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.

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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

Rigid Heddle for the First Time!

Yesterday I had the great honour of introducing five great women to the joys of Rigid Heddle weaving at the Muskoka Yarn Connection in Bracebridge.  They were a great group to teach. Everyone was engaged in learning and they were all game to participate in warping a loom.

The goal of the class was to get everyone up to speed on terminology used in weaving, and getting the store loom warped up so that everyone who comes in can fall in love with the simple joy of rigid heddle weaving.

Everyone took turns doing every part of the warping process, and while it took a little longer than planned we got a great plain-weave project on the loom. 

I'm hoping to get the group back together after Christmas to spend more time talking about the in and outs (or ups and downs) of weaving as we just made it to weaving the first inch before we were a full half-hour over schedule.

I designed a weaving draft to go along with the class and I need to put it through some more fine tuning and then I can hopefully release it, for anyone who wants to make their first woven scarf.

Based on the response to this class, I'm hoping to run it again in the spring. I know there are lots of fiber fans out there with rigid heddle looms stashed away i n their basements that would love to learn how to made good use of them.

The class project, I hope to get the pattern together so that I can release it soon.

FO: Tokyo Cowl

Note: I have had this project done since October and this is the only photo I have of it, from Instagram and from the fall.  The post has been written since late last year, but I needed to get it out of my drafts folder.

This was a spontaneous project, I saw a cowl Carla had made and I figured it would be a good use for the skein of Groovy that had been sitting in my stash for far too long.  When I had originally ordered the yarn (we don't have a decent LYS less than 2 hrs from where I live, so I order 99% of my yarn online) it came a different color that I had expected.  It is a very nice color, but it was basically the color of my peachy skin rather than the nice cream I had been expecting.

After having it live in my stash for nearly 2 years it was time for it to be made into a gift, and I still haven't found the right buttons or the right person for it, it will find its way to the right person eventually.

- Details -

Project Name: Tokyo Cowl

Pattern: Begbie Cowl by Jane Richmond

Recipient: The Box/Not Sure Yet

Yarn: Dream in Color Groovy in Tokyo Cream

Modifications: None

New Skills: None

Feedback: Easy pattern, nice yarn, but not my colors.

Re-Knit?: Only if I have a single skein of bulky yarns I don't know what to do with.

FO: Colors and Stripes

I find that my loom is a perfect palette cleanser.  I haven't spent much time getting fancy with my weaving, so for it is mostly plain weave on my little loom.  It's like meditation to me, the constant rythym of up and down, back and forth gets me to a spot in my brain that I don't seem to find with knitting, which I use to challenge me and to make increasingly complex items.

I like having a project on my loom, however I find that once I sit down at my loom I don't find I get up until the item is finished.

This scarf was a bit of a surprise, the warp looked great, then as I wefted with the yellow (the same yellow used in the warp stripe) it looked terrible, and like it was all yellow.  But when I cut it off the loom and washed it it magically became something really quite special.

- Details -

Project Name: Colors and Stripes

Draft/Warping Plan: I started warping with the darker purple till I ran out, then I did four ends of yellow and then warped the remainder of the loom with the lighter purple.

Recipient: The Box

Yarn: KnitPicks Palette in Iris Heather (dark purple), Pennyroyal (light purple) and Cornmeal (yellow)

Modifications:

• None

New Skills:

• None

Feedback:

• Yarn: Palette has such great colors and softens nicely with a good soak, but I won't be sad to see the last of the Palette from the Woodland Winter Mitts from two years ago.
• Draft: I'm really happy with the warping plan I was able to make up as I was setting up the loom.  I'm really enjoying learning how to use colors by weaving scarves like this.

Re-Weave?: Yeppers, but it won't be like this one, but using what I have on hand and figuring out how to make the colors work in my favor.

FO: Scrappy Scarf

So at the end of my two Sister Scarves I still had some scraps left that I didn't have the heart to get rid of.  I decided to make a magic ball of yarn and crochet up a child-sized scarf.

Again, this one was quite a while ago so the details are foggy, but it felt pretty darn good to get those scraps all used up.  Also, If no one wants the scarf I think the cat loved it.

- Details -

Project Name: Scrappy Scarf

Pattern: My Brain

Recipient: The Box (where I store gifts and donations to be)

Yarn: KnitPicks City Tweed DK

Modifications:

• It was a double crochet into the spaces kind of scarf

New Skills:

• Making up a pattern as I go

Feedback:

• Yarn: I love City Tweed, I need to find more uses for it.

Re-Crochet?: Only if I need to use up scraps