Snazzy Socks, Spinning Salt, & Seventeenth-Century Saturdays

On By happygingerhomeIn knitting, Spinning3 Comments

I don’t remember much from high-school science class thanks to my awesome ability to block out any information that a) I know I will never apply to daily life, and b) I don’t understand in the first place. But one thing I do remember is the trick for remembering all the colors in a spectrum by creating a person’s name out of the first letter of each color: Roy G. Biv. We all remember that little gem of information, right? Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet.  Science class memories came flooding back to me this week as the colors formed on the Zauberball sock I’m knitting.  The colorway I’m using is made of all the colors of the rainbow. Also Skittles. I love the bright, cheerful colors, although I’m knitting the rainbow backwards here. The violet, which is very deep and really more of a black than violet, is first. So I’m knitting Vib. G. Yor. Hmm. Maybe Vib is Roy’s cousin from Russia, or some other faraway locale. It sounds like some mysterious, exotic name, doesn’t it?

I’ve worked on this sock for a little over a week now, in front of the tv, on my front porch, and in a hospital waiting room. I began this project for its portability due to some hospital appointments I needed to take my mom to. At the same time I bought the Zauberball, I picked up 4 skeins of Cascade Pima Cotton to start the Semele shawl as a nice lightweight summer project.  But the guilt from all the unfinished objects piling up is starting to weigh heavily on me.  Despite the addition of two more projects, the following are still languishing away in project bags and paper shopping bags, competing for my attention:

  1. Cloudsong Cowl  The main color and contrasting color change several times, but the box colors don’t change on the chart. This threw me off, so I put it down.
  2. Cambrian Cowl    From Coastal Knits. This is a thick, quick knit, but I reached a point where the pattern said to block before continuing. I didn’t feel like going through the trouble, so I put it down.
  3. Albers Cowl   I threw this over in favor of the Cloudsong, with its fancy schmancy colorwork. Go figure.
  4.   Jaywalker socks. I finished one sock, ran out of yarn, ordered another skein (it’s handdyed) and it’s not exactly the same. Eh, I’ll finish these eventually.
  5. Cardigan #4    From Noro’s Catwalk 2 pattern collection. I’m actually more than halfway done, with only the right front and two short sleeves to go. But I put it down because it got too hot to knit. Last July.

I know. I’m not proud of myself.

Sometimes, we spinners, however isolated we may feel from time to time, come across a cosmic gesture that lets us know we are definitely not alone. Sometimes we come across a little reminder that lets us know that someone has been on the same path, and we’re reminded that–and this is important–spinning is a thing.

I came across this salt and pepper shaker set yesterday in a downtown antique store.  It only cost $6 for the set. At first I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy it. Despite the low price, I told myself I didn’t need another piece of junk cluttering up my house.  Yet I couldn’t shake the lure of the wheel, not even in tiny, salt-dispensing form.  It’s not the prettiest piece of ceramics I’ve ever seen, but I find its earthy utilitarianism somewhat comforting.

I love antiquing, and in every shop I visit, it’s obvious that salt and pepper shakers have been very popular down through time.  If it exists in real life, someone’s made salt and pepper shakers out of it.  There are many sets that were made as vacation souvenirs because they were popular items to take home, or to give as presents. I wondered who would make a salt and pepper set shaped like a spinning wheel and stool, and it occurred to me that whomever owned this set before me had to have been a spinner.  Who else would want a set shaped like a wheel? Maybe that person received this as a gift.

The store owner couldn’t tell me how old the set was or where it was made. There was no paper label so she ruled out Japan, and thinks it could have been made here in the US. I’ll try to do some research to shed some light on this mystery. She told me that a few years ago she purchased 250 sets of salt and pepper shakers from another dealer, and this set was the only one she had left.  She played around with the stool and laughed that she wasn’t sure if it went in front of the wheel or in the back behind the distaff.  As soon as she said that, I wasn’t sure, either, since I don’t use a wheel styled like the antique wheels. Fortunately, the answer to my question was already in my iPhone from the day before…

The stool goes on the side! You already knew that. Living in Salem, I’ve grown accustomed to coming across random witches and pirates.  Sometimes I even meet random Colonial citizens.  This summer, Saturdays have been dubbed Seventeenth-Century Saturdays, where we modern folk get to meet and greet our forefathers and foremothers. Last Saturday there was a group assembled in front of the Witch House. Many men in army uniforms were gathering for a muster, and sought recruits from the passersby.  Several ladies were present, demonstrating traditional crafts. There were also Colonial toys and games for children to try. I chatted for a few minutes with this lovely lady spinning flax for linen. The wheel is a 1970s reproduction of an antique wheel. She showed me flax that had been dyed with natural dyes such as marigold and logwood, in ranges from gray to natural to black, and light golden shades. The flax was beautiful and incredibly fine.  Some ladies behind her were sewing linen shirts by hand.

Eventually the men departed the camp to, I don’t know, march against the British or something.  The spinner also left. I don’t know if she went on a lunch break, or if the army needed her for some reason, but the other ladies were left to their own crafty devices under the saving grace of some shade trees on a 90-degree day.

These fine ladies fanned themselves against the heat:

These good ladies worked on their knitting and quilting:

It was a scene of productivity and ingenuity; things that we take for granted today. I vowed to appreciate these ideals more. Then I headed over to Rita’s, to take advantage of the Italian ice, and the air conditioning.

Knitting and Cooking in 90 degree heat, or, Feelin’ Hot Hot Hot

On By happygingerhomeIn Life, The Universe, And EverythingLeave a comment

It was 90 degrees out today.  I have no air conditioning in my house. So what did I do? I started knitting a sock and I made a pie. 🙂 It was either that, or go to bed at 7:30 again tonight because it’s too hot to do anything.  Sadly, this is how my entire week went down.  The plan was just to lay under the ceiling fan above my bed until I cooled off a little. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen asleep under that fan way too early every night this week.  This meant I woke up around midnight, tossed and turned for a few hours and, if I was lucky, fell asleep for a couple of hours before the alarm clock went off.   Sleep this week has been intermittent with all the Independence Day festivities going on up and down my block.  My neighbors have kindly been putting on illegal firework displays for my entertainment every morning–at 1 o’clock or so–all week.  Right in front of my house.  Cherry bombs are one thing, but when commercial-grade flares are going off over my roof, then I start to panic.  I nearly had a heart attack at 1:00 Thursday morning when I heard the distinctive shriek of what sounded like missiles right outside my house. I looked out the window and saw someone had set something off in the middle of the street right in front of my house. Flares were flying into the air and over the roofs of my very densely populated neighborhood.  There were no tragedies on my street,  but every year around this time I hold my breath and hope and pray nothing bad happens. I want to know how people get their hands on commercial-grade fireworks!

The one good thing about fireworks this year was this: I discovered I can see most of the city’s firework display from my front deck.  It’s not as good as being at the harbor with an orchestra playing, but it was great nonetheless. The rain held off until the display was almost over, but for a while I was watching fireworks while thunder and lightning started to come in.  There’s something frighteningly exhilarating about watching fireworks and lightning light up the sky at the same time, but it wasn’t long before I ducked inside for safety. When people started returning from the display carrying their deck chairs, I was glad I didn’t have to walk back in the storm.

This is the ball of Zauberball sock yarn I bought last week.  My LYS assured me that one ball will make a complete pair of socks. It was hard to pick a color from the variety of multicolored balls at the shop. but I couldn’t resist the blues and oranges in this ball of rainbowy goodness.  This yarn is incredibly soft and lofty; you can see the halo around it in the photo.  I’m only on the cuff but already I’m dreaming about wearing socks made from this. I bet they’ll be incredibly soft.   I will be taking my mom to some doctor appointments this week, and socks are a good waiting-room project.

On to the vegan baking.  Behold my lemon pie made with Ener-G egg replacer (Shhhh: it’s made from potato starch!) 😉 These days I guess I would call myself half-vegetarian, half-vegan. I appreciate the reasons for going vegan, and I’m all for creating  a healthy meal using exclusively plant-based foods, but veganism is very challenging.  And let’s face it, sometimes I crave cheese! I can usually break the week up into all-vegan days mixed with cheese/dairy days. This pie is from the back of  the  Ener-G box, and takes some lemon juice, sugar and water. It’s poured into a pre-baked pie crust and served chilled. I’ve made other lemon pies, and I like using chocolate pie crusts with lemon filling.  Lemon and chocolate work so nicely together, and it’s a somewhat unexpected combination.

 

There. It’s 10 pm.  That’s a decent time to go to bed, right?

 

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

On By happygingerhomeIn Life, The Universe, And EverythingLeave a comment

My problem is, I’ve bought 4 spindles in as many weeks.  Two of them have fiber on them, one is going to be used for plying very soon, and one is waiting for my Ravelympic challenge in July, so I can’t start spinning with it until the opening ceremonies. I blogged about the Golding rooster spindle a few weeks ago. Since then there’s been one Greensleeves, one Schacht, and one Sistermaide. Let’s start with the Greensleeves:

Queen’s Sceptor, Katherine Howard in purple heart and bubinga. Pictured with Spunky Eclectic roving in Sex On The Beach.

This is my second Greensleeves spindle, and once again I’m impressed with how long it spins. The craftsmanship is superb.  Just look at the details in the grain close up here:

…and here.

I’m going to spin on this during the Olympics using the turquoise top I bought during the Yarn Crawl in March.  Once again I have no complaints at all about Greensleeves and they are a very close second to my favorite spindle company, Golding Fiber Tools. Now, on to the Schacht.

This is a very nice spindle for the low, low price of $19. It only comes in one type of wood  but it’s very pleasing to hold and it spins well.  This model weighs 1.1 ounces. It’s a good price for anyone looking for a starter spindle, though it might be a little on the lightweight side.

I bought the Schacht from WC Mercantile. They’re online and they have a brick and mortar store in Texas.  I purchased the spindle on their Etsy shop, and then I followed their link to their website. There I bought 4 ounces of undyed firestar.  Since I didn’t know about the main site beforehand, I assumed I would get two separate packages. Both items arrived within a week in the same box, with only one shipping charge.  I love how this company was on the ball, even if I wasn’t.  That’s good customer service, and I’ll definitely place more orders with them in the future.

This is my newest spindle, a Sistermaide.

I couldn’t find any reviews or any feedback on Ravelry or through Google. I liked the starburst wood inlay pattern, and I liked that Sistermaide spindles are reversible.  They can be a top whorl or bottom whorl by simply switching the hook to either end of the spindle. That said, this is a perfectly servicable spindle.  This model weighs 1.9 ounces, and there’s a notch in the whorl. The spin isn’t nearly as long as on other spindles I own, but it functions well enough, it’s pleasant to look at, and it gets the results I want.  I’m getting the same results on this spindle as I do on my others. Unfortunately, I am SO out of love with that fiber color now that I’m seeing it spun up, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Get me a mint julep, would you?

This weekend was beautiful, and I didn’t end up doing much of anything.  I wanted to go to the movies but didn’t feel like making a hike anywhere, and the local theater was playing nothing I wanted to see. No Avengers, No Prometheus, nothing! Sometimes nothing is a good thing.  I cleaned the kitchen, cleared out some old magazines and catalogs I don’t want lying around the house, and followed it all with a relaxing spell on the deck. I even had some company. Spike likes the Adirondack chairs almost as much as I do; he hops right up onto them and makes himself comfortable. He is definitely one spoiled pooch.

I made a quick and easy supper.  Nothing complicated, just a simple casserole from a book in my vintage, or “classic” cookbook collection. I love cookbooks from the sixties and seventies; no one worried about pesky fat or calories or heart attacks! Everyone ate meat, butter and cheese like they were going out of style! Tonight’s entree was an easy cornmeal casserole, i.e., polenta.

I never knew how unforgiving the camera flash could be until it revealed how much black pepper I (deliberately) put on top of this casserole. Oh well. Here’s the recipe, from 1970’s Italian Casserole Cooking by Angela Catanzaro. According to the back book jacket, Angela is a “diminutive brunette bursting with energy.” oh, you Mad Men-type publishers, you!

CORNMEAL CASSEROLE (Casseroula di Polenta)

1 cup cornmeal

3 tablespoons of butter

1 lb fresh sliced mushrooms

1 cup tomato sauce or 1 8-oz. can of tomatoes

1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated

Freshly ground pepper to taste (emphasis mine)

Cook cornmeal according to label on package. Turn cooked cornmeal into greased 2-qt. casserole dish. Level top of cornmeal with spoon. Melt butter in skillet and saute mushrooms 3 minutes. Add tomato sauce and stir. Pour over cooked cornmeal. Sprinkle with cheese and pepper. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Serves 4-6.

Just a few of cook’s notes. I blindly follow recipes the way I blindly follow knitting patterns.  So next time I’ll probably rethink cooking otherwise healthy vegetables in 3 tablespoons of butter.  It was a lot of butter.  This type of dish is very friendly to veggie substitutions. I don’t like mushrooms so I used zucchini instead.  but polenta can be bland.  Adding parmesan cheese to your polenta makes a world of difference. What’s that? Your box of cornmeal has recipes for cornbread and hush puppies on the label, but not polenta?…just like my box. Here’s a simple polenta recipe if you’re similarly stranded:

4 cups of water, 1/2 cup of cream (or milk, skim, soy, etc.) and 1/4 cup parmesan cheese to every 1 cup of cornmeal. You can add a pat or two of butter if you want.  Bring the water by itself to a boil first, then slowly shake in the cornmeal.  Whisk it briskly and get out the lumps. Continue to whisk and quickly add the cream, cheese and butter. Whisk constantly for 5 minutes, until the polenta thickens. That’s it. Lots of people tell you that you have to stir polenta for an unbearably long time, but five minutes will do. You can tell when it’s thick enough.  Enjoy!

Wisdom Never Becomes Outdated.

On By happygingerhomeIn Spinning2 Comments
This wheel has a price tag of $385 in an antique store. Any takers?

Note, I didn’t say information never becomes outdated.  Sure, information becomes obsolete.  Techniques change and improve, modern methods and technology take over. More informed ways of doing things prevail over previously sworn-by methods.  But the wisdom and underlying traditions inherent to the process are always there, and sometimes technology just gets in the way.

Spinning is a process that has basically remained unchanged for thousands of years.  Spinning’s core elements remain constant: you can get the same results with a simple hand tool and a little bit of fiber that you would get with an expensive spinning wheel–or an enormous mechanized factory process. We take it for granted today that, in most parts of the world, we who choose to become handspinners do so as a hobby. Spinning is a luxury rather than a necessity.  Handwork, fiber arts, DIY, arts and crafts, whatever you want to call it, the urge to return to the basics is cyclical, and currently the fiber arts is experiencing a popularity that doesn’t look like it’s about to wane anytime soon.

Spinning and weaving experienced a similar renaissance starting in the Seventies as part of the grassroots movement in which people embraced a return to tradition, and self-sustainability was a motivator for many.  Spinners published their knowledge and experience to share with other spinners.  Some of these books are only available today through used booksellers, but they’re worth searching out.  Ironically, the Internet makes it easier than ever to find those elusive or out-of-print editions.

Bette Hochberg wrote a series of booklets on handspinning in the Seventies and Eighties.  Thanks to Alibris ‘s network of used booksellers I found two of Bette’s booklets immediately. Handspindles, published in 1977, is an in-depth yet compact guide to every type of spindle you can lay your hands on, from drop spindle to supported spindle, to spindles from every part of the world. There is a lot of historical information in here as well.  Handspinners Handbook, published in 1980, instructs spinners on getting the most out of a spinning wheel.  Don’t let the size fool you. These small volumes pack a ton of valuable information, photographs, and charming illustrations that teach the reader how to spin from start to finish.

I found the illustration below to be very enlightening.  I have a modern reproduction of this type of spindle made by The Spanish Peacock that he calls a Victorian Lady’s Silk Spindle. I can’t get the hang of this spindle. It’s made for very lightweight spinning, so I’ll probably have to order a silk hankie or two and give it a try.

This…
…sheds a lot of light on this.

Lee Raven’s guide Hands-On Handspinning, originally published in 1987 by Interweave Press, often comes up in the knitting forums as a valuable and relevant resource.  Plenty of photos accompany Lee’s step-by-step instructions on how to spin with a spinning wheel.  She details the mechanics of the wheel and identifies the various parts. She explains everything from Z-twist and S-twist, worsted and woolen drafting, and fiber preparation.  A more recent edition is still available on Interweave’s online store but it’s listed as discontinued. What can I say? Newer editions notwithstanding, I have a soft spot for vintage. 🙂

We as handspinners are absolutely spoiled for choice these days, with so many classic books being reissued, and new authors such as Abby Franquemont and Amy King covering spindles and wheels, respectively.  (Interweave is mainly responsible for this, being virtually the only publisher dedicated to handspinning. Thanks, Interweave!) I was finishing up college when Lee Raven’s book came out; there’s a part of me that wishes I’d stuck with knitting when I was taught as a little girl. I also wish I’d learned to spin at a younger age, too. But the interest wasn’t there, and traditional handcrafts just weren’t on my radar at that age.  Oh well. With age comes experience, and…wisdom.

The More You Know…a small spinning bibliography

In addition to the vintage books detailed above, here are some of my favorite spinning books, in no particular order:

  • The Alden Amos Big Book Of Handspinning by Alden Amos
  • Respect The Spindle by Abby Franquemont
  • Spin Control by Amy King
  • Color In Spinning by Deb Menz
  • Spinning The Old Way by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts
  • The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook by Lynne Vogel
  • Homespun Handknit by Amy Clarke Moore

A new spindle (whereupon I confess my love of chickens)

On By happygingerhomeIn Spinning1 Comment

I feel kinda bad that I’m not the most regular blogger.  Really, I do. I just realized that I went the entire month of April without blogging. My knitting is sort of in limbo at the moment, mainly because the cowl pattern I’m knitting wants me to block it before continuing on and picking up stitches. I didn’t feel like blocking it and leaving it on my kitchen table, so I put down the cowl and picked up the spindle. I’m almost finished with the 8-ounce bag of Romney and alpaca roving I bought at Fiber Revival last August, and I’m getting verrrry close to the plying stage.  I want to make a three-ply yarn on a spindle, and I decided I wanted a heavier spindle to use mainly for plying.  So I turned to a website I love to stalk visit often: Golding Fiber Tools. It’s so hard to choose from their beautiful handmade spindles, but once I saw this little fella, I felt an instant cosmic connection.

This is the Americana spindle.  It’s made from butternut wood with a vintage handpainted inset. He’s a big boy at 2.71 ounces, with a 3.5″ whorl and a bronze alloy ring. Have I mentioned my thing for chickens yet?  Lately I’ve been drawn to artwork containing chickens and birds.  My kitchen is full of ceramic chickens these days, and I’m beginning to fear that I’m well on the path to becoming the Crazy Chicken Lady. But you have to admire the detailing on the inset.  Notice the blue of the sky, and the delicate dark and seafoam green in the tail feathers.

He kind of reminds me of this guy.

I’m also drawn to primitive and early American art. The inset is actually a heavy paper with a sealant over it. I don’t know exactly how old “vintage” means in this instance.

A lot of people name their spindles and wheels.  I’ve never been tempted to do the same, but I am tempted with this one. I want to call it Rob Roy, because I think that would be an outstanding name for a big, strong rooster.  This spindle came with a sample of spinning fiber; it’s the first time I’ve received any with a Golding spindle.  It was a very pleasant surprise.  I challenged myself to spin it as fine as possible on this big monster of a spindle, and I’m pretty pleased with the results.  The sample is in the Jelly Beans colorway from a batt made by Inglenook Fibers. There’s a lot of stuff going on here: merino, silk, alpaca, wool, bamboo, silk noil, and angelina! It’s very easy to spin. I love the angelina.  This shop has since been added to my Etsy favorites list for future shopping sprees important academic research. I think I need to buy some angelina of my own to card into some roving. I do love sparkly! The sparkle is easier to see in the first picture, in the tuft unspun fiber to the left. The single is thicker in some places than others, not quite as uniform as I was going for, but there are a lot of different fibers/silks in here, and it is a pretty dang heavy spindle.

The spinning is almost done and the plying will soon start. I’m looking forward to Rob Roy being an important part of my spinning journey.

The One With All The Flowers

On By happygingerhomeIn Life, The Universe, And Everything, Other CraftsLeave a comment

Sunday was hot and sunny and gorgeous, so I made my semi-regular pilgrimage to the urban Mecca known as Home Depot.  So did a boatload of other people. I like Home Depot. I’m a crafty gal, but I’m not the type of person who can build a deck or redo their kitchen by themselves. No, I like to dip my toes into the kiddie pools of DIY, if you will: such as the paint section, garden furniture, and the gardening department.  For a year my goal has been to dog-proof my deck (on the 2nd floor) so my dog can’t slip under the gap under the railing. Mine was a simple no-frills solution involving 16 2-ft. sections of plastic picket fencing and a bunch of plastic zip ties. I just turned the fencing upside down so the spikes normally stuck into the ground were facing up, with the inverted fencing covering the gap.  I tied it to the deck railing with a zip tie on either side of each fence and voila! Spike can relax and enjoy the deck along with his humans.  I love a good reason to go to Home Depot, and since I needed to make a trip anyway, I decided it was time to give the whole deck a makeover, Martha Stewart-style. That is, if Martha Stewart lived in a triple-decker and had champagne tastes but a TJ Maxx budget. 🙂

Please enjoy my how-to guide for creating a beach cottage-themed deck fairly cheap.  Start with these wooden assembly-required Adirondack chairs. They retail at $49 each but the price seems to steadily decline as the summer wears on. I paid $30 each for them last year late in the summer.  I went back to HomeDepot a week later and they’d been reduced to $20 each. I started the makeover last year with these chairs. I LOVE Adirondack chairs and always wanted to own some.  They were cheap and, a year later, are starting to wobble a tiny bit when I sit down in one.  I may need to invest in some good ones someday, but for now, I’m living the dream.  The pastel mint paint I bought at the same time never made it onto the chairs, and I don’t think it’s ever going to at this point.  I added the cushions later on.

Do you like my coffee table? It’s an old lobster trap. Yay for upcycling! Oldies Marketplace in Newburyport, Massachusetts usually has a few lobster traps in stock in the summer. Mine already had a wooden tabletop put on top of it. All I need to complete the theme is some brightly colored bouys, and most antique stores from Mystic to Maine have them.

The pansies and two of the flowerpots are from Home Depot. The pot with the bees on it is from a local indie florist who has since closed up shop. Here’s a closer look at the plants I truly hope I don’t kill:

Finally, I couldn’t resist this lovely clematis plant:

I love my new and improved deck. I never used it last year but I’m going to really enjoy it this summer.   My finishing touches will be a wind chime and a small outdoor rug. I want my summer reading/knitting nook to feel like an outdoor living room.  This will be a wonderful place to read, knit, spin and just relax.  I have a lot of spinning fiber to work through, so I think I’ll be spending a lot of time out here.

 

Yarn Crawl, Day Two

On By happygingerhomeIn knitting, SpinningLeave a comment

That’s right, there’s more.

On Sunday I was looking forward to visiting Newburyport more than anything else. It’s a beautiful Federal-style city located right on the Merrimack River. Downtown is full of beautiful red brick buildings dating from the early to mid 1800s that are full of shops and restaurants.  There’s a large open boardwalk and public park right on the water. A Loom With A View bills itself as “your fiber arts destination” and it really is a destination unto itself. For one thing, it’s the only store in the area that teaches spinning and weaving classes. They always have a small selection of Frabjous Fibers dyed top in stock, and I am incapable of visiting the store without buying some! As you can see, Sunday was no exception. I have been obsessed with the color turquoise for about a year now so this is what went home with me.  I don’t have any specific plans for this fiber, but the more I look at this photograph, the more I’m smitten with the turquoise and grey combination.  Something to think about…

I was disappointed that I missed Hannah Fettig’s appearance at ALWAV.  The store was a little quiet that morning. Her new book Coastal Knits was on my shopping list but there weren’t any copies left.

Sunday was another beautiful day for a drive with the windows down. Since I started with Newburyport first, that meant I had to yarn-crawl my way back home to Salem.  Sweet! We headed to Ipswich and dropped in on Loom N Shuttle, which was very crowded.  They had a lot of Noro, but no Debbie Bliss.  So my sister and I moved on to our last stop of the crawl, Cranberry Fiber Arts in Hamilton.  There were so many things I wanted to buy such as tons of gorgeous Malabrigo and beautiful ceramic buttons.  I found Coastal Knits here, as well as Debbie Bliss’s Folk Chic and Summer Essentials pattern book.  What is there to say about Coastal Knits except that it’s gorgeous? It’s a beautiful book, from the photographs to the layout to the patterns.  Most of the patterns are sweaters, along with some cute stranded fingerless mitts and a lovely chunky cowl.  One of my favorite features of the book is the schematic illustrations. Rather than a bland rendering of the sweater’s separate pieces, the garments are shown, along with measurements, on illustrated women that resemble each of the actual models photographed wearing each garment. It’s adorable!

Since CFA was our last stop, my sister and I dropped off our Crawl passports and crossed our fingers that we would be selected for a grand prize. No such luck so far, but I still have my fingers crossed!

Got yarn?

Another Crawl, Another Haul. Day One.

On By happygingerhomeIn knitting, Life, The Universe, And Everything, Spinning2 Comments

The North Shore Yarn Crawl 2012 has come and gone, and I’m a little poorer than I was last week. But it was worth it. The shops were awesome. The crawlers were out of control.  Coveted Yarn was both awesome and out of control, but that’s nothing new. Yarn crawling on St. Patrick’s Day was a lot of fun, since there was already a festive vibe in the air.  We yarn crawlers passed quite a few pub crawlers everywhere we went, but who says you can’t do both?

We’re a little North of Boston, but we can compete with any major city when it comes to the variety and quality of yarn shops.  City yarnies may not have as much ground to cover, but all I had to do was follow the ocean the whole way. Cities can’t beat that kind of natural beauty.

I don’t know what happened to winter, but we passed it, skipped spring and went straight into summer. The weather was warm and perfect, and on Sunday it was in the 70s.  It was a perfect weekend for driving, shopping and eating Mexican food, and I did plenty of all of the above. This year I wrote out a wish list of things to search for such as books and a particular project.  Last year I was on a Noro kick. This year, Debbie Bliss was the focus.  I wanted to pick up some of her pattern booklets and the yarn to make the striped pullover from the spring issue of her magazine.  As it turned out, I couldn’t find the Bella yarn needed for the pullover, so I didn’t end up with a larger project. But I made some impulse purchases for smaller projects, and I found some of the items on my list.

Geekery!

As always, my sister/crawl partner and I started in Salem at our LYS Seed Stitch Fine Yarn. The store was hosting two local independent hand-dyers, and I couldn’t keep away. I bought two skeins of yarn, one from each dyer. The acid-green yarn at the top is from Toil & Trouble, “bookishly inspired” yarns. The color is Ecto Cooler, from her Geekery collection!  Sigh. You had me at “Geekery.” You know I had to buy some green yarn on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m eager to start knitting with this but I don’t know what to make. I’m tempted to just knit a plain pair of socks and let the awesome color speak for itself, but this color is crying out for…something…maybe a tree or leaf motif. I’ll have to search through my patterns. The yarn on the bottom is from Knittink, a dyer who takes the names of her yarns from comic books (yay!) that are “geekery inspired.”  Sigh. You also had me at “Geekery.” There’s definitely a theme going on here, and the funny thing is, I didn’t even catch the word “geekery” on either label until I got home.  This color is Burnished Turquoise #1. I’m planning on making a basic slouchy hat with this. I have yet to knit a slouchy hat, and I’m going to start working on one soon because I can’t wait to knit with this yarn.

The Knit Stitch

We drove over the bridge to Beverly, where three shops on the crawl are located. Two are a couple of blocks apart in the downtown area, one is farther away in Beverly Farms.  I love downtown Beverly because it has a quiet sort of cool with, among other things: two yarn shops, a tattoo parlor, great places to eat, including a vegetarian restaurant, an art school, funky shops, and The Cabot Street Cinema Theater. I love this city; Beverly’s cool without calling attention to how cool it is. We hit The Knit Stitch and Creative Yarns and had lunch in town.  Both stores have been open for just over a year; they each opened less than a week before last year’s crawl, and I’m very glad they’re both still here. Creative Yarns carries a lot of Debbie Bliss booklets but they didn’t have the ones I was looking for, so my search continued. It’s just as well, I’m still working my way through all the Noro I bought there last year.

Yarns In The Farms

Yarns In The Farms is always worth a stop, even if it is tiny and gets a little too crowded for my comfort zone during yarn crawls. My sister picked up a Classic Elite yarns pattern booklet, and I bought an adorable pattern for knitted Russian matryoshka dolls.  I have a thing for matryoshka dolls. It calls for Malabrigo but I’m not going to buy expensive yarn for these, I’ll probably purchase some Knit Picks in some obnoxious cheerful colors instead.

All of the shops so far are fairly close to each other, but the real road trip is the drive up to Gloucester. I can’t visit Gloucester without stopping into Coveted Yarn. I wish I lived closer (or they were closer to me!) so I could go to their knit nights and evening classes. I love CY because they’re my local source for spinning fiber. I order a lot of fiber online but nothing beats being able to see the colorways right in front of you instead of having to go by an online photo.  CY always hosts Mad Color Fiber Arts, and this year she took over the entire back room. I can’t resist racks full of gloriously vibrant spinning fiber! Check it out in this photo! I took my time picking out which colors to buy, while keeping an eye on the ridiculously long line at the checkout counter. By the time I joined it there were 16 people in line ahead of me! But CY fans are that hardcore, and CY reciprocated the love by handing out door prizes to everyone in line–just for waiting in line! Joey C., a Gloucester blogger, filmed this really cool video on Saturday and you can live vicariously through it here. I love how he can’t quite believe how bananas people can get over yarn. Believe. But he totally gets into the spirit of the event, and his enthusiasm is wonderful.

I bought two colorways of Mad Color, a superwash merino/nylon/wool top in bright pink, red and brown, and a polwarth top in purple/hot pink/violet shades. I bought a verrry chunky Louet bottom-whorl spindle at Coveted. It was so warm on Sunday evening that I took the purple roving and the spindle out onto my porch, where I spent a frustrating hour trying to spin the polwarth. The staple is shorter on this fiber and I think the Louet spindle is too heavy. I dropped the spindle a lot more than I usually do. Also, it wobbles while it spins. I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to do that, so either I’m doing something wrong, or the fiber isn’t the right kind for this weight. Unless I got a defective spindle…but I’m sure I’m the problem, somehow.  It would be nice to know the weight of the spindle but it wasn’t on the label. Two ounces, maybe?  My first ever spindle was a Louet top-whorl spindle of a similar weight, and I avoided it for a long time because I didn’t think it spun well. But once I had more experience at spinning I was able to get the same results with it as with my lighter spindles.  I’ll try to spin the polwarth on another spindle, but for now I’m a little disappointed because I really want to use the bottom-whorl.

Why doesn't Louet put the sheep illustration on top of the whorl, where the spinner can see it?

Saturday was exhausting, but the crawl was only half over.  On Sunday I headed North for more yarny goodness. I’ll tell you all about it in my next post. Good night!