Windows to the World

Now and then I’ve been looking online for fabric so to sew new living room and dining room curtains.  The rooms are open to each other, bisected by the upstairs staircase, so the rooms need coordinating decor.  The wine colored swag valances, which we’ve had since we moved in now remind hubby of a funeral home!  So, they need to go into storage, aka the too small linen closet.

We both like the Waverly Charmed Life and Rustic Life toiles, but I actually found it to be far less costly to just buy the curtain panels and tie backs, then the fabric, to sew them myself.

Amazon has the curtain panels reasonably enough.  As they didn’t have a 54” length, which we need to clear the top of the long radiators under the windows, I bought the 84” length, which I’ll trim and re-hem. This will also give me extra fabric for pillows and whatnot.

Caveat:  The listing says the color is cornflower.  It isn’t, it’s much closer to navy.  I have this toile in cornflower, which is much lighter.  The color isn’t what I prefer, but hubby doesn’t mind it, so I’ll live with it.

They are unlined, but a heavy enough fabric which doesn’t necessarily need lining.  So, I’ll press, cut and re-hem and hang them as they are, BUT, 4 of the 5 windows face south, with no trees out front to block any of the sun.  The 5th window faces west, so is only slightly less sunny.  Sun = fading. 

Even the curtains on the east-facing kitchen window and kitchen door window have all faded, and that’s just east light!  SO, one pair at a time will come back down and get a muslin lining.  It will be a less onerous task to tackle that project a bit a time instead of lining all 10 panels at this particular point in time.  Sewing is done in the dining room, which is warm in the summer with no AC in that room, so, small doses of working there is preferable.

As the sewing machine was coming out anyway, I figured I’d tackle all the other windows that needed a redo.

I began with the bathroom cupboard, which stores toiletries and medical supplies.  The sink is a pedestal, so there’s no built-in vanity to put all this stuff.  I’ve been wanting to make a Swedish blind for the cupboard for quite awhile, ever since I sewed new bathroom curtains and a shelf topper in this blue, white. and yellow plaid fabric.

So, this was the first project to get done.  Swedish blinds are great – they only need a face and lining fabrics not much wider than the window, which can contrast or coordinate, a couple of 1” plastic O or D rings, some cotton cord, a window cleat, and about a 1/2” dowel or scrap length of narrow wood for the bottom of the blind.  As the blinds use far less fabric than a pair of panels, they are less costly to sew.

Traditionally, the blinds were attached to a wood batten and secured to the top of the window frame, as shown in "Swedish Style" by Katrin Cargill.

I prefer something more impermanent, so I just hang the Swedish blind from a tension rod.  This makes it super easy to take down, vacuum or wash the fabric and cording.

The cotton cord on this blind, and the 2 coming up below, was some soft cotton 2-ply yarn I had no other use for.  I ran it through my spinning wheel, adding a lot more twist, then cabled it back onto itself.  Although I have some proper cotton cording, I find it to be rough on the hands.

Next up was revamping my bedroom curtains.  I sewed plain, lined panels with ties several/many? years ago, but not only did I get tired of tying the curtains up every morning, then letting them down at night, but, even with the double layers of fabric, they still let in too much light at this time of year.  

So, they came down, got washed and pressed, then cut down to size.  The face fabric then became the reverse side fabric, and I added a darker allover print to the face, then sewed tabs from the wide selvedge.  As we were all out of scrap wood or dowels, I temporarily used the rollers I saved from the old living room and dining room roller shades, when the vinyl went kaput and we needed to replace them.  

As you can see, I need to take the shade down and resew the tabs at the top that hold the 'O' rings.  I should have sewn the tabs down much closer to the rings, to the tabs don't pull over, as you can see in the photo.

I am seriously no fan of vinyl, and avoid it if I can, but I share the house with hubby who needs the living room as dark as possible at night, as he’s needed to sleep there since the first of the recent bout of surgeries, with more to come.

Next up is making new curtains for the kitchen, the toughest project, as the kitchen window is 70” wide x 33” deep.  This window needs a plain, light blocking panel that ties up at 2 places, as the window faces east.  All that light is far too bright in the morning, especially for someone (not me) who tends to wake with a massive headache.  So, it needs to tie up and then be let down at night.  It’s too wide a span to easily have a Swedish blind.

Whatever I sew for the window, though, also needs to coordinate with the kitchen door window and the valance for the sliding glass doors in the breakfast room.  LOL, all using just what I have on hand.

All for another post!

Onward!
Dawn

June Update

Every season except a couple months in winter seems to be rife with time-sensitive work and projects – so much has been in the process of needing to be done, with no time to blog.  So, finally, here is what I’ve been up to, and how things are progressing.  Naturally, it’s all interspersed with the usual cooking, baking, laundry, and cleaning, esp. the spring cleaning, which is still in progress – my bedroom and the entire upstairs still need doing.  It would help if I had the 6 arms of the Buddhist goddess Vasudhārā.

I weeded then manured the 2 raised beds, made hills, and planted Italian zucchini in one bed, which is coming up well,

and Ronde de Nice (French heirloom) zucchini in the other bed, which isn’t coming up well.   As you can see, our picket fence is sorely in need of repainting, though not sure if hubby will be able to get to it - his hands are now both needing surgery.  We'd just get them replaced, but the fence sections are 10' wide, not the 8' wide which seem to be all that can be bought now.

I grew this variety exclusively back in the mid-hudson, and it flourished, but not so much here, so yesterday I added enough Italian zucchini seeds to fill out that bed.

The pine of these beds *really* needs to be ripped out, as they’re rotting, which means ant fodder, but that will need to wait until autumn – springtime is just too busy!

8 heirloom tomato plants are planted in amongst the heirloom roses, where I hope they’ll be happy.  I rigged up simple bamboo pole teepees around each one, which I may need to reinforce with some thicker bamboo poles, if there’s any left in the bamboo patch in the back yard.  I used to have a slew of them, which have magically disappeared!

The 2 gutters hanging on the stockade fence have been seeded with Five Color Rainbow beets.  They won’t grow large in their shallow beds, but there’s no other place to plant them, and at least their colorful leaves will brighten up that area of the fence.  One of these years, I’d love to plant some kind of flowering vine along the entire stockade fence, as it’s just a long, tall, boring brown wall.  It’s screaming for a living adornment.

Pots of chives and parsley seed on the back deck railing.

The 2 hydrangeas I planted a couple years ago, on both sides of the front of the house, seem to have taken well, but not the 4 azaleas which flanked them, so I’ll need to rethink what to plant there next spring.  Buying bulbs and plants seems to be as iffy a proposition as buying veg from Stop and Shop!  LOL, which is why we don’t, we only get veg from Shaw’s.

 

Remember these 3 white begonia plants? 

I bought the 3 begonia bulbs when I bought the gladiolus, astilbe, ranunculus, and lily of the valley bulbs for the driveway bed.  As I posted to FB last year, “Like race horses, one shot out of the gate at breakneck speed, one can’t get out of second place, and one remains firmly in last place, dragging its butt.”  

Well, Mr. Dragging Its Butt went kaput.  Mr. Second Place has been on the way to kaput, leaving just Mr. Breakneck Speed remaining.  Fortunately bulbs cost a lot less than plants.  So, I am adding that to the List - find other bulbs I can grow indoors. A plus would be if the flowers are scented.  Unscented flowers always seem pointless to me, though showy flowers make up for it.

Adding to the scentless flowers is this waxed Amaryllis, which was a Christmas gift from a neighbor.  Not wanting to throw it out, after the flower died, as many do, I googled and found this video that walks through the process of removing the wax and planting it.  Susan also points out that these Amaryllis really aren’t, they’re Hippeastrum.  And the bulb is re-growing, so I'm very pleased!

They’re rather pretty shown together in the softer colors, so I’ll be looking to get some – the house needs more plants!

Speaking of which, after the scent of lilacs and lily of the valley filled the air for several weeks, the air is now redolent with roses, especially wild roses!  Hubby gave this bush a massive haircut a few years ago, which the bush seems to have not minded at all, as it’s blooming wildly now!

He also gave this rose bush a huge pruning last fall, which I’m sure was necessary, as everything growing on that side of the house was planted too closely together (by previous owners), and it was all getting tangled up.  

The huge, ugly holly bush took awhile to cut down and out, but now the rose bush gets the sun it needs.  As it was all so overgrown, we couldn’t see the *form* of this rose bush until now.  Its canes are tall and arching, so now I need to think about a trellis of some kind to anchor the canes.  Come autumn I will need to re-prune it and try to root the cuttings.

The small honeysuckle I planted 2 yrs. ago by the arbor is finally growing.  I think it was just an inexpensive qt. size plant, so I knew it would take several years to grow up into the arbor and the adjoining picket fence, so I’m pleased that at least it hasn’t gone kaput like the azaleas and a couple of the white begonias.

The driveway bulb bed is mostly flush with green and buds, esp. what looks like hollyhocks at the front of the bed, that I thought I had all pulled out last year!  Summer is so humid here, that the hollyhocks get a fungus and die off, eh, like my heirloom roses.  BUT, I searched for natural DIY anti-fungals and have a batch mixed up, awaiting several spray bottles (in 3 diff. colors) to come from Amazon, for the anti-fungal spray, and for the bunny-stop spray!  So, we’ll see if I can keep the hocks and roses looking healthy this year. 

 I can't wait until the astilbe bulbs below get to their full width and height - their feathery flowers will be a nice textural change from the gladiolus and hocks.  I've not seen many ranunculus come up yet, so they might not have survived, despite the 4 layers of frost cloth on the bed this past winter – will see!

 

Indoor work is no less busy!  The very long (70”) kitchen window, kitchen door and sliding glass door in the breakfast area all need new curtains.  The kitchen window faces east, and the morning light is blinding, esp. if one needs to get up to pee at 5 am and through half-closed eyes one gets a shock of unwanted bright light, making it hard to return to sleep.  So, the color and thickness of the fabric for that window is critical.

The other issue with curtaining that long window is the type of rod.  The current tension rod is wimpy.  Even being supported midway, the rod sags on both sides.  I don’t want a surface mount rod, which hangs the curtains 2.5 to 3” from the window, so I’ve begun the search for a better tension rod, whose ends will fit the 3/4” available for them.

For this project, I’ve pulled out every unused curtain and valance we either had or bought at local thrift stores, along with my small stash of fabrics, and am in the process of seeing how to rework what I have into something pleasing yet situationally functional for all these windows.  My vintage Brother VX-710 still plugs along sewing straight and zigzag.

 

After that is tackled, I need to rework my bedroom curtains, as this time of year lets too much early morning light in as well!  The 5 windows in the adjoining living and dining rooms also need a rethink, although I may just buy all new curtains, instead of getting a 20 yd bolt of fabric, which is about what would be needed to sew 10 panels, not counting lining fabric!  I really don’t want to be glued to the sewing machine for weeks on end.

Now, this is more enjoyable - knitting a pullover design sample in heavenly extra-fine merino, from Yarn Undyed.

It’s listed as DK wt. and has the exact same yardage/100 grams as the Nature Spun Worsted, in the first design sample, but I am finding that both yarns also knit rather well at the usual 5 sts/1” worsted wt. gauge.  I never judge a yarn by the words ‘worsted’, ‘dk’, or ‘bulky’ in its name or its suggested gauge, as I’ve seen enough yarns that are mis-classified.  

Both these yarns have 70 yds/oz. which screams DK wt, They both can easily knit a dk wt. gauge, but, perhaps its their 3-ply construction, making rounded instead of flattened sts, which also allow for a worsted knit gauge.  Whatever the reason is, I’m happy with the fabrics, which is saying something, as I’m rather fussy about knitting good wearing fabrics, which usually means more snugly than recommended.

The merino also still smells lightly of the sheep it came from, which I love!  Every now and then, I stop and take a deep sniff of this lovely wool.  

And knitting it?  Stitches seem to just fly off the ndls.  It does only come in the one natural white color (hence ’Yarn Undyed’), but I am sorely lacking in white sweaters, as in I have none, so in addition to this v-neck pullover, I definitely see a cardigan and perhaps an aran design in my future, not to mention that it would also be fab in hat, scarf, and cowl designs - SO much to dream up!  

Onward!
Dawn

On the Go!

It’s not usually like me to have more than 2 projects on the go at the same time, aka *startitis*.  Until recently it seems!  

I’ve had 5 projects in various stages, filling all available storage and horizontal spaces in my bedroom/office/knitting room, not counting the yearly sock re-knitting projects: 

* a stockinette knit bag (to be felted),
* a pair of slow-going fingering wt. socks at 8.5 sts/1”,
* a Fair Isle mitten and hat design, with just one mitten knit thus far,
* a worsted wt. striped pullover, and
* the last 2 samples for my newest design - Midnight Snowfall Stockings (whose first 2 samples sat waiting since 2020!)

As the Christmas stockings are done, I’m down to 4 WIPs.  But, only temporarily, as I have a Bohus-style yoke design to swatch.

As for the sock re-knitting, almost every spring to summer I assess my sock drawer to see which are worn enough to need their cuffs through heel flaps cut off from their feet, so to reknit the heel turns and feet.  When re-knitting, I use whatever yarns I have available, as, inevitably I won’t have the exact yarns or colors with which they were originally knit.  But I’m not fussy about such things – they don’t need to be pretty or even matching, just functional and warm.  One pair has been mended again, and will eventually be re-knit again!

Re-knitting makes good use of down time, when I need a rest, or just need something mindless to knit on, while I mentally figure out a design or other issue.  

For a long time, I’ve been fond of a k2, p1 rib for cuffs, as the repeat translates well into the stitch counts my socks need:  36 sts for bulky wt., 42 sts for chunky wt., 48 sts for heavy worsted, etc., and which work with my preferred 6 pt. round toe dec.  I also prefer how the this rib looks, as well as being less tedious to knit than k1, p1 rib!

And these WIPs are just the knitting projects.  We still need to finish putting the floor loom back together, upstairs, then I can rethread the rug warp for the remaining 3 rugs in a new series.  

The first rug in the series is still sitting, waiting for me to knot the warp ends, sew the hems, trim the tails and adjust any weft irregularities, then wet finish it.  I have read that rugs don’t need wet finishing, but I don’t find that to be true.  A good soak relaxes the materials used, helping to even out the fabric, and drying,  whether outside on a warm day or in the dryer, lets me know how the rug will wash and dry, for its new owners.

I’ve been putting the finishing off, rationalizing that until I can weave off the rest of the rugs, *this* one doesn’t really need to be finished, as I do want to present the entire collection at the same time.

As for new pattern – Midnight Snowfall Holiday Stockings – I began this design in 2020, then I went off on a tangent, designing the tea cozy, then the hat and mittens, then the cell cozy of the same name! 

In this design, I’ve kept my usual round toe shaping, but used wrap and turn short row heels, the shape and size of which seemed to suit the stockings.  I also tried the German short row heel for this design, but I find it easier to *read* the wrapped stitch heel turns rather than the pulled-snug double stitch heel turns in the German SR heel.

I've not knit SR heels in my socks, or wearable sock designs.  As you might guess, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool heel flap and V-heel sock knitter!  I like that a heel flap can be reinforced with heel stitch, eye of partridge stitch, or color patterns, none of which can be used in a SR heel, without a fair bit of trouble.  A heel flap's height and width is easily adjustable – it can also have as little or as much depth as is needed.  It seems that the only way to easily reinforce SR heels is by knitting a finer, strong yarn along with the sock yarn.

Thankfully, Christmas stockings don’t need to be reinforced, and SR heels *are* quicker to knit than a flap, heel turn, and gusset.  In an allover stranded pattern, like these stockings, a SR heel also eliminates the need to add in a separate gusset pattern, which I can imagine turns off some knitters, as they are more complex to knit, especially if the sole is *also* in a separate, though coordinating pattern.  Keeping track of 3 patterns while decreasing the gussets is a lot to be getting on with!

The pattern offers two sizes each in two yarn weights.  

Knit in Lamb’s Pride Worsted and Bulky along with Nature Spun Worsted, held single for the worsted stockings, and doubled, for the bulky stockings.    

Design details include:
corrugated ribbing,
allover stranded pattern,
duplicate stitching in a 3rd color,
wrap and turn short row heels,
rounded toe shaping, and
applied I-cord edging with a hanging loop.

Pattern includes 4 easy-to-follow color charts, and 4 short row heel turning charts.  The heel turnings are also written out.

Substitute Yarn Weights:  heavy worsted and bulky

Pattern is $6, available on: Ravelry, Etsy, Payhip, and soon, Lovecrafts

Start them now, and they’ll be done long before Christmas, to hang from your mantel, or string up and hang on your staircase!

Onward, to, hopefully, finishing more things than I start!

Happy Knitting!
Dawn

I Have a (Bohus) Dream

Ever since I bought Wendy Keele’s “Poems of Color, Knitting in the Bohus Tradition”, I’ve hankered after a ‘Blue Shimmer’.  Pullover or cardigan, it doesn’t matter!

The book was released in ’95, so that’s a long time to wait on a sweater, but the kit is expensive, and I need my luxuries to be frugal.

What quelled this Bohus desire (actually the desire to knit *any* sweaters) was discovering secondhand cashmere sweaters years ago at Goodwill and on Ebay.  Every other year or 2, I would spend $45 to $60 and get 3 new-to-me cashmere sweaters, to replace the ones that were falling to bits.  I still kept the bits going with patches and mending, and would relegate them to wearing to bed.  If you’ve never worn a cashmere sweater to bed, instead of a cotton or cotton blend top, you’re definitely missing out!  

The only way to get sweaters as soft as cashmere, is with baby alpaca or angora, both of which are pricey, so I put sweaters out of my mind.

What made me think of Bohus again was reading Meg’s blog post recently about the new-ish “Bohus Stickning på nytt, The Revival”, by Viveka Overland.

Yes, an 8-yr old book isn’t new, but it is, compared to the books in my library!  It seems, though, that the first edition is sold out – I can’t find it anywhere.  I can only hope they are planning to reprint it.

But, it got me thinking.  Specifically about the leftover skeins of Yarn Undyed’s (non-superwash) superfine merino DK and baby alpaca DK in a natural white, which I bought to weave a couple batches of winter scarves, along with Valley Yarns’ Becket, Sunderland, and Hampden - all beautiful yarns, the latter two of which are especially soft, and purchased during one of Web’s 30% off sales.  I was saving them for more weaving projects, that iss, until now.

I have a few skeins of lt. grey, med. grey, a deep blue, and charcoal in the Sunderland and Hampden, which get the same 6.5 sts/1” gauge as the 100% baby alpaca DK.  I may need to add more lt. grey or perhaps a fawn/sand – I won’t know until I swatch a few ideas to see what the final design needs in order to sing.  

The majority of the sweater, however, would be in 100% baby alpaca, and, of course, I’m questioning the wisdom of doing this, unless knit snugly enough.  All this softness, though, is yummy, so, I may go for it, regardless.  

As it turns out, the superfine merino DK works best at 5.5 sts/1”, where the baby alpaca (with the same yardage) is denser/thinner and knits at 6.5 sts/1”, as would a sport wt.

If I was just knitting stockinette, the gauge difference would be an issue, but, all the finer yarns will be in the stranded yoke pattern, so the overall fabric thickness of the yoke and the body will be similar, so long as the st count is adjusted at the transition.  

As I don’t have the lovely blues and teals needed for the “Shimmer”, my eye then turned to “The Large Swan”, another beautiful design, where the colors I have might work better, although I have less colors in total.  Part of what makes Bohus designs so beautiful is the total # of colors used.

But I also really like “Regnmoln - Rain Clouds Pullover”, which looks similar to the “Red Palm”, or “The Mists”.  I’m especially fond of that effect, as no matter the color used, the simple pattern just *glows* – it’s so striking!

So, I have a fair bit of configuring to do. If I do decide to rework a Bohus into a DK wt. gauge, it will also be affected by having less colors to shade, and the fact that i never work top down, only bottom up, so I’ll need to reconfigure where the purl sts go, as the (adjusted) yoke chart will be worked upside down from the usual Bohus top-down method for yoke sweaters.

All in all, it will be a good mental exercise, if not actually mental, although we knitters are used to adjusting designs, right?!  

And, it will still be special.  LOL, if I actually stick with making an adjusted Bohus, instead of doing what I am usually inclined to do, and that is design my own pattern, in the Bohus genre.   Which I have already embarked on!  It is a genre in which I have, thus far, only made 2 designs, so there is much more exploration that can be done.

I’ll re-post when I get these niggly details worked out.  In the meantime, i can dream of a lovely, super soft, yoke-patterned sweater!

Onward!
Dawn

Applied/BO I-Cord Methods

I’ve been knitting a lot of I-cord edges and straps lately, for my new collection of cell phone/eyeglass cases, and thought I’d post on the various ways to knit applied/BO I-cord, as well as ways to deal with the dreaded color blip!

I’ve knit some samples to demonstrate each method, knit in 2 contrasting colors of Bartlettyarns Fisherman Bulky on size 11 ndls.

The way I used to knit a 3-st I-cord
With the body sts still live on either dpns or a circular ndl, CO 3 sts in the I-cord color onto a separate ndl.
K2, ssk (the last CO st and the first body st) = 3 sts rem.
Slip sts to other end of dpn.
Rep last row, until all sts are BO.

With this method, the blip shows through the center of the first *row* of I-cord sts.

I have used this method with live sts to BO, but I have also just picked up an edge st (as with a cardigan front edge) and worked it into the I-cord.  One of the blips is rather large, as that edge st was a bit looser than the others.  It also shows *between* the first and 2nd I-cord sts.

However, unless the last row or rnd of the body is the same (or close in color) as the I-cord color, this method will cause color blips, either in the center of the first *row*, or between the first and 2nd *rows* of I-cord sts.

Here's the I-cord worked in the same white yarn as the swatch – no special treatment is needed, as there's no color to show through.

The way I knit I-cord now
With the body sts still live on either dpns or a circular ndl, CO 3 sts in the I-cord color.
Knit 1 st from the body edge = 4 sts.
Slide sts to other end of dpn.
K2, k2togtbl = 3 sts.
Rep until all sts are BO. 

Even though a st is knit up in the I-cord color, before dec’g on the next row, a blip can still occur, even if less obviously.

3 ways to deal with the color blip
A color blip can occur when the color of the last row of the knitting (that the I-cord is worked onto) varies in color from the I-cord yarn color, as is clear with these red on white swatches.

This blip of color can peak through between the 1st and 2nd I-cord sts, along the front of the work, or through the center of the first I-cord sts, depending on which way the cord was attached.

Fix #1
I have seen some mention that by working the I-cord from the WS, that *row* of blips will land towards the WS of the work, instead of the RS.  I haven’t used this method, but, in swatching, the blips do indeed fall to the WS of the work, as expected.

And here's the crisp RS:

The 2 fixes I *have* used before follow.

Fix #2
The simplest fix is to knit 1 row/rnd in the color that will be the I-cord color.  As the I-cord curls around the edge, this extra row/rnd visually becomes part of the I-cord.

Fix #3
This fix is more fiddly (and time consuming), especially when working snugly.  This method was un-vented by Joyce Williams, mentioned in Schoolhouse Press’ “The Opinionated Knitter”, pg. 55, in their “Knitting Glossary” DVD, and I’m sure also in many articles.

Her method adds a yo to Elizabeth Zimmermann’s I-cord method of k2, sl 1, k1 edge st, psso.

With live (un-BO sts):
CO 3 sts in the I-cord color.
Slide sts to other end of the dpn.
K2, sl 1, yo, slip 1 body edge st, pass the yo and sl 1 over this last slipped st = 3 sts.  
Slide sts to other end of dpn. 
Rep until all sts are BO.

If the body sts aren’t live, as with a cardigan’s front edge:
CO 3 sts in the I-cord color.  
Slide sts to other end of dpn.
K2, sl 1, yo, knit up 1 st along body edge, pass the yo and sl 1 over the knit up st = 3 sts.
Slide sts to other end of dpn. 
Rep until all edge sts are incorporated into the I-cord.

 

I have also seen the yo coming before the sl 1, as follows:
K2, yo, sl 1, knit up 1 st along body edge, pass the yo and sl 1 over the knit up st = 3 sts.  
Slide sts to other end of dpn.  

BUT, I do not think this method makes the neatest looking edge.  There’s no color blip, but it messes up the appearance of the first *row* of I-cord sts.

I find the sl 1 and yo business, then passing the 2 sts over, slows down the I-cord process enough that I’d do almost anything *not* to work the I-cord this way!

If working the cord along a vertical edge, I’d still likely knit up sts along that edge in the I-cord color first, and of course, in the proper st to row ratio, before working the I-cord.

Happy Knitting!
Dawn