Heather Knits

On the first weekend in November I picked up Joanne and we trundled down to Devon for a very fun (if somewhat muddy) fibre-y weekend. This year’s weekend was run by Emma rather than Terri and was in a different location to last year, and didn’t include any outings.

On our way down we popped into John Arbon‘s shop in Lynton. John and Juliet were very kind and put up with us despite being in the middle of packing for a big show up in London. Juliet had also measured out some fibre for me before we arrived. I bought 1kg of their organic merino which I plan to dye and spin for a jumper or cardigan soon:

And I couldn’t resist 500g of 75% organic merino, 25% silk.

This is lovely soft stuff.I plan to dye it as well but I am not sure whether to do it in one go, or do several smaller things.

The main reason for going to the shop though was to pick up some more alpaca / merino fibre in Cappuccino to add to the stuff I bought last year, and hopefully give me enough for a cardigan. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this as I have started spinning it already

After the shopping we trundled up to the farm to meet everyone. It was lovely to see some familiar faces and meet some new people too.

As well as a healthy amount of spinning, knitting, chatting and cake eating over the weekend we also did some dyeing under the excellent tutelage of Bex, and some people did some felting too.

I dyed 100g of superwash Bluefaced Leicester fibre in a mixture of blues with a bit of purple:

I plan to spin this probably as a 3ply and then knit socks.

And some rather orange silk fibre:

I used red, orange, and yellow dye on this one and was expecting there to be a bit more red. It has come out very orange I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with it, but I’m sure I shall think of something I haven’t spun much 100% silk yet either, so I am looking forward to that.

Bex also brought along some of her shop stock so I treated myself to a couple of braids of fibre. They are both 150g, 70% superwash merino, 30% nylon:

and

I think these are both destined for socks. Goodness I do seem to be going through a sock phase. I think it could be now that we are into wintery weather, and that my sock drawer is getting a bit depleted. It would work better if I actually got round to knitting the socks though, not just buying yarn and fibre

All too soon Monday morning came around and we packed everything back into the car and said goodbye. One advantage of leaving on Monday rather than Sunday was that the drive home wasn’t too busy and was all in daylight.

Roll on next year! (I might even try to use up some of the stuff I have bought before then!)

The cyclists are having a well-deserved day off today, so I thought I would have a break from the spinning and catch up with some other bits and pieces from the last six months.

Back at the end of October I went to Devon for Terri‘s second lovely Fibre Weekend. The Friday starting early with me packing all my stuff in the car, having a think and then re-packing. Then I finally set off to collect Marty, and re-packed the car, and then down to collect Joanne, and you guessed it, re-packed the car again. I was quite impressed that you could get three people, three spinning wheels and their luggage including bedding in a Nissan Note, and no-one had to be strapped to the roof or balance their spinning wheel on their head, though Joanne was squashed in the back with a wall of stuff along side her.

Luckily the drive down was nice and uneventful, and we arrived at Sheldon in time to unpack the car and eat our packed lunch before the afternoon’s workshops started. I had signed up for natural dyeing with Amanda Hannaford, which was great fun, and very interesting. Amanda sent us the mordant recipe so we could mordant our yarn before we arrived. I used some 4ply weight superwash bluefaced leicester wool, and made myself a selection of mini skeins so I could try the different dyes.

Here are some of the skeins we dyed drying outside:

And here is everybody’s skeins laid out for everyone to admire:

Here are my 12 little skeins:

From left to right they are: madder x 3, weld x 1, goldenrod x 3, logwood x 1, indigo x 2, and cochineal x 2, all using an alum mordant. I like some of the colours better than others, but it was fun to try it all, and interesting to see the results.

After Terri’s fantastic cooking for dinner and a bit of knitting and spinning we all fell into our beds in time to get a bit of sleep in before the excitement of Saturday’s outing.

Saturday was our busy day, lots to do, so we set off early to go to the David and Charles book shop. There didn’t seem to be quite as many craft books this year as previously, but I did find a copy of Girolamo Cardano’s Ars Magna (English translation) for £1 so I was happy

Then back in the minibus and on to Coldharbour Mill, where we were treated to tours of both the upstairs machinery open to the public and John Arbon‘s machines in the basement which aren’t normally viewable. I love all the machinery, and it is amazing how so much of it is recogniseably the same process as hand spinning just on a much larger scale.

In the shop at the mill I treated myself to 600g of 70% alpaca, 30% merino fibre, in Cappuccino:

After lunch at the mill it was back in the minibus again to go to Westcott Farm to see Lesley Prior and her Bowmont sheep and Cashmere goats.

Here are some of the sheep:

And here some of the goats:

It was great to see Lesley again and catch up on what is happening on the farm. It is always interesting to talk to someone so passionate about what they do.

After the tour of the farm Lesley very kindly made us all tea and fantastic scones. I couldn’t resist buying some of her lovely cashmere:

This is 4ply cashmere, 25g, 116m. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it yet, but it is such a lovely colour and feels very soft and squishy.

In the evening we all went out for a delicious dinner at the Nobody Inn, there were enough of us that we got our own room

Tired and very full we trundled back to Sheldon.

Sunday was less formal, but still packed full. In the morning we had a go at blending different colours of fibre on drum carders and hackles.

Here is some of the carding in action, with the enormous pile of fibre to choose from behind it.

And here is Terri having a go on Rachel’s hackle.

I spun up my efforts when I got home:

The red is merino blended on the hackle, and the greens are a mixture of merino with a little bit of silk carded on a Minty Fine Carder. I enjoyed having a go at this, particularly because I don’t own a carder or a hackle, it was very useful to be able to compare. I prefered spinning the fibre from the hackle, in general I prefer a combed preparation and like to spin smooth yarn, although I prefer the colours I chose with the carder. I love playing with colours and seeing the different effects you can create and would like to have more of a go at this soon.

After the tables were cleared away the floor was used to share out the two enormous bags of waste fibre John Arbon had given us, a mixture of alpaca and different wools. I decided this was best as a spectator sport!

And this is my share:

I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with it yet, but I think it will come in really handy for learning new techniques.

After a delicious roast dinner, there was just the clearing up to do, and then all too soon it was time to pack everything back in the car and say goodbye.

Very kindly Joanne gave me this sheep for doing the driving:

He has a lot of character, and is currently keeping an eye on me from on top of the printer.

And Marty gave me a skein of 4ply Alpaca/BFL which I am looking forward to dyeing:

The drive home went ok if rather slowly, there is always a lot of traffic on a Sunday afternoon.

In all a wonderful weekend. Lovely to see so many old friends and make new ones, and to have such a fun time.

I actually finished these back in March while at Skip North, and have finally managed to take some photos of them.

The pattern is Circle Socks by Anne Campbell. The yarn is some of my first spinning (I dyed the fibre too), and was a bit variable, and also rather thicker than that specified in the pattern. However the pattern was also written for smaller feet than mine, so by changing the needle size to 2.75mm it all worked out fine.

It has really surprised me how much the knitting evens out the wobbly bits in the spinning. The socks are still noticeably different, but not nearly as different as I had feared given what the yarn looked like!

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog because I have been knitting like a maniac to get my Autumn in Anatolia jumper finished. I made it! and handed it in to Fiona to mark on Sunday. I shall now be catching up on everything I haven’t done over the last week or so, when it has been definitely knitting every minute that I could find to finish on time. I managed a row in the hairdresser, and a row at my Uncle and Auntie’s house when we went to see them last week. I am definitely getting better at time management though, because this time I had packed my bag and finished everything at 8pm the night before, rather than still printing charts at 5am like I was with my Keble Cardigan.

Anyway, back to the important stuff: here is the jumper:

And the back:

And another one of the front:

And lying flat:

As you can see the sleeves are looking a bit long because I had a moment of stupidity with the blocking. I laid it out on a towel and kept adjusting the shoulders to make sure they were even, not realising that I was stretching everything vertically. By the time I realised what I had done it had dried and there wasn’t enough time to wet and reblock. I will be doing that when it is back from marking.

Apart from that little hiccup I am very pleased and proud of it. I love the way the colours and patterns have come out and I think it is going to be very wearable. Although in typical fashion we are now having a week of warmish weather

The day before I headed off for Skip North I finally got to the point where I joined in the sleeves for Autumn in Anatolia. (feel free to imagine the dance of great achievement I am now doing)

I also ended up having a bit of a late night despite the next day’s early start because I wanted to knit at least 4 rows and make sure I hadn’t accidentally twisted one of the sleeves or anything similarly awful.

The sleeves are set-in style but I am knitting them in the round in one piece with the body (there was much calculating that went into that one!). After a week and a half of manic knitting I have now finished the decreases on the body for the bottom of the armhole, and am now back to only two pages of charts rather than the previous three, which was rather unwiedly. Although it does mean that I am now doing four decreases per round rather than the previous eight, so progress is slowing up a bit.

I put the underarm stitches for both the body and the sleeves onto holders initially, but was getting a bit worried that with all the taking it in and out of my knitting bag that the stitches were getting stretched. So on Sunday I had a big session and sewed in a lot of the loose ends from when I had changed colour, and also grafted the underarms. IN FAIRISLE! I can’t sufficiently convey how pleased I am that this has come out well. I am very proud. There was much jumping round the living room with glee.

I even showed it to Mummy on skype, but I think it is hard to appreciate the marvelousness with only a grainy webcam picture.

The graft is the final row of the stripes. I am hoping it will look a bit more even after I have blocked the whole jumper.

The jumper has become a bit difficult to haul around, so for the last couple of weeks I have been stuck with no travel knitting. I had been resisting casting on anything new, for fear that it would slow down the jumper progress. The frustration of not having any knitting to take with me has worn me down and I have cast on for a sock, with strict instructions to myself to only knit on it when it is not possible to be knitting on the jumper.

The pattern is called circle socks, and the yarn is some 3ply handspun bluefaced leicester I dyed before spinning. My yarn is a bit thicker than the yarn the pattern used so I am using 2.75mm needles rather than the 2.25mm recommended. I am not altering the stitch count (yet) though because I would like these to come out larger than the pattern. My foot measures about 10 inches in circumference, but the pattern is written for 7.5 inches.

I have tinkered a bit with the cast on to make sure it is stretchy enough, I cast on 96 sts, then worked a round of purl, a round of (p1, p2tog), then another round of purl, and then went onto round 4 of the pattern.

I did have a bit of a false start with these. My first guess at needle size was 2.5mm, but the fabric was coming out a bit too stiff! There is a fine line between a sturdy sock and something which stands up on its own, and these were on the wrong side of it! The 2.75mm needles seem much better.

Back on the 21st of October I had a little jaunt down to Arundel to film a couple of programmes on dyeing wool with acid dyes for the new internet TV channel Knit1.tv.

Sadly I was my usual inane self and didn’t suddenly become witty and charming when put in front of a camera (well it was a nice thought). It was quite a fun day though, and although I was very nervous (when will I learn that I find any kind of performing very scary??), they were all very kind, and laughed with me rather than at me (or at least that is my interpretation).

The company that makes Knit1.tv also does several other internet tv channels, including one on beads, and one on miniature railways. The set we were using for the dyeing was one they often use for miniature railways, so it does look rather like I am dyeing yarn in a shed. Here is my beautiful pseudo-shed, with the yarn cooking in the steamer.

And here is my view from behind the counter, looking out to the cameras.

And here is the finished yarn.

100% superwash bluefaced leicester, 4ply weight.

They split my waffle into two programmes (because I go on, and on, and on), Part 1 and Part 2.

So if you have been harbouring a desire to see me large as life and twice as ugly I am there for your delectation! I’ve only just got my subscription password so I haven’t watched all the way through the programmes yet. Let me know if I say anything too awful. Luckily they didn’t have the camera on when I was dancing around between the programmes.

One of my contributions to the Show and Tell at this years patchwork knitting workshop was the start of this waistcoat.

The grand plan is to make something using some of my first few bits of spinning. To give it a moderately coherent look I am going to stick to natural shades of brown and black, and some reds which I have dyed.

The modules are reversible ribbed leaf shapes which I first saw at a workshop with Horst Schulz three or four years ago. I don’t think it is in any of his books, and the notes I have taken are a bit on the sketchy side! The safety pin stuck in the brown alpaca leaf is to remind me which is the right side. Although the pattern is reversible, I wanted to be consistent with always starting a new leaf on the same side, and it was getting a bit time consuming to have to work it out each time. The waistcoat has actually looked the same since the workshop while I spin a bit more yarn to add to it. I thought I had loads of yarn when I started, but once I collected it together it wasn’t quite as much, or as much variety as I had first thought! I have just finished some black shetland and some dark brown alpaca which will go into it too. I am trying to make it a random collection of colours, not in any particular pattern, but I’m not terribly good at random.

Luckily this pattern is quite forgiving of my rather inconsistent handspun, some of them are quite a bit thicker than others, and the brown alpaca with the safety pin is very dense! I am going to try and spread out my earlier yarns among my later ones so the finished article isn’t too lopsided.

I think these could qualify for the most-knitted-socks prize. I have been knitting them for about a year, and I think I knitted the first one four times in all, mostly due to my stupidity. The first time they were looking ok but I thought the fabric a little floppy so I thought I would try smaller needles. I went down two needle sizes and the second incarnation was like an inflexible little board. I then started off again for the third version with the needle size between that used for the first and second version, it was all going well until I realised part way down the leg that I had totally mis-counted the number of stitches to cast on – no wonder they looked big! The fourth version was (luckily) the last, although there were a few moments of un-knitting while I worked on the toes.

The yarn is superwash Bluefaced leicester 4ply weight, from Bluefaced.com, dyed with Kool Aid, and the needles I ended up using were 2.25mm.

I experimented with a few different things on these socks (one of the reasons they took a while). I started off with a version of the tubular cast on, adapted for use with a different number of knit to purl stitches, since I like to work a k3, p2 rib on the cuff of my socks.

I am really pleased with how this has come out and will definitely be using it again.

I tried out the Sherman heel, this uses a slightly different way of working the short rows. The heel unfortunately doesn’t fit my foot model very well but this does fit my feet ok.

This came out ok, but wasn’t as neat as I was hoping. I really like the garter stitch short row heel but haven’t yet found a stocking stitch version which I like quite as much.

I also had a go at making left and right foot socks.

The jury is still out on whether this is worth the effort. My feet are quite asymmetrical and the left and right foot socks certainly feel comfy so far. I shall wear them a few more times and then pass judgement!

I have been playing with the dyes again for my stranded knitting project. One more orange and one more green.

This is the new orange between its two immediate neighbours.

The Kemtex Acid Dye in Yellow is definitely not as bright as the Jacquard Bright Yellow. They do have another range called Kenanthrol acid dyes, which have a variety of shades of yellow. I’m not sure what is the difference between them and the Kemtex acid dyes, but they might be worth investigating in future.

I think I have got the 12 colours for the background sorted now.

The new green was another experiment for a foreground colour. I think this one is very pretty but is too yellow for this project.

Here is the new green in the middle, with last experimental green on the left, and the original green I used for the knitted sample on the right.

I think I am going to have another attempt at dyeing a green which is more similar in colour to the one on the right, but more solid than I have so far managed with the Jacquard acid dyes. I do rather like the bluer one on the left though, it makes a good contrast with all the oranges and I think it is a definite contender.

I have now measured my tension from my sample, and started working out the charts – I think this will be quite a long process! I have a rough idea of how the patterns should fit in, and have worked out most of the logistics on my rough sketch. The charts themselves will take a while though, I am using excel and am not particularly fast. Have any of you used any of the knitting charting programs out there? If so what do you think of them? I have been looking at Knit Visualizer and have just downloaded the demo to have a play with. The details of how I am going to do the shaping will take some working out too! Hopefully I will actually be able to cast on for the real thing fairly soon.