Apr
23
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 23-04-2010

I tried the Thing-a-Day challenge in February but only managed to complete something on 10 days (17 items total), and that was a struggle. Too many of the things I like to make require more than a day. I was visiting a new-to-me blog today, Myrna Wacknov’s “Creativity Journey”, and the header describes her personal challenge, which is to “work on my art every day and create a minimum of 2 finished pieces each week.” That seems a more manageable challenge than the Thing-a-Day, so I might try to do something similar once I get past the project which is currently bogging me down, and once my mother is out of hospital and we get into some sort of routine.

Apr
12

Stolen from a friend’s blog

funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

My own knitting has been going well, though slowly. I have almost finished a pair of Regia socks, as they have been my mindless knitting while visiting my mother in hospital (mainly on the journeys to and fro). As she isn’t likely to go home for a while yet, I needed to set up my next ‘car knitting’ project, so I’ve started on the yarn from the dyed sock blank. I have finished one toe, but as I’ve not used this yarn before and I didn’t swatch (bad Jenny!), I may have to do a bit of ripping after a couple more inches to adjust the number of stitches. At least I’ll have something to keep my fingers busy, so I won’t mind too much if that happens.

Apr
09
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 09-04-2010

The challenge is to go through April without buying any new craft materials, tools or supplies, in honour of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day on April 22. I did buy a craft book yesterday, but I’m claiming that doesn’t count as a tool or supply. We are also supposed to make at least one new project this month entirely from our stash. Well, I have a suitable one planned for as soon as I finish my most urgent current project, so that shouldn’t be a problem. However, I have no self-control where craft supplies are concerned, so wish me luck!

Between still not feeling well myself and having to deal with the situation with my mother, I haven’t got much done over the past few weeks, but I have finally got around to unravelling the sock blank I dyed back in February at the Procion MX workshop. It had been knitted with 2 strands of yarn held together (one for each sock) so as I unravelled it, I made it into 2 loose piles. The yarn was very curly after being dyed and washed as knitted fabric, so I had to wind it into skeins and steam them before I could wind them into balls.

One re-wound, one to go ...

Mar
19
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts, Knitting) by jennyk on 19-03-2010

So who is knitting again? Not me – I never stopped knitting, though I’ve definitely slowed down as I got distracted by other crafts. My mother, though, hadn’t knitted for 20 or 30 years, but she is in hospital and one of the occupational therapy activities is knitting.

On the day after she was moved to this hospital (a rehab facility), I saw the woman in the next bed to her was knitting a garter stitch square in thick yarn on straight needles. That led to a conversation about knitting socks, which used to be her favourite knitting. I happened to be wearing socks knitted with Opal faux-fairisle yarn, which really impressed her, even though I explained the yarn did all the hard work. I’m going to take in my current sock project (Opal again, but striped rather than faux-fairisle) to show her, and perhaps some of my fancy sock yarn stash. Perhaps she will want to try socks again, but I think my mother will stick with garter squares. The row of rib in the middle was unintentional, but it’s now a decorative feature. :-)

Mar
12
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts, Knitting) by jennyk on 12-03-2010

I’ve not been making much this week as I was very sick over the weekend and I’m still not really recovered, so I’ve nothing of my own to post, but I just want to draw attention to a friend’s work.  Opal spins and knits but she also makes lovely jewellery, so of course she also makes stitch markers for her Etsy shop. She has a giveaway for a set of similar markers on her blog.

Mar
09

Another small journal, for a friend this time. I think I am on a black & white & bright kick after using that colour scheme for quilt blocks for a swap. This one is 3″ x 4.2″ x 0.5″. It is coptic-stitched, with 7 5-sheet signatures of 5.6″ by 3.9″ 90 gsm printer paper (well, 3 sheets are red paper of similar weight). The cover is stamped Tyvek again, and the thread is Anchor #20 crochet cotton.

Mar
04

Well, the block isn’t very special, but the reason for making it is. On swap-bot, some of us are making blocks for a quilt to donate in memory of Cheryl LaVon, a member who died a year ago. The theme is “nature”, and she liked deep rich colours, so I hope she would have liked this Churn Dash block:

Feb
28

Another bobbin lace bookmark using Christine Springett’s snake design, made for a friend. The colours are brighter than the photo shows. I send these bookmarks in sleeves even though I usually use my own ones without them. The snakes do tend to twist if they are used without a sleeve, which is a bit of a nuisance, so I leave it for the recipients to chooose.

Feb
26
Filed Under (Dyeing, Fibre and textile crafts) by jennyk on 26-02-2010

The dyeing from Sunday’s Procion MX workshop did not dry till Tuesday, and it has taken me until today to remember about it in daylight and get a photo.  In the morning, we had done the dyeing for the samples, and our teacher Debbie had demonstrated some techniques for multi-colour dyeing.  In the afternoon, we got the chance to try whichever we wanted, and this is what I did:

On the left is a hank of dip-dyed superwash merino/nylon sock yarn.  It was just an afterthought when I found I had a little time left at the end of the afternoon.  It didn’t work out quite as planned, as the pink was stronger than I had intended and the yarn ‘grabbed’ the dye very quickly so there wasn’t enough left to give the gentle transition between the colours.  I might overdye the almost-white sections with more pink but I’ll probably just leave them as they are.

The  middle item is a sock blank, as explained here.  Again, the colours didn’t work out quite as I planned, but I am happy with it.  It will probably become socks for me.  [Edited to add: each row of the blank contains approximately 44-45" of yarn.]

The two pieces of printed cotton were just an experiment to see how the colours worked over existing patterning.  The standard 1% dye solution was not strong enough so I had use too much.  It still didn’t give the depth of colour I wanted and the colours on the larger piece merged together too much.  I need some more experimentation with that.

I have been distracted this week, but I do have another project started.  I probably will not have a picture of that until at least Sunday, even though it is only a small project.