crooked tines

"With genetic test results back from U.C. Davis Laboratories of toe-hair samples from each side of his body, I am excited to share that this sheep

🌟 IS INDEED a CHIMERA 🌟

His black mouflon side is a genetically different individual from his black gray side. The lab ran the test twice just to be sure!

Oh but wait, THERE IS MORE!

He is ALSO a she!

The black mouflon side is male.

The black gray side is female!

What I can tell you beyond these test results, is that this beautiful creature successfully bred four solid patterned ewes this winter that produced a total of 9 lambs, of which all were either solid pattern or mouflon pattern; 5 rams and 4 ewes. "

Octo-Girl／蛸乙女

The Octo-Girl print is available in my Etsy shop! 

*Please note* U.S. orders ship once a week on TUESDAYS due to limited access to a faraway drop-off location.

Starry socks, finally complete!! I started these back in February, but got waylaid by top surgery and other projects - so happy they're done! I picked black and white because I'd just finished playing 'In Stars and Time' ⭐

Pattern: 'Stars in the Evening Sky Socks' by Cindy Craft

So far I've only mixed up the main batch of colors, but I'll split them up and create a palatte of tints and shades once I have access to a scale again.

I don't have any fancy tools and have been blending the fiber by hand, so it's probably best I have a forced break for the sake of my fingers. Once I'm done I should have a very useful set of 57 2g swatches to play with! (Plus 5 more for a set of grayscale swatches)

The ratios are presented in the same order as the wool swatches in the photo above it. I didn't simplify any of the ratios so you'll have to deal with 2:2s instead of 1:1s, oops.

Plus some pure black and white mixes to compare to my cyan/magenta/yellow midtone gray tint and shade.

One category I've been exploring is lace, because I always seem to revert to lace. Knitted lace often has lines of decreases, which distort the vertical columns of stitches into emphasized diagonals. Here is a small swatch of a lace diamond pattern, fairly bog-standard except for the cable crosses at the points of the diamonds. The top half of each diamond shape is framed by its decrease lines, while the bottom half grows vertically out of the YO increases.

By using some False Decreases, it's possible to add diagonal framing lines to the lower edges of the diamonds as well. Now they look more symmetrical, and have a nice kind of crispy-edges effect.

Here are charts for both stitch patterns:

Aikama has good tutorial videos for warping up and weaving with both simple band heddle and pick up pattern heddle! They are in Finnish but I think the visuals are clear enough even if you don't know the language.

https://m.youtube.com/@aikamafinland

Also this blog has a rudimentary heddle band pattern generator that I haven't had a chance to play with yet but I'd be curious to see if someone else finds it useful

https://withmyhandsdream.com/pirtanauha-generaattori/

It's still a work in progress, and quickly spiraled out of control into a fully illustrated book (oops), but here are a few pages you might find useful that explain how plainweave patterns work with a rigid heddle:

Apologies if the wording doesn't make perfect sense, it's still a somewhat rough draft textwise.

As for the double slotted heddles for baltic pick up, I found this video super helpful when I was first learning how to use them:

So far I've only mixed up the main batch of colors, but I'll split them up and create a palatte of tints and shades once I have access to a scale again.

I don't have any fancy tools and have been blending the fiber by hand, so it's probably best I have a forced break for the sake of my fingers. Once I'm done I should have a very useful set of 57 2g swatches to play with! (Plus 5 more for a set of grayscale swatches)

The ratios are presented in the same order as the wool swatches in the photo above it. I didn't simplify any of the ratios so you'll have to deal with 2:2s instead of 1:1s, oops.