Tricotomania and more

I am having a good time over here. We arrived safely and even managed to sleep a bit on the plane. Friday we met up with my friend Charlie and went to Greenwich to see the view and learn a bit about the meridian and whatnot. We also drank some beer (Adnams Broadside and Shepherd Neame Spitfire for those who care; both very good beers though this was not the best pint of Broadside I have ever sampled), quel surprise. Charlie has a link to this  on his site. I have been playing a bit this evening and it is remarkably entertaining.

On Saturday, my friend Emily came down to London and she and I went with the kid to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Unfortunately none of the knitting was on display but we spent a pleasant day looking at some of the textile exhibitions, the fashion exhibition and doing one of their kid’s backpack activity things. Lunch was very tasty. We then met up with my partner for a very nice meal and then went back to the flat and drank wine and chatted until later than was probably advisable.

On Sunday I travelled back to Birmingham with Emily (with a brief detour to Liberty) and have been generally pretending to be single and childless for a few days. The kid is with her grandparents and the partner is at a conference. We will meet up again on Christmas Eve but for now I’m travelling around in a kind of random way. Tonight I am babysitting for some friends (easy job; kids sleeping). Tomorrow I head to Loughborough to visit another friend to whom I had some Blue Faced Leicester top mailed before my arrival. I will have lunch in Birmingham with a friend and former student of mine before catching the train and may check out what is left of the Rowan at a closing down sale of a large department store, too. I wasn’t hankering after any but if it is deeply discounted and interesting I may be tempted.

Well, I’m not getting much knitting done if I’m typing this so I guess I will cease to bore you with my travels. Try out the penguin baseball even though it will prevent you from knitting, too.

I know this seems early but I am getting on a plane later today and flying across an ocean. I may or may not post while I’m away depending on access to computers and internet connections and whether I feel like doing that while on holiday.

So happy whatever you celebrate (if anything) at this time of year. It seems that northern cultures have a long tradition of having some sort of celebration around the shortest day of the year (which the early Christians sneakily appropriated for their own ends) and that this is a good idea. It is cold. It is dark. Do something to warm your body and spirit.

I would also advise not doing things that don’t warm your body or spirit. I’m not a big fan of obligation. But I am a big fan of love and mutual support. Gifts are great if they are given in love. And spending time eating, drinking and being merry with people you love is also great. Spending time with folks who make you feel worse about yourself, or with whom you need to hide your self, or who generally expect you to do things for them without ever giving in return (even over long periods) is not good for you. You need to take care of yourself to be able to really take care of others. Selflessness is highly overrated (especially for women).

I highly recommend listening to Franklin’s piece on Brenda’s podcast. And then doing whatever it takes not to knit all your frustration, anger and resentment into that item you started making as a gift of love.

I am having a minor crisis about which knitting to bring with me. Specifically, whether it is worth bringing the makings of that Classic Slant Cardigan (which has only a couple of inches of sleeve started) or whether I will be happy with 2 complete sock projects and finishing 2 other sock projects. I haven’t been inspired by the cardigan lately. But it also requires some concentration (the increase frequency and the cable repeat do not join up nicely on the sleeve). And there are people to talk to. Perhaps socks will be better for that.

I also have 500g of Blue Faced Leicester (plus some samples of other fluff) awaiting me at a friend’s house and I will pack spindles. Spinning can also be done while conversing though it is somewhat more distracting for the person you are talking to. It think this is because most have never even thought about how yarn is made much less seen a spindle or spinning being practised. They are often awestruck. This is rather good in children because they immediately want to learn. [cackle, cackle]

When I told my partner about my knitting crisis yesterday, the response was a somewhat baffled “But surely there is a good knitting store in Hay?” Hay-on-Wye is a rather nice little town best known for its bookshops but also containing some shops selling good quality crafts (pottery, etc.). I do not recall a knitting shop and there may not be one. I suspect some of you are shocked that my partner is suggesting that if I don’t bring enough knitting I can just go buy more. This is but one of his better qualities. (I think that what Stephanie said about her partner in this post is very true. Particularly the part about the nature of love.) He is also an excellent cook (and loves to cook regularly) and grows his own vegetables. And was willing to pick up and move several thousand miles away to a country where you learn how cold cold can be because I wanted to live here. (He may be a bit crazy. It is -10C and was colder earlier and he cycled to work.)

Now I must go pack. I had the presence of mind to do laundry yesterday.

Every once in a while I start to worry that there must be lots to do before we go away. I have been spinning to make that feeling go away. There is now a reasonable pile of relatively thick turquoise yarn. I’m not sure my thicker yarn is even yet but it is getting better. Yesterday, I decided to spin some more of the orange stuff on the lighter spindle about the weight I was getting before all this desire for thick yarn and then try navajo plying. I’d looked up information last week. Here’s what I wrote then

The last 2 were linked from Stephanie’s post and, like her post, are done on a wheel. I’m going to have to try this to see how it works with a spindle. I’m thinking perhaps off the lighter spindle and onto the heavier one will work. Must go dig out a shoe-box and put some holes in it to turn the spindle into a lazy kate (or have I completely misunderstood what a lazy kate does?).

I did indeed wind off the lighter spindle and ply with the heavier one. My first try I just held the spindle between my feet which worked reasonably well but was a bit frustrating. Ted had suggested (in the comments?) that with a spindle you could stop the spindle to make the next chain and then spin again. I did this a bit but it was actually quite easy to get a rhythm going. You need to hold the strand up so that it is maintaining the tension on the loop but you can fudge it by not removing your thumb until the last minute.

For the second skein I went and found a shoebox, cut some grooves in the edges to hold the spindle and had that on the floor at my feet. There are moments when the upward pull on the yarn lifts the spindle instead of unwinding it (mostly at the ends where it gets stuck a bit) and the pressure broke the yarn a couple of times but mostly that worked better. I had a real rhythm going with the chains and could even pay attention to CSI while I did it. There are a couple of uneven spots where the tension on the loop got relaxed too soon and I didn’t redo it.

I am really happy with the results. As Ted also said in the comments, it is a lot of spinning per length of yarn but it looks nice. And it keeps the colour blocks of the dyed roving. So if you want a yarn with blocks of colours (insted of all the colours mixed together for a heathery effect), this is the way to go. Well, I suppose you could ply from two bobbins and have the colours match up. That will be an experiment for another day.

Sad title, I know. But I finally bit the bullet and sorted out my own blog. I have spent the better part of today making it beautiful for you. Hope you like it.

Many thanks to Cate for enabling so much in my life — the blog, the spinning, and the new business. She didn’t initiate the latter but she was very helpful in the early stages. I’m probably still undercharging (no one has yet questioned my fee which is probably a sign) but not as much as I might have without Cate’s advice.

Now, all I need to do is work out how to get all the content from here over there….

After many months of sponging off of Cate, I have finally taken the plunge and created my own space. The page where you get to choose a design wouldn’t let me save today, so I’m not sure I’ll stick with the red but we’ll see.

The main motivation was that I thought if I did this I could put my blogroll in the side bar and then I could read things while I am away in England. I know. Cate would have let me into the bit where I could do that on the other one but maybe I just needed to grow up and get my own. Cate then has scope to enable others similarly [insert evil grin here]

So at some point, I will work out how to bring all of that other stuff over here so I am in one place and one place only and can find my own ramblings when necessary. For now, I leave you with some more photos…

Two skeins of corriedale top spun up. I suspect this was still unplied as I recall plying this from 2 centre pull balls. This was about the third thing I had spun. The first was some natural brown BFL which was very lumpy but from which I made a rabbit (à la Lee Ann) and still have some hanging around. the second was some dyed corriedale from which I knit a neck warmer for my daughter. This corriedale was the first attempt at plying.

And this is what I knit with it. I dyed it first and the white is leftover mohair from another project.

That’s all for now…

I know. It was months ago but I have photos of that fluff I have been discussing. So here you are…

This is the orange Blue Faced Leicester I have been talking about.

This is the Persimmon Tree stuff that Cate enabled. It is 50% wool, 50% mohair. The purple colour is the colour of my mother’s winter coat so I have a vague plan to knit something for her. Every skein seems to come out slightly differently though so I think I will spin all of it up and then match up skeins for little projects.

This is the doll scarf that the kid knit up with the little samples that I spun as soon as I got home from Rhinebeck. Although I hadn’t considered it at the time, the colours go very well together.

Okay, that is enough for one post. I have more photos, though so the posts may come thick and fast in the next little while.

This post is going to be a bit of a filing cabinet for webpages I want to consult in my quest to spin something I can knit hats and mitts out of rather than lacey things. Those people interested in thinner yarn are probably eagerly awaiting Ted’s next missive on the subject. But some of us want yarn thick enough to knit practical outwear.

So I have tried to work out how to do that by doing the opposite of what Ted recommends for fine yarn (and consulting him by e-mail). Apparently, once you get the hang of spinning, it is quite easy to spin fine yarn (though not the VERY fine yarn he is helping you with). And the key to spinning thicker yarn is a combination of an appropriate weight spindle and practicing drafting more fibre evenly. So I’ve been practicing. I’ve switched to the heavier spindle (about 50g) that I bought at Rhinebeck and am trying to draft evenly for a thicker yarn. I’m doing not too badly. More practice needed and what I’m spinning so far is not unusable.

But then I was reading this (scroll down to the bit about the wool for Joe’s gansey) and I thought, “3 ply. Maybe I need 3 ply.” It had never occured to me. But once it did, I then recalled that Stephanie had posted about navajo plying a while ago. So I googled. Top tip. You get interesting links if you google ‘navaho ply’ but a very frustrating nothing if you do a site specific search for ‘navaho’ on yarnharlot.ca. This is because Stephanie, quite correctly, spells it ‘navajo’. Believe it or not, I took Spanish for 3 years in University.

Here are some of the sites I found. There are even little video clips.

With a spindle (useful because that is what I have; I like the tip about the andean bracelet on the wine bottle because I have those, too. I’m assuming full but not open for weight without danger of wine on the carpet.)

with useful audio (useful because a nice bossy voice often helps)

no video but lots of photos

The last 2 were linked from Stephanie’s post and, like her post, are done on a wheel. I’m going to have to try this to see how it works with a spindle. I’m thinking perhaps off the lighter spindle and onto the heavier one will work. Must go dig out a shoe-box and put some holes in it to turn the spindle into a lazy kate (or have I completely misunderstood what a lazy kate does?).

The film is with the photo guy. Photos should be coming mid-week.

There will be photos. It is a beautiful day — about -7C, sunny, blue sky, a skiff of snow on the ground — perfect for taking photos of knitting. So I went outside and photographed some recently finished projects: the hat and the shawl for my sister. This finished off the film. (For anyone new to this blog, that is right. I do use a camera with actual film.) I’ll take it over to the nice man and return in a couple of days with a CD full of knitting photos. I think that might be all that is on this film.

I also got one shot of one Sock That Rocks in a sunny spot on my living room floor.

The shawl for my sister is done and blocked. It is beautiful and only used 2 skeins of the icelandic laceweight (which were 2 ounces each, I think). It is oddly proportioned to my mind — not as long across the top as other shawls of similar top to point measurement. But it is pretty. I hope she likes it. And if I get my butt in gear, she may even have it for her wedding if she is inclined to wear it for that occasion. Since taking the photo was the only real impediment to mailing it, I have no more excuses. Well, perhaps needing to wrap it and find a suitable envelope… But really, no excuses. The post office is near the photo guy.

Some knitting of the Leicester City sock has taken place on the bus into town to do some actual work. Since the work involved taking notes at a meeting little more got done. I’m uninspired but will keep at it. I am keen to do something with that Lorna’s Laces I received from Red Bird Knits and have noticed that it is the exact yarn and colour of the Conwy pattern in Knitting on the Road. I need to decide whether I will need to make the leg a bit shorter to accomodate my size 10.5 feet so anyone with big feet who has made those socks is encouraged to leave a comment detailing your experience.

I have also received 4 balls of Koigu from Rose Haven Farm. Linda will do mail order but she doesn’t have a website for that. So I checked out the Koigu website for colours, emailed her a few suggestions of what I would like, she then picked out stuff similar (since she didn’t have any of the ones I’d asked for) and phoned me. My original plan was to buy some to gift to my mother but by the time I spoke to her, I was thinking of me, so the plan changed a bit but in discussion about the colours she had put aside, I asked her to send 4 skeins. 2 are an almost solid blue (like a dark denim), the other two are a varieagated with blues and purples and a solid skein in a kind of periwinkle that goes quite well. So I’m thinking stripes of variegated and plain, probably using the stashbuster spirals method (which eliminates all concern about colour jogs).

I suspect much sock yarn will be packed for the trip to England. That is less than 2 weeks away. I still don’t have much of a plan for the week of Dec. 19th though I am free to do anything I please. I now have a place for us to stay in London the preceding weekend. It will all work out, I’m sure. There is a trip to the V&A to look at the knitting and textiles. There will be beer and gossip with an old friend I haven’t seen in ages. In fact, I suspect much beer, much gossip, and much knitting will be done. The quality of both beer and friends will be high. The location is kind of irrelevant except as it relates to that.

I’ve also been corresponding wtih Ted for tips on knitting thicker yarns. I’m now trying that out with some success. Like Norma, I want to knit hats and mitts with this stuff and the laceweight stuff, while beautiful, is not what I want right now. I’ll keep you posted. I’d rather spin than add links so will assume you can find links to all that I refer to in my previous posts. Laziness is one of my main time-management techniques.