hawks & socks

A red tailed hawk was hanging out on top of the pole in our backyard for almost an hour last weekend. Things like this (and the moose that ambled through a few weeks ago) make me wish I had a telephoto lens. This week has been a getting things wrapped up kind of week. I finished off not one but two pairs of socks/slippers. I thrummed the slippers with about two batts worth of these. The socks just barely fit Toby. I tucked in the multitudinous ends of my first official woven scarf and rewarpped the loom for the next round. There was coffee with montessori moms that resulted in a tiny revolution. And, while I may not have anything to add to the shop I do have a lot of spinning to do after a marathon carding session.

almost not winter

Since last weekend I've mostly been starting seeds, tending the kombucha (its lavender blueberry this time), spinning and knitting. Around the house kinds of stuff. We recently got a foot or so of snow and I've been reluctant to wade out to the studio to do more weaving. My test project is off the loom so I need to rewarp it and start a new project, probably something wide with the chunky reclaimed cashmere yarn I dyed with woad this fall. I can see it as a soft cowl, maybe with leather closures.


 My first big order of seeds came in the mail. I'm trying to focus on perennials this year. Or at least things that will either reseed or overwinter. And more flowers. There were patches of toadflax around the backyard this summer so I'm going to try some heirloom linaria. It's basically the same plant, but in lots of colors. I've also got pansies and hollyhock and cosmos. The kids picked seeds out, too. They started a plot of their own down in the northwest corner of the yard. Anais wants to try white strawberries, litchi tomatoes and dragonfruit. That last one will probably be more of a houseplant, but it should like hanging out in the kitchen well enough.

All that puttering resulted in something to show for myself. I finished up three pairs of fingerless gloves and reserved four batts from a personal batch I made over the holidays. It has tons of yak and silk and when I soaked the first round of yarn it smelled like aspen leaves. All that means really, is that I finally have a proper shop update this week with knits and fiber batts.

aspen & nettle

     The dye vats were calling to me after I finally finished a pair of custom gloves I've been sloooowly working on for the past few weeks.  I can't wait to show them to the person who asked for them. They're a longer version of the striped gloves I usually make for craft shows, but the requested yarn is also bulkier. This made them much warmer and makes me think more of hiking/biking than typing but they turned out beautifully all the same.

  
     The vats of aspen and nettle I have going are not beautiful. I let them ferment as they cold-process, leaving the dyestuffs in for as long as my nose can stand it. They've reached peak smelliness with that scuzzy mold on top. The nettle is the primary offender. The word putrid comes to mind before I even lift the lid. While that sucks for air quality in my kitchen, it also means that the pigments and the fiber are getting along famously. I finally cracked and cycled the first round of fiber out of the nettle and aspen this morning.

     I worked outside on the porch to minimize any lingering zombie stench, not to mention the mess. These chickadees were hanging out with me the whole time. Well, they were mostly hanging out in the aspen trees and the bird feeder. But, when I stopped for a bit to watch them one did get curious enough to investigate my shoes.



     Specific fibers interact with natural dyes in differing ways for lots of reasons. One thing I've noticed is that silk will take up color with vibrancy while wool is more subdued. This batch was a good illustration of that general rule. The silk and alpaca came out of the aspen bath dyed a bright acidy yellow and the hampshire wool came out of the nettle a pale sort of greenish yellow. There was still one more step. I started bottles of copper and iron tea last fall for afterbaths and mordanting.  This was my first opportunity to play with them. On the aspen-dyed silk and with the copper, at least, the effect was pretty magical. It went from that acid yellow to deep green. The nettle...eh. It was a deeper, kaiser green last year but then I also pretty much forgot about it for a month or two, leaving it in the closet. And I used scottish blackface wool, which takes up dye almost as greedily as silk does. Maybe I'll try that for round two.

From left to right, the aspen-dyed alpaca and silk with alum moradant, then iron afterbath and copper afterbath. The next photo is the nettle-dyed hampshire wool with the same progression: alum, iron afterbath, copper afterbath.

A litany of this week's accomplishments

Finished spinning up the Spaulding Pink batch for my sweater.

Started and almost completed a child sized sweater for the shop.

Knit up one out of a family pack of four hats for the White Buffalo Farm fundraiser.

And mailed out two custom orders I picked up at craft markets last month.

Sold my last skein of Summer People: May to a wonderful traveling couple I met while working at the shop in Georgetown this weekend.

Updated Anais' unschooling Tumblr.

Roasted coffee in my popcorn popper. Got my oven back and made some pizza, too. Tomorrow begins a week of dyeing and some last foraging before winter and generally gearing up for restocking for the holidays.

The charms of Amarillo

Amarillo is a tough place to love, not to mention a tough place to find a decent latte or stroll merrily from place to place in. It sometimes feels like a ghost town in the making. People who live there must be really good at keeping secrets because alll the good stuff seems to be hiding. Since my husband has family there I've found myself wondering what to do with myself and my kids on more than one occasion. It wasn't until our last visit, driving through after the Renegade Austin show, that I could say I really felt l had discovered some redeeming characteristics. Namely, good thrift store shopping, good doughnuts and coffee, a bit of the art scene and something for the kids.

The first I located whilst tagging a yarn bomb just outside of downtown proper. Peering a the darkened shop window I spied cute vintage dresses. How could I stay away?

The next morning we were set to leave for home so I made sure it was on our itinerary. After coffee, of course. Roasters is the best place for that, really. I had learned that lesson on an earlier trip. It's a local chain, a touch Starbucks-ish but with local ambiance and good iced americanos. But what about those doughnuts? You cannot, I repeat- CANNOT leave Amarillo without doughnutting up. It's a quasi-legal reqiurement. So I was giddy to discover that the store I thought had gone out of business the last time I was in town was, in fact, right where it had always been. Like I said, it's a confusing town-in more ways than one.

Thank god for husbands who can read maps. Benjamin's is the art house of doughnut shops, an oasis of pastry in a desert of mediocrity. Green tea raised? You got it. Want a Cherry, candy and cake? Blueberry? Lemon glazed? Oh my freakin' yum! Get one of each and go to town! I mean it. Because next I went downtown, back to Heroine's. Remember the yarn bomb?

If good coffee and doughnuts made for a good morning then the folks at Heroine's made my day. Cute clothes, lots of selection (which, sadly, I have to attribute to Amarillo not having much of a hipster scene), a sweet shop dog and the guy at the register went above and beyond to help me out. They even have an Etsy site.

In between all this and, really, the whole time we were in Amarillo, I made my darling husband pull over to the side of the road about a bazillion times. For these:

One of those exceptional men with more money than sense has been nurturing the scene in this dusty Texas town for a while now. These prolific street signs are one of his projects. You can find them scattered throughout the "seedier" bits of town. Random quotes are generally the rule, but once in a while you find a graphic one like this. They have been a my favorite part of Amarillo since we started dropping in every so often a few years ago.

Our very last stop was several miles out of town and another of the benefactor of Amarillo's installation pieces: Cadillac Ranch. It's been moved once already to avoid the encroaching sprawl and the first hint I had of its existence was in a fleeting scene in one of my favorite movies, Arizona Dream. Cans of spray paint are scattered among the half buried cars and tagging is encouraged, in fact it's kind of the point. Art for the masses, by the masses. My own kids were happy to oblige. All of us were.

Thanks, Amarillo. For once, a good time was had by all. I apologize for taking so long to send this thank you note!

 

 

 

Firefly gypsy market!

Just found out I've been accepted into the next Firefly Market in September. Hooray! My goal is to have a knitting pattern ebook for Eat Agar to trade for signing up for the newsletter by then. And maybe buttons.

Shop update

New things and things besides yarn for you non-yarnies out there in the shop now. Hinky wristlets and wirecore cuffs and that pixi hat from before to be precise. Things are trickling in because I'd much rather knit socks, make beer, consider doing a million other things and then go the park right now. Summer is distracting me, but I have lots more yarn to Etsy-fy in the near future.

dang my kids are cute

I thought I'd share this quick/fast while I wait for my camera batteries to charge. After much sturm und drang this morning, as I was doing a yarny photo shoot and my kids were doing their least best to stay out of the way of the volcano that is mom on a mission, I came up to the challenge of properly pictorially representing this pixi hat I knit up a while ago. I'm glad I decided to dial it down and let the kids help me, because these shots are killer cute. I love how Toby's a kinetic bouncing ball and Anais is holding back and being as grown up as she can muster. The last shot is my favorite yarn shot so far, its of the skein I spun up at Renegade, all 250 super silky yards of it. If I can resist knitting it up all for myself I think I'll reskein it into 50 yards each and call it a sukoshi batch. There was some wirecore at the end, too, but I'm knitting that up into cuffs now. I love that giant green noil slub. It wouldn't cooperate draft-wise so I just spun it in there whole.

Oxygen cuffs

So, for future reference, 30 yards of wirecore makes about five cuff-bracelet-bangle things. I really love how these came out, simple but durable and pretty. The Paco-vicuña cocoons are there, but subtle and you can either squish them narrow into a bangle or stretch them wide into a cuff. The best part, mostly for me, is that they don't take a week to make, so I'll be able to make a whole mess of them to add to my table for Renegade Austin and the spring Horseshoe market.

Bubie yarny

Anais, my daughter, just finished spinning her first yarn today. I found some bright, adorable art batts on etsy when I was looking for feathers a few weeks ago. Not only were the feathers from farm-raised fowl, but the batts had been carded up by the shop owner's own daughter. How could I resist? We tried the drop spindle first, but that was sort of meh. Using the wheel seemed to make more sense for her. I had to do most of the treadling, but other than that she did all the yarn making. No sooner had I set the twist than I was assigned a pattern, which naturally involved flowers.

Socks are not so scary

Finally had time to sit and figure out how to do two socks at once. Anais' Totoro mits will be Totoro socks instead.