The Great Cape Caper

Sometimes you get an itch you just gotta scratch.

My name is Ann, and I like to make things.  Whether I need them or not.  Whether they are useful or not.  Just because I can, or to see if I can, or just because.

People such as I should not cruise Pinterest, because we see things like this:

That's just so wonderfully barbararic.  Me want.  So me make.

Dive the stash.  Some time back (15 years? 20?) a shepherd I met online was getting out of the business and gave me some Lincoln fleeces.  I still had the brown one--I dug it out and started pulling and separating the locks.

I also had some dark brown California Variegated Mutant fleece (my all time favorite sheep breed name).  That felts quite a bit easier than the Lincoln.  I carded it up, laid it into a crescent shape, and felted it--my favorite method of felting is to wet it with a bit of soapy water, cover it in plastic, and then go over it with a small hand sander minus the sandpaper.  This is so much faster than rubbing by hand, even if the vibrations do make you go numb after awhile.  Then I would lay out a row of locks, cover the ends with a wispy bit of the CVM, and felt it down.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

The fleece had some varigations so I chose some dark and most of the lighter locks to give some depth to the piece.  It came out quite a bit fluffier than I wanted so I did some "monkey grooming" with a bit of hair product.  All in all, this collar took about four hours, which is a heck of a lot faster than spinning and knitting or weaving.

I didn't happen to have any Viking broaches in my stash but I did have some heavy copper wire that I beat and twisted and made into a pair of penannular broaches.  That with some random jewelry made a closure.

Final product--not bad!!

Of course, now it has some crumbs in it because I had it on my mannequin in the guest room and Dingo the flying squirrel liked to escape from his cage and snuggle in it to have a peanut.

So all was well and good and that itch was scratched and now I could get onto more practical things.

Except . . . . this collar really needed a cape to go with it, right?

Autumn Leaves--the Details

The fiber--Blue Faced Leicester in the colorway "Autumn Flame" from Greenwood Fiberworks.

Spun-while-walking on a Caroline Hershey medieval-style spindle with the technique called "in-hand" or "grasped" or what I call "twiddled."  It never leaves your hand--I can only describe it as support spinning with nothing to support it but physics.  It's a relaxing way to spin, if you keep your fiber on a distaff (I use a hand ring distaff).  Both shoulders are down and relaxed and there's no spindle swinging around to be grabbed by cats (or, on one memorable occasion, a peacock).

The pattern is a lace leaf pattern by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer.  For copyright reasons I can't show the charted lace pattern here, but for me it's a real bugger.  I've knit a lot of lace, but it's always been the kind that has one row with lacework followed by a plain row, which sort of helps lock things in.  This one has patternwork--and a lot of it--on every row.  So if you drop a stitch, mayhem occurs.

My first leaf took four hours.

My eyeballs crossed trying to look from chart to needles every stitch--too easy to go up or down a row.  So I transcribed it (fortunately it's only 56 rows).  That helped.  A bit.

My usual knitting time is in the car when Bob and I are running errands.  I thought this would be too complicated for that.  My other knitting time is in the evenings, watching TV with Bob.  This didn't exactly work--I really have to focus on the knitting.  Sometimes I would knit and rip a row two or three times before I got the count to come out correctly.  I developed a bad case of what Bob has named "Project-Induced Tourettes".

It helped to count the stitches after every row--so I could fix mistakes before I discovered them knitting the next row.  It also helped to buy new needles.   I had been using my Knitter's Pride needles (my favorite brand), of a dark multicolored laminated wood.

Pretty--but they were also pretty close to the colors in my yarn.  I was having enough problems with this pattern without having problems seeing the stitches themselves.  So I ordered another set of needles of laminated birch.  Funny how being able to see what you're doing helps.

I say needle sets because I'm knitting these with three sizes of needle (small size 2, bigger size 2, and size 3) so the leaves will be slightly different sizes.

And one day, errand running, I decided What the Heck and tried knitting them in the car.  Turns out that not having a TV on to distract me, and working in natural light, actually worked quite well.  So now this project has officially become a multi-task project, being spun while walking and knit while riding.

I finished spinning the first braid.  That one I had opened up with my combs--which worked, but left me with a lot of leftover smaller pieces.  For the second braid I used my drum carder to open up the fibers and keep the various lengths (which ranged from 2" to 8") mixed together.  I also decided that it needed a contrast color--not the weird blue of my inspiration picture, but green, for the leaves that haven't turned yet.  Fortunately I had a couple of ounces of BFL roving so into the dyepot it went (Kelly green with about 10% added black).  The second round is ready to go.

It's also going on the back burner.  I'm in no rush to finish this, as I won't be able to wear it until November or so.  So it will get knit in the odd moments (probably mostly in the car) and just sort of simmer along until done.

Autumn Leaves

Although I have more shawls than I will ever be able to wear, given our short Florida Winters and the fact that I love to make fancy shawls but don't have a fancy lifestyle--I'm working on another shawl.

I  wanted another "spin and knit as you go" project.  I try to walk around our property (3 laps = a mile) once a day, and I love to spin while I walk.  But I enjoy it more if I have something that will be made from the yarn-- and it also encourages me to keep walking so I'll have enough yarn for my knitting.

For a few years now I've played with the idea of leaves.  According to my Ravelry notebook,  I've been gathering ideas for  over three years (no rush--really don't need another shawl).  Sometimes literal.

Sometimes more impressionistic

I kept coming back to this more literal one

(although what's with the blue leaves?)

Instead of the leaves in the pattern (and I'd have to buy the book that the pattern is in to get it) I wanted to try a lace leaf pattern that I bought at a spin in by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer, probably about 15 years ago (it's a pretty daunting pattern)

So--I had my pattern.  Now I need yarn.  By happy circumstance, my favorite indie dyer (Greenwood Fiberworks) just happened to have BFL braids (a wool that I love) in an Autumn Leaf colorway (with no weird blues).

At first I just tried spinning from the end--but the yarn came out a bit heavier than I wanted, and overlapped a color change.  So the first leaf looked like this.

Not bad, not quite right.  I had bought two braids (8 ounces), but I wanted the leaves to be a bit more light weight and delicate.  And possibly only one color.  The braid was dyed in sections of about 4 inches.  I pulled them apart and made piles of each color and then used my combs to open them up.  The fluffed up yarn drafted more easily, hence more finely.  It ended up being my default yarn, with the final 2-ply being 24 wraps per inch.  I don't have a problem with the idea of a default yarn--if I'm going to be spinning this over a long period of time, while wandering around and admiring the great outdoors, I don't want to think about it too much.

The original leaf is the two-toned one.  You can see that the others are finer.

To be continued . . .