Well, crap o' lantern!

Although I really love the pattern, I was hoping to save a little cash by not buying the Twist Collective pattern Wisteria by Kate Gilbert. Then, the FO pictures came rolling on on Ravelry:

(Sweater by No Knit Sherlock)

It really is as pretty as it looks. Guess I'm going to have to buy it. *grumble*

Spoonflower

I've been so busy lately that I haven't been keeping an ear to the ground with regards to the things that are happening on the Internets, so I just found out about Spoonflower. They're in invite-only beta mode at the moment, so I signed up to the waiting list.

Per the website:

"Spoonflower gives individuals the power to print their own designs on fabric that they can then use to make quilts, clothes, pillows, blankets, framed textile art and many, many other things that might surprise you."

I'm intrigued. Are you?

Taking a moment

It occurred to me last night that I'm extremely, extremely lucky.

Not just for the usual reasons of having a job and my health and a great family and all that - I'm grateful for that of course.

I was looking at my three wheels and all the spindles I've collected over the past few years, as well as my stunning fiber stash and all my amazing and beautiful fiberart friends and I realized that not everyone has this. I'm so happy I'm friends with all of you guys and I have all this fiberart in my life.

Thanks!

Majacraft's so-called affordable wheel

I don't know what's been going on with spinning wheels lately, but it seems they've taken a jump in price across the board. Majacraft has introduced a nice little wheel called the Pioneer:

Definitely scaled back (pine and plywood) and being sold as an entry-level budget model, but I wouldn't turn it down by any means. It's being sold at $469.

Since when is $469 considered budget? You can get an Ashford Traveler made of New Zealand silver beech for $440, and that's with a bunch of freebies:

I was horrified when I found out my tiny little Louet Victoria, which I bought for (in my opinion a slightly high) $620, was going for $733. These are astronomical price increases.

Since most of the companies that make spinning wheels are not US-based, I'm assuming that this price jump is based on a combination of currency fluctuation and fuel costs, and not the fact that people with more disposable income are getting into spinning and the price increases are just a greedy grab for more profit margin, right?

All this is more incentive for me to start a spinning wheel company...someday.

Crazy, but it Feels Right

Although the fiberart hasn't stopped, the time I have to post blog entries has been drastically reduced due to the work I get paid to do (boo!). However, this acquisition was noteworthy enough that I had to post something:

It's an old handmade spinning wheel of a design I've never seen before. I bought it very inexpensively (by wheel standards) and it is still functional. The wheel and the flyer assembly are made of metal, probably aluminum. It's double drive, and the brake tension is adjusted by sliding the flyer assembly out along the wooden "rails" and anchoring with a wingnut. It's being shipped to me and I should have it in my home very soon. I can think of little else at the moment.

In other news:

• I completed the Morehouse Merino ChocolateMint Knit Kit
• I began a pair of socks with an all-over lace pattern out of three-ply yarn spun from Tactile Fiber Arts naturally dyed Wensleydale.
  

About that "sister knitter" rubbish...

I read Ravelry forums a lot. Usually, I can find some really interesting threads, but after the first few informative posts, I generally get too irritated to continue reading.

Part of the underlying set of problems that contribute to this high incidence of miscommunication is the popular romantic misconception that merely being a knitting or fiberart hobbyist means that you share a sacred bond with everyone else who does the same thing.


Oh, no, no, no.

Knitting is a a vocation for a few, a passion for many, and to still others, just something they do with their hands. We're not priests, doctors, or legal officers; we don't take any oaths to uphold any sort of moral or ethical ideal and we owe each other nothing. We're a big group of people which likes to make things on sticks with yarn. Just like any other group of people I'm involved with, I love many of them, I like most of them, and there's a small subset who I wouldn't stop on the street to piss on if they were collectively on fire.


So, when I read comments from people who say things like, "I don't want to have the ability to ignore other people who are demonstrated troublemakers; we're both knitters, we'll work it out", or "Everyone here should be posting pictures of their projects because that's a great resource to me and you owe it to the community", I sign off and go do something else. I don't need any sister knitters; I have three real sisters. We get along fine most of the time, but occasionally we can be judgemental, petty, mean-spirited, and sometimes senselessly cruel to one another.


Actually, now that I think about it, maybe most knitters are my sisters.

Natural dyes

After tying up my bandhani project, I got impatient to see what it looked like and got out my natural dye supplies. I'd totally forgotten how amazingly gratifying it is to do.

Although I only have one kettle and no thermometer, scale, or measuring equipment, I decided to throw caution to the wind and eyeball it to the best of my ability. The result was not a disaster.

I know I got the ratios pretty accurately, but I didn't have any way to weigh the cloth and I overestimated - the result was a dark purple cloth (even though I used logwood grey) and a lot of extra pigment left over. The hand of the cloth isn't great, but it's not terrible and I'll definitely be able to make it work.

Now that I know that I can do this with a minimum amount of hassle, I will be dyeing more in the future. I'm in the process of collecting yarns and finished pieces that bore me with the intention of overdyeing them to see what the result will be.

Bandhani

Last night, the gang headed over to Kristine and Adrienne's to learn from her friends, Jabar and Jabbar, about their particular textile techniques. We had so much fun, and we weren't even drinking.

Jabar does a specific sort of block printing and I bought a cotton shawl from him that was very unique; its got a pattern of geometric birds (I call them ducks) printed in indigo. It wasn't that expensive and it was really unique so I had to cave in and buy it.

Jabbar showed us how to tie bandhani and as Kristine said, it is very addictive. I got through most of a shawl in a very simple design last night. Jabbar suggested that I dye the shawl twice; first in one color, take out the knots, re-tye them in a different pattern, then overdye. I'm pretty excited about that. We'll see if I can get my act together enough to actually pull it off.

Fear and Desire

There's a Buddhist belief that people are unhappy because they are ruled by fear and desire. Case in point:

I'm on a fiber diet, because my stash has gotten to unmanageable proportions and my beautiful fiber will be reduced to moth food if I don't spin it up as soon as possible. I also need to pay off my credit cards and buy a new bike, so new fiber acquisition is supposed to be a really low priority for the next several months.


Nevertheless, in a moment of weakness I went out to Etsy, which is where my problems usually start, and saw these:


- Silk and flax batt from Crystal Creek Fibers
- Shetland, alpaca, and angora roving from Spiderweb Specialties


...that just grabbed my by the limbic system and shook really hard, screaming, "You want us now! We won't be here when you can afford us!" over and over.

Now, I'm in a semi-foul mood. I should have never opened my web browser this morning.

Classic case of suffering directly caused by fear and desire.

Some of us can find fiberarts anywhere

I was off the grid on a catamaran in the British Virgin Islands for the past two weeks, and the sun, islands, water, history and rum (oh, especially the rum) was beyond fantastic. I brought a knitting project, which actually went a little too fast, when it wasn't too hot to be working with wool in the first place.



On semi-deserted Cooper's Island, I found a whole new (but ancient) fiberart lurking in the form of a beaten-up paperback in the salty lazarette of a worn-out wooden boat:



Marlinspike Seamanship, or the art of knotting and weaving rope and canvas into decorative and utilitarian objects specifically to rig, furnish, decorate, or protect parts of a ship.




Some of the pieces are just insane - take this USMC emblem for instance:






This is what people do when you have a boatload of rope, a shortage of spare parts, and a hell of a lot of time on your hands.

Prairie Halter!

I don't usually get excited about commercial patterns, but I am pretty excited Interweave is selling the Prairie Halter by Cathy Carron:



It's simple, nice silhouette, top-down, and doesn't take a ton of yardage. I'm probably going to make a few pajama tops out of this pattern.

Stressing

I'm stressed to the limit right now, thanks to my attempts at living a life outside of fiberart (what the heck was I thinking), but a couple of things have made it a little easier:

- Forrester Akha in Maple and Olivewood. I bought a Kokovoko akha, and while it's probably a little more authentic, the Forrester is so much easier to use, because I'm not an Akha tribeswoman and the teeny weeny notch in the top of the Kokovoko is way too advanced for me. The Forrester has a nice, big cup hook.

- Golding ringspindle. It's a beautiful spindle for sure, but for some reason I was expecting something a little grander. I'm sure I'll get over it.

- I went to the Ravenswood winery this weekend and bought a wine chiller that is the perfect size to hold all my nicer spindles. I'm very happy about that.

Homme-made backstrap loom

This French site has some great pictures of the construction of a backstrap loom with rigid heddles.

Rigid-heddle loom tricks

I just ordered a second 10 dpi reed and extra heddle blocks for my Kromski Harp.

Why?

Because I found this: official Ashford instructions on how to do double weave on a rigid heddle loom using a second reed and two pick-up sticks.

So you're doubling the weaving width of your loom, which, combined with the relatively easy warping of the rigid-heddle, is made of pure weaving awesomeness.

Weaving

I'm thinking about getting my rigid heddle looms out again and seeing if I can make something. I wove a narrow scarf a couple of months ago out of handspun I liked so much I wanted none of it to go to waste. Now I'm wondering if I can do something more ambitious.

I stumbled across this technique/philosophy called Saori today. It's the kind of thing I'd be into.

I think there may be some Saori obis in my future.

Spindle collecting

So, I've been wondering why I haven't bought a Golding spindle yet.

I've been wanting a Golding ever since I first saw them about two years ago, but I haven't bought one. It's not the price; with the money I've spent on spindles over the past year, I could have bought a few Goldings. I've been investing my money in Bosworths, Full Circles, and Graftons actually - I have an ambition to have a small flock of fiberships in the relatively near future.

There are a few spindle makers - Golding and Cascabeles to name two - who make spindles I think of as "fireside spindles". They're big, heavy, ornate and spin beautifully (so I understand). They're spindles for spinning at home. While I do use my spindles at home from time to time, I spin with my wheels at home.


So the spindles I buy tend to be on the compact, sturdy side because I'm a spinner on the go - when I'm carrying my life on my back, I don't want to have to worry that my spindle is getting squished or weighing me down. Although Goldings are undoubtedly sturdy and well-made, I wouldn't be psychologically prepared to take it on a sailing trip or be able to sleep knowing it's in the bag I'm using as my pillow on a train.

I guess a true spindle collector wouldn't have such prosaic concerns; I guess I'm ultimately a pragmatist, which is something I wouldn't have thought to call myself when it comes to fiberart.

Pub knitting

Yesterday, I tried to take Sara and Ted out to the local GAA match to see the Ulster team play. In typical fashion, they'd cancelled the games due to Mother's Day (Irish lads love their mothers). Nevertheless, our trip into the city wasn't a complete wash, since we got the chance to do a little Irish grocery impulse-buying, I mean shopping at Roxie Market, have some pretty tasty burgers at Darla's, and spend some quality time with the local Irish senior citizenry at the Blackthorn Tavern.

Sara took her knitting out of her bag to show me the progress she's made on her spindle scarf, which has been christened the "Kathleen" by, well, I guess Sara, and I got to thinking about how I never knit in pubs anymore.

When I was living in Dublin working on my MBA, everyday life would sometimes get so difficult I'd head over to whatever pub wasn't packed to the rafters, settle in by the peat fire (most pubs had one), order a hot whiskey and knit until my fingers cramped - this usually took anywhere from four to eight hours. At the time (four long years ago) you seldom saw people knitting anywhere in Dublin, so a lot the tourists who came in assumed I was a traditional Irish colleen knitting an Aran sweater for my fisherman-husband. The fact I was in the middle of City Centre Dublin (many miles from any fishermen) didn't seem to budge their impressions, even when I put down my knitting to consult the pattern notes on my Palm Pilot.

So, next time I'm in the Inner Sunset to pick up some Irish bacon, I'll drop in on the Blackthorn with some knitting. Either I'll be completely ignored or harassed by curious punters, which is pretty much always what happened.

More pondering: Great wheel

I realized yesterday that I need a Great wheel.

No, really, hear me out.

One of my big frustrations with working with short-staple fibers like cotton (okay, only cotton) is that I have a really hard time getting enough twist into the fiber before the flyer winds on.

That's why I bought my Bosworth book charkha, which I love to death but I can't spin anything in large quantity on it. I was on YouTube a while back, and I was watching this gorgeous video of Indian people spinning and weaving Khadi:



They're not exactly spinning on book charkhas.

Enter the Great wheel - works on exactly the same concept as the production charkha, on the same scale.

Frustration two - spinning bulky. I'm getting to the point where i want to spin big, loose singles for felting, but I can't do it on any of my current wheels. I just can't reach a low enough ratio to get the effect I'm looking for. The closest I get is when I turn the drive wheel with my hand to get a super-low twist.

Once again, the Great wheel is perfect for just this - since you have to turn the drive wheel by hand anyway, I have total control over the twist:




So this isn't just another rationalization to spend more money on fiber tools. I've actually thought a lot about it.

I'm thinking more and more about the bike spinning wheel project and how this problem can be solved fairly neatly with that, maybe.

The best idea ever!

I'm a frustrated DIY fanatic - given the choice and the means, I'd make everything I own and buy nothing as a finished object. However, that sort of thing requires certain resources (i.e. knowledge, workspace, tools, time) that I don't always possess, so this is a state that exists primarily in my fantasy life.

This is why when I came across this book, courtesy of TikkunKnits on Ravelry, I knew I had to own it:



A spinning wheel from an old bike? It makes so much sense! They're practically the same machine! Flip the frame over, replace the front wheel with a quill assembly using the front fork as the maidens, the rear tire with a drive band, and rig a treadle to the pedal mount and you have a reasonable approximation of a Saxony-style quill wheel! A little more work on figuring out a braking system and you could attach a bobbin and flyer. You can even use any existing gears and derailleur to approximate different spinning ratios.

Think about all those abandoned, stripped bike frames you see chained up to the bike racks at the BART station - they could be recycled into spinning wheels!

It's so punk rock, I can't even stand it.

Anyway, I feel a plan forming in my head. I found a relatively-low-cost copy of this out-of-print book in Australia that I ordered on Alibris. This may be the impetus I need to go and finally join the TechShop in Palo Alto to take advantage of their tools, space, and expertise.

Can't blog - sleepin'

Too many things have been happening. I'm in a fiber vortex of activity:

- The inaugural launch of Color: A Fiber Festival, and A Verb for Keeping Warm/Tactile Fiber Arts booth at the Maker Faire Bazaar Bizarre (both loads of fun...and work, but mostly fun).

- The completion of the spindle shawl and new ideas for the next one, including mitred square, triangle, and circular versions.

- Finished spinning the 4 oz. of Tactile ramboulliet, and the acquisition of some more fiber at the aforementioned Bazaar Bizarre.

- My new spindles came in: the aforementioned Avi Wasserman, a Cascade St. Helens, and a Greensleeves Loki.

I am exhausted. But not too exhausted to finally start spinning up the "Spice Eyes" batts I got from magicalfibers forever ago!

I see what all the fuss about Mr. Wasserman is - my new spindle is extremely well-balanced, with the majority of the weight in the whorl and not the shaft, which is a finer point of drop spindle design a lot of spindle makers don't figure out right away. Kudos to him!

I haven't had a chance to spin on the St. Helens or the Loki, but I'm optimistic.

Tax money

Here's one more thing I could have bought with the money that went to pay taxes:

A Wyatt Pegasus double-treadle

Never mind that I don't have any room for such a thing! Never mind the fact that I already have two wheels and yet the second one doesn't get used as often as it should! If this administration is really serious about economic stimulus, they'd give me my money back so I can get one. The Wyatts are small-shop American craftspeople - I can't think of anyone the government would support more. Why do they hate America?

Anyway, the Wyatts sell spindles, too, so I might just buy one to remind me of what I'd like to get at some point in the (hopefully nearish) future.

Well, son of a box of cookies!

I've been in an spending-spree period lately; we all go through them, usually around the holidays but for some reason I'm having a Spring Spree.

There have been a lot of purchases I've been making because things have gone on sale, or I've been wanting them for a while. Case in point:

Sara mentioned on Ravelry that she wanted an Avi Wasserman spindle and asked if I had one she could try. I don't, but in a moment of idleness I typed "Avi Wasserman" into Google. That's when I saw it: a parasol-style spindle with a Bethelehem olivewood whorl and an ebony shaft. It was one of my dream spindles; olivewood and ebony are two of my favorite woods, and the parasol design is one of my favorites.

Of course, this means I'm brown-bagging my lunch for the next two weeks. I think it's probably worth it.

Idle thoughts : Woolee Winder

So I've been thinking about buying a Woolee Winder for my Schacht.

There are some things I need to consider beforehand. The first one is the cost: for a WW and three high-speed bobbins, plus three regular bobbins, the combined cost is basically as much as a mid-range new wheel. Youch.

Considering the need for a WW: I don't really feel the need for one, except when I'm plying. I've mentioned before that I can't get as much plied yarn on one bobbin as I can singles. I'm sure this has a lot to do with how unvigilent I am when changing the flyer hooks when I'm plying. My hands get busy and I forget to slow down and change the hooks. However, it is really annoying when I have a quarter of an ounce left over on my bobbin and the other one is full.

Still, is this problem worth $400? I don't know.

Wheels

My Louet Victoria, Chibi, has a slight problem - I was spinning tons of baby alpaca a few weeks ago, and some fiber got stuck in her drive wheel axle. It's too recessed for me to go at by hand, so I need to take her apart and clean it out. Unfortunately, none of the wrenches I have at home seem capable of not stripping her main axle bolt, so I need to go to Home Depot and find a proper metric socket wrench for the job.


I haven't done this, of course, because I'd rather stay home and play with fiber (or go out drinking), so I've just been using Clotho, my Schacht Matchless.


I don't know what the trouble is, but we've been together more than a year and Clotho and I are still not in love with each other yet. Maybe it's that I'm so used to Scotch tension and she's a double-drive (I know I can convert her to Scotch tension - I'm trying to learn to love DD); maybe it's that I've been spoiled by Chibi's sealed bearings and I have to oil Clotho regularly; maybe it's that Clotho has ginormous bobbins and I have to spin forever to fill them (and yet, they're still too small to hold the same amount of plied yarn as singles). I really don't know. But in this time of trial with Chibi being somewhat out of commission, I'm hoping I can establish a better relationship with my Schacht Matchless.


On the upside, I spun up 2 oz. of the CVM/kid mohair Bonnie from frontierfiberfarm sent me, and I'm very happy with the results. I was thinking that the mohair would make this a really good sock blend, but it seems too soft for socks. I'll see how I feel once it's plied - maybe I've been conditioned to think that all sock yarn has to be stiff to be strong.


I've also been kicking around the idea of spinning something specifically for heel/sole/toe reinforcement - a longwool or mohair single in a bright color would make a cute accent and would also mean that I could use some softer fibers, like alpaca or angora, where I wouldn't expect a lot of wear.

Yeah, more fiber

I now literally have more fiber than I know what to do with.

The exciting acquisitions:

- 4 oz superwash in Leaf from Pigeonroof Studios (Yay! It's always a good day when I can get some of Krista's fiber.)

- 8 oz. soysilk/wool in Alia colorway from marion

- 4 oz. Shetland in Reds colorway from marion

And something I'm especially excited about:

- 8oz CVM roving and 2 oz. English Leicester Longwool from Frontier Fiber Farm (also at sheepythyme).

This fiber is amazing. Bonnie also sent me a bonus 2 oz. of a CVM/kid mohair blend that will be so great for socks.

I haven't recieved these yet, but I'm really excited to see what they're like:

- Posey Toes sock batts in Lunaria and Snake Plant colorways from feistywomandesigns

Tiny looms!

So far this week:

- 2 oz. naturally-dyed Ramboulliet roving in a raspberry colorway from Tactile Fiber Arts, waiting to be chain-plied.

- 4 bias squares on my 7" Hazel Rose loom, made out of leftover sock yarn made from silk, superwash merino, and mohair batts from Franquemont Fibers. They are destined to become a 4-square bolsa like this one.

As part of my obsession with all things fiberarty and purse-size portable, I very willingly jumped on the Weave-It wave.

I have a a set of 4" and 2" vintage Weave-Its in their original Lucite box, a 7" walnut Hazel Rose loom, and I just bought one of her smaller, finer Multi-Looms. That's what you call hardcore.

My motivation for this is pure instant weaving gratification. I have a lot of random scraps of handspun left over, and I loathe seeing these going to waste. A 2" Weave-It square takes 2 yards of yarn. The other is that I love to spin cotton, but it takes forever to spin enough three-ply to make anything. I can make a six-inch cotton washcloth on my Hazel Rose in an evening of watching the CW.

I've been trying to figure out how to use these little squares in a way that doesn't look too...shall we say...church-basement-craft-circle. I'm thinking some omiyage bag patterns would look pretty cool in Weave-It squares.

Fruits of the weekend's labors

- 4oz of two-ply worsted baby llama in sea-green handpainted colorway (the January installment of Susan's Spinning Bunny Fondle This club)

- 6 oz. of two-ply worsted alpaca, spun from batts I made from 4 oz. of natural silver Louet baby alpaca and 2 oz. of handpainted alpaca from Lunabudknits in the "Rainbow Suicide" colorway.

- Knitted up 90% of the spindle shawl, and I'm extremely pleased with the results. The only thing that didn't work out so perfectly is that I didn't start the decreases early enough so I've run out of yarn. I wanted this to be made from exactly 2 oz. of fiber, but I'll have to break into my stash a little to finish. Next time, I'll remember that.

It may come as a surprise to some of you that I'm a shutterbug. Last night I got out my (fairly expensive) camera to see if I could take pictures of a lot of my FOs - I'm painfully aware of the picturelessness of this blog and my Ravelry project notebook. However, the light is so bad in my apartment, you guys don't even know. All the photos I took looked like I was taking them for insurance purposes.

I really want one of these: a tabletop lighting kit.

Because there isn't enough math in knitting as it is

Wednesday night I went by Ledger's Liquors and with Ed's help, I got my friend Morgan a bottle of Russell's Reserve Rye Whiskey for his birthday and picked up a little something for myself, a bottle of Wathen's Single-Barrel Kentucky Bourbon. Ed Ledger is a man who not only resembles a young Bill Clinton, but is one talented and knowledgable liquor picker. It was probably the influence of these fyne spirits that got me thinking about cellular automation knitting, which as far as I know is the brainchild of Debbie New.

Cellular automation is the mechanism by which a system self-replicates, i.e. every little part of something operates by it's own independent rules, but they all have the same rules, like growing crystals or bacterial colonies.

Way back in the dark ages (I'm talking 1997), there was the Knitlist. It was an email mailing list with something like 1500 people on it, which was substantial even back then. A lot of it is also archived on woolworks, and it was the center of knitting life on the Internet.

I had picked up a copy of Knitter's (remember when that magazine didn't suck?) and because I'm a geek I was fascinated by an article on cellular automation and how the principles could be applied to knitting. Of course, I didn't really get it (it's not a simple concept) so I posted my first and only email to the knitlist asking for help. I got an email from the actual Debbie New, who'd written the article. Over the course of several emails, she'd helped me get the concept down. I printed out all those emails and stuck them in my knitting notebook, knitted a couple of scarves in CA lace, and promptly forgot it. I still have the notes, in my knitting notebook, at the bottom back corner of my storage space. Blast!

But the Internet never forgets, and thanks to the knitting-and site:

"You start with a seed row. Imagine you are working with a dark yarn on a light background. You scatter your dark seeds across the bottom row. As you get to your second row, you look down at the seed row. Each dark seed will be able to touch three stitches in the new row. The color of the stitches in the new row is determined by the location of the seeds. If a new stitch will be touching exactly one seed, either by being directly above or to the upper right or left of the seed, then you knit that stitch with the dark yarn.

new row      xxx  x  x

seed          x    xx

..."

Translating this to lace, which is a two stitch (YO, K2TOG) combo, looks a little something like this:

Row5   O/O/    O/O/ O/  O/  O/

Row4    O/      O/ O/    O/O/

Row3     O/O/O/O/ O/      O/

Row2      O/  O/   O/O/O/O/

Row1       O/O/     O/  O/

seed        O/       O/O/

What this means is when deciding how to work a new stitch, I'm looking at the stitch below to the left, directly below, and below to the right. If the stitch directly below is not a YO, but the one below and to the left or below and to the right is, I (YO, K2TOG). If they're both YOs, I knit a regular stitch. If I have to to do a K2TOG where there should be a YO, the K2TOG always takes precedence. The resulting pattern is sort of an organic triangular pattern that reminds me of snakeskin.

I love this, because the results are unpredictable and the rule is easy to remember. Total surprise lace. I'm going to knit my next spindle shawl in this and see how it turns out.

Feed the addiction

Tuesday, Kristine finally set out the fiber she's selling so we can all see it. I know she wants to be appropriate and all and not mix business with social events and that shows how well-bred she is. However, I'd tease her about how I feel weird about sneaking back in her fiber room to check out the merchandise. Even though I know that's what she wants me to do, I feel like I'm going through her medicine chest or underwear drawer or something.

So this time she set out a shelf and some baskets of yarn and fiber and I felt relieved - especially when I feasted my eyes on her polwarth roving in the "El Rio" colorway. At first I was thinking, well, I have a lot of fiber on deck, I'll just hang back and not get some. But Mike started picking out fiber to buy like a perfectly reasonable person and the addict part of my brain went all paranoid and started shrieking "MINE MINE!" like a kindergartner. I ended up with 8 oz. of the stuff because I'm not a reasonable person. I don't regret it. :)

I will be so sad when her naturally-dyed polwarth is gone (most of it already is it seems). But there's always next year, and her other pretty fiber to keep me occupied until then.

Speaking of utterly remorseless impulse buying, I went and ordered the Morehouse Merino Monet Shawl KnitKit the other day. I can't help it - I'm fixated on Impressionism after Eric took me to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and I want a Waterlilies shawl, goddamit! I also bought three new shorty Grafton spindles - a Mala, a mini Swan, and another Fibership, all in pretty wood laminates - mostly for portable spinning. They have the shorter shafts which make them easier to stick in a little project bag.

I actually broke a spindle a few weeks ago, my Dave Larsen acrylic laser etched one, and I'm totally in mourning, which is why I bought the Graftons. They've grown on me for sure. I really think that for all-around value for money in terms of artisan spindles Bosworths are the way to go (they're absolutely no-fail - you can spin anything on just about any of them). The advantage the Graftons have is they are not only fairly well-designed (especially the Swans) but are built Tonka-tough. I worry a lot less about breaking them in my travel bag, whereas I'd worry about my Bosworths.

(Oh my god, if I broke one of my Bosworths I'd be inconsolable.)

Being the bigger person

Part of the reason I took up this blog again is that I'm intensely passionate about fiberarts and as a result I have some strong, probably unpopular opinions that are best kept off the Ravelry forums and the Handspinning community. I also use this as an idea notebook and I'm thrilled that people actually read it sometimes (HI PEOPLE READING!).

I say this because Kristine bought me the latest issue of Spin-Off, and I stayed up way past my bedtime last night reading it. I've never had a lot of good things to say about the magazine in the past. Some of my criticisms have been:


- The articles are oriented to absolute beginners
- The articles are oriented to arcane techniques
- The patterns/techniques are ugly (come on, you have to admit, there has been some fug)
- The articles on individual spinners are too "in-flight magazine"


However, I want to go on record and say I might be wrong about Spin-Off. I found tons of really great information in this month's issue. It's possible the magazine evolved a little since I read it last, but most likely it's that I matured a lot as a spinner.

Next quarter, I'm probably going to do a trial subscription. That's right, you heard me - TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION!

Last night I was over at at Kristine and Adrienne's and Sara, Marlowe, Krista, and a new fun person, Mike of the Yknit podcast was there. As usual, it was a scream, and as usual I stayed way, way too late. It was really great to have Mike there, a rooster in the henhouse so to speak, and I hope to see him again at some future fiber events.

I really need to start a blogroll.

Artfibers Hana

I was going away for the weekend last week and I needed an emergency project for the plane, so I ran over to Artfibers and bought about 100g of Hana, which is a very nice 2-ply silk sportweight. I'm knitting some kind of smoke ring out of it, made up of garter stitch and dropped loop stitches.

I also picked up some of their spinning fiber, called Miso, which is a merino/soysilk blend. Generally speaking, their yarns aren't my thing - lots of ribbon and stuff, but it is pretty. I would like to see more spinning fiber along the lines of their design philosophy, though.

In which I prove my mastery of junior high geometry

I was contemplating the Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi Shawl, of which I've knit about a million, and I always forget the basic formula. So the thing I do know thanks to six years of university-level math is the formula for the circumference of a circle, which is:

C = Π2r

Where r = the radius, which is the distance from the center to the edge of a circle.

Now, when knitting a circular bit of knitting, each row increases the area of the circle in all directions, threfore, the radius isn't as applicable as the diameter, which is the distance from one edge of of the circle to the edge directly on its opposite.

The diameter of a circle is:

d=2r

So the circumference of a circle can be expressed as:

C=Πd

Thanks to the beautiful mathematical mystery that is the Algebraic Distributive Property, the every time the diameter of a circle doubles, so does the circumference! Check it out:

2(C) = 2(Π) x 2(d)

So what does this mean for my knitting? It means that to knit a perfect circle, you need to increase to twice the number of stitches every time you double the number of rows since your last increase round. For example:

Cast on 8 stitches in the round.
Knit three rounds.
K1, yo to end of round, 16 stitches.
Knit six rounds.
K1, yo to end of round, 32 stitches.
Knit twelve rounds.
K1, yo to end of round, 64 stitches.

...and so on, and so on, until you run out of yarn or your hands fall off, whichever comes first.

Writing this down before I forget

Technique to counter biasing when knitting with energized singles:

Knit with two balls/colors, one on each end of the work. The twist will balance it out!

Score!

I'm weak

Yesterday saw the purchase of two KnitKits from Morehouse Merino: the ChocolateMint Scarf and the Waves Shawl. You have to admit, they're fabulous.

Also, I transcended the boundaries of distance and language to buy a couple of shawl patterns from Dorthea Fischer, the lady who (along with some friends) wrote the Danish tie-shawl article in this month's Spin-Off (a copy of which the divine Ms Kristine picked up for me).

You absolutely have to love these shawls. I mean, just look at them.

Especially this one. I have a fantasy of tying on my shawl, putting on my hat and mitts and going out in the cold morning to feed the spinner's flock. This is why my sisters call me The Goat Lady.

I have a fascination with "working shawls". Due to my tendency to travel long distances in very short periods of time, I've developed a "nomad" mentality, where if I'm going to be carrying something around, I want it to be as portable, useful, and yes, pretty as possible. Shawls can be cover-ups, mufflers, blankets, pillows, coat substitutes, and in a pinch, picnic blankets and bedrolls. Therefore, give me something I can wear as a jacket and sleep under when I'm stranded in Chicago Midway airport.

Internet community drama

Apparently, the woman who owned the LiveJournal communities "spinningfiber", "dyeingfiber", "sellingfiber", and "weavingfiber" deleted them all yesterday afternoon for reasons that are not entirely clear but most likely have to do with her personal issues. The real tragedy of this is the collective wisdom of the 1500 spinners who were active there, many of whom are a pretty big deal in the spinning realm, has gone up in a puff of bytes.

However, in happier news, I finally got another 3.5 ounces of the "Rose Garden" wool, silk, and angora batt I bought from Crystal Creek Fibers spun and plied up and the top-down v-neckish, shawl-collar-y cardigan I'm making with it is back in process, just in time for summer when it will be way to warm to wear. One of the mysteries of the Schacht Matchless - the bobbins hold way more when they're full of singles than they do when they're full of plied yarn, which means I generally have about half an ounce of orphan single left on my bobbin. That is annoying, but I'm not counting out user error.

I think I have also figured out how to maybe get away with knitting at work. Needless to say, public knitting at my office would be frowned upon - not because they have any issues with knitting per se, but it would raise the question as to why I have so much spare time to knit. That's a conversation I'd never want to get into. So I've taken a very small project (the spindle shawl) and put it into a brightly-colored cosmetic pouch. When I need a knitting break, I just leave my desk and walk in the direction of the bathroom with this pouch, and nobody asks any questions. Then, I go out to the staircase and knit a few rows.

Lord help me I love this

The Morehouse Merino ChocolateMint Shawl KnitKit.

I know it's just a garter stitch bias square in two colors of yarn; it really couldn't be simpler to reverse-engineer.

But it's so pretty. I need to keep some perspective on this.

P.S. I forgot to mention I bought the Monet Scarves KnitKit in Blue Nympheas last week It seemed like a decent deal.

Because I wanna

I was having one of my punk rock tantrums this weekend. You know, like the Hives song:

"Do what I want cause I can and if I don't because I wanna!"

("Hate to say I told you so...ALRIGHT!")

So I stuck my wallet, keys, pepper spray (can never be too careful), and Blackberry in my pocket, grabbed my latest small project (in a Daiso bento bag, no less) and headed for the woods.

Saturday, I got deep under the influence of one of Katie's cappucinos and Rachel's Blue Chair jam at Pizzaiolo, so I jittered my way into Article Pract to work it off. While I was there, I picked up the Carmen pattern Kristine made, a pair of metal size 3 sock needles for travel, a 40" size 10.5 Crystal Palace Daisy needle, and 2 2oz. bundles of Kristine's BFL in her "Reyes" colorway. I decided to try that project I mentioned in the previous post, inspired by the Morehouse Merino scarf and shawl patterns.

So, my little Bento bag held the BFL roving, the little rosewood faux-Turkish spindle I got at Stitches West, and my new Daisy needles. Once I spun up a spindleful, I popped off the whorl-arms from the spindle shaft (which makes an excellent thread bobbin!), and cast on three stitches. In garter stitch, I slipped the selvedge stitch and did a yo at the beginning of every row, until I felt it was long enough, then I did a slip selvedge, yo, k2tog, psso at the beginning of the next row, k to end. The next row I did a slip selvedge, yo, k to end as usual for what will be a stole knit on the bias.

When I knit up the entire spindleful, I spin a new spindleful, and do a join between the end of the working yarn and the beginning of the yarn on the spindle. It seems to be working very well.

My only difficulty is with the Daisy needle. It's a nice, smooth plastic needle, but the cable is incredibly stiff and in a rigid coil, like wire. I have to wrestle with it every time I get to the end of a row. I'm hoping I can soften it a little in hot water or something.

Morehouse Merino

I absolutely love Morehouse Merino lace designs. Their shawls and scarves are minimalistic, textural, modern, and innovative - everything I love in knitwear design.

However, I really don't like their yarns. They do have their great points: the variegated colorways are beautiful and they do their best to keep the wool in its natural state (read: they don't carbonize out the VM). What I don't like about them is the randomly-occurring coarseness of the wool (I don't know why - their dye process, maybe?) and their lace yarn is not plied.

The last part is what I have a real problem with. I have been indoctrinated to believe that singles are unsuitable for lace knitting, because of their natural energized state. It makes the lace crumple up so you have to block it over and over. Supposedly, the most suitable yarn for lace knitting is a worsted-spun two-ply.

I'm as iconoclastic as the next person so I'm perfectly willing to knit lace with singles to test that rule, and Morehouse designs seem to be designed to sort of be crushy and crumply, which I like. What is difficult if not impossible to work around is the fragility of singles, especially Morehouse Merino singles. Many of the designs are also heavily dependent on wide multi-stitch-width dropped sections, which leaves the poor yarn exposed to the elements. If during the course of wear there's a break in the yarn, it could affect the entire structural integrity of the piece.

But I'm just speculating. I'm thinking of buying a kit just to see how it goes. If these designs are actually structured in a way that the singles are more-or-less protected, they might be really great spindle projects: spin a spindle full, knit the single until I run out of yarn, spin up another spindle full, splicing the end of the new spindle to the end of the knitting. No ends to weave in!

That's incredibly exciting for someone like me: I loathe finishing. I want my projects to spring fully-formed from my needles like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, and I will go to extreme lengths to achieve that.

Another impulse buy

I've really had to curb my fiber impulse buying because I'm seeing a "top of his field" therapist not covered by my health insurance. He's worth it, I assure you, but I spend almost as much on his sessions as I do on rent and as such my slush fund has long since depleted.

Since I can't seem to actually stop buying fiber (which I should probably bring up with my therapist at some point), I've limited it to:

- naturally-dyed fiber, commercially-prepared or not (i.e. things from Kristine or Maia and Brooke)
- Extremely artfully-dyed fiber (i.e. Krista's Pigeonroof stuff)
- non-commercially prepared fiber

So, falling into the last category is the stuff I bought just a few minutes ago, from Spiderweb Specialties' etsy shop. I just couldn't pass these blends up: shetland, alpaca, and angora in natural grey, and shetland, alpaca, and angora in Moorit color. I honestly don't know when I'm going to get around to spinning all this stuff.

I would love to do a fiber swap with some people at some point, as I have lots of really wonderful stuff that I'm either tired of or bought way too much of. Just don't ask me to organize this at the moment.

Bison down

I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to buy some.

"Exotics for the sake of exotics" is a good enough reason, really, to buy and spin up as much as you can afford to. However, I'm beginning to feel that certain things are frankly close enough.

For example, for most of my purposes, the luxury feel of alpaca/llama and yak are just awesome. Cashmere and quivut and all those things are fantastic but are outrageously expensive. For the money I end up spending on them, the results are not far and above what I can get with similar but less scarce fiber. Well, except for cashmere. But it's way too warm to wear pure cashmere here anyway so I rarely even end up using a lot of it - not to mention the pilling problem that short fibers have.

Anyhow, Kendig Cottage has Bison for not cheap. I'm wondering if it's really the much more wonderful than yak.

More Acquisitions

So, last Saturday Sara took me on my first trip to Daiso, because I'm always lusting after her cutie-patootie bento boxes. I bought some really useful things, not the least of which are tons of cute little fabric bento box bags, which are the perfect size for sock projects! And they were only about $3.00 each. I did pick one up which turned out to be insulated, so I'm going to use that for my actual lunch bag.

I decided I wasn't up to going to my finishing class at Knit-One-One (I know, bad me. Knit-One-One is a really excellent place to take classes, though), and we went over to Article Pract, where I got a reality check on how I remember things vis-a-vis What Knitters Are Paying For These Days. In some ways it was good news, other ways bad, but it reaffirmed my choice to become a spinner.

I noticed they were carrying some of Kristine's fiber, way up high on pegs over the till. Not really a high-visibility place for them, but this fiber thing is new for a lot of people so I'm not judging. Not only did I get a chance to shill for Kristine ("Look! This is polwarth, it's really hard to get!"), but I got six ounces of her Blackberry colorway polwarth. Yay! I'm hoping to turn this into at least 800 years, um, I mean yards of laceweight for a smaller version of g.bella's Catalina shawl.

After that, we swung by Kristine and Adrienne's to drop off some things Sara had for them, and saw pictures of the new A Verb for Keeping Warm studio! Wow, totally exciting. It was a superfun day (and Kristine had another bundle of polwarth hiding in her inventory so I made an even 8 oz. score.)

Sunday was Easter mass with my neighbors (I accidentally took them to the Spanish mass at St. Joseph the Worker - turns out our German pastor is also fluent in Spanish), Easter lamb for dinner, and way too much wine. I got the bright idea to spin up the 4 oz. of black BFL I've had in my stash since the winter before last, but I was a little too lit and my single kept coming out uneven. I wanted to ply it with the 50/50 merino-yak I bought a couple of months ago from Maia and Brooke as a present for bugheart when I see her on Friday, but my Easter Monday hangover kept me from getting much spinning done. I have some other pretty, interesting stuff already spun up so I suppose I can give her something else should I need to.

First successful batt

I used my birthday present to myself, Strauch Petite drum carder bought from Morgaine at Carolina Homespun, to card up some naturally-dyed polwarth locks from Kristine at A Verb for Keeping Warm in golds, oranges, and pinks.

While the teasing process was a little tedius, the resulting batts were well worth the effort. All the colors blended naturally into a tequila-sunrise sort of blend, with the fibers blending into a fluffy, airy batt. I'll probably card this again with some of Kristine's naturally-dyed yak for a larger volume with more warming properties.

Calm a llama down

I bought 4 oz. of chocolate brown llama from Clickety Sticks at Stitches West, and I loved spinning it up. It was a small batch processed roving, lots of air, a little VM but still a pleasure to spin up.

Except, last night I was chain-plying it into a three-ply, and it practically cut my fingers to ribbons.

I wanted to give this as a gift to bugheart when she and grub come to visit at the end of the month, but I'm not so sure it will be her thing. I'm also not so sure I want to finish plying this stuff.

As fora recommended project, it is soft enough for against the skin, but the bits of hay in it might be problematic for that in the long run. Might make a really good cafetiere cozy.