September 27, 2014

Foreign Parcel

I bought a copy of Fenny Nijman's Egyptisch Vlechten from the Netherlands.  It's a bit of a splurge, buying a book in Dutch, which I can't read, but it has pictures of finished objects and historical pieces in språng.

I tried making a pullover in språng.  The finished chest size came out at 76 inches unexpectedly, nothing like the small gauge swatch I made because it's harder to beat down a row on a wide warp and the rows are looser.  The piece looks better thrown across the back of a chair than it does on me.  At least I tried out false circular warp.

I made some stitch markers using fragrant beads I made from rose petals.  Here they are on my sweater.
rose petal beads

September 20, 2014

"Finish Him!"

My sweater is still very much an unfinished object and all urgency has gone from that project now that there is no deadline for it.  I have just done the armhole decreases on the back and that's all I have.

I am still using a kanban board to track the flow of work on my projects.  Each task is written on a card which I move left to right from the "ready column" to "in progress" to "done" by turns.  I'll get annoyed when a card is stationary too long, and do something about it.  The saying in kanban is, stop starting, start finishing.

I finished more Norwegian Sweet baby caps.  I assembled drop spindles that I painted with woad.  I posted YouTube videos that show someone processing dogbane and kudzu fibre, and someone spinning dogbane into yarn.  I pinned pictures of språng.  I dyed commercial yarn with tumeric and walnut.


Am glad I went to the kudzu fiber workshop.  Am probably cured of wanting to use kudzu.  Wasn't the smell of the composted vines, it was how little fibre came out of all that material.

I had another whack at the Tegle stocking språng pattern and still could not suss out the last few rows of the pattern repeat.  Oh, it's pretty though.