The Bookworm's Knitting

Insane

2010-09-07T21:37:00.000-04:00

I’ve officially gone insane. This might just be the millionth time I’ve said that on this blog. Today, I’m specifically talking about the slight obsession I’ve had with Rosemary Hill’s shawl patterns. Remember me talking about working on them in my last post? I had finished Bitterroot and was working on Brandywine. Well, I finished the Brandywine shawl on Sept 5th. It was started on August 31st!!!! And the shawl I’m working on now? Merope by Rosemary Hill.

The only modification I did on the Brandywine pattern was work 16 repeats of Chart B instead of 15. Actually, that modification would have really messed me up if I didn’t have another skein of the same yarn hanging around. For the last 5 stitches, I had to do a russian join with leftover cast on tail. Luckily, I did have 2 skeins of the yarn so I wasn’t stressing too much.

For the Brandywine, I used Kraemer Yarns’s Sterling Silk & Silver in a royal blue that has slight flecks of silver in it. Most of the time yarns that have metallic or angelina in them makes for a scratchy yarn. This stuff I could definitely imagine making socks with it though you would hide away all of the pretty sparkle in your shoes.

Do you want to hear about the next shawl? I’ve known that I wanted to knit Merope ever since it was first released. I absolutely loved everything about the shawl. The little eyelets in the middle of the shawl and the diamond design on the sides really sparked my interest. A couple of days ago, when I read the story behind the shawl, I knew the Sterling Silk and Silver yarn would be perfect for it. The silver looks like stars on a night sky.

This shawl was started on September 4th and today, September 7th, I’m 1.5 rows and a bind off away from being finished!!!! It’s a little bit insane how quickly these shawls have been going. It’s not even as if all I’ve done is knit this weekend. I’d say that I’ve devoted pretty much the same amount of time to them as I normally would during a week. I guess when my knitting mojo came back, it came back with a vengeance! Of course, I’ll probably take a long break from knitting anything after all of this craziness! :)

Shawls and more shawls

2010-09-04T18:55:00.000-04:00

Ever since finishing all of my state fair projects, I’ve been feeling a little “blah” about my various knitting projects. I think the weather could be a factor because it has been 90-bazillion degrees for the last month. You just don’t feel like knitting a wool sweater in such hot weather. But then, at the end of August, I was bitten (hard) by the lace bug. Since August 27th, I’ve knit an entire shawl, blocked it, photographed it and am 75% through another one. It’s actually quite astonishing.

The first shawl, Bitterroot, was published in the Winter 2009 Knitty. Knitting started on August 27th and I was finished with it by September 1st. The pattern is an extremely fast knit and you can memorize it very quickly. Rosemary has written a shawlette and full shawl version of the pattern. My Bitterroot is the full version but, because I did it in laceweight, it isn’t incredibly large. I’m very much in a “let’s put beads on EVERYTHING” place right now so this shawl was perfect.

This shawl is intended for a friend as a wedding present. She normally doesn’t wear a whole lot of bright colors so I originally planned to use a different yarn and a different pattern. But when she showed me her wedding colors, she had chosen a lovely pink and cream. I just happened to have the perfect yarn and beads in the stash!

The yarn is a lovely pink laceweight alpaca that was naturally dyed by Earthly Hues. I picked this yarn up from Tricia at a local craft show and this skein has lasted forever! So far I’ve made a cowl and a shawl from it but there is still enough left for a whole other shawl. The beads I used are pearl seed beads which were in my stash. Normally I don’t have as much of a contrast between yarn and bead color but I like the finished product a lot.

The second shawl is the Brandywine shawl. This pattern is absolutely fantastic. You cast on the bottom point and work your way up to the neck. This shawl is made out of a fingering weight yarn and it is simply FLYING. I started knitting it during my lunchbreak on August 31st because I was on the last 2 rows of Bitterroot and didn’t want to run out of lace to work on. As of lunchtime today, I’m 75% finished with it.

I don’t have a fantastic picture of the shawl because it is still in that yucky, not blocked lace blob. The yarn is Sterling Silk & Silver by Kraemer Yarns. It is a wool, silk, nylon and silver blend. The silver really isn’t scratchy and I can definitely imagine using this yarn for socks though it would be a waste in your shoes. A couple of years ago, I bought 2 skeins of it at Knitter’s Connection to make a shawl. Did I have a shawl in mind? Of course not. Then I came across the Brandywine shawl and knew I found the right pattern. The silver flecks really make my Brandywine look interesting.

Both shawls are designed by Rosemary Hill and I think the next one that I knit will be by her, too. I think I might be a junkie.

Even more state fair pictures

2010-08-04T07:50:00.004-04:00

I took tons of picture at the state fair and thought I would share some more after last post. So enjoy!

Einstein ducks!

Goat of the mountain!

felted items

leather working

duct tape flowers!

duct tape sculptures

Do you see the little bluebirds?

This is all hand quilted!!!

Again, hand quilted!!!!

Isn’t this table amazing?! Everything on the top of the cake is edible. EVERYTHING even the wee little egg shells and yolks!

Arrrgh!

State Fair results

2010-08-03T09:47:00.001-04:00

As you might remember, I went crazy this year and entered 7 different projects into the state fair. Next year, someone needs to remind me not to be over-ambitious! It was fun to see everything displayed there but was a lot of work. Mom and I went over on Sunday to see how I had done and to watch the fleece judging. If I had cash on me, I would have probably come home with a fleece. Ah, next year :)

The silk lace shawl I made for my friend’s wedding gift came in second in the lace category!

The competition was really tough (and beautiful!). This next picture is blurry but it should give you an idea. The pink stole to the right of the display case had crystal beads along the edges. It was really lovely.

This year the handspun skeins seemed to have more entries than last year. I didn’t pay too much attention last year though so my memory could be faulty. They did display things differently this year. This year there were 2 rows of wrapped up skeins.

I got a second place for my purple silk yarn whose roving I bought at Maryland this year. The category was silk yarns with no weight specified.

For the fingering weight category, I entered my Red Berries yarn whose roving I bought at SOAR in 2009.

One lady who entered multiple skeins into the competition had a really neat idea. She spun up the same roving into multiple weights. On her details card, she said she planned to weave a shawl with all of the yarns. I think the finished project would look really nice. I hope that she enters it into the weaving category next year!

My felted mittens also got a first place! Have I mentioned how much I liked the pattern? If I trusted my ability to figure out felting to knitting ratios, I’d be tempted to come up with a matching hat.

This is a picture of one of the displays of felted items. Do you see that rug to the right? It was a gorgeous wet felted rug. The hanging above it was needle felted.

Some of the miscellaneous knitted objects were also in the felted case. Can you see the knitted veggie basket in the corner? Adorable! And perfect for the fair.

The multi-directional scarf I made with Noro Silk Garden Sock won 3rd in the accessories category! I was really impressed by the way that they displayed the items. If you listen to the podcast, Sticks and String, he tells horror stories about how lace items are hung wrong side out or balled up, heavy sweaters were suspended by safety pins and fishing line, things scrunched up so badly that you can’t tell what the pattern is. Well, there is no such difficulty at the state fair. They did a really good job.

The sweater category had the best (and most!) competition, hands-down. There were sweaters all over the place. Mom and I even found some non-placing sweaters completely across the room in a doll art case because there were so many entries. They just couldn’t fit in only one case.

Do you see that grey one in the right hand corner? That’s my Twist Cardigan. Frankly, after seeing the competition, I’m floored that I even placed. I have absolutely NO idea why that Dale of Norway sweater didn’t get a ribbon.

What probably set mine apart was the different techniques I used: the tubular cast ons and bind offs and the grosgrain ribbon on the buttonbands. In June, a woman who used to judge handspinning and fleece selecting at the state fair talked to my fiber guild. She said one year she watched the knitting being judged and the 2 main things that set an item apart were the finishing (weaving in ends, seaming, etc) and different/challenging techniques.

If you are counting, you might have realized that is 6 projects mentioned and not 7. So what about the 7th, my handspun Tangled Yoke Cardigan?

I’m very happy :)

State Fair 2010

2010-07-20T19:04:00.002-04:00

It’s time again for the desperate rush to finish all of my state fair projects. I’m not sure what happened (I blame registering late at night and thinking I can complete more than I did) but I committed myself to 7 different classes (plus 2 classes for the local fair). I entered things in the felt category, handspinning category, and knitting category.

I have 2 sweaters that I’m submitting. The first is my handspun sweater, the Tangled Yoke Cardigan, spun from a local woman’s CVM sheep. I worked on this sweater for the Knitting Olympics but was a button band away from finishing it when the closing ceremonies happened. I decided to do a grosgrain ribbon backing for the buttonbands. “Why?” you may ask. Well, It’s a great way to put an excellent finishing touch to your sweater. I just like the idea that my buttonband won’t gap and make it look like the sweater is too small! Have you seen the grosgrain ribbon video tutorial put together by the Knitmore Girls?

The second sweater is the Twist Cardigan. The yarn I am using is Berroco Vintage in a lovely grey. This yarn is a superwash wool/acrylic blend that is knitting up really well. The finished fabric feels really nice. I had major problems with the shoulder seams of this sweater because that is where the cable is so you have the combination of the knit and purl stitches. None of my seaming attempts looked very good. Oh, well, running out of time so it is what it is!

Another thing that has been giving me trouble is the bind off edges. I did a tubular cast on and bind off on each edge. I got the tutorial for the cast on edge from Ysolda Teague’s website. It was super easy and I’ll definitely be doing it again in the future. The bind off isn’t strictly called a tubular bind off but an invisible bind off from Interweave Knits, Fall 2008. It is like doing a really long Kitchener Stitch. The finished look is nice but it felt like it took forever to do.

Mom helped me on Sunday by sewing the grosgrain ribbon onto the Twist and attaching the buttons. She sewed the grosgrain ribbon on in half the time it took me to do the same thing. She’s definitely better at handsewing!

The next project I’m entering is for the knitted accessories category. It is a multidirectional scarf out of Noro Silk Garden Sock that I knit back in 2009. The Silk Garden makes a nice looking scarf but I don’t think I would like it as socks.

Old picture of scarf

I was torn between adding a fringe or not to the scarf. Finally, I decided that it doesn’t look finished without a fringe. So I added a 3 inch fringe to each edge with a color change on each side.

What else is left? Oh, yeah, a lace shawl. I have one shawl, a Swallowtail Shawl, finished for one friend (it was a tinsy bit late for her wedding). I let my friend know that she would be getting the shawl after the fair was over. It is knit from a cone of silk yarn that I picked up at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2008. Originally, this yarn was supposed to be another stole but I ran out with a foot of knitting left to do. I frogged that and started a Swallowtail instead.

I also entered a pair of mittens into the felted knitted item category. You should be amazed that I could actually find these mittens because I felted them back in November. I’ve loved the look of this mitten pattern since I saw them at least 3 (or more) years ago. This is the second pair I have made with this pattern. This second attempt turned out much better because I used the correct weight of yarn (it’s amazing the difference between chunky and worsted!). This pair is made out of a dark blue Cascade 220 tweed. They felted down to the perfect size and I’ll definitely be using them this winter!

I almost forgot to talk about my handspun skein entries! My first handspun skein is the Red Berries yarn I finished back in March. The 6 oz of wool came from SOAR 2009 and I’m pretty impressed that it was spun up so quickly. Usually it languishes a lot longer. It is a 3-ply fingering weight that I’m planning to knit up into socks whenever it get around to it.

The other yarn is from a 100% silk bump that I bought at this year’s Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It is 2 ounces of beautiful purple silk. I started spinning it first on one of the trindles I bought this year but then finished spinning the singles and plying on the wheel. The finished yarn is a nice 2-ply heavy laceweight. The yarn has a tiny bit of barberpoling (light and dark color spiraling together) but I like the way it looks overall.

You might be wondering why, when I took that photography class, there aren’t pictures of every finished entry. The reason for that is I turned everything in at 4:30pm and the submission deadline was 5pm. There wasn’t much time for taking pictures in there! I’ll take pictures of everything in the display cases at the fair.

Photographing Your Fiber with Franklin Habit

2010-06-22T21:26:00.011-04:00

I took a photography class with Franklin Habit on Friday at Knitter’s Connection and learned TONS. The first and foremost is that the user manual to your camera is a useful tool! Who knew you could learn so much looking at the manual?

First, Franklin explained basics about cameras, how they take pictures, and some basics about color. Color is especially important to all of us because we all want to show off the yarns we’ve used and their true color. If you take a picture under florescent lights, for example, your photo is going to have a greenish cast to it. If your picture was taken in a wall with bright blue walls, the light is going to reflect off of the walls and give your picture a blu-ish cast.

One really great feature on your camera is the white balance feature. That means, even if you are in a greenish light and use the white balance, you can still get a decent picture. On my camera, you have to go to the white balance setting, picture of a piece of white paper (I used the back page of my camera’s manual) so the camera knows what is white in that light, and take your newly white balanced photo. This picture was taken next to the window in the lobby area without white balancing anything.

This one was. See the difference? I’m definitely seeing this setting being used frequently in the future!

Next, Franklin showed us how to construct a simple light box. His suggestion, if you want to build one yourself, was to google for directions because there are so many good ones out there. In the future, I’m definitely going to make one.

In the light box, you can control exactly how much light is falling on your project. If you want only one side illuminated to really pick up the stitch definition, you can make that happen without having to wait for the sun to move. You can also have light illuminating both sides of your project so one side of your sweater isn’t entirely in darkness and the other lit up.

Classmate's sweater

Another feature of the camera we were playing with is the aperture or lens opening of the camera and depth of field. The term “depth of field” refers to how much of the picture is in focus. You can use the depth of field to your advantage by highlighting only a small portion and blurring the fore- and backgrounds of the photo. Such a picture is said to have a “shallow depth of field.” This is especially good if you want to show off something like a button band but not the sweater as a whole. If you want the sweater as a whole, you would use a deep focus depth of field. (clear as mud yet?)

You can adjust the depth of field in your photo by adjusting the aperture diameter of your camera. The aperture diameter is measured like this: f2.8, f5, f16, etc. It’s a little counter-intuitive (a little?!) but the smaller the number (f2.8), the bigger lens opening is and you will have a shallower depth of field. So if you wanted everything in the photo in focus, you would use f16. You will have to check out your camera’s manual to see what all you can and can’t do with your camera. It’s just amazing to me that my “point and shoot” camera can have such advanced tools at its disposal.

I found what Franklin said about lace to be really interesting. He told us that lace is especially hard to photograph because it needs motion to make it look beautiful. Now, I don’t mean it has to be swirling in the air while you are taking the picture. Rather, it shouldn’t be laying there flat on the table without any shadows, folds, drape, etc. It needs those shadows to give it depth. Without the depth, your lace will look dead or drab so you should either hang it off of something or prop it up to create shadows. You can also use the aperture settings to enhance certain motifs of the lace while having the rest of the project out of focus. That will cause the eye to be drawn to the motif. As you can tell, I had a lot of fun with my lace shawl!

One of the things about photography that Franklin stressed was everything takes time and practice. He compared photography with learning how to knit socks. If you only pick up your socks every 2 months and knit a couple of rows, you aren’t going to learn how to do socks. He stressed that you should practice your photography skills and expect to take time with your photo shoots. If you point and click your photo, it will look like a point and click! You might have to take tons of pictures to get that one perfect one.

Our Knitting Heritage Perpetuated by Franklin Habit

2010-06-17T21:30:00.015-04:00

I went to the lecture about knitting history last night at the Knitter’s Connection. The introductory powerpoint slide said, “Our Knitting Heritage Perpetuated by Franklin Habit.” The talk was very interesting and I learned lots about the first knitting patterns (boy, am I glad I live now!), knitting needle gauges, proprietary needle technology, the Martha Stewart of the Victorian age, and terminology. I’ll give you a quick rundown and recommend that, if you ever have a chance, listen to Franklin talk about this subject (well, any subject really!).

First, did you know knitting patterns are relatively late to the game? Before the first patterns were published in the Victorian age, patterns passed directly from knitter to knitter. Or, if you wanted to remember how a lace stitch went, you created a lace sampler. You would cast on however many stitches would make a nice pattern repeat, knit your lace pattern, knit a couple of rows of garter stitch, maybe increase some or decrease some, do another lace pattern, knit a couple of rows of garter, do another, etc, etc. Nancy Bush showed us a similar strip of knitting when I went to her Estonian lace class. It was an easy way for knitters to share their designs with other knitters.

Franklin compared modern lace patterns to the original lace patterns by showing us a picture from Nancy Bush’s book and one of the first pattern books. Now, you all know what lace charts look like.

Lace Edging of Mlle. R de B, Franklin Habit, http://knitty.com/ISSUEss10/FEATss10SIT.php

Makes sense, right? The original lace pattern he showed us, however, was a solid page of text with two columns and minuscule font. Can you imagine?! And he told us that, at the very bottom of the page, was a horrendous mistake. UGH.

Not only are our knitting patterns formatted differently, but our terminology is different, too! As Franklin wrote in his “Stitches in Time” article in Knitty ‘08:

At first glance, these early books appear to the modern knitter as an invitation to headache and madness. The vocabulary is archaic; what we call a “purl” may be called a “pearl,” a “turn” or a “seam,” even within the same pattern. The “recipes” are often written in a stream-of-consciousness style that anticipates James Joyce. The errors – even in works that promise on the title page to be scrupulously accurate – are legion.
Franklin Habit, Knitty ‘08 http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall08/FEATfall08SIT.html

He said sometimes pattern writers wouldn’t even use the same terminology in the same sentence much less the same pattern!

Along with not using the same terms, needles sizes were not standardized. They were the proprietary software of their day. One woman put out the first needle gauge (and was the first to talk about knitting gauge) but of course the only needles that worked were ones that she sold. Can you even imagine how that could drive you crazy? The early knitters were made of much stronger stuff than I am!

The Martha Stewart of her generation was a woman who published something like 19 books in 3 years (I didn’t write down the exact numbers but it was a crazy amount in a very short period of time). She claimed to have invented crochet. Whether or not that is true is something crochet historians will have to duke out!

It was a very interesting lecture though I only gave it a brief mention here. Next time, I swear, I’m going to bring a working camera and/or a cell phone that actually has its memory card in it. I always find it so interesting to listen to famous bloggers talk. It’s fun to put an actual voice to the words rather than the voice you picture in your mind!

Really sad

2010-06-11T09:51:00.001-04:00

Is it really sad that I had forgotten that I signed up for a lecture and class at Knitter's Connection next week? I'm attending Franklin Habit's lecture called "Our Knitting Heritage" on Wednesday evening. Then I'm taking his photography class. I had volunteered to be a teacher's pet if they needed one and I got an email yesterday saying they wanted me. This should be really fun! I definitely need to get a working camera and NOT my camera phone. You know what that means, better pictures for the blog!

What I've been doing

2010-05-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Long time, no blog post! This spring has really gotten away from me. I feel like the entire month of April really didn't happen. Would you like to know what I've been doing recently? Well, it has been a whole bunch of things but very little knitting.

When I say very little knitting, I really mean very little knitting. Amazingly, I've only had one project on the go for the last month or so. It is the wedding shawl for my friend (Oh, what did you say? Her wedding was last weekend? Ooops). I had a slight problem with the original yarn/pattern combination. When I say problem, I mean ran out of yarn about a foot and a half too short. So the stole (which was lovely if only I had had more yarn) was frogged and I started a Swallowtail shawl with the yarn instead. I got through the bud pattern of the main portion of the triangular shawl and just had the nupps, bind off and blocking left to do. This past weekend, the almost complete shawl came to the wedding but the pattern didn't. Again, oops. I'll be sending the shawl to her later.

So if I haven't been knitting, what have I been doing? Spinning, thinking about spinning, processing fiber, and drop spindling. Some of you might think that spinning and drop spindling are the same thing (and they are) but I have projects going on the wheel and multiple drop spindles so that counts as two things. On the wheel, I've been going through some Polwarth fiber I got at SOAR last fall. Now, I really like the softness of this fiber and I would spin it again in a heartbeat. (You are sensing a BUT here, right?) BUT I think I would want buy it raw and process it myself because this fiber has nepps and second cuts all over. It's really frustrating to be spinning and then have little bumps in your knitting. Sure, you can pull them out but I can't spin a foot of yarn without having to stop and do that. I've gotten through 6 ounces of the 1.5 pounds so far but it is taking me much longer to do because I keep stopping and pulling out the nepps. It would be really nice to have it all done by the end of the month but I know that isn't going to be happening!

On the fiber processing front, I'm working on a small Cormo (I LOVE THIS FIBER!!!!!!!!!) fleece that I bought at Maryland. The fleece was coated and it was skirted well so there is very little VM.

(picture of Lily and cormo fleece)

Because cormo is a fine wool that will felt if you look at it funny, I decided to wash it in lock formation in lingerie bags with tulle separating the layers. I also wanted to preserve the lock formation because I'm going to be combing this fiber. So far I've only washed and combed a couple of ounces and am hoping to do more tonight and tomorrow.

On the drop spindle front, somehow in the past couple of months, my spindle stash has grown by 3 spindles. That brings the total to *mumble, mumble, kind of a lot, mumble, big number, mumble* One of the spindles came from the Spinning Loft in MI. Beth has some really lovely spinning tools available. Back in 2009, during the Tour de Fleece, one of the prizes offered was a resin spindle with 4-leaf clovers in the resin. I absolutely love 4-leaf clovers because they are so easy for me to find. My mother and I both can walk across a patch of grass and find one. That spindle called to me but the maker of it lived in England and the shipping made me think twice. I regularly googled "4-leaf clover drop spindle" to see what things might come up. Imagine my surprise when I saw one for sale at the Spinning Loft! It was instantly added to my shopping cart and a couple of days later, I found some fiber in the stash and started spinning.

(spindle and fiber)

The fiber is a silk blend with possibly wool, camel, or yak. I didn't write what the combination was because obviously I would remember it. Ha.

The next 2 spindles came back home with me from Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Both of the spindles are trindles, those funky looking spindles with 3 arms and beads at the ends of the arms. If you haven't seen one before, they are for sale on etsy and there is a picture of one in Respect the Spindle.

(picture of the trindles)

I bought the trindle with the square beads on Saturday then wandered the festival to find the perfect roving to spin. I ended up finding a 100% silk roving at Carolina Homespun in a beautiful dark purple. The trindle is really light and spins so long that the resulting single is like a cobweb.

After I went back to my friend's place, I kept thinking about the other trindles. Lust might have been the right word, actually. I went back on Sunday morning and bought the one with the round beads and fiber from the same shop. The roving is a delightful 100% BFL and definitely falls in my blue/green palette. Right now, this spindle is my "around town" spinning project.

What else have I been doing? Sewing up a (temporary) storm. One weekend, it was all sewing, all of the time. I sewed up a dress (without the zipper), half of a dress, a bodice, and a bolero (didn't finish the sleeves yet). I hate to say it but then those projects came to a screeching halt. Thankfully, mom helped out with putting the invisible zipper in the one dress so that is finished. What is needed for everything else is a spurt of finishitis (aka feeling of "must finish everything in sight!"). I did finish up a couple of small projects from scrap fabric. Have you seen those neck ties that you soak in water and tie around your neck? It is a great way to keep cool in the summer so I made a bunch out of scraps. I'm hoping to use them while riding.

Speaking of riding, a new horse came to the barn. His name is Loxley like Robin of Loxley. This guy is a 17.2hh (!!) bay Warmblood.

For those of you who don't know horses, a hand is 4 inches and 17.2 hh means he is 70" tall at the top of his shoulder (the withers). I am 5'3" which converts to 63" so that means the top of this horse's withers are 7" taller than I am. My horse, Java, is 15.2 hh and looks like a very small horse next to Loxley. Jazz, one of the other horses at the barn, is 15 hh and looks like a tiny, petite, little pony next to him. Of course, she is absolutely in love with him. She goes for the taller guys! Whenever you add a new horse to a herd, reshuffling happens with everyone's rank in the herd. The first week, the head mare, Cali, (16.3 hh) hated Loxley's guts and wouldn't let him anywhere near her herd. This week, however, she is in heat and likes any and all guys.

The poor guy is just confused by the whole thing and Java is sulking in the corner because his woman is no longer paying attention to him. I think all of the reshuffling might be over and my horse is back to his normal #2 position because he was acting very possessive of his woman. Ah, the drama. It's like high school all over again.

Speaking of horses, I've started taking individual lessons again at the riding stable down the road. My horse is getting older and I've ridden him for so long that I feel like I'm losing some skills. It's funny how we all settle into ruts. Riding the lesson horses is a really good because they are so different from each other. Hopefully I'll be riding Loxley regularly so having experience riding other horses is a good thing. My work schedule has settled into a routine so I'm able to take the lessons either on Tuesday or Thursday mornings and then go right to work. So far it has been working really well.

Also speaking of the barn, have I ever mentioned that the owner of the barn has a woodworking shop there? He is a fantastic woodworker. Well, I have a tendency to either go on big travel trips or redecorate. I haven't gone anywhere big recently (by big I mean Europe or some other 2 week vacation out of town, not weekend trips) so my redecorating urge is a little insistent right now. What does this have to do with woodworking? I've been wanting a new dresser (and desk and bed) but cannot find the design I'm imagining anywhere in the stores. I can, however, find plans to make what I'm picturing. Do any of you have this happen with your knitting? You can picture the sweater but can't find the pattern? You can probably guess what is going to happen. Yes, I'm going to try to build the dresser. Thankfully, Leon knows what he is doing and teaches well. He isn't convinced about making the bed but I bet I can wear him down.

Maryland recap

2010-05-24T18:00:00.001-04:00

I had a fantastic time at Maryland Sheep and Wool this year. I drove out and stayed with a friend in Baltimore which isn't too far away from West Friendship, MD. I wasn't able to convince anyone to go with me to the festival (in fact, I got weird looks) but it turned out pretty nice because that meant I could take my time everywhere. Oh, by the way, this blog post is going to be liberally sprinkled with sheep pictures.

My goals for the festival were:

a sweater's worth of worsted weight wool in black
a spindle
something from Jennie the Potter
a fleece from the wool auction

I met all of my goals and actually ended up coming home with more than that (big surprise, right?).

As you've probably heard already, it was HOT. Temperatures were in the upper 80s and the sun was out in full force. I had plenty of sunscreen, a hat and water so I was prepared for the long haul. After waiting in line for a while, I got to the festival and parked at the far ends of the earth. Later in the day, after many people left, I moved the car much closer!

My fiber festival strategy is to first walk through every building, looking but not buying. It helps you get a feel of where everything is and to which vendors you want to come back. On the MDSW Ravelry board, I already knew a couple of vendors should be on my radar because they had products I wanted to see in person. Additionally, wandering around everywhere gives you an opportunity to see where the shady spots are and really good food vendors!

Really all of this wandering around was a way for me to wind over to the wool sale, not going to lie. I had a fantastic time digging through all of the different bags of fleece. One goal was to buy a fleece but I hadn't decided what kind yet. In the past, I've tended to like dark fleeces in blacks, browns, and dark grays. This time I thought I would get either a white or light gray fleece but hadn't decided which breed. OK, that might be a slight lie. I really wanted a fine wool and the cormo just called my name. I spent lots of time choosing between a small white cormo and a light gray cormo blend. In the end, I went with the 100% cormo. Now I know why people have been raving over cormo. I washed up a little last week and started combing it. Love at first lock!

After buying my fleece, I was wandering back towards the car because I didn't want to cart my fleece around all day. As I was passing the official festival swag building, I noticed that the line wasn't long at all. The festival doesn't have an entry fee and is almost entirely funded by the sales of the official festival gear (well, that and vendor fees). At my first MDSW, I decided that I didn't need any more t-shirts and really liked the idea of getting a bag instead. That year I got a tote bag and this year I got a shoulder bag in a nice blue.

Another advantage of going to the car was that the Podcaster Meet and Greet was being held near the main entrance. A whole bunch of my favorite podcasters were going to be hanging out meeting people and I wanted to get in line to say "hi."

The Meet and Greet started a little late but everyone seemed to have fun chatting in line. The goodie bag that Jackie of KIPing it Real was fantastic! It was really nice to put faces to the voices. Some people looked very different than how I had imagined.

At the car, I took the opportunity to have a snack, apply even more sunscreen, and move my car to a closer parking spot. It was so hot by that point that many people had gone home. It was a really easy way to get a good parking spot.

When I went back to the festival, I decided to wander over to the auction. I didn't bid on anything but it was a lot of fun to watch.

By this point, it was very, very hot and I thought that going inside a building with cement floors and shade was a very good idea. The skein and garment competition is not something to miss. The amazing projects and skill levels demonstrated was simply amazing. One of my favorite projects had to be this needle felted sheep.

After wandering around the skein and garment competition building in awe for a while, I stopped by the boy scout food building and got lunch to go. Yum, lamb burger and a GIANT ice tea. Let me tell you, I loved that big glass of ice and tea. It was just about time for a sheepdog demonstration so I took my lunch and wandered down to the arena. It's always fun watching the dogs work.

I think my favorite part of the demonstration was the farmer who has been demonstrating with his dogs for over 15 years. He was the owner of the sheep, too, and they kept trying to run back to him. He looked like a very old school type of farmer but I saw him pet one of the sheep on the head when they were all clustered around him.

Because I was at the very end of the fairgrounds and the day was starting to get late, I made my way back through all of the vendors. It had cleared out a lot since the morning because so many people had left for the day. I ended up doing the bulk of my shopping then and then went back to Baltimore for the night.

The next morning, I hadn't planned on going back to the festival but woke up at an obscene hour of the morning and had nothing to do for a long time. There was a spindle that was really tempting and the sheep to shawl competition was going on so I went back for a couple of hours. For those of you who don't know, the sheep to shawl competition is where a team of spinners and a weaver take a freshly shorn fleece (so fresh they shear the sheep right there), spin the yarn and weave a shawl in a couple of hours. Here are a couple of the different teams.

Every team has a different theme which makes things very fun. As you can tell, the team in those first two pictures chose a Harley Davidson theme! The teams do a mock-up of their shawl beforehand and have their warp already strung before the competition. I wish I knew who won the competition.

On Sunday, was able to watch more of the sheep show. Listening to the judges is always so informative and I feel like I always learn something new. One of the judges is especially good with explaining the breed standards and how the different sheep in the class come up to that standard.

The last thing that I did before leaving the show was watching an impromptu shearing demonstration. A shearer set-up shop between two of the barns and was shearing those sheep that had full fleeces for the show. Once they are shown, their fleeces can be removed so they don't die of heatstroke in the summer. The different owners were offering the fleeces for sale there on the spot.

So you are probably wondering, what did you get already?! I got:

1 Cormo fleece
2 trindles (funky looking spindles)
6 round clay buttons with sheep on them
multiple snarky buttons
1 MDSW shoulder bag
1 4 oz bump of BFL top
1 2 oz bump of 100% silk
1 mug from Jennie the Potter with cute sheep dancing all over them
2 skeins of Miss Bab's Yowza Whatta Skein in Obsidian (a semi-solid black)
2 tubes of the best hand lotion EVER - Marcha Labs Wool Wax Creme

The silk and BFL are already on the spindles (of course!) and the mug has already gone to work to be my tea mug. All in all, I had a very good festival!

I've lost it

2010-04-27T19:17:00.001-04:00

Normally when I say, "I've lost it," I'm referring to something like biting off more than I can chew. This time, however, "it" means my knitting mojo. I have a confession. I haven't knit anything major in a couple of weeks now.

All of my projects have been conspiring against me. Either I messed up something on the pattern or I've run out of yarn and that makes me not want to knit. I'm working on a shawl for my friend's wedding but it definitely was going to be too short. According to the pattern, I should have had enough yarn but I didn't. I think everything combined meant I didn't want to knit. So I frogged that shawl and started another pattern. Let's hope it makes me want to knit again.

I'm listening to a lot of knitting podcasts to get me out of this slump and it seems to be working a little bit. Thanks, Knitmore Girls!

Another thing that will make me want to knit again is Maryland Sheep and Wool this weekend. Yes, I'm going to Maryland! How is it the beginning of May already?! I'm getting ready with my list of things to find and am excited! Are any of you going to Maryland?

Seaming

2010-04-04T13:13:00.002-04:00

Can someone remind me why I thought practicing seaming would be a good thing? Arrrgh.

Fickle knitter

2010-03-27T14:40:00.001-04:00

I've said before that I have knitting ADD. I'll be in the middle of a project and then will suddenly switch to another. Usually I'll switch to something new just as I'm coming to the end of the project. Does anyone else do this? Just get bored of what you are working on and have to start something new? You're starting to get the idea that I'm going to be talking about a completely different project aren't you? And you would be correct!

I'm a buttonband away from being finished with my Handspun Tangled Yoke Cardigan. The project that distracted me from the HTYC was the Corrie Vest, a fair isle vest kit from KnitPicks. Well, I've gotten distracted from that. I'm at the shoulders of the vest and only have to steek it, knit the neckband and the armholes. So isn't that the perfect time to start another big project?

I've started on Twist, a lovely cabled cardigan knit in pieces. Normally I hate seaming pieces together but I wanted to start this cardigan immediately without having to think about converting it to the round. Also, this way I get to practice seaming and will get better at it. Remind me of that as I'm cursing at the seams!

The yarn is Berroco Vintage in a lovely gray. I've never used this yarn before but have definitely fallen in love with it. Comparable to Cascade 220, it has a nice feel to the knit fabric and has a really good price. I also like the way that the cables look. (Of course I'm telling you all about how it looks but not giving you a picture. Sorry!) It's really surprising how nice this 50% Acrylic, 40% Wool, 10% Nylon blend is. I can see myself using more in the future.

I started the back on March 20th and finished it in a couple of days. For some reason (I swear there was a reason but I don't remember it) I started the sleeves next instead of the fronts. I've finished with the increases and will be done with them pretty quickly.

An interesting technique I've learned with this sweater is a tubular cast on for a 2x2 rib. For a good photo tutorial, Ysolda has excellent instructions. When you read the directions, it amazes you that everything works. I used Judy's Magic Cast On instead of a provisional cast on for the technique. It really makes an interesting edge for the sweater. The only thing is that I haven't seamed it yet so I don't know how well that will go with the tubular cast on.

This sweater is going to be one of the pieces I enter into our state fair. It definitely won't be finished in time for me to wear it this spring. Though we had snow yesterday so you never know. I never thought of myself as a sweater knitter but that is all that I have done recently! I really need to get in gear and start (and finish!) a wedding shawl for my friend. She is getting married in May but I haven't even picked a pattern yet.

Another FO

2010-03-16T11:19:00.003-04:00

I keep calling this sweater my Featherlight Cardigan even though the designer named it Featherweight. I think it is because there is a horse trailer company called Featherlight. Anyway, let me sing the praises of this sweater and the yarn (mmmmalabrigo).

I started the sweater last May (really, Ravelry? you aren't just making that date up?) but then put it down for a couple of months. I don't have a good reason for not finishing it much sooner. I love the yarn and the pattern is really easy to follow. I just got distracted by other things. Oh, well. I picked it up again right before Thanksgiving (an easy project to work on in the bar) and finished the body. Unfortunately, I put it down again and didn't pick it up for another month. I finished the second half of the second sleeve and then put it down again. Finally, last week, I sat down, made myself pick up stitches for the collar and worked on it. Isn't it amazing how things get finished if you actually work on them?

Yarn: 3 skeins of Malabrigo lace, Emerald
Pattern: Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig
Dates: May 2009 to March 14, 2010
Modifications: First, I decided that I didn't want a cropped cardigan. It's not really my style and my waist would probably be cold. The pattern originally called for 9 inches but I knit for 13 inches, instead. My next change was to make a 2 inch seed stitch bottom edge rather than a 1x1 rib for 2 inches and my collar is in seed stitch, too. I had seen someone on ravelry did the collar and lower edge in seed stitch and I really liked the way it looked.

The pictures on blogger are driving me nuts. Click on the picture to see my flickr page and see the actual color of the sweater.

This yarn feels fantastic. I can understand why so many people adore it because it is just so soft. But I have a feeling that the yarn will pill and probably felt like crazy. That is, however, a small price to pay for how soft, light and warm this cardigan is. It really is as light as a sweater. I'll just have to treat the sweater kindly.

Quick FO

2010-03-10T08:10:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the well-wishes, guys! I'm feeling a bit more human but still really tired. I haven't felt brave enough to pick up the button band on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan yet because my counting ability is still shaky. But I decided to finally work on some projects that have been hanging around for a while now. I actually finished one! (some of the pictures are going to be rotated but right now i can't figure out how to switch them around. sorry!)

This is a Knitting Pure and Simple pattern called Neck Down Pullover Tunic - Women #9726. Thrilling name, huh :) I had seen another person's finished sweater a couple of months ago and liked the comfy look of it. I used O-Wool Balance, a cotton/wool blend, which adds to the comfy-ness.

This sweater should not have taken me so long to finish! In the first week, I had everything but half of a sleeve finished. From there it took me 1 month to sit down and finish the sleeve. Then it took me another month to sit down and finish the collar. Oh, well. At least it is finished in enough time to wear it during the appropriate weather. In fact, I'm going to wear the sweater today even though it is supposed to be in the 60s today.

Details: O-Wool Balance, 8.25 skeins
US 6 and US 4 needles
Started January 17, 2010- finished March 9, 2010 (this should NOT have taken me this long to do!)
I knit the sweater with a couple of inches of positive ease for the comfy-ness factor.

Modifications:
I did change a couple of things with the pattern. The bottom of the tunic has garter stitch at the edge. The sleeves and the neck, however, are 2x2 ribbing. So I decided to lengthen the sleeves a little bit and to finish them with garter stitch instead of the ribbing.

The other change that I made was the ribbing of the v-neck. I feel like the only place the pattern had a fail was at its neck directions. It was a pretty good pattern for beginners (or people who want a mental break) but the neck was really funny. It had you pick up the stitches at the collar, knit the ribbing for 3/4 inch flat (not in the round) then lay the two ends of the ribbing over each other and sew it down. Wha? Instead, I picked up the stitches and knit a couple of rounds of garter stitch, doing a centered double decrease. I think it looks much better than what the directions were having you do.

sick

2010-03-09T12:25:00.000-05:00

How to know when you are sick: you can't do a mostly stockinette sock (in my defense, it was Skew from Knitty) but for some reason can do charted fair isle. Can someone tell me how that makes sense? I've been down with a lovely cough and fatigue since last Wednesday evening. The Tangled Yoke Cardigan has been languishing since the closing ceremonies and now I don't have the mental capacity to do the button band. But for some reason I'm able to work on the Corrie Fair Isle Vest from knitpicks. Well, I am able to when I'm awake.

red berries

2010-03-02T11:05:00.000-05:00

I got this roving at SOAR 09. It reminded me of a bunch of berries, so bright and cheerful. It is also completely outside of my color norm! Normally I'm drawn to blues, greens, and purples but this red caught my attention in the whole wall of color.

After spinning all of the yarn for my Tangled Yoke Cardigan, I wanted to spin something with lots of color. This roving definitely fit the bill. I also wanted to spin up a 3-ply fingering weight yarn. I divided the 6 oz of roving into three 2 oz amounts. Before the Olympics started, I spun up approximately 4-4.5 oz and had started on the third 2 oz bump. Knitting my Tangled Yoke Cardigan took priority but I still tried to spin for a little while a couple of times a week. I finished spinning the last of the 6 oz on Saturday and let all of the singles rest.

On Sunday, after the closing ceremonies, I started plying. Yesterday, I was leading a book group so I went into work for the evening shift. That meant all morning I was reading the book and plying. After work last night, I finished plying, set the yarn and hung it up to dry in front of the woodburning stove.

Details: 488 yards, 100% wool (of course I didn't write the breed down)
3-ply yarn spun using a worsted technique.
Started spinning mid-January, finished 3/1/10.

steek

2010-02-28T10:34:00.002-05:00

Steeking with obligatory cat

2010-02-25T09:24:00.001-05:00

I learned last night that a member of my knitting and spinning groups is losing her 12 year battle with breast cancer. Yesterday, her doctor told Gretchen and her family that there is nothing left that they can do and she should go into hospice care immediately. Gretchen was the person who encouraged me to take the learn to spin class and lent me one of her wheels to use. She has always been a caring and supportive person. She taught numerous classes at our LYS and always devoted time to help other people. Gretchen is only in her early 50s. It isn't right that someone so young has to go through this.

ETA: Gretchen passed away on Friday morning at home with her family. She will be sorely missed by all who knew her.

Olympics, day 10

2010-02-22T17:45:00.002-05:00

I've gotten to the point on my Handspun Tangled Yoke Cardigan where I'm ready to start the cabled yoke!

I cannot believe this sweater has gone this fast. It's gone fast even with me taking a couple of nights off after finishing the main part of the body. I didn't want to strain my wrists or hands too much so I decided not knitting for a couple of nights was the best plan.

The sleeves gave me a little bit of trouble as you can tell from my last post. I knit on them for a number of days but they never seemed to grow past my elbows. Finally on Saturday, I made my way out of the black hole of knitting and started making progress on them. Yesterday, I reached my desired length (slightly longer than the pattern calls for) and was able to join them to the body. Dad and I went to a Civil War lecture and I was able to knit my way through it. As a side note, I didn't know that there was a Civil War prison complex on Lake Erie. The speaker told us about the archeological digs he has been doing there for the last 20 years and shared stories of some of the different prisoners. It was very interesting and had the added bonus of me being able to knit through it.

Last night, I knit a little bit too far and had to tink back a couple of rows. I'm at the point where I start decreasing and doing the set-up row for the cable section. A friend and I are planning to go shopping in Columbus this evening so I'm probably not going to make too much progress tonight. I'm hoping to at least start the cabled section. It should go pretty fast just because I love doing cables so much.

Black hole

2010-02-19T22:31:00.002-05:00

The sweater sleeves have entered the black hole of UGH. I've been knitting on them for the past couple of days but they haven't grown past my elbow. UGH is all that I have to say.

Olympics, day 4

2010-02-15T17:11:00.002-05:00

Yay! Winter Olympics! Are you watching and enjoying the games? Going back to work after this long 3-day weekend is going to be hard because I will have to drag myself away from the tv (and the knitting).

My olympic knitting has been going EXTREMELY well. I mean, so well that it is freaky. On Friday, I cast on for the sleeves of my Handspun Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I completed almost an inch of them before I decided to start on the body of the cardigan. That was Saturday early afternoon and, by today at 4:30 pm, I've reached the point where you join the sleeves to the body! Wow. That's amazing. I think one thing that has helped it knit up so fast is that I decided to knit the cardigan in the round and steek it. For those of you who don't know, steeking is an extremely scary thing where you knit your garment with the intent to cut it open. It is just amazing how quickly this project is going. Now, that will probably jinx everything but I can hold out hope!

I'm off to work on the sleeves!

Are you ready? attempt #2

2010-02-15T15:03:00.000-05:00

** For some reason this didn't post on Friday. I'm trying another attempt so please excuse the time lapse! **

Tonight is the opening ceremony for the winter olympics! Are you ready? I always enjoy watching the winter olympics more than the summer ones (except for all of the horse events, I could watch those all day). All of the winter sports are things I really can't do so watching people who do them really, really well is just fascinating. And, while watching all of these athletes competing, I shall be knitting up a storm!

I should be all set to go this evening. A couple of days ago, I did a swatch trying different needle sizes. In case you are confused by the purl ridges in the picture, that is where I differentiated between the three different sizes. In order to tell the sizes apart, I purled 6 stitches for a US size 6, 5 for a US 5 and 4 for a US 4. I saw this technique somewhere a couple of years ago and have used it ever since. I tried keeping track on pieces of paper but always lost the paper and then couldn't remember what swatch was done with what yarn. Now the record is always kept with the swatch! For this project, I'm going to be using a US 5 to get gague.

I'm still debating about converting this sweater into the round and steeking it into a cardigan. I'll do another search of ravelry today to see if people have any suggestions. I could knit it as the directions are written but the thought of purling those long rows isn't really appealing. Sure, I could knit them backward but that takes me a long time, too. When I'm going for speed, knitting in the round is the way to go for me.

I can't wait to start! Are you participating in the Knitting Olympics or ravelympics?

Cheese making

2010-01-28T21:02:00.002-05:00

A friend from my knitting group and I got together last night to make mozzarella cheese. At the last spinning meeting, another lady brought her current issue of Hobby Farm Home magazine. One of the articles in there was for making 30 minute mozzarella using the microwave. Both of us had talked about making cheese before and that magazine article sealed it.

Making the cheese was amazingly simple! The most difficult thing about it was finding the rennet (I found it at our local natural food store) and the citric acid. Once Jane researched it, however, she realized that she had some citric acid already in her pantry. Did you know that citric acid also goes by the name Sour Salt? I did not!

1 gallon of milk on the stovetop

If my science classes in high school did things like making cheese or other cooking things, I think I would have been a lot more interested in science. Seeing the chemical change to the milk after we added the citric acid and then the rennet was simply astounding. It actually made cheese! (I'm still amazed by that as you can tell.) It only took a minute or two to start turning into curds and whey.

Curds separated from the whey

Apparently, we could also make ricotta from the whey. I think that is a project for the future. Neither of us were ready to make it right now. After you separated the curds and the whey (how Little Miss Muffet of us!), you microwave the curds for a couple of seconds. Then you knead the cheese like you would bread. This helps to smooth everything out and distribute the heat evenly.

Kneading the cheese

On the final microwave, you add your salt to taste and then form the cheese into whichever shape you want. This had to be done pretty quickly because the cheese gets harder to stretch when it cools. We both ended up making them into balls.

Cheese ball

Let me tell you, they didn't stay that way long. We immediately started cutting pieces off while it was still warm. I just can't believe it actually tasted like mozzarella. I know that shouldn't surprise me but it was so simple and had so few ingredients! I know what I'm going to be making a lot of in the future.

If you want some recipes that are similar to the one we did, try these links.

* 30 Minute Fresh Mozzarella Cheese Recipe
* Mozzarella Cheese Recipe from cheesemaking.com
* the recipe in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
* the recipe in Hobby Farm Home magazine (I really liked looking through this magazine)

**eta: corrections on book title

Getting ready for the Olympics

2010-01-27T11:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long hiatus. I really have no good explanation other than my camera died and I've been uninspired in the blogging department. Thanks to the camera death, I bring you pictures from my cell phone. So sorry in advance for the quality!

I can't believe it is time for the Winter Olympics again! I mean, it feels like it was just last year that the Summer Olympics happened. For knitters, the Winter Olympics means the Knitting Olympics. The point of the Knitting Olympics is to start a project when the torch is lit and finish it by the time the closing ceremonies roll around. Like the athletes, you use the opportunity to challenge yourself and your skills. My challenge is knitting a sweater from my handspun yarn.

It is wool from a local woman who raises CVM sheep. We grouped together and sent a bunch to be processed into top at a wool mill up in MI. The resulting top is FABULOUS. It spins like a dream. The color is a dark brown with hints of dark gray in it.

Now, I've been spinning this yarn up for the last month and a half. It has been a long month and a half. If I lived in ye olden times, my family would never have been clothed properly. They would be wearing sweaters with only one sleeve finished because I hadn't finished spinning the yarn. True, I wouldn't have been spinning so finely nor would I have been making a 4-ply and I probably wouldn't be spinning it worsted. Also the kids would probably be farmed out to prepping the wool and doing some of the knitting and spinning. Can I just say that I'm happy not to be living in ye olden times? Anyway, spinning all of this yarn has definitely been a test of stamina because all of this wool is the same color. I've even been drop spindling this wool, too. I'm really getting bored working with the same color but I can't let myself not finish the yarn for the sweater!

As prep for this project, I did a lot of sampling. I had a specific sweater in mind and knew what type of yarn I would need. Well, that plan actually changed as I went along. Originally, I wanted to make a relatively simple sweater with a cowl neck from Vogue Knitting a couple of years ago. I found the old issue of the magazine in a fellow raveler's destash. After I started sampling, however, I decided that I would rather do something with cables and the Tangled Yoke Cardigan really fit the bill. I've been wanting to do that sweater for eons and making it out of my handspun would be very satisfiying. Anyway, back to sampling and swatching. At first, I thought I would be doing a 3-ply yarn. But my default spinning seems to be fine, fine, fine. I didn't like my swatch with the 3 ply so I decided to try 4-ply instead. That swatch was much, much better.

Three of those plies have been spun up on the wheel and one has been done on my drop spindle. On the wheel, I've been spinning 1 ounce amounts up and then winding that off onto straws in order to ply easily. For the drop spindle, I would spin as much as possible until my cop (the spun yarn) either took up all of the room on the spindle or I couldn't spin easily anymore. Then I would wind it off onto a weaving bobbin so I would know it was from the drop spindle rather than the wheel.

For plying, I have a shoe box with holes punched in the side. I put the straws on some straight knitting needles and am plying away. I've been using a plying guide (aka a wooden rectangle with 4 holes drilled in it) to help me keep everything straight while plying. I know Judith MM says you don't need one but I did to keep my sanity! I can do 3 plies with my hand without too much trouble but that extra ply just messes me up when I try to do it with 4.

I'm finishing up the last little bit on my spindle and hope to finish plying the last of the yarn in the next day or two. As of right now, I have 1,600 yards of a sport weight yarn! I'm estimating, when I'm finished plying, I'll have another 300 yards to add to the total. I can't wait to start knitting the sweater!

Haiti earthquake

2010-01-14T15:27:00.000-05:00

It's been a much longer time than I expected to have without blogging. So in a quick sentence I hope everyone had a nice Christmas (or whatever holiday), New Years and middle of January! I've been busy with spinning and getting ready to make a handspun sweater for the Knitting Olympics. I swear that I really will post soon.

OK, now down to the real point of this post. As I'm sure you all know, Haiti suffered a horrendous earthquake. The Yarn Harlot wrote a very informative post about donating to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (Canada here, USA here, Other countries can find their site here) . If you are able, please consider donating.

I found an unusual way to donate today thanks to my credit card company, capital one. You can donate your rewards points to the charity of your choice. For capital one, 1000 rewards points = $5. I did a search for DWB/MSF and donated all of my (never redeemed) points. Just as an fyi for you guys.

Little nothings

2009-12-22T22:30:00.000-05:00

fAnne Hanson, of knitspot fame, has patterns that she calls Little Nothings. They are patterns for perfect small projects which usually don't require much yarn. I decided to do my own little nothing the other day. (Though of course I don't have her design skills and used someone else's pattern.)

Yarn: 1 oz of handspun 50/50 yak and silk (yummmmmmm) from Trading Post Fibers
Pattern: Abby from Knittyspin
Dates: spinning = one day in July 09, plying = 12/17, knitting = 12/18 - 12/20
Modifications: Lots! First off, I didn't use a silk single. Next, I only cast on 90 stitches. Finally, I only knit about 4-5 inches of cowl because I ran out of yarn (I knew I would).

This yarn is simply luxurious. I mean, yak and silk? What could be better? It is light, airy, shimmery and WARM. I did a worsted style spinning 2-ply yarn which ended up being a light fingering weight. The singles for this yarn was spun back in July for my challenge day during Tour de Fleece. But I never got around plying the singles and they took up one of my bobbins.

My friend, Victoria, does a lot of work with horses which means she is outdoors most of the winter. I thought this yarn would make a perfect pair of wristers to help her hands stay warm. When I plied up the yarn, however, I realized that I wouldn't have much and the wristers wouldn't be very long. I decided that a cowl, even a short one, would probably be better. I had previously made Abby with some laceweight alpaca so the pattern popped into my mind as a possibility. It is an extremely easy pattern to memorize so I could knit it without thinking.

I cast on 90 stitches so the cowl would be close to the neck and knit until my yarn ran short. In fact, it ran too short and I ran out of yarn before the bind off. So I did what any enterprising spinner/knitter would do, spun up some more, plied it and knit the bind off. I love drop spindles. The additional fiber I used wasn't actually yak/silk because I didn't have any more left. It was merino/silk instead and was much more white than the soft cream of the yak/silk. I don't think that really mattered because there was a slight curl to the ends of the cowl. That meant the cast on and bind off edges were both hidden.

I was able to finish everything up on Sunday morning and quickly ran over to another friend's house to drop off the gift to Victoria. Yay for quick gifts!

Stained glass cookies

2009-12-11T23:10:00.000-05:00

Apparently I've decided to do every other craft than holiday knitting or spinning this week. On Sunday and Monday morning, I made stained glass cookies.

You use any sort of sugar cookie recipe, cut out a shape in the middle (we have lots of mini cookie cutters), fill in that with crushed clear candy, and cook the cookie like normal. I used my family's sugar cookie recipe we've always used for cookie parties. It was kind of hard to scale the recipe back for only a few dozen rather than 50! I used crushed Jolly Rancher for the centers.

Aren't they fun? And they are actually really easy to do. I swear!

Felted soap

2009-12-11T12:41:00.000-05:00

Once again, more crafts other than knitting or spinning. Enjoy!

On Thursday night, a friend and I had craft night at her house. At our last knitting meeting, someone mentioned felting soap because we were felting some knitted projects in the sink at our meeting place. Jane and I decided to felt some bars. Jane wanted to make them for Christmas presents and I wanted to make one for a Secret Santa exchange at work. Oh, I confess, I really just wanted to play with another craft!

It was so much fun to play with the different colors and different techniques. Both of us did some research and had watched different youtube videos and read tutorials (can you tell both of us are reference librarians?). I found the method that worked best for me was taking 2-3 inch pieces of fiber and putting them cross-ways all over the place. Then I put that in a nylon hose, dipped it in warm water, mushed it between my hands, and, once it had felted well, dunked it in cold water. The best bars of felted soap were the ones that are palm-sized or circular. The rectangular bars worked ok but didn't seem to have their corners felt as well.

The bar that is blue, I added a moon design on one side and a sun and cloud on the other side. (Shut up, it really is a sun. Not an egg with a runny yolk.) I'm going to give this one to my secret santa recipient at work.

In other news, I made more terrariums. Why, yes, I am obsessed. Why do you ask?

Terrarium love

2009-12-10T22:51:00.000-05:00

I saw this project on the Design*Sponge blog yesterday and just knew I had to make one. I ran out at lunch today and bought the supplies.
Supplies:
Clear ornament
sheet moss
fake butterfly
mini mushroom birds (haven't made an ornament using these yet)

All you have to do is wet the moss a little, shove it in the ornament, squish the butterfly as small as it will go, and shove it in the ornament. Are you sensing a theme here? These fake butterflies are made from feathers and, with the moisture in the moss, their scrunched wings will smooth out in a little bit of time. A q-tip run around the inside of the globe will get a lot of moisture out and remove the stray bits of moss.

I'm in love with these little globes! So cute! There are definitely more of these in my future. So cute!

November = start lots of sweaters. . .

2009-12-01T22:41:00.000-05:00

. . . and finish none of them. I've failed miserably at the whole NaKniSweMo thing this month. I ended up starting 2 different sweaters, digging 2 out of the WIP pile and finishing none of them. I could have probably finished a couple of them if they were the only projects on which I was working but of course they weren't! Sorry for no pictures of the various sweaters. I've put my camera somewhere and haven't found it yet. I give you pictures of yarn instead!

First up is my Bohus-ish sweater that I started the last morning at SOAR. The pattern's name is Bountiful Bohus. I call this a Bohus-ish because it is knit using worsted weight yarn rather than fingering weight like the true Bohus sweaters. If it were out of fingering, I probably never would finish it! The body of the sweater is a dark brown with a reddish brown and white yoke.

It is my first skeeked sweater so that should be fun/nerve wracking to do. I should try to push through and finish it to the point where I cut down the middle so I can do that at knitting group. Doesn't that seem like something you should do with morale support around you? Right now, I've stalled out at the sleeves. I'm doing 2 at a time so that isn't the problem. The problem was a) I didn't like the sleeves in the pattern so I changed things and b) I needed a project during the holidays that I could just knit and not have to worry about doing increases. So the Bohus-ish has been huddled in the corner for the last couple of weeks looking lonely.

The next sweater I cast on was my own version of the Perfect Sweater. Of course I had to change the pattern. I had some DK weight yarn that has been marinating in the stash since I was in England in 2007. I love the yarn but hadn't found the pattern for it.

Well, I cast on for this sweater after doing a little bit of conversion for my yarn difference. When I say conversion, I mean squinting at the pattern then my swatch and saying, "Eh, I'll just make a size or two larger." As you can tell, it is a very scientific approach. And it definitely won't ever come back to bite my in the butt. Nope. Never. Anyway, I'm knitting the front and the back of the v-neck sweater at the same time. Or will be knitting them together until the decreases for the front start. I've done the decreasing for the waist and now need to start the increasing for the bust. That means, however, that you have to pay attention. That's a little hard to do with the bustle of the holidays and going out with friends to the bar. So once again, I need another project that is simple.

The third sweater graced by my knitter's ADD is the Soap Bubble Wrap(rav link) which has been lurking in my WIP basket/corner of shame for a while now. I LOVED the sweater instantly when it was released by Knitting Daily. I love it so much that I rushed over to KnitPicks and ordered some Cotlin in a very nice green color. I got stalled, however, once the patterning began. Now, those of you who have looked at the pattern will notice that starts on the 3rd row. Yeah, that's right. I got 3 rows into a sweater and stopped. So I picked the project up again and took a look at why I stopped. For some reason, I couldn't figure out the pattern and kept ending up with extra stitches and then fewer stitches. What makes it even worse is that I made a wedding shawl for a friend in this pattern so I know how to do it. Let's just say that the wrap is still in time out.

The fourth and final sweater is one on which I am actually making progress. (Of course, now that I've said that, I'll stall out!) I started the Featherweight Cardigan(rav link) a while ago, too, and can't remember why I stopped working on it for the life of me. It is a cardigan knit out of laceweight yarn (mmmm, malabrigo) from the top down using raglan increases. I had finished the increases and started on the sleeves. The pattern has you finish the body first but I wanted everything to be finished when I was done. Does that make sense? Well, I seem to have stopped because I was in the middle of the sleeve decreases for the second sleeve. Again, I didn't want to keep track of rows or count so I put it down then. Thank goodness I can read my knitting fairly well. Anyway, I didn't want to mess with the decreases so I put the sleeve on a stitch holder and started on the body again.

Can I just tell you how much I love this sweater? The yarn is fabulously soft and I love the emerald green color. It's such a nice and light sweater. Since last Wednesday, I've knit 10 inches on the body. The pattern calls for a 10 inch body but I didn't really want a cropped sweater. I have plenty of yarn so I'm going to keep going. Because the body is stockinette, I don't have to worry about paying attention to it at all in company. And, because it is knit flat and not in the round, I've had a chance to practice my knitting backward a whole lot. I'm to the point that I'm only a tiny bit slower knitting backwards than knitting normally. Keep your fingers crossed that I don't stall out on this one!

SOAR, Sunday and Monday

2009-11-27T12:19:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 1, tasks for the day: pack, attend a short lecture, and begin flying home with fall over to Monday, November 2

Sunday was the final day of SOAR as well as the day of the time change. Thanks to the time change and the jet lag, I woke up around 4 am and could not get back to sleep at all. I ended up using the time well by using it to pack and cast on for a new sweater. November is NaKniSweMo or National Knit a Sweater Month to correspond with NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. In my effort for this month, I've started a bohus inspired cardigan which involves a very long steek down the middle. I'm slightly nervous about that one. The body is all stockinette but I've kind of stalled out on it due to an issue with the sleeves.

Many people had already left on an early flight so breakfast was an even smaller affair than normal. After that, I returned to the room to finish packing. I had shoved all of my clothes into the small backpack that zips onto the front of the suitcase. The suitcase was left open for the ~3 pounds of fiber and bags of sample fiber we got in class and in the goodie bag. My roommate helped me squash all of the air out of the various bags of fiber and we quickly zipped up the suitcase. I swear, if a TSA agent had to open my bag, someone would have lost an eye. My bag was under that much pressure.

I did shove some of the fiber in my spinning wheel carry-on to act as padding for my wheel. I also put my pashmina wrap and pajama bottoms in there for my red-eye flight from San Fransisco to Philadelphia. I was not going to be stuck on the airplane all night without having PJs! :)

There was an interesting talk about taking spinning wheels to Africa and how people are using knitting to raise money. The lady who was giving the talk had some very nice pictures and lovely stories. I wish I hadn't missed half of it, though. I, for some reason, thought that the talk began at 9:30 and not 9. Oh, well!

After the talk, I finished packing everything and checking out. My roommate and I (the other left on the early morning flight) went back over to the Great Hall for lunch and general hanging out. There were only a handful of us at lunch, I think less than 12. We all took our time over the meal because all of us were leaving on the 4:30 or 5:30 shuttles that evening. Some of us stayed in the Great Hall for a couple of hours, knitting and spinning away. Thankfully knitters and spinners are always occupied! We were able to watch some of the Columbia people set-up for their conference which is how we figured out there was going to be a fashion show in the silk room. From there we moved on to the main lodge to find more seating area which we could colonize. We ended up hanging out with some other spinners who had taken over the lobby. It was a lot of fun to talk about what we learned and who we met at SOAR.

Four of us were on the flight to San Fransisco that evening so we were able to continue the experience a little longer. This might be funny to you but it was really nice to be able to have someone else watch your bags while you ran into the restroom or got food. That is definitely a hassle of traveling alone!

spot the wheels!

At San Fransisco, we parted ways and I ran (ish) to catch my plane in another terminal. Did you know that, once you leave one terminal to go to another, you have to go back through security? I have to say that I hate that with a passion? Of course my spinning wheel caught the screener's attention so my bag got flagged for a more thorough search. I believe that is when tragedy (ish) struck. The security guard checked through everything and my spindles got moved around. I didn't have time to repack and shift everything back because I wanted to grab dinner before getting on the plane. (Sidenote: Best portabello mushroom sandwich EVER! It was some of the best airport food I've had. Though, it could be because I was just so hungry.) I changed into my PJs and was ready for my red-eye flight. The only problem was that I had to gate-check my bag.

Now, I wasn't too worried about gate-checking because your bag normally meets you at the next gate and you can carry it with you for the next part of your flight. My wheel was so well packed with fiber, yarn and PJs that not that much would shift around with normal gate-checking. This time, however, they were checking the bags through to your final destination. That means picking it up at baggage claim which means they aren't as careful with your bags. Are you starting to get the idea? (Don't worry, it wasn't my wheel that got damaged!) The red-eye was actually nice because there wasn't a person in the middle seat so the guy on the aisle and I could kind of stretch out. My red-eye flew into Philadelphia and then I hopped on a plane to Columbus. After picking my car up in the long-term parking lot, I was headed home!

I ended up going to the barn before heading home because my horse had missed me over the weekend. Apparently, the people at the barn thought he was sick because he was acting so depressed. It took one of them telling Java that I hadn't left for good to get him to start eating again. I told him that I was going out of town but I should have told him when I was coming back. Poor guy thought I had deserted him!

Once home, I started showing Mom all of my purchases and telling her all about SOAR. I showed her my turkish spindle and she asked, "Is the shaft supposed to be bent like that?" Noooooo! I am willing to bet that my spindle got pinched between parts of my wheel in the suitcase and then got broken in the baggage handling. I didn't even have a chance to spin on it! I'm going to have to contact Carolina Homespun to see if they have replacement shafts or if they can contact the maker and have him make me one. Le sigh!

OK, now that I'm finally caught up with SOAR (only a month late) I can update you on everything else in another post!

SOAR, Saturday

2009-11-23T13:00:00.000-05:00

Wow, I've really gotten behind. Sorry, guys! Life has been getting in the way and I keep putting my notes in a "safe" place aka somewhere under all sorts of stuff.

Saturday, October 31 (Halloween!), tasks for the day: 2 retreat sessions, marketplace (I know, I know), and spin-in party
Happy Halloween! On Saturday, I once again got up super early (surprise, surprise!) and went off to breakfast. From there I moved on to my sock class. I love knitting socks so taking a class on spinning for them made perfect sense! The class was appropriately called Spinning for Socks and was taught by Janel Laidman. Many of us arrived early and got our wheels set up. We were greeted by a wonderful sight in the middle of the room.

I decided that I would set my wheel up for plying only and spin my singles on my various drop spindles. See, this is the advantage of having *cough* many drop spindles. When we got ready for plying, I wound my singles off onto a paper tube or left them on the spindle and put them in empty water glasses so they wouldn't go spinning across the room. Mostly my system worked well except when the paper tube flew out and would bounce all around under my chair.

Janel had everyone go around the room and say who they were, where we were from and how long we've been spinning. It was so interesting to hear about the different ladies' stories. Some of them had been coming to SOAR since the very first one! It was neat to hear how spinning has changed since they first started spinning. They recounted stories about being snowed in and other craziness. Times like that were my favorite part of SOAR. Talking with people and listening to their stories was just so interesting!

Janel recommended BFL for its softness and durability. Most of the fibers we used in the class were BFL, actually. She recommended, if you are using a fine wool, blend it with something like nylon, tencel or bamboo to make the fine wool stronger. To get a strong, dense yarn, you should use a worsted spinning technique. Woolen spinning would give you a lofty, warm yarn but it wouldn't be as durable. Janel also recommended using 3 or more plies for your sock yarn. Her reason for this is, with more plies, more surface area is hidden within the yarn. With more surface area hidden, there is less chance for the yarn to abrade and make holes. It also makes the yarn stronger the more plies there are. My "lovely" picture shows a 3-ply yarn and those itsy-bitsy red scrawls are the parts of the surface area hidden by the ply. (Hey, it's really hard to draw on Google docs with your mouse!)

Janel recommended having a twist angle of 45 degrees for sock yarn. Now, I'm not that technical of a spinner. If you are interested in learning more about twist angel, she told us to check out the Essentials of Yarn Design by Mabel Ross. It has a diagram in it that helps you figure out what twist angle you have put into your yarn. We also talked about twists per inch, another way of describing twist angle. Janel had us spin our singles in different colors so we could easily see how many twists we have per inch. They definitely had a barber pole effect! Twists per inch helped us a lot in our plying.

For plying, Janel told us a simple formula.

For a 2 ply, you want your ply twists to equal 2/3 of your spin twists per inch.
For a 3 ply, you want your ply twists to equal 3/4 of your spin twists per inch.
For a 4 ply, you want your ply twists to equal 4/5 of your spin twists per inch.

In other words, the more plies you have, the more twists per inch you should have. One liberating thing Janel told us is that your plied yarn doesn't have to hang perfectly straight (i.e. a perfectly balanced yarn) to make a good sock yarn. As long as your yarn is finished correctly (washed and dried without a weight hanging on it), your twist will be set. If you want a yarn that is lofty and soft, she recommened using fewer plies. But if you want a hard wearing and strong yarn, you should err on the side of caution and put in more plying twists per inch. In fact, she said you can sometimes go up to 1 1/2 times the spinning twist. I always have felt like I put too much twist in but that is apparently not the case! It was easy to see with all of the different colors of the singles. One of mine was red, another brown, the third an orange/yellow, and the 4th a yellow/green. It was definitely an interesting mix.

We practiced doing a 3 ply and a cabled 4 ply yarn. The cabling was very helpful. The idea behind cabling is you spin 4 singles all the same direction. Then you ply 2 together and 2 together so you have 2 2-ply yarns. So you've started with yarns that were all spun clockwise and now have plied them counter-clockwise. (Confused yet?) Then you take those 2 2-plies and you ply them together the original direction (i.e. clockwise) to get your cabled yarn. Janel described it as having the bumps of the plies looking like a string of pearls. I've cabled a yarn before but wasn't sure if I was doing it the right way. I think the yarn I did before had too few twists per inch as I was plying it.

My final retreat session was probably my most entertaining one. I took the Silk Work Sampler with Michael Cook and it was really fun. I took the class because I figured that it wasn't something I could find at home. I might be able to take other spinning classes but probably wouldn't come across someone as knowledgeable about silk as Michael.

First off, let me tell you how bad his room smelled. After a week of cooking silk cocoons, it was definitely pungent! :) Columbia Sportswear was coming into the resort as we were leaving and setting up a runway in Michael's room. They must have wondered what in the world those crazy spinners were doing!

Michael taught us how to reel silk first. He had been simmering the silk cocoons for about an hour or so until all of them were softened up. We used a scrubby brush like the kind you use on really stubborn dishes to find the ends of the silk cocoons. Basically we pummeled the tops of the cocoons and then pulled the brush up. All of these really fine strands were hanging on to the end of the brush. We then threaded those filaments on to the silk reeler and were able to start reeling silk.

Michael had us do 50-70 arm lengths of silk. He warned us that it wouldn't seem like much but, once we started adding twist to it, we would feel like the silk went on forever. Let me tell you how true that was!

After our 50-70 arm lengths were measured out, everyone wrapped their silk onto these bobbins (or were they spools?) that Michael had brought. They are very similar to the traditional Chinese tools used for this purpose. They help the silk not tangle as you are spinning it and helps it dry.

Then we raced to spin up some of our silk. Why was it a race? Because we had to put our silk in a degumming bath for 45 minutes in order for it to turn into really nice silk. We were coming up to the 45 minute mark so everyone's spindles or wheels were flying! My partner and I both got a good amount spun up but we still had more on our spools. We both decided to have before and after degumming samples just because we knew we couldn't get everything finished and still make the 45 minute cut-off. The differences between the two samples are amazing! The before is stiff, wirey and yellow-ish. The after, however, is a blinding white that is super soft and silkly (duh, it is silky, right?). I'm kind of glad that I have both samples to show people.

What did we do for the next 45 minutes you might ask. Well, we learned how to make silk hankies. Silk hankies are layers of silk cocoons stretched out over frames to make them into squares. If you want to play with silk, I would highly recommend making hankies. I actually taught our spinning guild how to do this at our next meeting. Thankfully, where we meet has a sink and stove so it was very easy. Anyway, back to making hankies at SOAR.

Go to Michael's website and he has a very good photo tutorial about the process. First, you simmer the cocoons in a degumming solution to loosen them up. Then you tease one of the ends open and dump out the silk worm and its poo (it's a glamorous project, let me tell you). Next, you dunk the cocoon in a bowl (or cup) of water and work it between your fingers. It is almost like a white egg yolk will come off of the cocoon. Once you no longer have the white yolk coming off, you start stretching the cocoon like a pizza crust. It will amaze you how far it can stretch. Michael had us stretch between 5 and 10 cocoons onto square frames. After we were finished stretching, we rinsed them in clear water then an acidic rinse (water and vinegar). In class at SOAR, we followed that up with a fabric softener rinse to make it easier to spin the silk later so it wouldn't catch as much on your hands. Michael recommend that you skip that step if you wanted to dye the hankie latter. In my mini-workshop at my spinning group, I didn't have them do the fabric softener because a) they might want to dye them later and b) my family doesn't use fabric softener so I would have had to buy some. After you are finished with the rinsing, you take the hankies off of the frame and squeeze out the water. It was so much fun! I'm really happy that I took Michael's class because I learned so much.

After things were finished in class and we got our newly degummed silk skeins, my partner and I headed back to the marketplace (I know, I know, how many trips was that?). But it was my last chance of the weekend! Anyway, I still wanted to pick some things while I didn't have to pay for shipping. I bought 12 weaving bobbins that I could use for plying. I've already put a number of them to use so they've been really helpful. I also broke down and got some more fiber. It is a fantastic wool (why can't I find my notes about sheep breed?) that reminds me of mixed berries. It's totally outside of my color range but I love it!

I also broke down and bought a Turkish spindle from Carolina Homespun. I've never used a Turkish spindle so I was really interested in learning how to use it. More about that later.

After leaving the marketplace for the last time, I ran back to the room to change into my costume, a giant Reese's package. We all went to dinner and then hung around for the spin-in. The spin-in was a little surreal. They had a karaoke machine but the guys who were running it seemed to think all of us would like big band era music. I guess they thought spinners would be a whole bunch of grandmas. Hardly anyone got up to sing until the alcohol started flowing. Then the music being sung was much better. My group and I moved into the lobby area where it was a little quieter and we could have a chance to visit.

I wish I had taken pictures of some people's costumes. My favorite was Denny's because she was dressed as a torch bearer for the Winter Olympics. She had a Toronto Olympics shirt on and was holding a spindle with some fire-y fiber attached to the top. It was fabulous! You could tell where she was in the building by the random bursts of the Olympic theme.

I crashed around 11pm and went back to the room, not quite ready for the next day when everyone would go home.

SOAR, Friday

2009-11-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I'm a week behind already! Enjoy this recap!

Friday, October 30, task for the day: 2 retreat sessions and marketplace (again)

On Friday, I once again woke up bright and early (damn you, jetlag!) and was ready to go to my first retreat session, Spinning for Next to the Skin taught by Sarah Swett. One of my roommates was in my class and she was able to tell me about Sarah's tapestries. Previously, I hadn't seen any of her tapestries which was a real shame. They are like paintings from wool. Sarah brought a series of them to show us and it was almost like a comic strip.

Sarah also brought a number of different handspun sweaters, dresses, and coats which she has spun and knit. I loved the green dress that she made and it was sooooo soft.

Sarah explained wool structure to us and why some wool is better than others for garments meant to be worn next to the skin. For some people, the direction of the scale in wool fibers can make it feel pricky to them. Of course, some of us can't tell the difference at all. Sometimes it is the difference in preparation. She had some washed locks of Rambouillet, Polwarth and what we thought was Cormo for us to prep and spin.

The reason I said what we thought was Cormo is because Sarah had it labeled that way until the man who provided the fleeces said it was actually Polwarth. He happened to be in our class because his wife was attending SOAR and he came along, too. It was very valuable to have him there because he was able to tell us so much information about the history of the breed (as well as cormos), raising sheep in a large herd situation, and much more. Of course, right now I wish I hadn't lost the paper where I wrote down all of his information. Anyway, ready for a brief history of the Polwarth breed? (Sidenote: turns out the breed is called PolwArth not PolwOrth. Who knew?)

Picture from the New Zealand Sheep Breeders Association

According to the Polwarth Sheepbreeders Association, the breed was established in 1880. It's origin is in Australia/New Zealand from crosses of Saxon Merino rams and Lincoln ewes (3/4 Merino and 1/4 Lincoln). It is a very vestile breed that can thrive in very diverse climates, produce fine fleeces, are a good meat sheep, are good mothers and can lamb all year. An average fleece has a micron count of 23-25 and a Bradford count of 58-60's. Fleeces can range in weight from 13-15 pounds (which blows my mind) and the staple length is 4-6 inches. The farmer in our class estimated that there is about a 75% yield rate for the fleeces. Because there aren't many Polwarth breeders in America (or Australia for that matter)and supply and demand being what it is, there is a high demand for fleeces.

Sarah handed out pieces of heavy cardstock/matting board so we could record what prep method we used, the wool type and spinning style for each sample. Because I love a 3-ply yarn, I did 3 ply samples for each type.

(picture of sample card)

I loved the gray locks to death. I kept petting my samples because it was just so soft. My combed fiber was MUCH finer than the carded fiber even when I did the same spinning methods. If I wanted to have something soft but with a lot of air in it, I would definitely card the Polwarth. Sarah was nice enough to give us a large enough sample to be able to make a small project like a cowl.

A random tip/trick I learned during the class came from a fellow student. You know those weaving bobbins that people use to ply or to wind their singles off of a drop spindle? Well, they are a pain to wind by hand and the bobbin winders that you can buy range from $95-120 (or more). She had a drink stirrer from which she cut the ends off which fits in the bobbin. You can find the electronic stirrer wherever there are those powder drink sport mixes. They are around 5 bucks, are handheld and take AA batteries. Talk about genius! On the way home from the airport, I stopped by a grocery store and picked one up.

After class, everyone headed to lunch and then on to the second session of the day. My second session was one about which I was very excited. I took Making the Most of Your Hand-held Combs by Robin Russo. I didn't realize it but Robin and her husband are the force behind the St. Blaise wool combs. If I didn't already have my set of Alvin Ramer super mini combs, I would be sorely tempted by their mini combs.

Robin brought a couple of different kinds of mini combs for us to use. She had a few sets with their tines set far apart which would be appropriate for certain kinds of wool (not fine fibers). The St. Blaise sets have their tines set closer and are appropriate for the widest range of fibers from wool to alpaca, etc. Finally, she had two sets of very fine combs for combing the angora. Those combs were much smaller than the others. The tines were very fine, set very close together and were shorter than the other sets.

I love combed fiber. The way it spins is just lovely to me. I can always get combed fiber to be a much thinner yarn without bumps and burbles (why, yes, that is a word). But I felt like I wasn't using my hand-held combs to their full advantage. I was hoping that this class would help me over come that concern and it definitely did. Also, the class gave me ideas for things I could do with the mohair fleece I bought last year. Yay!

Really, if you want a great photo tutorial from one of my classmates, go to this post. She took much better notes and did a much better job taking pictures than I did!

First, we samples of three different wools: fine, medium, and coarse. The fine breed was Polwarth (apparently for me, Polwarth was the wool type of SOAR), the medium was Romney and the coarse was Coopworth. Of course, the Coopworth wasn't really as coarse as some other fibers out there but it was the coarsest in our wool sample.

After getting used to working with wools, we moved on to fibers which need to be dehaired before you spin them. If you don't dehair llama, for instance, it would feel extremely itchy because the guard hairs are thicker and more coarse than the rest of the hair. Our two fibers were llama and Navajo Churro, a sheep breed known for its dual coats. Rugs and other hard wearing items are woven from this wool because it is so hardy. We separated the coarse top coat from the downy undercoat. I spun up a sample from both coats just to see the difference. The top coat was almost like spinning with fine wire, it was that coarse! The undercoat was still coarser than some breeds but was much better than the top coat. It was also a much darker brown than the top coat.

We moved on to exotic fibers next which were mohair, angora and alpaca. I've knit with all of these fibers before but had never spun much less combed them. I was really excited to do the mohair because last year I bought a fleece off of a local woman. I've wanted to use it but have been worried about messing it up. Robin advised us to tease the locks open as much as possible so you almost have a cloud of mohair before combing. That way you will won't have as much loss while combing. Combing the angora was just like combing a cloud, difficult and whispy! I think I need a lot more practice before I do a lot of angora prepping. The alpaca was similar (of course) to llama but with much finer guard hairs.

The final thing we did, if we had time, was playing with blending fibers on the combs. I ended up spending my remaining time practicing blending mohair and wool because that is what I want to do with my mohair fleece. I took some mohair that was dyed golden and blended it with some green wool then red and then white. It gave the blend a hint of gold and I really liked the way things turned out.

Robin stressed to us that, with fibers other than wool, you should only use water to dampen down the static. Oil of any sort gunks up non-wool fibers. She gave us a recipe for what she calls combing milk for combing wool. I liked the way it smelled and the oil kept my hands nice and moisturized.

After class was over, I went over to the marketplace again to browse around. I bought some weaving bobbins to use for plying once I got home. That idea of using a drink stirrer was just so perfect that I had to pick up some bobbins (and not have to pay shipping!)

After dinner, they were having the fastest spinner contest. There were two categories: wheel spun and spindle spun. The 10 contestants in each category had a pit crew and cheering sections. They all spun their hearts out for 15 minutes. It was hysterical! I bet the resort staff never knew spinners could be so loud! My favorite person of the night was the lady standing on her chair with her spindle so she could get a longer single before winding it on. She would yell, "Liquor! Liquor!" and one of her pit crew would hold up a wine glass with a straw in it so she could stay "hydrated."

Once spinning was halted, the measuring began. They used one hallway to measure distances. The wheels of course had the most distance but the spindles produced the finer singles with some being upwards of 80 WPI! I can't remember how long the winning spindler's single was but the wheeler's was 2 hallways and a bit. The distances will be listed in the next Spin Off magazine.

SOAR, the first couple of days

2009-11-09T12:32:00.001-05:00

I had a fantastic time at SOAR and really didn't want it to end. You can't even imagine how many interesting people were there and how many interesting ideas and stories everyone had. My retreat sessions were so educational, filled with tips and tricks from the teachers as well as the other attendees. In order to keep things in a little bit of order, I'll go day by day.

Wednesday, Oct 28, task for the day: flying for eternity
Luckily, my flight out to Oregon on Wednesday wasn't at 6:00 am like I thought but was at 10:30 am. I was able to wake up at a normal hour without having to rush around. I had already packed everything the night before and only had to put things in the car and make sure the car was cleaned out. I didn't want to have much in it because it would be parked in long-term parking for a few days. The thing that took me the most time in the morning was figuring out which project to work on in the airport and which spindle I wanted with me in my purse.

When I got to the airport, I had a short wait at the counter and then breezed through security. You could tell that they were really puzzled by the spinning wheel in my carry-on but they didn't pull me out of line for extra security. My first plane of the day was a little puddle jumper plane so I had to do a plane-side check-in with my wheeled carry-on. Luckily, I had already shoved my down jacket in there and my wheel was so well packed that I didn't worry too much about it. The plane took off right on time and I was off to Chicago.

In Chicago, I was lucky to have my next flight departing from only a couple of gates down from where we arrived. In O'Hare it always seems like you have to hike to the ends of the earth for your connection. I grabbed a quick snack and waited for my plane to Seattle. That flight also left on time and I had LOTS of knitting time on the way. Oh, I suppose you would like to hear about my knitting project for the trip?

Months ago, I bought a raw shetland fleece to home process. I cleaned and combed most of the fiber and spun it into a fine laceweight.

I hadn't done anything with that yarn because the perfect pattern hadn't come along yet. Then I came across a pattern for a beaded stole in knotions called Rising Fog. The pattern has a big geometric diamond pattern and, in the center of the diamonds, it has beads. A few days before leaving, I went into Columbus to the bead store and found some beads to match my handspun. So on my first plane of day, I cast on and started knitting.

I hit a snag in the Seattle airport on my project. I was in line for food, put my wallet back into my messenger bag and heard a snapping sound. Sometimes you just know what happened without having to look. One of my needles had snapped (oh, I was working this shawl on a pair of straights because all of my circular tips in that size were in other projects or I couldn't find them) and of course it was the one with all of the live stitches on it. Luckily, like all other knitters out there, I had more than one project with me. In this case, I had my drop spindles and plenty of fiber. For a while I would use one with one type of fiber and spinning technique and then would switch when I got bored with that.

The flight from Seattle to Redmond, Oregon was super fast because we had a strong tailwind and our plane arrived almost 40 minutes early. By this point, my body thought it was 10 pm but all of the clocks thought it was 7 pm. Guess who won. I was met by my shuttle and, after a 45 minute drive, I was at Sunriver Resort in Bend Oregon.

The Great Hall where we ate dinner and had some classes

Let's just say that the resort was spectacular. If you like golf, they have 3 different world-ranked golf courses. If you like skiing, they are known for it. The resort is in the middle of this housing development/community but you could hardly tell it. It has its own grocery, school, police and fire departments, post office, etc. The resort has a number of different buildings including the main lodge, the Great Hall (where we ate and had classes), the Homestead (where there were more classes and the marketplace), and different clusters of rooms. Our room has spoiled me for hotel stays anywhere. We had a 3 person suite that had 2 queen sized beds upstairs, a queen sized pull-out sofa, a kitchenette, a fireplace, and a porch outside.

Seating area in a typical suite which also has 2 queen sized beds and a bathroom upstairs

Thursday, Oct 29, tasks for the day: registration, figuring out where things were, and marketplace
On Thursday, I woke up extremely early thanks to my body having the firm conviction we were still in Eastern Standard Time. I used the time to spin a bit, listen to my audiobook and gradually wake up. Thursday was kind of an "in-between" day. The workshop sessions were finished and all of the retreat people were coming in. The retreat sessions were going to begin the next day. It gave all of us retreat people a chance to figure out where things were and which buildings were which. The great thing about Thursday, though, was the marketplace opening!

Everyone stood in line waiting for the doors to open and there was a cheer when they finally did. Things were a little cramped in there with people going to the most popular booths first. I like going around everywhere to see everything before going back to purchase. Well, after that first perusal, let's just say, lots of things in the marketplace ended up coming home with me. First things first was finding a pair of needles to replace the one that broke. After that, I had a couple of things to pick up.

I wanted to buy a drop spindle for a friend so I payed special attention to the spindle offerings. There were a lot there but nothing that looked like it would be right. Finally, at the Verb for Keeping Warm booth, I saw the spindle that would work. The display they used didn't hurt because it really caught your eye. They had the spindles hanging from a tree branch like a whole bunch of spinning ornaments. The spindle is a little bit more substantial than the ones I tend to use but will be perfect for someone just learning to drop spindle. She already knows how to spin on a wheel but wants to be able to spin as she goes. That's a little harder with a wheel.

While I was in that booth, a delicious braid/skein/bump/what do you call a bunch of pre-yarn fuzz? called my name and whispered decadent things to me. It's a beautiful dark grey alpaca silk blend that is going to be a dream to spin.

While I'm talking about fiber, I have a confession. Approximately, *cough* 3 pounds of assorted fiber came home with me. I blame waiting in the line for the Rovings booth (that is the name of the store) to see why everyone else was in line (I'm nothing if not a lemming). By this time, I had met up with my friend Kim from my town and we both waited in line. Kim had come for the full week so the long line was a nice chance to catch up. We were standing near a 1.5 pound bag of brown Polworth that was a really good price and soooooooo soft. I swear, it was love at first sight. Sigh

The other large purchase was a pound of white Rambouillet from the booth next to Rovings. It was really funny to see the multi-tasking from the people in line. You might be in line but there was another booth right there! People would look into the other booth and say "ooo! I want that. Here is my money!" All while not leaving the line.

Of course, I didn't exactly plan to buy that much fiber. The suitcase I brought is the size of a carry on. Actually, my wheel suitcase is bigger than the one I used for my clothing. What does that say about my priorities? Anywho, my clothes suitcase has a neat backpack that you can tuck the straps in and zip on to the front of the bag. That bag was empty and I thought it would be sufficient. Ha! But I'll tell you more about packing later.

After dumping all of my goodies from the marketplace back in my room, my roommates, Kim and I went to lunch. After lunch was registration for us and an excursion trip to the nearby volcanoes for Kim. Once we finished registrations, my roommates and I went back to the room and napped for a while. Later, I found out that we missed the introduction ceremony where all of the teachers were introduced which was a real disappointment. Dinner was after than and then we went to an impromptu spin-in in the main lodge. There wasn't really one good place to have groups meet-up like a lobby so we ended up taking over the spot where registration was.

For me as a newcomer, one downside to this SOAR was how de-centralized everything was. While I really liked the rooms (lap of luxury!) and the resort, the suites made it somewhat isolated and there wasn't a main lobby. True, the lodge had one but it wasn't big enough for lots of spinners to take it over. Classes happened in 3 different buildings (which I totally understand because it would be hard to have that many rooms available in one building) which were usually a far distance from the various suites. It was hard to get groups of people together because you weren't really sure in which building the most people would gather. Well, it will just encourage me to go to another! SOAR 2010, here I come!

SOAR, brief overview

2009-11-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

If you guys don't mind, I'm going to give you a short overview about my time at SOAR and then go back to do more detailed posts. I figured, if I waited until I had everything written in detail about each of the days, you would never get any recap about SOAR!

Let me just say, it was soooooo much fun. I'm definitely planning on going next year. It is in Wisconsin in 2010 so much closer for those of us in the midwest! I had a great time meeting all of the people, sharing tips and tricks, and taking classes. I didn't expect to know as many people there as I did. It was funny that I had already met everyone there who was from Ohio (OK, fine, there were only a couple of people there from Ohio but still!). I mean, out of all of the spinners in Ohio and all of the spinners at SOAR? That's really good odds. It was a lot of fun to sit down at random tables at meals and start to get to know people.

I had some fantastic classes. The first session I had was that spinning for next to the skin. If you ever have the chance to spin Polworth, TAKE IT! Gorgeous stuff. Sarah, the teacher, had some already cleaned fleece and had us try different preparation methods. One bit we combed, another we carded. She also had us try different kinds of fleece to see how differently fine wools could be. The man who raised the sheep whose fleece we were using was there in class. His wife was attending classes and he decided to sit in ours. He was able to tell us a lot about the science of breeding, the history of the breed, information about breeding on a large scale (think 200 head) and much more.

The next session I went to was about using hand combs. I can't even tell you how glad I am that I took that class. I have a set of combs but haven't felt that I've used them to their full advantage. The woman who taught the class makes the St. Blaise wool combs so she definitely knows her stuff. She had many different samples of fiber for us to use. She started with wools: fine, medium and long. We then moved on to llama and Churro, breeds that definitely need dehairing. Then on to exotics like alpaca, mohair, angora and one other that I can't recall. Then we played with blending fibers using combs. It was a lot to pack in one 3 hour session!

The third class I was in was spinning for socks. I don't think I've spun anything so fast in my life. We had to spin enough singles for a small amount of 3 ply and a 4 ply cabled yarn. That is a lot of spinning! The teacher talked a lot about different fibers and which things were good for socks. She had us spin a normal BFL then a superwash BFL. The superwash definitely felt slick and seemed to spin faster than the normal BFL.

My final class was about working with silk. Let's just say that, after a week of stewing silk cocoons, that room was pungent. We did a lot of hands on things and was really fun. He had us reel silk and make silk hankies. I have some of the silk we reeled before it was degummed and after it was and the difference is amazing.

The only bad part of SOAR was that probably a third of the people there got sick. Everyone thought that it had started at Rhinebeck. People got sick there then the illness had enough time to really get going before they came to Oregon. From there, the people who were there all week got sick. From there it passed on to all of the people who came in for the second half of the week. One of my roommates was one of the unlucky and came down with what was going around. I hope she feels much better soon! The other roommate and I had both gotten flu shots prior to traveling so, as of right now, neither of us came down with anything. All of the travel and time in airplanes is definitely an assault on your immune system!

OK, my next post is going to have a more detailed breakdown of the trip and pictures. I think that you will get only a few days in each post just so you don't have to read forever.

SOAR!

2009-10-28T08:05:00.000-04:00

I'm off to SOAR in Bend, Oregon! My flight leaves later this morning and I'll arrive in the Bend airport around 7 their time. I'm not planning on blogging from SOAR but I will take plenty of pictures for you, learn lots of things to share, and meet tons of fantastic people! I'll be back early Monday morning (so very early) so look for a post after that.

Soctober!

2009-10-15T15:01:00.001-04:00

Yeah, so I fail at being up to date. I meant to post about Socktober in the first couple of days of October but time passed me by. Have you been knitting socks (or something with sock yarn) this October? I have!

I finished my first pair of socks in 8 days! During school, I could finish a pair that quickly because of all the 3 hour classes of ~~knitting~~ I mean learning time. I think this pair went so quickly because I really wanted to see the way the cables would turn out. The pattern was Midsummer Night's Dream from Knitty. It has leaves growing up the front of the sock.

Sorry for the bad pictures. It's deciding to be cold and rainy here today.

Pattern: Midsummer Night's Dream
Yarn: Fancy Dancing Feet, a superwash wool
Needles: US 2, 2.75mm
Dates: Oct 2 - 10, 2009
Modifications: I used my own toe pattern and the sockitecture from Cat Bordhi's Riverbed pattern. That sockitecture is fast becoming my favorite way of doing socks.

My next project wasn't a pair of socks but it was knit out of fingering weight yarn. A couple of yarn festivals ago, I bought some sock yarn in OSU colors, scarlet and grey. Dad is a huge OSU fan so I was going to make a pair of socks for him. That was before I learned that he likes knee highs (well, knee highs for me but midcalves for him) and I really couldn't face doing all of that knitting. Also, I only had bought one skein of yarn. True, it is a very generous skein but not enough for my 6'4" father's feet. Anyway, this yarn has been hanging around my stash for a while now looking lonely. I decided that, if I wasn't going to use it for socks, I should do something with it. After poking around ravelry for a bit, I decided the yarn was destined to be a hat.

I doubled the yarn and cast on 112 stitches. I did a 3x1 ribbing which doesn't look that exciting on the right side but, when you turn it inside-out, the pattern looks really interesting. I cast on before going to the Quarter Horse Congress with friends, knit on it while we were walking around, and finished it after we sat around a bit and watched a couple of different classes. Definitely a quick little project.

Pattern: None really
Yarn: Yarnsmith Mazu, wool/seacell blend but I've lost the label
Needles: US 6, 4 mm
Dates: Oct 11
Modifications: Well, since I was making it up as I went along, none really.

After finishing that OSU hat, I immediately cast on for another one but with a different yarn. The yarn is one of my handspun yarns, a DK weight called Rainbow Fleece. It is 100% soysilk and was naturally dyed by Earthly Hues.

I spun the singles for this yarn back in 2008 and then finally plied everything this past July. The chain plying I did kept all of those colors together and the finished product has a really nice rainbow transition.

After I had finished the yarn, it was calling out to be made into some sort of hat. I pictured some sort of simple ribbed hat so that the pattern and the yarn would work well together. July, then August, then September all passed without me doing anything with this yarn. When I was grabbing the yarn for the other hat, I decided at the last minute to throw this one in my bag, too. This hat took me much longer to finish because a) it wasn't the weekend anymore, b) the house is cold and I didn't want to take my hands from under the sheepskin blanket, and c) I wanted to use up all of the yarn and that made it much longer than the other. I really wanted all of the colors to show up in the hat because what would be the point to have a rainbow hat without the purple?

Pattern: None really
Yarn: Handspun, Rainbow Fleece, 100% soysilk
Needles: US 6, 4 mm
Dates: Oct 11 - Oct 14
Modifications: Apparently, I forgot the pattern from one minute to the next and did a 2x1 rib rather than 3x1.

I am apparently on a hat kick because I've started another one (!). This time, I'm doubling sock yarn again and making sure that I do a 3x1 rib. I don't think I even have this yarn in my ravelry stash because it has been in the stash for so long. It was probably the second sock yarn that I bought and I made one sock out of it back when I was doing socks one at a time. Yeah, that didn't last long. I know that SSS hits me badly and knitting two socks at a time is the only way that I get pairs done. Another reason this sock didn't last was that the yarn pooled horribly around the ankle. So it was time to reuse the yarn for something else. I think that this hat will go in the holiday gift pile for a recipient to be named.

Hopefully, I'll continue with Socktober and be able to finish up at least one other pair of socks before the end of the month. I have a number of WIPs hanging around including a pair of toe-up Jaywalkers on which I've turned the heel and just need to do the leg. There is also a pair of cabled knee highs from last Socktober that have the entire intricate leg finished and I just have to turn the heel and finish the foot. Simple, really, after all of the work on the leg. Remind me why haven't I already finished them?

Oh! I almost forgot what I'm calling the Blanket of Insanity aka sock yarn blanket. I'm still continuing with the squares but now I have to finish up some socks in order to get the leftovers. Thanks to the Midsummer socks there is plenty of yellow left and I have a little bit of the OSU yarn from the hat left, too. Right now, there are somewhere between 45-50 squares finished with their ends woven in.

National Museum of the American Coverlet

2009-10-09T09:26:00.003-04:00

I happened to be in south central PA last week and used the opportunity to visit with friends and then stop by the National Museum of the American Coverlet in Bedford, PA. You are probably asking yourself, "What is an American coverlet?" Well, are you ready for some education? In the following post, images have been taken from a number of different museums. If you would like more information, please click on the links under each of the pictures.

Picture from the National Museum of the American Coverlet website
(sidenote: that is the style of walking wheel that I have)

Early Coverlets
American coverlets, according to the gentleman who took me on an in-depth personal tour of the museum, are a thoroughly American art. They are woven blankets which were made in America (and limited parts of Canada) by European weavers who had emigrated to America. Early coverlets are defined by their geometric designs. Early ones typically have a center seam because the looms that wove them were small. One of the examples in the museum was really interesting because the coverlet had been taken apart, repaired and sewn back incorrectly. The border of one side was sewn together with the center of the other side. The early weavers created geometric patterns because they were limited by their technology. At the time, the looms they owned were unable to make complex designs. All of that changed when the Jacquard loom was brought to America.

Jacquard looms
As those interested in the history of computers will know, a Jacquard loom is an example of an early computer. A Jacquard loom is, according to Merriam-Webster, "a loom designed to weave fabrics of intricate design whose control mechanism makes use of cards with holes punched in them."

Punch cards on a Jacquard Loom
picture from The Tapestry House

Those cards allowed weavers to move beyond the simple geometric designs. Suddenly, they could make works of art rather than just beautiful blankets. At this time, coverlets began being signed and dated thanks to the Jacquard loom.

Scanned image from American Coverlets and Their Weavers

According to the gentleman at the museum, the woman's name on the coverlet always refers to the recipient of the coverlet. There is only one recorded instance of a woman weaver making woven coverlets. The investment cost for purchase of the Jacquard loom and punchcards was so much that only well-established men could afford to buy them. The lady who wove coverlets inherited the loom and punchcards from her father.

The signature blocks allow us to know such a wealth of information about the weavers and their recipients. If you have a chance, take a look at the book, American Coverlets and Their Weavers by Clarita Anderson. The author looked through numerous census records and was able to find some fascinating information about the weavers.

Coverlets as art and function
I found it very interesting to learn that coverlets were probably one of the first things in a household that were bought simply to be pretty. The first items bought (or made) for a house would be things like furniture or kitchen equipment. A coverlet, on the other hand, was extremely expensive and would only be displayed on the master bed.

Melting Pot of America
In a very physical way, coverlets show explain why America is called a melting pot. When the European weavers first settled in America, their coverlets had distinct images and styles. For instance, a German weaver's coverlet reminded me very much of hex signs found on Pennsylvania Dutch barns.

Drawn example of coverlet from the National Gallery of Art

An English weaver's coverlet, on the other hand, had English symbols like lions or the English rose. Also, the border of the English weavers' coverlets were different that those of other European weavers. Their borders were bound off without tassels or fringe. Many English weavers settled in the New York area.

New York quilt, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Once the weavers began moving west, however, their styles began to blend. Elements of the different nationalities as well as traditional American symbols were common. By the time the weavers hit Indiana, they had developed a very cohesive style. The following image is from a coverlet that the Metropolitan Museum of Art believes was woven by an Ohio weaver. It shows a combination of the different elements.

Probably Ohio quilt, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Country Living had an article in the May 2007 issue about American coverlets. If you would like additional information, click here.

Stay at Home and Use Me Well Exhibit
From now until next year, the museum is having a special exhibit of spinning wheels and accessories.

I don't have any pictures from this display because I was the only person there and was having a guided tour. I'm sure Mr. Zongor wouldn't have minded but I didn't want to impose.

The wheels on display were the property of one man. Now, that doesn't sound that impressive until you see how many items were in the museum. I can't even picture where that man keeps it all! It makes me wonder how I can work it so that he adopts me. The variety of wheels were simply amazing. He had walking wheels, production wheels, a pulley wheel, flax wheels, wool wheels, upright wheels, more traditional wheels, double flyer wheels, TONS of mothers of all, etc etc. AMAZING. If you are interested in antique spinning wheels at all, go see the exhibit. It was really fascinating to see all of the different types in one place.

If you are in the area, make sure you drop by the museum. For a small museum, they have really good hours. They are located in historical Bedford, PA right off of the PA turnpike.

A Wool Gathering 09

2009-09-21T23:30:00.002-04:00

I went to A Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs, OH this past weekend. Last year, it was wickedly hot and just after that wind storm which caused us not to have power for a week. This year, on the other hand, the weather could not have been better. It was nice and cool in the morning and warmed up into the high 70s by the afternoon. It was great to meet up with my friend and her mom and to see vendors and other shoppers that I know. It's funny, the more I go to these events in my area, the more people I'm getting to know.

I was very happy that I stayed within my budget but I definitely didn't stay away from sock yarn or fiber.

Yeah, that is 3 additional skeins of sock yarn and a couple of ounces of different fibers. In my defense, one of those skeins was bought by my friend and I'm knitting the socks as Christmas presents for her. I've already thought up a good pattern for the variegated yarn. I should probably cast on so that the socks actually get finished for this Christmas rather than one far down the road. (Not that I've ever done that with a present *cough*) That skein and the other variegated one were from Earthly Hues and are going to be fabulous socks.

I think my best/most favorite purchase was the Greensleeves drop spindle and the fibers from Susan at the Trading Post. I took my spinning and knitting Estonian Lace class at Susan's shop back in April. She has wonderful crack fiber. Back in May at Wooster, I had wanted to buy one of her spindles but didn't make it back to her booth before everything closed down. I made sure that I made it to her this time around!

Purple = Ashland Bay Concord (I think)
Grey = Mongolian Cashmere & Mulberry Silk (again, I think)

I've found that I really like lightweight spindles that will spin a lace to fingering weight yarn. It doesn't hurt that all of the fibers I want to use at this moment really like to be spun thin. Right now I'm spinning the purple merino/tussah silk blend into a 3-ply fingering-ish weight. I'm using that chain plying technique where you spin then ply. The resulting yarn is REALLY nice if I do say so myself!

The other skein of fingering weight yarn that I bought was from Amazing Grace Llamas. Amazingly, I didn't buy any of her soaps this time around. Normally I come home with at least one of her cute shaped soaps but I was fickle this time and didn't find a scent that screamed to me. The ribbed socks that I just told you about were made out of her superwash fingering weight yarn. This time, I bought a semi-solid yellow that reminds me of a daffodil and other spring flowers.

I have a feeling it will be very nice to wear those socks in the middle of dreary winter. I also have to confess that I bought that color for the leftovers. You might be wondering, huh? Well, I don't have many brightly colored squares so far for my sock yarn blanket and I know I will have plenty of leftovers with this skein.

Speaking of the sock yarn blanket, the cat found the squares. . .

She looks really comfy doesn't she? I'm up to 24 squares and haven't repeated a yarn yet. Actually, the full count of squares won't reflect the true number of socks I've made. On some of the socks I had only a couple of yards left and one pair only had an inch and a half.

Oh! I almost forgot! I received the skein of Noro sock yarn in the mail on Saturday. Yesterday, I finished the scarf and started a matching pair of fingerless gloves. I decided to do a garter stitch pair so the gloves would be similar to the scarf. Thanks to ravelry, I found a good pattern and I immediately cast on. The original pattern was written for a heavier yarn so I just increased the number of stitches cast on and did more rows that the pattern called for. I might lengthen the tops of the mitts by picking up stitches and knitting a couple of rows of garter stitch. We'll have to see. I'll still have yarn left over so I am going to have plenty for a fringe on the scarf. Anything to use up the rest of the skein!

and we're back!

2009-09-18T08:15:00.000-04:00

Sorry, guys, that I've been gone for so long. I wish I could say that I wasn't blogging because exciting things were happening in my life. But in reality, I just didn't sit down and blog. Don't get me wrong. I thought of blogging and even went as far as composing things in my head (don't tell me I'm the only one who does this!). It seemed like I was never in front of a computer or was at work when I had a flash of inspiration. Oh, well.

Anyway, I've been up to much more spinning recently than knitting. This situation is going to have to remedy itself soon because the handspun stash is going to take over the world if I don't start using it. I really don't need another hobby but isn't weaving supposed to use up yarn quickly? That is looking like a really good option.

My biggest project to date (big in terms of both yarn and stash usage) has been a handspun sweater/jacket thingy. The pattern is from
The Yarn Girls' Guide To Beyond The Basics and is called Slip and Slide. When you imagine a handspun sweater, this sort of project comes to mind. It called for a super-bulky yarn and the linen stitch makes it look nobbly. Let's just say that it isn't a form fitting kind of sweater. When I first saw the pattern, it looked perfect for some yarn that I spun when I first started spinning. It was that beginners yarn that is super bulky then thin then bulky. A friend had given me a pound or so (I should have weighed it when I first got it) of brown wool roving. Well, I thought I could double the yarn and it would be the right gauge for the project. It turns out that it wasn't and I added a strand of a 3-ply worsted yarn I spun out of the Jacob fleece my cousin gave me. The fronts and back took me a weekend to do but then I hit a roadblock on the sleeves. I was going to run out of the original brown yarn. There is no more roving nor does my friend have any more and she bought it eons ago. You can see my dilemma.

My solution was to use some of the light brown in the Jacob fleece (I keep using it for different projects and the amount of fleece never seems to go down!) and spin it up in a similar style as the original brown. My cousin's sheep are rather elderly and their black and white patches have faded to light and dark brown patches. The light brown matched the original really closely which was very surprising. I had to card the fleece and make rolags because the original was roving strips torn off a drum carded batt. Next, I had to spin in a similar style as when I was first starting. Let me just tell you how hard that is! My default spinning style now is a worsted technique and very, very fine. The original was a woolen technique and thick and thin. Trying to replicate my previous spinning style has been teaching me a lot about how to use my wheel to the best advantage. I put the drive on a larger whorl and ratcheted the tension up so it pulled the fiber out of my hands faster and gave me a bulkier yarn.

The project has come to a slight halt because I've had to be prepping the fiber and spinning the yarn as I've been knitting. Hopefully the sleeves won't take too long after I get that yarn spun up. The only problem now is that I think I might run out of the 3-ply Jacob. That will mean I have to prep and spin for 3 singles and ply it up. At least I won't have to be as careful to prep only the light brown locks. I pretty much used everything in the 3-ply. My quick project is taking a lot longer and involving more effort than I thought it would.

Before starting on the sweater/jacket, I just had to knit a Milkweed Shoulder Shawl out of some yarn I had on hand. It is a fingering weight Cherry Tree Hill in the colorway Peacock. I have to tell you, I love this color. Everything about it makes me happy. It is a mix of lovely blues, greens, gold, and a dark fuchsia. Originally, the yarn was supposed to be a pair of Pomatomus and the color pooled quite interestingly in that pattern. Those socks, however, stalled out because I thought I was smarter than the pattern. We all know how that goes. Well, I saw the Milkweed pattern and, lemming that I am, I had to make it. After perusing the stash for possible yarns, I remembered the languishing Peacock.

This pattern is perfect if you want a very simple lace project. It is garter stitch and has a very simple lace pattern. It also took no time at all to make. This picture is from when it was unblocked. After blocking, the edges don't curl in the same way.

In other knitting news, I've been taking part in the Single Skein September over in the Stash and Burn Ravelry group. The goal for the month is to use up those single skeins you bought because they were pretty or because you used up everything else in a project. Let's just say that I have a number of those hanging around in the stash. The only problem is that my SSSeptember is turning into Startitis September because I've been casting on for everything under the sun. Let's start with the first project for the month.

I've been wanting to start using my handspun for a while now (see comment above about it taking over the world). So part of my goal for September was to use it in different projects because I usually had only one skein of the handspun. I started by making a pair of mittens out of some Gaslight Dyeworks roving called Wisp. It is a mix of wool, alpaca and different colored sparkle. As it so happens, the yarn I spun up was bulkier at the beginning and the sparkle was mostly blue/purple. By the end, it was thinner and the sparkle was pink. So the hand of one mitten is blueish-purple and the other is pink. In order to make them match(ish), I knit a blue cuff on the pink mitten and a pink on the blue one. I have no idea why I love these mittens so much. I'm not usually a sparkle kind of girl but these just make me smile.

I had enough yarn left over to make a hat and have been doing an inch of blue then an inch of pink. I've kind of stalled out on it, though, because I don't like the way I've done in the decreases. It is a 1x1 rib but the decreases at the top look funky. It would be nice to get it finished before it starts getting cold so I can have matching sparkly mittens and hat (what in the world has happened to me?!).

In the middle of working on those mittens, I cast on for a scarf using some Noro sock yarn I had on hand. I bought the skein originally to make some sort of shoulder shawl but never got around to it. Unfortunately, that scarf has stalled too. I really like the way it has been turning out but then I ran out of yarn in the last inch. That wouldn't really be a problem if I were making a regular scarf but this one is knit diagonally so an inch short means I don't have a corner. Someone on ravelry happened to be selling a skein of the same colorway so I bought it from her yesterday. It's annoying to have to buy a whole other skein but maybe I'll use it to make some matching fingerless gloves and add a fringe to the scarf. Anyway, it's on hold until the yarn comes.

Another project I've been working on, was started a couple of months ago but finished this month. It was a pair of 2x2 ribbed socks made from yarn I bought up in Wooster this past May. I'm going to a fiber festival this weekend and the vendor from whom I bought the yarn will be there. I really wanted to finish them because I wanted to show her what I made from the yarn. The yarn base she used is fantastically soft and squishy. If she has more this time, I might have to break down and get another skein. I did remember while I was knitting the socks, however, how much I hate ribbing. You knit on it forever but the socks don't grow in length. Well, anyway, it's nice to have another pair of socks to add to the rest of them.

Speaking of socks or rather fingering weight yarn, I've completely lost my mind. Like other sock knitters, I've been saving the leftover balls of yarn for a while now. Well, I started working on a sock yarn blanket a couple of days ago. For someone who hates weaving in ends as much as I do this is insanity. INSANITY. I've been using (kind of) the pattern from knit me a river. The only difference is that I've been using Judy's Magic Cast On so I don't have a hole in the center that I have to sew together when weaving in ends. In order not to kill myself with sewing in ends, I've been zealous about doing it the second I finish one. I've also been casting on for another square the second I finish one. When I have enough knit, I will weave in the tail so I only have one end to weave in upon finishing. As of this morning, I've finished 13 squares that will be about 4.5 inches when they are blocked. These things are like potato chips, seriously addictive.

I've decided to do this blanket a little bit like a quilt. I'm going to have at least one outside border of a solid color yarn (probably will have to buy a full skein or two for that). Then, rather than sewing the blocks together, I'm going to have a border in-between squares (see the purple sections on the highly "technical" diagram below). The plan is to pick up stitches along the square edges and knit the last stitch of the border and the picked up stitch together. Does that make sense?
Only time will tell if this idea is insane. I'll see what changes I have to make along the way. This is definitely not a project that I expect to finish quickly.

Well, you made it through a very long post! I'll have to do another one soon to let you know what else has been happening recently.

Beautiful

2009-08-06T10:32:00.000-04:00

Look at this beautiful space and photography.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stocksphotography/sets/72157609629601114/show/

Which picture do you like the most? Mine is this one.

I love all of the crafty things in the picture

State Fair 09

2009-08-05T07:33:00.002-04:00

My friends and I went to the state fair Sunday and had fantastic weather for it. This summer hasn't been like a real summer at all, much more rainy and cooler than normal. Not that I'm complaining at all because I really enjoy cooler weather. Anyway, this was the first time in a couple of years that I have gone to the state fair. It is also the first time I've entered anything at the fair.

We went all through the animal barns looking at everyone in the stalls, pens and tie stalls. I bet all of the exhibitors were thrilled that the weather wasn't roasting. No one had to worry about heat exhaustion. I really enjoyed going through the sheep barn because there were so many different breeds and some fleece judging was going on. There were some really nice ones there. I wasn't knitting ~~obsessively~~ ~~constantly~~ enthusiastically or spinning at all the last time that we went to the fair so I didn't take special note of the sheep then. My one friend made a friend for life because he gave a thorough head and back scratch to a ram who had been sheared recently. That big guy was definitely itchy. The one funny thing we saw was a ewe tied to the fence being shampooed and bathed. She was NOT THRILLED with the whole thing. The man who was washing her took her back to the barn toweled her head off and started combing her, getting ready for the show ring. All I could think about was felting fleece.

My friends and I then moved on to the natural resources area where we watched a demonstrations on water dogs. It was fun to watch the different dogs retrieving the "ducks". One dog had a very clean entry into the water. He would run to the edge and then delicately step into the water without a splash. Another dog there, on the other hand, took a flying leap and did a canine equivalent of a cannonball!

At the end of the day, we went to the Creative Arts building where all of the art things and cooking entries were housed. Some of the drawings and paintings were really impressive. The photography, however, didn't really inspire me. Ironically, the entries in my local fair usually do. I would have thought the people in the local fair would enter things into the state one. We kept wandering through the different rooms until we came to this. . .

That's right, second! I was so thrilled! I thought they were going to notify us if we won anything and hadn't heard from them so it was a complete surprise. The lady who won 1st in this category had a lovely wedding veil she had made for her wedding. She included a picture from the wedding which was very nice.

On to the next case and this. . . .

Another second! I think that is pretty good for a sweater I was still finishing on the morning we turned things in!

When I got to the semi-constructed case (from the looks of the entries no one else understood what exactly they meant by semi-constructed), I saw this. . .

A blue ribbon! I really liked doing this shrug and using the yarn so it was nice and sproingy. I can't wait to actually be able to wear it because this, too, was being finished the morning that items were due.

When I looked for my Morning Surf Scarf, I saw that it had been awarded first place and the best in category!!!

All in all, I'm quite happy with the results. I didn't place with my handspun yarn but, then again, I didn't expect to. I grabbed that skein at the last minute and definitely wasn't my best work. The way that they displayed the handspun skeins was quite nice and it was interesting to see all of the colors.

Speaking of displaying, I was glad to see the different items were protected in glass cabinets. One of Mom's friends mentioned how they had a problem with items being stolen in past years. I was definitely concerned that my projects would be stolen before I had a chance to enjoy them!

I wish that my camera battery hadn't been dying or else I would have taken more pictures. As it is, I have a couple of pictures of some of the other knit items that were just fantastic.

The quilts that were entered were amazing. I wish I could show you all of the detail in them. These pictures really don't do it justice but try clicking on them to make them bigger and you might see some of the exquisite quilting on them.

Some of the cake decorating ones really amused me. I hope they still look good when the fair ends on Sunday. The ones that had been made for tasting looked a little wonky in their display case.

And the last picture for this picture-heavy post. . . .

It could have only been better if that was actually bubble wrap and not just a paint job!

tdf day 18

2009-07-22T00:23:00.004-04:00

I thought yesterday was the challenge day for the Tour de Fleece. When the bikers are having a challenging day, the spinners push themselves by either using a new technique, a new fiber, or doing some other personal challenge. My challenge was going to be spinning up an ounce of yak/tussah silk that I bought at the Spinning and Knitting Estonian Lace Workshop I went to in April. So I ended up doing my challenge one day early.

Spinning this fiber blend was a little tricky. It wanted to be spun so very thin. I had to remove almost all of the tension on my bobbin before it would stop flying out of my hands. I really can't wait to finish plying it and knitting it into a set of wrist warmers. They are destined to be a Christmas gift for a friend.

If you can, you should get some of this fiber. It is FABULOUS. The Trading Post in Pendleton, IN has some really great fiber blends. The website is a little interesting to use but, if you click on the picture of each fiber, you can get more information about each. Susan is really nice and has great customer service. She comes to a lot of the fiber festivals in my area. I can't wait to get more stuff from her at Yellow Springs.

Because the 22nd is the real challenge day, I guess I will start spinning up the other fiber blend I got from The Trading Post, a 50/50 merino/camel blend. It is going to be another challenge and delight to work with.

State Fair FOs

2009-07-22T00:14:00.002-04:00

Last year, I listened to David Reidy's podcast (Sticks and String March 23, 08) and he was talking about entering projects in local fairs. His discussion about entering items was very inspiring. But I didn't get around to getting anything finished for the state and local fairs that year. Then I went to our local fair. Not to be a yarn snob but FUN FUR placed. FUN FUR. I was determined that this year would be different.

This Saturday and Sunday was the submission deadline for the projects for the state fair. I, of course, was not finished with the various projects. I entered 5 different items: a skein of fingering handspun, an item knit from handspun, a sweater, a semi-constructed item (why did I enter that one?), and a knitted lace item. I had a couple of projects that were already finished or so close that it would only take a couple of days to finish them. The skein of handspun was already finished.

I can't remember if I blogged about this and am too lazy to go back to look. This is a 100% BFL 3-ply fingering weight yarn and is intended for socks.

The item from handspun was going to be one of two scarves: the Morning Surf Scarf or the Waves of Grain scarf. Rereading the entry information, I realized that needed to have a skein of the handspun yarn. Well, neither one of these had any yarn left over. I think I had 2 inches of the one and maybe a foot of the other but, of course, I threw it out long ago. The Morning Surf Scarf has a bind off edge. The Waves of Grain is grafted in the middle. That means that one was significantly easier to get a skein of yarn from it. I ended up unpicking the bind-off edge on the Morning Surf Scarf, ripping back one row, and rebound off. I quickly washed the yarn and dried it with a hairdryer on my mini niddy noddy. Even though they probably didn't want it this way, I wrapped it around an index card just because there wasn't much of the yarn.

The sweater was one of those projects that was mostly finished but not quite. It is the Hey, Teach! cardigan from Knitty. I started this project back last year but just didn't get around to finishing it. I think my main problem was that it was knit in pieces. Sure the pieces go fast but the seaming (or thinking about doing the seaming) takes forever. In addition, I kept knitting the same sleeves over and over. I was going to make 3/4 length sleeves rather than the cap sleeves that the pattern calls for. The first pair I made were waaaaay too tight and would have cut off my circulation in a heartbeat. I started them again in the next biggest size. They were waaaaaay too big. (This is starting to sound like Goldilocks!) Saturday night, I made the decision to rip the second set of sleeves out and start over with the original size. Luckily, I wasn't deluded enough to think that I could get the 3/4 length finished in that amount of time (I still needed to finish the semi-constructed garment). The decision was made to knit the cap sleeves and, once the fair is over, I can decide to knit the 3/4 length if I want. That is the great thing about handknit sweaters; you can tweak them after they are finished.

When I realized I had entered the semi-constructed garment categorey, it made me wonder why in the world I thought that was a good idea. I mean, what in the world does semi-constructed mean? When last Monday rolled around, I realized that I still hadn't done anything for this category. A shrug seemed to kind of fit the bill but I wasn't sure what yarn I had on hand. Then I looked at the Dream in Color Classy I had bought in Pittsburgh when I was visiting a friend last November.

I bought this yarn with a shrug in mind. The skeins are 250 yds each and with two of them I probably would have enough on hand for a shrug. Then when I started looking around, I couldn't find a pattern that only used 500 yds and looked like something I wanted to wear. On Monday, I did a search on ravelry again for a shrug with my yardage and yarn weight. The Dream in Color Lace Shrug popped up and it was like the designer was in my head and could see the shrug I was picturing. And the pattern called for 500 yards of Dream in Color!

I really liked knitting this shrug. After finding an online store (the Dream in Color site was down when I was searching) that had the shrug as a download, I cast on at 10 pm on Wednesday. I ended up seaming it together on Sunday morning at 11am. It was a really fast knit whose lace pattern is definitely memorizable.

You knit the shrug as a rectangle and then sew the ends into sleeves, pick up the stitches around the opening, and knit some ribbing around that. After looking at some of the FOs on ravelry, I decided not to flip the cuffs up which would have meant seaming up the WS for a couple of inches and then switching to the RS. I also decided to knit 2 1/2 inches of ribbing rather than the 1 1/2 inches the pattern called for. It made everything look more balanced with the cuffs unflipped.

The yarn was so sprongy and fun to knit. It was so much fun that I could even do another shrug in the same pattern without being bored. That is saying a lot about both the yarn and the pattern.

The knitted lace was probably the easiest thing for me to have finished. I have a number of shawls around which are already finished but I wanted to take the opportunity to finish up one that has been hanging around for a while. The Queen Anne's Lace shawl has been a hibernating WiP since last year sometime. It was started last June when I was coming back from a trip to Maryland and I got stuck in the airport. I was in the airport so long that I finished the shawl I was working on and didn't have anything else to work on. I think I will be scarred for life with that experience. Luckily, I had more yarn and the shawl pattern so I immediately started making another one and called it the QAL 2.

I modified the pattern a little bit. The first lace section was knit on US4s, the next section on US 6s, and the following one on US 8s. I did the extended version of the shawl and used US 9s for that section. I would say that using the 9s was on purpose so that the edge would be nice and lacy but that would be a lie. I just couldn't find the 8s because they were in another project somewhere. As a final touch, I put pearl seed beads in some of the last rows. After finishing it, I wish that I had put the beads throughout. They gave the shawl a little flare.

The deadline for turning in items to the local fair is August 8th so now I just have to see what I have finished. Or rather what I can get finished by then . . . .

More TdF

2009-07-14T10:48:00.002-04:00

The Tour de Fleece keeps rolling on. July 13th was the first rest day of the Tour which means the bikers and the spinners are both took a break. I used it as an opportunity to catch you guys up on what I've been doing (of course that doesn't mean I actually posted on that day!).

I've been busy pretty much every day of the Tour so far. The first project I was working on was the 4 ounces of BFL that I showed you last time. I finished spinning it yesterday morning and figured out that I have about 301 yards of 3-ply fingering weight.

As a sidenote, if you are in the Tour de Fleece group, have you seen the great photo mosaics that people have been making? I used fd's Flickr Toys for this one. I wonder if Picnik has any fun mosaic tools? If you have any suggestions for places to do mosaics, let me know.

Once the BFL was finished, I wanted to keep going and was poking around for something else to start. A few months (how has that much time passed?!) ago, I reorganized my fiber and yarn stash in hanging bags along one wall of my room. It has been very helpful to be able to see everything in the stashes. It's harder to forget what things are in there if it is right in front of you. Well, one of the hanging bags has drawers in it (IKEA, I love you) where I put some different singles that had been spun but not plied. These different singles were spun a long time ago. I just looked back at my flickr pictures and it looks like the one single was spun during the last Tour de Fleece!

This is some 100% soysilk roving I bought from Earthly Hues. The colorway is called Rainbow Feet and all of the colors are from natural dyes. I remember spinning the soysilk was like spinning with cobwebs. It would stick to itself in a heartbeat! It made joins super easy and you could spin it so very fine. I remember that I didn't finish plying this because I couldn't figure out if I wanted to keep the colors together or ply it with another color to create a barber pole or ply each end together for a different kind of barber pole. When I looked at the single again this Tour, I decided to use the chain plying technique I've had just been using on the BFL. The result is a very squishy DK-ish 3-ply.

I'm very happy with the result. I think it will make a very nice hat. The purple, blue and green section, though, is going to be at the top of the hat. The indigo has a tendency to rub off on your fingers. Wouldn't that make for a great look on your forehead? :)

TDF 09

2009-07-07T08:16:00.000-04:00

On the 4th of July, the Tour de Fleece started with competitors off to a roaring start. And, oh yeah, there is a bike thing going on, too. If you haven't heard of the Tour de Fleece before, it was begun as a group blog in 2006 and has grown since then. Now, it mainly takes place on the ravelry group with people sharing pictures and details of their spinning. You set your own goals for the Tour from spinning 10 minutes a day, spinning up your stash, learning new techniques, etc. etc. The Tour de France goes from the 4th to the 26th with two rest days on the 13th and 20th. On July 22nd, the bikers are going through a major mountain challenge so the spinners challenge themselves in some way. For me, that challenge day is going to be spent spinning up either the merino/camel or the yak/silk blends that I got at the Trading Post in April.

I've mainly been using the spindle for these first two days. I pulled some muscles in my shoulder last week and using the wheel is more uncomfortable than using the lightweight spindle. It also means that I can spin wherever I am. The new horse, Ivy/Lily (we haven't decided what to call her yet because everyone keeps calling her Lily since she doesn't look like an Ivy), is absolutely fascinated by the whole thing. Of course, she has the attention span of a toddler so anything moving keeps her interest!

I've signed up for 3 different teams, Team SOS -- Spin our Socks, Stash Busters 09, and Team Spindle. Right now I'm working on 4 ounces of 100% BFL in a colorway called Peach Season from the stash. It originally wasn't my stash but the lady from whom I bought my Kromski wheel. I really am liking the colors and the way the BFL is spinning up. It is going to be a very nice 3-ply fingering weight that I'm going to use for my first pair of handspun socks. This picture is from the end of the first day.

This one is from the start of day 2.

And this is from the end of day 2.

You can see the true color of the yarn in that mini skein. Isn't it funny how the yarn vs. roving can be so different?

So far I've spun of 2 ounces of the 4. Now I've started thinking of which roving I should tackle next. Should I do a merino tencel or maybe the silk milk? Or even some more of the various fleeces which are hanging around? Or maybe that fabulous bamboo? Or the fun wools that have been marinating in the stash? Or maybe . . . .

A funny thing happened a couple of weekends ago

2009-06-26T08:15:00.000-04:00

Did you go to World Wide Knit in Public Day either on Saturday the 13th or the 20th? I helped to coordinate one for our county on the 13th. A group of us met at the county courthouse gazebo for talk, knitting, spinning and eating. It was so much fun to catch up with friends and meet new ones. I ended up spinning most of the time because I'm on a major spinning jag.

The rest of the weekend seemed charmed beyond all belief. On Saturday, before going to the courthouse, I stopped by the local farmer's market at the WWKiP event going on there. While there, I happened to see a great wheel at a tag sale. I didn't really look at it, just noticed that it was there.

The next morning, I drove by again and the wheel was still there. One of the ladies in my spinning guild collects antique wheels so I stopped and took picture of it and found out the price for her. When I called Kim, she said that she already had one great wheel so was going to pass on this one. I posted the pictures on an antique spinning wheel group on Ravelry and asked the members if they thought the wheel was missing any pieces, if the two breaks in the wheel itself could be easily fixed, and if it was worth it for the price. They said, yes, the wheel could be repaired and, no, it didn't seem to be missing any pieces.

I was still considering during the day and decided to drive by again before I went riding in the evening. When I went by, I saw that the people were starting to pack everything up. I only had $50 on me and offered it to the lady. Even though that wasn't was she was asking for it, she sold it in a heartbeat. I think they really didn't want to pack it up again. I continued to the barn, got the horses in, fed them, borrowed a truck out there, grabbed winter blankets and leg wraps for padding, and headed back into town. In 10 minutes, I had a brand new (you know what I mean) spinning wheel. According to the people on the Ravelry group, this wheel is a Pennsylvania Great Wheel. Right now, it is in the basement waiting to be moved to the living room.

The other exciting thing that happened that weekend was that I was offered a horse. Michelle, a fellow spinner, moved out to Colorado in January and their house finally sold a couple of weeks ago. She had reduced her herd of horses down to one horse that just wasn't selling. Ivy is a 3 year old Appendix (part Quarter Horse and part Thoroughbred) bay filly who hasn't been trained for riding yet. A couple of friends and I went to see Ivy on Monday. On Wednesday evening, we drove the trailer down to pick her up. (Our barn is just down the road from Michelle's.) She didn't want to load since we were a whole bunch of strangers. We borrowed another horse from the barn, loaded that one, loaded Ivy and drove off with both. Once we were at our barn, Ivy came off and Curtis drove the other horse back to her barn.

We let Ivy out with everyone else that night. It is always better to introduce everyone quickly rather than letting them injure themselves by fighting over fences. We let Ivy out first to let her have a chance to look at her surroundings before introducing everyone. Next, we let Java out to meet the new girl. He sniffed her and then went to get a drink out of the waterer. The next horse, Jazz, was in heat so badly that she didn't have eyes for any other horse than my gelding. (The girls have convinced him that he is a stallion.) Next, Bo was let go and he really wanted to be Ivy's friend. The last horse locked in was the head mare, Cali. She was slamming the door with her hoof, pinning her ears, and almost snarling at Ivy. Everyone got to a safe place and we let Cali out. She tore out of the stall and immediately put herself between Ivy and the other horses.

Ivy is to the left. The white horse in the middle is Cali.

They all ran around for a while. Cali was only able to herd Java because Bo kept escaping to see Ivy and Jazz had finally noticed the new horse.

By the next morning, Jazz and Ivy were joined at the hip. Both of them seemed perfectly contentent to come in the stall together to get fed and didn't understand when the silly humans wouldn't allow that.

Java and Ivy

After a little more than a week, Cali has given up on keeping Java away from Ivy. She has decided eating is much more exciting than herding her gelding around.

Save Ohio Libraries

2009-06-23T13:29:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

from http://www.olc.org/news_story062009.asp

6/20/09 Governor’s Budget Proposal cuts the PLF 50%. Act Now!

Many of the Ohio’s 251 public libraries could close or face significant reductions in operations as a result of the Governor’s latest proposal to balance the state’s 2010-2011 biennium budget.

Public libraries in Ohio are funded primarily through the Public Library Fund (PLF), which receives 2.2% of the state’s tax revenue. Since 2001, public library funding has been on the decline. As a result of the current downturn in the economy and decreasing state tax revenues, public libraries are currently experiencing a drop in funding from the Public Library Fund (PLF) estimated at 20% or more as compared to 2008. At a news conference on Friday, June 19, the Governor proposed an additional cut in the PLF of $112.5 million in fiscal year 2010 and $114.8 million in 2011 as part of his “framework” to fill the $3.2 billion gap in the budget that must be balanced by Ohio General Assembly’s Conference Committee by June 30. This will mean a more than 50% cut in funding for many of Ohio ’s public libraries.

With some 70% of the state’s 251 public libraries relying solely on the PLF to fund their operations, the reduction in funding will mean that many will close completely, close branches, or drastically cut hours and services.

The Governor’s proposed funding cuts come at a time when Ohio’s public libraries are experiencing unprecedented increases in demands for services. In every community throughout the state, Ohioans are turning to their public library for free high speed Internet to access information on employment opportunities, children and teens are beginning summer reading programs, and people of all ages are turning to the library for information and entertainment.

Ohio ’s public libraries offer CRITICAL services to those looking for jobs and operating small businesses. Public libraries are an integral part of education, which Governor Strickland says is critical to the state’s economic recovery. But it is unlikely that many of Ohio ’s public library systems, especially those without local levies, can remain open with these proposed cuts.

About 30% of Ohio’s public libraries have local property tax levies that supplement the state’s funding. However, with the Governor’s proposed drastic cuts in the PLF, even those libraries will face decisions regarding substantial reductions in hours of operation, materials, and staffing.

During the next nine days, the Ohio General Assembly will decide whether or not to accept the Governor’s proposal. We cannot allow that to happen; we cannot wait. ALL public libraries throughout the state should immediately notify their patrons, by e-mail if possible, of the Governor’s proposed library funding cuts and the devastating effects that will result. Patrons should be urged to contact their state legislators and the Governor’s office by phone or e-mail to voice their strong opposition. We have no time for letters. Library boards of trustees should meet as soon as possible to evaluate the impact of the proposed funding reduction and formulate plans to reduce services or shut down their libraries. Make sure your patrons know immediately the actions you might have to take. This is a drastic measure proposed by the Governor and it will require a dramatic and immediate response from the libraries and our patrons.
The General Assembly Conference Committee will likely make their decision about this proposal this week. Here are the things that you should do IMMEDIATELY:
E-mail your patrons and ask them to e-mail or call your state representatives and the Governor (614-466-3555) Immediately!

Make signs and handouts for all of your buildings. In some cases, it is appropriate to say “This Branch May Close If The Governor’s 50% Cut Is Approved - Call the Governor at 614-466-3555 and State Representative(fill in yours) and State Senator (fill in yours).

Contact your editorial boards on Monday and ask for a meeting as soon as possible.
Hold an emergency meeting of your board to discuss this cut and make sure to invite your local press.

Put a message on your Web site and include links to your state legislators e-mail address and the Governor.

Do a press release on the impact this will have on your library. Remember this cut begins July 1!

Work together with other libraries in your area.

This must be accomplished THIS WEEK.

The OLC is working with the Ohio General Assembly to make sure they don’t accept this proposal. We are developing a press release for Monday morning (we will send that to all directors). We are working with Jon Iten on a memo that will review the legal steps necessary to close or merge libraries should that become necessary. We will keep you apprised of the situation.

For more information, contact:

Ohio Library Council - (614) 410-8092
Doug Evans, Executive Director - (614) 216-0678 (cell)
Lynda Murray, Director of Government and Legal Services - (614) 746-0895 (cell)
Mackenzie Betts, Director of Communications - (614) 203-2656

To find your Ohio Senator:
http://www.senate.state.oh.us/senators/SenateZipSearch.html

To find your Ohio Representative:
http://www.house.state.oh.us/

Addiction

2009-06-09T13:05:00.000-04:00

Hi, my name is Anne and I'm addicted to sheep fuzz. All things fiber are appealing to me with the exception of finishing my various projects!

I'm definitely going through a spinning jag right now. The spindles I got in Seattle aren't helping any. Or this fantastic video for a new drop spindle technique. It's like navajo plying but not. I've been using this technique for the 4 ounces of Falkland I got at the same time as the spindle and am loving it. It takes a little while to get the technique down but is great. I've already spun up 2 of the 4 ounces of roving.

In other spinning news, I broke down and rearranged my yarn and fiber stashes. Now they are very much out in sight and all of it is harder to ignore. Well, not ignore, but forget about how much is really there. Thanks to rearranging, I've made it a goal to start spinning up some of it. When I bought my Kromski wheel, the lady who was selling it was also getting rid of her fiber so I bought that, too. So on top of the fiber I had already had, I put much more in. Some of the new fiber definitely wouldn't have been the colors I would have picked so this is definitely expanding my horizons. I've made it a goal this month to spin up between 16 and 24 ounces of the already prepared top (i.e. not any of my raw fleeces) from the stash.

So far I've spun up 4 ounces of 100% BFL (I think I love that fiber) into a 3-ply fingering yarn in a colorway called Watermelon. Now I don't think I would have bought this color in roving form but I really enjoy the finished yarn. The wool is very sproingy and the colors are just fun together. It is a really red red, a strong green, and brown for those watermelon seeds. The socks aren't going to match perfectly but will be fraternal twins whenever I get around to knitting them.

Right now I'm working on a 4 ounce wool/bamboo blend (the percentages weren't written down on the label) in a color called Flirty. The color mix is really growing on me. It has white, light gray, dark gray/black, pink and blue in it. My wheel's previous owner had bought 4 braids of this colorway (16 ounces total). I have a strong suspicion that 3 of the braids were dyed at one time and 1 after. The colors aren't that different but they just appear in slightly different places. What I mean is, 3 of the braids have the dark sections at the ends of the braid but one of them has those dark spots in the middle. Right now I'm spinning up that odd ball braid. The plan is to also spin this into a 3-ply fingering weight for more socks. I may be knitting down my sock yarn stash but I seem to be spinning more up.

In addition to all of this already prepared roving, I've been working on my fleeces. I've been spinning and plying up a laceweight yarn from the tan shetland fleece.

The first skein of this yarn ended up being almost 700 yards. I've already wound it up and cast on for a shawl from Knitted Lace of Estonia.

The plan is to try to get this finished for the state fair. Our local fair doesn't have a category for handspinning but the state does. (No, instead the local fair has a category for FROG FIGURINE COLLECTING. Yeah, that's right. FROG FIGURINES. That just doesn't seem like it should be a part of the arts and craft entries.) I'm also trying to get some other projects finished for both of the fairs.

I am also making a shawl for a friend out of some yarn I got last year in St. Michael's, MD. I don't think I ever entered it into my ravelry stash. It was from a nearby dyer and definitely was out of my normal range of yarns. It is a purple with slight variations in hue and a thread of gold metallic running through it. In addition, the yarn is 100% rayon. It feels soft and has a great drape but the yarn fumes must have gotten to me. I've been imagining a shawl with this yarn since I bought it but couldn't find a good pattern. Last week, I realized Michele is going to be leaving soon (duh, I knew that for a year!) and I needed to get a move on with her project. So I decided to do a Swallowtail shawl and immediately cast on. This will be the second Swallowtail I've made and I've come to the conclusion that I love it for a fast pattern. I've been working on the shawl since Thursday (with a lot of spinning time thrown in there) and I'm already to the nupps section. I think another reason for my love of the pattern is that I get to do more nupps. I think I have an addiction.

Oh, would you like to see a rather bad picture of the cotton spindle I bought in Seattle? Here you go. I haven't worked with it yet so I can't tell you what I think about it yet.

Mom and I went to a fiber festival up in Wooster at the end of May. I liked wandering around and seeing everything and everybody. We had some fantastic lamb sandwiches. The vendor also had lamb hotdog (lamb dogs?) but we didn't try that. We did get one for dad but I don't remember what he said about it. I ended up buying a small 1 yard niddy noddy and a skein of sock yarn. Doesn't it look so different wound up?

I already cast on for a sock with it. The spinning, though, has interrupted the sock progress.

Seattle

2009-05-22T14:10:00.000-04:00

I went out to Seattle last week for a very whirlwind trip. I flew in Wednesday night, had Thursday there and flew out Friday morning. It was AMAZING how well all of my hotel, plane and car arrangements worked. It was like the whole trip was charmed. I landed a little bit late (stupid Chicago weather) but got to the car counter right before the guy left for a smoke break. Getting the car at the offsite location took a total of 15 minutes and 10 of that was the drive to the car lot and 3 of it was me inspecting the car and figuring out where the various switches were. I ended up with a Subaru Impreza with which I was really impressed.

My hotel room was at an Extended Stay in Lynnwood, a community north of Seattle. We have friends of the family who live there and I was hoping to make things more convient if we could meet up. It turns out that Pam and her family lived 5 minutes away from my hotel. Also, all I had to do to get there from the airport was take I-5 north and the hotel was right there. It was so easy to get down to Seattle, too.

I probably should confess this, being a librarian and all, but I didn't do any research for this trip really. Well, except for the yarn stores. But I didn't even do a google map for the hotel or where I was going in Seattle. I just looked at the little guidebook map. On reflection, I'm really happy I picked up the guidebook on Tuesday when a patron asked me to show them the Alaska guidebooks and I happened to see it. But, like I said, everything was charmed.

I had an appointment in the middle of the day in downtown Seattle so I found a place to park the car (10 blocks away) and remembered the cross streets. I got to my appointment early so I had a chance to cool off from my hike. After it was over, I took a detour to Pike Place Public Market and roamed around for a bit. I got a fabulous thing of mac and cheese at a cheese store/deli and some flowers for Pam and her family. I drove back to the hotel and got ready to meet Pam.

You know the best part about visiting Seattle? Pam is a knitter. Pam knows yarn stores. Pam had a plan and a map of the stores we could get to. Pam is a native and can find her way around so much better than I could. The second best part? The Seattle yarn stores were having a yarn crawl that weekend starting on Thursday. If you were able to get to all 23 yarn stores in the near Seattle area, you were entered into a drawing for a set of Addi Clicks. Pam and I knew our limits, though, and were happy to make it to 4. We went to The Fiber Gallery, Bad Woman Yarn (hysterical name!), Weaving Works, and Pam's LYS, Acorn Street Shop. Because it was a yarn crawl, every store had a free pattern and would stamp your yarn crawl booklet. It was so much fun! I didn't buy and yarn but fell down hard with the fiber and fiber tools. I blame the delightful Weaving Works!

I came home with 4 ounces of Falkland fiber, 1 ounce of cotton roving, 1 cotton spindle and 1 wooden drop spindle made in Kent, WA. I should have never picked up any of the Cascade spindles to try them out. I tried a couple and they didn't click. I tried the .95 oz one and knew it was going to come home with me. Then you can't leave without fiber because what else would you do in the airport? Knit on the 2 different projects I had brought? Ha! Of course I spun in the gate waiting area! I came home with the cotton and cotton spindle because I've never seen those in fiber stores and, the last time I was looking for one, I couldn't find one. At Bad Woman Yarn, I picked up a bluebird needle felting kit. Mom has been watching a bluebird family in our backyard so it was the perfect present for her.

After our mini yarn crawl, Pam and I went up to the ferry landing for Whitby Island and met Pam's sister, Nikki, for dinner at Ivar's, a local seafood place. It was so much fun to see both of them and catch up a bit. Pam and I arrived right as Nikki's ferry was landing and, as we finished dinner, a ferry was arriving. Talk about timing! If we had taken any longer, Nikki would have had to wait until 11.

The next morning, I was worried about getting to the airport and Seattle's notorious traffic. After consulting with Pam, I decided to leave at 8 just in case. It definitely wasn't a problem getting up and out that early because I was still on Eastern time. By 8:30, I was getting ready to drop the car off. Can you believe that? I didn't even hit any sort of slow down. Definitely charmed. All I had to do with the rental car was get out, let the attendant scan the barcode, and get a receipt from him. The ride back to the airport was 10 minutes. By 9, I was in line getting ready to check in for my 11:30 flight. It was fantastic! I had plenty of time for security and getting caffeine. And spinning.

I guess the only downside is that I am back on the terrorist watch list. Have I mentioned this before? About 2-2.5 years ago, I couldn't check in online for a Southwest flight. Now, this was for the return trip. I was able to check in online 3 days before for the outgoing trip. At the airport, I tried the kiosk check-in and it went through all of the steps but, before printing the boarding pass, told me to go to the desk to check in. So I waited in another line. What being on the watch list means is that you can't use the curbside, online or kiosk check ins. You also might get more security. I got copies of my social security card, passport, driver's license, and birth certificate notarized and sent in to the TSA in order to get off the list. After many months later, I could check-in online again for my flights. Suddenly, 2 years later I can't check in online again. It's so frustrating! I guess I will go through all of that again sometime soon.

Bad blogger

2009-05-18T17:21:00.002-04:00

I went to Seattle last week but did I take pictures? No. Did I tell you about it before hand? No. Did I have a fun whirlwind trip? Yes. Was there yarn? Yarn crawl, yes, but buying of yarn, no. Buying of fiber and spindles *cough* yes. I'll let you guys know more about my whirlwind trip later this week.

Shock

2009-05-07T13:47:00.002-04:00

I'm going to SOAR at the end of October. I just did the retreat option rather than the workshops and retreat. My retreat sessions are going to be:

Spinning Next to the Skin
Making the Most of Your Hand-held Combs
Spinning for Socks
Silk Work Sampler

I'm a little bit in shock.

P.S. Registration is today and classes are filling up fast. The two classes I had originally thought of taking were waitlisted within 15 minutes.

My own NaKniAnyMoDo

2009-05-07T09:03:00.000-04:00

You remember NaKniSweMo, right? National Knit a Sweater Month in November where you knit a sweater in a month. Well, some people took it a step further and created NoKniSweMoDo, National Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecathon (i.e. one sweater per month for a year). On the Stash and Burn ravelry group, the members modified that extremely ambitious project into another one, NaKniAnyMoDo. What does that mean? National Knit Anything a Month Dodecathon so you make a goal to knit 12 of anything. For some people that means cleaning out the stash, for others finishing up UFOs and for others working on 12 of a specific project. For me, it means socks.

I love making socks but recently I've been distracted by other projects. This was the perfect opportunity for me to replenish the handmade sock collection and to use up some of my copious amounts of sock yarn in the stash. So I've been working on my one pair per month and have pretty consistantly met my goal.

April's socks were started right before leaving for the Knitting and Spinning Estonian Lace workshop. That was April 22nd and I realized I still hadn't started a pair of socks for the month. I figured having the car trip and some down time in the evenings would be the perfect opportunity to finish a pair. I ended up finishing them on May 2nd, though the majority of the sock knitting was done in April. I didn't get the pair done on April 30th because I thought I was going to run out of yarn and couldn't stand the thought. So for 2 days, the socks sat around. Then I bit the bullet and finished knitting the toes. It turns out I had plently of yarn left (well, a yard)!

Pattern: Pomatomus from Knitty by Cookie A
Yarn: Koigu my aunt gave me for a Christmas present
Modifications: None that I can remember
Notes: Now I remember why I don't like top down socks, you might run out of yarn at awkward times. I really like the way that this yarn and pattern look together. I'm glad I didn't just do a plain vanilla sock with it.

Spinning and Knitting Estonian Lace

2009-05-04T08:59:00.005-04:00

Vacations seem to end so quickly especially if you have been looking forward to them for a long time! Last week, I took Thursday-Monday off of work and travelled over to Pendleton, IN. What is in Pendleton you ask? The Trading Post aka den of delicious fiber crack and yarn. The Trading Post hosted Nancy Bush and Judith MacKenzie McCuin for a class on knitting and spinning Estonian lace. Let me tell you right now, if you have a chance, take a class with these ladies. I learned so much! OK, back to me telling you about the weekend.

Thanks to Lucie, you will have pictures. My camera came out only once during the entire weekend and those pictures were awful! Thanks Lucie for letting me steal your pictures!

I drove over on Thursday afternoon with two ladies from my spinning guild. We had asked Susan, the owner of the Trading Post, where she would suggest to have dinner. She recommended Bonge's Tavern in a nearby town. She was planning on taking a group there so 10 of us met up for dinner. The tavern doesn't have menus per se. The waitress listed everything and everyone ordered from that. That dinner had quite possibly the best salad I've ever had. The blue cheese dressing was to die for. One of those dressings that you consider licking the plate just so you can clean up every drop. I ordered the chicken and really enjoyed it. What made the evening, though, was that dessert. (I'm making myself really hungry right now) I split a piece of chocolate and sour cherry deliciousness with a fellow classmate, Karen. Oh, that dessert was good. *Drool*

The next day, everyone arrived at the Trading Post and started carting our wheels and stuff into the shop. Susan has converted part of a barn and hay loft into her shop. I couldn't believe they had moved everything in there the day before! The color of the walls is so bright and cheery. She has put in a small kitchen which was really handy when we ordered lunch and baked pizzas in the oven.

The Trading Post

Isn't the kitchen cute?

Food was a theme for the weekend!

It was definitely chaotic moving everyone in! We fit 30 people plus stuff up on the second floor. After some tweaking and moving around, everyone settled down. Moving from place to place on the 2nd floor could be interesting but everyone seemed really patient with it all. We ended up doing the knitting sections of the class downstairs and the spinning upstairs so stuff wouldn't have to move around too much. This weekend was unseasonably warm for the end of April so you can imagine it was quite warm upstairs! Luckily, the wind blew steadily the whole weekend and we were able to open the windows to get rid of some of the heat.

Taking a spinning class with Judith is a very organic sort of thing. Sure you have times that she shows everyone something (you should have seen almost the whole group doing stretching exercises) but, the rest of the time, you are listening to stories of her life and experiences. If you can think of a job that involves the fiber world, she has done it. If you have a question about fiber, she can probably answer it. If you want a spinning technique explained and demonstrated, she can do it. Everyone said that they were amazed how much their spinning technique changed from Friday to Sunday. It was absolutely amazing!

Judith teaching

One of my sample skeins (I would have taken more pictures of them but they are all white and look the same)

Nancy brought the shawls from her book, Knitted Lace of Estonia, and shawls she purchased in Estonia. Talk about exquisite! You would not believe how delicate and intricate these shawls were. What really got me about them is that the Estonian ladies a) started knitting these just to sell to tourists and b) knit them on 9-10 inch straight homemade needles. That's right, 9 inch needles with 400+ stitches on them. Wow. I loved learning more about Estonia (who knew they loved Sweden so much?) and their knitting traditions. But I think the thing that interested me the most was how Nancy described discovering the Estonian knitting. She said that she came across some watercolor pictures while researching for another book. For her, it was like meeting her husband, you just knew it was right. Nancy said that she just wanted to learn everything that she could about the country and the knitting.

Nancy showing us a shawl

Nancy's swatches, mini shawls, actual shawls and knitting needles from Estonia

The whole goal of the workshop was to spin and knit up a sample shawl (i.e. a wee little shawl coaster) of an Estonian stitch pattern. Nancy had a couple of different options that we could do. Everyone chose one of the patterns to use. We were given some yarn to start out with so we could make the initial swatch. At the same time, we were also learning to spin finer and finer yarn out of a couple of different wools and wool blends. Judith had a Shetland/Rambouillet mix, Falkland, a wool (Merino? should have written that down)/silk blend, tussah silk and mulberry silk (Did I miss anything?). I ended up doing the Lily of the Valley stitch pattern which was a lot of fun and had a lot of nupps (think rhymes with "soups"). I loved the stitch and can't wait to knit a full shawl. This is my little sample.

My mini shawl

I met so many fun people (Hi, Kerry! Hi Lucie!), learned so much, and had such a wonderful time. If you ever have a chance to take a class with these two ladies, don't hesitate to sign up!

The spinning mojo is fine

2009-04-21T10:19:00.012-04:00

I haven't been knitting much recently but my spinning is definitely not experiencing the loss of mojo. This upcoming weekend I'm going to a class in Indiana being taught by Judith MacKenzie McCuin and Nancy Bush about spinning and knitting Estonian lace. In preparation for the class, I've been working on finishing projects and cleaning off spindles and bobbins.

The first thing I finished was a bamboo/wool blend I bought at A Wool Gathering fiber festival in Yellow Springs, OH late last fall. The roving was from Creatively Dyed Yarns. I absolutely fell in love with her roving braids and ended up buying three different 4 oz. ones, each with a different, interesting fiber combination. This one was 50% bamboo and 50% wool. Another was 70% wool and 30% seacell. The third was 40% wool, 20% silk and 20% milk protein. Choosing a color (and not blowing my budget all in one booth) was so hard.

I enjoyed spinning the bamboo mix up and it ended up being very fine.

To keep the color changes together, I navajo plied it. But I hate to say it, now the colors underwhelm me. Sure, I like them but they don't have the same beauty as the roving braid did.

I'm not actually sure what I'm going to do with this yarn. I definitely don't have enough for socks unless I was doing an anklet sock or some other short sock. Maybe another Morning surf scarf? The obsession with that pattern hasn't diminished yet. The bamboo and wool might make for a perfect summer scarf for work. Hmmm, I'll have to think.

My next spinning project has been on the spindle since July 08. I guess in the grand scheme of things that isn't that long of a time. I started spinning a silk cap for my challenge day during Tour de Fleece 08.

The silk cap was purchased at Maryland Sheep and Wool 08 as well as the spindle I was spinning it on. I'm pretty proud to have something from last May already spun up.

I have absolutely NO idea what to do with this silk. It is definitely lumpy and bumpy with thick and thin areas. Spinning the silk from the cap was definitely a learning experience. I'm definitely going to have to try it again soon.

Next up, one of my goals for April was to finish spinning up some of the dark brown shetland fleece I've been processing. I showed you guys some pictures of working with it a while ago.

I spun it up to a laceweight/light fingering weight. Did I measure the WPI? Of course not!

I started knitting with it almost as soon as the yarn was dry. I bought Nancy Bush's book about Estonian lace (huh, I wonder why) and really loved some of the shawls in there. Miralda caught my eye so I threw the yarn on the swift and wound it up. So far I'm enjoying the pattern but discovered some issues: a) The cast on number is off by +2, b) some of the charts are wrong and c) I really should swatch before I start a project. Take a look at Interweave's errata page or ravelry's page before you start.

Instead of swatching, I started the project with US 7s and merrily knitted the first two knit rows. Then I got to the lace and decided that it looked stupid. I also didn't know about the 2 extra stitches until I was reaching the end of the first lace row and realized that the charts and my numbers weren't going to match up. I decided to fudge that and just rip back to the center stitch, k2tog on one side and k2tog on the other side of that center stitch. After I was finished with that first lace row, I switched needle tips and kept going with US 6s. I'm being very blase about this shawl! But then again, I really didn't want to cast on the 300+ stitches again.

I've started combing the tan shetland fleece I got at the same time as the dark brown one. This fleece is from a whether (a gelded male sheep) and has an extremely long staple. He must be a large boy because the fleece is 7 pounds. I'm really enjoying working with this one. Before washing it in hot water, I let the fleece soak overnight in cold water. That got almost everything out and, when I washed it in hot water to get all of the lanolin out, the water was almost clear in the first soaking.

2009-04-21T09:35:00.012-04:00

Those bookish ones of you might know about the annual Edible Book Festival. This festival is held around April Fool's Day each year since 1999. The premise is that you create an edible creation that illustrates a book, book title, or literary pun. The "books" can be anywhere from complex to simple (as an example I put together three cups of tea for the book...wait for it... Three Cups of Tea). It is so much fun seeing how different people look at books and come up with fantastic edible creations.

Last year at this time I was doing my practicum (aka library internship) at Denison University where they hold an Edible Books Festival each April 1st. My inspiration book was Pompeii by Robert Harris. My edible book was a red velvet layer cake in the shape of a volcano. At the top, I put a shot glass half full of unset red jello and lemon juice. When the judges came around, I added baking soda to the mix and *boom* we had lava coursing down the volcano. (Can you tell I really enjoyed making that cake?) I won the Best in Show and got a trophy and everything!

This year, I wasn't able to get time off to go to the event but I still wanted to make a book. I originally thought of doing the book Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes because it would be simple and my parents wouldn't have to worry about transporting anything complicated to the library. Then I flipped through the book, Hello, Cupcake! , and it was all over. If you've never seen this book, it is a fabulous cupcake decorating book. The authors of it really make you feel like you can make all of the designs in the book. They have one example in the animal section for a flock/swarm of monarch butterflies. Well, you can just see what happened, can't you?

I had noticed the day before that some of the grocery stores had melting chocolate in all sorts of different colors out for Easter. When I saw the chocolate monarchs in Hello, Cupcake, I knew I had my book.

After a few mishaps (who knew you couldn't add liquid food coloring to melted chocolate?) and broken wings, I had a whole bunch of different wing sizes. I decided to make all of the wings and antennae the night before and to put everything together the morning of the event.

Those brown dots are mounds of chocolate that set the wings on with frosting and more melted chocolate. They helped to prop the wings up and look like the butterflies were fluttering. I'm acutally surprised how quickly everything came together. Once I did a couple of sets of wings, everything was much easier. The same was true of putting the butterflies together. Once you did a few, it was simple. Well, some people might say my version of simple is a little skewed.

Dad took my cupcake platter over before the festival/tea was to begin. I managed to get over to the library over my lunch break and got to see the other edible books in person. Everyone was so creative! If you would like to see the other entries, follow this link. Here are a couple of my favorites:

The "sand" is actually raw sugar and the scrolls are made out of phyllo dough

Aren't they cute?! The artichoke is a wolf!

And my absolute favorite. . .

Isn't that funny?! I love the tail. It makes me laugh hysterially.

I had to run back to work before the judging and passed Dad on my way out. He stayed for the judging and eating (who wouldn't?!). The sly guy didn't call me to tell me anything about the results. He was out on an ambulance run when I came home before riding and then was at a meeting until 9:30. It turns out that I had won. . .

. . . Best in Show!

**Eta: I'm glad I didn't do Sushi for Beginners because it turns out another person did that exact book. She made her "sushi" out of rice krispie treats, fruit roll-ups and candy fish. Her's turned out so much better than mine would have. Every time I look at the picture I crave sushi!

Combing Shetland

2009-03-27T08:19:00.001-04:00

I thought you guys might like to see some pictures of processing that Mocha Shetland fleece I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago. I invested in a set of Alvin Ramer mini combs a short while ago. Combed fiber seems to spin so much better for me than carded. If you are ever looking for mini combs, take a look at the Ramer combs. He is definitely a craftsman! He even created a holder for the combs that is easy to pick up and safely stows the sharp tines so you can't injure yourself.

The diz was created by drilling holes in a necklace disc thingy that I found on etsy. When it isn't in use as a diz, I do use it as a necklace. It's really nice because that means I haven't had a chance to lose it yet. I haven't figured out how to get a continuous strip of combed top so instead I've been making little balls of top.

You would not believe how soft this stuff is. I can't wait to spin some up!

In which I sound like a farm extension agent

2009-03-22T23:02:00.004-04:00

The spring is a really bad time to be all resolved about not buying another fleece. I mean, shearing just started. (I'm betting at this point all of you can guess what happened.) Julia, a woman in my spinning and knitting guilds, sent out a message to the spinning guild saying she sheared and had fleeces available. I was going to resist until a) I remembered that Julia coats her sheep, b) she has CVMs and Cormos and c) I saw the pictures. I mean, how can you resist that? (Sorry, everything is sold now.) This one is the one I bought. I seem to be going through a dark fleece stage.

Romeldale/CVM or California Variegated Mutant is a very interesting breed of sheep. According to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, "The Romeldale is an American fine wool breed, and the California Variegated Mutant, or CVM, is its multi-colored derivative. Both the CVM and the Romeldale are unique to the United States and are endangered." Romeldale sheep are usually white in color. The CVM emerged when lambs with color started showing up in the Romeldale flock and then Glen Eidman, the original breeder, started breeding for that color mutation. If you would like more information about the history of the breed, this website is very good. The National CVM Conservancy reports that there are fewer than 500 registered CVMs. Interestingly enough, as the sheep gets older, its colors become darker rather than lighter like most other breeds. Julia also said the fleeces get softer. Keep in mind, sticking your hand in one is like petting a cloud (albeit a cloud with hand softening lanolin but you get my point) so it is hard to imagine how the fleece could get even softer. ***eta: I just listened to the 18th episode Yarn Spinner's Tales podcast from August '08 (I'm catching up!) and she mentioned the CVM/Romeldale in her sheep breed segment. It was a very informative segment because she also talked about spinning from prepared top as well as processing a pound of raw fleece. She also had more information about the breed history than I've written here.

Cormos are another interesting breed. They originated in Australia and are a cross of Corriedale and Merino. The breed's name is also a mix of Corriedale and Merino. These sheep are soft and have a micron count of 17-23. What's a micron count you might ask? Well, get ready for a slightly technical discussion. Listening to Yarn Spinner's Tales and researching for this post has definitely been informative. This blog has a very good post about micron counts and Bradford counts. I'm going to be quoting from it for the following information. "One micron is equal to 1/1000 of a millimeter. This means that if the micron count is being used as the system of measurement, a lower number means a finer fleece." Bradford counts, on the other hand, "measures the fineness of a fiber by determining the maximum number of 560 yard skeins that can be spun from one pound of combed fiber." To me, that one seems a little bit more problematic/objective.

Now, you might be wondering, OK, what does this all mean? Well, it gives you an idea how fine the CVM and Cormo fleeces from Julia's flock are. Merino is a good comparison because many people know what that nice wear-next-to-your-skin fiber feels like. The Merino is known for its fine, soft fleece and "has a Bradford count of approximately 60-70, and a micron count of about 24-18." CVM has a Bradford count of ~60-64 and a micron count of ~22-25. Cormo has a Bradford count of and a micron count of 17-23. My Shetland fleeces, on the other hand, have a Bradford count of 50-60 and a micron count of 20-30. The Jacobs have a Bradford count of 44-56 and a micron count of 28-39. Before the Jacob felt soft but I'm guessing that, after working with the CVM, it is going to feel extremely scratchy!

Oops

2009-03-22T10:34:00.006-04:00

I remember back in 2007 when I said, "I'm not taking up spinning. I can just see the fiber stash growing exponentially and taking over the house." Silly me. I mean, I was only thinking about prepared roving. I hadn't even considered the fleece stash and how easy it is to acquire *cough* 4 fleeces. Well, 4 sheep fleeces. I'm not counting raw mohair or alpaca. Though the alpaca really shouldn't count because I have less than a pound of it and the mohair shouldn't because it is is only 2 pounds. See I don't have a problem. Not at all. Nope. Not at all.

raw Jacob Fleece

raw mocha (aka dark brown) Shetland fleece

Combed mocha Shetland fleece

raw light tan Shetland fleece (this monster is 7 pounds!)

raw dark gray/black alpaca (only a couple of ounces)

Raw mohair fleece (2 pounds)

But then spring shearing started. . .

To be continued!

Obsessive much?

2009-03-20T09:51:00.005-04:00

I've been dreaming of the Morning Surf Scarf. I liked the pattern (here it is free) when I first saw it in Spin-off but didn't think much about it. Then I started spinning up this BFL and it was the absolutely perfect yarn for the pattern. So perfect that you really couldn't find a better yarn anywhere. I didn't dye this specially, the colors just patterned like this.

I was originally intending this yarn for socks. The plan was to divide the yarn into 3 equal sections for a 3-ply. I was going to weigh the fiber but then realized the batteries for my scale were completely dead. So I ignored the 3 separate sections and just spun all of it up and navajo-plied it. Once I was finished with the yarn, I decided I liked the navajo-plying a lot more for this dyed roving. It kept the colors together which really made the yarn beautiful.

I'm just amazed how thin this yarn is. When I checked it on the WPI gauge, it said the yarn has 18 wpi. 18! That is technically a lace weight yarn. Now, I think that is a little off because I might have pulled the yarn a little tight in my enthusiasm but the yarn is definitely a light fingering weight. I had 385 yards of this, hopefully a good amount for a scarf.

Now, I should know better than to start a pattern when sick. I mean, really, nothing good comes of it. The first time I cast on, I couldn't get my numbers correct for the life of me so that first attempt was ripped out. I started again and, this time, the numbers worked and everything was going well until I decided I didn't like the fabric and wanted to go up a needle size to a US 5. More ripping. I started again with US 5s and the correct numbers and flew along. It went so quickly that I had about 5 inches done by the time I went to the knitting guild meeting the next night.

I knit all through the meeting a little bit at home afterwards. The following morning, I looked at the scarf, looked at the remaining yarn and went "Huh. That doesn't look like there is enough yarn left." I weighed (after finding batteries) the yarn, 2 ounces left. I weighed the scarf, 2.25 ounces used. I looked at the scarf length and said, "That is going to be the shortest scarf on the planet if I keep it the same width." So once again, I ripped. Seven inches of scarf was gone in minutes. Ugh.

Once again, I was strong of heart (and high on cough medicine!) and cast on with fewer stitches, US 5s and the correct number of stitches. A couple of days later. . .

. . . I have a finished scarf! I absolutely love the way the colors patterned up. There is only one section near the end where the colors weren't as vibrant and didn't quite pattern up like the rest of it. That is something, though, with which I can live. I hate doing scarves but I loved this one. Go figure.

Pattern: Morning Surf Scarf
Source: Spin-Off Summer 2008
Yarn: My handspun 100% BFL, 18 (ish) WPI, Navajo-plied
Needles: US 5
Notes: <3 this yarn and pattern combination. No modifications to the pattern. Cast on 66 stitches.

Sew many FOs

2009-03-08T21:00:00.000-04:00

Hehe, I couldn't help myself. It always amazes me how quickly sewing projects can go. Sometimes they don't but this project definitely did. A couple of weeks ago, I purchased oilcloth by yardage and in finished project form from two etsy sellers, oilclothaddict and RickRackQueen. RickRackQueen has finished projects and some lunchbag kits. I bought a lunchbag kit which comes with enough material to make 2 bags. The lunchbags she was selling with contrasting side panels really looked striking. So when I bought the kit, I decided to get complementary fabrics in order to do the same thing. I also got some pre-made sandwich bags; one trio of which complements the lunchbags.

Oilclothaddict has oilcloth by the yard and fat quarters in fantastic colors and prints. I got a couple of fat quarters and one yard of fabric. One of the fat quarters was this print which I absolutely love.

It's already been used up :)

I've finished 4 lunchbags this evening and cut up materials for 2 more. I'm a wee bit obsessed. Is it too soon to have your Christmas gifts finished? Sewing is wonderful for finishing things quickly.

These sandwich bags are all mine! Anybody else watch Psych?

The UFO that will never end

2009-02-27T13:52:00.003-05:00

So remember how I was gushing about picking up and finishing old UFOs? Yeah, my Hey, Teach! cardigan is doing very well to kill that enthusiasm. Oh, and the Valentine's Day socks, too. They aren't helping. Let me tell you about my knitting "woes."

My Hey, Teach! cardigan (or what I'm calling my Hey, Librarian! ) isn't actually that old. It was started in September but got put aside for socks in October, a sweater in November, and Christmas presents in December. I actually got pretty far on the sweater before it was put down. The back and fronts were all finished. I had even started on the ribbing at the bottom of the sleeves. All I needed to do was to knit the sleeves, block everything, seam, and pick up and knit the button bands and the neckbands. Putting it down like that makes it sounds like a lot to do but the bulk of the work was finished.

As written, the pattern calls for cap sleeves. Now, cap sleeves have the benefit of not very much knitting (so right now that looks like a distinct plus!). But I really don't find sweaters with cap sleeves to be very wearable because they don't keep my arms warm at all. I also don't like full length sleeves because my forearms get too warm and I'll just push the sleeves up anyway. So that means 3/4 length sleeves are the way to go. Another Ravelry member had already figured out the math for the 3/4 length so I was all set for my modifications. After picking it up again, I realized I had the wrong number of stitches on my first attempt at the sleeves. I frogged that, knit my sleeves and blocked everything. After that, I could see that I made a mistake in the lace pattern of the fronts. It was right across the bust line so the mistake would have driven me crazy. I ripped back and reknit. Blocked the fronts again then got ready to seam.

buttons for my Hey, Librarian!

I seamed up the sides and got pretty good at mattress stitching (though the first attempt at it was distinctly NOT good). I realized having the sides sewn up made it difficult to set in the sleeves. Having it flat would make things much easier so I undid the side seaming. When everything was flat, I realized there was no way that my sleeves were going to fit easily in the shoulders. The sizes just didn't match up. If I decided to sew the shoulder and sleeve together, the fabric of the sleeve would be pulled too tight. I tried holding the sleeve together to see how it would be on my arms and they are fine until you get to the shoulder. At that point, they are a little snug. Ugh.

Yesterday, I decided to ignore the sleeves for the moment and to concentrate on picking up stitches for the neck band and button bands. I watched Chuck and Heroes and got all of that done. Well, until I decided I didn't like the look of the last bind off stitch on the neck bands. So I tore back the bind off and the last row. I slipped the first stitch of the last row, knit it and bound off in pattern. Slipping the first stitch seems to make the last bind of stitch look much cleaner. I'm happy I went back even though it meant more time dealing with fiddly things. While I was going back and finishing things, I wove in ends at the same time. One piece sweaters don't have as many ends. Just saying. After that was all done, I blocked the neck band and the button bands.

This morning, after blocking, I bit the bullet and decided to frog the sleeves and start them again in the next larger size. If they don't fit after all of this, I'm going to scream. Oh, did I mention I could only find one of the sleeves while I was frogging? Normally I try to do things two at a time so I don't get bored with knitting two of the same things and so that they will be the same length. Well, one of the completed but soon to be frogged sleeves was hiding under an afghan. I thought, "Forget it, I'll find it later. I'll knit them one at a time because if I don't feel like I've made progress on this thing, I'm going to throw it across the room!" I got pretty far on the one sleeve before leaving for work this morning. It would be great if I could block it tonight but we'll have to see.

I'll have to tell you about the Valentine's Day socks later. I don't know that I can deal with that much knitting angst!

A very late gift

2009-02-22T09:01:00.003-05:00

I finished the alpaca socks for my friend last night. Talk about a belated gift! I hope she enjoys them!

The Dove socks from New Pathways is basically a vanilla sock with a purl diamond on the center. This picture is atrocious but you can see a little bit of it. Taking pictures on a dim morning inside doesn't make for fabulous pictures.

I'm just amazed a) how quickly these socks took to make and b) how quickly projects go when you actually work on them instead of hiding them under piles of yarn. I started them on Feb 16th and finished them yesterday on the 21st. I don't think I've knit a pair of socks so fast since I was in school with 3+ hour classes in which to knit. I think this pattern will be a nice addition to my plain vanilla sock patterns.

Finishing craziness

2009-02-19T20:53:00.000-05:00

I don't know what has gotten into me. After that post the other day, I've been pulling projects out of the UFO ~~black hole~~ I mean, "basket." I finished my Waves of Plum scarf from my own handspun. I dug out the Hey, Teach! cardigan I was making for myself. I even restarted a pair of alpaca socks for a friend. I'm also considering pulling out the Valentine's Day socks after I finish the alpaca ones.

I love the way that the Waves of Plum scarf turned out. It is fantastic. Because my handspun is heavier than the laceweight the pattern called for, my scarf is a bit more like a mini stole. I love it. Have I mentioned that I like the result? Because I do. The color is fantastic and I love the beads at the ends. The only part I really don't like is the way I joined the two halves together. My grafting is all uneven so I think I might rip it out and regraft again. Or maybe just make sure I wrap the scarf in a way so that you can't see the join. Hmmm.

The Hey, Teach! cardigan has been languishing (wonderful word that) since September. I finished the back and the two fronts pretty quickly but was held up on the sleeves. I picked everything up again and was able to get the 3/4 sleeves finished in an evening. Then I blocked everything on towels on my floor, a process my cat loved. I took all of the pieces to the knitting guild meeting on Monday as a way to encourage myself to seam it up. Now I remember why I don't like knitting sweaters in pieces. Seaming is definitely NOT one of my favorite things. The side seams are wonky looking and the sleeves are something I really don't want to talk about! Earlier in the day, I had a horrendous migraine and had to go home from work. After taking an Imitrex and sleeping for 5 hours, I still had a headache but felt human again. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best situation to be seaming pieces together. Let's just say I'm glad I also took the scarf in order to weave in the ends and the alpaca socks. After seaming for a little bit, I wove in the ends (except for the ones where you graft things together) and got a few rounds in on the socks.

A new member came to the meeting on Monday which ended up having fewer people attend than normal. I met her at the yarn shop last Sunday when I helped her with her Mobius bag. In the course of conversation I found out that she is a librarian, too, and even runs her own small CSA. I wish more people had been there Monday and hope she will come back next month, too. It's nice talking librarian stuff with someone else.

On Sunday, I unearthed a pair of socks (yum, alpaca!) which were supposed to be for my friend *mumble mumble last year mumble mumble*. They were originally a pair of Snicket socks from the now defunct Magknits. There were a bunch of minuses being applied to this pair: the marker which told me where I was on the chart had fallen off, my friend and I have the same size feet but they wouldn't even pull over my foot, and the color and the pattern were definitely "meh" together. So it was definitely time to frog those. Instead, I decided I needed a relatively plain pair that I could get done quickly and which would look good with the color. It is a mix of green, blue, purple and brown which was flashing like crazy with the Snicket pattern. So I decided to pull out the New Pathways book and cast on for a pair of Dove socks. The migraine must have been lurking on Sunday because I definitely couldn't count my stitches per inch correctly. The number I got was absurd the first time I counted. It was something like 10 stitches per inch and I definitely wasn't using that thin of yarn. So rather than counting again, I just kept increasing (these are toe-up socks) until I reached the number of stitches I normally use for socks for myself (60 sts). In three days, I've knit the feet, turned the heels and am 2 inches into the leg.

The sock is mostly a plain vanilla sock with a purl diamond starting on the instep and going up to the leg. The diamond pattern hides the increases on the top of the foot. You increase one row, knit one, and do the purl pattern on the third row. I'm wondering if that is why this pattern is going so fast. I keep thinking, "oh, it's only a couple of rows until I can see the pattern grow some more." On the foot, the increases naturally make the diamond grow outward. On the leg, you have to keep track and keep shifting the purls towards the inside so the top comes to a point. For a plain vanilla sock, it's amazingly good at keeping my attention. For a long overdue project, that is probably a good thing.

I'm considering using this same sockitecture to make the Valentine's Day socks (the red and pink ones). Recently I've been using the Riverbed sockitecture where the increases are on the bottom of the sole. This sockitecture has the increases on the top of the insole. If I do yarnover increases, there will be eyelets in the shape of a v. On the leg, I could have more yarnovers make the top of a heart. Would that be too much? Hmmm. I can definitely see my next project taking shape.

**I just realized that this is another blog post without pictures. I'll try harder to take some! The weather and my work schedule haven't been cooperating at all!

UFOs

2009-02-12T21:32:00.000-05:00

I've been in a startitis/finishing mood recently. I know those two really don't go well together but, trust me, it does in this case. I really, really wanted to finish up my pair of Serpentine Mitts because the house has been cold recently. There is nothing better for typing on the computer or knitting in the living room than fingerless gloves. Well, maybe turning up the heat. These fingerless gloves were definitely an on-the-go, don't-have-to-think-about-it-at-all kind of project. When I finished them, however, I didn't have anything else on the go at the moment. Then I looked at my project pile (theoretically there is a basket in there somewhere under all of the knitting totes) and realized that was a lie. I had plently of projects on the go. There were even some in there that were mostly finished or well on their way to being finished.

So I splunked around a little and came up with my Waves of Plum (aka Waves of Grain) scarf that I started back in Sept. 2008. I was almost 45-47% finished with this project when it went into the UFO pile and can't come up with any good reason for having put it down. I guess another project distracted me with its shiny newness and this little scarf fell by the wayside. The construction of the scarf is interesting because you knit one half, cut the yarn, knit the other half, and graft the two together. I'm a little nervous about the grafting part. The Ravelry KAL will be a help with that.

I'm making it out of my own handspun from a merino/tencel blend I got at Maryland Sheep and Wool. It has just a few beads at the end which catch the light. My handspun has more yardage than the pattern called for but I'm going to keep going until I run out of yarn. It's been really fun working with my own yarn. The merino makes it super soft while the tencel gives it an almost silk-like glow.

At this point, I finished the first half and am well on my way to being finished with the second half. I need to dig out my yarn scale and see how much more is left in the ball of yarn. It's amazing to me how much progress has been made after having not worked on it for so long.

After digging through the pile, I even more projects that are mostly finished and are only waiting for me to work on them again than I even thought. There are 2 pairs of fingerless gloves in there. There should be a backstory on these pairs. With projects like these, I like to work two at a time if I can so I don't get SSS (second sock syndrome). These pairs were both supposed to be Christmas presents in 2007 (possibly?).** In order to make myself finish them, I knit one in one yarn and one in another at the same time. Then I cast on for the other "pair" when I finished with the first two gloves. This plan obviously didn't help me finish the two pairs.

Another problem I was having was the fingers I put on the first "pair." There were so many ends to weave in that I just got discouraged. I also didn't keep track of how many rounds I did on each finger so now I can't replicate it on the other "pair." The new plan (after the Waves of Plum scarf is finished) is to rip those fingers out and do an inch of 1x1 tbl ribbing like the cuff of the gloves. This will also make for MANY fewer ends to weave it. I'm estimating that there are 2 short evenings' (or 1 long evening) worth of work left in these gloves. I only have to finish one more pattern repeat on the second "pair," rip back the first "pair"'s fingers, knit 1 inch of 1x1 tbl ribbing on all of them, and do the thumbs on all 4. Then I will magically have 2 pairs of gloves finished. And a pair of my US 1 circs back.

There is a pair of Valentine's day socks in Koigu I started on Valentine's Day 2006 (maybe? possibly? I know I was home sick that day) and which haven't even been entered into Ravelry. They have little purl hearts on them and are pink and red stripes with white heels. I'm thinking of tearing them out (oh the ends!) and starting them again but using spit splicing. Also the stripes are more like 3/4 of an inch of pink then 3/4 an inch of red. I'm thinking of maybe 4 rounds of pink, 4 rounds of red. I'm also thinking of making them with white toes as well as heels. Hope the red and pink don't bleed. Also, I probably won't do the little purl hearts. It will be obvious enough that these are Valentine's socks.

What else did I find? A sweater jacket ! I really loved the look of this sweater. The designer reverse engineered a sweater she saw on the show Bones worn by Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist. I finished the sleeves first because I thought they would be the most boring part and the part most likely to stall me. Ha!

The designer did something really interesting with the body design. You start with the back and knit 6 inches of bottom ribbing. Then you put a number of stitches on each side on holders and knit the remaining live stitches in stockinette for the rest of the back. After you are finished with that, you pick up the stitches on the holders and get to work with your cable needle. The cables are diagonal in a v-shape when you sew the fronts and the back together. It looks fabulous in the design. It also started looking fabulous in person until I couldn't read patterns suddenly and messed everything up. Rather than taking time to figure out what was wrong, I put it back into its tote back and buried it deep in the knitting basket. Oops. This blog post is making me itch to get back to it though I should probably finish the smaller, almost finished projects first.

Like another project I just found even though they are in plain sight on my chair (albeit covered in dry cleaning), the Clessidra socks! Yes, I was working on these in October. I finished the intricate legs on these knee-high socks and only have to turn the heel and knit the feet in order to be finished. Why in the world did I put these down?! The feet are easy! There is only cableing on the instep, none on the sole! These socks are probably 3-4 evenings of work versus the 2 weeks of work on the legs. What was I thinking when I stopped working on them?! Curse you, magpie tendencies, getting distracted by shiny new projects! I really should finish some of these things. At least I have plenty of projects to work on.

**Don't worry, I gave the recipients something else.

Excited!

2009-02-05T11:12:00.004-05:00

Guess what! I've signed up for a class at the end of April with Judith McKenzie McCuin and Nancy Bush in Indiana. It is going to be a three-day spinning and knitting Estonian Lace class. Can I even tell you how excited I am? I absolutely love the Estonian lace book Nancy Bush just published. Keep in mind, I haven't actually seen the book myself but I love the pictures posted on Grumperina's blog and on ravelry. Hmm, must purchase book before class so I can get it signed. Must also purchase Judith's new spinning book. Hmm, looks like that one is coming out in March.

One lady from town just took a class with Judith in North Carolina and said it was nothing like she has ever done before. She learn so much but it didn't even feel like you were learning, just absorbing information. She also said they spun from 9 in the morning until 10:30 at night with short breaks in between. She told me that the class has improved her spinning 200% and she feels like she can do so much more. I'm very excited!

So at least there is one exciting thing in an otherwise depressing future. Sorry, not to be morose but work has been difficult the last few days. I'll talk about knitting instead!

I've been on a mitten kick apparently. I've been working on that pair of glove/mittens for my cousin. They are mostly finished and are just waiting for their ends to be woven in. I hate weaving in ends with a passion. I have a confession to make. Some of the socks I've finished DON'T have their ends woven in so it is like I have a small sock tail. Really, I'm just lazy.

Drying socks and mittens in winter
(Click on picture for my Flickr picture with notes)

The mitten part of the glove/mittens

And then the fingerless gloves of the mitten/gloves

Anyway, back to mittens. When I finished that pair, I decided I really wanted to make a pair of riding mittens. Now, when you ride English, you have the reins going through your pinkie and ring finger and up across your index finger, being held down by your thumb. Regular mittens don't allow you to hold the reins correctly but they do keep your fingers warm. So I decided to keep using the Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns and make myself a pair. I just slapped on a pinkie from the glove pattern and did the rest of the fingers like it was a mitten. I think my thumbs are a little short but, eh, I can rip them out again and reknit them. The whole pair took me 2 days (!) to finish even with sleeping and other non-knitting activities mixed in. The afternoon I finished them, I broke them in with their debut ride. The horses sniffed the sheepy wool quite vigorously but the dogs didn't really seemed interested. It's possible the horses thought they were going to get treats. Knowing them, that was probably the case.

Mom keeps saying they look like the Lambchop puppet.

I'm now working on a pair of fingerless gloves. Well, that's a lie, I was working on them before the glove/mittens and the riding gloves. I knit a 4 inch cuff on them but then paused to finish the other handwear. I've just gone back to them now. They are Serpentine gloves, a free pattern. Last night, I got through half of the chart as well as teaching myself to cable without a cable needle. (It's lost somewhere or stuck in a project. Guess that could be considered the same thing at this point.) This morning before going to work out I put in another 6 rows of knitting. It's amazing how quickly something can go when you, oh, I don't know, work on it! I can't decide if I want to keep these gloves for myself or if I should be a smug little knitter and put it in the Christmas gift pile. I love the Mountain colors sock yarn I'm using for it. That little bit of mohair really keeps your hands and/or feet warm.

Oh, did I tell you about the felted mittens? Ever since the LYS had a class on felted cabled mittens I've been really wanting to make a pair. I didn't take the class but I got to see all of the lovely results. So I bought (I would use stash yarn but I don't have any feltable stuff that would work) some Cascade Tweed in a brown. See, I've also been dreaming about making a pair of those mittens in this yarn. I could just see them in my mind. When the unfelted mittens were finished, I tried them on and started laughing hysterically. These things were HUGE. I mean, going down to your elbows kind of huge. I felted them once and the mittens came out slightly smaller but not much. Yesterday morning, I threw them and some other things I wanted to felt in the washer and went to work. When I talked to Mom later, she said they were the perfect size. I never thought that would happen. They just seemed too big! I'm going to give them to Mom because I never really wanted the mittens for myself. I just really wanted to make them. Ah, the lure of cables, bobbles and mittens. It was too strong to resist.

I also knit a small bag out of my Jacob handspun for the spinning wheel. I'm hoping to put all of the little accessories like the plying tool, wpi tool, oil bottle, etc into it and hang the bag on the wheel. This bag is also supposed to be felted but the first felting run only made it get fuzzier and a tad bit smaller. I also plopped the bag into a pot of dye Mom had going in order to dye some of her shirts to a light blue. Her dying attempts didn't work out well so I used the rest of the dye. I wasn't expecting much change to the color of the yarn because the yarn is so brown but parts are lighter brown. Those parts did pick up dye and the whole thing has an almost bluish-grey look to it now. I'll throw it in the washer whenever I have another load of towels and sheets to do.

Apparently I've just been a hive of mitten-making and felting activity! I really should finish the Hey,Teach! (aka Hey, Librarian!) I put down back in October. Hmm, wonder if I can catch a sweater making bug. But I really want to make the Lily of the Valley shawl instead. I have just the right yarn for it. . .

processing a fleece

2009-01-28T19:55:00.012-05:00

Some of you might remember eons ago (august, I think) that I got a Jacob sheep fleece from a cousin who has 2 Jacobs. I washing the fleece in three different batches during the summer and started flick carding it up. You might remember some of these pictures.

The full fleece

The "helper"

The first wash (ewwwwww)

Another wash (slightly less ewwwww)

Roving brains

Hanging out to dry

I started spinning up some of the roving at the end of summer but didn't get very far in the rubbermaid container which was almost full of light, airy puffs of wool. In November, I bought a second wheel (oh, how the addiction grows!). With the new wheel, a new determination to get through this fleece surfaced (also, the buying of 2 additional Shetland fleeces helped. Ooops).

So I started spinning the Jacob again. Jacob sheep have very distinct fleeces of black and white. It also turns out that this sheep has an undercoat of light brown with some darker and lighter patches. I didn't try to keep any sort of color separation going while I was spinning. If I felt like it, I grabbed some darker sections. When I got tired of that, I picked up some lighter ones. It made for an interesting experiment. Some of what I had already done was still on the Majacraft bobbins (my other wheel is a Majacraft Little Gem for those of you keeping track) and some of it had been wound up on a ball winder in order to free up bobbins. I decided to start filling the Kromski bobbins and, once I had enough to start, begin plying everything together.

I went into the woodworking shop at the barn one day and made myself a plying tool. This tool is basically a rectangle of wood with holes drilled in it. I made myself one with 4 holes so I can make up to a 4-ply yarn if I so choose. This easy little tool has been really helpful because I'm spinning this Jacob into a 3-ply.

The new wheel (seen here) is a Kromski Polonaise. It is a single treadle wheel and I've found that I really enjoy the single. I don't know how I would have done learning on it, though. The double treadle seemed much more natural to me. Having already learnt to treadle, however, made using the single treadle very easy.

After plying the first batch, it went into the sink for a soak in the wool wash and I dried it in front of the woodburning stove. Got to love those drying racks!

This is a picture of the first skein of yarn after its twist is set. My notes say that there are 230 yards in this skein but that really doesn't seem right. It is a monster of a skein and I probably just forgot to double my initial measurement. I have a 2 yard niddy noddy so you count the number of strands on one side of the noddy and double that number to get an approximate yardage on your skein. I could be more scientific about it all but I am lazy :)

I've already broken out the ball winder and swift so I can start knitting the yarn yup. Last week, I decided to make a pair of fingerless gloves/mitten combination for the cousin who gave me the original fleece. He lives in New Hampshire and is a pet-sitter. It always seems like you need your fingers when working with animals but who wants to wear a pair of fingerless gloves in the middle of a NH winter? Hence the idea of the mitten glove combo.

The pattern is based on the mitten and gloves pattern from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. This book is fabulous for figuring out basic patterns, by the way. I did a whole bunch of swatches and decided to cast on using a US 6 to get a nice and firm fabric.

It looks a little funny right now because I still need to rip back on the thumb and fix its length. I also then need to block the mitten and fingers inside of it. I'm almost finished with the second mitten glove. All that is left to do is the thumb and the mitten top (and weaving in the ends but we don't want to talk about that). I've been testing the gloves on almost every man who stands still long enough for me to get one on his hand. I don't know exactly how large my cousin's hands are so I'm going for a general fit here.

The colors of the fabric are really fun. I like the way it is almost like striping yarn but isn't.

Last night I finished plying and setting another skein. It looks pretty much like the first but has 380 yards to it. See? A much more realistic number than before.

I still have some roving puffs left in the rubbermaid container (it never ends!). Tonight, I'm going to try spin more singles to finish those off. After this, I'll need to card up some more washed fleece. Have I mentioned that I've only used up maybe a quarter of the fleece? I'm sure glad those Shetland are smaller than this Jacob!

Recap-ish

2009-01-06T21:03:00.003-05:00

Sorry I've been awol for so long. Things have been very stressful at work and I haven't felt like being in front of the computer to blog or even update Ravelry much (gasp!). I guess I'll start with a brief recap of what has been happening at work and then move on to the knitting and spinning.

I work at a public library. We have been cutting back for a long time: not filling open positions, not ordering office supplies, not ordering new books, taking one of the lightbulbs out of the staff area lights, etc. etc. In the middle of November, there was a library board meeting. We all thought that board meeting wouldn't bring anything good. That weekend, I took Friday off to visit a friend in Pittsburgh. While I was driving there, the assistant director called my cell phone (ominous, huh?) and said that I should check my work email and that there were many changes afoot but I wasn't being fired. I decided that I would have a good weekend with my friend and the only way to do that was to not check my email until Sunday evening when I got home. When I finally did check it, things were definitely disrupted.

That Friday, 8 people were laid off immediately with more layoffs in the future. Those included ALL of the part-timers by the middle of December. My library system has 5 branches, the main library, and a bookmobile. All of those places had part-timers. Main had the most. If that didn't balance the budget/lessen the deficit, 5 more people who had been hired after July 07 would be laid off, too, by the end of December. Needless to say, things are now like a tomb in the library. I also can't see how the branches can function with only 3 people at each branch.

One of the first 8 people to be laid off was my absolutely fabulous boss. I can't tell you how much I miss working for her. My other coworker in my department has been transferred out to a branch (ironically my former one) and I've been transferred into the reference department. I like the people there but I hardly get a chance to do what I love. Reader's advisory is my first love and reference definitely comes in second.

All of this made me not want to knit for a very long time. Everything made me sick at heart and so very depressed when I got home. For the first week, I didn't even do anything except discuss the situation with my parents. For the weeks after, I finally started knitting simple projects because that was all that I could concentrate on. Even though the situation still sucks, I've finally started knitting more complicated projects.

NaKniSweMo back in November went well for me. I probably could have gotten more done if the work news wasn't so devastating. I finished my feminized Cobblestone and absolutely love it. I finished it in plenty of time even without knitting for a week. Apparently I thought my arms were extremely long, though, because they ended up being 4 inches too long. I ended up snipping one stitch 4 inches up from the cuff, unraveling, and reknitting the garter stitch cuff again. I think I might need to do this on the neck opening because the opening is very wide. But I'll do that later.

I still am knitting on my Hey, Teach! in a natural O-Wool Balance. This sweater, however, has been pushed to the side thanks to Christmas knitting. I've finished the front and the back pieces and just started on the sleeves. I'm modifying mine to have 3/4 length sleeves (my favorite length) rather than having cap sleeves. My arms are always cold so cap sleeves just don't make sense for me. Hmmm, this makes me want to start working on this sweater again and get it finished.

Christmas knitting: Wow, there was a lot though there wasn't really a lot. I didn't blog about any of those projects a) because I wasn't blogging for a while and b) because some of the recipients read this blog. I'll post pictures in the next post. (I was going to be all picture efficient and have everything in one place but then I forgot the camera cable. Oops.) I really tried to stay with the homemade pledge this year. Most of the gifts were either made by me or made by someone else, not bought at big stores. I didn't finish one present for mom because the pattern for it sucks and I have to rewrite it all . She doesn't know about that one, though.

In non-Christmas knitting, I made up a cowl using some laceweight alpaca from Earthly Hues. I've been borrowing a cowl from mom for riding for the last year or so and it was more than past time for me to make one myself. This cowl is fantastically soft but I really thought I was going to scream every time I picked it up on the last 4 inches. Don't get me wrong, the pattern is well written. It was just the same thing over and over and over. I was really ready for something else by the time I was almost finished. I refused to let myself stop early because I wouldn't have been happy with the finished product.

I'm also working on a pair of plain vanilla socks in Austermann Step. The color of the yarn is Gras (grass in German). Amazingly, even though green is my favorite color, I don't have any purely green socks. This pair will fix that problem. They are my go-to simple project for when I'm not in the mood to work on any thing complicated. That means it will probably take a while to finish them because there isn't a push to finish them.

Well, that's all for right now! Hope everyone has been well.

I swear I'm not dead

2008-12-30T18:59:00.002-05:00

Sorry it's been soooooo long since I last posted. There has been a lot of upheaval at work and it made me not want to blog for a long time. I've been knitting tons and spinning, too. This post was just to say "hi" again and to let you know something more will be coming in the next couple of days (with pictures, too!).

NaKniSweMo

2008-11-06T17:41:00.001-05:00

You know NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)? Yeah, I'm not doing that. It amazes me that people can have an entire novel inside them. I definitely don't. No, I have a sweater inside me. Yes, that's right, it's also NaKniSweMo (National Knit a Sweater Month)! I'm planning on knitting (even though I should be finishing sweaters instead of starting more) a top-down raglan for the barn. I have a barn sweater already but I think this winter will call for something warmer than a store-bought cotton sweater.

My NaKniSweMo sweater is based off of the. . . OK, ignore that. I started on a raglan sweater pattern where you do the measurements, gague swatch and the math to get a customized sweater. I even had someone else check that my math was right (it wasn't). Once everything was correct, I merrily started my sweater. I knit on it a little the night before the election and all through waiting in line (one hour). Of course, I should have taken into account that I apparently can't measure while ill. I came down with a head cold on Monday night and had to take Tuesday off of work. Standing in line for an hour to vote wasn't any kind of picnic and, once we got home, I took a nap (later in the evening I went to bed at 7:30 and got up at 7:15 the next morning). Then I knit while snuggled in a blanket, surrounded by mugs of tea and tissues. I knit a lot. 7 inches worth (it was a stockinette pattern from the top down). I didn't at any point think, however, "Hey, that neck looks a little big." On Wednesday, I put it on a piece of waste yarn and tried it on because things just didn't look right. Let's just say, 3 of me could have fit in that neck. The math was correct. The measurements were not.

So I've started on another pattern. Rather than me trying to do more math fun (though I am going to be modifying this pattern, too. This should be interesting), I'm going to knit a pattern that lots of people have already made. I'm going to use the same yarn (Eco wool in a very nice dark brown) but go up one size (to US 10s) and knit a Cobblestone Pullover. A men's pattern you say? I'm going to modify it somewhat and can only hope I have recovered enough to make sense of every thing. We shall see. I frogged the raglan this morning, wound the yarn back up and cast on for the sweater this afternoon.

I'm headed to Pittsburgh this weekend to visit a friend and see a relative. I'll be taking some of the sheep fleece to show my relative how the process has been going. (Have I told you that I started spinning some of the fiber up? Well, I have though I haven't plied anything yet.) She was there when the fleece was handed over and saw it in its raw state. It should be a really fun time and a nice, short break from everything.

Sock slacker

2008-10-28T12:03:00.000-04:00

Something is very odd with Blogger right now and I can't compose things normally. Does anyone know how to get the rich text formatting back? The Blogger help is no help at all.

I've been a slacker this last week. I confess that I haven't worked on my Clessidra socks at all. What can I say, there was an error (I lost count and the magnet showing where I was fell off the chart) and I haven't had the energy to figure out where I was. Hopefully I'll overcome that since all I have to do is turn the heel and knit the foot.

Other than that I've been productive on other sock yarn projects. These are the two pairs of socks I've finished this October. The first pair is an early Christmas present. I saw the recipient over the weekend and decided to give them to her then rather than mailing them later. They were very well received :)

This next pair is a set of scrap socks for me. I used left over bamboo yarn from 2 other pairs. I did end up buying the last lone blue ball from the shop in order to finish up the socks using the same color.

I did a garter stitch toe and an afterthought garter stitch heel. I liked the toe but not the heel so much. I think it would have been different if I had done the heel not as an afterthought.

These socks have been on the needles longer than I care to admit. The stockinette stitch-ness of them made them perfect for a traveling sock and one I could work on without thinking. The only problem with that is I don't want to work on those sort of projects because they are so boring unless I am doing something else. This past weekend I took them to the Quarter Horse Congress over in Columbus and knit while we walked around. Basically the entire leg later, I was ready to do the ribbing and bind off. Good thing Congress came around or I would never have finished them!

Other sock yarn projects have also been on the needles. I made some Princess Mitts out of sock yarn (apparently this is my cable phase) in August but just hadn't finished the thumbs. It seriously took me 2 months to knit 26 rows of 20 stitches. That is something that could be done in an hour, tops! I finally, finally knit the thumbs yesterday and the fingerless gloves are ready for Christmas. There is still plenty of yarn left and I'm tempted to make another pair for myself. Maybe not the same pattern but I love the way the yarn stripes and the colors.

The other project I just started is a pair of Knotty gloves. I saw these gloves on the Stash n Burn Ravelry group and absolutely fell in love. Digging through my stash, I came up with the perfect yarn. A little while ago, the shop got in some Alpaca fingering weight yarn from Cherry Tree Hill. I absolutely loved the one colorway. It was blues, greens, pinks, purples, golds in lovely alpaca goodness. When I looked at the name, I really shouldn't have been surprised. It's name was "Peacock." It seems like I will like anything called peacock even if I don't know that is the name before I see it. I've made a sweater out of a green called Persian Peacock, have stashed a skein of peacock sock yarn, bought roving called peacock, and fell in love with the Peacock Feathers shawl pattern. Slap a peacock on it and apparently I will buy. I can't wait until I can post pictures here again to show you the yarn and gloves.