Rainy Days

Usually, I'm a great person for rainy days. Give me a good book, a big cup of tea, a spinning wheel, and a napping cat, and I'm happy. But we've had a spate of more than a week of grey skies here recently, and yeah, I'm about done. My friend Rachel was feeling the same way this past weekend, so we buzzed down to the last day of the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival on a whim. In a word? Rejuvenation.

Now I just need another fiber festival this weekend to do the same thing!

In the Quiet Times

I am coming to the tail-end of a two-week knitting moratorium. After having knit two sample garments for Quince and two samples garments for myself in the space of a month and a half, my wrists were in dire need of a break. At first, I was unsure of what to do with myself while watching Netflix at night (by the way, Downton Abbey? Oh my goodness). But my mom reminded me of the hurried and breathless question I got to ask Neil Gaiman in the signing line in Wellington this time last year--if one is working for one's self, what does one do when the phone isn't ringing? What do you do in the down times? He said that that was the best time for exploration, for trying new things, for making messes and not having a deadline to clean them up by. So, in the last two weeks, I have:

• made progress on my quilt
• finished writing two patterns
• listened to good music
• hung out with friends
• got my hands thoroughly covered in dye with the best knitting group in the world, as wonderfully documented by Leah and Aimee
• read some old favorites
• spun some frog-hair silk for my knitolution
• cooked yummy food
• I even made time to detangle skeins of yarn, one of my favorite guilty pleasures
• and naps! How could I forget the naps?
  

So, all in all, it was a good, if knitting-less, couple of weeks! However, duty calls, and there are a few more samples calling my name. How would you spend two weeks without knitting?

Nesting

The weather is getting warmer here in Maine; the grass is a vivid, emerald green (thanks to the rain of the last few days), the spring flowers are popping up everywhere, and, in hope, I have begun wearing sandals every day (even if I really shouldn't). But, even though we're moving towards spring, my crafting dreams recently have been about the perfect things for a midwinter night: bulky, colorful knit blankets, and jewel-toned handmade quilts.

When the Mitered Cross Blanket pattern came out, I loved it, but was initially dubious about the amount of Noro it needed. While I love Noro, the stuff ain't the cheapest, and a blanket's worth seemed a little extravagant. So the pattern sat on the backburner for a while, until I remembered the yarn I had dyed using Leethal's long-stripe dyeing with recycled yarn idea, where, instead of unraveling the thrifted sweater and then dyeing it, you dye it in stripes while it's still in pieces, like a sock blank.

I'm planning on pairing it with a deep cocoa-colored natural Irish yarn from the erstwhile Irish Ewe. Of course, it may be a long time until I actually get around to knitting it. . .

The other project I'm actually working on is a quilt based on the color scheme and lay-out of this pattern:

(from imagingermonkey on Flickr)

I grew up in a quilter's household, surrounded by my mom's fabric stash and tools, so it was a delight to come back to that world. About half the fabric in my quilt is actually from my mom's stash, and it feels wonderful to put all the eclectic pieces together into something beautiful.

I spent a great day over at Leah's house this past weekend working on it and hogging the ironing board, and while there's still a lot to get done, it's amazing to get back into this world and play.

As for things that I'm actually getting done, rather than just dreaming about, here's a sneak peek of the cowl pattern that will be coming out in September:

Stay tuned! In the meantime, I'll keep nesting and dreaming of chilly days, scented by woodsmoke, where I'll get to wrap up in my cozy quilt and blanket with a cup of tea and daydream.

Back in the Saddle

(The title is a hopeful reference to my horrid blogging habits, but since there wasn't really a saddle to begin with, the metaphor may not be apropos. Any suggestions?)

We're just going to ignore the fact that I've been gone for two months. The cool things in that time?

• there was over $800NZ raised for Red Cross NZ Earthquake Relief through the sales of the Christchurch Shawl. Knitters are awesome.
• I have knocked out all but two WIPs on my list--the socks for my Sock of the Month Club that I started in August (oops), and the socks that were one of my brother's Christmas presents (double oops). But! Since the last blog post, I've finished: 2 vests, 1 camisole, 1 shrug, 1 tee, 1 sweater, 1 cowl, 2 warps (1 scarf and 1 couple of rugs) and 1 pair of socks. Fear my productivity!
• Unfortunately, most of that knitting is secret. Well, internet secret. So I can show you pictures of. . . the socks! And that's about it.

These socks have been on the backburner forever, which is a shame, since they're awesome and I've rarely taken them off since I finished. My basic sock pattern, knit on size 2s in 4-row stripes (as per usual). I spun the yarn prior to my second Tour de Fleece a couple years ago, and it's amazing what those twenty days of concentrated spinning did to my yarn quality. While this is soft, squishy, and lots of fun, it was pretty underplied and uneven. However, the socks are holding up like steel, so who knows? The fiber was hand-dyed from Fat Cat Knits, in the colorways Brutus and Raja. Ravell'd here. (Incidentally, eagle-eyed readers of the blog will recognize this combination from the first pair of socks finished in New Zealand. I am glad I get to keep these!)

There's lots else going on, but we'll see if I can spread it out and actually have some consistent blog content. Plus, the laptop battery's dying. Priorities!

Christchurch

Well, I had hoped that my next blog post would be a joyous happy one, but I've been glued to the news for the past few days, watching the crisis in Christchurch unfold. I have never had such feelings of helplessness and sadness, and while I've donated (Red Cross NZ), I wish there was more I could do. So here's what I can do. 90% of sales of my Christchurch Shawl will go to the earthquake relief effort in New Zealand. You can buy the pattern on Ravelry here, Etsy here, or in kit form from Little Country Wools here. Every little bit counts, and hopefully us knitters can do our part!

Looking Back, and Looking Forward

After coming home in the wee small hours from a lovely New Year's party with wonderful friends, I finished the last few rows of ribbing on a sweater, and thought about what a momentous year 2010 had been for me.


(waist decreases and increases in a pattern modified from a vintage Swedish cross-stitch book, in hand-dyed Brown Sheep Naturespun and a hand-dyed vintage farm yarn. I'm nothing if not an over-achiever.)

From my last six months in New Zealand, to moving into my own place here in Portland, to trying to make a go of it in the fiber and yarn industry, to putting my knitting patterns out there for the first time. . . I've hypothesized that the '0 years (1990, 2000) in my life were the big ones, and this year has definitely lived up to it.


(pre-blocking, mid-snow)

I honestly couldn't tell you what 2011 will bring for me. Rhinebeck? SOAR? Back to Grinnell for Reunion? Saying, "screw it all!" and jumping on a plane to South India to intern at a textile center? Spontaneous dinners with friends, bad movie dates, tons of cooking, baking, knitting, weaving, spinning, making meep noises at the cat, and goodness knows what else? All I know is that 2011 will be a good one. And I hope it's a wonderful one for you, too.



If nothing else, 2011 will definitely be full of me making goofy faces while trying to model a sweater in the middle of a cemetery. (Ravell'd here.)

It's underground knitting time here right now, as I frantically work on half-finished Christmas presents and try to figure out the most attractive way to package them still on the needles. But one of the cool things I've been working on at the Fiber Gallery is rehabbing an old Macomber 32" loom that my boss picked up a couple weekends ago. She's a beaut! Dark, luminous mahogany wood, quirky brass pivots and fittings, and a great sense of history.

She's also got this one fantastic detail:

Serial number 1. How cool is that?

We're still waiting on a bunch of parts from Macomber, but I jury-rigged it and threaded a simple diagonal twill in merino/tencel, with a hand-dyed cotton warp. The one problem?

Yes, Ms. Cleaver, it's pink. Sigh.

p.s. still looking for a Christmas present for someone obsessed with yarn and fiber? I've put together a collection of my fiber photography into an adorable desktop calendar. It's basically a beefcake calendar, but with fiber instead of naked men. I promise there are no naked men.