A Life entangled in Thread, Wool and Needles

The “woodworking-resort” ended today and I had to pack all my things into my car and drive back at my students room to be at the university tomorrow. Really sad about it. Making the jewel case with my father was really big fun. In fact we didn’t manage to totally finish it (3 handles need to be milled and polishing and such things) but I didn’t expect us to get it all done in 10 days. My father is not the person to take a few pieces of wood and nails and hammer them in and call the result pretty. He wants to do things the way they need to be done to look good and it would be wrong to do it any other way. Especially when using such a beautiful ( and expensive) wood as ebony. I learned a lot and was really intrigued by this craft. Maybe I can help him a little when he is making my wheel but I think it might be in the month I need for exam-preparations. However, I would love to be a little more in his little wood-crowded room in the basement. There is so much more to learn!

On Saturday we melted silver to make the handles, and I did a few photos. He had made chunks of sterling silver by alloying silver with copper (no photo) and then melted the chunk again to get it into a shape easier to mill the handle. We did this by placing ceramic stones next to each other to form a rectangle in the middle, inserted the silver piece and then melted it with a blowpipe. (picture below, the metallic pieces around the fire are weights so that the position of the stones is fixed)

Afterwards we waited a few seconds to let the silver cool down a bit so that the form wouldn’t get distorted when the silver is taken out…

…and then removed the ceramic stones. You can see the cooled down piece in the next photo (after a bath in a bucket of cold water to speed up the cooling…

On the photo below there is this chunk of silver on the left, in the middle the milled handle and at the right the finished handle (sanded, polished and already a little tarnished)

And this is the case (the handle are not screwed on but you can see the holes on the drawers where they will find a place in the future).

As you can see it’s a two-sided design and it’s not a small case. I think there is enough space to keep buying earrings all my life and never run out of storage room. My father was joking that I could sell it to a church as a tabernacle . No way that I will ever sell this. I love it. I love ebony (however it would be handy if it wouldn’t be that splitty. We had issues with that which set us back several days because nearly finished pieces suddenly got cracks and we needed to redo them completely).

Due to the fact that it will be my Christmas present my father won’t let me see it until then. So you and I will have to wait a little longer to see it all finished.

.. in plain words: stash expansion (explosion) is expected in the next few weeks. At least if I continue to produce yarns as quickly as I do right now.

I wanted to experiment with 3 plys and used roving by die Wollfabrik

231m / 200g

246m / 200g

I really really like the rounder look of a 3-ply. It’s means more work, but I think it’s worth it.

After all the spinning in the last 2 weeks I felt the urge to dye something. Luckily I had 2×150g sock yarn with me, already knitted into a long tube. Right now I have no particular project in mind, but I think it will be socks or gloves.

Unlike the KnitPicks sock blanks I don’t knit the tube with yarn held double because I fear that I might get white undyed spots and I also dislike knitting two things at a time. So I have 2 tubes, every one done with 70g of yarn and dye them lying side my side. For making the tubes I use my Prym Maxi-Strickmühle (I wouldn’t have the patience to knit them by hand, no way).

Before I start spilling the dye anywhere I weight the wool and then soak it. I fill the pot I normally use for space dyeing (in a clean state!) with lukewarm water + vinegar ( enough to get a pH 3.5-4) and let the wool sit in it for about one hour (you can also use your sink for this). Especially when using non superwash wool be careful not to felt it (You don’t need to squeeze it, it will get wet enough without any help).

If you haven’t done it so far you will need to make stock solutions from the dye powders. I prefer a concentration of 5 %, but it’s up to you. I normally prepare about 100ml and fill it in screw-top jars because I don’t use it all up directly. The best way to make these solutions may be specific to the dye you are using (Ashford, Wash-Fast ect). In general you use hot water and a little acid. Add only a few drops of this acidic water to the dye powder and paste it. Then slowly increase the amount of water. (avoid clumps by any means. Clumps in dye solutions can lead to really unpredictable results)

Now a little math is needed to calculate the necessary amount of stock solution. ( I won’t get into color-theory here, but you might need to mix a few solutions to get the color you want. This is only about the total amount of dye you use for the yarn).

When dyeing bold/vibrant colors (what I do most of the time) about 2 % dye is sufficient (this means: If you have 100g wool, you need 2 g dyestuff). Note that the amount may vary depending on the color. Up until now I never got a deep black with only 2 %.

Now look at the weight of your yarn and calculate the amount of dyestuff. If you want to dye it with 3 colors, divide the amount of dyestuff by 3. Then calculate how much of your stock solution is needed.

Take the yarn out of the pot and press most water out of it (never wring it) If there is too much water still inside you may end up in muddy colors because the yarn will sit in a sea of water + dye.

Take plastic wrapping and cut a piece of it, about 50cm longer than your knitted tube. Place it on the counter and place the tube on it. If you divided the yarn to avoid white spots or if you don’t like two-socks-at-a-time don’t forget to place both tubes alongside each other to get the same color patterning.

Now take your dyes. You need to mix the measured amount of stock solution with water. Enough water to get the dye all over the section of the tube it was meant for, but not that much to create puddles of water on the wrapping. I like to use small beakers (100ml) to mix the stock solution with the water and then pour it over the yarn. Now it’s time to press the yarn down a bit to get the dye everywhere. Just let it sit where it is and use your hand to press it down a little.

When you did this with every color it is possible that there was a little bit to much water and you see small puddles. If so take a piece of towel and carefully absorb the excess water. There shouldn’t be too much dye left in this water because you soaked the yarn in acidic water and so the dye will be on the fiber right now.

Now wrap the plastic around the tubes (one side, then the other) and place it all in a steamer for about 40 min. If you are using non-superwash wool be careful to let the fiber sit afterwards until it is cooled down. If your wool is superwash, you can be a little ruder and proceed when your yarn is still warm.

Finally it’s time to wash out any excess dye. To do so place the yarn with the wrapping around it in a sink and remove the plastic. Let lukewarm water pour over it and rinse. You may get better results when using a mild wool-detergent (z.B. Perwoll) because the loose dye will be washed out more easily.

Press the water out of the tubes and then roll them in an old towel to get a little more out. Then place them on a clothing line and wait until you can frog to knit them

Shame on me, I haven’t touched my knitting in the last week. The reason is my growing Eagerness to sit in front of my spinning wheel in the evenings. I predict an upward tendency concerning my yarn stash (I won’t mention a fiber stash which is slowly building up )

Until the beginning of last week I had only spun one skein of yarn on the wheel…. so there was lots of room for improvements.

The first one I did:

(Single)(Plied)

265m per 100g. Roving by Main Woods Yarn & Fiber

The second one:

(Single)(Plied)

354m per 100g. Roving by Main Woods Yarn & Fiber

..last but not least…

(Single)(Plied)

669m per 100g. Roving by Main Woods Yarn & Fiber

Since Monday I stay at my parents home for a really special 2-week resort: Woodworking for beginners. I think I have mentioned in the past that my dad is great at creating furniture and a lot of other things with wood. He learned it from his father when he was a child and now he has a big room in the basement with lots of big machines. Sadly he missed to pass his craft on to me or my sister. Maybe because of a gender thing, I have no idea.

He planned to make my mother, my sister and me a jewel case for Christmas and asked about the way mine should be done. After a little thought I remarked that I would love to do it myself / with his help. He said ok and it was settled that we would make it in 2 weeks, which have started yesterday.

It seems that after the first 2 days he gained a little confidence in my skills to work with machines that could cut my finger of in a second. So I had the chance to work with a buzz saw (you see the blade below), molding cutters, planing machines and lots of other tools I haven’t touched before. So interesting!

The only sad thing is, that I will never (or at least in the next 10 years) have the chance to do this as a hobby myself, because..

a) the machines are really really expensive (5000 euro for a good molding cutter! holy…)

b) you need a lot of room

c) you need to live in your own house because a buzz saw is loud louder…. what did you say?

But maybe, when I will earn a little bit (or a bit more) money in the far future, I will start with all this. You see, he got me hooked. It’s much more of a construction thing (measurements, angles ect) than the textile crafts, and this is something I really like. Making technical drawings and all this was one of my favorite courses at the university

The jewel case will be made of ebony and now there is black sawdust everywhere. Looks like soot.

Today we finished the fronts of the drawers and both side walls. Lots of work still to be done but at the moments we are quite a bit ahead of our schedule so I have confidence that we will get it all done in time.

because I finished the sweater sprint (my first knitted sweater ever)! After all the gloves I did it was a really awkward feeling to knit with 7mm needles. There was a little pain in my right underarm after a hour or so. I hope that it is not any serious problem…

Sorry for the really bad quality of this photo, but I had issues with the sunlight and the fact that there was nobody around to take the photo. I hate autotimer functions but it’s actually my fault that I had to use it because I forgot to take my remote control with me. After all the sweater is visible and this is currently enough to satisfy me.

I like the way it turned out, though I think that I would have added a few centimeters in length if I had the choice right now.

Pattern: Corrugated Asymmetrical V-Neck by Teva Durham

Yarn: Lana Grossa Mille

I finally finished the christmas presents for my mom and dad! I know, quite ahead of time, but I just felt in the mood to knit these. Seems that I’m deeply stuck in a glove-frenzy

The pair of glove my mother chose for herself:

Pattern: Twisted Stitch Gauntlets

Yarn: Schoeller + Stahl Merino Soft

..and last but not least the pair for my father

Pattern: Improvised. There was no big enough pattern available.

Yarn: Regia 4-fähdig

.. and now it’s time to work on my ravelympics sweater! I’m kind of impressed how fast super bulky knits up!

This is a small booklet by Raumagarn and is written in Norwegian. No, I can’t speak this language, but when I saw it online with a few photos of the included projects I wanted to get my hands on it nevertheless. Since it’s color work the written instructions aren’t that important to me as long as the color charts are there.

I ordered it from Helylle.se and I was really astonished when I got it in the mailbox after 4 days!

It contains not only mittens and gloves but also hats, scarves and socks, all photographed as black and white color work (like on the cover). All in all 41 wonderful patterns. I thought that gloves could be the most tricky one to understand without any written instructions but when looking at the charts all was quite clear, so I will definitely make a few projects out of this. The patterns most appealing to me were the ones for stockings… especially No. 31

It seems that both on the top are men’s stockings but thanks to my huge feet it will fit nevertheless.

I think it’s a really really good one with lots of pretty patterns. So if you are looking for kind of traditional Norwegian knitting pattern this could be one for you.

After neglecting my sewing machines for quite a long time I finally sat down and made a knitting bag roomy enough for a bigger project like a sweater.

The  label had originally been  on a handbag which fell apart. So I reused it here.

Maybe I will do another bag tomorrow given the fact that I have a day off! So I might get a little more done

written by Nancy Bush, published by Interweave Press

I bought this because I looked for fair isle glove and sock patterns and this book seemed to include quite a few (Thanks to Ravelry it is no problem to see every pattern included in  a book without ever touching it in person. This might be not that important if you live in an English speaking country, but here in Germany it is nearly impossible to actually browse through an English book before buying it).

When I got the shipment and looked inside there was much more. Not only the patterns I already knew but pages and pages about the Estonian culture and the connection between culture and knitting. My first thought was “Should I skip this and go to the patterns?”. But I didn’t, partly due to my longing to read every book from cover to cover in fear of missing something. Right know I can’t understand why I considered the option because the historic & cultural part of this book is in retrospective the one I enjoyed the most. Even there being a bunch of nice patterns and good instructions on a few techniques completely new to me, the description of the Estonian culture was the most impressing and educative part.