feline approval

How is it that the cat always knows which object in the house is the subject of the most creative energies . . . and therefore moves to roll about on said object whenever the opportunity presents itself?

My feather and fan throw is now 60% complete. We have a camping trip and a long drive coming up at the end of the month, which means I should be binding off and sewing up loose ends soon.

just spinningly

This weekend I worked with some fiber that almost seemed to spin itself . . . almost.

I don't know if it's a good thing to say that about a type of fiber, when it seems like hand-spinners are perhaps one of the only groups of people I know that love the challenge of hand crafting their medium through hours of processing and hard work.

Maybe this batch of yarn seemed to go so "spinningly" because of the over-the-top, luxurious results that I got from my efforts.


This fiber is 60% creamy CVM romeldale wool and 40% kid mohair. I'll get a natural example of this fiber up on the blog soon.

knitting + hammock = bliss

I spent some time by the lake at a cabin in Wisconsin this weekend and participated in the usual "cabin activities." I attempted to canoe across the lake with my mother as a navigator only to discover that we were both exhausted when we got to the far side . . . too bad we had to row back.

That happens every year when we go camping.

I watched others attempt to catch fish off the dock and saw several sunfish reeled in. (Tonight we'll be eating some of those fish at our grill out.)

I sat in the shadow of the cabin drinking beer and watched as one of my cousins got thoroughly skunked by his wife in a game of washers. (That's where you throw a really large washer at a bucket in a wooden frame. 3 points for the bucket, 1 point for the frame.)

Then, when no one was looking, I grabbed my knitting a tiptoed out to the hammock by the edge of the lake. It was one of those impossible days in Wisconsin where there were actually no mosquitoes buzzing around your ears.

I love summer.

unraveling

As promised, here's a preview of the new project I'm working on using the yarn from the partially completed socks I was working on last fall and talked about in my previous post. The pattern comes from Beth Ann Paustian of Black Purl Designs : Sock it to Me Baby.


This little sweater is addicting, but I've had to pause indefinitely as I've run out of yarn and I'm hunting for more. Hopefully I'll have found some in time for the weekend, if not, I've got more than enough knitting to keep my fingers busy.

design camp + knitting

This week I'm working as a teaching assistant at a design camp for a local twin cities school. The students I'm working with range from first to fifth grade.

Our design goals for the week are to teach the kids design principles and process, while at the same time, helping their teachers incorporate what we in the studio call "design thinking" into their teaching curriculum.

We're helping them to design and build "gathering places" on the grassy lot and nature area behind their school. First we'll investigate the site through sketching, photography and note taking, next we'll help them build study models out of collected materials, and finally we'll help them build full scale structures.

Should be a blast, these kids are so creative.

Anyway, the entire design process and thought behind it always brings me back to my knitting and spinning. Designers, whether of buildings or knitwear, (and I'd like to do both) go through the same process.

Knitting has helped me immensely in architecture school. I'm not afraid to take what I've learned from a project and set it aside to explore a new aspect of an idea. (Just like I'm not afraid to frog 3/4 or a sweater . . . well, I said I wasn't "afraid" but I do sometimes get frustrated.)

They say that "designers fail faster and better," and it makes me think back to some of the projects I've started and my own learning process to complete them has required me to rip them apart at several stages.

Anyway, this may be a tangent . . . but I can see the connections between design camp and knitting. You can bet I'll have a knitting project in my bag today and that I'll be working on it during my lunch break.

P.S. the images in this post are of a pair of socks that I was working on at a wedding I attended at a Wisconsin vineyard last fall. I've completely unraveled them and now I'm using the yarn to make a striped baby sweater. I'll have some images of that project in my next post.

slugs, bugs and beer

I want lace on my knitting needles, but not in my garden.

To bring you up to speed: this year I'm tending an urban garden in my boyfriend's backyard. (He graciously donated about a third of his yard to this project so I can't have BUGS eating my plants!)

Currently most of my broccoli plants and a handful of my bean sprouts look the delicate lace leaves of a hand knit shawl. The culprits, I suspect are two varieties of beetles and a clan of slugs . . . well, not to mention the rabbits . . . but they seem to be afraid of the garden hose. So I have a handle on the rabbits . . . I think.

Never get to cocky about your garden. That's rule number one.

Rule number two is expect the unexpected. With this new garden on a new site in the city I knew I would be coming up against many unknowns. For instance, the soil that I found beneath the sod in the backyard seemed rich and loamy. It's filled with earthworms and plant matter, but I still don't know whether it will have the right matrix to sustain hearty vegetables.


I've brought in some compost from my parents' farm and started a compost pile of my own in the back of the lot, but the success of this garden will take time. I just want to see my plants grow into their blossoms so that they have a chance to produce fruits.

To do that I have to outsmart the bugs, slugs and rabbits. Like I noted earlier, the rabbits seem to be afraid of the garden hose I've wrapped around our tiny garden, but ultimately I'll probably need a short fence. The bugs and slugs are my immediate concern. I've tried a mild soapy spray on the leaves of my plants, because I will not use chemicals.

What seems to be working the best, however, is beer. A dollop of beer in the array of ceramic coffee cups that I have strategically placed around the garden. I found the coffee cups stashed in Garrett's garage. (He doesn't use these cups because they have a rim of metallic glaze that makes them spark in the microwave.)


The slugs don't mind. They seem to love slithering over that silver edge and plopping into the frothy pool of golden liquid I've set out for them. Too bad once they're in they can't get out!

Ah, the adventure and anxiety of a garden.

a weekend at the wheel

This past weekend was gray and rainy, perfect for the garden and for time spent at the spinning wheel. On Saturday afternoon, my mother, my cousin and I sat in a cozy room off my parent's kitchen and spun yarn as lightning flashed across the sky and pinged off the tin roof.

Progress is also being made on my feather and fan throw. I spun some more chocolate brown worsted weight yarn for the spacing between the colorful yarns that make up this project.


I recruited both my mother and my cousin to each spin a skein of yarn for this throw, so the finished object will be a group effort.

I think that's the best way to make a large project. When it's finished this throw is going to stay at my mom and dad's house. Whenever one of us snuggles underneath it we'll think about this spring's sheep, the colors we spun up and the memories we shared.