It has been a while

Why do I feel as if I have been saying this again and again? Probably because I have. But this is a travel story, not something boring about my fiber doings, although I will sneak in some of that at the end.

There is so much to write about that I have been overwhelmed as to where to start. But as with all things, the best place to start is just to start with something. So today, I am going to show you the Sydney Opera House from many different angles. I could write this as a story but then you'd see the Opera House over and over again. Today, if you don't want to see it or read about it, you can just skip it and I will not talk about it again.

I have always loved the Sydney Opera House. It is so iconic, so unique and such a graceful building. On our first day in Sydney, we took a tour of the Opera House. You can't photograph many parts of the Opera House for privacy reasons. There are multiple shows a day and there are people getting ready for the shows in the various theaters. Privacy laws say that you can't photograph them because they haven't given consent. There isn't anonymity in numbers as there are usually only one or two people and it isn't a public place like a park. In a way, I understand it but I didn't like not being able to take pictures.

The concrete ribs that hold up the roof have their own beauty as do the tiles on the roof which alternate between shiny and matte. The red theater - one of the smaller ones- had no one working in it so I could take photos. The Opera House rents out this theater and some of the others to both groups (theater, music, etc.) and to private citizens. You could have your reception, your kid's birthday party, a bar/bat mitzvah in this theater.

One of my disappointments was that we couldn't see the theater on the left in the above photo. It is one of the two main ones. There was a singer rehearsing in there who refused to let visitors through as it disturbed her. But, as a consolation, we were able to go through the backstage and were able to see the huge space underneath, where trucks can drive in with sets and music instruments and the like. We saw boxes labeled with the name of symphony orchestras. And we saw the sets for Carmen which was one of the operas that were being staged. In fact, it was the one that night so we saw pieces downstairs and then saw it being raised on a giant elevator to the actual stage when we were up in the theater. Very cool. The theaters don't have wings to store sets and other pieces so there is a lot of movement up and down. There is a giant turntable so they can have sets back-to-back and rotate them into position as needed.

The bottom photo shows the steps leading up. The first time I was in Sydney, I ran up the steps. i also ran up to the Harbor Bridge and ran across this. That was 20 years ago. This time, I just walked sedately up the steps and also across the bridge. Times and bodies change.

Approaching the Opera House from the Circular Quay side.

We left from the other side and went to the Royal Botanical Garden so this is the view from that side.

On our last day in Sydney, we took the ferry to Manly to see the harbor and see the beaches there. On the way back on the ferry, you get fabulous views of the Opera House from the water with the Sydney skyline behind it.

On another day, we went both under and on the Harbor Bridge. What you see below is the view of the Opera House from underneath the Bridge - on the other side of Circular Quay.

And this is the Opera House from the Bridge itself. One of the things that is amazing about a sunny day in Sydney is how blue the sky and the water is. Coming from a Shanghai winter, it was spectacular. We saw a lot of amazing colored water on this vacation and you'll see that as I post the photos.

I leave you with another view from under the Bridge - one that maybe tries to show it as a ship in sail, which is what it is supposed to be, conceptually.

There is a backstage tour at 7:30 am which I may want to take at some point in the future. That is before anyone is working so it might be possible to take pictures then. But we weren't really motivated to get up and get there at 7:30 given we were on holiday AND coming from China which is 3 hours behind Sydney. Mornings were tough for the first few days.

I think I may do this for the Harbor Bridge also as I have the same variety of photos from different angles. I hope you enjoyed this sort of photo gallery rather than as someone tagging along with us on our travels.

I've been making progress on my Tour de Fleece project from last year. I think I want to finish it before the Tour this year.

This is a spindle I just finished. It was getting heavy and I don't enjoy spinning with a heavy spindle. I took this shot to show the colors that are layered underneath the orange. This is a ply-on-the-fly project - which was the technique I was learning last year. So I am getting a chain ply.

This is what I have left to spin. You can see the spindle I just started. There is going to be a lot of orange before I get to the yellow. The fiber has two large sections of purple and orange with the other colors forming a transition between the two. I wonder what I can make with this that won't look like a clown collar.

Ideas are welcome and will be appreciated.

Thank you for being patient. I will try to post at least a couple of times in short order before things catch up with me and I go back into hibernation from blogging.

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Making multi-colored yarn out of single colored fiber

We spent a half day making lots of multi-colored yarns from a pile of solid colored rovings. I am showing you some pictures of the samples Maggie showed us along with some of my experimentation.

First and simplest in concept is to hold multiple rovings together and spin them. Judith Mackenzie showed us an example of this in a retreat I attended last year. I will talk some more about that later as I experiment with that technique myself. But Maggie's ideas are simpler. You can hold the rovings together and spin as is - across the colors or you can predraft them together. Predrafting blends them a bit more as the colors thin out. You can also predraft more of one color to get more of it in the mix. These two pictures are of a sample knitted like this.

Another option, to create an ikat effect, is to plan the lengths of the colors in the yarn you want. Maggie had a knitted sample like this but I am showing a woven one. The warp was spun with longer lengths of the white with the other colors having shorter lengths. The weft was spun with very short bits of the other colors so they wouldn't pool on the shorter width of the scarf. One way to get really short bursts of color is to spin them over the fold. Maggie had a mosaic knit piece that looked as if it had been knitted with a Noro-like yarn. What she had done was spin that with solid colors spun from the fold so each color was a very short length in the final yarn. This made each part of the mosaic that showed have a different color in it. Very cool.

This next set of samples was to do a gradual change of color by spinning sections of solid color with transitions planned by holding the two colors together. The advantage of this, if you want to plan it out, is that you can spin longer lengths of color for the body of a sweater and shorter lengths for the sleeves so you can get the same width of the various colors in both sections. Also, for a triangular shawl, you can increase the lengths of each color segment to accommodate the shawl's getting wider from top to bottom.

If you want to spin for socks and want even stripes, you can measure out the length of each color and spin your singles in the same color sequence. The key here is rewinding the bobbins and starting to ply from the beginning so that the colors match up better and slight variations in the length will become color transitions.

Now, similar to Judith's technique, Maggie showed us two samples. One was spun across the web, worsted, with multiple colors. You hold them together and spin across the colors to get lengths of each color in the single. You can also spin woollen long draw by spinning one for a while and then another.
The sample below is a 3 ply spun this way, with more periwinkle than the other colors.

The sample below is a 2-ply spun with 1 color more than the other. It was spun long draw with more periwinkle than the other colors. 3-ply tends to blend the colors more than 2-ply.

Blurry pictures of the entire samples below. Sorry about the quality of the photographs. Maggie was showing them to us, talking about them and then passing them around. So I was listening and observing and photographing as they came around.

 I spun some singles in various ways but then I picked a bunch of colors and drum carded them together. Below you can see a sample skein I made by woollen spinning 3 different colored rovings and plying them together. When I ran out of one, I continued with just a 2-ply. You can see a bit of it where it is just brown and gold.

The drum carding was fun. This blends the colors more and gives you little heathered bits of color as you spin.

One side of the batt.

The other side of the batt.

I then spun a single, woollen long draw, from the batt. I plied that single with my other colored singles and even some worsted that we had been spinning when we were talking about worsted-spun yarn. So there are a lot of colors in this skein. The colors move from one to another with varying lengths based on what I was trying.

This was one of the most fun parts of the class. We played a lot with colors. I have some solid colored roving from Judith's class and I plan to play some more to practice these techniques. I hope this gives you ideas and inspires you to play with some of the fiber you have. You might not like a color by itself and you can spark it up or subdue it by mixing it in various ways with other colors. You could card them together, of course, but you don't need to.

Dyeing FO!

All done and drying. There is about 800-900 yds of fingering weight yarn which should be enough for almost any project.

I now return you to the regularly scheduled programming

Hot off the presses!

I'm not really printing anything but the yarn is hot! You can see the steam rising from the violet yarn which is still soaking in a vinegar bath as it cools down. Blue is very hard to set and takes a lot of vinegar and a lot of heat to get it to fix. You can see some breaking of the violet but I think it is nice and will blend with the magenta below.
The magenta has a spot of blue-violet in it. The color is light in this picture because I used a flash on it. It is darker than it appears. It is also soaking in a vinegar bath but it is a cool bath.
Lastly, there are the yellow and chartreuse. I made the chartreuse a little darker and the magenta a little lighter than my samples so that there was less of a jump between the two.

These were all dyed with Wilton's icing colors. The yellow is straight Lemon Yellow. The chartreuse is Lemon with a tiny bit of Leaf Green. The Magenta (I changed up the formula) is Christmas Red with an almost equal amount of Sky Blue and the Violet is straight up Violet.

I was very efficient with respect to energy. I boiled one pot of water and used it to start the dyeing process. I took 250 ml and dissolved the dye and added it with vinegar to the Pyrex container I used for dyeing. After that, I think I added another cup of water that was boiled on the stove. The rest was just reusing the same water. After the dye exhausted, I took some water out and dissolved the next color recipe and added more vinegar. I had to throw out some hot water at the end as the volume got too much for the dish. That was because of the vinegar. The magenta and violet took a lot of vinegar to exhaust.

I heated for 2 mins at a time at full power, let it rest for 2-5 mins and heated it up again. Tongs were great for mixing and moving the yarn around in the water.

The yarn is Henry's Attic Monty - a fingering weight yarn. I have 238 gms which I divided up into 3 60 gm skeins and 1 58 gm skein. I wanted to dye them all as one giant skein but winding mini-skeins all joined together tried my patience. I am going to splice the colors together so there are no joins.

This will become a lace shawl that transitions from the yellow to the chartreuse to the magenta and finally the violet.

Color for a drab February

I am in the mood for color. I think it is because of the drab grey and brown landscape outside. So let's start with the brights. This is the color combination I have picked out for a Color Affection shawl. I love this designer's patterns. You'll see...I had a couple of skeins of Tosh Light Merino but decided I would rather put them towards this shawl. So I traded in Antique White for the two colors of Ella Rae on the left side. The right blue yarn is Lorna's Laces.

Next up is the current project. I had some self-striping sock yarn and combined it with some dark navy to make a Stripe Study shawl. This is by the same designer as the Color Affection Shawl. I am quite pleased with the way this is turning out. I am almost out of the self-striping yarn so it will be all blue from this point on.
Lastly, I have an FO to report. I finished this shawl - a Maluka shawl - that I made out of handspun BFL/silk (the darker red on top) and a Claudia's Handpaints in Paprika for the lace section. The handspun was from Corgi Hill, called Poppy.
The handspun was easy to knit. It was a 3 ply, spun worsted. I was pleased with how even it was. I was worried about it being thick and thin but there were only a few spots like that. Given that I am coming up on my first anniversary of spinning seriously, I can't complain.

A lesson in humility

Happy New Year! Here's to another year of togetherness and fiberlicious fun!

I have been knitting for decades. I can't even remember a time when I didn't knit easily. Therefore, while there are many patterns that I find challenging, it usually only takes me a few tries to figure it out. In some cases, I was misunderstanding what was intended and in other cases, the pattern was wrong. Therefore, I approach knitting with confidence and maybe a sense of arrogance. Until now...

The designer of this scarf says "This is a very challenging knit for someone unfamiliar with brioche knitting. It uses 2-color brioche and reversible increases and decreases. I would advise first downloading the free BEBEB scarf pattern to practice 2-color brioche knitting before purchasing this pattern.". I read that. I also have knitted 2-color brioche - I made a 2-color hat knit in the round as my very first brioche knitting project. It has increases and decreases. I have also knitted a whole garment in brioche knitting - with increases and decreases. Therefore, I wasn't too concerned about the scarf.

I even thought I could knit it while traveling. I knocked that off the list pretty quickly when I discovered that I had to spread out the pattern while beginning. This was not very practical on the train or plane. So I waited till I was at my aunt's house in Bengaluru before I started it. I spread the pattern on the bed and curled up to begin. And I cast on, and ripped, and cast on and ripped and cast on and ripped. First I ended up with 35 sts after casting on with 36. Again and again. Then I tried casting on with 37 and ended up with 37. Persistence and obstinacy are my middle names and so I kept at it. I eventually figured out why I was losing that 1 st.

Then I learned that what I thought was meant by an abbreviation is not exactly what someone else means by that very sequence of words. sigh Rip... The next problem was that the 2 colors I was using can be very close at times. So I was getting them mixed up. sigh Rip... After that I mixed up the knit and purl rows. sigh Rip Fortunately, each of these failures only meant that I was ripping out a few rows at a time. Eventually, I was well on my way to getting through the first repeat of the pattern. Yay!

Pride comes before a fall.... I thought I could now work on it on the plane trip back. So I packed it in my carry-on baggage. bad move The security guard at Dubai airport decided to inspect my needles and pulled a bunch of the sts off the needles. Plus I lost one of my lovely Holtz and Stein ebony needles along the way. sigh I wasn't far enough along to attempt to fix the problem on the plane. The issue with brioche knitting is that it looks like a mess at first. It takes a few rows before you get to the point where you can see what is going on. Rip

But all's well that ends well. I got past those problems. I am now even repairing dropped sts along the way without ripping. And therefore ta-da!

Here is the variegated side of the scarf. Isn't it pretty?

And the solid side....

It isn't blocked and therefore it is a little wonky. It is a pretty easy knit once you get the hang of the pattern. You have to keep track of where you are and make sure you aren't dropping sts on the decreases where you are working with 4 sts at once. But other than that, it is fun and I'm quite happy with the results. The colors are not me but the yarn is soft and warm. It will make someone a lovely scarf.

And it got me back into knitting in a big way. I am enjoying knitting again and I have high hopes for 2011! The morals of this story are what I tell my students all the time:

1. Don't be afraid to rip. Each time you do that, it is a learning experience yeah right..
2. Don't assume. Read the instructions and the abbreviations.
3. Pay attention to your knitting
4. Be confident. It is just knitting. You can figure it out. There is nothing too hard in knitting.
   

Flowers, at last!

This is going to be a photo heavy post. My garden is blooming! It has woken up at last from its winter's slumber. I had a few hyacinths earlier but the rest of it was just brown. But we had warmer weather last week and poof! the world is alive again. Wordsworth's lines about daffodils are ringing in my ears, especially the lines:

"When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;"...
"They stretch'd in never-ending line"

It describes my forsythia so perfectly. So without further ado, here is my garden this week.

This is a weeping cherry. The only sad part about this tree is that its blooms are very short-lived. In a week they will be gone.A close-up of the cherry blossoms or 'sakura' in Japanese.
There the the glorious forsythia bushes. I love forsythia. They make spring in the Northeast arrive with a BANG! Everywhere you look, there is that lovely yellow color shouting "Spring is here". They aren't like the crocuses and the hyacinths that whisper the arrival of spring. The forsythias proclaim it in the town square, in every street and corner.There are my daffodils. Just a few at present, but there will be more soon. My daffodils bloom a bit later. They were advertised as having pink centers but as you can see, they aren't pink. They are yellow. I love them anyway.
The hyacinths are almost done. Here's one that still looks good. Hyacinths have the most wonderful scent. I' was inhaling it as I planted pansies last weekend. I will have photos of the pansies in a couple of weeks once they have settled in and are blooming in earnest.

I also finished a few things, or thought I did. Here's the necklace. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Wait? What is that loop doing off on the side?
After I finished securing the clasp , I noticed one of the knots had come loose! I've spent much time thinking about how to fix it and have come to the conclusion that I have to undo the twist above the cone and secure the loop back into the circle holding the other strands under the cone. I tried a few fudges but nothing seems to work. There is no help for it. I am super-gluing the knots before I finish it again.

I added some pearls to the seed beads as the beads by themselves seemed a bit unbalanced relative to the big bead. I am quite happy with the result. Here's close-up of the clasp that has to be undone. You can also see the strand of pearls I added on the bottom here. I wove the pearls through the strands of seed beads to echo the glass filigree on the bead.I also finished a sock. The first of the pair from the Shibui sock yarn. It is lovely. I need to cast on for the second.
A close-up of the stitch pattern on the cuff. You can see the ribbing at the very top of the photo. The broken rib transitions very effectively into a 2x2 rib.

A color story

Thank you to all those who sent me compliments on the ESW, both via the blog and privately.

Yesterday I finished the quilt my mother started. I had picked it up from the lady who quilted it on Saturday and finally found the time to trim the batting and backing and hem the edging. Here is a photo of the completed quilt on my father's bed. As you can see, it fits the bed perfectly as an accent. It is a twin sized quilt on a queen-sized bed, as a point of reference.This photo shows the quilt folded over to show the backing. It is a burgundy color with a dappled/marbled effect. This post is about the color of the backing. At the quilt store, I went through about a dozen colors. My first thought was that with all the colors in the quilt, almost any color would work. We , the quilt store owner and I, knew that the backing needed to be folded over to create the binding so the backing color was very important. We started with black and navy (both solid and these mottled/marbled fabrics). Both of them dulled the colors. We then moved on to browns - from taupe to a deep chocolate. Same effect. We tried greens - deep natural greens. Same problem. We tried other blues. No luck. We started to have more luck as we moved into purples/violets, teal, burgundy and rust. The secondary colors enhanced the colors in the quilt. The rust and the burgundy were the finalists and I felt the burgundy made the whole effect much richer than the rust did. So that won out. The entire experience was a great lesson in color theory and practice.
My original plan was to press out the seam allowance on the last set of blocks and then attach a binding as usual. However, when I went to press out the seam allowance, I found that in a large number of cases, the seam allowance was caught in the seams attaching the blocks to each other. Since they were hand-pieced around a paper template, it was easy to catch the allowance in the stitches. That plan, therefore, went out the window. I decided to leave the seam allowance folded down and fold over the backing to create a binding. I trimmed the batting to an inch and the backing to 1.5" beyond the quilt edge. Then I folded over the backing and doubled up the batting and hemmed the backing onto the squares overlapping by 1/16". I am pretty sure our eyes can't see that missing 1/16" on the last set of squares around the perimeter. But I leave that to you to judge from the closeup of the binding below.
I folded over the batting because it creates a nice rolled, corded edge. One thing that happens with batting, especially on the edge, is that it gets compressed over time. I'm hoping that this corded edge will stay plump and fluffy. This is a closeup of the quilting. The quilter did a great job of the quilting although it is a very simple meander to keep the focus on the colors and patterns.It is a relief to me to finish this because I've felt that it was something my mother entrusted to me to finish. I wanted to do justice to the work she put into it and initially I felt that meant finishing it by hand. Once I came to terms with the fact that she would have wanted it used, rather than sitting mouldering in my closet, it was a task that needed to be completed. I have never hired someone to sew something and finding the right person was a bit of a challenge. I was lucky in that I found two wonderful people. Kathie who owns the Quilt Basket, and Debbie Brown, the quilter, both took a personal interest in the quilt and gave me sound advice. I am very grateful to both of them for their assistance.