The towels are really beautiful - I truly wish you get the very best gift - another 25 years with your friend. Love the sweater progress. Looking forward to seeing the final result.
Thanks for yet another great Casual Friday! It will be interesting to see how the year of the sheep proceeds. Also love how the colors of the dyed stripes look against the grey background!
I actually did the same thing; I took over the 2nd bedroom for my crafting. I have a sewing station in one corner, with a small sewing table (all of my rulers on hung on the wall around it. In another corner, I have my Ashford Traveller spinning wheel, a basket of spinning maintenance things, with my drop spindles hung on the wall. My 28" jack loom takes up the most space in the room -- when its open. I have the type of loom that you can close the take-up drum to make it more compact, and I typically push it against the wall when not in use. The warping board is on the wall, and I have plans to make the largest of the windowless walls into a tack board for my quilting projects. I found that, for me, if I kept the middle of the room available, I could keep all of my equipment and materials in the same room. What I did have to move, though, were the book shelves. They are now part of the house library.
I loved hearing about the tiny sheep! There is a brewery farm here in Maryland whose owners also raise Leicester Longwool heritage sheep, and the sheep graze in the hop fields, where they crop the lowest leaves to keep ground-borne blight from infecting the hop vines. They sell the wool (someone else spins and dyes it) and it has a lovely halo.
Those towels were amazing! And although I won't be able to weave, I'm very interested in learning more about it. Thank you for sharing your day with the lamb and your sweater progress. I look forward to seeing more on both. Thx for all that you do!
What a beautiful gift those towels are. Very precious. I loved getting to hear about your experience with the lambs as well! During my PhD, I worked on a radio telescope in Australia that was in the middle of a sheep paddock. There were alternately sheep and cows that would graze there -- including around the telescope -- and that helped greatly in fire risk management. The sweater is looking great so far! I love the striped gradient. It's really coming out very well so far. I'm working on designing my first top (not enough of the yarn to do a sweater but enough to do a short-sleeve top), so I was eating up all of the little tidbits in your discussion of your design process. Thanks as always for a wonderful casual Friday! Have a great weekend!
Hi again! I’ve been spinning for a number of years and I still find my yarns vary just a bit from skein to skein. I measure and weigh it all so I know what is lightest and heaviest, and knit jumpers accordingly - thickest (heaviest) at the hip, lighter as I go up towards the shoulder and lightest of all for the sleeves! New swatches are needed for the sleeves, usually. There is not that much variation and many spinners wouldn’t bother but I’m a bit nerdy that way. Hope this helps😊
Minute 23:26 - your look and sigh is priceless. It gives me hope that even you, with all your experience, has these moments :) The finished sweater I'm sure will be beautiful. I think everyone should have a day with the sheep to chill out and regroup.
Thanks for sharing about your experience with the lambs and getting to pick one and hold it. They are so precious. What a neat place to be able to do all that from start to finish. Oh, and the woven linen towels 😮 what beautiful work! 🧶
Awww, Lambs!! I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your sweater construction, plans, etc. and spreadsheets!!! I love that part of designing a pattern. Hours fly by, literally… I’m thinking, “Oh, lunchtime!” … nope, it’s time for Dinner. Oops! Totally relate to your excitement! My (over) analyzing working it’s best! Love Barbara Walker’s KFTT book, I refer to it often! Thanks for a fun episode!
What a great trade. Love hand woven towels. I can't take up that kind of weaving either. No room and I don't think I would stay with it. Awe, the sheep were adorable. Speaking of eating things with a name...I once ate a goat and his name was mower lol. So many good reasons for doing bottom up that I never considered. The color gradation is great.
I was going to mention Åsa's method and then you mentioned it. I took her knit stars class to learn her ziggurat method. Very interesting! Have you seen Jacqueline Fee's book The Sweater Workshop? I have been enjoying it and learned a great deal! She does bottom up in the round seamless construction.
Yup, I have Fee's book -- her process is based on Elizabeth Zimmermann's bottom up seamless methods. Zimmermann and Walker were doing similar groundbreaking work at the same time in the 1970s, without stepping on each other's toes.
Thanks Roxanne. Loved how joyous you were with the lambs. Must have been so much fun. Lovely episode again. BTW. I’m a spreadsheet geek too 😂😂😂. 🙋🏼🏴
Your towels are just beautiful and well deserved! Just use them. The day with the sheep would have been so fun. The sweater looks so hard to me. I will be following. Thanks Roxanne
I'm loving your top down sweater so far! Your color scheme is just lovely. I have Walker's book on top down construction but the method really clicked for me with Lyrical Knit's sweater patterns. She has fantastic knit alongs where she patiently helps everyone work out the proportions and stitch counts that work for them. Her patterns really helped me understand how all the components come together.
As usual, you have produced another very interesting video. I have watched you faithfully for 5 or 6 years. Thank you! I am in awe of the towels. Do you happen to know the fiber content?
Speaking of making room for sewing, back when you moved your office and gave us a tour you mentioned a height-adjustable folding cutting/craft table that you had seen and left room for in your closet. I thought I had remembered you actually bought one, but now I can't find that reference. (I did save the table to my Amazon wishlist, and I thought I had gotten the link from you, but maybe not?) If you did get one, how has it worked out for you? I'm also looking to get back into sewing, with limited space, and that folding cutting table does look like a great solution to the problem of large pattern pieces and not being young and flexible enough to cut things out on the floor.
It's worked out great! The biggest problem is allowing stuff to pile on it so that it doesn't get put away. It is height-adjustable, but not in a way that allows you to just adjust the height on the fly. You can set the leg height to whatever you like in order when you're putting it together, but then it's screwed in that way, and it would be a pain in the rear to adjust it.
@@RoxanneRichardson Ah, the perpetual pile... my WIPs tend to do that until I get annoyed and thin them out too. Good to know that it's basically "pick a height and stick with it" since I know I'll be using the tallest height for cutting, I'll have to account for that when it's folded and tucked away as well. Thanks for the info!
Wow. What an episode. I am reeling. I was trying to follow along with all your technical descriptions and comparisons of methods! Your sweater striping is lovely - - and it's way different than I thought. You have gotten off to a grand start and I look forward to seeing the progression. Are you still planning that lovely polo collar? Tiny lambs were adorbs.
Wow ! Your friend is such a great weaver, the cat paws ans snail trails is a lovely pattern !!! Thanks for sharing this "Year with a sheep project" I find it fascinating. Roxanne, when you build your sweater, do you use the row gauge of the unwashed swatch, taking into account how it will change with blocking ? This is question I have also when knitting from a pattern, if it says knit for 14 inches, do you have to think how many inches before blocking will be needed to equate 14 inches blocked ? Sometimes my blocked sweater fit perfectly the first time I wear it, but then with body heat and gravity over time, it becomes too long and /or too big. I find this doesn't happen so much on a small person, but the weight of a sweater is much more in bigger sizes.
I do wash my swatches, but the gauge rarely differs. If yours does, then, yes, you need to plan your sweater based on the blocked gauge, because that's going to determine the size of the finished garment. Certain yarns will be more prone to stretching out (superwash, for example), while others will hold themselves up better (woolen-spun). Knitting to firmer gauge can help to combat gravity, particularly with superwash yarns. Chainette and blown yarns are also resistant to gravity, because they are often lighter (with more yards per gram than their plied counterparts).
Hi ! I love spreadsheets too 😅 I am trying to learn how to make a sweater at my mesurements. I use the Ann Budd handy book for top down sweaters but I also would love to do it for flat knitting (to knit on my knitting machine). If you have any book or website that can help me I'm all ears ! The lambs were so cute ❤ the whole process for your sweater is so interesting. Thanks for sharing on RU-vid ❤
@@RoxanneRichardsonI also have a collection of machine knitting from the 1950, 1960 and 1970 but most of the patterns are not my size. I'd love to know how to make them my size but... Maths 😅😆 I'll figure it out, I'm still a bit new at knitting. Thanks ☺️
Hi I’m a midwife. We use knitted breasts to teach breast feeding to new mums. Showing infant attachment at the breast. They are ideal visual aids. There is an army of knitters in our locality who knit these is a variety of colours, along with new born hats.
