7.5 pounds of wet wool

It doesn't sound like a good time, seven and a half pounds of wet wool, but it depends on what wool, and why it's wet. Check out what I spent 5 hours doing yesterday:




It's hard to tell until it's spun, but on that rack are rovings that will become new batches of Kyoto, Gummy Worms, and Time Held me Green and Dying, as well as a bunch of new colours. Also coming soon, the return of Booberry. I got a couple skeins just right, and four that are too pale -- I'm calling those Son of Booberry.

I'm off to class this morning, and I'm theoretically looking forward to it, but if I had a time machine and could freeze this day a little longer, I'd do it. I have a pounding head, a dripping nose, and a great sense of being very sorry for myself.

Knitting will help, surely. It usually does.

Classes Starting This Week

I really love teaching knitting, it thrills me like I can hardly explain. I've been in love with knitting since I was a little child. I loved sitting quietly and knitting away, feeling like I was producing something, and I loved experimenting. I've never stopped experimenting and trying to learn new things. There have been times when I sat back for a few months and just made stuff with the skills I already knew, but I was never satisfied for long doing the same thing. Fast forward 27 years from the day I learned, and here I am, with a ton of experience under my belt, able to produce just what I see in my mind (give or take!), and able to empathize with knitters at all skill levels as they go through their own learning curve. Able to give all kinds of useful tips and tricks, the ones I wish someone had been able to tell me when I was figuring out this or that on my own.

So having the opportunity to teach these skills, for decent pay no less, at a lovely establishment two blocks from my house, on my own schedule? It's like I'm living in a happy fiber dreamland.

Which is all to say, here is a little reminder that my classes are starting this week. When I checked last week, the Sweaters class had 4 people and the Knit Cafe had 3 -- so there's room for more, if you're interested. Or if you know a friend.

I'm also planning my summer classes. I'm thinking of taking a scattershot approach, and offering a ton of fun, short, workshop-like classes. Most of them will be 2 hours each class, and the emphasis will be on practising the skills taught -- lots of swatching, lots of experimenting, lots of hands-on playing with yarn.

So far, I'm proposing the following:
Knit Cafe: 5 classes
Adult Beginner Knitting: 5 classes
Stranded Knitting 1: 3 classes
Stranded Knitting 2 (steeking!): 3 classes
Sock Knitting 1: 4 classes
Sock Knitting 2: 4 classes
Freeform Knitting: 3 classes
Basic Sweaters: 8 classes
Cables 1: 2 classes

I'd love to hear ideas and opinions. What sorts of skills do you like to learn in a class? That is, what will cause you to take a class in something rather than buy a book and try it on your own? What length of time do you think is good -- is 2 hours too much? Is 1.5 hours too little? Do you like single-day classes, 2-3 day classes, or longer sessions, like 8 sessions to complete a larger project?

I have big, if vague, plans for the Fall too. I'm hoping that I will have had enough people take my Basic Sweaters class, and some take the Stranded knitting and Cables classes, so that I can offer an Advanced Sweaters class which includes work in cables, colourwork and steeking.

I didn't mean this to be a knitblog...

And yet the compulsion to take pictures of my projects in progress and report to you on the techniques, materials, etc. is overwhelming. Ah well. I'm gonna go with it until someone complains.

I have been feeling this mania to try new things lately, and my latest experiment is with double knitting. This is a technique whereby you knit a two-sided fabric, working with two contrasting strands of yarn at the same time. It's not actually all that hard, but it is fiddly. I'm refining my technique of holding two yarns on the same hand, and knitting with just one at a time. Here is my scarf in progress:


And here's the magic part -- here is the back of the same piece:


Ta da! Reversible. The pattern is my husband's -- he's a computer programmer, he said something about "Life" (the way he said it made it sound like it ought to be capitalized). It sounded like some kind of pattern that appears in some sort of life-behaviour simulator? I'm unclear. I said he could guest-blog to explain it, when it's done.

But to return to the knitting -- isn't that awesome?! I'm very taken with this technique. The scarf is just the beginning. You can use double-knitting to knit two socks, at the same time, on the same needle, one inside the other. I know -- magic. I wanna do *that* magic trick.

In other people's knitting, here are Inara's mittens, done with my wool and pattern. Aren't they pretty? Like stained glass.


I've been dyeing all week, and I have a bunch of new BFL that will be posted this week. I have a bit of new corriedale dyed, and I have 10lbs in the mail, on its way to me. And for those of you who are local -- Three Bags Full will be getting a new delivery of my rovings on Monday. Anyone wanna meet me on Main Street for coffee and knitting?

Back to the steam

Today, I'm hitting the dyepots, and hitting them hard. Three Bags Full has indicated that they want more rovings, and Fibrefest is coming, so I'm trying to keep the stock high. I'm also low on sock yarn, so I'll be snagging a few braids for my own spinning.

It's nice to be back to it. My daughter finished with her daycare at the end of November, so I had all of December and the first two weeks of January with her in the house, as well as Christmas visitors. I can spin under those conditions, but dyeing requires unbroken time to get anything useful done. Today -- I have unbroken time. And a full pot of coffee!

Here are two pots full of wool and dye, cooking away:




The Farmer's Market yesterday was better than last month, in terms of sales and the warmth of the room. I was prepared yesterday with wooly tights, wool socks (handknit), jeans, boots, a tank, a very thin sweater, a thick sweater, a scarf, arm warmers (handknit Koigu), a hat (handknit handspun), and mittens (handspun handknit). I'm nothing if not a walking advertisement for the benefits of wool, and the joy of knitting. Needless to say, I didn't find myself needing all of those things, which is great, because when I'm wearing all of them, I look a little bit like I'm the victim of some sort of knitwear pile-on.

The Winter Market is getting a number of the regular visitors, those who frequent the summer market, but there are new faces too. I continue to enjoy talking to the various crafters who visit my table and tell me about their projects. I'm afraid I was slightly in "pounce" mode though. More than one person heard me respond, seemingly casually, "You know, I teach knitting at the Port Moody Arts Center.. I managed to give out all of the brochures I brought with me, and there seems to be interest in my classes. Not that I didn't enjoy the 3-4 students per class last term, but more would definitely be better.

I didn't trade yarn for anything, but I bought 3 loaves of bread from an amazing baker, a few pounds of organic fuji apples, eggs, carrots, strawberries (thank the flying spaghetti monster for vendors who freeze their stuff so they can sell it in the winter!), ethically and organically raised beef, and fig stuffed olives.

Lastly -- I did indeed write up the pattern for the colourwork mittens. It's available on my shop for a small fee, but free if you buy the yarn from me. Here's a suggested colour combo that I really like:

In which I totally brag about my own stuff

I had so much fun making the purple and grey stranded mittens, that I wanted to make them again. I decided to make them out of my regular corriedale singles, and I couldn't be more pleased by the results. Here are my new mittens:


I made them out of natural 2) and Pink and Brown. I like the effect so much that I'm considering making a whole sweater with a natural foreground, and a background in maybe multi-blue, or shades of orange. There is some undyed fiber all measured out and ready to be spun -- I suspect I'll want a lot of it around, for myself, and hopefully for the people who will see these mittens at Three Bags Full and the Coquitlam Farmer's Market, and want to make their own. I'm even considering writing up an actual pattern. I don't really enjoy writing patterns, I'd rather teach someone how to knit without one, but I do enjoy selling the patterns, and I do get requests for the things. So there may be a write up. A comment or two expressing an opinion on this matter would help me to decide.

I somehow put the thumb on the same side on both mittens. I can only blame temporary insanity. I swear, I checked, but I think when I checked I was holding one mitten upside down. Anyway, I was too lazy to totally undo the mitten to the provisional row that forms the thumb opening, so instead I took down the wrong thumb, grafted the life stitches of the thumb opening together (and not all that well, as you can see), then snipped a stitch in the middle of where I wanted the thumb to go and opened it up. This is an Elizabether Zimmerman technique, one she uses for afterthought pockets on sweaters, and afterthought heels on socks. The Yarn Harlot wrote about the afterthought heel last week.

Here's my picture of the altered mitten, close up:


I have printed off the entry forms for the Abbottsford Fibrefest in March. I'm a bit intimidated by the idea of sending off the entry fee and committing to a big show like this, but when I look at it realistically, it makes sense. I pay $35 for a table for a day at the Farmer's Market, and it's only a small percentage of patrons there who knit and are interested in buying yarn on that particular day. Fibrefest, *everyone* is interested in yarn or fiber, and if they're like me, they enter the building fully expecting to spend a minimum of $200 before they leave. So all in all, I think I can expect sales to be good enough to justify the entry fee. But it's still a bit intimidating.

Hey anyone know of a flat pack, easy to assemble and disassemble, and repeat many times over a season, fairly inexpensive shelf? Doesn't have to be that attractive, I can cover the ugliness with fabric and yarn, but it does need to fit into my rather small trunk of my rather small Subaru.

Where I'll be

Here are some places you can find me in the upcoming days.

1) Coquitlam Farmer's Market (details at www.makebakegrow.com) on January 13 and February 9. I'll be bringing a ton of yarn with me -- vast amounts of my single ply Corriedale, and as much sock yarn as I can make between now and then. Come visit me, and bring a big shopping bag for the gorgeous local food you can buy directly from farmers in the area.

2) At the Port Moody Arts Center (details at http://www.pomoartscentre.ca/pages/pdf_files/winter_spring/w08_adspecint.pdf). I'm teaching a class in how to knit sweaters without a pattern on Wednesday evenings. Shaping a sweater doesn't have to be a complicated affair; I'll teach you some basic calculations and basic sweater shapes, and you'll feel like you can take on the (knitting) world once the class is over. Plus, you'll have a new sweater.

The second class is a Knit Cafe on Saturday mornings. This is an open classroom, sort of like a knitting group with a mentor. All are welcome, from people who have never touched needles before to more advanced knitters who want some guidance in some specific techniques. Do you have a half-finished project that you can't make progress on? Do you want to know how to follow a chart? Work with two colours at once? Do cables? Or maybe you don't know what you want to learn, but you just want to go with the flow and see what's being taught that day. I think the Open Class is gonna be big fun. Basic materials and tools will be available for purchase at cost (including my own handspun yarn -- I can't pass up an opportunity for potential sales -- but you can bring your own, too.

As always, my yarn is available on my Etsy shop (link to the right) and at Three Bags Full.

I have a bunch of pink, lavender, pink/white/brown, and eggplant yarn drying inside. I might even photograph some of it this afternoon -- stay tuned.

I'm famous! (In Coquitlam)

So it's all silly, but at this moment I am absurdly proud of having been interviewed by one of the local papers, the Tri-City News. The interviewer got most of the facts right, and the photographer took a wonderfully glam photo of yours truly. The link is below -- read the article, then come back and tell me I'm pretty:

http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_maple_ridge/tricitynews/entertainment/12873486.html

I'm spinning orange sock yarn, and on my drying rack is a yarn I'm titling Myfanwy. Tell me why I chose Myfanwy, and I'll...well I don't have any useful giveaways. I'll be very impressed though, and I'll ask you to be my friend.

The love between a woman and her mittens

If this love is wrong, I don't want to be right. Above is shown a mitten in progress, both front and back. I'm so pleased, I can hardly tell you how much. It might be unnatural.

The first mitten is now complete, and the second is begun. Don't ask me for the pattern, because that scribbled-on graph paper in the first photo? That's my pattern.

I've knit with my own yarn before, but somehow this feels more special. Maybe it's because I know I'm preparing. I'm practising spinning this fiber, trying to get it thinner. I got it down to a worsted weight, but I need to get to a DK in order to do a Starmore pattern. I'm practising dyein the fiber in gradations of the same colour. I tried to get 5 distinct shades, but what I got was a light (not as light as I wanted), a dark, and three of much the same shade in between. And I'm practising my stranded work. It's improving. I have ordered this little plastic doohickey, looks like a ring with two guides on the top, for stranding both colours on the same hand. Right now I do my foreground colour in my left hand, as I usually knit, and my background in the right hand -- slow, and awkward, and not nearly as quick as I'd like. I must practice my "throwing" technique.

Here is a picture of me spinning the shetland. This is my usual spinning location (by my desk in the livingroom) and uniform (comfy jeans and fleece, sleeves pushed up because I hate having fabric on my forearms when I'm doing any sort of handwork). We're trying out a new camera -- not bad for low light, hm?




I'm theoretically doing the mittens as prep for my sweater, but the mittens themselves are really fun and satisfying, and fast! The first mitten was complete inside 24 hours (after the wool was ready of course). I'm having visions of a second pair in gradations of cherry pink, with a chocolate brown foreground. Maybe some sort of a leaf pattern?

Cooking up mittens

I'm cooking up something new -- something just for me. I handspun some Shetland wool, undyed. I tried for sport weight, but I think it came out more like a DK -- will need to practice that for my next project. Then, I put half the skeins in a charcoal dyebath, and half of them I dyed in varying shades of purple. My plan is to make a pair of Norwegian style, 2-stranded colourwork mittens. I was considering Eunny Jang's Anemoi (http://www.eunnyjang.com/knit/2006/12/anemoi_mittens.html), but the yarn might be too thick to make the pattern work. I'm also considering doing them in the Alice Starmore pattern for her Lindisfarne sweater.

My eventual goal is to have good enough spinning, dyeing, and fairisle knitting technique to make a full-size Lindisfarne for myself, out of my own handspun. And if I'm doing the dyeing, I can make the sweater in 12 different shades of red, 10 shades of blue, 4 shades of brown. It's my marathon project for this year. Right now, I'm training for the marathon with a short 5K -- mittens. Updates to follow.

Here's the purple yarn cooking:

Green, baby, green.

I have had a glorious week in fiber. In brief, here are the high points:

1) Inky the Squid Boy has turned out to be, not Shetland as I thought, but Corriedale. I two-plyed it anyway, and made something very puffy, slightly shiny, and altogether lovely. I think I shall keep one of the two skeins for myself, and make some fingerless gloves for my mother's husband for an X-mess present. I'm thinking of doing more Corrie as an Aran weight two-ply, and ditching my whole two-ply shetland idea. I may keep the 4lbs of the stuff all for myself, and do some glorious hand dyed, handspun fairisle work with it. Will keep you posted.

2) My skeinwinder, which clamps onto the top of my spinning wheel, arrived in the mail. My previous process for winding skeins involves using a swift clamped onto my dining room table, holding a yarn-filled bobbin on a long knitting needle, and tensioning the bobbin with a beleagered UNO card while I whirl the swift around with my right hand. Thank goodness I have really long arms, otherwise this system would be a total no-go. As it is, it's weird and inconvenient, and if I do more three skeins in a row my shoulder cramps up. My skeinwinder only involves threading the finished yarn up to to the winder, and using the hand-crank to whirl a skein up directly from the laden bobbin. This new device is $100 that will pay for itself in no time, what with all the carrying, tying, cursing, and massaging my shoulder that I'm no longer doing.

3) I have finally gotten the hang of this colour theory thing. I have finally put together some key pieces. My two blues, two yellows, and two reds? (well, magenta and red.) Warm and cool versions of the same underlying colour. Warm and cool. If I want a warm green, I should mix the warm yellow and warm blue. If I want a clear, bright orange, I should mix the cool yellow and the magenta. I know that many people learned this stuff in grade school, but I stopped taking art in grade 6 and never looked back. that's the one piece. The second key piece which I knew about, but wasn't successfully getting to work, was the art of toning down a colour with its opposite, its complement. To tone down red, I should add green. To mellow out a yellow, I should add purple. Put these pieces together and I have successfully created....

4) GREEN!!! Twice in two days, I created more or less the green that I was looking for, and nothing really unexpected happened in the dyepot. I even got a beautiful, even, bright spring green. If you have been reading this blog, you will have heard me complain about the difficulty of managing green, but I'm finally getting it. Expect lots and lots of green coming up.

5) I managed to dye a couple pounds of fiber while my two year old was at home. I usually wait until she's at daycare before I break out the poison and boiling water, but I wanted to see if I could accomplish the task with her underfoot. See, her last daycare day is tomorrow, and I have to see if I can keep dyeing even if she's around, otherwise I'll run out of fiber to spin before December is out.

I have no pictures for you today, because it's dark outside. When I start moving my new fiber inside onto my railing to finish drying, I'll show you some stuff. You'll see some gorgeous carmine red, some fuschia, some spring green and bright blue -- so much fiber all so very pretty that I might even offer some of the corrie for sale.