Persistent Knitter

I was looking for graph paper; and didn’t have any. I know there a million sites you can download it from, so I googled, and came up with this: http://www.mathematicshelpcentral.com/graph_paper.htm

Go down to the very bottom, and download the Graph Paper Printer. You can print almost any kind of graph paper, and knitter’s paper as well by just tweaking a few settings.

I love simple tools like this.

I realize it’s like 2 weeks after the fact; but I finally had time to make a quick posting.

First, the results if you haven’t heard it from a zillion other places.

WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here I am basking in the glory:

Quick bunch of random thoughts about the event:
We all arrived with plenty of time to spare. Got setup, and were ready to go when the figurative whistle blew.  There was one other team participating, the team from Wyoming.  We were off to a calm and mellow start - Rebecca had a cold and was on some great cough medicine, I had a lovely case of pink eye, and everyone else was pretty healthy as far as we could tell.

The day started out nice and cool; but it warmed up quickly. Luckily the tent we were in let in the breeze but kept out the sun really well. There was only one point after lunch that I felt like I was going to melt.

I decided to take the Schacht wheel with me. It’s more stable on uneven ground, and I’m used to the way it feels. I think I would have done fine on the Lendrum, but still feel more comfortable with the Schaht. Ingrid was our alternate, and she had taken her Lendrum along just in case someone needed a wheel or we needed her to spin.  (I think she was really relieved when we all showed up to the contest, ready and fairly able)  The other decideding factor was that we were arriving with plenty of time to spare for setup, and we could drive right up to in front of where we were doing the contest. So I didn’t have to carry the big wheel very far.   (We had to move a garbage dumpster because we arrived before they opened the main gate)

The morning went very quickly to those of us spinning our merry way along. There were quite a few people stopping by. (One of the things we are judged on is our interaction with the public. Part of the reason for the contest is to educate and inform the public about fleece, spinning, weaving, etc)  Last year I was the newbie spinner (really really new. I had to have Rebecca start my yarn for me the first two times, I couldn’t get the wheel to draw in) and hid behind a few other people. It was all I could do to concentrate on spinning yarn, nursing Alex (who was all about 6 weeks at the time) every two hours, and feeling like I was contributing something useful. 

This year I sat right on the edge, and really had a fun time explaining what I was doing to people.  We end up repeating the same phrases over and over, but it’s still fun.  Some people are quite amazed that "people still do that stuff". We didn’t have any rude comments (nobody asked us why we didn’t just go buy a shawl at the local Walmart), and everyone was really nice.

After lunch, we started spinning a bit more frantically.  We realize the deadline is drawing near; and spin faster to compensate.  We managed to actually finish the shawl with time to spare. We spent quite a bit of time washing, drying and then trimming ends. We rewove two skips that we found, inspected it closely to make sure there were no others.  It got a quick trim on the fringe to make all the ends even (all the practice I’ve had trimming my kids’ hair lately came in handy.  Special bonus that the shawl doesn’t wiggle when it sees the scissors coming!)

We proudly turned it in to the judge, and then ran off to the market to SHOP!

Some other thoughts on winning
When we turned the shawl in, we knew the other team wasn’t going to finish in time. While it was great knowing that we were the defacto first place winners - we would have loved to see how we stacked up against the competition if they had finished in time.  (Personally I think we would have won, but I am a bit biased). Their idea (two triangles, one small, one big, woven in plain weave with some color changes for the pattern) was really a great one. I was really worried when we realized what they were doing.  They also seemed to get started much much faster than we did.  They essentially had to warp the loom (a fixed size triangle loom for each piece, using nails to hold the yarn) as they went.

When the judge gave comments, she really went on about how the other team had alot of guts to do something so creative.  She mentioned how she felt we weren’t as creative because all our patterning was in the threading on the loom (she said this in a very nice way); and our weaver was doing plain weave most of the time.  We did lose 2 points on that category on our judging sheet.  While she is the judge, and I respect her opinion, I think that we were really smart to do what we did.  We had a simple yet elegant pattern (window panes with Huck Lace), that was simple to weave given the time constraints.  The other team not being able to finish in the time allotted clearly points out that while they had a great idea - it wasn’t the right idea for the time constraints.

So really, the judge was full of compliments for both teams.  Team Chutzpah feels it executed the whole deal really flawlessly; and we had a ton of fun doing it (Rebecca’s illness and my pink eye not holding us back).  Our goal every year is to above all HAVE FUN.  The competition merely places some boundries on what we do in that time frame.  I know if we hadn’t won, I’d be slightly dissappointed, but overall would have felt it was worth it either way.

Some stats on our various shawls.
Ours:  Warp & Weft were a three ply (Navajo plied). Pattern was a basic window pane using white as the alternate color.  Huck Lace was put on every other row, every other column (spaced out).  Fringe of 7" long (can you tell I was the one who cut the fringe? heh)

Theirs: Triangle shaped shawl, woven on two fixed size looms. One small, one large. They did a two ply yarn, and used the color of the yarn to create some pattern in the shawl. They did a nice job echoing the pattern in the hood/collar part.  They also had fringe, don’t know the length :)

I was at the LYS today handing over my skein of yarn to make it’s way up to the skein contest this weekend. (Hooray for totally cool LYS owners/teachers/friends that will do these great things for you)  I don’t have huge hopes that I’ll win anything (although yeah, it’d be cool) I’m more interested in the process.  Plans have been made so I’ll be there during the judge’s comments, and I can see all the other entries.  Then maybe I’ll have a better idea of what to do next year.

While at my LYS, I was tempted…. sorely tempted… to buy some beautiful dark blue/purple mohair roving. It was a solid color, but based on the light it looked dark purple or dark blue.  Wow. I can totally imagine a sweater in that for myself.  I resisted. Based on the fact that I have more things going now that I can keep up with. But it’s still calling to me.

Not much to look at yet, but here it is:

I have cast on an done about 9 rows on my Rogue sweater (pattern available here).  I’m using  Rowan All Seasons Cotton in a beautiful dark green.  My gauge from my swatch was 4.65 st/inch.  The pattern calls for 4.5 st/inch - so I’m pretty darn close. Given that I tend to loosen up a bit when knitting large sweaters, I’m hoping it will come out just right.

The size I wanted to make it somewhere between the Large and Xtra large size. I’m also modifying the pattern to be a cardigan.  In order to do this, I needed to add a few stitches.  Normally Rogue is knit in the round, but I’m using cotton and I don’t trust myself to get a very neat edge by doing a steek on this thing.  So I’m knitting it back and forth.   When you do this you end up knitting back and forth as follows:

   RIGHT FRONT    <cable>     BACK        <cable>      LEFT FRONT

The pattern uses an odd number of stitches for the front and back portions.  To split the front into left and right, you need to add one stitch.  To keep the back the same size, you should add a stitch there as well.

I wanted to increase the size of the sweater by about 1.5 inches:

RIGHT FRONT: +1 to make total # of front stitches an even number
       +2 to increase the size a bit
<cable>
BACK  +4 to increase size
         +1 to make total # of bac stitches even
<cable>
LEFT FRONT: +2 to increase size a bit

So I’m adding a total of 10 stitches to the pattern.   Notice the number of stitches added to the back and front match up to be 5 for each.

Once I get a few inches into the body I’ll see how it’s fitting around me and if it’s too big or too small.

I decided this weekend to "spin with a goal*".  I’ve been making little tiny skeins and really wanted to make some quantity!  I aimed for 2oz of yarn.  I didn’t care what yarn, of what type - just yarn.  I tried to let the fleece tell me what it wanted to be.

I ended up with this beautiful skein (approx 2.3 oz of yarn):

I wanted to do minimal preparation at this point, and just focus on the spinning itself.  I wasn’t having any fun with my unknown brown fleece rolags. I either don’t like the fleece or how it’s spinning, or didn’t prepare it right. It was just not working right.  Paraphrasing my friend Ingrid, "I just want to spin something simple, not fight it".  I decided to use Alice; a beautiful corriedale fleece.

The fleece was prepared with a drum carder (about a year ago. heh). I have a big plastic bin that had about 8 or so in it. I’ve been working my way through them slooooowly.  Since I wanted to get about 2oz, I weighed a batt to see approx how much was in each. I had more than enough, so was set to go.

Lately all my sheep to shawl spinning has been worsted style, straight from the lock; so I had to get my head abour doing a different type of draw. Being drum carded, a long draw woolen style would work best. Alice still has a bit of lanolin left in her, and when I started saturday morning it was a bit cold. I got out the hair dryer to warm up my hands and the fleece. A space heater would have worked better and been more efficient, but I didn’t have one. :)

I got into the swing of things easily.  Tearing off a strip of the batt, and drafting it out to be slightly thinner. I experimented a bit and tried drafting it out even thinner, but found I couldn’t prevent the twist from entering the drafting zone easily enough, and couldn’t keep consistent with the long draw method. It was actually better to have a slightly thicker bunch of fleece to spin from.

I can’t decide if the lanolin in the fleece or the preparation was helping me be more consistent. I think possibly a bit of both. The other unknown brown fleece I made rolags with had a lot more neps/noils in it. To really tell I need to card up some rolags with Alice and see how those spin.

I filled my bobbin about 3/4 full, and then weighed it. I zeroed out my scale with an empty bobbin first, so I could determine what the actual yarn weighed. I had exactly 2 oz of singles.  Freaky.

I decided to spin up a bit more singles so I could do a few samples for plying. I hadn’t yet decided how I was going to ply it. I was originally thinking 2 ply.  I sampled two options; two ply and a three ply.  The three ply seemed a better yarn to me, it was fuller and I didn’t have to over twist it to get the look I wanted.  Plus it had the added bonus that I didn’t have to spin any more singles because I can navajo ply it.

I’ve had problems when I’ve been navajo plying before - I’ve added too much twist, and even washing & setting the twist hasn’t seemed to get it under control.  (I have the backwards problem when doing singles; I don’t put enough twist in).  I decided to take a different approach. I switched to a smaller whorl on my wheel; and treadled really slow.  The single only broke twice the whole time I was plying, probably where I had made the yarn much too thin.  Not too bad! Now that it’s washed, I’m not even sure I can see where it broke at all.

Doing this kind of concentrated spinning has allowed me to learn quite a bit. How to do the long draw consistently (and sometimes not so consistently).  When navajo plying; trying to eliminate the bump when the yarn folds back on itself so it’s not as obvious how the yarn was plied together. 

I think my next concentrated spinning will be sheep to shawl. I may not have time before then to do anything else. I think I’ll end up doing more spinning from the lock.  I really love the way worsted style yarn is so smooth and I can make it more consistent (probably because I’ve done more spinning of that type than woolen style).

* My secret is that if the yarn came out good enough, there’s a handspun contest next month I might submit it to. Maybe. We’ll see.

In an attempt to spin more often, I’ve taken over the dead space area behind our couch.   There’s also a bookshelf back there that we’ve had for years, but not really ever known what to do with it.  I bought some baskets for storage and reinstalled my expando-gate around my stuff. I did it a bit differently, to give myself more room:

So far it’s worked out really well!  I’m on bobbin #1 of the yarn I’m trying to make. Still debating navajo ply, or a two ply.