The Linnet Knits

Dimity

2010-06-01T19:48:00.004-04:00

Well. We're almost at the end of the Pics to Picks Challenge, and I've hardly accomplished anything. I could beat myself up, but first, let's look at what I did finish.

So, if you'll remember, I had been inspired by Bety's Floridian images to weave something with those glorious blues and greens. I fiddled around with various rearrangements of blues and greens and off-white stripes with my cones of 8/2 cotton, but I just couldn't come up with anything. Lesson #1: Apparently, I can't think if I'm sick with a sinus infection/allergies/toothache that various medical professionals hadn't quite treated successfully. The sinus infection is mostly gone (that's what really made it impossible to think), the allergies are about as under control as they ever are, and the toothache - well, it comes and goes, as it has for the past decade, without enough specificity of location for the dentist to do anything about it. Lesson #1A: Keep going back if the doctors haven't quite gotten something licked. I tend to Just Endure, but I need to pester in my own defense. The last office visit resulted in a quadrupling of nasal spray #1, with a certain schedule of application, and a lengthening and increased complexity of antibiotic - and I think it's done the trick.

In the midst of infected mindlessness, all I could do was wind a warp of good ordinary blue, with accent dimity stripes of pale, silvery green. That was it. No complex, shifting, evocative combinations of blues/greens with a smudge of violet, sparked by raised dimity stripes in color counterpoint, all suggesting a sun-drenched, humid Florida summer day about to be cooled off by a rocking thunderstorm. Um, no. Not with a brain sat upon by an overweening sinus or twelve.

Blue. I could cope with blue. Luckily, the cone of pale, silvery green was on top of the blue cone, so I could be smacked in my mindlessness with how great the pale green was with the deep blue.

3.5 yards long, by 9 or so inches wide. I figured I could sew myself a lunch bag out of it. I got the warp on the loom with no mistakes, by some miracle, and started weaving. I used 16/2 cotton, because the dimity article guiding me, from the November/December 2008 issue of Handwoven, specified that the weft should be half the heft of the warp. And here it was...

It was working. By this point, the super-duper antibiotics and nasal sprays were beginning to do their job, because I started to get a little bored. And I started to notice something.

Does that look a little sleazy to you? Let me hold up a sheet of paper behind the cloth...

That's a lot of white showing there. I was worried this wouldn't work, that it wouldn't be sturdy enough for a simple lunch bag, and I couldn't figure out why. I rechecked the Handwoven article, the recommended sett for 8/2 cotton, the size reed I was using - everything I could think of. I could not figure out what I was doing wrong.

Lesson #2: Do not beat yourself up when you can't think straight when you are sick. It is not helpful.

Eventually, it dawned on me that the instructions in the Handwoven article were for dimity scarves. You know, those drapy, flowing pieces of cloth that aren't all that suitable for sturdy lunch bags? Sigh .... By that time, I had woven one bobbin's worth of the 16/2 cotton, and I switched to a turquoise 8/2 cotton for the next bobbin.

Now we were cooking! Here's the point of change. You can see the breast beam through the 16/2 weft, but not through the 8/2 weft.

A couple of bobbins' worth of 8/2 - maybe a yard or so - and I got bored again. I started throwing a shot of heavy, textured cotton in every 4th pick, and I liked the simple balance between the silvery warp stripes and the dark, slubby weft stripes. I finished up the warp with this combination.

A quick wash, dry, and iron, and this is the result.

From left to right, the same 8/2 warp with a 16/2 weft, an 8/2 weft, and the same 8/2 weft with shots of slubby cotton, along with one of Bety's images. The two heavier fabrics are indeed just fine for sewing into a lunch bag (or two), but interestingly, the lighter fabric is not sleazy at all. It's really a lovely, drapy fabric, just right for a cotton summer scarf or shawl.

In fact, I'm planning just such a shawl, in that same lovely blue and silvery pale green. I'd like to figure out how I can convey the rounded cloud shapes in some sort of lace along with the dimity stripes - maybe hand-manipulated Danish medallions, I'm not sure. Since I'll be away this coming weekend, I won't be weaving the shawl before the end of this challenge.

Lesson #3: Try something, and then variations on that something. Just keep trying.

I suppose I didn't accomplish that much with this challenge, certainly not compared to others, but I did what I could. Lesson #4: Learn to live with being imperfect.

Cummington, Part Two

2010-06-01T08:00:00.002-04:00

I know, I know, this is shocking: two posts in two days. Well, Fran loaded her photos of the festival into Flickr and kindly allowed me to use them here, so ....

(Psst: Here's yesterday's post. Read it first, if you haven't already.)

So, when last we left off at the MA Sheep & Woolcraft Fair, Fran and I had bought the Grand Champion fleece, a lovely white Romney from Mary Pratt's farm.

Mary was thrilled her fleece won! Fran and I were thrilled to buy it!

And after the fleece sale came the Short-Draw Spinning Smackdown between Jesh and me, with our antique wheels.

Five minutes of practice with some Texel x Friesian roving (the first fleece I ever bought, btw, at Rhinebeck in 2006), then ten minutes of furious, foot-stomping, wheel-whirring, all-out spinning our hearts out!

Finally, we wound off the two singles together on a niddy-noddy. This involved some serious yarn-wrangling skills.

And lo! One single ran out - whose was left? (The crowd was breathless....) Why, it was mine! I won!!!! I won by 21 meters!!!!

On the left, the two singles wound together. On the right, the yardage I spun beyond what Jesh spun. Impressive, eh?

Next year, it'll be a long-draw contest. Be there!

Life is Good

2010-05-31T06:09:00.010-04:00

I complain a lot. I whine, I rant, I look like a little lost lamb. I'm annoying, I know. Please accept my apologies.

And the next time I whine here (which will be tomorrow), remind me of this post, OK?

I just spent two days at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair in Cummington. I was so sad to see it end, you'd have thought I'd been on a month-long vacation in Tahiti. For once, I took lots of photos and I'm just going to put them up here for you all to love.

Cummington is about the sheep.

Sometimes the sheep love a good back massage (my friend Pat giving her Shetland ram Wilber the works. He twirls his tail like a lamb when she hits the right spot.)

Don't you want to spin that fleece? You can't; it's a Dorper, it doesn't produce ANY fleece worth mentioning.

How can you not love Jacob sheep?

It takes a lot of work to prep a sheep for a sheep show. These are two Shetland ewes and a Romney getting cleaned up, whether they like it or not.

A young boy with an Icelandic ewe. Apparently, he's been showing sheep for several years now.

Olivia and her Shetland ewe, the one you saw getting cleaned up. Olivia made her dress (which has lovely silk needle-felting on the front), her purse, her scarf, her headband, and the sheep's necklace. Olivia will be twelve tomorrow. (I feel inadequate all of a sudden.)

Olivia also made this bag.

And her older sister Isabelle - the one who turned 16 Sunday, the one whose photo turned out all blurry, that Isabelle? She made this bowl. Note the Best of Show plate. Isabelle won that. Did I mention she just turned 16?

And there were lots of my other friends there, too.

The Adorable Georg, being adorable.

Jesh and Lisa (and Dan in the background).

The incomparable Sandi (and Dan in the background; I swear I thought I was aimed at Sandi).

I realized I was taking too many photos of Dan's butt, so I made him face me (that's Cris in the background).

Spinners doing what spinners do (drink, not spin, that is).

Cris and Sandi. Charmers, both of them.

Lisa GAVE me this yarn. Nice yarn, you say? She spun it. Three ply, BFL, 600+ yards. It is wonderful yarn.

I like these people.

Even if Jesh does snarl at me all the time! Of course, I did WHUP HER ASS BY 21 METERS at short-draw spinning on our antique wheels - but, hey, she challenged me, what was I supposed to do? (It'll be long draw next year; I have to practice.)

Speaking of favorite people, none of whom stand still long enough to take many photos of, here are the legendary Manise, Laurie, and Judy.

Laurie may or may not have cleaned out Judy's stock.

Manise has the most interesting wedding ring(s).

Marcy's nieces were there. The gene runs strong in that family - here's Lydia spinning cotton on a giant African porcupine quill.

Just fiber people doing what fiber people do best.

And yes, I bought a fleece. Half a fleece, actually; I split with Fran the gorgeous, gorgeous white Romney Grand Champion fleece, raised by Mary Pratt at Elihu Farm.

And then I went home - along the beautiful Westfield River, over the hills to the Deerfield River valley and down to the Connecticut, across the French King Bridge, and up along the Millers River to home. Life is so good.

No, Not Really

2010-05-02T14:42:00.005-04:00

It's been more than a month since I posted last. I'm sure you're thinking that I've been working in the garden (well, yes, a little) or out chasing dragonflies (well, yes, a little) or eating ice cream (well, yes, a little) or any of those other non-fiber things one does when suddenly it's spring.

What I've really been doing is knitting like a madwoman (well, yes, I am, a little - so?). As I said in my last post, I finished Citron - it's still too small for me. And against my better judgment, but since Sara encouraged me, I finished Gail - and I love it! I wore it to the Connecticut Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend and got plenty of compliments on it.

I also started and finished Traveling Woman, in Ella Rae Merino Lace. I had my doubts as I was finishing it up - was it too small? Were my additional zigzag rows too much? Was the yarn really OK? (It seemed a little too plastic-y in the hand, not like wool at all. Plus, the yarn is a 3-ply and very round.) But yay! It's not too small, the extra rows look fine, and the yarn feels like real yarn now that it's washed and blocked.

So, I kept going. I was pretty sick of blues by then, even sick of rosy purples and dusky reds - here's a shot of my shawl rack to give you an idea of my usual choice in colors (these aren't all from my hand; that felted scarf in the middle with the white locks? that's my Christmas present from Pat) -

So, I found this in my stash and cast on for Multnomah:

This is Valley Yarns Franklin sock yarn, in the Frog in a Party Dress colorway hand-dyed by the Kangaroo Dyer. I love this colorway, completely unexpectedly, but I'm not so sure about how this shawl is working up. I've just finished the garter stitch portion and started on the feather and fan/old shale lace stitch part, and I'm having doubts. For one thing, I think I need to knit more garter stitch before starting the lace border, and for another - well, it's very bright pink and green. What do you all think?

In the meantime, more traditional yarns have been cast on for yet more shawls. Here's J. Knits alpaca in the Massachusetts colorway, just barely cast on for Anne Hanson's Nightingale Wing stole.

And some lovely, lovely lambswool with a smidge of nylon - a mill end from Pasa Yarns - dyed with many, many packets of Kool-Aid in some forgotten flavor (Blue Ice, maybe?) to a beautiful shade of jade, cast on for Cat Bordhi's Streaming Leaves shawl. The yarn feels wonderful and it even has a wonderful smell - something like the smell of cherry blossoms. I'm not doing the fancy two-circs-provisional-cast-on hem that Cat specifies, because I'm lazy and didn't feel like wrestling with three circulars in this heat.

So, I should be feeling productive, yes? I am casting on, plugging along, and by God actually finishing projects. Rather unusual for me, I must say.

Well, here's my secret: I'm procrastinating on my Pics to Picks weaving. It's not that I was uninspired by what Bety sent me - not at all! It's more just, well, um, I don't know - more just a feeling of yikes, what have I gotten myself into?

This weekend, I girded my shuttles and beaters, and waded into the weaving stash in search of the colors in my head. I have in mind to use the Floridian blues and greens Bety sent me to weave myself a striped cotton tablecloth using the dimity weave structure Sally Orgren used for her richly colored Tencel scarves in the November/December 2008 issue of Handwoven. Here are my first choices for the warp stripes...

Those reds peeking out are the warp for another rag rug; I'd say ignore them, except they echo the red flowers in Bety's images.

These are all 16/2 cotton, so I went poking about looking for a thinner cotton to use for the weft. Hmm ... I don't have one, unfortunately. I've got a nice pale green 20/2 cotton, but I'm not sure that would be fine enough. According to the Handwoven article, the weft should be half the weight of the warp yarn. So, I scaled up the warp yarns - here are some 8/2 cottons in the right colors:

And obviously, I have plenty of choices in 16/2 cotton for the weft. I decided I'd weave myself a generous sample, since I've never tried a dimity weave before, and sew it into a humdrum lunch bag for myself, since the bag I use now is literally in shreds.

I'm playing with stripe proportions and color choices now; if I can just resist the lure of the lace shawls, I may even have a dimity sample to show you the next time I post!

Not So Much

2010-03-31T20:12:00.002-04:00

I finished Citron. Woo.

Stonesthrow Farm (they're in Vermont) 60% Cormo/40% young mohair, in a nice medium blue, exactly the blue I look good in and would wear a lot. I was knitting this at Jenny's and she commented that it was camouflaged against the Wisteria I was wearing. That blue.

So why am I not excited? Well, it's blue. Nice, medium, boring blue. I think I need to break out of the blue mold. Also, despite my Citron turning out a little larger than the pattern predicts, it's still not really big enough to go around and stay around my neck without being pinned. Hmm. Oh, well.

Having finished this, I said to myself: Not Blue. A quick rummage in the first stash bin came up with this.

Four balls of Woolbearers Kona Superwash Merino, in the colorway Chocolate-covered Cherries. Definitely Not Blue.

A quick rummage among my Rav favorites yielded a few prospects for 560 yards of yarn; I chose the lace shawl Gail (aka Nightsongs). A really nice shawl. I had no problems with the pattern, probably because I had the benefit of all the people who have dissected its quirks.

Three-and-some repeats in, I'm here.

And I've decided: Not.

Unfortunately, this yarn is too heavy for this pattern; I really need a thinner yarn. I also think the strong raspberry and brown variegation is too much for this lace. When I work up the courage, this will be frogged. I've just wound a ball of Schaefer Anne in dark blue/green/purple to try instead.

I wish I could say I was getting better at pairing yarn with pattern.

Three Gifts

2010-03-17T14:30:00.003-04:00

Gift #1: Yesterday at work, I realized that since I'm now an Official State Employee, I get St. Patrick's, er, Evacuation Day off. I don't really think we ought to get it off, but since today is a simply beautiful, warm, early spring day, I thought I might be able to handle a day off. So I took it.

A long walk at Quabbin Reservoir this morning yielded nothing much to photograph for you, although I did hear brown creepers singing their sparkling spring song, and there was a newt and a caddisfly larvae in a vernal pool, and black ducks and mergansers cavorted and called on the far side of a pond, and I'm pretty sure I saw moose tracks. I did, however, get fairly close to this guy...

Who was guarding quite the harem of 15 or so hen turkeys. They slunk away before I got very close, but you can (maybe) see two of them beyond Mr. Tom the Virile.

By the time I got home, all the snow crocuses were blooming; that means it's really spring!

Gift #2: I can't quite believe that somebody cared enough to knit me socks - somebody I've never even met! - but Lisa was so very nice to knit me these. (I could show you the chocolate she sent along as well, but, well, you know...it's gone already.)

Paraphenalia, in Regia Stretch. I take back whatever I said about blue being boring. These are perfect, absolutely perfect. George thought so, too, and I had a hard time taking a decent photo without him in it (that's his shadow above).

And once more, for good measure, and so you can admire my sturdily wide feet. Thank you, Lisa!

Gift #3: Meg Nakagawa is quite the organizer. So far, she's been focusing her talents on weavers worldwide, but we can all hope she'll get the rest of the world straightened out soon, too. She's pulled together a couple of virtual scarf exhibitions; this year, she's organized a creative challenge called Pics to Picks for weavers. Fifteen of us volunteered to join in (OK, I admit it; I squeaked in at the last moment). Here are the rules, such as they are:

1) Collect three (or more if you like, but no more than, say, six) photographs/clipping/drawing to inspire a weaver. (May I suggest three different types of photos, for example one abstract, one emotional, and one something else, in case the recipient has very different taste/sensibilities from yours?)

2) Put all three in an envelope, and a personal message if you like. Send it to your weaver recipient. Keep an eye on your mail box for a similar envelope coming your way.

3) Plan a project based on one of the images.

4) Photograph it, sketch it, write about it, or blog about it. And weave it. Prepare to publish your project on the first weekend of June 2010. Include in the post:

All original images you received; all of them in one snapshot is good;
Whatever thoughts and images from your creative process you like. "Didn't Work" pics work, too.

5) How far you take the project depends on you. You could weave and have a finished piece, or go as far as determining the yarn, the set and the draft, or come up with a bunch of drawings and alternative project ideas.

Yesterday, I got my package of images from my challenge partner, Bety from Deep End of the Loom. And oh, my, what a great package! Look!

I fear that the images I sent Bety aren't nearly as exciting but even that realization is helpful to me. Maybe I haven't been looking, really looking, at the world enough to find and see the inspiration there. I think that's the first lesson - the first gift! - for me from this challenge.

Speed

2010-03-14T12:39:00.002-04:00

You know, it's all Slow Cloth. Even a three-day weekend like this one, pretty much dedicated to fiber in among the chores and errands, doesn't really let me accomplish that much.

I dyed eleven skeins of handspun into five colors for a woven bag. Weaving this will have to wait till I finish the red rag rug, which make take a while - see below.

I spun 4 ounces of Spunky Eclectic wool into 110 yards of uneven bulky three-ply. I suppose this could be a hat or part of a sweater someday; for now, it's stash.

I finished the bobbin of Corriedale/Border Leicester fine singles; I think I started this bobbin a week ago. There's another half-bobbin or so to go of the roving; then I can start plying. When the yarn's finished, I can dye it. When the dyeing's done, I can weave it. When the weaving's done, I can sew myself a jacket. (Don't wait up.)

I wound a warp for a red rag rug. Putting this warp on the loom has to wait till I decide once and for all what to do with the Paternayan krokbragd sample on the loom right now. I found more, a lot more, Paternayan needlepoint yarn yesterday when I was looking for that cross-stitch sampler of mine, so now I think I could do something cool with graduated colors in krokbragd. Plus, I need to cut a lot more 2-inch strips of red fabric for weft for the rag rug before I can start weaving that, anyway.

I dug out of the stash four skeins of Merino superwash in Woolbearers' Chocolate-covered Cherries colorway and wound them into balls; I still haven't decided which scarf pattern to knit with these. I wanted some not-gray, not-blue knitting and this yarn was the first to come to hand. Citron might actually be a good pattern for this, but I think this strongly variegated yarn might overwhelm any pattern but the simplest; I might just knit a feather-and-fan lace scarf out of it.

I've done a little of everything this weekend.

And yet, nothing's finished. All of these are worthwhile, to some extent, although none of them are likely to be earth-shattering projects when they're done. Even if I had spent all weekend working on one project, that one project would likely not be finished either. Plus, my knees would be sore from too much spinning, or my hands from too much knitting, or my back from too much loom warping.

It's patience I need to cultivate. An appreciation for the process, or processes, in my case. I suppose I'm going to have to think, really think, about why I knit/spin/weave, about what I really want to make, and about how to get there from here. It's been very easy to just acquire more yarn/fiber/wheels/looms/books/whatever over the past four or five years in particular - but now I don't really want to buy more just for the sake of acquisition.

Now I want to make stuff. I typed I want to create first, but then I got scared by the pretentiousness of that, so I scaled it back.

I suppose what I want is to understand why I am compelled to make stuff, to create; I suppose I need to create so as to look at what I create and find out who I am.

And finding out who I am is the scary part.

A Moment to Think

2010-03-13T11:54:00.002-05:00

We interrupt this fiber weekend to think. Or, more precisely, I'm thinking; you just get to read along.

I've just been eating lunch and reading blogs - multi-tasking as always to try fit in everything I want to do. I came upon this and this, one after the other. Go read them; I'll wait.

Tien Chiu is an extraordinary new weaver. I believe she's only been weaving about three years now, a little less time than I have. And yet look at what she just finished. She wove that, people - she wove and sewed her wedding dress and wedding coat. The photos in that post aren't even of the final garments; the final finishes took another couple of weeks.

Now, I know people accomplish extraordinary things while getting married (this is why I got married in front of a justice of the peace, with only two friends as witnesses; I simply couldn't cope with anything more). But still, Tien pushed and pushed herself - and now, as a result of spending the last year ( a year!) weaving and sewing her wedding ensemble, she has decided she is and will be a fiber artist. She is committing herself to becoming an artist. She already is, of course, but she's making it real.

Then I turned to Meg Nakagawa's blog. Yesterday I'd read the Slow Cloth article she refers to, so it was interesting to see Meg's thoughts and those of Keith Recker, who edits Hand/Eye. Keith had an epiphany while hand-sewing three pillows; doing so opened his mind to what it takes to really create something.

Now, you (the readers) and I make things all the time. We knit, we spin, we weave, we are compelled to be makers. I've always been a maker of things, usually with fabric. When I was eight, I sewed a cross-stitch sampler that's somewhere in this house, on a piece of fabric stamped with the pattern.

When I was a freshman in college, close to 40 years ago, I made my first quilt, now very tired, from scraps of fabric.

About 17 years ago, when I made Drizzle, this 5-foot by 6-foot quilt, I realized I was indeed a creative, powerful, productive person, even though my husband at the time didn't believe any of that about me. I left him because of this quilt. Other people appreciated it, and me; the quilt was chosen to be in the juried Visions art quilt show in San Diego, and then traveled around the country.

Right after the divorce, I made a series of little quilts to reassure myself. It worked.

And now I knit, spin, and weave. Obsessively, I'd say. I think I'm trying to say who I am through fiber, and I'm trying to get people to pay attention to what I have to say. I try to make things as fast as I can - and then I get frustrated that an object isn't finished in a week. But that quilt Drizzle took me six months, and I look at it now and think, that's OK, but not great. Not as good as I could make, if only I put the time and effort into it.

It's finding the time to make, to create, in the calm, focused, productive, concentrated state of mind that's necessary to make something worthwhile - that's what is hard for me right now. So, I'm going to think about how I, too, somewhat like Tien, can commit myself to becoming the kind of person who makes good stuff, who does a good job, who is a good craftsperson.

I don't know if I have it in me to become an artist, by which I mean someone who creates objects that convey meaning to other people - but I'd like to find out.

Scary stuff.

The Weaving of Not-Gray

2010-03-12T18:18:00.006-05:00

Well, $575 later, I have new front brakes and four new tires. Somehow, I'm not as thrilled as one might expect after that sort of outlay.

I walked downtown to go pick up my car - about an hour's walk, luckily literally almost all downhill. The sky was overcast, but no rain. The piles of yucky snow still prevail...

But lo! The snowdrops are up in my front garden!

No sign of the snow crocuses, though - do you see any here?

Me neither.

Anyhow, when I came home, I took a good, long look at this warp.

Pretty colorful, isn't it? This is a sample krokbragd weaving that has been like this since shortly after I finished the rag rug a couple of weeks ago. The warp is 8/4 cotton rug warp; the weft is Paternayan needlepoint yarn. I thought I would just play with the Paternayan, since I have a good bit of it and yet don't needlepoint any more.

Somehow, I'm not fascinated by this, I think because it's just a sample, with no particular project in mind, and because the small skeins of needlepoint yarn are a little too small to get a good rhythm going. So, shortly this won't exist. I don't intend to let all of $3 worth of yarn stop me from weaving.

Instead, I took this:

And did this:

And came up with this:

These are skeins of French Hill Farm Coopworth/mohair I spun last year (sorry about the lousy photo, but it was night by the time I finished dyeing. Plus, you're used to my crappy photos, right?). A few hours hovering by the dyepot, and I have five really lovely colors (yes, yes, there's a blue there) with which I intend to weave myself a krokbragd bag.

But they'll take a day or so to dry, especially because it's supposed to pour over the next two days, so in the meantime...

Well, that's a story for another post, isn't it?

Gray/Not-Gray

2010-03-12T09:56:00.004-05:00

It's that time of year - no longer winter, mostly, and definitely not spring. You could call it mud season, but today I'd rather call it Gray Season. Today it's overcast; it's supposed to drizzle and rain and sleet and snow and generally be crappy through the weekend. I took today off because my car needs brake work and new tires, so I have a three-day weekend. I'd really rather have a sunny, warm, spring-like weekend, but no, I get Gray Season. Or, if you'd prefer, Grey Season.

And since lots of other things feel a little crappy in my life right now, I decided to inject a little color. Lots of color, I hope, because my fiber life is lacking color right now. My weaving is stalled after the gorgeous rag rug of the Ravelympics, I'm spinning the endless, endless gray Corriedale/Border Leicester fleece I started last September, and I'm knitting a medium blue Citron from Stonesthrow Farm Cormo/young mohair. Jenny commented last weekend that the Citron was barely visible against the blue sweater and jeans I had on.

See?

So, color - I need it. Red, preferably.

I thought I'd blog a good bit this weekend as I play with color, so stay tuned. First, however, I'm off to deal with the car, with boring blue Citron along to entertain me.

I Did Good

2010-02-23T19:47:00.002-05:00

My first rag rug, and it won't be my last. This was my Ravelympics project.

It's just about 3 feet by 5 feet. I love it.

Here's the back:

Details Raveled here.

Sometimes I amaze myself.

Moving Right Along

2010-02-11T19:01:00.002-05:00

Um, I was supposed to show you these in progress....

And I suppose they are still in progress, since they just came off the loom last night and they haven't been washed yet. For that matter, I haven't decided what to do with the fringe, either.

So, to begin where we left off, I did indeed twist the fringe and wash and press that gorgeous, stunning, OMG-I-made-that!? blue silk scarf. I'm a better weaver than photographer, though, so all you get is this:

Then I threw eight yards of blue Bartlett worsted-weight warp across the 36" width of the Purrington 4-harness, and wove the three throws you saw above, each with a different treadling on a rosepath threading, using as weft my 2-ply handspun Romney from a lovely fleece I bought at Rhinebeck in 2007. Unlike the silk scarf, I did not have a single broken warp end. In fact, I had no trouble whatsoever. Those little white ends you see? Those are the weft ends; once I wash the fabric, I'll trim those back. The even tinier medium blue threads hanging off the sides? Those are how I kept track of the length of each throw - one thread per foot. Two of the throws are two yards long, on the loom; the last throw was just over 8 feet long. I wove that one till the warp ran out. I expect these to shrink considerably in the washing.

Here's a shot of the backs and one close-up of a front, just for fun.

I feel so virtuous. Close to 5 pounds of handspun used up. Almost all of 10 skeins of Bartlett yarn, bought at a 40% off sale at my LYS, used up. Acres and acres of woven cloth created.

On the other hand, now I have to find a place to store a clothes-basket full of woolen fabric. Apparently, as one uses up one's stash of yarn and fiber, one creates a stash of precious fabric. Fabric too good to leave out where the cats can get to it with their pointy ends and delicate tummies.

Anyhow, I'm sure I'll find a way to cope. It'll be a while till I get a chance to wash and finish these throws anyway; tomorrow night is flame-on time for the Ravelympics, and as a loyal member of Team Suck Less, I intend to weave a 3' x 5' rag rug before the Olympic flame goes out. The first rag rug I've ever woven, wherein lies the challenge. A rag rug that, I hope, looks something like this beauty, from the book Favorite Rag Rugs:

A rug for which I had practically everything in my stash already; I just needed one spool of red cotton rug warp yarn.

Some people think I'll get through this quickly, and that then I should take on the challenge of dyeing some handspun and weaving krokbragd for a bag. Some people might just have a good handle on just how crazy I really am. Stay tuned.

The Walks of Winter

2010-02-07T16:06:00.011-05:00

Laurie and Judy are right, you know; walking in winter is lovely. (Casting oneself headlong down mountains, on the other hand - hmm, maybe not.)

I've taken a number of walks these past few weekends, since the weather is cooperating. Sometimes I've walked with friends, sometimes alone. Sometimes I take a camera, sometimes I don't. All of the walks have been nearby, but places I've never been in the winter. Officially, I suppose I'm walking for the exercise or the company, but I really think I'm walking just to see, to observe, to find out.

Here are a few random photos of what I've seen, because you all seem to enjoy them.

Cass Meadows in Athol is the floodplain of the Millers and Tully Rivers at their confluence, just a couple blocks from the center of town. Now largely owned by the town and the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, it supports quite a variety of wildlife, even in winter. I saw vole tracks...

And what might be shrew tracks...

And what are likely deermouse tracks. I have no idea why this mouse or mice was so interested in this post.

These sumac seedheads reminded me of Margene's new shawl, with the colors reversed.

The Tully is the smaller river, here...

It flows into the larger Millers...

I'll bring you back to the Millers again this summer; it's a great place to find cool dragonflies. Right now, though, maybe not. (Well, actually, any dragonflies in the river must be pretty cool right now, come to think of it.)

Over at the Quabbin Reservoir, on another walk, I found this stone structure in the woods near the reservoir's edge. I thought it was an old root cellar, but my friend Dave Small, who works at the Quabbin, said no, it was a former tomb, used for storing the bodies of people who died in winter and couldn't be buried till spring.

Created in the 1930s by damming two rivers, the Quabbin is the drinking water supply for Boston and many of the cities and towns around Boston. Everyone who lived in the four towns where the reservoir was planned had to move out to make way - can you imagine? The reservoir itself covers 39 square miles and more than 100,000 acres of upland are protected around the water to preserve its quality. All the graveyards of the four towns were dug up and all 6,000 bodies buried in a new cemetery near the main Quabbin dam. Thus, the empty tomb I found.

A powerline crosses near the tomb; atop one of the supports was this large nest - a raven, I thought, and Dave confirmed it. No birds in sight, but maybe this spring I'll see them.

A view from the northern shore of the Quabbin. This shows only a small part of the whole reservoir.

I didn't dare walk out on the ice (for one thing, it's illegal to do so), so you may not be able to tell this is a deer carcass. Those are ribs sticking up on the right. Deer sometimes venture out on the ice and slip and break a leg; the coyotes finish them off. Or sometimes the coyotes chase a deer out onto the ice. Those giant regal scavengers the bald eagles will often show up at a deer carcass. We saw no tracks by this one, but it looked quite old; maybe it has snowed since the deer died.

The beavers and pileated woodpeckers are still alive and working away at the trees of this forest.

The yellow-bellied sapsucker is long gone from this series of holes in an oak tree, but maybe I'll be lucky enough to see it opening them up again this spring.

Real spring is still a couple of months off, but as long as it's sunny and not too windy on the weekends, I expect I'll keep enjoying my walks in winter.

Resist, Resist!

2010-01-27T18:55:00.002-05:00

The warp - worsted-weight Bartlett 2-ply - is chained and ready to be sleyed on the reed for the wool throws.

The weft - my handspun 2-ply, from a Romney fleece - is ready to go.

I even sampled a little - so unlike me! - and that was a good idea.

From this sample, I learned which treadling patterns worked and which ones didn't in this yarn. I learned that my little 4-inch-long bobbins don't hold squat for weft of this weight, so I'm going to use a rug shuttle. I used a floating selvedge on the sample, but I think I'll pair the floating selvedge with a heavy, smooth cotton yarn for the throws (and pull out the cotton after the fabric's off the loom), because I think it'll help make the edges neater. I learned I should beat a little less hard, because my thick handspun overwhelms the Bartlett warp, as seen here on the back of the sample.

But I'm not going to begin to sley the warp yet, because this...

needs to be finished. Tonight I gird my loins and get down to some serious fringe-twisting!

Making Stuff

2010-01-23T18:03:00.002-05:00

I have been cranking.

Exhibit A:

The DROPS jacket 103-1 that's been making the rounds. Here we see it in two yarns held together, the lovely raspberry Harrisville Orchid Line that Sue gave me for my birthday a few years ago and a dark pink Cascade 128 Tweed from WEBS. Cast on Nov. 30, 2009; blocked Jan. 3, 2010 - a quick knit for me. This is very warm and snuggly, perfect for the cold weather in the beginning of this month.

Exhibit B:

A blue silk scarf, just pulled off the loom last night. The fringe isn't twisted yet, but I have to say that this is the best thing I have ever woven. The warp is hand-dyed 50/2 silk (probably tussah) from Port Fibers; the weft is a 60/2 silk mill end from Pasa Yarns in Uxbridge, MA. For your knitters out there, these are skinny yarns, about like sewing thread, especially the 60/2. Woven in a twill, the scarf feels incredible, and I'm told it'll feel even better after it's washed. Once the fringe is finished and I've washed this, you'll see modeled photos.

Exhibit C:

A pile o' warp chains, for the next project, just waiting for the silk scarf to get out of the way. This is worsted-weight Bartlett yarn; the weft will be white handspun 2-ply. I'm planning on weaving three small throws, each in a different twill. I wove a sample today, trying out various patterns...

and figured out I like this one in particular. You'll see more of this project as I go along.

I've been awfully productive in the past month, and here's part of why I'm producing so much - Exhibit D:

A notebook. Every day, I write down what I accomplished. Sometimes I write down ideas for future projects, sometimes I note what issue of Handwoven has good info on doubleweave, sometimes I work out calculations for a warp or whatever. I believe it was Sara Lamb who suggested keeping a fiber journal (thanks, Sara!), and I'm looking forward to this year of making stuff, stuff, and more stuff.

A Quiet Walk

2010-01-16T19:12:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was the first time the temperature rose above freezing this year, and today was beautiful, for January. I took a walk south along one of the old town roads criss-crossing the Quabbin Reservoir watershed lands near me, starting at Gate 30.

It was lovely. A few people hiking here and there, a few birds calling, a red squirrel chattering for no good reason, a raven kawkking unseen. I looked at the ordinary landscape here, and found it good.

And somebody was glad to see me when I got home.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

2009-12-13T17:51:00.005-05:00

I am not in the mood for Christmas this year. It's not that I'm depressed or stressed or broke or anything; I just ... meh. I don't have a tree up or a wreath on the door or candles in the windows. None of you are getting Christmas presents from me this year. No one, and I mean no one, even those who do not read this blog, is getting a handmade Christmas present from me this year.

I will admit that when I was driving home from work a week ago and I saw the 70-foot-high spruce next to the antique shop in Oakdale newly and incredibly beautifully lit up with mostly blue lights - well, then I had a moment of seasonal joy.

And I loved these cards so much that when I couldn't forget them several days later - well, maybe a few people will be getting these this year. And these, too, while I was at it. They'll get to their recipients late, I'm sure, because I'm not really in the mood for Christmas this year, you know, so I might have ordered them a little late.

But otherwise - nope, not doing Christmas this year. I am going to go visit my folks over Christmas because, well, they're 81 and 79, and you never know. But I still haven't figured out what they're getting for Christmas from me, much less what my two brothers, my sister-in-law, and my niece ought to get, all of whom I'm likely to see at my folks' house. Well - maybe good beer for one brother and my dad. Maybe good cookies for Mom (but no chocolate; she's seriously allergic). My niece? Er, what does one get a freshman in college? A freshman majoring in some sort of engineering I don't even understand? And my artistic and sophisticated sister-in-law? Impossible to shop for.

I can't even get gauge for a small and secret (and not-Christmas) project today. On size 8 needles, the mysterious object is half an inch too wide. On size 7 needles, the mysterious object is still half an inch too wide. Annoying. You and I both know that on size 6 needles, the mysterious object will be half an inch too narrow, because this is knitting, after all, nothing nearly as precise and predictable as rocket science, God forbid.

Today I also wound lots of endless balls of lovely yarns for weaving, mostly hand-dyed skeins that would be difficult to wind a warp from. Here's a sample:

I thought about what sort of weave structure would do justice to these fine yarns - did a lot of figuring out numbers of warp ends and looking up half-remembered drafts and calculating total warp yardage and such, and didn't really get anywhere. Yet.

I'll keep working on it.

I've Been Thinking

2009-12-09T12:26:00.002-05:00

A snow day does that to me. Eight inches of snow fell here overnight and this morning; now the snow is turning to rain. My neighbor, bless him, snow-blowed (blew?) my driveway and I just cleaned up the walks and car and such as the snow turned to sleet.

So I took a day off work. An hour's commute on a good day turns into a stress-filled two hours, minimum, on a day like this, and there's always the chance of sliding off the road or being killed in an accident or something thoroughly unpleasant like that. I stayed home.

"Well!" I can hear you saying to yourself, "She's always complaining about not having enough time to knit or spin or weave - here's a whole day she can spend doing just that!" Well, yes, but even with the coziness of being snowed in, I feel restless. I knit for an hour on the CROPS jacket, which is coming along nicely...

...once I decided to just stop dithering over needle size. I ended up using the specified size, which gave me slightly more stitches per inch than called for. I compensated by using the stitch counts for the next larger size, after a bit of math said that was appropriate.

Knitting didn't satisfy me. I wound balls of handspun - some lovely cranberry BFL 3-ply and most of the skeins from Belle, the white Romney fleece I spun into a worsted-weight 2-ply some time ago.

That didn't satisfy me. I have the itch to create something. Not just follow a knitting pattern, not just mindlessly spin fiber because I like to spin and I have lovely fiber - but create something from scratch. My something. Something that says something.

It's very annoying. Creating something takes enormous time and energy, and while I have that today, I won't tomorrow or the next day. But I know this itch, this drive, won't go away, either, so I suppose I better give in and make something, damn it.

I'm going back to thinking. Thinking about creativity and what I want to say and how to fit making something into my life. I might knit while I think.

In the meantime, the plants in my bay window are blooming - enjoy!

Not Cooperating

2009-12-01T20:52:00.003-05:00

I've gotten about 3.5 inches up the back of the DROPS jacket.

Looks good, doesn't it? (I swear that red is more subtle in real life.)

Except...well, remember how I swatched this on size 11 needles and got 12 stitches in 4 inches? The specified gauge is 11 stitches in 4 inches, so I went down to size 10.5 when I cast on, vowing to myself that I'd check my gauge often, once I got past the evil influence of those garter rows and ribbing at the cast-on.

I checked. I'm getting 14 stitches in 4 inches. Wrong. The jacket back should be 30 inches across at the bottom; that...thing on my needles is 24 inches across.

Shortly, that...thing will not exist.

Why didn't you all tell me I was wrong choosing smaller needles? I need larger needles!

goes off to rummage through the needle stash, mumbling to herself waaaay more than usual

Takes 3, 4, and 5

2009-11-30T19:35:00.002-05:00

I'm making progress on my KAL with Sarah - I've now completed 5 swatches, or parts of swatches, at least. You remember my slight mathematical misunderstanding in the beginning, I'm sure - well, I did indeed complete a suitable swatch on size 11 needles in the rosy Cascade 128 Tweed.

I wanted 11 stitches in 4 inches; after washing the swatch, I got 12 stitches in that distance. No biggie, I have size 10.5 needles around the house. However, even before I washed the swatch, I could tell this swatch fabric was too loose, too limp, too almost sleazy. I didn't think size 10.5 needles would fix that. I want this pattern to be a jacket sort of thing, not a slinky form-fitting sweater.

Thinking about jacket fabric made me think of one of my most successful knitted objects, Sally Melville's Not Your Mother's Suit Coat, knit with turquoise Lopi and Artful Yarns Shakespeare held together. It made for a very firm and warm jacket, and I wear it all fall and all spring - in fact, I wore it to work today.

So, I went poking through my stash in search of yarns to pair up with the Cascade 128 Tweed, something to fill in the gaps, so to speak, in that original swatch. I came up with all sorts of possibilities, from mohair to glitz to plain wool to hand-dyed-by-me lamb's wool-and-nylon. A deep stash is a good stash.

First, I tried the Cascade with a dark blackberry Harrisville Highland weaving yarn (I think that's what it is; the cone's unlabeled). I just happen to have a giant cone of that I bought at a weaver's yard sale. The resulting swatch was OK - here are both the original swatch on top and the Cascade plus Harrisville on the bottom.

After washing, the bottom swatch measured 11.5 stitches in 4 inches. Not bad; I'm reckless enough I'd just start in on the jacket proper on size 10.5s and check the gauge after a couple of inches. But I wasn't all that fond of the blotchy effect of the darker Harrisville against the medium-value Cascade. I swatched again, this time with some slightly glitzy Cherry Tree Hill Oceania - a variegated wool boucle.

Eww. That swatch didn't last long enough to even get a decent photo. Next!

Swatch #5: the Cascade with Harrisville Orchid Line, a lovely, but discontinued I believe, mohair, silk, and wool single. After washing, 12 stitches in 4 inches. I think I like this. This is a substantial fabric, just right for a lighter jacket. Here are all three (worthwhile) swatches, with the Orchid Line combo on the bottom.

In that photo, the red of the Orchid Line stands out more than it does in real life, so you'll have to believe me that the real effect is considerably more subtle.

I did have a panicky thought, though, while I was knitting that last swatch - I think there's only 900+ yards of the Orchid Line! And this pattern needs more than that! Ack! Luckily, I was wrong; I have 1225 yards of the Orchid Line, and I need only 1040 for the DROPS jacket.

I'm casting on tonight (with size 10.5) and I've already started perusing Etsy looking for buttons.

Also, if this works, I will have used up two sweaters' worth of yarn in one FO. I may be on to something here....

A Bit of a Hike

2009-11-29T18:34:00.002-05:00

As I said yesterday, Sarah not only talked me into a knit-along, she talked me into agreeing to take a hike twice a month and blog about it. (This is what I get for whining on Rav about being out of shape and about not ever finishing anything. ;~)

It was perfect weather here today - sunny, about 50 degrees F, a little breeze now and then. Also, it's Sunday. This state doesn't allow hunting on Sundays, so it's possible to meander mindlessly through the woods without worry.

I wasn't meandering mindlessly, though; I was walking to Spirit Falls. I am lucky to live in a part of Massachusetts where there is considerable land protected from development. The Tully Trail crosses many of those protected properties, and I chose a bit of it for this inaugural walk.

The short portion of the trail I walked today starts on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood-control dam, which created Tully Lake. I stood on the dam to take the photo above. Before the Tully and Birch Hill Dams were built on the Millers River and its tributary, the East Branch of the Tully River, in the 1940's, downstream towns such as Athol would experience major flooding regularly. We like these dams. They also provide great recreational opportunities. I started hiking at a canoe launch on the Tully River; despite it being late November, there were two kayakers setting out upstream.

I met several other hikers (and their attending dogs and children) as well. Even with a few other hikers, this was a quiet hike. I saw no moose, no deer, no coyotes, no porcupines, not even any droppings - just one or two chickadees and kinglets. Until I got to the falls itself, this was a hike focused on the small and the underfoot.

In late November, the deciduous woods around here are bare of leaves, just shades of gray, with the occasional flash of white birch bark. On the ground, though, there are many little evergreen groundcovers.

Partridgeberry:

Round-leaved pyrola. These green leaves were entirely under the fallen brown leaves; it was only the withered, upright flower stalk that gave these away to me.

Trailing arbutus:

Mosses of unknown sorts, unknown to me at least:

Christmas ferns. These indicate a richer, less basic soil than we usually have here in central Massachusetts.

A little tapestry of greens:

There's more short greenery as well, but here's something different - Indian pipes:

Indian pipes are saprophytic plants, meaning they have no chlorophyll and subsist by parasitizing soil fungi that have a symbiotic relationship with plant roots. In summer, the pipes are thickish and white; late in summer, they wither, leaving brown stems capped by the seedpods.

The trail here parallels the Tully River at a little distance. I caught glimpses of it now and then.

Across the river was a large red maple swamp, underlain by thick grasses and sedges.

A few trees had signs that Pileated Woodpeckers were working on them. This hole was about 4 inches square.

After an hour or so, I rounded a small ridge and started hearing water. Running water.

I came upon the small Spirit Falls Brook. Crossing over it, I started uphill. Straight uphill. This brook falls about 300 feet in about a quarter-mile, straight down off the long Jacob Hill ridge.

Spirit Falls itself is a long series of small and larger waterfalls. The inch of rain we had two days ago gave the Falls enough water to really splash and rumble. It was a lovely, lovely waterfall.

I stood near the top and watched the water slide off into the air.

I stood for a while, just watching the water flow. And then I turned around and walked back to my car, my face in the sun all the way.

New! Shiny!

2009-11-28T18:34:00.002-05:00

Thank you all for your sympathy and well-wishes; I am indeed feeling much better, but I can tell I'm still weary. Just plain weary. So I'm being nice to myself.

Which, come to think of it, had nothing to do with finding out this week that I have the following in this house:

13 sweaters in progress
7 sweaters queued up (which for me means yarn/pattern/needles all matched up in a bag)
26 sweater quantities of yarn in the stash.

That is 46 sweaters in some form of not-yet-finished around this house. (Also, it doesn't count the handspun, nor the laceweight, nor the weaving yarn, nor...well, anyway, onward.) (Are you all feeling better now about your own stashes?)

It's all Sarahw's fault, the very dear and charming Sarah from across the pond, who is asleep as I write this and thus can't stop me. Heh.

I met Sarah on Ravelry in the Abby's Yarn forum and then in real life at SOAR. She posted on Rav a day or two, asking for opinions on what sweater she should knit next, giving us several choices. I said something, I don't even remember what, and all of a sudden I find myself in a little knit-along with Sarah. (Also, there's something about walking, but that's tomorrow's post.) Sarah's very enticing and persuasive that way. Sarah's going to knit Mariah, and I'm going to knit something else, to be explained below. We'll swatch together and plug along together and whip each other (OK, mostly me) into finishing mode together, blogging all the while, of course.

Now, while figuring out this week if I had enough yarn of the right sort for a KAL of a specific sweater with another friend (details on that later) (lots of yarny chumminess going on hereabouts), I figured out two things:

I have 46 sweaters in progress, in the queue, etc. See above.
I did not have the necessary yarn (5 sts/in; 2062 yds.) for that second KAL.

Which is how I ended up at WEBS today with Marcy.

Where was I? I'm getting my sweater projects mixed up...

Oh, the KAL with Sarah. Right. So, since I had so recently inventoried the sweater stash, I was loath to go out and buy yet more yarn for another sweater (except of course that second KAL, which was actually the first, for which we're going to knit something specific that I can't tell you about yet because I have to coordinate with my second, but really first, KAL buddy) (got that?). Somehow, 46 sweaters to knit strikes me as possibly enough.

Thus, for Sarah's and my KAL I decided to pick one of the bulkier yarns from my stash, choose an appropriate pattern, and have a prayer of finishing something sooner rather than later. So, here's the yarn:

Cascade 128 Tweed, bought at a deep discount at WEBS sometime in the past 4 or 5 years.

And I thought I'd knit that popular DROPS jacket. There are only 1,040 yards or so between me and one of those mythical FOs. I am being smart - knitting from stash, knitting with bulky yarn, and knitting a pattern that many people think is great.

I started swatching, because I am a Good Girl and was brought up a Puritan and All That.

Then I realized that if I want to make a swatch that's about 4 inches wide, plus a little garter stitch on either side, I didn't need to cast on 50 stitches for a yarn with a suggested gauge of 11 stitches in 4 inches. I kept looking at this row and a half, thinking to myself, "Why is this swatch turning out to be 15, 20 inches wide? Maybe I better drop down 3 needle sizes...."

No, I needed to cast on only 20 stitches. Basic math had eluded me. How many years of high education and blah, blah, blah.

Take Two:

If this jacket continues in this way...well, that may explain why I have so few finished sweaters in this house.

P.S.: Does it strike you as odd I don't have 2000 yards of ordinary 5 sts/inch yarn in my stash? I may need to go shopping.

P.P.S: That being brought up Puritan? Well, let me tell you - back when my mother knit, when I was in high school or thereabouts, she didn't really care about gauge and swatching and all that. I think she knit to relax (5 kids in 9 years, ahem). She always figured that with 5 kids, a sweater would fit someone. However, I suspect she wants me to aspire to be a better person than she is - do as I say, not as I do and all that. Thus, I swatch (that's the Puritan part).

Enough!

2009-11-24T19:36:00.004-05:00

It's been one of those days, and I'm going to vent here in detail, perhaps in such detail that those of you with delicate sensibilities may wish to go on to someone more refined in your blogroll.

So, last night I decided, yes, this really is a low-level bladder infection I'm dealing with, and I called my doctor's office. They're open till 8 PM most nights and I called about 6:30, maybe 7 PM. Got an appointment for 8:30 this morning. Okaaaaaayyyy - I'm used to a quicker response during normal business hours, like come pee in a cup now, yep you have an infection, here's your antibiotic prescription. Particularly since I now have only one functional kidney, courtesy of past doctor-induced "accidents."

But I'm not in pain, I can cope till the morning. So I do.

I show up at the office at 8:30 AM. Five, maybe ten-minute wait to be called into an exam room. Fine. The nurse comes and takes my blood pressure and temperature. Fine.

She gives me the sterile cup and sterile wipes and shows me to a bathroom. A small bathroom, with no sink and no shelf for putting down things like sterile cups. I manage to produce a small amount of the required liquid, getting half of it on my hand in the process and cursing the whole bathroom arrangement as I go. You'll be happy to know there was a sink immediately outside the bathroom. Fine.

I go back to the exam and await events. The doctor comes in somewhat later, apologizes for keeping me waiting - apparently, the server for the electronic records system went down, holding things up. Fine. She takes my history and symptoms, and prods and pounds my back (no pain - yay!) and my bladder (a little discomfort, hmm). Fine. She goes away to await the lab results on the required liquid. I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

The doctor comes back, apologizing again for the server being down, which apparently is holding up all medical progress for 50 yards around.

I wait some more. I read the WebMD magazine and the large-print Readers Digest in the exam room, but I skip the Scholastic Parent and Child magazine. I am thoroughly bored. I wish I had brought my knitting.

The doctor returns, asking if the lab results had been brought. They have not been. She goes off again and returns 10 minutes later with the results, apologizing yet again, as apparently the non-functioning server screwed up communications with the lab. This is not a big hospital we're talking about here; it's a small-town clinic. Whatever. Fine, dammit. (I like this doctor, whom I haven't met before; she looks very sweet and nice, but quite obviously has no tolerance for nonsense like this. Her steely eyes give her away.)

And why, yes, I DO indeed have a bladder infection. Fancy that. The prescription will be called into the local CVS; however, since I am already 90 minutes late for work - yes, that was NINETY minutes I waited around that exam room - and since I know CVS won't get around to filling the prescription immediately, I go to work.

Whereupon I find our computers at work are screwed up and we have no internet access, which means we have no email, and oh, by the way, we can't access most of the drives, either. I think it's all a big conspiracy to get me to file all the papers on my desk, seriously.

But the computers eventually return to their normal semi-functional state and I can finish an email conversation with the guy I'm seeing, who would like to spend all 4 days of Thanksgiving weekend with me, and because I am just a little stressed and weary and worn down and FINE, DAMMIT, I would like two of those days to myself. Alone. Quiet. Me time. We're dating, not living together, dear.

The work day ends and I drive the hour home to my local CVS to pick up the antibiotic before I dash home to grab something to eat before the Planning Board meeting tonight.

The prescription hasn't been filled yet. They just got it from the doctor's office, some - let me count - eight hours after my office visit concluded. I politely say I'll be back at 8:30 PM to pick it up. I go home, gobble dinner, and go to the Planning Board meeting at 7 PM.

It's short and sweet and we're out of there by 7:20 PM. Which means I might as well go home for an hour before I go back to CVS to pick up the prescription. Which means I have plenty of time to vent here to my very dear and patient blog-readers.

FINE.

In other news, we have half a sleeve. If I had taken my knitting to the doctor's, to work, to CVS, I'd have a whole sleeve by now.

And how was your day?

ETA: You guessed it - I should have taken my knitting to CVS this second time, too. Will I never learn?

A Small Victory

2009-11-16T19:25:00.002-05:00

Sweet Fern mitts, in Ashland Bay merino I spun three years ago. A fun knit, if you remember to check the errata beforehand, and they fit. Even more importantly, they're finished!

Next up: the Cottage Garden Pullover. I put this down when I needed something more portable to knit at SOAR, and its time has come again. First goal-along-the-way: The body below the yoke - only about three inches of plain stockinette, round and round, to go.

Lesson #2B

2009-11-05T17:30:00.002-05:00

Lesson #2B from SOAR: Finish things.

I'm sitting here at home, still sick with the flu I caught at SOAR, mulling over what I learned, what I experienced, what I felt. You'll know I'm well again when I quit posting!

I believe it was Monday night that we were all treated to a lecture by Sara Lamb. Sara has a wonderful new book out, by the way; all of you with any leanings towards weaving should get it. It's beautiful and inspirational. In the lecture, Sara showed us through her years of work, with a bit of emphasis on what didn't work, and why she finished those projects anyway. Her take-home message: Finish things.

For some reason (see the last post), that rings a piercing bell for me. I went up to Sara after the lecture and asked about all those projects one starts, and then sees within a few inches or hours or whatever that it just isn't going to work at all - do I have to finish those? Sara laughed (Sara is so completely sane) and said, no, those are called "samples" and you don't have to finish them.

I'm thinking of all my unfinished projects now, and there are some I can easily state are samples. The stripy thing part-way down this post? A sample, clearly. Overall, the idea is quite good, but as I said in that post, the sample I made showed the size stripe I chose to be too wide (even accounting for eventual felting). I did not finish this, but one of these days I'd still like to work on this idea some more.

On the other hand, there are many UFOs around here that are well worth finishing - they're proven patterns, in good yarn, in a style and color and size that should flatter me, if only I could finish the blasted things. Dear readers, help me here: How do I learn to persevere? How do I keep from flitting fruitlessly from project to project, acquiring and starting wonderful, inspiring, lovely new projects, but hardly ever creating something in its entirety?

Lesson #2

2009-11-05T16:02:00.002-05:00

Lesson #2 from SOAR 2009: Acquisition is not creation.

I'm very good at acquisition. I do it well and easily and fast. Give me a Rhinebeck or a SOAR market or Mass Sheep & Wool and I can pick out my favorites like nobody's business. I have the stash to prove it, too. The shepherds of the world are very fond of me.

But I do not have the finished objects to match. First of all, I give away many of the projects I do finish, and second, I don't finish much of what is supposed to be for me. I think this needs to change. I think I need to become selfish, in many parts of my life. I think I need to reserve some energy for me, so that I'm not exhausted when I arrive at SOAR and even more exhausted when I leave, so that I'm not doing 3.5 jobs at work in the time allotted for one, and so I have some pretty FOs for me.

I started the lovely, simple Sweet Fern Mitts from Clara Parkes' new book, The Knitter's Book of Wool, just before I left for SOAR, so I'd have something to knit in the airport and on the plane, wherever. They are for me. Me, me, me. I'm knitting them out of some badly spun (but more than adequate for this task), 2-ply, Ashland Bay merino I spun in September of 2006. It's soft, it's a lovely heathered rose-pink, and I did a good enough job spinning the fiber that it's not very pilly. Wanna see what the mitts look like now, after a week at SOAR?

There's also the frogged and re-washed skein hanging in the basement from mitt #1. Sigh...

I knew after an inch or two that the chart in the book was wrong, so that the cable pattern is upside-down, but I could live with that quite happily. I tried on the mitt several times as I went along to make sure it fit, and it did, beautifully. Once I got past the stitches reserved for the eventual thumb, I did think it odd that the cable seemed to line up with my index finger, not my middle finger, the way the photo in the book showed, but I thought it was because I was trying on the mitt with the three dpns still in it. Also, there was that oddly placed k2, p1 column, when most of the mitt is k2, p2, but hey, who am I to argue with a designer?

Lesson #2A: Always check the errata. (Here, for this pattern.)

Once mitt #1 was finished except for the thumb, it was clear the off-center cable was not acceptable to my symmetrical mind, and the mitt was frogged. Now I begin again, more mindfully, let us hope.

It would be very, very easy to put this project aside - it's only for me, after all, and it's only a pair of fingerless mitts that don't match any of my coats, after all, and it's only a little project, after all, when I have so many other, bigger projects in progress I should turn my attention to. At most it'll use up just one ball of yarn in my stash.

But none of those other projects are for other people and none of them have deadlines. I am going to finish these pretty pink mitts, in yarn I spun myself, and I'm going to finish them for me. Because I'm worth a little pink pair of handspun, cabled mitts.

Lesson #1

2009-11-05T12:02:00.006-05:00

Lesson #1 from SOAR: Learning new skills is HARD.

A confession: I cried in Stephenie Gaustad's workshop the first day when she was teaching us how to spin cotton on a wheel. Not as hard as I cried in Maggie Casey's retreat on long draw a few days later, when Maggie had us switch from spinning wool on a wheel via long draw to spinning cotton on the wheel. That time I had to leave the class, I was crying so hard. I think I was very exhausted by then.

Basically, I couldn't do it. I couldn't spin cotton on a wheel. I could spin cotton on a tahkli and a charkha and a great wheel, but a basic flyer wheel? No.

I don't normally cry all that much. Remember when I broke my ankle badly a few years ago? (No, I am not posting the link to the photo of my ankle in its external fixator and, yes, you should be very grateful I'm not. It wasn't pretty.) I did not cry when I broke it, I did not cry when the emergency orthopedic surgeon reduced the fracture (translation: squooshed the bones back together without anesthetic), I did not cry ever. At all.

So it was a big deal to cry in Stephenie's and Maggie's classes. (I really hope I didn't bother anyone who was in those classes.)

There are actually two lessons to be learned here. Lesson #1A: Exhaustion is not good. Sleep more, eat better, say no to more requests from anyone. I think most reasonably intelligent, properly socialized, sane people learn this in their twenties or thirties; I'm just a little slow.

Lesson #1B: Learning new skills that involve one's hands (both of them) and feet and eyes and brain and alllllll the leetle nerves among all those parts is HARD. And it's OK to fail, to suck more, to be miserable at the new skill. Where character prevails is in the afterward, in the persevering beyond the tears.

I've let a few days go by. I've slept a lot. I'm mostly over the flu I caught at SOAR. I'll probably go back to work tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon I felt well enough to spin a little. I pulled out the fleece I was working on in September, a lovely pale gray Corriedale x Border Leicester roving I was spinning on my antique Canadian Production Wheel. Apparently, I can still spin; I filled about a quarter of the bobbin in no time flat, before collapsing into bed again. Here's the proof:

Today I got out a little of the cotton sliver Stephenie gave us in class, and I tried spinning it using long draw on the CPW. Bingo.

It's not perfect, but it's yarn. Cotton yarn, spun long draw. Only a few yards, but more than I produced in 6 hours in Stephenie's class. A few months of practice, and it'll be good yarn.

Character-building, indeed.

SOAR

2009-11-04T16:42:00.003-05:00

I have the SOAR virus, so this post will have photos (a few) but only a few words.

Something about brain surgeons and Monty Python...

Roomie #1:

Roomie #2:

Stephenie Gaustad teaching cotton spinning:

My wonderful classmates in the cotton class, with Honorary Roomie #3 smack in the center:

OK, I'm going back to bed now, I've used up my quota of energy for today.

Stripes!

2009-09-25T21:05:00.002-04:00

I found this on the outside of a window screen at work this week. I don't think it's native to Massachusetts, but I like its stripes nonetheless!

There's Hope After All

2009-09-21T19:51:00.003-04:00

I don't have kids, but I get to hang out with a couple of absolutely top-notch ones anyhow.

That's Olivia on the left and Isabelle on the right. Olivia's holding Freddy's Hope, a dark gray Shetland ewe lamb; Isabelle's holding Wilber, a mioget (under the most luscious chocolate tips) Shetland ram lamb. In the middle you can't see their mom Pat, who can't tell she's holding upside-down the plaque Isabelle won. That plaque is for the Phil and Lee Delano Memorial Shepherd Award, given out each year at the Middlesex County 4-H fair, held in Westford, Massachusetts. The Delano award is a Very Big Deal. If I remember correctly, it is given to the best shepherd that year. Isabelle also won the annual Wool Top Trophy at the same fair, given for the shepherd who takes the best care of their flock overall, including how the flock is displayed at the fair. Under Isabelle's capable showmanship, Wilber was the Champion Shetland Ram at the Bolton, MA, Fair in both the Junior and the Open Shows, and he was the Reserve Champion Ram in the All Other (wool) Breeds class at the Northeast Youth Sheep Show. Isabelle is 15. At age 15, I think I was accomplishing exactly nothing.

At the Woodstock, CT., sheep show, Olivia led Freddy's Hope to a Reserve Champion medal in the All Other Breed Ewe Youth Show and to the Grand Champion Ewe in the Open Show. Grand Holy Mackeral Champion Ewe. Olivia is 11. I don't even remember being 11.

These two won many more awards this year as well, but I'm not even sure I got all the details correct on the awards I did list. Isabelle did say something about not putting the ordinary ribbons up on her bedroom wall any more - she only puts up the rosettes nowadays. And did I mention Isabelle was the one to decide which of her Shetland ewes to breed to which ram from another flock to produce these two lovely lambs? Apparently, she was debating the finer points of fleece quality and being high on their hocks and twinning and being a good mother and all that stuff.

I'm very proud of these two (and of their mom!), even though I had nothing to do with bringing them up or teaching them how to raise good sheep or anything (except maybe knitting) (and spinning, quite possibly) (definitely Rhinebeck - you can meet these young women and their mom there with me this year, by the way). And I'm showing my support for their stellar efforts by promising to buy Wilber's fleece when he's shorn for the first time this fall. I really ought to buckle down and go for Hope's fleece, as well. It's a sacrifice, but somebody has to do the hard work around here.

Knitting. I Do It.

2009-09-19T20:13:00.004-04:00

(Let's just pretend the past five months of non-blogging didn't happen, OK? I miss you and if I don't start somewhere, I'll never start again and never get to talk to you again. So, onward.)

I've been knitting. Yeah, so, you say? Well, all summer I did not knit. I spun, I wove, I learned, I even sewed a little. Deets on all that later, if I remember.

But now I want to knit. I want every inch of a lovely yarn in a heartswoony color to move slowly through my fingers, throw by throw, bamboo needles slipping along. I want to knit mindless stockinette, with a little fillip of color or cable or lace here or there. I want to knit for me.

I want to knit Yarnbee Cheryl's completely adorable Cottage Garden pullover from the latest Twist Collective. I've met Cheryl here and there in classes and such at WEBS; she is just as adorable as this pattern.

Nothing in my stash quite worked for this, despite my best efforts, so I ended up treating myself to a sweater's worth of Rowan Felted Tweed, and here's my progress 19 days after casting on:

I'm not quite as far along as Kelly, who plans to wear hers to Rhinebeck - she's about 25% of the way along now, and I'm at maybe 10%? OK, OK, I'm at 5%, although Kelly started only 2 days before me.

Now, I really don't mean to beat myself up here. I've had a stress-filled and chaotic summer - just the usual work nonsense, combined with a rainy, rainy, I-hate-rainy June - and I intend to be good to myself now. So, understand that I'm not comparing my progress to Kelly's, I'm really not.

What I am doing is wondering why I rarely finish anything I start for myself. The other day I was re-reading Abby Franquemont's blog post on the state of being waylaka. Go read it, so I don't have to attempt to convey something Abby has already written about so well. What struck me there was the concept of doing something right, and if necessary, doing something over and over and over again until it was right, because doing something right is what distinguishes a worthwhile adult from a lazy good-for-nothing. From a waylaka.

I am most certainly a worthwhile adult, in many, many ways, and I suppose that's why the pile of unfinished projects here bothers me so much. I can easily let go of attempts that didn't work out, but to take one example, since I'm talking about knitting here, the unfinished sweaters here that are wonderful patterns, in great yarn, in colors and styles that suit me - those unfinished sweaters in the bins hereabouts bug me. There's really no excuse for not finishing them except... I got a little bored. A little distracted by New! Shiny! somewhere else. And I'm a little lazy. A little waylaka.

I'm not happy about that. Let's see if we can get this simple, classic, adorable Cottage Garden in perfect colors, in great yarn, finished this winter, OK? For me, for me.

(Did I mention I missed you?)

Not All Bad

2009-04-28T19:03:00.002-04:00

Life isn't all bad, you know. As evidence, let me present some spindle-spinning.

Barb Parry's 75% Cormo wool/25% silk, spun on a Greensleeves Maureen's Mjolinor.

Random silk, given to me by Marcy because I harangued her to do so, spun on my new Golding.

Now, it's off to work on the other 95% of life.

Moving On

2009-04-26T11:14:00.002-04:00

No, I'm not going to tell you I've quit blogging (the non-evidence of the past two months to the contrary); I'm going to talk about the ways in which I'm moving on and how I feel about that.

Exhibit A: Earle's moving out. I'm basically OK with the fact he and I are calling it quits - we came to the mutual conclusion that we make good friends and good housemates, but that we're not more than that (think of magnets pushing each other away, in certain configurations) - but, you know, I'm really rather tired of being on my own. I'd like someone around to be nice to and for someone to be nice to me. Plus someone to help decide what the hell to do with the gutters.

It's rather hard being in one's mid-fifties and unwilling to spend hours and hours staying in shape and dieting and exercising and dyeing your hair and shopping and hemming pants and plucking eyebrows and makeup and dealing with flirting with guys who, in reality, are mostly pretty damn boring or whacko, if they're unattached at an age close to mine. I don't want to do all that anymore (not that I ever did to speak of). Screw it. I would like my fitness back, however. When I broke my ankle four years ago, I started sitting on my ass way too much (and knitting/spinning/weaving, ahem). Despite the gorgeous weather here today, I'm not inspired to go dig up the garden or saw down the dead branches way up in the spruces or much of that. Lack of exercise breeds more lack of exercise.

Exhibit B: We're all getting older. My parents are getting older and they'll die sometime in the next five, maybe ten years. Dad'll be 81 on Sunday; Mom just turned 79. A friend and neighbor of theirs just dropped dead at the age of 83 while arriving to see his grandkids hunt for Easter eggs. I don't want my parents to die, I don't want my friends to die, and I don't want to die. Blunt, but true. Helluva thought for early spring.

Exhibit C: I'm an okay knitter, an okay spinner, an okay weaver. I'm a relatively new spinner and a very new weaver, so I forgive myself beginners' mistakes, but already I can feel myself being driven to do good work. Creative work, competent work. Not dabbling-around work. Which takes time and training and practice and stretching one's brain inside-out. Rather like getting back in shape, only more so. I just don't know if I have it in me to work that hard, or, conversely, to relax about it and just knit/spin/weave for fun. I must always press onward.

And yet the chances of my getting anywhere are slim, especially given my age and other commitments (see Exhibit B) and the energy needed for coping with companionship or the lack thereof (see Exhibit A).

Annoying, really. I expected better from life, since I'm basically an optimist, and it's annoying when life doesn't live up to my expectations.

If I Don't Blog Now....

2009-02-22T09:41:00.007-05:00

I'll never get through it all.

I've discovered how to get through a snowy winter - keep at least two projects going in each of three creative modes! So, I've been busy; this'll be just a quick run-through.

Knitting:
I finished the cabled scarf Tilly from Lisa Lloyd's wonderful book A Fine Fleece. Knit from 4.5 skeins of Louisa Harding Grace Silk & Wool, this took me six weeks to knit, but oh, it's lovely. The yarn is a soft single, so it's a little splitty and a little pilly, but blocking made it bloom a tad and gave the whole scarf body. I love it!

While I was finishing up Tilly, worlds collided and I saw a lovely version of cosmicpluto's Simple Yet Effective Shawl on Ravelry at the same time my LYS had a 40% off sale on Noro sock yarn. Bingo! I restrained myself to buying only one ball (which is all the pattern takes), and now I'm fairly close to being done. You can't get a sense of scale from this photo, but it seems to me that this one ball of sock yarn is producing a lot of fabric - a lot more than would be needed for a pair of socks, even given that I'm knitting at a somewhat larger gauge than one would for socks. Interesting, at least to me.

Spinning:
I can spin on a spindle! Woo! Here are yards and yards and yards of Spunky Eclectic BFL is some forgotten colorway spun up on my little Greensleeves Connie's Mjolinar. I'm thinking I'll use this single as the weft in a floaty little scarf for me, hence the winding onto weaving bobbins.

The Louet S10 has been going like a banshee, producing a deliberately, ahem, slubby bulky-weight 2-ply from a beautiful Romney fleece I bought at Rhinebeck and sent to Friends Folly Farm for processing. I'm beginning to see the end of these 5.5 pounds of roving ...

And loving the result. There are two more big skeins drying downstairs, 2.5 more bobbins-full to ply, and maybe 8 ounces left to spin. I plan on dyeing this and knitting myself a heavy cardigan in a broken rib (but don't hold your breath waiting for it) and weaving a good-sized throw from all these riches of yarn.

I've been playing on the Canadian Production Wheel, just trying a little of this and a little of that, trying to get the hang of her. I finally figured out (with the help of Marcy - thank you!) that she needed a little corrosion taken off her flyer shaft; with that taken care of, I commenced real production. First off is a three-ply of Spunky Eclectic 100% wool in the Boogie colorway. I believe this went from unspun braid to spun/plied/washed in one day. A productive wheel, indeed.

Yesterday, I started a larger project - some gorgeous 80% merino/20% cashmere from Spirit Trail. This will be a 2-ply, for a weaving weft or knitting lace, depending on the final yardage and the whim of the moment. Oh, this is lovely fiber!

Weaving:
Well, I finished Laurie's warp-faced scarf, but I forgot to take a photo of it, so you'll just have to believe me. Now, I have an 8/2 Tencel warp partly onto the 4-harness loom; I'm planning to weave a semi-fancy twill scarf using Just Our Yarns Aziza as weft. I'm not sure I like the color combo so far, but I expect the multi-colored weft to tone things down. If it doesn't, I think I'll replace the blue in the warp with more deep fuchsia and try again. For me, weaving so much more experimental than knitting or spinning, and I like that.

On the 8-harness table loom, I finally - yay! - finished the table runner. Done, done, done! I've learned a few things from weaving this. First, I don't much care for using the hand levers common to most table looms. I'd much rather be moving the harnesses up and down with my feet on treadles; using my hands to move each lever one by one is too slow for my impatient mind. Second, you know how a cabled knitting fabric will draw in width-wise much more than a stiockinette fabric with the same number of stitches? Well, woven twills do the same thing compared to plain or tabby weave. For this table runner, I was following a pattern in Handwoven, which said to weave tabby for the hems on either end. I did, and learned that doing so made the ends flare. There's no real reason why the turned-under hem couldn't be twill rather than tabby, I think, and that would eliminate the flaring. I have enough warp left on the loom to weave a dishtowel, so I'm going to try using the twill pattern for the hems and see what happens. Third, this may not be evident in the photo, but my beat was off (equivalent to saying my gauge varied), so some of the motifs are square, as they should be, and some are rectangular. I suspect this came from neglecting this project all summer and fall, such that my hands weren't doing the same motions as when I started. All in all, though, this table runner is very usable and makes me happy!

Miscellany
See this? It's a medieval spindle whorl, from about 300 to 800 years ago, sent to me in a swap with Sarah of the UK. It's lead, remarkably heavy for its size - it's only a little over an inch wide, but it weighs 1.75 ounces. One of these days, I'm hoping I can make a shaft for it and try it as a bottom whorl spindle. It'll make a heavy yarn, for sure. Thank you, Sarah!

It may be winter still (and we're expecting another snowstorm this afternoon), but my fig tree, which has been dormant and leafless all winter, believes in the coming of spring - look at its little unfurling leaf! Oh, I can't wait - leaves and flowers and dragonflies...

I'm going to SPA in Maine next weekend; I hope I'll see some of you there!

Moving Right Along

2009-01-25T11:43:00.003-05:00

One of the great attributes of weaving is that it is accomplished quickly. Yesterday, I resleyed the scarf warpp to 30 ends per inch and lo! it's warp-faced!

Furthermore, it's done!

A little narrow, and the yellow isn't a color I wear often, but done. Woven. Finished. Completed. Done.

As well, the second mitten was finished yesterday. I even found the yarn label, so I can tell you these are made of Ironstone New Wool. The basketweave cuff is lovely, but a bear to knit at this gauge - quite stiff. This cuff won't be letting any cold breezes near my wrists.

So now I have a hat and matching mittens. I feel almost pulled together.

A Finger in the Dike

2009-01-22T20:16:00.002-05:00

All the snow recently has had a deleterious effect on my gloves. Apparently, the set screw on the handle of the snow shovel has been wearing away at the fingers of these gloves. I bought the gloves at Rhinebeck the fall before last, and I've already darned or duplicate-stitched two holes in the finger tips. This past weekend was the last straw.

Monday night I finished frogging and putting away the first attempt at new mittens, and then commenced anew. A couple of months ago, I made myself a Canadian-Winter Hat from this yarn, and now I'm holding three strands of it together for the mittens. I'd tell you what the yarn is, but the labels have disappeared. It's a very softly spun single plied with a think black nylon binder thread. I believe I held two strands together for the hat (I'm too lazy to go get the hat to check). Holding three strands together gives a good, firm fabric - not so firm I can barely stand to knit it, as with the first try at this pattern, but firm enough to protect the yarn from too much wear (I hope) and to protect me from the ravages of bitter winter wind.

The first mitten is complete. It fits. I like it a lot. It may be the first mitten I have ever knit, not being a big mitten fan up till now. I've weighed it and the remaining yarn and I have enough to knit mitten #2; I was a little concerned I might run out. So, perhaps by Sunday night I'll have a pair of mittens to match my hat. Sam would approve.

Of course, the winter coat this hat and mitten set complements is beginning to look quite tired. I predict that by next winter, I'll have a lovely set of hat and mittens, which will not go with any winter coat in my size in any store within 100 miles - what do you want to bet?

Weekends are for Weaving

2009-01-19T13:58:00.002-05:00

But first, some of those details later...

Here we have a lovely cabled scarf, about two-thirds done depending whether I want to stop at 6 repeats or go for 12 (for which I think I'll need another ball of yarn). This is Lisa Lloyd's pattern Tilly from her great book, A Fine Fleece. The yarn is Louisa Harding Grace-Silk & Wool, a scrumptious half-silk, half-merino yarn, bought at 40% off at my LYS's holiday Midnight Madness sale. Alas, it's a relatively softly spun single, so I think it might pill. That's why I went for a cabled scarf; I'm hoping for less wear and for the cables to hold everything together. We'll see. There was no way I was resisting such a blue, however.

I was inspired by Laurie's mittens to try a pair for myself. I figured I could hold three skinny yarns together and end up with an interesting bulky to match the required gauge, not to mention a quick knit. Well, yes, I could get gauge, after frogging it once after trying to knit this in the round, because I could not wrap my head around mittens that start out being knitted flat and then are joined after the cuff. What you see is the not-yet-sewn-up knit-flat cuff. But the resulting fabric is very, very stiff, and I think I'm going to frog this all together and try with different yarns and only two of them. So much for a fast knit.

I've been spinning! ... as you might imagine from my last post. [I should get a new wheel more often; I think I got more comments on that post than any other I've written.]

The new wheel, she goes good, and she's slowly bringing me into compliance with her wishes. I am simply fascinated with this groove in the flyer - see how the yarn fits exactly? Decades of spinning fine yarn have worn that groove. There's one on the other side of the flyer, too (double my delight!) and even grooves on the inside of the flyer arms, where apparently the yarn was laced for easing production of very, very fine yarn.

Speaking of fine yarn ... OK, I get the spindle love now. This is a 0.7-ounce Greensleeves Loki with some Spunky BFL. This is the same BFL that was driving me up the wall when I was trying to spin it on a Golding spindle. Apparently, the fiber prefers the Greensleeves.

Finally, a three-day, mostly snowy weekend has driven me back to my loom. I've been procrastinating for months about weaving the scarf warp I dyed in a Sara Lamb workshop at SOAR, but yesterday afternoon I dusted off (literally!) the floor loom and warped her up with no problems.

Except I chose the wrong sett. This scarf is supposed to be warp-faced, meaning none of the weft should show. Do you see that thin blue thread? Yeah, me, too. It's not supposed to show at all. (That big white weft is toilet paper; you use it at the very beginning of a warp to spread out the warp threads evenly.) So, I have to resley the reed to a closer sett, probably twice as close as I have it now. Not a big deal, and I'm actually very happy to be weaving again.

In fact, I've just been wandering from loom to wheel to spindle to other wheel to knitting to frogging to spinning again, with occasional stops to make tea and see what birds are at the feeders. It's a lovely way to spend a weekend.

WAKE UP!!!!

2009-01-12T12:50:00.005-05:00

The scene: A peaceful, snowy Sunday morning. Earle's at work, as he almost always is on Sundays. I get up late, make myself some tea and oatmeal, and settle in to the computer to check email and banter on Ravelry and such. Just a nice quiet day. I plan on putzing around the house later, maybe repot some plants, knit a little, call a friend, whatever. Take a nap, even.

But no.

There's an email from Marcy, entitled WAKE UP!!!! Let me quote the message in its entirety:

Go lookee wheel naow! Buybuybuy! CPW !! Go gettit.

A bigger font than that, even.

CPW stands for Canadian Production Wheel, one of which I want. Note that Marcy, in her excitement, neglected to tell me where, exactly, the wheel was or where it was advertised. I wrote Marcy back, saying, um, where, exactly? And then went on to Ravelry, where I discovered that Eva, somewhere in Massachusetts, had posted that she was, alas, selling her wheel.

Well, in between more frantic emails from Marcy, I establish that Eva lives in Hudson, only an hour from me, and that I could come see the wheel that very afternoon.

I did. She's beautiful. It only took me half an hour to figure out how to get her to spin (Eva doesn't spin, yet, and I've spun maybe 10 minutes on a double-drive Saxony, at most, ever), but a little oiling, a little adjustment of the driveband, and whee! She spins! She takes up! She goes fastfastfast!!!

And now she's mine. And I'm hers. I'm sure you can see why.

So much for a quiet Sunday.

P.S.: Thank you, Marcy!!

P.P.S.: Thank you also for everyone's kind comments on my last post; I've been meaning to get back to you all, but you see, there's this cobalt-blue, cabled, wool/silk scarf and the 5+ pounds of Romney roving and the several tries at mittens and well, I've been busy. Details later.

The new year

2009-01-01T15:03:00.002-05:00

I'm having a hard time dealing with my own mortality these days. Given my age, my family history, and a usual lifespan, I can expect 30 more new years. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

Especially since I'm so imperfect and so slow. I don't know why I can't accept that often what I make - sweaters, yarn, even mittens - is not quite right the first time and must be redone. Or that a sweater is a big project, which may have something to do with my frequent boredom with them part-way through. I'd hate to list for you all the projects I started in 2008, and where they are today. They're almost all - maybe 70%? - still in the WIP stage, stuffed in plastic bags and knitting bags in some bin somewhere, or scattered around the living room or the bedroom. I don't know why I have so little stick-to-it-tiveness when it comes to knitting.

Spinning gets finished - I just hung up to dry the first of what will be many skeins of lovely, springy Romney 2-ply, for a textured jacket, I think - but I'm not really very good at it. I spin a lot, but I'm not pushing my boundaries and getting better; I'm just making the same sorts of yarn I made three years ago when I finally figured out how to spin. Well...I have gotten more consistent and better able to spin the weight of yarn I want, but I have no patience right now to learn woolen spinning or how to spin on a spindle. I can do both, barely, but I'm certainly not competent at either.

Maybe I should knit hats and scarves and mittens for a while, get my mojo back. I spun some lovely subtle dark kid mohair/merino into a perfectly good bulky three-ply a couple weeks ago, and knit two good hats from it. Then I spun a pink merino/tussah/alpaca batt from Abby Franquemont in a decent fingering-weight two-ply (21 wpi - that's fingering, right?), and knit a rather nice Branching Out scarf from it for a friend. No photos, sorry, but as you know, my photography skills suck, too. But it was very nice to start something, several somethings, and have them make it all the way through spinning and knitting successfully, quickly, turning out just how I envisioned them before I started spinning. I suppose small accomplishments like these are to be savored, yes?

It does not help that a muscle in my lower back is strained and making it difficult to sit for any length of time (say, longer than 15 minutes) and that it's been frigid or icy or snowing like mad the past week, making it hard to go for a long walk. Walking is how I usually treat these occasional bouts with a sore back.

This general malaise has gone on for quite some time, as you'll see if you read back through the getting-on-for-three-years' worth of posts here. Time to do something about it. I've gotten fairly good over the past half-century (yikes!) at nudging myself, kicking and screaming, into a better stage of life every so often, and I suppose it's time to do it again. I can see traces of stick-in-the-mudness creeping into me, something I associate with getting old, and I intend to resist.

You know, that double-coated gray Shetland lamb fleece I've got would probably be perfect for learning to make rolags, and then for practicing a woolen long draw. Sigh ... Kicking and screaming, here I go!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T13:10:00.002-05:00

Warmth

2008-12-15T08:15:00.003-05:00

Earle took this picture Sunday morning in Templeton, MA, up on the hill where he works. Beautiful, but deadly.

We were very lucky. The power went out Friday morning around 7:30 AM and came back on Sunday morning about 4 AM. No trees hit the house; in fact, only a few big branches came down and I've already cleared them away. The pipes did not freeze, although the temperature in the house dropped to below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The sump pump seems to have died, but so far the groundwater hasn't risen above the floor of the basement. The big hibiscuses weren't happy, but they seem to have survived. I discovered that one of the pleasures of living in town is that one's water does not disappear when the power goes out, since water pressure is produced by gravity from those big tanks up on the hills. Who knew?! Since I've started owning houses, I've never lived in one on town water. Flushing is one of the great pleasures of civilized life.

The warmth of neighbors and companions extended far in our direction. Knitting and spinning continued on despite all challenges and a major birthday party of a friend happened Saturday night right on schedule a few streets over, by candlelight, wood heat, and a quickly bought generator. It's amazing how far friends will come through downed trees and wires, to celebrate with good cheer and good food.

Power has been generally restored to my workplace, but not to the trailer wherein I actually cubiculate. The lines between the main building and the trailer are down. I was advised to stay home, as power may well be cut to the main building when they restore power to the trailer, and who knows when that will happen anyway?

Resolved: I will knit myself fingerless mitts very soon. And get the chimney cleaned and a store of burnable wood laid by. LED flashlights seem to be a worthwhile innovation I hadn't noticed before, and the thought of a generator tempts me like never before. Wool sweaters, blankets, hats, and even socks are definitely not just a fad.

Not Gonna Happen, Margene

2008-11-30T14:23:00.003-05:00

This is why I am not going to knit 12 sweaters next year, unlike some I could mention.

This is the one NaKniSweMo sweater (Elsebeth Lavold's Pebbles, in my handspun) that has a prayer of being finished before midnight tonight, and it ain't gonna happen. You see that wonky-looking sleeve cap? Well, it is wonky in real life, too, and I don't think that setting in the collar will help one bit. (Interestingly, the ice cream helped my mood, though.)

That particular sleeve cap has been knit three times. Once, it was too long by three inches; I frogged and reknit with more frequent decreases. The second time, I lay sleeve #2 on top of sleeve #1, and found that when I reknit sleeve #1, I forgot the gently sloping decreases near the top, the ones that come after the now-more-frequently-knit decreases. The third time, well, you see the evidence. I am going to have to rip out these set-in sleeves (yes, I did both of them), rip back their caps and reknit a third time for sleeve #1 and a second time for sleeve #2.

I am having a hard time getting motivated to do that today. Frankly, I'm sick of knitting unsuccessful projects. Did I mention I'm running out of yarn for this sweater? My handspun, handdyed yarn? Sigh...I don't know why I should be running out of yarn to knit the collar, just because I neither measured nor weighed the yarn before I dyed it. [I believe it's called tempting fate. Apparently, I like to live dangerously. Also, I couldn't fit any more yarn in my dyepot.] Fortunately, the collar is double-sided; you knit a wide rectangle, fold it in half lengthwise, and sew the cast-on and bound-off edges to the sides of the square collar opening. I do have enough yarn for the front side of the collar and have, in fact, knit the front side. My friend Pat, with whom I was knitting most of Friday, gave me some Bartlett-type yarn to do the back of the collar if need be; I'm using it to seam with and waiting to see what happens with the sleeve caps. Oh Fashion Police, can we bring back dropped-sleeve sweaters?

In the meantime, whenever the frustration with sleeve caps got overwhelming, I've knit one and a half hats from my handspun for Jean's hat drive. The first one fits my head, luckily, or I'd be tempted to take very sharp scissors to the hat and a certain pair of sleeve caps in my vicinity.

ETA: I was knitting yesterday with That Sue and her brother and sister-in-law, Chris and Elaine. Chris snapped these photos of me and just sent them to me. You see what I mean about that sleeve cap, don't you?

And apparently I'm really cute when I'm grumpy about sleeve caps.

I Got Over It

2008-11-22T10:53:00.002-05:00

Well, I got over the snit I threw last weekend when the sleeve cap turned out too long. I also got over the cold, and after a few days got a new one, or a different version of the old one - I've progressed to drippy. At least I can think now.

Of course, once I was well enough to deal with the sleeve cap, it took all of an hour to rip it back to the armhole bindoffs and reknit the cap, decreasing one stitch at each end of every third row, rather than every fourth row as the pattern specifies.

Of course, it took me 5 days or so to get to that point, not because of my cold, but because I got distracted. Fancy that.

Distraction #1: I finished spinning the Spinner's Hill batt (which was part of my NaKniSweNo goal, you will remember). Lovely, lovely, 3-ply yarn - about 500 yards of bulky weight. Less yardage than I had hoped for, but I hit the right gauge.

Distraction #2: I cast on for a hat (or two, I hope) for Jean's hats for the homeless drive, which I came to by way of Kathy's blog. These are my handspun; the purple is BFL, the greener ball is merino.

Distraction #3: I finished spinning half of this hand-dyed Border Leicester top from Barb Parry. I took three wonderful classes from Barb at WEBS this summer and one of these bundles was part of our materials for a class. I bought a second one from Barb, figuring I could get sufficient two-ply to make a lace scarf. So, really, what I'm doing is just tidying up bobbins. Completely justified, to my mind.

I was watching my hands while I was spinning this, since there's been so much discussion lately about which hand should be nearest the orifice. I'm definitely right-handed, and I spin with my left hand nearest the orifice, which is, apparently, contrary to what Judith McKenzie McCuin recommends. She says that the forward hand is the one controlling the amount of fiber and twist getting into the yarn, so you should use your dominant hand as your forward hand. That makes perfect sense to me. However, when I watch my hands spinning this nicely prepared top into worsted, neither hand is moving very much. I'm not doing a short forward draw. I'm not doing a short backward draw. There is no twist between my hands; the forward hand is not allowing any twist behind it. Both hands are about two to three inches apart, and both are moving at the same speed (slowly) away from the orifice. The fibers are essentially drafting themselves between my hands, in the drafting triangle (and it is a triangle). The back hand is holding and loosely controlling the fiber supply - it's actually doing more than the forward hand. I can feel the fibers drafting themselves between my palm and my middle, ring, and pinky fingers. The thumb and forefinger of the back hand is flattening, gently, the fiber into the drafting triangle and controlling the amount of finer getting into the triangle. All the forward hand is doing is squeezing, tightly, the fiber at the point it becomes yarn. So I suppose it makes sense for my dominant hand to be my back hand.

However, when I was spinning the Spinner's Hill fiber, I was doing something different with my hands. Not consciously, but I was definitely doing something different. The Spinner's Hill batt is actually a "cloud," I'm told - it was a thick (maybe 2 inches) mat about 30 inches wide. There were layers within and paralleling the surface of the batt/cloud, but even the fibers within each layer were not nearly as aligned in parallel as what comes off the usual hobbyist drumcarder. I spun this in worsted fashion, left hand forward, no twist between my hands, but I was constantly pulling forward with my left and pulling back with my right, while moving both hands together away from the orifice. Because the fibers in the cloud were more entangled, I had to do more work wihile spinning to draft them down to the size I wanted for the single. This yarn ended up looking much more like a woolen spun, even though I spun it in worsted fashion, because of the relatively random arrangement of the fibers in the cloud.

In short, I may be too lazy to try switching my hands and I'm trying to justify that.

Distraction #4: I knit another couple inches on the back of Twist & Shout - I'm up past the armhole bindoffs.

Distraction #5: There seems to be a big bag full of Lopi in the living room that wasn't in the house a week ago. It may be turning itself into a felted rug, although not like the Mason-Dixon rug and not like what it looks like now, so no pics yet.

Frankly, it's amazing I finish anything around here. Clearly, it could be easy to finish at least one sweater for NaKniSweNo, but I get ...waylaid. I am so, so, SO very easily distracted.

It's Always Something, Isn't It?

2008-11-14T15:48:00.002-05:00

I think the sleeve cap for Pebbles is too long, now that I'm three rows from finishing the first sleeve. Note the evidence.

That tape measure reads 11 inches for the sleeve cap. Several other trusted patterns I've consulted give heights of around 7 inches for the cap of a set-in sleeve.

While the front and back of Pebbles line up perfectly (whew!), I think that sleeve is too long, even allowing for the easing-in needed to fit sleeve to body.

When I line up the Pebbles sleeve over the sleeve of a knit-long-ago set-in-sleeve sweater, the length from cuff to underarm matches perfectly, but the length of the Pebbles sleeve cap is sufficient unto a raglan sleeve, damn it, damn it damn it damn it.

And in case you're wondering, the pattern has no line-drawing schematic to check AND I am getting both stitch and row gauge. Not to mention being remarkably far along in this NaKniSweMo nonsense. Until now.

Damn.

And the worst part is that I was beginning to run out of enthusiam for knitting this. Sleeves are boring. And long. Especially long when they are too damned long for any normal sweater known to knitter, as I believe I've mentioned. So my attentions were starting to wander. I am still sick enough not to have the energy to spin, especially at my usual fast pace, and the Twist & Shout ribbing is irritating to my befuddled brain. When I saw this yesterday on the Mason-Dixon blog, I started to lust anew. But no, I told myself, I am committed to finishing at least one sweater this month and getting pretty far along on two others. No distractions. No new projects. God knows, no new yarn.

And then came the sleeve cap stretching from here to Timbuktu.

Now, can you really blame me if I've been looking at Lamb's Pride Bulky on the WEBS site and debating what colors I might go get tomorrow, if I'm still in a virally demented snit over this blasted Pebbles pattern? I know you'd be doing exactly the same thing.

Oh, Exalted Sheep on Yonder High Hill, give me the strength to do what I ought, to fulfill my promises, to resist the seductions of NewProjectNewYarnPantPant, to frog and knit that sleeve into submission. And then knit the other sleeve correctly and to match.

I may not be that strong.

I Hab a Code

2008-11-12T18:16:00.002-05:00

I'm not that sick, although if anyone's volunteering to massage my neck, the door is open. I just have the usual sharp, acid headache, achy thighs, and general malaise that goes with colds in this phase of my corporeal existence. I really should have paid attention when I didn't want to get out of bed this morning - in fact, didn't get out of bed till 45 minutes later than usual - but no, my damned Puritan soul whined and prodded till off to work I went. By 3 PM, I'd had enough. I stopped on the way home to get something edible with ginger in it - some sort of craving, I guess - and fortified with a big hermit, I'm home. If you think of it, tell me to stay home tomorrow; there's no crisis at work that justifies my going.

I'm definitely under the weather - I just had to correct at least ten typos in that last paragraph, many more than usual. No brain-finger coordination here worth mentioining.

Prior to this viral onslaught, however, I have been knitting. And knitting. And knitting. And I'm about ready to clean house instead, I'm so sick of knitting (which is yet another sign I'm not up to my usual healthy speed).

Behold the Pebbles:

The back is done. The front is done. I figure a sweater has four more-or-less equal parts: the back, the front, the sleeves, and the rest (sewing-up, collars, button bands, whatever). So, if one is trying to knit a sweater in a month, one ought to finish the back in a week (which I did) and the front in another week (which I did; 3 days, to be precise). I believe this gives me 4 days in which to loll around nurturing cold viruses.

I did cast on for a sleeve last night, and if my brain weren't slowed by viral ooze, I could figure out whether there's a problem with the tuck stitch directions for the sleeves or that I should be picking up those purl bumps on the wrong side, rather the right side, but the pattern doesn't specify and the photos aren't conclusive. If I can't find something definitive in my Barbara Walker stitch compendia, I'll just make an executive decision and that will be that. I don't think my brain can cope with this tonight, however.

Behold one strand of the sub for Lite Lopi in the Light Lopi Pullover:

Nice, eh? I love that color. I loooooove that COLOR!! The Spinner's Hill batt seems to be easiest to spin with my perfectionism held at bay, as I am quite happy with the thick and thin, slubby character of this single.

Character. That's a hard word to spell correctly when one's synapses are firing a trifle oddly. Charcter. Chartcer. Characer.

Enough. I better have something really mindless I can knit, somewhere in this woolful house.

Finally

2008-11-05T07:32:00.002-05:00

Finally, I'm proud of my country again. Finally, we elected a president I'd like to have a beer with. Finally!

Of course, this means I don't get to move to Canada, darn it.

Indeed

2008-11-03T18:12:00.000-05:00

Day 2 and Design Feature 1

2008-11-02T16:52:00.002-05:00

Sweater #1 (Twist & Shout): Great progress! I'm past the waist decreases for the back and ready to start the waist increases.

There's just one little problem. Notice anything wrong? Neither did I, till I wondered why the notes in the beginning of the pattern included instructions for something called a Back Cable Pattern. I assumed that meant some kind of fancy cable, like a Horseshoe Cable or a Gullwing Cable, to be used on the fronts of this sweater, where clearly the lovely photos of the pattern show cables. But no, "Back Cable" also refers to the cable pattern used on the back of the sweater - you know, the one signaled by the part of the pattern that reads, "...begin working Back Cable Pattern between markers." Or, if that didn't catch your attention, you might notice, a couple of lines down, the sentence that reads, "Work 36 sts in pattern (to 12 sts before beginning of cable panel), place marker, work 68 sts in pattern (to 12 sts past end of cable panel), place marker, work in pattern to end." Or you might notice the photo, the second photo of four provided, that highlights the cables on the back and sleeves. Or, like me, you might skip over all that folderol, pleased as punch with how quickly this sweater is shaping up - why, I'm already well into ball 2 of the yarn! - and simply keep on knitting and purling in the rib pattern till your boredom with knitting and purling leads you to read a bit more of the pattern, whereupon you discover some damned cable pattern that's supposed to go smack dab in the middle of the back.

I simply don't know why they couldn't have given me more warning of such an event. Harrumph and really now!

Since I'm such a seasoned knitter, however, I have recovered nicely, or at least recovered in some fashion. You remember all my dithering over needle size and gauge for this sweater? Well, before I cast on, I had looked at what it would take to adjust this somewhat-complicated pattern for the measly, itty bitty, really-hardly-there, quarter of a stitch per inch I was off by using size 7 needles, and decided screw it, I'm just going to knit size B with size 7 needles and trust the designer when she said, " Because of the pattern’s giving nature, instructions for only 4 sizes are given – trust me, this is plenty. If in doubt go small."

Well, I thought, I could always just lose 30 pounds this month whilst I'm knitting and spinning three sweaters - I mean, obviously I won't have time to eat anyhow (especially now that all the good Halloween candy is gone), so of course size B at 20 stitches to 4 inches instead of the specified 19 stitches to 4 inches will fit.

But just for back-up, just because I like to be prepared, I have decided that the missing Back Cables on the back of my Twist & Shout are a well-planned design feature. You know that cables draw in a knit fabric, making it narrower than a non-cabled fabric, right? Well, if I need just a smidgen more ease in my Twist & Shout, then it makes perfect sense - really, a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself - to leave off some of the cables. Where better to omit cables than on the back, yes? I may not have done this consciously, but clearly my fingers know better than my brain, and they just went ahead and left out cables that don't really need to be there. I hope.

Onward.

Sweater #2 (an interpretation of Norah Gaughan's Lite Lopi Pullover, but in handspun, not Lite Lopi): Sample skein knitted up; gauge is 8.5 inches to 2 inches. The pattern calls for 8 stitches in 2 inches, but I'm not at all worried about adjusting this pattern for a different gauge. [Translation: Stay tuned for yet another Design Feature.]

Sweater #3 (Pebbles): Cast on and coming along nicely, aside from the slight impediment of a furry beast on my lap. Interestingly and disappointingly, this yarn seems less soft now that it's dyed. It's not harsh now; it's just not as squishily soft as it was.

In other news, it was a gorgeous late-fall day here and I did get outside in between the fiber frenzies. Despite the late date and the hard frosts we've had this week, I saw a meadowhawk dragonfly and a sulphur butterfly. Global warming really is changing phenologies around here!

NaKniSweMo: Day 1

2008-11-01T17:38:00.000-04:00

Sweater 1: 15 rows of the back of Twist & Shout. Next step is the waist decreases.

Sweater 2: A sample three-ply of the Spinner's Hill batt, for the Norah Gaughan pullover.

Sweater 3: Look at this color! This is the dyed handspun for Pebbles, and I think I like it. With any luck, it'll dry tonight and I can cast it on tomorrow.

In other news, I've dithered by myself over this for the past few days, without blogreader input, and I've come to the conclusion all by myself that 27 inches is too wide for a stole. I ought to frog this and cast on about 3/4 as many stitches, before I get much longer. Otherwise, I think I'm likely to run out of yarn. This is Jager Farm DK-weight Icelandic yarn, in the Water Lilies colorway, knit up with the Milanese Lace pattern from volume II of the Barbara Walker stitch pattern books. Gorgeous, gorgeous yarn.

So, yeah, I'm busy - you?

But, But, I Wanna Do All Three!

2008-10-31T18:55:00.003-04:00

OK, Option A is out. Fine. I hear you. No easy way out for me. Sigh... I can cope with Option B. I'm a scientist; I can do the math.

But last night, after I posted to you, I got out this batt, to see if I could use it for the Norah Gaughan pullover. It's beautiful fiber, isn't it? It might even work with that Spunky Eclectic I spun a while ago, although I'll have to wait till the Spinner's Hill batt is spun up before I can really judge.

I decided I would be smart (for once) and knit a swatch from that Corriedale cross fleece I just finished up, just to see what gauge it was so I could judge how to spin the Spinner's Hill batt. Here's the Corriedale yarn knit and washed.

I'm in love. True, to-the-core, with all my senses, love. I took it to work today and made my co-workers fondle it. Shall we look closer?

It's a perfect Aran-weight yarn - 18 stitches to 4 inches on a size 8 needle (see? I got that size 8 needle for a reason). The fabric is soft, yet substantial. It does not bias, it doesn't show the inherent variability in thickness, it is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful yarn! And I made it!

Lots of it! A whole fleece worth! (well, minus the half-pound or so of roving the damned cats felted one day - kneading, drooling, warm-bodied cats are very good felters, it turns out.)

So, I'm thinking of Option D - Pebbles, by Elsebeth Lavold. I think this sweater would look great on me. I think I could knit this in one month. I think what I really want to do, as long as this is my hobby, my passion, is cast on or start spinning for all three sweaters, starting tomorrow, November 1, because hey, who says I have to follow rules, anyhow.

Which means I need to do a little dyeing tonight. Keep your fingers crossed - I'm aiming to turn that light brown into something dark blue with a hint of purple, and I just don't know what will happen next.

Dithering, Part II

2008-10-30T19:19:00.003-04:00

So, knitting Valley Yarns Stockbridge on size 8 needles, then washing and drying the swatch, yields a gauge of 19 stitches to 4 inches. Perfect for Twist & Shout. Yay!

Except...except...there's that question of sleazy fabric or no. Remember I told you that trying Stockbridge on size 9 needles yielded fabric so sleazy, so lacking in substance, that I frogged the swatch immediately. The size 7 swatch, on the other hand, is perfect fabric. I would love to knit and wear that fabric. It has a good hand; it drapes, yet has a mind of its own; it's good goods. Furthermore, I suspect that Twist & Shout, being essentially a jacket rather than a cardigan, may need fabric like that of the size 7 swatch - something that won't just droop into formlessness.

This is a photo, on a convenient lamp shade, of the size 8 swatch on the top and the size 7 swatch on the bottom. Note the greater light coming through the upper swatch. It's a little sleazy. A little formless. A little worrisome. So I am dithering. Should I do as Laurie suggested, and refigure the numbers for a size 7 needle? Maybe the alpaca/wool yarn called for the pattern is more substantial than the alpaca/wool Stockbridge? (Ravelry research is called for.) Or should I bail on this pairing of pattern and yarn altogether? Once this rootlet of doubt took hold in my mind, I began to remember Norah Gaughan's Lite Lopi Pullover. I could spin the yarn for the body of that sweater, maybe for the yoke colorwork as well - certainly, it would take longer than a month to spin and knit even a fairly simple sweater like this, but then I'd have a sweater that worked. And I'd have an excuse to spin a lot, maybe even starting tonight - making the yarn for a November sweater ahead of time isn't against the rules, is it?

What do you think, dear readers:
a) Twist & Shout, Stockbridge yarn, size 8 needles, ignoring the worrisome sleaze factor;
b) Twist & Shout, Stockbridge yarn, size 7 needles, with recomputed stitch counts - anybody seen my calculator and graph paper?; or
c) The Norah Gaughan pullover, from handspun; in which case get cracking.

Dithering

2008-10-28T18:21:00.003-04:00

Goal: 19 stitches to 4 inches in stockinette stitch, for Twist & Shout.

Size 7, as the yarn's ballband suggests, swatched, washed and dried, yields 20 stitches in 4 inches:

Is that good enough? This is a very nice fabric, sturdy, but with enough drape. Dither, dither...

Size 9, as the pattern suggests (for a different yarn): Clearly too sleazy. I didn't even bother with a photo, just ripped it out.

Size 8: well, I didn't have a size 8 circular free, except for the 40-inch-long one with metal tips, which I hate, or dpns, which I didn't want to fiddle with at 10:30 last night. Thus, after a short trip to a LYS today:

Stay tuned.

November Approacheth

2008-10-27T19:23:00.002-04:00

No, I am not going to try blogging every day in November this year; I know my limits - you'll be lucky to get me once a week. But NaKniSweMo - now, that's a distinct possibility (thank you, Terry, for reminding me!). Since I knit Wisteria in a month and two days, I figure I can knit a whole sweater in November, what with Thanksgiving and the Friday after, neither of which I have to work OR shop.

So, now the choices for November are:
a) Finish up old WIPs (there's at least three sweaters-in-progress I can think of), but that's really cheating. One is supposed to start and finish a sweater in the 30 days of November, 2008, not the 30 days of November, 2006, and the 30 days of November, 2007, and the 30 days of November, 2008. It's just not cricket.
b) Dye the approximately 3.5 pounds of worsted-weight yarn from the Corriedale cross fleece I just finished spinning (did you hear that? I finished spinning an entire fleece, a 2007 Rhinebeck Correidale cross fleece. I deserve cake, thank you very much), and use that in a NaKniSweMo sweater. The natural color is a bit of a yellowish-medium brown, which doesn't look good on me; that's why I'd have to dye the yarn. I could dye it tonight or tomorrow night and the yarn would be ready by Nov. 1st, but...eh, this doesn't inspire me. I think I'm scared to dye a whole sweater's worth of yarn at once - I'm not sure I have a big enough pot. Anybody got a restaurant kitchen handy I could borrow?
c) Use commercial yarn in the stash to knit something new. Now this appeals to me for some reason (today it appeals, at least; tomorrow I'll want to spin all the time). There are a good eight or more sweaters in my Ravelry favorites that I bet I have suitable yarn for in my stash. A few I'm eliminating because their gauge is 22 or more stitches to 4 inches, meaning lots of knitting. Wisteria, you may remember, is knit from Aran-weight yarn; that's one reason it was so quick. The other reasons it's quick are that much of the sweater is plain stockinette and there's very little finishing. So, if I were smart, I'd knit something like Norah Gaughan's Lite Lopi Pullover - 16 stitches to 4 inches, plain stockinette from the bottom up to the colorful yoke (hey! I could even use my handspun for the yoke!). And if I wanted to challenge myself, but still aim for something doable, I might go for Robynn Weldon's Twist & Shout - 19 stitches to 4 inches, lots of seaming, lots of ribbing and cables, about 1650 yards in my size. A challenge, but a lovely one.

You do realize, of course, that I just wanted to justify casting on for Twist & Shout, right? Tonight, I'm going to swatch the gray Valley Yarns Stockbridge I bought for just this pattern and see what I think. If all goes well, you know what I'll be doing next Saturday morning (besides eating Halloween candy). If swatching doesn't work out, hmm...maybe I'll go for Norah's pullover - I'm sure that would be a piece of cake!

Hold On to Your Horses

2008-10-26T12:29:00.008-04:00

OK, if I don't blog now about Rhinebeck, I'll never catch up. This post will be picture-heavy and philosophical-thoughts-light, because after a week at SOAR, a weekend at Rhinebeck, and a Saturday at the Franklin County Fiber Twist, my brain is fried. It's a quiet Sunday here at home, but my body is still in crisis mode - you know, "shouldn't I be somewhere right now?" I do know that while a quiet Sunday is lovely, I am missing all my fiber friends. insert sad face here I'm not going to the Gathering - more sad face - but I will have to get in gear to go to SPA in February. Anybody I know need a roommate for SPA?

When last we left our intrepid fiber fiend, I was home from SOAR. The next Friday, Sue and I zoomed off to Rhinebeck after work, bringing Sue's pets with her: meet Sparky and Shadow, hatchling Painted (the bigger one) and Musk (the tiny one) turtles that Sue is head-starting inside this winter.

They need their water changed every day and they need to be fed every day, so of course they had to come with us. Since we were staying in unheated (but quite nice) cabins at the Mills-Norrie State Park south of town, the turtles came with us to the fair (parking lot, no further) every day, too, and basked in the sun-warmed greenhouse of my car while we were shopping and eating and shopping.

My friends Pat and her two daughters Isabel and Olivia were at Rhinebeck, too, showing two of their Shetland ewe lambs and a Cheviot ram lamb in the sheep show. They tented on the fairgrounds Friday night, but since the fair officials werre concerned someone would run over their tent at night (apparently, all 'real' farmers have RVs), they came and stayed with us Saturday night. Here they are showing the Shetlands on Sunday.

We saw Deanna's prize-winning (second place) hand-washed (a Romney fleece), hand-dyed, hand-flick-carded, hand-spun, and hand-knit St. Brigid sweater - gorgeous! Really, really, really lovely!

I ran into lots of people I know, but not into lots of other people I know who were there. I suppose I will have to break down, join the modern world, and get a cell phone, if only to find my friends at fiber fairs.

Despite my best intentions, I bought fleeces. Um, three fleeces, to be exact. The blue-ribbon (colored fleece) fleece - a dark, dark brown Corriedale cross from Homestead Farm, in the upper left. A fawn-colored Corriedale cross, also from Homestead Farm. A dark brown 'Natural Color Long' (meaning a mutt, I think) from Marilamb Farm. Yes, I am nuts (but I just yesterday finished spinning up one of last year's Rhinebeck fleeces!).

I bought Alvin Ramer combs in cherry. Wicked implements!

Apparently, I was on a gray kick - I bought two kinds of gray yarn and three pounds of gray Romney cross roving.

Not everything was gray, though; this is Cloverleaf Farms BFL in the Cranberry Bog colorway, swearing nicely the turquoise background.

I bought buttons at the Briar Rose booth.

We had a ball. And then we came home. Going back to work the day after Rhinebeck is so hard!

Luckily, there was the Fiber Twist to look forward to. I helped set up and take down, so 'twas an all-day event for me, which also meant I took more photos that usual. There were great vendors, there were demonstrations, and the local rug-hooking chapter was there in force as well. Here, have a few photos...

The real highlight of the Fiber Twist for me (well, yes, I did buy a Leslie Wind shawl pin and some ruby red cormo/silk Foxfire Fiber sliver and 3 skeins of beautiful Jager Farm Icelandic yarn that I've already cast on, but nevermind...at least I resisted the fleeces) as Marcy Moffet's (aka Habetrot) talk and demonstration of some of her historic spindles, whorls, and distaves. Wow! I have no words; to have it made concrete for me just how much work went into clothing, bedding, sails, rugs, bags, curtains, everything before spinning wheels and commercial spinning jennys, really rather blew me away. That's not very articulate, but my head's still reeling. Take a gander...

If you ever get a chance to see Marcy show off and talk about her spindle collection, do it!

And with that, you'll have to excuse me - I have just a little spinning and knitting and even weaving to do!

I Suppose You Want Details

2008-10-16T12:22:00.000-04:00

I've been digesting my SOAR experience for a few days now and some thoughts are milling about in my mind.

But first, the obligatory photos.

The Delaware Water Gap from Cheryl's and my room.

A couple of photos of Abby Franquemont's Spinning for a Purpose workshop.

Marcy hard at work on her Alden Amos wheel, for once.

Deb Menz's table o' colors, with close-ups. Anybody want to join me in a dyeing spree?

Now for what I accomplished. On the third day of Abby's workshop, she asked us to choose a project to spin for, and to start making samples for that project. I thought about spinning Romney top for an Irish fisherman's sweater, but decided to kick-start my weaving by spinning for a woven shawl. After several tries at devising a makeshift loom, I finally produced this:

That's Spunky Eclectic BFL, in the colorway Thunderstorm, spun two-ply for the warp and most of the weft. The purple stripes in the weft are three-ply, just as an experiment. The woven part of this sample measures a grand 1 by 3 inches. I had wanted this to be a relatively balanced weave (meaning both the warp and weft would be visible), but this ended up being very weft-faced - and I love it that way! This is such a great fabric - drapey, but not too much, soft and warm, but not too much; just wonderful fabric. Then I knit up a 3-ply version into the swatch on the left in the first photo - very, very, very nice (aside from my wonky plying giving an odd slant here and there). I want a simple cardigan from this.

In Deb Menz' s retreat session, I spun five of the little poofs of dyed merino top shown above, and plied them with one strand of the pastel, multi-colored top on the bobbin below, to get five very different, but related skeins. Interesting, yes?

In Sara Lamb's retreat session, I dyed this raw silk warp. OK but not thrilling, at least to me.

Finally, remember how in my last post, I was planning to start a Mason-Dixon rug? Well, forget it; my stash wasn't suitable. Instead, I started this.

That is Manos and Elann Peruvian Sierra Aran (the solid dark red), beginning to be a throw, or wrap, or big swatch.

A few days later:

I don't know how this will turn out; stay tuned. (No, it will not be finished for Rhinebeck!)

Randomisms: As we were driving home, we saw the replica of Henry Hudson's ship migrating south along the Hudson River to New York City to spend the winter. Square sails, dark hull, high forward and sternwards, just like a pirate ship. Cheryl quickly looked up "old ship Hudson" or some such on her iPhone and was able to tell us all the details immediately. I think I may have to abandon my Ludditeness and get me an iPhone.

Beth's sparkly shoes. Pretty!

Good company:

Janel. No, she's not being obscene:

Well, it's taken me three days of moments snatched from work, sleep, bills, laundry, etc., to get this post cobbled together and I have to pack for Rhinebeck tonight, so you're not getting any thoughts as promised way back at the beginning of this meandering. Maybe after Rhinebeck...That Sue and I are zooming out there Friday night, by the way. That Sue has decided she doesn't want to knit any more, so we all need to gang up on her, OK?

I Came, I Saw, I SOARed

2008-10-13T09:06:00.002-04:00

And now I have to return to the real world. It's going to be hard. Very, very hard.

Lots

2008-09-25T19:08:00.002-04:00

So, it's been one of those weeks at work. Virtually no meetings. Not a single deadline. No oh-my-God-the-sky-is-falling crises (unlike the real world). Just plodding, boring, dum-de-dum work. I have just about gone out of my mind from sheer boredom.

Luckily, I got a reprieve - I stopped on the way home tonight and bought the new Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines book. Now I have at least seven projects I must cast on for right now, at least until I come to my senses, and not one of them involves dishrag cotton, mind you.

But first, good news! It fits! It looks great! I really can knit! Please join me for a short tour of...Wisteria in the Wild, as shot by That Sue.

Go knit yourself this pattern. You will not regret it.

Furthermore, although I haven't quite finished this next project, look at my handspun! (George the Vast included for scale.)

It's yarn! It's really yarn! It's a helluva lot of perfectly lovely worsted weight, and once I finish spinning up the rest of this Corriedale Cross fleece (a ewe by the name of Princess, from Rhinebeck 2007), I shall dye it all a color I can actually wear and knit myself something lovely and incredibly self-fulfilling.

Or put it in my stash and fondle it on dark days. Whatever.

Enough of the past and the present - back to the future! It is time to choose my SOAR/Rhinebeck/Fiber Twist knitting project(s). Yup, I'm going to all three and I need some knitting that is not so mindful I can't do it while laughing all day with friends, nor so mindless that I get bored. We know what happens when I get bored (see Paragraph A above).

And I want color. I have knit lots of lace and cables this summer; it is time for color, now that the nights are eating up the daylight.

I am very tempted by thhe Mason-Dixon Liberty throw (second photo here), but there's no way I could keep that pattern straight while riding to Soar or Rhinebeck. Some other time...

Maybe the Kiki Mariko felted rug... I've tried to knit a felted rug before, but it lies unfinished - I didn't care for the way it was turning out. And, frankly, I have my doubts about how well a felted rug would stand up to the ministrations of two furry beasts (see George, above). But I love the color pattern of Kiki Mariko.

So maybe I'll knit myself a wrap with that pattern, something that uses up stash, so I can buy more stash at SOAR etc. with a clear conscience.

Heh. Maybe even an afghan.

I knit myself a Kaffe Fassett coat once - it's gorgeous (someday I'll take a photo for you), or it would be on a woman twice my height who was still living in the 1980s. I've always thought I should have used that pattern to knit an afghan instead - the fabric of the coat is so heavy and wonderful, I've been known to throw the coat over myself when I've needed cheering up.

A wrap/throw/afghan, then. Fair Isle, in the simple Kiki Mariko pattern. It's a go. Pardon me, I need to go rifle the stash now.

Metamorphosis

2008-09-13T16:33:00.002-04:00

Wisteria is coming right along.

Even the caterpillars are growing up. This is a Pandorus Sphinx moth that showed up at work this week.

That's my hand it's on - it's huge!

Along That Same Vein

2008-09-07T20:30:00.002-04:00

This one's for you, Bezzie!

A Polyphemus Moth caterpillar - huge!

A Day at the Farm

2008-09-01T14:31:00.004-04:00

You know you've come to the right place when there's a fleece drying by the front door.

This is the home of Pat and Bob and Isabel and Olivia. Bob had to work, Olivia had to shop (she's 14, school is about to start, what'd you expect?), but Pat and Olivia and I had a glorious fibery day together yesterday. I admired the Cheviot ram lambs - these are twins, believe it or not. The coated one is close to twice the size of his brother, and his balls are probably three times as big.

I admired one of the she-devil Shetland ewe lambs.

I admired some of the chickens.

I forgot to photograph the horse, the dogs, the cats, and the rabbits; just use your imagination. I did admire the garden's bounty.

Which was transformed in Pat's creative hands into a scrumptious lunch.

A nifty caterpillar visited around lunch time. Despite poring over Dave Wagner's great caterpillar book, I still don't know what this is.

I admired Isabel's enormous haul of ribbons from various fairs.

And Olivia's (she's 4 years younger; give her time).

Pat and Olivia tortured little wooly dogs with very sharp needles while I knit and spun.

Olivia was very intent.

An incipient dog.

An even cuter incipient dog.

We took a walk in the late afternoon to stretch our legs and admire the neighborhood crop of Monarch and Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars. One of the Monarch cats was very dark.

I think I want to go live on Pat's little farm.

Too Many Choices

2008-08-26T18:47:00.002-04:00

I've finally gotten into the swing of Ravelry. My books are mostly catalogued there and I'm happily favoriting patterns I want to knit. Two hundred and twenty-seven patterns so far, and I've barely started on the Vogue Knitting magazines, the (older only; I do have some taste) Knitter's, the tall books up on top of the bookcase, and Knitty. I had a need-new-knitting-stuff attack this afternoon after work and ducked into the nearest Border's in hopes of finding one of the several marvelous new books coming out this fall. Alas, no new books there, which is good, because I'd like to get the current collection of patterns catalogued before the new books twist me in a yarny knot of sheer lust.

Not to mention cataloguing the stash, or the projects. Heh. Don't hold your breath.

It's rather sobering to see all, or even most, of the patterns I'd like to knit all neatly lined up somewhere. I know I didn't Ravel some patterns I loved when I first laid eyes on them in a magazine/book/screen, because upon second look, they don't continue to thrill me - and yet there are so many that do thrill me! I've been knitting lots of lace and cables this summer, so now I'm even developing a yearning for Fair Isle - Fair Isle mittens, in particular, even though I don't like wearing mittens. Fair Isle goes quickly, but the best kind of Fair Isle uses itty-bitty yarn, which means thousands and thousands of yarn must pass through my fingers on the way to becoming even a basic straightforward Shetland-style Fair Isle sweater. So if I succumb to the stranded-knitting itch, I have to knit almost twice as much yarn as plain objects would need. Argh!

Now tell me: How on earth am I going to knit even half - even 10%! - of the patterns I love? Do I really need to develop powers of discrimination, such that I don't love everything? Do I go backwards three steps in order to go forward more quickly - that is, should I learn a faster style of knitting than my slow throwing? Should I - no, please tell me no - buy a knitting machine?

And what about all the spinning I want to do? And the weaving? I bought fabric for some bags the other day - when are they going to get made?

I'll tell you, I have been knitting and spinning my fingers to the bone this summer, and I still haven't even cast on for Boo, Too, or the Streaming Leaves Shawl, or that little herringbone-stitch bag I want to knit up in Diane's sock yarn.

On the other hand, I haven't had this much sustained fun since I took up chasing dragonflies. Better to have too many choices than to be bored to death.

So, on to the good stuff: Look what I just spun! My first true 3-ply!

That's Spunky Eclectic Romney in the Go Fly a Kite colorway. Twelve ounces of nice worsted weight (I haven't measured yardage yet). I bet that if I spin up a certain big blue batt, of which I have a pound and a half, I could knit me a beautiful top-down, round-yoke, Icelandic-type sweater.

And perhaps this Wisteria yoke inspired those thoughts of top-down, round-yoked sweaters. I'm simply loving knitting this. I love the pattern, the yarn (Tahki Donegal Tweed), my rapid progress (dare I say Rh______?). I met Kate Gilbert at the Fiber Revival a week and a half ago, and I'm afraid I automatically half-curtseyed to her, in my excitement and shyness. She was abashed, of course - true royalty, indeed.

Finally, another inspiration for my Fair Isle yearnings - these are Shetland lamb fleeces drying. That's Licorice on the right, and Cocoa on the left - both were raised by my friend Isabel. Here's Licorice's fleece being washed...

And demonstrating why he was a dual-coated sheep, thanks to the visit of Marcy's competent hands...

Now if Ms. Habetrot had only demonstrated hand carding for me, I might be getting somewhere with these fleeces. Alas, she did not. Luckily, I have lots to do till I can glom onto someone else to teach me the proper way to card.

Blogging. I Remember Blogging.

2008-08-22T19:02:00.003-04:00

Geez, it's been a busy summer. I keep meaning to blog about this and that, but having fun keeps getting in the way. Sorry!

Today, however, you get an FO. I present to you my SeaSilk Hamsa...

This is Anne Hanson's Hamsa design - a simple swaying to and fro of parallel lines of yarnovers. The pattern calls for 9.3 repeats of the pattern; I knit 11.3 repeats of the SeaSilk on size 3 needles, resulting in a blocked size of 12.5" x 47.25". I might have gotten another repeat out of the 5/8 of an ounce of leftover yarn, but I was sick of knitting this by the end of 10.3 repeats (That Sue made me go to 11.3, drat her). I love the scarf, you understand - I was just bored with knitting it by the end. I have to remember this ever-present fact about my scarf-knitting for the next time I decide to knit one, and maybe I'll let the pattern mutate and evolve as I go along. More interesting that way, I would think (says the evolutionary biologist).

Here is the modeled photo, modeled by an adult:

And here is the scarf modeled by someone who is clearly not an adult:

Touring Many Fleeces

2008-07-29T12:30:00.006-04:00

Well, I expect you've all read by now that the Yarn Harlot spun over 1500 grams of fiber during her Tour de Fleece, exceeding her goal. That's about 53 ounces, or 3.3 pounds. She really is a nut.

Me, too. In a slightly different way.

My goal was to learn how to spin on a spindle. I did! I set myself the task of spinning one section a day of stripped and pre-drafted BFL from Spunky Eclectic. Here are the grand results:

Two very small skeins. Aren't you proud of me? In back, we have two spindle-spun singles plied with each other (on my wheel, I must confess) - waaaaay over-spun singles and inconsistent plying. In front, a spindle-spun single plied (on the wheel) with some periwinkle-ish Harrisville Shetland - a better job all around. And I'm still working on my spindling....

Two problems I've run into: One, my upper hand kept getting numb and tingly. I wasn't gripping the fiber with the Fist of Death, so that's not the issue, but I think I have some shoulder and/or elbow nerve squeezing going on, such that raising my hand above my shoulder for any length of time pinches the finger nerves. At least, that's my un-medical explanation. Getting through one small, skinny section of top a day was about all I could do, frankly.

Two, I overspin the singles. I do that on the wheel, too, and I need to back off. On a spindle, though, I don't know how to judge when a single is twisted just right - anybody got any clues?

That isn't all the spinning that's been going on around here, by the way. I just finished taking three spinning workshops with Barb Parry at WEBS. They were great! If you ever have a chance to take a class with her, do it! She was very organized, calm, helpful, kept the class moving, gave enough individual attention, covered tons of material. Wow. Now I just need to practice everything she taught. I'll show you some of the small sample skeins we made.

The first class covered twist and grist - basically, an advanced beginner class (which I needed). What was new to me was woolen-style spinning. My sample made in class was appalling, but at home, I tried spinning some of Barb's Border Leicester/fine wool/mohair roving (wonderful stuff, by the way; it took all my will-power not to ask Barb to bring pounds of it to the next class for me). It turned out beautifully!

I wasn't doing a true long backward draw with this, more of a short forward draw while letting the twist run into the fiber supply and pulling back some at the same time, but hey, it's a lot more woolen-y than I have been spinning.

The next class covered yarn design. We made slub, knop, wrapped, and a few other yarns. Here's my knop yarn - a tussah silk single "knotted" on a Border Leicester single. You can't see too many of the knobs here, but there are a few for you. I'd never spun tussah silk top before - that was fun!

At home, I tried spinning a small batt Barb gave us into a soft single, and then plying it with Jojoland laceweight.

Finally, in the last class we covered color in spinning. We made heathered yarn...

And learned how to Navajo ply (or tried to, in my case)....

And made cabled yarn....

And made ourselves batts!

As well as trying all sorts of other techiques. That was a busy class!

The day after that last class, I took an overspun (my usual, in other words) single I'd made from Spunky Eclectic BFL and tried Navajo-plying it - it worked! It worked! It's funny to me how learning a new spinning technique can be so hard in a class - not surprising, I suppose, given the brain/eye/hand/foot coordination needed - and then so easy when one tries it again at home.

One last spinning image for you - this is Wensleydale top that I spun semi-worsted thinking I would ply it. It was badly overspun, as usual (habits are SO hard to break), so I decided to run it back through the spinning wheel, take some of the twist out of it, and make a single. I had to run it through the wheel twice in the opposite direction from which I spun it, but doing so raised the outer fibers as it went through my fingers, and made this into a nice single.

You know, there are so many variables in spinning - the type of fiber, the type of prep, the spinner's predilections, even whether the fiber is dyed or not - that it's going to take years - years! - before I really know what I'm doing. What a shame, eh? All that exploratory spinning to do....grin

And the next time I whine about not accomplishing anything, would you all just shush me? Really...

Swallowtail Shawl and Onward

2008-07-28T12:10:00.003-04:00

I finished my Swallowtail Shawl a few days ago. I was waiting to post until I could get the shawl, me, Earle, the camera, and sunshine all in one place at one time, but that ain't happening, so here you go...

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl, by Evelyn Clark, Interweave Knits, Fall, 2006. I knit this exactly as written, except I used size 6 needles.

Yarn: Great Adirondack Sirino, 50% silk, 50% merino, in the Deep Blue Sea colorway. I used 60% of the skein, or about 405 yards. That means there are about 270 yards left over, enough to make a little scarf - which is a good thing, given how expensive this yarn was (never buy yarn in a shop where they don't put the prices on the skeins, or at least on the shelf nearby; that's all I can say).

I loved knitting this, once I figured out to use a size 1 metal dpn to do the nupps. The yarn blocked beautifully. I used blocking wires on the top edge of the shawl, which was a bit of a pain; next time, remind me to use cotton threaded through the edge instead. And this fits me perfectly! It was about 42" wide by 19.5 inches deep, pre-blocking, and 57 inches wide by 26 inches deep, post-blocking.

There's a lot more on the needles and the wheel, but I'll save that for tomorrow. Today, all you get for extra is this beautiful purple leaf.

Oh, So Much to Tell You!

2008-07-10T18:09:00.003-04:00

I've been busy, busy, busy.

The Fourth of July I was supposed to go kayaking, but instead spent the whole day in intimate congress with my swift. The Sloane yarn finally dried, so I wound it into balls. The second try at Kool-Aid dyeing the angora-merino laceweight revealed just how tightly the skeins had been tied originally, so I wound all six skeins into larger, looser skeins and redyed them, much more successfully, as you can see. This is Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, if you like this color. The color in real life is a little lighter, much more robin's-egg blue, as Bonnie commented. I really like it!

The yarn is still in excellent shape; now all I have to do is wind these into balls (more swift congressing!), swatch to determine needle size, and figure out Cat Bordhi's cast-on magic for her Streaming Leaves Shawl.

I also finished spinning, plying and washing the 3.5-pounds of brown Border Leicester cross roving I started in January - yay! I have no idea of the yardage, except A Lot, but I'm thinking I could knit the body of Norah Gaughan's Hex Coat with this, and use Noro Kureyon for the hexagons - what do you think of this color combo? I'm not too sure myself; it looked better under the fluorescent lights of WEBS.

And, of course, the very next business day after I finish spinning this fleece, look what shows up on my doorstep:

Three fleeces' worth of roving from Friends Folly Farm - yes, I know only two fleeces are in this photo, but I found a place to stuff the third fleece and I wasn't going to disturb it. These are three of the four (what was I thinking?!) fleeces I bought at Rhinebeck last fall; a month or so ago, I realized I had better get them processed. A 6.75-pound white Romney by the name of Bell became 5.5 pounds of roving. A 5-pound Corriedale cross ewe named Princess turned out to be 4 pounds of nice light gray roving. Finally, a 6-pound Corriedale x Border Leicester ewe by the name of Freckles, who apparently had a run-in with a big thistle, poor girl, became 4.5 pounds of light brown roving. Fourteen pounds of roving. Somehow, I thought I'd lose closer to 50% of the weight of these fleeces; then I would have ended up with, say, eight or nine pounds of roving. That would have been much, much more reasonable. OK, maybe there is good reason to believe I'm a little wackers.

That all takes us through Friday the 4th and early on Saturday the 5th. Later on Saturday That Sue, That Darlin' Sue, and I went wandering into southern New Hampshire, to the Fiber Studio, to the Old No. 6 Book Depot used bookstore, and to the Elegant Ewe. I was restrained in my purchases - a little Habu at the Ewe (I've never seen it in person before!), a little silk for spinning at the Fiber Studio, only three books at the bookstore - I was very moderate.

Sunday, Terry invited a bunch of us to her house to try our hands at dyeing fiber in jars, per her post of a couple weeks ago. Somehow, the eight or ten of us managed not to dye the entire house, and my simplistic attempts at dyeing turned out thusly:

This was white Romney top, of which I have mumble, mumble pounds. I tried to foist off lots on the others there at Terry's, but oddly, they all seemed to have goodly quantities of fiber themselves. I'm surprisingly fond of the eye-popping yellow/green/blue ball in the middle here, and I'm certainly going to try this again. I might try mixing some of the dye into the water-and-vinegar mixture, in addition to the dry dye sprinkled throughout the fiber as it's stuffed into the jar - that might help disperse the dye more evenly and get rid of the stark white when it's not wanted.

What else? Oh, yes, the Tour de Fleece - I am learning to spin on a spindle, a Golding spindle, to be precise, for my Tour. I have spun just one skinny little predrafted length of this Spunky Eclectic BFL every day and look! I have a copful!

In fact, I have a weaving-bobbin full! I'm getting the hang of this, and I've only dropped the spindle once, luckily, since in this heat I'm spinning over the stone floor of my porch.

Finally, I am nupping along on the first border of my Swallowtail Shawl. After several failed attempts at making nupps with the size 4 bamboo needle used elsewhere for the shawl, with a tapestry needle, and with a size 2 straight metal needle, I have settled on knitting the nupps with a size 1 straight metal needle. Given sufficient light, it works. I figure nupping might keep me out of trouble this summer. If not, there's always those mumble, mumble, yet more mumble pounds of fiber...

Blog-Worthiness and a Meme

2008-07-03T09:29:00.000-04:00

As you may already know...

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

I guess I blog for me.

In the spirit of solidarity with my mostly-sister knitbloggers, especially Ms. Amy-of-the-North, who tagged all of us if we wanted to be, I give you my first meme:

1. Where was I 10 years ago. I was working as a planner for the City of Holyoke, Massachusetts. I suspect that year was the year I spent half or more of my work time dealing with the proposal to open an enormous stone quarry in the side of Mt. Tom in the city, on the site of a just-defunct ski area. If you've ever driven west on the Massachusetts Turnpike, Mt. Tom stands out on the horizon just as you get to the edge of the Connecticut River watershed. It is what's left of a basalt ridge. Basalt is a very hard rock and resisted the grinding glaciers. At one time, back before knitblogging - why, back even before computers! - just after the glaciers receded, Mt. Tom stuck up out of an enormous glacial meltwaterlake backed up behind a natural dam in Connecticut. Nowadays, Mt. Tom rises a thousand feet above the flat bed of that glacial Lake Hitchock, now traversed by the meandering Connecticut River. To bring it close to my readers' hearts, Mt. Tom is just a few miles south of WEBS. Anyway, people wanted to mine the gravel, scarring forever the side of the mountain; I and many others didn't want them to. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Terry Blunt, land protector extraordinaire, the former ski area was bought and protected by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (for whom Terry worked at the time), the US Fish & Wildlife Service, The Trustees of Reservations, and the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club. It was quite a year.

2. 5 things on today’s to-do list. Er, it's 7:12 PM as I write this, so the list is limited - rinse and hang to dry the merino-angora laceweight I'm dyeing again with Kool-Aid; call my parents, since they've tried to reach me unsuccessfully the past two nights to wish me happy birthday; call my friend Sue, to get the scoop on her job offer; ply the last of the brown Brown Leicester cross (yay!) ...oh, wait, that's five already, I won't tell you the rest, or I won't have time to do everything tonight, especially the item called Sleep.

3.Snacks I enjoy. Fruit. Crackers. Um, whatever's handy, truthfully. (see post about Size Medium-No-More)

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire. Having money isn't as much fun as you'd think (see #5 below). I'd pay off the mortgage, car, furnace; get the house painted; the kitchen, bathroom, and back room redone; rent a place to live while all that was going on. I think I'd funnel money towards easing the lives of people in two of the towns I've lived in - Holyoke and Athol, MA - which are poor, old mill towns with undeserved lousy reputations. I'd fund the public libraries, buy new garbage trucks, fix broken sidewalks, pay for guidance counseling to get kids through high school and into college - hell, I'd set up a college fund - etc., etc. Lots to do there. I'd put most of the money towards buying land to conserve it from development, probably in hotspots of biological diversity around the world. And knowing me, I'd buy some yarn.

5. Places I have lived. Upstate New York, where my dad was going to grad school in chemistry at Cornell and met my mom, who was working in the library. Southeastern Pennsylvania, where my parents moved when I was 4 and where they still live, 51 years later. Delaware, for college. Michigan, for grad school (v. 1). New Hampshire, with my ex-husband, after grad school. The coast of Maine, when he took a shine to sailing (he was [is] independently wealthy [unlike me, since I value sanity and freedom more than money]). Western Massachusetts, after he and I split up and I went to grad school, v. 2. That was close on to 15 years ago. In western Massachusetts, I've lived in Conway, Heath, Holyoke, and now Athol - all great towns, in very different ways.

6. Jobs I have had. Whatever you're called at Kentucky Fried Chicken (I can't believe how short our skirts were; at least I had the body for them back then), for one summer. Weeder/waterer/planter at a landscape nursey, two summers. Biology teaching assistant, in grad school. Caretaker for a colony of several species of small mammals (Peromyscus, Tylomys, etc.). Bookstore clerk. Wife to independently wealthy guy who didn't want me to work (I make up for lost time now). Regional land use planner. City Planner. Now, I'm a Habitat Protection Specialist for the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program - I advise the state Division of Fisheries & Wildlife, of which the Endangered Species Program is a part, where to buy land to protect rare species, exemplary natural communities, and general biodiversity. I do the same for any other organization in Massachusetts, public or private, which asks for the service. I also do a bunch of other stuff at the Program - keep track of the 30 species of rare dragonflies and damselflies we have in Massachusetts, write reports and conservation plans, dispense knitting advice, you name it.

7. Who would I like to know more about. Well, I'm nosy. I want to know who the Pearl is in the Yarn Harlot life story. I want to know if my ex-husband's third wife (I was his second, for 10 years) really is just like me, as mutual friends have said (well, actually, I don't care). I want to know if Wendy Wonnacott is OK. I want to know how my old friend Zoe, who taught me how to knit, is doing - last I heard, she was going to nursing school. When I get right down to it, I want to know who I am - I'm not really clear on the concept!

Wednesday Sky

2008-07-02T18:42:00.003-04:00

While the frequent thunderstorms we've had in the past week or so have made for some record-setting dashes between buildings at work, once in a while we're treated to gorgeous aerial displays as the thunderheads build.

55 and On the Upswing

2008-06-30T20:23:00.003-04:00

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday, dear Lynnie-poo, happy birthday to me!

Ha! It's amazing what the thought of vacation has done for my mind-set. It's still appalling weather, I'm still a size Large, and the paint is still peeling off every surface in the house, but hey! It's my birthday and I'm happy! Let's go with it while we can, OK? (No, I'm not going to eat this much chocolate every day even if it does improve my mood. I was happy today pre-chocolate, I'll have you know. I think it was because I had a peaceful weekend and I'm almost done with six months of hard slogging at work.)

Last night I was snuggled up in bed with a stack of old Interweave Knits - since my Swallowtail Shawl is yarn-overing right along again, after a bout of tink-ering, I want to knit more lace, of course. (See my reaction to weaving a rug.) In the course of my studies, I came upon Cat Bordhi's Streaming Leaves Shawl. Aha! I said, I want that NOW! I lept out of bed, pulled down the bin labeled "laceweight," and started pawing through in search of 1620 yards of something sportweightish. I know, I know, I said it was the laceweight bin, but we're being ecumenical here and I'm on a roll, don't stop me now or I'll go back to being cranky.

I found this. This is six skeins - about 9 ounces - of merino/angora, that I bought at Rhinebeck last year for $4 a skein. It's soft. It would make a wonderful shawl. It's truly laceweight, but I'll swatch (I swear upon my grandmother's knitting needles I'll swatch) until I find the right needles to give me just the right kind of gauzy, but not sleazy, fabric.

However, the color leaves something to be desired. Aha! I thought, for the second or third time in one post but actually on my way into work this morning, I'll stop on my way home and get some Kool-Aid. I carefully researched Kool-Aid colors over my lunch break and stocked up on 25 packets of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade - a grand total of 5 bucks worth. I thought I had six skeins of 4 ounces each, and hence needed a packet of Kool-Aid for each ounce, but in fact I only had about 9 ounces of yarn. Thus, I mixed up a potion of 12 packets of Kool-Aid.

Not quite enough dye.

I mixed up the remaining vile blue potion and gently poured it into the pot. A gentle stir. A minute or two's wait.

Better, but still not enough dye. I see I'll be getting yet more Kool-Aid tomorrow. Hmm, as long as Kool-Aid's on sale, maybe I should see what else I should dye.

No matter. I'm still happy tonight. I'm swilling my wine and I'm about to go spin on the porch. Life is good.

And you know what else makes me happy? We all raised $32,548 for Claudia's and Michele's ride. We're just astounding, aren't we?

Productivity

2008-06-29T10:05:00.002-04:00

Look what I picked from my garden! My first broccoli, my first lettuce!

I don't know why the broccoli is so small - maybe the heat caused it to start bolting before the heads were very big? Anyhow, there's only so much broccoli we can eat at a time, so perhaps it's for the best. I left the plants in the hopes of getting side shoots later in the season.

And there are little pawpaws on the pawpaw tree! I bet not many of you can say that, eh?

Here's the whole garden - I just staked up the tomatoes last night and I bought some more basil to replace the plants the slugs got to.

And isn't this a nice line-up of clean, straight, ready-to-go yarn? I found one more WIP that needed frogging after yesterday's post; it's the blue yarn on the left. I was knitting it on too-big needles and the fabric was just sleazy. It actually feels good to have frogged these projects - I have admitted my mistakes and I am ready to move on.

Speaking of moving on, here's the beginnings of my Swallowtail Shawl in the Great Adirondack Sirino yarn. Love it! Aside from a small, er, mistake a few rows back that shall be corrected pronto (and yes, I promise to stop believing in my own perfection and to put in a lifeline when I start again), this is lovely summer knitting.

My friend Jen heard I was going through a cranky spell and sent me this necklace she made to cheer me up. I love the fact she based the design on the back of a beetle! I don't think Jen has an Etsy shop yet, but I'm going to encourage her to open one - the world needs more crazed-naturalist/creative types, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaking of cranky spells, I'm taking a vacation. I'm taking at least the last two weeks of July off and I'm going nowhere in particular - I'm just going to hang out, rest up, and regain some sense of reality, such as it is. Long walks, good food, no alarm clocks.... Of course, there may be trips to yarn shops (the Elegant Ewe and Fiber Studio in New Hampshire are calling my name) and a trip to the Cape with my friend Nancy and lots of visits to SnBs, I hope, and oh! Did I tell you? I'm taking Barb Parry's series of spinning workshops at WEBS in July - woot! Anybody else going? For that matter, anybody wanna come spin on my back porch while I'm on vacation? I'd love the company! And if you have any suggestions of shops/classes/SnBs/etc. that I oughtn't to miss, shoot 'em to me - I intend to have fun, fun, and more fun. I may even cast on for yet another ten or twelve new projects, just for the thrill of new beginnings.

It's Not You, It's Me, Or Frog Weather

2008-06-28T11:27:00.003-04:00

You'd think I'd know better by now. I have been knitting for more than 15 years, I have steeked successfully, I have Fair Isled beautifully, I can cable with the best of them, yet I still make stupid mistakes. I don't make all the stupid mistakes possible, mind you, I just make at least one per project.

So, for my Sloane Pullover, I really did swatch and got gauge. I did think about the need for using a light-colored yarn for a cabled garment and, in fact, I chose a light color. When I got confused with the pattern, I emailed Elizabeth, the designer, who got back to me with a clarification within the hour. I chose a smooth yarn that would show off the cable. I chose a color that flatters me. I chose yarn from my stash. I knit steadily along; I did not put it away for months (years, decades). It's a top-down sweater; when I got down past the armholes, I tried it on and asked my friend Sue (the one who is blunt and honest about what looks good and what doesn't) if it fit - she said it did. I was a good little dutiful knitter.

Except I chose the wrong size, damn it. I have a 38-inch bust. I knit the Medium size, because I foolishly persist in thinking I am a Medium size forever and always, despite all current evidence to the contrary. The Medium size has a finished bust size of 40 inches; the sweater is 38 inches around at the armhole, pre-blocking.

Two inches of ease is not enough if one is making an aran-weight sweater for a plump person. I should have knit the Large size, with a 44-inch finished bust. It's a good thing I didn't weave in any of the ends, isn't it?

Luckily, I have enough yarn for the Large size and as soon as we're finished with a little dip in the frog pond, I intend to cast back on again. I will not be beaten by my own stupidity.

Speaking of frog ponds, the weather here is appalling - the humidity is so high and the air quality so low that I feel as though I'm living deep in a frog pond myself. I was sorting through my breeding population of plastic food storage containers this morning, seeking to exercise a little birth control and selection for desirable traits like matching lids, and I found myself literally dripping sweat off my nose and chin, just standing still in the kitchen. Lovely New England weather. I think I'm going to have to hang the reclaimed and washed Sloane yarn in the basement near the dehumidifier, if there is to be any chance of it drying before Labor Day.

Given that the weather is awful and Sloane needs to swim in the frog pond, I also decided to bite the bullet and cull ruthlessly through my WIPs for other garments that need systematic rending. My Sloane reminded me that I have made the same error before, so I am reclaiming the Kureyon from this Debbie Bliss cardigan that's been sitting unfinished for more than two years.

Nobody, and certainly not I, wants a bamboo Clapotis.

There's got to be a better use for purple Calmer than a boring Caddy's Sweater.

And when I'm done, I'm going to go get Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream on a sugar cone, just to keep up my size-Medium-yeah-right girlish figure.

(Don't worry; there are plenty of other unfinished WIPs around that I couldn't bear to part with. And I've started two new projects and bought even more yarn in the past week, so I'm still normal, or what passes for it among knitters.)

Edited to add: Kinky!

Plateaus

2008-06-21T19:19:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time, long, long ago, the Linnet took gym in college - yes, this was long enough ago that 2 semesters of gym were required for graduation (University of Delaware, if it matters). I took archery and ballet - archery because it was fun and ballet because I'd taken ballet from age 9 or so till college and I wasn't bad at all (hey, no chortling in the back row!).

In fact, I think I took 2 semesters of ballet in college. The first semester I loved. The second semester I couldn't dance at all - I kept looking, and feeling, like one of those baby robins that hasn't quite gotten the hang of landing on a branch yet. All discombobulated. Crashing into the far wall after a jump. I couldn't bear to look in the mirror that covered one entire long wall. I even broke into tears a few times in class. Finally, the teacher, whose name I've forgotten, but whose advice I have not, said this: Sometimes, when you're trying to learn something new, you try and try and try and beat your head against the wall, but you don't make any progress. You've hit a plateau. Don't give up; just keep trying - one day, it will all make sense to your body and you'll make a quantum leap in your dancing.

Now, I'm not sure I ever got to that quantum leap in ballet (let's pretend the semester ended first, OK?), but over the decades since then, I've certainly hit, and eventually got over, that plateau in one thing after another. My ballet teacher's advice was one of the few specific teaching moments I remember from college.

So, I think I've hit a plateau. I've certainly been trying hard on many fronts for quite some time now, and I'm not seeing any progress. I'm cranky. I spend too much time list-making and quantifying (see Elizabeth's spot-on comment yesterday) and not enough time enjoying life.

Tonight I'm absolutely sure I'm on a plateau. I finished the bottom ribbing on my Sloane and tried it on. It's too small (or I'm too big). Damn! I can get it on, but it's too form-fitting to be flattering. I had even added one more set of waist-shaping increases than called for, but no go.

So, here are my options: Frog and reknit in a larger size. Lose weight till it fits. Finish it and give it to someone dear whom it does fit. Add it in its sleeveless form to the UFO bin(s).

For tonight, however, I went with Option E: I wound the Great Adirondack Sirino yarn I just bought, I dug out my copy of Evelyn Clark's Swallowtail Shawl, I got the last beer out of the fridge, and I'm going to go cast on something that doesn't need to fit.

I will be very, very glad when this plateau is breached, and I bet you all will be, too.

All I Needed was a Size 5 24-inch Circular Needle

2008-06-20T20:16:00.002-04:00

You know where this is going, right?

I started the bottom ribbing on my Sloane Pullover two days ago. I needed a size 5 needle. I had two, but they were both 16 inches long - they just weren't long enough to go around the bottom of a sweater that, I hope, will go around my considerable ass. So, I needed a longer size 5 needle - say, one 24 inches long.

Yesterday, I was out in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, for work, and I kept in mind that if we got done early enough, I could stop by some yarn shop somewhere on the way home and get me a 24-inch size 5 needle. That's all I needed. Just one circular needle. One.

Route 7 goes north/south through Great Barrington, more or less. It's the main drag. I had some memory of there being a yarn shop in Great Barrington somewhere, but I couldn't remember its name and I'd certainly never been there. Lo, the yarn shop is on Route 7 - not in the center of town, but out on the commercial strip of Route 7, just south of McDonald's. I passed it, did a quick turn-around, petted the old cat in the entrance hall, and stepped into the fumes.

The yarn shop is Wonderful Things. Aptly named. It had 24-inch size 5 needles, all right, and a lot of yarn. A whole lot of yarn. Rooms and rooms and rooms - a warren, really - of yarn.

I succumbed to the wool fumes, badly. I only bought three skeins, but those three skeins set me back about $100. I bought a ball of Jojoland Harmony, a skein of Claudia's silk laceweight, and a skein of Great Adirondack silk/merino Sirino. Here are my usual lousy photos.

The one thing wrong with Wonderful Things is they do not put prices on their yarn. I certainly could have resisted the Great Adirondack if I had known it was $55 a skein, but by the time I stepped up to the cash register, I was well and truly high on wool fumes, and didn't flinch at the total.

I feel rather as though I have eaten an extra-large ice cream cone instead of the baby cone I asked for - it's good, but too much. You know what else? I just timed myself knitting the k1p1 ribbing: I can knit 10 yards of yarn in 30 minutes. That's 20 yards an hour. I figure k1p1 ribbing is a good mid-range indicator of the variety of knitting, from simple stst, to keeping tracks of increases and decreases, to cables or Fair Isle, to maddening lace that you have to frog every third row. So, on average, I think I knit about 20 yards of yarn an hour. There will be about 1320 yards in my Sloane Pullover, about 65 hours of knitting. Six weeks of ten hours a week of knitting nothing else whatsoever. Maybe five weeks, really, given that much of it is simple stockinette.

When I succumbed to the wool fumes in Great Barrington, I just bought myself 2655 yards, or 133 hours, three or four months at the very least, of knitting. Knitting I hadn't really planned on. Knitting that will be fun and beautiful, sure, because these yarns are gorgeous, but really - is knitting (and spinning and weaving) all I ever want to do with my life? I'm thinking I may need to weed through the stash. I'll keep these three skeins, because they are stunning, but I think I have a lot of yarn that doesn't really thrill me any more, that could go without breaking my heart.

Or maybe not. It is yarn, you know.

The Good, the Bad, and the Dead

2008-06-17T19:52:00.002-04:00

The state of the garden, in three bullets:

The Good....The broccoli has little brocs.

The peony is gorgeous.

The porch plants look great.

The Bad....I think the slugs got to the basil. I've never seen basil look this bad.

The Dead...

This was my caladium-and-red-petunia pot on the porch. I cannot keep a caladium alive for beans - anybody have an idea why?

A Summer Weekend, Tra-la-la

2008-06-15T11:57:00.004-04:00

Don't you just love June weekends? Despite the sucky weather of this one (it's 60 degrees F today and overcast; not warm enough for dragonflies but definitely warm enough for the mosquitos to be out, little buggers), I've been enjoying myself.

Yesterday, Diane, that famed organizer of the Franklin County Fiber Twist, organized a Knit-in-Public Day event on the common in the center of Greenfield, Massachusetts - it was so much fun! Here's Diane, Marcy, both demonstrating their love of having their photo taken, and Lisa and Lisa's friend, whose name I didn't catch. We were the core attendees - several others came and went, and kids especially were fascinated with my spinning wheel.

I'd never met Diane before, so we got to chat about Marbled Salamanders and crazed-naturalist stuff - and she gave me several ounces of fleece off Io, her (mostly) Cormo ewe. Thank you, Diane! Here it is drying after being washed - I love this gray. Diane also gave me a refresher lesson on hand-carding; as soon as the fleece really dries (which will be a while, in this still, humid weather), I'm going to card this and spin it up.

Diane was knitting on gloves for Plimoth Plantation docents out of Harrisville Shetland Style yarn. Those are handsome gloves, aren't they?

Marcy decided she really needed to examine the gloves in detail right when I wanted to take her picture. I have much the same reaction to cameras, so she's forgiven, for now.

In other news, the other night I spun up an ounce of Falkland top I bought two years ago at the Wool Room in Antrim, New Hampshire, when I was buying a little of every uncommon breed I could find to sample spinning. This was a dream to spin, especially after the coarse springy roving of the brown Border Leicester I've been chipping away at for months now. I aimed for somewhat fine with the Falkland, and parts of it are perfect, as far as I can tell, but the consistency of my single's diameters still needs work. I'm not very patient - it was clear to me I should spin this much more slowly, with more control, but I didn't do that at all. This ounce made a grand total of 58 yards, over an hour or two that evening.

My Sloane Pullover is coming right along - another half-repeat and I'll be starting the ribbing.

Those of you paying attention will note that I am already working on my spinning skills list for SOAR (not Abby's list, at all, it's my list for myself; Abby seems to think we should have fun in her class, silly woman, rather than improving ourselves). I have now spun Falkland, Shetland, and Border Leicester cross in the past few weeks, and I have Cormo to hand-card. I spent maybe three hours yesterday spinning the brown Border Leicester at the KIP event, producing a grand total of a half-bobbin. I'm making progress.

And since, clearly [snort!], I'll get everything on my list crossed off well before SOAR, I give you today my list of projects to finish before SOAR and Rhinebeck. As you know, it is tradition to knit something new to wear to Rhinebeck. I plan on being there for Saturday and Sunday, so I'll need two new FOs to wear - I'm planning on the Sloane Pullover and my long-ignored Celtic Dreams. Of course, I'm also VERY tempted to take Lynne Vogel's Color for Spinning workshop at Rhinebeck on the Thursday and Friday before the festival itself, but even if I do take that class, I think I'll just restrain myself to finishing Sloane and Celtic Dream.

Now, for SOAR, I'll need a little something to wear, too...or maybe a few little somethings. It is a week-long event, you know. Oh, hell, here's the whole list, just laugh at me now and get it over with:

1. Finish Sloane.

2. Finish Celtic Dreams.

3. Finish a pair of socks (just one pair of plain socks, any socks).

4. Finish the shawl from my handspun (anybody remember this?).

5. Finish Boo, Too (I washed my swatch and the gauge is pretty damned close; a little math is needed and then I'll cast on for the body).

6. Knit a small (less than 500 yards or so) shawlette or scarf.

7. Weave a shawl or scarf (I'm thinking of using what I spin from the various sheep breeds).

8. Finish spinning the brown Border Leicester fleece, just to Get It Done.

9. Design something and make it.

10. Try making a little money from all this fiber obsession, to offset my fiber expenditures.

There. I have two lists of 10 items each to complete before October. I am certifiably nutso, aren't I?

Taking Off!

2008-06-11T19:10:00.002-04:00

Yep, I did it. I swatched for Boo, Too last night, and I drank a matching beer while doing so.

To answer Bezzie's terribly, terribly rude question about my balls, they're big. (Well, of course they are!) This swatch is for the corrugated slipstitch pattern that Jillian so cleverly used to take advantage of yarn with long color repeats; thus, you see the two-stitch-wide columns of different yarns in my swatch (please say you can see the different yarns!). The lighter color is the thick-and-thin singles Araucania Magallenes color #312, of which I have a total of 726 yards, more than enough for one of the two main colors in this jacket. The garter stitch rows at the beginning of the swatch are all this yarn.

The other yarn, the darker one, is my handspun - well, half of it is my handspun, anyway. This is roving (I didn't note the breed, if I ever knew) from Susan's Fiber Shop, bought at Rhinebeck in 2006. In February of 2007, I spun it up and plied it with several different solid colors of Patons Kroy sock yarn (85% wool, 15% nylon) that were lying around my stash. I have a total of 882 yards of this yarn, more than enough for the other main color. I doubt that these two yarns together are enough for the entire jacket, but we'll see - I can always use something else for the ruffled edges.

Also, it is obvious to me that swatching Boo, Too was all that was needed to:

Break the heat wave.
Bring on the new Knitty.
Get me into SOAR!

I'm going to SOAR, I'm going to SOAR, I'm going to SOAR! I'm taking Abby Franquemont's workshop! Geez, I think I'm more excited about this than when I got accepted into grad school, either time. Ohboyohboyohboyoh.... Uh, oh.

WARNING: Puritan content ahead.

This means I have to shape up. This means I really have to learn how to spin, before I take this class on Spinning for a Purpose. This means I need a list. A list of all the practice spinning I should do in the next 4 months before SOAR. Therefore, I give you The List:

1. Spin about 150 yards of a bulky singles yarn and knit myself a hat.
2. Try spinning a two-ply from the same fiber several different ways - looser singles, tighter singles, then looser plying, tighter plying - to understand how to judge what works best.
3. Spin two different colors of a three-ply yarn (I've never spun a three-ply) and knit myself a Fair Isle hat.
4. Spin enough 2-ply laceweight - say, 400-500 yards - and knit a scarf or small shawl from it.
5. Produce at least 300 yards of a decent 2-ply on a spindle (I have several beautiful spindles, and I've never used one of them).
6. Spin the fiber of five different breeds of sheep.
7. Spin five different non-sheep fibers.
8. Hand-dye three colors of roving successfully and spin them up.
9. Take one batch of multi-colored fiber and spin it three different ways, in terms of displaying the colors in the finished yarn.
10. Use hand cards to prepare one of the Shetland lamb fleeces I got from my friend Isabel, spin up the rolags, and knit something.

That oughta keep me out of trouble this summer. Luckily, some of these items overlap (dye the roving for spinning the laceweight, for example) and I think I'll count anything I've spun in the last month or so (like that Shetland roving a week ago). I probably have every single thing - fiber, spindles, dyes, hand cards - to do all of this in my stash already, so maybe I should resolve to use just what's in the house for this learning game. And I really should get around to subscribing to Spin-Off.

Now, don't you all look at me like that. I know you think I'm crazy. I know you think I'll never do all this (and you're probably right). I know, I know. Just for that, I'm not going to give you my list of what sweaters, scarves, socks (yes, socks), etc., I want to finish in time to wear them to SOAR and/or Rhinebeck. Not today, anyway.

Just remember, you only have four months till Rhinebeck - what are YOU going to wear?

(and I'm definitely not telling you about my co-worker, who told me today she already has two Christmas presents knitted up. Some people are really sick, unlike me.)

Too Hot

2008-06-10T19:14:00.002-04:00

It's too hot to work on my Sloane Pullover. It's too hot to decide what to do with all that Ashland Bay fiber in my last post. I have no mind left. All I've been able to cope with is...brown.

I have produced four enormous and two piddly skeins of this, and still there's more and more and more. Really, sheep should be smaller. If there are dwarf sheep in the world, I want a flock. Nice little two or three-pound fleeces, pre-washing - that's what I want. Remind me of this when I start lusting after some 12-pound Merino fleece at Rhinebeck, will ya?

So what's a knitter to do in this heat?

Why, cast on, of course! And since it's Jillian's birthday, as let slip by Amy, I am going to celebrate appropriately.

This is the yarn for my Boo, Too*. I'm finally going to swatch tonight. If there's a beer left in the fridge, it's coming with me. Onward!

Oh, and for all of you who follow this blog because I chase dragonflies (what? nobody?), here's a pic of an Eastern Forktail damselfly in my backyard. He's all of an inch long (yes, it's definitely a male). Gorgeous creature!

*Does that look like enough yarn for a jacket? I'm worried...

Monogamy. And Not.

2008-06-03T19:31:00.002-04:00

I've been knitting away madly on my mauve stockinette obsession, aka Elizabeth's Sloane Pullover. I'm past the waist sideline decreases, maybe halfway through the past-the-waist increases. I'm very proud of myself for being so faithful.

On the other hand....I am sick of brown. Sick, sick, sick of spinning up this brown fleece.

So, the other night I finished spinning up, badly, the silk cap I started back in, oh, February.

Pretty!

So, then I pulled out 2 ounces of merino and tencel. I'm afraid I can't remember where I bought this, and my spinning certainly didn't do the colors justice, but look!

Pretty!

Shiny!

Very pretty!

Well, that only took a couple of nights, so then I grabbed 4 ounces of gray Shetland roving (again, I'm afraid, from an unnoted vendor somewhere at Rhinebeck). Not shiny, but pretty! And very soft to spin; I think there was still a good bit of lanolin in the fiber, so it felt very different from the silk or the merino/tencel.

And next? Since I'm clearly loving this roll in the fiber stash -

Well, the next fiber on the top shelf of the bookcase full of fiber is the silver colonial wool/tussah silk from Ashland Bay, on the left in this photo. On the right is the same weight of Ashland Bay merino/silk. I'm thinking of plying singles of each together, so as to get enough yardage to really make something of this, but I'm not sure - they look too differentfrom each other. What do you think?

Why I Deserve to Sit and Knit Tonight

2008-05-26T17:50:00.002-04:00

Before...

After...

Even further after...

I don't know what I'm going to do when all six (six! what was I thinking!) of the Supersweet 100 tomato plants start bearing, but at least I'll have plenty of basil. And broccoli. I'm debating whether the front right corner gets more lettuce, or one (one, mind you) zucchini plant.

Ms. Robin was waiting in the wings as I took that last photo, I suspect to go dig up some of the worms I found. Now if I could only train her to dig up and fling over her shoulder some of the THOUSANDS of rocks I found, I wouldn't be quite so sore tonight.

I Didn't Buy a Fleece

2008-05-25T14:44:00.002-04:00

I am so proud of myself. I went to the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Fair yesterday and I did not, repeat, did not, buy a fleece. I fondled them, I smelled them, I lusted after them, I thought good and hard, and I resisted. I just want you to know that it's possible.

Now back to our regularly scheduled obsession.

So, Pat and I and Pat's two lovely daughters laughed and drove and knit and laughed all the way to the fair and back. Pat and her older daughter Isabelle (whom I forgot to take a photo of - sorry, Belle!) learned how to spin on a spindle. Here Olivia, the younger daughter, is dutifully holding the spindle while Pat demonstrates extreme spindling over lunch.

I admired the sheep. I really admired the Cheviots - they are just adorable with their big brown eyes and their perky goat ears.

I swear I did not notice this good-looking young man blocking my view of the Cheviot judging until I downloaded my photos. Anybody know who he is? Do you suppose he has sheep?

I bought yarn, in a restrained fashion. Two skeins of Judy's...

And one of Just Our Yarns' tencel laceweight.

I bought Shear Spirit. I bought a small mesh bag to wash fleece lock by lock. I did not buy lamb bits - the grill was out of them, alas!

And I bought this.

This is a gorgeous Corriedale/Finn/Rambouillet/mohair batt from Spinners Hill. I watched Pat and Laurie buy some of the enormous bag of this beauty, and then I handed the bag to Terry (it's blue; of course she bought some) and I wandered away. The Spinners Hill booth was very busy and rightfully so. I thought I'd get out of the way while I waited for Pat.

Later I wandered back. There was still some of this batt left. I bought what remained, only a pound and a quarter. Not that much really; it was the only roving I bought all day (well, except the braid of Spunky Eclectic BFL I bought for Isabelle; gotta start them off right, you know).

I just want you all to know the true story, since the dear if slightly demented Ms. Hog-All-The-Blue, upon seeing me come by with my treasure, promptly set upon me as if I'd robbed her cradle - she wanted more! She had first dibs on the batt, she got what she wanted, and then she wanted more! She wanted some of MINE!

Not likely. Let this be a lesson to all you young fiber whippersnappers - always buy all of the true treasures when you find them. And then make sure they're under lock and key when Terry comes to visit!

(Terry, Spinners Hill will be at Rhinebeck. I promise you can have the whole batt there!)

A Motley Assortment

2008-05-18T10:08:00.002-04:00

You know, for all that I complain about how little I get done, I do a lot. I just move in all directions at the same time - what's called Brownian motion, if I remember correctly.

So, here is a finished, blocked Zigzag Afghan, ready to be packed up and shipped to my parents. This is exactly, and I mean exactly, down to the dye lots I think, like the one I knit last year for a wedding present. Go see that post if you want the details. I still have some of the red yarn left, but having knit two big afghans and an Einstein Coat from this yarn, I think I'll give it a rest.

Exhibit #2: I cast off my Road Not Taken scarf last night and it's blocking now. I got to use my blocking wires for the first time!

In case you've forgotten, this is a Lisa Lloyd pattern, from her new book A Fine Fleece. Despite it being a very simple lace pattern, I screwed up now and then, as you can see from this close-up.

Unlike some wonderful anal-retentives we all know and love, I decided to leave many of the imperfections in this scarf. Life is too short to worry about perfection and, come on, once I wind this around my neck, are any of you going to notice the occasional bungling? No, you're not. And if you do, step back 20 paces.

I've said this before and I'm going to say it again: The yarn I used for this scarf was wonderful. This is Gail Callahan's (aka The Kangaroo Dyer) kid mohair/silk hand-dyed confection - get thee to her etsy shop and buy some. You will not regret the purchase. The pattern calls for 400 yards of laceweight; each ball of Gail's yarn said it had 240 yards, so I figured I was well-set with two balls.

Indeed, I was. I followed the pattern exactly (well, aside from the occasional screw-up) and after not quite one ball of yarn, I had knit 18 repeats of the pattern, making a scarf 7" by 68", blocked. Long enough for me. So, buy one ball. (I see that her etsy shop says the yarn has 330 yards per skein; I bought the yarn at Metaphor Yarns in Shelburne Falls, MA, where the label said 240 yards per skein.) Trust me, you need this yarn in your life.

Exhibit #3: Just so Elizabeth stops worrying, I did make it through the birthing process of her handsome Sloane Pullover. I'm using Debbie Bliss Merino Aran in a pinky lavender with the catchy name of #325601, since I had the exact amount called for in my stash and it came to hand in the first stash bin I opened (no, I have not memorized the locations of all my yarn). I've never knit a sweater with this construction before - cast on along the top of the shoulders, knit down in all directions - and as you may remember from my last post, it was a little complicated. But I'm all set now - onward!

Exhibit #4: I went flower shopping yesterday, since I'm craving color and life. A hundred bucks later, I have these four pots, plus more, all planted up on my porch.

That last one's for Terry, of course. And everyone's invited to come knit and spin on my porch this summer.

Exhibit #5: Yesterday I also went to WEBS' tent and fleece sale. I didn't buy anything from under the big tent, I didn't buy anything inside the store. I did, however, buy some Rambouillet roving from Tintagel Farm of Brookfield, MA, and this beautiful sock yarn from Diane Roeder of Sojourner Design.

See those long color repeats? This is sturdy, rustic (read: a little scratchy) yarn, perfect for socks, but I'm very tempted to use this in a scarf. I may knit up a swatch and wash it to see how much it softens, if any, although Diane noted it's already been washed in Eucalan.

Oh, and another sheep followed me home. No flesh and bones and big brown eyes, though - just a wooly hoggett Romney X Border Leicester coated fleece with gorgeous crimp and luster, from Winterbrook Farm in Staffordville, CT. Now, tell me, could you have resisted this beauty, even if there are, ah, maybe 7 or 8 fleeces in the house already?

I didn't think so.