Fiber to France to Finished Object

At the end of 2011, I had set up a Self-Imposed spinning club for myself to help me work through the fiber stash and also actually use the spindles I've collected over the years. At the time I didn't know I'd be paring down my belongings to one duffel bag and a backpack for the latter half of 2012. Whoops. Still worked through a lot of stash, I gotta day! Originally I had intended to spin this green Tunis from Gnomespun with this particular spindle, A Forrester.



The Forrester didn't fit in the whisky bottle cardboard holder tube thingy that is my spindle case, so it was a no-go. Instead I spun it on my kick spindle, with great joy.



Tunis, being a downs wool, is great for socks because it's hard wearing and doesn't felt easily. It also poofs up like WHOA when you put it in a bath.



I should have taken a photo of this skein next to another of the same weight. Easily twice the volume. So squishy. It was about 300 yds, and beefier than I had originally thought, but still doable for socks, albeit with fewer stitches around (ended up being 48).

I like to save my plain stockinette socks for travel, and I knit these ones almost entirely on a totally crazy day trip with my brother to Pont-a-Mousson, France, where my grandfather was wounded in 1944. He had, ill-advisedly, stuck his hand out of a foxhole to get a photo of where he was trying to get, which was to the top of the hill across the Moselle river from where he was positioned. He never made it up there. He traveled back to France sometime in the 1970s with his vet buddies to see what the place looked like then, and he got another photo. He gave copies of these to my brother so we could find the place ourselves.

The very definition of a wild goose chase ensued. The train travel was bizarre and involved 9 trains in one day and layovers in Luxembourg. It was so incredibly foggy it was hard to see more than maybe 50-100 ft ahead of you. Most of the businesses in the town were inexplicably closed that day. But we found the hill. It's barely visible in this photo, behind this cemetery (which itself received much damage in the battle).



We will show him all the misty, ghostly photos I took in the town when we visit him on Christmas. I think he will be very touched that we paid him the tribute of finding this place. He will no doubt regale us with more stories of what happened to him and his fellow soliders here as he loves to do. What else can I say, he's my Grandpa and I'd do just about anything to make him feel as loved as he's made me feel in my life.

The socks, though. These ones are for me. He's got giganto feet and there wouldn't have been enough yardage!

The Neverending Story

I bought some cotton at Michaels mumbledy years ago with the thought of making my mom a set of dishcloths as a gift.



I brought this yarn with me to Germany because I knew at some point with such reduced stash, I'd knit it. Fruit cloths!



I hope you can tell that's a pineapple. I made a whole bunch!



(The two red ones were actually knit by my friend who visited and neglected to bring her own knitting.) If you haven't knit dishcloths, let me tell you, cute patterned ones like this are so fun. Faster than just about anything, and as the pattern emerges, it's just so delightful to watch it take shape. Simple pleasures, greatest treasures.

There was some yarn left over after these ten cloths were knit. I was expecting this, because the pattern said you'd get 2.5 cloths to a ball of kitchen cotton. I went on a pattern searching spree and got really excited by the Linoleum discloth. Voilà.



This pattern might be even more fun that the fruit cloths, especially because you stop needing the chart quickly and can just groove on it. I will say, though, that I probably spent almost as much time weaving in ends as knitting the thing, but I adore the finished product. It's so nubbly and squishy, I'm thinking of making bigger versions for bathmats or hand towels or something. I'm also thinking about doing this in different colors of natural cotton in handspun, because apparently I'm a person who will consider knitting a dishcloth out of handspun yarn.

There was still yarn left. My fancy turned to crochet. I'd had the linked-ring tawashi in my queue practically since I started using Ravelry in 2007. It was time. Turns out I had yarn enough for not one, but four more tawashis.



I totally messed up the linking on the one on the lower right. I didn't realize it until I had crocheted the second one correctly. Pretty sure it'll still work. These are also incredibly fun and fast, though next time, I might use acrylic instead if I really want them to be scrubbier. Also, they certainly appealed to the husband for their mathiness, but I think he would have been more impressed if they were Borromean. Pretty sure I could do that next time, for funsies, right?

Guess what?

There's still yarn left.



WHEN WILL IT END?

I haven't thrown these out; I can't bear to. I also can't bear to keep working with this yarn right now. I've been trying to get creative. I made a clothesline out of some of the orange for hanging drying socks from the posters of the lofted bed. We even used a little bit when my roommate from the San Francisco years visited and we did a blind taste testing with some of the delicious Belgian beers we've collected.



I'm out of ideas. Help?

Gettin' cozy

I have a ton to tell you all about all sorts of things, but I'm behind on some photography, so I've got a quickie post for you today instead.

In a number of the cities I've visited so far during my time in Europe, people lock padlocks to bridges as declarations of love. So far, I've seen these here in Bonn, in Prague, Paris, and perhaps most impressively, in Cologne (Köln). I'm talking about a lot of locks.



I love looking at them; there are all sorts of interesting things about them. There are good German names, like Silke who loves Dietmar. There are cool old locks and shiny new ones. There are objects locked to the bridge through the padlocks, like pacifiers and rings. There are bedazzled locks declaring girls BFFs forever. I love imagining into the lives of these people and what inspired them to make these declarations. How many of these relationships survive? Do people come and see their lock? Do people ever take down the locks?

Also, did I mention there are A LOT of locks?



I was checking the ones in Cologne out today, and I saw the best declaration of love out of all of them. Whoever locked their love to the bridge didn't want the lock to get cold, and knit it a cozy.



I would totally lock my love of knitting to a bridge.

More travels plus acutal spinning content!

Have you heard of a béguinage? Don't feel bad if you haven't; I didn't know what one was until I went to the one in Leuven, Belgium the other day.



Quite a place, yes? Some of the most remarkable buildings I've ever seen. So the Béguinage. It's a little hard to capture in photos, but it's an island formed by splitting the river into two canals, and then filling the whole things with a little brick and cobblestone labyrinth of tiny houses and yards.



It's like a little medieval planned community, full of religious ladies. They were all widows or spinsters (hate the negative connotation of that word!). The women wanted a life devoted to faith, but didn't want to take vows or lose their independence, so these totally awesome places were built where they could support themselves with their own labor rather than religious charity (though I believe they accepted that as well). What kinds of skills do these spinsters (hint, hint) have? Spinning, of course!

Belgium was a big center for linen production, and I can only imagine the amazing tools that must have been everywhere in this town back in the day. It would be awesome if it were a living history type place, but instead, it is housing for college students and professors. How many other college kids get to live in a UNESCO World Heritage site?

So then I went to Paris. I could say a lot about that, because, well, it's Paris. Have a few thousand words worth of photos.


Suffice to say it was beautiful and magical and delicious. Perhaps the best thing in Paris is the art. I couldn't take any photos of the art at the Musée d'Orsay, but I did get a few at the Louvre. The painting is a Vermeer, and the girl is making bobbin lace like I saw in Bruges. The textiles are all Coptic.



Despite my traveling, I've had plenty of time to knit and spin. Not having a job will do that to you. So I'll show you some yarns I've finished recently. I don't know why I brought mostly teal/green fiber with me to Germany, but I swear those three are different yarns. They are Merino/silk/stuff, Gotland, Tunis, and merino/angora, going clockwise from the upper left.



Someday soon I'll share my knitting with you, because I've been doing that, too!