Spinning and also - spinning

This has been another big week, but more on that in a moment. Let's start with some spinning-related eye candy!

This gorgeous stuff was once roving, purchased from Twisted Fiber Art back in the day - it's the Downtown colourway. I recall knitting socks for somebody with the yarn I bought, and thinking I'd use up the remains somehow with this chunky handspun. Obviously I haven't gotten around to it yet, because I just found it in my yarn cupboard this afternoon.

Spinning was one of those things I thought I would never, ever manage to do until suddenly a used wheel came available via the owner of my favourite (sadly long-since closed) yarn store. It wasn't easy for me to learn, and I had a lot of bunchy, clunky yarn coming off it for the longest time! but I understand that's normal. Eventually I got so I could nod off while spinning. Eventually too, I got so I could spin quite fine singles, and ply them together for sport weight or even lighter yarns. I heard that once you can do that, it can be very difficult to go back to spinning for chunky yarns, as with my Downtown roving. I found that to be true and when I had to take a break from spinning, I hoped my bulky skills would come back to me.

Boy, did I ever love spinning! My favourite thing was to take the wheel to the porch in summer and sit in a comfy chair, listening to an audiobook and enjoying the breeze. Neighbours would pass the house and sometimes come up the porch steps for a visit. Bliss.

I stopped spinning while we renovated our house - I was just too swamped with organizing it all. Then when we moved back to the house and I was out of the habit, I couldn't find a place to keep my spinning wheel. It used to live just inside a closet, but weirdly, we don't have closets any more... except in the front hall, where we keep our vacuum cleaner.

In the end I planted my wheel on the landing of the stairs, where I can see it going up and down. The landing is large enough for a small chair, and it's lit naturally by a big south-facing window, so I thought I might sometimes sit there with the wheel, perch my phone on the sill to play an audiobook, and while away a noontime sunpatch.

Didn't happen. And that was so many years ago now! I try to keep it dusted, but it needs a really good cleaning. I have some vacation time coming up this week - nothing fancy, just fewer deadlines than normal - and I'm thinking I will get the wheel all cleaned up nicely so it's ready when I am.

This roving was in the cabinet today too - must be an early effort because of all the size variance. It's Twisted Fiber Art again - handspun, with some sport weight. I saw some solid grey sportweight alongside it which is putting thoughts of a woven scarf in my head. The colourway is called Big Bad Wolf.

 

So, like I said, this was another big week for me. I cannot quite comprehend this even now, hence the 'also - spinning' of the title, but my novel SNOWED has been longlisted in a second literary competition! This time it's the Debut Dagger Award from The Crime Writers' Association in the UK. Apparently they had hundreds of submissions this year, which makes it such an honour to appear on a longlist of only ten.

I'm starting to think this project might have legs, you know? The shortlist announcement for the Debut Dagger Award is still a couple of weeks off but I'm already so nervous hoping it makes the cut.

In entirely unrelated news, it came to my attention the other day that Jellycat makes PURSES.

 

We already have Toast in regular Jellycat form - he's looking at me right now in fact, from the armchair across the room - but I can't help thinking having my own Toast purse to liven up a black outfit might be kind of fun. Like great, conversation-starting costume jewellery, the like of which I don't bother wearing any more. 

That's just another kind of spin, though. I know perfectly well I would look eccentric at best with a slice of smiling toast on my hip, its legs kicking gently as I moved around at a party.

Still... a sock in progress would fit perfectly into that bag, don't you think?

Okay: I'm going to wrap up there and wish you well for another week, whatever it holds for you. See you next Saturday!

It's nearly July

Yesterday as I was walking along the street, I smelled handspun.  Or rather, hand-dyed fiber ready to be handspun. 

Fiber from 2012, some of which is still unspun and available... hmmmm...

Do you know the aroma I mean?  It combines vinegar and wet wool and whatever dye smells like, with a soft nesty feeling, and hope, and a sense of purpose. 

(I was passing several restaurants at the time and I'm trying not to think about what foods produce the same smell.  Would you want to eat something that tasted like hand-dyed fiber, I wonder?  I'm not sure I would.  Though I do like things with vinegar in them, so... maybe?)

Spinning does not feel like it's in my immediate future because even though my wheel has been sitting for over two years beside the very chair I am sitting in to type this Hug and is therefore extremely accessible, I am supposed to be doing a lot of other things that are not Making More Yarn.  Mostly in fact, I am supposed to be converting yarn I already have into items that pack neatly or can be given away, because I am storing too much stuff to take back to the house.  You can put in SO many hours of work with unspun fiber, to end up with something that is the same volume as the unspun fiber.

On the other hand, it's also nearly July, and isn't July the month I spend spinning?  You know, the month that bicycle athletes spend riding the Tour de France and a lot of crafty folk set up their wheels in front of the television to spin more or less alongside them?  I've been a long time out of my routine but I am pretty sure that's true.

And I might have time to spare, because in spite of a growing inclination I'm not quite there with the packing.  A lot of our stuff is already packed, and a lot more isn't coming home at all - IKEA furniture can only survive so many moves - and what is left loose is stuff we still need to be able to get at every day.  Also, a lot of messy finishing work is being done on the house right now so we can't take anything over there yet.  Well, we could, but we would have to clean it all off again after a week.  I think that time could much more profitably be spent making things.  Probably I should treat myself to something special for what looks like it will be a super rainy Canada Day Weekend (we are celebrating 150 years!) and pull out the roving box.

Yesterday Pete and I went out to get pizza and I took some pictures with my phone to document the magnitude of this unique event (sarcasm alert).  I was entranced by this chimney:

more clouds!!!

and then tried to guess how old the building is that's under it, by its brick.  Some of the brick looks like this:

and some like this:

and some has graffiti on it which I think is a real shame because the brick is so obviously geriatric.

Across the lane from the back of this very old building is a much newer building with ivy growing on it:

Do you recognize this plant?  It's so different from the exuberant green ivy you see on buildings, with their generously large, bright green leaves.  These leaves are glossy and sharp, and the suckers are tenacious, and the rusty red of the young leaves and the reaching armlike branches always strike me as a bit bloody.  Any ivy can damage pointing and gradually tear down a brick wall, but I don't suppose they are as hard on concrete.  And even a slightly vicious looking plant like this is still texture and colour and life.

And it keeps aiming high.  In fact I think one of those shoots is aiming right up into the window, don't you?

Well, either way - I liked the shadows the plant was making.  Looked at from this angle it looks like a Tom Thompson painting of rugged evergreen trees along the shores of a weather beaten lake.

Which is another thing July is good for - the lake! 

What will you do to fill your July when it finally gets here?

Spinning in nature

One thing I love about the cottage is that even though we've made little changes, it still feels a lot like a time capsule from 1975.  The dark fake-wood paneled walls, the original dark-wood framed single-pane windows, the books published in that decade with pictures of men and women in bell-bottom suits on the cover, the records that capture the era... if you lived it yourself, you know what I mean.  And spinning yarn there, surrounded by giant picture windows overlooking trees and water, just fits right in with the decade's back to nature, back to our roots aesthetic.

Plying the 'Forager' colours last weekend felt very fitting.  While I worked, Pete put on our ironic-favourite Travelers album which celebrates Canada's centennial and Expo '67 in Montreal.

It was clouding over outside, which always deepens the green of the tall hemlocks and pines that surround the cottage, and the greens and purples building up under my hands seemed like a perfect match.

Of course, nothing ever is perfect, really.  I had spun these singles to be very very thin, and I had hoped the lean nature of the resulting yarn would fit onto one spool.  Usually I have to stop three-quarters of the way through, break the yarn, wind it all off into a ball, and start over with the remains, cursing myself for not yet figuring out how to use the bigger spool Pete bought for me a few years ago.

This time, I just kept moving the yarn up and down the hooks, hoping for the best, and accidentally winding a lot of yarn in the gap between spool and frame.  In the end I had to take the whole thing off and wind it from a post on the bottom of the wheel.

Still, I was making yarn, which is by definition very earthy and natural!  And when I finally finished getting as much of it as possible into one ball (I had to ditch a bunch at the end, when the last few feet of purple went all knotty and entangled and wouldn't cooperate with me at all) I took it outside onto the beautiful deck overlooking our little patch of forest, to photograph.

Whereupon I was descended-upon by persistent mosquitoes.

Go nature!

And, go windows with screens in them!  Next time: indoor photography. Yeesh.

Making yarn

To me, spinning fibre is very different from plying singles.  When you spin fiber you go from fluff to string,

but it's string that's very easy to pull apart if you just untwist it again.  On the other hand, when you ply that string together...

You get fully recognizable yarn.  Even two strings plied together is a lot stronger than one, which is to say, it's much harder to break, or even pill.  Probably not a coincidence that DNA is pictured as two strands twisted around each other, you know?

Of course, your plied yarn is only as good as your spun singles.  And as I mentioned, some sections of one of my 'Ranger' singles was more than a bit overspun.  Plus, I never seem to get all the colour sections in the different lengths of fiber to be the same length, so I ended up with a lot of barberpole.

While I was plying this on the weekend, a non-crafty neighbour dropped by and asked what I'd do with the finished product.  I have no idea, I told her, and felt a bit stupid.  I mean, there's making for a purpose, and making for the satisfaction of making, which is a purpose also, but was I even achieving that?

In the past, I've found that a lot of the yarn I make in summer becomes my priority material for gift production in winter.  And maybe that will be true with this yarn, which I was able to ply with minimal disruption from the overspun bits.  If that's the case it won't matter that I didn't get to read as much as usual with this batch of fiber (thank you, kindle app on cell phone, which perches so neatly on my leg while I spin) or that I feel I failed by not having a lot less barberpole.

At least the beginning and end of the line will be solids, right?

And at least I turned something soft and vulnerable to breaks into something strong and resistant.  And compact, which in my current situation is a definite advantage!

Spinning at the cottage

Just before we left for a longer-than-usual stay at the cottage, new fiber arrived from the Twisted Fiber Art club:

and oh, man.  I love these colours.  As soon as I touched it, without reading the label, I knew it was my favourite fiber.  There is nothing else that feels the way Blue-Faced Leicester feels.

I made myself finish the first installment from the club before I got going on it, and then I debated how best to handle the braid.  Two, three, or four strips?  I opted for two, so I'd get a very long run of the main colour repeat without doubling it, the way you do with four strips.

The thing I forgot about that is, when you are spinning - what, 57 grams of fiber? - you are going to be sitting in your chair a very long time before you're done.  I'm used to spinning a quarter of a braid at a time. Well, I was used to spinning that much... I haven't done that in two years, which seems astonishingly long, and my body is definitely out of practise.  I didn't realize how much of my body is engaged when I spin, especially when I'm keeping my left knee steady so I can rest my phone on my leg and read from the Kindle app while I spin.

Plus, it turns out that Diane's chair - a very petite wooden rocker favoured by our longtime neighbour when she drops by for a visit - is not as comfortable as I remember.  Wood gets harder, right?  It's not just me? (please tell me it's not me.)

It took a couple of days, but I finally finished.  Even our new windup robot, Lilliput, was impressed.

and then dismayed, because I have to do it all over again now.  aiiieeeee

My sentiments exactly, Lilliput...


In other news:

I'm not even going to try to post tomorrow, because after a prolonged period of logistical Tetris I was able to organize having our new furniture delivered to the condo at 9am.  Since we're not getting back there ourselves till tonight, and I hadn't managed to clear a landing spot for said furniture before we left for the cottage, and to do that we have to dismantle some other furniture to bring back up to the cottage Saturday morning (thank goodness I've been able to make space for it here), as well as shift some furniture that has to stay and be accessible, there will be neither knitting to talk about nor space to set up for typing.

So: have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you again on Monday!

The committed spinner

Sometimes you have to make yourself do things you really don't want to, and it's such a treat when your reluctance is based on reasons other than the task being actively terrible.

You might recognize these colours as the last bit of fleece I was afraid to finish because the bit before was so desperately overspun, and I didn't want to face down my mistake come plying time.

You might also recognize this wooden fish-shaped salad bowl (aka The Fishbowl) from last summer, when I used it to corral my knitting projects.  It's actually fantastic for spinning because it keeps the as-yet unused fiber in such a clean, smooth space to flop around in.  Plus: IT'S A FISHBOWL.  I mean honestly.  I may never get over the cute.

While I was spinning, other people came and ministered to the stereo, putting on an interesting sequence of records.  We had Nat King Cole, a repeat of last weekend's percussion album, and a 1960s-era children's singer who sounds a lot like Burl Ives.  I don't know by what measure my uncle chose his collection but it's impressive.  It's a very eclectic mix and we're never short of the perfect sound for any occasion.

As I worked my treadle I was thinking about the iconic cottage experience, as practised in Ontario and Quebec.  The weather gets hot in the city and we go north, to lakes that offer cool nights and fun-filled days.  And endless bugs, obviously.

Some decorating magazines I brought with me this time celebrate the version that features soaring ceilings and great rooms where all one's plentiful guests can gather, when they're not in a giant, well-appointed kitchen preparing meals as a group.

Our version is SO not like that.  I mean, our 'great room' is certainly much larger than our living room at our house (be it pre- or post-renovation), as is the kitchen frankly, but it doesn't feel huge when there are eight adults in it.  The kitchen is narrow and galley style, its floorspace serving as the flight path to the only bathroom, so group food prep is discouraged.  Actually, any food prep is discouraged - Pete and I find that the best way to exclude stress from the cottage experience, especially when guests join us, is to bring prepared salads and pre-washed salad greens that can be tossed with dressing at the table.  Tonight I made a big omelet with chopped spinach and ham and onions, and I thought we'd both implode from the complexity of sharing such a tiny space for so many micro tasks.

Mostly we stick with simple: I wilt prepackaged spinach in a frying pan while he grills steak out on the deck, and we call it a fine supper.

But the feeling of togetherness is the same as the magazines describe, and most importantly, the grounded quality of the Family Cottage.  It's looked and felt the same here for decades, and since we bought it, we have done the same things every summer - danced to my uncles' records, laughed, fought each other over cards and Scrabble, napped, listened for the loons at night, and read books in the sunshine.  We've enjoyed the amazing scent of the forest air here and, in my case, taken endless photographs of the almost-unchanging view from the dock.

(which, this year, was set up for us in a completely new configuration.  it's a bit unsettling, but still functional, so I'm trying not to notice the difference.)

It's like spinning in its way.  You work through the same motions as you always do, even as you're shoring up something more than you had before.

And look, now I just have to face down the plying! 

But... maybe next weekend would be good for that.  I mean, it's summertime.  Why push myself?

Spinning denial

So much for doing this year's Tour de Fleece!  My spinning wheel is out and I have spun two of the three strands of roving I got from Twisted Fiber Art's latest club...

... but I haven't been able to make myself do the third.

I'm either in denial, or feeling passive aggressive.  Probably both.

The tension peg on my wheel sort of moved at some point in the last year when I wasn't using it, and I've forgotten where it normally sits.  I thought I got it right but when I was winding the second section into a ball I noticed something terrible:

It is HUGELY overspun.  I mean, you want a little bit of excess energy in a single, but we are talking crazypants overspun here.  It's going to corkscrew around the other singles beyond the beyond when I go to ply them together.  Plus, who's to say I won't overspin next time too?

So naturally, I am doing the sensible thing and not spinning the last section at all.  If I don't spin it, I don't have to ply, and I won't ever face the consequences of not paying attention to what I was doing.  Perfectly sensible.

Oh dang... I should just spin it, shouldn't I.  It's too pretty to ignore!

A return to spinning

A few weeks ago I did something I promised myself I would not do before getting back into the house and mopping up some of the crazy costs of renovating it:

I joined a Twisted Fiber Art yarn club.  Aiiieee!

The inspiration photos for the current round were too much for me.  I shouldn't have done it, and I kind of regret it, but if I had to do it over I would choose the regret and the fiber over practicality and no fiber, because I do love getting woolly surprises in the mail.

Also, things are finally settling into place around here.  It took me a while to notice and then even longer to feel that I could ignore the renovation and just live for a bit.  And eventually I noticed it was the end of June, that July was almost here and that I could do the Tour de Fleece again.  I was disappointed not to be able to do it last year, and I remember wanting so much to take my wheel upstairs to the rooftop terrace and just sit for an hour or so enjoying the views.  Maybe I'll do it this year, since we're spending a second summer in our temporary condo home after all, but I'm not going to pressure myself.  It's enough just to make a start.

As I tore this newly-arrived fiber into three sections I remembered that I'd been in the habit of tearing braids into four, for two two-ply cakes of yarn.  One long string of three ply is more of a favourite of mine for knitting, but my wheel doesn't let me hold enough yarn to make that possible - there's always a break at about the 2/3 point, which never gets less disappointing.

I considered tearing them up again for six sections - for either a pair of three-ply cakes or a trio of two-ply cakes, but didn't.  I wonder if that was a mistake?  Eh, it doesn't matter.

Spinning again after all this time was like riding a bike, which - now that I think of it - is what non-textile people assume I'm talking about when I mention spinning.  The muscle memory was still there.

But it felt odd, too.  My hand got sore and I had to stop several times to take a break, and the fiber broke more than once because I'd sent the tension too high.

I was glad to be back though.  I love watching the singles start to build up, especially when they're so lovely and even.  This is a Festive base - 20% silk to 80% merino - so it kind of glistens in the sunshine and makes me feel like I'm better at this than I really am.

One down, three to go.  It's so nice to introduce my interior finishing obsession to my yarn obsession.  I wonder whether they will learn to coexist for the rest of the decor stage, or whether I will still have to prioritize?


Either way, life feels pretty good around here right now.  Hope it does for you, too.  Have a safe and wonderful weekend everybody - see you Monday!

Yarn-ready

The maple singles are blocked and caked and ready to go:

but I still have no clue what to knit with it.

And really I can't knit anything with it till I'm done the Yak Hat - that project is made up almost entirely of the black (okay, really it's incredibly dark green) that goes with this set.

Meanwhile: I am just really enjoying the way four cakes of similar handspun look all lined up on the porch at home.

I'm looking at this yarn and wondering what to make, and I'm thinking about podcasts and wondering whether to start doing some.

It might be fun for me to speak some of my blog posts instead of writing them down - or rather, to free-associate for five minutes.  And it might be fun for you to hear my voice once in a while too in between photographs of yarn on a porch.

What do you think?

Plied yarn and broken dishes

I have such a thing for vintage dishes, and hands down, this oddly-shaped plate is my best find ever:

It's a Franciscan design and it was the sandwich part of a soup and sandwich set.

I used to have two of them, and up until last week they came out for every gathering at our house - I'd load them up with crackers or veg and then put a little vintage dish onto the soup area filled with dip or goat cheese.  Every time I'm in a flea market or antique store I look for more from this set, but I rarely see any and never unchipped.  Even then, they are priced so much higher then the $2.00 price tag on each of my two.  (You can usually find a few pieces at eBay but there's no thrill of the hunt there. Well, no $2 pricing anyway.)

Sadly, our kitchen at home is so small I had to store them with other much-loved dishes on an elevated on the top shelf of a cabinet and after about twenty years of their peaceful coexistence there... Pete's sleeve caught on the leg of the rack.  Everything came crashing down, luckily smashing to bits on our counter and floor rather than on Pete because they are being replaced and he could never be.  Neither survived unscathed.  This plate, and one small dessert plate from a different set, and the bowl from the cream and sugar for our everyday dishes were all that survived.

I am so glad I have that much!

And I am so glad I finally had time to ply this yarn and get it into a skeins for blocking.

It came out seriously bulky and warm, and although this year's exceptionally cold February is finally over I am pretty sure I still have time to wear new hat.

I am feeling good about the chances of such a hat looking good with the Yak scarf, too - aren't you?

Breaking much-loved dishes is sad, but buying new ones isn't... and I had a few really good finds when we were setting up a campsite at the condo.  I'll show you those another day soon!

See you later alligators, and best wishes for some knitting time till then.

There has been spinning

Today I am generously tearing myself away from bathroom fixture selection to tell you the other thing I did on my no-knitting-bag weekend: I plied the rest of my 'Maple' singles!

I have a ton of this stuff. There is a cake of black sport weight Playful, which I'm dipping into for my Yak Hat, and a cake of green to match the green stripe in the handspun, and a little over four hundred grams of said handspun which might be a little slimmer than sport weight, but close enough.

All told, I will have close to 600 grams of matching yarns with which to do something.

But what?  What would you do with 600g of sport weight yarn? 

I keep thinking Poncho, not that I ever wear those.  The pattern I love most for this yarn can't possibly use it all: it's Churchmouse's Shoulder Cozy, a cowl that doubles as a shoulder warmer.  I don't think I can carry off a shoulder warmer fashion-wise, but in terms of practical use, I need one bad.

It might be smart to knit the shoulder cozy in the handspun, then knit matching handwarmers and hat.  I am after all going to Newfoundland in May, and staying in a little house by the water with plans for some hiking, so I will need layers.

Or maybe I should knit something more substantial that's all one project.  I am at a loss, and I only hope that using up all my decision making skills on bathroom taps and toilets doesn't mean I don't knit this yarn up now that it's finally ready.

(I shouldn't speak too soon though - I still have to block it, cake it, and swatch it!)

If you're spinning today, I hope it's the good kind, and that we meet up here again tomorrow.