i should’ve taken a picture before i took it off the niddy noddy. 1 wrap around mine is 38” i did 190 wraps, i bundled by 10 to keep count! the pic of the niddy noddy i had ~30 yards wound on it then
balanced diamonds with eyelids and steeks in the middle, a beaded cross dead center (hard to see here), and strawberries but worked every row with extra berries that will end kinda in a wave on top instead of straight across! it’s fun to see the strong pull to the right from my yarn (i think it’ll block fine when i stretch it everything looks more normal)
size 4 needle for reference! working on a scarf in my first finished cobweb that was half wheel half spindle spun and a bit thicker
i think the yarn is adorable especially how tiny the balls are. roughly 750 yards in 24 grams! knitting this on 1.5mm needles and i like how airy it is
i fucking love spinning oh my god
made a diy lace bobbin bc i didn’t have one and i need to learn, switched to a thin drive band, 30wt cotton crochet thread i beeswaxed to hell, & now i can control the take up significantly better and im able to do this now without a headache. i will be a spider within 5 years i hope. im using the 15:1 ratio since its the fastest i have currently and im forward drafting a fauxlag with the tiniest bit of twist in the drafting triangle to help consistency, if i draft more than about an inch every 8 treadles it falls apart LOL but its nicer than spinning this fine on my support spindle, im using the fauxlags i made for spinning on that (rambouillet)
this thing is so insanely fast compared to a spindle LOL
my first ever try on a wheel last night was PIGTAIL HELL but i’m figuring out take up i think … i got to try so many. this one, (matchless), a majacraft suzie, kromski mazurka, ashford traveler, and a kromski fantasia and a little traveling spinolution wheel!! all in double drive except the majacraft, i found scotch super touchy. majacraft treadles are absolute magic, but i like the beast that is the matchless tbh. the woman who owns those wheels is genuinely the coolest person ive ever met in my life
idk what to flair this. this is my sobriety shawl (kinda lol)
i moved halfway across the country to somewhere i’d never been and got sober cold turkey after using from 12-23 and this …. got me through those first few months. it isn’t knit well, it’s full of mistakes from me shaking and dropping stitches, and i lost count of the repeats and don’t even know exactly where i am and it’s a headache to figure out lol. it makes me very happy every time i see it for what it did for me, it sort of gave me a connection with myself from before that period of my life when i first started knitting out of this book, it’s the triangular scarf in leaf pattern from knitted lace of estonia (boring name) i was doing in alpaca lace on size 2s. first time picking my needles back up in a couple years due to … life being life. i like to look back on where i was while i was knitting this and see how far i’ve grown as a person since then. i credit this shawl to keeping me sane and busy enough to get through to the other side and i might frame it lol. it’s been sitting on a shelf for almost 3 years but every couple days i go dig it out just to remind myself how far i’ve come in every aspect of my life
i finally managed to find chiagoo 000s in stock so i could stop fighting with my addi turbos but… im gonna need 0000 and 00000 n i cannot find them anywhere except as addi turbos or regular hiyahiyas, i refuse the hiyahiya and ill use addi under duress but i … crave a good point.
is it possible to get a custom needle? if addi made rockets or rocket2 down to 00000 id freak out bad. i just want a nice point, chiagoo red lace is the perfect one for me but i like the slickness of addis more, and im a big fan of the rocket2 in the larger sizes!(like 1-5. a big needle to me is a size 5)
the woman who taught me to knit years ago had really old ones that were perfect but i cannot find something the same now n that makes me very sad, the ones she had weren’t necessarily a needle sharp point but they had a very long taper.
the big skein was spun on my 35g drop spindle and the small was spun and plied on my 14g!! i get to try a wheel tomorrow for the first time and it’s also my wheel now …… !!!! i’m so excited
the border is lace border 8 from knitted lace of estonia/triinu magazine originally, i’m framing the center pattern with the blueberry stitch and the lace through the center is a pattern i made that’s worked on both sides ! the ssps are annoying but so worth it, i did all of the left leaning decreases in the border a k2togl instead of a sk1p like estonian lace is and i … love it tbh. cant wait to get this finished so i can wear it!!!!
so the pattern i’m working from is one i made, i’m trying to figure out something fun and geometric for a scarf lol
so, the decreases i’m using here are k2tog, k2togL, sl2k1p, p2tog, ssp, and im curious as to why one side of the yo paired with the sl2k1p is different than the other? i don’t fully understand the relationship between open and closed yarn overs but creating my own patterns has been helping me understand things more and im tired of using already made patterns LOL. i can send a picture of the chart, it has mistakes in it that i know are there and can ignore, thats why i didn’t post it since i feel like it would distract from my actual question
but yeah the row with that is k4, yo, k2togl, yo, sl2k1p, k2tog, yo, k4
following purl row p3, yo, p2tog, yo, p2tog, p1, ssp, yo, ssp, yo, p3
that’s the central part of this where i’m noticing two different yarn overs even though they’re paired with the same decrease
(i think, i work off charts, always have, written instructions confuse me sometimes which is why im a chart person LOL)
the border is border 4 from gossamer webs but i made a mistake and just keep doing it instead of fixing it lol(one yarn over is one stitch over) i asked the woman at the yarn store if she thought i could make a scarf with 1 hank of silkpaca and she said if i made it very open so i got 2 balls of cascade kid seta too and now i’m? doing this. i didn’t wanna do a honeycomb scarf i needed more visual interest (busy for the sake of being busy)
edit: i don’t know if i fully understand rule 14 i honestly think im bad at knitting but i get told to use this or that im like really good at it by people and they always ask me things like im a teacher? i usually try to not show any finished objects to more experienced knitters so they talk to me like idk what im doing bc sometimes i still learn things (i’ve been knitting half of my life and i still literally always learn new things thats why i like it)
the center is a self drafted pattern using orenburg motifs that i changed (some of them) and laid out myself + the pattern is worked on both right side and wrong side rows, i had to completely do all of the math to make the border and the center line up right, the center is a repeat of 26 rows + 2 and the border is 16 rows per tooth, im doing 11 repeats of the center so when i turn the corner im not doing it in the middle of a diamond or something lol. i always get told lace knitting is advanced but it doesnt really … feel like it. i just want to be in a sub where people aren’t asking how to do basic cast ons
edit 2: i can also give anyone who wants it the sloppy handwritten chart i did on graph paper with the tiniest eraser bc keep forgetting to get more so theres ghosts of where i erased things. its just 35 stitches im sure it could be repeated and look nice id have to knit a swatch to figure it out (i figured it out as i was typing this actually). ive only got 2 repeats finished currently bc ive been BUSY but its coming out nice in my opinion its just geometric with my take on whatever a double strawberry would be (the orenburg motif), i just kinda wanted to see how they’d look offset slightly and worked on right side and wrong side. also a lil rhomboid deal i meant to be more of a secondary diamond but i like that its a scrunched up rhomboid its almost like a mulberry
so i cannot stop thinking about a wheel or an espinner bc having 2 free hands without having to stop and flick a spindle sounds absolutely amazing. my interest with spinning is rly only fine yarns because that is what i use, that was why i started spinning and that is why i starting on a support spindle. im not really annoyed with how long it takes, but the 4 days its taken me to spin 15g of a rough 61wpi (i wrapped loose and didn’t fill the full inch + i know that varies a lot depending on the tension while wound) has me realizing i am gonna be stuck spinning for probably a month or more at a time per project, 8 hrs days like ive been doing, and it would just make more sense for me to get a wheel or espinner in the nearish future. idk which ones are better for fine yarns than others, i know higher ratio is better for that but in a little bit of research i’ve done it seems some wheels don’t like using a 20:1 or higher even if they technically can.
on to the height thing, i am 6’2. i have very long legs. i have a 36” inseam LOL i run into problems with things made for normal sized people and i do like the idea of an actual wooden spinning wheel more than an espinner just bc they’re cute and fully manually powered, but i dont want to end up bent up all weird trying to use one, and i dont know where i could test some out locally first. for reference i dont fit in old sewing machine cabinets, my knees sit too high and i have to sit far back and bend forward when i sew, thats with an adjustable chair as low as i can put it. i’ve seen online the ashford traveller is abt 31” and kromski sonata is the tallest at 33” 😭 sonata could work in theory if i could ever try one out but i have a weird feeling id prefer single treadle saxony style it seems more free. there is a weaving guild but the times they meet doesnt work with my schedule and i think spinners are only there once a month on a day i literally cant make it 30 miles away LOL. my other thought if im just too big and awkward for a wheel, daedalus starling! honestly even a walking wheel i think thats what its called the ones with the spindle on them sounds really nice to me. i’ve checked locally on fb marketplace and its mostly broken spinning wheels clearly missing parts for hundreds-1000$ bc of sentimental value, things that are clearly just furniture made from spinning wheels that they think is still a useable spinning wheel and worth 1000$, or the 1 schacht matchless which looks a bit short and awkward. everything else is hundreds of miles from me
finally grabbed graph paper after forgetting for weeks
basically, for starting orenburg shawls i had a MUCH easier time using jmco rather than trying to pick up from a long tail or backwards loop cast on, i’m knitting a sampler shawl but practicing the motifs in the book to familiarize myself before i design a shawl rather than a garter center
so i’m knitting a sample shawl from galina khmeleva’s gossamer webs (history and techniques) and apparently the traditional way is long tail and picked up & placed on holder, galina recommends backward loop
i’m trying this on size 000s with baby alpaca and it was hard, i tried judy’s magic cast on and well, its magic. i’ll continue to do this for anything that casts on similarly, yall should try it if picking up stitches from the cast on 2 place on a holder before you even knit a row gives you trouble like it does me LOL