A Little Bit Of Blocking

I don't know what is wrong with me. I ought to be writing a post most days, there is certainly lots to write about, but I just don't seem to have the time. My excuse is going to be that I have been knitting like mad over the last few weeks in an effort to make all the things that I want to give as Christmas presents. I've even managed to find time to knit a few commissions, a hat and mittens for one of my knitting group friends who is too busy to knit herself because she has started to make beautiful knitting project bags and is inundated with orders, and a lace scarf for her daughter to give to her Mum (she couldn't knit herself because Mum would have seen it and know it was for her).

It is this scarf that caused me to dream up the title for this post. The blocking concerned is not writer's block, but the blocking that is required to get a piece of knitting to its proper size and shape. You should really block all knitting before you start joining seams and doing the finishing touches, but I have never done that, because I know that I knit to tension and I am sure that the various pieces of any garment that I make will fit together easily.

But when it comes to lace knitting then blocking is essential. This is generally because you knit lace on much larger needles than would be expected for the thickness of the yarn. The resultant knitting usually curls around itself and has no real shape whatsoever. In order to block something you have to first soak it for some time so that every fibre of the yarn gets wetted, then you drain the water out of the bowl and squeeze out the excess water from the item to be blocked, first by squeezing it with your hands making sure that it is a squeezing action and not a wringing one, and then wrapping it in an absorbent towel to get rid of as much water as possible.

The scarf that I had to block this morning was knitted in a lovely yarn made from kid mohair and silk. The yarn is a delight to knit with but as anyone who is familiar with mohair will know the yarn has lots of fibres protruding from the yarn; it's these that give mohair its tremendous warmth capability. I put the scarf into the bowl of tepid water and it just floated on the top of it. The water just wasn't getting into the fabric at all. It took a good five minutes of prodding and poking to make sure that every stitch of the scarf had absorbed the water. Half an hour later with the scarf damp and creased from the squeezing action it was time to get the blocking wires and pins out and lay the scarf out on a couple of towels, pull it to shape, then insert the wires and add a few pins to make sure that it was kept stretched to shape while it dried.

Eight hours later I took the pins and wires out and lifted the scarf from the towels. I held up a beautiful scarf with its lace pattern clearly visible and the points at each end of the scarf firmly shaped. It will be going to knitting group with me tomorrow so that I can hand it over to the person who commissioned me to make it.

I have another scarf on the floor now. This one is a far more elaborate lace design and is made from a yarn that is a mix of baby alpaca, cashmere and silk. This one absorbed the water far more readily but I was surprised to find that the water had changed colour when I came to drain it away. Then I remembered that the yarn is from a company that uses natural dyes and so a certain amount of colour should be expected to come out of the yarn when it is first wetted.

This scarf was a little easier to apply the wires to because of the eyelets that are a few stitches in from the edge on all four sides. I'm hoping that it will be dry in the morning and I can block another scarf before I head off for knitting group. I have five scarves and I shawl to block in total and the shawl will require me to move all the furniture around in my room so as to ensure that I have a large enough area on which to lay it out.

I think that in future I will block each item as soon as it is completed so as to not have this blocking frenzy that I am going to have to endure over the next week. But at least it is keeping me busy and I don't have time to think about how difficult the next few weeks are going to be for me.

One Of Those Days

Sometimes, you just have one of those days when you really wish you hadn't woken up. I had trouble getting to sleep last night (probably a combination of the amount of sleep that I had enjoyed over the preceding couple of days and because my mind was so active with all sorts of horrible thoughts and memories whizzing round inside it) so it was about 2am before I finally dropped off.

I woke at 5.30am, managed to drop off back to sleep and then woke again at about 7.30. I felt awful. I needed more sleep, I could hardly keep my eyes open, my hip was causing me pain after I had obviously slept awkwardly, I had a headache, I had a stiff shoulder and all I wanted to do was cry.

What was I to do? I knew that if I went back to sleep I probably wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. But I really didn't want to get out of bed. It was comfortable, it was warm, and it was very grey outside and it looked as though rain was imminent.

Eventually I managed to force myself to get up, I got myself something to eat, I pottered around doing various things but not seeming to really achieve anything. I switched on the computer, checked my emails and then looked at my blog to see who on my blog roll had posted something this morning. And then I saw it. My lovely little cluster map widget had lost all its red dots. I knew that the map had been archived yesterday and that would mean a fresh map today, but after having managed to notch up dots in 65 different countries around the world during the last year, it was sad to see the map disappear and a new one appear with just a few dots covering the UK and the USA. But hopefully tomorrow the dots will have spread a little further around the world because there has been a visitor from Estonia today and another from Iran, as well as the usual visitors from the UK and USA. And who might visit overnight?

Having got over the loss of my red dots, I decided to do some knitting late this afternoon. I continued working on the circular shawl and I now have just seven and a half rows left to do before starting to work on the border. I don't suppose that I will finish those rows tonight as there are 738 stitches to the row and it takes a fair while to make one circuit around the shawl, but I am sure that the rows will be finished tomorrow evening and I will be able to start work on the border.

I'm not feeling quite so desperate now as I was earlier today (perhaps it is because I am going to have lunch with Mr Smiley tomorrow), but I still feel as though I shouldn't have bothered about today. But to be honest there have been quite a few days like that recently and I wish that there weren't.

For me, dealing with depression is about coping with the here and now. If I can get through each day, then I feel as though I have achieved something. I find it best not to think too far ahead because something is bound to crop up and spoil my plans (I only have to look at last week to see that happen), and by managing to live through one day at a time, I don't put too much pressure on myself to do things that will only result in me feeling worse than I already do when I can't cope with them.

I've decided that I am going to try to do a little reading before lying down to sleep tonight. If I am lucky, I will actually drop off to sleep while I am still reading. This happens quite often and I have actually learnt to take my glasses off in my sleep now. And if I get a decent night's sleep, then perhaps tomorrow won't be 'one of those days'.

A Quick Update On The Knitting (And Crochet)

I have been crocheting another scarf like the one that I showed you all the other day. This time the wool comprises a real rainbow of colours rather than just being the blue/green/purple combination of the previous example. The photograph below shows it in its early stages and it is now almost complete, but I needed a change from crocheting which can be a bit hard on my wrist, so it has been put away for a few days and I am back to knitting.
I have written before about how I like to have several projects on the go at the same time so that I don't get bored with what I am working on. Last week I bought a book entitled Victorian Lace Today, which includes a number of patterns from Victorian times which have been updated or comprise elements from several different pattern designers from those times. The scarf below is being knitted using a pattern from 1847 and it is progressing slowly but steadily as I try to complete one complete of the pattern each day, although I have to admit that I haven't done any of it for a couple of days because I have been working on something else.
I have been taking a break from the scarf to work on the shawl shown below. Instead of using very fine laceweight wool, this shawl is a little more substantial and is made using some sock yarn that I bought for another project, but once I started knitting it I didn't like the finished article so I unpicked it and the wool was available for something else. That something else has turned out to be a half-hexagon shawl which is progressing well. I have finished the first two pattern charts and I am now on the second repeat (of five) of the third pattern chart for this shawl. While the top of the shawl is quite substantial having very little in the way of lace patterning in it (this should mean that it will sit on the shoulders well and be warmer than something that is completely lacy), the second and third pattern charts are much more lacy in appearance and as the size of needle used increases as the shawl progresses the lower parts will be more flowing. With 45 more rows to be knitted and then a complex cast off which involves the use of a crochet hook as well as the knitting needle, the shawl won't be finished tomorrow but the weekend should see its completion.
I am then going to start knitting some socks, something that I haven't done for a number of years, but there are so many lovely sock yarns available these days and an incredible number of sock patterns, I am rather looking forward to working on them in the coming weeks. All I have to do now is make sure that I have the needles in the sizes that I require and then I can start to use some of my stash of sock wool that has been building up over the last few weeks. One thing is for certain, I am going to have nice warm feet this winter.

From Hank To Ball And Beyond

On Monday I ordered some wool from my favourite online wool store. I knew that I was going to have to wait a couple of weeks for some of it because it is not yet in the country, but the rest of the order arrived yesterday. In the package was a hank of wool that is to be used to knit a shawl/blanket and a knitting pattern for a tunic-length waistcoat that incorporates a stitch that I have never done before. I don't have the wool yet for the waistcoat because I needed to see the pattern so that I could see the finished measurements and determine how much yarn was needed for my size.

These days, most of the knitting yarn that you buy is pre-wound into balls, but when you buy yarn produced by independent dyers who use hand-dying techniques it is usual for the yarn to come in the form of a hank. This was also the way that yarn was often bought when I was a child and I well remember the hours that I spent sat on a stool in front of my mother or grandmother with the hanks of yarn stretched between my hands as they wound the yarn into balls so that it was ready to knit with. As I grew older and my hands became larger sometimes the roles were reversed and it was I who wound the balls while my mother or grandmother held the hanks.

In those long ago days the yarn was bought in hanks that usually weighed one ounce each. If the yarn was double knitting weight, then it didn't take very long to wind each hank into a ball; 4-ply, being somewhat thinner, took longer. I'm not at all sure what the length of yarn in each of these hanks was because in those days manufacturers didn't give this sort of information. The hank that I received yesterday was laceweight (this is significantly thinner than 4-ply), weighed 8 ounces and comprised 2400 yards of yarn. You can see what it looked like here although I should say that while this is the colourway that I have chosen my hank has more orange and blue in it than the one shown; but that is the glory of hand-dyed yarns, no two are the same (I didn't buy here either, my favourite online store is the Woolly Workshop).

Yesterday evening I decided to have a change from knitting and crocheting. I decided that I was going to wind this hank into a ball. I have had a number of hanks of this yarn in various colourways over the last couple of years and I have tried various methods of carrying out this task. It is not easy having to do it one your own, and on almost every occasion I have ended up in a mess and had to break the yarn and have ended up with either two or three balls. I've tried doing it with the hank placed over the back of a chair but I find this is very wearing and because it requires me to stand for the whole time that I am winding the ball, it does cause me some discomfort in my back and is likely to end up with a recurrence of the sciatica from which I regularly suffer. I have found that the best way for me is to sit on my bed propped up with pillows and with my knees up in the air. This means that I can place the hank of yarn over my knees and move them apart until they are at a suitable distance for maintaining the hank in place while I wind the yarn from it onto the ball that I am creating.

Yesterday evening things went very well and the ball grew quickly but as it got larger it became more difficult to hold. While I have fairly large hands there is a limit to how far my fingers will stretch over an object and after about two hours of winding things slowed dramatically. However, I persevered and I was approaching the end of my task when a catastrophe occurred. As the hank now only comprised about 30 yards of yarn, it had no appreciable weight to it and when I somewhat carelessly forgot to move my arms around my legs as I was winding, the hank came off my knees and in a matter of seconds I was left with a knotted mass.

I could so easily have reached for a pair of scissors and cut the yarn, after all there was only a small proportion of the 2400 yards in this mess, but my stubborn streak was determined to unknot it and ensure that there was the full amount on the ball. It took me more than an hour but I succeeded and ended up with a ball 16 inches in circumference.

An Absolute Giant

Having managed to create the ball of yarn to work with, I couldn't resist sorting out the needles that I would need to knit the shawl. It starts with double-pointed needles and moves on to various lengths of circular needle as the shawl gets larger. The pattern that I am using is the one for the Shawl KAL that I did a few months back. However, this time I am adapting the pattern so as to create a square shawl rather than the more normal triangle. The pattern is also a lot less lacy in appearance than is normal for a shawl but I think that this will allow the wonderful colours that make up this yarn to be shown to their best advantage.

After a couple of false starts caused by the complexity of creating the initial circle of stitches that allow for the end to be pulled after a few rows have been knitted, thus creating a tight group of stitches at the centre with no visible hole, I managed to get things going. The shawl is growing at quite a rate at the moment because the pattern is relatively simple at present and easy to follow without much difficulty. As it is being knit 'in the round' it means that every row is a knit row which also helps to speed up growth. The pattern is only worked on alternate rows and on these rows an additional 8 stitches are added each time, 2 at each corner. It shouldn't be long before the number of stitches becomes too many to handle easily on double-pointed needles and I make the first transition to a circular needle. This will actually make it slightly easier to handle as I will no longer have to keep changing which needle I have in each hand, but at this point it becomes really important to make sure that I have stitch markers in place to indicate where the corners are, and more importantly which stitch is the start of the row.

This is going to be a project that only gets worked on occasionally at the moment. So it may take a while for it to grow appreciably larger. But I thought you might like to see what it looks like at the moment, so the photographs below show the shawl in all its present glory at approximately 4 inches square and against a background of the ball of wool so that you can see each in relation to the other.

A Multicoloured Beginning

An Indicator of Scale

While I have been drafting this post I have received email notification that some more of the yarn that I ordered on Monday (the sock yarn for the tunic) has been dispatched to me and the postman will probably be delivering that tomorrow. I do like having plenty of yarn in my stash and hopefully over the next couple of months I should be able to build up a supply that will last me through the winter and into next spring.

Some More Of The Same

I really  enjoyed my day playing truant.  So much so that I have prescribed the same again today.  I know that I will have to work really hard over the next few days, but it is rare for me to really give myself the opportunity of doing nothing but what I want to do.

I'm not going to be totally naughty because I am going to do some reading for one of my courses after I have had a late lunch, but writing essays is not on today's programme.  I have one chapter to read, and that will probably take me about an hour.  When that is done, I shall go back to my knitting and try to finish the main part of a lovely filmy shawl.  That will only leave the top edge to finish with the lacy edging that is knitted as an integral part of the rest of the shawl.  When it is finished I will post a couple of pictures so that you can see what it looks like.

It is such a miserable, cold,  grey day, that sitting indoors well wrapped up in warm jumpers, with a lovely shawl around my shoulders and a knitted afghan over my knees, is the only way to be.  I did pop out this morning to get a loaf of bread, but fortunately I was not out for long enough for the cold to really penetrate.  The fact that tomorrow brings January means that spring should be with us soon.  I hope that it is not too long in coming because I really don't like this cold weather.

It's Very Snuggly

It was cold and very damp when I got up this morning and got myself ready to go to the hospital for my weekly psychotherapy session. Perfect weather for giving my new jumper a trial run.

I can report that it kept me nice and warm as I walked up the road to the bus stop, and as I missed a bus by a few seconds, I steeled myself for waiting in the rain for the next one to come along.  That would normally have been a wait of about 10 minutes, but fortunately this morning the next one came along fairly quickly so I didn't get too wet, and the jumper ensured that I didn't get cold.

There was a bus at the bus stop when I came out of the hospital from my session, but there was no way that I was going to catch it so I thought that I was going to be waiting in the cold for some time again.  It was about 15 minutes before the bus arrived, but once again I was cocooned from the cold. So I think that I can report that this has been a total success. The comments that I have received to my last post show that my readers seem to like it too.

I am lucky because I was taught so many handicrafts when I was a child.  I was taught to knit at about the age of five, and I have knitted for most of my life. One of the joys of knitting is that I can make things in the colour or colours that I want, and if I find a pattern that I particularly like I can make it in a number of colours.  It is also possible to make things so that they are a perfect fit, something that is not always possible when buying machine-made woollens in the shops.

After completing the jumper that I am working on at the moment, I will have to take a break from knitting things for me.  I have somewhat foolishly decided to knit a Shetland lace shawl for one of my 'kind of relations' in Canada who is expecting her first baby in February.  I went to her wedding in 2005, and she herself was born when my parents were making one of their first visits to Canada.  So Kelly always treated my parents as another set of grandparents and she desperately wanted my Dad to be at her wedding, and he was there as her honorary grandfather, as both of her real ones were dead.  Now I continue the relationship with the family which dates back more than 50 years, and I am going to knit this incredible shawl for Kelly's daughter (yes, we know it is going to be a girl), so when I am not studying for the next few months I will be knitting a very complicated lace pattern in very fine wool, and I just hope that I can get it finished and on its way to Canada before the little one is born. The shawl should be fine enough to be able to pass through a wedding ring, something that Shetland lace shawls are famous for.  I'll let you know if it does.