purlsandmurmers

The knitting goblins were out this weekend

In many ways the past weekend was a bitter disappointment.  Not that anything bad happened, just that what was hoped for also did not occur, and exhaustion and frustration truly ruled the roost.

To begin with, I had sincerely looked forward to going to Rhinebeck.  The NYS Sheep and Wool festival was going to be my escape from the hubbub that has surrounded me the past few weeks, not that the fair grounds would be quiet, but that it would be a different kind of activity, one in which I could either partake or just sit and watch as the mood struck.

It didn't happen quite that way.

The woodpeckers were back and I have gaping holes on one side of the house.  I don't know what prompted this.  We have lived in this wood sided house for 24 years and never had woodpecker problems until last year.  I thought they were gone.  They're back.   The WPP (Wood Pecker People) could only come on Saturday and I knew where my priorities had to be.    Then someone else, another contractor, needed to come on Sunday to finish up a job that had been rained out earlier in the week.  There were too many people around, schedules were being changed constantly, nerves were frayed.

Saturday morning we got a call that the crew would not be out until after 2 so I thought it would be a good chance to run up to Rhinebeck for a few hours.  DH wanted to go too, but we were both tired and short on sleep, and none to focused.  It was probably a mistake.  We looked at the animal barns and I thought I took pictures, but obviously there was an operator malfunction and only one picture, of llamas, actually was retained on my camera:

I also saw a few favorite bloggers, talked to a few people, looked around, and even bought some yarn (more about that in another post).

One thing we were looking for was a nice wool that I could felt to make a nice thick, soft on the feet, bathmat for outside our shower door.  I can't find one that is just the right shade and size, and since, for various reasons, we decided to replace the wool carpeting in our bedroom with an actual floor, I thought a soft wool mat would be a nice compromise.

I knew that I did not want superwash wool.  We found two vendors that had something in the color we wanted, but one was superwash and therefore not right.  But we were running around, and we were tired.  In the end, I was getting overwhelmed from the choices and DH was getting grumpy and we had to go and I just bought the yarn....

AND GUESS WHAT?

I bought the wrong one.

DUH.

Beautiful yarn from Brooks Farm.  The lovely colors are just perfect for my master bedroom and bath.  But it doesn't felt.  You can beat it up in the wash, run it through the dryer all you want, and it just becomes softer and softer, but it does not felt. 

Only afterwards did I look at the label and say "Oh".  I got confused.  And that wasn't the least of it.  I wound one skein of yarn while I was so exhausted that I just wanted nothing more than for the two workmen to go home so I could sleep.  I was interrupted in the middle and I apparently let the yarn wind back on itself inadvertently, and I may have wound it too tightly as well, because when I pulled the center yarn from the ball to start knitting a huge tangled mass leapt off my lap and spun itself around the room in a tangled mass of fibers which will take me hours, if not days, to unravel.

And you know, in the end it is all kind of  hilarious.  And I have a 10 x 11 inch doll blanket, or cat blanket, or something.    I'll just buy Cascade for the bathmat.  And I am not going to save this yarn, not because I don't love it, but just because sometimes it is better to just cut one's losses and move on.

There are two skeins remaining (see above photo, lower left for a picture of the yarn).

Brooks Farm Yarn
Solana Superwash merino wool
5.8 ounces   320 yards each (640 yards total)
Color ES18
beige/natural/blue
MSRP $24.00 per skein.

$30.00 will buy both skeins plus a partial wound skein (I will not subject the tangled mess on anyone) including shipping.  If you are interested email me at:

mardelATsewdistractedDOTcom

with a subject of YARN and I will get back to you with PayPal information.

Purple

Gray:  Damp, dark, dank, dreary.  These are the words that come to mind recently as the weather turned cool and rainy.  The house is dark.  It is none too thrilling outside either. Although it has been cool and damp all week, the temperature barely topping 70 degrees, today is much hotter, 81 degrees at 11 AM. , hotter yet before the end of the day. Still there is no sun.  We have traded cool damp and dreary for hot, heavy and sodden and still gray.  For the first morning this week there is no fog, but the air remains thick.  The house remains dark.

Is it any wonder that my urge to knit a pretty, frilly, white piece of froth has fallen by the wayside.  My thoughts have been on Fall knitting all week, although today's heavy heat reminds me that it will be some time before wools are inviting against the skin. 

If only knitting Passel would insure the return of hot sunny days frolicking among the flowers.  I want to knit it.  I want to wear it.  I dream of wearing the feminine white sweater with white pants in the bright sunshine.  Here we are, heading into September and I still crave white, white and bright colors. 

As I headed out for Thursday Knitting I was primed for distraction.

Enter a new shipment of Alchemy Silken Straw: The colors were absolutely stunning.  I wanted to grab them all and run off with them, hording them flike precious gems filled with life-giving brightness, saving them up to illuminate future somber darkness-filled days.    The texture intrigued.  I had no mental reference points for how this would knit.  What kind of fabric would it produce?  Obviously there would be some crispness there, but would the silk soften?  Would it produce a soft draping fabric or a scrunchy crisp drape?

I indulged in a skein just to play.  I decided to knit a swatch and wash it to see what kind of fabric is produced.  It is not an inexpensive yarn.  $28 to produce a swatch may be expensive to one way of thinking, but it is cheaper than a symphony ticket, and probably provides far more hours of entertainment.  One skein is also much easier on the pocketbook than many skeins which prove to be wrong for the intended project.

I didn't have the right size of needle with me, so I ended up buying size 3 bamboo needles.  The yarn calls for size 4 US, and I knit loosely so 3 seemed like a good starting point.

It was a mistake.  I had difficulty casting on the yarn.  My gauge was inconsistent. Splits were a big problem.  As soon as I came home and switched to metal needles all went smoothly again.  As you can see in the photo, everything got much smoother when I switched from bamboo (at the bottom of the swatch on the right).  The splitting problem also went away.  I wonder if I can return them -- after I only used them a few hours in the shop.

I often find that I am much more likely to split a yarn when using bamboo than when using metal needles.  Even though I am a loose knitter, and  I might think that my gauge would be looser on metal than on wood, I find that the opposite is true.  I struggle less with the yarn on  the metal and therefore  I am more consistent.

I am not far along yet.  I don't know how the swatch will be affected by washing, but already the yarn is softer than it appeared in the skein.  I am starting to dream of lacy knitted things and lovely little camisoles and tanks.    This morning I looked up the Shirley Paden pattern in the summer Interweave knits.  That is another possibility.  Ah, knitting dreams.  I don't need more yarn or more pending projects, but my dreams are not hampered by such practical considerations.

But for now, this scrunchy little bit of purple silk is making me very happy.
New yarn had arrived at Yarn Central when we gathered for knitting last night.

Native American Art

Sunday dawned bright and free of obligations.  I hoped to seize the opportunity to spend time on my knitting and my sewing, as I am getting to a point where I am pretty desperately in need of clothes.   Indeed I did spend a few hours at the sewing machine even though that meant spending less time knitting. 

Whereas I looked forward to a day with "nothing to do", G was less thrilled and was, immediately after breakfast, scanning the papers looking for diversions to occupy our time.  I have enough diversions here in the house.  There are times I could happily spend days here not going out, just knitting and sewing.  But not so the male member of this household.  Instead he suggested an excursion consisting of lunch and a museum visit, not at all a bad way to spend a hot Sunday afternoon.

Following a nice lunch of Vietnamese cuisine we ventured over to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center  at Vassar College where we wished to peruse an exhibit of Native American Art called Forms of Exchange. 

The exhibit was well worth while, small but choice, primarily consisting of contemporary pieces of artwork from three distinct groupings of Native Americans.  I think most of the pieces were stunning and the development from some older styles, and the occasional cross-referencing of forms and ideas between peoples and with modern western culture were very interesting as well.

There were wonderful Inuit drawings and prints, some shocking modern, some quite tradtional, several of which made wonderful commentaries on the juxtaposition of traditional and modern lives.  The detail and the spirit in many of these pictures is amazing. Aside from the merits of this painting as a work of art, I can't get the combinations of colors and shapes, the flow of space out of mind.  This appeals to the part of me that loves to play with color and fabric and yarn, as well as the part of me that enjoys looking at art.

The pottery was from the southwest and was overwhelmingly beautiful.  I kept wandering around pieces, staring, studying the patterns, admiring the skill, the development of skills and culture over time, the evoltuion of art.  Gee that sounds tremendously pretentious doesn't it.  Not so.  Tremendously overwhelming for a small exhibit it was, at least for this paltry brain.

I loved looking at the traditional shapes, which of course I have seen many of in the past, and even more appreciated studying these contemporary works which all draw upon traditional forms and patterns but are strikingly modern, sometimes almost startlingly so.

The Iroquois baskets were beautifully intricate and delicate looking and the witty modern basket made from film strips, shown if you click on the link to the gallery above, makes me smile just with the thought of it.  The embroidery was also stunning.  The skill and detail appealed to the fiber artist in me, even if the form of the work did not appeal to my more modern and geometric aesthetic.

You don't really get a sense of the work from this photo.  What looks like embroidery on rough cloth is beadwork on velvet or velveteen.  Stunning.  This is a contemporary work done in an older style.  I marvel at how nicely the work is done and I can't imagine doing anything like it myself.

Green

Its always spring in the new sewing/fiber room!

Orchids

The knitting progress is not very photogenic at the moment, but the orchids are:

It always amazes me how, in the midst of chaos, one small oasis of peace always persists.

Christmas Yarn

A couple of gifts of yarn are going under the tree:

This is actually a kit for a scarf.  The yarns are by Anny Blatt and are fairly subtle.  Unfortunately I could not get them to photograph well.  They were either too washed out and came back almost white, or they were too dull and gray.  The colors of the slate on the front porch echos the colors in the yarn pretty well  and the camera picked up on that.  The yarn is a little more intense here than it actually appears, but only a tad.

The Noro was the intended gift and I am sure the recipient will love this.  The first, I am not so sure, but the colors really spoke to me, and I hope she likes them too.

Weekend Update

It has been quite a busy weekend, and quite a lovely one as well, despite the very rainy start. Friday was a crazy busy day where I had little control over time or schedule until I boarded the train for Manhattan at 3:30.   The dinner and the concert were lovely and we had a great time.  Sometime during the concert the rain stopped, and it had mostly stopped at home as well by the time we returned around 2 AM. .

Needless to say we did not rise at dawn to make the opening bell of the NY Sheep and Wool Festival, but wandered in around noon, probably during peak crowd.   I had a wonderful time.  This fair is certainly much bigger than it was 10 years ago and that is a very nice thing.  The sheep, llamas, alpacas, and bunnies were still there and they still had the animal shows and shearing contests etc, all of which are part of what makes the event fun in my mind.  There were far more vendors and many more sophisticated ones that a few years back and I had a lot of fun looking at all the wares and wandering around the stalls talking to people and fondling fibers.

Oddly,  I did a lot of looking but not a lot of buying.  The whole thing was somewhat overwhelming.  Now, at the end of the weekend, I have a much better sense of the thing and a much better idea of what to expect next year and how to go about the entire “fair experience” in a more manageable way.  I had fun anyway.  I did buy two yarns on Saturday, shown here:

This is Haiku by Alchemy yarns.  I couldn't get the color to come out right.  It is really much more red, a deep burgundy wine color, with bits of purple, but more red overall.  I got it from the Amazing Threads stall, even though the store is just in Saugerties, a few miles up the road.  Still, I saw it now and knew I had to have it.

This color is much more true.  This is a blended yarn I got from a place called Potpourri yarn by Greta Dise.  She had a lot of fibers for spinning and was quite busy.

I was amazed at the quantity and variety of rovings and fibers for spinning and felting.  I admit I was sorely tempted to take up spinning, just to be able to spin some of the wonderful fibers; some of them truly took my breath away.  I am not opposed to the idea of spinning, I have been tempted before, but I don’t know how I would ever fit it in.  Some of the things I saw definitely lead me closer to accepting that I eventually will learn to spin.  I enjoyed looking at wheels and hand spindles and think that when I do decide to learn to spin, I would start with the hand spindle type of spinning, just because it is a more modest investment and I have a tendency to go whole hog investing in things and then dawdle along before I fully utilize them.  I do believe that if I do start to spin, I will eventually move up to a wheel and I dream of eventually using my great-grandmothers walking wheel, assuming that Mom would pass it on to me.

At any rate I did purchase some bits of fiber and rovings, dyed beautiful colors, which I intend to use playing with felting, although I think of felting as more of a sewing-related activity and will post those rovings and my progress there at my other blog,  sewdistracted.  I suppose I really did not need two blogs, but I felt, and still feel, that the potential for a combined blog was just too cluttered with different kinds of stuff, especially if I wanted to go into all the boring detail of work on projects.  Besides sewing gives me opportunity to explore all the whole fabric, fabric creation, and fabric embellishment ideas that I am interested in and knitting and the meanderings of my mind as I knit offer another whole range of topics and explorations.

After Rhinebeck on Saturday I still had to go grocery shopping.  My order had arrived at Adams and I picked up two cases of Old Chatham Sheepherding Yogurt ( a two week supply) and was assured that I would have a standing order for two cases every two weeks.  I am so lucky in that I love this stuff and now I get to indulge in it on a regular basis.  My daily yogurt fix is my idea of the ultimate luxury. So I got to go home from the Sheep fair and have sheep yogurt.  How wonderful!

There was no yogurt indulgence until after I drove around two counties in search of the new Vogue Knitting.   I don’t know what happened to my subscription; it is possible that I just renewed a little late and it got delayed, but I could wait no longer.  While I was in Kingston, after going to Adams, I ran down to Barnes and Noble to buy the magazine but they did not have it!!!  I had not been able to locate it in Grand Central Terminal on Friday either.  Desperation set in.  I knew I had seen it at the Barnes and Noble in Poughkeepsie a few days earlier, and of course I was crazed with desire.  All rational thought and reason had fled my body by that point so I drove to Poughkeepsie where I did manage to get the magazine.    Once I was back home I was able to constrain myself long enough to put away groceries before opening the VK, and I made myself a bowl of yogurt and honey to enjoy while I perused the magazine.  Nothing quite like dessert before dinner.  I am glad I did buy the magazine, there was a sweater that instantly made me think of a yarn I had seen up the Sheep&Wool festival, and several other things that I think have potential.

Luckily, my darling husband had gone to the gym after we left the wool festival and had stopped by the office after that so he was not home until late – good because it was nearly 8 when I got home – nearly 10 before he rolled in. 

I made a wonderful, simple, dinner of rainbow trout, pan roasted with a glaze that I made by boiling down a cup of balsamic vinegar until it was thick and combining it with a syrup made by boiling down fresh grapefruit juice.  This balsamic-grapefruit glaze, drizzled over the trout, offset the sweetness of the trout and glossed over that little bitter aftertaste that I often find in rainbow trout.  I also picked up fresh kohlrabi, sugar snap peas, and shiitake at a local farm stand, so we had peas with shiitake, and a slaw made of the kohlrabi, red bell pepper, slivered poblano pepper, and aioli.  Mmmmm Good!

Sunday found me back at the fair, then busy at home while we rewired the stereo system because we were getting some fuzziness in the sound and some unpleasant rumblings.  There were a couple of bad splices in the wiring, which I replaced and things are much better.  The entire system is old and needs to be upgraded but it will all have to wait until after the rebuilding of the decks, which has now been scheduled for spring, After that I had to catch up on laundry and ironing, basic important weekend tasks, and we drove up to Saugerties, to our favorite restaurant, Café Tamayo, for an early anniversary dinner.

I still have to photograph Sunday’s take from Rhinebeck and catch you up with my knitting progress over the last several days.  Needless to say, nothing has been finished but significant progress has been made on a couple of fronts.

Pardons

Pardon the strange sizing and typing in my earlier post. I was trying to do something reasonable, the phone line went down three times during that post, each time I got it back I couldn't see what had been done before.

No excuse really, but I don't have time to deal right now and there is too much to do.

Sanity will return sometime.

[update] I might have it fixed.  Any remaining bugs will probably sit.  If it is really weird, let me know.

A little bit of fluff

A simple scarf in anticipation of the winter which is yet to come, and we know it will.

Gedifra Barocco, 2 skeins.  Scarf is approximately 7" by 42". Knit on size 15 needles.  Very Fast; no thought required. 

Sometimes that is the best kind of project.