sweetgeorgia

“A good day for playing hooky…”

That’s what the weatherman said this morning on the radio. That lovely (or terrible) hot weather everyone else is enjoying is making it’s way to Vancouver and today will be a lovely 26°C. But no playing hooky for me today — there is a ton of work to do.

Congrats to Betzig of Stitchcounter who was the randomly-drawn winner for the contest! And thanks to everybody for the lovely birthday wishes!!

It’s funny, a few years ago, I was trying to decide whether or not I should go to art school, full-time (after having already completed a Bachelors at UBC — because I’m crazy about school?!?). In the end, I decided against it since I would have graduated at 29 and I really, genuinely felt that by 29 I shouldn’t be “starting” my life… that I should be “complete” with a proper career, proper husband, proper family and lifestyle, blah blah blah. Well, life just doesn’t turn out as you expect, eh? If, at that time, someone had told me that I’d be dyeing my own yarn with ground up bugs, spinning yarn from raw fleece, or completely obsessed with weaving… I would have laughed.

But here is the beauty of where things are at… inspired, energetic, passionate and unfinished:

By the way, spinning cotton? So humbling.

Secret Cove

Life has thrown me a few happy, crazy, angsty days since my last post on Thursday. Jen and I are both long-time volunteers involved in the organization of the annual DanceSport BC SnowBall Classic DanceSport event and we spent the past couple days tucked away in the Sunshine Coast participating in a massive strategic planning meeting that covers all things “SnowBall” from now until 2010. It was eight or nine hours a day of thinking, analyzing, dreaming, planning — all very inspiring. It’s so uplifting to be around people who are all so optimistic and enthusiatic. Their passion is palpable. The entire committee stayed at the gorgeous Rockwater Secret Cove Resort in Halfmoon Bay.

When we weren’t indoors, this is what we got to see:

And this is what we did each evening after dinner:

Jen is borrowing my Ashford Joy wheel indefinitely and so we were both spinning and chatting until late each night. A perfect way to relax after all that work — and I managed to get more of my Gotland spun up. Relaxing AND productive. No better combination.

As for the angst, see this lovely new 50/50 silk/wool laceweight yarn that I dyed?

Well, I can’t decide if I like it as the Diamond Fantasy Shawl or as the Kiri Shawl. Ridiculous, no? I started knitting each shawl from either end of the same ball of yarn… I’ll let you know which shawl wins out… when I decide.

Lovely and amazing.

I have been secretly in love with Rachael since she knit Alice Starmore’s Cromarty in custom-dyed Koigu Kersti. She is not so secretly in love with Lala. And last night, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting them both after their wedding here in Vancouver. A lovely and amazing couple.

Also at the Sylvia Hotel reception last night were Mandy (Yarnageddon) and Janice (Rabbitch) who were the witnesses at the ceremony, Zak (Mandy’s DH), Rachael (photographer), Siew and Heather. All lovely and amazing people.

Of course, I was too shy to bring my camera, so you can go see Rabbitch’s photos here… or Rachael’s photos here…

Oh, and in case I accidentally gave anybody the impression that I spun up all the silk for the Flower Basket Shawl in one day (!)… this is the entirety of what I spun:

It’s a teeny tiny amount, but just enough to knit up a sample!

The Good Girl

I went to Fibre Fest and didn’t buy anything.

Well actually, I did. I bought Michelle and Jo each a “Topknot” from Aurelia Wool & Weaving to see if it would push them over the edge and get them spinning. Heh. They both attended the drop spindle demo and then we spent much of the afternoon going from booth to booth to test the different spindles. The girls finally settled on a couple spindles made by Dave Smith/Shari Hamilton (similar to the one I bought in November at the Langley event). Michelle’s spindle is made from Jatoba. Sounds cool to me.

Over the five and a half hours that we spent shopping, I was such a good girl and didn’t buy anything. But Michelle bought me a ball of Bamboo yarn from Jane Stafford’s booth. Beautiful stuff. Laura Fry’s Weaving Studio was also offering a number of handpainted skeins of Bamboo yarn and I saw it woven up — lovely, soft and drapey fabric. And I heard it doesn’t pill!

I didn’t buy anything because, well, I have lots of stuff to play with already. So, on Sunday, I spent some quality time with my carder and some bombyx silk/merino top that I dyed a couple months ago. I’m in love with the carded batts at The Silkworker, so I decided to take my crumpled looking top and fluff it up with the drum carder.

I took one batt, stripped it vertically a couple times and spun it up from end to end. Andean plied the whole thing and washed the yarn. By evening, it was dry enough to knit up. This is going to be yet another Flower Basket Shawl (Evelyn Clark, Interweave Knits Fall 2004). I love how it feels kind of powdery and crunchy all at the same time — like fresh snow.

So handspun it hurts

Use your handspun. It’s the only way you can determine if your spinning is any good. I read that somewhere and it’s stuck in the back of my mind all the time now.

Last May, I bought 1/2 lb of Ashland Bay merino roving from Penelope Fibre. It sat in the stash for a few weeks because I was intimidated by it and worried that I might ruin it. I sucked up the courage to start spinning it laceweight. Finally, in January, I finished all the spinning and started knitting the Lotus Blossom Shawl.

This is my real first, large-scale handspun and handknit project… and here it is off the needles:

Lotus Blossom Shawl

• Pattern: from Fiddlesticks Knitting, designed by Dorothy Siemens
• Yarn: Handspun Laceweight Merino (I have about half of my spinning leftover! So I must have used about 100 g)
• Needles: US 6 / 4.0 mm Addi Turbos
• Changes: I used a smaller needle size just because I didn’t have any other needles handy, so I had to knit chart 2 twice to give the shawl extra length
• Finished Measurements: 70″ x 35″ (definitely smaller than the pattern specs, just slightly bigger than my blocking board).

What are things that people always say about spinning laceweight… the singles need lots of twist to hold the finer diameter, take all the tension off so that you can get lots of twist in, blah blah blah. This handspun is irregular in grist because I spun it over such a long period of time, was still getting a hang of spinning fine and also because I switched wheels part way through! But in some places, I think the yarn had so much twist that it became wirey and dense. If I were to do it again, I would spin it all a little softer.

This leads me to sampling. What a good idea. It’s like knitting a gauge swatch (which we always do, right?!). How does the fabric feel knit at that tension with those needles. How about going up a needle size, going down a size? Is the fabric too dense? Too drapey? When your knitting with commercial yarns, the yarn itself is taken out of the equation — it’s your job to just pick the most appropriate needle size for that yarn (ok, I’m oversimplifying). But when you are making the yarn, you need to look at how your yarn works up as fabric and if it is appropriate — will it be hardwearing? Will it pill or fuzz? All those variables are under your control now. So, spin a little bit, knit a little bit. See if you like it.

That’s what I’ve done with this new project:

There’s about 2 oz of Cashmere/Silk 50/50 top that I bought from Deep Color Studio this past November… Again, nervous about spinning it up and ruining it. So I tore off a little piece and spun it up laceweight using my new highspeed bobbins and whorl (I’m using 19.5:1 for spinning singles “from the fold” and 17.5:1 for plying). I washed the yarn and have started knitting it up in Evelyn Clark’s “Trellis Scarf” pattern from the Spring IK magazine. I figured if I liked it, I could keep going. If I didn’t like it, I could just go back and modify how I’m spinning it. As it turns out, I like it.