sweetgeorgia

On patience, on persistence

I’ve been working through my stash of spinning fibre… methodically and ever so slowly. I’ve been trying to stick to just one spinning project at a time and I don’t know why it took me so long to realize why I’m so slow… it’s because I spin everything so fine! I must have fallen into a dimension where I believe everything needs to start off being spun fine, so that if it gets plied, it will make it knitable. I think of plying fine lace singles into a balanced 2-ply lace yarn, or plying it navajo-style to make a three ply for socks, or even plying three bobbins of lace singles together to make a strong sock yarn. I don’t think fat, floopy yarns wear very well and it just negates making your own yarn… but the way I am just means that everything takes super long.

I’m about 1/4 of the way through spinning this Merino Bamboo Silk fibre… I checked the blog and it’s from way back in August 2010! I’ve taken the pound of fibre, split it vertically and spinning both halves very thinly. At the end, I’ll have two bobbins of lace singles that can be plied together. The colour chunks should roughly line back up and I’ll get broad stripes of colour when I finally knit this up.

Let’s see if I can get to the end… there is much spinning to do. And of course, I spin short-forward draw worsted-style, meaning it takes even longer. I hope good things come to those who wait.

Patience saved me upwards of $350! When “The Principles of Knitting” book was out of print, I was sorely tempted to buy it off E-bay but I just couldn’t afford or justify trying to afford to pay the $350 the book was going for at the time. Miraculously, June Hemmons Hiatt was convinced to come out with a revised edition of her book. Of course, editing the nearly 700-page tome took a long time as the entire book had to be re-typed by hand and all the 900 illustrations had to be re-created by her son. Now, it’s available for $30-something and it will forever live in my library as the most comprehensive book on knitting ever written.

When I heard June Hemmons Hiatt speak about the book at Vogue Knitting Live earlier last year, I had already pre-ordered and was waiting for delivery before Christmas. But she spoke up in her live interview with VK editor, Trisha Malcolm, and said it’s unlikely the book would be ready by Christmas. So, I would have to be patient.

I need to constantly remind myself to be patient, to be persistent. Small things done consistently to produce big results. Just keep at it. Maybe I’ll have all this spun up by next Christmas.

A light at the end of the tunnel

Things are coming together and there appears to be a light at the end of our very crowded, raw yarn-filled tunnel. If you’ve been to the 4th Avenue studio recently, you’ll know, there’s barely a foot-wide pathway through our entry hall into the studio. There’s so much yarn coming in and going out, and we’ve even added two more bodies to the studio, it’s becoming quite a squeeze. Constantly bumping into each other or having to crawl under racks of yarn to get from one table to another has gone beyond being mildy amusing… to pretty frustrating.

I’ve been looking for a new studio space for at least a year and a half now, and it’s been tremendously difficult because rents in Vancouver are especially high and the spaces are all extremely small or extremely large. I started actively courting our new studio space back in September and worked on the legal stuff all through October (while also juggling the incorporation of our business at the same time), and then the building proposal and drawings were submitted to the city in mid-November. Of course, with the holidays putting a damper on everyone’s workflow, we didn’t see the building permit approved until January 30, six weeks later.

But I’m so happy to say that I’ve been visiting the new studio space every couple days and things are progressing as far as I can see. The landlord is building out our shell space to include a second floor for our offices and a proper place to have lunch (the $5 Canadian Tire stool perched between bins of twisted yarns is not really my dream for how our girls have lunch every day). And on the main floor, we’ll be setting up the production dyeing area as well as a very small retail area for our on-hand yarns. There will be a separation too between the two areas so that I don’t have to worry about customers slipping on the wet floor and cracking their skulls open (something I worry about every time someone comes to visit right now… mainly, because I’ve slipped and fallen in the studio before myself). Last week, I saw that the main floor had been framed. And this week, the stairs and the upstairs offices have also been framed. I see electrical going in and hopefully this means we’re getting close.

The new studio is located at the opposite end of Main street from where we are now. Basically on East Kent Avenue South between Main and Fraser. Unfortunately, it’s not really a transit or pedestrian-friendly area… but if you drive, you’ll be happy to hear that there is TONS of free parking out front. No more having to fight to find street parking. Yay! (I think Carina will be happy about that one too).

The aim is to move immediately after FibresWest (March 16 and 17). So if I am a bit nutty at FW, please forgive me. We’ll be bringing basically everything we have in the studio for FibresWest… much of it will be on sale too. With all our TNNA order production in full swing right now, there is literally no space for more bodies at the current studio so it looks like FibresWest will be as close to a pre-moving sale as we can get! Hope to see you there… and then at the new studio.

Spinning & Dyeing Workshops this Spring at Place des Arts

With all the excitement around publishing the winners of the KAL, I nearly forgot to post about this! I’m very excited to be taking over the teaching of both of Irene Weisner’s workshops this Spring at Place des Arts. Irene was my instructor for a couple years at Place des Arts and I am half-thrilled, half-paralyzed by fear about stepping into her very big shoes. But spinning and dyeing have long been passions of mine and I’m looking forward to sharing this with more people.

Place des Arts will be offering one spinning workshop at the end of April and a dyeing workshop at the end of May.

Dyeing to Get Some Colour? (18+ years)

• Learn simple and creative methods to get the colours you want into your work such as immersion, hot pour, painting, top dye and batching. Bring some natural fibres (commercially spun or handspun yarn).
• 9053 • SA • May 26 • 12:30-4:30 PM • $55 + tax

Spinning Clinic (18+ years)

• Are you an inch-worm spinner? Do you need to improve your spinning technique? Or maybe you want to learn how to make funky art yarn. Our well-equipped fibre studio has many of the newer spinning wheels as well as three drum carders to blend creative mixes of fibres and colour.
• 9054 • SU • Apr 29 • 1:00 – 5:00 PM • $50 + tax

When we first opened the studio, I offered classes in spinning, weaving and dyeing, but gradually as our production dyeing work grew, it squeezed out the ability for us to hold classes in our little space. So this is wonderful to be able to return to teaching! Please feel free to ask me if you have questions about the workshops. Hope you might join us!

Winners of our Winter KAL

Waaay back in the early fall, Susan suggested we run a knit-along for the members in the SweetGeorgia Ravelry group. SUCH a great idea. There were nearly 70 finished objects entered for prizes and they were all either made with SweetGeorgia yarn or spinning fibre or made from a SweetGeorgia pattern. Here are our prize winners:

Andrea (arian624 on Ravelry) from Victoria is our Grand Prize winner who will received a skein each of Tough Love Sock, BFL Sock and Silk Crush sock in colours she’s picked (Summer Skin, Coastal and Riptide) as well as a set of all our patterns. Stella is a pretty strongly variegated colourway, but I’m so happy to see how the stitch pattern in the socks breaks up the colourway a bit and makes it so fun to look at.

Kate (Aelia on Ravelry) from Australia is our Second Place Prize winner who will received a skein of Tough Love Sock as well as a set of all our patterns. This Shaelyn shawl is so stunning! I’ve just downloaded a copy of the pattern to play with too.

Our third place winner is Grace (sprouts on Ravelry, who spins and knits the most lovely handspun). Grace receives a copy of all our patterns. I’m so happy her prize-winning shawl was knit up in our October 2011 Sock Club colourway, Rockwater! I love seeing this knit up.

And finally, Maya (mayapof on Ravelry) knit a beautiful North Wind hat that won her a fourth place prize… a gift from the lovely Julia at mindofwinter. CashLuxe Fine held double… so yum.

There were so many really exquisite projects, I wish I could link them all!

• iliketobike’s socks (beautiful texture)
• misocrafty’s Neither Here and There hat (such cool use of two contrasting colours)
• mayapof’s Plain and Simple pullover in Tough Love (Blackberry)
• luvinthemommyhood’s North Wind hat in my favourite colour, Raspberry
• pretty much all of sprout’s sock club projects… the Indian Wedding Jaywalkers, Sitka Dragonfly socks, Vampire Christmas Dragonfly socks… and you must see Cameron’s Winter Hose.

Thank you so much to Susan for her constant encouragement to all the participants and her hard work in putting this KAL together! Thank you to all the participants… I hope you enjoy all your finished objects! And of course, congratulations to the winners!

For all the Judith fans in Vancouver…

The Greater Vancouver Weavers and Spinners Guild is hosting their annual Memorial Lecture on Monday, March 5th, 2012 at 7:30 pm and they snagged the beloved Judith MacKenzie as their guest speaker:

ALL TEXTILE ENTHUSIASTS ARE INVITED TO THIS FREE LECTURE

Guest Speaker Judith MacKenzie presents “The Tinkuy Conference in the Sacred Valley of Peru”

Judith MacKenzie, has been a textile artist for the last 30 years. Her work appears in private and public collections. Judith teaches throughout North America, is a published author and regularly featured in Spin-Off Magazine.

In 2010, Judith was present when four hundred weavers of the Americas gathered in Urubamba, Peru, in the Sacred Valley near Cusco for Tinkuy de Tejedores. Participants travelled from the Navajo Nation, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and Peru for this unique textile conference. Judith will transport us to Tinkuy de Tejedores both visually and through her experiences to this ground breaking event.

The lecture will be held at: Kanata Co-operative Community Building, 7155 Blake Street, Vancouver, BC.