Alaska Report Inspires Button Blanket
Each student in my daughter’s fifth grade class wrote a report on a state. Her state was Alaska, and she wrote about the usual topics. My husband let her in on many of his professional secrets of map-drawing. Naturally, I always try to get her interested in the things people make. Alaska’s earliest inhabitants continue a wonderful tradition of art and craft.
Since “visuals” counted for one quarter of the requirements for a grade of A, I thought it would be neat for Eva to craft something, rather than just relying on the usual pictures glued onto poster board. What could be better than a button blanket?! Northwest Coast Indians, including the Alaskan Tlingit, make and wear button blankets for ceremonial dances.
Eva designed a cat’s face in her interpretation of the style of a Tlingit button blanket. She sewed diligently until it was done. I knew it was important to collect mother-of-pearl buttons!
Intarsia How-To
Intarsia How-To
In intarsia, you knit areas of color, guided by a graph. Depending on how big a color area is, you can use a ball of yarn, a yarn butterfly that you wind on your fingers, or a bobbin. I’m going to call them bobbins, since that is the traditional yarn-holding method for intarsia.
Intarsia is usually worked in stockinette stitch, and the color changes are done with the yarns on the purl side.
Each color change in a row requires a separate bobbin of yarn. Here’s what I mean.
For this graph, you need three different bobbins of blue and two different bobbins of yellow:
Rows 1-3: blue bobbin
Rows 4-7: blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin
Rows 8-12: blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin
Rows 13-16: blue bobbin, yellow bobbin, blue bobbin
Rows 17-19: blue bobbin
Ooooo, I know it’s tempting to strand the yellow across those three stitches of blue in the middle, so you won’t have to wind two separate bobbins. Don’t do it! Stranding and intarsia don’t mix well. They stretch differently, and you’ll get stiffer, solid areas surrounded by stretched-out areas.
The color areas are knitted more-or-less independently, so the key is to change colors so that you don’t get holes where the colors meet. If you want to knit along, cast on 6 sts with color A, and then cast on 6 sts with color B. Turn and knit across the 6 sts of color B.
Alright, here you are, all finished knitting color B (pink in the sample). (I went ahead and knitted a few rows so you could see the color changes better.) You want to change to color A (white in the sample).
Drop color B to the purl side of the work (away from you). Reach under color B to pick up color A. When you lift color A to knit, it should cross over the strand of color B on the purl side.
Hurray, now you’ve finished the knit row, and you have purled color A, and now you’re ready to change colors again. Drop color A to the purl side of the work (toward you, this time). Reach under color A to pick up color B. When you bring it up to purl the next stitch, color B should cross over color A.
Oh no! I’m getting ready to purl the white yarn, but it’s not crossing the pink! If I don’t fix this problem, I’ll have a hole at this color change.
Here’s the back of my finished sample. Crossing the yarns produces the dotted line of white on the pink side, and the pink line on the white side. You can see these lines, even when I change colors on the diagonal. When you add another color, it’s the same thing: drop the old color to the purl side, pick up the new color from underneath the old. The colors should cross.
Because stockinette stitch looks like a series of little ‘v’s stacked on top of each other, you will always get the little color jags when you change color on a diagonal. It’s especially apparent where the white changes into the plum, on the right side of my sample.
Another time you should use this color change method is on the first and last color change of a row, when you are knitting a stranded pattern on straight needles. It’s not necessary to cross the yarns in circularly-knitted Fair Isle. Back-and-forth stranded patterns are different. Do the cross-color-change at the beginning and end of the row.
Magazine Day
Yesterday was marked by three separate magazine encounters.
The fall issue of INKnitters arrived, and there was my article about Fire Ant Ranch, with lots of pretty pictures. In a box, set off from the rest of the text, I wrote about the 2005 Taos Wool Festival. Oops! Just a little late! But I hope it will pique peoples’ interest and move more knitters to attend next year.
My friend Joan from Canada had two copies of the fall issue of Spin Off , so she sent one to me. Inside was an article about fringed purses, using a familiar lazy fringe-making technique. The author mentioned a workshop at Alston Hall. Hey, I’ve taught there! Then I read my name—Thank you, Freyalyn, for giving me credit for the fringe technique.
Oddly enough, I had a letter in my computer, waiting for a final photo of my pink tassel, proposing an article on my fringe-making technique plus various trims and tassels that can result. Yep, the letter was destined to be sent to Spin Off . I’ll probably still send it. Hope they will consider another article about handspun fringe.
Then, late last night, I sent off the last photo for my article in INKnitters, winter 2005. Here’s another teaser picture. Can you guess what the article is about?
Talk Went Well
I arrived at Joy’s Fabrics a little after nine o’clock, to find Joy and her husband, George, already setting up for my talk to the Busy Bees Sewing Group. We brought in my piles of samples, and organized them for the program.
Before long, the ladies came in. They came from far and wide, including some from our little town of Dublin. We enjoyed coffee, Halloween treats, and chat, before the meeting started. They were a knowledgeable and attentive audience. Their questions and comments made the discussion lively and fun.
Best of all, I get to come back and teach a button-making workshop next spring! I will probably go back anyway, and join the group. I need to get together with others who like to make stuff.
Here’s the aftermath of the program—my wall hangings all on a rack, and people talking among the bolts of fabric after the meeting.
Many, many thanks to Joy for telling the group about me, to Freda for inviting me to talk, and to the Dublin Citizen for publishing an announcement about my talk.
A Fungus Among Us
What is this? An alien fungus set to take over the world? No. It is just the beginning of my Rexlace bag, nestled against a bladderpod, growing in my future studio (those boards are part of the foundation framing). I wanted to try knitting Rexlace after seeing its rainbow variety of colors at Michaels. When the NotYarnKAL came to my attention, I knew it was meant to be. Here I am, enjoying the beautiful weather last weekend, taking notes on the Rexlace bag design, with the fungus on my knee.
This project attracts a lot of attention during my frequent episodes of knitting in public. Just yesterday at the Coffee Studio, a young lady said to me, “I’ve never seen anyone knitting that stuff.” We talked, and the more we talked, the more apparent it was to me that here was someone knowledgeable about yarn and dyeing. The chances against casually meeting a fellow textile artist in Stephenville, Texas, must be astronomical!
She had just been to Santa Fe, another yarn and fiber art paradise in New Mexico. “I just got back from Taos!” I said. Raising an 18-month-old son on a tight budget, she is seeking her fiber thrills by growing a weaver’s dye garden, and by shopping at one of the old wool/mohair warehouses in her hometown to get (she hopes) a 100-lb. bale of raw wool. I hope she will contact me if she would like to talk about publishing her work.
Here’s some more fall color from our yard.
Giving a Talk at Joy’s Fabrics
Joy’s Fabrics (Stephenville, Texas, across from the courthouse) is host to the Busy Bees, an informal sewing group that meets on the third Saturday of each month, from 10 a.m. to noon. I am giving October’s meeting program, where I will show lots and lots of my knitted/sewn/machine-embroidered work. That includes the secret ladybug wall hanging, previously glimpsed on this blog.
Joy will set up an ironing board so I can demonstrate some TextileFusion techniques. You can pick up one of my pretty postcards, too.
And now for a Joy’s Fabrics testimonial: I love shopping at Joy’s. Joy herself is there to help. She knows a lot about sewing, and she can give help and advice. When I finish a quilt top or garment shell, I take it over to Joy’s. She walks around the store with it, testing it against various fabrics. We pull out bolts of the most promising fabrics. We always find something that works beautifully.
Now, suppose one had a couple of young daughters who weren’t particularly interested in fabric shopping at the moment. Joy’s store is roomy enough for children to run around. She doesn’t mind if they hide under the pattern book table. Last time we were there, my husband chased our two-year-old Ella all over the place. The little one giggled and laughed a lot, and she may have even shrieked. Joy took it in her stride, and offered a cool drink of water to the two runners.
Stephenville is southwest of Fort Worth, on Hwy 377/67, going through Granbury. It’s a small college town, so it has a good choice of restaurants. It has hidden treasures, like a Dutch food store, called Dutch Touch, which carries Dutch cheeses, rollmops, wonderful cookies, and more. It is tucked into the back of a children’s clothing store called For Kids Only.
Wool Festival at Taos, Part 4
Here are the finished projects from the ‘Small Quilts and Tote Bags from Your Old Sweaters’ workshop.
Randi admitted a sewing machine phobia at the beginning of class, but she really wanted to make a tote bag. So she plunged in. As we worked out the construction details, she did the required sewing. She was very pleased with the finished bag.
Ginger’s tote bag was well underway, when she placed her small quilt on it. “I think I’m going to use this as a pocket on the bag,” she said. It was absolutely perfect! Ginger used a variegated thread for decorative stitching on the bag.
Continuing the outer space theme, Susan sewed a bag from silvery black denim. She used her small quilt as a decorative panel on the front. Then she made another small quilt to decorate the back of the bag.
The class was made fabulous by the loan of Husqvarna Viking Designer I sewing and embroidery machines. Thank you to those who made it possible!
Taos Wool Festival, Part 3, Beginnings
Tuesday was a long, hard-working, fun day. I had the best possible students in my ‘Quilts and Tote Bags from Your Old Sweaters’ workshop. I dutifully provided a tote bag pattern, all written out with measurements and everything. None of them used it. They all had their own ideas and just went ahead with them. I love that kind of class!
Randi read my class supply list carefully, and correctly interpreted my intention for each student to make exactly the bag she wanted. She spindle-spun the yarn she used to make her tote bag, and bought jute upholstery webbing for the handles. Using one of her own tote bags as a pattern guide, we figured out how to cut, construct, and sew the new bag from her hand-knit fabric with Guatemalan fabric as a base and lining.
To strengthen the handles, Randi folded the webbing in and over itself along its length. She used a decorative stitch in red thread to secure the fold and match the stripes in the jute. The difficulty came when it was time to sew the handles to the bag. We finally got the job done with a denim needle, and slow, patient stitching. We both learned from this project. See the finished bag in tomorrow’s post.
Ginger saved our sanity when it looked as if we couldn’t get the fusible interfacing to stick to the sweaters. “They’re all different,” she said, “so you have to read the directions.” I always steam my fusible to make it stick better, but it seems that some fusibles work best with a dry iron. Unfortunately, fusible doesn’t always come with directions, so we experimented with steamy and dry irons to find the right combination.
Ginger was very comfortable with the sewing machine, so she put her small quilt together, and embellished it with decorative stitching and appliqué, without much interference from me. Time was getting on, and she decided to finish the quilting and binding at home, so she could start on the tote bag. Read the rest of the story and see the finished bag in tomorrow’s post.
jewelry-maker, pulled together her purple and charcoal sweaters with bits and pieces of knitting from my scraps box. “It reminds me of outer space,” I said. “Take a look at my lining material!” she said. The white dots and purple balls on a black background looked exactly like the Milky Way with planets. She had picked up the fabric because she liked it, but with no particular project in mind at the time. We all commented how beautifully things come together sometimes. Check tomorrow’s post to see how her project evolved.
Taos Wool Festival, Part 2
The vendors are gone, but the workshops will be going through Tuesday. I had the day off, so we visited the 200-year-old adobe Martinez Hacienda this morning. Thought to be among the products of the Hacienda were woolen socks, knitted from churro wool, by Indian servants or enslaved people. They started with the fleece, washing, carding, spinning, and finally knitting it. One pair of socks probably took about thirty hours to make, from washing to darning in the last threads. They were important for trade. One isn’t allowed to publish any photos taken at the hacienda, so you’ll just have to go along and see the replica stockings and a leg-shaped stretching board in the weaving room.
Then we stopped by Weaving Southwest, a tapestry gallery, weaving studio, and yarn store. The friendly folks at Weaving Southwest were glad to talk about their Rio Grande brand Hand-Dyed Yarns for knitters and weavers. The multi-color yarns at left are for knitting, the yarns at right looked like they might have been baked to perfection by a desert sun.
Look at this wall of tapestry yarn! As soon as I saw this, my mind immediately started planning a wall hanging. The yarn comes in two weights: a two-ply which has 162 yards in a 4 ounce skein, and a thin single yarn that comes in at 736 yards in a 4 ounce skein (2,944 yards per pound). Each of the 22 colors come in five shades, light to dark.
The thin yarn is great for blending, because you can knit several strands together, and gradually change them in and out to get effects like this store sample. It was knitted with three strands, using size 8 needles.
Taos Wool Festival, Part 1
Yes, it’s worth the twelve-hour drive from central Texas to the mountains of New Mexico. The Taos Wool Festival is the place to find American-grown animal fiber of every description: sheepswool, mohair, angora, llama, alpaca, and probably more that escaped my attention. There’s something for textile-lovers of all persuasions:
fleece and batts for spinners and dyers
yarns for dyers, weavers, crocheters, and knitters
finished garments, rugs, art, and accessories.
Here’s my 10-yr-old, Eva, choosing mohair locks, one ounce for $2.00. “What do you do with those?” a lady asked me. “Oh, you can spin them, or use them in a wall hanging,” I said. But who knows what Eva will do with them? She always surprises me with her ingenuity.
Mohair and mohair/wool combinations were impossible to resist in Brooks Farm’s booth. We stood in front of their small mirror, trying one skein after another to find the perfect one for our complexions. Eva looks good in cool greens, yellows, and blues. I prefer the warmer tones. Here’s our purchase.
The Wool Festival hosts competitions for handspun yarns, home accessories, garments, and fleeces. The items must be made from American-grown animal fibers (the percentages differ for the various contests). I plan to enter a wall hanging next year, so I bought some wool quilt batting.
My husband, Charles, played with our two-year-old, Ella, while we shopped. She fed and petted the wooly animals, and climbed in a tree. Many dogs were at the show, and she had to visit them all. By lunchtime, she was hot and tired and ready to go.
While Ella had a nap, Charles and Eva went to the Rio Grande Gorge.
