This New Obsession Makes Me Spin

I had a blogging hiatus this fall and I also had a little hiatus in spinning. I was so excited back at New York Sheep and Wool to have learned some basic spinning techniques and I was just so set to spin like crazy. Then I think Superstorm Sandy and some other tough year-end events just made December seem like the last mile of a marathon.

But all that is behind me now and I have been having a fantastic time this past weekend and this holiday weekend spinning away. It is completely mesmerizing to hold the fleece in my right hand and pinch the fiber as it is pulled by the action of the wheel onto the bobbin. My left hand is focused on drafting and the right hand is pinching and my feet are pumping back and forth. When everything is working just right it is simply magic.

I love the qualities of the roving I have bought. I bought a variety of qualities so that I would have some to practice on and, with the better quality, a reward to look forward to. I tried to find the most unprocessed roving possible. I have both natural white and brown fleeces. They smell of lanolin and I love the feel of the lanolin on my hands as I spin it. The brown fleece has lots of particles of hay and straw in it and as I draft it with my left hand, the bits fall onto my sweats leaving little piles. It is all clean and not at all gross, it just reminds me of where this fleece came from. I have always loved finding little bits of straw in yarn as I knit.

As my left hand drafts the roving, the individual fibers sort themselves out and the roving which flows to my right hand is a collection of wispy fibers fanned out to twist into the proper weight ply. That is somewhat idealized. The reality isn’t quite that perfect yet, but there are moments when things seem to be working.

This is yet another skill which can only be perfected after much time. I see that very clearly. My yarn is not always even and the twist is not quite balanced, but I think I could spin a powerful lot of fleece into lumpy, semi-usable wool before I ever got to the point that something gorgeous came off my wheel. That said, I am having a complete blast and I do think the yarn I have made, while decidedly rustic, is gorgeous in its own way.

Here are the four skeins I have made to date. The one on the left is the second Skein I made. The first skein is to the right. You can tell that the second is much larger and the balance of light an dark colors is better. The second skein from the right is probably the most troubled. It has some significant twist and balance issues. I am not sure how it will be to knit up. On the extreme right is the fourth skein. While the plies are thicker than I would have liked, the yarn is perfectly balanced with the twist of the plies balancing out the plied singles. It is relaxed and should be great to knit with.

My new goal now that I have learned the rudiments of spinning is to spin, ply, skein and knit a sweater from roving. A complete sweater which would be as self-produced as possible short of raising a sheep, shearing it, washing and carding the wool and then spinning it. Wonder how long it will take to get to that point?

Summer Knitting and WIPS

There is a bag of brand new yarn sitting in the Blue Room* waiting for me. This yarn was bought in April at Webs in Northampton when I was at the Friends of Smith College Libraries board meeting. This yarn was was purchased to make two sweaters for Ellie. One is an adaptation of a design by Fiona Ellis from her book, Inspired Fair Isle. The other is a pattern I saw in Knitter’s I believe that just looked like something Ellie should have. Ellie was with me and approved both choices and picked her colors and yarn.

I have written about my yarn diet which has been ongoing (sort of) for the past three years. Having accumulated a shocking amount of yarn, I decided I needed to stop purchasing. I felt almost nauseous at the thought of so much yarn. Like I had eaten a big, heavy meal and needed to go on an instant diet. There have been a few caveats to this diet–one is purchasing yarn with which to knit Ellie sweaters. I have written about that previously I believe. There have been a few other slips, falls off the wagon so to speak. One was a little problem with the Sock Yarn Club at Knit Purl in Portland, Oregon. I couldn’t keep up with the Sock Club, but I loved the way they packaged the kits. I could knit socks for a very long time with the stockpile of sock yarn which kept growing until I finally got the strength to not re-up. Another too big meal until I pushed away from the table.

So, the bag of new yarn is calling to me, but I am not listening. My fingers are in my ears. NaNaNaNa!  I have decided instead that I need to devote the summer to working through my WIPS (works in progress to non-knitters). I think it is the logical extension of the yarn diet.

Scattered about the Blue Room and in the Yarn Corner in our basement are a panoply of projects in various states of completion. I always have multiple projects on needles, but I also have to confess that I stall out sometimes and things just sort of sit. Using the new yarn for Ellie’s sweaters as the carrot, I am going to try to finish off some of these lingering projects. I can’t work on Ellie’s sweaters until I knock off a few WIPS.

The first one I picked up again is a mitred scarf kit in alpaca that I must have started close to eight years ago. I know I was knitting on it in Auckland which must have been back in 2004 or so. I picked it up a couple of weeks and have finished knitting the squares and am in the process of crocheting the edging. It gets a beaded fringe and then it will be done. That will be one down. One less bag of yarn sitting around the house.

The next project I re-commenced is also in alpaca. It is called Jaywalking by Twisted Sisters. Knit on size three needles, this thing has taken on a life of its own.

It is ultra wide and required long row after row of knitting on small needles. I have finally finished the body and am working on the “corded tuck” which I don’t quite understand. After that I need to do the entrelac and then just seam it up. I am going to nail this one once and for all. Than I shall move on to another and another. I want to get my total of WIPS in progress under control by August 1st so I can have begun working on Ellie’s sweaters before she returns from Peru. It is my plan.

*While we hardly live in a mansion, we have developed the habit of naming the rooms in our house. We have the Blue Room, the Green Room, etc. It is kind of fun to me to call them colors rather than by purpose.

Lauren and Jenny Play Hookey

When I was in kindergarten, my best friend Betsy and I decided to play hookey. We weren’t really proficient at this and all we could think to do was hide behind a tree by the tennis club. It was a really long morning and completely boring and I think that early formative experience has contributed greatly to my very rarely playing hookey.

But sometimes an offer comes along that is just too good to pass up and it leads directly to a heavenly, frolicsome day of playing hookey. When Lauren emailed asking if I wanted to go to the Members Preview of the New York Botanical Garden’s 2012 Orchid Show, I was there without a moment’s hesitation. Good girl goes bad in the most delicious way.

There was a time when I had way too many orchids. It was a fever. An overwhelming passion. If there are some 60,000 varieties of orchids, I was on my to owning them all. Well, not quite, but I did have close to 100 and it took me almost two hours to water them each week. That was before the “Great Orchid Death” which took place when I left my orchids outside one July while we went on a bike trip through the Canadian Rockies. One orchid survived. To be truthful, it was a bit of a relief, but I can feel that fever starting to climb again. For Christmas, I asked Jim for an orchid…

Lauren’s invitation was also most welcome because I have missed seeing her since we stopped working together. When we were at Crown, we had many fun adventures, many involved yarn and wine, so added to the excitement of the Orchid Show was the opportunity to spend some time with “Sharkey”– a mis-spelling in a newspaper account which became her nickname.

I picked Lauren up at the Botanical Garden Metro North stop and we drove to park. It was the preview day and streams of “ladies who lunch” were heading to the exhibit. This year the show featured vertical gardens designed by Patrick Blanc. A french botanist, Patrick loves the effect of “walls of green” or in this case walls of green with brilliant flowers. Patrick was quite amazing himself. His hair was dyed green and matched his shirt perfectly. I do not think that was probably the only eccentric aspect to Patrick.

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We finished walking the show all too quickly. With our senses full of the colors and scents of so many gorgeous flowers, we headed to the Cafe for lunch and a long chat. After lunch, we checked out the shop and then stopped in another cafe for coffee and more chat. It was a wonderful afternoon and I have to say it was a heck of a lot more fun than hiding behind a tree all morning.

The Electric Kool-Aid Yarn Test

I was checking out of my local Stop&Shop. There was a big corrugated dump bin of Kool-Aid on sale. Five packets for a buck. I have wanted to try dyeing wool with Kool-Aid for years. Suddenly it seemed the moment had come. Who could resist this kind of kismet?

I bought five packages and headed home with a sense of high anticipation.

Several years ago Knit Picks came out with what they called Bare Yarn. The idea was to buy undyed yarn and have some fun dyeing it and knitting something truly original. It became my Christmas present to a couple of my friends and I, of course, had to buy a skein for myself. This is what I planned to use with my newly-purchased Kool-Aid.

Saturday was gloomy, but I was in fine spirits. Just after lunch, I cleared the table in the kitchen in the country and began disaster-aversion preparations. Jim’s dubiousness at the potential mess I was going to make was only matched by his impatience at my constantly talking about dyeing my yarn with Kool- Aid. He actually rolled his head and groaned at one point. Time to be quiet, Jen.

I had read several blog posts and watched a YouTube video on the process so I was pretty clear. After spreading one sheet of plastic on the table followed by a layer of paper town and another layer of plastic, I constructed a dike of paper towels around the edge of the table for spillage. I don’t know what cascades of indelible color I had in my mind, but I was bound and determined not to make one of my usual messes. Especially not in our gorgeous still-feels-like-new kitchen.

After thoroughly soaking my skein of sock wool in tepid water, I wrung it out and laid it on the table. In retrospect I wish I had re-tied the skein into a long snake of yarn, but I can do that next time. Ought to be able to really make a tangle doing that.

I used a kitchen knife in an attempt to demarcate colors. I would pour some Kool-Aid, massage it into the wool and hold the knife to keep the colors from commingling. I had on plastic gloves and carefully rinsed my hands between colors. This was a high degree of precision compared to my slap dash tendencies.

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After applying the colors and massaging them through the yarn, I wrapped it in saran wrap. I wasn’t sure if the colors would bleed onto each other so I wrapped it so sections wouldn’t touch. To set the color I placed the yarn wrapped in saran into a pyrex dish with cover and microwaved for two minutes, let it rest, another two minutes in the wave, a rest and one last zap in the wave. Then I let the whole thing sit and cool. Amazingly, when the yarn has absorbed the color all of the water is clear. I carefully rinsed the yarn in tepid water and there was no color bleeding whatsoever. After gently wringing out the water and rolling the yarn up in an old towel, I hung it to dry.

Considering that I adore color and I adore yarn, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I absolutely adored dyeing my yarn with Kool-Aid. My finished result has that tie-dyed look to it. I could have used more Kool Aid for better color saturation, but I like the way it looks. I like the bits of undyed white and the mottled color. I would like to try using different colors and the grape section is my least favorite. I can’t wait to try it again. I really can’t wait to start a pair of socks and see how it knits up!!

The Yarn Diet

 

It frightens me when I calculate the number of years since I became a knitter. When people ask me how long I have been knitting, I shrink from responding. How in the world could someone as young as I am have been knitting for over forty years? That is a lot of stitches. You know how they always like to calculate how many times something could go around the world? Well, maybe the corollary to that is how big a garment I could have knit with all those stitches—a blanket which could cover our house? An even larger building? Perhaps the town of Rye Brook?

Of course the by product of all those years of knitting has been yarn accumulation. Knitters go to yarn stores. Knitters see yarn they can’t live without and they buy it. It accumulates at a rate that can never be matched by output. Knitters may be more or less forthcoming about how much yarn they have. Some revel in excess, some squirrel their yarn away in discreet caches. Some inventory their stockpile, others go to their maker leaving relatives to sift through bewildering scavenger hunts of half-finished projects and orphaned treasures.

 I believe I have written about this before, but at the beginning of 2009 I went on a pretty serious yarn diet. It had become clear even to me that my stash was a lot like my own private yarn store. Now, I think there are a lot of knitters with this situation. They may or may not be open about it, but I had started to feel like I had just ingested way too many desserts. There was yarn everywhere. I had yarn in plastic bins under my bed. I had a dresser full of yarn. There were three large plastic bins of yarn in the Blue Room and more yarn in plastic bins in the basement. I felt a little ill when I thought of all that yarn and it was time to go on a diet.

The Travel Bug

 

I love to travel. I love to see new places and explore new experiences. We have had some outstanding trips both as a family and I have done some amazing trips alone. One of my early goals as a parent was to instill in my children the love of travel and it has been successful. As a family, we enjoy reminiscing about the places and experiences which have been meaningful to each of us. We also love to dream of future places we want to go. Peter wants to see Hawaii. Ellie is dying to visit Machu Pichu. Alex wants to see London and often laments that his adulthood precludes more family travel.

But as much as I love adventure and new places, I have to confess that I just like riding on airplanes and traveling through airports. Post 9/11, travel has become increasingly less glamorous and downright arduous, but I still love to head to the airport, endure security and board the airplane.

Airplanes are a place to be undisturbed. Thank heavens cell phones still aren’t allowed. There is time for reading, for knitting, for napping and contemplation. I almost always fall asleep right before takeoff. I drop into a comatose state shortly after settling into my seat. It could be relaxation. The feeling of having that uninterrupted time ahead. Maybe it is the air, or lack of air, and accumulated fatigue. Whatever it is, I nap until we’re up in the air and then wake refreshed and ready to play.