maryland

sheep and wool was very very fun. i may have to spend the night next year! i arrived via bus with 50 other knitters from pittsburgh, many of which i knew and, frankly, the people who came on that bus really made my day. first we got into the food lines, knowing they would just get longer later - and we were hungry from getting up at an ungodly hour. after eating, i headed to the ravelry meet-up where i met my editor, jennifer, for the first time and got this button

mostly i was there because i wanted to clap and scream for jess and casey when they arrived :) and i did. they’ve done such an amazing job on the website that they at least deserve to be hooted at. then instead of standing around and feeling awkward i darted off to do my shopping. my friend vivian was all about sitting in the shade, so many of us stopped to sit and chat, eat and drop off our purchases with her. then we headed off shopping with other people when we felt the need to go.

my purchases you ask? all very very boring :)
white roving since i didn’t think my current housing situation very suitable for fleece cleaning
but since you asked, here’s the rundown

-26 oz of corriedale from The Clearing at Curry Farm - this is the only show they do. i really enjoyed talking to her. i saw a bunch of corridale’s too and i must admit, i had no idea they were such big sheep! my friend flo said they could be 150 lbs. that would be as big as me.

-5.5 oz bfl from Potosi Sheep Farm. i may contact them again when they get more roving made. love supporting those small farms.
-24 oz bfl from other sources (most likely imported)

-10 oz of farm wool from The Good Shepherd, the owner of which rattled off a bunch of different breeds she had crossbred to get this particular wool :) after that, i ask you how i could not buy from there?

-the new breed i’m trying out is cormo. i bought 9.2 oz from the America Cormo Sheep Association booth, some from Foxhill Farm and some from Running Wild Yarn (from montana!!). i’ll let you know how she spins. i may have to get ahold of those folks in montana…

i drank strawberry lemonade. my friend christine baked enough fabulous baked goods to keep me and many others in our group away from any other sweets (that and the ice cream line was really really looooooooooong).

and a bit of new knitting was started as bus knitting - colinette jitterbug, size 2 US needles, 3×1 rib. i needed something suitably brainless for a tired trip there and a tired trip home.

i highly recommend going to this festival with friends. a great time was had by all. just wish i had more time to poke around and learn more about the farms.

p.s. i need to order copies of my book very soon - so if you’ve decided to buy a book through me and you haven’t paid yet, please do so! if you need further assistance or want me to bill you over paypal, email me at cosyknitsliterally (!at) gmail (dot!) com.

p.p.s. the name game is done! go look at the yarn names over here. thanks for the help.

have a good monday! i’m dyeing in the bathtub, which, as my roommate pointed out yesterday, sounds utterly morbid ;)

the poorly written

several things have completely surprised me since i’ve started working at the yarn store.

first of all, patterns are often poorly written. most people who come in needing help, just need me to clarify either what the pattern means or that the pattern is wrong. this was emphasized on one particular day when i had 3 (THREE) people come in with poorly written patterns - all of them in books.

let me tell you about my favorite poorly written pattern. before moving to pittsburgh, we lived in vancouver bc. in canada the allure of fleece artist sock yarn is strong - it being the homeland and all. here are some socks i made for my friend pam using it

needless to say, i did not use their pattern. their socks come with a simple sock pattern. you’d assume, that since it’s a ‘basic’ pattern that it would be good for beginners… but alas. i’ve walked 2 or 3 of my friends through this ‘basic’ pattern. the only mistake i remember off the top of my head is a missing comma that is particularly confusing.

one of the local yarn stores in bc once mentioned the fact that the pattern is not very well written to the fleece artist people and they said something about west coast people just not knowing how to read patterns!!

granted, we are getting into the discussion of how much info one needs to have in a pattern. and it seems to be different when you’re a beginner and when you’re advanced. how much information do you give people? do you write all in knitting code, or do you hand hold a bit more? while just some numbers may do it for some people, others need a bit more chattiness, explanation, security. fleece artist is primarily a dye shop, not a pattern producer. fair enough. and i could navigate their pattern fine having knit socks before, although it was still irritating at times. ‘basic’ should probably not be a descriptor of this pattern. to me, just the actual typos - at least two of them - makes for a poorly written pattern. so buy the yarn (it is beautiful, eh?), don’t use the pattern. this picture is of some of their wool/silk roving that i spun up. mmmm.

i know, i know. i have a book coming out and there will probably be a mistake right smack dab in front of you when you get it, although i truly hope not. on christmas eve i received my final proof of the book with most of the photos in place. now i’m off to do a final read through/review - so send good vibes my way so as to find all of those mistakes!

p.s. aren’t you impressed that i made it through this whole blog entry without even mentioning victorian lace today? PDF. can you even imagine intricate lace with a row wrong? ARRHGHGHrgh. i don’t know about the rest of you, but i’d have been willing to pay more for less errata on this one…

in the mail

for my bro

every time ben touches this he ohs and ahs over it. maybe he needs an alpaca hat too :)

ingredients:
vintage 2006 alpaca, made in pennsylvania
mountain colors mill ends - weavers wool doubled

some pretty decreases

and the shear fuzziness of it

ben and i were hypothesizing that my brother’s head is a bit bigger than ben’s. so although it looks big, we think it will fit lester perfect.

for my dad

fly fishing mitts. he does a lot of fly fishing - especially now that he’s retired. we tried earlier with these ones

but they didn’t work - came back in the mail and now ben wears them. only for someone i really love will i make fingers or finger holes. actually, i didn’t mind, i just need the time to sit down and concentrate.
ingredients:
cascade 220
knit on size 4 needles to increase the waterproof and windproof factor. not modeled because they’re too small for ben and too big for me.

for my mom

these have been done for a long while… i even used them in my thesis! more christmas posts to come, but without the deadline of christmas - so maybe after? i need to pick up some new needles (and i need more time) in order to complete them!

exceptionally dyed

every time i type in knit to etsy.com, i come up with whole slew of new hand dyed yarn shops. the sock craze may be getting just a bit out of control… with that in mind, i just thought i’d take a moment to ponder what makes a hand dyed yarn lovely to me.

first, i must say that i love subtlety. as an example here, i would like to point to Fearless Fibers. her colorways have such a lovely depth to them created by gentle variation of color. another one of my favorites for this is Mountain Colors - because they often dye with similar shades, their yarn varies more, but still has that subtle core that i appreciate.

Secondly, variation of shade, tint, or tone draws me in. Adrian of Hello Yarn is a master at this one. look at this wool. notice how she varies all the way from dark brown to white. sigh. she’s my hero.

and lastly, i love yarn that is different than other yarn i’ve seen around.  Confections is currently taking the cake on that one. i love the mottled look she has going on in many of her yarns.  seriously though, i can’t imagine them knitting up anything but fun.

just some thoughts. what makes a yarn exceptionally dyed to you?  do you have a favorite dye shop?  i’d enjoy hearing your opinions.

trekking around for the sabbath

started some new sabbath knitting. of course i’m not done with the old, but colorwork mittens are not so good for public transit and the like.

so, i started these right before i got on a bus to go meet ben at work on saturday evening. knit them while heading over to an organ concert of the Orgelbuchlein that ben was a part of. i did not knit through the concert (which i quite enjoyed) and if ever i spaced out, it was in a great little church that looked like a barn with stained glass windows. i love church spaces.

knit during the intermission and was approached by a woman who told me her husband would have made fun of her had she brought her knitting. i said that my husband was used to it :) we talked for a while about knitting. i also knit during the reception while chatting with friends and drinking tea.

picked it up again the next morning and knit on the way to ben’s church, where they were debuting a piece he wrote specifically for their choir and organist for Pentecost.  the last piece he’s writing for that choir - why do i get the feeling that the last 8 weeks here are going to go crazy fast?  got there early for choir practice, knit through that. knit on the way home and here you have it. almost all transit knitting.

i am not so sure what i think of the reinforced heel, it took at least twice as long as it would take me otherwise and was a bit hard on my hands. i guess only time will tell if these wear really well because of it! in the meantime, i think i’ll make ben a pair with reinforced heels and toes and we can see together… awww.

in other news, appearantly we’re heading to alaska for two weeks next monday to see ben’s fam. yay! did i tell you that i needed to mail the book stuffs on the 11th and have the writing in by the 15th? while i’m in alaska? i hope this was an okay decision. his family has had a bit of turmoil and i really think i need to be there for support.  i’ll definitely have to pack the balls of yarn i use for heads to take photos of the finished knits…

out with the old, in with the new

remember the saddest thing ever? well, time has helped. last night as susan and i sat knitting, me on my new socks and susan on her first pair of socks, i decided to not darn my rock star socks. instead, this one (with the hole) will be frogged and knit into baby socks if ever we have a wee one.

the other one is a gift for susan’s husband gregg who has always loved these socks. she and her two girls are going to make it into a sock puppet that reminds papa to not take things too seriously. seems like the perfect solution to me!

p.s. no, i did not only get cast-on last night…. i just decided with the stretch in the fabric it was too big. destined to be stockingnet stitch and picot edged on size 2 needles, with shortrow heels and toes using hello yarn’s sock ratio reinforced with maybe some navy sock yarn? i’ve always loved how knitting iris reinforces her heels and toes with extra sock yarn hanging around.

a sock!

but just one. it has been kicking around my house on the surface of things lately. it is from very very early on in my knitting career, when we were still living in missoula and the first winter i wanted to knit christmas presents. i remember being poor, but still buying nancy bush’s ‘knitting on the road’ anyhow and how incredibly happy i was to have it. i remember having to really concentrate to knit this, and the reason it is a ufo and has been for so long is that it wasn’t the right size. i was hoping for my mom’s size and got mine instead, so i abandoned it for other christmas knitting (and a simpler sock pattern).  it will be interesting to compare how i feel knitting it now to how i felt as a beginner back then.

just so that you know, all other ufo’s of that era have been thoroughly abandoned and deconstructed. there was a striped purse from a debbie bliss book (and i thought that would be a good idea why?) and a halter top from another book (???? it must have been because i had the cotton, the pattern, and it was summer so shouldn’t i knit it?) and a couple of others that i found a while ago and frogged. sigh -i love the rabid trying of all things that goes along with early knitting. what did you knit early on in your knitting career that was ridiculously not you and proof that you had no idea what was going on? come on, fess up!

saddest thing ever

cause you know, it’s good friday and that’s not sad or anything. okay. i may be over-dramatic.

these are my socks that rock socks and my first hole in a knit good. they will be darned, but probably with a different color (i used the rest to make these- there might be a little ball floating around somewhere). i certainly don’t feel like i’ve been wearing these very long or all that much. the yarn was a gift from my lovely friend pamela… sadness.

i am wondering if people think that a little bit of felting might have made these stick together better. i always hand-washed them instead of machine washing them anyhow - so is superwash all it’s cracked up to be? i don’t know. anyone? maybe wool with a bit of nylon would have been better?

on another note, i wouldn’t be wearing these right now anyhow because it has suddenly become crazy warm and nice in vancouver! it’s humid too and i haven’t quite figured out how to change my wardrobe - it seems like i have to figure it out every year. i always go out wearing too much clothing and end up carrying it all around with me.  enough with the complaining though, it’s beautiful.  sigh.  flowers will be one reason to miss vancouver.  i could walk around looking at flowers forever.

vision and thesis socks

they’re done! yay! now to finish writing the paper, but once again, the enflambe muscles. ugh.

here’s what i’m envisioning right now:

the room that my thesis will be in is fairly sterile, but has windows on three out of the four sides. that’s great because people will see the things in the room when they walk by. hopefully that will draw many random people in. the room is by no means huge, but really there’s no way that i could fill it up (the whole thesis fits into two medium sized bags!!). so i’m going to play the sterility to my favor by concentrating my thesis in on particular corner (back right when you walk in). there you will find my spinning wheel, a wooden chair, a lamp, some of the thesis knits, baskets of yarn and fiber, my coffee table draped with fabric. as you get further away from this focal point, the thesis will slowly disipate into the opposite corner where there will be the sterility of the room. around the corner with my wheel, i plan to have more wooden chairs for people to sit in while they look at (and touch!) the knits, so that they can feel like part of the fibery circle. it’s kind of a metaphor for what i’ve been doing as the communtiy part of the thesis- helping the fiber to spill out from my life into the lives of anyone else who would like it. another thing that i’m going to focus on while setting up the show will be trying to create some different levels of space in the room. there is a big table that i will need to deal with. it might be left in the middle of the room, so that it looks like my show is invading the scholarly room that it is. we’ll see. there’s also still a chance that the table could be moved out and maybe the potter will show with me. that would also be fine… our artwork contrasts nicely. but for now, in my head, it’s all mine and this is the current vision.

rambling socks

emily’s forest for the trees socks

and the last pair of socks for the thesis.

ingredients:
mill ends from mountain colors dye shop
size two addi turbo naturas for magic loop (loved them!)

i really like mountain colors. not only are they only an hour from my hometown, they make such unique yarns - so dark and scrumptious. i used the french (classic round) heel and the french toe from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush.

these were mostly knit while sitting on my exercise ball for posture and listening to knitting podcasts. and i must ask, because i’m so new to such things, do any of you have a favorite knitting podcast? which and why?

so, i’ve been a bit under the weather for a while now. i can’t seem to shake the inflammation in my shoulder muscles. my shoulders hurt, so i made ben massage them and apparently that made them even worse. now i’m taking my fair share of ibuprofen and feeling very tired. yesterday i slept three hours in the middle of the day… because the day before i did dishes, went on a walk, finished these socks, spun a bit, i’m sure i used the computer- that doesn’t sound like too much in one day to me. oh well. i guess i’ll just have to live it out. i did manage to get a prescription for a massage therapist, but i have to wait until the inflammation goes down. how’s that for a catch 22?

in thesis news, we all met in the library yesterday. i must say that my show is like my living room in many ways- full of yarn and knit goods and spinning stuff. if you bring my stuff, it will feel like my living room which is exactly what i want, a den of fibery goodness and learning (lord only knows that ben will appreciate being rid of some of it for a while too). so the rare books reading room, no problem. unfortunately (my advisor and i both thought so) the room is no longer the room with all of the books in it like in the old library. ah well. my part of the show will be fine. currently i’m more worried about the other two people, because they do need optimal space and the space available to them is not optimal to say the least. i still think that the ethical move on Regent’s part would have been to rent a gallery somewhere. really, if they expect you to be a professional artist before you come, they need to treat you like a professional artist when you get here.