What's On My Reading List: Sweater Quest

Because I am moving and shouldn't buy too many new things until all my old things are at my house, last weekend I went to the Stuff Redux, a place similar to my beloved Scrap Exchange but in Richmond, VA. Jaime took be there a month or so ago and I'd made an absolute killing, picking up some acid dyes, some alpaca yarn, and a cone of lace weight mohair all for under $20. I'd considered buying up a bunch of knitting pattern books and then someone, in all the excitement, I'd walked out without the books. I spent the last month gnawing on the table and kicking myself for forgetting them. So my first order of business, on arriving in Richmond, was to go get them. I picked up about half a dozen pattern books (for $1 each!) and found a novel by Adrienne Martini.

Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously is a novel that bills itself as the story of her year spent tackling the Mount Everest of knitting... A Fair Isle sweater designed by Alice Starmore. She does this while raising two kids and working two jobs and, obviously, writing a novel. This is the sort of thing I can really get behind and I was super excited. All the other knitting books went into a box but Sweater Quest and I retired to my sofa with a glass of wine and a couple of cats. Ms Martini started strong, discussing herself and why she knits and covered a fascinating chapter about the Alice Starmore drama. I had no idea there was a brilliant and litigious Scottish woman out there, producing and defending intricate colour work!

The topic interested me enough that I went out and did some research. I think the issue is more nuanced and double-sided than Ms. Martini presented in her book but I can't really hold that against her. I can say the book sort of slid off after that chapter. I'm about half way through and it's become a painful slog. It's starting to read more of a who's who in the knitting world as Ms. Martini travels extensively and chats with the big names in our weird little world. Whole paragraphs, even pages, are transcriptions of these chats. She also includes a header on her chapters, listing how much she paid for materials... like, $130 for the book with the pattern in it. And that's where the book started making me really uncomfortable.

Knitting is a pretty self-indulgent hobby for me and probably for a lot of people. This is the first time in my life I've had enough money to spend significantly on a hobby (drawing comics is not a major money maker) so maybe that's part of the problem. I feel a little awkward about how much I spend on knitting and spinning. I'm trying to defray the costs somewhat by selling my dyed wool on Etsy but really... I spend a lot of money on fiber. And that's totally okay! I don't have a lot of responsibilities. I'm a single woman with two cats and a small house. Once we're all fed and the mortgage is paid for, I'm not really responsible to anyone else. Even if I shared my finances with a partner I would have spending money written into my budget and I would totally spend most of it on wool.

But it's super self-indulgent. Especially since I live in North Carolina where we get below freezing weather for all of a month during a bad winter. I don't need to knit to clothe myself or my family. I do it because I love it. And I spend lots of money to do it with unnecessarily nice materials. And that's fine, it's how a spend my spending money budget. But reading about Ms. Martini's year long traipse around the country (remember, this was billed as a book about a woman struggling to knit a complicated sweater while raising two kids and working two jobs), meeting the shiniest of knitters, buying the rarest of yarns really throws a harsh light on the wanton consumption aspects of fiber and tool acquisition. Belonging to the same group as the narrator of Sweater Quest makes me feel worse about myself.

I don't know. I don't leave a lot of books unfinished so I'll probably keep reading this but it's put a really bad taste in my mouth. I need to go do some community service.

An Inelegant Sufficiency of Yarn...

So I started packing up my yarn for the move.

Not all my yarn, you understand. Just the yarn I'm absolutely certain I won't need in the next 10 days before I move. So I made a very sensible analysis of the situation - clearly I need my February Lady yarn. And I need the yarn for Jaime's socks (man, I should finish those, huh?) and I need a couple skeins of alpaca in case I go hat knitting crazy. And it's probably best not to put away the rest of the sock yarn for now. And I need to keep my pet skein out so I can admire it's gradients in times of stress...

So I was diligently packing the rest of my yarn and I realized... Gosh, I've got a lot of yarn.

I've always maintained that I have an elegant sufficiency of yarn. That is, enough yarn. Not too much, not too little.. just exactly enough for my purposes. Now granted, some of my purposes involve owning yarn. I like the look of happy skeins on a shelf, waiting to become awesome. I like flicking through Ravelry and knowing I can knit most patterns I see without searching for the right yarn. But even still, I've always protested when people tell me I have a lot of yarn. I mean, it's all still in one room. A room it shares with both my computer, my giant computer desk, a cat tree, and the spinning stuff. If it still fits (barely) in that crowded room, it can hardly be all that much!

But actually packing the stuff and carrying it all downstairs to the box storage area we have previously called a kitchen I've been forced to admit it - I have enough yarn to open up a small modest sized yarn shop. A very specific kind of yarn shop, to be sure. A yarn shop devoted entirely to high quality natural fiber yarns with an unusual proportion of hand dyed, hand spun skeins. A yarn shop that would inspire my customers to long philosophical considerations and deep questions.

Questions like, "Hey. What's with all the blue? Why not some green or something?!"

I think I'll call it the Blue Ewe :D

What's On My Wheel: Not the February Lady

So I thought it'd just about kill me while I was spinning all the brown (brown, brown, brown... so much brown...), but I finished spinning all the yarn for my sweater. At least, I think I did. I might have screwed up the math and will wind up having to desperately try to match the dye... but it's not like I think about that constantly and with a jittery nervousness that keeps me up at night.

This is somewhere between 1200 and 1300 yards of 3-ply wool and the biggest spinning project I've undertaken so far. It wobbles a bit between a dk and worsted weight But I'm still proud. :) I did the main body in a Norweigan / Romney mix for durability and elasticity but I also did about 500 yards (see the caked section up above) in merino for the collar, the top of the yoke, and the bottoms of the sleeves... all the parts where the sweater might touch my skin when work over a t-shirt. Hopefully that's not doing something super crazy because I already started it.

I'm a little worried that the yarn is too busy for the lace panels so I knit a swatch and pinned it as if it had been blocked...

It looks pretty good, colour wise, but I'm not sure how well the sweater will hold a blocked shape under its own weight soo... we'll have to see. This is my first sweater, no one expects it to be perfect, right?

I cast on during the Maryland Sheep & Wool and have knit very diligently all week. I knit on my lunch breaks, I knit at home. I very carefully didn't start any interesting spinning projects so that I wouldn't be distracted from my knitting (except that gradient spin. I had to spin that to work in my new Roadbug. Hardly counts). And I have been rewarded with... a whole yoke of a sweater! And some chest. I'm not a fast knitter, guys.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Part 2

Jackie and I missed the Spin-In. I can hardly believe it.

We had this brilliant idea of going to the hotel before it started to check in, drop off some stuff, and get something to eat before the Spin In. But then traffic was really bad and we didn't realize how totally exhausted we were... We crawled into the fluffy, cloud-like beds and it was all over. Each of us were laying there, wondering how to mention we didn't want to go back without totally ruining it for the other.

Fortunately we were on the same page so pizza was ordered, movies were watched, and we got to bed pretty early. Early enough that I didn't bite anyone when I was woken up at 6 am. We had a lovely breakfast in the hotel restaurant and then skedaddled right back to the Sheep & Wool. First we had to drop off a bunch of alpaca Jackie wanted the mill to process for her - I can't wait to see what they make of it because doing all that by hand is a bit much. 1 or 2 lbs, yes. Not 90. :P

The young man who took our fiber was terribly charming and so handsome that I had to take my sunglasses off to admire him better. We met some interesting people at the fiber drop off (and fondled their fleeces with more glee than manners), especially a wonderful lady named Julie who is raising merino x corriedale sheep. The fleece she had there was a lamb's fleece and so especially lovely but I can't wait to get my hands on some of her fluff! If I hadn't spent all my money and half of Jackie's at the auction the night before, I'd have bought it all up then and there because she was sell it for $5 a lb. Excuse me, I need to wipe the drool off my keyboard.

We watched the Sheep to Shawl competition which was just amazing. Those folks have clearly put a ton of work into practicing and planning. The crowd favourite was a group who were all dressed up in an Alice in Wonderland theme. They were just amazing - their costumes were excellent and they built a little display stand that was right on theme. The decorations were amazing.

After the competition while they were waiting for the shawls to dry to start the auction, this group of clever ladies mingled through the crowd, taking pictures and staying in character. I didn't get to stay for the auction, but I bet it really improved the price of their work. We had to go because Judith Mackenzie, THE JUDITH, was giving a talk on the origin of sheep. This was basically the highlight of the show for us. We got there very early so we had front row seats. In fact, we were so front and center, I managed to make a complete fool of myself.

See, while she was waiting for everything to get going, Judith came over and asked me what I was knitting - I was working on the February Lady from my homespun. "It's a February Lady" I told her. "Ah," she said. "It's beautiful.

"Thanks! I dyed and spun it myself!" I chirped. Just like I wasn't a person sitting there with yarn full of thinner and thicker sections. Yarn that hadn't been over spun in places. Yarn that wasn't a solid column of merino wool foam because I have NO IDEA how to spin Merino!

"It's very nice," she said kindly, while I tried to crawl into the floor, taking me amateur homespun with me.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Part 1

In order to get to the Maryland Sheep & Wool I had to leave my house after work and drive up to my parents' place 3.5 hours away. The general idea was that we'd leave around 4 or 5 am and Jackie would drive the five hours there while I slept. In reality I napped for about.. one hour. The rest of the drive was spent chattering excitedly about wool and spinning and knitting. Should have expected that, huh?

That left me in a short of hyper, underslept and over caffeinated state which is exactly the right state to be in if you want to spend all the money. We started strong, boys and girls, looking but not purchasing as we swept out from the entrance. We saw sheep and coo'd at them. We saw yarn and squeezed it. I studied roving but observed that I could dye what I saw myself. We visited The Merlin Tree booth and almost had a falling down. Merlin Tree is very, very clever and put out several of their wheels so people can try them. I spun happily for several minutes while Jackie arranged to have her Hitchhiker fixed and all thoughts of saving up for a Kromski Sonata escaped me.

Still, it wasn't until we found the Love Happiness Sangria booth that we got in trouble. They were selling lightly alcoholic, delicious sangria by the jug for $15. So we bought a jug, got a couple cups and a whack of ice, and proceeded to spend all the money. The first stop was The Homestead Hobbyist, an incredibly talented dyer I know from Ravelry. He'd done the dyeing for a spin-a-long I signed up for and when I got my fiber I just knew I'd been a jerk not to get some for Jackie.

*drool*

I'd gotten the two monster braids and asked around but Ken wasn't selling them at the Faire. D: Fortunately the lovely Lenora offered to bring her extra braid and sell it to me. Lenora is very kind - now Jackie and I have matching braids of some really luxury fiber to spin. She also bought two braids of Ken's Merman blend. He'd brought quite a few beautiful things but hadn't increased his price like every other vendor on site... making his amazing colours and exquisite fibers (yak! Mullberry silks! merino!) the most affordable thing at the fair. Seriously... he was selling merino-silk blends for less than some folks were selling junk felting wool.

Merman sparkle!

I bought 3.5 lbs of black merino from the fiber processing company Jackie likes and she picked up a whole whack of craft Romney for her dryer balls. She's making really pretty, useful things and has a shop down in Florida stocking them for her. I want her to make some for my Etsy shop but first she has to stop selling out instantly.

After dropping off our giant bags of wool, we got to the auction site just in time for the spinning and weaving tool auction to start. Whuff. We, uh. We bought everything. Okay, not *everything*, but we made a few key purchases. I bought an adorable Roadbug spinning wheel with one bobbin and a second bulky flyer and then later a bag of 5 bobbins to go with it. Jackie got an umbrella swift, a pre 1860s yarn weasel in really good shape, a Louet sized carrying bag, and... I feel like there was something else, but I can't think what.

The auction was very interesting. The auctioneer was engaging and professional as well as being a fiber artist herself. She generally knew exactly what the items were worth and got it out of us. The lower priced items went for much more than I expected - ball winders and shuttles were selling for crazy amounts as people got swept up in the bidding process. But the high priced items - spinning wheels, looms, and the like... they often sold for less than I'd expect.

There were a few exceptions - the auction had three pieces of Golding  equipment for sale and basically everyone was waiting for those. A ballwinder went for $550, a spinning wheel (!!!) for $2000, and a ring spindle for $150. The auctioneer said she'd never seen a single piece of Golding equipment up for sale in all her time and I believe it. These were exquisite pieces of craftsmanship and everyone knew it.

Of special interest to Jackie and me were two Country Craftsman spinning wheels. Jackie and I each have one and Jackie recently bought a second one that's missing a few parts (treadle and footman). We love our CC wheels passionately and we've been debating whether the spare is worth getting the missing parts turned... if we could sell it at a profit or what. The CC wheels at the auction went for very pleasing prices. There was an unfinished Franzek with stool, distaff, lazy kate, and six bobbins that went for $600. I had to chew on my auction number to keep from bidding on it myself - it had a jumbo flyer and all those bobbins. I've never seen one of those for sale.

The Merlin Tree Is Amazing

So we spent the weekend at the Maryland Sheep & Wool and I have soooo much to tell you about that. But first, I want to talk about The Merlin Tree. They make ultra portable, reasonably priced travel wheels in two models: The Hitchhiker and The Roadbug.

Hitchhiker.

Roadbug!

Now Jackie bought a Hitchhiker some time ago and really liked it right up until she tripped over the thing and damaged the wood on the drive system. It was really minor damage but in a connection point so she decided not to spin on it again until she could get it fixed. So when we saw that Merlin Tree would be at the Maryland Sheep & Wool, we took it with us. Jackie asked if she could buy a replacement for the part that was damaged... but Merlin Tree said, leave it with us for the day and let's see what we can do.

And then when we picked it up that evening it was totally fixed and spinning beautifully... and they didn't charge her. That's going above and beyond there. It was a total accident, absolutely not the fault of their craftsmanship in anyway. But they took it and they made it a beautiful, fully functioning wheel again.

And then they did something that absolutely floored me.

At the auction a Roadbug came up for sale. I'd spent about 10 minutes spinning on one of their demo wheels so I knew I could spin on it and the travel design is perfect for my lifestyle that involves a lot of going to see Jaime. And a lot of going to spin ins. :) So I bid. And bid. And bid and bid and bid... and won. It wasn't in perfect shape but the biggest problem was that the tension knob had been chewed on by a dog and was split - no longer functioning well. So I went to see if I could buy a new tension knob from them.

First, they were pleased by the price I'd paid for it - about $180 less than it would have been new. I can understand that... knowing that your wheels hold their value used is an important consideration to a spinner. Keeping more than 50% of it's value even after it's been beaten up a bit and badly needs some wood wax, that's good information for a dealer. So I asked if I could buy a tension knob, and they gave me one for free.

This is a really little thing - they cost $6.50 on the woolery and I'd have gladly paid for it... But it absolutely floored and charmed me they they let me have it. If you go and wander around their website, look at their wheels, you start to understand something about this husband and wife team: They're people. They're a couple of people who decided to fulfill a need they saw in the spinning community. They adopt sheep, they have huge, spoiled dogs. They made design choices for the needs and convenience of their customers... who they want to be happy spinners.

They could easily have designed the wheel, like every other spinning wheel company in the world, to use only their specific bobbins. Then we'd all have to buy another set of a million bobbins from another company.. but instead, they chose to use the most common and inexpensive bobbins on the market so that we'd always be able to find some. They've made ethical, thoughtful design decisions that have a direct effect on their bottom line. That's amazing.

For that tension knob, these people have made me a fan for life.

Judgemental Cat

This is the face Noel kept making while I was knitting Jaime's hat...

Little cat throwing shade on my knitting, y'all.

Maryland Sheep & Wool: Preparations Continue

Tonight after work I'm going to drive 3.5 hours Jackie's house where I will sleep until approximately 4 am and then we will drive 5 hours to Maryland. I have not packed. I have not even figured out which wheel(s) I am taking for the spin in. I am almost utterly unprepared.

But I have finished (I think) spinning all the yarn for my February Lady cardigan. I have spun around 880 yards of Romney wool and another 330 yards of merino wool. The merino is still drying so I don't have a good picture of what it all looks like yet. When I get home I'll take a picture of my sweater's quantity of hand dyed, hand spun wool... But for now here's a picture of some of it drying:

Here is a picture of some of it, hanging out in my dark house...

And in a spirit of uncharacteristic diligence and planning, I actually knit a swatch of the lace panel to make sure the colour wasn't tooooo busy for it.

Having finished my spinning, I resolutely put everything down and began knitting frantically. You see, I only let myself have four projects going at any time... and I have exactly four projects on my needles right now. Soooo many needles, so few projects. :( And they're all really boring right now! Garter stitch forever, stockinette forever, foot rows leading to a toe decrease. Boring, boring, boring! But I absolutely must finish one of these projects so that I can start my cardigan. I have nothing exciting to wear to the MSWF to show off my knitting... But I can absolutely be working on the February Lady while I'm there!

... You think I should take a half day from work to finish my knitting?

Maryland Sheep & Wool - Preparations

There are 5 days until I leave for the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival... or, atleast, until I leave to grab my stepmother and THEN head to the sheep & wool. Certain preparations must be made!

1. Reserve a hotel room.... Done! I found a good deal on Groupon - $42 off for a decent hotel and 30 minute drive from the festival.

2. Pay all bills for the month... almost done. Mortgage is paid, Rent will be paid shortly. Credit cards, phone, insurance... all done.

3. Decide how much I'm willing to spend at MSWF, remove that cash from bank account.

4. Freeze all non-cash methods of payment in a large block of ice. If I want something badly enough to excavate it from a foot of ice, I probably ought to buy it.

5. ... Two feet of ice...

6. Pack. Pack.. everything I've ever knitted, ever. Maybe a few especially phenomenal skeins of yarn to knit on while I'm there. I need to represent around my knittas, yo.

7. Check weather... done. It is going to be in the SEVENTIES all weekend! Why! I have knit NO summer stuff! I'm going to be surrounded by knitters and NOT SHOWING MY COLOURS. For the love of wool, why!

8. Begin knitting summer garment. I'm pretty sure if I knit non-stop I can finish something in time for the festival. I mean, I have a few vacation days and Jackie's driving the first leg of the trip...

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival - Totally Unprepared

I just realized the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is THIS WEEKEND and Jackie and I have made NO PLANS!

How did this happen?! What were we thinking?!

I immediately texted my (beautiful, talented, wonderful) stepmother, "The MSWF is this weekend and we have made no plans!"

She was quick to reply, "I thought you had no money."

Ridiculous woman! Obviously I have sheep and wool money! I just won't have any food money... which is fine, because I need to lose some weight anyway.

So... we're going. I'm looking for hotel rooms now. :D