Sunday in the City

So I just got back from Columbus - it was just loads of fun, and so nice to see Jen and Linette again!  Man, did we pack in a lot in one day, but let me just get to the part I really want to share - Tiny Canary!  Super cool!  what a great time - if I was a high roller, I could have dropped a really fat wad there!  I was afraid that by Sunday a lot of vendors would be sold out of stuff, but not so!  I found Cosy's table and was probably about as obnoxiously weirdo fan-ish as I feared I'd be!  She was super nice - and I mean super nice!  Also with her was Laure (aka Klotho) who's a hand spinner and dyer and she and I talked over and under flailing arms and bags (it was busy there!) about everything from the Columbus knit night they went to last night, the Pittsburg state monopoly on alcohol sales, and what it's like to be friends with a knitting rock star!  They were both just really cute and it was really cool to meet them!  I ended up buying the Tomato Head hat:  This is one that I saw on her blog - see, the one in the two upper corner pictures?  that's mine now!  I was also happy to see that she could charge a good amount for her hats and seemed to be selling them like relative hotcakes.  way to make a crafty living Cosy!  I also got her Squares Squared hat pattern which is way cute.  After I giddily walked away and tracked down the friends, I did more shopping and nearly walked away without this, but smartly went back for it (ok, I was talked into it by Jen, but it takes very little for me to be talked into most things!)  How great is that?  I don't think there's a suitable qualifier!  It's from SquidFire and they had tons more stuff that rocked.  Ok, so quickly - in addition to Tiny Canary, we at gobs of Indian food, went to Penzey's where I bought probably my body weight in spices (which might come in handy if I perhaps die and need to be preserved! (or flavored)), hit the best bead shop ever, got some amazing chai, and finally ended at a thrift store (where I got some vintage grey wool for 50cents, but not a great casserole dish which they ended up pricing at like $7 -  forget that! )  whew!  what a day!  

what weaving has taught me about knitting

Ok, so it's not like I don't know these things already, but today really made them very obvious:  1) weaving is WAY faster than knitting.  Maybe almost too fast.  I guess it depends on my mood.  2) not all fingering weight wool is the same.  Or rather, fingering weight wool can be as different as night and day, depending on the brand - which is probably much more dependent on the type of wool, the twist, etc.  

My mother suggested that perhaps I'd weave her a set of two placemats for her and my father.

 I'd already planned on that because it'd be super easy.  I wanted to use something washable, because duh, it's a placemat, and I wanted to make them kind of stiff-ish, but not so bulky and bumpy that you couldn't safety put a drink on it without worrying that it'd tip over.  Now here's the thing - when I justified getting this loom, I did it by saying "but I can use my stash yarn - it's not like I need a different set of materials for weaving!" but I kind of had trouble finding stash yarn for this project!  I only have a 12 dent reed, which means my warp threads pretty much have to be fingering weight.  To weave from my stash, this means wool sock yarn, or the cone of yellow/gold rayon I have.  I'd kind of like a cone of fine cotton, but I certainly don't have anything like that for knitting.  Actually, the mill ends of linen I got would probably be fine, but they're yellow, orange, and tangerine and those really aren't going to fit my mom's much more neutral color scheme.  So I decided that some superwash sock yarn would be cool, and I'd use some natural colored worsted cotton (Peaches and Cream or something like that) for the weft.  

I got kind of fancy-ish (fancy-ish for my 3rd piece anyway) and did some green Cherry Tree Hill (leftover from my Monkey socks) on the sides in about a 2" band, then I did some red Pace (leftover from my May Beret) in a similar band just inside the green bands, then I used some yellow Opal down the middle.  Wow - I see now why the Cherry Tree Hill is so lovely - it's very much stretchier than the other two, and the twist is much more defined.  Maybe it's merino?  dunno.  The Pace and Opal - while very different in price, seemed pretty similar.  Very not stretchy.  That made getting even tension kind of weird.  I don't think that was the biggest of my problems though.  I think I did something a little screwy in the warping process because I realized that I was pretty consistently skipping two threads along the bottom, so it was like a giant long float back there.  And the front looked wonky.  blast.  However, unlike knitting, my whole piece of fabric, which I calculated to be long enough for two placemats (I was just going to cut it in half and hem the edges) took all of about 2 hours to make - like start to finish, warping the loom and all!  kamazing.  And when it was finished I realized that it was a bit short for two placemats.  not that I was too upset over that - it was kind of screwed up and I don't think I'd want to give it to my mom that way.  So I folded it in half and decided that maybe it could be a bag for me. 

 Oh, here's my other worry - are these colors too rasta?  that's really not what I was going for, and I think the white weft yarn mellows it out, but wow did it look rasta when I just had the warp threads together.  So anyway, I made some fabric this afternoon!  what it will become, I have no idea.  Oh, I suppose it could be a hand towel!  oh, this will work out just fine and I'll do better  next time on the placemats, I promise.

I'm gonna hang with the cool kids!

I'm going to Columbus to visit my dearest Jen, an old friend that I don't see nearly often enough, on Sunday.  We kind of planned to make it a mirror image of my last visit which involved lunch at an Indian place, spice shopping at Penzeys, then her sitting bored at a yarn shop which I spotted and talked her into stopping at!  THEN - I realized that this weekend is the Tiny Canary show (sorry, Indie Design Market technically) in Columbus and it was surprisingly easy to talk her into going to that - I'm not sure how down she is with the DIY crafters, but she's pretty much down with everything and for the love of god she did totally recover her couch with pretty much no knowledge and just a staple gun - and it looked damn good!  So anyway, that means I'll get to totally meet Cosy (and in my mind, me seeing her and gushing something stupid like "oh man, you're totally like a knitting rock star!" equates to "hanging with" ok?)  and all the other supercrafters that I would love to be!  And on top of that, I'll get to catch up on the past two years with my Jen!

oh, Sunday knitters - that means I'm not sure I'll be at the Night and Day for knit night - I'm just not sure what time I'll get home.  If you decide on some new location, you better keep me in the loop!  

Saturday is for fun!

Well, usually Saturday is for laundry and vacuuming that I've neglected during the week, but this Saturday was for fun!  After reading Dharmawrites' latest blog post about her finds at the Planned Parenthood used book sale, I was inspired to tell everyone about my haul too. 

Catherine and I went this morning (even got there before the doors opened - which means you're standing outside in the cold with an assortment of other weirdos who do things like 

get to used book sales before the doors open!) We hit the table labeled, I believe, "household arts" first (yeah, I'm not ashamed to admit it - even though it sounds very 50's - "where will the ladies go?  to the household arts table, of course!") where we did our best to corner the market on old craft books. I picked up some gems: McCalls Needlework Treasury from 1963 and The Good Housekeeping Needlecraft Encyclopedia from 1947 - 

both chock full of great instructions for like everything I'll never do!  Oh yeah, at this point in the game we're both grabbing everything we even halfway think we might want because you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em - and the foldn' 'em part comes later when you take you haul to a corner, like a squirrel hording its acorn, and sort through it all to make your final decisions (or maybe that's the part where i'm supposed to say "there'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done" I don't know I've grown weary of this Kenny Rogers analogy now.)  Anyway, I migrated over to the "collectible cookbooks" table next and scored more great stuff - The American Woman's Cookbook from 1942

 which has a whole section on, basically, how to be a good housewife.  In the Menu Making chapter there's a bit that reads "The appearance of food is important to the modern man.  Beautiful color and dainty, attractive arrangement play a large part in a successful meal." - I love that!   Oh, there's even a section on vegetarian entrees, which surprised me - although it's pretty much just billed as an economical meal, and lots of the recipes still call for stuff like bacon fat and gelatin!  Oh, then I got some little gems in the stack of booklet type cookbooks - Favorite Recipes from the United Nations (published by the UN in '56), The Ground Meat Cookbook (seriously?  204 intriguing ground meat recipes!), and (this one's for you to be jealous of Dharmawrites!) Cooking Way Down South in Dixie from '49.  

Man - I could have looked at old cookbooks all afternoon!  I got more than that - but those are some highlights!  I walked out with a bag for something like $21 and I'm half considering going back tomorrow when it's something like $5 for all you can stuff in a bag.  

I had to rush out (and by that I mean that I only had 2 hours to spend there, which felt like nothing) because I was going to a Weaving Guild workshop on the rigid heddle loom!  I totally thought I'd be running in there late and there'd be like 30 weavers giving me the stare down, but Cay (the woman I bought my loom from, who also happened to be doing the workshop) pulled up just as I did, and as it turned out, I was the only one who showed up!  She said there were only a couple who signed up and they were a little iffy.  So basically it was like a private lesson!  Even though I'd already warped my loom once, it was great to do it with someone who actually knew what she was doing!  I brought my finished piece to show her so she could see my edge issues and after I got the thing all warped and started weaving she helped me with that. 

 So basically I just sat there weaving for hours and got to ask her a million questions!  I kind of felt bad that I took up her whole afternoon just for me - but it was certainly a big help!  This time I warped it for a 5ft scarf and used the same shiny yellow/gold rayon for the warp, and some JoJoland sock yarn in a colorway that moves from blue-green to green, for the weft.  It's gonna be beautiful!

  Ok, man, this is a long post - my appologies!  It was an exciting day!  

You had me at heddle!

So I'm kinda like a double threat now - weaving and knitting.  Yeah, that's right - I'm officially a weaver.  

Thanks to Cay, from the now closed Yarn Basket, I have a loom and didn't have to sell a kidney to get it!  Even better, it's the Schacht Flip loom which was my first choice until I found out that they retail for $225 now.  I PM'd her a bunch on Ravelry and she gave me all kinds of advice on the differences in some of the looms I asked her about.  Some people suggested that I look on eBay or on some weaving websites where people are selling used gear - which I did, but then realized that I didn't know enough to do that.  When Cay told me that she had a couple Schachts from before the price increased, I totally jumped on it!  She's the best - I mean really the best!  She even handed me a big stack of Handwoven magazines for free!  

I talked to my mother to tell her I bought it - assuming she'd want to wrap it up and give it to me for Christmas, but she surprised me by saying that it really wasn't necessary due to the fact that I'm not 12 and that I'm pretty capable of remembering that this is my Christmas gift, even if I get it early!  yippee!  So last night I pulled it out and set it up - which was kind of weird since I didn't really know what anything was supposed to look like, and even though I was following the instructions, I was still not totally sure everything was, you know, on the right sides of other stuff.  Then I proceeded to warp it with some gold slightly slubby rayon from a cone I got at the Woolgathering 2 years ago. 

 It's fingering weight and seemed to fit the calculations for the 12 dent reed I have (yeah - there's math involved in weaving too!  oh math, what can't you do?)  I think this part took me a couple hours, and I believe I had to walk around my dining room table 62 times to measure out my warp threads!  Aside from the walking, there was a whole lot of this:

Pulling 62 loops warp threads through the slots with a little hook.  Then after that, there was the matter of cutting the end of the loops and pulling 62 of the now 124 threads through the little holes.  Sounds tedious, but I can certainly think of worse ways to spend my time - it was a heck of a lot of fun, really.  I mean I'm used to spending hours making loops of yarn and pulling them through other loops of yarn, aren't I?  This is the finished warping - I feel like I have more extra than I should at this end, but again, what do I know?  maybe this is normal. 

 Then the best part started - I picked out some Cherry Tree Hill from my stash and wound my shuttle and started weaving.  

It's fantastic!  I love it.  The variegated yarn is so much different in weaving than in knitting - or at least if feels like it is so far.  Maybe it's because the warp threads break it up, kind of like a slip stitch pattern does.  Whatever the case.  I'm crazy in love with this.  By my calculations, this was supposed to make a 12" wide piece, but it's a bit narrower, which I'm attributing to the fact that I don't really have my technique down - kind of like finding your gauge when you start knitting.  You can see at the beginning I was pulling the edges too tight (the warps are way closer together there) then I tried to loosen up and the edge got messy, but then I think I evened out a bit.  I'm hoping to attend a workshop that Cay is doing for the weaving guild next weekend, so maybe I'll get to weave with some real weavers and soak up their technique!  Whee!  

Santa, won't you bring me a loom?

And guess what?  I already know the answer!  He WILL!  

Ok, so here's the back story -- I called my mother today to talk to her about buttons for her Tweedy Aran Cardigan (which is coming along swimmingly, btw!) - we decided we're going to wait until she can try it on to decide on buttons, and I'll use little loops instead of button holes.  She really just wants one or two buttons at the top, so I think that'll look great.  And she's very particular about buttons, so if she finds something else she likes 6 months from now, she can easily change it out and not worry about the size being too big or small for the button hole, etc.  So anyway, I also wanted to give her a Christmas gift idea in case my favorite uncle asks for ideas for me - somehow he always comes up with amazing stuff, with no help from anyone, so he may not even ask, but in the latest KnitBits Cirilia talked about the fringe on the featured scarf being done with a fringe twister.  It sounded interesting so I looked it up on the www and found that it was a weaving tool and something that I think would be way cool to have for the ends of knitted scarves or wraps - so that was the gift idea I wanted her to pass on to my uncle - if anyone can find it, he can.  he's cool like that.  So in the conversation about weaving tools, I told her that I was thinking of weaving, but that I wasn't asking for a loom because they were expensive - and that this tool was in the $20 range.  I told her that the looms I was looking at were like $125 and said that sounded like a great gift for her and my father to get me - and she was SOO excited!  I too was excited because it was the first time someone else was that excited for me (gosh, can't you always count on moms for that?)   I told her how my friends were all poo pooing the weaving idea - she said "you tell them that yoooour mother thinks her little girl would be a wonderful weaver!"  so take that all you weaver haters!  Now here's the problem - I jumped online to look at looms again and realized that I was kind of off on the price thing - the Schacht loom I looked at before (the one that Cirilia has, and talked about on another KnitBits a while back, which initially started me thinking of all this) is more like $225 - but there's a Beka ridgid heddle that is about $130.  My problem is that I don't know enough about them to understand what the price difference means - is it a quality issue?  Will I have to spend $100 on Beka accessories just to start using it, whereas the Schacht comes with everything I need?  I've thrown out some questions to some weavers in the area and I'm hoping to up my understanding a bit before going back to my mother.  At the very least, I know I'll get one - even if I have to throw in $100 of my own - either way, I'll be weavin' in the new year!  yeah!

So most of you are probably over it by now

But here's one final entry about this cactus flower, because it's fully open this morning:

I'll stop going on and on about it now.  But I want you to  know that I'm still going to be raving about it inside.

*Added note about 20 minutes later, after I found out some info about this plant from the internets- check this out.  It's not incredibly flattering.  Especially the parts that talk about how the flower resembles "a small dead animal" which explains why it's sometimes called the "carrion plant" and that it can often "fill a room with the smell of death".  Oh yeah, and they attract flies - you know, because of the stench and resemblance to a small dead animal.  lovely.  mine, for the record, does not seem to have filled the kitchen with the smell of death.  I think I'd notice that.  But I am going to go stick my nose in it to see if it stinks up close.  I still love you carrion plant!