Cabin Crafted

Tag: knitting

  • Weekend doings!

    Our weekend started with a luxury dinner out for our Valentine Anniversary. There are few nice restaurants in our nearest big town. There are more in the nearest city, about an hour away, but this was the first February 14 that we have spent at home that it hasn’t snowed, so we don’t make reservations that far from home. Last year, we went to the same restaurant and having been there several times before we expected a good dinner and left very disappointed. They post their menu a few weeks prior and we gave them another chance. The starter, salad, and dessert are set, but they had a choice of three entrees, beef, salmon, and pasta, each well presented. Hubby got the beef, I got the pasta and we were both pleased.

    Yesterday was a quiet day, not much accomplished but some knitting and spinning, some laundry. The coop needed cleaning as did the house. There was no straw or woodchips to use in the coop, we needed dog food, chicken food, and bird seed but didn’t want to go out yesterday.

    After a lunch out today, a trip to Tractor Supply took care of all those needs and the coop was cleaned, sprayed down inside and refilled with fresh pine chips. Tractor Supply had 6 pounds of Black Oil Sunflower seed for $7, but 40 pounds for $10. Not sure how I would deal with 40 pounds, the bargain was too great. Every extra bucket is filled, along with the bird seed container and the bag still is about 1/3 full. The house was vacuumed, dusted, and the kitchen cleaned. Between jobs and preparing dinner, the fiber that was being spun on the spindle was finished and a few rows knit on the scarf.

    Left is the fat little cop of singles, Merino, bamboo, and silk from Inglenook Fibers; Close to You being knit from Lollipop Yarn, and the fat little cop of the plied yarn. Looks like I’m stuck in a color warp.

    The warm winter and lengthening days have upped egg production from 1 to 3 a day, now getting 4 to 6 a day and the yolks are taking on a nice healthy golden orange. This is the first winter wince I’ve been raising hens that there have been any winter eggs.

  • Productive Week

    Productive Week

    Today is a glorious break in a gray and wet week. We have had snow flurries, freezing rain, and drizzle this past week and two weeks of similar weather in the forecast. It has been calm wind wise until today, with warmer temperatures and sunshine. With the calm we had a fire scare earlier in the week when the farmer not immediately behind us, an area that is still wooded, but just beyond him in an area that has been logged, graded, and planted for pasture lit off first one, then several more large burn piles creating billowing smoke that looked too close to us that we feared was our nearer neighbor’s woods. We contacted him and after sending him photos, he left work to come check and let us know where the fires were and that they were being monitored with a track hoe.

    There has been smoke down there for 6 days now from various piles, but at least we know the woods below us aren’t on fire.

    Through the gray, drizzle and three waiting rooms days, I have been stitching through several smaller skeins of hand spun yarn that I had, making a hat and three pair of fingerless mitts, and finishing the Tool Box cowl from the mini skeins.

    Can you tell I’m a lefty, always wearing the mitt on my right hand to take the photo? The Merlot colored mitts still need to be washed and blocked, they were finished last night. After trying on the cowl that I had made for me, I decided I’m not a cowl person, so I put a price tag on it and put it in the shop with the other items.

    While perusing patterns, I found a cute hat with an owl on the front. Since there isn’t much yarn left that isn’t designated for weaving, I returned to spinning some gray/brown Coopworth last night. It would be a perfect color for the hat, but the pattern will require me to do some math as it calls for Aran weight yarn, this is likely to be DK weight when plied.

    Since I’m not a Super Bowl watcher, I only know one team that is playing and have no allegiance to them, I think I will warp the loom and start a cowl or scarf with a pattern instead of plain weave and continue spinning the Coopworth so I have a pocket project to work on during waiting room visits this week. Since we try to group our errands and lunch out around hubby’s PT visits, I have a 30-45 minute waiting room session a couple times a week, so I need a new pocket project.

  • What Am I Worth?

    Generally, when I spin and knit, I don’t track my time very carefully, if at all. I know it takes me about an hour to spin an ounce of fingering weight yarn on my wheel. An ounce on drop spindles is much longer.

    I am not a speed knitter, but not a slouch either and the size of the yarn and needles affect how much I can get done in an hour.

    These factors always stop me cold when I am pricing an item of hand spun, hand knit for my shop. A hat of worsted weight yarn might take me about 4 hours to knit if it is a simple pattern, like this one, a slouch hat of stockinette, garter, and ribbing. The yarn was worsted to aran, about 3 ounces, so a couple of hours of spinning and plying. A total of 6 or 7 hours of my time plus the cost of the wool to spin.

    This cowl took me close to 24 hours to knit. The three skeins that were hand spun in the cowl were done on drop spindles. The fiber and the mill spun mini skeins were all gifts or bonuses that came with other purchases, so it was just time involved.

    Total hours on this fingering weight cowl, maybe 35. I doubt that this cowl will go in the shop, but there is one in the shop of silk, drop spindle spun, my own pattern design. Paying myself slave labor wages of a couple of dollars an hour, it would have to be priced at more than $70-75. People will look, comment that it is lovely, that they can’t spend that much money on a gift or on themselves, and walk on, at least in the area that we live.

    The shawl in the header photo is the one I did from the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em challenge yarns. It has 8 different breeds hand spun on the wheel. Each breed had to be at least 4 ounces, but the white center triangle was 15 ounces and the light gray around the edge and one stripe was 8 ounces. That was countless hours of spinning and then probably near 50-60 hours to knit it. It isn’t for sale, it couldn’t be. How could I ever price it?

    This is my conundrum. My hook is that my items are hand spun, hand knit, or hand woven garments, so I don’t want to work with inexpensive big box store yarn. My body products are handmade with organic ingredients. Because the body products are generally priced under $10, they sell at craft shows and holiday markets but spinning, knitting, and weaving are what I do for pleasure.

    So how do you decide what you are worth? Or how much loss you are willing to take to continue the crafts? And none of this takes into account what the equipment costs are to do these crafts.

  • An ark, an ark, my knits for an ark

    Whew, we went from 12 degrees f a few mornings ago to 40 and torrential rain. It was low teens 3 nights in a row (no frozen pipes thank goodness) and the days weren’t even reaching freezing then it changed as Virginia will at any season. There was a winter storm warning last night causing schools to delay or close for no reason as it never was cold, and it rained. The wind blew and it rained some more. Still is raining hard. Without an attic to buffer sound, we hear it when it rains hard. Not the pinging on a metal roof like in the barn, but it is still a metal roof with insulation.

    When we went to dinner and then to daughter’s house for grandson’s birthday dinner on Sunday, we discussed having another mother/daughter movie date, taking her kids this time, to see Call of the Wild when it comes out the end of February. We had both watched the trailers and wanted to see it. It has been many decades since I had read it, and in our home library is a leather bound copy of Jack London books, so as soon as I finished the ebook I had out from the library, I started reading it. I’m not sure how true to the book the movie will be, but I am looking forward to it.

    Today’s rain allowed me to finish it.

    The Toolbox Cowl is progressing. I sat in a waiting room again yesterday and knit. Work has been done on it at night. I’m on the last stockinette section, the second to last skein. There will be one more Diamond tweed section with this skein and the final skein and the last Garter Rib section. I’m not sure I should have used the more brightly colored variegated one, but I think I like it anyway.

    With lots of Corriedale, Merino, silk, and bamboo in the skeins, it is soft. It shouldn’t take me too much more time to complete. I read the Yarn Harlot’s blog and she posts finishing mitten and cowls in a day. Wow, she must be a speed knitter.

    Tomorrow is going to be chilly and party sunny, maybe I can finally get the coop cleaned out. Today a bale of pine chips was purchased because straw seems to be scarce. The old straw is going in the run, the rain has made the area just inside the gate a hazard to my health and safety. There really isn’t a level spot on our property, but I’m not sure I picked the right spot to put that coop when we got it. With the bare scratched earth and a couple inches of rain or a coat of ice, I can slide forever. Perhaps I should put some rough pavers from the gate to the pop door.

  • Foolish Question

    A few days ago, I asked, “Where is Winter?” Well it found us. When we left for grandson’s birthday dinner last night, there were snow flurries. This morning, there was a dusting on all surfaces and a morning temperature of 16f. The high staying in the 20s. Now, I know that isn’t cold in parts of the world, but it is pretty danged cold here. Tonight is a repeat, then we return to more normal 30s and low 40s daytime, 20s to low 30s nightime. I expected to get zero eggs today with it so cold, but the girls surprised me with 4. I have gone out several times today to check so they wouldn’t freeze in the nesting box. The water in the coop was frozen this morning and will be again tomorrow.

    This would have been a good day to stay in, but we had yet another appointment to keep this morning and it required a driver for the passenger, so both of us were out in the bitter breeze.

    Yesterday afternoon, I finished knitting the carry along hat I cast on a couple days ago. The pattern is Barley Hat by Tin Can Knits, the yarn is my hand spun Tunis dyed red, plied with a Jacob X Finn. I spun this skein as an early wheel project, so it has been sitting in my stash for quite a while and it has never sold. It was a good weight for a hat and enough to make a large slouchy version. It is damp and blocked in the photo.

    Knowing there would be waiting room time today, a project that has been in my queue for some time is Tool Box Cowl by Adventure DuJour Designs to use up several collected mini skeins, some of which I spun on the drop spindle. After I finished the hat, I cast on for it and got the garter rib section done and realized that I didn’t have the right needle size for the rest. My interchangeables only go down to a size 3, I have a size 2 fixed circular needle, but it is 16″ long and the cowl has 168 stitches, so too many for such a short needle. While at daughter’s house for cake after the birthday dinner, I borrowed a 24″ and continued on with the Diamond Tweed pattern on the correct size needle. I have finished the first two colors of 6 and am about to work the next Diamond Tweed section that uses color 2 and 3. Color 3 is the blue and teal mini skein in the lower right of the photo.

    Color 1 is hand spun Coopworth, Color 2 is a wool/bamboo/silk blend I spun on a drop spindle, Color 3 is a mill spun mini skein that was dyed by a friend that has passed away. Colors 4 and 5 are his yarns also, and Color 5 will be another drop spindle spun mini skein of Merino/Silk/Sari Silk. Each skein has some blue in it.

    Yesterday we picked up Saturday’s mail and in it was the yarn I had ordered as the warp for a scarf or cowl. It is Shetland lamb and baby Alpaca that will be used with my spun Romeldale CVM.

    The grayer brown is my hand spun. I had hoped that the book I had ordered with rigid heddle information and patterns would beat the yarn here, but the book is still not in. I would have had it sent to the house, but the book seller said it would come in in 2 or 3 days. The book seller I spoke with today said I should never have been told that, that it usually takes about a week and with their membership, which we have, it could have been shipped directly to me with no shipping charges and likely would have arrived sooner. Oh well! It will come in when it comes and I will plan out the use of the yarns above.

    The hat will definitely go in my shop. The cowl is probably mine. The undecided cowl/scarf/small wrap with the yarn above will likely go in the shop, brown is not my color against my face. I guess my inventory is being rebuilt for the online shop and next fall and winter’s markets.

  • And So It Begins – 11/22/2019

    Another front is barreling through our area. After a miserably dry summer, we are at least getting some rain. It rained hard over night, the wind was quite gusty when we went out late morning. Today is colder than yesterday with the high reached around noon and a downward fall to around freezing with more rain tomorrow and even colder temperatures.

    Between rain, the car has been packed with totes of soap, salve, yarn, knits, laundry stain bars, beard oil, Men’s grooming boxes, Guest Bath boxes, display racks and two mannequins. Tomorrow the rain isn’t supposed to begin until after I am unloaded and hopefully with help toted upstairs to the room I have been assigned at the Catawba Farmers Holiday Market. I hope the rain doesn’t prevent folks from coming out to shop. I am inside, a few vendors are under the picnic shelter. It might be cold and damp for them. I don’t know if the Catawba Community Center is heated, so I will layer in wool and be prepared to peel layers if necessary. This event provides each vendor an 8 foot table and a chair, so I don’t need to load my tables and since it is indoors, I don’t need my tent. I have one more pair of mittens on the needles that I hope to have ready for tomorrow, but if not, I will have them for other Holiday markets. I was making them for me, but decided they are too pink for my tastes, so I will spin something else for mine or dig through my yarn to find a skein I like.

    Next weekend there is no event, but then I have 3 weekends in a row (if stock holds) at the Blacksburg Farmer’s Market Holiday event and 2 of those weekends in costume spinning and vending in the late afternoon/evening hours at Wilderness Road Regional Museum Noel Nights and Christmas Bazaar. They will require tables, chair, and the Farmer’s Market one, my tent and weights. The car is quite full then.

    This morning, I awoke to the memory that 56 years ago, as I sat in class in High School awaiting the arrival of a friend who had moved away and was coming to visit for my 16th birthday party, an announcement was made that our President had been shot and later died. That is probably the most significant first historical memory of my life. The friend did arrive, the party did not happen, and the country watched the news in shock and mourned. Yesterday, I celebrated my 72nd birthday and am thankful to my family and friends who remembered me with well wishes and to my hubby, who treated me to a new wool hoodie, some chocolates, and a dinner out at a local restaurant that we had not tried before.

    The Thanksgiving shopping got done in the rain today. A few gifts were purchased last night. One warm cozy gift was finished yesterday. I look forward to having some of our children and their families join us next week and wish the entire family could be together for a holiday again.

  • Weekend Things – Nov. 16, 2019

    November is birthday month in our family (we sneak into early December too). In a month’s time, we celebrate 2 grandchildren, 1 nephew, 1 daughter, 1 daughter-in-law, my stepmom’s and my birthdays. It is mostly card exchange as except for the two grandchildren, all are adults. Grandkids get gifts of some sort depending on age and interest.

    If you have followed this blog for a while, you know that I am a spinner, knitter, sometimes crocheter, weaver. Because of this, I am a definite yarn snob. But, sometimes it is necessary to use yarn that I don’t spin for a project. Granddaughter local is one of the birthdays. She is turning 8 and has grown many inches and many pounds since last winter, she needed a new winter coat. Her Mom found a real bargain, a very neutral gray coat that granddaughter loved. To go with her new coat, and because she seems to love her handmade gifts (last year a string backpack for her music lesson items with a colorful binder to hold the music), I decided to make her a knit hat, scarf, and mittens to go with her new coat. Because they will get hard use and need to be washed, I bought a giant Caron Cake of acrylic yarn in shades of purple to make them.

    I had finished the mittens, hat, and most of the scarf a week or so ago, but didn’t want to add fringe to the scarf and it didn’t look finished as is, so this afternoon, I crocheted a triangle on each end and added a small tassel, maybe less appealing to their 3 cats if it is left out. A year or so ago, I found the little wooden buttons that say Handmade with love by _____, so I added her pet name for me and sewed one on one end. Her birthday is next Sunday, so after we go to the farm where our turkey has been raised to pick it up, we will have a family celebration for her birthday.

    Last night, I finished knitting a pair of fingerless mitts from some Romeldale CVM wool that I spun for the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em challenge. They were given a soak and blocking last night and are currently drying. Here they are before their bath.

    They will go in my shop and be taken to the various Holiday markets until they sell. I am toying with sewing a row of small deer antler buttons to the backs of the hands.

    Saturday mornings, when I am not at an event, are breakfast out followed by the weekly Farmers Market. Today I was seeking yams for Thanksgiving as I didn’t grow any this year. Also seeking some ground beef to make dinner for daughter and her family tomorrow night, and other than that, I just browse and make decisions on what is available. I was able to get nice turnips, fresh spinach, Daikon radishes, potatoes, breakfast sausage, and Mozarella in addition to the yams and ground beef. As I finished the last of my fermented dilly beans last night, the Daikon radishes were purchased to make kimchi. Once home, they were peeled and diced, sprinkled with salt, sugar, and crushed red pepper and set to weep while I put everything else away and finished the scarf for granddaughter. It is now packed in a jar with a fermenting lid to sit for a few days.

    Next weekend begins the holiday markets. There is still one scarf that is about half done that I would like to get finished and blocked, then I will begin a pair of fingerless mitts or glittens for me as I lost one two weekends ago when I did the Harvest Festival at Booker T. Washington National Monument. There is no real hurry on them and I can knit on them while I am vending.

  • Stiff – 10/20/2019

    Since my return last week from helping eldest and family finish moving their household, I have done almost no knitting and no spinning. The weather finally broke and has been much cooler and we have had some rain.

    The rain revealed that the vent through the metal roof that has been resealed twice since installation a dozen years ago is again leaking. The leak ruined the drywall soffit in the finished basement within a year or two if it being finished, and several years ago at Christmas, eldest tore down all the drywall and rebuilt that soffit using paneling that allows me to unscrew a few screws and lift out a piece of the panel to put a drip pan in the ceiling whilst awaiting another repair.

    The leaky vent is one of the two toward the left side top, I sure can’t get up there.

    The cool and the rain also bring in the winter stiffness in my hands and lower back that are caused by arthritis, thus the lack of knitting and spinning. The arthritis and trigger finger in 4 of my fingers is always worse in the winter.

    With the various historical demonstration and craft events looming, some knitting must be done. One of the projects that went with me and never left my bag is a triangular scarf. This morning I picked it back up to work on. It is about 1/3 done and is a smooth fine fingering weight merino.

    Another reason knitting isn’t happening much is that prior to my leaving, hubby gouged a good bit of flesh out of his back (I will spare you the gory pictures) and as I wasn’t here to keep it bandaged and antibiotic on it, it didn’t heal whilst I was away. If we keep antibiotic ointment and a thick pad over it and he doesn’t stretch or twist too much, he stays fairly comfortable, but he can’t reach the spot to care for it. Now that I am home, it is getting treated, covered, and I am doing all the driving so he can sit still. Riding passenger is always knitting time. The wound is healing now and hopefully will cease causing him discomfort soon.

    I have some worsted handspun yarn skeins that I would like to get knit up into fingerless mitts before the craft shows. I never know how much to price my handspun handknits for so I went on an etsy adventure looking them up. It was not helpful at all. The prices are all over the place, the styles equally scattered. I saw short “wristlets” for way more than my much longer mitts. Plain bulky weight ones for double my fingering weight cabled ones. But then I saw handspun handknit lace shawls priced so low that the cost would hardly cover the fiber, much less the time to spin and knit it. I have several hats, a couple of scarves or mini shawls, a couple of large shawls, 1 pair of fingerless mitts with gusseted thumb. There may not be a lot more to sell if I don’t get busy.

    I need to figure out how to raise this rack enough to use top 3 or 4 rungs without setting it on a table top. The rack is 5 feet high and at one of the events, I am limited to an 8 foot table they provide. Still pondering how to do this safely and securely.

    Well, back to knitting, or they surely won’t get done.

  • Crafty week – 10/8/2019

    The past few days have been busy with craftiness. Eleven batches of soap have been made, Woodlands, Peppermint/Cocoa, Lavender, Tea Tree, Vanilla, Pumice, and Calendula.

    Unless that guest room is needed in the next month, the soap will sit there and cure for hardness. It only takes 24 hours for it to go from caustic solution to saponify to soap. Once it is hard, another day or so will be used to package it for the various markets. The holiday shapes, you can’t see all of them because of the picture angle, but there are snowmen heads, trees, snowflakes, flowers, and sheep, will be bagged in glassine bags with tags for the holiday markets. Plain round, square, or rectangular ones for the Harvest Market at Booker T. Washington Park will be banded with craft paper bands.

    After long afternoons of 2 or 3 batches of soap being made, I have continued to knit on my Free your Fade shawl, a pattern by Andrea Mowry using Only the Finest yarn by Louise Nuttle. I really pushed the limits with some of the yarns.

    I am on the last color and there is plenty of it. I will decide how many color repeats of it I want as I finish each section. The picot bind off can be done after any 10 row garter section. It is warm, soft, and very generous in size.

    I continue knitting on the Hitchhiker scarf and have slightly more than half of the points done in it. It is small enough to carry around in my purse to knit on when a passenger or sitting in a waiting room.

  • Challenges – 10/3/2019

    But these are the fun kind of challenges. Maybe still a bit stressful when you realize that if you fail, there is a lot of unknitting (tinking) to be done. I’m not a good enough knitter to bravely pull the needle out and unravel and then just pick up the live stitches again where you should have quit or not made the mistake, unless it is plain stockinette stitch. I never have gotten good at using lifelines to hold a row of stitches before a lace pattern.

    My main current knit is Free Your Fade, a long basically triangular shawl by Andrea Mowry. The pattern comes in two yarn sizes, DK and Fingering. As I mentioned before, I purchased a lovely 788 yard skein of 97% Alpaca, 3% Blue Faced Leicester from Only the Finest fingering weight yarn at the Knotty Ladies Retreat in Black Mountain in August. The skein was actually 4 two ounce coordinating skeins and I had a pattern in mind which would have required more yarn, so I purchased a 4 ounce skein of a 5th coordinating color. The planned pattern called for worsted weight and made a wide generous trapezoid basically of triangles joined. I thought if I did it in fingering, I could create the same effect in a scarf. I started it, and didn’t like it. First challenge. I was probably only 70% through the first color, so off the needles and simple rewind the yarn. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the nearly $100 worth of soft loveliness then. A few days later, whilst I was reading a friend’s knitting blog, I noticed the photo in her header and it was gorgeous, but everything she knits is gorgeous. A few message exchanges and I purchased the pattern from the designer, it looked like the perfect solution for the lovely yarn.

    Challenge 2: The pattern uses a 200 yard skein and two 400 yard skeins, I had plenty of yarn, but because mine was in four almost 200 yard skeins plus one almost 400 yard skein, it meant that the fade patterns from one color to the next would have to happen more frequently and not in the same place in the pattern after the first one. OK, that isn’t a big deal, she says in the intro that you can fade on any of the 20 row garter sections. The pattern forms the triangle by increasing 1 stitch every other row, so 10 stitches over 20 rows, followed by a 2 row eyelet lace with 1 more stitch increase. But each increase row started with a decrease and ends with a stitch that makes 2 new stitches, thus the 1 stitch increase and the triangle gets wider and wider. There was more than enough of the first color to follow the pattern and do the written fade into the second color.

    Challenge 3: The second color in the pattern is a 400 yards skein which meant that I was going to have to use 2 of the 2 ounce skeins to achieve that part of the pattern and an extra fade. Remember, the fades have to be done on a 20 row garter section and I didn’t want to waste any of this precious yarn so I played chicken and continued knitting, hoping to have enough to finish the second fade, three garter stitch sections and another fade with the eyelet rows included. Well I finished with about 80 inches (200 cm) of that color as I started on the next color.

    And then on to the variegated skein. Now the triangle is getting wider and there will certainly not be enough to do three garter stitch sections with two fades and eyelets so I shot for only two garter stitch sections with two fades and eyelets.

    As you can see from the middle remnant, I played chicken again, though not quite as close, I had about 120 inches (300 cm) left and on to the last 2 ounce color. I guess there will only be enough for a fade, 1 garter stitch section, and a fade with leftovers, but I still have the last 4 ounce (almost 400 yard) darker Merlot color left to finish without worrying about running out. This shawl is going to be very long.

    I have 181 stitches on the needles now and the pattern ends with 215 stitches when you start the picot bind off. Her general instructions say to can make it bigger if you wish by adding more sections. I doubt that I will, I will probably use the left over Merlot, lavender, gray (there was a bit of it left), and the remnants to make a matching hat or mitts. I have some lovely Romeldale CVM fiber I am spinning that would coordinate nicely with this for a hat or mitts and I will have a new ensemble to keep me warm and cozy this winter, if it ever drops below 90 degrees here. But there is no climate change, the deniers say so.