High Fibre Diet

Bwop! Bwop! CBRM Knitters Needed!

2010-03-11T10:39:00.004-04:00

One of the Torontonian Stitch & Bitchers and the giant pair of Noro(??) undies they made for Brent Bambury during the Feb 27 taping of Go!

Oh MAN, how DO I get myself into these things?? Well, not those things (i.e. the giant undies shown above) but these things meaning... well, read on and you will see.

Who: Local knitters with pride! (Even those who don't yet know how to knit.)
What: A taping of Go!, on the topic of "Giants of Canadian Rock"
Where: The Savoy in Glace Bay, 116 Commercial Street
When: 6 pm (the show starts at 7pm but we'll gather in advance)
Why On Earth?? Well, here's the deal...

There's a show on CBC Radio called Go!, on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m., hosted by Brent Bambury. On February 27, the subject of the show was Lobbying for Hobbying¹, and Brent invited four people to "show their passion for their pastimes" and convince listeners that their hobbies should be our hobbies. The pastimes in question were laughter yoga, playing the ukulele, naked photography in abandoned buildings... and knitting.

Okay, so right there you can maybe see my point. Laughter yoga, while actually it sounded really fun on the show, perhaps isn't very widely known. Playing the ukulele is kind of the textbook Lame Hobby - no disrespect to the ukulele but you've got to admit: that's how it's shown in pop culture. Naked photography in abandoned buildings... that is Seriously Obscure, as hobbies go. Now, Toni Wallachy's photography is really stunning (check out her Flickr photostream, too), so as art this naked photography in abandoned buildings bit is lovely. But as a hobby? I'm thinking there probably aren't a lot of participants. No, not so much.

So what was knitting doing in this obscure company? It was ROCKING, of course! Even so, I felt as though Bambury ... well, that he belittled knitting as a frumpy, granny sort of thing to do - in spite of the young and obviously hip Stitch & Bitchers who were there with Stephanie (or perhaps she was there with them?). I felt this way because of things he said, such as: "Knitting? Really, is this right? We're going to talk about knitting? I thought we were doing cool hobbies." And also: "I think knitting is something you do when you're too old to change the channel."

Now, in his defense, he was probably just making fun chit chat to drive the conversation along, but as a knitter I felt snubbed. Maybe I'm just a hobby snob and resented them lumping knitting in with what I considered to be Weird Hobbies when really I should have just been thrilled that knitting was getting some airtime, but there it is. Stephanie, who is always hilarious ("Knitters aren't knitters because they're patient, they're patient because they knit... We do this so that we don't have to be rude or drunk all the time.") and the other Stitch & Bitchers represented us well but I still felt like we got the short end of the needle, so to speak.

ANYHOO, during the conversation, Bambury gave Stephanie and the S&Bs this challenge: "Two weeks from now... Go! is going to be taping in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia... It is going to be cold on the Cape, so Stitchers, by the end of today's show, I want you to knit me some sexy, woolly undies - woolen underpants that I can wear out on the Cape."

And they did. See above.

So anyway, I listened to all this and, with knitter's pride bristling, decided that those of us within spitting distance of Glace Bay really ought to go to this taping on March 12 and make sure Himself has got his Noro on. Or at least in the studio, if not on his actual person. And I thought we ought to go with our needles and demonstrate that the knitting isn't all that obscure, thankyousoverymuch, nor frumpy.

I think we've got about half a dozen folks that're planning to go, but Chris (of Knit-a-thon fame) has let the CBC Information Morning guys know that we're going to be there so, on the off chance that the show organizers get wind of us coming, I'm really hoping we can get together a really big group of people so that we can make our point with pride and emphasis and NUMBERS.

I have let the Go! folks know that I'll be there with a knitting posse and requested tickets for us. Hopefully we'll be able to get a bunch of seats together - we'll be armed with sharp pointy sticks, so I think we'll be able to convince the nice folks at the Savoy to do that for us. They're actually going to save seats in the front row for anyone willing to sing on air but only a couple people called in to Information Morning this morning to do that, so I'm secretly hoping we can have the balance of the front row. If not that, then perhaps the second row?

The show is free and the topic is "Giants of Canadian Rock". Taping starts at 7pm but the audience is supposed to get there a little early; we knitters are going to gather at 6pm so that we can make sure to get seats together and also so we can teach any wannabe knitters the basics so they can be knitting with us by the time the show starts.² Bring your needles and whatever project you have on the go. (ha! Go!) And wear or bring something hand knit if you think of it!

Please please please, if you are a Cape Breton knitter, let me know via a comment here or by RSVPing to the Facebook event. If you know any Cape Breton knitters, please spread the word!

[Edit: Woo hoo! As of 11 am on Thee Day, we are now 14 knitters strong, plus various husbands and friends coming with. :D Bronwyn at Go! has been absolutely great about putting our names on the reserved tickets list in little dribs and drabs as people confirm, and I'm hopeful we'll get a good place to sit together. - J]

1. You can hear the entire audio of the show here. Look for the Feb 27 broadcast. The knitting bit is from around 14:00 to 23:30 or thereabouts, plus a bit at the end when they discuss the finished undies.

2. I'm not above bunging knitting needles and just-started projects into the hands of non-knitters to beef up our numbers, either. I shall come prepared!

My latest indulgences

2009-11-22T22:33:00.006-04:00

Ron and I just spent five days in Halifax and I've got all kinds of new goodies I'm anxious to show off!

This beautiful stuff I got at The Loop on Barrington:

The fleece is a romney/lincoln cross and comes from the happy flock of my friend Pia Skaarer-Nielsen, who dyes the wool herself. I bought 100g of my favourite colour in the morning and went back to buy the rest that afternoon but someone had beat me to it. I just discovered this afternoon at our Unspun Heroes gathering that "someone" just happened to be my friend Kimberly who had also traveled to Halifax last week. So I guess if I'm desperate for another 100gs of this lovely fleece I can go camp on her doorstep and refuse to leave until she sells it to me.

That's actually all the fibre I got while in Halifax. I was trying to be good, you see. I did get a 47" Addi Turbo circular needle and, following these most excellent instructions, manage to cast on a pair of socks 2-at-a-time using the magic loop method, but for those I used yarn I already had. (Yes, I packed a ridiculous amount of knitting yarn, all my knitting needles and my warped Knitter's Loom. No, I didn't use any of it, except for those two balls of sock yarn.)

On the way home, though, we took a detour and went to Sun Mercantile in Tatamagouche where I succumbed to the wiles of these two skeins of yarn:

At $30/skein, that top one was a total indulgence. I saw it as soon as I walked up to the yarn display and fondled it lovingly but then put it down 'cause it was so pricey. And I looked at a couple other things, then fondled that one again. Then looked at some other stuff, when I spied some other gorgeous stuff... and discovered it was the same skein of yarn that I'd put down in the wrong place. This happened at least half a dozen times, me falling in love at first sight over and over again with the same skein of yarn, until I finally just put the thing in my basket. A 60% superwash wool, 25% mohair, 15% nylon blend, it is absolutely gorgeous. It came with a Mountain Colours sock pattern of my choice included in the price, so I've convinced myself that it was money well spent.

The second one is a fingering weight 50% alpaca, 30% merino, 10% silk, 10% nylon sock yarn by Misti Alpaca. I've been eyeballing the Misti Alpaca lace weight for ages and ordered a couple skeins of the chunky weight that my yarn supplier sells, but I hadn't seen the fingering weight for socks before. This particular colourway really spoke to me, so into the basket it went as well.

Either one of these may wind up as socks, but I've also been really anxious to knit myself some fingerless gloves. I'm really hoping to win this contest on JL Yarnworks' blog and get the pattern for these babies...

...'cause I'm hankering to knit some cables and I really like fingerless glove patterns with a proper thumb hole rather than just a slit in the side. I did buy myself a really cute pair of handknit fingerless gloves done in Fleece Artist yarn at the craft market weekend before last but they're quite bulky and I like the more delicate look of these. Am thinking I might try to 2-at-a-time ML them as well to make sure they're the same size.¹

In spite of the fact that I was expecting 8 lbs of combed top in the mail and had just bought 100g of Pia's lovely fleece, I was also seduced by this beautiful roving that was hand dyed by Janine, who works at Sun Mercantile:

My justification for this is that it's a merino/silk blend and none of the top I'd ordered had any silk in it. Merino, yes - I'd ordered 2 lbs of that. Merino/bamboo and merino/tencel, yes - had ordered a pound of each of those, too. But merino/silk? None whatsoever. It only seemed right that I get some to compare to the others. *cough*

I got a couple other goodies from Sun Merc, including a hand knit hat that is SO CUTE I've barely taken it off since I bought it.² I also got a bunch of books at various bookstores that I'm excited about, including Sock Innovation by Cookie A, The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon, and Spin Control by Amy King.

Of course, I got home on Friday night and discovered the parcel pick-up slip for the 8 lbs of combed top I'd ordered from Fat Cat Knits waiting for me on the table. I picked that up the next morning so now I'm drowning in amazingly beautiful fibre for spinning, but that's a story for a whole separate post.

1. True Confessions: It drives me nuts when a pair of socks or gloves don't fit exactly the same way - I find it really distracting and uncomfortable. Can you say OCD?

2. Srsly, I've hardly taken it off. I have, however, put it carefully on the bedside table at night rather than sleeping in it. There are limits.

Long time no see!

2009-11-04T09:11:00.009-04:00

Just popped over here to find some pics of an old project and, as I skimmed several pages, I realized how much I really miss posting to HFD! I've gotten so sucked up into Scarfaday (even though it's only sometimes scarves and it's certainly not every day right now) that I've been neglecting my first baby. What kind of blog mother am I, anyway? At least I left things on a nice note with those super keen little videos! So anyway, as I sit here listening to "Art" again, I think I'll upload some shots of some totally non-scarf related projects from the summer, including some of the aforementioned old one.

You may recall that I wove some yardage back in January; it was soooo pretty and I was sooo worried that I'd screw it up in the wet finishing that it's been gathering dust ever since. I've shuffled it from one place to another over the past 10 months and have patted it lovingly a time or two but didn't dare take the plunge. Well, now it HAS taken the plunge, as of a few minutes ago when I finally shuffled it into the washer. I took one last shot before it went into the drink, just in case I muck it up completely and it never looks the same again:

Hopefully it'll come out of the wash okay. I have no idea how much agitation it'll require; I keep checking it but it's like waiting for a watched pot to boils so now I'm over here writing again... I just hope I don't turn around and find it's boiled over!

I also got a fair bit of spinning done over the summer - first what seemed like miles of Falklands for the Unspun Heroes' milling blanket project (actually only 300g) and then, since I was tired of undyed white and brown and starved for colour, some scrumptious hand dyed Merino from the Fleece Artist that I picked up at Baadeck Yarns last spring:

I couldn't decide which pic I liked best, so you get all three! :D Sadly, the pics of my other spinning projects aren't so hot and don't do the yarns much justice - I took them outside on a bright day so they're stark and contrasty. Oh well, you'll still get the idea.

First, the above yarn once it was plied:

This is just a tiny little skein made of what was left on one bobbin after the bobbin I plied it to ran out. (The full skein was in a Teacher/Student show at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design at the time I took these pics.)

Next, another skein of gorgeous Fleece Artist stuff, wot my friend Chris gave me as a thank you for weaving her a set of placemats at the last minute for a wedding gift:

When I first saw the roving, I thought, "Oh, that's pretty but, you know, not my colours." As soon as I started spinning, though, I fell head over heels in love. Chris (the spinner from our co-operative) knows her stuff, she does, and picked me the very prettiest stuff I could have asked for. I love this yarn, and plan to use it on my Ashford Knitter's Loom some time soon.

Next, more nummy gift rovings that I simply ♥:

Mom gave me this scrumptious stuff for Christmas a couple years ago, before I was spinning as much as I do now. It's a merino/bamboo blend and soooo soft and silky! I LOVED spinning this stuff, so am really excited that I'm going to be ordering more merino/bamboo from Fat Cat Knits soon.

And finally, a couple more mouldering projects, finally dusted off this summer. This was some top I bought in Victoria, BC and spun a few years back but then never plied. I was still pretty new to the whole spinning thing and had never worked with a sliver before so didn't really know what to do with it. As a result, the yarn was really thick and thin and I was frustrated with it at the time, tho' I think it's pretty wonderful now. I couldn't decide what to ply it with for a long time but finally this summer I chose a fine 2/32 wool that I had kicking around and plied it with that:

I gave the finished skein¹ to my friend Marie who, time after time this summer, drove an hour and a half and brought her rigid heddle loom to my place or the shop and kept me company while we both wove. Was GRATE to spend that time with her, so I wanted to give her something special as a thank you. :)

Last but not least, some Shetland roving that I bought at the Maritime Spinner's Retreat FIVE (5!!) years ago:

I started spinning it at the time but I had a pretty hard time with it. I figured it was because I was a newbie spinner, so I stuck it in the closet and left it there for many years. This year, feeling much more sure of my MAD SPINNING SKILLZ, I got it back out and tried it again. First I plied the stuff I'd already spun before and then I started spinning new singles. Turns out that it's just not very well prepared - lots of second cuts and the roving separates into light and dark. Or maybe I'm just spoiled by the gorgeous Fleece Artist stuff and the roving that Mom gave me and have unreasonable expectations. Either way, I'm not loving it, though there is a certain satisfaction of finally getting it done. I bought an entire fleece worth of the stuff, so there's lots to do.

So that's spinning... there was also some dyeing - with Kool-aid, of course! First at my friend Kimberly's house, where we had a lot of help from her daughter Min (and wound up with very stained hands):

Kimberly was dying roving but I was dying some frogged yarns, which turned out like this:

I did some more koolaid dyeing just a couple weeks ago when the Unspun Heroes met at CBU for a spinning & dyeing day. This time I did roving, too:

It looks pretty garish and Halloweeny before it went into the microwave 'cause the black cherry looks very black rather than red, but once the dye had set it was a really pretty mottled red. I'm spinning this stuff now - it's mystery fleece and not very soft but it'll make a nice hat or pair of mits or something.

Phew! That'll do for an update. I'd better go check on my fabric! I'm not sure if it's fulled quite enough yet but I figured I could always full more but could never full less, so I let it spin out a little while ago. Will keep you posted!

1. Oops. I just realized I never washed the yarn once it was plied, so not entirely finished I guess. I should maybe warn Marie? *cough*

Links to inspire you (and me!)

2009-03-29T13:50:00.005-03:00

WOW, just saw this on the CBS News website - I guess it's from a Sunday morning art spot or something? It's a video about a pair of artists who are weaving some really incredible pieces out of glass rods that they make themselves. Sooooo amazing!

Watch CBS Videos Online

I found it via Twitter - I've got a TweetBeep alert running right now that alerts me to tweets related to weaving. Most of them are actually about really bad drivers on the freeway (weaving in and out of traffic is the general idea) but there are a few gems that are actually related to weaving on looms or weaving baskets and I'm finding lots of really interesting people to follow.¹ :) One of those tweets was actually about this video and I'm so glad I went to check it out!

And, on the subject of videos I've found beautiful or inspiring, here's another one I like even more:

I have watched it over and over and over and over¹ and listened to the song even more. The art in the vid is really lovely and gentle and sincere but the lyrics of the song are like hearing the soundtrack that goes on inside my head - and, I'm sure, inside the head of any artist or artisan who aspires to make.. well, if not a living then at least a life out of his or her work. Maybe even those guys in the glass vid, except that at $4-12k per piece, I doubt they've got doubts any more.

That one I found in this blog by Betz White, which is one of my new faves. Another blog I've recently found and fallen in love with is How About Orange. I recommend them both! I'm turning into quite the blog junkie lately, as you can see from my much-expanded blog lists in the sidebar!

Now I really ought to head downstairs and work on the blankets I've got on the loom, but man, oh, man it's a bright sunny day outside and really warm (11 degrees!) so I'd much rather be out than in my dungeon of a basement. What to do, what to do...

1. Here's a tip for you weavers in the crowd who might like to do the same: to us "shuttle" means that thing that a bobbin of yarn goes in but to everyone else on the planet it means the Space Shuttle. And all those other people? They talk about space shuttles a LOT. Also "warp" means time warp. You'd be amazed at the number of Rocky Horror Picture Show fans out there. Seriously.

2. ...and over and over and over and over and over...

Little ideas = Big things

2009-03-23T23:11:00.004-03:00

Remember when I said that my theme for the moment is "little by little"? This idea continues to play out in fascinating ways. Case in point: I had the little idea a while ago that it'd be keen to have a blog ring populated by local artisans. I mulled it over myself for a while, and then I mentioned it to a friend. Then I forgot about it, and then later remembered and mentioned it to someone else... and now there are a couple others who are interested, and I've taken the first few baby steps towards the big picture... but for the time being it's still a small idea and that's just peachy.

I said as much to Laura Moore,¹ one of the artisans who's going to join the ring. What I said, in fact, was this: "I think it could be the seed of a much larger affiliation down the road, a little tiny beginning of something that could be big... or could just stay small and still be a good idea. I'm all about dreaming big and working small these days." It seems this resonated with her too, and she sent me the link to this poster by graphic designer Frank Chimero:

I cannot tell you how much I love this poster! Ooo-arrr, talk about an idea resonating. I can feel it thrumming in my gut. It repeats what I've been thinking about so much lately: that a small idea can grow into something big and maybe even that the best big ideas come from small seeds. That big ideas come about incrementally. Its "little by little" all over again, and in one of my favourite colours to boot.

Still, it's the second half that I can't get out of my head. I keep interpreting it in two different ways, both of which really speak to me:

#1: An idea that's too big may collapse under its own weight (and become so small it vanishes).

and

#2: Big ideas are really just a lots of little things combined.

I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time mulling this over the days and weeks ahead... and maybe even forever, since I've just ordered the poster from Mr. Chimero and it is winging its way to me As We Speak. I'm looking forward to framing it and hanging it where I can see it all the time.

You see? Little things really do add up to bigger things. The original "hmm, I should have a theme!" idea was a little thing. The idea for a blog ring was a little thing, too, and even this poster is a little thing. And yet, it feels like it's all starting to add up to something pretty big...

Huh. No mention of dietary fibre anywhere in any of that, was there? I'm scratching my head trying to think of what random thing I can bung on the end here to justify this post and I'm coming up totally empty. Sorry about that! I promise to make up for it with an extra fibery post next time, honest!

1. FYI: Laura and Teena Marie Fancey have an absolutely fabulous show on right now at CBU Gallery One, called Redux. Painting + found objects = FANTASTIC. If you live in the area, you must Go See This Show!

Knitting [& Knit-a-thon!] Update

2009-03-21T12:54:00.010-03:00

First, the knit-a-thon update. I got a very nice thank you letter from McConnell Library with the final tally (at least the current final tally) on knit-a-thon goings on:

450+ balls of yarn were donated,
260+ finished items were donated to the Clothe A Family campaign and half a dozen tiny caps were taken to the premie ward at the hospital,
over $900 was raised to support the children's lit programs at CBRL,
hundreds of knitting needles were donated, and many are still waiting to be given to new and aspiring knitters,
30 door prizes were donated and then won by very happy knitters,
and lots of good [donated] food, fun and conversation were had by the many many knitters who participated in both locations.

Isn't that great? Congrats and thank you to everyone who donated and/or participated. And hey, guess what! It's only 11 months until the next knit-a-thon!

I was lucky enough to win a door prize myself and, although there were tons of beautiful kits to choose from with enough yarn for e.g. an afghan, a lace shawl or even an entire sweater, I was a good little girl and picked the one, scrumptious ball of Noro you see above. I just loved the colours and one of my knit-a-thon objectives was to destash, not restash. Well, at least as far as yarn goes. I got heaps of new needles - everything from size 2 dpns up to 25 mm needles which are presumably meant for broomstick lace but won't ever be used for that by me! (At least, not unless someone tells me what broomstick lace actually is...)

I also scored a whole whack of needles for my friend Amy, who knew how to knit in theory but hadn't done it in practice for a long time. She came to the knit-a-thon to lend her support and keep us company but had zero (0) intention of knitting anything, but I bunged a pair of needles in her hands and a ball of yarn in her lap and she was away! She left with left with many balls of yarn and a hat under way and has since started another. I can be very persuasive!

Knitting continues apace on my March socks. I was really hoping to knit some monkeys for March since they're having a March Monkey contest on Sock-A-Month but, alas, I don't think I'll have time so I'm sticking to my original railroad rib socks. I knit the leg of both socks first and then intended to knit the heel flap of one and then the other so that they'd be exactly the same but I really like doing the heels and just couldn't stop! As you can see, they've gotten a bit out of synch so now I have to decide whether to just finish #1 and then go do the heel and foot of #2, or whether to play catch-up so that they're the same length. Tricksy! I must admit I'm not loving the colours quite as much as when I started. The pooling makes them look like camouflage socks - NOT the look I was going for. Oh well!

Another piece of knitting news: you may recall from my Feb 8 spinning pics that Sidney was knitting (yes, that's Sidney. Now You Know.) She had with her that day a really neat little book of Luxury One-Skein Wonders. This little gem was filled with tons of patterns for things you could knit out of a single skein of yarn. Now, this is perfect for me in many ways: 1) I really only get one or two skeins of yarn spun at a time before I get distracted by doing other things, so projects to use up these orphan skeins are much appreciated, 2) I can't knit anything very heavy without the ol' CTS acting up, so lightweight projects that use only a single skein are easy on the wrists, and 3) my attention span lasts about one (1) skein. Granted, my handspun is not anything luxe, but the idea was a good one.

Turns out there are a few different books in the series, so I am now the proud owner of 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders, which you can see behind that yummy Noro above, and I got a copy of One-Skein Wonders: Yarn Shop Favourites from Coast to Coast for Chris for her bday.¹ AND Donna has a copy of one of the One-Skein books - not sure yet if it's a fourth one or one of these three, but at any rate our little spinning/knitting group is well covered by wonders of one-skein or less! So now I need to pick a lovely pattern to use my new yummy Noro on!

Incidentally, I see that Chapters has all three titles on for 34% off right now, and a 20% discount on their irewards memberships. If you buy a lot of books, I heartily recommend it - it's not nearly as good as it used to be but nevertheless Ron and I always keep our membership current and get loads of coupons in the mail.

Only other thing to mention knitting-wise is that I finally finished that blue feathers and fan scarf but I think it's a bit short, so I'm going to take out the casting off and make it longer. I was worried about the length so I never cut the ball off, which means I can take out the CO and then just keep knitting until the ball is consumed. Which it will be before long!

Oh, and I was also given this totally fab vintage knitting bag that I'd been drooling over during the entire knit-a-thon as a thank you for helping to organize and get the word out. It came in as a donation, completely filled with needles which were divided up for door prizes, gifts and general use during the knit-a-thon and on Fibre Fridays. I told Chris that she ought to put the bag out for a door prize itself but she played skeptical - I think maybe she was saving it for a gift all along, the sneaky bugger. Not that I'm complaining: I. Love. This. Bag. It's vintage, it's my favourite colours, it's plenty long enough to fit a pair of straight needles into with knitting still attached, and it even matches my current project of that description. What's not to love? (Those are my new enormous 25mm ~~broomsticks~~ needles and my yummy Noro in there with the fan scarf, by the way.)

Okay, that's it for me for another week or so. I think I'll try to post something worthy at least every weekend since Scarf A Day is taking up my weekday blog-energy. Hopefully by next weekend I'll be able to impress you all with pics of the blankets I'm weaving on Mabes right now. :)

1. I tried to get pics of them all lined up side by side, but just couldn't figure it out. This has caused me grief in the past and will no doubt continue to do so in the future. Any Blogger users out there who can help me out?

Where does the time go?

2009-03-12T00:37:00.003-03:00

Here it is, more than a week since the Unspun Heroes last spin-in and I still haven't posted the pictures from the previous one! Have been meaning to do so for Quite Some Time, so without further ado, here are some pics from our February 8th gathering:

There was a fair amount of spinning...

...which required some carding as well:

There was also a bit of knitting...

...but mostly there was dyeing! There were tons of dye baths...

... containing both natural...

...and chemical dyes:

Or maybe Chris just likes to wear that mask - who can say?

Some folks painted the dye right onto their fibre rather than using a dye bath:

And some threatened to paint on me. I name no names. *cough*Prune*cough*

The joy of socks (a little at a time)

2009-03-07T17:30:00.009-04:00

Hey, long time no see! At least not here on HFD - I've been really busy over on Scarfaday lately. Turns out it's really hard to keep two busy blogs up to date all the time - who knew!? (Well, okay, I should have expected it and yet, I'm still kinda surprised. Colour me naive.)

I'm anxious to tell you about all kinds of stuff but I'm not gonna - not yet, anyway. "Why is this?" you may ask, and I shall tell you: it has to do with my new theme for the... month? Maybe a month, maybe a little less, maybe a whole lot longer. My theme for the time being, let's call it.

The theme is "Little by little," and my reasons for it are many. Mostly, I was trying to think of ways to make Scarfaday and all the other stuff I've got on my plate easier to do and more fun, but I also thought choosing a theme for a duration of time would be inspiring and helpful when it comes to making decisions - about design, about ways to spend my time and energy, about what to write on the blogs, ekcetera.

This particular idea for a theme suggested itself when I was starting to feel a bit burnt out on Knit-a-thon and Scarfaday stuff. I've always been a binger (as in"one who binges", tho' I am known to bing happily from time to time :) - I tend to do a whole lot of something for a while and then burn out and go do something else. One of the things "little by little" means to me is working on things incrementally - work a bit on a project, take a break. Work some more, take a break. Don't rush, don't burn out, get the job done all in good time.

"Little by little" is suggesting lots of design ideas, too. Things like working on items of a smaller scale, working on pairs of things that go side by side, working more slowly (something I've been thinking about a lot this year already), working in finer threads... It's going to be fun to see where all it takes me. :)

And so, although I'm dying to tell you all about tons of different things, I'm going to curb my inclination to write pages and pages about them all and just hit you with one thing at a time. I'll work through my list little by little, and maybe it'll be more fun to read about them that way, too. :) First up, the thing I've been meaning to talk about the longest: the joy of sock...amonth!

I was poking around online to see if anyone else had *aday blogs or something along those lines and somehow stumbled across a Sockamonth blog. People all over the world have signed up to knit a pair of socks every month and then post 'em when they're done. How cool is that!? I'm sure it will come as no shock at all that, since I'm a sucker for *aday (and, evidently, *amonth) projects and I've been loving the whole sock knitting thing since Mom got me hooked up with some needles and yarn at Christmas, I promptly signed up to participate.

My first pair of socks was due at the end of February but, happily, I actually already had them done. You remember those blue and green and yellow ones I'd been working on? When they last appeared on HFD, I'd just frogged the toe of the first one I'd finished in order to reknit it. I finished that up, Kitchenered the toes one both socks and was all set for Sockamonth! Easy peasey. :) Of course, since I didn't have to worry about getting them done in time, I promptly forgot all about posting them at all, and only barely remembered before the March 1 deadline. D'oh!

This is the picture I posted to the blog, mere hours before the end of the month. It's a bit cheesey, as we had friends coming over At Any Moment and plans for the evening, so I just bunged 'em on my feet, slapped some white paper down on the kitchen floor and tried to find some pleasing arrangement for mes pieds. It's kinda hard to get a good angle at your own feet without blocking the light coming from overhead, letmetellyou. Also: it's impossible (at least for me) to work your feet into a heart shape. This is probably for the best.

The socks way up at the top of this post ^^^ are the ones I've started for March. I quite like the colour and the railroad rib but I'm a bit worried that they're going to be way too big, 'cause this is stretchy yarn with some elastic in. Plus, I have no pattern for these in hand yet - I just cast on Some Stitches and am hoping that a pattern will miraculously appear in my inbox with the particulars sometime before I hit the heel. Also, I'm really anxious to knit a pair of toe-up socks and try out a really cool, really easy provisional cast on method I found on YouTube, so I might change gears and work on another pair for a while. A friend of mine gave me a toe-up pattern for fingering weight yarn at our last Unspun Heroes gathering that I might use, or I might use this pattern from Ravelry.¹

Fortunately, the Sockamonth rules just say that you've got to finish the socks in the given month - doesn't matter a whit when you start them. Which makes it perfect for my little by little theme!

Hmm. My text to photo ratio is pretty high for this post. Oh well, what can you do? I'll try to talk less and pic more next time!

1. Yes, it's true: I've joined Ravelry. Ravelry, Twitter, Flickr, WeaveZine, I even rejoined Yahoo (gack!) and some obscure machine knitting thing... I've turned into such a joiner! I used to avoid all this stuff like the plague but now I can't seem to stop! Might have to apply The Theme(tm) to online groups as well. Ooo-arrr.

Knit-a-thon 2009

2009-02-23T11:21:00.003-04:00

Wow, what a day! We had almost twice as many knitters as last year, produced tons of stuff for the Clothe-A-Family charity and raised lots of money for the Children's Literacy programs at the library - all in all, a huge success!

We had experts and newbies just learning how to cast on. We had people from six to sixty (and maybe even one or two seventies, though everyone was so spry and excited we all seemed about six years old). We had tons of great donated door prizes, loads of donated yarns and the biggest box of donated needles you could possibly imagine - hundreds and hundreds of pairs of brand new double points, circs, straights, crochet hooks, cable needles and more.

The best way to describe an event like this is with pictures, so here's a sampling of the pictures I took during the day (you can see the rest in my Picasa album here.) I really tried to get at least a couple pictures of everyone but towards the end of the day there were so many people arriving that I know I missed a few - I'm sorry about that! I wasn't the only one with a camera so hopefully everyone's represented somewhere.

And finally, here are some of the things we'd made by mid-afternoon:

Not everything fit on the clotheslines and loads of things were still WIPs at this point but were hanging by the end of the day. Folks also took lots of WIPs home to finish and then bring back to the library, and many people also took home yarn and needles to begin brand new things to bring in to the donation box in the next couple weeks.

My three hats are on the walls somewhere; sadly, I didn't get any pictures of the last hat I made which was my favourite of the lot. I knit it out of some Lopi wool I've had since the dawn of time and put in some stripes and even a little tiny colour pattern. I hardly got to knit at all during the day since I was so busy running around but I did start my very first pair of mittens. I finished them up last night and will make a hat to go with if I can figure out what size to make it - I need to find someone to fit the mitts and then measure his head, I guess!

Gossip girls

2009-02-19T20:26:00.004-04:00

I realized late last week that folks will be arriving at the knit-a-thon on Saturday with stuff already made, a fact underlined by one of my friends showing up for our usual Saturday night gig with yarn and needles in hand. "Oh boy," thought I. "I'd better get knittin'." And so I have!

I've been using a super simple pattern: Cast on 80 stitches, knit until you've got enough, decrease at 8 points. Easy peasey. Haven't worried about gauge - some hats are bigger, some are smaller, but everyone's head's a different size anyway, right? They'll fit someone out there. :)

That up there ^ is my trio of finished hats. Don't they look like gossipy little things? Not sure what they're saying with the heads so close together like that... can't be anything nice!

This was the first one I knit, using up odd balls of some bulky acrylic stuff I had in der stash. I started on Saturday after I finished the toe of my sock while the aforementioned friends were still over. They'd brought me a huge cuppa tea which just so happened to be almost the first caffeine I'd had in weeks, so I was up allllllll night - got the hat done around 4:00 aye em, as I recall. Ooph. And then promptly cast one this one:

More acrylic yarn from the stash. I'm never keen to weave with acrylics so knitting with it is a great way to use it up. I was really surprised by how soft this hat is - the ball didn't feel that soft before it was knit but hoooo boy is it soft now! I also really liked how the colours swirled around it. :) Good job it's too small for me or I might be tempted to keep it.

Took a break from human sized hats to knit up the one for Des Barres on Sunday afternoon, but then went back to finish the swirly hat on Monday. On Tuesday I cast on this one:

I cast it on twice, in fact, since I discovered after knitting the first few rounds (at Tim Horton's, OF COURSE) that I was actually knitting a mobius strip. Ho hum. Frogged it and started again, still at Tim's, and then finished 'er up on Wednesday. The yarn in the purple one is heavier than the others so I only cast on 72 and it's still plenty big. Doesn't curl up at the bottom the same as the others do either. I'm hoping it'll be slightly less toilet-paper-covery once it's blocked.

We went to Tim's for lunch again today so I cast on a new one. Just barely getting started on it:

Poor new kid on the block. I hope the gossip girls aren't too hard on it!

I've got more of all these yarns so, if the stars are right, I might get to knit scarves to go with. I'm not all that fussy about knitting scarves - they just go on and on an on and on and ON. Might try knitting them lengthwise but what I'd really like to do is combine the yarns with some other stuff to make it super bulky and then knit that to make it go even faster. Sadly, even with my ridiculous stash, I don't have the right stuff to combine them with and it seems wrong somehow to go out and buy more yarn when I've got such a pile already. I'm hoping to find the perfect thing at the knit-a-thon on Saturday.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some knitting to do!

You saw it here too!

2009-02-17T10:02:00.004-04:00

Holy Cow! We actually made the front page -- in full, glorious colour, no less! We couldn't have asked for better advertising for the knit-a-thon than that! WOOOOOOOOT.

Thank you, Cape Breton Post for supporting the Knit-a-thon! Thank you, Steve Wadden, for such a great picture! Thank you to all our sponsors for donating signs, door prizes, lunch on the day, patterns for things to knit, yarn to knit and crochet them out of, needles and hooks to knit and crochet them with, and money for the Children's Lit programs at the CBRL. Thank you to all the knitters and crocheters who are planning to come! Bring your friends!

Okay, so that was a bit premature seeing as how the knit-a-thon isn't until Saturday. I'm just so excited to be on the front page that I'm overflowing with thankfulness. :) There are worse ways to be!

FYI: The text in the pic above is Pretty Small, but if you click on it you will see it in its full sized glory. For the moment (maybe just the day?), you can also see it in the e-version on the Post's website.

Of course, there are lots more close-ups and details at my original post on our exploits here.

You saw it here first!

2009-02-16T21:45:00.015-04:00

Originally I wasn't going to blab about this 'cause guerrilla knitting is supposed to happen on the Q-T, you know? However, this wasn't exactly guerrilla knitting since we got permission from the Old Sydney Society and all, so there's really no reason to keep mum about it. :) Hmm, what do you call guerrilla knitting when it's officially sanctioned?

That's good ol' DesBarres, lieutenant governor of Cape Breton from 1784 to 1787, resident of the little park on the corner of Dorchester and Esplanade streets, and poster boy for the 2009 Knit-a-thon. The whole idea of the knit-a-thon is to get together and knit things like hats and scarves for folks who need warm things during the winter, and who needs warm things more than a big metal guy who lives on a street corner, I ask you?

This all started a couple of weeks ago when we were brainstorming ways to bring attention to the knit-a-thon. We were sitting at the Bean Bank, sipping our tasty coffees, when Chris mentioned that her husband had sent her an email with a picture of knit-graffitti in it. I'd seen tons of it online as well, so we started comparing notes and the next thing you know, Chris and I are out in the snow taking rough measurements of Himself.

By "rough" I mean I put my hand next to various bits and pieces while Chris took pics with my cell phone:

Gettin' an idea of the scale of this guy now? The span of my hands put together like that is 15" so I was guessing his whole head had to be around 35-40" around. (Ron and I went back later with a measuring tape and verified: 36" around. Am I good or what?)

This was like holding my daddy's hand when I was a little girl. :) Except that it was a whole heckuva lot colder! Ever held a bronze guy's hand in the snow? Brrrr!

After his measurements were taken, I made a quick trip to le Valu and picked up a hand knit sweater. Wasn't quite sure what I'd do with it but I figured inspiration would strike - and so it did! Chris provided the scarves and I whipped up the hat on Sunday (and tried it on for size late Sunday night just in case alterations had to be made).

As of this afternoon, DesBarres is wearing a fetching green hat and not one but two warm scarves:

He is also sporting the hottest new fashion accessory in park statue attire, the cabled legwarmer:

Aren't they great? Man, I'd like a pair of leg warmers like those! Note also his well turned (i.e. incredibly meaty) calves: they're 19" around, for anyone who's interested in his vital statistics. They're every bit as big around as his thighs. Not that I was feeling his thighs, no ma'am.

I made a wild guess as to what size hat he'd require but then had to skimp a bit on the rows before I started decreasing 'cause I only had just so much of this three yarn combo. Good thing his head is so much wider than it is tall: those rolls of hair on the sides of his wig add a lot of width but not height, you understand. I finished up with only two yards of yarn to spare and a hat that was just barely big enough but still looks quite nice on him, ifIdosaysomyself:

He looks happy about it, anyway! I suspect he also quite enjoyed having his leg warmers sewn on:

That's Chris and Sidney working on his right leg. I had the pleasure of sewing on his left leg warmer a bit earlier. And no, that's not a satellite in his right hand, thank you so much for asking.¹ It is, in fact, a giant ball of yarn with giant knitting needles through it:

Who knew that DesBarres was such an avid knitter? Must've learned at the military academy along with map making and the like, I GUESS.

Here we are, the four mad knitters. Sidney on the left, Chris in the middle and, yes, that's me on the right with the pink needles stabbing through my head. DesBarres getting back at me, perhaps?

This pic was snapped by the very obliging guy who came to take pictures of the entire enterprise for tomorrow's Cape Breton Post. I'm hoping that we'll get on the front page so that it'll be in colour but I'm not holding my breath. There may also be some t.v. news dudes by tomorrow to interview Himself - will be very interested to hear what he has to say!

Hopefully between the paper, the news and all the folks driving by, Col. DesBarres will help us get the word out about the knitathon! This being the word in question:

So there you have it: a full confession by Sydney's newest officially-sanctioned-so-not-really-guerrilla knitter!

Oh! I should also mention that Col. DesBarres is not the only poster boy for the 2009 knit-a-thon! By now, Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel are also spreading the word about our sister event in Baddeck from their perch on a park bench. :)

1. I kid you not: at least two people have said that the yarn and needles look like a satellite. I'd no idea satellites came in hot pink. Maybe I ought to make another yarn/needle combo and crash it into the first...

A preview of coming attractions

2009-02-16T15:19:00.005-04:00

I know I've been quiet the past few days - this is because I've been working on Top Secret Plans for advertising the Knitfit Knit-a-thon.

Here is a sneak peak of what I'm talking about (quarter added for scale):

I'm bad for knitting my hats slightly too large but this is by far the biggest hat I've ever done and I'm afraid it's too small. Also, those are by far the largest stitches I have ever made: nearly 1 stitch per inch! I used three strands of bulky weight yarn and The. Biggest. Circular. Needles. EVAR.

And now I'm off to go play dress up with larger than life dolls... hee hee hee...

In defense of overshot

2009-02-14T18:03:00.004-04:00

I have been meaning for some time to clarify my statements regarding overshot. I said that I don't like it; what I should have said is that I don't love it. Mostly I don't love weaving it (owing to the whole two shuttle thing) but, truth be told, it's not my fave even when someone else does the leg work. Even so, I've seen things done in overshot that absolutely take my breath away and I've woven a thing or two myself that I enjoyed making and enjoyed giving away even more.

My complaints about overshot are thus:

1) Two shuttles are slow! I'm one of those weird people who prefer planning a project and dressing a loom to actually weaving. Once I've gotten the first couple of inches done, I'm anxious to get the warp woven off and start on a new one. Two shuttles make that take longer.

2) Two shuttles are fiddly! If I've got to grit my teeth and weave off a long warp, I want to spend as much of that time zoning out in weaving zen as possible. Two shuttles require concentration and interrupt my zen.

3) Overshot is ... well, kinda boring. I dunno, maybe I'm just being obstinate, but around here overshot and tartan are the staples of the weaving diet and I'm not crazy about either one. My favourite overshot fabrics have something unusual about them, usually something to do with colour or fibre.

In light of these, I like weaving overshot best when:

1) I'm doing something unusual with colour or fibre. I like to weave it using chenille for the pattern weft. I like to put the colour in the tabby and use a white pattern thread. Better yet, I like to put a lot of colour in the warp and tabby weft.

2) I'm weaving it as a present for someone. If I have to focus on the project at hand rather than zen out, I don't mind as much when I can think about the person I'm weaving for, what the reaction will be when it's received... makes all the extra effort and attention to detail worth it.

3) I'm weaving with with someone. My guild has a 90" loom that requires two weavers to operate. We warp it with blankets or tablecloths and then take turn helping one another weave. If you've got to stay present while weaving, it's a lot more fun when there's someone else there to gab with while you work.

Here are a couple of things that fall into these categories that I'm really pleased with:

This is a coverlet that I wove a few years ago for my mother in law's 75th birthday. My MIL is allergic to wool, so I wanted the coverlet to be 100% cotton. You can't tell from the pic, but that's a cotton chenille pattern weft. It's sooooo soft!

It was woven in one piece on the aforementioned 90" loom. My dear ol' mum (over there on the right- hi, Ma!) helped me weave the first part while she was visiting and another woman in the guild helped me finish it. It's Double Chariot Wheel, taken straight from Weaving a Traditional Coverlet by Helen N. Jarvis. We threaded the full 90" at 20 epi and I had a hand in threading every one of the 1800 threads in the warp - did I mention I like dressing looms? Mmm, threading! Pretty sure we put on enough warp for 10 or 11 coverlets that time around.

This is the twin of a blanket that I wove for my dad and his wife. It's a name draft that spells out "Dave and Elizabeth". I'm pretty sure the little blue blocks are Dave and the big red blocks are Elizabeth, which I suppose makes the green stripes between them And. I used Fiberwork's name draft feature to work the initial design and then fiddled with the incidentals between blocks and the border pattern until I liked 'em. That's is a rather pretty border on it, isn't it?

The warp and tabby are 2 ply wool from Briggs & Little; the pattern weft is a heavy 4 ply wool that I got from South Landing. Man, I wish I could get more of that stuff - I used it in some really lovely huck blankets I did, too. Num!

It may just be possible to tell from this close up that I used different shades of blue and red in the warp and weft in this one just to create a greater depth of colour in the background. I love the interplay of colour and the way the white pattern floats on top. I'm really glad I put enough warp on for two of these and made one for myself, too! It lives on my couch and matches absolutely nothing else in the room. I couldn't care less because it makes me happy. :)

So there you are! See? I'm not anti-overshot!

And now I am off to enjoy the incredibly delicious chicken penne alfredo that Ron makes me every Valentine's Day because he knows it is my absolute favourite thing. Omg, it is TO DIE FOR. Yum!

Mmm Mmm Mmmacro!

2009-02-13T23:51:00.004-04:00

Why do all my posts seem to involve food lately? And such tasty desserty foods no less - you'll think I never eat any proper fiber at all!

Believe it or not, this one isn't actually about food. I just like this pretty picture, which is one of the very first taken with my new new camera Bella. (No, that wasn't a ptyo. There are meant to be two "new"s there. Those of you who've been following my ongoing camera drama on Scarfaday will be nodding to yourselves right about now.)

I've been thinking about photography a lot lately, and not just because of Murphy and Stella and Bella. I've been using photography for my artist dates, trying to remember all the stuff I knew once upon a time when I took photography classes in high school, and playing with all the spiffy manual settings on Stella/Bella. It's even been turning up on some of the other blogs I read. Must be something in the air.

I've always loved macro photography in particular, ever since Dad got me my first proper 35mm camera and a macro filter to go on the kit lens. There's just something about isolating and capturing one small element out of a riot of information and distilling it somehow, focusing your attention on that one thing by literally focusing on that one thing... makes you really notice the details, makes you take a careful look at the world around you and each individual thing that makes it up.

Whether it's stopping to smell the roses or stopping to take a picture of one drop of water on a rose petal - anything that brings me up short and makes me notice and appreciate all the tiny and amazing pieces of the things that make up my world rather than zipping through it without thinking twice is a good thing, in my book.

And chocolate chip muffins aren't half bad either.

When life hands you lemons...

2009-02-11T23:25:00.003-04:00

...eat lemon flavoured ~~Tim~~knitbits!

Haiku II

2009-02-10T16:04:00.001-04:00

treadle, throw, catch, beat
a moving meditation
I find weaving Zen

Two steps forward, five (or is that six?) steps back...

2009-02-10T09:06:00.008-04:00

Yay! I finally got a skein of the purple wool done. Just goes to show that to-do lists can be fun! That's what I'm doing right now, you see: working through my to-do lists. Yes, spinning and plying the purple yarn is on there. Or was, anyway. Now they're off and knitting the purple yarn is on. Two steps forward one step back, hmm?

I'm pretty excited about this purple yarn. It's not anything terribly exciting to look at, no, but it is the first yarn I've ever spun with a particular purpose in mind. In fact, it's the first yarn I've ever spun with any intention of using it at all. Most of my handspun either goes into a bag and is promptly forgotten, or goes into a basket to be slept on by the cats. Every once in a while I dig through that bag and discover things I didn't want the cats to get at, like these things I found today while hunting for my niddy noddy:

I think I intended to ply the green with a chocolate brown. Mmmm, more chocolate yarn! Didn't have any plans at all for the blue - it was a really pretty sliver that ambushed me in a yarn shop in Victoria while I was there with Ron and Mom a couple years ago. I'm such a sucker for topknots of unspun fibre. All the pretty colours - how could I say no?

The wine coloured skeins were some absolutely delicious uncarded stuff that my friends Chris and Lisa brought me back from the Spinners' Retreat... geez, maybe five years ago now? I loved spinning that yarn - I didn't card it or flick it or anything, just teased the soft and silky locks open a little bit and spun them up into lumpy and bumpy and twirly stuff, then plied it with a really fine commercial 2/32 wool to stablize it without covering it up. Seeing as how it's plied already, I think I'll use it as an excuse to buy this book or perhaps this one, both of which I saw for the first time on Sunday at the Unspun Heroes' spin- and dye-in at CBU. And of course then I'll have to knit it up into something too...

More stuff for my to-do list! How many steps back is that now? I've lost track, but who cares? The trick is to keep filling the list up with stuff I want to do so that I can feel that satisfying sense of accomplishment as I tick things off, even if I never do get to those bits I'm avoiding...

Just a wee spot of yarn...

2009-02-09T21:26:00.010-04:00

I've mentioned my stash a few times lately, on der blog, in email, when chatting with friends... then today my dear ol' Mum got her plane tickets to come visit for the whole month of May (woot!) and this got me thinking of my stash again. How on earth are they related, you ask? Because my stash occupies my Yarn Room (yes, a whole room of yarn) and, while Mom is here, she also occupies my yarn room, while it is cleverly disguised as my Guest Room. Yes, it's true: I stash my yarn AND my mother in my yarn room.

It's not a very big room, mind you, and our inflatable bed is a huge monster that fills up almost the entire thing. We literally have to wedge either end of it under the shelves. Mom sleeps there, surrounded by walls of yarn. She says it's very inspiring. She says she loves staying in there. I believe her 'cause, you know, I would too. I like just going in and looking around. I'm only in this whole gig for the yarn. It's always been the yarn.

So here is the part of my stash that actually fits in the yarn room:

The south wall: cones and spools of wool, mohair, chenille, acrylic and cotton. Recently some of my spools of heavy cotton snuck over to this side of the room when the opposite wall got too full... Note Mom's bedside table. Those are her pillows poking out the bottom left corner, too! (Yay! Mom is coming in May!)

The west wall: balls of knitting yarn, skeins of wool not yet turned into balls, and more stuff that's leaked over from the production wall. Also Mom's bedside bookshelf. Once upon a time this wall was organized by colour from left to right and by fibre from top to bottom. This did not last.

NB: The Tim Horton's cups are absolutely critical pieces of weaving equipment. I sort the little bits of string I use to tie my warp chains into them. Long strings go in the large and short ones in the medium, OF COURSE. I've got more cups near the looms in which I collect the little strings as they come off the chains. Am I ~~neurotic~~ organized or what? (Please don't answer that.)

The north wall: spools of the cotton and acrylic that I use in most of my weaving for sale. Lots of other spools of stuff that I've bought with the intention of using it to weave for sale, including those big grey cones of really fine and really yummy "cashwool". Why did I buy such fine stuff? I do not weave with fine stuff! I am such a sucker for mill ends. The clamp lights are also guest room accoutrements.

Back of the door: more knitting yarns. I am told that some people actually use this kind of yarn holder for shoes. Shoes, in a perfectly good yarn holder! What are they thinking!? Who could possibly have that many shoes anyway?

The closet: wool yarns that don't fit anywhere else, alpaca and wool fibre for spinning, and some cotton warp chains wrapped in newspaper that my sister found at Goodwill. The newspapers are from 1967 and I'd be very much surprised if the warp chains aren't as well. I'm afraid they'll fall apart if I unwrap them.

I know, I know what you're thinking: "Where does your Mom put her clothes if that's the closet?" Do not fret! Buried under all that stuff is a little filing cabinet, and I've very generously emptied out the front half of one drawer for her use. AND there's also a spring loaded closet rod just out of frame at the top of the closet for her to hang her clothes on. Lap of luxury, that is.

All I can say is: it's a darn good thing Mom caught the weaving bug from me or I don't know where the heck I'd stash her when she came to visit. Who but another weaver would put up with this? And who but a mother would be coming for an entire month to help me make stuff for the shop -- for the second time! Who's the luckiest thing? I am the luckiest thing!

Not pictured: the shelves filled with cones of wool and the other shelves filled with Pendleton wool selvedges near Mabel, the big boxes of vintage wools (circa 1952!!) and the laundry hamper filled with 2 ply for blankets in the library, the chest filled with fibre for spinning in the living room.... the list goes on and on. And I haven't even touched on the basketry supplies, the fabrics, the beads (omg, the beads!)...

Clearly, my husband loves me as much as my mother does to put up with all this. I repeat: I am the luckiest thing!

More on end feeds

2009-02-08T11:23:00.007-04:00

Sue asked me some questions in her comment on my last post and, being naturally verbose, my answer seems too long for a comment. Ergo, I have turned it into a whole new post! My mother always said I talk too much!

Here's Sue's question:

"Sue said... Love the picture of that latest scarf!! It's gorgeous!

So, if I'm understanding correctly, the thread doesn't come out the center of the end of the end-feed shuttle? Or you don't flip the shuttle around when you weave with it?

I'm thinking a lot about draw-in and selvedges myself these days....so this is interesting to me."

In an end feed shuttle, the thread comes out of a hole in the front surface of the shuttle (i.e. the bit that faces you) near one end. On my shuttle, the hole is about 2" from the end of the shuttle. This pic from last Wednesday's Scarfaday shows it pretty well:

Nope, you don't flip the shuttle around as you weave, which means the hole is always way over there on the left. You shouldn't really turn any shuttle around while you weave, as it slows you down considerably and interrupts your weaving rhythm, which is critical to having neat and tidy selvages, an even beat, and (to my mind) Weaving Zen.

Parenthetical teaching moment:

I say "shouldn't" but of course that's subjective. The whole point is to enjoy yourself so if turning the shuttle around is important to your enjoyment of weaving, by all means do it. Do practice weaving without flipping, though, and give it a good go before you decide it's not for you. I'm speaking here not to Sue but to all the shuttle-flippers in the crowd, whoever they may be. I've had students who like to flip, at least for a while, and though I encourage them to try weaving without flipping I'm definitely not going to rap their knuckles with a ruler when I see it happening. If they eventually decide not to weave that way, grand. I really do think that's best. However, if they are happy weaving that way to the end of their days, that is also grand. "Happy" is the goal, after all.

Anyway, back to end feeds. The advantage of an end feed is that the pirn (the end feed's version of a bobbin) is stationary. It doesn't spin around on a pin the way a bobbin does in a boat shuttle, so it never spins too far. Have you ever caught a shuttle and had the bobbin just keep on keepin' on, unwinding tons more weft that you wanted? Won't happen in an end feed. You may pull the shuttle too far and so let out too much weft, but that's another issue entirely and one that is corrected with practice. Another thing that doesn't happen nearly as often (once you've mastered the learning curve of winding a pirn, which is an acquired skill just like winding a bobbin) is having your weft snag on something and pull hard on the far selvage.

Yet another bonus of an end feed is that they all have some kind of tensioning system, so that you can adjust the drag on the thread as it leaves the shuttle. This helps you get just the right amount of tug on the far selvage and leave just the right amount of weft in the shed, whether you're weaving a narrow warp or a wide one, or weaving with a heavy wool or a fine silk. All these things result in much more even selvages. In a Bluster Bay shuttle, this system is made up of six little hooks that you hook the thread around to add drag:

More hooks (and more acute angles) = more drag. As I've talked about elsewhere once or twice, I have a mental numbering system for these hooks that helps me keep track of the way I tension my weft for a particular project. Since I repeat the same combination of warp and weft pretty frequently, this makes it easy for me to know or estimate what tension I'll need when I begin a new warp. I've numbered the hooks as 1, 2, 3 on the top row (left to right) and 4, 5, 6 on the bottom row (also left to right), and then I "read" my tension from orifice to pirn. Using this system, the tension shown above would be 1-2-5-6-3. That's one I use pretty often with weft similar in weight to the one shown above, which is a 4/8 cotton. With heavier weft, like an 8/8 cotton or a knitting weight wool, I usually use 1-5-3, or sometimes 1-2-3 (for less drag) or 1-2-5-3 (for more).

The one thing about an end feed that works against even selvages is the issue with angle in the shed that I described in my last post, and that's definitely something you can account for by paying attention.

I can think of only two things that detract from the appeal of end feed shuttles. Firstly, they're pretty darned expensive - I paid over CA$100 for each of mine. Totally worth the expense, in my opinion, but then I weave a lot and get paid for it. They're definitely a luxury item for weavers for whom that's not true. Secondly, they tend to be heavier than boat shuttles of the same size. I worried about this before buying my first shuttle because I've got CTS in both wrists and I feared the weight might aggravate it. Happily, it has not. I do find, however, that I prefer my lighter shuttle to my heavier one.

My experience with end feeds is limited to the absolutely beautiful ones made by Bluster Bay. I fell in love with one of theirs at my first Convergence in '96 and bought a second at my next Convergence in '02. AVL makes end feeds as well, as do Schacht and no doubt some others, but the Bluster Bays are things of such beauty and so lovely to hold and look at and pet fondly that I've had no desire to try any others. Dot obviously has more experience than I with different kinds and has posted detailed comparison of various end feeds and boat shuttles and instructions for winding a pirn here on her blog - go take a look!

And now I am running really late for our Unspun Heroes spinning and dyeing day so I'd best skedaddle (omg, I can't believe I'm actually using that word in print). I'll address the rest of Sue's question later!

Oops, just one more thought: Sue seemed a little anxious about asking so many questions. Please, please, PLEASE do not be! Ask me heaps of questions and I will answer them to the best of my ability or point you on to others who can do better. Being asked questions means that someone's actually reading der blog, which is the whole point after all, and so very gratifying. Being asked questions means I get to play teacher even though I'm not actually teaching a weaving course this term, and that makes me happy. Most of all, being asked questions gives me ideas for things to talk about that are actually interesting and relevant to people who pop by to visit der blog, and some days it's hard to know what to talk about. Once I get going I have trouble stopping (Hi, Ma!) but any inspiration from outside for topics is most welcome. In short, I love questions. Ask them. Please.

Roit. Gotta go. Byeeeeee!

Mathematical! Algebraic! Rhombus!

2009-02-08T09:41:00.007-04:00

I read Laura Fry's blog religiously - because I love knowing what others are up to, because Laura's really good to update frequently and I love that in a blog, and because Laura's truly (and literally) a master weaver and her advice and thoughts on weaving and weaving professionally are always worth my time. Besides, how could I not love a woman whose stash is even bigger than mine? "Look!" I can say to Ron. "Look at her stash! Stashes like mine are absolutely critical to being a professional weaver!" (I do not show him the posts she writes about actually using up her stash, of course.)

If you are a weaver, please go spend some time Right Now reading some of Laura's past posts. In particular, read this one, which is what I'm thinking about myself these days. It is about weaving ergonomically, i.e. in a way that is fast and efficient and yet also easy on your body - a subject near and dear to Laura's heart and mine. Your body, after all, is your most important weaving tool - all the looms in the world will do you no good if your body hurts too much to use them. Here's an excerpt (minus the photo which for some reason I am not able to include, so go look at her blog 'cause it's important):

"This is a photo showing how I catch the shuttle as it exits the shed. The point slips through my index and middle finger, and my thumb acts as a gentle brake on the bobbin so that it doesn't over run and let off more weft than required. I catch and throw my shuttle this way regardless of the width of the warp I'm weaving. I know it's hard to relearn muscle memory if you have been doing something physical another way, but working ergonomically is much kinder to the body than working awkwardly."

I read this post when it first went up, and thought "why would catching the shuttle between your fingers be better than catching it as I do now (fingers below, thumb above)??" However, I have learned not to ignore the Wisdom Of Laura(tm), so I've been trying this on my scarvesaday, like the one in the picture up there. You know what? I like it! It's a bit awkward since I'm using heavy 15" Bluster Bay shuttles rather than a small LeClerc boat shuttle like the one in her picture but I've got big hands so it's not too bad.

The primary difference between the two is the angle at which I wind up pulling the shuttle away from the shed. Catching it between my fingers encourages me to draw it straight out to the side rather than curving it back towards my body, so that the angle the weft makes in the shed is less acute. I think I wind up moving my wrist more this way because the shuttle's path is straighter and therefore my wrist must bend to accommodate it, so I'm a little anxious it will aggravate my CTS. I'll have to keep an eye on that.

Really paying attention to the way I caught the shuttle and the angle that created with the weft made me also think carefully about something else that's been dancing around in the back of my mind for a while but hasn't come forward to really be inspected until now. I've long suspected that part of the difference between my left and right selvages has to do with the construction of the end feed shuttles I use and, now that I've really thought about it, it makes perfect sense. In fact, it's basic geometry. It is, as they say, Mathematical!¹

The shuttle is 15" long and the weft comes out of a hole about 2" from the left end. That means that, assuming the shuttle is the same distance from the web on either side when I beat, the thread is following a path that's 13" longer when it's on the left side compared to when it's on the right side (because the length of the shuttle is added on the left). I could go into a long discussion of hypotenuses and similar triangles and angles and all that, but this picture shows it all Pretty Clearly, I think:

In both of these pics, the shuttle is about 2" from the selvage. As you can see, though, the thread has to go much farther in the left picture than in the right one, which creates a huge difference in angle. It doesn't look so very different at the selvage where the angle is created, I'll grant you, but look at the opposite selvage. The height of the right triangle is almost twice the left, which means there's a big difference in that angle whether you can see it or not - which means that there's more thread in the right shed than in the left one because that hypotenuse is longer, which means I'll get less draw-in there. Really, the angle at the selvage is all about leaving more or less thread in the shed anyway (i.e. adjusting the length of the hypotenuse).

So, what does this mean for me? It means that, assuming I catch the shuttle the same way on both sides and pull it out the same distance on both sides and move my body the same way on both sides, when I'm using an end feed shuttle I cannot expect my selvages to look alike. And, since I do want my selvages to look alike, I need to do something different on one side. And, because I like to move my body in essentially the same way all the time (the unconscious movement is part of the zen of weaving for me), I don't want to do things dramatically differently on the two sides. I could train myself to catch the shuttle closer to the beater on one side than the other but, as you can see, I haven't got much space to work with on Joey - he's got a very shallow little weaving area.

Enter Laura's way of catching the shuttle, which naturally causes me to pull the shuttle towards my body less and therefore create a wider angle vs. my way of catching the shuttle, which naturally causes me to pull the shuttle towards my body more and thereofre create a shallower angle. In this case, I'm using "naturally" to mean "unconsciously", i.e. it happens naturally without me having to think about it - good for Weaving Zen. I spent my last warp trying to practice catching the shuttle her way on the left and my way on the right in order to even out the angles and I think it worked pretty well. I'll keep practicing it and see how it goes.

A few additional thoughts:

1) I've noticed that catching the shuttle my way eventually tires out my left pinky and ring finger. Doesn't happen on the right hand, for some reason I've yet to determine, but it does on the left. Catching the shuttle's Laura's way doesn't seem to do this since, of course, I'm not bearing the weight of the shuttle on those two fingers but rather on my middle finger. So, using her method on the left side relieves that discomfort, which is a great bonus. It remains to be seen whether my middle finger will get tired the way the other two did.

2) This difference in angle and weft-left-in-shed is pretty severe on a narrow warp like the one I've currently got on Joey but would be almost non-existent in a wide warp like the blankets I plan to put on Mabel next. I'll have to try catching the shuttle Laura's way on both sides of that warp. She says she does this no matter how wide the warp but I suspect it's going to be difficult for me to catch a BB shuttle her way on a 50" wide warp when I'm already having to rock pretty far from side to side just to catch the shuttle at all. I'll definitely try it, though. Doubt Ye Not the Wisdom of Laura!

And now I'm off to prep for my Unspun Heroes fiber fiesta! Have a lovely Sunday, one and all. :)

1. This and the title of my post is a reference to a Youtube video, and the "they" in question are friends of mine that occasionally stop by HFD for a visit. You Know Who You Are. The rest of you may or may not enjoy the video, which is Very Very Odd Indeed, but I wouldn't recommend reading the comments.

My apologies to anyone who actually expected algebra and rhomb...rhombuses? rhombii? in this post. You'll have to settle for geometry and triangles instead.

Mmm, fiber!

2009-02-07T20:23:00.010-04:00

Hey folks! Still having trouble finding the time to post daily to both HFD and Scarfaday, and here it is Saturday with no SAD (an unfortunate acronym, that) post at all - I will be seriously lacking if I don't say something about fiber today, eh wot?

So here you are. This is what "fiber" has meant to me today:

No one had better tell me there's no fiber in peanut butter cookies. Seriously, I don't want to hear about it. There's certainly no "diet" in them, of that I'm well aware, so I've decided that there must be some fiber in them somewhere, perhaps hiding between the chocolate chips that somehow snuck their way into the recipe. And by "recipe" I mean packaged mix.

That's about as close as I've gotten to fiber today because it turns out that today was a photo day! Ron and I set out early to go buy ourselves some snowshoes and head to the park to go on a photo shoot to try out Stella, our new camera.¹ Things did not go quite as planned - do they ever? The reasons for this included things such as "I just want to stop a couple places first," "they're out of showshoes!?" and "it's really really cold!" In the end, our snowshoe through the park turned into a five minute dash down to the lake to take a couple of pics of gulls and ducks and some old buildings across the way and then a mad dash back to the car to warm up.

One of the stops we made en route was at a bookstore to try and find a good book on digital photography; sady we had no luck but since getting home I have spent hours and hours reading various websites on the subject, and have quite fallen in love with Natalie Norton's photography, tutorials, and sensibilities in general. I almost wish I was getting married in Hawaii just so I could hire her to take my pics. I found her via some tutes on DPS, which I heartily recommend to anyone with a hankering to learn more about digital photography - Natalie's in particular but the whole site is GRATE.

Okay, so that's the non-fiber news.

In other, more fibrous news, I finally finished the second sock! What sock, you ask? Can you have forgotten those green/blue/yellow socks I mentioned knitting aaaages ago? This sock, of course! The one on the left, with missing foot:

Sock #2 is finally done, apart from the kitchener on the toe, and no sooner had I finished it than I... (very proud of myself here) frogged the entire toe of sock #1! It simply wasn't big enough because I'd gotten impatient and hadn't knit the foot long enough. I know, I know - it looks ridiculously long in the picture - and in person - so I was confident I'd knit it long enough. And yet, I had not, and so it had to go. This is further evidence that I'm maturing as a knitter, as even though it goes against every fiber (ha!) of my being to frog something once I've knit it, I decided I'd rather spend the time reknitting that toe and be able to wear the sock than to leave it as is. I'm just going to cast on another pair as soon as these are done, after all, so what's the rush to knit one sock versus another?

This sock knitting and frogging happened at yesterday's Fiber Friday, which was by far the best attended FF I've ever been to. It was really fab - we had knitters, spinners, rug hookers, the works. Not to mention a bit of story time going on in the corner where one of the moms with wee ones was reading to her son - who very obligingly turned the pages for her so she could keep knitting while reading, of course! This was, to my mind, a perfect example of why Fiber Friday at the library makes perfect sense.

So that was yesterday. Tomorrow is the Unspun Heroes first spinning meet for ages and I'm really looking forward to it. I gather there will be a fair bit of dyeing going on but I plan to take my wheel and get that purple pencil roving done - I'm anxious to chalk a few things off my unfinished projects list and move on to new ones! I will take my camera with so that tomorrow evening I have something genuinely fibery to share.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some (high fiber) cookies to eat. Yum!

1. I should maybe fill Ron in on the whole "Stella" thing, hmm? Strangely, he doesn't seem able to hear things shouting out their names as clearly as I can. For me, it's like they come to us wearing little name tags. Is this a form of synethesia, I wonder?²

2.Synethesia has got to be The. Coolest. Thing. Ever. Lucky Ron, he's got it to a limited degree: some numbers have colours for him. I'm so envious!

Holy anagrams, Batman! = A banana's glamor myth

2009-02-05T14:41:00.004-04:00

I found a link to an anagram engine on Bent Objects a few minutes ago and can't stop playing with it. Waaaay too much fun!

Janet Dawson = 702 anagrams, including "Jan downs tea" - how well it knows me! Though it can't know me too well, 'cause it also said "Jan wed a snot." So untrue!

Weavers Palette = 34117 anagrams, including the very weaverly and rather poetic "wavelets repeat" and the far less poetic "area twelve pest". Now I'm thinking of ways to weave repeating wavelets (and wondering just where area twelve is).

Mixed Media Artisans = 55556 anagrams, which seems to be the maximum number it will deal with, since if I restrict it by insisting on a particular word or by excluding other words, it still produces that many. It only ever shares the first 1000, but there were plenty of fun ones in that short list anyway. For some reason, many of them included the words "madam" and/or "sex" in some fashion, such as "A madam insider's exit" or "a dadaism mire sex tin." At the less risque end of the spectrum was "A marinade misted six" which makes me think we ought to be looking for three new co-op members and investing in marinade...

And with that, I'm off to down some tea.

Jan saw, noted.
Jan twas done.

P.S. Ut oh! Scarf A Day = A Scary Fad

Takin' a stab at knitting

2009-02-05T11:58:00.006-04:00

Is this hysterical, or what? Poor, poor leetle ball of yarn... Talk about guerrilla knitting!

By Terry at Bent Objects via Craftzine. This is the only fiber one I've seen so far (except maybe for the Roman tickle fighters if you count feathers as fiber) but you should still run, not walk, over to look at the rest. Priceless!

A little of this, a little of that...

2009-02-04T19:43:00.006-04:00

Phew! Who knew it would be so hard to post on HFD regularly while I'm doing Scarf A Day?

Scarf a day is taking up most of my fiber energy lately -- but not all of it! I've got an idea in mind, an experiment if you will... I'm not going to say much about it now, but here's a preview of possible future attractions:

I'll post more later if this project amounts to anything. Yes, I'm a tease. :)

In almost completely unrelated news, I've been seeing more and more guerrilla knitting (aka knit bombing, aka knit graffiti) in the tubes lately, including this absolutely astonishing tree cozy and a whole host of other amazing things by the group knitta please and this incredible Mexico City bus by knit-graffiti artist Magda Sayeg. I can't get all that excited about knitted cozies for door handles, I have to say, but the scale of the covered trees and buses is pretty impressive...

And, before I forget, I wanted to share a picture of the beeooootiful thing my dear ol' mum has been weaving of late, for a show that she and some others are organising on her island off her coast:

She's weaving this on her new 12 shaft 60" macomber that SOMEONE GAVE HER. Okay, okay, so I don't think it was an actual gift -- the loom is living at Mom's for the foreseeable future but ownership has not actually been transferred as far as I know -- but geeesh! AND the macomber is like the umpteenth loom that she's acquired like this. Why does no one give me looms, I ask you? It wouldn't even have to be 12 shafts - I'd settle for eight! Even four in a pinch! I learned to weave first, doesn't that count for anything?! It's even got two back beams, one sectional and one not. (Ooops... drool in keyboard... Sorry, Lu) And yes, I realize that I already have three floor looms, one of which has never even been to my house and went directly into storage 'cause I don't have space to set it up. SO not the point!

Ahem. Now that that little tantrum is out of the way, is that not the most beautiful colour gamp you've ever seen? Check it out from some other angles (including one that shows off the loom *sob*):

I wish I could see the finished blankets in person but they're going into a show where I expect they'll sell in a heartbeat and so I shall not have the pleasure. Pictures may be worth 1000 words but they don't do much for tactile sensory input, eh wot?

And now, with drool in my keyboard and fingerprints on my screen, I bid you bonne nuit.