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Well, I can’t please everybody, but I got an unkind comment today about my title “Knitting Around”. Yes, I know it’s the title of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s book, and as Meg Swansen said, no one has a copyright on those words. But perhaps it’s best to reconsider my choice. I have just finished reading Jack Kerouac’s book “The Dharma Bums” and am about to get into his all-time classic “On the Road”. At the risk of being unoriginal, I think that title gives the sense that I am observing knitting in my travels. So, that’s where that is!
Hey, everybody, enjoy the day! : )
I am so easily distracted. I begin one thing and one aspect of that task will take me on a tangent to another and another. It is very hard to finish anything, especially with kids (almost adults) hanging around. I love their presence but I really thought they’d be completely self-sufficient by 18. They’re not, and come to think of it, neither was I.
Anyway I’ve had the house to myself for days and am so excited that I have finally finished laying out the Fair Isle (Lativan) Bag pattern I had in the Summer 2004 issue of Interweave Knits. It’s been on the to-do list forever! Now I will get it proofed and printed and hopefully I can start sending it out in two weeks or less to LYS! YAY!
The pattern took awhile because it contains an in-depth study of Continental knitting, the Norwegian purl and corrugated ribbing on the right and wrong sides. I had an article about that in Knits and the bag was to be the learning project. Editorial space being what it is, the article was brief. And I am seldom brief! So the article has been expanded into the pattern with focus on Continental knitting and lots of photos. I am also slogging through multiple learning curves at the same time with Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design… I learn a lot every time I post here, but it takes me forever and it’s HARD. wah!
While I was cleaning up the text for the pattern, I was laying the groundwork for my new chapter in my book–chapter X: Knitting Styles and Technique. It grew out of chapter 3 and became so unmanageable I decided it wants to be its own chapter. I love to multi-task! I have until Friday to keep working on this. I feel like I am on a roll!
I hope you are all having a meaningful Memorial Day, whether it is a time of sadness over the loss of someone dear, or a joyous occasion like a family picnic.
My laptop went back to the hospital for the second time in a month and now has a new hard drive among other things. I feel like I am back in the 21st century!
I spent a lovely weekend in New Hope, PA at a shop called Twist. My students were great and they worked hard, knitting up little Fair Isle cardigans.
Some of them laughed hard too (you know who you are!) and kept our spirits light.
It’s amazing how all the colors everyone chose turned out wonderfully, even if they weren’t too sure in the beginning. By the way, you’d think with all that yarn behind us, we had class in the middle of the shop, but no! We were in the back room. LOTS of yummy yarn out front…and did I mention spinning fibers?
The shop owner, Debby, who is the middle knitter on the right, is warm and lots of fun! I met her adorable pig, sheep, dogs, cat, horses, llamas, and chickens. Oh, and her husband! A fabulous pot luck topped off Saturday evening. I can’t wait to go back next year to teach another class and see that pig again!
New Hope is across the river from Lambertville, NJ where the famed Tomato Factory used to be. The owners were associated with Alice Starmore. I went there once and am I glad I bought her book Charts for Colour Knitting at the time! One can never have too many motif books. Now it costs a fortune on eBay.
I never got to know her, but I was very lucky to take two classes from Alice when she taught for TKGA. I think this was 1987, ‘88, or ‘89. I loved her quiet, gentle way of teaching. And of course her accent entranced us all. I wish she could get back on the teaching circuit occasionally, but I also understand how demanding travel can be.
Few people will ever doubt how much Alice impacted color knitting. Her fresh approach to color is still inspiring, daunting, and overwhelming to me. I think designing with lots of color takes courage, at least it does for me. It’s out of my comfort zone, but certainly challenges me.
Alice I am sure you’ll never read this, but thanks for everything! You made such a difference in my life as a teacher, a designer, and a knitter.
I have been laboring over my computer trying to organize my couple thousand photos and came across photos of my silkworm experience in, oh, 1983 I think. I did show them to the Atlanta guild earlier this year, and in the interval of ugly computer issues, was concerned they might be lost. But here they are!
It was a fun spring project, but it was a lot of work too. It was supposed to last about 26 days from hatching to spinning, but my worms liked me so much they hung around an extra two weeks. As soon as the mulberry trees started to leaf out, I brought my two small packs of eggs from the frig to bring to room temperature. I had a yellow silk strain and a white silk strain of eggs. It takes somewhere between 6 and 20 days for the eggs to hatch. You can see cottonballs next to the eggs. These are moistened with water to add humidity to their environment.
Here they are at four days old. You can barely see them still. Notice a dark thing at the top of the left hand leaf–there’s one! They are munching on mulberry leaves which I picked daily, washed, and kept fresh in the frig in a vase of water. All the leaves had to be dry before they were fed to the worms.
At 18 days they have grown considerably.
At 23 days, you can see some sluffed skins on the lower right leaf. The worms go through four moltings in their liftimes as worms. The five time periods between molts are called instars.
Here is a boxful at 36 days. I had to empty the box every day and remove the frass (their poop). You can imagine I was beginning to think I would be doing this forever!
Carefully, I had to lift the worms out and change their paper. The silkworm’s skin is so delicate from thousands of years of selective breeding for silk (not for impermeable skin), that you have to be very careful. I would lift them out of the box on top of the paper towel that was their floor, put new paper in the box, and then used a utensil to scoop them back into the box. Here they are while I am cleaning their home.
This amazing worm is over four inches long and bigger around than my forefinger. After I took one photo of him/her, he/she raised his/her head.
So all this time, the worms had happily stayed in shoe boxes. Then they began
a-wandering, looking for a place to hunker down and spin. I know the feeling.
Once the worms find a good spot, the process takes about three days to spin the complete cocoon and turn into a pupa.
It takes around three weeks before metamorphosis to moth is complete. What beautiful cocoons!
Here are a couple of moths emerging at about the same time. You can see a brown spot in front of one of the cocoons. I was told this is the acid that is excreted from the worm to break out of the cocoon. But I have read other explanations as well.
This little moth, just came out of its cocoon and is spreading its wings after being cramped for a good while. By flapping the wings, blood is pumped into them and they get larger and fuller after being cramped for so long in a tiny space. Domesticated silkworms have lost the ability to fly over the millenia, but there are still species in the wild that fly and spin beautiful silks in shades of brown.
OK. Now those of you who are sensitive… don’t look. This is the high point of a silk worm’s life: having sex, abdomen to abdomen.
Within two days, the female will lay her eggs carefully in a single layer. Both male and female moths die soon after. They eat nothing for the rest of their lives after they begin spinning.
The sad part is that in order to have a continuous strand of silk (about a mile long) the cocoons must be heated so the moths are “stifled”–a polite way of saying they are killed. Once the moth emerges, the single filament is broken into many pieces, and although the quality is the same, the more textured threads and yarns made from broken silk are not as highly prized. Here are some of my cocoons ready to be heated.
Here are some of the yarns I have spun from silk (not from my own cocoons). But the thread you see on the funny looking niddy noddy is what I reeled from 8 cocoons–that’s the filament from eight cocoons creating the thickness of that thread. Also shown are a brick of silk and mawata (the “hankie” looking thing).
If you are interested in a quick and easy factual read on more details of the life cycle, check out this school project of some third graders in California!
Hey, I just figured out how to have bigger pictures so you don’t have to click a thumbnail. I am calling this learning curve Blog Everest.
I mentioned a couple posts back that I went to the John C. Campbell Folk Shool at the end of March to teach during the annual Scandinavian Week. Sandra David who has taken both of my classes I offered there, sent me these great photos. I hope you’ll enjoy them and get even a small idea of the variety of classes available at the school. The sense of community isn’t as easy to convey but it’s there and it’s wonderful. And it’s especially magical in the spring, while Maryland is still cold and grey. This is the building where I taught. The top floor houses some of the students.
The porch is a favorite hangout. Down the hill a little is a handmade porch swing under an arbor. So peaceful!
My class was called a Nordic Tour of Mittens. Basically, my students knitted classic Norwegian mittens, Swedish Twined (Two-end) mittens, and Latvian mittens in five days. OK, so Latvia isn’t actually Nordic, but close enough for horseshoes…it’s just across the water and down a bit.
Here are some of the Latvian mittens in my collection. The ones that seem to be the same pattern are my design–the sampler for class in a couple different weights.
I also brought along some mittens and gloves from Estonia so my students could see them.
And bless the Norwegian cooking class (which was right next door to our classroom). They invited us one day to have dessert with them. WOW!
At the end of the week, there is an evening show of all the students’ work. How satisfying to see what others have been working at so diligently while we were knitting! But first here is some of the work my students did. They worked so hard and did a really wonderful job. You can see all three types of mittens in this picture.
Now on to the rest of the school! There was a clay class with a theme of leaves:
Basketry, focusing on Scandinavian Birch Baskets:
Paper cutting (At a demo, we were told Hans Christian Andersen used to cut pictures related to whatever story he was telling at the time!):
Metal work (tinsmithing):
Woodworking, creating Norwegian-style bentwood boxes called tine.
Painting, using traditional rosmaling designs:
Rosmaling fascinates me because I see a connection between the painted motifs and the embroidered ones used today on the Norwegian Setesdal Lusekofter. This sharing of ideas, motifs, colors, what-have-you, across different mediums (wood, fiber, paint, etc.) is pretty exciting and inspirational.
The following photo isn’t an outstanding example of some of the fabulous embriodery seen on Lusekofter, but it may give you an idea. This photo shows a store-bought hand-embroidered neck piece. This is so that when you are too exhausted to finish the hand-knit sweater, because it took so long to knit, you can take a short cut and use this ready-made piece to sew in. Sounds oxymoron-ish to me, but hey, *I* bought one.
Yes indeedy, as we look into our magic mirror, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is still the Greatest Of Them All. This was the 34th festival and it sure has grown up from the charming little event it was in the early 1980s when I started going to it. It has been the benchmark for other fiber festivals. Now there are so many festivals: Taos (NM), Rhinebeck (NY), and the wool festivals of Vermont, Michigan, and Massachusetts, to name but a few. Here is a very limited view of the promenade:
Note the threat of rain that hovers over the festival most years, which separates the rabid fiber fiends from the families on a weekend outing.
We live in magic times–so much at our disposal as fiber artists. What can be had at these events? Wool rovings, fleeces, dyes, baskets, spinning wheels and other tools, sheep cheese (a personal favorite of mine), lamb burgers, plus the usual wonderful fairground junk food, yarns, patterns, wool garments, sheep, sheepdogs, the handspun skein contest for spinners, the handmade wool garments, all the vendors, soap, herbs, the parade of sheep breeds, the sheep to shawl contest, whew! Even classes are offered by nationally known teachers. This year was no exception. However, with my stash of fiber exceeding my humble stash of yarn, I resisted the ever-popular Fleece Sale.
I attended with my sister, and dumped off some old spinning equipment that had been gathering dust for awhile. These were sold at the annual spinning and weaving equipment auction there. Now I have money to buy more yarn! Then I went straight to the sheep-cheese stall. MMMMM.
This is the cheese-man I go looking for every year. He is from Menhenett Farm in PA. Wicked good sheep cheese. If you search him out next year, PLEASE don’t buy it all before I get there.
Sixteen members of the Houston Knitting Guild flew up as a group to see what all the fuss is about! It is certain that they had a fabulous time. Those knitters will have a fabulous time anywhere they go! I know this because I went down to Mexico with them to teach a workshop in 2005. They are a blast, and so was San Miguel de Allende. You should check out Casa Luna where we stayed: FAB-U-LOUS! But I digress. Here are three of my favorite knitters from the Houston group, Vicki, Margaret, and Beth.
They bought so much they had to dump their treasures at the car in order to go back to buy more. Sigh. So fun!
One of the main reasons I go to the Wool Festival is to see old friends. I always try to get over to see my dear friend Margaret Klein Wilson of Mostly Merino. What a trooper she is! She broke her foot a couple weeks ago and STILL managed to dye up a bunch of yarn, pack for the show, drive down from Vermont, set up for the show, and still smile! She’s holding the sweater she made (Stone’s Sweater) for Barbara Albright’s book The Natural Knitter. I can’t wait to go up to Vermont this September for our annual knitting retreat.
And I was lucky to catch Ron Schweitzer, one of my favorite designers, in the Yarns International booth. With him is Bonnie the co-owner of YI along with Betty, who was helping a customer at the time.
Well, hopefully I have enticed you to consider attending the wool festival next year. People come from all over the country, including Canada. You can get on the mailing list to receive next year’s catalog on their website.
Enjoy your weekend!
Cool Workshop
I just got back from Nashville, Tennessee. I taught the Nashville Knitting Guild for two days and it was lovely—the hotel, the food, and most of all, the knitters! They worked so hard! And I got a little tour of the enormous homes there and the Parthenon. Yes, the Parthenon. It was breathtaking to see it whole. The one I saw in Athens was pretty old and broken into pieces. They ought to glue that thing back together—I bet more people would come to see it.
Anyway, if you’d like to see photos of what my terrific students created in class, click here. Also I was really honored to have Ann Shayne in my class. The second Mason-Dixon Knitting book will be out soon, I think! Here is the website.
So now I am looking forward to celebrating Cinco de Mayo by going to the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. I am charging up my camera batteries for the occasion.
I will be home for most of the month, which will allow me to play catch-up on various and sundry tasks, not the least of which is my book.
Stay tuned!
Remember that king who thought he was wearing clothing and everyone else knew he wasn’t but were too polite to tell? That’s how I feel with the photo that was SUPPOSED to be in my last post. Honestly, I am still on that darned learning curve. Sorry about that! Let’s see if I can get that photo up now of my son Jerod wearing Ålvros.
Well, that’s more like it!
I spent my birthday in St. Paul and Minneapolis at an amazing event called Yarnover. This year was its 21st year. It is a smooth running operation, offering many classes, a yummy lunch, and perhaps 20 vendors. Annie Modesitt was the keynote speaker this year. I taught two three-hour classes and really enjoyed the students.
I was lucky to arrange to meet up with my friend Charlotte who thoughtfully brought along her collection of ch’ullus. I have been trying to photograph them for several years but it never worked out. I’ll share a few of the images with you. These wonderful hats are knitted by the men in certain areas of Peru. They loop the yarns around their necks (as the Greeks do) and use both of their thumbs like shuttles to throw the yarn. The most amazing part of this is that their designs, which are so intricate, are worked from the purl side. I love the colors and the motifs—especially the ones representing animals. The women do all the spinning and I think all the weaving too—although I am not as sure about that. They use backstrap looms. Are they not AWESOME?
As I pondered creating this blog, a wonderful title came to me…. Knitting Around. Isn’t it catchy? Sounds great! It was not until a few days later that I realized why it sounded so comfortable—it’s the title of one of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s books. DUH! After talking to Meg about it, who of course is ever the gracious woman, I am still on the fence about it. So I may change it, or go the way of apathy and be lazy. I really like it…
On another note, I finally sent my computer in to be fixed, since the DVD/CD drive never worked well. I was very proud to say to the computer person that yes, I had backed everything up. (I had bought an external drive, even!) And so of course, you can guess the rest—I didn’t back up quite everything. Fortunately my photos of knitting in Scandinavia and my music were saved.
I lost all my addresses and email addresses from everyone I had entered into my data base. So if you want me to know of your existence in computer-land, please enter your email and name on my website where it says click here for email newsletter, or just email it to me. My email list (The Knitting Traditions Hotline) will receive regional notices of my workshops within the surrounding states. I’ll go into the Finer Details of knitting on the road here in my blog.
Take your knitting outside and enjoy the lovely Spring season!
