Crazy Lanea

Branching Out, in more ways than one

I may have a problem. 

When I was visiting Juno a few months ago, I bought some gorgeous hand-dyed Lobster Pot Cashmere yarn in a soft green.  I held off as long as I could, but decided to bring the yarn with me to work on when I went to Chicago last weekend.  And then I gorged on it.  I would have swallowed the skeins whole if I didn't think someone would call me on it.

This is Branching Out.   You can't see from these dark photos how pretty the subtle color changes are in the yarn, but I think this is a great pattern for the yarn.  It allowed me to use as much yarn as possible, to make something really wearable, and to wear it where my skin will truly benefit from its warmth and softness.  Ahhhhhh.

When last I wrote, I was talking about that lovely trip to Chicago I took last weekend.  On Sunday, Meg and I went to a great quilt show.  I was overwhelmed both by the marketplace (they were preying on my weakness for batik and Asian textiles, those sneaks!) and by the quilts on display.  I was astounded by the talent of the quilters showing.  I was paying a lot of attention to the use of black, to scale, and to the downright mania-inducing tiny patchwork some of these artisans engage in.  I'd never been to a quilt show before, and it was mind-blowing.  Photos of quilts never do them justice, and the people showing were brilliant technicians and great artists.  I hope I can come within a mile of their skills one day.

A  quick note--all of the quilts I photographed were open for photography.  At this quilt show, there were very clear signs displayed on a number of  quilts requesting that they not be photographed.  This is just a small percentage of the fantastic work that was on display. 

There was a segment of the show dedicated to architecture in quilting, and another on photo-realistic florals.
 

This chicken quilt greeted us on the way it--it won the day.  And this fantastic embroidery?  Yeah, that's the back of a quilt. 

 

I fell in love with this crow quilt.  Of course I did.  The purples and blues in the birds themselves, and the branches.  Wow. 

And the crazy-making patchwork . . . some people have so much more patience and dedication than I do . . .

And, well, frogs play cards.  This was from a competition where quilters were challenged to use a specific line of fabrics as inspiration.  Gold star, I say.  Though black fabric mixed with batik and hand-dyed fabric was my obsession of the day.  Look at how those colors pop.

 

And then there were the reds.       

   
It was just all so good.  I'm afraid I've already crushed your browsers with photos, so I'll stop. 

After the quilt show,  Meg was off to staff a show at the Old Town School of Folk Music and Jonathan and I went to a pub where he was playing in an Irish session.  And the wonderful Rachel came to hang out and listen to tunes and chat.  We've been online pen pals for years now, and last weekend was the first time we got to actually sit together and talk.  What a blast!  Listening to a friend play great tunes while talking about other great music with another far-flung friend . . . that's a good way to spend a Sunday night. 

Monday morning, Meg and I got to go to Rachel's bookstore and see the spot it's moving to sometime soon, and then all three of us had a nice lunch.  It was tough to get on that plane back to Dulles.  Can one of you come up with a cheap teleportation method now, please?  It would make this friends-all-over-the-place thing much easier to handle. 

Right--back to the remodel.  We have a new tub and most of the tiling is done.  Now we're moving furniture so the floors can go it and vacillating over paint chips.  I have to face packing up all of the books and my studio, and figure out what I can knit in the meantime.   

Chicago

Last weekend, I went out west to visit with Two Sock Knitters, and another Sock Knitter, and a whole passel of contra dancers.  The University of Chicago hosted a fantastic dance weekend, complete with the fantastic bands Cosmic Otters and Nightingale, and the amazing callers Adina Gordon and George Marshall.  We went to tons of yarn shops, a quilt show, three of the four contra dances the weekend provided, restaurants, Irish sessions--I haven't caught my breath yet. 

We get the fun started with a trip to The Fold.  Of course we did--how could we not.  Jonathan got some spinning pointers from Toni, and Meg and I dedicated ourselves to supporting small business in the greater Chicagoland area. 

Toni has a thing or two worth considering on offer, in case you haven't had a chance to stop by.

   

As usual, I didn't take enough photos, and many of the ones I did take aren't great.  Our surroundings for the dance weekend were beyond compare, though.  The university's buildings are gorgeously ornate.  Even the locks were gorgeous. 

The stairs were worth the price of admission.

And the dancing and music?  Hot.  Inspirational.  Astoundingly good.   What a dance weekend. 

As if I wasn't happy enough with all of these things, both bands included footwork in their sound.  Ahhhhhhh.  These are Keith's feet during Nightingale's Friday night dance.  I couldn't take pictures on Saturday night because I had too much dancing to do.

I'll tell you about the quilt show and my visit with another sock knitter next.  Now, I need to go prepare for the continued remodel here at our home sweet home and count the days till my next chance to dance.  Soon, I'll be able to dance on my own floors for the first time in years AND I'll be rid of the biggest source of allergies in my life.  The mere thought is making my eyes well up with tears of joy.   Get on your feet, and tune up your instruments, people, because the floor is going to catch fire under your toes if I have anything to say about it. 

Scanty evidence, finished objects, and questions of gauge and color

A couple of weekends ago, a bunch of us wandered out for the woods for a very relaxed camping trip smack dab between the Equinox and April Fool's Day.  Normally, I would carry back photographic evidence.  This time, I bring only this. 

It was really cold, and throwing an event is a fair amount of work.  But this bug sure is green!  I hope you can settle for it.

While we were freezing, I finished the butterfly moebius.  It ended up being a really great thing to wear while camping.  No dangling ends to be  a danger while tending a fire; soft enough to wear while sleeping; versatile enough to wear as a scarf, doubled up around my neck for extra warmth, wrapped around my neck and head--it's a great  garment.   I definitely want to use Seasilk again, and to repeat this knit.

I also finished the first of the horseshoe socks, and I really like it.  I need to give serious thought to my sock gauge, though.  I knew I was progressively knitting my socks tighter and tighter, but these served as a great touchstone when compared to  . . .

the kilthose I finally finished.

The hosen are knit on 2.25 mm needles, and they felt like tree trunks compared to the needles I'm using for the horseshoe socks.  I certainly want to continue to make socks that last a long time, but I think I'm risking injury and wasting yarn by knitting at this crazy gauge.  Must.  Stop.  Knitting.  So.  Tightly.  I had to use a contrasting heel and toe and still used 45 grams of the teal yarn for the body of the lace sock.   That's madness. 

Though, I will say that I felt like I flew through the last 3/4 of that second in the kilt hose pair, working on bigger needles in such a plain pattern. 

In case you haven't caught onto the repetitive color scheme working here, look at the skirt I'm almost done with. 

It's a very simple four-gore skirt in a lovely rayon batik.  I forget how much I hate to work with rayon until I, you know, work with rayon again.  And then I lament it, and whine, and cuss, and throw tantrums.  I'm toying with the idea of paying someone to hem this thing, because of the rayon,  the fact that I still haven't gotten myself a dress form, and my desire to wear this to a dance weekend in a few days.   I did set in the zipper with no complaints, so that was nice. 

Now--evidence that I occasionally work with colors that are not blue. Look--it's something mostly green and neutral . . .

The outside of the felt tote is entirely pieced now, so I just have to plot pockets, pick a fabric for the lining, sew that, and add the straps.  I'm loving that the two faces of the bag are relatively plain and the sides and bottom are brighter.

F is for Felt

F is for felt. 

I've been making felt for several years now, using a couple of different methods.  I was first attracted to it for historical reasons, of course--felt was probably the first fabric we humans made, and that warms my Luddite soul to the core.  But as I've worked with it, I've fallen in love with the way felting affects the color of the wool, and with the strength and water-resistance of good felt.  One of my favorite knitting bags is my Constant Companion, which is both pretty and bullet-proof--a rare combination. 

Felting is also one of those forms of frugality that appeals to my recycling, reusing, and reducing heart.  This bag I'm working on is made up of felted scraps from ruined sweaters.  I chopped up a few cigarette-singed beauties I found in thrift stores, but the rest of the felt for this project came from some sweaters Scott and I loved a bit too much.  I started collecting supplies for this a couple of years ago, felting commercial sweaters  that wore through at the elbows.  My stash of felt was too drab, so I just wasn't excited to start piecing.  Then a couple of weeks ago I went through my mending basket and realized there was no good way to fix a few of my favorites, which are in colors I love of course.    The purple one in the lower corner was theoretically superwash, so I put it in gentle cycle, and it came out unwearable.  Sigh.  The other three--including the spring green Cashmere at the top left--had irreparable holes.  All four felted like mad once I tossed them in a hot wash--see the kitchen shears for a sense of scale. 

I chopped the sweaters into 3" and 2"x3" blocks, and started piecing them to a thin twill foundation, also made up of scrap fabric.  Each face of the bag has a green nine-patch in the center, and the sides and a bottom are more randomly pieced. 

More than half of the felt tiles are affixed.  I'm trying to pick the right lining fabric and plot inside pockets and possible closures.  The greens and blues are much brighter than they seem here, so there is some great contrast playing on the bag.

If that's a confusing image, from left to right, it's a side, front above the bottom, side, and then back you're seeing there, with a big seam allowance for the top hem.   

I'll have plenty left to make at least one more bag this size once this is done.  And then maybe crazy-patched felt when only the small scraps remain.  Ahhh, felt. 

Like watching paint dry

I'm pretty sure the knitting is finished on the Heather Ale Cardigan, but I can't be sure yet.  Like most  knitted lace, it looked pretty sloppy and unappealing unblocked.   Unlike most knitted lace, this sweater really needs to fit nicely to be worth having.  I think I stopped at the right places.  I blocked it using the lace blocking wires my wonderful Aunt got me this Christmas. 

I love the light in the second shot--very fake-old-photo-montage, no?

Now I just get to wait for it to dry, hope it fits the way I planned, and think about what sort of beads to use on the points and which sweater to knit next. 

I finished that string pieced potholder, and made another ten sock bags, but then the evil cough caught up with me. 

I'm trying to think about spindle, dance shoe, and felted bag designs, but I'm not thinking as clearly as I'd like.

E is for Embroidery

Embroidery was my first craft, as I explained a few years ago in a book about fiber arts.   I feel I give it short shrift these days, using it now and again to adorn something else I'm flirting with, but rarely working steadily on a project for more than a day or two, and even more rarely finishing anything other than a little flourish on another project. 

My lack of drawing skills holds me back.  Once I have a design, I can embroider it or carve it into leather.  But I can't get what's in my head down on to paper--there's a gaping hole in my process, and I have to rely on friends to bridge that gap.   I can't explain the disconnect,   but it's there and it's one of the only things that I really regret about being who I am.  If there were only a pill I could
take  . . .

I also run into a stylistic problem with a lot of embroidery.  Some of the stuff I'm best at stitching  isn't actually to my taste.  I own very little of my own work for that reason.  The Jacobean crewel piece above is a prime example.   For the first time ever, I bought a kit to see if I could still work my needles as I had as a kid.  I can.  And once I finish, what will I do with it?  Like so much of what I make, I'll give it to someone and hope they appreciate the work that went into.  And  I'll worry that they don't.

Another stalled project?  Perhaps one of the most ludicrous things I've started.  I will finish it eventually, I guess, but it will take a long time.  It's a crazy quilt with an entire queen sized flat sheet for the foundation.  All of the fabrics are scraps left over from clothing I've made for friends.  And the bigger designs were all drawn for me by friends.  I've been working on it on and off for about 15 years.  It's a riot of colors.  It's too much.  It's too big to work on comfortably.  It forces me to abandon so many of my natural sensibilities about art and craft. 

A lot of the other embroidery I've done is utilitarian, in a sense.  Pieces on garments, stitched heavily--lending an almost tapestry-like effect--so that they last through hard work and washing.  This  piece was on a dress for years.  Eventually I'll attach it to something new.  I've actually made it twice.  The first time, I needed something to work on while I was studying in the UK one summer in college.  I finished it on the flight back, and learned upon landing that a good friend of the family had given birth to twin girls--one a brunette and one a red head.  I stitched that first version into a pillow and presented it off to their mother. 

I've gone searching for more inspiration for embroidery recently, and I think I've found some good stuff.  We'll see if my will can overcome my whims.

Kate's Mare

I've been plotting a great trip out to Chicago for a dance weekend and visits with some wonderful friends, and I am giddy with excitement.  Giddy, I say!

And in that spirit, I figured I should hop online to post some clogging cue sheets.  Kate's Mare is one of the coolest clogging steps I know, and it's notated here, along with some other good ones.  Don't worry if they make no sense to you--if you're learning to clog with the peeps, I'll explain it all next time we get together.  If you want to understand immediately but it's making your head explode, email me. 

Download cue_sheets.pdf

And now I'm heading back to the sweat shop.  My lace cardigan has two full sleeves and six inches of body below them, and there are another 10 or 12 sock bags in progress on my sewing table.  And all of that counts as prep for replacing all of the floors, right?  Sure it does!  Using stash=cleaning.  Soon, I'll even be able to dance in my fiber-arts studio.  Though clogging while sewing sounds mighty dangerous. 

Brush heel slap heel shuffle step leap
Brush chug slide stomp brush chug slide stomp
Brush heel slap heel shuffle step leap
Brush chug slide stomp brush chug slide stomp
And a basic

Patchwork

In footwork news: I taught a very informal clogging class for some friends Sunday, and it was an absolute hoot.  It felt great to be encouraging other folks to stomp about.  I think percussive dance is particularly appealing to folks with some strong tendencies towards rambunctiousness, and most of my friends could be described that way.  In fact, we had so much fun that we decided it's going to turn into a biweekly thing, complete with live music and potluck. 

 
Now for the handwork.  Two giant potholders,  each about 10" square.  They're both made up entirely of scraps from other projects, which always makes me very happy.  The Crazy patched one is actually greener than it looks--winter morning light is very blue near us, for some reason.  Both are entirely machine-stitched, which is still making me sort of twitchy.  But they're a quick use of leftovers, and making these will force me to get much better at quilt binding, my least favorite activity these days.  I'm not sure what I'll do with this pair once the second one is finished, but I may go make a few million if they continue to be so fun. 

In all its rumpled loveliness--my lace cardigan. 

I finished that first sleeve last night, and am a couple of inches into the second one.  This is going to be one warm sweater.  I'm so glad it's lace.  I think it would be nigh unwearable otherwise.

And some felt patchwork experimentation is underway.  I've been playing with feltable wool scraps for a while now, looking for a good way to use recycled sweaters without stockpiling dozens of thrifted bits and bobs.  I think I have a plan now. 

 
I cut a few felted pieces into squares, and then joined them by stitching them to little scraps of twill.  The twill should give the finished item a fair amount of stability. 

Roundabout

The small linen quilt is finally finished.  It took about 20 minutes of quilting.  Sadly, it also took about 6o miles of driving, spread out into many, many trips to regional fabric stores.  I'm not proud of that. 

For whatever reason, I started the quilting on this top using just the right green thread, ignoring the fact that said thread came on a small spool, and I just had the one, and that not all shops stock the stuff.    So I've spent far too much time looking for enough thread to finish this quilt over the last month or two.  And, being me, I bought lots of fabric and other thread while searching for the spool of thread I needed. 

When I finally found the elusive thread, I bought all they had, which wasn't actually that much.  I predict I will decide to use it again for a thread-intensive item, like the big linen quilt to follow this small one.  And then I will be stuck in this guilt-inducing, ludicrous situation again.  Sigh.

Still--pretty quilt!  I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but I'm glad I made it. 

My head is full of ideas for other wonderful projects.  I spent yesterday at the American Craft Council show in Baltimore with a bunch of friends.  I bought nothing but some greeting cards, but I saw amazingly beautiful things.  Including the glass spinning wheel that caused such a buzz a while back. Ruadhan and I started asking the artist about spinning on it, learned that he'd only put commercially-produced string on it to make sure it would draw, and both cringed because we hadn't any unspun fiber to force on him.  His aside of "They're spinners . . ." to his booth-mate probably said all he needed to say.  Clearly, other spinners have met this talented artist and tried to either make a spinner out of him or weasel the wheel away from him. 

Valentine

I can't drive on Valentine's Day.  I've done it six times, and three of those times I've been in very bad car accidents.  I'm not a particularly superstitious person, but I can do basic math and those are horrible odds.  So I arranged to take today off.  I also arranged to have PT and my doctor-mandated allergy test Wednesday afternoon, thinking I could use today to recover from both--limping plus angry needle-marks all over one's arms do not a good impression make, after all.  I woke up yesterday to learn that the ice storm we had the night before had frozen my car doors shut, so I ended up calling in sick rather than adding terrible ice-removal tasks to my extra-crappy commute and half day at work.  A morning of leisure to prep for my four hours of allergy tests and PT that afternoon seemed a good option.  Cue accidental mid-week break, complete with power outages, errands, bad roads, scratch and intradermal tests, and stability tests (though only for my leg--no one looked into my mental state). 

Lo and behold, my immune system decided to switch it up on me.  When I was tested for allergies a few years ago, I tested positive for allergies to dust mites and dogs.  Yesterday, I learned I was no longer allergic to dogs, but was suddenly allergic to cats.  Now, I know dogs can be very very smart, and I'm sure Kayo and Scott have both used some amount of their mental prowess to entirely win me over to the dog side.  But such a drastic shift of allergies?  What the hell would cause that?  Are Yarrow and Speedwell really so different from Scath that their dander is poison to me when his wasn't?  I'm so confused.

Apart from the running around, I've spent the last couple of days on a number of worthwhile projects.  Priority one: trying to help out our young pin oak, which was having a bad time with the ice.  Pin oaks hold their leaves through the winter, so suffer more than most deciduous trees in such  storms.

 

The whole tree was bent pretty dramatically towards the ground Wednesday morning, so I did some judicious ice-removal, while simultaneously convincing neighbors of my continuing insanity.  Thankfully the ice has melted and this young tree is standing up mostly straight again. 

Priority two: prove I still knit.

This is the lace cardigan I'm making for the sake of a  beer label.   I asked Aes and Phalen to brew some heather ale, and they agreed, while encouraging me to perhaps grow hops and heather and also do a label shoot for them.  So I have to come up with a lovely outfit that seems to evoke heather, and maybe Scotland, and the like.  So, of course, greens and purples and knitted lace.  I need to speed up, I guess, since it's not that long until heather season.  Though, being lace, the sweater is further along than it looks.  I'm using a free pattern from Elann, though I'm not using the second lace pattern for the sleeves, and I am going to make it longer than the original.  It's worked from the top down with raglan shaping, so the alterations should be dead easy.

And Hedgerow Mitts:

 

( Ignore the bump over my wrist there--my friend Tara gave me a beautiful bracelet, and I can't bring myself to take it off right now.)   I started off a second pair of Hedgerow socks in some lovely Fearless Fibers sockyarn I had on hand. But then thought it was silly to make another pair so similar to my first, noticed that I was going to have too few stitches, and accidentally designed some mitts.  It may be a special kind of laziness that makes a knitter design a new garment rather than start over upon realizing things aren't working out.  The first mitt is finished, and the second one is humming along.  I really like how this stitch patterns feels as mitts--it is very stretchy, and reminds me of those arthritis-therapy gloves turned pretty.

Priority three: shop for books and eat great food with my Mom. Nuff said.

Priority four: cut big pieces of fabric into smaller pieces of fabric.  I'm trying to do more with red, because the red-loving people need bags too. 

Priority five: Order flooring!  Tonight, we buy bamboo.  Lots and lots of bamboo.  I know some of you gals go for jewelry, flowers, and candy--and I certainly like all of those things--but this is the best V-Day plan ever.   We get to replace carpets that literally make me sick with environmentally-sound bamboo floors, thus increasing the value of the house and making dancing at home easier, while employing a dear friend to do the work, all the while financing the project with the settlement money from that terrible car accident Scott was in a few winters ago.  It's like a home-improvement hat trick. 

Please remind me I said that when we have to pack up everything we own so that the flooring can be installed, ok?