NH SHEEP AND WOOL AFTERMATH
The offspring, Friend Merlyn and I went to the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festival this Sunday past. We had a good time, with lots of sheepy things to look at, from fleece on the hoof to finished product. I do however note that Saturday rather than Sunday is probably a better day to go. It looked like some vendors and displays had already packed up and left, and some of the remaining sellers were displaying much depleted stock. There were still sheepdog trials going on when we got there, but the advertised horse show was among the events scratched for the day. Younger Daughter especially got a kick out of what looked to be a children’s llama agility course, in which youngsters led their equally young beasts around a set of gentle obstacles. It was hard to pick out who was cuter, the clearly concentrating little kids at one end of the lead ropes, or the gangly legged, long necked fuzzballs at the other.
I did manage to pick up some excellent buys. From left to right, 665 yard/8.3 oz hank of gray sport weight alpaca, from the Times Remembered booth – super soft and probably a bit more yardage than advertised on the label (labels were pre-printed with sport weight target yardage but hanks varied in weight, I picked a more weighty one); two skeins of sock yarn from Dorchester Farms; and an oversize lace weight yarn, one in black of 13.3 oz, probably around 4200 yards from a bargain bin in a booth whose name I neglected to note. At the same spot Elder daughter got some orange/russet lace weight of about 6.5 oz, probably around 2000 yards. Both pods of lace yarn were at a bargain basement prices. I also got some white cotton, close to 30 weight suitable for filet crochet at another stall that was offering mill ends. The two of us together spent less than $75 total on yarn, and garnered enough for winter’s worth of scarf, hat, sock and shawl knitting and crocheting for us both (lace is especially cost effective in terms of dollars spent on materials vs. hours of knitting enjoyment). Finally, in the center is the felted snake Younger Daughter made at the Textile Museum’s booth.
I almost bought a sock kit from Harmony Yarns/Tsock Tsarina – the sock kits there were the most original thing I saw on display, and I got a big kick out of the opera themes of the design. The Tsarina herself was working on a pair on a theme to match “Daughter of the Regiment.” I was tempted by the Firebird and Kitri socks, and admired the sculptural cleverness of the Vintage. The only drawback is that these are socks as art objects. They’d be difficult to add to the daily wear and wash rotation. Still, I took the card (they were out of kits in my mega-flipper size), with the intent to do up one or more of them in the near future. I meant to pick up some more Mostly Merino fingering weight, but although I pegged their display as being on the “zip back after full reconnoiter for purchase” I didn’t manage to loop around to them. Which was a shame because they had some beautiful yarn there in the highly saturated colors I prefer.
There were many other vendors of note although my yarn budget would not let me stretch to buy everything I liked. I especially enjoyed seeing all the micro producers in addition to the larger (yet still not big business) concerns like Bartlett Mills and Green Mountain Spinnery. Hand dyed/variegated yarns predominated, with natural off-the-animal colors a close second. Lots of bunny and mohair – sadly both fibers I avoid because they make my hands itch when I try to work with them. Most vendors on Sunday had short quantities of most products, although some of the larger booths did have full sweater lots left. I missed seeing one vendor I thought might be there: Nicks Meadow Farm, a New Hampshire sheep farm/yarn seller I’ve seen at local Gore Place Sheepshearing festivals. I like their scoured Maine style rustic wool and have used their heavy worsted/Aran weight to good effect in the past.
I did not take any wandering-around or day-out pix (as you can see from my feeble attempts at photography here, cameras are not my forte). However, Friend Merlyn did. I’m hoping to link to some of her shots when they’re posted.
EVENT – NEW HAMPSHIRE SHEEP & WOOL FESTIVAL
I don’t know if anyone reading here is within striking range but if you are, the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival is this weekend. I’ll be headed up there tomorrow. Not sure if I’ll be dressed in something recognizable, but it’s a good bet that the offspring (both small and large) and a friend of ours will be wandering the grounds and exhibit tents there for the better part of the day. I’ll try to take pix.
MORE SUBVERSIVE STITCHERY FROM THE ’70s
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I’ve stumbled across a box of unfinished stitching, packed away in a prior move and long unseen.
This piece I can date pretty accurately. I was working on it just before I joined the SCA, in January-February 1975. The counted thread patterns are from a mix of historical sources, mostly pix of antique band samplers, and illustrations in embroidery books. The composition was (of course) my own. The bottom panel was going to sport an Adam holding the apple, and an Eve rolling her eyes. They were going to be surrounded by an assortment of standard fauna and flora. I had just started the snake on the tree when I put my needle down. The brown thread for the tree’s trunk is coiled on top of the snake in the center.
My color choices on “Eve Was Framed” weren’t very good. I was working from a student’s stash of small quantities of floss, and never actually sat down and planned layout or color coordination. “Clashing haphazard” however was a common color set of the time. The faux linen butler’s tray cloth I was using as a ground was even weave, but rather coarse, about 24 threads per inch (12 stitches per inch). I stopped working on it when I realized that although many of the patterns had precedents, the work as a whole was a sad mish-mash. I wanted to spend my time doing more historically accurate pieces. So I shelved my subversive sentiment, rather than finishing it to hang on my dorm wall.
I will say that many of these styles and patterns are better known today than they were when I was doing this piece. You can buy pattern leaflets, design books and even full commercial kits today to make reproductions of historical band samplers, and patterns from period pieces have informed the work of many contemporary stitching designers. But back in ’75 there were very few people doing this type of stitching. And certainly even fewer using it to make trite political statements.
NEEDING A JUMP START
Another week of low inspiration here. I’m half way through the brown/tan/ecru entrelac socks. They’re working up nicely, but as I mentioned last week, the yarn has had lots of knots in it, one or two interrupting the color progression, but most clearly knotted before the stuff was dyed. I’m not pleased and will consider greatly before buying Berroco Sock again, even though I like its other properties that are so similar to more expensive European label sock yarns.
I’ve also picked up my olive tablecloth again. Rounds are still interminable, and nothing much interesting has happened since I put it aside last year. I’m still in the spiderweb section, with at least eight more rows of that two-row pattern before I have enough width to consider moving on to the final design element. I share my last olive picture again. The piece now looks the same, except the spiderweb around the outer edge is now about twice as deep.
And finally, in yet another traditional blurry String picture, I show off a partially completed embroidery. This one is a true sampler – a piece that exits only to try out random counted patterns. I had no particular goal in stitching it, it wasn’t intended to be displayed and remained a work in progress. The super long repeat in maroon shown separately is one of the design candidates for my curtain project mentioned here before. That work is still in the larval planning stages, mostly pending finding an affordable close to even weave linen or linen look alike.
Gauge on this sampler is approximately 15 stitches per inch on 30 count linen, in DMC Danish Flower Thread. Stitches used are cross stitch (green at top left), double running (grapes down center of piece and the two-tone framed flowers bit), and long-armed cross stitch (the extra long repeat). At this gauge the red repeat is just under 3.25 inches wide. To make my curtains less of an aeons project and to achieve the heft I want for my curtains, I’m looking for a plain weave even weave of about 12-15 threads per inch. That would make my stitched ribbon about six inches wide. Considering that I would need four panels to cover my windows, each 71 inches long x 35 inches wide, the six inch strip width would be in proportion to the rest of the project. But I haven’t found the linen yet, and certainly haven’t had the time to start, so my embroidered curtains remain a mental exercise for now.
Graphs for all of the patterns on this piece except for the small bans of field filling squaring out the area immediately to the left of the frame flowers can be found in The New Carolingian Modelbook. DMC DFT is now discontinued, which is one of the reasons why my play sampler ended up in my Chest of Knitting Horrors(tm).
GRAPE ESCAPE
Life took a silly twist here at String this week. Younger daughter and her fifth grade class participated in an Egg Drop. That’s the now classic assignment of designing and building some sort of a container that will protect a raw egg when container and egg are tossed from the roof of the school. The kids worked on their designs over the school break week last week. Yesterday was launch day. Acclaim was given for mission accomplishment (the passenger egg remained unbroken after a three-story fall), and originality of design.
Younger daughter’s idea was to wrap her egg in a bit of bubble wrap for stability, then to embed the wrapped egg in a mass of balloons. When we went to the party store we found a bag of purple balloons on sale, a post-season discount along with other traditional Mardi Gras colors. She decided to make her balloon mass into a bunch of grapes. A very BIG bunch of grapes.
She made the streamers from tissue paper, three sheets each cut in a spiral for maximum length without the extra weight of additional tape.
Getting the thing to school on a windy morning was a challenge. It filled the back of the van. But as I hear the effort was worth it. “The Grape Escape” had a successful launch, and fell from the third floor rooftop with majestic slowness, bouncing a couple of times on landing but remaining intact. The egg passenger was unharmed. If the school posts a video of the trial I’ll share the link. Younger daughter is quite pleased both with her project’s success and with its amusement value.
In knitting news, I continue on the entrelac sock and am now about halfway up the ankle. Minor disappointment in the Berroco Sock yarn I used, though. I’ve found six knots so far in the skein of color 1487 (browns/tans) that I’m using – one or two are a statistical aberration I can live with, but that many knots is a clear indication of quality control problems. By contrast the skein of #1425 (mixed turquoise black, red, orange, purple) was clean.
SCRATCHING THE SOCK BUG
I clearly haven’t gotten the latest sock bug out of my system. After playing with the yarn-leftovers entrelac pair last week, I thought that the same technique might be useful for a problematic skein. I recently bought a couple of 100g balls of Berroco Socks. The first was a visual jumble in the ball (color #1425 John Moores). The colors were pleasing, but the appearance of the thing gave no clue as to how it would knit up. It ended up working pretty conventionally, with an interest-maintaining long repeat:
I kept patterning on this pair to a minimum, and introduced the eyelets only because I find miles of stockinette to be exceedingly boring.
The other ball looked nifty in the skein, but presented more of a problem. Those nice, solid sections you see in the photo (color # 1487, Gielgud) are actually quite short. The foot of my toe up sock shows the small tiger-stripy effect of the stuff just knitted up plain in stockinette:
But that’s even more boring if continued up the whole leg. That’s where the entrelac comes in. I’m using it on the ankle part. The color patches don’t align into checkerboard (a mathematical impossibility) but they are interesting in a skewbald sort of way. Note that if I had used a companion contrasting color along with this brown/tan/ecru yarn I could have made the visual weave effect clearer.
I don’t know why I’m not more enthused about picking up an in-process project, but until I am I’ll stick to working up more of my stashed sock yarn. One thing that whets my interest somewhat is Hanne Falkenberg’s Mermaid jacket kit. Unfortunately it’s way out of my price range and doesn’t come in an XL (the large looks to be a 12-14 US). There’s a vaguely similar pattern available from DROPS/Garnstudio that is in my size, but the lines aren’t anywhere near as elegant and to me at least, it doesn’t have the drape or color placement finesse of the Falkenberg. So I keep dreaming…
THE BEST OF ORC MANUFACTURE
We had an entertaining weekend here at String, spending most of it cleaning up the debris of a New England winter and waking up the garden for spring. Now I’m not a very good gardener. In fact I stick to plants that in more hospitable geographic areas are rated as borderline invasive, because they are about the only plants I can’t kill. I trust in my own lack of skill and the odd deep freeze winter to keep them in check.
This weekend’s chores included moving a trillium and a peony to make more room for an aggressive hosta‘s growing hegemony; shuffling some day lilies out of the way; rescuing some tulips and daffs so courteously relocated mid-lawn by squirrels; planting three ultra hardy five petal rugosa roses in some newly freed up spots; and pulling dead leaves out of the giant grass stubble (aka elephant grass, or maiden grass).
How giant is our giant grass? It gets tall enough for its early September plumes to overtop the roof of our front porch. We cut it down before the seed sets and ripens in order to keep it from colonizing the entire neighborhood. But what to do with canes ranging from 8 to 13 feet? The first year we bagged them with the rest of the yard trimmings, for the town to haul off for composting. This fall though I had an idea.
I also attempt to grow what started out as an antique variety of big scarlet speckled runner beans. While I don’t harvest enough of a crop to eat, the kids get a big kick out of our sequential years of Mendelian genetics. We plant our Magic Beans for three springs now – some are still true to their parent’s form, some now look more like French flagolets/ Then we watch to see what color flowers appear (originally all red, now a mix of 25% white/75% red), and what color/form of beans result. They grow very fast, and require strings or a trellis to climb. Last year all we could find at the garden shop were puny 4 foot tall bamboo stakes. Not near long enough. So I decided to dry my giant grass stalks and store them through the winter to furnish the scaffolding for this year’s bean trellis.
It’s not warm enough for bean planting yet (final frost date is the second week of May here), but we did build the trellis and set it up against the sunny southern face of the garage:
On the whole, given the random length, lack of flexibility and fragility of the stalks, I’m amazed we were able to come up with anything at all. Yes, those are cable ties fastening the thing together. We’re nerds and proud! The structure is sort of pitiful, as if it were built by drunken orcs in World of Warcraft. I’m pretty sure that if they produced something this sad their players would be dunned a dozen experience points for failing so miserably in the attempt. But I like it. Covered in green with little flowers it will look grand. Provided it survives. Which is why we built it early. Better for it to collapse before beans attack it rather than having to disentangle them after the fact.
On the knitting front, I’m just about done with the entrelac socks. They turned out better than I expected.
Still a bit motley, but the four colors of leftover self stripers ended up complementing each other, mostly because all of them had green and brown in their mix. In person what looks like bright tomato red in the on-needle sock is more muted. Also, I divided the lot of leftovers into two groups – one that was mostly speckled with few or no solid stripes, and one that had firm solid stripes and spotty bits. The finished sock clearly shows the solids in the entrelac bits worked from left to right, and the speckled yarn in the entrelac bits worked right to left. All in all quite a satisfying project for something starting with such an unpromising quantity of leftovers.
KNITTED SCULPTURE
I stumbled across this on Boing-Boing Gadgets and was fascinated. It’s a piece of circular knitting fashioned from thin, clear plastic capillary tubing. The flow of colored water through the thing is mesmerizing. Although it looks a bit like nalbinding, it’s a twisted loop variant of frame knitting (the frame is upside down on the bottom, forming a pedestal for the sculpture).
Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.
Fascinating. Hats off to Mr. Bucket and the folk at Casual Profanity for the joy of this piece!
LEFTOVERS FOR LUNCH
I’m not quite sure why – maybe it’s spring doldrums, but I continue to be rather uninspired by knitting. Since I wrote last, I’ve finished two more pairs of socks and am half-way through the third. One of those pairs has already been given away, so no pix are possible but here’s the second rather boring pair:
About the only thing I can say about recent sock production is that I’m trying to use up leftovers and odd skeins. The turquoise in the pair above is old Kroy 4-ply (pre Kroy Sock). The multicolor is a Schachenmayer sock yarn, a ragg blend of spring pastels, mint, turquoise, yellow and pink leftover from a baby project. I had only one 50g skein of each.
The sock on needles below is a more ambitious adventure in leftover exploitation. I save every little bit of sock yarn. You never know when you’ll need as little as a row or two to work a contrasting color stripe. Along the way, larger bits get used up to make baby booties in my favorite pattern –Jane’s Booties by Ann Krekel. But I tend to use mostly the brighter colors and primary colors for the booties. This means that the tangled mass at the bottom of my sock yarn box is disproportionately a large number of tiny balls in browns, greens, and muddy mixes (the in-between parts of self stripers). Since there’s more than enough of those leftovers to do a couple of pairs of socks, and I wanted to reclaim my storage space, I decided to work them up.
Even though I need to use lots of little bits, I don’t like lots of darned ends in the foot part of my sock, so I decided to use some of the larger quantities for the feet. The ankle part however is fair game. The foot is rather humdrum, toe and heel in the same brown, and 6×2 stripes of green and brown. Rather than tons of skinny stripes I opted to do my ankles in entrelac:
I’ve got bits of my brown and speckled green in the ankle, plus odds and ends of three self stripers and a couple of raggs and other prints. Lord knows what yarn labels these were in specific, but likely suspects include Regia Ringel, Schoeller Stahl Fantasia and Opal, all chosen because somewhere in their repeats they included green and/or brown. The second sock will begin similarly with a very plain foot part. Then it will explode into a similar bit of entrelac, although I won’t be using the exact same mix of leftovers. I do have just enough of the first set (most notably the orange and brown) to unite the look of both socks so they end up being fraternal twins.
As for what pattern I’m using – I’m not. These are toe-up socks with Figure-8 toes, worked on 72 stitches around (rather large gauge for me, and quick to knit), with a short-rowed heel. I worked about three rows beyond the heel in the speckled green before blasting out into the entrelac. To keep the ankle a manageable width, I had to do some decreases. Each foundation triangle “eats” 8 stitches of my circumference (k2tog, k1, k2tog, k1, k2tog) to produce patches that are 5 stitches wide. That’s 9 five-stitch foundation triangles in total around the ankle. Then I continued in normal entrelac manner until the sock was long enough. On the last row of half-triangles, I reintroduced the stitches I trimmed out before to restore the piece to 72 stitches. I’m now working my standard 20 rows of plain old k2, p2 ribbing at the top.
One more note. To keep from going nuts, I worked the entrelac patches using “backwards knitting.” I used my usual yarn in left hand Continental method for what are normally the knit side rows, but instead of flipping the work over to purl back on each 5 stitch patch, still holding the yarn in my left hand I used a throwing variant to knit back from left to right. Much more efficient than flipping back and forth a zillion times.
So I guess the moral of the story is that frugality pays. If you save all those small bits you can look forward to some interesting adventures in sock knitting.
ONCE A SMART ASS, ALWAYS A SMART ASS
More nostalgia. I was digging through an old trunk the other day and I came upon a stack of my old embroideries, mostly unfinished. The majority of my finished work got given away as gifts. The completed pieces I still have I’ve posted here on String already, so this stash is in fact my “Chest of Embroidery Horrors,” a precursor to my “Chest of Knitting Horrors.” The first item in my stack was this odd little object, about 4 inches wide by 7 inches tall.
I doodled it up one weekend while I was in 7th grade (age 12 or so), obviously to hang in my middle school locker, picots and all. There was quite a fad for locker interior decorating among the other girls at Teaneck, NJ’s Benjamin Franklin JHS at the time. They did up elaborate confections of varying degrees of utility using contact paper, ruffles, shelf liner, sweet little color-coordinated pouches and shelves, magnetic mirrors, beads, decorative buttons and the like, trying to out-cheery or out-trendy each other. Many did whole themes in the school’s colors, or paeans to favorite bands or actors. Others copied design tips from hot teen magazines. I suppose it’s not shock to see that this same generation grew up to worship at the shrine of Martha Stewart.
I stitched my sad little sampler partly for fun, and partly to poke fun at the overly elaborate, overly girly, just plain over done lockers of my peers. I don’t remember if the other girls thought much of my embroidered commentary, but I do remember a couple of teachers coming by and asking to see the thing, then convulsing with laughter. And seeing it each day jump-started my mornings with much-needed sarcasm. Subversive stitching in 1968 from a sardonic pre-teen.
As to the various animals and plants on the sampler, there’s no deeper symbolism behind them, except for the cats and the budgie at the bottom. When I was a kid we had a couple of cats. The white one with the black tail was named Pixie. The Manx was Cola, from his rain-soaked tabby color and the Spanish for “tail” – an attribute he lacked. The other tabby and the bird belonged to friends. It happens that my severe allergies disappeared when I went off to college, away from home and the cats. I still miss their antics, but I’ll never live with a cat again. Breathing is much more fun.
I’ll post pix of some of the other pieces. At least one of them also qualifies for the subversive label.
String-Or-Nothing 