Today has been a very sad day for us. After a long and hard fight, my sister-in-law Debbie lost her battle with cancer. What started as breast cancer moved on to other areas, and it finally took her from us today.
I know that she has found peace and is no longer in pain, but it is hard to get over the void that is left at this moment, especially for my brother and my nephew. Please keep them in your prayers.
Copyright 2012 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com
Well, it has taken me long enough, but I am finally updating my blog about the gradient spin along that Kimber of Fiber Optic had over on Ravelry. There were a lot of beautiful yarns spun up by people, some of whom even knit up the yarn in the time of the spin along. (Talk about over-achievers!)
When Kimber announced the spin-along, I immediately knew which of the gradients I was going to spin up.
Kimber had started offering pre-orders on a gradient every other week, and I believe this is the first one that I got in on. But while having the gradient picked out, I wasn’t sure how I was going to spin it, just what I was going to spin it for: to weave a scarf as a practice for a bigger project later on. Then it occurred to me, I could do something similar to what Deb Menz does in her book, Color in Spinning.
So, I took the fiber and divided it into four strips along the length, so that each strip had the entire gradient. Then, I took each strip and divided that into the four, this time along the colors so that each piece was only part of the gradient. I took those four pieces and pre-drafted them together, resulting in this.
When spun up as a single, the color comes out kind of random in the yarn.
In time, I spun up both braids, and then plied.
I do like the resulting yarn, though if I had to do it again, I would have done the first splitting of the fiber into more pieces (maybe six or eight) for shorter “color bursts”. I am pretty sure that I will be weaving with this yarn, as I have tried knitting with it, and while it looks and feels great, stitch patterns have a hard time fight against such a big mix of shades and tones.
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com.
The shawl hasn’t been the only thing that I have been on these last couple months. I have briefly stopped work on the vest to start a sweater from the same book
The pattern is Ansley from the Jane Ellison Queensland Collection. The yarn that I am using is Mas Acero from Brooks Farm that I got this past spring and MDSW. One thing that I did not pick up on with the yarn until now is that the shade changes from one end of the skein to the other. I am not so sure I like that. But I will keep going with it, doing the sleeves next, and if need be, ripping out the back and reknitting it so that the color progression matches the rest of the sweater.
And now that the bobbins are free from the shawl yarn, I can do some more spinning again.
I finally plied up the silk/camel in Titania from Dragonfly Fibers. I just have two more two ounce braids to spin up in the Bad Moon Rising colorway, and all of this silk and camel will be ready to go on the loom.
And as a little treat for both me and a friend, I spun up this.
This is Siren Song UNSPUN! in the Equinox colorway from Fiber Optic. Being a pencil roving, it spun up really fast. It was the first time spinning this particular roving from Kimber, and once fulled, it was extremely soft. I just gave it to a friend of mine last night as a gift. She has just learned to knit lace, so maybe this will find its way into a shawl or something.
Kimber is also having a gradient spin-along on Ravelry. This is the gradient that I am spinning.
It is the olive to slate gradient. I will let you how I am spinning it the next time. Warning, it may seem like crime what I have done with it….
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com.
Race day, which was two weeks ago now, was a brisk but sunny day; and as usual, my stomach was turning before the event. The nervousness starts on the drive to the event, as the last few miles take an eternity to drive because traffic is so backed up. Granted, I have learned my lesson with that, but the traffic back up seems to get worse every year. A blessing and a curse, I guess.
Once the car was parked, I got myself to the starting line. I didn’t get a spot as close to the starting line this year as last year because I really don’t like worming my way through all of those people, jockeying for position. They all just kind of look at you like, “And who do you think you are?” And somehow, the response, “The one that is going to beat you to the finish line!” doesn’t seem appropriate.
Not jockeying for a position closer to the starting line turned out to be a big mistake, because my time (24:31.4) was close to a minute slower than last year. And all of that lost time was in the first mile, trying to get out from behind people who decided that maybe they will just walk instead. While the 1 mile clock said 7:00 when I past it last year, it said 8:15 when I passed it this year. Oh well, live and learn.
The actual race isn’t the primary reason for being there anyway.
Everybody there was racing for someone.
I wrote down who I was racing for.
Thank you all for your sponsorship to help me do this.
Now for the shawl.
It is completely finished and ready to go to the winner of the drawing, Joan Hajek.
It took me a while this year to come up with a project to make. Part of the problem is finding a project with some kind of pink in it that I will actually like doing, because I am not a pink person. Surprise! Then, in July, I got the last shipment from Spirit Trail Fiberworks fiber club. Of course, the thought of this shawl didn’t occur to me until the night that Irene hit us when I saw the notice that Jennifer had post on Ravelry that she had 10 ounces still available of the colorway. While the storm was raging away on us, I was messaging with Jennifer to get the rest of the superwash BFL. Good thing we didn’t lose power until later that night!
After spinning the fiber up, I had to figure out what pattern I was going to use to weave it. Since I was using the same yarn for both the warp and the weft, I wanted a pattern that didn’t instantly scream “PLAID!!!!” After playing around with different drawdowns (weaver-talk for how we figure out a weaving pattern), I settled on the one below.
It is what is called a progressive twill, which basically means a basic twill pattern that gets its starting point shifted over to a different set of treadles with each start of the repetition. I thought the long diagonal would be longer than any color repeats, and thus play down the plaid a bit. (BTW, I have nothing against plaids. It was just not something that I wanted to go for here.)
Overall, I think the idea was kind of successful.
On the loom, the shawl was sett at 15 ends per inch, with a weaving width of 16″. Coming off the loom, the shawl measured 14.5″ X 59″. After fulling, the shawl measures 13.25″ x 54″. None of those measurements include the fringe. I believe a good bit of the draw-in, take-up, and shrinkage is due to using wool singles, which have a great deal of energy to release. A plied yarn in a less elastic fiber probably wouldn’t have shrunk down so much.
Again, thank you all for your help and support. I already have next year’s fiber on order!
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com.
Joan Hajek!
The shawl is being fulled as I write this.
More on the shawl and the race later.
And thank you for your support in the Race for the Cure.
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com.
Just a quick reminder that the drawing for the shawl is at 7 pm Eastern today.
For every $5 donated on my page, you get an entry for the shawl below.
Thanks!
You know that problem I told you able in the last post where a tie-up came loose? Well, it kept happening, and not just on the one treadle, but some other treadles as well. It seems some of the treadles really don’t like being tied to the eighth shaft. That last tie-up seems to want to work its way out of the treadle.
So, there has been some unweaving to take care of areas that were woven with the correct tie-ups missing. And there has been a treadle fix to keep the ties in place.
It might be a little difficult to see with all of those tie-ups hanging down, but for the eight treadles that I am primarily using in the pattern, I have wrapped a rubberband around the end of the treadle to prevent the ties from sliding out. This has worked out well so far.
I have about 30″ woven so far. I have at least 40″ (if not 50″) more to go.
Thanks to those that have sponsored me already. If you would like to sponsor me in the Race for the Cure, just go here and for every $5 in sponsorship, you are entered in the raffle for this shawl. Thanks again.
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com.
So, as some of you have figured out, the shawl that I was putting on the loom if the “thank you!” prize for the those that support me in Race for the Cure. For every $5 you sponsor me for in the Race, you get 1 entry in the raffle for the shawl.
So how is the shawl weaving going?
Well, it is on the loom and the treadles are tied up, and I have started weaving. Here’s a couple close-ups so that you can get a better idea of the design.
Of course, there is always a chance that this could all go horribly wrong. (For example, I have already had one of the tie-ups to one of the treadles come loose, causing a big old problem when trying to weave. I had to cut out the weft and start again.) If things do go so wrong that they are beyond repair, I will weave the winner another shawl just for him or her.
The race is October 23 in Hunt Valley. The drawing for the shawl will be October 30 at 7PM Eastern. Thank you in advance for helping out!
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com.
Woohoo! Socks are done.
The toe and the heel of these socks are from Charlene Schurch class I took back at the MDSW. For the toe, I used Becker’s magic cast on, rather than knitting a rectangle as the basis for the toe. I think I am going back to the rectangle method, as the magic cast on gives two little points on the toe when the sock is actually on the hoof. For the heel, it is a matter of increasing a number of stitches, than knitting a trapezoid for the bottom heel, followed by picking up stitches along the sides of the trapezoid and gradually knitting in the increased stitches into the back of the heel. That works pretty well, so I may be doing that again.
Not that I waited to be done the socks to start this, but last month I was spinning up July’s shipment from Spirit Trail Fiberworks‘ club.
It is superwash BFL that I spun up as a single at around 24 epi. When I saw a notice on ravelry that she had more of the roving available, I contacted her (during Irene, no less) and snapped up the rest of it. Once it arrived, I spun that up to match the initial shipment so that I had a total of 18.6 ounces of singles.
With that much of one yarn, a woven shawl sounded like a good idea, so the last 10.6 ounces spun got wound into a warp, and the warp is currently being put on the loom.
The yarn is kind of kinky right now, which is making it a bit of a pain sleying the reed, but it is not too big of a deal. I think I might add a dummy warp to the end of all of these warp ends so that I can use as much of the warp as possible.
Who am I weaving this shawl for? More about that later.
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com
So what did you do to pass the time while you watched the Weather Channel for the constant loop on Irene?
I worked on two things on Saturday.
The top image is of a pair of socks that I making using Dragonfly Fibers Dragon Sock in the Deep Ocean colorway. I started them a few weeks ago. I got the yarn from Cloverhill during MDSW.
The second image is of the front of the vest. I finished the back before the heatwave began and only recently started working on the back because I really didn’t want a big old lump of alpaca sitting in my lap during the hot spell.
I hope if Irene hit you, you didn’t suffer too much damage and life is returning to normal for you. It finally seems to be doing that here.
Also, a big thank you to Roseann for letting me know of a certain problem I had with the site. I think that I fixed the problem and have reported the issue.
Copyright 2011 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com.