nemo ignorat

End of Winter Darning

When the end of winter comes, I wash all my woolies, look for holes, wear and tear and try to mend it. Most of my darning happens in between and concerns socks. But then there are the various holes in sweaters. I usually use similar coloured yarn and just weave. But this year I went bold. 

Hubby's deak at his job had the tendency to eat shirts and sweaters. Most shirts are chafed around the belly (probably because he tends to sit rather close to the deask) and almost all sweaters get tears at the right arm. Luckily for us, the company hubby works for, got new desks which don't eat sweaters habitually. But there was one left, I needed to mend.

This is the inside of the sweater. You can see how the desk munched away at the arm. The yarn was too fine and the holes too many so that I tried another approach to mending.

I knit a whole patch from some singles yarn I've spun and sewed it on. Good enough for home. 

One of my favourite sweaters showed serious wear and tear. I've knit the sweater 25 years ago from yarn I got from ripping my back then partner's jumper. Because of the cable pattern, the yarn was not enough so I got some black yarn and added the stripes. Now the hems were frayed and I needed to do something. There was some wear below the arms as well and a small hole. I mended the thinning patches below the arms conventionally by weaving, the same with the small hole. But the cuffs with their ribbing were a problem. I could have used swiss darning, imitating each knit and purl stitch or I could have just ripped the cuffs and knit new ons. I chose decorative darning. 

you can see the cuff patches from the back better

Time ate away at the cuff, leaving a visible dent. So I crocheted sock yarn on to it. Attaching every other row with the cuff, so securing the tear.

conventionally mended hole and the crochet mending

About every five years, I need a new jeans. By then, the old one is worn out. Width is no problem but length is. I prefer 33" long legs but usually you get either 32 or 34". So I buy 34" trousers and cut them off. 

You can see the cut off part. I used some indigo dyed linen to secure the hem.

To protect the hem, I fold it over and attach it with some kantha stitching. This way, I can remove it once or maybe even twice to sew a new reinforcement on to it.

this took a bit longer

My second UFO for this month was a sweater I began two years ago and which I tried to finish in a rush during my last vacation. Rushing things never is a good thing, and so the almost finished result was less than pleasing and begged to be ripped - at least partly.

Which I did. And then I knit some better fitting sleeves and finished the neckline and after cleaning up all the end, washing and blocking, it looks really nice. I think I will like it.

I remebered I based the pattern loosely on the Fana Cardigan in Priscilla Gibson Roberts' book Knitting in the Old Way. A knitting book I can only recommend. This and her Ethnic Socks and Stockings could well be the only knitting books one needs.

Re: Online Classes

I am in the process to set up a new website for my German classes. The move from one provider to the next proved to be as bumpy as it was expected and it still takes a lot of time to get things sorted out. I will squeeze in updating my English shop for my English classes as soon as possible. There will be two English classes this year, one 4 weeker on the basics of dyeing with natural dyes, indigo vats included, and a second 4 weeker on printing and other decorative techniques with natural dyes (including katazome). The second one will be based upon the experiences we made in the first class. Alternatively, people who took part in my classes last year can skip the basic class and take part in the printing class only, if they like to continue with these techniques.

well, that was easy

Hubby's jumper is finished.

It turned out, the arms were much quicker to knit than expected. I caught up with some reading while knitting (reading on a screen while knitting is much easier than reading from a book) and got it done. It fits, and DH is happy. And in time as well. We had snow tonight.

Meanwhile in the studio

The warp is - well - warped.

7 m of the most sticky and tangled warp ever. It will not become my favourite. But, now it's warped and the RH loom is prepped and ready to go.

I suppose, handspun tussah singles should not be warped without sizing. The tangling was almost as bad as with the one chenille warp I used many moons ago. Live and learn.

Oh, my OLG festive exchange gift arrived at it's designated place and I got mine, so I'm free to share pictures. The topic of the festive exchange was 'pincushions'. Something everybody can use. Very nice.

I got these lovelies

Two tetrahedrons. One made from her handspun yarn and another one from an old jeans. So cute. Everything was wrapped in one of her shibori dyed fabrics. Which was really funny. She told me when she unwrapped my gift, she had a deja vu. Cause I wrapped mine in some shibori cloth as well. AND I used geometrical forms. My exchange partner and I had a rather similar thought process.

I took the form from Zentangle Stitches for Quilters and Fabric Artists. They are the pincushions from the cover and honestly the only really interesting thing in the whole book. Really. The rest is meh. But these shapes are super cool and DH already said, he could envision some larger cushions in this shape. Well, I can too and the pincushions were a nice try out.

I never was much into cushions, (nice) carpets and (nice) blankets (not only the practical ones that wash well) -  having cats and dogs who liked to chew and do other things to them. But with only one dog left, who just - well - sleeps on cushions without maiming them first, and who does not have a habit of puking on carpets or chewing on blankets, I am really looking forward to make some more textile things for our home. Make our sofas maybe a bit more comfy, even weave a carpet or two? That would be nice. Not just making textiles and giving them away but actually keeping and using them.

UFO month (that's unfinished objects for non-crafters not the other kind)

 Happy New Year everyone

Many years ago, when I was member of the Workshop Program Steering Group of the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, I invented the UFO month for January. What's better than beginning the new year by finishing some old projects. Unknowingly, I started a tradition and ever since the OLG celebrates the new year with UFO month.

During the sorting and hauling for the studio move, I found several unfinished objects. Mostly sewing projects I began, didn't get around or didn't know how to finish. Except for some actual clothes, I intend to have a look at all the others over time. There is no need to rush them. But - there is this one jumper.

It was started on our vacation 2014 and all looked well back then. I knit on it on and off (mostly off) and intended to finish it during our last vacation. Which I almost did. But the realisation that I didn't pack enough yarn paired with the intense sense of needing to finish it led to a really wonky thing. The body it alright, I guess but the arms? I mean ... too short and not the same size. So, I will rip them and knit them with more patience and calm. Let's see, if I can get this jumper working.

Because, it is quite nice otherwise.

yes, I already knit another jumper from the same yarn. I had more than enough of it. It's local yarn from native sheep spun in one of our last yarn mills.

The other project I intend on finishing this month, is not exactly an UFO. It is a jumper for DH I began in late October by spinning the yarn first. This one is nothing for the eye, DH wanted something big and comfy and sooofffttt. So he got a yak-silk-blend (yes, sometimes I indulge in this kind of luxury), spun soft and knit with rather large needles.

as you can see, missing the arms. Seems to be a common theme for me

pure softness

wooden spoons

I'm almost 50 now so things were different when I was little. My mum kept her flour in a large metal box. The box was from baby food in the 50s or 60s, most probably from my food. There was some cheerful baby face on the box and some name or other for the baby formula. She scooped the flour with a wonderful bakelite flour scoop. The metal box rusted away over the decades but the scoop is still in my flour box in use. (Though my box is made of plastic with tight silicone seal, I am paranoid when it comes to moths.)

But since I use more than one kind of flour (there is the usual wheat flour, the blé noir for galettes, and the dark rye flour) I always had to switch the scoop from one box to another. It's just so practical. And it has a nice size and handling. And it always reminds me of the in milk steamed sweet dumplings called 'Buchteln' we cooked on sundays (I still have the brown glaced porcellain bowl, too, in which mum served the vanilla sauce that belongs to the dumplings).

Anyways, this switching from box to box was tedious. And I really love wooden spoons, so I asked a very nice wood carver from Romania who sells his stuff on etsy, if he would make me some flour scoops like the one I already had? And he did. They arrived yesterday.

Aren't they just lovely? I love wooden spoons. I love cooking with them. I love the feeling of wood in my hands. Never got used to the plastic kind.

On a more exhausting note, this is how my studio space to come looks right now:

main room

office space

and a shy look into the kitchen space

It's a whole small flat with a small kitchen space, a small bathroom with shower, the main room, divided in two smaller spaces and a rather small room where I plan to put my office stuff in.

Originally, I wanted to go all natural. Clay plaster, lime-casein-paint and so on. But after a closer look at the walls today, I decided to stick to modern age stuff. The wall material is too mixed up. I would have to sand off every wall completely before I could plaster it. All this when I only want to move in as soon as possible. So, come monday, I will invade the local DIY store and get the usual filler, primer and paint. BTW has anyone and idea how to get rid of cigarette smell?

DH's new socks

While packing for vacation, we noticed that DH needed some new socks. So the first thing I did was knitting him this nice pair in green. I have no idea what kind of sock yarn or where I got it from, I found it in my stash and used it. He loves them. That's all I need to know.

Japan Journey 2

 Since we all arrived on different days, most of us met in the lobby of a hotel in Tokyo. Which was more or less on the other side of town. Underestimating the Japanese inability to speak English and overestimating my own sense of direction, I wandered around more or less in circles on my search for Tokyo Station. It was easier the day before when I arrived and just took the most direct route to the hostel. 45 minutes later (I did even then see interesting parts of Tokyo‘s banking quarter which were not supposed to be on my direct route) I arrived there and that was it. But the next day I felt adventurous and thought I could just walk to Shinjuku Station next to which we were supposed to meet. And it would have been possible only I lost my way so many times on the way to Tokyo Station that what took me 45 minutes the day before took me more than 1.5 hours the next day. And yes, I have Google maps and I had a physical map as well. Google maps shows only Kanji (the Chinese-Japanese characters) and doesn‘t seem to be quite sure about directions either when it comes to navigation and my physical map only showed Romanji (our letter system). Yes, Tokyo has his main streets labeled with both writing systems. But I got lost in the maze of small backstreets with no Romanji street signs. A very, very nice policeman (with less than basic English) put me back on my track and then I just took a taxi (whose driver didn’t speak English either) to Shinjuku Station and arrived just in time after an odyssey of almost 3 hours.

wikipedia commons pic of shinjuku station yamamoto line - I was too confused to take any pictures

 

Like with so many big cities it seems almost unbelievable how rural it can become only a few kilometers outside the wider city boundaries. And Fujino is rural.

this is how bamboo sprouts - I was constantly amazed at this wonder

 

Wonderfully so with those lush green steep hills, bamboo forests, tea terraces and the scattered farm houses. Walking up the steep hill to Bryan’s house you are greeted by two large indigo vats in ceramic pots that are standing right and left to his main entrance. We would use these vats every day over the course of the next 10 days.

The first thing Bryan did was to get us introduced into the chemistry of the indigo vats, how to judge the vat’s health, feed it with what it might need and how to use it.

Since not all of us had experience in dyeing with indigo out first exercise was over dyeing several skeins of cotton yarn. Indigo has the wonderful property of making everything look much nicer. Even weird beige colours and ghastly turquoises. Bryan owns an old industrial knitting machine with which he produces long tubes of knitted fabric. And those over dyed yarns were meant for this knitting machine. At the end of the workshop each of us got her piece of knitted fabric. It might just be enough to a sleeveless t-shirt, I’m still pondering. (Which will take me a while like always.)

knitted fabric from our first cotton skeins. Slightly striped with darker, lighter and mottled indigo skeins

With the over dyeing of the skeins, Bryan established a kind of base line for his students. From where he could move on. With out next task we moved to the large and wide field of shibori. I had some experience with basic shibori stitching in the past. During Glennis’ workshops I folded those mandalas and stitched the dragon fly. More or less successful.

 

folded triangles stitched and dyed

 At Bryan’s I was introduced to the high ART of Shibori. The many variations, the time and effort one can invest in one piece and the nice little tricks in dyeing it. I didn’t put that much time into Shibori though because of all the many other textile techniques I was offered.

 

96 year old Ogata san visitig us, making Udon noodles and dyeing shibori in between

 

Ogata san in front of her shibori pieces

 

one of Mini's shibori pieces which took her the better part of two weeks to prepare

 

Especially Katazome. Katazome is the Japanese craft of stencelling a resist on fabric. Something I really wanted to learn now for quite a while. We have a similar technique in Germany called Blaudruck. But unlike Katazome this is done by printing the resist with wood block prints onto the fabric before dyeing it with indigo (in our case it was mostly done with woad and naturally we wouldn’t use rice paste but some wheat flour paste but that’s just local flavour). Because of the wood blocks local patterns usually are much smaller and live mostly from the repeat.

 

one of my katazome pieces

 

a vintage stencil

 

Katagami are larger and the patterns can be much more elaborate depending on the provenance. Kaki Shibugami, the special stencil paper is made from paper glued together by fermented unripe persimmon juice high in tannin content and then smoked over a wood fire for several days. It is almost impossible to get outside of Japan (and if only to exhorbitant prices) and since unripe not sweet kaki are not available at my place (or anywhere near) I will have to find another method to produce something similar useful.

 

my little shifuku pouch

 

 

 

 

you can see the silk netting that is glued to one side to protect the stencils from falling apart

 

Right now I’m thinking of walnut or oak tannin or simply boiled lineseed oil as it is used as base coat in paintings. If all fails I will have to resort to plastic stencil paper. Not my favourite but better than buying the original stuff from Japan (or someplace else). Again, something I have to ponder about. After shibori we got out our homework. He had send us some shibugami to cut our own stencils at home.

 

resist paste

 

And now he showed us how to make the resist paste (although we ended up using ready to use resist paste everything else would have ended in very complicated logistics with 9 people), how to prepare the stencils and the fabric and how to apply the paste onto the stencil and the fabric. And he brought us to a katazome master whose workshop we could visit and use for some smaller stencil experiments. Especially his fermentation indigo vats were very interesting.

Mini's katazome. Resisted, dried, dyed, resisted again, dried, dyed and I lost count if there werde more stages involved

 

a katazome piece consisting only of tiny dots

 

the above after dyeing

 

From Katazome we moved on to Kumihimo and Weaving. (Not that we didn't still do all the other things as well.  Bryan's workshop is more like a textile bootcamp with little sleep and more craft possibilities than you can imagine. At one point I was so overwhelmed by all the possibilities I just stood a little dazed in the hall doing nothing until my head cleared. At least food and entertainment is really nice.)

Right from the start I was hooked on kumihimo. So much that I ordered my own Marudai (the stand you use for braiding) over the internet at home. Luckily for me I already have the bobbins. A craft shop closed several years ago and sold them for a bargain. And I like them for fixing broken warp threads. The Marudai, made by a local wood turner from local wood, arrived on wednesday and it is so beautiful. And in use already.

Our little bits of weaving (about half a yard each) were done on a very old traditional Japanese loom. She was called – very endearingly – The Beast by all of us outsized gaijin women. And she had tended to bitch around a bit eating warp threads by the dozen if you were not careful. But we succeeded in weaving our piece without any long term damages.

And I was introduced to another bit of weaving. One of us was so nice to show Bryan how to warp and thread his 4 shaft loom. As I understood it the loom was a rather new acquisition and he and her were not quite on good terms yet. Luckily I had the chance to take more than a peek and learn so much for my own 4 shaft darling. Thank you for the opportunity.

And all the while we dyed on, learned to sew little pouches called shifiku, visited the Folkart Museum in Tokyo, learned how to behave in an Onsen (my first time) and learned how much all parts of Japanese culture are interlaced into each other.

Japan was a rather isolated country for more than a millenium. Just imagine a country whose basic garment design didn’t change for 1300 years. (Look at how people clothed themselves in the 6^th century Europe and then in the 10^th or the 11^th, the 12^th or during rokkoko, baroque, regency ….?) And now imagine those 1300 years only wearing one kind of clothing. A more or less practical one and one on whose fabric amount taxes were paid. A basic piece of clothing that had only the chance to subtle changes. Much like the whole society. Imagine a country with a continuing line of crafts and craftspeople, without the suppression of the church, without cultural setbacks and lost inventions, lost knowledge and without permanent waves of mass migration from one end of the continent to the other, without constant invading forces that brought their own culture with them and without next to none external influences. And you get a culture which had so much time to get so intricately interlaced that from subtle non-verbal communication to flower arrangements to tea ceremonies from pottery to fabrics everything is connected. This realisation hit me at one point. How close knit the Japanese culture (at least up to WW2) was. How little was left to accident and choice. And how different it was to ours. European culture is basically the antithesis to Japanese culture.

Even in early days celtic rulers (I’m talking about him, 500 BC) in what today is Southern Germany were buried with Greek pottery and amber from the Baltic Sea. Trade later reached as far as China (Silk Road) and all over the world. There were so many different oppressing, suppressing and encouraging influences over the millennia. And how impossible it is to compare both cultures. (And I am talking only about Japanese and the European hotpot, ignoring the fact that there are so many other cultures out there either almost or actually extinct or still existing, ignoring whole continents of culture and societies just for the sake of literary flow.)

I am completely fascinated and feel like I am on the first steps of a new road. Embarking on a journey, one that might lead me nowhere or to a lot of interesting places. Who knows.

momo (back) and geiger (front) in the entrance hall

 

scarf

Several years ago, I taught myself to spin cotton on a wheel. It worked well on the spindle but the wheel was still a matter of severe practice which I did. I got out my stash of naturally coloured cotton and began with the first kilo. After a while a got the hang of it and so in the end, I had about 900g relatively thin spun cotton. I plied it and now it was something like 28 wpi. Perfect for a scarf. Which I began knitting. only to decide, I didn't like it. I began something new, ribbed it, and gave it with a Elizabeth Zimmermann Pi Are Square classic a third chance.

I still didn't like it. I like the pattern and there is some mohair from a friend's goats lying around which will be perfect but not the cotton. It didn't feel right and it didn't look quite right. And so it went. And I decided to skip the modern techniques and go back to where cotton came from: weaving.

Some 2.5 metres long, about 35 cm wide and with some indigo silk as added interest. Plain weave on the rigid heddle, braided fringe and simply just the way it should be. Cotton is for weaving. Just the right look and feel.

Hubby is commuting every morning to Frankfurt. And sometimes he forgets things on the train. This time, it was his We Call Them Pirates hat. I knit the hat some 5 or 6 years ago and Hubby loved to wear it. And was really down trodden when he realized he lost it. No problem, I told him, you'll get another one.

Because my yarn is finer than the original one and I knit rather tight, I added a ladder on each quarter to make the hat a tat wider and added some more rows at the bottom to make it a tat longer. I loved his proud smiling face when he put it on for the first time.

(almost) done sorting

The last month was more or less completely devoted to sorting through stuff.

Usually I'm doing this one piece at a time, in a slow pace but I need our attic rooms to be empty by end of the month (which would be on friday this week) because a friend of ours is in dire need of living space and wants to move in.

We live in one of the areas in Germany where the leases are on the higher end of the scale and he hit the economy on the low end a few years back and is now at the end of his financial possibilities. He can't afford the rent on his old place anymore (a wonderful flat he renovated into a small treasure himself), doesn't earn enough money to afford something near his family and his work and so after a futile search for an affordable place, he asked us if he could move in. We've got the space. But it meant moving my textile stuff from the attic into the basement which still was still filled with all the stuff my parents brought with them when they moved in with us.

So I had to sort through a lot of things. Most pleasantly was the sorting through the crafts stuff in my flat. Which at least resulted in a tidy crafts cabinet

 

(almost) all my crafty stuff in one place now what a joy - and yes, the drawers are labelled

 

and well organized weaving yarn

 

the other portion of the yarn is in a dresser

 

And then there was the basement.

Imagine two people moving out of a more than 5000 square feet (that's 500 square metres for the metric people) house into a 1000 square feet flat (90 qm). They arrived with 2 moving vans (3200 cubic feet = 90 cubic meters) full from the bottom to the roof. Everything that didn't fit into the flat (which was quite a lot) went into the basement. And stayed there. For now almost 11 years. And wasn't touched or moved.

When my father died I began the feeble attempt to sort through but my mother was still physically active back then and swarted most of my attempts. (You know the comic routine when one person carries something into a van and the other carries it back into the house again - only it didn't feel comical at the time.) So I quit and didn't touch it. But now my mom is bound to the wheel chair and everything outside of her direct view is out of sight and quite literally out of mind.

Which meant, I was free to delve into it and clear the basement.

And it was a roller coaster down memory lane. After four days of sorting through I was emotionally exhausted.

I don't like to throw out still useful and functional things but true to the motto keep only that which is useful and/or beautiful (to you) this angel, a few photos and some tableware was all I kept. I brought my mom her very personal stuff for her to sort through and the rest went to the recycling yard. And oh joy most of it was kept by the workers there for their little second hand shop. I was very pleased. (German waste management is a whole story for itself.)

Why the angel? I am an atheist, I don't celebrate christmas but this angel was hand made by my father and decorated the nativity scene in our house during my childhood christmasses.

After the war when my dad had no work, he and a friend made nativity figurines out of plaster, painted them and sold them. Unfortunately, only one of the kings and this angel are left of ours. I don't know what happened to the rest and mum can't remember. And so this angel will find a place in my atheistic household. Because it is beautiful to me. And reminds me of my dad.

But I did find time to knit a bit.

As promised I began the Fana inspired sweater with the rest of the yarn.

The needle size is one size smaller than the one I used for the lusekofte which makes for a much denser fabric (and a much slower knitting) But I don't think I will need it for this winter (which didn't arrive yet and is most probably not showing this year) so I will have almost a year to finish. One stitch after another ;o) I think, it will need some Norwegian stars too.

dampening the clackety-clack

When we moved into our flat, there was a strange carpet in the hall. Each time I vaccumed it I got zapped through the vaccum cleaner. Only the vaccum cleaner got charged, it was totally weird and rather unpleasant. I told this to some of my friends and one year they pooled together for my birthday and presented me with a new floor, laminate and all, fitting inclusive. I was so happy I actually cried.

And I am still happy. But since my octogenarian dog (he's 16) doesn't dig as much as he did in the past his claws are longer than they used to be. Not as much that I should put him through the torture of clipping them but long enough to click and clack on this very laminate. And since elderly people don't sleep through the night any longer, he wanders. From living room to "library" (we do have about 2/3 of our 4000+ books in this room but it is only 12 square meters so library might sound a bit grand) and back. With a little tap dance in front of our bedroom to see if I might wake up to relieve him from his boredom. And so it called for a dampener or in other words: a rug.

A while ago I inherited some cones of carpet wool (some local sheep, I suppose they grey is Pommersches Landschaf) which I wanted to use for weaving at first. But I need my sleep, short as it is, and so I decided for the much faster method of knitting in garter stitch. (It still takes me too long to warp the countermarch)

So far it works. He can still roam the flat freely only without waking me at unholy hours.

Ramses, our younger one, may wander as well, I don't know. His nails are so short from digging for mice that they don't touch the floor.

new year new sweater

Lusekoften is finished. Just right on time on Monday Dec 30th last year.

Gosh, and another year. Annoyed by all the fireworks in the neighbourhood and being a lark at all days and nights of the year, I try to ignore it. But the date creeps in nevertheless. I never saw any significance in the turn of the year. In the long run, it doesn't make any differences.

This New Moon was extremely dark (I usually don't use a torch in the mordnings when I'm out with the dogs but the last mornings were extraordinary dark) and we still have rather warm weather for January. Though several media assured us that our notion of a White Christmas is only a recent invention. Up until 1836 there werde no Christmas postcards in Western Middle Europe with snow on them. European Santas (called Nikolaus and Christkind) climbed over snowless roofs and beautiful, autum like forests twinkled only illuminated by the stars with no snow refelctions. Only in the mid 19th century images of Vermont's snow filled forests arose and with them the image of a White Christmas. Supported by Hohoho chubby red Santas in reindeer driven sleighs and by some rather cold decembers between 1939 and 1970, we got the idea imprinted in our collective memory. Though I can recall that Christmas was more often than not a rather dullish, greenish, brown, rainy thing. And I'm not that old.

Anyway, it was what seems to be a typical Western Middle European Christmas, with rain and some sunshine and between 4 and 10 (or even more) degrees. And at least this week is about to stay this way. I don't complain, it will get colder soon enough. Though I wouldn't mind living in Norway in the cold and snow and the dark. But that's just me.

Which is why it doesn't really matter that my sweater is not exatcly finished yet. As the saying goes in weaving: It's not finished until it's wet finished. I haven't washed it yet. But it is finished enough to show you a nice picture.

Those bumps in the weld are from the needles that keep it straight. As long as the sweater's not washed, the weld will stick up and it looks ridiculous ;o)

As I wrote before, it is totally local and I love it.

And since it used not even 450g of yarn and I still have loads left, there is another one in the making already. Though I will have to cast on again today. I cast on yesterday already but there are way too many stitches. I'm of a good stocky build like all of my rustic ancestors but I'm not that round. Ease is all very well but le sac is not exactly my style. Next one's going to be more Fana style. I am a sucker for checkerboard patterns. I get my inspiration from one of the best sweater books there is: Priscilla Gibson Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way.

I wish you all a good new year. Be it as good as you wish. And full of wool and yarn and cloth and ideas that keep you warm and happy.