I'll Remember April... and Put a Bird on It

Yes, I'm addicted to making lace shawls.  It's not like they really go with my rather utilitarian wardrobe style. 

But I love working with designing lace as a way of studying and understanding the structure of yarn overs and decreases. Knitting them is like working out an idea or doing a proof. With each one I design, I do feel a bit more comfortable with it. 

This time I actually made a lot of changes to the original swatch/chart while knitting the shawl.  

Honestly I could not see the pattern of lace with this shawl too clearly because of the gradient. I may have to make another one just to see how the lace structure turned out. Yes, I'm that obsessed.  I need to be able to see the stitches to confirm my understanding.  

This is the latest one using  my hand spun yarn. The fiber was merino that I dyed last summer.  

If I may shamelessly say, this is what loveliness is! Lace with gradients of deep purplish burgundy to pink to silver. 

Again, named the shawl after a Stephane Grappelli's piece - I'll Remember April.

April is kind of a special month I'll always remember. It's the last month in Cody's life. I remember so clearly the cherry trees blossoming and how desperately we wished he'd live to see another season of it. I still miss him, a lot. And every April, seeing the trees blooming, it makes my heart ache a little, and, smile a little.

OK after shooting these photos, I felt like they're soooo sweet looking border-lining saccharine. In reality these lace shawls feel more like math study or conceptual art project or an idea pursuit than some representations of me. And I like that. 

I decided to switch mood and made a "Put a Bird on It" cup cozy.

This was truly an instant gratification. It took about 15 minutes to draw the design, and one movie to knit the cup cozy. I'd never made a cup cozy in my life.  This was my first time.  I don't see myself making many more either...

I was watching way too many times of Portlandia on Netflix that I couldn't help but make this. Love that show. I had not laughed so hard with TV (other than South Park) for a long time.

"Put a bird on it." from Portlandia, slurped from YouTube. 

A little confession to make, 10 years ago, Paul and I drove up to Portland to check the city out as a potential place to move to. Within half a day I told Paul, "No way am I moving here!"  

The attractiveness of that city that everyone talked about was completely lost o me. Everyone there was too good-looking in the self-consciously "don't care about look" kind of way. 

I guess that was a sign of me getting old and jaded.  

Ode to Bonnard

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint.  A painter should have two lives, one in which is to learn, and one in which to practice his art. 

 -Pierre Bonnard

This time I do have some knitting to report.  I finished a hat and a pair of mittens from the same skein of yarn I spun.  The summer Music Festival Club of Two If by Hand came last month with the colorway Bumbershoot and it was 4 oz of Rambouillet. I began spinning using short backward draw and I was not enjoying it at all.  The staple was very short.  So I switched to long draw method. a very good move.  I immediately found the Rambouillet pleasant to spin, and the resulting yarn bloomed after wash, a lot.  It was very squishy, much more so than merino or BFL.  Love it.

The spinning was done over a week ago.

This week I began knitting a hat with the yarn.  A simple hat and a little cable design on the side.  The colorful palette demanded a simpler decoration.  It was slightly slouchy.    

After the hat came the mittens from the nearly half of the 380 yards of sport weight left.  They were just plain St st all the way.

While knitting the mittens I kept thinking how much the colors reminded me of one of my favorite painters, Bonnard's work,

The colors may be akin to some other artists' palatte as well, such as Diebenkorn, but up close it's more reminiscent of Bonnard because the brush work in spots of color rather than flat area of colors as a result of 2 strands plying. 

Diebenkorn's Ocean Park

Back when I was living in DC during grad school years, Phillips Collection was within walking distance from our apartment. After visiting many museums in the world, Phillips remained to be one of my most favorites. For a not overwhelmingly large museum, it housed a superb collection. Sometimes when visiting a collection composed mostly of third rate work by big names, like a bad Monet, or so-so Picasso, I'd get the sense that the collector was collecting by name rather than a profound appreciation. But at Phillips you could feel the collector's love of art and the depth of it. For example, I didn't care for Renoir at all, but the Renoir at Phillips made me re-evaluate my opinion of the artist, the Luncheon of the Boating Party.

Being a painter, I bow to the supreme use of color by Bonnard.  Both him and Matisse, in my world, are the 2 colorists of all time. His work may be seemingly charming but the use of color is absolutely experimental for his time.  His composition is more studied than its informal look impart with first impression.  

Pierre Bonnard - The Palm

The Palm at Phillips is really my favorite Bonnard that I'd seen in person.  It could be because I'd visited it so many times that it became personal to me. 

Then there is The Riviera,

My mittens made me think of these two paintings and that's a wonderful thing. 

My Very First Handspun Sweater

I'd been wanting to make a handspun sweater.  But I was not up for spinning 1000+ yards of the same color yarn.

After staring at and thinking about the 395 yards of Finn Top I'd dyed and spun last weekend, I decided to make a sweater by adding to it the Grey Shetland that I'd spun a while back. Jumping on the stripes bandwagon here since it was the simplest way to combine two yarns for enough yardage for a sweater. I used up every yard of the Finn Top plus 215 yards of the Shetland.

dyed Finn Top

2-ply

Grey Shetland

Super, duper easy and quick knit. It took me much longer to dye and spin than to knit this sweater. At the gauge of 4.5 sts per inch using US #6 needles, this sweater took me 3 days to knit accompanied by one episode of Foyle's war and marathons of Doc Martin.  I was also able to squeeze in a documentary of Yves Sanit Laurent in French with English subtitles thanks to the St sts. It did feel kinda surreal watching the story of this couture fashion icon while knitting a very homemade looking sweater and wearing my homely looking pajamas. I knew so little about fashion world, so it was for sure an interesting story to watch.  I couldn't keep my jaws from dropping when I spotted Matisse paintings on his walls. Although not a huge fan of late Mondrian's work, I definitely found his Mondrian-look dresses amusing. One thing I really admired about YSL's creations was his work provided possibilities of imagination to the viewers.  The romance with clothes in many of his collections was that they make you dream about something beyond the dresses themselves.

As far as my non-fashion sweater, it was knitted top down in raglan style. Began with 5 rows of garter sts in Grey Shetland. The stripes were alternated every 2 rows until underarm, then continued with only the main color until the 2x2 hem border.

It turned out to be a rather cute top, if I may say so myself. Shetland was not a next-to-skin fiber for me, but Finn was much softer.

I finally made a handspun sweater! albeit a small and short one.  I may just dye up a full sweater worth of fiber pretty soon...

Handspun Shawl #1

Slowly, I'm adding entries into my spinning journey.

I was away for the holidays for 4 days. The entire time I did not miss knitting, but I sorely missed spinning.  

Something about letting the fiber glide through my fingers while my feet treadle away just feel so satisfying. 

It alos seems be my cure for stashing up yarns.  I have not made a purchase of yarn since I started spinning. 

My spun yarn may be uneven but I love making them.  I also love dyeing up my own colors and see what they turn into. It's like magic. In some ways, it reminds me of printmaking.  Being a painter, I'm so used to see result as I paint, but with printmaking, you can see the color of ink, the image on your plate, but there is always that slight mystery with the final product. That is what dyeing my own fiber and spinning and knitting with it was like.

I wanted a shawl using merino, so I had some ideas in mind of how I will approach it. But being a complete beginner, there were so many surprises along the way, both good ones and bad ones, which all made the process that much more exciting. When I dyed the fiber, I had an image in my head of deeper purple and more light brown areas. I was envisioning a purple/brown combo. But as you can see, it didn't turn out that way. While spinning, I was feeling a bit disappointed how the color combination came out.  Then I liked the colors much better when I was at the knitting stage.  It was like a roller coaster ride with my feeling towards the colors. Spinning merino took a lot of my patience. I truly thought I was spinning it at a pretty fine and even thickness until plying.  I was surprised at how uneven and thick the yarn turned out to be. And, I was even more surprised at the yardage being less than I thought.

The knitting design was pure improvisation. I knew with the stripey look an all over lace would be too much. I just knitted in plain sts and inserting 2 rows of eyelets. I used US #7 needles for a more open look with St sts. Half way through knitting, I realized instead of using the same chaging color yarns for the lace border, it would be better with a solid contrast color.  I spun up some BFL without dyeing it for the border. Oh, how I love spinning BFL. It is just as luxurious as merino but easier to spin.  BFL is my favorite fiber to spin so far. The color section was knitted until I ran out of all 4oz spun merino yarn (~375 yards,) then I made a simple lace design for the border, and it used about 100 yards of the 135 yards spun from 2oz of BFL.  

I like the shawl as the final product..  Even though it is not my wardrobe style at all, but I like it because it truly was a wonderful journey to dye, spin, design, and knit. 

spin spin and more spin

For the past two weeks, I'd been dyeing up fiber and spinning like a total addict.  I did manage to knit up a quick pair of fingerless mitts after the first batch of dyed fiber just because I was soooo curios how the dye job would look when knitted up.  I also ventured into spinning merino, it did take some getting used to, but I loved the luxurious fiber.  I'm definitely putting in a lot of practice time.

and this is what's on my spinning wheel now:

My Very First Handspun Mittens

After a week and half of spinning on my new spindle, I finally got enough yarn to make something.  I even plied the yarn.  But I wasn't sure how correct was my plying.  All I did was holding 2 strands and spun them in reverse, and voila, I had 2 ply yarns that weren't too balanced.

Main Color: Dark Brown Welsh

Contrast Color: Corridale 

(both purchased from Dharma Trading CO)

Needles: US #4

 
 I made a quick motif design that turned out to be a bit too diffused due to single stitches of contrast color in many places as opposed to concentrated consecutive stitches of contrast color. Also, the contrast color yarn was spun thinner than the brown so the stitches aren't as fulled as compare to the brown yarn.  But I'm still pleased with the result.  One mitten also came out wider than the other due to the yarn was thicker.  I guess some batch of yarn was spun thicker than the others.  Live and learn.


After 10 days of spinning, the designing took 40 minutes and the knitting took 2 days.  So the last part was definitely an instant gratification.


I raised a little money to fix up the old wheel by destashing  the few indie yarns in my stash.  They barely made a dent to my yarn collection in terms of quantitiy, but they sure were the most expensive ones in my collection, so that really helped.  Now I just need to learn more about spinning wheels to make better decisions regarding the missing parts for the old wheel.

I am really excited about this new addiction.   But I did miss knitting.  Not knitting for 10 days while spinning was starting to get to me.  I'm ready for new projects.