Blocked Veronika

I forgot the one thing I did get done this week. I finished knitting Veronika last weekend and got it blocked last night. Ta da!

 There are some errata and clarifications, plus I made a change to the design. Elizabeth from the NieblingLaceKnitters yahoo group was kind enough to share what the blurry symbols are, as well as the "move marker" symbols seem to go the wrong way. She figured it out from trial and error, saving the rest of us some time and effort. Thanks, Elizabeth! Here are her clarifications and corrections:

Round 1- (one) make 4 from 1
R13- (one) k4tog
R15- move marker forward 1 stitch
R35- (six) make 3 from 1
R37- move marker backwards one stitch
R45- (two) k9tog
R47- (six) make 3 from 1
R57- (three) make 3 from 1, (two) k9tog, (three) make 3 from 1
R67- (two) k9tog.

For the Make 4 from 1's  I decided to do (k1, yo)2x instead of alternating knits and purls. It made the start MUCH faster and easier. Did the Make 3 from 1's as k1, yo, k1. Don't think it made much difference visually, but the ease of it sure helped my attitude, especially since I had to start over after 60-someodd rounds the first time. I decided to do all the k9tog's as slip 6 individually, k3tog, pass slipped stitches over. Very do-able.

The other change I made was in the number of repeats for rounds 77 through the end. The pattern calls for 20 repeats of a 16 stitch sequence. Since there are 8 repeats in the rest of the pattern, I changed it to 16 repeats of a 20 stitch sequence. To do that, I added one unit of hex mesh (k2tog, yo, yo, ssk) to the repeat. I wound up knitting 2 extra rounds, but I really prefer the look of it. Cleaner and more intentional, I think.

Blocked out to 20" in circumference, and it looks smashing on the dark wood table. Victory!

Stefan, bread

Here's the second Esbensen doily, Stefan. No trouble with the charts, a nice quick knit!

I picked up a great book at the library over the holidays, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Lots of great reciped for bread that doesn't require kneading or living by a lengthy schedule dictated by rising times. It's nice to have fresh, real bread every day. We've had a different type of bread every week since Christmas and there are plenty more recipes left to try.

Playing with a Straight Threading

In the Handweaver's Guild of Boulder, there is a Complex Weavers interest group. I decided to join when it started up even though I was a pretty new weaver. Nothing wrong with having the most to learn, especially when many of the others have been weaving for decades.

These ladies are amazing! They know their way around rules I haven't even learned yet.

Anyway, we've been working our way through Bonnie Inouye's book Exploring Multishaft Design this year. The first 6 chapters deal with what you can do design wise on a straight threading. So I put on a long warp and made mugrugs for chapter 1, twills. Some of the liftplans I made looked pretty good, so I wound a 7 yard warp pf 6/2 cotton and wove some towels. The fringe turned out to be a bad idea with that particular yarn, but overall I'm quite pleased. I got to play with pattern, and color too. I'm still figuring out how color works in weaving, mostly by imitation and my own trial and error.

I wove these in the spring but didn't get them out of the camera until last week.

Miniature Lace Tablecloth 2

I finished it this weekend. It's a nice new addition to the collection on the kitchen table. It blocked out to 12" across. Quite a bit larger than the one in the magazine, but I knew it would be. I knitted it on size 1 needles with size 10 thread. If I had it to do over, I would use size 0 needles instead. It's a little more open than I would like. A very fun knit, though! I'm thinking about starting something from Sonja Esbensen's Kunststrick II, maybe Bertel, Lars, Miki or Mikkel. I'd dearly love to knit Valde but that's more of a commitment than I feel comfortable with now.

There will be much dancing this weekend, yeah! Maroon Bells Morris will be dancing at Oktoberfest at 22nd and Larimer in Denver at noon and 1:30pm, then on to English Country Dancing at Berkeley Church after dinner. Sunday night is SCA Medieval dance practice at Berkeley Church again. I'm going for tired but happy. ;)

8 Shaft Huck Towels

This past March, I took a class on weaving towels from Susan Wilson. It was a round robin where each of us threaded a different weave structure and /or fiber that's good for towels, then wove a sample from each one. There were also several lectures peppered throughout where she talked about the design tools you would use for each type of weave structure. I was very interested in working some more with 8 shaft huck, so I wound a 15 yard warp of 6/2 unmercerized cotton, got out my graph paper and notes, and went to town. I came up with about 12 drawdowns and converted them to liftplans (I weave on a table loom, no treadles).

I had such a good time playing around with the liftplans and weaving each one several ways, by the time I made it through 15 yards of warp I had only used the first 5 designs. I have another 15 yard warp ready to go so I can weave some of the rest of them.

I used the same 6/2 cotton for the weft on about half of the towels. For the rest, I used 7/2 inmercerized cotton in a slightly darker, duller green. I love the brightness of the 1 color towels, but I also love the depth of the 2 color towels. It makes the huck spots "pop" a bit, too.

I also learned to double-check the liftplan after transcribing from the drawdown. I had a few "surprise" patterns where I had missed a shaft on a particular pattern row. I still liked the pattern I wound up with, but I did have to look at what I had done and compare it to the graph to figure out where I had gone astray. Good learning opportunity, but If I had been weaving somthing that was supposed to be a certain way it would have been frustrating. I also found that all of my designs had been symmetrical. The ones with missing shafts were not, and I both liked them and found them interesting. So, next time I'm going to try drawing patterns that are deliberately asymmetrical just to see if I can. ;)


All in all, I wound up with 21 towels each about 12x22", except for one that came out much shorter (I must have mismeasured). They are all different. I can hardly wait to see what the next warp will reveal!