On the Ravelry group where I seem to be living at the moment, there’s a thread for the ‘Year of Making Stuff’. In it we egg each other on to greater feats, and enthuse, and feel inspired even while turning pale green with jealousy at some of the items some of us make. We’re all making beautiful things, and learning new ways to make beautiful things. Sara Lamb’s book Woven Treasures: one-if-a-kind woven bags inspired me to try pick-up weaving. It’s a folk weaving technique, the sort of thing people have been doing for thousands of years to enrich their lives by making everyday objects a little more beautiful. As I reached into the sewing box to find a needle to finish the ends of the band I was struck by the way I took those needles and my other odds and ends for granted.
I don’t know what brings these thoughts to mind. They’re not random, they’re always related to something I’m doing. Usually something that people just like me, my ancestors, have been doing every day for longer than I can think about. Baking bread, boiling water, spinning. I am so fortunate. I don’t have to grind grain and gather wood to fire an oven for 3 hours to bake bread for an entire household for a week; I just buy flour and turn on the oven. If I want a hot drink, I turn a tap to get fresh, safe water that boils in minutes at the flick of a switch. If I want a needle, I take one from the packet I bought more than 20 years ago in Canada. For 60 cents I had 50 steel needles, incredibly sharp and fine, suitable for a variety of uses. I still have lots because I sew as infrequently as possible (I dislike fine sewing, so it’s just as well I can buy ready-made clothes). By contrast, a thousand years ago, this one needle would have been someone’s prized possession. Most people used bone needles. Even in the Middle Ages, metal needles were nothing like those in the packet I take for granted. Not to mention the crochet hooks, the scissors, the safety pins and dressmaking pins so cheap they’re used in packaging the clothes we buy. To be thrown away, or sworn at when an overlooked pin finds its way into flesh as well as cloth.

After pausing to consider my good fortune, I did my best to finish the ends of my first pick-up band.
It’s shown here above my first complex tablet-woven band. That tablet-woven band is a sad sight: now a bookmark, it was meant to be much, much longer, long enough to be a belt. But after spending several hours over the course of a week or so getting to grips with the diagonals, I worked out how to make the diamond ‘eye’ at right… and then, for some reason, I had to put the loom to one side. I did make some notes about what I’d done, but by the time I got back to it I’d lost the knack of doing the diagonals, and I think some of the tablets had been rotated by accident. That strip and its warp sat on the loom for the next three years, reproaching me. Occasionally I’d try to work out how to get back to the diagonals, fail, and put it to one side again. Until a month ago when, after another afternoon spent staring thoughtfully at it, turning tablets to and fro, I took Denny’s advice and cut the dog off the loom. I can make another one. It is, after all, the Year of Making Stuff.
And I have been making stuff. There’s been quite a lot of spinning, some of which is being knitted.
The 400m of cashmere/silk is becoming another shawl based on the Rampton Lace Swatch pattern. It’s become overly difficult for a beginner, so that ball of Jo’s red merino/silk will become yet another version, with the complex ending of the green as a variant for more knitters willing and able to keep an eye on the orientation of their YOs. I can’t knit that lace AND remember to write down what I’ve done after wine, or when I’m tired, so I need some simpler knitting as well.
These will be fingerless gloves, a gift for a good friend. Apparently she has an opal ring in exactly these colours; how fortuitous! And when those are finished, I need a hat because the brown one I knitted in a hurry is both too short and too loose. And it’s boring. The last installment of the Socktopus Fibre Academy, ‘Magic Dust’ batts from FeltStudioUK
became a bouncy woollen 3-ply that I think will do nicely. Can you see the firestar in it? My new hat will *sparkle*!
There is of course more spinning occurring; 2 oz of Switzer-land alpaca from SOAR on the Suzie. I’m practicing long draw because after I finish that it will be time to compete in the Ravelympics. My chosen project? Spin cotton warp and weft for a small bag, then weave it on the Schacht ‘Flip’ rigid heddle loom that hasn’t yet arrived. We’re getting close to the wire here. I need to know the grist I need to spin! In the interim, I also have to work out how to crochet a friend’s knitted squares together to make a baby blanket.
When I finish *that*, there’s the Christmas present that arrived last week. I wonder if the fates are telling me to spin that 100g of silk on a spindle?

And there’s another big project hinted at by the background in all these images. To be fair, we don’t have to MAKE anything from scratch, but still…
that’s roughly 34 m^2 of solid oak floorboards to replace the worn and maltreated pine that is our current downstairs floor. Spinning wheel and cat for scale. That’s a lot of work even starting with the boards made by someone else. I’m hoping for warmer weather for the project, because there’s a chance that we’ll have to mess with the central heating pipes and radiators to get some of the old boards out. The snowdrops know the sun is moving north once more.
If by any chance I have time to feel bored, I will warp the loom for another tablet-woven band.

^1: if you don’t know the origin of this phrase, I suggest you obtain a copy of ‘The Princess Bride’ (book) by William Goldman or the 1987 film of the book, make a cup of your favourite warm beverage and settle into a comfortable chair for a pleasant afternoon.

How to identify over-twisted singles: if they wear ruts in your fingers, your singles may indeed be over-twisted.
There’s more to the problem than that, though, and it relates to a second kind of pain. Lesson learned from recent spinning: if a new spinner came up to me holding The Most Beautiful Fibre in the World and said “it’s for when I’m a better spinner”, I’d advise them from bitter experience. Spin it sooner rather than later. Don’t fondle it, allow others to fondle it, don’t carry it around like a security blankie. Don’t make it the very first item in your stash bin, carefully piling other stuff on top of it because you’ll spin that other stuff first, and you want The Most Beautiful Fibre in the World to be there, a treasure to reward you when you’ve spun your way through the dross. Do that and the fibre may still be pretty, but it might not be the nicest fibre to spin.
Exemplar the First. That was two large rolls of ‘Montana Agate’ roving, a blend by Three Bags Full from The Bellwether, bought in my first flush of enthusiasm three years ago. Lovely stuff, a subtle blend of silks and wools. Huge, lofty bags, they were… but when I found them in my Bin of Treasures, they’d been squashed beyond recognition. Fortunately the wool bounced back a bit, lofting as I ripped chunks off, but it never regained enough air to become a pleasure to spin. I’ve become so accustomed to drafting with ease that this took me by surprise; I knew some was over-twisted, but I hadn’t realised how badly until I plied it. The singles were twining around themselves even before they hit my left hand, and it’s the constant forcing back through the incipient tangles to get another arm’s-length on its way to my right hand and the orifice that cut into my fingers. It’s become 345m of 3-ply. Lots of hats and mittens, perhaps.
Exemplar The Second. 60g of cashmere/silk from Chasing Rainbows via Crown Mountain Farms. Bought in that same dangerous spate of enthusiasm, the single most expensive fibre I could imagine owning (hear me and my current stash laughing at my younger self :-). I carried it around for ages, marvelling at its softness, then hid it with the other Treasures. When I pulled it out last month I instantly realised that in my ignorance I’d compressed it badly. It was reluctant to draft as thinly as I wanted, but still I’ve got 400m of soft lace shading from gold to forest to olive green (I’ve tried to tweak that shot to give you some idea of the colours). Eerily appropriate for what should be my next project…

I’ve designed a small lace swatch for the Rampton Project in 2010. I’ve knitted it in handspun red silk, light fingering weight
I’m knitting it in laceweight merino, my very first spindle-spun laceweight:
It’s a variation of the patterns I used in the ‘Teaching Shawl’, most of which are based on various forms of leaf lace. I’m minded to put a lifeline through the current version when I reach the end of the chart, then strike out for unknown territory and a pattern for a different shawl. If I am pleased with the result and can remember what I did, I will chart it (yay! for KnitVisualizer) and then knit it in that green and gold. I’ve just remembered that those are the colours of the U of A. Ah, memories.

There’s been a lot of knitting going on here. Slowly.
That’s my ‘New England’ Luxury Spinners’ Set from Spindlefrog spun as a heavy laceweight 2-ply, becoming a Textured Shawl based on Orlane’s Textured Shawl Recipe (Rav link). I’ve added a texture or two; I keep telling myself the unevenness will magically disappear during blocking. Fingers crossed…

Sam the Ram is progressing, too. Although I was wildly over-confident of my ability to graft k1p1 rib. I may rip that belly graft out and try again. The rest of the spaghetti is, as far as I can tell, on course to become legs at the appropriate points of the body. Only time and patience will tell. It’s still one of the most fun things I’ve done: the shaping of the head, the way the body is constructed are revelatory about the things that a plane of knitting can be made to do.

I managed to get quite a lot of spinning done this the weekend.
The window is blinding white because we’ve got snow. Quite a lot of snow, in fact. We woke up on Friday morning to this
and most of it is still here. It’s COLD. I need a sweater, I’m in a KAL with Lynn – and due to my greed at SOAR, I have a duff right elbow that’s restricting me to about 15 minutes knitting at a stretch. It’s getting better, though. Slowly. I wonder if the realisation that I’m healing more slowly, aching more often, is one of the reasons that I feel so strongly my time is running short, that I have to get everything I want from Life sooner rather than later? This is the only Monday 21 December 2009 that you and I will ever have, Dear Reader. Let’s put it to good use. I am going to do a solid hour of work, and then I am going outside to glory in the myriad shades of blue created by snow and sky.

But I have more than memories.

Spirit Trail ‘Blue Jeans’ silk/cashmere and Spindlewood spindle, 10g, birds-eye maple

When I was trying to decide whether to try for SOAR I spent a lot of time googling for hard information about it. What actually happened? OK, it was clearly memorable, even life-changing, and people had fun and drank a lot, but what did they learn? Having been, I now understand why it’s so hard to describe. Yes, you learn, or at least I did. A lot. I learned about spinning, and fibre: I learned that I really am a better spinner than I thought, and I was able to get a glimpse of just how much more there is to learn. I learned about teaching: I want to be a mentor, I want to give people the knowledge that they desire. I learned about having fun, in a way that I’ve never had fun before because never before have I been part of a group of women old enough to know what they want and young enough to go for it. But it’s exhausting, physically and mentally. My single room was expensive, but absolutely worth it for me, because I was able to get enough rest (bed at 2130 most nights, I am not joking) and get up early enough to get some exercise. Also: Vitamin C and echinacea+zinc. Placebo effect or not, it may have saved me from the SOAR ‘Crud’, which this year turned out to be H1N1 for many attendees.

There’s a group pool of SOAR 2009 photos over on Flickr that’s worth trolling through. What can I show you?
Over the three days of the workshop, Stephenie told us about the history of cotton, the varieties, where they come from and how their physical characteristics affect the processing and spinning of their fibre. We spun cotton from the seed; we ginned seeds to separate the fibre from the seed, we ‘willowed’ and ‘bowed’ the resulting compressed fibre to see how vibration opens it up for spinning. We carded it and made punis (and a lot of very bad jokes based on Canadian slang. Google it :-) We spun our punis and commercially-available Indian punis, we spun top from many cotton varieties and blends. We spun on our wheels (the Journey Wheel was fine), we spun on spindles, tahklis, akhas, southwestern spindles, we spun on box charkhas and banjo charkhas, we spun on bull pups, and a great wheel. While we were spinning, Stephenie passed around samples of handknitted and handwoven cotton to show us what we could do with our handspun.
It’s the item Stephenie didn’t bring that is clearest in my memory: her re-creation of Native American weaving for a museum in the southwest, and the look on her face as she spoke of it.

Much of the equipment we used was made by Alden Amos (the box charkhas were Bosworths, or from India). Talking with Stephanie about textile history and spindles, she brought out a spindle Alden had made for her, and put it in my hands. How can I describe it to you? Have you ever felt that something was perfect, that it could be no other shape? Light and shadow emphasize the perfection of line and, if it’s something you can touch, you HAVE to touch it because, well, you have to. The spindle was not ‘like’ that, it was that. The simple, elegant perfection of the line of the shaft, the grain of the section of wood used as a whorl. I can’t help it, beauty makes me cry, and tears were in my eyes as I handed it back. And then Stephenie gave it back to me to keep. It’s sitting on the desk in front of me as I type, and I look at it and… it still makes me cry. Both for its beauty, and the memories it evokes. Anyway. I also have an AA tahkli. I tried several in the course of the class, and liked this one for its weight and persistance. I can’t think of the right word to describe its insistence on spinning long and fast. Look, it’s got whirlwinds on it!
On Wednesday evening the various workshop groups set up displays to show ‘everyone’ what we’d done and what we’d learned. We decided to emphasise the fact that cotton gets a raw deal: it isn’t difficult to spin provided you approach it with an open mind. We set out samples of the fibres, the tools we’d used, and the skeins we’d spun. We included ALL the waste fibre discarded over the three days (only a double handful), labelled ‘Cotton is NOT difficult to spin’. We enthusiastically demonstrated spinning on tahklis (Avedan and Stetson excel at this) and an ordinary wheel.

Stetson holds/spins a tahkli while the amazingly talented Denny spins cotton from it. Lyn/enallagma9 (centre), Ellenspn (far right) and others watch, bemused by their teamwork.

Stetson I think realised that someone spinning looks a bit… ordinary… sat behind the wheel, so he decided to try something different. At his request I brought the wheel out, turned it so the orifice faced into the room and bent down to adjust something. And the rest is history, recorded on YouTube and the memories of anyone in the room. The purple lump treadling is me; Stetson is the handsome chap who takes a bow after the singles finally gives up the ghost. None of the video and photos I’ve seen so far have caught Denny and the others who were limbo-dancing under the singles, or the moment when my hair got caught in it!

Thursday was a rest day, or meant to be. But the Market opened, which was not at all restful. The queue to get in began to form an hour or so beforehand, most of it being the proto-queue for the Rovings booth. The first five minutes were mayhem; I took refuge in Carolina Homespun, whence I emerged considerably richer in Abbybatts and Spirit Trail fibre. I am not saying how much poorer in cash terms! I then surveyed the field. My goal was to acquire stuff I cannot get in the UK, or that is best chosen in person. It was a great pleasure to finally meet Steve of Spindlewood, and I was thrilled to discover that 10g spindle. A Verb for Keeping Warm was on my list; I tried to buy enough fibre that I won’t be immediately frustrated when I run short. The colours are so, so pretty.

There’s some Spirit Trail in there, too.

I almost forgot to mention the special SOAR blend. Black BFL and silk, 8oz for $15, limit of three per person. I got three.

Also a gift bag from Jimbobspins!

There is a lot more fibre, I mean A LOT MORE FIBRE to be revealed. I’m going to ration it in case it overwhelms you, or inspires fibre-holics to raid my house. It’s currently bagged by colour, and there’s the ‘brights’ and the ‘blues’ yet to be revealed. Also the Rovings black polwarth/silk blend.

Back to what I learned, rather than what I bought or was given!
Friday am was Blending on a Drumcarder with Abby Franquemont. Amazing, intense three hours. Started with chunks of black merino, silver alpaca, and silk, used to teach us how to feed the carder, how to sandwich slick fibres, and how successive passes make more effective blends. Those tiny twists are my plied samples, one from each pass. I’ve rarely spindle-spun so fast… We used a range of carders, from small manual to ‘Judith’s carder’, a huge motorised beast that just ate fibre. Don’t worry about presenting the fibre correctly; don’t put your hands anywhere NEAR it! Just toss the fibre at it like flesh to a hungry lion. I was interested to note that the batts from the Strauch were more finely blended, but wow, it was fast. For the next exercise we were given dyed silk. merino and glitz to blend. Not allowed to choose: we learned that even apparently ugly colours can result in lovely blends. My maroon and mustard merino plus lavender silk ended up looking like lavender-shot mahogany. Rather lovely. But now I want a drumcarder. What do I remember most clearly? Abby’s hand on mine, pressing down to show me how to feed the fibre into the carder. Knowledge passing from hand to hand.

Friday pm was Plying with Judith Mackenzie Mckuin. Slightly less intense, but still… wow. We used millspun singles, Judith’s Rambouillet/Mohair blend, to create 2-ply, 3-ply, and 4-ply. (Judith said my plying was beautiful!) We talked about the benefits of plying and how the structure affects its performance in knitted fabric. And then we played with novelty yarns created by plying. And Judith talked about her work with Native Americans, projects to preserve and pass on their knowledge of fibre.

I don’t have any photos from my Saturday am class, American Long Draw with Maggie Casey. I don’t have any samples, save what’s still on the JW bobbin. That’s because I didn’t stop spinning. I learned… my hands learned that my right hand’s habit of pulling forward was causing slubs: the right hand should do nothing but control the twist while my left hand pulls the fibre back and away. And I did the Beerdrinkers’s Long Draw! From the fold or from the end, makes no odds. Should I wish to, I can now drink and spin at the same time. And I got to watch Maggie’s hands, spinning.

Saturday pm was Handcombing with Robin Russo. Peter Teal’s precision produces true worsted, but it is possible to produce perfectly useable prep by lashing on fibre as it comes, by the handful. Faster, too. And we did it with a range of fibres on a range of combs, from Navajo Churro on Viking combs (de-hair and comb), Polwarth and Romney on smaller combs, down to angora on mini-combs. See that grey skein on the card? That’s hand-combed, handspun angora. How cool is that? And the red stuff is my first pure mohair. Such fun!

But my word, we were tired by the end of it. Saturday evening was Hallowe’en, dinner in costume (I wore my best clothes with button eyes and behaved very properly as the Other Sarah. Which makes no sense unless you’ve seen Coraline) a spin-in of sorts, plus disco/karaoke. Far too loud for me. I went back to my room, changed into my travelling clothes and packed my suitcase bar my toothbrush so I’d have time for a last long pre-breakfast walk before leaving on Sunday. Then I went back to the Great Hall to watch, entranced, as Michael Cook/wormspit demonstrated silk reeling. One of the Sunriver staff leant over his shoulder and I couldn’t help overhearing as he was told he had to clear his workroom within the hour. And I saw his face – he’d been promised the room until Sunday, allowing him to pack all the class equipment. I volunteered to clear it, packing everything onto trolleys (commandeered from the kitchen) to be taken to a different room. When I’d done so (interrupted only by Tsocktsarina’s summons to help give Abby the final installment of the FOAY (Ravelry group) gifts), I was stunned by Michael’s insistence that I accept 2 bobbins of hand-reeled silk, plus 2 empty bobbins, a frictionless clip, and a 3-minute summation of what to do to turn it into laceweight yarn.
I’d had to sit on my suitcase (full of fibre) to close it. I’d already thrown away a pair of old socks in order make space… could I fit these in? Of course I could. So I did. And the suitcase weighed 49lb 8oz on the scales at Redmond Airport on Sunday morning, which is why my right elbow has been Not Quite Right ever since. Very Painful, in fact. But at least it doesn’t stop me spinning.

From Redmond I flew to Victoria, where we spent three days with his family before flying back to Heathrow. It hurt to leave, even more than my elbow, it hurt my heart. Western Canada is Home. I console myself with the thought that I carry it with me in my bones, but I still couldn’t bear the view from the windows on the other side of the terminal, the ones that showed the sea and the mountains beyond which lies Home.

I walked to the Lodge for Registration with some trepidation: I knew *nobody* here In Real Life, only as digital entities on Ravelry and via email. I’d tried to memorise ravatars, but I’m bad at faces, and pictures of someone’s dog or favourite FO are no help at all…

Abby was unmistakable, and gave me the first of many, many SOAR hugs (for which I later gave her the beer I’d brought from England). If someone asks if it’s your first SOAR, and you say ‘yes’, they’ll probably hug you. Inspired by this, I did my share of hugging, to thank Beth of The Spinning Loft for all the stuff she’s sent to me ( OK, I did buy it, but it was all good). Wearing my Camo Laminaria I was stunned when ElizF (on Ravelry), who designed it, came up to me to see mine – the first she’d seen in the wild. Her first time at SOAR too, so I hugged her for that AND the fabulous patterns. I hugged Tsocks, and Lynn (Enallagma9) and JimBobSpins and Sandi. All around me other people were hugging each other, friends who saw each other only at SOAR. And speaking regretfully of those they’d hoped to see who hadn’t been able to attend.

The three-day workshop session was about people, too (as well as cotton). Other students, learning. Our mentor, Stephanie Gaustad, who poured a generous flood of information, skill and experience into the room. The people who’d made the tools we used (Alden Amos’ work is so beautiful that some pieces made me
cry) the people who devised the techniques we learned, who used them to clothe their families. We are part of a tradition stretching back into the mists of time. Stephanie talked of duplicating ancient textiles, and people who’d done similar work spoke of feeling that the original makers were there, present, helping and approving of the effort to keep the tradition alive.

Pass it on, people.

— posted on the move

Mt Bachelor at 0730 this morning. After a brisk walk during which I saw a family of otters in the river!!! And a deer. And a dead garter snake :-( I decided to try the gym. Which was good – but the spa pools afterward are even better. Registration next, then the fun really begins :-)

— posted on the move

Almost there

— posted on the move

It’s usually considered best to start at the beginning and proceed to the end. There’s no end in sight, though. A couple of weeks ago I watched with interest as a friend blended her colours for the Rampton Project 2009 on her Louet drum carder. I eventually asked if I could borrow it, and recently I tried it for myself. I don’t think I’ve put the Romney fleece on record (can you sense my embarrassment? my third fleece?)

From Ashford in New Zealand via Treenways in Canada. Isn’t it gorgeous?
So… I decided to try a Romney/tussah silk blend, just to see what happens. The washed locks were flicked open and spread carefully across the tray thing while I turned the drum carder handle as slowly as possible, then more slowly still. Once I’d built up a layer of Romney on the drum, I lashed a finely-spread layer of tussah
directly onto the drum, then covered it with more Romney. 60g of Romney and 9g of silk later, I removed the batt and fed it through again. I’d have done a third (I tried lashing some silk across the drum, but these strands didn’t blend on that pass, the action just brought them together in a solid strip), but the silk was starting to think about nepps. The end result:
And this is what it looks like on the bobbin:

I like it a lot. I want to make MORE.

Speaking of the Rampton Project, there’s been some progress. Here’s the photo I’m working from, just to remind you.
I chose colours from that photo and tried to match them or at least come close, by blending dyed wool on handcards (see this post for more details). I added white and black silk to some blends, and others have silk noil in shades of green and orange to reflect some of the variation in the colours of the photo. The final list is Dawn Sky, River/Cloud Purple, Grass Gold, Beach Bronze, Islet Brown, Bright Grass Green, Mid Grass Green, Dark Grass Green, Shadow Blue, and Cloud White. The fibre for each was weighed as I created it, so I can blend more to match. Which is just as well.

This is an array of batts based on that photo:
The p-chullo pattern requires 10 colours, and there are 10 in that shot, but after looking at them laid out I realised that the beach bronze (second from right) was too bright, and the shadow blue (fourth from left) was too similar to the river/cloud. So I added some black to the bronze, and lots of black and more magenta to another attempt at the blue. The pattern is written for Berocco Ultra Alpaca, a 3-ply, so I blended 3 batts of each colour. I happen to have some, so I unraveled a length, made a sample card and started spinning.’X’ marks the wrong blue; I have to say its replacement, next to it, is one of the prettiest colours I’ve seen anywhere. This is how to get colours of the beauty and subtlety of the Starmore collections. Also I am very, very proud of the quality of some of that handspun!
I think the effect is close enough to be going on with. I need to think very carefully about the balance of the colours, and how to echo the combinations that stand out in the photo. Next? I have to get gauge, or close to it. First I have to finish this:

Another Aeolian in BMFA Rook-y, like the first. Hand-dyed yarn varies: this isn’t as pretty as the first, the colours are brighter, but I can fix that with a bath in 10 or 20% black dye before I block it.

But before I can finish that, I have to cut the hedge. I’ll deserve an afternoon sitting and knitting after that!

Silly things to do on a walk: No. 1

Imagine walking across this vast field on a lovely sunny afternoon. Be invisible (it’s your imagination, you can do it) so as not to disturb two people having an intense discussion, one waving something in its hand in the air. Drift closer and discover it’s us, me and him, trying to work out what/where that distinctive ‘lump’ on the horizon might be. Could it be the theoretically visible Sharpenhoe Clappers? We need a compass, but haven’t got one. So I pull out my iPhone, download and install GPS software from iTunes (the waving about was trying to get the best signal), then we waste 10 minutes trying to walk fast enough to get the GPS compass to pay attention to us. FAIL. Double FAIL, once for being sad enough to download and install software to use on my phone when we’re meant to be walking in the countryside, and again for enjoying the experience and thinking it perfectly justifiable.

Here’s another kind of fail… I am rapidly concluding I don’t like spinning angora. The end result is soft (the Fetchings I knitted from a handspun Wooly Rabbit angora blend are lovely to wear), but the stuff sticks together even when it’s not felted. I find it very difficult to draft; even semi-longdraw is proving problematic. Which is a nuisance, as I’d planned to spin it from the fold. I need to practice that.
But isn’t it pretty? The brown is slightly pinker than I like, but it still reminds me of the sea washing over pebbles and sand. I just have to finish spinning it at home because two people at the spinning group are allergic to angora. It’s part of one of Spindlefrog‘s Spinner’s Sets, roughly 6 oz of luxury fibres dyed in the same colourway. Mine is angora, cashmere, silk, baby camel, baby alpaca, kid mohair. Here’s the rest of the fibres, all their potential as yet untapped.

More foolishness. I’m beginning to realise my handspun falls into two quite clearly defined categories. One is
WOW!! I can’t believe I made that. It’s far to beautiful to knit. No pattern does it justice. The second is
Ho Hum. Look at this, and that… nope. I can’t knit that, it’s not good enough for any pattern.

Which is really silly. I know it’s silly. I’m too new at this to expect perfection and yet, I hurt a bit when I don’t achieve it every time. Look at this:
That’s about 490m of singles spun from two ‘Spanish Moss’ Abby batts, part of a swap with Fernmonkey on Ravelry. It’s a lovely silvery grey-green, the singles are reasonably soft, not over-twisted. I think it will make a reasonable, perhaps even a nice shawl (I’m casting on for one from the Icelandic shawl book Thrihyrnur og langsjol: Three-cornered and long shawls). But I feel dissatisfied with every inch of yarn passing through my fingers; it’s too thin or too thick, there’s a slub of silk… I really do have to get over this. It’s MY OWN YARN, for pity’s sake. I made it. It’s a miraculous thing, the product of my own hands. I should love every inch of it.

Grrr. Perhaps I need chocolate?

No. I just need to remind myself that, barring accidents and other unpleasantnesses, I AM GOING TO SOAR!!

RIP, Aeolian Shawl

Physical and mental. Let’s get the mental over first. In short, my cunning plan proved to be a turnip: yes, a hammer trumps a bead every time (ok, might take two or three careful blows) but, where my trial beads turned into glittering dust, those on the shawl shattered into shards. Sharp ones. After cheerfully demolishing about 20 beads I realised the fragments had cut the yarn in two places. I repaired them, but BMFA Silk Thread II is, well, silk: it doesn’t stick to itself, it’s thin and shiny and the repairs are visible). However, I was committed, so I continued much, much more carefully – the next c. 100 beads required only two more repairs. I sat in the sun with my heart sliding into my socks as I realised that, at this speed, I’d still be breaking beads in two weeks’ time, and the shawl would be a higgledy-piggledy mess of repairs. I looked at that beautiful silk gleaming in the light and realised that my selfishness had ruined that shawl and wasted weeks of my precious spare time. After all, if I didn’t like the glitter, I could have given it to someone who did. But no, I wanted that lovely yarn, that shawl sans beads for me. Therein lies the anguish: I was Stupid. And now I think no one will have it, even though after I announced that I’d binned it the Tsocksarina decided to attempt to salvage something from the wreck. As soon as its chaperones arrive (no knitting can travel unaccompanied) the mess will be on its way.

I distracted myself from the mess by casting on for a hat in my handspun. It’s still a novelty, knitting yarn I made myself. I used the ‘Come in Spinner’ Polwarth from the first installment of the Socktopus Fibre Academy, which I’d spun as a thick 3-ply. I’d known it was more worsted than I’d wanted, but only when I started to knit with it did I realise just how ‘solid’ it was. It’s made a very… sturdy… hat. Weighs about twice as much as any of our technical gear, so it will not come on long treks, but it’s pretty. And, alas, too big for me. Suits him, though:
Then there’s the physical anguish. We did it to ourselves, too. The weather forecast was good, dry but cool, so on Friday evening we pulled the Big Packs out of the cupboard and packed them with almost all the stuff we’d be carrying in Scotland (mine weighed 15.5kg, about 35lb), and at 0630 yesterday morning we threw them (figuratively speaking; they’re far too heavy to throw!) with the rest of our walking gear in the back of the car and hammered up the M1 to our nearest hills in Derbyshire. Again. After discovering that the concentration needed to do Emily Ocker’s circular cast-on with two circular knitting needles instead of a crochet hook in a car travelling on a winding road left me feeling distinctly poorly, I didn’t get a lot of knitting done! But by the time we reached Chesterfield I had the map open and was formulating a plan. It went something like this: arrive Edale, park, start walking. Good one, eh? It expanded to: arrive Edale, walk up to path along Rushup Edge,

Above, the view east along Rushup Edge. Mam Tor on left above my pack, Castleton at right.
Below, the view north to Edale village and the Kinder plateau.

then northwest and north over the top of Colborne and Brown Knoll

This Boundary Stone inscribed ‘1748’ lies on what fell-runners say is the driest line along the top of the moor. They’re probably right, but it was wet nonetheless. And I finally tested the depth of a bog hole: only 18″ or so in diameter, it was nearly 4′ deep!

stop for lunch in the shelter of a quarry and stone wall (the wind was cold!), strike west along the flank of Kinder, then north until we had to decide: take the ‘easy, short’ path that slides up the western slope to the top of Kinder, or carry on around Kinder Reservoir and up William Clough to the far northwest corner of the plateau. For several minutes we fidgeted, thoughtfully shifting the packs on our shoulders, trying to balance time, pack weight, energy level, distance and knee condition, before basically saying ‘Sod it, we can eat at McDonald’s if the pub is full – let’s go!’ and committing to the lunacy of the longer route. Besides which, we were carrying tent, sleeping gear, water filter, stove, fuel, and food for 6 days. We could take our time.

click for bigger…

So we took the path in the left of that panorama over the lovely soft green dotted with sheep and lambs, down the hill to the reservoir, along the baking hot path on the other side to the start of William Clough, where we realised there was Another Choice: an unofficial path heading straight up the side of Kinder. It would be shorter, no question of it, but it was much steeper. Time was pressing… I’m really bad at uphill; given my pauses for breath (remember I’m carrying a 15kg pack!), would it be faster than the Clough? Nothing ventured, nothing gained: we headed up the hill. Unfortunately, while pausing allows me to catch my breath, it does little to persuade my duff knee to pull itself together and by the time we reached the top, I was hurting. But the view was… ok, no, it wasn’t worth the pain. Not by itself. Add the sense of achievement and the two together were worth it :-)

The view west from the top. Good but not quite good enough :-) The panorama was taken from the top of that long green hill above the dark trees on the left of the picture.

The familiar Pennine Way stretched ahead of us and we did our best to set a good pace past Kinder Downfall to Kinderlow, (but were scarcely able to stay ahead of the school groups. Oh, to be 16 again!) then left on a minor path to the main path running along the southern edge of the Plateau, high above Edale. The late afternoon sun revealed a wealth of detail on the hillside south and west of us;
The ridge in shadow to the left in the distance is Rushup Edge; in the middle distance is Brown Knoll. The blanket of peat on the flattish top of the hill is clearly visible, broken up at the edges by erosion and by old peat cuttings. You can also clearly see some of the post-glacial landslips for which Edale is famous.
As we strode, kneesore but determined, we discussed the best route down. The plateau stands about 300m above the floor of the valley; given the weight on our backs and the condition of our knees, were we better trying to lose height as quickly as possible (the c. 75° drop down the rockfall of Grindsbrook Clough), or more slowly (the unfamiliar path down Grindslow). We opted to get it over with and paused for an SIS isogel (those things work wonders when you need a quick boost of energy for a specific task) before carefully making our way down the rockfall. The energy ran out about halfway down the path to Edale, but it didn’t matter, we were down. End result: over 15 miles/24k, roughly estimated, including more ascent/descent than we’re likely to encounter on any day on the Sutherland Trail. Conclusion: we did it; we can do it again. Barring accidents, we’re up to the task, in every sense.

And this morning? We’re fine. If we had a hill, we’d be up it :-) In the interim, I will do some lace knitting!

That’s what this is. Remember that post about colour blending with handcards in which I mentioned the 2009 Rampton Project? I said I was going to make a bag for my head? I’ve made some decisions since then. (Well of course I have, that was weeks, er, months ago. Bother. Where has the time gone?)

I’m going to make something based on Susette’s p-chullo pattern, a simply beautiful hat available free on Ravelry and from her blog, Knitting Letters: A to Z. If you’ve never heard of it, go and read the first entry now, then savour the rest slowly. I ration myself to one per week as I re-read them. The pattern requires 10 colours; I’m going to work from a photograph, as I did for ‘Hellebore’. This photo.
Taken just as the early morning sun rose above the hills east of Inveroran on the West Highland Way, it was the start of one of the best days of my life. What better way to commemorate it than by using those colours in a hat? In the margin of my colour laser hardcopy I’ve written: dawn sky; river/cloud; grassgold; beachbrown; islet brown; bright grass green; mid grass green; dark grass green; shadowblue; cloud. The list has been laughing at me for nearly a month while I tried to find both the time and the space in my head to make these colours from dyed wool and silk. This weekend is the beginning. I’ve got sky, river/cloud, and a start on grassgold, which looks like this on the handcard and as a rolag:
The white is filament silk cut to roughly the same length as the dyed merino. Note the dyed silk noil; I’m using dabs of bright yellow, an orange, and a few hints of bright green. I’ll use the same colours in the browns and in the greens, but the proportions of each will change. I might add some heather pink/purple to one of the browns. I haven’t started spinning this yet; I’ll save any rolags that end up the wrong colour (one so far) to practice. The pattern calls for Berroco Ultra Alpaca and, fortunately, I have some so I’ve made a control card from a small sample, including one of the singles (it’s a 3-ply). I want to roughly match the weight so I don’t have to fiddle overmuch if at all with the stitch count. I’ve got at least another two afternoons of carding before I deserve to spin any of this. Yes, spinning is the reward. I’m warning you, if you don’t spin, beware: it’s addictive. I had no difficulty kicking my trivial Geo Defense habit… I’d much rather be spinning :-)

Let’s see, what else can I show off? I love to post pictures of a shawl blocking, but you’ll have to settle for Aeolian on the needles ready to bind off.
Once again I CANNOT get the photo to do justice to the yarn. That’s Blue Moon Fiber Arts silk thread II in Rook-y, and it’s simply, utterly gorgeous. The Raven Clan colours are striking on wool, but on silk they’re beyond beautiful. The shawl pattern is great fun, but I have serious reservations about the beads. There are a LOT of beads on this. The shawl is so heavy that I’ve wondered whether a heavily beaded shawl, say one with a border of real silver beads, could be used as a lethal weapon. Swing this thing by one corner and the entire length would wrap tightly around someone else’s throat like a bolas. Beading it added at least a third to the time needed to knit it and… I’m almost certain I don’t like it. Just too much glitter. So I’ll bind it off tonight, block it tomorrow and I might just attack it with a hammer on Tuesday. Beads are glass. In a contest with a hammer, they’ll lose.

No photos of any walks, though. Of course there have been walks! We broke out the big packs a fortnight ago for 13 miles there-and-back on the Monsal Trail, along the Wye in Derbyshire. Last weekend we took my sister and her husband to Ashopton and walked about 12 miles along Derwent Edge. Next weekend… who knows? But it’s no wonder I’ve had difficulty finding spare afternoons for the Rampton Project. Especially as there has been spinning.

Hullo, my name is Sarah, I have a problem… and I love it!

This is 640m of noiled silk singles, spun from Gnomespun‘s Surprise Sapphire (a custom blend). Dan’s got a really good eye for colour. This wanted to be a weaving yarn, so it’s gone to Lynn.

This was fun: 255m of 2-ply lace spun from a 50g (less a good handful given away as samples) cloud of dehaired guanaco from Heathylee in Derbyshire. Treated harshly in hot water, then thoroughly thwacked, it’s very soft. I’ve decided I really, really like spinning shortish fibres from clouds; it’s good fun and I just rather like the imagery :-)

What else… this is 88m of 3-ply ‘Jackaroo’, ‘Come in Spinner’ dyed Polwarth from the Socktopus Fibre Academy Club. I’ve decided this club will be an opportunity to challenge myself by spinning outside my comfort zone; for this I wanted something bouncy and warm and significantly thicker than my usual lace singles.
I think there’s enough to make a hat to replace the one I lost on Derwent Edge a month or so back. There’s more, but I have to go and deal with the hamburglar* buns for dinner tonight. Lesson for today: if you alternate making bread and making rolags, you might be able to avoid bits of dough in the rolags, but you will not be able to avoid bits of rolag in the dough. I picked the big lumps out, maybe he won’t be able to distinguish the rest from the usual cat hair.

A final thought. If you like being active outdoors, if you climb or ski or dream of whitewater kayaking, there’s a podcast for you at The Dirtbag Diaries. Good stories, well told, with well-chosen music and silence, as appropriate.

*Don’t mess with my stash. Srsly.*

*not really.