stash additions

I promised a look at the lucky finds I brought home from our trip.  It took a stellar day with gorgeous sunshine and an hour to shoot all the photos I wanted, but it was worth it.  Sometimes just touching fine yarns, imagining the potential in things--it can be inspiring and hopeful.  Here are more images from the photo shoot.

Here are the odd balls of Brooklyn Tweed and Kidsilk Haze I picked up--all yarns someone did not use, donated, and I got for $5US a ball.  Can you imagine colorwork or fuzzy mitts?  I can!

It will be so hard to decide if the blue balls, knit together, will be gorgeous on their own, or if I should use that rose colored tweed to offset the blue and save the mohair for some other purpose.  (mohair is warm but does kind of go up your nose when it is cold, nose drippy weather and wearing mitts...)

A friend was at a yarn shop that was going out of business.  She specializes in art quilting but said she could not stop touching this Alpaca/silk yarn and had to buy me what was left.  I got it in a package sent to my parents' house.  Wow! Just touching it is a tonic for what ails you.  No idea what this will be, something delicate, obviously.  I will need to put into my stash to "marinate" until the right project comes to me.

Last but not least, I got these skeins of Quince & Co. Puffin.  I was delighted by this.  My twins mostly like sweaters knit from DK-to Aran weight yarns, but I could see this becoming a bulky weight version of Stripe Freestyle.  It would be a fast knit and I need to get going, because my guys are growing and need sweaters for next fall.  (It's Winnipeg.  Winter is always coming.)

In the meanwhile, here's an "outtake" of what things looked like as I moved yarn around on my porch.  Sadie was taking a rest (note the squeaky ball) in the shade while I took photos. Even more photos to come soon in another post!  Stay tuned.

PS: Please join me in wishing the Professor a very happy 45th birthday today!  Here's to many more!

Slow Fashion October and related ideas

I started "slow fashion October" early --based on my last post--but I was inspired by the Fringe Association blog to mention it.  I'm always exploring how to re-use, or read labels, or buy less and make do...our lives are so full of waste.  Here are a few randomly connected things that relate to this theme:

1) I had a blast teaching at the Manitoba Fibre Festival.  I'm really worn out though.  The spinning class was inspired, in part, by a really out of control stash...since having kids, I just don't spin as much.  I loved sharing 10 small packets of non-wool fibers and information with my students, and maybe sending them home with these .5 oz-1.5 oz packets of flax, ramie, silk, cotton, llama, alpaca...etc. will enable them to try something new.  It also helped me to share something I'd somehow managed to amass too much of and redistribute it to good homes.

2) I also have re-issued an old favorite.  I re-visioned the Plum Ribbed Cardigan in Berroco Remix, a yarn that uses all recycled fibers.  I originally designed it for Knit Picks in 2006.  Eventually, copyright returned to me and I always intended to reknit it for myself but never got to it.  This week, I released it on Ravelry in a new format.  It includes new photos, metric measurements, and yarn suggestions.  It's also available for only $5US as an introductory (retro) price.  Please check it out!

(I loved being able to feature our family friend as a model.  This image was taken by one of my twins...there were dogs, twins and more racing around our yard as we tried to shoot this sweater in style.  I think this sweater suits her, but...I loved it too much to give away, so I am still wearing it, too!)

3) Here's my most recent piece on the CBC.  It's about international moving costs and the recent Canadian Liberal government aides who moved from Toronto to Ottawa.  They racked up enormous moving costs...roughly $126-189 per kilometer, paid by taxpayers.  Our stipend from the university? $3.95 a kilometer.  We were happy to move so that the professor could do research and teach in Canada, but why is it that some people get gold-plated moves instead?!

This seems tangential to slow fashion, but it's not.  Making economical and careful use of one's resources is important.  When I work with other people's yarn or expect to bill someone else for my services, I try to be reasonable because I don't want to promote waste or excess of any kind.  We need supplies and income, but not enough to insulate our houses!  This too (unnecessary stash, or out of control waste of yarn or charging too much)  is a form of unnecessary waste.  It's a lot of money!  Taxpayers could use it on groceries or ....sweaters... instead.

Note: "Plum Ribbed" is FULL of ribbing, (the knitting pattern) and that is why it is named this.  Please feel free to knit it in any color you like!

Snow time and stash

It's here!  Snow time!  On Wednesday night, my twins were up half the night...which is not all that unusual, actually (yes, we still don't have good sleep, I am one tired Mommy) but the main excitement was the SNOW.  Yep.  We now have snow on the ground, and barring weird melting events, it is likely to stay there until April or so.  

This correlated with another exciting moment.  I have finished the first twin sweater of the season.  Each boy gets a new handknit sweater (from me or from their Didi --grandma--) each year, at minimum, and luckily, we are still fitting into most of our sweaters from last year.  However, this one was absolutely knit to order.  I used Rowan Felted Tweed dk, which I am not in love with, but all the "best" colors were on sale at the yarn shop this summer, so there you have it.  75% natural fibers (wool and alpaca) AND much softer than last year's Lett Lopi Icelandic wool, which I love, but which was pronounced too fuzzy and furry.  (they still wear it willingly on cold days, just with a long sleeve shirt with a collar underneath.)  I used a variation on this pullover because I have the pattern book and I did not want to design a whole new sweater from scratch!

Here are two photos of the sweater.  Due to the gray, windy, snowy day, I had to adjust the light in the images, even when I took them outside on the porch.  True color replications are nowhere to be found on a day like that!

When I announced that sweater #1 was finished, the other twin burst into tears because his sweater isn't ready yet.  He has ordered a chocolate brown with blue edging sweater, and depending on the moment, it will be a lightweight, heavyweight, henley, cardigan, pullover, with or without stripes. :)  Anyway, based on the gauge swatch, it will likely end up being something fairly similar to the one I just knit.

There are some special touches worth noting.  I've been spinning some chocolate brown wool while the boys play in the basement, and it is a great color, but the yarn is a bit too bulky for what I think this twin might need.  (He already has his fair share of heavyweight sweaters, regardless of style.)

So, I dug into the stash, and found this.  It's a brown handspun Shetland 2-ply, roughly 600-700 yards, that I spun on my Canadian Production Wheel.  I kind of knew where it was in the stash, and I used my blog search function to find out the yardage...cause I wrote about it in 2009.  Bingo.   I got the gauge wrong back then, or at least, I am going to knit it at a looser gauge now, on a #5 (3.75mm) needle...but when I found it, I found the perfect blue yarn to go with it.

Yup, I wrote a post that featured the perfect blue merino/silk contrast color in 2005.  There is something to be said for a deep stash!  I have sold or given away loads of yarn in the last 10 years, but these handspun skeins were saved and moved to Canada because who knew?  One day I would have a twin four year old who asked for this...

He stopped crying when I gave him his very own gauge swatch to race with...around the house.  (At first there was confusion over whether this was a watch, which both boys clearly wanted more than a gauge swatch, but whatever...)

I don't list my yarn stash on Ravelry (hey now, this is big.  It is nobody's business!), but I do have this blog.  This ten year old blog, where I've been talking yarn, and wool, and knitting, and spinning, and stories---for a good long time.  That is worth celebrating this month, as the blog turns ten.

Meanwhile, while I cherish these things I tucked away, I am also getting ready to give away a lot of woollies for our newcomers.  Manitoba is hosting 2,000 refugees, and they are coming soon!  I feel lucky to live among people who are opening their hearts and communities to those in need.  This article says it best....or maybe we could just open with We were strangers once, in the land of Egypt...?

Distal sale and more

When I finished and posted my new pattern, Distal , last week, I felt a big let down.  Although I've been slowly working on several other knitting projects, I missed the rush of producing something new, something creative, and--most of all--something fast.  The solution was two-fold:

First, I cast on again.  A new one!  Hurray!  This time, I used a hand spun heavy worsted weight 2 ply yarn (4 sts=1" on a size #8(5mm) that has been marinating in my stash for a long time.  From notes I took in the pre-blog days, I think this was one ply Harlequin wool and one ply of Wensleydale or Lincoln long wool.  The Harlequin was a soft, marled brown/gray/white yarn that I spun woollen and felt would not last long on its own with any sort of hard wear; hence I plied it with something more durable, coarse and spun more worsted style.  Then, I dumped it into the dyepot and fell in love with the deep textured color that emerged.  I saved about 800 yards of this stuff--forever.  Well, not forever, but best I can tell, I bought these fleeces from 1997-2000.  I think this yarn has been in stash for 15 years.

Second....I decided to offer a sale.  Follow this link to get 20% off Distal from now until December 15.  (sale ends midnight, EST)  I'm hoping to sell a few patterns.  Based on rough estimates (cost of tech editing, yarn price, my time @ local minimum wage, etc.), I need to sell about 35 patterns at $5 to break even.  So, if you're tempted, please, knit a Distal!  It's fast!  It's a good gift...and it's on sale for even less than $5, too!

Last up, I had another essay published this past week on our local CBC website.  I'd clarify, before you click over, that I wish the income disparity between rich and poor in our society wasn't so great...but as long as somebody is going to earn $300,000 for a lecture, well, it might as well be an elder with amazing professional experience--that is, a woman with sound credentials.

That's most of the news from here.  We've been passing around cold viruses mostly...I'm thinking we should rename Autumn or Fall to "Getting Cold" or "Falling Sick" or maybe just "Virus?"  :)

Lost:

One sturdy, portable folding black music stand.
This music stand was given to me by the religious school class I taught. The kids and their parents gave it to me in the early '90's. It is well traveled, much loved and has lived in upstate New York, Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. It's new home should be in Winnipeg. Somewhere.

Last seen during the packing of my house in Kentucky.

Note: This is one of those things you don't need to unpack right away. However, it eventually occurs to me that it might be useful to have it, say, when I'm playing music. Thus began a "*pop up from the couch, do a focused search, return to the couch, defeated, start doing something else that might have been productive, and then....*return to asterisk and repeat" sort of day.

The professor says, --and yes, this might be logical, since it was stored in my office before--
"Do you think, (long long pause) maybe... it's in a box of wool?"

Well yes. It might be, clever man... I've looked briefly through the 30 boxes up here on the third floor of the house and I can't find it. I've found numerous other skeins of yarn, stashed where I least expected them. I've found all my boxes of roving, formerly used to pack photos. (Photos still not up on the wall. Yes, I know, we're working on that.) Brief moment spent wondering if that roving could possibly be compressed into, say, 5 or 6 boxes instead of the 10 it's in now.

Rediscovery of multiple bags of wool used as padding in other bags. Oh! I wondered where this Rambouillet went to... (no, actually, I'd forgotten I'd had all that. Left my mind completely.)

I hate losing stuff. Yet, I'm feeling that the only way to find this might be to empty every single box and reorganize the whole household. Oy, I'm not up for that. I just moved! It should be here....somewhere?

(Yes, I'd planned an entirely different sort of blog post, but now I can't focus. I can't find the #$)(%#@ music stand.--add your own frustrating bad word in as it comes to you. I'm sure you know how this feels...)

Update:
Found after much searching, one music stand, carefully tucked away in the back of a desk drawer. I spun Icelandic wool and thought about this a long time. I checked every box. Then? I remembered drawers. Thank goodness for drawers. Finally! (and yes, I would have likely stayed awake until I found it...so good this happened by 7pm.)