Year Of Projects: week 33

What a very lovely crafty week I’ve had! Not much to show for it, but very satisfying.

I am getting on with my tatting – I have now some tatting specific cotton thread, which I guess could also go for crochet. The “ultimate” tatting thread consists of 6 plies in total, made of two threads of three plies each: this makes for a strong, smooth thread, as the amount of friction that tatting thread gets is quite substantial.

Lizbeth tatting thread size 20 by Handy Hands

These are all solid colours, apart from the yellow which is variegated. My practice pieces so far do not warrant using storage space: however now that I’ve got the basics I can try patters, starting of course from the ones that our tatting instructor has made available for this week. I cannot share them for copyright reasons, but to give you some eye candy for what is possible, here are some free ones from Japanese (I think) designer MC Hatsu, which look very pretty to me, and I’d like to try my hand at this turtle

A turtle by MC Hatsu – patter for personal use only

I am also having endless fun with the excellently designed online course on Understanding Double Weave with Cally Booker. Cally herself is as lovely a person as an accomplished weaver, and is so available to us students that I feel bad. The course runs on an online platform, and in addition to her lectures, downloadable material, worksheets and exercises, we have plenty of zoom meetings each week, not to mention the community forum.

On top of that, the content of the course is amazing: it is not a “here is a sampler, off you go weaving it” kind of course: she gives you the fishing rod, then you do the fishing. And with all the other students on the course there are so many ideas and results, and it is just beyond exciting. The topic of the course really is designing double weave with blocks, so once the principles are explained, you have to come up with your own design (though of course nothing stops you from following strictly one of Cally’s examples).

So last night I started warping a gradient with blues – I agonised between the purples and the blues, but after looking at the mockup I decided to go for the blues, and maybe after experimenting I can use the purples for an actual project – these are the mockups:

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And here is how my warp is looking – this corresponds to the right half of the top picture above. The weave is going to consists of two layers, one in silver grey, one in the gold-to-blue gradient, and the warping is done so that the threads for the two sides are clearly separated, as in the photo below:

The blue looks much darker than in real life

The colours in the photograph look much more saturated than in real life, but give an idea of the gradient.

I have also wound up the skeins for Nathan Taylor/Sockmatician‘s Battenbonkers hat, a triple knitting hat which I am planning to cast on this week. The recipient decided this was the colour combo he wanted:

Wee County Yarn’s Kinross 4 ply

It is Kinross 4 Ply, a very delicious 100% superfine lambswool yarn from Clare Hutchison at Wee County Yarns, spun in Scotland – it is their own yarn, and it comes in 21 shades one lovelier than the other. As a colour work fan and designer, Clare is also pretty amazing in that she will send you picture of colour combos if you want to check them before you buy.

No spindling this week, and very sadly no taking part in Eah‘s test knit either, as I have too much going on already, and designers are small businesses, so would’t want to delay her in any way. I will get the pattern as soon as it is published – in case you are interested, the test knit opened today here (links to Ravelry).

Happy crafting!

This is a year of projects (YOP) update. YOP is a Ravelry Group, and an idea – make a plan for the year ahead for all your fibre activities, then update your blog every week if you manage. The objective is to keep track of progress on any fiber crafts with maximum flexibility: post, don’t post, follow your list, change it – so really it is just an opportunity to get to know of more blogs and activities of those who share a passion for anything fibre crafts.

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