Moth Heaven

Dude, You got papers?

Boy's Obsession du jour (tm): Origami

Mom: paperless.  We've used up what there was left over from when the now-17 year old went through this phase.  You'll be happy to know that papers hold up well when left in proper storage.

Action: magazine paper!

Cut: 8 inches square.  It helps to have vintage Department of Treasury  shears used by banks in the old days to cut new sheets of bills apart, but regular safety scissors also work.

Pretty, eh?

Fold.  Make 12, one for each year of the Chinese Zodiac (another one of his interests, because of the animals, see?) 6 out of coloured, 6 out of editorial.

Stick them together.

Mystery Stole: row 279.  I am considering knitting the longer length.

Jaywalkers Finished

There was a small celebration in the mail this morning.

The wheel's mother arrived in a tidy box from Pat Russo.  I took a picture of her returned to health and hearth, posing with the Jaywalker so the blog would know I was still on track and making progress.

It rained a lot today, so we all played indoors, and I knit all the way to here before the natural light started to fail.  After I turned the heel, I caught up with comments on the blog, (my email is eating most of the stuff Typepad send me at the moment.  The PC has a new mail program --Thunderbird-- that acts like everything with vowels in it is spam, so we are trying to teach it to be more hospitable) and something about Beth S's comment that she could never fit her Jaywalkers over her heel (etc.) got to me.

I realized that I had never tried them on.

Damn. This is as far onto my left foot (the smaller one) as I could get them.

Double damn: they were going to be quirky things with random yarn for the feet.  They won't even be fit for gifting. 

I put them into storage, reclaimed the needles, and moved on. I promised that I would knit them until they were done, and they are.  Finished.

Tonight, I console myself with the Mystery Stole. 

I'm at row 217, for those of you keeping track.

Jaywalking Jaywalkers

You know that feeling you get sometimes with first socks as you approach the toe, that maybe you won't have enough yarn?  I regarded the resurrected and still incomplete Jaywalker and the yarn remaining,  weighed them to check my suspicions, and found that yes, they weighed the same.  No expletives, just resignation.  So I put the sock on a holding yarn, and cast on for the second sock so at least they'll match. Contrast toes?  These will have contrast feet, yarn to be determined. I understand the whole episode as merely another obstacle in my personal Jaywalker odyssey.  I seem to remember that the original Socks that Rock skeins didn't have quite enough yarn for a pair of socks, conceived as they may have been for their funky stranded sock patterns.  I have long since lost the yarn band, but I think there are only 325 yards in this skein, a colour called Queen of the Nile.

There's something unsettling about how resistant to completion these particular socks have been: stitches jumping ship or crossing "panel" borders in the pattern, first-sock getting itself lost for about a year, and now, lacking sufficient yarn.  Scofflaws they are.  Petty criminals of the knitting bag. Insolent and unruly.  I am all the more determined to get them off the needles they've been hogging for almost two years now, and so I am digging in to get them done as Kay says, Wendy style. Non-stop, until they are done.  I'll show them I will.   

Glamourous

This is my friend Megan.  She is a photographer.  Long time readers might remember the Dunkin' Donuts mitten I made for her a winter ago.  She's working.

This is Megan photographing a lovely piece of knitting in my stair hall.  The knitting in question is the pretty red sleeveless party top on the model that Leslie Scanlon (in the back there, wearing the white cami) designed out of Tilli Tomas hand-dyed silk (I don't know the name of the yarn in particular, sorry).

Megan and Leslie drop in on me sometimes to do stuff like this.  In fact, it was Leslie who brought Pam Allen by a few years ago in the middle of a blizzard, just to look at the wallpaper, which Pam liked a lot, and used as a background in a number of shoots during her final two years at Interweave.  If you look at Lace Style? About half of that is shot (not by Megan) in my parlor, in the garden, and on the front stoop. I got to hold Evelyn Clark's lace anklets in my very own hands.  All thanks to Leslie.

I used to be in the knitting group Leslie ran until she went Hollywood on us started getting published in Interweave, and designing for Blue Sky Alpaca.  Sometimes she has time for tea, but mostly she doesn't.  Having to make a living as a knitwear designer is not as fun as it might sound.  But sometimes, like when you get to shoot your new design yourself, it actually is a bit fun, especially if you have to root through your friends' closets for accessories and long forgotten party handbags. 

You'll have to wait for the winter Vogue, Leslie thinks, to see the ad for the pattern.

Close Call/House Call

I came home from TKGA last week to a husband who poured me a glass of wine and turned on the 11 o'clock news, as is our custom, old married couple that we are.  We like to heckle together. Thoreau said that after you grasp the basic concept, all news is merely gossip.  No media proves this better than the local late night television broadcast.

We watched the murder news (sometimes we flip from one local channel to the next comparing which shooting they choose to lead off with), the car chase/roll-over of the day, the people-on-trial portion, and waited for the weather (aka: the stuff you can actually use), and when the sports came on, he said, pouring me another taste of Cheverny, "Pat Russo made your wheel, right?" (it was an intended pun, I am afraid.  He's that kind of guy).

"Yes" I said. I thought this was kind of cute, but nothing more of it quite yet.
"Did you know that he works for xxxx?"
"No, I didn't" Here I wondered a little at where this had come from, but then decided that The Mister must have run into someone at one of his flea market/trash picking sessions, and somehow it had come up in conversation, my being a spinner and loving my Vermont Wheel in particular and all that, and that perhaps the person had known Pat or Robin, his wife.  But my husband had more to say.

"You know he's staying three towns south of here this week?"

Okay friends.  This is where I began to speculate wildly about the reasons for the conversation. 

"How do you know that?"

"His sister-in-law told me." This was now officially suspicious.

"You  called the Northeast Fiber Centre?"

"How else does one get to talk to her?"   He's a sly one, folks, isn't he?

"Care to share with me why you called?"

"Well, he said, placing his elbows one at a time on the table and interlacing his fingers in a languid yet rhetorical gesture of calm, "There's good news and there's bad news." He paused for effect. "The good news is that it can be fixed . . ."

I did not run to the wheel at this point because I didn't want be the lead story on channel 7, but when I examined it the following day -- when I had conjured my happy place, done my deep breaths, and felt able to face the damage -- what I found was that the dowel that connects the mother-of-all to the wheel's table had snapped off under the weight of a large wing chair and a five-year-old boy experimenting with gravity and counterbalances.  The only thing hurt was a three inch long piece of wood, easily repaired.  Had the wheel not caught the chair tipping backwards, my son may have ended up in the hospital, but as it stands, my son now believes me when I say he could fall and hurt himself, my husband  knows that names of all the parts of a spinning wheel, and Pat Russo was able to make a house call.

See What I Mean?

Five rows in, and I am popping these little sections like candy.

This is the Stained Glass bag from Madeline, not the Bar Harbor Bag I pictured two posts ago.  I love this one too, and thought it was more appropriate to Kureyon colour #207 I chose.  I am using Cascade 220 for the black because I prefer the way it felts to the Lamb's Pride she recommends.  Knitting these little shells is addictive.  Really.

Fiber Revival, August 18th

Join the Newburyport Spinners and Historic New England for a day-long exploration of the fiber arts, featuring spinning, weaving, felting, alpaca and sheep husbandry, colonial rug-making, and knitting at the Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm, 5 Little's Lane in Newbury, Massachusetts from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Vendors will offer a variety of natural fibers, yarn, and equipment.  To register for workshops on Scandinavian weaving, needle felting, dyeing, knitting, and more, please contact the instructors directly, as indicated in the class descriptions below.  Spinners, Knitters and Circular Sock Machine Crankers are invited to bring their projects and sit under the maples in the courtyard of the farm's stone house for a day of community and chat.  Plans are in the works for box lunches, details forthcoming.

No rain date.

$5 entrance fee to the property.  Children under 12 free.

For further information, email me, Seedstitch Cheryl, or Kathleen Corcoran at the Spencer Pierce Little Farm.

Classes

9 am to 12 pm

1. Dyeing a Rainbow:  Using just three primary dyes learn how to create a whole rainbow and how, by changing one base color, you can create a totally different set of colors. Take home samples produced by the whole class to duplicate any color. Learn how to shift colors and create your own personal palette
Class cost: $45, includes materials.
Contact: Linda Whiting

2. Spinning a Superfine: Break out of your default single and learn how to stretch that cherished fiber into a consistent laceweight. Students should bring a wheel, the smallest whorl you have and one bobbin.
Class cost: $32  includes materials fee.
Contact: Barbara Clorite-Ventura

3. Math for Knitters
Ever wish you could design your own sweater?  Convert a worsted gauge to one suitable for that dk yarn in your stash? Make a better neckline on a pattern you otherwise love?  Then this is the class for you.
Class cost: $15
Contact: Alison Green Will

4. Finnish Weaving Techniques, Session 1
We are honoured to be featuring Bianca Haglich as an instructor at our inaugural Fiber Revival, you can read more about her here.  Three special techniques will be studied: Finnweave  or Takana, a double-weave construction; Raanu, a weft-faced weave using a single-ply tarn; and Kuultokudos, a transparency weave featuring linen.  Looms will be set up with these weaves so there will be opportunity for student sampling.  This class is appropriate for new weavers.

Instructor: Bianca Haglich
Class cost: $35
Contact: Kathleen Corcoran

Afternoon
2pm to 5 pm

1. Spinning for Magic not Mudpies: What to do with that delicious handpainted roving you bought or dyed yourself?  Learn how to design your yarn and control color for vibrant results.  Students should bring a wheel, about 60 or so yards of a variegated singles, about 2 yards of a plain colored single and at least 3, (preferably 5) bobbins. 

Class cost:$ 35 includes materials fee.
Contact: Barbara Clorite-Ventura

2.  Needle-Felting Workshop for ALL AGES!  Come one, come all! Needle felting is an easy way to embellish your knitted work, or make felted objects. Learn to felt belts, buttons, and flowers. No knitting necessary.

Class cost: Workshop fee: $45 (includes needle felting kit and fleece)
Contact: Jill Stover

3. Finnish Weaving Techniques Session 2

Due to anticipated demand for this class, we will have a second session available in the afternoon. See session one above for description. 

Instructor: Bianca Haglich
Class cost: $35
Contact: Kathleen Corcoran

Vendors:

Sereknity Yarn and Fiber

Yarns in the Farms

Pinestar Studios

Parker River Alpacas

TKGA Summer Show

I was at TKGA for the last two days, sitting at the feet of one of my knitting idols, Beth Brown Reinsel, the designer of my beloved and much worn Celtic Dreams.  I learned a few things.

1. She has a blog.

2. Her last name Reinsel rhymes not with "fine sell," but with "pencil."

3. I can knit a whole Gansey in six hours. Okay, it's only big enough for a bottle of 1999 Hermitage, but technically it is every stitch a Gansey.  See the gussets?  They're the part under the arms that look like the overwrought "lats" of a hamster-sized pump monkey, but at full size, they would be the charm of the whole sweater for me. Sure, you have the patterning on the yoke, but me, I dig those little gussets.  I  also enjoyed the company of Kathy and Cheryl for the day, but I forgot the flashcard for my camera, so you'll have to check out their blogs for photographic proof.

4. I want to learn anything Beth has to teach.  I signed up for the second workshop she was offering even though I had no idea what twined knitting was, and I was not disappointed.  I spent Friday with Terry and her friend Cindy, making Swedish mittens with a stitching technique, tvåänstickning, that is at least 400 years old.  It makes a warm and lofty fabric, and the surface is really interesting.  Beth had a lot of pictures on her laptop that she took in Sweden of museum examples, as well as the incredible work of Anna Maj Ling, who wrote the book

This one I didn't finish in the class time, but you can see what I am getting at here.  The inside has a lovely texture to it, and the wrist end of the mitten has a border of what is called "O-stitch", and a row of "chain stitch" too.  It will fit the boy, when it's done, so these go into the knitting basket with the (many, many) other things.

5. I need a new purse.

Isn't this amazing?  I found this originally on Heather's blog, bought the pattern from the designer's Etsy shop, and actually met Madeline in person outside The Yarn and Fiber Company's booth at the TKGA marketplace yesterday.   She had several of the bags with her in person, and they were amazing.  That's when I really caught the bug.  (Cindy of Yarn and Fiber can set you up with the yarn and the pattern at one go, if you suddenly need one too) To make it, I bought six skeins of one of the new Noro colours from them myself, number 207 (the two skeins of feltable black I need are in the Cascade 220 stash) I can't wait to get started.

(okay, I already have)

6. One plate of guacamole does not satisfy a table of knitters.

Terry, me, Laurie, Cheryl, Kathy, and blogless Manise.  I also learned that you can get only once scoop at Ben and Jerry's if you insist on it, and are willing to still pay for two.

7. If I leave the Mister and The Boy alone in a wool house for two days, I should lock away the precious fiber tools, lest something like this happen.

Before or After? A Beading Conundrum

I took the Mystery Stole to knitting last night, and showed off the beads to Cheryl and Terry.  (Damn, Alison, where were you?) who have been similarly bitten by the bug.  The lilac iridescence was commented upon, and there was much debate about whether one places the bead on the stitch about to be knit, or on the stitch after it is knit.  Terry and Cheryl have read Melanie's instructions, which members will find in Files Section, labeled Special Notices #2:

The tutorial I added to that folder is from 
Fluffy Knitter Deb (Beading Made Easy), and I just wanted to mention 
that her technique differs a bit from some others.  I used her 
technique when I knit the stole and kept it in mind as I was 
designing bead placements.  The way she has you do it is as follows:  
when you get to a stitch where you place a bead, put the bead on the 
crochet hook and grab the stitch from the left needle.  Slide the 
bead over the stitch and replace the stitch on the left needle, then 
work it.  Essentially this places the bead on the row below the 
stitch marked, but this worked very well and is how I both designed 
and knit the stole.

I know Melanie designed the stole this way, but I worry about the beads sitting in the exact center of those hexagons among other things.  Placing the bead before the stitch is made leaves the bead off center, at least in my knitting.  So while Terry and Cheryl, and most of the knitters in the blogiverse are putting their beads on stitches before knitting the stitch,  I am putting them on after, both because I prefer it, but mostly because I didn't read Melanie's instructions before blundering into it.  So I will stick by my elaborate rationalizations, and promise to change my placements should the occasion arise in the pattern where it would be necessary to put beads on before and and not after, but for now, I am sticking to the after technique.

Keeping in with the theme of me against the world as far as lace is concerned: here I am at the back of the pack for the Flower Basket Shawl.  Is there anyone left out there who has not yet knit this? Well, no matter.  This has been on the needles for about a year, out of Art Yarns Regal Silk, in the colour 116 -- Melon -- which is (as you might guess from the name) a ripe cantaloupe colour, ill-served by the picture, among other things.  I had a time blocking it, first ironing it, which a friend had told me was the best thing to do with silk lace, but the colour faded sadly, and the block didn't hold for more than a few hours.  I finally soaked it for a day and tugged at it hard, using blocking wires and lots of pins crammed into the guest room rug.  (I am pretty confident that I got all the pins when the shawl was dry, but we'll know soon enough ) The block seems to be holding well.  I'll be wearing it at TKGA this weekend, because there really isn't much else in the way of knitting that one can wear in July. So say hi if you see it, and don't pick a fight with me about beads, if you please.  I am resolved.

Small Wooly Bits to Love

You may recall from my previous post that I was less than thrilled by the results of my needle felted penguin.  You also might have noticed that I posed the "chick" with The Boy so you might be distracted by the Boy's obvious charms and not notice the cartoonish blob resembling in the most oblique manner, a baby penguin.  Never mind.  The first attempt illustrates vividly my shortfalls as a sculptor, but it is a first attempt that was quickly handed off to be played with and then abandoned for newer playthings in the treadmill of consumption that is the particular psychosis we call five year old boy.  I was hoping to move on, back to the knitting, which after thirty years practice looks, when it's done, like I imagined it would in the first place.  I am safe there.

But The Boy sees this newly discovered wool craft of Mommy's as an infinite source for his (current) favorite thing in the world: small wooly beasties that he can act out world affairs with and then stick in his pocket. (he does a great Condi Rice)

His request on Saturday was for a character he sees on that most Genetically Modified Organism of children's television: Blue's Room.  Have you seen this mutation?  Blue is now a puppet, and she talks.  Even worse are the sidekicks, among them Blue's baby brother, named for that endearing tendency of over-excited puppies everywhere: Sprinkles.  The Boy spent most of the morning checking my mental inventory of the stash for the colours of the spots I would need for verisimilitude. "Do you have purple fleece?  You're going to need at least two spots of purple fleece."  Thanks to his attention to detail and close supervision of every manuever of the needle, he was delighted with the results.

Sunday, he decided that he needed a chihuahua.  He had found this book on my bookshelf.  Never mind that the instructions are in Japanese (it has since been printed in English) he was most enamoured with the chihuahua --

I think he's been watching the Paris Hilton updates with his older sister. 

So I rooted through the fleece and found something approaching tan, and made this.  I think it looks more like a terrier, but we agree it's kind of cute.  It's also really small, about two inches from stem to stern. Not a bad incline on that learning curve either, even if I say so myself.  Still, the knitting prevails.

Today, he wants a Siberian Husky.  Which is all to say that this is a fair warning: if you get your hands on this book, keep it away from the kids.