Keeping me humble

Have you ever watched or read an interview with an artist, be they musician, filmmaker, etc, and seen how they answer the question: What's your favorite work of your career?

I think it's the same answer every time. They always say it's the last thing they worked on. Always. Even when it's a rock band who peaked in the 90s and is making total shlock now and you sort of feel bad for them and wish they'd hang it up (made up example). Now it's important to note there's a difference between your favorite thing and the best thing, but you have to figure there should be some overlap.

As I hung this skein to dry a couple days ago, I thought to myself, this is my all time favorite skein of handspun.



This is a 3-ply Aran weight(ish) Shetland dyed by Into The Whirled in the Sterrennacht colorway. (That's Dutch for Starry Night, naturally).

What makes this my favorite? Well, you know how lots of tween girls bedeck their bedrooms in the vaguely androgynous non-threatening heartthrobs of the day? I adorned out my room in Van Gogh posters and prints. Yup, former Van Gogh fangirl right here. Further confession: there were also a couple of Andre Agassi and Def Leppard posters. But I think a big part was the huge joy of spinning it. This was my first Into the Whirled fiber, and they dyer Cris obviously takes great care not to let the fiber felt or compact during the dyeing process. I held the fiber like a baby bird and spun it as woollen as I'm capable of. I tried to keep it as airy and bouncy as I could, and I think I succeeded. Coming back to my wheel after a six month stint of spindle only spinning turned out to be good for my wheel spinning, I think. Stay tuned to see it knit up, as I'm sure it will be pretty soon.

So is this my favorite just because it's my most recent skein? No! Because, surprise, it's actually not my most recent skein.



Behold, the disastrous first skein of cotton from my charkha. 3 plies and 0.7 ounces of doing it wrong. Oh boy. Do I have a lot to learn about spinning and plying on the charkha.

I know it looks like yarn, but trust me, it barely qualifies. It's certainly not the charkha's fault. It is, however, very obvious that this whole spinning cotton is a very different beast in terms of the amount of twist required for a stable single and plied yarn, and if I ever want to weave with this as warp (I do, by the way) I certainly need to figure out how to make it stronger than it is right now. I may try to weave with it, just to punish myself?

I'm not discouraged, though, don't worry. I love my charkha and I'm happy to put in the work required to get a skein I love as much as my Starry Night one. I've only been working on mastering my wheel for six or seven years now...

A new year of spinning, with sound effects

Hi everyone! I live in Indiana! What!?

I hope everyone had fun and relaxing holidays, and now it's time to get down to business. Moving has been hectic, and it's far from over, but the most exciting thing about my new domicile is that I have my very own yarn room. It's not like it's also the guest room or something; it's its own room, with lovely French doors and space that needs to be filled up with both comfy and functional furniture. All in good time.

I was reunited with my spinning wheel, and magic happened. The first magic, some Polwarth dyed by the Unwind Yarn Company in the abalone colorway. Boom!



I love abalone (though not to eat). I once found an abalone shell at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve with a little kelp crab sitting inside it.



As soon as that was off the wheel, I had to spin a Loop bullseye bump I got at Maryland Sheep and Wool last year. Bam!



Then I found another braid of Polwarth, this one from Play At Life Fiber Arts, that I got from Massachusetts Sheep and Wool in 2012. So this is on the wheel now. Shazam!



If you can believe it, I've been spinning even more. My grandfather, who I've well established is the world's greatest grandpa, made me a spinning wheel and gave it to me at Christmas this year. What? I know! So I've been spinning on that too. It's the Dodec design that uses easily available and cheap materials. It's an extremely low financial barrier to wheel spinning, though it's hard to say how easy it would be as a beginner tool. In any case, I'm a more experienced spinner who is comfortable spinning from a quill, I'm having fun with it. Kapow!


Moreover, there was a very special object waiting for me in Pennsylvania upon my return from Germany. Many moons ago I reserved a Bosworth charkha to be my very own. We are getting along swimmingly. Blammo!



Last, but of course not least, is that I have a spindle project going. The spindle is a Forrester and the fiber is from Hobbledehoy. This is the last of my spinning fiber remaining from MDSW 2012. Here's hoping for a top up in 2013. Zok!



I know this seems like a million things at once, but honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

So, so many things have changed for me in the last couple months. I went from living in Germany to being a car-owning, single family house-dwelling Midwesterner. I live in a very new place where I don't know anyone yet and I need to find a new job. In other enormous news I have my very first niece or nephew on the way! (More to come on that and the requisite knitting!) So many new things. The funny thing is how all these changes come about whether or not you're ready for them. I'm simultaneously embracing them and reeling from them, and in the meantime, it can't hurt to knit a very simple dishcloth from some very wacky handspun cotton yarn.

Another neverending story

A few years ago, Jenny Jo, Malia and I went to Rhinebeck together.  We had tons of fun and I behaved a lot like a kid in a candy shop.  One of the tasty morsels I ended up with was this amazing pair:

(Fun fact:  Rhinebeck 2010 was my first exposure to 

the addictive power of the Sanguine Gryphon.)

Which, after some work (ie, realizing they would knit into the wrong gauge for the pattern I had in mind, stewing for a while over what they should be instead, and finally frantically sketching on sarah-marie's couch), turned into this pair:

(Fun fact:  Octopi have 2/3 of their neurons in their arms, not brains, 

and are 'honourary vertebrates' in the U.K.!)

I still had some yarn left afterwards -- enough to make another background for aquatic animals.  This was my birthday present for J this year, and she obligingly loves the sweater.  (And I do too.)

(Fun fact:  I like stripes!)

I still had a wee bit of the blue yarn left!  I wasn't planning to do any Giftmas knitting this year, but a few days before the holidays I stumbled upon a pattern for knitted owl ornaments.  We spent the holidays away from home, so I wanted presents for J which wouldn't take up too much suitcase room.  Two of these little guys incorporate yarn left from J's whale sweater; there's now less than 6 inches left of both the blue and the purple.

(Fun fact:  next year, I'm going to knit a billion of these.)

I still have a half skein of the orange yarn left.  I'm thinking of weaving it against a dark gray warp ... eventually.

Feeling Festive

This will probably be my last post from Germany, because I am moving back to the States in less than a week, the thought of which is weird and scary right now. I want to recap the trip I took before the one to Amsterdam I just microblogged about the other day, because it was kind of the culmination of my time living here.

There were two things I was really looking forward to when I moved to Germany. The first was experiencing how Germans do Christmas. Hint: it involves Ferris wheels.



The other thing I was looking forward to? Visiting the Wollmeise brick and mortar shop. Wollmeise is a yarn that has caused much Sturm und Drang on the internet (see how good my German is getting?). These kerfuffles are inevitable when the demand far outstrips the supply and the expectations get out of control. In any case, I've gotten my hands on a few skeins over the years and I love it. I love the base yarns, I love how they look knit up, and Claudia, the dyer, has the most incredible color sense when it comes to rich, saturated colors and unexpected combinations. Being able to visit the shop was basically the first thing that came to mind at the prospect of moving to Germany, honestly.

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow knitter came to visit me from NYC, and we embarked on a trip of Christmas markets and Wollmeise hunting. We went to markets in the following cities:

Bonn
Köln
Heidelberg
Munich
Nürnberg
Frankfurt

All in a week. That's a lot of Christmas! It really did put me in a great spirit. There's something so fun and festive about wandering between the stalls and oohing and aahing at all the beautiful things around you. There was much glühwein, and kartoffelpuffern, and lebkuchen consumed, and shopping. Plus it was snowy, which I just loved. Have a few photos.








But what you really wanted to see is the yarn, yes?

The Wollmeise shop is in Pfaffenhofen, a very small town in Bavaria, less than an hour's train ride from Munich. The shop is thankfully a short walk from the train station, and it wasn't too hard to find. We started with a walk down this wintry path toward the town center.


Then we arrived.



It was pretty breathtaking, I must say.



We actually didn't spend too much time there, lest more yarn fall into our bags. We met someone who'd travelled from Pittsburgh with her family and planned the whole trip around being able to visit the shop. We also met a lovely woman who rode the train with us back to Munich who was visiting her daughter and made this outing hoping to be back in time for lunch. She also told us that before we arrived, an American man had come into the shop, having been sent by a cousin who said to buy yarn but gave no other guidance. It certainly was a fun place. And yes, I made some purchases.



On the train I worked on these socks that are now finished. They are for my husband and made with handspun Rambouillet yarn.



Now, I am done with the traveling. I'm winding down my time here, cleaning and packing and getting ready to move again. Soon I'll be plying the very last fiber I brought to spin.



2012 has been the most incredible year of my life, with all these adventures. 2013 promises to be incredible in a different way, as I retire from this transient lifestyle I've had up til now. I'm incredibly thankful that I've had this opportunity to live abroad and I felt like I've made the most of it. Now I'm ready to discover what home is.

The longest night is very soon upon us, and I hope you and all your loved ones have a fabulous time awaiting the light on the other side.

Quick report from the Netherlands

I'm staying in Utrecht:




But today I went to Amsterdam:




which is a great place to knit on a boat:




I love boats. I don't care how much of a cheesy tourist it makes me. If knitting on a canal tour boat is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Turkish Delight on a Moonlit Night

I'd love to share with you, if you'll indulge me, the experience of buying things, namely fabric and spices, at the markets in Istanbul (not Constantinople), a trip which followed closely on the heels on the previously blogged day trip to France. Sadly this post won't have a lot of photos of the markets themselves, because the experience was surprisingly consuming. I'll toss in some photographs from around the city for good measure, though.



Anyway, Istanbul. It's breathtakingly gorgeous, and ridiculously old, and there is so much fun stuff to do there. As with so many of the places I've been in the past few months, it's been merely a taste of someplace I already miss and want to return to.



If I had merely been browsing, perhaps I would have had a different experience in the makets, but I wanted to buy some ikat fabric and some spices for glühwein. Ever since Jenny Jo and I took a dyeing/weaving class at California College for the Arts, I've had a fascination with ikat fabrics. My hilarious attempt at making a vaguely circular shape in that class:



Nailed it! Anyway, ikat fabrics are not typical in Turkey, but they are in other parts of Central Asia, and that stuff makes its way to market along with the carpets and the saffron and whatnot.



Some things about shopping at the markets, namely the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar:

* It's like the biggest 600 year old mall ever. My biggest advice to anyone visiting Istanbul is WATCH YOUR STEP. The city is super hilly so there are stairs everywhere, and said stairs along with floors, sidewalks, doorways, streets, etc are old and uneven and not so friendly to the clumsier among us. But watching your step isn't the worst thing, because the floors can be fascinating, too.



* Shopping takes takes some time. The shopkeepers wanted to sit me down, yell at some guy out the door to fetch me tea, and show me EVERYTHING.



The husband and I got trapped in a carpet store for quite a while after pausing to look at a map of Turkey with corresponding carpet patterns outside the shop. We made it patently clear we would not be buying a carpet and he didn't seem to care much; he just wanted to show us the goods and challenge me to untie a knot from his superbly made carpets. It was pretty hilarious, and I suspect he offered us a really great price on a truly beautiful carpet we were sadly just not in the market for?

* If I said I was "just looking," I was often met with a snide comment. People wanted to know what I wanted, and once I said ikat, I was quickly whisked through the market by one guy to his buddy's shop. Buddies. When the guy at the hotel called his buddy to take us to the airport, he walked us outside, took some bottles of water from his other buddy at the convenience store without paying or even saying anything, and handed them to us. So many buddies!

* I'm glad I didn't buy anything at the first shop I went to. I actually really enjoy haggling but I wasn't meshing with the first guy and I later came to find out his prices were indeed quite outgrageous. I did the slow walk out the door and he made no appeal to me, so that was that.

* I enjoyed the next shop I found much more. The salesman was friendly and fun to talk to, the husband and I had some delicious tea, and then I did some damage. I didn't have to work too hard to get the guy down to a price I thought was reasonable for the absolutely stunning and gorgeous fabrics I came away with. These are all from Samarkand in Uzbekistan, and now I have to figure out what exactly to do with them.



* It is so much fun to taste everything that looks good, both inside the spice market, which also sells nuts, dried fruits, and sweets, and outside where there are people selling amazing fresh cheese.



In general, there is so much amazing food and drink to be had all over the city. Fresh squeezed pomegranate juice, where you been all my life?



* The husband, who is not a haggler by nature in the slightest, talked a street vendor down on a bottle of water on our last day there. This tickles me to no end.

I hope you're enjoying traveling with me. I've got less than a month left here in Germany, but hopefully more adventures to share before I go all Midwestern on you. A few more photos:









p.s. I must not be the only one who read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as a child and wondered what Turkish delight was?

p.p.s. One of the photos is a dead giveaway, but this blog post is also a Where's Waldo for the evil eye amulet.

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!