Fuzzy Feet!

If I remember correctly, I went through my inaugural Fuzzy Feet Stage prior to our last Christmas in California, which would have been 2006. Yes, I am too lazy to look it up. Why do you ask?

I was brand new to sock knitting and once I made it through the first pair, they were a cinch to churn out in quantity.

But what happens when, 3+ years later, you look across the TV room and see skin through the soles of both Fuzzy Feet being worn by the Hubster?

HOLES!!! (the scary part? He hadn’t noticed …)

Obviously, if he’s worn them enough to walk holes in the soles, he gets a new pair!

So I spent my entire Labor Day stay at the Lake knitting furiously with some Cascade 220 and US 10.5 needles. I finished the second Monster Sock around 11 a.m. on Monday and took them upstairs to felt. Oh, and why the urgency? We have a front-load washer at home, but an old school “standard” washer at the Lake. Labor Day weekend was the last time the ginormous ski feet and felting-friendly washer were going to be in the same place at the same time in 2010.

Pre-felting comparison.

Oh, he has wide feet too, so I cast on some extra stitches (for a count of 52), turned the heel over half of them and muddled through the rest of the numerical stuff without actually having to think about it. Yay, sock knitting experience! And yes, I knit the socks to 14.5” before starting the toe decreases to make sure they’d be long enough for Bigfoot post-felting.

Post-felting.

The new ones are on the left. Old on the right. It’s amazing how fuzzy and thick the new ones are. We’ll see how well they wear.

And no, my recipient was unwilling to model, so you get some stunning still shots of slippers. Exciting, no?

Fuzzy Feet, Redux

Pattern: Fuzzy Feet by Theresa Vinson Stenersen
Source: Knitty.com, Winter 2002
Yarn: Cascade 220 Wool
Colorway: Light and Medium Gray (#9401)
Yardage: Probably about 1.75 skeins. I used a fresh skein for each foot, so it's a little hard to tell for sure.
Needles: US 10.5/6.5mm 16” KA Switch
Started: 4 September 2010
Finished: 6 September 1010
Mods: I was knitting for Bigfoot, so I used 52 sts and extrapolated the appropriate numbers from there for the heel turn, gusset pick-up, etc. Knit to 14.5” before beginning the toe decreases.

Imperial Stock Ranch

Anybody who talked to me shortly after my field trip to the TNNA marketplace last June in Columbus, Ohio, got an earful about the yarn I was most excited about.

Imperial Stock Ranch is a 150 year-old family-owned ranch in the Oregon desert. They have all-natural practices and are relatively new to the hand knitting universe (Here’s a link to the ranch site, rather than the yarn branch linked above). Over the years, they have bred a unique type of sheep that thrives in their harsh climate. That’s the wool in the skeins below.


We purchased the ISR pencil roving for the store, along with pattern support for it. But I fell in love with the above yarn, their Columbia 2-ply in Spring Sage. It’s going to be my first Barbara Walker “Knitting from the Top” sweater. I honestly believe this yarn is going to shine in plain ‘ol stockingette.


I also indulged in the above skein to make a plain garter shawl. I can’t find the tag right now, but I’ll edit the colorway name in when I find it.


The yarn has a slightly “natural” feel to it, but is still plenty soft and I’m so excited to clear my needles and get to work with this yarn. I’ve been excited about it since June and there’s no reason to stop now, since it’s finally in my hot little hands.


Oh, and since this is a small family-owned company, there’s no having to buy a full bag of this and a full bag of that. I needed seven skeins (at 4 oz/220 yards/skein of 100% wool) of the green and one for the brown, and that’s all we had to order. Love it!


As soon as I finish a project or two that is currently on my needles, I’ll be knitting with this yarn. You can count on it.

Farmhouse Scarf

As I mentioned in last week’s WiP Wednesday post, I got home from The Mannings and was nearly desperate to get something on my very own loom. I needed to do the whole project process by myself, start to finish, to lock the info into my brain.

I started with a skein of Fannie’s Fingering Weight in Old Glory. It was a sock yarn skein I’d admired for a very long time. Did the same 3 yard warp length that I’d one for my class scarf, but when I had 120 ends measured (10” on-loom width), I looked at the cake of yarn I had left and decided “what the hell.”

I came a lot closer than I really should have to using the entire skein, but what the heck. I have a wide scarf that used the vast majority of the skein. I think that’s a win.


The varying chunks of darker color that you can see come primarily from the weft. I chose two skeins of JoJoLand Melody superwash sock yarn, which is a very subtle self-stripe in colors that complimented the Old Glory nicely.


In the darker chunks of fabric, that’s where the warp was more of a dominant red. Once the loom was warped, this scarf flew by. I tied the knots for the fringe at knit night a mere 72 hours after measuring the warp.


There was a minor fringe fail, which is why this scarf does not have a twisted fringe. I started weaving closer to the front edge of the warp than I thought. Once I trimmed the fringe to the longest possible even length, there wasn’t enough length to twist. So it’s au naturel.

Scarf was wet-finished with the first dollop out of my lifetime supply of Orvus Paste, then a bit of hair conditioner in the rinse. Spun out in the washer and air dryed on a rack at the bottom of my driveway. Took about 10 minutes to dry, since it was about 90 degrees outside at the end of last week.

At the end of the day, I learned stuff and still came away with something useful. Isn’t that what a first solo project should do?

Please pardon my skanky lightpost. Someday, I will re-paint that thing.

Farmhouse Scarf

Warp: Fannie’s Fingering Weight in Old Glory from Farmhouse Yarns
EPI: 12
Width on loom: 12”
Weft: Jojoland Melody
Pattern: plain tabby
Warp measured: 29 August 2010
Loom Warped: 30 August 2010
Weaving finished: 1 September 2010
Project Completed: 2 September 2010

I’m still figuring out what details should go in the “recap” for my weaving projects. Yell if you have questions!

Things in Progress

Yeah, titles for these WiP Wednesday posts are a struggle.

Oh, and keep in mind that the entirety of my weekend knitting time went into a now-finished project that you haven’t seen yet.

Daybreak is almost finished


It would be finished by now. But I ran out of the outer border color (the lavender) with about three rows to go, which meant I had to purchase another skein. It’s not the pattern’s fault. I changed yarn and had a feeling this was going to happen. But since I had to buy the extra yarn, hell if I’m gonna just do three rows and bind off. Stand by for a bigger-than-normal outer border.

Last night, I measured out warp for the next project on the loom.


Enough for probably 10 dishtowels, so this will keep me busy for quite a while. It’s 10/2 unmercerized cotton, 14” wide on the loom and eight yards long at 24 epi (ends per inch). I’m going to thread the loom for a twill pattern and I’ll have three treadling options for the towels. Kinda like these:


It’s actually one of the columns from the twill sampler we did in class. Not particularly creative, but it’ll work and holy warping practice, I’ll be an expert by the time this thing is done!

Labor Day

Hi there! Hubster and I headed up to the Lake for 2/3 of the long weekend. Since I worked Saturday. It was his last trip up for the year, although I hope to go up a couple more times before the end of the month.

Anyhoo, the wind was amazing when we got up there on Saturday night. We arrived at the house about half an hour before the power went out, but that wasn’t such a big deal. It’s amazing how quickly my body manages to “power down” after arriving at VBP.

Sunday was an inside-the-house day because the wind was still pretty high. I did spend a few hours in my hammock chair, which was do-able because it hangs from a relatively wind-protected portion of the house.

No beach walk on Sunday because, well, there was no beach. The lake was entirely too high because of the weather.

We actually had a pretty good sunset that evening, which was a bonus. I took a completely excessive number of photos. Here are the highlights.








You can't actually tell in the above photo, but it was really obvious that all of that sand had been underwater extremely recently.



Otherwise, I spent the weekend furiously knitting a pair of Fuzzy Feet for the Hubster. Since Monday was the last time the felting-friendly washing machine and his ginormous ski feet were going to be in the same place in the same time. I got ‘em done and you’ll see them here shortly.

There was a walk with some good beach glass on Monday, but I totally forgot to take pictures, so I’ll try to include those with my WiP Wednesday stuff tomorrow. Hope all of you had an enjoyable long weekend as well!

Class Scarf

The final project that I did during class last week (geez, that was only last week? I feel like it was a lifetime ago!) was my scarf project.


When I went yarn/thread shopping for my scarf, I knew I wanted wool. A scarf, to me, is not decorative. It’s for warmth. Cotton is pretty, wool is warm.

Tom pointed me in the direction of the sock yarn section. Ironic, huh? I chose Knit One, Crochet Too’s “Crock-o-Dye” yarn as the warp. 65% superwash wool, 20% nylon, 15% silk. I even managed to get some warp stripes. Totally unplanned, but equally awesome.


For the weft, I picked another sock yarn, Panda Superwash, in the Neptune colorway. 51% bamboo, 39% superwash wool, 10% nylon. It’s splitty as all hell, so I wouldn’t chose it for most knitting applications, but it was great for this project.


My mother loves to call me “Gadget Girl,” and there was one true gadget that I felt I needed to bring home, a fringe twister.


There is something about a twisted fringe that just screams “weaving” to me. I blame Dave Daniels and his fabulous blog for this association. (and I decided to leave the fringe on the sampler as-is. I’ll trim it down when I’m through toting it all around the ‘Burgh for show and tell)

Our scarf projects were a major demo for finishing information. There’s definitely some info that will transfer to my knitting and quilting projects as well, but bottom line I’m very happy with my scarf.


In fact, I liked it so much I now have another woven scarf that’s completely finished. Now to do the maths for my next project to jump onto the loom!

WiP Wednesday

We’ll take a little break from Weaving Week recap and I’ll show you what I’m currently working on!

Since I was too busy to post last week, you didn’t get to see Daybreak as it started along. Now I’m into the border section and the end is near.


As with most shawls, it looks like a blob of nothing while still on the needles. But I’m digging it.

I really wanted to get my first project on the loom as quickly as possible so I didn’t have time to forget what I was doing. So I copped out and threw another sock yarn scarf on the loom. Farmhouse Fannie’s Fingering for the warp and some JoJoLand Melody for the weft. I’m already a good chunk into it and am somewhat hopeful I can finish it today.


And since she always seems to be popular, I snapped a few pictures of my favorite puppy since she was outside while I was picture-taking this morning.

Hi, Sydney!


And a close-up!


Back to weaving tomorrow. Happy Hump Day!

Dishtowels

After a bit of general information and theory at the start of Monday’s class, Tom got all of us sitting in front of a counterbalance floor loom, and we started weaving. Here’s what I made:

Four dishtowels!

I started at the bottom of that strip, with the green towel. You can see where I started out beating the ever-living crap out of the towel following each shot, and where I was when Tom came by and told me to chill out and not beat so hard.


The pattern was to knit a hem, then not quite 3” of tabby (plain weave), five repeats of our twill pattern (my loom was threaded for the “Star of Bethlehem” pattern), then 1.5” of tabby, four rows of twill, lather, rinse repeat to make it symmetrical.

My second color was chosen because I liked my classmate Misty’s first towel.


Each towel is about 24” long. They’re woven with unmercerized cotton. 10/2 in the warp, 8/2 in the weft.


My final towel was done with a dark purple. So dark it looks navy blue.


I decided that I was bored with the basic pattern, so I started messing with my twill set-up.


At this point, we’d been working on the twill samplers enough (the purple thing I showed you yesterday) that I understood that the pattern wouldn’t really emerge unless I reversed direction every so often. So instead of treadling 1, 2, 3, 4 over and over, I tried various combinations of 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1.


I’m just about certain that twill dishtowels are going to be the next project on the loom. I just need to decide how long of a warp I want to measure out (i.e. how many towels I want to weave at a time) and what twill pattern to thread for. I’m still pondering my options, but I’ll bet I have it figured out by the time I get home from my Labor Day Weekend trip to The Lake.

Twill Sampler

I was planning to show all of you my class projects in the order in which they were started. But then I decided I wanted a bit of finishing advice on this particular one, so it’s gonna jump in line. Ready?

When Teacher Tom presented this sampler, our second project, we were all given the option to weave either a table runner, with fringe on both ends, or a wall hanging. I have a spot on the landing of my stairs that is essentially the first thing you see when you walk into my house. I have quilts that hang there for Halloween, fall, Christmas and winter that I love. But as soon as snowflakes are no longer appropriate, I have to put something up there that I hate.

Which is why I picked the wall hanging. Everyone else picked the table runner. Dare to be different.


After doing enough tabby (plain weave) to create a hem that was hand-stitched down on the back. We got into our first section of pattern. No, I don’t know the names of any of these patterns. Someday …


We then put in four rows of brown, in pattern (and yes, that’s the identical brown in the vertical/warp lines and in the horizontal/weft lines), then onward to the next 4” chunk of pattern.


Next up was learning how to put in a floating selvedge (a very useful trick). No, you can’t see it. Just trust me that it’s in there and it makes life easier.


And, finally, we learned a technique called overshot.


See how the pattern is really elongated? That’s done by throwing the main weft (purple) through the same shed (pattern of raised and lowered warp threads) more than once. With something in between to make it not pull itself out. Yeah, I know that didn't really make much sense. Just trust me. It works.

Anyhoo, my question is about the very bottom of the sampler. See in the top photo how the fringe is reeeeeeeeeeeally long? I wanted to give myself the option to do a twisted fringe, like this:


Or should I just chop the fringe down to maybe 3-4” and leave it “natural.” Lemme know what you think!

Class Twill Sampler

Warp: 3/2 Perle Cotton (natural with brown as dividers)
Weft: 3/2 Perle Cotton (purple with brown as dividers)
Tabby Weft: 10/2 Perle Cotton (natural) – this is for the overshot section
Sett: 15 EPI
Started: 24 August 2010, Beginning Weaving Week, The Mannings
Finished: 27 August 2010, Beginning Weaving Week, The Mannings

The Mannings

I’ll start with the bottom line. What a fantastic week. I would absolutely, positively, 100% recommend Beginning Weaving Week at The Mannings to anyone with an interest in learning how to weave. Tom is a fantastic teacher with the patience of a saint. I arrived at class a little worried about whether or not buying the loom had been a good idea. I left confident in my ability to warp that very same loom and get weaving.

Last Sunday, I met my mother in Cranberry to start our drive to The Mannings. As we went along, we realized we’d be driving right through Gettysburg. I’d never been, so we stopped briefly. One day, I’ll brush up on my Civil War reading and go back for a real visit.

But there was one place I absolutely had to stop while we were at Gettysburg.

RT, meet George Sears Greene!

That’s Gen. George Sears Greene, atop Culp’s Hill. Why did I make a point of visiting that particular statue in a gigantic battlefield with thousands of memorial statues? General Greene’s great great grandson was best man at my wedding!

Meanwhile, back to weaving, the theme of last week.


Class started on Monday and after just a bit of theory, we were all weaving away, on the far set of looms in the above picture. Oh, and yes, that’s corn straight out the window. Ground level is just a few inches below those windows in the back of the Loom House.

Within a few hours, RT was admiring two of the four dishtowels I completed over the course of the week.


By Tuesday, we had started on our twill samplers. I knew exactly where I wanted the finished project to land in my house, which meant I was the only person in our class doing a wall hanging instead of a table runner.


We picked yarns for our scarf projects on Wednesday (I picked two sock yarns. Go figure.) and warped our looms. Tom and his daughter Sara did their best to make sure all of us were working on a loom as close as possible to either what we already owned or what that person was considering purchasing. I was on an eight-harness Schacht loom that (hopefully) prepared me to warp my own loom.

We started weaving our scarf projects on Thursday. That wound up being my latest night, since both the dishtowels and scarves had to be ready to cut off the looms first thing Friday morning. Here’s my scarf:


I’ll show you my finished projects over the next few days. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll be going back and taking classes at The Mannings again.