>September

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This month is always an emotional roller coaster for me.  On the one hand, the weather is magnificent! I have so many new plans and projects in the works that it makes my New Year’s resolutions look amateur!  We celebrate several wonderful family events, including birthdays and anniversaries. 

Last week one of my husband’s uncles turned 90, and he is as spry as the most youthful 70 year old! Both my husband’s parents will turn 80 at the end of the month, as well as celebrate their 54th wedding anniversary.  My father turns 75 today.  It’s a month with a lot of parties and large family gatherings. There is so much to celebrate… 

And here’s the balance.  I miss the quickly fading light as we hurtle toward winter.  I’m often overwhelmed by the demands of all the things I’ve promised to people, deadlines rushing toward me, obligations I wish I’d never made!

My younger son, who lives in Manhattan, went to the site of the World Trade Center on Friday, late in the day, after the services were done.  He took several moving photos there, but the one that haunts him, and now haunts me, was never taken.

I’ll preface it with these photos from the New York Times.sept. 11 2009 memorial 2 Sept 11 2009 memorial

The image he did not take is of a crew of men shoveling thousands of flowers into a dump truck.  The inevitable clean-up from such moving ceremonies….

Here is one of Chris’s photos from that afternoon.Chris. Sept. 11 2009 memorial

Such is September, a mix of celebration, reflection, sadness.  Over the weekend I learned that Chris has been friends with Annie Le and her fiance Jonathon throughout their four years at Univ. of Rochester.  Jonathon is at Columbia with Chris now.  Such an unspeakable tragedy.

>More Thrills

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This one is a bit embarrassing to tell.  I was zipping along knitting one day near the end of our sailing trip, and I accidentally stabbed myself with my Signature stilletto-pointed needle.  You’d think I’d never held a needle before!  It was a fluke!  As I finished a row, the empty left hand needle slipped out of my grip.  For some irrational reason, I did not want to drop the needle…. it would only hit the cockpit sole, but I think subconsciously I must have thought I would lose it overboard!  I grabbed for it as quickly as I could. The needle managed to hit the cockpit bench on end with its tip standing straight up. My hand came straight down, and that stilletto tip went into my palm, dead center.  It actually hung there for a second or so before falling out, so I was impaled on my knitting needle!  It hurt,  but my laughter definitely took the edge off! I thought about taking a photo of my bleeding palm, but then thought better of it!

After 45 years of knitting I’ve had my first knitting accident.  Beware….

>Some thrills

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There are many people who find knitters and knitting so boring they cannot possibly imagine what thrills we have. I spent a lot of time knitting my kimono cardigan on our recent sailing trip, and it seemed a good time to analyze my technique and see what I might do if I wanted to knit faster!

I am a picker (meaning I knit by holding the working yarn in my left hand and making the right hand needle do the work of catching it to create the new loop).  I am left handed but knit in the right handed direction since I’m pretty fast at it.  I knit about 60 stitches per minute, which would be a poor showing for knitting speed competitions, but seems faster than most knitters I have spent time with..

To be fair, I should say that I have tried many ways of knitting and still use them all on occasion.  I was taught to knit ‘throwing’ (the traditional English way which involves having the working yarn in your right hand and using your right hand to ‘throw’ the yarn around the left needle), and over the years I’ve tired both ‘picking’ and ‘throwing’ in the opposite direction (with the knitted work on the right needle moving to the left needle) just because I’m left handed and felt I should give it a whirl!  It comes in handy when I don’t want to keep turning my work around, but I am still faster at right handed picking than other methods. Other methods will get mentioned later…maybe!

So, faster…  knowing that efficiency of motion is a vital key to speed I have also made efforts to keep my knitting right at the tips of my needles, and now, for years now actually, I’ve managed no movement at all in my left hand…my right needle does a little flick to get that needle to pick up a loop from the yarn in my left hand.  When I switch from knit to purl, involving moving that working yarn from the back of the needle to the front, I barely move my finger, making ribbing quite fast to work. 

What else could I do to get faster?? I realized that while my knitting stays right at the tips of the needles, my right needle which gets inserted into the loop on the left needle was going into the loop a bit further than just the tip before catching the working yarn.  Could this be minimized??  A little practice showed me it could! Since I was knitting my kimono cardi on brand new Signature needles (another thrill!) I could keep track of how much I was inserting that right needle by keeping the movement completely on the silver tips.  Those silver tips sure come in handy for checking movement!  Although I love my Addi Turbos and my wooden Knit Picks, and in general prefer circular needles to straight, these Signature needles gave me a visual marker to how little movement I needed to make with the right needle.  Almost immediately I noticed that the tiniest change with the inserting needle made a noticeable difference in speed!  In a couple of hours I was knitting faster than ever before!

What is fast now?  I think I’m knitting in the range of 75 stitches per minute now, and it happened with only about an hour of practice.  Pretty exciting for me!  Here’s my plan for checking my accuracy.  I tried knitting to my metronome, but I got so uptight I became completely clumsy!  Since I have a natural memory for 60 beats per minute (try it, many people do!) I will listen to my metronome at other speeds until I feel that rhythm is well established in my head, then I will try knitting at that speed!

I have some piano works that I’ve played at certain speeds for so many years that they come naturally to me now (like Bach inventions that I had to practice ad nauseam to work up to speed).  I will hum those pieces at speed and see if I can knit to them!   75 stitches per inch is pretty satisfying, but if I can get closer to 100 I’m going to go for it!  I’ll let you know how I get on! Wish me luck!

>Homecoming

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It’s always wonderful to return home, but returning home after some hard sailing makes the pleasure even sweeter.  I may be a seasoned sailor after 35 years (well, maybe not) but I will never be a a hardened sailor. Late summer often offers some big challenges.  My husband doesn’t feel this way at all! You can check out a particularly hard day for me here by clicking on the video.

While sailing, I finished knitting (and partially sewing!) my kimono cardigan from Dovetail designs.  I just tried it on and I love it!  (I don’t say that often.)  I might not add the shawl collar since I like it so much as is!Sept. 09 009

(After wearing this sweater on two chilly days last week I have decided to knit the shawl collar, which you can see in progress)

 

 

 

While knitting I listened to my audible copy of The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, read by John Lee.  I’ve wanted to read this book for years and never got around to it.  To listen while knitting was a delightfully guilty pleasure!  It’s hard to imagine wanting to actually read anything ever again when I can listen to someone who was chosen to read for their lyrical voice while I continue to knit!Pillars of the Earth

Although I listened to four books on audible this summer,  I did manage to actually read two books:  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows, and The Elegance of Hedgehogs by Muriel Barbery (translated from French by Alison Anderson).  Both were delightful for the same reason! …a quirky look at a particular time period in a particular niche of society.  Both were so well done that  I regret finishing them! I particularly regret that Ms. Shaffer’s voice is gone from us now after such a lovely book. 

Blog The elegance of the Hedgehog blog the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society

I’ve just bought my ticket for the “Wild Fibers” annual dinner at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, which means I will definitely go the festival!…in spite of never needing another ounce of spinnable fiber!  The weekend is October 17 and 18, and the dinner is Saturday evening.  If you will be there please let me know!  I want to meet you!

Goethe said, "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."  I’m off to do a little of that right now….

>Vacation Interrupted

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All packed and nowhere to go!  It’s raining buckets here, and we thought we’d be ahead of it in Maine, but even so, arriving before the rain hits Maine doesn’t really sound appealing when we are traveling with our dog.  When we are on Pandora in rain we snuggle up down below and turn on the heat, bake some bread, or biscuits, or pie, and spend the day reading and knitting or spinning.  Having a wet dog down below, who needs to go ashore three times a day,  is much less appealing….

So today I’m using my newly found time to dye a second small skein (only 1 oz., 70 yds) in the Brazilwood pot. Yesterday’s 2 oz. skein is a wonderful color that I cannot describe well.  It’s a medium/dark shade of something between rose and terracotta.  Yes, it’s both a cool and warm shade of a complex reddish color! That’s what I love about natural dyes!  The colors are so complex I can’t find the words to properly describe them!  And monitors being what they are, I can’t even show you an accurate photo! Today’s skein will be lighter.  I could keep going with this dye bath, but I think I will discard it after this second batch. Pack rat that I am, I have saved the sawdust…

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I’m scouring my two large hanks of grey corriedale which seem to have a lot of lanolin in them.  I washed that fleece before sending it off to be processed into bumps, but oh my!  There is a lot of lanolin still in it!  I may take a skein with me to Maine to sample some lace patterns…. I’m now imagining this yarn as a lace cardigan.Aug. 09 033

This little swatch of the corrie is 6 st/in…just what I wanted! (I love using my Signature needles! I now have size 1 through 6!)

 

And since it’s a dark, dreary day, I will take some time today to spin the Shetland which is now my first choice for the stranded, round yoke sweater I want to make with the handpainted yarn I spun earlier this summer (the Gale Evans “grapevine”).

Our ETD is now Sunday, very early.  That means I can go to the local farmers’ market tomorrow morning.  And perhaps this evening we’ll go to a movie….

>Finishing Projects

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I have been home for a little over a week, in which I’ve spent a few days with my younger son (attending the all-John Adams concert at Alice Tully Hall, seeing the Julia movie and basically relaxing!), a little time catching up with friends, and perhaps even less time attempting to finish some projects before we head back up to Maine for another couple of weeks of sailing.

BRAZILWOOD DYE EXPERIMENT
Today I’m finally dyeing with the Brazilwood sawdust that I began soaking in February.  I was advised to let the sawdust soak for 6 months so this is the right time to revisit my dyepot.  I had the dye liquor covered with plastic film to prevent molding, and it seems to have worked!

My instructions (from Deb Bamford) called for heating the sawdust and soaking water together for about 30 minutes at 80C.  Alas, I inadvertently let the mixture boil, which means the color will shift to into the brown range of reds.  Frankly, the dye liquor already looked quite brown before I began heating it!  After that initial boil, I turned the heat down to a simmer and let the dye continue simmering for about 30 minutes, after which I turned off the heat.  When the dye liquor had cooled a bit I strained off the liquid into another dye pot and have saved the solids for a possible future dye.Aug. 09 024 I then put in 2 oz. of my pre-mordanted yarn (Henry’s Attic ‘’Texas,’ wool/mohair blend previously mordanted with alum and cot) which had already been wetted.  It immediately turned a medium value of dull orange.  I have been reheating the mixture more carefully now, trying not to exceed 80C, and it is now simmering at about 75C for 1/2 hour. The color on the yarn has become a deep red/brown…more red than brown! I like it very much!Aug. 09 028

The flash washed out the color quite a bit….it’s a much deeper red.  Who knows, it might be this color when rinsed, but I’m hoping for darker!

KNITTING
While dyeing I have also been finishing up a simple vest project that I’d like to wear in Maine on cool evenings.  It’s a vest knit entirely in stockinette from yarn that I got from DBNY (Discontinued Brand Name Yarns).  I have sewn on the zipper now and am now sewing a decorative ribbon (from LFN designs) over the zipper to add some visual interest when the vest is open.Aug. 09 020

Aug. 09 021

SPINNING
My dark brown/grey corriedale which I washed and sent out to be processed into bumps, and which I was spinning during out last sailing trip, is not the right color for the stranded knit sweater I have in mind for the multi-colored roving, in a colorway called “Grapevine” which I got at MDS&W from Gale Evans. Gale Evans Grapevine roving BFL  Earlier this morning I sat down to spin a little of the dark charcoal Shetland roving that I recently got from Hatchtown Farm, and it appears to be just right for the Grapevine.  I am considering doing this sweater from the Twist Collective.Aug. 09 027

 

 

 

I think I will use the grey/brown Corrie to make a lace cardigan sometime in the future.  It’s a dream to spin, but I will put that project aside in order to spin the Shetland for the the stranded sweater. Well, now! Aren’t I being mature?

And there was a very happy occurance in my inbox! Linda Lee has written to tell me that she will soon be dyeing my cotton sliver in her colorway “Phoenix Garden.”  I can’t wait to get back to that project!  Maybe the package will be waiting for me when I return home!Cotton spinning (1)

WEAVING

I’ve been thinking a lot about weaving, but not actually doing any since I returned from the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Conference in Gettysburgh, where I took a 3-day class with Jason Collingwood on 3-end block weave and shaft switching.  While I am thinking about what sampling I’d like to do on the rest of the warp from that class, I have also been thinking about future tapestries.  I have some ideas brewing….

I need to leave some time today for packing since we are leaving tomorrow morning!  I hope this weekend’s storm is the only difficult weather we experience during this sailing trip!

>Clifton Arts Center

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Clifton Postcard front

Clifton Postcard back

Well, I guess these aren’t the clearest photos.  I have not got these postcards in hand yet, just the digital file with poorer resolution than hoped!

The Details:  Tapestry: Ancient Art for Modern Times
                   Clifton Arts Center Gallery
                   900 Clifton Avenue
                   Clifton, NJ  07013
                   973.472.5499

              September 23 – October 31
              Gallery hours: 1pm – 4pm, Wed. thru Sat.

Okay, I posted this because I’m tooting my own horn.  How shameless!  Out of the 16 images on this card, four of them are mine!  This has never happened to me before so I’m reveling a bit!

Here are the image credits:
Top row: Helen Gold, Alta Turner, Helen Gold, Don Burns (all works from ‘Not Gone for Baroque’ collaborative piece)
2nd row: Alta Turner, AnnaByrd Mays, Don Burns, Brenda Osborn (moi!) (again, these works are from ‘Not Gone for Baroque’ collaborative piece)
3rd row: AnnaByrd Mays, Brenda Osborn, Susan Martin Maffei, and Barbara Burns (all individual works)
Title row:  Brenda Osborn (my Stone Buddha!)
Bottom row: Carol Bitner, Annelise DeCoursin, Brenda Osborn

Now…back to my regular life of chores…..

>Maine Fiberarts Open Studios Tour 2009

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Visit the website and their real home, with gallery, in Topsham, Maine, if you possible can!

BEAU-CHEMIN PRESERVATION FARM, Waldoboro, ME.
JoAnn and Wayne Myers.

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Maine August 2009 134

 

 

 

 

Left: field of heirloom plants, where JoAnn gave me copious woad seeds!  Right: three Leicester Longwool ewes stampeding to greet us!

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Beau-Chemin Farm, Leicester Longwool ewe with nursing lamb and Leicester Longwool ewe in the pasture.

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Maine August 2009 146

 

 

 

 

Left: Soay ewe at Beau-Chemin Farm. Right: owner JoAnn Myers telling me about her work in preserving heirloom livestock breeds and heirloom flowers and vegetables.

SPRINGTIDE FARM, Bremen, ME.
Wendy Pieh

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Maine August 2009 154 Male kids rushing to greet us!

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Maine August 2009 164 Tyler, the male kid, with his adorable bangs and goatee!

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Left:Owner Wendy talking about her goats.  Right: Donkey guarding the rams.

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Rams.

Maine August 2009 180 Maine August 2009 179 Ewes, who are guarded by a Great White Pyrenees whom I did not photograph!

I also visited two fiber artists, but did not get photos.  In Rockland I stopped by Maine Island Rag Rugs, where weaver Mary Ann  Small has a wonderful fairytale studio with her loom and a display of colorful rag rugs sits in a beautiful shed built by her husband and surrounded by lovely gardens.

Last stop of the day was Botanical Shades, where Jodie McKenzie dyes some wonderful hues on beautiful wool and wool/mohair blend yarns that are stunning!  She is in between homes right now so I cannot give her address!  Hopefully she’ll be settled soon!

>Something to Say

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I’ve been away from blog writing for some time now….too long!  And almost everyday I’m writing blog entries in my head, but not at the computer. 

But hasn’t it been a glorious summer!  Since I’m not a fan of hot weather, I have loved the lush, cool days with or without rain.

I am spending most of the August on board Pandora (where you can see our sailing adventures in Maine), with lots of knitting and spinning projects. Yesterday was a glorious day, part of an exciting weekend of open studios of members of the Maine Fiber Arts Association!  I only managed to visit four of the 80+ listings for this event, but I made really good choices!  I must make this annual event a priority in future!  I will post photos of that next!

Before arriving in Maine on Aug. 3rd, I spent a long weekend in Gettysburg, attending the biennial Mid-Atlantic Fiber Association Conference which was held at Gettysburg College.  It was an awesome weekend!  Attendees took one 2 1/2 day class from a stellar line up of choices:  Sharon Alderman, Inge Dam, Su Butler, Jason Collingwood (to name only a few).  I was so engrossed in my class that I neglected to take the photos I should have!  It was a terrific event, with late night shopping at The Mannings nearby and  Just Our Yarn, Serendipity Farm and Lunatic Fringe in the vendor hall (again, I’ve only named a few!).  There was a Saturday evening impromptu fashion show, the second annual one, where you just show up in your creation and walk the runway.  This unplanned, un-rehearsed event has worked very well and is a highlight of the weekend! I wish I’d taken a photo of Karen Donde’s wonderful ruana.  It defies words, so hopefully I’ll get a photo from a friend shortly and post it.  MAFA Aug. 09 009

MAFA Aug. 09 010

 

 

 

Left: Students admiring Inge Dam’s work. Right: Susan Wilson displaying her crackle samples.

I took a class with Jason Collingwood on 3-end block weave and shaft switching which was completely enthralling to me!  I’m inspired by the freedom of design, the simplicity of the shaft switching technique, and Jason’s affable teaching style!  I hope to christen my Toika loom this fall with a rug!

MAFA Aug. 09 004

MAFA Aug. 09 007 One of Peter’s  design samples and one of Jason’s.

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Jason demonstrating weft clasping.

 

 

 

 

The photos I didn’t take:  The vendor hall where several bags of corriedale fleece from Ruppert’s Farm sang enticingly to me (I brought that on board to spin!), the three friends of mine who shared my dorm suite and kept me up ‘til 2 am three nights in a row!…the open studio evening where we visited other classes and saw their work.  And I wish I had more photos of Jason teaching us, but I was busy writing notes and weaving samples!  Hopefully something very fruitful will come of that!

>Summer Scenes

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Gardening, sailing, knitting, weaving, beautiful weather!  I’ve even managed to spin a little.  It is a lovely summer!

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Sailing on the Mystic River during the Wooden Boat Show.

 

 

 

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Alpaca and fiber at the Casey Farm market in Kingston, RI

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July 2009 050 July 4th on board a friend’s boat for the fireworks.  We had our own bagpiper!  Next morning this little sparrow sang to use from our stern lifeline.

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July 2009 065 The Spring ‘09 GoddessKnits Mystery shawl blocked and finished!  I’m taking it to the MAFA (Mid-Atlantic Fiber Assoc) Conference later this month.

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A window box at Mystic Seapot and my dream house and garden in Watch Hill, RI

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July 2009 139 My next lace project from Renaissance Dyes. A farm in RI where llamas are used as guard dogs for the flock.

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July 2009 168 Nappatree Beach in Watch Hill, RI

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July 2009 059 Fringed poppy in my garden at home…. a braid made for a friend…..and lastly, the slow but steady progress on my latest tapestry….

Hudson River tapestry 7.09

I’m off for another long weekend sailing in Rhode Island.  I hope to visit the alpaca farm I mentioned at the beginning and also, hopefully, a couple of RI weavers!