Every girl needs a good hunk o' wood.

Can't talk. Spun madly. Three bunny balls and a batt in two days. Transferred projects to ziploc and safe bamboo circs. Getting on plane in six hours...In state of utter panic. This is, I'm told, relatively normal. So, in lieu of a long post, I give you photographic evidence of my preholiday insanity.

Exhibit A: Felted slippers for husband.
Husband claims that "Wow, it would be really cool
to have a pair of those in black and grey
is not a request for a pair. I disagreed.

And if he doesn't like them, I'll steal them. This is the prefelted one, and the pair is great, though I did not have time to photograph them. I'll photograph them later when I've added one eye, complete with eyebrow, to each toe. I'm not kidding...that's what he asked me to do. (Yes, they are very fuzzy. He sees fuzzy, he thinks Muppets, apparently....)

I spun up an entire big batt of this wonderful Grafton wool.
Then I used the nostepinne and finally figured out,
thanks to help from the commenters, how to create
perfect little center-pull balls.

I no longer want a ball-winder. When I told Mamacate that I was in love with my nostepinne, she said, "Suuuuuure you are...." She wondered aloud if ball-winding was all I was doing with the nostepinne.

Would you believe me if I told you that nostepinning is all in the wrist?

Just look at that. Perfection.
That's a bunny-ball turned into a real live,
red-hot centerpull ball. That's lust, baby.

And on that note, I give you Mamacate herself, "The Reason for the Season," which if you have not read yet, you should. What a woman. She has said better than anyone I know exactly what I need to hear, at this time of the year and all year long.

Happy everything. See you in two weeks. Rock on.

December 23, 2005 12:20 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (14)  | Print

This Calls For Another Glass of Whine

I haven't been completely satisfied with my first handspun-knitted-not-a-bunny FO experience, I have to say. There is something about watching your gorgeous stitch definition disappear that makes you feel a bit...I don't know...like you didn't really knit that, much less spin it...and yes, I said "disappear." Uh, you might need to be sitting down for this. And pour yourself a good dose of your favourite coping beverage, okay?

I'm talking about that glossy, floppy, love-in-a-bag llama that I was spinning up for a neckwarmer for Spiff. Well, I finished the neckwarmer, and I even took it for a test drive. The drape was fabulous, the feel against the face was divine, and I proudly gave it to Spiff, with all the love a person can put into the giving of a neckwarmer to one's spouse. With one's clothes on, that is.

Gorgeous. The neckwarmer's nice, too.

I sent e-mails to him throughout the day. "Did your neckwarmer keep you warm?" Reply: "I haven't used it yet." Lunchtime: "So? How do you like your neckwarmer?" Reply: "I, uh, haven't gone to lunch yet, I'm WORKING." Oh. Okay. Better wait. He's showing signs of annoyance here and we don't want to jeopardize the chances of the first handspun, handknitted object being completely adored as it should be...bragged about to the coworkers...how wonderful it is that I spun and knit this to keep my darling man warm and safe from the cold....

Heuuuu, NOT. The post-lunch reply: "This thing is too big, it flops around, it's too drapey, and it doesn't cover my nose. I can't use it if it doesn't cover my nose. This is Canada. My face is cold. Do you think maybe you could shrink it?"

Lest you misinterpret the request, my husband did not ask for a smaller face. No, indeed. It's much more drastic than that. It wasn't even an option to rip it (the neckwarmer, that is) and reknit it, because llama drapes no matter what you do to it. Except for one thing you CAN do to bulk up the fabric and lose the drape. Yep, you guessed it:

My husband asked me to felt the llama.

Oh. My. God. My beautiful handspun...my glossy llama...my limited-edition-no-one-has-this lovely fibre....

A lesser woman would have told him to shrink this, buddy, or give back the neckwarmer. I, however, decided that since the whole purpose of this venture was to please the wearer, I had to buck up and attempt to shrink the neckwarmer, as requested. I am not going to be someone's wacky great-aunt-in-training who persistently knits the very thing the recipient would sooner eat ground glass than wear in public. Not that a gorgeous, floppy, glossy llama cowl (because that's really what this garment turned out to be) can be classified in the same range as those neon red reindeer sweaters, but for a guy who isn't the glossy, floppy cowl type, this was just not going to work.

And dude. I can't let my husband's nose get frostbitten. I love my husband's nose. He hates it, but that's his problem. I think it's gorgeous.

Oooookay. Here's where the faint of heart, the YOU WHAT???-sayers, and the people who have never fallen in love with a guy and his nose might want to look away.

I felted the llama. On purpose.

I also whipstitched together two ribs for every ten, to further resize,
making ridges that pop out. Industrial llama chic.
A real snowtire. Do that once, and it's a stupid move.
Evenly space it, and it's a well-thought-out pattern.
I feel like Teva Durham.

Call me a weak woman for caving and doing this to a perfectly beautiful fibre, but believe you me, every time I put this thing through the hot-water paces, I checked to make sure it was still as glossily soft as ever. If it had started to lose that softness, I would have put a stop to this nonsense and would have kept it for myself. (I have my standards. They're bizarre, but they're standards nonetheless.) I assure you that it never lost that glossy feel, and I'm thinking that if I ever get an unlimited source of this stuff, it would be fabulous for a curly-lamb style hat. That's what it feels like now, the softest curly lamb ever.

Yes, that would be a wee bit of pain in my eyes.
But the neckwarmer does, indeed, cover one's nose
and you can't make it budge by jumping around.
Yes, I tried. It stayed. In fact, I might steal it.

So, after the jumping-up-and-down-the-hallway test (exactly as dorky as it sounds), I realised that I had created the perfect thing I hadn't intended to create, and the wearer would be happy. Not to mention about as warm as a human can get. And it's sooooo soft. It's the ideal next-to-the-face Canadian winter neckwarmer. Because this stuff, once felted, is not going to let anything in: not snow, not wind, not rain, not fear of sniffing dogs, not cognac from a pocket flask...

Oh wait, that's the postman's mantra. Sorry, I'm a little disoriented from the PFSD (post-felting stress disorder).

I am not going to tell you how many glasses of wine or how many times through the washer this took to create the perfect hyperwarm neckwarmer for my beloved. I will, however, tell you that when Spiff finally took out the Canadian Tire new-and-improved version of the neckwarmer for a test-drive in the cold, he said those fabulous little words every knitter loves to hear:

"Your thing? It's really, really HOT."

Yeah, baby. Back at you. I'll felt for this guy any time.

Okay, alright, so he meant "warm." But he's French, and I'm delusional, so I'm choosing to believe he thinks felted llama neckwarmers are sexy. Shut up.

It may seem bizarre to jump right into another felting project after this little brush with insanity tailoring session, but I figured, you know, desensitization is the way to go in these cases. So I took the most heinous pink yarn I've seen in a long time, custom-dyed for my daughter by Norma, and blended it with a dark purplish red Galway to make these:

These are the felted slippers from Knitting At Knoon.
And you'll never guess who wants a pair next.
No, not the pony. And for the record,
I did NOT buy that pony.

I knit these over the course of two three-hour waiting room sessions in the Neuropsychology department at our nearest hospital. Kid evaluations. It was not lost on me, however, that I might be making matters worse for the other patients by knitting with what I can only describe as Neon Barbie yarn. The seventy-year-old stroke patients trying to retrain their brains to "look right, look right" while they were navigating the hallways had to regress a bit and "look away" when they came past the waiting room door, just to avoid further retina damage. It should not, therefore, surprise you that not one soul asked me what I was knitting, although one person did say to another as they passed by, "I hear knitting's back. I'm not sure I'd ever do that, though...."

The felting, in this case, really, really helps. The second colour, too. And Norma, she LOVES them. You knew she would. You're evil, but you're wonderful.

Two more pairs are in the works, because my mother-in-law informs me her house is not heated and the floors are cold. (They have heat. They just don't turn it on. I do NOT understand French people.) I will be making the adult version of these in black and grey, of course. And for me, embarrassingly, I have to make the Youth size, because I have "hairless hobbit" feet. Small and square. Maybe I'll do mine in red.

Well, you didn't think I was going to wear pink, did you? I'm just not that kind of hobbit.

December 17, 2005 2:03 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (23)  | Print

If you couldn't find any weirdness...

...maybe we'll just have to make some!" —Calvin and Hobbes

One of these camelids is not like the other....

I spindle better than I wheel. You will not, therefore, be surprised to know that I can parallel park a pickup truck in a VW-sized space. But at a grocery store, where the parking lines are neatly drawn for you, with circles and arrows all over them, so even a complete novice can manage to park properly, I need a freaking laser level and a police officer.

I'm not telling you what I need the police officer for.

I'm way too stressed lately. I've been finishing up a major job, then worrying about being unemployed, which lasted for about ten minutes until my cellphone rang (miraculously and oddly, I had recharged it for the first time in months) and I became employed again while driving home in a snowstorm, as long as I could manage the job in the next half hour. As Bob The Builder says, Yes We Can. Because We Don't Say No. We Are Hyperactive.

I've also been scrambling to try to get my kid into a school which does not put her into catechism classes without asking me (we are not only not Catholic, we are a wee bit on the atheist side...) and which will understand that a child who is hypersensitive to sound might possibly have a hard time being placed in the loudest and most boisterous of the first grade classes in her school.

I have also been tearing my hair out over alpaca roving. Suffice it to say that I seem to thrive on the difficult and fuck up the easy. Every wheel spinner I know tells me they find spindling more difficult. But I'm here to say that the llama on the wheel was, well, not easy, but doable. The red Fleece Artist merino was a breeze...laceweight on the wheel, no problem. The alpaca, for which I have waited...the baby alpaca...sniff, sniff...okay, I'll just admit it right here: I can't spin that stuff on Hitchhiker to save my life.

Oh, sure, blame the wheel. Seriously, the slippery stuff,
merino/tencel included, needs twist and needs it NOW.
Not gonna happen with this wheel.
Just look at that crappy spinning job. Awful.

So, what's a girl to do when the twist is not twisting and the baby alpaca is in danger of being utterly wasted on overspun Crayola, but someone wants a scarf and this means yardage? Um, I mean, metreage? Emergency instant message to the SpindiCate. Who told me I ought to consider learning to spin from the fold, and that might solve my problem, but in the meantime did I know she bought a loom and a certain very understanding partner was starting to wonder why she had a certain wicked fast wheel in the house she was not using and wasn't it taking up too much room and couldn't she find a place for it?

So, uh, she did. Sometime in the next few months, I'm going to become a wheel slut. I can't afford the Lendrum I wanted, which would have allowed me to be Speedy Gonzales with the slippery stuff, so instead I'm doing things the old way. The "every lady worth her fibre has a wheel for the rough stuff and a wheel for the laceweight" way. This means double-drive, baby. Antique Saxony. God, I'm practically drooling and I haven't even seen the thing yet. It is similar to Cate's HEN, which was the first wheel I spun on, ever, and we were quite a pair, that wheel and I...so I expect that this Saxony will become my partner in silk laceweight crime in no time.

So, why do I feel like I'm wimping out, spindling this alpaca? I'll try it from the fold, once I have a free bobbin (why, yes, I'm still knitting the snowtire straight from the third bobbin and I now need a fourth. Why do you ask?). Well, here's a close-up of why I'm sticking with the spindle for this particular fibre for now:

Ouache, this stuff spins up fast, and beautifully.
Please ignore the hobbit hand.

I feel better, however, knowing that there is a new magazine online for people like me who have a thing for spindles. It's called Spindlicity, and many people you know from the knitblogging world are already in there, spinning up a storm and designing cool stuff to use up miniskeins of handspun. Gauntlets, baby. I'm so there, once I'm so not working so much. Which, luckily for my paycheck but very bad for the holiday knitting, seems to never be destined to happen. I see no vacation in my future. (Two weeks with in-laws is under NO circumstances a vacation. This is just a fact. You know I'm right.)

I promised photos of the bunnycrack, and I'm crapping out on you again because, well, today is when I took photos and today it snowed. No light. So I have done a "study in reddish gifties and purchases" to whet your whistle. Next post, promise, bunnycrack in two colours. Maybe even some spun up if I decide that sleep is optional.

Fugue à la rouge.

A brief guide to the wonders of red: Top ball is gorgeous red wool roving from my better pal, Beth, aka Big Geek. Small ball on right is Suri Merino from Beth, too. Yum. Braided roving is Fleece Artist merino I bought in Montréal. YES. Sad sack nostepinded Fleece Artist KidSilk is bottom middle. Barbie Pink yarn is hand-dyed by none other than Norma.
Galway dark red will help me make felted mittens with Barbie yarn.

Not a bad haul, eh? And this does not even include the Llama from Heaven. I'll tell you about that next time, and post pictures. But for now, I can say that I've found THE llama person for me. Her stuff is just what I wanted, and I'm thrilled to have it. I have to have a new room just for the camelid fibre, I swear. Because I kind of ordered a fleece. Shut up.

Regarding the massive ball of still-unidentified wool and the sooooo-soft Suri Merino, Beth gave me truly delicious stuff in the Better Pal swap, and she is the source of the Cari Hair locks you saw earlier as well. A challenge. I love Beth. Thanks to her, I might also learn to unwind a silk pod. And Norma gleefully informed me that yes, she does realise that this Barbie yarn is hideously pink. And that when (not if) I turn it into felted mittens for my daughter (what??? you thought I was using it for me??? yeeeeeek...), I should perhaps consider mixing it with something else to tone it down. Enter, tasteful Galway from Paisley Fabrics, which is also the source of my Fleece Artist KidSilk AND (This is so important. So amazing, I might cry) the source of my Fleece Artist Merino Roving. Yes, you heard right. Roving. In Montréal.

Excuse me while I have a...Wool Moment. Thank you.

A direct connection to Fleece Artist, right here in my hometown. I'm SO happy about this. Sorry, no website yet for Paisley. But Ginette's shop promises to turn into the shop of my dreams. She is open to spindle sales. Need I say more? Bowlful of roving at the door? Yeah, baby. She already has KidSilk, which just makes me melt. Unfortunately, it also makes me realise I am in deep need of winding technology.

I realise that my nostepinding skills completely suck.
So I told Spiff I can't nostepinde worth shit
and I need a swift and ballwinder. He pulled out his pen and paper
and wrote down the URL for what I need. No questions asked.
I DEEPLY love my Spiff.

By the way, many many thanks for the compliments I've received on the profile of Véronik Avery I wrote for Interweave Knits. Another profile, which shall remain anonymous until it's published, is also in the works. Yep, I kept the Avery piece quiet until I had it in my hot little hands. You just nevah know in publishing until you see your name in print, so I waited. I'm very happy to know people liked it.

Back to your regularly scheduled frantic spinning for a knitted gift. I'm an idiot. Read the Yarn Harlot regarding "IT"...that horrible state of mind when you realise you have no time left AT ALL for what you planned to do for holiday gifts, but you keep doing it anyway, and worse, you decide it's a good idea to make the yarn first. Just remember:

Friends don't let friends spin for Christmas.

December 10, 2005 2:18 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (25)  | Print