Distractions

I have to admit that there hasn't been much knitting lately in my world. Although I've managed to finish 5 Christmas stockings (2 more to go and then I'm done done), not much else has happened. I did get a little more work done on my gansey, though and it's starting to take shape. I've got the gussets done and I'm well into the pattern. Somehow I must be in a diamond mood because I decided to do the first section as small diamonds. The second section, where I'm at now, is an argyle pattern. I think this is the first sweater I've done with knit/purl patterning. I don't believe I'm going to use any cables on this one but we'll see once I've got the back of the bodice done.

I still love the color and I do love knitting with Galway. I was going to do steeks, which would be perfect for this sort of yarn, but since I'm still not quite sure about the pattern, I decided to do the back and front separately. Less investment in case I decide to do something different. So far, so good.

Vintage Beaded Purse

I went over to one of the local auction houses a few weeks ago and found this lovely beaded crochet purse. Usually these things go for way more than I'm willing to pay but I must have been there on just the right night because there was nobody to bid against me and I got it for a steal. The lining is torn a bit but it's not obvious and the beaded section was complete and in good shape. There was some dirt in some of the beaded areas so I thought, instead of taking the chance of wetting it, I thought I would use a dry paint brush first. There's no telling what I breathed in but it worked a charm and cleaned things right up. A little wipe of the chain with a jeweler's cloth and I think it's cleaned up nicely. Certainly a pretty little thing. 1920's do you think?

A very full couple of days.

A couple of very exciting things have happened over the last couple of days. In fact they happened so quickly, I didn’t even have time for pictures.

The Car
The first is a follow up to the last post. Evidently it was going to cost me $500 for a new muffler. I almost had to giggle when the guy very solemnly assured me that it would have a lifetime warranty! Great, that makes all the difference. That’s a lot of money and with everything else, I just decided it was time to bite the bullet and get a new (for me) car. I’ve been doing lots of research of what I wanted and what the costs would be so I was somewhat prepared. Here was my list of criteria:

• Not a PT Cr uiser. Apologies to those who like the PT Cruiser but it’s my taste.
• Not red. Don’t know why, just don’t want to drive a red car.
• Manual transmission. Learned on a manual, have driven manuals most my life except for my Tracer. Love to drive a manual.
• Less than 30,000 miles. You don’t save any money anymore getting a car with higher mileage – at least not in today’s market.
• I’d decided I quite liked the Ford Focus, both the looks, the feel and the reviews and safety ratings I’ve seen on them.

No one in town, or hereabouts, had a Focus with manual drive, except brand new models (out of my price band completely). There were several low mileage 2008 models that were automatic. One was a really pretty blue color. So I looked and then I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, I suddenly thought, “Why am I giving up on my manual so easily?” I got on Edmunds.com and out of the blue, my car showed up. It had never shown up before in all my searching but here it was. A 2008 with just over 10,000 miles, 1 owner who’d returned it to the same dealership because they wanted something bigger, manual, kiwi green and right in the expected price range. The dealer gave me twice what I expected for my trade in which put it right in the price I’d decided I was willing to pay and Bob’s your uncle. I have a new car!

According to the reading on the dash, it’s averaging 30 miles to the gallon so far (mine was getting less than 20 at the end) and it has all the mod cons. So I’m happy, I’m blessed. I don’t like the idea of a car payment again after not having one for 6 years but, if I have to have one, this is the car to have one for. It was really inevitable, anyway.

And the piece de resistance is that the backseat area has enough headroom for me to transport my Kromski spinning wheel!! Ha!

The Kids
So all of that happened on Tuesday. I had, or thought I had, a session at a local elementary school demonstrating spinning on Wednesday. It was part of an art night open house at the school and it was packed. No time to go into details but suffice to say I got a phone call at 6:10 saying that the event was actually Tuesday night! Yikes. So I said I would run home (I was still at work) and grab my stuff and come out (in my brand new car). Karen was going to come with me but she was out so I headed on to the school. I was only about 20 minutes late but as soon as I hit the table with cd spindles and roving dyed with bright Kool-Aid colors, I was surrounded for 2 hours with kids spinning bracelets. It’s something I learned from Susan. Have them spin shortish strands of a couple of colors of roving with the cd spindle and then make it a bracelet for them. They loved it! I did have the wheel and demonstrated it a couple of times but mostly it was the drop spindle. They were absolutely fascinated. I also had some washed fleece for them to see it from the sheep to their bracelet. The little boys were the most fascinated, I think, which really surprised the teacher who’d organized it. I felt bad that I’d missed the date but it worked out really well and having an evening with the kids was very rejuvenating.

All in all, I would say it was an eventful day. Did I mention I also did a little bit of work, too?!

Happy Spring!

The fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high....

Oh yeah, speaking of the spinning workshop, I learned a little about spinning cotton. Someone made the comment about cotton being extremely directional and spinning from the right direction of the roving making all the difference. Ding. The light went on. On Tuesday, one of the ladies in the Woolgatherers Spinning Club brought her charkha, which is used to spin cotton at a very high ratio (which cotton needs to hold together). She let me experiment and I was able to spin a fairly decent thread that held together and was fairly even. The charkha works on the same principle as the great wheel so that helped my understanding of how things should happen.

I’ve had a takhli spindle for a while now but had never had any success with it – because I was spinning from the wrong end of the cotton roving. Who knew?! So I took it out, dusted it off and lo and behold…whaaaala…

spun cotton. What’d’ya think about them apples?

Actually, it’s the most rudimentary success but far more than I’ve accomplished to this point. And with the cotton spinning workshop coming up in April, I’m very excited about the possibility of the medium. I know I should be able to spin cotton on my new Kromski but I couldn’t quite get everything to work together there so I’ll wait for the workshop and see how that goes.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Display

Jane and I took our stuff over this morning to the Library for their display of Lincoln era knitting. Jane had some great old needles that she’d been given from a housecleaning a while back as well as a copy of the most recent Piecework magazine that had several articles on Civil War Knitting that went exactly along with the display. I had my Spanish Opera Hood (both versions), my version of a 19th century jug coin purse and a couple of beaded bags. I also worked up a skein of handspun for them to use if wanted. The Librarian, Gwen, was very excited about the display and said she would call us when they got it done so we could come have a look. I’ll try to get a photo to post. I’m sure they’ll make it look grand. Since the Spanish Opera Hood was from an 1863 Peterson’s Magazine that’s in the Library’s collection, she’ll add a copy of that along with the display.

Some of Jane's needles were marked "Chesterfield." Does anyone have any information about when they were in business?

Car

I’ve got the best little car in the world - 110,000 miles and hardly anything ever done other than regular maintenance - but it’s now starting to have some little troubles and gas mileage challenges. In fact I’ve had to spend over $500 on it in the last 6 weeks or so. I keep telling myself that it’s far better than having a car payment (which I haven’t had in a number of years) but today as I ventured over to Lincoln for a day of exploring I turned off the highway and up to a traffic light. When I stepped on the accelerator, I heard the old redneck muffler tune. Arghhh…. Again to the mechanic. Evidently it’s a section of the muffler that’s given out. Guess I’ll find out how much THAT’s going to cost on Monday. A new (to me) car is starting to sound like it’s in my future.

My Epiphany Weekend

I was going to say this weekend’s spinning workshop was a revelation but it was really more of an epiphany. It was good, solid, basic spinning stuff. You’ve got to have the basics to go farther faster (and have fewer frustrations!).

I have been spinning for a number of years, as I’ve said, but what knowledge I had was so basic it wasn’t even basic, as I’m now discovering. Well, discovering. I really knew it but just hadn’t had the opportunity to do anything about it.

I was amazed that things I had read in spinning articles or spinning books that would have made my eyes glaze over because they meant as much to me as this: Я ничего не знаю о прядения шерсти.

I know what language it is but couldn’t save my life with it.

Last night when I got home, I picked up the handy little Interweave press spiral booklet about spinning – one of those everything your wanted to know, etc.-type books – and…wait for it…understood it! I still get woolen vs worsted mixed up but even that was helped by Barb Brown equating worsted with a worsted men’s suit. Strong, long, smooth wool to make up a sturdy material. That stuck, Barb! Thanks!

I learned to Andean ply, a long-term mystery that I can now see why people suggest it to ply singles from a drop spindle. Epiphany.

I learned why twists per inch and understanding crimp structure is important to creating an optimum yarn for whatever wool type you’re spinning.

I learned how a walking wheel, or great wheel, works. Not that I had any success with it but they assure me that’s because the wool we were using had too much lanolin in it and it wasn’t drafting properly.

In learning about the walking wheel, I also learned the principle behind how the charkha works (same sort of spindle). Very cool but still a little intimidating.

I learned why it’s good for the singles to be slightly overspun and why some of my yarn looked almost unplied after I underspun the ply and then set the twist (both relax the yarn).

I learned how to tell if I’ve got too much twist in my ply or not enough (look at direction of twist in a hank of yarn – if it hangs with no twist, it’s balanced; if it hangs with a ‘z’ twist – depending on direction of ply – tells you whether you’ve over or under twisted the ply.) I didn’t know that and that’s a good thing to know.

I learned how to figure out how much handspun you’re going to need for a project. That’s a useful piece of information worth the price of admission alone! Can’t tell you how often I’ve had that question asked of me. Now I don’t have to just shrug my shoulders and say I just guess.

Can you see where I’m going here? A roomful of smart spinners sharing tales and war stories. Nothing like it.

It was a wonderful first day for the spinning workshop at Lincoln’s New Salem. The teachers, Dona Walzer and Barbara Brown, sure know their stuff and have made it such fun. Here are a few pictures from the day.







I tell you, the dynamics of the group makes all the difference and this group has been so good to be with.

Not having had much instruction, particularly with a spinning wheel, I’ve enjoyed practicing different types of fiber preparation. We’ve worked with merino sheep raised at New Salem (which was a bit more dirty than expected, really) and they’ve got quite a good variety of fleeces and prepared fibers to practice with as well.

We went over the differences between worsted and woolen preparation (cards/combs), worsted and woolen drafting (short/long draw), spinning to the crimp and counting the twists per inch for singles and plies. All the things I’ve heard about over the years but never really understood or practiced. My problem is just that, although I understand that there’s a difference between the two, I can never remember which is woolen and which is worsted!!

Sigh…

Tomorrow’s another day with more to learn and more to spin!

Things to do...

I had a great time with the Prairie Weaver’s Guild on Tuesday night. What a great group. I did a short program on Characteristics of fiber and then broke out the samples of a fairly wide variety of them for people to touch and spin with. Of course, the star of the evening was the Kromski Minstrel spinning wheel that recently graced me with its presence!

I’ve had a couple of days off from my day job to prepare things for my upcoming Lincoln Land classes – Designing a Purse (knit or crochet) which will run over 3 Thursday nights beginning March 26th and Knitting With Jewelry Wire and Beads which will be the first Saturday in April. I’ve been able to get a great deal done with a little more to do later today. This is the first time I’ve done the Designing class in this format and, of course, designing is what I love to do so I’m very excited to get this class underway. I’ve got lots of fun creativity exercises and a design questionnaire that should help people get started with the process.

The next thing to come up in my busy month is a spinning workshop this weekend at Lincoln’s New Salem. We just so rarely have access to spinning classes here so this is such a treat and I can’t wait. Kromski and I will head over tomorrow to learn about the sheep breeds that were common during Lincoln’s New Salem days (around 1830) and the spend two whole days with spinners – what a treat! I’ll take my camera and will hopefully have some pictures to share (if I can remember to take them!).

The gansey is through the plain stockinette and I’ve just started the first garter border. I promise that I will take a picture for the next posting. A blue knitted tube just hasn’t seemed worth breaking out the camera but now it’s soon to get thrilling!

Slightly blocked

Just a quick post to show off the slightly blocked long gloves. I really do think they would look better in a lighter lace yarn but I do think they're awfully elegant!

(Click to see a larger version.)

Just a quick note, too, to brag a little on my wonderfully talented mother, Wanda Odum, who designed this t-shirt logo for her local chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists:

I'm so proud! ahhhh....