on the spinning night, mac brought me some superwash merino roving that was, truly, lurid - mostly white but splotted with bright yellow and hot pink. i couldn't blame her for wanting to get rid of it. but frankly, when i spun it, it came up kinda nice!
however, my plan is to overdye it with some red. the white bits should get red, the pink redder, the yellow, orange - yes? i guess we'll see. we have a february-birthday-baby-dyeing-day coming up and i'll try it then.
superwash merino - nice and easy to spin for sure and feels lovely to touch. i always equate needing a washable yarn with smaller projects (gloves, socks, hats) and so it's extra useful to be able to spin a washable yarn.
as far as my plans to upgrade my wheel go, i'm still thinking about it but at some point, a drum carder pulled ahead in my heart again. neither of these purchases are going to come very soon (frankly, i guess we need to buy a crib and junk first) but a floor loom is also on my mind. and a piano. we ARE planning on gettting a flatscreen tv and infant robot dinosaur this season, though. thus ends the dorko levin family consumer report.
tonight some other married women with spinning wheels came over and we had childfree, tea-and-cake-and-paté spinning hour. i have learned something: i don't care for my single-treadle ashford traditional (i knew that) and indeed prefer the double-treadle... i am looking (hopefully) at the louet victoria folding spinning wheel (model s95). i don't know how soon, but seriously.
it would require more of a commitment to spinning for my own projects, and in large enough amounts to fulfill those projects, but that was a commitment i was ready to make with the ashford, and it just never took. the other issue is that i'm so much more interested in cellulose fibers than i am in animal fibers, and that's hardly the easiest stuff to spin. i do not know if the model i am looking at has a flax distaff that it can use... there is some stuff to consider.
i think it will help me to bifurcate my thinking about spinning into Total Practice and Earnest Project-Oriented Seriousness, because balancing between the two has brought lukewarm results. i can use practice yarn in freeform anyway, or even for felting projects, so i don't need to feel it's (pardon the pun) just spinning my wheels.
yeah. pretty proud. (LOVE park photos by adrian seward.)
we celebrated with friends and of course drew quite a few looks and doubletakes -- but only one inquisitive person came forward and asked. "that's neat. who is it?" "edmund bacon." "who's he?" "he was a city planner. he designed this park." "what happened to his eye?" "he didn't always have one."
the gentleman then suggested we place the scupture in the center of the fountain -- which, even though the fountain was not functioning, seemed a bad idea. the man offered to climb into the fountain with the sculpture himself. we declined the offer.
here's the headlight-beamingly-happy artiste (photo by ben.) note the hat -- also made of the same adopt-a-sheep fleece as ed himself is made!
then, along with kathy and lou, we were then off to brunch at continental two, where i had lobster mac and cheese. life is good!
UPDATE: there are so many good links about mr. bacon on the web, i thought it wise to share a few more. this one, from WHYY's "hometown legends" series, cracks me up -- look at the picture! that's not a photo i used while making the bust, believe it or not -- and that shade of blue shirt has become so ubiquitous that i just assumed he'd have had one -- it seems he actually did!
and, of course, having worked for and in the academy of music, this quote kills me: "We were so middle class that in the Academy of Music... my family always went to the family circle. And they thought if you went up to the Ampitheater, where I go now because I can't afford the family circle, that it would be very dangerous cause that's where the ruffians were and they thought that everybody below them in the balcony and the parquet and the boxes were the stuck up rich."
here's another about bacon's LOVE park anti-skateboard protest. here too is the city paper piece covering bacon's disobedient shredding. "'I want to ride a skateboard across LOVE Park and get arrested,' says Bacon, who, though he is 92 and has only one eye, exudes the rakish aura of a Little Rascal. 'I want to protest what the mayor has done to LOVE Park. And I want you to cover it.'"
love that man.
white hair, and an eye.
this hair is handspun ramie -- correct in color and texture but goodness it's for better spinners than i am. and all these cut ends only compound the problem. when things began to fray, i added some dubbing wax -- that's something used in tying flies, and has worked well so far.
...because i know that soon, you'll change, and so will i. but i never want to forget this moment.
will i have the courage to let you go, and to continue to let you Become? or will i just keep you here like an unsprung bud because you are the fucking coolest thing i ever knit in my life?
who can say? i'm weak.
and thus ends august, the suckiest month of them all. every day was worth it. don't wish your life away, not even in august!
i'm knitting a head, again. i am still working my way through akuta's fleece and this project may use up most of it. we are in the verymost first stages and there's little i can say. the problem with this cotswold is that it sheds, and when i get up from knitting i'm covered, as much so as if one of the animals has been on my lap. irritating any day of the year, but particularly nasty in august. so, moving slowly on this one.
there. that's a blog entry title that google will pick up on! hear that, mr. romero? i mean, if you should be trolling the web for works derivative of -- in homage to -- your own. you can send me an e-mail, mr. romero, at theknittingtarot@gmail.com. i assume the subject line will be "NAME YOUR PRICE". ah yes.
oh, and then there's that howard sherman/sherman howard guy. he might be interested too. (ben and i were SO BLOWN AWAY when i looked up this entry on this actor -- since we had JUST SEEN the "malcom in the middle" episode in which he also appeared, but had not known it was BUB!!! BUB ON "MALCOM IN THE MIDDLE"!!!)
anyhoo, bub is finished. he has been finished for a little while but we were trying to find the right kind of lumberjack shirt for him. we compromised slightly for now and will see what the fall back-to-school lines bring. when all is said and done -- and it more or less is -- bub is wicked cool, utterly wicked cool, and a lot more than i expected him to be. the luck i had with this!! i LOVE it.
the full bub? full of reanimated life and ready to rumble.
his outlook on his soulless life? he has broken free of his chains, and his appetite for eviscera is endless.
his drippy sinew? pungent. his lower limbs? muddy, messy, and generally overlooked. (various brown-and-black odds-and-ends made a very basic "workboot" for the ends of bub's cartoonishly short legs.)
for anybody who has to ask why -- maybe you could try meditating on the phrase labor of love for awhile.
whoa no is right. i cannot gauge bub's love for me by his warm embrace at this juncture, since i only have this one arm complete. but he has some nice necrotic fingertips, and some icky red (and not very colorfast, which only added to the effect) sinew. the fingers slowed me down (i knitted the middle one while awaiting the michael jackson verdict) and i now fear that some people are going to be sad to hear that bub may not make it to the premiere of george a. romero's "land of the dead" a week from today! so much of bub does not exist yet -- torso. feet. other arm. shirt and jacket. shackles.
on top of that, ben had to go have a good idea.
BEN: not that i want to pressure you to knit MORE things, but don't you think bub needs to be eating a person's kidney or something?
ME: you're going to be cooking dinner tonight, i think. i'm going to be busy.
BEN: pizza it is!
so yes, i have begun a human giblet and have a length of nice human tripe ready to affix to bub's lovely and adept little hand, soon. will he really be done in a week? that's so doubtful. but, i suppose, not impossible.
i'm still not buying readymade yarns from primary markets.
but, what do you know -- no DTs, no night sweats.
a friend bought me some spinning fiber when she was at MDS&W. this is the single i did on my drop spindle walking to and from pilates class. the fiber is wool with some hand-dyed rayon and some silk noil -- and it is very soft and very lustrous.
this yarn showed up quite unexpectedly from a friend for whom i had done some tarot readings. (yes, i'll trade tarot for yarn, fiber, or sometimes even nothing at all ). it is a wool and hemp blend, and is very perfumey.
both of these together ARE going to work to make a new little something i've been planning. i cringe to think that both of my pals here will perhaps say "i cannot believe THAT is what you chose to do with that fiber/yarn..." but i've got a plan. i've been doing research.
the shabby gluttony still gets to me. i like yarn, i really like yarn. but i remember being in a yarn store in the last few years -- it was not my store -- and commenting to another shopper that i do not keep a lot of stash.
(why do people in yarn stores persist in believing that because they are all there, they must have enough in common with everyone else to have a civil conversation? why did i think it?) the woman in question, this shopper, was someone who thought her stash was a real virtue. "but i just love looking at it," she said.
but we were both "looking at it", and neither of us had purchased it yet. we were in the yarn store, looking at yarn. and yet for her, looking at it meant owning it.
plenty of artists have been too poor to purchase their own tools and media. de kooning worked in black and white kitchen enamel paints when he couldn't afford pigment. i can't help but think of renoir or picasso too poor to buy proper paints and canvases while doughy, triple-chinned dilettantes filled their little baskets with the very best money could buy -- so they could take it to their homes and salons and look at it and get inspired.
it's that "my candor makes all my ugliness and avarice seem amusing and refreshing!" ploy. gotcha.
there are more reasons than just lack of funds to not buy yarns. i think it has really juiced up my creativity, and you little poppets will just have to gauge your agreement over the course of the months while the projects i have in my mind and on the needles unfold.
i certainly didn't expect that i would stop buying yarns and just be given yarns or fiber, and while i am touched, i am also prepared to be neglected from hereon in. my eye is on a drum carder. but these new yarns mean more to me than just turning over my charge card, and i will not forget where they came from.
let me just clarify.
people give "kool-aid" to their children...
to drink.
ew.
well, bub -- you're soaking in it.
how excited were we to hear that george a. romero was releasing a FOURTH in his series of "dead" movies -- i am not much of a first-run moviegoer but i try to make the festive trek at least once during the summer months and thank GOD there will be no dennis quaid or jake gyllenhall for me this summer! i get dennis hopper, john leguizamo, and ZOMBIES!
i. love. zombies. i am fascinated with the (predictable) way in which humans will vilify even their most dearly loved ones the moment those loved ones make a transition -- in this case, to death -- that those "left behind" cannot understand. you've changed! = you're monstrous!
i love that romero's zombies come from all walks of life, with all the distinctions of their identities still sorta flopping off of them. i love his use of multiracial casting that reveals no "token" players. and i love the fantastic fun of angry, stumbling carrion ripping into the flesh of the living!
yes! yes! yes!
all those years volunteering for the opera company of philadelphia as an onstage extra and all they ever gave me was nun, whore, townswoman... never "zombie". some people have all the luck.
"bub" from 1985's day of the dead is such a sympathetic, sweet character. as soon as i heard about land coming out, we rented the original three, and before we had even finished watching dawn, i knew -- i wanted to knit bub.
i started with some single-ply costwold from akuta that i had been doing on my wheel. this stuff that i spin up with the akuta fleece, undyed, unanythinged, is kind of like the "simple syrup" of knitting and felting. and i was sure bub's head would need to be felted.
i began knitting on two circular needles, casting on simultaneous sock toes using the queen kahuna book's "invisible cast-on" (yes, that's what it is called. i think it's on page 90.) these sock toes, inverted, made bub's deep, tortured eye sockets.
then, i must admit, i just kinda went. i might as well have been playing with clay or with papier maché. he just happened.
miles to go, just on the head itself -- shaping, painting, hair... and of course those sexy blue eyes of bub's! then i can dye the yarn for bub's body (i will be doing some testing of colors soon -- all kool-aid, i think) and then get to work on his outfit. the rest of bub will NOT be felted, just knitted. alas, i tried to keep his neck stitches "live" but the waste yarn i used was NOT a piece of red heart as i had thought. it fused right in there. no matter because bub wears a neck collar and chain, as we all know!
i would like to give him fingers. you know, the beautiful "tape recorder scene". well, we'll see how it goes -- right now both bub and i need a few days of recovery and perspective.
the light hasn't been right in the den for the last month, but this weekend's snow helped. this is the beautiful wooden stool that
ben
gave me for christmas. it is to be used at my spinning wheel, and i am able to keep all my little junk -- needles, measuring tape, stuff that usually piles up on the ottoman -- in the drawers, and still have it all nearby when we are watching tv.
i don't know when i'll spin next -- maybe not until spring -- but i'll try the stool out then, and i'll also be trying out these feathers. rai sent them to me. you've heard about rai before; but what's best about being friends with rai is that we both suck. we suck at keeping in contact, and yet there are never any repercussions for this. so i never have to worry, when calling her after a YEAR of not calling her, that half the conversation will be about why i didn't call her. i recognized her handwriting on the package when the feathers showed up. that's good enough. i still spell her name two different ways, but she answers to both.
obviously the little feathers are going to be easier to use than the big ones, but there are a lot of both, so we'll see what happens.
i got the idea for a big tall hat made with my handspun akuta's 'owl noodles' and the plan to make a hat more wearable than a very pretty one in my possession. the inspiring hat is one made by my friend betsy, and actually belongs to my sister, but is for some reason in my house. it's a lovely hat, but nobody ever wears it. except my father, when he's pretending to be sun ra. the betsy hat is lovely, but it has never been comfortable to wear, nor does it provide much protection from the elements.
i thought, a big, wedding cake-height hat made of handspun -- and augmented with a rhinestone brooch or some such -- would be more suitable for me, and would actually get put on when i left the house.
here's what i came up with. the "brooch" on the hat now is in fact an earring with no match -- the shape of both the hat and the ornament evoke something rather military for me (whose military, i do not know.)
of course in the long run we realize this hat and betsy's hat have almost nothing in common other than being light-colored, brimless hats, but we don't go through life trying to recreate point A.
you may be noticing the "wall of tarot" behind me there. that's in the den. it's one uncut deck in two sheets. tarot makes great wall art.
here's a funky in-the-mirror shot.
it's a nest! it's a cake! it's military! fashion buzzwords for february 2005.
i used some of my borders christmas gift card money to buy the new "want: two" by rufus wainwright. i adore rufus.
how delightful to find on the cover: rufus is pictured as a rather bedraggled damsel doing some super crappy-looking drop spindle work!
it makes him very tired.
i love rufus so much.
i hang out at
rosie's yarn cellar
and they are very receptive to ideas there. (they are also receptive to people coming in and hanging out and eating their candy when they have it.) and i asked lisa, how would it be to let handspinners sell the little bits of their wares here? i bet they would like it. and lisa also thought it would be fun. and it is she who is capable of implementing it.
i have a few small skeins of stuff i've been working on this summer, and i letterpressed the outsides of some little tags for the purpose.
on the insides of the tags, i have pasted a small inkjet-printed description of the yarn itself, and what it might be good for. i'm quite the novice, but i know that i would buy the yarn of other novices, because those are the yarns that have heart! (or often do. they have more heart than R2, i know that.)
if you are a
rosie's yarn cellar
person, and a handspinner -- whether you want to get some local handspun or put some in the store -- or both -- check it out!
i am still spinning my cotswold fleece. it makes spinning on the wheel easy for me. must be some sort of beginner-type sheep. i think i'm getting better.
hillel was a lot less interested in the spinning of the wheel than i thought he would be.
and i did indigo. i made one praying mantis very angry indeed, but was trying harder not to mistake him for indigo (and cut him in half) than i was catering to his general happiness.
i used the indigo on some of the cotswold roving. some of it came out very deep indeed! i think that was the most indigo leaves i have ever used at one time -- i have certainly got more plants than ever. in the new house, there will be a planter in the backyard just for indigo. i may even be able to start letting it "compost" so that all the plant matter rots away and just the dye itself remains. that is the "real" way to do it.
we may have a lot of irons in the fire here at notsoswift.com, but we don't leave many things unfinished.
remember akuta, my adopted cotswold sheep? his fleece arrived here weeks ago, and i sent it out again for processing. it returned once again, and i have been spinning it.
i love it! i love the feel of it -- it's sort of dry and coarse, but in a good way.
because i love the look of organic matter stuck in wool -- bits of leaves and whatnot -- i have been spinning in noodles of this natural silk stuff i had lying around. it was impossible to knit with, i had plied it with a bunch of stuff already, so now i've just made noodles out of it. i also think it give the effect of, you know, asymmetrical owl feathers. hence "owl noodles".
i did this on my wheel! i am getting better at that -- but then again, this stuff was easy for the wheel. there would have been no real point in trying the drop spindle with this.
i'm going to have a lot of it!
the unspun silk "waste" that i dyed with cochineal came out very differently than the soy silk did.
later in the week, i picked some of the early indigo. notice how a bruised indigo leaf turns blue. notice also, if you are mature enough, the hot ladybug sex occuring on the indigo plant.
with this indigo, i attempted to dye some bamboo/silk fiber blend. it didn't exactly turn blue -- it went from being a natural yellowish, to looking like it had been holding its breath for a long time. rather silvery.
i'm not exactly sure what comes next but i'm working on it.
by the way, since he was in town today getting the liberty medal -- who else is with me on having a crush on president of afghanistan hamid karzai and his sexy astrakhan hats?
it was a surprise to go into the backyard and see how purple the cochineal had become on the soy silk and wool skeins. (this was not true of the unspun silk waste in the lingerie bag; but that is for another post.)
still, very pretty indeed. i was motivated to ply it on my wheel.
also very pretty!
this whole project loomed large over our weekend, and frankly, the process of using the heavy metal mordant was a real buzzkill. indigo, though messy and smelly and certainly an activity for caution in the kitchen, isn't quite as worrisome as mordanting yarn.
my kinda sloppy skein-making notwithstanding, these are right nice.
i purchased a bag of cochineal -- which is an insect-derived natural red dye -- last winter, and this weekend, got up the nerve to use it. dyeing with cochineal requires mordanting, which is something i was not all that comfortable with. different mordants will produce different hues, and i had purchased some alum to get a good deep scarlet. (next to black, i love red the most.)
just talking about the mordanting last night -- along with ordering letterpress cuts to be made from some original art for an upcoming book project, and talking about magnesium v. copper, had me all hopped up and anxious about metals. ben told me, for instance, that pure magnesium ignites on contact with air. so last evening i kept peering around corners in fear of running into pure magnesium, like it was donald pleasence in a james bond film.
we got through the mordanting process unscathed, although it kept me hopped up late into the night and we ended up eating, well, breakfast at the oregon diner. which, although the phrase is overused, is like a fellini casting call. also, there appears to be a large statue of, well, stalin, on oregon avenue... ben insists that he is the franchise owner of the south philadelphia fashion bug shoppes. complete with imitation of stalin that i guarantee none of you will ever, ever see, not even after a few glasses of wine on thanksgiving.
anyway. what i wanted to turn red was -- this handspun soy silk of mine, and this skein of noro kureyon.
notice that the soy silk has bits of blue in it -- i threw it in an indigo pot last year, before it was spun up, when it was still roving. the indigo dyepot had been near exhaustion at that stage, and so you see, blue only showed up in certain spots. then i spun it, and got this. the plan was to overdye. that's where the cochineal came in.
i got the cochineal dyebath going while ben slept. unlike the mordanting process, this was fun -- and utterly perfumey! a really, really sweet and exotic smell. and when the first batch of it was ready -- it was a mezmerizing, slasher-movie, heart's-blood red.
"smells like... pancakes," said the barely coherent man who had only gotten up to go to the bathroom.
anyway, the dyebath is not quite exhausted yet, but when it is, it will go outside to be used as compost for none other than the indigo plants. right now the effect of this project on our kitchen is no less than hitchcockian. downright.
okay. here we are. some superwash wool that i used my wheel to do this to.
sigh.
now, i feel pretty sure that i will turn this into something good -- and useable. and the fact is that now it doesn't even look that bad. but that darned wheel. i don't seem to have any control -- or much -- over my foot. i can't seem to convince myself that i'm not biking uphill. it's the thrash guitar equivalent of spinning; it's easier to play fast, easier to spin fast.
i wanted a big, thick single to play with. i got it, in places. wetting and weighting the yarn redistributed some of the twist. but i know what i wish spinning on the wheel felt like, and i'm not there yet.
i get excited when i see some of the fancy handspuns you can buy online. they are always a treat to look at and very tempting, with their kooky fun names -- i can be swayed by such things, for sure -- and i have had fun with some of them. and when i have knitted with such yarns, they do look nice in garter stitch and in stockinette -- at least i've had good luck with the ones that have found their way to me. but sometimes i see a nice picture of a skein, and think: there is no WAY that will look okay when knitted.
and of course the artist who made it can't show you that -- then they'd use up half of the one-of-a-kind skein! which is only ever going to be enough to trim a hat or add a stripe here or there anyway. not that there's anything wrong with that.but i don't think it's what i want to do. i think i'll keep buying it here and there, and trading for it. but i don't think it's really what i want to make. then again, it looks awful fun to make. maybe it's not all i want to make.
this is the stuff i've got to keep in mind when trying to really pinpoint what it is i want out of spinning. the idea of buying pre-mixed fiber, pre-dyed batts -- that's like buying those cookies that you slice and which have the little holiday-related picture inside of them.
i will eat those in a pinch, and sometimes they are even what i'm looking for, but i do not gauge my prowess by baking them.
i'm not exactly sure what i'm trying to tell myself here. you'd think there would be something liberating in only wanting the prizes one is giving out oneself -- at least you'd think it would give you an inside track on what the judging panel wanted -- and sometimes even that's not the case.
o the humanity!
you may remember the baby bleu cheese hat, for which i spun the yarn, knitted, dyed with indigo from my garden, and felted. here it is, at long last, on a human baby named taariq.
smashing!
the weather is warm, i'm walking home more often, and the drop spindle is out and spinning.
i was approached on broad street by two slightly pre-teen schoolgirls.
GIRL ONE: make me one of those.
AMBER: make the wooden thing or the yarn that goes on it? because i don't know how to make the wooden thing.
GIRL ONE: oh.
AMBER: and all it makes is yarn. what are you going to do with a bunch of yarn?
GIRL ONE: make something. make stuff.
AMBER: well, i only know how to make the yarn. not the wooden part.
GIRL TWO: you go to school?
AMBER: nope.
GIRL TWO: nurse?
this had barely left her mouth, and both of their eyes had glazed over and they had forgotten me, because a schoolbus was driving by, encasing people they knew.
i liked this conversation. it was completely unfettered by either politeness or rudeness; it carried no expectations, even though it was nothing more than a list of unmet demands; and it ended painlessly the moment that most of its participants lost interest in it. i also appreciated the high value placed on making; just the act of "making", even before you need to know what it's going to be. that's a good thing in kids. of course, if it doesn't mature into a finer urge, we end up with a LOT of knitted cellphone cases and palm pilot cases, don't we?
here's a version of vicki square's "small origami bag" from folk bags. mine doesn't have a strap and is in stockinette rather than seed stitch. it's made with some hemp and natural silk i plied last summer, then tried to make a moebius with, then ripped out and salvaged. the yarn now has a nice distressed look, and i wanted to use that in a bag that would get a lot of use, as the carry-around for my "everyday" tarot deck.
the deck fits in the bag, but it just doesn't wear it well. love the bag, love the deck, but they're not going to have anything to do with each other.
what to do? just wait for the right thing to happen.
update: it's a perfect sunglasses case!
my dad is becoming dangerous on the internet. that is to say, he is starting to do it on his own. dad -- please hit the back button.
okay! i am tempting fate by posting the finished product a whole six days before christmas morning, but here it is: the footstool that i have made for my father (with help from a few special people, as usual.) this footstool has a long and storied past, starting with the yarn: soy silk that i spun and dyed, and dog hair from our dead family dog that i also spun. it also features a photographic image of my father as a toddler, along with some of my aunts, which i transferred with the use of a large halftone negative onto a piece of fabric treated with photographic chemicals.
we bought a footstool frame, and ben stained it. brett and lisa at rosie's yarn cellar helped me figure out how to make my piece of knitting frame the photo correctly (i worked from the outside-in.) then grace was very patient helping me to put a fabric backing on the piece, and dorlynn suggested the grosgrain ribbon edging -- and helped hammer the furniture tacks into it! the whole thing went from being a very floppy and doubtful-looking project to a very solid one, over a course of weeks. believe me, i worried i'd be going to borders on christmas eve for a booby-prize gift cert! but it seems we've made it. lots of people have seen the work-in-progress and it has spawned my brief and testy
footstool FAQ
Q: wow! that's really neat! do you think your dad is going to APPRECIATE IT?
A: (pitying snarl)
Q: isn't it a little WEIRD and DEMEANING to put a picture of your FATHER on something people are going to put their FEET on?
A: (disbelieving perplexed snarl)
erm, i'm starting to feel a little holiday stress building. this came together the way i wanted it to, and i think it will have a very happy recipient. it doesn't speak to me being such a great knitter or spinner, that's for sure -- but i dare anybody to have a better dad.
dad, i said get the fuck off my page.
a couple of mornings ago i hobbled out (crutchless) to my big old japanese indigo plants, and picked the drying flowers, in hopes of saving plenty of seed for next year's experiments.
my playtime with fresh-leaves indigo baths earlier this season was, after all, only play. fresh leaves are not the way to get a deep, lasting, saturated blue. that is done in a long, painstaking process, using leaves that have been composted until no organic matter remains except the blue dye itself, then using that stuff in a carefully balanced, heated, long-tended dye vat. far more than my urban resources allow me to do, not only in terms of the indigo i have, but in terms of time, space, and abilities.
so what can one do?
believe it or not, the japanese have invented a freeze-dried indigo vat! just add water and you have a ready-to-go vat of deep, blue, strangely smelly stuff that does indeed turn your yarn (or whatever) very, very blue. it's as easy as making kool-aid!
i tried it, and i loved it. here you see the results. you have seen this yarn before: it is the plied wild silk from
habu textiles
and the soy silk that i spun on my drop spindle.
to which, i added a little of the coby yarn...
... to make this rather mark rothko-like swatch, which, yes, is on it's way to being what i hope will be a very special project.
i got on the C bus on broad street yesterday, and a few blocks later, an older, black woman got on, with a bright red satin team-jacket that read HEROINES OF JERICHO on the back, and was emblazoned with a spinning wheel.
what a freakin' hardcore find a jacket like THAT would be at the salvo, huh? regardless, i did a little research on these heroines, and they are apparently a black womens' masonic organization.
the "regalia" available is rather impressive...
i think i know what i want for christmas now.
so joel goes to south america for seven weeks. before he leaves, i say, "get me some yarn if you can."
i did not say, nor did i imply, "rob a peruvian woman of her livelihood for the equivalent of nine american dollars." however, you know joel. and if you don't, let me tell you something about him: he's the kind of guy who would rob a peruvian woman of her livelihood for the equivalent of nine american dollars.
or not. regardless, joel tells me, with a little help from the locals, he was able to purchase this spindle, and the yarn that was being spun on it, from a tiny lady who apparently thought joel was an idiot and laughed at him. maybe people don't ask to buy other people's yarn and spindles right out of their hands in peru. maybe joel started taking the malaria pills too soon.
joel seemed a little surprised that i wished to just keep the yarn on the spindle the way it is. it's hauntingly artifact-y this way.
my broad street friend, my biggest fan, the-man-who-would-be-played-by-ossie-davis, was outside of the check cashing place this morning when i walked to the office with my drop spindle.
i don't know all that much about mental illness, but if this man's condition is in any way graphable, suffice it to say he was on a different point in the graph today than on other days when i have seen him. whether he remembered any of our previous conversations, i am not sure. but he zeroed in on the spindle immediately and said:
"what i need to do is get some sheep, and some goats, and bring them to you, so you can have cashmere."
i agreed wholeheartedly, because i thought doing so would expedite the "see you later" part. it didn't. suddenly, it seemed, we were making actual plans.
"i will need about three sheep, and a ram," he said. "it'll be about six weeks from now before they're ready for you. the goats..." he trailed off. "well, i'll eat the goats."
i told him that if he was buying, i'd eat the goats too.
"i do this in homage to you, for your devotion to your craft," he said.
(ben never says stuff like that.)
this is the first time i've talked to that man in awhile. we saw him a few weeks ago, when we were in the car, and he was walking around the subway entrance brandishing a power drill.
... have been the theme of my day.
i woke up to ben's maple pecan pancakes, and by bedtime, he had taken my spinning wheel and stained it a beautiful maple color. it matches many of the framed textiles in our bedroom, which are done in bird's-eye maple.
i've had the spinning wheel for years. since i was married (and channeling gertrude stein through my hair)...
(for the record, flanny peed all over the grey velvet backdrop belonging to the photographer mere milliseconds after this picture was snapped. it was the mid-nineties and that was how we did things back then.)
now i'm a gay divorcée with a maple-stained spinning wheel! the ashford took the stain beautifully; the grain came up real nice.
it's in no one's best interests to use the word "epiphany" lightly, but i can think of no more appropriate name for my experience while plying the dog hair singles.
plying. it's what i do on the spinning wheel. i should not spin singles on the wheel (like i did with the dog hair) -- i overspin. i know that, and should have done the coby dog singles on the drop spindle, where i seem to spin more comfortably.
but, like i said, i thought "icky dog hair", and interpreted the use of the wheel as somehow less tactile, skin-to-hair, than the drop spindle. i doubt i was even right. anyway, i had some very overspun singles, and i needed to ply them.
what else can i say other than while plying, i had an absolute THIS IS IT experience. no, i did not decide to overthrow all other yarns for dog hair, or anything that black and white. but i did see an awful lot of time and steps in the process of getting to where i was, flashing before my eyes; from a living dog that i had spent many years with, to her death, to the scuzzy bags of hair sitting in a spare room year after year, to the recent cleaning of the fiber, to the hesitant spinning of the singles.
and plying is so fun. so mezmerizing. and it just went and went. never broke, never got caught, it was absolutely like... like taking dilaudid, or watching "the magic of oil painting", or any other hypnotic experience. and i thought: THIS is the kind of experience you can make a life's work out of. THIS is ACCOMPLISHMENT. not the kind of "accomplishment" that gets you on "hollywood squares" or something -- but the kind that keeps you from getting alzheimer's, and puts a few roses in your cheeks.
knowing that it would interest few people, impress even fewer, and be personally meaningful to fewer folk than i could even seat on my couch made it no less special, interesting, or just plain meaty as far as creative experiences go. it just felt like heaven. i hope every decent and loving spinner out there gets a chance to just feel it once. it's not like wool. it's not like silk. screw anybody who has an issue with it; they don't deserve to know.
thanks to my dad's learned helplessness when it comes to the internet, i doubt i can spoil part of his christmas surprise by posting about the elements that create it. (dad, if you've actually found your way here, hit the BACK button, please. the BACK button. where it says BACK. in the upper left... no, BACK.)
i am spinning dog hair. this is the hair of my old family dog, coby, who died on october 31, 1996. she was a shephard-collie mix. most of this hair was gathered in the months leading up to her death; a little of it was gathered slightly after. (she was brushed one last time after her death.) this hair has been sitting, clumped up, quadruple-bagged, in a spare room of my ex-husband's apartment since then.
when i finally claimed it, it was more than nasty. it was fetid. i washed it in scalding water and dawn dishwashing liquid, and that helped quite a lot. after the singles are plied, i will soak aggressively again.
even though it looked soft and pretty -- and had this distinctive, mottled, fawn color -- and was so clean it actually squeaked when i drafted it -- i had some prejudices, and did a lot of the first spool while holding my breath. now i am used to it. it never got combed or carded, as i thought that it would be easier for me to spin if it wasn't. so, here and there, i am removing a burr or even a bristle from the dog brush itself, stuck in the hair.
using handspun singles in combination with commercial yarns -- plied together on a spinning wheel -- creates new and exciting yarns!
this is the "soy silk" i have been spinning with my drop spindle. strong, soft, shiny. drink it up. when i wet it, to set its twist, it smells like dry ramen noodles.
combine it with some of the wild silk from
habu textiles
that kathy, on an arbitrary and despotic rampage of cruelty, gave me (it is nearly impossible to do anything with alone, regardless of how gorgeous it is)...
... and you get this! i have no idea what to do with it...
here's what i got when using the same wild silk, plied with some samples of black hemp that i had lying around and about which i was feeling rather equivocal. this, i believe, will be a lightweight moebius.
remember my recent party-train wool single ?
when plied with commercial lopi...
... and then felted, you get something entirely new! and expensive looking, i must say.
yesterday, philadelphia experienced a citywide power failure. air conditioners stopped running. ceiling fans stood still for the first time in months, so we could all finally see how filthy they were. phones were dead. pizzas couldn't be made.
for people without spinning wheels, it must have been hell.
i, however, came home and had a good old time. sure, the apartment was warm and smelled like a combination of cat box and cantelope rinds... but only for a few hours. i spun this crazy, party-train single out of a bunch of little bite-sized woolies from "aj" -- my good mail karma continues.
do i have a plan for this? baby, you know it.
here is a curiosity-born precursor to the "big" project i have in mind for that copper-patina handspun of mine. this is a felted bowl, made with my somewhat labile (and unfelted) singles. i threw it right in the washing machine and even let it go through the spin cycle. the white that rose up out of the felting process was not so apparent to me when i swatched and felted previously. but i'm okay with it.
i had been wanting to make bowls and open vessels for some time, and had been asking around, but no one had heard of any specific "patterns" for such. then i stumbled across a post on another knitting blog that addressed felted bowls as discussed in a recent issue of "spin-off". i didn't buy the magazine, but i loved the bowls i saw in this particular post, and took away from it an idea that i surely could have used during the disappointing days of making shuler and zooey's felted cat "basket": a square bottom is better than a round bottom when you want something to have sides that stand up.
utilizing this knowledge, i knit a square, random in size. then i picked up stitches around its four sides, without even bothering to count, and worked in the round. near the top edge i decreased on K rows: once every five stitches (then purled a row), then once every ten stitches (then purled a row), then did a double decrease the whole way around and bound it off.
there is no question, that straight upon pulling it out of the washer, i did have something that would have easily doubled as a hat. and this knowledge, too, i believe i will utilize. this just isn't my color.
as it stood, i turned down the edge to give it a tighter lip and sewed on some "button pie" buttons that look like triangles of sea glass. i used colored embroidery floss to sew these on. i think it looks lovely, and i think it will be a gift come holiday time -- i have a few individuals in mind, it's just a matter of choosing. it is a shallow bowl, but perfect for holding: bananas, lemons, pinecones, soaps, mail, stamps, postcards, candy, dog biscuits, buttons, cat toys, etc....
i got a lot of learning out of this one little off the cuff project!
an article found by my buddy lisa, entitled "the silence of the lambswool cardigans", has me thinking today: about knitting, spinning, and dyeing, and for that matter, printing. (ben and i are on the precipice of, not only putting off human parenthood for an unforetold number of years more, but of buying a 19th century working replica iron handpress).
i'm having fun spinning my pre-fab batts and sliver, but it is rawther the equivalent of... brownie mix out of a box. which i do use. but i don't use cake mix. and i'm beginning to wonder if i could produce batts as good as the ones i purchase.
but i also love knitting the handspun of my "secret" source. i feel like we're doing something together. i feel like that handspun is a gift to me, which is the way that it feels when lisa illustrates something for me. (like the knitting logo on the right, or the xyz girl or greta the transgendered rooster, who was the logo for night rally.) the article mentioned above makes me think about, and feel grateful for, all these things.
there are those of you reading who know me well enough to know that bleu cheese is a very, very important part of my life.
i can't remember exactly when i said to myself "i wish to knit a baby hat that looks like a small, artisinal bleu cheese," but i definitely said it.
in this case, not only did i knit it -- i spun it, i felted it, and i dyed it with indigo from my own indigo plants using a semi-shibori technique. (do you hear the implied "beat that!" in that statement of fact?)
i thought i might have to wait awhile for a progressive enough set of parents to come along to put this hat on their baby boy (i wanted it to be a boy's hat). i didn't have to wait long at all. this is going to kori and herry's new baby, who last i heard wasn't named yet. i am hoping they will like it. i know i'd love to see the baby in it. i do realize that my current model -- now nicknamed "murder baby" -- is a little on the stephen king side. anyhoo, i think i'm finished with my baby hat knitting spurt.
it was no cleverness on my part to make -- or recognize -- batts of wool that looked like copper with patina on it. it was the cleverness of the person from whom i purchased the batts. and i can no longer, darn it, remember the name of the farm.
but i have been spinning these singles with a few very specific projects in mind. and i have been felting this yarn. the difference is perhaps not so obvious initially. here, you see unfelted yarn stretched over my kitchen counter, and next to it, the felted skein, upclose:
the bigger difference is what you see in a swatch that has been knitted with unfelted yarn and then felted, and a swatch simply knitted up in the felted yarn:
i like them both, and might use both looks. what i am going for is a rather aged, archiological-find look. embellishments will be added. details of projects will soon follow!
here is most of the white jacob wool that i had been spinning -- turned into a little white hat. i felted it some as well. am i finished yet? no -- the coupe de grace has yet to be revealed. watch this space!!!
drunk gay guy after the pride parade: oh, look, she's looming!
me: no, she's spinning.
drunk gay guy: looming.
well, it was his day, not mine...
i also saw my friend outside of the check cashing place recently. i was happy to see him and showed him that i had moved on to green wool.
"you've been working in earth tones," he said, "and now you're moving into color !"
he does this very booming, ossie davis-thing.
ben is going to be very surprised when he comes home and finds that we have, not a beagle like i've been threatening, but a brand new Old Black Guy.
i spun it, i knitted it up in mistake stitch ribbing. and it's an afghan; a relatively normal-sized afghan.
it's got a bit of a hairshirt quality to it. itchy. plus, with my amateur spinning skills, there are thin places that i fear would be too brittle for the wear and tear of hardcore napping. i can easily picture a foot breaking right through the stitches! maybe i'm being overprotective, but i think this'll just live on the rocking chair like i originally planned.
there's something about the wobbliness of the stitches, due to the twist of the yarn, that reminds me of my grandfather's printing.
this is the white jacob wool i bought at the maryland festival. i finished spinning all the brown batts with the orange and green "jimmies".
and apparently, this was noticed by a guy at the body shop up the street, who yelled to me as i walked by on the day i started spinning the jacob, "onto a white one, huh?"
this jacob wool is very springy. i fought with it at first, but now i am enjoying it. won't get more than two skeins (this being one) out of it.
remember the guy on broad street who was talking to me about spinning?
today i'm walking down broad, and there he is, outside of the same check cashing place, half a block away. he has a splint on his hand.
"i was wondering," he yells to me, "why you chose the university of the arts over philadelphia university, the former college of textiles and sciences?"
"i don't go to either," i yell back, "i just do this because i feel like it."
"that's even better," he calls. "that's the artiste in you!"
i was spinning on my drop spindle while walking up broad street to my office. a man -- i cannot say he was a homeless man, but can say that he was a dirty man, waiting outside of the check cashing place, ostensibly for it to open -- looked at what i was doing and said, "i love seeing someone spin their own yarn!"
he knew what i was doing. that's more than i can say for most of philadelphia. most people seem to think that i'm just toying with some trendy new street combat weapon.
i told the man i was having a great time with it and he said, "my... ex... used to be a textiles major at university of the arts, back when it was PCA." he seemed a little reluctant to say this, perhaps because the memory of this long ago time, and his current situation, were widely separated. then he pantomimed the use of a loom.
it was a pleasant encounter. better than the occasional pasty-faced bunch of conventioneers in the park who will decide upon spotting me that this must be colonial f---ing williamsburg and that i owe them a demonstration.
i've kept up with my drop spindle and am working my way through the bag of brown batts with few expectations, other than getting a feel for it. see here, the skeins of this brown single -- with what might be guard hairs all over it -- are piling up. i do have a project in mind, a simple afghan that will eat all of these and live draped over a chair with dignified anonymity.
i find that spinning is definitely an outdoor activity. when i first tried it a few years ago, i found it was necessary to listen to the grateful dead's "uncle john's band" while spinning. now, i find i must be out of doors entirely. i often spin in rittenhouse square park. i sit over near "the goat", where all the children are, as they remind me that they are demonic life-suckers who would serve only to separate me from my knitting and spinning and writing if i had one of my own. children become hypnotized by the drop spindle. my favorite incident so far was when a little girl stage-whispered to her mother, "I think she is making a kite!"
this weekend i practiced walking and spinning at the same time. it has for the time being set the evenness of my "yarn" back a little bit, but it didn't have far to fall. i like walking with the drop spindle. ben, at first, didn't want me to do it like that -- too much attention taken away from my surroundings. but i am insisting. someday you will see me on the cover of the daily news: THE DROP SPINDLE KILLER. i will thwart my own mugging or murder, maybe.
ah, it practically spun itself. i sat in rittenhouse square, and i spun, and i spun. the sun was on my face, and everybody left me the hell alone, and i thought, "i love my life".
i blocked the yarn (do you call it "blocking" when you wet it and get out the overspun parts?) at home and marvelled over how pretty the skein turned out. i practically imploded from self-satisfaction. I LOVE SPINNING WITH THE DROP SPINDLE.
my wool batts came today. i have ideas for both the brown with the autumn leaf-colored "jimmies" in it (left), and the copper-patina looking one. i cannot wait to start working.
i have been eyeing my drop spindle and getting interested in it again. lisa at rosie's yarn cellar thought that i should start with wool batts as a material, so i ordered some this morning. but i was chomping at the bit to do something spinning-related. so, i made this wrist distaff, with what appear to be the quintessential instructions web-wide. i like mine! i didn't use all beads on my fringe (see detail for special swirly button, piggly wiggly button, and goddess pendant, as well as for the crumbs on my kitchen table), and i also cut some of my fringe short because there just seemed so much of it. but i have used the distaff already, doing my rather crappy spinning with some roving i had here -- and it's easier. my yarn isn't better, but it's easier.
i'm excited about my batts coming soon.