Gotta love a busy weekend

I'm getting organized to head out and give my Ravelry 101 talk to the Pinecone Treadlers Guild here in Bracebridge today.  I'm excited to share Ravelry with the amazing ladies in the guild.  I'm a firm believer that anyone can use Ravelry, but I know it can be overwhelming for those folks who aren't as comfortable with web applications as I am.   So I'm hoping today I will be able to give these ladies a few tips and tricks to help make Ravelry work for them.

Ravelry 101 is just one of the talks I have in my ever-growing roster of classes, you can see more about them on my Workshops page.

However, that's not what was keeping me busy this weekend.  I managed to finish off two projects over the weekend.  My Rainbowllenics Socks and a scarf woven on a rigid heddle loom, which I'm calling my Olympics Medal Scarf.

I did get my Rainbowllenics Socks doing during the Olympics, which I ended up watching more of than expected.  I don't have cable, just internet and AppleTV, so watching the Olympics wasn't super easy, however with the Men's and Women's Hockey games being ubiquitous here in Canada I ended up doing some streaming.

I'm really quite pleased with these socks, they fit perfectly and I got to do my first afterthought heel.  

I can't see myself switching over to all afterthought heel, however the fit is good for me so I will probably use it on striped socks to preserve the striping. If you have't done one before and a short-row heel fits you fine, consider an afterthought heel.  I followed the video by The Knit Girlls and found it to be helpful and correct. 

The other project I started, and finished this past weekend is a woven scarf.  I wove it out of a single skein of fingering weight yarn, and I have to say it is the PERFECT use for those high-contrast multis I just don't like to knit with.

I ended up screwing up my calculations so my weft ran out well before my warp, but the scarf is still a nice length.

While I did take nice pictures of it on my lady, the scarf isn't quite finished yet.  I still need to trim and twist the fringe and then do a wet blocking.  When I taught  rigid heddle class back in November the group was shocked, shocked when I said to "block" your scarf after finishing your weaving.  I know there is some disagreement out there around the words, particularly what is involved with blocking.  However, for me, every finished object needs to go for a swim before it is done. 

Think about it.  That project in your hands, the fleece was shorn from a sheep, then cleaned, combed/carded, spun into singles, plyed into yarn and then wound into a skein, where it was wound into a ball and then tied in knots by your needles and hooks or stretched half to death on your loom.  If you had been through that wouldn't you need a bath to get yourself right with the world.  Also, I don't know about you all, but I don't only knit after having washed my hands and always sit in a clean sterile space to work.  I have a cat, he LOVES yarn, my projects are FILTHY by the time they fall off the needles, they need a good washing just so they aren't gross anymore. Even my weaving projects aren't safe from the cat.

So no matter if your item needs pinning/stretching or not, a bath is a very, very important of finishing every project.  Also, if you ever plan on washing it, you are going to be blocking it, might as well know whats join to happen when you get it wet.

With weaving the project "plumps" up, and all those little gaps you saw in the weave will disappear and I will have a perfect, plain weave scarf.

So block your knits, I remember my terror the first time I wet blocked an item, now I can't imagine not sending my finished objects for a swim.

---

Project Details:

Rainbowllenics Socks
Pattern: Jaywalker Socks by Grumperina
Yarn: KnitPicks Felici Fingering in Rainbow (sady both the colorway and yarn are discontinued)
Previous Blogged: February 7th, 2014 - Rainbowllenics Socks

Olympics Medal Scarf
Pattern: Plain Weave @ 10dpi  - 9.5" warped
Yarn: Fleece Artist Sea Wool in Fire Opal

FO: Purple People Warmer

So, you know all the lessons I learned from my Apricot Jam Ring?  You can read all about it here, but basically I learned about the importance of a good warp separator, not tugging on my warp, not beating to much and how to make selveges look tidy, oh and actually doing the warp math properly so you know how much yarn you are acutally going to use!

So I took all these lessons and applied them to a new scarf, this one made out of some bulky yarn hanging around in my stash that I knew I was never going to knit because I am really not a huge fan of variegated yarns (although as I mentioned I am warming to them thanks to my Visions of Sugar Plum ... House Elves?, although that is just for socks).

I must confess, I am quite pleased with myself and the scarf because it worked and I'm starting to see the possibilities that this little loom holds within itself and my stash.

- Details -

Project Name: Purple People Warmer

Pattern: Plain Weave, 5dent reed

Recipient: Dunno, I may actually put this in the gift box because while I like it, I see more of these in the future

Yarn: Fleece Artist Big Merino (discontinued), 1 skein Purple, 1 skein Purple/Green/Brown

New Skills:

• Doing things right!: Basically there were no new skills, I just managed to get the skills I learned last time right.

Feedback:

• Yarn: It is too bad this yarn was discontinued, it would be great for weaving more Christmas scarves, at $8.99 for 100gm/100m it was a really good deal.  But I think this was a noble use for the last of the yarn.

Re-Weave?: I really like the way the scarf turned out, if I can find a comparable yarn there will be more of these scarves for gifting.

FO: Visions of Sugar Plum ... House Elves?

Four months, four pairs of socks.  I'm still on track to complete 12 pairs of socks in 12 months.  After the complex cables of my Staked Socks these were a nice shift with the subtle patterning and interesting color shifts.

 

They did turn out a bit small, I think for a 64in sock I need to be using a 2.75mm needle more often than not.  I find that all the different Merino Nylon sock base from my fave Cdn dyers seem to be pretty similar so I'm not surprised that I use similar needles for all of them.

So I have cast on for my next pair, I will be doing lace which is again a nice change from the plain, cables and texture of the last three months of socks.

- Details -

Project Name: Visions of Sugar Plum ... House Elves?

Pattern: Hermione's Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder from Dreams in Fiber

Recipient: Me

Yarn: Fleece Artist Trail Socks in Sugar Plums

Modifications: None

New Skills:

• Different Gusset Pick-up: I was reading the new Simply Sockupied eMag and Ann Budd had a cool technique using an extra DPN to twist the picked up gusset stitches, which for me resulted in a bit of extra work but a really attractive "seam" with no gaps.
• TAAT Magic Loop on a 32" needle: I didn't have a longer one and I tried to do Two Socks on Two Circs and it made me want to cry so I figured out how to do two socks to 1 circ. It has inspired me to get 40" circs to do my TAAT socks as 47" is a bit too long feeling now.

Feedback:

• Yarn: I am quite impressed with how Fleece Artist does a multi, while it did swirl around the leg both socks striped identically and the slipped stitch heel looks really amazing.  My aversion to multis is being reduced thanks to this yarn.
• Pattern: Nice, clear, simple and free.  My only issue is the author doesn't tell you how long the toe is at gauge.  Although the shape is really nice and now that I know how it works I may use it again in future.

Re-Knit?: Nope, although I may steal the toe for a default top-down pair of franken-socks (ie. my default sock made of parts of all sorts of different patterns).  There are way too many socks out there to make the same pair twice.

CanCon: Yarn Edition

For anyone who has lived in Canada, you are familiar with the concept of CanCon.  For those of you who haven't spent much time in the True North, might not know that all our radio and television stations must play a designated amout of work by a Canadian each day (the percentages are dependent on location and type of stuff the broadcast).

Based on very cursory internet research (and by that I mean Wikipedia) it seems this number can range from 25% up to 40% of content on radio and 60% on television (although news shows count so most primetime is American shows).  On the radio the CanCon is hardly noticeable we have so much great Canadian music, and we send all the annoying ones to the US (you can thank us later for Celine Dion, Nickelback, Avril Lavigne, and Justin Bieber), on TV it can be a bit more painful although recently CBC really has been bringing up the average with Little Mosque on the Prairie, Being Erica and Republic of Doyle (which just got a 4th season pickup, which is awesome).

What does this have to do with yarn?

We have so many amazing Canadian yarn dyers, both indie and artisnal, that going forward (and this has been in place for most of 2012 already) I want my stash to be CanCon-ed.  I want to make sure that I am supporting the amazingly diverse range of dyers and fiber producers here in Canada. Between Handmaiden/Fleece Artist in Nova Scotia to Sweet Georgia in Vancouver and in between Tanis in Montreal, Kim in Haliburton, Emily in Toronto, Lisa in Barrie, Hasmi in Banff, Kirsten and Melissa in Vancouver  and so many more I haven't discovered yet.

However, I couldn't go 100% Canadian, there are too many cool indie dyers in the States that I would miss like bohoknitterchic, Gale's Art, Winemakerssister and Wandering Wool (who I haven't actually ordered from yet, but her stuff is so tempting) and the rest of the Phat Fiber crew who are working in their corners of the earth on amazing yarns and fibers.

And sometime KnitPicks has exactly the yarn you need for a project, and Felici, I do love my Felici.

So I am going to try to buy mostly Canadian yarn, I will tag projects that are either made with Canadian dyed yarn (or a pattern by a Canadian designer) with the tag CanCon. Let's see if I can do better than the local stations and bring my CanCon up above 60%.

Either way I will have help with this,  I am currently signed up for three different yarn clubs, the Tanis Fiber Arts Year in Colour Club (which is still accepting signups and you will get all the previous months in your next shipment), indigodragonfly's Smart Ass Knitters/World Domination 1 Skein Club (there may be 6-mo slots in the fall, if not the next round of signups are in Feb 2013) and the latest one is Sweet Fiber's Super Sweet Summer of Sock, Vancouver Edition (which there are still spots in for the the 3 month club, which ships May, June, July).

Also, I am headed to the Downtown (Toronto) Knit Collective big show, Knitter's Frolic next Saturday (the 28th) so I will get to check out and sample all sorts of new yarns, bases and dyers at the show, and meet some of my other dealers (ie. Kim and Tanis face to face).

Just like the latest CBC shows, CanCon yarn is a great thing and I am excited to keep it a major part of my fiber diet.

WIP Wednesday: April 18th

I had a fairly busy weekend so not much fiber art-ing happened, and there have been no changes to the stole or spinning in the past week.  Both the socks are coming along although they need to speed up considerably for either pair to be finished by the end of the month. I have 8 of 12 repeats done on the cowl and so that should be finished up in a night or two of focused work.

I am nearly done with the cloth I have on the loom right now.  I am finally getting my selvages looking good and balanced between sloppy and too drawn-in.  I totally messed up the warp tension on this, however I am pressing on and learning the proper techniques (note to self, don't finger comb the warp before it is tied onto the fabric beam and get a better warp separator).

At the very top are some rolags I made this morning with the hand cards I picked up many moons ago.  I downloaded a whole bunch of Interweave videos this past week, one of which is the How I Card video that highlights 4 different handcarding techniques.  While watching the video I finally got the nerve to break out the handcards and some Cormo fleece I got from bohoknitterchic and start carding.  I am really loving the rolags and I will probably be swapping out my bobbins so that I can start spinning them.

I have heard rumors it is going to be a nasty weekend so I may get some good hands-on fiber time and finish up a few projects (and maybe start a few others, my tatting showed up on Monday).