Rhinebeck!

I had a wonderful time at Rhinebeck. For a change, I actually bought quite a bit of stuff. In the past I have bought a few high ticket items but this time it was a lot of lower-priced things. It definitely made the experience different. I had made a note of a few vendors that I wanted to visit but there were a couple of impulse buys.

As usual, I bought soap from Clove Valley Soapworks. They are local and I can buy their soap at a local farm but since I was at Rhinebeck, I decided to stock up. I only use their goat's milk soap now. It keeps my skin from getting too dry and the fragrances are mild but wonderfully pleasant.

I also had plans to buy buttons for my cabled cushion/pillow. I couldn't find matching large buttons but I found these two coordinating Fimo buttons and decided to go with an asymmetric look. I am pretty pleased with the result. I had envisioned large natural wood buttons but these fit the bill. The rest of my purchases (except for one I have not photographed) were all fiber. I did buy another orifice threader from Hansencrafts to use with the Tina. I prefer these to an orifice hook. But that is also something I'll have to photograph later. On to the fiber!

Each of the following is 4 oz. The first is some CVM (California Variegated Mutant)/silk dyed with lac and indigo by Handspun by Stefania. It isn't very clear in the photo but there are subtle mauve tones in it.
Next is a braid from Miss Babs. It is called Scarlet Ibis and is BFL.
In contrast to the brightly colored one above, I bought two more muted braids from Into the Whirled. I don't remember the details but you may be able to read the labels. The left one is Targhee.
Back to the brights, I bought two braids from Gale's Art. She had dyed the blue BFL I just finished spinning and I loved it. The bottom one is called Moldy Pumpkin! So very seasonal. It is a mix of dark and light BFL. I think the other one is called Scarab. Another customer in the booth recommended it as a good color.
I am dreaming of a handspun Log Cabin blanket so I bought a couple of gradient dyed rovings from Fiber Optic. I had bought a couple on sale from Corgi Hill Farm, one of which I am currently spinning. That is rather dull so I wanted a couple of bright ones to enliven the blanket. I think these fit the bill.
And last but not least, some green merino from Spinners Hill. I fell in love with the color. It is a mix of brights and darks.
I had to force fit all this into my fiber shelf. But fiber squishes, doesn't it? I guess I'm all set for the winter. I have bright colors to complement the dark outside.

I also took 2 classes. I took 'spinning the yarn you want' with Amy Tyler and 'getting more productive with your spindle' with Abby Franquemont. I loved both classes and learned a lot. Amy is very organized and taught us to mimic a yarn that was already spun. This was very complementary with the spinning retreat I went to following Rhinebeck. More on that next week. All in all, it was a wonderful fiber-filled, delectable and eye-opening week. There is so much I want to try and work on this winter.

New beginnings and endings

I have been working on a cabled cushion cover for a class. It is a very simple pattern with 2x2 and 4x4 cables which give me the opportunity to explain a couple of different ways of cabling without a cable needle as well as teaching the use of one.

The yarn is leftover Cascade Ecological Wool from my CATS poster.

I'll post a picture of the other side later. It is a little different but not completed.

This is the Timantti that I started while I was traveling along with its contrast color. Pretty, isn't it?

I also started spinning this lovely blue BFL (to match my toenails?). I am spinning it from the fold. It is from Gale's Art and I bought it at the Sheep and Wool Festival last year. I love the color. It is a very grey day today and I think these colors are calling to me. That is why I am posting about them today!

Confessions of a book addict

I thought I would show you some of the things that have been occupying my time lately. I grew the tomatoes and peppers above in pots on my patio and porch. The tomatoes are called Sungold cherries and they are the most amazing, sweet tomatoes. Eating them is like eating candy!
This gorgeous bowl of red cherry tomatoes came from the Community Supported Agriculture farm. Also, the lovely heirloom varieties below. They come in all colors of the rainbow. I didn't get any of the purple ones this year but there are green, yellow, orange and red tomatoes and each has its own unique flavor.
I am really enjoying the vine ripened tomatoes, peppers and greens. I love greens. I could spend my life eating just greens. The only thing I don't like is cleaning and cooking them. But one can't have everything that one wants.

Today I am going to do a comparison of the original and the new editions of Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting. I can't resist buying books. I bought the new edition published by Dover even though I had the original book. But it provides a good opportunity to see what has been updated in the years since the original version was published.

The books are approximately the same size. The new one is softcover whereas the original publication was hard bound. The new one is slightly smaller than the original.
Some of the photos are the same but many garments have been re-knitted and feature new photographs. Here is Irish Moss in the new edition (left) and in the original (right). The colors of the new garments are generally more vibrant and feature Alice Starmore's Hebridean 3-ply yarn. Some call for Bainin (which I believe is being reissued) and Scottish Fleet. You can see the newer versions of the patterns at Virtual Yarns. The new edition also includes an additional pattern as well as information about Alice Starmore's yarns.

I really like the new pattern. It isn't boxy and is very feminine. It is called Eala Bhan and Alice Starmore says that she originally knit it for herself. She includes the pattern to show that Aran patterns can be fitted precisely to the body. As you can see, this is one curvaceous garment!The instructions are a combination of written instructions and charts and cover 11 pages. This is because of the precise shaping instructions that are included and I think the end result is worth it. Of the many patterns in the book, this one immediately caught my attention. Now, maybe that is because the others are very familiar, but it might also be because the body skimming Eala Bhan will suit many real women. It doesn't hurt that it is knit in a color that I love. The yarn used is the 3-ply Hebridean yarn.Next, I will do a compare and contrast of Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting and also one of the commemorative edition of Knitter's Almanac. The latter was brought out by Dover to celebrate Elizabeth Zimmermann's 100th birthday in August.

Theme of the week

I think I will organize things with a theme of the week based on what is on my mind. This coming week's theme is designing and finishing a lace stole. I just completed a stole for a class. Let's start at the very beginning: I was asked to teach a lace class at my LYS this fall. Great! I love lace. Then the owner came over with the yarn (#34 of 48 - look in the lower right for the numbers) and I fell in love with it. It is a gorgeous color - the color of my favorite beverage - coffee! I look at the label and it is coffee-dyed! But something about the yarn made me think cables, not lace. So I decide to combine them. The yarn is a merino/cashmere single. Absolutely luscious in look and feel.

The next step is to look for a pattern. I scoured my very large library of knitting stitch dictionaries. These represent possibilities. For some knitters, their stash represents possibilities. For me, it is the books and the ideas contained in them that represent possibilities. In this case, I wanted patterns that were relatively simple because it was for a beginning lace class. So patterns with repeated rows are good. Also patterns with some plain rows. And the patterns have to look cohesive together.

The next step was to think about construction. This is iterative with the process of finding the stitch patterns. My past experience with lace classes is that people don't finish their projects. I've done little lace sachets, scarves and a shawl. This stole class is going to be similar to the shawl class. Multiple sessions, walking students through each step of the process and then having them do the rest of the work at home. In the shawl class, this worked very well BUT, the edging tripped everyone up. Who wants to knit endless repeats of edging when the teacher isn't there with the whip cracking? So no edging. Which implies the stole needs to be self-edged. I had been pondering an up-and-down center with sideways knitted sides for a while and so that is what I decided to do. I didn't like the idea of cables going horizontally so the cables had to be in the center section.

What does this mean vis a vis the stitch patterns. Well, the side stitch pattern's stitch repeat count must divide evenly into the center stitch pattern's row repeat count. You'll see later that I blew this but for now, I had the math I needed. Back to the books with this decision in mind.

I found what I was looking for and I started swatching. The patterns are in two different books - both Japanese stitch dictionaries. This is the way I swatch. I knit with different needles (usually 3 sizes) so I can compare fabrics and decide which gauge to use. In this case, I used US 8, 9 and 10. The little tags indicate needle size for future reference. The first repeat of the cable/lace pattern at the bottom left is the size 8. The repeat above that is the size 9. The top two repeats on the left and the sideways knit pattern are on size 10s. You can see that the swatch is misshapen because of this.

The swatch was washed and blocked (w/o the tags of course!). Next comes a big decision. How wide do I make the center section. There are 3 possibilities: center and sides equal in size, center larger than sides and center narrower than sides. I was leaning towards the latter because the first was too symmetric and offended my sense of asymmetry. But luckily I was at Meg Swansen's Knitting Camp so it was easy. I walked around and polled people. Bridget Rorem, who designed Ingrid's Bridal Knot Shawl in A Gathering of Lace, had a really good rationale for her recommendation. Making a narrower center section would make the wearer's body look larger as the back would be divided by the sections. That made a lot of sense so I decided on a 3' center with 1.5' side panels giving me approximately a 6' shawl that would be approximately 22" wide. I measured the swatch and calculated the st count based on the size 10 needle fabric. I had to make sure that I had a half repeat at the end to mirror the beginning. Now I could cast on. I did and knitted a few inches. But I found the fabric too floppy. So I ripped carefully and started over with size 9 needles.

To be continued...