Knitting Camp!

I have missed going to Meg Swansen's Retreat 2.75 for the past 2 years. The Campers are like family and going back was exactly like going to a family reunion.

I got there a day early and so Linda and I went to Jurustic Park on the Thursday morning. That deserves its own blog entry so I won't talk about it yet. The retreat starts with dinner on Thursday evening and ends with breakfast on Monday.

I completely forgot to take pictures till the last day but I more than made up for it. I won't bother you with all the photos but here's a sampling.

 I caught Meg taking a picture of me!

 That's Jane the devilish dragon who was a hit at the contest - theme was 'If I had wings"

 People looking at the immense array of donated goods during the raffle. Our retreat holds a raffle with items donated by the attendees to raise money for scholarships for the following year's Camps. This way people who can't afford to go can attend.

 Amy Detjen - our fearless leader in all things technical looking cute.

 The Schoolhouse Press room with all the goodies for us to look through and play with. We don't really play. Just drool. No, we don't drool either. Just walk around with glassy eyes. I can't believe the room is empty!

 In the evenings, we mill about and chat and knit and spin and visit. We also get to look at the marvelous samples that are placed on tables around the room.

Another view of the evening sessions. There is also a small market on Saturday but since I didn't pull my camera out till Sunday, no photos of it.

I didn't buy much this year. I have too much stuff. I got a small book of Turkish colorwork patterns, some alpaca roving, a scarf, yarn for a pair of socks for DH and some cards. I also won some yarn for my contest entry and a couple of needle cases in the raffle.

It was a lot of fun meeting everyone. These are my people, my tribe!

Another FO!

I took some artistic pictures of the lace plaid stole to show the size and the texture. I am quite pleased with this project.

And a detail of the texture and the lace

In addition to blocking the stole, I have also been working on the ruffle of the purple triangle shawl. It was slow going as the sts were very crowded on the needle. I switched to a 60" Hiyahiya interchangeable but I found the tips kept getting loose as I pushed the sts around. Also the tips were rather short for this heavy shawl. The cable would hang at almost a 90 degree angle due to the weight. Not fun.

Finally, I just divided the sts onto two circs. One was a 29" which had about 1/3 of the sts and the other was a 40" that had the rest. It was still slow but manageable. I was having fewer problems with sts coming off the tip as I tried to slide them around to make room.

Anyway, I finally finished binding it off last night. It isn't blocked but it is done. My hands are very grateful. Ruffles are not my thing and now I know why.

It is Polyhymnia's Triangle by Rosemary Hill. I combined two variegated yarns that I had. The center triangle and ruffle are from Joslyn's Fiber Farm. The color is eggplant. I had bought this years ago at Camp. I don't think there is a sock yarn in the portfolio any more. But this is a nice mohair/wool sock yarn. The other yarn - the more multi-colored variegated yarn - is Skinny Bugga! from the original Sanguine Gryphon in Burying Beetle. Sharon (of TVknittingpodcast) gave it to me as a trade for a shawl I gave her. We bought beads that matched it and I put them into the eggplant yarn to blend the two yarns together.

I made good decisions on when to stop knitting this time. Usually I end up running out of yarn and ripping back. I watched the yarn usage carefully and managed to avoid that. I have just a few yards of each yarn left. So this shawl is as big as it could be. It will stretch with blocking but it is a nice size. I don't like small shawls. That is why Sharon ended up with a shawl.

And finally, here is a photo to brighten up the darker days of winter. Fiber Optic yarns partnered with the KnitGirlls to create a colorway of her lovely gradients. This one is called Rouge-Violet-Cerulean and I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. The way Kimber handles the gradients is that they go on pre-order for 2 weeks and you can order as many as you like. She dyes them to order and sends them out. So you can't buy any old gradient at any time but they go on a strict rotation and you can buy them when they come up in that rotation. And of course, some go on hiatus every so often. This keeps her sane and allows us to buy the ones we like in quantity. No mad rush to buy when they hit the store.

My order of 2 gradients arrived yesterday. Feast for the eyes! It is merino-silk

I have to admit to a love of rich saturated colors and Kimber does these really well. I have quite a stash of her gradients to spin in the next couple of years.

Eye candy

 I promised you pictures of the books I bought at Camp. I was very selective this year. I had already decided to buy one book before I went there. The other two, though, leaped into my hands. That is my story and I'm sticking to it.

The Haapsalu scarf book is a complement to the Haapsalu shawl book. In Estonia, a scarf is a square shawl. This book is devoted to the square shawl and it is just beautiful - both in content and eye-candy.

 It was photos of shawls like these that made me buy the book! How could I resist such beauty?

 Another impulsive purchase was this Anna Zilboorg book. It has been out of print for a long time so when I discovered it had been re-printed, I had to buy it. It has very unique sock designs in it.

There are cables,

 whimsical designs,

 colorwork,

 and more texture. What's not to love?

 This is the book I went there with the intention of buying. This book contains all the technical information from Sweaters From Camp, which is now out of print. If you want to do stranded colorwork, this is the must-have book for you.

Last, but not least, here is my lovely scarlet skein. It is all plied and finished. I am quite proud of it. It is a 3 ply that is sock weight. I plan to combine it with some sock yarn and make a pair of socks. There isn't quite enough here for a pair.

Pink!

 Or, I should say Scarlet! but it looks pink to me.

This is called Scarlet Ibis and it is a BFL from Miss Babs that I got at Rhinebeck last year. I love spinning it. I have finished spinning the singles and will be plying a 3-ply sock yarn tomorrow evening. It is a good color fix after hours of staring at computers.

The rest of this post is about recent acquisitions. What do you think about the two yarns below? One is the Briar Rose Polwarth I spun and the other is a merino/tencel yarn dyed by Briar Rose. The colors are amazingly similar. I am planning to combine them into a shawl - with the similar colors but different hands. The merino/tencel will be more drapey.

 On that note of similar colors, this is what I bought from Briar Rose at Camp. Two sets of BFL rovings that I think I will spin separately and ply together. I think the combo will give me a lot of depth but it could also be mud when plied together. Sampling is my friend!

 This is a silk/Coopworth mix from Hidden Valley Woolen Mills. I love the colors. I can't wait to see how it spins up.

 I bought some books at Camp but those will be in a different post. I received two books in the mail in the past couple of weeks and I am excited about them. The first is a book I won (yes, I won) in a random drawing from Serious Eats. When they review books, they usually get multiple copies to give away. I enter every time I find a book I like. And I won this! How cool is that?

 The other book is from Paperback Swap. I signed up a while ago and listed (and sent away) some books that I didn't want any more. I also put up a list of books that I wanted. I have received one or two that I wanted right away. For a while I would check to see where I was on the list for the books I wanted. All of them were highly requested so there is a list of folks waiting for them. Then I got tired of checking and forgot all about it.

So imagine my surprise when I got a notice that this book was being shipped to me. I had signed up for auto-request for books I really wanted. This eliminates the step of agreeing that you still want the book when it becomes available.

It arrived really quickly and is in excellent shape. The way Paperback Swap works is that you pay the postage when you mail people books and they pay when they send stuff to you. You get credits when you list a book and those credits apply to books that you request. You can also buy with money but so far I've acquired my books just with credits.

I've been mostly spinning as my elbow tendonitis has been acting up and knitting is not fun. I hope it heals soon.

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

I started with 2 skeins of natural Cascade 220. I knitted a rectangle of stockinette with garter borders. 

Then I used these tools...

 

Food dye pens.

Icing colors and stencil brushes

Paper cups, water and measuring spoons. Teeny tiny measuring spoons.

Did I mention paper cups?

I drew the outline of the girl and her rainbow hair with charcoal and then painted on each color using the stencil brush. She is floating in the sky...

After painting, the knitting was covered up in plastic wrap - top and bottom.

It was rolled up and steamed.

Then it cooled.

After drying, the details of the girl were added. I used buttons for her eyes, black and red and yellow yarn for her features. I was going to paint them in but the buttons made her look bug-eyed without some other texture. She has some braids and some loose hair.

I used a food writer pen to add a chin and some neck shading. Also, give a little shadow to her nose. French knots make up her nostrils and she has stem stitched eyes and eyebrows.

And there she is.. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

Remember the buttons I showed you a few weeks ago? They turned into her kaleidoscope eyes.

Swarovski crystals scattered over her hair and then sewn down represent the diamonds.

After looking at her for a few days, I felt she looked rather thin-lipped so I got out some Ultra Alpaca and gave her more voluptuous lips with satin stitch around the original lips.

 And there is she is in all her glory - floating in the sky...

for those who are wondering what this is all about - the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" features John Lennon singing about a hallucinatory state in a monotonic, slow, mesmerizing tone. The title is supposed to stand for LSD. Hence: Knitting Under the Influence.

Sadly, many of the younger members at Camp had no clue about the song and so only half the attendees laughed when I told my story about how my knitting flowed in multi-colors from my needles as I played the song on my iPhone.

I won this lovely kit. The shawl is pretty but

 the yarn is even prettier!

 I also get a nice zippered case. I think this laceweight will be a nice shawl.

I hope you enjoyed my Knitting Under the Influence! It was a fun adventure, a grand experiment. I had never used stencil brushes to paint on colors, much less use the food writer pens. I didn't set the dye after I used those so I don't know if they will last.

The entire project is recyclable except for the bits of yarn. The hair will come right out, the crystals and beads can be removed and once I snip out the embroidery out, I have a dyed blank which can be used to make a cowl or a hat or mittens.

Knitting Camp 2012

I was at Meg Swansen's Retreat 2.75 last weekend. What a feast for the eyes, the brain, and the spirit! It is like a giant family reunion because many of us have been coming for so long. Of course not everyone is there every year and there are always new people to welcome into the family but that is exactly the way family reunions work.

I took a lot of pictures this year, which is very unlike me. Usually I forget to take my camera out, and just sit there drinking it all in with my eyes. I am going to do this in stages. Today's stage is the Camp contest. We have a contest every year. We vote on the theme the year before.

This year's theme was Knitting Under the Influence, which can be intepreted in many different ways. Some of those will be visible here. I am not telling the entire story of each entry as that would be a) long and b) incorrect as my memory isn't that good. The post-it notes with the numbers indicate that entry's voting number. That is how we vote for each one. Mine is not here as that will be the subject of next week's blog post.

 This is a necklace made from yarn from many of the attendees as well as from Meg and Elizabeth Zimmerman. The person who made this was very clever in acquiring those pieces.

 One of our attendees has not interacted with her home town in decades. She found a group on Ravelry and did a KAL with them.

 Here was a knitter who thought she was creating a lovely sweater out of all her leftovers, only to realize that she was copying the color scheme in her rug!

 A token of a huge yarnbombing effort that took many moons to plan and execute

 A sweater representing influences in color, pattern and design

 A gorgeous Armenian knitted vest representing the influence Joyce Williams had on the knitter.

 A fair isle purse that also represents the influence of Joyce Williams.

 A cotton vest representing the influence of marketing on the knitter.

 The winner! A vest with an illusion-knitted Elvis who was influential to this knitter.

 This two-piece garment (a dress and a shrug) showcases what happens when a knitter gives in to influences that she's been fighting against for years.

 A beautiful pair of dolls representing the influence of hungry and destitute children in the world.

 Sheep have had a tremendous influence on this knitter, from childhood. The knitted items are from descendents of a family flock.

 An 'angel' shawl (the name has angel in it) that represents the angel on this knitter's shoulder during a scary health crisis.

 Fair-isle and garter st have influenced this knitter. I wonder who introduced those into her world? wink

 A very clever entry that came in second, I believe. It is a yarn fume enhancer since we knitters do so much under the influence of yarn fumes. You put your yarn in the container on the seat and the fumes come through the long hose and out through the yellow dispenser (also on the seat). The scarf on the back of the chair helps hold the dispenser so the fumes can be inhaled.

 This one is very cute but I don't remember the story. this is why this post is first in the series...

 Yarn from a knitting mentor who had an influence on this knitter

 This vest did not need a pattern written for it. It represents the freedom of not having to work out multiple sizes and write up all the details.

 A hoodie that represents the influence of the people who have inspired and supported this knitter. We all took turns knitting a little on it.

 This knitter appears to be under the influence of a pink elephant! Or maybe a woolly mammoth?

 another one whose story escapes me... but a gorgeous piece of knitting..

 This knitter was also influenced by Joyce Williams.

 A knitter who is influenced by her friends to make something unusual and rather lovely.

 A mushroom hat. What influence was the knitter under? hmmm...

A gorgeous shawl representing the Roses in this knitter's life. Many of the people she loves can be represented by roses. I think there is more to this than I am remembering...

I hope you enjoyed our little contest. It made us laugh, it made us cry and it made us grateful for all the influences in our lives, be they people, places or things.