Winter blues

On Monday, I decided to dye a light blue handknit sweater that was a hand-me-down from someone when I was 15 or so. It was knitted by a lady in Hong-Kong, I know that much. I was told it was wool, and it is certainly quite warm. Pastel sky blue with an intarsia scene of a tree, some guys fishing and a fence, in white and navy. I guess it is much what could be considered a slightly ugly 80's sweater, although fortunately quite fitted. It does fit very well, but has been langhishing for decades in a box due to the colour scheme.

I landed a job in a cold wokshop so I decided to dye it. I prepared a dye bath with some yellow and some blue, hoping for teal. After dyeing, which was partly successful, I got some sort of undefined greyish, darkish robin's-egg blue. Wearable. In a cold, dusty workshop. I also think now that this sweater has some synthetic blended it in, it didn't take the dye well, and I see some sort of shininess on the fibers. It is still warm enough. I think the right sleeve is also shorter than the left (both fairly short, probably little-chinese-lady sized, but I am very small in the upper body so the rest fits ok), which is all right since I do dusty work and I wear a light wrist brace on the right arm.

Teeswater worsted in front
Texere 2 ply at back

Anyway :) with the leftover dye water I dyed some yarn! I still have about 3 litres worth of (not very saturated) dye bath in plastic bottles, that can perhaps be used at a later date (the bath I used was already partially recycled).

I dyed one skein of Teeswater 4-Ply Worsted Wool from Higher Gills Farm that I have been treasuring for a while. It takes the dye beautifully as my experience was when I dyed a pair of my Esporòfits mittens after knitting them (ombré, from dark to light green, seen at right). The yarn is glossy and a bit hairy. I still have about half a skein of natural white, and I may or may not use both the teal-ish and the natural together (note to self: if you do, check for leaks first).

So I just held the unfurled skein as a loop, dipped it in the dye bath quickly, brought it up, and then squeezed well the upper portion while leaving the bottom of the loop in the bath. I kept dipping the lower portion a few times, wrapped the loop carefully in a bowl with the darker loop at the bottom, as a bit of the dye bath, and nuked, then repeated the operation, adding a little bit more blue acid dye to the bowl. The result is a skein that is ombré dyed from the bottom to the top of the loop. The contrast between light and dark is a little more intense than it shows on this picture. Sort of Robin's-egg blue to teal.

Now, I have to admit that I am not a great fan of variegated yarns. I rather dislike quick and strong colour changes such as the yarn I used in this project. It can be seen in the bottom picture, since I overdyed it. In this case it looks sort-of-like camo print, which is a slight redeeming quality, but still, not a fan. I do like subtle changes as in semi-solids. I am not a fan of self-striping either. I love solids. And I love ombré, which of course works best when dyeing after knitting as I did with the mitts (yes I know there are graduated-colour knitting yarns, but the choice is rather small, and sometimes the change is quite sudden).

So, perhaps I will regret having dyed this yarn like I did. Perhaps not. Will depend on the project, I guess, and if I mix it in stripes. We will see. I still love the tones.

I also wound a little (19g) center-pull ball of Texere Pure Lambswool 2ply laceweight and dyed it too. I absolutely love this super fine but still fluffy yarn. I knitted my Lucy's Wreath with it.

After winding it, I realised I should have skeined, duh! but then I thought, let's experiment instead :) I dipped the little ball in the bath briefly, squeezed it, put it in a little bowl with some dye water, nuked it, repeated, put a very tiny bit of black in the bowl, dipped the outside of the ball, nuked... I don't even remember anymore all the abuse. Then I washed it best I could, squeezed well and left it over the heating for a bit before I wound it into a skein to dry. Once dry I wound it again. the colour, a lightly variegated greyish blue-green. I am pleased. Now I have to figure out what can I do with such a small amount of laceweight!

Underway

Progress is being made! :D

Pattern 02 is written, sample is knitted and blocked, and a beautiful friend is coming over this Saturday to model it for my pictures. Very exciting! she is just perfect for this sweet character, and very enthusiastic about the project and inspiration for it (this is always nice to hear! :))

This pattern features beading and a little fiddliness, which I think is always nice to make a small project more entertaining! I have decided to shoot some HD videos to accompany these patterns, showing trickier parts etc. Video for pattern 02 is filmed, edited and already uploaded to my new YouTube Channel:

Pattern 01 is underway. This is lace knitted with linen, which gives a whole different look, and also beaded. Pictured is my swatch, but I have decided to use other beads which are on the way to me. Meanwhile the sample is started but on hold.

Pattern 03 is what I am working on right now. This project is a pleasure to knit because of the amazing yarn I am using, plus it has a delightful drape! Truly decadent to knit :)

As you can see in the picture, it features my beloved lacy faggoting stitches, the YOs make it airy, but the ribs created by the decreases still give quite a bit of volume.

These three patterns form the first "chapter" of my project. It is very exciting to have the three of them finished soon. Next is a very ambitious (for me!) pattern, moving beyond accessories... my first garment!

Blogging and big project

I have neglected this blog, so much. In fact I ever only posted a few "new pattern" posts, and my last patterns haven't been announced here anymore either. I will not start doing that now. I should put it in the sidebar or something.

No, let's see. I used to really enjoy "blogging" my activities over at Livejournal, so I could do likewise here.

Additionally... I have a big project. I have been developing the idea for the good part of a year, and I have recently gotten started with it. I have been hesitant to talk about it (and only two people know about it), since I realise that it is gonna take me a long time to finish, and I still am unsure if I will publish patterns as I finish them (I am not too keen on this), if I will publish a few patterns only as teasers until everything is ready, or if I should keep everything between wraps until I have it all ready!

I have nonetheless decided to write a little bit about it here, since this blog is very unknown anyway :)

I don't remember exactly how the idea grew in my mind, but I think it was just an idea for one literary-inspired pattern that grew and grew into a collection of patterns. I am now settled on 13 of them. These are very conceptual patterns, in which the shapes, techniques, look and even the yarn composition, colourways etc play a part. They all form a cohesive collection, and even four of them combine into a set of accessories (I love matching sets!). Naturally it ocurred to me that such a collection of patterns best belonged in a booklet format.

In fact, I would preferably present it into an anthology of the works that inspired them, and perhaps some other content I have in mind. This is... a book. Scary! it is a technically challenging and time-consuming project, at least it is for me! Perhaps a little too ambitious an undertaking at my experience level... but I can be stubborn. And my vision is driving me forward in an irresistible manner, so I must oblige. I must try anyway.

Many years ago, I studied DTP. I am still interested in the subject. I do have a clear vision of the layout, typography and overall design, look and feel of this book, and the work for it is already well underway. It helps me have the overall framework in mind as I go along. A little bit of a control freak? In any case this will allow self-publishing if that is the path I end up taking. I want in any case to offer the patterns individually as PDFs.

All of the designs are already well formed in my mind, many of them to the smallest details. Knitting and designing has started on several of them, swatching for others. I have nearly all the yarn I need, which I have been buying in small (and not so small!) batches for the last months.

This is so exciting!

A few swatches. This is for the set of accessories I mentioned earlier. I will allow myself to say, it is a set of fingerless mittens, hat, shawl and "overmittens". The set thus could be worn when it starts to get chilly, fingerless gloves and the shawl draped loosely, and also dress it up for winter with a warm hat and overmittens, and the generous shawl more closely wrapped around the neck. How does that sound?

I have started projects in Ravelry for these patterns as I go along. By now, though, I will only post detail pictures and some notes useful to me (I find keeping these notes in Ravelry to be extremely useful mysefl!), and they have been numbered by their order of appearance.

How convert Excel charts into bitmap images

I have found information online about making knitting charts in Excel, but once the chart is made, I didn't find a satisfactory method to convert these charts into bitmaps, to use as images online, paste into Word, or to use in PDF documents. A simple screenshot will have poor resolution, especially when working with bigger charts.

This is the method I came up with, there is a bit of going back and forth between platforms, but the result will be a high resolution image.

First, you need to draw your chart in Excel, or a similar spreadsheet program. Using a knitting font such as this one, it will be easy. There are also several tutorials online about drawing your knitting charts with Excel, they will show up in a quick Google search.

Ok, we have our chart finished:



Now we will convert it to PDF format. So let's first select just the chart (or everything we want to export):

Then we will go to the Office Button and click on Save as > PDF or XPS:

We will then click on Options, and select the Selection radio button, then click OK:

NOTE FOR BIG CHARTS
If your chart is very big, it will be cut off in different pages when you export to PDF. To avoid this, in Excel, go to the Office Button > Print > Print Preview. In this screen, click on Page Setup. Under Scaling, set the Fit to to one page wide by one page tall (you may also want to choose landscape if the chart is long), then click OK and exit the Print Preview. When you export the selection onto PDF, it will then be fitted to one page wide by one tall.


Now we have a PDF file in the destination folder we chose, with the chart in it. If you want to publish only your chart in PDF format (you can also add a little text in the Excel file), this will be your last step.

To convert to image, we will now need to open the PDF in a program that will allow us to do this, like for example GSview.



We will now go to File > Convert, and in the menu choose jpeg and 600 resolution, then click Ok:

Don't forget to add the .jpg extension when chosing a filename.

Now we have a high resolution jpeg file in the destination folder we chose. We can now edit this image in an image edition program such as IrfanView.

We can crop it and resize it, for example. If you want to use it in Word or for a PDF, you may want a bigger resolution than for web. Let's crop and resize this picture to use it in Word. We select the area we want, then crop it by going to Edit > Crop selection:



We will still have a very big image:

So we will resize it, go to Image > Resize/resample, then choose your width or height:

Now we can insert this image into Word. Open your Word file and place your cursor where you want to insert the image. Then click on Insert > Picture:

And select your cropped image. You can now resize it as you like:

Going one step further, you can also convert your finished word document to PDF for publishing.
Go to the Office Button and click on Save as > PDF or XPS:

Tada!