And here's the promised picture of the other finished thing - the Pirate Robert Hat. As with so many of these things, it's incredibly hard to take good photos of it, which means that the pattern bit is less legible on the picture than in real life, where you can actually make out the crossed sabers. Ah well.


I love that hat, and it fits perfectly. It's almost a shame that it is getting nice and warm outside these days, too warm to wear a woolen hat!

It's the time of finished things at the moment, or so it seems - I finished the gold band weaving this morning, and now I have a bit more than a metre of band. It was really fun to weave, and I am thinking of doing some more of it and maybe even sticking it in the shop...

I also did get some nice buttons for my Vignette a few days ago, and I've since finished the cardigan. Finally! So here's a quickly snapped photo of the thing in action:


It's not perfect, but it fits nicely, I like the sleeve length, and overall I'm quite happy with it. Also... there needs to be room for improvement after a first non-sock, non-hat garment, right?

If you like to knit and would like to do so in the name of science (yay!), or like to spin in the same name, there's a recent project about Knitting in Early Modern Europe looking for volunteers to do just these things. The main task at the moment is spinning yarn to specifications taken from the original items, then knitting small round swatches and fulling them. This is done to test theories on cap construction without having to knit a full cap (which is rather a lot of work compared to knitting a few smaller swatches).

To join the KEME volunteer team, you will be required to fill out an online form, and you can get instructions for spinning and knitting from team member Rosalind. Read more about the project in their first newsletter, and their second one. (These also contain contact data for Rosalind - I'd rather not get her extra amounts of spam by posting her mail address right here...)

Feel free to tell a friend or three if you think they'd be interested, too!

 

Now, finally, after hanging out for a while, they have been soaked and patted in form and stuck with pins:


My very first sweater. Once it's dry, I get to sew it together (exciting!) and then I'll get to find me some nice buttons for it. Yay!

(It's Vignette, modified a bit regarding the fit.)

I'm not spinning today, for a change - the yarn is still in transit, and once it has arrived (the two-ply to be woven together with some variants of the yarn for the next batch), we can discuss what I spin next, and how exactly regarding thickness and twist.

So instead, today there was finally time to sort out some paperwork, pay bills, make some space on the desk and now I will have to do the beloved (hah!) book-keeping and tax stuff. One day I will be rich enough to have somebody do that for me. (Maybe. Probably, by then, I'll have come to terms with it and have become so efficient at dealing with that stuff that I won't need somebody to do it for me anymore...)

Anyway, while I am doing stuff that is not spinning and not knitting, here's a picture of the current state of the knitting (which I'd rather be doing):

I have a Pirate Roberts on the needles, and I'm halfway through the pattern bit, so almost finished. Here it is only a few rows into the pattern part:


Also, the Vignette cardigan is almost finished. It needs blocking now - though I have discovered that one of the sleeves, due to Weird Yarn Shenanigans, looks much more pink than the rest of the pieces, so I'm considering knitting it again (from a different skein, obviously):


Aaaaand that being blogged, now I'm finally out of excuses not to get started with the bookkeeping stuff!

Here's the other kind of progress report - from the knitting front:


This is the front left panel of "Vignette", which means I am approaching the day of having made a non-sock and non-hat garment. It knits up rather quickly, and I'm all happy about that! (There's the sleeves still to do, though. Those will probably take an astounding amount of time...)

I really like the pattern so far - having the little simple lace panel does add enough interest to the thing, especially in combination with the increases and decreases for the shaping - I have modified the pattern a little bit to be more hourglass-shaped, by mashing the original Vignette pattern up with one for a fitted plain cardi in the gauge I am knitting, so it's all rather exciting, especially since a thing knit in parts is hard to try on... soon though, soon I will be able to see how it turned out!

Continuing from yesterday, for your amusement wants and procrastination needs - more links! To things!

The Atlantic has a piece about how the current incentives and structures make science worse, not better - The Inevitable Evolution of Bad Science.

Textilis has a post about Appliqué embroideries on medieval textiles.

If you're looking for a bit more to read, Isabella von Holstein's thesis "A light stable isotope (C, N, H, O) approach to identifying movement of medieval textiles in North West Europe" is available online here.

A Scottish lacemaking company is using modern computer technology to keep their looms running - CAD instead of punch cards.

If all that makes you want a sonic screwdriver, here's a knitting pattern for one. Functionality not guaranteed - unfortunately!