A finished item! (the crocheted charity baby blanket)

Ooh, a post for May!  And it's an actual blog-related accomplishment!

The baby blanket I've been working on for a while is finished.  I handed it over before measuring the amount of yarn I used, but at least I got a photo!

It took a while to decide on an edging.  I ended up doing two single crochets in each gap all the way around, and then did a round of reverse crab stitch (putting the hook between the single crochets of the previous round because I'm lazy that way).

It still slightly ruffles, but it's better than some of my other attempts at a border, which either ruffled or pulled in or both (ruffle on the sides, pull in on the ends, or vice versa).

It's small, probably less than 30" square, but reasonable enough.  And it's pretty cute.

I like the variegation combined with the texture and the slight bling of the mylar.  Hopefully the recipient will like it, too.

I could have taken more yarn for another baby blanket, but I took some darker blue acrylic instead and will knit another hat or two for either this charity or a different charity.  Then maybe I'll do another crocheted baby blanket.

(The blanket is going to a local organization that works with women and children.)

My pink shawl is continuing to make progress, yay!

My green sweater is not, boohoo!

And I haven't yet started another project in any of the crafts that I write about on this blog.

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I did get together with friends last week to mordant some wool for an upcoming natural dye day.  We just did alum plus cream of tartar.

Since we all had different backgrounds in dyeing, we all had some different experiences with quantities.  How much alum and cream of tartar does one need?  What is the actual procedure for mordanting?  If you want to refresh a mordant solution to mordant additional goods, how much do you need to add to refresh?  Which alum, in particular, since different chemicals in the same family may share the name "alum" when we go to buy them?

It turns out that there are many answers to these questions.

Which means that it's a pretty forgiving process.

And I guess we'll see what happens when we do Round 2 -- Dye Day!

The longer answer is that every good dyeing book and reputable website (reputable meaning that they sell dyes and mordants and aren't just AI hallucinations or twee misinformation from people without much experience) has a slightly different method with slightly different percentages and what-not.

Anywhere from about 5-20% WOF is suggested for alum, with many clustering around 15%, and with several sources warning that too much (i.e. over about 20%) will mess up the wool.  The percentages weren't significantly different for the different types of alum that are commonly found through natural dyeing supply shops.

Cream of tartar is used to acidify the bath and reduce chances of stickiness and is usually suggested at around 5-6% WOF (and often said not to be necessary or desirable for mordanting silk).

Refresh amounts range from one-quarter to one-half for the alum, with no refresh needed for the cream of tartar, and some also suggested using a hydrometer to calculate appropriately.  Some said to discard the bath if it got cloudy or had precipitates in it, while others said it made no difference.

Time and temperature were all over the place, though all agreed that keeping the bath at a simmer or below was preferable.  Some suggested that the goods should simmer for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and then cool in the mordanting bath overnight, while others didn't seem to care.  Some people had good luck with room-temperature mordanting (a cold soak of several days to a month) while others didn't.

I have heard that the post-mordanting treatment can affect the results, too.  Do you dye right away?  Keep the skeins damp (but not moldy)?  Let them dry and store them?  Put them in the refrigerator or freezer?  I have no idea what effect, if any, these variables would have on the dyeing.  We won't be dyeing for at least another week, so we know these particular skeins will be stored for a while before getting dyed.  I don't think we have enough dyestuffs to require us mordanting up anything more for this round.  And I don't recall anything weird from former dye days where we mordanted in one pot, pulled the skeins out of the mordanting bath, and then dropped them into the dyebath.  So who knows?

I am not a professional dyer and don't care if I have a fully repeatable process or get any specific colors.  As long as I end up with interesting and colorful yarn (or cloth or roving) at the end, I'm fine.

More of the same

I'm still working on the same things as last month.  Progress?  Yes, some.  But not sufficiently different to provide photos.

The center of my crocheted baby blanket is finished.  Now on to the edging!  Two dcs in each hole (starting along one side) doesn't have the right tension.  I'll try 3, and if that is too much, then I'll alternate 2 and 3.

The pink Miami Vice shawl is making progress, too.  I'm still in the last section of lace.  Once I've done all eleven repeats, I'll decide whether to grow the shawl a bit more or to bind off, and also how I want to bind off.

The sweater sits, alas, taunting me.

And no new doilies are on the needles!  Nor any other knitting!  Nor anything on the rigid heddle loom, nor a spinning wheel.

It's been a hard winter, for many reasons, and that has spilled into spring.  Hopefully things will settle down enough that I can be productive again soon.

Time for another progress report!

 I haven't posted since last month, yikes!

Knitting and what-not is still happening, though I've been very busy with things unrelated to having fun with fiber.

I haven't started any new doilies yet.

My travel shawl is still growing.  I'm on the second (and final) ball of yarn.

I'm not sure how much of it will get used as I finish up the actual pattern.  Then, once the pattern (as written) is finished, and if there is yarn left, I'll need to decide what to do.

I could grow the pattern a bit more -- add another band or two in the same style.

I could add a sideways-knit lace border.

Or, if there's enough yarn left, call it good, and then make a pair of socks or fingerless mitts.

I have no idea how large the shawl will be once it's blocked.  It's kind of a weird little shoulder-sized poncho thing at the moment.

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My sweater has had close to zero progress since the last time I wrote about it.  Hopefully I'll return to it soon since I'd like to get it done.

No pics, because what's the point?

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I have started a new project, though!  It's a crocheted baby blanket.  A friend of mine ended up with a stash of acrylic baby yarn, and asked all of us if we'd like to take some yarn to make baby blankets.  The blankets are destined for a local shelter that serves women with children.

I'm holding two yarns together.  One is something like Woolease, mostly acrylic with a bit of wool, in white with a bit of mylar.  I can't resist the sparkles.  The other is some skinny boucle-ish thing in shades of green and yellow.

I'm doing a very simple pattern.  Chain a likely number of stitches.  Then, all rows are dc, ch1, with the dc going into the space of the ch1 of the previous row.  Once the blanket is roughly square, I'll probably do a round or two of dc for the edging, estimating how many dcs will be needed so that nothing ruffles or binds, and then maybe a round of crab stitch to finish off.  If I'm feeling it, I'll switch to a different yarn for the edging -- that same boucle yarn but in yellow rather than green-and-yellow.

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I went to the first local fiber fair of the season this month.  I hadn't intended to buy anything, but, well, 4 ounces of a pretty gray Romeldale roving followed me home.  It's a blend from several different sheep, white and dark, which overall reads as a medium gray.

I guess I'll need to drag out a spinning wheel and do some spinning in order to keep my fiber stash at steady state or better!

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So there's my relatively meager progress report for the past month or so.

Lavori 07/15

 Lavori 07/15 is finished!

This is an 80 round doily (plus crochet cast-off), 8 pattern repeats per round (and 16 PR/rnd in the outer rounds).  The chart is NOT error free.

Chart Errors:

Round 51:  Towards the end of the repeat, there is a | symbol that should be a double-decrease instead.  It's fairly obvious.

Rounds 57-59 end up having an issue, but it's easily fixed.  Instead of what's charted, do the following:

Round 57: (yo, k1b, yo, k3) all the way across.  (This is how it's charted, but the chart omits one repeat, which ends up affecting how to chart round 59)

Round 59: (sk2p, yo) all the way across  (you could do yo, sk2p instead of sk2p, yo, though that'll affect the next error fix)

And somewhere before round 65:  K 6 more stitches at the end of the round before beginning the next round, so that the first stitch of round 65 is directly over the sk2p of round 59.

This was a reasonably fun doily to knit, though it had way more stitches than seemed necessary by the end.  Perhaps it would have been better doing this with either 6 or 7 pattern repeats per round instead of 8.  Dunno if that would have worked well enough, though, since the number of stitches in the early rounds is just about right.  It's the later rounds where things go wild.

I think it is probably a Herbert Niebling pattern, and if not, then it's a design by someone who used motifs that are characteristically Niebling-esque.  Whatever.  It's a cute doily no matter who the designer was.

The thread was from the thrift store vintage stash.  It was 300 yards of something that seemed like it was roughly #30 in weight.  I ran out in the middle of round 79.  Luckily, the leftovers stash yielded some DMC Cebelia that was sufficiently similar, whew.

Hmm, what doily shall I tackle next?  There are a few more small doilies in Lavori 7 that could be quick to knock out.  There's the old French language non-charted text-only doily I've mentioned before, clearly a Niebling design, that could be interesting to puzzle out.  I could pick another big pattern, or do some designs by Erich Engeln or Christine Duchrow or Marianne Kinzel or one of the other greats.  I guess I'll see what appeals, and also what thread I feel like using.

Other than finishing Lavori 07/15, I've been slowly working on my Miami Vice shawl and my Appledore gansey.  There's not enough progress to be worth sharing.  I've mostly been busy with other things.

A new year, a new doily (and a new post!)

This is another doily in Lavori 7.  This one is Figure 15 Sottovaso.  It has 80 rounds and, as you can see, 8 pattern repeats per round with 16 pattern repeats per round in the outer part of the doily.

It is very silly looking.  So I decided I wanted to make it.

It might be a Niebling pattern, given those outer sets of fans, and also given the silly stuff that happens early on in the doily.

The early doily has several rounds of twisted stitches, which isn't all that unusual, I suppose.  I twisted them in the intermediate rounds since it helps define the columns so well.  And then the columns of twisted stitches turn into columns of crossed stitches.  That (complicated stuff early in the doily, including crossed stitches) is more commonly found in Niebling designs than in patterns known to be created by other designers.  So maybe.

The outer sets of fans are the thing where two or three fan motifs are next to each other with a double yarnover between the fans, as I did in the Lavori 07/30 doily and many others.  As far as I can tell (i.e., from a quick glance), there are no rounds that begin and end with yarnovers.

I rummaged through my collection of vintage threads and found something that might be #30, and, if it's a full rather than a partial ball of thread, might have about 300 yards.  If that's not enough, I found another partial ball (I am nearly 100% sure that's it's partial) of similar-weight thread in a color that's not too different.  I don't care if the outer rounds are slightly different in color from the earlier rounds.

Yesterday was the cast-on day.  Fun fun!

As often happens, I get tired of dpns somewhere in the early slog and try to move to a circular needle a little bit too soon.  So the next few rounds were a bit annoying, as I used variations on the two-circulars and the magic-loop methods until I had enough stitches, and more importantly, enough diameter, to fit on my circular with no more fuss.

I don't always end up doing that, but really, I should know better.  But the dpns kept trying to slither out of the knitted stitches, and it was annoying doing crossed stitches and horizontal-running-thread increases and I wanted to be done with the dpns.

I don't have high hopes for this doily given it's less than well defined motifs in the pic above, but we'll see.  Once I get past the section with so many crossed stitches, the rest seems relatively straightforward and hopefully a bit quicker to knit.

Then I can ruminate on what doily project I might feel like tackling next.

My sweater is growing again -- I'm knitting the back above the armhole.  I'm still vaguely dithering about whether I want to put a couple of short rows in there somewhere.  Quite possibly.  Then I can do the front, and I'll probably do a dropped area in the middle to shape the neck area.  Then the shoulder straps!  Those will require a bit more dithering, too.  I also have to decide how many inches to knit for the front and back before the shoulder straps so that the sweater will fit well and so that the sleeves will have a reasonable number of stitches.

My travel shawl is continuing to grow, too.  Soon I'll be done with the current set of eyelets.  Then it'll be time for another round of increases.  I'm getting close to the end of the first skein of yarn.  It's a bit soon, but I'm already thinking a bit about ways to make the shawl bigger if I still have a lot of yarn left after the official pattern reaches its end.

And that's it for this post!