Blanket number 3 is off the loom, joined and hemmed.  I wet finished it in the washer like the others.  However, I was a little looser in my picks per inch, so it got a few more minutes in the washer to allow it to full up a bit more than the others.  This has made it a very soft and cuddly blanket.  The red has a bit more brown in it than the photo shoes and the pink is really more blue, fuchsia rather than just pink.  The colours work together quite nicely in real life.   The 4th blanket warp is half wound off.  I was going to shake things up and change up the pattern.  Then I realized the date.  There is no time to change the weave structure.  That warp needs to be wound off, the loom dressed and ready to go by tomorrow morning, if I want any hope at all of getting blanket number 4 under the tree in time.

Yesterday I had the joy of going to the dentist.  While I waited for the freezing to take hold, I started a new sock.  When they had to go back in to freeze it a second time, I knit some more.  By the 3rd attempt, I had a good start on my sock.  The 4th shot worked, but it was in the wrong place for the place they needed to work on.  So while my tooth didn't get any work done on it, my sock sure did. 

Sock yarn is misfit Kroy from the bargain bin. 
 It's lighter weight than normal Kroy.  It's a joy to work with and I sure wish all Kroy was this thin and nice to work with.  Usually it's much too thick for my liking.  Best yet, it was really, really on sale, for cheap!  





The freezing was finally coming out of my lower jaw, when my dh mentioned that he wondered what he could give his guys at work for Christmas.  Last year I wove scarves for him to give as presents.  Then he added that they needed to be done by tonight.  Yep, come up with handmade Christmas gifts in 24 hours.  Finally he told me that he had thought perhaps Dryer Balls would be a good gift.  Phew, I could do that.  So last night I wound off 6 core balls and felted them.  I hunted down a bunch of suitable rovings for the outer wraps.  First thing this morning, I wrapped the 6 cores and put them through as wash and dry cycle.  I did laundry as well as there is no use wasting the water or power use.  I needed to make sure they were large enough and dry enough before wrapping.   However they are about the size of tennis balls or a tad larger, so they are good to go.  Right now they are in front of the woodstove, drying thoroughly.  The bonus to all this is that absolutely all the laundry is washed!

Done, started and OMG!

The Fall socks are done.  They are beautiful and fun!  I think the pattern is just perfect, though it did take a wee bit of concentration.  By the second sock I was memorizing the pattern, so that halfway through I just had to mark my spot on the pattern when I finished so that I could pick up next time without thinking about it.   The yarn is amazingly soft and cuddly.  Belfast Mini-Mills - you guys rock!

Next pair may actually be knee socks or over the knee socks.   I've been thinking about something to wear over leggings for wearing skirts in the winter.  But I also picked up a huge amount of Kroy at an amazing discount and they work up to be heavy duty, hard wearing and quick to knit socks and those are sometimes advantages for socks, when one is suddenly finding themselves heavily into level 4 homework.  No brainer, easy to knit socks for relaxation aren't a bad thing.

Blanket number 3 is on the loom.  The 4th colour, which I managed to leave out is a dark red.  I was testing two colours here, a green and a grey.  While the green makes a lighter, more fun blanket, it rather overtakes the other colours, so I'll go with the dark grey once again.  The weaving is pretty easy, but the finishing takes the time.   I'm still hopeful that I'll get all 4 done in the next 13 days. 


I've had this bisque ware sitting around for years.  The plates were an experiment in slab work before I had any idea what it really entailed.  Okay, I still don't really know, but I know more than I did.  The bowls are from the pottery day with the girls .   I kept the bowls even though my kiln wasn't hooked up. I packed and dragged them through a move and they sat mournfully on a shelf for years.  My friend Maureen's husband  is a potter.  He does amazing stuff, not much in the way of dishware now but art, with a capital A.  It's very sleek, modern and interesting work.  However, one days Maureen dragged me out to her studio.  I got to play on the potters wheel and they then took my assorted mongrel dishware, glazed and fired it for me. Actually, Maureen mixed the colour up for me right then and there.  It was an interesting process to watch her weigh and mix the bucket of glaze.  She showed me how and I got to wax the bottoms and dip the bowls.   It's a beautiful colour, like an I'm in love type of colour.  With a drizzle of white or grey, I could definitely see this colour as dishes for the table, if I could actually learn to throw that well.    Anyway, hubby even liked  them and he's much harder to please that way.

Happy days, even if it's cold, blustery and stupidly snowing :)

Easy Peasy Dryer Balls

One of my kids asked me if I could make some wool dryer balls.   They're supposed to be environmentally friendly, shortening drying time by 30% - 50% and eliminating the need for fabric softener.   I don't use fabric softener anyway, but they didn't look very hard and it's not like I don't have the sorts of materials they might use on hand.   A quick interweb search showed tons of tutorials and yep, easy peasy to make as long as you have the right wool on hand.   Acrylic and superwash won't felt and for wool dryer balls, you definitely need felting to happen.

From searching for the workability and durability of wool dryer balls, I found out that you can use either yarn, roving or batt type preparations.  There were a few warnings out there that yarn balls don't felt completely and can start unrolling after a few months, requiring rewinding and felting.  I decided on a yarn core with a roving outer layer.  The yarn would make it easier to get a solid core while the roving should add durability. 

I dug through a box of scrap yarn and roving.  I found lots of bits from my first experiments with natural dyes which would make perfect cores.   I've all sorts of roving which is either in bits too small to make anything with, slightly compacted from sitting waiting for it's turn in the spinning queue or just stuff I don't really feel like working with right now.

It really didn't take long to wind 8 core balls.  I tried to keep them fairly round, neat and remembered to tuck in the ends to keep them from unwinding before the first felting could take place.  I realized that I'd need a nylon stocking /pantyhose leg before I could continue.  I don't wear those things normally, so I actually had to run out and find some, which were on sale for $1 a pair.  The idea is to stuff them in the pantyhose leg and tie them off, in order to keep each one separate and facilitate felting while keeping the ball from both unwinding and keeping it round.    I just tossed this in with a regular laundry load, but you could use wet, soapy water and do each ball by hand as well.
Don't use wool yarn to tie off between the dryer balls or it could felt and make it hard to remove.  I used white, cotton, butcher string.  Crochet cotton would work just fine as would knotting the pantyhose between each ball.  The latter might require cutting them out and I'm too cheap to use the pantyhose leg just once though.

I tossed the whole kit and kaboodle into the dryer after washing and the cores were adequately stuck together to start winding roving.  It took more than I'd expected but I also made fairly large balls.  The smallest is a bit larger than a tennis ball.  I'd wrapped them with enough roving to make them a good bit larger than my smallest desired circumference as I wasn't sure how much shrinkage I'd actually get in the felting process.   It shrank more than I'd hoped but not as much as I'd expected, so it was all good on that front.  I did a little bit of needle felting where the roving ended and any place where there were rough or loose spots.  It only took a few pokes here and there to needle felt the outer roving securely down.  I don't know if it really was necessary but I'd rather spend the two extra minutes to make sure than have them unravel during the washing process, or while one of my kids is doing laundry.  I stuffed them back in the stocking, tied them off and tossed them in with another load of laundry. 

Now I have another batch of cores ready to go but am now waiting on more laundry to need washing!  Since the first batch worked out so well, I figure that it will be a useful pressie for several of my kids.

Blankets - seaming and finishing

 2 down and counting!

Finally, the second blanket is finished.  Because I wasn't going to fringe this blanket, I ran a zig zag stitch along each end of both halves to secure the weaving.  It keeps the whole thing from fraying before I get to the hemming.  

Seaming the two halves is a little finicky, but not difficult.   I simply run an extra warp thread though the weft loops, alternating between both selvedges.  I find a really blunt ended wool darning needle works best for this.  It makes a fairly unobtrusive seam line.

You can see it of course, but it doesn't stick out as the first thing you notice.  There is no ridge or edges to deal with.  If you get the tension of the seaming thread right, the drape of the blanket isn't affected either. 

I hem by hand, using a wool darning needle and whatever I used for the weft.  If I used multiple weft colours, I use whatever colour that was in the area of where my hem will be.

After hemming, I fill the washer with cold water, toss the blanket in and let it soak for a few minutes.  Then I turn the machine on and let it agitate for a couple of minutes too, checking regularly to make sure it just fulls nicely to be properly wet finished and not fulled/felted completely. 

The finished blanket turned out exactly as I'd hoped.   It's a gift but really, I'd be quite happy to keep it for myself.

Blankets, blankets, blankets

 Blanket 1 is off the loom.  Because my loom is only 36 inches wide,  I had to piece it.  I'm slightly off on the one blue block, but the rest are fine.  Leave it to me to do a checky or plaid pattern for my first big weaving project in a while, that had to be pieced at any rate. 
It took a while to twist those fringes.  Even with my handy little fringe twisting device, my fingers were a little roughed up from it but I guess it's an occupational hazard for fringed items.   I have to admit that fringes on a throw type blanket make it look nice.  I don't really like them for practicality though.  When you pull a fringed blanket up to your chin, the fringes get in the way and tickle your nose!  

I tossed it in the washer with cold water and agitated it on and off for a few minutes, checking every minute until it was perfect.  It took just a couple of minutes for the yarn to get clean, fuzz up, soften and fill in the weave structure.   It's soft, drapey and yummy.   If it hadn't been slated for a gift, I'd keep it myself.  

Same with blanket number 2 which is on the loom right now.  I love the wide bands of colours.  The weft is a dark grey.  If I had a lighter grey, it would have been my preference, but the dark grey does look really nice.  I'd forgotten that I'd switched the direction of the twill every colour change for the plaid, so the pattern on the wide stripes is interesting.  It doesn't detract from the look though, so I'm going to leave it.  I don't want to have to re-thread the heddles unless I get an virulent attack of inspiration. 

This blanket won't have fringes.  I'll just hem the ends for a clean and useful finish.  That change brought up a major problem with my math.  I forgot to remove the amount I'd allotted for fringes and when I subtracted the excess loom waste, I manged to wind on a longer warp than for the checky blanket.  I'm thinking I might have enough extra (about 3/4 yard or maybe more) to have a couple of matching pillows or a bag of some sort.  What was I thinking?

I'm not that fond of tying on warps but I'll have to admit that it's really fast and effective for multiples in large projects.  I wouldn't be comfortable about winding on more than one of these blankets at a time because they are pretty bulky and I'd worry about keeping my tension even with that much on the loom.   Since the piecing of the two halves, the fringe twisting and all the other finishing bits and pieces takes as long as it does to weave off the fabric, not having to re-thread heddles and re-sley the reed speeds up the process immensely. 

Spinning, threading and cleaning

I started spinning this Blue Faced Leicester sock yarn a while ago.  It was my "fun" project while starting my level 4 homework. I was spinning it on the Mazurka at spinning nights and demos.  However I suddenly had a need to free up bobbins.  This is a 3 ply, so I needed 3 bobbins plus one to ply to.  As of the last spinning night, I was on the 3rd bobbin so it was time to hurry the project along.  I spent the weekend spinning up the rest of the roving and found time to ply it last night. 

It's superwash and has some added nylon for strength.  It's 3 ply worsted and there are unfortunately only 275 yards of it, so I'll have to spin up a bit more for security.  I like my socks with longer cuffs.   I'd weighed and divided the rovings into equal portions before spinning.  It worked a treat as I had only 1 yard left on the second bobbin and only 3 leftover on the 3rd bobbin after plying.  Sometimes my scales are a little off and it doesn't work quite so well at making equal amounts of string on each bobbin with little waste.

I've got a new project on the loom - finally.  This is wool and was quite to wind the warp thanks to finally finding a place to mount my warping board on an unused wall.  A bunch of us have used this yarn in our guild so I was able to query a friend as to the correct sett.  However I'm going to resley and rethread the heddles.  I have a stupid 4 thread float which I don't like.  It's my own fault for not bothering with a draw down, as I usually do.   However this is a blanket and a float that long will just catch and be a nuisance.

My back up sewing machine has been making an awful squealing noise.  The last time I took it in to be serviced, the guy didn't even bother to look at it.  It had the same lint and the same problems that I'd asked to be fixed so I'm a little leary about some of the repair people out there.  Being so far out of warranty, I opened it up and found this huge wad of lint hidden on one of the gears.  I got it back together but it's still making noise.  It's coming from the gear/belt area though.  I am pretty sure I can change the belts but I'm not sure about changing the gear if that's what it needs.

 This old girl makes pretty decent button holes with a minimum of set up and fuss so I hope I can keep her going.  My other machines makes great stitches, but takes so much fussing to make a button hole that even a great button hole is not worth the effort when compared to the back up.

Small November projects

It's starting to feel like I'm making progress on this year's Fall socks.  For some reason I always find that if I actually spend a few minutes here and there actually knitting the socks, they get finished much more quickly than if they sit there in the project bag, ignored.   I love the pink and decided to do the toe in the opposite colour, just to tie the two together.  The blue one will have a pink toe.  Then they will definitely be a pair and not two lost socks finding their way together.

I've respun the cashmere.  I'll have to admit that the results are a bit better this time and I've kept it high enough that Kevin can't get to it.  I still have to wind the sample skeins required for homework and do all the calculations and measurements for the tags.  That's really the part I dislike the most.  I think it takes as much time do the math for count, % blends and even just filling out the darned labels with all the identifying info, like tpi, wpi, fibre, how it was prepped and spun, and what I would actually make with this yarn.   

On to Cotton.  I have always thought that I didn't like spinning cotton.  However all of a sudden, with this exercise, it seems that I don't mind it all that much.   I guess it's just practice coming together making it easier to spin it more efficiently and consistently, not that it's perfect by any means.

Projects on the go - the loom is about to be dressed with a couple of projects, blankets and scarves I think...
I'm also about to start on a new coat for wearing at the bake oven.  The costume department calls it a Sacque coat, but online info suggests that Paletot might be another name for it.  Regardless of the name, I have a nice bit of wool, which is really a tad too lightweight for a coat, but it's in the stash so I don't have to  purchase new yardage for the project.  It will make a nice coat if I line it properly.  It will be perfect for wearing at the bake oven in December.  Last winter I found wearing a cape just too awkward to be actually working in.  Sleeves will make a huge difference in being able to work and keep warm!