meet Juno . . .

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Jen

Juno is nine weeks old, and came home with us today. She is swiftly jump-starting my life, keeping me busy every minute, and as we’ve all three had a very big day, it is naptime! I am so glad we found her, it was fate, my heart is full. In Greek mythology Juno was the wife of Jupiter and symbolizes undying loyalty. And, did you know also that Juno is a very large asteroid which orbits in our solar system between Mars and Jupiter? But mostly she’s our puppy who’s just arrived here on our mountain, a wild place which will grow with her to be a paradise anew! :puppy woof:

A charcoal vest.

Posted on May 13, 2021 by Jen

jenjoycedesign© charcoal-vest4

I have been working through unfinished projects since the beginning of the year and finally committed to this long hibernating one. I bought the tweed yarn for it two and a half years ago when we were living in the tiny house in the charcoal forest , and at that particular time I felt urgency in knitting the same Calidez Cardigan to replace my lost original . Everything was freshly burned, practically still smoking, loggers gone through and the landscape languishing. I had knit 14″ of the sweater body before squirreling it away to hibernate while I worked on other things, as I shifted into Spring and new designs. But March of this year, when I started it up again I found that I might not have enough yarn to finish the sweater, realizing that either I didn’t buy enough, or used a ball of it on something along the way, and too much time had passed for me to remember. So it was an easy decision to go ahead and knit the Calidez Vest instead, and then I rattled it off quick! I am so glad I got this finished because I really am ready to mentally close the gate on that dreadful time. Oh, but I couldn’t help myself finishing off the vest this morning with six “burned wood” buttons I found on Etsy . . . : laughs :

jenjoycedesign© charcoal-vest2

A totally off season finish as well,

I will fold this vest up and store it in the woolens dresser for at least 6 months if not longer.

Did I say yet how happy I am to be finished with this project?

jenjoycedesign© charcoal-vest6

♣ ♣ ♣

Pattern: Calidez Vest (with high v-neck)

Yarn: Studio Donegal Aran Tweed in color 4801 “charcoal”

Project details on Ravelry

jenjoycedesign© charcoal-vest1

Fish a little, croft a little, weave a yard or two (2)

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Jen

I am revisiting a very personal ambition of blending signature colors from local landscape and spinning into yarn, as is always the genius of Harris Tweed, and it all began for me in this post a few years ago. Soon my own color blending experiments were born, and became a literal obsession with me, and I created Tweed Chronicles on this blog. But also it is about my intrigue of the life of a weaver, particularly the tweed weavers of the the Hebrides, their tradition and industry that has held on through the test of time. Whenever I find an old film about textiles, or mills, I am sure to post it here, and I do look often for the most wonderful ones, and it appears that I have dug one up out of the vast archives of the internet. The film opens with the weavers working their fields, cutting peat, doing the work of island life, but soon gets in to some great footage of the Harris Tweed company making warp bundles to deliver out to the resident weavers of the island, then once in the hands of the weavers, warp is set up on their looms, weft shuttles loaded, and then the shuttles fly. I love how when the cloth is finished, its left out on the roadside to be picked up by the Harris Tweed people. I know you’ll love this little gem as much as I do!

I got a new bag!

Posted on April 15, 2021 by Jen

jenjoycedesign© felted Maiya'kma large bag 2

Well, you know what I mean, I made a new bag.

Knitted, then felted.

jenjoycedesign© felted Maiya'kma large bag 3

Just a perky large bag, big enough for me to put a whole sweater project into perhaps while I knit-walk for a little while, while knitting a body section . . . or whatever.

jenjoycedesign© felted Maiya'kma large bag 5

Shown on Abelene, a life-sized “woman thing”, this actually is the first prototype of three yarns held together, of three different colors, which in fact give even more of a texture visually, as well as a supremely thick and gorgeously rich color depth of felted fabric.

jenjoycedesign© felted Maiya'kma large bag 7

Just two hot washes in the washer machine made this great thick plush wool bag from a big floppy giant one (( and wouldn’t you know, how dumb was I to forget the before photo )) having shrunk at least 25% and weighing a little over 500g. I cast on 100 sts and very gradually and randomly decreased throughout the body, attempting an improvised wedge shape, with the turned-edge of the shaped bottom being only 80 sts. I must say, I couldn’t be more pleased.

jenjoycedesign© felted Maiya'kma large bag 4

Pattern: Maiya’kma

Yarn: Wool Of The Andes worsted : colors garnet, brass, and amber for the rust, and varying changing shades of blues and greys for the blue.

Project Details: on Ravelry here.

Nep Clouds 4

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Jen

spun nep clouds

The final plied woolen spun skein, washed & dried, and my nep cloud experiment is finished !

The neps were so subtle and very difficult to get to show on the camera, so I had to intensify the color saturation of the photo just so that you could see them, the blue and green neps. The whole skein looks rather seafoam color when hanging out on the line.

This time of year the Black Oak leaves are budding out a soft fuzzy beautiful crimson velvet!

The landscape by the way, is healing slowly from the wildfire. We’ve had to cut down so many dead & dying old Black Oaks around the house, and since I was outside photographing yarn drying on the clothes line, I want to show you how the young shoots are vigorously growing from their parent trees, from root systems perhaps a hundred years old. I have been shaping the new growth, and now the tallest of these young oak trees is almost 10 feet tall. I’m so proud of these young darlings!

I was thinking of trying another variation of the technique I posted in my first Nep Clouds Recipe on my new hand-carders, but I don’t think I can really improve it, for it seems to do best I think , to achieve the affect of the traditional woollen spun rustic tweed, so drawing off the rolags from the blending board work very nicely ( I have made some more notes in the original Nep Clouds Recipe for those who don’t own hand-carders ). Alternatively one could spin from the batt, worsted technique. Anyway, this method suits me just fine, and I will look forward to blending up some more neppy colorways just as I did this skein, and that about wraps up this nep clouds experiment!

See all posts Nep Clouds.

See all posts Tweed Chronicles.

Nep Clouds 3

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Jen

I am having a lot of fun documenting every step of my Nep Clouds “recipe” . However, I think the improvement I will make on my next nep cloud experiment, I will avoid using bulky weight yarns for the snippet neps ( see first post Nep Clouds ) as I struggled with some of the neps being too stiff and unmalleable, so instead I’ll try fingering, sport, or dk weight. These are the single ply bobbins, and I wanted to show how present the blue and green neps are even at this stage. Next will be plied, skeined, and washed finale!

See all posts Nep Clouds.

See all posts Tweed Chronicles.

Nep Clouds 2

Posted on April 5, 2021 by Jen

jenjoycedesign© nep-rolags

Nep clouds from last post have been layered on the blending board with more wool, then rolled off into lovely speckled neppy rolags! You can barely see the imbedded blue and green neps in the white cormo wool, but I know when I begin to spin they are going to pop!

jenjoycedesign© nep-rolags3

Next is the spinning, but first, what I did . . .

♣ ♣ ♣

Techy Stuff . . .

I layered twice, actually with a different wool (undyed white Cormo) layered in-between nep clouds (see last post for how I made nep clouds ), wanting to be sure the neps were well homogenized. It would have been a good idea to use a light grey , to show the blending steps separate from the nep clouds. Next time!

Layered first wool, then blue nep cloud, then wool, then green nep cloud, then wool — taking opportunity to evenly disperse with my hands, clumps of neps, and then l lifted batt off of board.
Layered handfuls of the batt again, to get all nice and well blended.
Drew rolags off with large knitting needles in a slightly tensioned ” combing ” motion.
Rolags ready to spin! (click the 1st image below to go to slideshow)
See Blending For Tweed Simplified for my basic blending board slideshow how-to.

See all posts Nep Clouds.

See all posts Tweed Chronicles.

Nep Clouds

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Jen

Hey look, nep clouds ! These are premixes from my new hand carders, and will be blended in with a main fiber on blending board next. They can also be spun ” in cloud ” , made into rolags from the hand carders, or can get layered on the blending board to build up a more complex visual texture. I will try a few methods to see what gives the most pleasing results (for me). For ages I have been thinking about how to go about spinning tweed yarn with colorful neps, and how to achieve the affect I want using the yarns I have in my stash. I am rather fixated on designing a yarn which has the characteristic flecks of color that pop in the final spinning, as in the traditional rustic spun from Ireland and British Isles. Anyway, this is a part 1 of a several neppy posts, and as is customary in my Tweed Chronicles. Here’s the techy stuff . . .

Continue reading →

Wool carders, and an anniversary.

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Jen

I have got an almost new pair of Schacht hand carders, for a great bargain, from someone who didn’t need or want them anymore, practically a gift. These are an essential part of my blending experiments past and future! Rather a coincidence as before I had a nice pair of carders given to me decades ago, along with a splendid drop spindle, from someone who couldn’t use them. Now that I think about it, that was the chance reason I started spinning in the first place.

Little sentimental pieces of my creative life are falling into place, one re-acquisition at a time, and I think I am fully kitted now, having all the bare essential tools of the trade. Anyway, as creative energy slowly returns, so do lists of ideas, rolling out on the straight and narrow progressing path, in patient commitment to my knitting & spinning, and sharing the process here on my blog.

Speaking of this blog, I want to mention that it was ten year anniversary a couple of days ago, when I started this WordPress blog with this first post ( soon thereafter I transferred all the relevant earlier dated posts from another blog I had) and ever since I have truly been immersed in what it has become, documenting my life and my creative endeavors, things and details which may have otherwise been forgotten.

I love blending colors and fibers , even more than spinning, and almost as much as knitting! The reason I wanted a pair of wool carders is because I hope to pre-blend some color and tweedy neps before layering on my blending board, as I have learned that my jumbo sized board really is a work of labor to load and reload, quite exhaustive for fine tuning blends. Sometimes I have to lift and reblend the 50g batts three or four times before it is nicely homogenized, then multiply that by about 10 to make 500g, it becomes a serious amount of work. So I am thinking about using hand carders to premix parts of the blend, and curious to see if I can have more control over the results as well as save myself a lot of effort. Coming up– premixes from the hand carders to layer into a fully loaded blending board project — watch this space!

A sock novelty.

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Jen

The socks mentioned in my last post are at last finished, and just in time for Jeff’s birthday, although that is purely by accident.

I am seriously pleased with the plush fabric made from holding two fine merino soft sock yarns together, and using my usual 2.5mm needles. Its like the two yarns balance each other and fill all the stitch together so that it is nearly like thick chamois. I really love the aesthetic of of these socks, and all basic simple knits.

Getting to know Jeff through the years, a man of an extraordinary and somewhat intimidating physical work ethic, (not hard to guess is only three generations from Amish roots), and yet he can not stand scratchy itchy wool, nay, but as said before, this merino chamois is something I am sure will stand the test. And these are very much mens boot socks, even too big for the large sized sock blockers, and they did not take forever because of the two yarns held together.

Jeff’s first impressions on me, the Amish ” plain & simple ” aesthetic, was at first a novelty, but over the years has seeped and settled into me, and become a quiet smile of contentment, void of the superfluous. If this could be expressed in socks , it would be in this very pair, only enough ribbing to hold the socks on through the boot tongue, to get the work done of staying on the leg and no unnecessary immodest fancy work beyond that.

What I am saying technically, is the rib/cables are worked through until the gusset is finished decreasing, then continue to knit the rest of the sock in stockinette. I have not paused for a minute, as soon as Jeff’s socks were laid out to dry, I cast on another!

♥ ♥ ♥

Pattern: Walking With Emma (above shown in chart D)

Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll, colors Granite and Midnight Heather

Project details on Ravelry Walking with Emma & Her Dad.

foot steps and paw prints . . .

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Jen

jenjoycedesign© 2-at-a-time-socks 2 Walking With Emma socks, for Emma’s dad. Two very fine soft merino sock yarns held together to get a great tweeded affect, a lovely marled rugged strong-but-so-soft boot sock. Yarn weight when held two-together falls within the dk weight range, so that I can knit not only faster, but one (or two) sizes smaller , and these socks are racing along to the finish. This sample I’ve decided to show the option for rib patterning just through the gusset decreases, rather nifty as the patterning would disappear into the boot, but as this fabric tends to be very thick, I felt the foot section should be plain knitting only. Do you see what I’m talking about?

These Walking With Emma socks were cast on a year ago, in a knit-along with some pals on Ravelry to celebrate the life of Emma, and well, time has just gotten away from me! All year long I was not making progress with very fine Knit Picks Stroll yarn, having started the 80st size, but then I stalled because I thought too big and they would take forever and a day to knit, so I started over again with the 70st size thinking maybe that would work . . . but still not much knitting got done. So, a couple of weeks ago I decided to change things up (rip out all that) and cast on the 60st size with two yarns held together for double thickness boot sock savvy! In a week or so, I’ll come back and post the finished pair of Emma’s Dad’s socks and they’ll be washed and blocked nicely.

♥ ♥ ♥

Emma has been gone a whole year, :tears: and it hasn’t gotten any easier. Not really. A dog’s life puts a frame around a time span in a human’s life it seems, wherein the dog was central. Emma framed almost a fifteen year period of my life; over hill and dale, through some hard times, but mostly in and around cherished times, walking the wild and magical places together, every day. Knitting this sock pattern makes me think of her, and the way she helped me design them in her own way, two springs ago now, so no wonder these socks are now continually on my needles!

Abelene speaks!

Posted on February 26, 2021 by Jen

Hi, its me, Abelene. Its been a very long time since Jen has brought me out of my closet to model beautiful hand-knit things, but there is something really important that she wants me to show you right now . . .

um, something about recreating the original photo . . . what do you think?

After losing all of her lovely lace Fishwives prototypes within weeks of knitting them, and never even getting to wear even one of them in that fateful Autumn, Jen felt that loss almost as dearly as any. But after the wildfire, one of the first things she bought again was another ME, and the dear little hand-made fish shawl pin she had found on Etsy , which I had modelled the original prototypes with. Jen has just been waiting for another Fishwives stole to be completed, so she could put us all together, and here we are !

You see, Jen really wanted to bridge over to recreate the experience of ‘a pile o’ fishy shawls’ . . . and yet although she tried, she drowned herself in new designs to distract herself, which required a lot of knitting different and new non-lace prototypes, and never seemed to get around to making the Fishwives stole she wanted. An important anniversary of the year after the first one brought her to cast on but it sat, in a basket. Everytime she’d pick it up she had to relearn the chart, etc, typical knitterly & nonsensical excuses, which kept it from getting knit. Then very recently a real effort was made, and voila!

Splashing fish tails and waves are the Fishwives Lace Shoal signature theme, do you see them? ((shhh… but Jen is already casting on for another, a second in her pile o’ fishy shawls)) At last Jen has a lovely stole to wrap ~~herself~~ me in , again!

Ta ta for now, Abelene.

♣ ♣ ♣

Pattern: Fishwives Lace Shoal

Yarn: One very sentimental skein of Sweet Georgia Merino Silk Lace, brought with Jen when the wildfire came.

Project details: on Ravelry here.

All fun posts FISHY ! ~~ scroll to bottom of posts to read about the theme.!

very nearly finished…

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Jen

A long awaited finished project is blocking finally ,

and attempting in part, to recreate this post of three and a half years ago, in our original house.

The summer of 2017 was a time when All Things Fishy was my focus, entertaining myself to a colossal degree while I researched subjects of “lace , as it related to fishing” . . . all the while whipping out on the needles four lace prototypes for the new pattern.

Two months later all four were burned to ashes in the wildfire. A year later, in summer of 2018, when we were living in the tiny house waiting for our house to be rebuilt, I cast on for this, really wanting to have a Fishwives Lace Shoal to wear. This stole has for some reason taken a really long time to get knit, but can now be posted next in a ” fully finished ” photo , very soon.

Brindle Beret & Gloves

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Jen

This rustic tweedy ensemble tells a story of morning walks in the country, just come in from the cold foggy damp, and flung on to the nearest post as one urgently makes their way to the kitchen to put the kettle on!

My latest glove and beret set, a satisfying contribution to my drawer full of wintery woolens I have been busy making.