17 posts tagged “cables”

My old camera died, so I'm way behind in taking photos of things, but today I bought a new one, which I chose on its ability to take closeups. So here's the last week or so's crafting...

Spinning! The alpaca (first two photos) isn't new spinning, but I took the photos to test the closeups - the second is without flash, because super macro doesn't work with forced flash, but it still shows that the picture is clear even this close up. The third picture is the plied result of the shetland-merino-silk-mohair mix, and the fourth is to be a gift for a friend. It's the hand-painted purple wool I bought at the Knitting and Stitching show, but it was so matted it wouldn't spin easily without carding it first, so it's much less variegated as yarn than it was when I bought it. I've got two more lots of fibre from the same supplier, but carding really would mess up the colours in those, so I'll have to carefully pre-draft before spinning it.

Knitting! We bought teapots on holiday in Cumbria, and now I've made a teacosy from the three-ply wisteria yarn that matches the navajo ply in my dissertation socks. It took me a day, and the top is Cat Bordhi's whirlpool toe! And I'm still knitting along on Clessidra - over halfway through both socks now.

Beginning the first Clessidra toe

As a result of a long-held scheme, I have finally cast on for Clessidra, only a year after buying the yarn! Naturally, I'm converting the pattern to toe-up, and using Cat Bordhi's master numbers rather than the numbers in the pattern, but I am following the pattern part of the pattern, so that's alright. Although toe-up means I'm a long way from the exciting hourglass cables :-(

The yarn is purple Cherry Tree Hill, as seen in my Baudelaires, and the needles are 2.25mm Knitpicks. It's coincidence that these are the same size needles the pattern calls for - my 2.5mm Addis are otherwise occupied, 2mm is too small, and I only have 2.75mm needles in DPNs.

Alpaca rolags

I'm still plotting my MiL's Christmas present - the photo to the right is a pile of alpaca rolags I've hand carded in preparation for spinning them, on the theory that I might as well card in front of the TV to encourage me to spin, and therefore possibly get the whole thing done in time for Christmas. Still, I saw her this weekend and warned her that the price of lovingly hand-crafted gifts was possible lateness ;-)

The colours in these are deliberately not mixed much - I'm carding to tidy up the fibre, not to blend colours, and I'm hoping the eventual yarn (which will be two-ply) will be gently variegated.

But I really don't like hand carding very much, so I'm forming a scheme to purchase a drum carder to make the process easier. Space in the library is, as ever, at a premium, so some book weeding and miscellaneous tidying is called for before I'll allow myself to add to the pile of crafting equipment I'm keeping.

Meta weaving

I finished my mini-weaving project, and wove the resulting braid into a small square of meta-weaving, which I'm rather pleased with. In fact, I'm so pleased that I'm plotting a loom acquisition, or rather, scheming to get R to buy me one for my birthday. Only a little one, but I'm already plotting my first real weaving project. My excursion into buying coloured clothes this spring and summer has left me with a problem now the weather's getting colder: all my mid-layers - cardigans and wraps - are black or purple, and don't go with some shades-of-red clothes I've bought (or the others I may still buy). For a while I've been plotting to ply my burgundy merino fibre with something variegated and autumnal (as yet unpurchased), but my original plan was to knit a wrap with it. However, I'm not actually all that keen on knitted wraps, and much prefer woven ones. The loom I'm scheming for is 80cm wide, which should be plenty big enough for a nice wrap, and I'm excited about the colour possibilities in spinning hand-dyed fibre then weaving it :-)

In the last week, I've had two crafting dates with different groups of women, and I've resurrected two old projects. In the first crafting date, with one knitter, one mender and one, umm, court jester ;-) (R did bring some work with her, but in the end she didn't do any of it), I swatched yet another stranded project, with the leftover Coriolis yarn, which produced a much better swatch than either of my previous stranded attempts. The next day, I cast on for the project.

Swirly slipper

Neither of these are new. One is positively ancient (November? October? I'm not sure. Sometime during the bit of the back end of 2007 when I was in a bit of a pit. Not that I'm blaming the hat for the pit.)

Spirals hat

It's called the spirals hat for two reasons: first that single-row stripes in the round are spirals, and it's always seemed to me a bit sad that this fact isn't visually obvious. Second because the slip-stitch cable columns spiral around the hat as it goes. I like the idea better than the reality, and I messed up the decreases at the crown (read: didn't bother calculating them properly, just made it up on the fly, which doesn't work for such a structured idea-piece), so it's all bunchy. I should just get on and frog it, really.

Handspun hat

Hat number two is more recent (I finished it in December, because I was wearing it on Christmas Eve, prompting the gift of the spinning wheel!), and I like it much more. It's the first real, fairly successful, yarn that I spun - the lilac and purple merino, spun and plied on a spindle. It's not very even ('rustic charm'), and the hat is slightly too big (so I can pile all my hair up under it). And it's a bit more sensible than my bright-variegated-purple pointy stocking cap, which was what I needed. (I love the silly pointy hat, but there are occasions it's too silly for ;-)

I have come to a conclusion: I will not knit jumpers for other people. It takes too long and is too much of a risk; the last two jumpers I knit, both for myself, had to be frogged because even though they knit exactly according to plan, neither of them suited me at all. That's one pattern I designed myself (the jumper of dooooom) and one designed by someone else and knit with no mods (Cherie Amour).

But I'm making another attempt at knitting one for myself, albeit a cardigan rather than a jumper. My previous cardigan - one of the very first things I knit, and also one of the very first things I designed - is one of my favourite garments, and always gets compliments. In fairness, I should say that the cardigan itself is very simple: oversized raglan with moss stitch edges, and it's the yarn - Colinette One Zero in semi-solid purple - that deserves the compliments, but anyway, it's a garment that I love.

The new cardigan is much more complicated. It's the spiritual, as well as physical, successor to the jumper of doooom: made with the same purple merino DK, and with cable panels on large expanses of stocking stitch.

Over Christmas I did some planning and setup work on the cardigan - I designed the cable pattern, swatched, made some calculations and then set off. The beginning wasn't even in the merino, but in Curious Yarns' purple variegated DK silk, which is too variegated for me in large quantities, but is absolutely gorgeous and feels lovely as a facing. I've finished the collar - silk on the inside, merino on the outside - and made a start on the shoulders, with four beginnings of cables, two of which will work their way down the sleeves, and the other two down the front edges. I'm knitting it with my lovely new Harmony needles and I'm having to constantly steer my knitting brain away from it and towards other things (like the clapotis which I was scared I'd be knitting forever, and the Shadow and Ghost socks).

The cables don't really show up very well in the photos, but I'm very happy with how it looks in the flesh :-)

triskell cable socks in cornwall

Just back from a week in Cornwall, and I did photograph the triskell cable socks, or rather, asked R to. This is the view from our front door, and I know it didn't come out in the photo, but some of the blue in the background is sea as well as sky. (Sorry the socks themselves are so dark - the photo was taken from inside facing out, so the lighting's funny.)

I've had a couple of requests on Ravelry for the pattern for these, so I'll try and get round to finishing writing it up and post it.

I took Wisp with me, but didn't even touch it - bored already! My other holiday knitting plan was much more open-ended: my sock yarn stash and patterns for socks and for toys...

St Austell, our local town, had a wool shop. Just a little one, and mostly containing either boring crappy acrylic-mix or stuff like Debbie Bliss that I've seen in the flesh before and can get easily online. I'd gone in for some stuffing for toys, which they had, and they also had a very small amount of sock yarn. Nothing I can't get easily online, no, but things I hadn't seen in the flesh before... In recovery from the expense of the Lorna's Laces you see above, I bought one skein of Trekking XXL in tweedy blues, and one skein of Opal handpaint in dark greens, reds, purples and blues (I nearly got the other Opal colourway as well: flame-coloured reds, yellows and oranges). But I'm not allowed to cast on with them until the Favourite Socks book arrives (although that leaves me with no current project that isn't stalled or not yet ready to go OTN).

So, stuffing for toys. Did that tell you what I knitted on holiday? I like making toys from sock leftovers - I once made a dinosaur for J from leftover Curious Yarns sock yarn. In Cornwall I made Nautie from leftover Lorna's Laces Valentine and purple Cherry Tree Hill, and started Norberta from leftover LL Rainbow and a no-name dark green. I love Nautie - so much fun to knit, and looks really cool, but I'm not sure about Norberta; I think my gauge is off, because she's not as rounded as she should be - more sleek than chubby - and her spine was way too long. The spine is cool, though - looks like a Pride rainbow :-) And I don't like the garter stitch. So I might not bother finishing her. Photos of both Nautie and half-Norberta to come.

Next on the planning list is a Cthulhu hat to be first player marker for Arkham...

The triskell cable socks are now finished, bar the trivial matter of weaving in the ends (NB, must also weave in ends on Baudelaire). No photos yet, because I've spent the evening preparing for going to Cornwall on Saturday (might photograph socks in glamourous Cornish location). I've also been downloading patterns to take with me, since I've inconveniently finished a project just before going and am unlikely to get round to starting another in time (am bored of Wisp, so don't want to take it). Seems I'm incapable of writing a sentence without a parenthetical comment (even this one).

The patterns I've downloaded are all intended for sock yarn (wide-ish choice available, takes little space, few sets of needles required). Some of them are actually sock patterns (for socks for friend-R - probably Jaywalker, but I've downloaded some others as well in case I can't get a decent gauge on Jaywalker), and the rest are toys (dinosaurs, nautiluses (nautili?), dragon, turtle, etc), cos I don't want to buy yarn for toys, but they work well knit small from sock leftovers).