DesigKnit

Ellen and I have been emailing about how we’ve both been in a bit of withdrawal since Rhinebeck. It’s a little harder than I expected to come back to real life after a fantastic weekend of friends and fiber. I’m thinking that perhaps it is time for a little reminiscence, yes?

(And a little revealing of purchases, too…can’t have a proper festival post without that.)

As usual, I had terrible camnesia for most of the trip, so this post will be link-heavy and picture light.

Fortunately, Ellen had the presence of mind to ask someone to take a picture of our group, while waiting in line for the fair grounds to open on Saturday:

From left to right, that’s Karen, Cricket, Ellen and me (bet you couldn’t tell on that last one).

We all stayed together in a beautiful little cabin about 20 minutes from the fairground, which really was the perfect way to enjoy the festival. Ellen arranged that too. (You may be sensing a pattern here…)

Despite a heavy rainstorm on Friday night, we had a weekend of beautiful weather that was just right to highlight the fall foliage. Driving back and forth along all those winding country highways, it was all I could do not to pull over every 10 minutes to take a picture of the colors as the car rounded a bend into yet another beautiful landscape.

We all arrived late Friday night, had a great nights’ sleep after our travels, and then sprinted off for the fairgrounds first thing in the morning. First off, we investigated the fleece sale, where I was sorely tempted by an 8 pound Cormo. I managed to resist that one, but fell head over heels for this gray Corriedale cross from Lisa Lafferty at Eidelweiss Farm, which Ellen and I agreed to send off for processing and then split between us.

This is the first time I’ve sent a fleece off for processing. It does add a whole new dimension to buying raw fleeces (as well as cutting out many, many steps in between the buying and the spinning). Could be dangerous.

Then, we stood in line to meet the Yarn Harlot and get our books signed. Actually, we stood in three lines. One, to get to a copy of the book, then one to purchase the book, and a third to get it signed.  Fortunately, there were other books and authors to look at and chat with along the way, and Ellen kept us entertained with her adorable little Jenkins Kuchulu spindle.

I picked up a copy of Sheepish along the way, which I’ve heard is a very good read.

Then, we began our wanderings around the fairgrounds. And there was much wandering to be done. I’ve just had a look at the fair map, and there were ten (ten!) barns chock full of fiber. You could go for days and not take it all in. Fortunately, we had Karen to read the map and make sure we knew where we were (and where we were going) at any given time. This is a big help when the rest of the crew is caught up in *shiny!*

Instead of doing my usual walk once around before buying, we just went straight for it and hit up the booths we thought were interesting. We found rare breed wools at Spirit Trails Fiber. I was bitten by the Targhee bug at Jefferson this year,  and so ended up with 8 oz of that, even though I got in line expecting to buy 4 oz. Oops. I also bought 5 oz of Debouillet, since Rambouillet has been on my to-try list for a while now, and Debouillet sounded kind of close, and was very soft.

There was a whole booth full of incredible shetland sweaters from Yarns International. I didn’t buy any, but they’ve gone into my mental file of yarns I must try someday. Their colorwork was also stunning, but it was early in the festival and I hadn’t worked up the courage yet to start asking if I could take photos of sample pieces.

We stopped by the Fiber Optic booth to meet the dyer, Kimber, who I hear is very scientific. Unfortunately, she was also swamped, so I will have to find another time to stand around and talk shop. Her fiber is lovely, though. I ended up with a bag of Black Coffee pencil roving, and a gradient-dyed braid of Merino Tencel in Espresso Gold (must have needed a caffeine kick after the early start to our day).

We also stopped by the Golding booth and had a look at their spindles. At one point, both Ellen and I turned around, saying “you’ve got to see this one” and then dissolved into laughter when we realized that we were holding two copies of the same spindle. Great minds think alike. (And you should see it spin!!!)

After lunch, we wandered the upper fairgrounds, passing by the Briar Rose and Sanguine Gryphon booths. Then, we watched a few sheep lose their coats:

And took a tour of the show barns, including the breeds barn where Ellen picked out all the sheep she wants for her future farm (and for Jan’s…she’s such a thoughtful sister).

We also got to talk to Otto Strauch about his drum carders, which was very interesting. Both Ellen and I are in the researching phase of considering a drum carder purchase, so it was interesting to hear about all the technical details that make the Strauch carders unique.

At the end of the day, we realized that we had not sat down from the time we arrived at the fairgrounds until we got in the car to head off to dinner. You know it’s been a good day when you’ve forgotten to stop and sit.

We had dinner at a local brewery, where Cricket and Ellen dueled their way through the beer sampler, and Cricket kept us all in stitches. (Actually, she did that all weekend.)

We got back to the cabin late, but we had just enough time for a show-and-tell before bed, and a few more laughs. Ellen did some sample washing of fleeces in the kitchen sink, and we all oohed and aahed over the locks of freshly cleaned wool.

I headed back to the fairgrounds alone on Sunday morning, since I had a morning class and a few hours before my afternoon flight. The class was called Great Garments from Handwoven Cloth by Daryl Lancaster, and it was very, very good. I’ve done a good bit of garment sewing myself, but I learned so much about simple sewing techniques that just hadn’t come up in my self-taught career. Daryl is great at getting into the “why” of garment construction instead of just the rules. She also had tons of useful tips for stabilizing handwoven cloth, adding structure to garments, and finishing edges so that they stay put and don’t ravel. The class was only an hour and a half long, but it was jam-packed.

And then there were the samples. Here’s one of my favorites:

After class, I was in a weaving mood, so I visited the Just Our Yarn booth to peruse their samples. I just love looking at them all.

Look at the detail in this one:

I just love how those colors work together, but wouldn’t have thought to put salmon and blue in the same piece. The owners are also wonderful to talk to about weaving; they know how each sample was made, and can talk at length about the structures and colors and yarn weights used to get a particular effect. I always learn so much from a visit to their booth. I have some of their yarn for a project already, and so forbore to buy more, but I did pick up a couple of books that are kind of the equivalent of weaving stitch dictionaries. There are years of exploration in these pages.

I also found a few things on the fairgrounds that we’d overlooked on Saturday. There were some very artistic carved pumpkins:

And a whole barn full of antique museum-displays. They had everything from the print shop to the formal parlor. I spent quite a while watching the clock maker repair the mechanism for a pendulum clock:

Here’s the print shop:

I got to use the mini moveable-type printing press, but didn’t take a picture of that one.

Then, I headed back into the yarn barns. I found this beautiful colorwork sweater by Decadent Fibers. It’s sold as a kit, but I really just wanted to sit and study those intricate colorwork designs. Might have to buy the pattern someday, just because.

And these fantastic felted/leatherwork bags by Spiralworks. I just love the combination of felt and stylish leather bags.

None of them made their way home with me, but it’s something to keep in mind when I need something special one of these days.

A couple of tiny braids of pure silk from Cloverleaf farms did manage to sneak into my bag:

I bought the first one because I thought it might make the perfect trim to go with the fall colors sweater:

The red is looking a little pink next to the wool yarn, so I’m not sure if it will actually end up in the sweater. We may have to see what it looks like when spun up first. The second braid I bought just because. I’m not sure what they will become, but they are beautiful.

I also stopped off at the Briar Rose booth to show Chris my sweater and gush a bit about her yarn. I’ve just realized that I never actually showed a modeled photo on the blog, so here it is:

And here’s a closeup of the neck detail (that’s my favorite part).

I had completely forgotten to take pictures; probably because I’ve been so busy figuring out how to wear it as often as possible. My sweater queue is completely full up right now, or I’d have bought yarn for another three right then and there. Honestly, I could buy every yarn in her booth.

And then, in my last few minutes of wandering, I ran into Anne, as I’ve already told you. I really had given up hope of finding her at that point, so it was just the perfect way to end the festival.

So that was Rhinebeck 2011. Two days packed full of fiber, fun, and friends. I’m not sure I could handle this much fiber activity on a regular basis, but I am looking forward to next year!

You may remember the waving lace shawl at I knit a couple of years ago. (Has it already been a couple of years?? Amazing.)

While we were taking photos for the blog post, I arranged it like this:

Partly because I wanted to remember that I thought that this lace pattern would make a great lacy sweater.

Fast forward two years, and you’ll find me with a bowl of yummy Falkland handspun just waiting for a project.

That became this:

Which happens to be another in a long series of completely unphotographable colors that have emerged from my dye studio. That photo gets the intensity right, but leans a little too far toward the blue for the real yarn.

In any case. I swatched, I cast on. I knit a full repeat. I decided that I was going to run out of yarn at that rate, pulled back, went up two needle sizes and swatched again, reduced my stitch count by 30%, and cast on again on the plane to Rhinebeck.

(Some people make sweaters to wear to Rhinebeck. Apparently I cast on. There’s nothing like planning ahead.)

This second photo is a little closer to the real color, and shows the lace pattern beginning to emerge.

And if you look very closely, you can see some beautiful little stitch markers that Jan made for me and sent by way of Ellen. (Thanks, Jan!)

She has perfect timing, too, since I had just lost my stitch markers and was in need of more. Knowing me, I’d probably have gone for plain plastic rings, so I’m especially excited to have some fancy jewelry for my needles. Those colors match the lace prefectly, too. Aren’t they pretty?

I’m just finishing up the waist shaping now, and beginning the repeat that will increase for the bust and underarm split. Knock on wood, but it looks like I might actually have enough yarn to make it at this gauge. Fingers crossed!

I finished plying the Fall colors yarn last night. Here it is as singles:

And here is some of the final yarn with the unspun fiber:

It’s funny; I loved it as single plies on the bobbin, hated the 2-ply yarn as I spun, and then fell in love again when I saw the skeins all laid out. I’m not sure what it was about the bobbins of plied yarn, but I very seriously considered stopping, switching to Navajo plying, and calling it a bust.

Now, I’m glad that I didn’t.

I love the way the colors mix in the skeins. Each strand looks like a different colorway, but somehow they all go together.

See those blues and greens in there? There’s even some gray. I’m not really sure where they came from, but I’m glad they stopped in for a visit. This section of the skein seems to contain an entire rainbow:

The color mixing reminds me of the yarn for my sunset sweater, which knit up beautifully in the end. I’m excited to see what happens with this…I think it will make for a similarly interesting knit.

The only thing missing is yardage. You may remember that I spun 8 oz of Falkland a while back, and ended up with 950 yards. That’s a pretty good yield for 8 oz, but it’s a little shy of what I’d like to knit a sweater, even a lacy one.

When I dyed the fall colors fiber, I went up to 12 oz of Finn. I figured that should give me 1100-1200 yards, which is much more within my comfort range for a sweater. You can see that the two fibers spun up to very much the same weight.

When I gave Anne her fiber, she said lightly “oh, I’ll put it on the blog.” Then she said two words that puzzled me at first, and then sent me scurrying back to the dye studio in a hurry.

She said “be ready.”

It hadn’t really occurred to me that I might end up with a few extra visitors from all this, and that those visitors might like to find something in the shop to look at when they arrive. Gulp.

So, tonight I’m getting ready for visitors. (If you’re new, never, ever feel pressured to buy…I’ve written at length about my thoughts on that here.)

Fortunately, I always have a million color ideas floating around in my head that I just haven’t gotten to yet. I try to spread out the dyeing, so that it’s not all dyeing all the time around here. (I do like to spend some time talking about knitting, after all.) That inevitably means that there are color combinations that end up on the back burner, waiting until the time is right. I spent yesterday evening putting a few of those ideas onto fiber:

It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, as you might imagine. Of course, there are the fall colors, inspired by the beautiful foliage at Rhinebeck:

My favorite of these is yet to come; try as we might, we just couldn’t capture its color without natural light.

I also tried some brown, since I am always fascinated by the colors of fields lying fallow in the fall. There’s that deep, deep brown of the wet earth, mixed with the lighter brown of the fading grass. It’s the perfect backdrop for the fiery fall display.

Then, there were a few bolder colorways. The first reminds me of the sky at sunset:

The second was a bit of a game. Somewhere in conversation over dinner on Saturday, someone suggested the Irish Pirate as a name for a colorway. Since I love to play with suggestions (leave some in the comments, or submit them on the color suggestion page), I decided to give it a try. I ended up with bright, bright Kelly green mixed in with black and golden treasure.

That got me into the mood for green, so I added in this mixture of saturated emerald and black:

I also played around with olive, mixed with purple and gray, in a colorway based on the sage plant growing in my garden.

And then, because one can never have enough purple and gray, I dyed another with those two by themselves.

This is probably my favorite colorway of the day. Teal and black have been jumping out at me all over the place this fall, and I have been dying to put them together on fiber.

I just love the way this one came out. I used both turquoise and teal; the turquoise is lighter, and really pops out and lightens the colors. The teal is a deeper color and makes a more subtle contrast with the black.

There was just a little black dye left over, so I mixed it with deep reds and purples in a colorway I’ve been dreaming of for a long time now. There’s a particular picture of black cherries that I took a year or two ago, and I’ve been wanting to play with some of those shades. I can’t find the picture right off, but this fiber matches the image I have in my minds’ eye.

So that’s that. A big batch of random colorways, pulled from the back burners and neglected shelves of my mind. Things I’ve been wanting to dye, but hadn’t gotten to, for whatever reason. A wide sampling of the colors that we love, but only the smallest bit of all the possibilities out there. If you’re new here, welcome. There’s something for everyone, I hope. They’re all up on Etsy, should you see something that you absolutely must have.

With the next post, we should be back to our regularly scheduled content. I have fallen a bit behind the blogging wagon, so I have some catching up to do. More on that soon!

Before I go into the dye studio or sit down to plan a colorway, I usually set some broad goals about what I want to accomplish. Sometimes, I’m trying to pull out colors from a particular photo. Sometimes, there’s a color combination that I think is interesting and want to play with. And sometimes, I want to dye for a specific person.

The last one can be tricky, because it’s hard to know exactly what a persons’ signature colors are, unless you know them very well. But every once in a while I run across a color that just absolutely belongs to someone I know.

I don’t think that everybody does this, but for some reason my brain stores colors for all the people I meet. It’s just one of those details that is part of knowing someone for me – like recognizing their face, their style, their favorite foods or the  smell of their go-to perfume. I stash away details like what color lights up their eyes, or highlights their skin tone, or matches their favorite piece of jewelry.

Sometime last year, I was sampling away in the dye studio, and that gold emerged. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a color for Anne Hanson. (You can see why here, here, and here.)

If there is one person responsible for getting me thoroughly hooked on knitting, it is probably Anne. I stumbled across her blog sometime in 2006 or 2007, and immediately fell in love with her designs. I had been knitting for a while, but was getting bored with stockinette and the knit-purl stitches. Her blog opened up a whole new world of lace, and watching her designs develop caught my interest so deeply that I began to create my own. I haven’t been bored with my knitting since.

Now, I don’t know Anne. Not personally, anyway. I’ve lurked on her blog for years, been constantly inspired by her work, and have learned a lot about designing and about writing from following her blog. When I began selling my own products, I looked to her to figure out how to talk about things for sale without making a sales pitch, while still generating real content for the blog. I met both Jocelyn and Amanda through her blog, and Ellen and Jan through Jocelyn. Through some funny twist of fate, more than half of the people that read this blog ended up over here because of Anne. But I don’t know her.

So I set aside the color, as something to ponder for another time.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to Ellen about meeting up at Rhinebeck. It occurred to me that Anne would also be there. The color popped back into my head, and refused to leave. Something said that it was time. There is nothing I love more than cooking up a surprise gift, so I set off in search of the perfect fiber.

After a little while with my sample cards, I came up with this combination:

I just love the way the gray and olive green bring out the richness in the gold. This was my colorway.

It took a couple of tries, but this is what I came up with:

The fiber stowed away in my luggage when I flew to Rhinebeck on Friday. We looked for Anne on Saturday, but didn’t find her. (If I had been caught up on my blog reading, I would have known that there was a Knitspot picnic at noon, but I was behind and didn’t know.)

On Sunday, I was wandering around the market when I saw a familiar face. Kim was standing in front of one of the show barns, and Anne was with her.  Kim took the obligatory fan girl picture, and I tried not to gush too much. Fiber changed hands, and I think she liked it.

I love when things come full circle like this. Anne inspired me to knit, taught me a lot about writing and design, and introduced me to Jocelyn, who introduced me to Ellen, who brought me to Rhinebeck, where I met Anne. Little ripples going out, and coming back again.

I hope she enjoys her fiber.

There has been lots of crafting going on around here lately, despite the time crunch from the commute (or perhaps because of it – being busy has a way of focusing my energy and getting a lot more done in less time).

The fall colors are starting to appear on the trees all around us. Just this week, the edges of the highway have gone from green to reds and yellows. The tree in front of our house is an explosion of gold and orange. I’m delighted to say that some of those colors are also showing up on my spinning wheel:

That’s the “reds” colorway for the fall colors sweater.  I think it’s going to work. Very excited.

Branden’s sweater has been growing by leaps and bounds, since rounds and rounds of endless stockinette is the perfect way to come off of a 2 hour traffic jam. I bound off the body last night, and have started the first sleeve. I love knitting Branden raglan sweaters; the construction means that the sleeves are already knit to the armpit by the time I split off onto holder needles, so finishing up the rest is much faster than knitting the whole thing in one go.

With that getting so close to done, I’m starting to scramble around for another project for the queue. I think I’m going to dye up that Falkland that I spun a few months ago.  I’ve been dithering about whether or not to order more fiber and spin some more, just to be sure I’ll have enough. But I do have 950 yards, and I know which lace I want to knit and what color, and I think I might have enough. (Plus, I’m itching to knit it, it’s half designed already, and I am not feeling patient. True confessions.)

I just finished setting the dye on some samples, and I’m pretty sure I have the colors I’m looking for when they’ve cooled enough to check. Fingers crossed that it comes out like I expect, and I’ll be dyeing the yarn tonight or tomorrow, and swatching soon thereafter.

I’ve also been slowly chipping away at teasing open the locks on the Gulf Coast fleece. This isn’t my favorite part of fleece processing, truth be told, so I have to do it in spurts here and there. But on Tuesday I finally washed everything one more time to (hopefully) get out the last of the lanolin, and I now have quite a pile of fluff in the basement.

That little bit in the box is all that I have left to tease open and rewash, and I’m hoping to do that today, since it means that I can go sit outside and enjoy this glorious weather we’ve been having. Once the washing is finished, I’ll move onto the combing/carding, which should be more fun, since it will get me that much closer to actually spinning the stuff!

I dropped Branden off at the airport this morning; he’s on his way to Austria for a week for work. That leaves me the whole weekend and most evenings to putter around on fiber things, so I’m hoping to finish up a few more loose ends. Or I may just sit and spin the rest of that fall fiber, as it is begging me to do. Doesn’t sound like a bad plan, really.

For now, I’m off to wash those samples and see what new colors await!

Fall is my absolutely favorite season. I love the weather. I love the colors.

Red and orange have been slowly making their way into my color palette lately, and I’ve been thinking of knitting a fall colors sweater. It’s been percolating in the background for quite a while now, but I’ve never quite gotten around to it. A few weeks ago, I finally decided that I want something a little on the light side, and lacy.

Last weekend, I indulged in some dyeing time for myself, and came up with 12 oz oz of Finn in vibrant fall tones.

I wanted to calm the colors to meet the earth tones (to make it wearable for me), and I wanted to end up with fairly subtle shading in the final yarn, so that I can knit lace. I also wanted to keep all the variety and purity of color that goes with the season.

That’s a bit of a tall order.

I ended up dyeing two separate colorways, one for each ply. I’ve been thinking of experimenting with spinning mixed-ply yarns, and this seemed like a good opportunity. I dyed one colorway with the browns and olive greens, leaning all the way down to gold.

And one with the bold reds and oranges, to keep them from mixing with the brown and muddying.

The color segments are relatively large, so there should be fairly long stretches of a single color that then gradually fade into the next with spinning. I’m hoping that the brown ply will ground the reds when they’re plied together, and that having two separately varying plies (with relatively similar color values within each one) will limit the amount of variegation I get in the final yarn.

I’m not sure that any of that will come out as I’m hoping it will, but so far I really like the looks of the two colorways wound together.