Turtleweaves: Warp Part 1

I have been weaving a bit, but my loom came pre-warped with a rather long warp, so I have never warped it. I decided at the end of last year that I needed to learn how to warp it. I bought the book in November, the yarn in December, then the project was OBE (Overcome By Events) and finally today I had time to begin. This post is picture heavy so my apologies if you are on dial-up.
Here’s the book, Learning to Weave by Deborah Chandler; I picked it because it was recommended by Syne Mitchell on her excellent podcast Weavecast:

Here is the wool, Halcyon Victorian (the green is a spruce green – not nearly as blue as in the photo):

Here is my assistant Adidas, setting up our “warping board” which consists of wood clamps on the dining room table:

I sat on one side of the table, while Adidas wound the warp around the clamps. We learned about making the “cross” and he was very careful that every round had a cross.

I’m in the foreground. When Adidas throws me the ball of yarn, I wrap it around my clamp and throw it back.

For this sampler (10″ wide, 12 ends per inch) we needed 60 white pieces of yarn:

We tied the cross in 5 places with scrap yarn:

Adidas cut the far end and tied it:

Here’s the warp. It was supposed to be 2 feet, but I was math challenged when I attached the clamps to the table, so it’s a little more than 1.5 feet. That’s OK, it’s a sampler. Notice the quantities of liquid refreshment we are consuming.

I chained the warp:

And then it was on to the green!

The green took about 1/3 the time of the natural, maybe less:

I guess we knew what we were doing the second time, at least a little bit.

My first two teeny tiny warps. I wanted to start the actually warping, but that will have to wait for another day.

Green Beaded Bag

A Turtleknits Classic – I started this in August, thanks to Tracy who took me to the bead store and helped me pick out the perfect beads.

Typically for me, I got it 90% done then got distracted by socks, blanket knitting, and Christmas present making.


It was inspired by a Librivox project to have a cadre of knitters record all the chapters in a book called “Exercises in Knitting” and then knit swatches to go with each item in the original book. (I can’t link to the audiobook because it isn’t complete yet.) Each knitter then rewrote the pattern using modern knitting terms and included it in Knitwiki.

Some more pictures. I found it hard to capture this bit of knitting photographically. The beads are very sparkly, and that doesn’t come through in the photos.




Yarn: Crystal Palace Baby Georgia, mercerized cotton, fingering weight.
Needles: US 4’s

Zip Socks

Flashback to 2008.

I made these socks for a Christmas present and they were finished on November 27th, but due to the vicisitudes of life (as my mom would say), I was only able to give them to their intended recipient a few days ago.

Just plain-old stockinette socks in Berocco Comfort DK, but I taught myself the tubular bind-off for this pair:

I like the edge. Less “ruffly” than I usually get by just doing a super-loose regular bind-off on a toe-up sock.

This time I used US 3’s for the Comfort DK and that worked out much better than the 4’s I used for the Comfortable Socks. (The Comfortable Socks have stretched since they were knitted, and I think knitting at a tighter gauge would have helped prevent that. Sock Knitting 101.)

I called these socks “Zip Socks” for 2 reasons. One is that I wanted to see if I could knit a pair of socks in 2 weeks, and I succeeded. Remember, these are plain stockinette in DK weight, so I won’t have to rename my blog anytime soon.

Blanket Finished

It’s hard to know when a garter stitch blanket is finished. One way is by running out of yarn, but I seem to have a lot of this yarn. The other way is by arbitrarily saying it is finished, which I did the day before yesterday.

For size: this is our Christmas tree.

Looks cozy, no?

This blanket is for Tumblyday’s Botswana project. Any knitters, crocheters, weavers or quilters/sewers out there, the deadline is March 13th and I know that any handmade hats, sweaters, socks, mittens, blankets and toys will be much appreciated!

Progress on Blanket

I have a lot of “almost finished” projects that I’m going to try to complete. Here’s the “Rose Quartz” blanket which got neglected for a while as I made Christmas socks.

When I looked at this photograph, I said to myself “That’s almost a blanket!” I’d been knitting away on it and never really looked at it to see how much progress I’d made. It won’t take me long to finish now.

I made a little baby hat to go with it:

Is that ruler bent or what?

I tried to find a model for the hat, since the bent ruler doesn’t really give a good idea of the size:

Too small for a 13-year old.

Too big for a stuffed monkey.

Why are there no babies around the house when you need one?

Socks Finished

My last FO for 2008: my mom’s socks.

Of course, I had to try them on to make sure they were big enough:

That was a mistake, because they were so comfy and I didn’t want to take them off to ship them up to her. They fit perfectly.

I think my next pair is going to be for me.

Faux Fair Isle Socks

Well, I seem to be on a sock-knitting roll, so I started these self-patterning socks for my mom.

The yarn is Regia 4-ply Jacquard that has been in my stash for years. The yarn is fairly “tough” – there is nothing soft or squishy about it, but I think it will soften up with washing. It is 75% superwash wool and 25% nylon.
As is typical, my gauge was wrong (and YES I did knit a large gauge swatch) so the foot looks a little narrow. (56 stitches on #1’s.) My mom has narrower feet than I do and I can fit them on, so I think it will be ok.

Comfortable Socks

I fixed the 90 degree-off toe, and these socks came out nicely:

They are a little too big for the model’s feet, but they will fit the recipient fine:

The top rib isn’t as stretchy as a regular 1×1 or 2×2 rib. Poor choice. I like the yarn choice, though. It is Berocco’s Comfort DK. Since Jill can’t tolerate wool, and cotton socks are too hard to knit, I think it’s the perfect solution. It’s a little splitty; I should have been more careful while knitting it, because when I had to rip back the toe, I noticed I’d knit only some of the strands sometimes.

Baby Alive

Our church partners with a local elementary school to give holiday gifts to the children. The kids write their “wishes” on hand-drawn ornaments and we pick which one of the toys or gifts to get for them.

Spragoon picked the ornament this year (there’s a picture of it in the bottom photo). It was for a “Baby Alive” doll which he helped me shop for.

It turns out there are dozens of Baby Alive versions – this one sips from a bottle and naps.

I was surprised that there weren’t patterns all over the Internet for that particular doll. I only found one which didn’t fit into the time we had for the project (2 weeks). We made do without a pattern: I made a small blanket, a hat, and a poncho.

I also made a bright blue shawl that is folded under the doll’s arm.

(The poncho will fall down and not look like a weird Elizabethan collar as soon as the doll is taken out of the packaging.)

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

Socks. Not my first, second, or third pair. Something I thought I would never do:

Can you see it?

The top sock is correct. The bottom sock has the heel parallel with the toe:

The person these are for is going to have to have foot surgery to wear this sock! Or, maybe, just maybe, I’ll cut off the toe portion and reknit it at 90 degrees to its current orientation. But I still can’t believe I made such a rookie mistake.

By the way, these are “You’re Still Putting Me On Socks” (the only socks I’ve been making recently), knitted toe-up, in Berocco Comfort DK. The color isn’t right in these pictures, it’s a lovely permsimmon red. It’s not that garish bright red. Knit on size 4’s, 52 stitches around, with the leg made in the “International Rib of Doom.” (If I were to knit socks with this yarn again, I would use size 3’s.)