Preparation Underway

Front and back of card

I just wanted to quickly post the "rack cards" I had printed for Oregon Flock and Fiber this weekend. Banner is arriving tomorrow; not a moment too soon!

I am more stoked than ever for this year. As usual, I get the lovely Barbara staying with me and I get to spend 2 days with all my favorite people. See you at the Festival

Petra, Me and Sailing

The sailing vessel, Sara

Preparing to leave

Someone with a spinnaker sail

That big rotating bridge, moving just for us.

My she's happy we made it!

See, don't I look really really calm? Yeah, this was on the other side of that bridge.

Back at the slip, all relaxed, like.

All the comforts of home

Ah, yes. I believe the wine was poured by this point...

There's a lot of story to this. Oh, I wish I could just tell you all over a cuppa. Seriously funny, amazing, a little scary and yeah, amazing.

I manned the tiller and gave us direction, eventually trying to find the wind, catch the wind and still sail down the river with Petra adjusting the sails and talking non-stop about what was happening. None of it was easy, but somehow it call came back to me. The parts of me that knows about boats and hopping, yes hopping off to safely guide them into slips. I forgot what I knew.

The most amazing and no doubt stressful time for Petra was when we found ourselves on the other side of a massive steel bridge (Hey, let's just keep going to see what we see!). We get up on the bridge and see some other boats hoavering. Hell, let's just move beyond and wait a little down river until they raise that side of the bridge. Oh no! They're raising the bridge and now we're far away and look! They're moving it back again.

We have no radio. We don't know what to do. Petra pulls out the airhorn and I try and look up how many times to signal for "let up the bridge, please!" There's a wee little house actually on the bridge where there's some guy who comes out to see our little 20' Ranger sittin down there blowing our air horn for dear life, going around in circles. Next thing we know there's two speeding trains, racing across the bridge. Well heck, we think. At least there's actually trains. Maybe he really does see us. Maybe that far off signal was, Ok, don't get your panties all in a wad!

Yes, the bridge eventually rotated back to the open position. Mr Man blew his horn in a Howdy Ladies kinda way (seriously, we thought we were gonna have to lift up our shirts any minute because he didn't seem to see us batting our eyelashes) We passed through.

Ummm. I guess she needs a radio for occasions like this.
We did fine. I know I'm gonna be crazy sore tomorrow and that I've gotten myself into "something" there.

World Wide Spin in Public Day (WWSIP)

This is the way my day started, waiting at the MAX in the drizzle in my socks. Only in the fiber arts community is it cool to wear sandals with socks. And so you'll be asking, Nutkin, knitting in the Paul colorway of Wollmeise.

And so I get there, and Bobbie, above, smiling to the left already has the Journey Wheel ready for it's hand-off back to me. Here she is demonstrating carding technique with what I believe are dog combs.

And above we have Carrisa, showing off some sparkly art yarn to Sara on the right.

Left to right, we have Melinda and Jessica down from Vancouver and Sara's delicate hands doing their thing. Oh, so was that great banjo, mandolin and guitar player right above her.
Here we have our very organized spinning organizer, Sheila January with the Black Sheep Gathering shirt on. We compared notes about spinning guild organizing as well as fiber-related trips to Sweden.And thanks to Tami Hawes for organizing this shindig and landing us these great swag bags!

I Finally Did it

As many of you know, my dad had a phase of spinning. It was after he had lost most of his site after some eye surgery. I made some beautiful yarn. His resources for fiber were really limited, but he turned out some great natural colored yarn. I have a couple of sweaters he knit from that yarn and some that I've over-dyed, as you can see in the hank to the left above.

Thing is, I've really gone more to the sleek worsted style of spinning and have had a really hard time replicating the woolen style of spinning that he was so good at. I love the light, airy quality it has. The ply is really angled nicely. The whole package.

Last night I gave it another try. I pulled out some wool/mohair blend that I picked up at black sheep. I set my ratios for a fast spin and I just let 'er rip. As I finished two bobbins of singles in about an hour, I wasn't really quite sure of what I'd come up with. It was only after I plied them that I thought, Holy cr*p! I've done it!

So, here you go. Dad's is on the left and mine is on the right. Oh, happy day.

Now off to finish preparations for the multitude of "end of season" happenings.

It's in The Stars...

...and in the wind. The words that is, to pluck out and put down.
This is one of those posts where I start with no exact idea, no images and then somehow it coalesces and appears on this page.

I was just visiting with my dear friend Paula tonight who has graced the posts of this blog for years now. She is one of the most singularly talented people I know, and for sure, in fashion. These days we seem to be coming to some of the same conclusions about "just doing it."

Today I taught my friend Laura how to hand sew. No one has ever asked me to do that before. To me it's like knowing how to speak or read or walk. How do you teach that? My brain was at a loss for a moment and then I thought about being maybe 5 or so and how I might have learned. (see picture above in making mode) With anything, hands awkward at first and then it just starts flowing, one stitch after another.

Paula and I talked about the gift of being able to make things no matter what. No matter how awful we feel, how anxious or scared. We just keep making things. She told me a story of staying up nights, mending clothes because she was worried about her Grandmother and it seemed like the thing to do.

We all have stories like that in this community of makers. What I seem to be focusing on more and more these days is the passing down of the gift. I was so lucky to have the parents I had who taught me everything I know about making things. My New England heritage is very much about that simplicity of purpose. You make a dress because you need a dress.

I learned to take my brothers' old oxford cloth shirts with the frayed collars and turn those collars to the un-worn side. You pick out all the tiny stitches of the collar from the band and then you turn it upside down and stitch is all right back in place. I did it because you couldn't find things like that for girls when I was 16.

A purpose filled life is a happy life. You can take the girl out of New England but you can't take the New England out of the girl.
"Dyed in the wool" as we say.
A favorite phrase, still.

Time Bisected

Yes, we have a logo.
Right now most of my time is spent of getting this business up and running, ASAP. On the other side, today I am about to start developing some of my own kits under the Krafti-Kit name.

Believe me, I know the most time consuming part of making a kit is writing the instructions. Fortunately we have a team of testers up for the task of checking each pattern before selling. As someone who has been a pattern tester for knitwear designs off and on these past years, I know what that means. It is somewhat a thankless job, but the reason I've always done it is to expand my skill set. In this case, we're going to try and do the same thing by having knitters to needlepoint, crocheters doing spinning, etc. An adventurous type is needed, for sure.

On the personal knitting side, I'm trying to finish some languishing projects that I now I'll want to wear soon. But, you know it's kinda bad when I shorten a sweater because I can't stand to knit on the body of it anymore. UGHH! Knitters need a sense of humor, don't we? If not, those pointy needles would become objects of torture for us or those we love...

Oregon Flock and Fiber is next month and if nothing else, it means that I will be immersed again into the fiberarts community again for 4 days. Here's hoping the weather does it's normal sunny September thing here in Oregon. It's great spinning outdoors. It's also great teaching and showing the little ones what we do. In fact, I think I've had more of that going on than ever. When we meet at the downtown library for the monthly Spinnerati meetings, more and more kids drag their parents in to see what we're doing.

Okay, folks. Back to work and dreaming of the next projects to pull together!

Sock Summit -- Experience of a Lifetime

photo courtesy of Deb Accuardi

I am not going to do an overall recall of my entire Sock Summit experience. That's why this is so late in coming! There's too much to say and so many feelings about the whole thing. As many of you already know, I spent 3 days doing registration. I have NO regrets about that. It was a wonderful way to meet my sock buds and celebrities alike.

The part of my weekend that was really unexpected is that I was asked to assist a teacher on Saturday afternoon. I didn't know who she was, or what her work was like. I was just looking forward to helping a teacher in any way that I could and get to be a fly on the way of her class.
The teacher that I was assigned to was Marjan Hammick, aka yarnissima. Traveling all the way from her small village in The Netherlands, her tales of rural life and growing up in a knitting culture were fascinating to me.

I'm generally pretty clear about what I find to be "fun" to know socks, and um...NOT. If I had time to examine Marjan's work in advance, I might have been more guarded about the class. What happened instead is that I saw her patterns and was called to the challenge. Marjan's design's caress the foot in the most amazing ways, bringing in traditional twisted, Bavarian stitches to truly fluid and inspired designs.

That Saturday night I went home and immediately cast on the most simple socks "Brainless" using techniques that I was not so very familiar with. A week later I had the socks complete and any worries I had about fit cleared up in the relaxing of the yarn in the first wash. The only thing that I did differently was to work the whole upper leg in stockinette, as it seemed in the pattern to be optional. Probably not, but moving up a needle size, it worked just perfectly for me and it added to the elegance of the design.

Yesterday I cast-on her latest design, Sottopassaggio.

Although better pictures of all of these socks exist elsewhere, these are my pictures of the same socks when I got to actually feel and examine their textures and construction. These were taken my my moment of glee!


Look at that calf detail!
And finally, below is my "brainless" using yarn from Miss Babs.
And for those of you who know me, I always make time to knit, right? Sweaters are just going to have to wait until I get a little of this out of my system!

New Business Venture!

Right now I'm embarking on a new business venture with my friend Laura Cohen.
We're very excited to say that we're looking for craft kit vendors to sell to this new business,
Krafti-Kit

We've really been looking forward to the day that we could formally announce this new project and hope that you know some craft folks who will be interesting in contacting us with submissions.

We really see this as a start for some new "cottage industry" and a way for folks to get more exposure for what they're already doing.

Our time line in...ummmm. NOW!

Sock Summit Post 1

This is the sweater I finally finished and will be wearing today to the Sock Summit.

And yes, day 2 of registration. Yesterday I started at 5PM after the folks before me had been there for 4 of the first hours. The message to register before the whole shindig started got things going on the right foot. Although it took me about 20 minutes to catch onto the process, all went smoothly for me.

Won't even TRY and process the whole event until it's over, but so far am as excited as can be. I feel happy every time I send a student on their way with tickets, book and schedule in hand. I have to say though that I was so tired by the time I got home last night I just flopped in bed. And seeing how exhausted the planners were just made me feel like a wimp! I hope they got some decent sleep, although probably not.

Was Flumoxed, Now Finished!

Wow, am I every happy that I got my new blocking squares this week. This scarf, thankfully grew another foot after blocking! I'm so pleased. Although the wool will not be worn for a bit, I know I'll wear this one a lot.

Flumoxed!

This picture was taken a while ago. It's now 2/3rds done.

Jeez, I took out an old ufo (unfinished object) today because of a message I got on Ravelry. The message said how great it was that I had a "zillion" works in progress. Oy. I know I don't even have them all up there. But....

1. I knit like the wind
2. I actually finish a lot of projects
3. I crochet and spin as well
4. I start too many things that are charted.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it! Never MIND the fact that I de-stashed an obscene amount of yarn this past year. I admit to having some kind of guilt, but I'm not sure what it is.

I'm thinking about Sock Summit. I'm thinking about what I would wear each day to show off my knitting prowess. Uh...I've got lots of tank tops that I've knitted and I'm almost done with a little summer sweater that I ran out of yarn for. Maybe I need to start another quickie shrug, or tank top, or...

Yeah, maybe I just need to stick to finishing what I have on the needles right now! For the love of fiber, how to we get this way??? Oh, right. That would be, For the love of fiber.

The Pink is Back

Don't forget to click the image for a really close up look!

These are both rather unbalanced 2ply yarns and for good reason. I'm learning plenty about what I do and do not like to spin these days. Both of these fibers are from Spunky Eclectic. I love her stuff. The one on the top is s silk/merino blend in Tahiti, plyed with a tiny silk single. This skein is really light and airy and was easy to spin.

Then came the merino/Tencel in Pink Elephant. It was so slick it was pretty hard to manage. It just wanted to pull as much fiber in as possible and not "hold" the twist. So, I let it do it's thing and then I plied it with a thread of iridescent Mylar. It looks way better than you can tell. I have another 2 oz of this to spin so I'd best get anther spool of thread. If I had plied it against itself, it would have been so heavy. That's what happened when I tried to do that with Optim. So, now I'm seeing that if I want to get this weight of yarn and not laceweight, I should just ply it with a tiny single for strength.

Come Engage!

Next Monday I'll be doing a tele interview for the blog Woman on Quilts at 5pm PDT. The focus will be creating and business. Call in and have the opportunity to ask questions on the many different facets of this topic!

Tricky Latvians

My new knitting buddy, Petra showed up to group yesterday with the coolest little way of counting pattern rows! It's a length of yarn, (see white strand above) knotted in one inch increments. You move along to the next knot to as you go to the next row! When I asked her what the origin of this technique was, she said:

I just confirmed the source. In Joyce Williams' book "Latvian Dreams," she cites Lizbeth Upitis (author of Latvian Mittens) as the source.

Coooool. Low tech and free.

So, you'll also see these funky mittens that she's knitting in Noro as well.

When the Wheel's Away, the Spindle Will Play

Ever since I obtained my funky little spinning wheel, it's been a little tricky, having only one bobbin. What I've been doing is filling it up, winding half of it off and then plying it with a drop spindle. It's been exercise. I think my upper body strength has benefited. But, along with that challenge is the challenge that once I commit myself to spin a fiber, I've gotta pretty much stick with it until the bobbin is full.

It's been hard to find someone to make me some new custom bobbins, PDQ. I did find someone and then it's been a matter of letting my bobbin go for about a week to have the "babies" made. I have plenty of knitting to do, but there's this certain mindset that's just right for spinning. Hard to describe. Slightly distract-able, but still wanting to do something. Knitting won't always fill that void.

Thus, my lovely Spindlewood Spindle came out to play. It's a little snobby though. It only likes luxury fibers (go figure). Last night, in the heat of the night I started spinning some silk. It's pretty satisfying. I haven't dropped it too many times. The fiber is from Chasing Rainbows in Abalone.

There wasas well, the slightly manic spinning BEFORE I let got of my bobbin, pictured below. I had to do finish off what I had started before I let go of the bobbin for baby-making. You really can't tell in this photo, but this is Ramboulet, Silk and Sparkles, in a intense, deep blue. It's my idea of "dessert" spinning. It's something that I save up for fun, adventure and color satisfaction.I admit it: I'm a kinky spinner. I have proclivities that can hardly be explained. But, I have NO shame. Well, almost...

I Couldn't Wait!

I couldn't wait to post all these pictures from my time yesterday at the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR. This is my third year and was really the best ever. I went with my friend Melissa who is NOT a fiber person but a jewelry person. She's so inquisitive though that it made it really really fun. I love talking wool. I love talking all things fiber. And Melissa, well, she likes talking! (I may catch some sh*t for that last comment).

The whole day instilled me with new enthusiasm for my fiber-life. I paid more attention to the sheep breeds and their temperament. I found myself more open to every aspect of the day. And yes, I did have lots of business cards with me! This picture above is one of my favorites of the whole day.
There's Melissa (top left) just dreamy with thoughts of sheep.
This is my buddy from Twitter, Velma who was there showing her ColorBomb Creations.
And here is the bunny lady, Debby who I am always so happy to see. We found each other in the Toots Le Blanc fiber booth.

Then came the judging.
Each farm presenting their sheep breed would show in groups of three. Here are two being wrangled. They show the livestock with their butts facing the interior of the ring, to be judged first. Interesting.
This wee gal had the third in that group and you can see she had quite the steady grip on this sheepy.
How can you not be fascinated with the different horn shapes?
The amazing monotone but gorgeous texture combination is really highlighted with this ram.

But you look at this one and wanna say, "Hey! You've got a great haircut but let me get that straw out of your 'do! Ah! The conditions there are just not up to a fashion icon like yourself!"

So, as you can see, I've taken no pictures of the fiber this year. Yeah, it's all just gorgeous. Does this mean I'm about to buy some goats or sheep in the near future? I think not, but the focus in my spinning it changing a little.