October Shuttlebug Meeting

Now that I have the loom, I was very eager to attend this month's meeting of the Shuttlebug Weavers and Spinners. They have tons of weaving resources and information that, as a member, I am welcome to borrow.

As it happens, the library had recently been re-organized and duplicates of some of the books and magazines were there for the taking so I snagged one called "Four Harness Weaving" that was originally developed for the Youth and Recreation Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services - probably dating from the mid-1970s.

Jacki, Judy and Gayle attended a weaving workshop in Haliburton this summer.

Gayle showed us a fringing board that makes it easier to measure, cut and braid fringes.

 Jacki talked about the challenges she had weaving with alpaca yarn.

She got a lot of practice repairing warp threads and concluded that alpaca yarn may not be the best choice for that purpose.

Judy showed us a trick suspending the lease sticks that makes it easier to dress the loom.

She also spoke of the challenges she had weaving yardage to make a jacket. The instructor used almost half of her warp demonstrating samples so she shared with us how she laid out the pattern pieces with what was left.

Judy also showed us some interesting weaving accessories.  The top two items are weaving paddles. The boat shuttle is a double one that can hold two bobbins.

Carol Ann then reported on a fur sewing workshop that she attended. She described the special kind of sewing machine that is used to sew pelts or strips of fur together. The needle operates horizontally rather than vertically and the resulting seam looks like it was serged. She passed around the samples that she worked on. There are not many fur sewers any more - not surprising since it is not very politically correct to kill animals for fur or wear fur.

And now to get a warp onto the loom. Wheeee!!!

Orchid Thief

Last weekend, Mo was the gracious host at her mom's cottage. On the way we picked up the 15 3/4" LeClerc Dorothy loom in Belleville that I had found on Kijiji. The only thing that didn't come with it was a raddle but I had one that I fashioned to use with the loom I had borrowed from Paula. It is a table loom that folds up to a relatively compact size - 16" x 24" x 8". My mind is swimming with stuff I want to try weaving.

Then we went to Picton for lunch and to explore a couple of the cute shops. Once at the cottage, we began our knitting in earnest. Mo was designing a shawl she wanted to knit for her mother. I started knitting Orchid Thief using a skein of my handspun.

It knits up pretty quickly and I got everything but the leafy border done before we headed for home. The setup row (Row 86) for the border kicked my ass. I couldn't seem to interpret the chart nor the written instructions. Thank goodness cmari on Ravelry had created a chart for this row.

Once I got that done I progressed pretty quickly. Of course, the rows got longer and longer but I finished binding off last night and blocked it this morning. I ran wires through the centre spine and through the eyelet radiating from the points of the leaves at the neck. Basically, it is a triangular shawl with a big, leafy border and additional half segments on either side of the hypotenuse of the triangle.

Then I pinned the points of the leaves and the diamonds. It dried pretty quickly.

I got a couple of photos outside before we lost the necessary light.

I like the leaf detail at the back of the neck.
It sits nicely on the shoulders.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. This was a good project for this particular skein of handspun.

I used almost 470 yards and 105g of yarn so beware, anyone who wants to knit this shawl, you will need more than a standard 100g skein of fingering weight yarn. Also, check the errata page. There were a couple of errors on the first edition of this pattern.

Spin In 2013 and Big Things

Donna and I had a busy day on Tuesday. We attended the Spin In in Campbellford sponsored by the Warkworth Handweavers and Spinners Guild. There were lots of spinners and their wheels but way fewer people than attended last year.

Just looking down a row, one can see such a variety of spinning wheels.

The lamb burgers were tasty, particularly with the Feta/garlic mayo. Yum!

I met the person who breeds the 'Norbouillet' sheep from which Laurie at The Black Lamb gets her fibre. I picked up 4oz of roving which I'll spin and then dye.

I won a $12 gift certificate and promptly spent it on some alpaca/merino fibre. Paula not only won a gift certificate, she also won a gift bag that had been donated. Last year I won the 50/50 draw but wasn't that lucky this year.

At about 1pm we packed up and went in search of the famed Dooher's Bakery. After ogling the baked goods, we settled on some butter tarts. While there, we asked directions to the 'big Toonie' and were told to go back across the bridge and hang a left. It is in the riverside park. The designer, Brent Townsend, is from Campbellford.

In a past life, I used an old photo of the Big Toonie and myself with my mathematics students when we studied proportional reasoning (calculating ratios).

On our way back to the car we stopped in at Your Number One Sewing Centre - a very comprehensive quilt fabric store. I picked up some cool fabric with which I've already made a stealth Christmas gift. :-)

We then went in search of the Empire Cheese factory. I guess we could have bought the cheese at almost any store in town but I wanted to go to 'ground zero'.

It was immaculate inside. There was a wide variety of cheese plus other gourmet items like jams, jellies and dips. I bought some cranberry pear chutney, some cheese curds, and some 4 year-old cheddar.

Back on the highway, we decided to stop in at 'The Big Apple' in Colborne. Donna bought an apple pie and I just bought some apple chips to munch in the car on the way home.

It was a busy day but we did and saw a lot including two very big things.

Brigit

I've been in a real sock knitting mode lately. I guess I just want a couple of small projects after finishing the Rams and Yowes blanket.

Last year when I was visiting relatives in New Brunswick, I had a chance to drop into the Moncton location of Cricket Cove to check out their yarn selection. At that time, I purchased a ball of Opal Vincent Van Gogh sock yarn in the 'Starry Night' (Nach) colourway. I had started a 2x2 ribbed sock but wanted something interesting to break up the ribbing monotony.

I like my sock cuffs to be within the 64 - 72 stitch range and Brigit fit the bill. It isn't mindless knitting - I do have to do 1x1 cables every other row and work stitches as presented on the in-between rows, but it's knitting up quickly. I have knit the leg of one sock and am ready to start the heel.

Brigit using the 'Starry Night' colourway

My new, favourite short-row heel is the Shadow Wrap heel. Once I get to the foot, I will decide if I'll decrease to 72 stitches as were in the leg or a few more stitches so the foot isn't too loose.

Battle of the Blades 4

Last night, Suzanne and I attended CBC's live show of "Battle of the Blades Season 4". Last week was the introductory episode where all the skaters were introduced and interviewed. This week was the first week of competition.

Getting tickets was not easy. Suzanne learned that some were becoming available on Saturday. She bought them, only to learn that she couldn't pick them up at the box office of the arena but had to go to a TicketMaster outlet to pick them up. That sounds simple, right? WRONG!

As she purchased the tickets in the late afternoon, she assumed she'd be able to go to any TicketMaster outlet on Sunday morning. WRONG!

Evidently, of the 15 outlets in the greater Toronto area, only ONE is open on a Sunday. And it was located at Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket. For a while she accepted defeat and decided it was crazy to drive all the way from Brighton (where she spent the weekend) to Newmarket to pick up the tickets and then to Ajax (where she lives) and then to the show in the southwestern corner of Toronto. But then decided to go for it.

I got the message to meet at her condo in Ajax and 4:30 which would give us plenty of time for me to pick up Suzanne and drive through Toronto and possibly grab a bite to eat before taking our seats at 6:30. The traffic was actually not bad and we got to the area in only an hour. We found a wacky Polish/Irishpub, The Albatros in Lakeshore Village - a part of Toronto I've never explored.

The pub was completely decorated for Hallowe'en - tons of ghoulish things - even all the way back to the restrooms. I had an excellent hamburger and was pleasantly surprised when I asked for mustard to get authentic Polish mustard! Cool!

After dinner, we easily found free on-street parking just across from the arena and once inside, after mugging by the "Battle of the Blades" sign,

we quickly found our seats.

Once the ticketed people were seated after 6:30, the seats were filled by those who waited in line for seats all day. We moved over more to the centre for a better vantage point.

This put us closer to the judges, Kurt Browning, Jamie Salé and P. J. Stock. (I apologize for the graininess - flash photography was prohibited so there wasn't enough light most of the time)

If you look at the other side of the ice, you can see that there are 3 rows of people on the ice behind the lights, then about 8 rows of people in chairs on bleachers behind the boards.

The show started promptly at 7pm where it was broadcast live to the Atlantic provinces and tape-delayed across the other time zones in Canada for local starts at 8pm.

This is the third year Suzanne and I attended. We went the very first year (2009) when it was held at Maple Leaf Gardens. That was shortly before the Gardens was closed and a big Loblaws grocery store was opened. The next year BOTB was held on a sound stage in the southeast corner of Toronto. We didn't attend the third year and last year there was no show due to cost-cutting by the CBC.

It's a lot of fun for only $12 admission fee. It's unfortunate that getting tickets is such a pain in the ass. Thanks, Suzanne, for all your efforts getting our tickets yesterday.

One More Step...

I finished the doubled garter stitch border on Tuesday night. It makes the border quite sqwooshy.

When I picked up the stitches all around the edge to begin knitting the border, it created purl bumps on the back of the blanket all around the edge. After I had knit the border with the mitered corners, using increases on either side of the corner stitches then decreases back to the original number of border stitches, I then took a tapestry needle and stitch by stitch I picked up a purl bump on the back and then one stitch from the needle.

It creates a very tidy edge and conceals all of the steeked stitches and ends of yarn from the colour changes.
I really like the look of the back of the blanket, too.

Rams and Yowes is very photogenic.

And an indoor shot.

It is a toasty, warm, lap blanket which will be keeping my legs and feet warm while I knit or watch TV. Working with the Shetland wool was lovely. I will keep my eye out for an appropriate sport or DK weight yarn to make another, larger one.

I did run out of one colour on the border and just knit more with the next colour in the order. I almost ran out of white which was my last border colour and the colour I used to hand-sew the border to the back of the blanket. I am obtaining another ball of the Shetland black (a really dark, dark brown) to knit on the i-cord edging and the last step.

I just have the final episode of the last season of "Breaking Bad" to watch to conclude my "Breaking Bad" binge. I enjoyed watching the first episode of the new season (4th) "Downton Abbey" which aired in the UK on Sunday night. I have just finished listening to Michael J. Fox' book, "Lucky Man" and rather enjoyed it. I'm ready for another audiobook. I seem to be in a biography mode these days.

And now, to run some errands...

Overdyeing

Yesterday I had another dye day out on the deck. Jennifer and I both had some bare yarn and some yarn that needed to be overdyed.

Jennifer hand-painted some KnitPicks Bare Hare yarn using a couple of shades of Gold Ochre. Here, she is measuring out the concentrated dye and water.

As she had two skeins, what she did to one, she did to the other to create the same colourway. After she applied the darkest shade of colour, she diluted it a bit to get a lighter shade of the same colour.

Jennifer also overdyed some light blue laceweight with burgundy resulting in a purplish colour (far left). The other three skeins were KnitPicks Imagination yarn in a lighter green and yellow colourway that she overdyed with varying shades of sapphire blue in three gradations from lightest (on the right to the darkest (third from the right). They are now gradient shades of a teal, green and blue.

I first overdyed some tan-coloured Opal sock yarn. I used chestnut and a couple of shades of spruce. I'm not thrilled with the colours I picked but they'll make acceptable man socks (pictured on the right). The skein on the left is another skein of my handspun which I dyed to somewhat match the two skeins I dyed two weeks ago. The tonal golden yarn in the centre is the norbouillet I bought at the Knitter's Fair. There was quite a bit of VM (vegetable matter) in the yarn but it will be easily picked out while it is being knit. Now to find a pattern for this very special yarn.

For the most part, if you don't like the colour of a skein of yarn, there is always the option of changing the colour.

Cheese!

I have started a shawl using Sparkly Sock yarn from Yvieknits that I purchased at The Gathering in Port Hope back in April.

The pattern is Crescent over Lothlorien by Cordula Surmann-Schmit. I wanted a crescent-shaped shawl with some lace and this one seems to fit the bill. I hope it is big enough. I am doing the pattern as written but now wonder if I should have added more repeats of the plain 'stem' part. We shall see.

I made a mess of winding the ball of yarn and ended up with a huge mess on my hands which took me about 3 hours to untangle the other night. I am leaving it as a hand-wound ball with it unwinding from the outside. Lesson learned - knit from the outside of the ball if the yarn is in any way 'sticky'.

The even-numbered rows are not charted, rather the knitter is instructed to work stitches as presented. However, I am purling the even-numbered rows except for knitting the two-stitch garter stitch border on each side and the two yarnovers on each side. I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to what stitches were presenting themselves on the wrong side and don't believe it will make that much difference in the appearance of the final product. Doing the even-numbered rows as instructed creates what the designer believes to be a 'reversible' shawl but I'm not concerned with that.

I'm hoping it will be appropriate to take on my upcoming Irish knitting tour to wear with my bright yellow coat.

I am on row 13 of 45 of the lace border. It shouldn't take more than a couple of concerted knitting sessions to complete.

Rams and Yowes is almost finished. I needed a break from the 750+ stitches per row of garter stitch. I have about 24 rounds to go before attaching the border to the back of the blanket and concealing all the ends. I may have to order a ball of the shetland black yarn to complete the i-cord edge. I found a distributor of the yarn at the Knitter's Fair. He didn't have the colour I needed at the fair but has it in stock at his store so I know it is easily ordered and shipped.