Taking My Show on the Road

This was the scene last week in the room that I grandiosely refer to as my studio...

...as I prepared and packed for the next three weeks of my life. I am about to embark upon Spinny Tour 09, a spinning road show of epic proportions. I will be teaching 5 different workshops in two different cities within a week, then flying to North Carolina to teach Level 3 of the Master Spinners Program to the fabulous group of spinners out there. A total of 19 days of spinny goodness, all across North America. Wahoo!

(You will note the open notebook and the plate in the foreground. Yes, I am so dedicated to preparing thouroughly that I did not even stop for meals. I ate as I worked. Or maybe I just had a piece of cake to keep my energy up.)

I'm pretty excited about getting out there among Fibre Folk. It's been a long, lonely winter of spinning by myself, and I'm looking forward to the company of those who speak my arcane language. I always come back from conferences and gatherings with a renewed sense of the rightness of what I do, and full of ideas that I will never have time to execute. There is joy and inspiration (and plenty of wine!) around every corner, because people with a common passion have gathered. I have many good friends in the fibre community, and I'm always happy to make more.

So, if you happen to be at the HWSDA Conference in Olds, Alberta May 22/23 or the ANWG Conference in Spokane on May 28-30, come on over and say hi. I'm looking forward to seeing you--or meeting you for the first time!

Happy Mother's Day!

Yes, it's that one day a year that we are allowed to be Moms, openly love our Moms, or praise Motherhood in general. Happy Mother's Day!

Motherhood is damned hard. Pregnancy, childbirth, the Terrible Twos, the Terrible Teens, wondering where the hell they are at 3 a.m., knowing exactly where they are at 3 a.m. (just follow the incessant crying!). They all take a toll on a body. Not to mention the day to day dealing with everything from sibling rivalry to broken hearts, bad grades, awards days, messy bedrooms, perfect teeth, sniffles and boo-boos, and big hugs. And ALL THAT DRIVING! (I swear that I had a couple of years that I wanted to change my permanent address to my car.)

I have, like every mother, made mistakes, and will continue to do so. But I love my kids. And I love my Mom and am grateful for all the lessons she has taught me. I don't always see eye to eye with my children or my Mom, but in the end, my love and respect for all of them far outweigh the petty disagreements and occasional hurt feelings.



Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thank you for letting me become who I am today.



And thank you to my kids, Brendan, Lexi and Julia, for helping me become who I am today.

I came across this snippet of poetry the other day, and it seemed right to me. So in the spirit of Mother's Day, I would like to pass it on:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you, but not from you.

And though they are with you, they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have thoughts of their own.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

But seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite;

And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's had be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he also loves the bow that is stable.

- Khalil Gibran

The Prophet

Around and Around

I had a little dizzy spell last week, and it made me realize that my whole world was going around in circles.

Of course, as a spinner, I'm pretty used to things that go around and around. I find the whirl of spokes and whorls soothing. And I've been watching those soothing discs spin quite a bit lately, between filling in gaps in workshop samples and working on yarns for the ongoing shawl series. So circles are my friends.

Then I noticed that my knitting was all going in circles. The Fire Shawl is a variation of EZ's Pi Shawl, knitted in concentric rounds, increasing stitches as the circumference increases (or vice versa), from 36 to 72 to 144 to 288 to 576. Around and around in circles, until it looks like this:

The shawl is a little smaller than I had hoped, but, apparently almost a mile of yarn doesn't go as far as it seems it should when you are knitting around and around. There is yarn left over, but not enough of any of the colors to do another set of rounds. I'm still pretty happy with the effect, though.

The sexy close-up, showing all the different yarns.

I am planning to knit a pair of stripey gloves with the leftovers. More knitting in circles.

I'm not entirely certain how one actually wears a circular shawl, but I appear to be thinking about it.

When I was resting from the around and around of the Fire Shawl, I was working on the around and around of a linen doily. I will be presenting a workshop on flax at the ANWG conference in a couple of weeks, and I'm feeling utterly under-prepared, so I'm adding samples and examples on a daily basis. Thus a red linen doily. I did not have enough yarn spun to do the full pattern, but I did crochet around and around for 10 rounds. (No pic yet--it's just having it's blocking bath.)

Of course, there is a sock going around and around on dpns, as well. Paton's Kroy in a rather interesting self-striping pattern.

Then there is the garden cycle, which began again last week.

The little heads of baby rhubarb and the first new strawberry leaves have started to peek out. This means that the digging and planting and tending has begun. It's getting harder to kneel with my bad knee, but I am plugging away in small chunks. Our growing season is notoriously short up here in the North, so I'm getting as much started as early as I can, though the bulk of the work will have to wait until June, when I get home from the teaching tour.

Which brings me to another circle. I was originally scheduled to go to Olds for the HWSDA conference, then to Spokane for ANWG, pretty much a straight up and down trip. But now I have added Greensboro, North Carolina to the trip, which means travelling almost all the way across the US, then back to Canada. In a big circle.

No wonder I get dizzy!

So, just to keep myself on the straight and narrow, I cast on a scarf last night. That should do it!

(You'll notice, however, that I am knitting with circular needles!)

Greetings from Earth

Yes, my feet are back on the ground for a while.

You know you travel too much when two people start phone conversations with "So where are you today?" in the same day! Pretty funny.

I am settled in after another jaunt away, and I am spinning, spinning spinning. And as I spin, I ponder. I ponder a great many things, most of which are imponderable at the best of times, but there you have it. And, at times, I feel the urge to share my Deep Thoughts with the world.

First off--to the anonymous yarn bomber who struck recently in Dr. Wilbur McIntyre Park in Old Strathcona in Edmonton:

Thank You! You made my Saturday last week!

Now that that is out of my system, on to the pondering. Today is Earth Day. I am not exactly the granola-munching, Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging type, but I happen to like the rock that I am floating through space on. But I am frequently surprised by how often my fellow hairless primates take that rock for granted, so it's nice to have one day a year where the media takes a minute or two to remind us where we live.

So, with this in mind as I spin flax and contemplate the slow, steady accumulation of singles on my bobbin, I am struck again by our disposable culture. By the waste we create and the mess we are making of our Planet Earth.

It is spring in Fort McMurray, which is not a pretty thing. The grass is brown, the trees are bare, the boulevards are ankle-deep in the gravel and sand that was spread on snowy streets, and there is garbage everywhere! There's not much we can do about the grass and trees--they will turn green in their own time. The municipality is out clearing up the gravel and sand, which is much needed during our long, cold, and often icy, winters. But all that crap--plastic grocery bags, Timmy's cups, sales flyers, torn up term papers, fast food wrappers galore--that has accumulated where the snowbanks have melted does not have to be there.

To begin with, there are more than adequate garbage disposal receptacles all over our fair city. But for some reason, many people can't be bothered to walk two meters to put their waste into them. Now I have to look at their mess when I walk my dog down the local trails. Lovely.

Secondly, why don't we just cut down on our waste to begin with. We have a relatively good recycling program up here. Take the 15 minutes and sort your cardboard, paper, cans and glass, then drop them off. Seriously, 15 minutes a week.

I use reusable shopping bags--my favorite one is from Egli's Sheep Farm and has a picture of a sheep on the side and the caption "Re-ewesable shopping bag." I also carry my own re-usable coffee cup (which was referred to as "a classic" by the barista yesterday!), so I'm not tossing paper cups into the garbage every time I need a caffeine fix.

These are little things--and only part of my personal campaign to reduce my carbon footprint--but they tell us every little bit helps. Sure, landfills are an eyesore, but putting your garbage into an organized area where it is compacted and plowed into the ground to decompose is a lot more desirable than leaving it to blow around my neighborhood parks. Remembering to grab your shopping bag before you leave the house is a PITA, but it's better than having a hundred of those crummy little plastic bags shoved under your kitchen sink. Or blowing around my neighborhood parks.

And, speaking of carbon footprints, and spinning, let us not forget our good friends, natural fibres. Wool, linen, hemp, silk, llama, alpaca, even the dreaded cotton with all of its pesticides and herbicides, are still better for our planet than polycarbon synthetics. I've never seen a flock of Acrylics that were as charming as Marg's Shetlands.

So, as I continue to spin and ponder life on Earth, I would suggest to you that if you do not wish to observe Earth Day by hugging a tree, you could go out and yarn bomb a tree. Or, you could hug the local spinner, knitter, weaver, or shepherd who is working to keep natural fibres on our backs and hold the Polyesters at bay.

Orange You Glad...

...I didn't say banana?

That's the punch-line to my second favorite knock-knock joke of all time. I am amused every time I see something orange, because I think of that phrase.

Well, just imagine how amused I have been over the last three weeks:

Five different blended orange yarns, all lace-weight (more or less--there is that one, lower right, that is sneaking into fingering country). There are approximately 250 yards per skein, and there are multiple skeins of some of the colors, for a total of 1642 yards, all from just under 400g of fibre. That's .9 of a mile, 1.5 kilometers, of skinny little yarn, spun from 295 hand-blended rolags and rolls, over a grand total of 12 days. Perhaps, someone needs to get out more....

There is a plan for all of this yarn, and it has already been set in motion This will be the first of four shawls, inspired by the 4 elements: fire, water, earth and air. Since I am a Leo--a fire sign--I have started with fire. The blending begins next week on water.

Meanwhile, the orange yarns are all neatly wound and are being knitted into a rather fabulous sunburst, using EZ's Pi formula and a pretty basic eyelet lace pattern. (I'm up to the 288 stitch rounds, and things have suddenly slowed down. Funny how your productivity gets cut in half when you double your number of stitches!)

By the way, for those of you who were wondering, this is my all-time favorite knock-knock joke:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

The interrupting sheep.

The interrupting sheep wh...BAAAA!

Darn It!

I knew this was coming, but I held out hope.

I knitted and blogged these socks last May, shortly after Noro had introduced a new sock yarn. At the time, I speculated (okay, ranted) that the yarn construction was pretty useless for socks and that holes would appear. Here we are, 10 months later, and lo and behold:

Yep, The dreaded holes in the heels.

Now, you may say, "Gee, Michelle, most socks will get holes in the heels after being worn for nearly a year". And my reply would be, " Not my handknit socks!" But, to put things in a little better perspective, I will give you a brief history of these socks.

I put the socks into my sock drawer in May 2008. It was warm and I felt no need to wear big old boot socks anywhere. And in the sock drawer they remained until November--a time lapse of 5 months.

Now, November in Northern Alberta can get mighty chilly, and this winter seemed to be especially harsh. Putting on a thick pair of woolly socks under my boots seemed just the ticket. Out from the drawer came the Noro socks.

They were actually quite warm and cozy, in spite of the scratchiness Noro yarns are infamous for. And they softened (and pilled like crazy) after washing. Maybe they weren't as bad as I thought....

The socks went into regular rotation, meaning that they were worn and washed about once a week. From November to early March, they held out okay, though thin spots were showing up, and I occasionally had the thought that I should keep an eye on those.

Then, the first holes appeared. But, March being the insanely busy month that it was for me, I ignored them. So the holes grew.

It took me nearly an hour to darn the holes up. The big hole got a patch darn, and the thin spots got a Swiss darn. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my leftovers of the original yarn, so I had to sub another sock yarn, meaning that there was no hope of matching the colors.

On the other hand, considering how unhappy I was with the original yarn, it was probably a good call to darn them with something sturdier. Sadly, though, I suspect the darned patches will far outlast the socks!

In 20 years of sock knitting, I have had to darn 3 socks. The other two belonged to young men who did not necessarily feel that wearing shoes in parking lots was a part of daily life, and that handknit socks were indestructible. (I don't know where they would have gotten that idea!)

All of the other socks I have made have been outgrown or passed on until I don't know where they are anymore. I have heard of a few toe repairs done to gift socks, but I blame those on folks who have not yet discovered the joys of a good pedicure.

So, all in all, these socks did live down to expectations. Cool to look at, cozy and woolly for winter, and not the least bit durable under pretty light wear and tear. (Remember that I sit on my bum, spinning or knitting, for the large part of the day!)

I hate it when I'm right.

(On the other hand, I wore them last week, after they were darned, and I couldn't feel any unevenness where the darning had been done. I'm just that good!)

Six Short Stories About March

So much has happened in the last couple of weeks that life has become a blur! In lieu of my usual long, rambling blog post, here are some quick snapshots of my March:

1.) I bought A LOT of Angelina fibre. I'm all about the glitz these days, and I set out to order 3 or four colors. But Laura from Legacy Studio kept tempting me. In the end, there are 18 baggies in 8 colors. Oooooh, sparkly!

2.) My son's production of The Rocky Horror Show opened last week, and it's fabulous! Funny, sexy, and waaay over the top! I designed the set (sort of), Steve built it, Brendan produced, directed and designed costumes. A bit of a family affair. Brendan has done a marvelous job of surrounding himself with passionate, talented and...interesting people, and will probably not need his old Mom the next time around, but it was a thrill (and a bit of stress) to be involved with this project.

3.) For some reason, it seemed like a good idea to handcard 60 orange heather rolags one afternoon. Then for some reason, it seemed like a good idea to have a hot bath and rub Voltaren on my shoulders and not do anything for two days.

4.) There was a lot of orange spun. The darker orange is a Corriedale/silk blend. Spun worsted, lace-weight (about 50 wpi), 320 yards. The heather is still being plied, but so far, I have one skein of 305 yards, woollen, about the same grist. There is one more orange yarn in the planning stages, then the project will take shape. One hopes!

5.) To relieve the stress, I spun a little corespun mohair yarn. There are 95 yards at about 24 wpi. The core yarn is lace-weight Corriedale top (with a little left over), spun S and plied Z, and the outer layer is hand-dyed mohair locks that were loosely carded. Mmmmm, soft and fuzzy!



6.) You may have read about Karen Wolverton, co-owner of Lush Canada, painting herself red and laying on a bloody Canadian flag to protest the seal hunt. Well, part of that is a lie. She did not paint herself red, my daughter, the lovely and talented Miss Lexi Boyd, painted her.

Those are just a few things that happened in March. There was also a sweater completed, a soccer tournament (knitting + soccer mom=tink), a birthday, exams, and a minor collapse from exhaustion.

Bring on April!