Yes, on October 8, 2002, I embarked upon this blogging adventure.  The first six months or so was actually a mailing list that I established for the 100-odd people who wanted to follow my travels through Southeast Asia…then I moved to Blogger, and then again to WordPress.  It’s been nine years now and loving every minute of it!

Meanwhile, I have not been idle…all three blanks for the dark panels are now knitted and dyed.  (One still needs to be rinsed out; the other two are dry and ready to unravel.)  Here’s a pic of the first two blanks for the dark panels:

I’ve spread out part of one blank so you can see the knitted nature of it.

What’s next?  Tomorrow I’m going to knit up the final two blanks (for the facings/collar), and start weaving up the final bright panel.  Next week I will focus on getting the dark panels and the facings/collar panels woven.  I’m hoping to have all the fabric woven by end of next weekend, following which they will need to be overdyed using fiber-reactive dyes.  With luck I should have all the fabric ready by the next time I see Sharon!

After two mind-numbing days, I’ve knitted two of the three blanks I need for  the dark panels.  As soon as I finish knitting the third (hopefully tomorrow!), I’ll take them out and dye them in the darker colors.

Which I have selected, starting from this puddle of samples:

and reducing to these nine colors:

I’m still considering the bluish purple that is in the middle of the bottom row.  It’s really too blue for autumn purple, but overdyed with a warm wine red, I think it’ll work out nicely.  I’m also debating the red at top left; it may be too assertive, fighting with the brighter panel for attention.  On the other hand, since the collar will be purple, I don’t want to start in the purples, so red may work out just fine.

As a reminder, these colors are going into the darker panel:

Off to bed!  I need a break from all that boring knitting.  Tomorrow I’ll be fresh again, and can finish knitting up the last blank.  And then, it’s off to dye!

I was explaining the Autumn Splendor project to a coworker today, and mentioned that I’d been working on it since April.  He said, “Six months and it isn’t done yet?  Don’t you get bored, working on the same thing for months at a time?”

The short answer is that no, I don’t.  In fact, quite the reverse: I find long projects fascinating precisely because they are long; they give me time and space to explore different ideas.  A weekend project, by way of contrast, is far more boring because there is rarely any meaty content to a weekend project.  If I can get it on and off the loom that quickly, it’s because I already know exactly what to do…either because I’m following a recipe or because I’ve done that kind of project a bazillion times before.  In short, I can only do a quick project if I’m not exploring, and because it’s the exploration that interests me, the quicker it is, the more boring it becomes.

That is not to say that a longer project couldn’t bore me.  When I used to knit, sweaters were a real challenge because they involved doing the same thing over and over again, without learning much.  Socks were easier because they were shorter projects and I could try out new ideas faster.  I tried a crocheted tablecloth once, and that was a  total disaster.  The key, to me, is to keep myself learning and experimenting through the entire project.  This typically involves doing a variety of things – with Autumn Splendor, I’ve been through devore, cross-dyeing, drafting my own sewing patterns, etc. – all new (or relatively new) to me and always changing.  I rarely do the same thing more than two days in a row.

Sometimes the learning can be subtle.  I don’t mind weaving long lengths of yardage in fine threads, even though it’s “the same thing over and over again”, because I use the time to fine-tune my weaving technique – how I hold the shuttle, the rhythm of my hands as they move from throwing the shuttle to beating to catching the shuttle on the other side.  I have not got this perfected yet, and I doubt that anyone who does not weave lots of yardage can get enough practice to achieve a really smooth “beat”.  It usually takes me at least half an hour to “settle in” and another half-hour to achieve a perfect rhythm, and even then it’s not consistent.  It takes sustained weaving time over several days to really feel like I “get it” – time that I wouldn’t get if I weren’t weaving yardage with fine threads.  So I enjoy it very much.  It’s like doing T’ai Chi – aiming for that internal body awareness and unified motion of the whole body, fine-tuning slowly as I go.

And, in case you’re wondering where I am in my dyeing/weaving, I finished unraveling the blank yesterday morning (my, that went fast!) and am about 18″ into the weaving:

I like it so far!  There is color variation, but it is subtle, and the color transitions are coming out nicely.  There were some ominous lighter patches towards the bottom of the blank, which may not look so good, but I’m hoping I can adjust it somewhat in the second dyeing.  We’ll see what it looks like, first.