Madrona 2011

I didn't post last week because I was at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma, Washington. I love going there, not only because it is more specialized than some of the other fiber retreats, but also because many of my friends gather there. We all stay in the same hotel so it is easy to interact and hang out. The classes are also different from the ones offered at the NY Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck , New York.

I made excellent progress on my Rose Lace Collar. The yoke is done and I am now on the plain stockinette part.

I love the colors in this yoke. So muted, and yet so interesting.

My first class was from Janine Bajus on designing fair-isle yoke sweaters. I love Janine's approach to color in fair-isle. She is a wonderful teacher. I made a little American Girl doll sweater. I am not happy with the colors. I will post a picture one of these days. I have put away most of the stuff that came back from Madrona so it isn't readily available to photograph.

I also took Susanna Hanson's Bohus class. Yes, I know I have made a lot of Bohus sweaters, but the class covers the history of Bohus Stickning, and Susanna brings the vintage sweaters that she collected. She is also a great teacher. Very organized and methodical. I have updated the blog page so my photos of the vintage sweaters are a slideshow. There are too many photos to post on the page directly. If you want to see the whole album, it is here.

Lastly, I took a knitted and beaded beads class from Betsy Hershberg. Here are the beads we made in class.

The left two are knitted coverings on wooden beads. The right hand one is a soft bead made entirely of yarn and beads. We have instructions for a few more that we didn't get to in class. I plan to make these on my own. This class has given me lots of ideas that I want to play with. I wish I had more time in the day!

I bought this Betsy Hershberg kit before I took the class. It makes this lariat necklace from Knitters magazine. I bought it because it was the last kit with the gray yarn I wanted. The others were much brighter and I felt the colors would limit the opportunities to wear it. I think this could be a weekend project one of these days.

I bought a few more odds and ends but my biggest purchase was this lovely Hansen mini-spinner in purpleheart and maple. I have been spinning a little every day on it. I love it because I can really focus on my drafting skills without worrying about treadling and speed.

I also love the orifice threader I got with it. It is made of mono-filament and it much easier to use than a hook. I am busy spinning up odds and ends of roving that I've collected for practice.

This little ear-light is something that I'm looking forward to using when I'm in the car or in the plane, and the light isn't great. There is also a useful folding Ott light on my shopping list.

That is all for now... Back to spinning and knitting

On the subject of i-cord

There it is! All finished except for some neatening that this perfectionist must do. I don't like the way the i-cord handles look like on the inside. They are all puffy and pulled in where the sts are. So I will get some wide grosgrain ribbon and sew it on over the handles on the inside to neaten it up. My grandmother taught me that the inside of the work should be as neat as the outside and I still tend to abide by that teaching.

The garter st bottom pieces felted much better than other garter st that I've felted. You can't see the sts at all in this bag. But the i-cord handles did not felt as much. You can see sts there.

As for the i-cord, I think I like it much better when I'm done. It is not fun to knit for me. I like the way it looks on the bag but I really dislike knitting it. However, I don't think I'm a big fan of the braided i-cord handles. I love the way the garter st handles on my first bag feel. They are cushion-y and comfortable. At first glance, these don't feel as comfortable but time will tell. They aren't uncomfortable.

With no planning at all, this bag is going to be the correct size for toting lunch to work. If I decide to use that, I'll have to make a removable liner or tie up my lunch in a furoshiki, which would also serve as a napkin. Otherwise, leaky bits will end up staining the bag.

On a completely different note, I am trying Marmite. I've always been intrigued by it and have wanted to try it. A discussion on Ravelry as to whether Marmite was preferred over Vegemite pushed me over the top and I bought some yesterday. I've eaten it twice. I spread a thin layer on WASA Light Rye Crispbread, topped it with a wedge of Laughing Cow Light Garlic and Herb cheese and another slice of the crispbread spread with a thin layer of Marmite. So far, I like it. It adds some saltiness and complexity to the mixture and seems to keep the cheese from soaking into the crispbread, which is a positive thing when you are bringing the sandwich to work.

And miles to knit before I sleep

Robert Frost's immortal words were echoing in my head this week as I knitted i-cord - miles and miles of i-cord. First I had to do the i-cord bind off on the top of the bag. Then I had to knit the attached i-cord on the bottom of the bag. Then I had to knit 3 separate strands of i-cord to make the braided handles. OK, it really wasn't miles but it felt like it, especially because I only have circulars in the US 10.75 (7 mm) needles I was using. So I had to transfer the sts from the right to the left needle after each row instead of sliding which is much faster. But I finished it last night.
After the i-cord, I decided to knit a second bottom. If you remember, I wanted to use a Bag-E-Bottom to reinforce the base. I was thinking about this and I thought that just dropping it in the bottom was not going to work. It would slide around and fall out. So I knit a second bottom and crocheted it on three sides (2 short and 1 long) to the bottom of the bag on the inside. After the felting, I inserted the Bag-E-Bottom into the pocket formed by the two bottoms and let it dry. The bag was slightly smaller than the Bag-E-Bottom, but it will be fine after it dries. Here's a photo of the bag and the unattached handles drying. I felted them last night. The ends of the braid came undone as I had only knotted the tails together thinking they'd felt themselves together. But apparently they came undone before the felting so the braids had unraveled. But the i-cord felted so I just re-braided it and held them closed with clothespins to dry. When I sew them on the bag, they'll stay together.

I hate trying to find something to shape the bag around. I used cereal boxes and a zipper plastic bag box covered in plastic. But I could have used something slightly bigger. You can see how the bag curves in at the sides. It should work itself out but if I had a box or two that would make the felt stretch slightly, it would have been better. No flash used for these photos. It is taken in natural light so I guess it is pretty close to the correct colors but it looks lighter than the real life bag.

Interestingly, I made my first felted bag as an up-scale lunch tote and spent a lot of time working out the sizing - only to fail miserably. It was too big. I use it as a knitting tote. That is the one I photographed with the yarn originally. This one - which was designed to fit the Bag-E-Bottom - is going to be almost perfect for the lunch tote. With the reinforced bottom, it should work well. But all that after the class is over.

Faith

There are some things in knitting that take faith. I taught a sock class this weekend and grafting is one of them. I had to keep repeating to my students to take the instructions one at a time, not to worry about how sloppy it looks and have faith that it would work out. We had the same conversation about turning heels. That takes faith too. The instructions don't make sense, the thing looks like a mess when you are in the middle of it and it feels as if there must be a mistake somewhere. But when you are done, voila! there is a heel!

I think felting and i-cord take faith too. I-cord always looks like a mess for the first few rows. I am attaching i-cord to my felted bag this week. I did an i-cord bind-off on the top and am now working attached i-cord around the bottom - like a cording. Once that is done, it is time for the handles. I looked for handles at the LYS but I couldn't find any that looked just right. The dyed leather ones were nice but the color was just off and so I didn't like the effect. I am planning on taking Nancy's advice and making braided i-cord handles. I hope I have the patience to finish it. I don't like knitting i-cord all that much although I like the effect of the i-cord once it is done. The colors on this are wacky because of the flash. It is much darker but the flash shows the pattern more effectively. This looks like candy while the original is very ethnic and much more intense and darker in color.I also finished the Tapestry vest on Sunday. I worked on the front on Saturday in the car on the way to the Met and over to Penn Station in Newark and back home. Fronts of vests go so much faster than the backs! Anyway, I finished the shoulder shaping and joined the shoulders using a 3-needle BO on Sunday. Now I have to work the armhole and neck bands but the bag comes first.As an aside, did you know there was a Penn Station in Newark? We were prepared to pick up my daughter at the Penn Station in New York but she called and said she had dis-embarked from the train at Newark because she thought it was Penn Station. Fortunately, the two are only about 10 miles apart and the Lincoln Tunnel and the New Jersey Turnpike were not backed up. So we drove over and picked her up.

The Gates of Paradise were spectacular. It was so nice to get up close and personal with them and see all the details. I didn't realize that they had 3 different levels of perspective/distance in each one. There is a foreground where the figures are almost 3 dimensional; a middle distance where they are carved in some relief; and a distant perspective where they are almost 2 dimensional. Yet, there is texture and detail even in the distant perspective. You can see that in the Genesis one. God is giving life to Adam in the foreground. See how 3 dimensional God is in the lower left corner. Eve is being created from Adam in the middle distance in the center of the panel and the Temptation of Adam and Eve is in the distance just above the creation of Adam. Their departure from Eden is also in the foreground on the lower right. You can't see it in this photo but the snake coiled around the tree has wonderful texture on its skin.

We also saw the Age of Rembrandt at the Met and one on European clocks and watches. They were really really nice although the Rembrandt exhibit was crowded. I want to take this opportunity to tell you that the Metropolitan Museum of Art isn't just about paintings. There are Egyptian mummies, a Japanese tea garden, a Tuscan courtyard, a Frank Lloyd Wright room and lots of carvings and furniture and musical instruments, jewelry and armor in it. There is even a Costume Institute that has fashion. In fact, to relate it to blogging, the current exhibit at the Costume Institute is blog.mode where one is encouraged to blog one's reactions to the fashion on display. All in all, the Met is one of my favorite places in the world to visit. I am lucky that I can go there often and I go there at least once a year. The only places that are similar that I'd love to live near are the British Museum and the Louvre.

Happy 2008 to all!

A very happy New Year to all of you! Here's to a wonderful 2008 filled with peace and a resolution to the many conflicts plaguing the world.

Once again, thank you for all the comments you left on the last few posts. I have one of them that I want to address.
Rima says:
"I wonder how long it will take knitters using the current trendy crop of expensive merino yarns to find out how badly those yarns can pill when knit too loosely. What a waste.

I used to have faith that the yarns companies knew their products, but over the past couple of years have come to agree with you."

Rima, I hope you are right in that the yarn companies are doing this out of ignorance. I think it is being done deliberately so that knitters are tempted into thinking that the project will be completed quicker and therefore they buy the yarn to begin the project. I also think knitters buy into the delusion because they want to complete things more quickly. Sadly, they don't realize that the few days/weeks of time they save knitting will be lost in the years of wear they won't have. Maybe it is a result of the societal values we have: to acquire quickly and to discard quickly. We buy on impulse and toss indiscriminately when we are tired of things without regard to the resources, effort and time it takes to create and eventually to dispose of each item.
I took this photo last week of my next project but it is almost done already. Talk about instant gratification. I made the bag on the right last summer out of Lopi and Lopi look-alikes. But as you can see, the bottom of the bag is sadly defective. It is concave as I made mistakes on the mitering calculations. But it received a lot of interest at the LYS and made me realize that a felted bag is a great way to learn fair-isle. It is quick to knit (especially in Lopi), you don't have to weave in ends and mistakes vanish in the felting. So I proposed a FI felted bag class and needed to create a sample. I picked two patterns out of Sheila McGregor's Fair Isle book (after looking through Ann Feitelson, Alice Starmore and Sarah Don) and the bag is almost done after a day and a half of knitting. I just have to find the right handles for it (or decide what I want to knit as a handle) and then do the appropriate finishing. I did it right this time. I bought my bag bottom reinforcement and then made the bag to match and I plan on doing the same with the handles. The yarns on the left are the colors in the bag. The main color is the olive (top right-hand 4 balls) and the others are the contrast. I did the patterning in the olive as I wanted a brighter bag and changed the background colors from the green (bottom) to the blue, then the magenta and used the gold as the center accent of the motif before reversing the colors. It looks nice and bright but I'm not sure the FI pattern stands out the way it does in the first bag. Time will tell once it is felted.

I know Alice Starmore's Book of Fair-Isle Knitting is out-of-print and hard to find but it has one lovely section in it missing from the others I looked at. It shows one how to adjust the width of a motif to suit one's needs. I have often done this (along with adjusting the height) but it is nice to see it described. McGregor's book is one of the best and most accessible references for traditional motifs to design one's own. Many of the same designs are in Starmore's book and organized the same way. Feitelson has the best discussion on the use of color. But both McGregor and Don have traditional FI garments pictured and I fell in love with some of the paneled ganseys in McGregor's book.