Dale Harriet in Multnomah

Today at Last Saturday Knitting, I gave Dale Harriet her new Multnomah shawl. Doesn't it suit her perfectly?

I Sense a Theme Here...

Kathy, from Milwaukee came over to Last Saturday Knitting with her friend Lynne. Kathy wanted to give me this perfectly apropos gift that she bought for me as a "Thank you" for organizing the Alt Knitting Camp aka Gourmet S'mores Camp. Now, when I see the WienerMobile in my neighborhood, I'll be ready!

Last Saturday Knitting was a gas, as usual. We had just about the largest gathering yet! It was all the usual suspects, only all of us were there. Usually, we top out around 6 knitters, but this time we had 10, plus Owen! Thankfully, the nice young man who works weekends seems happy to have us there.

I've been spinning on the Mixed Berries yarn and working on the plain grey knitting project. And of course, counting down the seconds until school starts tomorrow (for the little guy) and Wednesday (for Owen). And I've been sitting around on the porch, under the fan, waiting for this little heat wave to pass. Tomorrow will be steamy again, then nice cooler weather blows in. Ah! True autumn can't be far behind, right?

Mostly Spinning

It's been interesting working with the Brown Sheep mill ends. I started on the mixed browns a few days ago. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this stuff is a little compressed and benefits from some loosening up. I've been pre-drafting each section before I spin, and it makes a big difference in my results. There are also section with a lot of very short fibers, from where the roving was blunt-cut, and those tended to form clumps unless I took pains to get them out.

This skein is from the first bobbin-full plied back on itself. It's very thick'n'thin and has a real beginner look to it.


A closer look:


I was afraid that I wouldn't like the effect when I got it plied, but I do. It reminds me of a calico cat. I thought I would prefer fiber with more even color distribution and placement, but this is ok.

While I was spinning, I was thinking that it would be nice to have access to a drum carder, so I could blend the colors and loosen up the fiber more quickly. Mr. SABLE looked on Ebay to see what was there. I thought briefly of asking my friend Fern if she wanted to goes halfsies on one, but I really knew this is not something I need and put it out of my head. The next day, I was driving to St Paul with Fern, who also bought a couple pounds of the Brown Sheep mill ends and we were discussing our results so far. Then, she asked me if I might be interested in going halfsies on a drum carder. It must be fate. She's going to look into the choices and let me know.

Here's a picture of the Romney sliver I bought from Paradise Fibers a while ago.

This yarn is pretty hairy and rustic, but I was spinning it right off the ball and doing no pre-drafting whatsoever. It was fun to work with and was spinning very quickly.

In Other News
Yesterday I went to Last Saturday Knitting. We've moved to 2 p.m., which seems to be working out better than the 10 a.m. slot. I tried to work on my Fair Isle project a bit, but I was just starting a new repeat of the big reds and yellows band and I kept either screwing up or thinking I did, so I cast on some new socks instead. I can do colorwork in a social setting once I have the visual cues in place to read my knitting. Maybe next time.

That Fair Isle has seen darn little action this past week. I drove over 1000 miles on the two round trips to St Paul. I had the Lost Wednesday. And a couple of less-memorably lost days in all that. I'm afraid not much knitting will get done until fall, in spite of the fact that I have no aversion to knitting in the summer. It's just that family life has a way of interfering.

I need to make myself another swimsuit. The second one has grown obscenely sheer from chlorine exposure. This happened to the first one. Marji helped me out with finding a source for chlorine-resistant swimsuit fabric, so as soon as that arrives, I'll have my next project cut out for me. So to speak. (If it really was cut out for me, that might simplify everything. Remember the old Frostline kits?) I would just buy a bathing suit, but being both long in the torso and plus size, I kind of need to make my own. Unless I want my butt cheeks hanging out the bottom, or a two-piece with my stretch marks hanging out the middle. Even in my life BC (before children), when I was just tall and not plus-sized, the tall suits were never tall enough. The first time I realized I could sew my own suit and emerge from the water with out any tugging whatsoever was a truly liberating day.

Meanwhile, we're hoping to take the kids and the canoe to Devil's Lake today and I need to find a way to cover my backside. I'm thinking about doing surgery on a suit I got at Target 6 years ago. It's the kind with a dress over a tank suit and the suit part creeps A LOT. I think I might slice off the the bottom around the waist and either serge in a 2 inch strip of stretchy fabric around the waist (it will all be hidden by the dress part over) or cut the bottom off an old Land's End suit that had other fitting issues, and serge that on, adding the needed length. Sounds like I have my agenda for the day worked out.

Fair Isle Evolution

I spent last night and this morning working on this swatch for my next Fair Isle project. It's an interesting process.

At first, I try to figure it all out in my head. For me, that doesn't guarantee good results. I have a lot of yarns in the reds/maroons/rust range and was thinking about using those in a warm, autumnal kind of project.

I got out several different Fair Isle reference books and chose three charts from Sheila MacGregor's Traditional Fair Isle Knitting. Starting at the bottom, I paired an olive drab with my dandelion-dyed yellow in the peerie pattern. I wasn't pleased with how vividly the yellow read against the olive in the knitting, though the colors looked nice together in the balls. Moving into my first larger pattern, a 15 row border pattern, I felt that the pale green in the background might not be warm enough to work out. I also screwed up the pattern near the middle of the chart. Obviously, in this swatch you can see that I wasn't thinking much about lining up my pattern repeats. I'll do the math on all that when I get to a garment.

For the next repeat of the peerie, I swapped out the dandelion-dyed yellow with a natural light tan. This makes the olive read more brown, which I felt helped it, but I still wasn't quite happy. I decided to use a natural brown with a lighter value heather to it with the natural tan.

As I moved into the smaller 9 row border pattern, I introduced a plum purple and a lighter olive green to the foreground colors. I really liked the way this section worked, even though I didn't expect great results by looking at the colors in the balls.

For the next repeat of the 15 row border, I tried to use more of the dandelion-dyed yellow and brighten up the middle of that pattern. While I was knitting it, I liked it, but I thought the pale green background had too much value contrast with the dandelion yellow. So, I subbed in the golden-grey yellow on the final section of that.

After I cut the swatch open and gave it a quick wash to block, I kind of decided that I did like the first version of the 15 row border after all.

So, what I'm going with:
Natural brown and tan peerie.
The 15 row border as it appears in the lower part of the picture, but without the errors in color placement.
The 9 row border as it appears.

This leaves me with only one challenge. The gold-grey background color was a random ball I found in my stash. I'm not sure where it came from, but I suspect it was in a large grab bag from St. Vincent's some years ago. There seems to be less than 25 grams of it, judging by my comparisons to full balls of Jamieson's Spindrift. So, I need to try to find a similar color in currently available Shetland 2-ply jumperweight yarn and buy about 75 grams worth to make a sweater. My first step is to ask to look at the Spindrift color cards out at The Sow's Ear. If there's a good match, ask them to order a few for me. Failing that, I could send a snippet to Schoolhouse Press and see if the Jamieson and Smith 2-ply Shetland has a good color match. Failing that, I'll have to swatch again and see what else might work.

I wish I could just spend all day playing with color. It's exciting to see how things change when they get paired with different partners. There are some real surprises for me, even though I think I know a bit about color.

In Other News
Last Saturday Knitting met this afternoon. Cindy, Yarn Thrower, and Linda were there. It was a great time, although we missed MollyBee, who didn't make it. Next month Molly!