May Day Spinning and Knitting

 

Gosh, there is a lot of stuff going on around here including only a little knitting this week, and work on two upcoming patterns.  

The patterns are coming along nicely, Spring weather has arrived and although I had to wait on more yarn to arrive to finish up the pattern projects, I am finally knitting the last version and putting the final touches on the first pattern. 

The "Grasshopper" colorway Madeline Tosh Merino Light yarn shown in the photo above is one I've been working with for this pattern and it positively shouts "Spring!" to me and makes me smile.

The non-knitting parts of my life are a bit chaotic right now, and I feel like my head is spinning sometimes, so I decided this would be a good time to take a short timeout from work on the patterns and do some spinning.

I've finished a bobbin of fingering weight singles in the beige Coopworth and decided I needed to work on something with a little color.  

The beige will eventually be multi-plied to knit some sort of coat or jacket from it, but that yarn will most likely take me the rest of the year to complete since I plan to intersperse working on it with other, more vibrant fibers.

  

Craving some cheerful color, I went stash diving.  I didn't have anything light-colored (wool festival anyone?), but I did pull this pretty BFL hand-painted roving from Handwoven by Tina in the "Wildflower" colorway out of my stash to play with.  

 

OK, all you expert spinners out there, please keep in mind I'm not super experienced as a spinner and be kind in your assessment of my spinning.  Our little spinning group at Temptations seems to have become defunct, and I miss having other spinners to consult with for advice.  I'm mostly learning from videos, Youtube and written materials.

The fiber is soft and well-prepared, and very easy to spin, great for the relaxation I was seeking.  After deciding I wanted to knit a shawl with the finished yarn, I split the 4 oz. bundle into two even portions, then split those into five thinner sections each before drafting them to spin.  

One end is much darker than the other.  

Although the singles is slightly different than I expected, I love the way the colors are blending in the twist and can't wait to see how it looks when knit up. 

This has certainly whetted my appetite for colorful spinning and knitting and I'm looking forward to attending the 16th annual Great Lakes Fiber Show in Wooster, Ohio at the end of this month.  

Held May 28th and 29th at a fairgrounds about an hour south of Cleveland, this show features workshops in knitting, crochet, weaving, spinning, tatting, carding fibers, felting and more, competitions for fleeces and handspun yarns, multiple buildings filled with vendors, demonstrations, a sheep show and sale, and loads of other fun things to see and do.  

Our dog always has a great time riding in her backpack.

Every year that I attend Great Lakes, I see lots of beautiful fiber and yarn, take tons of photos, and leave with great memories.  

This year I'll definitely be on the lookout for some fresh, light colorways, inspired by the beautiful, native wildflowers.  Although I live in a densely populated, semi-urban area, my city is ringed by many beautiful parks featuring wooded nature trails.  My husband and I try to visit all the different parks, and this is where I get many of my photos, shared here on this blog.

This weekend I was able to snap a few more examples of our local flora, including this  Geranium maculatum, commonly known as Wild, or Cranesbill, geranium.  

Violets of every color are abundant.

Jack in the pulpit is a more unusual sight.

And this blue beauty is a stunner, but I'm not familiar with it's name.

I hope you are enjoying Spring wherever you are, happy knitting and happy May Day! 

The Wool Festival at Taos

Yarnie heaven. That's what my visit to The Wool Festival at Taos (WFT), the coolest fiber fest in the west, felt like.  

Presented by the Mountain and Valley Wool Association since 1984, and always held the first full weekend in October, this festival delights in many ways.  

WFT is large enough to offer a dazzling array of fiber and related goodies, and small enough to allow you to enjoy thoroughly checking out each and every booth before exhaustion sets in.  This is truly a knitting and spinning paradise.

The set up in festival venue Kit Carson Park, in the heart of historic Taos, New Mexico, is ideal with vendors' tents ringing the tree-shaded park, and information, meet-up and refreshment tents grouped in the center.  

 

Although crowds were thick later in the day, shopping was a breeze when we arrived at opening time of 9 AM.  The full-fever pitch of a true fiber frenzy had not yet been reached, but you could feel it brewing in the atmosphere as shoppers dashed from booth to booth to get the best choice of merchandise. 

Vendors, many of whom are from New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and California, were relaxed and friendly, even the staff working the crowded tents at Brooks Farm, Elsawool and other popular sellers.  

 

Sixty-eight vendors exhibited wool and exotic spinning fibers, handspun, millspun and hand-dyed yarn, woven, knitted and felted finished garments, rugs, hats, sheepskin shoes and accessories, hand-made wood fiber tools, buttons, jewelry, body products, and so many other wonderful things I can't begin to list them all here. 

 

 

An entertainment and competition stage, fiber animal pens, workshops, silent auction, fashion show and technique demonstrations rounded out the offerings.  

You know I can't resist the animals, including this mama alpaca and her cria.

These sheep, in a large pen, swirled and flocked together in a tight clump.

I loved the hand-dyed yarn at Royal Fibers Spinnery.

I would've bought cartloads of wool if I could have!  But in the end my pocketbook dictated that I be choosy, so I selected some things I haven't tried before including: Brooks Farm Mas Acero in a grey-brown mix;

 

cushy Elsawool worsted weight, woolen spun Cormo in soft grey;

and some cool natural stone buttons.

A favorite part of this year's festival was getting to meet many fellow Ravelry members, including founder Mary-Heather Cogar (seen taking a photo in the Ravelry meet-up tent below).

Mary-Heather (Rainydaygoods on Ravelry) is such a nice person, and she did a super job of conversing with complete strangers for hours, always with a friendly smile.

The festival's site in the heart of Taos is surrounded by streets lined with intriguing galleries, shops and restaurants, making it easy to walk to a small cafe for lunch and check out a few of the local shops.  

Across the street from the cafe was La Lana Wools, renowned for their gorgeous, naturally-dyed fibers.  

I loved Common Thread (big Indian dude notwithstanding, LOL), a specialty shop offering silks and exotic fabrics by the yard.

Displays were pure eye candy.

In the same block as the fabric store is Weaving Southwest, a large, airy space in this area of tiny boutiques.  

Filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves bursting with yarn, hand-woven rugs, giant looms, knitting tools, and racks of finished knitted and crocheted items, this well-laid-out store delights fiber artists of all sorts.  

 

 

The front of the shop held large boxes of wool, silk, mohair and alpaca yarns at amazing clearance prices of $5 and $8 per 100 gr. skein.

 

The Taos area is, of course, famous for many other things not limited to spectacular scenery, charming southwest atmosphere, outdoor pursuits like cycling, hiking, river rafting and rock climbing, and the Taos Pueblo.  

In fact, because there were so many wonderful sights, smells, sounds and other treats for the senses that I cannot possibly relate them all here, I highly  recommend any knitter, spinner or weaver consider the Wool Festival at Taos for a fiber holiday some year soon, and discover the wonders of Taos for themselves.  

And just one teensy, non-Taos-related note before I close this long post, I am absolutely thrilled to bits that my new free pattern, Greyhaven, has been nominated in the Ravelry Cowls Group for their November knitalong!

Voting closes this weekend, so if you are interested in participating in the KAL, please pop into the group and vote for your favorite pattern in the November KAL thread.  

That's it for now, new knitting projects and recipes coming up soon.  Until then, peace, blessings and happy stitching!

Gathering Wool

This week has been a very fiber-y one for me. I recently finished knitting some projects that are being written into patterns for release soon, took a few days to finish spinning and plying some yarn projects, and attended a fiber festival.  

I've only been spinning for a couple of years now, and don't spend nearly enough time at it as I'd like, but I can see progress.  

The 4 oz. skein of yarn shown above was spun with an attempt at a woolen-style, slightly thick-thin 2-ply, which is mostly what I ended up with. A few areas are somewhat overspun, and a few are underspun, but overall it's fairly balanced. It knits up at about 17 stitches per four inches in stockinette.

The wool was from a ball of .79 cents-per-ounce generic breed roving I purchased in natural white, and dyed with Wilton's cake icing dyes.  

I found this handy icing guide on the Wilton website, but I have to warn you - the color of the icing dye before setting it with heat is frequently different from how the yarn color turns out!  

This batch was dyed using pale sky blues, green and purple.  Using this way to dye your yarn requires a relaxed attitude and enjoyment of serendipity! 

Ravelry groups are helpful in finding information on this technique which is essentially acid dyeing using vinegar as the mordant, in the same manner as dyeing with a drink mix such as Kool Aid.  Check out this group, and this group for ideas and helpful links.  Knitty.com also has a helpful page on using drink mixes to dye yarn here.

Last weekend was the Wool Gathering fiber festival in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  

Held every year at Young's Jersey Dairy, this annual event has grown and improved over the years to become an exceptionally nice, excellent quality small show with a true heartland 'country' feel.  I think this giant cow sign is so retro-Americana cool.

For city-dwelling fiber lovers like me, it makes for a fun drive through scenic farmland to an attractive dairy ranch compound boasting several restaurants on-site, a sports pavilion, picnic areas, tractor rides and games for children, animals of all sorts, spinning, knitting,  and weaving demonstrations, and duck-herding border collies. 

And Young's serves wonderful ice cream, gelato, and cheese made fresh in their dairies.

This year's event was even larger than last  year's with another large tent full of vendors added and many more individual vendors in the areas between the tents. 

My only complaint about the show is that the tents are striped yellow and white, which makes it difficult to discern colors in fiber. Shoppers end up taking skeins of yarn over to tent openings to try to evaluate the color. Vendors in their own small tents outside were much better off in terms of ability to show off their merchandise.  

Of course the gorgeous fiber and yarn was everywhere, like this from Knitting Notions.

But there were also spinning wheels, looms, ceramics, glass, mosaics, framed art, jewelry, shawl pins, body products and other fun things to peruse. 

This vendor made the most exquisite jewelry in petit point wool worked in bargello and quilt designs set in tiny sterling silver frames.  

 

We enjoyed the peaceful drive, the gorgeous September weather (sunny and dry in the high 70's). Of course we enjoyed the animals too - sheep, goats, alpacas, and bunnies galore. 

I am in love with this darling little Angora baby bunny.  I wonder how my dog would feel about a new friend to play with....

This will be a crazy week for me as I prepare to head to New Mexico and to attend some really cool festivals and more.  I will definitely take many photos and notes to post so you can 'go-along' with me on the trip, but between now and then I have a ton of stuff to get ready.  I'll try to post at least one more time before I am off.  

Adventures in Yarndom

Last weekend my husband and I took off through the Ohio countryside for a bucolic day of driving and yarn shop hopping around the Dayton area.  I was on a mission to find some specific things for project ideas I am working on. 

En route we stopped to enjoy a typically pastoral scene.

 

Although Dayton is one of Ohio's smaller cities, the surrounding communities do offer a few shops, and our first stop was at Arlene Graham's Fiberworks, specializing in spinning fiber and supplies.  I chose a small amount of a lustrous silk/ alpaca blend to experiment spinning with.   

After meeting up with my cousin for lunch at a favorite BBQ place (City Barbecue), we headed south to the town of Springboro for a visit to the Wooly Bully Yarn Company.  

 The shop's proprietor greeted us with a friendly smile and an open door.  

Although tiny compared to the shops in my area, it still held a nice assortment of yarn, and I found a bargain - fingering weight wool from Jojoland in a mouth-watering red the color of ripe cherries - 3 balls for less than $10.  I have a terrible time trying to photograph reds, but this yarn is a much deeper, blue-er color than this photo shows.  More on the wine side of red.

Our final destination before heading for home was the Yarn & Needle shop in quaint Centerville, an old village full of beautifully restored homes and shops.  I'd love to go back sometime to see more of the town.   

  

Yarn & Needle was the smallest store we visited, but had a beautiful selection of yarn, arranged by color, lots of knitted samples and vintage knitting memorabilia on display. 

I found some exceptionally soft fingering-weight beige Suri alpaca, by Frog Tree (shown in the first photo of this post), to swatch for a pattern I'm working on.  I considered a silk/ mohair yarn (one of my most favorite fiber blends!) but wanted to try something new, and I was drawn to the physical and visual texture of this yarn.  

All in all, a fun day in which I heroically stuck with my project-related shopping list and still managed to find some lovely things to work with my ideas. 

And knitting update:  I'm nearly finished with my Misti alpaca shawlette (on temporary hold), also nearly finished with my lace project in the pink fingering weight cotton (which I'll show more of soon), and have made some progress on my textured cardi-shrug pattern.

I'm also working on a new little handspun project which I will write more about in another post.  I really love to knit lace, but I'm balancing that out with other styles too.

This coming weekend I'll be teaching a Brandywine Falls wrap class at A Tangled Tale in Powell, so please join us if you are local!