sweetgeorgia

Spread those feathers…

The Peacock Feathers Shawl is done!

After a clumsy crochet cast off, there was a quick soak in some Lavender-scented Eucalan and then lots of pinning onto the blocking board. I used my make-shift blocking wires for the top line of the shawl. The individual loops at the bottom edge of the shawl had to be pinned out individually. I was not a perfectionist here. Alas, as much as I love my blocking board, it’s not big enough for shawls. I have three towels placed at the edges of the board in a sad attempt to extend the area.

Peacock Feathers Shawl:

• Pattern: from Fiddlesticks Knitting, designed by Dorothy Siemens
• Yarn: Jaggerspun Zephyr 2/18 in Cinnabar (3.5 oz skein, but I have lots leftover)
• Needles: US 3 / 3.25mm Addi Turbos, 3.25mm Addi crochet hook
• Changes: I used a smaller needle size because I was unsure if I would have enough yarn to complete the project.
• Finished Measurements: 83″ x 41″ (a little smaller than pattern specs which are 88″ x 43″)

As mentioned by many, many knitters before, Fiddlesticks patterns have large, clear charts and very well-written directions. The crochet cast off was easy with Dorothy’s inclusion of a step-by-step photo instruction page.

The only one time I really goofed was when I brought my shawl with me to dinner but forgot the chart up in my office… I attempted to engage in dinner conversation with Richard while knitting and also trying to channel Dorothy Siemens… hoping that I would be able to figure out some of the non-repeating portion of the pattern just by looking at it. Well, I guess I’m not that “sensitive”, so I have one goofy plume.

On multitasking, or not.

It’s 9:15 pm on a Sunday night and I’m still at work. These are the days when I envy those people with lovely 9-to-5 jobs, hour-long lunch breaks and paid vacation time. This past week, I’ve been at the office until about 9pm every night (except spinning night) and last night. It is insane how much work I have to do, but what has surprised me completely is that I nearly made my Olympic goal.

I have three more rows to knit on the Peacock Feathers Shawl.

Over the past week, I was able to squeeze in the shawl by multitasking… knit while I generate big PDFs, knit while I wait for stuff to finishing uploading, knit while doing my bridesmaidly duties for Jo…

But more importantly than multitasking, is well… not multitasking. One project at a time. One thing at a time. This shawl has gone so quickly because I focused all my attention on it. Might be something to keep in mind next time I want to cast on for something new in the midst of all these unfinished projects.

I leave you with a photo of something I’ll post about… when I dig myself out of this pile of work.

Tail Feathers

Some weekend knitting yielded…

… the end of Chart 6 and the start of some peacock tail feathers.

New Silks

How about some colour to go with that sunshine?

This is three skeins of 20/2 cultivated silk (bottom) and one skein of 70% silk / 30% seacell (top). SeaCell is a new fibre made from seaweed via the lyocell process. Sound familiar? It’s the same process used to make Tencel, Bamboo, Viscose Rayon, and other cellulose fibres. The manufacturers of SeaCell are saying that all the “good health” benefits of seaweed can be enjoyed, that is absorbed, by wearing fabrics made from SeaCell. That’s some fancy transdermal vitamin delivery system.

Healthy yarn or not, the SeaCell silk is gorgeous. It takes dyes nicely, but as you can see from first photo, it gives a warmer end product. I dyed all the skeins above using the same stock solution, but the seacell skein is slightly lighter (acid dyes not reacting with the cellulose portion of the yarn?) and slightly warmer.

Last night’s guild meeting hosted Diana Sanderson and Kate Barber who came and brought skeins and woven samples of these new silks — beautiful drape, luminous, light fabrics. There was also look/fondle/discussion about silk/linen, silk/bamboo, silk/camel and stainless steel yarn(!?!).

While they talked about yarn, I did this:

A couple days ago, I switched from the H&S ebony circs back to my standard Addi circs and knitting is faster and easier now. This weekend, I might just find some time to catch up!

Wicked

Isn’t it wonderful how you can be wicked tired, barely able to drive down Highway 1 without falling asleep, and then perk right up just talking about dyeing. Then actual dyeing causes you to go hyperactive… But who wouldn’t be all excited about this:

Last night in spinning/dyeing class we dyed up some raw Romney — I dropped in about 3/4 tsp of CIBA dye powder and the pot didn’t exhaust. There was about 12 oz of raw fleece and we calculated the dye powder at 1 tsp per pound — I guess we were so excited about putting colour on wool, we forgot a couple things: raw fleece is heavier than clean fleece (hence too much dye powder) and greasy fleece resists the dye (hence too much dye powder). But here it is — a wicked indigo, moody blues kind of colour — washed in Dawn and dried, kind of teased, and ready for carding. I think we are making boucle with this next week.

Wicked Carding

In other whoa technology kind of news, take a look at what a bunch of local girls have done to their Pat Green Beverly carder… How smart is that?! Maybe I should have called these girls before I went and bought my drum carder!