Knitting Keeps Me Sane

I always suspected that yarn grew on trees.
It turns out, I was right!!





You didnt really believe me, did you? :-)



(True to real Colours)


I spun up this skein today because I wanted to experiment a bit. I dont usually spin singles, but for experimenting you cant beat using only ½ of the time creating a skein. I spun this by adding in (admittedly large) tufts of coloured fiber every 1-3 yards, depending on mood and how interesting the movie was (Shakespeare in Love).

I want more, and have decided to use a bit more time on it, and so I will take this:



Add some more white (note that the colours are the exact same colours as in the brown skein) and see what I can come up with!

Here be pictures and babbling:

Feel free to request further pictures and babbling if I left something out: skrukhoene-at-hotmail-dot-com.

Lets start out with this whipe heap of wool.
Lovely, aint it? Just as lovely as the doorstep of our back door I used to take pictures on :-) (The denim thing is the lower part of a jeans leg I cut off and made into a knitting bag. Me loves it.)



For your wieving pleasure, I knit a non-pattern (purl) round and am here a stitch and a YO before my TWO corner stitches - you need two corner stitches for this trick from the very beginning on.



Knit the YO and knit the first corner stitch veery losely - if you pull it tight this corner will pull in which isnt desirable.

Macro:

Now, turn your work, carefully not to let any stitches slip off your needles, put the just-worked stitch over on the right-hand needle, insert your left-hand needle into the stitch BEHIND the one you just put on the right-hand needle, pull it over the first stitch, and off the right-hand needle, keeping it on the left-hand needle! Knit this stich, it now serves the same purpose as a corner stitch. YO and start your pattern round :-) The picture shows this maneuver (which sounds harder than it is) after the stitches have switched places.



When you have knitted a few stitches it should look like this:



The manipulated corner:



When I have knit that round and come to the manipulated corner from the other side, YO, k1, turn, pass 1 st. from LH needle to RH needle, pass second stitch over first one to the RH needle, knit round.

For the edging I am planning to knit those two corner stitches together, eg. treat them as one stitch to try to create the illusion that there was only ever one stitch.. :)

I hope my wording was clear and understandable :)

Have a nice day

/Lene (who wants to spin now..)

We made Felt Easter Eggs :-)

Hope the bunny brought plenty of eggs for everyone!

Em's package came today!

I wrote up a lenghty entry before Blogger ate it... sigh.

Let me recap: I got a wonderfully wrapped package from the postman today, and inside there was all kinds of wonderfull chocolate, tea, a bit of chips and a chocolate bar (?) called "Tree Musketeers". I might need to find Alexandre Dumas's book before I can start to taste it. There was Godiva chocolate and some 0% fat pringles!
There was also a wonderfull letter on a beautifull card with embossed leaves and Em's name on it. She had included 5 beautifully coloured stitch markers, two sandals in blue and three stars in red, blue and green respectively.

There was my yarn (KPPPM in turquoise with hints of blue, purple and green), LL in "Purple Club" and, the thing that made my heart beat faster when I took it out, "Cherry Tree Hill" Sock-yarn in a bargain package - a 4oz skein in a random "Earth" colour and a sock pattern from Fibertrends written for three yarn weights in a pretty mistake rib pattern. This yarn is SO rich, so many colours, so soft, I think I might have died and gone to heaven.

Have a wonderfull day

Lene

I am not just knitting on Rosebud, but almost... I did finish a "Samus" (see Knitty Archives, if you're REALLY interested ;-) sleeve, although admittedly a short one because I am knitting Samus for a friend of mine living in Taiwan, who is a short slim girl. I will visit her for a month from May 15 (day after Charming Nephew's baptism), and wanted to bring her a present.

Rosebud is coming along, though my "old friend", the fear-of-running-out-of-yarn, is slowly knocking on the door again - 39 rounds of 90 of the border, plus the edging, uh... nope, no way I'll make it with two balls of yarn.
I love how this is working out, though I am a bit uneasy about how my rows(rounds) have lenghtened themselves by 200 stitches! All this knitting with white lace yarn makes my head spin and my creativity flow... Thinking about perfect shawl shapes, about easy constructions, lace patterns, garter st. borders in the round with points made of extra-large YO's (triple, quadruple?), stoles with round edgings and triangular shawls with rounded corners... Oh the possibillities are endless.

Isnt it good wool is forgiving and that there is no end to wool supply? :-)

PS: www.wollsucht.de has new colour of the evilla (Evil?) ArtYarn, and also more of the Kauni... ooh.. EEEvil...

To knit the "Rosebud" (sorry no link, this mac powerbook G4 defeats me) you cast on 117 stitches (I chose an invisible cast-on) and knit 238 rows of a simple rosebud pattern, 22 repeats of rosebuds. Pick up 117 (119) stitches on every side and knit either in rounds and purl every second row, or knit the 4 border pieces seperately and seam them together.
I was afraid seams would pull in (I have made a pair of flat-knit booties in the shetland cobweb yarn I am using and the seam was just terrible), and knitting around 30.000 purl stitches just wasnt going to happen.

I picked up the stitches, and made sure to make 2 corner stitches in one corner. I turned around and knit a (purl) round, and when I arrived at the same point again I knit the first corner stitch veery losely, turned, transferred it to the other needle, pulled the second corner stitch over it and put it on the lefthand needle, and knit it - made my yarnover as this row was a pattern row (round) and proceeded as normal. I marked this corner with a hot pink piece of sock yarn (sockapaloooza yarn actually) to make sure I wouldnt knit right past it. Every time I come to that corner I knit the first corner stitch, turn, put the first stich back on the righthand needle , slip the other stitch over the first stitch, knit it and proceed.

Currently I am at row 31... well... The manipulated corner seems fine and pretty stretchy, and i dont (yet) regret my decision.

Have a nice day

Lene

Right now I am soaring along on Rosebud from Heirloom-Knitting.co.uk (sorry no link) which I got for free with my Heirloom Knitting book, completed the center that had been abandoned for my Rainbow Pi shawl (I am currently trying to figure out if the used patterns are in the public domain or not.. all but one seem to be, still debating the last one, so that I can publish the pattern).

I picked up stitches for the border around the center square, but I couldnt be beaten to purl every second row... nor could I bring myself to knit all the borders seperately and have ugly seams in my shawl - i used a technique I have used to tighten the first row in socks to create a no-sew no-purl border version.

When the camera powers up I will bring a picture tutorial and also link to it from the Heirloom Knitting group - because, honestly, who wants to purl roughly 25000 stitches?

I am using a MAC (ewww) thus the short post and the typos, I just cant get aquainted with the keyboard.

Have a nice day

Lene

My parents invited me over to their cottage for the easter holidays - I do not yet know how long I will stay there, but it was the reason for my non-blogging yesterday. I will try to send some text-only posts as the old computer over there does not accept the camera.

I did try to photograph the Sock-a-paloooza socks today, and got one good shot - too bad the background is not entirely desirable.



Blogger minimizes everything and fuzzes it out which is really a shame. I used a wave pattern and knit a womans med. size. The pattern I used was so mediocre I almost cant believe it.. sheesh. Good thing this pair of socks is not the first one I have knit, more like the 50'st :-)

Near my parents cottage lives a woman who has a small(ish) spinner's flock of 10 ewes with their lambs - currently around 25 animals. My mother went over there and picked up the fleece from a shep that she had also bought last year, but what a difference from the luscious sherling fleece to the even more wonderfull grey adult fleece! Three times as long, three times and beautifull and soft.
She also picked a fleece out for me - I had requested a "black" one, but sadly she only had one left, a very small one. After skirting it there are 1330 grams of it, but there was so much I'd have liked to throw out because it didnt meet my requirement of "perfection"! It will do, however, and bring me closer to "My Dream Aran" which is handspun out of black wool following either the A.R.A.N. pattern, or the Son of ARAN, but ultimately I think I might go with a large braid of honeycomb cable as the main, a few smallish cables in the sides (maybe a horseshoe cable?) and the FLAK sweater, because it has saddles... :-) I dont like horsehoe cables as the main motif. It will be black/brown (which is inevitable with sheeps wool, unless you dye it or go for Karakul or Såne, that might give you pure black.. its just that I dont like the feel of their wool). The wool I got isnt coarse at all, but I hope it will stand up to abuse - and give me the amount of wool I need.. :-)
Have a nice day
Lene

I did take Em's advice today, and took many many pictures, trying many many different positions. I found a crocus in our garden:



I tried to photograph the yarn from yesterday better:



I tried to photograph the difference between that skein and one of the others:



It doesent come out as clear as I would have wished, but loads better than yesterday for sure.

Then I tried to photograph some yarn I am currently spinning, also a laceweight single because the yarn wanted to be that way:



I tried to photograph the roving it was before I spun it up (I bought 2 batches á 100 grams):



It is called "humbug" because it is made up of different colours of fleece combed together. I like the effect a lot and am looking forward to knit it sometime in the future.

I tried to photograph the yarn I bought for myself from Wollsucht.de:





I made lots and lots of pictures, but look closely at them. They are ALL smeared out in the left side. Each and every one. I thought the camera was at fault, and indeed, it was... There was a large spot on the lens. Ew ew and double-ewww!

Plus that it doesent seem to like wool all that much if it is fuzzy, I think it focuses on something I dont want it to focus on, but hey... Now I have proved that it can make beautifull pictures, and will try to go out again tomorrow (It is very cold outside) and take new pictures.

Late spring '04 my mother was going right along, had her own spinning wheel and lots of contacts to many people. I really thought I had enough with my knitting hobby and didnt even try to get into spinning, until she explaimed one day:

"Next weekend there is a large sheeps market in Kiel, at the outdoor museum there. Do you want to go with me, I will sit and spin as an exhibit?"

"I cant spin, mom, so what should I do there, just sit and stare at sheep?"

"Well you can sit and knit..."

"If 'I' am going to a spinners meeting I want to be able to spin. I dont want to be the odd one everyone can sit and snicker at"

"You will not be the only one I assure you.."

"You are wastly underestimating me, and I'll show you... (insert evil laughter here)"

I think she planned it that way *laughs*

As said, so done. I sat down with her wheel, a vague idea of what spinning was, and a bunch of carded sheeps wool, (almost) violently refused her tution and a few hours later had two choke-full bobbins of white wool. She plied them for me, but I didnt even look at them anymore, they didnt interest me... after all, now I knew how to spin, and that was enough.
A few days later she dyed some small batches of wool, a green one, a red one, a blue one...
I stole both the red and blue one, and when the spinning day arrived she had no choice but to sit'n'knit, because her wheel was taken.

I seemed to get the hang of it naturally and easily, and very experienced spinners marveled at my yarn even though I had only been spinning for less than a week.

The explanation is this; my hands knew what they were doing. I made soft, wearable wool, even and smooth without no tution at all, only an ancient knowledge that must have lived in my hands since I was born. Apparently it unleashed itself as soon as I got good raw sheeps wool in my hands, and a spindle or wheel to play with.

Why this lenghty explanation?
I finally finished something I am quite proud of. I bought a large bag of raw sheeps wool from a spinning friend, a quite coarse and basic wool, but in the bottom of the bag there was (uncleaned) 300 grams of something very dirty and tangled, but with long staples and a promise of being soft. I spent a lot of time with it, washing it carefully many times, laying it out to dry, picking each lock out for itself, washing it once more and laying each lock out seperately to dry. I used my mothers wool combs and combed all the wool, sitting and combing and combing it over and over again for hours.
I decided that I wanted a one-ply yarn to try and imitate the look of shetland cobweb yarn, spun a 50-gram-skein and took to make other things. Inbetween I spun two smaller skeins, but today I finally pulled myself together and firstly carded the rest of the wool, and then spun it into a moderately fine single.

Imagine me crying out: Finí!
I dont spin much, but when I spin I want it to be good (and sometimes it is).

Here is a picture of my yarn.



The large skein in the middle was the first one. I have no idea why this skein is so different, but maybe it was due to my quite harsh washing and whacking it afterwards? I will try to wash them again, and see if I can bring it all to look alike.

There are now 170 grams of yarn, roughly translating (calculation based on the last skein) into 1900 yards of yarn, or 550 yards/50 grams. That is even thinner than what Knitpicks calls lace weight, so 1900 yards should go pretty far, right? :-)

My ideas for this yarn are: Print o' the wave lace stole (But then I'd have to dye this yarn), or a circular shawl of some fashion.

Have a nice day

Lene

First af all, I didnt expect all those kind and wonderfull replies to my shawl, which was also posted here: Here. Try to take a peek at all the comments, I couldnt believe it that every time I opened my mail box there were 5-6 new replies.
The shawl is wearing really well, I almost havent taken it off since it finished drying, and it hol me warm and snug now in this "dont want to wear a large sweater but it is too cold for just a tee" weather.
It was really nice to see over at Em's, she has put a little link to me in the sidebar with a few kind words about my shawl.
Thanks Em!

Today I also went and got a large grocery bag full of yarn. It was so full, that when I sat in the car and wanted to take a skein out to look at it, three other skeins jumped out in my lap.
There was a large skein of This, two largish skeins of This (we vere lucky em, she's completely sold out of it now). There were also three skeins of This, a skein of this, and finally, two wheels of this, though she has taken the colour down that I have bought - it is a dirtyish white with light and dark blue.

The first three skeins are for you, Em - they smell a bit funny of some herb or other, I guess it was to keep the moths away, but I will hang it in the fresh air (if the rain ceases) before I send it off Monday.
If the Villa yarn is not enough for a sweater vest, you could always knit a shawl for your grandmother, or try to combine it with another sport weight yarn.

The wool/linen yarn and the green/yellow Kauni was for my mother who wants to knit a summer sweater, and needs the green kauni for a coat she is currently knitting.

For myself, I bought the unspun yarn because I wanted to try it, see how it felt and explore its possibillities - maybe spin it, knit it as-is, use as a felt accent when handfelting, who knows what can be done with it?


After I completed my shawl I have hit a bit of a knitting slump. I am craving colours, colours, colours, but the three projects I am currently working on are all in one, solid colour.

That would be Samus in a nice stretchy 50% wool / 50% acrylics yarn, slim-fit, for my friend that I am going to visit in Taiwan for a month from May 15 - June 12. I would have loved to go earlier, but my nephew will be baptized May 14 and I couldnt bring it over my heart to miss that.
I am knitting it in a lavender-ish colour, and honestly... This is both the first and the last time I am going to knit with that yarn. It is consisted of 12 tiny plies, and when cabling I often only get half a stitch, and st. st. flat has ridges because the yarn is so stretchy. I hope it will turn out to be a lovely sweater anyhow.

I am also knitting a pair of Sock-a-paloooza socks in solid pink. I dont like pink, and I dont like the lace pattern I am using - though I know my pal will love it.

More lace: The Rosebud Shawl in 1-ply cobweb lace. I have most of the centre pattern knit, but the Rainbow Pi came in the way and took me to a beautifull land where large shawls grow :-)

Currently I am forcing myself to knit a few rows of sock every day, and for Tv knitting (I seem to avoid the Tv.. hmmm) I knit a Samus sleeve.
Slow, but steady, I guess?
Pardon me while I go and play with my unspun yarn. I'm so unfaithfull to my knitting.

Have a nice day
Lene