The Second Simple Things

On the way home from MDSW, I realised with a start that the following weekend was Mother’s Day and, having just finished and falling in love with my cobbled-together version of Mary-Heather’s Simple Things shawlette, I decided to quickly knit one up for my mum.

I cast on the next day, using the Rumba yarn I’d picked up at MDSW and knit as fast as two demanding toddlers would let me.  Big needles (8mm) helped it move along quickly, and I finished it just in time.

Unlike the previous version, I loved this yarn, loved the way the deep raspberry colour melted into the caramel brown.  And I kept asking myself if Mum wouldn’t really be perfectly happy with a hastily bought bottle of perfume…?  But I was a good daughter and gave it away on the Sunday.  Mum was suitably delighted, which softened the blow.

I note, however, that she hasn’t worn it once so far — never mind that the weather has never dipped below 70 since — and if I don’t see it round her neck soon, I may be stealing it back!

I love the way the yarn overs came out using bigger needles.  There’s something really graphic about the big stitches, the big holes.  It looks to me a little like this scarf has a spine… looks a bit like the skeleton of a dinosaur in the natural history museum.  That’s really weird, but I kinda like it!

Simple Things

As I said when I started this blog, I never finish anything, knitting-wise.  I have hundreds, thousands… nay, millions of unfinished projects lurking in dark corners of the house, all hoping that the sun will shine on them again one day.  It’s just get so excited by trying new things — new stiches, new patterns, new shaping, new yarn — that it’s impossible to resist until I’ve finished whatever I’m currently working on, and I find myself casting on something new — just to see — before the current project is even cool on the needles.  And that’s ok, because I don’t knit for the final product — I’m a process knitter.  It matters less to me to be that I come away with something at the end than that I just enjoy the knitting.  The click-clack of the needles, and feel of the yarn in my hands, the smell of the wool, and the rhythm of the stitches…  That’s what it’s about for me.

But when I saw Mary-Heather’s Simple Things shawlette, I wanted it.  I wanted it.  And that was a strange sensation — and one I didn’t trust.  But I realised the project was small enough and quick enough that I might actually have  a shot at getting it done before I moved on, like a drifter, to the next shiny thing that caught my eye.

No pattern available yet, but I studied Mary-Heather’s photos and reckoned I could work out at least a good approximation of the pattern.  And so I looked through my stash for some decent yarn to try it out with, and cast on.

The funny thing is, I didn’t like the yarn as I was knitting.  I wasn’t sure I liked it in the ball, but the more I knit with it, the less I liked it.  The colours jarred.  And pooled.  It felt scratchy.  It was too marroon-y, and I didn’t like the yellow or the orange bits.  Time and again I thought to myself that I would just rip it all out and start over with another yarn…  but I never had one to hand at that moment, so I carried on.

I finished it on the way home from MDSW and here’s the crazy thing about this scarf: as soon as I put it on, I loved the yarn.  Loved it!  Couldn’t stop looking at it!  Then I took it off and looked at it and…  I didn’t like it.  Put it back on, and loved it…  Took it off again, and didn’t like it.

And, I still don’t like it.  Until I put it on — and then I love it.  I just totally don’t get that.

MDSW: A Day of Fibre Heaven!

Once upon a time, there was a girl who went to Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  And she had a fabulous time.

And she got lots and lots of loot.  And she spent waaaaaay too much money.  And she met Jess and Mary-Heather from Ravelry.  And she ran into her friend Cosy.  And she met up with friends from her knitting group. And she met with a cyber-friend that she’d never before got the chance to meet in person.  And her husband and children were bored to tears, but they were very, very patient  for her sake.

And she listened to music.  And talked to sheep.  And she smelled all the wonderful fair-food smells.  And she looked at fibre and touched fibre and smelled fibre and lusted after the fibre and… and… and…

It was all too much.  She thought about blogging about but there was so much to say, she didn’t know where to start!  So she never did.  And, as time passed, more wonderful fiber-y things happened that she really wanted to blog about, but the first things about MDSW hadn’t yet been said, so the next things had to wait in the queue… and so they never got said either

And she thought they’d never get said.  And she thought it was all too much.  And she nearly gave up.

And then…  she told herself to get over it already and just GET ON WITH IT.  It’s only a bloody blog post!  Sheesh!

So here you go, dear readers…  Without further ado, I would like to introduce you to my MDSW swag…

Some gorgeous purpley-bluey-greeny top from Fat Cat Knits…

I could not resist this top from Woolerina…

Some fun dyed Wenslydale locks that I thought would be great to just drop into my spinning here and there…

I loved this purple and green from Dancing Leaf Farm so much that I bought two…

Some top in random colours from Stony Mountain, to spin on my spindle…

I got this yarn from Dancing Leaf Farm to make a Mother’s Day gift for my mum, and then immediately regretted not getting more!…

And finally, as I was looking at all these colours, I thought, “Maybe I should get in on this dyeing lark myself…” so I picked up two bags of undyed top from Little Barn, just to play with…

Ply Me A New Look

When I first tried it, I wasn’t expecting Navajo plying to produce a completely different yarn from regular plying, but it does.  I tried it on my drop spindle, using multi-coloured singles (where I had spun a little purple for a while, and then switched to a little blue, and then green, and so on).

When I plyed these singles in the normal way, I got a barber-pole effect across the whole yarn like this:

But, when I Navajo plyed it, the yarn came out multi-coloured in sections, like these two:

Both from the same singles, but what a difference!

It’s logical, of course.  In regular plying, you are bringing two separate singles together and, if they are different colours at the point where they ply together, then that barber-pole striping effect is what happens.  Whereas in Navajo plying, you are taking one single and doubling it over on itself (well, tripling it over, actually) so, in a multi-coloured single like I was using, you are plying like with like for a while, then switching to another colour and plying a new like with like, and so on.

I find the difference really intriguing, and I can’t decide which result I like better.  Which do you like more?

First Navajo Plying — Success!

Navajo plying…  It’s something I’d heard about but just couldn’t wrap my head around — how can you get a multi-strand ply out of only one single?  And, it kind of scared me.

I’m back to spinning after several years’ break (I found I couldn’t balance a baby, a grab-everything toddler, and a wheel spinning at high velocity all at once) and have been experimenting with plying.  It’s not something I’ve done a lot of before, because I always spun for weaving, so the process stopped at singles.  Plying those singles is something I’ve only done a couple of times — years ago — and I wasn’t feeling confident in reviving my skills in normal plying, let alone learning something that sounds as downright weird as Navajo plying does.

But I watched a few instructional videos on YouTube and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t nearly as frightening a process as I’d feared.  Within minutes, I’d got the concept in my head and my wheel out from the corner and, after a somewhat shaky start, I hit my rhythm and that was it — I was off!

And what’s more, I was really enjoying it.  I found it was much easier to control the tpi (twists per inch) with Navajo plying than I’ve found with regular plying, and I find the three-ply it produces much more finished-looking than the two-ply I’m used to.

I enjoyed it so much, I couldn’t stop plying.  I finished the denim-coloured yarn, and then moved onto some silk that had been on the bobbin for… well, probably two years, and then onto every other single I could find.  What was I worried about?  Navajo plying is fab!

The roving that spun up so beautifully is from CosyMakes.

Rains, Pours

I’ve got my knitting mojo back! I decided I wanted to use some yarn from my stash to make a lacy dress for E2, and found a pattern in KnitSimple that inspired me and gave me direction. I had new design ideas bouncing around in my head all last night. Went to bed hardly being able to wait for morning to come so I could get started!

And then I spotted an interesting design on Ravelry for an entirely different project — an intriguing scarf. There’s no pattern for it, but I studied the pictures… and studied and studied… until I think I figured out how it was done, and now all I want to do is cast on and see if I’m right. A whole month, totally dry and then… BAM! My mojo is back!

That’s  the knitlust.

Busy, but Quiet About It

You might think I’d not been doing anything, but I have — I just haven’t been talking about it much.  In fact, I’d rather let the pictures do the talking…

I finally dug my wheel out of the moving boxes.  Here’s the result: handspun Merino top from Stony Mountain Fibers…

I’ve also been doing a lot of spinning on the beautiful spindle that Sheila at Journeywheel picked for me.  Here’s my first attempt at plying on a spindle…

Here’s the chunky jacket I was designing for my daughter, using Creme Puff yarn from Decadent Fibers, and it was going fantastically when…  when…  I realised I can’t find the second skein!!!  It wasn’t in the moving box I thought it was, and the garage is full to bursting with boxes… it could be in any of them!  This has been quite a blow, and I have completely lost my knitting mojo.  I just can’t find anything I feel like knitting now…

And here’s the Debbie Bliss baby cardigan I was working on.  It’s come out so lovely, and I am really pleased with it.

Really, this cardi should have had an unhappy ending, because my daughter would have surely outgrown it long before I finished it, if it weren’t for the beating she’s taken from her food allergies that stopped her growing for seven months.  Getting her diagnosed and managing her condition has been a really difficult experience for her and for me, but the silver lining is that she stayed small enough that this cardi fits her perfectly now!  It feels a bit sacriligious to say that though…

Holding Pattern

Did I say I was going to sort out my project-list and blog about it?  Did I say that?

Yes, I remember (and the proof is staring out at me accusingly in the post below).  No sooner had I said than my body decided to start a hormone-surge that has had me spending every free moment asleep in bed, rather than knitting or felting (or cleaning, or caring for my babies, or talking to my husband, or blogging…).  I have not touched my knitting in at least a fortnight and I am missing it so!

If the hormones settle out a bit this week, I hope to do as I promised and get my projects lined up all neatly.  I’m also considering going to a new knitting group this Friday that I’ve found out about.  This would be the first knitting group I’ve ever gone to uninvited — I saw it listed on a blog I stumbled across and there was a general invitation for anyone to join, but I’ve never really done that before.  I am a little nervous.  But I am also new here, and how else does a person get started in a new place than by being bold and making the first move?  So…  if I get my courage up…  perhaps I will.

I will let you know.  Watch this space.

Breathe Deeply and… Begin Again

I haven’t been writing about my fibre-crafts lately, but I have been taking a lot of comfort in them. There has been so much going on in my life lately — an international move is disruptive, to say the least — that the quick moments I grab here and there to do something quiet, creative, rhythmic, and calming have been absolute sanity-savers for me.

As my life has begun to fall apart, so has my control over the tendancy I have to give into my knitlust and start project after project with no rhyme or reason, and without ever managing to finish anything. In all the stress and difficulty of the past few months, I have somehow managed to start so many things that I can hardly remember them all, let alone keep track of them …and let alone make any progress.

But I desperately need to regain some order, both in my fibre-crafts and in my life in general, so I will begin here. In the next few days, I will begin documenting my projects and my progress — and weeding out those that were created less out of genuine interest and more in a wild attempt to soothe my stress at the time.

And once that’s done, and I can see clearly again what I have and what I want to work on, I hope to make some good progress, and find myself calmed again by that lovely sense of satisfaction that comes from accomplishing a long-standing project instead of the hyped-up feeling that comes from diving — lustily — into a million new ones.

Slow Progress

The baby hasn’t given me much opportunity to knit this past week.  I was doing my knitting whilst breastfeeding her but, just lately, she’s realised there’s something very exciting going on behind her head and started flailing her free arm around behind her to try to grab it.  That messes up my knitting either because she gets hold of it and I drop stitches or else my tension just suddenly goes all over the place …and it darned well HURTS when she pulls away like that.  So, I haven’t been doing much knitting lately.

But I have been craving it.  Even when I’m too busy to pick up my needles, when I’m cooking mini-lunches and folding laundry, I find myself knitting in my mind, allowing my subconscious to relax into that nice rhythm of needles and stitches.  That’s when I know I really need it.

I treated myself to some nice wooden 12mm Brittany needles from Yarnsmith for the maroon cardigan, and that alone inspired me to go back to it with as much gusto as time will allow.  It’s lovely to knit on wooden needles — makes all the difference in the world.  The cardigan has grown surprisingly quickly, despite how little I’ve been knit, and it’s quite exciting to see it take shape.  It deserves more time than I’ve been able to give it, but I am determined to put that right as soon as possible!