Hats ahoy

02.03.2010

Having gotten a haircut I now need to wear a completely different kind of hat, a poofy one that I can plop my hair into so that it won't be flattened by a watch cap or blown by the wind. So we're doing berets!

This is the Mystery Beret (or "Meret") pattern by Wooly Wormhead (you can find a million of 'em on Ravelry), knit in the Araucania Aysen that I had left from my February Lady cardigan. It's soft and poofy and comfortable, and I love the colors, and it got done really quickly. I did one full extra repeat of the 10-row pattern so that I'd get enough slouch.

I liked it so much I frogged a hat I'd made a couple of years ago out of Elsebeth Lavold Angora, and made a second one.

I knitted this on smaller needles (size 6) to get the angora yarn to hold its shape. I added the extra pattern repeat for extra slouch, and eliminated two plain-knit rows just before the beginning of the crown decreases so that I would not run out of yarn before I finished, and it worked out just right, and the fabric is firm and plush.

Posted by Prudence at 01:19 PM | Comments (2)

Cambridge Cables

01.11.2010

I am finally done with this sweater. Yay.

It actually turned out quite well despite all the gnashing of teeth and frogging of stitches.

It's a little longer than I might have chosen, but it's very soft and comfortable.

I whined at length last week about all the annoyances in the pattern, so I won't whine anymore. I did have the sense to shorten the sleeves and also to skip the increases that begin below the elbow. Sorry, I use my hands, so no bell sleeves down to my knuckles.

I used just over 5 1/2 skeins of the Berella Muskoka, which is a superwash merino. Instead of blocking it wet, I decided to spin it in the dryer, to be sure that the fabric snugged up, and it came out plump and cuddly.

I have been going great guns spinning on my Philias Cadorette wheel. I started some merino/tussah on Friday night at spin group, and finished the bobbin yesterday afternoon. I am hoping for a three-ply worsted weight, we'll see what I actually get...

The fiber is an Ashland Bay blend, and the colorway is called 'rose quartz' which is such a perfect name for the rose color, with the white silk and a little bit of blue running through it.

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Update to last week's story: Philias Cadorette died in 1946 at the age of 63. By then, CPWs were not being made and sold anymore, so I wonder what he did in his shop during the last 10 or 15 years of his life. His wife Aurore lived to be over 90, and died in 1976.

Posted by Prudence at 08:12 AM | Comments (10)

Another old spinning wheel. And some new knitting.

01.04.2010

On January 1 I completed my first FO of 2010.

When I made my annual pilgrimage to WEBS after Christmas, I saw some Plymouth Baby Alpaca Worsted Glow that immediately said, "Emily!" to me. So she has a new helmet that is exactly what she wants, and very soft and warm.

The rest of my pilgrimage to WEBS yielded this.

Some Plymouth Baby Alpaca Worsted (no glow) in a nice saturated pink (I don't have much pink in my wardrobe), a bag of Tahki Sedona which is aran-weight wool and silk, because I really need something in this weight in my stash, and some Valley Yarns Florence in navy (this is being discontinued and I really like it so I grabbed some in navy at only $2.29 a ball). I was pretty good. There is a reason for that, as you'll see.

In the old-knitting department, I finished the socks I was working on. The pattern is "Eunice" from Cookie A's Sock Innovation book. I haven't actually worn these yet, I have been saving them to photograph, and I just like looking at them. I think they are gorgeous.

The yarn is the luxury sock blend from Neighborhood Fiber Company, in a gorgeous royal blue shade called "Georgetown". It has a little cashmere in it, but it feels extremely solid and firmly plyed, so I'm hoping they will wear well.

I knitted 4 repeats of the leg pattern, instead of 2, because I don't like short socks. I literally had about 6 feet of yarn left when I finished. The remaining yarn is what you see wrapped around the yarn tag in the photo. I knitted the leg ribbing on size 1 needles and then went down to size 0 for the legs, to get a firm fabric out of the delicate yarn and to get a good fit. When I go down a needle size I always end up burning through a lot of yarn to get the same length.

After I finished those, I was in a sort of a knitting slump. I had one thing on the needles, and it was driving me nuts. It's Cambridge Cables, from the winter issue of Twist Collective. It's a very attractive and clever design, but a couple of things about the pattern really caused me needless headaches.

First (and this caused me to knit the start of the neckline FOUR TIMES before I caught on) - if you see "K2T" in knitting instructions, what would you assume it meant?? I mean, based on the experience of your previous 100 years of knitting? Well, it doesn't mean that. It means to make a baby cable (1 over 1 twist). Once I figured that out, I got the raglan increases completed, but the cabled collar is a bit the worse for the wear I inflicted on it it as I picked up and knit, ripped back, picked up and knit... Grr.

The bustline short row shaping is quite clever but I had to knit it twice. I'm not sure if the pattern was obscure or I had a stupid day.

Then I got to the cabled waistband, which is applied sideways in the manner of adding edging to a shawl. Now, again, this could be me being too demanding, BUT - if you provide BOTH a chart AND written instructions for doing a particular piece of work, why would you avoid marking BOTH of those items to indicate that the first stitch of every right side row is SLIPPED, and bury this information in a NOTE on a completely DIFFERENT PAGE? Even if you are not supposed to slip the first stitch of the row with the twist, you could easily indicate that since all rows are charted and explained. I was going to let it go, but then I noticed that for 2 of the 4 right-side rows of the waistband, you are supposed to attach it to two body stitches instead of just one. Now this, I could not let go, it created a tremendous flair at the waistband. So I ripped it off and redid it.

That was my last mishap. This is what it looked like yesterday. Now, I wonder - what will happen when I block and wear it, given that the applied bottom edge seems to want to ROLL UP??? Sigh. The cursed sweater.

One sleeve to go. I tried it on. It fits nicely. It's a bit too long but I will just be careful what I wear it with. The yarn is Berella Muskoka, an old out-of-print 100% merino from Canada that I've had in my stash for a long time. It's a bit firmer than the merinos of today, so I think it will be reasonably durable.

I fumed and frogged over this project for a week or so while I tried to get inspired to cast on something else. Usually when I have a vacancy in the WIP lineup I can't wait to run and start something, but it took me a lot of pondering over my Ravelry queue before I decided what to do.

This is the Cable and Lattice pullover from Vermont Fiber Designs, and Cascade 220. I bought the yarn and the pattern at about the same time, because I just wanted this sweater in this color. It is a really good match for the pattern - the cables really pop. The body of the sweater is based on one of my favorite cable patterns of all time. I figured, if I want to knit a wine-colored cabled pullover, this is the time of year to do it.

So what, you may be wondering, about the old spinning wheel?? I was restrained at WEBS because I was acquiring something else that same morning.

This is an antique Canadian production spinning wheel, made by Philias Cadorette in St Hyacinthe, Quebec, probably in the late 1920s. The maker's mark is a little damaged, but mostly clearly present.

I bought it from someone in Maine who met me at WEBS to make the handoff. As I carried it across the parking lot, people were admiring it, and someone said, "We covet your wheel even though we don't spin." It's that beautiful.

It really doesn't need any work at all. It obviously has not been stored in an attic, next to a fireplace, or in a damp basement. The wheel is quite true and the joins are tight.

The wheel hub, of all places, has some pretty grain in the wood.

The flyer is balanced and quiet, and the iron saddle does not bind on the mother of all.

I can put a 3.5 ounce cop on the bobbin! That is unusual for an antique wheel.

The bobbin is made so that it nests ever so slightly into the flyer whorl. I haven't seen anything like that anywhere else although I'm sure it's not unique.

The interesting patterns of wear on the flyer make me think that it was used in a cross-threaded manner for its whole life. Why else would there be wear like this on the back of the flyer arm, and below the hooks?

Its spokes have this pretty turning.

The day after I got it, it went to a party with lots of others of its kind. It also got a little beauty treatment of the inside of its bobbin bearings, from the Canadian Production Wheel Pit Crew (long story), so that its takeup would be better.

If you click through to the flickr set for the party you can see 9 different Canadian production wheels all gathered in a room together. Le Premier Reunion des Rouets Canadiens was held on the 27th, in Athol, Mass. There were three identical wheels there, two marked as by Philias and a third that was the same in every way although its mark had been lost. There are more flickr photos of the details of my Philias Cadorette wheel also.

This is a really beautiful wheel. I brought it home and put it next to its young cousin in my small study.

Having French-Canadian ancestry, as I do, and having spent a lot of time doing genealogy (really easy for Quebec, everything is very well preserved and available online), it was not difficult for me to determine that Philias Cadorette was third cousin to my great grandmother. Because the initial immigrant population of Quebec was so small, if you carry in your family tree a name that was present in the country prior to 1700, you are related to almost everyone. Therefore, that is not as thrilling as it may sound, but it's still pretty cool. I wish it was possible to know more about these people who left little information behind, other than the marked products of their work and their names and signatures in parish and government records. What we know of Philias is that he was a middle son of an established maker of wheels, and that when he was about 25 he left Quebec to go to Vermont. On his border crossing record he described himself as a telegraph operator. However, 12 years later he was back home (based on census information), and by the time of his father's death and his own marriage, when he was in his mid-40s, he was clearly the heir of the business, his occupation identified as "industriel". So, although he evidently tried to dash off to the US and become something else, he ended up coming back and making these functional and very beautiful pieces of work anyway. Whatever else can be known of his story is yet to be found in more recent Canadian records that are not yet released to the public....
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I am updating this to add a note about my friend Philias. He was indeed the third son of his father. However, I was able to locate death records for both his older brothers. The first son in the family died at the age of 7, when Philias was 1 year old. The second son died in 1910 at the age of 31 and was listed as a maker of spinning wheels at the time of his death. Philias was present at the funeral and signed the register, so perhaps he had to come home from Vermont and take over the family business at that time.

Posted by Prudence at 09:32 AM | Comments (9)

A Scarf, Two Hats, and Some Old Spinning Wheels

12.11.2009

I have been quiet this past summer and fall, but things have been pretty busy around here. Time to catch up.

First, a pretty silk scarf from a Silkworker tussah top called Candy Apple.

The body is the Shetland Chequered Acre pattern.

The perky edging is called Doris.

Fall is a good excuse for hats. I knitted two.

A no-fool-roun'-warm hat from a friend's BFL handspun, as a joint gift to the fellow who keeps our wheels up and spinning happily.

A fat fuzzy pull-it-down-to-your-chin-warm hat for me from handspun mill end wool and mohair.

The biggest part of my time this fall, though, was taken up with spinning wheels. A (ulp...cough, cough) HOUSEFULof spinning wheels.

My cozy knitting corner.

The rest of the kitchen story.

Today the kitchen, tomorrow the world!

The office crowd.

The studio, storing wheels for long-tem rehab.

And holding most awesome pride of place among the wheels--
A castle wheel and reel from Maine.

The first of my little collection to be restored and returned to useful life is a wheel brought from Sweden by homesteaders in Maple Plain, Minnesota. The story of its remarkable rescue and transformation is too big, and the details too beautiful, to tell now, but here is a glimpse of a grand old Swedish wheel, humming as it makes yarn in a kitchen once again.

It was in pretty tough shape when I bought it on eBay a year ago (Thanks, Detta, for the photo).

With generous help and information from owners of similar wheels (story with names and links to be fully told later), Erwin Nistler of Maple Plain MN repaired broken parts and recreated a host of missing parts.

Now my Swedish wheel stands majestic and tall and beautiful.

The wheel has come back to life, and oh. how it spins. It flies with a feather touch. It runs relaxed and easy, true and fast and fine. The first time I sat down at it I spun half a two ounce tussah top in one sitting.

It is nothing if not consistent.

Tussah singles, first half.

Tussah singles, second half.

The deep grooves in the flyer arms say that this spinning wheel was a well-used production wheel. Now it is back to doing the work it was made to do.

In a few days (and way too many packing boxes between now and then) I will be leaving for Hawaii for the winter.The old wheels will be tucked away in North Dakota, and hopefully my next blog post will begin "Aloha from Molokai......"

Posted by Jan at 12:38 PM | Comments (10)

Something old and new; something new and blue

11.09.2009

The Alpaka tunic (by Deborah Newton, from Interweave's fall issue) is finished.

It's huge. It's about 32 inches long from shoulder to hem and I am only 64 inches long altogether. It fits nicely around the chest and shoulders (I got about a 39 inch chest circumference with the yarn and needles I used) to go over a long sleeved t-shirt. But it'll need to be worn with leggings or other skinny pants, or it'll just look frumpy I think.

The color is a little washed out in these photos, it's a heathered navy.

It was a fairly easy knit. I used size 7 needles instead of 8 or 9, so that I could get some shrinkage - the original pattern would have had something like 9 inches of ease on me.

There were weird things about the pattern. The bottom edge was just weird. After you finish sewing up the entire thing you pick up all around the bottom, knit two rows, and bind off. WHY?? If I had read all the way through I would have knitted some kind of edge right when I cast on, but I didn't, so I knitted a row and purled a row, trying to minimize roll, and then cast off. It still rolls but it looks more intentional... I did cast off at the top of the body and pick up again for the yoke, I figured the reason for that was to reduce the sag factor of the weight of the tunic, so I kept it although it seemed counterintuitive. I also narrowed the neckline a little because there are few things more annoying in a sweater than having it fall off your shoulders. I like how that turned out.

It's nice and light for its size, I only used 5 full skeins of Ultra Alpaca plus enough from the 6th skein to knit a teeny sleeve. I have seen a lot of people on Ravelry knit this out of the recommended yarn, a soft spun singles, and I am just DYING to know how long they wear it before the entire seat of the thing falls apart. You definitely will be sitting down on this one.

Meantime, I was ambushed on eBay by an adorable antiique flax wheel that was of Canadian provenance. It was in really good shape and quite attractive, so I didn't even put it on my watch list, thinking it would go for its Buy It Now price which was a bit high for me. A few days after the auction ended, though, I remembered it, and retrieved the link from where I had posted it to a Ravelry forum, and checked. No one had bought the wheel. Yikes. I emailed the seller and told her my tale, and she said she was going to relist it with a lower BIN price. I watched it for about a day and a half after she relisted it, and when no one jumped, well, I did.

The story of the wheel was that the seller had purchased it about 30 years ago, somewhere between Windsor and Toronto in Ontario, and had it refinished and refurbished, and the distaff was a reproduction as well as one leg but I'm not sure which one. Upon reviewing all the photos, the estimable Alan Ramer said he believed the wheel was originally made in Nova Scotia or eastern Quebec and was a fairly typical example of flax wheels from the region.

The following photos are all in my flickr set of spinning wheel photos, and you can see more closeups of the wheel's parts over there.

The seller had very carefully labelled each piece with a letter, and placed the same letter at the place where the piece attached to another piece, so assembly was easy.

The table had this pretty fluting on both ends, which I find so appealing.

The table itself was a SOLID slab of wood. You can more clearly see the signs of handwork on the bottom of it.

The mother of all assembly.

The flyer (yes, with the whorl on backwards...).

These flax spinners must have spun really fine. The orifice is tiny and I had to make my own hook out of a paper clip to find something that would fit through. The hooks are so close together that I can only use every other one on the test bobbin I'm spinning, and I am not a fat spinner.

The bobbin end with its cute turnings.

The obviously hand made end of the crank.

The way the wheel rim is put together.

The two ends of the bobbin are not attached to the core and will have to be glued. Luckily the fit is smooth and tight and there is no old glue to be removed.

As you might be able to tell in the first photo, there are some slight quirks with the treadle and footman. The footman is clearly a retrofit and is both too wide and too thick - it rubs on the crank, and it bangs on the back leg and the side of the table. I've bandaged with rags until I can get this dealt with. This may be telling me which leg is the reproduction... Also the treadle bar does not look as if it is long enough in the back, it doesn't stick out from under the table as much as it should, which probably contributes to the footman issues.

There is also a hole for a peg to hold the mother in place once you've adjusted your tension, and I have a quarter inch dowel shoved in there for now - I will need to shape that a little better so it does its job properly.

All put together, even despite these issues, it spins readily and smoothly. The wheel is heavily weighted by the crank, and when you stop it turns till the crank is resting downward, but once you are expecting this it does not take you by surprise. In one end of the treadle bar, there is a fixed pin, and in the base of the opposite leg there is a fixed pin - there is no way to put this together wrong. The pins were a bit rusty but I rubbed them with steel wool, cleaned them with WD40, and greased them with lithium grease, and they are very smooth. This is the third antique wheel I've sat in front of in the past month, and it amazes me how ready they are to work - nothing balky about them, they were made for a purpose and they just go when they are clean and oiled and assembled.

Posted by Prudence at 08:53 AM | Comments (4)