Fiber, fiber everywhere... and no time left to spin.

These are the eggs I have for breakfast.
The names of the hens that laid them are written in pencil.
I know EXACTLY where my food comes from.

I miss spinning. I miss the rhooooom-whirrrrrr-whirrrrr of my wheel. I miss the hypnotic treadling and the clack-clack of the footman-treadle join.... which, come to think of it, might be something that needs fixing.

My poor wheel -- my beautiful, shiny wheel -- has been sitting under a striped sheet for a long time. No one has recently wiped it down with oil after a long spinning session. No one has checked to see that it hasn't been suddenly attacked by termites. I am guilty of spinning wheel neglect -- the only saving graces are that (1) I cared for it very well before it went into the corner with a sheet and (2) it has been kept out of the sun and inside a climate-controlled house, where the temperature and humidity never vary significantly, thanks to the ridiculously complicated HVAC systems.

I know it hasn't suffered physical harm, but I still feel like I've fallen down on some sacred duty... It's times like these that I'm pretty sure I don't deserve a wheel as gorgeous and well-made as mine. My wheel was lovingly made by hand, and now it sits in a corner, unnoticed. One would think that I'd at least have the decency to drape it in a hand-loomed shroud, not a cheap twin-XL sheet leftover from the two years of undergrad that I lived on campus.

I have gigantic plastic storage bins full of fiber -- hand-dyed silk hankies, mounds of fluffy buffalo down, piles of silky angora, three whole alpaca fleeces, goat and sheep fleeces in various states of nature, prime first-clip mohair, and seemingly endless balls of dyed top in various blends of merino/silk -- in an endless holding pattern.

I am not a skilled spinner. I am proficient, but I have not practiced enough to be truly skilled.

With Spring in the air and a definite house-moving coming up, I pause to reflect on this.

Do I need to keep my beautiful Reeves wheel? Do I need these pounds and pounds of fiber that may never become yarn?

Is it something I can let go? Perhaps it was important in the past but I no longer feel the need to cling to it. Maybe it is something unnecessary and weighing me down. Is it something I need to shed? Will I regret the absence of something I barely noticed (except with vague feelings of guilt)?

I am thankful to have owned and had the pleasure of working on such a marvelous, luxurious wheel. It's sorta like having had an exotic sports car in your garage, that you drove once for five miles, detailed and fussed over, and then put on those special curved tired blocks and under a cover, and haven't jingled the keys since. I know how nice it is to spin on a Reeves wheel.

But if I don't spin regularly, why do I have one? I'd get much more use and enjoyment out of an etching press. And I know there are spinners out there who drool over, covet, and would cherish having this wheel.

I'm not going to make a hasty decision on this, but right now I'm leaning toward selling my wheel and getting rid of my fiber stash. I don't think it's necessary at this point in my life.

Notes from the Inside

Day 453. No cars in the parking lot this morning, except those that have been parked there for nigh on two years. It's 10am. Where is everyone? Aren't they working today? Am I alone here?


Day 462. Rain today. Think today is Monday, but can't be certain. At times, I'm pretty sure it's Thursday. Don't ask the clients for fear they'll think I'm crazy. Postman came by today, so today is definitely NOT Sunday. Unless they started Sunday delivery and I was so busy working I didn't notice. The adding machine still has a 9+4 keypad in the main section (1-9, 0, 00, 000, .) I have used approximately 2,356 meters of adding machine tape since my time here began. Have processed God only knows how many returns. Well, God and my timesheet.

Day 245346836. Think porcelain coffee cup is permanently stained from green tea. Have possibly measured out life in tea-spoons, but lost count and therefore cannot be certain.

Day 23478! (23478 factorial) . I woke from my nap on the office floor. I had a dream that I was... knitting. I think that's something I used to do, a long time ago...

Day 235φq09Φ20456ЖΔ². Am nearly out of yarn.

Cookies for Africa -- Easter Cookie Giveaway

Cookies for Africa is an online bake sale to raise money for ChildAlive, a nonprofit that buys mosquito nets for children in Western Africa. I know the woman who runs Cookies for Africa; she is incredibly kind and generous, in addition to incredibly talented.

She is trying to raise awareness for her fundraiser by giving away cookies. The cookies are totally free, with no strings attached. The ulterior motive is, of course, to raise awareness for the charity. To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on her blog entry for the giveaway. I won her St. Patrick’s Day cookies (swiped picture below); they are as delicious as they are pretty.

Have you been to Becky's blog yet? Have you commented? DO IT NOW! WIN COOKIES!

Knitting in the Time of Taxes

The Baltic Sea Stole is chugging right along. Er, it was, when I had time to work on it. Progress is slow lately because most of my waking hours are spent calculating how much money Big Daddy Plantation System the government is stealing taking from its sharecroppers my clients*, and trying to mitigate the damage as much as legally possible.

This means I don't get a whole lot of sleep; I work long, long shifts; knitting is therefore squeezed into remainder time, and there isn't a lot of that until mid-April. Anyway, here's what I've been up to:

not exactly 3 feet long.

Lisa Souza Petal, 50/50 silk/merino, colorway "Sapphire." Gorgeous, isn't it? It feels as beautiful as it looks. Can't wait to block it out.

Oh, and that carpet on which it is resting? Yeah, that's in the latest annex to Knit Goddingdom, a province known as The New House. More on that later.


*Note from the editor: the "Taxation = Slavery" rhetoric has been deleted from this post.

Tuesday Eye Candy

Like I said, we have a LOT of catching up to do! Future posts include the knitting workshop I recently attended with Anne Hanson of Knitspot.

Welcome back! Here's some eye candy to tide you over until a meatier post comes along.

This is Araucania Ranco Multy. It's a semi-coarse sock yarn that I bought for its colors.

I knitted it up into a half-width Clapotis. It turned out okay. I was not satisfied with the texture, and therefore do not recommend Ranco Multy for this project.



I've been knitting LOTS of socks! I haven't yet taken photos of all of them. Here's an in-progress look at a pair of candy-striped beauties with yarn from Holiday Yarns.


My current project is a Baltic Sea Stole, using a pattern Pearlsmother sent me in a Knitters Tea Swap some time ago. I'm using Lisa Souza Petal, a 50/50 silk merino in colorway "Sapphire." It's soft, gorgeous and has perfect stitch definition. Below is a picture of the beginning. I've been trucking along on this and have about three feet now, and will post an updated picture soon.

Stay tuned!

Etsy and the art of FAIL

I was surprised this evening to see Health Care as the featured story on Etsy's front page. Figuring it couldn't possibly be about the current US healthcare debacle, I clicked on it. I was wrong.

What followed was a watered-down, left-leaning synopsis of the current state of health care legislation in the United States. It provided no salient details while it omitted a lot of important ones. It was how you might explain the healthcare debate to a third-grader, while trying to stay neutral. The problem is, nobody can stay neutral when discussing such a politically-charged issue. And third-graders aren't going to make informed decisions.

Regardless of your stance on the issue, it has no place on Etsy. What's next, reproductive rights and the art of handmade? I can see it now:

Reproductive Rights: An Etsy Guide.
Since many of our patrons and sellers are female, we thought we'd discuss reproductive rights. The right to an abortion is an issue that affects many people. People have differing opinions about this. Right now, Roe v. Wade legalizes some types of abortions. Some people don't agree that this should be the case, but they have not been successful in overturning the Supreme Court decision. We here at Etsy thought we'd do a five-part series on abortion, to let you know the ins and outs of women's reproductive rights and how it might affect your life.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't see any way in which that would be appropriate. Frankly, I'm not that comfortable posting that fake paragraph here, on my blog. Did it make your blood boil a little bit? Do you find it offensive that I've even mentioned abortion in an uninformative, neutral fashion on my knitting blog?

It illustrates my point perfectly, doesn't it?

I would not want to direct buyers to my Etsy shop, encourage them to poke about the site, only to have them balk at the political discussion. It's not what you look for when you're shopping for a party dress, or a landscape painting, or some vintage housewares. I would like a disclaimer at the top of the article that Etsy in no way represents the political views of the individual sellers. Better yet, why not represent no political views at all, and keep that stuff for the editorial coffee break?

I commented on the article that discussion of such a divisive issue was inappropriate for a community of the handmade. That I enjoyed political discussion elsewhere, but Etsy was not the place for it. Two minutes later, the editors had deleted my comment -- no wonder it had been the sole dissent.

I repost the quote I have kept on the sidebar of my blog, in which I still firmly believe:

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. . . . But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." -- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Etsy welcomes discussion of topics -- as long as you foster discussion that agrees with them. Maybe Etsy should run for Congress -- they'd fit right in.

It's disappointing and disheartening to see this from a site I had liked so much. I'd write them a letter and explain why I don't want to shop there any more, or why I am considering closing my shop and not putting up the new listings I had planned, but I know they won't actually care. They're going to go right on in their happy, green, urban, veganized, shiny, sterilized, unilateral, and in some ways ignorant, world. Etsy in no way represents my political beliefs, and I want no part of it.


XXX




Your regularly scheduled knitting blog will resume shortly. We have a LOT of catching up to do.

Christmas, In a Nutshell

Cookies:

teensy tiny saucepan
for reducing black raspberry jelly down to jam.

sheep cookies (because I can)

Then I cut out a LOT of snowflakes.




(l) black raspberry jam cookies
(r) red raspberry jam cookies

peppermint cookies

slightly blurry Christmas tree.

I sewed buttons on the Autumn Leaves Capelet:


And I cast on for Anne Hanson's Starlight Lace Wrap.

That's all for now -- see you guys next year!

Zoe Sock Shawl

The Simple Yet Effective Zoe Sock Shawl is finished! Here's slightly blurry proof:


There was one minor snag (da dum dum) discovered during blocking:

Not a dropped stitch... just a pull... that somehow created a hole.
This is what you get when you let your finished objects
sit on your desk, fall on the floor, get shuffled around,
snagged on things, and be generally neglected
while you wait a couple weeks to find time to block it.

The yarn bled substantially blue during three lukewarm soaks with Eucalan. On the third bath, it was still bleeding. I figured I'd run out of patience before the dye stopped running, so I squeezed it out and blocked it. The good news is that the yarn is a super-sturdy superwash -- I did a lot the things you're not supposed to do to your woolens to see what would happen. I filled the basin with lukewarm water while the shawl was in the sink. I squeezed it and then squeezed the water out hard, before giving it a gentle wringing each time.

Three wringings later, the yarn looked no worse for the wear. Were it made into socks, it is my professional opinion that this stuff will wear and wash like... well, not like iron, that tends to get a bit rusty with washing... more like it will wear like stainless steel... that is, without the scratching and the need for polishing and the picking up fingerprints... You know what I mean. It's some tough, tough yarn for as squooshy as it is.

Overall, I'm pleased with it. The pattern shows off the hand-painted aspect of the yarn. The YOs give it a little definition. My only complaint, which I suppose is true of most triangular garter-stitch shawls, is that it's difficult to wear draped over one's shoulders. I wore it using the old Pashmina trick: put it over my shoulders take the tails under my arms and square knot the tails behind my back.

Here are some final blocking photos:

Happy Late Belated Monday!

Hurrah! I have successfully rigged up a substitute computer for processing photos! We can now celebrate the Monday update only a few days late.

Update on Thing One and Thing Two... it is with a heavy heart that Coco and Bella have gone to a new home. I was about to write "Coco and Bella have gone to a better place," which is technically true, but then my friends would look at me suspiciously every time I wore my white fur hat.

No, it turns out that while I was sad to see them go, my allergies were not -- in fact, my sinuses decided to throw a party and stay open 24/7 to celebrate the cats' departure. Mom held out for a while... until she discovered that she was allergic to the kittens, too. We had no idea what to do with them -- they were rescue cats, so I couldn't very well haul them off to the pound.

I could not live with them. Mom could not live with them. Mom's housekeeper, whose beloved cat died many years ago, thought they were precious.

They are now clawing their way through my mother's housekeeper's furniture, clinging to her screened-in porch and running madly around her living room in the middle of the night, much to the delight of all. Coco and Bella are thriving; Mom's housekeeper loves them; Mom's housekeeper's home is under constant threat of imminent shredding. All's well that ends well; thanks be to God; God Save the Queen; Knees Up Mother Brown, Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Speaking of Monty Python, here's my sweater so far:

I could not be more pleased with how the torso turned out. It fits perfectly. Brava, Ms Chau, for an excellent pattern.

view from back

Now with 50% More Sleeve Action!

The lesson I have learned is to only adopt pets to which I am definitely not allergic. Fortunately, I am not allergic to alpacas. I learned a few days ago that there are rescue alpacas available for adopting, not thirty miles from where I live...

To be continued.

Best Balaclava EVAR.

First, she brought us the Bokaclava (ravelry link):



Now, Anne-Marie Dunbar introduces the Cthuluclava (ravelry link) and -- my personal favorite -- the Dracoclava (ravelry link).




I love the bold, confident sculptural quality of Anne-Marie's knits, as well as her attention to detail. Note the sticky-out tongue of Bok and the finely-worked scales on the forehead of the Dracoclava.

The Bokaclava pattern is a free download, either Ravelry or website. It is also available in a child size. The Cthuluclava and Dracoclava patterns are £3.00 (GBP) apiece and available through ravelry downloads and her website.

fine print: I am not in any way affiliated with Anne-Marie Dunbar; I have no monetary interest in promoting her work. Just a fan. :-)

Pardon me -- your 1337 isn't showing.

I finished knitting the torso of the Noro and alpaca top-down raglan cardi. I'm super-pleased with it so far. The fit is just right -- yay, Laura, for an excellent pattern! I took pictures of it this morning. Normally, it takes me a little time to sit down, download the pics from the camera, fuss with them in Photoshop to get them color-corrected (that's why you often see a grey card in my pictures - that's a Neutral Gray 5 card). Things might take a leeeetle bit longer this time:

My lappy says something like this:


Actually, my particular BSOD tells me that it has something to do with the memory. I ran diagnostics and my lappy failed March A, March B, March X, and March Y tests. I don't know enough about computers to know exactly what this means, but past experience tells me that this probably isn't good for the files I haven't backed up.

Alternatively, I can pop out the keyboard and start jabbing at my computer's innards with a #17 straight needle and see what happens.

I went into Eleganza yesterday because, despite my calculations that ensured perfect fit, I messed up the yarn requirements for my Top-Down Raglan Cardi. I need more Noro Silk Garden #47 (yarndex closeup), lot P. I was hoping that Kristi might have a ball or two leftover, but no such luck. I looked for another yarn that I could use as a substitute, but no luck with that, either. I checked Ravelry stashes but no one had any listed for sale/trade. So last night I bought two skeins of #47, lot V on Ebay. Even if the dye lots are not exactly right, I am confident that I'll be able to tweak them to make them work.

My main tweak so far for this sweater: I took the remnants of my last skein of #47 and divided them into sections by color. There were 5 distinct color changes in all. I then cut each color section exactly in half and wound each piece into a little ball, so I have 2 equal sets of 5 colors in little bitty balls. This way, I can knit each sleeve with one set, so the sleeves have the same colors/equal stripes.

While I didn't get what I originally wanted, my trip to Eleganza was not entirely without success. I bought a bag full of yarn to make another top-down raglan cardi:

• 3 sk Noro Silk Garden #226 (grey - blue - purple) (yarndex link)
  
• 1 sk Manos Wool #04 (turquoise) (yarndex link)
• 1 sk Cascade Lana d'Oro 1066 (blueberry)
  
• 1 sk Cascade Lana d'Oro 1069 (purple)
  
• 2 sk Noro Cash Iroha #108 (chocolate brown)
  

Arrrgh, I want so badly to show you guys pictures of these yarns together! I'm very excited to play with them and make them into a jewel-toned sweater! Here's a quick collage to show you roughly what they look like together, until I can get a proper picture:



The Silk Garden #226 has little bits of the robin's egg blue in it (picked up by the Manos #04), along with a larger portion of blues that go beautifully with the Lana D'Oro #1066. The Cash Iroha (background of the picture) picks up the deep chocolate/coffee colors in the Silk Garden.

That's all for now; keep your fingers crossed that I'll either get the lappy sorted out or rig up another computer for transferring/editing my pictures.

Bed isn't made; needles are crying.

I haven't knitted in four days.


My knitting bag goes everywhere with me, following my purse with a persistent optimism I thought only belonged to dogs. I don't have the heart to tell it, "not today."


My wheel sits idle. It accepts the dust that slowly settles on it, patient as the tree and maker that birthed it.


Bags of roving slouch together, wondering whether they'll ever be predrafted.


The brown sweater is locked in a holding cell, awaiting judgment. Any day now, it may find that there is not enough Noro to knit the sleeves. Conversely, it might get 3/4-length sleeves. If by some miracle, I find another skein of Silk Garden in the same color and lot, it will get a reprieve and receive full-length sleeves. Or, it may be sent to the frog pond (not likely, it has a good lawyer knitter on its case).


I've started drinking caffeine again.


And it isn't even tax season yet.






I fear I may be going insane insaner.