Mended Spider Webs and Hanami Progress

Bad Cat has another little contest: Send in "the most amazing, fiber-related pictures" you find on the web.

I sent a link to this picture:

This artist did a whole series of mended spiderwebs!!! Isn't this amazing?

Progress on the Hanami stole is slow, I'm a little over half-way through the first basketweave repeat, and can now see the pattern emerging:

I am knitting rather slowly, because my needles are very slick and the yarn is sooo thin! Knitting with it has made me realize that I need to take better care of my hands - the tiniest loose piece of dry skin will snag on the yarn!

Oh, and if you are looking for a good movie to watch: I can highly recommend "The Tale of Despereaux" - it's a beautiful movie!

Take care!

Swiftness

So ... looking over my Ravelry queue and my hardcopy projects-to-be (yeah, it’s a 3-inch binder with printed out patterns), I was zeroing in more and more on the Hanami stole by Melanie Gibbons (you can also find it on Ravelry). About 3 weeks ago I ordered some beads and teeny-tiny crochet hooks from the Beadwrangler – they arrived very quickly; and some Grignasco MerinoSilk from Woolworks, which also arrived promptly in the form of two gigantic hanks. No problem, I thought, I made do without a swift and only a yarn winder for years, so I hung it over the yarn winder to wind it by hand (I didn't have any suitable chair backs, and my husband is not patient enough!). Let me say here also that this is my first lace-weight yarn ever! Winding was slow, but I made reasonable progress – sort of (well, a ball of about 2 inches diameter after winding carefully (!) for over an hour), only the hank started to look more and more like a bird's nest:

With razor-sharp logic I concluded that I had to stop right now, before I made things irreparably un-entanglable, and get a yarn swift. Checking ebay, I found a guy who makes swifts himself; so I ordered one and it arrived from the east coast (I’m in California) in 3 days! In the description of his swifts he says they have the seal of approval from his wife. I heartily concur.

My new favorite gadget - a yarn swift

I was able to save the entangled partial hank.Here are the swift and yarn winder in action (unfortunately, the camera flash blurred the white part of the yarn winder and the white yarn together, but it's there!

Yarn swift and ball winder in action

And this is what I ended up with:

Hank of Grignasco MerinoSilk and the equivalent balls of yarn

The round ball is my own work (approximately 25% of one hank), the smaller, neato ball is the second 25% of the hank, and the large ball represents the other half of the hank. Winding 75% of the yarn using the swift and ball winder together took maybe 15 minutes – versus over an hour for my hand-wound yarn ball! I love my swift already! By the way that yarn is kitten-soft - you touch it and it feels like petting the softest cat you ever had!

So, after finally having the yarn in usable condition, I immediately cast on for the Hanami stole. Boy, the cast-on row must have taken me a good 30 minutes or more – you have to slip a bead onto every other stitch with a tiny crochet hook. After about 20 beads I had the technique down, but I still had to proceed very carefully.

This is the first time I am actually using lace-weight yarn, and I was constantly afraid to either tear it (I’m a tight knitter by nature), or that it would slip off my needles (slick Addis). Those first few rows were downright nerve-wrecking!

Can you see the beads in the cast-on row?

These are the cast-on row and the first 6 garter-stitch rows, with a lifeline after row 5. (The lifeline is the yellow cotton thread just underneath the cable and is thicker than the yarn itself. Ready for the basket-weave pattern.

And some good news: the lace-making retreat organized by the Lacis Museum will take place! You can now sign up for individual days, instead of for the whole retreat.

Take care!

New Acquisitions

Friday's mail brought 2 great books: Oma’s Strickgeheimnisse (Grandma's Knitting Secrets) by Eichenseer, Grill and Krön, and Poems of Color by Wendy Keele.

My two new books

Poems of Color describes the history of the beautiful, colorful Bohus sweaters, the techniques, and includes some patterns, with colored charts. A great resource and interesting reading.

Oma’s Strickgeheimnisse is a German book of patterns, most of which date back to the years 1815 to 1870. Each pattern is charted only (with German chart symbols, of course – clearly explained in the front of the book), and – this is very helpful – provides separate charts for knitting it in the round and back-and-forth.

This pattern is called Perlmutter-Fächer (Mother-of-Pearl Fan)

The photos are clear, and in some cases variations are shown:

This pattern is called Floras Gaben (= Flora’s Bounty)

The top version was knitted in the round, the bottom version was knit back-and-forth.

The patterns are grouped into Strips, Ladders, Flowers and Leaves, Bugs and Beetles and so on, obviously named after things encountered in everyday life on the farms and in the villages, where most of the patterns evolved.

So far I’ve knitted 4 Orenburg Sample shawls, here is the latest:

This is the Fish Eyes pattern, plus Border 1 from the book

The Gossamer Webs Design Collection by Galina Khmeleva

I also finished my Something Teal cardigan:

Something Dark Teal cardigan

The sleeves are 3/4 sleeves. I might re-do the border again, because it looks rather stretched, but for now I'm declaring it done. The pattern is Something Red by Wendy Barnard. More details are on my Ravelry page (gjabouri).

The bad news is that the Lacis Museum’s “A Week of Lacemaking” Urban Retreat might not take place. Apparently they are still short a few people (some who signed up canceled due to the bad economy) – so if you were thinking about joining (and can still afford it), please sign up.

Take care.

Orenburg Shawl Samples - the beginning

Yesterday I started knitting my first Orenburg “Sample Shawl”, and finished it today. (The sample shawl pattern is in both the Gossamer Webs Design Collection and in Gossamer Webs - Orenburg Lace Shawls both by Galina Khmeleva). I made some errors, but I got the basics down. I did not bother to correct them since for this first sample I was mainly interested in the border technique.

Orenburg Sample Shawl 1 - plain center

If you look at the picture you can see that up to the yellow line, I kept slipping the first stitch of the inner border. Sometimes I knit 3 stitches from the outside border when I was supposed to only knit 2 and vice versa. If you look at the 2 holes traversed by the yellow line on the left side you will see that in that area the sequence of holes is incorrect. Every now and then I was in a knitting trance and forgot the last YO of the center stitches ... which is why I lost one stitch in the top center row, so I had to fudge the top border.

The grafting technique was new to me: Slip one stitch to the left needle, slip the second stitch on the left needle through the slipped stitch and slip to right needle, then do v.v. for the second stitch on the right needle, and so on, until you only have one stitch left, which you then tie off with a knot. I’m not fond of knots, so will have to ask Galina at the upcoming workshop whether there is an alternative.

On to the next sample - I want to try out as many of the traditional patterns in the book as possible before the workshop.

Till next time.

Summer Sampler Stole finished !!

A few days ago I finished the Summer Stole Stole by Bad Cat Designs, soaked it for a few hours and then blocked it (took me about one hour), crawling around it on the floor and sticking needles into a blocking board and a towel, and yet another towel. It turned out a bit bigger than I expected, even though I knew it would be larger than a "normal" lace stole, because I used fingering-weight wool and 5 mm needles. It weighs 14 7/8 oz and measures about 27.5" by 8'. Thank you, BadCat, for a lovely design and a great knit-along!

Here it is blocking ...

and here it is afterwards:

I am glad this project is done - now I can start knitting samples in the Orenburg lace style in preparation for the lace-making retreat at the Lacis Museum in February.

On another note: I have started to make my own kefir - it is delicious! I received the kefir-grains from someone living near-by through a kefir-grains-sharing website. I was really surprised how fast the milk turned into kefir - it only takes about 24 hours.

Till next time.

Visitors

I mentioned before that we have a feral chicken in the neighborhood, who frequently visits our back yard (probably because of the abundance of our organically grown bugs) ... Well, after returning from our road trip, we saw her once, then she disappeared. We already resigned ourselves to the sad fact that she finally must have become dinner for a hawk that had been eying her for a while, when she showed up again last Thursday. And she brought company:

Nice-looking rooster, eh?

As you can see he’s quite handsome: nice, shiny colors, and, of course, a healthy “cock-a-doodle-doo”. He’s much more scared of us than Henrietta, but like her, ignores the cats. Where this rooster came from, we have no idea – we live in suburbia. I'm wondering whether Henrietta visits a coop in the neighborhood, and breaks out other chickens. We don't know yet what to do with him, because we certainly do not want to breed chickens in our backyard. (Does anyone know any good rooster-catching techniques?) But they do make a good-looking pair:

Henrietta and Henry

Our deck is almost done: the sides still need to be enclosed, but we are already using it. It is much bigger than the old deck, and much sturdier:

New deck

Oh, and our old water heater broke – it started leaking, so we replaced it with a boiler – which is much more efficient. I hadn’t realized how corroded the old one was – now it takes me only a third of the time to fill my bathtub.

And on the knitting front: I hope to finish my Summer Sampler Study Stole today!! During the last two weeks I forced myself to just keep knitting the border and not stop every time I become bored with it (which would happen very quickly). It's fairly big, because I used Alpaca fingering-weight yarn, not lace yarn, so I will have to block it on the carpet. Then I’ll move on to work on Orenburg-style shawl samples to prepare for the workshop at the Lacis Museum in February.

And we just found out that my father-in-law will be visiting us in 10 days ... off to do some cleaning ;-)

Till next time.

Roadtrip! Part 2 - the way home - wow!

So on Tuesday morning we headed back towards home, but decided to take a more northern and, according to the map, more scenic route, following Hwy 160 West towards Durango. Now the scenery changed from interesting to gorgeous! The first part from Fort Garland to about Monte Vista was still flat country (don't know why this is marked as a scenic route on the map), but the part from Monte Vista to Pagosa Springs is beautiful! That’s the Colorado I remembered from long ago when I lived there! The view from Wolf Creek Pass is fantastic!

View from Wolf Creek Pass

From Cortez we took Hwy 491, because we figured Blanding would be our overnight stop. It was only about 3:30 when we arrived there, so we decided to squeeze in a visit to the Bridges National Monument nearby. This alone would have made the trip worthwhile! Seeing those natural bridges, carved out of the rock by the water is awe-inspiring.

Sipapu Bridge in Bridges National Park

We walked a little bit on the trail to the Kachina bridge and found a quiet spot to just sit and listen to the silence. You could hear nothing except the buzzing of an occasional fly and the swish of some swallows’ wings as they sliced through the air. I could have stayed there for a very long time, just enjoying nature. There was no sound to be heard!

We also happened upon these mysterious rock carvings ...

... actually these are shoeprints in the sand on one of the steps of the Kachina Bridge trail – rotate the image 90 degrees counter-clockwise to see how it actually looks.

Then we drove back to Blanding to find a room for the night. We stayed at a new Super 8 motel, which was very nice, room-wise, but there were dogs barking almost all night (one was in a yard next to the motel). So far we hadn't had much luck with hotels! The next day (Wednesday) we drove towards Kayenta, which of course passes through Monument Valley.

First view of Monument Valley as you approach it

Ever since I saw these rock formations in old Westerns as a kid, I wanted to see them. They are far more impressive in natura! Absolutely fantastic! We drove the 17-mile loop inside Monument Valley, which gets you close to these formations – the best view being Artists’ Point:

Monument Valley - "The Mittens"

Monument Valley

Monument Valley - Artist's View

The "Artist's View" absolutely deserves its name. You will also see a lot of these:

“Open” ... but what are they selling?

We continued on our northern route towards Page (we deliberately avoided the Grand Canyon, because we want to cover it on a separate trip), passing Lake Powel – a beautiful contrast of the deep blue lake vs. the pale red and whitish cliffs), the Grand Staircase and the Vermilion Cliffs, heading for St. George. In order to get to St. George, however, and staying on Hwy 89 (and then Hwy 9) you have to pass through Zion National Park. We did not even want to go there, but since it would have meant backtracking for quite a bit, we grudgingly paid the hefty $25 entrance fee. It turned out to be the best $25 we spent! Zion National Park is gorgeous. Not only are there fantastic rock/mountain formations, but also lots of trees, so you have wonderful red-green contrasts. This park is absolutely worth a trip for its own sake! I had never heard of Zion National Park before – it is a gem! No pictures, because we were too busy being awed by the beauty of it!

It’s too bad we only had a week for our whole trip. So many areas would have justified staying longer and really exploring them further Since it was still daylight when we arrived at St. George, we decided to push on to Las Vegas, where we arrived at about 8:00 pm. We originally wanted to stay at the Luxor, but unbelievably, it was booked solid. So we went next door to the Excalibur, where we got a nice room with a view of the Strip. Here we had the best sleep of the entire trip! The room was quiet, and the constant hum of the traffic on the strip lulls you to sleep easily (we were on the 24th floor). We're not gamblers, but like everybody else, we love the buffets – so after sleeping in a bit, we had a hearty breakfast, and then drove the rest of the way home, via Hwy 15 to Barstow, then changing to Hwy 58. After passing Tehachapi and Bakersfield again, we continued on Hwy 58 west to Hwy 101, because we wanted to try a different route.

There is a stretch of about 40 miles on Hwy 58 after McKittrick that is the most desolate country I’ve ever seen. You see occasional pumps, but the whole area looks almost sinister. It changes again for the better the closer you get to Hwy 101. We even saw a Golden Eagle sitting on a tree right next to the road! Once we reached Hwy 101 it was just a matter of rolling off the miles back to the Bay Area.

Overall, this was a very nice trip. We didn’t plan much ahead - our objective was to look at the property. Bridges National Park, Monument Valley, and Zion National Park are each worth a lot more time than we had. There were countless roads leading to other parks, national monuments, Indian ruins, and other sites, which we simply had to pass by.

Till next time!