Knitted Caps

I have been dragging my feet where knitting was concerned. Spinning and weaving are currently on my brain, and knitting seems so tame, and,  well,  tame in comparison.

But I really wanted to knit recently.  I have a friend who lost her hair from chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer.  We have not seen each other for several years, even though she moved back to this state, within four hours of me.  When it was decided that we would meet within two weeks (it was actually this past Sunday), I had to drop everything to knit some caps for her.  Because she had joked in an e-mail about wearing different coloured wigs so that everyone would think her husband was seeing different women, I had to knit these “No-Hair Day Chemo Caps“:

This red cap was the first one I knitted.  It only took one day to knit it up — the first time.  I was finishing off the very last stitch, when I noticed I must have dropped a couple of stitches.  On closer examination, the opening laddered all the way down to the beginning.  I was ready to cry.  But, I bravely and stoicly frogged the entire cap and started over.  It only took three more tries to get it right.  And only the first required complete frogging…  I hope it survives at least one wearing.  The black one was easier.  It gave me very little trouble.

I fervently pray that I will never, ever, ever have to touch fun fur again.

Handspun is a different story altogether.

This is Purple Grapes worsted weight yarn, a hand-painted superwash merino.  This is the first time I’ve knit any handspun, and I’m glad it was my own.   What a joy it was to touch and knit!  It performed beautifully, with none of the unravelling I’ve experienced from mill-spun yarns.  It was knit up in one afternoon, at the birthday party barbeque for my nephew.

The pattern is “Shortie“, also from the Head Huggers site.  It’s a wonderful resource of chemo cap patterns, and a great place to donate time and money.

I had some left-over yarn, so I modified a pattern from “101 Designer One-Skein Wonders“:

See the tail?  That was all I had left.  When I got to the last few yards of yarn, I measured and made estimates for the number of rows it would knit.

Because it was handspun wool, I washed as well as blocked the knitting:

It’s my first time blocking!  It really makes a difference to the finishing of the cloth.  These recent projects really rekindled my enjoyment of knitting.  I’ve already started another project, a scarf, with more of my handspun.

These count as four items!  My goodness, I now have six FOs.

Reely Warped

Finally!  My first weaving FO.  The project that came with Hedy is finished.  It would have been finished sooner if not for the time it took me to find appropriate yarn to make the warp repair.

The colour doesn’t match, but the weight does.  It’s surprisingly inconspicuous in the final product.  I’m  happy to report that the wispy bouclé thread that came with this project is finally used up.  The closest match I could find was a chenille yarn.  It’s heftier than the original, and much closer to the same weight as the warp.

What a difference the yarn makes!  Almost all the problems I had with evenness and selvedges disappeared!  (BTW: Thank you, Jane, for great tips about grabbing the beater by the middle, and tying smaller bouts.  They worked wonders for me!)  The bouclé had been such a struggle to work with; I’m so relieved to find out it wasn’t me.  Weaving goes along so much faster than knitting!  I had woven more than a foot with the chenille yarn before it dawned on me to try out some weft floats that didn’t show up when using the bouclé.

Of course, by that time, there were only a few inches left to weave.

Finished!

And immediately commandeered by my son

to dress Squiggly Pig’s owees.

I was anxious to finish that sash and create my own project.  I started out warping on the warping board that came with Hedy.

I didn’t have any spare wall space to hang it on, and was using it on the floor.  That became old very quickly.  About six ends quickly.   So I had to drag out this bad boy that came with Beauty:

Introducing the Humungo-Warper Frankenreel 2000.  This warping reel is so large and heavy that it can knock out a boxer.  But, I can (just barely) carry in, assemble, and take apart all the parts without any help.  Which is a good thing, because within minutes of seeing me lug this into the house, my menfolk hastily vacated the premises.  Muttering something about shopping.  Lovely.  Leaving me to figure out how to Warp. In. Peace.

I measured several times, and found the circumference of one turn to be 110.75 inches, or 3.076 yards, or 281cm.  I suppose they were aiming for three yards when they created this monster, and the extra 2.75 inches may be a result of humidity.  (It looks very similar to Schacht’s horizontal warping mill, but that one is only two yards in circumference.  If the Schacht can warp eighteen yards, I wonder how much mine can do.)   With the cross bar skewing the weight of the sides, sometimes the reel swung around with such speed it was difficult not to wince — or duck — when the arms were swinging towards me.  The cross bar can be moved to any location convenient to make up the warp length.  In a sense, I don’t have to worry about a brake, because the sides tilt, even when base locking pegs are well seated.  So the reel often hits one or the other side on the base; this slows it down, but doesn’t stop it.  It’s a bother, but I’m learning to live with it by controlling how I swing the reel.  I thought I was missing a second cross bar, but after setting this up, I don’t think so.  A second cross bar wouldn’t eliminate the tilting, since that problem is caused by the base wobbling.  I may still ask a carpenter to make me a second one, because it would be very helpful for shorter warps.  In this case, my shorter warp measured 212 inches, comprising 81 ends.  For three dish towels.  I also had the same problem Trapunto mentions, of uneven tension and lengths of warping threads created when the later threads deviate from the guide thread when wrapping around pegs, changing directions, and adding more thickness to the warp.

Because my design would be symmetrical, I decide to use the information from Tom Knisely’s video, “A Comprehensive Guide to Warping Your Loom from Front to Back”, and make my threads twice as long, doubling the ends when I warped the loom.

Reeling around.

Closeup of the locking jaw tool used on the cross, found at the Home Depot

I didn’t want to tape an apron rod or stick to my loom frame (as Betty Davenport recommends), but thought a suspended apron rod would be very useful when threading the heddles.

Above: Note the wire clips suspending the apron rod in place.

So I made these with the help of some wire-bending tools and copper wire.

Two of my apron rods already had holes drilled.

Warping the loom took forever!  I had so much trouble with crossed and tangled ends, even though my crosses tied at both ends kept beautifully.  Then the problem of uneven lengths created while using the warping reel.  I spent a lot of time combing through the ends to undo tangles and adjust tension.  I’m sure that doubling the ends and cutting them in half exacerbated that issue, which created trouble at times when I had a few ends that were a bit too short for tying a bow on the front apron rods.  Even counting out a little time for meals, bathing and putting my son to bed, I spent a solid fourteen hours warping the loom.  (I turned down every Fourth of July invitation to have time to do this!)  At this rate, I won’t be hawking my wares at the Pike Place Market any time soon.

After the loom was finally warped (about 1AM), how could I sleep without doing some weaving???  This first towel was woven in less than two hours, even including unravelling and re-weaving something like thirty percent of it to get it right.

Approximately 14.5″ x 22″.  Warp at 34 wpi, weft at 18 wpi, 100% cotton.  Using a 10-dent (my only) heddle.  The weave is less dense than I’d like; I completely forgot about making an arc with the weft before beating to obscure more of the warp, so I’ll have to try that next time.  I’ll be weaving more towels like this, as an exercise in creating some of the patterns from Betty Davenport’s rigid heddle pattern book.

In case you are wondering: “Where did she get her fabulous sense of colour from?”  Well, My Dear, thank you very much for asking.  It’s taken years of dedicated study, but I have a degree in “Because I can’t afford to pay retail, I get what I can scrounge together from whatever bargain-priced lots I bought”.

Dear Reader, if you have any ideas about
1) how best to finish an edge without a fringe (fringe on a towel would feel like drying dishes with a placemat!)  and also without much bulk, and
2) creative uses for the loom waste,
I’d love to hear of them!

FO: Purple Grapes Yarn

I decided to finish off the woolen (attenuated long-draw) started in class on Saturday.

Pictured above, the last of the rolags I had from class.  Shiori prepared them from dyed superwash merino top; it’s sooooooo dreamily soft.  Shiori makes exceptionally lovely, dense, and fluffy rolags.  She calls them “punags”.  (Punis are the dense preparations of cotton for spinning.)  Rolags are so fun and fast to spin, I had to force myself to stop spinning to take this picture before it was gone.

My singles wound onto three bobbins for plying.

The three-ply in progress on my spinning wheel.

This is the skeined yarn, pre-wash.  It’s a lot more twisted than I used to do.  I used to produce a more “balanced” yarn pre-wash.  I had read somewhere that this was something to aim for.  But Judith MacKenzie set me straight on that.  It’s actually better to be over-twisted, since you would lose about twenty percent of that twist in the washing/finishing stage.  Also, the way we handle yarn in knitting can also take twist out of the yarn.  I’ve experienced that before, especially when I’ve frogged a section more than once.  Lastly, it’s better to have more twist to give the yarn more strength if the end product is for weaving.

Still, I overdid the twist here, and will back down a bit in the future.  My theory is, a more “balanced” yarn plus a little extra for the handling during knitting in the pre-finished stage would be more wash-friendly in the final product.  If a lot of fulling, wuzzing, and whacking of the yarn is put into the finishing, I’m guessing that the knitted product would retain more of its pre-wash shape.  Anyway, just a theory.  I’ve only two knitted FO’s at this point, neither using my handspun.

Finished and re-skeined.  My son calls this colourway “purple grapes”.  I have to invest in a small plunger to full the yarn as Judith does.  I did the fulling by agitating the skein by hand in the hot wash, and I’m surprised this didn’t end up felted into a ball.  It’s 135 yards, 2.25 ounces, 23 wpi, superwash merino three-ply.

A closeup.

Judith says that a three-ply yarn should be our default.  Not only that, we should use three bobbins, and not Navajo ply for a better yarn.  I must say that it’s worth the extra work.  The finished yarn has a lovely, rounder shape.  Since it’s a woolen and quite springy, I think it’s better for weft than warp.  I’d spin worsted for warp.

From today’s mail:

I couldn’t resist; it was a bargain, and it came with two dozen cards.  I have an unused set of tablets and a pamplet I bought from Linda Hendrickson something like ten years ago at a Seattle Weavers’ Guild sale.  Now that I’m in the weaving groove, I believe they will see some use soon.