sweetgeorgia

Top 5 for 2006? No.

Vancouver received a most gorgeous snowfall this past weekend. Outside our house, the snow is still a thick layer of fluffy, clean white goodness. It’s made us eager to get up the mountain and go snowboarding… The cold outdoors makes this a perfect time to sit inside, snuggle under your handknit or handwoven blanket and reflect.

For the past two years, I’ve made this list of Top 5 for the year — here are 2005 and 2004. This year, I want to do something different. I have four questions here…

1. How was 2006 for you?
2. What was the highlight of your year?
3. What did you want to accomplish that you didn’t get to?
4. What are you planning for 2007?

I would love to hear your responses. They don’t have to be about knitting or spinning or weaving… we’re talking about you and all that comes with it — yarn or otherwise! Post me your answers in the comments by Friday, December 1 at midnight PST and I’ll randomly draw someone to receive yarn (2 skeins of Superwash Sock) or fibre (a 100g braid of BFL)… your pick.

Over the past year, so many overwhelmingly challenging yet positive things happened to me that I couldn’t just reflect on my fibre-y activities. So here are my responses:

How was 2006 for you?

Productive. Passionate. Undeniably life-changing.

What was the highlight of your year?

Meeting Patrick Green and Paula Simmons? Yeah, that was awesome. Weaving on my own, beautiful floor loom? Yeah, also amazing. Having my handdyed yarns available at the newest local yarn shop, three bags full? Like a dream! And meeting the force of nature that is Michelle Whipplinger… also fantastic, but my highlight was…

…absolutely, positively the surf trip to Tofino this summer. There is no other experience in my life that has made me feel this strong and empowered… nothing like it. I don’t believe being a surfer has anything to do with your skill, your clothes, your gear, or even your attitude. I believe it has everything to do with being on the water, listening to the waves fall, feeling the relentless force of the ocean and then craving that same feeling every moment of your life. Even if it’s just spending a session bobbing in the saltwater… it’s worth it.

Spending those four days with close friends and away from the city really made me question the way we spend our time, our money, our resources. We, as in ‘Rich and I’, but also as in ‘our society’. That experience was quickly followed by a natural dye workshop at Maiwa where the owner, Charllotte, talked about dyeing in India without the need for external energy sources. It’s so hot there, the water is always warm and the sun cooks and sets the natural dyes. The concept of energy-free, synthetic-free dyeing is marinating with me now… actually lots of new thoughts are marinating with me now.

What did you want to accomplish that you didn’t get to?

Oh, I’ve been dying to finish my naturally-dyed, handspun and handwoven Gotland blanket. That is something I would love to see completed. To wrap myself in cochineal and logwood… like a hug from nature, itself. An option now to finish it quicker is to use a millspun warp that I just dye up so that I don’t have to spin all the yardage for both warp and weft… but somehow that feels like cutting corners. So, I’m determined to persevere and create every last inch of this blanket.

What are you planning for 2007?

Changes.

Great Not-So-Big Green Blanket

I must have true finishing avoidance disorder. The Great Big Green Blanket that I am making for Michelle, well, I finished weaving it back in July. All I needed to do was finish the hemstiching at the starting edge of the blanket, trim the fringe and wet finish the blanket. It’s November now. So the unfinished blanket has been sitting there, patiently waiting, for four months now.

But last night, in a burst of energy (probably inspired by a yummy dinner at The Foundation) I sewed up my Lucy in the Sky Cardi and blocked it AND finished the blanket!

At first I attempted to wet finish the blanket by hand with a plastic tub full of warm water and lavender-scented woolwash. It was too tiring, so I took the wet blanket and dumped it in the washing machine. We have a front-loader and I’m told that front-loader washing machines are terrible for felting wool. So, I started up a full cycle on the machine with two glugs of Eucalan. Every few minutes, I’d stop the machine and take a look at the blanket… to see if it was fulling or felting too quickly. After about 15 or 20 minutes, I stopped the washing and set the machine to rinse and spin out. After another 15 or 20 minutes, almost all the water had been spun from the blanket. The resulting fabric was more cohesive, nicely fulled… and much smaller!

The blanket is originally 450 ends with a sett of 10 epi — so that would be 45″ on the loom. Then the measurement off the loom was 40″ x 78″. Already, the fabric had pulled in to be narrower… After fulling, the blanket is now 36″ x 62″. So the blanket shrunk 25% of it’s original size! Now, it’s a nice and compact lap blanket perfect for staying cozy on the couch.

The colours are, well, more intense than I had originally planned… because I misplaced a decimal point in my dye calculations… So the colours are basically ten times darker than I had intended… oops. But I’m completely pleased with the result. I took a clean stiff-bristled hairbrush and brushed the whole surface of the blanket (I brushed so hard I gave myself a workout AND a blister!). The delicately-coloured brushed mohair weft creates a beautiful hazy nap that softens the more intensely coloured wool warp. I’m so in love with this blanket, I want to make ten more just like it… in all different colours of course.