Playing catch up and a Drum carder

I have some FOs to report; the Monkey socks are done and I'm very happy with them. The Regia yarn is superb to work with and feels soft.


After a bit of a time out, the Simply Spring crochet top is finished too. I had to decide how to finish the neck edge and the bottom edge. the pattern has you work just one row of dc (UK terminology), but I needed a bit more depth to prevent the neckline gaping and to stop the lower edge from flaring out. In the end I worked several rounds of dc, ch1 where the dc goes into the ch space on the previous round. After washing and blocking, I'm pleased with the fit of it. Now we just need some warm weather. For a change I've finished something in advance of needing it. This won't be the case for the Cabled Spiral because by the time I finish that, it will be too warm to wear it.


I finally finished the Wendy Happy scarf and used my new hair braider gizmo to twist the fringes. It certainly saves some wear on the fingers. 36.8cm in the heddle, 35.2cm wide after finishing and 1.8m long excluding fringe.


I need to wear glasses for reading and I hang them round my neck with a made by me kumihimo cord so I don't lose them, and one of the rubber ends gave way a couple of weeks ago, so I dusted off the marudai and made a couple of new cords. I ended up using the one at the bottom, attaching it to some new rubber ends. Job done!

I've saved the best for last - I have a drum carder now. My hubby decided that he would like to build one for me quite a while ago. He is not a well man, so this has really given him something to work towards, doing a little at a time. He enjoys precision metal work, so the majority of the structure is metal with a minimum of wood! I've christened it, and it works great.



I have two doffer rods and a small carder for cleaning the cloth. The gap between the drums can be adjusted and the infeed tray can be raised and lowered. It has high quality sealed bearings and will outlast me I think.

A couple of progress pics

On the loom:
4 ply cotton at 12.5 dpi, with simple pick up stick patterning.

Repeating myself

We are having to have a new central heating boiler installed after the old one stopped working over a week ago. Luckily the weather hasn't been too bad, and a couple of oil filled radiators are taking the edge off, and along with the immersion heater for water, we haven't been too badly affected. Work begins on Thursday, and we've drained the system and made a start on emptying cupboards where access will be needed. Crafting has to take a back seat for a while, but I can still fit some in.


My second Cabled Spiral sweater is still stocking stitch and no cables yet, but the body is excellent mindless knitting, and it is growing. The yarn is Emu superwash DK in a marled grey and it's very soft. I'm having to use 4.5mm needles to get gauge which is odd, but whatever works is fine with me.

This is one and a bit no purl Monkey socks. My first pair were made exactly as the pattern, but these have plain ribbing, not twisted, and a slip stitch heel instead of stocking stitch. The yarn is Regia Design Line, Kaffe Fassett colour 4260, which I think is the Caribbean colourway. I'm pretty happy with the way these are turning out. There is the occasional splodge of colour, but mostly pleasing stripey bits.

I can see a trend here, my current knitting projects include two repeated items.


Weaving-wise, currently I'm weaving a wide scarf/stole with Wendy Happy bamboo/nylon 4 ply yarn in shade Aquarius. It is threaded at 12.5 epi now having started out at 10 epi which proved to be much too airy. Weft is a dark airforce blue/ grey 3 ply wool. It's plain weave and the width on loom is 14.25".


I haven't mentioned the next ufo until now, because I wasn't sure about it early on, but I've been crocheting too. This is the Simply Spring top from Crochet! magazine May 2007. The yarn is Rowan Cashcotton DK in Sage and Parchment. I'm using a 4.5mm hook and recalculating because of the gauge difference. The back is about 75% done, so it won't be too long before it's done.

In a bit of a rush

Does this remind you of anything? It's cotton which I will be making into an oven glove, hopefully with better insulation properties than my current one which lets heat through far too fast for my liking. I just wove a long strip of plain weave using the same rustic type of cotton for both warp and weft. I need to get some binding and then I'll put it together.

I really wanted to make something that used some twill patterning, so I made YAS (yet another scarf). I threaded two 10 dpi heddles in a 3 2 1 3 2 1 threading which worked out at 15 epi. I'll elaborate about the threading another time,'cos I don't have the time right now. I explored the weave drafts at Handweaving.net and found two which worked for me. I used one for about 10" at each end of the scarf and a second for the middle section. The pattern at the ends (no. 62700) was very different on each side, while the other (no. 34910) was the same on each side.


This shows the transition from one pattern to the next, the ribbon was my length guide, because I needed to know when to start the ending pattern. The yarn is 80% acrylic, 20% wool 4 ply from the machine knit stash. The finished scarf is 20cm wide and 1.82m long. On the loom it was 19cm and 2m. I always thought that woven fabric decreased in width when finished, but not mine, well not all of it. I tried twisted fringe for the first time - my poor fingers. I need to get a fringe twister if I'm going to do more of this. I love the effect though.

In knitting news, I've finished one all knit (no purls) Monkey sock, and started the second. These really are going quite fast for me. I've started another Cabled Spiral sweater because I really like the yoke, but this one has ribs for the cuffs and body. So far I have both sleeves done to the armpit and about 4" of the body completed.

I've just started weaving YAS using Wendy Happy bamboo yarn for warp, plain weave with a 3 ply wool weft. Pretty. I'll try to get some photos taken soon.

A glut of FOs

This keeps happening to me, and I don't know why. All of a sudden, I finish projects at nearly the same time. Each time, there is a vacuum when I can't decide what to make next. I've started a Monkey sock to keep me going, after all, I have to have something to knit.

Kearsarge is done, and it fits well. This is Patons Diploma Gold DK yarn with 4mm needles, and I used less than 10 x 50g balls.

The bright kettle dyed socks are done too. These are my standard 72st 2.5mm needle socks and I like them. I won't be overdyeing them. Cold feet aren't an option wearing these!

Fulled woven bag

This is the start of a fulled bag using some Jojoland Rhythm yarn left over from a previous project and some coned wool yarn that has been vegetating in the stash for a loooong time. The Rhythm is a 4 ply with each ply changing colour along its length. I thought it would be ideal for trying the clasped weft technique. On the loom the fabric was very holey, but after fulling by hand, it closed up nicely...

and shrunk too. I just caught it at the size I wanted and then set about weaving a strap to match using the same yarns in a warp faced band.

This was also fulled and the next step was to bribe my sewing machine. One broken and two bent needles later, I had a bag. I turned under the edges of the flap and front top edge of the bag and instead of basting or pinning the raw edges before machining, I needle felted them to hold them in place. The lining has pockets and was sewed in by hand.

Twill on the rigid heddle loom

I've been playing with 1/2 and 2/1 twill recently. I blame this book. On one of my rare forays to the shops, I visited Borders bookshop and found this, the only weaving book they had. No longer are fabric types totally mysterious. Sadly for me, the book is aimed at weavers with a 4 shaft loom, but there are a few things which are for 2. This twill isn't one of them really because it needs 3. Undaunted, I figured out the threading for extended point threading. I used two 10 dpi heddles and some red 4 ply wool/nylon yarn. I used the holes in one heddle as one shaft, the holes in the second heddle as the second and the slots in both as the third. This involved missing every 4th hole in each heddle and having either 1 or 2 threads in each slot which meant that the sett was variable.

With this setup, six different sheds are possible: front heddle up, rear heddle up, both heddles down, giving weft dominance and the opposite: front heddle down, rear heddle down, both heddles up, giving warp dominance. The patterns you can get are not what you expect to see on a rigid heddle loom. Yet again, I'm using up oddments so my trademark eclectic colourways are in evidence.










It's been fun trying this out and I may use the technique for an actual item sometime. The uneven sett doesn't really detract from the fabric, in fact it adds an extra dimension to it, especially on the chevron pattern.

Just to say that I have still been knitting, and that the second sleeve of Kearsarge was finished last night. I will have enough yarn. Phew!

It's been a while...

Yet again it's been a month or so since I wrote anything here. Mainly because I've been weaving a lot and knitting a little. I find it difficult to find suitable blogging time for some reason. Anyway, my progress on Kearsarge has been steady, and now I just have one sleeve to do, along with the neckband and seams.

I've made some modifications to the raglan shaping, since I didn't like how the decreases were spaced in the pattern ie. decreasing every 2 rows x times, then every 4 rows y times. This gives a strange shape to the pieces. I recalculated the shaping to give a smooth slope to the raglans which I prefer. If the sleeve looks a bit skinny, it's because it is knitted in mistake rib which contracts when left alone. It has lots of stretch and goes round my arm fine.

I took the scissors to my piece of green stripey wool fabric having sewn a zigzag either side of the cutting lines. This turned out to not be necessary as the fulling was enough to hold it together. I made a long bag with pockets on the outside for the shuttles. Inside is plenty of room for the heddles, warp rods and pickup stick. I had trouble getting a picture of the whole thing, but here are the pockets.



My sewing machine grumbled a bit about the multiple thicknesses, but we made it. I took the lengths of tapestry wool left over from the warp (the ends of skeins which weren't long enough for a warp length) and plaited them into a thick drawstring for the top.


Since then I've woven a scarf using patterned all wool sock yarn which I overdyed first, because it was too bright. I warped in stripes with the colour repeat staggered. I'm puzzled about something though, why did this scarf increase in width when washed? The weft was slightly finer than the warp. I've never heard of this happening. I tried hemstitching for the first time and find it much easier to do than tying matching knots.

I've also been playing with a narrow band, the sort of thing you make on an inkle loom, this was fun. I used DMC Petra pearl cotton size 5 for this.


Last but not least, experiments using two heddles: first was a fine 2 ply wool. It was difficult to keep the edges even on this, and the finished fabric has a strange texture all over. I assume that I was getting the wrong length of weft. I think I was trying to avoid extreme draw in by using plenty of weft and got it wrong. Still, it's consistent and feels nice.

After that was a sample piece using crochet cottons. I found this from the Schacht website, and I just had to try the patterns.

This is half of it. I was trying different thicknesses of cotton for weft. Towards the end I was trying 1/3 twill and even had a go at 2/2 twill (last pale blue bit on the right), using a pickup stick and string heddles and a dowel rod to make the 4th shaft. Verdict: fiddly, but possible.

Currently, I'm pushing the possibilities with 1/2 and 2/1 twill, but that will be for next time.

Ripping and weaving

It's been a while again, but I've been busy. This loom has taken over my crafting time big time. I'm still knitting in the evenings, but Ribena is no more. Having done the front and back and more than half of both sleeves, I felt disappointed with the look of it. My knitting was not very even in places, and the leftmost stitch in the 2x2 ribs was a lot bigger than the righthand stitch. I know this is common, but it didn't look nice. There is a fix involving wrapping the yarn the other way round the needle when purling the first stitch after the knit stitch, and then knitting into the back of that stitch on the return row. I've used it successfully when cabling, but not on a ribbed section. The major revelation is that the yarn, once skeined and washed, is much softer and knits up really nicely. I'm now knitting Kearsarge from the book A Fine Fleece by Lisa Lloyd, which is a basketweave pattern for the front and back, and mistake rib for the sleeves. So far, I'm about a third of the way up the back and one sleeve.

This is the result of the first warp, it's a sampler of various things. I've tried stripes, leno and Brooks bouquet which are both lacy effects, also weft floats and warp floats. I used it as a practice piece, using oddments of 4 ply yarn hence the eclectic colours.


This is the next step. I bought the book by Betty Linn Davenport 'Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving', and couldn't resist trying the colour and weave sampler in it. I used some Forsell Shamal 4 ply (80% acrylic, 20% wool) from the machine knitting stash and the result is lovely fabric with great drape. The patterning which is possible from different arrangements of two colours is astonishing, and even plain weave can look really complex.

I bought an extra set of heddle blocks and more heddles, along with some shorter shuttles. A 32" shuttle is a formidable thing to be waving around, and for narrower warps is over the top. Anyway, I decided I need a way to store them safely together, so I thought I'd weave some yardage to sew a bag. From my needlepoint stash, I have a lot of tapestry wools, and since I don't do needlepoint any more I figured that I could use some of it as warp, so that is what I did.
I used two threads of tapestry wool and then one of a double knit green wool repeated across the warp. The weft is all the same dk green wool. This time I used the Ashford 7.5 dpi heddle, which fits the Kromski Harp fine.

Warped and ready to go...

Off the loom with ends knotted.

Washed, lightly fulled and steamed, ready for the scissors. I'm trying to summon the courage for that.

Next up is trying to weave with two heddles, the warp is ready to go on the loom - maybe tomorrow.