Top row:
Jan (Black Dog) – Feb (Flying Horses) – Mar (Ocean Park) – April (Campground)
Second row:
May (Oak Bluffs beach) – June (Edgartown harbor)
Third row:
July (Gay Head cliffs) – Aug (Among The Flowers)
Bottom row:
Sep (Tabernacle) – Oct (Morning Glory Farm) – Nov (MG Farm) – Dec – Edgartown (Federated Church)
Comments Off on My 2013 Vineyard Calendar …
I finally found time to ply my angora, corridale, wool/angora singles into yarn yesterday. I had quite a lot of the blue/purple singles left over so I had a chance to try plying off a nostepinne as I’d seen a spinner do last fall at the Fiber Festival of New England. She said to wind your singles into a center pull ball on your ball winder and then slip that onto your nostepinne. You take both ends and slip a bit through your leader and off you go. It takes a bit of practice and I think my yarn is a bit underplied but I found it much quicker than using a plying ball.
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Tagged Spinning
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Tagged Books
My creation for 2013.
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Tagged calendar pictures, Martha's Vineyard, New Jersey, New York, Photographs
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being the first person to buy something from a brand new etsy shop: Rustic Roots Farm out of Michigan. I purchased a pound of her dark brown Shetland roving. So far, I have spun two skeins like the one pictured. The yarn is a cushy worsted weight 3-ply, and the wool is really quality stuff. It’s soft, lofty, strong, and retains just the slightest hint of lanolin scent. I am having a blast spinning it up.
It was hard not to be completely charmed by Jill’s store. It is set up very tastefully with simple and beautiful photographs of the product and the farm. They are so beautiful in fact, I think they speak for themselves. She graciously allowed me to post a few of them on my blog.
See what I mean? Don’t you just want to wrap yourself up in that wool? That warm sunlight is almost enough to make you forget it’s really winter outside. (Pretty obvious in my photo)
Go say hi to Jill from Rustic Roots Farm. Tell her I sent you, and have fun playing with Shetland.
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Tagged organic wool, rustic roots farm, Shetland sheep, shetland wool, Spotted
Shawl Design in Plain English by Julia Riede, 2012, 122pp.
I’m always on the lookout for good self published books. Julia’s book contains a ton of good info, as well as nine different patterns, lovely in their own right, that illustrate the design concepts. (The patterns are all available individually as well.)
She walks you through the initial number crunching (swatching, blocking, measuring gauge, repeat dimensions, and so on). Subsequent chapters apply these principles to specific shawl shapes.
What are the shapes covered?
Within each shape chapter she covers the specific ways of constructing each shape. For rectangular shawls, for example, she covers from hem to hem, each half worked from center out with a provisional cast on, and diagonally from one corner. She also discusses borders and edgings.
Her book is one of the most complete I’ve seen for teaching how to design different shapes. It’s a wonderful complement to Anna Dalvi’s Shaping Shawls, which I also love.
The patterns are all charted. I think Callie, shown left, is one of my favorites.
There’s also a small stitch dictionary with a very nice collection of stitches; each page has a photo of the stitch pattern and its chart.
Julia has a Ravelry group. She has a website, too.
Note: My review copy was given to me by the author. All opinions are my own.
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Tagged Knitting & Spinning
All three girls sharing the couch has to be an auspicious omen for the new year.
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Tagged cats
