Posted in knitting

Mowing around the Luna Moth

Posted on by Laura Kate

The green expanse of our back yard is not the monoculture of grass species typically found in American suburbs. Due to the presence of several mature trees, the grass will not grow thickly. Instead, we have what I call an English lawn. Today it is dark green, dotted with the yellow, lilac and white blooms of English violets, false strawberry, dandelions, oxalis, white clover and tiny bluets. It still requires weekly mowing. But one of the virtues of this diverse ecosystem is the abundance of wildlife. Today I noticed a luna moth clinging to a leaf of fescue. I stopped the mower and went to get Bill, so he could take her picture. The moth held perfectly still. In fact, she simply would not be budged. I carefully rolled the mower around her. After spending nine months as a pupa beneath the soil, this magnificent creature has but seven to ten days to complete her life cycle. If she is lucky, she will attract a mate tonight. They will dally together for a few hours, then she will be off to lay her eggs in a nearby tree top.

I was struck by the strong resemblance of the moth to this little dress I am knitting for the grandbaby. At the end of the first skein I am nearly finished with the skirt.

Ruffle and all but a few rows of the skirt section complete.

I have named the project Luna Lou Dress and plan to embroider a moth on the bodice. I will keep you posted on my progress.

Posted in colorwork

Vigil Scene

Posted on by Laura Kate

While I am not an overly religious person, there was a moment in last Saturday’s vigil service that I have been pondering. During the Ceremony of the Light, the Easter candle is carried down the aisle. Each person in the congregation receives light from the candle by passing the light from one to another. The view from the choir loft is stunning. I couldn’t see the people, but I did watch in awe as the reflection of the growing number of burning candles lit the marble walls of the church. This scene has remained with me all week. I want to recreate it using fabric paint and candle wax.

I am using two colors of fabric for my experiment – natural muslin and gold quilting cotton. My plan is to drip dots of melted wax from the lit candle to approximate the reflections that I saw. Then I will color wash the backgrounds in a dark palette.

  • Drips of candle wax in place

Here are the two swatches after the paint has been applied. I am using lentils to portray the veining in the marble.

The muslin dried quickly. I have used an iron to remove the wax, and applied a little paint to render the warm glow of candles. The background colors look very like the color of the marble walls in the darkened church.

Removing the wax created little halos around the dots.

The gold fabric was much slower to dry, probably because I used a lot more paint. This result is not quite as accurate as the scene I remember, but it is more dramatic.

In a future post, I will show the final versions of the two vigil scenes. I plan to paint in some details and perhaps enhance the textures with embroidery.

Posted in knitting

Knitting Baby Clothes

Posted on by Laura Kate

The past two days have been cold and wet – perfect weather for curling up with a bit of knitting. My daughter let me know that the baby has outgrown most of her outfits which I knit last year. And she is crawling now. Here is the baby, seven months old, wearing the cotton overalls that I made in a 12 month size.

I picked up a similar yarn last summer, in an acrylic blend.

Designing baby clothes is really quite simple. All you need is an idea, some measurements, a swatch, and a schematic drawing. Everything else is math. While I don’t have my granddaughter’s measurements, I can use the standard baby size chart developed by the Craft Yarn Council. You can find it here: https://www.craftyarncouncil.com/standards/baby-size-chart.

Here are my drawing and swatch:

The lower edge will be a lace ruffle. The skirt will be in stockinette stitch and the bodice in garter stitch. I have decided to use the same style of buttoned straps as I did on the orange overalls. My swatch gauge for the lace section is 4 and 1/2 stitch per inch. I want the skirt to measure at least 32″ around. The lace pattern is a seven stitch repeat. So I will cast on 154 stitches. This works out to 22 pattern repeats and about 34″ diameter. After about three inches, I will switch to stockinette stitch. My gauge for this stitch is 4 and 3/4 stitch per inch, which will bring the diameter back to 32″ After knitting for seven more inches, I will reduce by K2tog every other stitch, eliminating about 40 stitches. This brings the diameter down to 24 inches for the bodice. Once I am there, I will figure out the armhole shaping.

Here is the dress so far. Ruffle almost complete.

Since rain is forecast for the rest of this week, I should make fast progress on this cute little dress in the next couple of days.

Posted in colorwork, crochet, knitting

Colorblock with a twist

Posted on by Laura Kate

Easter and garden events in the past two days have kept me away from my Daily Fiber blog, but my fiber stash has not been idle. I have checked out a few tutorials on some techniques that I have been wanting to try. The first is Tunisian crochet. If you haven’t heard of Tunisian, it is a sort of cross between knitting and crocheting. The hook looks like a crochet hook but with a straight smooth handle, on which the loops are collected up during the forward pass. On the return pass, you crochet them back off the hook. Since each stitch is worked twice, it makes a nice, thick fabric.

Tunisian Simple Stitch.

To be honest, this technique did not capture my imagination. The swatch is just, well, meh. Perhaps it could be used to make a warm pair of slippers. Moving on – the tutorial I watched yesterday is about various colorwork knitting techniques, including fancy stripes, duplicate stitch, inlay stitch (called Roositud in Estonia) and two-color cables. This last technique is the one I am swatching right now.

I’m using the two-color cable technique as a join between two different colors of yarn. In other words, I made a swatch that was two colors, side by side, joined in intarsia technique. I started by casting on fifteen stitches of grey and the same of yellow. Here is the wrong side of the swatch, just as I begin the first cable.

This is a six-stitch cable, bordered by two purls stitches on each side.

Here is my progress for the first two cables:

At this point, I was totally getting the technique and decided to make it a little more interesting. I decided to “travel” the cable from its central position. I did this by knitting two grey stitches together and making one yellow stitch. I repeated this two more times. Here is a view of the swatch back, showing how the two yarns are locked together. To do this, you bring the working yarn of the second color up from underneath the first color working yarn.

And here is my two-color cable swatch after wet blocking.

This was an easy knit. I can think of fun applications for two-color cables, such as children’s sweaters and team color scarves. Can you spot the slight lean in my cable? It’s going to the right, so I guess that makes this a conservative stitch.

Happy knitting!