Rhinebeck Bound!

In about 16 hours I'll be heading out of the house and hitting the road for Rhinebeck, aka the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival. This is my most favorite weekend of the year, a trip I look forward to again almost as soon as it's over.

This is my third trip to Rhinebeck and I'll be joined by my BFFs (Best Fibrey Friends), Dianne and Geri. We've each booked classes for Friday, which is why tomorrow is our travel day. My class is Custom Fitting Existing Patterns, taught by the well-known Lily Chin. I rarely knit a pattern as-is, so I'm hoping to learn a lot of practical tips and tricks on Friday for making those small modifications to a pattern that create the perfect fit.

Rhinebeck is always a blur of yarn, roving, animals and food. There are thousands of knitters, shoulder to shoulder, wandering the fair and checking out the amazing products on offer. It's so wonderful to be surrounded by "my people" - those who understand one's love for wool and all things fibre. And it's common to hear "Is that a ?"  Or to have strangers come up and talk to you because of your knitwear. 

I've done little to prepare so far. I've got one final load of laundry in the washer, after which I'll start trying to figure out what to pack for a 4 day road trip. I have my passport, a bag of American change for the toll roads, and my homework done for class.

I'm leaving the biggest decisions for last: what knitting to pack for the 4 days.

Murphy's Law

Just a quick post this morning; I haven't had enough caffeine for more.

After going to bed early last night, I awoke at 4am unable to sleep any longer. In a rare burst of energy I decided to head into work, taking advantage of the early hour to avoid rush hour. Plus, I thought, I can do an hour of knitting at work before starting my day.

Fast forward to 6am in the office. I pulled out the bag containing my sock project and settled in, only to find: one of my DPNs was missing. This wouldn't have been an issue if I was knitting with 5 DPNs (double pointed needles), but I knit with 4, so loosing one needle reduces me to an impossible 3 needles.

So here I am, in the office alone, at 6:30am with no knitting and little motivation to begin the work portion of my day.

Thanks Murphy!

PS. Yes, I am trying to knit with only 3 needles. I'll start working at 7:00.

Why I test knit for designers

Over the past year, I've venture more and more often into the intriguing and exciting world of test knitting for designers. Aside from my straight-out love for knitting, part of the attraction for me comes from my day job. I'm a technical writer, which means that I write documentation for software products. I take information given to me by the programmers and turn it into instructions that are easily understood by our customers.

I guess you could say I'm a natural born test knitter. I love discovering new designers and participating in the process of delivering an error-free, simple to understand pattern to my fellow knitters.

Let's back up a bit. What's a test knitter and how did I become one?

Low Tide Cardigan - 7 yr size
Knit in Wollmeise Twin sock yarn

A test knitter takes a designer's pattern and follows the instructions to knit the garment. Our job is several fold: we must understand the designer's intent for the garment. What is it supposed to look like? From that understanding, we need the discipline to follow the pattern exactly yet with enough understanding to recognize potential errors. For example, in a current test knit one row called for a repeat of *YO, sk2p, YO, nupp, YO*.  This resulted in a double yarn over, which seemed suspicious to me. Sure enough, it's not what the designer intended.

We also need to keep an eagle eye out for areas of potential misunderstanding. Repeat rows 1 & 2 three times - does that mean I should knit rows 1 and 2 and then repeat it 3 times, or does that include the first time I did those rows? We also provide feedback to ensure the designer is using conventional terminology. Or sometimes we may suggest alternatives to a specific stitch: a M1 (make 1) instead of kfb (knit through the front and back of 1 stitch, which creates a knit and a purl stitch).

How did I get started? On Ravelry, there is a Free Test Pattern Knitters forum, in which designers post their patterns and request test knitters. Volunteers apply and are selected by the designers. I started slowly, with patterns I knew I could successfully complete - mostly socks. As I gained experience, I spread out to sweaters, shawls, and so on. Within the confines of this Ravelry forum, the testers use their own yarn and commit to create a project page with photos and link it to the designers pattern. Testers keep their finished garment and receive a free copy of the finished pattern. There is no other payment.

Other designers may work outside of Ravelry's test knitter forum and come to other terms with testers. Some designers have test knitters they use over and over again. Sometimes the yarn is provided and the tester do not keep the finished sample. It all depends on the designer and the test knit.

My personal criteria for selecting what to test knit includes:

• It must be something I will enjoy knitting. If I'm going to spend all that time (sometimes up to 60 hours or more!) I better have fun doing it. Or learn something from the experience. Straight-away this eliminates intricate color work.
• It should be a garment that I could see myself wearing. I'm not going to spend all that time knitting and not have something that suits me at the end of it.
• If it helps me destash some yarn that's been languishing on my shelves, so much the better!

I've discovered a few new favorite designers while test knitting. One of the earlier designers I 'met' is Londonleo, who has her blog and designs here. I tested her Harbinger shawl pattern and thoroughly loved it. It was such an interesting technique that I'd never seen before, yet it was easy to learn and produced beautiful results. And the Harbinger I knit provided me much comfort and warmth recently when my father was in the hospital.

Harbinger Shawl (Copyright Londonleo)

Another design team I've discovered, and promptly fell in love with, is the dynamic duo of Alexa Ludeman and Emily Wessel at Tin Can Knits. I recently finished the Low Tide Cardigan, which I ejoyed so much that I've knit it for both my 7 year old daughter and for myself!

But more on Tin Can Knits and their delicious designs in another post, including a review of their gorgeous book, Pacific Knits.

Low Tide Cardigan - adult size
Knit in Colourmart Silk & Linen

 

Finger Lakes Fiber Festival

A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to attend the Finger Lakes Fiber Festival in Hemlock, NY. It was a spur of the moment trip and I immediately invited Geri, my usual road trip companion, to accompany me.

Our plan was to depart bright and early on the Saturday morning, planning our 4 hour drive so that we would arrive around lunch time. Unfortunately, Murphy's Law swept into action and made itself felt in a big way: my friend couldn't find her passport.

Since June 2009, Canadians have been required to present their passports as identification when crossing into the United States via land or air; no other form of I.D. will do. So, my travel companion began a systematic search of her home and car to no avail. After a 40 minute search, we had to concede victory to Murphy and she reluctantly removed her luggage and knitting from my car. I had to go to the Festival by myself.

Had I not been meeting a fellow Ravelry member, I would have considered staying home. But, I was committed to purchasing a new (to me) Lendrum spinning wheel from someone I was meeting at the Festival.

The drive was uneventful and I successfully met up with the Lendrum's seller and took possession of my new wheel. More on that in another post.

The Finger Lakes Fiber Festival is relatively small in size (anything is, after Rhinebeck!), but has a great variety of vendors spread out over a large venue. My first stop was the fleece sale, which had started at 10am and had mostly sold out by the time I arrived. I spent a good 20 minutes discussing the merits of Romney versus some of the other breeds available, before eventually deciding on a 5.5 pound natural white Romney fleece from Johanneshof Romneys.

Alpacas! (photo courtesy of dearmary)

That mission accomplished, I slowed my pace and began checking out the vendors in the various barns. At BitsyKnits Fiber Arts I picked up some lovely Sharlea merino fibre. Sharlea is actually the trademarked name for the ultra-fine merino wool produced by Saxon Merino sheep, which are housed in "specially constructed sheep care sheds where all aspects of proper sheep husbandry, nutrition and feeding, health, wool growth, quality and cleanliness are exercised between each shearing." This wool is 13.3 microns. That's as soft as qivuit!

Not Sharlea, but still lovely sheepies.
(photo courtesy of dearmary)

At Nistock Farms, I fell in love with a CVM/Rambouillet blend that was extremely soft and lovely to the touch. After much internal debate, I decided to exercise some restraint and only bring home half of the 6 lb fleece, which came from a coated sheep called Gooseberry.

I spent a total of 3 hours wandering the booths, accumulating roving, fleece wash and other trinkets. Then it was time for a cold beverage before getting back into the car and driving to the hotel, just outside of Buffalo.

The 8.5 lbs of raw fleece which I purchased took up most of my car's trunk space. As I looked at it all, I knew that I'd better have a mill process it into roving for me. Processing that much by hand would take forever and produce a dubious quality roving in my inexperienced hands. Fortunately, a friend of mine was going to be traveling to Prince Edward Island and visiting the Belfast Mini Mill, which processes custom orders.

I'm getting the roving from those two Romney and CVM/Rambouillet fleeces back in a few days and I'll share all the details then. But I'll leave you with the tantalizing quote from the Belfast Mini Mill owner that has me itching with anticipation:
"not only was it beautifully clean but the Romney wool is ... amazing …..she loved everything about [my]  fleece."

A Walk in the Woods

 It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. Or, as I like to call it - Turkey Day.

This year, we are starting a new tradition in our family. We're spending the long weekend at our new family cottage, located in a wonderful 3 season community called Sandbanks Summer Village near Picton, Ontario.

The air is wonderfully crisp and the leaves are starting to turn. Perfect for a walk in the woods. Yesterday my daughter and her Oma (that's grandma to the rest of you) discovered a huge mushroom, and this morning we embarked on an expedition to document the monstrous wonder.

A girl and her puppy. Part of the cottage community is still being built, hence the orange fencing.

 We wandered along the path with Stella, our dog, running back and forth sniffing all the wonderful forest smells.

I kept an eye out for the supposedly huge mushroom. On our way, we saw these -->
The stump of this tree was surrounded by its own mushroom village.

Stella the wonder dog comes to meet Morris

 Finally, we can to the abode of the mushroom we had by now nicknamed "Morris". Let me tell you, Morris certainly exceeded my expectations.

Morris was about the size of a football.

This is Mabel, Morris' fungal wife. Hand added for scale - no way did I touch Mabel!

There is a lovely fire pit with Muskoka chairs down  by the lake. The white seats are pine tree stumps. In the summer, the community social organizer holds campfires here, complete with Smores and songs.



Stella loves to play in the water.

Playing fetch at the end of the dock

Later, we'll get our fill of turkey and other yummies. I'm thankful for my family and for the wonderful memories we've made at the cottage so far.

I'm baaaaack!

I don't know why I've let this blog languish for so long. Perhaps because I've found a cadre of fibery friends in real life with whom I've shared my adventures. But I keep hearing that I should be blogging about my fibery adventures, so here I am.

A lot has happened since my last blog posts. I've certainly expanded my repertoire, adding in spinning, sewing and now cross-stitch.

With an expanded repertoire comes more "toys". When I began spinning, I learned on drop spindle. Which quickly prompted me to buy a couple Golding spindles - the Rolls Royce of drop spindles. Drop spindling quickly because too slow for me. Next in my sights was a spinning wheel. But I'll save that story for another time.

I've also noticed a natural progression in my skills, as evidenced by my ability to spot and fix errors as I knit - key for any knitter. Another evolution in the past year has seen me venturing into test knitting for designers on Ravelry. I'll share some of my test knit designs and designers in subsequent posts.

I'm off to Rhinebeck in a few weeks - the NY Sheep and Wool Festival. So there will be many more tales to tell!

See you soon.

Better late than never

The pattern for my Trellis and Coin socks can be downloaded by clicking here. It is also available on Ravelry by following this link.

I was inspired by some richly toned Handmaiden Casbah yarn to create a unique sock pattern that would do justice to this lovely yarn. I wanted a pattern that was as voluptuous as the Casbah itself. For me, that means bold, stunning cables that capture the eye immediately.

Since my approach to patterns is to consider them more of a guide than a strict set of instructions from which I should not deviate, this sock pattern is intended to be customizable. No two pairs of feet are the same and it's easy to customize the width of the cuff or leg portion of the sock. That's what I love about this pattern – the back of the sock is a lovely alternating moss stitch and coin cable pattern. If you need to make the circumference of the sock bigger or smaller, simply adjust the number of stitches by adding or removing repeats of these stitches.

Trellis and Coin socks, love them for its delicious cables, but feel free to change the cuff, heel and toe to suit your preferences.

If you have any questions or notice any errata, please feel free to email me at: maureen at foulds dot ca, subsituting the appropriate symbols.