R2

 11.07.22

R2 stands for Ranunculus 2.  Yes, I got sucked into the Ranunculus vortex!  Of course, this one is progressing quickly because of my previous notes.  The sample ticked all the boxes with the tweedy bits of the Noro Silk Garden Sock Solo yarn and the perfect fit.  I love when a plan comes together.  The second version is one I can wear now.  The yarn is the same except for the base color.  It was a pleasant surprise to see some warm brown in the yarn as the yoke progressed yesterday.  

The tweedy bits are so beautiful against the dark base color of the yarn
 

Deck knitting with Gus before the rain

Ranunculus

 07.07.2022

Recently I was thinking about adding another sweater (something lightweight) to my pick-a-sweater class at beWoolen.  I asked Michelle and we thought about it for a bit and then she mentioned the Ranunculus sweater, by Midori Hirose.  It has been consistently on the "Hot Right Now, designs with the most visits in 24 hours.  At the time the project count was over 12,000 and as of this morning, the count is up to 13,625. Wow!  Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn was the perfect choice, because I pictured the sweater in a neutral color to show off the design.  The size you knit depends upon the yarn (lace to worsted weight) and needles used for the amount of transparency of the knitted fabric.  At Shepherd's Harvest in May, I saw no fewer than four people wearing their Ranunculus sweaters.  It is a popular knitting project.  

When knitting a class/shop sample I take time to study the pattern before casting on any stitches.  Ravelry is a helpful tool for checking out other projects.  Given the huge number of projects, I narrowed down the search to helpful projects and projects with notes.  Casting on for the swatch, I thought about the fabric (lightweight, but not transparent), neckline (not too snug or loose), sleeves (three-quarter), length, (cropped) and fit (positive ease).  

Deck knitting on a nice day.

Using the Doocot as a template for for width and length.  

After blocking, the fit is perfect and the yarn bloomed beautifully.

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!

It's a process...

29.07.2020  Everything is a process, particularly knitting.  I have been working on the End of the Road Gansey since June.  It should have been finished by now, but the progress slowed once I got to the gusset.  The sleeve was a bit generous in size than I wanted, so after trying it on last night I decided to frog back to the beginning of the texture stitching.  Instead of starting the gusset at that point, I opted to work just over an inch and then began the gusset.  Keeping notes is so important when not working from a written pattern.  Before undoing the shoulder seams and frogging the whole texture section, I made notes of the row repeats, the neck shaping section and length to the new beginning of the gusset.  Good thing I use a pencil with a good eraser!

A minor setback, but the sleeve will fit better.  The photo was taken before I adjusted the numbers on the schematic.

End of the Road

02.07.2020 On June 1, I started a pullover, using the schematic and notes from my Camp Gansey.  A friend gave me 15 skeins of Rowan DK Tweed in a lovely colorway aptly named Bliss.  After knitting g a swatch, I decided to use the same stitch counts as the original sweater.  Using smaller needles and yarn, the fit will have just the right amount of ease.  Yesterday morning was perfect for knitting on the deck before the heat set in.  I finally snapped a photo that captured the color of that beautiful yarn.  The notes and schematic jotted down two years ago were enough to recreate the new version, which I dubbed End of the Road Gansey.

The texture stitch pattern is Ridged Rib (2 + 1 stitches, 4-row repeat) and works well with the weight and texture of the yarn.  

The texture and tweedy bits make this yarn one of my all-time favorites.
 Sadly, it was discontinued years ago.
This is how the color usually photographs, even in natural light.

Using my new dot journal for the schematic.  It is nice to have the other sweater as a guide.
The time of day and the light were perfect for getting a good photo.

❤️

Cancelled, but still occupied

04.04.2020  Today is a lovely day.  The sun is shining, currently it is 22-degrees F and the high for today will be 48-degrees.  We are healthy and keeping busy.

Today would have been the first day of the two-day North Artists Studio Crawl, 2020.  This week the powers-that-be cancelled Shepherd's Harvest Festival.  The cancellations are a good idea given the continuing rise of cases locally.  Jim and I get outside for fresh air and venture into a store for groceries and other necessities if we are lucky enough to find what we need.  I have some  cotton masks ready to sew this morning.  The last time I went to Target the social/physical distancing seemed to be better amongst the customers and there were signs notifying patrons that the carts are regularly disinfected in addition to the wipes available as you walk into the store.  The state department of health has a website with news releases, updates and information, which I find more helpful than the national network news programs.

02.05.2020  Best laid plans, I certainly waited long enough to post.  There is quite a difference in the temperature, although it is another nice day--sunny and 72-degrees F.  Jim, Gus and I have been well.  I sewed masks for the local hospital and then last week sewed more for the neighborhood fire department to distribute to assisted living facilities and nursing homes.  Around the cities there were hundreds, if not thousands, delivered to those in need.

Zoom has been a way to connect with my fiber friends and my artist friends.  I host a knitting group on Thursdays and the Rum River Handweavers Guild once a month.  Otherwise, life goes on, we stay busy and enjoy life.  Below are scenes from the past month.  Stay well!

Early into the shut down, Mary and I helped during the spring shearing and were able to cuddle lambs.
This one was a day old.  It was freezing cold in the barn, but the little lambs were nice and warm.

This little girl is Olive.  Her mama, Molly is on the left with Olive's sibling.  She loved to be held and would sneak out of the penned area to follow us around the barn while we waited for the shearer.  She caught sight of me and was running up to get a cuddle.  It was a lovely afternoon!

I managed to finish spinning and plying 4-oz of Romeldale/silk from Ewespun Fiber Mill.

I was preparing for a Lopi sweater class at BeWoolen when everything shut down, and I plan to reschedule the class.  It was cold enough for a few days and I was able to wear my new sweater, which was so nice and warm.  After stash-diving, I came up with some more primary colors and made Katie's Kep, the Shetland Wool Week 2020 hat.  Gus enjoyed stealing the blue ball of yarn multiple times.  I was not amused.

The star on top of the hat is so pretty.  I lightly fulled the hat to improve the fabric and the fit.

Schacht Spindle Company is having an explore tapestry weave along.  It came at the perfect time--I warped the new loom!  There were a few challenges during the warping and initial weaving, but I learned and adapted during that learning curve.

Week 1 was worked to the red and green section (adding the spacer at the bottom before the twining kept the weaving from slipping), week 2 is the color blending/gradient, and week 3 are the rectangles and the shaping.  I used string markers, which made the triangle much easier to shape correctly.

Week 3 completed!  Tapestry slits, interlocking and shaping.  

Buttons for the finish!

17.05.19 Last week...The pattern is Textures—A Poncho Pattern by Melanie Smith from Spin-Off Magazine, Winter 2017.  I finished knitting the project last month, blocked it, changed the ribbing at the sides by re-knitting them with a smaller needle, and then folded it and put it away.  Yesterday I looked through my button stash and found a tube of wooden buttons I purchased when Depth of Field, a yarn shop, was closing.  Also in that issue of Spin-Off is  I wrote an article (pages 90-91) about a group weaving project out of Anoka Fiber Works.

The handspun project yarn has been in my stash for some time and there was a ball of roving ready to spin when I was reorganizing my fiber room.  It is nice to use up a large amount of handspun yarn in a project.  The roving colorway name Dark Side of the Moon, Coopworth wool/silk noil blend, from Hidden Valley Woollen Mill.

 

I like the look of the rustic sliced wood buttons.

FOs

There are two finished objects for the end of July, the Gansey sweater and the handspun Polkagris.  Starting with the kerchief, I pulled some photos from a previous post (May 2013) to show how the yarns were created.  They sat in the stash for five years waiting for the perfect project.  Shortly before Grey Wolf in June, an email arrived from KDD with a pattern for newsletter subscribers.  It did not take long to choose yarns from my stash for the project.

Colorful wool roving and wool batts with some cotton yarn are pulled together.

The fibers are added to the bowl on the scale for weighing.  Joanne and I made 3-ounce batts.
Fibers used in both batts:  wool, silk, mohair locks, silk noils, sari silk, and cotton.

The fibers can be blended a little or a lot using the drum carder.  It is ready to spin!

The singles are plied with thread or yarn.  This was plied with a thin textured yarn.
This skein weighed 3.7-ounces after plying.  The white skein weighed 3.8-ounces.  Each skein was 200+ yards.
I should have enough left from both skeins for a small project.

The Polkagris kerchief by Kate Davies was the perfect project for the special skeins of yarn.
The shape of the kerchief fits nicely over the shoulders

The Gansey sweater was a rewarding project to knit.  It is a simple, wool sweater with traditional shape and style with extra ease added for comfort.  It will be a good piece for layering when it gets cold.  I have it on right now, as we are experiencing a cold front before the heat and humidity return.  

Before the knitting, I did my homework by looking through my personal library and studying photos of the design elements of traditional garments.  Body  measurements and measurements from other garments along with choosing yarn and swatching are so important.  One of my biggest take-aways from the experience was that less is more.  I planned for fancier textures at the top, but the simple, 2 +1 stitch repeat over four rows fit so beautifully into the design.  

Mary is just about finished with her sweater and soon we (Kathryn, Mary, and I) will have to take photos of our finished projects together.  

Garter stitch at the neck, cuffs and hem. Ridged ribbing worked well for the stitch counts for the body and sleeves.  

A bit of shaping on either side of the front neck and three-needle bind off at the shoulders.  The bind off was worked on the right side of the work and the purl ridge flows into the texture stitches nicely.

The two-stitch faux seam runs on either side from the hem, around the underarm gusset, and the to the  cuff.

Winter Whispers

Winter is not whispering today.  Last night it was 57 degrees F and today with the high winds it feels like 16 degrees F.  One good thing is that I can wear my  new sweater.  I saw a photo of it pop up on Ravelry and it was instantly in love with the cardigan.  Designed by Paulina Popiolek for Loop London, Winter Whispers is the perfect pattern for the light blue (Classic Elite) Skye Tweed yarn I've had in the stash for years.  Even better, it was easy to knit and fits exactly the way I like my sweaters to fit.  Sadly, the yarn was discontinued long ago, but I have three+ skeins left for another project.

Skye Tweed yarn and the perfect pattern

Joining the body and sleeves

Blocking makes everything better

Note how the project looks before blocking.  the fabric appears dense and the stockinette stitch edges are curling.  I didn't get a photo of the cable detail appearing condensed.  I filled the washer's tub with cold water and a bit wool wash, immersed the sweater (after weaving in the ends) and let it soak for about 20 minutes.  The lid of the washer was up so the agitation would not work.  Using the wool wash is great, because you don't have to rinse out any soap.  I set the washer to spin, which removed most of the water, gave the sweater a shake, and then smoothed and pinned the sweater while using the schematic as a guide for the measurements.  It dried overnight and all I needed to add were the buttons.

Cable detail on the yoke

Natural shell buttons are a lovely touch