The Rebirth of Knitting Cool

ATTENTION ALL KNITTING GRANNIES!!

This little news story came to my attention via Ravelry this morning. There was some mildly indignant discussion attached to it, with many knitters pointing out that knitting has been growing in popularity since long before the economy tanked and not as a response to the current economic woes. Or that not all knitters are grannies. The biggest beef, though, seems to be with the closing comment that "this is one hobby that doesn't take a lot of dough". Many of the forum posters point to this statement as clear evidence of the reporter's ignorance of our craft. Speaking as someone who is currently knitting with a yarn that cost me $25 a skein, I would have to concur!

There are a great many of us fibre lover types who seem to get quite agitated when non-crafters misrepresent our beloved techniques. (Don't get me started on the whole spinning wheel thing in Disney's Sleeping Beauty! ) The stereotypes of knitting grannies and frilly little toilet paper cozies abound out there. But this weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing two movies that countered those stereotypes. Two movies about "cool" fiberistas! I was blown away!

We have been working hard to get caught up on our movie viewing around here. We're usually big movie fans and see lots of great and not-so-great flicks, and now we have about a dozen movie channels on cable, but we've fallen woefully behind. We have, however, accumulated all of the summer blockbusters on DVD and have been chipping away at the pile.

Friday night, we watched Wanted, starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, and Angelina Jolie. I'm a bit of an action movie fan anyway, but everyone told me that I had to see this one. Now I know why--it's about the most kick-ass gang of weavers ever! I will not give away the plot details, but suffice it to say that there is a little preface that tells us that 1,000 years ago a group of weavers established this elite assassination squad. I actually had to skip back and check the DVD because I thought I had misread. But, no, it said weavers. And, let me tell you, if more weavers acted like the characters in this movie, nobody would ever mess with us again!

So, that was pretty cool.

The next night we watched Zach and Miri Make a Porno. (WARNING! Not for the faint of heart! Pretty damn raunchy, actually.) I am also a Kevin Smith fan, though I totally understand that not everyone appreciates his sensibility. But, as we are watching away (and laughing our asses off), I commented that there were a lot of conspicuously handknit scarves and hats (some of which, frankly, were pretty bad). Then Miri says that she got to try some clothes because she gave a sales clerk a deal on wool. SHE WORKS IN A YARN SHOP! The movie is crass, but hilarious, and remarkably sweet. I loved it a lot. So we're watching the deleted scenes, and there is a scene where Miri is getting dressed while Zach starts the car. She runs into her room, and there, right beside her bed, is her stash!

I think I actually squealed a little.

I've also heard rumors of knitting content in Lars and the Real Girl, but I'm having trouble getting my hands on a copy.

And, lest we forget, Marge Simpson is a knitter. As is Emerson Cod on Pushing Daisies.

So, for every Ford truck commercial that tells us that you can settle for a lesser vehicle "if all you're hauling is yarn" (Clearly, the folks at Ford have never seen my stash!), there is Angelina Jolie catching a flying shuttle with her bare hand. And for every knitting granny, there is Seth Rogan wearing a chunky blue scarf and talking about pornography. The cool is beginning to balance those stereotypes.

And, for those who still wish to cling to the image of knitting or spinning or weaving as the domain of little old ladies, may I remind you that we are little old ladies with pointy sticks. And we know how to use them!

Confessions of a Loomwad**

The course of true love never did run smooth.

William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream

Let me begin today's tale with this statement: I am not a Weaver. Oh, I weave. And I'm reasonably proficient on a rigid heddle loom. But I do not Weave with a capital "W". I understand terms like "beaming on" and "Bronson lace" like I understand the term "nuclear fission"--I can use them all correctly in a sentence, but I have never actually executed any of the acts they describe.


Now, let us travel back to August of 2008. Gasoline cost $1.50 a litre, the Beijing Olympics were in their full glory, and Barack Obama was a gleam in the Democratic Party's eye. And I travelled to Gibson's Landing to teach at their Fibre Festival.


I had a wonderful time, and I have blogged about the fabulous festival, scenery and seafood before. But what I haven't revealed until now is that I developed a bit of a secret crush while I was out on the Coast.


I blame Jane Stafford for introducing us. It started as a casual conversation about weaving, but then, I had to meet "the loom". Oh, sure, she's just a little table loom, but she was so pretty. And who could resist the smooth action of those rollers on the pattern shafts. And the fact that she could fold down, even fully dressed, to fit that little spot in my studio between the chair and the fibre storage. And the price! Oh so tempting at an introductory cost of $750.



I had met JP.


I walked away smug in my belief that no one needed a shiny little table loom when they had a sturdy and faithful rigid heddle (aka RH) waiting at home. After all, who needs eight shafts to do plainweave?


But then I started thinking about warps set at 30 epi, or even 50. Fine, hanspun silks making subtle patterns. Linen napkins with a little lace insert. Portability. I dreamed of weaving with a boat shuttle instead of a stick. I felt guilty about these errant thoughts, but I couldn't stop thinking about JP.


Oh, I fought it. For months. Then, at the last minute, I placed my advance order. Jane, the one who was facilitating this sordid affair, assured me that the object of my desire would arrive before Christmas. Oh, how could I wait that long?!?


The days flew by in a frenzy of spinning and knitting. All the while, my faithful rigid heddle stood waiting to be warped for last-minute Christmas tea towels. But I dreamed of multiple shafts and Texsolv heddles and delayed my weaving projects. I needed to spin more cotton, anyway. Really.


As Christmas Day came closer, there were delays. But, just as I was about to abandon all hope, JP arrived the same day we were packing the car to go away for two weeks. I dropped all packing and organizing to release her from her crate. And I sat and stared. I knew I would have to wait a little longer to consummate our relationship, but I am patient. So I delivered her, still not fully assembled to my studio and left her there to get acquainted with the other equipment.


I came down with a cold on my trip, and it seemed like forever before the day came when I had the time and energy to assemble JP But it came. There were difficulties. It turns out that assembling the shafts on a loom is only slightly more complicated than building Ikea furniture. But I persevered. And there she was.


I could hardly wait to weave! But here is where the tale takes an ugly turn.


I do not have a proper warping board, but that's okay because I have a clever little set of warping pegs. Or, at least, I did. I spent the better part of the day tearing the studio, then the living room, then the basement, apart, looking for the cross pegs. Gone. Nowhere to be seen. Apparently swallowed by the same black hole that consumed my 10 mm dpns in early November.


But I had to do SOMETHING! With that lovely little loom sitting there, tempting me, I couldn't wait days, or even weeks to replace the pegs, or to get an actual warping board. I figured I was clever enough to get around this.


So I rigged up an inverted stool, which I weighted with a heavy file box, as my cross end, then attached the remaining lone warping peg to my rigid heddle and wound away. I was not pretty, but it worked.



The only problem was that my cross was at about the 24 inch level from the ground, which required a little bend from the waist each time I made it. After 160 wraps, this did cause a small ache in one's lower back, which will lead one to reconsider the brilliance of this system the next time one decides to make an impromptu warp.





However, a warp was run, 6 yards of cotton at 15 epi for a set of 3 tea towels. (Can you see the optimism in this plan?) Here it is before my first attempt at tying on the warp:





...and here it is after:





Now, let me make it clear that I do not blame JP for this. It was my clumsiness and inexperience that made our first attempt to weave a fiasco. There were tears shed. Where was the wondrous relationship I had dreamed of? I looked longingly toward RH for support. And I was reminded that things did not go smoothly for us at first, either. There are yards and yards of orange 8/2 cotton in the bottom of a bag that are just too tangled to do anything with, but that I still can't bring myself to throw away, to remind me of my first tentative foray into weaving. So, I dried my tears, and set out to wind another awkward warp.

Teagan The Wonder Schnoodle, who had borne witness to all of this madness, began to whimper as I set out to wind the second warp. Knowing that animals can sense impending disaster, I hesitated for a moment. But such was my obsession that I threw caution to the wind and warped on.

Aside from the fact that I had a cat flipping the end of my cross off the stool leg every time I turned my back to run the warp the other direction, this warp went a little faster and smoother. I began to consider the first one a "practice warp". ( Note to self: always buy twice the weaving yarn required so you can "practice" your warp. Or learn to warp?)

And off I set to beam on and thread my loom.

It took a few tries, but I got the warp tied onto the apron and the lease sticks in place. It took a little longer to untangle the warp and feed it through the raddle, but it got done. That was one whole afternoon.

The next afternoon was spent threading heddles --I used four shafts, but threaded for plainweave. Which was confusing enough, thank you. But I have only discovered ONE misthread (so far).

And weaving has begun. Not Weaving, but cloth is being made on a loom by my own two hands. Which is good enough for me. And JP seems content enough, too.


For those of you who may be concerned that my poor RH has been thrust out into the cold, don't be. She has been whispering to me about a tapestry project with all those novelty yarns that I've been spinning lately. And as I type this, Jane is cozied up under RH's stand.


I have, however, noticed that my Schacht wheel is looking a little forlorn with her empty bobbins over there. It's okay, Sweetie, I have lots of love to go around. Let's find that bamboo and
spend some quality time.


**Blame The Simpsons for this word. In one episode, the family goes to the museum to see an exhibit entitled " Looms, Labor and Liberation: A History of Women Weaving" and, before they can get into the museum, the banners change to read "Weapons--Sponsored by Kellogg's". When Lisa and Marge go "aww", the guy hanging the banners says "Sorry, loomwads, there's a new exhibit in town."


This same episode also contains the classic line: "WEAVING?? Homer, you're my father. You're supposed to protect me from things like this!"

The Cure for Grey

It's mud season again. That's the time of year that is not quite winter anymore, but spring is still a week or so away. Everything is grey and mucky, and this is what I look out my window at right now.

The good news is that this will only last a couple of weeks and that it has to be warmer to make snow into mud. It is not quite time to pack away the parkas, but, for now anyway, sweaters are working just fine.

I am still knitting away on my grey DAAGBF sweater, the view is muddy and grey (as are my floors) and a few unpleasant incidents over the past week have put me in a grey mood. So what's a gal to do when she is mired in grey? Warp up her own sunshine, of course!

A great big fat singles yarn, spun by Ellen Munroe, and space-dyed in reds, pinks and yellows for the warp and the matching red for weft. Sett at 5 epi on the rigid heddle and mostly woven at this point.

Ooooh! Happy colors!

The other cure for grey has been the wonderful people in my life. It's Theatrix (the school theatre group that I work with) production time again, which means I get to hang out with a lot of really committed and enthusiastic creative kids and adults for a couple of weeks. This year's production is Willy Wonka Jr., and I'll tell you, nothing recharges the batteries like 37 Oompa-loompas dancing around you! The curtain goes up a week from tomorrow, with sets and make-up design by yours truly--check it out at Keyano Theatre if you're in Fort McMurray! (I'll take pictures for those of you who can't make it.)

I will also be starting rehearsals for Angels in America tomorrow evening, so my time will get much tighter for the next 6 weeks. I have no mindless backstage knitting to keep me from mischief. I do have a pair of knee-high self-striping socks on the needles, but those will be done by the weekend (she says optimistically). We shall have to go stash diving soon...but first, let's weave a little more sunshine!

The Dumb

I have a friend who occaisionally sets her Facebook status to: "***** cannot brain. She has the dumb." Apparently, I have also contracted The Dumb.

I have been working on a yoga shawl commission off and on for about a year now. It has been pushed back and sidetracked, and the client has shown remarkable patience. This is not a complex piece of weaving--plain weave, 20/6 silk warp, 20/2 wool weft--but the fates have conspired. Until last week, anyway. I cut the last section off the loom on Friday. Hallelujah!


The piece was commissioned at 40-48" wide. I have a 24" loom. No problem, we'll just weave strips and piece. All was hunky-dory. The pieces all came off the loom beautifully and I spent Friday afternoon and Saturday morning very carefully grafting the pieces. I would have defied you to find a seam! Then into the wash to full. Perfect!

And about 5 minutes into the wash cycle, The Dumb wore off. I realized that I had grafted using the wool from the weft. It made perfect sense as I was doing it. Grafting the weft with the weft yarn. Of course! Except, wool shrinks when fulled--that's how fulling works. I should know. I offer workshops on felted (or, more properly, fulled) knitting.

Mercifully, the goddesses were smiling upon me. The damage was minimal, suggesting, perhaps, that I had left sufficient slack in my grafting to compensate for The Dumb. Yes, there is a wee bit of ruching there at the end, but all it took was a little steam and a wee tug to straighten it out. Whew!

There were other symptoms, as well. Agreeing to meet someone who really irritates me for coffee and getting sucked into the ensuing drama. Going to the store for cat food and coming home with $100 worth of groceries, but no cat food. Volunteering to write a puppet-show script. Going out to the bar with my son and drinking the house red. And, of course, the ongoing inability to find a pair of scissors or an orifice hook when they are needed.

So now I am left wondering where I may have contracted The Dumb. I know I did not get it from *****. She lives too far away. Unless it is a computer virus, of course. But no, I think it is far more likely that it may have been the gal at my favorite coffee haunt who could not make change for $6.12 when I gave her $20.12. Or perhaps the woman who backed into me twice with her shopping cart at the grocery store--in two different aisles. Or any of the fools in this post. Or perhaps it came to me through my television--after all, American Idle, oops, I mean Idol, is back on the air!

So now I need to know: Is there a cure for The Dumb? Somebody save me before it's too late!

The FO Files

Ahh, the sense of accomplishment when you finish a project...

The New Year Yarn socks turned out really well. I tried to get all fancy and make lace, then textured socks,but the stitches obscured the beauty of the yarn. In the end, your basic sock pattern seemed to work best for the yarn, showing off the sparkles and the stripes to perfection!
Don't you love it when a project turns out exactly as planned?

And while uploading sock pics to my computer, I also cleared out the Christmas weaving pics. Once again, something that worked out exactly as planned. I'm getting a little alarmed by this trend... This is the silk scarf I wove for Miss Lexi. Warp and weft of 10/2 silk sett at 12 epi, with shots of handpainted silk chenille placed randomly. The closeup is even more impressive.

Then the rest of the silk chenille went as a weft over a turquoise 10/2 silk warp. The warp ends were also embellished with beads, which I don't seem to have a picture of. Humph! And the color resolution doesn't do much justice to the dye work, either. But, it's a finished object and you have to take my word that it was as lovely as the others.

I also made these exquisite little cashmere gloves for my sister. I used a leftover ball of 3200 ypp lace yarn, knit at 12 st/inch, so they were somewhat painstaking to complete, but they are gorgeous! The only problem was that I modelled them to my hands, which are slightly larger than my sister's--perhaps with the unconscious hope that she would give them back if they didn't fit? Alas, that did not happen--she still wears them, baggy though they may be on her delicate digits. As I type, I have a silk and wool yoga shawl ready to go into the wash. Yay, productivity! I guess that's what happens when you have a studio!