Proper Knitting Weather

Autumn is here, with cool, wet, blustery weather.  We even had a bit of a thunderstorm last night as the latest front arrived.

I haven't posted for a while.  However, I have been doing stuff!  So here's another boring progress report on my projects.

Appledore-ish Gansey

This is coming along.  My gauge seems to be holding steady at about 4 st/in.  I have a few more inches to go on the body before I start the underarm gusset.

Here is a bad photo (my specialty!).  The color is way off -- the yarn is a nice dark forest green.  This photo is from a few weeks ago, and I've knit several more inches since then.

I rather like this phase of a project -- lots and lots of fairly mindless knitting.  I can zone out and just go around and around, stopping whenever I need to.  Of course I have to pay attention at the seams, but that's why I have stitch markers.  It's great for travel knitting as well as for something to do while I am in a meeting or watching a video, etc.

Hobbit Shawl

This is the feather-and-fan comfort shawl that has been my travel knitting project for the past several weeks.  The name of the variegated yarn's colorway is "Middle Earth", so the shawl become the Hobbit Shawl now that it's done.

It'll grow a bit if/when I block it, but it's a perfectly reasonable shoulder shawl as is.  I'm wearing it now, in fact.  I used all but a few yards of my 4 50-gram skeins of this DK-weight yarn, between 450 and 500 yards of yarn.

Now I need a new travel project, since the sweater won't be a good travel project for much longer.

Good-bye to the Daisies Shawl project and maybe hello to a new shawl project

I started this a few years ago.  It's the Daisies shawl, from an old pattern from the Heirloom Knitting website (Sharon Miller's website).  It was fun enough, though there's some slight inconsistency in the charting as it goes from the initial set-up rows to the sets of repeating motifs.

But I hadn't touched it in a few years.

So...  It's gonna be unraveled and the yarn used for a new project.  There's another old pattern linked through Ravelry that might work well for this -- it looks like a half-pi (or 3/4-pi) with bands of offset eyelets (not quite a faggoting stitch since the wrong-side rows are purled) separated by thinner bands of a more solid pattern stitch.  The potential pattern is called Miami Vice, by Hilary Latimer (from threebagsfulled).  If that doesn't work, I guess I'll try something else, right?  I don't plan to reskein and wash/steam the yarn to remove the kinks from being part of a knit-up shawl for a few years.  Hopefully that won't be too much of an issue.  If I have enough yarn left when I get to the end of the pattern, I might add a sideways-knit edging.  Or I might not.  My guess is that I won't have enough yarn left anyway.

The yarn is from Crazy Monkey Creations, a nice gentle variegated pink sock-weight yarn (MonkeyToes, a 100% superwash merino 2-ply yarn, in a colorway Christy calls Girly Girl).  I have 2 100-gram skeins of it, close to 1000 yards.

I might try the Daisies project again in the future, possibly using a thicker yarn.  But it requires just enough concentration that it isn't a fabulous project for times that require mindless knitting projects.

Lavori 07/30 doily progress (charting!)

I think, fingers crossed, that I might finally have a workable chart for the hex mesh area.  I will double-check the stitch counts one more time and then maybe give it a try.

This means that any errata I list will be more for the outer-fans or leaf part of the doily -- the entire hex mesh area is borked anyway given the problems earlier in the pattern.  I may share my chart for my solution.  However, there are a LOT of potential solutions.  I don't know if mine is the best.  Heck, I don't even know for sure yet if it's 100% correct.  I may still go back to the approach of following the chart (with one extra hex mesh motif repeat) and ignoring the issues until they can no longer be ignored, which will be approximately where the leaf tips get incorporated into the hex mesh around round 183.

I tried to keep the outer stitches aimed in the correct direction, to mostly have double yarnovers between decreases where possible, and to incorporate the leaf tips reasonably gracefully into the hex mesh area.  I looked at previous areas in the chart where the hex mesh is next to the leaves and the leaf tips get incorporated to see examples of how Niebling approached the potential issues.

There are a few spots where my potential chart fix has 2 fewer stitches per hex mesh section than the original/wrong chart.  Hopefully that won't be a problem.  I don't foresee a problem with the rounds where I have 2-4 more stitches than the original/wrong chart.  But who knows?  That whole area is gonna be a bit funky anyway no matter what I do, given all the stacked increases happening in the outer fans area.

I'm resigned to maybe having to unravel a few gazillion-stitch rounds if it turns out to be necessary to adjust my chart in a way that can't be done on the fly.  I don't like using lifelines because they are too much of a pain to pick up the stitches from, in addition to the hassle of putting in the lifeline and having it not distort the stitches in a way that's noticeable during blocking.

The current photo shows the usual wad of thread, so I won't bother including it in this post.

I'm looking forward to making actual knitting progress again on this.  I'm on the last chart!  The last few dozen rounds!  So close to done.  Well, if you don't count the number of stitches left to do, which is still way in excess of 20,000 and maybe closer to 40,000.  I'm looking forward to finishing so I can start thinking about the next doily project(s).

Weaving

Nothing new here, but what the heck, here's a photo of the initial Tia rigid heddle project that I was writing about last month.

I haven't started another project yet.  I'm thinking about what I might want to try and what yarn I might want to use.  Houndstooth or log cabin?  Rig up some string heddles and do twill?  Just crank out some random strips of fabric and sew them together for a blanket/throw/bag?  Etc.  I don't particularly want napkins or towels or runners.  Scarves are not that useful, either.  Rigid heddle looms are not usually recommended for rugs, though maybe they'd be OK for rag rugs.  I don't want to make handwoven clothing.  I'm sure I'll get inspired at some point, and then warp up something and get going again.

Etc.

I think that's it, for the things I write about on this blog.

If I have a chance, I'll try to spin a bit this week.  Next weekend is Oregon Flock and Fiber, and I might be going there with friends.  I don't need anything.  But serendipity is a thing, and maybe something will come home with me anyway.  I want to support my friends who are selling there, after all, plus the festival has all kinds of interesting things that one doesn't always see for sale elsewhere.  I like being able to support local vendors, especially the ones raising fiber animals and/or making these wonderful products available to us.  However, I'd like to feel like I'm more or less doing steady-state with my spinning stash.  I gleefully restocked my dwindling fiber stash when everything opened up after COVID and I'm still slowly working through those purchases.

Google is offering me all kinds of AI-assisted beta features for this blog.  I don't want any.  I like having a dead-simple blog format and prefer to keep it that way.  If any AI-crud gets inserted anyway, I'll do my best to disable it.  If I can't, then my deepest apologies.  Alas, I've been here on blogger long enough that I don't necessarily wish to switch blogging platforms, but I will if I have to.  Well, as long as I can find something simple.  No bells or whistles for me, nor any AI-assisted anything.  AI is relatively useless for the kinds of things I do and I hate the effect it's had on me being able to find anything accurate and reputable for my own various internet searches.

Today's meaningless post (progress reports plus a doily pic)

 Roll call on my projects!

Tia Rigid Heddle Loom First Weaving Project

The piece is off the loom.  I hem-stitched the ends.  That was a new thing for me!  I went around four warp threads and up two weft threads.  The instructions I was using went from left to right.  I don't know if that's the usual direction, but it felt very much like I was sewing left-handed.  The stitches are a bit uneven, of course, but were getting better by the time I was done.

Then I soaked the piece in water for a long time.

The red runs.  Runs and runs and runs, even with lots of direct rinsing.  So the white is now a somewhat blotchy off-white.  I don't believe all the excess red is gone, either!

The so-called magic where everything supposedly gets relaxed and filled in?  Didn't happen.  Maybe that's because this is cotton?  Or it needs a hot-water washer and dryer experience (with plenty of soap in the wash), ironing, a bit of abuse, or something beyond what I did?  The bits that are uneven are probably more obvious since the warp and weft are so contrasting in color.  It's not hugely uneven, but enough for me to notice.

So, now I have a striking yet not terribly attractive piece of weaving, yay!  I don't know if I'll do anything with it or just toss it into my samplers and prototypes box.

I mean, it's not terrible.  As a beginner piece, it is perfectly fine.  I learned a lot by doing it, and feel very ready to tackle the next project.

Fresh off the loom, it was 9.5" wide and 52" long.  After the long soak and then hanging it to dry, it's about 9" wide and still 52" long.  I haven't cut the excess warp length yet.

I'm not sure what I'll weave next, and whether it'll be on this loom or another of the small looms floating around the household or borrowed from friends.

Lavori 07/30 Doily Progress and Chart Error(s)

I've knit a couple of rounds, yay!

As I wrote earlier, for round 165 and beyond, I'm following the basic pattern set up that was established in previous rounds.  That means that the first set of hex mesh needs one more hex mesh motif (k2tog, yox2, ssk) for all the rounds until further notice.  The second set is fine as charted through round 169.

Round 169:  This should start with a 1Mv.  In other words, the last stitch of round 167 will become the first stitch of 169.  (When you reach the end of round 168, move the last stitch to the beginning of the next round before starting the chart.)

I'm still looking at the charts to see how I want to handle the discrepancy once I move to the 12 PR/rnd chart.  It becomes more of an issue when a leaf closes up and the double-decrease of the leaf tip needs to merge into the hex mesh.  Plus there's still the extra-or-missing? issue of the asymmetric yarnover placement in round 173.

Hobbit Shawl (F&F Comfort Shawl travel project)

I'm on the last ball of yarn.  This has been going much faster than I expected!  I still like the shawl.  It seems like it'll be an OK size after blocking.

It's turned out to not actually be a great travel project because I can't keep track of things when I'm in meetings and stuff.  I need to be able to count every now and then!  Plus knowing if I'm on the right or wrong side of the shawl also turns out to be important.

I might make another of these after this one is done, using some other batch of yarn.  It's a good pattern for yarn with a longish variegation and/or lots of small batches of this and that.

Appledore Gansey

This seems to be going pretty well at the moment.  My gauge does seem to be 4 st/in in stockinette, whew.  I'm on the second skein of handspun.  I seem to have chosen the largest skein after the smallest, but that doesn't matter.

At this point in the sweater, it's actually a better travel project than the Hobbit Shawl.  I have to re-measure the intended recipient so I know when to begin the underarm gusset but there's a fair amount of knitting to do before I get close to the underarm.

I like how it looks so far.

Etc.

I'll be traveling a bit in the next few weeks, possibly including a bit of camping.  I think I'll bring some Red Heart acrylic and #7 needles and make k1p1 hats for charity.  That's if I do anything, of course -- I feel more comfortable having a project with me even if I never touch it.

I don't remember what else I'm thinking about starting -- just the usual cloud of "maybe I should do X!" that follows me around much of the time.

Doily Pic!  (Erich Engeln #60E)

It's been a while since I've included a doily pic.

This is a pattern by Erich Engeln, #60E, i.e., the E pattern in pamphlet 60.  It's small but cute, though I say that about almost any doily I knit.  It has 30 rounds.  Apparently there are a few design quirks, but I didn't write down what, if anything, they were.  Clearly it could stand to be re-blocked, assuming I still have it around and haven't given it away.

I knit this many years ago, probably in the first several years I was knitting doilies.  I think it might have been the first Erich Engeln pattern I knowingly knit.  Maybe that's why I noted the design quirks -- his designs and charting styles are distinctive, possibly in a way I had not previously encountered.

A group of us on one of the old lace mailing lists did a group order from the person who had the rights to sell copies of Erich Engeln's patterns.  We bought a complete set of the pamphlets, all photocopied but still quite legal.  I think there were close to 100 pamphlets -- tons of lovely designs to knit, all in Erich Engeln's distinctive charting style.  This doily is one of those designs.

Doing an international group order like we did is the Doily Underground in action.

Yet another interim/progress report

First project on the Tia rigid heddle loom

I still haven't taken my first rigid heddle weaving project off of the loom.

Soon.  I'm pretty sure I'll hemstitch it, simply because I've not done that before.  So hopefully there will be more information about how this project turned out by the end of the month.

As you can see from the photo, one of my weaving assistants has taken an interest in my project.

Lavori 07/30 doily

I'm still playing around with the charting.

However, I'm getting tired of the dithering.  I think most of it will work as charted, with the extra motif in the middle, for several more rounds.  (By "as charted", I mean by following the chart but using the second area of hex mesh as a guide for doing the first area, too.)

I want to be knitting on this.  So I will slowly start up again and continue looking at charting possibilities until round 173 or so.  Round 173 has an issue with either a missing or an extra yarnover just outside of the hex mesh area; I believe it to be a missing yarnover but will confirm when I get there.  Sometime in the next several rounds after that will be time for me to have a reasonable adaptation in place to help the hex mesh area look good as it works its way to a proper end.  The last few rounds of the doily use a stacked column of (yo, SK2P, yo) in that spot, but I can probably mess around with exactly which round that will start on.

Hobbit Travel Shawl  (feather and fan comfort shawl)

This is zipping along.  I'm on the second go-through of the general pattern repeat, with 5 sets of motifs per side.  The third ball of yarn is mostly gone, and fairly soon I will start on the fourth and final ball of yarn.  I still like how it looks.  The shawl will be on the small side, as expected, but should be pretty reasonable after blocking.

I'd better start thinking about the next travel project.

Appledore-ish Gansey

I'm on the next iteration (or gauge swatch) of this sweater.  I've switched to a big batch of forest green handspun.  I started with 160 stitches but soon decided that this would be too big.  I cast on again with 144 stitches and so far, so good.  I did 16 rounds of k1p1 ribbing and then switched to stockinette, with one purl stitch along each side seam.  I've knit until the end of the first skein of yarn.  The first skein is the smallest of this batch of handspun, probably in the 90-95 yard range.

It's still a gauge swatch rather than a committed project.  It's possible I will unravel it yet again and start over on even fewer stitches, especially if I make it for someone else who has expressed interest in it (as opposed to making it for myself).  Soon there will be enough stitches that are far enough away from the needle and the ribbing to get an accurate gauge, I hope.  It's going to be close to 4 st/in, but I'm not sure exactly how close.

I do like the fabric I'm getting.  So I'll stay with this yarn/needle combo even if I re-start on a different number of stitches.  If I do need to restart, hopefully it'll be the last time I need to do that for this sweater.

I cast on using a 3mm needle because it was a really long needle and I wanted to make it easier to not twist when I joined!  Also, I wanted to make sure the cast on was relatively loose and relaxed to maintain the elasticity of the lower edge.  I used a crochet cast-on, then started immediately in rib as I knit back across the cast-on, and then joined.  After a round or two, I switched to the 2.5mm needle for the rest of the ribbing, then returned to the 3mm (a shorter needle) for the body.  I decided to keep the same number of stitches for the ribbing and body because I'm lazy and didn't feel like increasing.

The yarn is from the "Castle Rock haul" of roving bumps.  I was in a yarn store many years ago that had a table where people could bring in stuff they wanted to sell.  The table had a lot of bumps of what I think was some kind of Brown Sheep roving dyed into various colors, all at a really good price.  I bought several bumps in different colors, which was only a small fraction of what was there.  It's all been spun up and/or given away by now.  Most of the bumps spun really consistently into a 2-ply Aran-ish weight.  There are some thick-and-thin areas and a few of them ended up a bit slubby, but all of the batches (of the ones that were the same thing even though they were different colors) run approximately the same average thickness.  Several batches have already been knit into various projects, mostly the smaller batches.  One smallish batch is destined to be an area rug or bag or maybe a small weaving project since it's fairly scratchy.  Most of the rest of the remaining batches are enough for sweaters or other large projects.

A true gansey is knit from something that is a lot closer to sock-weight yarn, often at 7-9 stitches per inch.  That's why this is gansey-ish rather than the true historic ethnic style.

General Dithering

I've not really worked on any other fiber pursuits since the last post, I don't think.

I'm thinking about a next weaving project but only vaguely so far.  I haven't started a new tablet-weaving project, nor sprang, nor braiding, nor inkle.  Netting is starting to intrigue me -- the kind used to make fishnets and hammocks and stretchy bags, not the fine needlework version used for hairnets -- but I'm not sure if/when I'll teach myself how to do it.  Chances are I would write about most of these on my narrow wares blog rather than on this blog.

I should start a charity hat because it's that time of year.  I'm thinking of making another cabled hat or some mittens (or fingerless mitts) from small batches of yarn, whether commercial or handspun.  I'd add cowls to that list, but cowls have been irritating my neck lately so I've been using polarfleece against my skin rather than good honest wool and alpaca, alas.  I should also think about what I feel like spinning next, and whether I want to go to Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival this year (and what my money-and-storage-space budget might be).

And that's it for this post!  Hopefully I'll have the weaving project done by the next post, and ditto for starting to make progress again on the doily, and also making progress on the sweater as it goes from a gauge swatch to an actual planned sweater.  A lot of my fiber-related activities are like that -- things in progress at various stages of completion from idea through the process of planning and then execution all the way through to the final finished project.  Luckily, there's no rush for most of these.

A second weaving post and other progress reports

Weaving on the Tia rigid heddle loom

I've slowly been weaving and have finally reached the end of my first warp on the Tia rigid heddle loom.

It's been sitting until I get ambitious/brave enough to finish the ends and cut it off the loom.  Knots?  Braids?  Twisted cord?  Hemstitching?  There are more options but I want to keep things relatively simple.

Then I can soak it and all that other post-finishing treatment and see what it really looks like.  It's possible that the red will bleed into the white, but I don't care if the white goes a little pinkish.

The above pic is a closeup of what the weaving looks like.  It's not too bad for a beginner.

The selvedges aren't too terrible, either.  I did a lot of experimenting as I wove -- how tight to pull the yarn, what angle to leave the weft at before beating, that kind of thing.  Once I get things figured out, it'll be more about practicing to build consistency.

It's relatively balanced, especially considering that the weft is thinner than the warp.  Where it's not balanced, it's slightly warp-faced.

I have no idea what I'll do with the piece of cloth.  Maybe a bag?

I also don't know what (or when!) my next weaving project will be.

Appledore-ish gansey project

I did a bit of swatching for the Appledore-inspired sweater I'd like to make, and then today I cast on!  I chose my fuzzy gray handspun yarn on 2.5 and 3mm needles, which seems to be knitting up at a fairly shocking 4 st/in because it gets splitty if I use finer needles.  Or maybe the fuzz makes the yarn want to knit up at that gauge.  Or it's this particular skein and other skeins are finer.

Anyway, it did not go well.

First, I miscounted the number of cast-on stitches and had to re-do part of the cast-on.

Then, I joined and wasn't sufficiently careful not to twist.  Yep, twisted.

So I went back a ways and then rejoined.

Twisted again!  Argh.

My third attempt succeeded in not being twisted.  But after a few rounds, I noticed a section of about 10-20 stitches where the rib was offset.  Although I can usually fix those pretty easily, there were a few rounds that would need to be fixed, with some risk of unraveling all the way down into the cast-on.  And I wasn't willing to live with it.

I give up.

I took it all out.  I will choose a different yarn and see if that works any better.  As before, the first step is to swatch.  I expect about 4 st/in for the batch of handspun I'm going to try next -- it's somewhere in the worsted-Aran-bulky continuum.

Feather and Fan Hobbit Shawl (aka F&F Travel Shawl)

I'm on the third (of 4) skeins of yarn, as of the middle of row 95.  This project may not last long enough to be a proper travel project!  That's OK -- it's still a nice shawl (though on the small side) and it gets 200g of yarn out of my stash.

The name of the colorway is Middle Earth, and thus I'm mentally calling this the Hobbit Shawl.

Lavori 07/30

I'm playing with charts to see what the problematic area of hex mesh will need to do in order to behave in a relatively orderly manner for the rest of the pattern.  The doily is sitting at round 164, as charted, while I figure things out.  I'll be fine for rounds 165, 167, and 169 if I follow the chart for the second rep of the hex mesh (i.e. mentally adding a hex mesh motif for the first part of the chart).

But then things get weird in round 173.  The hex mesh has to absorb the leaf tips while staying more or less in pattern.  Also, one side of the hex mesh in round 173 has a yarnover between the hex mesh and the next left, and the other doesn't.  One of those is wrong, independent of what I end up doing to accommodate the extra hex mesh motif.

I'm sure some people could fix this on the fly.  Not me, though.  And my confidence was shaken by my carelessness in my first attempt, where I overlooked a critical detail.  I'm charting more carefully now.  And hopefully I'll have the sense to test my fix before committing to the many many stitches per round of the actual doily.

I want to start knitting on it again, though!  I'm starting to get close to the end!  Well, at least in number of rounds left to go.

100 posts

Hmm, blogger says that this is post 101 for this blog.  At least one of them is a draft that never saw the light of day, so I guess this is really post 100, or if not, then close to it.  Yay, me!

I don't really have much to say about it.  This blog started as a way to write about doilies and share pics.  Then it morphed into a general knitting and spinning blog, though again kind of geared towards an audience.  I was a very minor player in the greater doily-knitting and lace-knitting blog ecosystem.

Then the blog went dead for a decade.

Now I'm back.  I'm posting again.  This is still a general knitting/spinning/yarn-fun blog, though I'm trying to make sure there is regular or at least semi-regular doily content.  I've been knitting doilies for all those years even if I wasn't blogging about them, after all!  But it's more of a journal for my own use rather than something aimed outwards.

I'm writing more about day-to-day progress.  More ruminations that are kind of clueless as I stumble along towards enlightenment.  More about plans and ideas and anything else that enters my mind.  I'm trying to include more pics even though I still suck as a photographer.

Any readers I once had are long gone, probably.  Blogs are a thing of the past, a very minor waypoint in the vast social media universe.  Even mailing lists, another formerly active environment for inspiring fiber-related content, are tiny compared to their former glories.  So maybe it is a good time to quietly creep back in, with no further ambition than having a place to write boring prose about knitting, spinning, dyeing, and now weaving, for as long as I feel the urge to do so.

We'll see if I make it to 200 posts and if I can do it without another decade-long hiatus.

First baby steps in weaving

My first weaving project on the Tia rigid heddle loom

The Tia loom is warped and I'm weaving.  Yikes!

The above pic is the loom with the warp wound on the back.  The loops from the direct warping haven't yet been cut, meaning that the yarn is doubled in the slits but nothing is in the holes.

The above pic shows the warp fully sleyed through the heddle and tied onto the front.  I didn't bother with a surgeon's knot, just a plain bow knot of the sort used to tie shoes.  I did 8 threads per bundle since that's about an inch.  The last bits of that skein of Sugar n Cream were just sitting there, so I ran it through the base of the warp to help start spreading things out more evenly, and also to double-check that things were more or less doing what they ought to in terms of what threads were where, did the heddle do anything useful, was the tension more or less OK, and stuff like that.

And here's the first bits of weaving I've done as well as the first weaving I've done on this loom.  The angle of the pic is funny so not all the details are visible or the perspective is weird, that sort of thing.

The red cotton is a little thinner than the white.  So although the weave looks balanced and seems to be pretty close to balanced when I measure the picks per inch, when I look more closely it's slightly warp-faced.  Every now and then I don't quite pack it evenly, so there will be a little stripe of white or red.  Eh, I don't care.  I'll see how it looks when off the loom and finished.  It seems awfully gauzy for now, but I'm under the impression that's kind of normal.

It's taking a few inches for me to figure out how tight to keep things so the selvedges look OK, not too loose and not too tight.  In spite of that, the edges are really surprisingly straight, not pulling in or anything.  I'm sure they aren't professional grade or anything, but for beginner edges, they're not too bad.

In the first few picks, I sometimes improperly skipped over or under a warp thread.  Hopefully I can keep better track of this so I can fix problems quickly.  For the very beginning of the cloth, where the warp is still finding its happy spacing, I don't really care.

It looks a bit different depending on the angle -- more red or more white, depending.

I'm not sure how tight a tension this loom will hold.  But it seems OK.  It's not uber-tight tension but the warp doesn't seem to be loosening as I weave or anything.

Yay.  I'll keep weaving and will no doubt learn more things as I continue with this first project.

----------------------

Sweater project

I was swatching for the upcoming sweater today.  Last time I knit with the fuzzy gray handspun, I got 4.5 st/in on 3.25mm needles.  Today, I'm getting 4 st/in on 3mm needles.  Sigh.  The fabric seems fine, not too loose nor uber-stiff.  If I go down too much more in needle size, the stitches all start splitting and being difficult.  Also, I need to have enough different needle lengths for both the sweater body and the ribbing.

So.  Maybe this particular ball is a little thicker than some of the others, and the real gauge over several skeins of yarn ends up averaging about 4.5 st/in.  Or the fuzzy yarn fills in the spaces, the way mohair does, and it's really effectively closer to worsted weight yarn.  Or I'm just knitting more loosely these days.  Or I'm using a different tape measure that doesn't match the tape measure I used earlier, and my gauge is really the same.

Also, gauge swatches always lie.  Maybe they don't for some people, but I don't have a good track record of getting them to match the garment gauge even though I don't think I'm doing anything different when I make the gauge swatch.

I'll probably cast on a likely number of stitches and get started.  The lower part of the sweater will be my gauge swatch.  I'm not bothered by knitting and then unraveling a few thousand stitches if I don't like how it's going.  Depending on the real gauge vs the swatch gauge, I can do some discreet increases or decreases.  Or I can make this for someone else -- I know a few people who'd be delighted to have one of my handknit sweaters.

Lavori 07/30

It's time to test my potential chart fix.  I want to be making progress on this doily!

F&F Travel Shawl

Growing nicely.  I'm on the second ball of yarn, and doing 3 sets of feather and fan on each half of the shawl.  It is still a very reasonable combination of yarn, pattern, needle size, etc.

Spinning

Nothing new has been started yet.

Thinking out loud and counting stitches (Lavori 07/30)

Lavori 07/30 doily progress/discussion

I'm finally playing around with the chart for Lavori 07/30, to figure out what needs to happen in the area with hex mesh, to get from the stitch count of round 163 to the stitch count of round 171.

As discussed in the last post, the chart as written does not work.  The first rep of round 165 is consistent with the stitches needed by round 171, but is not consistent with the existing number of stitches from round 163.  The second rep of round 165 is the opposite -- it is consistent with the stitches of round 163 but not consistent with what I'll need in round 171.  The second charted section has one extra repeat of hex mesh compared to the first charted section.

Both of them need to be the same at this point since the chart already unofficially has 12 pattern repeats per round (2 repeats charted, in the current 6PR/rnd chart) and will officially transition to a chart that is explicitly a 12 PR/rnd chart on round 171.

So I'm counting beginning and ending stitches for that section of rounds 163, 165, 167, 169, and 171.  I've knit through round 164, but can do some small stitch adjustments and/or will take out as many rounds as I need to in order to make it work.  Yes, all 800+ stitches per round, bleh.

One thing I've noticed from the magazine photos (the cover and page 17) is that the stitches there are very distorted at this point.  The outer fans will soon start, the leaf motifs will separate into two (surrounding the fans), and the hex mesh will continue to decrease at both edges.  The stacked increases and decreases distort the fabric in ways that mostly enhance the overall aesthetics of the design.  They exist whether or not they're aesthetic, of course.

Anyway, this distortion is happening right where the hex mesh is.  Which means that any fix I do doesn't need to be perfect.  It won't be all that obvious given all the other stuff going on at the moment.

The above photo from page 17 shows the approximate area (circled in red).

And the above shows the photo from the front cover.  It's kind of hard for me to see exactly how many repeats of hex mesh there are and whether all of the holes are single or double yarnovers and whether edge decreases are single or double decreases.  It's also not at all clear to me what the test knitters did to make the pattern work.  Whatever they decided didn't end up in the published charts, apparently!

I'm sure there are people who could look at the photos and see what was going on, but I'm not one of them.  Not yet.  I do know that doily charts can have a lot of weirdness that is not very noticeable, especially after the doily is finished and blocked, and that's even in areas where the fabric is not distorted.

By round 171 -- the section of hex mesh starts with 14 stitches.  (I don't care how it ends because that's not my current problem)

Round 169 (using the first chart, since it's where I need to be for round 171 to work) -- it ends with 14 stiches, check.  It starts with 18.

Round 167 -- It ends with 18 stitches.  It starts with 22.

Round 165, which is where I am now.  The first section ends with 22 stitches.  It starts with 24.

Round 163 ends with 28.  So I have to do something to get to 14 stitches by round 171, and preferably 22 stitches by the time I start round 167.  I essentially need to make one more repeat of hex mesh (4 stitches) go away in a visually unobtrusive way over the next few rounds.

So.  Round 163 starts and ends with a double decrease and 2 yarnovers.  If I drop one yarnover at each end (which I can do easily, since the slightly loose stitch in round 164 will disappear when being blocked), then I'm down to 26 stitches.  (This changes the edge stitches to a single yarnover and a double decrease.)

For round 165, we now have 26 stitches to start the round.  The edge stitches for the hex mesh in round 165 are charted as / \ o o / ... \ o o / \.  After dumping one of the yarnovers from round 163, it's easy to change the / \ to a double decrease.

However, if I merely change the last couple of stitches to a double decrease, I only get to 24 stitches by the end of the round.  I'd like to get all the way to 22 if possible since there isn't a lot of wiggle room in the next few rounds.

If I change the last few stitches of round 165 to a double decrease and 1 yarnover (as I'm doing for round 163), that should get me down to 22 for round 167.  And then we're good.

I will probably check this out with a mini-swatch to make sure the numbers work and nothing looks too obviously stupid.  I don't know if there was a better way to have done it starting in some earlier round, but I'm obviously working under the constraint of not wanting to take out and re-chart and re-do thousands of stitches.

F&F Shawl -- making progress!  I'm on the second of four skeins of yarn, starting at around row 66 or 67 or so.  This means the shawl will be roughly 130-ish rounds before binding off.  I still like how the variegation is interacting with the pattern.  Unless things change, I'm committed to the project, yay!

Sweater -- still in the planning stages, but I'm inching closer.  Current plan is Appledore-ish gansey with fuzzy gray handspun.  Simple seed or moss or betty martin stitch should show up OK even without really sharp stitch definition.  I last knit it at 4.5 st/in, but might do a swatch on smaller needles to see if I can easily get it tighter and if I can, if I like the fabric of the tighter gauge.  If I have less of this yarn thank I think I have, I can do 3/4 or shorter sleeves.

Rigid Heddle Loom Weaving

I've decided that I'll use this blog for weaving posts since weaving uses yarn in similar ways and similar quantities to how knitting uses it.  And also because weaving might be a good way to use bits and bobs of handspun that are too small or ugly or rough to use for the kinds of projects I usually knit.  If I end up doing a lot of weaving or acquire and start using a bigger loom, then I'll probably just start up a new blog devoted to weaving.

I have stopped circling the newly-acquired vintage rigid heddle loom and started working with it.  This will be my first-ever real-loom project.  I don't count tablet or inkle weaving since those, in my brain, are narrow wares rather than real weaving.  I also don't count the small amount of backstrap weaving I've done with either small rigid heddles or string heddles since those projects are closer to narrow wares than a piece of cloth.

When I picked up the latest rescue wheel, the person asked if I also wanted a similar-vintage rigid heddle loom, too.  I said "sure!" since, well, fiber-equipment rescue means that I say yes to just about any working piece of equipment that fits in my very strict budget (and my car).

The pic below is the loom as I received it.  It's a Northfield Tia Rigid Heddle Loom from the mid-1970s.  It has a 20-inch weaving width (about 22 inches overall) and an 8-dent heddle.  The sides are plastic.

There's also a rod that came with the loom, notched every 1/2".  I have no idea what this is since it didn't come with the original loom (as I can tell from looking at internet photos of etsy and ebay sales of the loom in its box).  So it's either from some other loom or weaving equipment entirely, or it was used for some random purpose that isn't obvious.  I'm tentatively planning on using it as a stick to hold a string heddle if I want to do any fancy weaving.

None of the original shuttles were still with the loom, but the person from whom I got it threw in a couple of extra stick shuttles that were lying around.  Good enough for now!

Dang, weaving has lots of jargon.  And dang, I know and understand a lot more of it than I did a few years ago.  I'm probably still moderately incorrect at times.

As you can see, there's a project already on the loom, a very weft-faced fabric that uses every slot and hole in the heddle.  Many of the warp threads are snapped.

I need to get a new photo of what things look like now.

The old project is off the loom.  Cut cut cut unroll untie discard etc.  The loom has been dusted and wiped down with a damp paper towel to get off old spiderwebs and bugs.

And I've warped for my first project.

Most of the stuff I've read says that an 8-dent reed/heddle is suitable for worsted weight yarn.  I found a skein of Sugar n Cream in my oddballs stash so that's what I'm using.  (I found another worsted-weight cotton to use for weft.)

I decided to start with half the width (slots 20-60-ish, or 80 ends) and about 2 yards-ish for warp length.  Good thing I didn't try for anything wider -- that's as far as the warp skein went!  There's only a few yards left, not even enough to have gone for 82 ends.

I did a direct warp, mostly because I've not done one before.

The warp is wound onto the back beam, with leftover one-sided scrap used between layers of warp.  (One-sided scrap is what we call 8.5" x 11" copy paper that is in the recycle bin.)  I had some help with this -- someone held the warp at a gentle tension while I wound it on.

Next up will be cutting the front of the warp and moving half the threads from the slots to the holes.  Sley away!

I'm sure the first project will suck in all the usual beginner ways.  Eh, I don't care.  We all start at white belt.  In other words, you can't get better without starting where you are.  As with my first sprang project, my first tablet-weaving, my first doily -- they might not be terribly complex nor expertly executed, but I'll still be thrilled.  And hopefully I'll keep practicing until I become competent.

If the first piece doesn't suck too badly, I might try to turn it into a bag or some other semi-useful item.  Otherwise, I'll throw it into the sampler/prototype box.

Hopefully I'll remember to take more pics as I finish the warping process and start weaving.  At some point, I'll write more about the rescue wheel, too.