Yan Tan Tethera*

Myrtle

2009-07-08T11:20:00.003-04:00

Meet Myrtle. This is my latest installment of the Spunky Eclectic fiber club. I'm usually several months behind. Wish she'd held still for the picture-taking (ha).

This is my jetlag yarn since I started spinning it the day I got back from China in a valiant effort to keep awake. It worked. The colors seemed appropriate for jetlag, too: a core of smokey gray BFL, with stained-glass greens and maroons and blues blossoming out of it, muted and rich and dreamy. This just how I felt: full of all the colors and memories of the trip, and moving through a fog.

Spun into 3-ply sock yarn (310-plus yards, 16-18 wpi), it all turned a kind of heathery gray. Though there'll be at least one red stripe. I'm thinking socks for a man. The question is: which man?

I am at a crossroads with my fiber club. Until now, I have justified it as a monthly expenditure that isn't exorbitant and makes me happy whether or not I can keep up. But I may have reached the proverbial tipping point. The other night I went into my box of fiber and felt like I was drowning: too many plans, too many ideas, too many small hanks of variegated yarn. I may have more fiber at this point than is fun to keep around. I'm torn because I so enjoy getting the monthly shipments, and then following on Ravelry what everyone else does with them. But I will never have enough time to catch up. Until the recession claims my job - and then I'll have to sell all the fiber so we can eat.

Furthermore, I don't spend all my free time spinning. I also knit. I have developed a knitting callus: a bump on the back of my right-hand ring finger. I hold the yarn in such a way that my two last fingers curl under and the ring finger presses against the needle, and the p4tog of Surface requires enough pressure to create an actual sore spot. The unsightliness worries me less than the idea that this might lead to some horrible form of arthritis when I'm 65.

My professional blog gets more hits in a bad week than this blog has gotten in its entire existence. This gives me a deceptive sense of freedom about posting here, which I have to keep reminding myself not to trust. But it also makes this blog a poor platform for the kinds of things I'd like to vent about in my private life. Like Wimbledon. Did it bother anybody else in the US that you couldn't see some of the important matches live, because NBC took over broadcasting at noon (Eastern Daylight Time) from ESPN and went back and re-broadcast the earlier matches from the morning before airing the final one of the day (by then, also on tape)? In the age of the Internet, does it really make sense to punt on live coverage? Or do I, in my tennis fan-dom, represent such a small part of the population that it's insignificant? Obviously, it says something that I only get around to posting about this days after the final match is over.

Chinese Yarns

2009-06-30T21:26:00.003-04:00

China was amazing.

Of course, the one thing I brought too much of was: yarn. Somehow when I thought of those 14-hour flights and all the internal flights I thought I'd spend my whole time knitting. I didn't stop to think that I might be sleeping. Or reading. Or working.

I did finish both sleeves of Surface. I even ended up liking the blister stitch. (You're right, rubbishknitter: like bubble wrap. Now I keep poking my fingers into it, happily.) But three whole skeins of yarn traveled back and forth to Asia untouched.

My great regret, besides not buying the Shantung silk, was not being able to check out the yarn booth at the fabric market in Shanghai. Actually, I regret not buying the Shantung silk a lot more. I'll have to go back for that.

Late Lace

2009-05-30T15:36:00.003-04:00

The pace of my blog posts here reflects the pace of my finishing in the last months. A colleague at work had a baby and I thought I'd whip up a quick little baby gift. After all, that Mason-Dixon baby kimono doesn't take any time at all, right? Alas, I have had even less time than "no time at all" in the last couple of months. By the time I finished it the baby had almost outgrown it. (Her father tactfully described it as "snug," but was touched by the gesture.) Worse still, I did a truly crappy finishing job. An heirloom it ain't, handspun or no. But here 'tis.

This is made from the leftovers of the BFL I spun up for my mom's birthday shawl last year... well, the spinning happened two years ago. How time flies.

And the post I linked above (but hey, I'll link to it again for good measure) also documents a cliffhanger: the time I ran out of handspun yarn when my Melon Shawl (from Victorian Lace Today) was nearly completed.

Fortunately I can report a happy ending.

A little blurry, but hey, it's done.

It's a sign of my current state of overextension that I finished this on vacation in March, but didn't block it til May. What kind of obsessed-knitter behavior is that?

Gratuitous vacation shot to distract me from my woeful lack of knitters' OCD:

This is Tulum, Mexico, before swine flu, but not before drug-related violence that kept the tourist crowds to manageable proportions. Please note that this is a last-minute vacation booked on Travelocity. On a Wednesday night, my husband found an amazing deal for flight plus four nights in a really nice hotel in Coba, and we flew on Friday morning. And it was one of our best vacations ever. Muy bien.

In other travel news, I'm leaving in a week for China (there's a temptation here to insert lots of exclamation points and smiley faces to indicate the monumentality of this news in blog terms, but I am resisting). And on this blog, as nowhere else, I can discuss the all-important question about this trip: what knitting do I take for a 14-hour flight? (Plus sundry other three-hour flights once we get to Asia.) I'm thinking I'll be able to finish my Surface: I just have the sleeves and the collar to go, and then the wrap. Even that monstrous wrap might be doable in 28 hours of flying, though the dreaded blister stich (which requires a string of p4tog every six rows) has put off better knitters than I, and I'm not sure my fingertips would survive several consecutive hours of it.

(A side note: I worry a bit about this sweater. It looks like it could either look really cool when it's done, or really weird and homemade and never, ever get worn.)

But I can't only take Surface - there has to be some variety. I'm wavering between the Belinda wrap, which seems like nice thoughtless travel knitting, and the Leyburn Socks. (I'm so used to Ravelry that it's frustrating to try to find non-Rav images on the web for blog purposes. All you Rav readers know where to find better information.) My urge is to compromise and take both, but I'm not sure how much yarn I'll have room for in my luggage. And the sad reality is that this is a work trip and I'll probably spend most of my time on the computer, and get much less knitting done than I hope.

New Day, New Wheel

2009-04-02T22:36:00.002-04:00

This yarn is called "New Day" (from Spunky Eclectic). I call it "Eye Candy."
I first looked at it and thought, "Orange." But when I spun it up it turned into streams of butterscotch and toffee, lines of spun sugar like French pastry chefs make into baskets on top of their desserts, caramel and toffee and the inside of a Butterfinger bar. I wrote on Ravelry, but I'll say again, that spinning it did for my eyes and fingers what eating all those delicious sweet things would have done for my tongue. Except that I didn't feel sick afterwards.

And I wasn't planning to spin it up at all. But then I got, wait for it, my new wheel.
My new Lendrum DT, my Christmas present, for which I'd been on the waiting list since December, arrived in mid-March (I think I was really lucky only to have to wait a couple of months). And when I pulled it from its box and assembled it (such an elegant well-planned and well-made thing; two screws, basically, and you're ready to go), I wanted to spin some appropriate fiber, and there was my new Spunky Club installment sitting right there, appropriately called "New Day" to mark a new beginning.

When I began plying I briefly considered changing the name of the yarn to "Spice Market." Maybe it was because the lighting was different, but I started thinking of tumeric and curry powder and cardamom and cloves and saffron as I blended all the colors together.

But "Eye Candy" won out when I noticed a strong family resemblance between it and a newly-opened box of Girl Scout cookies. (Samoas, of course.)

Meanwhile, I outed myself as a spinner at work. It says something about me, I'm not sure what, that I freely post in a public place about my spinning and yet I've been extremely shy about telling people who know me in person. But I made it pretty public now. I think for most people the idea seems so weird that it's not even worth commenting on; it's as if someone said, "In her spare time she enjoys taking walks on Mars."

finish line

2009-03-26T20:22:00.003-04:00

It was more than two years in the making (!!!), but I finally finished my Chanel Crossing sweater.

I am thrilled it's done.

But I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

I don't know if I can really call this a design, but I came up with my own pattern, with help from Barbara Walker and Ann Budd. Of course, when I was halfway through I found almost the same sweater in Jean Frost's Jackets, which took the wind out of my sails somewhat.

The issue is that the yarn was so fine the whole thing took ages and ages. And then there was the border. Oh, the border. That crochet border. I started it last January (that's January, 2008), and realized at some point that I was crocheting backwards. Which meant it took me six weeks or something like that to get halfway through and realize that I'd done it too tight and it was curling up in places in a way I wasn't going to be able to block out. So I did what anyone would do. I punished that sweater. I put it away for a whole year. When I took it out I was a little abashed at how easy it was to rip out the border and put it on right - mainly because I was crocheting the right way...

I am going to make one more modification and sew the backing ribbon down the buttonhole side to reinforce the buttonholes, which are stretching. Here's how I reinforced the buttons. Don't laugh at my sewing skills. Oh, OK, go ahead and laugh at them.

The thing about this sweater that was supposed to be so cool is [recapping ancient history here, but I doubt anyone reading this now still remembers it. Even I don't remember writing it] that it's a three-color tweed but it actually uses five different colors, so the sleeves gradually shade from one tone to another, and the body gradually shades from a different tone. However, the result is so subtle that, well, you don't even notice it. It looks a lot more conservative than I'd intended, and is thus not really my style. But I am determined to make it my style, because I put a lot of work into it, and after all, it is wearable; it's not like I created some embarrassing thing.

Mostly I'm thrilled it's done.

I've been writing a lot of blog posts in my head lately. I got a new spinning wheel, and if that's not something to blog about, what is? I also finished a shawl and am just waiting to block it. And I even have a couple of batches of finished yarn.

(This is "Perfect Storm," 8 oz of Wensleydale from Spunky Eclectic, spun as a three-ply for a total of 274 yards.)

However, I've been swamped at work, and furthermore I'm about to start a professional blog for work, which may deliver the coup de grace to my struggling little plant of a blog over here. I mean, there's only so much a girl can write in a single day, and I feel like I'm testing that limit more days than not.

I'm not giving up this blog, though. I may be one of the few people I know who keeps a blog as a private space rather than a public one, but I really like having a place to display my knitting and spinning work.

Size matters, redux

2009-02-06T13:22:00.010-05:00

I have been spinning for nearly 2 years now, but sometimes I suspect that I have no idea what I'm doing.

Example: I see on Ravelry a gorgeous specimen of a Morning Surf Scarf, out of the Spunky fiber club's August 08 installment, Thermograph. So I decide I want to spin fat singles and make one just like it.
So I spin these.

I've said it before: my idea of "fat" in spinning seems to be like an teenage girl's idea of "fat" in body weight.

Then, I cast on. Those singles seem awfully thin, so I cast on a lot of stitches. As a result, rather than a slender scarf, I get this.

Still, it's knitting up pretty nicely. But then I panic, because I've finished the first 2 oz of my 4-oz hank of fiber, and the scarf clearly isn't going to be long enough. So I quickly engineer a trade on Ravelry to get more of the fiber. At the same time, I spin the other 2 oz.

Clearly my concern about running out of fiber affected my spinning. Because while the first 2 oz yielded about 250 yards, the second 2 oz yielded about 500 yards. Even I can't call them "fat singles" any more.

And the scarf keeps groooowwwinggg.

Then, a little late in the game, I decide to test-block a swatch. Which grows from a little over 3 inches in length to 4.5 inches in length. Since I now have 5 feet of unblocked scarf, this gives rise to concern about the length of the finished product. I'm putting off the final blocking, in fact, because I'm scared.

Meanwhile, I have another 4 oz of Thermograph sitting there minding its own business. I decide to change gears and spin up a chunky yarn for this cowl. I decide to chain-ply it to preserve the colors. I need about 150 yards, and as I spin I keep thinking, "spin chunky! spin chunky!"

Well, I did.

Here's what I got: under 50 yards of super-bulky 3-ply yarn.

The thing is, I don't even care that I don't have enough for the cowl I wanted to make, because it may be my favorite yarn I've ever spun.

Elephants

2009-02-01T18:09:00.005-05:00

I had a vow in January not to start anything new until I finished up what was already on my plate.

Here's all I have to show for that.

The great thing about these scarves is that they photograph so well. In person, however, I fear that my elephants look a bit like anteaters. Since the recipient is 3 years old, I am hoping that her critical faculties are not yet finely honed enough to take exception to this zoological abomination. Or, I hope she likes anteaters.

Meanwhile, I chafe at my self-imposed restriction by spending my time, not finishing my four other WIP's, but planning out all the zillion projects I will start when they're done. (Does swatching count as "starting something new"? Does spinning? Of such questions are the Talmudic debates of the fiberholic engendered.)

Here, for instance, is something pretty that arrived in the mail.

(Organic merino, colorway "Twilight" from Spunky Eclectic.)

Tactile

2009-01-18T14:42:00.005-05:00

I started to say that I am a terrible blogger, but anybody who has followed my halting progress here over the last year already knows that.

But I am particularly terrible at the moment because I have for weeks neglected to say a proper Thank You for one of those wonderful fiber-karma gifts that descended on me from above.

It started when the redoubtable Maia launched a contest on her blog to commemorate her 200th post and help publicize the launch of her fiber studio, Tactile.

She asked readers to leave a post saying what they were thankful for.
I said I was thankful that after 20 years of full-time self-employment, I got my first-ever real job this year, in this economy.
And I am also thankful for my wonderful husband for putting up with the fact that the job is in another city.

Now I can also be thankful for the fact that I won a prize - a gift certificate to Tactile.

Because of my two-city commuting life, I don't have all the Tactile fiber I got with me to photograph at the moment. (It may be that some extra fiber fell into my basket when I went to use the gift certificate. Funny thing about that.) So I can't show you the merino/tussah (colorway Heliotrope), or the wool top, which are waiting for me at my other home.

But I have the baby camel, in the Slate colorway.

And the yak down sample in the colorway Kelp, in the topmost photo, which came as an extra that I didn't even order.
This stuff is addictive.

And getting this prize out of the blue like that, at a lonely moment late one night, was especially wonderful.

Thank you, Maia.
And thank you to my job and husband, who seem to me to be at least partly responsible.

Xtreme Xmas, home edition

2008-12-29T11:58:00.013-05:00

If I have had even less time than usual to post, it was because I had the harebrained scheme of knitting half my Christmas presents. And that was before the entire family, somewhat at the last minute, decided to come visit us for the holidays.

The Christmas presents went down well.

L is wearing a handspun hat made with Spunky Eclectic "Pie for Everyone" fiber, and an illusion scarf with shy magic butterflies that, in repose, look like this:

She and her sister also got some slippers.

Which fit.

Since Aunt Yan Tan Tethera inexplicably could not devote 20 hours a day to knitting, a couple of presents did not get finished. We are still working on an illusion scarf with elephants for L's sister.
And this, for her mother.

Meanwhile, when we weren't cooking for the hordes, we spent our time corrupting the young.

She figured out drafting pretty quickly, and she made, plied, and Kool-Aid dyed this yarn almost on her own (with a little help from Aunt YTT).

Turns out she already knew how to knit.

So we coached her mom.

Yes, it's all fiber, all the time in the Yan Tan Tethera household.
Even baby W got a Toasty Topper:

Happy Fiber Days to all.

In praise of asymmetry

2008-10-26T12:37:00.003-04:00

This summer I bought some plain-Jane grey fingering-weight yarn so I could make myself a pair of socks from Cat Bordhi's much-praised New Pathways for Sock Knitters.

The first one fit OK. But it was, like most socks I make, a little loose. So I took a daring step. I made the second one in the next size smaller.

It felt like heresy. After all, everything is supposed to match. But I reasoned that I would never know if the smaller size fit me better unless I tried, and I could always rip out the one that didn't fit.

Lo and behold, the smaller size fit much better. The discovery was liberating. It cast all of those slightly baggy handknit socks in a new light. Maybe my feet aren't as big as I think? Maybe I like a snugger sock than most patterns allow for?

But it was also liberating in that I had no desire to rip out the bigger sock. I had knit a lot of nice memories into that sock (starting with the yarn, which I bought at this wonderful store).

And this in turn freed me from the obligation to have everything match. I have long tried to reconcile my basically improvisatory nature with my anal-knitter side: the side we all need if we are going to get, say, the two fronts of a cardigan to match. I thought the anal knitter was somehow good for me. Well, this just in: my inner anal knitter has left the building.

Take the next thing I knit: these felted clogs. I made a mistake knitting the first one. As a result, the foot opening is bigger than it's supposed to be. Came time to knit the second one. Should I duplicate the mistake? Or should I rip back the first one and fix it?

My new persona, Deliciously Bad Knitter, did neither. I knit the second one "right" to see which one I liked better.
Deliciously Bad Knitter (DBK) not only relishes the sense of transgression this involves. She is learning more. More about sizes. More about preferences. More about experimentation. I kind of like the clog I knit "wrong," which is easier to slip on and off. Does it bother me that the two clogs are slightly different? Not a bit.

There's no stopping me now. DBK is actually an antidote to the very anal-knitter, or anal-spinner, side of me that spun several hundred yards of merino fiber into fingering-weight wool on a hand spindle this summer, improvising a Lazy Kate with two dowels stuck through a laundry basket, much to the wonderment of my parents, who were on vacation with us for a week.

After finishing up that lot (I didn't think to snap a picture of the laundry basket, probably because my hands were otherwise occupied, I had this.

At which point DBK took over. It wasn't really deliberate. It was karma.

Now, these socks are pretty much the same size. Followed the same pattern (Tibetan socks, "Coriolis" architecture, from Cat Bordhi's book; not that you can see much of the patterning detail with this yarn). But symmetry?

I call them "Night and Day," because the colors evoke another unequal pairing: two things that always go together, but that don't, technically, "match."

But they are my all-time favorite knitted socks. So far.

Rough Fell

2008-08-30T08:43:00.011-04:00

On the hoof.

In the shed.

In the bath.

Got fiber?

And back in its natural habitat.

This breed is not necessarily a handspinner's best friend. The rougher outer fibers (which I spun up) create something that feels like packing twine.

But there is something incredibly cool about turning fiber from the sheep you see around you every day into yarn you can actually knit with.
And it should make a perfect rug.

(Admission: the sheep in the first picture is not literally the same sheep from which I got my fiber. But it came from within a mile of this sheep.)

Color in Spinning

2008-07-22T21:28:00.008-04:00

Creative chaos is the name of the game around here.
This is what happens when you love to buy fiber but have very little time to spin.

Color in spinning is a fascinating topic. I've read a book or two, but learning by doing seems to be the best way to go.

For instance, I would not have predicted that this yarn, which seems pretty uniform in color

would turn into this strongly striped scarf.

Nor would I have thought that this roving (an anonymous merino-tencel or perhaps even merino-silk blend I got at Rhinebeck)

would blend with another fiber that looked all graphite-colored to become this scarf.

This is made of 3 different yarns - one two-ply graphite (Nuit Noire from Zen String), one with one ply of each fiber, and one two-ply with the Rhinebeck roving. Extra credit to anyone who can tell which part of the scarf is which.

Finishing

2008-01-27T12:23:00.000-05:00

New year.
New job.
New city.

I have lots of reasons for my silence. No time to post. No time to knit. I am lucky to get one row a night done on this pretty thing

(Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn Clark)
which was due by my mother's birthday. Which was two weeks ago.
I only have 8 rows to go.

(This is, obviously, what I am making with my beloved handspun laceweight BFL. It's my biggest handspun project to date, and giving it away is a supreme act of generosity because I love it so much. Perhaps that's another reason it's taking me so long to finish.)

I wanted to end 2007 with a post about finishing. Better late than never.

I was very despondent about my finishing skills after my first Baby Surprise Jacket (see here).

But I made two great strides before 2007 was over.
For one thing, I made a second BSJ that I was much, much happier with than the first one.

The reason? This:

I can't remember where I read a blogger's description of reinforcing the button band by sewing ribbon tape on the reverse side of the button band and doubling the buttons. But I tried it. And it worked like a charm (and even went through the washer and dryer like a charm). As a result the sweater seemed to me much crisper, neater, and, well, more finished.

The other stride involves the poor languishing still-unfinished Chanel Crossing (most recently blogged about here). It's all sewn up, ends are woven in, and the border is kicking my ass. I'd love to be able to wear this to my new office before it gets too warm, but I'm not counting on it.

But the revelation here involved CROCHETED SEAMS.
Now, my first knitting book, and therefore my touchstone, was Maggie Righetti's Knitting in Plain English. I still think this book is delightful. But some of its outspoken views are, well, not my own. Primary among these is her repudiation of the crocheted seam. If I remember correctly (I can't refer to the book since I have loaned it to a new knitter), she equates crocheting the seam on a knit sweater to pouring canned chocolate sauce all over a delicately flavored soufflé. Or something along those lines. So I read that and vowed I would never crochet a seam.

Well, Maggie, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. Because if I had tried to stitch-seam the sleeves on a three-color tweed jacket, I would have basically gone mad. You can't even mattress-stitch these pieces properly, because of the way the colors vary at the end of every row.

Instead, I got this.

This is a shoulder. It may not look all that great to you, but believe me, no other sleeve I've set in, or rather attempted to set in, would withstand such close scrutiny.

And on the inside, the seam is a nice straight line.

(Sorry for the crap photo. I guess you'll have to take my word for it.)

There are different ways to set in a sleeve, many of them involving the equivalent of grafting, and I will continue to hone my skills in them. But I can guarantee that this jacket would never have looked so crisp had I not crocheted those seams.

For photographic proof that the whole thing DOES look good, though, you may have to wait another couple of months.

Spin Cycle

2007-12-04T10:41:00.000-05:00

One amusing thing about being a beginning spinner is that you have no idea what you are doing.

I have been sitting since Rhinebeck over my 4 ounces of Blue-Faced Leicester roving, spinning away and wondering why I wasn't getting through it faster.
After I filled two bobbins I began plying it. It still seemed pretty irregular, and I thought, Well, I'll have some coarse handspun to make into a shawl for my mother.

Then, when I started spinning on my spindle and it did seem to go faster - I spun up the whole 4 oz of the Spunky Fiber Club's November installment in a few days - I just assumed I was getting better.
It wasn't until I had finished all of the Spunky Club roving (Falklands wool, 212 yards total)

and was back at my wheel finishing the BFL that it dawned on me that I had actually spun laceweight.

You'd think I might have noticed before then, but no, I thought it was going to turn out pretty chunky.
262 yards, 21 wpi, and I still have quite a bit of the 4 oz hank (from Cloverleaf Farm, colorway "Jewels") to go. I hope I can hit 400 yards.

Actually, I just hope I can keep spinning this fine, now that I've gotten all self-conscious about it.

Corn Dogs

2007-11-30T18:58:00.000-05:00

You know you have entered a new stage of fiber addiction when you start using implements that make your spinning wheel feel high-tech.

I was forced to leave my wheel for a few days with two bobbins of gorgeous BFL singles on it, only half-plied. This was such a wrench that thinking about plying kept me awake a couple of nights.

Meanwhile, this month's package from the Spunky Eclectic fiber club arrived.

Falklands wool, in the color "Pie for Everyone."

And I still haven't touched last month's installment. Because I am still spinning the BFL I started after Rhinebeck. The BFL I thought I would be done with in a week. (Yes, there has been limited fiber time this month.)

In my frustration, I turned to a $15 implement I had bought on a whim for just such an eventuality, but never learned to use.

I learned to use it.
I divided the fiber into four equal sections, and divided two of those sections lengthwise, and spun them on the spindle to create reasonably equal amounts of fiber.
What I got were two corn dogs.

Two unequal corn dogs. (Here's what was left over from the larger one after plying.)

I guess my skills at dividing roving equally are even more low-tech than my technique for spinning them.
Note the nod to Chinese take-out in the creative use of chopsticks.

I then turned to my trusty Lazy Kate. Size 10, if you were wondering.

Once I had plied the yarn, I went for the niddy noddy.

And presto - a very small, and rather overtwisted, skein of yarn. (About 93 yards.)

The yarn is having a bath now which should calm that twist down nicely. You could hear it fizz with relief as it entered the water.
2 oz. down, 2 to go.

I get back to the wheel on Sunday. It's going to feel like a Cadillac after this.

Chance of rain

2007-11-19T14:10:00.000-05:00

Or so they said in yesterday's weather forecast.

What a perfect day for sitting and knitting and spinning. Unfortunately I have to work.

I got nothing for the blog this week. I'm still slogging away on the divine Chanel Crossing. Here are some sneak preview pictures (blurry, as befits sneak preview pictures. This is the blog equivalent of those first-run movies you can buy on DVD from some guy on the street who taped it in the theater on his pocket video camera. You want them in focus, you have to wait for the official premiere).

My husband looked at me last night as I inched my way up the second sleeve and said, "Is that the sweater you wanted to finish for Rhinebeck?"

I think I detected a faint note of derision in his voice, but perhaps it was merely incredulity. I hope it was incredulity that I would wear something so glamourous to Rhinebeck, rather than a hint of doubt that I would finish this by Christmas.

Handspun Harlot Hat

2007-11-12T19:11:00.000-05:00

Three years ago I never would have dreamed that you could make this

into this

by way of this

thanks to this.

When I saw Stephanie's post about a spontaneous hat I knew that was what my handspun wanted to be.
It was my first actual cable project too, so I can cross that one off my list.

And I think I even have enough yarn left for a scarf.

Gloves & Monsters

2007-11-08T10:41:00.000-05:00

Here's a belated Halloween post showcasing my mismatched handspun handwarmers.

Same number of stitches, different levels of spinning skill.
Result: one handwarmer fits a human hand. One looks like it was made for the Incredible Hulk.

The arty flower shot is a tribute both to our fall crocuses (a highly recommended flower, sending up bright splotches of white and purple in the carpet of fallen leaves) and to this Halloween-season classic.

Rhinebeck

2007-11-01T16:25:00.000-04:00

I did not finish my sweater in time. (In fact, I haven't even finished the first sleeve. I have, however, knit the sleeve cap twice, and am working on attempt number 3.)

I did not take any pictures.

I did not eat fried artichokes. (My friend and I found it notable that the line for artichokes was as long as the line at the fleece shed.)

I did not buy any yarn.
I did not even buy wool carders, though now I wish I had.

I did not buy the gorgeous shining electric green bamboo roving that I had in my hand at the start of the day, when I had forbidden myself to buy anything til I had cased the joint. When I went back to get it, every scrap of their bamboo was gone. (Still kicking myself over that one.)

But I did buy other things.

Clockwise from top: 4 oz of Blue-Faced Leicester roving; approx. 4 ounces of a tussah silk/merino blend as creamy and rich as ice cream; 5 ounces of a wool blend whose provenance I forget; and one lovely, shining, Romney fleece.

A fiber orgy.

Getting my first fleece was a rite of passage. After waiting in line for an hour, hundreds of ravenous fiber hounds fell on this room full of fleeces like Bridezillas at a wedding-gown sale. I roamed rather haplessly up and down the aisles, pushing past overstuffed bags of fleece and the warm bodies of people thrusting their hands into them (one woman was testing locks by spinning them up on a drop spindle), feeling like a fraud and not sure what I was supposed to be looking for. (I wanted Blue-Faced Leicester, but I think most of that was in the separate BFL area.) At one point I saw that Amy King (aka Spunky Eclectic/Boogie Knits) was right next to me, going toward a fleece with such an air of fierce determination that I didn't have the nerve to say anything to her. She definitely seemed to know what she wanted (evidently she got six fleeces).
But after all that I did find a fleece that spoke to me, a Romney with a wonderful shiny luster and great crimp. And after some inner debate, and the requisite testing of a lock for crimp and strength, I headed toward the check-out with that and a cottony Corriedale. I made myself put the Corriedale back - one whole fleece is plenty for a beginner to deal with. Let alone a beginner who right now has more work than she can handle.
I adore the Romney.

And I got right to work spinning the BFL.

(This is an old picture - my first bobbin is now full.)

Originality

2007-10-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

What little fiber time we've had around Yan Tan Tethera this week has been all knitting, all the time, as I try to get my sweater done for Rhinebeck.
I have to start accepting that it ain't gonna happen.

The body is blocking now, but I only have a few inches done on the first sleeve. And such a tough work week ahead that my husband just laughed incredulously when I outlined everything I had to do.

Being me and stubborn, I am unwilling to face facts on this one (add it to the long list of unpleasant realities about which I am in denial), so I will probably knit furiously at every opportunity, and end up wearing my Faroe to Rhinebeck, draped around my shoulders since it is not likely to be cold enough to actually don such a garment.

As I struggle with the end of this sweater, I keep thinking about what makes a design "original" or not (something that's discussed quite a bit on Ravelry).

I've been playing with the idea of a Chanel-ly tweedy jacket-y sweater for a long time. I also had some yarn in various colors that I originally meant to use for a brocade sweater, then perhaps one in stripes. One week this idea and this yarn came together in a three-color tweed stitch pattern I found one evening when playing with Barbara Walker. So I figured out the kind of jacket I wanted, consulted Ann Budd, changed everything Ann Budd said, and started knitting.

I had gotten partway through the body when someone gave me Jean Frost's book of jackets and I found a jacket in the same stitch pattern in there. This month, I even saw it in the Knitpicks catalogue.

Now, mine will fit differently; I'm going for a more tailored look. (Let's be honest: my design skills are pretty embryonic at this point, and I'll just be thrilled if it fits.) But it will look similar.

For me the distinctive thing about my jacket is how it uses color. Each panel blends four colors together in the three-color tweed: two of the colors are the same throughout, but I use three different colors for the third color, so that the overall color shifts from bottom to top, wrist to shoulder.
(After all, Kaffe Fassett's originality is in his use of color, not so much in the shapes or styling of his garments.)

And goodness knows, I'm wrestling with measurements, sleeve tapering, I-cord cast-ons and finishing details that I'm figuring out myself, with plenty of reference to other sources. I certainly didn't use anyone else's pattern to make it.

So will my sweater be original?
At any rate, it probably won't be finished.

Here, for comic relief, is something I did finish: some wristwarmers with my first handspun. Since the yarn got less chunky and more even as I went along, one of these is sized for me, and the other one is sized for the Incredible Hulk. (Same number of stitches in both.)

As for Rhinebeck: I've got my button and bag. And anyone looking for me will know me by my Monkey socks.

Spun Out

2007-10-01T12:41:00.000-04:00

After a rough week I couldn't muster the energy to make it to the Spin-Out, which I'm sure was amazing. Instead, I had my own private spin-out in front of the Mets games on TV, which were by turns exciting (on Saturday) and devastating (on Sunday). I am heartbroken.

On the bright side, literally, there is fiber. I have to say one more thank you to Kit Kat Knit for sending me my first roving as a prize. There was something liberating in having this wonderful fiber given to be out of the blue (or whatever color the Internet is). First, it's awfully pretty.

Then, because I won it, I had a sense of freedom about experimenting with it. I also have some roving I bought from Knitterly Things, but I was worried about messing it up. But because this was a gift, I got to luxuriate in it. As a result, and because it has so many vibrant colors, I figured out more about spinning with colors, striping, plying, etc., than I would have in weeks of careful spinning with undyed roving, and I had much more fun than I would have had in anxious spinning with non-gifted roving. So it has turned into an exceptionally appreciated gift.

My anticipation about the finished product was so intense that it was but a short step from this to this:

For all my excitement, I was a little disappointed at how chunky and homemade it looked, in comparison to other people's amazing homespun yarns.

Then, the fantastic guest blogs by Laurie over at The Yarn Harlot (these things can keep a beginning spinner awake at night, kind of like Christmas Eve for a small child, but more involved) led me to one of Stephanie's own tutorials, this one on predrafting.

Oh. So THAT'S what "predrafting" means.

So I went back to my wheel.

Before and after:

Left: the first skein of handspun from KitKatKnit's roving: about 112 yards, 6 or 7 WPI.
Right: the rest of the handspun I spun after I read Stephanie's tutorial, with about one-third as much fiber: about 140 yards, 10 WPI.

Strike another blow for the power of the Internet.

Handspun / Tag

2007-09-29T11:35:00.000-04:00

I just got tagged by KitKatKnit. And here I was preparing a post about how she lured me further down the fiber path.

(To refresh your memory: KitKatKnit had a contest, which I won. And she generously sent me this as a prize.

Then came this.

And now the roving looks like this, and like this:

So how can I pass up being tagged? The meme is Seven Odd Things About You, or something along those lines. Here goes:

1. When I am a passenger in a car, I somehow always end up riding with my shoes off and my feet up on the dashboard. I always try to remember not to do it, since if an accident released an air bag my knees would go through my teeth.

2. There are three things I have always wanted to learn to do and never have (though I have made peremptory stabs at all three): play the piano, ski, and speak Russian.

3. My favorite Chinese Szechuan dish is pickled ox tongue and tripe, which we originally ordered because my husband loves to be adventurous about weird food, and which I thought sounded kind of disgusting.

4. When I was about 13 I fell madly in love with Ernest Hemingway and set out to read everything he ever wrote. I have never quite gotten over him, either.

5. I am double-jointed and trained myself as a child to be able to bend only the top knuckle of each finger while holding the rest of the finger straight, a skill that has no known application apart from showing other people that you can do this weird thing, which usually kind of freaks them out.

6. I am one of those superstitious flyers who has to read the safety instruction card every time I board a plane, to ward off mishap.

7. It was not until this week that I told my husband I had a blog, although he knows absolutely everything else about me.

I'm not sure about passing on the meme - it feels a little like a chain letter, and I wonder if most bloggers haven't already participated in these memes by now. But I guess it's all in the blogging spirit, and since I was pleased to be tagged, I will pass it on and tag the following people.

Born Knitty
HPNY Knits
Half-Soled Boots
Der verlorene Faden
Dolores at The Panopticon (I figure Franklin has already been tagged for hundreds of these, but Dolores might be willing, nay, even eager, to share some personal tidbits with her readers).
Knitterly Things

And YOU, if you're reading this, and want to. Post the rules, write your list on your blog, tag seven other people, and within two weeks you will get 10,000 postcards from all over the world... or something like that.

Astrid Furnival, knitting artist

2007-09-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

Since I began this blog, I've been intending to post about an artist who's inspired me (and who, without knowing it, gave this blog its name).

I can't believe that with all the current interest in knitting, nobody seems to have discovered the work of Astrid Furnival.

Astrid is a knitting artist. She hand-dyes yarn with natural dyes from plants she collects herself, and knits them into unique sweaters and hangings.
The above image is a portrait of Samuel Palmer, the British visionary artist (click on his name to see the original portrait she was working from). Below, you can see it in context - as a sweater.

Get a load of the wrong side of the piece. Astrid cares not a bit for weaving in ends. (Note that this sweater is at least 15-20 years old, and has been actively worn for years with no ill-effects.)

I wish I had more shots of Astrid's amazing sweaters and hangings. She did one that was a whole set of indigo variations on the Navajo word for "blue." She did this wall hanging, based on the Chanson de Roland, which now hangs in a museum in New Mexico. (Sorry for the lousy photo - you can see it a little better if you click on it. Note the dimensions: 56 inches high, 108 inches across.)

But the work I know best and the one that inspired the name of this blog is a set of sheep-counting rhymes from five different regions of Great Britain. Each of the five panels is dyed with plants from the region in question.

(I'm not going to win any awards with these bad pictures - but at least they give some idea. Again, you can see them better if you click on them. Note the all-important Yan Tan Tethera, center (Borrowdale) panel.)

It seems to me that, with all of us knitting fanatics out there, Astrid (who now lives in France) should be poised for wide recognition (or at least a spread in Interweave Knits). An enterprising publisher could do an amazing book of photographs of her pieces that knitters would snap up.

I hear that she is not working much these days because of problems with her hands. All the more reason to celebrate her underappreciated oeuvre.

How Lucky Can You Get?

2007-09-23T08:57:00.000-04:00

This luscious yarn arrived in the mail yesterday. Handpainted from Painted Skeins in the most perfectly beautiful autumnal colors.

It came to me courtesy of KnitMap, a great new site that's basically an interactive map of LYS's all over the world. You can use it to post reviews and, if you're planning a trip, find a yarn store anywhere you happen to be going. It's a fantastic resource and very well designed.

And as if that weren't enough, Stacy, whose brainchild this was, holds weekly raffles for users - and, out of the blue, I was one of last week's three winners.

Now, I would be recommending KnitMap eagerly in any case. But in this rosy "Afterglow" (that's the name of the colorway), which bathes the site in a downright romantic haze, I feel impelled to send everyone I know there, and to spend hours there myself, in sheer gratitude.

Hours, that is, when I'm not knitting socks.

My First Handspun

2007-09-17T10:48:00.001-04:00

It's the baby steps one is always most proud of. After one gets good at walking, one just takes it for granted.

Here is my first very own yarn.

I'm not sure it's even enough for a hat. My spinning guru recommended doing a 5x5 swatch, but I am sure there's not enough for a swatch and anything else.

Spinning lessons are incredibly cool. When I started knitting a couple of years ago, I was stubborn beyond reason about wanting to figure everything out myself. Each lesson - gleaned from books, the internet, trial and error - was hard-won, and a source of pride. For some reason, with spinning I feel just the opposite - I am really enjoying having someone show me how it's done. Of course, this is partly because I found a teacher whose emphasis is on the creativity of the process, on continually playing with the yarn, trying different variants, remembering not to be limited by the conservative or conventional.

By saying all that, I just might be able to convince people that the big chunks of undigested fiber that are visible in this yarn were left in as the result of a deliberate choice. Yup. I'm creative that way.

As far as knitting goes: since I have decided to try to finish my "Crossing the Chanel" cardigan/jacket for Rhinebeck, there may not be a lot of very photogenic knitting going on around here for a while. I truly love this sweater - I keep caressing the fabric as I go. But it is a slog. And I'm not sure the result, however well it may turn out, is going to be commensurate with the effort. Anything that progresses this slowly should end up as some magnificent Alice Starmore creation (by Margene) that reveals some of the work that went into it.

But I do have my second, improved Baby Surprise Jacket to show, though still unseamed and un-buttoned:

This one is a definite improvement on the first one (ugh, that neckline makes me cringe). I went down to size 4 needles, so it is more likely the baby may actually be able to wear it within the next 12 months, and since I had been through the pattern once I had figured out the slight trickiness about how to pick up the lower ten stitches on the RS rather than the WS of the jacket.

But by now I am heartily sick of these jackets. And I still like other people's better. (Oh, wait, that's Margene again. Hm, maybe it's just that I like Margene's knitting?)