Knitters Have Big Personalities

Last night I was invited to a social knitting dinner by Tricia, one of my favourite people at the guild. I don't think the social knitting group has a name or anything complicated - it's just a group of knitters and if they can, they generally show up on Wednesdays. It's nice and casual - I really dig that and it's awesome to have an undemanding social outing in the middle of the week.

I've mentioned before how awesome it is to find so many STEM women in the fiber arts and this group was no exception - there was me, a structural engineer, Tricia, an industrial engineer, and one woman who does IT for clinical research and another who does massage therapy (not really STEM, but still cool). Their names escape me because I'm just terrible with names. Still, lovely ladies and I was happy to spend the evening in their company. Edit: Karen is the clinical research IT geek and Sue is a kids physical therapist. Thanks Tricia!

Another thing I've noticed about fiber artists is they tend to be very interesting people with broad personalities. I'm sure there are shy and retiring knitters - perhaps they don't come to social gatherings? But all the ones I meet tend to have lots of knowledge and experience in interesting realms, stories to tell, lectures to give... and boy, will they give them! Now, please don't get me wrong. These are interesting people with interesting stories to tell and I enjoy listening, but it is a little funny to watch a group of women each... more or less... take turns completely and utterly dominating all the conversation.

... I may also do this.

And, of course, watching the social knitters reminded me to treasure Tricia and people like her who selflessly surrender the foreground and seem to have endless patience and interest with other people's stories. I wanna be like Tricia, if I grow up.

On that note, today was the adultiest day of my life, so far, as I closed on my yarn storage facility house. My first house. My darling, beautiful house. I don't get to live in it for another three months as I have tenants, but still. I am so excited, boys and girls.

Home, sweet home. <3

I'm trying to think of it as three months to pack. And properly plan out my craft room.

Observational Data Supporting Belief in the Power of Knitting!

Today I went to the DMV to get my driver's license renewed. They opened at 8 so I arrived at 7:30am to be first in line (I was not. How did that happen?). Still, there were only a couple people in front of me so I was sure it would go quickly and I'd get to work in plenty of time.

... I'll wait while you laugh at me. All done? Okay.

I'd taken my welcome mat and Jaime's Socks-To-Be along with a Ply Magazine on spinning cotton so even though they didn't allow cell phones, I knew I'd be well entertained for the, what, twenty minutes it take? Half an hour? But while I knit and knit and knit on my welcome mat, I had a vague sense of time ticking by while person after person was called ahead of me. I started to get very antsy and emailed my team leader to ask permission to be late. I flipped through the magazine, I measured, knit, and measured my welcome mat...

And finally, I picked up Jaime's socks. I opened up my book on Two-At-A-Time-Magic-Loop and reviewed the cast on technique. I organized my two balls of sock yarn into ziplock bags, fed tails through little holes, took a deep breath... and then I picked up my tiny, tiny needles and began casting on.

They immediately called my number.

House! And Etsy! But mostly house!

Is anyone superstitious about their knitting?

The Yarn Harlot  has talked in the past about her belief that expected babies won't be born until the things she's knitting for them are finished. And that sounds like utter nonsense except I'm trying to buy a house and I have been fantasizing about all the wonderful things I will knit and weave for my house - rugs, welcome mats, lacy curtains, pillows, and every other thing a pair of needles and possibly come up with. The only thing I've actually cast on is a welcome mat which I have idly been knitting a few rows a week while jumping through loan hurdles. I haven't been in much of a hurry because the house has tenants so I won't be able to move in until August and even my little heart can't maintain enthusiasm for that long. And the house buying process is no joke! It's been an endless marathon of inspections, repairs, post-repair inspections, septic testing, water testing, negotiations, and paper work... at one point I was no longer sure whether I was buying a house or just writing checks as part of some vicious practical joke.

Until the other day. See, I finished my socks and frogged the socks I'd started for Jaime (for no reasons! Definitely not because two at a time magic loop is hard and I got lost some how! I... just didn't like them). I've felt too guilty to cast on another project for me while Jaime's socks languish, unloved, in a project bag but I haven't quite been able to get up the gumption to restart his socks, soo... I've been dragging around the rug and have knit many, many rows on it.

And now. I have a closing date.

Whoa. Like... whoa. After all that rigmarole, apparently all I needed to buy a house was to get cracking on some knitting! That's my kind of karma, let me tell you. The house still has tenants... do you think they'll move out early if I get some lacy blue curtains done? ;D

To keep myself busy while I'm waiting, I also made some lovely, colourful things for Fantasy Fibres.

First there is this beautiful variegated orange I dyed up in a fit of pique after it rained and rained for days. Doesn't it look like a pile of sunflower petals? It chippered me right up and I saved 4 ounces of it to sell.

I also blended this batt with alternating layers of gradients going from pale blonde to dark brown and layers of a pumpkin orange, to give the whole batt a consistency and sort of unifying theme. It's made entirely of the softest things - merino and bamboo, mostly - with a little bit of tencel for strength. Each colour has a slightly different texture to it and I think this will be a wonderful spinning experience.

Carolina Fiber Fest Day 2!

First, I want you all to know that I didn't buy anything. It was a struggle, but I made it through with my bank account intact! Phew! Mind you, Jackie arrived and bought us each one of those awesome canvas knitting bags I talked about yesterday. She also picked us up porcupine quills which were being sold as shawl pins. They're really cool but also absurdly sharp. Stand by for stories of me impaling myself on my own shawl. xD

She also got herself a lovely skein of 50 Shades of Gradient in Patina, from a shop called Yarns to Dye For. I love terrible puns like that and I probably laughed like an idiot after I read it.

Patina colorway. Gorgeous, gorgeous.

The skein is a 100% superwash merino 2-ply, in something like a fingering weight. You could definitely make socks out of it, though the merino would might wear fast. It cost $32 but it's 560 yards which is pretty generous for that kind of (I think) hand dyed yarn. There were all sorts of samples knitted up and one skein can make a lacey shawl very easily. I'm not sure what Jackie's going to make but I'm excited to see. Even though there was a gorgeous silver to blue to black gradient skein I didn't drool too much. I take a certain amount of pride in that. 

The Sheep to Shawl was very interesting.

When I originally joined it I thought it was going to be a competition type thing where you start with a sheepie and it gets sheared in front of you and a small team of devoted workers card, spin, and weave that fleece into a shawl, right there on the spot. It turned out that this was more of a demonstration event and no one expected to finish the shawl that day. Still, a whole bunch of folks worked their treadling feet off to make it happen. We had a lovely Jacob's fleece and every bit of it got spun and plied. It wasn't frantic or stressful, we just worked at our own paces, all together, for four hours straight.

It was especially educational and a bit challenging for me. I'm very picky about my fiber prep and my spinning. Nothing goes through my carder fewer than 3 times and when I spin up something bumpy and lumpy I get pretty grumpy. But at the Sheep to Shawl people just... loosely carded and then spun whatever they had, lumpy gnarls and all. At first I felt uncertain about my spinning around all these much more experienced spinners but after I took a break to look around I realized everyone else was just... accepting all the imperfections that popped up. A bit of an eye opening experience for me, I'll tell you!

Afterwards, I drove up to my parents house and introduced my fantastic boyfriend Jaime to them. That went great - I beat Jackie at cards for the first time in my life with him as my partner! That's never happened! I gave my stepmother an easter basket full of little bits and pieces I'd picked up for her along the way...

Including that awesome sock yarn so we can make matching socks.

I gave my dad a copy of Sid Meier's Civilization so he'd have something to do while Jackie and I babble about fiber... and that was fortunate because Jackie had an easter basket for me too. I tore it apart so I haven't got a picture yet, but it had some bamboo sock yarns, orifice hooks she made herself, and other awesome things. The bamboo sock yarn is perfect for this lace sock pattern, Summer Slice, I wanted to knit.

Meanwhile I need to find a pattern for Jackie and I to do our matching socks in - anyone have any ideas? :D

Carolina Fiber Fest Day 1

Today was the first of two days of a fantastic local fiber festival where my guild, Twisted Threads Fiber Arts Guild, likes to make a bit of a showing. We set up a bunch of spinning wheels, spindles, yarn, some finished projects... and then we lured unsuspecting people into the wide, wonderful world of fluff. We're a bit disorganized which is a struggle for me - I'd rather everything were planned out, but it's good for me to not have things Exactly How I Want Them. There was much shuffling and moving of tables and wheels but eventually we were all arranged where we wanted to be, happily going about the business of spinning fiber.

Patricia and Danielle, two of my favourite people so far, really did amazing work. They had boundless energy, patience, and enthusiasm for teaching people how to spindle. I'm not an enthusiastic teacher, possibly because I'm such a terrible student. I like to take something new to a dark, private corner where I can fuss and bang my head against it in private. You know, someplace no one will see me cry or threaten to burn everything down. I don't like people to watch me struggle and so I have a tendency to politely turn away when other people are struggling. This is not what teachers are supposed to do! So I was happy, sitting on the sidelines and making encouraging noises while I spun and spun on a big project I'm working on (more about that another day).

Here's Danielle, working her teaching magic.

Danielle was so kind and generous - it turns out she has a huge soft spot for broke students so a few people when home with their first spindle and a pile of wool to play with. Hopefully we'll see them at some guild meetings! :D

Around 5 things started winding down so I went for a nice wander and peered at all the beautiful, beautiful things I absolutely could not buy because house. Patricia came with me and was very helpful - when a few shopkeepers sensed an easy mark she intercepted. "She can't. She's buying a house." I'm very grateful though I really, really wanted the Nantucket knitting bag. Omigosh, you guys. This bag... it's a study canvas bag with a million pockets that you can unzip flat or zip into a backpack. It's cleverly designed so that if you want a skein of yarn that you left at the bottom of your bag... you can unzip the side to get it. Without messing up the contents of the rest of the bag! Good lord, I want this bag!

Gimme, gimme, gimme!

I wandered around and took pictures of some awesome things I was really taken with... and since I couldn't buy any of them, I will now tell you all about them. Brace yourselves.

First, look at these amazing buttons. There was a whole table of hand-carved buttons. I'm planning on knitting Jaime a Dragon's Wing Cowl for his larp costume and I've been sort of idly watching for the perfect buttons to show up for it. I was thinking some very simple carved wood or stone buttons... but these horn toggles really distracted me. I'm covering the price tag in this picture in case I buy them - I don't want Jaime fussing about how much they cost. :P

I was briefly tempted by this kit and I took a picture so I'd remember the pattern. It's Amy Gunderson's Stinger and I think it'd look fabulous on me as a sort of summer weight tunic-y thing. Something to obscure the amount of chocolate I've eaten, you know? Fortunately they didn't have any colour kits I liked but the sample piece they'd knitted up was very eye-catching. Now take a deep breath and brace yourselves...

Because look at these tiny, tiny needles! Size #0000! Look how adorable they are! So tiny! The shop was selling itty bitty mini skeins and had all sorts of tiny, tiny things they'd knitted. The tiniest socks I've ever seen. I'm only capable of making high pitched squeaky noises when I'm around them and I have no idea why.

And finally...

I want this sock yarn so much it hurt to put it down without buying it. I hope you're all really impressed with the herculean self-restraint I showed today... because I'm going back tomorrow.

Rough Fiber Day

I got my hands on 3 lbs of raw Suffolk x Corriedale wool for very cheap and I was so excited about it. I didn't look too closely, just fingered a couple locks and found it delightful. It was full of bounce and energy but much softer than I expected. I bought it and set it aside to wait until I had time to love it properly. I was headed up to see Jaime over the weekend so I washed it all Thursday and laid it out to dry while I was out of town. Visiting Jaime makes for a long Monday - I leave his place at around 6:30 am to get to work on time and then there's a long day (to make up for all the goofing around we do on Fridays, see? :P). I got through the day in good spirits by reminding myself what a delightful pile of fluff was waiting for me at home.

So you can imagine my sadness when I got home and started picking the wool... and discovered it was full of nepps and short cuts. Little bits and tangles that spoiled what should have been a lovely carding and spinning experience.

Here you can see some of the snarls and lumps

A hand carded rolag, full of "texture".

I tried to live in denial - I drum carded, I hand carded, I combed... If I worked really, really hard and picked out all the nepps I could spin a lovely single... but finally I had to stop and face facts. Some people would really love this sort of "texture" for their spinning, people who like to make artsy yarns. But I'm not one of those people (yet) and the sheer amount of time it would take to make this into something I want to spin, well. You have to put a value on your own time, right? And I've decided my time is worth more than what I spent on this fleece. Now I just have to force myself to get rid of it.

So after all that brouhaha I was in a bit of a mood. I should have had a glass of wine and gone to bed early, and I totally tried to. But after an hour of grumpy tossing and turning I finally got up, returned to the craft room, and really tackled my drum carder.

I picked three colours, based on how they suited my mood and wound up with these delightful puni style rolags:

I made them with merino wool, a little bit of bamboo, and a tiny, tiny bit of firestar in the purple for sparkle. They are so soft and the texture changes subtly as you run through the colours making them a tactile joy to spin.

It perked me right back up.

Jackie's Got My Back

I'm supposed to close on my house sometime in the next two weeks (paperwork processing has me on tenterhooks) and I'm still not *totally* sure what the closing costs will be. I'm a fairly high strung soul to begin with so... this is not ideal for my personal happiness. I'm spending a lot of time looking at my bank account, counting on my fingers, and checking my documents. And trying very, very hard not to spend more than $15 between now and then.

Which is a darn shame because this weekend I'll be at the Carolina FiberFest. Now granted, I'll be spending most of Friday doing some spinning demos and on Saturday I'm doing a Sheep to Shawl demonstration... But I feel like there's still going to be time for me to wander through the festival, staring lustfully at all the beautiful fleeces and roving and yarns...

...Which I absolutely can not buy. D:

This is a disaster! What have I done to myself?! Why? Why?!

Faced with this sort of disaster, I immediately texted my stepmother. "Oh... Oh no, Jackie," I said. "I just realized I'm going to be at a fiber festival all of Friday and half of Saturday... with no money."

"What fiber festival?" Jackie asked, getting the important stuff out of the way right away. And then, "There's always a fiber festival at my house."

I'm pretty sure that's permission to rifle her stash and run off with the yarn and roving I like best. ;)

In other, slightly less hysterical news, I finished my socks this weekend.

These are not identical...

Jaime and I are on slightly shifted work-sleep schedules so he goes to bed before I do, like a sensible grown up. I was over at his place this weekend and got the toes finished up after he went to bed. This turned out to be key because an unexpected cold front rolled in. In March! It was 80 degrees all of last week and now I'm huddled up in my warm wool socks and hoodie. Ridiculous.

I take my spinning wheel to his place and it says something about my priorities that I packed an 8 ounce spinning project and two knitting projects... and then just threw half my laundry hamper into a duffel bag at the last minute. Which is how I wound up with one pair of shorts, one pair of pajama pants, one t-shirt, 16 panties, and 5 socks. Priorities.

I also left Jaime alone too long with my sock yarn...

I think he got bored. First he pretended to be performing surgery with the needles and yarn, then he fussed at me to remind him how to use chopsticks... then he started assembling Frankenbunny. When he demanded I pass him some stitch markers so that he could make a face, I decided it was time to put down my spinning and pay attention to him.

Supported Spindling with the Twisted Threads Fiber Arts Guild

Thursday night was the guild meeting and our program was on support spindes. It was awesome - Jame brought in a whole range of spindles. Some from the Himelayas, Africa, Russian, one from France. She talked about these places and the type of fiber they spin and what materials they make their spindles from. It was very interesting! Afterward she passed out some bead style spindles she made by hand and tried to teach us how to use them. Some folks were better at it than others... I, myself, have no skill a spinning cotton. :P

Still she let me keep the lovely bead spindle - it glows in the dark! - and one of the other ladies there sold me a very inexpensive tahkli so I can practice. Because, really, I needed more spinning things in my life. I'll upload pictures later, right now I'm at Jaime's and didn't bring them. They're so small and delicate, I'll have to fret over them until I get used to them.

I also gave a brief speechish thing at the guild meeting about the website but there were only a few people there (on Saint Patrick's day... I wonder what they were all up to, hmm?) so we postponed any votes until later. It's always tricky talking to people about technical stuff, I used to have the same problem when I try to talk about cementitious materials. I start out talking in a way I *think* is pretty basic, then I realize I'm using a lot of jargon no one has any good reason to understand. Then when I adjust, I wind up talking way further down than I need to. I really need to work on that. Web hosts, DNS, code packages... most people have no good reason to know what I'm talking about when I yammer on and on about this stuff. In any case, we'll be voting on stuff like that soon and then I can roll up my sleeves and get to work!

Meanwhile, I'm working on some blending batts and rolags so soon I'll have an update for the Etsy shop and some cool pictures to show.

Update time: Here are the pictures of the support spindles I was talking about.

Bead whorl spindle, handmade by Jame.

Indian Tahkli Spindle, ideal for cotton.

Sheepies, Sheepies, Sheepies! (Jacob Sheep)

Spring is in full force here in the North Carolina / Tennessee / Virginia area and do you know what that means? It's time to shear all the poor wee sheepies so they'll be all comfy for the summer.

And, you know. Buy all their fleeces.

My sheep to shawl group (non-competitive) is using a Jacob fleece and I am just enamored by it. Jacob sheep are so cool, you guys. They're small, spotted sheep and can have between 2 and 6 horns. They're sheep that look like goats... but act like sheep. I like that as I've always found goats to be suspicious. They're very smart and often have a bad sense of humour. Also Goat's Cheese is unfairly delicious and expensive. I totally hold that against them and will continue to do so until I can afford to eat goat's cheese every day... But I digress.

The Jacob fleece we're working with is so nice. So, so nice. This is the first time I've ever worked with Jacob and I was under the impression that it's a little coarse but it turns out there's a lot of variation. We may even be working with a lamb fleece - it was donated so we're not sure. But I basically want to spread out this fleece and roll around in it. My cats also feel this way, which is why the fleece is hidden and I can't pet it at will.

So imagine my delight when a shepherd located within driving distance announced that they'll be shearing their Jacob sheeps April 18th. I immediately began hatching an evil plan and emailed her asking, "Are there good hiking trails near you?"

You see, boys and girls, Jaime is a lovely fellow. If I said, "This weekend I want to go stomp around a sheep farm, pet all the sheepies, and buy all their fleeces. You drive, okay?", he would probably go along with it. But I would feel just the tiniest bit bad, forcing him to spend all day drowning in my bizarre hobbies. Not very bad, just a wee little bit.

But Jaime is a hiker. A thru hiker, no less, which seems to involve spending a lot of money on gear so you can pretend to be in the bike-less apocalypse and walk hundreds of miles in the wilderness. So the weekend after April 18th, weather allowing, Jaime and I will go hiking and camping in the Peaks of Otter. I will show my travelling sock some beautiful sights while getting some fresh air, sunshine, and exercise...

... And then, on the way home... ALL THE FLEECES! MUAHAHAHA!

How To Clean Raw Fiber - Washing and Drying the Fiber

Now first off, I am definitely not an expert. I feel like I should say that before I tell anyone what they should do. But I thought it might be a nice change of pace if, instead of rattling on about my latest fiber fluff, I told you how I make my fiber all clean and fluffy. Sound good? Let's start!

First I take my dirty fluff - in this case alpaca. I spread it out and pick out the especially gross, dirty bits or terrible snarls and then throw it away. Then I put it in mesh laundry bags. Any fiber that can felt, especially wool, should go in mesh bags. If you've ever put a hand wash only item in the washing machine, you'll know why. These animal protein fibers have scales on the surface of the fiber and hot water causes the scales to open up. Agitation causes the scales to lock up together so that you wind up with a tightly matted mess that will never be the soft, fluffy fiber you want it to be.

Now if you're working with wool, depending on the breed, it's going to have something called lanolin on it. Lanolin is a natural grease that the sheep excrete through their pores that helps protect and water proof their wool coats. Cool, huh? You can spin "in the grease" with the lanolin still in but typically we want to remove most of the grease. Hot water and soap, especially a liquid soap that's good for degreasing (lots of people swear by Dawn. Is there anything Dawn can't do?), will help pull the dirt and grease off your fiber. So stuff some fiber into the mesh laundry bags. Not too full, it should have room to move around. If I'm dealing with wool, I wash it outside in large plastic bins outside because the lanolin can really gunk up a plumbing system. Especially septics - hoo boy! Alpaca has no grease so I just toss it in my bathtub and make some soup.

Alpaca soup. Not delicious.

First I fill the tub with really hot water and soap, too hot to touch. Bring gloves if you're fussy about keeping the skin on your hands. Then I put my mesh bags in so my alpaca can enjoy a bubble bath. I push the bags up and down a bit int he water to get the water and soap int the fluffy. You will immediately see more foul brown water than you expected - these animals are filthy! There's a pretty strong smell - not unpleasant - of animal fleece, dirt, manure. When it's wool there's a nice, spicy smell from the lanolin too. I don't mind this, but I spent my summers mucking out horse stalls so don't take my word for it. Also, wash your hands because... ew.

It's probably going to take a few sluices to get clean. When the water is still warm but not so hot that you can't touch it anymore, empty the tub and refill it. Repeat until the amount of filth coming out of your bags is no longer shocking. Depending on how dirty things are looking you might only want to soap on your first sluice - play it by ear. 

Once you're done rinsing the soap and dirt out of your fluff, pull it out. I like the mesh bags because I can hang them up in the tub and let the excess water stream out for awhile. You can also give it a gentle squeeze or roll it up in towels and walk all over it. The more water you get out in this stage, the quicker it'll dry and the sooner you can play with it. Now a quick warning here - when you pull it out it's probably going to look way worse than it did going in. It's going to look all tangled up and horrible. I know of a few people who gave up at this point, assumed they'd felted it, and threw away their fleeces. Tragedy! Give yourself a chance. :)

I spread my wet fluff out in the sunshine - if there is sunshine. My dad, who loves my mother, made her a mesh screen that allows air flow while protecting the fiber from wild cats when she's drying it inside. Note how she puts an absorbent mat underneath the fiber to help it dry faster.

You can see she teases her fiber a bit during the washing process - either before she puts it in the bath or when it's drying, I'm not sure. But this teasing probably helps her fiber dry faster than mine and teasing is definitely the next step. Which I'll tell you all about next time!

Knotty Sunday

It's been a busy weekend, here in the Knotty House. I may or may not have gone a bit crazy about dyeing and blending. I don't know, everything went a little fuzzy and went I surfaced, I had dye-splattered fingers and the smell of vinegar was in the air. I must remember to check my credit cards  and make sure I didn't order huge quantities of merino, angelica, and other such delights.

I put together a rainbow spinning and felting kit for my Etsy store. Take a look!

Not as yummy as skittles. Do not taste this rainbow.

It's half an ounce each of hand dyed Romney in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. The blue came out variegated as all my blue dyes do and I rain it through the carder to blend. It should produce a lovely, heathered effect. One of the down sides of making nothing I would not use myself is every time I try to list something on Etsy, my fingers itch with the desire to run off with the goods, cackling and petting them. I, uh. I'm working on this.

That romney / alpaca fluffy cloud I blended? Holy cow. Such a dream to spin. It's coming out just gorgeous and so easy to stretch as fine as you want. Here's a picture of a single I'm spinning, twisted back on itself so you can see how pretty it'd look as a 2-ply.

So often in spinning, dyeing, and blending I find myself looking at what I just made and thinking, "This is the most beautiful thing I've ever done". And then a week later I make something else that's the new most beautiful. I'm not sure sure how to deal with these feelings of self-satisfaction. I may have to beat myself up over how messy my house is, just to keep balance.

Fiber Saturday and Etsy

Last night I went to The Scrap Exchange and found my new favourite helper - A collapsible mesh basket that I think is meant for laundry. I bought it for a dollar and it makes a fantastic container for drying fiber. The mesh provides lots of air flow while keeping things safe from any stray gusts of wind. It's been really warm this week, 75 degrees (almost 24 celsius!) all week. The sun is shining, the birds are singing (the ducks are being wildly inappropriate) - I just had to make some color happen!

So I turned on my dye pots and got to work - here is a little basket of sunshine yellow and a slightly variegated orange. Soon they'll be all dry and fluffy and instead of spinning them, I'll force myself to bundle them up into rainbow kits. Probably. Maybe.

Thursday I picked up a Country Craftsman spinning wheel for my (lovely and talented) stepmother Jackie.

I'll be delivering it to her come Easter but until them I get to put my hands all over it and spin beautiful things. They don't make Country Craftsman wheels anymore so I'm very excited to play with this one and boy is she a beauty. I've the woods chosen for this - the grains and shading. It's a very sturdy, heavy wheel that spins with a silky smoothness, even with an improved drive band. The wheel came with 4 bobbins and a lazy kate. The bobbins are quite small - I've been spoiled by large bobbins and I think I'd get frustrated if I tried to spin anything other than very fine yarn on it. But why would you ever spin anything but the finest, loftiest lace on this lovely wheel? I know, I know. I can't keep her, I have to hand her over to Jackie. And I will! Probably. Maybe. ;)

In other, exciting news I finally tackled that mountain of alpaca. I'll go through the whole process some time in the future, but I took raw, dirty fluff and I washed it, teased it, carded it... and blended it.

See this beautiful, fluffy pillow? That's 70% Romney wool and 30% fluffy alpaca in a beautiful batt of carefully prepared fiber. Half of it I took to spin myself... and the other half I put up for sale on Etsy. :o

Yes! That's right... I've started my own little Etsy store, Fantasy Fibres. In it I plan on selling my dyed stuff, (maybe) some of my handspun, and just about every thing Jackie makes. There's very little up for sale now, but I'm working hard to get a reputable store front together.

Oh Dear...

I have this system where I take my travelling sock with me to work and whenever I switch analysis tasks, I knit a couple rows to clear my head. It works pretty well - if I jump straight to another job without a breather I start scrambling up member sizes and wind conditions. And if a task is frustrating me, I'll also take periodic breaks and knit a bit to stay calm, relaxed, and focused. This week I have had a series of non-standard towers to analyze, each more unique than the last.

That is 75 rows of sock...

It's been a rough week. :x

Home Again, Spin Again!

Returning home (well, Jaime's home) was such a relief. I didn't drive one bit but even still, as soon as we got home, I collapsed into bed and slept for two hours. And those two hours gave me the strength I needed to kitchener stitch up the toe of the completed sock and ply 8 ounces of yarn. Whuff!

Behold, the sock!

Ignore my goofy toddler-shaped feets.

Yes, one sock. The other is in progress and at the rate I knit socks it should be done in time for next winter. And that'll be nice because this is an absurdly warm sock. I knit it out of Patons Kroy Sock on US 1 (2.5mm) needles. I'm a tight knitter and that sock is about 7200 tiny stitches, making them very thick socks indeed. It's 72F (22C) outside... my foot is sweltering.

I spun and spun and spun and produced 500 yards of beautiful 2-ply fingering yarn, spun from fluffy romney sheepies grown here in North Carolina.

Again, my feets.

It's currently in two skeins of roughly the same size but I'm thinking I might split it into 5 100 yard mini skeins and dye each skein a different shade of blue. I'm imagining a beautiful, lacy gradient shawl, going from pale to dark blue.

... after I finish this sock.

Intrepid Knitting Part 3

On the way home we took the longish way and enjoyed 34 miles of Skyland Drive, a scenic bit of highway with lots of little places to stop and enjoy the views. It was a bit cold - the mountains still have snow and the wind was fierce but the sock still had a good time.

The sock even spied a kinsman down on the rocks. We considered a rescue mission but thought better of it - it was pretty far down and who's to say the sock wasn't just resting in the middle of its own hiking trip? Meanwhile, I got exactly three feet up the Appalachian trail before I tripped. There are no pictures of that (I hope). 

Intrepid Knitting Part 2

Have you read everything the Yarn Harlot has ever written? Of course you have! But in case you've temporarily forgotten... she goes on at length about her rather poetic feelings about the humble sock and how she likes to show her socks a little bit of the world before they get stuffed into a pair of shoes. A fair amount of her (awesome) blog is taking pictures of places she takes her sock knitting. I think that's pretty cool, so when the youngish man swept me off on an excursion this weekend, I was excited to show my socks a little bit of the world. This has nothing to do with me spending half a king's ransom on sock yarn this weekend and needing to get really, really into knitting socks to justify it. It may have something to do with my desire to both knit and prove to the youngish man that I was thoroughly enjoying myself on this birthday excursion1 .

Shortly after parking the car and working out our sleeping arrangements, we went for a stroll along the Hawksbill River Greenway. It was a really cute greenway with lots of literature and small bits of historical rubble and I wanted to show all of these things to the sock... Unfortunately, there were also lots of ducks. It must be close to duck mating season because, uh... there were unspeakable things happening along that river. It seemed best to protect the sock's delicate sensibilities and also I wasn't in the mood to embark on a career of amateur pornography so I kept my camera tucked away.

After a fabulous meal at the Mimslyn Inn, we retired in order to be properly ready for our adventure the next day - heading deep into the Luray Caverns. These are limestone caverns and I don't want to get into a frothy rant but limestone is one of my pet passions, left over from my concrete and cementitious materials research. It was a good choice of excursions for my youngish man to surprise me with... though I have to admit I was less interested in the prettiness or the size of the various formations and more interested in what they implied, chemically and geologically speaking. I *mostly* kept my mouth shut and didn't chatter too much about crystalline structures, erosion, or precipitation of minerals. Especially since the poor tour guide was being constantly pestered by an excited teenaged boy with no concept of personal space and a million questions.

The sock has simpler tastes and was awe-struck by the natural beauty of the caverns.

And made vaguely hungry by this slab of "Cave Bacon"

And hungrier by these fried eggs!

One of the unique things about the Luray Caverns is its stalactite organ. A series of rubber mallets on wires are strung throughout a large cavern and, when played, the mallet strikes a stalactite to play a note. They are, I think, 36 or 39 notes and they echo, slightly warped and haunting, from all directions. It's very beautiful but it made me feel uneasy, for reasons I can't quite explain. I kept staring at the components while the song was played and watching the mineral rich water dripping on the mallets and wires. I thought about how it would be if people were to move away from these caverns - the water would drip and drip on these components, until new mineral formations grew around them. The notes change very slowly as the stalactites grow - about a cubic inch in a hundred years. Hundreds of years from now would archaeologists or explorers find the remains of this organ and play the warped, out of tune notes?

The plaque next to the organ talks about man's genius and god's hand being in perfect harmony. But I spend a lot of my time thinking about the cost of progress, the implications of our decisions and the damage we're doing. These caves are carved from limestone, the skeletal remains of ancient sea creatures. We take that limestone and we grind it up and cook it at 1450 degrees until it releases a single carbon dioxide molecule. We use the resulting calcium oxide as the primary ingredient in cement. Every ton of cement produced releases about a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. We have built our civilization on top of and out of that cement, filling our atmosphere with the last breath of ancient creatures. It is hard to believe that we're living in perfect harmony with anything right now.

1. There are strange, sad people in the world who think that knitting distracts from your ability to participate in and enjoy the world. They are wrong. Knitting soothes nerves and allows the knitter to enter a Zen-like state where only joy and serenity exists. Unless the knitting is on a deadline, then all bets are off.

Intrepid Knitting Part 1

This weekend my youngish man took me on a surprise excursion for my birthday.

Boys and girls... I loathe surprises. I try to be a pretty outgoing person and to take a great deal of joy in the moment I find myself in... but still I loathe surprises. I dislike surprise parties. I don't like it when people show up unexpectedly. Heck, I prefer to know exactly what my presents will be. I'm not a surprise kind of girl. I had recently filled two bobbins with 4 ounces each (227 grams total) with the finest singles I have yet spun. It took hours of work - combing the wool, pre-drafting, and learning the new wheel's quirks so that I could get something fairly consistent. I was so looking forward to plying these two singles together into a beautiful fingering yarn that I packed my new spinning wheel to the youngish man's house. The new one. You know.. the expensive and delicate one? The one that's meant to live at home and be delicately cherished while my sturdy and reliable Louet travels? So excited was I about my plying that I also packed 4 ounces of beautiful blue kettle dyed roving I'd made a couple weeks back.

So when the youngish man revealed to me that we'd be driving two and a half hours off to some unknown destination for activities unspecified (despite constant questioning), it was hard for me to be properly excited and grateful to my thoughtful boyfriend. I began to feel better when we arrived at the Knit Wit Yarn Shop in Sperryville, VA.

Like an oasis in the desert...

Knit Wit's had the most glorious selection of sock yarns. Opal, Trekking, Saki Silk, local handspun... It all went straight to my head and I could barely restrain myself from buying everything with a hint of blue in it. They even carried all my favourite needle brands. I wandered around fondling everything before I finally settled on some little notions for Jackie and two matching balls of Saki Silk sock yarn (a mix of wool, nylon, and silk) so we can make matching socks.

© rmethvin

... Assuming I let her have one.

Giving the (Terrible) Gift of Needles

I recently sent Jackie a set of interchangeable circular knitting needles. This is just a terrible gift to give someone. Terrible. Do you love a knitter? Don't do this. A person's preference in knitting needles is an intimate and wildly personal thing and you'd be hard pressed to find a pair of knitters who will agree on what the perfect needles are for any given project. Some people like sharp needles, some people like blunt. Different people like different sorts of material - wood, bamboo, brass, aluminum, nickel, chrome. A knitter may like a brand of needle when they are fixed circulars but hate the joins for the interchangeable circulars. And what they like may change wildly depending on whether they're knitting socks or, say, a sweater. Or on the material they're knitting. Unless you know exactly what your knitter likes, you should never try to surprise them with needles. Never, ever, ever.

I did it anyway.

But! I have an explanation for my foolish and reckless behaviour! See back when I first started knitting, I bought a set of Knitter's Pride Dreamz interchangeable needles - which are colourful wooden things - and sat back to wait for them to arrive, content that with one good purchase I was never going to need to buy needles ever again. (I'll wait while all you knitters laugh hysterically. I was a sweet, sweet summer child.) Alright, while I was waiting for my Dreamz I got itchy, wanting to start all the projects I'd lined up in my Ravelry queue. and it turned out a local yarn store was going out of business so before I knew it... I had bought two pair of circular needles and a pile of yarn. Only at the time I didn't realize how different needles can be so I'd just bought needles that the store had in a size and colour that I liked. Not liking a lot of colour, this meant I walked out with two Addi Turbo knitting needles which were brass needles with nickel plating and a very flexible blue (there's that blue fetish showing again) cord. I didn't realize at the time that I'd accidentally bought some of the more expensive needles in the world or that this would doom me forever.

See, the Addi Turbos are very, very slippery needles and also a little blunt and I spent two weeks knitting feverishly on them. When my wooden Dreamz needles arrived I quickly tried them out and discovered a couple things. First, they're really sticky. Wood has more "grip" to it than ultra slippery nickel plating. This can be good for some kinds of knitting but I'm a tight knitter and going from the Addi Turbos to the Dreamz felt like trying to knit in quick sand. Second, I'm also what's called a "pusher". It's this terrible habit where you use your finger to push against the needle while you slide more stitches forward. This wasn't a problem with my blunt Addi Turbo needles but the Dreamz needles were sharp enough to *hurt*. It's a terrible habit and I need to break it but dang... those needles broke my heart. I really wanted to love them.

Eventually I discovered the Addi Turbo Clicks - a set of staggeringly expensive (I'll wait while you laugh again) interchangeable needles with the blunt, slippery Addi Turbo feel I'd grown to love and a particularly clever spring join system (upside, it doesn't come undone while knitting. Downside, it can be obnoxious to get the join lined up, especially if your eyes aren't as young as they used to be). After a lot of agonizing I bought them and proceeded to be deliriously happy with my purchase. I'm not saying I sleep with them cuddled in my arms... but the Theo cat is suddenly sleeping at the foot of the bed and is wearing a distinctly disgruntled face.

While comparing toys with Jackie over Christmas, I discovered that she uses a set of Boye interchangeable circular needles which... uh... are the subject of some controversy in the knitting world. They have their pros and cons.

They are inexpensive, aluminum needles which are colour coded by size. The best thing they have going for them is they go all the way down to 2.5 mm (US 2) needle size in the default purchase case. A lot of interchangeable sets only go down to a US size 4 or maybe 3 because they are limited by the size of the join mechanism. So that's a major plus for the Boyes. On the downside the cables are really stiff, the needles often unscrew themselves in the middle of your knitting, and on the really small sizes the cable can be larger than the needle itself making for some very awkward knitting. So those are some major negatives for the Boyes.

Jackie had mentioned an interest in learning to knit with the Magic Loop technique (which I'd stumbled into by accident when I owned one circular needle that was about 8 inches too long for my bag) and the stiff cable of the Boyes doesn't lend itself well to that. Though I'm told you can do some creative DIY stuff to use your beloved Boye needles for Magic Loop - including making your own cords. Crazy.

So when I found someone online who wanted to trade two sets of Knit Picks Options needles for a set of wooden needles, I went to do some research. The Knit Picks Options are very similar to my beloved Addi Turbos in that they are brass needles with a very slippery nickel plating, but they have sharper tips and use a screw join. They're also compatible with Knitter's Pride cords allowing you to sort of pick and mix your accessories. So I decided to go for it and traded my Dreamz for the two identical sets of needles and set one to my lovely stepmother Jackie. Even though it's a terrible, terrible idea to give someone knitting needles... if she didn't like them I would happily take them back and cuddle them until they felt better. I also sent her an Addi Sock Rocket on a 60in cord in her favourite sock knitting size. I'll gush about the Sock Rockets some other time but they are my absolute favourites and the long flexible cord means you can do two at a time socks, which I knew Jackie wanted to try. And again, if she didn't like it - I'd take it back! Clever girl, no?

There was a brief moment of hysteria when I found out Jackie is allergic to nickel. But it turns out her fingers are tough enough that she can use the needles without problems. If you have allergies though, your mileage may vary - some people are fine and some people get itching and swelling and all sorts of problems. She's raved about the sock rockets and after decades of aluminum dpns announced that she's never doing socks any other way again.

... It doesn't look like I'm going to get those Options needles back either. :P

Accidentally On Purpose

I accidentally bought a spinning wheel last week. I blame Jackie can't really blame anyone but myself.

Despite the fact that I am an indecently lucky lady with a beautiful Louet S60 spinning wheel that my lovely and generous stepmother Jackie gave me for Christmas...

Seen here being guarded by very grumpy cats who would prefer I pet them rather than spin.

My Louet is a wonderful wheel and I adore it. It's so sturdy and well made that I don't hesitate to put it in the car for a trip to a guild meeting or to spend the weekend with my fellow. It's also an fantastic workhorse. The bobbins are enormous - I've run out of the will to spin before filling one but I've been told a single bobbin will hold up to 250g (nearly 9 ounces!) depending on how you spin.. That's fantastic - I kept getting frustrated with Jackie's Ashford Traditional because the bobbins filled up so darn fast (they hold about 100g or 3-4 oz). Louis has an upright posture that's easy on my back and the broad single treadle allows me to easily work the wheel with either or both of my feet and my legs never get tired when I'm using it.

But it's an Irish Tension wheel - I can explain this in detail some other time but the long and short of it is that it's much better suited to doing thick yarns. This doesn't mean I can't spin fine, delicate threads on it - I absolutely can. It just takes more work than it did on the Ashford Traditional - a Scotch Tension wheel - that I originally learned on. So I've been playing around with the idea of acquiring an Ashford Traditional if I could find one that didn't cost too much.

Right about when I was considering a desperate 13 hour drive to pick up a wheel that the seller would absolutely not ship... Jackie asked me to pick up a wheel for her. If my life were a movie, this would have queued the ominous, dramatic music. Jackie's been looking for a wheel for a friend of hers and found a Kromski Prelude. I was already plotting against Jackie when she asked me to get it, I knew there was a possibility that I'd want to keep it after using it for a month and she said that'd be alright. I almost changed my mind when I picked it up because the seller had bought it as a toy and not loved it properly. It'd barely been spun on, dinged up quite a bit over a couple years, and hadn't been oiled since dinosaurs walked the earth (approximately).

Still I wanted to play with it! So I rolled my sleeves up, got out some oil, and got to work. I oiled everything that moved, reseated some connections, tightened some bolts... and after a couple hours she was spinning silky smooth.

And by golly is she ever a beauty.

The Prelude is an interesting piece. It has a smaller footprint than the Ashford Traditional and the orifice seems taller, which is easier on my back. It doesn't feel as stable as the Traditional and is more inclined to hyper dog-related upsets. But the bobbins are larger (I've heard claims of a 120g or 4.2 ounce capacity. I put 4 ounces on one bobbin last night without a lot of effort to pack it carefully and it's still got loads of room) and there are really solid ratios. One of the things I love is that, like the Louet wheels, the Kromski wheels all use the same bobbins... so if later I wanted to add another Kromski to my herd (*cough*pay the mortgage first*cough*), I know they'd be compatible.

I'm such a trouble maker...

Last night I was talking with my dad on the phone (I'm a total daddy's girl, we talk several times a week) about knitting my boyfriend a hand towel.

That's his favourite colour.

I'm slowly edging my way into knitting for my boyfriend - we've only been dating three months and I'm not sure how knitworthy he is.

"What's knitworthy?" asked my father. And I explained - knitting takes a fair amount of work and the yarn isn't exactly free so if you're going to knit for someone you want to know they're worth it. And you don't want to get crazy, knitting for an significant other, until you know they're going to stick around.

"Oh," said my dad. And there was a long pause in the conversation.

"What, um. What has Jackie knit for you?"

"One pair of socks."

Now socks are a labour of love, boys and girls and nothing to sneeze at. But surely a husband of more than a decade is worth more than a pair of socks? Well, that must be what my father thought because today at work I got a text message from my (lovely, wonderful, talented) stepmother...

"Because of you, your dad wants me to knit for him!!"

Apparently he has a list of things he wants - a hat, mittens, a scarf.

"Are you going to give in to his demands?" I asked.

"Not yet."

Pass me the popcorn! I can't wait to see what happens next. :D