STRANDS AND STITCHES

Just kind of a short post today -- to let you sock knitters out there know that, as of today, Strands and Stitches knit shop in Laguna Beach is carrying my handpainted sock yarn. This is a superwash merino fingering weight. I delivered an array of colors to Cindy this morning, so there is now a LYS in Orange County that is carrying my sock yarn.

Strands and Stitches is located at 1516 South Coast Highway (in Laguna) and their phone number is (949) 497-5648. The owners are Cindy and Lisa.

I've been dyeing most of the day -- more sock yarn, but I am also experimenting with a fiber blend I haven't dyed before: 60% merino wool/40% bamboo. The rovings are due to come out of the dyepot in a few minutes and I'll be anxious to see how this blend turns out. If it's a success, I'll add this to my repetoire of rovings. I am so hoping that it will dry overnight so I can spin some of it tomorrow. I may have to get out the hairdryer just to help it along. All right, the timer went off -- dyepot calls.

BACK FROM STITCHES WEST

Arrived back home from Stitches West on Monday,exhausted from sensory overload, but very happy with all my classes and, of course, my purchases. First the classes. Thursday, Pam and I took "Fiendishly Difficult Stitches" with Merike Saarnit and we did indeed learn some new stitches and stitch manipulations. Much fun and challenging.

Thusday night was market preview for Stitches attendees. My very first stop was Toots LeBlanc, Michelle Camacho's fiber business from Oregon. I purchased her lace shawl pattern and two different angora/merino (60/40) laceweight yarns. I love to knit with these yarns; they bloom beautifully as you work with them.

Then, on to Redfish Dyeworks where I bought three big rovings, merino/tussah and some baby camel/silk. Even though I dye these fibers myself, I just have to support Sandy Gunther and Elff because they have such a wonderful color sense. Can't wait to spin these.

Friday, I took an all-day class with Barbara Kerr from NYC on "Mitered Patchwork Knitting." We worked on a pillow. Here's what I completed so far. This was absolutely my favorite class -- you just keep building this piece by piece. There's a map so that you eventually end up with a square or rectangle. Much fun!

Saturday, no classes, lots of time for shopping. [Sorry no pictures from the vendor hall -- photos forbidden] Margie (who was in Stanford for the weekend) joined me in the afternoon and we made our way up and down aisles. Here are most of my purchases:

From Beehive Wool Shop, Victoria, BC -- lots of Handmaiden and Fleece Artist yarns. From the left, Somoko sock yarn (merino/mohair/nylon/silk); Handmaiden Mini Maiden (50-50 silk/merino) and Sea Silk (70% silk/30% seacell). Glorious colors! Here's a sock I'm working on with Somoko and Fiber Trends pattern "Fidalgo Feet", size US1 needles.

From Tactile Fiber Arts (Richmond, CA), spinning fibers dyed with natural dye extracts.

From Sweet Grass Wool, Montana -- four skeins of white Targhee wool. Then I had to buy some laceweight alpaca (charcoal and white) from Pajolo Alpacas, Minnesota; and three skeins of Zen 4-ply cashmere from Melissa at Argosy Luxury Yarns in "Nautilus" (plum,wines). Yum!

Margie and I also tried out some of the wheels at Carolina Homespun. We were in a zen moment when we each spun on the big, big Lendrum Saxony. I was ready to take it home on the spot, but it wouldn't fit in my suitcase. Then Margie reminded me that she was in her SUV. Boy was I glad to see a "Sold -- Do not touch!" sign on it a little later in the day.

Sunday was "Russian Continental Knitting" in the morning with Galina Khmelva and then in the afternoon a bead knitting class with Betsy Hershberg. After messing around with tiny beads for three hours -- last class of the last day, Oi vey!! -- I was literally cross-eyed and the brain was mush.

Well, it was Sunday early evening and the academy awards were starting, so Pam and Karen and I went down to the hotel lobby bar, plunked ourselves down at the bar in front of a big screen TV, ordered wine, salads and soup. We were completely exhausted but reveling in our fun four days at Stitches.

I also had great news at the end fo the show from HABU. Takako sold half of the 90+ skeins of handpainted silk boucle and silk/kid mohair I had brought for her booth. The other half is going "across the pond" with her to a knitting show in Paris the first week of March. Wow! I am stoked.

So, on to my ETSY shop. I cannot believe how great this ETSY thing is. When I got back from Stitches, I posted more rovings, some sock yarn and handspun yarn. My handspun sold within 10 minutes. I had five sales yesterday and had to make a run for the post office before they closed at 4:00 p.m. YeeHaa! http://CapistranoFiberArts.ETSY.com

So for now, I'm going to relax, lunch with friends, knit, spin, and oh yes, hopefully run off to the post office some more.

MY ETSY SHOP IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS !!

I finally decided to see what all the hubbub was about ETSY so I signed up and posted some of my rovings. Whoa! ETSY is very cool. There are so many great handcrafted items on the site and now, my handpainted rovings are for sale in my ETSY shop. Soon, I'll post some of my handpainted yarns and handspuns, too. It's so darn easy and the site keeps track of sales and let's you know when you have an order and you get an automatic payment through Paypal. It's fantastic. I had two nice sales within the first day, one from Jan of Ontario, Canada and one from Laura of Albuquerque. Thanks Jan and Laura for being my first customers. Here's the web address: http://capistranofiberarts.etsy.com/ WhooHoo!

My inventory of rovings had been suffering after a big shipment went out to Linda LaBelle at The Yarn Tree in Brooklyn in January, so I have been dyeing up a storm this past week. This is some Blueface Leicester roving that just came out of the dyepot this evening. Oh, so pretty and colorful. These two colorways would be incredible plied on each other.

Here's the rest of what I did today hanging on the drying rack, all BFL.

OFF TO STITCHES WEST THIS WEEK

Pam and I, along with Karen, will be flying up to San Jose this Thursday to go to Stitches West, an annual knitting conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center. There are so many vendors, your head starts to swim after a while. Overstimulation.

I am so happy to have some of my yarns in a couple of the booths at Stitches. Morgaine Wilder of Carolina Homespun will have my handpainted fingering weight merino sock yarn in her booth, along with Nature's Palette and Claudia Handpaints. So, sock knitters, you must make a trip to the Carolina Homespun booth.

And, I'll also have some handpainted yarns in HABU's booth. The yarns I have dyed for HABU include a tassar silk boucle and a laceweight silk/kid mohair. I will also have a lace scarf pattern that uses those two yarns stranded together. As always, the HABU booth is a must since Takako always has some of the most unusual yarns as well as beautiful kits. Here are a couple of the colors that will be available and a knitted swatch.

I am hoping to run into lots of friends at Stitches. Pam and I had a great time last year and I'm sure it will be the same this year. Another must will be Melissa Sheppard's Argosy Luxury Yarns. I hear her cashmere calling to me. Toots LeBlanc is another stop.

SPINNING AT COMMON THREADS, ENCINITAS

I motored down to Encinitas last Friday with Pam and Karen for a little spin-in at Commons Threads. They were launching spinning in their shop. There were lots of spinners, including our friend, Nancy, who we hadn't seen for a spell. So good to see her. There were many people who came just to see what spinning was all about and many were very interested in learning. We set a spinning meet-up for the third Friday of the next three months, March 21st, April 18th, and May 16th, so anyone who wants to join us or who wants to learn more about spinning, we'll be there from about 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. I'll also teach a drop spindle class on March 26th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Common Threads.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

I told my husband no bling, no perfume, (maybe some flowers), but just come home and we'll have a nice quiet evening together.

New fiber arts studio -- Last week I sent off a shipment of my fingering weight sock yarn to Stone Light Studios, a new quilt and fiber arts shop in Soddy Daisy, TN, just outside Chattanooga. Veronica and Dee will be hosting a Lynne Vogel workshop on March 8th and 22nd. Lynne will teach lace knitting, using a spiraling leaves glove pattern she designed using my handpainted yarn. The pattern colorway will be available, as well as an array of other colorways. Lynne is always a great teacher. For more information on the workshop and the shop, visit their website: http://www.stonelight-studio.com/laceknitting_vogel.html

I got out my Bosworth Journey Wheel last week because I hadn't played around on it for a while. I had been wanting to spin some of the Blueface Leicester I got from Sandy Sitzman at Black Sheep last June. She and I shared a booth and had a mutual admiration fest -- she took some of my roving and I took some of hers. I love Sandy's beautiful bright sense of color. She has the touch. Here's some in the process of spinning.
I decided not to divide the roving in long strips. I wanted to achieve long sections of color, so I took the whole roving and loosened it and predrafted it. You can see on this bobbin, how I got very long color bands with this technique of drafting.

Here are the yarns after plying. The violet and chartreuse skeins were hand dyed by me after spinning. They were spun using roving I bought from a group of women out in Riverside County. The fiber was an oatmeal colored blend of mohair/merino/angora from their own animals. It spun up nicely but I decided it would look great if it was dyed in some colors to go with the yarns I spun from Sandy's roving. I am thinking these might be perfect for a handknit child's sweater.

Lizard Ridge Blanket

I have been steadily making progress on the Lizard Ridge blanket (from Knitty.com Fall '06 issue). I am now working on my 17th square, so I've got 8 to go. This will really be fun when I have all 24 done, figuring out the placement of the squares. And then, of course, I'll have to seam all of those squares, one of my very, very favorite things to do. (Not!) This has been a great project, because no two squares are alike, even with the same colorway, so it's definitely not boring.

Tomorrow, Friday the 15th, I am trekking down to Common Threads in Encinitas with Pam and Karen to spin. Nancy and Carolyn are launching spinning in their shop with a little spin in, and we're always looking for an opportunity to spin in public and promote spinning. CT will have a couple of extra wheels in the shop for anyone interested in trying out a wheel. This can only be a fun day with lunch at the little French bakery down the road.

RAINY DAY MUSINGS

Last Friday morning, it was still dark and I was already working upstairs in my weaving/knitting room when I looked up and saw the sunrise. I just had to run and grab my camera to snap a picture of the morning sunrise on the palm trees. Within minutes, it was clouded over and the morning turned to gray overcast as the stormy weather blew in.

Today is a rainy day Sunday, a good day for sitting around knitting and spinning, cozied up in front of a fire. My backyard is full of birds (lesser gold finches and sparrows) running around in the rain. It's hard to see all of the birds, but there must be at least 40 little birds out there skittering around on the ground and on the bird feeders.

Later in the day, I'm expecting two spinning students (Jerry and Megann) for a pre-Super Bowl spinning lesson. And, then I will continue knitting squares for my Lizard Ridge afghan. I went on Ravelry and was amazed to see that this particular project has been posted 489 times. Wow is the only thing I can say!

And in between my obsessive square knitting, I have been dyeing more sock yarn. This is one of my most popular colorways. (#731)

And I am working on hand-dyeing silk/kid mohair and silk boucle which will be sold in Habu's booth at Stitches West with one of my patterns. I am more than excited about this. Takako has an array of amazing yarns in her booth and it's always packed, so it will be a great venue.

So back to my knitting and getting ready for my spinners.

STITCHES WEST Feb. 21st - 24th -- Santa Clara

I am off to Stitches West up in Santa Clara a few weeks from now with Pam and Karen. Hope to see lots of friends up there, too, and looking forward to visiting Melissa Sheppard's Argosy Yarn booth. I need some of her beautiful cashmere. Some of the classes I am taking at Stitches are: "fiendishly difficult stitches", "mitered patchwork" and "Russian-style continental knitting" with guru Galina Khmelva.

I have been busily dyeing the past couple weeks, putting together a shipment of sock yarn for Morgaine Wilder of Carolina Homespun, who will be featuring sock yarn in her booth at Stitches. Besides my Capistrano Fiber Arts sock yarn, she'll also have Nature's Palette and Claudia Handpaints. Morgaine's booth at the fiber shows is always one of the best. She literally brings a store with her and has all things fibery that run the gamut from spinning to knitting. [http://www.carolinahomespun.com/] So make sure to drop by the Carolina Homespun booth.

SUMMER FUN! While at TNNA on Jan. 11th, I Iearned from Morgaine that she and Judith MacKenzie McCuin have put together a slate of summer intensive workshops to be held July 28th through August 3rd at Point Bonita in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, just north of SFO. The workshops will be put on by their organization, the Golden Gate Fiber Institute. Margie and I got so excited just thinking about a summer intensive in a natural setting, we immediately signed up for natural dyeing and spinning ancient fibers. Some of the other classes are lace knitting, felting, crocheting, each with great instructors. All meals will be prepared by a culinary institute chef, so you take your classes, socialize, hike around, and they feed you, too. And it's all within reasonable driving distance. I can hardly wait for July to arrive. For information, visit their website at http://www.goldengatefiberinstitute.org/.

New Year's resolution well in hand I have been spinning almost daily to keep true to my 2008 resolution of spinning ALL of the fibers I have purchased at Rhinebeck and Black Sheep Gathering the past couple of years. I am happy to report that progress is being made. Here are a few skeins I spun last week. The emerald skein is merino/tussah (80/20) and the deep jewel toned skein is merino/bombyx (50/50). Both of these were spun from roving purchased from Clover Leaf Farm at Rhinebeck. The taupe skein was spun from baby alpaca roving I got in the alpaca/llama barn, also Rhinebeck. It's a blend of the fiber from four baby alpacas.

This past weekend, my knitter friend, Jan, was visiting from NYC. She wanted to go to a LYS, so I took her to Strands Studio, a very cute knit shop in Dana Point. When we walked into the shop, we were met by a long row of colorful knit squares hanging from the beam in the middle of the store. I recognized them as squares from the Lizard Ridge afghan (Fall 2006 issue of Knitty.com), a pattern I had wanted to try. The shop's owner, Kelly, has been knitting these colorful squares out of Kureyon and will put them together with a cloth backing. Kelly's artful display motivated me to run home and start knitting. I only had two skeins of Kureyon in my stash, so I then tried the pattern with some of my sock yarn. Here's the result. Once you get the hang of the short rowing in the pattern, this is a very easy knit.

And it's always good news when another spinner comes into the fold. Jerry reports on his blog (http://twistedknitster.blogspot.com) that his new Fricke spinning wheel was waiting for him when he got home yesterday. He was so excited he put the big size 15's to the treadles last night. I predict he'll be spinning easily within a month since he did pretty well as a beginner when he tried out my Rose last year. Just another little obsession, huh? Thankfully, he and Mrs. Twisted are both knitters, so they'll be able to do something with all of the yarn he's going to spin.

CAT BORDHI AT COMMON THREADS

Last Friday I got a welcome call from Common Threads in Encinitas that they had a cancellation for the Cat Bordhi sock workshop and would I like to attend. Of course! So yesterday, I trekked (in a pair of handknit socks) down the coast for an all day class with Cat Bordhi. The class centered around the sock knitting techniques in her new book, below:

Was there homework for the class, was my first question. And the answer was yes, so I spent part of the weekend getting myself up to speed by knitting the two learning socks at the beginning of Cat's book. I knit one pair of the "Little Sky Sock" and two pairs of the "Little Coriolis".

These little socks are so cute and easy, and the absolutely best part is that when you bind off, you're done. NO SEAMING!! It always seems that with a lot of the bootie patterns, you spend more time weaving in the ends and seaming than you do knitting the dang little things. There were about 15 in attendance at the class, a really nice group of women, and some familiar faces, including Gaby from the OC Ravelry group. Here's Cat (standing) helping one student with a question.


I had a great time at the class and have to thank Nancy and Carolyn of Common Threads for hosting the workshop. I learned toe-up sock knitting and different kinds of toes. I also mastered the provisional cast-on that Cat explains in her book -- I just needed a little visual push and I got it. I also got my feet wet knitting socks on two circular needles, although I did my sample sock in class on my double points. I didn't want to get bogged down in too many new things at once. But, I am now ready to tackle Cat's book on knitting socks on two circulars. (I know my converted friends are cheering.) Hey, I still love my dpn's. And I started "Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks" from the new book. The socks in Cat's book for the most part do not use the traditional heel flap. It's a really neat way to knit socks. She also had all of the socks from the book with her and told us the story behind each one. She was a delightful, patient teacher and I was so glad that I had the opportunity to take the class.

Over the weekend, I also finished the pair of ribbed socks I had been working on.

I am now going to turn my attention to finishing a cabled shawl I have been working on that is knit with some very dark brown buttery handspun alpaca from "Shadow", fiber I bought at Black Sheep Gathering two years in a row. Happy knitting and spinning!

HAPPY NEW YEAR - 2008

We all talk about new year's resolutions, so I've got a few. First on my list was to destash and only keep yarn that I would actually want to cast on and knit with. I already accomplished this task two days before 2008. Since becoming a handspinner in 2000, I have only wanted to knit or weave with natural fibers. I managed to go through my entire stash and pull out all of the acrylic, rayon, novelties, and other yarns I bought eons ago. The good news is that almost all of these orphaned yarns have found a good home. My friend, Marion, took many balls and skeins to share with her Wednesday knitting group at the San Juan Senior Center where some of the knitters are of limited means. I am so happy to know that they will enjoy using these yarns. And my other friend, Dale, came by and departed with three big bags. Yee!Haa!

My other resolution is to scale down and get organized. Just before Christmas I got into a whirlwind of purging and cleaning, wanting to start the new year afresh. I spent days shredding up old files, checks, receipts and actually destroyed my shredder in the process and had to go and buy a new one. Sheesh!! But . . . I have only made a dent in the pounds of paper that we have accumulated over the past 20 years. Why oh why do we need this stuff anymore? So this will be an ongoing process during 2008, but now that I have started, I am on a mission.

My final resolution for 2008 is to spin all of the fiber I have purchased at Rhinebeck and Black Sheep over the past couple of years BEFORE I go to Black Sheep again this June. I've actually made a dent in this one as I have been spinning every day. This, of course, is the best of resolutions. Spinning is so relaxing and therapeutic and I love it . Here's some of what I have been up to -- This is about 1,100 yards of white cormo wool/tussah silk that I spun and plied with 100% angora rabbit. The cormo blend is from Barbara Parry of Foxfire Fibers of Massachusetts. She has lovely cormo wool rovings and blended rovings from her own cormo sheep. The fiber on the mini niddy noddy is some merino/cashmere dyed by Lynne Vogel and spun by me.

Here are the other skeins I spun from Lynne's handpainted merino/cashmere rovings. I started spinning these on my trip to the Sierras in late September and just finished the final skeins yesterday. There were about five different colorways which I plied on each other. I plan to use all of these in one project -- maybe a vest.

The skeins below, I started about a month or so ago and have been working on them ever since. I wanted to spin an array of colors that would go together in one project. These are all spun from my handpainted rovings. The two gray/light yellow/lilac are superfine merino in "Etoile". Then, to the right is a skein I spun plying "Etoile" and "Johnny JumpUps". On the bottom is a skein of purple baby camel/silk plied with merino/silk in "Gentian" colorway. In the middle is a skein of merino/silk/angora in "Violets Marl" and then the gold skein is merino/cashmere in my "Goldenrod" colorway.

Below are some random skeins I have been working on for the past few months. The blues on the left are baby camel/silk and kid mohair/merino in "Sargasso Sea". The ones in the middle are merino/bombyx silk and plied with baby camel/silk. The skein on the right is merino/cashmere.

On the knitting front, I started another (my third) Lady Eleanor entrelac stole. I just love knitting these. I am trying to work my way through my large stash of Silk Garden and some natural silk/merino yarn that I hand-dyed. These two yarns are the perfect combination for the Lady Eleanor. I'm loving these colors.

And during all of this cleaning of the nest, I managed to experiment with dyeing a new superwash merino sock yarn. And I am now knitting a test pair of socks to see if I like the yarn. So far, I like what I'm seeing and I like knitting with this yarn, too. These socks are on US2 needles and it's just my basic ribbed sock pattern.

Oh, yeah, there's that resolution about trying to blog regularly. Yeah, okay. . . so I hope everyone is having a great new year. Happy spinning and knitting 2008 and let's resolve to keep our little spinning and knitting groups going throughout the year -- let's not lose touch with our fiber friends.

My best intentions of blogging regularly evaporated quickly as I found myself immersed in numerous projects. Oh, yes, and there was the messing around on Ravelry (it's addicting). I discovered something the other week when I started listing my books on Ravelry. OMG! I have at least 120 knitting books -- this doesn't include the ones not in the Ravelry database, or all of my weaving, spinning and dyeing books. Yikes! And I'm now deep into dyeing sock yarn for The Yarn Tree's "A Sock for All Seasons" sock club. I actually have had dyepots going since 6:00 a.m this morning. My pattern and yarn will be sent out to members in Spring 2008. Linda LaBelle just opened up the sock club for the next go-round. [http://www.TheYarnTree.com]

So here's some stuff I've been working on since last I blogged. I knit a "Lady Eleanor" entrelac stole a couple of years ago, and ever since wanted to do another. I used some of my stash of Silk Garden -- two colorways. In between the SG, I used natural silk/merino yarn that I dyed which looks so similar to SG, same hand only in solids. My four colors (cinnamon, toffee, pear and moss) melded perfectly with the many colors of the SG. And for anyone wanting to knit the Lady Eleanor with SG, I went down to a US6 needle instead of the US8 suggested in the pattern (using LaLana Wool's yarn).



Then, Lynne Vogel emailed me a pattern she'd worked up for a felted bag. I loved it and, geez, on US13 and US17 needles, it was a snap. I had it completed within 24 hours of receiving the pattern. I followed Lynne's pattern to a "T", but used stash yarn: Manos del Uruguay worsted doubled, and a superfine bulky merino in cream and some I had dyed. After felting the bag, I added a handmade flower from my friend, Michelle Hoffee.

Of course, I was still in felted bag mode and looking to use up more of my stash, so I immediately knit a second one, using Berroco Hip Hop in two colors stranded with Malabrigo worsted merino. This time, I altered the handle by knitting it in three strips and braiding them before reattaching to the other side of the bag. I used the Malabrigo doubled for the handle. The bag turned out so cute and then I knit two colorful flowers with some of my leftover bulky handpainted yarn.



I love both of these bags and they make great knitting and spinning baskets. Another project I had been wanting to do was a pair of "Firm Fitting Fingerless Gloves", one of the Mac & Me patterns I had knit previously. On Ravelry, I saw a pair of mitts knit by "Punkin" from Southern Oregon and was inspired to use some of my natural-colored handspun yarns: taupe pygora and cream alpaca/silk. Here's the result. Yes -- I had to add a splash of color.



After Margie and I had our first foray into "nuno" felt with the kits we brought back from Rhinebeck, we'd been wanting to try this felting technique again, only with silk, instead of cotton gauze. My order of silk organza arrived from Dharma Trading Co. so we got together on Monday and had a very successful felting session. Here's a picture of my piece.



I loved this piece so much, I had to try it again yesterday and here's the result. This time I made a wider and more rectangular piece.


If you haven't tried felting, it's fun but quite labor intensive. My arms and back are killing me today so I'm going to have to recover before I tackle another felted piece.

I was very excited when I saw Lynne Vogel's spinning article for Knitty.Com with a beautiful mobius wrap in the pattern section. I think the Winter Issue of Knitty is going public today (Weds.), so check it out. If you aren't a spinner yet, this article and pattern may just push you over the fence into handspinning.

And, finally, let's keep all of our friends in Oregon and Washington in our thoughts. They have really taken quite a hit with horrendous rains, floods, huge surf, snow storms etc.