I Am Curious About These Carts

I'm still unpacking from Wisconsin Sheep and Wool (which was so much fun!) and I can't stop thinking about the carts a lot of the spinners were using to tote their wheels and spinning stuff.

They hold a ton -  a wheel, folding chair, tool bag, shopping, a lunch cooler and collapse into the back of a car. I've never seen so many spinners using them as I did at this show.

They aren't cheap, but could make my shelping life easier. Do spinners use them outside of a fairground setting? They're kind of big to get in an elevator and roll around a hotel retreat. On the other hand, I usually take up half of the elevator with all of my Ikea bags.

If you have one, will you tell me how much you love it, if you use it at hotel and shop based classes and where you got yours. Many thanks!

I'm already thinking of ways to decorate my cart. I'm sunk aren't it?

Hipstrings Striped Top Part Two

Remember this top from Hipstrings? I was going to spin it into a fine cable yarn. But several people suggested things that had to do with color, so of course I had to go down that road instead.

I wasn't making the connection between this striped top and a striped batt. It's the same thing just on a smaller scale. If I spin in the direction of the fiber's grain the colors combine into a sexy heathery yarn. If I spin against the direction of the grain in the fiber the color plays out in brighter chunks of color, less blended.

You can see it in these bobbins, one is blended and one is chunkier. I plied them on themselves, fraternal not identical yarns.

Left, yarn spun with the grain of the fiber, blending all of the colors. Right, yarn spun against the grain, one color at a time.

Here are the yarns with a chunk of top indicating the direction that the yarn were spun.

Why didn't I buy more of this fiber? I have so many ideas now!

She's Landed; I Still Need Tissues

Before and after dorm room photos prove Isobel is comfortably settled at Buffalo.

There was a lot of crying, mostly me. And there's been lots of texting, both of us.

She's already made new friends and is getting ready to start training for D1 level diving.

The house is a little quiet. Her stuff was still everywhere when we got home.  I will admit to raiding her art supplies as I put them away in her room.

It's a big change for everyone. I'm still carrying tissues with me.

I already have her first care package started - it's mostly stuff she forgot, and we're all planning to visit during family weekend in October.

It's going to take a bit for everyone to find our feet, but in a few weeks I suspect I won't need my tissues anymore.

Here She Goes, Pass the Tissues

This is loaded up in the car and we are on our way to take Isobel to Buffalo for college.

I think I've had a bit of a cry every day for almost two weeks. I am sad she's going, but also so proud of her and excited for her. It's hard to explain the torrent of emotions in words, so I cry.

She's ready, really ready, and we are mostly ready. I'm excited to watch and hear everything as she goes thorough in this next part of growing up. I just don't want to say goodbye.

I'm hoping it will be like kindergarten where the girl you leave sad at the door, is laughing by the time you walk around the corner and peek in the window, and full of stories to tell you the next time you see each other.

Nashville Part 2: Super Summer Knitogether

Teaching at SSK 2017 was so much fun! Leslie and Laura (and Sara and Gwen) put on a great retreat.

I had superb students that were game for anything. Look at them draped in wool when it's 100 degrees outside and we had wobbly air conditioning in our classroom! They even took their free time to knit swatches of our class spun yarns.

One of the great things that Laura and Leslie do is to have many, many things available to try. One night it's knitted things, one room of sweaters, one room of accessories - all to try on and fondle.

One night it's tools - two rooms full of knitting needles, fiber processing tools and other goodies and a ginormous circle of spinning wheels to try. I helped sell a couple of wheels that night.

We were in Nashville and we ate well! Our dining hall looked like the Hogwarts great hall and it had a soft serve ice cream machine. I ate barbecue with Ross Farms and wish I had ordered the same sandwich as Lee Meredith (mac and cheese with pimento cheese) at a grilled cheese restaurant. I drank a lot of sweet tea.

And of course my loot! This is a decidedly unsexy picture of my haul from the mighty SSK marketplace, but I will talk about most of it separately in other blog posts.

Ready? Clockwise from top left: Hipstrings Corriedale top, Two bags from the Fat Squirrel (I could have bought them all), battlings and top from Hobbeldehoy, my SSK goodie bag, Hipstrings WPI and twist angle tools, two bags of dyed locks from Hopkins Fiber Studio, two Akerworks bobbins for my Hansen, a Wonder Woman bag from Whimzee Stitches (this has already been stolen by my daughter), and this year's tour shirt from Ross Farm.  Not shown a Turkish spindle from Jeri Brock and some yummy smellies from Tuft Woolens.

I wrote about the Hobbeldehoy battlings and Jeri Brock's Flying Pig spindle on the the KnittyBlog yesterday.

SSK is one of those rare retreats where everyone helps each other, questions just get thrown out and everyone contributes an answer or demonstration without bickering and everyone laughs. There were so many jokes and songs and so much laughing. I hope I get to go back!

What Do You Call This Style of Color on Fiber

I bought this fab Corriedale from Jill at Hipstrings at the SSK marketplace, the color is called Warm Woolen Mittens.

What do you call the way the color is presented on the fiber? It's done at the mill rather than in dyepots, though the dyers still choose and sometimes dye the colors. Jill calls it blended.

I might call it striped. It looks like Grandma's candydish ribbon candy to me.

I've been excited to see how it spins up. Since I only have one braid (silly me), I waited a bit to see if it asked to be something specific.

Nothing really came to me, so decided to spin a little just to see how the colors blended. I spun a quarter of the braid, woolen but finer than usual for me.

And boy did those colors blend. The colors get duller becasue of the intermingling, true, but it makes a glorious heathered yarn.

As soon as I saw a bit on my bobbin I knew what yarn I wanted to spin.

Yep, I want to see this type of blended color spun into a cabled yarn.

What yarns do you make out of this type of striped fiber?

Corefun - Playing with Yarn

This week I needed a little yarn play time.

I'm trying to spend some time every day crafting without a deadline. Just whatever occurs to me that day. Sometimes it will last over a couple of days, but usually never more than three.

I found that I've been crafting solely for deadlines and while I don't enjoy it less, there was a little something missing.

So random crafting has become a thing at my house.

I spun some corespun yarn and turned it into two different yarns.

I used a batt from Mork Made Fiber Co and corespun it on Jaggerspun Zephyr wool/silk lace weight yarn. I don't corespin particularly evenly and this helped me practice that.

I intended to chain-ply the whole bit, but my love of spiral plying got in the way.

I chain plied as much as I could stand. I am just not a huge fan of the structure of chain-ply. I do use it and I keep trying to find ways to like it, but it's definitely not a go-to structure for me.

I tend to over twist in the ply, which leads to harder yarn, that's one reason for being, meh on the chain. The other is the constant comparison to 3-ply. Nope. I find the more I think about it as completely separate from 3-ply the more I can accept it into my spinning repertoire. It's a personal spinning weirdness.

I spiral plied most of the yarn. I used the Zephyr as the core- it's stronger than it looks. Of the three yarns, I like it the best.

Right now spiral plying is my favorite. It's just fun to do an so fast!

Here's a peek at the three yarns a little closer and side by side. This was a fun diversion from work spinning.

What did you do for fun this week?

Nashville Pt. 1 and PLY News

Mason Dixon Knitting World Headquarters!

Now I tried to fit everything that happened in Nashville last weekend into one post, but when I tried to combine all that is SSK and MDK it was just too much goodness.

My first adventure was with Ann Shayne of Mason Dixon Knitting. Ann is my kind of woman, with limited time to play and sass she knew just where to take me. Lunch to swap stories, Parnassus Books and Mason Dixon Knitting Headquarters to fondle yarn and spin ideas.

Before I get to the yarn, just a couple of words about Parnassus Books - Holy crap what a great store! This one, co-owned by author Ann Patchett, is up there with Powells, Book People and the Tattered Cover.

That's Ann up there in the photo and I want you to imagine that she offers a bouquet of Jill Draper mini skeins to everyone that walks through the door at Mason Dixon, it's just the neighborly thing to do.

The MDK offices are full of yarn and I pet and squeezed all of it. They pack and ship every skein they sell from this office. Not one skein of yarn would get sold or shipped, and I believe that Ann and Kay might have trouble finding their own butts without the help of Liz, the woman on the right with her dog Daisy. She is the most organized woman I've ever met. Look at the color coded binders on her desk, frightening.

Bonus visit: Fringe Association is in the same building as MDK. I got to hug Karen Templer and she didn't even comment on my strings of drool as I surveyed her mighty inventory. I could have easily bought one of everything. As beautiful as things look on her site, in person it's even better.

I got some sneak previews of new Mason Dixon Knitting kits and the upcoming Field Guides, so many cool things! There was also some plotting and planning, I'm super excited.

Did you see the PLY news, today? PLY Magazine is going to start publishing books! And guess who has two thumbs and is on the book publishing team, yep, me. Again, with the excited!

Have a spinning book you want to write or an idea for a great book that you want someone else to write? The announcement and info about all of those things are on the PLY blog today.