Aftermath

I survived Thanksgiving! The holiday proper was no problem - just me and Max and a big, tasty meal. The four or five days leading up to the holiday, however, were a different story. It's the biggest week of the year for us at the bakery, and with this being my first year as production manager, a lot was riding on me not screwing up. I did have one or two screw-ups, but thankfully they were minor and all things considered, this was one of the smoothest Thanksgivings we've had there.
Now I can return to the fun stuff - knitting, spinning, watching season one of Heroes, and importing lots of pictures into Ravelry. Yes, I joined the madness. If you're signed up, you'll find me there under knitopotamus. If you're not and you're a knitter, spinner, or crocheter, get on the list or just be patient. They're saying they'll be opening up the site pretty soon. It's worth it. The hard part will be keeping up with the blog, especially with photos, now that I'm posting so many fiber-related pictures there.
I'll try not to disappear completely.

Anniversary

Last week Max and I celebrated our anniversary - nine years married, fourteen as partners. In addition to a not-quite-worth-the-exorbitant-price dinner out, we managed to get away for a whole weekend. We didn't get very far away, but away we got. We spent two nights in a cabin in Trinidad just a few miles to the north.

The cabin was perfect. A big comfy bed, a full kitchen, a woodstove, and a deck overlooking the ocean.



We listened to the waves and looked for whales while eating tasty treats and drinking good wine. And there might have been a little ass-kicking on the battlefield of Catan.

On Saturday we decided to sample some of the best tourism our region has to offer by visiting the Trees of Mystery. It continues to amaze me that the local response to awesome natural beauty is cheese and kitsch, but I guess that's not just limited to the North Coast.

Mr. Bunyan was there to greet us...



...along with his anatomically impressive buddy Babe.



Chainsaw art was brought to new heights...



...while humor and maturity hit a few lows.



The gondola ride to the top of the mountain paid off, though, with views like this:



And on the drive home we got to see these guys (they've become a common sight, but they never cease to impress me):



I fear for these windows.



One of the real surprises of the trip, though, was the museum at the Trees of Mystery. It's a private collection assembled by a woman with tremendous love and respect for local Native nations. The examples of Native basketry blew my mind. Sadly, the few flash-free photos I attempted didn't turn out well, but trust me when I say it was a touch of class amidst the exploitive crap and foreign-made souvenirs.

The other good surprise was finding Rooster McClintock, a local honky tonk band that nearly brought the roof down at a little Trinidad dive bar on Saturday night. The dance floor was packed with costumed revelers of all stripes. We were unaware of the Halloween party and therefore decked only in our usual garb, but we danced until we were ready to fall down. It was a fantastic way to round out our weekend and to celebrate our years together. May there be many more!

Finish Fest 2007

Here are a couple more things I can finally cross off the list. First off is Mariah. It's not even funny how long this has been a work in progress (I started it in May of 2005, while still in New York). I actually finished it back in July, but I wasn't happy with the zipper, and I didn't get around to changing it until today. See, the ribbing pulls in quite a bit at the waist, and the yoke is just a tad big, so it makes me look a little like a linebacker, and it doesn't stay on my shoulders that well. By changing to a double separating zipper, I can have it zipped at the top while leaving the ribbed section undone, like so:



Here it is with the full zip:



There are certainly things I love about this sweater. I love the long sleeves. I think I knit them a little shorter than the pattern called for, but honestly, I can't remember now. I love the way the cables turned out. I did a lot of ripping back on this sweater, but it was ultimately worth it. Despite its minor fit issues, I'm still really proud of it.

The recap: Mariah from Knitty in the smallest size, knit in organic wool from Full Belly Farm in natural gray (though it appears brown). I used a little less than 5 skeins at 250 yards each. I love that this yarn comes from an organic CSA and is undyed, but it is certainly rustic. I wish I had saved all the bits of vegetable matter I picked out during the knitting process, because it would easily amount to a small shrub's worth, and it was mostly burrs. Fortunately, this is not the kind of sweater I'll be wearing next to bare skin.
All-in-all, this was a rewarding project, although I'm not sure I would say I had a lot of fun knitting it.

The next finished object is Tubey.



Again, I'm excited to be finished, but I have reservations. It's just not that flattering on me. I'm hoping I'll wear it anyway, otherwise this poor yarn is destined to never see the light of day, even it its fourth (!) incarnation (here's an earlier one). The good news is that it is fabulously soft and cozy while being slightly dressier than most of my sweaters, so hopefully it will see some use this winter on evenings out.
The pattern is Tubey, again from Knitty, size medium. The yarn is Morehouse Merino 3 strand (worsted) in gray. I highly recommend this yarn as a sub for the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino called for in the original.
I did change the sleeves a bit because I didn't have enough yarn. I did a few decreases and echoed the ribbing of the body to finish them off a little short of where they were supposed to be. The body is also a couple of inches shorter than the pattern called for.
It's an easy knit, but I was bored to tears during the ribbing, and it was too big and bulky at that point to be mindless waiting room knitting. Still, it's an innovative pattern. I like that.

And finally, the results of my dyeing:



Again, I was surprised by the outcome of adding emerald dye to the twice-dyed Corriedale, especially the way that one skein stayed stubbornly brown, but I like it in an earthy, foresty kind of way. If I had to give this color a name, I think it would be Humus. Although if I were being arty about it, I would call it something like Mirkwood.
The whole multi-dyeing process definitely fulled the yarn, which is fine. (I think the worst of it happened during the workshop at the Fair when they let all the little hippie children stir the dyepots.) It's still really soft, and according to Spin Off, it will make my yarn a little more durable and less likely to pill. I've decided to go forward with a vest, based on Leftovers from Knitty, but with slightly different ribbing. Now that I have a relatively clean slate, I can work on it without worrying about all my languishing unfinished projects!

Just What Kind of Olive is That?

Wow, this has got to be almost unprecedented. Three posts in three days? It probably won't work this way for long. It just so happens that this has been my weekend and I didn't have a whole lot on the agenda. (It's been a bit of a Fiber-and-Buffy Fest. Max went out of town and I found used copies of the two Buffy seasons I didn't already own. You should see the house. It's trashed.)

Anyway, last night I got it into my head to overdye the Corriedale yarn, both the natural grey and the dyed stuff, in an attempt to make it all work in the same project. I pulled out some acid dyes I bought at the Fiber Fair and chose the color Olive, using a small-ish amount of dye in the hopes that it would give a nice mellow olive green tone to the whole batch while preserving some of the natural dyed shades underneath.

Boy was I wrong:



I don't know if it's the previous dye job (there was the iron bath on two skeins, and I only rinsed, didn't wash afterward) or if those Jaquard people don't know what the hell an olive looks like, but I sure wasn't expecting this strange copper color.

As much as I normally love earthy colors, this one just didn't satisfy me, so the whole lot went back in the dyepot. It's currently soaking up some Emerald in an attempt to greenify it. I'm hoping it will be mossy and foresty and pretty, not vomitous, but who knows. I would really like to make a wearable vest out of this stuff, so I just hope it's something I can live with.

I also spun up another sample of the heathered top from the Fair.



This time I went with a single, spun from the fold.
Here are a couple of tiny swatches with both samples:



Both were knit on US #5 needles, though I probably could've gone down a size on the left-hand one. That one is from the single. It came out to about 12 wpi and knit to 6 1/2 stitches to the inch. It was a bit splitty to work with, but made a nice soft fabric.
The right one is from the two-ply, which was more like 11 wpi and knit to 6 stitches to the inch. It was easier to work with, gave better stitch definition, and produced a smoother, firmer fabric.
I like the look and feel of the fuzzier one, but I should probably figure out what I'd like to use it for first. I'm sure the worsted-spun two-ply would be far more durable.

There is other, more substantial knitting happening, and I hope to soon have another long-awaited FO to document. I know Buffy will help me through.

More Spinning and Another FO

One of the first things I did with my new wheel was to spin up a batch of Corriedale roving I bought down in Sonoma County last year from the Artisan's Co-Op. I had played with it a little on the old wheel and the drop spindle, but it was a really nice introduction to my Lendrum.

I ended up with five skeins, each approximately 160 yards and worsted weight.



The skein on the far right is the first one I did, and it is noticeably chunkier than the others. I didn't notice until I had spun the second skein, which was much thinner. These two were both Navajo-plied, only compounding the problem. With the next three, I did a standard three-ply which helped to balance out the inconsistencies. These were done with a long backward draw, from the fold.

Last weekend was our local Natural Fiber Fair and I spent most of Saturday there. By the way, while the Fair had its disappointing moments (no Carolina Homespun or Chasing Rainbows this time!) they have a brilliant little thing called the Used Equipment Booth. I brought along my Ashford wheel, put a price tag on it and walked away. A couple of hours later, I returned to the woman running the booth to find that my wheel had sold. She handed me a bundle of cash, I handed her ten percent of it, and that was that. Practically effortless!

While there, I took a workshop on natural dyeing and brought my Corriedale yarn with me. Here are the results:



The one on the left, which is a little more yellow than this in person, was dyed with saffron, the middle is Brazilwood with an iron bath, the right is Cutch with an iron bath. Mine looked much different from the others, most of which were commercial white yarns bought from the workshop leader. I'm not particularly fond of how these colors turned out. I thought the saffron was especially disappointing since everyone else got such nice, bright yellows, but it was a good lesson in how dyes can vary on different yarns.

The process was fun to learn, and it would be neat to do more, but I don't see myself getting into it any time soon. It's quite a lot of work, especially to get predictable results.

Another fiber I played with on the new wheel is some dyed alpaca I bought at the Black Sheep Gathering.



This stuff felt great and I liked the colors, but it bled like crazy on my skin and my flyer as I was spinning.
Here's what I got from the first bundle:





I suppose you would call this a semi-worsted yarn. It's roving, not top, but spun with a worsted draw. I then Navajo-plied it to preserve the color sequence.

I tried to avert the bleeding problem by washing the second bundle of roving before spinning it so I could attempt to fix the dye with vinegar. Sadly, despite trying to be gentle, I felted it a bit, and spinning it is a real bear, so I've tossed it aside for now.

I emailed the company I bought it from with what might have been too gentle a message. I told them how disappointed I was and that I didn't feel confident buying from them any more, but I stopped short of asking for a refund or replacement. I never got a reply.

Here's some pretty dyed top I bought at the Fiber Fair last week.



The woman who sold it to me said it was from a breed called "Colonial," a Merino cross, she said, but there's no mention of it in my copy of In Sheep's Clothing, and Google only turned up references to them as a very general category, not a breed. If I'd been paying attention, I would have noticed that it's really not very Merino-esque. Long staple, not much loft, but pretty colors, and I like the way it spins up.



I've only done a small sample so far. This is a two-ply, worsted draw.



And finally, a non-spinning FO. I don't normally do baby stuff, but this is for an old friend of Max's. I still want to wash and block it before getting it in the mail. I really need to hurry, though, because the baby's already here and will probably soon be too big to wear this!



It's the Baby Kimono from Mason-Dixon Knitting (Rosie the Riveter added to counteract girliness). I did it in Lion Brand Cotton, color Banana. I used just a smidge more than one ball, but I added some length to the body and width to the sleeves because I'm worried about shrinkage. I also went with buttons instead of the ties used in the original. I though the ties seemed fussy, and it looked like the inner flap of the kimono would sag without something securing it.
Here's a button close-up:



I can now see the appeal of baby projects for their speed and cuteness (I also made a hat for a different baby recently, but forgot to photograph it) but it still saddens me that they grow so fast and can only wear these things so briefly!

A Tentative Return

It's been such a long time that I don't even know where to start. This is one of those things that gets harder and harder the longer you're away.

The last year has been a bit of a tough one for me, and I think the blog started to feel like another obligation I couldn't keep up with, so I dropped it, but in the last couple of months I've started to miss it.
At a most basic level, I've missed the visual and textual record of my projects. Since the spring, my fiber enthusiasm has come flooding back, but in a bit of a disorganized fashion. Since the original goal of the blog was to keep track of that stuff, it seemed the likely place to return.
I've also missed the connections I made with some inspiring people out there. I don't expect any real readership after such a long absence, but if a few interesting people wander my way I'll be pleasantly surprised.

So, on to a few updates.

First off, my health has improved dramatically. I had my thyroid nuked in March, and while my hormone levels went a little wacky for a couple of months, I'm now on a dose of synthetic hormone that works for me. As long as I remember to take my pill first thing in the morning, I feel fine. The only bummer is that I have to wait 30 to 60 minutes before I can eat or drink anything, which, for a coffee and breakfast lover like me, sometimes feels like an eternity. My newly balanced hormones coupled with a little outside help has also done wonders for my depression. That's not to say everything's hunky dory all the time, but at least everything doesn't suck all the time.

My position at work has changed again. I'm now the production manager, so I oversee all things bread. This has been a really exciting change for me. I was really bored doing sales and missed the dough. Now I get to play with dough with the added challenge of managing about a dozen people on two shifts. My hours are a little bizarre, but so far it hasn't bothered me. It's the personal challenges that will make or break me here, I think. I've been in the position about six weeks now, so I still remain optimistic about the whole thing.

But some of the most exciting updates, for the blog at least, are in the realm of fiber. As I said, I managed to recapture some of my knitting mojo back in the spring. I started small with these legwarmers:



Sadly, the color is a bit washed out in this photo. They're a very pretty olive green. The yarn is Manos del Uruguay in Uranium. The pattern is from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I know many people are opposed to color pooling, but on these I like the way it looks. The downside is I started knitting these before my thyroid treatment when I weighed about 15-20 lbs less than I do now, so the cute skirt I planned to wear them with doesn't fit me any more, not to mention the slight mental scarring I have from youthful encounters with legwarmers. Thus, they languish unworn. Perhaps I can find someone younger and hipper than I am to give them to.

After this victory, I decided to pick up my unfinished Birch shawl in order to wear it to a wedding on Memorial Day weekend.
Here is the result, again with slightly washed out color due to our grey skies:





It turned out pretty enormous - 96" wide and 42" from top to point - but I like the size, and it's still light as a feather while being soft and warm. The yarn, a blend of silk, angora, and nylon, is recycled from a thrift store sweater. The only real drawback is that the angora sheds like crazy.

During this exciting knitting period, my spinning wheel was gathering dust, but in June, Max and I went north to Oregon and the Black Sheep Gathering for a little inspiration. While we were there, a couple of pivotal events happened. First off, I test-spun a Lendrum folding wheel, and it confirmed my suspicions that it's the wheel for me. Secondly, I bought this:


It's a Merino/Border Leicester fleece from Hub Corriedales in Oregon.
After sorting:

I photographed these locks while still in the hotel in Eugene. I couldn't stop fondling them.


It was a bit of a whim, but once I wandered into the fleece sale it seemed inevitable that something was coming home with me. I got there after the big initial rush, but early enough to find this. It's certainly not a perfect fleece, but for my first purchase I was pretty pleased. It had a few weak spots and some dandruff, but was very clean and well-skirted, with nice luster and incredible softness, and I love how the color goes from light brown tips to deep brown and even charcoal grey in places. It all blends together in the spinning, but I think it gives the color nice depth.

The thing I wasn't prepared for was just how much work a fleece is! I scoured it in several batches because I was paranoid about getting the grease out (I didn't want sticky Merino wax hanging around to muck up my spinning) and then tried some hand carding with carders I also bought at the festival. I learned an important lesson, which is that I suck at hand carding. Well, maybe I don't completely suck, but I'm really slow if I want it to come out nice, and I'm a bit on the impatient side.

So my new approach is drum carding. I've taken one batch to my LYS where I can rent time on her drum carder and I've got three lovely batts to show for it. The crazy part is that's only a small portion of the whole fleece. I'll need at least a couple more trips, but the teasing is slowing me down. It's almost enough to make me go back to hand carding!

The upside to all this processing work is that this wool is a pleasure to handle. It still has enough lanolin in it to stay soft without being sticky and I'm really enjoying the spinning. I almost wish I had saved a small sample of the unscoured wool, though, because I actually miss the sheepy smell of it.

My current goal is to spin enough for a sweater. I've been playing around a little with yarn weights and plies to see what works. Here's a recent sample skein (with apologies for the poor lighting):




It's Navajo-plied, roughly 11 wpi, although the twist isn't set, so I'm not sure if it'll bloom. I'm still working on getting balanced skeins, but improving all the time.

I have a lot more fiber stuff I'd like to post about, but this is getting a little long-winded, so I'll just add this final, important detail. In August the most generous and loving partner in the world bought me this:

My very own Lendrum folding double treadle wheel. It is absolutely the best thing that could have happened to my spinning.

I knew something wasn't right with my Ashford, but I didn't even know exactly what it was until I got this one. Even after having some repair work done on the Ashford, it was still fussy and clunky, and I would get sore after spinning for just a little while.
With the Lendrum I can, and sometimes do, spin all day long with no discomfort, and my yarn is coming out better and better. I finally see what all the fuss is about. Now if I can just figure out how to get the cats to settle down while I spin, all will be well.

Branching Out

Thank you so much for the kind thoughts. It's nice to know that a few of you are still out there. My sense of isolation is certainly lessened knowing that I have a few "virtual" friends.

On to the issue at hand...

When I was a student, many years ago, I wore skirts all the time. In the last several years, skirts have been reserved for more dressy occasions, but I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for those days. I love the comfort and freedom a skirt can give you. The right skirt, anyway.

Back in the day, I favored long, flowy numbers, or short dresses. Neither of these will suffice for everyday wear these days. I've been wanting something like a Utilikilt, or maybe this gardening skirt (although I don't know anyone who gardens in a skirt). Regardless, to suit my purposes it has to be functional, and ideally, less expensive than either of those examples. I've been keeping an eye out, but I haven't seen anything like it in my thrift store travels, so I finally decided to make my own.

Since I'm still pretty crap with the sewing machine, I decided to fall back on that seventies stand-by, the jeans-made-into-a-skirt. I found these instructions online, and with a pair of second-hand carpenter's pants that I never wore, I made this:




I didn't have quite enough fabric from the legs to fill the back panel, so I used a section of an old T-shirt in coordinating colors. I cut it wider than it needed to be so that, combined with the stretchiness of the T-shirt material, it provides a lot of give. It's been tested on a couple of dog walks, and I find it to be both comfortable and practical.

I was feeling very clever and proud of my achievement until I happened to walk by a shop the other day displaying several new, trendy skirts in a very similar style. I had no idea that I was making something that all the local 14-year-olds would be wearing. Oh well, I'm still pleased that I made it myself. I think the sewing machine and I have finally reached an understanding. As long as I don't ask her to anything too strenuous, she performs adequately. Someday I will replace her with a machine that can handle felted wool, but for now, she'll do.

The best part is that this project is inspiring me to do even more crafty business. I have a couple of other pairs of jeans destined for donation, so I may work my magic on at least one more pair, and I've also been inspired to start knitting a pair of legwarmers. I haven't yet decided if I'll feel too silly as a nearly thirty-five year-old woman to wear legwarmers, or if I'll throw caution to the wind and wear them anyway, but I forge ahead with the knitting.

I have also picked up another old friend/enemy (frenemy?): Mariah. I finished one sleeve and started the next, and the front and back are done. Someday soon I'll be able to join all the pieces together and knit the yoke, but I wouldn't want to rush things. It's only been 21 months since I began.