Impossible Dreams

Against all logic, I've set myself an almost-unmeetable spinning goal.  Before I attend Madrona this Friday, I'd like to have finished spinning the fiber I bought there two years ago.  I've made good progress in the two years I've been working on it.  From its original weigh-in at 11 oz, it's currently down to just below 2 oz.  This technically makes my goal not completely impossible, just...ambitious.  Keep in mind that I am spindle-spinning a lace-weight yarn.  I actually set this goal a little over a week ago but almost immediately picked up a job working on a music video (for a band you may have actually heard of) so I got derailed for about a week.  Now it's really time to double down!


I've signed up for another mini-class at Madrona this year.  Being a freelancer means that by the time I have a sense of whether I'll be available enough to take a class, most classes are sold out.  But I did manage to grab a spot in a class that teaches knitters how to avoid hand/wrist pain, which I'm hoping will be quite useful.  I'm also planning to attend the Friday night teacher gallery & Donna Druchunas' talk on native Alaskan lace knitters.


Finally, you can expect to see the title of this post pop up again in the hopefully-not-too-distant future as I realized upon coming up with it that it is not just an apt description of my spinning goal, but the perfect name for the multi-colored alpaca fiber I've been spinning.  I'll spare you all the cheesy cliches about "living the dream" & "realizing my dreams" that are running through my head right now.  Suffice it to say, I'm off to do some spinning. 

    

Hibernation

 With the exception of a few hours of sun today, this is what Seattle has looked like for over two weeks.  In fact, this is light fog compared to some of the days we've had recently.  Combined with freezing or near-freezing temperatures, being outside, as a friend put it, is like taking a cold shower.  And since I start my first job of the year in a couple of days, I haven't felt the slightest bit of guilt about staying inside knitting every day.  I even got off my ass & moved my Buttony Sweater off the needles & onto some waste yarn so I could try it on & photograph it. 

I think I'll knit about 2 more inches before separating the sleeves from the body.  I'm happy with the way it looks so far & I think it will fit well, though I might incorporate some waist shaping for a snugger fit.

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts the last few days & have discovered some new ones (new to me at least) that I really like.  Tonight, before running out to snap the after-dark photo above, I listened to fiberstory.tv, an interview show hosted by Johnny Vasquez (whose beautiful wife, Lacie Lynnae, you've probably seen in recent issues of Knitscene).  Up until October, Johnny was a prolific podcaster, interviewing designers like Cirilia Rose, Emma Welford & Allyson Dykhuizen.  However, he hasn't put out a new podcast since October so I hope the show hasn't come to an end.

Yesterday, I shuttled my sweater off of then back on to the needles in the company of the video podcast 90% Knitting. Normally I stick to audio podcasts because they don't require me to divide my attention as much.  I can visually focus on my knitting while my mind focuses on the podcast.  But when I have an exceptionally boring or tedious task at hand, a video podcast is just the thing.  And Lisa, who hosts 90% Knitting, is adorable & charming.

I've also discovered the knitting section at my local library & it kinda rocks!  I just finished reading Clara Parkes' Knitter's Book of Wool & it was absolutely eye-opening!  As with everything she writes, it was readable & concise while containing a wealth of information.  It really helped me figure out which breeds of wool I want to spin & I will be on the lookout for them at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival this year.  I've even begun entertaining the possibility of traveling to Oregon Flock & Fiber or Black Sheep Gathering later this year for more breed exposure.  Until then, knitting with yarns simply labeled "wool" will hold a whole new level of mystery! 

Hit Refresh

Despite how long it's been since my last post, this finally-finished Vite Cowl is really the only thing I have to show you.  And it's kind of a difficult garment to take good pictures of since wrapping it around my neck obscures the pattern more than I'd realized it would.  But it's very warm & comfy & looks terrific with one of my winter coats so I dig it.  

My excuses for this poor showing in finished objects are as follows:

1. Carpel tunnel.  Yep, I'm gonna play that card again.
2. Work.  Normally I can expect a bit of a lull in this excuse come November before we ramp up for a big finish at the end of the year.  But this year was non-stop!  Not that I'm complaining but I worked straight through December 10th (without a day off after Nov. 25th) then scrambled to finish all things Xmas before I left town on the 20th for the annual trip to NY.
3. Xmas knitting.  Or actually a total lack thereof!  I decided to bypass the Xmas knitting this year & I am so glad I did!  With my work schedule, I pretty much need to start making knitted gifts in January, when I least want to be thinking about Xmas.  I'd even started buying people gifts in April this year so I thought I was ahead!  But when it came right down to it, there were still lots of gifts unaccounted for at too late a stage for knitting.  Plus I've already knitted gifts for many people in my family & Dan's so it was time for a break.  I think I'll revive the tradition this year but I need some inspiration...& some serious lead time!
4. And last but not least, there's been this little distraction:

This is Carter & we brought him home exactly one week ago.  After we lost Isaac in September, Tree got very lonely & needed more companionship than any human can give a cat.  We've been wanting to get her a friend but neither of us had much time to devote to acclimating a new cat over the last few months.  So we forced ourselves to wait until after the holidays & as soon as we returned from NY, we went right out & found this little dude.  Things are always slow for me in January so I've been able to help him get settled in & now he's completely at home.  Tree took a few days to come around but she loves him almost as much as we do now.  And just in time, as I just landed my first gig of the year, which will start in a little over a week.  

With my down time, I've been doing a bunch of knitting & spinning but don't have much to show for it just yet.  I finished my first Mermaid's Lagoon sock & started on the second.  And I've been spinning away at the multi-colored alpaca I spoke of previously, but I'm not even halfway through the fiber yet!  

I also cast on for the Buttony Sweater by Katie Marcus, whose simple but super-cool patterns I just love.  I've also knitted her Razor Cami.  I'm using the rest of the Patons Jet that I bought in Australia in 2008.  I don't have quite enough blue for the whole sweater so I'm doing the trim & possibly the cuffs in green.  It'll be a little clashy...but in a good way.  It's a top-down raglan so I hope to use this project to really learn & understand raglan construction.  I'm at the point where I need to try the sweater on under the arms, which means I need to move it from the needle to a holder.  So naturally, I'm procrastinating on that.  :)

This is the first of what I intend to be many projects geared towards significantly reducing my stash.  I don't have a huge stash but it's overflowing the space I've allocated to it & a lot of it has been just sitting there for quite a while so I either need to use it or trade it.  I have a few uncommon yarns in odd yardage so it's a bit of a challenge, plus I refuse to knit something that I know I won't wear just to get rid of a yarn.  Though I'm not opposed to charity knitting.  I'll keep you abreast of my progress & hope to have some photos to share next time.

Till then, happy new year!

The Yearling

This is the yarn I spun from the lavender Corriedale roving I got last October (just about a full year ago!) in Cornwall, NY.  I love the various shades of purple that you can see in the skein (the green yarn is just the yarn I tied the skein up with).  This was my first time spinning a singles yarn & since I knew I was over spinning it, I did some research on how to finish the yarn to avoid bias.  Most of the advice I found suggested soaking it in hot water for about 30 mins, smacking it against the edge of the tub or sink to release the twist (not sure if that worked but it was fun!), then weighing it down while hanging it to dry.  So I did all of those things & the yarn still had a bit of twist to it so I twisted the skein against the yarn's natural twist & that seems to have done the trick.  You can still see a little bit of twist in the skein & even more in the photos I took when the yarn was hanging up to dry.  This doesn't bother me too much as I've seen it in indie handspun yarns here & there.

 

This yarn also has a bit of a halo, which I don't know how to explain or avoid in the future.  I'm not sure if it's the fiber itself that creates this or something about how I'm drafting or spinning it.

In other purple project news, the Vite Cowl is just flying along despite my reduced knitting abilities.  Huge needles & super-bulky yarn can make even the slowest of us feel accomplished!  Plus knitting on large needles doesn't bother my wrist as much as small needles do.  I think I'm already well over halfway done.  It's going to be super-warm & comfy & I just love the ginormous leaves!  Unfortunately I'm not really sure when I'll finish this as I'm back on the knitting sidelines for the moment.  I'm taking a week-long break to rest my wrist.  This one is self-imposed, rather than doctor-imposed, though I'm going back to the physical therapist tomorrow for her opinion.  Each time I take a break like this, I find myself aimlessly roaming the house in my free time, not sure how to occupy myself.  I think that probably means that I have a co-dependent relationship with my knitting.  Maybe I should just be going to a therapist!  

Round & Round We Go

I may be the only knitter on earth not currently thrilled that it's autumn but my body clock is a little out of whack with the change of seasons this year.  I think I spent an even higher proportion of our short summer indoors behind a computer than usual so I didn't experience enough summer to feel like it was actually here.  Now that it's over, that doesn't feel right either & that means that the time of year I usually like best feels weird & out of place.  But while it's still sunny, there is no denying that autumn is indeed here.  

The photo on the left was taken at Bainbridge Island's Bloedel Reserve, a beautiful nature preserve that Dan & I visited a couple weeks ago before stopping by Churchmouse Yarns & Teas to check out the Brooklyn Tweed trunk show & say hello to Jared Flood.  Imagine my excitement when Jared remembered me from February's Madrona Fiber Arts Festival!  

I figured I just had to buy some Shelter or Loft whilst I was there so getting to examine & try on the BT pieces was really helpful.  It turns out that the Original Loop size of the Eternity Scarf from BT Fall 12 fits exactly like I want a cowl to fit: it covers my neck completely when wrapped double.  So I chose 4 skeins of Loft in the Tent colorway for some cold-weather knitting.

Cowls seem to be my knitting theme this year as I just completed my Gray's Ferry Cowl.  Like I mentioned above, I'm rather particular about the way cowls fit & although I enjoyed making this project, it does not meet my fit requirements.  It leaves too much of my neck exposed & that just won't do when it gets cold & damp (as it soon will).  So I've decided to donate it to the Warm for the Winter project.  Hopefully someone else will find it useful & enjoy wearing it as much as I enjoyed knitting it.

  

But that's not the end of CowlQuest 2012, oh no!  Last year's obsession with chunky knits has re-emerged & finally found an outlet in the Vite Cowl.  I love, love, love this fat, leafy, squishy ring of warmth and am currently knitting it in Cascade Eco + held double in the Dark Plum colorway.  It is downright luscious!  Unfortunately I have no photos right now but I'll include some in my next post along with the photos of the thick-&-thin handspun I mentioned at the beginning of September.       

Skacel's 25th Anniversary Party

Seattle is a pretty fun place to be a knitter.  We've got annual events like Stitch 'n Pitch & the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival.  We've got about a million great yarn shops & knitting groups.  And we have distributors like Cascade & Skacel right in our backyard.  Until recently, these two members of our knitting community were almost completely invisible to me.  However, Skacel recently threw a party to celebrate their 25th anniversary & I discovered a new wealth of knitting awesomeness hidden away in an unassuming office park.

Most of the day was spent participating in activities like yarn bombing, games & posting photos to Facebook, all of which earned points that could be redeemed for knitting-related prizes.  Oh yes, there were prizes!  In fact, I walked away with a few good ones: 3 skeins of yarn & a Skacel-branded beer stein!  There were also piles of delicious free food & beer, all with a German theme to celebrate the founders' German heritage.

Nothing but yarn as far as the eye can see.

We also got to take a tour of the factory, which was by far my favorite activity.  We saw enviable amounts of yarn & learned that Skacel is the sole North American distributor of Addi Turbo needles!  I also wound up meeting the proprietor of the recently-closed Yarn Stash, a yarn shop which was across the street from my dentist's office.  I had recently stopped in during their liquidation sale & scored some killer deals on yarn & magazines (all magazines for $1, including an issue of knit.wear from 2011 which retails for $15!!!) so it was nice to thank her for having a great shop & wish her well in retirement.  Though going to the dentist will be slightly less rewarding from now on.  :)

The tour ended in the samples room, where we saw tons of garments knitted in the yarns we'd just seen on the shelves. I love seeing how a yarn knits up & which projects the experts pair it with.  But we were not confined to just looking.  In fact we were encouraged to take the garments off the shelves & try them on.

   

This was a great opportunity to hang out with other knitters & learn more about a major player in our local knitting scene.  If only more bland industrial zones secretly held warehouses full of yarn!

The Out-Of-Date Update

For this post, we will travel back in time to the long-ago month of June 2012.  E3 was nearly over, no new jobs were on the horizon & Brenda Dayne was just about to wrap up Cast-On Tour 2012.  As my last day on the E3 job came to a close, there was just one stop left on her tour & it happened to be in Corvalis, OR.  So on a whim (& with no idea where Corvallis was, other than in Oregon!) I signed up for a spot in Brenda's class & began planning a road trip!  After all, Portland is in Oregon & that's only 2-3 hours from Seattle, so how far could Corvallis be?  Let's not talk about the fact that Portland is located at the northernmost tip of Oregon & there is a whole huge state below it.  

Well it turned out that Corvallis is 4.5 hours from Seattle but by the time I realized that, I had already paid my class fee & I was mentally committed.  So this turned out to be quite a road trip indeed!  

The table on the right is where the class was held.

 The class was held at  Stash, which is an  adorable yarn shop,  located in equally  adorable downtown  Corvallis & staffed by  even more adorable  women.  It's a perfect  small-town  LYS & I wish I could  visit more often.

Once I arrived, I realized I was not the only person from Seattle who had made the trip!  A group email had gone out before the class with everyone's email addresses in the To line so I had thought about responding to everyone to ask if any other Seattlites were going down & if they wanted to carpool.  But after a moment of contemplation, I figured I was surely the only one crazy enough to make that trip so I abandoned my email.  And while I apparently was not the only Brenda-crazed Seattlite, I was the only one crazy enough to make the trip there & back in one day.  My fellow road-tripper, on the other hand, did it right by checking into a bed & breakfast after the class to practice her new knitting skills & save the return trip for the following day.

Thumb tack for size comparison.

Speaking of new knitting skills, the subject of the class was Sherman toes & heels.  This is a brilliant & fast method of making toes & heels that requires very little math (& easy math at that!).  We spent pretty much the entire class knitting so by the time we left we had the makings of the world's tiniest sock.

When I left, I also had the makings of carpal tunnel but I didn't learn that for another couple of weeks.  This has had the unfortunate consequence of capping my knitting time at 15-20 minutes in order to keep the discomfort at bay.  Knitting on small needles also bothers me more than large needles so not only have I not practiced this technique since learning it but I've made very little progress on my Mermaid Lagoon socks.  Between this & the impending onset of autumn, I think it's time to cast on for a chunky cowl or set of slippers or mittens.

Speaking of cowls, the Gray's Ferry Cowl is nearly finished.  I realized that I made a totally rookie mistake by not carrying the yarn along the inside during the color changes but it's too late to fix that now.  There will be much weaving in of ends but so it goes.  

And while knitting almost instantly irritates my carpal tunnel, I have a higher tolerance for spinning so I've been using my wheel a lot more lately.  I spun up the lavender roving that I got in NY as about 60 yards of thick-&-thin singles & that is drying right now.  It's my first time doing a thick-&-thin singles so I know it is overspun & the yarn will probably bias.  I probably should have run it through the wheel in reverse before winding it off the bobbin. 

I've also been working on some fiber that a friend destashed to me for my birthday last year.  She couldn't remember what type of fiber it was when she gave it to me but after spinning with it for an hour or so, I realized it had all the characteristics of alpaca.  I'm maybe a quarter of the way through it & while the photos below don't do the color scheme justice, I'm really excited to finish it.  It's looking like it will be DK or light worsted weight after plying.

  







That pretty much brings you up to date.  I've got one more fiber adventure to share with you but I'll save that for next time!