RareSteek's Stuff

Boxing Day -- Time to Post

2008-12-26T05:40:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time since I posted. No legitimate reason for this, just a few excuses. The usual busyness, and I admit that I still find it difficult, slow and frustrating to manipulate this process, insert pictures, and the whole gamut of things involved in pulling a blog together. I know, I know -- practise, practise, practise, which is also what my spinning mentors tell me. Sigh.

Anyway, it's Boxing Day, and although John and I will be heading off to Toronto in a few hours for dinner with friends, I decided to take a stab at this again. I hope all of you had a Happy Christmas, or whatever the occasion is that you are celebrating this time of year, even if just a break in your routine.

Since my last post there have been some things happening, although nothing too dramatic and out of the ordinary.

My guild, 'The Niagara Handweavers and Spinners Guild" moved. We found quarters in the Historical Museum in Welland, Ontario. And so we packed up and moved over a few days. The new space is great. Lots more room for meetings and the looms, and it is rent free, since we are considered to fit well with the museum's mandate. We are merely required to do some display and demo stuff from time to time. Thank you , Mr. Carnegie, for your libraries generously donated to so many communities in North America and which are still being used in imaginative and educational ways!

I also bought a Drum Carder a couple of weeks ago. It belonged to a lady in my guild who is getting elderly and so is divesting herself of of a lot of her equipment. When I went to Dorothy's house to pick the Drum Carder up, I was amazed at her weaving stuff, including, what she believes is the largest loom in Canada -- 120 inches wide (yes, that is 10 feet wide fabric it will produce!) It works best with 2 people, although there is a device so one person can do it.

The Drum Carder I got, although it appears to be 'no name' brand, is in excellent working condition and I am looking forward to working with it, especially in experimenting with colour blending. Dorothy let me have it for $175 which I thought was a good bargain.

I have also been doing some drop spindle spinning. Spinning singles in two different colourways -- Louet's Northern Lights line of space dyed wool top, I did some named "Ocean Waves" on my Tom Forrester spindle.

And the I did the other colourway, named I believe, "Skittles" (which I think is some sort of candy similar to our 'Smarties' although maybe not. lol) I did it on my new Bosworth spindle that I got at Rhinebeck. I am not sure I like the spindle though, it has a tendency to only spin for a very short time and then start travelling in the opposite direction and 'unspinning'. Now, I don't want to blame Mr. Bosworth, since I am far from being an expert on the drop spindle, so perhaps I am doing something wrong and it will take a steeper learning curve than I anticipated. However I do like the fine yarn that is finally produced.

And then I plied these two singles together and I really like the result. The colours never come out very well for me in these photos, but here is what it sort of looks like. I am in the process of doing some more, and now I have to decide what to do with it. I am thinking, at this point, of either trying my first EZ 'Baby Surprise Jacket', or maybe that 'Morning Surf' scarf that was on the cover of a recent SpinOff magazine. However, it will most likely end up sitting in my stash for forever and a day.

John has been busy dyeing with all his plants and twigs and things, including the most foul smelling fermented Eucalyptus you could imagine. He started it in the kitchen but I made him take it outside shortly into the process. When I THINK of eucalytus, I think Vick's Vapour Rub, right? Wrong! Vick's is always a comforting smell to me, redolent of colds, flannel pajamas, and my mother rubbing it on my chest and dabbing a small glob of it at the base of each nostril before putting me to bed.

Fermented Eucalyptus, on the other hand, has a smell more reminiscent of the cold congealed vomit of a Koala bear. However there were some nice colours from it. Unfortunately we still have two huge leaf bags of eucalytus cuttings on our porch, since John had people at the nursery save them for him in their pruning.

Our house is gradually filling up with balls and skeins of John's experiments in colour and vegetable matter. I cannot complain, however, since I contribute at least as much to the mess with my fleeces, rovings and tops as well as my mammoth yarn stash. (Speaking of which, a local, lovely high end yarn store is having a 'boxing day' sale starting tomorrow. So John wants to go, so I know we will each add more to the mess as well. We do tend to egg each other on in unfortunate ways!

John has been natural dyeing, as I said, and I have been experimenting with acid dyes. My OHS spinning programme homework includes a 'colour graduation' assignment, in which we have to spin and dye 10 skeins of yarn in which one colour is used but with increasing intensity --- 10%, 20%, 30% etc. I did mine last Friday when we stayed home because of a huge blizzard. It was a lovely day, I do enjoy being snowed in if I have the luxury of not having to be anywhere. The work went fairly well, although the subtle colour gradation does not show up so very well in this photo. The extreme left skein is the natural colour of the yarn. The shining glints are small plastic bags holding a lock of the dyed unspun fleece.

Of course I have also been knitting. Socks finished and new ones started, scarves started and set aside for a while, and so on. I have also been plugging away at the current sweater I am working on. The basic pattern is from 'Guy Knits' in the Best of Knitter's series by XrX books. I like the colourway a lot, and although you have to keep track, it is really not a hard knit at all. It looks more impressive than it is, simply being a slip-stitch pattern (which I have never done before). The yarn I am using, for the main, teal-turquoise part is Brown Sheep's 'Nature Spun' in a colour called Hurricane Seas, and the variegated colourway is Noro's Silk Garden Lite in colour #2033.

Here is a closeup of the back and a sleeve in progress. The colours, as usual, are not true, but you can get the idea. I am using 4.5 mm needle for the work (3.5 for the cuffs etc). I did a swatch with a larger size (4.5) but did not like the drape of the fabric. Now, I have one more sleeve left to go, then putting it all together which is my least favourite part.

We had a lovely Christmas dinner with friends in St. Catharines yesterday. I gave Fran some of my handspun yarn as a gift. She had admired this particular one for a long time so I surprised her with 3 skeins of it (It weighed out at a pound in total). It is very uneven, one of my early spinning efforts, but as they say, people don't have to know it wasn't planned that way. The top I used was Louet's 'Soysilk', although at this point I can't remember the name of the colourway. Some of you may recognise it. I think I got the top as one of the door prizes at the Men's Spring Knitting Retreat in May held at Easton Mountain near Saratoga Springs in New York State. http://www.eastonmountain.com/ And I spun two singles and then plied them on each other, letting the colours fall where they may. I am pleased with the way it looks.

Speaking of Easton Mountain, I have also registered for the next Men's Spring Knitting Retreat to be held again on the Victoria Day weekend in 2009. Very much looking forward to it and seeing all the guys again. It is amazing how this thing has taken off.

Well, folks, I think this is all for now. Look forward to seeing some of you in the near future, and hearing from more of you over the weeks ahead. I hope that all of you have a healthy, prosperous, and peaceful 2009.

Easton Mountain and Rhinebeck 08

2008-10-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

I hadn't been thinking of going to the New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, but then my friend Ted http://knitterguy.typepad.com/my_weblog/ suggested I might like to drive down with him. After some toing and froing I was able to arrange it, and I am so very glad I did. So Ted arrived at my place on the Thursday night, stayed over and we got an early start on Friday morning.

After Coffee and something to eat we started out on the long drive to Easton Mountain.

We arrived at Easton and it was just as beautiful as I remembered from the Men's Spring Knitting Retreat there last May. Although this time there was the added bonus of the fall colours.

Frosty morning, crisp air, peace, quiet, lovely.

Early Saturday morning we set out for Rhinebeck. Dave and Scott, from Easton, Ted and I. It was a lovely drive, about two hours or so, through the Hudson River Valley. Great scenery and colours.

We arrived early at Rhinebeck. As the day went on the crowds grew. But it was amazing. I have never seen so much fibre and fibre related stuff. Sheep and alpacas and llamas, border collies and wheels and yarns and rovings and...and.....and. It was rather overwhelming, but wonderful.

Gotta love those Jacob sheep!

And the Leicester Longwools.

But the best thing of all was meeting friends past and new. I meet a few people from the OHS spinning certificate course I had attended in August. Including Johanna, Danny, Alanna and Edy.

Alanna, Edy and some guy.

As always, we had a good silly laugh, until Alanna got a sliver in her butt from the bench. Actually, come to think of it, that was pretty funny too, watching the crowd watching her squirming around with her hand down her pants.

Ted seems to know half the world, and so I was able to ride on his coat tails and meet some wonderful, funny, clever fibreholics of all sorts. As well as hooking up with a bunch of guys from the spring knitting retreat. Knitting retreaters Joe, Steven, Thad, and Sean.

I was also pleased to meet and get to know a bit, some people I had heard about from Ted, but never had a chance to meet. A big group of us, I think about twenty, congregated at a diner in nearby Kingston, for dinner that evening after the show was over for the day. It included guys from the kntting retreat, and other friends from Ted's circle.

Here is Lars, a new friend although I had chatted a bit online with him before, and Van and Paul from the retreat. It was an hilarious dinner, including our waitress who did a brilliant job doing her work and keeping a bunch of rowdies happy and fed. Sort of like a young Flo from 'Alice'.

Dave and Franklin Habit. My first meeting with Franklin although I had read his blog and his column in Knitting Daily with great enjoyment.

Veronik Avery was part of the gang as well. My first meeting with her although I had admired her designs on Knitty and elsewhere. She was just as elegant and chic (and fun) as her designs.

Another reason I enjoyed meeting Veronik is that I am currently working on her 'Lace Ribbon Scarf' from Knitty. Here is a picture of the work in progress.

I can't get over how big food portions are in American restaurants. I mean, Canadians are pigs, but we pale in comparison. Franklin just wanted a simple, small chef's salad. Here is what he ended up with. It was hilarious. Never eat anything bigger than your head, Franklin. That is Lars watching in bemusement.

Marilyn , the Knitting Curmudgeon just had to get out from her seat, and easier to go under than over.

After dinner the 4 of us headed back to Easton, and then Sunday went back to Rhinebeck for a few hours.

Leland (who lives at Easton) and Ted.

Then Monday morning Ted and I left for home. Ted was going to stay overnight again at my place, but decided to have a short break and head off to home to Owen Sound instead since he had to do some work Tuesday.

I had a bit of a shock when we arrived at my place. John was out but all the books and fibre that was in our office was piled through the living room. Apparently the wall of bookshelves suddenly collapsed and toppled, just failing to land on John by seconds. Glad I didn't come home and find him dead under a pile of rubble. That would be an even worse mess to clean up. :-) However, he is fine. So I have spend this morning trying to figure out how to do this blog rather than begin the real task of re-organising and culling books and stuff.

My deepest thanks to the community at Easton, to friends old and new, and to Ted for a wonderful weekend.

Boiled Grass and Cat Piss

2008-09-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

John has developed a deep interest in 'Natural Dyeing', although there really isn't all that much 'natural' about it, in many ways. :-) I remember, with amusement how my friend Ted (Knitter guyTed) sniffed when I told him. His only comment a trenchant : "Oh, the boiled grass and cat piss method."

However, as he does, John has entered into it very deeply and has been experimenting and dyeing with all sorts of mordants and plant material over the past weeks, as well as devouring book after book on the subject. Being a horticulturist by profession, I guess he has a leg-up on all this stuff, and also has access to a lot of plants that are being pruned etc. at his nursery. I must say that I am amazed with some of what he has achieved, although we do joke about our 'house brown' as the identifying hue of much of his work.

On Saturday we went out gathering various plant stuffs that John wanted to experiment with. He had spotted in the area a stand of wild helianthus (a 'Sunflower' family) that he wanted to try. So we went harvesting. It was a beautiful day for it, and enjoyable, baring a 'soaker' achieved while jumping the creek. We got some of the sunflowers, quite a lot actually. (We also got permission from the owner of the land, always a wise - and polite -- thing to do.)

And there were also some abandoned trees of various sorts, including a couple of ornamental crab apple and some pear trees. So we picked some of the little apples. That was a picky job, they were smaller than cherries. John had come across in one of his books a description of the lovely rosy red pinks you can get from them. (Hah!!)

However, we pushed on. And picked. And had a nice chat with various people who wandered along, trying to figure out what these two madmen were up to. And the weather was good. (Did I mention that?)

John had read that you could get some colours from pear tree leaves, and since there were some of them around, we gathered them as well. There was also some nice fruit just hanging unused and going to waste, so I gathered some of that to take home as well.

After getting what we wanted, we piled back into the truck. John had remembered seeing, in the ditches around our place, some wild asperagus. So we gathered some armsful of the ferns, and since they were the 'female' plants, they had the lovely red berries attached as well. He also got a bunch of willow boughs. And then, at another spot, scrambling precariously up the side of the embankment, we gathered a couple of buckets of goldenrod flowers. We had to look for a bit to find some good ones since they are past their peak here, but we managed, eventually. Then we headed home, hands sticky, with our stuff.

He started the preparation of the liquor for dyeing. Here are a couple of picturesof two of them in the process. The helianthus being made

ready for the pot, and the goldenrod in its bath simmering away.

Of course, all the yarn requires mordanting in order to take the colour. John had been preparing if for days ahead. For this batch he decided to use Alum and he also wanted to experiment with Tin as a mordant, so he prepared various yarns using each. He got some really good colours with some of the stuff, and others were pretty insipid. But he is a note taker, much better than I, so he will move on from here, having learned a lot, and trying other stuff. No cat piss yet, though. :-)

Finally, here is the result of our work on the drying rack, outside. Not bad. We didn't use all the mordanted yarn and plant material we have. That will be for another day. I also find it frustrating to get a true photograph of the colours. Some of them are more vibrant than they appear here. But it gives you an idea. I am pretty pleased with it all, and there was some good learning done each time we do this. I think John is so clever!!

Bull by the Horns -- Homogeneous Colour Blending

2008-09-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well, after all sorts of wringng of hands and procrastinating I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and begin some of my homework. I started with the assignment in colour blending to create a homogeneous yarn. It probably took me about four hours from start to having two bobbins of singles. Given my level of organisation, a good chunk of that was spent in finding things and gathering everything in one place. :-)

I started with two colours of a dyed Corriedale carded roving. The colours are not completely accurate here, but they were a kind of burnt orange and a blue/green teal. Garish, eh? Or so I thought. Just wait, it surprised me too, at the end of the day.

I took about the amount of roving of each that I figured I needed, leaving enough for the second assignment which will come later. I then divided and placed some of each colour on a card and then carded it. I quickly learned I had placed too much roving on the card as great billowing clouds of fibre puffed up. That is often my problem with carding, I have discovered. I tend to put too much fibre on the card initially. Less is more, as they say. So the second time I did much less. And less was still more, so I cut it down again. I planned on following the method Julia showed us, of creating 4 batts of blended fibre, dividing each of those into 4 and taking 1/4 from each and blending them together etc.

However, I found that I had too much fibre to work strictly in batts of four. It would have meant loading way too much on the card, so I ended up doing eight batts, This pictures shows four batts, but I confess I am cheating here. There are two stuck together in each of what looks like one. But you get the idea at least. Now, you can either blame my photography for the fact that the four batts look kind of fuzzy. ORRRR..... and this is the option I prefer, you can convince yourself they are fuzzy looking because they are so lofty and well carded. Since they are destined for woollen spinning. I prefer the latter understanidng. :-)

Anyway, I divided and carded again, mixing up sections of each batt in order to try and make them as varied as possible, but I could not strictly do the four divided by four thing since there was too much fibre. Finally I made it all into about 10 rolags. They seemed fairly well blended, but, second guessing myself as I tend to do, I started to wonder if they should be better blended, more unform and homogeneous than they were. I could still see some of the individual colours.

In her notes Julia referenced an article "Carding Beautiful Blends" by Lorraine Smith in 'Knitty,Spring 07. www.knitty.com/Issuespring07/KSblendingfibers.html Taking a cue from her method, I decided to redo things a bit. So I laid out the rolags side by side, as Lorraine did with her batts, re-drafting them all to the same, long length, and then took a bit from the end of each, carded that again, and made a new rolag. I ended up with, I believe, ten new better blended rolags. "Full speed ahead" I said to myself. " I am spinning this or I could spend days carding it over and over to try and get it perfect". These are the final rolags I spun. You can still see the two colours a bit, but I kind of like it, and decided to go with them.

And here is a photography of one of the bobbins of singles. As you can see, there is still a little colour differentiation. I am unclear as to just how much they are supposed to be "one uniform colour', but I like the tweedy yarn I ended up with, although in reality the colour is a much more dark chocolatey brown than shows here. But, it is nice and woollen in look -- lofty and all that. I am letting the two bobbins of singles rest until tomorrow when I will ply them and see what I end up with. Keep you posted (if you are still awake.)

Drop Spindling

2008-09-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

Part of the work I have to send in involves a skein of yarn created on my drop spindle. I have been practising to try and get it down. On Saturday I got this beautiful new 'Tom Forrester' drop spindle at the Waterloo County Knitter's Fair in Kitchener on Saturday. It is a beauty, a bit heavier than my Tracy Eichman spindle, also a beautiful one, that I got from Ted. They are both really nice spindles, and I am beginning, I think, to get the hang of it, but I admit that I do tend to overspin. However here is a picture of the singles I just spun from 'Norah'. I am planning on spinning a contrasting yarn and then plying the two together. I still have trouble controlling the grist of the yarn, it is all over the place, from heavy to gossamer thin. Although, I think I have begun to feel a little more in control of things the last couple of days. Its about time. :-)

In my spare moments I like to do some small mindless knitting like these socks I am working on. It is 'Regia' sock yarn in one of the new Kaffe Fassette colourways. I like them a lot. Since my feet are so big, and I dislike short socks, there is never enough yarn for me in the standard 100 gm. of sock yarn. Thus I often knit the heels and toes in a solid contrasting colour in order to stretch the yarn. I kind of like the affect. I admit, as well, no matter how often I do them, I still get a thrill a turning a heel, as here. There is really something magical in the way the heel cup begins to form as you short row back and forth.

First Blog Ever

2008-09-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

Well folks never done this before. Being an old time Scotts-English-Ontarian (read uptight) I have never been much of an emotional exhibitionist so I thought blogs weren't for me. But then as I read more and more of my friends' blogs I began to realise that they are a good way to both keep in touch and share knowledge and interests. Voila, here I am. So as I try and learn how to manipulate my way around in what is a new world to me, I hope at least some of my friends might be mildly interested in what I am up to.

I am a relatively new spinner, and did the first week of the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners Guild certificate at the Haliburton School of the Arts in Haliburton Ontario in August. It was a great time of learning for me. While there, I acquired a beautiful morrit fleece, from a Romney cross lamb named 'Norah'. The shepherd from whom I got it was Chris English from somewhere north of Kingston, ON. It was (is) a lovely, short staple, beautiful coloured thing. Here is a picture of it 'in the grease' before I cleaned it.

After scouring, then came the hand carding. It was a delight to card, and here is the result, a basket of beautiful, soft, lofty rolags to spin.

Finally, it was time to practise the 'long draw' a spinning technique which is supposed to give a soft, lofty, 'woolen' style yarn. Here is my first bobbin of 'Norah' using that technique. Not great, but it takes practise. All in all I am relatively pleased with this first attempt And it was a lot of fun to do. With time I hope that I will get used to the 'double drafting' technique and gain more control with it, but all in all I am fairly pleased with it.