Project Fleece

FInally Finished!

2011-10-04T12:47:00.000-04:00

Well, I am have finally completed my hand spun sweater, the lovely Rhinebeck cardigan designed by Lisa Lloyd from the book, A Fine Fleece. And it is not so itchy after all, thanks to Donna, my spinning teacher, who told me to put some hair conditioner into the water when I blocked the sweater. I think using the outrageously expensive Aveda Be Curly, as the conditioner, as it was the only thing I had in the house, probably made a difference in the softness of the fleece.

I don't know what I was expecting when I started this project, perhaps some kind of epiphany , when there really has been none - just a lot of hours and hard slogging. I found out it is ok not to know where you are going when you start out on something, the joy is in the journey and sharing that with people you care about.

I am pretty sure that I am glad not to be a pioneer woman, like Ma on Little House on the Prairie, who had to balance making clothes for her family, with all of the other things she had to do, like putting up food for the winter, chopping logs and killing bears. I thought about her as I sat spinning in my basement with all of the comforts of my life as I watched enless reruns of Six Feet Under and the Young and the Restless. I wonder what Ma would say about the TV and how so much of our lives are spent watching the invented lives of others. Ma would have been spinning her wool while Pa, her husband, played the fiddle as she sat by the fire. I think they would have told their own stories.

I do want to thank all of my dear friends who gave me support on this project - Greg, Sheila, Annie, Mary and my family members -- Rick, Char and Nora. A special shout out to Nora, my sister, for learning to made socks, when she was staying with me last winter.

Finally, a special greeting to my dearest and oldest friend, Owen, who is celebrating her birthday today. Thank you for the loan of your spinning wheel and for helping me get started.

Mother Nature's Lessons

2010-08-29T14:24:00.001-04:00

Mother Nature is a cruel teacher, I have decided today. I have been knitting my sweater now for about two weeks and it is coming along nicely.

If you like a giant brillo pad to wear. Oh, and I can't get this post not to centre as I type. Darn it.

The darn thing is very itchy. I probably should have made a bathmat out of it but since I have spent a good 50 hours or so of my life spinning it, that is not going to happen.

I must be some kind of masochist to sit and knit an itchy sweater in August but I will finish this.

Damn it.

I have decided that I am going to give this sweater to my darling husband as he has much thicker and less sensitive skin that I do and will wear it. I probably would not.

To be continued...

lisa lloyd, texture maven

2010-07-11T09:13:00.001-04:00

A Fine Fleece is quite a book. I want to make the sweater from my fleece from one of the designs in it but I am not sure which one yet. Tons of beautiful aran patterns that are not for the faint of heart with all kinds of cables, stitch patterns and interesting shaped garments. Can you say "saddle sleeve"?

I have to say it is what we fiber obsessed folks call "Yarn Porn". Lovely pictures of his and her models, textured cardigans, pullovers, socks, buttoned vests, scarves and a cap. A simple, homey yet seductive picture of a drop spindle with some perfectly spun lace weight on it.

I am in awe of Lisa Lloyd, the author of this book. Apparently each of the patterns has not only been knit by her in hand spun and commercial yarns, but she also spun all the yarn as well. You can learn quite a lot about the properties of the different sheep fleeces from the book.

Others have written detailed reviews of the book and I won't do that here, but one of the things that made me want to knit my fleece up from this book was the fact that everyone seems to talk about how the patterns are "sized large" and that is a good thing for zaftig gals like me.

Lisa Lloyd is a knitting superwoman, for sure. I think of myself, taking a year to spin to the wool for one of her sweaters and cannot understand how she could spin enough wool for the following:

7 ladies' cardigans

6 unisex pullovers

3 ladies' pullovers

2 ladies' cardigans/jackets

2 ladies' buttoned vests

3 lace scarves

2 textured scarves

3 socks

1 cap

I am going to write her and ask her, I think. A total of 29 garments. If she did nothing else but knit and spin, then maybe this would be a five year project. Maybe like some great artists, she has spinning assistants. Does she use test knitters? I sure hope so.

The reason that I wonder is that it took me a year to make her Town and Country cardigan and I am still not finished it, as apparent in the above picture of it being blocked. I have to go to buy some buttons and put the thing together. Not sure about doing mattress stitch on seed stitch so I will have to ask a knitting store owner such as the lovely Meko at the Purple Purl in Toronto. I told her I was knitting an aran cardigan and she said to bring it in so I could pick out some buttons. Nothing screams knitter like aran cardigan.

twenty two inches

2010-06-06T17:04:00.000-04:00

Finally done the spinning. The first chapter of this journey has taken me just over a year. How did those pioneer ladies do it and make sweaters for their whole family? I guess other family members helped them but no one I know in my family seems to like spinning very much and think that it is crazy to do this kind of thing. I suppose I have the satisfaction of knowing that I did this all myself. Of course, the slowness of the endeavour was due, in part, to several other projects that called to me but I now have a large amount of grey itchy wool that shall be made into a sweater, god damn it. Five pounds of it.

So, one thing did happen that seemed to be a little bit of serendipity. It struck me as rather interesting, maybe even some kind of sign. When I had finished plying my wool, I only had 22 inches left over of wool between the two plyed bobbins and that has never happened to me before, that I had calculated so closely and had such a small amount left. I guess I was channelling the pioneer women as I watched the Young and Restless while I plyed.

My little cairn terrier Penny likes it too. She and my sheep tape measure are posing below with the twenty two inches of wool just to the left of the tape measure to show their approval. Now I just have to figure out which pattern I am going to knit. I knit up a practice square of the basket weave pattern and it looks pretty good.

I have posed the wool and the sample with my latest botanical obession, hens and chicks, aka houseleeks or sempervivum. Such a cheerful and low maintenance plant. Don't they look nice planted in some old army boots from the Salvation Army? At $2 for the boots, that was a good deal.

the people you meet

2010-05-10T14:57:00.000-04:00

Back to reality from my lovely odyssey to Peru. I made some new fiber friends from different parts of the globe and they are all into knitting and weaving. Kindred spirits all.

One in particular -- Marilyn -- from the south of England, is an inspiring woman who embraces everything that the world has to offer. Her life is like a skein of handspun wool with all kinds of texture, color and variation. She made me feel lucky to have met her.

Marilyn is an alpaca farmer who also raises chickens. She explained to me all about the wonders of getting fresh eggs every morning, chickens who will hen peck a rooster to within an inch of its life, and how a fox will come back to the hen house once they get a taste for the chickens. I think if we ever can get our by-laws sorted out here in Canada, and can have chickens in our own backyards, I would love to try this kind of thing. Just a couple of chickens running through the backyard would be fun to add to my little menagerie of two cairn terries and a tabby cat. I can see my husband wondering about the wisdom of two feisty terriers and chickens as I write this.

Then there is the fact that Marilyn has a heart bigger than the Colca Canyon - the canyon in Peru that is bigger and deeper than the Grand Canyon. She has taken in three adults with Down's syndrome whose parents have died. What can I say about that? Those people are very lucky people to have someone like Marilyn on their side.

The last thing I want you to know about Marilyn is something she did for me. She bought her hand made sweater that she spun from her own sheep to show me in Peru. She hoped to inspire me in my own project fleece to finish the darn sweater that has been dragging on for a whole year. My energy for the whole endeavor -- endless spinning that is not finished yet -- has been given a shot in the arm by seeing her sweater. A soft yet sturdy creation of creamy southdown wool with intarsia flowers and a beautiful sawtooth edging finish on the bottom and at the ends of the sleeves. AND, she also gave me a pair of alpaca slippers that she spun from her own herd to wear when my feet were cold at night.

Marilyn, thank you for the heartwarming gifts of your slippers and your friendship.

ropa bordada

2010-04-28T12:52:00.000-04:00

The Colca Canyon. At 3,800 meters above sea level, the place leaves you gasping for breath. Drinking lots of coca tea helps, as does chewing coca leaves with a piece of volcanic stone to soften the leaves. The whole endeavor leaves your mouth numb and gives you a bit of a buzz. I am here now and continuing on my fiber adventure in Peru.

I have bought some amazing hats from the ladies in the markets/mercados we passed along the way. And there are the little children who, for one sole, which is about 30 cents will let you take their picture. I saw a baby alpaca about 2 months old taking it easy on a table of tapestries that the woman was selling. I really do feel like I am part of a National Geographic special, it is all so different from what I am used to back home. What a turista I am!

This is the place where some of the world’s finest fibre comes from -- alpaca, llama and vicuna. There seems to be a debate about which is a finer fibre, vicuna or cashmere. All I know is the adorable animals, with their giraffe like necks, long spindly legs and their huge brown eyes, are very strange to look at and part of an endangered species. One vicuna scarf costs $500, so it is out of my price range. Then there are the three alpacas who are cutting the lawn at the guest house where we are staying. Much prettier than our regular lawn mower from Canadian Tire! I want them to come home with me.

I have seen so many beautiful fabics, all machine embroidered in motifs called ropa bordada. Most women wear these traditonal outfits to show that they are part of a group and have been doing so for the past 500 years or so. These outfits form their identity. They started using sewing machines to embroider the fabric the last 50 years or so. Who can say no to the modern convenience?

The full skirts of this outfit look cumbersome to me but apparently the skirt can be quite functional to their daily lives and looped up around the waistband, it can serve as a large pocket, that is handy to carry lunch to your husband in the field, taking groceries from market or sowing quinoa seeds.

These outfits cost a lot to produce and they also seem to be a form of status, much like designer jeans would be to me. There seem to be a lot of turistas buying the hats, passport, cell phone and digital camera holders with the ropa bordata on them so I suppose that is a good source of income for the folks from the Colca Canyon. It is all very interesting, this blending of traditions and cultures. I think the Peruvians have a lot of ingenuity -- selling us rich North Americans stuff for our technology toys!

a peruvian knitting lesson

2010-04-20T20:54:00.000-04:00

Today was an amazing day. I am in Arequipa, Peru, celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary on a fibre tour. The company who arranged the tour is called Puchka Peru and we are here for three weeks. The highlight of the tour for me is the knitting lessons and I have signed up for 8 days. Above is a picture of my teacher Rufina, and while she does not speak very much English and my Spanish is truly marginal, I still am thrilled with the results that I am creating.

In Peru, they knit backwards from what we do and they knit on the purl side while looking at their work. They put the yarn around their neck to help them maintain an even tension, which tends to make one feel like they are being strangled -- at least that is how I felt. They also use bicycle spoke knitting kneedles with ends that have been filed down to resemble a crochet hook.

Then there is the cast on. I never did really figure it out. It was a complicated affair using two colors, two hands and one needle. I was all thumbs and very frustrated. I was trying to over- think it but I was fortunate that Rufina's assistant Gloria, took pity on me, and did help me quite a bit with it and once I got past the cast on, what we were doing made more sense.

I ended up producing about two inches of my bolsita or purse after 7 hours of work with lots of ripping out and getting my mistakes fixed by Rufina who has endless patience and good humour. We seem to be getting by with the words, "OK, "NO" and "Excellento". Above is also a picture of my doggie motif that I am making from a book on traditional Andean patterns.

I was thinking how beautiful and unusual Rufina's clothing was when a fellow workshop participant said that it was for show and they probably wear jeans like the rest of us folks when not doing teaching. So, they don't look like they are part of a National Geographic TV Special, I guess. This was further re-inforced when I saw Rufina sending a text message after the workshop. I don't know why this was suprising to me, but it was.

I hope I can finish my purse before I leave this yarn lover's paradise.

lemonade in lima

2010-04-13T16:37:00.001-04:00

Above is a picture of the best lemonade I have ever had and I had it today in Lima, Peru. The taste is very different than what we are used to in Canada as the lemons grow from right around here. It is also made with fresh lemon peel and brown sugar. Rick and I each had our own pitcher and at $3 soles it only cost about a dollar a serving. YUM.

Lima is so very different than any city I have ever been in. A real contrast of rich and poor neighborhoods with 9 million people living here. I got a glimpse of the shantytowns of Callao that look like transport trailer trucks piled on top of each other that people live in --no windows, no electricity and running water -- when we were driving from the airport last night at 3 am. This is where the poor people live. You don't want to go there, ever, according to the guidebooks. It's funny, even with all of the poverty, there are tons of billboards and American fastfood restaurants everywhere. I have seen more KFC outlets here than in all of Ontario. Oh and there's Pizza Pizza, TGI Fridays and Starbucks too.

I am fortunate to be staying in the very nice area of Miraflores at the Hostal El Patio. Lovely, charming place with rooms off of a central courtyard with a fountain. The walls are festooned with all kinds of plants -- azealeas, bouganvillea, wisteria -- and so many more, but I don't know their names.

We also went to a very posh shopping district carved out the the cliffs on the Pacific Ocean called Larcomar. It was a controversial place when it was built as it took over a park. It is also full of very expensive shops with things that most Peruvians can never buy.

Let the fiber adventure begin!!!

i have measured out my life on easter weekend

2010-04-03T08:05:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking a lot about the passage of time lately and how I am using it while I am not at work. One of my favorite quotes about time is from T.S. Eliot's famous poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". When he says, 'I have measured out my life in coffee spoons", I think he must be talking about the boring details of our lives that become routine after we do them every day. Like what I do every morning -- making coffee, letting the dogs out, letting the dogs in after they start barking at nothing and wake up the neighbors, giving the doggies their breakfast, checking my emails -- same old, same old.

I am starting to feel like this is a good mantra to use for my spinning of the sweater project. Lately, I have measured out my life in rolags spun. I have been doing so much spinning that my wrist hurts and there is still a large basket of them to do. On the positive side, I now have two large skeins of wool to use for my sweater and I have four other bobbins that will become skeins soon as they are plyed together. A tube of Ben Gay ointment has now become one of my best friends.

I wish I could say I like the stuff I am spinning. BUT, there is a big problem. The. Itchiness. Factor.

This unfortunate fact was confirmed when I proudly showed these two finished skeins to my daughter, and she said, "Wow, Mom, you sure have spun a lot of dog hair up! Talk about being crushed. The 40 or so hours of work this represents and she says it looks like dog hair. So, how will I make a sweater to wear out of this? What was I thinking?

Only 9 days until I leave for Peru. I don't think I will finish this sweater before then. At one point last year, when I started this whole endeavour, I had thought I would take the sweater that I made and show it to the folks on my fibre trip to Peru and hear their oohs and ahhs. The best laid plans....

some progress and sadness

2010-03-14T15:55:00.001-04:00

Well, I am finally making some progress on the fleece and will be starting to spin in earnest soon. This progress comes in the form of rolags. A rolag is a roll of fibre made using hand cards that you can spin into wool. It looks a bit like a french roll in someones hair, truth be told. What a ton of work this was -- I estimate it has taken about 10 hours of time to get them all done. The good old drum carder I was using that I wrote about in an earlier post decided she needed to take a break from work. I guess she didn't like being called a battle axe. So, I used my nice hand cards given to me by my friend Nancy and they did the job. It seems somehow appropriate, I guess, with the endless grey days we have been having, to be dealing with endless grey rolags.

With the lack of sun, and endless grey rolags, I felt like trying to make something spring like. So, I made a wire bowl out of rebar wire and used some of my handspun mulberry yarn to hold it together. Then I took some little leaves from some teabags I got for Christmas to ebellish it. It made me feel like spring...

I showed it to the ladies at my spinning guild as I decided to donate it for a door prize for the upcoming seminar they have scheduled in October. They seemed to like it and want me to teach them how to do it. I don't think they were being kind either. So, now I will have to think about making more of these.

Today I would like to mourn the one week anniversary of the suicide of Mark Linkous, also known as Sparklehorse. His recording, "It's a Wonderful Life", is one of the prettiest and most haunting things I have ever heard. What a loss.

On a brighter note, I will be taking my trip to Peru in 29 days.

smudge the sequel

2010-02-04T08:53:00.000-05:00

I wrote in an earlier post about my cat hair spinning adventure... and, the cat hat story is evolving. My friend Dawna is crocheting a hat for her boyfriend Dave but she has run out of wool. The darn handspun does not act the same as commmercial yarn and it seems to have a mind of its own. I am in the process of spinning more now and I hope to have it done so Dave can wear it this winter. Even though there has not been much of a winter this year. Here is Dawna modeling the hat and a closeup of the hat. It is very thick and feels so soft! It looks like it will be super warm and cosy. Pet hair is a lot warmer than wool.

My two little doggies, Penny and Stewie, love to smell the newly acquired fibre when it still has animal smells on it and above is a picture of them greeting the cat hair. I am afraid that Stewie is a bit camera shy and when he realizes that you are taking his picture, he starts to get very weird and tries to run away but I got a picture of him before he took off this time.

Notice I have not mentioned the fleece. I have taken another break and have lost a bit of momentum this week. I hope to return to it soon. Other projects seem to be beckoning. Like making a quilt from my father's old shirts and a bowl out of my handspun paper yarn....oh the crazy crafting life. Another deal will have to be made. Now that I have finished watching the reruns of Six Feet Under, I have decided that I can only watch the Young and Restless if I spin my fleece. Another pathetic crafting moment.

a rose is a rose!

2010-01-25T14:01:00.000-05:00

I have added another child to the family, so to speak. Her name is Rose and she is a lovely girl. She is bigger than my first one, so I guess you could say a big sister to my first wheel. She was a birthday present from me to me, crazy huh! I am hoping she will be able to help me spin my fleece better and so far I am enjoying spinning on her. I am finding her a tiny bit easier to work on than the Little Gem, the smaller Wheel that I have, in terms of treadling her foot pedals. I had been looking at a few places to buy her and found the Little Red Mitten in St. Thomas. They had a very good price and Matt, the husband of Joan, who also owns the store bought it to me as he was attending a hocky game in Toronto.

It was a bit on the funny side, I think, as we decided to meet at Yorkdale Mall, one of the swankiest malls in all of Toronto. Here Matt and I were, sitting on the polished marble and oak benches, fashionable shoppers walking by with their purchases, while he explained the mechanics of my new wheel to me. I noticed a few people looking at us and I wondered what they thought of it all. I wonder if they even knew that we were talking about a spinning wheel. An old fashioned spinning wheel, abeit the latest in spinning technology from Majacraft, in such a place devoted to high fashion and consumerism. I think we spinners should set up in shpping malls and talk to people about spinning sweaters by hand and see what they think of it...

I almost have a bobbin full of my fleece and have knitted up a sample and it looks pretty good. I am a bit fearful of the scrachiness factor but am proceeding and am going to show it to some ladies at my spinning guild tonight to see what they think of it.

I also spun some angora rabbit fur with sari fabric on the wheel and have decided to ply it on the other wheel so she doesn't feel left out. I decided to put it in the muffin tin for artistic effect! I reminds me of a Monet painting somehow....

the carding camino

2010-01-13T10:01:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

From January to June 2010 is my SLF. My self funded leave. I decided to take some time off from work and have been looking forward to it for over two years, but now I am not sure why and there is a feeling of anticlimax in the air. It is not really retirement, not really a holiday. My life is still the same -- still the same old errands to run, the same dog food to buy, the same driver's license to renew, watching the same dear hubby play solitare, the same old same old. The same grey January.What a whiner I am.

I wanted time and now I have it. But my fleece looms large. But instead of starting it on Monday like I thought I would, I organized my kitchen utensil drawer.

Something else did happen on Monday. I spent the aftenoon with my good friend and excellent writer Mooncattie and he gave me a gentle lecture and some inspiration. He told me that this time off was to be looked at as my personal Camino -- a journey at the start that you don't know where it will take you. There are all kinds of books about women discovering themselves on the on the six week walk of the Camino from Shirley Maclaine's crazy book where she gets pregnant with an alien baby to the recent bitchy henfest account about a bunch of women from Hamilton. Then there is also the one about the MBA who gets downsized and leaves rocks on the path. Many of the women seem to find true love (or alien babies) in the process. But I don't need to find love as I have my lovely hubby. And I don't need to find an alien baby. At one point, I was thinking of doing the walk, but the more I read about it, the more cliched it became. So how do carding and the Camino fit in to teach us about ourselves and lead us to self discovery? I don't have the answer to that one. YET.

So now my fleece seems like an insurmountable journey, like the Camino. It has been sitting in the basement, three bags full, for over six months. Getting compacted and less spinnable by the month - I am not honoring the fleece and not honoring nature in the process. Yesterday, I made a pact with myself. You can only watch your Six Feet Under reruns while carding. How pathetic. And how symbolic of our society is this -- rewarding yourself by watching tv and using the clever diversion of the stories of hollywood to take your mind off of your life.

I can see why machines have taken over from us as labour saving devices. Hand cranking the old gal of a carder pictured above for two hours is a lot of work. I looked at my book on carding and I see that I am overloading the machine it in my hurry to be done. This is not a process that can be rushed. It is time to slow down and not take things so fast -- I see this is symbolic of my life as I, like most folks I know, am always rushing about to finish things in a frantic mode and usually spraining my ankle in the process. Time to slow down and smell the flowers. Or, in this case, pick the vegetation out of the fleece and think of the fleece from a sheep named Aysia in Orillia I hope to become a sweater.

Anyway, I caught up on my show yesterday and I did some carding and ended up with almost 20 rolags to spin. Now I see how this will go. Card and spin. Card and spin. More to come as soon as my wrist recovers from the winding of the carding machine.

merry christmas to all and a fiber time tonight

2009-12-25T12:07:00.000-05:00

Hello Everyone!

Here is what I got for Christmas from my lovely daughter. She took some pictures of my handspun and had them developed and put them in frames from dollarama! I think they look lovely...
My fibre studio (aka basement tv room) is growing bigger every day.

how soujourner truth became free

2009-11-14T09:15:00.000-05:00

A pretty ferocious woman, all 5'11" of her. She was born as Isabella Baumfree in late 1790's in Swartekill, New York on Round Out Creek near where it joins the Wallkill River in Ultster County. A stone's throw from Rhinebeck.

Soujourner Truth ... She was a famous American abolitionist and a champion of women's rights. Her most famous speech is Ain't I a Woman? Here is her fibre story and how she freed herself as an indentured slave. Ulster County was known as a wool producing region, but this reputation rested more on the mediocrity of it's wheat than the wonderfulness of its wool. Her task to freedom was to spin 100 lbs of wool for her owner, Mr. Dumont, in order to become free. She was an excellent spinner and this task only took her 4 to 6 months. Her work as a slave came to an end in November or December of 1826.

I have been thinking about how this relates to me, with my nice basement spinning room, my new spinning chair, my fibre club subscriptions and my high tech wheel. She was an early femnist wanting to free herself from the chores of spinning and lower level of mindless work that spinning represented. Now, almost 200 years later, I am using the same activity that she wanted to get free from, to relax at the end of a hectic day. I now feel the pressure to spin my fleece, which lays in three bags in my basement but life has got in the way. I have too many emails to answer, too many knitting blogs to peruse every day, too much driving around Toronto to do my job in 12 different libraries, too many loads of laundry and too many other distractions. My husband says she wouldn't let watching tv shows like MadMen or Six Feet Under re-runs stand in her way. I think of Soujourner focusing on her spinning after a full day of her slavery chores and I feel not worthy, diminished in a way. But I am also inspired. If she can do it, so can I.

ewetopia aka rhinebeck

2009-10-26T09:33:00.001-04:00

Rhinebeck. That is what we fibre addicted people call the place. It is much more than that. The New York State Sheep and Wool Festival -- mecca!

Other people have written about it more eloquently than I, and certainly taken more and better pictures. A few impressions for you -- the line up for the deep fried artichokes that stretched a couple of hundred people long, the wool that my husband spun while I took a class, the class that I took called "Kitchen Sink Yarns" with the substitute teacher named Beth from The Spinning Loft who stepped in when Janel Laidman was sick, the hundreds of vendors. It was all a bit overwhelming, to tell you the truth.

I had some lovely conversations with the vendors and bought some amazing fibre. Everyone was carrying their fibre that they purchased in a special basket. That same special basket that I bought on sale at Pier One for $7.99. If only I had known, I would have brought mine as well. Mine is above as I cannot get it to copy below...

how smudge came...to become a hat

2009-09-24T10:12:00.001-04:00

Here is my latest pet hair spinning project. A lovely cat named Smudge. He is the cat of Dave, the boyfriend of my friend Dawna. Nice picture Dave -- love the black and white photo! Dawna wanted to crochet Dave a hat so I told her I'd be happy to spin some cat hair for her. This was my first attempt at spinning cat hair and I must say, I liked it. It is much softer than the dog hair that I did and I think that it will be something wearable and not scratchy.

When I got the bag of hair, it turned out that it was quite grey and not black like the cat. Apparently Smudge has a grey belly and that is where all of the hair comes from. He sheds a lot so it didn't take too much time. I like to think of Dave brushing out all of the hair and how nice it is for them to bond over that activity.

I ended up with something that I quite liked. Two ply that I hope will knit up as bulky. I have asked Dawna to give me a picture of Dave wearing the hat, so I hope that I can show it to you soon.

I thought that I was going to have to blend it with a lot of black romney wool that I want to spin but it turns out that was not necessary. It is a nice grey and black concoction that I hope will keep Dave warm in January!

By the way, I choose the title of this blog post because it reminded me of a children's book I like. "How Smudge Came" is the title of an award winning children's book by Nan Gregory about a girl named Cindy who secretly adopts a puppy. She has Down's Syndrome and lives in a group home and wants to keep Smudge but the beauracracy of the group home will not let her and he gets whisked off to the animal shelter. I don't want to tell you everything in case you want to read the book, but Cindy's love for Smudge ends up winning out. I will leave it to you to read the book and not shed a tear!

a ravelry tale

2009-09-04T14:30:00.000-04:00

I had an adventure on Ravelry that is still evolving. For those of you who are non-knitters, this is a social networking sight for us fibre obsessed people -- kind of like facebook but with less spam, annoying quizzes and tons of practical information to help you complete your fibre projects.

The adventure started out when I tried to help someone -- after all, who doesn't like to do that? Someone I had never even met, only spoken to online -- a very nice lady named Sasha who runs fibre tours to Peru from her company called Puchka Peru. I am taking one of these tours in late April of 2010. She had never heard of Ravelry, so I told her about it and that it would be a good advertising place for her. When she said that she was technology challenged, I thought it would be super easy to put something together from the electronic samples of her advertising that she sent me. Was I wrong, wrong, wrong.

For starters, the ads are self serve and then there is the matter of getting the pixel measurements just right so they can fit into the pages where people look. I had to read what seemed like a lot of information and wasn't sure that I understood. I created something that looked like this....

I really thought that it would work. I wrong, yet again. For starters, I didn't realize that I was supposed to create an ad that was taller than it was wider. I was trying to create a "notebook" ad and I created a "banner" ad. Uh oh.

Then there was the matter of the pixels. It was supposed to be a certain size, 140 pixels wide x 200 pixels high. I am not a big technology person so that was a bit of a mystery to me. Anyway, this ad was the wrong size and the very nice person at Ravelry told me should could not read the ad. She kindly suggested that I try the Designer Group for some much needed assistance. I must say that the whole art of internet design is something I take for granted. Those ads that you click on when you are surfing the net need to be created by someone, right? It turns out my someone was a very nice person named Susana from Portugal who re-worked the ad and made it fit...
Oh Susana. Thank you for that....

Talk about the global village -- first person from Victoria, British Columbia wants to create an ad but cannot, she is assisted by second person in Oshawa, Ontario, and when second person cannot create ad, she gets help from third person in Sintra, Portugal, so the ad can be placed on a website that resides in Portland, Oregon owned by three other persons. WOW!

Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for people to click on the ad. I hope they will click through too!

fibre fiction and non fiction

2009-08-02T15:39:00.000-04:00

For those of you lucky people who have some time to read this summer, here are a couple of fibre-y reads for you....

On the fiction front....One of the best (ok, well there are not too many of them when it comes down to it) books about the creation of a fibre item is called The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracey Chevalier. She's a great writer who also did the wonderful Girl With a Pearl Earring later made into a movie with Colin Firth playing Vermeer. I leave it up to you whether that was a good casting call or not. Here is a quote from Amazon… ” She yokes her limpid, quietly enthralling storytelling to the six Lady and the Unicorn tapestries that hang in the Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris.” I have also seen this Tapestry at the Cloisters in New York City and it is breathtaking. There is tons of interesting stuff all about the production and spinning of the fibre and the competition that went on between people who produced the wool. And a mushy love story too...

On the non-fiction front ...I am reading the The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Pulitzer prize winning history writer. It is one of those books where common household items are taken and analyzed and we learn more about the social history surrounding the items.

This book has many objects and interesting stories for us fibre addicted folks -- fascinating things like spinning wheels, niddy noddys and an unfinished sock for a civil war soldier. Some of the women who spin were also early feminists and the meetings organized by New England's "daughters of liberty" became front-page news, taking a place of honor in spaces typically reserved for more male news as the British Parliament's effort to tax the colonies provoked boycotts of British items and woolen goods. Highly recommended.

dog bowl -- no water allowed

2009-07-24T14:30:00.000-04:00

So I have still not carded any of my fleece but does it count that I carded dog fur? Coton du Tulear, to be exact. The Coton du Tulear is an adorable white ball of fluff from Madagascar and my friend has two of them, Bailey and Cleo. I got a bag of their hair in May and have been rather busy getting it organized.

The first bowl is pictured above -- a nice felted thing that is soft and angelic looking with a bit of a halo from the dog hair that surrounds it. I like it.

I am also making another bowl but it isn't making me too happy -- it is stripes of dog fur and left over lopi wool from my yarn stash -- quite a concoction. I am shuddering of it as I write as I fear it is rather ugly and a true crafting disaster. What was I thinking? It reminds me of the hat that Henry Fonda wore in "On Golden Pond". Yikes.

I am planning on embroidering the dog names on it so it will look less like a hat. Pictures to follow soon. Or maybe not!

Postscript: I finished embroidering the bowl...I would have to say it's got an "Ugly Pretty" aesthetic..

Oh well, perhaps I am being too hard on myself. How many people can say that they have a bowl, let alone two bowls from their dog fur... I learned a lot doing it. It is not any fun spinning dog hair that has come from a groomers with the guard hair and undercoat left in it. The bowls are still shedding...and I am not sure when that will stop.

the cat and the carder

2009-06-26T16:29:00.001-04:00

I STILL have not gotten around to carding! I know that I should be doing it or I am never going to be able to spin my fleece and make the sweater but life (and tons of other projects) seems to be getting in the way. New socks have been started that are proving hard to put down, called Hypnosis, and spinning of assorted other fibres seems to be taking up a lot of time.

Then there is Daisy. She is a stray cat who has adoped us. She was abandoned at the garden centre where my daughter works and seems to like to sleep beside the carder in the garage. My guess is that she is about six months old and she is in heat as she spends most of her time walking around the house and crying to get out at all hours of the day or night. What ungodly noises a cat in heat can make. When my daughter and I are we are bored we try and make up a game to see what words from the English language her yowling sounds like -- hello, door and argon are some of the words she has said so far -- or maybe we are just going crazy with the constant noise and these are the voices in our heads.

We have an appointment to get her spayed next week.

The dogs are ok with her. Stewie growls as she walks by but I don't think he'd do anything terrible and Penny just rolls over on her back into her favorite submission pose when she walks by. I didn't really want to take on another animal as I think that two dogs are plenty, but my daughter has assured me that when she goes back to university in the fall, Daisy is going with her. I sure hope so...

Oh well, so that is my excuse for not carding for today; cannot disturb Daisy as she is "settling in". She is actually a very nice cat and is quite affectionate and doesn't bite or scratch when she isn't yowling. SIGH!

gather all ye fibre friends

2009-06-14T14:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Worldwide Knit in Public Day and it is held the second Saturday of June to encourage all of us fibre addicted people to get together and spread the word.

I was at my Local Yarn Store in Whitby -- Kniterary -- instead of knitting in public I choose to spin. We also brought non-perishable food items and put a square on the tree in the back of the store as a record of our participation. Thanks to Martina and Vicky for a lovely afternoon. Two other people brought their spinning wheels and their were also a number of drop spindles in action. Now that is something I'd like to master but haven't gotten around to yet...

I am currently spinning some lovely falklands wool from The Sweet Sheep called Harrumph. Upon the advice of another spinner, Heidi, I am going to try and make some socks with it.

I don't look happy here but I am ... just concentrating...

of montreal

2009-06-02T15:20:00.000-04:00

I haven’t been able to work on my fleece all week but hope to get started on carding it soon. Every time I walk in my laundry room, I see it and I start to feel rather guilty. My lack of work on the fleece was because I went to Montreal this weekend for the Canadian Library Association Conference. It was a quick trip with only two full days there. I wasn’t really a part of the conference but I was asked to introduce a session about the Canadian Federation of Municipalites work in post tsunami Indonesia and Sri Lanka. It was a very interesting session and I am putting a link to the blogs written by Dawna and Katherine who went to Indonesia and Laura who went to Sri Lanka to help re-build two libraries in those countries. Talk about life changing experiences for them.

I did have an opportunity to visit one very nice wool store called À La Tricoteuse . There is a complete list of at least ten wool stores in Montreal found here, but I didn’t have time to visit them all. That is for another trip! I ended up starting out walking to the wool store from my hotel because MapQuest said that it was approximately 2 kilometres but I ended up walking more like 5 which took me a lot longer than I thought.

A light rain was coming down during my walk and I arrived at the store soaking wet at a quarter to five with the store closing in 15 minutes. The store was in a lovely part of Montreal, just north of the Latin Quarter and it was a very unassuming storefront painted in dark tones. I entered the store which was quite light inside even for a rainy day and very simply organized with all of the wool on big cubby holes in the wall. No stray balls of wool floating around here or baskets overflowing with handspun. I did see a madam sewing at a table in the corner of the store and she glaced up at me as I came in but continued on sewing. She had that certain French je ne said quois and was dressed all in black which made her match the formality of the store. I told her that I was looking for some sock yarn and started babbling on about being from Ontario and wanting some souvenirs for my afghan and she smiled and I guess she realized I was a serious customer. She pointed to a large whole section of sock yarn set up in the centre of the store arranged by color. I ended up buying quite a few balls of yarn for my sock yarn afghan as I want to add some bright solid colors in pink, yellow and orange to the rest of the striped sections. I also bought a large ball of blue yarn which has some aloe vera in it for my sore feet. $99 dollars worth of sock yarn. Yee gods!

I also finished my zig zag sock and knitted about 10 more squares for the afghan on the trip. All in all a very productive time with lots of good knitting karma. I like Montreal!

happy birthday vicky

2009-05-22T16:10:00.000-04:00

There seems to be a bit of a misconception about Queen Victoria's Birthday. It is actually today, May 24th, and she was born in 1819 and lived to the ripe old age of 82 in 1901.

Queen Victoria was a big fan of knitted Shetland Lace and she knit herself. I stole this quote from the Yarn Harlot's page a day calendar. Sorry Stephanie, I didn't think you'd mind) and she took it from the New York Times, dated December 25th, 1898. It describes the sorts of Christmas gifts given by the Queen:

"There are comfortable woollen goods, sometimes made by the Queen's own hands, for she is fond of a little plain knittting. She uses large bone needles and double Berlin wool. It amuses her to make comforters and cuffs ready for Christmas presents, but it is only special favorites witin the roay family circle or among old retainers who are honored with these gifts."

Something else important to know about Queen Victoria is that she supported the knitting of socks by hand. Just before her birth was a time of huge labour unrest in England with the Luddites smashing sock knitting machines as a protest against low wages and rising prices and it would be interesting to see exactly how she felt about it all. I shall find out some more as I go along....

One interesting item that I did find out is that black and white silk stockings with hand crafted ornaments which belonged to Queen Victoria were sold in September of 2008 at an auction in Derby, England for 8,000 pounds (nearly 10,000 euros) by the Ruddington Framework Knitters` Museum from Nottingham.

Nice Socks!

three bags full

2009-05-22T12:38:00.001-04:00

Well, it took me three days and I used the equivalent of 150 lingere bags and 30 runs of my hot water soak cycle and about 3/4 of a bottle of the Soak wash, but the fleece is done and smells great. Three lovely bags full. I split it up into the black parts and have two grey bags full. Now I just have to begin carding.

It is very interesting to me, this whole endeavor and how much time and money I have spent doing it myself. I checked the Wellington Fibre Mills fibre processing page. They only charge $1 per pound for each wash so I could have saved myself a lot of water and time by sending the fleece to them. It probably would have been about $20 to have it washed and it took me the better part of three days. But I wouldn't have had a chance to get my hands on all of the greasy fleecy goodness and its farmyard smell and I love that part about it.

The carding part will probably be even more discouraging as Wellington Fibres says they could card it for $9 a lb. So that means $45 for it all to be carded. I figure it is going to take me about 10 to 20 hours to card it. Say I get paid $25 an hour at my job, that means it would cost from $250 to $500 if I was getting paid my regular wages to card it. That makes no sense.

I guess fibre processing places must have all kinds of super fast machines that make all of the washing, carding and spinning a snap. I still want to do it all myself, just for the sake of it...I want to be a purist though from a time and economic stand point it really makes no sense.

Let the carding begin....

washing day - do NOT agitate.

2009-05-13T14:26:00.000-04:00

Today I am going to start to wash the fleece. It is the Victoria Day Long Weekend and I hope that it won't take more than three days to wash 5 lbs of fleece.

For some reason, no one in my family seems to keen on helping me wash a giant bag of smelly wool. "It's so gross, mom", said my darling daughter. "Yuk, you are crazy", said my lovely sister. Oh well. That's their problem if they don't want to commune with nature.

Here are the fleece washing instructions I got from Donna, my fibre mentor and spinning teacher:

Take small amount of fleece and lay gently in your lingerie bags. Put hot water in your washer and use the small load setting. Set about 5 (Sorry, Donna, I used 10 bags at a time out of laziness) of your little bags in the water and pat them down gently do not agitate. Close lid to keep heat in and leave for about 45 min. Then turn to spin cycle and spin out. Remove and see if they are clean looking, if not repeat--use liquid soap--When ready to rinse put hot water in again and leave for abot 15 min then spin out as before. Lay fleece on a towel to dry.

Lingerie bags are purchased from Dollarama at 2 for $1. I also decided to use palmolive detergent as it will cut the grease well. I am going to use Soak for the second rinse. They have a new scent called "Celebration" and it is some kind of wonderful. It is nice because you don't need to wash it out and it smells fresh fresh fresh... now my fleece will smell like a walk on a country road. Ba ha ha.

Even though I love the smell of the fleece and all of its farmyard goodness, I guess it is time for it to smell like something else.

karma police

2009-05-09T20:45:00.001-04:00

I have been thinking about Ghandi a lot lately. I went into one of the libraries I work in and started to read about his spinning obsession.

When he was in prison, he spent a lot of time spinning. He believed that the way for India to escape British Colonialism was to learn to spin cotton and make their own fibre.

I think he was really onto something here. If we spent more time spinning, which is so meditative and calming, there would be less time for violence, drugs, rampant consumerism and all of the other ills that seem to befall us.

There seems to be so much violence in the world, so much unhapiness and longing for other things. Spinning really teaches you to live in the moment while you are doing it.

Here is a Ghandism that I like:

I believe that the yarn we spin is capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life.

I feel like when I am spinning a lot of my cares do disappear and I feel connected to something else, to nature, so another power different than myself and that is a good feeling.

For more things he said about his chakra or spinning wheel, visit

I am getting my fleece tonight and am quite excited about it

project fleece

2009-04-30T20:12:00.000-04:00

Welcome to anyone who stumbles across my blog. I hope you enjoy my musings about sheep and spinning.

It is hard to buy a fleece. At least, for me it was. I have been trying to purchase one since January and it is now the last day of April. I am a new spinner and had the idea, as so many new spinners do, that I should buy a fleece and process it from scratch. Little did I realize that that was going to be rather a time consuming endeavour. Like everything, getting your hands on a fleece is all about "knowing the right people".

I tried a local farmer approximately 45 miles north of me and after three emails, a visit down to the Green Barn Farmers Market in Toronto in which said farmer told me to call her and we could set up something, and no response from the first voicemail and two additional phone calls, I was getting very discouraged. A knitting friend even enquired at the Market for me and she was told by the farmer's "Communications Person" that the said farmer was too busy to call someone like me who was only trying to buy a fleece. So much for trying to support local people! I guess I am sounding bitter and I don't mean to be but I had hoped to buy a local fleece but they did not seem to want to sell it to me. I had to go further afield. SO I have decided to get a fleece from Orillia from someone my spinning teacher has recommended.

This has led me to some interesting questions. Why it is so hard to buck the status quo and make something from local products instead of going to the GAP or Walmart? Why are we encouraged to shop local and then it proves to be so hard? I don't mean to slam the aforementioned farmer, but if they are too busy to deal with me, how do we set things up so they are not?

BIG SIGH. I still don't have the fleece yet but I will soon...I hope!