Category: Blog

The weaving has been going pretty quickly, and I’m so close to cutting this crazy stashbusting potluck casserole of a project off the loom!

It’s been fun going through my scraps and partial skeins, mixing and matching to try and keep the weft at a aran/bulky weight throughout.

I’ve got only about 4 inches left to weave, and I’m cutting it pretty close with the length of the warp, but I should be able to get my three 60 inch panels, with about a 6 inch fringe. Just hope I’ve kept the selvage even enough to be able to join them without too much trouble.

And there are still some leftovers! So if this turns out well, I might get another blanket warp going. Would be great to get some of these odds and ends into use rather than taking up storage space in the wool room.

This week my main focus is on cookie baking, but I’m hoping that in the spare moments I can get this assembled, washed and dried. I expect that drying something of this size might be the trickiest bit this time of year.

Perhaps hanging in the hoophouse? Hmmmm.

Have a good week folks!

How it started, (mountains of stash)

It’s coming together quite quickly, as it’s bulkier yarn.

Worsted and heavier random handspun stash. Plain weave. about 20 inches wide. 6 yards. The plan is to break it into three even lengths and seam them together to make a delightfully random, stashbusting throw blanket. I imagine I’ll full it lightly once assembled to plump and fuzz it up a bit.

One challenge I’m finding of using a bunch of different yarns in the warp is that some are a bit stretchier than others. But I think I can keep it all hanging together, making little adjustments along the way.

It’s been fun revisiting yarns from previous knitting projects, and some from dear departed sheepy friends. Lots of different colors and textures. Makes me so happy to see them contributing to this cozy project!

Having committed to the Argyle sweater vest, and picked out some yarns,

I promptly started in on the official swatch, displayed here for posterity. 🙂

After a quick wash and block, it came out to 19 stitches/26 rows per 4 inches. which is pretty close to the specified gauge (18/26). So the finished object might be slightly smaller than the specified measurements, but I think I’m still ok with doing the smaller of the two pattern sizes.

So I went ahead and cast on. The pattern calls for a provisional cast-on, but I’ve never really gotten the hang of that, and so am just going with my standard longtail, and will plan to pick up stitches for the bottom edge ribbing when the time comes for that.

Seeing as how it’s knit in pieces, the cast on isn’t too many stitches (working the back first), but I found that doing the setup for the argyle pattern kind of challenging. Lots and lots of ends. So for the first couple of rows I did actually wind my yarns up into little butterfly thingees, just so I could see where everything was coming from. But now that I’m a few inches in, I find that it’s easier and less of a tangle to just let everything hang loose.

Also, I had planned to knit the white lines into the pattern as I went, but during the setup it occurred to me that working them a the same time would mean another 8 strands hanging loose, and so reconciled myself to doing duplicate stitch after the fact as the pattern directs.

So I’m underway with the argyle!

Also did some spinning this past week- those pretty little superwash color blending samples-from earlier this month

are are now spun and plied- only about 13-15 yards of each color (~.25 oz) but should be fun to work up into a small project of some sort

That’s all the woolly news I’ve got for now. But I’m kind of feeling the urge to get a new warp on the floor loom. And there’s a long weekend coming up.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

Been kind of in a groove with stranded colorwork recently. It’s a very happy, comfortable groove. One that I find quite satisfying. But I seem to have been bitten by the Argyle bug again.

This happens from time to time. I find argyle very appealing. So appealing, in fact, that I’ve made two pairs of argyle socks, despite generally not enjoying the process of knitting intarsia.

Fiddly, messy intarsia. Knitted flat, with lots of intersections and lots of loose ends to weave in.

But, Argyle!!

So here we go- Pluviae Vest by Bana Kavanagh

I love the classic look. And the doubleknit button band sounds interesting and looks very polished.

Inspired by a tutorial that I watched recently on YouTube, I’ve decided to approach the intarsia a little bit differently than I have in the past. No bobbins. Going to embrace the chaos and just let the yarn strands hang loose.

Also going to employ a knitting technique that I haven’t played with in quite a few years- knitting forwards and backwards across the right side of the fabric. No purling. Just knitting in my normal (backwards) mode from left to right, then knitting like everyone else in the world on the return trip from right to left.

I dashed off a sample this morning with some bits I had hanging around, not so much as a swatch for this particular project (haven’t picked out yarn yet) but rather as a warmup and “proof of concept”.

gah! the ends!!!

There are actually more ends than were strictly necessary, because I chose to work with rather short pieces of yarn. But you get the idea 😉

The main things are: 1. seeing if I can keep an even tension knitting from right to left, and 2. managing the intersections of the different colors to maintain nice clean edges on the color blocks.

I think it looks pretty decent after a quick soak and block

I’m off to the yarn stash to pull together a plan. Argyle awaits!