Friday, August 20, 2010

A Gift

I came home to the most wonderful thing yesterday, an unexpected package from a friend. I was so excited that this friend of mine Katie sent me a package that I immediately opened it, and plunged my hand in to the most wonderful soft material to pull it out and discover a note and a beautiful pair of hand knit socks. Now Katie and I have been friends for 5 or 6 years at this point, we meet through knitting and we often buy knitting and spinning related gifts for each other.

When I was leaving for Graduate school Katie gave me the most beautiful hand knit lace shawl. While she was knitting the shawl several of us kept telling her we each would be a worthy recipient of such an object. So when Katie gave me this beautiful object I was honored, touched and overly emotional. I wore that shawl to the first exhibition reception that I had work at in Graduate school. It has been a treasured object for the last 4 years of my life. As a knitter I know the labor that went into the shawl, and for that alone I treasure it. 




So the socks that arrived yesterday came with a note, explaining the gift. Katie said that I had gifted her this yarn several years ago and that it had been in her stash since, that she found the pattern that the yarn wanted to become and she had knit these socks. The thing is she said that “EVERY SINGLE TIME I picked u these socks to knit on they SCREAMED your name at me. I am pretty sure they were telling me that they belong on your feet. Hope they fit.” Well Katie my dear friend they fit, they fit perfectly now I just need a big important event to wear them for.



I am a knitter and I have a drawer full of hand knit socks, but these are special because someone who loves me made them for me and felt I was deserving of them. I hope that the people who receive my hand knit object feel this special. And I will wear them after all that is what they were made for. So thanks Katie, for teaching me a bit more of what I preach, that hand made is always better. I hope you all enjoy the pictures of my new socks. 






Monday, August 9, 2010

Wonderful


So this weekend something wonderful happened. I have been trying hard to decide how to weave up a group of threads, and was not successful in any of my groups. So I just had the yarn sitting in my studio wishing for the answer. It came on Sunday, I had breakfast with a few friends and one came back to my studio to see what I have been working on, I excused myself to the restroom and came back to this. And it was the perfect solution, I was just making it far to complicated and this is the simple solution.


I have been bogged down lately with lots of stuff, I helped a friend move Friday, lots of stairs and really hot. It was not fun. But she is a great friend and she did help me move earlier this summer. So the weekend was spent knitting, and reading. I have spent the day today getting ready for school to start. School starts two weeks from today and last week I got a contract to teach one fibers curse at the University of Missouri Columbia. So today has been a day of decision making and planning, along with syllabi writing and this will continue into tomorrow. Things are coming together nicely in my plans lets hope the semester goes as smoothly. 

Thursday, August 5, 2010

New Yarn

Short blog post today, I finished this yarn of last night and wound it off into skeins. I am in love with this yarn, it is a wonderful range of colors. I purchased a series of Baby Cakes from loop on etsy. I did ply it with a solid black. I hope you enjoy.

I will be posting more later but I got really good news about the scarf line I have been trying to get going today. I will share more when I can. 


Monday, August 2, 2010

This weekend I had the great pleasure of teaching a 9 year old girl to spin on my spinning wheel. While Emily loved plying yarn, she had a harder time spinning singles out of roving. So what follows are the photos of her first yarn, she plied it from singles I had.

These are the skeins that Emily made. 














These are the balls of yarn she wound. I started the balls and she then wound them herself. I have placed a AA battery next to them for scale. 


She was very proud of herself and was determined to understand the process and tried to fix the problems that came up on her own. She would try to fix the problem or try to understand what went wrong before she would ask for help. It was a joy to teach this one how to use the spinning wheel. Now she has dreams of spinning the yarn for her next knitting project, as she is learning how to knit this summer as well. 



Meanwhile I have been getting a bit of my own spinning done, I have several singles spun that I am planning to ply. This is what I have done.