Why do I keep calling it a baby blanket?

Update: I hit publish before I realized that I hadn't provided finished pictures of the zippered hoodie or the sock yarn!

 From left to right: the 3 ply sock yarn, the 2 ply from the remnants of the 2 bobbins, and the 2 ply from the last bobbin that had twist added to it and then it was plied on itself. I think I need to cut down on the plying twist in the sock yarn in the future.

The zippered hoodie with zipper sewn in and blocked. The i-cord edge is rolling. I think I am going to put a thin cord into the edge on the hood and ignore the others - pretend they are rolled edges.

I have been weaving on the baby blanket (there I did it again!) and making excellent progress. There are two reasons for that:

1. I am only working on one craft right now - weaving. No knitting or spinning WIPs
2. It is in bulky yarn! 

There are 3 panels and I divided up the colors based on quantity of each and how much I needed for each panel.

 Middle panel.

 Left panel.

Right panel.

So far I am half way through the second panel. I started with the middle panel because it had a red middle section and loops on both sides. The loops are used to join the panels. It is from Weave a No-Sew Baby Blanket from Interweave. The video shows the loops on both sides as Sara Bixler (the weaver) explains the technique. I thought it would be best to start exactly as indicated in the video and then modify for my own purposes. I didn't want loops on the outer edges of my blanket so I am only doing loops on one side on the two outer panels. And yes, this is why keep calling it my baby blanket!

 The warping is pretty fast - again because it is fat yarn. The two white strings on either side of the warp are used to make the loops. Every other weft pick is woven around the strings to create the loops.

 Finished middle panel off the loom. You can see the loops on both sides. The panels have to be joined before the fringes are knotted and the blanket wet-finished.

 Warp for the right side panel. This one has loops only on the left side. So there is only one string. I warped as far as I could do on the right until I ran out of the yarn in the ball and didn't want to go get another ball and tie it on. I am really not looking for symmetry in this blanket as there is so much asymmetry in the colors. The stripes are relatively symmetric and there is a wide horizontal band of a different color in each panel at the same place. In the middle panel, this stripe is red. On the two outer ones it is a violet.

You can see the violet in the photo above. I am much further along and you can't see the blue and red weft stripes any more. They have rolled onto the cloth beam.

I have also been planning my next knitting. As I said earlier, I am supposed to start Flieder. This is the yarn I am planning to use.

However, my brain is not in the mood for something as complex as Flieder. I think I am going to start it but I am also going to start a basic sweater that is mindless. I was going to make up my own but found this lovely one on Ravelry. The neckline is different from what I normally do and so I thought I'd knit it. My gauge is slightly off so I will have to do some calculations anyway.
It is called Grapevine and the designer is Heidi Kirmaier who designs classic elegant patterns.

The yarn that is calling to me to knit it is this color, again in Rowan Calmer. It is called Laurel and it reminds me of the young leaves of trees in the spring.

I still haven't settled on a spinning project. I am torn between spinning a DK with a gradient just to mix up what I've been spinning, or pulling out the Into The Whirled Odds and Ends and doing a random spin. Eventually my brain will tell me what to do. Until then I'm taking a break from spinning.

More fiber-y catchup

I was away in Bengaluru on a business trip for 2.5 weeks. I got a lot of knitting done. Most of the shawl I posted last week was knitted there and on the plane. But I also got the opportunity to go to the SilkIndian store. The silk here comes from cottage industries in the Indian state of Karnataka. Families specialize in various aspects of silk production - from breeding the silkworms to raising them to reeling the silk. Dyeing and spinning are usually factory operations as is weaving. But many Indian silk saris are woven on handlooms.

This weaver is doing a demonstration in an upscale sari shop but that is how traditional Indian saris are woven.

I didn't get to see all this but I got to sit and chat with the two men who run the retail store. You can follow them on FB where they post videos of the yarn and other information.

I bought some yarn and more interestingly, some fiber. I got 2 skeins of their 20/2 spun silk in a gold color. I swatched for Shleeves. I want to make a shawl that I can wear with dressy saris and other outfits in the winter.

That is the yarn on my window sill in the hotel.

The swatch I made and blocked this weekend at my son's place was spot on for the gauge. So I am ready to cast on.

I also bought some silk/linen yarn and some 20/2 spun silk in variegated colors. The silk/linen will be a summer-y top in a loose gauge. The kind of thing you throw on when it gets chilly. The variegated colors are to blend with some other silk yarn I have for woven shawls on the rigid heddle loom.

 Silk and linen yarn.

Two colors of variegated yarn on cones. The bottom one is to go with a blue (kind of turquoise but a bit more blue than turquoise) and the top is to go with a bright orange. They are still wrapped in cellophane which is why they are reflecting the light so much.

The fiber is packed into a brick so I am going to give you some different shots so you can see the colors.

 That is the plain red silk top. I have about 200 gms of it.

 I also got some carded sari silk roving. This is the stuff that sari silk yarn is made of. Judith McKenzie carded sari silk yarn and then spun it loosely to create a more lofty, tweedy yarn in The Spinner's Color Toolbox. Link to Interweave store, if interested. I'm hoping to recreate it without the carding step. I think I will have to ply it with a solid yarn to make it useful but one never knows. I have about 500 gms of this.

This is another shot that shows other colors in the roving. It is very colorful!

I also bought some silk strings. These are just lengths of reeled silk with the glue (sericin) still in them so they stick together. I am thinking of incorporating some of it into jewelry.

There are 10 colors in the package. Each string is one color.

This past weekend I also made some progress on a shawl that I've been knitting on planes for a long time. It is light and portable so I've just been working away on the body. I'm done with it now. I need to pick up sts for the lace border and edging which will get done at home. Then it will go back to being travel knitting. The yarn is Elann's Kid Silk Haze equivalent.  I bought some when they closed their internet store because I had a bunch of credits that I had accumulated. I figured I couldn't go wrong with this yarn! I have 3 balls and did the body with 1. I think I'll use one more in the lace border and edging and have the third for a scarf or something else. The pattern is Katy Jubilee.

Not much spinning going on here but i hope to change that this weekend. I have to weed quite a bit in the garden but won't be able to do much during the day so I'll work on spinning and cleaning and cooking CSA produce.

I am done with the catch-up so from now on, it will be what I've been working on during the week.

I also need to get back to spinning. I am missing it a lot. I haven't spun in over a month!

Fiber news roundup

Somewhere along the way in moving back, I hurt my right shoulder. I have been icing and resting it (remember RICE? Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevataion) and taking an NSAID. But it didn't get better as quickly as it should have (3 weeks and counting) so I went to the doctor and now am getting physical therapy for it. It is healing very well after even two visits, which means that all my TLC did help in keeping it stable vs. getting worse.

Anyway, the reason for the story is that I've been knitting as I can do that while icing and resting it. Spinning wasn't as comfortable. I finished Nymphalidea from Knitty with a bunch of mods. I should have paid attention to the helpful notes in the finished projects before I started but I don't typically read those and I didn't. Part-way through, I realized two things: one, that it was going to be a very l-o-o-n-g shawl if I kept going and two, it was boring. Then I went and looked at the notes to see what mods people had made.

The comments said that the shawl as written is a tough shape to wear and quite a few people had increased the short rows after about 20 wedges to make it more crescent like. I had already knit 30 wedges which is the size of the finished shawl in the pattern. I had more yarn though, so that was part of my plan. I decided to increase the short row sections and then also finish the top and side with an i-cord to make them one long side - another mod someone had made.

I tried following the short row increases as described in the first set of mods but quickly went my own way. I was winging it here as I couldn't really see what the shawl was going to look like on the needles. But I could visualize it.

I liked the way the wider short-row sections brought out the rainbow in the handspun. It is all done but not blocked as my blocking wires are waiting for customs clearance in NY.

Here is a photo of the finished but unblocked shawl.

The purple long section in the middle is what the rainbow looks like with the original short row sections. You can see the difference between that and the second purple section on the left which is made with wider short row sections.

I started another knitting project. I am tired of shawls and thought about knitting a sweater. I have plans for a couple of handspun sweaters but the yarn is also waiting for the customs clearance. So I went with another shawl but with beads I bought at the wholesale notions market in Shanghai. I had the perfect beads for the yarn.

The yarn is spun from a Miss Babs. It is a BFL in a color called Scarlet Ibis, which is not on her site. I bought it at Rhinebeck a few years ago. I spun it worsted on my Tina. It is a 2-ply and quite even. I am making Dragonfly Wings.

Lastly, in the fiber news roundup, I won a spindle bag in the Tour de Fleece in one of my groups. I had deferred getting it till I was back, which also worked for the person donating the prize. She told me I could get any pattern I wanted so I looked around and found this style. It can be sized to fit a water bottle with the top cut off inside. The water bottle provides protection for the spindle. I thought this was a great idea but I wanted to put my smaller Viewtainer inside. That is the 8" one. Nadine made it for me with padding in the case so it can be used for a larger spindle without the Viewtainer.

For some reason, I can't seem to get it to show up properly in line so here's the link to the photos on flckr. I hope it works. I'll test it after I publish. Else I'll have to work something else out. Edited to add: it works!

And that is all for now. I am busy trying to organize the house. I've been cleaning and decluttering the pantry, the kitchen, my closet and some of the other closets. They all needed to be dusted and cleaned so I am organizing and getting rid of stuff at the same time. it is a slow process and will take the entire winter I think to go through the house but it is a good thing to do.

Project Unlayer

I am so sorry for the long silence. After coming back to Shanghai, I went to Istanbul, Turkey on a business trip. When I got back, I had to go to Beijing for a few days. Last weekend, I had the pleasure of hanging with a Raveler. It was extremely hot so we hung out in my apt and knit and spin. So I just didn't have the brain power to blog. But I have accumulated a lot of photos from Istanbul to post. When I have time, you will be inundated!

But I want to talk about our adventure last Sunday. We went out early in the am to avoid the heat. It was above 100F and humid so we planned to hit the yarn store at 10 am when they opened. We met at a Metro station and went to a road where I had seen 2 yarn stores. I think I showed you pictures of these in my Former French Connection post.

At the first one, we walked around and asked a few questions but the people didn't seem to be interested in us. So we left and went to the other one. Here the staff/owners were much more approachable. I had a list of the Chinese names of fibers that a Ravelry group had put together. I pulled it up on my phone and started to ask about wool and silk and cotton. It was wonderful when the lady we were talking to understood what we wanted and started showing us a cotton/silk blend. But neither that nor the bamboo was anything special.

I asked about silk and cashmere but again, we didn't see anything we liked. Then I asked about mink which is a yarn that is sourced from China. The colors of the yarn glowed and both of us were interested. The price was also right. 6 50 gm balls for about $30. I bought a box of 6 balls.

It was packaged in a box.

One thing we noticed was that the wool had a sheep on it. Cotton did not have the famous cottonimal but the mink had a photo of the mink When you open the box, the yarn is inside a clear plastic lid.

The label of the yarn also has a mink, as you can see. The yarn is inside this plastic lid.

I think the spools of thread are for sewing up.

I have been knitting and spinning a bit. I started unlayering the bobbin that I filled with singles when I didn't have my household shipment. The first yarn was the Fiber Optic Autumn Harvest gradient that I already showed you.

The second yarn was the Blackberry to Raspberry gradient which I finished last week.

I have about 550 yds and it is a nice laceweight.

I continued to spin on the Tour de Fleece project but I have decided not to do the ply on the fly any more. It really slows me down and I think it is more efficient to just ply on the wheel later. I also don't like the joins between the cops. If I am joining singles, the joins get hidden in the plying. Here, they show more and I don't like that. But I started plying on this cop, which is the third cop, so I am going to finish this with plying and then start just spinning singles from the next cop onwards.

I am using this project to practice cop building. I have to wind on the single and then wind on the plied yarn. So I can play with a temporary cop and then proper winding.

On to more unlayering: today I spun the second single of the next fiber on that bobbin. This was a Targhee from Sweet Grass that I had spun from the fold. It is not my favorite color and I am not enthralled by the finished product. It is hanging to dry right now but here is the plied yarn on the bobbin. Yes, I spun a single, plied it all and have finished it all today!

There is some brown in there too so maybe it will be OK once it is knitted up. I wanted a fluffy, squishy, thicker yarn and I did succeed in creating that. It is a soft, squeezable yarn.

There is one more fiber on that bobbin which I spun worsted but thick with a loose twist to create a chunky, lofty yarn. I want to make some mittens with it for the winter. It is a Romney from Into the Whirled and I love this color.

The second single of that fiber is the next spinning project. Maybe even as early as this week.

On the knitting front, I started a shawl with the Fiber Optic Autumn Harvest gradient. I played with the color trying to get it right. I don't think I have it with this photo.

I am adding beads I got from one of my Beijing Raveler friends. You can see it here.

I didn't play with the color temperature on this photo and you can see that it is pretty washed out. The gradient is a very saturated colorway and this doesn't do it justice.

It is a small shawl, called Bryce Canyon, meant to be made with one skein of sock yarn. I have 422 yards so it should be enough. I hope to finish it soon and start a shawl with the mink yarn. I need something fairly simple to knit on my next business trip. Knitting something like Bryce Canyon where you need the chart out all the time isn't practical when traveling because you have to keep taking out and putting things back and one can forget something somewhere quite easy.

In between, I did pull out a sock that I had started years ago and finished the first sock. I have not started the second one as I am finding it rather boring. But I should start it so it will be there for emergencies.

I hope to do another travelogue this week finishing up the Beijing trip so I can go on to Istanbul.

The shawl is complete!

I bound off the green shawl yesterday and blocked it. I used a crochet bind off like a doily. You crochet a group of sts together and link them with a crocheted chain. I used a 7 st chain and bound 3 sts off with a double crochet.

This is the first item I am blocking here and I wasn't in the mood to bring out the blocking wires. So I just laid it out on towels and stretched it out as best as I could. The towels were grabby so it blocked OK. I could have made the center straighter too, I guess.

Here is a detailed view of the lace edging.

I had a busy weekend. We went to the French Concession yesterday and to Yu Yuan Garden today. Lots of walking around. I have lots of pictures which I will put up later.

It is a beautiful weekend here. Temps in the low 70's F/20's C with a breeze blowing. Everyone was out so both places were pretty crowded. But it was still a lot of fun. Back to work tomorrow. The weekends are really short. sigh

On the river at night and a study in contrasts

There will also be some strange but interesting Shanghai miscellany and a fiber mention in passing.

Ariana commented on the bride's dress in my previous post, asking if Western culture had taken over to the point where white was no longer the color of mourning. I think Western culture has taken over to a large extent. I see ads with brides dressed in Western style dresses. I don't know if they wear traditional colors for the wedding with white dresses for the reception or if they wear white. The other thing to remember is that there are Christians here and they may very well wear white for their weddings. In India, Christian brides typically wear white sarees, even though Hindu brides do not wear white.

We went out to dinner the other night and took the ferry across the river at night. Some of the older Shanghai areas have been made into nice little oases with restaurants. One of these is now labeled the Cool Docks.

The pool/fountain in the middle is surrounded by restaurants. There is a nice Indian restaurant here and that is where we had dinner. It was a very pleasant evening so we sat outside.

The Shanghai skyline is well lit at night and many buildings have light patterns that move across their faces.

This is the Pudong skyline from the Puxi side of the river. You can see the Oriental Pearl Tower to the left and the Shanghai World Financial Center (aka the can opener building) on the right.

I also took a movie, hoping to show some of the light patterns. It is about a minute long. I'm not sure I was able to capture it properly but you can hear the water as the ferry moves away from the dock and then a little of the Puxi skyline also. For some reason, it wouldn't upload into here so I have linked it.

Shanghai also has a huge economic divide. There is a new, very tall building going up next to my office building. It is taller than all the other buildings in Shanghai. Work goes on 24/7. The construction crew comes to work on bicycles.

They are stacked up around the corner.

And a few blocks away...

with a...

next door to it. My office building has a Jaguar dealership on the ground level. Note that there are a number of cars in the showroom, ready to drive.

Every corner has bicycles chained to the railing between the pavement and the road. Lots of motorbikes and scooters too. And of course, lots of cars.

One also comes across quirky things in Shanghai. First a painted bus I walked by coming home from work.

Next a painted utility box near my apartment.

It is not like all the boxes are painted. Look at the bicycle picture above and you'll see a utility box that looks like a utility box.

Last but not least, there are swarms of window washers and painters who keep all the glass clean from the outside. They ride up and down on scaffolds which look reasonably safe to me as long as they are kept horizontal. I think I can handle being this high up, though. :-)

They are cleaning the outside of our apartment building also. At least that is why I found this sign in the elevator.

But why it was in the elevator, I don't know. One tends not to question these things, but just to enjoy them as one comes across them.

And as promised, a passing fiber reference. I have been knitting slowly on the handspun shawl. I am about half way through the lace section now. It gets easier so I hope to finish it soon. I had a few problems with a couple of the rows that involved a bit of tinking and counting and fudging. That took time.

The fiber gets very fuzzy very quickly so I don't know how nice the shawl will look after a bit of use. But it was a freebie fiber and the shawl colors are pretty.

Advantages of being stuck in an airport

Yesterday my flight was 3 hours late so I spent quite a bit of time at Beijing airport. Now, I am sure you are all thinking about what a waste of time this must have been. But no. It wasn't.

I fixed my counting issues. I adjusted the sts to the correct number, started the lace pattern on the shawl and am now far enough along that keeping track of it is easy.

I have markers separating each repeat and the pattern is beginning to develop so it is easy to work.

I also found ways to manage my yarn. This yarn is both sticky and slippery.

Loops of yarn come off the ball together and if I am not careful, I end up with a big tangle that takes a long time to fix. The first thing I did was to wear the loops as a bracelet.

This works pretty well as long as you are gentle while rotating it to get the yarn off to knit with. It is a good management technique for the next process I developed, which was to wind the loops back on the ball more tightly and then remove the yarn in a very controlled fashion, a few feet at a time. Unwind, knit, unwind some more worked best. So that is what I ended up doing.

So overall, I have something to show for the extra 3 hours I spent at the airport. Other passengers, not so much. A whole bunch of them raised their blood pressure by yelling at the gate agents for about an hour. I felt very sorry for the gate agents but was quite amused by the whole thing. Entertainment is always good.

A mostly knitting week

I am making slow but steady progress on the Larimar shawl. I am really enjoying knitting this as the yarn is soft and silky yet weightless and the color shifts are beautiful. There is a sheen to the yarn that also adds pleasure.

I tried to take a close-up of the fabric to show the luster. It is hard to capture it but I think you can see it in this photo.

Here is half the shawl so far, showing the colors.

I have a bit more of the plain knitting and then I start on the lace border. So far the knitting is easy and I can just watch the color flow from my fingers.