Welcome September

I adore this time of year. I suppose it's likely true for lots of people who knit/spin/weave/craft with wool, but the start of September means some very specific things for me: 1) the start of school (only one more day of holiday to go, not that I'm counting it down or anything like that); 2) a bite to the air that makes me think of wood fires and snuggling into wool sweaters and scarves and hats while the leaves blow on the autumn wind; 3) apple cider donuts (sadly not to be found in the UK, as far as I've been able to discover).

We've settled in to our new digs fairly well by this point. My studio, while being somewhat crowded by the vast piles of stuff that are amassing for the Great London Yarn Crawl, has sorted itself out into its usual state of disarray (there are towering piles around the computer on my desk, for instance, and bags of fleece waiting to be washed piled under the workbench, bits of yarn are strewn everywhere). The important thing is that I know where things are. Really I do...

So much GLYC stuff. So, so much.

Spinning nook

I've managed to set up my spinning wheel it's it proper spot, however, and the result has been a whirlwind of spinning. On of my (sadly failed) Tour de Fleece goals was to time how long it takes me to make a handspun woven scarf, from fiber to FO. So over the course of the last three weeks, I've been timing my spinning of various fiber types.

From left to right: Southern Cross FIber South African Merino/Corriedale in "Buccaneer", Hello Yarn BFL in "Scorch" and Hello Yarn Panda in "Villain"

Unwashed, so somewhat mangy looking.

All of these were spun as 2-ply yarns at my default single wpi. The really interesting thing to me is that my production speed varied depending on the fiber type. The fastest singles were from the SA Merino/Corriedale (4.15 yds/min), with the Panda next (3.75 yds/min) and the BFL the slowest (3.5 yds/min). Plying was less variable, ranging between 3.75 and 4 yds/min. 

My other motivation behind this timing experiment is that having all my stash in one room and visible has brought home the hard reality that I have more handspun yarn then I will ever use, and it needs to go to new homes. So I'm setting up to sell handspun over at Porpoise Fur, and the big question to be answered is How much will it cost? I'm very aware of the issues in pricing handmade goods, and trying to find the balance between what the market will bear and what is a reasonable compensation for time and skill put in to making the product. So all these variations in timing are very interesting from that perspective - stay tuned over at the Porpoise Fur blog for more details in the next few days.

The other result of sitting in a room full of yarn has been much knitting! I've knit two shawls in the last couple of weeks, finished off a languishing pair of socks, and started a Tiny Tea Leaves Cardigan for Boo (Devil's will follow shortly). My design brain is going bonkers too, and I've cast on a new shawl design that is flying along...whee!

So what's on your needles with the advent of the new season?

The Creative Blog Hop

This is the first one of these I've ever participated in, so thanks to Jacqui at Happymaking Designs for including me! She tagged me last week in her post, which I really enjoyed reading. It's always interesting to get a view into other's creative process and how they work. So welcome to anyone finding their way here from her site - I'm glad to have you for a visit!

Here are the blog hop questions:

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
3. Why do I write/create what I do?
4. How does my writing/creating process work?

As I thought about these questions, I realised that my wooly creative life is inextricably linked with other parts of my life, so there's going to be more in here then just yarn. Consider yourselves warned...

What I'm working on:

Under normal circumstances, I knit, spin, crochet (some), weave (occasionally) and dye fiber. I also work part time as a biomedical research scientist. I started technical editing for knitting designers in May of this year, and am in the process of trying to do more scientific editing/writing as I get less enthusiastic about lab work. I'm on Ravelry as porpoise and my Rav designer page is here. You can find my handdyed fibers at Porpoise Fur.

It's been a crazy few months for my family. We moved to the UK from the States just over five years ago, as expats with my husband's company. At the beginning of April, the company said "We're sending you back to Houston at the end of July." This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but Himself and I are both from New England, and experienced more culture shock with moving to Texas in 2002 then in moving to the UK. So we spent a few weeks dithering about what to do, decided to stay in the UK indefinitely, and have spent the intervening weeks finding a new place to live, finishing the school year and sorting out new schools for the autumn, going on a long-planned and eagerly anticipated holiday to Norway, and packing up the house and moving. We haven't moved far, but it is still a huge drain on everyone's energies. My creative energy has been otherwise directed, not surprisingly. Our trip to Norway did give me huge inspiration on both the dyeing and knitting fronts - I came back full of ideas for new colorways and new projects (in some instances, with the same inspiration for both). Now the challenge is to get everything sorted out so I can get back to work on those ideas and get them out into reality.

The other thing I'm currently spending a lot of energy on is the Great London Yarn Crawl, of which I am one of the co-organisers. This event is a one-day stash enhancement extravaganza, happening this year on 20th September, where nine teams of yarn lovers visit four London yarn or haberdashery shops over the course of the day, ending with an after-party sponsored by Pom Pom Quarterly. It's happening in just over six weeks, so we are frantically trying to get everything sorted out for the big day.

How my work differs from others:

On the design side of things: as Jacqui said, this is a really tough question! The number of ways to knit a sweater or a sock are, let's be honest, not infinite. I think what can be strikingly different is how the designer got from inspiration to final piece. I find that a lot of my inspiration for knitwear design comes from structural examples - I've designed hats and mittens inspired by London sky scrapers, a stole that mimics pierced stone screens found at Moghul palaces in India, and socks that were inspired by the tiles of a swimming pool. I also am inspired by nature, and particularly by water. I love designing with textured stitch patterns; the process of trying to re-vision an architectural element or a waterfall in knitted fabric is more fun then should be legal.

On the dyeing side of things: my colorways all have a story behind them, whether its how cells divide, a number that shows up in art across the ages, or an inspiration that hits closer to home. I usually have an image in mind before I create a new colorway, and my dyeing process owes a huge debt to my lab background - every little detail gets written down so it can be successfully repeated as needed on different fiber bases.

Why I write/create:

Because I'd be a miserable pathetic ball if I didn't. Really and truly miserable.

It is a bit strange to think that there are strong similarities between scientific research and knitting design, but I find the skills needed for writing a scientific grant or an academic paper can also be applied to writing a knitting pattern or a technique tutorial. I find the challenge of writing a clear, easy to follow pattern really fun. This may be why I have found tech editing to be such a rewarding experience. I also find the puzzle solving process (of both science and designing) to be endlessly entertaining, just on its own. As well as requiring the same kind of out-of-the-box creative thinking. 

Dyeing is a never ending experiment: if I put this much dye on this fiber and heat it this way, what happens? The fact that other people seem to like the results, and go on to make beautiful things with them is the ultimate in gratification.

How my writing/creating process works:

London Slouch photographed by the London Eye.

I've talked a little bit about this already, but let's take an example - the London Slouch hat. My "real" work is located near Waterloo Station, so every time I go to the lab from southwest London, where I live, I get to pass by the London Eye. One day I was daydreaming on the train, noodling about with ideas for a hat collection inspired by different cities (which became Travelling Hats), and was struck by the silhouette of the Eye against the sky - round cars at the end of long straight spines, wheeling across the skyline. The circular yarn over motifs around the hat were derived from a pattern in one of Barbara Walker's stitch dictionaries, and they are linked to each other over the crown of the hat by columns of twisted knit stitches, which mimic the spokes of the London Eye.

Thanks so much for coming to visit and read my babblings! To share the love, I'm going to tag my BKFF and GLYC Partner-in-Crime, Allison, at Champagne and Qiviut, and the fabulous Linda of Kettle Yarn Co. Alli is a thoroughly enthusiastic knitter, throwing herself at any and all projects with contagious enthusiasm, and is a fabulous resource in the world of marketing and social media - I'm looking forward to reading her thoughts on these questions. Linda creates the most gloriously rich and inviting colorways for her yarns, and I'm sure she'll have something new and exciting up her sleeve. 

Thanks again to Jacqui for tagging me, thank you for coming by to visit, and go check out my tag-ees - they are fabulous!

One benefit of tech editing

I started tech editing for real in May of this year, after an online class and a bunch of practice in an apprenticeship. And I love it - it appeals to the analytical side of my brain, and to the "this isn't perfect here's what you should do" voice inside my head that I try very hard to keep internal instead of external most of the time.

While I was pretty sure that I was going to enjoy tech editing by the time I started, there has been an unforeseen benefit: namely that I get to see a whole bunch of really, really cool patterns before they're generally available. Sometimes I can't help myself, and I have to ask the designer if I can cast on right away because I just can't help myself.

Two recent patterns I haven't been able to resist: Tabetha Hedrick's Fée Shawlette

Nautilus shawl...

I edited this pattern just about the time I started thinking about a present for Boo's Year 2 teacher. This was knit out of less then a skein of Kettle Yarn Co's discontinued Falkland/Tencel blend, so it's got fantastic drape and a lovely sheen from the Tencel.

Boo was a most enthusiastic model (my little hambone)...

My latest tech editing project is the Santa Maria Scarf from NorthbrooKnits. 

The pattern isn't up on Ravelry yet (although I know it's been released), so I won't give too many details. I'm using my precious one and only skein of A Verb for Keeping Warm yarn. It's their Annapurna base in "Root" (dyed with madder) and was part of the Knit Love Club in 2010. I figured that any yarn with cashmere belonged on my neck, not my feet, but hadn't found the right project until now. 

Pattern is addictive, yarn is luscious, Porpoise is happy. The end.

Reboot II

I am slowly emerging from a fog of post-holiday, moving-induced chaos. There are still boxes everywhere, although many of them are now empty. We don't have wardrobes (somehow all of our previous UK houses have had built in wardrobes so we haven't had to get any), and Boo needs a different bed for her very small room. The loft conversion is full of all of the crap that I don't know how to tidy away yet.

And my office/studio is in a state of right disarray. I can actually move around in the space now (as opposed to before the weekend), and I've got almost all the dyeing stuff up there, if not put away. Its a complete disaster for the most part.

But there are glimpses of what is to come, and it's very exciting.

Porpoise Fur fiber and random stash yarn storage

Personal fiber stash plus bins of yarn for designs.

This room is so much bigger then my previous office space, that I'm having to stop myself from rubbing my hands together in glee every time I look around it. Plus, the floor sends me in to transports of joy whenever I look at/walk on it (we hates carpets my precious...).

Forgotten handspun stash begging to be knit up.

More handspun goodness.

I'll post some more photos when I've got everything in place and sorted out. In the meantime there has been some knitting behind the scenes...

FO blocked and waiting for a photoshoot.

In the meantime, the needles are ready to go!

Everyone stores their straight needles in an empty single malt container, don't they?

Reboot

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of various life transitions. We've been in the UK as expats for the last five years, but at the beginning of May, Himself's company said "You're going back to Houston at the end of July." To which we replied with a resounding "Hell no!" (OK, maybe that was mostly me). In any event, the decision to stay in the UK was followed by deciding whether Himself was going to change jobs (he's not), and has now been followed by the necessity of finding a new place to live (which had the buy vs rent dilemma, followed by the Hoo boy, we will have to sell a kidney and/or a child to get a down payment right now realisation).

With all this madness going on, I have been seeking refuge in Other People's Designs, and enjoying it tremendously. A couple weeks ago I cast on for Veera Valimakki's Juniper on a long plane ride, in some lovely dark red merino I picked up in Florence with my sister-in-law.

All was going swimmingly, if quite slowly. The sweater is in reverse stockinette, and even though there were directions FROM THE DESIGNER HERSELF in the Unwind Brighton KAL Ravelry thread about how to do it inside out (so mostly knitting instead of mostly purling), I decided to be a freaking purist and do it as written. Purling. Lots and lots of purling. Add to that the fact that I had chosen a pair of blunt and unpleasant hard plastic circulars (the better to deal with airport security) and the result was an unhappy project.

I sat on my couch on Friday night, looking at this sweater yoke. And thinking to myself "Self, you could switch to those lovely zippy metal Addi Turbos you've got upstairs. And while you're at it, we could start over again and do this thing in stockinette."

Juniper is cruising along now.

The next thing I knew I was sitting in the midst of a pile of bumpy red spaghetti, casting on for the neckline again. However, two days later, I'm past where I was when I ripped it out, and am zooming ahead. It's not going to be done by the end of the KAL (that would be tomorrow...), but it should be done well ahead of the worst of the British "summer".

It's good that I've resigned myself to not finishing this for the KAL, because yesterday morning, my lovely friend Allison completely and totally blindsided me with another fabulous Veera pattern that made me drop everything, buy the pattern, print it out, wind up the yarn and start swatching, all before 10:00 am on a Sunday morning (there may have been vast quantities of coffee involved. Don't tell anyone...)

The pattern I'm so excited about is Whispers, a gorgeous ethereal little summer top, knit in fingering weight on large needles, with a loose drapey fit through the body, fantastic fluttery sleeves, and pleats above the bustline. Allison had called me with a sizing question, and when I pulled up the pattern on Raverly, I gasped out loud. Must Have It Now. So we're having an impromtu KAL of our very own. She's using sweetgeorgia Tough Love sock, and I'm going with my second yarn idea: Scrumptious Lace in Cherry, double stranded.

Is that not the most gorgeous red you've ever seen?

My swatch is dry, and the gauge is right on. I can't wait to get started. 

I guess we can call this my Red Period. Either that, or my Homage to Veera Period. Maybe both...