Historic Fibers

I've Moved!

This will be my last post to this Typepad blog. I've created at new website at:

http://www.juliakehew.com

If you have subscribed to the blog via a reader, you SHOULD theoretically automatically recieve posts from the new blog. (But if you are reading this post in a reader, then obviously I still have some tweaking to do!)

This site will remain in place through July as I continue to transfer content to the new site. After that, it will disappear and become a distant memory in my personal history. Thanks for staying with me throughout the past 7 (!) years, and I hope you will join me in my new web home for more fiber adventures!

Seamless

The slippers that I made last week will be great in the dead of winter. Thick, warm, and bulky. But I hear rumors, despite the persistent rain, that summer will be here. I wanted something a bit lighter for shambling around the house.

I decided to give Melynda Bernardi's French Press Slippers a try.

This is one of the more stylish knit felt patterns out there. I hate to say it, but many knit felt designs are somewhat lumpen and inelegant. Knit felt produces a thick, sturdy fabric. It's great for items where durability is needed, such as outerwear. But the heaviness and lack of drape in the resulting fabric means that the objects often look heavy as well.

Bernardi found a way to create a pattern that uses two things often missing in most knit felt patterns - shaping and seaming. The slipper pieces are increased here, decreased there, and then seamed together to give them structure. They look polished and fit beautifully as a result.

Here are my slippers:

The downside to this lovely pattern is that it involves shaping and seaming. I know -- the very things that make them successful finished objects are also the things that mean making them is a pain in the neck.

To knit this pattern, it is necessary to follow the pattern line by line. There is no getting into a rhythm and going with it - this is tedious knitting. Each slipper requires four pieces, and for some of the pieces, the pattern merely instructs that you purl where it says knit and knit where it says purl, which takes some concentration.

Once all eight pieces are knitted up (and luckily, each piece does go fairly quickly), then they are sewn together. In a knit felt object, the seaming doesn't need to be pretty, so that isn't a huge drawback. But for the seam averse, this might give pause.

Finally comes the magic moment where the floppy, sloppily seamed things are tossed in the washing machine, and that felting miracle occurs. After attaching the straps, buttons, and putting some puffy paint on the soles to make them non-skid, voila. Slippers.

Whenever I make a knit felt piece, I always ponder whether it could be done faster and more easily with wet felt. And these slippers have brought up some really interesting questions for me.

Most wet felters hate seams. They see the ability to make a seamless item as one of the big advantages of the wet felting technique. And now I'm wondering if we're not losing an opportunity to add structure by avoiding seams.

This will require some experimentation.

 

Wonders Never Cease

When last we visited, our heroine was pondering the dark cataclysmic void of not having any ongoing projects, or at least nothing terribly inspiring.

She thought about making more gloves, and as she contemplated the enormity of locating her 6 mm needles to cast on 12 stitches, she came to a sudden, horrifying realization.

Her feet were cold.

She dove into her comforting, oversized stash of wool yarn and came up with something suitable. She pulled up the appropriate pattern on her laptop, and began.

It had been many years since she had written this pattern, and she had doubts. Would the pattern work with this yarn? Would the slippers fit when they were done? She gnawed on her lower lip as she raced through the knitting, as though speeding through a mystery novel to reach the climactic ending.

She labored for two evenings, knitting what seemed like endless oceans of stockinette, with the occasional cable thrown in to circumvent the catatonic state that hovered threateningly. Once the final stitch was sewn to close the toe seams, she sighed in relief. She laid out the slippers to admire her work, and exclaimed:

"Holy crap, these are humongous!"

Our hapless heroine had knit this pattern many times. She knew, intellectually, that the slippers would be felted, and therefore had to be humongous in their just-knitted state. But faith deserted her as she gaped in awestruck horror at the monstrosities that would surely never fit human-sized feet, shuddering in terror at the mere thought of the gargantuan beast who might don footwear such as this:

She sighed in resignation and approached the Sacred Washing Machine. She genuflected three times and humbly offered the floppy, misshapen atrocities as a sacrifice, adding tennis balls and a couple of large towels apologetically, as if to make amends for such a poor gift. She ran them through the hot cycle 4 times, and then put them in a hot dryer, just to be sure.

When she finally pulled the felted slippers out of the machine and tried them on, she wept in astonished delight. They fit. She danced about in the new slippers, delightedly noting their thick warmth and cushy comfort. Having not yet attached the non-skid leather soles, she slipped and landed on her ass, but her joyous wonder at the miracle the Sacred Washing Machine had wrought remained undeterred.

And they lived happily ever after (until she wore holes in the slippers from dancing about and had to knit new ones).

Enditis

Knitters talk about a phenomenon known as "startitis," meaning the impulse to start several new projects whenever an ongoing project is getting a bit dull. I seem to have the opposite of this - enditis, meaning the reluctance to finish a project because then I'll have to start something new, maybe something that will not be as satisfying as the current item.

Both of these reactions are probably related, but just different ways of dealing with the experience of not having a compelling project at all times. People with startitis start new projects when the thrill has gone, but this habit protects them from not having something exciting to work on. Enditis, too, protects me from not having something interesting going on. It also prevents me from being able to enjoy successful completion.

So as I pondered what to do next this week, I began toying with the idea of starting a new pair of felted Origami mittens. I still need to work out that enormous thumb glitch.

Suddenly, it occurred to me, "I could just finish the pair of mittens that need cuffs." Oh. Yes, I could do that. But then, since I have industriously finished a couple of projects, I would really not have anything in progress, and that would be . . . Bad. Itchy. Uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, I was so desperate for something to do with my hands that I did indeed start knitting the cuffs. I distracted myself by turning to the universal question, "How can I work some orange into this project?" Okay, so maybe it isn't a universally universal question, but it is something I think about with possibly abnormal frequency.

I experimented. I picked up stitches and started a K1P1 rib beginning with yellow and ending with green (orange in the middle). I didn't like it. I ripped it out.

I then picked up stitches and started a K2P2 rib beginning with green and ending with yellow (orange in the middle, of course). I like it! Here they are:

I also like them with the cuffs turned up, and especially like imagining that when someone is wearing the mittens and something good happens, the cuffs will roll and unroll spontaneously in approval. Here's another picture so you can imagine along. Look at the top photo, imagine something happy, look at the bottom photo, then look at the top photo again:

So! These look great! Plus, they have magical cuffs-rolling-and-unrolling superpowers! And still, I am faced with the problem of having to start something new, or perhaps several somethings new so I won't be faced with this problem again anytime soon.

Could it be that startitis is the cure for enditits?

 

Loose Ends

I'm in that uncomfortable place of having successfully completed a couple of projects last week - Dublin and the skein of Cormo. Usually I have several things going on at once so I'm not left completely bereft when I finish things up, but right now, I have nothing very interesting in progress.

The horror.

I noodled around with a pair of gloves this weekend, but convinced myself it would Never Work, and ripped them out. Starting over again seemed like too much fuss.

I need to do some photography for the new website, so I spent a few hours setting up shots and taking photos, only to find that a much more complicated set up is necessary to get the look I want. This will involve putting a leaf in my table and suspending a backdrop. Getting out a ladder to reach the leaf and to suspend the backdrop seemed like too much bother.

I resorted to flailing around blindly, hoping to stumble upon inspiration by sorting through fiber I have designated as To Be Spun, trying to stir up some interest by combining colors.  Here are the somewhat unexciting results - two lots of hand dyed Cormo:

One strand will be the variegated red/blue/magenta, and one strand will be the solid red. A basic two-ply (stifling a yawn).

I then set to ruining Sissy Hankshaw's mittens by hand felting the thumbs. I will leave you to imagine the repetition of a very rude hand gesture necessary to hand felt just the thumb of a pair of mittens, accompanied by wet, squishy noises and the inevitable wanker jokes. Everything felted nicely, and resulted in mittens that can be worn by someone with thumbs of an unremarkable size:

Having completed that task, I fell to contemplating cuff colors, but haven't reached a consensus yet.

Moving on to the dye department, there are several skeins of Aran weight yarn that need to be dyed in contrasting colors so I can start putting together the Origami Mitten tutorial.

I got as far as skeining the yarn:

Now I must decide what colors to dye the yarn. For the moment, this project too is at loose ends.

I'm not sure exactly what will give me the burst of jet fuel I need to get moving again. These dormant times are necessary and part of the creative process, but they are certainly annoying. Here's hoping for a more productive week.

A Little Spinning

My life has become completely consumed with the new website. There is nothing more boring than hearing someone natter on about adjustments in pixel parameters, so I'll spare you the details. It's sort of like laws and sausages - you'd probably rather not know how these things are done.

The challenging part is restraint - I really don't want a site that looks like a crazed programmer threw up all over it. And the Wordpress platform does allow better, cleaner organization. I'm just starting to see the site that I have been envisioning for quite some time now, and I love it. However, it still needs some work.

So in between obsessive spates of pixel tweaking, I've been trying to maintain some calm and some balance by spinning. Not much - just 4 ounces of hand-dyed Cormo that I've been meaning to get to - but enough to keep me grounded.

Having perfected the art of spinning really fine yarn, now I'm going in the opposite direction and trying to master making heavier yarn. I still need some practice, since the spinning isn't as even as I would like, but I have a skein that will likely make some nice gloves, mittens, or even a hat.

Here we have 178 yards of hand-dyed, handspun Cormo hiding amongst the foliage of an absolute bastard of a cymbidium orchid that has stubbornly refused to bloom for 4 years now, despite my dedicated efforts at coddling:

Perhaps my public shaming will prompt the orchid to cooperate.

Let's all have a little zen moment thinking about soft yarn and orchids abloom before we head back to work.

Dublin

A few years ago, I went to Dublin, and while I was there, I met up with Jo of Celtic Memory Yarns. She gave me some lovely natural grey and white Irish wool. When I got home, I carded the wool and spun it to make a gradated yarn. I started with the white, adding in bits of color and the grey, to create a light-to-dark effect. Here's a very old photo of the completed yarn:

I ended up with 660 yards, which is an odd number. Not enough for a sweater, too much for a smaller item like a hat. I vacillated about how to use this yarn to show the gradation that I had worked so hard to achieve.

Not long ago, while trolling Ravelry, I happened upon a pattern for the Stockholm Scarf. It called for 660 yards of DK weight yarn, and I knew I had finally found the pattern.

The scarf is actually a large knitted tube. It can be worn looped around the neck as a scarf, or pulled down over the shoulders for a shawl-like arrangement. If you get caught in an unexpected cloudburst, it can be pulled up over the head like a hood. Here is the finished object, in some of its infinite variations:

Here is a detail shot to show the gradation:

There have been plenty of times in the past couple of years when I've wished I could be incognito, what with the tiresome paparazzi who endlessly hound history professors. I suppose that's why we make the big bucks.

Had I found this pattern sooner, I would have had it covered:

All I need is Dublin and a fast getaway car, and I'm ready for all eventualities.

Even Mittens Get the Blues

One of the things I've been working on over the past week was adapting the Origami Mitten pattern to be a felted pattern. I know some of you know the various ways to make felt, but I'll give a quick explanation for the felt-curious among us.

There are three basic ways to make wool felt. You can knit something out of wool and then throw it in a washing machine on the hot cycle and get felt. Anyone who has accidently shrunk a wool sweater is all too familiar with this method, but when done on purpose, there are a variety of possible results. The advantage is that this method gives quite a bit of control over the shape of a three dimensional object. The disadvantage is that knitting a giant piece takes some time, although the felting itself is pretty quick and painless.

The second method is needle felting, in which you take wool and stab it repeatedly with a special needle, very sharp and barbed. The advantage of needle felting is that it is possible to make finely detailed sculptural forms or even wool "paintings." The disadvantage is it is quite labor intensive and is generally better suited to small objects.

The third method, which is the one I use most often, is wet felting. Unspun wool is layered, then moistened with hot water and soap, and agitated by rubbing or rolling until it becomes a cohesive sheet of felt. The advantage to wet felting is that it is pretty fast and is suitable for larger pieces. One disadvantage is that larger pieces take a lot of room, since shrinkage rates of about 40% are not uncommon. In other words, you have to lay out a huge sheet of wool to get a finished piece that is almost half the size.

So for this project, I wanted to adapt a knitting pattern so that the finished knitting could be felted. This is always somewhat of a high wire act and requires trial and error. My tried and true method of adapting a knitting pattern for felting is to knit it much more loosely on larger needles, using the exact same pattern that I would for a knit piece that was not going to be felted.

I tried this with the Origami pattern, knitting it on large needles using the same wool and same pattern as I have used previously. I decided that I wanted rib knit cuffs, just as with the originals, that would be unfelted to retain their elasticity, so I worked a round of cotton around the cuff area. The cotton will not felt, but will leave holes when I remove it so I can pick up stitches to add the ribbing later. Then it was into a hot wash cycle, and here's what I got:

They look pretty good. One concern I had was that I did not want the mittens to felt too hard, as they would be stiff, but these turned out very nicely. The fabric feels good.

My one complaint about these is the thumbs. They are enormous. There are a couple of ways to fix this - for now, I can hand felt just the thumbs until they become a more anatomically correct size. In the future, I can knit the thumbs smaller at a tighter gauge so they won't have to shrink so much to be proportional.

The mittens reminded me of a quirky Tom Robbins novel called Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. I like Robbins' writing - he's an inveterate smart ass, and while I haven't read his work in a while, I used to appreciate his weird sense of humor. Anyway, in this particular novel, his heroine, Sissy Hankshaw, was born with enormous thumbs, and she used what might have been a disadvantage to become a successful hitchiker. Strange, I know. But I can't help thinking that Sissy Hankshaw would have appreciated these mittens.

The novel was made into a movie, but as is the case with many adaptations, the flavor of the writing was lost on the film. Nevertheless, if you happen to know someone with enormous thumbs, I have a pair of mittens for them. Hitchiking is optional.

 

In Which I Adopt A Jar

Some of you may be familiar already with Kirsty Hall's 365 Jars project - if you have been following along, then you'll understand what the title of today's post means. If not, read on.

Kirsty Hall is a UK-based artist who came up with an idea for an epic year-long project. She makes art, puts it in a jar, and leaves it in various locations for people to find. She has committed to producing and releasing a jar every day for one year.

The jars are labeled with information about the project, and the finder is asked to report sighting or finding a jar. Kirsty reports on her jars' progress as she learns of their adventures.

I love this project on so many levels. I walk a lot, and it is a very special day indeed when I see or find something memorable. One time, I was returning home from a walk and inexplicably, there were several large balloons rolling lazily down the street. There were no people around, just the balloons bouncing along in the middle of the road. I had a good time imagining how they came to be there, and thoroughly enjoyed just the surprise of discovering something completely unexpected.

I imagine finding one of Kirsty's jars as the same sort of surprise. It doesn't really matter that I will likely never find a jar myself. I just like the idea of finding a jar.

Kirsty started a sponsorship program for the daily jars to support the cost of materials and the time it takes her to produce them, and I adopted a jar. "My" jar will be released on my birthday, which is several months away. But in the meantime, I'm having a lovely time imagining what "my" jar will look like and where it will be placed. I'll be sure to include a link when "my" jar is revealed, but in the meantime, it's just nice to think about it.

 

Voluntary Upheaval

Blogland is quiet this week! I must not be the only one on Spring Break.

I'm in the midst of a super secret project, which isn't so very secret since I'm about to tell you the gist. I'm creating a new website and will be moving the blog as part of that website. Not to worry - this is a long term project and it likely won't be completed immediately, since I'd like to include lots of new content in a cleaner format than is possible here. Of course, this means I have to actually generate this content, and that will take a little while!

I took a Wordpress class from Wendy Cholbi, and can highly recommend her if anyone else is considering a similar move. The advantages of switching to a Wordpress site are that it will give me so many more options and much more control over design. These are laudable goals, but there is a fairly steep learning curve. Still, I'm not one to shy away from a challenge.

Related to the new website, I have changed my Ravelry user name. I've decided to stop hiding behind a DBA name, and use my Actual Name, aka juliakehew. Since I'm branching out into doing more than just production work, it makes sense to start promoting my real name. Writers and artists typically don't use a DBA.

That's all the news fit to print for now. Back to my regularly scheduled fiddling with the new site. Hope you're enjoying spring, in whatever form that is taking for you.