Fleegle's Blog

Fleegle Spins Supported--The Book!

2012-01-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

From the back cover...

The greatest book every written about supported spinning! Looks offstage. Yes. I know this is the only book ever written about supported spinning, but I have to write something for the back cover copy ...glances offstage again ...because the guy who printed the books told me blank covers look, well, suspicious. Turns toward the stage wing... I am not going to rant about that on the back cover... faces front... OK, so this book is just full to the brim with over 400 pages describing everything you need to know about spinning with a supported spindle. Included with the erudite, entertaining text and stunning photographs are 25 videos taken by total non-professionals who had some trouble figuring out which buttons to press on the camera, but all in all, we think they came out pretty well!

A few sample pages to whet your appetite...

Probably the first-ever interactive PDF to ship on a flash drive! It might actually be the first, but we don't want to get sued, so we inserted a waffle word. Heh.

Click here to pre-order the ebook version. $30, plus shipping

Interactive PDF with embedded video, shipped on a flash drive

400+ full-color pages, suitable for any computer or tablet

Requires Adobe Acrobat 9 or later to take advantage of the
interactive features and software capable of playing .MP4 video files

Expected deliver date around March 1, 2012

Click here to pre-order the hardbound paper book. $100, plus shipping

400+ full-color pages, suitable for any coffee table

Includes the ebook flash drive version

Expected delivery date around May 1, 2012

Testimonials!

We couldn't find anyone to write glowing praise, mainly because the book isn't published yet, so we just made stuff up!

Alexander the Great would have said...
If I had had this book while I was facing Darius III of Persia, I might not have actually won the battle, because I would have been fiddling with fiber.

Cleopatra would have said...
I could have done some real damage to those asps with a pointy spindle.

Shakespeare would have said...
To spin or not to spin, that is the question. But after reading this book, I feel that spinning is the answer, not the question. Anne really liked the book, too.

Einstein would have said...
S-twist or Z-twist, it's all relative.

Feel free to submit your own testimonials and if they are as positive as the ones above, we'll use them! Just think, you get to replace Alexander the Great's or Einstein's verbiage with some of your own!

Copyright for the 21st Century

2011-12-15T16:04:00.003-05:00

Readers of my blog know that I occasionally poke fun, or wickedly sharp needles, at some of the actions taken in the name copyright and trademark. For example, I went to purchase a circular knitting needle a few weeks ago, and noticed that underneath the KnitPicks logo, was the following statement:

The color purple is a trademark of Crafts Americana Group, Inc.

I sent this information off to TechDirt, inquiring how anyone could trademark a color, especially a color as ambiguous as "purple." A lively discussion ensued. A week or so later, someone else pointed out that Cadbury has also trademarked the color purple. Another lively discussion ensued. It doesn't matter whether the companies involved in this silliness were granted trademarks or even applied for them (no and yes), the point is, trademarking colors can be considered a form of restraint of trade, even if it only applies to a candy wrapper, which is apparently how the British Courts ruled for Cadbury.

As far as I know, there are only, what, six main colors, generally known as red, orange, yellow, blue, green, and violet. Let's throw black and white in there and make it eight colors. That means, if candy Company A trademarks red, and Company B trademarks orange, and so on, then Company I has no color they can make their candy wrapper. What do they do? Sell the stuff in a transparent wrapper? Then sure as I am typing here, someone will trademark see-through candy bar wrappers, and then Company J will have to sell their candy naked. Or spend millions of dollars and years in court arguing that Peach isn't Orange.

I could go on and on about the actual color, as KnitPicks needle cables are technically red-violet, not purple. Suppose I want to market knitting needles with lavender cables? Is this purple or pale violet? KnitPicks didn't limit their color trademark to knitting needles either, the way Cadbury did for candy bars. So purple yarn is a trademark violation? Is Barney the Purple Dinosaur going to present a legal hassle for his owner?

And if KnitPicks trademarked the color purple, should Alice Walker, the author of the book, The Color Purple, take legal action? Book titles cannot be copyrighted--there are only so many ways you can say Introduction to Biochemistry, and that's been through the courts. But what if she wants to take out a trademark on, say, purple toothpicks with that slogan engraved on them?

In sum, the entire grabby mentality that pervades business these days is disheartening, not to mention stifling. This is not to say that you shouldn't take appropriate measures to protect your intellectual property, but it seems that companies are spending most of their time and money litigating instead of innovating. And we all know what happens when laws become too stringent--people just ignore them. Or they stage a revolt.

So, when I turned my attention to the front matter of my book, having tired of investigating the spinability of cow hair, I took some volumes off the shelf and looked at their copyright pages. No, no, and more no. I am not going to wander those narrow little roads. Instead, I wrote my own copyright statement, which I hope will provide a broad avenue for everyone who might wish to take a stroll through my book.

Human Copyright for the 21st Century

With the exception of a few pictures that are in thepublic domain, almost everything in this book is under copyright. Whensomething is copyrighted, it means that it belongs to someone else. In thisinstance, unless specifically acknowledged otherwise, all the words and imagesare under copyright by me, the author. However, it’s my firm belief thatinformation is meant to be shared, not bound by legal stricture. I reallyresent blanket copyright declarations that forbid the readers from using orreformatting the knowledge in any meaningful way. Thus, I’ve devised my veryown copyright permission page that spells out what you, the reader, may do withthe contents herein.

You may scan, print, copy, or otherwise convert thecontents to other formats in any way you wish, as long as your purpose isentirely personal. You can, for example, make backup copies of the DVD; outputthe contents to your printer; transfer the DVD to your hard drive; or paintexcerpts on the back of your pet gerbil. You need no permission from me to doso. These permissions do not extend to making copies of this work, or any substantial partthereof, for your friends. If you are wondering about the word “substantial,” and howit might apply to what you want to do, please contact me directly and we’lldiscuss it.

You may share an excerpt for non-commercial purposes, forexample, to help a friend; incorporate into a blog post; or contribute to aprivate group; without my express permission. Please do assign credit, however.The credit line should read: Photo/text/video courtesy ofSusan Stevens, used with permission. In the cases where the photos ortext are the property of someone else, you will need to contact them directlyto arrange permissions.

You may not share any part of this book for commercialpurposes without permission and remuneration. This does not mean you many notshare the information in the book. Itdoes mean that, if you are teaching a class and printing copies of thecontents, I expect some form of payment as well as credit, because in theseinstances, I am the teacher standing behind you as you instruct the class. AStarbuck gift card, an Amazon credit, or a small donation to Paypal is not toomuch to ask, considering the time that I’ve spent assembling this missive.Again, in the cases where the photos or text are the property of someone else,you will need to contact them directly to arrange terms.

If you are an ongoing commercial enterprise, for example,a magazine, other arrangements will have to be made. In these cases, I expectfair payment commensurate with your other contributors. Please pm my Ravelry name, fleegle, or emailme at xxx to discussterms and conditions.

There are no reserved foreign rights. We are all of oneworld, thanks to the Internet.

I have made arrangements for this book to be put into thepublic domain after my death for use by anyone and everyone under allcircumstances. I refuse to sequester the information in the name of copyrightwhen I am no longer around to benefit from it.

Although this copyright page is copyrighted (see Department of Redundancy Department), I herein giveexpress permission for it to be reused in any format by anyone who shares thesame information philosophy I do. If you intend to use this page as an exampleof How Not to Write a Copyright Statement, the reprint and excerpt fee is OneMillion US Dollars. And I will pursue you legally if I find out about it.

Eco-Junk

2011-11-27T14:07:00.001-05:00

At the beginning of the year, I promised you guys that I would write a book. After casting about for a subject, I finally decided to write about supported spindling--a topic that is often ignored or relegated to a footnote in most descriptions of hand spinning. It's coming along nicely. So far I have almost 200 text pages and suspect that after adding in all the images, the page count will balloon to 350 or so.

It will be first be published as an ebook PDF with embedded videos, all on a DVD. Those who wish printed copies will have to sign up for a subscription. It's a full-color book, and printing will be very expensive--about $30, plus the cost of the DVDs, shipping, and so on. A subscription with a down-payment will allow me to actually pay for the printing.

Right now, it looks like I will be finished with the text by the end of the year. Then it has to be tech-edited, copy-edited, laid out, proofed, and the videos created. I am aiming for publication somewhere between April and June.

In the meantime, I know that many readers don't spin, but half the book talks about various fibers. And so, here's is the first of several excerpts that I will be putting on this blog. All the images and spinning info have been removed here due to length considerations, but I hope you enjoy this brief tour of.....

Eco-Junk

According to me (it's my book, after all), A Green Object is one in which the entire process, from start to finish, involves methodology safe toliving beings—plants or animals. Sustainability doesn't make somethingEco-Friendly, as anyone who has lived—and died young—near a paper mill couldtell you if they were still alive to give an opinion. Furthermore, biodegradablitydoes not make something Eco-Friendly. Some nerve gas agents degrade naturallyafter a few days, mammoth bones survive for thousands of years. Draw your ownconclusions.

With that definition in mind, let’s take a tour ofsupposedly Eco-Friendly fibers.

Bamboo

Bamboo is frankly my least favorite fiber. Aside from itslack of elasticity, it has an unpleasant scritchy feeling while being spun thatis reminiscent of squealing chalk-on-a-blackboard. It’s also an ecologicaldisaster. Like most rayons, bamboo is a regenerated cellulosic fiber. The mostcommon production method, called the Viscose Process, incorporates corrosivechemicals such as carbon disulfide, sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid. Asidefrom the direct effects on workers, successful disposal of these chemicalsposes yet another set of knotty problems. And do think about the fact that mostof this stuff is made in countries that have a less enlightened view of workerand environmental safety than we do.

A second method, the Lyocell process, is touted as beingmore ecologically friendly. This process, which is also used to make Tencel®,uses N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide (NMMO) as a solvent to dissolve the bamboocellulose into a viscose solution. This chemical is a hazardous irritant forskin contact and has some corrosive potential, as well. Inhalation is not agood idea either, as the chemical produces severe irritation of the respiratorytract. Repeated or prolonged exposure can damage organs. And so on.

Finally, there is actually an eco-friendly enzymatic processthat produces a yarn known as bamboolinen. It involves crushing the woody parts of the bamboo plant and usingnatural enzymes to break the bamboo walls into a mush that can be mechanicallycombed out and spun into yarn. This is essentially the same process used toproduce linen from flax and other bast fibers. Very little bamboo linen isactually manufactured, because the process is very labor intensive and costly.

Bamboo is often touted as having antimicrobial properties.Untreated bamboo fabric actually doesn’t have any sucheffect, but inventing this feature makes for a good marketing. Go here toread all about it.

Given all these factors, why has bamboo become a standardaddition to batts and tops? Well, it is shiny, and is thus considered a cheapsubstitute for silk. There is no substitute for silk, whose glorious propertiesI have already discussed.

Avoid it, and whine to battmeisters who toss the stuff intoa perfect good batch of merino.

Soy Fiber

Those who know me well also know how much I dislike tofu—asquishy flavorless food with all the gustatory charm of wallpaper paste. Ispent years avoiding it in Japan,and trust me, that’s like trying to avoid grits in North Georgia. Come to think of it, grits rate about the same in myculinary book.I do lovesoybeans themselves, though. Delicious! Adorable!

Soybean fiber is made from tofu manufacturing leftovers.Proteins are extracted from the residual oils, which is turned into a liquidgoo, cooked, wet-spun, stabilized by acetylating, curled, thermoformed, and cutinto three- to four-inch staple lengths. Several sites cheerfully describe theprocess this way: “the soy protein is liquefied then extruded into fiber in achemical free process.”

Aside from having an abysmal understanding of punctuation,the person who wrote this clearly slept through high school chemistry; acetylationis a chemical process. A few of the non-chemicals used include aceticanhydride, acetic acid, and sulfuric acid, the same chemical-free chemicalsthat bamboo rayon manufacturers insist are Green!

We can skip over the acids, because everyone has a good ideaof what these do to animate and inanimate objects, so let’s investigate aceticanhydride. According to the CDC’s NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards, exposure to thisstuff causes:

conjunctivitis,lacrimation (discharge of tears), corneal edema, opacity, photophobia (abnormalvisual intolerance to light); nasal, pharyngeal irritation; cough, dyspnea(breathing difficulty), bronchitis; skin burns, vesiculation, and sensitizationdermatitis

According to the eco-crap Ifound on various sites, it supposedly possesses the softness of cashmere, andhas the moisture absorption of cotton with better diffusion, making it“comfortable and sanitary.” In actual fact, it looks, feels, and spins just like bamboo rayon with the same annoying scritchy texture.

Corn Fiber

Sigh. Another Green Fiber made from a non-chemical chemical process.This one was a toughie, because the vague description of the manufacturingprocess made it difficult to figure out how it’s really manufactured. Theprimary consumer fiber, Ingeo, is the trademark name for NatureWorksLLC's synthetic fiber made from corn.

The site has a really pretty biocycle diagram showingsunshine, corn plants, and some chemical marbles on sticks. Reading between thelines and referring to some rather esoteric organic chemistry websites (But Ha!I have a BS in Physical Chemistry), I tweezed out the following explanation: Cornfiber is a bioplastic spun from lactic acid generated by bacterial fermentationof corn sugars. That’s certainly sounds green.

Now we get to the good part: The lactic acid molecules linktogether to form rings called lactic monomers, which, in turn, open and linktogether to form long chains of polylactide polymers, which are then made intoa plastic. Notice they don’t tell you how this part is actually performed.

Next, I chased down polylactides--polyesters derived fromcorn, sugarcane, and tapioca. Ah. Good old polyesters, which, among otherthings, use concentrated sulfuric acid or dry hydrogen chloride gas for theesterification process. BLAAAATTTT. Not Green.

Milk Fiber

The active ingredient of milk fiber is casein, a proteinthat’s been around since ancient times. It’s been found on various ancientChinese and Egyptian artifacts and those who live in New England will be familiar with antiques coated in milk paint. Milk fiber was developed in the 1930’s and wasused as a wool substitute during WWII. It’s basically casein that has beendissolved in an alkali bath, then processed in such a way that it can be blownout of spinnerets—plates with zillions of tiny holes—where the liquid caseinthen solidifies into fiber with the help of such friendly chemicals as strongacids and formaldehyde.

After the war, the explosion of synthetics caused milk fiberto fall out of favor. Thanks to the Eco-Junk movement, it’s experiencing aminor renaissance. The newer process uses acrylonitrile, a human carcinogen,which is bound to the casein, to produce a non-carcinogenic fiber. Among otherthings, acrylonitrile is the primary ingredient of acrylic fiber, which willnot, under any circumstances, be discussed further in this book.

In any case, those who point to milk fiber as green andeco-friendly should go take a good look at the eco-chemical properties of acrylonitrile and getback to me.

So, milk fiber is sort of like rayon, which we have alreadydecided is liquefied plant goo shot through spinnerets. However, milk, being ananimal product, produces a fiber that dyes like wool and spins something likesilk.

Crab(Chitosan )

Another fiber touted as eco-friendly and antibacterial,chitosan is derived from shellfish carapaces and, oddly enough, mushrooms.According to various websites, chitosanhas “scientifically proved biocompatibility,” and is “an absolutely safematerial.”

Chitosan itself is not useful to spinners, but let’slook at Crabyon©, a blend of chitosan andviscose, which should tip you off immediately about the chemicals used tomanufacture it. Refer to the Section on Bamboo for a completerundown of viscose rayon.

I am so sorry to disappoint seafood fans, but I was unableto obtain a sample of this stuff. However, that won’t stop me from including itin this section. I remember handling a skein of it a few years ago and thoughtit felt like cotton with an odd squeaky texture.

I understand that people with shellfish allergies sometimeshave a reaction to the yarn, which makes it not “absolutely safe.” Ihaven’t seen it around in a while, so perhaps the manufacturer rethought theconcept.

On the bright side, chitosan might fight fat, supposedly byreducing lipid absorption, which means that if you manage to find crab fiber,you can eat it and lose weight if you decide you don’t like to spin it.

A Long Story

2011-11-15T17:31:00.001-05:00

Semele is a terrific design for which I specially spun the yarn. I wanted the ends of the shawl to be dark blue, fading to white in the center, which is why the balls are wound the way they are. The lovely merino batts were made byLeilani Sue, and I bought the batts from her Etsy store, Heavenly Fiber. As you can see from the picture, I added plenty of Angelina for sparkle.

I heartily recommend the pattern, which had not a single error and left nothing to the imagination. It's worth knitting for the clever beginning leaf, from which the rest of the pattern flows without a hitch.

I was so careful after spinning. I measured and weighed the skein twice to be absolutely sure that I had two identical halves. But clearly Harry put his legs on the scale when my back was turned, because when I got to the last three leaves, I ran out of yarn.

I frantically emailed Leilani Sue, who was in the process of moving and thus had everything neatly packed in boxes. I whimpered. I whined. I sniffled. And dear Leilani Sue unpacked some boxes and found what she thought was the right color. Um, it wasn't. So I sent her a little sample of the spun yarn, and she unpacked more boxes and finally found a precious ounce of the dark blue.

So, after a month of squirming in anticipation, the merino arrived and I spun it up. The next day, Semele was finished and I gleefully started pinning it out. And pinning it out. And pinning it out some more...

The length was my fault, because I kept knitting the center repeat until I had used up all the white, at which point the design faded back to blue. As I never bothered to measure it on the hoof, as it were, I got a long surprise when I blocked it.

Well, it will certainly wrap around me a whole lot of times...

Yarn Guides

2011-10-23T11:55:00.001-05:00

The very first sweater I ever made was a multi-coloredNorwegian, at the tender age of eight years old. It still fits!

My mother ordered a kit from Norway, becausein those long-ago days, yarn selection was limited, and the color range waseven worse. Knitters of a certain age will recall, and not fondly, that odd brick red and the peculiar pea-soup green that were all the rage back in the Fifties...

I remember being entranced when the package arrived—what lovely shadesof clear blue! The yarns were a somewhat harsh worsted weight and thedirections copious—lots of diagrams, pictures, charts, arrows, and paragraphsof explanation. Too bad they were all in Norwegian.

Fortunately, a neighboring couple hailed from theOld Country. I used to spend many afternoons in their kitchen appraisingtraditional Norwegian cookies (Delicious!) and avoiding traditional NorwegianLutefisk (Not Delicious!). Made from dried whitefish and lye, Lutefisk has a repulsivegelatinous texture and an indescribable odor. The only substance that canapproach Lutefisk is a dried Japanese fish called Aji, whose aroma is so, um,ghastly that as soon as I saw the depressing little flatfish being removed fromthe freezer where we lived in Japan,I slunk out to the bus stop and had dinner in town.

Anyway, my mother and I hiked down to the Jensens’ with thepattern and yarn, and Mrs. Jensen explained, partly in Norwegian with lots of gestures, how to makethe sweater. Following the directions included learning Norwegian purling and knitting with oneyarn in the right hand. I found itawkward and annoying, but persevered, and after a while, the sweater wasfinished and I had a working knowledge of knitting English-style. I never didfigure out how to purl that way.

Over the years, when confronted with multiple colors, Idefaulted to the two-handed method. I still found it awkward and annoying, so afew weeks ago, I decided it was time to master the one-handed technique, thatis, knitting with two colors in my left hand.

I dutifully watched all theYouTube videos, and was amazed at how easy it looked. However, to my great annoyance, the actual trick of winding the yarns onto the fingers fortensioning was always performed at The Speed of Light, or the camera wasfocused on the knitting instead of the hands, or someone smeared Vaseline onthe camera lens as soon as it moved over to record the tensioning trick.

NOTE: If a Two-Color-Left-Handvideo knitter is reading this, please repost the video with a slo-mo of thetensioning step. Yeah! Thanks!

I spent a week tangling the yarn around various fingers. Atone point, I somehow wrapped the yarns in such a way that I created one ofthose Chinese Finger Trap toy thingies. Harry snickered, Laptop rolled her eyes, Rambo flipped her ears, and I said things that cannot be written in this blog because it’s G-Rated and I am not supposed to know those words, anyway. Roy was out of the house,so I was at least spared his chortling.

After snipping the yarns off my fingers, I threw in themetaphorical towel and went hunting for The Knitting Accessory of Shame,purchased years ago and never actually used beyond a brief, and unsuccessful, trial period. I finallylocated the thing in a cigar box full of straws (don’t ask), placed it on theindex finger of my left hand, and, after a few minutes of practice, discoveredthat it actually worked quite well. It’s liberating!

For comparison, I bought the KnitPicks version—it’s aplastic ring with dividers—lightweight and rather cleverly designed.

The trick to using these yarn guides is to practice with asingle yarn first, before adding the second one. Each guide has a sweet spot onyour finger—you’ll have to experiment and find the position that suits youbest. For example, the metal guide’s picture always shows it sitting straightup, with the yarns coming off the top. For me, turning the rings so that theyface front worked much better. I also found that putting the yarns on the floorwas a great help—the slight gravitational pull prevented the yarns fromtangling.

The KnitPick’s guide is very tight and the plastic edge abit sharp. I’m probably going to give it a coating of nail polish to smooth itout and hope that using it loosens the band a little. People with large fingersmay have to pre-stretch it on something—a wooden dowel, for example-- before itfits comfortably.

I realize that Real Knitters don’t use yarn guides and thatyarn guides cannot be taken to S&B’s because everyone will laugh at you orgive you that pitying, condescending look implying you also use training wheelson your bike and sometimes knit with acrylic. So, the answer is to take one-colorknitting to the S&B and in the privacy of your home, create lovely FairIsle, Scandinavian, Estonian, and Bohus colorwork with perfectly even tensionat a speed only slightly slower than a single color.

Pink Sago Palm Bohus from http://www.solsilke.se/

May Queen Mystery Shawl

2011-08-19T18:30:00.000-05:00

A sweet knit from Tiziana, the May Queen started out as a mystery shawl from one of my favorite designers. The pattern is quite easy, so I thought I would experiment with my very own Firebird yarn and some colored bead sequences. Unfortunately, the #8 beads were really too small to show off my clever gradients and could hardly even be seen at normal viewing distance. But the beads were an adventure, and rather than writing about the perils of using ten different colors of teeny, tiny, round, bouncy, exuberant objects, I shameless quote kath1996's description (with her kind permission) of her own interaction with the little rascals. The experience closely mirror my own except that she used a single color, so you can multiply this scary scenario tenfold:

First you open the container with the beads, then you pick up the ten or so beads that always drop out of the container while you are trying to carefully open it…then you spill a small amount out into another dish or container so as not to have the whole container open in case the cats knock it over, then you hit the new dish of beads with your elbow and knock them all to the floor (where they roll under everything and cause you to grab a flashlight and crawl around with your nose almost dragging on the floor while you search every place for the blankity blank little suckers), then you get back on your feet, set the dish down with satisfaction, certain that you have every bead back in the dish, and tip over the original container scattering the beads everywhere. Now these beads can fly…so they make it into every room in your house (except for those ten over there that somehow managed to get through the window and are now outside). I would tell you not to worry about them, except that I can tell you for sure that you will be exactly ten beads short on the project…(and no matter how hard you look you will never find those beads again). At this point you could try the old tried-and-not-true method of vacuuming up the beads…but this only sounds good on paper…your vacuum will only further scatter the beads making it impossible to ever find them again. Ooooh, look over there, isn’t that the cat eating the beads? Yep…and she seems to be turning a bit blue….off to the vet.

Laptop is a little too finicky to eat beads, but that did not deter her from Getting In The Way from the beginning to the end of this shawl. I can't figure out the attraction--Firebird is odorless, the color is not red (which she finds attractive), and it doesn't resemble either a hamster or the ugly brown scarf thing she enjoys cuddling. I couldn't get her off my lap for the entire project, and, as you can see, once the project was completed, she claimed complete possession, beads and all.

Attempts to remove her were met with The Look:

And she followed up The Look with The Snooze:

A few hours later, I filled her food bowl--a guaranteed draw--and snapped a few Laptop-less photos:

Well, almost...

Batt Editing--Part 2

2011-08-02T15:01:00.002-05:00

Readers of this blog probably know how much I love glitz, but many battmeisters eschew such additives for a variety of reasons. Anna of Corgi Hill decided against working with Angelina fiber after a bag of it exploded and left her, well, rather sparkly. Others feel that Firestar (trilobal nylon) and Angelina are scratchy. And some feel glittery yarn is somehow undignified.

Not me! I love to spin with glitz, I love to knit with glitz, and search out batts containing glitz, preferably in high concentrations. So it should come as no surprise that I figured out a simple way to add sparkle to batts that lack what I consider an essential ingredient.

If you paid attention to my first Batt Editing post, you might recall that I showed you how to split a batt into two layers. But if not, let me show you again.

Here we have a perfectly lovely example of a glitz-less batt from the immensely talented Zauberzeug :

I carefully peel the two layers apart...

...and sprinkle the bottom layer with Angelina:

Just flop the top layer back on the bottom layer:

And roll it back up:

Needless to say, you can use this technique to add anything you might want to spin--strands of silk, Firestar, exotic fibers of which you only have a tiny bit, ~~or slices of pepperoni~~, and so on.

On another note, I promised you some killer tomatoes, so I would be remiss if I didn't include a photo, taken several weeks ago. At that time, the plants were approaching 11 feet in height, and had outgrown our double stack of tomato cages by a wide margin.

Roy, who was an Eagle Scout and knows how to do things like assemble tripods, crafted several out of our very own bamboo and is seen in the above photo tying one of the plants, fondly named Terminator One, onto the supports. I should add that the plants are now over 14 feet tall, although we are training them down the supports, because we don't have a taller stepladder and would feel idiotic trying to harvest our crop by tossing rocks at the fruit.

Last year we planted four plants, three of which promptly died. The survivor barely attained a meter in height and spent the entire summer generating six puny tomatoes. This year, we figure to harvest about 200 pounds of fruit from the four plants that were really cute when we plopped them into the soil but now consume a cow a day and we'd better be on time with the feeding....

Knitting with the iPad

2011-07-18T15:51:00.002-05:00

I mostly love my iPad, but I wish someone would write the perfect knitting app. The iTunes store has quite a large handful--counters, project managers, books--but none of them is The Killer Knitting App. Recently, a new program appeared that would seem, from reading the PR, to fulfill my KKA requirements. Errrgh. It was expensive and clumsy to use, and a regrettable expenditure. I won't mention the name, lest I generate hate mail or lawsuits, so instead of whining about The-App-That-May-Not Be-Named, I'm going to show you how to use a program called iAnnotate to work with knitting patterns on an iPad.

Basically, iAnnotate lets you download, read, annotate, organize, and send PDF files. I think it's more flexible for PDFs than GoodReader, but it's also twice the price--$10 vs. $5. GoodReader's advantage is its ability to read multiple formats, so it can handle Word and Excel docs, as well as PDFs. GoodReader's tool set isn't as robust as iAnnotate's, though, so I prefer the latter to the former.

First of all, let's go get a PDF. iAnnotate has a built-in web browser that let's you:

Convert a web page to a PDF and download it--useful for grabbing Knitty patterns
Get patterns from DropBox
Navigate to a PDF in your Ravelry library and download it directly
Download patterns directly from your Ravelry library via WebDav (a protocol that allows collaboration between users and websites for editing and managing documents and files)

In the image below, I've navigated, via iAnnotate's built-in browser, to Mawelucky's gorgeous Gail (aka Nightsongs) shawl (Free!) that's stored in my Ravelry PDF library.

I clicked on the download link...

...closed the browser, and opened the file via iAnnotate's File Organizer screen.

iAnnotate supports multiple tabs, and more importantly, let's you duplicate tabs, so let's play with these. Click on the tab and you'll see a little bar underneath that shows buttons for tab management--Close, Navigator, Share, Duplicate, and so on.

This pattern only has four pages and three charts, so I set up four tabs. The first tab is the intro text; the other three pages hold the charts. There were no surprises in the pattern's Stitch Key, so I didn't bother giving it a separate tab.

As you can see, there's a handy thumbnail panel on the left that can be collapsed when not needed. You can use the panel to whip through your document by page, bookmark, annotation, or outline, or use the toolbar buttons to navigate bookmarks and pages.

Given the name of the app. it's no surprise that there are lots of tools for annotation-- pen, highlighter, typewriter, stamps, notes, straight line, underline, strikethrough, photos, voice recording, and date stamp.You can easily customize your tools, for example, create a set of custom highlighters, import your own stamps (such as a signature), set a custom typewriter color and font, and convert an annotation into a stamp. The only thing missing is a rectangle; GoodReader has one and it's useful. Oh well.

One of the nicest features of iAnnotate is the configurable toolbars. the app has a rather overwhelming number of features, so I made a Knitting toolbar (shown at the bottom of the previous picture) that holds commands I use frequently: Note, Line, Stamp, Typewriter, Bookmark, and so on.You can easily drag and drop what you need into your toolbar, which can then be repositioned and resized as you see fit. You can have multiple toolbars on the page, for example, a set of navigation tools at the top and some highlighters on the bottom.

For some odd reason, you can only highlight text, not images. I like to use charts, so I made a highlighter line to pinpoint my place in the chart. I used the Line tool to draw a long line...

.
...then made it thicker and partially transparent.

You can make the annotation into a stamp if you like, but stamps can only be resized and rotated once in the library. Adjusting the highlight is easy--just tap and slide it to move it up and down.

You can also add a text annotation to the highlight drawing. Notice the annotation can stay open and pinned to a specific place on the page.

Similarly, you can highlight text, and add notes, sound recordings, or images as annotations. The latter is particularly useful if you need to refer to a knitted sample or suggested yarn.

Photos may also be emailed right from iAnnotate...

...or you can send the Photo to another program, such as DropBox.

There are several options for hopping around the PDF. I like the temporary Mark--it's a quick bookmark that holds only a single location. It's very useful for flipping back to a specific place, such as a text description, while you are studying a chart in another tab.

You can also set as many permanent bookmarks as you like, and these can be color-coded to indicate various sections of the pattern (or various testers):

I have Next/Previous Bookmark tools in my toolbar, but if there are a lot of them, open the side panel and tap the desired bookmark.

Your notes, annotations, and drawings may be sent along with the file via email--convenient for test knitters who need to send information back to the designer:

And if you're working on a KAL or test-driving a pattern, you can clip out a problem area of the PDF and send just that section:

As for stitch counters...well, there are a few things you can do to keep track:

You can double-click click out of iAnnotate and switch to your counter app in the bottom tray...ugly, but workable.
Use iAnnotate's Typewriter tool to type in numbers and the text editor to mark them in meaningful way.

Use one of the number stamps.

Mark repeats on your hand with an indelible marker.
Line up M&Ms in some predefined increment and eat one at the end of a row.

Until Apple allows dual panes so we can have a counter in one window and the chart in another, we're stuck with workarounds (or buying the expensive App-That-May-Not Be-Named, which sort of works...don't get me started on that thing).

There are lots of other features in iAnnotate, not the least of which is the ability to rotate pages, add blank pages, and delete pages you don't need.

Printing from iAnnotate, like any other iPad app, depends on your accoutrements and pocketbook. There are any number of printing apps in the iTunes store--they run between $5 and $10. If you have an AirPrint-enabled printer (currently implemented on some HP printers), you can use that feature. Rather than invest money in a separate printing app, I just email the document to myself and print it from my laptop.

iAnnotate has a few silly quirks that I hope will be fixed in an update. You can only highlight text, and all knitting charts are images--the workaround is the Stamp--but it would be nice to be able to directly mark a stitch or row with a finger swipe. You can lock a page horizontally but not vertically. It's awfully easy to inadvertently tap the display and slide to another page. No biggie, but it would be helpful to be able to freeze the page.

Next time: The Attack of The Killer Tomatoes, right here in fleegleland!

Batt Editing

2011-07-11T19:22:00.001-05:00

Although Harry is perfect, the rest of the world generally needs a little tweaking to rival his flawless stature. It's rare that I spin a batt right out of the bag--I usually add or subtract something, especially if I have a specific project in mind.

Harry thought it might be instructional for me to show his faithful readers how I edit a batt. According to him, I don't have any faithful readers, which instigated a shouting match (MORONIC BIPED! HAIRY MIDGET OCTOPUS!, and so on). While we were hurling epithets at each other, Rambo kindly loaded the text and images into the blog and then proceeded to clean out the vegetable bin because nobody was paying any attention, and the lettuce was going to wilt soon, anyway.

Onwards to batts.

Let's take this lovely item from Lampyridae, euphoniously named Sarah Bejeweled. It's an eclectic mixture of milk, bfl, silk, soy, merino, alpaca, and sari silk. but is very smooth, if a bit mussy. Notice the colors after the greens are kinda folded under...you can't see them in this picture.

If you've ever fooled around with batts, you've probably discovered that most of them are layered, and it's easy to separate the layers by gently pulling them apart. The blue and purple are peeking out on the bottom layer in this image:

Here are two two layers, side by side.

Now to strip the batt into bite-sized pieces. I started on the left, coaxing each color transition into a little swathe.

I took a bit of the next color, pink, into the second strip, and a little more pink in the third one--mixing the colors this way makes for smoother transitions.

Sometimes, when pulling off a strip, the wrong color crawls over....

It's easy to just peel it off and put it back where it belongs.

Here's what the deconstructed batt looks like now.

The next step is to do a little drafting. Although the batt is smooth, it has a fair amount of fibery locks lying on the surface. When you try to spin it them in, the loose bits can fall down or become folded over, creating a snarl. If you're spinning thick yarn, this fluffiness isn't a big problem, but for fine spinning, it's better to try and incorporate the little rogues into the main wad of fiber. And because I will be spinning fairly fine on a supported spindle, I want to loosen up the fiber, as well. Both of these tasks are done simply by gently pulling sections of the strip like this:

And here's the first attenuated strip. Notice there's some white fiber that refused to play nicely with the rest of the strip. I just inserted a few twists to keep it from running away.

Here and there, I found some bits of fiber that didn't belong, as well as a few nepps that would simply make a blob while spinning. I just picked them off.

And we're almost finished. Notice the adorable cat toy...Laptop couldn't be with us today, due to a prior engagement, but she left a clownfish proxy for Harry's faithful readers to admire.

The transitions looks pretty good, but the sequence is a bit lacking in blues and purples. Dipping into my batt stash, I found colors that would work, and added a few extra strips.

To keep everything neat and tidy, I rolled up the strips, one after the other, into a squooshy ball...

And put it into a plastic bag. It's ready to go.

On another note, I report that over the course of the last few months, the occupants of the fleegle household endured three eye operations and two root canals, thus triggering our favorite floating holiday: Celebrate Something Random Day. To commemorate such occasions, we always have a cake, decorated especially for the occasion being celebrated. And so I present to you the Infamous Fleegle Eyeball and Teeth Cake of 2011. It was delicious!

And before you ask, Nancy, it's from the Country Bakery on 75 between Ingles and White County Jail. :)

Jaali

2011-06-24T10:34:00.000-05:00

One of the things I love best about Ravelry is browsing other people's favorites. There are knitters who have the same taste as I do, and some of them have thousands of favorites. My meagre list only has about 200 entries, because when I see something I like, I spend a lot of time admiring it and then forget to click the little heart.

One morning, while perusing one such glorious Favorites list, I stumbled across Jaali--a shawl similar to Percy--both use the elegant Frost Flowers pattern as the main motif.

Jaali was especially lovely to knit, because it starts at the bottom by casting on a zillion stitches and decreasing to the top edge. By the time the honeymoon period is over, the rows are short and getting shorter; I found it difficult to put down because I wanted just One More Decrease.

The yarn was handspun by me from an EverImprovingMe batt--merino, firestar, and angelina--using a Tibetan spindle. I added a few beads (6/0) on the border, and, in a miracle of pre-planning, I actually did not run out of them before finishing that section.

There's not much else to say about this piece--it's a relatively quick knit, especially if you choose the small or medium size. I went with the large size, because it required 680 yards and my skein of handspun was 700 yards. I had exactly 18 inches left over and knit the last five rows holding my breath.

Crocus Shawl and a Bunch of Excuses

2011-05-22T14:45:00.001-05:00

Hello? Hello? Anyone out there? Ahem, tap, tap tap....

Fleegle surveys her faithful readership and lobs a handful of flash-bangs at the audience to get everyone's attention....

So, now that we're all awake and alert, I can list all my excuses for not having posted in, um, a while.

1. I was in-country on a secret mission.
2. I was out of the galaxy on a secret mission.
3. I was out of my mind on a secret mission.
4. I was out of order on a secret mission.
5. I was out to lunch on a secret mission.

Having supplied a surfeit of incontrovertibly believable excuses, I will now wrench your attention towards my latest knitting effort--the Crocus Shawl.

This piece was knitted with Malabrigo lace yarn (Amoroso colorway), to ensure that it will be especially warm and cuddly for my friend Kyoko-san. If I were to knit it again, though, I would use a finer yarn and larger needles to better emphasize the complicated patterns. And, as you can see, even slight variegation caused the pattern to buzz a bit--a plain color would be a better choice.

I have decided that large, glittery crystal beads are fun and blingy, I used a profusion of them in this shawl--4mm roundelles on the nupps themselves (yes, the pattern features beaded nupps) and 6mm roundelles on the border. They make the shawl a bit heavy, but also cause it to drape nicely.

The reason that this shawl took months to finish is because I am clearly unable to correctly place a bead order. I first ordered 6mm beads for the nupp section, but those were too large, so I revisited the Fire Mountain Gems website and ordered what I thought were the correct number of 4mm beads, but naturally, my calculations were, erm, imperfect, and I then had to order two more packets to finish that section.

When I got to the border rows, I started using the 6mm beads I ordered by mistake (waste not, want not), but, not surprisingly was exactly three beads short of a finished shawl. Back to Fire Mountain...

Placing a bead order before finishing my morning coffee turned out to be a bad idea, because when the new shipment arrived, they were 8mm...and well, it took a week for each bead order to arrive so this shawl just went on and on...you get the idea. The people at Fire Mountain are likely convinced that a certifiable nutball lives at my address, but they keep sending me catalogs and free stuff like pens and magnifying glasses anyway.

All's well that end's well, and I am now planning to knit Tiziana's lovely Meridiana shawl. Ooo, it has nupps, so I'm working on the bead order, which will, of course, be the wrong color, wrong size, or wrong quantity. As I have often said, consistency is important.

Percy Shawl

2011-03-06T07:26:00.008-05:00

I received a huge pile of lovely batts for my birthday, custom-blended by the incomparable Ever Improving Me. I admit to having been lazy--I didn't photograph them. But I've spent a lot of time spinning them, and one of the batts just seemed perfect for Percy. The pattern is, unbelievably, free, and a fantastic knit--interesting, non-repetitive, and adapts easily to any length.

I wanted the top of the shawl to be a bit darker in tone than the rest, so I snitched some orange fiber from another one of EIP's birthday batts and spun it up first. The yarn, a two-ply spun on Tibetan spindles, is merino with lots of lovely, sparkly angelina and firestar, which makes the shawl twinkle happily.

No matter how it's wrinkled and folded, it looks lovely:

The top portion of the shawl is a little cat's paw design. You can repeat this motif as long as you like.

The pattern then segues into Frost Flowers, which some people don't like to work because it's patterned on both knit and purl rows. I confess I enjoyed knitting these--they look so lacy and delicate.

Alas, I didn't have enough yarn to work the border nupps, so I ordered some 6mm faceted round, glittery Czech glass beads and used them in place of the nupps...

Note to Self: When calculating the required number of beads on one-half of a symmetrical shawl, don't forget to multiply by two, or you will have to sit around for another ten days waiting for the rest of the beads to arrive.

The yarn was one continuous strand--I didn't have to break the yarn to make the colors work. I just kept knitting the Frost Flowers pattern until I was into the greens and then proceeded on to the border. I did stop the Frost Flowers pattern in the middle of a repeat and just decreased away the extra stitches.

I fully intend to knit this pattern again, making it a bit smaller next time for a little scarf that will tuck gracefully into a winter coat.

Counting Sheep

2011-02-26T18:17:00.006-05:00

Although this is primarily a knitting blog, every so often I wander off into other, less fibery, topics. And today, I am going to editorialize a bit about citizenship--a subject that gets a fair amount of babble, but most people probably have no idea what being a US citizen really entails.

Yes, you can vote at a certain age. Yes, you can earn money and collect Social Security in some cases. Yup, you can serve in the Armed Forces if you wish. But there is one, single inviolate privilege that US citizenship confers, and I would be willing to bet that few of you can name it. But you will, of course, by the time you finish reading this post, and it may help you in dire circumstances at some point in your life.

I took a short international trip last week, which was unremarkable and not worth even mentioning, except for the part where I deplaned at a United States airport and queued up for immigration. For those US citizens who have never re-entered the country, suffice it to say that it invariably entails briefly standing on line, having your passport stamped, and then zipping off to another destination.

This time, however, when I disembarked, the immigration hall was filled with people--sitting, standing, lying down--hundreds and hundreds of people, waiting in eerie silence. The lines stretched out of the hall, around corners, and, for all I know, back into jetways, stairs, elevators, and rooftops.

No lines moved towards the dozen or so immigration booths. The only noticeable movement was the arrival of yet more deplaned passengers squeezing into a space that bore an uncanny resemblance to a gigantic Tokyo subway car at rush hour.

After a few minutes, I queried an airport supervisor as to the problem, and was told that the relevant immigration computers were down, nationwide, and had been in this sad state for about six hours. He had no idea when the network would come back online, and until that happened, the static occupants of the immigration hall would not be allowed to pass over the magic yellow line onto US soil.

Now, people who know me well would imagine that I would pull out a book and immerse myself in the written word until the situation resolved itself. But it seemed to me that this logjam was just plain wrong on many levels.

We pay the salaries of the people manning those booths. More importantly, we do have real, unassailable rights under the Constitution, although we have lately been giving them away with depressing regularity. The history of the United States rarely portrays the citizenry as a nation of sheep. But when I looked around, I could see a vast assembly of ovines, waiting immobile for orders from Governmental Shepherds.

After a few minutes of cogitation, I pulled out my blue US passport, waved it over my head, and opened my Big Mouth.

"Excuse me, but I am a citizen of the United States. Under no circumstances may I be forbidden entry to this country while I carry a valid passport. In fact, the US cannot turn any US citizen away, regardless of what might happen once that person touches US soil. This Blue Sucker (fleegle waves passport again) entitles me to cross that yellow line, no questions asked."

You could have heard an ant sneeze in the silence. The officers manning the immigration stations stared at me in astonishment--a two-legged sheep bleating constitutional truisms--something that these government workers had clearly never before encountered.

A minute passed. A supervisor finally climbed down from his chair and addressed the crowd:

"All people possessing Blue Suckers over here." He pointed to four of the booths.

And with that, everyone bearing a US Blue Sucker speedily proceeded through the booths, the immigration officers' stamps thumping away in triple time.

I doubt that I will ever again receive a round of applause from hundreds of exasperated passengers, complete with dozens of pats on the back, a few wolf whistles, and many, many smiles. The airport supervisor asked me if I was going to run for Congress. Someone else asked if I was in immigration attorney. Several people shook my hand.

On the down side, I suspect that citizens of other countries sporting Green, Red, and Purple Suckers are still milling about the hall, waiting for the IT geniuses in Washington to figure out who pulled what plug on which database.

So, in the words of Robert Frost:

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

I can't speak for other countries, but in the United States, the only perquisite of citizenship is that you must be admitted if you can show such proof. It might be that you are arrested the moment you step on US soil, but you may not be denied entry, no matter what.

The moral of this little story is that sometimes, you can confront Homeland Security, and sometimes you can actually win. Speak up. Know your rights. Welcome home.

Circular Honeycomb Brioche

2011-02-16T16:18:00.000-05:00

Well, I was certainly pleasantly surprised by the response to my last blog. I figured about six people might want me to keep babbling about spinning, but there apparently are quite a few who enjoy the postings, so of course, I shall continue. As every blogger knows, feedback keeps us going. The last spinning post had four comments, so I figured that either (a) Harry was deleting posts just to be annoying or (b) everyone's head hit the keyboard in stupefaction when they saw Yet Another Spinning Post. Clearly, the answer is (c).

So, now that I have explained things to everyone's satisfaction, let me respond to several readers, who requested the secret to Circular Honeycomb Brioche. Here's the little neck warmer I made a using a strand of silk and a strand of cashmere:

The pattern is mildly tricky, but once you've run through one repeat, it's a no-brainer. Please swatch carefully, though. Brioche patterns are incredibly stretchy--you'll need a lot fewer stitches than you could possibly imagine.

Cast on an even number of stitches.

Row 1: Knit
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: K1, K1 below, that is, knit into the stitch of the previous row. Doing so unknits the stitch, so you will have the equivalent of a slipped stitch, thusly:

Row 4: P1, Purl the next stitch with the slipped thread of the previous row, as shown below.

Row 5: K1 below, K1
Row 6: Purl the next stitch with the slipped thread of the previous row, P1

Repeat rows 3-6.

I realize that this pattern could be done by slipping stitches instead of knitting in the stitch below. Many Brioche stitches are written using slips instead of belows. Try it both ways and see which one you prefer.

Next time, Harry will post about his exciting goat-herding class that he took in Albania, followed by a slide show of his whirlwind tour of Krasnoarmeisk, Myshkin, Putchezh, Kholui, Urupinsk, Mariinsky Posad, Kirillov, Suzdal and Gus-Krustalnyi.

Here ends my 300th post, and I want to thank all my readers from the bottom of my heart for your support and comments. Harry doesn't have a heart, but he thanks you from the bottom of his purple iPod for electing him Ruler of the Known Universe. Did you guys really do that?

Where in the World is fleegle?

2011-01-19T10:32:00.009-05:00

No, I was not suffocated by mountains and billows of the Queen Susan shawl, although it was a close call there for a few weeks. I've actually been quite busy, but just haven't had the urge to photograph anything. Fortunately, Hyperactive Harry got a new camera for Christmas, and condescended to take pictures for me. I winnowed out the dross, namely an extremely unflattering set of early-morning-before-coffee snapshots, and instead present you with the remainder.

First, I managed to slog through the Queen Susan border--all 165 miserable rows. By the time I was finished, I hated the pattern, loathed the yarn, detested the stitch markers, despised the needles, and abhorred the color. The instant I finished the last stitch, I zoomed into a closet, threw the huge hairnet inside, and slammed the door. At some point, I will have forgotten the tedious slog through the endless rows of repetition and optimistically resume on the edging, but in the meantime...

I've been busy spinning. All of the skeins shown below were spun on Tibetan supported spindles.

And some closeups...

After the Knitting gift rush was over, I took the incredible step of actually knitting warm things for myself. The first is a simple neck warmer in circular honeycomb brioche stitch. I wanted something very warm and soft, so used one strand of silk and one of cashmere. Fortunately, Harry wasn't around to see the first attempt. I forgot that brioche stitch is really very stretchy...and the result was more of a waist warmer. By eliminating 3/4 of the original stitches, I obtained something that actually fits my neck.

I always wanted a pair of hand-warmers, but always ended up giving them away. This pair is a keeper. Knit from a worsted-weight merino-silk, the pattern is my own invention. Too lazy to find a cable needle, I simply knitted three rows, then knitted the third, second, and first stitch on the left-hand needle to produce a cable-ish effect.

And I finally got around to casting on for two lovely shawlettes. Percy here is being knitted in my own gradient handspun:

Krokus is being knitted with Malabrigo laceweight in the Amoroso colorway. The beads are 4mm bi-color faceted rounds.

Both patterns are freebies and lots of fun to knit--there's little repetition, so boredom cannot set in.

In other news, I decided to discontinue my spinning series--few of my readers seem interested, so I will forgo publishing the rest of the articles that apparently bored my readership into a stupor. Anybody still there?

Spinning for Lace, Part 3: Fiber

2010-12-05T07:56:00.011-05:00

After some high-powered nudging from an assortment of readers, I've finally gotten around to writing the third in a series of blog posts about spinning lace yarns.

Let's start by defining lace yarn so we know what we are talking about. Just as there's no standard sweater yarn, there's no standard lace yarn--you can knit lace out of hawser line if you have Really Large needles and a good-sized backyard. But conventionally, lace yarn is that which is finer than fingering weight--in the area of 10,000 meters per kilo--about 5,000 yards per pound. The finest handspun I've seen was made by beadlizard: 171,360 meters per kilo (85,000 yards per pound), useful to people with the eyes of a hawk, the patience of Mother Theresa, and the mindset of, well, words fail me.

Bear in mind that the thinnest yarn you can spin is comprised of three fibers. Yarns of this grist were used, three-plied, for Shetland lace.

There are some spinners on Ravelry who aspire to such wispy (and fragile) yarns, and several who have accomplished this impressive feat. I confess to have spent a week making about 100 meters of this stuff out of Optim merino, which was carefully plied on a charkha, wound off into a tiny ball, and reverently placed in a drawer so I can admire it periodically. I have no compelling drive to knit with it anytime soon. I estimate the plied yarn to be about 37,000 yards per pound--about a 150/2 grist.

I am frequently asked what sort of fiber is best for spinning fine lace yarns, and will answer the question this way: There's no Best Fiber, because the ability to spin fine grist is all about fiber preparation.

If the batt or roving is immaculate, my hands will be spinning away as I read a book. Perfectly prepared fiber draws so evenly that, with a bit of practice, you shouldn't have to do more than glance at it once in a while. Clearly, producing an even yarn is just a matter of rhythm. Your hands will be repeating the same steps over and over--draft out a length, twist, and wind on. If the fiber prep is flawless, the rest of you can be doing some thing else--a pleasant application of multi-tasking that's well worth mastering.

If the fiber is less than optimal, I will put it away and use it for another purpose. If there's one thing I have learned, it's that raw material will always dictate what it wants to be. And some of the batts and roving I have bought insist they want to be sock yarn. Or hat yarn. And in one sad unspinnable case, the only thing that fiber wanted to be was stuffing. And so it was.

Here is an example of a lovely, smooth batt eminently suitable for fine lace spinning (the dark pink dot is dye, not a fuzzball):

And here is one that is not:

The nepps (little wads of short fibers or snarls) are circled. You can, of course, hold the batt up the the light and daintily tweeze them out. Not being that energetic, I spun that particular batt (merino, silk, and angora) in a heavier weight yarn and thus avoided all the delicate plucking and concomitant mumbling, and whining.

It's often difficult to tell if a batt is really smooth by inspecting the prettily wrapped or folded fiber you see on the Internet. You can ask the artist to take a picture of the batt with light behind it--most sellers will be happy to show off their carding prowess.

Roving, because it's machine-made, tends to be more uniform than batts. However, if you are buying dyed roving, you need to make sure that the stuff wasn't felted or over-handled by the dyer. A good close-up picture will give you good idea of spinability, but no guarantee.

I almost never get lumps in my yarn, probably because I learned long draw, my preferred spinning technique, from a master spinner in New England 40 years ago. Lumps mean your fiber prep was not perfect and/or the twist is running into the fiber too quickly. You will also get lumps if your fiber is sticky. Some fibers are naturally sticky; others may have too much lanolin and just require a good wash to make them easily slip by each other. Adding silk to a fiber mix dilutes the natural tendency of wool fibers to cling to one another. But too much silk makes for a non-elastic yarn and I like my yarns to be springy.

Because I really hate it when people talk in generalities, I will give a few sources for superior fiber that work especially well with long-draw and supported spindling and have produced, for me, exceptionally wonderful lace yarn.

1. Dragonfly Fibers 65/35 merino silk top. Utterly flawless mixture that's a bit springy, a bit shiny, and altogether perfect for fine drafting.

2. Ever Improving Me Batts. Her batts are scary. There's not a tangle or nepp to be found. Fluffy and perfectly blended, they set a standard for carding fibers for lace. She has also mastered the rare ability to evenly blend in sparkle. Make sure you order smooth batts, though. She also offers art batts--lovely, but not so good for fine yarn. Sorry I don't have a close-up of a batt--I've spun everything I bought from her. No leftovers.

3. Adventures in Fiber Batts: Just as frightening as Every Improving Me products, these batts often feature gorgeous color gradations, which keep me from getting bored with a single color.

4. Optim Top. Optim is a fine merino (19 micron) that has been mechanically stretched to a finer fiber diameter (14 microns) and chemically fixed to prevent bounce-back (14 microns is a typical diameter for cashmere fiber). Optim is silky, lightweight, and and very strong. The three-fiber yarn I showed above was spun with Optim; the picture below is heavier--about 30,000 yards per pound. It's a bit difficult to dye--it resists wetting out and floats around on top of the water for hours. If you don't want to spin white fiber, weight it and then soak it overnight before trying to dye it.

5. Corgi Hill Roving: Heart-melting colors in all sorts of fiber. I am particularly fond of her angora/merino and the wonderful merino/silk blend shown here:

If you take a peek at my Ravelry stash, you'll see that I am helplessly in love with her batts, as well. However, the fibers are sometimes not uniformly blended, which makes it a bit difficult to spin uniform frog hair. For heavier lace yarn, though, you can't go wrong with her carded preps.

It's certainly possible to spin from a loose cloud of fibers--just be certain that the cloud is uniform and doesn't contain bits of short second cuts. For example, here's a lovely sample of Rainbow Farms Pygora goat fiber spun on a Gripping Yarn Snakewood Russian spindle:

And a bit of Rambo's prime German angora, spun on a Russian supported spindle.

Finally, there are vegetable fibers, such as cotton, that can be spun very fine. I don't care to knit with it, so I don't have anything much to say about it. Bamboo and similarly processed plants are just rayon. Some people love the stuff, but I don't care to spin it or knit it either. There are several Etsy artists whose color sense makes me swoon, but they add bamboo to everything. About the kindest thing I can say about bamboo fiber is that it's shiny and cheaper than silk.

The next post in the series will probably cover charkha spinning. Or not! Stay tuned!

SAFF

2010-10-30T07:44:00.002-05:00

SAFF (Southeastern Animal fiber Fair) is my favorite fiber show--it's relatively small and compact, so it's easy to walk around and not so crowded that we couldn't get into every booth. It's held near Asheville, NC, one of my favorite cities. And, most importantly, there is a surfeit of gorgeous undyed and dyed fiber, tools, and friendly booth keepers.

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Show, which I attended last spring, seemed to feature the same two fiber mega-vendors in almost every booth. There's nothing wrong with their stuff (it's actually very nice), but the same large balls of identical colorways in every direction quickly became monotonous. And MDSW was also jam-packed--I had to pass by many booths because they resembled a Tokyo subway car at rush hour. Never again.

Alas, SAFF's spindle selection was small and unpolished--a big disappointment. We did meet up with The Spanish Peacock, who was perusing the wares with an eye towards having a booth next year. If he shows up, he'll surely be mobbed and sold out within an hour of the opening bell.

I did purchase a dark blue Ann Grout turnip spindle and matching bowl because the set was charming and twirled with a pleasant heft. However, the shaft was a puzzle. Made out of a fragile dowel topped with a useless hook, it was too short to be productive, although the washi-paper shim that held it to the whorl was very pretty. Washi paper not withstanding, I turned the spindle over to The Spanish Peacock, who promised to make a usable (and beautiful) shaft out of Blue Mahoe wood. When it comes home, I will post before and after photos.

As you can see, I had a wonderful time, disgracing myself at Knitty and Color and Dragonfly Fibers. I would have disgraced myself more at Dragonfly, but there was more yarn than roving, and I really don't need any yarn. But then, I didn't need any roving either, so forget about that specious argument and just gaze on the lovely photos.

From Knitty and Color, we have merino/firestar batts ...

and lovely merino roving (the top photo is merino/silk).

From Dragonfly Fibers, I bought merino/silk roving:

And I bought a few miscellaneous fiber thingies that were irresistible. The top photo is merino/angora from Frabjous Fibers. The bottom batt, purchased from a local spinnery, cost me all of $4. It's immense--more than four feet long and two feet wide--and I have forgotten what the wool is (it's very soft, but not merino). I haven't decided what to do with it yet, but it looks tailor-made for those Icelandic shawls that graduate from white to black. Given the size, I can probably knit a dozen of them from the spun yarn.

Harry, of course, spent most of the show terrorizing the animals. While it was amusing to watch herds of llamas and alpacas stampede around the barn, I doubt their owners were pleased. Fortunately, he tired of this activity fairly quickly and settled down inside a cashmere batt. I wonder if the poor lady who purchased it has recovered from the shock yet.

Echo Flower Shawl

2010-10-21T15:45:00.000-05:00

I actually finished this little shawlette a few weeks ago, but had a Japanese Embroidery student here from England for several weeks and didn't get around to posting the pictures until today. This shawl pattern is one of those amazing designs that looks exquisite regardless of the yarn or needles used. In addition, you can make it any size you like simply by adding repeats. No advanced arithmetic is necessary to compute border stitches.

I finished the shawl in less than a week, knitting a repeat here and there when I had a few minutes to spare. Yes, it has nupps on the border and those pesky 2-into-9 and 3-into-9 increases, but only every fourth row or so, and was surprisingly easy to knit. The shawl was made with my own AK-47 20/2 silk yarn in the Grapeful colorway on US size #4 needles. I added a few #8 orange beads to the border just because I haven't beaded anything in a while and felt like picking up small round thingies from the floor.

I fully intend to knit it again with some handspun, and I don't believe I have ever before knitted a shawl pattern twice. It's that sweet a pattern.

This is a short post, so I thought I would take the time to remind everyone that I always reply to comments so long as there is a way to do so. If you don't have a Blogger account or otherwise leave me a way to contact you, all I can do is try to reply by telepathy. This usually doesn't work well because there are mentating animals in and around our house that cause interference.

I am off to SAFF tomorrow, so if you happen to see a short lady with a pink stripe in her hair, stop me and say hello, will you?

Spinning for Lace Part Two: Russian Spindles

2010-09-16T17:37:00.002-05:00

As promised, here is a video starring an exquisite ebony Russian Spindle from the Spanish Peacock. The motions are almost identical to those used with Tibetan spindles, but Russian spindles tend to be a bit wobbly until you pack some fiber on them. If you are having trouble starting up with your Russian, wind on some waste yarn until the spindle feels stable.

Spinning for Lace Part One: Tibetan Spindles

2010-09-11T17:58:00.000-05:00

Back at the beginning of the year, I promised to make some videos of lace spinning. And today, Roy and I managed to produce the first in the series. My personal comfort zone is a grist that, when two-plied, makes a laceweight yarn and when three-plied, makes a fingering yarn. Needless to say, all the techniques shown can be used to spin other weights of yarn.

I particularly enjoy supported spindles because:

You don't have to stand up, lean over or perch on a chair. Spinning can proceed easily in the space allotted for an airplane seat.
Supported spindling puts no strain on your wrist, neck, or shoulder.
Unlike the pendulum action of drop spindles, which is sensitive to car movement, supported spindles act like gyroscopes and can be easily used in a moving vehicle.
You don't have to worry about dropping your spindle and watching the beautiful wood chip, splinter, snap off, or roll underneath the refrigerator.
Yarns spun supported are pouffier. Gravity doesn't yank on the fibers, which can squeeze out the air, producing a less elastic yarn.
You can fit a whopping amount of fiber on a supported spindle. I've crammed four ounces on my Spanish Peacock Tibetan. Even better, the more fiber you have on the spindle, the longer it spins.
For me, supported spindling is about five times faster than drop spindling. I don't have to stop and wind on after a length, as you will see in the video. Every half-hour or so, I butterfly off the temporary cop at the tip and whirl it onto the lower part of the spindle--a big time-saver.
The whirring sound is hypnotizing.
Because I am spinning in my lap, I can read a book at the same time, doubling my happiness quotient.

There's no sound in this video, because the process is (I hope!) self-evident. The video is long because there are two slow-motion segments so you can actually see what's going on. And Roy carefully filmed from two different angles over my shoulder so you can spin along with me, if you wish.

I used two different Tibetans in the movie. The first one, with the red merino/firestar yarn, was crafted by The Spanish Peacock. The second, smaller Tibetan Lite was crafted by Grizzly Mountain Arts. Weight is not a big factor with Tibetans, so I never bothered to put them on a scale. The Spanish Peacock spindle is 13" from stem to stern. The Tibetan Lite is only 10". Both are perfectly balanced and a delight to both the eye and the hand.

So, make some popcorn and watch the video. I hope you find it worthwhile!

Fleegle's Fluff Analysis

2010-09-10T08:46:00.001-05:00

Before we embarked on our bunny adventure that culminated in the addition of Rambo to our family, we first had to decide what kind of bunny we wanted. Well, clearly we wanted one with a great personality, but aside from that, I wanted prime angora fiber to spin. So we did some research and you guys get to read all about it. Or not. Harry fell asleep on the "H" key in t*e middle of t*e second paragrap*. I couldn't type muc* until *e woke up.

...................

There are four major rabbit wool breeds: Giant, French, English, and Satin. Germans are a subgroup of Giants, and always white. German rabbits don't shed, so they are shorn about four times a year. The other three types are usually plucked, but I gather that some people shave their bunnies in hot weather. Angora fiber is eight times warmer than wool and I suspect that most of them would faint (or worse) in the summer heat we've had this year.

Germans are always white with red eyes; the rest of the breeds come in a dazzling assortment of colors, many of which have lovely, evocative names--frosted pearl, lilac, silver fox, blue, and my favorite, copper agouti. In reality, there are only four colors--white, black, gray, and brown--with an infinite variety of shades, tones, and markings.

Because I wanted to dye the yarn, we started hunting for white rabbits. But before we actually bought one, I needed to do some fiber testing. I therefore ordered small samples of each breed from Etsy vendors--an inexpensive way to dabble in angora spinning.

Angora staple varies considerably, but should be about 1-3" long for pleasant spinning. The German fiber was neatly machine-carded into top. I don't own any carders, so for the other three samples I pulled handfuls of fiber apart several times until I had a semi-orderly mass.

The first bag I opened was the English fiber. And the first few handfuls were delightful to spin--something like yak, if you've ever handled that fiber. The handfuls were fluffy and soft, spinning into a fairly smooth, thin yarn on my electric spinner with occasional blips of short fiber.

To my dismay, however, the bottom half of the bag was full of matted globs and second cuts too short to spin comfortably. Clearly, the owner of this bunny was a meticulous caretaker, because she first clipped off all the long fiber and then went back over bun-bun a second time to make sure all the matted clumps and fuzzy bits were gone. Too bad she decided to pad her retail fiber with them. Half the bag went into the trash can.

I spun the nicely plucked French fiber on a spindle. French angora is noted for its guard hair, which is not the stiff, scratchy stuff found on some sheep, goats and camelids. It's poofier, soft and very fine. In fact, it's the guard hairs that bloom, making French angora yarn so cuddly (and shed-prone). Despite my best effort, I couldn't get a perfectly smooth yarn from it. It spun a bit thicker than the English, but produced a really lovely result, blips and all.

The incredible German roving spun like whipped cream--there's no other way to describe it. I dashed back to the Etsy vendor, only to discover that there was no more. It spun into a perfectly smooth yarn; grist didn't seem to matter. This stuff was happy to be spun very thin, very thick, or medium with no complaints.

Alas, the Satin fiber was really too short to spin comfortably. I put the bag away after an hour of painful micro-short-draw. If I ever get a carding machine, I might experiment with it.

I took some photos, but I ended up with an assortment of white/gray fluff and yarn photos with no distinguishing features and I didn't want to bore you with those.

Suffice it to say that my angora research was thorough and I pass on the following bits of wisdom to you:

If you buy a bag of plucked or shorn fiber from an Etsy vendor you don't know, don't be surprised to find that some of the material is unspinnable.
Prime angora can be easily spun on just about anything--spindles, e-spinners, charkhas, or your favorite foot-powered wheel.
If you find any German angora roving, don't buy it. Send me the link immediately.
Cover your lap with a piece of velvet or other adherent material to catch all the flyaway bits. Do not sneeze around loose angora.
Undiluted angora yarn is not stretchy and is really, really warm. Such yarn would make an excellent scarf for anyone living in or near the Arctic/Antarctic Circles. Mixing angora with fine wool, such as merino, will produce a sproingier and more temperate result. Add more merino the further south you live. Those folks on the equator probably should skip angora altogether and stick with Vorpal Bunny leg fiber, which often resembles cotton, except for the black variety, whose fiber is indistinguishable from fwooper feathers.

Rambo--A Fleegle Fractured Fairy Tale

2010-08-21T13:07:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, on a typical summer day, I was peacefully carving a voodoo doll of my former employer out of a radish, when Harry blew in the door, scrabbling across the floor so quickly that he left a small sonic boom in his wake. He informed me, in a terrified sqeak, that we had a visitor, and the visitor, was, well, pretty scary. So scary in fact, that Harry scuttled under the refrigerator without his bagpipes, smoking jacket, or box of Lindt truffles.

I carefully parked the paring knife in the radish's midsection, wandered to the front door, and recoiled in horror. Lounging atop a camo duffel bag was a furry white rabbit wearing killer shades and camo fatigues. Leaning against the duffel was a well-used backpack with a bunch of carrots lashed to the side and K-Bar knife dangling from the webbing pocket.

"Hello, ma'am" said this nightmarish vision.

"Erm, hello." I replied. "Can I, um, help you?"

"Looking for a spider named Harry. About so big." The rabbit held his paws about eight inches apart. "Wears sissy clothes and totes a set of bagpipes. You seen him?"

I cleared my throat. "Well, yes. He's currently under my refrigerator. He lives here when he isn't on a karaoke tour or off on one of his Terrorize the Tourist gigs."

"I'll wait."

The rabbit slid off the duffel and opened a side zipper, extracting a lethal-looking weapon and a cleaning kit. He propped the duffel and backpack against the porch rail, made himself comfortable, and proceeded to meticulously disassemble the weapon.

I retreated to the kitchen, fumbled for the phone, and called Roy.

....beep beep boop beeep beep booop beep...

"Hello?" queried the voice of sanity.

"Sweetheart, there's a Force Recon Rabbit named Rambo sitting on the porch cleaning a gun." (I deduced his name and service from the name tag rakishly embroidered on his flak vest).

Roy has lived with me for a long time, so instead of wasting time questioning my sanity or what I had to drink at lunchtime, he merely asked me what sort of gun was being handled by those fluffy little paws.

"Just a second." I put down the phone and peeped out the door.

"Excuse me," I said. My husband wants to know what kind of gun you have there." I omitted any reference to fluffy little paws.

"M4A1 Close Quarters Battle Weapon (CQBW) with a Special Operations Peculiar Modification (SOPMOD) M4A1 kit."

I picked up the phone and repeated the gobblydegook of acronyms.

"Cool," said Roy. "I'll pick up some parsley nibbles at the grocery store and be right home."

Roy spent most of the afternoon on the porch sharing beers and swapping war stories with Rambo, while I pleaded with Harry to come out from under the refrigerator. He adamantly refused, even when I lovingly assembled a bowl of freshly picked raspberries topped with his favorite organic whipped cream.

When Roy finally wandered in the door (with carrot crumbles and splotches of gun oil on his t-shirt), he explained how we ended up with a ferocious fluff ball reconnoitering the front door.

Apparently Rambo had hopped all the way from Fort Bragg, where he works as a tracking rabbit for Force Recon. Having taken a few vacation days, he opted to spend part of his leave time hunting down the spider who snitched his custom-designed carrot peeler (scrimshaw shaft, glove-leather holster) after stiffing him for $100 in a poker game last year.

"Uh oh," I said. What do we do now? Call his commanding officer? Call the police? Hire a hit fox?"

Roy thought about it a minute. "Maybe we can just return the peeler and the money and hope he hops on to his vacation destination." Rambo apparently was on his way to compete in a San Shou kickboxing championship.

I peered around the corner and noticed that, although the equipment was still piled up on the porch, there wasn't a single whisker to be seen anywhere in the vicinity.

"Uh oh again," I said to Roy while walking back into the kitchen. "Where did he go?"

Roy pointed to our meager vegetable garden. "He's out there kicking the tomato plants." Cherry tomatoes were popping down into Rambo's outstretched paws. When he had finished stripping the tomatoes, he picked off the miniature eggplants, pulled up a few radishes, and calmly proceeded to wash his paws and face in the pond. He then hopped back to the porch, picked up his weapon, and began perimeter patrol.

I fell on my knees in front of the refrigerator and explained the situation to Harry.

"Harry, you've got to return his peeler. And his hundred dollars. And maybe throw in a bouquet of squash blossoms or something. He's picking our garden clean! And scaring the turtles in the pond!"

A tiny whimper was heard from the sub-fridge.

In the meantime, our usually placid cat, Laptop, spied Rambo marching over our basil plants, and gave herself a quick lick-and-wash. She sashayed over to the rabbit, introduced herself with a small giggle, and offered to show him around the neighborhood. Then she twitched her whiskers in a deplorable display of flirtation, wrapping her tail around Rambo's rather impressive lats. So much for any help from the feline contingent.

Let's summarize the current situation. Harry's incommunicado. Roy's plinking at the dahlias with the M4A1. Laptop's playing fur games with a military lagomorph.

Taking matters firmly into my own hands. I pulled out Harry's drawer apartment and sifted through the contents. Among a vast assortment of items that I won't bother to recount, I found my engagement ring, a skein of quviuk lace yarn, a set of nude black-widow-spider cocktail sticks, two containers of truffled pate, and finally, underneath a rather impressive collection of Chocolate Frog cards, the carrot peeler and a wrinkled hundred-dollar bill.

I pilfered the latter two items (and my ring and yarn) and exited the back door.

"Excuse me," I said to Rambo. "I, erm, found your missing items and would like to return them to you with our heartfelt apologies. Sometimes Harry gets a bit, frisky, and er, forgets himself."

"Thank you, ma'am. I do appreciate your honorable behavior. Rambo gave me a breezy salute by folding over one ear and smartly tapping his forehead.

"If it's not too much to ask, I'd like to camp in your garden this evening. Laptop said she would provide some vegetarian MREs and entertainment. I'll make sure the yard is safe from meercats tonight." He chambered a round and sighted in on the last remaining cherry tomato.

"Right. Good, Hate it when those meercats attack." I mumbled as I cautiously backed away, a bit horrified at the sight of our last cherry tomato splattering over an annoyed-looking petunia plant.

The next morning, Rambo, along with his camouflage equipment, was gone.
......

Harry crept out from under the refrigerator. Roy pouted. Laptop received suggestive postcards from in-country locations. I returned to my voodoo doll carving. A year passed.

.........
Another typical summer's day. The doorbell rang. I stuck a final pin into my He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-in-This Blog-for-Fear-of-Lawsuits durian-fruit voodoo carving and answered the door. There stood Rambo, resplendent in freshly pressed BDUs, bearing a frothy bouquet of catnip.

"Hello, Ma'am," said Rambo politely. "Laptop around?"

A furry mass shot between my legs and, in a totally unseemly manner, leapt into Rambo's waiting arms. The two of them overbalanced, rolled down the front path in a breathtaking display of revolving whiskers and fur, coming to rest in a patch of outraged day lilies. We didn't see either of them again for several hours.

When the two of them finally emerged from their flowery bower, they carefully groomed each other before wandering into the kitchen, paw in paw. Over a platter of carrot canapes, Rambo related a series of fur-raising escapades from the previous year and then announced that he would be teaching a Wilderness Survival course and Escape and Evasion at the Ranger camp in the next town.

"I must be getting soft," Rambo said bashfully. "I'd sure like a place to stay off-base. Those army-issue burrows are cramped and noisy. And the lettuce/timothy hay MREs leave a lot to be desired."

Laptop gave us her patented Irresistible Pleading Cat Expression That Causes Instant Human Capitulation.

We struck a deal. In exchange for joining the fleegle team here in Georgia, he'll get fresh lettuce, wireless internet, and a custom-built hutch. In return, Rambo has agreed to provide us with companionship, a comprehensive perimeter patrol schedule and, of course, his gorgeous angora fur.

Bet you were wondering if I would ever tie this story into fiber arts, right?

And so we all lived happily ever after, except for Harry, who spends a lot of time under the fridge playing mournful tunes on his bagpipes.

The End

Cool Winter Sweater

2010-08-04T10:44:00.010-05:00

Many of you are probably complaining about the weather--killer temperatures, rampant humidity, eyeball-searing sunshine... But let's consider the positive aspects of the heat and humidity.

It's no longer necessary for us to bother with cooking vegetables from our garden. We can simply glance outside and watch them being gently steamed in the aftermath of a summer thunderstorm. This natural cooking process has been so successful that we don't bother dragging our healthy groceries into the kitchen anymore. We simply toss them on the back steps, sprinkle them with a little tamari, and sun-roast them.

Should you be the proud owner of a moon rat, fairy bluebird, or capybara, you can rejoice in their comfort--after all, tropical rain forest is their native habitat.

And finally, if the study of molds is your specialty, you won't need any expensive laboratory equipment to pursue your interest.

Alas, it's difficult to get enthused about knitting with wool, but a friend recently had a baby and she requested a warm sweater. The first thing I did was stroll around the Web, looking for superwash wool. I found a veritable mountain of the stuff, all priced at about $10 for 100 yards. A quick calculation revealed that a little sweater for a one-year-old (we're into future growth here) would cost about $50. A bit much for an item of clothing that would be quickly outgrown.

Instead, I ordered a skein of Henry's Attic superwash DK merino for $14, and dyed it myself in the coolest color scheme I could think of: watermelon.

A quick peek at my Knitware program produced a seamless, bottom-up pattern. And a day or two later, my needles produced this:

I used a decorative ribbing on the hem, cuffs, and neckline. This little rib looks wonderful on socks, too.

This pattern is meant for circular knitting.
Cast on any number of stitches divisible by 4.
Row 1: k2, p2
Row 2: k1, yo, k1, p2
Row 3: k3, p2
Row 4: k3, p2
Row 5: k3, then pass the first stitch over the other 2 knits and drop it, p2

And finally, I embroidered some seeds on the yoke.

Keep cool, everyone. The next blog post will feature a brand-new fleegle fairy tale, so stay tuned!

Current Knitting

2010-07-17T13:13:00.002-05:00

Warning: This blog post contains Harry.

Puddle #1: The King Bat Shawl

Harry has refused to budge when I asked him to help out, but I am slowly creeping around the edging, having actually finished one and a half sides. Although I try very hard to do at least one repeat a day, just about anything, including a compulsion to alphabetize my sock drawer, is sufficient to divert my attention. As someone once remarked to me about the first The Lord of the Rings movie: "I thought they would never get to Rivendell...." And speaking of the endless march to Rivendell, we have...

Puddle #2: The Queen Susan Shawl

Although I dearly love the pattern, I have to admit that it is a stupefyingly boring knit. The delicate tracery is mostly composed of a single motif, and I am thoroughly weary of it. Being only on Row 52 of 165, this initially sweet little pile of fluffy gossamer has mutated into the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the UFO basket, snapping and growling at me whenever I pass it by. Which I try to do often. But I gamely knit at least five rows a week, because I want to see it finished. I try not to look ahead to the interminable edging, lest I suffer mental collapse before the border is actually started. Harry furtively backs away towards the vegetable keeper, because he knows he promised to knit rows 53-63...

Genuine Finished Objects
There are few things in a knitter's life more precious than a friend who is always cold, and thus actually needs warm hats, mitts, and other small, fuzzy, and quickly finished objects. The Queen Susan Shawl of Avoidance has driven me into a relative frenzy of knitting winter gear, for example...

A lovely pair of Whitewater mitts out of Mini Mochi....

And a little Bainbridge neckwarmer out of handspun merino/angora/silk.

And lastly, because, next to a chilly friend, those with babies are also useful, as I can knit silly stuff like this:

The mitts, scarf, and elephant patterns are free on Ravelry and take little yarn, not much time, and, most importantly, have no edging whatsoever.

Those who have asked after Harry can draw comfort (or not) from the fact that he did not fall into a volcano, get eaten by an aardvark, or retire from the knitting world. He has, however, traded in his karaoke machine for a set of ten-pins. He thoughtfully set up a practice lane on the headboard of our bed, so we will always be aware of when he gets a strike and can wake up to give him a reward.

He generally bowls with his millipede buddy, Clarence, and Harry is currently knitting him a set of socks. He claims this project is preventing him from fulfilling the promises made to help out with the Puddles, but I think he's even more bored by edging than I am.

Back to the Future

2010-07-05T11:24:00.001-05:00

1968. Viet Nam. Rolling Stones. Martin Luther King. Bobby Kennedy, Alice's Restaurant. Apollo 8. Spinning. Knitting, Macrame.

Yes indeedy. I once made a macrame thingie that hung on my dorm wall next to a Jefferson Airplane poster:

I wasn't at all fond of macrame, but I loved the colors of this piece, and so it travelled around with me, hanging around on walls while I did other things. When we moved from Maryland to Georgia, I noticed it looked rather scruffy. I removed it from the wall and thoughtlessly asked Roy to toss it out. Which, of course, he didn't do. He still has his grade school report cards.

2010. Iraq. Afghanistan, Rolling Stones (they are still giving concerts!). etc. etc. yadda yadda. Spinning. Knitting. Dyeing. A few months ago, I spotted a gorgeous batt All The Pretty Fibers' store on Etsy. I quickly dropped it into my shopping cart...the lovely colors rang a bell.

Then I asked Roy where that old macrame thingie was. And sure enough...

I will spin one of the batts into a graduated yarn, perhaps to knit either Aeolian or Luiza .

It's amazing that a color scheme I admired 40-odd years ago is still beautiful to me. And even more remarkable that Roy actually found the wall hanging in the basement. Of course, he will never let me forget that he saved it so I could write this blog post. Sigh.

Dremel Guy Strikes Again~

2010-06-15T13:13:00.000-05:00

I rather enjoy knitting with beads, although it does slow me down, mostly because of the small number of beads that will fit onto a normal crochet hook. Cheeto here, will demonstrate.

First, you whisk the hook around in the little bead pot. If you're lucky, you'll snag four beads.

After placing these little guys onto your lovely knitted object, you do some more fishing....

And once more..................

And again.......................................

After the eleventy-millionth fishing expedition of the day, I stared at the crochet hook for a few minutes. ....gotta be a way...mumble mumble...., of course! fleegle yells for...............

Dremel Guy!

Dremel Guy flashed into the room wearing his Formal Socks, a Cape of Invincibility (tm), a Really Old T-shirt, and, of course, his hand-held Miracle Machine! After whisking my hook away, he returned an hour later with this:

Both Cheeto and I were thrilled with the result....

The hook's not much good for crocheting anymore, but the last time I used a size 13 crochet hook to actually crochet was, um, let's see.........scribble........scratch........scribble..........never gonna tell them that number.....Suffice it to say, a long time ago. And I have a spare just in case I take up doilies again. Heh.

Intwined Studio Charting App for Knitters

2010-05-24T16:09:00.002-05:00

I truly am useless at reading written-out patterns, so I have, over the years, collected almost every charting program for knitters that appeared on the market in the hopes that one of them would be the Killer App of Chart Knitting. I did not purchase the extravagantly expensive application that appears years ago whose name escapes me, but I did shell out $185 for Knit Visualizer when it was released. I rarely use it--I prefer Excel. Most of what I chart are older patterns with written directions, and I dislike KV's awkward single-line pattern parser, which is unforgiving of mistakes. (There are other things I don't especially care for in KV, but this post isn't about Knit Visualizer, so I won't whine any further about it.)

Anyway, I was rather blown away when I started playing with Intwined Pattern Studio. First of all, it costs $44--a whopping bargain of gargantuan proportions, because it not only contains all of Knit Visualizer's features, but allows full-page editing of charts and directions.

The main chart screen is divided into three sections.

On the top is the chart and to the left, are three lovely collapsible palettes that can be positioned anywhere on the page or closed up to save screen real estate.

The Stitch palette shows you the stitches in the chart and the Colors palette displays colors in use--both palettes save a lot of time, as you can instantly reuse items without scrolling through a long list of symbols.

The Stitch palette itself is quite exhaustive, but if you need a special symbol, you can design one.

What's especially nice about the Symbol library is you may rearrange stitches into categories, create custom categories, and edit the abbreviations and descriptions. If you collaborate with someone else and created a group of special symbols, you can export symbol sets and email them to your partner.

The Stitch Library uses bitmap symbols, not fonts, so you can import your own pictures and use them in the library. You can also edit the current settings. For example, I happen to like a dot instead of a dash for purl. So I changed it.

Like other charting programs, you can add cheerfully colored borders and no-stitch symbols; flip chart areas horizontally and vertically; replace one symbol with another; and zoom in and out of the chart. You can also use colored boxes for the No Stitch symbol, or simply have them omitted from the chart.

The star of the show, though, is the window at the bottom of the display: it's where you can type (or paste) knitting instructions and see the corresponding symbols appear on your chart. Unlike Knit Visualizer, the entire written pattern is displayed at all times, and changes made to either the chart or the pattern are reflected in corresponding section. This feature is exceptionally useful, because you may access the whole design, not just a single line.

Note also in the image above that there is a lace setting--the program just skips alternate rows, which saves a lot of space.

Once are satisfied with the chart, you tell the program to copy the chart and switch over to the Document window. You'll see your chart there, and you may add any special instructions. This window is a full-featured word processor. If your design uses multiple charts, you can insert them, and you may drop photos into the document as well.

On the down side, you must save the stitch key as a separate image--a little annoying. And, while you can copy the written instructions into your document, the method is not obvious. I hope both these little foibles are fixed in a later version of the program. On the whole though, this program is powerful, customizable, delightfully easy to use, and won't have a significant impact on your yarn-buying budget.

By Popular Request (Sunglasses AND Hazmat Suit Required!)

2010-04-23T19:09:00.069-05:00

Blog readers can sometimes be a bit, um, perverse. Here I went and posted my latest FO--Roy's Formal Socks--a work that reflects my impeccable taste and fashion sense, and all anyone wanted to see was the tuxedo that completes the outfit.

Note the unremarkable bow tie and studs. We just haven't found the perfect set to complement the jacket. Harry, of course, has a similar outfit, but I am afraid I melted all my camera lenses taking this picture, so you will have to use your imagination: Just think of a gigantic spider in psychedelic formal attire whizzing around on his purple iPod/skateboard.

Sorry about the headache.

I understand Knitty and Color is getting a bit tired of carding Jelly Bean batts. Apparently, Roy isn't the only one who owns tasteful tuxedos. Someone even commissioned me to spin six of these batts for her very own sets of formal foot covers.

I have been busily knitting away on the Queen Susan, but frankly, working on this shawl is akin to scrubbing Boston Common with a toothbrush. And it currently looks like a hairnet for 700-pound pumpkin. Nothing much to show yet. Check back in, say, six months.

Next week, I am off to the Maryland Sheep and Wool show. Several people have expressed interest in meeting me, so I made myself a t-shirt sporting my avatar on both the front and back. If you see a short lady wearing a rainbowed octopus, it's probably me. Stop and say hello!

Warning! Hazmat Suits Required

2010-04-08T12:48:00.000-05:00

I refuse to answer any questions regarding the bobble yarn that so delicately rims the top of these socks. Suffice it to say that it's a long story involving Asherbanipal, a radish, two feemsters, and a Batmobile.

Warning! Sunglasses Alert!

2010-03-28T14:36:00.003-05:00

DANGER! Do not proceed to read this post without an infallible pair of polarized sunglasses firmly placed on your nose.You have been warned!!

Several weeks ago, Roy announced that his only pair of formal socks had become listless and wan from years of washing. Please, could I create a fresh pair of socks that would exactly match his tuxedo?

I ordered a set of merino batts from Knitty and Color that precisely matched Roy's extensive written requirements. When the batts arrived, they immediately melted the 99-cent sunglasses I had foolishly donned as eye protection.

I raced out to an optician and purchased the darkest pair of shades that the guy had in stock. Then I stripped the batts lengthwise to produce a continuous succession of color, and ramped up my Hansen e-spinner.

The resultant yarn is equally eye-searing.

As I was cajoling the camera lens to stay open while I took some photos, Cheeto scuttled into the room, whimpering "Mama!!!."

The reunion was tender, until I pointed out that, while the skein did seem to match his coloration, the texture was way off. Cheeto ignored me and demanded another touching family reunion photo.

For those interested in the technicalities, this stuff was spun using a squinting long draw and Navajo-plied in the dark. Heh. Just kidding.

Obtaining a smooth, lofty finished product is easy if you undertwist the singles and overtwist the final yarn. If you overtwist both the singles and the final spin, you will end up with a tightly twisted yarn that lacks both smoothness and elasticity.

When I presented the ball of yarn to my collection of knitting needles, the entire pack rolled away screaming about union rules, toxic yarn, and my appalling lack of consideration. Cheeto valiantly snared a pair hiding under Harry, and we achieved cast-on shortly thereafter.

I haven't decided if these need bobbles. I will keep you posted.

Three Lovely Shawls

2010-03-02T13:24:00.004-05:00

None of which are actually on my needles, because I am literally knee-deep in The Queen Susan. Having finished the center, I can testify to the fact that it going to be huge. A rough-block of the center measures about 40x40 inches--almost large enough to be a shawl in it's own right without the border and edging.

When I get tired of plowing through the border rows, I have three shawls in my queue competing fiercely for Right of First Cast-On.

Luiza

Designed by Jane A. (Mawelucky on Ravelry), this masterpiece is the Harry wants to knit first, if only because of the magnificent colors (matches his belly button rings, I was told). The original, shown here, was knitted with fingering-weight yarn, but the pattern is open-ended and can be made with any weight yarn by increasing the number of repeats or doubling a finer-weight yarn. You can buy the pattern on Ravelry, or get it free with my very own kit in my Etsy store. The kit yarn is a Zephyr-weight called Firebird (2/20 60% merino, 20% cashmere, 20% silk),--a lustrous, soft, luxurious yarn custom-spun for me. The default kit is Black Plum and Black, but any main color, for example, Lapis) may be ordered instead.

The Persian Princess

This exquisite shawl was designed by Bad Cat specifically for Love Potion #3. The design is intricate and made even lovelier by the addition of sparkly beads and a feathery border. The pattern is free if you purchase a skein of LP3; otherwise, you can buy the pattern directly from the Ravelry store.

Faroesertuch mit Blättern und Blüten

(Photo by uta953)

The name means "Faroese shawl with Leaves and Buds," which doesn't do justice to this breathtaking beauty designed by Utlinde. The original was knit with sport-weight mohair on size 7 needles, so it should be a fairly quick piece to do. Alas, I do not stock any such yarn in my store, but I do have some stash that would work beautifully for this--a ball of Lisa Souza's mohair in the Mother of Pearl colorway flashes to the front of my brain. The pattern is, believe it or not, free from the Ravelry store.

Current Knitting and Spinning

2010-02-08T10:49:00.001-05:00

I tried. Honestly, I tried. For a week now, I've been skittering around the floor holding a sign that read: Attention fleegle! It't time for a blog post! Unfortunately, fleegle merely smiled absently in acknowledgement, and then wandered away to do who knows what. Well, this morning, I really lost my cool. Well, a little bit of my cool, because I am too cool to lose all my cool, as you all well know.

Enlisting the aid of a few friends, we attached fleegle's laptop to a crane, levered it over the bed where she slothfully lay sleeping, and mostly carefully lowered it onto her person. I regret to say that, after the cable slippage, fleegle did wake up and pay attention, but the Raid attack was not exactly the result we were looking for.

So, I, Harry, will write the blog post instead.

First, I have here fleegle's Owl sweater. Very soft and warm. And actually pretty well knitted for a human. I have her knitting notebook right here, so let me flip through the pages and see what she made this thing out of.

......riffle riffle, fwip fwip....

Hmm.
Ah, here we go.

Onions
Tomatoes
Raid
Kleenex
Pork chops
..................

Whoops. Grocery list.

Ah, found it!

Size 5/7 needles, white Yubina Bulky cashmere knitted with one strand of Colinette Paresienne in the Marble colorway. Simple bottom-up seamless yoke sweater pattern made with Knitware. Owl cables from an old Mary Thomas book. Pearl beads from somewhere. Time: 6 days.

Piled on top of the owl sweater were several skeins of handspun. Rather nice handspun. In fact, the yellow merino yarn makes an excellent mattress for yours truly. Not much in terms of notes, I'm afraid. The orange is merino/silk from Corgi Hill, the yellow merino is from Funky Fiber, and the lovely black merino/angelina sparkly stuff is from Bohemia Fibers. All these were spindle-spun, but there is no indication which spindles she used. Sloppy record keeping.

And lastly, I dragged fleegle's Queen Susan out of the tacky plastic bag and spread it out the best I could. So far, it looks like she's half done with the center and, to my surprise, there is not a single coffee stain on the entire thing.

Had I been knitting it, I am sure it would have looked better, but this, after all, is about fleegle's knitting, so I am trying to be nice. It is not easy after spending two hours in the shower to remove lingering Raid fumes.

Bart & Francis Open House

2010-01-29T11:32:00.000-05:00

Sigh. I wish I could be there. But there is a Big Pond between me and this exotic yarn extravaganza, which will take place in beautiful Belgium, January 30 and 31st, from 9:30 am-6:30 pm.

For those who don't know about Bart & Francis, go here and sigh with envy. The store carries a wide range of exquisite yarns--lace and otherwise--some of which are simply not available anywhere else. Their silk yarns make me weep a bit, and they stock exotica such as mirror and glass bead yarns, vicuna yarns, and linen and stainless steel thread.

If you can make it to the open house, you will be able to play with their fabulous offerings ~~and I will hate you~~. The owners will handle your questions and assist those with special textile-related requirements to find exactly what you are looking for.

Francis assures me that all this will be done is a cozy atmosphere, featuring a never-before-encountered "Dump Your Husband Corner," stocked with a broad range of fancy alcoholic beverages and newspapers to keep him accupied while you, the textile lover, can range freely over their offerings. Of course, you can tenderly park your wife or SO there instead, and the brochures below indicate that tea and pastries are also being offered.

And here is the announcement in a variety of languages :) Yarnlot, do enjoy your trip and post about it, because I am sure you won't want to miss this affair.

Bart & Francis

OverleieStraat 59

8500 Kortrijk

België

info@bart-francis.be

No-Purl Garter Stitch In-The-Round

2010-01-18T12:54:00.003-05:00

Problem
When knitting a Shetland shawl, the center square is knitted back and forth in garter stitch. Then the border stitches are picked up around two sides of the square, thus producing the first row of a circular border. However, if you want to maintain garter stitch on the border, every other row needs to be purled. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with purling (there are even some knitters who prefer it), but for most people, purling can quickly get tiresome when the border has 1000+ stitches on each round.

Pseudo-Solutions
The alternative to purling every other round is to turn the work somewhere, somehow, and knit back, essentially knitting the border flat and using some hocus-pocus to bind the two border edges together. All of the solutions rely on a fancy wrap-and-turn on one corner...making a loose yarnover and knitting it with the next stitch; picking up the bump on one edge and knitting it with the last stitch of the row; sewing the seam when the border is completed, and so on. None of these solutions pleased me. I could always spot the turn line from a galloping horse. No good.

Fleegle's Solution

This humble-looking sample represents a solution to a dilemma that has plagued knitters since the first dinosaur broke two limbs off a tree, wound some vines into a ball, and produced the world's first Stegosaurus shawl.

In the sample shown above, the border is knitted flat, not circularly, but there's no discernible seam, is there? The red arrow points to what you might think is the seam, but it's actually the place where the next row begins. Circular knitting, as you recall, isn't really a circle--it's a spiral.

The solution turns (bad pun, sorry) out to be relatively simple: knit the border using two balls of yarn, not one, alternating direction, so that one ball of yarn (A) is knitted in one direction, the other ball (B) in the other direction. The aqua arrow above shows the position of the yarns in the current row and the place where the switch will happen. The trick that makes this solution work is that A and B are going in different directions, there’s no turn at all, and thus no wonky seam line.

In the image below, the actual color/yarn change for the rows is shown along the dotted black line. Note that the yarn travels one stitch outwards with every other row because of the yarnover increases at the corners. I did a sample where I cheated one stitch and kept the change point in the same place with each row. It didn't make any difference--there still was no seam line.

Here are the directions for a little sample, so you can try this yourself. I used sock yarn scraps in two colors and cast on 13 provisional stitches because I am incredibly lazy and 14 stitches was just too much work. It's a small sample, so when you do the border, you'll need one additional circ or a set of DPNs to go round and round.

Knit a center square with Color A.

Pick (do not pick up and knit) up the stitches along the first side, slip the stitches from the provisional cast-on, then pick up the stitches from the third side, slip the last group of stitches. Don't forget to pick up a stitch at each corner.

Note: At this point, I strongly suggest you rearrange your stitches so that the corners fall towards the centers of your needles, not at the ends. Otherwise, you will be working yarnovers at the ends of your needles, and that's always messy.

You are now at the beginning corner.

Attach color B, turn your work, and knit all the way around to the beginning corner.

Drop B, turn, pick up A, and knit around, working an OKO at each corner.

Drop A, turn, pick up B and knit plain around.

And so on.

In this sample, you will always be doing OKO at the corners with color A and a plain knit row with color B.

I put a safety pin on the side where I should be knitting color A, so I didn’t get confused. Obviously, when you are knitting a real shawl, both balls will probably be the same color. I will therefore put a safety pin on one side of the shawl and a some indicator on the corresponding yarn ball when I use this technique on my Queen Susan shawl.

And, of course, this trick is not limited to shawls--it can be used any time you want to knit garter stitch in the round without purling.

Rana Pilosus

2010-01-07T11:24:00.001-05:00

January 7, 2010
Dateline Kyzyl-Oi, Kyrgyzstan

Scientists today announced the discovery of the fabled Rana Pilosus, the Hairy Frog of knitterly legend! Hitherto mentioned only in passing on a multitude of knitting blogs ( as in "The yarn looked like frog hair, so I ran away screaming."), this endearing amphibian is no longer a myth, but a reality. In fact, Rana Pilosus cultivation turns out to be a major economic industry in a remote area of Kyrgyzstan.

Dr. Elmer Vrkyng and his graduate student, Bob "Hoppy" Hopper, semi-distinguished amphibian zoologists at the University of Uch-Korgon, made their tremendous discovery while floundering around in marshland north of town. Dr. Vrkyng explained that they had overindulged in fermented mare's milk (not much to do in Uch-Korgon besides drink and flounder) and decided to take a walk and clear their heads. Unfortunately, they wandered into the infamous Gryznyk Swamp and got, um, bogged down.

"Bob fell flat on his face, causing a torrential tidal wave that floomed all over my clean shirt. When the water, mud, and algae subsided, I felt a tickling sensation on my forehead. I reached up and discovered a webbed foot caught in my pith helmet. I tugged frantically on the squishy offending limb and was suddenly face-to-face with a genuine Rana Pilosus! His other leg was curled around my earlobe! I immediately whipped out my camera and took a picture of this monumental discovery."

Dr. Vrkynk and Mr. Hopper subsequently interviewed the nearby townspeople, most of whom were oddly dressed in layers of delicate knitwear. Apparently, the surrounding area, being mostly swamp, was not conducive to raising sheep, yak, or vorpal bunnies. However, the town was overrun with furry frogs, especially during the Annual Festival of Flies, an occasion marked by fly-calling, fly-swatting competitions, fly markets, and highly decorated swatter sales.

Over the millenia, frog herding became the town's major source of income. The only other business in Kyzyl-Oi is a vowel importer, and apparently the import tax on A's and E's is so outrageous that the company only accepts a few shipments of I's and O's every year and thus doesn't offer much hope of employment. Mr. Krygzy, who owns the company, says Vrknuk's Vowels has spent a ton of grybzyfs in search of a new vowel, but have not had much luck so far.

In light of the poor job market, frog herding has become the sustaining business. According to Madame Grizkyrg, who owns the largest frog spread in the area, the Rana Pilosus is an economical crop, as the frogs take good care of their families, are excellent padkeepers, and require only an occasional rinse with conditioning shampoo to keep snarls and split ends under control. And, she adds, the frog industry is unquestionably Green!

Madame Grizkyrg explains. "Our frogs are free-range, happily playing cards and engaging in frog-wrestling tournaments by day, and indulging in karacroake at night. In June, the frog shearers armed with tiny scissors, lure the frogs (with homemade fly snacks) onto supersized pads, where they are carefully shorn of their pelts." She went on to say that the hair is then washed, sorted, and spun by the locals to produce extremely fine yarn, which is then knitted into garments during the severe winter months. As you can see from the picture, a shorn frog is a happy frog!

"One gram of frog hair, spun in our little factory, will produce over 5000 meters of yarn. And the frogs come in a wide range of colors and patterns, including polka dot and herringbone, so we don't have to worry about dyeing it," says Madame Grizkyrg.

She went on to say that the frogs make excellent pets, as they are clean and very intelligent. There are two frog trainers in town who coach the ambhibians in Kyrgyz, the native language, as well as instruct them in the rules of Frog Paddy Bingo, a subject that will not be further discussed in this article. A new niche business has recently emerged, thanks a sizable grant from the TSA. Azrygyr is one of several being trained as drug- and explosive-sniffing frogs.

The TSA will soon be deploying these little guys in both the personal security and baggage-screening areas. Being small, they can easily hop around inside carry-on and checked baggage. When contraband is detected, their hair stands straight up and vibrates silently, quietly alerting the agents. The frogs' foot-long tongues have been genetically modified to carry an electrical current and, on command from the TSA Frog Handlers, will zap offenders, who are then dropped through a trap door directly into a paddy wagon.

Dr. Vrkyng and Mr. Hopper will be staying in the town for three months studying this new genus before publishing their findings in Nature. After they have completed their research, they intend to start an eco-friendly frog-hair yarn exporting business. "Our enterprise should bring a business boom to Kyzyl-Oi," says Dr. Vrkyng.

All of us lace knitters look forward to seeing the product! Right? Don't we?

End of the Year Miscellany

2009-12-21T21:18:00.007-05:00

I have no monumental news or projects to report, but there are a few items to post about, not the least of which is that Harry has sold his karaoke machine and taken up meditation. When asked about this dramatic about-face, he said he was preparing to knit The Queen Susan Shawl, which is now available here.This is a temporary link, but the pattern should be available in the Ravelry store by the time you read this. The pattern But please come back and finish reading this last post of 2009.

I hope you will download the 73-page pattern even if you don't intend to knit it immediately (or ever). Those who think they could never attempt such a masterpiece will benefit from studying the pages and working the suggested swatches. You might discover that this shawl, as daunting as it appears, is still knit one stitch at a time--and the stitches themselves are not complicated.

Next, I want to address a few reader requests. I have received numerous messages, both here and on Ravelry, requesting information about how I spin such fine and even lace yarns. Given the avalanche of spinning books that have been published in the last few years, plus the enormous wealth of videos on YouTube, I decided to ask my readers: Do you want a lace spinning tutorial, and if so, do you want videos too? I don't have a video camera, so I would have to borrow one, but if there is enough demand, I will work out the logistics.

The second reader request has been around for years--that I write a book. Only one person has ever detailed what she thought such a work should actually contain, but she did have some excellent suggestions. So the question I ask here is, do you really want a book from me, and if so, what do you want it to cover? And how much of the book can be blog material? Few people read my old posts, and there is a wealth of material there that I would like to include. Asking me to write a book is an effective form of flattery, but I really need more information about subject matter that would be useful, informative, entertaining, and not already beaten into tiny knitting molecules elsewhere.

Please understand that I am not a designer, and have no intention of writing a book of patterns. But if there are enough subject requests, I will turn my attention to completing such a work in 2010 or shortly thereafter. Now is the time to speak up if there are knitting and/or spinning topics you want me to address.

And so, I bid Good Riddance to 2009, and wish all of us a lovely 2010--a new decade and fresh start.

Current Knitting (and Spinning)

2009-12-13T13:40:00.000-05:00

The Queen Susan shawl seriously impinged on my knitting and spinning time over the last few months. Fortunately, the pattern booklet is now off my desk and onto that of Laura, a most wonderful copy editor. I am hoping she will have time this week to work her magic, so I can upload the pattern shortly thereafter. I promise to announce availability when it's off everyone's desk and into the Ravelry pattern database.

Despite Queen Susan, I managed to complete a few small items for Christmas gifts.

I made two hats, one of which I cannot post about, because Kyoko-san is not allowed to open her present before December 25 and I don't want to spoil the surprise. However, the hat I made for Jun is not under any secrecy doctrine.

Jun's family owns Rhubarb, one of the few non-Japanese eateries in Togane City, Japan--the Nepalese chicken curry is especially good. We love Rhubarb's desserts: the lemon pound cake is particularly delicious.

I am sure you guys remember the Friendship Cake Plague? Every few weeks someone would drop in bearing a wad of Friendship cake starter. The idea was that you used to it make your own cake batter, reserving a blob to foist on someone else. We actually made one cake from the stuff and pronounced it Worse Than Grandma Tillie's Matzoh Balls, and frankly, I didn't think anything--foodstuff or otherwise--could earn that distinction.

After five of these batter bits had been charmingly received and surreptitiously handed off to the increasingly resentful neighborhood wildlife, we escaped to Japan, a country renowned for green tea and sashimi, but not for Americanisms such as Friendship cake.

So of course, the first thing we spotted, to our horror, in Rhubarb's dessert case a few days after arrival was--wait for it--Friendship cake. Clearly, a batter glob had somehow stowed away on a jetliner and slithered from Narita to Togane.

Regardless of this lamentable gastronomical lapse, Jun remains a good friend and deserves a warm hat. I used two skeins of Noro Silk Garden, removing the weird green yarn in the middle of the skeins, reserving it for future knitted frog toys. The little 2x2 cable pattern was spontaneous and I took no notes.

Tonya's son is now old enough to appreciate the fact that his older sister has something he doesn't, so I now knit them pseudo-matching gifts. This year, Nina receives Douglas, The Extremely Happy Giraffe, while Kai gets Horatio, The Happy Hippo. Both patterns are free, from Bobbie Padgett.

Horatio is proportionately smaller than Douglas (to match the size of the children), but equally squashy and adorable:

As for spinning, well, there is a drawer full of singles waiting for an appropriate plying device. I hate, loathe, detest plying. It's boring. It's dull. It's frightful. But! There's a beautifully wrapped package sitting on our Gift Slab that may address the Plying Problem. In the meantime, the myriad little copps sit quietly, waiting for Plyness. But I am not idle.

The Spindlewoods pink ivory spindle in the top photo holds gloriously silky Suri alpaca from The Critter Ranch, and the spindle in the lower two images is clearly enjoying luxurious 50/50 silk/merino roving from The Fiber Denn. It might be the only smiling spindle ever made!

The Queen Susan Shawl

2009-11-28T10:29:00.000-05:00

Yeah, yeah. Harry has been following me around for the last few days, poking me with his swagger stick to remind me that I haven't posted a blog entry in weeks. Because his swagger stitck is an exquisitely sharp quilting needle equipped with a customized leather handle, being poked with it gets the point across (Ouch! Bad Pun!).

Most of my time for the last few weeks has been sucked up into a fascinating collaborative project called The Queen Susan Shawl (based on a photograph by M. Sutherland, from The Shetland Museum Photographic Archive).

The project is remarkable in so many ways. It shows, first of all, the power of a social networking site such as Ravelry, to foster communication across the entire globe. The shawl is so lovely and so complicated, but by combining all of our skills, The Ravelry Heirloom Knitting Forum has re-created the pattern for this masterpiece. Right now, the only missing bits are the corner chart and a paragraph or two of calculations. We are hoping that by the New Year, The Queen Susan shawl pattern will be available on Ravelry, free to anyone who wants to hoard, knit, or just cherish this delightful design.

Because I have been working like a little fiend on all aspects of the shawl, I am not going to recapitulate the history. Instead, I am posting, with my own permission (seeing as how I wrote it), the introduction to the pattern booklet. It's a lovely story, so please enjoy!

Little did Clarabeasty realize what a firestorm she would start when she innocently posted a shawl picture from the Shetland Museum on the usually quiet Heirloom Knitting Ravelry forum:

October 16, 2009
Clarabeasty: Does anyone recognize the border pattern on this piece of lace? Specifically the part that looks like little wreaths and twigs.

Sophiphi137: No, but it is beautiful! I also am now very curious about it.

M1K1: Look again in the Shetland Museum photo library. There is a close up detail of another shawl which has the scalloped (wreath) effect made by placing roses.
You can get a really good look at it by selecting Large Image.
Isn’t it a fabulous effect - softening the straight lines of the zigzags.
Actually this might be the same one you showed above...

fleegle: Wow! That’s the most beautiful border I’ve ever seen…..gets out graph paper immediately….

This innocent, offhand exchange would result in a mammoth project involving more than 30 people and hundreds of hours of charting, swatching, proofing, writing, editing, and layout.

We started off rather simply with the center design, which we recognized from other shawls. The pattern, called Spider Webs, Spiders, and Diamonds, was easy to chart from other sources. But then, Msleoknits, presented an alternative center that she had charted and used for another shawl. Her design eliminated the garter stitch interruption in the spider webs, and many of us preferred her design to the original one.

Similarly, Q-Knitter graphed the original edging. a variation of Mrs. Sutherland's Fine Lace, a coincidence that made us all smile with delight. EdithCone subsequently presented a second, more delicate pattern—a variation of Alpine Lace—and made a chart for it, as well.

Now we had charts for two centers and two edgings, and the project was not so simple anymore.

The border, clearly the charm point of the shawl, presented numerous problems. First of all, the original shawl was clearly knitted in the traditional manner. The center and borders were worked separately and sewn together. We all decided that we wanted to knit the piece in the modern way, that is, knitting the center, then picking up the border stitches and knitting the rest of the shawl in the round. And this method meant that we had to invert all the motifs in the border.

Piece by piece, each motif was charted and test-knitted. In many cases, we had to choose among several alternatives. After a few weeks of experimentation and decisions, we had a semblance of a genuine, workable border chart.

The corners presented more difficult decisions. While we liked the original corners, we wanted something special. KnitLab became our Guy in the Corner, working up the beautiful flower sprays that integrate so well with the main border area. In what can only be called an astounding feat of charting, M1K1 not only charted the complex corner, but turned part of it inside out so less-experienced knitters could better see how the pattern fit together.

When all the parts were finally defined, LarasCreations spent weeks developing the calculations. A few days after M1K1 and LarasCreations had mostly completed their assignments, fleegle jokingly suggested adding a row above the bottom row of flowers:

fleegle: Not terribly radical. Although you would have to regraph the entire corner.

fleegle climbs into her nuclear blast bomb shelter and closes the hatch. Click.

larascreations: Well…….it does seem like it might look nicer with another 1-2 between?
What’s one more line?
……runs to keep fleegle company

fleegle: …fleegle yells through the blast door, informing Lara the price of admission are the new calculations…

laceknitterlois: “NOOOOOOOOO”….flipper proofer runs & throws supercape over m1k1’s computer screen.

“Don’t look, m1k1!”
Points pointy finger accusingly at larascreations & fleegle:
“Sure, go ahead and give m1k1 heart palpitations. And where does that leave us? Without our Professor of Corner Chartology!”
Makes ultimate threat:
“Which means you 2 would be sentenced to take over corner charting duties. Knock it off, ya hear?”
Leaves scene whistling. Just keeping the world safe, one knitter at a time.

As you might expect, the concept of an additional row was tabled forever, amidst heartfelt apologies entailing considerable virtual groveling. Gentle humor and mild tangents that drifted into totally unrelated topics made all of us smile amidst our piles of graph paper.

In the meantime, we realized that we needed to think about how we were going to present the finished pattern, and we needed to bring the Shetland Museum into the loop.

The consensus was that the pattern should be placed into Creative Commons without copyright protection, and should be available as a free download on Ravelry, a highly popular site for knitters. But we wanted to alert the Shetland Museum to the work and give them the files, so visitors to their web site could download the pattern from there, as well. Perhaps the museum would be able to use the pattern as a donation magnet.

Here is the original letter written by edithcone to the Shetland Museum.

Novmber 6, 2009
Dear Ms. Christiansen,

    I’m writing to you on behalf of a group of knitters who were very inspired by one of the shawls in the Shetland Museum and Archives Photo Library. The shawl in question is found in the photos numbered S00019 and S00024.

    We are members of Ravelry, an online community of knitters and spinners from around the world. Within Ravelry, our group, Heirloom Knitting, is particularly interested in fine Shetland lace knitting. The shawl shown in the photos above, was brought to the attention of the group and the design was so well-liked it was proposed that a collaborative effort be made to create a chart of the original design and produce a pattern that could be downloaded free-of-charge from Ravelry. After much debate, the shawl was named The Queen Susan shawl.

    We would like to give mention to the Shetland Museum for housing the original photo which led to the project. We also thought you might be interested in being able to offer the pattern for download from the Shetland Museum site (thereby making it available to non-Ravelry members).

    Is it possible you have any background information about this shawl, such as the name of the knitter/designer, the approximate date it was made, the location, etc.? M. Sutherland is noted as the photographer. Was the shawl likely made by a member of his family? Any information you could give us about the shawl would be very helpful and appreciated.

    Because this is such a large project, it will be some time before any of us finish knitting an entire shawl. In light of this, we would be extremely grateful for the use of one of your photos (with credit given to the Shetland Museum), so that we can show a completed shawl in the pattern instructions.

    There has been a tremendous co-operative effort within the group and at this point, most of the elements of the shawl have been charted. There are few Shetland lace shawl patterns of this complexity available today and none, as far was we know, that have been produced by knitters from all over the globe. It is exciting to be involved in this project, one that we hope will make a beautiful Shetland shawl design available to knitters everywhere and help continue the tradition of Shetland lace knitting.

    I hope you will entertain our request to use one of the photos mentioned at the beginning of this letter. I look forward to your reply.
Yours Sincerely,
Denise Furukawa
(on behalf of the HK Ravelry group)

And here is Dr. Carol Christiansen’s response:

November 13, 2009
Dear Denise,

Many thanks for your email. We were delighted and intrigued by how our photographic archive has been put to use once again.

The photographer M. Sutherland was Magnus Sutherland, of Colvadale, Unst. He was related to a number of expert lace spinners and knitters, some of whom are pictured in photograph R01400. He took the photographs of the lace pieces in the late 1890s or 1900 – one scarf has the date 1899 knitted into it and it is likely that the other lace pieces were photographed at the same time.
This shawl is not part of our collection. However, we have several other shawls and stoles knitted by the Sutherland women, one of which is on display. It has similar centre and border motifs to the one you are knitting. Our records indicate that the border of the shawl on display was designed by the brother of the Sutherland sisters, probably Magnus himself. It is possible, but by no means certain, that Magnus was involved in the design of the shawl you are knitting.

The Sutherlands designed and traded patterns with one another, as you can see from Magnus’ photographs that many of the shawls bear similar motifs but used in different combinations. If the designs were written down by the Sutherlands, which is unlikely, this information has not passed to us. However, the reason we have these early photographs of Magnus’ is that they were passed on to Ethel Henry, who donated them to the Museum. Ethel Henry was herself an expert knitter and knitwear designer, working in both Fair Isle patterning and some lace – she designed wonderfully stylish fine lace jumpers in the 1950s! We have two of Ethel’s lace notebooks, one in which lace patterns are written out, in another where they are charted. Some of the motifs found in the Sutherland laces are described in these notebooks. Unfortunately, Ethel stipulated that the notebooks not be published, and therefore, we can only offer them as study materials here in Shetland.

Have you completed the pattern for this complex shawl? If you are struggling with any parts of it, please let me know and I will see how I can help.

I will meet with our IT person next week to discuss sending you the Magnus Sutherland photograph for the completed pattern and how to attach Ravelry information/download to the photographic archive website. I shall get back to you with this information in due course.
Best wishes,
Carol
(Dr. Carol Christiansen, Shetland Museum and Archives)

Having received an enthusiastic response from the Shetland Museum, we continued the cycle of chart, knit, proof, write, edit, chart, proof for several months. Until finally, we had all the material at hand, and this pattern booklet could be assembled for what we hope is your visual and knitterly delight.

It was decided to name the shawl The Queen Susan, because several of the ringleaders bear that name or have close relatives who do. We also felt that the name conferred a certain dignity on this lovely piece.

And finally, although fleegle wrote the introduction, EdithCone pointed out that she barely mentioned her own contributions. So, I will lapse into the first-person at this point and say that I was the initial instigator; graphed the original center and border; assigned the test knitting; wrote the bulk of the text; designed and laid out this pattern booklet; and generally pushed, poked, and prodded the participants where necessary to get the pattern assembled in a timely manner. I was the hub around which activity whirled, but without the other contributors, the project would never have come to fruition.

The Ravelry Heirloom Knitting Group now presents to you The Queen Susan Shetland Shawl, and hopes that you will derive as much pleasure in working it as we did in developing the pattern.

Shieladeedee’s post sums up the project thusly:

I’m feeling a little weepy here. Think of it - a piece knitted before the turn of the last century, designed by a close group of family/friends living in an isolated area, preserved in a photograph, being recreated by a far-flung band brought together by technology and a love of this craft.

The Amazing (and Cheap) Spinning Notion--Zia!

2009-11-07T19:33:00.002-05:00

I don't often write about tools, because there's really not much new under the sun. Let's face it, a knitting needle is a knitting needle, and everyone has an opinion about composition, pointiness, and configuration. But they are still knitting needles, you know?

However, no spindle spinner should be without a Zia. And wheel spinners might find her handy, as well. Let's take a little tour.

First of all, Zia holds your spinning projects. The units are stackable, and come in a variety of colors. I like the clear ones so I can easily see what's inside. If you don't want your project open to the air, just place everything in a plastic bag before dropping it into Zia. She's got a handle so you can tote her around.

You can use a Zia to hold your spindles, too--just turn it on its side. Put a piece of foam down on the bottom if you like. The foam will prevent your spindles from slipping through the bottom holes. I don't have any foam in this picture, but you get the idea.

You easily can store your copps in Zia. Mine are mounted on clear soda straws. And of course, you can use Zia for plying. Notice that in this picture, I ran straight knitting needles through a few straws (the only use I have for my Mother's Bernat straight needles). The silver handle is on the top side...

...If you flip the handle to the other side, it keeps the needles from sliding and also adds a bit of tension. If you need more tension, make sure the handle is on top of both the straw and the needle. You can slip a bit of eraser or non-slip pads through the points and snug them up to Zia's side to eliminate any unwanted slippage.

Best of all, Zia is not expensive!

I bought mine at the Container Store, but they are also available on-line from Ace Hardware. Amazon, Organize, and many other suppliers. The one in the picture is the smallest size. Go shopping!

It's a Sweater! It's a Shawl! It's Honeysuckle!

2009-11-02T11:36:00.003-05:00

Although I love to knit shawls, I do not love to wear them. The sole exception is my tiny Hyrna, which slips neatly into my purse for A/C protection during the summer months. As for the rest of them, I take them out for show-and-tell when somebody asks. Otherwise, they sit around in a drawer, playing cards, drinking beer, and watching PBS's Knit and Crochet Today on an iPod Harry installed for them.

The Honeysuckle sweater immediately caught my eye, because it combines the best of all possible worlds. I could knit some simple lace with my favorite luxurious Hamanaka mohair/silk and have an actual, wearable knitting object.

This inspired pattern appears in Issue Six of the elegant British magazine, The Knitter, and was created by Sarah Hatton, Rowan's in-house designer.

Of course, I changed the pattern a bit. For starters, the original configuration is a circular shawl knitted flat and seamed. The sleeves also knitted flat and seamed, and then sewn into the bind-off/cast-on slits created for the armholes.

Well, all that sewing seemed ridiculous, tedious, and annoying. Instead, I knitted the shawl in the round, using a contrasting thread for afterthought armholes. I then picked up the sleeve stitches around the contrasting thread and used Barbara Walker's clever short-row sleeve cap method to knit the sleeves downward.

I also added beads to the sleeves and sweater front, and changed the boring edging to the more dynamic Ocean Wave from Miller's Heirloom Knitting. And, there was a lot of plain knitting in the original pattern; I dropped in a few Shetland cat's paws motifs to break up the monotony.

The only mild setback was the cuff area. I have thin wrists, and even though I doubled the decreases at the end, the cuff was still too baggy for me. Instead of ripping out the mohair (urgh), I threaded some narrow ribbon through the final row and gathered the cuff.

Best of all, Honesuckle informs me that she detests beer, can't play cards, and doesn't enjoy TV, so leaving her out of the drawer and actually wearing her pleases everyone. Well, except for Harry, who is always looking for another sucker for his rigged poker games.

An FTC/Litigation/Copyright-Safe Book Review

2009-10-26T12:51:00.096-05:00

A few posts back, I mentioned a test-knit that I was doing for a designer. I fearlessly quote my own blog post below, as I wrote it and gave myself written permission to quote it elsewhere under the Fair Use provision of copyright law. The excerpt is fewer than 50 words, so I should be doubly safe from self-litigation.

... a test knit so hideous that Laptop scuttles out of the room (hissing) whenever I remove the thing from its lightproof bag. To add insult to injury, the supplied yarn's texture rivals that of steel wool, but is not quite as soft.

Having placated the copyright cops, I state here, for the comfort of the FTC, that both the pattern and the yarn were given to me. However, neither were gifts, as I must return both the knitted object and the remaining yarn to the designer, for which I will be paid a pittance. I did, however, receive a free copy of the pattern, and this I shall gleefully burn. Aside from the appearance of the thing, which Harry and I agree is the single ugliest knitted work in the history of textiles, the pattern contains several errors. The designer did not respond to my queries, so I assume that the errors are now written in ~~stone~~ printer's ink.

It turns out that the pattern is from a book the designer has written, as I discovered on Saturday. I picked up a book at SAFF, and was smacked in the eye by The Ugly Object as I riffled through the pages. It occurred to me that I ought to do a book review, since I have an intimate acquaintance with at least one of the patterns contained therein.

I am not, however, going to mention either the book title or the author, lest I be sued for libel. Similarly, I will not be showing you any photographs or quoting content, for fear of breaking copyright law. I am safe from the FTC as well, because I neither bought, nor received the book as a gift, so do not now, nor have I ever, had it in my possession.

So, I present to you an FTC/Litigation/Copyright-Safe Book Review. Please feel free to reuse the words here for your own book review. As you will see, my coverage will work for just about any knitting book you dislike, while keeping you out of the courts and the prison system! Furthermore, I give everyone blanket permission to blatantly copy everything written below in perpetuity.

Fleegle's Hard-Hitting Review of , by , available from , 2009.

The title of this book is very descriptive of the contents, but the designer's taste leaves something to be desired. I've never seen anything quite like these finished objects, which are actually not intrinsically ugly. However, the designer's choices of yarn and color transformed the plebeian patterns into a chaotic visual jumble.

The body text font is a very thin, condensed typeface, making it difficult to read and even more difficult to follow the directions. The color plates, paper, and binding are very attractive. Nice job, printers!

The book has a table of contents, an index, and a bunch of designs in between. I won't tell you how many there are, because you might figure out which book I am talking about and notify the designer. In turn, the designer would contact a lawyer and I would be sued for libel. Let's just say that there are more than five and fewer than 100.

I noted that most of the patterns could be found for free on Ravelry, and would most definitely benefit from your own personal and tasteful choice of color and yarn. I am not going to tell you what kinds of patterns we are talking about, because again, you might guess the book and I would be sued. The patterns are definitely all knitted, most with worsted weight yarn. Some patterns were knitted with other yarns, but I am not going to furnish any more details, except to say that you will need some knitting needles to complete them. A few stitch markers would be a good idea, too.

So, to conclude, unless you are a fan of visual hysteria, I discourage you from purchasing this book.

And with that, I leave you until next time, when I shall present photographs of an actual finished lacy sweater, knitted and photographed by me, and completed this very day.

Mind Boggler of the Day

2009-10-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

I rarely comment on news items, but these two blips are beyond ludicrous. The PRS is the British equivalent of the RIAA, who, we assume, will surely adopt these Draconian regulations in an effort to squeeze the last penny out of anyone dumb enough to hum in public.

PRS Threatens Woman For Playing Radio To Her Horses Without Paying A Licensing Fee

PRS's Latest Trick: Demanding Money From Shop Assistant Who Was Singing At Work

More Wickedness

2009-10-16T19:28:00.002-05:00

A while back, I posted a pattern link to this lovely shawl (Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Karen Walker).

Although I love the red, I know that I would be bored to tears knitting miles of it, and this shawl is BIG. And it seemed to me that Something Wicked needed Something Black...the most wicked of colors. I begin a thought process.......

......Time passes. Aliens come and go in the back yard. Harry assassinates karaoke from Albania to Zanzibar. The RIAA sends Al Jolsen a copyright infringement notice. The FDA issues a recall notice on water (too much water will cause people to explode and that's not acceptable). Blue Cross/Blue Shield announces that having been born is a now considered a pre-existing condition and will no longer cover any illness or injury for any claimant who has undergone this process........

.......I think about knitting the edging in black. Nah. Too abrupt. Then I think about dip-dying it. Nah. Too chancy. Then I think about spinning the yarn and new possibilities present themselves. I finally emailed Anna at Corgi Hill Farm, sent her a picture of the shawl, and explained what I was looking to do. She's brilliant, folks. She carefully dyed a graduated series of silk/merino batts for me that will, after I spin it all up, give me a nice flow from Wicked Red to Wicked Black.

I have about 7 ounces of batt, and need about 2200 yards of two-ply, which works out to 314x2=628 yards per ounce. And that, after consulting various tables, is about 80 WPI. Doable, but it's going to take some time.

So the only Wickedness you're going to see around here for a while is Harry. Apparently, he had a nice gig at the Two Tables Restaurant in Zanzibar City. Unfortunately, a two-table audience was way too small for his ego, so he's taken some time off to kayak the Zambesi river. The guides discovered on his first day that Harry's rendition of Moon River caused crocodiles, algae, and hippos to flee from the river at Mach 2. The tour company is trying to sign him to a long-term contract. I personally wrote him a stellar letter of recommendation.

Terrible Tuesday

2009-10-06T13:04:00.003-05:00

It has not been the best of days. The early morning hours were spent writing ~~begging, whining~~ eloquent, pursuasive letters to an assortment of accounting departments that owe me back pay.

Having completed this distasteful task, I moved on to the Project of the Day, namely a test knit so hideous that Laptop scuttles out of the room (hissing) whenever I remove the thing from its lightproof bag. To add insult to injury, the supplied yarn's texture rivals that of steel wool, but is not quite as soft.

I unpacked the magenta, yellow, orange, turquoise, and black yarns, donned my sunglasses and Kevlar gloves, and knit two rows (actually I knit one row and purled one row) of the convoluted, confusing directions painstakingly deciphered from the blurry scan of tightly packed, faint type.

Whoops. I am instructed to attach C, then knit some rows with D and F. Except why did I attach C? Removes sunglasses and gloves, emails the designer. Replaces project into lightproof bag and stuffs into closet.

Moving on to the Alternate Project of the Day, I unpacked the printer I was asked to review for a World Famous Techie Magazine. Too bad paper and ink cartridges were not supplied. Poked at the buttons for a few minutes and discovered that the printer has the unfortunate feature of Speech. Does anyone want a talking printer? After listening for a few minutes (Hi! My name is Phil and I'll be your printer today!), I resisted the urge to shoot the little elecronic creep in the USB port and began the Alternate Alternate Project of the Day.

Fortunately, this project actually went quite smoothly after the initial cast-ons, which featured long tails that were too short. I see from the pattern that I need 200 yards of yarn. I have 198 yards. What are the odds of having enough yarn for the last row?

Find out next time, because I am afraid to fire up the camera. It can talk to the printer.

Current Knitting (and Spinning)

2009-09-15T15:38:00.001-05:00

King Bat Shawl

I slogged my way to the finish line of the shawl body a few days ago. As you might imagine, I am very tired of pink. I have miles of edging to knit on before the thing is completed, but I am putting it aside for a while to let my Pink Receptors recover from extended stimulation. Cindersall's reversal of the crown motif was masterful, and I think it looks better than the original.

Honeysuckle Shawl/Sweater
Having carefully placed the Bat shawl on the bottom of my UFO pile, I decided to treat myself with my rendition of the Honeysuckle shawl/sweater thing, which appeared in Issue #6 of The Knitter.

This design is beautiful--elegant, graceful, and feminine. I had to read the directions four times because I simply couldn't believe that the designer would actually take a round shawl and convert it to flat knitting. Thus, the reader is instructed to knit across the pattern row, turn, purl back, and then, when the piece is finished, sew up the back seam. Nah. I am knitting it in the round like a grown-up.

For the sleeves, the original design calls for casting off 40 stitches one one row and then casting on 40 stitches in the next row. The sleeves are knitted separately and then sewn into the gap. Why make an ugly seamline at the shoulder and force the knitter to do even more sewing? Instead, I will knit a contrasting piece of yarn over 40 stitches. When I am ready to do the sleeve, I will carefully undo the contrasting yarn, pick up the stitches around the armhole, and knit the sleeves from the top down to the wrist.

In an incredible display of foresight, I decided to bead only the sleeves and the front side of the sweater. I realized that if I beaded the entire thing, I would wear the sweater once, wonder why my back felt like llittle glass beads were digging into it, slap my forehead, and put the thing away forever.

I am using Hamanaka mohair/silk Parfait yarn and some pretty beads that have been languishing in the closet for a while. Harry finds the piece rather restful. Too restful. I have to shake him out of the thing every time I want to work on it.

Spinning
I love Corgi Hill batts. I love them to pieces. I want to make an entire room out of Corgi Hill batts and live there. While I am busy accumulating the raw materials for the Corgi Hill Extension, I actually spun some up. Here's a neat ball of Navajo-plied merino/silk:

It will probably become a scarf for Kyoko-san if Harry doesn't filch it and bury it in his stash drawer.

And here's what's currently on the spindle:

The lovely fluff is Corgi Hill merino/silk and the tulipwood/ebony spindle is from Spindlewoods. I have no idea what I will do with the finished yarn, but I am thinking it should be two-ply laceweight, which of course leads to wandering around my notebooks looking for an appropriate project. Like I need another project...

The Fleegle Symmetrical Short Row--No Wraps, No Holes, No Hassles

2009-09-05T17:03:00.262-05:00

I've never been a fan of short rows, mainly because I've never been able to make them look pretty. I've tried all the techniques--yarn overs, Japanese, wrapped, unwrapped, rewrapped, and encroachment-- and frankly, they all look hideous. Or worse, one side looks nice and the other side looks hideous.

Every so often, I pick up my needles and fiddle around with short rows. But it wasn't until yesterday, as I was dozing in the car, that I came up with a new short row technique that actually looks attractive, is symmetrical, leaves no holes, and doesn't require wrapping or safety pins. Those familiar with the fleegle heel will find the concept similar. The only difference is that you are not spacing out the increases to make a gusset. You'll see what I mean when you work the sample (assuming, of course, that you have tried the fleegle heel).

If you want to try this out, I suggest you cast on 20 stitches. Knit a few rows and place markers around the center 10 stitches, because it will be between these two markers that we shall build a little nose. Note that all slipped stitches are slipped purlwise.

Here's what your row looks like at the beginning:

Knit across the 10 stitches between the markers. Put your needle through the bump behind the 11th stitch...

...and knit through the loop. You now have 11 stitches between the markers.

Turn. Slip the first stitch, which is your "new" stitch, and give it a little tug to tighten it up (important!). Before you proceed, please look carefully at the two stitches on the right needle. They are a pair under a single bump and the pair straddles the marker. I call it "1 pair."

Now purl 10.

Put your needle through the bump in the front of the 11th stitch...

...and purl through it.

You now have 12 stitches between the markers. Notice that you have made another pair of stitches under a single bump straddling the marker.

Turn, slip then first stitch, give it a little tug to tighten it up, and knit 9.

Put your needle through the bump behind the next stitch and knit it. You now have 13 stitches between the markers, and two pairs.

Continue on...

Turn, slip the first stitch, purl 8. Put your needle through the bump below the next stitch and purl it. 14 stitches are now between the markers and 2 pairs.

Turn, slip, knit 7. Pick up the bump in back and knit it (15 stitches between markers and 3 pairs).

Turn, slip the first stitch, purl 6. Pick up the bump in front of the stitch you just purled and purl it (16 stitches between markers and 3 pairs).

Turn, slip, knit 5. Pick up the bump in back and knit it (17stitches between markers and 4 pairs).

Turn, slip the first stitch, purl 4. Pick up the bump in front of the stitch you just purled and purl it (18 stitches between markers and 4 pairs).

Now we are ready for the second half of the short rows. The basic concept is that you will knit (or purl) one stitch further on each side by knitting (or purling) two stitches together. Do pull out the slack when knitting these. Otherwise, you'll have loose stitches that will make you sad.

Here is an annotated photo showing which stitches get knitted together.

Turn, slip the first stitch, knit 5, pull on the yarn to remove slack, knit 2 together.

Turn, slip 1, purl 6, purl 2 together or purl 2 together through back loops. I prefer the way P2tog looks, but you may like P2togtbl better.

Turn, slip the first stitch, pull on the yarn to remove slack, and knit 7. Note that the 7th stitch is the K2tog from the previous row. If you make a note of these decreases, you won't get confused as to how many stitches you should be knitting or purling plain. Knit 2 together.

Turn, slip 1, purl 8, P2tog.

Turn, slip the first stitch, knit 9. K2tog.

Turn, slip 1, purl 10, P2tog.

Turn, slip the first stitch, knit 11. K2tog. Do not turn.

Knit to the end of the row.

Turn. Purl 12 across the center markers, P2tog.

And here's what the left side should look like:

And the right side:

And the front (sorry, it's hard to photograph a nose):

Given this basic technique, many modifications are possible. You can use a different increase (knit front and back, for example). And you can change the directions of your decreases. Experiment and see what works best for you. If you have an improvement, do let me know!

Them's Fighting Words

2009-08-30T15:35:00.003-05:00

There are few sentences in the English language that enrage me more than this one:

"You can't do that."

The instant I hear those words spoken, I have an immediate urge to run off and Do That. Or figure out a way that It Can Be Done.

I would guess that about 80% of the time, You Can Do That, although doing so might turn out to be expensive, awkward, or embarrassing. Or all three.

One of the biggest Can't Do That's around in Fiberland is the myth that you can't spin long fibers, such as silk and alpaca, on a charka. For those unfamilar with this device, it's basically a compact spinning wheel originally designed for spinning cotton. Closed, this size of this elegant machine is a bit smaller than a hard-backed book, hence its name book charka.

Spinners use charkas for other short fibers, such as cashmere and camel, but the First Law of Charkaness states that for longer fibers, You Can't Do That.

Having received this gorgeous cherrywood Bosworth charka as an early birthday gift, I dutifully spun the enclosed sample of mindnumbingly boring white cotton and then fooled around with some cashmere and camel. Okay, got the concept. Now on to the You Can't Do That fibers.

Out comes a lovely silk/merino batt from Corgi Hill Farms. These batts are not carded to homogeneity. Instead, the long, lush silk fibers are layered in between the beautifully dyed merino.

Contrary to expert opinions, not only can silk be spun on a charka, it spins beautifully with nary a blob.The stuff was just meant for long draw. It spins thick, it spins thin, it spins any way you like your yarn.

Here are some samples--medium, thin, and really thin.

And while we are busting myths, we might as well explode the Second Law of Charkaness: You Can't Spin Thick Yarn on a Charka. Sure you can, and here are some thicker samples to prove it:

Of course, the spindles on the Bosworth are small and delicate, so spinning yarn of this weight would fill them up in a few minutes. However, I have a Babe charka too, which sports a spindle fashioned from a nice, big knitting needle (courtesy of a fortuitous swap with Janice in Georgia). That spindle can hold almost as much as a clunker drop spindle. So there.

I figured I was on a roll, so I pulled out a one-ounce spindle and spun some gossamer laceweight from the batt. Current opinion is that you can't spin gossamer-weight on a spindle that heavy. I went up to the heaviest weight spindle I own, a 1.2 ouncer. And spun gossamer on that too.

All this, by the way, was accomplished in my round kitchen, which, when we requested this eccentric design from a herd of architects and builders, were told: "You Can't Do That."

We Interrupt This Blogcast for an Important Announcement

2009-08-21T12:25:00.008-05:00

Finally and at last, I have set up my Etsy store. It isn't complete, by any means, but there are enough seductive yarns, fibers, and tools to at least look mostly like a Real Shop.

All of the yarns were custom-spun specifically for fine lace knitting--giving crisp-looking stitches, but blooming with a little halo after a wash-and-block. I hope to increase the number of custom yarns to eight or so. For now there is a lot of:

Love Potion #3: 36/2 cobweb lace yarn; 35% cashmere, 35% silk, 30% merino
Sheherazade 36/2 cobweb lace yarn: 50% camel, 30% cashmere, 20% merino
30/1 plying silk for spinners
Folca boxes

Harry is working hard at adding other items and as soon as he returns from his karaoke bartending class, I'll make sure he uploads some more stuff.

I hope you at least enjoy looking at our shop. Of course, both of us would be especially delighted if you bought something, but I refuse to follow Harry's suggestion that I whine, wheedle and beg. Until later. If needed. Do take a peek and have fun!

Silly Season

2009-08-15T16:18:00.009-05:00

Traditionally, silly season is the period starting in late summer, sometimes called the Dog Days of August. History tells us that this is the time when newspapers, lacking in substantive news, publish stories about three-headed watermelons, alien-infested knitting magazines, and sightings of purple fungi growing on Capitol Hill.

I don't have anything that exciting to report, although we did have a bear wander up to the back door in search of a snack. Who knew that bears could give you puppy-dog eyes? Being of sound mind, we did not open the screen door and toss out any bear kibble. Barnabas then proceeded to strip our fig tree of fruit and then wandered up the hill to have dessert at our neighbor's plum tree.

My personal silly season began with boredom. I have been working on two interminable projects--the King Bat shawl and the Iris stole. I am sick to death of both of them, but know that if I put them aside, they will slowly mutate from WIP to UFO. I have invested too much knitting time in these two objects to condemn them to UFOness.

So, in the spirit of Silly Season, I present Douglas, the Extremely Happy Giraffe.

This charming pattern, and may others equally adorable, are available for free from Bobbi Padgett. I have an urge to work the hippo, but haven't decided what color it should be. Pink and purple hippos are so common, gray is so dull, and green seems a little too peculiar.

Douglas here will become the personal pet of Nina, the daughter of a friend living in Japan. Let's wish him bon voyage and hope he enjoys sticky rice!

A Rare Perfection

2009-08-01T12:13:00.004-05:00

Spindles are much like sock yarn--there's always another one you have to try (at least for sock knitters) Other knitters might crave the next Noro colorway, brushed cashmere yarn, or the newest knitting needles fashioned from string beans. And non-knitters might yearn to acquire the complete works of Phillip Parker. As he has written over 200,000 books, that particular passion is even more profoundly time-consuming than spindle acquisition.

Anyway, having caught the spindle bug, I set out to test-drive spindles from a variety of craftspeople. I firmly believe that every quality spindle has a sweet spot in terms of fiber and yarn thickness. Some of my spindles are still in the drawer, awaiting their perfect mate. But of the eight spindles I now own, two spindles stand out as the epitome of perfection.

They are exquisitely made, perfectly balanced, beautiful to look at from all angles, and simply wonderful to use for a variety of different fibers.

~~And I shall tell you about them another time.~~

Just kidding.

These two stunning beauties are from Spindlewood. The left whorl is camphorwood (smells spicy!), and the right whorl is bloodwood. They both weigh about 18 grams. Now take a look at the lovely workmanship on the shafts.

The ebony shaft on top goes perfectly with the bloodwood; the flamewood shaft on the bottom makes a lovely foil for the camphorwood.

The camphorwood is now Number One in my Spindle Hall of Fame. Because of the perfect weight ratio between the shaft and the whorl, it feels much lighter than 18 grams and spins gossamer weight with grace.

Customer service is perfection too. During the creation process, Connie emailed me pictures of the whorls, then pictures of the shafts. When I asked for a darker shaft wood for the camphorwood, they graciously made me another spindle. And the spindle comes with a cover for the hook--a clever little touch.

And Then There Is The Golding...

The front of this spindle has a sweet and charming face made from a Russian brooch I found on eBay.

I sent it off to Tom Golding with a request that the spindle be made as light as possible. I also emailed, phoned, and lettered him about my personal dislike of walnut. No walnut. No walnut. Please, no walnut.

I eagerly opened the package to find a 22-gram black walnut whorl and a walnut shaft. Hmm. As soon as the yarn comes off the spindle, I will dye it black with a juicy permanent marker. This little fix was recommended on several woodworking sites. I tried it on another spindle--the ink is permanent and even shows the grain.

It must be me, because the whorl so overbalances the unadorned shaft that the spindle wobbles like a drunken Klingon (and spins about as well). It works perfectly fine for plying, however, so I didn't return it (Tom will give you a refund if you aren't happy). I am sure there will be some fiber in the future that will happily spin on this spindle, but for now, it remains a disappointment.

A Sticky Wicket

2009-07-25T13:58:00.003-05:00

I am not the boss of much, but I am mostly the boss of this blog (except when Harry overrules me). And so today, instead of showing you knitted wares, I am going to tell a little story and ask you guys what you think of this practice:

An owner of a yarn store approached me last week, offering to supply me with yarn and let me do anything I wanted with it--knit cat hats, felt myself a mousepad, or just wind it around my ears. She would them pay me to post the review on my blog with a link to her store for those who wished to purchase the stuff.

I told her I might be interested, if, at the beginning of the review, I informed my readers I was being paid to fiddle with the yarn and say something about it. The owner did not like that idea at all. According to her, several Famous Bloggers, whose names she did not mention, are on the payroll of the biggest on-line store, which she again did not specify.

Besides the fact that this practice is now illegal (see here), the entire concept makes me a little ill. I am not a Famous Blogger, but I think I would be doing my readers (however few) a disservice if I didn't reveal that I was being paid to talk about something. And certainly, I wouldn’t review the yarn at all if it were a nasty knit.

I find it sad that Famous Bloggers have become Greedy Bloggers. I may have been laid off and spend a lot of time inspecting the couch for spare quarters, but I don’t want to do anything that would compromise my innate honesty. Or am I just being naive and stupid?

What do you guys think?

On (and Off) the Silk Road

2009-07-17T20:20:00.008-05:00

Harry takes great pride in his designs, as evidenced by the fact that he spent an entire evening slowly creeping around the King Bat shawl searching for flaws. Fortunately for me, he only found five cat hairs and a single decrease slanting in the wrong direction.

After a stern lecture to me about carelessness and to Laptop about feline hygiene, he departed (with 11 suitcases) for Uzbekistan. Apparently, the owners of the ALBATROS Karaoke Club in Tashkent had been incredibly impressed by his performance in Albania a few months ago and invited him for a two-day gig. In an effort to avoid an International Incident, I will not comment on the listening tastes of either Albanians or Uzbekistani.

Where was I? Oh yes. Harry. Uzbekistan. Eleven suitcases. The mystery of the suitcases was solved when Harry returned with 20 skeins of Z-twist 30/1 plying silk as a gift to my proto-store (it's taking shape, but it's taking time to take shape, sigh). I was immensely touched for a second...after which he demanded 75% of future profits, as well as my cashmere bathrobe. I guess we can all share.

I happened to have a spindle full of merino-cashmere waiting to be plied, so I immediately wound the silk and the yarn onto a felt ball and twisted the two strands together. Thank you, Harry! He may be an obnoxious, demanding spider with a penchant for sarcasm, aggrandizement, and chicken-fried raisins, but he has excellent taste in yarn.

As you can see, the silk and merino-cashmere are about the same weight, so the final yarn can safely be deemed 30/2. I have another spindle half-finished, but haven't made much of dent in the two-ounce bag of fiber yet.

And thanks to everyone's suggestions from the last post, I have indeed ordered a Golding. Actually, I ordered two--Harry wanted his own custom job. Tom Golding was understandably puzzled by my request for a .1-gram spindle, but after I explained, he decided that he could make a nice one out of a hand-painted pinhead and a hand-carved Japanese embroidery needle. Good luck with that, Tom.

Harry's King Bat--It's Alive!

2009-07-10T14:07:00.004-05:00

When Harry first tossed me his redesigned border for the King Bat shawl, I was skeptical. After having knit this border section, I just laughed out loud. Who else could work bats and hearts into a Shetland ring shawl? Sharon Miller should never see this. I see a hoard of peasants out there warming up their pitchforks. Not good.

I am about 30% done with the border...from here on, except for the addition of another row of hearts, the border sort of mostly follows the original design. And I promise to be faithful to the edging, except where I might change it.

Current dilemmas revolve around whether to buy another Bosworth or veer off the well-trodden spindle path and get a Golding. I know I can't go wrong with a Bossie, but those Goldings are so lovely... I am sure there are plenty of opinions out there. Convince me.

The Blame Game

2009-06-23T09:11:00.009-05:00

The blame for this post falls directly onto the shoulders of The Akamai Knitter and LaceFreak Jane. I refuse to accept any responsibility for my actions, because it's Not My Fault.

After observing (with tears in my eyes and lust in my heart) the spindle acquisitions of these two blameful beings, I was forced, much against my will, to order a 2" Karelian birch Bosworth spindle (about 18 grams) and two ounces of 80% merino, 20% cashmere from Miss Babs.

After a few false starts, due to the fact that I had never used a top whirler, I was happy to discover that spinning is like riding a bicycle. It didn't take long before I was humming along in my personal comfort zone of 80 wpi.

After a few days of spinning plain gray, my eyeballs itched for some color. A little red dye, a little fiber...

I also ordered a bit of angora/merino top from Susan's Spinning Bunny. In a remarkable display of postal schizophrenia, the package was both refused and signed for on the same day. Somehow, it was apparently refused here and returned to Susan, but when we looked up the tracking number, the post office said it was signed for and received on 6/18.

I questioned Harry closely about this, and the best explanation we have is that Harry answered the door, whereupon the mail carrier dropped her electronic gizmo, and ran screaming back to the car with the package. Harry carefully signed for the package by stomping on the gizmo's touch screen, and then wandered over to the hammock with a cold beer.

Meanwhile, after inhaling several tablets of Xanax, the postal carrier snuck back up to the front door, retrieved her gizmo, and then screeched out of the driveway with the package beside her.

If anyone has a better explanation, I would sure love to hear about it.

Purl Decreases Demystified

2009-06-10T12:18:00.020-05:00

If you hunt around the Internet in search of purl decreases, you will probably encounter only two: the right-slanting single decrease (P2tog) and the right-slanting double decrease (P3tog). There may be times, however, when you need single or double left-slanting purl decreases or a double purl decrease with no slant at all.

Most commonly, you will encounter these snarky decreases if you are knitting garter-stitch lace in-the-round, for example, a borders-outward shawl in a single piece. To maintain garter stitch in the round, alternate rows must be purled (unless you are cheating and going to futz one corner so you can knit back and forth). And if you are knitting Shetland lace, there's probably no way you will escape having to work double purl decreases with no slant. Central double decreases abound in Shetland patterns.

After perusing my standard books, such as Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs, and rejecting most of the solutions as kinda awkward, I fiddled around with a few different ways of accomplishing these dratted decreases. Some people hate purling through the back of stitches. Others don't find this uncomfortable. Please try all these methods and decide which one works best for you.

Left-Slanting Single Purl Decrease

The most common method is purling through the back of two stitches thusly:

the finished stitch on the purl side:

And finished stitch on the knit side:

If you hate this process, then slip two stitches, one at a time, knitwise.

first stitch slipped...

.... second stitch slipped.

Then insert the tip of the left needle through the front of these two stitches (which are now on the right needle)...

and slip them back to the left needle as a unit. Notice that the stitches have switch positions.

Purl these two stitches together.

Here's the finished stitch on the purl side:

And here's the knit side:

The second method seems easier to me for purling together two stitches when one of them is a yarnover. But sometimes I just purl through the back. Which method I choose depends a great deal on the yarn--some yarns don't like the back stitch, some don't like the slip-and-flip business. Take your pick :)

Left-Slanting Double Purl Decrease

This is just an extension of the single decrease, but with added torment. No matter which method you use, the process is awful. My favorite method, not described here in detail, is to avoid patterns that require me to do this.

Anyway.

You can purl through the back of three stitches:

Here's what it looks like on the knit side:

Or, slip three stitches, one at a time, purlwise.

Then insert the tip of the left needle through the front of these three stitches (which are now on the right needle),

and slip them back to the left needle as a unit.

Then purl these three stitches together.

Here's the purl side:

The he knit side looks the same as knitting 3 stitches together through the back loops as shown above, so I didn't take another photo.

Yet another method is described in the Walker book. Purl two stitches together. Keeping the yarn in front, put the stitch back on the left-hand needle. Pass the next stitch over this one, then transfer to the right-hand needle. I frankly don't care for the way it looks, but it's simpler to execute.

Double-Purl Decrease with No Slant (Central Double Purl Decrease)
This one is actually pretty easy. The literature I encountered had some wacky solutions; I think my answer is simpler. The first two steps are identical to the Left-Slanting Single Purl Decrease shown above.

Slip two stitches, one at a time, knitwise.
Then insert the tip of the left needle through the front of these two stitches (which are now on the right needle), and slip them back to the left needle as a unit.

Purl three stitches together (the two you slipped and flipped, plus one on the left-hand needle).

Here's the finished decrease on the purl side:

and the knit side:

Queen Ring Shetland Center--Complete!

2009-06-03T16:38:00.013-05:00

Easy and fun to knit, the center for the Queen Ring/King Bat shawl didn't take long, either. I am under no illusion that the border (or the miles of interminable edging) will dance off my needles quite as quickly , but it's still a very pleasant pattern to work.

And the yarn! Technically, it's 52/2 60% merino, 20% cashmere, 20% silk. But to knit with it--it's incredible! It's stupendous! It's incredible! Oh whoops, I said that. It's bouncy. It's silky. It's soft. It's everything a gossamer yarn is supposed to be. It deserves a niche in the Yarn Hall of Fame.

Alas, I bought the only skein in the universe on my trip to Japan last year. I was so besotted with it that I decided that I had to have more.

I sent a sample to a mill in China and asked what their minimum order was for a custom spin. The bad news was that I needed to buy 50 kilos. Much as I loved it, I didn't love it 50 kilos-worth. Each kilo has 25,000 meters, and, while I am a fairly robust knitter, I couldn't see my way to stashing 1,250,000 meters of yarn. There are limits, even for me.

I figured there were probably a few other people who might go in with me on the buy. I posted the information in the Heirloom Knitting group on Ravelry and placed a little Post-It note next to the computer to write down the names of the five or six people I figured would want a kilo or two. To my utter bafflement, I had to quickly switch to a spreadsheet to keep track of the orders.

The good news is that I have 100 kilos subscribed. In about a month, I will be able to roll around in the stuff (just kidding, guys, really!)

The thought of 200 pounds of yarn landing in my yard is a bit daunting, but a dear lady is driving down from South Carolina to help us pack and ship the 2,500,000 meters of the yarn I am naming Phoenix.

Of course, Harry said he would help out by providing the entertainment. Unfortunately, he has developed a crush on Al Jolson. The house reverberates with the clickity-click of eight little feet tap-dancing on the dining room table. I can't wait to see what he has in store for us as we wrestle with mailing bags. Hmm, perhaps he will fit in one of them. (Joke--it's a joke!) I promise that nobody will open their package and find a tap-dancing spider in it. Unless, of course, you want one.

Knitting Rules of Thumb

2009-05-20T12:00:00.001-05:00

Every so often, I come across an approximation that makes sense, is easy to remember, and I actually write down in my knitting notebook under the heading Cool Things That Are Easy to Remember but I Forget Anyway. I was flicking through said notebook the other day looking for something I have already forgotten about, and stumbled across the list. Because I am feeling way too lazy to photograph the center of the King Bat (aka Queen Ring) shawl that I finished a few days ago, I figured the list entries might come in handy for some of you. And make me feel less guilty about not stretching, pinning, photographing, cropping, uploading, and so on and so on.

Please remember that these are Rules of Thumb, not Inviolate Laws of Physics. If one or the other doesn't work every time, perhaps you could arrange for a different thumb or something.

If you don't know what needle size might work best with a mystery yarn, thread the yarn through your needle gauge. The best fit is a good size to start with for regular knitting. For lace, try doubling the needle size.
Don't want to (or can't) measure someone's foot? The length from the tip of the index finger to the base of the thumb is about equal to the length from the toe to where the foot connects to the leg (measured at the top of the foot). I discovered this one day when I put my sock over my hand. Why did I do that? I don't know.
The measurement from the base of your thumb to the inside of your elbow is the same as the total length of your foot. Seems incredible, but it's true.
If you stretch out your arms and measure from fingertip to fingertip, the length is the same as your height. You might find this useful when knitting shawls (Thanks, Carla!).
The circumference of your wrist is about equal to the circumference of your foot at the arch. I have never needed to know what my arch circumference is, but I am sure there's someone out there who has been panting after this fact.
The sleeves of an average sweater uses 1/3 of the total amount of yarn; the back takes 1/3, and the front 1/3. If you are not sure that you have enough yarn, knit the sleeves. Then you can adjust the body by, say, making it shorter, using a different yarn for the yoke, or blending in another dye lot.
A cable takes about 10% more yarn than knitting the same stitches flat. This is an important rule of thumb if you decide to add some cables to a plain sweater--you'll need to cast on extra stitches or the fit of the sweater might be a big surprise. Actually, it would be a small surprise, but you know what I mean.
Changing the size of your needle will change the gauge by about 1/2 stitch per inch for each needle size increment or decrement.
One row of knitting uses about 3 times its length in yarn. This is a nice factoid for long-tail cast-on that eludes me every time I do a long-tail cast-on.
According to the folks at Elann, if the gauge of a single strand of yarn is X stitches-per-inch, the gauge when used doubled will be X*.7.
Also via Elann--if the project requires X ounces of yarn used single-stranded, it will require X*1.4 when used doubled.
If you want to make a circular shawl, the general rule for increasing, is to increase four stitches every round, eight every other round, 12 every third round, or 16 every fourth round. There's some geometric flim-flam going on here. Please don't try to explain it to me.
Eight increases/decreases every second round will give you a flat knitted circle. Six increases/decreases every round in single crochet will too.
If you make six increases every second round, then knit x rows (where x is the number of rows with increases that you just made) then decrease six times every other row, you will get a ball.
Two increases/decreases in the center of every second row will give you a 90 degree angle. That one’s pretty obvious, but it’s so useful.
The last row of a project takes as long to knit as the rest of the entire sweater/sock/hat/scarf. This is a prime example of the Time Dilation effect.

Easy Go: The Sequel

2009-05-15T15:00:00.054-05:00

Thanks so very much to everyone who made room in their homes for last week's offerings. Harry was delighted to learn that I didn't sell the hot pink eyelash yarn. However, what I didn't mention to him was that I had cut that grisly stuff into small bits and auctioned it off to the neighborhood birds. The nests look a bit, erm, exuberant, but at least they all match.

The back yard now resembles a miniature South Florida neighborhood. One enterprising family of chickadees further adorned their home with tiny pink flamingos. (I don't want to know where these came from.) Unfortunately, the yarn clashed horribly with Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal, who finally convinced me to trade the lurid pink for some equally regrettable twinkly fun fur. Their nest looks like a Las Vegas casino, but it sure is cheerful.

This week, I am listing a few more lace yarns, but most of what's here is sock/fingering weight. My Paypal address is sglinert--feel free to send me money and I will send you your yarn. Don't forget to tell me which yarn you want in the Paypal comment section. Or you can just email me, if that's more convenient.

IST Spindle--18 grams--oak burr inlay, sycamore whorl and ash shaft.
$60 including US postage

Lisa Souza Sock Merino-Graphite

100% Superfine Merino Superwash 560 Yards
$18 including US postage

Katsara Yarn Pure Merino Fingering Sock- Hosta
100% Merino 370 yards
$12 including US postage

Katsara Yarn Pure Merino Fingering Sock- Delphi
100% Merino 370 yards
$12 including US postage

Seacoast Handpainted Superwash Sock-Pink/Green/Beige
100% merino 560 yards
$21 including US postage

Unique Sheep Merino Sock-Blue/Purple
75% superwash merino, 25%mohair 346 yards
$17 including US postage

Claudia Handpainted Sock-Oops (2 available)
100% merino 350 yards in BOTH skeins
$21 including US postage

Greenwood Fiberworks Cotton Lycra Sock Yarn--Yellow
96% cotton, 4% Lycra 460 yards
$16 including US postage

Greenwood Fiberworks Cotton Lycra Sock Yarn--Black
96% cotton, 4% Lycra 460 yards
$16 including US postage

Greenwood Fiberworks Cotton Lycra Sock Yarn--Green
96% cotton, 4% Lycra 460 yards
$16 including US postage

Easy Come, Easy Go

2009-05-07T13:15:00.024-05:00

Well, it was certainly an eventful day. With no notice whatsoever, my company shut its doors. Worse, it shut its doors owing me a lot on money. I was also bemused to see my name spelled incorrectly on the severance letter, which sternly admonished me to refrain from discussing anything about this incident with anyone, including family pets, houseplants, or myself.

On the bright side, Harry offered to contribute to the household income by accepting a karaoke gig in Bulgaria. He then threw himself into a bottle of sake, where he has remained for most of the afternoon.

While he is in his state of inebriation, I was able to get into my stash again and sort through it.

As is often the case with stash, I found quite a lot of it that I will never use. I want to say that no offer is too small to be refused, but that's not the case. However, if you have a reasonable bid for the lace yarns listed below, I sure would like to hear it.

Katsara Yarns Alpaca Fingering--Coleus (two skeins available)

1000 yards, $38 per skein, including US postage

I shall post sock and miscellaneous other yarns for sale next week. Harry is now sleeping off his sake binge on the sock stash and I don't want to disturb him.

Why Knot?

2009-05-06T18:24:00.015-05:00

I love the Internet. While lounging around in my ratty shorts and t-shirt, I can go anywhere and discover just about anything except how to get rid of ~~giant spiders that steal my stash, hoard my needles, and filch my patterns~~ Harry. During one of my epic wanders, I stumbled upon a truly cool site called clanbadge.com.

Daniel sells a font that charts Celtic knots. I cannot imagine how many hours went into the design, but the results are simply amazing. The site is a bit confusing, so here is the link to the Charted font.

For example, by typing the following into Microsoft Word:

qe
zc

And then applying his font, I get the following little design:

Well, that might be interesting to cross-stitchers, but maybe not so interesting to knitters. That is, until I apply some knitting symbols to the design.

Naturally, the first thing I thought of was lace. There are several ways to treat the motif. It can be outlined with yarnovers thusly:

Or the interior can be filled with a small pattern:

Of course, these designs can be knitted without any holes at all. Cable lovers can go insane knitting something like this:

For those who like colorwork, a bit of paint to the following would make an interesting (and confusing) sweater motif.

If you want to purchase the font for charting, make sure you buy the Charting font. Daniel also offers several other fonts, for example outline, 3D, and inverse, and filled. This page shows some beautiful examples of Celtic knots applied to a variety of crafts such as woodworking, quilting, metalsmithing, stained glass, and ostrich egg carving. Daniel offers a pattern pack for the chart font and there's a page of fancy knots that users have posted, which you can find here.

I would love to continue this post, but unfortunately, Harry just pulled the plug out of the compu

How To Go Off On a Tangent

2009-04-29T16:10:00.012-05:00

The other day, in search of Something Different, I plucked Galina Khmeleva's lovely book--Gossamer Webs--off my bookshelf and refreshed my memory of Orenburg shawls.

These extremely fine shawls have been traditionally knit by ladies in and around Orenburg, Russia. The designs are quite geometric and the construction unique and efficient. The traditional yarn--goat down plied with thin single-ply silk--is handspun on lightweight supported spindles.

Unlike Shetland shawl knitting, which is popular enough to support commercially available yarn and a wealth of patterns, genuine Orenburg yarn cannot be purchased and charted designs are basically limited to those in Galina's books. In fact, Ravelry's knitqueen05 has knitted most of Galina's patterns--over and over and over. Yike!

I am intrigued by the fineness of the spinning and the luxurious feel of these shawls (I got to fondle them at the Skaska booth at Stitches South). I am intrigued enough to actually think about spinning again. (Opal, I don't want to hear about it.)

The thought made my brain cramp--I was shearing sheep and spinning before most of you were even born. My flock of rare non-white sheep and the byproducts thereof put me through graduate school.

I can't say that I enjoyed spinning. I recall with a grimace the lady who brought me Samoyed dog combings every year so I could spin sweater yarn for her. No matter how carefully or with what I washed the yarn, it retained its appalling dog odor and had to be dried as far from my house as possible. Worse, my cats hated the stuff and I had to leave it hanging in the barn lest it get clawed back into fluff again.

However, I did win several blue ribbons at the state fair for my fine skeins of lace yarns (90 wpi!), so the thought of spinning yarn for an Orenburg doesn't make me faint.

Times have changed since the 60's, when only a few types of wheels were available for purchase. As I wandered around the Internet spinning sites, I chanced upon the perfect solution for whipping out fine yarns without straining the shoulder or knee.

Warning!! All you spinners out there are about to toss rotten tomatoes at your screen. Spinning snobs should exit now!!!

Look: an electric charkha!

Fetchingly made from PVC pipe, a wheelchair wheel, and a knitting needle, Babe's Electric Liten Spindle Charkha Wheel entranced me. It weighs only two pounds and disassembles into a small box of giblets for compact storage. It's made for spinning gossamer-weight yarns and the motor assures a nice even pace for drafting.

I haven't quite justified the cost to myself yet. I may decide that the entire concept is too much trouble and just use some gossamer-weight cashmere to knit an Orenburg. On the other hand, new horizons beckon. I wouldn't want to get bored, now would I?

Harry, of course, thinks the concept is wonderful. At last he will have someone who can repair his disgraceful web. "Male spiders may knit, but they don't waste their time producing spider silk," he sniffed. "And cashmere batt will make an excellent mattress."

Going Bats

2009-04-19T08:03:00.015-05:00

A well-written pattern is akin to a gripping novel--tightly plotted and suspenseful, and a satisfying denouement with all the loose ends tidily wrapped up. A poorly written pattern, on the other hand, reminds me of a badly produced movie--terrible acting, disjointed, confusing plot, and loose ends galore at the end.

Occasionally, I will run across a pattern that makes me snicker. For example, any production with the line "Reserve at least 10 hours for sewing together" is, by definition, a genuine howler.

When I encountered this particular direction in the Queen Ring shawl, I giggled for at least ten minutes.

The original shawl is knitted from the borders inward. I don't like that construction for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the epic sewing-bits-together at the end. I wouldn't mind the sewing so much if it produced an attractive finished product. It doesn't. Sewn-together seams look ugly and I won't use them.

The second problem with the original pattern is that only half of the border is neatly mitered around the center's corners. The other two sides are stretched into shape during blocking. The stretching might work if the shawl is knitted with a nice, compliant wool yarn. It probably won't work with something like cashmere/silk yarn, which has the elasticity of a watermelon. The fact that the corners in the lovely photo are scrunched together and not viewable makes me uneasy. I want fully mitered corners that won't produce an unpleasant surprise after hundreds of hours of intense knitting.

Thus, I regraphed the shawl to be knit from the center outward, which means the border is picked up around the center square and knitted around and around (and around and around and etc. etc., and so forth....).

This process has its own inherent problems. First, the border itself must be inverted, because it's being knitted from top to bottom instead of bottom to top. Anyone who has ever reversed a pattern knows that it's usually impossible to simply turn it upside-down. And then there is the tedium of having to purl every other round in pattern to maintain the garter stitch in circular knitting mode. I tried a number of different fake corners to avoid the purling, but didn't care for the results.

Unfortunately, at some point during this epic graphing production, I took a well-deserved break. When I returned to the computer, Harry had redesigned the shawl border to suit his ~~bizarre~~ ~~awful~~ ~~regrettable~~ erm, unique taste. He had lopped off the seed pods (a decision I applauded) and substituted the never-before-revealed Shetland motif: Flying Bats.

Harry announced that he just adores bats. I was a bit puzzled when he uttered that statement, because airborne insect-devouring predators just didn't strike me as arachnid-friendly. However, Harry pointed out that bats make exceptional targets and he enjoys plinking at them with his custom-built Barrett Model 82A1 .50 caliber sniper rifle (with BORS optics).

I also took issue with his introduction of non-traditional motifs into a mostly traditional Shetland shawl. I have this uneasy feeling that, after having worked his bats into the shawl border, I will open the door and find a mob of enraged Shetland Islanders bearing torches and brandishing pitchforks. But Harry pointed out that our designs often begin with a healthy respect for tradition and end up, well, different than the original pattern.

So, here's a bit of eye candy for you. It's one repeat of the center. The shawl is being worked in a 52/2 yarn composed of 60% wool, 20% cashmere, 20% silk that I purchased at Avril and dyed myself. Alas, there is no more of it, which is a real loss to the lace-knitting community. It's a lovely knit.

Irtfa Irt'fa Irt'faa Irt'fa Irtfa'a...Oh, heck, dark purple Faroese shawl

2009-04-05T05:38:00.032-05:00

My mother, who could out-curse any five drunken sailors, was (incredibly) an English major at NYU. I was therefore subjected to considerable cruel and unusual punishment during my formative years. From age 7, I was tasked with solving the New York Times crossword puzzle every morning before I left for school. Worse, when I achieved the lofty status of a tenth-grader, I was required to work it out using a pen.

I finally rebelled when she dragged out the typewriter sometime during my senior year. I think she was desperately trying to train me up so I could beat the socks off my Uncle Stanley, who could actually work the London Times crossword with a typewriter, a feat even my mother couldn't match.

The result of all this brain-twisting was that a) I knew more obscure words than my teachers and b) I was a whiz at spelling. At least I was a whiz at spelling before I encountered this shawl.

An Ann Hanson Faroese-style design, the final product is indeed lovely and doesn't slide off the shoulders, thanks to the top shaping. The knitting, alas, got a bit tedious.

I designate patterns of this type as "Beer-Bottle Shawls." Wait--it's not what you're thinking! I am referring, of course, to the repeat accumulation. One repeat on the needles, two repeats on the needles, three repeats on the needles....100 bottles of beer on the wall etc. blah.

By the time I have worked five repeats, I start looking for tax forms to fill out in lieu of knitting another row of The Same Thing Over And Over. After 10 repeats, I avert my eyes when I walk by the WIP's little plastic bag. But, after a few weeks of avoidance behavior, I generally sit down, plug into some music, and finish it off.

It was a simple knit and I adored the feathery edging. The real joy of the shawl was the yarn: 2/16 Lamoramere Fine Lace Blend (50% Cormo Lambwool, 40% Angora, 10% Cashmere), from Running Wild Farms. It's soft, lofty, springy, has a very fine halo, and dyes beautifully. I bought a skein of white and hand-painted it in dark blues and purples.

I did modify the edging pattern by knitting all the stitches in both directions. Life is too short to do all the purling acrobatics required as written.

Odds and Ends

2009-03-26T07:13:00.014-05:00

A Cure for Knitting Ennui
A few days ago I was flipping through my pattern collection in search of Something Different. At last count, I've been knitting for 58 years (urk!), which means I am abysmally jaded. The old saying "What Goes Around Comes Around" certainly applies. The same sweaters/hats/scarves/dishcloths/tippets have gone around and come around so often that I can point to a picture and recall at least five previous incarnations.

I was grazing through this season's knitting magazine offerings and for the first time I can remember, I bought neither Interweave Knits nor Vogue Knitting. The offerings in the former were tired and the projects in the latter made me laugh.

Fortunately, I have a dear friend in England (Thanks, Jo!) who faithfully traipses to her news agent every month and ships me a lovely package of Across-the-Pond knitting magazines. Although Simply Knitting is for the beginner/intermediate knitter, every issue carries an Alan Dart toy pattern, and I dearly love these. I couldn't resist this one:

It went right to the head of the queue. The yarn is sitting in front of me waiting for me to finish this blog post.

Some brilliant English publishers thoroughly perused American knitting magazines and decided that they could do it better. And they certainly did! My last two care packages included an issue of a brand-new offering entitled The Knitter.

A few sample photos:

Intended for the experienced and adventurous, the two first glossy issues have been inspiring and beautifully laid out--treasures of knitterly eye candy. ~~The only problem with it is that the magazine is not yet available in the US. I hope the publishers will consider overseas distribution, because advanced knitters here will surely snap up every issue.~~ It's apparently available at bookstores and yarn shops in the US and Australia, so go get a copy!

Pattern Obscura
There's a wonderful thread on Ravelry entitled Favorite Obscure Patterns--I cruise through it often (Warning! Big Time Sucker!). Thanks to the diligence of the posters, I've added an embarrassment of items to my queue. The Internet also offers zillions of patterns that never seem to rise to public acclaim, and I want to tweet my kazoo about two of my recent favorites.

The first one is a lace shawl called Something Wicked Comes This Way, designed by Karen Walker. It's stunning! It's unusual! You can purchase it here. Go ahead--you know you want to!

--Photo Courtesy of No Two Snowflakes/Karen Walker (Thanks!)

The second pattern comes from the famous White Lies Designs. However, I haven't seen anyone get excited about this pattern...
....but I think it's eyepopping. And I have sufficient Yubina worsted-weight cashmere to make it. I have asked Harry dye the yarn for me in the requisite luscious shade of crimson, and he's agreed to do it in exchange for our new car and a year's supply of chocolate-covered beetles. A fair trade for him.

Yarn Obscura
Artist's Palette Yarn is one of my favorite Internet stores. Yes yes, she's in England. but the postage isn't punishing and the yarn will make you weep with delight. I've purchased a variety of her offerings--the quality is superb and the dying exquisite. Do give her store a try if you are looking for a little treat. Here are a few of her many types of yarns.

Glisten is a luxurious 2-ply 100% silk yarn, soft as down. I actually bought all four skeins--1200 yards will make a lovely shawl. Sorry, folks.

Damsel is 80% Extra Fine Merino 20% Silk cobweb weight, with 1200 yards per skein. She's currently having a 20% off sale. Don't you hate it when I tell you things like this?

And finally, I want to also report that I have also fallen in love with the yarns from No Two Snowflakes. Her stock isn't extensive and goes quickly, so you'll have to regularly troll her Etsy shop and see what's available. I snagged a skein of Roses and Lilacs cobweb-weight silk:

...and two skeins of Juicy Nectarine cobweb weight 50% silk, 50% wool.

Have fun grazing!

Iris

2009-03-01T15:36:00.004-05:00

I have to admit that I started Susan Pandorf's Iris stole with more than a little trepidation. The skeins of Handmaiden Seasilk (Mermaid colorway) looked unpleasantly brown to me and I wondered if the final result would be at all similar to her sample. The answer is yes--and it's quite stunning in person. Alas, the photos can't convey the beauteous shimmering of the silk or the glitter of the lovely beads.

This is not a project for the impatient. There are LOTS of beads in this stole. Worse, the Seasilk is quite heavy and the #8 beads quite tiny. Most of the crochet hooks I tried could not pull the entire yarn through the bead hole.

The first few hooks I tried grabbed only a few plies of the yarn, producing a sort of shredded furry carpet of Seasilk (not quite the effect I was looking for). I finally dug out my mother's Really Old Boye #12, and that hook worked perfectly, although considerable force is required to yank the yarn through the little bead holes).

I compared my set of hooks to my mother's and discovered that hers have a much deeper hook than my newer Boyes. I immediately took myself off to eBay and found an identical backup hook in case the first one broke.

I have several other projects of Susan Pandorf's in the queue, most of which use the same yarn/bead combination. For the next one though, I ordered Delica beads, which have larger holes than the seed beads I used for Iris. The Delicas slide easily onto the Seasilk without a pitched battle.

I am about 3/4's finished with the first half, so this stole won't be completed for a while. Once you get past the intriguing triangular area shown below, the pattern becomes repetitive (and not terribly interesting to knit).

I figure it will be finished around the time it becomes too hot to wear it.

Pearly Whites

2009-02-08T08:16:00.000-05:00

The weather is lovely here in Costa Rica, but apparently, it's a bit nippy back in the US and other Northern climes. So, despite the fact that we are prancing around in shorts, many of you may appreciate seeing (and knitting) a Really Warm Hat.

The pattern is Susan Pandorf's Gotham hat, which I modified because I used heavier yarn than the original. I happened to have some Yubina Chunky cashmere and a bit of Richmore Count 10 mohair, so I worked them together to make a fluffy, warm little head cover. I omitted the final repeat and altered the stitch count to make the hat fit my head (a practical concept I try to use often).

I wanted to decorate the hat with some beady stuff, but I didn't want pounds of pearls on my head, so I bought some cheap plastic pearls from Michaels and sewed them on afterward. The holes in the pearls were too small to thread on the yarn during construction.

In Other News...

We originally came down to Costa Rica for a bit of medical work and a lot of sightseeing, but our trip didn't work out exactly as planned (as usual). Instead of frolicking in the rain forests and ogling indigenous animal life, I spent most of it in a San Jose hospital.

I can tell you that, while the hospital was fabulous (and accepts Blue Cross/Blue Shield), I was unable to knit, thanks to the plentiful IVs that adorned both arms. In fact, even though I couldn't do anything with knitting needles (Enough already with the needles!), I did sort of resemble of skein of yarn. The knitless weeks turned out to be a good thing, because I was down to a single skein of sock yarn. And folks, there is not a single yarn store in the entire country.

Several lovely people offered to send me yarn--thank you all for your generosity!

We are returning home Wednesday where I shall bury my face in my stash for a few hours and pick up my needles (knitting, not IV) once more. I do have something exquisitely lovely to show you next time, so please come back and enjoy.

And no, before you ask, Harry was totally useless. He picked up a karaoke gig in a local bar, where his Japanese renditions of popular favorites were greeted with wild enthusiasm. He did visit the hospital several times, only to be chased around by nurses wielding tightly wrapped tortillas. He also took my lonely skein of sock yarn with him on his last visit, noting that I couldn't knit, so why waste it? Little heartless creep.

Triads

2009-01-11T15:54:00.001-05:00

Well, there are certainly a lot of traids here! it was an interesting knit, although I do not want to see another triad for a while, after plodding through 24 repeats. I did, however, have an engaging time with the dangly balls I knit into the edging. The added weight on the ends makes the scarf stay in place instead of fluttering and flooping around.

Particulars:
Pattern:Triad by Susan Pandorf
Yarn:Handmaiden Fine Yarn Lace Silk in Rainforest (used about 250 yards)

Needle Size: #4
Beads: Stuff I bought them at Michael's. No useful labels on the packaging, I'm sorry to say.

Speaking of rain forests, we are in Costa Rica for a month. The Internet is a bit shaky, so if I don't send you comments, please forgive me (and the Costa Rican ISP).

Fishing for Compliments

2009-01-04T08:55:00.000-05:00

I don't care for felting and have a healthy horror of large needles, but I overcame both aversions recently after falling in love with this sweet little confection:

It sort of came as a kit at my LYS, but I ended up changing the yarn color from orange to black, so I did not walk out with the pretty bag that held the original package.

Because the pattern was fraught with errors and omissions, I won't mention the designer's name here. (I am beginning to think that every time I pick up a pattern, it immediately shifts to Errata Mode). Here's a sample from the purse pattern:

Knit 4 stitches; bring yarn forward between needle tips (BYF).
Knit 15 stitches, BYF.

Wait! The yarn is already in the front! Rip.

I finally worked the purse thusly:

Toss pattern in the trash and *make up the pattern so it looks like the store sample.*
Repeat from * to *.

Knitted with doubled Malabrigo worsted on size 13 needles, the purse was agony to finish. Needles that large should be illegal, or at least should have a Carpal Tunnel/Knitter's Elbow warning prominently stamped on the shaft. There was a lot of i-cord, too, but I refused to purchase a set of #13 dpns that I would never use again, so I used my Boye NeedleMasters with 16" cables. They weigh a ton. Never again.

A Side Note: A few weeks ago I watched a 13-year-old struggle with size 15 needles. She was clearly hating every stitch. It should also be illegal to give children needles larger than, say, a size 6. You are never too young to wreak havoc on your tendons, carpals, and other delicate body parts.

Where was I? Oh yes. Fish purse. The handle was made with 84 interminable inches of i-cord. I discovered that, instead of dropping the yarn, sliding the stitches to the other end of the needle, and picking up the yarn again, it was easier to just slip the three stitches back to the left-hand needle after knitting them. I started picking up speed at that point, but it seemed like I would never finish.

I bought the fish and yarn from Twisted Skeins. The shop doesn't have an Internet store yet, but you can probably call her and order fish-by-the-yard over the phone. I don't recommend purchasing the pattern--just find your own felted bag directions and go fishing!