At last it's cool enough to start wearing wool!

First thing in the mornings I usually stumble out of bed and head to the front door to let Lucy (my little faithful doggie) out for her morning "tinkle". Just to make sure she does not get lazy and try and do it in the house. My eyes are half open and usually I get up early and it's still kind of dark outside. Lucy did not want to get up this morning and refused to go outside! I knew it must be raining! She hates rain!

I don't know about you but I like to see pictures in blogs because I will confess I don't always read all the blog content. So if you are like I am here is a pictorial collage summing up this post.

Yay! The weather has changed and it's starting to get cool, it's time to wear my sweaters and woolens. Last winter I loved wearing this and I carefully laundered it ready for the new season. The wool held up really well, I think it got softer and more cozy. I'm thrilled with the results. Sometimes projects work out well and it's very satisfying.

This project started out with some wool roving I got from "The sheep shed studio"
It was basically a huge box of odds and ends 5lb of it. The fiber was really nice but the color! White with a black stripe running through it a very nice texture and I saw potential. So I decided to dye it in the pot just "Willie Nillie".

I took about a pound of fiber shoved in the pot added water and a bit of vinegar then squirted dye. The dye I'm using is Jacquard Acid dye. No measuring just sort of eyeballing the colors.

The letting it simmer on very low heat for about 15 minutes.

Then some much needed spinning lessons from Judith McKenzie. Love Judith she is just one of the high priestess' of spinning. Her classes are relaxing and she dazzled us with her knowledge of fiber and spinning weaving knitting etc. Loved her stories about living on a ranch and her life experiences in the love of fiber. I learned a lot and her materials fee was low and she was very generous with her fiber samples. We got enough fiber to actually make something. 

We learned how to control our spinning gauge and I loved the thick and thin stuff also. I finished enough yarn in class to make this little shawlette.

When I got home I plied all the fiber and already had this "shawl sweater" in mind. Made a "Swirly Swirl" neck piece to go with it for those extra cold days. 

Ending one project... What is next?

When I start to get to the "almost" finished stage of a project, I'm already thinking about what project comes next? I have a lot of projects "in waiting" or as my friend Peggy Baxter put it "They are in a time out!" as if they were misbehaving. In a way maybe they were misbehaving for some reason I lost interest and jumped to the next project. There is always something new that catches my eye and I want to make "that".

Sometimes a knitting project is just not turning out as I had hoped and I think maybe if I let it rest for a while next time I pick it up with fresh eyes it will be different. Sometimes it never gets any better and "frogging" is the only answer. (Frogging is a term used by knitters because a frog says "rip it" and we are unraveling or ripping our knitted stitches.)

Frogging is not to be confused with "tinking", that is when you un-knit. Tink is knit backwards and you are un-knitting stitch by stitch to get back to where you made the mistake or something you did not like happened. The knitters are very funny and have their own vocabulary and shorthand. k2, k2tog, p1, k1, ssk, etc. Each of those symbols means something. If all these terms were written out the patterns would become extremely long and hard to follow. When I first saw this it was daunting but I learned this language rather quickly. After all it's not rocket science even though it seems like an impossible language that these weird knitters all understand.

Nice texture and shaping: 

Yesterday the knitting guild I belong to had a field trip to Trendsetter Yarns. 10,000 square feet of warehouse full of yarn. Barry Klein gave us a preview of their Spring 2013 collection. I really like him, he is always smiling and is very gracious. Some of the items were very nice and other pieces were just not me but lots of work goes into all this. I think a good time was had by all. Oh yes I bought a couple little balls of yarn, sparkly yarn. Adding a little pizzaz to something, now just to figure out where to use it. So many projects ...... so little time.

Target has these for $19

The Value of Not Planning

Some people like to plan their work, others don't. The learning theory is that the planners are sometimes called "left brained" and logically the others are "right brained". When I attended a talk at Madrona Fiber event given by Betsy Hershberg the main speaker, with a wonderful power point presentation. Betsy started with this graphic showing how the "left brained" people are so very organized and the "right brained" people, well more creative "knit by the seat of their pants" than those organized pattern following folks.

I definitely belong to the the "right brained" side but often take a visit over to the "left". I like to organize my tools and stash and can get obsessive with all that but when it comes to creating a garment I am for sure a right brained approach. I often take the "what would happen if....." approach.

With this philosophy, I teach others to let go following a knitting pattern as if you were painting by numbers. Don't take me wrong there is nothing wrong with painting by numbers, I've done it and loved the end result. As they say it's all good.

I often have to give "permission" to students that they do not have to follow my patterns exactly. I actually encourage making changes, the more changes the better. But you may say at the end it will not look like your pattern. All the better it will be YOURS!

Having said all that, my current project is called "Nether Garment" by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I love her approach, it's not a line by line instruction but the outline of how the garment is constructed. She too encourages the knitter to make changes, customize till it fits.

I call the project Long John's or to some it may be leggings. They are a long stocking without feet and at the hip joined to make them pants. I'm knitting them out of some good strong sock yarn from Germany. So far the knit has been fun and rather surprisingly fast.

The details: size 3 needle, 56 sts. cast on. Ribbing k2, p2 for 2" then another 2.5 inches of stockinette. Calf increases are what EZ calls Make 1 but it's not what I learned as M1 but simply looping the yarn over the needle. First with the index finger and k2 "anchor stitcher" then with the thumb. This makes a very nice right & left leaning increase. Easy Breezy just as I like.

As I go about my everyday life and often knit in public, the question I'm always asked is what are you knitting? My answer is long john's! A lot of the times I get that look, "But why"? When you can go to Target and buy one already made? Have you ever had fresh home baked bread? The smell the taste vs. that packed stale old bread you get in a plastic bag. 

I did buy the fair isle style colorful leggings and yes from a distance they look really good but they do not feel the same as my hand knit wool ones. Oh and for sure they do not fit the same way either. Just like the home baked fresh bread vs. the plastic bag of stale old store bought bread.

And there is another benefit my state of mind and the relaxation of the act of knitting. I've read that they have done studies that spinning wool lowers your blood pressure. I think knitting lowers my blood pressure also. Go ahead bake some bread and while it's "resting" keep on knitting. But in case you are in a hurry Target has these for $19 dollars.

Fall update

I keep starting to update this blog and get half way when something distracts me and I've ended up with 4 or 5 "draft" postings. Here is one of them and this time I'm posting whatever I have and not obsess about it's perfection.

The summer went by so fast now winter is just around the corner. As the old saying goes where does the time go? There are not enough hours in the day for me to finish all that I would like to do. I do keep busy sometimes with great rewards and other times just had a great time.

One of the highlights this fall was teaching at Newton's 25th Annual Fall Festival Seminar. September 28-30 2012 

(The class was sold out but we've already talked about me teaching at the next seminar at Newton's.)

 "Design Your Own Shawl: Shape, Color, Texture and Lace"

I love to teach and always enjoy the experience. I especially love it when I get positive feedback. I put a lot of work and thought into the classes I teach and I always learn so much in the process. 

I just saw this graphic on Facebook and loved it.

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Spring Update

I have had a busy busy spring and it looks like the summer is off to a "busy" start. Because I still have a day job. For those of you who may not know I am a classic car dealer for a living. My husband and I own a shop in Venice, CA and we are a mom and pop shop. My husband is a master mechanic and I am the licensed car dealer. We deal in classic EnglishCars.com.

But my relaxation and hobby is my fiber arts. Knitting is my number one because I've done it for so long it's the most comfortable "comfort" zone. When I feel stressed I just sit down and start knitting, soon my brain goes in the "zone" and the world seems to calm down. I often refer to Mihaly Csikszentmihaly who coined the being in the "zone" or "flow".

......."the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task ........"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Not that I've been uptight although if truth be told I do get uptight at times but thank goodness I have my hobbies to relax by. I was thinking and meaning to update my blog to catch you up on my Dyeing as if the Earth Mattered. Such a great time on Shaw Island! Michelle was terrific and the ladies that I met were also so very interesting people. We stayed at a guest house because Shaw Island is a private island in the Pacific Northwest. Which means that there are no hotels, restaurants or stores.

There is one little general store at the ferry landing but that is it! Green lush and beautiful is how I would describe the island. And my favorite flower the lilac was in bloom everywhere! Here are a few pictures of the many I took. We used "Natural Dyes" and dyed wool, silk and cotton hanks. As you can see the colors were amazing.

Some of the ladies I met and here is a link to Marie's blog with pictures. Thanks Marie for the kind words and back at you! Had some wonderful conversations with Marie a very interesting and talented lady.

http://mzjohansen.blogspot.com/2012/05/agony-and-ecstasy-dyeing-as-if-earth.html

http://mzjohansen.blogspot.com/2012/05/dyeing-as-if-earth-mattered-with.html

Dyeing As if the Earth Mattered.

I am going to this workshop on Shaw Island, WA. and I can hardly wait. Since I've started to dye and spin my own fiber, it has expanded my yarn choices beyond those I could find commercially. It used to take me months and sometimes years to find the exact color weight & content fiber for a particular project I had in mind.



I love the title of this workshop:


"Dyeing As If the Earth Mattered"
Dyeing As If The Earth Mattered with Michelle Wipplinger
Thursday to Saturday, May 10-12, 2012
Shaw Island Community Center

Michele will host a 3 day workshop entitled, "Dyeing As If the Earth Mattered".  The workshop will serves as an introduction to dyeing with natural dye extracts on silk, cotton and wool yarn. Two different colors will be obtained from a single dyebath and then a reserved sample of each color will be overdyed in indigo. Participants get 20+ different colors on each fiber type.

Michelle Wipplinger is an author, educator, photographer and master dyer and designer with over thirty years experience in natural dyes. Michelle trained in France and Switzerland with noted natural master dyes, and developed her style of dyeing that yields beautiful, repeatable hues using only non-toxic alum mordants. In 1992 she introduced the concept of natural dye extracts that yielded brilliant, consistent, lightfast hues that were safe and easy to useMichele is founder and president of Earthues.  

Just because it's so darn funny.

Another Swirly Swirl

I've written the pattern now it's being tested. It's only fair that I test and retest the pattern over and over. This one I call #55

YouTube Video I made

This is a crochet picot bind off that I use often. It's easy, I think it looks good and it's stretchy.

Part one and part two will be how to add beads.

Walk for the Cure of Breast Cancer.

ThinkCure! we participated in NPN LA Marathon 5K

The NPN LA 5K Run/Walk starts at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, March 20 

We did it! "Slipt Stitchers" knitting guild gals. 

"Think Cure" and walk.

"You can walk or run the 5k at your leisure as a member of the ThinkCure! team," said President of ThinkCure! Janet Clayton. "This can be a great family outing that encourages fitness, helps a great cause and raises funding for institutions that serve the people of greater Los Angeles and for some, can serve as an act of remembrance and support of a loved one."

Fun was had by all. By the time we got home I was exhausted.

Walk done in record time by 10:30 am we were eating a Phillipe. Yum Yum.

Great fun day.

Short Term Memory Problems

I find this terribly funny and practical. I recently switched our cable connection from Times Warner to Verizon. It's a so called "package" so my land line telephone was involved. I have been bombarded with "spam" phone calls and was terribly mad at this phone number we had at the house. It seemed every shady contractor would call on a daily basis asking if we had any repairs we were planning to do at our house. Because they were in our area and they would come to our house for free and give us an estimate. Sure I'll invite some total stranger into my house to look around! But each day the phone would ring and I would try many different creative ways to stop it. Oh yes I was on the do not call list but it did not matter. I would sometimes engage in conversation with them, sometimes silly and other times asking them nicely to remove me from your list because I will NEVER let them in my house. But the calls kept on coming especially during dinner.

Change the phone number and this problem will be solved! So I thought. I now was getting a new set of calls but once I put the phone number up at the do not call list, it seemed to stop. There was another problem! This new phone number we got even though it was the easiest number of the choices I had, I could not remember. I tried to write it several times, post it on the refrigerator, repeat it etc. Nope it would not stick in my old brain. It seems that my capacity of storing phone numbers has exceeded it's storage space. But I can remember this old phone number I used to have about 40 years ago. I can recite that number with no problem at all.

So just for fun I thought I would dial that number and see who had it. It was not in service! Does that mean that it's up for grabs? I called Verizon and asked if I could change my new phone number to this old phone number I used to have? Success! I now have a new old phone number I can remember.