Coping with the new normal

I notice with some embarassment that my last post was 3 months ago and I can only blame the uncertainty of the times, the fact that I've just not had the motivation to weave and also the reports I've read on other blogs about the challenges with the updated Blogger

So what have I been doing?

Feverishly checking coronavirus news updates, especially as the numbers started to rise in Victoria to the point where we are now in Stage 4 lock down, basically confined to our homes except for essential shopping, medical care, exercise (1 hour per day) and caring for others. We have to stay within 5 km/3 miles of home and if we do go out, mask wearing is mandatory.  So the first thing I did was make another 31 masks for me and for family and friends. 

I think I'm up to about 55 in total and I haven't had to buy anything.  They don't take much fabric and I can't see any discernable size reduction in the stash

I finished the shawl I had started in the last post.  It turned out well even though it was just plain weave. I've had no opportunity to wear it as we're not allowed to go anywhere

I've also been doing some spinning, starting with some rose fibre roving.

 

Once it was spun I realised that it would work with some rose/cotton yarn and decided to go with an overshot pattern.  I started using it as a single but wasn't happy with the way it looked. 

I knew full well that the hand spun pattern yarn wasn't really thick enough but rather than fix it, I found other projects.  Maybe I was waiting for the yarn to spontaneously become thicker but strangely nothing happened.  Eventually common sense prevailed , I undid the first few inches, and Navaho plied the pattern weft.  It's working well now although I'm not quite sure whether it will end up as a scarf or a runner, probably depends on how it ends up once it's finished. 

There's enough warp for 2 but probably not enough of the handspun weft so the second one will have to be different

I had a braid of indigo dyed sock blend - superwash wool with nylon. There were some undyed areas and I wanted to blend the blue and the white. I spun it finely with the intention of making a 3 ply sock yarn. The colours blended nicely and it ended up finer and softer than I expected, probably a bit too fine and soft to wear well as a sock and too nice to be hidden inside a shoe. I moved on to Plan B which was a scarf or cowl. I found Lyn Dell's's Corona Cowl on Ravelry.  The cowl was based on a Barbara Walker lace called 'Corona', from the days when it still had its original meaning of 'crown'. Once I read Lyn's description - poking pointy sticks into something called Corona - I was hooked and very happy with the final result. 

As I expected it was too soft and pretty to hide in a shoe.  There was enough left over to make another and I used a pattern from an old Mon Tricot book - must have been old, I only paid $4.95 for it.

Work has been on and off depending on the restrictions.  We were almost back to normal in June but as the numbers stated to rise and more restrictions were added business fell away again.  We are classed as essential under Stage 4 but only for emergencies such as a sore painful eye, loss of vision or broken glasses and while wearing a face mask and shield.  As well as that we have to constantly sanitise everything. I've had to buy 'hospital strength' disinfectant and have a suspicion that there's been a bit of price gouging going on. It's a challenge working around the protective equipment and trying to see through the foggy glasses as well as equipment that's equally foggy.  Every day brings a new challenge but we're still seeing people with problems and just have to manage as well as we can

Towards the end of the first lockdown I was beginning to get fitter, walking longer distances and exploring parts of the local walking trails I hadn't seen before. Then I developed a sore knee - my physio thinks it's the result of too much walking.  I'm doing the exercises and gradually getting back to walking.  While it's officially still winter, there are definite signs of spring.  The wattles are coming out,

the native clematis is out. It's a bit different from the more exotic one growing on the back deck but what it lacks in the size of the flowers,

it makes up in the vast numbers of the tiny flowers.  

The smaller coot chick is now a strapping adolescent and the larger one almost indistiguishable from the adults, so my earlier concerns about them making it through the winter were unfounded.  I was down at the pond looking for the coots recently when something else swam past. It looked like a small animal, perhaps an otter, to me and also to a man who was watching as well. His partner was sure it was a duck.  We don't have otters in Australia and I couldn't believe that it could be a platypus so close to the city.  Once I got home I did a little homework and realised that it was probably a Rakali or native water rat, sometimes called the Australian otter.  I'd never seen one in the wild but now I'm looking for it every time I visit the pond.

Clearly life doesn't stop for the coots I've been watching.  I noticed the other day that one of them was busy building a nest of reeds in the middle of the pond, must be time to lay more eggs.  While I had been worried about the last lot of chicks making it through the winter, the coots must know what they are doing if they are building their nest in the middle of the pond where they would be safe from most predators.

While I'm on the subject of birds, one of the attractions a couple of hours from Melbourne is the nightly penguin parade where the little penguins come ashore every night.  With the lock down, no visitors are allowed so they're now live streaming it every night.  Obviously it's better if you can go there but it's much warmer watching from the comfort of home and they are very cute.  I love the way a few will come out of the water, look to see how many others there are and if it's not a penguin's idea of a quorum, they go back into the water until a few more are ready to walk up the beach.  

See it here:https://www.penguins.org.au/virtual/live-penguin-tv/

Not sure what all the fuss was abut with the new Blogger, it didn't seem too bad to me apart from spaces but then I like to be fussy about layout

Til next time

Helen

 

A Day at the Market

Last Sunday was the first market for the year for the Hawthorn Craft Market.  I was better organised than usual – the tea towels were all labelled and dry rather than finished so late they were still slightly damp as things are sometimes when I run out of time.

They looked pretty good piled up

I made them using draft from Handwoven, September/October 2014, on an olive drab 8/2 warp. The colour was a bit out of my blue green comfort zone but I was pleased with the results.  I used linen in the warp for 2 of them and despite hearing horror stories about linen, kept the bobbins slightly damp and had no dramas.

I even ‘cold mangled’ them between the stone bench top and the rolling pin.  It certainly made a difference to the ones with linen or cotton-linen blend wefts as this picture shows where the line about a quarter of the way along on the left hand side, is the boundary between the right hand corner which has already been rolled and the unrolled part.  This yarn was a slubby cotton/linen blend.

A customer came past and asked where they were made, clearly thought they were from a sweat shop in a distant land.  ‘Glen iris’, I said naming the adjacent suburb where I live, and occasionally think I have my own personal sweat shop.  I was discussing this exchange with my neighbour on the next stall who was new to the market, it turned out I had been at university with her sister.  Sometimes I think Melbourne is a very small town.

I usually take some hand work for the quiet times, fringing, knitting, whatever needs to be done and is portable.  The only thing I had to take this time was my drop spindle and some very colourful roving.  I thought it would add a bit of colour and movement to the stall but the funny thing was that very few people commented on it at all, to the point where I began to feel it was a bit like an affliction that would be impolite to mention.  As we were packing up, the friends who sell hand spun yarn and knitted articles made from hand spun at the market remarked that I’d got quite a lot done.  I said how strange it was that very few people had mentioned it.  That’s when they said that a lot of people had gone to them to tell them that I was spinning.  Who knows what the passers-by thought but if they thought I was setting up in competition, they obviously hadn’t seen how slowly I spindle spin.  Any yarn made on the spindle will be precious indeed and certainly not for sale.

The unmentionable spindle and roving

It’s been a long weekend and while I had many plans on Friday, not much seems to have been done. I did find time to tidy the studio, remove all the mess from the tea towels and get the yarns back into the boxes where they belong, all ready to start a new warp, I feel something snake skin like happening.

I have finished spinning some yarn from 200 gm of First Editions merino and silk roving I won at the Geelong Show last year.   I thought it would be good if the 2 small bobbins

could be plied on to one of the large bobbins and while it did just fit,

it reminded me of one of those very woolly sheep who emerge from the bush from time to time having escaped from their flock and missed several visits from the shearer.

Helen 

Don't try this at home

I’ve realised that I tend to write when something is finished and there hasn’t been a lot of finishing happening around here recently.  I was busy at work during January, working an extra half day with a staff member on holidays.  It doesn’t seem much but sure eats into the weaving time, especially when there are long, and not very exciting warps on both looms.

Fortunately we had a holiday for Australia Day on the 26^th and I was able to make an extra long weekend of it.  I wanted to do some dyeing and with four days, knew I would have enough time to wind warps, set up, do the dyeing and put it all away again.  I wound some warps for dyeing and painting, got some wool top ready to dye and knitted a blank from some 3 ply I’d found in a bargain bag from Bendigo Woollen Mills.  I’d planned to dye on Monday but all the prep took longer than expected.  It made good sense to get the newspaper and plastic wrap all in place on Monday night and, after attending an Australia Day breakfast, come home and do the dyeing. 

There I was setting up, I had the newspaper down and was getting the dyes out.  I wrote here about finding very good new jars to store my dye solutions to replace the ones with the poorly fitting lids.  You may have guessed by now where this is going.  I picked up one jar by the lid – Rubinole – if you’re interested, and the jar fell from the lid, bounced on the stone bench and dye went everywhere including all over me.  It didn’t taste good but does not seem to have had any serious after effects and believe me, it won’t happen again.  First thing was to put my head under the tap and rinse off as much as I could.  The tee shirt, an old dyeing one, went straight in the bin and then I started the clean up.  Although the dye was a darker red, it looked a bit as though there had been a murder in my kitchen however the clean up went surprisingly well.  The newspapers absorbed a lot, there was probably only about half a cup spilt altogether but it went a long way and it came off the hard surfaces, including the white cupboards easily.  The only real casualties were one of the blinds

and a part of the wooden floor which is due to be refinished.  The blind needs to be taken down, dismantled and soaked and if that doesn’t work, I think there is enough fabric in the cupboard to make another.  If that fails I may have to add a few carefully arranged artificial flowers to cover the stains.   
When you think about it, it’s probably not surprising that it cleaned up so well since soaking in soda ash and heating are what sets the dyes on cellulose fibres and none of those conditions was operating when the dye hit. By the time I cleaned up it was quite late but I had a shower to get rid of any remaining dye as I wanted to be sure it had all gone, and my hair wasn’t pink before I went out next morning.  As I stood under the shower, late at night, little pink trickles kept running down my skin.  

I was much more careful doing the dyeing after that and I won’t forget this lesson.

Here’s the finished result

I liked the blue and green wool top so much I started spinning it before I took any photos.  It’s already been spun and plied with a very fine thread best described as ‘bling’ in a co-ordinating colourway

During January I did manage to knit some socks.  I have knitted them in the past but was not that excited with the result and decided to try again.  I had bought some Tofutsies yarn with the idea of weaving with it but I realised that the very short colour repeats would not work for weaving.  I could hear a little voice saying ‘knit me, knit me’ and of course the obvious thing was to knit some socks.  It was a good blend – 50% wool, 22.5% cotton, 25% soysilk and 2.5% chitin(from shrimp and crab shells) – to knit during the hot weather.  One pair finished and another sock almost finished. 

I even realised that there wasn’t a rule to say that it was compulsory to knit the yarn as it came off the ball if cutting and re-joining would make the stripe pattern work better.  I’m happy with the first one of this pair and there’s been no sign of the yarn or sock police so far.  I just have to make sure the stripes match on the second one of this pair and then it’s on to the dyed blank where everything should match perfectly. 

Think they will be toe up with yellow toes.

I’ve also been working on spindle spinning, I think I’ve got the hang of it and I like the portability but I don’t think I’ll be getting rid of any of my wheels for a while yet.

On the weaving front, the tea towels are still in progress but need to be done for a market on the first Sunday in March.  I’ve done one in natural, one in lemon, one in a textured gold yarn, one in a light salmon cottolin and have just started one in natural linen.

It’s the first time I’ve used linen but seems to be behaving well so far.  I think this is probably number 9 of 13 or 14, I seem to be losing count.

Helen

Sheep Show 2015

I spent last Sunday at the Sheep Show.  I left home very early on what turned out to be the coldest day in 18 years and here’s the frost and fog just over my back fence to prove it.

I had planned to meet a couple of weaving friends there which may explain why there was much talking but not much photography.  The only photos were the ones I took during the parade, so here are a few highlights.

A couple of felted garments, great garments but unfortunately I can't remember who made them

A lovely tabard from my fellow weavers - Members of Black Pearl

An entry from the students at Genazzano College who were inspired by the ANZAC Day centennial with poppies on a khaki background

And my jacket, looking good on someone who is tall and slim, unlike the intended wearer.

Though I probably won’t wear it with a very short skirt and bare legs

The jacket was woven in 6 shaft turned boulevard weave, with the last meter woven in plain weave for the facings, button, cuffs and pocket detail.  The yarns were 2/22 weight wool from my stash.  I was happy with the selection of colours I had.  Most were machine washable, a few were not so I dyed some machine washable yarn in the colours I wanted.  The fabric of course did not shrink or full at all so I backed it with the lightest iron on interfacing I could find and after that it behaved almost like store bought fabric.There were a few places where there were multiple thicknesses of fabric and it wasn't as smooth as I wanted. Then I remembered that I had a tailor's clapper in the cupboard.  

I don't think I had ever used it but with plenty of steam and vigorous clapping the lumpy areas flattened very nicely, just as they were meant to. 

We went to the showgrounds dining room for lunch.  The Sheep show is one of the few places where the lamb served at lunch is breed specific.   On the menu were not just any lamb pies but Dorper lamb pies.  They had obviously come from a local bakery and were just glowing in the food cabinet.  We couldn’t resist and not only that, they were served with 5 vegetables, nothing like a hearty country lunch. No pictures of the food either, too busy eating it!

And here’s the obligatory Bendigo stash picture, some bought, some won, some gifted, everything from knitting markers and snail biscuit cutters to wool detergent and everything in between.

A good day all round.

I’ve started spinning, not sure what moved me to do it though it might have been a perusal of the spinning fibre stash before I went to Bendigo.  I’ve finished a braid of Angel Bunny – angora bunny, cashmere, blue faced Leicester and Tencel -  from Charly, colours ranging from silver to indigo.  I’m very happy with the yarn, beautifully soft and after trying 2 knitting patterns, then 2 crochet ones, I finally think I’ve found the right one

It’s still winter here and while I realise that people who live in places where it snows regularly would consider it to be quite mild, it wasn’t mild enough when my heater failed during the week.  The control panel looked fine, the outdoor heating unit felt warm but I noticed that it had tilted a bit away from the house.  Fortunately I was able to get someone to look at it the next day and when it had tilted, the duct from the heating unit had parted company with the rest of the duct work.  Sure enough everything was working OK but the hot air was all under the house instead of inside it.  There was an emergency duct transplant, secured I was pleased to see by duct tape, the unit was returned to its usual, vertical position with the help of a couple of pavers and everything is back to normal and Winter is more than half over

Helen