a sweet moment

Here is a knitting moment that I'd like to capture: taking refuge from the heat of the afternoon, reclining on the sofa, kept company by my napping kitty cat.


Other small thoughts run through my head now that I look at this picture.

My cat is most often portrayed on this blog as eating my fiber, tangling my untangleable mohair, chomping my needles, and generally being a troublemaker. Along these lines, you may notice the puncture wound on my left hand in this picture, which is her gift to me from a recent 'playtime.'

But I think I've been unfair. Ninety percent of the time she's an incredibly sweet and affectionate girl, and I'm glad that I could show that in this picture. Especially since she's had such a tough week (the mockingbirds have been terrorizing her, and I keep seeing the poor girl running headlong across the yard with a bird buzzing at her tail).

The other notable thing about this picture is that I'm actually knitting with straight needles! OMG! This amazes me. The last time I knit with such needles was in spring 2000, a full eight years ago. That's when I discovered circulars, and I haven't touched the straight ones since. But I will say that they have a nice nostalgia to them, and it makes for smooth knitting when you don't have to slide stitches over a join.

One-shoulder tunic

My fresh-off-the-needles tank top makes me feel like I'm wearing a dramatic Grecian costume, as if I were in a Martha Graham dance.*


And I love it! It's knit from a handspun, rosemary-dyed silk yarn from Avril in Japan, with a cottony texture that suggests tussah or muga rather bombyx silk.

The construction is based on the One-Shoulder Tunic in Teva Durham's Loop-d-Loop. Her pattern used ribbon tape on a size 13 needle; I was using a much lighter yarn on size 5 needles, so I had to change the pattern considerably to adjust to my gauge.


In addition, I added a few inches of crochet to the bottom to keep it from curling, and a few rows of crochet to widen the strap and stabilize the top edge (I might even go back and add a few more rows in the future). I could've added waist shaping, but because it already had some negative ease I didn't think it was necessary.

Martha Graham was my high-brow cultural reference for this project. I have a low-brow reference as well. Do you remember the song that never ends? Back when I was a kid, singing that song was a sure-fire way to be annoying. Similarly, it made for an annoying theme as I knitted this top: "This is the knit that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends. I guess I started knitting it not knowing what it was, and I'll continue knitting it forever just because..."


It took me forever to make this, because I was working with a yarn that was an unknown (and stretched a bit) and because the strap fitting was a bit tricky. I had to do the strap and top inch three times, at 2 hours each. I had to do the bottom crochet three times, at 2 hours each. It became a joke at my weekly knitting night that I was still endlessly working on it. But all's well that ends well!

*I love modern dance and took Graham classes for years, so this was the first thing I thought of when I put on this tunic.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Roundup

Ah, Maryland Sheep and Wool. Marvelous animals, gorgeous yarns, and kindred fiber-minded spirits.

The highlight for me was meeting Nanney Kennedy of Seacolors yarns . She's a dynamo, who raises her own sheep and solar dyes her yarns, with seawater as a mordant (get a wonderful glimpse into her world with this little video). I was so excited to meet her because I'd been reading about her farm and dyeing in Shear Spirit, a new book that profiles life on ten US fiber farms.

It's a beautiful book, and I want to talk about it for a moment because it was kind of a theme for who I talked to at the wool festival. I got to meet and praise the photographer, Gale Zucker, who captured the farmers and animals in such a magical way. I didn't get to meet the author, Joan Tapper, but I would've sought her out if I'd had more time; her writing is rich and natural, and she has a wonderful way of drawing out the stories of these farms.

I've been savoring the book over the last couple of weeks, reading a few pages with my morning coffee and fantasizing about living such an authentic, rural, creative life. Makes me want to pack up, move back to Vermont, and find myself some alpacas and angora goats! Seriously! Look at their Shear Spirit blog and see if you don't start fantasizing too.


Anyways, after reading about Nanney in the book, I was incredibly excited to happen upon her at the wool fest. We had a great conversation about green knitting. I had to run off to the Ravelry meetup and, unfortunately, ran out of time before I could come back and buy some of her amazing yarn. I'll be back in New England for a good part of the summer, though, and I hope to make a pilgrimage to Maine to find her and her yarn there.

The other dyer that I'd read about in Shear Spirit and met at the festival was Jody McKenzie of Botanical Shades. She is a natural dyer who partnered with Tregelly's Fiber Farm in Massachusetts, although she's now moved to Maine. I bought some gorgeous naturally-dyed mohair locks from her, which were my sole purchase of the festival.

The only downside to the day is that I didn't leave nearly enough time to see it all. I'd completely underestimated the scale of the festival and its subsequent traffic, lines, and slow-moving crowds. The main casualty of this was the Ravelry Meetup. I showed up right on time to see Jess and Casey come in, where they were treated like rock stars (cameras, applause!).

(if you look hard, you can see them entering towards the left)

Since it was crowded and hard to circulate right then, I decided that I'd come back a bit later. But by the time I got back, hardly anyone was there and they were out of buttons. Drat! Next time I'll leave more time and strategize more carefully. I'm already planning for next year!

sheepsies

Everywhere I go, I seem to seek out fiber animals. I've been in DC for a few days, and even here I've managed to find some sheep. This was at Mount Vernon, which was George Washington's beautiful estate. Here's my sister just before she pet the sheep:


It was a good opportunity to give her a lecture (and you can guess how much she enjoyed it -- but she was the only one around to lecture!) about lanolin and fiber processing and why sheeps' wool is not the greenest fiber around. Ah, obsessions.

Here's me, getting a little lanolin on my hands:


There were two types of sheep. One of them had a curious, curly coat. Can anyone tell me what kind of sheep this is? I'd love to know.


As we'll be heading out to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday, there will undoubtedly be more pictures of fiber animals coming soon. I'll be at the Ravelry meetup at 11:30 on Saturday - hope to see you there if you're coming, too.

And a last little note -- I've been getting more commenters than usual (thank you!) with the launch of Green Knitter. But more than half of the commenters are impossible to respond to, since their Blogger profiles are private or they don't include an email in their profile. If you haven't gotten a response, would you check your settings? Takk!

emerald shrug

Pattern: I used the construction of the Little Lace Shrug in Lace Style as a starting point. Basically, it's a knitted rectangle which is sewn into a tube for a couple of inches at each end, with a picked up border around the back and neck. I changed the stitch pattern to 'Openwork Diamonds,' I adjusted for my own gauge and sizing, and I added a ribbed border.
Yarn: Kaalund 2-ply Merino Lace in Camphor Laurel from One Planet Yarn, which is a deliciously springy lace yarn
Needles: size 6


Shrugs are slightly strange little garments, but I think I'll wear this one. I love it!! It's an easy way to inject some gorgeous color into an outfit, and it's lightweight enough to wear even when the weather is heating up.

For example, I took these photos when it was 93 degrees in the shade even, and there I was in the blazing sun. As I wanted the oleanders as my backdrop, I had to standing on our picnic table (now I wish I'd taken a full-length photo to amuse you!). My feet were burning. But my shoulders? Quite comfortable in their laceweight wool, thank you very much.

Happy Earth Day!!

To celebrate Earth Day, I'm announcing my new website: Green Knitter

I started working on this website a few months ago when I was trying to find reliable information on organic, natural, and eco-friendly yarns. I wanted a website with straight talk about the sustainability of different fibers and yarns. When I couldn't find one, I took matters into my own hands...

I hope you check it out! And I look forward to hearing what you think about it...

coffee as dye

Mountain Man recently handed me a pair of white linen trousers. He told me he never wears them, and he asked me to dye them. Yay! I love a dyeing challenge.

The reason it was a bit of a challenge is that plant fibers are much less receptive to natural dyes than animal fibers. They usually require a labor-intensive series of mordants, and even then they often don't come out with the same pleasing colors.

I decided to search for a substantive dye, which is one that requires no mordant. I thought about pecan hulls and tree barks, but I settled on the nearest one at hand: coffee. (A big thanks goes out to Mama Java's, our local independent coffe house, for collecting some grounds for me.)

Before I got to the main event, I wanted to do a little experimentation. I set up two dye vats: (1) one for the stovetop, with a conventional 1-hour simmer of dyestuff and 1-hour simmer of fibers, and (2) one for solar dyeing, with a 2-day soak of the coffee grounds and a 2-day soak of the fibers. I made mini-skeins of wool, handspun alpaca, and cotton yarns for each vat, and I added a silk skein to the conventional vat as well. The results:

Left to right: tussah silk, conventional wool, solar wool, conventional alpaca, solar alpaca, conventional cotton, solar cotton.
Overall, I was pleased with how the solar dyeing compared to the stovetop dyeing. It produced slightly lighter colors, but it was free, carbon-free heat.

I love the caramel color that came out on the silk and wool. You'll notice, though, that the cotton just came out looking dirty. Had me a bit worried for those trousers, but I tried them out anyways, solar-style (that was the lesson I took from the experimentation). And, reasonable success!
I did two rounds of solar dyeing on them, and they came out a light khaki color, a little warmer than it looks in the photo above. I had to agitate them in the dye pot (basically, plunging my hands in every couple of hours and giving them a good scrub) pretty often in order to get the color even. Both my hands and the fabric seem coarser after all that, but it was worth it. Now Mountain Man has a pair of pants he can spill coffee on with impunity!

handspun and a book

These past few weeks, I've often spent a bit of time spinning in the morning, after coffee and the New York Times but before I really start the day. I need to spin outside because I'm working with raw alpaca fleece with a fair amount of hay and dirt in it. And I need to spin in the morning because the rest of the day is now getting to be too hot. It's becoming a lovely morning ritual.


I'm experimenting with making different yarns, so I don't have much of any one yarn. But I have it in my mind to pick a special project to spin for. And to that end, I picked up a marvelous new book: A Fine Fleece: Knitting with Handspun Yarn, by Lisa Lloyd.

The patterns in this book weren't what I was expecting, but I fell in love with them. What I'd been expecting, and what would be useful for a beginning spinner like me, would be a book with many small projects that could help me figure out what to knit with what I've spun. What this book offers for the most part are intricately cabled sweaters (although it does have a few patterns for socks, hats, and scarves).

That makes the book less functional for my immediate purposes. But, but! I LOVE these sweaters. The patterns are full of symbolism and beauty, and the author's passion really shines through. She's very thoughtful in these garments. Every single one is shown in both a handspun yarn and a commercially made yarn, so that you can see how the texture changes (and so that you use these patterns even if you're not an accomplished spinner).

So, I'm very, very happy with this book. I would highly recommend this book if you're a cable fiend like I am! Now if only I could figure out what to do with these little skeins of my handspun ...

family members taking an interest

It's usually gratifying when a family member takes an interest in your craft. But that's not the case when it's your cat, whose interest involves eating your spinning fiber:


My god, this is one crazed cat. I'd been spinning by the picnic table on Sunday morning, and apparently I dropped a scrap of raw alpaca fiber.

Leila pounced on it, rolled over it, ripped it into bits, and seemed to be eating part of it.

This went on for quite some time, and I couldn't stop laughing. And then Mountain Man got a laugh out of at me, as I crawled around on the ground trying to get a good shot of her. The best part was that I'd been Andean plying, so I had some 30 yards of singles wrapped around my left wrist, attached to the spindle, which I couldn't put down during this exciting photo session.

But I had my own good laugh at Mountain man a day earlier. He'd just returned from a workshop in the UK and was trying to describe one of his colleagues to me.

She was wearing an interestingly constructed vest, a peasant skirt, some wild boots. He summed it up as: "She looked like a Rowan model."

Mwa ha ha. My plan to indoctrinate him into my knitting world must be starting to take effect ....

knitting in green

This is a beautiful season in Phoenix. Temps are in the low 80s; it's already too hot in the sun, but it's incredibly pleasant in the mornings, evenings, and shade. The citrus trees are blooming, the grapefruits are ripe and full, and the sky is clear and blue. Outdoor colors of the moment: green, yellow, and blue.


Knitting colors of the moment: green, green, green. I didn't realize this until I tossed my active projects together. They're all predominantly GREEN. Starting at the top and moving clockwise, there's a strange felting experiment in a green wool, a camisole in pale rosemary-dyed silk, the Primavera socks, and a new lace project in green laceweight merino.


The lace project is my obsession for this week. I love the yarn, which is Kaalund laceweight in 'Camphor Laurel.' The color is a gorgeous, saturated emerald with hints of blues.


It's going to be a delicate shrug, adapted from the 'Little Silk Shrug' pattern in Lace Style. I changed the stitch pattern to the more defined 'Openwork Diamonds,' and I'm probably going to add a ribbed edging like Cast & Bind's version.

Happy spring to you too!

A Visit to the Forest

Mountain Man and I went up to Flagstaff last weekend. It was breathtaking, both figuratively (the mountain scenery is gorgeous) and literally (we hiked to 9000 feet!).


I brought along a hat I recently finished, a delicately striped cap that's meant to evoke tree rings. The yarn is Blue Sky Alpacas sportweight in two of their natural browns. It's knit in the round using a nifty little technique so that the stripes match up without jogs.

We spent Saturday rock climbing and Sunday hiking, and we came home happy and well-exercised. Isis was probably the happiest of us all - I wish I had a photo of her bounding along the trail and rolling in the snow. She finally got a taste of winter! But all I have is a photo of us on the hike, with me doing my best to smile in the intense wind and Isis intent on the next adventure:

pink!

Here's a precious little something to "awww..." about:

The patterns are Lacy Bonnet, from Knitting for Two, and Saartje's Booties. I love these patterns. They feel fancy and girly, but they're also quick and uncomplicated to knit. I used this combination for the white set with hearts, and I will probably come back to it again, although I have my doubts about the appeal of tie-under-the-neck bonnets compared to caps. (Any thoughts from moms or dads out there?)

The tie of the bonnet is a lovely silk ribbon. The yarn is a soft and bouncy worsted merino (label fell off) that I kettle dyed with cochineal last summer. It really, truly is the shocking pink that you see in the picture. I loved it all so much I almost didn't want to send it off to the intended baby!

feeling springy!

Blogging from Connecticut now, courtesy of free airport wireless (yay!).

I came back East on a last minute trip this week. I was feeling nostalgic for familiar people and places -- it was just my birthday on St. Patrick's Day -- and it was also time to reconnect with graduate school.

It was super to be home!! Here I am in my parents' garden, enjoying the hopeful sunlight and cool freshness of a New England spring.


You can see that I brought my Forecast along for the visit, and I was also wearing my birthday present to myself: a Perl Grey stick pin via One Planet Yarn & Fibers.

I spent a few days in Cambridge before I came down to Connecticut. I had the grand fortune of having a cup of tea with Ellen of Knit Sisters. No photo, alas.

But I do have a photo of some excellent yarn that my friend Gustavo (inspiration for the Cambridge Watchcap, author of the Dinner Bell food blog) brought for me from South America. He's been in Paraguay all year for his PhD research, though I think this particular yarn came from Chile.


It's soft, handspun, and beautifully colored: soft, mossy green with flecks of gold. Perfectly coordinates with the andromeda shrub :)

camping with yarn

I spent a couple of days this week camping, hiking, and birdwatching with a dear friend. We were primarily in Madera Canyon, a birdwatching hotspot south of Tucson. It's at reasonably high elevation, so it's forested, cool, even a bit snowy in places. Such a breath of fresh air!

I mostly was just getting in a few rows by the campfire in the evenings (all my yarn has a woodsmoke aroma now!). The last morning, though, I let my friend go on a birding walk alone, and I took the hour by a pond to just listen to the morning birds and catch up on some fiber arts. Here's what my backpack looked like:


The pink is a new hat I'm working on in Nature's Palette organic worsted wool, colorway 'Owl's Clover.' The camel-colored fiber is a lovely, straight-off-the-animal alpaca fleece that I got from a local alpaca farm. I'm spinning it up into a fingering-weight 2 ply on that there spindle.

The hat was meditative. Stockinette stitch in the round. I don't even have to look at it while I knit, so it was the perfect accompaniment to bird-watching...

impulsive knits

Isis (our doggie) and I go on nice, long walks every day. When we go up into the desert, we pack a backpack with water, doggie bowl, and biscuits. When we walk in our neighborhood, though, all I need is a little pouch for cell phone, ipod, and keys. I realized the other day that I didn't have such a pouch. It's always such a delight when you get ignore your ten other WIPs and instantaneously cast on for a little, easily finishable project.


I started it at the Stitch & Bitch last Thursday, where I talked so much and was so indecisive about which stitch pattern to use that I hardly made progress. But it was quick to finish the next day. Basically, I knit a long, thin rectangle and then picked up three stitches on the side. I knit a strip of garter stitch perpendicular to the main rectangle, picking up other side stitches as I went. This forced the rectangle to turn into 3-D, with a bottom of 3 stitches' width. I knit a garter stitch strap, and then when it was long enough, I attached it to the other side of the rectangle in the same manner.

I don't know if my off-the-cuff description makes sense. Sometime I may make another pouch with some improvements and post the pattern here.



It's soft and stretchy, knit in SWTC's 'Craft,' which is an organic cotton and milk protein (!!) mix. And I knit another kerchief to match. I brought it along rock climbing yesterday, and it was perfect for keeping my hair out of my eyes.


Whee! Impulse knits are good for the soul!

Primavera

Spring comes early in Arizona. The grass is greening up. The apricot trees are blooming. The grapefruit are sweet as can be. And I've celebrated by starting a very springy sock indeed.

The pattern, appropriately, is called 'Primavera.' Yarn is Fleece Artist Merino Sock in 'Rainforest.' It seems so yummy and fresh to me, and it's knitting up speedily.

I have to admit, though, that the warm weather makes me realize how much I missed having a cold and bracing Vermont winter. As long as my body thought it was autumn (which is what an Arizona winter feels like), it didn't miss winter. But now that we're headlong into spring, I really feel like I've skipped a season.

And soon it will be too hot for socks! So I'd better back to my needles ....

two reasons I'm getting less knitting done

My New Whorls

His New Wheels

(It's hard to knit when you're spinning. And it's hard to knit in that passenger seat!)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made this sweet little heart for Mountain Man. It's knit with cochineal-dyed licorice twist, lined with pink cotton fabric, and filled with lavender flowers.


The pattern is 'Lavender Heart' from Pretty Knits, with some modifications. In addition to changing the yarn, needles (6), and overall size, I made it by knitting one large rectangle in the front stitch pattern instead of two squares in contrasting yarn and stitches. I handsewed it. And I made it so the 'wrong side' is on the outside (it's more subtle than the ribbed 'right side').

It's a nice little pattern that I'm sure I'll use again and again for gifts. But I'm sad to say that I can't say the same for the rest of the patterns in the book ....

I was very much drawn in by the title and the concept of girly, lux knits. But in the end, it came off as too much frilly frippery for my taste. Too many ruffles, beads, bows, and flowers. And too much frenetic mixing up of textures and colors. I do like a few of the simpler patterns -- namely, a kidsilk haze stole (Anisette) and a delicate tunic-length cardigan (Isobel) -- and may make them yet, but I do wish they came with charts instead of just line-by-line instructions.

I'm disappointed because I really did want to like this book. But, these days, even romance has gone modern! I'm more likely to look to the stronger, body-conscious lines in books like Sensual Knits, Fitted Knits, and Knitting Lingerie Style.

Thank you, Phoe!

All my trolling for contests (in the name of WiKnit) has paid off, big time. I won a prize in a fantastic contest that Phoe was throwing for her own birthday.

It came so nicely packed up, a tidy bundle in orange crepe paper, tied with colorful yarn, and accompanied with a sweet note on cool stationery. Savage that I am, I immediately ripped the package open and unwound the hank to see the yarn in all its glory:

The yarn is Fleece Artist merino sock in the Rainforest colorway. It's a gorgeous handpaint of blues, purples, and greens. In addition, Phoe gave me a handbeaded necklace with opaque blue glass beads and sparkly crystals. This is such a kind gift that I can hardly believe it.

And to think that she sent it halfway across the world to a stranger to celebrate her own birthday!! May we all cultivate such generosity. Thank you, Phoe, for the gift and the inspiration.

dyeing experiments

After my foray into kool-aid dyeing, I've come back to the natural dyeing full force. It's felt like an exciting challenge to learn all about what I can dye with from this new landscape. So in the past few weeks, I've tossed dozens of plants into the dyepot -- our kitchen gives the distinct impression that Macbeth's witches are our houseguests! Here's what it looked like as I was 'loading' the dyepot, with pomegranate rinds drying in the sun:


I have a big enamel pot with a few inches of water in it. For these dyeing experiments, I just pack the large pot with mason jars, each with a plant sample (anywhere from a few teaspoons for something like turmeric to a few handfuls for a plant I'm unfamiliar with). I bring it to a boil, simmer it for about an hour, and then leave it for a few hours to cool. Then I'll add mini-skeins of wool -- alum mordanted or unmordanted -- and simmer those for an hourish.

These were the dyes from my kitchen (turmeric, carrot tops, chamomile) and neighborhood (all the rest). Unless otherwise noted, they're alum mordanted. Starting at the bottom and moving clockwise, we have: cochineal (yes!! I found some growing on a neighbor's cactus), pecan hulls, pomegranate rinds, unmordanted eucalyptus, eucalyptus, rosemary, chamomile, unmordanted carrot tops, carrot tops, turmeric exhaust with a pomegranate mordant, and unmordanted turmeric.

The turmeric is fantastic but not very light-fast, although the pomegranate rinds are supposed to help it (I'm interested in them more as a source of tannin mordant than a dyestuff). The carrot tops were a real surprise, and the fresh cochineal is divine. All in all, I was exceedingly pleased with the results.

The next task was to explore the desert plants. Mountain Man and I spent a day rock climbing in the nearby McDowell Mountains, and I came back with a backpack stuffed with plants: jojoba leaves, desert mistletoe, creosote bush, willow, ferns, and many others that I couldn't identify. Here they are, layed out on the counter in the evening:

The results were rather disappointing, with muted, washed-out colors. Some of the brightest yellows came from the most odiferous plants - creosote bush and turpentine bush (named because they have these smells). But I am curious about the pale reddish color that I got from the mistletoe, which is on the bottom, so I may try working with that to see if I can find another way to extract it.

And that's it for now! I've got another set of samples simmering away as I write this, but it's time to focus on the knitting again for a while ...