Spindling

Tour de Fleece spinning

    This year I decided to join the Tour de  Fleece on Ravelry.  Generally speaking, I am not much of a joiner.  I like to do my own thing at my own pace and I don't particularly like rules.  TdF is pretty straight forward.  During the Tour de France, this year from July 2 until July 24 one makes a spinning goal and tries to attain that goal.  There can be rules, lots of them,  and there are also prizes for  following those rules and reporting to Ravelry about one's progress; but I decided to just set a goal and try to reach it.  There are also teams, lots and lots of teams.  Although I seriously considered the HelloYarn/ Spunk Eclectic/Southern Cross Fibers Team, because I belong to both the HY and Spunky fiber clubs,  instead I joined Team Trindle.  I have a couple of Trindles, a rather innovative top whorl spindle, and I really enjoy spinning on them.  Also I planned to be on vacation in Rhode Island during a good portion of the TdF, so wheel spinning was out of the question.

Trindle spinning, merino silk

Jenkins Kuchulu spinning, cormo...for a sweater!

Navajo Churro

Spunky Eclectic Periwinkle , organic Merino

Hatchtown low whorl, not sure what fiber

   My goal was pretty straight forward.  I wanted to finish a couple of projects that were currently on spindles; to finish the current wheel project, a Spunky Club project, and to learn to  spin silk caps and hankies, using my trindles.  Did i meet those goals?  Well, in a word, no.  But I did spin A LOT, and I did spindle spin, A LOT. Did I learn to spin silk caps and hankies?  Not a bit.  Much of the time I concentrated on knitting the wedding shawl, particularly the technical difficulties that I had with the bride's shawl.  But I enjoyed my TdF spinning, and I accomplished quite a bit.

Canadian Production Wheel

  Last week a Canadian Production Wheel came to live at my house.  She is a beauty and she spins like the wind.  I have been fascinated by these lovely wheels for over a year; they are relatively available, reasonably priced and spin well.  Finding a wheel is not  a problem, I see them at The Merlin Tree booth at fiber festivals, on Craig's List and on Ebay.  This particular wheel came from the long time owner of the wheel who happens to own a small Antique shop in a nearby town.  The wheel was not actually for sale, it was just in the shop so that the owner could spin while the shop was quiet.  And she had spun on it for may many years, I am guessing since the 30's.  Over a year ago I was in the shop, which is rarely open, and I asked about the wheel, she let me spin on it, and honestly I was not impressed.  I asked if she would sell it anyway, though I was not seriously interested, and the price was, honestly, unbelievably low.

Tilt tension

Annette

Wheel hub

Mother of All

Treadle

  Over a year went by, every time I went through the small town the shop was closed, and I thought perhaps that the woman had passed away.  Then, early last week the shop was open so I went in.  The wheel was still there, still not really for sale, and was a lot dustier; in fact, part of a plaster wall had collapsed in it, so we had to dig it out.   I asked if it was for sale ( and I knew it would probably be the only sale that week, if not that month) and the owner quoted the same low price.  I bought her, brought her home, bathed her in Murphy's Oil Soap and made a new drive band.   Then I sat down to spin and I am in heaven.  She's fast and smooth and spins fine, smooth yarn in a flash.  I posted her picture on Ravelry and within minutes found out that she was built by Fred Bodura in St Hyacinthe, Quebec, probably in the early 20th century.  She is an unmarked wheel and a tuplet ( past a quintuplet and sextuplet...) there are many just like her attributed to  the same family of wheel makers.  Since many CPWs have names, hers is Annette.

The finish line

Three of the bridesmaid's shawls

     THE WEDDING is fast approaching, and lest anyone doubt my ability to knit 5 shawls in about 5 months, including the spinning of the yarn for one of them; as well as the total destruction and reconstruction of one, I am on the home stretch.  They are gonna happen.  The wedding is gonna happen ( I hope) and the bride as well as 4 bridesmaids will be wearing hand knit shawls.  I will not bore you with the harrowing events leading up to the completion of the shawls; the two emergency, last minute trips to Webs, the washing and rewashing the silk/cashmere shawl to get out that silk cocoon smell, the total change of patterns, twice, and the current conundrum of two of the bridesmaids shawls being considerably larger than the other two ( never fear, they will be ripped back to the 10th pattern repeat and the lace edging reapplied.)  Traumatic, yes, appreciated, I damn well hope so.  Will I ever knit another shawl?  Actually, I took a break from wedding shawl knitting while I was on vacation and knit a small shawl for myself as well as a baby sweater for one of the bridesmaids.  Will I do this again?  Yep, and I will most likely have that opportunity sometime  in the next few years.  Pictures, you betcha'

Blocking bridesmaid shawl # 3

Blocking the edge

Beads instead of nupps on the lily-of-the-valley pattern

After blocking

Squam Art Workshops

    I spent June 2 through 6 at Squam Art Workshops at Rockywold/Deep Haven Camps in Holderness, New Hampshire.  What an amazing few days!  Between the splendid natural beauty, the creative and stimulating people, the great classes, three meals a day served in a dining hall and free beer each evening it was just an outstanding experience.
   SAW happens twice a year, Spring and Fall, and the Spring workshops are mostly fiber related.  Along with the full gamut of knitting classes there was printmaking, embroidery, pattern-making, sewing, a bit of carpentry, Yoga , spinning and crochet.  The teachers were all rockstars in their fields and everyone I spoke with thoroughly enjoyed the classes.  I loved mine!  I took two days of Printmaking classes, a day of linoleum printing with Lizzie House and a day of botanical prints using freezer paper stencils with Maya Donenfeld.  The third day was an all day class with Ysolda Teague on The Perfect Sweater.  It was a class about fitting and adapting sweater patterns so that they will both fit and flatter.  It was a long and uncomfortably cold class, much of it spent huddled around the fireplace in the Playhouse, but it was totally awe inspiring.{Interestingly, my class the following day was in the same building, and we discovered there is a HUGE electric space heater there, and we were toasty warm!}  I was able to purchase Ysolda's  brand new book Little Red in the City, which we used as a text for our future sweater endeavors.

My porch

Greenwood Lodge

My room, very monastic, but cozy

Greenwood living room

Happy Hour and Knitting do mix!

   My cabin was called Greenwood.  I was there because I requested a single room, and what a room it was; a room with a balcony overlooking Squam Lake.  The cabin slept 20 people and we had an amazingly diverse group, first timers, mothers and daughters, friend, total strangers.  We also had two people staying off campus, Judy and Gretchen, who adopted our cabin as a place to hang out.  Most everyone knit and our cabin was used for classes by Gudrun Johnston during the day, and also one afternoon for a discussion of writing and knitting by Barbara Delinsky, who was a Squam attendee

Shawl Pictures

And the beat goes on, and on and on.

    I am on the very last row of shawl number 2.  Next I have to crochet about 9,000 edge stitches and block this baby.  It has been a fun  knit, and though it is close, I don't think I am going to run out of yarn.  The brides shawl yarn is spun, skeined and washed.  It is really lovely, and I think I will knit that shawl next, partly to get it over with, and partly because I need a challenge in my life right now.
     The real problem with knitting 5 of one thing is that I miss the variety of knitting a bunch of small projects; socks, hats, mittens.  I started 3 little things in my Nancy Bush Estonian knitting classes, but I haven't allowed myself to finish any of those items.  When I see the finished projects of my classmates on Ravelry I get really jealous.  But I suppose some of them would like to be knitting wedding shawls. This is just a quick post to let some of you know I am still alive.  Pictures of Shawl 2 tomorrow!

Monoganomous Knitting

     I am a pretty big fan of monogamy.  I have been married for many, many years, and find it hard to imagine my life otherwise.  I have been married long enough to have a 29 year old daughter who is getting married on 9-10-11.  I almost always drive a Subaru (though not at the moment); Pink Ladies are my favorite apples, Newcastle my favorite beer, and I love Vermont Cabot Seriously Sharp Cheddar Cheese, though it no longer likes me very well. It is rare for me to deviate from my favorite things. But knitting monogamy has not really entered my life until recently.  I am knitting wedding shawls.  Six of them.  One for the bride out of cashmere/silk handspun which has been be spun by the bride's mother- who would be me; and five others for the bridesmaids.  There are only 4 actual bridesmaids at the moment, but I am making 5 shawls, in case of some unforeseen emergency.
     The way I usually handle my knitting projects is pretty simple .  I have stay-at-home projects and on-the-go projects.  Stay-at-home projects are those that are either too large and unwieldy or to complicated to knit when I am away from home.  Right now the stay-at-home project is  Girasole which is a lovely circular shawl designed by Jared Flood based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi shawl.  It is knit in Green Mountain Spinnery Alpaca Elegance in the color Cappuccino.  It is a wonderful yarn and a great pattern.  But the damn thing is going to be about 70 inches in diameter and it is very heavy.  Not only that, one must count every stitch and every row. Currently there are about 600 stitches on each row and I am about half way done.  Not a traveling project.  In fact it is upstairs in my sewing room (where I rarely sew), resting.  Then I usually have a travel project.  This is something pretty small, preferably that fits in my purse, requiring no mental acrobatics and not on size 000 needles.  It is usually a sock, a plain vanilla sock, knit on size 2.25 needles, in some self patterning sock yarn.  Recently I knit 5 Koolhaas hats as holiday gifts, and after the first hat, they became travel items.   It is rare for me to have more than 2 projects on the needles at a time.  It happens, usually only after taking a class, when I start a couple of projects and am anxious to finish them before I forget what I learned.  I recently took 3 day classes from both Ann Hanson and Nancy Bush.  I started 3 projects with each teacher, and haven't touched any of them since I took the classes.  That is just how devoted I am to these wedding shawls.  My current on-the-go project is a 6th Koolhaas hat.

     The first problem , of course was choosing both the yarn and the patterns for the shawls.  After several false starts on both accounts I settled on the Icarus shawl in the Aracaunia Rialto solid yarn .  I bought 2 skeins of each of five colors at Webs in Northampton, MA and I was pretty sure that I would have enough yarn for each shawl.  But no, I ran out of yarn on the first shawl 14 rows from the end, so ordered another skein of  3 of the 5 colors.  Two colors where out of stock, so those shawls will be slightly smaller.  The first shawl is complete and blocked and I'll show you a picture of the colors as well:

     The bridesmaid's dresses are champagne, so I wanted to add a bit of color, but not too much.  Because theses colors are tonal as well as hand dyed they look fairly similar.  Though each color says that all 3 skeins come from the same dye lot, they do vary a bit.  We are calling that a design feature.  The lavender one has about 20 rows of each skein alternated, and that makes a nice transition.  I completed the first shawl in 10 days, but the second is taking longer because I went off to Burlington, Vermont to take a 3 day class from Nancy Bush on Estonian knitting.  And ski season is wrapping up as well, so I have to get in all the hours that I can on the slopes.  The yarn for the bride's shawl is complete.  It is Antique white, as is her dress, so the combination should be lovely.  Natalie's shawl is in the Swallowtail pattern by Evelyn Clark.  I had originally planned to make Nancy Bush's Summer shawl, but Nancy thought the silk/cashmere was too heavy for her pattern.  It is a heavier yarn than the Rialto, but Natalie's dress is strapless and she is always cold, so we are going with a more substantial shawl for her.  Knitting these shawls is not just a labor of Love, but a real lesson in perseverance.  At this point I am still enjoying the process.  I just hope the bride appreciates the results.