46 posts tagged “progress report”
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 :-)
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.
The first sekrit project is what many partners of knitters will have been given today, the heart from Knitty. This was loads of fun to knit, and small enough that R didn't even notice that for a couple of evenings, every time he looked in my direction, my hand 'happened to' cover what I was knitting. The yarns are Dream in Colour Smooshy in dark red, and Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Valentine - luxury sock yarns for a luxury heart :-)
Second pic is the red-toed sock just after turning the heel (the other sock is tucked inside, as it is while I'm knitting).
Third pic, the variegated-toed sock, ditto.
Fourth pic, both socks conjoined, just after the heel turn, with the ends still straggling and the hole at the join still very visible.
Fifth pic, same thing a few rows on and with the round beginning moved to centre back instead of the side. Ends all woven in, and holes closed up reasonably well (how good this looks on the right side is yet another thing I don't get to see until they're finished!)
I've also started spinning the red leaf fibre my parents gave me for my birthday. I took some photos of this a week or so ago, but the colours were off so I'd been holding off posting about it until I'd taken some better photos, which I now have!
This is the next batch of black alpaca carded with purple merino. More than half of the fibre is carded now, and it's going much quicker with the drum carder than it did with hand carders :-) I've actually spun one batch of this, but I don't think I've taken any photos. It's about 5m/g, and will either stay as singles or end as two-ply, depending on what I decide to do with it. It's probably going to be another woven wrap, but at the moment everything looks like a weaving project to me, since the loom is spread across the library floor in pieces having been varnished at the weekend. I'm resisting the urge to assemble it for as long as possible, because I can't start using it for another week and a bit, so barriers are good ;-)
The grey-pink alpaca for my MiL's Christmas present is finally all spun and plied. The first picture is a closeup of two balls of singles ready for plying, and it's really just another excuse to show off the macro capabilities of my new camera! The second picture is of the finished yarn, about 500m of two-ply. I spent some time the other day swatching from my sample of this yarn, and I didn't come up with anything I liked, so this is starting to look like a weaving project as well. Of course, weaving it also means the finished item (a scarf) will be larger, since weaving uses less yarn than knitting, so this is solidifying into a plan.
This is my lovely new drum carder, which arrived yesterday, and which has already got through hours and hours worth of hand carding in a very short time indeed :-) I've now carded all of the lilac alpaca which is destined to be my MiL's Christmas present, and spun the first lot of it; I'm intending to spin most if not all of the rest of it this evening, and then it will be ready for washing and plying, hoorah. I've also made a start on carding the black alpaca, which will end up carded again, with the purple merino, to make goth-coloured yarn.
I was intending to make this into a wrap for me, and had originally thought of one of the beautiful spiky lace shawls I keep seeing on Ravelry, but in the same delivery from Fibrecrafts as the carder was another package, which I'm not entitled to enjoy for about six weeks: the loom R is giving me for my birthday. I've got two projects planned for this, and one of them is the gothmerino-alpaca - a nice simple rectangle of plain weaving to make the kind of wrap I like best. The other weaving project I'm planning is one I've already talked about: the autumn coloured wrap, with one ply of burgundy merino and one of variegated autumn-leaves colours. For a while I looked around for fibre in the colours I want, and then when I gave up on that, I looked around for undyed fibre and dyes to produce it myself, but then I remembered that Freyalynn (who dyed my Wisteria and Caribbean fibre) also does custom dye jobs, so my autumn leaves fibre has now been commissioned! This will be a birthday present from my parents. I believe in planning ahead in such matters :-)
And Clessidra is coming along nicely. The heel is turned, and I'm into the ankle, and am just about to take measurements and make calculations for the calf increases.
Clessidra is coming along swimmingly, and in another row I think I'm ready to start on the heel :-)
I've used the riverbed sockitecture from New Pathways, and it's actually a little loose, although I've checked and double-checked my gauge. But I think it will be fine once the heel is turned, and then I can start on the hourglass cable, hoorah!
The first picture is the non-gusset side of the first sock, the second is the gusset side - since this is Cat Bordhi's sidestream sockitecture, the two sides are very different. There's a yarn over section near the beginning of the gusset, from before I decided to leave it in plain stocking stitch, so I'm intending to go back and work the loose yarn along the row to remove it. It looks fine as is, anyway, so it's not a big deal.
I've been thinking about how Ravelry's 'percentage complete' box works with socks. When I finished the first one, I triumphantly changed the project to '50% complete', and now, even though I'm sure the toe doesn't actually constitute 10% of a sock (and therefore 5% of the total project), I've just changed its status to 55%, to signify that I've begun the second. I only permit myself to reach 25% and 75% once I've completely turned the heel, even though that's probably more like two-thirds than half of a sock. This is also complicated by my uncertainty about whether I'm estimating percentage of stitches or percentage of time - the toe and the heel both take much longer per stitch than the foot or the leg do; with the whirlpool toe this is particularly obvious, since each plain knit round takes much less time than the corresponding increase round, especially at the beginning. If I'd had a stopwatch to hand as I was thinking these thoughts while knitting the toe just now, I would probably have started timing rounds and calculating seconds per stitch ;-)
I've also been enjoying my 'progress report routine'. When I reach a stage in a project that I feel is worth documenting (which is often as much to do with how I feel about a project as reaching milestones in it), I take photos, download them from the camera, import into iPhoto for editing, then export to the desktop. From there I drag them into my Flickr uploader, title, describe and tag them, then upload to Flickr and put into appropriate sets. Next I add to the new photos to the Ravelry project, change the project's percentage complete, and if I want to show the photos or have something to say about the project, I blog them here. I started this blog to provide a structure for me to keep track of projects and write about them, and the combination of the blog and Ravelry means I'm able to think much more critically (in the neutral-not-negative sense) about my knitting and my spinning, and apply my innate geekiness to them. This makes me happy :-)
Having a wool gathering with White_Hart and Dyddgu earlier, I finished the heel on Bellatrix, and now with an evening's TV viewing behind me, I've knit a couple of inches of leg as well (photos below were taken a couple of hours ago) - this goes surprisingly fast :-) I love the eye of partridge heel (even though it doesn't really suit the yarn/pattern perfectly), and I like how the sidestream sockitecture makes the foot part look slightly twisted (it doesn't feel twisted, just looks it). The pattern is lovely - I really like how it messes with the colour changes, and leaves big fat blobs of colour in the middle of the stripes.
Very happy with these, and hoping to finish the first sock this week, although the wool gathering has made me feel all spinny again, so I'll be doing some of that too :-)
