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Dear Jan,

We had a little visitor come in with the morning paper today.  I guess that is one reason to not go to the internet-only version.  I’m not sure it will sway me (the hard copy doesn’t do the funny scroll-overs on XKCD, after all), but we enjoyed our breakfast guest.

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Wilson went off to work, and I worked from home.  At least I did until I heard SQUEEAL-BANG!!! in front of the house.  Two high schools students, rushing on an errand on their lunchbreak, ended up taking a dead end into the woods at the curve in the road.  You can barely see their car in the photo, it got that deep into the trees.  Thankfully, by the time I was out there they were out of the car and looked shaken up but otherwise OK.  I called 911, brought one of them a jacket (it was chilly today and he was in short sleeves and was rattled, he needed a hug more than the jacket, but I don’t think that would have been accepted), and then got out of the way.   I felt for the guys, but I hope their hard-but-not-horrible lesson will be a warning to the other students who come careeming around the bend.  And I bet they are both better drivers from this day forward.

The afternoon brought the excitement of having my runner up’s copies of  1000 Fabulous Knit Hats delivered.  It was a thrill to see my pattern in print in a real book!  Annie’s commentary is great, and the book overall is a real inspiration of patterns.  The winner, Harpa Jonsdottir of Iceland, designed an incredible felted and embroidered creation, Flowers, and has several other examples of her unique combination of techniques in the book.  These hats look like they could be homes for fairies - absolutely enchanting.  It is the hat in the lower right corner of the cover - do check it out.

Afternoon brought hard core spinning (taking breaks to finish laundry, do a little more work email even though I had the afternoon off, even a modicum of cooking).  Look at what I have to play with - 3 fat bobbins of fine singles which will become 3ply yarn for a future sweater, about two weeks of spinning.

I have about twice as many batts of the same fleece remaining so I am feeling pretty good about quantity.  The yarn will be about DK weight once it blooms in the washing.  I am calling this my Selkie yarn - it should be obvious why.

And that about brings us to the end of our big day.  Some of us were ready for a nap long ago.

Sleep tight!

Love,

Ellen

P.S. Twin Cities readers - don’t miss your chance to take a class on photographing your textiles from the fabulous Gale Zucker of She Shoots Sheep Shots and Shear Spirit.  The Yarnery is bringing her in the weekend of September 25th-26th.  Alas, I will be in northern MN that weekend, so why don’t you sign up for the class and give Gale a hug for me?  (Photos courtesy of Gale - note the happy workshop attendees, beautiful textiles given their due with great technique, and even the chance to visit a farm.  Lamb not guaranteed, but I don’t think it is possible to spend time with Gale without having fun.)

…it must be state fair food.

Dear Jan,

It’s hard to believe any nutrition can be found in such an offering, but, you know, I think falafel-on-a-stick just might do it.  At any rate, it was darned tasty - you could discern actual chickpeas and the herbs were spot on.

That was lunch today as I made a visit to the state fair.  I saw some animals, watched the draft horse show, did my annual wondering as to whether making our dairy princesses sit in a refrigerated glass booth while their likenesses are carved in butter in front of crowds of onlookers will have a chilling effect on their mental health, and generally had a pleasant day.

The Fine Arts building was fine.  An example of  life depicting art depicting life, a portrait of a sheep, created by felting white sheep’s wool onto a background of black wool, won an award.  The series of photos of squashes on vacation did not, but I enjoyed them anyway.

I spent much of the day examining the knitting entries.  I was happy with my outcome, thrilled, actually, to win 1st place and a sweepstakes award for my gloves (Paula, that was great yarn you gave me last holiday!) and satisfied to win a 4th for my gansey.

Everything is bigger than life at the state fair, apparently even Dead Fish Hats.

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There was plenty of Bohus sighting.  A Large Lace Collar knit by Shelly Monitor won big.  What a beauty!

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But what’s this?  According to the records, my Wild Apple cap had not won anything and yet here it is with a blue and a special award!!!  Dang, it sure looks better than I remembered.   Um, too good?

Yep.  Over in the back of the room was my actual cap, knit at a larger gauge than the one that did all the winning and justifiably not sporting any ribbons.   But a knitter can dream, can’t they?

I knit a bit on the bus on the little baby hat I’m designing for the Knitmore Girls contest, and knit some more on it when I got home.  I’m maybe 50% of the way there, so finishing and writing the pattern by August 31 should be doable, shouldn’t it?  (And casting on such a small project doesn’t really count as startitis, right?)

More to come on that later.  Right now I’m busy dreaming about entries for next year’s fair.

Love,

Ellen

Dear Jan,

Please forgive my vulgar post title, but really, this weekend was rather nuts with fleeces and batts and, well, just look at what I had at the end of Sunday morning…

Yes.  The patio table is covered with literally pounds of batting, all the result of my borrowing Steven’s drum carder for the weekend.  My arm was aching from all the cranking, and it was with no small amount of relief that I returned the carder to StevenBe on Sunday and started spinning the results of my labors.

For those of you who have no interest in the fleece processing process, just skip to the gratuitous kitten picture at the end of the post.

This process started months ago when I bought the fleeces and then washed them (without agitation or rinsing!) in my washing machine.  The results were kind of condensed clumps of fleece - not felted, but definitely not fluffy.  I used my fingers (and later my hand cards) to tease these clumps open a bit and feed them into the carder.

Several handfuls later, I removed the batt by sliding the doffer under the web, pulling rather than cutting the continuous piece apart.

I split it lengthwise and then spread it widthwise and fed it back through the carder once more.  This time I let the carder really stretch the fibers as they fed in.  The result - an airy poof of loveliness.

Repeat roughly 70-80 times and you have an idea of how my weekend went.  I processed my Targhee cross fleece (shown above) and my Shetland.  The former is great.  The latter is simply wonderful.  The darker batts are from the fleece from the belly and legs - coarser and a bit hairy, but still wonderful.  The grey batts?  Like buttah.  Funny to think they started out looking like little lumps of something you wouldn’t want to step in.  The transformation was enchanting, like blocking lace.

Ah, my favorite colors really are grey and black.

Love,

Ellen

P.S. Knitting happened over the weekend, too, and a little spinning.  Maybe that will make it to a midweek post, but right now I have to do a little of the work that pays for my hobbies.

Dear Jan,

Your favorite knitting expert and mine, too, has done it again, shedding light in his own unique way our favorite subject.  Here is his August missive.

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Modern day laplanders.   Who’d a thunk such an impressive body of work could have arisen from their ancestors?  Or that they’d look so cute and pettable?  Husband added for scale.

Q: Who invented knitting anyway?

A: This goes back a long way. It started in a cold Arctic region known today as Lapland. It follows naturally that on the long winter nights, Laplanders would have to find something to do besides raise large families. Early knitted garments were prepared to place across the lap on cold nights, hence the name Lapland.

Another reason knitting started in cold climes instead of torrid regions such as Africa is that elephants have very little hair and are hard to hold down during shearing.  The Laplanders wisely raised the placid Musk Ox instead.

Sealskin jackets were going out of style, and some new fashion had to be developed. Early on they just stuffed the Musk Ox hair in jackets and comforters. They soon had too much of the stuff; fortunately, they had all these whale bones lying around after their Labor Day barbeques.   As it turned out the rib bones looked just like our curved double-pointed needles of today. It was a natural to put the two together and start making little jackets and socks.

What really set knitting off for good was when tourists started coming to Lapland and were enthralled with souvenirs.  They would spend good money for the little knitted garments. The tourists would spend 99 cents for a sweater with a picture of a moose or goat knitted in. This would be equivalent of $129 in today’s money. Nowadays knitters spend $129 for material to make a $150 sweater. Time and motion experts have figured this out to be about 10 cents an hour or about the same pay scale as in early Laplander time.

Thanks for this excellent historical question that adds depth to our knitting culture.

Dr. Yarn

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Jan, you and I know that  a handknit sweater is priceless, but I fear Dr. Yarn is referring to the price a Muggle might pay for a handknit.  I guess he’s on the mark, there, so we’ll have to measure our knitting wages in pleasure instead of dollars per hour.

Labor Day is coming up.  Do you have any barbeques planned?

Love,

Ellen

Dear Jan,

In a case of the blindingly obvious, I discovered just how much one can accomplish on a 3 day weekend if one doesn’t allow one’s job to intrude.  I told folks at work that I was taking vacation and would NOT check email.  If something urgent came up, they had to call me.  I informed my boss, she said, “good for you!”, and I came home resolved to not check in until a quick look at the calendar tonight told me to what location I needed to head in the morning.

Wow - it sure was effective.  By focusing on home, I’ve cut a swath through a number of long ignored tasks.   Friday I picked up our new drapes (good ol’ J.C. Penney, at least until kittens stop climbing the walls), picked up my new desk (yay! no more dining room table as office!), got substantial knitting done, picked tomatoes, processed the farm share, and then, after dinner, actually started cleaning out a walk-in closet which was no longer walk-in.  Oh, and spent a fair share of time letting kittens sleep on me.

Saturday - installed the hardware and the sheers for the new drapes, knit a bunch more, spun up the last of a batch of grey merino, and even fixed a wonderful dinner with Wilson.  And exchanged the desk for one without a scratch and got that one assembled.  The kitties helped clean up the salmon skin from dinner.

The different yarns I squeezed out of my Frabjous Fibers top are kind of fun.  Here you have a single spun on a drop spindle to your left, the middle yarn is plied from one ply drop spindled (hence worsted spun) and one ply semi-woolen (long draw but from a combed top on the wheel), and the right yarn is both plies semi-woolen on the wheel.  I hope you remember my 2ply of this fiber with the silk hankies, shown separately.  That one looks most different, but take my word for it, they all feel quite a bit different and I expect will knit up in their own ways.

There was a fair amount of kitten cuddling on Saturday, too.  Since it was the weekend, Wilson could help.

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Sunday brought State Fair Entry Day!  I am entering my gansey, my gloves, and my Wild Apple cap.  We’ll find out the results in about a week.  I’m also entering some handspun, just to get my feet wet in that arena.

I also finished hanging the curtains.  This was aided by kittens willing to sleep on each other instead of on me. The truly amazing thing is I did this after W & I went for an afternoon run.

And a little more knitting.  I am finally to the scyes on that tank top and it should go a lot faster now.  For a little fright, click to embiggen and look at all those ends on the back.  I didn’t figure out that I could put it all on a circular needle and slide it back and forth to whatever end the color I needed was on until I started on the front.  I am going to do the unthinkable and tie these ends together - not only will this be in the seam, but this is slick cotton yarn and I think that will be the most secure method.  (This will NOT be a state fair entry at any point in its career!)

Phew, now I know why  I am so tired now.  I doesn’t compare to what you usually put into a weekend, but for me it was pretty good. Time for some shut-eye and then back to work.  Maybe focusing on that for the week will yield the same great results, even if it isn’t all as much fun.

I hope your week is productive,

Love,

Ellen