Bella’s Bed

Well, I finished Bella’s bed last night and felted it today.  One trip through the wash cycle, and it was good. I let it spin out in the washing machine and then stretched and shaped it.  It’s dark and gloomy today so the photos are not the greatest but here we go:

Here is the bed pre-felting. That’s my 15-pound cat in the background, on a twin bed, for scale.

I used all, every single little bit, of the variegated and almost all of the navy. I have about 3 yards left.  There is a tiny bit of shaping in the navy, to help encourage it to fold over and make nice thick sides.

 

Post-felting. I’ve folded over the sides here and stuffed it lightly with plastic bags.  When it’s dry I’m definitely going to stuff the sides – and either just sew those shut, or add a sturdy fabric bottom and stuff the bottom also. I’m not sure what, yet.  The variegated does come up a little bit onto the sides on the inside.

Here’s the underside – it’s actually fairly sturdy, you can tell that the fabric is not really collapsing much in the middle. The navy sides come down to be just even with the base.

Bella explored it briefly; it’s still wet but it doesn’t feel too bad, the spin cycle worked fairly well.

Then she sat in it.  It’s definitely big enough for her!

Bed for Bella

We have a new cat, Bella. She’s lovely and we like her very much, but she keeps stealing Tomás’ bed.  We waited to buy her a cat bed until we knew if she wanted one, and now we think she does.  So we priced cat beds and were astounded to find that they are ~$40!!  Tom’s was a gift so we did not realize how expensive they are.  So, creative person that I am, I first thought about sewing one out of fleece.  Then I decided that was too much work so I am knitting her one. I was originally going to use some Plymouth Galway Highland Wool that I got years ago to knit a Rogue but have since decided not to do, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to break up a sweater’s worth of yarn for a cat bad.  So, I went fishing in my stash.  I had some Manos del Uruguay lying around that I have not been able to come up with anything to do with, and a knitted-but-not-finished Clapotis of Manos that I ripped out.  So far, I have used 3 balls of a variegated color and am on my second ball of a dark blue to work with.  At $14/skein (retail value at my lys), that makes this a $70 cat bed… not counting labor and water/electricity to felt the darn thing.  So much for saving money.. ;)

 I’ve started with the basic Kitty Pi pattern from the Wendy Knits website, but am making a few modifications. We’ll see how it ends up..

 For now, I’ll leave you with a few photos – if I get a move on, I might be felting this tomorrow.

Bella sitting in her partially-finished bed; I was partway through the base piece at this point, and was taking a break to frog the Clapotis.

She looks very cosy, doesn’t she?  I chose to do the base entirely in the variegated, hoping I could do the sides in the dark blue and finish with a stripe of variegated – but the base used exactly all of the variegated yarn, so the sides will just be dark blue.

Since I’m not knitting…

I have been tagged.  I don’t usually do these, but two friends from England (who blog at Potential and Expectations and Prairie Road) have tagged me for two different questionnaires, so I will oblige :) Erin actually tagged me a few months ago, but, well, I’m a slacker!  Most of my friends with blogs have already done these, so I won’t tag anyone else.

#1: The rules are that I have to post 7 facts about myself.

• I hate mushrooms and celery. These things are in a lot of canned or store-made soups :(
• I am a really lousy housekeeper.  I hate to dust and mop, and I really don’t like cleaning the bathtub.
• I am NOT a morning person AT ALL, but when given the choice, I set my work hours as 7.30 – 4 instead of 8.30-5 or even 9-5.30, because I discovered how nice it is to get out of work before everyone else.
• I have a mole on the side of my head, my hair hides it but sometimes a hairdresser doesn’t listen when I tell her about it and combs right over it. Ouch!
• I have the blackest thumb I have ever known, I just can’t keep plants alive! But every year, I keep trying. One day I will succeed!
• I love to read, but I don’t usually like to read anything especially deep or thought-provoking. Lately I’ve been on a vampire-and-werewolf kick.
• Sometimes I wish I could be a writer. Fiction, of course.

#2: Erin asked these questions.

1. Is there a place in the world that you consider home? Why?  Where I am now feels like home to me.  I really love it here, and I hope to live here for a long time.  In some ways, however, New Hampshire will always be home because it is where I grew up.
 
2. You’re not a parent, and yet you know so much about children through your work and study.  When you consider the children you’ve known who have really thrived, can you attribute that to any specific actions on the part of the parents?  I think the key thing is parental involvement and a willingness to adapt. Every child is different, even siblings can be very different from each other, and it seems to take parents who are willing to really grow to know and support their child(ren) to be really successful.  Also, most of the really super parents I’ve known realize that it’s okay to have fun sometimes, and not everyone is perfect all of the time :)
 
3. You are an American dating a Brit.  How do you think a cross-cultural relationship might differ from one between two people from the same country? It’s a bit different in my case since my boyfriend was only raised by British parents, and he hadn’t actually lived there until we moved to London.  But even still, it is funny the little cultural quirks that we discover – even something as simple as the difference between me saying “brush my teeth” and him saying “clean my teeth”.  I think it would be much different for people from two very different cultures – in some ways I think the difference between British and American isn’t that far off from the difference between Alabama and Minnesota!
 
4. What is it that you love so much about knitting? I find it rather relaxing, and I have always liked doing crafty things.  I’m good at it, too, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of finishing something.
 
5. Do you feel you have a vocational passion, and if so, what is it?  I really enjoy my current job, I find it rather satisfying and not too frustrating.  However, I also enjoy working with younger children and I think I have a knack to it.  At the moment I have no desire to work with kids again and I am content with my current career track, but who knows what I will end up doing in the future ;)

Pain

If you have been wondering: “why aren’t you posting?”, it’s because I haven’t been knitting.  I’ve been having a fair bit of wrist pain again, and so the knitting has been set aside.  After a trip to the doctor and the physical therapist I finally have a diagnosis – cubital tunnel, and tennis elbow.  Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

 I’m hopeful that physical therapy will help – so far, the doctor’s taking a different approach than I’ve had previously. My appointment Thursday consisted of some tests as usual, but the tests were followed by a lovely massage of my forearm muscles, and then some time wrapped in ice packs with these little electric things attached to my arms which made them all tingly.  Very strange. 

 Oddly enough, each visit to the doctor (first to the wrist specialist for diagnosis, then to the physical therapist) has resulted in MORE pain in the days immediately following.  I find this frustrating, but hopefully things will improve in time.  I still have to go and let them stick needles in my arms to determine how badly the nerves are damaged.

 Did I mention I also have some weak muscles under my right shoulder blade? Yeah, that’s fun too.

Weaving and Dyeing in Bali

While in Bali, we also got to visit a weaving and dyeing studio.  Unfortunately there were not many weavers about, but I did get a few photos.  All of the dyeing is done with natural dyes, such as indigo.  I wish I could remember the other plants our guide told me they use for the other colors but I don’t remember. Oh well.  It was really pretty, anyway.  Nobody was spinning while we were there but I did get a picture of the spinning wheels they use. They are kind of different to what I am used to.

Some cotton thread. I wish I’d thought to put my hand in the picture for scale. It’s really thin, at any rate.

This frame shows the thread above in its entirety – you still can’t tell how thin it is but it gives some idea how much of it there was, I guess.

Spinning wheel and other devices.

Thread drying.

Pink, Green, Yellow, Beige

Indigo

I just loved all of the colors all hanging together like this. So pretty!

Thread being dyed

Weaving project. Women do the weaving, mostly, and they do it in their spare time. Balinese women are very busy looking after their homes and families, making offerings, cooking or cleaning or working in the tourist trade, and also they find time to weave or do other things to bring in more income for the family. Our guide said it takes about a week of spare-time work to do a piece this wide and about 1 meter long.

Ikat Dyeing in Bali

I recently returned from a lovely vacation in Bali (and Taipei, but that’s not the topic at hand today).  While there I had the chance to visit the Threads of Life textile museum in Ubud.  It’s quite small but well done, very well lit and (really rare for a building in Bali!) with a door that actually closed all the way.  Best of all, admission was free!  They had a fantastic display of the process of Ikat dyeing, so this is going to be a photo-heavy post!  The text is taken from the signs on display at the museum.

 Step 1: Ikat means to bind and refers to a tie-and-dye process employed by Indonesia’s weavers. For warp ikat the warp threads are arranged on a tying frame. Groups of adjacent threads are then bound together using lengths of palm-leaf fibre.  The length of each binding seals a section of thread; the resist pattern of bindings forms the intended motif. Two sets of bindings, differentiated by the knots with which each is finished, are tied initially.

Step 2: Both sets of binding resist the indigo dye and only unbound areas become blue. Threads are dyed and dried six to ten times to produce a deep color. To maintain a light blue new bindings are created after three or four dyeings to seal the desired shade against further coloring. (These new bindings have been opened here for demonstration purposes.)

Step 3: One set of bindings is now opened, revealing white sections of thread, while new bindings are applied to seal some of the indigo work. The application of kemiri oil is required as a mordant for the red dye. Once the threads have been thoroughly soaked they are sun dried to evaporate volatile oil components that would otherwise cause the final colors to migrate. Care must be taken not to overheat the threads to the point that the oil combusts.

Step 4: The red dye then colors the newly exposed white sections red, and over-dyes the unsealed indigo with red to produce a midnight-blue. Opening one set of the remaining bindings reveals sections that have received neither dye and remain white; opening the other set re-exposes the pure indigo work.

They do this for warp and weft, and then the finished product looks like this:

 And just for fun, here is some hand-spun, hand-dyed with natural dyes cotton thread.

Charity Auctions

You may remember last fall when I participated in a round of charity auctions, helping to raise money for a little boy named Nat, who was undergoing treatment for a meduloblastoma tumor in his brain. 

 I am sad to report that the treatment did not work.  Three-year-old Natty passed away on December 1 2006. 

According to Natty’s family’s religious tradition, his headstone is placed at the grave one year after burial. This one-year mark is coming up quickly for little Nat’s family, and the members of the Fiber Arts Avengers feel strongly that they should not have to bear the cost of the headstone along with the grief of losing their son.  To help raise money to offset the cost of the headstone, we’ve arranged another round of auctions/raffles.

 The list of all items up for raffle/auction can be found here .  My contribution is a lovely little baby kimono sweater, knit using the Mason-Dixon Knitting baby kimono pattern and offered for raffle with permission from Kay Gardiner.  It can be found here.  I also provided a couple of pieces of knit fruit (pumpkins and and apple) for this auction of knit toys.  This time, we’ve branched out a bit.  In addition to the usual yarn, baby clothes/diapers and handknit items, we have 4 lbs of fresh salmon and some aromatherapy products.  Check it out!

First Solstice Slip

I have finished my first Solstice Slip sock.  I really like it.  The more muted, less varied yarn is beautiful.

 

First, my lovely garter stitch heel. It’s nice not to have to pick up wraps on a short row heel!

 

Against the pattern, I decided to do three rows of 3×2 rib before binding off.  I think this was a mistake.  The cuff would be plenty loose enough without that step. So, I am pretty sure I’ll be undoing my cast off and ripping back three rows.

 

I’m not a huge fan of the yarn in stockinette.  I like that it didn’t pool or flash or stripe TOO badly, but it is just a little boring. It really paired nicely with the more complicated pattern!

It really is hard to take a photo of your own foot!

New Toy

Remember how I started spinning?

A coworker has offered me her spinning wheel.  It’s a lot of fun!  I tried it out briefly at my spinning group last night, and it is really nice. I can’t wait to use it more. 

 

Cable-Needle Free Cabling, part 2

Here’s the previously mentioned tutorial for the 1/2 RC (right leaning cable cross).

In these photos, the purple is the working yarn, light green the slipped stitch and the two darker green stitches were knit in the last round.  RHN = Right hand needle, LHN = left hand needle.

 

1. Ready to start!

 

 2. Stretch the slipped stitch if needed to make the next step easier.

 

3. Insert RHN into slipped stitch as if to knit

4. Wrap working yarn around RHN and pull it through the slipped stitch (this last step is not pictured – sorry!). You now have one new stitch on your RHN, and the same number as before on your LHN.

 

5. Insert RHN into first stitch on LHN as if to knit and wrap working yarn around RHN

 6.  Pull working yarn through first stitch on LHN – you have just created a stitch (the second one on your RHN – this photo is deceptive, the right-most stitch on my RHN is the first purl stitch)

7. Insert RHN into second stitch on LHN and knit it.  You now have three new stitches on your RHN.

8. Slip all three of the stitches you just knit into (two knit stitches and one slipped stitch) off the LHN — Finished!