knittingrat

I'm nearly done knitting that babby a hat

2011-09-23T20:47:00.003-04:00

I've enjoyed the Norwegian Baby Hat a lot (see previous post) and am at the point of making and attaching the i-cords now. Making is easy; attaching--well, I'd never done that. There are perfectly good explanations at Knittinghelp and Tech Knitting, but I have a lot of trouble understanding written instructions for knitting techniques--can't picture what's meant by the words, sometimes.

So I thought: well, if there were live stitches on the hat brim, I'd just graft those mofos. I can graft like a frickin' pro, because top-down socks are the one thing I can reliably make without either freaking out or f***ing up (should I bleep myself here? I am such a huge fan of profanity, people, you don't even know, but I hesitate to alienate the more gently-bred). So instead of picking up stitches on the hat brim with a knitting needle, I just did it with the darning needle as I went, and basically, it worked a treat. I am pretty pleased, and I think it looks good. A better knitter might notice something, or have a better way to do it--that's cool. But if you don't understand the usual instructions for attaching an i-cord to your knitting, you might wanna try this grafting thing, because it gets the job done with a minimum of anguished sobbing.

In which I get back on that horse

2011-09-11T21:56:00.003-04:00

So as we saw from the last post, I may not be the world's best knitter. But that's okay! There are more things I can knit. There are lots and lots of baby hat patterns in the world, and they work up quickly.

Baby heads grow quickly, too, so I got to steppin'. After trawling Ravelry's pattern database, I decided on this adorable Norwegian Baby Cap, which takes fingering weight yarn (I wound up with Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light, which is technically sport weight, but whatever). If you're a Ravelry member, you can see the original pattern page with lots of cute FO pics here (including a picture of what may be the cutest baby ever known to man), and find my project page with notes here.

I do have US 1.5 DPNs, but I loathe them--they're rosewood, and I'm always terrified they'll break, and the texture is literally a drag. Ugh. And of course the pattern requires one to use, effectively, a US 2.5 needle for the main portion of the hat; I don't have such a thing, nor can I find it quickly or cheaply. But I can find, in my needle hoard, US 2 DPNs (abominably long--too long for socks, but lucky I kept them!) and US 3s, which are only barely larger than the required needles. The yarn I am using is a little larger too, so that's fine; I would do the infant size in case of winding up with a far-too-large hat, but the 1 year is only a few stitches larger than the infant, and I knit tightly, so I'm not going to worry myself too much.

One thing I discovered while tracking down some clarifications on the pattern are these Knitting Scout Badges, which are probably old news to everyone on the internet but me. However, I thought they were delightful. I am choosing to interpret the anti-grandmother part of the "Proselytizing Knitting" badge requirements as meaning that you are disqualified if you've ever said "This isn't your Grandma's knitting" or some similar bunk. Readers of Laughing Rat Studio's blog know that I can't stand that nonsense. Hopefully, the creators didn't mean that saying something like "My grandma knitted, and she was badass" was off-limits.

(My grandma did knit, but doesn't now, but she is nevertheless pretty badass.)

So I should, in theory, qualify for the proselytizing badge:

and the "Knitting Has Forced Me to Seek Medical Attention” Badge (Level One)" badge (alas!):

and definitely the "I’ve Knit Items With No Conceivable Practical Application" badge:

.

I'll leave it to the gentle reader to decide if I qualify for the Divorce badge, since I cannot have been divorced, not having ever been married, but knitting has certainly gotten me through multiple (!) unpleasant breakups. And does it count at all that my pal (mother of the aforementioned babies, in fact) and I once started a handmade wraparound pants business to help us cope with our various terrible boyfriend problems? I think it does. So maybe that one too.

That's enough for one post.

In which I am genuinely not the best knitter

2011-09-08T18:15:00.001-04:00

Two hats. Both from the great "Gnomey" pattern by Hello Yarn. Both knit within a week of each other. Both made from the same yarn. So why's one a good inch+ bigger than the other one?

I think we both know the answer to that question. Perhaps my friend's twin babies can, um...swap hats? Maybe they can wear the smaller one now, and the bigger one later, and share them both? Yeah, I'm not thrilled with that idea either, but they're getting to be too big for Baby Surprise Jackets, so...

I probably should try again with the hats, huh.

A detour.

2011-02-18T15:17:00.002-05:00

This is important enough that, yes, I'm even posting it here. It's not "polite," and in fact, it's got a component that's pretty embarrassing to me, but there's something at stake more important than my pride, so here it is.

The House of Representatives, you see, just voted to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving Federal funding.

There's a petition here, and I hope any US resident with a bit of conscience and empathy will sign it. Elected officials do actually pay attention to such things.

Here is a story. It is, in fact, my very own story.

Planned Parenthood is more than abortions. Most of their centers do not, in fact, offer that service. What they do offer is gynecological care for women who do not have medical insurance, do not have well-paying jobs (or any jobs), or are otherwise unsupported by spouses or family in making safe reproductive health decisions.

When I was unemployed and in graduate school, I found myself with no other real health alternative than Planned Parenthood. Through them, I was able to afford gynecological health screenings and birth control pills which I need for health reasons--and make no mistake, birth control is a health issue in itself, but in my case, an underlying health condition also requires me to use birth control to stop ovulation. This medical care kept me healthy and prevented emergency-room care that would have been necessary had one of my ovarian cysts exploded, which is exactly what I'm at-risk for when I don't have access to birth-control pills. Nice, eh?

Planned Parenthood did something else for me, too. My partner at the time had cheated on me, and declined to use a condom with his other partner(s). He acquired multiple STDs, which he then spread to me. This is not a matter of comfort or convenience; STDs are incredibly dangerous. If I had not been able to get low-cost gynecological exams from Planned Parenthood, I would not have been diagnosed with these STDs for some time, probably well after they'd done long-term damage to my reproductive health. Because of Planned Parenthood, I was able to get the medications required to eliminate these diseases at an incredibly low cost due to my nearly nonexistent income.

Planned Parenthood's funding--indeed, all social-services funding--is a barely-noticeable fraction of the Federal budget. It comes in last behind our various wars in the Middle East, the military overall, and the huge gap created by the multitude of tax cuts given to corporations and the rich. It is not being attacked because it's a serious drain on Federal coffers. It's being attacked because there are still a tremendous number of people, even in this enlightened year 2011, who think that sex is a sin and that women should have to suffer for engaging in it. These are the same people who have kept HPV vaccinations away from young women, because it's better to have an STD that makes you more prone to cancer than it is to possibly get the message that sex isn't dirty, shameful, and criminal. These are the same people who promote abstinence-only education, knowing it doesn't work, because they want young women to suffer for having sex. These are the same people who, in South Dakota, are trying to make it legally defensible to murder doctors who provide abortion services.

This is an attack on real human lives, with real consequences. It is not "manufactured outrage." Please contact your Senator and other elected officials to demand a stop to this legislation before it's too late.

Bargain-basement blecch

2011-01-01T14:40:00.002-05:00

The nearest big-box bookstore issued a 50% off coupon today, so I went to shop and found...nothing. Just a big bag of nothing. I understand that having a lot of unsold inventory was not good for their business, but in reducing what they have to things that are new or bland, they've managed to work themselves down to the lowest common denominator. It's not that they never have anything good there at all, but they certainly have little of genuine interest for me anymore, and I no longer go there with the happy excitement that I used to have. Previously, I would sally forth in the knowledge that I'd wind up hard-pressed to come away with only one item; now, I know that if I do buy anything there, it'll probably be grudgingly and without enthusiasm.

Meh.

I even stooped so low as to see if I could apply my coupon to, say, a boxed set of all of Tove Jansson's Moomin books--a shameful thing, because there's an independent children's bookstore down the road from my apartment, and I have pledged to purchase children's books only from them--but no worries. In the BBB's frantic desire to make sure that only the mundane, the usual, and the unchallenging are on its shelves, they made sure to relegate Tove Jansson to Big-Box Bookstore.com. No, thank you.

Finally, I thought to check for Margaret Stove's new book. "IN-STORE!" proclaimed the store's computer...but because of poor organization, or poor inventory control, or lack of interest on the part of underpaid, overworked employees, or all three, it was not, in fact, on the shelf. By this time my dissatisfaction was complete, and I returned home to make some toast and read library books, instead.

Perhaps 2011 will see the resurgence of independent, small businesses, since the large ones are doing so poorly satisfying the needs of many customers. Then again, fewer and fewer people have spare money these days, and starting and running a small business is colossally expensive. Margaret Stove, at any rate, will still be available another day.

And now, a raffle

2010-12-06T08:17:00.003-05:00

Knitting and spinning continues apace, albeit slowly. I do not have carpal tunnel, but it's undeniable that something is wrong. Fortunately I have heavy braces to sleep in at night, which are helping considerably; I'm due to visit a hand clinic in January.

So no pics--things have been too complicated lately to entail finishing any one thing or taking pics of what I do wrap up--but there is an eventthe annual Huron Valley Rat Rescue raffle!

Huron Valley Rat Rescue is a non-profit animal rescue in Michigan. They've been around several years and have helped a lot of animals that would otherwise have been homeless, killed, or abused. Rats are civilized, engaging little animals, but they don't get quite the advocacy or respect that larger animals get. That's when folks like the HVRR step in and provide concrete help and rehoming for at-risk rats.

Raffle tickets are only $1, and although many of the prizes are rat-related, many are not--including a $25 gift cert to Laughing Rat Studio, my own yarn/fiber business. You can choose what prize you're entering for and everything, too! If you have a couple bucks to spare, I hope you'll consider purchasing a raffle ticket or two.

Incidentally, my own little engaging rat friend, Ira, passed away last week. Corny as it sounds, if you ever heard one of my rat stories and thought it was funny, or if you ever looked at the rat pics in my Flickr account and thought "Hey, they aren't such scary little dudes after all," then I especially hope you'll consider getting a raffle ticket. :)

Fiber! Fiber! Fiber!

2010-10-25T23:10:00.003-04:00

In my slow but steady (well, not always steady, but steadier lately) way, I'm putting a dent into my stash and doing some necessary fiber-related stuff. No pics right now, but a short list:

*Talked to doctor about my hands. This had really been preying on my mind. Would she take me seriously? Would she just put me off and tell me to wear a brace for a while? Would I have to fight for proper care? As it turns out, she took me quite seriously and I have a diagnostic test for possible nerve issues (as in, carpal tunnel) next Monday. Wow! What a relief!

*Just finished a long-idle project: some woolen yarn spun from roving. It's not my best, and during plying, the yarn on the older bobbin was clearly too weak to ply. I opted for the low-hassle approach and scrapped it, making do with what I have left, which is a nice fingering weight. I have a lot to learn about spinning long-draw and am trying to be happy with what I produce with this method, since it's rarely even. This batch is at least usable, and is a nice 276+ yards of what will probably be fingering weight when all dry. I have more of the fiber left and plan to spin it all up this way, except for the whole throwing-out-half-a-bobbin-of-singles thing. That's not actually part of my spinning technique.

*In re: the above, finally tried out the new plying head on the Fricke. I am somewhat ambivalent; it's heavy, awkward, and the bobbin shaft is a little narrow and the finishing on the brake groove is very rough. Nevertheless, if you want to ply a lot of yarn, and you have a Fricke, it's a nice thing to have.

*Found a fleece I didn't know I had. Oh dear. It's got quite brittle tips, too, so I'm trying to gather advice on whether I should snap those tips now, before washing, or whether they'll comb off. I guess if I snap the tips off first I can change my mind and card them, which would be harder to do if I waited until after they were washed. But I think I want to comb them.

*A pretty Shetland fleece from Kev's Korner Shetlands was, I decided, too small to make a full sweater for me. Plus, some of the fiber was quite short, and I want to comb this; maybe I'll reserve the shorter, finer stuff for a different project. This required the addition of another Shetland fleece, naturally, which is on its way; I will wash it and comb locks of it along with locks of the first one, producing a heathered yarn. Since the new fleece is brown and the first fleece is a silvery gray, I might reserve some of the new fleece to spin all by itself, providing a border. Oh, and perhaps do the same with the silver, but overdye it, maybe with natural dyes, and do some kind of striping or other color-work type stuff on the cuffs and bottom edge.

Whew.

A personal appeal

2010-10-22T08:48:00.004-04:00

I'm a little creeped-out by the body-policing, disguised as fashion-policing, that's coming out of some of the post-Rhinebeck blogging.

Women are bombarded constantly with relentless messages telling us that our value as human beings lies in our ability to conform with an ever-shifting, arbitrary standard of appearance. We must be thin (but the right kind of thin!), we must have symmetrical features proportioned according to the current standard, we must have clear, bright skin, hair, and nails, and we must be...fashionable.

"Fashion" is arbitrary too. Clothing is, generally speaking, a requirement for human survival, certainly for basic human social acceptance (although even that, ultimately, is arbitrary). "Fashion"--an arbitrary set of standards based on trends in clothing, and designed to help police the shape and size of women's bodies--is not.

When you criticize the clothing other women wear, you are participating in body-policing. When you criticize it based on your, or the cultural mainstream's, perception of fit, whether or not it "flatters," or whether or not it's fashionable, you are participating in body-policing.

There is a difference between disliking a garment and making a value-judgment about it, or about the choices of the person wearing it. And a lot of the language used around this--again, going back to "fit" and "flatter" especially--either hints at policing the shape of the person wearing it, or outright does so.

Don't do it. This goes double if you're a blogger anyone actually pays attention to; there have been some incredibly high-profile bloggers participating in this. Please remember that the human beings you are criticizing are human beings, that their value is intrinsic and has nothing to do with their appearance, that they have feelings, and that chances are, they're reading your blog. So just don't do it.

Thank you for your time.

Three-ply!

2010-10-14T21:46:00.003-04:00

Not dense enough for socks; possibly making a textured triangular shawlette out of it, but am interested in suggestions. :)

This is the one I started during the Tour de Fleece. I am a very, very slow spinner, although for me, this was finished in practically lightning speed. THREE bobbins, not just two, and fairly thin. Shetland top, finished weight/length 3.8 oz./622.64 yards.

I don't plug my shop much in the knitting blog, but I will point out that I did dye this one myself, in the "Complementary" colorway. There's a braid of "Bluebird" in the same fiber now, which is a fairly similar color. No gray, though. I do like that bit of gray in this, which turned out hardly gray at all once spun up. It's amazing what colors do during spinning.

The wool festival and what I found there

2010-10-04T09:26:00.002-04:00

In September I went, as usual, to the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs, Ohio. How can I resist? It's a great festival with a lot of variety in vendors and demonstrations, and it's only an hour away. This year I opted not to take my camera, but to just enjoy walking and looking instead. The shepherd-dogs were there, with the cantankerous ducks who just cannot be made to go over that little bridge--at least not when the dog wants them to. There were alpacas and llamas and many sheep, although the Border Leicester who was so outgoing last year was either not there, or not outgoing this time. There were tiny tiny angora goats, and big fluffy angora rabbits. I nearly bought a Greensleeves spindle but didn't (I don't spindle much, and my Dyak spindle is more than sufficient for my uses, being both elegant and effective); I nearly bought fleece but remained strong (although I just committed to buying a large white Corrie fleece, but I'm forcing myself to use the majority of it, maybe all of it, to dye up pretty locks for the shop).

I did, however, select a variety of pretty-hand-dyed things, and my mother, who likes to accompany me on these jaunts into Woolville, and who has often bought me a fleece out of sheer good nature, bought me a hank of yarn instead at my request. Really, I have a LOT of fleece.

OK, so I got a little fleece.

This was just about perfect: five ounces of BFL. I've never worked with BFL, and I do love trying new types of wool. But I sure couldn't afford, and didn't need, an entire BFL fleece! So this vendor, she had just exactly the right amount already bagged up, and I snapped it up. Alas, I don't remember her name, which is a shame as we did remember each other by sight from previous years of the wool fest.

The soap is from Earth In Arts, and it's really great stuff. It had been a while since I saw this vendor at the Wool Gathering, and I was glad to see she was back.

That is Polwarth/silk roving, and I couldn't resist it. Probably should have gotten more, to be honest. At $10/4 oz. I knew it would go fast, so although I normally don't purchase anything until I've been through the whole festival once, I snapped this up when I first saw it.

River's Edge top. Er. I think this is BFL and silk? Tencel? I know I can dye it myself, but you know what? I didn't! I didn't dye it myself, and it's a brown I don't normally dye up, and it looked so fluffy and pretty that even though it wasn't labeled yet, I asked the vendor to please sell me a braid. She labeled it up and the sale was achieved.

Bullen's Wullens (I always forget the spelling) is a regular at the festival. Their work is beautifully dyed and they're always very nice. I loved the intense mustardy gold of this--another situation where others' color sense delights me, and it's always nice to have fiber I didn't have to dye. ;) This was BFL/silk and really sumptuous.

Happy Hands' BFL top in "Mother Earth," a new color for them. There were a few balls of this left, but only one of the yarn--

--which is what my mom picked out, independently of me, only to be pleased as punch when she realized we'd picked the same colors.

So that's it--and that's plenty, since I don't even have last year's haul spun and knitted yet. Seriously: no fooling.

Historical spinning--a book review

2010-08-18T08:51:00.006-04:00

Hand Spinning & Woolcombing, Grace M. Crowfoot and H. Ling Roth. Reprinted by Robin and Russ Handweavers, 1974.

This is pretty fabulous, one of those rare finds now available only by chance or through an academic library. A reprint of two books from the early 1930s--Grace M. Crowfoot's Methods of Hand Spinning in Egypt and the Sudan and H. Ling Roth's Hand Woolcombing--this edition contains all the notes, drawings, and plates of the original, providing a window to the Egypt of 80+ years ago (or in the case of the latter book, rural England of the 19th century).

That's actually a somewhat inaccurate statement: in reality, both books describe cloth-production practices that have existed, in some cases, for thousands upon thousands of years. Crowfoot, a respected archaeologist, demonstrated ably that many Ancient Egyptian practices in flax-spinning survived in some form to her present day; her personal expertise as a handspinner allowed her to evaluate and analyze the methods of flax and wool spinners in Northeast Africa and compare them to each other and to ancient techniques. I was afraid her section of the book would be dry, but in addition to its intriguing anthropological insights, it interested me as an artisan.

H. Ling Roth's portion of the book was much shorter and somewhat more homey in tone, probably because he was working from interviews made with rural woolcombers and their first-generation descendants. As a student of the woolcomber's trade, there was much here of interest for me, including a great deal that was surprising (combing wet wool?!) and much that was somewhat familiar. It was only a few pages, but if you are interested in learning how to comb wool, I recommend it.

What anyone, textile artisan or not, might take from these books is awe at the breadth and duration of human practices. Spinning and weaving have been known to humans for millennia, possibly as far back as 34,000 BC. That certain elements of textile production should have continued largely unchanged, and still be in practice around the world today, illustrates a continuity of human experience most of us would never have imagined.

NOTE: This book is out of print, but Ohio residents may be able to use OhioLINK to access it. Persons affiliated with colleges and universities, or cardholders at the Westerville and Cuyahoga County public libraries, can use OhioLINK. Others may be able to access the book and others like it through interlibrary loan or a similar academic network in their own state.

I didn't say it was purty: fleece and a recipe

2010-08-13T14:16:00.006-04:00

...I just said I was nearly done washing it. ;) It was an awfully LARGE bag of fleece, you know--the size of an average kitchen trash bag, I would guess, when it was full. This is all that's left to wash.

My spectacular inability to take a nice picture of anything in this house unless it's in a light-tent sort of interferes with my hopes of making an aesthetically-pleasing image of this here bag of fleece. Well, it doesn't matter, I suppose; I'm just excited to finally have it Washed and Done.

...

What do you mean I have to spin it now?!

And that is pudd'n.

It's not very pretty. I wish my food pictures were prettier. But it is Pretty Fabulous. It's actually pots de creme (yes, aren't I fancy?); I don't have a proper double boiler, but I do have a stainless steel bowl of a good size to fit over my medium saucepan, and that does fine for all my double-boiling needs. If the bowl also serves as my weighing-out pan for yarn and fiber...well, that's what soap and water is for, is it not? So many uses.

I get my pots de creme recipe straight from The Joy of Cooking, although I present it here slightly adapted, as I made it last night. It is 2 C whole milk (up to half of this could be cream), 4-8 ounces (by weight) very nice semisweet chocolate, grated [chips, discs, or even chunks is fine too]; melt the chocolate in the milk in your double boiler, over darn near boiling water, until the chocolate is thoroughly melted and the milk scalded. Stir the mix while you're melting it, to incorporate the chocolate and such. I use a whisk for this, because whisks are necessary for this recipe anyway. While the chocolate is melting, separate five egg yolks and beat them lightly; when the milk is hot, SLOWLY add about a half cup of the hot milk to the eggs, whisking the whole time. This brings the eggs up to temperature and thins them out a bit so that when you add them to the milk, they won't curdle into scrambled eggs! Then SLOWLY add the egg mixture in a constant stream to the milk and chocolate, stirring the whole time. Add a teaspoon of vanilla, or maybe of rum; keep stirring the mix with your whisk until it begins to thicken noticeably. It shouldn't be as thick as one normally wants pudding to be--it will thicken an awful lot once it's cooled!

Once it's ready, pour it out into a good Pyrex or other heat-proof bowl, or maybe a whole bunch of supercute little dessert dishes if you wanna be fancy, and let it cool to just about room temp before putting it in the fridge. It is delicious.

Now this last is very nice. Margaret Stove's Handspinning, Dyeing, and Working with Merino and Superfine Wools is going for fairly high prices in the used book market, but a fellow member of a Yahoo fiber group was selling hers very inexpensively. I have lots to learn about superfine wools, so I snapped it up and am happy I did! While we're talking about Margaret Stove books, I'd like to point out that her book on original lace patterns is actually in print and available for about $30 from Lacis and Schoolhouse Press. No need to pay $50 and up to the used booksellers!

Underneath the Stove book is a Tony Millionaire graphic novel called Uncle Gabby. Maybe a lot of the folks who stop by here don't read graphic novels, but really, they're an amazing medium. The best graphic novels and comics are like films, but slowed down...the art will be evocative and beautiful, and the words just right. This is part of Millionaire's Sock Monkey series, which is drawn a lot like the wonderful comic strips by Winsor McCay and other early-1900s artists. So beautiful, and in the case of Uncle Gabby, so poignant. The Sock Monkey series is generally safe for all ages, although I think adults will catch the humor and bittersweetness of them better than young people will. Millionaire's weekly comic, Maakies, is a pretty foul affair, although it's also drawn with incredible skill and delicacy. An amazing dichotomy, really.

That's it for now! Knitting and spinning continues slow, as always.

Etsy: it's not just a US/English-speaking site, yo.

2010-08-12T19:17:00.002-04:00

Whoops, posted this too soon--left the text out initially. Although really, the subject line says it all, except maybe I should replace "Etsy" with "The Internet."

EtsyFAST, and no doubt other support groups for Etsy business owners, gets a fair amount of questions regarding potential scams. And there are a lot of scams, especially the classic "wire transfer" scam where the person convo-ing you will say they want to buy an expensive item, but they want to buy it outside of Etsy, and they'll send you extra money, so can you deposit their money order and refund them the rest...oh dear.

It's true that many of these overtures feature poorly-written English. It's just one of those observable things, aside from any assumptions or beliefs about broken English that we tend to have in English-speaking countries. But something that gets overlooked in discussions of these potential scam overtures is that "broken English" does not automatically equal "dishonest." Some of these e-mails have actually turned out to be from people unable to communicate fluently in written English, and/or who were unfamiliar with Etsy's rules about purchasing or basic netiquette. They were honest customers, trying in good faith to contact someone about an item. It really does happen.

I don't know how to put this in a way that's clear. Maybe someone practiced in dissecting the privilege that native English-speakers carry around would have better ways to put this, ways that acknowledge the prevalence of broken English in real scam e-mails while also pointing out less insulting ways to talk about that. I wonder how Etsy sellers and customers who don't speak English fluently, or who speak it as a second (or third, or fourth...) language, must feel when they see people say things like, "The first hint that this convo is a scam is that it's in broken English!" That probably feels really crummy and weird.

And you know, as someone who works in public and academic libraries, and who sees people who have had it seriously Rough returning to school after a lifetime of being shorted by an educational system that gave up on them, or of not being able to concentrate on, say, learning how to write professionally because they were too busy living hand-to-mouth...I feel a little creeped-out when I hear people denigrate folks with poor written language skills. I help people every day whose written English is pretty bad, almost as bad as if they'd grown up speaking a different language. They're not bad people; chances are they've had a much rougher life than many of us polished writers have.

Come to think of it, there's plenty of native English speakers on the internet, accepted members of their communities etc., who don't exactly write like Austen, you know?

So the automatic assumptions and the hostility, in light of all that, are what gets me. It's just creepy. And I think it's not only about identifying a common trait in scam messages. I think there's something there about language and privilege, too, and I think that's not cool.

The End.

2010-08-08T09:05:00.003-04:00

There! I've been wanting to post that pic for weeks now. Two remarkably different yarns that I just happened to skein and wash at the same time...I always knew that the way one spins a yarn is crucial to deciding its appearance and behavior, but these yarns really brought that home.

The one on the left is Corriedale, fairly short fibers at that, that I ran through my drum carder, pulled off as a roving, and then spun with a short forward draw with no smoothing. Quite a mix of techniques there, but as you can see, the resulting yarn is still quite lofty and fluffy. It was spun to be thicker than the other yarn, so the loft doesn't account for the difference in thickness, but believe me, it's fluffier, bouncier, and takes up more room. When I plied it, the bobbins could only hold about 3 ounces of it, not the usual 4+. (Speaking of which, I can't wait to get the Fricke plying head, which should make splitting up plied yarns onto different bobbins no longer necessary.) When I pulled it up out of the soak water, the water poured off it in a rush, leaving it almost dry to the touch.

The one on the right is the Cormo x Romney, of course, a long-stapled fiber that was hand-combed and spun true worsted. It's dense, and when I pulled it out of the water, I had to gently squeeze the water out--it didn't shed the water like the Corrie yarn.

As mentioned in a recent post about libraries, I requested a book on "Penguin Quill" spinning from our state's academic library network. I could have Googled "Penguin Quill" to see what it meant, but reckoned I would wait for the book. Well, apparently it was a wheel type invented in the late 60s/early 70s, an upright wheel with a quill head. Looks like a decent enough invention, although not something I'll be picking up for myself. Although I do not plan to get a Penguin Quill wheel (antiques are out there, and a few people still make them), I read the little booklet from cover to cover. It had that good-natured naivete that a lot of 70s books on spinning seem to have, with hand-drawn illustrations, rustic techniques, and a willingness to experiment. An interesting suggestion, for instance, was to rough-card damp fiber with dry fiber and spin them together to make a "gloppy" thick and thin yarn. Again, this is not something I'm likely to try, but the results of the author's experiment did not look half bad.

I took a picture or two of the book's pages because the illustrations were very much "vintage" to me, and reminded me of some of the old spinning books I stumbled across at libraries, when I was first learning. The last page of the booklet, above, struck me as especially poignant--all those pals, caught in time (40 years ago!), making stuff and hanging out together, with the funny, charming end-note spelled out in yarn. They really don't make spinning books like this anymore.

OMG GUISE THE FAIR

2010-08-06T16:34:00.005-04:00

I went to the State Fair for the first time ever, the trip I made when I was 16 to see a concert not actually counting.

There was so much stuff that I actually wound up missing the stuff I went intending to visit (crafts, cooking, farmers' market, etc.). But I got to pet a lamb, and a heifer, and a very friendly Tunis sheep, and made a child stop tormenting the chickens, and nearly got run over by an angry yearling ewe, and, uh, bought more fleece.

It's true. There was a barn full of fleeces. Fleeces in bags, with prizewinning ribbons (some of 'em) and soft and pretty and allsorts and, oh no, a whole rack of them skirted for handspinners. Oh NO. At this point I was actually mugged and forced to purchase the above-pictured fleece, which is most likely Corriedale since that's what the Reicherts apparently raise, mugging being the only acceptable reason that I would bring another fleece into this apartment, let me tell you.

The Reicherts are, according to the good demonstrators of the Central Ohio Weavers' Guild, known for their awesome spinning fleeces. Good fleece, good shearing, good skirting, because Mrs. Reichert is a spinner herself. I cannot understand, then, why Mid-Ohio Wool Growers, who was selling the fleeces, was selling it for only $22, but who am I to argue? All the fleeces, the ones for sale anyway, were going for a scarily small amount. No wonder wool farmers can't break even...

Hopefully the Reicherts' fan club is such that the family can also sell their very awesomest stuff direct. As it is, this fleece had a ribbon on it (should have taken a picture--something like "fourth premium" or something, several fleeces had the ribbon), and I've definitely seen (and bought) worse before. It's just gorgeous. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but Corrie does enjoy being carded and spun fluffy, I know that much, so that might be how I go.

Exploit your local (academic) library

2010-07-23T10:29:00.005-04:00

Sea turtle, Columbus Zoo. One of his flippers was partially amputated, probably by a motorboat when he was in the wild, bless him.

I find it hard to spin when I am depressed, and right now I am depressed. Well, I'm always depressed, that's why they call it "depression," but you know what I mean. So no actual spinning, but while at work today I explored the Ohio academic library consortium's (OhioLINK) catalog for books on spinning, and found a goldmine.

I've only begun to scratch the surface, having learned my lesson with library books and my slow reading speed, a problem of relatively recent vintage. No point in having these sent from hither and yon, with a short loan period, only to return them unread. I picked three likely titles:

Innovative spinning : Penguin Quill, by Dee Hight. This was published in the 70s by a company in Boulder, CO. Was this company the forerunner of Interweave? I wonder.

Fashioning fabric : the arts of spinning and weaving in early Canada by Adrienne D. Hood.

Methods of hand spinning in Egypt and Sudan by Grace M. Crowfoot, which seems to be published with Hand woolcombing by H. Ling Roth. I'm really intrigued by this one.

These are all old books, and there were only one or two copies of any of them in Ohio's academic libraries. If they were ever in the public libraries, they have likely vanished by now--either stolen, or destroyed through use, or scythed from the collection due to the misguided policies of New Modern Librarianship, whose hollow, self-reinforcing mantra "The library is not an archive!" has been used to excuse egregious cuts in the diversity and depth of public (and, increasingly, academic) library collections all over the United States.

But I digress--but not really, no, I don't digress. Fight back! Protect your public library collection's diversity, breadth, and depth!

Ahem.

At any rate, I look forward to receiving these, which should start happening sometime next week. There are a lot more books on spinning and knitting in OhioLINK, too! If you're an Ohio resident and have memberships with the Cuyahoga County Public Library or Westerville Library systems, or if you attend or work for a college or university in Ohio, you can take advantage of OhioLINK too. If not, your public library may be able to use interlibrary loan to bring you books that are rare, hard to find, or just not owned by your library system.

A little update

2010-07-21T23:34:00.004-04:00

Two posts in one day! My goodness.

I have a typically-unattractive in-progress TdF pic. Still on the first bobbin of the Shetland.

I've been busy with an out of town visitor, you know. When one's SO lives 9+ hours away, and he visits you for a week, you tend to spend less time spinning. Although, really, he likes my spinning. And then, on top of everything else, I was down with a nasty stomach situation for two days of his visit, and a migraine earlier this week. BOO.

In between all that, though, we fit in a trip to the Zoo before he left. Here's some manatees eating lunch. Nom nom.

Not that thing, but this thing

2010-07-21T09:46:00.001-04:00

No, I haven't tried knitting with my laceweight singles yet. I couldn't decide what to knit, you know. I kept telling myself to do something simple, then I'd tell myself to do something ornate, and then I'd tell myself that I have multiple FOs and am not making any headway on any of them, at which point I'd stall out and go read a whole lot of Dashiell Hammett short stories. By the way, that Hammett was all right.

I ought to test them soon, though, just to see if I can actually knit with them and they'll hold together. You'd think they would; they withstood skeining and ball-winding. But hell, with my fiber work, the rule "Anything that can go wrong, will" is basically always applicable.

So in the meanwhile I've been doing a very small amount of spinning and a moderate amount of fleece-washing. One of the fleeces comes from--well, I won't say where, as I'm not 100% happy with it. The fiber is magnificent, a Cormo x Romney cross, but the condition of the fleece, with its poop tags, disarrayed locks, lots of VM, and--this was pretty gross--a big chunk where the sheep had been injured or maybe had a surgery, with cut-off fleece and...stuff...in the surrounding fleece, was not so great.

Gah!

But the fiber is so pretty, and I was making this a Learning Project, my first one where I wrapped the locks up in tulle to keep them straight, so I persevered.

To learn more about this kind of prep, check out HJS Studio's page about wool "sausages." Is there anything that site doesn't have on it? It is the best site.

Here's an unwashed and a washed lock, for comparison:

You've seen in an earlier post (which originally was a later post--this one's been in pending for weeks!) that I was combing and spinning this for the Tour de Fleece. I was able to do pretty well on spinning every day, despite arguments from my hands! Then I had a visit from my SO (who is interested in my spinning, yes, but it's so hard to make yourself spin when you've got someone special visiting whom you rarely get to see!), and then I got sick, and now I'm down in the dumps--so spinning has really been on the back burner for the last week or so. I did, however, finish the first 4 oz. bobbin of Cormo x Romney, which was my initial TdF goal:

For my second (and probably last) project, I decided to swipe one of my own braids out of the shop and do a three-ply. This is a first for me, since the only three-ply yarns I've done before were Navajo-plied. I haven't gotten very far with this, I admit, but here's the braid split into three lengthwise segments:

Hopefully I will be able to get back into spinning for this soon. It would be great to finish it by the end of the Tour.

Let the Tour begin...

2010-07-03T16:16:00.001-04:00

(More about this future yarn when I can get back to finishing an in-progress post that's been on hold for days!)

Spinning laceweight singles: followup

2010-06-03T09:49:00.003-04:00

In this post I showed off some pretty fiber, with the prospect of maybe spinning some laceweight singles from it. After some false starts, this is what I have to show you:

(Click to embiggen)

304 yards, .8 ounces. Not too bad. It's uneven; the early part of the bobbin was spun thicker, although actually, as I wound off, it was the part where the yarn was most likely to drift apart. And I did have some tense moments, winding it off: there were two breaks, better than I'd thought, but not the best in the world. I knotted those places (also not desirable, but only I will be using this yarn!) and kept going. Given that the first several attempts I made fell apart completely the minute they were tugged on, I'm pretty proud of myself!

(Laceweight singles on Cascade Niddy-Nosty)

"The right tool for the job" is more than a hollow aphorism. When preparing to wind off my singles, I realized I didn't want to use one of my huge, rough-finished niddy noddies. The large size, the sharp edges, and the slight roughness of the wood would all contribute to create extra tension on the delicate yarn. Suddenly I remembered my Cascade Niddy-Nosty (pictured above), something that I had foolishly felt I no longer needed (what with the large niddies and all!) but had kept because it was so beautiful and well-made. I dug it out of storage and found it perfect: no sharp edges, no rough wood. Everything about it was rounded and smooth, and there's even a special arm that is smaller, to enable you to slide skeins off more easily and without abrasion or excess tension. (How many of us have held our breaths as we slid a tightly-wound skein of fine yarn off the arm of our niddy-noddy? I know I have.) I'll definitely be keeping it nearby as I work my way through this project.

I'd split the fiber into five or six sections lengthwise. By the time I got done with that first section--in just over a week, and without hardly hurting myself at all, something else I'm proud of--I was heartily sick of laceweight singles. What I'd really like to do now is complete some other spinning projects I've had lingering, complete at least one knitting project (preferably the gift socks, now only six months overdue!), and then get started knitting the singles I have into something pretty.

(A detail of the Triangles within Triangles shawl)

Suggestions? I'm thinking a Kiri shawl or something else like that--something with a simple, repetitive pattern that will be easy to alter the size of depending on the amount of yarn I have. Triangles within Triangles would be pretty too, although I don't understand the pattern as well as I do a straight-up leaf lace triangle shawl, so adjusting it might be more difficult. (Knitting it was a breeze, though--Heartstrings patterns are wonderful.) Actually, looking at the Heartstrings site, the Elegantly Simple Triangle holds a lot of appeal--I like the slightly unorthodox wavy/patterned edge all the way around, and Feather and Fan is a beautiful old pattern. Well, I don't have to decide any time soon. When I do figure out my pattern, I'd like to organize my time spinning up and processing a batch of yarn, knitting a section, then spinning the next batch of yarn when I run out. That should keep my activities varied enough to engage my mind and prevent physical strain.

Ableism: It's everywhere.

2010-06-03T09:06:00.005-04:00

I see the "charts vs. written" discussion is heating up again on Laceknitters, with a lot of assertions being thrown around about knitters whose disabilities make them unable to use charts. "I can learn how to read written patterns, so all those people who can't read charts just need to cope!" is one popular sentiment. "Designers are artists, so they shouldn't have to worry about accommodating anyone!" is another. (Architects are also artists; will these speakers feel the same way when they, elderly and perhaps wheelchair-bound, cannot get into a building because the architect was too much of an "artist" to be held to ADA requirements?) "These are two different languages, and since you wouldn't expect a Japanese designer to give you English instructions, you shouldn't expect a chart designer to give you written instructions either!" A favorite one I read during the last go-round was, "My momma didn't need no 'commodashuns, and by gar, I ain't givin' no weaklings no 'commodashuns neither!" Ableism at its finest (by gar!).

These statements are asserted with the confidence of those whose experience is considered the norm: the standard by which the validity of all other experiences are judged. They are the statements of people who have never had to consider disability, or at least not the particular types of disability--visual, nerve damage, neuroatypicality--that can cause someone to be unable to read charts. Because their experiences are considered "normal," and the experiences of persons with disabilities are considered "other" (or simply ignored), their assertions are given credence without having to be well-researched, factual (two different languages? really?), nuanced, or humane. No one will hold these speakers accountable for their behavior, just as no one can force publishing companies to accommodate customers with disabilities. For those new to this kind of discussion, that set of assumptions these able-bodied persons are able to make, the extra validity their experiences and opinions are assumed to have, and the fact that they can act and behave in this way without challenge makes up, in part, what activists and social critics call "privilege."

In this self-reinforcing cycle, the experiences, demands, and opinions of persons who currently do not have a disability continually eclipse the experiences, needs, and opinions of those who do. Once the knitters with disabilities have been shamed into silence again by a community that simply wishes they would shut up and go away, the able-bodied knitters who have been so against accommodation can then smugly assert, "See? There isn't any need for this accommodation anyway. Nobody's asking for it." Eventually, someone who maybe wasn't around for this round of ableist smackdowns will meekly ask if anyone knows of a publisher who uses written instructions (a question which in itself can raise threads full of contempt and fury, even if the words "disability" and "accommodation" never rear their heads), or even--gasp!--if anyone would be willing to petition publishers for greater inclusiveness when printing patterns. Then the shitstorm will start all over again, and we'll all be up to our necks in ableist entitlement and smuggery before we can blink.

The next time you're tempted to dismiss critiques offered about racism, sexism, classism, ableism, or a variety of other prejudices as "unreal" or "irrelevant," remember how ableism cropped up in this discussion. It is the most innocuous of contexts--a knitting community--but here, in miniature, we have seen acted out the problems of the greater society. The people it affects are not faceless, but are the people you speak to, swap stories and FO pics with, and maybe even meet at conferences. They are real people, and they feel real effects because of this problem.

Note to self:

2010-05-29T23:58:00.004-04:00

Teeswater sheep

Mrs. Teasdale

One is a sheep. One is a character from a Marx Bros. film. Please do try to keep them straight.

nevertheless i totally think of one every time i think of the other

Hey! Look what I found!

2010-05-29T12:58:00.001-04:00

Emergency homies

2010-05-28T10:39:00.006-04:00

Lately I have been bitten by the design bug. A customer returned some lace yarn--not a regular occurrence, thankfully--citing a dislike of the mottling and, most troubling, condition issues. Sometimes yarns do come from the mill in less than spectacular condition, and although I try to catch that stuff before it even hits the dyepot, we all have our off days.

I don't feel like I can return it to the shop, you know? What if it does have an exceptional number of thin spots or ply issues? I don't want to pass that along to someone else. And I don't want to toss the stuff, either; I really liked the yarn's color, and at the time I dyed it, had considered keeping it for myself anyway. So, well, now I've got an excuse: I can't in good conscience give it to the public, but I can use it to, say, create an original shawl design.

I know what you are saying: "Rat, you can barely knit a pattern someone else wrote. Why do you think you can design a shawl of your own?" To which I say, "Hey, bite me." Well no, maybe not that, but the point is, I have knitted some lace before and now I got Ideas. So I had these Ideas and then realized I have absolutely no damn clue how to implement them, and then I had Problems. Fortunately, I also have Emergency Homies.

That's right: Kinzel, Swanson, Waterman, Don, Walker, Zimmerman, Clark, and a few other people I have likely forgotten (sorry, ladies). They are my Emergency Homies, much like in the celebrated Achewood strip. [BEWARE. IN ACHEWOOD, THERE IS SWEARING. IT IS NOT A COMIC FOR THE CHILDREN.] Kinzel reassured me that my idea of starting from the center and using four rays of double eyelets to increase a square center was an awesome one. Swanson compiled a book that showed the technique in action, with better suggestions for cast-ons than the one I came up with (and tried in cotton yarn while knitting a dishrag; oh boy the swearing was probably heard for a block). Clark reassured me that I could figure out how to pick stitch patterns and increase appropriately. Don and Waterman educated me heartily about Shetland lace knitting. Walker offered me lace stitches. Zimmerman--well, Zimmerman was just there much of the time, lurking benevolently behind many of these ladies, referenced by them and inspiring them. I don't even own her books, but I run across her almost every time I pick up an American knitting text.

Unlike the Emergency Homeboys of Achewood, however, none of these ladies have any priors. Well, I heard that Ms. Zimmerman was once arrested for mayhem, but they couldn't make it stick.

Spinning laceweight singles

2010-05-28T10:30:00.002-04:00

Everyone has been spinning laceweight singles lately and I want in on some of this sweet action. I decided to use some pretty BFL (maybe a risky choice, since it's a longwool but a shorter/softer one) for this project, but of course, being me, have run into Difficulties.

I don't want to waste any of that, so it was a real blow to my confidence when the singles I spun held together just fine as they went onto the bobbin, but later drifted apart when I pulled a few inches out to look at them. Flashbacks to the baby camel/silk fiasco sprang to mind, and I got mad as hell: I'm not gonna let this damn fiber tell me what to do! So I'm pretty determined to learn how to spin laceweight singles that will hold together, but not be too horribly overtwisted.

The members of the Snobby Spinners group on Ravelry gave me lots of good advice, although I found that if I spun with as low a twist as some seemed to recommend, I just couldn't keep my singles together. (Sorry, ladies. I am just a slow learned when it comes to spinning.) So I'm still experimenting with the whole thing. I moved my drive band down to the next smallest whorl, and the singles are pretty firm and twisty now. In an effort to have them be slightly less twisty, I drafted faster...only to have them drift apart.

I know that the guideline seems to be that your singles should hold together and just barely feel like they might start to slip when you gently tug on a yard or so of them between your fingers (what an awful, awful sentence!), but I can't seem to hit that sweet spot yet. It's either twisty or nothing for these singles so far. Go figure. I'll keep trying. I guess if I come to the end of the project and am really unhappy, I can...I don't know. Between you and me, if I get to the end of spinning 1200+ yards of BFL over a period of months, and they turn out unusable, I'll probably plotz.

Oh, halp!

2010-05-19T17:16:00.006-04:00

Seriously, this arrived right before I went on vacation...I put it somewhere for safekeeping...and now I have no idea where it is. My thought, alas, is that I put it back in the envelope to protect it, then got confused in the pre-trip hurrying and accidentally pitched it. Which is a shame, because it was pretty, the dyer (Rogueadventures) worked hard on it, and hey, money down the drain.

Siiiiiigh.

Oh well.

What am I up to?

2010-05-18T19:03:00.002-04:00

Well, I snagged a Treasury somehow, entirely by accident. It's got everything from raw fleece to FOs--check it out before it expires!

In news-that-isn't, I've unearthed this:

And it's probably...maybe 2/3 done, as far as I can tell from what yarn I have left. This was the first viable yarn I spun on my first wheel, the Fricke. In fact, I've probably blogged the project and/or the yarn before, long ago. This is an old project, y'all. I think a modest little goal for 2010 would be to get this all finished and blocked, don't you?

Argus completed

2010-05-04T10:32:00.004-04:00

I wrapped up Argus last week! As usual, my pictures of it are pretty bad. Something about me and taking pics of FOs, I dunno.

That's a detail shot--at the bottom is the beginning of Chart B, looking upward along the furrows of Chart A.

A not-so-great pic of the blocking, but I do like seeing the shawl all stretched out like that.

If I make this again I might risk doing another repeat of Chart A. I have a lot of yarn left, got to be at least an ounce, maybe more. I think the edging could be more pronounced if it was designed differently. Extra eyelet columns in each repeat, then a centered double decrease in the middle of the stockinette sections would do it. That's how the Seraphim Shawl edging is, and the points on that are more pronounced.

At any rate, I enjoyed this particular project quite a bit!

Argus Shawl in progress

2010-04-18T13:50:00.001-04:00

Argus Shawl in progress
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

A couple rows of Chart C. The most knitting I've done in a few weeks.

The knitalong for this seems to be going okay, except that I'm not posting my group-update posts regularly enough in the community where we're hosting the knitalong. Alas. I feel badly about this, because other are waiting on me and it's not like it's a difficult task.

Remainders

2010-03-23T12:55:00.003-04:00

There are a few things I left out the other day, mostly cos I forgot. But that's okay, they're enough for another post, and now I've got an additional item, as it were.

This is beautiful homegrown roving from Spider Web Specialties. I'd had this fiber in my favorites on Etsy for several days, and finally bought some. It's a crossbreed fiber, and is a lovely natural off-white. I think it will be very nice to spin. Not sure how to spin it yet; I'm thinking relatively low-twist, as I don't want the long, somewhat large-diameter fibers to become harsh instead of silky. There was more of this in the shop, quite a bit in fact, and it was only the fact that I have too much &%*@*$ fiber already that kept me from getting enough for a large project. It was sent super quick, too.

The neverending Corriedale fleece project is back underway, although it is close to being stalled (again) due to uncertainty as to what I should really do with this stuff. The problems: fine fleece, short fibers, and somewhat careless washing (*blush*) have made the fleece more neppy than is really suitable for carding. However, it is short, fine, and soft, as I said, which means that combing it will take out a lot of perfectly usable fiber as well as the neps, which at least have been fairly easy to pick out as I go (if somewhat time-consuming), and spinning it worsted may lose the benefits of this beautiful fiber.

I know: sample, sample, sample! And I'll soon be in a position to do that. The two huge bobbins of singles I spun over the last--oh gosh, has it been over a year?!--are finally being plied, and will produce a couple of good-sized 3 oz. skeins. (If I'd been thinking, I'd've gone ahead and plied a whole bobbin-full, then used the skimpy remainder as my sample skein, but I learn these lessons so you don't have to, am I right?) At any rate, I'll soon have a semi-woolen sample to knit up, and now that my Alvin Ramer Super Minis have arrived, I can finally comb some of this delicate stuff and spin that up and see how it does.

...What's that? Oh, you mean that thing I dropped casually into the paragraph just above? The thing about how I FINALLY WAS ABLE TO BUY THE SUPER MINI COMBS I'VE BEEN YEARNING FOR? Oh yeah, that.

I did it. I probably shouldna, finance-wise, but sometimes a Rat has got to say to herself, "Shit, if we don't do this now, we will never do it." (Pardon my swearing.) It was much the same for my two tattoos and my fancy gauged ears (incidentally, I have fancy gauged ears these days ;)). I do have combs already, big coarse Viking combs from Indigo Hound. They are well-made, easy to use, and very nice for combing coarser, longer fibers. However, they make a mess out of anything fine. It sounded like the Alvin Ramer Super Minis (available exclusively, as far as I can tell, through Janet Lynn of The Wheel Thing) were pretty much the awesomest and most versatile option out there for the range of fine-medium fibers I was likely to be working with. If you click through on the photo above, there's a photo right next to it in my Flickr photostream that shows what came in the set and has notes, etc.

So anyway, I haven't used them yet, and I've got lots to learn about combing, and yeah, the way I washed the fiber is not ideal for combing, but what're you gonna do. So I will probably work up the coarse-combed Border Leicester project (also sitting since last Autumn) and then do the combed Corrie real quick. Somewhere in there I'd like to get some more yarn spun for the the shop. I've also been combing batts again, a little at a time, and need to get two more sets done--tomorrow. Looks like a busy time ahead, and here's me with gimpy hands at the moment, too. :)

Argus!

2010-03-18T09:30:00.003-04:00

Oh yeah, finally knitting Argus, but knitting it slow. It's a very nice little shawlette, a very straightforward pattern. The yarn is dyed by me, and is Gems sock yarn base dyed in my "Storm at Sea" colorway that I made up for the 2010 Sock Club.

The pattern, like I said, is awfully straightforward if you've ever knitted lace before. My one repeated issue so far is sometimes forgetting to PSSO during my centered double decreases. This is fixable when you discover it on the following purl row, so not a big deal, but it's something to look out for as a general lace-knitting issue.

After this, I have a pair of socks to finish, I'd like to get a three year old feather-and-fan scarf completed, and then I'd really, really like to get back to work on the Peacock Feathers Shawl.

In other news, I finally finished some more handspun and am kind of geeked-up about that.

A little bit of profanity

2010-02-13T19:44:00.003-05:00

All y'all spammers what've been inundating my comments sections with totally legitimate (HAW) requests to give money for charities, or investment opportunities, or whatever, can just haul y'allselves off and go suck it.

The rest of you legitimate reader types, I apologize for the crudity of that sentiment and hope you will forgive this momentary outburst.

I spun for the first time in months today.

2010-02-10T18:29:00.003-05:00

That's all, really.

When I look at the date of my last entry, it's obvious to me how much of a drag on creativity depression is. October is about the time I last spun anything, too. It's great to spin again, but I am already getting the really horrible self-critical internal messages going, "See? You screwed that up. What's the matter with you? Why aren't you doing this like Judith McKenzie McCuin? What's your problem? Why have you let the fiber get squished up around way behind the drafting triangle? She said that's not really worsted spinning, if that happens!" etc., etc., etc.

Which of course isn't Ms. McCuin's fault at all, but her book was the last one I read about spinning, see, and I want to be good at spinning, just like her.

Every day I see, listed on Etsy, really marvelous yarns that were spun by people who couldn't give a crap about whether not they are Good Spinner, Just Like X Famous Person. It seems very freeing, to me. But remove the Famous Person from the equation and, for me, there'd still be the crippling self-criticism. Which is not to say it's humility, because it's not. It's just really, really unpleasant.

There--NOW that is all.

Knitting and colonialism

2009-10-30T16:30:00.004-04:00

Well, the blowback from the disability-accommodation post in Laceknitters was fascinating. I feel rather badly for the knitters with disabilities who had originally broached the discussion; my post wasn't meant to stir up fresh bouts of ableist verbal abuse, but unfortunately that happened in at least one situation. While I know that I can't speak for knitters with disabilities, I would hope to act as an ally in any way appropriate.

Readers living with disabilities or interested in fighting ableism might be interested in FWD/Forward, a blog that--well, here's part of their mission statement:

FWD/Forward is a group blog written by feminists with disabilities. It is a place to discuss disability issues and the intersection between feminism and disability rights activism. The content here ranges from basic information which is designed to introduce people who are new to disability issues or feminism to some core concepts, to more advanced topics, with the goal of promoting discussion, conversation, fellowship, and education.

On another thread, no pun intended, I find out from this article that First Nations knitters in Canada were investigated as a terrorist threat because they planned to make a lawful protest against alleged appropriation of their traditional designs by a commercial company providing fake "Cowichan" sweaters for the Olympics. The many hostile comments the story received reveal the strongly pro-colonial--or to say it bluntly, racist--bias of many respondents. While I have insufficient legal or, indeed, knitting/historical knowledge to know whether or not the design appropriation is something legally actionable, I know enough to know that there's a long history of oppression and cultural appropriation in how folks of European ancestry interacted, and continue to interact, with the Native peoples of the Americas. I am reminded too of appropriation of "country" quilt designs and the classism inherent in that, legally-actionable or not.

I have the sense that these are important issues that are of potential interest to, well, anybody, but especially people who work with their hands. They're concerns that deserve some attention and thoughtfulness, no matter what one's eventual opinion might be.

Coming soon: content about my own knitting? Is it possible?!

Knitters with disabilities

2009-10-28T13:18:00.007-04:00

Yup, I'm still here, still knitting, still looking too much at the internet. Lately in the Laceknitters Yahoo group there's been a few threads about visual or neurological impairments' getting in the way of chart-reading. This is a problem, because charts are sort of The Thing now. It might be about publishers' catering, understandably, to majority preferences, but it might also be just as much about saving space on a page. That means a lot of money to publishers.

Disabilities aside, it wouldn't surprise me if chart- vs. written-instruction preferences had something to do with our individual neurological differences. Me, I find written instructions incomprehensible. I am not a neurologist, and I don't play one on TV, so that's just a haphazard guess. I wish a legitimate neuroscientist would study knitters, because the results might be fascinating. But the important thing here is that there's a lot of knitters who simply cannot enjoy the patterns and books that a lot of us temporarily-able-bodied people enjoy, and it's because of visual or neurological issues that render charts unusable to them.

Most of the folks on the Laceknitters list have been pretty sympathetic about that, which shouldn't be a surprise. Some people offered to translate charts to written instructions, which was really decent. But what I think might be a better long-term fix is if actual feedback was sent to publishers. The publishers are the ones who can really fix this by providing both kinds of instructions in their books, or by making written instructions available upon request, or something along those lines. They aren't going to do this on their own, though. They need to hear about it, a lot, before they're going to see that it's a problem; they need to understand it in terms of money as well as human costs. That's business for you.

So! I mentioned this on the list, because that's a pre-made community right there who can understand the problem enough to want to mobilize to fix it. But I thought I'd throw it out here, too, and see who nibbled.

Rat, where are you?

2009-10-15T10:12:00.004-04:00

That's quite an old pic, as you can see from the chart. I'm way up on row 124 now. Yes, the Peacock Feathers shawl continues apace, with somewhat less speed, as I am going to Zen Cha slightly less. Gotta economize, you know. But the background of the above photograph is indeed said teahouse, a place which could rightly be said to be my knitting's natural environment.

I'm really enjoying the shawl. Yes, you have to pay some attention to what's going on, but most of the main body is pretty repetitive. I may change my tune once I get to the final details, but the pattern is so carefully charted and designed that I'm having little trouble with it. The stitches required are all basic lace stitches. Sure, the long rows get a bit tedious as the shawl progresses, but that's just shawls for ya. It's a good knit, and I would tell anyone who's got a lace shawl or scarf under their belt to not be scared off by the "Advanced Intermediate" skill tag.

This is some Targhee wool top that I finally got mostly spun up. I've been working on the project for a couple of months now, and am heartily sick of it. Plying began almost immediately after the completion of the second bobbin, but it's taking a lot of time, as plying can do. The other ongoing project I've been fooling with for the best part of a year--the Corriedale fleece project--is once again languishing, but I've made definite strides. The fleece is so fine, and in some places so short, that even careful drumcarding has caused significant neps. I was gentle in washing it, but not gentle enough. My basic technique for fleece processing is sound, but needs considerable refining to adjust for fleece types. Thus goes the learning process. The fleece is far from a waste, however; I may just need to evaluate the best way to process and spin it. The roving I pulled off my drumcarder is alternately fabulous and horrific to spin, depending on how neppy it is; the basic prep type works well, but maybe not for this fleece. Unfortunately, I am still not done with the second bobbin of singles from this preparation style, and only after it's all done and plied will I really be able to evaluate the results. I am seriously considering purchasing English combs for the processing of fine fleeces, and if I don't like how the drumcarded Corrie turns out, I will likely comb it on those instead. I didn't wash the Corrie in a way that preserved the lock structure, but one makes do with what one has.

I learn these lessons so you don't have to.

News of the Handmade

2009-09-24T21:08:00.003-04:00

Fish and Eagles
Originally uploaded by portableantiquities

Wonderful things! This exquisite Anglo-Saxon gold ornament was found, along with a multitude of similar items, in a magnificent hoard this week in England. This news story from the BBC has more information. It's the most important find since Sutton Hoo--and might actually be more historically significant and revealing.

A huge Flickr set of the entire Staffordshire Hoard to date is available--just click the link and prepare to be amazed. "Amazed" probably doesn't cover it. Moved, astounded, grateful, stunned, awed--those might just barely touch on it.

In more fiber-related handmade news, a unique textile was created which incorporates the silk of over a million golden orb spiders. Supposedly no spiders were harmed in the silk-collection process; I find this difficult to believe, and thus I find the making of such a garment to be a bit of a questionable undertaking. The spider-silk item is a one-off item, not the beginnings of a new, viable fiber industry. It's one thing to make something necessary and in the process harm another being; I'll freely admit to eating meat, for instance, not that I don't find that ethically-questionable as well. And unless every yarn I use comes from a sheep raised on a humane, ecologically-sustainable farm, I must be prepared to admit that when I engage in my craft, I'm taking part in someone's suffering. Nevertheless one can, as with all of our craft work, bear in mind the reality of where our fibers come from while also admiring the cunning and workmanship involved in the creation of the final product.

Peacock Feathers Shawl--started

2009-09-05T09:49:00.006-04:00

Not much to it yet. I'd heard this was a fairly difficult project, and didn't understand why when I looked at the charts. Didn't seem too crazy to me. Now that I've gotten into it a bit, I'm wondering whether people thought it was difficult because of the way it's charted.

See, only the right-hand side of the shawl is charted, because they wanted to make nice big readable charts and something had to give, basically. So, okay okay, only the right hand side is charted, and to do the left, you have to work your way backwards down the row, reversing the decreases. K2togs are now SSKs, etc. Well, not SSKs because Fiddlesticks seems to hate those--they do that S1K1PSSO thing--but if you're Rat, and you're knitting YOUR shawl, you do a SSK because you like them and they sort of crack you up, for some weird reason.

I don't know why.

Anyway, this is easy and I did it instinctively for a few rows, until stuff started getting slightly more complicated and I made the mistake of thinking. Suddenly I was second-guessing everything, reading stuff backwards (in a bad way), all of that. I was even having trouble on the right half of the shawl, where the chart was to be read normally. I finally had to tink back half a row, then stop and think really hard about how I read knitting charts and how I know what the symbols mean.

We all know, for instance, what a left-leaning decrease looks like:

We see this and say to ourselves, "That goes to the left." Well let me tell you, when you start reading lace charts like prose (left to right), your brain does not remember which way that's leaning.

Look at that symbol again. It's just a line. The line joins two corners of a square. Convention tells us that it's left-leaning, but really, it could just as easily be interpreted as moving towards the right. And that's what my brain was trying to do at all the wrong moments, you dig?

I had to sit down and think about how my brain, in its right mind that is, interprets that symbol to mean "left-leaning decrease." Because once I figured that out, I could figure out how to reverse it, and I could do that when I wanted to, not when I least expected it, thereby screwing up my knitting.

Well if you think about it, if we take that symbol to mean "left-leaning," it must mean we're looking at the top corner:

See? It's the top corner being on the left that tells us "go left." We could just as easily be interpreting it as "go right," but we don't, because we're looking at where the top of the line ends up.

Now on the way back, I got to reverse that. The pattern says to turn what was a SSK on one side of the shawl into a K2tog on the other side, and vice-versa. Well how will I keep that straight? I will keep that straight by looking at the bottom corner instead:

You get me now? Coming back across the row, working backwards to create the left half of the shawl, means that in order to consistently reverse my decreases I gotta look at where the bottom of the line is, not the top. That's how I'll keep it straight.

"Rat," I can hear you saying, "this is ridiculous. Everybody knows this." Yeah, I knew it too until things started getting complicated. It's entirely possible that really accomplished lace-knitters do this switch automatically, having already processed this stuff on some deep level without consciously realizing it. The rest of us have to go about it the long way, actively engaging with how we're reading the charts. And actually, that's kinda cool.

The cost of clothes

2009-08-28T08:27:00.005-04:00

Labor, wages, and the cost of material goods have all been on my mind a lot lately. It's too early in the morning for me to put together something coherent about that, but this article from the Victoria and Albert Museum has the benefit of touching on the subject while bringing historical fiber-work to life. Called "Buying and Losing Pockets," it discusses the value and theft of these predecessors to the purse (more about pockets here); the value wasn't only in the objects therein, but in the fabric and workmanship of the pocket itself. The article explains, "Sometimes the pockets were stolen when empty along with other items of dress. All clothing was liable to theft as it was expensive and could be easily pawned."

An unfinished pair of pockets from the V&A Museum

An example of theft was given, with the contents of the stolen pocket and their value. "On 5 November 1716, 'Robert Draw of London, labourer, was indicted for privately stealing from Martha Peacock a linen Pocket (value 2 shillings), 1 holland handkerchief (value 1 shilling), a pair of white gloves (value 1 shilling), a pair of scissors and 3 keys..." I'm no expert on the exchange rate between a 1716 shilling and a 2009 U.S. dollar, but let's take a look at what I, at any rate, would assume is the most expensive, labor-intensive soft item in the lot: the gloves. These are one shilling. Maybe they're not made of the fanciest fabric, maybe they're not the world's classiest gloves, but that makes me think that a shilling would go a long way back in 1716, you know what I mean? Gloves probably weren't cheap. And then check out the handkerchief--made of "holland," which I'm guessing is a high-quality linen--that's a shilling, too. Whoa, that's an expensive handkerchief. The fabric itself must've been valuable. And then the pocket itself is a whopping two shillings. I notice they didn't even give the value of the scissors...were they cheaper than the fabric items? Maybe I can put my librarian-brain to work when I'm more awake and do a little research about this, but what emerges here, as far as I can tell, is a picture of costs and values which are totally different from what we experience now. For me, at any rate, that seems intimately connected with who makes our clothes, the conditions under which they're made, and how the cost of items affects our ability to consume.

Would you credit it?

2009-08-21T10:37:00.003-04:00

I finished something!

That's the Triangles within Triangles shawl from Heartstrings Fiber Arts. It was a great knit, very well-written, very straightforward, nice elegant pattern, too. The finished shawl as written is absolutely gigantic; I had to fold it in half to block it, which believe me was no picnic. I had one of my Patented Blocking Meltdowns halfway through and had to walk away. Gosh, I hate blocking.

But it's huge, anyway: the side points, when the shawl's draped over my shoulders, go all the way down to my knees. Seriously. It's going to be a cold-weather item for sure. I will definitely knit this again someday and would recommend it to others; it would be great knit up in laceweight on smaller needles to produce a shawlette (or you might even get a regular-sized shawl at that size since the original is so huge).

The yarn? Why, that's fingering weight superwash Merino from (ahem) Laughing Rat Studio, naturally. *grin* In "House Finch," which I tend to dye up somewhat differently these days.

My life at the moment

2009-07-21T21:29:00.001-04:00

KEATON GOING TO THE MOON BRB
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

What I've been up to, speed edition

2009-07-06T14:25:00.000-04:00

SAVE OHIO LIBRARIES

2009-06-22T15:07:00.002-04:00

Are you from Ohio? You can help, but there's not a moment to lose!

This link explains the sudden, last-minute proposed budget cuts to Ohio's library fund, and lists who to call. If you're not in Columbus, you may need to look up your own state reps to contact them, but the Governor and anyone on the actual committee are fair game regardless of your location.

Never called an elected official before? Nervous? It's okay. The good news is that even I was able to do it! Here's what to say:

"Hi, my name is [state your name!], and I'm an Ohio voter. I'm calling because I'm concerned about the proposed cuts in library funding, and I wanted to register my dissent."

For the most part, the receptionists/assistants will stop you there; they don't want to hear about why, and I'm pretty sure they're getting a lot of calls. The woman at the Governor's office--the Governor being the one who pulled this--sounded especially hassled. All of them have promised to note the call, which is the only thing one can hope for.

Save Ohio's libraries!

Just look at this mess

2009-06-07T14:05:00.001-04:00

Just look at this mess
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

I forsee Andean plying in my future. ARGH.

Meet Emma

2009-06-05T20:37:00.005-04:00

Yes, I named her after Emma Goldman. No, the Fricke still doesn't have a name; after working with it so long without naming it, it seems a little arrogant to suddenly slap a name on it now, after it's developed its own personality, after we've built a relationship.

Yes, I'm funny about my tools.

I wouldn't name the Ladies, for instance--the little white rats in my userpic--because I hadn't named them when they were young. I couldn't tell them apart then, and by the time they'd gotten older and more distinguishable, they were all their own unique little individuals, and it seemed the height of arrogance to suddenly tell them what their names were. Accordingly, I called them Large, Big, Medium-Sized, and Small Girl, respectively. We had a very respectful relationship, me and those rats.

At any rate, me and the Fricke still have a love thing going on. I felt so guilty purchasing another wheel, but no, nobody can replace the Fricke in my mind. It's so loyal, so practical, so handsome, so clean-limbed. It's a great wheel. It can't help it if its wheel is made of wood laminate. It's still a wonderful piece of equipment and it does whatever I ask it to. Could a person ask for anything more in a companion?

The Ashford Traditional--Emma--is already stained a gorgeous color, has only two ratios, which will be an interesting challenge, is in working order...what else to say about it? It's beautiful; it's functional; I put her together in one evening, more or less. I just dove in and did it, and learned a lot in the process. It was a great experience. I put the Fricke together, too, and never regretted an instant of it. It was so important to learning how the wheel would work when I spun.

Emma Goldman wanted beauty and justice; she wanted, to borrow another Labor phrase, bread and roses too. A lot of people in the movement criticized her for that, criticized her bitterly, but it was a cornerstone of her lifelong struggle for women's and workers' rights that the poor and disenfranchised not only had a right to beauty, but needed it--that we all need it. Although Emma-the-wheel is a piece of equipment, a means of production (which Discover Card could seize any minute if I don't get crackin' on payin' her off, already), she also represents my hungering for truth and beauty as I struggle against my own set of troubles, and against the injustices of a society that hasn't quite gotten it yet.

Is it time already

2009-06-04T08:33:00.003-04:00

The Tweed Baby Blanket looks like something it might be easy to knit up as a lap blanket or house shoulder-shawl for someone for Christmas.

And maybe it is time to think of that, because I normally don't think of Christmas stuff until November, and look what happens.

I've heard that people get really up in arms if you don't post a photo in every blog post. Silly me, I was thinking that substance counted as much as pretty! So OK, here's a photo. It's not of knitting, though.

Hey! A Treasury!

2009-06-01T20:59:00.001-04:00

Please, check it out! Treasuries are good for two days.

How did I, The Laughing Rat, get an actual Treasury, one of the most coveted things in the history of the world ever, right up there with gold, nutmeg, and a cure for impotence?* Through this frabjous countdown timer. Seriously, I cannot say enough good things about this kickass website.

So go and peek! It's all sky-themed!

*List of coveted things may vary depending on sex of reader.

Goodbye fleece, hello roving

2009-06-01T18:11:00.002-04:00

Well, I finally snapped and sent the brown Merino fleece to Pufpaff Fiber Mill. I've never tried them before, but have always heard great things about them, and their prices are excellent. They're so excellent that I'm afraid I misunderstood something, like that there's a 20 lb. minimum or something like that. I hope not, because that fleece is in the mail.

I have also amused myself today with the literary stylings of Smoove B, ladies' man extraordinaire. I would like to advise the reader that although there is only an occasional minor swear word in Smoove's writings, he uses somewhat explicit imagery and word choices. I tend to forget about Smoove for long stretches of time, then will stumble across him on TheOnion.com and spend an afternoon reading all the old articles. Oh, the hilarity.

The Noro socks are killing my hands--I'm thinking of picking up something else to work on daily, because I have to go so slow on the socks. It's the Noro sock yarn that's doing it. It's just too sticky, too thick and thin. The socks are pretty, but I doubt I'll being making them again.

Slowly spinning

2009-05-28T11:35:00.003-04:00

Well, like a crazy-ass I bought a new wheel yesterday from the EBays. It's a used Ashford Traditional, very beautiful, with the new graphite bearings but older-style flyer with only two ratios. I think it will be a nice wheel; hopefully I'll be able to figure out how to reassemble it.

In the meanwhile, I'm getting very little spinning done once again, but it's less because I dread it (although there's an element of that) and more because I just don't seem to have time. I had an afternoon off yesterday, in fact, but in my bits of down time between skeining laceweight yarn, baking a pie, doing laundry, cleaning the rats' cage, and generally trying to keep things from falling apart, I really was not inclined to spin. I was sweaty; my hands and arms hurt; I was tired; I knew I'd only have a few minutes before leaping back up to do something else. That's just not how I like to work.

So I've been progressing very slowly on the green Merino project:

I do have the other half of the fiber about halfway spun, so that's all right. We'll see what happens.

Leland; socks

2009-05-25T19:14:00.002-04:00

*sigh* Oh, cat.

I'm doing internal battle today over whether or not I get a second wheel. It's one I fell in love with all of a sudden, but I'm not sure if my raging desire to own it comes from the fact that it's in a time-limited sale (auction) and that I honestly can't afford it, or whether it really is Meant To Be and I should totally go with this and it will just work out somehow. Honestly, finagling buying this gorgeous thing would probably be extremely foolish and irresponsible. Mmm, makes it more tempting, huh?

So I'm really tempted to do something else, too: make a pair of socks and put them up on Etsy. Now here's the deal: I don't think knitted stuff probably sells real well on there unless it's incredibly trendy, and honestly, I don't do trendy. Kind of like handspun yarn--the trendy art-yarn stuff sells, but solid old-skool craftsmanship, not as much. Well, what're you gonna do? But see, I've seen some handknitters and other folks really underselling on there, and more than that, I want to get a point across to the folks who don't make stuff, and who think that handmade stuff should be dirt-cheap. I've never understood what the deal is with that, you know? So I wouldn't expect anything knitted to sell, but I'd be more making a point than anything else.

"What's your point, Rat?" you say. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I'd be timing my work so as to keep track of my hours spent, then pricing the sock according to a living wage for those hours. Well, $12/hour, which is barely a living wage these days and is still far undercutting what professional skilled laborers make (and knitting is totally skilled labor). But still, I suspect the final price would be absolutely shocking, and I guess that's the point: that this stuff is valuable, is worth something.

It might be an interesting project to do, especially if I document it as I go along (like in a blog, though whether this one or the biz blog I'm not sure) and maybe do supplemental research about handcrafts, wages, sweat shop labor, and some other related issues that go along with the whole subject. I went hog-wild on those people at the Treehugger blog a few months ago, for instance, because they were shilling what was pretty clearly one step above sweatshop labor as "handmade." And yeah, it was handmade--by human beings, yes, but human beings working for a substandard wage. The company in question didn't even dare to claim its stuff was Fair Trade or any of that, but folks like Treehugger were just eating it up, saying it was handmade, that it was art (the workers were working according to prescribed patterns dictated by their masters--hardly "art"), disregarding the hinkiness of a Canadian company exploiting overseas workers and undoubtedly making a vast profit in the process.

Er, I got a bit tangential there, but really, this stuff is important to me, and I think this idea I've been playing with sort of interfaces with the whole subject in interesting ways.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself

2009-05-24T22:53:00.004-04:00

For someone who's not reading magazines, books, or blogs because they fill her with Dread of Art-Making, I sure have bought a lot of reading material and skimmed a lot of blogs lately. Well, some blogs. The 3000-post backlog in my feed aggregator is pretty daunting.

But I truly did get the most recent Spin-Off, and today, while I had a coupon, I got the Intentional Spinner book. I haven't looked closely at either yet for fear of giving myself the screaming meemies, but they're here. I also acquired The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook used from someone who was destashing--wanted it for years, but never shelled out for it, and managed to get it at a discount off the cover price while putting the money directly into another individual's hands. Win-win.

I have high hopes of organizing much of my stash tomorrow, but I'm not sure it'll happen. I also need to cook food for the next week or two's lunches (mattar paneer, which is time consuming), as well as dye things, skein some laceweight, and make fudge. I'm going to be very busy.

The Noro sock

2009-05-22T23:33:00.002-04:00

I love the look of this, but the yarn is killing me. Knock wood, no breakages yet, but it's alternately perfect or too thick for my needles, so knitting this sock has really been hurting my hands. I've been picking it up perhaps once a week, usually while out at the tea shop--although given how little I've knitted in the last year, once a week is practically 100% focus.

Love that pink, too bad it hasn't shown up yet so far in the actual knitting. Noro is so weird.

Malabrigo Silky Merino...

2009-05-15T16:40:00.002-04:00

...or whatever it is, the DK weight stuff. Making a Turn A Square hat with this: Y/N?

I'm thinking Y. Technically Noro Kureyon is called worsted, but who are they kidding? It's usually a lot closer to DK. I think I can do this.

EDIT 5-22-09: apparently there's a Forest Canopy cowl that would be perfect for this yarn. Problem solved!

Reading, not reading

2009-05-14T08:39:00.003-04:00

In re: my remarks from the other day about not reading fiber magazines and why, the same has applied to blogs lately as well. This is a shame, because there's a lot of blogs I follow (or, in this case, don't follow), and some of the people I know personally.

I've always had trouble with making contact through blogs, mostly because the commenting part is really difficult for me. Over the years, I've had a lot of people misunderstand how I phrase things, and I'm afraid of sounding a certain way or putting things rudely without meaning to. I rarely intend to be snarky (I mean, on other people's fiber blogs--on my personal blog, I'm incredibly snarky), but I'm so afraid things will come out badly that I tend to go the opposite direction in order to compensate, and be so bland that what I say has no content at all. And then the pressure gets to be too much, so I stop reading for a while. I've accidentally dropped several acquaintances this way.

This time around, pressure was a factor too. I'd see other people's knitting and spinning and make inevitable comparisons between their quality and mine, or (worse) their productivity and mine. I've already talked about how slowly I work and why that is, so I won't go into it again now, but it's definitely an emotionally-charged issue for me. So once again I've been staying away from the fiber blogs, and it's probably done me a lot of good craft-wise, letting me start to clear my head a little and stuff, but it's once again lost me some connection with people whom I really liked.

That's all, really--nothing much else to say about it, just that it's a tangled little problem and I'll have to figure out what feels right, and what benefits outweigh what consequences. I'd like to start poking around the fiber blogs again, seeing what people are up to and generally being pleased to know folks.

Spring Forward socks

2009-05-09T13:14:00.003-04:00

I just now completed a nice little pair of socks, a gift for a friend. They're the Spring Forward socks from over at Knitty. I really liked this pattern; it was well-written and clear, the chart was intelligible, and the way the stitches were handled over the gusset was pretty slick--it took some adjusting for the writer to get the foot to work while still letting the lace pattern look like it ought to.

The sock is pretty narrow; I have, I'd say, medium-sized ankles and calves and it was pretty tight on me. It fit okay, but the lace pattern looks less attractive when it's stretched out. On a woman with slender ankles, it will be fine. If you go to the pattern page linked above, you can see that the socks are barely snug on the wearer in the first pic; the sock is attractive and comfortable-looking. If I make these for myself one day--and I'm considering that, because the pattern was an enjoyable knit--I might fiddle with the lace pattern a bit--throw in an extra YO, or an extra spacer stitch in between reps, or something like that. As it is, I used my trademark extra heel rows and picked up every stitch on the heel flap (both of which I do regularly anyway) to create extra room in the heel/ankle area, which should increase the comfort and wearability of the sock for the recipient. She tried the first one on and pronounced it "perfect," so I hope it is so.

An abjuration of knitting magazines

2009-05-08T09:22:00.005-04:00

Actually, I have no real problem with knitting and spinning magazines in principle. They're a wonderful way for people to share knowledge and open up new horizons in craft for each other, and a possible, if not completely satisfying, substitute for community for those craftspersons who are somehow isolated or unable to make contact in person.

For me, though, they were part of the whip, the goad, with which I hurt myself whenever I worked in my craft. They were part of what drove me to be perfect, and to be bitterly unhappy when I was not. They weren't the cause of it, but they were a trigger; they helped perpetuate the problem. So for now, I reject the craft magazines; I love the pictures, I love the articles, but there's something unwholesome about how I feel when I read them, a sense of needing to do more, to do better, to work constantly, to be perfect, which actually saps my energy rather than inspires me.

This is not to say that I have spontaneously begun knitting and spinning again after months of being almost terrified to do so, or feeling exhausted and self-loathing at the very thought of it, but it does mean I feel a little less pressured, a little less driven. Although it's contradictory, this has allowed me to actually work more than I have for months. I hesitate even to discuss what I've been doing (which begs the question of what this blog is really about, if not to share my finished items when I have any), because I don't particularly want to make my craft all about what I've done when I'm just now starting to re-shape how I work with it. If that seems like another conundrum--after all, again, what is a craft for if not to do--that's because it is. I'm not sure what else to say, or how to think about it.

The decision to work or not, to craft or not, is a difficult one for me right now. I feel like it's very portentous, like a lot depends on it. I feel alternately like I should be crafting, and like I shouldn't be. I'm not sure what I really want, except for, probably, to not feel crappy. This is important. I nearly said "to make things, but not feel crappy," but I'm not sure that even that much is true. I just don't want to feel crappy. I think until I get to the bottom of what I'm feeling around craft work--and possibly, even after that--I'll never be really free to just sit down and knit something, or spin yarn, or even dye. Yes, it was very hard to dye for a while, too, although there's nothing like pretty colors in the dyepot and income showing up to make a person feel like working with dye again. Still, until there's some personal understanding about this, I'll probably feel like my smallest choices in the matter could make or break me--because, let's face it, they have had that power in the recent and not-so-recent past. I used to wish it wasn't like this, but for right now I feel sort of resigned about it all.

OK, no. I really do wish I could just sit down and knit for hours, like I used to, perfectly happily. But I can't. Oh well.

What am I actually doing

2009-03-18T20:36:00.003-04:00

Right now, watching "Vampyr" and drinking a lot of sencha.

Incidentally, that appears to be the new Criterion edition of "Vampyr," which is nice and all, but it's a pretty grotesque copyright violation to slap it up on the YouTubes, so enjoy it while you can before it gets taken down. It's part one of several.

Why is it a copyright violation when the film is an old one? Well, even assuming the original film is out of copyright, which I think it is actually, the restoration work done on it is not. True! This sounds piddly, but film restoration costs mucho bucks and requires serious skill. I'm not talking about so-called "remastering," which sounds awesome but is really just a fancy-sounding term for "we took this off film stock and put it into a digital medium." Sometimes films are cleaned up during remastering, but honestly, it's just not the same as restoration.

So, yeah. In order to fund these projects, which are of considerable value to humankind etc. (at least in the cultural department), Criterion, Kino, Image, and other distributors have to be able to make money on them. Plus, as a creative type myself, I'm all in favor of people getting credit for their work 'n stuff. So.

At any rate, none of that has to do with knitting, except tangentially, but this is what's happening here right now, and it's just possible that somebody who's never seen "Vampyr" before might really enjoy watching this eerie, gorgeous little movie.

Oh lord, look at my dumb cat

2009-03-07T23:42:00.003-05:00

I sound SO squeaky and nasal. Oh well.

Not much actual knitting is occurring, sadly. I wish I wanted to knit more. I'm getting that big old "fear of failure" thing when I contemplate knitting these days.

So I knitted anyway

2009-01-11T01:15:00.003-05:00

But slowly, because hurting my wrist more is just plain stupid. Of course I hurt it more anyway, doing knitting plus a variety of other things; I always do. It's recovering, still.

I'm actually up to the decreases on this, or thereabouts. I didn't work on it any more tonight, choosing instead to spin and photograph my recent yarn acquisitions and put them on the Ravelries. I'm slowly getting the hang of it, although I'm still super intimidated by the groups and forums. I did decide to start a Laughing Rat Studio group, and grabbed some ad space for February, so that's kinda nifty. But this is the first stash I've put on there, just about.

I love the orange with that blue, but I don't know if I'll use enough of the yarn in this hat to get those two knitted near each other. I hope so. I might make a third Turn A Square hat, out of what's left from this one and the one I have planned.

I actually bought yarn today rather than making it or waiting for it to appear. I petted some Malabrigo Silky Merino and it came home with me:

I reckon I can't post my whole stash here, so I'll stop. It's on Ravelry, for those of you who are part of that. I really don't like it when people say "Ooo, go to Ravelry to see X," because for ages I either wasn't on Ravelry or didn't care to use it, so I disliked how excluding it felt. In this case, though, it's sort of ridiculous to show ALL MY STUFF (or even just the small selection I uploaded tonight), so, you know, what're you gonna do?

The hat's nice; it's a good straightforward project and I can't wait to see how the colors keep developing. I'm not as thrilled with the mix of colors right now, but I sort of feel like it's cheating to cut sections out of Kureyon when they don't do what I want them to do. I feel like part of Kureyon is that it's going to surprise the heck out of me, that I don't know what all is really in there the first time I use a color, and that being exposed to someone else's very different ideas of what goes together is part of the whole Noro thing.

As I may have mentioned previously, I decided to use two colors of Kureyon rather than one solid, one Kureyon; I also am alternating every two rows; in addition to that, and partly because of it, I decided to throw jogless joins out the window. Honestly, I'm making sure the join is more or less at the back of the head, and I just don't care for once if it's jogless or not. No one will notice in all that riot of color. I shifted the decreases to keep the join at the back, and to avoid doing the decreases on either side of a DPN. Since the hat is a circle and the number of stitches between the decreases is still the same, I fail to understand how this could be a problem.

I like that Jared Flood essentially wrote a pattern that could be used more as a formula, but I think he used color and the arrangement and style of the decreases in a way that was truly creative and resulted in a unique finished item. Although Turn A Square is easy to adapt in a variety of ways, it's not a generic pattern or an unvention.

There's way too many irons in the fire right now to cover them all, so I'll close with a shot of some recently finished and dyed handspun--the last of the Border Leicester locks, 185 yards or so, running from sport to worsted. Yeah, I'm scared to death I won't be on-gauge enough as I spin for that sweater...

OK, one more--here's the first bobbin for the sweater project, not that I've, like, gotten any further than this. It takes forever to drumcard.

It might not look it, but it's incredibly soft and lofty when it's relaxed.

flail

2009-01-05T09:38:00.003-05:00

Well, this is dumb: I started to weigh fiber to dye, but my scale decided to keel over. I started to knit a new hat, but my wrist went kaput and now it hurts to turn it, much less to knit(or pick up library books). Oh, and spinning's out too.

This is just like when I start a new exercise regime and immediately get ill!

Say whut

2009-01-03T23:37:00.004-05:00

I can't believe I didn't knitblog this! I not only finished Grandma's hat in time for Christmas, but I got her clunky but serviceable mitts done in time for New Year's. The hat is the more spectacular (relatively speaking) of the two, so here's a pic:

This is my first non-sock, non-lace finished object in a long time. In fact, it's only my second hat. As I explained in the previous post how scary it is, to me, to try new things and encounter failure, the creation of this set was rather fraught and stressful. But it's done, and I even adapted clever crown decreases from another hat and made them work in this one! Yay pretty crown!

The original intent had been to make the Lacunae set from Knitspot, but that didn't work out, so I based my numbers off that pattern and did simple 2 x 2 ribbed accessories instead.

Now I'm working on my first Turn A Square hat, from Jared Flood's pattern (Brooklyntweed--find it on the Ravelry!). True to form I, 1: Changed up the yarn, and B: Want it to be in crazy garish colors, so I decided to go with two very different colors of Kureyon rather than alternating a single color of Kureyon with a solid. I'm a few stripes in and really like the effect. I'll probably wind up giving the hat to someone--I'm not sure. The someone may choose the other hat I aim to make with the same methods but a different contrasting color yarn.

No pics yet because setting up the light table is a real pain.

The yarn is knit at a pretty tight gauge on this one, and it's hurting my hands a little. This seems to be something I've encountered before with Kureyon, probably too because it's a "sticky" yarn. I will leave you with this description of the problem, extracted from an AIM conversation:

giantsumatranrat: wow, this hat is shaping up to be really fabulous.
giantsumatranrat: the noro's a bit hard on the hands at this gauge.
giantsumatranrat: in a superhumanly stupidly hilarious move, i typed "nads" at first.
giantsumatranrat: that noro--it's so hard on the nads.
[my pal]: NORO
[my pal]: UR DOING IT WRONG

Kicking back

2008-12-29T21:04:00.002-05:00

I am drinking rum-laced tea and eating homemade cookies tonight (I may have just about perfected my cookie recipe...), so not much is happening here. You could even say I am avoiding doing anything, or at least I would say so. Previous experience has taught me that when I think I'm being a slacker, other people are often amazed at all the stuff I'm getting done. I find it confusing.

Anyway, I am doing something constructive right now other than digesting. I am washing this:

I'm not sure how much there was total, but it's wool from Lee, my excellent friend up in Canada. I strongly suspect it's from the sheep she raised this year. I don't remember what she said about the breed(s) these sheep were, and maybe she wasn't even sure. I think she mentioned Suffolk at one point, but the wool from these is a lot nicer than people usually say Suffolk is. It reminds me a lot of the Romney I had, you know, the beautiful fleece that wound up having scurf in it. *sob* Anyway, I'd guess there's at least a pound, maybe more. I've been washing it with two colors at a time in the sink, and the white separately in the smaller bathroom sink. I'm almost done.

Washing fleece isn't really hard; it's just something you have to pay attention to. Maybe I should have waited; my Noro sweater (my only sweater, actually) is on the drying rack right now, because, wait for it, some twit drove by me while I was walking down High Street the other day and hurled a full cup of icewater right at my bosom while I happened to be wearing that sweater. Wow, violence against women sure is endemic in our society. Geez. So needless to say even though my clothes didn't smell like anything objectionable, I certainly washed my sweater after that. Not taking any chances with that one. Ugh.

Where is this going...oh yes. I'm not a very good knitter, actually, you know. I can knit socks, and I knit lace passably well if I get over my fear of actually knitting in the first place, but I'm really not very experienced at anything else and I have a huge creativity block that keeps me from being very daring. There's this crappy conditioning I have from when I was young, see, that says that any mistake is failure and that failure makes me a bad person, and then there's, well...hey, this is awful personal...there's this depression thing on top of that.

That is probably buried so far under a rambling, personal post that no one will notice it, but yes, I has a depression. I don't particularly want to talk about the details since I've done so a great deal over the last few years, to close friends, therapists, and in a blog that's a lot more locked-down than this one. This isn't really that kind of blog, anyway. But the point is that wow, depression is a real mind-killer, it really screws with my creativity, and yet creativity--making beauty come into the world--is one of the few things that really makes me feel like a good and valid person. Essentially, escaping depression requires action on the part of the sufferer, but the nature of the illness itself is that any action you take, even apparently healthful ones, risk feeding the depression and causing amazing backlash.

Well. I had wanted to post about this several weeks ago, when I locked myself into knitting and spinning that gorgeous sweater from ChicKnits. I got my usual writer's block, though, the feeling that whatever I was posting was just TOO DUMB, and let it go. So it's surprising us all by coming up now! My point originally was that it might be nice to have a support group of sorts, online, for people in this situation. The idea wouldn't be to goad each other to "just feel better" (absolute poison to someone suffering depression--just makes them feel guilty for feeling horrible!) or to finish this or that or to talk about the nuts and bolts of how bad we feel. I envision something, just a way to check in on a regular basis and know that other people in the same boat are out there, listening and not judging. Like: "I knitted three rows today, but had to stop," or "Today I finished a painting!" or "Started to make a pot, but couldn't, so just played with the clay instead." The sorts of things that don't have a goal, maybe don't even have standards, but just allow us to be there and be supported in that. You know?

Gosh, it's sad that I had to drink spiked tea before I could get this post out. Hey, what's that about? And I applaud anyone who's read this far. :) I'm probably going to knit a little while before going to bed tonight, and maybe listen to some Bessie Smith--I've been hearing "Just Me and My Gin" in my head for hours. What fun she is...and since Amazon.com is having a mad-crazy DVD sale this week, I bought Mae West in "She Done Him Wrong" for a crazy-cheap $6.50 today (not to mention the original "Scarface," but that's not quite the same thing). I have an abundance of sassy women here and on the way, basically. That group thing, that support group--I'll think about that. I wonder if there would be any response, or if it would be a support group of one?

More later as I start working with the gorgeous fleece shown above and as I finish some more late gifts. Lee also sent me TWO SKEINS of the elusive Fleece Artist yarn, too, which is apparently much easier to get in Canadia Land than it is here. I have one that will definitely be socks (it's got mohair and nylon in it), and one skein of Sea Wool that I feel is just too tender for footwear and will probably become a lace cowl of more-or-less my own invention. Oh no, daring knitting! Will it backlash and send me into a cookie-devouring funk? Stay tuned! :-P

I forgot.

2008-12-09T09:57:00.002-05:00

I did. I forgot to take a picture of Beth's "Monkey" socks once I got them done. For shame. I did photograph the Manos scarf after it was bound off:

And I won't say who that's going to, but I will say that it looks like it will be a knitting Christmas. Surprising.

I have begun "Spring Forward" socks and am finding the pattern enjoyable, although I worry a little about the small circumference. I understand that adding another repeat would make the socks unbearably large, but it may turn out that they are too small to be comfortable on their intended recipient. I intend to have the first one done by the weekend so I can ask her to try them on. Not much of a surprise I suppose, but it's better this way.

Well now I've done it!

2008-12-09T09:49:00.003-05:00

I have publicly, or rather, to more than myself, committed to make the Cassidy sweater from Chicknits. That is not such a big deal, but I've committed to making it from handspun Corriedale. Even that is not quite so awful, but I've specifically committed to using handspun from a fleece I've processed myself. To the pattern designer.

Well, $&%)#.

Actually, I'm sort of glad, because I've been dithering about it for a month and now will maybe get started on it. I just don't know where I will find the time, fortitude, or energy. More about that in another post; I don't want to mix the two subjects. For now, for this post, I'm a little bit excited, and a little bit nervous, about committing myself to such a project.

Patterns of interest

2008-12-07T12:58:00.001-05:00

Fritzl's patterns caught my attention this weekend because I saw that she's having a sale. I'm interested in what indie pattern designers are producing, so I headed on over to her shop and was pleasantly surprised. These look like good solid sock patterns, attractive and well planned. The construction is apparently pretty straightforward: top down, with a heel flap and gusset. I honestly find that a relief after being inundated with patterns that are all about wacky construction for its own sake; I can't abide toe-up sock patterns and can't make them fit me because there's just no room in the heel/ankle area. No, give me the solid, architectural structure of a heel-flap sock every time.

Anyway, head on over before 9 PM tonight and you'll get the patterns at a discount, and you'll be supporting an indie pattern designer, too.

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

2008-11-27T00:54:00.002-05:00

Bear with me, I'm feeling playful.

This song and dance routine puts me in tears of laughter every time I see it. The song itself is one I need to hear whenever I feel like the Man is getting me down--playful, willful, rebellious, it's everything I need when I'm feeling oppressed, yo. And if you've never watched the Marxes, this might well be a nice introduction for you. The entire movie is available on YouTube, in bits, from the same fellow that was kind enough to upload this one.

That way lies madness

2008-11-12T08:25:00.003-05:00

Well, I pestered the Handpreparedfibers group with questions about flick-carding that new fleece: was it reasonable to flick-card enough for a whole sweater? Do items spun in the grease need different care than items spun from scoured wool? Etc. I watched videos (and noted that one video specified freshly-shorn fleece for in-the-grease spinning; this Corriedale fleece was shorn in April), read websites, and decided that I would give it a try.

Once I got the locks out and started flicking them, it was obvious that they were stickier than I'd thought. Drafting them was difficult, the finished yarn sample uneven and nubbly. As much as I hated to throw out four nice locks, they weren't any use to me once carded, so into the trash the whole mess went. Perhaps another day, with another fleece. This one, I'll wash like usual and drum-card. Pity, but I think the spinning process will be much nicer this way.

Common experience, part II

2008-11-07T17:10:00.003-05:00

Here we have a sweet and funny little painting by Gustave Courbet of a spinner who has fallen asleep at the wheel. The accoutrements of her work drew questions on the Handpreparedfibers e-list, namely why there was a little pot attached to the spinning wheel. In the video I posted earlier (which someone else also posted to the group), you can see the flax-spinner spitting on her fiber as she spins it, so the discussions about the painting and the video became sort of wound together into a conversation about wetting the fingers while flax-spinning.

For me, flax-spinning is still an unknown skill, but I knew about the wet-spinning rule long ago because I'm a reader of fairy tales. Here is "The Three Spinners," collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, from a translation that is long out of copyright and readily available online. I shared it with the e-group and it gave a few folks a good laugh.

The Three Spinners

THERE was once a girl who was idle and would not spin, and let her mother say what she would, she could not bring her to it. At last the mother was once so overcome with anger and impatience, that she beat her, on which the girl began to weep loudly. Now at this very moment the Queen drove by, and when she heard the weeping she stopped her carriage, went into the house and asked the mother why she was beating her daughter so that the cries could be heard out on the road? Then the woman was ashamed to reveal the laziness of her daughter and said, “I cannot get her to leave off spinning. She insists on spinning for ever and ever, and I am poor, and cannot procure the flax.” Then answered the Queen, “There is nothing that I like better to hear than spinning, and I am never happier than when the wheels are humming. Let me have your daughter with me in the palace, I have flax enough, and there she shall spin as much as she likes.” The mother was heartily satisfied with this, and the Queen took the girl with her. When they had arrived at the palace, she led her up into three rooms which were filled from the bottom to the top with the finest flax. “Now spin me this flax,” said she, “and when thou has done it, thou shalt have my eldest son for a husband, even if thou art poor. I care not for that, thy indefatigable industry is dowry enough.” The girl was secretly terrified, for she could not have spun the flax, no, not if she had lived till she was three hundred years old, and had sat at it every day from morning till night. When therefore she was alone, she began to weep, and sat thus for three days without moving a finger. On the third day came the Queen, and when she saw that nothing had been spun yet, she was surprised; but the girl excused herself by saying that she had not been able to begin because of her great distress at leaving her mother’s house. The Queen was satisfied with this, but said when she was going away, “To-morrow thou must begin to work."

When the girl was alone again, she did not know what to do, and in her distress went to the window. Then she saw three women coming towards her, the first of whom had a broad flat foot, the second had such a great underlip that it hung down over her chin, and the third had a broad thumb. They remained standing before the window, looked up, and asked the girl what was amiss with her? She complained of her trouble, and then they offered her their help and said, “If thou wilt invite us to the wedding, not be ashamed of us, and wilt call us thine aunts, and likewise wilt place us at thy table, we will spin up the flax for thee, and that in a very short time.” “With all my heart,” she replied, “do but come in and begin the work at once.” Then she let in the three strange women, and cleared a place in the first room, where they seated themselves and began their spinning. The one drew the thread and trod the wheel, the other wetted the thread, the third twisted it, and struck the table with her finger, and as often as she struck it, a skein of thread fell to the ground that was spun in the finest manner possible. The girl concealed the three spinners from the Queen, and showed her whenever she came the great quantity of spun thread, until the latter could not praise her enough. When the first room was empty she went to the second, and at last to the third, and that too was quickly cleared. Then the three women took leave and said to the girl, “Do not forget what thou has promised us,—it will make thy fortune.”

When the maiden showed the Queen the empty rooms, and the great heap of yarn, she gave orders for the wedding, and the bridegroom [1] rejoiced that he was to have such a clever and industrious wife, and praised her mightily. “I have three aunts,” said the girl, “and as they have been very kind to me, I should not like to forget them in my good fortune; allow me to invite them to the wedding, and let them sit with us at table.” The Queen and the bridegroom said, “Why should we not allow that?” Therefore when the feast began, the three women entered in strange apparel, and the bride said, “Welcome, dear aunts.” “Ah,” said the bridegroom, “how comest thou by these odious friends?” Thereupon he went to the one with the broad flat foot and said, “How do you come by such a broad foot?” “By treading,” she answered, “by treading.” Then the bridegroom went to the second, and said, “How do you come by your falling lip?” “By licking,” she answered, “by licking.” Then he asked the third, “How do you come by your broad thumb?” “By twisting the thread,” she answered, “by twisting the thread. On this the King’s son was alarmed and said, “Neither now nor ever shall my beautiful bride touch a spinning-wheel.” And thus she got rid of the hateful flax-spinning.

Note 1. Braütigam, betrothed. The old English brydguma had the same signification, and was only applied to a betrothed man, just as bryd, bride, was only applied to a betrothed woman.—TR.

Common experience

2008-11-07T08:10:00.003-05:00

I wish I understood what these ladies were saying. Their fiber-processing techniques are almost exactly like what any one of us would do here and now, although a few nuances are delightfully different and intriguing. Note that partway through they show the hackling (I think) and spinning of flax, rather than wool--the long, blondish fibers that are raked across the hackle on the floor are flax.

I'm moved by these ladies' generosity in allowing themselves to be filmed. They all seem very at ease and happy to be sharing their work with each other and with us. Since I don't understand their language, I can't tell whether they are re-enactors or whether this is part of their daily life; the film's title implies that the former is possible. Even if they aren't peasants in the historical sense of the word, even if they don't have to perform low-tech, high-labor tasks to get through daily life, it seems that life for them has not been as generous as it has been for most of us here in the U.S. I thought at first that these women were elderly, but I realized after watching closely that they were probably no more than 40 or 50, tops--but that most of them were missing some or all of their teeth, their faces were worn, they showed many signs of hard age. Somehow this makes their generosity seem more poignant to me. Is this respect on my part, or condescension? A hard question to answer.

Finally

2008-11-06T13:12:00.000-05:00

You know that grey, heavily-skirted, COATED Corriedale fleece on Etsy that I've been looking at for a couple months now? Yeah, I bought that.

No self-control at all, man. Just none. Wonder where I'm gonna store it?

Skeins

2008-11-03T08:37:00.002-05:00

I've been practicing new spinning techniques that I learned by watching Mabel Ross; so far I think the results are better than my earlier efforts, although I have a lot of trouble spinning slippery, fine wool like Merino thinly and evenly. A recent attempt to spin yarn for baby booties resulted in something much closer to worsted than sport weight, and was fairly uneven:

It is soft and very springy, though, which I like; previously I have tended to overspin Merino. I'm making progress.

I recently had a terrible, repulsive surprise in my fiber: a carpet beetle, or something like one. All the commercial stuff (for Laughing Rat Studio) is in plastic bins and is perfectly fine, but any of my personal fiber that was in my room and stored near the floor was at risk. After my bed was removed from the old place, I found what might have been the initial draw: a ball of undyed Merino/silk top that had fallen behind my bed, and was now full of the nasty little creatures. It went into the trash, of course. Anything else that seemed to be in danger went into the freezer for a week and then received a good airing; I found an insect in one of the balls of hand-combed Border Leicester I'd painstakingly prepared, then foolishly stored in an open basket on the floor. I tossed that particular parcel of top and decided to spin the rest, since I could see no bugs in it; if bugs turned up during spinning, I'd know to just scrap the project, but if no bugs were visible, I knew that the dyeing process would cook the bejeezus out of any baddies left in the fiber. Perhaps this sounds icky, but bear in mind I'd spent a really, really long time with my Viking combs working this fiber into something I could use. I wasn't about to sacrifice those hours needlessly!

Well, I think the results speak for themselves.

I am kinda pleased with myself. This is actually the first skein I spun using the new techniques the whole time. It's also the largest skein I've spun with hand-combed fiber. I'm not very accustomed to such long-stapled wool, and occasionally that caused me some problems; I'm maybe not the world's best comber yet, either. I notice that there's a bit of a halo around the yarn, which seems odd given that I spun it strictly worsted-style the whole way through. I don't particularly mind, but it seems strange.

I've been puzzling over what to make from this; my initial thought was a hat. There's 193 yards of it, a heavy worsted weight. A stylish friend thinks it would be better used as the edging for a black scarf, which is an appealing idea; I'd have to spin enough for a scarf, though, which appeals less. We shall see.

Recovering from the Move, Part II

2008-10-19T00:39:00.002-04:00

Life is returning to normal for me. Correction: I am trying to create a new pattern for my life, a happier, healthier pattern, a new normal. So far I'm doing okay. I mean, I already got most of my stuff unpacked and put away--a big difference from the last two years right there.

There are so many great things about having your own apartment rather than sharing a large house. For one, you can cook in the nude, if necessary. This isn't something I actively seek to do, but occasionally I get distracted while getting dressed in the morning and think, "Damn, I really need to get the oatmeal started." Well, now I can give in to that whim without a care in the world, because there's only two windows and I've got the blinds down on both of 'em, and there's no way in hell anyone else is going to see me in here because I'm the only one in the place.

Cooking, primarily while clothed, has been a major activity of the last day or so. The ability to cook a proper meal in my kitchen is, for me, one of the most important parts of becoming accustomed to a new place. So much needs to happen, so much needs to be unpacked, washed, and put away, before something so simple can be accomplished. Sure, I ate food all week, plenty of it, and some of it was even cooked, but it would have been difficult to prepare multi-stage dishes or otherwise really let fly and cook. On Saturday I did both: I finished unpacking the kitchen items, although some of my Pyrex baking pans are still filthy with dust and need to be washed and put away, and I cooked like a fiend and laid up food for the next few days. After a fruitful visit to the fancy supermarket, I have even more amazing things to prepare over the next couple of days, too. The prospect is exciting.

I liked the patience required to make butternut squash soup, something I have been making for years now, but which I made for the first time without a recipe on Saturday. The recipe I use creates a soup that has a lot of flavors and is very satisfying to the palate. The other dish I cooked, a pasta sauce (and, later, pasta), is special to me because I am notoriously bad at creating pasta sauces. My father gave me a recipe for one a year or two ago, but I did not have all the ingredients it mentioned, so I stuck to what I knew ("Tomato pasta sauce has onion and garlic in it!") and expanded from that. The results are very pleasaing, so I'm pretty proud of myself. Recipes for both dishes will appear at the end of this post.

Drying fleeces and dyed yarn items has been another thing on my mind lately. The air vents in this apartment are all in the ceiling rather than the floor, so I can't set a drying rack above a heat vent to dry my yarns in the winter, like I did back at the house. There's no porch or balcony here, no way to safely dry my yarns outside, so summertime drying has to change too. It's been very worrisome to me. Last week I washed some fleece and although I turned it frequently as it dried and tried to place it in well-ventilated areas, it took days and days to get fully dry. Today, however, after unpacking so much stuff, I was able to free up the space just beneath the living-room vent, and placed a batch of wet fleece there. (I keep the fan on almost all the time to dampen any noise and keep air circulating in here.) It's only been a few hours, but the fleece is considerably dryer than it was earlier, a marked difference. This bodes well.

I'd like to envision my making this place work for me, rather than the restrictions inherent in my new home forcing me to give in and stop all the things I like best. Moving to such a tiny place, such a different place than I've previously known, has made me fearful that the life I'd built for myself would no longer be sustainable here. What I am trying to do now is take the good parts of that life and make them even better, while turning my new apartment into a true living-and-working space. I think we call that "home."

-----------------------

Recipes

Butternut Squash Soup
(makes four to six servings)

2 butternut squash
3 C chicken stock
1 C sliced leeks
3 T butter
1/4 C heavy cream
2 T real maple syrup
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and ground white pepper [Whatever. I used, and have always used, black pepper.]
Garnish: creme fraiche or sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the stem end from each squash. Peel and cut into medium-sized pieces, then set aside.

Cut the bulb sections of the squashes in half and scoop out the seeds. Rub half the butter on the fleshy side of the halves, and drizzle with a little of the syrup. Roast squash [I assumed this meant flesh side up] on a foil-lined baking sheet until soft, about 1 hour. Scoop roasted flesh out of the shell.

In a large pot, melt the remaining butter. Add the leeks and saute until soft. Add diced squash, roasted squash, and chicken stock. Cook for about 30 minutes (or until diced squash is tender).

Add heavy cream and remaining syrup. Season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Puree in blender until smooth.

Recipe courtesy of Thomas Smith of the Seven Stars Restaurant, Worthington, Ohio.

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Tomato-based pasta sauce

Ingredients:
1 can fire-roasted crushed tomatoes (what brand? I can't remember. It's that brand with the fire-roasted tomatoes.)
3 cloves garlic, pressed or minced, whatever
1/4 onion (I used a big onion), diced
Olive oil, lots
Basil, thyme, marjoram, that crushed red flake pepper, black pepper, a small bay leaf
Balsamic vinegar, enough to splash a bit in the pot
Natural brown sugar (turbinado sugar), a very, very small amount

Saute the onion and garlic in some olive oil in the bottom of a medium saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat until onion is transparent. Add the tomatoes, stir, bring the heat up to medium. Add a very generous pinch of basil, with smaller amounts of thyme and marjoram. I reckon you could add oregano too. I like to crush the dried herbs a little with my fingers before I add them. Add a very healthy amount of black pepper, and a somewhat more conservative (depending on your tastes) amount of the red flake pepper. Toss in the bay leaf. Add your splash of balsamic (not a glug, not a drizzle, you know?) and shake a very small amount of the sugar into the pot. I didn't measure it, but I reckon it was about a teaspoon of it. You could probably use white sugar, but I figured that, just like with the vinegar, the more complex the flavors in the ingredients, the better the sauce would taste.

Cover and cook on low heat for a good while--say an hour--stirring occasionally. I then cooked it for a little while with the lid off, to thicken it up a bit. You could probably let it cool and puree it in the blender; I left mine chunky, and it was nice that way too. This is not the world's most greatest awesomest pasta sauce, but it is really tasty, very wholesome, and easy and fun to throw together. It will make you feel awesome to know that you made your own pasta sauce, too.

Recovering from the Move, Part I

2008-10-19T00:01:00.006-04:00

Lately I've been working on stuff for someone else...

...for example. Incidentally, folks interested in spinning technique might want to check out the recent posts at the LRS blog (linked, sidebar); I've been watching a Mabel Ross instructional film and she really inspired me (passively, simply by being so awesome) to examine how I spin and how my posture was causing me pain.

The move has finished, more or less; there will be odds and ends to deal with for weeks, I'm sure, but tonight I officially unpacked all my stuff--except, oh wait, this box here, and the two small boxes of office crap...dang. Well, most of my stuff, the vast majority of it. I've found books I haven't seen in three years (some things never got unpacked between the apartment three years ago and the new place), gotten all my old kitchen stuff out (some of it is FILTHY from dusty disuse, and I don't know where I'll keep it, either), flattened all the unused boxes and slated them for removal (Mom's basement--thanks, Mom!) or recycling, and packed up all my fabric.

Yeah, that. That's pretty depressing. I used to make art quilts; not very good ones, perhaps, but they were mine. I still have a casual interest in art quilting, but have not been able to make a quilt for several years now. The whole artmaking thing is really fraught with unpleasant emotion for me. I'm so obsessed with being perfect that I can't just make anything, and that keeps me, perversely, from actually learning and getting better. I really can't cope with failure. My ideas became hackneyed and stagnant, because I instinctively went with what was going to be the easiest, and my work showed that. I did a few really cool things, and perhaps I'd like to go back to quilting some day--on a more craft basis, or rather, I should say, a more traditional basis.

I do think traditional quilts are art, incidentally. Discovering traditional quilts with my best friend, right after college, is one of the most important moments in my life. The Bowling Green public library had such a wealth of beautiful books about quilts! And then, right around the same time, there was this magnificent touring exhibit from the American Museum of Folk Art (or whatever it's called) the next city over: the best and most fabulous American quilts they had, from the 1700s to the present. I would walk around in there and get choked up, overwhelmed by the sheer quiltness of it all. So many people had worked so hard, and made such beautiful things...it was almost too wonderful to bear.

For three years I've had my painstakingly-gathered, super beautiful fabric collection out and ready to use, just in case I felt the need to sew. I would feel guilty every time I passed it (which was several times a day for the last two years, since it was in my room), and it became increasingly clear that I no longer had the space, time, or desire to quilt. The fabric gathered dust, and it put a little cramp in my soul every time I had to look at it. Plus, it occupied a set of shelves that I really could have used for other stuff.

So when I moved, I packed it as the other things, but decided that as I gradually uncovered all the fabric, it would go straight back into a box (boxes, as it turns out) to be stored. I'm not sure if that storage will happen here or at Mom's, but stored it will be. It was so hard to put it away. The colors were so bright and pretty, and the textures were so interesting. I didn't like the idea of putting all that behind me, because that's what it feels like--taking something I really loved and pushing it, forcibly, away from me. Surely this is still healthier than reminding myself daily of failure: the failure to create, the failure to use my resources, the failure to grow. Perhaps someday I will want to sew again. I'd like to imagine the fabric waiting for that day, hibernating.

Damn.

2008-10-12T23:06:00.002-04:00

Romney sample 2
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

Remember the big ol' Romney fleece I bought at the Yellow Springs fest? Yeah, it's full of scurf. Scurf scurfy scurf. I can no longer deny it. The first bits I washed up were only kinda scurfy, but this batch in the sink right now is flat-out riddled with it. It's dreadful. I will probably try to find contact info for the shepherd and let her know, since scurf is treatable.

Don't know what scurf is? This blog post, which is very well-written and with photos, will tell you all you ever wanted to know. Bleah. Although the author was able to get some scurf out of the fiber in question, it was labor-intensive and not 100% effective. Maybe she's willing to do that for a very fine mohair fleece, but I have nine freaking pounds of Romney that cost me all of $35 and you know, I can't help but feel that the labor I'd spend to get a not-really-scurfless yarn is worth a lot more than that.

I don't mean that I don't have regrets about it, though. I've been putting off doing this for weeks, living in denial of the problem, etc. But the prospect of dealing with more scurf that will never really come out is an awful drag.

Mantis!

2008-09-28T18:57:00.001-04:00

Mantis!
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

Wow, man, I dunno. Try to open the curtains and let a little light in, and terrifying bugs fly out. I dunno man, I dunno...

I didn't even know these creatures lived in Ohio. Apparently my bedroom is an ideal natural habitat for a praying mantis.

Actually, she was in pretty pathetic shape. Once I got her onto a sheet of paper to carry her outside, she kept falling onto her back and stuff. Real pitiful. I hope she does better outside. Maybe even if she's about to die, she'd rather die outside than in the house. I reckon. I can't help feeling sorry for her, although she does have altogether too many legs. Ugh, shudder, brr. Bugs!

Women's work

2008-09-28T10:06:00.004-04:00

I keep hoping someone will give me a super good reason not to buy this. So far, no one's doing so. Thanks a LOT, peoples. Like I need more fiber.

I do think of serious stuff, too. This news story, this morning, hit deep. After all the women of Afghanistan have undergone in the name of a twisted, warped version of the region's dominant faith, the attacks on women who try to help themselves and others still continue. Malalai Kakar isn't the only such casualty there, you know--she's just the most high-ranking one at the moment. I just can't help but feel that while this is going on somewhere, we're not free here, either. What makes it so painful is that I see so little I can do about it, except send up prayers of gratitude every day that I was born when and where I was.

Swag

2008-09-23T02:06:00.002-04:00

So over the weekend I attended the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs. Highlights of the event involve moments such as my mom carrying a 9 pound Romney fleece back to the car for me (Thanks, Mom!) and my stopping a woman to ask her where she got the pattern for a beautiful Shetland shawl. She said, "I made it up." Then, with typical knitter humility, she told me she'd found one stitch in a Walker treasury and had adapted the edging from a shawl of a different shape (as if that was nothing!). But I am still impressed with the shawl, and I realized later that I quite possibly made her day by asking that. Excellent!

As I mentioned before, one of the items was a Romney fleece.

There's a sample the seller thoughtfully made and provided. She let me keep it, since I bought the last one. I fell in love with this fleece for some reason, probably because it felt softer than it really is due to the grease. That said, now that I've got some of it washed and almost dried, I think I really will be able to get some wearable fiber out of it. I envision spinning this one woolen, so as to make the finished yarn as soft as possible. One friend dubiously wished me luck making something soft enough to wear; I had my doubts too, at first. Nevertheless, the sample they gave me is certainly no rougher than Kureyon yarn, and I love my Kureyon sweater. Nine pounds...that's enough for a sweater, yes? I think so.

More items will likely appear as I work with them. If you want to see more (and there is some nice stuff to see!), click through on the photo above and go to my Flickr account, where you can see all the swag at once.

Something that's been on my mind for a while.

2008-09-02T03:44:00.004-04:00

I don't have any new pictures of my knitting, so at the risk of being tacky, that's an overview of my latest dye project--a color-wheel sampler. It took absolutely forever to complete, and there's only two available. I'm still in the process of figuring out how much to charge for it, and will be uploading it in a few minutes.

Why am I talking about my business in my personal knitting blog? Well, aside from the fact that the two somewhat overlap, this particular post may be a bit too touchy, and a bit too personal, to put on my business blog. Over there, I keep everything light and happy; over here, I feel a little safer talking about the grittier aspects of dyeing and artmaking, even though, god knows, the two blogs are separated by only a single mouse-click. It must be said, though, that placing this post here, and not on my business blog, makes it clear that my audience is intended to be my friends--fellow knitters, dyers, and fiber artists of all stripe, to name a few--rather than, say, customers. As with the blogs, there is some overlap, so for that I apologize.

The late hour is causing me to be unfocused, and therefore long-winded. Indeed, I would have been in bed long ago was it not for the fact that I wanted to get the upload done before I went to sleep--that, and the fact that I saw a gigantic spider AS BIG AS MY HEAD, I AM SERIOUS, scurrying with terrifying speed along my bed. That's the bed where I sleep, peoples. I tried to coax him off, but he wasn't having it. I eventually flipped the edge of the quilt until he was tossed off the bed, but for all I know he'll come back while I'm asleep and crawl all over my face, or even in my mouth. This is not beyond the realm of possibility, and the thought is too grotesque and atavistically horrifying to bear. The spider may not truly be as big as my head, but he IS the size of a Liberty-head silver dollar, and that's plenty big enough.

If you are an artisan trying to make a living off your work, and you are part of a large community, such as Etsy, that is composed of a lot of folks, you will see a variety of approaches in how things should be done. There are people who are trying to make a living off their work, and there are people for whom this is not an issue. Even that's not precise enough for what I'm trying to discuss, because some of the latter group take their work, and others' work, seriously enough to price it appropriately. They don't dismiss their own outlay in time, skill, and materials to by pricing their work too cheaply, and they don't show contempt for the work of others--of people who need the money they make on Etsy--by drastically undercutting the prices of folks who literally cannot afford to give their work away.

If I'm being delicate about how I phrase all this, it's because I don't want to be unkind to the folks who are truly ignorant of what it's like to try to live off the income one makes from one's artwork. It's my belief that the sellers on Etsy who undercut are either manufacturers who have found it useful to masquerade as an artisan, or hobbyists who feel embarrassed about pricing their work appropriately. In regards to the former, the high volume and purchasing power of even a small manufacturer outstrips that of most Etsyers, so of course they are able to undercut real artisans by 1/4 or even 1/2 the retail price, and I hope that karma will, when they least expect it, rise up and bite them soundly in the nether regions.

As for the hobbyists, what can I say? I don't want to be ugly, even though seeing items priced at a rate that I know must barely cover the cost of materials makes me grit my teeth in frustration. There is no way any true businessperson, any artist trying to make a living from their work, can match those prices. But see, I don't want to fret over what other Etsyers are doing, or make them appear small. I'd rather, if possible, concentrate on what I am doing, and what I have to offer--I and, by extension, other working artists on Etsy. I feel that this is a more positive approach, and it certainly feels better than stewing in my own frustrations and pointing the finger at people who mean well enough, but who perhaps just don't know any better.

Over the last year or so I've seen a lot of associations on Etsy. I don't just mean the street teams, which function as mutual support and promotional groups, but groups of like-minded artisans who are promoting quality and fair pricing in their work. The glass-bead artisans spring to mind particularly; after dealing with an onslaught of poorly-made, mass-produced, copycat designs being produced in sweatshops and sold unscrupulously on Etsy and EBay as being made by individual artists, the legitimate artists got together and declared their mutual worth. They pointed out the value of their skills, the worth of their time, and the beauty and durability of their products versus those sold in the knockoff shops. They declared that the high-quality work of an individual or small collective is indeed worth more, financially and culturally, than the work of a manufacturer producing garbage under sweatshop conditions. They also stood up for their intellectual property rights, pressing the uniqueness of their work and condemning the often outright thievery of the manufacturers who passed themselves off as artisans.

This sort of effort educates the public, which is far more productive in the long run than railing against undercutters and thieves. Working artists can't fight those people directly, but maybe we can fight them by providing positive information about ourselves and how we differ. Maybe Etsy should have a Working Artisans association, filled with artists and crafters from all media who are pricing their work at something approximating a living wage. I think it would remind us that there are real people with simple daily requirements behind each Etsy listing, and that the time and effort that went into their work should be valued accordingly. It might remind all of us, too, that a society in which an artisan can make a living from his or her work is a society to be proud of. It's a society with more beauty, joy, and security than one in which the only option for survival is to stifle your creative spirit in a meaningless daily grind, working for someone else. If that sounds dramatic, think of all the crummy cubicle jobs you may have had, or that your family and friends have had. Is that kind of soul-sickening experience really what we want for each other, or ourselves?

I'm going to leave off there, because I just don't have any more to say on the subject right now--plus, I finished my upload long ago and even managed to catch the giant spider and release him on the front porch. I work in only seven hours, but need to be up in four or so in order to package up an order, breakfast, shower, the whole nine yards. It's long past time for sleep.

Monkey!

2008-08-15T12:03:00.001-04:00

I finally like knitting again. I've wanted to knit these socks for a friend for some time; in fact, I've been trying to do just that since January. I would try to knit, and realize that the very thought of knitting made me absolutely miserable. Finally I picked them up again about a month ago, only to realize that the pattern--a basic stockinette sock--was utterly disappointing and unfulfilling. I raveled the sock (halfway done, too) and put it aside to consider what I would do next.

When I remembered the "Monkey" pattern from Knitty, the prospect of knitting seemed a little brighter. The sock would be prettier, more special, and more interesting to make. Since then I've been knitting like a fiend, or at least with considerably more gusto than before. Now I'm at the heel flap, which is dull and tedious, but soon I will be on the foot. I aim to have the first sock done by next Tuesday, so the recipient can try it on for fit before I start the second one.

Other than that, since the last time I posted I've mostly been spinning, dyeing, and generally trying to cope with life. There's been a lot of upheaval in the last year and more on the horizon. We'll see what happens.

Whoops.

2007-08-30T10:19:00.000-04:00

This is what happened to my precious, precious first laceweight after processing. I used alternating hot/cold baths and some agitation, as suggested in Spin-Off and some online sources I've read. [EDIT: And I dried it under tension, even, and repeated the whole process one more time!] Before the processing, it looked pretty smooth and even!

Sigh. I've asked an online spinning community for any reasons/suggestions they might have, because I'm determined to understand what I did and not do it again. I do know that the light ply is less tightly-spun than the dark ply, because I really was learning as I spun...so that probably has a lot to do with that ply becoming all fluffy on me.

I'm spinning up the second bobbin of superwash merino right now, and hopefully the inconsistencies between the bobbins won't be so great. Actually, I'm going to need to wind the first bobbin onto another bobbin to reverse the color order, because I apparently can't figure out how to spin both bobbins in the same direction the first time...but this will at least give me the opportunity to put a little more twist in the first bobbin and maybe even them out a little.

Plying, plying, plying

2007-08-19T20:57:00.001-04:00

Pacific alpaca, being plied
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

Less knit, more spin.

Little green skein

2007-08-16T11:35:00.001-04:00

Little green skein 1
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

What to do with one little green skein? If I recall aright, it's less than an ounce...probably around 300 yards of laceweight. Hmm. A very airy lace pattern, narrow, with a garter stitch border? I know there's something I can do with it, otherwise none of those people who buy .5 oz of qiviut or whatever would never manage to make anything!

Interweave Knits and sizing

2007-08-08T21:12:00.001-04:00

For those of you who don't read the Knitting Daily newsletter, here is a link to a survey that Interweave is doing where they ask the sizes of their various readers in order to better gauge (heh) what sizes they should be offering.

I think this came about because a lot of folks replied to them earlier this week asking for more large-size options in the patterns, but smaller folks should reply too in order to avoid being left in the cold. I fall on the larger end of the spectrum, but I know it can be hard to find a pattern that fits for super small folks, too.

Part of the trouble isn't that they don't offer a range of sizes, but that their median size is way too small. Many designers seem to think that 34" bust is "average," and I'm not sure that's so. It's not bad or good, it's just not average, and certainly doesn't fall in the middle of the range. So yes, I'd like to see them expand the sizes upwards a bit, but I don't want them to leave the thinner gals behind either.

Ministry of Silly Hats

2007-08-08T11:23:00.000-04:00

It has been brought to my attention* that I require one of these.

Now I swear I saw someone adapting one of these to an adult size about a year ago, with the promise to release the pattern in a book or for download or something, but I cannot search this out. Despite wailing to a friend over IM that I am not SMRT enough to figure out how to adapt this pattern to a "grown-up"**-sized head, I promptly got out the calculator and did some figuring. I think I figured the right things, having thrown out the improbably crazy numbers (a hat 167 inches around?) and tried new calculations as necessary.

It appears to me that the pattern is written with 10% negative ease (is that how you say that?), so I would need to:

Measure hed
Write down measurement.
Gauge swatch (I'm likely doing this with some random Noro Kureyon that will never, ever become the Equilateral Triangle Hat it was bought for three years ago).
Write down measurement.
Compute number of stitches to cast on.
Cast on.
...
PROFIT!

At any rate, I really should do my knitting for other people first. At least I have an idea about where to start when I do start, though.

*by me
**I hardly qualify for the term.

Groucho Marx

2007-08-06T09:33:00.000-04:00

The Marx Bros. were never knitting rats like Vincent, for the simple fact that they would have promptly stolen my yarn, chewed it to bits, and dragged it merrily across the room. Groucho, for instance, once climbed onto a plate I was holding and tried to steal an entire bean burrito. What he would have done with it other than sit on it, I don't know. It was certainly too large for him to eat.

I mention all this because Groucho passed away on the 1st of August. I wasn't sure I wanted to mention it here, but after all, there have been pictures of him and Chico posted here before.

His last photo came out so strange that I kept it despite the poor quality. I'm glad I did. His brother Chico was very mopey and sad for a couple of days after Groucho died, but he seems to be eating okay and acting more perky now.

Very little knitting progress to show you; I've decided to rip out my Mystery Stole and concentrate on my lovely Triangles within Triangles shawl. I've also been busy spinning up some hand-dyed alpaca roving; I'm learning very slowly how to handle the alpaca, which is a new fiber for me, and I'm simultaneously learning how to spin very fine, so this is taking absolutely forever to do. I have some Shetland and Finn and Northern Lights (easy spinning!) top waiting as my reward one I finish all two ounces of this alpaca, although by the time I get done I suspect it will be much easier because of all the practice!

I'm debating just getting rid of the copper Zephyr I used for the Mystery Stole--the color is so unusual that I can't help but be drawn to it for that reason, but I'm not sure I actually like it. We'll see. I might put it on EBay or something.

Yarncakes!

2007-08-04T12:44:00.001-04:00

Yarncakes!
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

Yarncakes for all and sundry!

(Yarns what I dyed: worsted weight wool and silk/wool fingering weight.)

Clue 1 done woohoo!

2007-07-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

No, there's no pics, because I was super tired and now I'm eating breakfast! Nevertheless Clue 1 of the Mystery Stole 3 is done!

Now to catch up with all the other clues!

How I spent my weekend, in (mostly) pictures

2007-07-25T14:54:00.000-04:00

alternating with:

I also went to Zen Cha for impromptu knitting, where I showed off:

For the last couple of days I have been dyeing this:

...which I'm now spinning up, slowly, as I learn to work with alpaca.

Anyone manage to get anything fibery done this past weekend, or were you all reading Harry Potter?

Psst...

2007-07-19T09:37:00.001-04:00

Robin's Egg sock yarn
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

There's a sale on superwash merino sock yarn in my shop this weekend. More info over here.

The knitgroup that wasn't

2007-07-16T14:40:00.000-04:00

Two weekends ago Dr. Annaoj, Mary-with-no-internet-nickname, and I got together for knitgroup in the Short North, only to realize that it was, in fact, not a knitgroup day.

That's okay, though, because none of us could be there on the actual day. We are far from the only members of the downtown Columbus knitting group, but lately we are the three "core" members, the ones who show up every time, so I wonder if anyone showed up on the right day last weekend...

In lieu of actual knitting progress (I'm going to cut my computer time and spinning time down so I can get knitting done in the future, I swear), here's some photos of other people's knitting progress:

Mary, with her just-finished baby sweater! She is doing a great job of getting older projects off the needles.

Here is Dr. Annaoj, not spinning, but knitting on an EZ Baby Surprise jacket.

Mary, exceedingly thoughtful about her upcoming gauge swatch.

Finally, some proof of my own knitting:

This has been consuming a lot of my time lately:

It is much thinner and more consistent than my previous one, but still not enough for my tastes. I'm trying to spin true fingering weight right now, and chose superwash merino for my fiber. What was I thinking? I am determined to produce a quality yarn, so it's going to just take me some time.

Mystery Stole 3--a beginning

2007-07-02T12:14:00.001-04:00

EDIT: This post was originally supposed to be about beads! See my beads? The blue beads? Now look closely and see if you can see the orange beads. [Click on the photo for a bigger version, if you like.] Yeah, that's what I thought: you can't! My roommate looked at them from six inches away and was all, "What orange beads?" So the bead store person was right, orange beads go beautifully with the yarn--but I was also right, because they're practically invisible and thus of no use to me on this project. I'm glad I bought the blue, which is pretty IMO, and will save the orange for some other project where they can be shown off to their advantage.

Mystery Stole IP 7-2-07
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

Here is what's been completed so far of my Mystery Stole. Not much, huh? Well, I've got a lot more on the needles than just this, that's my excuse. That, and I'm new to beading, AND I chose to put myself through using Addi Turbos to do this project.

I thought: I have never liked metal needles, but everyone loves Addis. Perhaps I too can learn to love Addis. Perhaps it will be a Useful Learning Experience. Perhaps it will make me a better knitter.

It is possible that all of these things might have been true, except after two days of trying to knit with Addi Turbos, I gave up and stormed off to the Knitter's Mercantile to purchase a set of my beloved Addi Naturas in the appropriate size. Why? Because I really, really love Naturas, and (apparently) really, really loathe Turbos.

I think the Turbos are great needles, for those who like metal needles. I just know that my knitting tried to flop out of my hands, tried to slip off the needles, generally tried to evade me, and was absolutely exhausting while I used the Turbos. When I switched to my House Finch shawl, which is on Naturas, I could feel the physical relief in my hands. I could feel how much relaxation took place in my hands and wrists when I switched back to the bamboo needles. For someone who is already stressed-out enough as it is, and for someone who has some ongoing pain/repetitive motion stuff in her hands, that makes a huge difference.

So, goodbye Turbos--perhaps I'm not a very good knitter after all, if I couldn't work with you. I do feel as if I've failed an important skills challenge. I will try to remember the Mason-Dixon edict that "Knittin's spoze to be fun!" and go back to my Mystery Stole with a good will, but on more appropriate needles for my little Rat hands.

P.S.: And if you see me selling a set of Addi Turbos, size 4, on the Knitting-Forsale group, you can purchase them in the confidence that they've been hardly used at all. ;)

WHEE

2007-06-29T09:12:00.000-04:00

The first clue for the Mystery Stole 3 is up! Yay!

...and to make up for utter lack of other real content, here are some photos.

Violets roving!

A rose from the Whetstone Park of Roses!

36 + 8 =/= 42

2007-06-25T11:46:00.000-04:00

Lately I just keep grinding out row after slow row of lace triangles; I am still enjoying the shawl, but am beginning to find it slightly repetitive as the rows get bigger and bigger with little change. However, I'm about fifty rows from the edging, so the end is in sight. I would still recommend this shawl to just about anyone, but will be relieved to start the Mystery Stole at the end of the week.

After almost two weeks' hiatus, I have started dyeing again. On a lark, over in my shop blog I posted a series of photos detailing the hand-painting process. I normally prefer to kettle-dye yarns and fibers, but the BFL roving I was working with seemed to call for more delicate treatment. So far I enjoy how it's turned out.

Just to break up the monotony I've started a feather-and-fan scarf with my first handspun. I used Open Office's "Calc" program to create my first lace chart, and am working from that. The rest of the pattern--a simple garter edge with an eyelet on either side--I worked up in my head, and cast on 42 stitches accordingly, with great assurance, as I was only working two 18-stitch feather-and-fan repeats in the body of the scarf. It was with great bewilderment that I kept reaching the end of my pattern rows with a stitch missing; only at row eight did I realize, by counting on my fingers (naturally), that the eyelet and border stitches made eight extra stitches total, not six. I have fixed things accordingly, but am embarrassed at myself and dubious about my chances of eventually creating patterns that others can use with enjoyment and felicity.

I don't think I've posted pics of the wheel (a Fricke from Amy at Spunky Eclectic), so here's a couple spinning-related photos:

Dr. Annaoj, who came over to learn me some knowings about the wheel, and who left wanting a Fricke.

My first handspun off the wheel--from gorgeous, soft BFL batts sent by Amy as a gift with my order.

Curious types can check out my Flickr spinning set to see more. No doubt it will be updated regularly!

Spinning!

2007-06-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

I went a little photo-happy yesterday, rephotographing stuff from the shop. Here's a sample:

More over at the shop blog, or in my Flickr account if you want to go straight to the pictures.

OK, so I bought a spinning wheel. For years I've thought, "Oh, I'd love a spinning wheel, but it's totally beyond me. I could never afford something like that." Suddenly I find myself, for a variety of reasons, able to finance a spinning wheel and I realize, whoa, it actually ties into my business ventures too. Hurrah!

In-progress; Knitters' Connection

2007-06-12T09:32:00.000-04:00

Work on my House Finch shawl continues apace. I'm at 110 rows, so that's 80+ rows to go plus edging, cast-off, weaving, blocking...ugh. Makes it sound like I'm much less than half done, huh?

My House Finch socks are over half done; one sock is complete, the other is somewhere in the foot. Here's the finished one.

I'm really disheartened by my inability to take good photos of my knitting. I mostly do okay with my yarn, but my knitting just looks terrible in pictures. I have to assume people will take it on faith that I did a good job! But more than that, they're just not a pleasure to look at, and I want them to be nice to look at. I am not sure what to do about all this, really.

At any rate the House Finch is working great both in socks and lace. It's one of my favorite colorways and one I keep in the shop fairly steadily. Spiral striping is one of my favorite things for sock yarn to do, so obviously I'm well-pleased with these socks. :)

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This past weekend was the Knitters Connection extravaganza here in Columbus. There were classes and a live recording of the Lime 'n Violet podcast and a very tempting vendors' mall. I especially enjoyed meeting Karida from Neighborhood Fiber Co., a one-woman dye company (sound familiar? ;)) selling wholesale to yarn shops. Her colors are fabulous and the yarn stocks are great:

I really cannot get my pictures to give justice to any darker/bluer toned yarns right now (including my own, grr), but let me assure you that the colors in this really glow. It's similar to the Iris colorway I do, but with a few different colors. It's fabulous, and I enjoyed supporting another dyer and getting to talk shop for a minute, too. I haven't had a chance to work with this yarn yet of course, being in the middle of four projects, with the Mystery Stole 3 coming up as well (go here for more info on what that is and how to take part!), but I want to do something lovely and special with it, something with a simple, strong geometric pattern that will let the yarn show to its best advantage. Because it's 1100 yards I'm thinking triangle shawl, but I might be able to do a lacy stole. We'll see. I may design my own pattern!

I was pretty conservative at the vendors' market--the only other yarn I bought was Jojoland Melody sock yarn:

It looks like the first Trekking I ever knitted with, as far as how the colors shift. Judging from the samples we saw it should knit up in large stripes, with gentle shading and flecks of other colors. Is that "ombre"? I think that's ombre. Alas, the colorway I fell in love with, above, turned out to not be superwash. I don't regret my purchase, though. Supposedly they made the switch to superwash recently so all newer batches should be machine washable.

Well, this post is about as long as any post really needs to be. Hope the photos broke it up a bit for folks. Anyone else doing the Mystery Stole this year? What colors or yarns are you gonna use? I'm still undecided, but we have until June 29th to figure it out. :)

House Finch shawl

2007-06-04T23:19:00.000-04:00

I'm a rather tired Rat, so this will be a pretty picture-intensive post.

My current projects include two pairs of socks, two sweaters on hiatus, and the Triangles within Triangles shawl from Heartstrings Fiber Arts. The latter is what's getting the most attention right now; it's gotten to the stage where it takes a good half-hour to finish a row, so I reckon I'm about 1/3 of the way through the shawl--maybe a little less, but over a quarter for sure.

The yarn I'm using is the first skein of "House Finch" I dyed, an accident in the dyepot that I fell in love with:

Here's the shawl a day or so after I started it. I liked the pattern and the yarn, so I really dug in:

The lace pattern is not fighting with the variegation at all!

I think part of why this works is that the yarn has fairly short repeats, so there's very little pooling or large blocks of color; there's also a large solid section in the lace pattern, so that displays the variegation to good advantage.

My lace kit--a Rosie the Riveter/women in wartime propaganda lunchbox my friend Lee got me years ago, just the right size for a circ or two, a row counter, stitch markers, paperwork (if working from a hand-charted pattern I don't mind folding up small), yarn, and lace. Lace takes up so little space.

The outside, with the new fancy magnetic chart board I bought myself at the Merc:

So in a way, nothing to see here, especially if you read my dye studio blog, but then again that is what's happening in my knitting life right now. More to come, I hope!

And now, your moment of surrealism

2007-06-03T01:33:00.001-04:00

chico1
Originally uploaded by laughingrat

Thought of the (very late) night: "On the internet, no one knows you're not a giant rat."

Goodnight everybody!

(Knitting content to come soon, I swear.)

A post without content

2007-05-27T18:15:00.001-04:00

Don't mind me, I'm just showing off some Flickr badge options for someone I'm helping out with photo hosting.

In other news, I aten't ded. I haven't been knitting a ton, but I have been knitting some, and that's what counts, right? And I've been doing other things: dyeing like crazy, graduating with my Master's in Library Science (THREE YEARS WOOHOO), and getting my first ~~liberry~~ library job. More of substance later as I accumulate some photos and catch up on everyone's blogs. I've missed knitblogland!

...Er, okay, I can't get Flickr to co-operate and let me try a Flash badge, just an HTML one. I'll figure this out later. But the post still stands!

www.flickr.com

mightymightyrat's Cats photoset

2007-02-28T08:54:00.000-05:00

Rosedale United is finished:

Look, a sweater!

Here's a nicer picture (as far as composition), and the color is a little more accurate here:

Surprisingly I did not need to have a roommate take the first photo. I hardly ever take photos of myself (hands and feet excepted), mostly because I have the world's worst luck with that sort of thing, but this time it only took fifteen minutes to get one that showed off the sweater properly.

There's lot of stuff I did that I would change, such as some weird decreasing at the back of the neck, which I thought would make the whole thing a little more rounded. Oh boy, was I ever wrong. Next time if I want my sweater to be a crew-neck, I'll plan for that in advance. My defense is that I'd never done a neckline before and only when I did this one did I sort of understand what shape the neck would turn out to be.

I picked up my stitches a little sloppy on the neck; there's that fearsome back rectangle I already confessed about; I am not sure if ribbing is called for on the neck, although I've worn the sweater three times and no one's looked at it like I'm crazy for wearing it. Mostly people seem to love the colors, which to me is the whole point of the sweater anyway.

The pattern is great. It's very easy to follow. That back rectangle is a problem (many people eliminated it altogether, apparently), and the neck is a little high. If you make it, you might want to alter it to a crew-neck to avoid that sort of high boat-neck thing that happens in the pattern. I had never seamed anything before and was very proud of my mattress stitch, which seems to be even and not puckery--although I ran into issues where the rectangle is broken by several rounds of MC knitting. At those spots, the plain knitted stuff did want to pucker a little because of the seaming above and below. All told it is a very fun knit and very encouraging--one wants to hurry up and finish the sweater because the colors are such a pleasure to look at, and watching them unfold is a lot of fun.

I enjoyed it so much that I already bought yarn for the next one:

That's Berroco Ultra Alpaca. I was impressed by the price, the feel, and the color, which grabbed me as I turned the corner in my local yarn shop. The green, which is a little more juicy than it shows in the pic, was originally meant to be the base color, with the eye-searing magenta as a stripe accent. It grew to include the bright teal and the grape as a grounding color. At first I was all about doing crazy stripes, but now I'm retreating into fashion-conservative self-consciousness and wondering if all them horizontal stripes will make my ass look big, or make me look like exactly the wrong sort of clown. As clowns go, you know, I never mind looking like Harpo Marx--a silly hat and a jacket of many pockets are just fine to me--but Bozo is not where it's at. Nor do I want it to look like something from Talbots, either, as that's not really my style. So I'm a bit stymied, although I reckon I will figure it out as I go along.

I was turning my little pink row-counter over in my hands the other day and thinking about Vincent, who loved to hassle my yarn and steal the row-counter. Groucho and Chico are just delightful, of course; they're not lacking in the rat department. It's just hard not to miss Vincent when I think about knitting. Recently someone told me that this blog had been mentioned in a Lime and Violet podcast (!) from way back--I downloaded and listened to it, and it was nice to hear about Vincent from someone else... Anyway, yesterday I dug out my long-unfinished Hourglass Sweater (a Vincent-era project) so I could get my size 7 circ out of it and start the new alpaca sweater, only to be surprised at how nice the HS was, how soft the fabric, how utterly finishable. And here I'd been going to frog it! Oh hell no, I see the error of my ways. I'll work on the alpaca sweater, then return to the HS. What happens to the bulky-weight orange sweater is still up in the air, though. I make no promises.

Camel libraries and not-really intarsia

2007-02-24T10:02:00.000-05:00

(As a book person and a library person, and knowing that knitters tend to be a charitable bunch, I thought it might be helpful to post some info about a really cool project I just heard about on Ye Olde Interwebs.)

Camel Book Drive:

[The camel-borne library] operates in Kenya’s isolated Northeastern Province near the unstable border with Somalia. It brings books to a semi-nomadic people who live with drought, famine and chonic poverty. The books are spread out on grass mats beneath an acacia tree, and the library patrons, often barefoot, sometimes joined by goats or donkeys, gather with great excitement to choose their books until the next visit. ...The librarians in the Northeast Province who travel with the camel bookmobile told me children’s storybooks are most popular, general fiction is also high on the list, and much interest is shown in nonfiction books covering topics ranging from astronomy to geography to history. The librarians also said patrons especially love it when a book is inscribed with a note from the sender. It helps them feel connected to places only barely imagined.

If you click on the link, there's more information about the library and how important it is, plus ways to help supply books or money to cover postage fees.

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In more knitting-related news, I'm in the home stretch on the Rosedale sweater. However, I really bungled that little rectangle that you're supposed to make on the back. About halfway up the sweater, one is instructed to create a narrow leetle rectangle of CC yarn just like the large one on the front. Instead of using yet another ball of yarn on the other side of the little rectangle, however, one's supposed to float the MC yarn along the back of the rectangle. Now I understand those instructions okay, but the problem for me was carrying them out in a way that didn't look like absolute crap. See, the edges of the rectangle wound up being laddery and sloppy because there was six stitches between them, unlike a normal Fair Isle technique where you'd only have one or two. If it had truly been an intarsia technique, there would have been no problems, but I totally understand why the designer chose to do it the way she did--it keeps the striping of the MC consistent except for the little rectangular "interruptions."

It's a design element that should have looked gorgeous, but just didn't. And when I used the yarn tails to sew up the laddered areas, I managed to execute that so badly that I just decided to stop the rectangle on the back altogether. (This also bodes ill for when I sew up the front seam--I plan to do some serious mattress-stitch research and maybe practice quite a bit before I do that, to avoid pulling too tightly and generally getting it all puckery and nasty-looking.) So I have one single puckery blue square in the back of my sweater, and nothing else.

My roommate is a non-knitting artist who specializes in clothing and costume, and who really picks about people's finishing techniques when watching TV shows about couture fashion and stuff, so I ran the back by her. Her verdict is "no big deal." So I'm going to bank on that, but I do regret the puckery sewing and the general lack of skill that caused me to decide against that design element. It's a kickass design element! Of course if I'd had my wits about my I probably could have Googled for knitblog entries about this part of the pattern, but I was too impatient (and probably didn't want to stop watching whatever episode of Buffy I had on while knitting). So, there you go.