Shawl – Hazel Purls

One, Two, Three, Four!

Harriette has been complaining that she’s not been doing any modelling work. In fact it’s so long since she last modelled anything that she’s forgotten when she last did some. She’s currently stood in my study with some hand-dyed skeins of yarn draped around her and she says that I should either do something with them or put them away as she’s not a hat stand (technically she’s a clothes stand – shush, best not tell her).

Sadly I didn’t think to cater to Harriette’s aspirations when taking pictures of my first object. I think I was too busy making patterns with it! It’s a scarf and I finished it in the run up to Christmas.

scarf-folds

scarf-side

scarf-roll

scarf-ends

The yarn is handspun blue faced Leicester and bamboo that I carded into batts to make a gradient coreless core-spun yarn.

Over the Christmas/New Year period I finished plying some polworth yarn. I threaded both plies with beads and used the intermittent coils technique I learnt on Sarah Anderson’s course. My coils improved as I went along (my hands got better at controlling and moving the twist and coordinating with my feet!) but when I do another intermittent coiled yarn I’ll put more twist into the singles. I haven’t yet decided on a destination for this, or what technique I’ll use for it.

coils

During the summer I spun up some alpaca and bfl. In October I started spinning up some merino and seacell and last week I finally finished the spinning and started plying them together. Even at the last moment I wasn’t sure that plying them together was the thing to do, but as the colours have gone onto the bobbin I’ve been pleased with the result. I’m surprised that two very strongly coloured singles are making a paler more subtle plied yarn. I’m interested to see what the finished skeins will be like.

basket

abms-plying

Finally, I’m still working on the knitted shawl it’s been quite a few places with me, including a beach at the end of October while the children dug big holes in the sand.

sandyshawl

While at the beach I took the opportunity of going for an early morning walk and taking some photos. Here’s sun, sea and sand just after dawn:

sun and sea

sandysun

Harriette is really keen that I finish the shawl soon, so we can go outside for a bit and get some nice photos that include her. She’s hoping to see some daffodils.

It’s been a while!

runs a finger through the dust on the blog heading

Sorry about that!

fetches a feather duster and twirls it in the corners… sneezes!

Since we last spoke there’s been the Tour de France (and the much more interesting Tour de Fleece), I’ve attended two spinning workshops and been spinning, knitting, weaving, attempting to prevent the garden turning into a very wild place, running a code club and generally trying to keep up with two young children…

watches as some fluff bunnies bounce, like tumbleweed, across the bottom of the blog

I hope to catch up on some of that in future blog posts, in the meantime I’d like to show you what I’m currently working on.

shawl

It’s my first lace shawl, and I’m knitting it with my own handspun yarn. Now, I have to admit that I couldn’t remember what fibre this was, but looking back at my blog, it appears to be some Blue Faced Leicester I dyed and spun on my Ashford wheel. I’d been knitting for a few days when I realised that I’d Navaho plied it (I was wondering why the colours had remained separate)!

The pattern is True Romance Shawl by Juju Vail which was in Mollie Makes a few months ago.

shawl-edge

I’ve really enjoyed knitting it so far. I got a huge buzz of satisfaction from fixing a mistake, two rows after I made it, without needing to tink back. I’d skipped a yarn-over then added one at random a few stitches later. I’d also made the yarn-over on the wrong side of my marker for the centre stitch (which added to the confusion and may have contributed to the mistake in the first place). Anyway, with the aid of a crochet hook I created a new yarn-over and dropped the extra one, and after a couple of rows the mistake was invisible! The lace is lovely and simple to work, but defies the placing of markers to make counting easier.

jumps as a HUGE spider runs across the blog

Wow, that really was a big spider! Did you see it? I should probably go and get a glass and some cardboard and pop it outside, but I think I’ll leave it as a guard spider to scare the hackers who are constantly trying to discover my password. Good luck to them I say! Most of the time I can’t remember it myself!

Anyway, Harriette my assistant is delighted I’m writing this blog post and is encouraging me to finish the shawl quickly so she can model it before it gets too cold and wet for a photoshoot in the garden!

So, TTFN until next time (and I promise I’ll try and come back much sooner).

A Shawl for Time Travel

My assistant Harriette is of the opinion that she would rather be the assistant of a certain time travelling Doctor. Since taking on the role of my assistant she has felt herself to be severely underworked and believes that if she were travelling with the Doctor she would have been enjoying lots of adventures and still be back in time for a photoshoot.

Today, in her second assignment in two months, she is modelling a time travelling shawl with 78 glittery bowties scattered over a swirling, corespun, time-vortex background.

Harriette likes the finished shawl and plans to pack it for travelling with the Doctor. The only thing it needs to finish off the look: a TARDIS shawl pin.

An Introduction and 3 Finished Objects!

Firstly, I’d like to introduce Harriette. She’s my new assistant and will be modelling finished articles on my blog. Within hours of starting her new job she was demanding a new hand-sewn skirt – so I suspect she may be trouble!!! Anyway, here she is modelling the first of my finished objects (and also the new skirt):

This is the Purple Paradise shawl I started weaving in March with hand-spun yarns for both the warp and the weft. It came off the loom in May. I’ve finished it off by making a twisted fringe from the warp-ends. Here I am starting to use the twisted fringe maker on the shawl:

The second finished object is also being modelled by Harriette:

This is a Mobius cowl knitted from my first core-spun yarn.

Finally, I have finished spinning the “Bowties are Cool” Doctor Who inspired yarn. This isn’t being modelled by Harriette as she objected to juggling the three large skeins. So instead I’ve draped them on the back of a chair. However, I hope this gives an idea of the scale of this yarn, which is fairly light (being core-spun) but very bulky:

It’s been a nice few days finishing off knitting, weaving and spinning. But as you’ve probably noticed I still have lots of active projects I really must get on with (though I’m very tempted to immediately cast on a shawl with the bowties yarn)!

A Long Update

Firstly I must apologise for the length of time it’s been since I last made an update to this blog. The reasons for which I’ll briefly explain. Sometimes I read other craft blogs where the authors have wondered how much from their personal life they should put in the blog, and I don’t think anyone is sure what the right answer is. In my case I’ve decided I’ll mention a little of what’s going on in my personal life, then you don’t need to worry if I go all quiet again for a while, but in general I intend to keep this blog as a mostly craft only zone.

I’m in the process of divorcing my husband and, as it turns out, even if you’re able to sit in a room and discuss the options calmly with a mediator, rather than dragging the process through a court, things can still be said that surprise or upset. There were certainly surprises during that last mediation session a few weeks ago. One thing that upset was the suggestion, from my husband, that my spinning wheels should be considered as a “collection” that could be sold as a job lot to raise funds. When discussing this later it transpired that my husband considered this to be a joke.

As an act of defiance I came home and finally put together my main Ashford spinning wheel with the lace flyer. I polished it with a beeswax polish, and did two coats. But after doing that the undermining effect of the implicit suggestion that my craft hobby is unimportant and that my equipment can simply be considered as an asset to be sold has taken its toll and I’ve found it impossible to get any inspiration for any craft activity at all.

However, today the sun came out and I took my spinning wheel into my patio to supervise the children playing and impressed them with my long draw (and impressed myself with the 40:1 ratio that my wheel now has). It seems to have a rattle at the moment, so I’ll try and tighten everything up and get it running smoothly, but otherwise it’s delightful. And here it is glowing in the afternoon sunshine:

And here’s some Shetland and soybean fibre I carded together a long time ago, being spun on my new lace flyer (as you can see two coats of furniture polish isn’t really enough and the spinning oil has stained the flyer, I’ll add more polish over the summer):

Before the mediation session put the kibosh on my crafting energy, I had a lovely day at Creating Space and got my Purple Paradise Shawl off the loom:

Since then it’s had a wash but I’ve not done anything with the fringe. I think I’m going to work a twisted fringe. However, at the moment I’m unsure how to proceed, as it does appear to be a rather tedious process (this from someone happy to spin 100g of fibre into yarn – a process that takes many hours)!

Purple Paradise

What a terrible name for a shawl. The name is derived from the names of the tops I handspun and I’m now weaving into a shawl.

One of the yarns is a 2-ply Blue Faced Leicester, that I spun worsted style from hand-dyed tops called Violetta. The other is a single of Corriedale spun long draw from hand-dyed tops called Birds of Paradise. I spun these originally nearly 2 years ago!

I’ve tied a 100” (2.5m) warp onto my 16” rigid heddle loom, set at 7.5epi. I’ve warped up nearly the whole width, leaving just one eye on each end of the loom without a warp thread. When it came to warping up I wasn’t sure the thread was going to be robust enough and I want to minimise warp threads getting broken. The rigid heddle has slots and eyes, threads in eyes experience the most stress and wear during weaving. Threads at the selvedge often get drawn in and therefore also experience more stress and wear than other threads. So I wanted to avoid having a selvedge thread that would experience further wear from also being in an eye.

To further help with wear I’m keeping the tension as low as possible and winding the warp on regularly. As for an earlier project I’m winding paper onto the front roller when advancing the weaving. This is helping to keep the tension on the weaving even across the whole work.

I’ve woven about 18” so far and it’s looking good. The weft thread is fairly slubby, but that’s making the weaving look very interesting. I’m not too sure how the woven fabric will behave when it’s off the loom as the weft is a fairly active single, so it may collapse. I’ll have to see what happens!

Here’s progress after tying on the warp and weaving a few picks:

Tunisian Shawl

The Tunisian Crochet Shawl continues to grow. So far it’s proving to be a fast project. I’m finding time everyday to spend working on it, and the yarn and technique make for quick results. So, I’m already on ball six of eight.

It is being worked in Paton’s Eco Wool Chunky in three different shades. I love the way that the Tunisian Simple Stitch makes the colours work in the yarn. However, I had to laugh when I read the inside of the ball-band:

“… has a unique Home Spun character with a soft and lofty handle.”

Here is the shawl with all the stitches picked up ready for the return row:

I’m now desperate for the hook that goes on the knit-pro cable. However, it hadn’t arrived before I went away for a few days. I don’t know how much more I can crochet without it: