Molli, my Grandcat, is with me for the holidays. I've never had a cat, and it's been quite challenging to host Molli in a yarn-rich environment. She was especially interested in my knitting basket with its yummy handspun yarn.
By remaining vigilant at all times, I was able to finish a knitted shawl yesterday, and washed & blocked it.
It's time to get out my grandmother's chopping knife and bowl again. I use them twice a year, once at Passover for chopped liver, and again at Thanksgiving for cranberry orange relish. These tools are some of the few things left to me from my beloved Granny—aside from my love of knitting, of course—and I inevitably turn very nostalgic as I am using them.
The cranberry recipe gives a very aerobic workout. After half an hour of vigorous chopping, I have this:
It's just chopped cranberries, chopped whole oranges, and honey to taste. Then leave it in the refrigerator for a few days.
While in kitchen mode, I also put up a batch of refrigerator dough. Just AP flour, white whole wheat flour (from King Arthur), water, salt, & yeast. These will become dinner rolls next Thursday.
It looks like I'll have time for a few rows of knitting before lunch. So here's to you, Granny.
Alarm signals coming in from my back. I'm putting a hold on weaving for a few days, and have picked up the knitting needles; this will be an opportunity to make a dent in the mountain of yarn that arose from World Series spinning.
I thought it would be fun to see some of the knitting up close in the scanner. The first one is suri alpaca I purchased in batt form. Turns out it had tons of second cuts and vegetable matter not evident on first inspection. It was terrible to spin—constant stops & starts to remove the offending bits—but I did get something knittable from it. Here's a scarf in progress at roughly 12x magnification (click to enlarge):
And here is a wool/silk blend plied with all wool. Click.
The linen/wool blend I showed you a few days ago is all spun up and plied. Here it is under artificial light.
I skeined & washed it, and after it dried, it smelled like freshly mown hay. Not a surprise. It's a bit stiff and grassy looking, and you really can't tell there is any wool in it. The wool content was a big factor in making it easy to spin, however.
It's a deep pewter gray, a characterful yarn, and I love handling it. There are 284 yards, and I might have enough to knit a small market bag.
Meanwhile, I love picking it up and sniffing it.
From time to time I've tried to teach her to knit, but she would work with it for a few minutes, then drop it for something else. It really didn't "take." Two years passed. Then over the weekend, while she was watching me spin, she suddenly asked me, "Do you know where that red ball of wool with the yellow needles is?" We went down to the studio and searched under stacks of yarn and found it. I gave her a quick review of the basic knit stitch and she was off and running.
The difference between her new knitting and her old knitting was dramatic; something had clicked. She completed a few inches, and commented, "This is very absorbing. You forget about everything else while you're knitting! It would be a great stress reliever." Then she knit some more.
Well, I think she's got it.
When I returned from my travels, did all the laundry, sorted through all the mail (real & virtual), I sat down with my knitting. In a large basket with a partially finished knitted afghan and 27 skeins of Noro Kureyon, I spied something that looked suspiciously like a clothes moth. Time for action! I spread everything out in the sun and fresh air for the rest of the day, turning blanket & skeins frequently. No signs of damage. I will keep a close eye on things for a while. Most of my yarn stash is non-wool, but you never know.
This very clever knitting pattern, Ten Stitch Zigzag, is the creation of Frankie Brown, and is available as a free download on Ravelry.
A traveling project has been finished. Handspun merino from my stash; it was knitted during the final episodes of Mad Men, and finally completed during a recent road trip. This morning I blocked it. Feels good to have finished something. Gotta do more of that.
We were a little late with the program this year. Couldn't get the entire cast of characters together in time, but last night we made up for it.
No latkes (I find them indigestible), but Catalina requested brisket, so that's what we had. Outdoors the weather was frightful, but indoors the weather was fine.
I was the lucky recipient of a beautiful alpaca sweater. Thought you'd like to see it up close, as I know you appreciate good textiles.
Yesterday I took a picture of this bloom in a weedy lot around the corner. It was barely more than a bud, slightly unfurled.
Today at roughly the same time of day I photographed the exact same bloom, now entirely open (Oh how quickly our little ones grow up). Why do I bother documenting these things? Who knows. It just seemed important to me at the time...
Meanwhile, in the studio...eleven covers are coated with acrylic and cut to size. They will become eleven books, and by a fortuitous coincidence, I have eleven page blocks already torn to size.
Now let me tell you a strange story. I sold a lot of stuff at the fiber sale, but came home with several cartons of unsold knitting books, which are still in the trunk of my car, waiting for the next trip to Goodwill. I stopped at Publix for groceries, and the man who helped me load my groceries in the car saw the books and asked if I belonged to a book club. No, I said, I've just come back from a garage sale. Ah, he said, my mother was a great reader, and when she died she left a large book collection behind. What did you do with them, I asked. We gave them to Goodwill, he replied, but at the last minute we decided to just flip through the books, and I'm glad we did, beause in every book we found several hundred dollar bills tucked between the pages.
This morning we drove up the mountain to Asheville, North Carolina, to take in the Second Annual Fiber Feel Day, presented by Local Cloth. It's a gathering of local fiber producers and artisans, and there was an abundance of color and texture.
I enjoyed meeting Jonesborough (TN) spinner Cari Jarman, who demonstrated core spinning.
Then I chatted for a while with spinner/knitter/musician/storyteller Martha Owen, also renowned as resident artist in fiber at the John C. Campbell Folk School. What did we talk about? The joys and challenges of grandmotherhood, of course! And all the while Martha didn't miss a stitch:
Then there was Teena Tuenge's inkle loom. She said the directions are in a free ebook from Handweaving Today, and pointed me to the link. The article referenced was published in Handwoven in March 2009, and was authored by Sharon Kersten. Thanks, Sharon. Thanks, Teena. Thanks, Handwoven.
There was so much else to see, but eventually I settled into chatting mode and put the camera away. You know how it goes.
But one last picture...sorry I didn't jot down the attribution for these guys, but if you know who did them, please shout out. Aren't they wonderful? Click to enlarge.
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