13th Annual Holiday Show and Sale

On Saturday, November 11, 2023, the Mountain Spinners and Weavers Guild will host its 13th Annual Holiday Show and Sale at the Prescott Armory (Grace M. Sparkes Activity Center). Our guild will have more than 1,000 handwoven, knitted, handspun, and felted items for sale. The Prescott Area Woodturners will be there as well, selling beautifully crafted items. We will have spinning and weaving demonstrations throughout the day, and amazing raffle baskets are just waiting to be won.

Vintage Knitting Patterns Online

There are numerous vintage knitting pattern sources online--either free to download or as excellent references. These are fabulous sites to learn about the history of knitting in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as to acquire some cool patterns. Below are links to collections I've found useful.

A note of caution: if you download patterns, be sure they are out of copyright. Unfortunately, there are people who post copyrighted patterns illegally.

The Victoria and Albert Museum

Project Gutenberg

Free Vintage Knitting

Antique Pattern Library

Knitting Reference Library of the University of Southampton

Vintage Purls - vintage patterns no longer under New Zealand copyright

Australian patterns from the '30s, '40s, and '50s

PDFs of Canadian knitting booklets issued during WWII

Library of Congress

The British Library

On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics
OK, this site is for weaving, but it's great!

And if you want to purchase vintage patterns or reproductions of them:

The Vintage Knitting Lady

Vintage Knitting Patterns

Baby Lambs!

Galadriel had twins late Tuesday night -- a boy and a girl. I was getting ready to go to bed about 11 pm when I heard something that sounded very much like a lamb. Sure enough, there were two! In order to move them to the lambing pen, I had to put the flashlight in my pocket. It's not easy catching two black lambs, one in each hand, on a very dark night.

Channel Island Cast-on

Wanting to view the Channel Island cast-on, I went to YouTube. The first video that came up was from Eunny Jang. I've watched several of her other videos and liked them, so I watched this one. It taught me what I needed to know.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up-0QOubXQ8


I figured it's always useful to get more than one take on a subject, so I watched the next Channel Island cast-on video in the YouTube queue. That knitter presented the subject a bit differently.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUDQnKA0KDo


So I watched two more YouTube videos, and each of them took varying approaches to the cast-on, especially the last one by Ann Kingstone.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwWy57-5nmk

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uDb_O3c0rw&index=5&list=LLkkaVkDugej8K9tbT6iwOzA&t=3s


The moral of this story is don't rely on just one source to learn something new. The more you know, the more options you have. Oh, and this is a very cool cast-on.

Sheep on a Schedule

When the summer monsoon rains come, I let the sheep out most afternoons to graze on the green grass. They love it, of course, and it lowers the feed bill for the alfalfa hay.

Awhile back, I opened the gate for them to graze in the morning. Apparently, I messed up their schedule. All the sheep hesitated to go out, and Gimli, one of the rams, simply refused to exit at all. Instead, he shifted over to his usual spot to await hay. I finally scattered COB (corn, oats, barley, and molasses) on the grass to get Gimli out. After they ate it, the sheep dispersed and started browsing.

Seriously, guys, you can graze in the morning as well as the afternoon. Silly sheep.

Autumn Towels

I just finished weaving five autumn towels and a bread basket cloth. OK, so the bread basket cloth was supposed to be a sixth towel, but I ran out of warp yarn. Hey, bread basket cloths are good. They're all from the same warp. Changing weft yarns certainly makes a huge difference.

Madeleine

Some of this year's wool from Madeleine, one of my Cotswold sheep. Her fleece is absolutely gorgeous. It was her first shearing, though, and she was not cooperative. I had the bruises to show for it.

Knitting Lessons

I'm teaching a woman to knit who works in the same building as I do. I dropped by the other day to say hello.

When she saw me, she said, "Emergency!"

I asked, "Knitting emergency?"

"Yes!" she replied as she grabbed her knitting.

She's knitting her first slipper and somehow managed to wrap a stitch instead of knitting it. I was pleased she recognized there was an error even if she didn't know how to correct it. She's enthusiastic about knitting and already has a list of things she plans to make. Teaching is so much fun.

Herd or Play?

Yesterday, returning the sheep to their pen after grazing was easy. It was hot, and both Logan and the flock were tuckered. The sheep simply followed Logan as he ambled to their enclosure and through the gate. Below is a picture of a job well done.

Today, however, was more exciting and involved a chicken.

Instead of gathering the grazing sheep, Logan entered the barn and discovered a hen. He was in a bouncy, playful mood and started chasing her around. He plays with the chickens often and doesn't want to hurt them, but he was overexcited and kept trying to pick her up. I told him to stop, and the chicken ran off. She didn't go far, though, and Logan continued the game. I finally scooped up the slobber-covered hen, put her in the hay storage room, and gave her some COB (corn, oats, barley, and molasses) to mollify her. She can leave via the open window when she's ready.

I turned around to find the sheep entering their enclosure under Logan's watchful eye. Huh, well, that part was easy.

Vet Visit Anxiety

When you run into your vet while out shopping, someone who you usually see just once a year, and she greets you by name, does that imply that your dog is a bit too memorable?

Logan is perfectly happy to go to the vet's and to see her and her office staff, but he emphatically does not want to be examined or treated. The situation makes vet visits a challenge.

Sometimes Sheep Respond to Their Names

While taking the trash out to the road, I saw all but one of the sheep grazing nearby. Coming back, I noticed Logan had encouraged the group to move along.

Wondering about the other sheep, I asked Logan, "Where's Gimli?" Immediately, I heard a deep baa and looked up to see Gimli rounding some scrub oaks and trotting towards me. After I petted him, he wandered off to graze some more. That was a really weird experience: I had no idea the ram knew his name.

Hooded Scarf

Preferring a hooded scarf knit in one piece without picking up stitches, I designed the scarf below using short rows to shape the hood. I knitted it from 100% alpaca worsted weight yarn. It's warm, comfy, and drapes beautifully. I'm selling the pattern on my website and on Ravelry (https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/hooded-scarf-with-short-rows).

Capes of Eleanor Bostwick

Eleanor Bostwick, a fellow guild member, is a lovely woman and an amazing artist. Watch the YouTube video "Art Over Your Shoulder: A Chat with the Woman Behind the Capes."

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_tod_S11BY

One of Eleanor's capes

e

Finished Poncho

Back on September 26, I posted that I was going to make a poncho from yardage I wove some time ago. I finally did it.

Handwoven poncho with knitted collar

Close-up of fabric

The fabric was longer than I needed, so I cut it and fringed the cut end, thus avoiding the need for seams. I made a template for the neck opening, pinned it onto the fabric, and zigzagged around it with my sewing machine. (The tissue paper template kept tearing and shifting, so next time I'll outline the template with tailor's chalk and sew around the markings.) I then cut out the fabric inside the stitching.

Next, I decided on an appropriate gauge for the yarn I was going to knit with and picked up stitches around the neck opening accordingly. I knit twice as much distance as the width of the collar I wanted and then turned the extra knitting inside and sewed it to cover the zigzagged edge of the weaving.

To maintain the V-neck, I decreased a stitch on both sides of a central stitch every other round for three sets of decreases. After knitting one round even, I increased one stitch on both sides of the central stitch every other round to return to my original number of stitches. That way I was able to turn the knitting inward and sew it without the fabric puckering at the V.

The sides of the poncho are open. I may leave it that way or add a button on each side so the wearer can fasten it if desired. I'm quite pleased with the result.

The Tarkhan Dress: The World's Oldest Extant Woven Garment

A linen dress found by the British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1913 was thought to be the oldest woven garment known, but until recently scientists were unable to determine its age. Radiocarbon dating has now established that the dress was made approximately 5,000 years ago.

 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0216/150216-tarkhan-dress

Soft Furnishings

The pillow top is woven in overshot with an 8/2 cotton background and a slightly heavier rayon/wool pattern yarn. I made the piping from the same material as I used for the pillow back, and I inserted a zipper at one end. The pillow's 12" x 16".

Knitting in the Fresh Air

This morning I was sitting on the deck knitting the second of a pair of mittens. It was pleasantly windy, a refreshing late October day. Logan, my dog, had come over to be petted and then wandered off to lay on the other end of the deck.

The mitten was progressing nicely, and I had almost finished a round when a gust of wind caught the ball of yarn at my right. The skein flew into the air, passed between the vertical metal uprights of the railing, soared over the water tank, and landed out of sight on its other side.

I took a moment to contemplate the recovery operation and decided my best alternative was to toss my knitting onto the tank and retrieve everything from below. It was highly unlikely I could throw the ball of yarn back up onto the deck in that wind. So I walked down, picked up the skein from the ground, and rescued my knitting from the top of the tank.

Although it was still very pretty outside, I decided knitting in the house would be a good idea.

Woolhandling

A short video about sheep shearing and handling the sheared fleece. Very cool.

 https://www.facebook.com/ChantelRenaePhotography/videos/1358616410822874/

Playmates

Animals can be so entertaining.

Last week I bought a couple bales of hay. Since my back was hurting, I didn't want to unload them, so I parked the truck a short distance from the barn and left the hay in it. I've been feeding the sheep out of the truck the last few days.

My hen, Miss Kitty, is free range. She doesn't need chicken feed, but she enjoys it, so I usually give her some every couple days to supplement what she chooses to eat on her own. The hay was in the truck, so I didn't need to enter the barn to feed the sheep since Tuesday, which meant I hadn't given the hen any chick feed since then.

Apparently Miss Kitty decided to protest. She was waiting for me near the house when I came out this morning and, clucking, followed me to the truck. She was obviously letting me know it was past time to refill her bowl.

In the meantime, Logan, my dog, spotted Miss Kitty. Chasing her from the truck to the barn, he could have easily caught her. Instead, he kept about two feet behind her the entire way, clearly enjoying the game.

He's quite extraordinary. He weighs 60 pounds and is perfectly willing to jump on me without holding back. But with the hen, he's gentle. When he catches her, he nudges her with his nose and even drools on her and then lets her go. She's not real thrilled with the experience, but there are times when she could avoid him but doesn't, so maybe she likes the attention.

I have enough trouble trying to understand dog psychology. I can't even begin to understand the thought processes of a chicken.

Originality...or Not

"What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original."

"If we're free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it."

From Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative, pp. 7 & 8.