A change of scenery...

...now that it's been over a year. Here's a view of early fall in the Columbia River Gorge while I (continue to) consider the future of this blog.

You sure do make it like a sunny day.

A bit of a photo-essay, since clearly it's the writing of the blog that's holding me back, and not my utter laziness when it comes to blogging.

I bought some Lincoln Merino at the LYS (a pound for $13!) so that I'd have something to play with, something not too precious that I'd be worrying about messing up (although I still was).


Round one:

And two:


And then -- then I was ready for something pretty. My wonderful LYS, Fiber Nooks and Crannys (sic) (why is it not Crannies? I clearly have some problems since I cannot get past this), stocks Dicentra Designs fiber on consignment, and I fell in love with the Dune colorway.

5 ounces of blue-faced Leicester top in saturated, rich blues and orangey-gold. Here's my overspun single:

And here it is plied and skeined:


I've named it Helianthus, after the sunflower genus -- it reminds me of driving through Kansas. I think it'll be just the thing for a sunny winter scarf to lighten the northwest winter mood. It ended up being around 375 feet and 3 7/8 ounces.

A new member of the family.

She doesn't have a name yet, but she's definitely a she. She was a super-score on Craigslist a few months ago -- a nearly unused Ashford Traditional single drive. All that was missing were two bobbins, and the instruction manual.

It started, well, this past summer. I'd been smitten with spinning for awhile, and finally felt free enough to take it up once grad school was over. I visited The Yarn Tree in Brooklyn while I was home -- a lovely shop, and I got to meet Linda LaBelle, the owner and author of The Yarn Lover's Guide to Hand Dyeing. She was very sweet and very helpful. Along with some sale Koigu, I picked up 2 oz. of butter-soft, pure white Targhee top, and my Schacht spindle.


Get it? Clouds? Targhee? Do I really need to push this comparison? A few months later (that move got in the way), I had this:


Once I settled in Corvallis, I signed up for a two-day spinning class at the Oregon State Craft Center, one of my favorite things I've discovered in my new town. While the class was... not perfect, I did get to get some time on a wheel, and I learned to prepare a fleece.

Here's my first handspun on a wheel:

This is not cloud-like. It is dense, scratchy stuff. It was difficult to spin, lots of stops and starts as I learned what the wheel and the wool needed. But the last 10 yards just flew, and I was hooked. That 2 ounces (I think) took me hours. This ounce, bought from Steam Valley Fibers at the Tioga County Fair, took me about 15 minutes:


And I was hooked.

More to come, hopefully in less than a month, on how my wheel and I have been getting along...

Rites of passage.

Why in the world would 400+ knitters, of all shapes, sizes, genders, and ages gather in once place? Was it Earth Day, or The World Forestry Center that brought us all together, desperate as we were to learn about the most effective stand density for Doug fir in year 25 of a 50-year rotation?

And there's a forestry reference on my knitting blog. I am so cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a week. (Now I've added science fiction humor quotes. Time to move along.)


It was, of course, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, better known as The Yarn Harlot.


She was truly wonderful, funny and fresh (as you can read in her post on the day). I will admit to fearing that the talk would be sort of a rehash of her blog, or tired knitting humor. It really wasn't. Her commitment to a bit (drunken yarn company executives, anyone?) was unparalleled. I also enjoyed how she honestly seemed taken aback by the size of the crowd -- since I felt the same way. As a knitter, and one who knits in public and attends my very own weekly knitting circle, I have difficult time describing why it was so odd to see, literally, hundreds of people sitting in one place and knitting. Why should that seems so extraordinary? The topic of the talk spoke to this a bit -- knitters are all different, and few other hobbies/activities/arts are so easily portable. Waiting for a plane, for an appointment, people are usually either reading or watching TV. Knitters stick out, and no one really knows what to make of us. Putting us all in one room sort of turns all that on its head.

One thing that does unite us -- we like to show off our work. I wore a mohair/alpaca/merino blend in an absolute oven of a room until I almost passed out. But my sweater looked good.

It was quite fun. Aside from the Yarn Harlot, my new knitting buddies BlueKnit and MonkeyCat (her excellent pics are here) were along, adding to the sense of knitting community -- and troublemaking. The three of us, in search of food, after claiming our seats, took a shortcut back to the car. We rounded a corner, only to bust into SPM being interviewed. On camera. And she definitely noticed, as we ran away (literally!) giggling like high schoolers. Oops.

Aside from that mild humiliation, I had a grand time checking off another knitting rite of passage (LYS owner recognizes me? Check. Knitting group? Check. Blog? Check.). On to the fiber festivals and the taking of sock pictures in front of public landmarks!

Most recent podcast: Cast On.
What I'm reading: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz.
Currently listening to: Joshua Morrison's Home.

FO: Baltic Knee Socks

Ravelry project link here.

Pattern: Clementine's Baltic Socks [free PDF], by Diana Jones.

Yarn: Less than one skein of Fearless Fibers (blog here) Superwash Merino Wool Sock Yarn in Brick House.

Needles: Size 1 bamboo DPNs.

Size: To fit a size 6.5 foot.

Mods: To make the socks knee-high, I added shaping in the handy stockinette side panels, and made the ribbing at the top longer.

For: Me!

Time: Casted on July 2007; finished February 2008. They kept me company during two moves and a job hunt. We've bonded.

Thoughts: A great pattern. The pattern repeat was easy to memorize, and those stockinette panels made my first time calf-shaping attempt. They're my best-fitting pair of socks yet, although they'll need some elastic woven in to actually stay up. The Fearless Fibers yarn -- which I was lucky enough to have picked up back when it sold for $14.50/550 yards (still a steal at $19) -- was a wonder. It just going on and on and on -- there's still a good chunk of it left. It was also still my first short-row heel. Overall -- I love them!

Most recent podcast: Cast On.
What I'm reading: Mozart's Women, by Jane Glover.

FO: Hemlock Ring Blanket

Ravelry project link here.

Pattern: Jared Flood's blanket-sized version of the Hemlock Ring doily.

Yarn: One and a half skeins of Cascade Ecological Wool in colorway 8010

Needles: Started on US 10 Brittany DPNs, and finished on 32" US 10 Addi Turbo circulars (my LYS was out of the 40", and I really could have used that extra eight inches).

Size: I did two more pattern repeats than Jared's version -- although I didn't measure the final product.

Mods: None.

For: A Christmas gift for my mom.

Time: Casted on at the end of October; casted off on the tarmac at SFO on December 20th.

Thoughts: A gorgeous pattern, and I am exceedingly happy about how it turned out. My mom seemed to love it! Because I finished it on the plane home, I couldn't block it as long as it really needed -- I had about 36 hours to block on my sister's bed before she came home and, you know, needed somewhere to sleep. I had to block it super aggressively -- there was a lot of fighting, and it's still a tiny bit ripply -- but the final product is pretty striking (considering that it looked like this:

More Christmas updates to come -- fiber goodness, new books, and news on life (I'll be moving soon). For now, though -- I'm going to enjoy my Saturday.

Most recent podcast: CraftLit. I'm catching up with Tristan and Isolde.
Currently listening to: Blue Planet.
What I'm reading: The Amber Spyglass, by Phillip Pullman.

What you are picks its way.

My. It's been nearly a month since I posted last, and I can only partly blame it on the new job. Because I work remotely, I spend most of the day tethered to my laptop; once I'm finished, the last thing I want to do is spend time online. I've even been neglecting Ravelry!

I have been pretty busy, though. The knitting, admittedly, has been slow. Only two more pattern rounds before I finish the Hemlock Ring Blanket, which continues to look like a big, unphotographable blob. I can't wait to block it -- my goal is to finish it this week, and to take lots of blocking pictures. The only other active project on the needles is the second of the Baltic knee-high socks, which have been good for travel. The Urban Aran continues to require a new collar and then a zipper, and it's just occurred to me that I might have some down time next week (house-sitting in Seattle (yay!), and TreeHugger will be out of town on business) to focus on it.

So, instead of knitting pictures, I leave you with "How I spent my Thanksgiving vacation" pictures. I trekked, with TH, his family and friends, to a hut in the Colorado mountains. This east-coast flatlander had a great time, even if I was sucking wind for three days.


Oh, here's something fiber related! I overheat like crazy once I get moving, and so I love my calorimetry. It keeps my ears nice and warm, but lets me vent a bit from the top of my head. I originally knit it up using Malabrigo on size 9 needles, which made a pretty loose fabric that let winter winds through -- so I took a deep breath, and threw it in the wash. Now it's perfect!

Calorimetry at 12,000 feet.

More to come, and sooner than a month later, as I finish up the Christmas gifts, and start a new project or two!

Most recent podcast: Cast On!.
Currently listening to: Sufjan Stevens Songs for Christmas Vol. 1.
What I'm reading: Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass.

You don't go out looking for a job dressed like that? On a weekday?

Is this a... what day is this?

Apologies for the lack of posting -- things have been busier than usual around here (which isn't difficult, as most days find me in my pajamas until about 10 or 11am). They have been busier because -- I have a job! After several months of searching, moving, applying, and interviewing, I've landed a job with a great conservation organization in Oregon. It's temporary for the moment, but (finger's crossed) should go permanent once the next round of grants come through. And extra good news -- Corvallis has a great LYS (Fiber Nooks and Crannies) with spinning supplies and classes!

I celebrated with a knitting splurge -- I bought a handful of color cards from KnitPicks, as well as two books, one practical and one impractical, as a true splurge should be. The practical is The Knitter's Book of Yarn, bought as a direct result of my Tangled Yoke yarn selection frustrations. There's an excerpt on alpaca in the winter Interweave Knits, and I think it's going to be a useful addition to my knitting library. The impractical: Twinkle's Big City Knits. This is not a book I'd normally buy -- I prefer technique books to pattern books, and simple, classic patterns to trendy, striking ones (nearly every shirt I own is a long-sleeved, solid-colored, cotton knit). But there was something about a few of these patterns -- Shopping Tunic, Karate Sweater (both Ravelry links) -- that I really enjoyed and kept coming back to (I think knit lit kate's love affair with Twinkle helped plant the seed).


The arrival of these two books, as well as finishing the Tangled Yoke and Joel's hat, has led to some serious project lust. The afore-mentioned shopping tunic is tempting as an instant gratification project, and I've been drooling over the Lion Brand Pringle sweater knock-off for awhile now. Conveniently, I also have LYS credit burning a hole in my pocket -- thanks, four extra skeins of Tangled Yoke yarn!

On the knitting front, I'm about halfway through Jared's Hemlock Ring Blanket, which I am loving. The blanket will be a Christmas gift for my Mom, and should be done (knock on wood) way ahead of time. I never plan this far ahead, and I have to say I'm quite pleased. I may even cast on another once I'm done with the first, for a recently married friend with a baby on the way. (Excuse the poor picture -- I was too lazy for a proper photo shoot).

Most recent podcast: Lime and Violet.
Currently listening to: The Seahawks game/The Simpsons.
What I'm reading: Doris Lessing's The Real Thing.