Stone Sock Blog

1300

2012-01-21T07:39:00.000-08:00

Last week I finished detangling the lace-weight cashmere yarn. It took approximately 15 hours distributed over the span of about six weeks. I calculated there to be 1300 yards total.

That’s an average of 86.7 yards detangled per hour.

To get an estimate of the total yardage, I took one ball of yarn and re-wound it into a skein (2-yard loop). I got 188 yards. Then I weighed that skein. It weighed .65 ounces. That averages to be 289 yards per ounce. Then I weighed the total amount of yarn that I’d detangled (4.50 oz) and multiplied by the average yards per ounce. Thus, approximately 1300 yards.

I now feel that I have a better understanding of how this lace-weight yarn behaves. I’m hoping that will make knitting it that much easier and all the more interesting.

Good Blogs

2012-01-18T06:04:00.000-08:00

I’ve been writing blog entries since January 2010. And I’ve been reading other writers’ blogs since about that time too. There are some blogs that I check out nearly daily, and some I just check out now and then. Here are my favorites.

My all-time favorite blog (besides my own, of course) is “More Favorite Sheep”. Entries are written by the self-named “Crazy Sheep Lady”. She writes about life on her farm in Kentucky with sheep, horses, dogs, cats, chickens, and bees. Some of her ongoing stories will make you laugh or cry or both at the same time. But it’s not her writing that brings me back; its her photography. She has a great eye and equally great technical know-how, so her pictures are magnificent. And she provides a great deal of commentary about her photographing strategies: lighting, composition, depth of field, focus, and so forth. She posts nearly daily, so I check her blog site nearly daily.

I often check on Lucy Neatby’s blog, “Happy Stitches”. I have long admired Ms. Neatby’s knit designs (I’m still working on the double-knit “Bubbles Scarf” ). And I enjoy reading about her travels, her designs, her adventures and misadventures. It makes me long to spend time in Nova Scotia and other places in Canada along the Atlantic. I do hope sometime to meet this lady!

You are likely quite familiar with “The Yarn Harlot”, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee . I enjoy her very entertaining style of writing. She has an admirable compulsion to always be doing something fibery. Yes!

Last fall I met Abby Franquemont. After that, I started reading her blog, “Abby’s Yarns” . She has had -- and continues to have -- some interesting life experiences, which inform her approach to fiber. I like that.

A couple years ago I met Ann Budd. And then I started reading her blog, “annbuddknits”. What I especially like about her blog is that she quite often writes about the trials-and-errors of knitting and knit designing. She allows her readers to learn from her successes and mistakes. Very informative. Very generous.

Now for a couple of lesser known blogs. Here’s one that was started in September 2011. “Knit.Write.Repeat.” The woman who writes this blog does not have her name posted on the blog. Her blog entries are especially well written with good insight into knitting, yet clearly from a personal point of view. I’m not as interested in her blog entries about music, but the knitting entries are a pleasure to read.

Kathy Lambert writes about life on her small fiber farm in Southern California on her blog, “Rancho Borrego Negro” . This is another well-written blog: I like her writing, and I like reading about a place that is very different climate-wise from where I live. I have lived in the southwest, however, and I can practically feel the dry air when I read her blogs. Since I don’t raise fiber animals, I do like reading about her animal adventures.

So, there you have it. The blogs I check out the most.

Good Books

2012-01-15T08:57:00.000-08:00

It’s now really winter here. We finally have a good blanket of snow on the ground and the temperatures are in the teens (Fahrenheit). Light snow continues to fall.

This is a great time of year for delving into my fiber books. And I’ve re-discovered a couple of really really good ones.

I started reading the book by Jane Patrick, The Weaver’s Idea Book (2010, Interweave Press). I mentioned getting this book last September. I’m a novice weaver with an Ashford Knitter’s Loom (rigid heddle). The title of this book is spot on! My head is spinning (pun intended) with all kinds of ideas to try on my little loom. The book got me to rummage through my yarn stash and re-examine knitting yarns with weaving in mind. I gathered up some linen yarns, some cotton yarns, and some bamboo yarns. Ideas ideas ideas….

I want to mention a couple of especially good knitting books too. In the past couple weeks, I’ve knitted 3 pairs of fingerless mitts as a commission for a friend of mine. All three pairs were knitted out of the same yarn that had been in my stash for many a year: Annabel Fox “DK Donegal” (100% wool, 50g, 130m, color “pebble” lot 001). I used Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns (2002, Interweave Press) to develop a mitt skeleton to which I added cable patterns for the back of the hand. I used a different cable pattern for each pair of mitts (and I reversed the directions of the cables for left and right hands to make them symmetrical). An excellent opportunity to peruse my stitch pattern books.

For the first pair of mitts I used a cable pattern from The New Knitting Stitch Library by Lesley Stanfield (1992, Quarto Publishing).

I especially like this book because it has tiny snapshots of all the stitch patterns at the beginning of the book. So, you can do a quick look-see before examining the stitches page by page. Here’s a prototype of the first pair of mitts using stitch pattern # 85 (with the cable not quite centered on the hand):

By the way, I scanned that mitt on my flat bed scanner; it’s not a photograph.

For the second pair of mitts I used cable pattern # 18.2 from The Harmony Guide to Aran and Fair Isle Knitting (1995, Lyric Books). This really is a great book. I love the way the cable patterns are organized by the number of row repeats. So, first there are 2-row repeats, then 4-, then 6- and so on. This is an especially good organization for designers. And it teaches you something about cables. If you run across a used copy of this book, get it!

For the third pair of mitts I modified a cable pattern (“Enclosed Cables”) from The Harmony Guides 440 More Knitting Stitches Volume 3 (1998, Collins & Brown Limited). I’ve used this book in the past mostly for its wonderful collection of slip-stitch patterns, but it does have some very nice cables too.

The last book I want to mention is one that I bought just a couple years ago but let languish in my library unread: Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller (2002, The Shetland Times Ltd.). It’s a substantial book about Shetland Lace. I grabbed it from my shelf the other day because I’m preparing to design a square shawl and I wanted to investigate the structure and lace patterns used in Shetland lace shawls.

What a treasure! As I often do, I first flipped through the book. Excellent diagrams and pictures; they made me want to read every word. So, I turned to the very beginning of the book and I was hooked. I’m even reading the history bits. I am quite confident that I will find the inspiration in this book that I was looking for. If you like lace knitting (and knitted lace), you must get this book. Worth Every Penny.

Mini Workshops Start Next Week

2012-01-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

This is a time of year when I’m not travelling much. So, it’s a good time to offer small workshops at home. I’ve scheduled a series of mini workshops to start next Thursday. Each workshop will be at my house (in Lake Ann, Michigan), starting at 1pm, on Thursday afternoons.

The first workshop is next Thursday, January 19, “Spinning Balanced Singles”. Here are some details:

Spinning Balanced Singles: Do you like thick yarns? In this session we will practice making “lopi-style” yarns. These are singles yarns (not plied) with not too much twist. You will practice using a “point-of-contact” long draw to make the yarn. $10 fee (covers handouts and fiber for spinning). Bring your spinning wheel. 1-2:30pm, Thursday, January 19, 2012

Here’s a picture of the yarns in question:

If you’re interested in attending, contact me at atyler@centurytel.net

And here’s the list of the following workshop topics.

January 26: Spinning with Locks, Part 1
February 2: Worsted Spinning
February 9: Woolen Spinning
February 16: Spinning Super Stretchy Wools, Part 1
February 23: Spinning with Locks, Part 2
March 1: Spinning Super Stretchy Wools, Part 2
March 8: Spinning with Locks, Part 3
March 22: Knitting Petoskey Stone Medallions

If you’d like details, again, you can email me: atyler@centurytel.net

Ten Hours Later

2012-01-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

I first wrote about my tangle project in November: a very big skein of lace-weight cashmere yarn that had gotten tangled by a fiber-loving pooch.

Little did I know this would become an epic detangling task. Here’s a picture after at least 10 hours of detangling work:

Now, you might think it’s not worth the time. I mean! The original cost of the skein (circa 2001) was probably around $25. Why would I spend more than 10 hours of my working time on this skein?

Early on in the detangling, I was tempted to quit and just chuck the yarn. But then I realized I was actually learning something from the process. I’ve done my fair share of undoing tangles so I didn’t expect this to be a new experience. But it has been.

This yarn, remember, is lace-weight. That means that the yarn doesn’t have much mass per length; the weight of a single strand does not have much umph (ie, force). And it’s a very big skein; I don’t know how many yards but I’m sure it’s well over 800. And this skein had been sitting around for years, gathering a bit of dust no matter how carefully it was stored, and the individual strands were a bit stuck to each other.

Because of these things (skinny yarn, lots of it, old yarn), I had to make a few specific adjustments to my detangling:

1. I used a small weaver’s bobbin for winding the yarn. Once the bobbin was full, I would wind off the yarn using a ball winder. The weaver’s bobbin was slim enough that I could snake it through loops in the tangled mess.

2. Work in chunks. Fortunately the yarn was not one big mess. It was more like several smaller messes. So, I would work for about 2 hours at a time. Some sections have been very slow going; others a bit faster.

3. I found myself putting down the bobbin to pull strands of yarn apart sideways. I quickly learned that pulling lengthwise on this yarn only produced a miserable snarly knot.

4. After awhile, I realized that I did not have to always loop the bobbin through strands. If there was only one strand over the winding strand, then I would loop the bobbin through. If there were two or more, I was able to unfold the tangle and not loop through. I gradually developed an intuition about whether to flip over the big tangle or flip part of it or loop through it.

5. For such skinny yarn, keep your eye on the point of work; do not look too far in advance of where your winding yarn is disappearing into the tangle.

6. Don’t drop the bobbin. Of couse I have dropped the bobbin now and then. And words would come out of my mouth that would make my dog leave the room…

7. Don’t be in a hurry.

I think I’ve got about 4 or 5 hours left. Then I’ll feel obliged to actually use the yarn! Perhaps it’s now time for that Orenburg shawl I’ve been meaning to knit….

SOARing into 2012

2012-01-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

I just sent off my signed “mentor agreement” for Spin-Off Autumn Retreat 2012. That’s right! I was invited to teach at SOAR. This year it’ll be held at the Granlibakken Resort in Tahoe City, California, October 21-27.

I’m scheduled to teach a 3-day workshop called “Spin-Knit Nexus”. This is the workshop that I taught last summer at the Midwest Weavers Conference. You can find blog entries about the content of the workshop and my experiences in Hancock Michigan starting in June 2011. Click here.

I’m also scheduled to teach four sessions of a half-day workshop called “Mechanics of Your Wheel”. I’ve taught this workshop at several venues and I always enjoy the experience; it’s a chance for me to call on my physics, biomechanics, and engineering backgrounds.

Of course, I’ll need to finally get a travel wheel. Up to now I’ve been mostly driving to teach and I can tuck one or two of my wheels in the car. For SOAR, I’ll be flying (no pun intended!).

So, which will it be? An Ashford Joy? A Lendrum Folding Wheel? A Kromski Sonata? A Schacht Sidekick?

Any advice?

I'm Dreaming of a Sheepy Christmas

2011-12-26T09:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Christmas Day. I spent the day knitting and weaving. Perfect. I also spent some time treasuring my new sheepy possessions.

My new roommate, Joanna L., gave me the cutest finger puppet, “Mini Black Sheep” from Folkmanis Puppets. This little thing needs a name. I’ve considered several names (Frank, Oscar, June, Mabel) but nothing has stuck. Any suggestions?

The other sheepy items were presents I bought for myself. I was in Interquilten the other day and succumbed to the siren call of a sheepy fabric, Patt# Farm-C 7744 from Timeless Treasures Fabrics. I’ve got 2 yards. Don’t have a plan yet. Maybe pillowcases?

The other impulse buy was an adorable mug by Wacky Woolies. It’s perfect for my morning cup of coffee – it holds just the right amount of caffeine juice. I haven’t tried tea in it yet.

Bag To Be

2011-12-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

My friend Becky McD. – the same friend who has crocheted so many beautiful bags for me – is going to make me another bag. A bigger one. This one’ll be sewn, not crocheted. The bits of this bag have been gathered over many years.

When I was going to school in Tucson in the late ‘80’s, I had a Dalmatian, “Taxi”. He was a true gentleman. I was crazy about him. That’s when I started collecting Dalmatian coffee cups. And I found this fabric:

Taxi died in 1995, but I still have the fabric. I also have my second Dalmatian, “Toby”. And I’m crazy about her. And I continue to gather Dalmatian-themed stuff.

Becky found this upholstery fabric for me a few years ago:

Becky’s a fabulous seamstress. She has made many beautiful bags of all sizes. I asked her if she’d make a bag for me with the Dalmatian upholstery fabric and use the dotted fabric as the lining. She said, “Of course!”

But she suggested that I weave an inkle band for the bag strap. Now, my yarn stash is primarily for knitting; I really didn’t have anything Dalmatian-y in my yarn stash that would work on my inkle loom. So I asked my weaving friends Marty F. and Carol S. if they had any cotton weaving yarns in the right colors that they might be able to spare. Marty gave me some black and white yarns; Carol gave me some blues. Here’s what I wove last week:

So, now all the parts are ready.

I’m going to knit a hat for Becky and she’s going to sew a spectacular Dalmatian bag for me. I am lucky to have such generous friends.

I wish you all friends as good as mine. Merry Christmas!

Changed My Mind

2011-12-21T08:52:00.000-08:00

Few would disagree that angora (bunny “wool”) is among the softest fibers around. After touching angora, even cashmere can feel coarse. What’s not to love?

Well, as much as I admire the softness of angora, I have not really liked it as a fiber for spinning. Probably due to my first spinning experience with it.

When I lived in Nebraska, a fiber friend, Diann B., gave me some angora from one of her bunnies. Lovely grey fiber. Super super soft. I’d seen some of Diann’s spinning and crocheting of her fiber and admired it. I was looking forward to my first angora experience.

So, I spun some singles from the grey. At that time, I was working on a series of scarves from “energized” singles (they got published in Spin Off, Spring 2006 and again in Interweave Knit & Spin 2011), and I thought angora would be a great material for such a scarf. I mean! What could be more neck-worthy than angora?

I knitted up a swatch.

And I did not like the result. To me, it looked like a pelt. Or a dead rat. I couldn’t imagine wearing such a thing around my neck. So, I gave up on angora.

I continued to read about angora, admire its softness, hear about its warmth, respect those who raise the bunnies and love their fiber. But I had no interest in spinning it.

Moving ahead a few years. I designed and knitted a scarf & hat pair. And I used an Elsebeth Lavold yarn, “Angora” (60% angora, 20% wool, 20% polyamide). Here’s a picture of my friend Sylvia VM wearing the pair.

I sold the scarf very shortly after making the pair, but the hat has languished in my inventory for four years. I personally thought the hat was kinda cool and was surprised that it didn’t sell. This fall I decided it was time to remove it from my for-sale inventory. I thought about gifting it to someone, but since it had received so little sales interest I thought it might not be a welcome gift. So, I decided to use it myself, despite it being a bit too large for my pin head.

Epiphany! Although the hat is a little sloppy on my head, it is magnificently soft AND warm. Even in the most brisk December wind, this hat has kept my ears happy. And, I have received a surprising number of compliments on the hat since I started wearing it out and about.

So, I’ve changed my mind. I like angora, and I will spin some in 2012. And perhaps I’ll formalize the pattern for the scarf and hat.

Let It Snow

2011-12-10T07:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got new tires put on my car. I was dreading spending the money – so many other bills to pay – but it needed to be done. As I drove away from the car place (Marathon Automotive, the absolute BEST auto repair place anywhere), I instantly knew that I’d done the right thing. Watson was a pleasure to drive.

“Watson” is what I’ve named my car. So I can say, “Come Watson, come! The game is afoot!” Believe me, I know that it’s incredibly arrogant to believe oneself to be Sherlock Holmes. But still…

We haven’t had much snow yet this year. Some was forecast for last night and some for this morning, but nothing yet. When it happens, I'll be ready.

Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow….

A Silk Purse...

2011-12-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

…out of a silk yarn.

In 2006 I spun a cabled yarn with three of the four plies from bombyx silk top that had been dyed in blues and greens by Nancy Finn of Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks. The fourth ply was undyed Optim, a super-stretched Merino wool that feels quite silky. I entered this yarn in the “Spin a Grand Strand” skein exhibit at Convergence when it was held in Grand Rapids. The yarn reminded me of Michigan. And I think of Michigan as being rather like a very very large terrarium. So, that’s what I titled the yarn: “Terrarium”.

And it won first place.

I had always thought the yarn would be put to its best use as a crocheted bag. But I don’t crochet … unless I have to. My very good friend Becky McD, however, can crochet. And magnificently well. So, I asked her to crochet a bag for me out of the Terrarium yarn. She made two bags:

These are not the only bags she’s crocheted for me. See?

The larger bags were gifts containing bottles of Bushmills Irish Whiskey. Becky knows me very well….

The small white bag she crocheted from some yarn that I’d inherited from my dear friend CiCi Rock when she died in 2004. So the yarn is from one great friend, and the crocheting is from another great friend. I especially treasure this bag.

The small red bag isn’t really a bag at all. The yarn was some of my handspun; an experiment that I thought had not gone well. I was going to chuck the yarn, but Becky asked me to give it to her instead. Well, of course she could have it! A few years later, I was preparing to attend a fiber retreat at a location where alcohol was not allowed. Becky and I were in a grocery store and I found some wine in cute little juice-box-like containers. She suggested I take these with me to the retreat and just cover them up. And she crocheted a juice box cover for me so that I could camouflage my illicit “grape juice”. I must say that I rather liked the yarn after she’d made this bag for me. Not so much of a failed experiment after all!

All Things Reeves

2011-12-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

Most of my travels to teach spinning workshops are by car. So, I usually take two wheels with me: my sturdy and reliable Louet S10-DT and my mechanically magnificent and adorable little upright made by Rick Reeves. Here’s a picture:

I did take both wheels with me for my October road trip, first to the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY, then to the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in Fletcher, NC.

One of the workshops I taught at SAFF was “Plying Balanced Yarns”. And one of the participants in that workshop was Linda Martin (aka “Tropical Twister”, seabreezespinners.com ). She is a big Reeves fan, and she admired my sweet little Reeves wheel. She has a couple of her own (not, however, the upright!). We oohed and cooed about the wonders of Reeves wheels.

A few weeks after meeting Linda, she sent me a present: a lovely orifice hook made by Rick Reeves. Oh, yeah! Thank you, Linda!

Linda also has an etsy site, where she sells yarn, jewelry, and the occasional Reeves orifice hook. Take a look.

Now retired from wheel making, Rick Reeves made some absolutely magnificent spinning wheels. You can see pictures of the wheels he used to make on the website, Detta’s Spindle. Rick Reeves sold the rights to his saxony style wheel to the Schacht Spindle Company, which now makes both the 24” and the 30” saxony Schacht-Reeves wheels .

I used to have an original Reeves 24” Saxony wheel, but I didn’t use it enough so I sold it. Now, I miss it. Wish I hadn’t sold it. I look at this picture and think of what could have been … yarn-wise.

By the way, if you have an original Reeves wheel, you can still get bobbins for it from Carol Leigh’s Hillcreek Fiber Studio . I’ve purchased several from them. I think I now have 12 bobbins for my upright. Is that enough?

One more thing: everyone who knows me knows that when I kick the bucket, my friend Sylvia VM inherits my Reeves upright wheel and all its accessories. Now it's public, now it's official. Until then (and there are no immediate plans!), I will gleefully use my Reeves wheel daily or nearly so.

Tangle

2011-11-27T09:42:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I bought a skein of laceweight cashmere yarn after taking a 2-day workshop on Orenburg lace from Galina Khmeleva. I had every intention of knitting an Orenburg shawl. I still have every intention of knitting an Orenburg shawl.

This yarn sat in my stash for a number of years. Then a few years back, I sold it -- needed the $ -- to my friend Molly L. Last week I was visiting her and she returned the skein to me. You see, her dog is quite the Fiber Hound….and not in a good way. He apparently loves yarn, especially high quality yarn. He got into Molly’s yarn stash and tangled up the skein of cashmere But Good!

Now, I like a tangle challenge. I consider myself to be especially talented at undoing knots and snarls. So, the other day, I put the messy skein on the dining room table to tidy it up. Here’s a picture of the start:

It’s not a particularly good picture. The composition is a mess. The lighting is terrible. The table cloth is too busy to allow you to see the yarn. The color is off; the yarn is really a most lovely layered rust color, not cranberry red.

I’d show you a picture of the untangled yarn…..if I had one. I worked for about 2 hours and was able to wind up about 1/5 of the yarn. Maybe that much. Maybe. Having other chores to do, I put the rest of the tangle on top of my dresser, where I’ll be forced to see it frequently. I hope the regular reminder will motivate me to finish the untangling job. I know it’s going to take time. And patience. But I think it’ll be worth it.

I remember in the book, The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx, that each chapter started with a quote from The Ashley Book of Knots. One chapter’s quote was about untangling a rope mess. Same applies to yarn, I thought. I wish I could remember the quote.

Trunk Show Soon

2011-11-13T08:52:00.000-08:00

The yarn shop up in Cedar, Michigan is called Wool & Honey (fka “Inish Knits”). Melissa Kelenski is the owner. She has recently invited a number of Michigan fiber artists to participate in a trunk show at her shop over the Thanksgiving Day Weekend.

I will be one of those participating. I’ll have all my knitting patterns for sale there that weekend including:

Jog-in-the-Rib Socks
Diamond Anklet Socks
Victory Hat & Spring Break Scarf
Gradual Grace Scarf
Denim Duo Hat & Scarf
Both Sides Now Scarves
Quartet of Slip Stitch Hats
Summer Socks
Patch Pair Scarves
Dream Shawl

Three Bags Fulled
Wrist Wraps

And…

…my most recent: “Brick Road Afghan”. It’s a very large afghan that I knitted from 3 skeins (1 pound each) of “Abundance” yarn by Briar Rose Fibers.

Here’s a picture:

I will have knitted samples of all the patterns. At least, that’s my hope. I have most of them knitted, but I still need to finish 2 scarves, a hat, and 2 bags. My fingers are very busy with production knitting right now!

So, if you visit this delightful shop between Friday, November 25 through Sunday, November 27, you’re sure to find something Michigan-y and Fiber-y. Yes!

If you can't visit the shop, but you're interested in buying any of my patterns, you can contact me directly at amy@stonesockfibers.com.

Family Portrait

2011-11-11T11:07:00.001-08:00

The spinning group I’m in meets every Monday afternoon. I do my best to keep my schedule open for those get-togethers; the company is always delightful ... and so are the snacks!

I was in need of some pictures of various spinning wheels, so last Monday, I asked everyone if they’d let me take group pictures of our spinning wheels. The weather cooperated….the sun even came out (perhaps for the last time for a good while!). And here’s the family portrait that I took on that day:

Let’s see….I think I know who’s who. From left to right: Gerrie, Jenny, Ginnie, Carol, Marty, Amy, Joan, Libby. Nice family, eh?

Updates to Website - Stone Sock Fibers

2011-11-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

At this time of year, I’m busy sending out teaching proposals for next year (and beyond). While preparing some of this year’s crop, I realized that I needed to update some information on my website. So, for the past week I’ve been tweaking and cutting and pasting and revising and rewriting and creating. The biggest change has been to the descriptions of the workshops I offer.

I revised a few descriptions, and I created three new workshops. Here are the new ones:

Spinning With Locks (6 hours): Wool and mohair locks can be used “as is” or prepared in a variety of ways for spinning both highly textured yarns and very smooth yarns. In this workshop, we will cover a wide array of lock structures, from fine crimp to bold curls. We will play with undyed and dyed locks, we will spin yarns from the locks, we will combine locks with rovings in a variety of ways, and we will flick locks for spinning smooth, worsted-type yarns.

Spinning Super Stretchy Wools (6 hours): Some wools are especially elastic: Targhee, Cormo, Romeldale/CVM, Rambouillet, Columbia, Suffolk, Montadale, and others. In this workshop, we will work with these wools to create sproingy-boingy yarns. We will cover a variety of drafting techniques that influence the springiness of yarns; we will card and comb washed fleece of these and other wools to make the most of their elasticity; and we will explore the best uses of such wools.

Circles, Hexagons, and Octagons – or – Knitting Petoskey Stone Medallions (3 hours): In this workshop we will knit a medallion that was inspired by the state stone of Michigan, the Petoskey stone. The medallions are flat circles, knitted from the center out. When a series of these medallions are crocheted together, you can change the circular shape to 4-, 5-, 6-, or more-sided pieces. We will cover a circular crochet cast-on, how to knit circularly with 2 circular needles, 2-stitch cable patterns, and crocheting medallions together. With this approach, you can make scarves, afghans, hats, pillows, and more.

You can find descriptions of all my workshops on my website. Click Here.

The Library Is Your Friend

2011-11-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

As I kid, I spent many hours each summer at the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library in Midland, Michigan. I’d hop on my bike and ride over there, then I’d hunt in the shelves for reading miracles. I found plenty. One summer, I spiced things up by picking books randomly. I read some weird things that summer.

When I started ballet lessons, I scoured the library for All Books Ballet. The library did not disappoint. I read several books by Agnes de Mille long before I was able to execute a grand jeté en tournant. The library was instrumental in assuring my addiction to dance and to dance history.

Further cementing my dedication to libraries, I worked at University libraries as a college student. I got to work in several departments: stacks, US government documents, microforms, periodicals, and the medical reserve desk.

Later, I was teaching college students. During my stint on the faculty of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in the Division of Physical Therapy Education, I taught courses in “critical inquiry”: evidence-based practice, statistics, and research methods. I often told the physical therapy students, “The library is your friend!” So many resources, so much information, such wonderfully helpful librarians…..What’s not to love about libraries?

Anyway…because of my love of libraries, I was thrilled when I got a recent request from the Interlochen Public Library to teach a single session on the basics of knitting. I would never say “no” to a public library. I would have even done it for free, but they are paying me a modest honorarium. Um, I think it’s the Friends of the Library who are actually footing the bill.

So, the session is Thursday, November 10, 6:00 to 8:00pm at the Interlochen Public Library. You can contact the IPL librarian, Janette Grice, for more information. Her email address is: jgrice@tadl.org

The Trip East Was a Blast...

2011-10-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

...But I’m happy to be home!

During the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival , I stayed at the Grand Dutchess B&B in Red Hook, just up the road a few miles from Rhinebeck. I love staying there. The festival houses a number of the workshop instructors at this charming establishment. This year, the group included Daryl Lancaster , Abby Franquemont , Donna Kay, and Andrea Wong – all absolutely delightful folks! I was, however, recovering from a cold, suffering from a very sore throat and overbearing cough, so I didn’t join in on the late evening knit and chat sessions. But! I did enjoy the conversations over the fabulously delicious breakfasts that proprietress Beth Pagano made for us – sometimes under unusual circumstances. On our first morning, the electricity went out. Beth improvised and we had a breakfast by candle light!

My classes were loads of fun, with really delightful and interesting participants. I didn’t get much of a chance to shop because of my teaching schedule, but I still managed to snag some very lovely Wensleydale locks from Crimson Shamrock . I had met one of the owners, Lori Wall, a few years ago at the Mid Atlantic Fiber Association Conference in 2009.

One interesting sight at Rhinebeck: there was a spinner, Suzan Stapleford, demonstrating spinning on a pendulum spinning wheel. I’d only ever seen one of them once before (at the Octagon House in Watertown, Wisconsin). Suzan’s husband built the wheel for her. I didn’t take a picture, but I did find a YouTube video of her at the wheel. Click here.

After Rhinebeck, I spent two days at my my cousin’s house near Scranton, PA. She loves fiber too. Trish now works full time for the Mid Atlantic Alpaca Association. We did manage to have one “fiber day”, spent mostly spinning and knitting and playing with her new Hansen Mini-Spinner that she’d just purchased at Rhinebeck. I love that little thing! Here’s a picture.

Trish has an interesting Rhinebeck tradition: she gets a pedicure before going. This year, she had her toenails painted a lovely red, with special fibery images on the big toes. See? This picture is quite out of focus. I hope you can still get the idea…..

Trish has a new kitty too. It’s name is “Lucky Kitty”. Les, Trish’s husband, found the kitty under the hood of his truck – after he’d driven over 90 miles. The kitty was filthy dirty, but not injured. Lucky kitty indeed! And way too cute for words. So, here’s a picture:

After too short a visit, it was on to North Carolina. This was my first time at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair, and I had fun! My classes went well. A few of the classes were quite full. My Sunday class, in contrast, only had 4 participants. That was my “Slip Stitch Knitting” workshop. You know, I really had the very best time with those four ladies. They jumped right in and played with slipping stitches this way and that way. I left that 10th-workshop-in-10-days on an inspired high. In fact, last night I had a dream about a really really cool sweater that incorporates slip stitches.

Love those knitting dreams!

Here, Then There

2011-10-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

My move took longer that I’d planned. Isn’t that always the way! I did get some wonderful help from a number of folks: help with lifting, lugging, and storing things that won’t fit in my new location. Thanks so to: Judy, Molly, Dick, Jill, Joe, and especially to Becky!!

My biggest consolation for having to drive carload after carload is that this is a most beautiful time of year. I got to watch the colors come alive along Reynolds Road. Spectacular!

I am quickly falling in love with the village of Lake Ann. My dog and I are getting to know the best walks. The closest walk is up an old country road with the quaintest farm, not more than ¼ mile from my front door. Here are a few pics:

Now it’s time to hit the road again. I’m headed to Rhinebeck for the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival.

I teach Thursday through Sunday. After that, I drive to North Carolina for the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in Fletcher (just south of Ashville). I’m teaching three days there. All in all, I’m teaching 10 workshops with only 1 repeated. My car will be FULL!

But I get to see autumn colors all the way. Nice!

Movin' to L.A.

2011-09-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

Lake Ann, that is. Lake Ann, Michigan. Right now, I have an Interlochen address, although I live in Benzie County. Sometime over the next couple weeks, I’ll be completely moved to Lake Ann. From Inland Township to Almira Township.

I’m moving because I’ve lost my house due to foreclosure. I was one of those folks who bought a house at the height of the real estate market. Then the bottom fell out. And I haven’t been able to develop the income I’d hoped for. Despite having made a significant downpayment, I now owe more on the house than it is worth. I’ve pursued several avenues of recourse, but nothing has worked. This is a very common story.

So it’s time to move on. Start over. I’ll be sharing a house with a nice lady in Lake Ann. The biggest psychological hurdle was giving up the gardens that I’ve spent years developing. I’ve gotten over that one. At least I’ll be able to garden in my new place.

I may have to take a break from blogging for a couple weeks. I’ll get back to it as soon as I can. And I’ll update my website when the move is complete.

Here’s lookin’ toward the future. Cheers!

Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Part 3: Excellent Fiber

2011-09-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

Nice plaque! It was awarded for the ”Grand Champion Fleece Overall” (i.e., “best in show”) at this year’s Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival.

This year, Letty Klein was the judge. She had somewhere between 120 and 130 fleeces to judge. That doesn’t include the Shetland fleeces; they were judged separately.

There were three fleece divisions, each with multiple classes. I emailed Letty to ask about the judging process. Here’s what she had to say:

“The Coopworth fleece won the white coarse division, then beat out a nice but kind of dingy Cormo to be Champion White fleece. For Supreme fleece overall, I had the white Coopworth, a stunning natural colored Bluefaced Leicester, and they brought over the Champion Shetland fleece to judge. Since this was the first time I had seen the black Shetland fleece, I looked it over closely. I was very surprised to find that the tips came off very easily. I tried in several areas, all the tips were tender. The audience groaned when I showed them. So, that left the Coop and BFL. I then asked the audience for a vote - more voted for the BFL. I said OK, but lets take a closer look at both of them. I showed examples and talked about the character, consistancy and handle - and talked both them and myself into selecting the Coop!”

Who knew that fleece judging could be so suspenseful! I was on the edge of my seat just reading Letty’s description!

Here’s the kicker: That winning Coopworth fleece came from Carol Wagner of Hidden Valley Farm & Fiber Mill! I have always known that she has wonderful fabulous can’t-be-beat Coopworth wool. Now there’s confirmation!

Needless to say, Hidden Valley is my go-to source for Coopworth wool.

There are other vendors at WSWF who I consider go-to sources:

I always get my Cormo wool from Jill Johnson at Riverwinds Farm. This year in her booth, she also had some fabulous Bluefaced Leicester wool. I bought some combed top and some dyed locks. Mmmmm…..

BrambleWool Farm is my go-to source for Shetland wool. Julie Guilette had rovings, tops, and Shetland blends in her booth. By Sunday afternoon, her booth was nearly empty!

I have also in the past bought lovely a Shetland-Mohair blend combed top from Psalm 23 Farm at WSWF. It is yummy!

This year, I ran into Neil Kentner several times at the festival. He’s from Mason, Michigan and he raises Wensleydale sheep at his farm, Wynsmoor Manor (sorry, no website). He has also been fleece judge at WSWF in the past. So, he knows fleeces. I snagged a pound of lovely washed Wensleydale fleece from him this year (from a sheep named “Beulah”). I suspect that may become an annual tradition!

Anyway, WSWF is an event that is guaranteed to offer magnificent fiber for handspinners. If you haven’t attended this event, do consider going in the future. It’s worth it!

Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Part 2: Excellent Shopping

2011-09-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

Books, tools, and treats for myself. The shopping was excellent. This is one of my favorite places to shop. There were about 150 vendors. This year I went with an actual shopping list. And I got pretty much all that I was looking for….and, of course, more!

My one real indulgence – just for myself – not related at all to business – but I love them: Earrings by Jenny the Potter. A few years ago, I bought one of her mugs. Last year, some earrings. This year, some more earrings. Who could resist green sheep?
The other non-tool, non-fiber, non-business related purchase was a canvas bag. Now, I’ve got loads of canvas bags. And I use ‘em. I always have a stack of them in the passenger seat of my car, so I can quick grab them for grocery shopping or whatever shopping. But do I really need another bag? Well, no….but! I saw Cheryl Stegert (see yesterday’s blog entry) carrying one around, and I was compelled. You see, the bag is the Festival bag, sold by Ewesful Gifts (they sell all sorts of sheepy-related paraphernalia ). And this is the 10th year for the Festival. That’s a meaningful milestone. Besides, the bag is green (Can you tell that green is my favorite color?) and fabulously big. I was able to put a goodly amount of my purchases in it. Worth it, don’t you think?

Now, most of my purchases were purposeful and intended to help with my fiber work. I got two books, one on knitting, one on weaving.

As I’ve begun my foray into the world of rigid heddle weaving, many folks have encouraged me to get the book by Jane Patrick, The Weaver’s Idea Book. I found a copy of it at the Mielke’s Fiber Arts booth. Yes!

I was also on the lookout for Ann Budd’s latest, Sock Knitting Master Class. Ann is the editor of this compilation of fantastic and fantastical patterns by many of the best sock designers. I found a copy at Susan McFarland’s booth (Susan’s Fiber Shop). A quick perusal convinced me that this book is a must-have for any sock knitter. By the way, I’ve been visiting Ann’s blog lately and she is in the process of knitting every single sock in this book, presenting these sock knitting adventures on her blog.

Besides books, I got a few tools too. I do a fair amount of hand combing, and I usually just pull the top off the combs. I thought I should give a diz a try. So, I got one at Susan’s McFarland’s booth. I think it’s made from some type of plastic, but I like its looks, and I like that it comes with a hook for snagging the first bit of fiber off the combs.

Cheryl Stegert is responsible for prompting me to buy a tahkli spindle. Now, I've already got a good tahkli at home. I didn't really need another one, but this one was made using a Sacagawea dollar coin as the whorl. I could not resist. I bought it at Mielke's Fiber Arts...and they make them.
I also came by a great niddy noddy. Nancy Shroyer (see yesterday’s blog entry) gave me one of her fabulous travelling niddy noddies as a thank you for driving her around at the Festival. What a sweet thank you! I am thrilled. It’s so nice to have portable, functional, and beautiful spinning tools!

As you might imagine, I did purchase my fair share of fiber at the Festival. I will talk about things “fibery” in the next blog entry….Stay tuned….

Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Part 1: Excellent Classes

2011-09-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

I got home late Monday night from my trip to the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival. What a wonderful time I had! I’m going to blog about my Wisconsin adventures over the next three blog entries. Today, I’ll concentrate on classes: Students and Teachers.

I taught all three days of the Festival. All the workshop participants were alert, enthusiastic, ernest, adventurous, appreciative, and just really really pleasant people. That’s the way it has always been at this event. I just love teaching workshops there.

I got a chance to chat with a few of the other instructors at length. Most especially, I got to spend time with Nancy Shroyer of Nancy’s Knit Knacks. She had flown in from North Carolina and was without a car. So I gave her rides to and from the hotel where we were staying. She is a delightful person, as well as an ingenious fiber tool designer and a wonderful teacher.

On Thursday night Nancy and I joined Letty Klein for dinner at Highway Harry’s in Johnson Creek. Letty was scheduled to teach a rug braiding class on Friday, judge the fleece competition on Saturday, and give a presentation on Sunday. I had met her last year when we travelled together to the Northeast Handspinners Association “The Gathering” in Vermont (see my blog entry November 11, 2010). It was very good to see her again. It reminds me that I haven’t started the braided rug that I planned to make from some Shetland roving….

On Friday morning I had breakfast with Cheryl Stegert. I had first met Cheryl in Neenah Wisconsin at Midwest Masters 2010. She often teaches classes at Yarns by Design in Neenah. We chatted about knitting and spinning and weaving. We bumped into each other several times during the Festival, and I “blame” her for some of my purchases (I’ll explain in my next blog entry).

I did stop in on Carol Rhoades’s classroom to say howdy. In past years, we have taught in the same building, but this year we did not, so we didn’t have much time to catch up, but it was nice to see her. Carol is the technical editor for Spin Off magazine, and she helped neaten up my article on my 3X3=10 shawl (Fall 2011 issue). Thanks Carol!!

Labor of Love

2011-09-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

Today is Labor Day. As with most of you, I’ve tried my hand at many forms of work. These days, I work at what I love: fiber arts. I spend most of my days spinning, knitting, teaching, preparing to teach, writing, and contemplating the wonders of fiber. I am lucky that way. Not everyone can do the work they really really want to do.

The flip side of my labor of love is that it requires that I live on a financial shoe-string. I have simplified and downsized a lot over the past few years. I will likely continue to do so. I’m not complaining: I find it satisfying, not constraining. (Hey! That rhymes!)

Last week I “labored” on what I think is an adorable pair of wrist warmers. Last year, I had spun a yarn that I describe as an “intermittent wrap yarn”. It’s a two-ply yarn where one ply intermittently wraps around the other ply. The wraps alternate between the two plies. In her book, The Essentials of Yarn Design for Handspinners, Mabel Ross labeled this type of yarn “Cloud” yarn. It doesn’t look particularly cloud-like to me, but what’s in a name (“A rose by any other name….”)?

This particular yarn was made from two rovings that I’d purchased from Hidden Valley Farm & Woolen Mill; one of the rovings was 80% Coopworth wool and 20% mohair; the other roving was 80% coopworth and 20% silk. Here’s a picture of the yarn. To try to show you the “wraps”, I wound the yarn around a piece of paper and then took a not-very-good picture of it on my flat bed scanner.

I recently swatched the skein, using a slip-stitch idea that Jacey Boggs had briefly mentioned in her wonderful article on “cocoon” yarns for Spin-Off (Spring 2011, pp44-47). “…work up to the cocoon, then slip as many stitches as it takes to make up the length of the cocoon – usually two to four – then continue knitting. The result here is a cocoon stretched over the top of your stitches – visually stimulating and incredibly unique.”

I loved the result when I applied it to my intermittent wraps. With only 1 skein (3.25 oz, 104 yards), I was limited in what I could make with my yarn. I decided on wrist wraps. I used the skeleton of a mitten idea from Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns.

I’m keepin’ these babies for myself. I can hardly wait for cold weather!

Marl? Comin' Right Up!

2011-09-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

Look what arrived in yesterday’s mail.

See that blurb in the upper right hand corner? That’s my article about my shawl “3 X 3 = 10”. It was originally scheduled to be published in Spin Off last spring, but the editors moved it to the fall issue. It’s good to see it in print!

Here are a few of my photos of the shawl, taken in February 2010 (as explanation of the snow in the background). My friend, Vivienne K is the model:

And here is a picture of the 10 yarns that I spun for the shawl (again with snow in the background):

I do like marl yarns. I like spinning them, and I like knitting with them. And I’ll be teaching “Spinning Marl Yarns” a couple times in the near future. Next week, I’m headed to the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival in Jefferson, Wisconsin. I’ll be teaching the marl workshop on Sunday, September 11.

And in October, I’m headed to Rhinebeck, New York to teach workshops at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival. I’ll be teaching the marl workshop there on Saturday, October 15.

Care to join me?

Bond. "Kyne" Bond.

2011-08-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

In July, when I drove up to Charlevoix for the Fiber Arts Festival, I had a very important purchase in mind: a Bond fleece.

According to both The Fleece and Fiber Source Book (D Robson and C Ekarius) and In Sheep’s Clothing (N Fournier and J Fournier), the Bond breed arose around the turn of the 20th century in Australia from a cross between Lincoln and Merino sheep: a very nice combo, resulting in a soft and springy wool with a long staple length.

The back story: Last year at the Charlevoix show I visited the booth of Big Hand Farm.

They had a few dozen of the loveliest, cleanest fleeces. I spied and admired a few brown fleeces, I wrote a note to myself with the names of the sheep from which these fleeces had come, and I wandered away from the booth. About a half hour later, I decided to go back to the booth and buy one of those fleeces. But they were all already sold!

So, over the intervening year, I plotted and planned to get to that booth right away this year and buy one of those fleeces. As soon as I arrived at the festival, I made a beeline for their booth, and quickly picked a lovely fleece from a sheep named “Kyne”. I was smitten. The fleece was darn big: 8.6 pounds. The locks were a good length, about 5 inches, and had a nice tight french-fry-crinkle-cut shape to the crimp.

I did not drive home with this fleece. Instead, I took it over to Deb McDermott’s booth, Stonehedge Fiber Mill, and dropped it off with her. Last week I got the fleece-turned-roving. “Kyne” is kinda nice, don’t you think?

I spun up a bit of the roving. Yum! It’s too bad that the picture can’t tell you how soft and elastic this wool and its yarn are.

Then, I took a pinch and combed it. One pass on my Valkerie double pitch combs. Even more yum!

I’ve got 5 pounds and 12 ounces of this lovely roving. Kyne is sure to keep me happy for a good long time.

Norwood Loom for Sale

2011-08-28T09:03:00.001-07:00

My friend, Judy McLaughlin, spends her summers near here in Beulah, Michigan. She spends her winters in Duluth, Minnesota. No kidding!

She has two looms, both identical, one in Duluth and one in Beulah. And, she’s decided to sell her loom in Beulah. She has had this loom for 10 or 15 years and has not found time to weave on it as much as she’d like. Here are the loom specifics that she has provided:

“NORWOOD FLOOR LOOM, 36" wide with a 30" reed. Cherry wood. Includes a bench, but nothing else. The going rate on line seems to be $600, but I'm open for negotiating. Contact me personally (JudyLaugh@aol.com) if you would like more info, photos emailed to you, or to come look at it.”

Here is a picture of the loom:

Please contact Judy directly with any questions. JudyLaugh@aol.com

Clean Combs for Addey

2011-08-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

In early August, the Benzie area spinners visited the Crystal Lake Alpaca Farm. Chris and David Nelson are the owners. (David Nelson, by the way, is the DVM at Platte Lake Veterinary Clinic who sees my dog, Toby.) Chris gave us the grand tour. Their spread is most impressive, and they have some very beautiful animals. Here’s one of the many pictures that I took:

At the end of the tour, Chris showed us some lovely fleeces. I was immediately attracted to a light fawn fleece that seemed to have a hint of pink about it. The fleece was from an alpaca named “Addey” (short for Crystal Adelaide). Although my photography doesn’t do it justice, here’s a picture of the fleece:

I bought 4 ounces. Yum-EEE! This fleece was quite clean, with very little vegetative matter. Another spinner who also bought some of this fleece was planning to spin it without washing. Well, I decided to wash my 4 ounces….

….Which I did a few days ago. I used some hot tap water with just a bit of added boiling water (not as hot as when I wash Merino). One wash with some Orvus paste, one rinse with a glug of vinegar, and one plain rinse later, I had the loveliest clean alpaca.

Now, I could just pick the fleece open to prepare it for spinning, but I decided to comb it. So I got out my combs. I have a pair of Valkerie 2-pitch combs that I’ve used for years, but only on wool. This would be my first attempt at hand combing alpaca.

I charged the combs and then tried to make a pass or two through the fiber. I quickly realized that my combs were on the tacky side – apparently the tines were coated with a bit of remnant lanolin from a previous combing endeavor.

I had to clean my combs. For the first time. My initial thought was to use rubbing alcohol. It worked ok, but it was a slow process: putting the alcohol on a rag and then trying to wipe every surface of every tine without injuring myself!

My second thought was to use WD 40. So, on the second comb, I sprayed some WD 40 on the tines (outdoors, mind you!). After letting the combs sit there for awhile, I put some clean white wool on the combs and pulled the fiber through to remove the excess WD 40.

Both methods worked fine. The WD 40 was faster, but it was a bit smelly (to my very sensitive nose). I’d love to hear from other folks about their efforts to clean combs. Comments, anyone?

Lots of Locks to Love

2011-08-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful time at the Michigan Fiber Festival. My workshops were pretty well filled….and all with delightful participants!

And I had a chance to do some shopping. Most of my shopping is geared toward replenishing my supplies for teaching. This year I was on the look-out for various types of locks because I’m devising a new workshop on spinning with locks.

There were plenty of locks to be had!

First I got some locks of Lincoln wool, dyed shades of purple. Love the shine! I got these locks from Victoria Station. Victoria Brackney is located in Howell, Michigan.

My next lock purchase was from MoonsShadow Farm. They’re located in Chisholm, Minnesota. They had a wall of yearling mohair locks dyed in all sorts of colors, so you could mix ‘n match. That’s what I did. Pretty colors! More shine!

Then I managed to snag some locks of Wensleydale wool, dyed by Chris Roosien of Briar Rose Fibers. Love her color sense!

All these yummy locks will be joining my growing stash of locks.

For example, I bought some kid mohair locks from River’s Edge Fiber Arts (check out their Facebook page) at the Midwest Weavers Conference in June. Carol had loads of intense colors. These are just some of the colors I got.

And last year, I’d bought some kid mohair locks from Elizabeth Koeppen, here in the Grand Traverse region. These are from natural colored angora goats and are dyed a pale and subtle combination of purples and yellows. Rather mysterious and metallic looking.

Also last fall, I bought some adult mohair locks from Marie Glenn in La Cygne, Kansas (by way of the Yahoo Spin Sales List). These locks are undyed, and from natural colored angora goats. Very nice!

It may seem that now I have plenty of locks to play with, but I know I’ll be getting more locks when I go to next month’s Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival . In the meantime, I’ll be experimenting with the many ways locks can be used in spinning. What fun!

At Interquilten This Weekend

2011-08-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

Interquilten is a lovely quilt shop in Interlochen, Michigan. Tawni Gilmer is the proprietress. She carries not only a vast selection of quilting items, but also some of my handspun yarns and my knitting patterns.

This weekend Interquilten is part of a six-shop “shop hop”. Quilt shops in Interlochen, Traverse City, Charlevoix, Cedar, Bellaire, and Williamsburg are participating in the 2011 Amazing Quilt Race Shop Hop, August 13 – 20.

Tawni has offered me a table so that I could sell some of my wares during the shop hop. So, on Saturday, August 13, I will be at Interquilten. I’ll be spinning on my Reeves upright spinning wheel, and I have some knitted items for sale, such as this lovely afghan in a slip stitch pattern from a luscious wool-alpaca yarn. I've called it “Peruvian Pebbles”:

And a grey version of my “Dream Shawl”. Here’s a picture of a version in green:

And my Petoskey stone wall hanging, “Petosegay – Sunbeams of Promise”:

I’ll also have some of my inkle weaving, including dog leashes (if I get the sewing done!) and bookmarks:

And some scarves that I’ve woven on my Ashford Knitter’s Loom:

And, don’t forget my handspun yarns and knitting patterns.

If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by. And if you mention reading this blog post, I’ll give you a 10% discount on any of my knitted or woven items (but not yarns or patterns).

Run Up to the Michigan Fiber Festival

2011-08-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

A week ago, I cut my left index finger – instead of the intended baguette. My typing was, um, impaired. I’m just now getting back to normal finger activity.

OK, that doesn’t sound very nice…..

Let me catch up. The Michigan Fiber Festival is just around the corner; workshops start August 17, and the Festival is open to the public August 20 and 21. I’ll be teaching on Wednesday (“Blending Colors at the Wheel”), Thursday (“Plying for Texture” & “Plying Balanced Yarns”), and Friday (“Mechanics of Your Wheel” & “Spinning Marl Yarns”). There’s still room in some of these workshops. Check out the MFF website and the MFF blog.

In addition to my teaching, I get to shop, meet new friends, and catch up with old friends. One person I’d like to introduce you all to is Laurie Boyer. I met her a few years ago at MFF. She is an amazing art yarn spinner. Her yarns are not simply hodge-podge mixtures of odds and ends; they are well thought out, carefully designed, and meticulously constructed fantasy yarns. She used locks, nuts & bolts, q-tips, feathers, and this year even clothes pins! She recently sent me a couple of pictures of some of her latest yarns. See the clothes pins?...on the right....

Laurie will be at MFF – with some of her yarns – helping at Carol Wagner’s booth, Hidden Valley Farm & Woolen Mill. You know I’ll be stopping there early on!

For more on Laurie, click here to go to a 2009 article about her by Ruth Knight Sybers.

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Earlier this week I got a call from Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood. She’s a free-lance writer who does articles on arts and crafts for the Grand Rapids Press. She’s preparing an article about the Michigan Fiber Festival and she wanted to get some of my thoughts on trends in the fiber world, specifically about the increasing popularity of spinning. We had a wonderful chat, during which I found out that Jennifer also has begun a new arts and crafts magazine, CraftSanity. You can find more about Jennifer and her writing at www.craftsanity.com. Jennifer promised to stop by one of my classes on Friday at MFF so that we can meet face-to-face. I look forward to meeting her in person.

Washing Fleece and Ice Fishing

2011-07-30T13:09:00.001-07:00

What do ice fishing and washing fleece have in common?

The punch line: a “Bucket Seat”.

I don’t wash a lot of fleece….maybe one or two whole fleeces a year. Last year, I washed a fleece from “Lizzy”, a Romney/Corriedale/Suffolk X Ile de France sheep.

There are so many successful strategies for washing fleece. I live in the country and have a septic system; I don’t want to dump the lanolin-rich water down the drain, so I use a bucket system. (Then I dump the lanolin-rich water in my compost bin.) My strategy is to use two 5-gallon buckets, a colander, a wooden spoon, lots of hot water, Dawn (usually, but not always), and vinegar. And I do most of this (except heating the water) outside on my back porch.

One common bit of advice for washing fleece is to keep the succeeding buckets of water (pre-soak, wash, rinse, rinse again…) at a similarly hot temperature. When I first started washing fleece in buckets, I struggled with some sort of top to put on the bucket so that the water wouldn’t cool too much. All too often, my make-shift top would get blown off by the wind….even if I used a heavy rock to hold it in place.

Then one day, my friend, Becky McD, offered me the perfect solution: A “Bucket Seat”. This is a cover for a 5-gallon bucket that you can sit on! It’s really meant for fishing, especially ice fishing, but it does the trick for keeping the water hot during fleece washing.

Since then, fleece washing has become a reliable production for me. I highly recommend a bucket seat.

Blast from the Past

2011-07-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last week an old college chum visited me. We hadn’t seen each other since 1978 when we graduated from the Department of Modern Dance at the University of Utah. Cynthia is still part of the world of dance and she is now a Full Professor in the Dance Department at Hobart & William Smith Colleges. She was in this neck of the woods because she was delivering her daughter to Interlochen Arts Camp for a 2-week stint in a rock music program.

Cynthia and I had a brief but delightful visit. As a gift, she brought me 8 ounces of lovely fiber from Mapleton Farm in the Fingerlakes region of New York. Here’s a picture:

The grey is an alpaca (“Hershey”) – Corriedale wool blend. It has a sturdy feel to the fiber that matches the heathered color. The black is an alpaca (“Hester”) – Shetland wool (“Violet”) blend. This roving is rather softer than the grey.

Oh, and the rock is also from Cynthia. Turns out we’re both big fans of interesting rocks. So, I let her take a bucket full of rocks from my gardens (I have loads and loads), and she gave me this lovely specimen from Lake Ontario. (So, now I have rocks from all the Great Lakes except Lake Erie.)

Back to fiber: I got an idea for the future of this fiber pretty quickly. I want to knit a pair of lined mittens – which I could really use!

I think I’ll spin both yarns into similar thickness 2-ply yarns (DK or worsted weight). I will review the nice article by Mavis Adams that was in Spin-Off magazine, Summer 2008 (“Teresa’s Lined Mittens”) for overall mitten architecture. I’ll use the grey for the outside of the mitten which I’ll knit in a slip-stitch pattern. I’ll use the black for the inside and stick with stockinette stitch. I’m not sure yet what to do with the cuff.

I’ll post more about this project as it progresses.

Varsity Blue

2011-07-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

Many years ago at the Michigan Fiber Festival, while I was perusing the vendors, I stopped in a booth of mostly Targhee wool. I love Targhee. You just can’t beat its elasticity.

Anyway….In this booth I spied some balls of carded roving. The colorway was an immediate turn-off: longitudinal stripes of black, medium green, and yellow. The wool looked like a moldy bee. Yuck!

So, I turned my back on the roving and looked at the vendor’s handspun yarns. My eyes were promptly drawn to a lovely speckled green yarn. I picked up the skein and said, “This is pretty!”. The vendor then told me that the yarn I was admiring was spun from the roving that had so recently turned my stomach. Wow!

Moral of the story: you can’t judge a handspun yarn by its preceding roving. Or, at least I can’t…..

So, I bought 1 ½ pounds of the moldy bee roving. The vendor put the roving in a large, clear plastic bag. I then walked around the rest of the vendor area for a couple hours. On more than one occasion, a passer-by would stop and “comment” on the roving in my clear plastic bag. I couldn’t help myself; I had to respond that I knew the roving was ugly, but it would spin up into a charming yarn. Really.

And I did indeed spin some lovely yarn from that roving. I named the yarn “Green Granite”.

Fast forward to the present. At the Midwest Weavers Conference last month, I bought another striped roving. This time in 3 colors of blue and a greenish yellow. It didn’t repulse me at the time….Here’s a picture of the roving:

Last week, I started spinning it. The more I looked at the roving, the more it made me think of my highschool colors (blue and yellow), and the colors of the University of Michigan (maize and blue), and the colors of UCLA (blue and gold). I was fearful of spinning a yarn that would look equally athletic. Ack!

I am happy to report the yarn does not need to be titled “Varsity Blue”. The stripes turned in to subtle speckles. Here’s a bobbin of singles:

And here’s the final yarn, which I’m naming “Gone Fishin’”.

I will no longer fear rovings of weird color stripes.

Mulligan!

2011-07-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

No, I don’t play golf. However, it is my understanding that the term “mulligan” is used as a “free re-do” of a poor shot – at least during a friendly game of golf.

My re-do involves knitting. In May (blog entry May 21, 2011), I started knitting an afghan from a delicious mohair boucle yarn. I had a good plan. Or, so I thought.

My idea was to incorporate zig-zag lines of eyelets on a garter stitch background. Here’s a rough sketch of my idea:

This is a big, big afghan. It’s 48 inches wide. And I’ve knitted nearly that same number of inches in length. So, I’m closer to the end than to the beginning. I took a couple pictures of my progress earlier today. Here’s one picture:

Nice colors, don’t you think? I do love this yarn, and I love knitting it. But I’ve been so attached to my design idea that I was ignoring what was right in front of my face: the yarn hide the fabulous design. I mean! Can you see it? All I see is garter stitch.

Here’s another picture which is intended to point out the pattern:

Perhaps you can see the eyelets, but not very clearly.

The problem is this. I’m designing the afghan to sell. I’m thinkin’ that no one will want to buy an afghan that looks as if it’s just knitted in plain ol’ garter stitch.

So, I’m taking a “mulligan”. I haven’t been able to bring myself to rip out the afghan yet, but I will. Anyway, July is not the time of year to knit with a giant pile of mohair in your lap.

When I do get around to re-knitting, I may go back to one of my earlier ideas for this yarn (which has, by the way, been a real pleasure to knit): an oversized pullover with a dramatic cowl collar, or maybe a flashy, versatile ruana. Maybe a cross between a ruana and a pullover…..

Festivals on Parade

2011-07-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

Lots of links today. The fiber festival season is well under way. Here are a few in my future:

Fiber Arts Festival at Castle Farms in Charlevoix, Michigan, July 23-24. This festival has about 50 vendors, live animals, food, and various demonstrations; all at a beautiful venue! No workshops, however, so I’ll be attending as just a visitor/shopper.

Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan, Michigan, August 19-21. One of the larger festivals in the midwest, with fiber arts workshops beginning on the Wednesday (Aug 17) before the festival opens to the public. I’m teaching workshops Wednesday through Friday. See the MFF blog for details and pictures of a number of instructors.

Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival in Jefferson, Wisconsin, September 9-11. This is a robust and growing event that is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year. There are loads of vendors and everything lamb & sheep under the sun. I’m scheduled to teach all three days, and I really look forward to it!

Northern Michigan Lamb & Wool Festival in West Branch, Michigan, September 24-25. Small by comparison to MFF and WSWF, this event is well known for its shearing school. This year there will be about 50 vendors. And the weather is often absolutely delightful at the end of September. I do love the Ogemaw county fairgrounds.

NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, New York, October 15-16. One of the largest fiber festivals in the country, “Rhinebeck” (as it is typically called) is a hoppin’ event! This will be my third year teaching there. Workshops start on Thursday, October 13 and go through Sunday, October 16.

Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in Fletcher, North Carolina, October 21-23. A new festival for me. I’ll be driving from Michigan to Rhinebeck, then straight to North Carolina. It’ll be my longest fiber road trip yet. If you’ve attended, I’d love to hear your impressions or tips. One really nice thing about my upcoming October travels is that I’ll get to see fall colors here in northern Michigan, then in New York, and then again in North Carolina. Color, here I come!

Insinuating Influence

2011-07-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

Most of my teaching travels are to events with either a spinning focus or a knitting focus. On occasion, the focus is on weaving. Such was the case last month at the Midwest Weavers Conference in Hancock, Michigan.

Because the conference, with pre-conference, lasted for a whole week, there was time for me to soak in a bit of weaving inspiration….without even trying! Let me share a few examples.

A number of folks who took my workshops turned out to be quite accomplished weavers. As example, Marcia Kosmerchock took my pre-conference workshop. (Then she taught some weaving workshops on Friday and Saturday.) On the third day of the workshop, she brought in a fabulous example of her collapse-weave work. The fabric had the most amazing texture and surprisingly stretchy drape! And I then saw a pillow of her's that was in the Member’s Exhibit. It had a very cool 3D textural structure to it.

All of the pre-conference workshops were held in the same building. On the second day, we had a chance to visit other workshop classrooms to see what everyone was up to. I got in a quick visit to Cameron Taylor-Brown’s class, “Natural Inspiration. Design Ideas from Nature”. I saw some very interesting strategies for refining ideas from photos of nature by using white cardboard cutouts to frame or re-frame sections of a photo. I came away inspired to play more with color and ideas for seeing texture in new ways.

Later in the week I snuck in to Robin Spady’s class for a look. In her workshop, “Fun, Funky, Fantastic”, participants try all kinds of strategies for insterting embellishments into plain weave. Hey, I thought, I can make plain weave on my Knitter’s Loom. Maybe I can do this too….!

Thursday, there were no workshops. Heather Winslow (who took my Nexus workshop, then taught silk spinning on Friday and knit/crochet edges on Saturday) and I drove to the Chassell Heritage Center to attend a fashion show of women's clothing from many decades, starting with the 1890’s. Prior to the show, we had a chance to examine some fabrics that were on display at the back of the auditorium. Many of the items were made by Finnish weavers. The Upper Peninsula was the destination of many immigrants from Finland and a strong Finnish influence persists today. I was especially intrigued by a plain weft-faced weaving that was a compilation of stripes. The technical execution of the piece was perfect, and I really admired the composition of the stripes. I wish I had a better picture...

And another piece struck me too:

Daryl Lancaster, who had to deal with illness and extreme weather-related travel challenges, judged the Fashion show on Friday night. I was so pleased to see her give her “judge’s choice” award to my favorite piece in the show, a stupendous jacket, “Spike’s Cuddle Coat”, by Peggy Bowman. You can see a picture of Peggy's jacket on Daryl’s blog.

As it happened, Peggy took my workshop on Saturday, so I had a chance to shower her with praise on her piece.

Also on Saturday, I got a chance to chat briefly with Jane Patrick of Schacht Spindle Co. Over the past few years, we’d chatted on the phone as part of our committee work for the Spinning & Weaving Association, but I’d never met her in person. It’s so nice to put a face to the voice! Earlier in the week, several folks suggested that I would find her book, The Weaver’s Idea Book: Creative Cloth on a Rigid Heddle Loom to be very helpful in my adventures in weaving with my rigid heddle loom. I’ve got to get that book!

With all the weaving vibes surrounding me for a whole week, I was nearly sucked in to buying another loom! Many of the conference attendees would meet in the evenings in the dorm lounge for some chatting, knitting, and usually some “grape juice” or “lemonade”. One evening, Julie A. (aka, “Chassell Tour”) put up a notice for a rigid heddle loom that she wanted to sell. I was seriously considering it. In the end, I decided not to buy it, and Julie decided to keep it!

Since returning from the conference, I’ve finished one woven scarf and started another inkle band.

Here’s a non-fiber picture that I took on my drive home. I stopped at a road-side rest area somewhere between Chassell and Baraga. This glimpse of Keweenaw Bay is what I saw.

Michigan is beautiful!

Nexus 4: Hands and Heads

2011-06-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

What a week it was! The Midwest Weavers Conference was way too much fun. And exhausting. And wet (it rained most of the time). And full of weaving and fiber inspiration. There is too much to say about it in one blog entry, but let me start here with a few tales about workshop participants.

The Spin-Knit Nexus workshop yielded a lot of interesting yarns. The workshop participants were enthusiastic and inventive. Beth D. learned how to Andean ply. She wanted to have pictures to remind herself of the technique, so she pulled out her smart phone and snapped away. She then emailed me her pictures. Here’s Beth’s hand:

As a good chunk of Day 2 of the workshop, I had folks spin several 2-ply samples skeins, where one ply was from one hand painted combed top, and the other ply was from another hand painted combed top. Each student had roughly 2 ounces of fiber to spin. We made three smooth yarns and four textured yarns. At the end of the day, I suggested that it might be possible to knit a small hat with all the yarns they’d spun. Just a suggestion…..

The next morning, Sherri M. walked in and pulled out a hat that she’d knitted the previous night out of those 7 yarns (plus a tiny bit of some of the other yarn we’d made in the workshop). Whoa! Here she is wearing the hat:

By the way, Sherri is from Kansas. And she is one of the folks who will be coordinating the next Midwest Weavers Conference, “Prairie Winds”, June 21-23, 2013. It’ll be in Emporia, Kansas. I can hardly wait!

Here's a picture of some yarns that students spun on Day 3 of the Nexus workshop:

One more quick story: Julie A. took both the Beginning Spinning workshop and the Blending Colors at the Wheel workshop. When I first met her at the conference, her name tag was flipped around, showing the back side. On the back side was her ticket for the tour to Chassell, Michigan. All I could read was “Chassell Tour”. I thought, “What a lovely name.” So, for most of the week, I called her Chassell. (Once in awhile I’d call her Julie.) Chassell Tour. Don’t you think it’s a nice name? She said she was going to name her spinning wheel Chassell. I think I’ll name my next dog Chassell.

Nexus 3: Right Side Up?

2011-06-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to take bits of fiber of many solid colors and blend them into one yarn. Taking such bits is also a nice way to make multiple different yarns that go together. Such approaches are a good part of my upcoming workshop, “Spin-Knit Nexus” at the Midwest Weavers Conference.

I wrote an article about one such approach for Spin-Off a few years ago, “Blending Colors at the Wheel”. You can download the article for free from their Spinning Daily website. Click here.

In the article, I described various ways of pre-drafting and then spinning bits of different rovings or tops to get a variety of blended effects. Here’s a picture of some samples:

I then used this blending technique to create yarns for a sweater that I’ve named “Right Side Up?”. I made three yarns: one all white, one all purple, and one that was a blend of the white and purple. The yarns:

And here’s a picture of my friend Sylvia VM wearing the sweater:

And here’s a picture of the back of the sweater:

The reason the sweater is named “Right Side Up?” is that Sylvia took the sweater, turned it up-side-down, and put it on again. And it worked!!!! Here she is wearing the sweater up-side-down:

I do have plans to write up this pattern, but I need to knit it once more in a different size to make sure it works. A near-future project.

Nexus 2: Pretty in Polwarth

2011-06-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

“Nexus (neks’ əs) n. 1 a connection, tie, or link between individuals of a group, members of a series, etc. 2 the group or series connected.”

~~Webster’s New World College Dictionary

Three days of connection between spinning and knitting. That’s what I’ve got planned for my pre-conference workshop in Hancock.

One of my favorite ways to connect spinning and knitting is to combine two hand-painted tops in multiple ways.

Here’s one example: I bought some yummy hand-painted Polwarth wool top from Briar Rose Fibers in a sizzling combo of oranges.

And I got some equally yummy hand-painted Polwarth wool top from River’s Edge Fiber Arts in a succulent combo of fruit colors.

There are so many ways to spin these two fibers. My first decision was to spin the singles from both wools with the same thickness and twist.

Then I created a 2-ply yarn from just the orange fiber.

And a 2-ply yarn from just the fruit fiber.

Now, you may think that these two colorways wouldn’t go together, but I had to see for myself. I created two 2-ply yarns with one ply from the orange fiber and one ply from the fruit fiber. And, instead of plying a balanced yarn, I created a couple of textured yarns.

Here’s a “knot” yarn. I call this type of knot yarn “pill bug yarn” because the knots look like pill bugs.

And here’s a “snarl” yarn from the same two plies.

I think these yarns could be combined in a single knitted project to great effect. I was thinking of some kind of cowl/wrap, using the smooth yarns in a cabled pattern and the textured yarns as edge interest. What do you think?

Nexus

2011-06-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

I’m getting ready to teach five days of workshops at the Midwest Weavers Conference, “Northern Wefts”, in Hancock, Michigan. And my dreams are filling with the preparations. I am especially looking forward to my pre-conference workshop, “The Spin-Knit Nexus”. I see this workshop as central to my spinning and knitting approach: I often explore the point where spinning and knitting come together by spinning a series of yarns that are different but compatible and that can then be knitted into one unified project.

One of my first attempts to create such a nexus project was my “Before and After” jacket. Many years ago, when I was a “young” spinner, I wondered why some spinners preferred to dye the fiber and then spin it, and some spinners preferred to spin the fiber and then dye it.

I decided to try both approaches and put them into one project.

I got myself three or so pounds of Bluefaced Leicester wool combed top. I spun up about half of it into a heavy worsted weight yarn. Now, I’m not a dyer, so I commissioned Nancy Finn of “Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks” to dye the yarn I had spun plus the rest of the combed top. I wanted her to dye both the yarn and the top in the same colorway. I suggested spice colors (you know….cayenne, cinnamon, clove, cumin). She did a magnificent job. I then went on to spin up the top she’d dyed, and then I designed and knitted a jacket that combined the yarn that was spun-and-then-dyed and the yarn that was dyed-and-then-spun. The jacket now belongs to my friend, Carol S. Here she is wearing the jacket:

For the upcoming workshop, I want to give the students a similar opportunity to play with this combination. I took some more Bluefaced Leicester wool top, and spun up half of it. Then I commissioned my friend, Elizabeth K., to dye both the yarn and the wool in the same colorway. I let her decide on the colors. I picked up the dyed wool and yarn the other day. Here’s what the workshop participants get to play with:

There are several nexus approaches that I cover in this workshop. I will write about more in the days to come.

Distraction

2011-05-29T13:59:00.001-07:00

May is a month of distraction. Although I am getting some knitting and spinning done, it’s not nearly as much as I would like. I’m too distracted by Spring.

Spring arrived late, and very slowly, this year. But its tardiness has been outweighed by its lavish verdure. I enjoyed daffodil blooms for nearly a month. Here’s a picture of some of the last to bloom.

My rhubarb plants have provided me with a bumper crop. I’ve already baked two pies and one cake. I plan to bake another cake tomorrow.

This little plant, a “Lewisia” has been right at my front door for a couple years. Aren’t the flowers sweet?

I have three large chives plants in my back yard herb garden. I try to keep the flowers trimmed from them so that I can harvest chives all summer. Last year, I put a few chives plants into one of the flower beds in the front yard. I will let them bloom and enjoy the lovely flowers there.

Late last summer I put in a plant called “Speedwell”. It didn’t do much then, but this spring it has begun blooming, and I am lovin’ it!

Each day I find new treasures and surprises in the garden. Ah, May!

Speak to Me

2011-05-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

Ideas for my fiber projects come from many sources: from nature, from dreams, from my dog, from my friends, from science, and more.

Sometimes the fiber or yarn just speaks to me directly. I am at the beginning of a few projects right now that have started with the fiber talking to me. Let me share a few examples.

For my birthday this year, my friend Carol S. gave me a tiny jade plant in a pot that her son, Vince, had made. A lovely gift.

She wrapped it in tissue paper and tied it with a strand of a ribbon yarn. That tidbit of yarn Spoke To Me. Here’s a fuzzy picture of it. (My camera does not like close-ups.)

I put the yarn bit on my desk next to my computer and fondled it frequently, wishing I could have more of it. I wanted to knit it. Bad. I had developed quite a crush on that yarn. Ultimately I asked Carol if she could part with the yarn. And! She agreed! I now have the yarn sitting on my desk. I know I will knit some drapey, tunic length cardigan, with ¾ length sleeves. I don’t know when I’ll knit it, but I will.

Another example. Last weekend, at the Spring Fiber Fling, the fiber cupid struck. Joanne Dufour was one of the vendors. She raises alpacas. One of the fibers that she’d brought was a blend of true black alpaca with a goodly amount of multi-colored silk noil. I was smitten.

My plan is to create a marl yarn with one ply of this alpaca/silk and one ply of a light blue-to-light lavender Polwarth wool roving. I’ve already started the spinning. Mmmmm.

One more example. Many years ago, I bought some mohair boucle yarn at Personal Threads, a terrific yarn shop in Omaha, Nebraska. The yarn was being discontinued, so the shop had it in a sale bin. What luck for me. It’s a lovely raspberry color with splashes of many other vibrant colors including lime green, brown, many reds, turquoise, and peach.

I did not have to fondle the yarn for long before I bought it. This yarn has been maturing in my stash since then. On occasion I would open the drawer that contains the yarn and consider its future. At first I wanted to knit an oversized pullover with a dramatic cowl collar. But recently I got an idea for an afghan with an asymmetrical zigzag lace pattern. The swatching and designing are done, and I started knitting it last night. Oh, ah!

Peaches and Dream

2011-05-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Finally. I get to open the jar of peaches (Canadian Harmony variety).

Last fall, Lois Robbins gave me one jar of apple butter, one jar of peach preserves, and one jar of peaches. She said the apple butter and preserves were intended to nourish me as I wrote up the pattern for the “Dream Shawl”, but I could only open the jar of peaches after I’d actually finished writing the pattern.

Well, today, I picked up 15 copies of the pattern at Staples. So, I get to open the jar of peaches!

I am not particularly timely in writing up my knitting patterns. (Hey, I do get other things done.) This shawl pattern has been a long time in the making, and I’ve been nudged by a number of people to Get It Done. This pattern will be making its debut at the Spring Fiber Fling in Pickford, Michigan this weekend. Lois is one of the organizers of this event.

Here’s a picture of the shawl in question.

I call it the “Dream Shawl” because the pattern for it came to me in a dream. How awesome is that!?

If you would like to buy this pattern, contact me by email: atyler@centurytel.net

The price is $12 plus first class postage.

Three Fliers

2011-05-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Fliers for fiber events just keep comin’ in the mail. Yipee!!

Next month, I’m headed to the Midwest Weavers Conference, “Northern Wefts”, in Hancock, Michigan. I so look forward to visiting the Keweenaw Peninsula again. This conference is going to pack a punch. The line up of instructors is quite impressive (and I’m not just saying that because I’m one of them!). There are workshops for everyone. There are also tours to go on and many exhibits to see.

I’ll be teaching a three-day pre-conference workshop entitled, “The Spin-Knit Nexus”. We’ll be exploring ways of spinning combinations of yarns that would be difficult to find among commercial yarns, and then knitting swatches and figuring out ways to use these yarns in knitted projects.

I then have one day off. My plan has been to spend most of that day at the Seaman Mineral Museum on the campus of Michigan Tech University in Houghton, Michigan. My first visit to this amazing museum was a few years ago. I spent hours there, and I only saw half of the exhibit. I can hardly wait to see the rest! Unfortunately, according to their website, the museum is currently closed for renovation and won’t be open again until July. How disappointing! I guess I’ll just have to visit it some other time.

Then I teach two 1-day workshops: “Beginning Spinning”, and “Blending Colors at the Wheel”. Both so fun!

Another flier that recently arrived is for the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival in Jeffferson, Wisconsin. This’ll be my fourth year teaching at this wonderful event.

I love taking the ferry across Lake Michigan, I love seeing all the fiber animals, and I love all the fiber and fibery people!!! I’ll be teaching: “Creating the Yarn You Want”, “Spinning & Knitting Goat Fibers”, “Spinning Marl Yarns” and “Mechanics of Your Wheel”.

I also received a flier for the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, New York.

It’s a delightful drive (although it takes 2 days to get there) and a delightful event. I’ve enjoyed the folks who organize everything, I’ve enjoyed the folks who vendor fabulous mechandise, I’ve enjoyed the other fiber arts instructors that I’ve met there, and I’ve especially enjoyed the folks who’ve participated in my workshops.

This year I’ll be teaching: “Creating the Yarn You Want”, “Spinning with Commercial Yarns”, “Spinning Marl Yarns”, “Mechanics of Your Wheel”, "Spinning with Silk Hankies", and "I-Cord Edges and More!". A swell line-up.

So, go to one of these events. Revel in fiber. It’s good for the soul.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jog

2011-05-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

The drive back from Duluth was under much nicer weather conditions than the drive to Duluth. The first day of my outbound trip it rained all the way to Marquette, and the second day it snowed almost all the way to Duluth. On the way back, all was sunny and bright!

I stayed with Judy and Jim McL. I’ve known Judy for a number of years. Judy and Jim summer in Beulah, Michigan and winter in Duluth!

Judy is part of the Duluth Fiber Handcrafters Guild, and she was responsible for encouraging them to invite me to teach some workshops. I’d been there three years ago to teach, and I was delighted to be invited back. The workshops were held in one of the Duluth Art Institute locations.

In addition to the workshops, the Guild asked me to give a talk the night before the workshops, in conjunction with a potluck dinner. I prepared a presentation that I titled, “The Value of Process”. This presentation prompted me to put together some of my thoughts on learning, mindful practice, creativity, and the process-product dichotomy. I took the opportunity to draw from my experiences in dance and neuroscience, as well as my work as a fiber artist. I hope that these disparate disciplines came together for the audience as well as they come together for me.

Earlier that day, Judy took me on a stroll around the boardwalk area of Duluth. Here is a picture of Judy near the lighthouse there.

Saturday’s workshop was “Spinning With Commercial Yarns”. Here’s the metaphysical question of the day: When you take a commercial yarn that is Z-spun and S-plied, and you re-spin it in the Z direction, are you “adding twist” or are you “un-plying”?

Sunday morning’s workshop was “Plying for Texture”; the afternoon’s workshop was “Spinning With Silk Hankies”. Everyone enjoyed the “hand spa” at the beginning of the afternoon session; I had everyone use a scrub on their hands called “Silk Spinner”, a Dermalove product. Makes for the smoothest of hands!

Oh, on Sunday, it snowed. I’d like to point out that on my visit three years ago, it also snowed…at the beginning of May. Could this be the start of a tradition?

Monday, Judy and I did some more sightseeing. I picked up rocks along the shore of Lake Superior just north of Duluth. Here’s a view:

Then, we visited a charming yarn shop in Knife River and later ate lunch at the Lighthouse on Homestead. I had an excellent grilled cheese sandwich with tomato-basil soup. By the way, they make the Best Potato Chips Ever.

The day’s highlight was our visit to Church Road Farm, owned by Marie and Paul Glaesemann. Marie and Paul have a wonderful spinner’s flock of sheep. Here are a few of this year's lambies:

I’ve been buying fleeces from them for several years now. I am happy to report that I was able to snag Lucy’s fleece again this year. And I was able to snag a picture of Lucy on this visit. Well, I got a picture of her rear end as she enjoyed her lunch.

Here’s a picture of Marie with her 30-year old Morgan horse, Winston. They raised and showed Morgans for many years.

I also bought Lizzy’s fleece, and Judy and I are going to split Puff’s fleece. All three fleeces will be processed into roving at Hidden Valley Farm & Woolen Mill.

Tuesday, I started the drive homeward. On Wednesday, I made a few stops at Scenic Outlooks along Lake Michigan. Here is a picture somewhere between Epoufette and Brevort, looking southeast onto the lake.

And here’s a picture of the Mackinaw Bridge from a couple miles away, still in the U.P.

All ‘round, a great trip! I do hope to travel Duluth-way again. Maybe next time without snow…

Stones, Snow, and Spring

2011-04-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

It's Spring? Yes, that's a question mark. Yesterday I awoke to this world:

Despite the winter views, I am getting ready for this year’s Spring Fiber Fling. It’s a weekend fiber retreat held each year in Pickford, Michigan (in the eastern Upper Peninsula).

This year the dates are May 13-15. And the registration deadline is April 23. If you want to download a pdf file of the brochure, go to my website. Or, contact Lois Robbins, loisrobbins@gmail.com, 906-632-3689.

I’ll be teaching two workshops: “Spinning With Silk Hankies” and “Knitting Petoskey Stone Medallions”. This’ll be the first time teaching the petoskey stone workshop. I’ve been knitting medallions like crazy lately to make sure my pattern directions are correct.

Here’s a picture of a pile of mostly petoskey stones in my front yard perennial garden (before the snow fell):

And here’s a picture of a pile of recently knitted medallions and the yarns I’m using.

Sylvia's "Sylvia", Part 5

2011-04-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

Last year, I started a fleece-to-socks project. The fleece was from a CVM lamb named “Sylvia”. I got 6 ounces of the lovely raw wool from my friend Sylvia (for whom the lamb was named). You can see my blog entries about this project starting with July 12, 2010.

“Sylvia” lives at The White Barn Farm in Blanchard, Michigan with several other CVM/Romeldale sheep. If you want to see classic pictures of this distinctive breed, go to their website.

Most of this project was completed in July of last year. Then it stalled. I was having trouble designing the sock pattern. I tried several stitch patterns before I stumbled onto the stitch that inspired me.It is stitch pattern “I.21” on page 17 in The Harmony Guild to Practical Knitting Stitches (1983)

This stitch pattern is made up of just knits and purls. No slips, no twists, no yarn-overs, no increases or decreases, no fancy loops. Just knit and purl.

But what a pattern! I would never have guessed that a knit-purl stitch pattern could surprise me so. As the pattern grew on my needles, I saw a wonderful construction of gently curving horizontal welts. The pattern as written has a modest amount of asymmetry, but it could easily be revised to be symmetrical, or even to be more wildly uneven.

Isn’t knitting amazing? After so many years of knitting, I can still find newness and excitement in the basic building blocks of this craft.

Here’s a picture of “Sylvia” with the two lambs she had this spring.

Here’s a picture of the finished socks.

Here’s a closer look at the stitch pattern.

Sylvia will soon receive her “Sylvia” socks as a belated birthday present.

Lots of Lambs

2011-04-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

On my return trip from Wisconsin I made a brief stop at Hidden Valley Farm & Woolen Mill. Carol and Paul Wagner run the joint (see my blog entry about this marvelous place September 14, 2010).

They raise Coopworth sheep. Lots of them. And now is the height of lambing season. I arrived just minutes after one lamb was born. What an amazing sight!

Because the weather was still on the cold side all the lambs were in the barn, making photo taking (with my wimpy camera) a bit of a challenge. I wish more pictures had turned out, but here, at least, is one sweet pic:

Toby is Ten Today

2011-04-11T12:32:00.001-07:00

It’s Toby’s birthday today! She’s a “mature” 10 years old now. And as cute as ever. Here she is in her youth:

And, here’s a more recent picture of her, upon her throne (aka, the sofa):

Now, to keep this in the realm of fiber arts let me show you what’s currently on my inkle loom. A few weeks ago, Marty Fox lead a program on “Inkle Weaving the Alphabet” for the Northland Weaving and Fiber Arts Guild. When I watched Marty show the pick up techniques involved, my first inclination was to avoid the alphabet and just stick with plain weave. But! I gave it a try. She had set up my loom in advance with my name (A M Y). During the program, I started weaving Toby’s name. I got as far as T O B.

I will finish the Y before the end of the week. I swear!

April Travels

2011-04-02T07:04:00.000-07:00

I’m hittin’ the road next week. I’m travelling to Pewaukee, Wisconsin to teach at the Wisconsin Spin-In. I’ve heard loads about this event, but this will be my first time in attendance. I am looking forward to it. Starting on Thursday, April 7, there will be workshops, vendors, and spinning! What could be better?

I’ll be teaching three workshops: Spinning Marl Yarns, Mechanics of Your Wheel, and Blending Colors at the Wheel. Look!

So, that’s the beginning of April.

At the end of April (Apr 30, May 1), I’m travelling to Duluth, Minnesota to teach two days of workshops at the Duluth Art Institute: Spinning With Commercial Yarns, Plying for Texture, and Spinning With Silk Hankies.

This will be my second visit to Duluth. Two years ago, I was there at the beginning of May. It snowed. And Duluth is a city on a hill….a very steep hill. Slip slidin’ away!

For both these trips, I’ll be travelling through the Upper Peninsula…for the second and third time this year. And I’ll be headed up that way again in May and again in June. Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Can you tell that I love the UP? I’m even getting used to driving over the Mighty Mac! (My mantra: “Don’t look at the water; look at the road….Don’t look at the water; look at the road….")

Suzie for Sale

2011-03-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

Sylvia has several spinning wheels, all lovely. But she has never bonded with her Majacraft Suzie Standard. So, she’d like to sell it. She’s had it for about 5 years, yet it only has about 10 hours of spinning under its belt. In other words, it’s in next-to-new condition. It comes with 3 bobbins.

Here’s a picture:

You can find information and specs about this wheel at the Majacraft website.

New, this wheel sells for about $800. Sylvia is asking $500 plus shipping/packing (UPS) and insurance. I told her that I’d be willing to deliver the wheel if delivery is on the way to one of my teaching gigs. Click here to see my upcoming teaching/travel schedule as listed on my website.

If you’re interested in the wheel, contact Sylvia (the owner) at svandermolen@yahoo.com

Bubbles Progress

2011-03-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

The latest meeting of the Bubbles Brigade (see blog post February 3, 2011) was at my house. Wine was served, but not the sparkly type. Significant progress has been made by a select few Brigade members; I am not among that select few.

Sylvia leads the Brigade. She’s now up to the last 6-inch section of her scarf.

Carol is a close second. Her work looks so neat and tidy.

Joan finished her first bubble at this meeting.

I…well…I have let my bubbles stall at the swatch stage. Instead of knitting with my Brigade sisters, I spun. Hey! I’m trying to get samples ready for some upcoming teaching. My swatch is pitiful. Pitiful!

To compensate for my lack of scarf bubbles, let me show you my bubbly shower curtain.

It counts for something, doesn’t it?

Complete Tattoo

2011-03-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

The hold up was the collar. I thought I had a good idea for the collar. But I didn’t like the first attempt. Or the second. Or the third. As I was tinking the fourth effort, I stopped with the collar halfway undone and tried the sweater on. And I was hit with a new inspiration for the collar.

Attempt number five was a success. After I finished the collar, I decided to add shoulder pads. I’d never put shoulder pads in a sweater before. I followed the instructions -- more or less – for a lightweight shoulder pad in The Ultimate Knitting Book (Vogue Knitting). I think they help the sweater.

The sweater does fit me, but I will try to sell it first. (If you’re interested, let’s talk!) If the sweater doesn’t sell by the end of the year, I’ll adopt it as my own.

I would like to write up the pattern, but I’ll need to re-knit it first. As with most of my creations, there are some things I’d change in a second iteration.

Here’s a picture of the front.

And a closer look at the right front.

And a look at the left sleeve.

And a look at the back.

I think the buttons work. And I really like how the duplicate stitch worked. What do you think?

My Very First Woven Scarf

2011-03-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

Jean lit a fire under me, figuratively speaking. She was my host in Sarasota. When I first arrived, she showed me all sorts of fibery things in her extensive studio. One thing that really sparked my interest was a series of scarves that she’d woven from bits and pieces of wild and crazy handspun yarns. She then showed me the loom she used for weaving these scarves: an Ashford “Knitters Loom”. I must say it was the first time I had a serious urge to do some weaving (other than my previously mentioned inkle weaving). It seemed a wonderful way to use small amounts of handspun.

And I have plenty of small amounts of handspun yarns! Currently, they’re just “maturing” in a couple bins.

Over the course of the weekend, I praised Jean for waking me up to the possibilities of such small loom weaving. I told her I would, no doubt, get one of those looms and start making some very cool scarves.

Well! As I was packing my suitcase to leave, Jean came into my room with a canvas bag with “Ashford Wheels and Looms” printed on the outside. She laid the bag on top of my suitcase and said, “Oh good. It’ll fit.” Puzzled at first, I asked what it was. And she told me: she was giving me an Ashford Knitters Loom. Can you believe it!!?? I am so thankful to Jean. And so incredibly excited to start learning a new fiber craft.

I got home from that trip on Sunday. And on Tuesday, I wove my very first scarf. To keep my first attempt on the simple side, I selected two mill spun yarns from my stash: DK weight merino wool singles. One was a solid color, the other a variegated yarn. I used the variegated for the warp and the solid for weft.

Here’s the scarf on the loom.

And here’s the scarf finished, washed, and dried.

I think I’ll make another scarf today….

Sarasota was Something!

2011-03-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

I got back on Sunday. A whirlwind visit. And loads of fun. There were 10 people in the workshops, and after two full days, I felt right at home among them.

Let’s go around the room:

Tammy had a very cool spinning wheel, I think made in New Zealand, but she’d purchased it in San Diego. The wood was beautifully striped.

Jean was my host. She made me feel like family at her home. She is originally from Maryland and was involved in the inception of the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. Once a shepherd with more than 150 sheep, she now has a house filled with all kinds of equipment and fiber. She is a dealer for Spinolution and Ashford equipment. I got to spin for a bit on her sweet Spinolution “Mach 3” wheel. Awesome! Oh, and she let me try her Fricke electric spinner. Very cool too!

Debbie was the youngest among us. She had recently gotten a Spinolution “Hopper” wheel. So incredibly cute! She also had some crazy tales of “clubbing” in Tampa on Friday night.

Maureen was getting to know her Bosworth “Journey Wheel”. The workshop topics required frequent changing of spin direction, so Maureen ultimately became very comfortable switching the drive band on her wheel. Maureen also does some very nice dye work, and she gave me a bit of some lovely tencel that she’d dyed.

Elizabeth is a talented, long-time fiber artist. She is especially good with precision work. So, it was no surprise to anyone that she loved the more “tidy” yarns that we made, and she was much less enthusiastic about the more “reckless” yarns. A good sport!

Kate is a new spinner. In fact, prior to this workshop she’d never plied a yarn! And the first morning was all about “plying for texture”. A lesser person might have had a meltdown, but Kate persevered with equanimity. I was very impressed.

Lynn had to leave a pinch early on Friday to pick up her dog, Foxy Lady. On Saturday, Lynn handed me a written apology from Foxy Lady which included her picture. She’s an adorable Papillion!

Elaine. Thank goodness someone else was originally from Michigan! She had the knack of asking questions that were perfectly timed to lead me on to the next topic. Thanks for keeping me on track!

Wendy remained cheerful despite having some knee challenges. Wendy and Bev treated me to a delicious lunch on Friday. We were seated outside – something that you can’t do in Michigan in March! I had lobster bisque and a grouper sandwich. Oh, and I got a sunburn on my neck. A perfect Florida memento!

Bev was incredibly gracious about the fact that I stumbled backwards over her lazy Kate and broke it. And it was a borrowed Kate. Yikes! She assured me the following day that all was taken care of. When Bev heard that I’d spent my academic career studying dance and motor control she took the opportunity to make the requisite joke. Ha ha.

Let me get back to Jean. Not only did she host me, she sent me home with some wonderful gifts. During the workshop, she gave me a sweet Ashford niddy noddy that is a perfect sample size.

And then she gave me a loom! An Ashford “Knitters Loom”. I’ll write more about this soon.

Delay

2011-03-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

Beautiful, isn’t it? I love winter. I really do. And today’s weather is beautiful. But quite inconvenient!

Right now, I should be on a flight to Sarasota, Florida. That flight was cancelled due to the winter storm that is hitting us. So, instead, I’m scheduled to fly out very early tomorrow morning.

In Sarasota, I’ll be teaching two days of spinning workshops (Plying for Texture, Spinning With Silk Hankies, and Spinning With Commercial Yarns) for the Manasota Weavers Guild. This will be my second visit to this wonderful guild. I was there last year in February. My flight was delayed then too, but I still made it on the scheduled day….even though my luggage did not!

At least I mailed supplies and handouts two weeks ago, so I don’t have to worry about that stuff getting there!

The storm warning is supposed to expire by 7pm today. I am hopeful that the roads (and skies) will be clear in the morning.

What to do with today? Knit and spin, of course! Re-pack my luggage, and re-set the alarm clock. Here we go….

Sock Miscellany

2011-03-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Sock knitting is in the air. Yesterday, I got an email from Pat Petrovich. She’d taken a boot sock class from me recently. You can see her first pair of socks in an earlier blog post. Well! She has finished her third sock. Here it is:

At what point will she lose count? I lost count of my sock knitting long ago. But I still keep adding to the score. I finished my latest pair of socks yesterday. My friend, Sylvia VM, had given me some lovely green yarn for my birthday. The yarn is made by Wool Candy; the yarn is “Fondant merino superwash DK yarn”, approximately 223 yards, 3.5 ounces. The color “Verdant”. And howdy!

Since I’m partial to green, and this yarn was a birthday present, I made this pair of socks for myself. I perused my library of sock books for inspiration, and found it in the book, Sensational Knitted Socks, by Charlene Schurch. This is a very nice, thorough book. I love the way it’s organized. This peek through the book I was especially struck by several of the “Six Stitch Patterns”. I settled on the “Stanfield #10” pattern, then modified Ms. Schurch’s instructions to make me (and my feet) happy.

By the way, this stitch pattern is from the book, The New Knitting Stitch Library, by Lesley Stanfield. This book is a lovely collection of stitch patterns with clear charting, and I’ve used many a stitch pattern from it.

Here’s my new pair of socks. I washed and blocked them last night…they’re still a bit damp.

My original plan for that pair of socks was to have them be travel knitting. I’m headed to Sarasota, Florida next week and socks are nice travel knitting. But I finished them! Now I’ve got to prepare another project for this trip. Yep. It’ll be socks. A few years ago I designed a pair of socks that I call “ThisWayThatWay” socks. But I never got around to writing up the pattern (I tend to procrastinate on my pattern writing….). So, next week, I’ll start another pair so that I can make sure my notes are accurate. Here’s a picture of the original pair:

I’m going to re-knit them in “Heritage Sock Yarn” by Cascade Yarns (75% merino superwash, 25% nylon), in a lovely solid turquoise color (color #5626).

And So It Begins

2011-03-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

There were only two ladies in my “Learn to Knit” class at Interquilten in February. So it was an intimate environment for starting down the yellow brick road of knitting adventures.

Judy and Laura were complete novices. Neither had ever held knitting needles before. Oh, I do love to see the beginning! Even though I learned the knit stitch and purl stitch when I was a kid, I still remember the challenge of that most wonderful puzzle of changing string into fabric. So, I can still relate to the very beginning of someone else’s knitting life.

We covered the obvious basics: cast on, knit, purl, bind off; garter stitch, stockinette stitch, ribbing, seed stitch; increases, decreases.

In our third, and last, session, Judy and Laura started knitting a dishrag. Two days later, Laura sent me a picture of her completed dishrag. Her very first knitting project. Here it is:

My hope is that I’ve created a monster….of knitting!

Here’s the pattern I use. Pretty standard:

CO 4 sts.
K one row.
Sl 1 purlwise wyif, move yarn to back between needles, K1, YO, K to end of row.
Repeat that row until there are 48 sts on needle.
Sl 1 purlwise wyif, move yarn to back between needles, K2TOG, YO, K2TOG, K to end of row.
Repeat that row until there are 5 sts on needle.
BO. Sew in ends.

Abbreviations:
BO = bind off (i.e., cast off)
CO = cast on
K = knit
Purlwise = insert needle as if to purl (i.e., from right to left)
Sl = slip stitch
St = stitch
Sts = stitches
Wyif = with yarn in front of work (as occurs naturally when purling)
YO = yarn over
K2Tog = knit two stitches together

Luxury Knitting

2011-02-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

For “show & tell” at a recent meeting of the Northland Weaving and Fiber Arts Guild, my friend, Molly L., showed some of the loot she’d gotten at Convergence (the Handweavers Guild of America biennial conference; in 2010 it was held in Albuquerque, NM).

One of the items she’d picked up at the conference was a single ball of 100% qiviuk (the down from Musk Ox) lace-weight yarn in a lovely deep eggplant color. She asked the guild members for ideas for this most luxurious of yarns.

Marty F. promptly spoke up, “I think you should get Amy to knit you something from it!”

And I said, “Oh, yeah!! I’d love to knit you a scarf!” Molly immediately handed me the ball of yarn. Oohhhh…..Aahhhh….

I then spent awhile trying to decide what exactly to knit. Since I wasn’t selling the scarf, I realized I didn’t have to design the scarf; I could use someone else’s pattern. So, I looked through my lace book library. This seemed like a good time to dive into the book by Nancy Bush, Knitted Lace of Estonia. Nancy Bush is a renowned knit designer, best known for her fabulous sock patterns, and she’s the owner of The Wooly West. I took a 2-day workshop on Estonian knitting from her a number of years ago, and really wanted to follow up on some of the techniques we’d covered.

Now, here’s my chance. The yarn is “Qiviuk”, by Windy Valley Muskox in Alaska, 1 ounce (28.5 grams), approximately 218 yards, color 3007. Here’s a picture of the pattern I’ll be using, the “Raha Scarf”, and the ball of yarn.

How lucky am I that I get to knit a scarf out of qiviuk? And I didn’t even have to buy the yarn! I am lucky lucky lucky.

Cool Buttons!

2011-02-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

I’ve been warned by many people to avoid buttons that are too dramatic. What could be worse than lovingly handspinning some yarn, designing a unique sweater, meticulously knitting that sweater, only to have someone say, “Cool buttons!”

But I happen to like cool buttons.

Tattoo is nearly done. I have only to knit the buttonhole band. But to do that, I must decide on the buttons so that I know how big to make the buttonholes and where to put them in the band.

I have a pretty nice button collection. In fact, I’m rather smugly proud of it. When I started this sweater, I just assumed that I’d be able to find some Tattoo-worthy buttons within my collection. But upon examination of my button stash, I found none that seemed just right.

So, last week I made a trip to one of the local yarn shops, Yarn Quest . They have a substantial button collection. And, as it happened, they had a sale on buttons that day. 25% off! Who could resist? I couldn’t. I bought four sets of buttons (spending my entire cash budget for the day!).

Still, I could not decide on the buttons for the Tattoo sweater. I asked several fiber friends for advice. That advice was mixed and it all left me ambivalent about my choices. As work on Tattoo has progress and it has become a more completed look, my personal preference about the buttons has changed. Last night, as I got so close to the end of the project, I think I finally decided on the right buttons. But instead of just telling you which buttons I decided upon, I’ll show you all my choices. Here’s a picture of all the buttons I seriously considered (on a background of the left front of the sweater):

My absolute favorites were these metal-and-enamel buttons. Problem is….I only have 2 of these buttons. But aren’t they cool? Very Art Nouveau!

And, I found the color of the petoskey stone buttons to be perfect, but I am quite put off by the gold toned rim:

I bought these square buttons a few years back at the Michigan Fiber Festival. I thought they were ugly but so unusual that I had to have them. Close, but no cigar:

I adore these buttons that I got at Yarn Quest. I think they look fine, but there are only 3 of them. I may put them on a hat made from the yarn left over from the Tattoo sweater. I can’t quite tell what’s on these buttons. Sorta fishy, sorta shellfishy, sorta mermaid…but not:

These buttons look like some animal horn material, but I’m pretty sure they’re plastic. They were very high in the running for placement on the sweater:

I liked these metal buttons, but no one else did. And, they are on the small side:

Here is an interesting metal button that has been in my stash for awhile; I think they originally belonged to my grandmother. These were the choice of many of my friends. And, I do like them. I wouldn’t complain…..

However, I finally decided on these fused glass buttons. They did not appeal to anyone else. When I first started Tattoo, these buttons were low on the list, but as I added more of the duplicate stitch embellishments, these buttons spoke to me. Oh, and these buttons were already in my stash…

What do you think? Have I made the right decision? Or, have I gone horribly wrong in my choice of buttons?

It's My Birthday and I'll Card if I Want To

2011-02-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

I celebrated my birthday earlier this week by spending some time with my drum carder. Well, first, I did some hand combing. Ok. Let me back up:

2007: I bought the fleece; a lovely light brown merinoX from a sheep named “Babes”. I got this fleece from my friend, Tina Ulbrick of Ewephoria Farm. She is a wonderful shepherd and fiber artist who now raises corriedale sheep. Here’s a picture of a bit of raw fleece:

2008: I washed the fleece.

2009: I hand combed some of the fleece. Then I drum carded that combed fiber. Then I spun some of the drumcarded fiber. I made 3 yarns each of different thicknesses. The thickest yarn averages 48.6 yards per ounce; the medium yarn averages 83.9 yards per ounce; the thinest yarn averages 150 yards per ounce.

Here’s a picture I took last year of the yarn:

What fleece I hadn’t combed has been sitting in its own private plastic bin in my office. I have a 8 X 11.5 purple sign on it: BABES.

About 10 days ago, that bin started talking to me…..first at a whisper, then with an inside voice, finally yelling at me: I WANT TO BE YARN!

So, I got to work. In two evenings, I finished hand combing the washed wool….except for one chunk that was too tacky to easily hand comb.

AN ASIDE: I have had great success washing greasy fleeces such as merino with Dawn and very very hot water. But I had been persuaded by a friend to try Meadows Fibermaster on part of this fleece. Perhaps this wool wash is good for less greasy fleeces, but it left my merino too tacky to process further. So, I still have a bit of Babes to re-wash. Here’s a picture of that washed-but-not-washed fiber:

For my birthday, I took all the bits of hand combed top and put them though my drumcarder (Pat Green Deb’s Delicate Deluxe). The only reason I carded the already combed fiber was to even out the color; there had been some variation in the brown throughout the fleece and I wanted the final yarn to be even in color.

Here’s a picture of a big pile o’ carded batts:

A WORD ON MY CARDING TECHNIQUE: I must say upfront that I am no drumcarding expert. Despite reading everything I could get my hands on, and watching reputable videos of master carders, I struggled for quite awhile before I was able to card to my satisfaction. There are some important tips that most folks know: 1. card slowly….more slowly than you think you should. 2. don’t put too much fiber on the intake tray; you should be able to see through the fiber to the tray. I follow these tips religiously.

Now, most folks also suggest preparing the fiber before carding it. I’ve most often heard that the fiber should be opened or spread out sideways. I’ve tried this. It doesn’t seem to work for me; the fiber tends to buckle and tug as it moves from the intake tray under the lickerin drum. I hate that!

One day, I decided to draft my fiber LENGTHWISE, just as I do before I spin. Oh, what a difference! My fiber carded smoothly with absolutely no buckling. Now I use this pre-drafting technique all the time when I card.

BACK TO BABES: My goal is to spin up the rest of the fleece as I’d done before: some thin, some medium, some thick. I plan to make a shawl of the three yarns, using the thick yarn for the area directly over the shoulders, and then the medium yarn further out, and the thin yarn for a lovely lacey border.

Can I complete the shawl before June? That’s when I want it as a sample for a workshop I’ll be teaching at “Northern Wefts”, the Midwest Weavers Conference in Hancock, Michigan.

"Smarty", the Inkle Guardian Sheep

2011-02-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

I have been making progress on my inke weaving. I’m in pause mode right now as I allow a friend to use my inkle loom for a bit.

I can create about an 8-foot long inkle band on my Schacht inkle loom. That’s more than enough length for my planned dog leashes. So, I’ve decided that with each band I will make a dog leash and a bookmark. Yesterday I took a picture of my bookmarks to date:

For some reason, I was compelled to put a little sheep in the picture. This particular sheep was a gift from my sister, Meg. When I looked at this picture this morning, two thoughts popped into my head: 1) It kinda looks to me like the sheep is guarding the inkle bands, and 2) the sheep should be named “Smarty”.

I love it when things just pop into my head: creativity with no effort! I have no idea where the idea for “Smarty” came from….

But, I suspect that the “guarding” thought occurred because of a recent discussion thread on the Yahoo group, Spin-List. Lately, there has been a lot of discussion about Livestock Guardian Dogs. I have found this discussion very informative and very fascinating. I don’t own livestock; I don’t own a guardian dog; but I do like the idea of a quadruped guardian helper.

Anyway, the sheep in the picture will now and forevermore be known as “Smarty”, the Inkle Guardian Sheep.

Tattoo Update

2011-02-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

It’s worth mentioning that the sun was out this morning. In this area at this time of year, we can go for a loooonnng while with cloud covered skies. I took advantage of this natural light by taking some pictures in the one room in my house with south-facing windows (my office). A few pics of my “Tattoo” sweater were in the bunch (see blog entry, January 23, 2011).

I decided to limit the knit-purl pattern to just the right front, leaving the left front plain. I may add partial outlines in duplicate stitch to a few of the diamonds on the right front.

It took me awhile to decide how to shape the arm and cap of the sleeves. I referred back to a wonderful article, “Set-In Sleeves – a love affair”, by Pam Allen. This article was published in the Winter 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. It is a nicely laid out explanation of how to calculate the shape of a sleeve cap so that it fits the armhole properly.

I wanted a shallow set-in sleeve, with plenty of ease. I won’t really know if I succeeded until I try sewing the sleeve into the armhole. I plan to try that later today.

One other decision I made about the sleeve was to have a diagonal change from Lucy + Lacy marl yarn to just Lacy yarn. I don’t do a lot of intarsia knitting, so I got out the Vogue Knitting book, aka my “knitting bible”, to remind myself how to twist the color changes on the back side of the fabric. It was way easier than I expected. I will probably add a small amount of embellishment to the sleeves. Ideas are still percolating.

Here’s a shot of the sleeves.

So far, I’m thrilled with how the sweater is turning out. I’ve done some swatching of collar ideas, but I still have to decide how to construct the button band and the buttonhole band. Can’t do that until I decide which buttons to use. That’s a topic for another blog entry….

By the way, the sun is not out right now. It’s grey, and snowing (despite the forecast for a “slim chance of snow” on the radio!).

New Boot Sock Knitter

2011-02-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

Pat Petrovich took my boot sock class at Interquilten last month. Prior to that, she’d started, but never finished, several socks. She completed her first sock during the class. And yesterday, she emailed me a picture of her completed PAIR of socks. Brava to Pat!

Here is “Pat’s Purple Pair”:

She’s now in the process of making another pair…and another. And then some mittens. I’m so happy to have helped Pat on her way to becoming an inveterate sock knitter! You can hear more directly from Pat at her blog.

This month, I’m teaching “Learn to Knit” at Interquilten. Three sessions, on three consecutive Mondays at 6pm, starting on February 14. What better way to spend Valentine’s day! Contact Tawni if you are interested in the class: tawni@interquilten.com , or call 231-276-9100.

Lucy's Warning

2011-02-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

After the previous post about the Bubbles Brigade, I emailed Lucy Neatby to let her know about our bunch of scarf knitters. And I got a response. She wanted to post a comment on this blog site, but was stymied somehow. So she emailed me directly. Here's what she had to say:

“So glad that you are all having fun with the Bubbles Scarf. The addition of Champagne is inspired. Although I have been heard to say ‘Friends don't let friends drink and double-knit!’

“Happy happy stitches to you all.”

I’m wondering if anyone else has tried to leave a comment on my blog posts without success. If that describes you, please email me; perhaps I can figure out what the hang up is.

atyler@centurytel.net or amy@stonesockfibers.com

Aside from the Bubbles scarf, I am making grand progress on the Tattoo sweater, and I have indeed kept up with my resolution to weave one inkle band a week. I won’t be able to keep that up, however, because I’m lending my inkle loom to a friend for a month or so. Pictures soon.

The Bubbles Brigade Begins!

2011-02-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, Sylvia invited some of her more adventurous knitting friends to join her in the “Bubbles Brigade”. She gave each Brigade member a kit for Lucy Neatby’s Bubbles Scarf, accompanied by this note:

“You are a member of the Bubbles Brigade. All meetings are called when necessary and knitting strategy is planned over a bottle of champagne.”

The Brigade includes: Sylvia, Joan, Carol, Gerrie, Marty, Cynthia, and me.

Lucy Neatby, as you may know, is a renowned knit designer and instructor. If you haven’t yet, you must visit Lucy’s website. And I strongly encourage you to check out her blog, “Happy Stitches”. And, hey, take a class from her too!

You will quickly see that she’s crazy about double knitting. Her Bubbles Scarf is a fantastically clever example of this intriguing technique.

Now, none of the members of the BB had tried double knitting prior to this project. But we are all game! My first effort at the scarf was a few weeks ago, when I started the swatch. I got up to row 6, then I put it aside for other, more pressing projects. Because this is the first time I’ve tried double knitting, it took a fair amount of concentration. But I can see that with practice it will become more natural and logical.

The first “official” meeting of the Bubbles Brigade was earlier this week at Gerrie’s house. The meeting began with the obligatory toasting with champagne.

Then a lunch of chili and cornbread. Dessert was cookies from Mary’s Kitchen Port in Traverse City. Then we knitted. And knitted some more.

Of all the members, Sylvia has made the most progress on her scarf. She graciously shared many of her hints and tips (i.e., mistakes) with those of us taking up the rear.

Sylvia’s accomplishment:

Joan’s beginnings:

Gerrie’s start:

I’m headed to Mischicot, Wisconsin for the weekend. For travel knitting, I’m taking my “Tattoo” sweater with me. When I return, I promise to spend some time knitting bubbles…and maybe drinking some bubbles too.

My First Tattoo

2011-01-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a project just takes you over, consumes you, forces you to follow its path. That’s what’s happening to me now.

In a mad rush of spinning at the end of 2010, I finished over 2 pounds of yarn for a yet unspecified knitting project. I blogged about that spinning frenzy on Dec 31. The yarn was spun from two sheep named Lucy and Lacy.

A few days later, an idea for a cardigan came to me: a loose fitting, boxy cardi with embellishments. Here is my very rough drawing of my first thoughts of that idea. As I drew, the embellishments started to look like tattoos to me. So, the sweater will be titled, “Tattoo”. Just a note: I can’t draw.

On the back, I want to put a short central cable pattern at waist level, and then put some dulplicate stitch embellishments – also centrally located – above that. On the front, I want to have a knit-purl stitch pattern in a triangular space with the point at wasit level. The front and back will be knitted from Lucy (grey). The sleeves will be knitted from Lacy (dark grey) and a marl yarn of Lucy Plus Lacy. I want a large collar, and a stiff, short, 3-dimensional stitch pattern for the hem and cuffs (and perhaps also on the outside edge of the collar).

I swatched for several days, first to make sure I had enough yarn, then to make decisions about the hem stitch, the cable, and the knit-purl stitch on the front. For the hem, I finally decided on a stitch pattern that I found in an old vintage knitting magazine that was missing its cover (so I don’t know what magazine, or when it was published; my guess is that the magazine was published in the 1940s). The stitch is called, “Cayce”. Very simple, but with a nice, dense structure:

Here’s “Cayce”:

Multiples of 2 sts.
Row 1 – K1, *yo, sl1 (as if to P), K1, repeat from * across row, ending K1.
Row 2 – (RS) K2, *K the yo and the slip st tog through back of sts, K1, repeat from * across row.
Repeat these 2 rows for pattern.

I also swatched a number of cable patterns (for center back). I decided to modify a cable pattern I found in The Harmony Guide to Practical Knitting Stitches (1983): Pattern VI.1, page 63.

On Thursday, I started knitting the back. After about 7 inches, I decided to change the depth of the hem and the width of the knitted piece. So, I ripped out the knitting and started over. I got up to the neck edge last night.

I would have gotten farther, but after changing the width of the sweater, I realized I needed to spin some more yarn. So I spun 2 more skeins (about 8 ounces) of Lucy. They’re drying now.

Here’s a picture of the back (Lucy), and some of the Lacy yarn, the Lucy Plus Lacy marl, and a pinch of a Lacy plus kid mohair locks that I may use for one of the embellishments.

I've Got an Inkle-ing

2011-01-21T10:11:00.000-08:00

About two years ago, I bought an inkle loom. A Schacht inkle loom. Before that purchase I would say, “I’m not a weaver…yet.” Now, I guess I’m a weaver. I got some wonderful basic instruction from my friend Marty F. And I purchased and perused two books on Inkle weaving: Inkle Weaving, by Helene Bress; and Inkle, by Evelyn Neher.

Thus instructed, I set out to make some inkle bands. My goal was – and still is – to make a series of dog leashes from my inkle bands.

I enthusiastically wove some bands, then, as can happen, I let my inkle loom languish as I turned my attention to other fiber endeavors.

Last Sunday, however, I couldn’t stand looking at the partially finished band on the loom any longer! I finished the band, and I warped the loom for another band – which I actually finished the following day!

Here’s a picture of some of the inkle bands I’ve woven.

I hereby resolve to try to weave one band a week. (I wonder how long that will last…..)

Warm Up!

2011-01-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

I do love winter. I love snow. I love to bundle up and go for a good long walk when it’s 20degF outside. Invigorating!

I may like cold weather, but I don’t like to be cold. So, any opportunity to warm up during winter is a golden opportunity.

One such golden opportunity is fast approaching. In early February, I will be headed to Mishicot, Wisconsin to teach some workshops at the fiber thing’s Winter Weekend Warm-Up . I get to teach “Plying for Texture”, “Plying Balanced Yarns”, and “Variations on Long Draw”.

Other instructors include Carol Rhoades, Sandy Bulgrin, Stefania Isaacson, Liz Sutter, Julie Sonnenberg, and Carol Brodtke.

And workshop topics include basketry, spinning, knitting, kumihimo, dyeing, and soap making.

I can hardly wait! Not only do I get to attend and teach, but I also get to drive around Lake Michigan, through the Upper Peninsula in February! Woo Hoo! I am very happy that my car has all-wheel drive and excellent snow tires.

I Heart Boot Socks

2011-01-04T09:15:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I had a roommate who knitted socks all the time. Well, nearly all the time. CiCi was a prolific sock producer. She knitted boot socks – nice, warm, thick, wool socks. I really didn’t think much of it until she knitted a pair for me. They were deep red, with pink toes. I fell in love with those socks. And I insisted that she teach me how to knit them. Then I fell in love with knitting.

CiCi changed my life. She became one of my dearest friends. She passed away in 2004 (cancer), the same year that I left my job in academia to turn my attention full-time to fiber. I miss her so.

But CiCi is in each stitch of every pair of boot socks that I knit. And I knit a lot of boot socks. And I must say that I have very comfortable feet during northern Michigan’s winters.

I’m going to be teaching a class on knitting boot socks at Interquilten. The class is in three sessions, starting January 13. You can find more information on the Interquilten website. I look forward to passing on some of CiCi’s sock passion, and I look forward to helping make more feet warm!

Here’s a picture of some of my boot socks (only the clean ones; I left out the ones in the laundry hamper).

Yarns at Year's End

2010-12-31T10:57:00.000-08:00

December is an “at home” month for me. So, I get a lot of spinning done. Since mid-November, I’ve spun over 30 skeins of yarns, most of which are available for sale at the local quilt/yarn shop, Interquilten.

One of the great satisfactions of creating yarns is also creating the names for those yarns. Here are the most recent yarn titles:

Cinder & Silk
Sun-Speckled Spruce
Saffron & Sandalwood
Just Kidding
Crystal Lake
Elfin
Sour Grapes
Roasted Toasted
Bloody Mary
December Bay
Peppercorn
Confetti
Lunar Eclipse

Tawni, the owner of Interquilten, will be posting pictures of some of these yarns and descriptions of them on her website. Take a look.

The very last yarn of 2010 is really a set of 3 yarns, from 2 fiber sources. In March, I’d purchased the fleeces from 2 lovely sheep, “Lucy” and “Lacy” (see my blog post). Both sheep are Border Leicester/Corriedale/Romney crosses. I had the fleeces washed and carded into rovings at Stonehedge Fiber Mill, and I’ve used bits and pieces of them for teaching throughout the year. I also used some of Lucy and Lacy for the above mentioned yarn, “Peppercorn”.

I so liked spinning Lucy and Lacy, that I decided to make up a whole bunch of yarns from these two fleeces to be knitted up into a cozy cardigan. I spun 2 very large skeins of Lacy, and two smallish skeins of a marl yarn of one ply Lucy and one ply Lacy. I’m now finishing up 5 skeins of Lucy.

At this moment, I only have 2 skeins of Lucy done. But my plan is to complete the other 3 skeins by the end of today….by the end of this year!

Here’s a picture of some of the skeins, drying in the bathroom (the warmest room in the house).

And, as an aside, here’s a picture of a pre-sunrise contrail that I managed to see just a few days ago.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Eggs and Chocolate

2010-12-23T07:46:00.001-08:00

Spinners in this part of Michigan have been meeting once a week for, oh, maybe 30 years. Even though I’ve been part of this group of spinners for only the past 5 years, the group has become a very important part of my life.

Our meetings vary in location. For our last meeting, we met at the house of Carol S. Her house is situated on the Platte River. We gathered in her living room with large picture windows facing south over the river (and through the woods). Here are two wintery views:

There were maybe 10 folks in attendance. Midge O. was among them. Midge is a Cranbrook-trained textile artist. She has been working in fiber arts for over 50 years. These days, however, she specializes in making chocolates. I was delighted to find out that she’d brought some of her delicious inventory for sale. I instantly bought 2 boxes of my favorites: “Chingers” which are dark chocolate covered candied ginger, and “Pepitas” which are dark chocolate covered pumpkin seeds with a hint of cumin and salt. Too tasty! I will dole these treats out to myself slowly, very slowly, so that they will last into the new year.

Another group member, Cindy H., raises chickens. And she brought some fresh eggs to sell. There is nothing so wonderful as farm fresh eggs. After I bought a dozen, Cindy and I discussed the dilemmas of peeling hard boiled eggs if the eggs are too fresh. (FYI: I had done a systematic study of this particular problem. It is my scientific conclusion that it takes about 6 days from laying for an egg to become easily peelable.)

We do, as a group, get around to spinning and other such fiber endeavors. Gladys S. arrived wearing a recently completed sweater from bits of yarns that she’d spun. The design is simple, yet elegant. Gladys is another accomplished, life-long fiber artist. She spent most of her life in the south, but now she is a valued member of this northern group.

Carol S., our hostess, is a masterful weaver. Lately, she’s been spending her days in her studio weaving scarves. Here is a picture of some of her most recent projects:

Libby C. brought two knitted items to show. One was a “hand warmer” that she’d knitted from her handspun yarn. It covers a small fabric-covered packet of rice. So, you can put the bag of rice in the microwave for a bit, then reinsert the bag in its knitted cover, put the handwarmer in your pocket and have warm hands in our Winter Wonderland.

The other item that Libby brought was a magnificent pair of gloves that had been knitted by Daryl W. Libby had recently received these gloves as part of a holiday gift exchange through the local weavers guild. Daryl is a stupendously gifted knitter, and these gloves were coveted by all!

Let me leave you with an icicle view of our meeting. Marty F. is the spinner in sight.

Marl-velous!

2010-12-12T07:56:00.000-08:00

I got an email the other day from Shelley Rau, a woman who’d taken one of my workshops at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in October. She’d been perusing my website and noticed a photo of a particular yarn that I posted in my gallery of handspun yarns.

I’d named the yarn “S’mores”. It’s a 3-ply marl yarn with one ply of marshmallow-colored merino wool, one ply of graham cracker-colored alpaca, and one ply of chocolate-colored American bison down. Here’s my yarn:

Well, Shelley had recently spun a 3-ply marl yarn with the very same colors, but all of alpaca. Here’s her yarn:

And then she’d knitted a vest with the yarn, following the “dishcloth vest” pattern in Debbie New’s book, Unexpected Knitting. Here’s Shelley’s vest:

I do like marl yarns. Whether you’re using the same fiber for all plies or different fibers, you can create a lovely yarn that makes a nicely speckled knitted fabric. If you use different fibers for the different plies, you do need to pay special attention to get the right amount of twist so that the different fibers ply together neatly.

I cover these techniques in a half-day workshop “Spinning Marl Yarns”. As of now, I’m scheduled to teach this workshop twice in 2011: once at the Wisconsin Spin-In in April, and once at the Michigan Fiber Festival in August.

And, an article of mine which features a marl yarn shawl that I spun and knitted is going to be in the Spring 2011 issue of Spin-Off magazine.

To see more of my marl yarns, go to my handspun yarn gallery on my website .

Sour Grapes and Snow

2010-12-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

Snow season is upon us. We’ve been under “lake effect” snow warnings for the past couple days. At least 6 inches fell overnight. So, the snow in my yard is about 14-16 inches deep right now.

Snow season is a productive fiber season. I’ve been spinning daily lately, and I’ve completed several yarns. The most recent is a fun slubbed yarn. I used two hand painted combed tops. One top is wonderful Rambouillet wool in a lovely combination of peridot and purple colors, dyed by a local fiber artist, Elizabeth Koeppen. She sells some of her fiber and yarns on her etsy website . The other top is a delightful Merino wool in a deep muted purple colorway, dyed by Chris Roosien of Briar Rose Fibers .

Here’s a picture of the two tops (Chris’s fiber is on top, Elizabeth’s below). Aren’t they lovely?

Perhaps you notice the little white dots in the picture. That’s snow. At this time of year, it’s rarely sunny here, so I took the fiber outside to get at least some natural light for the photo. I did get some light, but I also got some snow….

I spun a slubbed singles (thick and thin) from the green and purple wool, and a thin-only singles from the purple wool. Then I plied the two singles together.

Here is a picture of the yarn. I took this picture outside too. Even with natural light, albeit grey skies light, I had to use the flash on the camera. I’ll admit that the flash washed out the colors of the yarn a bit, so I adjusted the saturation and lightness with Photoshop.

I’m delighted with the result (of the yarn; not so much the photo). The Rambouillet and Merino combine to make a very soft, very elastic yarn. And the colors can’t be beat. I had several ideas for a name for this yarn, but I decided on “Sour Grapes”.

I’ll be taking it to Interquilten where it will be available for purchase.

Tea to Dye For

2010-12-05T13:22:00.000-08:00

Last May, I purchased 4 ounces of Very Special combed top, 50% alpaca and 50% Cormo wool. The specialness was in part due to the award winning and dream disturbing nature of the Cormo wool (see my blog entry June 23, 2010).

By the end of July, I’d spun up this lovely fiber into a skein with 472 yards that ended up weighing 3.85 ounces. See?

My plan was to then knit myself a small triangular shawl. But as much as I loved the fiber I wasn’t excited about a white shawl. Maybe I should dye the yarn? But it’s so beautiful! What to do….what to do….

This is what I did. First, I let the yarn sit in my stash for a few months, giving it time to mature and me time to debate the pros and cons of dyeing.

I mentioned my hesitation to a number of folks. To my surprise, I got the same advice from several completely independent sources: dye the yarn with tea.

Oh, yeah! But how? I asked around, and then I hunted around on the internet. Each source provided different directions. Personally, I like simple directions, so I did a test with the simplest directions I could find (essentially to just soak yarn in tea until it’s the color you like).

I found a small skein of handspun in my stash that was up for the test: an old skein, of some unnamed white wool, weighing just under 1 ounce. I had Navajo plied it; clearly one of my early attempts, because the plying (and the spinning of the singles for that matter) is pretty darn inconsistent. Perfect for sacrifice.

I boiled about 2 quarts of water, then let 8 tea bags of plain ol’ black tea steep in the water for about 20-30 minutes. In the meantime, I took my then-white sacrificial skein and soaked it in very warm, nearly hot water. When the tea had steeped for that little bit, I removed the tea bags and added the wet skein.

Oh, I started this process in the afternoon. Then I just let the yarn soak in the tea until the next morning. The “dye bath” was still very tea colored, but so was the skein. Then I rinsed the skein in cool water (same temperature as the tea water had become overnight). Then I washed the skein as I usually do in some warm water and Eucalan. Hung it up to dry. And, voilà! I got a lovely skein of fawn colored yarn. I like the color. I haven’t yet dyed the alpaca/Cormo yarn, but that will happen soon. Then I can get to knitting!

Here’s the test skein.

Exotic Animals

2010-11-28T08:53:00.001-08:00

My cousin, Trish, lives just east of Scranton, PA in the small burg of Lake Ariel. For the past two years, I’ve used my trip to the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY as an excuse to visit Trish. We’ve only ever seen each other three times in our lives. Our dads were brothers (Bill and Les, both now deceased). As it happens, Trish is also a fiber fiend. Only a few years ago she taught herself to knit, then she learned to spin. Now she owns fiber (and other) animals!

She has a pleasant number of alpacas. Here are three:

Two suffolk sheep (strictly “pet”). Here’s one:

And a lovely Belgian horse, Cloe (a rescue that is also a “pet”).

Now, the aforementioned animals are not exactly “exotic”, but Trish has a friend who lives down the road who does have some exotic animals. When Trish and I drove up to her establishment, we were greeted by two camels (dromedary). Here’s one:

Then we got to visit with the zebras. I’d never seen a zebra up close before. They have beautifully refined heads, shockingly stark stripes, and eye “makeup” (at least this one did). Here’s one view.

And another.

And the most exotic of all: Bella, Trish’s yorkie. Cute!

Rhinebeck Revisited: Sheep v. Goat

2010-11-27T13:38:00.000-08:00

Two of the workshops that I taught at Rhinebeck this year were “Diversity of Wool” and “Spinning & Knitting Goat Fibers”. I’d taught the wool workshop many times, but this was the first time I’d done the goat fibers workshop. I spent months collecting just the right mohair, cashmere, and pygora supplies and quite awhile composing the notes to accompany the workshop.

I do thoroughly enjoy the preparation stage of teaching. It’s during this preparation that a teacher really clarifies in her own mind what exactly is important about the topic in question. For this workshop, I got to come to terms with goat fibers, play with various ways to spin them, and remind myself what’s wonderful about knitting them. Because I was teaching this workshop during the same week as the wool workshop, I pondered on the similarities and differences between sheep fibers and goat fibers. This notion struck me:

Goat fibers are like bookends around sheep fibers.

Here’s what I mean: Wools range from soft and fine (e.g., merino) to coarse and strong (e.g., lincoln). The finer fibers tend to be less lustrous, the thicker fibers are more lustrous. And there’s plenty of variation along the continuum. I think of goat fibers as the outside extremes – the bookends – of these characteristics. For example, mohair from an adult angora goat is typically very strong, highly lustrous, and not particularly soft: rather like an extreme version of the longwools (cotswold, wensleydale, teeswater). On the other end of the spectrum is cashmere or pygora types B or C: very fine, very soft, not much luster; outside the range of merino.

Some of the mohair that I got for this workshop was from Sara Healy. Sara was the workshop coordinator at Rhinebeck, and she happens to raise angora goats. Her business name is Buckwheat Bridge Angoras. In advance of my trip I ordered some raw mohair, some washed locks, some mohair top, and some mohair/wool roving. When I arrived at the fairgrounds, Sara took me to her van (she was also vendoring at the festival), and got out the huge bag of mohair supplies for me. She had to dig a bit for the mohair/wool roving. While she was hunting for it, she said, “I hope blue is ok…” Then she pulled out a pound of the loveliest roving of 50% kid mohair and 50% cormo wool. The colors were fantastic!

I used about 4 ounces during the workshop, and took the remaining 12 ounces home with me. I got around to spinning a simple two-ply yarn from the roving last week. The colors reminded me of many of the beautiful lakes in this area. So, I named the yarn “Crystal Lake”, after one of the largest and prettiest lakes in Benzie county.

Here’s a picture of the yarn:

And you can see a picture of Crystal Lake if you click here.

To give wool “equal time”, here’s a picture of some of the samples that I have workshop participants examine in the Diversity of Wool class (In this shot, you can see samples of coopworth, cvm, finn, merino, and wensleydale.):

Thick Singles

2010-11-24T12:50:00.000-08:00

I spent last weekend at the inaugural Fall Fiber Retreat near Boyne Falls, Michigan. The retreat, nicely organized by Pip Jones and colleagues, was held at the Lake Louise Camp & Retreat Center . The lodge there is delightfully comfortable, with a good sized main room containing the requisite large fireplace. There is nothing nicer than a blazing fire on a raw and wet November evening!

On Saturday afternoon, I taught “Variations on Long Draw”. In this workshop, participants get to spin from various carded preparations, including mill carded rovings, hand carded rolags, and drum carded batts. We play with different styles of long draw and different thicknesses of the spun yarns. I especially like covering techniques for spinning thick, soft, Lopi-style singles: yarns that have just enough twist not to fall apart, but not so much twist that they bias when knitted.

I personally love spinning these yarns. They provide nearly instant gratification. You can fill a bobbin in no time, and with no plying to do, you’ve got a usable yarn right away! (Well, I do wash them first.)

I’ve had the chance to teach this “variations” workshop at several venues this year: Midwest Masters 2010 in Wisconsin (see my blog entry on Emily’s Rolags ), the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival at Rhinebeck, The Gathering 2010 in Vermont, and last weekend at the Fall Fiber Retreat.

It’s always nice to hear from students who come away with a new appreciation for spinning thick yarns. I recently got an email from one such student, Marjorie Marker, who took the workshop at Rhinebeck. Here’s her email:

“Hi Amy, I just wanted to thank you for the great long draw class. It really helped me to make stable singles. I was sitting right across from you next to the lady with the lendrum with the duct-tape. Here’s some pictures of my first attempt using some coopworth from Maple Ridge Stock Farm. Hope to see you next year.”

Here’s a picture that Marjorie sent me of her spinning success:

By the way, she got the coopworth wool from Maple Row Stock Farm, a wonderful Michigan business run by Deb and Bob Cline (517-741-7434). They do have delightful rovings. I have 2 balls of romney roving sitting on my desk right now.

And here’s a picture of the Lendrum spinning wheel that Marjorie mentioned. Would you believe that both rubber links between treadles and footmen broke during the workshop?! Duct tape to the rescue!

Silk Hankies at The Gathering

2010-11-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve been doing more and more teaching these days. And the more I teach spinning workshops, the more fiber supplies I must buy. There are several advantages to this need to buy: I can keep up with current fiber supply trends and current costs; I get to see a regular turn-over of content in my fiber inventory; and I get to know vendors who are good fiber sources (and sometimes not-so-good fiber sources). I also get to share source information with others.

My recent participation in The Gathering 2010 in Vermont included more than teaching workshops. I also got to shop. I mean, I had to shop.

There were perhaps a dozen vendors at the retreat. My plan was to carefully peruse each booth for supplies I will need for upcoming teaching events. I’m always on the look-out for such things as good carded rovings, washed locks, down fibers, and silk hankies.

When I entered the room where the vendors were set up, my eyes were immediately drawn to the first booth on the right: Robin Russo’s The Spinning Studio (802-222-9240). Robin had two enormous boxes of brilliantly dyed silk hankies right up front. Wow! I shuffled through the first box, grabbing about 6 bags of various colors of silk hankies. I was afraid of losing control, so I stopped grabbing and paid for the hankies in hand.

I was very pleased with that purchase. I’m scheduled to teach my “Spinning with Silk Hankies” workshop twice in early 2011: first for the Manasota Weavers Guild in Sarasota Florida in March, and then at the Duluth Art Institute in Duluth, Minnesota in April. (See my website for specific dates and contact information.)

I then found a wonderful source of cashmere: Norma Bromley, who had been the workshop coordinator for The Gathering, raises cashmere-producing goats. Her business name is Boreas Farm Cashmere. I bought 1 ounce of a lovely brown cashmere, and 2 ounces of cashmere blended with silk. Norma doesn’t have an internet presence, but you can contact her by email, boreas25@localnet.com

My next stop among the vendors was at Vermont Grand View Farm. They raise Romney sheep and Angora goats. I bought 8 ounces of white Romney roving, and 8 ounces of grey Romney/mohair roving. Both are delightfully pleasant and easy to spin.

With my requisite shopping done, I returned to my room. That night I had second thoughts about all those silk hankies. They were so beautiful, and the price was right. I really, really should have bought some more….

So, the next day, I promptly went back to the vendors and snagged several more bags of silk hankies. In all, I purchased over 11 ounces of silk hankies. That may not sound like much, but silk hankies go a long way. Here’s a picture of my purchase triumph:

These hankies will be added to my current stash that includes wonderful silk hankies from two of my favorite sources of fiber for spinning: Bonkers Handmade Originals and River’s Edge Fiber Arts.

Travels with Letty

2010-11-11T07:37:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I had the great good fortune to teach at The Gathering 2010, a biennial fiber retreat sponsored by the Northeast Handspinners Association. The event was held at a delightful ski resort, Mt. Snow, near West Dover, Vermont.

I also had the great good fortune to travel with another instructor from Michigan, Letty Klein. Along with Ann Brown, she is the author of The Shepherd’s Rug. Letty raises Karakul sheep (see her website and blog) and she creates fabulous braided rugs from roving. It was a true pleasure to spend the weekend with her. We were in my trusty Subaru for two days on the way to Vermont, we roomed together at the retreat, and we travelled together for two more days back home. Letty is a nice, nice lady, with loads of knowledge about sheep and fleeces. Not only has she taught her braided rug techniques throughout the country, but she has also been the sheep and fleece judge at numerous fiber festivals.

Spending time with her has made me even more inspired to try her rug braiding technique. I’ve got a few bins full of shetland rovings that are not all that nice for spinning, but now I’m convinced they’ll work well for rugs.

Letty gave me a good close up look at some of her rugs. The one I wanted to take home was a beautiful rug made from natural colored wensleydale wool. Lovely!

Both Letty and I taught Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I was teaching spinning workshops and Letty was teaching rug braiding. And we both travelled with the supplies we needed for these workshops. Needless to say, my car was on the full side. The view out the rear window was somewhat compromised on the way to Vermont, but I had a clear view on the way home.

We travelled through Canada (Port Huron, MI to Niagara Falls, NY). This was the second time this year I’ve used my “enhanced” drivers license to cross the USA-Canada border. Despite having a vehicle jam packed with fiber, we had no customs trouble crossing the border.

It was a great trip with great company. Thanks, Letty!

Wild Wind

2010-10-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

A month has passed since my last blog entry. I’ve been busy. After the Northern Michigan Lamb & Wool Festival, I scrambled to prepare for my workshops at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. That trip – which was great! – has come and gone. I will be writing more later about the Rhinebeck trip, but today I’m posting about the weather…

The upper midwest has been beset by crazy wind. Wild wind. Ill wind. Here, in Benzie County, Michigan, the wind and rain started about mid-day yesterday. Averaging about 30 – 40 mph, there are gusts up to 60 or so mph. I’m not surprised by the strength of the wind, but by its persistence. It was windy all last night. My dog, Toby, did not sleep well. It was windy this morning.

I walked Toby early this morning, as usual. What was not usual, however, was a new dog on the road. I knew my neighbors had a dog because I have heard it barking. It has a fearsome bark. The young son (maybe 8 years old?) was walking the dog on a leash. Toby, too, was on a leash. They were approaching Toby and me. Let me emphasize that Toby is a sweet dog who gets along well with almost all dogs. As we got closer, I asked, “Is your dog friendly?” Before the youngster could answer, his dog pulled the leash out of his hand. The dog barrelled toward Toby and managed to get in several severe bites before I could step on his leash to stop him.

I quickly took Toby home, examined the wounds, and called the vet’s office. We made the trip to the clinic. Toby’s wounds were treated. For the next two weeks I need to apply Betadine and give her antibiotics to prevent infection. Toby is not happy.

I stopped by the neighbor’s house on the way home from the vet. She was most apologetic, insisted the dog would be better regulated, and paid my vet bill. All is good.

I think the wind is in part responsible.

I don’t want to show you pictures of Toby in her current condition, but here’s a picture that was taken of her about six years ago. Isn’t she the cutest dog ever?

It is still windy. I’m staying indoors.

Fiber is Soft. Metal is Not.

2010-09-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I like working with fiber is that it is soft. Even the most coarse of wools is softer than many substances around us. And, to me, soft means “safe”. I’m unlikely to hurt myself with yarn.

Metal, on the other hand, is something I need to be cautious around. Knowing this, before I started working regularly with hand cards and hand combs, I got a tetanus shot. Good thing, too, because I regularly get poked by those tines. So I’m clumsy. So sue me…

Well, I may be metal and wire phobic, but I’m happy to report that other spinners and fiber artists are not. Meet Kathi Pecor. She took a couple of my classes at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival earlier this month. In one of those classes, we played with core-spinning (wrapping fiber around a core yarn). She then took core spinning outside the box. In an email, she told me, “…I applied what I learned to something I saw on the internet-core-spinning with wire as the core. I used 24g wire and some wild glitzy stuff I carded and just spun away-the hardest part is that the stuff doesn't wind up on the bobbin-you have to do it by hand-which isn't all that bad….”

Here’s the picture she sent me.

I asked her what she planned to do with this fiber-wrapped wire. She replied that it might find a place in jewely or book binding. How cool is that! For more, visit her blog.

Over this last weekend, I met another fiber artist who is combining metal and fiber. Her name is Emily Wohlscheid. Her business name is Bricolage Studios. She was a vendor at the Northern Michigan Lamb & Wool Festival . I was quite intrigued by her jewelry and her orifice hooks. The orifice hooks had tiny bits of fiber encased in plexiglass (I think) and copper. Charming! She has a few examples in her etsy store and she discusses her art work on her blog . Take a look.

Page 32

2010-09-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

Two wraps-per-inch events have recently collided in my universe. Perhaps not of astronomical proportions, but noteworthy to me none the less.

At the recent Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival I helped one of the other instructors, Nancy Shroyer, by giving her rides between the motel and the fairgrounds. Nancy is the owner of Nancy’s Knit Knacks , and she makes marvelously ingenious and useful tools for spinners and knitters. On the last day of the festival, she gave me a handful of her wraps-per-inch tools, hoping that I could use them in my teaching. What a sweet gesture. And, yes, I certainly can use them!

After she gave them to me, I sheepishly said, “I have to warn you….” I told her about an article I’d written that was on the verge of being published in Spin Off magazine about the wraps-per-inch measurement. In the article, I presented evidence that the WPI measurement is lacking “reliability” (from a research methods point of view). I didn’t want Nancy to think I was utterly opposed to the measurement or that I didn’t like her lovely tools. She responded with grace and equanimity.

A few days after I returned from that trip, my copy of the Fall 2010 issue of Spin Off appeared in my mailbox. My article is on page 32. I structured the article on the standard format for a scientific paper: introduction, methods, results, and discussion. What do you think?

Sheeeep! Sheeeep!

2010-09-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

I got home late last night from my trip to Jefferson, WI for the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival . It was a terrific trip. The highlight was after the festival: my stay overnight Sunday at the home of Carol and Paul Wagner. They own and run Hidden Valley Farm & Woolen Mill.

We three left Jefferson on Sunday (after a good dinner at a local Mexican restaurant) at about 7:30pm. It was a three-vehicle caravan. Carol was in the lead with the truck and trailer, then came Paul with the van and camper, and I brought up the tail in my trusty Subaru. We arrived at their farm at about 9:30pm. I was exhausted, but I imagine that both Carol and Paul were more so! The sky was clear and the Milky Way was visible. Ah!

After a night of sleeping deeply, I got up to fresh coffee, eggs, bacon and toast. Yum! I wandered around the near surrounds of their old farmhouse (which had earlier belonged to Paul’s parents) and took pictures.

Carol and Paul showed me the workings of their fiber mill: washing machines (old ringer types), drying racks, picker, post-picker room (that’s what I call it; I don’t know the official name), roving carder, quilting batt carder. All were awesome machines. The building that served as the retail store was a fabulous space. I walked up the stairs and promptly asked if I could move in. They have so many wonderful ways of displaying their wares. I especially loved the “cabinet” that had once been a paper press.

Then Carol took me to the sheep pastures. They raise Coopworth sheep. First off, we visited the lambs (now weaned). There were over 150 of them! Cute cute cute! And Frenchy, the guard llama, was right in the mix. Paul arrived and asked Carol and me to help move the lambs to the next pasture (they rotate pastures frequently). Those lambs did not cooperate! Carol and I tried to chase them around; I was next to useless. Finally they figured out which way to go. Hey, they’re young, like teenagers. No wonder they don’t want to follow directions!

Next, we went to the pasture with the ewes. When Carol and I drove up, they pretty much ignored us. When Paul arrived he said, “Hey, Amy, watch this.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Sheeeep! Sheeeep!” As a group, all the sheep (many more than I could count) swept down the hillside toward Paul, hoping, I’m sure, that he would have something wonderful for them. It was a sight!

The rams were in a third location. They were not at all interested in visiting with us. They were too busy eating some luscious clover.

After we had a delightful lunch of ground mutton burgers, Carol and Paul bid me adieu with some peppers, squash, and eggplant from their garden and a hefty chunk of lamb/pork summer sausage. I drove off to Manitowoc to catch the ferry to my side (the “good” side) of Lake Michigan.

Rich! I tell you I’m rich to know such wonderful people. This past week could not have ended better. Thanks, Carol. Thanks, Paul.

Treats for Teachers

2010-09-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

An apple for the teacher. A sweet, kind gift to show gratitude and admiration.

I sometimes get “apples” from students in my workshops. It always surprises me. It always delights me. And it makes me think I must be doing something right!

One such gift I received recently was a charming piggy bank. Not just any piggy bank! This one is meant for fiber fiends. One of the folks who was in my beginning spinning workshop at the Michigan Fiber Festival gave it to me. I was so stunned by the gesture that I failed to note who exactly gave it to me. (How rude!) If anyone reading this blog knows the culprit, tell me. I really must send her a proper thank-you.

I began putting coins in this fountain right away. When it’s full, I will spend the money on something fibery, of course, and completely for myself.

Rare Threads

2010-09-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

I just met with Sylvia Walworth in Traverse City to deliver my wall hanging, “Petosegay – Sunbeams of Promise” (see my blog entry June 30, 2010). She is one of the organizers of the upcoming fiber arts show, “Rare Threads – Eclectic Meanderings”.

This juried show will be held at the Jordan River Arts Council building in East Jordan, Michigan. There is an opening reception Sunday, October 3, 1-4pm. The show then runs October 3 through November 12, 2010.

In conjunction with this show, the Jordan River Arts Council is sponsoring a number of fiber arts workshops. Topics include batik, shibori, porcupine quillwork, beading, knitting, and others. You can check their website for details on these workshops.

I’m thrilled that my wall hanging was accepted to this show, and I do look forward to seeing all the other wonderful fiber art on exhibit.

Wisconsin Sheep & Wool

2010-09-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

Next week I’ll be travelling to Jefferson, Wisconsin for the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival . This’ll be my third year teaching at this delightful event. I can hardly wait!

For one thing, I get to travel by ferry (“The SS Badger”) across Lake Michigan. What a treat to be on that inland sea for 4 peaceful hours. A perfect opportunity to knit!

Then, I get to teach workshops for all three days of the festival. My workshop, “Plying Balanced Yarns” filled rather quickly. The other three workshops still have spaces available. I’m especially looking forward to my workshop, “Spinning with Commercial Yarns” in which we play with re-spinning commerical yarns and various crazy ways of combining handspun singles and commercial yarns. Here’s a picture of some of the stuff we’ll do:

I like that this festival has a very strong emphasis on agriculture. The “lambing barn” and the “hall of breeds” are both wonders for visitors. In addition to the large selection of fiber arts vendors, there are many agricultural vendors. You really get the connection between those who raise the animals and those who use their fiber.

On the cover of the festival’s magazine this year is a print by Joan Arnold . I love her work. A few years ago, I bought a print of her piece, “The Gathering”. I’d love someday to get an original. I will certainly spend some time at her booth admiring her art….and maybe purchasing some!

These are a Few of my Favorite Things

2010-08-31T13:26:00.000-07:00

Inspiration hit….with the help of some fiber friends. A month ago, I bought not quite 2 yards of a cotton fabric with a sheepy print (see my blog entry July 30 ). At the time of purchase I was without any idea as to what to do with the fabric. A few days later my friend, Gladys S., suggested making an apron.

Brilliant! I love aprons. And just recently my friend, Marty F., offered to make me an apron. The stars were aligned in my favor! I gave the fabric to Marty and she promptly made me two aprons.

It didn’t take me long to get it dirty. I made a peach pie on Sunday. The peaches this year have been especially delicious. This was my second peach pie of the season. I shared the pie with friends.

My friend, Sylvia VM., took a picture of me in one of my sheep aprons, holding my fabulous pie, standing next to my adorable dog, Toby.

A new apron, fresh pie, my dog….all in the company of some wonderful fiber friends. These are a few of my favorite things.

Events Updates

2010-08-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

I love to go to fiber events, whether I am teaching classes, taking classes or just fiber hunting. On my website, I list the upcoming fiber events where I’ll be teaching. Today I just made a couple of additions to that list. Some of these events are brand new, some I’ve attended before and thoroughly enjoyed!

Here are the new additions to my events list:

I’m teaching a “Learn to Knit” class at Interquilten, a quilt shop in Interlochen, Michigan. Classes are on three consecutive Wednesdays (September 8, 15, and 22, 2010), 6-7pm. Contact the store to register.

The “First Annual Fall Fiber Retreat”. This is a weekend event scheduled for November 19 – 21, 2010 at the Lake Louise Methodist Camp near Boyne Falls, Michigan. Pippa Jones is organizing this new event. She’s asked me to teach “Variations on Long Draw” and “I-Cord Edges and More!” You can contact Pippa via email, jonesph12@gmail.com

My friend, Carol Wagner (of Hidden Valley Farm and Woolen Mill ), asked me to participate in the “Winter Weekend Warmup” in Greenbay, Wisconsin, February 4-6, 2011. I believe that knitting socks will be the event theme. We haven’t decided yet what exactly I’ll be teaching. Contact Carol for more information, hvfarmwoolenmill@lakefield.net

One event that is not yet on my list is another visit to the Manasota Weavers Guild in Sarasota, Florida. The workshops will either be in December 2010 or March 2011. I was there this year in February and had a swell time! I’ll post details as I learn them.

The workshops that I’ll be teaching at the Duluth Art Institute (April 30, May 1, 2011) have been decided upon: “Spinning with Commercial Yarns”, “Plying for Texture”, and “Spinning with Silk Hankies”. I taught at the DAI in late April 2009. Not surprising for Duluth, Minnesota at that time of year, we had a snow storm! Other than that, it was a most wonderful experience and I do look forward to returning to that event. You can call the DAI business office to register, (218) 733-7560.

For a list of these events (with contact information) and others I’ll be attending, take a look at the events schedule page of my website.

No matter where you find your fiber fun, I hope you make the most out of it!

Spin on! Knit on!

Constraints and Creativity

2010-08-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, August 1, 2010, I started three knitting projects: a pair of socks, a shawl, and an afghan. Well, I finished knitting the afghan just before the Michigan Fiber Festival, and Tuesday I finished weaving in the yarn ends. (I’m still mulling over the cuff edge of the socks, and I’ve knitted about 15 inches on the shawl.)

The afghan is knitted from some brushed mohair yarns that have been in my stash for awhile. I used five colors: light purple, an orangey red, a raspberry red, a gold, and the fifth color is really 4 very thin brushed kid mohair yarns held together and knitted as one (orange, dark purple, lilac, and brown) that created a sort of “raisin” color. The other yarns are either “La Gran” or La Gran-like.

The construction is simple: garter stitch edges, with the body of the afghan knitted in the classic “feather and fan” pattern (multiples of 18 sts):

Row 1: knit
Row 2: purl
Row 3: *K2tog three times, (yo, k1) six times, K2tog three times*, rep from * to *.
Row 4: purl

I created “stripes” of color, with each stripe equal to one 4-row repeat of the feather and fan.

Here’s where the constraints come in. My first constraint: how much of each color was available. I had 10 skeins of the light purple, but only 1-3 skeins of the other colors. So, the light purple is the “background” or main color and I needed to be conservative on how much gold to use (only 1 skein).

My second constraint was self-imposed. I decided to maintain a color sequence of the non-main colors: A) orangey red, B) raisin, C) gold, then D) raspberry red.

I love the challenge of creating something new and interesting within constraints. I allowed myself to play with how many stripes and how thick the stripes could be. Knitting this afghan reminded me of my days long ago as a dance student at the University of Utah. We had composition & improvisation classes nearly every semester for four years. This afghan was like a slow growing improvisation within the color constraints that I had.

I found myself thinking really no more than 4 or 5 stripes in advance. I allowed myself to “go with the flow”, yet maintain the color sequence. Here’s the stripe order, with the main color (light purple) identified as “O” and the other colors identified by their letters as listed above. There are five “repeats” of the sequence of colors (A,B,C,D), but each “repeat” varies with the amount of “O” interspersed and how much of each color I used:

A,O,B,O,C,O,D,O
A,B,C,D,O,O
A,A,O,O,B,C,O,O,D,D
A,O,O,O,O,A,A,O,B,O,B,O,O,C,D,D,O,O,D,O
A,O,A,O,A,O,O,O,O,B,C,D,D

I rather like the regimented-to-irregular composition that resulted. Here’s a picture of the stripe sequence of the afghan:

Photos from Michigan Fiber Festival 2010

2010-08-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

Five full days at the Michigan Fiber Festival!

When I arrived on Wednesday, I took a picture of the gate to the Allegan County Fairgrounds.

Wednesday afternoon, I taught a class on I-cords. In this class, we knit a sample version of a wrist wrap pattern that incorporates I-cords on all edges. One workshop participant had her daughter with her. The daughter was quite taken by one pair of wrist wraps that I’d brought as samples. You can find a free copy of the wrist wrap pattern as a pdf file on my website.

On Friday, a photographer from the Kalamazoo Gazette took pictures at the festival, including some pictures of me teaching beginning spinning. I insisted that his photos make me look 20 pounds thinner. That didn’t happen. Take a look.

Friday was also the day that the vendors open for business. I promptly went to Carol Wagner’s booth, Hidden Valley Farm and Woolen Mill. With Carol was her friend and Spinner Extraordinaire, Laurie Boyer. Laurie spins the most amazing art yarns. One of the yarns she had for sale this year incorporated q-tips! Can you believe it?! Her most stunning yarn this year was a skein of yarn that had been wrapped multiple times and then had cut-aways. Spooky but spectacular! I covet her yarns.

A close up:

The many steps:

Saturday morning I took a class from Galina Khmeleva, “Handspinning Orenburg Style”. Great class. I am taking to heart her advice of practicing at least 15 minutes a day. She says it’ll take about 2 weeks of this daily practice to develop some proficiency. Hmmm….

I had time to visit the barns on Saturday afternoon. Pygora goats were the featured fiber animal at this year’s festival. They are really really cute. Here’s a picture that shows off the beautiful coat of a couple pygora goats from Great Lakes Pygora .

I stayed with the pygora theme on Sunday, taking Patsy Zawistoski’s class, “Positively Pygora”. Another great class! We got a good look at all three types of pygora fleeces.

Type A (rather like kid mohair)

Type B (more like cashmere)

Type C (even more like cashmere, but way more guard hair)

Sunday afternoon, there was a new event at the festival: a sheep costume parade. I got one picture and then the batteries in my camera died.

Next year, next year….

All Aboard for Allegan!

2010-08-11T08:03:00.000-07:00

The Michigan Fiber Festival is just around the corner. Yippee!

Let me be plain: I love this event. I know that the weather in August can be a challenge, but this summer has already been so hot and so humid that I’m psychologically prepared for these conditions to continue. (My advice: Wear linen; it dries so quickly.) All kinds of fiber animals. Loads and loads of fiber vendors. Fiber arts, fleece, and skein competitions. The Allegan county fairgrounds are classically Midwestern and bucolic. And who isn’t charmed by the sheep dog demonstrations?

Don’t forget the workshops! Workshops start on Wednesday, August 18 and continue through Sunday. The Festival itself opens to the public on Saturday and Sunday.

I’ll be teaching on Wednesday (“Spinning With Silk Hankies” and “I-Cord Edges and More!”), Thursday (“Slip Stitch Knitting”), and Friday (“Beginning Spinning”). I know that my Friday class is filled, and the Thursday class is nearly filled. But there is still room in the Wednesday classes. And I love both those half-day workshops. I’ve been crazy about I-cords for years; I incorporate them into a significant number of my designs.

This is the first year I’ve been offering the silk hankies workshop. The more I work with silk hankies, the more I like them! I especially like that they make great yarns whether you use high twist, low twist, or even no twist!

And silk takes color so beautifully! I’m not a dyer, so I buy silk hankies already dyed by artists who know what they’re doing. Two of my favorite sources of dyed silk hankies are Bonkers Handmade Originals and River’s Edge Fiber Arts. I’ll be using hankies from both these sources in my workshop next Wednesday. Here’s a picture of some silk hankies and some things you can spin from them.

So, here’s hoping you can join the fun in Allegan and further hoping that the weather is kind to us.

A Great Wheel

2010-08-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my good friend, Gladys Strong, delivered her great wheel to my house. Gladys has been working as a fiber artist most of her life, and she’s now well past 80 years old. Lately, she’s decided to downsize her considerable collection of equipment and materials. And she offered me her great wheel and several pounds of cotton and flax for spinning. I am honored. It is a beautiful wheel. It was made for her by Joseph Danhoffer in 1986. I believe Gladys was living in Virginia at the time. Now, she lives in Lake Leelanau with her daughter and son-in-law. Her son-in-law, Joe, was kind enough to use his van to deliver the wheel to my house.

I didn’t have much to offer in exchange. But I did send Gladys and Joe home with some fresh chives, thyme, basil, parsley, and tomatoes from my garden.

Now, I must live up to this magnificent gift and hone my skills at quill spinning. Here’s a picture of the wheel.

How Many Projects Can You Start in a Day?

2010-08-05T08:54:00.001-07:00

I don’t know what got into me. Typically, I work on just one knitting project at a time. I enjoy the journey from beginning to middle to end. But on Sunday, some bug attacked me and I started three knitting projects.

It was getting late in the day, and I was watching TV (on the computer). Since I’d finished spinning “Sylvia”, I had a strong urge to make a swatch from that yarn. The size 1 (US) needles worked well to create a snug feeling fabric. I got 15 sts per 2 inches. A good gauge. Then I started to consider a sock pattern. I have a very old pair of commercially made socks that I’d always wanted to duplicate. So, I spent some time examining that pair of socks and writing down its pattern. But I couldn’t decide what to do with the cuff of the sock. I want to create a scalloped edge of some sort, but nothing struck me right away. So, I put that project aside. Here’s a picture of the swatch (30 sts knitted in the round):

Next, I started work on a shawl. This is a pattern that I created a number of years ago, and I’m just now getting around to writing up the pattern (“Dream Shawl”). This triangular shawl is knitted from the lower corner to the top edge. The lower corner starts with I-cord fringe, and I needed a picture of that beginning for the pattern. So, I pulled out some grey Cascade 220 and knitted the I-cord fringe. But it was too late in the day (not good lighting) to take a picture, so I put that project aside. I did take some pictures yesterday. Here’s one:

Still feeling the urge to knit the night away, I decided to start an afghan from a large stash of brushed mohair yarns that I’ve been collecting for years. I wanted to remind myself of the important strategies for knitting mohair in preparation for the goat fibers workshop I’m teaching at Rhinebeck in October. This has been a fun project. I’m using the old standby, “feather and fan”, in stripes of colors. The fun thing about knitting stripes is that the upcoming color tends to encourage me to knit more, faster, and longer. So, I get done faster. Here’s a picture of the afghan in progress:

Three projects started. Which will I finish first?

Sylvia's "Sylvia", Part 4...and More

2010-07-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

For the past month, I’ve spent Thursday afternoons at “Open Knitting” at Interquilten , a local quilt and yarn store (1:00 – 4:00pm every Thursday. All are welcome!). Yesterday, in an off-handed way, I asked if the store had any “sheep fabric”. Oh, yes! Once I saw it, I could not resist. I bought all that was on the bolt, about 1 ¾ yards. I have no idea what I’ll do with it. I’m waiting for inspiration. Here it is:

I mean! Could you resist it?

As for “Sylvia”, I finished the spinning. The first skein – from from the fiber that I’d washed, combed, then carded – weighs 2.90 ounces and has 296 yards. I did manage to get a bit of a streaky effect, but not as dramatic as I’d hoped. I’m still optimistic that I’ll get a nice effect when it’s knitted up.

The second skein – from just the darkest of the extra fiber that Sylvia had washed and combed and given to me – weighs .85 ounces and has 86 yards. I plan to use it for the toes of the socks.

For both skeins, I spun the singles on my Reeves upright wheel, using the smaller of the two whorls. It was a wonderful opportunity to concentrate on the spinning needs of this most magnificently springy fiber. I then plied the yarns on my Louet S10-DT, also using the smallest whorl.

Here’s a picture of the two skeins sitting atop the sheep fabric (I think the lighter skein has much more personality than shows in this photo):

Local Corriedale

2010-07-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

In late May, at the peak of lilac season, I drove up to Windy Knob Farms between Omena and Northport to buy a corriedale fleece. Although the farm itself has been around for a very long time, only recently have the current owners begun raising corriedale sheep.

The current owners, Marek and Dan:

Dan and Marek have put a huge effort into establishing a fine herd of natural colored sheep. They’ve also got a guard llama, chickens, and the most spectacular views of the best of Leelanau county. Looking east from their porch you can see lilac bushes in the foreground and Grand Traverse Bay in the background. The southward view from the farmhouse is of some beautiful cherry orchards. It is a most lovely farm. Looking east:

And they have lovely sheep with lovely fleece. I bought Lisa’s fleece. Lisa has a light-to-medium grey fleece, very nice crimp, very soft. The staple length was on the short side, 3-3 ½ inches, because they’d had her sheared earlier to avoid a “break” in the fleece. But the fiber was so very nice.

Lisa and friends on the hoof:

Here's Lisa off the hoof:

I originally planned to wash and card Lisa’s fleece myself, but I realized that I don’t have the time. So last Saturday, when I went to the Fiber Arts Festival in Charlevoix, I took Lisa’s fleece with me and I dropped it off with Deb McDermott of Stonehedge Fiber Mill to have prepared into roving.

I look forward to spinning Lisa. And I look forward to future visits to Windy Knob Farms.

Road Trip! Road Trip!

2010-07-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

For the past few years whenever I’ve gone to a fiber festival it has been as an instructor. In that capacity, I have had to fit my fiber shopping in between or after classes. But yesterday, I attended the Fiber Arts Festival at Castle Farms in Charlevoix, Michigan purely as a spectator and shopper.
It’s a nice road trip from Interlochen to Charlevoix, about 70 miles. My friend Becky M and I left about 10:30am. Yesterday was a cloudy – occasionally rainy – day, but the drive was delightful. We made one stop on the way to Charlevoix at a very sweet road stop on US 31 at Birch Lake. It’s one of my all time favorite roadside rest areas. Birch Lake is a small lake, with cottages dotting the shores. Yesterday, there were a few boats hanging out at their docks. Dragonflies lazed above the calm water. Minnows darted in the shallow water near the edge of the lake. Becky picked a bit of mint from the shoreline. It would have been so easy to just hang out there all day, hypnotized and soothed by the scene.

We continued on, however, to Charlevoix. I had some specific shopping goals. I’m scheduled to teach a workshop this fall at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival on “Spinning & Knitting Goat Fibers”, so I was on the lookout for teaching supplies: mohair, pygora, and cashmere….and blends of these fibers with either wool or silk. I found some wonderful fibers! I got some handpainted cashmere/silk/Merino tops from Creatively Dyed Yarn, some natural brown cashmere blended with silk from River’s Edge Fiber Arts, and some pygora (both types A and B) from Great Lakes Pygora .

Here’s a picture of some of my loot:

Becky and I also ran into many fiber friends who were either vendoring or shopping: Marty F, Cindy H, Tracie H, Joan S. We ate lunch at the festival. It was a perfect day for a hotdog and fries!

So, the summer fiber festival season has begun on a good note. I look forward to more fiber road trips: Allegan, Jefferson, West Branch, Rhinebeck. Good thing I have a trust-worthy car!

Sylvia's "Sylvia", Part 3

2010-07-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

I carded the combed bits of “Sylvia” on Sunday. I ended up making four batts each weighing 0.75 oz. My first step was to separate all the small combed tops into four piles (one for each batt). I wanted to card together all the shades of grey, so I tried to put equal amounts of all the different shades of grey into each pile.

My general carding technique was this: I would take one small combed top at a time, open it up, shake it a bit to remove any twist. I then pre-drafted it lengthwise (just as if I were going to spin it – this strategy helps to make the fibers as loose as possible), and then I broke the top into two long pieces. I then put the pieces side-by-side onto the uptake table of the drum carder, opening up the fibers sideways a bit to make sure I had a thin layer of fiber. Then I would card the top onto the drum very slowly. I only made one pass on the drum carder for each batt.

For the first two batts, I selected the combed tops randomly, so that the batt was made of very thin layers of different colors of grey.

Now, my original idea was to make batts that would spin up into a nice variegated yarn. I was a little concerned that the strategy I chose for combining colors in the first two batts would result in too continous of a color of medium grey, with very little variegation.

So, for the second two batts, I changed my tune: I added the tops to the batts in order of darkest grey to lightest grey. I’m hoping this strategy will result in the variegation I have in my mind’s eye.

Here’s a picture of the four batts (the top two batts were done first using the thin-layer strategy; the bottom two batts used the from-darkest-to-lightest strategy):

I’ll spin the first two batts onto one bobbin, the second two batts onto a second bobbin, and then ply them together.

I’m a bit concerned that 3 ounces will not make quite enough yarn for a pair of socks. And I expressed this concern to Sylvia (my friend, not the wool). She graciously provided me with 3 more ounces of already combed “Sylvia” (the wool, not my friend). She did her combing with Alvin Ramer Super Mini Combs (available through The Wheel Thing). Both Sylvia and another friend, Joan, own these combs, and they both absolutely love them.

My plan is to spin this wool directly from the tops, and not card them. I will try to keep the colors separate so I’ll end up with small amounts of solid colored yarns of various colors of grey…which I will use on the cuffs and/or heels and/or toes of the socks.

Here’s a picture of the extra fiber that Sylvia gave me:

Sylvia's "Sylvia", Part 2

2010-07-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

I finished combing the CVM lamb wool (“Sylvia”) on Thursday. A lovely rainbow of greys! The fiber was fairly easy to comb. If I were to do it again, however, I would be more meticulous about opening up the tips of the locks before washing the fleece. More opened tips would have made the combing even easier.

As it turned out, I lost about 50% by weight: I had started with 6 ounces of raw wool, and I ended up with 3 ounces of clean and combed wool.

Here’s a picture I took yesterday:

The next step is to create a variegated blend with my Deb’s Deluxe drum carder. I’ll let you know how it turns out!