Summer is over, ready for autumn!

28.09.2021 This year has been a blur.  We managed to get some camping in and one of the first was Cascade River State Park in Lutsen, MN, where the water looks like root beer.  It's so beautiful there and I particularly love the hiking trails.  Gus did great coming down the "ladder" stairs.  Our first day hiking was beautifully sunny, but I have to say I really enjoyed the second day of hiking in the fog.  

Since then, we added a few more pins to our MN state park map including Scenic, Whitewater, Split Rock Creek and Blue Mounds.  There was also a trip to Ohio using Harvest Host sites along the way including an aviation museum, and a heritage museum in Iowa, two wineries and a farm in Illinois and a farm and private property in Ohio.    We recently returned from the Camp-Inn Campout in Wisconsin and it was nice to see familiar faces and meet some new folks.  

There was and is lots of fiberwork happening with spindle spinning more colors to use in tapestry weavings, a dive into the Shetland yarn stash for this year's Wool Week hat designed by Wilma Malcolmson. 

I went back to plein air painting briefly, but the cool weather did not last long and the bugs came out early this year.  We have had a hot and dry summer.  Lately, there has been some much-needed rain with cooler temperatures and shorter days.  We have a day or so of warmer weather and then it will once again be cool.  I am ready for sweater weather.  Bring on autumn!🍁

Cascade Falls

The "Ladder"

Spinning little skeins

For little tapestries.  Perfect projects for deck time under the umbrella.

Wool Week 2021 hat.  My color way was inspired by my favorite outfit,
blue jeans and a white tee.

Houndstooth fabric on the home loom, Buttercup

Knitting a Strange Brew cardigan.  As of this writing, I still have to cut the steek,
finish the bands and block...buttons.  Must choose the perfect buttons. 

Springtime plein air painting in progress.  

On the loom and on (and off) the needles

20.04.2021 Only one of my looms (the small Good Wood) is empty at this time.  Recently, I re-warped the tapestry loom and made new string heddles for it...only because I could not locate the other heddles.  I lost one warp thread in the process.  My current read is Rebecca Mezoff's book, The Art of Tapestry Weaving: A Complete Guide to Mastering the Techniques for Making Images with Yarn.  It is a good book with plenty of photos and well-written instruction for self-guided learning.  

Sampling on the little loom.

Schacht Tapestry Loom, cotton warp approximately six-inches wide.

A couple Saturdays ago Louie and I into the shop and I plied a full bobbin of Jacob yarn from roving purchased years ago at Shepherd's Harvest Festival.  It will be helpful to have more Jacob if needed for a knitting project in the planning stage.

My office (using the term loosely) is a bit cramped, so it was time to reclaim yarn, needles and markers from a couple of UFOs.  The blue Gansey is frogged along with the Eid Top.  I would get more wear out of a blue cardigan and keep the Eid Top's yarn and repurpose into another colorwork vest.  

Looking pretty good.

I love the yarn colors, yarn type and the pattern, but
sometimes one just cannot get into the groove with a project.

It was the end of the road for this Gansey.

Needles and markers reclaimed from the depths of the knitting bags.

I finished a shop sample for beWoolen using the beautiful Tahki Donegal Tweed yarn.  The pattern is Strange Brew from Tin Can Knits using Aran weight yarn, top-down construction with short rows at the back, and extra colorwork at the cuffs and bottom.  This was such a fun knitting project and the class is going well with all the lovely sweaters in progress.  Next will be a cardigan version...steek!

Happy knitting!

Tweedy bits love

13.01.2021 

 I love rustic tweedy yarn.  This past year I have been enjoying using handspun and commercial  tweed yarns for my projects.  The bits of color add texture and interest when viewed up close,  and blend optically at a  distance.  

Small tapestry weaving in progress

 

It was a happy day when beWoolen yarn shop stocked Tahki Donegal Tweed.  The perfect project to highlight the lovely yarn was Doocot, by Kate Davies.  The pattern calls for DK weight yarn (11 WPI).  This yarn is Aran weight (8 WPI).  WPI means wraps per inch, a way to determine the thickness of yarn,  something I did not know about until I learned to spin.  It is also helpful to measure the WPI when a commercial yarn label is missing.  The Craft Yarn Council (a very helpful resource, by the way) has a chart showing the yarn weight system.  

Back to the sweater...to knit the appropriate size for myself, I went up with my needle size and yarn weight and down a pattern size and the numbers and measurements from the pattern were perfect with the correct amount of positive ease.  The only other adjustments I made were to the sleeve decreases, which I did every five rows to the cuff ribbing and to widen the neckband ribbing.  It worked out beautifully.

Tahki Donegal Tweed yarn for a sweater and a mini skein of handspun

Donegal Tweed, Fossil colorway

It helps to have a knitting buddy in the camper.  We were staying at Itasca State Park when the yurt was unveiled in Bemidji

There was enough leftover yarn for a pair of mittens

My second sweater with Donegal Tweed is Dacite.  I knit one for a yarn shop sample in 2014 and then taught a class.  I received an update to the pattern through Ravelry.  Carol Feller, the designer, updated the pattern with extended sizing.  It was a good opportunity to knit this sweater again and teach a class. The pattern is well-written and fun to knit, as there are lots of fun knitting techniques throughout.  In my excitement to take the sample to beWoolen, I did not snap a photo of the sweater when it was done blocking and the buttons added at the neck.   

Hot off the needles

The back has a natural dip (no short rows) because it and the sleeves are worked in stockinette stitch.