6 posts tagged “handspun”

Setting up the loom to weave this took all day on Saturday. Several hours in the morning for measuring the warp threads, several more hours for threading alternate warp threads through the holes on the heddle at a crafting date with Sadie, B and G in the afternoon, and another hour or so in the evening tying on the warp. It wasn't until Sunday that I finally got to start weaving, and it almost feels like an anticlimax after spending so much time in planning and preparation :-)

Red leaf weaving in progress

The fabric looks puckered because I'm deliberately making each row of weft slightly longer than the width of the warp, so that when it's finished and washed the extra length of the weft will, I hope, even out and partly cover the warp, making weft-dominant fabric.

Slubby purple swatch

While doing the boring knitting of the red cardigan, I have been convinced by Frax to start thinking about the design of my next cardigan. I spun this yarn with a particular garment in mind, modelled vaguely after my favourite bought cardigan, and now I've washed and set half the yarn, wound a ball, and have proceeded with swatching. The pattern is a drop-stitch rib from Vogue Stitchionary vol 1, and I've now frogged back the stocking stitch to reknit it with some drop stitches incorporated to see how I like it. The yarn is lovely, exactly how I wanted it to be, and very soft, and I really like how it's knitting up - I just have to decide on a design...

I've been knitting the Peekaboo gloves from Magknits, and I've just finished all but the thumb of the first. And in honour of having figured out iMovie and the camera attached to my computer, here's a video! (The colours are better in the photos, because they had benefit of flash. The video was filmed directly under a bare light bulb, but I think it would have been better if I'd done it in daylight with the light on.)

Flip top mittens

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 ;-)