TNNA 2009

My sweetie and I were fortunate enough to make it to TNNA's winter show in San Diego last weekend.  In the words of Anne of Green Gables, there was plenty of "scope for the imagination" to be had by most.

 

We attended "Sample It" on Friday night, which was a great opportunity to see new products by some of our favorite fiber industry folks.  The best part was that you could buy samples of these items.  I snatched up a Flat Feet kit from Conjoined Creations in a wonderful pink and purple colorway.  This kit was very smartly designed and even included a copy of their latest pattern book and double pointed needles so that I could start knitting immediately.

 

I also picked up a sample kit from Eucalan, my favorite wool wash company.  They have a couple of neat new products out, including lint remover sheets (perfect for the hand spinner) and single use wipes for those knitwear + food accidents on-the-go.

 On Saturday morning, I attended a class on "Designing Sweaters that Fit" by Stefanie Japel, author of Fitted Knits and Glam Knits.  The focus of the class was on taking your own measurements and using them to design a top-down raglan sweater that fits your proportions perfectly.  This class was very useful, and certainly inspired me to start knitting sweaters from the top.  Thanks, Stefanie!

 After my class on Saturday morning, my sweetie and I walked around the marketplace.  We stopped by so many great exhibitor booths.  A few of our favorites were Interweave Press, Fiber Fiend, One World Button Supply Co., Bijou Basin Ranch, Hand Jive, Lantern Moon, and Tanglewood Fiber Creations.  We really had such a great time and we have already marked our calendar for next year!

Holiday Knitting

I knitted for what seemed like hundreds of hours over the last two months in order to finish up Christmas gifts for my nearest and dearest.  It was such a blast!  The final tally was two hats, two neck cozies, and one scarf.  The scarf was the biggest challenge.  I knit it using my handpainted fingering weight superwash merino/tencel (50/50) yarn on size US3 needles.  Yikes!  The finished scarf was 440 rows long!  I really love how it turned out, but in the future I will keep in mind that fine yarn projects do take more time.

4x4 hat - made with Knit Picks Essential Sock Yarn in Cocoa

Top-down hat - made with Handmaiden Casbah Sock Yarn in Stone

Neck Cozy - made with handpainted superfine merino sport weight yarn in Stone

Entrelac Asymmetrical Neck Cozy - made with Trendsetter Yarns Tonalita

Buttonhole Scarf - made with handpainted superwash merino merino/tencel fingering weight yarn in Limited Edition

Dyeing up a Storm

I have been handpainting rovings lately, which is great fun! I absolutely love playing with new colors and imagining how they will look when they are finished and spun into yarn.

Here are some photos of the latest batch.

Merino/Kid Mohair (70/30) in "Shamrock"

Merino/Kid Mohair (70/30) in "Chestnut"

Merino/Tussah Silk (80/20) in "Tourmaline"

Merino/Tussah (80/20) in "Bryce Canyon"

Bluefaced Leicester in "Ribbon Rock Turquoise"

Bluefaced Leicester in "Desert Sandstone"

Bluefaced Leicester in "Sorbet"

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Bluefaced Leicester in "Topaz"

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving! My sweetie and I are planning to spend the weekend relaxing at home. I have already pulled out a few knitting projects that I hope to spend the majority of my time working on. One of my current projects is the Ivy League Vest by Eunny Jang from the Winter 2007 Interweave Knits. It is my first large-project attempt at Fair Isle knitting, and I must say that I am enjoying it. I picked this project because I wanted to learn how to steek my knitting, though now that I have cast on the front neck steek I am feeling a bit nervous about wielding a pair of sharp scissors near my precious hand knit garment. I am confident, however, that I will be able to muster the courage to press on once the excitement of having a finished garment hits.

Ravelympics 2008

Whew! Seventeen knitting-packed days can be so exhausting! But also so enjoyable! This year was the inaugural year of the Ravelympics, and I very much enjoyed knitting and watching the Summer Olympics with all of my knitting sisters and brothers around the globe. I entered two projects in the challenge - the handspun lace curtain that I am knitting for our west-facing kitchen window (Event: WIP Wrestling) and an asymmetrical neck cozy for my friend Sarah (Event: Gift Knits Pentathlon).





I worked on both of these projects throughout the games. I suspected from the outset that I would not have enough yarn left to finish the curtain, but I knit on until the very end. Now I think that even if I had had the proper yardage, I would not have been able to finish such a big project in such a short time frame. It doesn't help that the lace pattern has a 16 row repeat that, for some reason, is all but impossible for me to memorize! Anyway, it was great to work on this project, which had been hibernating for some time. Even though I didn't finish it, I am optimistic that I will finish it soon. [Note: the curtain is about 2 1/2 times the length that it was in the above photo.]

The asymmetrical neck cozy was such a relaxing project. My friend Sarah came to visit a couple of months ago, and she asked if I would knit her something from a skein of my handdyed superfine merino yarn that she purchased. I was elated to make her a neck cozy, in part because I love knitting for other people! Also, she lives in the D.C. area, and winter can be quite cold. My hope is that the cozy will make the chilly weather a little more tolerable. I finished knitting the cozy only two days before the closing ceremonies, and I still had to decide on a button. After some thought, I decided to make a "thumbprint" button out of polymer clay. My friend, Barbara, was really the inspiration behind the button. She has been making polymer clay buttons like crazy over the past several months. In fact, Barabara and I have joined forces, and are now offering her buttons on our Etsy site. I baked the clay, glazed the button and finished sewing on the button with about 36 hours to go before the closing ceremonies.

I found the entire Ravelympics experience to be very enjoyable, and I am already looking forward to the 2010 games in London, England. Perhaps I will be there in person, knitting in tow.

Antique Spinning Wheel

This summer, a long-time friend of my mother's sold her house house. My mom helped her to clean out some storage on the property, and unearthed this spinning wheel in the process. The wheel was in pieces. My mom brought it home and carefully cleaned the years of accumulated dust and lanolin off of it.



We visited my parents in early August for my brother's wedding, and my sweetie spent most of his free time working on the wheel. At the end of our stay, I was able to spin some bluefaced leicester roving on it! My mom's friend thinks that this wheel is at least 100 years old. It was passed down to her from her mother-in-law who did not spin, and she feels that it must have been her grandmother-in-law's or her great-grand-mother-in-law's. Considering the age of the wheel, the parts are in good shape. The wheel includes three leather pieces on the footman, which were brittle, and so we replaced them with some leather from my grandfather. I have three scotch tension spinning wheels, and so I am not at all familiar with the double drive system, but we were able to use some candle wicking (thanks Dad!) to rig up the double drive band. Though the ratio was better suited for spinning chunky yarns (I prefer to spin fine yarns), it was really fun to spin on this historic artifact. We all kept wishing that the wheel could talk because we are certain that it has a rich history to tell. If you know anything about this spinning wheel, please contact me!

Orange County Fair

Mid-summer in the OC means that it is fair time again. We always look forward to the fair and enjoy going to see the animal barns and the Home Arts building. For the first time ever, I entered some of my handspinning and knitting into the arts and crafts competition. And I won! I can hardly believe it! In fact, I received 2-1st place ribbons, 1-2nd place ribbon, and the Division Winner award for handspinning! I am over the moon with excitement! I feel very honored that my work made the cut. I am currently writing up the pattern for the handspun hat, and will make it available through Etsy and Ravelry once it is completed.

Here is the hat - 1st place and Division winner!


My yarns are the two on the outsides (1st and 2nd place, respectively). My friend Pam won 1st place in the exotic fibers category for her beautiful handspun yarn (in the middle).


In addition to the awards, I was able to track down a farmer who had some wool for sale. On our final visit to the fair, we walked through the animal barns yet again. This time, we met Jennifer from Hillside Cottage in Norco, California who was changing the coats on her Angora goats. I bought 8 ounces of yummy merino/mohair/angora (50/30/20) roving from her. Hillside Cottage raises each of these animals themselves, and this roving has a lovely oatmeal color. I am really looking forward to spinning it up. I think that I will spin a lace yarn and make a Pi Shawl (a la Elizabeth Zimmermann).