Moth Heaven

To Brattleboro and Back Again: Part the First

Saturday was the annual meeting of the Board for the Northeast Handspinners Association, in Brattleboro, Vermont.  While I am not a board member, I went because I edit the newsletter.  The organization has a couple of things that it does, and it does them well.  They have a directory of the members, which is a kind of who's who of northeasterntypes who are involved in the making of handmade yarn -- shepherds, fiber artists, dyers, festival organizers -- a whole kit and caboodle of them.  It is a resource like few others (blogs being the only rival I can think of) and the hundreds of men and women in there have knit and spun their whole lives and never once cracked the Web to ask anyone about it.  Fascinating, really.  Such a thing is still possible, to know something and know it well without once having to log on to ask Marcy or June or Abby about what twist means to the final sock.

That's Karen and Jan and Trisha and Ellen and Lynda and Shirley (eating an orange): just a small example of the smarts in the room. 

The other thing NHA does and does well is they have a fiber retreat once a year, and every other year (which happens to be this one) it's a doozy:  nationally known and renowned spinners and fiber types teaching intensive skills in hotel conference rooms, giddiness over the wool, vendors in the ballroom, and spinning wheels a-flying in the lobby.  Sounds a little familiar?  Gathering  (as it is called) is one of those retreats that lights your fiber soul from within like a lantern: like SOAR, but more local; like Spa, but with classes; like Rhinebeck, but less crazy.  And you can only get in if you are a member. (hint hint)

And you can only join by sending a check in the mail.  No paypal.  No on-line shopping cart that takes your credit card.  I know!  Crazy, huh? (check the website to find the address and the fee) This is old school, chums.

So I am a member.  And the newsletter editor.  And last Saturday, a fly on the wall at the board meeting. From my vantage point I had the very best position from which I could admire all the handknits.  See all the handknits?  It's a good kind of meeting where you can look around and admire the handknits.   And I could also take a picture of Kelly's newest pair of Chucks.

And get some knitting done.

If ever there was a meeting where knitting is utterly copasetic -- if not de rigueur -- it would be a board meeting for a hand spinner's association.

And for the scorecard, that's the Crest of the Wave kit I bought at Spa from Ball and Skein Judy.

But You Can Call Me Swatch

The mittens that were inspired by the preparations for this sweater turned out a little oddly, and were consequently called by several names, some of which probably shouldn't be said outside a knit circle, so let's just call this one Swatch for now, 'K?

It worked out exactly as I had planned, size wise, but it turns out that this cable needs ease to be flattering, so it's back to the cast-on again with 18 additional stitches on the next attempt.  I was trying this morning to work out how I could avoid having to knit the whole body again, but no amount of cleverness or perfectly mattress stitched seams will apologize for the ruthlessness of a large cable panel's demands on the stitch count.  ::sigh::

What Do You Call a Sweater With No Arms And No Neck?

Swatch.

Get it?

oh never mind. This is a going to be a strange post; just go with it.

I have this whack of Ultra Alpaca I bought on sale during the changing of the owner at the LYS last summer. I am trying out an idea I blogged about last fall.  Here is the idea so far lying on something I noticed while I was knitting: the back door matt.

Matt.  Get it?

Anyway.  The mat came from IKEA in January, which in geological time is not too long after I bought the yarn. Practically simultaneously, in effect. I guess I like this colour green. This is where you can find a mat just like it in the catalogue.  If you're feeling lazy, I'll just stick the whole thing here:

Wipe your feet on the way out, okay?

Thanks

And Yet, the Knitting Goes On

Spring here in the northern hemisphere officially begins when the earth tilt passes through the equinox, and the hours of daylight begin to be longer than the hours of darkness. It is only by minutes, so the difference is barely perceptible at first, which is why spring seems to be such a cruel joke in New  England.  But day by day, the difference grows, and soon, the accumulated warmth bears fruit.

Is the knitting metaphor clear obvious blatant Wagnerian enough yet?

Instead of my usual knitting group on Tuesday this week, I went to a craft-in with some of my muggle friends, and we made pin cushion birds together. The bird is based on a design by Karen Dardinsky, a talented re-maker and artist with a reputation for magic.  I forgot my camera and was hoping that Megan would send me the pictures she took, but not being a blogger, she has no idea how critical such small favours can be to a good post. But I do have this to show for myself:

A Different Kind of Shearing

In other kid news:

The 18 year-old called late Sunday night, on his way home to his mom's from work, and asked if maybe, we had a hair clipper in the house?

He had reached a place in his relationship with his hair that amounted to divorce.  Could I just shave it off, and could that be . . . now? . . . before he went home to his Mom's? (oh she's going to love me for this, I thought). 

Can't you just tell that he's reading L'Etranger in French class at school?

Actually, as worried as I was about the result, I liked it very much. Muy guapo, I said.

And the 15 inches of thick curly Celtic red hair goes off to Locks of Love to boot.

The coda to this evening is that as I was finishing up, I told him I would happily whip up a watch cap for him in something soft and navy, but he declined the offer.  The reason?

He's knitting a hat in art class in school.  I love this guy. And I love his school.

Can I hear koigu for the art teacher?

We Are the Goonsquad and We're Coming to Town: Beep Beep

With the middle child, sometimes referred to here as the Divine Miss C, on school break for two weeks, there has been little forward movement on the yarn front.  The mittens are finished, it's true, and I have made a first swipe at a sweater on my drawing board since November with "the mitten cable", but otherwise, I am doing more thinking about than actually knitting with.  It's like an opium den for the wool right now, with all the yarn lying about the place.

Brace yourself: a month ago, Miss C had asked ever so sweetly, and shouldn't we consider this to be something worth doing, for a trip to Paris over her spring break? 

She goes to a private school where there are many such excursions over negligible amounts of time.  She is 15 after all, and brings home a cumulative sense that the world is having a lot of fun without her, given that one friend owns an iphone, and another has a whole wardrobe full of Marc Jacobs and no end of shoes, and a third is off to Hawaii for the fortnight.  The group of them, nice kids though they may be, are bullies in the materialistic sense, ganging up on my step-daughter, obscruing her former pride in her slightly bohemian and blended family's quirky (yet wise) sensibility towards buying things.  She has become a wanter of stuff.  Preferably the stuff with labels on it.  Like Apple, and Kate Spade, and Christian Louboutin, he of the $600 red-soled floor-puncturing heels. Miss C is always mooning about her friend Claire's new boots, or Sam's great jacket, or the trip to Paris she wishes we could take, Euro be damned. I can't help but hear from this that she wishes we didn't care what things cost and could just buy it all.

I am sympathetic.  Before house, before two cars and tuition, before the ravages of childbirth, I liked clothes.  I had a lot of them. For a few years, some of the nice stores in Boston were like my Cheers bar, where everyone knew my name. I ran with a fashion crowd.  One of my best friends from high school is a jet-hopping stylist who works for the big glossymagazines, and another clubbing friend is now the head buyer for Holt Renfrew.  So the impulse for Marc and Vera and Manolo is familiar to me.  But gimme a break!  At 15? sheez.

We compromised.  I gave her a budget, and we went into Boston on a pretend trip to Paris.  After all, the girl had never spent any time to speak of in our very own city, so a day window shopping on Newbury Street and having cafe au lait at Louis felt like a real vacation to her.  We ran into a couple of my old fashion friends (still haunting those same stores), admired the inaccessible creations at Barneys, caressed a pair of $242 jeans, then went down Boylston and found their twin in Miss C's size at Marshalls for $45.  I sat and knit on the comfortable couch at Anthropologie while she pawed through the racks, and the salesgirls, many of them wearing chunky little yarn schmattes themselves, all stopped to admire my stitches. I almost felt cool for a moment there.  It was a good and affordable splurge of a day.

And I got to sleep in my own bed at the end of it all.

She was grateful after all that, thank the heavens, fully intoxicated by the delights of city life, the magic of a real-life Narciso Rodriguez gown, and the candy-coated happiness of standing in a tiny store brimming with Betsy Johnson confections.  There is yet a lesson to be taught here.  She will most likely always have friends who buy things she can't, so between her mother and me, we have to help her find her chic without breaking the bank.  She is going to want the fancy stuff, and doesn't want to learn how to make it herself.  So she'll have to get a job (someday) with decent pay, to save her pennies for the one good piece, and learn to recognize the satisfaction in wearing something well, rather than just wearing the thing du jour (which I suppose has its own satisfaction).

Well, wish me luck. If anyone has anecdotal wisdom, or advice, I would appreciate it.

Bird in Hand, in Hand

Bird in Hand mittens by Kate Gilbert, knit in Cascade 220. 

I love the palms too, not to mention the little birds on the thumbs.

Gifted to the Divine Miss C today, who has not had a new knitted thing from me for a long time.  She is very happy, and loves them with her J Crew coat.  They might be a little large, but with glove liners in the deep of winter, they will be perfect.  For now, if it is spring (and we in New England really have no right to say it is so until after The Marathon), they will probably spend most of the time in her (stylish) pockets.

Spiders Welcome

I plied the Blue Moon Fiber singles that taught me about the drive band's affect on my spinning.

I had thought I was going to make a three ply with them, but for reasons that amount to my lack of skill as a spinner, I made a two ply out of them instead.  The twist in the singles wasn't enough for a two ply, really, so the final balanced yarn has less twist in it than I would have liked.  I don't think it will wear well for socks, being an gently-plied super fine merino, so I'll be shelving this for something in the future.  It's a pretty skein though, and a good lesson.  If anyone knows any differently, please speak up in the comments.

In other areas in my life, I opened a box out of the stash yesterday, looking for (what else?) yarn, and was greeted by a very large and well-fed looking spider.

(no pictures of my own, but she looked like this:

)

Inside the stash.  A spider.

Hm.

First thing that crossed my mind?  oh, how did she get in there?

second thing to cross my mind?  If a spider can find its way into my stash, so. can. moths.

Third thing to cross my mind?  What do spiders eat? 

ah-ha.  exactly.  Looked through the box.  No moths.  Or at least, no crumbs formerly known as moths.  I bet that spider is a tidy eater.

We always have spiders. During the winter, there are likely to be one or two of them lurking on the bathroom ceiling or in the corners of basement windows.  We leave them be because they do in the left over mosquitos and the odd fly that finds their way inside at the end of the summer.  It never occured to me that maybe they might be feasting on moths, but once I found this little beauty in the sock yarn, I noticed (and perhaps I am tempting the fates with this declaration) that we haven't had a moth hatch in a really reeeaaaaaly long time.

It would be a lovely thing if my laissez faire policy towards spiders has liberated me from the moth plague, but I won't be doing any celebrating until I am certain that this is true.  In the meantime, I'll shake out the skeins a little more thoroughly before I start knitting with them, for sure.  But if moth-munching spiders want to live in my house, they are welcome.

While I'm on the Subject of Buying Yarn

I bought some yarn at Spa.

It's wool.  Plain old honest to goodness wool.

I say this often and I say this loud: I love wool.  If you know me, you know that I am a bit of a wool chauvinist.  I was raised in Atlantic Canada on Lopi and Bartlett yarns, and while I like silk blends, or a touch of alpaca (I really do), there's a primal charge that I only get from the wool. You're going to say the scratch turns you off. Perhaps I'm a little macho about the wool thing, so you should also know that under it all, I'm wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt; I am sensitive after all.  But I like to think that the good honest wool is like a single malt scotch.  It's the burn that makes it good.

This yarn is from the other mill in Ireland that still makes knitting yarn, the one that doesn't make Blackwater Abbey.  (I understand there are three mills left in Ireland altogether, but the third one makes rug wool: not so nice for knitting) So this yarn is special if for no other reason than it represents a dying breed.  And having already made my beloved Celtic Dreams from one of those yarns, I need to make something in this yarn out of principle.  It's organic, vegetable dyed, and the mill is family owned.  I'm helping save something important.  It has such a poetic wooliness about it, it makes me want to dance with Michael Flatley.  Or at least knit something with cables. Lots of cables. And celtic knots.  And -- hold onto your tams, knitters -- maybe even a bobble or two.  A yarn like this can do that to a knitter. 

It's Not the Prize; It's the Winning

I have never managed to get my hands on any of the fabled Vesper sock yarn. Julia is good about posting the time for her shop updates.  This would be the one reason I would spring for one of those fancy PDA's with the alarm, or an ebay pager  like my husband has for the rare RCA field coil drivers he hoards (don't know what one of those are?  You have to ask? It's an electro-magnet that makes really wild and retro -- or alternately, cutting edge -- speakers work. Audio technology is like that: both new and old at the same time, kind of like a Lisa Lloyd sweater pattern).  I put post-it notes on my computer, I mark my calendar. . . but the shop update day comes, I log on, and

out of stock

is my hello.  It's happened too often.  So often, really, that I've shelved it as one of the great elusives in my life.  Like a guilt free Haagen Das binge;  or a triple sow cow; or George Clooney: something I know that I am destined to never have for myself.

But then one night at spinning, Cheryl was making the prettiest singles on her bobbin, out of the craziest looking roving.  It's Vesper, she said.  "I think there's some still in her shop."

And don't you know that I went right home (I had a spinning crowd to beat) and logged on and there it was: one 4 oz bag of Plum Posies superwash roving sitting there with a big old BUY ME etched over its smiling face (I'm speaking figuratively, of course)?

My monitor doesn't do it justice, so I bet yours doesn't either.  But it's like a painted elephant at a Hindu wedding during pomegranate season.  It makes me smile.  And even though I paid money for it, I feel like I've won something.