New gloves

A long while ago, I started knitting some gloves with my handspun. From the start, I wasn’t thrilled with the colour of the yarn, and as I progressed it became clear that these gloves would never make it onto my hands. The pattern I chose was for large-ish hands, and despite my modifications, they just weren’t going to be snug enough to show the lace panels on the back. The 3/4 finished glove sat accusingly next to the sofa, making me feel guilty, until…riiiiip!

The reason for my new-found zeal is a very similar glove pattern in the fall issue of Vogue knitting. No mucky modifications required, so I’m hoping for a good fit this time. I mean, it’s getting chilly out there, not to mention the number of gross people that sneeze all over the handrails on the skytrain. So I happily cast on some Koigu in my favourite shade of chocolate brown and hopefully will have cozy, germ-free hands soon.

Colour institute

colour bridging and composition exercises

Wow. I spent all last week at Maiwa’s Colour Institute workshop, led by Michele Wipplinger. At the risk of sounding gushy, Michele is very inspiring both personally and professionally. The whole week was simply an immersion in colour, with plenty of show-and-tell: woven, quilted, and dyed items from around the world, books, and yarns. It was like an advanced colour theory class, with tons of exercises using different colour systems (like Munsell and NCS), watercolours, and plain old paper and glue. One interesting highlight was the colour vision test, a test of colour discrimination that left me feeling a little cross-eyed.

In addition to being a colour expert, Michele also has a wealth of knowledge about natural dyes. I see a trip to her Seattle studio in my future. So I’m feeling inspired and trying to scrape together some time to put this new-found inspiration and colour knowledge to work, before it wears off. I’ll be going back tonight to volunteer at Maiwa’s Slow Clothes Fashion Show, plus a few more lectures next week. And then my love affair with Maiwa may cool down for a bit.

sample quilt with hand-dyed fabrics

On looking delicious

Last weekend I happened upon a food photography workshop at the Roundhouse.

I thought it would help my knitting photography, as both food and fibre subjects are small, close, and need to look delicious.

Friends asked me: Did I learn a lot? Well, no, but I find that getting better at photography, for me, is a slow process punctuated by the occasional ‘aha!’ moment. The ‘aha!’ from this workshop: the five-way reflector/diffuser. I ran straight to Dressew and bought some white nylon for $6 to make my own.

Light as a Feather

I’ve finished the Featherweight Cardigan and have been wearing it a lot – it’s perfect for cool sunny weather.

It’s knit in sweetgeorgia’s handpainted lace. It’s amazingly soft, and warm considering it’s made from only two 50g skeins.

I like this pattern much better than Hanna Fettig’s other cardigan, Whisper, which has weird shaping around the armpits. But you should have a look at her patterns if you haven’t already. Because I still consider myself a beginner knitter, I really appreciate the simplicity and elegance of her designs. This one was knit in the round, so no side or shoulder seams to fuss with.

I knit a 1×1 rib for the border around the front instead of the stockinette suggested by the pattern – I thought it might look funny if the edges rolled, and I know I’d be tugging on it constantly to make it lie flat.

The only thing I would do differently is the sleeve cuffs. I shortened them to elbow length, but you can see the perma-wrinkle they’ve developed from where I bend my arms. Complicating the matter is the modified tubular bind-off I did on the cuffs, thinking it would be a cleaner edge. It’s too tight- my ripped biceps have kind of maxed out the ribbing, but the bind-off keeps it from stretching out evenly.

Oh my, Maiwa

This past weekend I did some dyeing in a workshop I took as part of the Maiwa Symposium. These Maiwa ladies, they are organized, smart, and interesting. Just look at the fun we had:

Acid dye samples on silk and wool

I’ve already been dabbling with acid dyes, but the Procion dyes for cellulose fibre and most of the natural dyes were entirely new to me. I’ve decided on a winner: cochineal. Grinding dried bugs into a bright red powder to dye my samples was satisfying in a Farmer John kind of way that the chemical dyes just can’t match. And my vegetarian views are unwavering; these are parasites, and used as food and cosmetics colorants, to boot; I’d rather have ground bugs in my lipstick than red dye no. 2.

Cochineal on silk, cotton, and wool

But I digress. The cochineal samples above were mordanted with iron to give bright fushia colours; if we had used iron they would have been dark purple, or vinegar, orange-red. Other samples were done in logwood, cutch, osage, and madder, all beautiful. The colour varied with the fibres we dyed, even though they were all dyed the same strength.

And now I’m sadly staring at my dye pots piled up in a corner of my office, wondering when I’ll fill them with colour. It’s hard in a little apartment to use all these dye implements, much less store them. But now I’ve got them – so I need to use them.

Low-water Procion dyeing on cotton scarves

W³

Warped, woven, washed – but not without a bit of struggle.

It was a bit of a fight to bring my first real weaving project into existence. I wound the warp onto the back beam crookedly and had to rewind it – with all the ends still in the heddles. I then finished warping – before realizing I had the wrong reed on the loom. I stubbornly insisted on using a fine silk weft that almost took over the warp. I made mistakes. I persevered. And here it is.

The warp for this scarf is commercial merino and my handspun polwarth, both my hand-dyed, plus a skein of Felicia’s 50/50 merino silk singles. The weft is 12/2 silk, also hand-dyed by me.

I put it in the washing machine to full it – to clean and open the fibres – for only a few minutes. It wasn’t until I dried it and tried it on that I realized it had shrunk 10″ in length. Yet it’s still long enough to wear and I’m so much happier with the plumpness and softness of the fulled fabric. But I believe I will consult an expert to help me figure out if the scarf is, in fact, over-fulled so I don’t make the same mistake next time.

An update

A birthday cheese and olive plate

Well, it’s been awhile…and I’ve been busy but I’m not quite ready to show off my almost-finished projects.

What have I been up to? Well, we had a very nice trip down the Oregon and California coasts to San Francisco. We went surfing, explored cute little towns, rode the cable car, and celebrated my birthday at the amazing Greens Restaurant on the San Francisco waterfront.

Since I got back, I’ve been working away on some knitting and weaving which I’ll be able to show off soon. But it seems I’ve been doing much collecting of supplies for future projects:

Kid mohair, silk, linen, and wool collected at the Gibsons Landing Fibre Fest

I’m most excited about the grey skein in the lower left corner: silk and yak from Treenway Silks. It’s so soft, you really have to feel it to believe it.

A few skeins collected in San Francisco - silk (reds) and wool (greens)

Stay tuned – there are good things coming up!

One more thing…

My dyed silk, which I wasn’t going to bother posting, except that sweet C. gave me a 50mm lens for my birthday. So of course I had to try it out. This, I like a lot.