Support your local...

Whenever I go on a road trip, I have this fantasy that I will happen upon a wonderful farm-stand by the side of the road, but instead of vegetables, they will be selling yarn and fiber. It hasn't happened yet, but the dream is one step closer to reality, thanks to this awesome website I just found:

http://www.localharvest.org/

This website is a directory of local farms all over the U.S. True, this is mostly about vegetables (have you signed up for your 2012 CSA yet?), but you can also search by product, including...ta-daa! Fiber! You can also look specifically for wool, angora, etc. You can even join a Wool CSA through the website! I mean--OMG! Isn't that completely fantastic?!? I love the internet more every day.

*Disclaimer: sadly, this is not actually a picture of a road-side wool stand, it's just what I imagine they would look like.

Thankful for the weather

Last week, temperatures in New York were in the mid 70s. I was of two minds about this. For one, it was great to sit outside and enjoy the blooming magnolias and other flowering trees on my lunch break.

On the other hand, I mourned that we never had real winter in the city, and I never got to wear my winter boots or trudge through Fort Tryon park in the snow on my way to the Cloisters, my favorite snowy day activity.

Moreover, I was worried that I had missed the window to finish the crochet blanket I started in January. It's really warm, and to weave in all the ends, I was pretty much going to have to sit with it on my lap. I overheat really, really easily. Was I doomed?

Then the weather turned! This week has been legitimately chilly, so here's my finished afghan.


I love quilts, but I'm intimidated by quilting, plus I don't have a sewing machine, so I like crocheting quilt patterns. I have actually done some quilting though, back in the day when I took the school bus out to the Leerkes' farm once a week to get sewing lessons from Mrs. Leerkes. She taught me that the center square of a log cabin quilt must be red, to represent the hearth of the cabin, so I kept the tradition in this afghan. I'm really happy with this aghan, so now I am in the preplanning stages of crocheting another quilt based on the Drunkard's path quilt pattern.

It was actually cold enough to snuggle under this blanket last night.


This pattern is Granny's Baby Log Cabin Blanket. The yarn is a mix of Decadent Fibers Cookie Dough and Creme Brulee yarns, purchased at Rhinebeck 2010. Now I'll probably get to use it for the rest of the week, and then put it away until next winter...

Fiber to Finished Object

There's a thread on Ravelry I first learned about from Jenny Jo that's a gallery of photos of unspun fiber, the finished yarn, and then the object knit from said yarn. It's a glorious thing to behold, full of surprises and sublime levels of talent. I was so excited about my February yarn that I knit it right away, so now I have the sequence of photos to contribute to the thread.

Fiber (Fiber Optic merino/silk in Copper to Verdigris):


Yarn:


Finished Object (Stephen West's Boneyard Shawl):


I have lots more photos on my Ravelry project page, if anyone wants to check it out. I wish my photographic skills gave a consistent representation of the color of this project, but alas, those are not skills I have.

The Yarn Harlot's been on a spinning kick lately, and she said something that resonated with my thoughts on spinning at the moment, namely that she thought when she started spinning that she'd spin most of the yarn she used. That's not how I felt starting out, but it's totally how I feel these days. With the exception of things like blanketsworth of yarn (stay tuned, because I have a blanket FO to show you as soon as I weave in the ends and take photos), and probably some sock yarn, I think I would be really happy spinning for all my knitting/crocheting. Just look at these other two yarns I've finished this month! I feel like I have to put them to the top of the priority list because I'm in love with them both. I don't know that I'm feeling quite ready to destash all my commercially spun yarn and start from scratch, but I can say it's a tempting idea.

The February Surprise

I will post about some knitting or crocheting at some point, but right now, I'm super into what I've been spinning. January was a great month for me. Three skeins!

Yarn the first. This was spun from a batt I received for my birthday that I felt compelled to spin in December even though December was for finishing up outstanding projects:


Yarn the second. This was once ounce of C type pygora (that's the most cashmere-like grade), plied with silk. I'm in utter love with this one:


Yarn the third. The January self-imposed spinning club project itself, in batt form:


In cop form:


And as yarn:


On to February! The old random number generator gave me this project to spin:



That's some merino silk from Fiber Optic, and a Jenkins lark. For some reason I have a bit of a hard time spinning silk blends consistently, so I figured I wouldn't be that concerned about it and try to spin a beefy single to keep the color gradient intact. Here are my beefy turtles:

What was so great was that I knew a gradient was underneath. It was like an easter egg, or as one person on Ravelry likened it, an everlasting gobstopper. It's an apt comparison when it comes to the neverending task of winding yarn onto a niddy noddy. To paraphrase Gene Wilder, "You can wind it and wind it and wind, and it'll never get any smaller. At least I don't think they do."

Because I wanted the singles to be hale and hearty, I decided to give them a good fulling. Alternating hot and cold soapy water, agitation, a cathartic amount of whacking. So here's the surprise. I have a theory why the yarn turned out like this: I tend to overspin my singles, plus wool and silk don't behave the same when fulled. So, voila, my unusually textured finished yarn:


I'm into it! Who knows if I could have made this on purpose? It's one of the great things about spinning, really more of an art than I science the way I practice it.

Spun to finished: BFL Thorpes

Unlike my co-blogger, Malia, I do not have a self-imposed spinning club. But I do have projects!

The interesting thing about this project was that I loved the fiber, but I couldn't get excited about the yarn...the texture was nice, but I wasn't into the colors. The ugly yarn sat around for months, un-loved, until finally I decided to just get it over with and make something (also I needed a hat). Lo and behold, the colors that looked so muddled in the skein sorted themselves out again into very attractive stripes, and I ended up with a hat that I really love.

Here's the fiber: Abstract Fiber BFL. Funny story, I was on a multi-stop trip and bought spinning fiber both in Northampton, MA (at Webs, of course), and in Oakland, CA (at Piedmont Yarn), and by pure accident I bought Abstract Fiber BFL in both places. What can I say? I love the colors!

I spun it into a basic 3-ply. Behold! Color mixing!

This is about the point where I lost interest in the yarn. The overall color effect of the skeins is just brown, and at close range you can see the dreadful clashing of sage-green, orange, and red-violet. Some people might be into this yarn, but I was very dubious.

When I finally did knit it up, the colors settled down quite a bit, into nice fuzzy stripes. I like it!
The pattern is Thorpe, by Kirsten kapur. I kept the larger hat for myself and donated the smaller one to a handknits drive at my local library. The green edging is a millspun yarn.

Excuses, excuses ...

Between job interviews and baby J, I haven't had much time to knit -- let alone blog -- these days.  I'm happy to report that I've made progress on the first of these problems, though:

J is happy to nap all day -- as long as someone is holding her.  I discovered that, at least on my parents' couch, there's a sweet spot:  a way to sit so that friction keeps her in place on my chest, and my head is sufficiently elevated that I can knit comfortably.  Cuddling my baby and knitting at the same time:  is there a better way to spend a winter morning?  Oh, and I also got to watch my parents' nutso cat chase his own tail.

What's that?  You want some AKC along with cute baby pictures?  That's fair, I guess.  On the needles above, I've got the beginnings of a daybreak shawl. 

I've never made a Stephen West pattern before, and I'm excited about this one.  I love knitting shawls even though I never seem to wear them.  Recently I decided that part of the reason for this is that most of the shawls I've made are just too lacy for me.  So I hope that the awesome colorfulness of this one means I'll actually wear it.  (My contrast color -- which I get to start in only twelve more rows! -- is a fabulous deep blue-green that perfectly matches the blue-green bits in the first color).  

The story of my holidays

It's 2012, so I'm kicking off my self-imposed spinning club. In December, I was trying to finish various spinning WIPs from 2011, but I had a little stumble. A dear friend bought a batt for me at Rhinebeck for my birthday, and then as a reward for running a race on Thanksgiving, I bought myself a hot pink turkish spindle.

So, this happened.


Whoops!

Luckily, it was so much fun to spin that the whole batt had been spun before Christmas. I was hoping to ply it all up over holiday travel times, but instead I got really into the socks I was knitting (more on that later). Today, however, I finished plying and once I give it a wash and whack, we can call this one done.



Now I can move onto my randomly selected first fiber/spindle pairing of 2012, which is this Bosworth mini spindle in curly koa with 2oz of merino/silk/yak from Corgi Hill Farms. It's as delightful as it looks.



OK, so back to the holidays. Christmas Eve of 2011, I spent the time with my husband, my parents, and my brother. Food was eaten, stockings were unstuffed, and while we all hung out I finished these, the last on-the-go stockinette socks of 2011. Seven pairs!



On Christmas Day, things started to fall apart. On the way out the door to head to my grandparents', I get a text that my grandmother has been sent to the hospital. My husband, brother, and I visited her there, bringing our Christmas presents and spending a little time trying to cheer her and my grandfather up. At that point, the nurses thought she might just be there for a few days.

My husband and I continued our travels to his parents' house, and although it was great to be with all of his family, I was preoccupied with my grandmother's condition, to say the least. I did a lot of just sitting quietly and knitting. To me, the comfort of knitting plain stockinette socks is simply immeasurable. All of this worrying resulted in an entire sock in just a few days, which is probably some sort of record for me. These socks are in Sanguine Gryphon Bugga!, in one of their special nudibranch colorways.



You might know where this story is heading. My grandmother died on December 29, and I'm still reeling from the loss. I'm a very fortunate person to have had such a funny, generous, supportive, and generally awesome grandma for so much of my life.

So the travels continued. My husband and I met up with my brother to take us back to my mom's hometown. My grandfather, who is also a funny, generous, supportive, and generally awesome guy, was already in purging mode, wanting the family to take lots of her personal effects with us. I didn't want to be too grabby for a host of reason, perhaps mainly because I hit the mother lode years ago: my grandmother gave me her engagement and weddings rings when I got engaged. Yes, while she was still alive and married to my grandfather when she gave me those. Also, she told me if I didn't like them, I should "sell them and see what I can get." Sentimentality: not my grandmother's strong suit.



There was one thing that I saw and knew needed to come home with me (Well, two. The heart pin with BINGO on it is just too awesome for words). I don't recall her ever wearing this, but given her aforementioned lack of sentimentality, she must have liked it for some reason. It probably speaks to my obsession with fiber arts that this thought cut through all the grief I've been experiencing: this will make an amazing inlay for a spindle.



And it will. Tom Golding of the incredibly gorgeous Golding Fiber Tools is going to make it for me. Stay tuned for how it turns out.

As a final image in this rambling ramble, I wanted to share one of my favorite photos of Grandma, one that I saw for the first time just a few days ago while going through some of her old stuff. This is her on her wedding day over 65 years ago, and yes, that's my grandfather leering at her. It perfectly captures her sassiness. That last time I saw her, she was sick and frail, but the sass was all still there.