sometimes things are just as they seem

I needed a bit more than 200 yards of a heavy worsted yarn. I wound the various skeins that I thought were the same yarn into cakes and here's what I got:

Even though the darker ball is larger, it seemed lighter in weight, less dense. Guess what? It weighs more. A whole 1/10th of an ounce. It has more yardage. Suspense over.

I actually worried about the outcome of this drama.

I'll be away most of the week working with some very favorite clients. I even get to travel my favorite way to the job, by ferry boats instead of planes. I can knit on board for the trip. The larger skein is more yarn. Life is good.

alpaca fan club meets now

To sum up, the friends & family, pizza truck & cupcakes were fabulous. Even the weather, which freaked us out by dumping a sudden storm an hour before the 100 guests arrived, was just perfect for the outdoor party. Roasted plum and carmelized onion pizza is genius. In case you were wondering. Thanks for the bday wishes! I still have a week to go, I am relatively youthful.

In real time, I've been on the road and back and gone for Shear Spirit and other projects. This will come to a screeching halt in July, when I'll be tethered to my computer, whining and whimpering, doing the production work.

But let us not dwell in the near future! Let us dwell in the near past when I went to New Mexico to photograph a big sprawling mountain top alpaca ranch.

I learned a long time ago not to have pre-set notions about my subjects.I figured here I was exempt. Northern New Mexico is one of my favorite locations so I thought it'd be all about the sense of place.
So Very Wrong. The land and setting were stunning but it was all about the people. I meet THE BEST people in my work.



This is a mother/daughter alpaca ranching team.

I discovered that alpaca are (arguably) the most lovable of the fiber animals. Sorry sheeps, I love ya but , the alpaca are so cute and friendly, you wonder if they are actually big cleverly disguised puppets. I mean, look at these two.

I wonder if Jim Henson met any alpaca before he got to work?

A further discovery: the more I visit fiber farms, the more I'm falling in love with natural, undyed fibers. I went through a long, hippy-girl naturals only knitting phase a while (OK a long while) ago. Then I learned that gray looks better on a sheep than it does on me, since then I gravitate to strong colors. At this ranch, about half of the yarn they sell is handspun, soft and beautiful and they keep track of which alpaca it came from. See the little tag ? This is all the more impressive if you know they have a couple hundred of the creatures on hand.

As I was leaving, the lovely generous rancher insisted I choose two skeins. I think I've mentioned how indecisive I am ? I was struck silly and under pressure to move fast, to make a 3 hour drive to the airport in less than 3 hours which you know isn't such a great idea even without the added pressur eof choosing luxury yarn. Idiotically I chose two entirely different skeins because I loved them each so much. Now back at sea-level I realize I have maybe 300 yards each of a rosey-brown and of a brown & white, a bit like the one above. Maybe mittens & a scarf that sort of go together? Its too warm to knit alpaca now so I'll let it ferment till the fall.

There was a spinning workshop going on too while I was there, and I met two cool spinning sisters, and a knitting cowboy designer, but I'm saving the rest for the book. Just a few months to go...

the upside of being a nervous flyer

A proud tale of what I learned enroute.

I am a nervous flyer. I wasn't always this way. Returning from vacation in August 2005,we flew through the edge of Hurricane Katrina. Nervous took on a whole new meaning. At the time I didn't make too big a deal. I was on a plane that bucked and fell thousands of feet a few times but in the end, my family was unharmed. Considering the folks on the ground below- what's a rough ride?

Ever since, I become a cartoon character as I walk through that boarding tunnel. If we hit so much as a pimple of turbulence: my heart sproings out of my chest on a coil, sweat spurts geyserlike from my palms. I make small choking noises and squirm. I am not fun to be near.

Turns out modern medicine has just the thing for me, so one pill per trip and presto change-o: I am calm, smile goofily and fall asleep while trying to knit cashmere lace. Cheerful indifference.

On my way to New Mexico a couple of weeks ago, having abandoned the lace project, I was approaching equanimity when I looked down at the needles and thought of the knitting maneuver that's eluded me since childhood: purling backwards. I try it once a year just in case I spontaneously develop the knack while I'm not paying attention.

So, up there feeling no worries, I thought, what's the big deal? I'll just put the yarn here, loop it around here...and walla. I am purling backwards.
Maybe not with lightening speed but it makes knitting a long narrow tote bag strap more pleasant. Back, forth, back, forth. It was all I could do not to nudge the strangers on either side of me in 7a and 7c to share my joy.

I was going to link you to some places that show purling backwards - some call it knitting back- and to my surprise, ain't no one doing it just like me. I'm sure there are, they just didn't get a manicure and put it online. I knit in the combined method with the scooped purl, so my purl back is wrapped that way too, clockwise. (no, really, do go on, we need a chance to rest our eyes and dozeoff...)

Ok enough about me.I really want to tell you about the huge alpaca ranch up in the mountains of New Mexico where I bunked out for a few days. But not just now. Now let's talk about me and cupcakes.

We are having a great big party in a week . Dave and I and 3 of our closest friends are having the same big birthday in the same month. The five of us have been jawing about this for ten years, since our last round of big birthdays.

Unlike most of the stuff we jaw about for ten years, we took action. The main food is taken care of by this brilliance, The Big Green Pizza Truck. After gazillion emails planning a massive collaborative birthday cake creation (frighteningly, the group of 5 includes an architect, an artist , two photographers, and a massage therapist, we are so damn hands-on we can't help ourselves) we settled on having a cupcake tower, each of us baking up many crazy cupcakes. Then word leaked to my oldest dear friend, a restauranteur , and the call came . She will arrive with ALL of the cupcakes we could ever want. And then some.

If it was anyone other than her I'd say no, but her cupcakes taste better than you can imagine . Can you tell? However. As a knitter, I can't help put have a moment of awe for the marzipan stockinette on these cupcakes. I wonder if you can purl back in confectionary materials?

so...where was I?

As soon as my jeans were washed and lost that Eau de Sheep scent, a tangy whiff I've grown so fond of, I was in Montana.

Montana looks just like you think it should. They didn't just make up that purple mountains' majesty line in the song, y'know. I kept thinking the ranch we were staying at looked like the movies, until a neighbor told me that they had, indeed, filmed The Horse Whisperer and A River Runs Through It right up the road. Thus inspired, I got on horseback for the first time since junior high. It felt great. But looked dorky, as I white knuckled the reins while grinning ear-to-ear, so I'll skip the visual.

My sister, the mitering Lulu, came along for this leg of the Shear Spirit book photo marathon. We briefly - very briefly- considered bringing our loose squares to sew at night.

Here she is arranging yarn skeins for a still life.
Behind the scenes view:



What we were doing:
.
Lulu's really NOT a country girl and was a good sport about it, getting up close and personal with the animals and all.

This one liked her. A lot. She left that morning covered in Corriente cattle slobber.

I'll spare you an exhausting incident that involved her vigorously herding a group of pregnant ewes. We thought they should be in a particular spot with good light to make an interesting photo near a sweater for one of the book's patterns and they, the ewes, felt otherwise. I think they just wanted to be left alone till they gave birth. Selfish animals. No sense of publication deadlines and editorial needs. You know I'm joking , right? We had carte blanche from the rancher. He set us loose with the sheep, hoping the activity would get them into labor. I am considering a sideline: photography and fiber animal birthing coach.

We also met sheep with personality. This is Devil. His mixed breeding left him with a lovely teddy bear face but these unfortunate horns that stick straight up . I was made to promise he wouldn't end up in the book. But the blog? Just don't tell the rancher if you know her, OK?

Do you wonder if still knit? I do! But with little to show. I was, as far as I could tell, the only person knitting while waiting for Old Faithful to blow a couple days after leaving the ranch, while playing tourist in Yellowstone. And then, 90 minutes later, while waiting from a different vantage point geyser-side, I was the only person ripping out 8 inches of cashmere lace, having found too many dropped stitches to live with. I think the cashmere lace will wait until I can work on it in one spot.

the song from Rocky Horror

Have you ever had an incredibly great meal, with every bite delicious from the first appetizer nibble on? And you sit there wishing you could spread the great food over two weeks of your usual boring meals, instead of having them all happen in 2 hours? Yeah. That's how I feel about life the last six weeks. So many interesting people, so many stunning views, new tastes, interesting conversations, revelations, challenges. I want to grab a clock and pull back the hands like a super hero so it all goes more slowly and I can spread the goodness over a year or two.

The Shear Spirit Oregon to San Francisco photo shoot road trip tour was just such a feast.

1200 + miles, two farms, cashmere goats, chubby woolly sheep, one sheep herding dog bite, many losses of bearing on remote dirt roads, great hosts on each farm who let us bust into their lives and then fed us well and told us stories, nightly digital slide shows with people who actually enjoy looking at 500 more images of fiber related subjects you shot that day because they raised or spun or knit or dyed it, a hike and wade through icy water, redwoods, espresso huts (seriously why do we not have these on the east coast? are we not civilized???) , one little earthquake just so we knew we were in California, a charming off-the-grid cabin with woodstove, and much more.

One police stop for speeding . My lame-o excuse "oh I'm so sorry officer but the Oregon coast is so FABULOUS and I've never been here before and no I didn't see you trying to pull me over for two miles because, well, I was looking for a........sandwich. "

I wouldn't admit I said that if I were alone but once again my 16 year old son was riding shotgun, on his spring break. Like any good teenager he zoomed in on it as hilarious, and it probably was the funniest thing I said that day, because the rest of our conversations were
"Oh. Wow. Look. Wow. Whoa. Don't look while you're driving. Wow that's beautiful. Whoa thats the Pacific and a....CLIFF!"

We stayed at a cashmere farm in Oregon where I sat in the evening test knitting some sturdy New England botanically dyed wool/hemp until the cashmere farmer/fiber artist could stand it no longer and inisted I cast on a cashmere lace scarf with her delicate, glimmering, natural colored yarn. Oh..OK!. Force me.

Here's cashmere lace from its true start start to finish. Mine didn't advance so smoothly, until days later in Mendocino I got my lace groove.

Its hard not to share more from the trip . Not just because the best stuff has to be saved but I'm only half edited and I need to leave again, destination on Wednesday is Montana. I don't know much about Montana except for what I read in novels or blogs or learned in my youth. What I can count on: sheep, yarn, beauty, surprises.

I don't see the problem here....

THOUSANDS of rich women were conned by a firm into believing LAMBS were valuable miniature POODLES.

go ahead and click on that above, I'm sure you'll agree with me

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I haven't fallen entirely off the blog train. Really.
I'm trying to put together a coherent post about the Shear Spirit book photography 12 day swing from Portland OR through Northern California , via cashmere goat farming and life on a farm in Mendocino. Complete with a sheep herding dog bite. #%&*! I'm trying to view it as a badge bruise of honor.
Do you know how many shades of green there are in Oregon? I'll be back with some of that soon, and the ongoing challenge of me vs. cashmere lace.

no such thing

I was going to post about how I don't believe in coincidences and even when things seem random, eventually I get the connection. Sometimes it's science, sometimes it's karma. Sometimes it takes me years to figure it out.

I've had a whole bunch of not coincidences going on, a sad one illustrated here. A year ago this week I cast on for this, my first sock ever. This week... a breeze came through the koigu. Sad little puppet, isn't it?

So, that's the short of it.
You want a truly cool knitting coincidence, go over to Cara's.

In just a few hours I'm leaving for another Shear Spirit sheep & goat farm book photography trip, this time off to Oregon and Northern California. If you don't see a post here for a couple weeks, it's not that I don't want to share, it 'll be for lack of internet connection. I'll be busting at the seams with pixels. Just you wait. I am so looking forward to seeing that part of the US.

Meanwhile, some recent tinkering with crochet on a sweater edge (Ok my mom did the tinkering, I watched) got me thinking, and then Lisa's post got me wishing, for time to do a newfangled granny square blanket like the one she showed. I know someone with 84 unsewn mitered squares on the top of her bookshelf should not be uttering these words. But there you have it.

f

Not that I'm insufficiently granny-squared in a more traditional way. This blankets sits on our bed, made by my great grandma Gussie in the 1940's. The squares are about 3 " on each side, all gazillion (seriously, its 27 by 39 squares, you do the math. OY!) Every bit edged in industrial strength black mystery fiber. So psychedelic! So durable!

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.