Silken Skeins

… and still making stuff - sometimes more successfully than others.  The silk scarf I was working on for the competition and exhibition didn’t work out, but I’m hoping to salvage it in some way.  I hope to have pics of it on the loom in a day or two.  I’m still working on tablet-woven bookmarks for the exhibition too.

Meanwhile I am also working on swap stuff, such as this hand-dyed yarn:

Some of the tablet-woven bookmarks will be for swaps too.  I just finished another bobbin lace one like this one:

and I am working on 2 more snakes.

I decided to try some long-repeat dyeing for socks for a friend, and here it is ….

Bright, isn’t it?   Not my colours but I hope she will like it.

In case someone is curious as to how I did it, I wound the yarn into a long skein on my warping board (5 yard path, so 10 yard repeat), then dip dyed it.  Here is a picture of it in the first colour bath …

So, how did the stripes work out?   Well, like this …

I did a lot of swatching for this KAL, including Zephyr, but I decided in the end that I don’t want a stole, so I’m going to knit it as a scarf. I was given some Skacel Merino Lace by an online friend and hadn’t found the right project for it. It is nearer cobweb than laceweight, so I swatched with 2.50 mm and 2.75 mm needles (US #1.5 and #2). I’m going to go with the 2.75 mm, which will give a scarf about 12.4″ by 58″. That seems a good size for a cobweb scarf to me.

So here are the swatches. They are lacier in real life than they look here.

I scored 4 free Blue Faced Leicester fleeces last month, and I finally got around to washing one. Then I felt a need to dye some of it, so …

No pictures today, but I might get some taken over the weekend as I have a lot of things that need to be photographed. However, we have to go new-to-us car hunting urgently this weekend as our current one died this week.

My most urgent current project, other than the car, is to get at least two more pairs of slippers knitted for my mother by her birthday (less than 4 weeks). The old ones wore out too quickly, so I am going to use the same yarn I used for her socks, as that seems to be lasting better. It’s Paton’s Diploma Gold DK, and I picked up 4 balls each of navy and denim so I can make at least 3 pairs of slippers and one more pair of socks, maybe a second pair of socks too. That’s how many she requested for her birthday, but she doesn’t expect me to get them all done in time.

I’ve been swatching for other projects - the Mystery Stole 2 KAL and the Icarus shawl from the latest Interweave Knits. I haven’t joined the Icarus KAL yet but I might. The Icarus is for me, and I have a cone of 2/16 cashmere from ColourMart UK. I can’t stop fondling the swatches as they feel so wonderful.

I’m doing the Mystery Stole in Skacel Merino Lace, which is almost cobweb weight, so it will actually be a scarf. I’ll probably end up giving that one away, unless I totally fall in love with the pattern when I finally see it complete.

Before I start either of those, I’m trying to finish the edging on the fan stitch half circle shawl from Waterman’s shawl book.

I’ve also been washing and dyeing free (yes, free) BFL fleece. I got 4 fleeces for just a contribution to the petrol (gas) costs of the friend who collected them. They aren’t bad, even though they were sheared by the farmer’s neighbour and were going to be burnt as it wasn’t worth him sending them to the Wool Board. They have quite a bit of VM, but mostly straw and not too difficult to pick out,

Well, that’s all the fibre news from Chez Jenny for today. I hope I’ll manage to do the next update a bit more promptly than this one.

I mentioned in the May 24th entry that I had hoped to use that yarn for the Mulitcoloured Sockies in Socks, Socks, Socks but the colour spacing was too long. Instead, I spun up some undyed superwash merino top and handpainted it, and here are the Sockies I eventually made:

After many tries, we still haven’t managed to get the colours to show correctly. The actual sockies are darker, more saturated colours, but this picture does give some idea of the effect. I wanted the ‘dashes’ of each colour, just 4 or 5 stitches, and no pooling and that is what I got.

These sockies are fun to knit. I have a lot of the yarn left over, but not quite enough for another pair. I’m going to spin and dye a bit more yarn, maybe solid dye it in a colour from the yarn, then use it to knit parts of the sock - maybe just for the soles and cuffs and to make the cord.

I also want to spin some sock yarn for myself (maybe BFL/silk or BFL/nylon) and dye it in the same way and the same colours - watch this space but don’t hold your breath. :-)

One of my guilds, Kennet Valley, has been meeting in a church hall for many years. As a gesture of thanks, it was decided to make a tapestry for the church using as many of our crafts as possible. It took us a few years, but it was finally hung in the church last month.

The main part of the tapestry is woven from Cotswold and other long wools spun by guild members (including me *grin*). The cross was inkle woven, the dove and the crown are bobbin lace (I’m not sure whether they were made with handspun thread) and so on.

First, here’s a look at the silk scarf (or belt or hairband or however the recipient wants to use it) which I entered in the Berkshire Guild Challenge. The theme this year was “Nature’s Colour Palette”. We got the results at today’s meeting. Mine didn’t get a prize, but that’s fine by me as there were 15 entries, all of them very good, and I loved the prizewinners.

Technical details: warp - 16/2 silk dyed with acid dyes, weft - Gutermann’s sewing silk, plain weave. It was sett to make it very drapey, but I think it may have ended up too sleazy and unstable. The judge didn’t say that, though, so perhaps it isn’t too bad after all.

After the meeting, we took a friend home. While we were there we got some photos of the blue tit nestlings being raised in an old cylinder vacuum cleaner ouside her house. It seems that the hole where the hose went is just the right size for the adult tits.

She keeps silkworms, and we had a look at her current ‘crop’. She doesn’t have any live moths at the moment, but she has some beautiful dead ones for display at demonstrations. She does have a lot of larvae at the moment, though. Moth-phobics are advised not to read on. :-)
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The postman and my friends have been really good to me over the past few days. I have been sent fine lace knitting needles (US #00) by Sharon, and beaded stitch markers from Tricia, who makes lovely markers and also row counter bracelets:

The blue ones were a gift, and fit sock needles and fine lace needles. I was so impressed I bought the red ones (with that lovely bonus one) to use with thicker needles.

Then yesterday, the postie brought a package of hand-reeled silk from Michael (a.k.a. Oaken King) You can read more about the different types he sent.

If you are at all interested in silk fibre or silk moths, you must explore Michael’s web site.

As for what I’ve been doing since my last entry, I finished the corrugated ribbing on the first Sanquhar glove, but it is on hold while I try to come up with a chart I like for the initials block. I realised that when I put my ALF aside weeks ago, I was actually within 20 rows of finishing it. I’ve decided it makes sense to finish it before getting back to the shawl I started more recently. ALF was intended for me, but it will also serve as a fall-back for hte scarf exchange if I can’t finish the other shawl by the deadline.

Now I have to eat some Haagen-Daz Chocolate Midnight Cookies ice cream, so I will get back to blogging another time …

It’s been a while, but I can finally post pics of some of the things I’ve been doing this autumn. though others haven’t reached their recipients yet. I wove some bookmarks for an exchange, as I had a warp I needed to use up:

The warp and weft were 12/2 white mercerised cotton. I used fibre reactive dyes to dye the finished bookmarks. The dyeing wasn’t completely successful as too much of the dye washed out, changing the colours, so after those, I wove a few for Christmas presents using lilac 12/2 weft.

I went back to bobbin lace after a long break to make the rest of my exchange bookmarks, and I have really enjoyed that. I have done 3 so far, with one more to do, but I’ll make a couple more for presents.

… about keeping my blog up to date, partly because both my current fibre projects are ones I can’t talk about too much here.

One is mittens for an exchange, and I don’t want to risk spoiling the surprise for my exchange partner. I was preparing Shetland fleece but it has been slow going as the fleece has a break just above the base so I’ve been combing each lock to get rid of that part before I can drum card it all.

I’ve finally decided I can’t get that done in time, so yesterday I mordanted a lot of merino top and both bombyx and tussah silk. Today, half of it is in the dye pot cool dyeing. More will be hot dyed tomorrow, and then I’ll do an exhaust bath on Monday. If I get a good enough colour contrast, I will probably do stranded colour work, but if I don’t think the colours will work, I’ll card it all together to spin a heathered yarn and knit a textured pattern.

My other project is weaving samples for a medical research company. I can’t say much more than that, but the first samples are at 120 epi. They are small samples, thank goodness!!!

I probably won’t post more details or pictures of the mitten project till after they reach my partner, and unfortunately I won’t be able to post pictures of the woven samples at all. I do have some workshops coming up though, so I should be able t report on those, at least.

I can’t resist a little bragging. The cushion got 2nd place out of 18 entries … :-)