In Dreams KAL Project (part 2)

I thought I would post an update on the In Dreams shawl I started and post a couple of pics. I really debated with myself wether or not to even post it because I have decided that it would be best to take out what I have done so far and start over, eekkk. I did make a couple of errors along the way that are not that noticeable so I thought I could keep going and it would turn out fine. However I have also missed one very crucial direction in the pattern that has been causing my stitch counts to be wrong every other row. So by restarting this project I will be more aware of all those oopsie spots I made and hopefully do it better the second time around. But I won't be restarting this project till after Christmas because the holidays are always so hectic for me in the first place and this project requires my full attention. So below are a couple of pics to show you where it is at the moment.

Ok I had trouble placing this pics side by side so the one on top here is of the whole thing so far. The one underneath shows the up close detail of the beads, you can notice that some of them are hiding behind my stitches. This was one of my mistakes that I thought I could fix during the blocking stage. I discovered I was placing the beads on wrong by knitting the stitch first then placing the bead when I should have placing the bead first then knitting the stitch. So this should work out much better when I re start this project in January of 2012 :)

In Dreams KAL Project (part 1)

The current project I am working on is a lace shawl entitled In Dreams. This is a mystery shawl Knit A Long (KAL), which means you don't know what the design looks like before you knit it, that's the mystery. There are clues given at timed intervals so the design is revealed as each clue is worked. The design is by Susan Pandorf of Sunflower Designs and was inspired by Galadriel's crown from the movie Lord of the Rings.

I decided to spin my own yarn for this project so the picture below is of the fiber I decided to use. This is a 50/50 blend of Merino/Silk, I love the way it shines.

This shawl is going to have a ton of beads, 5,000 I think is the right number so below are the beads I have chosen for it. I have the beads laying on top of the fiber to give you an idea of how they will go together.

I am using my Schacht double treadle wheel for this and below you can see the lace singles on the bobbin. I will be making a lace weight 2-ply yarn.

In this next picture I have placed a green sewing machine thread to the left of my spun single so you can get an idea of the size of the single.

This is the plied yarn drying on my homemade pvc niddy noddy for blocking, (setting the twist).

For those of you who read this who are not spinners, after spinning the yarn I wind it onto a niddy noddy and then wash it and set it out to dry. Before making a niddy noody from pvc I would wind it onto a wooden one to make a skein. I would then take the skein and wash it and would have to dry it under tension to set the twist. By making the pvc one I can skein it, wash it, and set it all on the niddy noddy in fewer steps.

I am currently half way through knitting the first clue and will post pictures after clue one is complete, in part 2 of this post.

My new Wheel

This is a Great Wheel that was given to me by a wonderful friend this week. This wheel has been in her family since the wheel was new. She gave it to me because, due to health issues she has to move to a one level home and won't have the room to keep it and she choose me because she knew I would love her and take good care of her forever.

She is in pretty good condition considering her age but is not currently is working order. She does show signs of being repaired throughout the years and I have a few pictures to show you what I mean.

In this photo if you look carefully at the two spokes you can see the one on the left, as compared to the one on the right, looks hand carved. Of the ten spokes on the wheel three of them are like the one on the left. I found something similar on the legs.

Above you can see the leg on the left has decorative turning and the one on the right does not. This leg on the right looks hand carved like the replacement spokes and I am guessing the repairs to all the wood were done by the same person. I could find no identifying markings as to identify the maker of this wheel. The next repair I found is in the following picture.

What you're looking at above is the bottom of the large wheel, it appears as though the wheel had split at some point and was repaired with these three thin sheets of metal that were riveted to the wood to keep the wood from splitting further. What I have noticed about this repair is that even though the metal is very thin it has added weight to this section of the wheel and it will move the wheel around until these metal sheets are on the bottom. So the wheel is now off balance.

This next photo shows why the wheel isn't in working order.

The peg sticking up on the top left hand side is called a maiden, there is supposed to be two of these and in between the two maiden is supposed to be a spindle, without these parts the wheel won't work. Another interesting thing you can see in this photo is hanging from the maiden by a string that has been tied at the top, it looks like a miniature base ball bat and I honestly have no idea what this would have been used for. It doesn't look as though any part of this wheel has been banged on by a little bat such as pegs being tapped into place so this is a mystery to me. Perhaps someone reading this might know what it is and what it is for and mention it in the comments.

I would like to get this wheel in working order again if at all possible. I do have a few messages out to people who do wood turning and I am just waiting for replies now so I will post any progress reports as I get them. Thanks for reading and if anyone out there has information that might help with getting this beauty working again please leave a comment.

Wow, where does the time go. I suppose during my long hiatus from the blogging sphere I have lost readers I previously might have had. Well, I guess that's ok and I'll just have to deal with it but hay, I blog mainly for myself anyway as a way to journal my crafting activities. I have been crafting, just not blogging. Sometimes the necessities in life take up a little more time than one expects and takes away from the things one really loves to do, as is in my case. At any rate, here is what I'm doing now, I won't go into all the things that have been keeping me from blogging like, finding facebook (spend way too much time there), my handspun yarn business, homeschooling, wait, I said I wouldn't go there, so where was I.... oh yeah what I'm doing now.

Over on the Ravelry site I joined a Lord of the Rings Mystery Shawl KAL (Knit-A-Long) and I am having a lot of fun with that. Here is what I have done so far without giving to much away, I don't want to spoil the mystery for those who might not be as far along.

Clue number one came out on February 12th, By the way it is not to late to sign up for this project and you can find all the details you need here

This particular shawl is only one in a Lord of the Rings series so if your a LOTR fan like me you might want to check this out.

This project is called the Evenstar, the pendant worn by Arwen Evenstar in the movie played by Liv Tyler.

I have spun up a light lace weight yarn from a 50/50 blend of Mulberry silk/Merino for this project, the silk gives off a beautiful shine that I think will be perfect for this shawl.

I have also knit up the swatch but I didn't use the good yarn for the swatch, I used crochet thread instead.
I had a couple of reasons for doing this. This swatch was my 4th attempt to get it right so I didn't want to mess up the good yarn. Also the crochet thread is the same WPI as my handspun so it would work for obtaining the gauge. I will be using size 4 needles instead of the size 3 prescribed. I also wanted to play around with bead placement to see if I even wanted beads. My real camera is not working so I had to use my camera phone and it doesn't get close enough for you see the beads in this picture but they are there, trust me.

The flower on the bottom has 4 beads, one in the center of each flower section, (don't like this at all). The two flowers on the upper right and left each have one single bead right in the center where a hole is but I placed these beads on different stitches to see what the difference would be and here is what I found.

The one on the left- I placed the bead in the 4th increase stitch on the pearl side prior to purling the stitch, now the bead wound up on the purl side so I had to push it through the hole in order for it to be on the front but the bead is directly in the center of the hole.

The one on the right-I placed the bead on the 5th increase stitch on the purl side prior the purling the stitch and the bead wound up on the front side not the purl side, however it is not perfectly centered and has a rightward slant which I don't like.

I have not yet decided if I like any beads at all at this point but I hope that if anyone else out there is doing this KAL that wanted to place beads that this post is somewhat helpful to you.

Cheers

Punch Needle Embroidery Part II

This photo above is of a quilt pattern called Autumn Eyes by Toni Whitney. I purchased this pattern last year around August with the intentions of making this 32" X 31" wall hanging as a Christmas gift for my mother who loves all things bears. But as I was hunting for just the right fabrics for this beauty I was having trouble finding what I wanted and time was quickly running out for getting this ambitious project done in time for Christmas giving.

The Photo below is of the pattern and as you can see there are many tiny pieces to be put together, when I first pulled the pattern out of the package I gasped for air and though to myself, I must be nuts.
I quickly realized that without finding just the right fabrics for this quilt I wasn't going to get it done for Christmas and needed to choose another project I could do in the time that was left and that's when it hit me, I could do this in punch needle in half the time if I made it smaller and turned it into a pillow that would match the quilt when I do finish that.

So I took the pattern to my local Kinko's and had it shrunk to a 12" x 12" image and started my hunt for the yarns the same day. It took me a month to gather all the yarns from many stores, I traveled miles just to find what I was looking for and when we went on vacation to visit family in Iowa I found most of the yarn in a tiny store there that carried just what I was looking for. I selected in all, over 100 different colors for this piece and most of those were hand dyed wools that were variegated.

Once I had all the yarns I chose an even weave background fabric in a light green shade that would work well with all the colors of yarn. I taped the paper pattern to my sliding glass door on a sunny day and then taped the fabric over that and using a black quilting pen I traced the entire pattern to the fabric, this took hours. Once I was done with that I stretched the fabric over stretcher bars and stapled it in place. I started in the center and worked my out working one section at a time till it was all done and picture below is of the finished pillow.


This was a great project and I plan to do many more Punch Needle projects in the future. By the way I now have all the fabric for the quilt and working on that this year so stay tuned for the blogs on the matching quilt.

Thanks for reading.

June 19,2009

Last year I went into my LYS and found on display a craft I'd only heard about but never had the opportunity to see up close, Punch Needle Embroidery. This is very easy to do and works up quickly. Above is a close up of my first project and below is my first project agian but with the needle used to create this included. The was what I did for practice before I started the project I purchased.

All I did was find a picture I liked and traced the pattern onto a scrap piece of muslin by taping it all to my sliding glass door and using a quilting marker to trace with. For the center, leaf, I used a variegated DMC floss that I had left over from a cross stitch project and I am very happy with the result. The deep red inside border and black outer border are also DMC leftovers.

The needle is hollow and threaded from the bottom of the handle up through the top, there is an eye at the top of the needle you pull the thread through. After that all you do is punch down through the fabric and up again until the whole picture is filled in. The project is worked from the back, this leaves loops on the front, (right side). I know these aren't the best pictures but you may be able to see the loops in the top photo. These pictures were taken last year before I got my new camera. This whole project took me only an hour from start to finish and is a lot of fun!

I liked it so much in fact, that I skipped doing the project I first purchased and jumped into something a little more challenging. But I will save this for the next post so I can get some better pictures. Sorry for the suspence ;)

June 3, 2009

While my shoulder is healing the spinning production has come to a screeching halt which is very bad for business. Thankfully the customers that had orders in are patient and understanding of my situation. I am however, able to knit so I though I would update you on a project I haven't updated in a while, the afghan.

I have three of the 6 panels completed and I'm half way done with the 4th. The last two panels are cables so I have saved these two for last because I love doing cables and thought I would save the best for last. Below are the pictures of the completed panels.


This first panel is called the Moss Stitch, the picture was taken before it was finished.

This second one is called Little Shells.

The last one is called Diamond Net Mask.

I also started a new craft last year before Christmas that I have not yet blogged about so my next post will be about that, Punch Needle Embroidery.