Progress

OWL progress:

Not much to look at yet, but there are about 6 inches of 1x1 ribbing, 3 vikkel braids, the numbers of pi up to 35 decimals, I think, a few sine waves, and the beginnings of  Daleks. The Daleks have been trying to exterminate the project from row 1, which I had to knit, tink, knit, tink and knit again due to a problem that, apparently, didn't exist after all. Sigh. After the Daleks I think I'll do the DNA strand. So far it's about 9 or 10 inches long, so half way to the underarms.

Mash-Up progress:

The Bravo mix went into Potions class

102g, 134 yards of six-ply

and the Charlie mix went into Charms

110g, 138 yards of six-ply

Bravo is dark and zombie-like :) (we were studying Draught of the Living Death in potions) and Charlie is light and sparkley. But hopefully, when all the mixes are done, there will be enough mixing and matching that it will work together in one top. In any case, it will be warm.

The only other thing I've made this month is a cowl for Mother's Day, which I did on night shift Friday and Saturday night before Mother's Day. I cast it off at breaky time, as Nathan got the kids ready for church and before I went to bed, so this is a tired look... ;)

Now I'm going back to work on Daleks and spin some more of the Echo mix. Lots to do before the end of May.

Ravenclaw :)

I've spent six terms (two calendar years) playing the HP game as a Slytherin, but this term I'm leaving the Dungeon and heading up to The Tower. Ravenclaws, it seems, are also a crafty, ambitious lot, and (as in the books) are a clever bunch, too. So I thought my Potions OWL should be nerdy, at the very least.

See this tshirt made out of sock-weight yarn?

It's Kate Davies Tortoise and Hare Sweater. It's cute and all, but I'm going to replace the colorwork with some of my own. It will have secret messages in codes, little Daleks, quotes from nerd culture, and whatever fun things I can think of. A "swatch" is required for an OWL proposal, so last month I made myself a hat-swatch

It fits me because I blocked it very hard and kind of wrecked my DNA strand, but it was good practice, and gave me some ideas about what I like and what I'll do differently with the tshirt. I like that Vikkel braid (the one that looks like a column of sideways knitting right above the ribbing). Fun :)

My proposal is already approved, and I've done about 20 rounds of ribbing so far. I'm doing 1x1 ribbing in dark green, and my cast-on was 270st. I'm using sport-weight yarn and 3.5mm needles, hoping to put in some positive ease. Liking it so far.

I've also started my Giant Mashup. I'm doing the mix I called "Charlie" (gave the paired up fibres Radio Alphabet names), which is BFL/silk/angelina that I carded together, and a tan-colored merino/seacell mix from EGMTK that I call Sand. The BFL is a natural greyish color, and the tussah silk and silver angelina give it a shiny silver look. Only fluffy. hehe.

I did a trial run in April to see whether I liked 2ply or 6ply better. I divided some Kathy's Fibres merino in halves (Octavia and Rosy Red)

I spun the 2ply first, 50g of Octavia and the 50g of the Rosy Red right on top of it. Then I wound it into a ball, and pulled one strand from the outside and one from the center, and plied them both. It worked pretty well, but it didn't take very long, and I find I don't like spinning "thickly" any more. Anyway, the 2ply came to about 16WPI, which is about DK weight, I think. I like it

but spinning thinner is easier, and I'll get more points. And I have time (I think)

This one is the 6ply.

Sorry about the different lighting. Same deal here, colored yarn first and then red, only I spun it thinly. The plan was to pull yarn from the outside and center again, but at the same time to "navajo ply", which is basically a long crochet chain with big loops.




Singles are twisty, though. They want to twist back on themselves, and you have to have enough limbs to keep some tension on it as you ply, or you end up with little twist worms getting plied in and sticking out of your yarn everywhere. In the end, after cutting out tangles and failed bits, I decided to do one step at a time, and loosely 2plied the whole thing, which balanced the twist somewhat (as you ply in the opposite direction to how you spin). Then I put the whole 2ply through again, navajo plying.


It does mash the colors more, I think. I like the barberpole effect of the 2ply, but I like the interesting look of the 6ply better, and spinning it (in spite of the plying issues) was more fun. And it was about 600y of singles instead of 300. More points. hehe.


Two other things to report. This cowl

which is Bertrand Louis, is a squishy sort of cowl done in "half brioche" and Malabrigo Rios. I've been wearing it lots since I made it. It's cowl weather.

Also, Byron came home with a note about his first School Excursion which contained the phrase: "bring hats or gloves according to the weather" and he took this to mean "your mum needs to make you gloves with fingers in school uniform colors." I tried to gently talk him out of fingers; no deal. LOL. So here are his Rios gloves in Paris Night with a stripe (according to his directions) of Ravelry Red.

He wore them all day at the Wildlife Park and didn't lose them. So I was happy. All those fiddly fingers were worth my time   :-)

News of the day

I have continued to walk around the lake, knitting, and so finished the orange hat and a green one

They're the same as the brown stripey one (which I posted before) because I put them into "Charms class" when I was studying a duplication charm. (lol) The orange one was so non-pooling that I had decided dyeing with iceblocks was a great way to get yarn guaranteed not to pool. Then I knit up the green one and was surprised to see it pooling in diagonal stripes. Now that I look at the orange one again, it has very faint diagonal stripes, too; I guess there's no avoiding color pooling with variegated yarn!

I also whipped up this one

for Jasmine, because I got a felted flower badge with a fibre club I joined (where you pay for a fibre surprise - fun!) I wouldn't give her the fibre to love and cuddle (much to her disappointment) but she loves her flower hat.

This is the fibre: Merino/tencel 70/30 from Kathy's Fibres. 150g. I'm going to spin it in May :)

I have two more plans for May. (Well, two main plans, and lots of other plans... hehe) The first is a Potions OWL. I'm planning on using up some sport-weight stash and knitting a colorwork vest, using this as my guide but making up my own colorwork. The swatch is done; show you next time ;)

The other plan is to spin a Giant Mashup, practicing my 2ply and using up some stashed fibre. I'm going to mix 2 plies each of a bunch of different colors, and make an Idlewood top. It would actually have made a good Potions OWL, but I'm convinced I could get more points by submitting each part to a class. So I'm... researching... Points Maximisation.

And playing with the fibre stash.

The last thing I spun was some pretty, multicolored BFL/mohair from Kathy's Fibres. I loved the mix last time, and I love the socks, so when I saw some more I grabbed it, though it was not a colorway I would have chosen.

I can't think why.

I love it, and it's going to make bright, happy socks. Good Winter socks.

Anyway, the news of the day is that Slytherin won the House Cup again! We have won more than our fair share these last 6 terms, because we are awesome, obviously. Next term I'm going on a little tour to spend my seventh year over with the Ravenclaws! There are a lot of nice people up there in the Tower, and I'm looking forward to seeing how differently they organize themselves.

It's Sorting Week. Want to come and play?

:)

NEWT 2 all done

Well, I finished off Byron's top in time to get all the points :) and he's been wearing it quite a bit during the cool autumn days. He loves it.

I don't think I'm happy with the shape; it's really wide under the arms, and the collar looks ok when off, but weird when it's worn. But who cares, if he's happy. He has been pestering me for a matching hat, and Jasmine wants one of her own. lol. That's because they know the image came from this...

Toothless, from "How to Train Your Dragon", their current favorite, which they are watching for the twentieth time as I write :)

The whole NEWT

I also did another rolag and woollen-spinning experiment. I used some black alpaca Kelly had sent me from London, mixed with sparkly bits, and some "Licorice allsorts" merino from EGMTK. NaturallyKnitty gave me the good idea of making rolags on the carder. (She made these) and so I mixed up my merino/alpaca/angelina and made 12 ten-gram rolags up.

I spun from the ends, letting up the twist and stretching it out, and ended up with some shiny dark yarn with flecks of color all through it, if you look up close.

It's so hard to get a picture with accurate colors. Anyway, it's a bit rough, as you see, and I'm going to prefer worsted spinning for a long time, just because I like it even and smooth, but it certainly is fun to try something different. It goes against the grain to let twist up into the fibre like that, though. hehe.






Well, it's April, which means it's the month between "terms" in the HPKCHC, and I'm having a month off :) to try and finish some unfinished things. Mainly I'm planning to work on Gala and Vivian, although I may have started some socks and some spinning... heh.

Finished stuff

The Order of the Phoenix mission (knit four socks, preferably single socks) is done.

I did Hedgerow socks for Gryffindor, in a BFL sock yarn called String Theory Bluestocking. The color was Firecracker, and I loved knitting with it. The pattern is basically columns of moss stitch.

The yellow ones (for Hufflepuff) are Embossed Leaves, and they'd be a great start to lace, I think, as it was pretty simple but looks good. The yarn is Wollmeise Twin in Olio Vergine.

The blue Ravenclaw socks are Tern, and I used Lorna's Laces Sportmate in Navy Pier. The color wasn't really dark enough, so I dyed it a bit bluer.

The Slytherin Green ones are the pattern Brave, which I got in the Tour de Sock last year. The yarn is Shire String (it's all speckley and I loved knitting with it) in the color Samwise, dyed by Pacasha from the House Cup game (see also blogs on the right). I think I started these first and finished them last!

This lot is my handspun Cormo from the Ton of Wool Project. I got 100g or so of it at Bendigo last year, and spun it into 325m of 3ply. It's 20 or so WPI...

I probably could have fit a few more strands into my inch marker there...

Mostly this month I've been getting the socks done and working on Byron's red jumper. It's getting there; should be finished in a few days :) The other thing I have been doing is walking around the lake, and it occurred to me that I could knit as I walked reasonably easily. So

Dyeing this month

Made the yarn for the Hat In Progress with dyece (food dye ice blocks in the steamer)

And dyed some sock yarn with Fair Trade Coffee, stuffed into the jar and left in the sun all day :)

This one is just a dip-dyed-in-a-pot  with green, teal, blue and purple. Should spin into a bit of a gradient; we'll see, I suppose.

And now, back to that silly dragon jumper! Sigh...

Little things

More dyeing :)

Someone in the Harry Potter game ran a little tutorial on dyeing self-striping yarn, and, even though I've done it before, it put me in the long-skein-crazy mood. So I dyed some BFL sock yarn into "house" colors (blue, green, red and yellow) to make stripey socks. It is fun, though the sheep and husband all seem to think me a a bit silly... I used a repeat or two to test it, making up some icord scarves for the mini models :)

Also dyed another self-striping one, but this little skein is small-hat-sized at the most ;)

I'm getting into NEWT part 4: Byron's dragon. The "egg" part is spinning 100g of cormo from the Ton of Wool Project (wherein Kylie Gusset got a bunch of Aussies together to finance her, and took charge of a thousand kilos or so of Tasmanian wool, and made sure it was processed 100% in Australia, and then divided it up amongst the backers) - I've never spun cormo before, and after all the long-fibred Romney, it feels a bit short, like merino, but I think I'm getting it thin enough. It sure is nice and soft!

The "dragon" part - Byron's top - is harder. I'm just not loving the red that he wanted... but I'm  persisting. I'm about down to the underarms, now. The socks are going sooooo slowly. I think I've done about an inch in a week! lol.

I may have gotten distracted knitting baby things

Well, I have 20 minutes to clean this place, and then half an hour to get dinner in, and then my hubby will be home. It's my night off, so I get to run around crazy for the evening sit in the air-conditioned  shopping centre eating chocolate healthy stuff and knitting socks.

NEWT progress

 For this month's NEWT work, I had to finish spinning some merino/BFL/sparkle fibre into 3-ply yarn of 16-20WPI...

145g. 394m.

 and knit Jasmine a top representing unicorns

Used 582m of Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 12ply, which she hand-dyed with my assistance. There's about 150g left, so enough for a hat, perhaps. It's got a picot hem with a 20-row facing (to cover the back of those unicorns) and the sleeves just have a  purl-row turn and 10-row facing. I'm liking facings at the moment; they're neat. The jumper was knit top down, but I left a little V at the top, and then did a little collar with an icord cast-off that extended down the V. It worked out ok, I think. It was all made up as I went, although I pinched the "horse" pattern from Hestapeysa :) She wanted to wear it all day, but gave it up when it got near to 30 degrees at 10am. hehehe.


My 113 in 2013 goal is up to 16 so far. I whipped up a little one of these

A Milo, size newborn, but with worsted weight. Aguas. Love that color of Malabrigo Rios.

It's going to the unborn baby of a friend of a friend. I'm also making that particular kid another thing or two...

I've been doing some dyeing, which is a relatively quick way to get Points in the HP game, but it's still addictive and fun. Both were for Quidditch, and are BFL fingering weight sock yarn.

Here's one color repeat, to show how it's self-striping.

And a chuck-in-a-pot easy one, too

And this little thing, which began as a "let's all weave cushions" weave-along in the Slytherins' weaving thread on Ravelry, and became a useful padded shield. hehe.

The fabric I made for it ended up being far too long and thin. So I made it into a rectangular cushion with a deep pocket. My sewing machine and I are not yet friends, so this was a frustrating little thing, but the kids have been having fun with it.

And now I'd better get off to bed. Somehow, 1am always manages to sneak up on me, and make me grumpy the next day! hehee  :)