for those of you on a skinny connection. This is what I do every year with the leftover Easter egg dye. That's about 6oz of mediocre white Corriedale wool. When it is dry I'll chuck it in a bin with wool from years past and maybe one day it'll spontaneously spin itself and become worth of socks. Or something :D
I finished a pair of Incredibly Ugly Trekking sox this week and I have the first of a pair of CTH socks on needles. Froghair for the next handspun sweater proceeds slowly (an ounce per day at most), and I'm making slow progress on a tight-gauge commercial yarn sweater as well.
My physical terrorist has told me I should do no more than 10 mins of pinch-intensive activity at a time, so I spin or knit for 10 minutes, then hike around the block while doing my thumb excercises. The neighbors who know me have seen me in various immobilization devices so don't think anything of my thumbwaving. The new people in the renthouse next door probably think I'm cracked, as I hustle around the block waving my thumbs hehehe
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Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET. This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%. Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...
Good for you and your thumb, what kind of excercises do you do. BTW felting is another good way of getting rid of your old fleeces. Ahh, but maybe not so good for your wrist.
Question: Next year, if I throw the kids into the crock pot with the undyed wool, will the dye seep off of them and onto the wool as it heats? I had purple and green children for HOURS yesterday before I managed to get them all scrubbed off.
Was that the blue stripey stuff I saw you working with? I liked it, what I could see of it. What was ugly about the socks? The shaping?
I double-dog dare you to sing "Where is Thumbkin?" while you're doing it.
On Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:27:27 GMT, "Threnody" spewed forth
Don't know about that but if you add a potato, a carrot and a bay leaf you'll have soup?
That colorway didn't do much for me, is all. I don't remember buying it and it isn't a colorway I'd choose for myself, so it must have come as either a White Elephant or a swap of some sort. But, the socks are made and I'll wear 'em - after all, I don't look at my feet even if other people do!
Hahahahaha!
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Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET. This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%. Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...
When I was a kid we used to dye white sand after we finished with the eggs. Dad would go out to a special place by the river where the sand was really white and get some for us and we would use it to play with and to make sand pictures. We had read about it in the Maud Hart Lovelace books (Betsy Tacy) that were set in our town. (Mankato, Minnesota, which was called Deep Valley in the books) In the books the kids layered the sand in little bottles. I don't remember us doing much of that but we did have fun with it.
Most years (not this one as their vacation was shorter) I have gone to take care of my grandkids and supervised the Easter eggs. They do manage to dye themselves and their art table along with the eggs - fortunately we have managed to keep them from getting it on anything too vital and kids do eventually come clean.
Ever tried steaming with dyeing, laying the fleece batts out on clingfilm, ontop of a wad of newspapers of course, then pour on two to three colours across the width of the batt, rolling the batts up in the cling film, and then sealing and steaming for 20mns .. it comes out beautifully randomed and three thick batts is enough, spin it finely and ply it against itself from a ball winder, using the first and last thread from the ball... you get some unique colours..and very pretty socks..
I know you all do not believe me, but you can knit fast with minimum pinch effort using long steel needles and a knitting sheath.
Since the bottom of one needle is anchored, the knitting motion is very different. Currently, I knit from left hand needle to the RHN and hold the left needle almost stationary. Since the right needle is anchored at its base, the upper third of the RHN is flexed with the right hand about 1/2" to one side, this allows the tip of the right needle to slip under the left needle.
This is a very different motion from the motions that we learn for handknitting.
When the flex pressure is released, the needle springs into the stitch. While the needle is springing into the stitch, I move my R hand preparing to flip the loop of yarn over the tip of the right needle. Then the needle is flexed to the right to carry the new stitch off the LHN. Then the RHN springs back to starting position. Since the motions to flex the needle are essentially short, linear motions, driven by major muscles of the upper arm and shoulder, they are quite fast. Likewise the needle springs back into position rather rapidly, and the whole stitch formation process is quick. The effort to flex the needle left is carried by the base of the right forefinger and the effort to flex the needle right is carried by the of base of the thumb. Minimum stress is placed on the wrist. The main muscle effort is the right deltoid and biceps with minimal effort by the hand and forearm muscles.
I have only done 25,000 stitches with this method, so I do not have all the details worked out. My winecork based knitting sheath only lasted a couple of thousand stitches - I am still working on the sheath technology. And, I am still tending to knit way too tight. On the other hand, I have not poked myself hard enough to draw blood for 24,000 stitches, so I have hope. When I do get all the details worked out; I promise -- pictures. For now, I have not tried socks, but I am knitting a ribbed tube - what is the difference?
Aaron, I believe you! I also have the same frustration in trying to explain to ppl that Continental/German is SO much faster than American/English! LOL Noreen
You got me started doing Continental/German so that I could knit faster. Using long needles and a sheath is much faster still faster, and I have not yet worked out all the details!
Cher dyeing a warp like that works as well, and when you weave it it is just like Ikat weaving.
Plying can be even easier when you Navajo ply. If you do not know what that is, here is how that works. You crochet your single yarn in long, long chains, at the same time spinning it in the opposite direction of you roriginal single. In other words, you are plying. This will give you better controle of where you colours in your singels end up. Also it eliminates problems of knotting when you use both ends of one ball of yarn.
Aaron I love the way you work away at doing things, and not give up either I have an old Dutch magazine here with the what you call a knitting sheaths. Send me your snail mail address by E-mail, and I will mail this magazine out to you, so you can see what these herders knitting sticks look like. These are made of wood, bone or bamboo. All of these are more than 150 years old. They were found in Holland, and made by farmers, who did a lot of knitting at night while their wifes did the spinning, accordingly to the text that comes with the photos of these wonderful tools. Come to think of it, I could scan the pages and post them on my web page. I am sure that you could make one and that they would be easier to use. Aaron, they also state in this article that the knitting needles used with this knitting sticks, were much shorter than the regular knitting needles. I must do a search on the internet to see if there is more info on this Dutch way of knitting. It also said that this way of knitting was also done in Scotland.
Ahhh, Aaron and Noreen, but is faster better. Maybe you are both better served by getting a knitting machine and keep your sanity, and in Aaron's case his fingers as well.
It would be very nice if you would post the pictures of knitting sheaths on your web site, so more people can see them. I think a few others are also interested.
I have several pictures of old knitting sheaths - The designs were quite diverse. Some worked better with shorter needles, and others with longer needles. I suspect the long steel needles were relatively expensive and got passed on from generation to generation. In the course of time, the needles would be worn down or broken, and would continue to be used with slightly different knitting sheath designs.
I do know that the traditional Scottish DPN was shorter than the DPN used for ganseys farther south. I had speculated that the Scotch were very thrifty and more likely to have needles that were worn to a fraction of their original length, but if the Dutch also used short needles, then I have no idea if that is a result of a preference by the knitters or if was a matter of commercial availability of shorter lengths of metal rod for making the needles. For example, the Spanish trading north may have carried longer lengths of steel than the Swedes trading south.
Aaron, it does become complicated, when you look at the manufacturing of steel knitting needles. You would have to look at where the ore was found. It gets interesting to look at the size of the knitting needles, hand in hand with supply and demand of steel and ore. Would the local smithy make knitting needles, where they made, as a side line by guilds. OK another research project....
Wooly I know you will do something fantastic with the corriedale wool as I think it is *the* most bbeautiful wool - almot silk when knitted up. God Bless Gwen
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