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.

Lavori 07/30 regress report

I think I'm probably gonna back out my changes to round 163 and 165.  I'll follow the second charted rep for rounds 165/167/169.  Round 171 will have one extra hex mesh motif.  I'll keep following the same decrease pattern and do my kludging at the end.

This means I'll have a few more stitches than charted for some of those rounds.  Dunno if that'll do anything to the way the blocked doily is distorted in that area.

Why I'm doing it -- I'd like a clean finish to this area of hex mesh.  I'd like the edge decreases to be symmetric and consistently angled (though a consistent rate of decreases isn't going to be all that noticeable).  I'd like to finish the hex mesh area with a single motif of k2t-yox2-skp rather than yo-skp-k2t-yo.  Also, I believe (hopefully correctly) that it might be easier to adjust in the area where the hex mesh transitions of a column of yo-sk2p-yo.

So.  This is the problem:  In round 163, there are 7 reps of the hex mesh motif.  The decrease pattern supports the typical thing of reducing one hex mesh motif per pattern round, alternating k2t-yox2-skp with yo-skp-k2t-yo.

As charted, this does not work.  I can make the stitch count work (which I did with my original changes).  But then I'm offset on the hex mesh.  That cascades upward.

The symmetry means that I should be going from 7 reps, 6, 5, 4, etc., with the odd numbers being k2t-yox2-skp and the evens being yo-skp-k2t-yo.  Round 171 compared to round 163 means that one of these is missing, that I go 7, 5, 4, 3, etc., with 6 being missing.

So I'm going to go back.  I'll have one more hex mesh motif than charted in 171.  But hopefully I can at that point continue to decrease in pattern, so that I end up with a final section of k2t-yox2-skp before the final double-decreases that close the section.  I might have to be a little bit creative with edge decreases and how they merge with the leaf tip closures, too.  I also see a few symmetry inconsistencies that will probably turn out to be chart typos in addition to all of that.

I might be cussing at myself by the time I reach round 180 or so, but I'm already cussing at myself at round 167.

If I go back to round 164 (and re-pick up the second yarnover at the edges of the hex mesh sections), then this is a doily regress report.  If I do the smart thing and test out a few ideas in actual needle and yarn before committing to anything, then this is a doily hiatus report.

In other yarn news, the travel shawl project is almost at the end of the second skein of yarn.  It's not going to be a very large shawl, apparently.  Oh, well.  I'll block it a bit bigger and it'll be more of a shawlette than an encompassing giant shawl like the alpaca one I finished a while back.

My weaving is going reasonably well, too.  I'm gradually getting more consistent and a bit faster.

On arrogance (aka pride goeth before a fall)

I put my fix in place for the Lavori 07/30 doily -- dropping the double-yarnover from round 163, and turning the edge stitches in round 165 also into the double decrease with one yarnover.

The number of stitches matches up for what I need for round 167.  (I'll have to move the last stitch of 166 to the beginning of 167, but that's something that the chart didn't note, either, when it disappears from the end of the chart before beginning 169.)

However, even though I have the right number of stitches, I don't think it's set up properly for the hex mesh pattern.

Ugh.  I really should have done a little knitted sample to make sure it would work.  Why didn't I even notice this earlier while I was charting things out on graph paper?

I guess I'll probably continue kludging my way upward in the pattern until I can get it to align properly.  Round 173 is the point where it would be nice to have it match if I can't get it there by round 171.

Part of the problem is how the hex mesh is aligned on each row and how many reps there are (kind of an even/odd/symmetry thing).

I had felt very smug, and now I feel like an idiot.  Not the first time, and no doubt not the last.  But it's still kind of humbling each time it happens.

Now to figure out what to do for round 167, and its effects on round 169 and then 171.  Harumph.  I'll take out rounds of knitting if I have to, as far back as necessary, but only if it helps.  I'd rather kludge my way forward if possible.

Maybe this is part of why some Niebling patterns are really strange in their hex mesh edge effects.

Ah, well.  I'll try to remain humble.  No doubt this doily will provide more lessons to remind me.

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.