postcards

I went thinking we'd be visiting and photographing a Churro sheep breeder /herder/weaver and throw in as much ethnic connection as we could, along with the knitting. Instead, the writer and I found ourselves living for 5 days with an extended Navajo family in a remote setting, completely immersed in their lives. It was one of those " oh, how did I get so lucky to have this amazing experience" weeks. I can't show you the most woolly, fibery/sheepy/knitty parts that'll be in the book - (did I mention it's called Shear Spirit )- but since so much of the trip can't fit into that one measly chapter, how about some postcards from the rez?

A scene setter

Here's where we stayed, with Helen out front. When I say out front, it's not as in "the yard" because, well, there is a lot of land out there and it just extends. Totally freaked out my east coast sense of space and boundary. That ugly little orange car was our unfortunate rental. The price was right but it wasn't meant for unpaved sandstone -clay earth that turns as slippery as a bumper car rink when wet. The upside: no other traffic when you are sliding sideways off the road.
Helen's son Jay is our main subject. Until we pulled up, we didn't realize we'd be moving in with her, Jay, two other adult sons, a daughter-in-law and a 5 week old grandbaby. To say she is a generous spirit is gross understatement.

Our main subject, with spinning and fiber content

More misconceptions blown away. I always thought churro wool was rough and meant for outerwear, rugs, saddle blankets. Not so! If only I had "touchavision" so you could feel the lovely skeins Jay makes, in naturals and in some of the local plants he's using for dyes.

You know you won't find much spinning content here normally but here it is: I saw a lot of spinning going on, all of it using a lap spindle. He made it look so easy I almost asked to try but...nah. When he started to ply and spin the plies together, a little blog-reading light bulb went off in my head. Says I " Um, Jay..is that what they call Navajo plying". It is to his great credit that he didn't kick me across the mesa. Or even laugh.
Since the first language spoken by all in the community is Navajo, he may have relayed this comment to everyone right in front of me, though. I only picked up 3 or 4 words: hello, thank you and white women.

New friends

Rena & Sam, a great aunt & uncle, came over to meet us . Jay had told them of our interest in the churro wools. They raise sheep, goats and Rena is a master weaver. Sam or Jay take her rugs to a trading post that is a couple of hours away, the rugs eventually go to dealers in places like Santa Fe. These are some of the small samples she makes when working out patterns and color combos. Yup, these are rug swatches. Rena speaks no English, Sam only some. They regarded my enthusiasm for photographing them ("Jay, ask them if they would stand here...no here...no wait...ask them if they'd walk down the ridge a little" with great amusement. Turns out no one has ever photographed them before. 8x 10's will be mailed this week.

They invited us over for traditional Navajo breakfast the next morning.

In their hogan Rena cooked us Navajo bread, straight in the embers, and then grilled a rack of freshly butchered goat. The hogan is kind of a cabin/clubhouse they spend most of their time in, directly behind their small modern house. Sam built it by hand from timbers, and also a teepee nearby. Turns out every family has some traditional building like this outside their 60's modular home. The food? It smelled fab-u-lous. I ate as much of the breads as I could without being an obvious pig.

Proof that we also worked on the book

A little behind the scenes action. I am dying to show the sweaters that were designed from the churro wool for the book but..sorry. We spill no pattern before its time.

Alas no soundtrack

The things you can't show: the smell of sandstone, juniper and sage after it rains, endless sky, and during the day when all the animals were far away grazing, a silence so profound it borders on disturbing to my cluttered ears. Except for these guys.

follow up/ fouled up

Oh thank you, thank you, my dear commenters for the unanimous support in doing the right thing. You know I went and got those damn size four needles even if it meant heading out to Arizona with only 4 hours sleep the next day.

this is the road in, as seen from the ranch on Black Mesa

I would rather be telling you about this churro sheep ranch visit and the family of herders and fiber artists I was privileged to meet and live with. There aren't many experiences that have me at a loss to for words but this...well, this will be a chapter worth buying the book for. If possible read that last sentence with some modesty in my voice.

Since it'll be a while till that's possible (the book buying, I mean) and you know how I love to show & tell... as soon as I can distill coherent words and edit out a few more of the the 1200 images, I'll be sharing .

Meanwhile, back to them new needles:
I cast on the hat I am test knitting, a lovely slightly artsy little hat, on the plane and finished it on location - with the whole Navajo family I was staying with watching to see me try it on . It was too freaking small. What was wrong? Aside from- ahem- the obvious not swatching for gauge?

What was wrong was that it needed to be knit on size 5 needles. Take a moment to absorb the irony.

So now I rip and reknit. And save my size 4 needles for future outings.

One more view on the rez. Mostly the other 1198 images have people or sheep or fiber in them, you'll see.

wwak*d?

* ak= any knitter

for want of a needle an hour is lost

Say you were leaving tomorrow for a remote location on a Navajo sheep ranch and you had stuff to do up the wazoo or is it out the wazoo...oh, what is a wazoo anyway? Equipment to check, recharge and pack , clothes to wash , deadlines for clients, a vomiting itchy dog, a 16 year old who went to school saying he might be getting sick (although blessedly neither itchy nor vomiting) , a 13 year old with a high maintenance homework assignment that will be due tomorrow and requiring your attention as he struggles through it .....

wouldn't you find time to run to a yarn store for some size 4 circulars, even though you have the world's largest collection of size 5 needles in all configurations, so you can knit what you have in mind on the plane ride?

I thought so.

sing for me, Kermit

Do you think I have spring on my mind?
My new shoes:

My new bag:

Yes, it is ginormous, though they call it Classic Large

The jacket I am itching to wear:

What I'm knitting today:

well, you know what they say,
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds".

shakshouka

Trying to think of an alt word to well-worn random, this dish popped into my brain. From way back when a much younger version of us lived in Israel for two years. You throw anything you have on hand into a pot on top of sauteed onions and tons of garlic, adding crushed tomatoes, cook till it's melded, then you toss in a couple of eggs on top. If cooked over a fire while camping in the desert: indescribably delicious. Not bad at home either but when you get those little smoky embers in it, mmm.
Anyhow, here I am with all kinds of stuff and an egg on top.
Thinking about our Israel years , Dave reminded me that I used to try to get up early on Thursdays for the weekly sheep trading market in east Jerusalem by the Damascus Gate at dawn. To take pictures. Consistent, am I not?
I wandered everywhere fearlessly then, now I can barely get my quaking self on a commercial airplane from fear of turbulence. An ageing wuss! And yet I still love to travel. Flying recently I spent hours in a panic over a super bumpy start and the pilot's warning that landing was going to be rough, too. Like I had any choice, seeing as I was in the air strapped in trying to do yoga breathing. I am crying uncle and going for drugs before the next flight. I'm also heading over to the excellent travel sites MamaCate linked to yesterday. I'll add Mobissimo to her list.

On to knitting. It's still woolly weather here, I'm knitting this scarf as a way to use the beautiful hand dyed mohair locks I was given at Kai Ranch.
It's a feather and fan, 20 stitches wide in Andys Merino from Farmhouse Yarns (it never ends, I tell ya), I'm just knitting the silky little curls in sort of how you'd add thrums, except poking outward. I decided to congregate them near the ends and more sparsely placed in the middle, so I won't end up with an upscale wool scarf that looks like fun fur.

You know what I want to be knitting? Lots of the new Knitty . I looked at my spring Interweave and thought "well that proves it, I am not in synch with What Knitters Want to Wear" Then, the spring Knitty and if only I didn't have other sweaters started, this or this or this would be cast on immediately.
You still with me? I'm getting to the egg on top (or maybe the whipped cream but its more proteiny and useful than whipped cream): my next trip to shoot sheep is to a Navajo ranch, in Arizona. Can I not wait to leave? No I can not! Why am I doing this? For a book! Next year, from PotterCraft. Fiber farms, lots of juicy photos, fiber artists, great writing and of course knitting patterns from the fiber farms/ranches all over the US . Please note: I'm not writing, I am definitely NOT designing anything, you've got to know your strengths and designing? Not mine. Real designers and fiber artists from each farm are, using their own yarns from the profiled farms. I just take the photos. And give opinions to editors. And test knit. Swoon.

my groove thang

Before going to Texas, I was sure that a successful photo shoot hinged on a warmer weather headwrap. I needed to knit one more Calorimetry . So sure was I that, the day before I left, I bought me some Noro Tidiori , and with my priorities thus clearly in order, I was good to go.

Texas turned out to be over 80 degree F . Head wrapping was not so high on my needs list after all.

Back home, I returned to Group Groove , a hiphop dance workout class I get to any week I can. Go ahead and click on that link, you'll see what my inner flygirl thinks I look like . To the untrained eye at the gym, though, I look like a dork. Best thing about being me now? I really don't care what I look like while I dance. I always leave laughing and aerobically fortified. Or depleted, whatever. My wardrobe is way not hiphop cool. For months I've been sure that if I could tweak my look, I'd surely dance better.

Last week I figured out what I needed: a head wrap. A non-wooly headwrap
.

This one feels like cotton, even though its a rayon/nylon/cashmere blend. I can cover the front of my hair and sort of twist up and stick the longer messy wild part up under the back button. The instructor , a woman who can shake her hips , wear blue tinted glasses and pants that are falling off while looking non-chalantly fabulous- complimented my head style right from the front little stage she teaches on. oh yeah. Everybody to the dance floor.

I only used half a skein to make this last 88 stitch, narrower than the pattern calls for Calorimetry little groove thing. The colorway is so all over the place, look at this, I can knit a second one out of the leftovers in completely different stripes.

some things I learned in central Texas

1. A group of goats is called a tribe.

Call me a member of the tribe.


2. Angora goats make mohair. (Confusingly, rabbits make angora wool.)
Kid mohair is silkier than you can imagine.
Especially on the hoof.


3. Lisa Shell at Kai Ranch makes beautiful beautiful (did I mention beautiful?) dyed mohair and weavings and yarns and dyed locks. When she's home at her dying/weaving studio on the ranch, the mohair awaits outings to places like Estes Park or Maryland S&W. But let's say you're visiting to take photos, and you sleep on the futon in the studio.....do you get it? essentially, I slept in a yarn store. sigh.

4. A sixteen year old son,
.
when removed from the rest of his species and placed in a new ecosystem, can be great company

5. Austin is a very cool place.
Good food, friendly people.
Live blues music at the airport. And, it's warm in the winter.

once again

These oldish socks are newly done! Not a moment too soon for this icy cold week. Since crossing into the cozy world that is sock knitting, my toes have known nothing else but handknits this winter. With only three pairs, rotation is heavy. Not to mention boring.

These are just the basics in Lornas Laces Stripes. I impulse bought this yarn on Destash late last winter when the brightness seemed, I don't know, perky or something. Then the seasons changed . I wished for more subtle colors. Now it's back to winter and, hell, they're wool, they're warm, who cares if they are garish and match nothing I wear? They're perky!

Careful viewers , by which I mean anyone with eyeballs, will note flashing on one foot and not the other. Curious? In my wisdom I customized the pattern to fit my foot shape but didn't write down the changes I made. I was sure I'd remember months later when I knit the second foot. I can hear you snickering , by the way.

That whole customized thing went down the drain after wearing them half a day. They stretched and are every bit as unfitted as if I'd never tried on either hoof. Not sure I'm loving the Lorna's Laces yarn as much as I thought I would. However, they are warm. And perky!!

Moving on. I bet you thought I'd be back with another Calorimetry.

You'd be right. An impulse one in some leftovers: Araucania NatureWool with a stripe of Frog Tree Merino. Its already done and on the head. More true to color in the view below. Cannot stop making these. I have tons of small leftover balls of yarn, there is no end in sight. I already showed you how many buttons are in the reserves.


Mia asked, in the comments last time, how I bound off. Firmly, in the same 2x2 ribbing that the piece is knit in. You don't want a baggy edge on these babies. I'd go down a needle size for the cast-on and/or bind-off if you're usually loose on those maneuvers.

I'm answering her in the text because Blogger, while the right price if you know what I mean, doesn't give you much chance to answer your comments unless your commenters write from their own email address or choose "other" when leaving comments and link back to themselves. You other Blogger bloggers know what I mean. The rest of you, if I don't write back, it's not cause I don't want to have some blog manners, I just can't.

v2 debuts

When I stopped by the yarn shop to get some Noro Silk Garden for my second Calorimetry, there sat the sales person knitting the exact same thing, with the exact same yarn. She was re-knitting it for the third time. It was the too large problem. She showed me store samples she'd made using the recommended yarn - and she's a tightish knitter- and we agreed the pattern model must have been tall and melon-headed (in an attractive and proportionate way I mean) 'cause they were big.

Her third attempt was on size 5us needles with the full 120 stitch count, and it was looking nice and neat. She persuaded me to go down to size 6, I knit on the loose side so I went for 88 stitches.

I short row decreased until there were 34 stitches on either end outside the markers,and 22 stitches between them. I should have made it narrower but honestly, it's been a while since I knit any Noro . I was so into the color changes I couldn't stop. This is great for those of us with cold heads and behaviourly challenged hair. Did I mention immediate gratification ? And way less than a skein was used. I could cast on another one right now.

For those of you keeping track on your tally cards, here's the comparison, heavier worsted on size 8 needles us in green, lighter worsted on size 6 on top:

Side benefit, I opened my button tin for the first time in ages. Dontcha love a visit to the old button tin?

I think we can all agree this size, yarn weight and color is better than v1. If "we all" does not include the 13 yo, who still thinks it's a weird look. I told him not to worry. It's my aim to make a different color one for every day of the week.

v1

I could resist no longer. I was mentally designing headwraps- a standard diversion of mine that never gets anywhere near needles- all week. I was looking at Knitty Calorimetry as a possibility and then saw this and these and..well, at 6:30 am yesterday I was already into the short rows.

A bit of knitting then , a few minutes mid day and some rows during a wait in the evening and it was done. If I had to guess, under 90 minutes of knitting and I'm not all that speedy.

I was thrilled with it, I had a cool button that matched, I put it on.
Owing to my ethnic inheritance, most headwraps that look cool on others scream BABUSHKA on me. And not in that good waify gypsy way .

My 13 yo son upon seeing it said " No...no. That's really not good. You look like a...uhhhm...look in the mirror. Don't even bother finishing that hat." When I told him it was finished, and would he take a few photos of me wearing it so I could see, he agreed. As long as we did it in the backyard, away from humanity.

Me? I like it as a v1. I'm thinking maybe a colorway other than "Violent Spring" (just kidding, its Key Lime) would be a better choice for me, with less short rows so it was narrower. This being a heavy worsted yarn, and my head being smallish, I followed the experience of others , casting 8o stitches on size 8 needles and cut back my repeats to 8 short rows of decreasing and 8 growing back, about half of those on the pattern.

Its a potato chip of a knit. Tomorrow all the yarn stores around here have super bowl sales, and I'm thinking Noro, on size 7 needles, something subtler in tones and smaller in size. Meanwhile, avert your eyes if you're 13 and see me coming.

everything old

...seems to be breaking. (Alternately titled, how about some whine with this post?).
On Sunday it was the tenant's oil furnace next door, flames licking out and smoke filling the basement. Emergency repair.
On Monday,our dsl modem flickered its last gasp of connection. I spent the afternoon agitating tech supports internationally . More locally, I crouched between my desk and the wall, in the big tangle of cables. I appreciate my talents as a champeen yarn untangler at times like this.
Monday night I thanked the helpful fellow in Mumbai, reconnected the router and set up a new improved wireless network for my family & world headquarers.

Later Monday night it was the tenants turn. The dishwasher was leaking next door. Not a little leak. A need-a-new-dishwasher type leak. Did the dishwasher talk to the furnace and plan this? Were my router and dsl modem involved?

Wednesday there was one old-ish thing I could make new easily, with blessedly no wires, added expense, cables, plumbing, heavily accented tech support or fumes .

The nephew's hat, knit and gifted in December came home to roost when he showed me that even though he has a great big dreadlock covered teenage noggin, it was way too big.

fyi: Its the go-to hat pattern that never disappoints, the Chic Beanie, knit in Farmhouse Yarns worsted weight merino, two strands held together. Black and something variegated.

It returns to him tomorrow night. And if the tenants call.....I'm not home.

red scarf road trip report

If you thought the red scarves were beautiful last year, you should see this year's.
And if you think it's "nice" to knit for the Red Scarf Project, well, nice doesn't begin to cover it. Go read Norma's post about the students. Ok you've probably already been there. Read on!

This sneak peek is from a most excellent road trip to frigid southern New Hampshire to meet up with Norma and some lovely OFA students, who gave their afternoon to pose for PR photos for the Red Scarf project.

I'm not sure I can capture in words how moving it is to meet the OFA students and learn how truly touched they are to receive the care packages. Something so easy for us is so big to them. As in , makes a difference in their lives. The heartfelt and unsolicited comments they made while looking through the scarves, that people cared enough to knit for them, and the handwritten notes, and the receiving of a personal gifts when they get NO packages at all from "home"....well,let's say there were some moments where you need to blink back those eyes.

Not that we didn't get in some laughs. We had our Fearless Boy Reporter stop in from the New Hampshire newspaper


And had a general all around good time, reenacting - or maybe I should say pre-enacting- the receiving of Valentines Day packages, and posing for gazillion photos to help spread the word about the Orphan Foundation and its students.


It was zero F (for freakin') degrees out and we could still look this glad to be there.
If you knit a Red Scarf , you were there too. Be proud.

ps. The Orphan Foundation also has an virtual mentoring program that the students raved about. Students and volunteers are matched up by interest and career goals, and your experience. They keep in touch over the year for support, exactly what they don't have after they've aged out of foster care. Or maybe never had at all, from what we heard. So simple and so meaningful. If you are interested check it out on the OFA site.

everything old is new again

An ongoing theme for 2007.

I always thought of myself as a sweater knitter. To me, sweaters were the main course of knitting, and hats or scarves were little snacks to have once in a while on the side.
In 2006 it seems I went wild with the chips and crackers, I didn't finish a single sweater. In fact I barely worked on one, and that baby is going to be ripped out in the near future.
This sweater was started at the end of 2005.I'd bought a button I was crazy about while on vacation in New Mexico and decided to knit a sweater for it. Can you say "Bass Ackwards" ?
It's a Cutaway in Rowanspun DK, last seen with half a back knit in November 05.

Being one of Bonne Marie's wonderful designs, it is so well written , it's practically knitting itself . (That and it's mostly stockinette with shaping.) I've whipped out the back, the two fronts and cast on for the sleeves. Two on one, that is.


Below I am illustrating the velcro qualities of my backdoor tree (aka the lazy photographer's quick wall for knit shots) and also the oddly attractive combo of random orange waste yarn and the lavendar tweed. I'm tempted to blanket stitch the edge in something terra cotta-orangey.


Fortunately I still like the pattern I chose, I still like the yarn.

I'm just not sure it goes with the button.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

Road trip today! It involves red scarves, students, Norma and, umm, maybe a gnome?

sisterly relations

Recently a commenter asked: whatever happened to all those miters? Blogger being its usual ornery self, I can't email back so you all get to hear. Normally I cringe when asked about something I went on and on and on about and then never finished but that's only if you know me in regular life. You, my invisible internet friends? On the blog? Im honored to have you notice my dangling ends.

In case you missed this ongoing sibling knits drama, all summer my sister and I knit up mitered squares to make a surprise blanket for our parents. By mid August we were plenty psyched that a) we stopped short of hand-to-hand combat over artistic decisions and b) the trial layout looked awesome, in our-ahem- modest estimation. September passed and with it our not-really-but-we'd-like-to deadline .

We chose all those beachy bright colors because, in summer, the parents mostly live in beachy bright seaside Delaware. By October the place was boarded up for winter, so Lulu and I kinda lost our zip. We have the afghan-less sofa that faces the waves in mind as its final resting place. We're both immediate gratification gals , we want the reward of seeing the piece esconced and appreciated right way , none of that store it in a closet till spring stuff for us. (yeah we are old enough to be more mature than that. what about it?) We're thinking end of March when the place gets re-opened as the new goal.

Meanwhile, it appears that the easiest way to lose control of your schedule and your time to walk a couple of miles a day, is to pledge to do 100 Miles by April 1st at Run a Go Go. Last week I was up in Hartford on a job and realized I could boost my meager mileage and get major sisterly brownie points with the mitering sister r by taking a hike over to her museum shop before heading home. The walk itself was..well...unless you call the folks outside the methadone clinic interesting , a not so scenic mile each way.

Although I always like the Puritan gravestone art. You've got love New England cities for having the 250 year old winged skulls right next to the glassed in office tower in the center of town.

The store is full of fun things to browse, Lulu is an excellent buyer and a gifted gifter.

Check out this display

Have I not been a good influence on her? See that issue of Piecework? Its all about knitting and has some very cool mittens in it. Wish I'd bought it.