Peanuts
This weekend included a bit of American iconoclastic DVD watching with the kids…Charlie Brown and the whole Peanuts gang.
And I’m thinking that this:
subliminally inspired this bit of practice spinning:
Archive for September, 2006
Erratum
Historical note: In 1878, Thomas A. Edison boldly announced to the world that he would invent an inexpensive electric light that would replace the gas light. Often ridiculed, Edison tried over ten thousand different experiments before he finally demonstrated the first incandescent light bulb on October 21, 1879.
Do you remember this statement about the chenille bath squidgey pattern? ‘But, if you find a better way, by all means do it! It’s a prototype and so all disclaimers apply.’
I decided to do a little experiment with the cheapter-and-better-chenille-bath-squidgey…meaning, I got it wet. Here’s my photo album of the results. Minimal commentary is needed.
Hollywood ending
Everyone loves a good ending, don’t they?
Thus, I come to the end of the ‘trilogy’ recounting my battle with the houndstooth monster. After re-winding the remaining warp, today’s weaving went along very well, smoothly, satisfactorily, wonderfully, without a hitch, like clockwork, without difficulty, easily, according to plan, swimmingly, like a dream.
I had made allowance in the warp for having enough length to keep samples but with having to cut my losses in the initial set up and then prematurely cutting it off after the first scarf, essentially wasting another good amount of precious inches, I had a bit of concern that not only would my samples be sacrificed, but I also wouldn’t have enough remaining warp to finish the second scarf, but thankfully all is well.
So, what’s this niggling feeling in the back of my brain?
Well, as I post this lovely-Hollywood-esque-type-ending, it seems rather flat. No scary pictures to post. No flowing verbage to rant. Just ‘it went along well and I’m done.’ Full stop.
Now, I’m not so totally ungrateful that I would wish headaches and heartaches to become the normal ‘modus operandi’. Oh no…I love it when a project goes smoothly. It’s just to say that one appreciated byproduct of abject chaos is…it weaves a great tale!
Tra-La-Laa
Admittedly, my life is not influenced in great measure by Captain Underpants, but his ‘Tra-La-Laa’ says it all!
Preface: For those without school aged children, Captain Underpants is a fictional tongue-in-cheek superhero immortalised in books which appeal especially to six year old boys. Enough said.
Right, notice anything different? Need a hint? OK, notice what’s missing? Hmmmm? Yep, gone are the bits of crumpled tissue. Missing are the plastic carrier bags filled with juice cartons. Notions of the past are the wonky warp threads (I hope). All that’s left are wide spaces between the threads which I know ought not be there, but sadly that cannot be helped.
And so, I will no longer be a victim to thwoinging threads.
After fiddling around with weaving the first scarf on this warp, I decided that after it was done, I’d take the time to cut it off, and straighten up that warp-in-the-back-disguised-as-a-Sir-Walter-Scott-quote-’O, what a tangled web we weave’! Always-Helpful-Handy-Husband-Will assisted as we wound the warp forward (taking care to keep all the threading intact!) and then correct the wrong-way-roller and tighten up the threads. After all of their previous riotousness, they behaved themselves quite nicely. I’m not fooled, though, as I know they, having a mind of their own, can mutiny at any moment. And so, I still proceed with extreme caution.
But for now, tra-la-laa…
And last night at our local knitting group, I received from Lisa-aka-This-Is-Knit, the first installment of yarn for the knitted portion of the Christmas pressies project. Dark, manly colours for the men. Last night, navy and slate gray. Black and brown yet to come!
And so I say again, tra-la-laa!
Farce
Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Either way, I’m thinking that my recent weaving experience would reflect either a) a sitcom, b) a thriller or c) a horror movie (with the best odds on the horror flick!)
After the weavers came to my house last Saturday (and if there were sniggers at my warping fiasco, they were well-camouflaged), I knew that I could no longer put off the actual threading of the loom. Thus I steeled myself to wrestle the beast.
I had thought, actually I had hoped, that after the first set of challenges getting the warp on the loom, perhaps the weaving-powers-that-be would have a bit of sympathy. And so they did. In fact, the threading went along flawlessly. I relaxed and let my guard down. And then that dreadful beast reared its ugly head again!
Problem No. 1
After threading the heddles (needles) and sleighing the reed (which looks like the grill-front-of-a-car), I thought I was home free, but in counting the repetitions of colour changes. Hmmmm, 2 short? I was sure I had at least counted correctly. After all, the careful planning of the project had preceded the dreadful warping of it. Looking all around…..good news…I found the missing 2 sets of threads…bad news….they were in the middle of the warp and I had to un-sleigh the reed by about a third. Good grief!
Problem No. 2
Undaunted, I finished up the threading and moving the warp forward…….oh, no…..NO! On the dreadful day of winding the warp threads onto the back roller, I had not notice that my (untrained) helpers had wound the roller the wrong way. That may not sound too traumatic to you, but let me put it this way….ever watch the film ‘Speed’? Well, with the roller wound the other way, I basically have no brake. Kinda like driving a bus without a way to stop it…..and no Keanu Reeves.
Problem No. 3
After tossing back an extra strong cup of tea, I assure myself that if I go slowly and carefully that I can overcome the ‘no brake’ issue. Right, wind the bobbins….put them in the shuttle……get ready and…….what now? The paper quills I used to wind the bobbins are too long for the shuttles. And so, the bobbins won’t spin in the shuttle. No spinny, no weavy.
At this point, though I live in Ireland, I was doing a pretty good impression of a British ’stiff-upper-lip’. No, I will not chop up the loom for firewood. Yes, I will move steadily on….there’s a good fellow.
After trimming the too-long-paper-quills, I begin to weave, praying that the bobbin threads won’t come ‘thwoinging’ off. After a few rows, picks they’re called, I begin to believe that I have indeed come up out of the valley of the shadows, into the light of day…..
(OK, at this moment, it would be appropriate to play the music score to ‘Jaws.’)
Inexplicably, the more I weave, the looser my warp becomes. Well, not all of it. The outside threads on either edge are pulling tight, nigh unto breaking. The inner threads are loose. Hmm…..what do I do? Kamikaze? Hari kari? Nope, good ol’ American problem-solving. You realise how vulnerable I feel showing this stuff? It’s just downright ugly, those threads, but no room for egos, I suppose.
First of all, stuffed the handy-dandy-homemade-thread-tensioner-aka-tissue-paper in behind the loose warp threads. Worked for a while. Uh oh. Looser. Looser.
Warning: For you weavers who get squeamish at the sight of warping horrors, close your eyes.
Have to go to Plan-B-Tensioner.
Have to get the big guns out…..plastic carrier bags, filled with juice cartons and water bottles, hanging from ‘S’ hooks from the loose threads. Eek gads! I do not like chaos in my life. This is chaos. I’ve never had so many things go wrong on a weaving project. Was kinda hoping to spread out the challenges over years, rather than having them occur in days….or minutes.
Unbelievably, the actual weaving doesn’t look too horrendous. Fairly passable. Somewhat straight. But as a holiday pressie, it’ll probably have to come under the category of ‘it’s-the-thought-that-counts’!
Redirect in brief
I’m not usually a big fan of the ‘here’s-a-word-that’s-underlined-and-once-I-click-it-I’ll-be-flung-to-the-far-reaches-of-the-internet-sure-hope-I-can-get-back-to-where-I-was’ link. But……okay, just this once.
Did you ever wonder what happened to that knitted food Daughter-Kate and I, along with the rest of We Five, created for the Electric Picnic? It made the trek to the music festival this past weekend and boy, was it a hit!
If you are a) a knitter, b) want to be a knitter, c) have heard of knitting, d) have seen Ireland on a map, then may I kindly direct you to the following blogs for a pictoral review of the cool things that went on? The popularity of knitting is rapidly on the rise here, if the response at the Electric Picnic is any indication.
And I have to confess, seeing all the ‘look-how-much-fun-we’re-having-knitting-in-this-great-venue’ photos, I’ve got a case of knitting group envy cuz I couldn’t go! So much so that I’ve nicked a photo from one of the blogs, as a bit of a teaser….
So, click a link…and enjoy.
Clickety Knits, Tea and Cakes, Tangelled Angel
Next post topic: “Wrestling the Beast”
Voxpop
It’s not so much what I’m knitting, but rather, what I’m knitting with!
In the course of my travels around Ireland in search of yarn to knit with, I came across a yarn shop….well….it’s not just a shop…more like a yarn manufacturer and distributor, which carried a lovely selection of wool yarn. As I was in my ‘felted bag’ phase at the time, that was like fibre manna from heaven! So, after regularly haunting their doorstep to purchase wool, typical business dealings have grown into friendship. They’re just nice people!
Well, every now and again, like a kiddie getting a goodie bag at the end of a party, I’ll be given a sample of yarn to try out. And such is the snippet of knitting I did today. Now, I hope I’m not leaking some highly-classified-yarn-secret….just keep it to yourself and I’ll share a peek.
If you’re sitting in North America as you’re reading this, you may not be as impacted by this yarn. But I gotta tell ya, we just don’t see as many yarn variations in Eire. Once again…lotsa sheep, not a lotta wool. Go figure.
But here is a lovely wool/silk blend in, what I consider to be, a beautiful colourway. I know computer monitors can radically alter colour shades, but what you’re seeing should look like cerise, burgundy, goldenrod, tan, and olive. It’s also loosely plyed, both yarns being variegated and a bit thick-n-thin. As they’re plyed, though, the colour combinations are endless! (Okay, that’s not entirely true. Mathmeticians would know the appropriate amount of colour combinations available from the five or six colours.)
It does indeed felt. And felt fairly well.
And taking a page from other bloggers (like you, Leigh) who give good practical data, here’s my review of this yet-unnamed wool/silk yarn….
1.5 ounces of yarn knit on US size 10 needles (6mm). 2″= 7 sts, 10 rows
Pre-felted size = 8.25″ in length, 5.5″ in width
Post-felted size = 5.75″ in length, 4.75″ in width
So, before it goes on the market, what d’ya think? (It’s a spontaneous voxpop poll.) Would you like to knit with this yarn? Care to leave a comment?
Legacy
I wonder if knitting is genetic?
As I watch Nine-Year-Old-Daughter-Kate pick up and knit, as it were, I wonder if there’s some type of knitting gene? Is it hereditary? Well, in her case, it’s more nurture than nature, as her Siberian birth will attest. But what was I doing when I was nine? Can’t remember what I did yesterday, let alone what my childhood hobbies were! Did I have an interest in knitting? Horses, yes. Nancy Drew, of course. But knitting? I don’t think so….or I think I’d have more finished projects on the list.
I vaguely remember my grandmother, Daisy, trying once to teach me this gentle art, but my being left-handed and short-tempered did not make for a successful outcome. And so, if there is a knitting gene, it certainly lay dormant in me for many years…..over thirty. But coming to a new land, a land flowing with sheep and fleece—so I thought—in my fortieth year I asked Knitting-Mentor-And-Fibre-Friend-Holly to teach me to knit. And what a full four fibre years it’s been!
Yet I hearken back to the legacy, latent though it may have been, modeled for me by my grandmothers and me ma….
(Okay, I don’t actually call my mother, ‘me ma,’ and I know that sounds terribly and stereotypically ‘Oirish,’ but you know, I truly hear Dublin-city children make that reference and it usually brings a ‘how very cool’ smile to my face. I had to put it in here somewhere!)
Now, let me ‘hearken back’ to what I was saying…
‘….I hearken back to the legacy…..’ and the material representation of that legacy is found in this treasure, the collected aluminum knitting needles passed down to me from those who had used them well.
I love the cheery click that comes in creating each stitch, which no other needle material can duplicate! And I find myself looking for colourful needles which coordinate with the yarn I’m using, hoping they’ll be the correct size.
So, on this Non-Hallmark-Event-Cuz-It’s-Not-Mother’s-Day-For-Many-Months-Yet, I just have to say to thanks to the women in my family for passing on a wonderful heritage.
Sunday Reflection-Was, Is, Shall Be
I realise that I talk about my daughter frequently. And I realise that I’m the mother of a son as well. No favouritism. She and I have the fibre connection. If I need a ‘wheeling and dealing’ connection, then we call in Son-Alex.
He has this inexplicable ability to go to school with the normal, everyday school life items…pencils, erasers, parers, books and a lunch. What he comes home with will include more than one of the latest school-boy treasures!
I never bought my ‘Salesboy-In-Training’, any Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards. But before I knew it, he had a stack of ‘em in his hands, trading and swapping at the speed of light. How’d he get his first one?
‘Where’d you get that?’ I ask, pointing to the stack of cards.
‘I swapped for it,’ is the standard reply.
‘How d’ya get so many?’
‘I traded stuff.’
‘Like what?’ (waiting to hear that he no longer had socks or a jacket!)
‘Oh…I don’t know…nothing much…..sharpened pencils, I guess….’
So my kid is acquiring boyish gold by swapping common everyday school supplies. No wonder we don’t have any writing implements in the house!
I have to say, as objectively as I can, that I don’t see bullying tendencies in Son-Alex to increase his assets. Rather, he’s generally happy-go-lucky-with-a-smile-on-his-face, except when the emotional storm clouds brew, burst with brief showers, and the smile comes out again. And so he wins friends by his overall likeability, all the while adding to his stack of cards.
What’s ironic about what I see is to remember the early days with the boy, and the general countenance of his face:
I had no idea that this somber, serious toddler would burst into pure-energy-in-speech-and-motion as a schoolboy!
Yet I wonder, as most moms do, what he will become as he gets older? Every now and again, the curtain masking the future seems to be pulled aside for a quick peek at what my boy will be when he’s grown, but still I find myself curious to see how his amazing ability with names, his quickness of thought, his impulses and compulsions, his lightning-quick-temper-and-tongue will blend together in future.
And I have to ask myself what will he be wheeling and dealing? I guess I’d better hide the pencils.
Cheaper and Better
Apart from the title, where ‘cheap’ is not necessarily always a good adjective to use, and the eternally perky-there-could-be-an-issue-with-caffeine-and-we-need-to-do-an-intervention photo of the author wearing a garment in which she is in imminent danger of having her head swallowed by the size of the cowl but thankfully the amount of hairspray will keep it all in place, although I’m sure she’s a very nice person, and the fact that this tome is no longer in print and I’m almost done with my run-on sentence…..it’s a pretty neat book.
The last time I had thoughts of economy, I bought this book from a second hand bookshop. It certainly has some interesting recipes in it claiming cheaper-ness and better-ness such as how to make Bisquik and the equivalent of store-bought salad dressings, face cleaners, furniture polish and cold remedies.
Ah, cold remedies….I made the cough syrup from this book of cheaply better recipes and gave it to Three-Year-Old-At-The-Time-Daughter-Kate. She still has an intense-aversion-to-and-nigh-unto-shoulder-shuddering-hatred-for honey, six years after the fact. I think it was the cooked onions along with that honey which put her off. Understandable.
On the other hand I have to say there have been some winners, like homemade lip balm. Surprisingly easy, adding whatever flavour/smell of food-safe ‘essence of’ oil to make a personalised lip protector. Love that.
And so, in the spirit of thrift and excellence, I stumbled onto this:
A chenille bath squidgy thing for sale at The Body Shop. Taking a closer look, much to Daughter-Kate’s immense embarrassment and to the increasing curiosity of the security-guy-at-the-door-pondering-whether-I-was-trying-to-nick-it, I took a Bondesque photo with the spy camera on the mobile phone.
Now, I’m not adept at ‘I see how that’s made and can do it at home.’ I generally need a pattern to follow from someone else who’s cracked the code. But even this was simple enough to decipher. Chenille yarn. Got that. Pattern for Curley Wurley scarf. Got that. And evening’s worth of time. Well……don’t quite have that because the list of projects is growing exponentially, but……okay, I’ll give one evening to this impulse item.
Voila! It worked!
Wanna make one too?
I took chenille yarn and US 10-1/2 size needles (that’s 6.5mm). Cast on 30 stitches.
Row 1—Knit
Row 2—*K1, M1, repeat from * until last stitch, K1.
Row 3—Knit
Row 4—*K1, M1, repeat from * until last stitch, K1.
Row 5—Knit
Row 6—*K1, M1, repeat from * until last stitch, K1. (It’s gonna get tightish, go carefully, you’ll get it)
Row 7—Knit
Row 8—Cast off.
If you want a bigger squidgy-thing, then perhaps you may want to add a row of knit in between the increased rows? Just a thought….
And now you’ve got a mini-Curley-Wurley scarf. Make a second one. Below are pics of how I put it together, with the assistance of Helpful-Hand-Model-Holly. But, if you find a better way, by all means do it! It’s a prototype and so all disclaimers apply…
Take one of the ‘mini scarves’ and fold in half along the long side.
Stitch it together on the ‘non-curley’ side.
You could do an ‘in and out’ stitch or whipstitch it.
Do the same with the second ‘mini scarf’ and then stitch the two pieces together.
Take a bit of string for the hanger (in the photo I used the left over chenille, but I think I’d use string next time). Run a gathering type of stitch to bring one end of the toward the other end. Use the extra bit of string for the hanger.
Handmade chenille bath squidgy. Cheaper and better.