Spinning Dust Bunnies

Last Friday (one week ago) I attended the Fibres West Festival at the Abbotsford Fairgrounds and came away with, among other things - many other things -  a bag of quiviut.  I spotted it at the Birkeland Brothers booth when I stopped to say hi to the nice women with whom I've spoken at the shop on other mainland fibre hunting expeditions.  

Now I have a history with quiviut, the proverbial skeleton in the old memory vault.  I once owned...wait for it...an ENTIRE GARBAGE BAG OF QUIVIUT, pounds of the stuff.  It was given to me to spin by a guy who worked up north in the oil exploration business whom I had encountered at some craft event where I was selling the natural-dyed fat singles I was churning out at that time.  He had picked it up off the tundra where it was lying around in heaps after the spring moult, or whatever you call it when muskox shed their winter undercoat.   The deal was that I would spin up the fibre in exchange for a share of it and perhaps some of his very beautiful hand carved antler buckles or buttons.   

I tried spinning the stuff on my Indian spinner and needless to say, had a lot of trouble.  I put it away in our tiny attic, resolving to delay the R and D until the long winter months when every hour of the day wasn't taken up with tending gardens and preserving the fruits thereof.  In the typical "back to the land" (i.e. hippies in the backwoods) style, my then husband and I lived in a cobbled together house (and I use the term "house" loosely) in the bush that was heated with two wood stoves. To make a long story short, the house burned to the ground one freezing cold December day, and the quiviut was one of the things that didn't get saved.  A few weeks later during the cleanup, buddy who worked up north arrived in his pickup and stared at the place where the house had been, not needing to be told that his quiviut had gone up in smoke.  He was pretty philosophical about it, saying "Oh well, easy come, easy go," or words to that effect.  

Ever since the fire, my feelings about quiviut have been ambivalent:  intrigue mixed with the memory of  that gut-wrenching day.  The scarcity and astronomical prices have been a sufficient deterrent up until now but the temptation was always there and I longed to give it a try, to master it - the fibre and maybe the negative feelings along with it.  Last Friday I took the plunge and shelled out for 20 grams of the stuff, a pouffe of roving the size of a loaf of bread in a ziplock bag and after it sat for a week, calling to me from the spinning corner, I plunged in yesterday, still full of those ambivalent feelings.

It was very difficult at first.  The roving is ephemeral, smoke between my fingers, like drafting a cloud of nothing, spinning dust bunnies.  It has to be a very fine yarn in order to get some decent yardage out of it so I cast about for a method that wouldn't waste a shred of fibre. Not yet in possession of a diz, I tried pulling the roving through a small funnel but it was still too dense and nowhere near small enough.  It was a semi-transparent pencil roving I was after. Then I tried pre-drafting the chunks of roving and when they threatened to drift apart, I dampened my hands and rolled the predrafts on my thigh to firm them up.  This really worked and now I'm well into the first spool, although I have very little spun fibre to show for two hours of spinning.  

My intention is to ply two singles and knit a very open lacey short narrow scarf...after all, the muskox survive -60C wearing this stuff so anything more dense is going to be too hot even on the coldest Victoria day. And of course I only have 20 grams so my choices are limited.   The singles are spun quite firmly so that they stay together so the plying should also help them to bloom a little.  My only quandary is how to estimate when to change spools so I have equal amounts to ply from.  At the moment I'm going by weight but if anyone has a better idea, lay it on me.  

As for the negative feelings and regrets?  Still there but less strident as a result of confronting a tiny corner of them. One of these posts, I'll tell the story of the fire and perhaps get a little more of it off my shoulders.  For now, I'll just say that it was a long time ago, no one died, and it opened some doors that needed opening.

 

 

  

Blankie

Took a little ramble with the camera in the garden today.  It may be chilly still but the garden thinks it's spring.  The photo to the left is of the hellebores or Lenten Roses out in front of the house that are one of the earliest things to bloom. It helps that they are against a south facing wall and have the benefit of a micro-climate.   

Down below I've posted all the various skeins that I spun for what seems to be destined for a blankie project.  The dark brown skeins in the middle will be the anchor/main colour for the mitered squares and they are a two-ply  of a merino, alpaca and soy silk roving from Anna Runnings at Qualicum Bay Fibre Works.  The soy silk is pink and chartreuse and while the roving looked like chocolate pistachio ice cream, the finished yarn is mostly brown with pink and chartreuse tweedie bits.

Once I had a good whack of the main yarn, I experimented plying a single of the dark brown first with a single of chartreuse kid mohair and then with a single of pink merino to emphasize the pink in the blend.  I still had a skein of the dark brown left so I plied it with some commercial alpaca leftovers from stash to get a bit more variety for the mitered squares.  The result was a small skein of brown and gold and another of brown and purple.  Since they all have at least one strand of the dark brown, I think the variations should all look like siblings...let's hope so.    

Merino/alpaca/soy silk plied with chartreuse  kid mohair

Merino/alpaca/soy silk plied with pink merino

The happy family

I'm quite thrilled with how the skeins look against the dark brown leather of the couch.  I think the blankie is going to look very nice thrown over the back of the couch when it's not in use. The inspiration for this project is the Mitered Square Afghan by Chris Delongpré on Ravelry but I plan on winging it.  I'm craving something straightforward that I can knit without charts or fuss and just make it up as I go along.  Yep - meditation knitting.  

More sad news

Yet another dear spirit has left the world.  My little Auntie Marguerite passed away two mornings ago after losing her brief struggle with a brain tumor.  I was in Kelowna last week for a funeral (bit of a theme here) and visited her in her hospice room on a couple of her "good" days.  She recognized me right away, and although very quiet, was in good spirits. It was hard to believe the prognosis but now, less than a week later, she’s gone.

She was a tiny woman, tinier as the years progressed, but one underestimated her at their peril. With eight lively children, and my uncle the ferryboat captain away from home for long periods, she probably couldn't afford to lose the upper hand. Many a time I saw a towering son quake before her wrath and have had reason to quake myself. I often wondered how she kept it together but she was part of the last generation of women who were never in doubt about their destiny.  Home and family came first.  She devoted herself to it whole-heartedly and still had time to be generous to her community and extended family. 

And there has been yet another death in the family.  I was in the Okanagan last week to attend the funeral I mentioned earlier, of my Auntie Emilie's husband Victor who died quite unexpectedly of heart failure. Emilie is the eldest of my dad’s siblings while Marguerite was the youngest. 

My attachment to these elderly aunties in spite of only sporadic contact over the past few years has taken me a bit by surprise but I think it has something to do with my childhood.  I grew up on a farm next to Mission Creek in the south end of Kelowna, not far from Okanagan Lake.  It was a truly a "family farm".  My grandparents lived in the main farmhouse and my respective aunties with their husbands and large families occupied two newer houses set close to the road, models of modern (1950's) convenience.  Our patched together house was up the lane toward the barn tucked in amid weeping willows.  I say “patched together” since our house started life as a hired hand’s cottage and was constantly being added on to when farm chores and outside work allowed my father the time for home improvements...in other words, hardly ever.  

As kids, we didn't give a hoot that our house was modest at best. My brother and sister and I and the tribe of cousins lived our lives mostly outdoors, searching out new kittens in the barn, roaming the fields and woods on horseback, spending hours at the lake on hot summer days.  We hung out on the creek bank fishing or cracking rocks to see the shiny bits, built forts and explored the one bit of bush left wild at the back of the farm.  We traipsed in and out of all four houses as if they were our own, my mother and the aunties praising, scolding, settling arguments, teaching and feeding us indiscriminately.

After the sale of the farm and my escape first to university and then to marry and live on the west coast, we saw less of each other aside from brief exchanges at 50th anniversary and landmark birthday parties.  The cousins similarly scattered and in this long-lived family, we were lucky enough to not often have the marshalling effect of  funerals.  With the events of this spring, and the advanced years of the generation ahead of us, that is about to change. 

If there is any upside to all this, it is the opportunity to get to know my cousins again.  In some cases, it's been 30 years and more since I last saw them yet the connection is still there: a dormant familiarity that springs back to life upon re-acquaintance.  And it probably doesn't hurt that the years apart have knocked our sharper corners off, increased our tolerance so we don't piss each other off like we used to.   

Between deaths in the family and losing my little dog, there have been a lot of tears lately and I hardly know anymore what I'm crying about - the tears arrive and I just go with it. What set me off yesterday was the enthusiastic greeting from my friend's dog Sophie when I arrived at her place for our twice-weekly walk.  Last evening there was no discernible trigger - one minute I was fine and the next I was weeping. 

Tough times but once again, knitting and spinning have come to the rescue.  My Gnarled Oakwoods shawl is growing apace and I'm into the vine patterned centre panel.  Soon I'll be putting the first half aside and starting the second half although it makes me want to tear my hair out to think that I'm less than halfway.  I’ve made a lot of mistakes but the lace patterning seems to hide them quite effectively.  With any luck, the oopsies won't show once it's blocked…either that or I’ll be redoing the entire first half. Shoot me now! 

Because of the difficulty keeping track of where I am in the pattern, I've put aside the index cards I made up for the first section and taken Sarah's suggestion to work from the chart. Not one for waiting about for an internet shipment, I  jury-rigged a chart tamer from a metal tray and some adhesive magnetic strips used for making fridge magnets and it works brilliantly. On some short pieces of  tape, I drew little arrows on the paper covering and I move them about to indicate the direction of the row and the start of the repeat for each row.  I place the main strip above the row I'm working on so I can check on the preceding rows without having to move the strip and lose my place.  Cheap and cheerful!

Fast and dirty chart tamer

My merino/alpaca/soy silk spinning project is complete and I intend to knit a mitered square blankie to show off the various colour combinations.  I’ve felt cold so often this winter that I want a nice throw for the couch that I can wrap myself up in when I’m chilly.  And even big kids need a soft cozy blankie when they feel blue.  Look for photos of the yarn and a pattern preview in my next post.

Separation

For this or any other dog

I believe in heaven, yes, I believe in heaven

Which I shall not enter, but where he will be waiting for me

Wagging his tail like a fan

To greet me with affection when I come.

Pablo Neruda, "The Separate Rose"

Good dog Daisy

First of all, fair warning...this post is about the last hours of my beloved dog Daisy.  If that kind of subject matter upsets you, stop reading now.  

The events that initially inspired starting this blog last August(Daisy's first trip to the pet hospital) resolved last evening when Daisy's life came to an end.  Little Daisy, velvet of ear, fleet of foot, scourge of squirrels, bouncy and bright and sweet-natured is gone into whatever it is that awaits us all.  She spent the intervening five months since her first big health challenge in relatively good shape, running after the ball, chasing squirrels, greeting her many admirers passing by the front gate.  She had occasional tummy issues  kept under control by strict enforcement of the "no treats, no people food" policy and careful watching of her diet. She ate better than we did with only the tastiest low fat concoctions to tempt her fragile appetite and home-prepared dried chicken breast for treats.

Then a little over a week ago, she started to go seriously downhill, refusing to eat, vomiting, accidents on the carpet at night, getting thinner every day.  Two days ago she went for an overnight stay at Kindred Spirits, our local veterinarians, to have intravenous fluids administered for dehydration.  That seemed to turn her around very quickly, her appetite returning in spades and her mood back to normal. But the real problem, it seems, was her lungs. During the second night she developed a pneumothorax which collapsed one of her lungs.  The vets were able to reduce it yesterday morning but by late afternoon when I expected to be picking her up and taking her home, it had re-formed.  It was decision time...the thing I had been dreading for months.  I was put into a room with Daisy and I held her on my lap while I waited for Harry to arrive from work.  Her breathing was very rough and she held her nose up high trying for a better position to draw in more air.  Her body felt odd, sort of loose, like a bag of bones. If you don't know the fox terrier breed, "loose" is the antithesis of the "solid and muscular" norm. For me, that was the telling moment - she wasn't going to come out of it this time.  

Once Harry arrived, we agreed that it was time to make the decision to have her put down.  I struggled with this as my perfect scenario would have had her dying quietly, lying on the lawn in the sun or failing that, in her own bed at home, not in this cold tiled impersonal room.  When I suggested taking her home to die naturally, the vet told me kindly that it would be horrible for Daisy and horrible for us, given her respiratory distress and the anxiety that goes with it. That scotched any romantic notions I had about the perfect death.  Once we decided on euthanasia, we sat cuddling and stroking her and talking about all the funny things she had done during her life: the time when she was small when she walked right through the bars on the deck railing, fell into a bush, slid to the ground, got up and trotted away unfazed, or the way she cocked her head to one side when someone said the magic words "squirrel" or "treat" or "whacka whacka" (our term for a nightly ball chasing session using a racket and tennis ball), the daily ritual of biting the mail as it came through the mail slot, her ecstatic greetings at the door after our briefest absences, her enthusiasm for life, and her courage and buoyancy in trying or painful circumstances.  Many are the lessons in right living that we have learned from our intrepid little dog. 

Eventually, the vet came in to check if we were ready, went away and returned with a full syringe. She told us what exactly to expect and as the drugs went in, Daisy seemed to know somehow. She turned her head toward each of us to look deep into our eyes as we stroked her and said "Good dog, good dog".  Finally, her head drooped then went down and it was as if she went to sleep - no more laboured breathing and moments later the vet confirmed that her heart had stopped.  It was very quick, very peaceful and somehow right.

The wonderful staff at Kindred Spirits wrapped her body up in a blanket and carefully placed it in a box for us to take home.  I can't say enough good things about the docs and staff at Kindred Spirits.  Not only competent but respectful, empathetic, understanding and diplomatic...they couldn't have been better.  I'm sure they've done this hundreds of times before but you'd never know it from their concern and sensitivity.

It was dark by the time we got home so we rewrapped Daisy in her own blanket and this morning we buried her without ceremony in the garden in her favourite sunny spot, taking turns to cover her over.  Nothing left now but to grieve and remember all the good things about her.  I like to picture her greeting our old cat Aphra in some kind of afterlife, the two of them restored to youth and grace and ambushing each other from behind the Elysian shrubbery as they used to do in our back garden.  It doesn't seem to matter a bit that I don't really believe in an afterlife - it still comforts me. 

Lost in the (Oak) Woods

And here it is, the green monster aka  Cobblestone Pullover completed just after my last post. It required very little finishing...just a few ends to darn in and the underarm stitches to graft. And seemingly, I'm not destined for the dreaded "boyfriend sweater" experience - he's worn it nearly every evening since it was finished and says he loves it.  It fits beautifully and the fabric is supple, drapes nicely and I hear it is comfortable to wear.  Yay!

Yep, once again, it's been awhile since posting.  No excuse really although I had a week long trip to the Okanagan visiting family and since returning, I continue to pursue my New Year's resolution of cleaning and sorting one drawer/cupboard/trunk/bin/shelf  a week all year. Can't recall if I mentioned this in my last post but because I felt so defeated and overwhelmed by the nasty build-up(s) that lurk behind closed doors and the lack of space to stash new acquisitions, I decided to try doing it in teeny chunks.  I made up an Excel spreadsheet and it appears that based on somewhat reasonable/realistic divisions, I'll still be doing this well into 2010.  The bonuses are already apparent six weeks in...forgotten and misplaced treasures have emerged from the nether regions of every cupboard so far and I'm not even out of the kitchen yet. Imagine the gems that await in my full-to-the-rafters workroom, not to mention  the joy of having access to the surface of my work table once again.

Spring appears to be on its way out here on the Pacific coast.  The snowdrops have been in bloom for a couple of weeks, the rhodos are showing some pink and the robins have arrived in force. Yesterday I gardened (second session of the year) and hung the clothes out on the line where they actually got dry...okay, almost dry. Sadly, today is windy and cold and I'm happy to stay in and work on my alpaca lace shawl and pity my fellow North Americans to the east who are still blanketed in snow.  I'm using the laceweight two-ply spun from the dark brown alpaca fibre I acquired from Blue Stone Alpacas on my fibre safari last fall.  It took forever to spin and I had to pay a lot of attention to consistency but it seems to be paying off. The deep brown suggested a leafy/woodsy motif so I chose the Gnarled Oakwoods wrap by Anne Hanson from the last Twist Collective newsletter.  It's really lovely although now that I'm into the third iteration of the 40-row repeat, I wish I had added one more section across (the pattern calls for three) to get more width.  No, I'm not about to tear out 90 plus rows of lace and start again. My hope is that it will magically expand with blocking but I suspect it may not end up wide enough for my liking.  I had envisioned this as a lightweight travel piece that would cover me from neck to ankles and just the width of my body - I'm a smallish person - on long plane and train journeys. I hate those icky blankets the airlines provide (do you really believe they wash them between usings?...not likely!)  The shawl (scarf?) is knitting up so light and airy that an extra panel would not have added much bulk.  Too late now...the thought of doing a second one is too overwhelming to consider just now. 

This is my first major commitment to lace and I'm finding it quite a challenge.  I keep forgetting to do the yarnovers at the end of the repeats and since the wrong side is a purl row, by the time I notice, I have to tink back two whole rows and part of another.  Also, I think perhaps the yarn is a bit underplied in some parts as it separates easily and I end up with surprise extras.  

Part of my Okanagan visit involved a couple of days with my latter-day hippie daughter and her partner in beautiful wintry Cherryville.  They are avid chain maille makers and they have taken to incorporating coloured rubber rings to add stretch and of course, colour to their work.  It seemed to me that these rings would make great stitch markers so I cadged a dozen each in white and yellow.  They work brilliantly for the lace as the colour shows up well against the dark brown yarn and they are flexible and soft and a little clingy so they don't slip too easily through the stitches.  I know these can be ordered in the bazillions online but I'm not sure what I would do with all the extras.  Unfortunately, they only seem to come in black at the hardware store - fine for pale yarns but pretty much invisible otherwise.  If anyone out there knows of a source that supplies a range of sizes in a range of colours in stitch-marker quantities, please share.

Elephants and Phone Booths

Another "holiday season" behind us - sometimes it seems like the social (and every other) aspect of Christmas is like trying to stuff an elephant into a phone booth.  Eventually, something's got to give.  Thanks to the weather, we had a respite this year, many events being cancelled due to the slippery roads and unusual amounts of snow for our usually green-year-round city.  What I didn't miss due to weather, I missed due to a bout of the flu which is still in the denouement stage as I write.  There was a lot of knitting done over the past few days as I lay beached upon the living room couch, listening happily to the audio version of Connie Willis's unabridged novel, "To Say Nothing of The Dog"...20 plus hours of entertainment with an excellent narrator.  It's supposed to be science fiction but reads more like another of my favourites, Oscar Wilde, given that the time travellers spend most of their time at a country house in late Victorian England.  

The green monster (aka The Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave) is almost knitted and is looking very good.  I was lucky to have such a simple garter and stockinette stitch project on the go since my fever-addled brain could probably not have coped with anything more complicated. The many pairs of Felted Clogs were well received and I managed to knit myself a pair as well - there is a reason these are so popular despite being quite a pain to knit - they are sooo comfortable and they look wonderful once they are fulled.  What was a loose floppy thing becomes a thick firm fabric and the colour intensifies.

During the holidays, I knitted another pair of Sea Anemone Wristwarmers in yet another colourway of Noro Blossom and was very happy with the outcome.  Herewith, the pattern, as promised.

Sea Anemone Wristwarmers

Yarn:  Noro Blossom, 1 40 gram skein

Needles:  4.5 mm DPNs or one long circular for magic loop

Divide skein into two equal balls (by length) and loosely  cast on 28 stitches (I went up to a 5.5 mm circular for the cast on). Join and work in the round in 2 x 2 rib (2 knit, 2 purl) for 3.5 inches.  Work another inch to an inch and a half in stockinette (4.5 - 5 inches from the cast on). Work one increase round by knitting into the front and the back of each stitch. (56 stitches).   Knit one round even.  Work a second increase round by knitting into the front and the back of each stitch (112 stitches).  Knit another round even.  Cast off knitwise and sew in ends. If you want the cuffs longer, you will need another skein of yarn, knitting in rib for however many more inches you desire before changing to stockinette. 

As you can see from the photo, I made no attempt to match them, preferring to believe that the chaotic colour scheme is part of their charm.  Pretty much impossible to match them with just one skein anyhow.  I divided the skein by winding a centre pull ball, hand winding a ball with the yarn held double to find the middle, cutting the yarn then rewinding each strand by turns to make two separate balls...kinda painful.  If anyone knows a more elegant solution, by all means, let me know.

Below are a few photos from our guild Christmas party - so much fun and many thanks to the organizers for their hard work putting it together and to all the fine chefs for their contributions.  The adorable lamb cake that begins this post was one of the offerings.  

Lamb cake

Seasonal headgear

More seasonal headgear

Raven snags the lambikins in the gift exchange/showdown

Table of revelers with my prize-winning

 felted tea cosy in the foreground