Passings

My Grandma passed away yesterday at the age of 94. She was a lifetime knitter and stashed before stashing was cool. Sadly, I only kept these stockings that she knitted. They have been brought out for the holidays so I thought I'd put this photo up. My stocking was knitted in the late 60's I think. It's wool. My husband's and kid's were done in the 90's. Of course my grandma was a huge influence on me in many ways and I am sad. That's all I can say now.

The Best Day Ever

Today was my birthday and before we went to Cupcake Royale (yum) I opened presents from my family. My husband gave me about 5 pounds of Targhee and the book Teach Yourself Visually - Hand-Dyeing. The kids gave me wonderful non-fiber-related gifts. I received these gifts after spending the whole day dyeing. It was awesome just to listen to pod casts all day and dye roving/top in my kitchen.

I started with about 3 pounds of different types of top.

I tried several types of space dyeing. I heated some in the oven in tin casserole pans with tin foil lids.

I steamed some of the roving/top in the canning pot.

And now it's all drying on the rack. I can't wait to spin up these samples and see how they come out. Once the roving is dry I'll take more photos. Today was the best day ever!

Schwartzie the Icelandic/Navajo-Churro cross

When I lived in Montana I obtained a whole fleece from a young woman named Mandi. She had owned an Icelandic/Navajo-Churro crossbreed named Schwartzie. Beloved Schwartzie fell into an ice pond and died. Her first (and only) sheering was all that was left. This whole black fleece has been in my possession for several months now and I have finally begun to process it.

I have decided to comb out the long course fibers and then I will probably drum card the soft undercoat. The photo above is a charged hand comb and the photo below shows the results of combing this fiber. The little ball is the combed course fiber ready to spin. The fluff on the left is the "seconds" - the soft undercoat. I put quotations around the seconds because this is the soft part that I'll actually have more of a use for. I'd like to blend it with something in the future.

Yucky Cakes

I finished the wool/cotton-denim 2 ply and wound them into cakes. These are going in the storage bin and my guess is they will never get knitted. It's a lot of work for yarn I do not like. :(

ps I'm not searching for complements. When I like my work I like it. When it sucks I'm not afraid to say to.

Keepin' it Warm

This is my new design: Oxygen Tank Cozy. It was created out of necessity. Now that I'm living in such an urban and densely populated area, I'm experiencing parking troubles. I'm constantly stressed out about finding a parking spot. The neighborhood is packed with cars and there's new condos going up all over. There are no parking spots and I find myself driving around and around looking for a place to put the car. Being that I'm a home birth Midwife, I need to be able to get in my car with all my equipment and go fast. I figure there are Midwives in Manhattan, so they must know how to deal with these issues. I've decided to consolidate all my birth bags into one huge birth bag for easy traveling.

The problem that arose with my new system was that the Oxygen Tank would slightly rattle around in it's new container. Problem solved: it get a sweater---or "cozy". The other benefit is that it looks kind of covered up when it's in peoples homes. The typical home birth aesthetic is that the medical equipment is "out of sight, out of mind". The tank usually is set aside with a baby blanket over it; covered, but easily accessible. Now after it's unpacked at a home birth, it can look friendly and warm in it's sweater. I know, I know...it sounds silly, but home-birthers don't think of birth as a medical event. If it means putting a sweater on the medical equipment, so be it.

The Oxygen Tank Cozy was knitted with a solid colored yarn and a self-striping yarn. Both were hand spun left overs. Knitting in the round, I alternated the solid and the self-striping every two rows to get the effect.

What's on the Bobbin

Here's what's on the bobbins: I took hand picked, hand dyed (blue/grey acid dyes), hand carded wool and carded it again with denim waste. The denim waste looks like the stuff they sweep up off of a jeans factory floor. Well, I've never seen a jeans factory floor, but I'm sure this stuff is all over the place. I plied one strand of just the wool with one strand on the wool/cotton combo to create a lumpy bumpy yarn.

Husband asked if I'm going to knit sleeves on to an acid washed denim vest. He's joking. But it does have some sort of 80's look to it. Did they knit with denim fibers in the 80's? I think I remember some sweaters that looked like stonewashed jeans.

The Lack of Light

There are days when it's so dark from the cloud cover you have to turn your lights on in your house in the middle of the day. And you'd want your headlights on when you drive. When I was in Montana I had a perfect system for photographing yarn. I put the black coffee table next to the huge living room window that let in a large amount of indirect light. I laid the yarn on the coffee table and used my old Olympus digital camera. Taking photos is my favorite part about blogging. But now...

The lack of light is making it hard to get good photos that show the details. I've tried the flash and reading lights and indirect window light in different combinations, but I can't quite catch all the qualities of the fibers. I'm going to keep working at it---maybe going outside will do it. For now here is a photo of all the orange yarn that I made. It was taken by the window that lets in the most light.