March 2013 – Page 6 – Fiber Musings

Mitered Non-Cross

On 14 Mar, 2013

I didnâ€™t like my faroese styled shawl. It’s been 3 years since I made it. I’ve never worn it. It was time.

So I ripped it and started a mindless, knit whenever project. I started it nearly a year ago as a hospital project. Dad was in for a minor day surgery at Stanford. It was fortuitous that I started with the red yarn instead of Cal blue.

I had purchased enough Silk Garden Sock years ago to make 2 stripey shawls: 3 each of S8 (green-blue-purple) and S64 (pink-red-orange), and 6 of S269 (natural). I will update the quantity above as I actually use the skeins.

My blanket will be an interpretation of the Mitered Cross Blanket for Japan.

I will not be making crosses. They donâ€™t speak to me. The miters are solid. There may be an odd 2 colored miters as I feel like it.
It will be a traditional stacked quilt squares rather than staggered. I like symmetry.
Silk Garden Sock makes smaller blocks than the regular Silk Garden. My blocks are 10â€x10â€. Nominally, mine will consist of 20 blocks (4×5), or until I get bored, or run out of yarn.

So far, 6 blocks from 2 skeins of S84.

Myth Busting

By Ann

On 9 Mar, 2013

In Crochet, Spin

I love the show MythBusters, but I have a something that you will never find featured, dissected, and blown up on the show.

I have always heard (*) that if you are spinning yarn for crochet, the yarn should be spun opposite of how you need to spin for hand knitting. Typical yarn is spun Z then plied S. The saying goes that crochet will twist the yarn in the Z direction, therefore, unply your yarn. For this reason. You have to spin S then ply Z.

* I don’t know where it came from, but I read it on the internet.

I’ve been crocheting all those hexes and it just dawned on me today to take a careful look at my working yarn. I spun this yarn without any project in mind so it was spun just the normal Z then S. Nope. It hasn’t tried to unply itself as I’m working along. In fact, the yarn still looks fine and just as sound as it was when I first spun it.

As with all things found on the internet, you should take it with a grain of salt and test it out yourself before you make any decisions.

I’m really enjoying crocheting this. I had forgotten how much fun crocheting is. I need to dig out some of my old crochet pattern booklets.

Hexes!

By Ann

On 7 Mar, 2013

In Crochet

That crud that has been going around finally caught up with me last week. I was down for the count with fever, chills, and all that nastiness. When I was finally able to sit upright, I pulled out some yarn I spun up from rainbow bright fiber that I won as a raffle years ago and started crocheting hexagons.

I don’t know if it will be a bed shawl or a lap blanket. I’ll see how far this yarn will go. I do know that my grist had changed from the start of the spinning project to the end — from light fingering to almost DK. This is because this was spun over the course of a couple of years. It was my island spinning project for that period of time. I should add that this is why you should keep a spinning record card.

I am alternating from the 2 sections of the spinning project to mix it up.

Random thoughts of a fiber enthusiast - mostly fiber related, sometimes coherent

Month: March 2013 Page 6 of 8

Mitered Non-Cross

Myth Busting

Hexes!