still here, still searching, still crafting (a little) – only a little doped!

Family history research is a very absorbing hobby – absorbing of one’s time, that is!

In the past couple of months, I have added over 400 people to my extended family. I try to include the parents and siblings of all my blood relatives’ spouses. Families with ten or more children are not uncommon among the working class from which my ancestors come so the numbers add up quickly.

So, if you’ve been wondering why I’m not reading and commenting on your blog – or writing my own – my computer time is almost totally devoted to family history research these days!

I’m not one for resolutions (and it’s not New Year) but some self-discipline is called for and I am now going to limit my time spent on family history research each day. I have friends who deserve my attention, followers that expect somewhat regular posts and craft projects that need my attention.
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There are photos coming but they have all been taken with my iPad so I apologise in advance for the quality!

Ah, shingles; yes, I was diagnosed with that mysterious virus four weeks ago. I spent the first week doped up so high I couldn’t walk a straight line. I was taking anti-viral medication and a daily dose of125mg of heavy-duty pain-killers (pregabalin for those who need to know such things) for post-herpetic neuralgia. But the good news is that the rash has almost completely disappeared and I am down to 25mg (one capsule) of the pain-killer a day so I’m thinking relatively clearly and almost ready to drive my sewing machine again!

I have been doing some crafting. A week after I was diagnosed I was supposed to teach a workshop on knitting with variegated and hand-painted yarns. I worked diligently through my fog to prepare for that workshop but, alas, it didn't happen; there's no way that I could get my befuddled mind into gear and teach! But samples were made, ripped out and made again.

Why do my mitred squares never come out square? This one will be ripped out!

I even managed to knit a whole dropped-stitch scarf in a commercial variegated acrylic yarn that I’ve dubbed the “brussell sprout” scarf because of the colouring.

In theory, knitting this scarf should have made the blotchy tendencies of this yarn less obvious but, unfortunately, this scarf is still so blotchy the pattern is almost completely obliterated!
 
If it wasn’t acrylic, I’d consider over-dyeing it. I’ve been successful in dying white acrylic yarn but I’m not confident that I can get colours dark enough to overdye this one!  Never mind, the scarf will still make the journey west to Mudgee next week when I tutor a workshop on “knitting with dropped stitches”.

A new project, called the “Mudgee Wrap”, has also been started for the same workshop but there isn’t much to show yet.

I haven’t been courageous (or foolish) enough to use my sewing machine while taking painkillers with that famous warning: “This drug may cause drowsiness. Do not operate machinery.” The idea of sewing through my finger is not at all appealing! But I have paid for classes so attendance is “mandatory”. Bring on the hand stitching…

In the past month I have made quite a few hexagon “triads” from scratch (the photo shows my intended layout although not the final position of the “blocks”)

– which basically means I have drawn and cut hexagons from 4” fabric squares, basted those hexagons and joined them in sets of three to create thirty of these:
  
There has been some humming and hawing over setting these triads but in the end I have decided to go with my original plan and have stuck with my “Dutch cap” shapes which I talked about in this post. In reality, there is quite a lot of fiddling around to create these shapes because each diamond is added separately to the triad then the diamonds are joined together.

So far I have made only one. I hope it will get easier with experience, otherwise I’ll be ripping them all out and looking for an easier setting!

So that’s my last four weeks summed up. Not much to show for it but I am supposed to be taking it easy and concentrating on getting better. The thing is that I just don’t feel “sick” and most of the time forget that I have been ill.

Onwards and upwards, as they say! In other words, back to my Mudgee Wrap which I ambitiously hope to finish in one week!

Pretty Yarn Cakes

Here are the first yarn cakes made from my hand-dyed acrylic yarn on my 'new' [secondhand] wool winder which I bought on Ebay from Kate. She was the only seller able to answer my questions about how much yarn the winder would hold and as a knitter, not just a seller, knew how it worked [and that it did work].

For DD and I it was a challenge - we had never used a wool winder before so we had to work out how to put it together, how to make the gears mesh without breaking anything and how to thread up the winder. We've been pretty successful, don't you think?

The Tam it did a-swimming go!

I like knitting new things - new patterns, new items, new techniques. Yes, I knit for charity and so knit some items over and over [like beanies and scarves] but every now and then [or more often as the whim might take me], I want to knit something new, something different, something I haven't tried before.

So, there I was, looking for something I could knit for charity from the one-of-a-kind hand-dyed 50g balls/skeins of 8ply/DK acrylic, preferably something in stocking stitch which would best show off those recurring colours, when my eyes, strolling through Knitting Without Tears for the umpteenth time, 'found' the pattern for a tam o'shanter. Seemed straight forward enough, and I had about 75g of yarn that would work together. Surely, a tam wouldn't need more than 225m of acrylic? And. I was right; a tam can be had from a mere 50g [155m] of acrylic.

I cast on 90 stitches, with my never-before-used Knitpicks 3.7mm needles on 60cm of cable. I had to use the magic loop technique for the first few rows but after that everything was fine. I had finished the base and decided that next time I would just do a rib not a folded back double layer for the base [waste of yarn knitting twenty rows when I could settle for ten!] I knitted on, increased to 120 stitches, knit for another 25 rows, and did a beautiful seven-point-star cast off [thank you EZ].

With two dpns still attached to the crown, I tried it on - what a shapeless bag my tam turned out to be!! Now, EZ does warn about this - but she blocks her tams. I have learned from experience that acrylic will not be blocked - not for love or money. It has great memory and goes back to its original shape as soon as it is dry! Perhaps, if I'd known what was coming, I would have done one purl row when I did the increases so the tam knew where it was to fold! But it was too late for that! I was at the end, finished, finito, finis!! [except for “cut the thread, draw it through the last seven stitches, pull it tight, sew in the end”!]

Everything may have been okay, if I was knitting it for myself or if I could be there to explain it to its new recipient. Even so, I still thought that, maybe, I could get away with it … but WM laughed once too often. Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s very supportive and just two days ago, talked me out of frogging the too-narrow scarf [again] but this was the final straw!

Can you imagine some homeless person at the food van late one night, looking at a shapeless blob that looks like a handle-less bag, recognising it as an article of headwear, and choosing it over other offerings [like practical, sensible beanies]? No, neither can I.

So, to save my poor tam from humiliation and the pain of rejection, I did what every good creator does - consigned it to the frog pond. No, not the sometime-in-the-future pond, the right-here-right-now pond. What had taken hours to bring into being was gone in a few minutes, just as if it had never been. But I remember -- adieu, Tam, we knew each other so briefly but I enjoyed the encounter except for your last few moments here.

And no, there won't be another; but I did go to bed re-designing Tam as a beret! Do you think a homeless person would want one? Perhaps someone staying in a women's refuge might appreciate one as a Mothers' Day present!

Lookee here!

Nine skeins of hand dyed acrylic and they said it can't be done!

Clapotis went swimming in the frog pond!

I learnt the reality of knitting with handpainted yarns. Despite both hanks looking very similar, they knitted up very differently. The second hank was a little darker overall than the first but had many more light patches - Clapotis looked like I had knitted two different fabrics and joined them together in the middle. In other words, it had an obvious dark line across the middle and looked terrible. [Anyone who's ever knitted with two different dyelots would know what I mean!] So, at 11 o'clock last night and 80% completed, I frogged the lot! :-(

I'm now about halfway through section #2, knitting two rows from each ball as I should have done in the first place.

Ah well, we live and learn!