will this one be the charm?

geezzz. undone again. this time i'm not going to enter  yet another war with shaping, i'm knitting a long 190 needle knit  to cut and sew the top.ordeal time bye,bye. on with life.
never expected linen to be so badly behaved in knitting. maybe it's this particular linen.








neki desu

partial to lilies

i buy them every friday at the market and they keep the house smelling heavenly.such a pleasure to have morning coffee with sunlight hitting the table and that scent.

 nevertheless their stamens stain  your clothes if you brush past them and it is difficult to get rid of such stain.

you see where i am going right?

on cotton

on a scrap of silk organza.

was too lazy to prepare soy milk, but it is essential.what i'll do is seal the color in some way after brushing off the stamens.

there is going to be stitching  too.

neki desu

the poetry of threads

reiko sudo, arai junichi,chiaki maki, michiko uehara and all the textile stars of japan
have a great weekend,







neki desu

devorè revisited

looks pretty unappealing oi? wire knitted  and linen knitted together in a technique called plating.

each yarn knits on one side so you have a *double knit *the technique presented some issues that i'm sure practice will sooth.also tested a thicker cotton yarn with the wire at the top.being thicker, the cotton covers the wire better.

linen and mono-filament, my latest best friend.

 the devorè part using fiber etch.

 the linen mono-filament needs more tweaking in terms of temperature.if hot enough to dissolve the linen it will melt the mono filament :(

wire presents no problem. however the frayed edges need some treatment to appease the architects surrounding me. or not. next will be aging the wire.

had tried devorè on some woven silk linen pieces time ago and on commercially woven silk linen fabric.

 all the knitting activity is because i'm waiting for more heddles to arrive.the thinner the yarn i use the shorter i am on heddles. and to think my dobby loom is just 70 ms wide.

on the life in general department started aqua gym this week.quite a workout!

and got great tickets for the opera.thrilled that in my new town one can enjoy opera without having to sell either the firstborn or the spouse or both.

neki desu

star of the show

serger mono-filament thread, 17,000 meters of it.wonderfully liberating as it won't run out at least in this lifetime-famous last words.
 sampling like crazy and learning how to work with it.

                                                                                       
                                                                               
your regular stockinette, now you see it,after you cast off you don't see it

keeping up with the wire trend, too bad this one
which knits very well is coated and does not patinize.

with metallic yarn. next step will be trying to zap it with the heat gun.

using a punch card pattern. it flows well from the cone, nothing jams in the k machine.
















neki desu

more on wire and patinas

my take using ammonia, acetic acid and uniodized salt. had to use glacial acetic acid as i just have balsamic vinegar in the house and that doesn't cut it.unless the copper wire knit doesn't get sprayed with a sealant it will lose some of the patina, but i really don't mind.

another sample. i used rock salt because that's what i had at home and i think it gives a grittier grainier patina.

now i can put this knowledge in my bag of tricks!

rant alert :

 it is evident that you get what you pay for. however a little consideration just for civility's sake doesn't hurt.

delicious got sold( for a pittance) and the new owner did not have the courtesy to notify users of the new scheme. one  just had to be into the tech blog groove to know about it.then after the acquisition a brief note appeared when one logged in

the bookmarks  one has collected over the years are *safe* god knows till when.

they can be accessed, but it's for reading purposes only.one can't download them unless one subscribes to the new owner- platform .which means users  and their saved links have become captives.

end of rant















neki desu

the stencil making

the preparation of dyes, the dyeing.the japanese way of honoring  process.
have a good weekend.







neki desu