches. Zero waste is a new term in the fashion area, and refers to a goal of making garments without wasting fabric or other resources. The figures for fabric waste vary by garment type but are usually quoted at an average of 15%. So for every 10 tee shirts, or 10 pairs of jeans made and sold, enough fabric to make another one and a half is dumped. Consider the clothes in an average house, or shop ... and extrapolate that to the amount of waste fabric that is generated by the manufacturing process and the volumes get quite scarily large.

Holly McQullian's approach can only be described as holistic, considering not only the fabric, and the fit, but also aiming at a cutting scheme that has beauty as a flat graphic. An example can be seen in the Yield exhibition page for her work, which shows an image of her cutting plan - it is the image that 'isn't a dress' (yet) and sort of has a monkey face at the top. Inspired by her approach to zero waste - spent the first few hours playing with half sized patterns to see how they could be morphed into something that made full use of the fabric. Its not perfect yet, I can see potential to tweak the cutting lines to make the garment sit and fit better, ... but there is only so much one can do in 6 hours when the ideas are new and jostling in ones head.


That pattern when cut out and lifted and stitched in a few places turns into this dress. I was working in calico (in the USA - Muslin) - which is stiff, cream, inexpensive plain weave cotton, so allows all sorts of experimentation without worry about wasting expensive fabric. Now this design is shaping up I see it being executed in a more fluid fabric, and darker. At the back there is a hint of a hood, but one that falls from under the arms, and hidden in the side seam are pockets, constructed by swinging the 'waste' fabric from the armhole down and around, and folding it back. I'm going to keep playing with this idea .. and see if I can't polish it a bit more ...

On Saturday I attended a workshop with a different approach to reducing waste. Jennifer Whitty presented a workshop that looked at new garments that are relegated to waste before they are even sold. This happens for lots of reasons and happens surprisingly commonly, in scary amounts. Jennifer provided new unworn 'waste' garments and asked us to pair up and collaboratively design something from this often ignored waste source. I paired up with Anne-Marie who I had only just meet, and we had 40 minutes to create something from two generic dark polyester shirts. The shirts were 'work-wear' uniforms, and the care label had me in stitches - giggling like a little kid. Hand wash - warm water , Line dry in shade! Really - after spending a day in the kind of job where you have to wear a dark polyester blouse - the wearer is to go home and lovingly hand wash it .. and hand it to dry on a line? Polyester ? the most robust fibre known to human?

This is our 40 minute dress - I am amazed and think we worked really well together. Ok it does have a bit of a toga feeling to it, but it has pockets and a back button closure that works, and we even worked the sleeves into pockets that sit inside the dress at useful points.

Not only did we use all of the two black polyester blouses, but we even made use of the care labels and two buttons from other projects in the same room. I think we should call it the 40-minute zero plus dress!


I thought that if I sorted this all into a blog entry ... well my head might spin less with all that has happened in the past few days. But no ... a little clearer but still buzzing with ideas and pleasure at the lovely gate at the end of my front path ...

so I'm off to finish unpacking, write few messages of thanks .... and make a cuppa tea, and I'll leave you with Holly's update on the event, venue and Exhibition that was held at the end of the workshops.

na Stella

And the answer to a spinning question posted recently

Woollyprimate asked recently in a comment on a post "May I ask how you fill your bobbins so evenly when you have hooks on your flyer? It looks like you used a woolee winder. "
Well it has to do with the arrangement of the hooks. The flier on this wheel has hooks that are offset - rather than exactly opposite each other ... and the arrangement of the orifice and design of the flyer allow the yarn to be strung from both sides of the flier. I hope this photo shows how the hooks on the top arm are not lined up with the ones on the lower arm, but are instead between them. Effectively the hooks on the top arm allow the yarn to fill in the valleys that the hooks on the lower arm create. Two or three of my vintage wheels have this feature, and I think it shows that the wheel maker was considering how the wheel would be used, and perhaps was a spinner themselves. My modern Majacraft wheel has a sliding hook that allows me to achieve the same effect.

A big weekend all round

When you have younger people in your life, birthdays are significant events. I can understand that, when you have only ever had 11 birthdays, and I'm pretty sure the first few are kind of fuzzy and the memory is probably only the photos in the family album and stories you have been told, the number 12 is significant. Tomorrow my eldest, Toby, aka 'the toad', or 'tobe' turns 12. We try to be responsible parents, no first-person-shooter games, no playing with matches, and making a point of not letting go of what is on offer unless the please and thank-yous are said. That said kids develop interests that plain confound me, The littlest cub is into ballet, so I find myself doing ballet-hair, a bun, twice a week. The eldest cub finds WWII planes fascinating - who knew? That is all part of this weekend, then there is the start of the Tour, not the tour de France, but the tour de Fleece, with all the preparation and false starts that go with that. This weekend and there are knitted objects that relate to the tour, and knitting objects that might even be closer to being finished than they were a few days ago!

This is my 'birthday boy', with his new toys. I am thankful that Bear has insight into the tings that this 12 year old boy likes - as I never would have guessed that teeny tiny miniature planes that are used with a board game replicating the movements of World War II airplane engagements would the perfect present. Me, I supplied blank comic book drawing pads, A3 drawing paper and blocks of A4 210gsm cartridge paper because he is always wanting to use my supplies. I also provided a FC Tk9400 2mm clutch pencil, nice soft black lead refills and a Fabre Castel lead pointer. His sister supplied a vintage style slinky, and an environ science kit. If that boy even hints he is bored in the next few days .... I can't even imagine my surprised reaction. Equally how he will fit all that new stuff into his already full and tiny bedroom is a mystery that only he can solve.

This year I am again on tour, the Tour de Fleece, spinning along with the Tour de France, resting on rest days and trying to challenge myself. This is pink combed perendale that I dyed last year. This year I am spinning on my vintage Pippy wheel, I've not used this much since the two new wheels arrived and every time I visit the back room I admire it and think I shouldn't be ignoring it. So Friday I rearranged the family room, gave the wheel a dust and an oil (silicon spray really), and pre-drafted the fibre.
In any event of the size of the Tour (france and fleece), there are bound to be false starts. My participation started disappointingly. The Pippy and I had to get reacquainted, for I thought I had her all adjusted and drawing in nicely ... but in truth I forgot that treadling with one treadle is very different to treadling with two. Of course any coach will stress how important it is to train with your competition equipment so you are familiar with it, and I didn't. My first 11 grams were thicker than I wanted .. but I have 160g to use. So I thought about it overnight, and decided to sacrifice the 11 grams, and start again. The second start was much smoother, the wheel and I are not quite one, but my hands and feet are more in tune with my spinning and the wheel.

In prepareation for the Tour I spun up the lovely cross breed that KathyR gifted me. I was aiming at lace ... and I'm closer than I have ever been to lace weight yarn. And I do think this my spinning is becoming more even. Once I was compelled to spin three ply yarn - only because I knew the averaging out of three plies would even up my yarn, now I happily spin two ply knowing that my control is improved the point that there is not as much difference between the thicks and thins. Details, fine fingering, 2 ply, shifting from pale to darker over its length, 115g, and 550m. I am still thinking of a a shawl or blanket that uses the transitioning shades to add drama, with the dark as the final outside lace edge. Thank you again Kathy!


With the tour looming I felt the need to knit up some of my previous tour spinning. 2010 I spun 3 skeins of texel fleece into a sweater weight of yarn. This year I plan to turn that into a simple sweater for Toby. He has outgrown the gansey I knit him way back in early 2009. Time for a new one, and as he is a boy with boy traits peer fashion dictates it be plain and simple and serviceable. Bang goes my idea of embellishing the front and back with Barbara Walkers spider or some such crazy motif. The things we knitters do to hold back for the ones we love, like knitting a plain sweater when a patterned one would be so much more fun to make. So I have swatched a gansey edge, a few rounds of garter, then a 2x2 rib, followed by another garter band and three sections knit on needles increasing in size from 3.75 to 4.5mm. I think I like the 4mm best now the swatch is washed. I tried to hide a slip stitch chain pattern along the top ... but I'm not sure it will stay in the final design although in the photo it looks tidier than the garter bands.

And lastly I have finally finished the tip of the second mitten, only of course as I won't be using the first mitten this is technically the first mitten. This will be the third time I have finished this tip ....... only a thumb and a whole n'other mitten to go and I will have a matched pair. I assume that there are other projects like this out there, in terms of the frogging and the redoing and all? The thumb is looking a little puckered as I have a knitters safety pin holding the stitches. I do like the evil owls more than the running dogs ... and the double knitting chart reading has become much much more fluent.

So I'm off to complete other computery things, upload photos and tidy up things that need tidying up. I submitted my second article to Entangled this last week, but I still need to prepare and send thru the images. then there is some long overdue correspondence to catch up on, a pen or two to prepare to send away for repair, two favorites. There was a good frost this morning, which means a sunny clear crisp day - a good day to work thru things inside - before returning to the wheel for more spinning.

take care, if you are touring, may your wheel fly, and your fibre flow, if not please cheer on spinners and cyclists in your circle of crafters.