A Hat of a Different Color

     This is no ordinary hat: Aside from the actual shearing and processing of the wool, this hat was made from yarn spun with my own hot little hands and Matilda.
     At the weaving/spinning shop, the roving was in a basket intended as practice material for beginning spinners. I loved the colors, even tho' they looked a bit garish in their raw state and I shamelessly begged them to sell it to me. As I suspected, it spun up into a beautiful yarn, which in turn almost demanded that I knit something in Entrelac. I had only one ball of the yarn, barely 80 or so yards, so the project had to be small. The hat seemed small enough, so I began by knitting a rectangle in Entrelac and when it got big enough to fit around my head, I planned to knit the top closed with the classic shaping for hats--k2tog every 10th stitch, one row plain, k2tog every 9th st, etc. But--oops--when I got to the end of the rectangle, there was no yarn left to close the top of the hat and I had no more roving to make more yarn. My only hope was to try to dye enough yarn to match. I came close but, as they say, no cigar.
     I was using some already-dyed roving and adding Kool-aid color to intensify the original. In other words, I started with a pale blue roving and dunked it in a blue Kool-Aid bath, and a pale pink roving dunked in a (what I thought was) pink bath. Both colors were way off the mark. The blue was more navy with a small hint of green; the pink was red! But with judicious blending I was able to at least approximate my original colors with the exception of the deep, clear blue. As you can see in the picture, the top melds with the body, but won't bear close inspection. But then, I wouldn't expect anybody to rip the hat off my head just to examine whether or not the top matches the rest of the hat. On the other hand, this is near Portland, OR, whose new city motto is "Keep Portland Weird" so anything could happen, including an overly-inquisitive hat inspector.
     On a side note, this particular hat has at least one admirer, almost to the point of embarrassement--she keeps hinting that I should sell it to her. I had originally intended it as a chemo cap, but being wool, it can't be donated for that purpose. That's okay, I can always make other hats, and this one I am beginning to like more and more, and suspect it will become the hat of choice for winter weather.

Happy handcrafting!

"…spinning wheel got to go ‘round…"

Like my kids used to say “it just gots to.” She sits in the corner, luring me from things I have to do, should do, want to do and she won’t listen to any excuses: “Get over here now and start spinning!” It does no good to tell Matilda the Wheel (as in Waltzing Matilda” because when she is on a tear, she dances all over the floor) that I have many other pressing things to do, like finish a wedding shawl and a crazy quilt by September, continue knitting a comfort shawl for an ailing friend, clean house, take a nap, eat. She is very adamant about her position in the hierarchy of “hobbies” and somehow ended up thinking she is #1 (spinning), followed by #2 (plying) and by #3, unspinning and unplying. The rest of the hierarchy she couldn’t care less about as long as I pay dutiful attention and spend enough time spinning, et. al. I can do all the other necessary things in odd moments when not using the wheel.

And you know what? I agree with her! As much as I dearly love knitting I never thought I would find another craft I would love as much; spinning is it. And strangely enough, even though Matilda is so demanding and never stops nagging me, I don’t feel enslaved to her. In fact, after lots of practice, I’m beginning to feel we have become friends rather than adversaries (Why do you keep breaking the yarn, Matilda???) even to the point of producing a yarn that I actually want to knit.

My first attempts at getting to know Matilda the Wheel were pathetic. I think I threw out as much ruined fiber as I actually managed to spin into a sort-of useable yarn—it ended up being crocheted into a floor runner. I am fortunate in that I found a shop that sells shopworn top and roving for $1 a pound so I had almost endless supplies of differing  fibers to play with and now with some practice behind me, I can say that my early failures were not due to using “inferior” fiber, but rather to my own hasty nature and a lack of understanding of what I was working with. They say that spinning is like yoga, very relaxing. I may be getting there, but at first, I sat at the wheel drafting out too thick, then too thin bits of fiber, watching them either blob up or be so thin that they broke from the stress of being spun, and gritting my teeth throughout, literally. I clench my jaw when I’m under stress, and I had a pretty sore mouth for quite a while. Did Matilda the Wheel care? Not a bit, she just sat there doing her thing and made no attempt to help me at all!

But now I think we understand each other…Matilda the Wheel still sits there unmindful of my struggles, but I am becoming used to her ways and know how to get around her. However, I may have to remain vigilant with her to make sure she doesn’t sneak a friend in when my back is turned.

Happy Fibering

Finally Got It Right, I Think

It's been about two months since getting my spinning wheel, and I've been practicing, practicing...you get the idea. I've finally created a yarn from which I actually think I can knit something. A small something, like maybe a hat, but it is way better than anything produced so far! The picture doesn't do it justice: it is light green, pale yellow and orange. Kool Aid colors. I played around with dying the combed top, rather than the spun yarn as I wanted to have a more gradual blend of colors into each other. BTW, when dying multiple colors, be aware that allowing complimentary colors to bleed together will produce some shade of brown or brownish grey. Separate the complimentaries with a color that will blend with either. In this the complimentaries were green and orange (I know, red is the opposite of green, but orange is close enough to red to produce the brown effect)and the separator was yellow. Allowing the yellow to bleed into either the green or orange did not produce any unwanted effects, just enhanced the contrast. I'm also spinning a blue shade that looks like denim spun up and I can envision making a denim-look Einsenhower jacket, if there is enough. And that is a problem with spinning, rather difficult to tell how much product one has until it is at least on the niddy noddy. With the blue, no matter how much I end up with, that is the amount I'll have to work with, since there is no more top available. It is promising to be a very lovely yarn. I've not forgotten either about my knitting. How could I? Right now I'm focusing on finishing some of the five projects I have active: A cotton summer shell is almost off the needles, only lacks finishing the I-cord on the bottom edge and it will be done...after two years! I'm pushing on finishing the wedding shawl since that must be done by September and I will still have to attach blue crystals to it after finishing and that involves fishline, blue Swarovski bicone crystals and--eeekkkk--a cigarette lighter or candle flame. Half-finished cotton socks may get done by winter (hah! They are taking so long because I'm doing both at the same time), a lovely varigated green shawl sits lone and forlorn in its bag, awaiting some sort of attention, and I try to regularly work on the prayer shawl/lap robe/cuddler I started for a friend with a dire diagnosis.

Taking a Left Turn

Just when you think life is going to settle down and there arises the specter of boring sameness, a new thing comes along to pique your interest and get you sidetracked from what you normally do. I fought it for years, determined I wouldn't give in to it, steadfastly turned my back and mind away from any thought of undertaking yet another hobby. Then my sister took me to visit the Eugene Textile Center (http://www.eugenetextilecenter.com/) and all my resolve dissolved. There was a type of spindle for sale I've been sort of (well a lot) interested in for a long time and I ended up buying it, along with enough combed top to get started with spinning. I had already made a spindle out of some weird round plastic thingy--no clue what it was in its former life--and it worked pretty darned well, but I expected better of the one I bought: a supported spindle that sits in its own brass bushing in a wooden holder. It didn't live up to expectations, so the shop was kind enough to take it back, and in lieu of a refund, I had the shop send me more combed top. The next time I visited my sis, we again went to the shop (I really need to stop doing this)and I ended up buying an Ashford standard wheel along with lots more top. You see how this gets out of control? That was in March and I've been working away on learning to use the wheel (I do wish it was as easy as using the drop spindle) and using up lots of cheap top and batts. You see, I also found there is a shop on Gresham, OR that sells end-of-run top and batts for a very reasonable price and I go there and load up on all kinds of practice fiber, including even some bamboo and mohair. The only thing I can't do right now is blend fibers and colors because my carding combs (dog combs in reality) are packed away deep in storage. But I have begun dying some of the white top with Kool Aid, super easy and fast, and the results can be anything from wonderful to gag-me-with-a-spoon. It's a learning curve. So, expect to see a lot about spinning here in the blog as well as knitting: no I haven't lost my love of knitting, still think it is a most wonderful craft and pity anybody who doesn't also think so-- :) -- but I have found as much passion for spinning as for knitting. I suppose it is the whole fiber experience thing going on.

I sincerely hope that this doesn't end up with me pasturing sheep in my son's backyard!

This just in...

Knitted for a friend in a wheelchair who is a redhead, so I figured that the greens would be a good match, with a bit of punch provided by the red. And,since I found the yarn just after Christmas, I got it at about half price.
The pattern is entrelac. Because of using alternate colors on every other square--entrelac usually follows one color across an entire row--I wasn't sure what to do with the opposing color. I first tried weaving the unused color along the side of the block I was working on but that was way too much confusion. The only solution I could come up with was to make the color change knots a part of the design by tying in the new color then unplying the yarn ends and fluffing them up, so there are little puffy "ties" at each corner of each block. I think it looks kind of cute.
I added some crochet ties on each long side so the robe can be tied to the chair and as an added benefit, the robe is in the proportion of a shawl, so in a pinch, my friend can drape it around her shoulders if needed.

Not Enough To Do...

Because I don't have enough to do with my hands, when I was recently in Springfield visiting my sis, we went to a weaving shop (wrong thing to do!!!) and I got caught by a "Spindolyn" spindle and was forced to buy it...there was this invisible thing commanding me to do so, I couldn't help myself.
And, of course, I needed to also buy some roving to spin on it, which I did, rather clumsily, and I'm not at all happy with the end results so I must needs go back and get more roving so I can continue to produce a pretty crappy looking yarn, which is where I am heading to day, to a fiber shop over in Gresham, to sample their wares, so I can keep spinning in the hope that somewhere along the line, something will click and I will begin producing a yarn that will actually look like something I would want to knit with.
Why am I doing this? No clue! I'm a fool for all things fiber. I drag things home from the Goodwill bins just because they are some sort of unique fiber something: fine cotton handkerchiefs, sari cloth, once even tempted to buy an entirely beaded evening dress but since it weighed at least five pounds, I didn't want to pay that price (1.59 lb) just to have something to look at, and I sure wasn't going to try to reclaim all those beads! Maybe some day I'll figure out where or how to hang what I have (I have visions of what the inside of a yurt must look like, to hide the walls, only doing it in the apartment I hope some day to inhabit).
I figure I'm up to about 130 pairs of socks now in my stash. The last two purchases were fully justified: one was a varigated rose/lavender I needed to buy to match a darning job in my sis's glove and of course, it made no sense to buy ony one sock worth of yarn, so I had to buy two skeins. The other was justified by being 30 percent off--how could one refuse?