All right, it is summer here! With temperatures hovering above 40 C for most of the days and some nights our outdoor time has been reduced to a few minutes here and there. Any other attempts – a four-hour golf game in the morning or a longer than expected walk from a bus stop – and one is in for the risk of headache, overheating and heat stroke. Even with drinking plenty of fluids, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible and a little breeze it is pretty much impossible to escape the heat. It is like walking in an oven. This has an curious impact on our activities and seems almost to mirror what effect a winter in Canada would have: one spends endless hours inside with a lot of sitting and eating, interspersed with a little walking. Luckily, this is a time as well that allows for a greater focus on all my crafts. To keep my motivation up I try to go to the crochet and knit meetings and I signed up for “Tour de Fleece”  (TdF) with the “wool n’spinning” group which is a fibre spinning event running during the Tour de France. The group members motivate each other with posting pretty photos of their current spin and finished yarns. My goal is to spin through all my cotton (about 140 gm) in earthy colours of natural dark green, white and brown. I had hopes for a more consistent and thinner result, but am ok with the rather rustic thick-and-thin look of the dark green 2-ply braid in a heavy fingering/DK weight. The white pima cotton I just started to spin behaves even more obstinate with the fibres trying to fly away and not liking the long-draw/woolen spin. Figuring out which draft (a supported woolen, may be?) and which uptake will work best will challenge me for the next little while.

In preparation for the Tour de Fleece my motivation soared and one day I finished cleaning all my bobbins – resulting in two mini skeins -, a 3-ply cat hair yarn and a pair of socks for my husband. I don’t think I have finished so many different items in one day and was proud to have three (small) skeins of yarn and a knitting project to show for it.

Another group I want to sign up for is “Stashdash” run by the ladies from the “Knitgirllls blog”. It is a group event where one is trying to get as many items finished between May 26th and August 20th and post about it in the Ravelry group. Almost everything in spinning, crocheting and knitting counts towards it as long as a few rows or meters of the finished item have been done in that time frame. Since one can sign up for different levels starting at a 1,000 meters and going up to 15,000+ meters I am quite busy knitting on my blanket and my cardigan. The latter could have been finished a few weeks ago if I weren’t distracted by making sure I spin every day for the TdF and not being able to lug the cardigan around with me as easily as the blanket squares. I have not declared my level, yet, as I am hoping to finish with 5,000+ meters and one can declare a few days before the deadline. The blanket will account for about 2,900 m, the cardigan for 700 m, the socks for 300 m and the spinning for about 1,000 m by August. It could be possible….:)

The blanket and the cardigan will be finished by the deadline for sure. But to keep hope alive that I might even be able to reach the 7k-mark I started a free-style half-circle shaped lace scarf which could add another 600 m to the goal. Who knows how much spun yarn I can add to the total – and voila!?!

As much as I love to sit and knit, spin and crochet I sometimes miss a bit more of a mental challenge and to keep things going I am continuing my Arabic lessons. It is a smaller class this time and I think it will be more effective as it runs twice a week for 8 weeks.

I hope you are having the most beautiful and crafty summer in your area of the world! Thank you, for reading my blog.    Maike

It has been a few weeks since I last posted a more in depth review of my current knit, crochet and spin projects. I felt there was not much to be reported despite working every day at least for half an hour on one of them. For that reason a pair of socks were chosen to have at least one finished object for March. The test knit cardigan Abu Dhabi Soft  by Meiju was my February finished work. It is now published and the pattern can be purchased here.

 

My slow progress was partially due to hosting guests for about four weeks over three months, partially because I took classes throughout the month of March. My motivation to craft is highest when I have few distractions and can spend longer patches of time on knitting. It seems to increase my productivity…

Some of my works in Progress (or WIPs) are old acquaintances: The crochet poncho grows by about 5 flowers each week when I go to the local Wednesday crochet group. At that speed it will take me another 20 weeks or more to finish it. So, you will be able to watch the growth in very slow motion. The other “seemingly endless” WIP is my pinwheel blanket. 10 squares have been finished and in the current colourway I have enough yarn for another 2 squares. Once the last two squares will be knit I want to decide if a. to stop and leave it at lap blanket size (about 100 x 120 cm), b. knit more squares in another colourway to add or c. Buy some white yarn and knit a border around each square and then knit them all together into a blanket of about 160 x 170 cm. I found an example for a mitered-square blanket with borders here.

Even though this should be plenty to keep me entertained, I crave knitting with my hand-spun 3-ply in sweater quantity I finished spinning in 2016 and had wound into cakes “ready-to-go” in January. While I was knitting on the Abu Dhabi Soft cardigan and mentioning in my blog a little while ago that I was trying to remember a Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern for my hand-spun yarn a dear friend of mine found the pattern and sent a copy.  There was no time to be wasted and it was started around March 19th. I am really happy about the progress as it grows rather quickly on the 4.5 mm needles. My latest Project is a hat for charity to reduce some leftover yarn. Additionally, it gave me the opportunity to try one of Barbara Walker’s mosaic patterns from her book “Charted knitting designs”- Four armed square with arms bent eight times. I am enamored by the intricate look, especially in garter stitch and the easy knitting.

 

Spinning has been taking a fair amount of my time as well. In January – before I agreed to the test knit – I signed up for the “spin the bin” challenge in the Completely Arbitrary and Twisted (CTA) spinning group on Ravelry. I learned about this challenge from Rachel at Welford purls. One declares at the beginning of the year which braids and fibres one wants to spin, a minimum of 24 ounces = 720 gm. That does not sound like much to some spinners, but it will take me about three and a half months to spin my first 12 ounces of 28 declared. It is basically a challenge to use as much fibre out of my stash as I can to free up some space. This created the goal to knit more from my hand-spun yarn this year and reduce buying yarn to a minimum. Easy, as long as I stay out of yarn stores while travelling..:)

When I read the winter issue of Spin-off magazine in December and January I found an article ” A sweater from my backyard” about sourcing local fibre and working with dye colours available to us in our surroundings. This article had reinforced the idea to find local farmers of sheep or camels here in Abu Dhabi and procure some of their fibres. This has been proven utterly difficult since access to agriculture seems to be for the local people only. Lacking Arabic has not helped neither, as the few crafts people I meet at fairs are often elderly and were educated before English was taught at school. But without looking two opportunities of unexpected fibre have entered my sphere of spinning. The first one is cotton: one of my friends noticed an ugly tree/shrub in her garden and asked the gardener to remove it when he chided her for wanting to kill a valuable tree. With not much watering the tree started to grow cotton flowers that could be harvested. Now, I am in the possession of 15 gm of natural white (and organic) cotton fibre, hand-picked and cleaned from the seeds that I am spinning with my turtle lace-spindle into thin singles. I hope to create about 30-50 meters of a three-ply yarn to return to the cotton-owner to create a memento of her time in Abu Dhabi.

The second local fibre too explore will be described in my next crafting blog. Until then – thank you for following my adventures in the Middle East.

Happy crafting! Maike

January 2017 already passed and I wondered where the time has gone. Looking at world politics big changes are afoot and worry about humankind’s future are creeping into my mind. I find refuge and happiness in crafting and sharing my excitement about knitting and spinning with anyone who asks. Despite, knitting at least a few rows every day and of late some spinning at my wheel I find I have no finished object to show for all the work. Certainly, it has to do with the size of items I am working on and the preparations to get to the production stage. Plus, living life with family and friends gets me easily distracted. My expectations to have something ready-to-wear or use to show may be heightened by my online following of some fellow craftspeople who I admire for their lively video-blogs and amazing line of finished items to show every week or two. The most prolific and fastest knitter is Mina of the Knittingexpat-Podcast. I love listening to her adventures in sock knitting, designing her own patterns fro scarves, socks, hats and baby garments intertwined with her life journey from the UK to expat life in the Miiddle East and now New York. Not surprisingly one of her published patterns the Pinwheel scrap blanket is one big item I am knitting on.

It all started with my mental review of knitting, spinning and crocheting of 2016 and thinking of what I really enjoyed. I realized that I wanted to spin more for sweaters or big scarves and feel less “obliged” to work through my store-bought yarns. One result was the decision to unravel a scarf and use the yarns for a different purpose. May be, socks. The other to let my crochet flower poncho hibernate for now. My motivation to continue was already dampened by realizing that the colour distribution I had chosen would not work the way I imagined. Reducing stash works best with a knit or crochet – the latter may have been the wiser decision to reduce my yarns quicker – blanket. It can easily take thousands of meters of fingering weight yarn, but does need patience and endurance to finish. In my excitement to use all garter stitch and being totally motivated I assumed I would have at least 12 squares by now and may be closer to assembling. It being a bit colder in Abu Dhabi these days makes thinking of having a snugly blanket to wrap around me (most apartments have air-conditioning, but no heating unless you count the oven in the kitchen) an exciting thought. Still, with knitting 5 squares I realized that my knitting speed is only half of what Mina manages: 40 instead of 20 minutes for each of the 8 segments to create a square. On top of that there was the winding of 6 x 400 m skeins of yarn into balls/cakes which took me about 5 hours and weaving in 16 ends per square for the 8 colours which takes another half hour or so. At least I can account for about 34 hours of preparation and knitting in January towards a blanket.

The podcaster who most likely moved me from a knitting focused approach into a start with planning, spinning and then using my yarns for an envisioned garment or accessory is Rachel of Wool n’ spinning or Welfordpurls.com. She lives close to Vancouver, our hometown in BC, and is the most inspiring teacher in her videos and blogs. Even though she spins a lot and fast, too, knowing that she has a family and very limited time every day, she still manages to work on knit and crochet projects which feature her hand-spun yarns. Her blog is the “treat” of my week and I try to listen to it with either knitting or spinning at hand and paying close attention. This blog and seeing my friend Uta of Justquilts spin for a sweater quantity of fibre last September lead to this green marbled yarn.

The skeins had been wound into cakes/balls to knit early in January to be put aside to think some more about a suitable pattern. After my first intention to use the “Garter stitch swingy sweater” pattern by slinkimalinki I was disappointed that the pattern did not print out properly and I would have to sit next to a computer to knit it. Reflecting on previous sweater construction I remembered how I knit Elizabeth Zimmermann’s “Icelandic overblouse” with only 800 m of DK-worsted weight yarn. The pattern uses a double-increase to form a short sleeve while at the same time creating a shoulder seam. Unfortunately, the pattern is part of her book “Knit one, knit all” which I left in storage in Canada.

Now, it was up to my memory to create the increases. A small swatch was made, a mini jacket so to speak, before the call to participate in a test knit for a cardigan came my way and stopped further planning for knitting with my hand-spun.This opportunity was too good to pass and the remainder of my knitting time has been spent on knitting in a fingering weight on 3.5 mm needles. The test knit put me a bit into a tight spot with regards to finding a suitable yarn in my stash. I had bought a sweater’s quantity worth of Holst Coast yarn in November at WetCoastWools – the third video podcast I am following – but the yarn seemed a bit too thin to be knit with a 3.5 mm needle and yield the required gauge. Into the stash I went to find some sock or fingering weight yarn. In the past I picked up many a single skein of sock yarn when traveling and all in different colours. Luckily, my taste trends towards blue, purple and red and after some digging I found three blues that looked about the same thickness and would make a nice striped version of the cardigan.

 

Since the pattern “Abu Dhabi soft” by Meiju Knits is still in the test stage I can’t post any photos of my progress and will do so in a later post. I had hoped that knitting the cardigan would be fast, but with a couple of hundred stitches for each row and almost 200 rows from shoulder to hem it takes a while to knit. Plus, there is the pattern to pay attention to and figuring out if it works when knit as written. Which is the entire purpose of a test knit to see if the written instructions are complete, correct and making sense to any knitter. It has been fun and I hope to be done latest by the end of February as the deadline is early March. To ensure this all will happen as planned I had confined myself to those two projects for the first 28 days and none finished to show for it! This is a bit depressing when I watch the WetCoastwools video podcast with Glenda and Bernadette showing multiple finished items every two weeks. Besides them knitting faster them me, the only other explanation I have, is the fact that they can use bulkier yarns and knit smaller items – who wants to wear a woolen hat in Abu Dhabi?. In any case, it is inspiring to see the yarns and patterns they are discovering and broadens my horizon on what is out there. Without those video, audio (Sweetgeorgiayarns has a great one!) podcasts and blogs I would feel cut off from the creative world out there and back home. It is such a great community!

Thank you and Happy making, everyone!  Maike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My plan to post shortly after our return from travels was delayed by a good 14 days thanks to Spinzilla: “a monster of a spin event”. This event is organized by the National Needlearts Association’s (TNNA) Spinning and Weaving Group and a lot of fun. The goal is to keep one week free of all activities to spin the largest amount possible. There are teams with up to 25 members and rogue spinners who compete for a mention as the most prolific spinner. Seeing the winner in the rogue category spinning more than 20,000 yards in one week I am amazed and now know that it was a good idea to spin rogue  (by myself) for my first try. I had planned to join TeamGeorgia in Vancouver remotely, but may have not been such a good support with my 2,935 yards in one week. I seriously want to work on my speed. Some pointers like select and prepare all your fiber before the spinning week starts and decline any activities for 7 days I took lightly. Not touching my email (besides one or two important ones) or any housework worked really well, but there is a limit on how much I will neglect time spent with my husband and exploring Abu Dhabi. I planned for that by having one spindle-spun project to work on in the car or while waiting, but deciding on my Turkish lace spindle made for slower progress than working with a larger one. I think that theory will be tested for next year.

Let me guide you through my process. The basic plan was to reduce my stash and have an idea (before spinning) what to make out of the yarn. I had just returned from an amazing two days at my friend’s house in Germany and saw her gorgeous three-ply yarn built out of hues of yellow with  white and a green. Seeing those different fibers and colours of the singles combined to create a beautifully interesting looking yarn made me want to be a bit more relaxed and adventurous about my yarn and allow my intuition and creativity to go beyond my usual “planned” colours. Plus, I realized that with a lot of spinning I might be able to end up with enough for a sweater. That would be a first for me, too!

Since my three braids of roving from Kinfolk Yarn and Fibre added up to about 340 gm of fiber and a sweater would most likely need at least around 400 – 450 gm I decided to add 30 gm of light blue Falkland fiber and 50 gm of a white-blue indigo dyed Corriedale fiber by Kristan MacIntyre. This decision happened on the evening before Spinzilla started and there was no time to blend the fibres by carding. So I thought “Why not try combination drafting?” Rachel Smith described it in her blog Welfordpurls and it did not sound too difficult. Knowing that I was ignoring the fact that drafting of two different fibres will not go smoothly or as consistently as a properly carded blend.

My finished yarn was to be a 3-ply created by plying together my three different colours of combination drafted singles. Before spinning I split all three rovings into half and then halfed them again to spin a quarter of the original onto a bobbin of my Victoria Louet travel wheel. Each of the three single bobbins held about 50-60% of its capacity making it the perfect amount to be plied onto my Majacraft Suzie Pro bobbin.

Singles were S-spun and Z-plied. I set my Louet to 1:8 for the singles and the Suzie to 1:10 for the plying. Resulting in  a slightly overtwisted yarn before finishing it with a hot-cold-hot rinse cycle and a thorough snap before drying. Once dried the yarn was balanced and amazed me with an overall blue-green first impression dotted with interesting highlights of light blue, purple and light green. A small sample turned out to look quite green, but it only showcases about 10 m of the yarn. Other parts have areas where blues dominate.

The heathered effect shows well in the knit sample on 3.5 mm needles and yields a dense, but still soft fabric. During Spinzilla 568m in 3 skeins were spun. The fourth skein with 165m was finished in the following weeks resulting in 733m of a DK-weight yarn. Just enough to knit a version of the Garter stitch swingy sweater  by Jenn Pellerin. I will swatch in garter stitch to see if I like the look of my yarn or I may need to either adapt the pattern.

In the past two weeks I finished a baby hat (no photo as it was gifted right away), the knit-along scarf and my Stormwatch sweater.

I will try and post a better photo of the sweater in another post. It looks funny with the skinny sleeves on the blocking board but fits well hugging the arms and swings around my body.

Thank you, for reading my blog! Maike

 

Since my last post in July, where I was writing about projects in the making, not much has been finished. Some not being in my control, for example : this knit-along shawl. I have finished all I can knit as per emailed out instructions, but will leave it be until the 5th pattern shows up in my mailbox. I am sure it can be a quick finish then.

I could “cheat” and just knit the 5th pattern since I test-knit all of them earlier this year, but I feel it is better for me to wait and knit along with everyone else. Especially, when there may be questions popping up. I find it easier to answer while immersed in the process than weeks later.

The shawl I started with the variegated Blue Moon “Socks that rock” yarn combined with a Regia sock wool came along well during my visit in Germany and could have been finished if I had liked the current size. For a while I couldn’t make up my mind if it was big enough and then decided a week ago that with my impending travel back to Munich/Erding next week I have the great chance to buy another ball or two of the Regia sock yarn at Sopie Braun’s Haus der Handarbeit and continue knitting the burgundy edge. At this point it is only about one inch deep and I think the colours look more balanced with at least two inches of the darker colour.

The second knit project I took on the trip is almost done. Really, there is only the last task of adding some eyes and a nose to this cute, little lamb. It probably could pass as a bunny, too, with its droopy ears and small tail. As much as I am happy with the outcome this time again I find that the knitted fabric shows a little the stuffing inside. I noticed this with my baby toy balls as well and thought it might be fixed with a tighter gauge. May be, I need to go down more than 1 mm in needle size?

 

Once I arrived back in Abu Dhabi the Panda fibre was laid aside and the yak-silk fibre I had sampled during Tour de Fleece was spun. I had decided that to showcast the beautiful colours a long gradient would be best. Which meant that I needed to prepare the fibre. First it was split lengthwise into three strands of roving. Then the first one was seprated after each colour into shorter pieces. The pieces were sorted from fuchsia to blue to purple and spun into a thin single with a ratio of 1:10. The second strand was prepared the same way to yield a lace-weight to fingering weight 2-ply yarn. I was trying for a worsted spin, but the fibre was tending to fly away and didn’t draft consistently after the manipulation. I found it easiest to work with a short backward draft.

Thanks to Wetcoastwools video blog I was bitten by the sweater knitting bug. Glenda and Bernadette have been showing the most amazing sweaters and cardigans they were knitting during the summer and talking about how much they wish it would be fall or winter to be able to wear their new pieces. That was so inspiring that I pulled out a project I had swatched for in 2015 and then put aside to clear some stash before moving. It is the Stormwatch sweater by Holly Yeoh which was started on August 31st with Filisilk yarn (70% Merin, 30% Seide) by Atelier Zitron. I would describe the colour as coral red with a very slight yellow undertone. This yarn is thinner than the recommended sock-yarn in the pattern, but knits up with the same gauge and will be more suitable for our warm  Arabian climate. The oversized fit will allow a lot of airflow which I come to appreciate since moving here.

The very last and most recent craft is a crochet poncho made of 156 flowers. This beautiful, lacy crochet top pattern came to me as a birthday gift and paired with a pretty fuchsia-coloured cotton yarn to get started right away. The pattern called for a few more balls and I found the perfect complementing colours at Greenbranch Trading in downtown Abu Dhabi.

I have to admit that this pattern is way more challenging than I thought. It is a case of reading the instructions, thinking “Oh, this seems easy enough and I am sure I can modify it to not have so much sewing to do” and then being taught by trial and error that it is not. For some reason I was expecting to be able to crochet one flower and continue to the next one without breaking the yarn. With a little bit of thought I could have figured out that it is impossible when crocheting from the middle out. So, there is a thread to be sewn in at the beginning of each flower and at the end. Multiplied by 156 flowers. Yikes! How could I? When I don’t like the non-crocheting part of the work? It turned out to be ok as I am hiding the threads after each flower while working along and thinking of a dear friend that makes it all so much easier. The other learning experience was that I do not as easily understand the written crochet instructions and am heavily relying on the photograph and the chart. In knitting I can work from either one, but not for crochet. I ended up ribbing back and crocheting each of the three rounds three and more times until I was satisfied that I had the result I was expecting. Since my first flower took over an hour to finish I am happy to report that I am down to about 15-20 minutes per flower. A much better speed to finish the final garment before the year is over. I may even be so lucky to use fewer flowers as I find that my first row chain of 10 is quite long already and I like the poncho to cover my shoulders and upper arms, but not down to the wrists. It will be an interesting journey.

Thank you, for reading my blog! Maike