List mania

I decided yesterday that I was taking a sickie. Allergies, the after-effects of the party on Saturday night and a busy weekend had me feeling too tired and headachey to concentrate on work. What did I do instead?

* Ordered a flicker, and some new reeds for my Knitters Loom.

* Looked though some knitting magazines and my stash.

* Doodled some crazy garment designs using weaving, crochet and knitting in mad combinations. (I doubt I’d ever make them, but it was fun playing around with ideas.)

* Stressed about that mis-addressed sock yarn order, and how the shop hasn’t emailed me since last Wednesday.

* Wrote lists.

I’m a bit of a list addict. Sometimes I’ll write a list of things to do, then rewrite it each time I finish something on the list. When I write lists of knitting projects, I’ll usually write at least two.

You see, no one knitting list ever covers everything I want to know. A list of the things I need to have can be completely different to the one of projects I want to do. Or the projects waiting in the stash.

Yesterday I started with a list of projects waiting in the stash, and included a list of things I need. Then I copied that into a new document and sorted them into a “Priority List”. I listed the projects I’d most like to tackle and finish next, then divided them up over the next five months.

Then I decided this might be better titled “The Wishful Thinking” list.

But there was another purpose to doing it this way. To combat hand pain, I decided I needed to have a weaving project listed under each month. Some knitting projects, I realised, might be better done in crochet or weaving. If I can vary the sorts of hand movements I make, I might have less problems.

Then I decided that spending hours making lists was a sure sign that not knitting was making me a tad obsessive. Last night, after weaving the first coffee-coloured stripe of the Mocha blanket, I actually knit a little on the chocolate socks, finishing the heel flap. My hands were a little stiff, but not sore. I think the rest has done me some good… physically. Not sure about the brain, though. Looking at the doodles I did yesterday, I may just have been edging on madness.

Knitting withdrawal

I’ve had a bit of hand pain before and a day of rest usually fixed it. This time it’s been a lot worse, so I decided I’d take at least a few days break. There was an extra reason for this: I had my first day-long spinning class on Sunday. I didn’t want to end up hurting too much to participate. As it turned out, my hands were fine and I suffered more from the hangover I gave myself drinking too much champagne at a birthday party the night before.

The class was fun. I sat and spun with the lovely Rebecca to my left and the amazing Danielle to my right. Having taught myself to use a drop spindle already, that wasn’t new to me. But a week’s practise on the wheel certainly didn’t leave me with nothing to learn! I picked up a much better way to join the next handful of fleece. I learned that a flicker is much easier on the hands, and faster, than a comb.

Since the wheel is a Hebridean, I looked up Scottish first names on the internet and for a while it was a toss up between Harvey and Howie. I don’t usually name inanimate objects, but when you curse something a lot it does seem more satisfying if it has a name. And spinning on Harvey does seem to be a matter of forming a relationship based on negotiation and affection.

Harvey, as he turned out to be, seemed to require a lot faster foot pedaling than the other wheels to keep going, possibly because the wheel bit is smaller. This meant I had to spin at, well, a faster pace than would allow me to get some refinement into it. I was a bit jealous of Danielle, who managed to produce a nice thin thread! But I think the small bit of experience I’ve had has, at least, helped me to avoid putting big chunky bits in mine.

This is the spinning I did during the week:

This is what I managed at the class:

I’m very tempted to mail order myself a flicker today so I can avoid combing. It would be better for my hands. And I need alternatives to knitting. Last night, after having spun all day, I turned to my other fibery distraction:

I didn’t get much actual weaving done. But warping up the loom kept me occupied for a while. This is the coffee coloured version of the slubby chocolate yarn. I think I shall call this my chocolate mocha blanket.

Hurties

My hands are too sore for knitting.

I’m just going to have to rest them. Okay, I did do half an hour or so of knitting on the band for the Zhivago top last night. And 20 mins of spinning practise. But the knitting hurt. A lot.

This is incredibly frustrating.

To keep myself occupied, I’ve started my annual knitwear washing ritual. Each spring, when the weather warms up and I start to spot moths inside and outside the house, I wash every jumper and cardigan and jacket I own, block them, then pack them with lavender sachets and camphor. This year I’ll be packing them away to make room for my summer clothes. At the moment most of my clothes are on an open bookshelf in the loungeroom. Oh, the joys of house renovation.

I enjoy this washing ritual. It’s not a chore at all. I get to look at and access all my winter knitwear. And on hot days like yesterday and today sloshing about in water is nice and cooling. And they dry fast, too.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much space for blocking. Just one end of the kitchen table, and the top of a clothes airer for items that are either acrylic (commercial) or baggy and old, and don’t need proper blocking. I can only do two items at a time, so it doesn’t alleviate the frustration for long.

I could entertain myself by looking at my stash or reading knitting books and magazines, but that would just make me want to knit, which would be even more frustrating.

Sigh.

A Collection of Oopsies

You know that partly knit chocolate sock? Frogged. And reknit.

Being a luscious, robust yarn it’s a bit thicker than the Patonyle I designed the pattern with, so the sock was coming out a bit big. Then I realised I’d been knitting the chocolate squares with four rows rather than five. I would have kept on. Neither were fatal oopsies. But I am supposed to be testing the pattern. It kinda has to be right.

So I ripped, and reknit using 2 mm instead of 2.5 mm needles. I only have 2 mm in metal unfortunately, and I find them quite hard on the hands. But I reckon I’d break bamboos that thin. It’s coming out the right size, though very densely knit.

But boy do my hands ache.

The other oopsie I discovered today isn’t mine. I’ve ordered some sock yarn from the USA. When the order confirmation email came through from the shop everything looked fine. Then the USPS shipping notification came through and appeared to be right. I always check the street address, as it sounds like a person’s name but isn’t spelt that way, and there is a street of that person’s name in the same suburb. It was fine.

But today I had a quick look to see if there was any indication of a delivery date, and something else caught my eye. The USPS order was headed for Canada. The shop’s confirmation order said Australia, so I know their order form didn’t malfunction.

I can’t help imagining someone in the US postal service thinking: “Victoria – that’s a city in Canada, not a state in Australia!”.

The poor shop owner has emailed to say she’s going to see if she can chase the parcel down. I have my fingers crossed for her. (Well, for short stretches, because they still hurt.)

Chocolate Yarn; Chocolate Socks

Look what arrived yesterday:

The Knittery’s new line of merino cashmere sock yarn. Oh my. This is delectable stuff.

The merino sock yarn is about the weight of Sunshine Yarns or Opal. The merino cashmere sock yarn is more like Lisa Souza’s sock yarn. It’s sproingy. It’s an appealing mix of softness and robustness, and should make very warm socks.

A chocolate skein:

A chocolate cake:

A chocolate sock:

I had intense chocolate cravings as I knit this last night. I think the pattern might have to start with a warning.

Fibery Adventures

I was so dumbfounded by the Patonyle=discontinued saga, I forgot to photograph what I did purchase:

When I compared the scrap of brown I had brought to help with yarn identification to the brown in the store, I found it was a much more chocolatey brown than the one in the shop, which was a very red brown. But then, I did get the yarn at the Australian Country Spinners shop, where it could simply have been a wrong batch. This coffee coloured version goes okay with it, though. Mind you, I had better weave it up fast in case I haven’t got enough. Who knows. It might end up ‘discontinued’ too, and it’ll be a lot harder to find outside S’bitlightonyarn stores.

On Friday I decided if I did a few hours work on Sunday I could make time to take the spinning wheel down to the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria. I rang first, and it turned out their spinning teacher was there. So I took the wheel in and got the ladies there all in a stir.

You see, they hadn’t seen anything like it before. (It’s called a Hebridean wheel, my friend told me later.) First one, then another, attempted to spin on it, but with limited success. As this went on, their suggested price kept dropping. They put on a new band, tweaked this and that, and concluded it needed a really good clean up.

I’d found a website with instructions on how to clean up a wheel (Keep Spinning – Smooth Running) so I decided to do that on Sunday. But to know if I’d been successful, I’d need some fleece to spin.

So the teacher led me into the back room, which was full of bags of greasy fleece. When I realised they didn’t break the bags up – you had to buy an entire bag – I baulked at that. Though the fleece came in gorgeous chocolate browns, the thought of working my way through that much of it was intimidating. I was expecting to buy one of the small bags of pretty stuff that had already been cleaned, dyed and carded.

But, the nice ladies said, it’s easier to spin in the grease.

So I bought both:

A small bag of the pretty stuff.

A large (but small compared to the rest) half kilo bag of greasy Polwarth.

On Sunday I pulled the wheel apart as much as I could work out how to, cleaned off the dust, lightly waxed the wood, oiled the shafts and put it all back together again. Then I attempted to spin.

And I provided the beau with much amusment as I cursed and laughed for the next hour. Either the thread spun too tightly and wouldn’t pull onto the spool, or there wasn’t enough twist and it kept breaking. I googled the problem and found this had to do with the tension of the drive band. Trouble is, the way this wheel is designed doesn’t seem to allow for precision tension setting. But that could just be me.

So I filled out the form for spinning lessons at the Guild and sent it off. And then I de-stressed with some knitting:

Another baby wash glove, this time designed by me to fit the husband of the girl I made the last ones for.

Some attempted aquisitions

Look what I’m wearing today:

I finally got my Snicketation. (What’s worse, having Devo or Rolling Stones songs doing the rounds in your head while knitting?)

Now the needles are free for more chocolate sock action. Speaking of chocolate sock action, I popped into Spotlight yesterday to buy a second ball of Patonyle in cream so I could make the pair for the white chocolate socks. The amount of yarn on sale seemed to have shrunk. Aisles and piles of acrylic and novelty yarn, and not a lot else. And I couldn’t find the Patonyle. Finally I gave in and asked where it was. Discontinued, I was told. Go look in the bargain bin.

WTF?

I shall not contemplate the white chocolate sock never meeting it’s mate. I shall instead distract myself with this:

Which is mine, once I pay the former owner for it. Paying isn’t the problem. Figuring out how much to pay is.

Podcasts, with added controversy!

Since my last podcast review quite a bit has changed. I found two new favourites. Lots of podcastsers stopped podcasting. And my favourite podcast… well, episode 37 left me feeling like I’d been kicked in the guts and I’ve been a bit depressed about it since. (More on that later.)

KnitCast wasn’t back, as I’d hoped. There one one new episode and nothing since, but Marie has been os and I’m hoping that means she’s managed to record some interviews.

Knitcentric and KnittingPsychos have both stopped podcasting, though neither have said anything in their blogs about whether they’ll start again.

Math4Knitters is always interesting, but you have to be feeling bright and brainy for this one and I tend to listen to podcasts when I need time out from being bright and brainy.

I also tried BritKnitCast, Irie Knits and The FibreCast. I tried the most recent episode of each. The latter was the most enjoyable, but unfortunately she hasn’t podcasted since May so I suspect she’s stopped. The first BritKnitCast episode I tried was rather boring, as she spent most of it describing setting up and using a Knitters Loom! But the one after it was okay.

Lime & Violet and Knitty D and the City are both very funny, enjoyable podcasts. The latter doesn’t seem to have made a podcast for a while.

And lastly, Cast-on. Consistently good quality, interesting, enjoyable, professional…

However…

In episode 37 Brenda talked about the inspiration for her theme for the next series: the Free Culture Movement. Alarm bells were ringing soon after she started describing this philosophy. I’ve encountered it before and it disturbs and alarms me.

Then she said this: “I don’t believe that somebody has the right to take an entire novel that somebody else has written, slap their own name on the cover and market it as original work. But I do believe that somebody has the right to read the novel, and perhaps interpret part of it dramatically, and maybe do that in a public venue and charge admission.”

As a writer of novels, hearing that from a podcaster I’d respected was so disappointing. On one hand I want to argue with her and point out all the many ways that this sort of philosophy can bring about the exploitation of creative people, the vast majority who don’t make a lot of money. That getting rid of copyright laws would prevent professional creative people from being able to make a living out of their work, all for the sake of increasing derivative works.

On the other, I didn’t want to be thinking about it at all while listening to podcasts. I listen to podcasts as relaxation and entertainment. I don’t listen to writing podcasts, because writing is work for me. So now I’m thinking I’m likely to either end up angry and sad at the end of each podcast, or just stop listening to them completely.

Conversely, Lime & Violet’s discussion, in episode 12, of the illegal price fixing that some yarn manufacturers are practicing in the US, was very interesting (and safely knitting-related). If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, go have a look at this site: Consumer Friendly Yarns. I’m curious to know if this happens in Australia, too. And if we even have laws against it.

Other things to do with yarn…

Spinning

A few years ago all the talk about spinning on blogs put glorious visions of making colourful slubby handspun in my head, but I was pretty broke and buying a wheel was out of the question. So I headed down to Wondoflex and bought some undyed pre-carded roving (so cheap!) and a drop spindle.

Following instructions from a book on spinning from the 70s I found in a local secondhand bookshop, I taught myself to spin. Well, I think I did. I grabbed handfuls of roving and teased it into a sliver that didn’t break too often as it twisted. I didn’t know when I should stop, so I filled the spindle up pretty full. But my enthusiasm dwindled as I went. My arms hurt, the spinning was so slow, and I couldn’t watch tv at the same time.

By the time I was sure I couldn’t get any more yarn on the spindle I’d decided I didn’t like spinning much. The instructions on plying didn’t make sense, so I piled roving and spindle into a bag and hid it at the back of my stash.

Then on Saturday Lynne showed me how to Andean ply. As my spindle filled up with something that looked like yarn, I started to regain some of my enthusiasm. But it wasn’t just the joy of finally seeing my first rough skein of handspun come together. I’d fondled some of the predyed roving at the Forum, and now I felt the undyed roving I’d bought and realised why it was so cheap, and understood why people end up with stashes of roving as big as their stash of yarn.

Which is good timing, because an aquaintance of mine has offered me the spinning wheel of an ageing relative going into care.

Weaving:

I love thick, slubby yarn. Trouble is, I love the way it looks in a skein or ball, but I don’t like it knit up. Aside from bulky scarves, I can’t think of anything flattering that anybody could knit with it. However, when I bought my Knitters Loom I discovered straight away that bulky yarn looks so much better woven.

There’s been one last batch of yarn I bought at the Australian Country Spinners shop two years ago that I haven’t knitted up. It’s a chocolate thick and thin bulky yarn, so soft I don’t care if it turned out to be acrylic. I fancied a vest, but once I worked out how thick it would knit up I abandoned the idea. Along comes the loom and I know what I want to make: a blanket. I was already knitting a red blanket in strips, so I thought I’d make and stitch together squares out of the brown yarn.

The problem was, I couldn’t settle on a warp thread. When I was on holidays I tried the large ball of black patonyle. I’d used sock yarn before as a warp thread. Unfortunately, it stretched so much that I ended up with rectangles. And I realised that the fringe formed at either end of the squares would be too bulky to somehow sew into the edges.

Then yesterday I remembered that cone of thin brown yarn I’d bought from an op shop. I’d considered using it before, but worried it might be too thin and fragile to be used on the loom. Yesterday I decided to give it a try. If it broke, I’d put the project aside again.

It didn’t break, and by the end of the day I’d woven most of the wool into two thick lengths:

Which isn’t really enough to make a blanket, really. I’ve seen this yarn at Spotlight, so I’m going to weigh the pieces of weaving and buy as much again in another colour, and make two more lengths.

Chocolate:

How did the Japanese chocolate taste? Well, the first one, Morinaga, turned out to be so badly heat spoiled it practically disintegrated into powder. That went in the bin. The Meiji was fine. It was a lot better than I expected – definitely real chocolate – but there was a wierd flavour to it. Made me think of the fragrance of some kind of wood. Resinous. Strange. Of course, the ingredients listed ‘flavour’ but now what it was! Definitely not vanilla, I’m guessing.