At Last, Actual Fiber Content :)

By Leigh

Remember these socks?

These are my Lucy Neatby Chequerboard Socks. This is the project I didn't pack away during moving, so that I would have at least some fiber in my hands to help me keep my sanity in the midst of the chaos of boxes everywhere and not being able to find anything.

I've enjoyed working on these socks, and they've been interesting because the short row garter stitch toe and heel are new for me. I didn't think I would care for them at first, but they match the thickness of the stranded knitting for the chequerboard body of the socks, and so work quite well.

But I've run into a problem. Not because of the pattern, but because of my foot.

The checks are stretched so tight before and after the heel, so as to pull them all out of shape. I'm not happy with how this looks and am not sure what to do about it.

The pattern calls for sizing the sock based on the ankle measurement. I admit I didn't do this because I have skinny ankles. I used the ball of my foot instead, and as you can see, the sock fits fine there. But the ball of my foot has a much smaller circumference than before and after my heel, hence the pulling.

What to do! The only thing I can think of is to somehow increase checks, but am not sure how to do that without distorting the checkerboard pattern. The logical place is at the bottom of the socks. Still, I'm stumped! Suggestions???

Posted 31 May 2009 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Socks: One Pair Done & Another Begun
Fiber Forum Weekend

The State of My Studio

By Leigh

The move went well. It wore us out but everything is here. Now for the unpacking. *sigh* Below is the current state of my new studio after the move. (For the "before" shot, click here.)

This is all my yarns, fibers, fleeces, books, magazines, dyes, and equipment. The loom is in pieces off to the left of the photo. Now I've got to find homes for it all!

© 25 May 2009 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
My New Studio
The Move
Unveiling My Studio Set-Up

My New Studio

By Leigh

This is actually a duplicate post. However, it is very on topic for this blog and besides, several of you have asked about it! This room was one of the things I loved when I first saw the house. It is a sun room, but I immediately envisioned it as my weaving and fiber studio.

There is a set of French doors off of the living room.

These lead to a sun room, which will become my studio.

After thoroughly cleaning the kitchen, I decided to tackle this room next. I figured that this way, I could move a little of my stash and equipment with each trip to the house.

Here is a 360 degree look at this room. The windows on the immediate left look toward the back of the house.

One thing you can see in the above photo is the beadboard ceiling. The walls however, are smooth.

The circle on the wall in the corner is a stove pipe flue cover, leading to a chimney outside the corner of this room. Obviously a wood or coal burning stove once stood in this corner. I say coal, because one of the outbuildings has a room with coal all over the floor.

As you can see, there are lots of windows and lots of natural light, making this the perfect choice for my weaving studio!

The front windows look out at the front yard and across the street.

There is a closet in the corner. The other door leads out onto the screened in front porch. This is the only solid wall I have in this room.

The wood floors are in fair shape, and will be much improved with sanding and refinishing.

This closet was added as an afterthought to this room. Possibly to make it a third bedroom. For my purposes, I think I would prefer shelving here. The interior of the closet offers a peek into what the room was like before it was painted.

The baseboards were originally unpainted. The closet floor is darker than the rest of the room. Possibly it was stained or painted at one time and had been sanded after the closet was added(???)

When I removed the switch plate to wash the walls, I discovered the original wood of the wall, which had been painted twice; once a darker green, and later a lighter green. These same colors were used in several other rooms as well.

The double-hung windows are likely original to the house.....

These operate with weights and pulleys; you can see the pulley rope on this one seems to be in fairly good condition. The ropes on some of the other windows are broken, and some of the windows are painted shut.

This room presents several challenges for me. The first is that there isn't much wall space, and I have a lot of stash, books, and equipment! DH says I could put shelving in front of the windows, but I am loathe to block any of that light.

Because of those windows however, and the orientation of the house (of which the front faces west), this room gets a lot of late afternoon sun. This in turn heats the room up considerably. While this will be welcome during winter months, it has the potential to be unbearable during the summer. I have this problem at our apartment, but I couldn't do anything about it! Now I can and I plan to plant a deciduous shade tree in the front yard this fall!

The last challenge is the size of the room. It measures 9' 3.5" by 19'11". It is the width I am concerned about, because of the size of my loom. My Glimakra Standard measures about six feet in width, so obviously the "getting around" room will be somewhat restricted. Depth-wise, my loom is about five and a half feet, not counting the bench. Even so, this is the perfect room for my studio!

© 13 May 2009 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
A Life Detour......
Unveiling My Studio Set-Up

Differential Shrinkage Fail

By Leigh

Remember Catzee's Cloth? (If not, click here.)

Remember how surprised I was when I wet finished the fabric and the yarns shrank at different rates, so that the fabric sort of bubbled? (If not, click here.)

Remember how I didn't like it but decided to try and do it on purpose for another project? (If not, click here.)

Remember how I researched rayon and cotton yarns and read that they don't shrink at the same rate and so thought they would be a good choice for an experiment in differential shrinkage? (If not, click here which, BTW, is the same post as the above.)

Well, I did it and the results are in.

Before wet finishing .....

After wet finishing .....

Both yarns shrank the same! My experiment was a flop.

Project Particulars:

• Weave structure - summer & winter
• Treadling - "O's" (see Summer & Winter: Treadling)
• Yarns -
  
• Warp & tabby weft - 10/2 unmercerized cotton
  
• Pattern weft - 8/2 rayon
• Sett - 16 epi
• Picks Per Inch - 16 tabby & 16 pattern
  
• # ends - 244
• Reed - 8 dents per inch
• Sley - 2 per dent
  
• Wet finishing - cold water wash and hot machine dry
• Measurements before washing - 53 x 8.75 inches
• Measurements after washing - 48 x 7.75 inches

So much for that experiment.

At the moment this is just a scarf sized sample. Even though it's a little heavy for a summer scarf, I may go ahead and twist the fringes to finish it off. Might as well make the best of it. :) [UPDATE 3 July 2009 - Click here to see what I did.]

© 30 April 2009 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
An Unexpected Wrinkle
One Thing Leads to Another
Beaded Fringing

Measuring Handspun

By Leigh

Once I have an idea of how much handspun I need for a particular project, I can measure whether I have enough on hand, or if I need to spin more. There are a several ways to do this.

One way is to use a McMorrin Yarn Balance, a handy gadget which calculates the length of a yarn based on its weight. Laritza at Yorksett Arts & Crafts wrote an excellent tutorial on that, which you can read here.

Niddy noddies (or swifts, for that matter) can be used to measure yarn as it's wound off the bobbin. The trick here it to know the how many inches it takes for the yarn to make a complete path around the device. This measurement is multiplied by the number of times the yarn is wound around it. This gives a rough estimate, because the yarn piles up on the arms of the niddy noddy. I don't use this method because I prefer to wash my freshly skeined yarn before measuring it. Why? Because there can be some "shrinkage," especially with wool, when the fibers resume their natural crimp pattern after being stretched out on the bobbin and niddy noddy

I calculate the yardage of my handspun with a yardstick and some simple math.

Click for a tad bigger

The skein in this photo measures 20 inches. Of course, the skein is actually a loop, or circle of yarn, so what I really want here is the measurement of the yarn all the way around. To find that, I double the measurement, and get 40 inches.

Next I count the strands of yarn in the skein.

For this skein there are 96.

I multiply these two numbers to get the approximate inches in the skein,

40 inches x 96 = 3840 inches

I divide that number by 36 to get the yards. In this case, 106.66 yards. If I need to round any numbers, I always round down, to give myself a safe minimum amount of yarn.

I do this with each skein and total up the yardage. If my spinning were more consistant, I could probably just use an average for each skein, but it isn't, so I don't.

So far, I have spun a little over 728 yards of 2-ply pol-paca yarn, so I'm close to a fifth of the way to the yards of handspun I need for the Turkish coat. Even so, I could use some of this to start sampling on the loom, as I need to finalize the weave structure and pattern, as well as sett and shrinkage from wet finishing. Since I have plenty of both Polwarth and Alpaca, I can sample to my heart's content.

Obviously this method can be used for knitting and crochet projects as well. You may recall the complex calculations that went into trying to figure out if I had enough various colors of yarn for my Shetland Sampler Cardigan. This post describes how I calculated that, and this post describes how I calculated for the cuffs and bands.

This is not a project I'm in a hurry on, so progress may be slow. At the moment, I'm just happy to be spinning for it. So for now, I'll spin on.

Posted 27 April 2009 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Spinning For Weaving, Knitting, Crochet, Etc. An Introduction
Calculating Handspun For Weaving
What I Learned From My Swatch - calculating for stranded knitting
Dissecting My Shetland Swatch - calculating for bands & cuffs