It sat in my stash for a while as I got up the courage to learn a new craft. It turns out, basket-making is not hard (and YouTube is awesome)!
I started by soaking my materials to make them pliable. While they were soaking I found a basket weaving tutorial by Nancy Jacobs and figured out what to do.
It was odd working with a rigid material (yarn is decidedly flexible). For the most part, though, this was not hard to weave.
Tadah! If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend weaving a basket. When it’s done you can prance around the house excitedly chanting, “I made a basket!!!” (Not that I did that…)
What new things have you tried that turned out way better than expected?
I love garments with interesting constructions. I think it’s fascinating how many ways people can come up with to do the same thing. I have been knitting the Squircle socks by General Hogbuffer with Knit Picks Felici in Mint Chip. Whoo, is this an interesting construction! Let’s take a look and compare classic sock construction with this sock construction.
This is a regular sock construction. You cast on a number of stitches (64 in my case), join in the round, and knit your leg. The heel flap is worked on half the stitches, then you turn the heel with short rows and/or decreases, pick up stitches along both sides of the heel flap, and decrease for the gusset. The foot is worked even, and the toes are made with decreases every other row.
And this is how the Squircle sock is constructed. You can see how this sock starts just like a normal sock. Everything changes, though, when you knit the thinnest heel flap ever! You then pick up a million stitches and start double gusset decreases while increasing for the heel! Once you’ve finished the heel increases you finish decreasing as for a normal gusset. The foot and toe are done much in the same way as a normal sock, but the toe decreases are graduated instead of being every other row for the whole toe.
I am part of a spinning group at my LYS. We meet twice a month, and this year we have decided to do a breed and fiber study. So once a month our meetings will focus on a specific wool breed or fiber, and we will all take turns teaching each other about them.
January’s focus was on Blue Faced Leicester. What a luscious fiber! I have only spun BFL once before (as part of my Skywool), and I had forgotten how easy it is to spin! The fiber we were provided with has a staple length of about 6 inches. The wool is wavy, rather than crimpy, and it is a commercial top preparation.
From about 1 1/4 oz I spun 92 yds of singles at my default spinning size of a light fingering/lace weight (Spun S). I like the yarn to be tight and plump when plied, so I spun with quite a bit of twist. In addition to trying a new type of wool. I decided to try a new plying method by cable plying my yarn. So after I spun my singles I plied both ends together, adding more twist than I would for a balanced yarn (Plied Z). I then plied both ends together again to create the cable ply (plied S). This resulted in 23 yards of a thick, almost ropy, Aran weight yarn, and I love it to bits!
Do you have a favourite kind of wool to work with? What about a new technique that you’ve recently learned?
Hey friends! One pattern has just been published, so that means it’s time to get the next into testing. My next pattern is quite different from normal for me, in that it is a crochet pattern. It all started on my vacation last October, when my husband’s grandma taught me how to crochet broomstick lace. I got an idea at that time, and now I’ve made it a reality: I made a Broomstick Lace Shawl!
The beauty of this shawl is that it can be made any size, and with any weight yarn, so the possibilities really are endless. Mine is a shawlette, made with a skein of Miss Babs Yowza (Worsted, 560 yds/ 512 m).
I’m looking for 6 pattern testers – 2 each to make a shawl in fingering, Sport or DK, and Worsted weight yarns. If you’re interested, all the details are here.
Also, I need a name for this beauty. “Broomstick Lace Shawl” is descriptive, but not very evocative. What would you name this shawl? Leave a comment and include your Ravelry name. The person who comments with the best name will receive a free copy of my Ribless Hat as thanks.
Up until now I have exclusively spun combed top. Commercially prepped Top is easy to find, both dyed and undyed, and it’s easy to spin. And the method of spinning worsted (this has nothing to do with the diameter of the yarn, but rather with how you draft the fibers) gives the spinner a lot of control over how the yarn spins up. I love spinning Top, but I am a curious cat, and I wanted to try spinning woolen, and that meant getting some rolags and some batts and learning a different drafting method.
I bought 4 oz of these glorious rolags from Wildthyme Art on Etsy.
Image courtesy of Wildthyme Art
You can see how each end is a deep black that fades through grey to a stark white in the middle. The rolags have sparkly bits and some fun colourful additions throughout. I love the stark contrast of the black, white, but buying sparkles was a bit of a stretch for me.
The first rolag was so hard to spin. Not by any fault of the rolag, but because I was learning to use the short forward draw instead of my normal short backward draw. By the time I got to the second rolag, though, things were going well. I took this spin with me to a St. Distaff’s day celebration at my LYS, and spun almost half of my fiber in one day! Clearly, woolen spinning is speedy!
As I finished spinning my singles I thought long and hard about how I wanted to ply this yarn. I decided on a 2-ply, but I didn’t want stark black and white stripes in whatever I would make out of this yarn. After much thought, I decided to ply a marled yarn, where the black and white were plied together. I pulled the first few yards off the ball and held them in my left hand in a butterfly, then once I got into the grey section, I began plying the yarn on itself.
When the short end that I had held in a butterfly was plied, I added the other end of my ball to continue plying the singles on itself.
I finished plying, looked at my yarn, and thought, “You know, I would like this yarn a whole lot better if it had a lot more twist in the ply. So I ran it through my wheel again to add more twist. I am SO HAPPY I did this! I love how my yarn turned out!
This is definitely a thick and thin yarn, ranging from light fingering to heavy worsted. I would label it as a sport or DK weight. I ended up with 312 yds.
So now I get to decide what do do with it. Weaving? Knitting? I think it could make the most wonderful handbag!
What do you think? What would you use this yarn for?
P.S. The coupon code for my newest pattern is still running. Get the Ribless Hat on Ravelry for 18% off until January 18 with the code HOORAY18
I feel like a junkie. There are needles all over the place. My yarn storage is a mess. I have so many half-finished projects. But all I want is the next high, the next quick project, the next finished thing.
I am a Project Knitter. I knit (and spin, and sew, and weave…) for the stuff. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the process of crafting. There have been so many times when I went to knitting as a balm for my soul, to soothe and ground me. But there have also been many times when I just wanted a project to be done. I want instant gratification. When a shiny new idea hits me, I want to cast on immediately. I find the yarn and the pattern, and for a while everything is good. But then the project doesn’t get done right away. Maybe I’m busy and don’t have a lot of time to knit. Maybe I decide to read a book. Maybe (gasp) I’m knitting something else. And without realizing it, I put the project down for a week or a month or a year. After a while, I have a small mountain of unfinished things. And they weigh on me, because somewhere in the back of my head I know I need to work on them. Something has to be done.
I am very bad at keeping New Year’s resolutions, but one of my goals this year will be to finish up these lurking projects. The nice thing is they’re already half finished. And think of all the needles I will free up! But all I want to do right now is cast on something new.
What do you do when you have a bad case of startitis?
P.S. The coupon code for my newest pattern is still running. Get the Ribless Hat on Ravelry for 18% off until January 18 with the code HOORAY18
Friends, I am so excited to tell you about my newest pattern, the Ribless Hat.
This hat started when a dear friend gave me a beautiful skein of yarn. It wasn’t something I would have bought for myself, but when I really looked at it I realized how lovely it was. I knit on this hat through a move and a job change, and once it was finished it became my go-to hat. It is stylish and easy to wear and just the tiniest bit slouchy.
And (this part is key) it doesn’t have any ribbing.
To celebrate the release of the Ribless Hat, I am offering you a discount. Use the code HOORAY18 to receive 18% off the regular price until January 18. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Dramatic Lyric 