The Autumn Leaves cardigan

Carl Sagan once said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe." I felt a little like I'd just invented the Universe with my most recently finished sweater. Two years in the making, the roving from which the yarn was made was dyed a couple of summers ago, the yarn was spun on a drop spindle over the course of those two years, and then the whole sweater was knit in less than a week.

In the beginning, there was the dying:

As I wrote in a previous blog post (unfortunately, all of the image links are broken), this roving was dyed with acid dies in the summer of 2012 during a very fun afternoon with Joanna. This is what the roving looked like after it was dry and all nicely braided up:

I spun the whole lot (I'll admit that I never weighed the whole mess, so I'm not entirely sure how much there was) on my cut acrylic drop spindle from Seven Yaks Design. I chain plied it so that it would be a 3-ply yarn with a roughly DK to light worsted weight. Of course, it was closer to fingering in some spots and aran in others, but I think the average thickness was about DK. Here's some of it on a niddy-noddy:

From how many times each skein wrapped around the niddy-noddy, I estimated that I spun approximately 588 yards of the stuff. Here it is drying after I washed all the yarn:

And finally, here's the sweater!

I loosely followed the Ruby Tuesday pattern by Ewa Durasiewicz, a round-yoke top-down design, but because I didn't get the same gauge with my handspun as called for in the pattern, I didn't do the third set of increases. Somehow, I managed to do the right calculations and end up with a sweater that fits me perfectly. The buttons don't match, but I kind of like it that way. Best part: I used up all the yarn!

As a first experience knitting with hand-spun yarn, I've gotta say, it's pretty amazing. The knitting experience felt so natural and organic, it was like nothing else. I would recommend it to anyone. I can hardly wait to finish spinning up my next batch of yarn to knit with!

A Pilgrimage to Yarn Mecca

Folks, I have been to the place all fibre enthusiasts hope to someday visit: The Duchess County Sheep & Wool Festival, more colloquially known as Rhinebeck. I'll admit that it was everything I could have hoped for… Hundreds of yarn and yarncraft-related vendors, lots of adorable fibre animals, a ton of delicious foods to sample, not to mention the thousands of knitters to chat with and whose knitwear I could admire.

For my first trip to Rhinebeck, I went the easy route and joined a busload of Toronto-region knitters, including my good buds Joanna (see her blog post here), Erin (who also wrote a blog post about the trip), and Kate. It was a long bus ride, but I got a lot of sleeping, reading, knitting, and drop-spindling done. Here's an action shot of the bus drop-spindling action:

After a long bus ride from Toronto, we arrived at our hotel just outside of the town of Rhinebeck in the early evening. I felt I had to take a picture of my knitted outfit, which included knitwear from three generations of knitters: the socks were made by my grandmother, the sweater by my mom, and I knit the Lanesplitter skirt back in 2012.

The next morning, we arrived 30 minutes before the opening of the festival only to find the mother of all lineups (and some beautiful fall colours).

Fortunately, it didn't take long for everyone to get in once the gates were opened, and we were soon greeted by some cute furry friends! In fact, the whole festival was full of adorable fibre animals, and I more than once considered taking one home with me… Here are a few of them:

For me, the main draw of the festival was the demonstrations. I figured, since I'd come all this way, I should learn something more about my craft or about fibre-related things in general. Seeing all the different types of fibre animals helped with that goal, certainly, but there were also a ton of other interesting things to watch. I just missed the sheep-shearing demo I'd hoped to see, but I got to watch a canine frisbee demo (adorable!):

The Fleece-to-Shawl competition took place on Sunday morning, and there were more spinning wheels and looms in operation than I'd ever seen in one spot. The idea is, in three or four hours, to prepare the fibre from a fleece, spin it into yarn, and then weave it into a shawl:

The ultimate high point for me was the Leaping Llama competition! I would have loved to watch the whole thing, but our tour bus would have left without us… The place was so packed that I didn't get any good photos, but here's a proud-looking fellow about to show us all what a good leaper he is:

After all is said and done, one of the highlights for most visitors to Rhinebeck is the shear (if you'll excuse the pun) volume of vendors at the festival. There were at least 10 huge buildings devoted to shopping, with some vendors spilling out onto the pathways between buildings. I showed amazing restraint, and somehow managed to spend less than $100 (USD) on goodies. There was so much I could have brought home with me! First, here's Joanna enjoying the view of some award-winning handspun:

A whole room devoted to fleece:

The best-tasting apple cider donut you'll ever have:

Some expensive spinning fibre (Qiviut, $60 for 1 oz):

And some very pretty spinning fibre and tools:

Last but not least, here's the obligatory loot shot. Surprisingly, I didn't buy any yarn! Clockwise from the bottom left: Official Rhinebeck project bag and zipper dangle, Goat's Milk soap from Cat's View Farm, Forbidden Fruit apple wine from Pazdar Winery, Maple Syrup from a New York sugarbush, Shetland roving from Autumn House Farm, cotton roving from The Wool Room, a "Susan" lightweight drop spindle by David Reed Smith, and "Second Quality" (which I had to card to make spinnable) angora fibre from Cozy Rabbit Farm.

I was so inspired by the whole trip that I'd love to make another pilgrimage next year! (And we're already looking at nearby B&B's!)

Thrifty Knitting: Using T-shirt Yarn

I have trouble throwing anything out. I got a lot better at it during our move, since getting rid of something I hadn't used in five years made more sense than packing it up, but I have to say that keeping things "just in case" is definitely still part of my mentality. I would rather find a way to re-use or re-purpose something than just throw it away. For that reason, I still have a pile of the boyfriend's old shirts that I plan to make into a dress, and a big ziplock bag full of can tabs that I eventually plan on making into a purse. Someday… someday…

Because I participate in a whole bunch of science outreach events, I tend to end up with a lot of free t-shirts, most of which end up languishing in the bottom of my drawer. In an attempt to satisfy my aversion to waste, I decided to convert some of them into t-shirt yarn! I don't have any pictures of the process, unfortunately, but I followed the instructions posted by Fuck Yeah Craft! (Pardon my french!) I ended up with one ball of yarn from an extra-large t-shirt:

I'll admit I didn't weigh it, so I have no idea how much it is in terms of grams or yardage. The weight was approximately worsted, sometimes a little thicker, and sometimes a little thinner. However, I do know that it was just enough to make two 6-inch dishcloths and one 3-inch coaster:

The first dishcloth is just a simple square knit in seed stitch, the second one is a diagonally knit Grandmother's Favourite Dishcloth with seed stitch instead of garter stitch, and the coaster is just a little granny square.

The verdict? Knitting with t-shirt yarn is fairly easy. It has the same stretch as a wool yarn and is pretty soft. My only complaint is that it sheds a lot. My desk ended up with little fluff grains all over it. As for the finished product, so far the dishcloth I'm using to wash the dishes every day is holding up very well. The fabric is very sturdy. So if you have some old t-shirts lying around that you don't wear any more, I'd highly recommend this as a way to re-purpose them!

Domaine Chambord

A blog post, you say? What is this madness?! I thought surely this blog had gone the way of the dinosaurs!

Yes, yes... It's been 8 months since my last confession... err... blog post, but I'm happy to say I'm back! I managed to get a PhD, run a 10k race, go to a bunch of weddings, and knit a lot of baby clothes in that time, and I'm sure I'll get to all of it in the next few blog posts. (Yes, I promise I won't just post once and leave you hanging.)

I'd like to begin again more or less where I left off. Over the Christmas holidays, my mom took me and my cousin to a lovely little farm and yarn shop called Domaine Chambord, located in the small town of Moe's River in the municipality of Compton in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.



It was an icy day in December, but the owner, Kathy, was more than happy to show us around to pet the animals. They had sheep, of course, both Shetland and Jacob...



And lively alpacas...



And funny-looking ducks...



And llamas, and cashmere goats!



They even had a cute little guy who (I think) is a cross between a llama and an alpaca. He was extremely friendly and kept making funny little noises at us.



After seeing the adorable animals, we headed towards the yarn shop. It wasn't very large, but there was plenty of yarn spun from the fibre of the animals we had just visited.



Each skein had on its label a picture of the animal that yarn had come from, which was a nice touch.



Mom couldn't resist fondling the cashmere (and I think she ended up taking some home with her).



And I had a hard time resisting jumping straight into this big basket of alpaca fibre...



At Domaine Chambord, they also sell some knitted products: a few hand-knit scarves as well as knitted socks made with these amazing antique knitting machines they have lining one whole wall of the shop.



They all appear to be in working order, and if you go to their Facebook page, you can see a bunch of pictures of the sock-making in action. I found it fascinating, and I hope to be able to visit Domaine Chambord again!

Summer dying

Well, fall is definitely upon us. I can no longer get away with wearing my flip-flops without freezing my tootsies off, I have had the requisite seasonal cold, and the leaves are starting to turn shades of crimson and gold. Fall is a beautiful time of year (and it does mean pulling out the woollens!), but I do miss summer already. I thrive in the heat and sunlight, what can I say?

And this summer has been a particularly good one for me in terms of improving myself and learning new skills. I learned to run, I lost almost 30 lbs, and in the craftier department, I learned how to hand-dye yarn! This was several months ago, but I thought it would be worth sharing the process with you all.

First, we soaked the roving...

We used Dharma Acid Dyes, which were what Joanna had on hand. They worked quite well, I thought, though one of them ended up being grainy when mixed with vinegar and water.

Of course, all the special squirt bottles had to be labelled, since they weren't going to be used for anything else (at the risk of poisoning someone). We put a little vinegar in the bottle and then a bit of the dye we were going to use.

And then I went to town! Next time I'd probably try to saturate the roving a bit more with dye, but I'm pretty happy with my colour choices.

The final result was amazing. Here it is getting a rinse:

And then hanging out to dry:

Joanna also came up with a pretty colour combination:

And remember that yarn I tried to dye with Kool-Aid over a year ago? Into the pot it goes!

It came out a lovely shade of emerald green that I much prefer to the robin's egg blue it was before:

We tried many more things, and this was the final haul of the day. So many colours!

And now some glamour shots: