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Nyt år – nye projekter!

– Men også gamle projekter der skal gøres færdige .. Jeg har en (endnu ikke helt udpenslet) plan om at færdiggøre en hel del UFO’er i løbet af det nye år. Noget i retningen af at have 2 til 3 UFO’er i aktiv rotation hele tiden, og så kun begynde på noget nyt når 2 gamle er færdiggjorte. En UFO er i min terminologi et ufærdigt objekt der er påbegyndt for mere end et år siden. Dem har jeg mange af. Rigtig mange!

Nye idéer har jeg naturligvis også rigtig mange af. De står i kø i mit hoved, og ofte udspringer de af at der lige er en eller anden ny strikketeknik eller -metode der skal afprøves.
Senest (i forgårs, faktisk) har det adstedkommet fødslen af et nyt projekt i form af tvebindingsvanter.
I strikkeforeningen Seriøs Strik for Sjov, som jeg holder strikkemøde med i Silkeborg en gang om måneden, havde vi i efteråret Helle fra Horsens til at holde en mini-workshop om tvebinding. Meget interessant!

Eksempler på tvebinding
Eksempler på tvebinding

Tvebinding er en gammel skandinavisk strikketeknik, der er karakteriseret ved at det strikkede bliver meget fast og dermed varmt og på det nærmeste vandafvisende. Et klart hit i tidligere tider, især hvis man arbejdede dagen lang i de svenske skove – om vinteren.
Tvebinding – eller tvåändstickning på svensk – får sin struktur ved at der strikkes med 2 tråde skiftevis. Disse tråde snos om hinanden for hver maske, så det bliver fast og tæt!
Efter workshoppen med Helle har jeg gået og samlet mod til at lære det ordentligt (= strikke andet end en prøve) og jeg begyndte for et stykke tid siden at spinde garn til et par vanter. Garnet til tvebinding skal helst være spundet i S-retning og tvundet Z, hvilket jo er det modsatte af “almindeligt” strikkegarn. Der er enkelte steder man kan købe det Z-tvundne garn, men ikke mange.. Så er det jo perfekt at kunne spinde noget selv! 🙂
Garnet blev færdigt for et par dage siden, lige samtidig med at de bøger om tvebinding, som jeg havde bestilt hjem fra biblioteket, kom. Så nu er jeg i gang med at træne teknikken i et par simple stribede vanter.

Den spæde start på en vante ..
Den spæde start på en vante ..

Hillemænd, det er tidskrævende! Et par centimeter om dagen, det er vist den fart jeg kan regne med. Der er selvfølgelig nogle tekniske udfordringer der skal overvindes (garn i højre hånd, f.eks), så jeg satser på at hastigheden kommer lidt op hen ad vejen. Men alt andet lige er det vist en lidt langsommelig proces at tvebinde, set i forhold til almindelig strikning. Jeg håber det viser sig at være umagen værd!

Andre ting der optager mig lige nu:

Væven næsten klar ..
Væven næsten klar ..

Væven er blevet sat op! Næsten da. Jeg har bommet med en trend af tyndt, grå alpacagarn og søllet lige over på fire skafter. Jeg vil væve tørklæder i lærredsvævning, og islættet til tørklæderne skal være håndspundet garn. Foreløbig har jeg spundet til det første tørklæde. Det er 1-trådet BFL/silke i farven “Jupiter”.

Månedens farve på fiber:
Januars farve hedder “På spring”. Inspirationen til farveholdningen kommer fra et foto, som Mariann Jensen har sendt mig, af en knop der er i færd med at springe ud. skønne, varme pastel-agtige farver, som jeg synes jeg har fanget nogenlunde godt i fibrene.
Der er farvet på Polwarth uld, Oatmeal BFL/silke-blend og luksusblandingen FalkSilkPaca. Se mere om priser osv. i webshoppen.

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Colourway: På spring / Leaping

Til slut lige et par ting, som jeg er blevet færdig med. Ja-ja, det sker jo trods alt også engang imellem! .. Hele 3 ting denne gang!
De første er en skønno halsedisse i restegarner, dernæst mine dejlige rønnebær-pulsvarmere a la Knitsonik og sidst, men ikke mindst, min plante/svampefarvede cardigan.

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Halsedisse

 

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Rønnebær-pulsvarmere

 

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Færdig cardigan!

Jeg ønsker alle et smukt, spændende og kreativt nytår!

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Just Blue – Blot Blåt

I am a relatively new member of the knitting society “Seriøs Strik For Sjov”, which means “Serious Knitting For Fun”. Every year the members are encouraged to knit/crochet/craft something for a travelling exibition. This years theme is “Just Blue”, and that simply means that only blue items are allowed.

The deadline is on March 1st, but I handed in my blue item the other night when we met at Silkeborg Museum, as usual on the third thursday of the month.
Before I let go of my blue thing, I took a few photos. Our chairman Hanne has given permission to publish photos, so here it is:

Equalizer
Equalizer

The top is knitted in two long panels that goes over the shoulders, each one dyed in two blue colors. The idea was to knit with exactly the number of stitches required for the color change to find place in the middle of the panel. It meant that I had to pay great attention to gauge – I litteraly had to count on every row, allowing for some drifting – but not much.
The two panels were joined front and back with mattress stitching, and the sides are mesh panels.

Side panel of the Equalizer Top
Side panel of the Equalizer Top

I like how the two panels that make up the front and back are so different. The dark blue/turquoise panel gave name to the top: The color shifting looks kind of like the equalizer-panel on the stereo..

Apart from finishing my Equalizer Top I have been weaving. Soon I will be ready to cut down the two rugs in Swedish Rosepath-pattern. They will be approximately 2 meters (80 inches) long, the first one a little longer than the second. The weaving width is 80 cms (32 inches), but I expect the width to crawl in to about 70 cms.
Here is a look at the pattern of the second rug:
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Cutting down will be very exiting! It will happen in a few days.. I’m curious to weigh the rugs to find out the amount of yarn that has gone into them – I have used nothing but stash yarns.
Yes. I have a serious stash..

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Rosepath Rug #2

About a week ago I finished the first Rosepath Rug on my Finlandia loom. It still sits there on the loom, because I have to weave a second rug before I cut down and finish the work.

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First rug finished!

I really like the look of Rug #1. I hope it looks good also when it’s off the loom and on the floor. Now it slowly dissapears from my eyes as it rolls onto the clothbeam..
For the second rug I first started out doing some weft-changing over the width, in order to create a rug with four color zones from left to right. I happily started working on the idea but it didn’t work out quite the way I had envisioned it. Gave it up. Then I took a break for a few days to think..

This is what I ended up doing:

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Rosepath rug #2 – the beginning

The ground weft is a light gray wool yarn and the pattern weft is multiple strands of brown, red and purple yarns. I also altered the threading sequence to make this pattern – I like the way it looks – kind of old-fashioned. And Swedish.. 🙂
Take a closer look:

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Swedish rosepath.

I would love to hear what you think! Does it look okay? (No, I will not show you my selvedges.. There is something to improve regarding those..)

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Green and brown

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“Grass” on Opus

I have composed and dyed 3 new colors: 2 greens and a red-brown. Here they are, shown on Opus yarn.
I have also dyed the green ones on Serenade (lace yarn) and on BFL-Steps (sock yarn), and they are now in my webshop:
http://garngalleriet.bigcartel.com/

The chestnut brown have been dyed on wool-tops as well as the Opus yarn, but I don’t have any photos of the Chestnut fiber to show yet.

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“Chestnut” on Opus

Also, the rug weaving project I talked about in the last post is coming along nicely. I’m about 20 cms short of finishing the first one, and right now I am thinking about how I want the second rug to look. The exact plans are not quite complete yet, but #2 of this warp will be a much more colorfull rug than #1, that’s for sure!

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“Hunter” on Opus

I want to try weaving with several weft-bundles per pick, so that I can change colors in the middle of the rug. I have a feeling it will be slow-going, also because I will be composing the weft bundles out of many strands of yarn each. What fun it will be!

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Weaving project started.

So, I’m off!
This morning I began weaving the first of the two (maybe three) rugs that I’ve set my loom up for. Have a quick look at this very beginning:
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At the bottom you see the hem. This is to be folded and sewed – no fringe for any rugs in my house, because the vacuum cleaner robot chokes on it..!
On top of that is the rosepath patterned rug fabric. For the tabby ground weave I use a beautiful 2-ply yarn of gotland sheep wool. Dark bordeaux. I use 4 strands as one. Actually I have plyed and then cabled the yarns to make it easier to get an even tabby-weave.
The pattern yarns, on the other hand, are just laying side by side. There are 8 strands of yarn held together, all different qualities and fibers. Only “rule” is that the yarns for the pattern weave has to be white, natural, tan og grey.

There are many many pattern possibilities with rosepath, but this first rug is just gong to have this diamond pattern, all over. For the next one I might get a little more adventurous and play with the threadling sequence.. 🙂

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Now: The Loom

I want to weave. Now.

It’s been much too long since I’ve done that, and my beautiful Finlandia Loom has been standing naked in my studio for more than 1 year. The latest items I wove on the Finlandia were two twill shawls. These beauties. Back in August ’12!
Yesterday I suddenly decided that it was time to dress the loom. I made a warp of cotton carpet yarn, for rugs.
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I am going for a weave structure called Swedish Rosepath. It is woven on 4-shafts and ties up into a ground tabby and the rosepath pattern. 6 treadles. I have an idea of using grey wool yarn as the ground weft and several strands of left-over yarns for the pattern. Hope it will work out the way I envision it!
I really have enormous amounts of left-over yarns, whish makes this project look very usefull and practical – at least in my head. I can’t wait to weave a sample, so I better get going.. The loom is warped but I still have a lot of setting-up to do before I’m ready to go.

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Dyeing, spinning, weaving

There’s a lot going on, but I haven’t been very good at blogging about it. Sorry about that. But I’m quite busy all the time, things take time and sometimes I just have to make priorities.
Today I sent out the club-fibers for July fiber-club. The colours are soft and sun-bleached and summer-like, so I just called the colorway “July”. Well, you know. It just came to me.. 😉
I don’t have any photoes of “July”-fibers yet, but actually you can see the colors in my waeving in the previous post. I have spun the July-colors (alpaca/silk) using my Bosworth spindle and the singles yarn is used as weft in my shawl. Still on the loom, but soon to be finished! (if I get the time..)

I have beeen doing a little bit of natural dyeing too. Inspired by an experiment from Jenny Deans book “Wild Colours” I dyed this bunch of very small skeins in one dye-pot, with Curled Dock (Rumex crispus). I had mordanted beforehand with different mordants and then I treated some of the skeins with different stuff after the dyeing. That way I got a lot (25) of different shades from just a single dyebath. I’m going to use these yarns in a fair isle project.

All the shades go so well together!

Last week I was at a tapestry class. Great fun! I learned a lot and really really want to get some work done on my big tapestry loom – but the time is not for that right now, sadly..

Also spinning a little bit. Not much, I mus admit. But in the latest issue of Spin-Off Magazine I read about a really cool technique: Ply-on-the-fly, using a spindle. i just had to try my hands at that method of spinning and navahoplying at the same time, and after a little fumbling and trial-and-error I finally got it. Here’s the Polwarth I spun and plied-on-the-fly:

I have made two of these balls. Still two to go..

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Fiber Club for June.

The fiber is ready. Packed and ready for sending off tomorrow. It’s still a little too early to show the June-colorway on the fibers, but I’ll show you my inspiration for this months colors:

A wonderful painting by a friend of mine, Karen Margrethe Jelonek. She is a very talented artist, and I was so fortunate to get this beauty in a trade for a piece of furniture.. Lucky me!
The colors of this flower painting are deep and rich. Reds, dark and strong and warm, deep dark blues and greens and browns. I just loved the painting the moment I saw it, and also knew right away that these hues just had to become a fiber-colorway..
I’ll show the actual June-fibers in a few days!
I just want to say that there are a few available slots in the Fiber Club , starting from June. So if you are very quick you can still join the fun for this month and the next two. See my Etsy-shop for details!

Other than dyeing fbers (and yesterday some yarn as well) I am been weaving these days. I’ve warped the loom with a merino/silk warp in three colors and threaded the shafts for a twill structure. It’s going to end up with two shawls. The first one is allready woven and still sits on the loom. Now I’m weaving the second one:

Using handdyed, handspun weft for this one. Alpaca and silk singles that I’m spinning (as I go along) on one of my favorite spindles, a Bosworth midi. It’s yummy stuff!

 

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Tapestry eye candy.

Today my good friend Elisabeth had asked me to meet her at a local art center, Silkeborg Bad Kunstcenter.

Elisabeth wanted to show me an exibition of wonderful woven tapestries by a group of European art tapestry weavers. The artists call themselves European Tapestry Forum (ETF) and the juried exibition is called ARTAPESTRY3.
And it was interesting stuff! As a wannebe-tapestry weaver I was mostly drawn to the technical aspects of the artworks, and not so much the artistic impression..
Elisabeth and I have both signed up for a two day workshop in tapestry weaving later this month, so todays expedition was kind of a study filed trip..
The colors, the size, the impact of all those very different weavings was overwhelming! I snapped some photos, of which very few were a decent quality.

I’ll just show a few, like this hanging, woven of fabric strips like our well-known, good old scrappy floormatts.
It was sooo hard not to touch the hangings, and so tempting to lift them out to inspect the backside.. We were of course thrilled when we came to a tapestry that stood out from the wall just enough for us to get a good look behind the surface:

As you can see, the back side of this very colorfull piece looks almost like rya. No weaving in ends here! Notice how Elisabeth holds tight to her hands.. We didn’t touch anything. And, because touching was not allowed (and this maybe is a bit nerdy) we simply used another one of our senses: we actually sniffed in the fabric with our noses in an attempt to find out if a certain part of a weaving was made out of silal of silk. Elisabeth even claimed that the colors had their own different smells, like in this piece woven with naturally dyed nettle yarns:

But mostly it was the use of many strands of yarn to create subtle color variations and a lively surface that was interesting to me. Like this:

Beautiful, isn’t it? I would love to be able to weave just remotely like this some day..

We also visited another exibition today in the same place. “Netmaskerne“, a group of Danish machine knitters opened their show fabolous, interesting and gorgeous dresses and robes, and of course we went to have a look.. 🙂

Beautiful stuff!!

Back home I immediately sat down to weave a bit on my pratice-tapestry:

I have to admit that I’m quite intimidated by all the colors I have to control to get the right look of the mushrooms. It’s not easy at all! But I guess I just need to remind myself that it is a practice piece, and that I’ll learn by doing (and hopefully learn a lot at the tapestry-class later this month..).

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Back in weaving-action!

It has been too long since I have woven. My new landlady here at my studio provided the motivation for getting the loom dressed up: she said that she could use a shawl or stole in soft hues of pink, green and tan, something that would go well with a summerly outfit.

That got me thinking, and last week I wound a warp for two shawls out of luxurious merino/silk yarns in 3 colors: light rose, beige/tan and sage green.

Dressing the loom with the warp took its time, but today I was finally ready to start weaving.
For the first shawl I have chosen the same yarn as the warp: a lovely 2-ply silk/merino yarn, soft and shiny and just a little fluffy..
The weave structure is a regular 2/2 twill on four shafts. Very classic and always suitable for shawls with its simplicity and wonderful drape.
I have woven about 40 cms of the first shawl today:

I have chosen an off-white weft yarn to tone down the colors even more.
For scarf no. 2 I have decided to use a handspun yarn with lots of colors, just to make a shawl that will very different from the first. That handspun weft-yarn is not yet spun, so I predict that it will take quite a while before I can cut the two shawls off the loom.