Author Archives: Heather

Patchwork knitting workshop 2009

Well, it has been a busy September round here! In a calm between the storms I am finally going to sort out my photos from the last few weeks. Due to the wonders of the scheduling function on wordpress you will be pleased to know I’m not going to drown you with everything that has happened all at once, but instead try to spread it out so you can be enjoying the delights every few days, while I am dashing round like a headless chicken again. I am going to catch up in chronological order, because otherwise my brain hurts.

On Saturday 22nd August I had a lovely time in Marlow, Bucks, helping Rosie and Jill teach a workshop on the patchwork knitting of Horst Schulz. We were joined by twelve delightful and enthusiastic knitters, who I have managed to photograph in the most unflattering and blurry way possible. I am getting a bit better at photographing knitting, but my photographs of people leave a lot to be desired. Here is the least awful picture.

This year as well as talking about basic mitred squares, and variations on them, including increasing and decreasing, I did some samples of different edgings. With these patchwork knitting workshops we are aiming to give people the skills to be able to design and create their own items and hopefully these edgings will be another something to add to the design toolkit. One of the parts of the day I enjoy the most every year is when everybody shows their patchwork knitting projects they have been working on (both finished and in progress). There are always such a lot of wonderful and creative projects to see, and so many different directions in which different people have taken the same basic building blocks. I’m afraid I was enjoying myself again so much that my photos are dreadful. Luckily though, one of my few reasonable photos is of Rosie’s beautiful short row cushion.

I found all of the projects very inspiring, and am looking forward to incorporating some of the ideas in my own knitting. I hope that the other participants had as much fun as I did, and I look forward to seeing everyone again next year!

Samhain / Hallowe’en Fibre Retreat

Tropical Storm socks

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I can’t actually remember when I finished these. They have been sitting on the arm of the settee waiting for me to photograph them for ages.

The toe looks a little weird here because my plastic foot model is quite a bit smaller than my foot.

The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, and I think the colour is Tropical Storm.

I experimented with a garter stitch heel for these, which I like very much. It looks nice and neat and is very comfortable.

I also did a ribbed hem.

I like how this looks. Very neat from the inside too.

It is a bit pointless though, since rib doesn’t curl anyway. You do get rid of a cast on edge, but the rib makes the cuff quite thick. It was an interesting experiment but I don’t think I will do it again. I think I will experiment more with hems in other stitches.

Yet another shade of orange (and another green)

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I have been playing with the dyes again for my stranded knitting project. One more orange and one more green.

This is the new orange between its two immediate neighbours.

The Kemtex Acid Dye in Yellow is definitely not as bright as the Jacquard Bright Yellow. They do have another range called Kenanthrol acid dyes, which have a variety of shades of yellow. I’m not sure what is the difference between them and the Kemtex acid dyes, but they might be worth investigating in future.

I think I have got the 12 colours for the background sorted now.

The new green was another experiment for a foreground colour. I think this one is very pretty but is too yellow for this project.

Here is the new green in the middle, with last experimental green on the left, and the original green I used for the knitted sample on the right.

I think I am going to have another attempt at dyeing a green which is more similar in colour to the one on the right, but more solid than I have so far managed with the Jacquard acid dyes. I do rather like the bluer one on the left though, it makes a good contrast with all the oranges and I think it is a definite contender.

I have now measured my tension from my sample, and started working out the charts – I think this will be quite a long process! I have a rough idea of how the patterns should fit in, and have worked out most of the logistics on my rough sketch. The charts themselves will take a while though, I am using excel and am not particularly fast. Have any of you used any of the knitting charting programs out there? If so what do you think of them? I have been looking at Knit Visualizer and have just downloaded the demo to have a play with. The details of how I am going to do the shaping will take some working out too! Hopefully I will actually be able to cast on for the real thing fairly soon.

Stitches East Part 4

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It is now nearly 2 years since I went to Stitches East. High time I finally finished telling you about it! In my previous witterings I had got as far as the Saturday night. So we will start here with Sunday.

On Sunday morning I took Joan Schrouder’s class on Shaping Shawls: Triangles & Trapezoids. We looked at different directions to knit shawls. First, from the point up, and from the top long edge down. We practiced both of these on the same sample, without casting off and on again in the middle.

This one was fun to knit, but the rows are all rather horizontal and I’m not sure whether a shawl made in this method would actually be very flattering on short, wide, me.

Then a wing-shaped triangle, with sideways knitted on edging. I do rather like this shape.

And lastly we looked at knitting side-to-side. This has an elongated middle section, allowing you to make the shawl wider without getting any longer. I can definitely see this one having potential too, and I like the vertical stripes.

Joan is a lovely person and an excellent teacher, and a mine of experience and useful information. Her class was jammed full of useful information about how you can actually use these shapes to make interesting and very wearable shawls which are also fun to knit. If I have another opportunity to take a class with Joan I will jump at it!

The last class of the event was Fully Fashioned and Fabulous with Melissa Leapman. She was an excellent choice for the end of a long four days. I don’t know how she manages to have so much energy! She managed to make the class enthusiastic and chirpy, without wearing us into the ground 🙂

We explored fully fashioned increases and decreases to shape knitting:

Splitting a central cable for V-neck:

Splitting for a V-neck in a lace pattern:

Creating the illusion of shaping with increases and decreases, first in garter rib:

Then in normal rib:

Melissa is a prolific designer (I have a couple of her books already), and I really enjoyed the tips and tricks from her class. Towards the end of the class we discussed how you could use fashioning to create shapes, and also to create the illusion of shapes. I love this kind of thing, and found it fascinating.

As you may have guessed from previous hinting there was a bit of stash enhancement as well 🙂

Some books:

A pattern and yarn for some mittens, and some lace weight yarn:

A shrug pattern, and some more lace weight yarn:

Some purple and green sock yarn (I think the colours of this are fantastic!):

Some more lace weight yarn:

Some double pointed needles, and the Webs catalogue:

Some bargain cashmere / merino:

Some more bargain cashmere / merino:

Yet more bargain cashmere / merino:

I had a wonderful time at Stitches, although I was absolutely exhausted afterwards! Great teachers and classes, and it was wonderful to see so many things at the market that I have only ever read about or seen online. I would love to go again one day.

A bit more pre-tour yarn

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I realised that I hadn’t shown you my first attempt at spinning sock yarn yet. I actually spun this before the red BFL. This is superwash bluefaced leicester again, dyed in the fibre, in a progression of colours, rather than a random mixture. I am hoping that as the yarn is knitted the colours will gradually shade from green through turquoise to purple. We shall see how successful this is!

There is 75g in each skein, and about 340m altogether. It measures about 13 wpi and so is somewhere between a 4ply weight and a DK weight.

I spun the lower skein first, and I think I got a bit over-keen with the plying of the second as it is plyed quite a lot tighter than the first. I’m not sure yet how much this will affect the finished socks. They may end up coming out slightly different sizes. I will just have to remember to wear the bigger sock on my bigger foot 🙂

More shades of orange

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On Monday last week I had another play with the dyes to see if I could make another pale orange and another mid orange for my Autumn in Anatolia jumper. While I was at it I also had another go at a green for the foreground.

These were the three colours I dyed. I am having a lot of trouble photographing them accurately, but this is fairly close.

The mid orange is good I think. I am a little concerned that the palest orange is actually nigh-on indistinguishable from yellow. The green is a beautiful colour, but I think still too blue.

Here is the new pale orange with the other colours it will be with in the sequence (the new colour is in the middle).

And here are the mid oranges. Again the new colour is in the middle.

Here is the new green on the right along with the last green I attempted on the left, which is 400ml of 1% stock solution of Kemtex acid dye in green, and which as you can see is a very bluey green. Then at the bottom is Jacquard Emerald Green, which is a lovely colour, but I had trouble with it being a bit blotchy. The Kemtex does dye very evenly and exhausts very well (which is very satisfying 🙂 ). The new green is 300ml of green and 100ml of yellow. For my next trick I think I shall try 200ml of green and 200ml of yellow.

Just for fun, here is the sequence of colours laid out on our dining table. As you can tell we don’t eat on the table often 🙂

I think I shall have another go at dyeing a pale orange since I think that step is still a bit big. I think the mid orange is ok, and I shall try to get a slightly yellower green.

While I had the dyes out I had a go at semi-solid dyeing my Dorset/BFL sock yarn I spun during the Tour de Fleece. I did this using a variation on the dyeing in a bag method Fiona showed us at her workshop. Her method was a cold dyeing method, but it adapted easily enough for hot dyeing. Boil in the bag yarn! I put the dye and the yarn in the bag and squished around, then left for about an hour and then steamed it as usual.

There was 250g altogether of yarn which I think was a bit much for my bag. I couldn’t mash the yarn round as much as I would like, so some of the skeins are more evenly dyed than others. The two smaller skeins dyed much more evenly, with the biggest skein being the most mottled. I like the effect though.

It was also interesting to see how the Dorset took the dye in comparison to the BFL. As you can see from this picture, the Dorset has taken the dye a bit (both the grey and the white) but not nearly as strongly as the BFL.

I am looking forward to knitting this up and seeing how it comes out.

Some more dyeing

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Back at the beginning of June I went on a dyeing workshop with Fiona Morris.

The first three samples are mini-skeins of 4ply superwash bluefaced leicester. They are all dyed in a pot on the stove, you sprinkle the dye powder in as the mood takes you but don’t stir while it cooks, creating a (totally unrepeatable) multicolour effect.

It was fun to do, but my control freak personality doesn’t really gel with this method 🙂 It is quite hard to predict how the colours are going to come out, and in fact they often change as the yarn cooks and more dye is absorbed.

Next I had a go at dyeing with fibre reactive dyes. These are the kind of dyes you use for plant fibres, and you use a cold dyeing method.

First some cotton dyed as a semi-solid in a plastic bag. You just measure out your dye, bung it in the bag, stick the yarn in on top, squish around for about 10 mins or until you have had enough, then leave it for half an hour.

It came out rather paler than I was expecting. The fibre reactive dyes don’t seem to exhaust as well as the acid dyes. I found it rather worrying how much dye ran out as I was rinsing.

Finally, using the fibre reactive dyes again, this was dyed in a tray, pouring the dye on and then leaving it. I was surprised at how well this one took the dyes. The yarn is 50% merino, 50% tencel, so I was expecting it to come out a lot paler as the merino wont take the fibre reactive dyes as strongly as the tencel.

A fun day. I enjoyed trying some different techniques, and being able to play with the fibre reactive dyes without buying a whole load of colours myself. I haven’t worked out what these are all going to become but I’m sure I will think of something soon 🙂

A bit of pre-tour yarn

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With all the excitement about Le Tour de Fleece I failed to blog about some yarn I finished shortly before the tour started.

This is some superwash Bluefaced Leicester dyed in the fibre by me. I used the left overs in shades of red and brown from the dyeing day at Ash.

I like how it has come out, mostly red, but with little bits of brown and a variety of shades of red. There is 232m and 100g and it is about a 4ply ish weight, bits of it are a bit thicker 🙂 It is going to become part of my handspun waistcoat which at the moment exists only in my head.

Le Tour de Fleece: Day Twenty-Three

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Well today is the final day of the tour. For me it has been a sprint all the way to the line to finish off this yarn.

First off here is the finished yarn from yesterday.

Today I spun up 50g of BFL:

Then plied it until one of my BFL bobbins ran out:

This was 103g, 279m.

Then I plied the remaining grey Dorset with both ends of the BFL to create a 3 ply again, until the BFL ran out. This was 14g, 41m.

The remaining 1g of grey Dorset I chain plied to create 7m of what feels like garden twine. I’m afraid I didn’t take a photo of that (you aren’t missing much). I think part of the problem was that the Dorset isn’t very soft, and part of the problem was that I plied far too tightly.

I am pretty impressed with what I have managed to achieve in the Tour de Fleece. I have just had a tot up and have spun 730m of 3ply out of the Dorset fleece, which works out as 2190m of singles! This is not including the bobbin of black Shetland which I haven’t measured. It has also been fantastic to see everyone else’s spinning, it has given me loads of ideas for things I would like to try. Roll on next year! (I think I might have a bit of a rest first)