I would first of all like to thank Sprite for including me again this year! It is so much fun reading all the posts! It is a highlight of the season for me!
Today I want to spend a little time going back in time and reminiscing about the best books I read with my kids when they were much younger.
It could simply not be Christmas without these books. We read them over and over and over and over.
We talked about community, and sang the songs.
We drank cups of hot chocolate, and ate Christmas candies.
We did voices of animals.
We talked about the stories.
We thought about what perfect really is.
And, Christmas wishes.
and, best of all were the stories we made up ourselves when there were absolutely no words at all.
What did you like to read to your children? Or have someone read to you? And, please make sure you stop by Sprite Writes and see what all the other Virtual Advent participants have to share!
So, I spun a bit more to see if I could improve the “thready-ness” of the yarn.
I stitched with more tightly plied yarn. I stitched with less tightly plied yarn. I stitched with singles. And, even though my results were not wonderful, I am sharing what I learned here.
Dressmaker Linen is not suitable for yarn stitching. It is abrasive to the fibers and I had problems with breakage in the yarns. I also needed a needle that could pierce the fabric, but the needles I have on hand might not have had a big enough eye, which also caused more abrasion to the yarn.
Plied wool yarn is very difficult to stitch with in linen fabric. I had issues with the plies wanted to be untwisted. I had issues with one of the plies breaking. I had issues with stitches laying how I wanted them to lay.
Singles wool yarn is too fragile to withstand the stitching process in dressmaker linen with a needle.
I did like some of the results I got with Pygora singles I tried, but it did not want to be stitched in satin stitch at all.
I admit that I am surprised by my results, but I am unbelievably happy that I am finding out these problems through swatching and not as I am beginning my new project. And, I am really happy that I have a bag filled with Pearle Cotton staring at me while I spend the next few days pondering how this changes my idea, if at all. But then, I texted with my friend Beth, and she gave me lots of advice but this made my head spin: “I would go to the internet and see if people use wool for the same stitches as cotton. By the end I would have tried 400 million fabrics and 200 million wools…”
Okay, so seriously? I don’t have that much testing drive in me! But, I did go to the internet and found some fun things on Pinterest, like this and this! Which led me to Judy’s Journal…I could be heading down the couching rabbit hole but, for today I am not going to think about this anymore. I have a bit of wrapping to finish up for things that need to be shipped out before Christmas and a quick trip to Costco.
The knitting marches on, albeit slowly. However, today I am going to share a bit of a preview about my 2018 Stitching Project, which will begin on December 21 and I am taking a bit of license from Vivaldi and borrowing his Four Seasons. There will be four much larger stitching projects; Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. And, while they will still be free-hand stitching – no drawing out of my design, the season of stitches will all be the same motif, but will change color as the season does.
I have also been wondering how handspun yarn would work to use for stitching, so I have been playing with some fiber to create some “crayons” to stitch with. I will test this out before hand to see how I like it. I am not the best at spinning super fine yarns, so I am not sure that this will work as I am envisioning it. But, I am going to do some experimenting swatching and see what it looks like over the weekend and I will share my results back here on Monday.
This week there was a bit of unraveling and a careful bit of unknitting. Sigh.
The unraveling bit involved my Peace Train knitting. Right pattern but wrong yarn? Or perhaps, it was the wrong pattern for the right yarn. Thus, my Peace Train Knitting has a definite Decemberist vibe now. And, the fabric is much nicer. I will be on the lookout for some wonderful fingering weight yarn to use for the Peace Shawl, but that won’t be my focus this December.
The unknitting was entirely my fault. One would think if the pattern author took all this time to lay out super clear instructions for short row shaping, including making sure you have different markers so you don’t mess up, that well, I wouldn’t mess up! However, apparently, I can’t follow instructions multiple times in a row correctly, so I am tinking back to fix my mistake. I should be back on track shortly, and then sleeve division. (Really, I am blaming this mistake on Outlander – I should have been Decemberist Peace Knitting not keep track of where you are in a pattern knitting!) I am sure you will get sick of updates on this sweater before it is finished, so I promise to share a different view next week! (Hopefully!!)
Never Caught. It was a quick listen and I enjoyed it. It is a fascinating story and I learned things I did not know. It is incredibly well told and amazing frank. My opinion of George and Martha Washington has diminished greatly after this book. If you love history, you will enjoy this book. I gave it 4-stars.
Simply Clean. I had hoped for some amazing motivation in this book, but really, there was none. The idea of “just pick up after yourself” is great (I mean who does not know this already????) but the concepts do not at all seem logical. Her 10 minutes might work if you live by yourself in a studio apartment, in a real house it seems highly illogical. I gave it 2-stars.
