CrumpArt » Knitting

Lace Galaxies.

May 7th, 2008 by Crumpet

Part of my project this semester involves spinning yarn and knitting it into lace circles based on Elizabeth Zimmermann’s pi shawl pattern. To put it in the vaguest terms possible, it’s a scienc-y, mathematical meditation-y mandala thing — a reflection on creation and the clash of scepticism and belief. I’ll be printing on each piece of knitting repeatedly to build up colour, and will also try printing with them on my paper works. Next semester they’ll be ripped out and made into something new, playing into my destruction/creation theme.

I started with a bag of wool that I already had, but it hadn’t been carded and was just too lumpy and uneven for what I wanted. I could have hand-carded it, but the thought of processing 500g of fibre that way made me want to cry real tears. Instead, I paid a visit to the Yarn Barn in Coburg to see what they had, and came out with 700g of processed superwash merino that had already been pre-drafted and wound onto a cone. Freaking score!

It still took me a few skeins to get my tension right for the project I have in mind next semester, but I’m still using the first efforts this time around, and will use them for a different piece later.

Here’s what the singles needed to look like…

And here they are plied.

And posing with Neil Gaiman’s signature in my sketchbook (yep, definitely fangirl.)

I’m really quite disgustingly proud of my spinning job. It took at least two full days to spin the singles, and another half day of plying just for two skeins. The knitting feels like flying in comparison.

Posted in Geekery, Universe, Spinning, Art, Knitting | | 2 Comments

Swapperific

March 31st, 2008 by Crumpet

I received my Ravelry Bag Lady swap package last week! Hooray!

annie3891, who doesn’t seem to have a blog, sent me a beautiful felted evening style bag made from some handspun yarn she’d bought. I love it, but it was a bitch to photograph. Especially at 10pm when it was raining and dark outside… here it is anyway making friends with my sketchbook.

I also got Pocky (!), origami paper, a beautifully soft blue iPod cosy and some lovely lip balm! Thank you Annie!

I’m pretty sure my ‘target’ will get the package I sent today, so I’m happy to post pictures now.

I have a bunch of old laser discs sitting at home waiting for a crafting opportunity. While my swap pal doesn’t like horror films so much, I decided that Vertigo was the best one to use, considering her profession. Every single office I’ve ever walked into that’s part of this particular business has had a Vertigo poster somewhere. And I figured my pal could do with a pencil box. Or a ‘whatever she wants to put in it’ box, really. I added some arty extras to the box, keeping in mind something that I read somewhere while stalking.

Continuing on the Hitch theme, I sewed this bag. It’s made almost entirely from recycled materials (we had a $30 budget, and I’m doing Wardrobe Refashion, so I set recycling/upcycling/working from stash as a challenge for myself) — I used some op shop pants that once belonged to a very short, very round old man for the outer, and some unwanted handmade pants scavenged from Kym’s stash several years ago for the lining. The batting was also recycled from old manchester, and the pocket was made from some beautiful fabric that I received in exchange for some art years ago. The zipper was also recycled, and the magnetic snap was from stash. Hopefully it’s easy enough to guess which title sequence I was riffing off with the quilting…

I was originally going to put two pockets in the bag, but the construction method didn’t really allow for that, so I used the leftover fabric to make this cute little pouch. So easy, and now I want one for myself!

And considering that the Bag Lady swap was happening on a knitting board, I obviously had to do some of that. This is the Saturday Market Bag from MagKnits, made from stash yarn (Lang Filo, I think) bought years ago for a buck a ball at Lincraft. It even matches the lining of the Hitch Up Yr Pants bag! Next time, though, I’ll figure out how to knit this in the round, then do a three-needle bind-off at the base. Teh Seaming SuXX0r3d.

So there you go, swap pal (if yr even reading…) — I hope it arrives soon, if it hasn’t already.

Posted in photography, Geekery, Book making, Film, Swaps, Sewing, Knitting | | 3 Comments

Celebrations!

March 19th, 2008 by Crumpet

It’s been a busy weekend…

First, Kris had a birthday — Happy Birthday Kris, from me and the Hardman. He hopes you had fun blowing out candles!

The Hardman’s dad turned… eight — Happy Birthday Giz!

Zefrank had an anniversary… (I miss The Show!)

And I celebrated my ancestry…

Posted in Food, photography, Knitting, Random | | 4 Comments

Waiting for the bell to go (to go where?)

March 3rd, 2008 by Crumpet

It’s the first day of school today. I have my art theory class at 9:30 this morning, and have about 20 minutes before I’m due to leave.

In what seemed like another birthday treat, but was really just a case of good timing, myself and some others from work organised to go to the Creswick Alpaca Mill on Saturday. We sell the beautiful Creswick alpaca blankets where I work, and we thought it would be fun to go to one of the mill sales that happen occasionally. Instead, the family who run the company organised a special day to show us around the mill and take us out to lunch!

I’ve been to the mill once before, but I didn’t get to see all the machinery and whatnot last time. It was so cool.

The massive alpaca carding machine was in action when we arrived. I started taking photos, but quickly handed the camera across to Mr C. He has much better pictures than I do, but hasn’t had a chance to upload them to Flickr yet. The photo above is the alpaca fibre mid carding, just before it’s run through another set of softer cards and separated into cones of long thin unspun yarn.

After that process, they send the yarn through a big spinning machine, then it’s loaded onto massive warp spools (in the photo at the top of this poost) and sent to the loom room.

Here is the yarn being prepared for the warp:

None of the looms are computerised, so to weave in the right pattern, holes are punched into long plastic sheets that are loaded into the looms, which follow the pattern sheets kind of like how a pianola plays a tune.

I was going to buy some merino fibre for a uni project while I was there, but they didn’t have any this time around. I settled for a gorgeous blanket and a new throw rug.

And that’s my 20 minutes up! Next time, I’ll catch up on the blog housekeeping…

(The title of this post is from a poem by Roger McGough called First Day of School.)

Posted in Spinning, Knitting | | 1 Comments

“somehow, somewhere, sometimes sunlight seems to come my way”

February 12th, 2008 by Crumpet

Today I nearly lost my teacups. And my marbles. It was the last day of two weeks worth of stocktaking at work*. I had no energy left and missed several trams. I ended up getting to work 20 minutes late. During the day, I found out that one of my coworkers had to flee Bosnia when she was five, with her mother and two week old brother. Not many people I know can, or would want to, claim that their luckiest moment in life was when the sniper didn’t shoot them.

After work I had plans to go to a yarn night — meeting with Australian Country Spinners (Patons, Cleckheaton, etc.) advertising agency to clue them in on the whole knitting thing. I left work at 5. The information man at the tram stop stuffed me around and I ended up not getting off the tram where I was supposed to in order to catch a connecting tram. I wasted half an hour. Then when I finally did get to Carlisle St in St Kilda, I realised it was the wrong end and I’d have to walk for about a kilometre to get where I was going. I was half an hour late that time.

Then, I intended to head back into the city for a coworkers going away drinks. I got off the train at Flinders St Station, walked up the steps, and realised that I didn’t have one of my bags. I went back down to the train, jumped back on for a minute, realised the train was not taking passengers and couldn’t find my bag. And just as I went to get off, the doors shut. And wouldn’t open again. I was stuck, alone on a train that was retiring for the evening.

The train started to move. I hoped it would stop at Southern Cross Station, but it didn’t. I panicked. And realised my phone was in the missing bag. I panicked some more. I contemplated pulling the big red emergency door release button, but the thought of dying while trying to cross the surrounding train tracks was a little too terrifying, and around that point in time I realised there was an emergency intercom. It didn’t seem to work at first, but I finally got in contact with the driver and did a fairly convincing job at sounding calm. Thankfully he was going to the North Melbourne train depot, and not the one at Werribee… He helped me off the train when we pulled up, and let me search all the carriages for my bag. I found it on the last pass through. I thought it had only had my current knitting and my phone in it, but when I searched inside, I found the bag of knitted teacups that I’d taken along to the knitting night. I hadn’t realised quite how much they mean to me until that moment. I almost cried with relief… although the tears could have been for other reasons. Did I mention that I’d been busting to go to the toilet for about half an hour? The ten minute walk with the driver back to the train station platforms from the depot was tough.

I finally made it to the city. My friends had waited for me and I had a couple of beers while being reminded exactly how funny and awesome they really are. I cried laughing at one point.

I finally walked through my back door while listening to Lithuania by Dan Bern. I found a package on my chair.

My Pay It Forward gift** from Lesley at Bird Ahoy.

As I was taking the photos for this blog post, another song started. One I downloaded for my now extinct podcast way back when. Sunlight, from thesquarerootofeleven. “Somehow, somewhere, sometimes sunlight seems to come my way” seemed like the perfect title. I cried again.

All the shit that happened to me today? Not even worth worrying about. I’m loved. I have wonderful friends, a beautiful partner, a family who would do anything for me. I get incredible packages in the post from people I’ve never met. I’ve never had to flee from war. I’m not the junkie whose blood had dripped over the floor and sharps disposal in the odd public toilet I had to use on Collins St. I’m alive.

And I have my teacups.

*Although I now have to go in for a few hours tomorrow to finish up some stuff.

**The Pay it Forward thing works like this: I was one of the first three commenters on Lesley’s Pay it Forward blog post, so she sent me a handmade gift on the proviso that I would do the same thing with my blog. I’m not going to make it the first three commenters though — I’m gonna take advantage of this to do some comment fishing. The names of anybody who comments on this blog post until the 20th of February (Melbourne time) will be put into a hat, and I’ll draw out three names at random for my Pay it Forward gifts — remember that you’ll have to follow through on the paying forward too. So get commenting!

Posted in Swaps, Universe, Jewellery, Art, Knitting, Random | | 10 Comments

Pants, pants, pants, pants, sing the praise of pants.

February 6th, 2008 by Crumpet

I have one month of school holidays left. That means I’ve been on holidays for three whole months. I feel like I’ve barely had a break at all, and I have so many things left to finish before I go back…

I have made some headway though.

I finished these awesome, awesome, wonderfully comfortable pants for work the other night. We have to wear all black even behind the scenes now, and even though I’m from Melbourne, I have very little black in my wardrobe. Some simple fisherman style pants seemed the way to go. These are made from the Burda pattern 8315.

I love them very, very much and have plans to make several more pairs to wear to school.

For mindless knitting (my favourite kind — I use knitting as a way of zoning out) I’ve been working on Stefanie Japel’s Cozy V-Neck Sweater, re-mathematised to be made from stash DK weight instead of the chunkier weight the pattern calls for. One of the great things about top-down raglans knit in the round is that you can try them on for size during the knitting. I’ve started the ribbing for this now, and am about 5cm into it. I’ve put it aside for the minute because the yarn comes in massive 200 metre skeins, which I have to wind by hand into balls because I have no swift or ball winder (hint hint), and I didn’t have time the other day to prepare another skein before leaving the house. So I picked up this.

Free yarn.

20 balls of free yarn.

20 balls of the most beautiful, lovely, squishy, soft, green free yarn.

It was a thank you gift for attending an ideas/information night put on by Patons. I was going for the fun. I had no idea there would be free yarn. Score! It’s turning into Stefanie’s Puff-Sleeved Feminine Cardigan.

And finally, the birthday presents have already started rolling in! And this one is the best kind of present anyone can give me. A friend needed to buy a gift for someone else, so they specifically bought something from my Etsy store as a gift to me. Totally awesome and thoughtful and kind and lovely.

I sent this off to the unsuspecting recipient today.

Posted in Etsy, photography, Sewing, General crafts, Knitting | | 2 Comments

Long and winding roads.

January 5th, 2008 by Crumpet

Just got home from a big day out. First, we had lunch with my sister and brother-in-law, here from Darwin until tomorrow. Then we went for a long and somewhat bracing drive up Mount Donna Buang, then through to Sassafras before landing at Kym and Giz’s place for dinner, where, amongst other things, I finally managed to get a decent photo of Wayne.