sweetgeorgia

I knit.

Yes, in fact, I do still knit. Unfortunately, I don’t think I am particularly productive… my knitting speed is not terribly bad, but I just never seem to finish things… all the while, I have a million things I want to make. I think one of the Twist Collective issues had an article about knitting productivity. Something about always asking yourself if you are knitting… if not, why not? It’s not about knitting fast, it’s about always knitting. It is, of course, a little bit difficult to always have knitting in your hands when you are busy mixing dyes and bookkeeping, or lesson planning and warping, but that is probably the same as anyone with a day job. I don’t have a television, so there’s very little sitting-down time. Some days, I fantasize about afternoons where I have no responsibilities, no phone calls to make, no emails to answer… and I can just sit and knit for hours at a time. Maybe that day will be today. It’s sunny and warm in Vancouver today. It’s Friday.

Here’s what I’m actually knitting:

I guess it’s a recurring theme… the need to focus on one direction. I don’t know if this is a lesson I will ever fully learn. I’m just too easily distracted by lovely, engaging things.

On a totally different tangent, I was so happy to see Alexa’s yarns up on her blog… several weeks ago, she was in our dye class at the studio and produced some beautiful hand dyed yarns.

Another student came by the studio this week to show me some of the panda roving she spun up recently… so utterly fabulous… that and her “Wicked” sweater in Cascade 220 complete with front pocket (I love it and am tempted to make one now). A few girls have contacted me about renting wheels to try their hand at spinning and I’m constantly delighted that there are new spinners being born each day.

The weather is getting phenomenal in Vancouver and in the upcoming weeks, I’d love to host a little spin-in at the studio… most likely on a Saturday afternoon. Possibly May 23rd? We’ll see. Drop me a line if you might be interested in coming with your wheel… or your knitting… ’cause, as you know, I do still knit.

Spinning Panda

Two weekends ago, we had a dye class here at the studio and I did my very brief demo on direct application of dyes on wool roving. It was Panda fibre, to be exact… a scrumptious blend of superwash merino, bamboo, and nylon… a perfect blend for making sock yarn or baby things or anything, really. We had sort of randomly mixed up some reddish orange and emerald green colours and I just randomly applied the dyes to the fibre, not entirely sure if I liked the colour combination. It was mainly to demonstrate the idea of the technique. But in the end, I loved the colours. They reminded me of cactus flowers, for some reason.

I took the variegated Panda fibre demo (50g) and split it lengthwise into many, many narrow strips to basically create very short intervals of colour in the singles yarn and plied it with another 50g of semi-solid Panda fibre that had been dyed red. One solid, one variegated, to sort of even out and break up the colours… overall dominating the yarn with red. The resulting 2-ply yarn, most likely a dk or light worsted weight, will make a nice little baby sweater… or hat… or, I don’t know. Right now, I’m happy just to look at it on the shelf.

CashSilk Fern

Back in the fall when I travelled to Japan, I brought along one single skein of CashSilk Lace to knit something on the plane. Some kind of planes, trains and automobiles kind of knitting. Lace that was easy enough to remember and interesting enough to keep me knitting. After a few false starts and frogging fits, I ended up with this lace pattern from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns… the diagonal fern lace… and now it’s a cashmere and silk scarf.

My scarf pooled a bit in some sections and not in other sections… but it was fascinating to keep knitting and seeing where the pooling might happen. Of course, you can bypass the drama by using a semi-solid or totally solid colour.

Since it’s super easy and super nice, I’ve done it up in a snazzy PDF plus handy lace chart for your enjoyment. Should you have a need for easy, but interesting lace…

Check out the CashSilk Fern pattern »

Make your own raddle

A bunch of nails and a stick of wood. A raddle is a very helpful and necessary little device to allow you to warp your loom from back to front. It’s designed with evenly spaced guides so that you can roughly spread apart your warp threads before winding it into the back beam. It shouldn’t cost you $90, but if you buy one new, that’s what it’ll run up to… Sure the store bought ones will be nicely finished and perfectly aligned, and it’s possible that they’ll include a fabulous closing top thing to prevent your threads from accidentally slipping out of the raddle.

But we decided to go the cheap route… a $3 box of 1 1/2″ bright finishing nails and a $3 stick of wood from Home Depot. Carina helped me mark every 1/2″ inch along the stick and pre-drilled tiny little holes at the markings. I had the easy job of hammering the nails into the pre-drilled spots. You probably don’t need to pre-drill, but it makes the process a little easier.

We’ve clamped this raddle on top of the shafts of the Baby Wolf, Leclerc Artisat, and also the little Schacht 15″ table loom and put warps on this way. Super handy and fast. I guess I have no excuse not to warp from back to front now.