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.