Yep, definitely 2016.

I've finally stopped writing 2015 on things, I survived the Blizzard of 2016, and I have concrete plans for the days ahead. I avoid resolutions, but I can already detect a theme for the year. There may be some personal changes afoot, however slow.

I'm not going to waste your time, or my own, whining about what kept me from keeping up blogging on a more regular basis. It is important to recognize that I am not the kind of person that works like that. Fits and starts are more my thing. The important thing is that I didn't scrap the blog. In fact, it has often been in the back of my mind and I've been keeping my own personal print journal in the mean time.

Let's get to the good stuff. What did you miss? What's been going on?

Since I last posted, I failed at Spinzilla, but I had a very good medical excuse, I swear. On the other hand, I did enjoy a great experience spinning with friends at one of the public Spinzilla spinning events. We set up in front of the Hendersonville Visitor Center on a lovely sunny day and spun for hours. Several people stopped to speak to us and watch our work.

A couple of days later, in a roaring downpour, I drove around downtown Asheville in a hopeless search for a parking place. I had planned to attend my second Spinzilla public spinning event. With a swollen treadle ankle, low visibility, and no parking spots (did they melt in the rain?), I gave up. But not before I risked parking in a sketchy lot for a special rendezvous...to buy my very first rigid heddle loom from a weaver who was upping her game to a floor loom. Thank you, Ashley, for the hook up!

This sweet Schacht Flip joined the family!

We visited my aunt in the eastern part of the state several times this year. On one of our longer trips, we were able to join her family on a visit to the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh.

There were rides and micro vegetables and oversized vegetables and sheep. A proper state fair.
(Have they always had micro veggies?)

We also made it to the Pittsboro Street Fair. I picked up a couple of sweet, hand-sewn bags that will make perfect knitting project bags. We ate lunch at lunch at the delicious S & T Soda Shoppe, a sweet spot that serves everything under the sun, including luscious flavors of ice cream. Next door, and outside working on new coffins (Halloween being just around the corner, you see), we found Roy Underhill! He was working in front of the The Woodwright's School. He hosted the woodworking show The Woodright's Shop on PBS / UNC-TV, which my family watched when I was younger.

Roy! Looking just like he did when I watched him on PBS.

We managed to come away with pottery from both fairs on this trip, but I can't tell you who made the pieces! They were sold in booths with works by numerous vendors and I wasn't given a business card specific to their makers. Boo.

The mugs are oversized and the bowls are small enough for the base to sit easily in the palm of your hand.

I totaled our car, Daisy. She was classic, in the "I'll die trying" sense of the word. And I guess I drove her a little like an old lady some times, because if I'd pulled out faster, maybe we wouldn't have gotten hit. It was a hidden driveway in the middle of a blind curve at the top of a hill, so oncoming traffic is speeding up as they pass you while you're attempting to turn left in front of them. Now, I refuse to turn left when leaving my brother's house. If we're going somewhere east, we'll just have to get there by a different road. That makes total sense to me. (Check out those stickers in the window. And that's a wee crocheted sheep dangling from the rear-view mirror.)

 

Poor Daisy.








On a more positive note, fall was beautiful here on the mountain:

October ended with the biggest fiber party around these parts: the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. Mom and I didn't go hog wild in the market place, but we participated in classes for the first time this year.

We discovered a new-to-us family-owned farm, Heelside Farms, located in eastern NC. They had a great selection of locally milled and hand-dyed yarns from breeds I don't usually see blended in the skein or even together in one booth, including Icelandic, Border Leicester, and Columbia. And we could see pictures of the actual sheep on display. We enjoyed chatting with the owners. The next time we visit my aunt, we hope to visit their farm's Red Barn Studio in Four Oaks, NC.

The darker skein is 100% wool, but I think it may have been a blend of their breeds. The brighter one on bottom is wool, silk, and nylon. 

I was very excited that Gale's Art had a booth. (I first discovered Gale's Art through Gynx Yarn's The Dyer's Notebook video podcast. You can see the interview here.) I had fallen in love with her heavily speckled "Graffiti and Asphalt" colorway, but wanted to see her selection in person before purchasing. It is a super cool color combo and I nabbed her last one on the Wonder Sock Yarn base (75% Superwash BFL / 25% nylon). In the picture below you can see the other two skeins that Mom picked out, both solids ("Ashes" and "Silver"), both on her MYS 62 base, which is a luscious blend of 60% Superwash Merino, 20% yak, and 20% silk.

Mom and I volunteered to help Julie Wilson teach one of her beginning spinning classes on Saturday, which was a great experience. Julie is a wonderful teacher (she was mine) and has a great approach for all learning styles.

We also took a class on spinning and blending rare fibers with Judith Mackenzie! For those who are not in the spinning or weaving world, Judith Mackenzie is a world-renowned spinner, weaver, fleece judge, teacher, and has apparently been called upon by some pretty important folks (royalty) to work on conserving textiles. She is a very knowledgeable, experienced, and esteemed woman in this community. And I would add wise to that list, too. And sweet. (But tough. She's married to a Montana rancher and spoke about many experiences related to the ranch. Yes, definitely tough, too.)  She was very soft-spoken and sweet, despite my barely contained excitement (as close to rock-star-fandom-level excitement as I get) at meeting her and being taught by her. She doesn't just teach, she tells stories. It was dreamy to spin with luxury fibers (cashmere, camel, yak) while she spun tales and demonstrated. And she didn't say anything when I was so rude as to whip out my cell phone and take pictures every now and then. (I generally don't do it, for fear of making any presenter or teacher nervous, unless I've asked ahead of time.) She doesn't have a personal web presence per se, so I've linked to the Interweave Store's page of her videos and books. Here she is:

And she is tiny!

After SAFF...was November...and then December...and I don't remember much, except that I was not feeling so great. I let the new year creep in softly. I do remember it rained. A lot.

On New Year's Day, I did bundle up and take my mother with me to the highest point of the Blue Ridge Parkway, just for a brief, frigid walk in the hopes of setting a tone of discovery for the new year. This was at mile marker 431.4, at the Richland Balsam Overlook, which is at an elevation of 6053 feet. Our house is at about 3000 feet, but not too many miles away. These pictures are from that overlook or on the way to it.

And then it finally snowed. And snowed some more. And snow being more exciting than rain, it was therefore dubbed the Blizzard of 2016. Actually it was manageable for us, but pretty rough elsewhere along the eastern seaboard.

Here is Samson, the bigger of our Great Danes, viewing his great white kingdom:

And here is a particularly nice, silvery sunrise:

Our property faces south, so our snow melted pretty quickly, but there were many areas that simply aren't graced by winter sunlight in these mountains. On family property in the Balsam Gap area, there were patches of ice and snow for over a week after our snow was completely gone.

We are all done with playing catch up. Now, on to what is currently going on.

I'm spinning up some chunky singles from batts that I picked up at last year's regional "Anything Fiber Sale" at Warren Wilson College.

Cuckoo for Cuckoobatts Club Batts from Art Club in "Meadow" (Superwash wool, Tencel, nylon, and alpaca)

I'm weaving a color-and-weave sampler based on the samples given in Jane Patrick's The Weaver's Idea Book: Creative Cloth on a Rigid Heddle Loom (pages 24-25). I'm using Knit Picks CotLin yarn (70% Targuis Cotton / 30% Linen) in "Whisker" and "Planetarium".

I haven't forgotten knitting. In fact, I have a ridiculous number of WIPs. At least four of which I could grab right now, in this very room: 1 complete-except-for-a-toe pair of socks, 1 almost-to-the-toe sock for another pair, and 2 sweaters that have both been worked from the top down, past the sleeve split and halted mid-torso.

I'll be back soon with details of what lies ahead in 2016. I've also discovered some new podcasts that I'd like to share.

Oh, I have a blog?

It is such a wonderful fall day on the mountain. I'm writing this from the backyard patio, feet propped up, breeze cooling off the mid-day heat, and golden light filtering through tree leaves in a dozen colors.

So many things have happened! I have more yarn and fiber and tons of new pictures, and it's almost time for SAFF! This post will mostly be pictures. I'll try to go in chronological order.

June was a busy month. On June 6th, the Local Cloth initiative in the Western North Carolina area put on an event held at the Asheville Farmer's Market called "Fiber Feel Day". The purpose was to bring local fiber farmers in touch with local fiber artists. My goal was to get as many different breeds of fleece to spin as I could.

I made a killing at the Twist Fiber Studio booth, Ashley Eskew's company.

Brown Jacob, Cheviot, Grey Gotland, and Targhee, all combed top.

Unfortunately, I didn't keep records so well for these (except the first, obviously from Echoview Fiber Mill), but I do know the fiber content.

A Merino blend.

Llama cloud.

Teeswater mix combed top and Icelandic with the both the tog & thel fibers included. 

There were these precious pygmy angora goats, or pygoras, from Mountain Meadow Farm in Franklin, NC.

Also in June, The National NeedleArts Association held the annual Stitch-N-Pitch night in partnership with the Major League Baseball association and we attended the event at McCormick Field in Asheville, NC, home of the Asheville Tourists team (farm team for the Colorado Rockies team). Unfortunately it was a very damp evening, but there was this beautiful sight while we waited for the first pitch (made with a ball of yarn, by the way!):

After the Stitch-N-Pitch game, was the Appalachian Lifestyle Celebration in downtown Waynesville, NC. The Smoky Mountain Knitting Guild has a booth at this annual street festival and this year the guild yarn bombed one of my favorite metal sculptures for the event!

"Old Time Music" set to yarn!

Julie Wilson, of Jehovah Raah Farm (and also my friend and spinning teacher), brought samples of her fiber wares, her spinning wheel, and some furry friends to the festival. 

Julie spinning mohair locks on one of her Lendrums.

Llama and alpaca.

Shetland ewes and new lambs!!

A handsome Angora goat.

I was on hand when Julie conducted a sheep shearing demonstration and asked me to hold one of the lambs close to the mother ewe's face to help keep her calm on the shearing table...I was sooooo flipping excited! You'd a thunk I was a townie for being so giddy at holding the lamb. It was actually the first shearing I'd seen in person, but I was so distracted by getting to lamb cuddle that I was barely able to watch the goings-on. 

I'm so excited that I held that lamb, that I don't even care about that terrible double-chin.

And then, as ironic as it may seem, I got to pet a real wolf (well, she's about 93% or so):

Isn't she lovely? 

I had to leave midway through the day because of ankle and foot pain due to swelling, a problem that I've never had to deal with prior to this year. As I write this, my right foot is swollen and propped up on a chair. (I snuck in some plying this morning on Mom's double-treadle Lendrum, but I couldn't do it for very long. Boo.) It wasn't long after this street festival that I saw my doctor and, via a blood test, she discovered that my thyroid had decided to call it quits. New meds seem to help, but when the dosage was recently adjusted lower, the swelling returned...just in time to throw off my Spinzilla game. Ugh. Too much spinning fiber and no healthy feet to treadle!

In July, Mum and I spent time with friends spinning at Julie Wilson's farm. The knitting guild's annual picnic was also held there in September. You can see how Julie decorates everything beautifully. Her house is a 200-year-old cabin! 

In September, Mum and I headed south, to historic downtown Columbus, GA, right on the Chattahoochee River, for the Georgia Fiber Fest.  This fiber festival began in 2012 as an Alpaca-focused event. Although it is still, thankfully, full of alpaca fiber vendors, the festival offers classes in all sorts of fiber crafts and hosts vendors with products from many fiber animals. We stayed in the Marriott hotel directly across the street from the convention center and had a great experience. We shopped till we dropped!

Much of that is indeed from alpacas, but there is much wonderful wool and tons of wonderful hand-painted yarn and fleece. I'll eventually photograph each with its proper source.

Mum and I also went with Ann, a good friend we've met through spinning classes, to a regional "Anything Fiber Sale" at Warren Wilson College. It was a giant stash-busting sale for anyone participating, housed in a gymnasium. Here's what came home with us: 

Again, more details on what's in that heap later.

I've been knitting! With a gimpy foot, I had to lay off spinning, so reading and knitting caught up. Here are some of the finished objects. 

The Edison shawl in three shades of Knit Picks Palette (my Rav project page). 

The Brush Creek Shawl in three shades of Knit Picks Palette (my Rav prject page).

A Sockhead hat in Miss Babs "Zombie Prom" colorway on the Hot Shot base.

I've also begun the Danshui cardigan in Knit Picks Andean Treasure (100% baby alpaca!!) in "Verdant Heather" green. It is soooo soft! This one is for me. Yum. It is top-down and I've already begun the body below the arm pit. 

The lace edging.

I've begun the BooKnits Voodoo MKAL (Mystery Knit-A-Long) with this Miss Babs lace in "Black Magic" with amethyst purple, silver-lined beads:

I also began a cowl with some homespun, but it is currently languishing because I messed up on a row while trying to knit with a sinus infection...not good.

There are other projects in the works, but they're Christmas gifts, so they're secret for the time-being. 

There is still more to update!! But this is probably plenty for one post. Time to knit!

Being Social

Giving my first post in four months a title that mentions anything to do with my social behavior is a joke. I admit I prefer solitary activities. Although I have many complaints and opinionated views on technology and it's potential to harm developing social skills in our youth and encourage outright rudeness, I embrace technology as a valuable tool. Particularly for social outreach. I can remain happy in my isolation while connecting with individuals who share my passions, but also learn from others with no limit on mileage (or demands on my sleep schedule). I can't call myself a paper-pushing traditionalist or jump on every social network or techie bandwagon that comes down the pike, though. I love blogging. I love reading your blogs. I particularly love blogs that share thoughtful commentary, observation, reviews, encourage conversation, and / or formulate their posts like documentary essays on topics (OK, particularly those on fiber- or book-related topics). I love when bloggers take time to make links so that I can follow bread crumbs from the stories that whet my appetite, allowing me to tumble down the slippery and delightful slope of the Internet's potential. It can always lead me to a paper book. Or a real place. Or a person. And I love photographs. I love when bloggers share what they love in images, but also aren't afraid to limit their photos to the "pretty". It is tempting to leave out the reality and focus only on the pretty. But we have glossy magazines for that.

I will come back to this blog. I've been away for various reasons this summer. The best reasons are ones that I'll share with you on this site very soon::
-June's Fiber Feel Day and the Appalachian Lifestyle Festival
-spinning wheels and my progress as a spinner (including making a new friend and visits to Julie's farm)
-my sad knitting progress and recent recovery (almost a shawl in one week!)
-plans to learn weaving on a rigid heddle loom
Plus I want to share my upcoming fiber-related travel plans, knitting and spinning project plans, book reviews and reading interests, including new blogs and podcasts.
The worst reason I've been absent is that I'm down with the worst kind of head cold: the summer head cold.

So, I will continue this blog. I will continue to post irregularly to FaceBook, although I hate it. To my mind, it is nothing but a genius ploy to mine data for commercial marketers (read this in The Guardian, but you have to admit it is true, and creepy, when you purchase New Balance shoes from one website and then later log into FaceBook only to see New Balance ads for the first time ever on the side bars). I try to use it as a means to spread good cheer, so I'm one of those folks who only forwards along either "good news" or things that encourage critical thinking. I have no time for haters. I am looking forward to no longer acting in an official capacity for my knitting guild so that I can enjoy it as a member without needing to update the group's FaceBook page. (Which reminds me...)

I do have a Kindle (quite an old [read "heavy"] one) and I do read books on it. I prefer a paper copy of a book. I like libraries and used book stores. I like to read. I feel there's a better chance for clear communication with something beyond a 140-character limit (see Twitter). I don't Tweet. Words are too fabulous to be given such short shrift. Even FaceBook allows up to 5,000 characters, but most folks don't bother clicking on links to read beyond the first paragraph that is usually displayed. Laziness? Passive training? Who knows. Now there's this thing called Periscope, similar to Meerkat, both of which allow live streaming video. Apparently Periscope (released by the thrifty geniuses behind Twitter) only archives uploaded videos for up to 24 hours (and Meerkat less than that). I'm assuming the social interaction aspect is completely dependent upon immediate feedback. Really? I purposefully "lose" my phone in various quiet corners of the house so I can get things done in my "real" world. I like photography enough that I joined Instagram and browse uploads maybe (not always) once a day. I only make a point of checking my email every day when I'm expecting packages and check for delivery updates. I don't have smartphone updates activated on my gmail. Obviously downloading Periscope, Meerkat, or Twitter apps to my phone would be a waste of my phone's little grey bytes (Poirot allusion there, and if you don't know Poirot, read Agatha Christie).

Do you remember when you'd leave your phone indoors when you spent time outside, even if you were't mowing the lawn, even if the dang phone didn't actually have a cord attaching it to the wall? Maybe you're just having a glass of sweet tea and reading a book while smacking mosquitoes on your legs.

Do you remember screaming the lyrics to your favorite songs while driving, with or without the windows open, and never having to stop because the song died just to let you know so-and-so was calling? (Did you ever roll down the windows just because you loved the wind in your hair, and you could sing louder, even though you really did have fully-functioning air conditioning?)

The smartphone is a tool. I try to use it like one. Just because I have a hammer does not mean I try to use it in every single job I tackle. If I need to fix something to eat, it is nice to continue speaking to my brother, especially since he'll talk with his hands-fee set for his entire home-bound commute to help mitigate his road rage. See? It works for me and saves countless lives on I-40. I keep the appointment schedules for at least three family members (sometimes more) on my phone. Priceless. My phone is a better digital camera (than my old one) and takes up far less space than one "dumb" phone and one digital camera would.

On the other hand, if I find myself able to converse with someone via text for more than 2 lines, I just dial their number. I prefer those great digital photos in large format for editing family photos, so sharing them is still problematic and slow, unless I do a hard-line download to a large hard drive on a regular basis. (By they way, doesn't anyone else feel the need to edit or be selective with their photographs, or am I the only one that takes a bazillion of any one subject? Out of ten pictures of my mother and her mother taken on Mother's Day, two were absolutely fantastic and captured them laughing together or genuinely smiling without reserve. That's how I want to remember them. The real way. Not frozen in fear because someone yelled "picture time!")

Have you ever discovered that a loved one has died via a social network? One of my younger brothers did. Over a month after the fact. I can still remember the anguish in his wail from his basement bedroom that brought my mother and I scrambling downstairs in the middle of the night to find him staring dumbly at the wifi HD television that he'd set up as his computer monitor.

Using technological tools to take the place of social interaction is pushing the limits of our humanity, the very fabric and boundaries that we use to define what it means to be humane, generous, kind, sincere. Perhaps generations before felt the same about the telephone and the telegraph and their potential to supplant the handwritten correspondence. Sally Mann, famous photographer, talks about how the photograph, in its way, has begun to kill our memories (check out her fantastic memoir Hold Still: A Memoir with Pictures). It's worth a thought.

I write this because I am a member of a human race that is far larger than the small community in which I grew up, and to which I would have been bound by all traditional means only a couple of generations back. I share my little slice of the world with the larger world. In turn, I read your blogs and learn what your communities are like. I will remain a fan of handwritten letters, long blog entries, well-researched web articles, multimedia and multifaceted hyperlinked and carefully curated projects, visual journaling, paper books, paper magazines, email and paper newsletters, postcards, rock collections, manuscripts written on legal pads, Moleskin notebooks, Pilot Precise V7 ink pens, libraries with local archives collections, Friends of the Library annual book sales, collections of library cards, and online databases and pathfinders.

Yarn, yarn, and yarn...and more yarnishness

I was so charmed by this little guy that I totally forgot to look for a sign indicating his breed. 

We attended the Mother Earth News Fair at the Western NC Agricultural Center in Fletcher, NC a couple of weekend ago. It was a bright, sunny day, but the wind almost blew us away!

Momentarily shielded from the wind in the cab of a big John Deere tractor, she looks perfectly at home with those cowgirl boots!

Mom and I discovered that EchoView Fiber Mill and Farm (located just up the road in Weaverville) had a booth in one of the buildings...

We picked up two skeins of 100% Merino, 2-ply fingering in "Seafoam," one skein of 100% Alpaca, 3-ply sport in "Fusion," and a batt (called "Midnight," if I remember correctly) of 95 Merino / 5 "other" (probably Tencel). That wee little multi-colored skein (purples, greens, natural) was a freebie that we were able to pick out.

This picture shows the colors in the batt better. Gorgeous blues, greens, and maybe some purples.

The day after the fair, our guild's monthly meeting was devoted to a panel of local fiber farmers: Marcia Kummerle of Good Fibrations Farm, Elizabeth Straub of Hobbyknob Farm, and Barbara Vassallo of Mountain Lady Farm.  And these guys had to come home with us...

 

They are both balls of roving in a mixture of Mohair (from Marcia Kummerle's Good Fibrations Farm) and wool (Corriedale in the big ball). Mom chose the little one with the beautiful blues, plums, and mauves. I couldn't help but get the gigantic fire ball! I love the pops of gold in the rust and clay reds.

Plus, Rik Schell of Purl's Yarn Emporium was there with offerings from the store. Obviously, the fiber couldn't go home alone...

These are all skeins of Mirasol's Nuna (40 Merino / 40 silk / 20 bamboo-sourced viscose) and they are sooo silky slippery. Mirasol is a Peru-based company that benefits communities and local textile traditions.

Ummm, and then I received a message from KnitPicks that the emergency extra yarn for Dad's sweater (because those skeins just look so small and the sweater is not so small) was back in stock, but who can order just a couple skeins when some more added to the cart would mean free shipping? Duh. And I'd never tried their Palette line before...

Hare Heather, Iris Heather, and Mineral Heather 

Tidepool Heather, Rainforest Heather, and Opal Heather

Palette is 100% Peruvian Highlands Wool (a hardy mix) in fingering weight, available in a 150 colors (hachacha!), and each 50 gram ball has 231 yards. It is perfect for color work, like complex stranded sweaters that I'm not quite ready to tackle. But, dang, it is nice stuff. 

What is all this yarn going to do in my possession? I think we'll be seeing a lot of multicolored shawls on shoulders this coming fall fashion season...

Quarterly Report

Since I pounded out my last post, I took the time to review my blog entries since the beginning of the year. I had goals? Where did those go? Life has a way of throwing curve balls, or simply hitting the batter with a rocket-launched fast ball for the sheer cruel joy of it.

We're a quarter of the way through the year. Here's the scoop on those January goals:

-Self-care / self-love: Although this does mean improving my physical health, my philosophy of self-care must be wholistic. Stress can sometimes have very drastic physical consequences. This is necessarily a work in progress. There have been definite improvements. But, I sought to report finite steps toward solid goals. I haven't joined the local rec center gym. I have abandoned the treadmill since January. On the other hand, I have been limiting some sources of stress and I've been eating more vegetables and smaller meals throughout the day. I did get my hair cut, so I look less like a frizzy-headed madwoman. And I invested some money in clothes that actually fit me. Small steps.

-Learn to crochet: Not so much.

-Learn to spin fiber: No more on this, either, since my class in January, but I hope to own a Lendrum wheel before this year is out. And I should have several unique opportunities to purchase some great fiber this coming weekend. (So excited!)

-Complete the knitting guild's designer challenge: I've completed one pattern of the requisit four. Two others are in the wings, both at least a third complete.

-Attend more KnitWits knitting groups: Not so much.

-Reading mindfully: This has proven to be an interesting experiment. Unfortunately, the knitting slump I mentioned in the last post seemed to coincide with a reading slump. I've spent more time reading about books and browsing lists of books than actually reading any. But, dare I say it aloud, I think I've got my reading mojo back. I have about five books going, two that I'm sure I'll finish in a couple of days.

My family has been hit by one thing or another: my mother in the hospital with pneumonia and slow recovery, my brother and sister-in-law in a car accident (they're OK), other family members with serious illnesses, my own health issues, sleepless nights, small changes that build up into large stresses, and I can't even discount the pressures of tax season, because it has become a practice of mine to handle my parents' taxes ever since my father spent four months in hospital several years ago. In his absence I took over that responsibility, with the generous help of H&R Block's great online programs. (Bless whoever decided to roll out electronic filing.) Even the spring has brought with it that annoying sidekick: pollen. Boy, I'm whining tonight.

With that out of my system, let's look at the good things that can get in the way of accomplishing all these goals. On Saturday, April 11^th, I'm going to check out the Mother Earth News Fair at the WesternCarolina Agricultural Center.

Sunday is the knitting guild's monthly meeting, and our special program will be a panel of local fiber farmers. I'm looking forward to them bringing their homegrown wares (fiber, maybe even yarn) to sell. And an LYS, Silver Threads& Golden Needles, that I've never been to will also be there with some yarn stock to sell. The shop is located in Franklin, NC. They are supplying us with yarn for a MKAL by designer Susan Dingle, which begins in May.

The next weekend, Saturday, April 18^th, is the guild's spring retreat at the Lake Logan Episcopal Center (http://www.lakelogan.org/).

P.S. The yellow bell bushes that I love so very much, and couldn't recall their actual names in my last post, are yellow forsythia. 

spring means yellow bells everywhere

I love yellow bell bushes. I don't know their proper name. They thrive no matter how you butcher them. They can be chopped off and last wonderfully long in a vase. Or hack off a branch and stick it in the ground. Boom. Instant yellow beauty next year. Love them. Cheerfulness that keeps coming back.

It is spring but I feel like I've been in a barren creative climate. Barely any knitting. That's not true. I've knit several skeins' worth on Dad's sweater, but it is a very basic raglan with a Henley neckline. I actually created the pattern myself using his measurements and Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. Unfortunately, it is a bottom-up pattern, so all the interesting shaping parts are after I finish this gigantic and seemingly endless desert of stockinette. I was tickled to stumble upon a bargain priced copy of Budd's later book, The Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters, but this didn't happen until after I'd started his sweater. If you aren't familiar with these two books, you should certainly seek them out. Budd offers schematics and standardized sizing for basic sweater shapes with their accompanying stitch counts for all parts of a pattern. It is hard to describe. When you open one of these two books you will see pages and pages of tables of numbers and more numbers. It can be confusing at first. In fact, though, these numbers can be your first step towards becoming your own sweater designer. They can set you free, but it helps to read carefully and you must swatch or it won't work. (Also, if you're not prepared to step off into a misty land of "Choose Your Own Adventure" patterning, each book has "normal" patterns for knitters, too.)

Basically this is what you do:

You pick your yarn and knit up a swatch or two. When you're happy with the resulting fabric and have done the full swatch tests (washing, blocking, measuring), you match your resulting number of stitches per inch to a line in the pattern table. Every table has gauge rows.

Then you consider the body measurements you're working with and the ease you wish to have in the finished sweater. Find the best size that matches this expectation. These are given across the top of the patterns, over a column of numbers.

For the bottom-up sweaters, the pattern begins with the cast on numbers for the body's bottom edge. I matched my size column with my gauge row and that number is, ta da, the number of stitches I need to cast on! The next section gives you instructions for the sleeves with the same type of tables to give you the correct number of stitches and increases from the cuffs up. And so on.

Ann Budd is a genius.

In other yarnish news, I created this pink camouflage-inspired colorway for my brother (he's going to loom knit a hat for a friend):

This was dyed on Knit Picks' Bare Wool of the Andes superwash chunky. (In my previous post I said it was Merino, but I'm pretty sure not, now. The 'Wool of the Andes' yarns are usually from a hardier sheep breed or mix.)

If you are scratching your head at the concept of pink camouflage, let me explain. In many rural areas of the United States, wearing camouflage on a daily basis, in any setting, is as common as Parisians wearing black (fashionable everywhere) and those living in hot desert climes wearing draped cloth and turbans (practicality that can save you from heatstroke and, probably, sand storms). Here, in the Appalachian mountains, wearing camouflage serves both fashion and practical purposes...mostly. If your hobby is hunting, you buy one good winter jacket that can serve double-duty as everyday warmth and hunting trip warmth. If your family or friends have ties to the military, camouflage may have deeper significance. It is basically another color of the rainbow around here. I'm not a camo person. But my father was Army and we have 1970s camo and olive drab clothing in storage and my brothers often wear his old overshirts and jackets. We all vie for the old olive drab, military-issue sleeping bags when we go camping. (They're warmest.) Camouflage has received a total overhaul in recent decades due to military action in deserts. Plus, a civilian line of camouflage that is a common trade mark recognized even by many non-camo wearers is Mossy Oak. Rather than shades of green in lava-lamp formations (think 1970s camo), Mossy Oak uses realistic imagery of actual leaves and bark indigenous to North America (perfect for hunting). It is actually very pretty, I think. So where does the pink camouflage come from? The gendering of camo (which I totally believe was utterly unnecessary, but then I don't need to wear pink to know I'm a woman, either) when non-hunters and non-military persons began wearing camo for fashion, political, or whatever reason. The colors in the skeins above were specifically requested by my brother, who looked over my shoulder while I mixed dye stock, and they match his friend's pink Mossy Oak pullover. The background is pink with purple hints and the realistic imagery of bark and dark fall leaves are in the foreground.

Whew. That was a lot of writing to get to an explanation of why there's a fashion demand for a non-camouflage version of camouflage. The only place this would make a person disappear into the background is at a shopping mall out of hunting season. Real women hunters usually wear real camouflage during hunting season. Or else they would be fake women hunters...the one's who just like to fit in with the crowd that does actually hunt. Oh, boy, I need to stop right there.

By the way, I don't hunt and would probably only do so for survival needs. I do respect a hunter's skills and codes of conduct and honor, such as being responsible stewards of wildlife. (Obviously I'm leaving out poachers and trophy hunters here. I really don't wish to cause my blood pressure to rise, so we'll not discuss such idiots.) That's pretty important to me. Like responsible forestry practices, knowing where your hamburger came from, using local fresh markets when possible, and shopping at LYSs and getting fiber from smaller fiber farmers and mills. Ooooh, and that is a perfect segue!

I read and reviewed Adventures in Yarn Farming: Four Seasons on a New England Fiber Farm by Barbara Parry (also author of Teach Yourself Visually Hand-Dyeing) for the Guild's April newsletter. Parry's book is fantastic and full of beautiful photography! There are also several sweater patterns and a handful of other projects. Reading this was pure pleasure. Here is the link to Parry's Foxfire Fiber and Designs at Springdelle Farm.

Wow, I've rambled on tonight. I've got to go find out what Mom is doing. It involves a great deal of hammering, drilling, and swear words.