sweetgeorgia

Keeping Warm. Keeping it Simple.

It’s getting cold in Vancouver. I know, I know, “cold” is relative since it’s not cold like Vermont… but hey, I just got back from sunny California. My hands and feet freeze up in my office because I’m mostly sitting at my computer, moving at the absolute minimum, typing away. Last week, the handspun yarn that was sitting in my office with me was taunting me, “I’m warm, you know? You could knit something from me and you’d be warm…” So I pulled the Blueface Leceister handspun from the shop and knit this:

It’s basically 56 sts on 10.5 mm needles, knit for 6 inches, then decrease every other row (i.e. Row 1: *k6 k2tog, repeat from *. Row 3: *k5 k2tog, repeat from *. etc.). The ultimate no-brain knitting (NBK). I knit the entire hat in about two episodes of “House MD”. And I love this hat. So warm. I wore it out grocery shopping and looked at every person on the street not wearing a hat and thought “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

Here’s the start of Ron’s Animal Cracker Hat:

Again, super simple. 56 sts on 10.5 mm needles, 4 rows of 1×1 ribbing in dark green, 2 rows of stockinette in lighter green, 2 rows of white and then a little zig zag pattern in fair isle. Knit for 6 inches and then decrease as above. I’m wondering if I should do the ear flaps and make it more “authentic” a la movie costume. I kind of like it without the ear flaps. Simple.

And oh, BTW, has everybody rushed out to see the new Harry Potter movie yet? The DH and I saw it at the Metreon on San Francisco on Saturday night — waited in line for 1 1/2 hours for the 9 pm show and got out at 12 midnight. Love love loved it and I’m going to see it again this weekend!

A foggy day…

Yippee, I’m back from my mini spinning wheel research trip to San Francisco! You might be delighted to know that I passed through security three times with two pairs of Addi’s in my purse. No problemo.

Of course, trips never go exactly as planned. Our Friday morning WestJet flight was cancelled because of all the fog in Vancouver — I made whimpering noises and my furrowed brow indicated that I might cry, so the WestJet staff pulled some strings and got us on a direct flight to San Francisco on Air Canada. We got in three hours ahead of schedule. Marvelous. The way back, of course, our WestJet flight was delayed by two hours — again, because of the fog — so I guess it all evens out in the end.

But while I was in San Francisco, I visited only three (super stocked to the ceiling) shops: ArtFibers, Carolina Homespun, and Deep Color Studio. Each shop is unique and amazing. And of course, I spent way too much money:

From Art Fibers

• Golden Siam
• Saje

From Carolina Homespun

• Superwash Merino x 1 lb
• Organic Cotton x 1/2 lb (Peace of Yarn)
• Merino/Tussah 50/50 handdyed by Blue Moon Spinnery
• Merino/Tencel 50/50 handdyed by Blue Moon Spinnery
• Corriedale blend from Ashland Bay Trading
• Six old issues of Spin Off from the early/mid-90’s
• Mabel Ross’s Advanced Spinning video
• Mabel Ross’s book, “Essentials of Yarn Design”

From Deep Color Studio

• Merino/Mulberry Silk 50/50 x 1 lb (Peace of Yarn)
• Cashmere/Silk 50/50 x 3 oz (Peace of Yarn)
• Merino blend from from Ashland Bay Trading
• Michele Wipplinger’s natural dye instruction booklet

Hmm. Yep. I think that was it. I should have brought a larger suitcase.

Spinning Wheels

Happily, I got to try spinning on the Schacht Matchless. Three of them, in fact. One double-treadle version that squeaked quite a bit, but was smooth nonetheless. A single-treadle version that had a broken tensioning knob and another single-treadle version with a wobbly drive wheel. Even with all these quirks, the wheel still worked very smoothly and relatively quietly. My main impression was that this wheel was quite sturdy and stable — it did, however, need a ton of oil. I don’t think it necessarily lived up to it’s end-all-be-all sort of reputation.

I did try it side-by-side with the Majacraft Suzie Pro and, by comparison, started to find the delta flyer kind of annoying — if you don’t hold your yarn exactly perpendicular to the point of the delta flyer, you get lots of vibration. This is likely why the flyer head needs to be able to move to the left or right sides on this wheel… otherwise, you’d have to spin directly in front of your body leaving you only with short draw techniques. Just my observation!

There was a Louet S10 there as well that I played with for about 30 seconds. Hmm. The drive wheel on this wheel was floppy as well. I don’t know if it was just that particular wheel, or if they are all a little unstable.

But finally, I got to spin on Morgaine’s (owner of Carolina Homespun) wheel — a Lendrum Saxony (28″ wheel) in cherry wood. I couldn’t help but continuously blubber, “Awesome, just awesome.” while I spun on this. The drive wheel has great momentum and just keeps going and going on its own — it felt like I barely had to treadle at all. She has a right-flyer saxony and I found that I could sit perfectly in front of the wheel and spin without twisting about. It makes sense for someone who spins with the fibre supply in the left hand.

This is really one of the only big saxony wheels I’ve tried (I did try an Ashford Elizabeth 2 and my leg started to ache after only a few minutes — the wheel is heavy, sure, but it’s hard to treadle and keep it going. Definitely, not the wheel for me!), so maybe that’s why I’m so enamoured with it. I guess in the end, there may be no “end-all-be-all” wheel out there but I’ll try again in May when I go to the Maryland Sheel and Wool Festival…

Eating

Of course, we also visited friends and family in the city. Richard’s childhood friend, Anne and her husband, Joe, took us to Gary Danko which is a restaurant with the same Relaix & Chateau designation that Lumiere has in Vancouver. To me, that translates to amazing cheese course.

Between Anne and I, we got to try six cheeses off the cart… I can’t remember them all but I think there was Ubriaco, St. Agur, Point des Reyes, Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog and Manchego. We both fell in love with the Cypress Grove cheese and trotted off to Whole Foods to buy some for ourselves!

Ok, now I’m off to catch up on work, email and skeining up sock yarns for the shop!

Finishing what you start.

It is Monday morning and I am ticking things off my list. I am being productive. I am… “getting things done”… (who knew — it really is like a cult!)

I finished knitting and assembling the little baby Trellis sweater. It’s so tiny! So adorable! And that’s without the baby! All it needs now are buttons… so I’m off to visit the local button lady today.

And since I finished something, I figured it was ok to start something else. Ok, ok. I started a bunch of things, but they are all gift things that are impossible to talk about here… So, I started Alice Starmore’s St. Brigid sweater. Commence the cable-y goodness.

I’m knitting this in Jamieson’s Heather Aran (or whatever they are calling what used to be Soft Shetland). I bought this from them a couple months ago when they were having some massive over 50% off sale — this colour is called “Pagan”, a really vibrant, clear purple.

This is so far one repeat (plus two rows)… I have made some changes since I don’t really want to be swallowed whole by the sweater. I’m only going to do 7 repeats rather than 8 to help shorten the sweater a bit — don’t want to look like I’m wearing a giant wool dress. Also I ditched the two double seed stitch panels on either side of the sweater — this should remove about 10-12 cm (approx 4 inches) from the width of the sweater. That would still make it a 40 to 41″ sweater which is quite large, but liveable for me — it’s an outdoor sweater… or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Yippee, I also finished spinning for Ron’s Animal Cracker Hat — you know, the hat he’s wearing as the boys are sharing animal crackers in Prisoner of Azkaban? Yeah, me like-y. Most of the yarn was spun from Border Leicester — the same stuff I spun for the Jayne Hat. The darker greens on the left are a mix of Border Leicester and brown Romney (both dyed in the same pot together). The red is actually the red yarn that was leftover from the Jayne Hat — but I overdyed it with straight Magenta to get this blindingly brilliant red colour. It’s pretty glow-in-the-dark!

And in weekend news, I taught one of my friends to spin! Jen’s a knitter but her mom used to spin flax, weave and other crafty things. It was Jen’s birthday recently, so I stained and finished a bottom whorl drop spindle and dyed two little bumps of Corriedale wool for her. By the next day, she told me it was all spun up! The infection process has begun…. muahahhaha… ,

Pink Novelty

At the last spinning class, we learned how to spin boucle… my first attempts are pretty ugly. See here:

It’s made up of a nice space-dyed mohair top (local supplier) and spun up with some shocking pink commercial yarn. Stringy-looking boucle, eh?

I like my second attempt much more… On Saturday, Michelle and I attended the Langley Weavers & Spinners Guild fair and I bought (among too many other things) a bag of hot pink adult mohair from Sun Bench Fibres. I took this and halo-ed it around some commerical black nubby yarn then wrapped it with a thin silver metallic sewing thread ($0.99 at Dress-Sew).

There’s only about 7 yards here — it’s brutal trying to spin this with a teeny tiny orifice and flyer hooks. Every few seconds, I’m thinking, why isn’t it winding on?!? and then I see that a chunk of mohair has trapped itself in a hook. This is when a big fat orifice would be so welcome!

Here’s one of the other things I picked up at the “Falling into Fibre” fair on Saturday: a new spindle! I’ve only ever used my heavy-duty bottom whorl Ashford drop spindle, so this is such a welcome change… It’s a 40g top whorl spindle made by Dave Smith/Shari Hamilton out of “Redheart” wood. So pretty!

I’m wondering if I can take this on the plane to San Francisco with me!?! Anybody ever drop spindle on an airplane?

And thanks for everybody’s comments and recommendations about the spinning wheels… There is so much collective knowledge and experience out there — I’m just so grateful that you guys share! As for the wheels, I think I’ll just have to try them both, side-by-side. I’m off to SF in just under two weeks so hopefully Morgaine at Carolina Homespun will have a couple wheels I can try out!

Friday Crazy Brain.

Hmm, is it weird if you are having breakfast and read “skein milk” on the milk carton? Yep. It’s 6 am and I have yarn on the brain.

Note 1: you know that “to-knit” list from yesterday? I have all the yarn for all those projects ready to go. Sob. No more yarn shopping for me!

Note 2: I’m currently listening to audiobook “Getting Things Done” that I got off iTunes. It makes me feel like the cornflower blue tie-wearing boss in “Fight Club” — “…make these your primary action items…”.

Note 3: So the people inhabiting the office below me have finished their renovations… now the people directly above me are renovating. Probably installing hardwood floors or something. The drilling… the nailing. Ugh.

Now, here’s what my brain is pre-occupied with these days: the second wheel.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about buying a second wheel — something smoother, faster and more versatile than the wheel I have now (Ashford Joy). I love my Joy — it’s super portable and a very good general spinning wheel with ratios between 6:1 and 14:1. But it doesn’t cover anything on the low ratio or high ratio ends… It’s very medium. My thoughts of buying a second wheel are also supported by my spinning teacher who said that I’ve outgrown my wheel! Whee!

So, I’ve was pretty much decided on the Schacht Matchless DT based solely on its specs — I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet (Irene is looking for one that I can borrow)… but in the meantime, she brought in her own wheel (actually one of six wheels that she owns), a Majacraft Suzie Pro… mmm, this wheel spins beautifully! So smooth and quiet. I think my most favourite things about this wheel are 1) the rotating flyer head so that I can spin with either left or right hands or position it more comfortably for a nice long draw, and 2) the delta “orifice”. The Delta orifice is a big wire loop rather than a regular orifice — this is great for spinning slubs or “stuff” because it doesn’t get stuck at the orifice.

Ah, decisions, decisions. You all know how good I am at making decisions. What do you think? Anybody own either of these wheels? Offer any advice?

June, I saw that you sold your Schacht last year — any reason (maybe spinning only on your lovely Drudik wheel?)?

Ok. Back to work now!