>Unfinished Work

Posted on August 18, 2007 | 1 comment

>Will I ever finish this piece? I’m beginning to think NOT, and it’s frustrating me. Quite some time ago I found a wonderful picture of a stone Buddha on the fridge at a friend’s house. Yes, it was a photo posted on a refrigerator!….yet it was the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen, and I asked my friend right then and there if I could make a copy of it. She gave it to me. I’m not doing anything artistic with it, I’m just copying it. I blew it up to the size I wanted, and I took a lot of time deciding how to convey a sense of the pitted stone in yarn. I’m happy with the mouth and nose. I’m actually quite a bit further along in the weaving than this photo shows. Yesterday I started the left eye. Well, I guess it’s really his right eye, but as I work on it it’s the eye to my left. I’ve woven it three times now, and it’s still not right. I love everything about this face! He has a beautiful mouth, and a perfectly shaped nose, but his eyes are truly moving. I can’t get the right expression. I’m trying not to feel like a failure, but I really do. I’m just a weaver, and if I could figure out how to portray this beautiful face I could weave it without much trouble. It’s portraying his amazing expression that’s going to defeat me…..

Okay, here he is in the photo. I wasn’t going to post this, but he’s too beautiful to leave out. How many times have I written that word, beautiful, in this post? I think I’m obsessed with his beauty!

(The colors I’m using are closer to the real photo than this photo would suggest. He’s much greener, like he’s seen years of moss and algae, and not at all golden as he looks here.)

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Posted in tapestry

>Sleep Deprivation

Posted on August 12, 2007 | 2 comments

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I’ve been awakened several consecutive nights by this owl. If you click on both the “A” sound and the “B” sound you’ll hear what wakens me! It’s a soothing sound, and I find it is bringing up some very old memories of sleepless nights full of teenage angst when I would be lulled to sleep by a whippoorwill. If you’ve never heard a whippoorwill I truly hope someday you will. It’s an indescribable experience that is heightened by occurring in the depths of night.

I doubt if I’ll ever get to see this owl, so hearing its call is quite intriguing. I’m imagining him (although possibly her) sitting in a spot like this photo, in a tree somewhere nearby, maybe even in my yard. I have heard him for several years now, in the summer when our windows are open. While the voice of a whippoorwill will always bring back details from my bedroom from the mid-70s, now the sound of an Eastern screech owl will be the voice of my menopausal, empter nester years when I don’t often sleep through the night.

Recently, during my late evening walks I’ve been hearing what might be a Great Horned Owl. I’m not completely sure about this as the owl in my neighborhood has a much lower pitched call. All I know for certain is that it is not the same owl as the one that awakens me later in the night. It’s interesting to realize that there is such bird life in my suburban town, although my town is rather undeveloped, so less manicured than most ‘burbs.

I’m not a “birder,” so it’s not as if I’m on the lookout for them, and this means I’m sometimes pleasantly surprised by my surroundings. Waking and drifting back to sleep to the sounds of owls (or whippoorwills!) is quite a good experience, something I highly recommend!

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Posted in serendipity

>Knitting Pattern

Posted on August 7, 2007 | 2 comments

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Two years ago I started a knitting ministry group in my area. It was not about religion per se, but about the power of knitting to heal us and others. I think the act of making anything by hand and wearing it or giving to someone to wear or use is a powerful totem for good health and protection against bad things. There just has t be a lot of good karma in something that you’ve made stitch by stitch for yourself or for someone you know. I’ve made it a point for many years now to wear something handmade everyday. I was surprised at how easy it is to wear some little something made by real hands, mine or others, each day.

So, I figured there were plenty of people in my community who would want to learn to knit now that knitting is so hip and there are so many LYSs (local yarn shops) cropping up again, and so many mega craft stores carrying yarn. I also figured there were plenty of past knitters out there who wanted to start again and just needed a little impetus. So I decided to offer knitting lessons for free and to focus on knitting for others. I was happily surprised at the number of people who have joined, and very pleased at how they each help each other. Even the new knitters now help others. I’m awed by what they do!

Most of the group knits shawls since fit is not an issue and since they don’t require any complicated shaping. Some people have moved on to interesting stitch patterns and/or triangular shawls, and some have just continued to knit, knit, knit! Some of the members have learned to make socks, and some have rekindled their talents at making sweaters. Everyone has felt the healing power of just going through the motions of knitting.

So here’s one of the shawls for which I’ve written a pattern. It’s not complicated; it’s based on the traditional Faeroese triangular shape that starts at the neck edge rather than the bottom point, and makes a shape that stays nicely poised on one’s shoulders. Hopefully later today I’ll have the PDF!

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Posted in knitting, patterns

>Summer Vacation

Posted on August 1, 2007 | Leave a comment

>So here’s some of what I did on my summer vacation while sailing through the Elizabeth Islands, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Cape.

It was a good trip for knitting and spinning. I finished one pair of socks and knit another pair, and I knit the entire front of my next Elsbeth Lavold sweater (I had finished the back before leaving). I think she is one of the most interesting designers. Her pattern writing is so terse, but the patterns themselves are a joy to knit! Like Alice Starmore, even though Lavold’s designs look complicated, they knit like a breeze. There’s something about the designs that keep me going without any tedium, so they work up more quickly than would seem possible. I don’t think I could ever be that gifted designer who could manages to balance a complicated pattern with such logic and grace that the knitting is simple, so I’ll just stick to knitting their designs!


Wouldn’t you know this sweater, called Hild, was shown in my favorite color in the Silky Wool line! Since I’d already knitted Siv in this color I had to choose something else. I hope I will enjoy this color as much:

The first pair of socks I finished were the Jaywalker socks. I’d already made one months ago and had started the second, so I just finished these up one afternoon. The yarn is Regia Color Effekt.


The second pair of socks was made with yarn bought in June, in Williamsburg. The yarn is Regia Silk Color, and though it really doesn’t show in the photo, there is a certain subtle “glow” from the silk.

I had some trouble spinning while away. I’m trying to figure out the best way to spin a worsted single that is medium weight and has very little twist. It’s easier on my Lendrum, but I wanted to get some spinning done while sailing so I took my electric spinner. On the electric spinner I could not work out the ratio between slow spinning and slow take up. I had the brilliant idea that I could use my plying head to spin a low twist single, but I didn’t take into account how the plying head has even faster take-up since it’s used for plying. Ugh. Bob helped me put on a longer piece of cord for Scotch tension so I could slow down the take-up, and he suggested monofilament since it would slip a little which would also slow down the take-up. It worked well! Now that I’m home I think I want to go back to just spinning on a regular wheel, in my case, my Lendrum. I have barely put a dent in my beautiful Romney fleece. I’ll never get to dyeing if I don’t get a lot of spinning done….and soon!

I’ll be home for the whole month of August! I’m looking forward to catching up on a lot of reading and a lot of weaving. By the way, My copy of Tapeis Gael: Weaving in rural Ireland arrived while I was away so I couldn’t resist starting to read it moments after it arrived. I’ve read the first three chapters, and it’s well written and a wonderful story of such interesting people!

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Posted in books, knitting

>Lost June!

Posted on July 10, 2007 | Leave a comment

>I never got here in June. Hmmm…. I was traveling again, and when home, frantically working in the garden. I’ve been away so much the gardens are quite overgrown and messy. I hope I get them a bit tidied up before I leave again at the end of the week. As this is our first really hot week with temperatures in the 90s I’m not exactly energized to get outside and weed.


Look what I finished! Finally! Although I posted pictures of this project on the loom back in Feb., I actually think I put these towels on the loom way back in November! I was full of excitement to give them as Christmas presents, but somehow after the first couple of weeks I couldn’t actually sit down and weave them. Having a guild Show and Tell at the end of June was what motivated me to finally get back to weaving them. I’m happy to have them done! I will keep one and give the other four away, most likely well before this Christmas!

I have just spent an amazing weekend at our regional weaving conference, called MAFA which stands for MidAtlantic Fiber Association. This was the first time they have offered a conference in which one could take only a full three-day class, as opposed to some variation of 1/2-day and 1-day classes. I took a class on natural dyeing, and the teachers were so organized and so well prepared that we managed to dye 76 wonderful colors in only 3 days. We were insanely focused and busy, and we even had to stagger our lunch hours for this class when the rest of the conference had 2 hour lunches which allowed for lunch as well as shopping in the vendors’ hall, but it was well worth it! I will try to take some photos of my incredible sample book.


I am now so thoroughly re-committed to the tapestry project I’ve had in mind for a couple of years now. I want to do it with hand spun, hand dyed yarn, and this class has moved me considerably closer to gaining the skills I need. I’ve got two fleeces waiting (one washed, one not!) to be combed and spun. I’ve done a little sampling on spinning technique. I’ve taken a mentor on this project, or rather, she has taken on me! Her name Vicki Fraser, and she is the creator/weaver of the California Rug Project.

Vicki has been very patient with my questions on what breed of sheep to use and how to spin the yarn. She’s been giving me advice on mordanting and dyeing, which I haven’t even started yet, but I have taken copious notes from my phone conversations with her. This workshop at MAFA gave me the chance to do some real dyeing and get some experience under my belt. The two teachers, Debbie McCrea and Carol Wood, were also very encouraging to me (sorry, no website for them, but they are located in the Alfred, NY, area and are members of the Rochester Guild) and have offered to guide me on the dyeing if I can come do it at their studio. I’d better get spinning.

Meeting these three women who are so willing to share their knowledge with me makes me realize what positive energies are out in the world when one needs guidance. Some people call this synchronicity, which means something like “with time.” That’s just my very rusty ancient Greek coming back to me….I think it must really connote things coming together at the right time, and boy, that is what’s happening here! I feel touched by something greater than coincidence right now, and I don’t want to squander these opportunities.

Hopefully I’ll post pictures soon, and hopefully I’ll post again this month. I’ll be sailing around Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket for the rest of the month, but I hope to get some of the clean white Romney fleece combed before I leave so I can spin while sailing. I’m bringing my electric spinner (made by my husband) because it takes up so much less room on the boat than my wheel. He made it to be compatible with the flyers from my Lendrum. He’s so clever….

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Posted in language, weaving

>Just a note….

Posted on June 1, 2007 | Leave a comment

>A funny thing happened this evening when I went to write my last post. I FOUND the two missing posts. How weird is that? It seems I have two blog accounts, and the errant posts are in this mysterious “other” account. Hmmm….my ignorance on things techie knows no bounds!

….and one other thing. I’m smitten by the Knitting Daily blog. If you don’t know about Major Laura (an avid knitter serving in Iraq) you must take a look.

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Posted in knitting, serendipity

>Shameless May!

Posted on May 31, 2007 | Leave a comment

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I can only use this title “Shameless May” if I get this published before midnight! Yes, you guessed it….it’s May 31st. Where have I been for the last six weeks? Well, it’s been pretty exciting. I’ve been to England and Scotland for almost three weeks, and I’ve been sailing in the Chesapeake Bay for the long Memorial Day weekend. Not a bad life, is it? Believe it or not, aside from the UK, I would always rather stay home and weave, knit or spin. I know. I have an addiction! And you see, in the UK, I did get to spin and knit. ….

I guess for once I have more pictures than words. I think for most people this is a good thing. I can easily spew out more than a thousand words for every picture I take for this blog. Perhaps the best thing today is to share a few photos from England and a few from my garden. I have spent my very short time at home in the garden the last few days. So there’s been no weaving anyway…. I have been spinning mohair on a drop spindle and working on a new knitting project with yarn I bought in England. Have I tackled those other unfinished knitting projects? I haven’t even given them a thought. I’m a yarn slut. It’s not pretty….but it’s May and
my garden is!

And here is a picture of my friend Lesley and me at Isaac Newton’s house, appropriately named Woolesthorpe. Yes, there were sheep!

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Posted in knitting

>STASH

Posted on April 12, 2007 | 2 comments

>Stash….I’ve read a lot of things about stash over the 30 years I’ve been collecting mine, and a few people have given me stash advice in person. I was out walking one day this week when stash advice began to replay in my head. I want to record some of those ideas before they go underground again for another decade or so!

Pat Slaven recently wrote a very poignant essay about stash, inspired by the death of two good friends. She was somewhat involved in dealing with the stashes left behind by both these women. In one case she was invited to view the friend’s quilting stash in order to pick some fabrics to make a quilt for the 6 year old son of the deceased woman. Are you getting misty yet? She tried not to influence the young boy, but she did hope that he would choose fabrics that would still speak to him as he grew and matured into a young man, and beyond, as this quilt would hopefully stay with him for many years. Pat was relieved that he did choose fabrics that were not specifically for very young boys. The poignant part of this story is that Pat discovered that her friend never seemed to have used any of these fabrics. There were no quilted projects in progress, no finished projects anywhere in the house, and no one remembers ever seeing her sew. There was only her stash. Her friends and family can only speculate what this stash meant to her. Was she going to learn to sew? Was she just interested in collecting interesting fabrics? Who knows, but her stash remained hidden in various closets in the house, complete with sales receipts.

Many years ago, in a weaving class with Daryl Lancaster, she admonished all of us to enjoy our shopping experiences. She said, “Shop to shop, buy what appeals to you! Then weave from your stash!” This has been my motto for many years, ever since I first heard Daryl say it! I shop with such abandon! I buy things that call out to me, and boy do things sing to me. The problem now is that I have opportunities to buy (and do buy) at a faster rate than I can weave. I now have some serious space considerations, and no hope of catching up if I continue to have SEX (Stash Enhancement eXperiences) at this rate! My studio looks like a warehouse, and it’s often difficult to access my looms, much less my stash. I do weave from my stash, but the effort it takes to get things out and examine my stash is often competely overwhelming. Sometimes I have to take a month’s break before I can face going back into my studio to put some of that stash away. It’s too hard. There’s too much of it, it doesn’t fit neatly on my shelves (in plastic bins, and in anything else that will contain it) anymore. Trying to find things has become a herculean endeavor, and I am not strong enough for the task! I now have my spinning stash in one bedroom, my knitting stash in another, and all of my weaving stash overfilling my basement studio.

This leads me to a bit of advice I heard recently on a podcast I enjoy: “Cast On” by Brenda Dayne. As part of her New Year’s ritual each year she goes through her stash and reorganizes it. She had some fantastic ideas, especially for anyone whose stash is still moderately sized. She calls her yearly process the “Airing of the Stash.” She gets it all out for viewing. Yarns that will make complete projects she bags together, and when she has several complete projects bagged she places them all together in large vacuum bags and proceeds to vacuum them into a small concise size, which can be stored and easily viewed. You go, Brenda!

It gets even more interesting after this. With the rest of her stash, which consists of small batches of yarns that appealed to her when she bought them, she begins grouping them into possible projects. She looks at color and texture and decides what yarns look good together. These also get vacuum bagged together, after being collected into various possible project groups. What a feat of decision making and courage! She makes it sound like this possibly takes place during ONE day, maybe a couple of days. I may remember this wrong, but I’ve pictured this more random stash spread out on a bed! I’m thinking of my random stash taking up every horizontal surface in every room in my house, and me playing a horrific memory game (oh, where is that lovely aubergine mohair that would go so well with this celery green alpaca? Did I see it in the dining room or the basement?) Ha! After 30 years, I think my stash has become a behemoth, a monster, a nightmare.

But, to get back on track with Brenda Dayne’s idea: Here’s one awesome benefit of doing this. At least once a year you see your stash. It rekindles the ideas you had when you bought each thing, which perhaps will get you started on a new project, and/or motivate you to finish current projects in order to start something new. And better yet, now that you’ve seen your stash, when you are out shopping and some wonderful little tidbit leaps out at you, you can make an intelligent decision on whether you really need it or not! How great is that? I might be panting over some incredible blend of color and luxury fiber, but perhaps I won’t buy it knowing that I have something equally wonderful waiting for my attention at home.

This idea of “viewing your stash” at least once a year is a terrific idea. I just can’t figure out how to do it! I’m not sure I can share photos of my own personal stash here, for two reasons. The first and biggest reason is that it won’t all fit in one picture, or even two. It might fit in a photo album! The second reason is that I’m a bit shy about this. It would be like showing the dark side of my addiction. It’s not pretty!

Well, okay, here’s one picture (what’s a blog entry without a picture?). I think this is about 1/4 of my linen stash for weaving, with some other stuff in the background. I swear not all of my stash is this messy….really!

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Posted in knitting, serendipity, spinning, weaving

>Knitting Funk

Posted on March 13, 2007 | Leave a comment

>I’ve been in a knitting funk since the new year. It stems from trying to make a sweater for my older son’s fiancee for Christmas. I chose the cute sweater from Interweave Knits’ Spring ’06 issue called “Sunshine Circle Jacket.” It was a fun design to knit, and quite creative in its use of partial circles for the fronts of the jacket to give a bolera shape to the garment. But it turned out WAY too big, in spite of my knitting the smallest size. So I partially ripped it out and made those circles somewhat smaller and re-did the ribbing around the whole thing (I had decided that ribbing would be better than a bulky hem as called for in the directions). Still, again, the sweater just swallows her up. So, for the third round I marked various key spots while it was on Lauren. It’s just sitting near my favorite knitting chair waiting to be re-done yet again.

You may wonder why one little set back would cause such a funk, lasting over two months now. I have lots of other knitting projects (not to mention weaving and spinning projects) to take my mind off this one knitting fiasco in the long span of my knitting history. I can’t say for sure why this is so traumatic for me. This is certainly not the first project to turn out less than perfectly for me!

I think it was the knitting “tight rope” I’d strung for myself this holiday season. I have been spinning and knitting a sweater for my younger son. I ordered roving from one of the Orkney Islands off Scotland, from sheep called Ronadlsay that I’d never known of before. I never intended that sweater to be a Christmas present for Chris, but I had hoped it would be done in time to give him for Thanksgiving. As Christmas approached and Lauren’s Sunshine Circle jacket dragged on, I realized I’d be lucky if I finished Chris’ sweater by the end of January when he returned to college. Then there was also my little niece’s Christmas sweater, a wonderful Dale design called Marihone.

It has adorable little red and black lady bugs interspersed with multi-colored stripes of different widths. Back in Dec. it was just zipping along lickety-split. When Lauren’s sweater went down the path of (I’m tempted to say failure, but will refrain!), the path of do-over I had to put both Madison’s and Chris’ sweaters aside. When I returned to Madison’s sweater, it had lost it’s zip. Somehow it’s become a drudgery to work on it. There really is no time to dawdle with a toddler sweater if one expects the toddler to wear it for more than a nano second. But now it’s March and it’s still not finished! Help! I did plan for it to fit her next fall/winter as well, but I was sure hoping she’d get two seasons out of it. Now the first season is ending.

So, back to Chris’ sweater. He’s home for spring break now, and he’s asking me to work on it. I had finished the body and started one sleeve. The steeks on the body were still closed so today I decided to cut them open so Chris could try on the sweater. I was practically paralyzed with a lack of confidence about this sweater fitting. Also, although Chris would fervently deny it, I think he is quite picky, and I was almost certain he’d find something not to his liking about the fit of this sweater. While I was spinning the yarn (for months) we had discussed very carefully what this sweater should look like. Chris had very strong opinions about what this sweater should NOT look like! Anyway, on to the punch line!….
I cut open the steeks, and he tried it on and loved it. I mean really loved it! I wanted to faint from relief. Something has turned out very well. Now I have just the bit of impetus I need for tackling those sleeves. I don’t know if he’ll be taking the sweater with him this weekend at the end of his spring break, but surely he’ll have it another week later. It’s a good thing he’s in Rochester, NY, where it won’t be truly spring weather for some time to come!

And so I did finish it! Less than a week before Easter! A friend of mine took it to him on Maundy Thursday since she was going to Rochester. Rochester has had two snow storms since then, so he has gotten to wear it a few times!
Whew!

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Posted in knitting

>Lunar Eclipse

Posted on March 8, 2007 | Leave a comment

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This is a little out of order, going back to the lunar eclipse that happened on Saturday, March 3. Losing those two posts interfered with my writing about the eclipse, but now I’ve made peace with the disappearance of those two entries I can get back on track.

My friend Elisa called me about 7.30, and told me to go outside to see the eclipse. I grabbed my cell phone (so I could call my two sons and my husband since everyone was out of town that evening) and went out on the front porch. This porch is the best feature of my whole house. It sits quite far back from the road, so our front porch is a private place, and since it faces East, there have been many wonderful evenings to watch the moon rise. The moon was still rising Saturday night when I went out on the porch to see the eclipse. The eclipse was more than half way done already, but it was still a wonderful sight. I watched until the end, which must have been about half an hour.

A couple of years ago I read that native American women thought moonlight was very good for female well being. Women should sleep with the light of a full moon falling directly on their faces. Well, even though glass cuts out the real rays of moonlight, I’ve felt very connected knowing that on those somewhat rare occasions when a full moon is rising late enough in the evening for me to be in bed, that light is falling on me as it comes straight through one of my windows! So I thought of all that real moonlight falling on me as I watched the eclipse. I hope I gained something good from it!

No weaving to speak of yet this week, but I have returned to my younger son’s handspun, handknit sweater. I’ve started the sleeves! He’ll be home tomorrow evening for a week (spring break). With a lot of luck I hope to finish both sleeves and get the sweater assembled for him to take back to school with him. School is in Rochester, NY, so he could still get some wear out of a winter sweater there before real spring weather arrives.

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Posted in knitting, serendipity