Textures

Photo by Micki Da Re
You might note that the title description for this blog is not only about tea knitting but about nature inspiring design.

Before I moved to the Pacific Northwest I was dreaming about the wonderful plant life I would find here. In the Northeast, the cold of winter limits the variety of plants you can grown. Don't get me wrong, the variety back there is still amazing, but give it warmer temps and lots of rain and...

The trees here are enormous. The plants, greener than green. The ground covered with blankets of foliage. So, a little break from the fiber action to post some recent forest and park pics from my outings. Enjoy.

Photo by Micki Da Re

Photo by Micki Da Re

Photo by Micki Da Re

Photo by Micki Da Re

Photo by Micki Da Re

Photo by Micki Da Re

Photo by Micki Da Re

Photo by Micki Da Re

A Designer I Be?

How many years has it been, gentle readers, since I declared that I would write my designs down? I guess it took an actual job as a designer to force me to do it.

Since I've been partnering with Laura at Krafti-Kit last Summer, I've been much more in the role of designer than I ever thought. We had originally planned to purchase exclusive designers for the entire first year, but way sooner than that we've come to offer our own designs. It doesn't mean that we don't still WANT to work with designers. It's just been more time-efficient at times to do our own thing.

I'm going to start off by saying that one of my biggest time savers has been Knit Visualizer. I cannot say enough great things about this charting software that I've had for quite sometime now. I can use it for needlepoint as well as knitting and who knows what else?

One of my favorite parts of designing has been working with dyers like PicoAccuardi on projects like these socks, knitted in Maple Way. I'm working on a lace project using one of their yarns right now and I'm just loving it. More than just sock yarn!
Then I collared FibroFibers for a wool/bamboo blend for this crochet project (modeled by the ever lovely Petra):
An entire sweater? Yeah, but baby sized:
There have been some smaller projects too:
Oh yeah, knitting with beads too:
And then there's the needlepoint:
At this point, you might think, Wow! That's a lot of designs. Truth is though, that I have a basket of ones that are still in the works that haven't made it to market yet.

I've also been thinking about pattern writing "guildlines" that would be "approved" by some authoritative source. I think it's great that we have the freedom to do things as we like, but sometimes I do like the idea of agreed upon pattern guidelines. What do you all think?

Back to the drawing board, literally!

Really?

Is it truly about to be Spring? Has it really been over a month since I posted?

Well, the Knitting Olympics have been here and gone, but not without some serious, down to the wire knitting. I started the team, Spinning Knitters on Ravelry. It was more fun to be a team captain because I had the opportunity to interact and inspire all my fellow spinning knitters.

The challenge was to use at least 4 ounces of already spun yarn and knit something challenging in the 17 days of the Olympics. It may seem a bit "beside the point" to use already spun yarn, but for those of us with growing stashes of said yarn, it seemed appropriate. I started out with 7 ounces but when my scarf grew to 72", I stopped knitting. Smart girl. Tired girl.

The yarn I carded and spun was my current favorite in my stash. It was a blend of Polwarth and Angora that I carded and spun to about a sport weight. I used the pattern Alhambra of Anne Hanson of Knitspot. After a false start cast-on during the opening ceremonies, in which I gently frogged my attempt, I started with new needles and knit away. It's all in the tools, people.

I was waiting for the perfect picture of me wearing this lovely for my post, but alas, that's not happened yet. So, here are the progress and finished scarf pics for you all.
This is pre-blocking and I know that a lot of folks said it looked so cool here, but...
Block it, I did. I wanted to see the pattern definition and show off the AMOUNT of knitting I did!

Fae Days

All photos courtesy of Micki Da Re

I'm not quite sure now of the exact turn of events, but Robert and I had been talking more and more about Fiber Arts, in general because...well, that's what I like to talk about. After some prodding he attended Black Sheep last year and saw a distinct "lifestyle" link between the faerie community and the fiber folk community. We both thought it would be cool to find a way to make that happen through demos first at the Winter Celebration. Indoors, smaller, sooner and the enormous Summer shindig.

At the same time I was building Krafti-Kit with Laura, and although we had no intention of doing shows per our business plan, this seemed like the perfect way for us to get our feet wet in the show world. It would be good to actually see our potential customers because of our ecommerce experience limiting us in that way.

So it came to be, through Robert's generosity, that we got to do all of this and have a big taste of the Fae community to boot. Here, I'll speak more to my experience demoing and then I'll try and get Laura to chime in on the Krafti-Kit blog with her experience.

I love to teach. I forget how much I love to teach. When one does two days of spinning demos, it's like a tease for folks who might have a passing interest to come see what you're doing. In this case, it had quite an amusing turn. I normally have a lot of kids who drag their parents to see what I'm doing. In this environment, where the children often roamed freely, the little girls were all in their faerie costumes, whooping it up. That left the boys to...find other things to occupy themselves:

A fast turning wheel and some fiber magic.

Suddenly I had a 7-12 year old boy fan club. Such sincere curiosity! It was truly great to see the amazement when one boy asked to just hold a ball of yarn because he had never done so and it was "so cool". Yeah, I kinda think so too. Just a little.

And then there was the experience of wearing flowers in my hair for two days. Quite another thing. I think my big glasses rather took away from the entire look, but hey, sometimes reality just has to play into things, even in Faerie Land.

Drafting fiber with my young guy, Gareth at the wheel

Tracy Irwin Helping me out with a spindle demo

I Sing as I Knit

Singular in my focus? Making a change on that.

Sure, I'm interested in lots of things but when I was a student, years and years ago, I studied voice and piano. You'd think that "once a singer, always a singer". When folks know about my past, they often ask me, "Well, aren't you still singing?" It seems odd to them that I haven't been. I've played piano depending on availability and I have a box of sheet music in the closet, but I've not even been much of a shower singer. Things change though, and for the better.

An article just came out in Neighborhood Notes, an online local news source that I'm quite fond of, about the Flash Choir. They were taking pictures last Monday night at our rehearsal. I've been going for a couple of month now but this is the first time it seems that we're getting some notoriety. We're practicing like fiends this week in preparation for a concert that's been scheduled for a while. Then, on our night for a dress rehearsal, this other opportunity came up for us for sing at a benefit for Haiti.

I've been obsessively watching the coverage of the Haitian disaster on CNN every day while I'm doing my work, my knitting, my whatever. It's been a couple of weeks of planning more than moving great things forward. Mercury Retrograde. Now life has an engine again, so to speak. The Christmas tree came down today. I took care of the neglected plants. Turned on the music to drown out the sad news...

The sun was up in the sky today and it actually kinda looked like this. I understand more clearly now why the Nordic folks wear such brightly colored knits. I'm catching on...

So, this is a sample for Krafti-Kit as we didn't have our own. It's called the Seven of Hearts Tam and I've photographed the blocking on a plate process that gives it a distinct "tam" shape. For those of you not keen on blocking, this hat, like many others would just be a "bubble" hat without this process. And, it actually stays this way. Pretty cool. And, for a change, my colorwork tension was just right! My sample is quite a bit more pink than the first sample but I really like it. For more of the reddish-orange, I could have cut the yarn and used more of the end bit.
I'm ever thankful that I do have multiple skills and interests. I hope that by my readers are sometimes influenced to reach outside their comfort zone to try new things that may end up as new loves.
Make, Heal, Love.

Five Eighty Four

That's the blog post number this is. Wow. New Year, new stuff made. Even with a busy business life, I've been knitting and spinning like a maniac. Truly.

This is going to be a photo content heavy post; the work speaks for itself.

I have started and am halfway up the back of the Forever Sweater. It's a little hard to get each little red crown perfect, but I've actually gotten that part memorized. I've actually finished something I started last year with mixed results. It's the February Lady Sweater (above), or to you knitters, the "FLS" I made it a bit cropped when I felt the weight of the yarn and that's fine but I wish I had lengthened the sleeves a little. You can see in the neckline that I used some ribbon to stabilize and as always, so glad I did!

Finally got to use these handmade porcelain buttons I've been saving.

There were the 2 hats from Vogue Fall 2009. This one below was knit in wool/bamboo sock yarn for the lovely, Dr. Kate.

This is mine, knit in some alpaca that's been sitting in my stash forever. This is the hat I pull on when I'm waiting for a bus and the wind is cold. The second I put it on, all is well in the world! (Oh, and that's a reversible cable scarf I knit a couple of years ago, also in alpaca).

Hmmmm. Then there's the two pairs of mittens. This first pair I started years ago and "shamed" myself into finishing. They came out rather narrow because I was insisting using a yarn that was too lightweight, but I have narrow hands, so that works out.
And then there were these mittens I knit in 3 insane days for Petra. They're really long and gladly, she likes them that way. I do want to knit them again. Knitting plaid is fun.
And then most recently, I threw gauge caution to the wind AGAIN and used a slightly too heavy yarn for these End Paper Mitts and so they came out really long in the hand. That's working out for me as well. I still have my fingertips available for my phone and yet they nearly cover my hand.

There's the spinning, as I try and get the hand of spinning more Worsted weight. There's also some more of other stuff I've spun MORE of to be able to make my projects of choice.

So, yeah. Folks ask how I get so much done and all I can say is that I work at home. Knitting and spinning are my breaks of choice. Oh, but that reminds me: Weaving.

Yeah, another post for that one.