A Hot Summer Day at Lambtown, USA

So I thought that I would try to fit one more blog post in before we hit August 1st. I am unexplainably excited for August. I am not sure why.


Michelle, Adrienne, and I hit up Lambtown. Whoa, it was hot -- something like 95F. In the Bay Area, we rarely reach 85. Maybe in September. We looked around. I want to be a supporter of Lambstown. Truly. But there were alot of vendors that had nothing to do with fiber. And, they were interspersed with the fiber vendors which kind of sucked. I kind of felt like it should be called "Lambtown & Other Random Stuff". I hope in the future they place all of the fibery vendors/ people together. I did see alot of great spinner/ knitter friends that I haven't seen in a while so that was great.


It was so hot that we decided to sit under a tent and listen to live music. Well, that was just not going to cut it. This was the perfect excuse to buy some fiber. I ended up with 2 colorways of Chasing Rainbows. This orangey color and a blue-teal color. I plan to use it for the Chevron Scarf.



This was working out quite nicely until these 2 60 year old guys took the stage and started singing about cowgirls and texas. I started dropping my spindle. Michelle started to make mistakes in her knitting. We took it as our queue to pack up and leave.

I am going to divert away from fiber for a moment. On the way out of Dixon, we stopped at a car show. Loved it. Sidenote: I was raised by a man who looooves moving objects; virtual and real. We are talking about everything from Atari to U.S. Airforce Jets to any number of cars, etc. He taught me about these moving objects whether I wanted to know or not. Out of all of the moving objects, cars were always my favorite. You can imagine my excitement when I drove up to see this...



It was very interesting to see the dashboards -- to see how the knobs and levers had changed over the years.



I hope everyone had a nice July.

Jabbar and Bandhani Awake My Intuitive Creative Process.

Wow, it has been way to long to go without blogging. It has been a big week. The house's exterior is finally done being painted. My grandfather's brain surgery went well -- and I had a very special guest this week.

My very good friend, Jabbar. He is a master bandhani dyer from Gujarat, India.

I was lucky enough to have gorgeous silk scarves strewn around my house!


About Jabbar's work: He and his family do a form of resist dyeing called Bandhani, also known as tie-and-dye. They use natural and acid dyes. Each dot you see here is made by tying a very small bunch of silk with thread. When the fabric is dyed, that little tied part does not take the dye. After the dye has set, we pull the scarf and all of the thread pops off and the design appears.


When I lived in India, Jabbar and his family took very good care of me and I consider them to be my second family. It has been five years since I have seen them. And this is Jabbar's first trip to the U.S. I can describe this trip emotional at best. It brought up alot of feelings about my time in India, and alot of feelings about the fact that I have not returned to see my loved ones in India. I have been literally aching to write about textiles and India lately and seeing Jabbar really sealed the deal. I am thinking about creating a series on my blog dedicated to textiles: history, cultural meaning, and technique.

I decided that I really needed to take the day (and maybe week) off. I really want to make art this week and focus upon my surroundings. Today, we went to Bolinas to Agate Beach.

bsolutely beautiful. To look at the tide pools.

I am always amazed how much color is packed into these small microcosms. Inside the purple shells, live little blue crabs.

Otherwise, on the home front, I have washed more fleece. argh. but beautiful....


And here are the spun samples, knit up into cable swatches. They are a little hard to see....


And last but not least, I spun a little yarn tonight, inspired by my day at Agate Beach. All of the fleece used was natural dyed indigo, cochineal, and madder.

I love using my intuitive sense to create -- and can easily get bogged down by practicality, structure, and theory. This week I am devoting to the intuitive creative process -- creating from and trusting my gut feeling. I can't wait to see what I will make!

Come one! Come all! Handspun Yarn & Hand Dyed Roving!

Hello -- I am happy to announce my offering of beautiful hand spun yarn and hand dyed roving at our new online store: A Verb for Keeping Warm.com. Right now, we have a great selection of fibers in stock: merino, merino/silk, corriedale, and bluefaced leicester.

In the upcoming months, we will be working hard on expanding our company to include our first line of naturally dyed 100% merino yarn, naturally dyed roving, and dyestuffs like madder, indigo, fustic, and cochineal. We will also be expanding our list of fibers to include cashmere and alpaca.

Email me your contact information and I will send you upcoming store specials and updates. Thanks for stopping by!

Black Sheep Gathering: Washed fleece and spun locks.

We have been very busy around here. Washing (which may have to join the list of verbs to keep warm), flicking, spinning, and washing again. I can not wait to knit these into swatches.

From left to right: targhee, shetland, shetland (I have left the guard hairs in both shetland), coopsworth/romney, and ramboulliet. Out of all of the samples, I love them all, but I especially love the Ramboulliet. It feels like velvet. Sometimes the color looks dark grey and sometimes chocolate brown. I defintely see a sweater in the future.

All 1oz samples have been spun from the lock with a mainly worsted draw. I find spinning from the lock somewhat frustrating. Funny enough, while most people learn how to draft worsted, I learned to draft over the fold with a long draw. The over the fold draw is great because its brings alot of air into the yarn making it very lofty and soft but soemtimes it is nice to have a tighter, slicker yarn. Also, I am used to spinning from top or roving. I decided to try and perfect my worsted draw because I would really love to use these yarns to make a cable sweater and I would really like those cables to pop. Needless to say, this experiment has been a challenge, trying to maintain the proper worsted drafting method, feeding a similiar and continuous amount of fibers into the drafting triangle and so on.

My next program will be to spin each type of fiber from a carded rolag. And to spin the shetland without the guard hairs. Onto the next topic, the new additions to my stash:

Lynne Vogel has hand dyed this beautiful blend of 60% merino/40% bamboo.


This is my first top up sock. I picked up this yarn from the Blue Moon Fibers booth. As you can see, there is another skein of Blue Moon hanging out in the background.



You might say "What on earth?" But I ask for you to with hold your judgement. Yes, the colors are in athestetic nightmare. But, these were done entirely on a drop spindle. I have to add that I have hated my drop spindle for the past years and am very proud to announce that I have a new warm and friendly relationship with my drop spindle. And, the even cooler aspect of these socks, is that they were knit as I spun, thus, they are made from energized singles. The close up photo is meant to show you the singles slanting. Energized singles give you a very elastic and springy sock. The only other cool piece of information that I can add is that these socks were plant dyed. Oh, and they actually fit my feet. Something, that I have not been so successful at in the past.


Here, we have a photo of my sad little indigo shawl. I started using a pattern from the Folk Shawls book. You know, I really don't think I like this book. Every shawl I try, I just don't like. What's a girl to do? Well, she goes out and buys A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker. And, she makes up her own pattern. Swatching starts soon. I am feeling a watery, an ocean theme perhaps.

Spun Stitches SAL/KAL

Short recap: I have joined a Spin Along/ Knit Along called Spun Stitches. This is one of my entries:

This weekend I am attending a 3 day indigo dyeing intensive. My dyeing teacher is kind! She said that we can bring some of our handspun to dye in her indigo pot. I thought, perfect, I will use this opportunity to dye my yarn for the KAL. This also means I have alot to accomplish by Friday.

As you might recall from a few posts back, I had a large pile of uncarded Polwarth fleece and didn't know what pattern to knit. Well, I found a pattern to knit. Its the Red Sea Shawl from the Folk Knits book. And, over the past week, I have carded most of the polwarth. I can not believe how much the polwarth grows and fluffs up when carded. Its silky and soft. I just love it. Below you can see the big pile of polwarth rolags.


I happily spun and spun the morning away. I decided I needed some entertainment, so, I watched Keep the RIver on Your Right. It is a docmentary about a native NY who travelled to Peru in 1955 as a Fulbrighter and ended up living with one of the native tribes. The twist in the story occurs when he finds himself alongside his tribe as they mass murder an entire village, and then is involved in cannabalism. Needless to say, this has marked him and has haunted him for his entire life. Whoa... this was pretty intense.

The DVD ended up making my spinning a side note. And after an hour and a half, I ended up with 382 yards. It feels like cotton. It's great and ready to go to the indigo pot.

I still have more polwarth to spin but I am a little afraid that I won't have enough. I think the pattern calls for something like 800-900 yards. I keep saying to myself "Cross that bridge when you come to it". I can not wait to feel this along my fingers as I knit!

Natural Dyes: Our First Attempt Is Successful!

Well, we are happy to report that our yarn came out beautifully. The array of color we obtained is amazing. I really did not expect to get this many colors from three dyes.

Starting from the left, we have 2 skeins dyed with madder. The orange color was obtained by mixing a 1/2 tsp of cream of tartar with the madder. The next two skeins were dyed with onion skins. We think that the use of red onion skins created more of a chartreuse color. The dark blue grey skeins were made with the logwood grey and the last purple skein was made by mixing madder and logwood grey. We put a paste mixture of 1/2 tsp of logwood grey in the bottom of the jar, put the wool in, and placed a paste mixture of 1/2 tsp of madder on top of the wool.


Next, I am going to create a dye notebook, start recording and analyzing our results. And of course, plan our next dyeing adventure.