Infirm Elephants and Halloween Coleus

This post was to be entitled: "My LYS is a Spindle," meaning that hand-spinning yarn gives more options than purchasing it ready-made. No need to run to the store when you run out of yarn. ("LYS" is knitters' talk for Local Yarn Store -- a wonderful resource and worthy of its own separate posts.)

If blogs are simply chronological logs of one's subject, I suppose redundant images of half-finished projects, raw sheep locks, and wooden spindles are permissible.

Today there are two fresh images:  Blankets for elephants and coleus plants raised from seed, now flowering in decidedly non-tropical conditions. (The "blankets" are the best use yet for the dozens of test swatches lying around the house.)

Our granddaughter's discovery that blankets will comfort sick critters has got to be a "keeper"

Ran out of Shetland yarn to finish round jacket -- locks, roving, and spindle to the rescue!

Drop spindle, bobbin, and Shetland roving

Coleus, Nasturtiums, and the round jacket stalled for lack of Shetland yarn

Coleus in flower at Halloween-time

Sleeves and Loopy Edge

The round blanket with loopy edge is done. At the 45" diameter mark, I ran out of orange yarn. (I think the standard diameter for these is about six feet.)

The round jacket begun last month has recognizable sleeves and a sketched-in decoration for the back. Don't want it to appear too much like a target, so will add some wavy rays later.

45" diameter circular blanket with loopy edge

Back view of jacket -- this pattern is really just a circular blanket with sleeves inserted

Halloween blanket with faded zinnias in background

Note loopy edge, to left of rear chair leg

Detail showing loopy I-cord edge of Halloween blanket

Into the Woods

Nature is the best medicine, if it's serenity and refreshment you're after. Two days at a state park in the Coast Range made new persons of us.

And if a little knitting got done on the circle projects begun last week, so much the better...

As the camp was near a mountain top, we were "in a cloud" -- lovely!

Progress on two circular pieces begun last week

Back of sweater and beginnings of the two sleeves. Widening the circle will make collar and front pieces.

Test of "loopy" border to be used on circular projects. Light-colored bits are decorative I-cord loops.

Our cabin at Stub Stewart State Park

Throwing One Back

Saw someone wearing a jacket fashioned from a circular blanket, just had to try it. A week later, two circular blankets are in progress, one from the Elann "pinwheel" pattern, the other from Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Pithy Directions for a Plain, Circular Shawl."

The methods of construction for the two could not be more different, so it will be necessary to construct two blankets when I had only intended to make one. How else to learn?

One set of exciting, new construction techniques is going back to the library untouched, though. Mathew Gnagy's Knitting Off the Axis (Interweave Press, 2011) is full of beautiful, complex jacket designs. It will just have to wait until the project queue is shorter.

Beginning of Elann's pinwheel pattern

Beginning of "Pithy Directions" circle construction -- Ms. Zimmermann might wonder what happened to her pattern!

Cover of Elizabeth Zimmermann's book -- notice the very non-pithy circular blanket at the center.

This is the one I "threw back," though every design is delicious...

"Pithy" circle will soon be to the point where one adds sleeves

Finish What You Start, But...

One feels privileged to have the freedom to take up fiber arts as a hobby. To quote Sara Lamb (Woven Treasures, p. 7), the activity "goes at a different pace than life today, slower, more deliberate, more contemplative..."

The fiber arts offer "craftsmanship, personal expression, beauty, and utility" -- in abundance. And it is abundance one has to wrestle with:  A technique glimpsed at a fiber festival (or even chatting with friends) can trigger the start of yet another project. Really "seeing" something one had previously dismissed can set off a familiar chain of events:

1.  Go to the library and bring home a dozen books for "how DO they do that?" reading.

2.  Sketch a graphic, pick colors of yarn, and assemble tools.

3.  Knit or weave swatches to test your design.

4.  Start project and get the satisfied feeling that "this will look really great when it's done."

5.  Set aside the project you just started and allow the "amazing-new-technique" fairy to whisk you away to the next-big-thing-in-your-imagination.

It seems that discovering, learning, and imagining have more power than the satisfaction of finishing what one has started.

One worries that following every impulse to learn a new thing, a person could end up as a "tree with many branches but few roots."

Back to last winter's motto:  Start one, finish two. (But leave lots of room for library books!)

Start of the pinwheel sweater similar to the one I saw my friend wearing last week.

Fleece I purchased last month. It would make a nice coat, knitted in pattern shown in foreground.

Library books brought home in search of instructions for the Peruvian pebble weave I saw at the fair.

Intarsia, felt, tapestry and socks-on-two-circular-needles:  four older projects to finish up!

Bus Knitting and TV Weaving

Fall classes at a remote campus require a new knitting project to while away the hours spent on a bus. Perhaps a "pinwheel sweater" will do the trick. Basically, one knits a blanket-sized circle  and adds sleeves. I have never tried this, but found photos posted by "knit-along" participants.

And new Fall TV programming should be accompanied by a little portable weaving, I think. In my spindle class last month, I saw some delicious Peruvian "pick-up weaving." Tension on the warp of the loom is supplied by the weaver's body, so one can roll up the weaving and take it anywhere.

Pinwheel sweater, pattern available on Elann.com, example posted by knit-along member.

Same sweater pattern, laid out to show the design. Knit and photographed by a knit-along member.

Pick-up woven belt similar to example seen in OFFF spinning class last month. Photo from Threadsofperu.com

Backstrap loom for weaving Peruvian pick-up design. Photo from Incas.org