SpinnySpinny

I picked up a new book today, one that leaped out at me at the store and chased me down. I wasn’t planning to buy anything other than the Spanish phrase book I went in to get. A knitting book, of all things. It’s Big Girl Knits by Jillian Moreno and Amy R. Singer. It’s a collection of mostly sweaters designed for fat chicks, from a bunch of different designers. There’s even one from online SpinningFiber friend Emma Crew.

I’ve been thinking about making a sweater for a while. I haven’t really done knits with any kind of shaping, although I well understand the theory from sewing. And what I saw I really wasn’t liking: big rectangles. If I wanted to wear a garbage bag, I’d go get one from the kitchen. Boxy is not at all a good thing for a short fat chick with a big ass. Oh, and narrow shoulders. Anything dropped shoulder is just a bad idea, I don’t need the shoulder seams hanging around my elbows. I know it’s possible to knit in shape, I just wasn’t looking forward to the twenty-seven attempts it would take to figure it all out myself and develop a pattern. Remember I said I’m not all that much a knitter?

Here is a whole book without a single drop shoulder oversized box. They all have shaping and, more importantly, lots of directions on how to make things actually fit. No “Sweater in a Weekend” super chunky yarn, either. A lot of that stuff doesn’t even look good on skinny women. The authors are sassy and in-your-face and make no excuses about being fat, they just get on with it. My absolute favorite line in the whole book: “Black is not magic. Black does not make you look thin; black does not give you a shape. black makes you look like a fat girl wearing black.”

I’ve known about short rows, Lily Chin did an article for Threads a long time ago and I still have it someplace. And increases and decreases are a beginner basic. But getting it all together the right way takes trial and error. I expect it will take a couple tries to get something that is perfect, particularly when I start changing yarns and such, but this is a huge head start.

I’ve washed the baby blanket several times now and it’s still throwing off lint like crazy. I even pulled out the sweater shaver. It’s impossible to tell from looking at the ball of yarn how it is going to behave when washed. In this case, I even machine washed and dried a sample and it was nothing like this. Back in the laundry it goes, and another round with the shaver, until it’s time to deliver it to the intended recipient. That may be several more weeks, so I’m not too worried. It only gets softer with every wash.

Somebody paid good money for this drek. At least it wasn’t me. And people ask me why I spin.

I finally finished a baby blanket I started a few months back. It’s a big dishcloth in classic cotton dishcloth-type yarn. I put it in the Gallery, too. I started it thinking it would be a good travel project, but even with the absurdly simple pattern the two colors were a nuisance to drag around without tangling. I finally ended up putting it in a basket and threading the yarns through the two handles. It was too heavy and too easy to tangle for travel, so I rarely worked on it.

I’m still sorting and washing the Merino lamb, it does drum card nicely but I think I’m going to comb anyway. Combing doesn’t require an extra step to get the VM out. I tried carding with the bleached tips cut off and it is darker, but only barely. It’s good and dark for wool, but not black. I might dye it once it’s spun. I can’t decide what to make, so for now I’m just working through the scouring a batch at a time.

I did the Dorset/Romney blend on the drum carder and it came out nicely. There are a few noils because I didn’t flick the Romney, but not too many to pull out along the way. I can’t figure out what to do with that either. There’s almost 300g, enough for several hats or a scarf or maybe a lace shawl. Spun worsted it will still have decent loft, perfect for socks but I like finer fiber for socks. And I hate hand washing socks, anyway. I want to finish the spinning I’ve got going, so I packed it away for now.

Also in the interest of cleaning up half-baked ideas, I started flicking yet another dark brown Merino. I long ago packed up the nicer parts of this fleece, a rush scour job after a brush with the M-word. I wasn’t so careful with the sorting and more than usual ended up in the carding pile. Which then felted a little in the wash. After that, I wasn’t happy with how it came off the drum carder. So it’s been sitting around in an old produce bag ever since. I should be able to pull out enough well-formed staples to flick out the felted bits and then card and still have enough to do something. I could always blend it with more from the other portion, or any of the other three nearly identical fleeces. Somebody kick me if I suggest buying yet another dark brown Merino fleece before I make it through the ones I have. That should give me a good five years, minimum.

Lately I’ve been less than enamored of my current spinning project and also in need of more stare-into-space time, so long sessions with the dog brush are actually a good thing. I have fairly easy access to the drum carder now, so I’m trying out different things. But I always go back to combing anything that can be combed and then only maybe getting around to carding the rest.

Now that the blanket is done, maybe I can get motivated to continue with the purple Ashland Bay stuff. I’m trying to like commercial prep but failing to be enthused. Maybe I’m just out of enthusiasm this month, it being used up on other things. I’ve had some real work and expect more and we are trying to buy a house. I’ve been organizing my fiber stuff with the thought of having an actual room to myself for a studio. Maybe that’s why I just don’t have the energy for this pretty but too short and very not perfect commercial top. It’s like those things on the shopping list I never quite get to, despite being out of AAA batteries for weeks now.

The last of the gray Romney fleece is finally scoured. I sorted out the shorter and more curly bits for carding and the rest is bagged and waiting for me to start on more Peruvian warp yarn. I even washed the rest of that questionable Dorset, although I still don’t know what to do with it. But the more wool I get scoured, the more I can seal in plastic bags and put in the storage unit. After the “M” incident, I’m not keeping raw fleece over there. Now I can start on the black Merino lambs.

I got this idea a few weeks ago that I should finally knit myself a sweater. I’ve avoided it because I’m actually not all that fond of knitting but I like to have handspun hats and scarves to wear. It’s great for small travel projects, something I am always in need of. I determined a while back that I am also in need of a “casual outergarment.” Something to throw on to run outside. I like the idea of a poncho, but I’m so over the whole “Celebrity Poncho” thing that I don’t want to touch it for fear someone will assume that I’m one of those kinds of people. I am decidedly anti-fashion when it comes to anything that involves People or Entertainment Weekly. Maybe in a few years when everyone has forgotten about it.

So, I think, I’ll knit myself a sweater. A nice classic cardigan I can nonchalantly drape over my shoulders. When somebody asks, I can respond “Yes, isn’t the yarn nice? I made it.” But since it will be of my usual 3-ply worsted, it will wear forever, never pill and be immune to the damp San Francisco evening breezes. And then I contemplate my sweater-making skills. Or, more correctly, the complete lack thereof. How will I get it actually fit my narrow shoulders and wide butt? Will I look like a stuffed sausage? None of those patterns have ever heard of bust shaping. I wonder if undertaking a first attempt in handspun is such a hot idea. What if I completely blow it? This leads me to the unthinkable: do I Buy Yarn?

I’m not sure I’m quite ready for this.

So here I am in New Jersey. I tried to find some textile things of interest, so I looked up a local group, the Big Apple Knitting Guild. They had a meeting Saturday and I could get there on the subway. The meeting is a typical guild type of meeting, some business, a charity auction for hurricane relief, a speaker and socializing.

The program for the day was Lily Chin (a guild member) introducing her new line of yarns. For anyone living under an even larger rock than I do, she’s a big knit and crochet designer and is constantly on the road doing yarn shows, tv appearances and so on. She creates patterns, writes books and is a good teacher. Some people like her, some people hate her. Mostly I only have issue with the whole poncho thing. And I hadn’t even seen the Martha Dog Poncho because I don’t watch television. To her credit, she’s also over ponchos but somehow the market wants them I guess. Mostly what I saw was a woman trying to make a living by knowing her customers and trying to give them what they want without either pandering or being stuffy. People say she’s got a big ego, but mostly it seemed no different than any other business owner’s self-promotion. So there was a lot of handing around of sample garments and fondling of yarn and generally a good time was had by all. As for her new yarn collection, it is well thought out. I expect it will be even better next season when she gets the custom spun yarns, to pull it off on time she had to go with existing yarns from Europe but she is working with a mill in Canada. The patterns are simple but some of the garments are interesting and they all are reasonable for an average non-expert knitter. Each yarn has a crochet pattern too.

Enough about knitting, then. Also at this meeting I found out there was a huge yarn festival the next day. Knit-out New York was in Union Square Park and there was going to be giveaways and booths and all sorts of things. I even got my sister, who is finally getting around to finishing her first garter stitch scarf, to go. We get there and I start looking around, I get about three booths down and I find … spinners! A guild from upstate had a booth and was demonstrating spinning. I quietly had a look around while one of the demonstrators showed how to use a drop spindle and asked if anyone wanted to give it a go. I waited. Nobody was volunteering. Ok, I said, I’ll do it. I gave it a minute before I pointed out that I was, well, “somewhat experienced” at this. I put down my bag and almost immediately started teaching.

I did want to see the rest of the show, so I had to get up for a while. But I came back and spent the next two hours carding and spinning and talking to people. It was a little weird because although it looked like I was with the guild and might know local shops and teachers, I didn’t. I would say “I’m not from New York” and hear back “That’s ok, I’m from New Jersey.” “No, really.” I taught a spinner who wanted to learn how to card, several novices who were confused about some of the basics and spun for a teacher with a video camera. An experienced spinner showed me her new copy of Pluckyfluff’s art yarn book, which I had heard about but not seen. Because I could move around and had this funny looking spinny thing in my hand, I got a lot of attention. It was a bit weird. I hadn’t set out to take over somebody’s guild booth but it’s funny how things worked out. The folks from the guild seemed happy to have another demonstrator and I had a good time and managed to stay out of the sun in the process.