An old yarn

I came across a bag of yarn scraps upstairs in the spare/craft room last week as I was puttering around. It is the ends of yarn I spun 10 to 15 years ago! Much of it was also dyed by myself in my Brooklyn backyard.

It was nice to run across this yarn. Not a bad spun yarn if I do say so myself. Most of it is 3-ply as I was heavily into Navajo plying at the time and spun of lot of yarn using that technique. Most of it is also spindle spun. These yarns were spun all over the city, at bus stops, parks, atriums, etc.

So I decided to make something of these scraps, a scarf for winter yard work. Nothing fancy, size 8 needles, just 20 stitches wide, seed stitch because it doesn't curl and looks nice.

I'm glad I ran across this yarn, it reminded me how much spinning I did back then, and like I said, it's a pretty nice yarn. I think I'm going to have to revisit Navajo plying, it's been years.

I did a bobbin's worth of spinning on one of my wheels this week but it was far from successful. I'm trying to figure out the best way to spin a short, soft, lofty mixed fiber. I spun from the fold but ended up with insufficient twist and too many thin spots. I'm out of practice. Today I spun another sample after carding some of the fiber and spinning it long draw. This test looks better and perhaps I will spin another bobbin using that technique this week. Tour de Fleece begins Tuesday but I'm not signed up for it. Not sure I can commit to daily spinning right now.

A visitor last week. Deer are a rare sight on my property.

Yesterday, mama bear and two cubs were out back. Melts my heart...

A little bit slow

 

It is a little bit slow at the moment but I did get the tapestry backed and hung on the wall.

I took out the wool applique quilt of flowers I made last year and sandwiched the backing, batting, and top so as to start quilting, but I haven't started quilting yet. There are a couple large house projects that need doing and I feel I need to attend to those before getting engrossed in a large sewing project.

However, I dug out some knitting needles because I want a new dishcloth.

This yarn is called "Scrubby" and I find it at Walmart. It makes the best dishcloths. 100% Polyester. Not expensive. It's great at scrubbing and doesn't scratch. It also last a long time. I've been using my current one for months!

I had a foray into the spare room a few weeks ago, mainly to straighten it up (it really needs a professional!) and I came across a small hooked rug pattern that I've decided to hook. In my opinion, small patterns like this do not work so well on such a loose weave as this burlap; there just aren't enough holes to get the detail in. But it's coming along OK so far and it should be fine. I love hooked rugs and I enjoy hooking them. Maybe I'll set my sites at making something considerably larger this fall.

In gardening news, the Egyptian onion patch is out of hand again. I'm tempted to remove it entirely, to be honest. In an effort to make something of what's there, I harvested a bunch of onions a few weeks ago and decided to dehydrate the greens. I think these will work well in dips and soups, etc.

Happy Solstice!

The last stitch

The last stitch went into the needlepoint project on Thursday; it is done!

I'm glad I decided to jump into it again, back in January. To be honest, there was a hint of possibility that I would tire and decide to put it away again, but once it got started I was into it. Many hours were spent re-viewing several old Britcom series that I especially enjoy. The experiment of hanging the frame from the ceiling, although a good idea and exciting, didn't pan out over time because the sofa was too low. Having sat for too long a while with my knees almost higher than my pelvis was taking it's toll.

It was fun meeting the challenge of coming up with yarn matches when the supply started running out and I was yet unsure how much I wanted to order. In the end, I ordered all the dark green for the thin border all around the tapestry, At 162 strands (36" long) that made up the bulk of my order. The remaining 70 strands consisted of a few different shades of green, a bit of burgandy, a bit of gold, and a bit of yellow.

My stitches improved during the course of working on this project. Stitching with a doubled yarn has a few challenges that single threads don't. Keeping the two threads lying nicely needs constant attention. It doesn't look good when one thread is directly on top of the other in the stitch. But one nice thing about doubled thread is that the thread never pulls out of the needle because the thread is looped. The pillow that I'm working on now is single thread and when the working thread becomes shorter than four or five inches, it has a tendency to get pulled out of the eye of the needle.

On the next sunny spell lasting at least a few days I will soak it and block it. I want to sew a backing onto it before hanging on the wall.

Revisiting the irises

The yarn on order arrived this week. I've finished stitching the main pattern and I'm now working on the outside border. It's goes pretty quickly and I expect to be finished sometime in the coming week.

Scrolling back the tapestry on it's frame, to access the borders, I've come across the Irises that I "made work" a while back due to the pale yellow yarn having run out. Although happy enough with the choice to use a gold-ish color to stitch the shadow areas of that Iris, I have not been thoroughly pleased with the out come; I thought it looked a bit 'messy'. The contrast was too stark and obvious, in my opinion, and not in keeping with the Medieval look and feel of the pattern.

When I placed the order for extra yarn, the Iris had been out of mind for a while and it did not occur to me to order a few threads of the pale yellow. Never mind. But as I pondered the situation this morning, I decided to have another look at my stash of yarns. I had found some light gold tapestry wool at the thrift shop a month or so ago, and as is my habit, took it home for my stash. On closer inspection, this color would seem to work better than the darker gold I used.

So I tore out the gold. Finished needlepoint does not frog easily, let's just say that. It takes patience and great care and attention not to cut into, or dislodge any stitches that are to remain. But I got the gold removed and stitched in the lighter yarn.

Oh, I think the result is a huge improvement and now I'm happy in a settled way. The difference between the pale yellow and the pale gold is very slight, almost unnoticeable. So much better. Mind you, I would have been fine keeping my original 'make do' had an alternative not been available. Glad I took the time to revisit this Iris.

The original "make it work" solution (I can see from the date of the picture, this was March 17th!):

How it looks now with the lighter, closer, match:

Yarn on order

The tapestry is at a standstill until the yarn I ordered last week, arrives. I hope it will be here any day now. In the meantime, it stands propped against a cabinet.

So I'm tackling another needlepoint which was started a few years ago. As you can see, it has a lot in common with the large tapestry. Same designer (Candace Bahouth), same colors, same flowers, and a similar border (although totally abstract). The design is called "Meadow Garden" and it will be a pillow. The scale of it is quite different, obviously. It is worked in a single yarn at 10 stitches to the inch.

The spring weather here has completely collapsed. We've had rain for almost a week and that is to continue through tomorrow. I noticed this morning that we have another 3 days of rain forecast for next week. The rain is good but it has created challenges for getting the yard cleaned up and the garden in order. It's also been quite cool. So much so that I haven't started any seeds indoors yet; it's just not warm enough. I may have to bite the bullet and buy nursery plants this year because soon it will be too late to start tomatoes and what not.

Lots of ticks this year so far and yesterday was officially the beginning of black fly season. The black flies will mostly disappear in a few weeks and the tick situation usually abates somewhat after the initial spring fling.

Wild flowers are making a show though. This week saw the Trillium and Violets and Wild Phlox make an appearance. The Rhododendron is blossoming now. It looks like we're at least a few weeks out from having Lilacs.

Floral Trellis

A few posts ago I mentioned Kaffe Fassett's "Floral Trellis" needlepoint rug and how I was enquiring about whether or not it was available as a kit.

I found out it was available as a kit at the time the book I was perusing was published, 1987. The Ehrman US office did not know of any available kits and I have not called the UK office yet.

However, I was just browsing needlepoint kits on eBay and found someone selling the printed canvas, only--no yarn--and the bidding is already up to $999! I suppose that price reflects the rarity of the item. I will not be bidding on it and the auction ends tomorrow.

Floral Trellis

Shuffling the design

This needlepoint I'm working on came in the form of a kit containing yarn and a printed canvas. It's possible to do needlepoint without a printed canvas by working from a chart. It would be considered counted needlepoint and I've done some pillows this way. I've also done a pillow working from a photograph of a pillow without the chart. The resolution was just good enough for me to see the distinct stitches.

Another alternative is hand painted canvas and they are expensive--needless to say. I've never worked from a hand painted canvas but I imagine they are very accurate. Accuracy is sometimes lost in printed canvas and I suspect it's especially true of a large canvas like the one I'm working. The printing process needs to lay down the correct color at the intersection of two canvas threads and if the registration is off at all or if the canvas slips, or whatever else I know not, the color can end up straddling a space instead of covering an intersection.

When I come across this in the canvas I simply decide--by looking at the overall pattern and neighboring areas--whether to move the color up or down, and always within the same area, move the colors consistently in one direction.

This picture shows colors out of alignment. The canvas intersections are half yellow and half another color. I have to decide whether to move the colors up or down:

If the printing went askew at the borders, the line between the design and the border could be jeopardized, ending up jarred--broken between two different rows and this will 1) be very obvious and 2) look like a mistake. This picture shows how the bottom edge of the pattern goes astray:

Looking at the right arrow shows that the last row of the wide border comes up to the green border. If we keep the bottom of the design on the same row--which we must if we want to avoid something that looks like a mistake--then by the time we get to the left arrow, we see the printing alignment gradually going off and eventually the top of the green border is a whole row lower than it was on the right.

This happened at the top of the canvas as well. I am having to make adjustments by dropping the last line of the design as it floats away from the current line (see bottom circle below). It will become part of the green border.

Since there is a solid double line above the wide border as well (top circle below), I've had to improvise here as well. If you follow the two red arrows at the top, going from the right to the left you can see that the line would be broken if I kept to the misaligned printing, and since I don't want that I'm dropping a line above the border and adding one below it. I'm making up the pattern for this row as I go along, pointed to by the blue arrow, ignoring what's printed and basing it on what the design is doing. (According to the canvas this would be the bottom row of the double line, but I've had to keep the double line higher to avoid it skipping down a row.) The wide border pattern is quite abstract so it's pretty hard to go astray, just about anything works.

By the way. . . I'm at the bottom!!! Can't believe it. Will be done soon. But I have to order some yarn and will have to wait for it to arrive before I can really finish it.