In which I wonder where Ellen spent the money she was given for singing lessons, Ellen delves into algebra to solve the classic math problem “Gigi’s Socks”, we discuss much (much, much, much) activity in the patterns of our lives (multiple fiber festivals included!!), trips to Minnesota and NYC, visits with daughters, fine dining, farm lessons and lessons learned (Sorry, Chicks!), the value of a good shearer and many knitting nibbles, and we chat with the mothers of Steven Berg and Stephen West. Phew!!
Cherry blossoms in summer…
Dear Jan,
We have become very bad bloggers. We are maybe pretty good podcasters*, but our blogging has really dried up. I feel bad for the folks who read blogs but don’t do the podcast thing, and I also like to have a bit of writing, not just audio of our lives. Still, to try to catch up at this point would make for an interminable post. Instead, I’m going to pick one thing at a time and post about it, and maybe much of what has happened in recent weeks will get recorded, and maybe it won’t. I doubt anyone will miss the “gee, it’s hard to believe it isn’t spring yet in Minnesota posts”, so I’ll skip right past those and get into summertime cherry blossoms.
Yes, we went straight from winter snow one week to temps in the 90’s the next, and it sure prompted my North Star cherry to bloom quickly. I had some blooms of my own to hang on it - my Umeshu stole, my version of the Hanami stole by Melanie Gibbons. The stole represents cherry blossoms falling from one end of the stole to the other - the geometric lace reminds me of garden fencing. I used Knit Pick’s hand dyed Shimmer lace weight yarn (70:30 alpaca:silk) on size 3.25 mm needles. The yarn was a tonal of plum colors, hence the name “Umeshu” which means plum in Japanese.
Though the color was pleasing, I found the tonal was really more of a stripey and was disappointed at how the lace pattern was obscured. It really bugged me, so I decided I had nothing to lose by tossing it in the dye pot.
I used Cushing’s Perfection Acid Dyes in burgundy and white vinegar as a mordant. The dye exhausted pretty thoroughly, but boy did I have to rinse and rinse to clear the alpaca/silk of the dye. After the first few rinses resulted in continued bleeding, I retreated and reheated with vinegar solution and rinsed and rinsed again, using some woolwash to help free up loose dye. Finally, about 9 rounds later, I was reasonably satisfied that the dye wouldn’t immediately transfer onto my skin when I wore the stole.
No doubt, it was worth the trouble. If you look very closely, you can see the ghost of the stripes, which just makes it more interesting and rich.
The beaded cast on reminds me of dew drops.
I modified the pattern by making it one multiple wider than called for and adding some length. And instead of going to the perfect lace grid on the ends, I repeated the more organic random grid several more times and am very happy I did so. Finally, I made the ruffle more ruffly by doing a triple increase in each stitch and then finishing with some garter stitch (which is wider than stockinette) before binding off. You can see the details in my notes on my Ravelry page.
It felt so good to get this piece which I started back in 2009 off the needles that I may have to go UFO diving again soon. Hey, at least it didn’t take me 4 years to write about it!
Love,
Ellen
*and even the podcasting has gotten slowed up in the rush of spring, but a new episode should be up soon!
Episode 16 — Thunder Snow!
Cover Art by Martin Austermuhle
In which Ellen sings and is repetitive and in which we discuss Yarnover and Fiber Fest, a great review from Jasmin & Gigi, Thunder Snow!, quick trips to Ohio, Spring springing…and not, farm stuff, mouse melons, love blankets, snow and the frozen north, blended colors and intarsia, when eagerness overwhelms instinct, yarn to dye for, figure irregularities, the magic bullet and Yarnover and Fiber Fest.
Jan shared information about the Yarn-a-go-go effort to support victims of the bombing at the Boston Marathon. You can find more info about helping knit Love Blankets here.
In On the Runway, Ellen continues her socks in the Monkey pattern, which she is calling Saki. She has a HO - a half object aka one sock. She also has one full sleeve and much of a second, as well as the fronts and the back, of her Blue Moons cardigan, based on the Veronik Avery Forestry Cardigan. In a moment of insanity, she thought she’d whip up a shawl for Yarnover, just days away as this was recorded, and started Souvenir of Fiber Fest, a blended intarsia shawl from Susan Newhall’s Souvenir pattern. As always, as she recorded, she worked on Rimfrost, aka Many Moments of Grace.
Jan is preparing for Minnesota weather at Yarnover by knitting up Ohio River Ebb tide, her version of Susan B. Anthony’s Ebb cowl. She is developing a classroom project to teach the techniques in her Tiffany Capelet design - a potholder! She continues on her Death Spiral shawl (design by Erica Gunn) and her Percasocks. Someday perhaps she will start a project page for them to which we can link. 
In Bitten by Your Knittin’, both Ellen and Jan struggled with thinking they knew what they were doing. Jan’s potholder gave her fits as she worked to figure out the best yarn for it, letting her eagerness start with the wrong yarn and having to come back to the old standby for this sort of thing - Sugar & Cream. Ellen learned that the signal that all was not well in her knitting of Souvenir was the words, “It’s great to get to the point where you really know what you are doing” coming out of her mouth.
In Finely or Finally Finished Items, Ellen finally finely finished Umeshu by over-dyeing the striated yarn that was camouflaging the lace. You can read of her misadventures with bleeding dye at her blog post on the subject. (Jan reported back later that she learned from some dyers at Maryland Sheep & Wool that overheating silk can cause it to not hold dye as well - maybe this was Ellen’s problem.)
During Design Principles, Ellen discussed how she appreciated the feedback she got from Shirley Paden during her on-line meeting to discuss her Shirley Paden Design Along 3 project. You can follow the process in the We Love Shirley Paden Ravelry group. Jan shared more information from her set of vintage design books, citing Overcoming Irregularities in Figure, Woman’s Institute Library of Dressmaking, (c) 1925. She will report back later on whether Amy Herzog’s Fit to Flatter suggests similar advice.
In Design Principles, Ellen again thanked Shirley Paden for the enormous effort she is giving to the Shirley Pade.
In 360 degrees, Ellen has finished the singles of her Rhinebeck foliage colored Rambouillet, dyed by Erica of DesigKnit. The colors are marvelous, if not really suited for spring spinning.
Jan shared an Embellishment (or was it Fun Fur?) - her Magic Bullet Blender with Drinking Goblets. As seen on TV!
While there will be plenty of fun in April, the big events for Jan and Ellen both are Yarnover (April 27), and Steven Berg’s Fiber Fest April 25-29.
Yarnover looms on the horizon, but Shepherd’s Harvest isn’t far beyond that. If you can’t meet up with Ellen in April, you can find her at SH in May, for sure.
Enjoy the episode!
Hitting Restart
Dear Ellen,
My participation in this blog of late seems to be limited only to putting up new episodes of the podcast. While that in and of itself is a healthy contribution, it seems I’ve not written anything about antics on the farm or within our family for way to long. As time drags out it is becoming apparent that the massive “catch up” blog post is becoming more and more overwhelming. So much so that I’ll never do it. Therefore I am declaring a restart! I will provide below a photo montage of many things that are happening or have happened in the last three months without much care about chronology or detail. Once that’s done, then that’s it…the past is behind me. And maybe my next post will be more manageable!
Love, Jan
I made gorgeous yarn.
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It became Swagger, an almost published design.
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Marie not only modeled for me, but she also got bitten by the knitting bug. (So proud!)
I designed the perfect gauntlets with which to feed chickens.
I entered designs in the Fiber Factor competition, but will have to try again next year.
Dorito took up tweeting as doritothealpaca. He seems unable to use capital letters because of his two-toedness.
The other alpaca are unimpressed. (Fun to peek over your mom!)
We got our farm name established legally…and physically.
I scored an amazing quilt at the Bart Township Mud Sale. (For cheap!)
Charlie (Allen and Libby’s dog) met the gang…they were alert, but when they figured out that she’d run off if they challenged her, they went back to grazing.
We toured a robotic dairy farm where cows choose when to be milked (and queue up nicely for it) and go to the self-service back scratchers whenever they like.
I finished the second version of my Entrelac Capelet pattern…minus the closure as I can’t seem to lay my hands on that stupid clasp!
Dale built the gang a little mountain so they can play king of the hill. (Amelia is hoping neither of the boys will put the other’s eye out.)
We had a visitor to the farm from a 5th grade class in Illinois. She liked the chickens but could not figure out how to lay an egg.
New babies came home to live with us for eight weeks. Then they’ll live with our frozen food. Very cute now…good thing they won’t stay cute long and that there are so many I won’t be able to name them. (I did help the the one on his back regain his footing…at a day old he couldn’t handle it himself.)
We made a boomerang trip to help mom celebrate her 90th birthday.
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We are thrilled to see everything on the farm wake up with the arrival of spring.
Except for Ruby that is.
And with that, that’s it!
Episode 15 — A Little Fuzzy
In which we sound a little fuzzy. I don’t know why. I spent extra time trying to level, equalize, invert and noise remove, but to no avail. I think the issue is in our gain settings, but that can’t be fixed till next go. I finally decided I’d better just publish it or you would never get the chance to revel in the glory that is our wisdom laugh at us.
And also in which we discuss my Fiber Factor fail, flocks of birds, travels to NYC, Ellen’s dull and uninteresting life, makeup and stash enhancement, prodigal knitters, a visit by Louise from Scotland, finding your niche, robotic farms, a possible triplet, frogging phobia, being bitten by a monkey, knitting phases as they wax and wane, found spinning time, multi-craftual (but not promiscuous) designers, self-effacing and debunked slick tricks, stitch marker swaps and future meetups.
For your ease of viewing pleasure. Note that as time has passed the K2Togtbl is more pronounced as the resulting stitch wants to twist to the right and this stands the stitch a bit on edge. It doesn’t lie flat in this worsted weight yarn.
Episode 14 — OWN IT!!
In which we own our discussions about growlers, baked moths, ground hog seers, signs of spring, soon-to-be-geldings, barns to be built, tweeting alpaca, transforming errors into brilliant (if unexpected) design features, cross training for knitters, glittering galleries, design alongs and design challenges, a promising designer and a blending of batts.
In Patterns of our Lives, Ellen recounts the happy trip on the bus to Dave’s Brew Farm. Jan is getting estimates for barns for the herd. She is also on the planning committee for the SAFONA Fiber Frolic which will happen in June - The Savvy Girls will be featured guests!
Instructions for a fine recipe of Baked Moth are here.
Jan is twitter-pated that Dorito the Alpaca now has a Twitter account.
Cutting it close, Jan got her entry in for The Fiber Factor. (Added post-publication of podcast - no, she didn’t get in, but it should still be fun to watch.)
Ellen’s Fiber Fusion sweater was included in the Third Place Gallery exhibit featuring Steven Berg, the Glitter Knitter, of StevenBe Workshop.
In the What Would Susan Ask design element, we discussed what crafts we combine with knitting.
In On the Runway, Ellen is juggling projects - her Great Dayne top-down raglan from her class at Madrona; Umeshu, her version of Melanie Gibbons’ Hanami Stole; socks in the Monkey pattern which she is calling Saki and she has started swatching for the Shirley Paden DAL3. As she recorded, she worked on Rimfrost, aka Many Moments of Grace.
Jan is making a second version of her capelet design. The pattern is now named Tiffany Capelet. She continues on her Death Spiral shawl (design by Erica Gunn).
In Bitten by Your Knittin’, Ellen reported that using similar sized cable needles as the project needles to hold stitches and then taking a break from knitting that project can lead to some unfortunate knitting.
In Finely or Finally Finished Items, Ellen finished her Fiber Fusion sweater in time for it to be displayed at the Third Place Gallery. Jan finished Swagger, a new shawl that uses up every yard of the yarn she spun from her Fiber Optic gradient roving.
Ellen is participating in the Shirley Paden Design Along 3, which you can follow in the We Love Shirley Paden Ravelry group. Jan extolled her find of a vintage design set of books from Dogstar Books (for the Sirius Reader).
In Design Principles, Ellen discussed the value of a large swatch, especially when working with cables, to plan pattern flow.
In 360 degrees, Ellen played with color by spinning tri-color batts of Coopworth fiber which she created in a class with Carol Wagner of Hidden Valley Woolen Mills at last year’s Shepherd’s Harvest.
Our Featured Designer is madmum, aka Louise. Her blog is Knitting for Sanity.
While there will be plenty of fun in April, the big events for Jan and Ellen both are Yarnover (April 27), and Steven Berg’s Fiber Fest April 25-29. If you are going to the Yarnover teacher dinner, stop by the bar at about 7:00 pm and say hi (we’re not going to the dinner), and if you are coming to Yarnover, we’ll be meeting up at 8:30 a.m. in the commons area at Yarnover.
Yarnover looms on the horizon, but Shepherd’s Harvest isn’t far beyond that. If you can’t meet up with Ellen in April, you can find her at SH in May, for sure.
Enjoy the episode!
A Finch of a Different Color…
Dear Jan,
I’m not sure if this is a house finch or a purple finch. We usually get house finches, but that bill looks pretty conical and the coloring went all the way down the bird’s back.
I am sure this is Rambioullet fiber, dyed by the expert hand of Erica at DesigKnits. A different color combination than you might expect for this time of year, but it is tickling my fancy.
Our Ostara eggs didn’t need dye this year. They are a different color right from the get-go.
Whatever color your springtime celebration comes in, I hope it is joyous.
Love,
Ellen
Finch Me…I must be dreaming.
Dear Jan,
I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or if I’m having a nightmare. This morning the thermometer read 9 degrees. Those are Farenheit degrees, just to be clear. Wind chill tonight is predicted to be double digits below zero.
And yet this little guy insists that spring is virtually here, proclaiming he is too sexy for his winter feathers, and it is time to show off his bright yellow dating wardrobe.
I am not too sexy for my new cowl, Massive, pattern for which is Decibella by Gale Zucker and yarn for which is by Classic Elite and me (Waterlily, cable plyed 4 strands of this Aran weight yarn into one super-bulky yarn). In this weather, it is good to look hot warm.
Someone else may feel sexy in another recent FO, Impossible Dreams. Stats: pattern - Seedling Dreams by Amy Beth Mays, yarns are Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted (gray, 100% wool) and Frog Tree Merino Melange (pink, 100% merino wool). I knit the medium, and while it fits, it just barely does. I don’t do much pink, either, so I’m thinking this is likely to be a charity hat.
And I have yet one more FO to share. This is my Fiber Fusion class project, knit out of various handspun yarns and one skein of fat and funky art yarn. Mostly knit on size 13’s, but I accidentally picked up an 11 and did most of one sleeve so I just repeated that on the other. The yarns include my handspun Nora (a TargheeX sheep whose fleece I bought at the 2011 Shepherd’s Harvest), samples of handspun Shetland, Black Welsh Mountain and Wensleydale, and a Steven Be Exclusive Handspun, created by Ruby Slippers Studio out of wool, alpaca, fabric, metallic thread, polyester, acrylic, nylon, sequins, mohair, silver, glitz, angeline, and rubber butterflies. Because glitz AND sequins weren’t quite enough.
The process was and the result is exhilarating. I explained the process in a prior blog post. The result is going to be in a showing of Steven’s work at Third Place Gallery in Minneapolis which opens this weekend. (Yes, I do work well to a deadline.)
I could use the sweater at home to wrap up in and keep warm this weekend - we won’t see anything like real spring temperatures for quite sometime.
I won’t be the only one happy for their arrival.
Love,
Ellen
Episode 13 — How Now Giant Cow?
In which we squee over Dr. Gemma’s review, welcome baby Matilda, and chat about Shirley Paden’s Design-A-Long, clever cats, alpaca roundups, giant cows, top shelf vodka, knitting satisfaction, lots of knitting on and off the needles, lots of knitting nibbles too, bulging bobbins and that’s not everything, but it is about the grist, err, um, gist of it.
Our mud sale quilt score!
The stitch swatch for the gradient shawl/scarf. I think I’ll name the patten “Swagger” because the ribbed border looks something like swags and I’ll surely swagger when I wear it!
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More thanks! To new and returning listeners, for kind iTunes reviews, to stashmuffin aka Laura Rickets for making Jan feel better with the gift of her cowl pattern, sha-ZAM! and to Jennie the Potter for donating a beautiful button to the winner of the Madrona meet new friends contest. And special thanks to Dr. Gemma of the Cogknitive Podcast for the very kind (and thrilling to us) words.
Ellen continues reminiscing about Madrona, in particular about a new friend, designer Mari Tabita. Check out her lovely designs. Mari introduced her to the Shirley Paden Design Along 3, which you can follow in the We Love Shirley Paden Ravelry group.
Jan gave her alpacas the full health and beauty treatment with the help of family and friends, and retrieved the alpaca when a gate was left open, also with the help of family and friends.
In the What Would Susan Ask design element, we discussed how knitting makes us feel. Thanks again to Susan Dolph of the Knitajourney Podcast for letting us use her interview questions in our podcast.
In On the Runway, Ellen is juggling projects - her Great Dayne top-down raglan from her class at Madrona; Umeshu, her version of Melanie Gibbons’ Hanami Stole; socks in the Monkey pattern which she is calling Saki and she has started swatching for the Shirley Paden DAL3 as well as gotten a start on her re-knit of the Master Knitter Level II wrister. As she recorded, she worked on Rimfrost, aka Many Moments of Grace.
Jan is making a second version of her cape design, this one is named Beta. She continues on her Death Spiral shawl (design by Erica Gunn). In the design phase, Jan is planning a new shawl to use up every yard of the yarn she spun from her Fiber Optic gradient roving and has swatched for it.
In Bitten by Your Knittin’, Ellen reported that you need to follow the pattern if you expect it to turn out the way it is in the picture. She learned this while knitting Seedling Dreams, an Amy Beth Mays hat. She also struggled a bit with her version of Gale Zucker’s Decibella, which she is calling Massive. Gauge and a lack of the right knitting needles held her up initially, but things turned out great in the end. Jan struggled with her new cape prototype until she started listening to what it wanted to be.
No Finely or Finally Finished Items for Jan, but Ellen did finish both Massive and her version of Seedling Dreams, The Impossible Dream.
In Design Principles, Ellen discussed starting a design with a stitch pattern as the inspiration.
In 360 degrees, Jan reported on the continuing production of singles from her Finn roving. After Ellen described using 4 strands of commercial yarn plyed together to make yarn for her Massive cowl, Jan thinks she’ll do some cable plying of the Finn singles to make another big yarn.
In Fiber Jargon we discuss grist and how to measure it - one way being the McMorran Balance.
While there will be plenty of fun in April, the big events for Jan and Ellen both are Yarnover (April 27), and Steven Berg’s Fiber Fest April 25-29. Let us know on the Ravelry group if you’d like to meet up!
Enjoy the episode!
Imagine a moth…
Did you know that the last stage in an insects life is the imago, plural imagines? While I wish I had imagined this, unfortunately I didn’t. A moth flew out of my closet a couple of days ago.
Though said insect is now smashed to smothereens, I am sure it was Tineola bisselliella, the dreaded clothes moth. Powdery, silvery green wings, erratic flight, yup, sure is the fiber artist’s nemesis.
As many of my sweaters were due for a wash, I went ahead and used my soaking and spinning machine* to work my way through all of my wool sweaters over the course of a few days. I thoroughly vacuumed the drawers in which I keep them and the closet itself.
The shawls gave me pause. All of that blocking to be redone was more than I could face. So I baked them.
Recalling that at work (where we handle tons of grains and flours) we occasionally heat the whole building up to quell meal moth infestation, I wondered if something like this would work for wool moths. After some research in agricultural texts and on-line information**, I concluded that if I got my knits over 140F for several minutes (or 160 F for less than a minute), I should be able to knock out any and all forms of moth - egg, larva, or adult. Combine this info with my favorite feature of my kitchen range, the warming drawer, and you’ve got a straightforward method for disinfesting delicates of these pests.
I set the warming drawer on High, wrapped the shawls in a light cotton towel, stuck a meat thermometer into the middle to make sure I get them up to 140F, and baked my shawls free of any insidious infestation.
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Bonus - thanks to this unasked for prompt, I have gotten my annual sweater wash done earlier than ever before.
Imagine that.
Love,
Ellen
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Note - do not do this with garments that you aren’t sure are clean. Heating causes all sorts of great chemical reactions between sugars and proteins (like the ones in that egg salad that dripped on your sweater the other day, or the sweat that has been accumulating on the edge of that cowl) and these reactions create delicious flavors and very brown stains. This is what is happening, by the way, when stains slowly appear on old clothing - the heat just speeds all that up.
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*A.K.A. washing machine - great for soaking multiple sweaters at once and spinning the water out - just don’t ever let it agitate them!
** Tang, Juming; Mitcham, Elizabeth; Wang, Shaojin; Lurie, Susan. 2007. Heat Treatments for Postharvet Pest Control: Theory and Practice. CAB International, Oxon, UK.
**Cranshaw, W. 2003. Fact Sheet No. 5598, Indian Meal Moth. Colorado State University.
Image of clothes moth from Wikimedia Commons.
Jan and Ellen are identical twins who have always had an innate fashion sense. Crafting is an integral part of their lives and they stay stitched together sharing their love of knitting, family and community.
