twinset.us

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.

——————————————-

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

——————————————–

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.

.

.

.

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

Dear Ellen,

Last week I shared some beautiful blues from Fair Winds.  This week we have sunny orange, red and feathery white.  I also found a gal with the most silky golden hair.  Plenty of yellow, greens and browns, and lacy whites were around to inspire as well.  Also a view of what an aunt must see when strolling through a lawn.  (Max, Ruby and I took a trek through the corn.)

It was a very tough week with some announcements that will radically change my directorate — whether I agree or not, I’ll find a way to support.  The part I am most disgruntled with is the lack of communication that there was between the decision makers and those of us charged with leading the affected groups.  I’m thankful we went to the farm today where I was able to forget it for a while.  Just being in nature was calming.  (Chopping and burning helped too!)

And I finished the knitting of sock number two of my Tropical Gorillas.  You can see I’ve got my chimney in place so I can do Lucy’s magic graft tomorrow and have a great new pair of socks.  That makes me smile.

Love, Jan

Dear Ellen,

Our spammers are ever so clever.  An online gambling site must have thought it would fool us with the following post.

“How is it that just anybody can write a blog and get as popular as this? Its not like youve said anything incredibly impressive –more like youve painted a pretty picture over an issue that you know nothing about! I dont want to sound mean, here. But do you really think that you can get away with adding some pretty pictures and not really say anything?”

Should I criticize the spelling and rash claims? ……..I think I’ll laugh instead.

Love, Jan

Dear Jan,

It may not interest you as much as the birds interest the kiddens, but here is what I did with those silk singles I spun up last week.

Singles, spun in laceweight from hand dyed silk hankies rom River’s Edge Weaving Studio…

.

…plus singles spun at  light fingering to fingering weight from Frabjous Fibers hand dyed merino top in colorway Potash…

.

.

.

…yields a wonderful blend of gray and blues/purples/fuschias.  It jazzes up the grays, tones down the neon of the silk, and results in a wonderful slightly beaded fingering to heavy fingering weight yarn, 220 yards of it.  (For those keeping track, that is about 220 yards of single from 0.3 oz of silk hankies!).

Gray, of course, goes well with so many colors.

Love,

Ellen