On being a perfectionist

Posted on 01/17/2008 by Andrea | Comments (0)
Filed under : Spinning

I'm stuck in sort of an endless loop of perfectionism in my knitting/spinning lately. I have a love-hate relationship with perfectionism, and it's because I'm also kind of an impatient person. I want to figure out how to do something perfectly, but I don't want it to take forever. In the past, I've let impatience win out and ended up making a bunch of stuff I wasn't too happy with. Lately, I've been letting perfectionism take over, which means it's hard to finish anything.

I need balance!

This is what I'm currently working with, and it's destined to become a scarf for a friend of mine. She saw the singles I was spinning in this colorway and loved it and wanted a scarf. I started to have some very specific ideas of what sort of scarf would be perfect for this person, and that's what led me down the path of perfectionism. I've never spun anything with a knitting project in mind. I've always just spun yarn and then figured out what to do with it. So this adds a whole new realm in which I can be a perfectionist and take forever to accomplish anything.

I plied the singles I had spun. They weren't right. I wanted longer, slower color changes. I wanted a thinner yarn, yet still soft and lofty. I then spun and plied four different versions. Navajo plying gave me the types of color changes I wanted, but it used up the singles so fast that the color changes were distinct, but very short.

I finally settled on splitting my rovings in half lengthwise and labeling the other half of each one that I used to spin my first single, so that I could spin a second bobbin using other halves of the rovings in the same order. I added very little twist, creating a fluffy, squishy yarn. The colors lined up surprisingly well when I plied them together.

So now I've been knitting and reknitting swatch after swatch trying to come up with the perfect pattern that will be just right for my friend. I've come up with about five different scarf patterns that might be right for some other yarn or some other person, but I think I FINALLY hit on the right one, last night.

Creating this scarf is taking way longer than it really needs to. But it's satisfying to have a vision and try to create something that's right for a particular person or a particular situation. The key is to be able to realize when it's good enough or it will never get done.

My latest swatch has promise, but I made it a little too narrow. I think it's safe to say this will be the last time I'll have to rip this out and start over. Stay tuned....

Installing a zipper

Posted on 01/16/2008 by Barb | Comments (6)
Filed under : Finished Objects, Knitting, Spinning, Tips

I recently added a zipper to a sweater and people asked how I got it in straight, without having it look all "ruffly."

It's pretty simple. In addition to a sewing machine, your garment and the zipper, you'll need a sheet or two of white tissue paper.

This technique works for all sorts of finicky fabrics ...

Here I'm putting an open-end zipper in the front of a sweater. First, carefully block the sweater, making sure both edges for the zipper are the same length, that they're straight and any stripes or patterns line up left to right.

I generally leave the zipper zipped when I do all this, but if it's easier for you to take the two halves apart, that works, too.

Position the first side of your zipper along the edge of the sweater as shown, and pin it in place. Then lay a sheet of thin tissue paper over it. The tissue paper permits the sewing machine foot to glide over the knitting without pulling at or catching on the yarn. With the tissue side up, carefully stitch through tissue, sweater and zipper, making your row of stitches far enough back from the teeth so the zipper pull will be able to move freely along teeth without any yarn catching in it. It's pretty easy to see what you're doing right through the tissue paper.

Then carefully tear the perforated tissue paper away and remove the pins. Repeat for the second side of the zipper.

That's all there is to it. When you're finished, you'll want to give it a good blocking, of course.

I just grabbed a bit of scrap yarn and tied it to the zipper pull on this sweater, but it's fun to find an interesting bead or bauble to dress it up. I'm keeping my eyes open for just the right thing!

Hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-knitted pinwheel vest

Posted on 01/09/2008 by Barb | Comments (3)
Filed under : Dyeing, Knitting, Spinning

We celebrated "second Christmas" on Sunday since Steph wasn't able to make it home from Boston for "real" Christmas.She's been a busy girl with work and school, but she still had time to complete some pretty fantastic homemade Christmas gifts. I was left slack-jawed when I opened my gift from her. She had made me an amazing pinwheel vest, using a combination of commercial yarn and her own hand-dyed, hand-spun! Andrea commented earlier in this blog that I might have teared up a little. She's right, I'm a wuss about stuff like that. And I know how incredibly many hours she put into that gift. I absolutely love it!

She used a free pattern from Elann as her starting point, then made it into a vest.

I just love it! I wore it yesterday and it made quite an impression on people at work, many of whom are knitters themselves.

We had our after-work knitting group last night and I added a few more inches to the Knit a Mile Project. So I'm up to maybe 325 yards done. It was fun to see what other people were working on, I wish I had taken some pictures. We had a needlepointer there, and a crocheter, in addition to a half-dozen knitters. One of the women brought her 7th grade daughter who does some crocheting already and is now wanting to learn to knit. I love it ...