patterns and spindles

Monday, December 31, 2012

Looking for the name - design preview

СI'm looking for the name for this shawl. ravelry folk voted for 5-circle gossamer. the modern crescent came down to second.
Here it is
Name is needed in English.






Planned January release.

Here is some inspiration for you...
Don Cossack chorus
Очи Черные


Снегурочка.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Spinning comfort zone

Spinning comfort zone for a wheel... does it exist...
left small ball  -  Shetland supreme, right small skein - regular cobweb.
Looking for a portable wheel that would help spinning this in a comfort zone, meaning in here neither wheel or fiber are pushed to their limits, they are placed in a comfort zone spinning.
Can it be spun finer - the answer is yes. did you have a case When you choose not to spin finer?
Because the other yarn feels more right. Fiber is white goat down for ones who is curious what is it.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

About design once more

Orenburg shawls... a ravelry member asked a question about a rather simple pattern from a wester designer. The pattern name http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/russian-lace-scarf-to-knit is Russian Lace Scarf to Knit.
The pattern itself follows it's own path. Not Orenburg lace tradition. It's not done in traditions of Russian lace construction when it comes to it. The pattern does it's own lace implementation and the method of construction. However the question of the ravelry member was to me as she has started her very first Orenburg style lace scarf. The question was about
"Row 2 and all even-numbered rows” knit, working k1,p1, into each YO twice wherever there is a yo twice in the previous row."
That somewhat picked up my interest to look at that pattern closer. Later more details in the quotes from the pattern was provided, at first I thought the designer used a look of a Russian snowflake and made it using some of Shetland elements that can look similar to Orenburg lace (both are geared for gossamer threads) and executed differently when it comes the the lace elements themselves, some of shetlan lace elements do have double yo in them from some of the books I've seeing about this kind of the lace.
It the follows it's own path in the lace execution, neither Shetland or Orenburg it seems. The lace resembles Orenburg snowflake and the peas, however, it's neither of them to be honest. Orenburg lace does not have double yo, nor it has pearl stitches.

How this look would be done in Orenburg lace. Let's take a  снежинка на горохе - 'snowflake on peas' example...
The layout and the alignment of the lace vertically and horizontally would be 6 teeth scarf, the 3.5 teeth tall lace element. That's if I'd make that kind of a look like the scarf pictured has.
Snowflake is constructed of rite and left diagonals leaning into the center and strawbery element in 4 corners. I put a single diagonal element in the center for the balance.
Now, the corners - those are filled with peas. What the pattern in question has are not peas if one looks at it carefully
these are peas in thick lace yarn, so one can see what is happening in the wrong row when these are made, no pear stitches is happening

larger hole is not done with double yarn over as one can see from this.

the full layout chart of Orenburg snowflake with peas corners (wide border)  turned into a scarf scarf  will look like so




overlap middle snowflake with  this one
for some reason snipping tool is not cooperating today.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

White down

It's time to get back to fibers. white down... tubs...

and the fiber animal, yea, I've got helper

needs to be done to produce this






there is more to Russian empire then one may think. as some figured, it;s a series on things. A bit more that that. It's back in time and forward. It's my heritage. Through time, wars, revolution, Red terror, Gulag.
And I've got helpers. Of different kinds. It was not one person deal in the past. It will not be this time.
Some of them I miss dearly as they have past, some left memries.

Настало время вернуться к уху. Контейнеры сортировки, чтобы получить нужное каество пуха.
Как наверное некоторые догадались в Российской Империи больше чем одна работа. Это шак в прошлое и в будущее. Это мое наследие. Сквозь врекмя, войны и революции, Красный терор и Гулаг.
У меня есть помошники. Разные помошники... Это не соло в прошлом, это не будет соло в этот раз. Некоторых уже нет, только память осталась.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

It's being a while

It's being a while since I've posted. High workload and such...
This is a little bit of the addition to the previous post. A better photo of a custom AG doll and the embroidered dress
Lace garment for this... undecided, first the color has an ego, second the type of golden elements in teh hand embroidery has a tendency to snug of added garment/veil. Do I like working with natural stones, yes, I like that, jewelry making is fun :) so is clothing making, and 1/4 of human size sure helps....

Here is another one in gold, mama and me enjoyed some sewing time.


Photos a credited to my good friend Lena, man I wish I had 1000+ pro light, that is cool set up.

Sister dress for another time period  http://www.etsy.com/listing/116814692/american-girl-mid-1800-th-style-golden?ref=pr_shop



On the fibers side of things... yes there was another package from Russia, when I'll have more time I'll blog about how does Orenshal yarn lands on a local market and things of that nature; how different the fiber is that comes from 2 places in the same region or about cross breeding of 2 well known goat lines in Russia in Stalin's time. Stay tuned.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Turquoise.Regency and Med-evil





An interesting fabric, quite challenging. Chiffon, embroidery. Turquoise beads (it turns out another stone can be used and imitate turquoise, who knew :) ). I'll be modifying Guinevere outfit. will get more embroidery... if I'll get there where I want it with the hoop, otherwise... that will be interesting. Mother-daughter project

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Colonial dresses

So, these dolls patterns appear to be 1/4 of human patterns. and thicker at the middle due to the body style. This is original AG Felicity x-mass dress. made of 'bolonia' like material (we used to have rain coats made from it when I was a kid. When I've seen this AG fabric application for the first time... wow I was not expecting these fabric selection, looks good in photos and quite durable for a kid to play with.). We took evening dress fabric, crepe. Laces ad here we are.

The dresses are put over AG shift - undergarment of the period.
Mother-daughter project. We 2 may as well have some good old fun sewing. And I get to design the dresses :) just like in good old days making stuff back in Russia, yeah... we did make a gown or two :).... lot's more than that to be honest... and dolls are always there to try-fit :)
  Here we go


under-petticoat on. 


gown on.


petticoat on



details





and more detail





So how did we do compared to the original? fine print cotton and crepe dresses.


The custom purple dresses are for sale. e-mail me.


Edit to add the outside photo with the shawl so you can see it now with light purple travel dress, blue holiday dress and custom deep purple dress.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Small shawl 1 is done and a little bit of the yarn talk

In this blog post small doll shawl yarn and the outfit was shown.
Since then I visited the vendor's store for the first time and found some useful hair care techniques. So couple dolls were set up like so. Water, shaping=synthetic material memory.

And the shawl was done. And I caved and picked a doll in rather nice condition out of a consignment store. I think I just happen to like the look of this particular one.
So, this is the gradient yarn on blue. The shawl is 2 piece, 3 looks.
Shawl alone pinned way







Hooded. the shawl top has small loops enough to put the ribbon through and the shawl can be styled as a cape in several ways, this is one of them






Now... The hair talks and the yarn talk.
Hair after several days in the shaping
I probably will do more curls on Samantha doll hair to have as it looked originally, maybe, I like this styling somewhat better, will see...


Other doll talk...
more little things storage that can go on a shelf... which is not done yet.

 
The yarn talk... Gossamer yarns versus lace weight. How do they look like.
Let's see in doll's hands, easier to take a picture of, does not require jumping around bogen tripod as something less havy I can just trip over and make a nasty equipment mess.
Here we have Felicity doll in the cape lilac-pink gradient wool plied with silk spun as a lace weight yarn. The small chest is used to keep some shoes and other small easy to loose and hard to keep the track of doll size things. The underskirt in the making will go under Victorian Samantha dress to have it shaped better (Felicity lilac dress has an underskirt).
And the dolls are holding yarns of Orenburg, the gossamer yarns. Can you see it?
Not yet. The yarns are 2-ply yarns. Maybe now it's better?
somewhat... how about closer
I do not know if I can get in my ligh in the middle of the night the actual 2-ply. more close up
here is gray 2-ply yarn next to lilac-pink gradient wool yarn. See the difference between gossamer Orenburg yarn and the lace weight?
The gray yarn is a wheel spun.
This wheel.
that has some of the single I'm spinning on it.
the white yarn is spindle spun Orenburg yarn
it has tighter ply than I do and I'm quite impatient to see how this will be in the shawl. This is more about the experience exchange among Orenburg yarn spinners. This is from the lady taught by Olga Fedorova who is her successor at the school where she has taught. I'm now quite far from my home land, but we can do yarn talk. the yarns speak.
This is how the wheel spun yarn looks in the shawl
these are the yarns side by side

they are plied with same silk

What else did come from back home? 4-th Irina's book


And spindles
next to what is called here abroad student lace spindle size (10gr range student spindle i not quite common thing here.. all spindles are made in Russia, Orenburg region). Smaller spindle is not a maker's joke and not a shawl pin. It's a spinning spindle. something not quite common these days as this kind of work is not done these days on routine bases.

this photo is from Irina Bushuhina book

I'll show these things of old during my 2012 fall classes in Boulder, CO at Shuttles Spindles and Skeins.
They did exist, they are not quite lost, They are hard to restore, not impossible so. Did the shawl come from back home? Yes they did, just takes time to come buy with the funds :).
 Architect salary helps (nope I'm not a housewife :) , I'd love to be, but I'm not ).