Maia Spins

The Lake

This weekend we are off to "the lake".  That is Lake Madrone, a tiny lake made by damming one of the feeders to Lake Oroville.  Lake Oroville is a reservoir and a recreational area in the Sierra foothills of Northern California.  It is a three and a half hour drive from home, traffic permitting.

Last November I took some photos to show to the good folks in blogville.  I bring them to you now (dial up and limited computer access this weekend will make posting challenging).  The pictures are fairly dark, click on any one to see better clarity in a bigger version.

This is the first thing you see when you get to the lake.  It is the Lake Madrone Inn.  I don't think it has been operational in the 14 years I have been going to the lake.  This is Butte county.  You know when you are in Butte county because there are signs announcing the end of emergency call boxes in the highways.  It is a poor and very rural county.  The businesses along the highways seem to struggle and change hands frequently.

A few years back, they decided to make Lake Madrone a gated community.  The entrance has a country club feel to it.  Good thing we arrived in our Mercedes!  (well, our 1979 Mercedes with 240,000 miles, but it proudly runs on 100% biodiesel).

It is very wooded around the lake.  This is the road just past the gate.  On the right are homes set back from the road.  The fall foliage was very pretty.  The red leaves are native dogwoods.

The sun is just starting to set.  You can see a bit of the lake peeking through the trees on the left side of the road.

At a break in the trees you can look up to the top of the lake.  It was a foggy day.  I love fog.  It is romantic and ethereal and mysterious *.  The redwoods in the distance are topped with a layer of fog that looks like gauze strung in the sky.

Across the lake is the ski beach.  This is where the locals gather on holidays for community picnics.  The water is very low here.  Since this is not a natural lake it accumulates a lot of silt.  The water comes from Sierra snow melt and brings whatever it collects along the way.

This is the view if you drive or walk around the lake and back to the highway.  The ski beach is on the left in the distance and a small one lane bridge is at the very top.

Here we are, back at the Lake Madrone Inn.  As you can see, the back side is built over the lake on piers.

* Fog is NOT romantic and ethereal when you are driving at freeway speeds.  Then it is scary and dangerous.  Smart people stay home in thick fog.  Around here it can get thick enough that you can't see two car lengths ahead of you.  Bad!  Stay home.

In The Garden

After a brief storm and a bit of rain, we are back to gorgeous, warm, and sunny weather.  It is in the high 60's, maybe low 70's.  My cherry tree finally decided to bloom.  The plum and pluot trees are done.

Every year we get volunteer borage plants.  Like the arugula, if you plant it once, you'll have it forever.  It is an attractive plant with big fuzzy leaves.  The bright blue flowers will start to open soon.  They have a cucumbery flavor and are delicious in salad.

In the front yard, I have a deodar cedar tree.  It is a graceful tree that provides shade and a nesting spot for several types of birds.  My native shade garden is under this beautiful (although non-native) tree.

This year I decided to put out some of the fluff I've accumulated from preparing fiber.  The birds will take bits for their nests.  It is in a suet cage.  Most of the fluff is Rambouillet combing waste.  The wool was natural dyed in madder and cochineal last summer.  I like this cage because it has little landing ledges that fold down.

I encourage you to put out fiber too.  You can use pet fur and yarn scraps too (I have a few in my cage).  Just be sure that it is animal fiber.  Plant fibers are cold when wet and we want to keep the birdies warm.  If you don't have a suet cage, use a mesh bag like produce sometimes comes in or a piece of tulle fabric, preferably with large holes.  If the holes in the mesh are fine use tweezers to start pulling some of it out through the holes so the birds can find it.  Easiest of all, you can toss fiber onto the lawn for the birds. 

Each year rabbits are bought as Easter presents.  Unfortunately, many of these rabbits are surrendered to rabbit rescues shortly after Easter.  If you are thinking about getting a bunny, check out this site to learn more about what your new friend will need.   I am going to  Make Mine Chocolate this year.

Biodiesel Socks *

Dulaan Knit In
On Sunday I went to Rachael's house for a Dulaan knit-in in honor of our friend Janine, visiting from Seattle.  We had a great time socializing.

On the left is Rachel (known across blogville as no blog Rachel) and our lovely hostess Rachael.  On the right is Becca and Cindy.

The lovely Lala with Miss Idaho modeling the hat Lala made.  Miss Idaho is such a little star.  She knows how to work a crowd.  Half of the pictures I took include her.

I managed to take bad pictures of the other attendees, Janine, Breanna, Jeni, and Celia.  I hope they will forgive me.  I know they would if they saw the pictures!

I tried to start the hat from the Master Knitter program.  First I realized that I have brought the correct needles for the body of the hat, but not the ribbing.  Rachael kindly loaned me some needles and I cast on.  I counted my stitches and recounted my stitches and worked k2, p2 around to find an odd number of stitches remaining.  Twice.  Twice.  I can take a hint.  I switched over to my Latvian mitten for a few rows and had to stop because I had forgotten to bring the directions for the thumb.  Doh!

Not much else to report for the last couple of days.  I finished my February fiber from the Spunky Club.  It is 350-360 yards of Navajo plied fingering weight.  I divided the roving into 4 strips to keep the stripes fairly wide.  It will hit the needles this weekend.  We are going to "the lake" and I need a travel project.  More on "the lake" this weekend.

I may have learned my lesson about backgrounds.  I usually use either the side board (pale wood) or my dining room table (medium wood).  Both are very warm wood tones that have very little contrast with the colors I gravitate towards.  Then there are the pictures of yarn on my wheel (pale wood) against my hardwood floors (almost as pale wood).  It was all starting to wear on me.  Today, I tried my lavender sheets and didn't have to tweak the colors to get the yarn to pop in the picture. 

* In a recent Google search string, I came up first in biodiesel socks!  Two of my favorite things.  I'm sure the searcher was looking for sock filters for biodiesel, but hey, it makes a catchy title.

Forecast for Fun

I think I mentioned that I joined Amy Boogie's Spunky Club.  I am getting the fiber.  Last month's offering was a lovely merino roving called Forecast.  A couple of bloggers have spun it into Navajo plied sock yarn and knit beautiful socks.  Margene made these socks and Mya (ETA: Yikes! her name is Amy, my apologies) made these socks.  Lovely! 

I'm not one to pass by a great idea and the Navajo plied BFL socks I made from Amy's "Chocolate Covered Cherries" roving are some of my favorites.  So, I have started spinning my forecast roving for Navajo plied socks.  This picture doesn't show much of the blue.  I looked at the spindle and it was mostly blue.  I thought I should spin a little more to show the color more balanced and got this.  SIGH.

Last night my FIL, Roy, and his girlfriend Marcela came over and brought their dog Pancho.  Sammie and Pancho are great friends.  Lots of wrestling and cuteness ensued.
Bite me! No, bite me!

All that makes for two happy and tired dogs.  Sammie could barely drag his butt out of bed this morning.

Other Bits & Pieces
Nanette has published her Glove Knitting booklet.  Mine has shipped; I hope it arrives soon.  There is a KAL and you are encouraged to make any glove pattern, not just one of hers.  I have joined but not posted yet.  It should be a great way to finally get some gloves that fit my hands.

Speaking of new books, Terri Shea's book on Selbuvotter, a style of black & white knitting from Norway, is available for pre-order.  In this post you can see it being printed.  That must be very exciting for an author.  If you pre-order by March 31, the shipping is free.

Speaking of Scandinavian knitting, this October the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle is sponsoring a Nordic Knitting Conference.  Check out the line-up of people scheduled to teach!  I plan to go and keep checking to see if registration has started yet.

Pippi pointed out this great project of knitting comfort dolls for AIDS orphans in Africa.  There is still time to whip out one or two to contribute.  Check out Big Yarn Mama's blog for more info.

Speaking of charity knitting, I am off to Rachael's house for a Dulaan knit-in.  It was scheduled today to celebrate Janine being in town.  I hope she brings the acorn sweater, a stunning stranded sweater she designed for her husband.

Budding and Blooming

I forgot to wish you all a Happy Spring!  This is such a glorious time of year here.  The weather has been sunny warm, in the 60's (F) during the day.  Everything feels so full of promise.

I love seeing plants budding. The fig here is a varietal named Black Jack.  I planted it about seven years ago.  In the fall it has lots of big yummy figs, if the neighbors don't steal them all.  A few of the tiny, immature fruits overwinter and start growing again in spring.  We will get a small crop in a couple of months.  How cool is that?

This is my first spring with my front yard planted in California native plants.  Only about half of it is planted so far, the shade half. Some plants, like the monkey flower (Mimulus puniceus) pictured here, are evergreen and have had a few flowers all winter long.  These are a dark orange red.  Another monkey flower, bought on the same day and planted just 15 feet away has bright orange flowers.  It is smaller and flowers less frequently.  I often wonder if that one got mislabeled.  I'm not complaining; I love both colors.  And, the hummingbirds love both colors too.

Another evergreen native is this wild ginger (Asarum caudatum).  It has very odd dark red flowers in spring.  Click on the picture to see one of them.  They almost look like rosehips.  The flowers are hermaphrodite and I understand they are pollinated by flies. 

A patch of mushrooms has volunteered.  I am not schooled in identification, so these will remain eye candy.  They look beautiful.  My garden philosophy is live and let live.  I like the wild look without being shabby.  Ironically, this takes a fair amount of maintenance.  As Dolly Parton says "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap."  Love me some Dolly.

We Have A Winner

Remember the Wayback Machine Sweater Contest?

I have counted the yarns.  My best accounting says there are 48 different yarns in there.  Several of them are the same yarn in different colors.  I counted each of these individually.

Laurie guessed 46, so she is the winner.  Since Laurie has received handspun recently, I decided to randomly select an additional winner and it is Ronni!

There was another contest a while back and I forgot to select a winner!  My apologies.  I was looking for a name for the scarf. 

I plan to write up the pattern.  It won't necessarily be in these colors or have the locks fringe.  Long story short, I didn't find the name I am looking for.  I skewed the results by playing up the 70's angle.

Still, I want to reward all the great suggestions I got.  They were quite good and funny too. 

Our randomly selected winner is Lisa!  She did have a big list of great ideas.

Email me, I'll need snail mail addresses for sending the handspun love.

The Latvian mitten cuff was frogged and reknit.  This one fits perfectly and quality of the knitting is much better.  I made the changes I talked about in my last post including a black purl row to tie down the fringe, reordering the braids, and a stockinette band between the fringe and the first braid.  I also changed the direction on the middle braid.

I am combining several patterns in the book for my mitten.  I was going to try to be consistent and make a mitten that represents one of the regions of Latvia.  The pattern I chose is from Kurzeme and they don't usually fringe their mittens.  The traditional colors of Kurzeme tend to be bright colors.  I guess I am mixing and matching instead.  I love the zig-zag pattern; all four colors are in on that one.  There is a little more cuff pattern and then I start the main pattern.

Today, I caught my Sammie sunning on the bridge of the pond.  This is a good vantage point to spot all the birds violating his airspace.  Plus, the bridge (an old wooden plank) is warm from being in the sun all day.

He is so cute.  In this picture he looks peeved.  I think he is just squinting because the sun is in his eyes.

Oooh! or is it Ooops?!?

I am Knitting Like A Latvian!  Finally.  The first cuff of my Latvian mittens!  This has been a fun challenge so far.  The fringe and the braid are both new techniques to me.  I like learning something new.  I also like the look.  The colors are playing well together and the cuff pattern I am using (barely visible - up by the needles) is very satisfying.

Does anybody hear a "but" coming?

But, there is only one thing wrong with my mitten.  It is HUGE!  I guess my gauge swatch was wrong or the handspun I used in the swatch was finer than the bulk of it.  I wanted the mitten to measure a little under nine inches around and it is measuring ten inches.  Sasquatch could wear these mittens.

The plan is to go down a needle size and maybe trim the pattern a bit.  I hate to frog all that work.  It took me a long time to get this far.  Both the fringe and the braids take forever.

Oh well, there are a couple of things I wanted to change anyway.  I'd like the fringe to be a bit longer and for more space between the fringe and the first braid (blue & white just about the fringe).  I may rearrange the braids by putting the blue one above the other two.  I may also use the black as the tie down row (purl bumps just above the fringe).  Latvian mittens don't seem to be ashamed of contrasting purl bumps.  I like that.

I have started my Master Knitter swatches.  Here are the first five; the sixth is almost done.  This is some boring knitting.  The only spice comes from a sprinkling of panic that I haven't picked the correct cast-on or that my edge stitches aren't even enough.  Good grief!  I have been knitting for decades. 

It has spurred me into learning a few new tricks.  I learned several tubular (dude!) cast-ons and used one of them for the 1x1 ribbing swatch.  With a bit of practice, it turned out decent.  I like the look better than the long tail cast-on I usually use.

Next up:  I get to fret over my weaving in method.  It is a great method, never shows, and is elastic.  But, I will still fret.

Getting Closer

I'm still trying to get to my Latvian mittens. I want to Knit Like A Latvian.  I didn't exactly make it easy on myself (a common theme in my life I'm afraid).  I decided to spin the yarn from some delightful roving (see below for more info.)  I asked the seller to kindly dye some in a steel blue color (Project Spectrum colors - I was thinking two birds with one stone.).  Then I tried to find the book Latvian Mittens.  After 5 weeks I finally found a used copy.  I feel like I have been all talk and no knitting.

I think I have picked out my pattern.  I love the geometric floral design.  We shall see if it sticks once I start swatching (soon I hope, time is running out on these Project Spectrum colors).

I have half of the blue roving spun up and the white on the wheel.  While looking through the book, I realized most Latvian mittens have a contrast color at the cuff.  I decided to make a bit of black and charcoal gray.  I want a semi-monochromatic look.

But let me tell you about the fiber.  It is 60% wool, 40% alpaca roving from Jessie at A Piece Of Vermont.  Here is the white on my wheel.  It spins like a dream!  I think it must have been combed because there aren't any neps, just free-flowing soft fibers.  I am spinning it long draw and it feels like it is flying out of my hand and onto the wheel.  There is a little bit of veggie matter, but most falls out while spinning.  I don't mind a bit of VM.  It is somehow reassuring, like there really was a happy critter romping in a field.

Jessie sourced all the fibers from local (to her) Vermont.  I love that she works with local farms.  I expect the 40% alpaca to make nice warm comfy mittens.  Perfect for the early spring we have this year.  Oh well, there is always next year.

Mitten List
A couple of weeks ago I got a call from my mother.  A few minutes into the conversation this is what she said:
MOM: I want you to put me on the mitten list.
ME: Mitten list?  What mitten list is that?
MOM: You know, the list of mittens you are going to make.

The sneak plied me with talk about how everything I make is so lovely and that I am so talented.  I suspect she may be biased.  I did learn to knit from her and well, she IS my mother.  She hooked me.  Before she was done, I was committed to a pair of mittens and a matching head band to keep her ears warm. 

My mother has gorgeous silver hair; I hope I inherit her hair color.    She is leaving the color and pattern up to me "because I have such great taste" (see how she suckered convinced me?).  While I was making batts for my Latvian mitten contrast color, I ended up with a couple of colors that were too close to the blue.  I decide to make a series of grays in a 60/40 blend of merino and alpaca (similar to the roving from Jessie).  Each one is made only from white and black wool and some naturally black alpaca fleece from my stash. 

I should have enough of the white and blue left over, combined with these grays to make her set.  I think I will use Norwegian patterns.  She learned to knit in Norway as a girl.  It seems fitting; all during my childhood, my sister and I had beautiful handmade Norwegian sweaters.  The least I can do is to put my mother on the mitten list.

Knit Like a Saxon

Recently, I ordered a few books from Schoolhouse Press.  At the last minute I decided to add a book called Charted Peasant Designs from Saxon Transylvania.

Wow!  This book has me more excited than anything I have seen in a long time.  The patterns are for cross-stitch but I see no reason not to use them for knitting.  I can't stop thinking about what I can do with these patterns.

The price is unbelievable.  $6.95  Seven US dollars for all this inspiration.  Amazing.  Yup, it is a Dover publication. 

Here are a few pages from the book:

And now for something completely different
Have you seen the latest Knitty Spin Get Spun column by Pippi Knee Socks?  She blended Hemp and Sari Silk.  It looked like so much fun that I dug through my stash and found both fibers.   

Oy!  What a mess!  I think this blend is better left to drum carders with coarser teeth like her Louet.  It fought me quite a bit.

I decided two passes through was all I could stand perfect.  The batt looks pretty cool and I am looking forward to spinning it.  OUTSIDE.  She warns that we should use a sheet or the like to try to contain the loose fibers.  I can she she is right.

Yarn Recipe

The idea of yarns having a pattern or a recipe has been on my mind for a while.  The method I describe here is one I often use.  Click on any picture to see it larger.  (WARNING: this is a very picture heavy post.)

I start by taking commercially dyed merino roving and my drum carder.  Using dyed roving is an easy way to play with color.  To my way of thinking, making batts like this is all about getting a heathered yarn.  To fill the bobbin on my wheel I usually need four batts.  I often make each one a little different (convenient since it is easier to be inconsistent).

This yarn is based in red.  I used two to three main colors (all versions of red) and several minor colors.  I like the minor colors to be fairly well blended and the main colors to be a little less blended.  To achieve this I blend the minor colors together with some of the main colors and then run that batt back through with the main colors.

These are the colors I used plus a violet that I used up.  Some where used in very small amounts like the bright orange and the lighter pinks.  The purples were only used in the purple batt and the dark burgundy is only in the two darkest batts.

I like to keep my hand just before the small roller to control the feed.  Sometimes clumps of roving will try to fee through all at the same time.  Light pressure on the feeding batt can reduce this tendency. 

It is very important to keep the pressure light.  If you press too hard you can cause the fibers to break.

The picture to the left shows a length of burgundy that slipped through as a clump.  It will not be distributed around the full circumference of the large drum.  If I were to spin the batt like this, I would get strong streaks of burgundy.  No problem, another pass through the drum carder will fix it.

A nice batt ready to be removed.

For this yarn my four batts have the following minor colors: oranges, pinks, dark pinks, purples.  It is okay to use colors from the opposite sides of the color wheel as long as they are in separate batts.  They won't get blended enough during the spinning process to make an awkward color.

To prepare the fiber for spinning, I stack the batts unfolded.  In this case I put the orange one on top and then the pinks from light to dark and purple on the bottom.  I ruffled them here just to show you the colors.

I then stripped the batts lengthwise into half, then fourths, eighths, and sixteenths.  Each sixteenth was then predrafted a bit (sometimes this is helpful because the batts get really fluffy and want to fall apart.  Predrafting makes a more cohesive roving that can be wound into balls.

In the drafted roving you can still see each of the batts.  The amount of each batt may not be exactly consistent along the roving, but that is a good thing.  Slight variation makes a nice yarn.

On to the spinning!  I like to use the long draw with this preparation.  I did the large skein that way and made a bulky two ply.  I made three mini skeins to show you how changing the spinning method will give a different result.

First is a swatch from the long draw bulky weight skein (swatch in the very middle of the group shot).  The colors are pretty well distributed but there is still a nice mottled texture.

Next is a swatch spun long draw except that the finished yarn is a sport weight (top left swatch).  The mottled texture is still present, but at a finer texture.

The third swatch is spun over the fold.  To spin from a batt over the fold, I split it lengthwise into eighths and then pull a staple length off the strip.  With this method the fiber tends to draw from one batt at a time.  You can see the the cast on edge is mostly the orange batt.  The yarn will be less mottled and more stripey than if the long draw method is used.

For the final swatch I divided the batts and spun them individually into a fine singles which was then Navajo plied.  I did just one color repeat; the colors could continue in this order or go from orange to purple to orange and back to purple.

As you can see there are a lot of options.  You can pick the method hat will give you the effect you desire.  There are also ways that I have not shown.  For instance, on the last swatch I could have made a two ply with a barber pole effect.

(ETA:  update with better pics)