A Life entangled in Thread, Wool and Needles

Heute abend gibts wieder nur ein kleines Detailphoto: diesen Specht (die persönliche Note die mein Vater an diesem Rad angebaut hat), zusammen mit einem Teil der Spannung für die Antriebsriemen. Warum kein Ganzkörper rad-Photo? Weil es schon dunkel war als ich bei meinen Eltern ankam und das Rad fast fertig ist und so schön ist, dass ich es nicht bei Kunstlicht mehr schlecht als recht photographieren will. Deshalb gibts erst am Sonntag abend ein Abschlussphoto. Und dann muss ich mir ja auch noch überlegen, wo das Rad hinkommt. In meine Studiwohnung? Oder in die Wohnung meines Freundes in der ich meine Wochenenden verbringe? Denn immer umherfahren geht definitiv nicht. Als ich herumgegrübelt habe wo es wohl am besten Platz findet meinte mein Freund: “Stells doch auf die Heizungsbank”. Ja, das meinte er ernst. Er hat da wohl die Dimensionen dieses Rades noch nicht ganz verinnerlicht (er hat es auch noch nicht Auge in Auge zu sehen bekommen).

This evening there is only another teaser for you: this woodpecker (kind of a personal signature of my father) and the driveband-tension. Why no photo of the whole thing? Because it was already dark when I arrived at my parents. The wheel is nearly completed and so beautiful that I really don’t want to take crappy photos because of the lack of daylight. So the final shooting will be on Sunday. Another thing I still work on: were should I put the wheel up? In my dorm room or at the flat of my partner where I’m on the weekends? Because of putting it in my car every week and take it with me just doesn’t work with this one. When I was meditating on the perfect place for it my friend remarked: “why not place it on the bank over the heating (ca. 35cm wide)”. No, no joke intended. He seems to have quite an incorrect idea of the actual dimensions of this spinning wheel (he had till now no chance to see it in person, just the photos I took).

Ja, ganz ehrlich, ich hatte mir wirklich wirklich vorgenommen zu verhindern dass meine Wollberge weiter wachsen. Sie müssen nicht kleiner werden, eine Stagnation auf gleicher Höhe wäre auch schon toll. Ihr merkts schon. Das wichtige hier ist WÄRE. Soll heissen: es wächst munter weiter in meinem kleinen Kabuff, egal was ich mir vornehme um es dann eine Woche später zu vergessen. Aber es gibt einfach so Sachen, da kann ich nicht Nein-Sagen.

a) Wollmeisen. Auch wenn ich schon eine Kiste voll habe, ich liebe dieses selten gesehene Getier einfach. Insbesondere wenn ich die jeweilige Farbe noch nicht habe. Man könnte sagen: das Wort “Nein” verschwindet kurzzeitig aus meinem Wortschatz.

Photos der Verdächtigen:

b) gute Begründungen (Ausreden). Ich habe ja meine Ravelry-Quene rigoros ausgemistet und nun fällt mir doch tatsächlich auf, dass ich für den nächsten Pullover garkeine Wolle habe! Und außerdem musste die Cascade 220 superwash doch sowieso mal getestet werden, nun wo es die in der Wollbox zu kaufen gibt. Und wenn ich gerade dabei bin, dann kann ich auch direkt noch ein Paket für den übernächsten Pullover kaufen, da kann man ja dann Porto sparen. Gute Idee, oder?

c) Violett. Dinge in dieser Farbe schreien ohrenbetäubend “kauf mich!”, so geschehen bei Drachenwolle. Da hilfts auch garnix dass ich eigentlich mehr als genug Sockengarn habe, denn es ist violett! Jetzt wo das die Modefarbe ist/war, wird jeder Gang in einen Wollladen potenziell gefährlich.

Lange Rede kurzer Sinn: nein, das mit der Stash-Diet klappt nicht so ganz. Aber das sollen solche Vorhaben ja grundsätzlich an sich haben. Ich müsste wohl entweder eine Strickmaschine kaufen (ich mache auf dem Gebiet auch zaghafte Versuche, sprich ein Gebot bei Ebay) oder 5 Strunden am Tag stricken um am Ende des Monats unter der 60000m Schmerzgrenze zu bleiben. Aber vielleicht lässt sich das ja einrichten

Und nun zu etwas ganz ganz untextilem. Obwohl, naja, eigentlich nicht, ist ja schliesslich auch Wolle. Ich war beim Frisör, und zwar bei Unisex, um meine Undercolor nachfärben zu lassen (irgendwann sieht man den Ansatz dann ja doch, und schwarz + blond ist da eine recht auffällige Kombination). Und was sagt mir dieser Knilch? Das das doch alles total langweilig ist und wie man bloß so lange Haare haben kann. Hach ja, das war mal wieder aufbauend. Und für sowas bezahle ich dann 65 Euro. Manchmal könnte ich die da in dem Laden wirklich…..*grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*

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Hey, stop laughing! I really tried to prevent any stash-growth! No, I don’t have the goal to end up having no stash at all, but kind of a stagnation would be pleasant. As you realize, I wrote WOULD. This hints at what is currently happening in my stash: new yarn coming from everywhere and demanding to get adopted! I just keep forgetting about my resolutions. Sometimes saying no is just to complicated, even the word being just one syllable. Here are a few recent examples:

a) Wollmeisen. Even though I have a box full of them I just can’t resist, especially when it’s a color I don’t have in my stash. You could say: the word “no” suddenly disappears from the word pool. Strange, isn’t it?

Photos of the suspects:

b) Good reasons (pretexts). After going through my queue and deleting everything which wasn’t screaming “knit me!” immediately I was left with 10 items and 2 of them are sweaters. Suddenly I realized that I have no yarn to knit them! Besides Cascade 220 superwash is now available at the Wollbox and I want to try it out. And to save shipping costs I bought yarn for both sweaters, good idea, eh?

c) Violet. Things of this color just scream “buy me NOW” in an almost deafening way. This happened at Drachenwolle. It was no help to tell myself that all my stash consists of sockyarn and that I don’t need any more of it but IT’S VIOLET! Since this is one of the trendy colors around here right now every trip to a LYS gets horribly dangerous.

Summing all this up: no, the stash-diet is not working out the way I imagined.  Seems to be a general problem with diets. What can I do? Maybe I should buy a knitting machine ( I already placed a bid on ebay) or knit at least 5 hours a day to stay under the 60000m benchmark at the end of October.

Now a little non-fiber ranting. Or at least not in a way you might expect it. Yes, my hair (=wool = fiber = perfect blog topic). I went to the hairdresser (which I do maybe twice a year because I don’t like sitting on this chair having someone pull out my hair while trying to comb it. But since a certain amount of my hair is dyed black I just needed to go there to get it dyed again (looks funny when there is a blond stripe of hair next to much much black). After going through the rather painful combing-procedure (I TOLD him that it is a bad idea trying to comb my hair when it’s wet. After 15 Minutes he believed me and blow-dried (I told him also that this could be as bad as the previous thing because my hair will get a tangled mess) it. More pain followed. After all this I would have expected a “sorry” but what I got was an “I can’t understand how a women can have so long hair, it’s so boring!” from this jerk. What a positive experience! It will help me avoiding another visit at any hairdresser for a rather long time. I paid 65 euros for this. GRRRRR

… weil es schon dunkel ist und ich erst gerade zuhause angekommen bin.

Auf Schwärze des Rades wartet man bis jetzt noch vergebens, das wird aber wohl nächste Woche noch kommen. Trotzdem mal ein kleiner Teaser

Zur rechten der Spinnflügel und links ein paar der Metallpieker und das Dingens um den Faden durchs… Orifice (ach wie gut dass ich mich mit Spinndeutsch auskenne) zu ziehen.

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..because it’s already dark outside and I just came home.

The wheel didn’t turn black until now, but this will be done in the course of the next week. However here are 2 pics. On the right the flyer and on the left a few of the metal spikes and the tool to thread the wool through the orifice.

And the winner is.…

are both. So there will be both a german and an english section in each post (at least I hope so).

Irgendwie seltsam, einfach so ohne Leo hier etwas hinzuschreiben. Aber durchaus angenehm.

Tja, und was ist mit dem Spinnrad? Photos habe ich gestern nicht gemacht weil es schon stockduster war als ich bei meinen Eltern ankam und das Rad momentan sowieso wieder in seine Einzelteile zerlegt ist und recht unspektakulär aussieht. Der Flyer hat seine Haken bekommen und unter der Grundplatte gibt es jetzt noch eine Schublade für die verschiedenen whorls (ich kenne das deutsche Wort dafür nicht). Außerdem hat ein Bekannter meines Vaters der eine kleine Maschinenbaufirma hat die Metallspitzen für die ganzen Pfeiler gedreht. Ich habe sie gestern schon gesehen und sie sind exakt so wie ich es mir vorgestellt habe. Nun werden sie noch poliert. Mein Vater hat schon angemerkt dass ich, sollten mal kleine Kinder zu Besuch sein, die Spitzen irgendwie sichern muss (Tennisbälle?). Gestern prognostizierte mein Vater das bis Sonntag das Rad schon schwarz sein wird.

Ich mache mir immernoch Gedanken darüber warum das Rad so schwer zu treten ist und komme bis jetzt auf keine Lösung. Vielleicht ist das Getriebe einfach zu viel, aber andererseits: das ist ja alles Kugelgelagert, von schwergängig könnte eigentlich keine Rede sein. Aber ich sehe es positiv: Spinnsport ich komme. Spätestens wenn ich Radfahrer-Oberschenkel habe

Und was gibts sonst noch so? Ich habe endlich mit den Fausthandschuhen für eine Freundin begonnen und es klappt auch ganz gut. Diesmal will ich alle Fäden einweben und meine Finger stellen sich dabei garnicht mal so doof an wie sonst.  Überhaupt habe ich im Moment viel zu viele WIPs. Einige von euch mögen jetzt sagen: na warte, ich habe Kisten voll mit WIPs, aber ich bin eigentlich jemand der gerne eins nach dem anderen macht. So viele Sachen auf den Nadeln zu haben stresst mich irgendwie. Im moment sind es:

• der Adventskalender für meine Eltern (das meiste ist fertig, es fehlt nur noch die “Endmontage” und die Befüllung). Erschwerend kommt hinzu dass ich immernoch nichts/zu wenig für meinen Vater habe. Ich dachte ja an neue Fräser oder sowas, aber er sagt immer nur “ich habe alles, du musst mir nichts schenken”. Das bringt mich ja seeehr viel weiter.
• Die Lederhosen-Socken. Eigentlich wollte ich in dieser Woche den zweiten Socken angefangen haben, aber da drängelte sich alles mögliche dazwischen.
• Die Spina di Pesce Socken, angefangen in Landshut und nun sind beide bis zum Knöchel gewachsen.
• Der Corkscrew-Schal den ich in Landshut auch noch anfangen musste. Vielleicht  15cm sind fertig, der Rest verharrt noch als Knäul im Strickbeutel.
• Die Fausthandschuhe: Heute angefangen und nun ist der Handgelenk-Teil vom ersten beendet. Ich hoffe inständig dass sie passen und ich mit dem Design den Geschmack treffe

Das sind sie alle, und ich hoffe es wird nochmal weniger. Obwohl ich eher ahne dass es mehr wird, denn eigentlich wollte ich das neue Handschuhdesign auch bald mal stricken. Nur zu doof dass ich die meiste Zeit des Tages in Vorlesungen sitze oder in Chemielaboratorien sitze, da verliere ich sooo viel Zeit.

Hui, das war jetzt ja mal garnicht wenig was ich da so mir-nichts-dir-nichts hingeschrieben habe. Mir grauts vor der englischen Übersetzung. Tschakka, ich schaffs. Vielleicht.

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so, whats doing on with the spinning wheel? I didn’t take any photos because it was pitch dark when I arrived at my parents and also because the wheel is disassembled and doesn’t look that spectacular. The flyer got all the hooks and my father added a small drawer under the groundplate to store the different whorls. Besides a friend of my father who owns a small engine buildung company and turned the spikes for all the posts. I saw them yesterday and the look exactly like I imagined it. Now they will get polished by my dad. My father already observed that I need to secoure the spikes when there are small children around (tennis balls?). Yesterday my father predicted that the wheel will be black when I see it next time on sunday.

I still think about why treadling on the wheel is that hard and until now I have no idea. Maybe it’s the gearboxes fault but then all the axes have bearings, so it shouldn’t be that hard. But I see it positively: Spinning-sports! I hope I won’t get thighs like a biker

What else? I have started the mittens (present for a friend of mine) at last and all works well. This time I want to weave in all the floats and it works better than I expectet (my right indexfinger is sometimes kind of eccentric). Have I mentioned that I have too much WIPs right now? A few of you might now say: wait, I have buckets of WIPs! but I’m a first things first person. Having that many things on my needles just stresses me. Here are the suspects:

• the advent calender for my paternts (most of it is done, what’s still to do is the final assembly and finding things to put into the stockings. I have still nothing for my father! I thought about small tools for his workshop but when I ask him what he would like to have he just says that he has everything he needs and that I don’t need to give him anything. What a great help
• The Zur Lederhosen socks. Well, I planned to cast on the second sock this week, but then lots of other things got me distracted.
• The Spina di Pesce socks, started at Landshut and now both are done to the ankle.
• The Corkscrew-scarf which I really really needed to start at Landshut too. Maybe 15 cms are already done, the rest is still sitting as a skein in my knitting bag.
• The mittens: started today and now one cuff is one. I hope dearly that they will fit the recipient and that the design is her taste.

That’s all and I hope I will get the WIP-count down a bit. I have the strong feeling that there will be even more since I wanted to start knitting a new glove design soon. Isn’t it bad that I’m sitting most of the time in lectures or in labs? I’m loosing so much knitting time!

After having missed one week of lectures I’m still catching up on the stuff… I think I will think twice about doing such a “business-trip” again when I would actually need to be at the university.

As the birthday of my father is approaching rather fast I sewed up a prototype and I hope that they will fit fine (trying my luck tomorrow). Furthermore there were a lot of darning the dungarees of my partner. Need I tell you that most of the holes were in the middle of the leg where it is a pain to get the presser foot in? Big fun, I tell you. However, all this is DONE.

The wool I bought in Landshut is already transformed in a pair of socks (plain stockinette ones). The yarn is just too colorful to use any real pattern (at least in my mind. I see lots of photos of cabled socks on the internet done with selfstriping yarn).

Another FO is a scarf which I knitted on my Prym knitting mill. I bought the black kidsilk night because I really loved the idea of a black yarn with a little silver sparkle in it. However I just couldn’t find the right pattern. I tried a few lacy ones but combined with the mohair it was just too fanciful for me. So I decided to knit a long tube with the knitting mill (woohoo, 400m in less than one hour) and it worked well. I don’t know why but one side of the tube has all the mohair and the other one looks almost like the yarn has no such thing at all. So it’s actually a reversible scarf! One with a plain side for my not-so-cuddly-days.

The Spina di Pesce socks are both in kind of hibernation because there is just too much else I want/need to knit right now. In the summer I was crazy with knitting gloves and now I have a dozen of ideas but much less time and so much else to knit. We will see. I’m aiming at getting a new pattern out at least to the end of the year, including 3 sizes instead of my normal “women’s L” want to stop discriminating people with smaller hands. At least I try. May lead to having a 20 page instruction with separate charts for each size. Time will tell. Another thing: it’s just so crazy to see others knitting the gloves I designed. I still can’t really believe that it all works so well and that so many people like what I’m doing. When I told my parents that I had registered a trade they were (no, not discouraging, not saying “are you crazy? You had this once before and said you would never do it again”) a little sceptical if it would pay at all (even for the 20 euro fee for registering the trade) and I myself had my doubts about the sense in all the paperwork. I’m just soooo happy that it really works! That there is an actual demand for glove patterns! Jipeeeee!

In the last weeks I have thought on and off about if I should start writing my blog in german with a english translation beneath. Sometimes it is just sooo timeconsuming to get it all down in english when saying it in German is a matter of seconds. On the other hand I already realized how much writing here has improved my language skills.  Thanks to wordpress, there is now a poll feature and this is the perfect time to check it out.

Today it was my first try on spinning with the wheel. Because of the gearbox the treadling is not as easy as it is on my other wheel and we came to the decision that we will cut out a piece of the wooden base so that I could get my heel also on the treadle (makes it a lot easier!). There is also the idea to add weights to the spokes to make the treadling once the wheel is turning a little easier. We will try it when the rest is done by taping a few pieces of metal onto the wheel…

Still on the To-Do List:

• shortening the steel tube holding the little wheel to change the tension on the drive bands (you can see it on the far left of the photo)
• the hooks
• the lazy kate
• the steel spikes on the pillars
• the black stain and the varnish

My dad hopes to get it all done in only 2 weeks! Woohoo I’m excited!

One observation: this wheel leaves definitely room for a second wheel. I carried it from the basement in the livingroom and just lets say: nothing to hold with one hand. And definately nothing to move around in a car because it is not at all as small as a few wheels I have seen in a local spinning store It’s more like a piece of furniture to me

I’m back home!

Thanks to the Deutsche Bahn my dislike of travelling with public transport grew a considerable amount. On my way back home the train (note, not the common crappy cheap train stopping at every station but the ICE) was so crammed with people that it was impossible to get anywhere. Due to technical problems there were only half as many wagons as the train should have had and lots of people where mad because they paid for a reservation in the missing wagons and now had to stand for as long as 6 hours. Just awful.

Concerning Landshut: A really nice place to stay! I would share a few pictures I made with my mobile but I can’t find the adapter to connect it to the computer….   (maybe later)

One thing was really funny: on Friday I had a few hours before I needed to get back to the train station and so looked a bit around. After having searched for yarnshops in Landshut before I really didn’t expect to find anything just by randomly walking the streets. In about 30 minutes I found three yarnshops and one fabric store! Remembering that I have enough yarn I resisted the urge to went inside… at least the first two times. The third time I walked in…. and out again with a skein of sockyarn.  Nothing handpainted (there wasn’t any. Just the usual Lana Grossa and Regia stuff). But the skein of Regia in purple/grey/green just needed to get a new home….(you can see the skein on the photo but the colors are not true at all).

Thanks to working from 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening and not being used anymore to be standing on my feet and walk around without time to sit down for so long I was happy to sit down in the evening and knit a little. Mostly I worked on the Spina di Pesce (the Cat Bordhi socks were finished on the train ride to landshut). On the way back I couldn’t stop me from casting on a new pair of socks with the regia yarn I bought….

Yippee, tomorrow is sunday and I will see the spinning wheel! And I will be able to try spinning with it! Really can’t wait.

Since I will take the train to Bavaria  really early tomorrow I will use this post both to show you a few picture what was on my needles in the last week and say bye for the next week. Hopefully I will be back on Friday having had a nice week with good results in the tests I have to do there.

But now it’s time for a small advent calendar update. All the socks are done and now it’s time to thing of the little presents I will put in each of them and how to arrange them on 2 branches. And also sewing on the little hangers onto each stocking is still on the to do list. Hmmm… maybe it will look nice to felt a few green leaves or christmasy flowers to decorate the branches?

Besides the calendar I went on testknitting the Zur Lederhos’n done by Yarnissima up to the point where I need to wait until I get the “new clue”. I’m up to the heel turn on one and I’m thinking of knitting the second sock up to this point while I’m in Bavaria. Due to all the cables in the design I think I will leave it as a project for the more or less lonely evenings in the hotel room because I strongly suspect that I would totally mess it up trying to work on it being on the train.

What else? The socks I made using a Cat Bordhi master pattern have grown quite a bit yesterday and what is left is the cuff and the ribbing (which I chose as the ideal on-the-train-project).

One thing I really dislike about being for a week I Bavaria is that I can’t keep track on the work my father does on the wheel. My father is aiming at having it in a state where I can try spinning on it when I will be around again on next Sunday and so I fear that I miss much of the process which was so interesting to observe. So I’m just a little sad.

What else? My IPod really gets on my nerves. I bought a IPod Shuffle a few weeks ago to keep me in a good mood while traveling for a long time. When I went to Benediktbeuern everything was fine but then I put it in the docking station at my PC and miss taking it out of the station when I shut the PC down. When I tried to start the PC the next morning it froze while booting. I restarted it for a couple of times and slowly got really mad. I remembered that my pc-savvy friend told me that the computer problems I had could have come from my motherboard being broken (the company I bought the PC changed the Hard-drive and the RAM, not the Motherboard). So I mentally prepared to once again take my PC and wait in a long line to get it fixed at that store….. when I saw that the shuffle was in his docking station and a little white light on it’s side was blinking. I unplugged it and with restarting the pc again everything was okay. This kind of shocked me. I often forget to unplug my Handy, USB Sticks or my navigation system and this never caused any problem. And on next time I plugged the Shuffle onto my pc it froze and after a short time I got a blue screen saying that I should call for a technician. Isn’t this wonderful? I begin hating this sweet little Ipod thing. I just don’t want to have any more PC issues in the next years! No more reinstalling Windows and all the other programs and endless searches for drivers and all this. PLEASE. Sorry for rambling about this but I just felt like it.

I used humongous amounts of cascade in recent weeks thanks to holiday knitting. You may wonder because it is merely October but I just felt like it (literally felt like it) and I planned using the cascade for months and so I just started knitting.

The the FO:

Pattern: Kitted Strawberries by Pezdiva

Yarn: Cascade 220

Colorway: Red and green. Can’t find the ballband

This was such a quick and fun project! One berry is done in no time and I just loved to see the little things jump from my needles. First I thought I would leave them as they were but then I felted one as a test and was much more pleased with the result. One thing I realized on my testberry is for achieving an strawberry like form after felting there needs to be much less stuffing than I would normally put in. The first one hand too much and ended up nearly as round as a ball. Looked kind of like a tomato with too much green. But after poking a tiny crochet hook in it and pulling out quite a big of the stuffing it all ended well.

2 other FOs are these stockings:

The brown one is attempt No. 1 and the red one is attempt No. 2 on achieving a toe like these oriental type of slippers have. And to be honest I’m not satisfied at all. The tip of the brown one is okay but a little bit too long, not curvy enough and has this strange bump at the arch. On my next attempt I just messed up the foot. Much too slim for the rest of the stocking and the tip is a little bit to wide and not pointy enough. I think I may need a third attempt until getting a stocking which comes anything near what I aimed for. Shortrow shaping plus felting is making me mad. Luckily there is still more cascade around here..

One current WIP:

These are 2 of 24 stockings made for an advent calendar. Most of the knitting is done but nearly half of them lack the white part because I ran out of this color.

Other WIPs: a pair of socks done using the Master Side Stream pattern by Cat Bordhi. Thanks to knitting it with around 36sts/4inch it just seems to go on for ever. Both socks are up to the gusset increases. Maybe I will take this as my travel project for next weeks journey.

A few hours ago when I came home there was a package on the counter of my kitchen (the caretaker of the dorm I live in puts them in my kitchen so I don’t need to drive to the post office to get my mail). First I thought that it would be the white cascade 220 but when I looked inside and there was something wrapped in green paper and 2 sweets and I knew that this would be a happy day for me. After I quit happy dancing I unwrapped the “thing” and out came 2 skeins of Wollmeise in the Zur Lederhos’n colorway. I already started knitting and I love love love this color. And I love the pattern (as far as I can see right now). Thanks again to Yarnissima for accepting me as a testknitter!

I think this is quite a full report on my knitting both in the last weeks and the near future

included lots of knitting. Most of the stockings for the advent calendar are done (would have finished it if I would have had any white cascade left. I need to reorder) and also two bigger christmas stockings. Lets say my cascade 220 stash shrinked down a considerable amount in the last few days. But when it comes to the bigger stockings I’m still not that happy with the overall appearance. I made up the pattern because I wanted them to look kind of special but up until now there is definately room for improvement. I will take pictures of them when I attached the straps so that they can be hung up on a doorknob. Maybe tomorrow.

(Drumroll) Spinning wheel news:

Most of the structure necessary to make all the up until now finished parts a spinning wheel is done. All the bearings (every axis is hold in bearings) are attached (you can see them on the photo half protruding the poles). The legs of the wheel are also finished but not on the photo.

Just don’t feel like writing that much today. The prospect of making a buisness trip the week after next while there are lectures at the university I should attend makes me feel kind of stressed out. Especially since I don’t know anyone at the company where I’m supposed to make a few test series and up until know have no idea where I will stay during this time. Thanks to the policy of the university I will need to pay for all the expenses (both the train tickets and the costs for the hotel) and they will refund the money. Might be great for a professor with a big paycheck but I’m a student! They don’t really care that 500 euros is a huge amount of money for me (did I mention that I didn’t got any payment – I work as a student assistant -  the last 2 month because they weren’t able to renew my contract in time?). ARRRGH.