Tricotomania and more

I started spinning this silk (from Treenway Silks) so long ago I’ve forgotten. Was it 2 years? But the other day I got it out again and got going on it and have spun up all but that little bit of fluff you see in the photo.

I spun it fine on the spindle and navajo plied it to maintain the distinct colours. I have about 160 yards varying somewhat in both thickness and twist. The original weight of fibre was 25 g/1 oz. It is still pretty fine even though a 3-ply yarn.

I have had a lacy scarf in mind from the first little skein off the spindle. Yesterday I leafed through my Harmony Guides and found a stitch pattern I liked and just cast on. The first needle choice wasn’t right, so I ripped and started again. I’m using 3.5mm needles, the Butterfly pattern, and a tubular cast-on as described in a scarf I’ve knit a couple of times from a summer issue of Vogue Knitting (2005?). It will be a skinny lacy non-reversible scarf, possibly with beaded fringe. One of the colours matches a pair of linen trousers I have almost perfectly so it’ll dress up some things I already have quite nicely.

I have quite enjoyed spinning this. And the knitting is going quickly. Another shot of just the scarf:

I recently had a conversation with Kim, which started in the comments of my last knitting post, continued by e-mail, moved into a post of hers and so on. It got me thinking. I thought I’d share those thoughts.

At various points in knitting discussions, folks get on to the relative merits of process and product. For example, I knit lace largely because I enjoy the process. I think Ted does, too. But since I have started knitting lace, I have found a use for the product. I now wear shawls. And have given shawls to people as gifts. (Ted is clearly all about the process. He stores his shawls. In the freezer.) So while I knit lace primarily for the process, there is still some part of me that needs to see a use for the product. I suspect many of the knitters who claim to knit certain things because they enjoy the process also find some use for the product. Certainly the reactions to the shawls in Ted’s freezer suggest this is the case.

But if you go and read Kim’s post (I’ve put the link in again to encourage you. I’ll wait.), you will find someone who knits purely for the benefits of the process. She has yet to produce anything wearable. She claims not to be able to produce a decent washcloth. And yet she eloquently explains why the process is enjoyable and she keeps knitting. I encouraged her.

How many times have you been brought up short by someone who is horrified at the cost of the yarn for a sweater (or whatever) that you are knitting? Their comparison of the price of the yarn (and perhaps the monetary value of your time knitting in it) with the price of even good sweaters from the shops seems somehow to miss the point. And yet would you recommend that Kim buy nice, even expensive, yarn to knit with? I’m going to guess that there are limits to the value we place on the process.

We live in a society which values that which can be bought and sold. Commodities. If it does not produce a commodity, it seems that our work is worthless. Crazy, even. Thus the incomprehensibility of handknitting a sweater when a perfectly good one could be purchased for less. And the difficulty for even knitters to comprehend why one would knit something beautiful and then pack it up and store it safely where no one can even admire it much less get any use out of it. But to spend money on yarn and spend time knitting to produce something that even the producer doesn’t think is beautiful or useful? Completely at odds with the culture of commodification (otherwise known as capitalism).

Kim and I have not found each other because we are both knitters. Kim’s is not on the regular round of knitting blogs. No, Kim and I both homeschool. And these issues of process and product are also germane to the homeschooling discussions in which we both participate. Homeschoolers just don’t call it that.

Tests. Grades. Certificates. Credentials. These are indicators of the commodification of education. Listen to our politicians talk about education and you will hear a lot of talk about job skills, employability, and so on. And education policy (in most western industrialized countries) is being driven by this conceptualization of the value of education in terms of its value in the job market. And what matters in the (job) market is what can be measured and traded. Knowledge gets reduced to those aspects that can be given a dollar value.

How many young people have you met who expect that their university degree will earn them a higher salary? Is it the knowledge they gained in the process of earning that degree that they think will do this? Or is it the certificate (a product)? Having taught in a well respected university, I can tell you that there are many young people out there who think that the knowledge they might gain in the process is largely irrelevant. And many older people, having worked with younger degree bearing colleagues, who will agree with them (albeit resentfully).

This commodification of education has led to ever increasing “accountability measures” to ensure that the money the taxpayer (or parent in the case of private education) is paying is delivering a product worthy of the investment. A product that can be traded on the (employment) market. A commodity.

At the same time, the scope of what is taught is shrinking. Art, music, physical education, and the like have all become “luxuries”. When children are having difficulty reading, social studies time is shortened to make more time for the teaching of reading through drills and exercises. The fact that social studies might require reading and that the material might be a more interesting (and thus more motivating) way to practice reading becomes nonsensical.

As homeschoolers, we are often asked how we know that our children are learning. Or even how we know that our children are learning “the right things”. People are amazed that my province does not require me to follow the provincial curriculum guidelines or have my child tested when others are tested. Of course, we often wonder if our children are learning anything, too. But things happen in our lives that reassure us usually in sort of random ways. We converse with our children and the depth and breadth of their knowledge bcomes apparent.

But our children do not have grades or certificates. Products that can be traded on the (employment) market. It is tempting (and perfectly normal) for homeschoolers to look for means of comparing the product of their process to the product of other forms of schooling. Sometimes we try to redefine the terms of that comparison to value education differently. And there is some value in this comparison.

Some of us make arrangements to make sure that our children get the appropriate certificates so that they are not disadvantaged in a society which requires us to turn our knowledge into commodities. And some of us (depending on geography) are required to have our children tested or to submit portfolios of their accomplishments. Often, the process makes us realize how little of what they know is validated by tests, grades and certificates.

But homeschooling is about much more than the product. It is about the process. There are non-educational benefits to homeschooling that just cannot be compared to other forms of education. And there are things in this process that we value that cannot be commodified. Heck, I have difficulty articulating them sometimes. But the intrinsic value of the process makes the whole thing worthwhile, even if most of the people we meet think we are crazy.

We are also asked how we know that we can teach our children. The teaching certificate is the only recognized currency in the commodified education market. Without it, how can anyone be sure we know what we are doing? This despite the fact that many people are willing to admit to knowing several properly certified teachers who are incompetent. Some of us are lucky enough to have met uncertified teachers who are brilliant. But how do you measure that? And how do you put a dollar value on it? You can’t.

I recommended that Kim buy whatever yarn she most enjoys knitting with so that the process is as enjoyable as possible. If she feels she is being extravagent, she should not think of the value of the product but the value of those benefits that the process brings to her — calmness, the ability to enjoy sitting with others waiting for her children’s swimming lessons (or whatever activities) to finish, concentration. Unfortunately, those qualities do not normally have a dollar value. They cannot be commodified. People will still think she is crazy to knit. And she’ll never be able to explain it to them.

Edited to add: Today’s post at Paradise Found makes a nice companion to these thoughts. You might want to check it out.

The washing and combing of Romney fleece continues apace. I have quite a bit in a pillowcase in the corner of the living room but the bag of unwashed fleece still looks substantially full. I suspect if I just plod along with it, it will eventually all be clean and ready to spin. I’m thinking that maybe I should invest in a metal afro-comb as the cheap and easily available alternative to actual wool combs.

I’ve bens pinning the mystery brown top Cate gave me back in May. I’d like to get it all spun and plied and then contemplate doing something with it. I’m enjoying the spinning of it. But we need more bobbins because I’d like to try a 3 ply and only have 3 bobbins AND because Tigger often wants to be spinning something, too. It is a great incentive to spin, ply and get stuff off the bobbins quickly but sometimes it creates a disincentive to start something.

The shawl is also coming along well. I’ve turned the last corner and am steaming up the 4th side. It is an easy enough edging pattern that I can do it in company as long as folks don’t mind if I look down and count from time to time. Photos when it is all done and blocked and no sooner.

Socks have not been touched for a bit. I had gone too far on the foot and had to rip back a couple of inches so I’m about at the point where I need to start toe decreases on the first one. Folks who have seen it say nice things and I am impressed with how good this rather simple stitch pattern looks.

My living room looks like someone went in there and threw yarn and fleece and things all over the place. We have both been spinning. Tigger has been doing needlepoint (and leaving ends of yarn all over). I’ve been drying and combing fleece in there. Etc. But it has to be tidied today because I am hosting a meeting at 6 p.m. So no fleece washing today.

You may recall that Cate enabled the purchase of a Romney fleece back in May at the NH Sheep and Wool Festival. She went so far as to split it with me in her enabling, which I’m sure was a great sacrifice on her part. Ever since then I’ve been talking about how I must wash the fleece but haven’t actually been doing much about it.

Well, the vegetables kicked the fleece out of the freezer the other day. (If I were Franklin, I’d have some sort of nifty cartoon to illustrate that but you will just have to use your imagination.) I put the bag of wool in the bathroom over night and in the morning was subject to questioning about the “funny smell”. Someone may have compared it unfavourably to “one of Daddy’s bad poos”. So I got washing.

It is going slowly but I’m very pleased with the process and the result. I got out my big dye pot, heated water, squirted in some dish detergent (enviro-friendly stuff — what I have in the house), and put some in to soak. After a bit (but before it got too cold and the lanolin would solidify again), I drained it, put the wet wool on a tea towel temporarily, refilled the pot, heated the water, and plunked the wool back in to soak. Drained again, put the wool in the washing machine for a spin. Laid it out on a sweater rack to dry.

I pulled apart the tips (and the clumps in general) gently. Some of them I did while it was still damp so they would dry faster and it doesn’t seem to have harmed anything. The second batch, which I did today, I let dry and then combed out with a regular wide-tooth comb. Folks had said you could use a dog comb but I don’t have one of those so I used a regular comb. (Yes, I’ve put it in the dishwasher so it’ll get washed before a person uses it to comb their hair.)

I also tried spinning up some of what I washed yesterday and have about 10 yds of 3 ply hanging up to dry. The colour is really nice — a sort of mid-grey with some sandy coloured flecks (the tips were a nice sandy colour). I think it’ll be nice. But there is still a lot of it sitting in a bag waiting to be washed. So I’ll have to keep plugging away at it.

I have been finding some time to spin. I have been putting off knitting a swatch with the GF yarn and don’t want to spin more of it until I know how it knits up and what I might do with it. I purposefully bought two batts so that I could spin enough to do something with. And I had decided not to spin more of the Romney roving (even though I was really enjoying spinning it) so that I would have something Tigger could use to work out how to spin on the wheel. So I got down the box with the Blue Faced Leicester in it that I’d bought at Xmas in England (from here).

BFL is such nice fibre. It is really soft. But I needed to fiddle with the tension a bit as it was flying out of my hands a bit too quickly. I spun it quite fine even though I’m not sure what I might do with it. Yesterday evening I was sitting on the front porch spinning when a neighbour from around the corner walked past (obviously on an evening walk) and asked what I was doing. We chatted for a bit and it turns out that she has a spinning wheel she is putting in her garage sale (supposed to be today but it is raining so I think tomorrow, though I should pop out and check). She bought it in an auction several years ago when she lived in a bigger house. For her it was purely aesthetic. And she thinks it would need something fixing to make it useable. But I might just go over there and have a look.

Today, I decided to swatch the GF. It is thicker than I thought/hoped. Seems to be about a DK weight. I swatched it up on 3.75mm needles and it makes a nice firm fabric at that guage. Believe it or not, I’m actually blocking the swatch so we’ll see how that looks. It is a corriedale blend, I think, and I put quite a bit of twist in (thinking it would be for socks and need it for wear) but it does feel quite nice. I don’t have a use for socks at that guage but I’m thinking it would make great mittens. I might even try thrummed mittens if I think I can spin enough yarn to knit them and still have enough fibre left over. The colour would work for me with my black coat anyway (thought not with my red parka).

I keep thinking about getting back to spindle spinning the silk on the comet. That was producing some really nice yarn and I was thinking about a lacy scarf. The colours go well with some linen pants I have and would pull together some combinations of those pants with plainish tops really well.

Tigger’s spinning is amazing. She skeined another spindle full of blue singles the other day and they are remarkably fine and even. I made her a twisted skein distaff inspired by Ted (scroll down to the spindle full of red fluff).

She hasn’t tried it yet but it looks pretty good — Brown BFL with some of the GF used to wrap.

I’ve been working. Downtown. In a suit. Kind of hard to believe, I know, but this happens sometimes. I have to do it tomorrow, too, but just for the morning. And then again next Monday and Tuesday (in Edmonton, of all places). All in all though, not a bad gig.

So just to keep you happy, I’ll show you some more of the photos I took the other day.

This is my new spinning wheel with a bag of Grafton Fibres beside it and my lovely purple sofa behind it. There is evidence of spinning activity on the bobbins though by the time this was taken a whole skein of yarn had been wound off onto a niddy noddy.

Okay

I haven’t measured wraps per inch or anything but I think this is fine enough to knit socks. Lots of twist for durability but still soft. I intend to knit a swatch before I spin up that other batt.

This won’t be as detailed as it could because it is late and I’m kind of busy and distracted and going out of town again on Wednesday. But I thought I should fill you in on what happened.

It rained. Really. Rained. A lot. And it was cold. People were buying mittens. So the weather basically sucked.

But I didn’t go for the weather. I went for the people. And they didn’t suck at all.

To get from my house to Contoocook, NH, you only need to use 2 roads (plus a few little windy bits at each end). So you get on the highway near my house and drive east for about 200 km. Turn right (that’s slighly more complicated than it sounds because it is Montreal and there are all kinds of things going off in a bunch of directions and you actually exit off the left side of the highway more than once and the road number changes about 3 or 4 times but it is basically the same road) and then drive south until you get there. We hopped off the highway in Vermont and picked up Norma, too. But she lives right on the highway we were going down anyway.

So that was Friday. Drive to Vermont. Take a break. Drive to New Hampshire. Arrive in time for dinner.

When we walked into Laura’s place, Tigger commented on the number of spinning wheels. She was very happy. And then there were the looms and people promised to teach her to spin. etc. etc. We went out for dinner. Great food. Great conversation. We came back. More conversation. We slept.

Morning. Cate teaches Tigger to spin on a wheel (after breakfast; Cate was fully caffeinated, don’t worry; there are photos on the camera). Laura helps a bit in passing. We leave her to get on with it. She is fine. I start spinning up something Cate brought me just to see how it will be. No one seems to be in a hurry to get off UNTIL I get the andean bracelet on my wrist and am into plying it. Figures. So I give the keys and the kid to Norma and they all head off and Cate and I follow later.

We get to the festival and have no idea where to find them but figure they will turn up. We end up at the Merlin Tree booth where Cate tells me firmly to sit down and try a Hitchhiker wheel. So I do. Some initial frustration and then I get it. It’s going well. (Cate got screamed at by a spindle at the Grafton Fibres booth across the way during this period, necessitating a purchase with a bit of very nice green fibre.) As I’m trying out the wheel some other woman walks up and buys one for cash without even trying it and walks off. I get the feeling that if I want it, I can’t spend all kinds of time mulling it over. I ask about the price and pull out the old credit card. The price is good and made better by the fact that my money is worth something south of the border these days. But I have to leave it there because I have no idea where my car (or car keys) are.

At some point we run into Norma and she gives me the keys and tells me where I might find Tigger. Cate and I wander over there and find evidence of Tigger but no Tigger. Leave her bag. Wander off. We eventually run into her and I take her off to purchase ’stuff to spin’ (which was her big goal). She ends up back at Laura’s booth spinning, demonstrating spindle spinning to passing adults, and finding more stuff for me to buy (notably a spindle that she likes).

Cate enables the purchase of some Romney roving (good for all that spinning we are now going to do on the wheel and whatever) and even a Romney fleece. She offered to split it with me. It is currently in the freezer until I have some time to wash it. Without her assistance I also picked up a couple of Grafton Fibres batts. Rather nice. I am thinking about spinning sock yarn. Do not relieve me of those illusions just yet.

More food. A change of pants. And off we went in the driving rain, driving north. Slowly. Not far up the highway we saw cars in the ditch on both our side and the other side of the road. A warning the SUV drivers seemed not to be heeding.

Tigger did a bit of spinning when we got to Norma’s (having slept in the car). She spun in the morning. She spun when we got home. She spun this morning. She spun this afternoon. All on the spindle (which she was having trouble with before the fair but the combination of spinning all day on the wheel and getting a new spindle seems to have sorted her out). I have spun a bit on the new wheel and am very glad Cate spoke firmly to me and got me to try it.

The only photos taken were of Cate teaching Tigger to spin in the morning. Too wet. And I thank you for the advice about on-line storage but I don’t have enough disk space to load the drivers for the damn card-reader. So no photos yet. Patience. I did order a fancy new machine before going to NH. Hopefully it will arrive soon and my life will be better. In the meantime, I’m leaving town again. To do work. Earn money. (Meet up with friends. Drink beer.)

I’m writing this on Thursday but setting it to post on Friday because I’m afraid some of the information may make people either do housework or feel guilty about not doing housework and I don’t believe in either of those things.

So today (Thursday), Tigger and I cleaned the car. I figured that if folks clean their houses when they have guests then having a guest in the car for a longish journey was a good excuse to clean the car. Also it badly needed it. I think half the grit and salt spread on our streets this winter was on the floor of my car. Tigger actually thought it was a fun idea and had pretty good stamina. She climbed up on the roof to wash up there and then I had her do all the low parts. Then she did the interior windows and some of the wiping down the wipeable parts of the interior. I did the vacuuming and the rest of that wiping. All spiffy and ready to go. Just needs to be filled up before we head off tomorrow morning.

We’re looking forward to meeting up with folks. We plan to buy ’stuff to spin’. Cate is required to enable. I’ve also kind of suggested that Tigger could get spinning help from her as there is something complicated about learning things from your mom (I know, I homeschool, but sometimes the resistance seems to just be on principle). I’m hoping Cate won’t mind.

And even though it might ruin the surprise if Cate checks blogs before she leaves, I now have a functioning digital camera. I have had the camera for a long time but haven’t used it because it doesn’t like OSX and was therefore a pain to download pics from (made worse by the fact that the AC adaptor had got lost and downloading just eats battery charge). So we went into a camera shop recently to possibly buy a camera and the guy says that we probably only need a card reader. On that occasion we didn’t have the camera with us so I went back yesterday with the camera and spent less than $60 getting organized. My camera is lower spec than the lowest thing on the market now but it is probably fine. He showed me all the things I could do (some of which I was unaware of. Macro feature, for example.) sold me a card reader and a new card (the smallest now sold is 128MB, I had an 8MB card). When I got home I plugged in teh charger and charged up the batteries and I’ve got loads of space on that new card. So you can anticipate photos of NH on this here blog.

Of course, now the problem is that my computer is complaining bitterly about how little HD space there is so no card reader software is going on it nor any space hungry photos. I am going to order a new computer (that was in the plan anyway). But there is hope.

Have a great weekend.

The blog reads seem to be dominated by stories of folks packing for Maryland. I’m not. It is too far south for me. Instead I’ll be packing Tigger in the car next weekend and heading off to New Hampshire, stopping in Vermont on the way to pick up Norma. I know it is a small festival but that probably means I’ll see all the vendors and have lots of time to hang with my pals and maybe meet a few new folks. And J. and I have started planning the Rhinebeck roadtrip which might be in danger of becoming the Annual Rhinebeck Roadtrip.

I’m also kind of busy with work this month which is a good thing, I suppose. I love my work so it’s no problem and I get to travel a bit at this time of year. But the change of pace and focus is a bit rough. Tigger is away right now hanging out with her grandparents which means a bunch fewer things to worry about. Procrastination is the order of the day though. And we decided that while she was away we should paint her bedroom. No, it isn’t a surprise. She picked the colours (with a bunch of guidance from me because I want to use curtains we already have). I do love the fact that she is old enough to travel unaccompanied on Via Rail and likes doing big grown-up things like taking 4+ hour train journeys by herself. She also gets to develop her own relationship with her grandparents unmediated by me and whatever issues I have.

Not much knitting has been going on around here. I finished the Bearfoot socks and am quite pleased with them though the weather is now often a bit warm for wool/mohair socks. That led to a little crisis because I don’t seem to have any sock yarn stash. I’ve become quite partial to sock yarn that isn’t available in my LYS — Koigu, Lorna’s Laces, Socks that Rock, Bearfoot — but have only knit with each of these in the past year so haven’t picked up stash of any of them. My LYS does stock Fleece Artist sock yarn and I went off there with high hopes but they’d sold out. The only thing that really tempted me was Regia Silk (which is only 20% silk and rather soft). It only seems to come in conservative solids but there was a nice grey so I got a couple of balls of that.

This gave me the opportunity to try out some stuff from the Schurch book. I’m doing an 8 stitch ribbed lace pattern. The only anxiety was that this yarn seemed a lot thinner than the other stuff I’ve been knitting socks with. I went down to 2 mm needles (my usual is 2.25 mm) and decided I really needed to have 80 stitches around (compared to 60 on the Bearfoot, and 64 on other socks this was a bit scary). I’m doing it toe up for the usual reasons and keep trying it on and it seems to be fine. I think 72 might be a snugger fit (particularly since it is a ribbed pattern) but that would be an odd number of repeats and require me to do something funky with 2 x 4 stitch columns on each side. So I soldier on. If anyone has size 10.5 (European 42) feet that are WIDE (compared to my medium, I think), let me know in case they really are a bit loose.

I’ve also been steadily working on the cardigan. Slowly and steadily, I guess. It is coming along. Relatively mindless. I’m still liking it.

And my spindles finally arrived. They are beautiful. I briefly started on the silk with the smaller one yesterday before dinner guests arrived and must get back to it. I think I might like them. And the silk isn’t too frustrating yet.

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately. I should probably take this opportunity to reflect on homeschooling a bit, particularly since there is a new Country Fair with a secular focus started by a bunch of folks whose opinions I respect and who often say things I find useful and/or thought provoking. But for now, you’ll have to live with this little knitting and spinning update.

This hasn’t been the greatest week. I had little patience with Tigger who didn’t seem to feel like doing anything that remotely resembled homeschooling. At some point I realized that I am probably premenstrual and although that probably explains my grumpiness it doesn’t really make it go away. I suspect she actually did learn things this week but we also had a couple of conversations about the particular frustrations of the combination of her not wanting me to tell her what to do and protesting that she is only 8 and thus shouldn’t have to make decisions. ARGHHH!

So the other day I took a little surf over to Treenway Silks and bought myself a little bit of this in the colour Musgrave Melody. Only $10 worth but I figure it is a pretty colour and I would like to see what it is like spinning silk.

I may now take Ted’s advice and go here and get a Tracy Eichheim spindle. My lighter spindle (not from Tracy) keeps coming apart when it falls on the floor. I think that’s a design flaw. Anyone who expects you not to drop it on the floor doesn’t understand much about spinning.

I have also been working on spinning more lighter weight yarn in the Persimmon Tree fibre that I bought at Rhinebeck (photos in the gallery). I think I have enough for a smallish lacy scarf. I looked through the patterns I have and ended up thinking I’d go with the old standard (wavy triangles from the Summer 2005 Vogue Knitting; I did the grey romney-angora in that and have also done one for a friend in some alpaca/cashmere/silk blend I got from Elann). But then I remembered a mobious pattern I got from Elann and looked around a bit for it and I think that will be perfect. I’ll make it narrower than written (since I only have about 140 yds).

After consulting with friends on my knitting list, I have cast off the first sock. I used a crochet cast off (basically the same as a normal one but you use a crochet hook to manipulate the stitches instead of the needles) adding an extra chain once every 6 stitches. Seems to work well. I cast on the toe of the second sock yesterday evening. I’ve also done a bit more of the 2nd sleeve of Tigger’s sweater while a friend was here with her kids the other day.

I found listening to an audiobook while knitting to be very nice but I’ve now finished Eventide. Must get another one when we go to the library this week.