It's Alive!!!

What is that thing crawling around that poor headless woman's neck! Is it alive? Is it dead? Is it endangered?

This Möbius Strip collar was knitted on 10-1/2 needles and used only one 50g, 85 yard ball of Skacel EVO yarn. All man-made fiber, EVO is 45% Polyester, 30% Acrylic and 25% Polyamid lace-weight boucle with loosely woven, braided strands spun into the yarn here and there. I prefer wool. I don't usually use machine-made yarns except for children's clothing or design tests. But this was one of those irresistible yarns we all have in the bottom of our stash. The one we kick ourselves for buying, but dig out and admire from time to time.

So no, it's not alive, dead or endangered. No I didn't think up a Möbius collar, and no I didn't think up the lace stitch. But using a Novelty yarn to knit a lace collar was one of those wicked flashes of insight that pops up when each and every one of us works with fiber.

If you were spinning a yarn like this, you would spin one single of very fine lace weight yarn and then ply it boucle (or spiral) style around a machine made thread. Every so often ... every 6 inches let's say ... you'd introduce a 1 to 2 inch long piece of yarn in between the twisting threads. I would suggest that you consider running the commercial thread up and down around the join as you treadle to tie the snippet in with coils.

You don't have to go to that trouble. Joann's, Herrschner's and many other online yarn stores are having fire sales right now, and you can pick up a skein of expensive novelty yarn (online or in their store) for $.99 cents to $2.00. If you're goofy enough to sign up for their email fliers (like me) you'll also get 40, 50 and 60% off coupons to make the deal even sweeter. Or, if you have a local privately owned yarn shop in your town, now's the time to dig around in their bargain box. You'll find all kinds of dreadfully mangled, single skein wonders in there.

So it's time to dig down in your stash and pull up that tiny skein of novelty yarn that you couldn't resist buying and still haven't used.

Gideon's Knot is Nothing

The main problem with novelty yarns like these is that you have to use extremely large knitting needles in order to show off their true beauty and you still get a loopy mess that has very little warmth to it. Needles you would normally use to knit a sport or worsted weight wool can turn the yarn into a little dollhouse welcome mat. If you make a mistake with Novelties on smaller needles, you might as well cut your yarn and pitch it. These yarns are almost invariably un-ravel-able if not completely incomprehensible and unwearable when knitted on normal sized needles.

Personally I hate using any knitting needles larger than 8. I'll use 10-1/2 if necessary, and that size worked very well for this project. But they still don't feel comfortable in my hands, and have a tendency to drop straight out of the work if I don't have a good grip on them. I won't be seen knitting with those, it's just too much of a caricature.

But there is a way to deal with Novelties by knitting them up with a simple lace stitch called faggoting. The two columns of garter stitch and two columns of yarn-overs produces a knitted piece that marries the novelty yarn extremes of TOO dense and TOO loose into one delightfully wearable piece with just a touch of warmth.

An extra long cast-on tail can be used to blanket-stitch the two ends together to make a Möbius strip. I suggest snipping away the fluff and tassels where you can on the cast-on tail. Take it down to the base threads if possible. I didn't when I made the sample and spent a lot of time cussing when every snippet festooned stitch tangled. Luckily it's not that noticeable but it is an infuriatingly messy join.

The Graph!

If you've never used a lace knitting graph before, it's much simpler than working the written pattern. A key explaining each symbol usually accompanies a graph. In our key, a circle equals a yarn-over, a slash equals K2tog and a blank equals a knit stitch. You read a knitting graph from right to left, just the same way you knit.

This pattern works with a multiple of 4 stitches. The Möbius scarf has 24 stitches, though if you wanted you could work with 16, 20, 24, 32 ...

If you know a flashy nun, 3 or 4 skeins of yarn worked on 72 stitches would make a racy wimple.
Cast on the number of stitches, multiple of four, that you want to work.

Knit one row, turn.
*Knit the first four stitches (white blanks from right to left), then yarn-over, K2tog, K2 (the yellow portion from right to left).
Repeat the yellow portion only until you get to the end of the row. Turn. Repeat from *.

Another way to write this pattern would be: *Knit 4, [YO, K2tog, K2] Repeat between [ ] to the end of the row. Turn.* Repeat between * until you're out of yarn.

You'll be repeating this simple sequence --knitting the first four stitches of the row and then repeating the lace block to the end of the row -- on both the wrong and right side of the work, until you get down to the last couple of yards of yarn.

Finishing: Plain knit one row. You're matching the first knit row at the other end where you cast on. Now Bind Off. Sew the two ends together. Weave in any stray ends.

Whew!

Melissa, a friend I'm knit-coaching, inspired this project.

Sandy has sent in the first suggestion. She's curious to learn how to knit a sock on two circular needles. That and knitting with the magic loop will be the topic of August's Newsletter. If you have suggestions on what you'd like to learn or what you'd like to see in the newsletter, let me know. You can email the name Suggestions at prodigalsock, or just use the "Contact" button on the front page of the web site.

Have you made a blog or website about fiber arts? Send me the link. If you don't have the time to blog because you're busy reading them, but have pictures or tips you'd like to share ... send them along. I pay nothing and I can't promise not to edit it down to the bare bones, but I won't charge you anything to broadcast it to my Newsletter subscribers, your name attached of course. And I'm sure everyone will enjoy the relief from the "I, I, I" .

If you're looking for a good laugh, and there is something you'd like to see me try to explain, send it on. Sandy did. You can too!

Links to resources I've mentioned will only be found on the Prodigal Sock Newsletter.
Anyone can unsubscribe as anonymously as they subscribe. Click the sock above go to the free section of the Prodigal Sock Website and follow the link to the subscription page there.

That's if for July! See you all in August!

Dancing with Chaos

Walking along a deer path in the woods or looking at an herb garden gives me a feeling of peace that can't be found in manicured lawns or well weeded kitchen gardens. I had noticed that for sometime before realizing what I was appreciating and interpreting as 'beauty' can also be an art form. Each tree in a forest has a genetic map controlling its growth and the way it reacts to the conditions around it. Each plant in a helterskelter herb garden follows its own genetic laws of leaf and flower production. Even the outside forces that constrain these plants have their own rules ... the speed of the winds, the rain that falls, the sun that radiates, the soil that feeds.

One would think that my options for experiencing this quiet inspiration would be nil in an urban environment. And I thought so too, before I discovered the Lincoln Park North Pond and the Lincoln Park Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool. These are public places that the exercise obsessed park users skate, bike, and power-walk past blindly. There are small poorly hidden (and so invisible) benches and steps scattered throughout the area ... apparently placed there for people just like me. People who want to stop, sit and see.

I can't find the name of the landscape architect of the Lincoln Park North Pond, which is a migratory bird sanctuary -- though there is a volunteer conservation group which is working to restore the the area to it's prairie ecology. According to the Park District website, "Throughout Lincoln Park's history, renowned artists, landscape designers, and architects contributed to its development. These included sculptor Augustus-Saint Gaudens, landscape designers Ossian Cole Simonds and Alfred Caldwell, and architects Joseph Lyman Silsbee and Dwight H. Perkins. "

It's very nearly Prodigal. Frankly, the North Pond and Caldwell's lily pond are. They were neglected for years and have just recently been the objects of restoration efforts.

Whims

On a whim, I ordered a 1 foot by 3 foot rectangular modular loom from Hazel Rose. My first project involved 4 oz. of alpaca spun 2-ply and dyed spruce. It resulted in two rectangular panels which when joined together made one 6 foot x 1 foot scarf. Unfortunately, it shrunk considerably during dry-cleaning, but it was woven on the bias. It will stretch.


My second experiment


To the right is a spindle filled with various colors. It is constrained by:

1. The colors I chose to dye wool for other projects
2. The amount of roving left over and available for this use
3. The personal whim of which color to select next
4. The english long-draw method of spinning interspersed with slub spinning -- also controlled by whim.
5. Plied with a white, non-slub, english-draw single.

Two Whims Combined

Two finished panels, the one still on the loom and the one hanging left of the easel are made from the same skein described above. As I spun, the amount of available roving changed from predominantly yellow and orange (hanging panel) to blue and green (on the loom).

IF More Constraint Were Added

About the loom and the mathematics of variegation

The loom is equal to 3 one foot squares. Dividing one square diagonally gives two right-angle triangles. When weaving with the 'continuous method' on a tri-loom, one learns that each and every pass of yard will be equal to the hypotenuse of the triangle.


The hypotenuse, the diagonal line from one corner of a 1 foot square to the other can be calculated:

• A²+ B²= C² OR 1² + 1² = 2²
• C (the hypotenuse) = 1.4142135623730950488016887242097 feet

With 3 feet to one yard, this means that it takes approximately, 1.4 yards for each pass on this rectangular loom. This means that in order to create more than one panel of cloth that will 'match' the other panels, any variegated repeat should take place within every 1.4, 2.8, 4.2, 5.6, or 7 yards.


Right now I'm spinning yarn for a 2 - 3 panel scarf of variegated yarn in these proportions:

• 80% Chestnut Brown (warmed with a little red) hand dyed variegated by the dying process from beige to brown
• 10% Commercially dyed Black roving w/white and gray strips
• 5% Periwinkle hand dyed mohair - again variegated by the hand dying process
• 5% Wine hand dyed wool -again variegated by the hand dying process

I'm thinking one ply of the lighter brown.

It's of interest to note here that when I spin 'english-draw,' each draw is about 1 yard. Some times more, sometimes a little less -- more often than not, more. Then with the variegate single I'll spin :

• 5 long english-draws of darker brown
• 1.5 Draws of variegated black and gray (one long and one short english-draw)
• .5 Draw of color alternating between periwinkle and wine.

OR

• 5 long english-draws of darker brown
• 1 Draw of variegated black and gray
• Small corespin slub - alternating periwinkle and wine.
• 1 Draw of variegated black and gray

I'm leaning towards the second option because it adds the additional chaos of texture in what will result in about 30 to 40 variegation repeats per panel.

If I discover that the spots of color clump at one side on two of the panels, then they'll go at the ends. If I discover that the color clumps are more randomly spread on two panels, then they'll go at the ends.

I'll keep you advised.

Hooded Shawl

Yes I weave too.

Once I started spinning, knitting couldn't keep up with the amount of yarn coming off my wheel. Frankly, weaving can't keep up either, but it puts a wider dent (sorry) in the stash.

I have a rigid heddle, and it does a good job of eating up the yarn, but I discovered early, that extra care had to be taken in spinning the warp. The heddle can wear through handspun yarn quickly. It takes a lot of time and care to spin warp that is strong enough to stand up to the punishment. While it is gratifying to spend the extra time spinning yards and yards of worsted two-ply, there's a lot of loom waste -- that is -- you end up cutting off and throwing away hours of yarn.

You can pretty much forget about using handspun slub singles, granny knot, beehive coils or any of the other fun-to-spin novelty yarns as warp. Either they won't fit through the heddle, or they are too delicate to stand up to the abrasion or the tension necessary to weave cloth on a loom that depends on heddles to create sheds.

But you can use novelty yarns on modular looms. I won't go into what a modular loom is here, because you can google Tri-Loom or Triloom and find a lot of sites that will explain it far better than I could here. You can even watch a Fineweaver working on a rectangular modular loom on Youtube. She also has a great video of Weaving with Mohair on a triloom. Mohair, with it's fluffy loose construction is a particularly challenging fiber to use, and as you can see from the video, even handweaving it without the mechanical intervention of a heddle can be daunting.

I belong to a Triloom Group on Yahoo where we talk about looms and making them and weaving on them and design ideas. That's where this post started with an ascii art experiment.

I was trying to explain how to put a hood on a triangular shawl and I'm afraid I didn't explain it well.

I'm going to try again with lots and lots of words and some illustrations.

I've not tried this yet. It's just theory here. But this looks like it would work.

First, I'm assuming that the person who is making the hooded shawl has a 7 foot Triloom and a 14 inch square loom, and further that they know how to weave on both.

After weaving the triangle and two squares, you sew/crochet/knit the two squares together to make a 14 x 28" rectangle, then center and attach that rectangle to the top center of the triangle. At left is an illustration of a 7foot triangle with two 14 inch squares centered on the hypotenuse -- the longest side of this right-angle triangle.

If you only have a 6 foot triloom and a 1 foot square loom to work with, the proportions would be the same. Two squares attached to each other are equal to 1/3 the length of the triangle's hypotenuse. I'd think that after fulling the weaving, you'd probably want to crochet or knit an edging to extend the depth of a hood made with a 12 inch square loom, but that's something to decide once you've pieced it together.





Now let's say you don't have a square loom at all, but you do have various sizes of trilooms. You could piece together several triangles as shown here.

Or, let's say you only have one triloom -- and that is the most probable scenario since trilooms are handmade and not a small investment.

That's when it pays to belong to the yahoo triloom group, because you can find instructions on how to run a line/wire/rod part of the way down a large triloom to create a shorter hypotenuse -- and thus weave a smaller triangle. With a bit of ingenuity and a great deal of swearing, you can do it with a single large loom. With a lot of patience and an eye for mosaics or quilting layout, you can do it with a single small triloom.




Once you've got your pieced-together rectangle attached to your shawl triangle, fold it in half and sew/crochet/knit together the top of the hood.

Now, I'm also assuming here that you've made hoodless shawls with similar yarn on the triloom prior to the hood experiment and have a fairly good idea of how much the shawl will shrink with fulling. You can expect the attached hood to shrink in a similar way.

Measuring from the center back of my head to my nose is about 1 foot. With take-up in fulling, a 14" square won't quite meet my nose ... and frankly a good hood from my point of view should have some windbreak on each side. But again, this is a matter of preference.

So, now. There you go.

P.S. Recently, yet another member of the Yahoo Triloom Group mentioned a way to make hoods using triangles only, and this would actually make an attractive medieval type with the longer tip on the hood.

In this example, equal sized triangles are joined to create a shape that will open into a pyramid shape. I believe this would make a much more agreeable drape to the hood ... but again, this is something which would need to be tested.

Button, Button, Who's Got The Button

The Ribbon Bow Tie Method

It's been brought to my attention that my "cuff-link" solution to buttons on knitted items that are bulky, just doesn't work for everyone. I've been asked to post other fun and hopefully easy ways to deal with the button dilemma.

First off is the ribbon tie alternative. With this, you select a complimentary ribbon at the store. Four yards should do you.

Cut off a yard of the ribbon and double it to make a loop. Push the loop through the top of the collar from the front to the back, and then again back to front so that you have the loop and the ends both on the front of the collar. Then push the two ends through the loop and pull snug. You have your first lace.

On the other end of the collar do the same, then tie the two laces together in a bow knot like the bow in the picture. Do the same for the bottom bow. If it's too long, snip it off to your preferred length.

The Crochet Method


With this method, you haul out the crochet hook and crochet button holes up on end of the collar. Start by attaching the yarn to the top or the bottom of the collar, single crochet a couple of stitches to anchor, then chain 1, 2 or 3 stitches and then go back down and put a single crochet in the next stitch on the collar. The number of free floating chains you create depends on the size of the button and you can check that by trying to push the button through the chain loop you've created.

Make as many loops as you have buttons. You would then sew the buttons to the other end of the collar so that they correspond with your crocheted button holes. Voila!

The Knit Method


And finally, the knit method. Knitted buttonholes take a lot more prior planning in that you have to decide before you finish the collar how many buttonholes you want and where you want to place them on the collar. In this example we're using two large buttons.

A basic knitted buttonhole is a bind-off and then cast on. You'll see here, that our button needs a 3 stitch space to pass through. So we've cast off three stitches (as if we were ending the work) and then immediately gone back and cast three stitches on to the right needle (orange yarn). After you cast on, you keep on knitting until you get to the place where you want your next button hole. Again, cast off 3, cast 3 onto the right needle and continue knitting. Once the buttonholes are complete you'll need to knit a few more rows.

Rule of thumb on button holes is to figure out how many stitches the button covers when you lay it on the collar, then subtract 1 or 2 from that and use that number for your bind-off. If your buttonhole ends up being too large, and gapes, you can always go back and cheat and use a darning needle and yarn and sew it up a little on either side to make it snugger.

If your buttons are small enough to be pushed through the knitted material, don't even make a buttonhole!

Securing the Buttons

Finally, when using Buttons, you'll want to put some ease in between the button and the knitted fabric. That is, you don't want to sew the button down tight. Take a look at the buttons on a cardigan or other knitted garment you already have. You'll see that there is a shank of thread between the button and the cloth it's attached to in order to accommodate the thickness of the material it's being buttoned to.

That's it for the Buttons Post. Hope it helps! If not, don't hesitate to ask for clarification!!

The Other Part of Prodigal

If you look up the word prodigal in the dictionary, you get words like spend-thrift, profligate, and wastrel. These are all good definitions of how one goes about becoming prodigal, but not how one goes about being prodigal. While becoming prodigal involves a great deal of action, primarily ill-advised action, being prodigal involves such complete inaction as to render oneself invisible. Being prodigal involves being lost. Being prodigal is the absence that is only seen when a single member of a pair is visible.

So how does prodigal have anything to do with socks. It has to do with creating only ONE sock. It has to do with challenging the idea that socks only come in pairs. It has to do with creating a lot of individual socks that are sometimes deceptively similar in size and shape, but otherwise completely unique.

What does Prodigal have to do with wearing socks? It has to do with wearing socks that might be made from the same skein of yarn, and might not. It has to do with wearing socks that have absolutely nothing to do with each other aesthetically. We're not talking one brown sock and one navy blue, here.

What does it mean when you wear socks that cannot be blamed on a dark morning or a inattention to detail, socks that are so radically different from each other that even color-blindness cannot be plead? It means that above the hem you conform and below it you retain your rights.

It means a political statement. It means that one has chosen NOT to part one's hair. It means choosing NOT to wear casual togs (that actually cost more than formal business attire) on "Casual Friday." It means choosing NOT to wear "business casual" when one is doing business. It means choosing to say, publically, that the Kafeteria Kulture is dead and Less is NOT More. Less is Less.

I want Less Monotonous Manufactured Crap. I want luxury and diversity.

That means consistently wearing business clothes to work along with socks that appear to be, but are not mismatched. They cannot be mismatched because they are matchlessly and luxuriously beautiful.

Missy's Loop Hole

The most gratifying thing about teaching someone how to do something is the amount you learn yourself. And not just old techniques that have been revamped by new designers and given a new flash name by them, but new ways of seeing.

Specifically, multimedia in fiber art, is something that wilted in the neglected back corner of the art department when I was a child and is now something that is so hot it's very nearly passe already.

But before multi-media is discarded as a way to work in fiber, several other dyed in the wool concepts need to be jetisoned. Correct lengths for scarves ... out the window. Correct size and shape for hats ... down the toilet. Correct types of yarns, buttons and button holes for handmade clothing ... in the garbage.

A student came up with a few images of scarves she'd be interested in making and two of the three incorporated over sized buttons. The technique the student thought they needed to learn was making button-holes. The technique they actually needed to learn was misdirection of the eye.

The primary scarf pattern pictured here, Missy's Loop Hole, is very, very simple and employs one type of button hole technique, though it's not used for buttons. The other three scarves will employ the misdirection of the eye. Though I'm calling them scarves, these patterns could just as easily be called neck cuffs or dickeys.

This simple cabled neck cuff, though takes on a slightly different look depending on whether it's executed in Red Heart Grande Craft Yarn (like the one at the top of this posting) or in handspun wool dyed "Sky Blue." In both cases, bright yellow asterisk buttons are used deceptively. In both cases, too much fun. In both cases, less than 100 yards of yarn and less than 8 hours spent completing this necessary accessory.

Yellow Wheat Sonja Van Gogh Head Band

Awhile back I started reading about different kinds of novelty yarns that involved rough drum carding of different colors so that the colors and textures remained distinct in the finished roving. At that time I had some extra unspun wool that I'd dyed for a couple of different projects. In looking at the colors -- gold ochre and chestnut brown -- I realized they reminded me of one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings .... "Wheat Field with Crows."

The left-over wool became three short skeins of yarn. One skein became a neck cuff. One may be enough for mittens -- though that may be a prodigal thought. The third wasn't really large enough for anything other than something small, fast, and useful.

background on the pattern

Currently fashion demands we keep our ears warm with unisex ear muffs or slip-on fleece head bands. These accessories cost around $20 to $30 dollars, depend on the sweat of workers in 3rd world countries, send our money elsewhere and are... well ... ugly. I don't like slavery. I don't like shipping jobs overseas. I don't like sending money elsewhere to buy trash. And finally, I don't like being forced to pay for ugly.

The best way to strike back? Design something that is quick and simple to make that employs the basic skills of knitting and purling. Add in a couple of intermediate, but actually quite easy, techniques to expand the skills. And, last but definately not least, make it attractive on a visual and fashion level.

color and retro

1940s movies are full of women who were stars of the silver-screen for swimming or dancing or skating better than anyone else. Sonja Henie often wore a simple headband that kept her ears warm, her bangs out of her eyes and her medium-long hair bouncing behind her as she leapt, twirled, spun and danced across the ice. These headbands tied under the chin and often appeared to be made of embroidered felt or kid leather with rabbit fur lining or intarsia knitted wool.

And, of course, the whole ear connection thing with ears of wheat and Van Gogh ears was irresistable.Yellow Wheat Sonja Van Gogh Head Band is the result and you can find the pattern over on prodigalsock.com by clicking on the name or by clicking the Prodigal Sock picture, upper left.

The only thing I have left to do, to make it complete, is bake some sculpey crow baubles to sew on here and there. I think I'll resist adding some red gauze to the right side.

I'll be putting together a collection of ear-warmer designs for sale in a couple of weeks. Let me know if you'd be interested. In the meantime, make yourself a unique earwarmer to celebrate women who do things better than anyone else, individual vision and, well, ears.