The Independent Stitch

Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook numbers, part 2 - Romney

My previous post laid out the background and my philosophy for presenting the numbers describing fiber qualities in The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook. As my first example, I used a breed that was relatively simple, because it's modern and part of its definition involves very specific wool qualities: Cormo.

Although the other breeds I'm going to talk about were significantly more complicated to come up with numbers for, I was able to lay out all of the basic issues with the Cormo (which was not, of course, as straightforward as it "should" have been). So let's look at another breed's scenario. . . .

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Example 2:

Romney

The Romney is a breed with a long history and a lot of variation. It originated, and obtained its name, in southeastern England. However, it's a successful type of sheep for both wool and meat growing and has been exported around the world. In each locale, breeders have selected for different qualities of fiber. In addition, Romney genetics include the possibility of natural colors. For large-scale industrial production, anything other than pure white wool isn't desirable, but handspinners treasure the lovely colors.

So: what types of numbers could I use to describe the Romney's wool?

As for the Cormo, the first thing I did was simply gather a bunch of data from as many sources as I could find and put the information all in one place:

 

 

As before, I sorted by geographic location, when I could tell what that was. Noticeably absent from this list is the Romney Sheep Breeders' Society in the British Isles. When I reviewed its website, there were only subjective descriptions of wool quality (although it did mention "heavy fleeces of 4 to 5kg").

There's quite a lot of overlapping data: Fournier & Fournier's Romney Marsh, The Sheep Trust (UK), and the British Coloured Sheep Breeders Association have nearly identical information. Fournier & Fournier have separate data for the New Zealand version of the breed.

Then I got out my pencil and started sketching relationships.

 

 

As the data began to come into focus for me, I started over on another sheet of paper and sketched in approximate micron-count spans for the sources that only offered Bradford or USDA numbers:

 

 

Factors I was watching for as I evaluated sources were (1) geography, (2) color (if specified), (3) date of source (since breeding goals shift with time as well as location), and (4) overall reliability of the source—not necessarily in that order!

While there's definitely overlap, New Zealand Romneys look like they have fiber on the sturdier end, and the Americans are breeding for more fineness. Fleece weights were a bit scattered.

 

White Romney samples, with two-ply yarn

In the summaries, I wanted to indicate the potential for variation by region. Here's what I came up with for Romney:

• Staple lengths: 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm)
• Fiber diameters:
  North America: 29 to 36 microns (spinning counts listed at 44s to 50s, but micron counts suggest 44s to 54s)
  New Zealand: 33 to 37 microns (spinning counts listed at 44s to 52s, but micron counts suggest 40s to 46s)
  British Isles: 30 to 35 microns (spinning counts listed at 46s to 54s, but micron counts suggest 44s to 50s)
• Fleece weights: 8 to 12 pounds (or more) (3.5 to 5.5kg)

For the Cormo I gave the USDA or Bradford grades less weight, because the breed is new and part of its definition involves fleece quality and consistency criteria based on micron-count data. For the Romney, the breed's long history suggests giving the Bradford grades a bigger say in the compiled description.

Overall, wool classification is moving toward the use of more objective—i.e., micron count—measurement systems. For a number of breeds, the contemporary preference for fine wools is pushing the breeders to select in favor of the "skinny" end of the spectrum. In selecting numbers to represent the Romney, what I did was attempt to embody the effects of these forces as I saw them appearing in the data I collected.

For some breeds (although this wasn't obvious in the Romney), I observed differences in quality designations between white and colored wools. That may be because the genes that produce color in those breeds act in combination with genes that result in slightly coarser fiber, or because the breeders who are going for color like sturdier wool, or for other reasons. There's a lot we humans haven't figured out yet about sheep.

 

Gray Romney sample with carded rolags

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In some cases, the metric/imperial conversions I'm giving here are not identical to those printed in the book. My numbers are more rounded-off, since the things we're measuring aren't manufactured to precise dimensions and thinking about them in ballpark numbers is more practical. Copyeditors, of which I was one for years, sometimes get more precise in their attention to details than the material warrants. For example, for Romney fleece weights, the book says "8–12 (or more) pounds (3.6–5.4 or more kg)." I'd go with "3.5 to 5.5kg." It's as good an approximation in the metric universe as "8 to 12 pounds" is in the imperial one. It's also easy to remember.

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Charcoal Romney sample with "bird's nests" of hand-combed top.

Whatever its numbers, Romney is a versatile wool. It's easy for beginning spinners to manage. It also will accommodate any preparation or spinning approach more experienced hands may want to try with it.

Just as a point of curiosity, although all three of the samples shown here have well-defined, bold crimp, as is typical of Romney, each has a different type of crimp. Crimp patterns are fascinating! And way beyond what we can consider here and now.

How I came up with the numbers I used in The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook, part 1

I've been promising, or threatening, to write a post about how I came up with the numbers used to describe the fibers in The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook—you know, the parts in the boxes, where the text talks about fiber diameters, staple lengths, fleece weights, and the like.

The short answer is that . . . well, there isn't a short answer. The shortest is that I didn't just copy numbers from somewhere else. Instead, I did research, drew on almost forty years of experience looking at and handling wool, and came up with numbers that I thought would best represent what a fiber person (for example, me) could expect to find.

Two decisions, one philosophical and one practical, set the foundation for my work with the numbers.

Philosophically, I wanted the data we provided to reflect what fiber folk were likely to hold in their hands: in other words, to give a reasonable ballpark idea of the range of fibers an animal, or breed, is probably growing.

From the practical perspective, I wanted a consistent approach to underlie all the sets of numbers.

Co-author Carol Ekarius and I had already spent months deciding what would be on our list of animals to cover.

The first thought that arises for anyone engaged in such a quest is to use the numbers published by breed associations. Yet those aren't available for all breeds and not all types of animals have breed associations. In addition, those numbers may reflect a particular group of people's ideal for judging animals in the show ring, not what's showing up on the shearing floor.

What comes next is wondering how people who have written down numbers before have decided what to use—but that lasts only a moment, because in almost all cases the back stories can't be discovered. A reasonable approach would be to choose an ostensibly reliable source and copy its numbers. I've done this in the past, as a result of personal curiosity and for my own notebooks, and it takes a long time.

Yet this time I was responsible to more than my personal curiosity—or, rather, to new levels of that curiosity as well as to a potential community of fellow fiber-users. So I moved to a new level that involved gathering as many numbers as possible for each type of fiber from a wide variety of sources, and then taking a look at them to see if I could discern patterns or irregularities.

To demonstrate my process, I'm going to use four sheep breeds that presented radically different problems in deciding what numbers to use:

• a very consistent breed (Cormo)
• a breed with a lot of variety (Romney)*
• two breeds with almost no data (Santa Cruz and Hog Island)

 

* If I'm feeling brave when I write up the "a lot of variety" section, I'll mention the Cheviots again. . . . Does it indicate anything that, when I went to link to a blog post about the Cheviots, I could remember the EXACT MONTH AND YEAR when I had a serious tussle with their identities and data? I have a good memory, but for things like "when did I write that specific post?" I generally need to refer to my notes. Not in this case.

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The numbers part of writing The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook operated as a separate sub-project and had its own dedicated working spaces, including a physical folder:

It was about 1.5 inches (4 cm) thick. Inside were sections with pockets:

It also willingly held a few extra manila envelopes of papers.

I happened across this organizer while I was buying yet another dozen cardboard file boxes to hold fiber samples. I bought it on a whim, feeling extravagant because I had no precisely defined use for it. It became a reliable sidekick. Although the data it held was partnered with a lot of computer files, my thinking processes took place with the help of the papers it protected.

As I mentioned, I began by simply gathering data presented by other people. I looked at the Oklahoma State University site and at Wikipedia, of course, in part because many fibers are listed and it's nice to start a search with success (or to be warned that the digging will need to be deep). It was interesting to discover later what the sources of these sites' data were—when I located matching material elsewhere that appeared to predate the compilations. I was able to perceive this cross-linking between sources (print and web) from time to time throughout my research, and it helped me evaluate and weight my results.

Then I consulted as many breed and trade associations as I could locate, performed multiple web searches, and prowled through a couple of shelves full of books. Repeatedly.

When I had exhausted at least myself, if not the options (although I worked to plumb those as deeply as I could), I assembled in a spreadsheet the data I had found for each type of animal or breed of sheep.

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Example 1:

Cormo

Cormo is a relatively modern sheep breed developed with strictly defined performance standards, including for the quality of the wool. Individual animals that don't meet those requirements are culled. You'd think I could have almost instantaneously processed this breed through the numbers-cycle. While it was easy relative to other fibers, it shows that none of my decisions worked by cut-and- paste.

Sometimes I obtained information in imperial designations, sometimes metric, sometimes the Bradford or USDA numbers. (These two systems use the same notation system, although they are not completely interchangeable.) I started by putting whatever information I had on one sheet of paper (well, sometimes, as for the Romney, two sheets of paper).

Here's my Cormo list, in its neatly presented spreadsheet form:

Because I ended up looking for regional variations, I coded the column just to the right of my source indicators for the potential geographic bias of the data, if I could perceive one. (1-US, 2-UK, 3-NZ, 4-AU.) If I wasn't sure, I left the column blank. (Fournier & Fournier sometimes got coded as 3-NZ—when the data matched what I found in a New Zealand breeders' association. Sometimes I could tell where Wikipedia's information had been drawn from. In this case, the Oklahoma site referred specifically to Australian sources.)

While Cormo was one of the simplest breeds to come to conclusions about, you'll note discrepancies in the collected numbers.

In staple length, the two sources I found said 2.5 to 4 inches OR 4 to 5 inches. Well, 4 inches seemed like a safe place to land, but there will always be some variety in a natural item like wool. I knew from experience that not every Cormo fleece is exactly 4 inches long.

Staple length can be defined either as "how much wool can these sheep grow in a year?" or as "how long was the wool that the shearer clipped off?" They're not the same. Which were people talking about?

Suspending judgment temporarily, I simply moved to other parts of the summary to see what I could learn.

In fiber diameter, I found additional intriguing oddities. Initially, the numbers looked pretty consistent at 17 to 23 microns, with 21 to 23 microns coming from In Sheep's Clothing (Fournier & Fournier), possibly a reflection of the authors' New Zealand origins. (The breed developed in Australia, but there might be more focused goals among New Zealand breeders. Or not. This was part of my discovery path.)

Turning to ASI, which is the American Sheep Industry Association, I found an even more arresting set of numbers. These were at cross-purposes to each other. This source specified both 17 to 23 microns AND 46s to 56s USDA grades. The micron equivalents of USDA 46s to 56s are 26.4 to 32.7. The site did helpfully specify that it was looking at American Cormo, which might mean it was recording information on a regional variation, even though with this breed the standards appeared to be both strict and internationally consistent.

Fournier & Fournier, with their 21 to 23 microns, in addition specified 64s to 58s. They didn't say whether this was Bradford or USDA, but in either case a ballpark equivalency would be 21 to 27 microns. The grades corresponding to 21 to 23 microns would instead be roughly 64s to 62s, a much narrower span.

I'm skipping lightly here over a discussion of how Bradford numbers differ from USDA grades. We did talk about that in the book. By the way, I constructed the chart comparing fiber counts and USDA grades that appears on pages 12 and 13 of The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook to help myself keep track of all this stuff.

Now, without having resolved anything, I turned to fleece weights. As an initial observation, rams and ewes tend to produce different amounts; rams grow heavier fleeces. Yet a lot more ewes are kept and shorn, so sometimes fleece-weight numbers ignore the rams. Like staple lengths, fleece weights are subject to a lot of interpretation, because the parameters aren't specified. In addition to "ram or ewe?" there's "a full year's maximum growth?" and "skirted, or not?"

The general assumption is that a fleece weight will be grease, not clean; a full year's growth; from a ewe; probably lightly skirted.

But you never know whether that is the case for a particular set of numbers unless it's spelled out.

Where my chart says (e), that means the source specified that this was the weight of ewes' fleeces. (Similarly, some of my charts have both (r) and (e) measurements.)

The Cormo Sheep Conservation Registry liked 12 pounds as a nice, single number, presumably an average. Fournier and Fournier were in the same vicinity, with 9 to 12 pounds. ASI thought fleeces from this breed would be a good deal lighter, 5 to 8 pounds, but they also specified that they were talking about ewes.

When I did my research on Cormos, I did not find micron counts or fleece weights on the Cormo Sheep Conservation Registry website, which is now listing 21 to 23 microns and 5.5 to 12 pounds.

Okay, what to do with all these flying numbers?

At this point, I began to draw pictures.

When I first felt backed into one of these corners, I was on a retreat in Salida, Colorado. This was fortunate, because my retreat times gave me opportunities to stick with one thorny issue or another until I had resolved it, something that wasn't anywhere near as easy when I was home and juggling writing tasks with regular duties and interruptions.

I remember the morning I stared at a sheet of statistics that were not coalescing. I felt compelled to confront the problem with a pencil and some graph paper. I took a brain-clearing walk to the office supplies store and splurged on a spatious pad of quadrille paper, 11 x 17 inches of open territory on each sheet. Back at the cottage, I wrote reference numbers across the long side of one sheet and then sketched where all my different sources thought a particular breed's wool should be (I may have started with the Romneys).

This turned out to be a breakthrough. During my retreat time, I hand-wrote a number of these sheets and refined my system. When I got back to my home computer (and its printer), I made up an Illustrator file with the key across the top and lots of guidelines, like my quadrille paper, in the body of my form. I printed out blanks and used them the same way that I had the big sheets. With pencil. These got tucked into my blue pocket file, either alphabetically by breed or, when I was looking for patterns in particular groups, in clusters by family or fiber type.

The top row of numbers represents micron counts, in crisp, even numbers. Next comes the Bradford scale, and below that the micron counts broken into fragments (with standard deviations) assigned to Bradford-like numbers when the USDA grades were established. Below that, there are the traditional fine/medium/coarse/very coarse designations, and the bottom row relates all the other measurement methods to the old blood system.

What I ended up with for Cormo, as my final numbers to go in the book's box of data:

• Staple lengths: 3.25 to 5 inches
• Fiber diameters: 17 to 23 microns (in the realm of spinning counts 62s to 80s)
• Fleece weights: 5 to 12 pounds

I'm sure some Cormo fleeces are as short as 2.5 inches, but the wonkiness in the ASI wool grades made me mistrust that low end. Of the Cormo wool I've seen, the 4- to 5-inch range seems typical, although some has been shorter.

It seems clear that 21 to 23 microns is where the breeders would like the wool to be. It also seems likely that some may be as fine as 17 microns.

Because of the difficulty of confirming Bradford versus USDA throughout the entire inquiry, and because many people are familiar with those methods of describing fiber diameters, we supplemented the micron counts for fiber diameter with what we called spinning counts, meant to communicate in terms similar to those of the two closely related older systems.

For this breed, one developed at a time when micrometer measurements were coming into fashion and one that is defined in part in terms of the micron counts of its wool growth, I gave more weight to the ranges in microns than to the USDA-Bradford-style numbers that were causing problems. In order to get our "spinning counts," I translated from the micron measurements, coming up with 62s for the 23-micron end of the range and 80s for the 17-micron end. It seems pretty clear that most of the wool will be 21 to 23 microns, or 64s to 62s, but we couldn't write a whole essay like this about every breed.

I settled on a range of 5 to 12 pounds to take into account the span from what was probably a light ewe fleece to what was likely a heavy ram fleece.

Wool is a natural, not manufactured, material. It will always have variability—more than anyone coming newly to the topic of studying it can begin to imagine. Getting more precise numbers would require a dedicated research project for each breed (with an extensive budget for communication with breeders, likely including travel, as well as sampling and analysis). The end results would not serve our intended purpose any better than what I'd done.

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Having wrestled a clutter of numbers to a ground of my own defining, I would let myself spin some samples, as a reminder of what it was all about: a person, at a wheel, with some fiber, enjoying the process of making yarn.

And that's enough for one day. I'll continue later.

Spinning photo taken on a writing/research/spinning retreat in the mountains of Colorado, March 2009. Photo by writing friend Judy Fort Brenneman.

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Information and new sources continue to appear. Here are a couple of items that would have fed into my research, except that they appeared after I had to call it quits and give the manuscript to the publisher. (We tweaked until the last minute, but couldn't continue the fundamental heavy lifting for that long.) First there's an article with great quotes from Ian Downie, who developed the Cormo breed. Second, a new registry was established in 2009, also too late for inclusion.

The new Cormo Breeders Coalition has this to say about the wool: "Sample from mid-side 17–23 micron. Consistent wool with 90% of wool within a two micron range. Staple length 3.5” to 5.5”. Dense soft wool. Fleece weight mature ewe 5–8 lbs." Add this set of numbers to my list.

There's always more to be discovered! Sometimes those discoveries will result in corrections to previous conclusions. In this case, I read that and said, "So far, so good for my conclusions on that breed."

Kristi's Nourishing (Nibbles and) Knits

During my years as an editor at Interweave Press, I didn't have time to participate in any fiber groups—other than those that naturally arose as part of work, which were more task-oriented than social. I still don't have a lot of time. So I'm especially happy to have found, a number of years ago, a particular knitting group. We meet one night a week. We have no scheduled activities. We show up, we knit, we talk, we occasionally vent, we often laugh, we go home. Oh, yes, we also eat. Because we start showing up at 6 and hang out until at least 8, maybe 9 or later, we do have food around, although it's not planned.

This is the group that supported me through the research, spinning, and writing of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, although most often—unless deadlines were just too imminent—I'd take my R&R knitting, like the Ink sweater. When I showed up with my spinning wheel, these good folks would know that I was seriously scrambling. I'm grateful for the ongoing and unqualified friendship of each individual and of the cluster that includes us all.

(Four folks are missing from that picture: Kristi Schueler, who took the photos of the group at our gathering last week; Dee, whose dining room we refer to as "the clubhouse"; Irene, who participates more often in the summer; and Ashley, who now occasionally commutes from her new job in California. Present are Kathryn, Amanda—who can be recognized as one of the models in Nourishing Knits—Sarah, me, and Rebekah. Rebekah's wearing her first completed knitting project, a blue wool pullover with a cable motif on the front.)

This group has also informally supported another recent project during its development: Kristi's Nourishing Knits: 24 Projects to Gift and Entertain. This electronic book contains a dozen knitting projects and a dozen (well, a generous dozen) recipes. The yarn-related and kitchen-based components are paired, with stories about each. Kristi is a gifted knit designer, recipe deviser, and photographer (she took the author photo of me that's on the back of Fleece and Fiber). We watched the development of the patterns and we taste-tested the recipes, sometimes in multiple iterations (from yum to WOW).

In the next photo there's Dee, pouring the spice tea that makes our world go 'round. (Recognize the sweater I'm wearing? Sarah's working on a Swirl, and has actually figured out how many stitches are in each section, as well as a total, and gives us reports on her status. She's an engineer. Dee's working on a Swirl of her own, and being an accountant has prepared a spreadsheet and revised some calculations: her work-in-progress is on the table in front of her. I think Kathryn is knitting socks. Rebekah is making another sweater. I have no idea what I'm knitting. I may have ripped it out. No, I think it might be a Christmas present that will be ready by spring.)

In addition to providing perspective, useful and not, on Kristi's knitting designs, we have joyfully contributed reliable feedback on her kitchen adventures. In the reddish glass by Kathryn and on the plate in front of Sarah are a few remaining saffron pastries that Kristi brought last week. They were absolutely scrumptious: not too sweet, delicately flavored, satisfying.

Nourishing Knits contains lots of options of the knitterly and cooking varieties. I subscribed to the early version of the book, so I've been getting updates as things progressed. Now it's finished, and I have the whole thing! You can, too. It's currently available only through Ravelry, the online knitting community (free memberships), but Kristi is working on a landing page on her website as well so non-Ravelry folks can get it.

One of the patterns in the book is "Guided by Love," a sock design constructed on one of Cat Bordhi's architectures so that pawprints go spiraling from the toe area up to the cuff, with "guided by love" added in braille beadwork around the top of the sock. (Note: Designing pawprints in lace is no small accomplishment. I've done it, independently. Getting the components to line up correctly takes a lot of trial and error. Kristi's standards for how things will work are really high.) Early sales of this pattern earned $1400 in donations for The Seeing EyeTM. The accompanying recipe is for Bow Wow Biscotti, dog treats that were tested by Kristi's dogs. . . .

very sweet Emma, who will, if she knows you pretty well and you don't look at her directly, let you pat her:

and spicy Brandon, a more recent addition to the household:

as well as our dogs, Ceilidh (with some of the yarn for Dee's Swirl). . . .

and Tussah, who, like the others, doesn't get fed people food but is hoping for a pup-biscotti:

. . . plus Amanda's and Sarah's dogs, and maybe some others as well. Everybody's been involved in Kristi's book, at least at the tasting level. All of the dogs shown here are rescues. Being rescued to test Kristi's dog treats is a pretty good deal for a dog.

Looking over the finished product of Kristi's book brings back lovely memories for me. The patterns and food ideas in it have been carefully selected to create similar fine memories for you.

Because it can be hard to know where to start, I'll pick out four of my favorite patterns and recipes.

Although I like and would knit all the patterns, the specific designs that I personally would be happy to cast on for immediately, and be working on by tonight, include:

• "Buttercream," elbow-height hand and arm warmers with twisted-stitch patterning and shaped thumbs
• "Challah," warm warm comfort socks
• "Masala," unique slippers, and
• "Ciabatta," a sweater to steal from the guys

I'd revisit all the recipes. Yet the ones I want to make this week are:

• Savory Pesto Cheesecake, even though I don't like cheesecake! (it pleases cheesecake lovers and non-lovers alike)
• Smoky Sweet Pumpkin Seeds, which I should warn everyone are addictive
• Chai Concentrate, created in the spirit of a local restaurant's exquisite brew
• Pumpkin Fig Muffins, not too sweet, great texture, nice gingery punch, and
• Slow Cooker Black Bean Chili—this stuff is awesome, worth the price of the whole collection

Oops, it turns out I can't limit myself to just four.

Hmmmm. . . . They must have tested the Antipasti Bread Pudding while I was doing something out of town. I'll have to experiment with that one on my own.

Another plus of this book is that Kristi talks about her design processes, for both yarns and foods, and offers suggestions for modifying and principles for diverging from the written instructions. She's aware of allergy issues; likes whole, unadulterated foods; and is vegetarian-friendly.

Both patterns and recipes would be appropriate for the run-up to the holidays (even, for some of them, at this late date), but are also prime candidates for cheering up January, February, and mud-slushy-stormy March. And on beyond that. Check out Nourishing Knits. You'll be glad you did.

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Photos by Kristi Schueler, © 2011 and used by permission. / I purchased my subscription copy of Nourishing Knits.

Mini book tour, with slush

Last May, I began the process of scheduling a mini book tour this week. It's all set up and announced. It's "local," which means "in the same state that I live in." For a Westerner, quite a bit of ground can be covered by that definition.

Last night it started snowing (again), with a prediction for 6 or 7 (more) inches (12.5 to 14 cm). By morning, that much new white stuff was on the ground, and I was scheduled to drive 200 miles across some mountain passes that I know well enough to be very cautious about when the weather is bad. I've driven them in fog, sleet, rain, and snow—experiences I prefer to avoid, if possible.

After less than an ideal night's sleep, I optimistically dug out the car and cleared the driveway and sidewalks, poked at the tree branches again to knock off as much snow as I could, and then signed onto the excellent road-conditions website sponsored and maintained by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). The CDOT map is most useful and gets updated frequently. Road conditions are color-coded, so it's really easy to see what the surfaces are like. There is, however, no topographical information, so "icy and flat" and "icy with 7% grade" look the same. This is where it's good to have experience with the roads you're considering.

I noted that parts of I-25 and I-70 were closed, although not the parts I planned to use. Highway 85 north of Greeley was black (adverse conditions = in my words "you'd be really stupid to drive this road right now"). Most of the roads I would need were bright blue (icy = "cars are going off the road and being wrapped in yellow caution tape until the weather clears and the tow trucks are less busy; expect to see on average one abandoned vehicle, many of them 4WD, every half mile").

Highway 285, a crucial part of my route, was decorated with at least a half-dozen of the red circle icons that mean "restriction." The detailed information on those locations indicated that trucks, and along some stretches smaller vehicles, were being required by law to use chains. The highway wasn't closed, but when chain laws are in effect wise people don't join the melee unless it's an emergency, they have a bit of extra time to spend, and their tires are in great shape. Maybe they even have chains (and use them) themselves. The two sections of road that can be particularly ugly to drive (although spectacularly beautiful) are Crow Hill and Kenosha Pass. Those were, of course, included in the restricted areas. So was Turkey Creek Canyon, which is sometimes a clear part of the road even when the rest is not so good.

There is an alternate route, taking I-25 farther south (bright blue/icy all the way) and then angling over toward Penrose and crossing Wilkerson Pass, instead of Kenosha. Wilkerson has less precipitous grades and doesn't have Crow Hill east of it. The roads through that area were a mix of bright blue (icy), blue (snow), and green (wet, rain, slush), and there were no restrictions in place.

Yet Kenosha is southwest-facing (it would get sun, if there was any) and the plows would be out. It's the shorter route. I know it better. So I waited a couple of hours, and the chain-law restrictions were lifted and more of the road became blue, and some of it even green. "Rain" and "slush" mean "the stuff's melting."

The familiar route won. And it was all fine.

Here are some Crow Hill photos:

There was some slush. This wasn't the worst of it. I was glad I'd bought, and installed, new front windshield wipers yesterday. (I got strong wiper blades: on a previous trip through this area, I'd had to find an auto parts store mid-journey and get sturdier ones.) I need to put a rear wiper blade into the budget for next month. The biggest difficulties occurred when the slush kicked up and instantly froze on the glass. The new wipers handled that just fine, though. (At times, I had about 10 square inches (65cm²) of back window free of ice.)

Kenosha Pass was dry and clear, with the usual view-to-almost-forever. You can't tell, though, that there are 14,000-foot (4250m) peaks out there because they're covered in clouds.

Toward the south end of South Park, the day got brighter, with some sunshine breaks coming through.

On the drive, I saw two splendid herds of pronghorn. There were about a dozen stunning ones standing in a cluster just north of the Buffalo Peaks turnoff. If there hadn't been a semi right behind me, I would have found a place to pull off (not much trustworthy shoulder today) and snapped a picture. There was a smaller group not far from Salida.

Tomorrow night, I'll be part of Dies Librorum (the day of books) at The Book Haven independent bookstore in Salida. RSVPs are required, and there will be music, a couple of authors, and good food. Oops, when I went to retrieve the link, I learned that the event is FULL! Well, that will be fun! I'll be interested in seeing who turns up. Party!

Anyway, you can see how nice the day was when I reached Salida in the late afternoon. Perfect.

On Saturday afternoon between 1 and 3, I'll be at Serendipity Yarn and GIfts in Buena Vista. Buena Vista is a few miles back toward home, and on my outbound trip today I took a side jaunt to pick up some yarn (because I didn't have enough, right?).

Liz Gipson will be at Serendipity on Saturday, too, and we'll likely be playing with fiber in the upstairs. There's a whole lot of yarn in that yellow house, and an amazing selection of gift items, too. No advance planning or RSVPs needed. If you're in the area, come visit with us. Bring your knitting or spinning or weaving (if it's portable, as Liz's often is) or your questions about fiber. We like to talk about fiber.

I have a spinning wheel with me, and a couple of deadlines to work toward while I'm doing this. However, I also plan to enjoy a little quiet time when I'm not at an event.

Like now.

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Oh, two other things:

Today's Spinning Daily newsletter is called "Tools for Writing a (Rather Large) Fiber Book." It's about The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook, as regular readers of this blog might imagine.

And some folks have decided that this month is Wovember, not November, and are dedicating the time to raising people's awareness of how wonderful wool is. Yes! Natural fibers! There are great sheep photos on the website. I keep opening the page I linked to, seeing that Herdwick, and smiling. Thanks to Valerie for letting me know about this.

A good friend of mine would like me to remind folks that llamas also produce delightful, practical, and warm natural fiber. She's right.

And we can't forget the yaks, mohair and cashmere goats, musk oxen. . . . (See The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook for the remainder of the list I just started.)

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Stay warm. I am.

KDTV, take 2

I'm not even going to try to make this entirely coherent. That's not how life is right now.

KDTV

Last week I flew to Cleveland again to be a guest for three segments of KDTV series 800. KDTV is Knitting Daily TV, a program that is available for broadcast on public television stations (PBS). A year ago I took this trip and appeared in two segments. I had the pleasure then of working both with Shay Pendray, an amazing woman who established a place for needle arts on public television, and with Eunny Jang, editor of Interweave Knits.

This time, I missed seeing and working with Shay; she had already completed her scheduled appearances and returned home. The trade-off was that because Eunny and I did all three segments together, we were able to get a little better acquainted and as a result could carry the positive energy from one segment to the next. In addition to the segments she did with me, Eunny was also taping introductions and finales and some technique concentrations, so she was busy changing clothes, getting the right demonstration materials ready, and talking to the cameras. Kristin Omdahl, who hosts the crochet sections, had finished her work early but wasn't scheduled to fly out yet, so we were able to visit in odd moments, and that was a treat.

Kristin's recent blog post shows the studio set-up and talks about the TV makeup, plus preparation, suitcases, and wardrobe issues. She's a pro at this and can show you the environment, while I'm just working hard not to trip over my own feet or end up stammering on camera: not much time or energy to document my surroundings or the process. Kristin's post also shows the amazing Annie Bakken, who last year and this managed to be in half a dozen places at once (or so it appeared), doing unobtrusive tasks that kept the process running smoothly, got us where we needed to be, and so on.

The segments are about 5 minutes long, and are timed to the second. The host—in this case, Eunny—keeps track of the timing. In addition to her microphone, which records the audio for the show, she has an earphone and has to listen and respond to information coming in from the production area. I just need to stay on my toes, follow her lead on the general timing, and be ready to let her wrap up when they call time. I imagine tightrope walking would be similar.

One of the segments was on using yak fiber. I talked about the basic qualities, and about using yak either on its own or blended, as well as why yak is a relatively new presence in knitting yarns. Eunny presented a neat hat pattern made with a yak-bamboo blend that features an intricate, but not so hard to work, cable running around its brim.

Back up two months, because it took me about that long to get all the swatches ready for the demonstrations of the segments that I did. For a 40-hour trip, I packed two suitcases and a large backpack. In the backpack and my carry-on suitcase were the absolute essentials: if the check-through bag had gone astray, we could have managed the segments, although not with the ideal array of supplies.

In addition to swatches, yarns, raw and washed fibers, and a bunch of sweaters to use as examples, the suitcases contained about a dozen different shirts and blouses. The garments all needed to be in specific colors, and had to be able to go on and off without messing up the makeup, which is done first and just once. I took the two shirts I wore last year, because I know they worked. I wore one of them again for the DVD I made for Interweave last fall. My daughter said I really shouldn't wear the same thing all the time, so I took along two other new tops I found on sale and a bunch of appropriate knits that I'd found at local resale shops. It's hard to tell in advance what will work best, so it's good to have alternatives.

Fortunately, one pair of black slacks, which I already owned, sufficed for the rest of what I needed.

We ran into a little glitch while filming the segment on why yarns pill. The numbering on one form was off, so Eunny wore the wrong sweater for our first take.

So we got to do it again. This was where it started getting nice that Eunny and I were working together repeatedly. The retake went smoothly. Here's the right sweater, and our smiles embody our confidence that we will hit the revised segment length. These photos are taken in advance of the taping of each segment. In addition to being useful for publicity, they are tacked up on the door to the green room, where everything gets prepared, to help everyone keep track of who wore what, and when. In general, they work really well.

By the way, the sweaters on the stands behind me are thirty and forty years old and have not pilled. In this segment, I talked about fiber content, processing damage, yarn construction, durability, and maintenance, and why and when we make trade-offs that result in pilling. (There is, by the way, an absolutely fantastic article by Erica Heftmann in an old issue of Spin-Off magazine on why yarns pill. Although I worked with other sources, if you want a one-stop overview, Erica did a fantastic job. Summer 1999, pages 70 to 77.)

The final segment involved some information on scouring and washing wools. Recognize Eunny's sweater? It belonged on this segment. I wasn't as happy with the content on this final bit. We did it twice as well, for reasons of the producer's, and I preferred the first version.

Still, Eunny and I managed to do two takes on two segments and keep them fresh-feeling each time. On one of them (and I forget which one), somebody mis-read the timing notes so Eunny was given the "wrap it up" signal at either 20 or 30 seconds too short or too long. I don't remember which. I think we needed to fill an extra 30 seconds on the second take. My job is to speak in ways that are conversational but that I can cut off at any time and sound like I meant to end there.

Then I packed up my suitcases and Kristin and I shared a cab to the airport. I heard she had a delay in getting home, including an extra overnight.

For me, this is what the day looked like, with all times indicated for Mountain Daylight Time, even though Cleveland is on Eastern Daylight.

• 3:45 a.m. Wake up
• 3:45 to 5:15 a.m. Yoga, wash and blow-dry hair, dress, breakfast, pack suitcases, check out of hotel, and be in lobby for ride to studio. I wanted to walk to the studio to see if I could stretch out my back some more, but it was raining and I needed not to show up with wet hair. I am so not a TV-ready person in everyday life!
• 5:15 to 7 a.m. Unpack show materials and begin arranging them on working trays; professional makeup (an hour).
• 7 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. Tape all three segments, two of them twice.
• 10:15 to 10:45 a.m. Lunch.
• 10:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. Repack all suitcases, then catch up on e-mail and a little work.
• 1:45 to 4 p.m. Cab to airport, check-in, and security. Buy a salad to take with me because the availability of future food is not at all certain. (Yes, I carry Luna Bars, apples, and other compact, security-friendly emergency fuel.)
• 4 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Fly home, changing planes at one airport or another, very glad that I have the salad (run from first gate to second, and make it on board as one of the final four passengers).
• 8:45 to 9:50 p.m. Disembark and reclaim the one checked bag. Miss the 9 p.m. shuttle by about 8 minutes. Grab a chai as the airport concessions are closing their accordion barriers for the night. Drink chai and do some reading while awaiting the shuttle.
• 9:50 to 11:45 p.m. Shuttle ride home.
• 11:45 p.m. to 1 a.m. Dinner, shower, bed.

Next day: in bed with a cold! Likely the result of not being able to dodge secondhand smoke (to which I'm allergic) while in the shuttle areas outside airports. I need to get rid of the congestion and start packing for SOAR, in addition to doing enough work at my desk that the office won't collapse while I'm gone again.

Packing for events other than KDTV involves a lot more fiber, but much easier clothing options: t-shirts, jeans, whatever sweaters I want to wear. And no makeup at all!

 

knit, Swirl—my version

Sandra McIver has recently published a wonderful (and beautiful) book of knitting patterns focusing on a concept she calls the Swirl. There have been a couple of other sweater designs drifting around that put similar ideas onto the needles, but compare the constructions and implementations and you will discover that Sandra's gone for the gold, wrapped it up, and taken it home with knit, Swirl.

As I'm wrapped up in the Swirl that I made from one of Sandra's designs. It's not quite finished in these photos, but close enough. I wore it (happily) in this state before I put the final touches on. (That's Ceilidh on the right side of the photo.)

The garment is comfortable enough that it feels like something I could wear anywhere, but it has a good deal more elegance than my usual wardrobe—a quality that's obvious from the back.

The pattern of Sandra's that I worked is called Strata Sphere. The original was made in Noro Silk Garden, and as the book says, "While the color work in Strata Sphere appears intricate at first glance, one yarn does it all." Swirls are, indeed, a perfect place to use variegated yarns.

My version, on the other hand, incorporates several different yarns. They were all Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride, which fits a similar gauge. I began with colors in my stash, including the hand-dyed version with the bright green that's around the edges. I bought that skein as a one-off sample at the Brown Sheep factory, and it became the "key" for my color combining, the color range I wanted to highlight. I also used Deep Pine, Pine (discontinued, but I had some), a frosted navy that I can't find on the color chart (came from my stash), Forest Shadows (a shaded green), and Ocean Waves, the shaded blue that became the color that held it all together. I used a few other colors that I don't remember, in smaller amounts.

It is a lot easier to just use one yarn! Nonetheless, I got a huge kick out of working out my sequences and deciding which colors to put where so that there's both unity and variety. I designed my color placement as I went, and would happily do so again.

Sandra gave me one tip before I started. Swirls are constructed in welts. She said not to change colors at the changing points between the welts. I thought with the many yarns I was using and the variegations in most of them I could get away with changing at welt shifts (since the purl bumps showing up on the reverse side would just pixelate the transition points, which were multicolored anyway). However, Sandra was right, and after knitting the first several welts I ripped back to round 5 and began again, always shifting colors at least one row away from the welt transitions. (Sandra has thought through every detail of these garments. If she says to work the first three rows flat before joining to work in the round, she has a reason.)

As is my long-ingrained habit, I changed yarns at the beginnings and ends of rows, not in their middles. On another multi-yarn Swirl, I might play with staggering the change points at many different locations within the rounds or rows. The change points weren't an issue in the body of the garment, but when I got to the sleeves and bodice, worked back and forth, I was changing so often that the joins create a little extra bulk at the edges of the fabric. (The yarn I was using was singles. Feathering the ends to overlap them was more tedium than I was willing to put up with.) A year from now, I won't even notice this, but it's enough at this moment to make me consider a refinement in my technique.

Then again, my next Swirl may be solid-colored, just because!

Let's talk a little about the concept and structure. Sandra explains "What is a Swirl?" on her website, where you can also see the wide range of garments presented in the book, worked in different fibers and weights of yarn.

There are two basic shapes: circle and oval. There are two positions for the bodice and sleeves: centered and off-center. Put these together and you have four silhouettes: circle/centered, oval/centered, circle/off-center, and oval/off-center. They have different amounts of shawl collar and body length. Some have narrower sleeves than others, to better fit different body types. In fact, however, almost everyone can put on a Swirl and find that it works. Selecting the ideal silhouette is a matter of refinement.

I'm going to let two other folks' descriptions of the concept complete this discussion, rather than repeat what they've already done extremely well.

I'll just point out that Strata Sphere, the pattern I followed exactly except for my yarn substitutions, is an oval with an off-center position for bodice and sleeves. Here's the lovely blob that I made, complete except for blocking and sewing the one seam (and working in a few of my ends).

While friends were out of town, I borrowed their living-room floor to block the fabric. My house is full of boxes of fiber. This is the main portion of the fabric with blocking wires in place.

And then I spread out the sleeves and bodice and patted them into position to dry. Yes, part of that lefthand sleeve is under the couch.

That last picture shows the rhythm of my color placement. I had only the one skein of the multicolored yarn with the bright green, so I spaced it out with other colors. I saved pieces of some colors to use in the sleeves, to bring things back together. I was running out of Pine and could only find Dark Pine, so I saved back a bit of the original color to work in among rows of its darker relative, which appears only in the sleeves. I used the Ocean Waves as a dominant color. It looks like the entire center was knitted in Ocean Waves, but there are other colors of similar value worked in there just to keep the interplay between all the colors going. 

There are a number of ways to wear the finished garment. It can be loose, as in the photos above, or higher on the neck and shoulders, as at right, fastened with a shawl pin.

As another alternative, it can be worn upside down, also held in place with a shawl pin, although I don't have a photo of that version. Worn that way, it ends up looking like a just-past-waist-length jacket with a matching cape (or extra-huge shawl collar). There are two luxurious layers of wool around the whole torso. It would be very snuggly for winter. What I think of as the "regular" version is great in our climate for spring, fall, winter, and air-conditioned summer.

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Last year, while I was working hard on some of the last stages of the book project, I searched for an engaging and calming but not boring project. The design I decided to make ended up as a useful sweater, and it was not boring, but it was also nothing like calming.

THIS was the project that I needed.

It is very simple in construction. It requires that the knitter know how to knit, purl, decrease (no need for mirrored decreases), cast on, cast off, and keep track of the number of rounds in each welt (not a difficult task). And when it's done, there is that one seam. Perfect seaming is not required.

Yet it is NOT boring, even if you don't play the color games that I did. It's a superb project to have in the works for when you Just Want to Knit. It does require a lot of yarn (consider stash-busting), and it is not great for travel knitting because of its bulk. It is a good travel garment once it's done. I can even wear my backpack over it. The hardest part is casting on the first row and getting the stitch count right. There's a lot of knitting involved, so it lasts a while (although I am not a particularly fast knitter and I completed the body in a week of evenings). It would be a great project for buddying-up and doing a knit-along with friends.

I'll be making another one, changing the silhouette, yarn, and colors. It was fun, and it was satisfying, and it's a versatile addition to my wardrobe. WIN, WIN, WIN.

The National Needlework Association (TNNA) trade show

I spent last weekend at The National Needlework Association's trade show in Columbus, Ohio. It's called TNNA for short, and there are actually four shows throughout the country during the year. Columbus is, as far as I know, the biggest of them. It's definitely the one located near Jeni's Ice Cream, which is a bonus that I've heard about for years and finally experienced for myself.

This was the first time I'd attended a TNNA show. As a trade show, it is not open to the public. Attendees have to be in the needlework business, as producers of goods (exhibitors, who purchase booth space at the show to publicize their wares), owners of shops (who look at the items in the booths and decide what to stock for the coming seasons), or teachers and designers (who network among the producers, shop owners, and themselves). There are a lot of educational programs on business matters and techniques.

"Needlework" includes everything from spinning to needlepoint, by way of weaving, knitting, crochet, needle-felting, tatting, and any other fibery technique you might think of. Booths overflowed with yarns, needles and accessories, bags, painted canvases, and books. In addition to the fact that the show is limited to people in the trade (all of whom have to have special badges to attend), nothing can be sold directly from a booth. Orders are written for future delivery. Lots of them. That's the purpose of the show. If your local yarn shop is going to carry a new product this fall (say, Juniper Moon Farm's new line of yarns or Nantucket Bagg's versatile project and tool containers), there's a pretty good chance that the owner or buyer ordered the stock this past weekend in Columbus.

I've been a member of TNNA off and on for years. I've wanted to attend the show before, but time and finances have always been barriers. I finally got there for two reasons. Cat Bordhi's group of Visionary authors was having a booth for the first time, which I wanted to support, and with the release of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook this was a great opportunity to meet shop owners and let them know about the book.

In preparation for the show, a number of the Visionary authors knitted garments (Swirls) from Sandra McIver's new book, knit, Swirl. I had made mine as evening relaxation during one of my working weeks in the mountains. I have a whole post on the process almost finished. In addition to the Swirls we were wearing, Sandra brought a lot of prototypes and samples to the show, and we had a great time helping folks try them on. The booth was busy that way, and while people were looking at the Swirls they also browsed, and placed orders for, the other Visionary books that were featured.

Here's the Visionary Authors' booth:

I took this wide view because the discussions spilled out into the aisle. While the booth is in the background, that group of folks on the right is also talking about Visionary books.

Here's Sandra, wearing a gold Swirl, giving a Swirl tutorial to two visitors. A lot of this went on. The Swirl is a great project for all levels of knitters, and will make a terrific knit-along subject for shops.

The most fun was watching people try on the Swirls from the book. They are easy to wear and extremely flattering to diverse body types.

Behind Sandra is the main Unicorn Books booth complex, specifically the book-signing area. Unicorn, a major industry distributor (run by folks I've known for decades), sponsored the Visionary Authors' booth, which was great for everyone. That meant that we simply educated people about the books and then they placed their orders with Unicorn. It was a great collaboration.

Signings. . . . As at BookExpo (the trade show that serves similar purposes for the book industry), there were book signings. The ones that took place in the Unicorn area are very well established and run like clockwork. There are a certain number of books available. An hour before each signing, tickets become available. Shop owners who want a signed book line up to get a ticket. When the tickets are gone, all the books are committed. Ticket-holders return at the appropriate time and stand in line to meet the author and get the signed book.

JC Briar signed her new Charts Made Simple, about which I also have a post-in-process. Simply put, it's the book on charts for knitting that has been needed for a long time.

(JC is wearing her Swirl, a beautiful and classic combination of grays. Margaret Fisher was assisting, although she was outside the frame of this photo.)

Sandra signed knit, Swirl. Her husband, Bill, helped out. It is hugely useful at a large signing to have someone opening and handing the books to the author. There is also, out of sight, someone from Unicorn helping organize the line of people with tickets.

 

And I signed The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook.

I'm wearing my Swirl, in blues and greens, that there will be much better views of in another post. Alee Marsh from Storey Publishing helped me out enormously.

Carol Ekarius and I will both be signing the book this Saturday, June 18, 2011, at Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins in Boulder, Colorado. Because of logistics, we aren't doing many signings, so this is worth remarking on.

For me, TNNA was about the people, and I had a lot of great conversations. I wish I'd been able to attend in previous years, and I'm very happy I was able to be there this time. 

There was so much to do at the event that I only got to Jeni's Ice Creams twice. Yes, it's as good as people say it is. Finding lunch and dinner in the convention area was easy. (Check out Knead if you're in the area! It's on North High Street, directly across the street from the Greater Columbus Convention Center.) Finding breakfast was very challenging, and I'm a breakfast person. There wasn't even a grocery or convenience store within walking distance. There was great coffee and chai, but for some of us that doesn't constitute breakfast. On Saturday morning, I had Jeni's strawberry buttermilk ice cream for breakfast, after I gave up my hunt for orange juice and for milk to put on the cereal I'd even brought with me in my suitcase (this was the first time I've failed to find o.j. and milk readily available when traveling). I figured the ice cream at least contained some protein. It was delicious.

Then, shortly before the end of the three-day show, I took a break and walked over to North Market for a second flavor that I'd had my eye on: rhubarb lime cardamom. It was divine.

I'll have to go back another time to try the extra-dark chocolate.

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival: Yet another fine time

Time has been zooming past. I've been to Maryland (more on that in a moment), California to teach (few photos, although I've asked the organizers if they can send me some that they took in my workshop), and downstairs to the basement office at home, to catch up (at least partially) on paperwork. I can hardly believe that it was already two weeks ago today that I flew east to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and one week ago today that I flew the other direction, to the Conference of Northern California Handweavers.

In nine days I traveled about 6200 miles, and in my three days at home between the two spurs of that bifurcated journey I managed to get a freight shipment out (550 pounds of books to a Pennsylvania warehouse) and handle enough other details to keep the household and businesses at least nominally afloat.

No wonder I've felt a little less productive than usual for the past few days and that this blog post got started but not finished.

Maryland!

I love the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Some time I need to look back in my records and see which was the year I first attended, after Linda Berry Walker of WoodsEdge Wools had urged Interweave to have a presence there for Spin-Off for quite a while. I was editor of Spin-Off. I think the first year we attended Maryland ad manager Sharon Altergott (a long-time good friend) and I went to the festival just to look it over. Before we left at the end of the weekend, we put in an application to have a booth the next year.

We didn't need a lot of space at the festival because we simply promoted spinning and Interweave's products, which were for sale from other vendors. We had a shallow half-booth in front of the utility room in what was then called Building V, and is now the Main Building (booth 18B). That became our home base for many following years.

Over time, my practice became to do set-up on Friday night and also perform a quick survey of the other booths to discover a fiber that would be catchy for people to watch me demonstrate with: color was always a draw. Early Saturday morning, I'd show up at the booth I'd identified, buy my fiber for the weekend, and then return to "home" and start spinning and talking with folks about spinning. Because we traveled light, I always used a handspindle, although occasionally I was loaned a wheel to try out for an hour or two. One year I spun all weekend on a Navajo spindle. Another year, fairly early in our time there, a new exhibitor showed up in the booth next door to the left along "our" wall—a young woman, named Maie Landra, working with her mother to present her lovely hand-dyed yarns and the designs she created to showcase them. In subsequent years, the woman's infant daughter joined them, and it went on from there . . . the young woman called her company Koigu. Now her yarns have become well-known favorites within the knitting community.

Lots of similar stories weave through my memories of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Because booth assignments tended to stay relatively stable, we developed a sense of neighborhood throughout and within the parts of the festival. Even with all the changes over the years, the festival overall still feels that way to me.

We only had two or three people staffing the Interweave booth, so breaks were infrequent. We put in long days, mostly standing on the concrete floor, but we worked beautifully together and got to meet many fine people who were either working the festival or visiting it. I remember many specific conversations. Sharon, more of a social organizer than I am, made sure we got some visiting time with other folks on Saturday night.

A couple of years ago, when it was time for Kristi Schueler to take the author photos that would be used on The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, I wore a vest for which I spun the yarn at Maryland and I held the cherry spindle on which I'd made the yarn. From purchase to plying, I made the vest's yarn during a single weekend, while talking with folks, using a variegated commercial roving with a bit of flash in it that I had bought from a Building V vendor. I did spin the yarn I used for trim at home later (because I ran out of the Maryland yarn just shy of finishing the front edgings). The vest, my own design, was shown in an early issue of Interweave Knits, although the instructions as printed in the magazine didn't precisely represent the way I made the garment; they were more generic and didn't describe the intricate ribbing that flows without a break into the main body patterning.

Hmmm. I bought the cherry spindle, one of my all-time favorites, at Maryland, too, from Noel Thurner of Norsk Fjord Fiber. . . . Noel has pretty much retired from that business now, as have a number of other folks who are still firmly part of the festival in my heart.

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So Maryland feels like "home" to me in many ways, and I was delighted that Storey Publishing decided to have a book launch there for The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. For the launch, Storey sponsored the AfterParty organized by Guido Stein on Saturday evening, and we participated in a book signing on the festival grounds on Sunday.

The AfterParty was held at the Sheraton Columbia Town Center Hotel, in one of the ballrooms.

Most of it was a bit of a blur, because I'm not especially focused when I'm part of one of the featured events, but I loved that Storey gave away five books as part of the door-prize drawings. It was sort of a jackpot thing: for five of the door prizes, if your ticket was called you ALSO got a copy of the book!

Carol and I did a presentation on the process of making the book. We'd been asked to prepare a ten-minute routine, so we put together an appropriate number of slides. Yet it was all ad-lib, and folks seemed to like the details so we went on longer than that.

Here's the first slide, before the party began, after a collaborative crew had set up the projector, sized the picture/screen relationship, and keystoned the image (made it look square on the screen). The situation wasn't a great one for good photos, but the pictures hint at what went on.

Pam Art, president of Storey Publishing, introduced us. She's in the light blue below. I'm on the left, in a purple cotton handknitted sweater (great for summer events in air-conditioned rooms). Co-author Carol Ekarius is behind Pam, and organizer Guido Stein is in the white shirt on the right.

Guido's mother was there this year. She is as nice and as interesting as a person can be, and I had a great time talking with her. She had ideas for us involving international educational outreach about fibers that will require multiple cloning of ourselves and a bunch of years to implement, but we've started on them. . . . 

Some books were available for sale and signing at the party. Most of the stash was held back for the signing at the fairgrounds on Sunday.

Because Storey sponsored the party, the event raised about $1,000 for rescue organization Star Gazing Farm.

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On Sunday, Carol and I signed books steadily for an hour and a quarter and then they were all gone. The copies that were there were air-freighted in, so the number was limited. The rest of the print run was still on the boat, coming by more economical means. We did have special bookplates that we signed for folks who were there but were in line too late to get the book itself.

And we didn't have to worry about missing the Parade of Breeds (a concern I'd had since I heard about the timing of the book signing). We were at the show ring in plenty of time!

Can digital cameras wear out? I was having trouble getting good photos of the sheep, although I was in a good position. The shutter speeds were correct, but it seemed to take about three-quarters of a second between when I pressed the button and the shutter fired. This is new. Changing batteries didn't help. Sheep can move a lot in three-quarters of a second. I have blurry images of all sorts of critters.

Yet I did get a few halfway decent photos at the Parade of Breeds, mostly, I think, through luck. Here are some Jacobs, with enough movement to be interesting, not completely out of focus.

Colonial Williamsburg's Leicester Longwools make regular appearances in the parade.

Scottish Blackfaces were represented by this delightful character.

This Shetland ram was not only incredibly handsome but very friendly. He charmed me completely. His people said that he'd be happy to go home with me, and if it had been feasible, I'd have been tempted! Yet I don't think they would have wanted to give him up. He was wonderful.

Suffolks have such fascinating faces. The wool is often overlooked by both shepherds and textile folk, yet can produce an exceptionally versatile, serviceable yarn, superb for making mittens, sweaters, hats, blankets, and other items that see daily use and provide a lot of comfort. As a spinner, I'd rather see the wool at full length, instead of trimmed for the show ring.

There was a lovely group of American Tunis, lambs and adults, showing the color shift from cinnamon to oatmeal (with color remaining on faces and legs) as the animals mature.

Not from the Parade of Breeds, but from when I was wandering around the barns, here's Sue Bundy, one of the people involved in Solitude Wool. She has American Karakuls at her RedGate Farm. She's brushing the fleece before showing one of her sheep, while a couple of others from her flock look on in the background.

I didn't get much shopping done, although a friend had sent me with her budget and a mission that I fulfilled. I did get some lightweight wooden cardweaving cards for myself, something I hadn't seen before that I have a reason to use within the next six months. And a Lincoln Longwool t-shirt, bright pink, that will become a regular part of my life at home.

Ah, Maryland.

We had a great time.

Thanks to everyone who played a part in making it happen.

And now I'd better get this post up, before another week wings by.

3 pounds 10 ounces (1.6 kg)

Yesterday the first six (6) copies of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook arrived at the publisher's. This morning, I received an overnight box.

What you probably can't see on that package is the weight on the label: 5 pounds (that's 2.27 kg). Of course, that includes the packaging. Yet it's unquestionably a substantial shipment.

I want to share with you one of the most magical moments in publishing: the first glimpse of the completed book. It's still thrilling, even after all these years in publishing. Despite the fact that it's a given that the work will not be perfect (no book ever is, no matter how hard everyone works to achieve perfection). The experience of seeing and opening the REAL book for the first time is an event to savor.

There are lots of photos in this post. I have made them as small as possible; I hope they won't tax anyone's internet connection, so you can enjoy this process along with me.

Packaging components = outer carton, bubble-wrap, and lightweight brown paper protective wrapping.

The people at Storey understand how special this moment is. Editor Gwen Steege made sure this copy got shipped to me as soon as possible, prepared like the treat that it is.

Wonderful paper, tied with yarn. Need to examine the wrappings properly. There's a little hide-and-seek involved.

And a variety of critter variations—I'm only including those that regularly provide fiber.

Turning the package over to open it without tearing the paper, more sheep show up:

Inside: a real book. You mean we've been making a book? That's been the theory, but this is when it feels like something other than a mirage that keeps receding into the distance instead of getting closer.

It's thick.

I took it downstairs to the office and weighed it. Book alone: 3 pounds 10 ounces (1.6 kg).

Opening up: We ran out of room for the maps inside, so a creative decision put them on the front and back endpapers. Editor Deb Burns masterminded this piece. Easy to refer to!

Here's the official first spread:

And looking at a few familiar pages, out of order because I'm just browsing, seeing them finally in the form they have been destined for:

. . . I remember spinning those . . . and these. . . . 

Those are the Lincoln Longwool samples up there. Here's part of the treatment of the Romneys:

Co-author Carol Ekarius is especially brilliant at locating material for fascinating sidebars. We all ended up searching for just the right animal photos, but Carol did the heavy lifting on that part of the book, in conjunction with photo editor Mars Vilaubi at Storey. I'm especially fond of that Romney photo, although don't, please, ask me to choose favorite pictures. I can't; there are too many candidates.

Shortly after the book arrived, Carol and I were on Skype, typing messages back and forth. She had meetings all afternoon and was going to have to wait until she got home to see if she had a box, too.

Here's some of the Karakul information. . . .

And something I'm seeing for the first time: the index, prepared by Kathryn Bright, who is a fiber and animal person as well as a professional indexer (among her other amazing skills). I'm so pleased that she was available for this job.

Area maps from the back endpaper, and photos of two relieved writers (my photo was taken by Kristi Schueler, another multiply gifted fiber person—thanks again for making me look so good, Kristi!).

And the back cover, with a bunch of wonderful quotes by people I didn't know had seen advance copies and sent such encouraging words to introduce the work to potential readers (and browsers: the book is really friendly both to random-and-casual and to linear-and-comprehensive encounters).

Returning to the front. . . .

Both Carol Ekarius and I thought we'd see copies for the first time at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It's delightful to have this opportunity to get to know the book ahead of time.

Yes, this is the book I have wanted to consult myself. It's in a form that is beautiful and, unlike the clutter of research notes and files or even the proofing pages, easy to leaf through.

Wow. It's real.

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John Polak, who took all the studio pictures, was interviewed recently on how to photograph fiber.

Interviewer: "Tell me about a particularly interesting shoot or challenge that you have taken on, in photographing fiber arts/textiles."

John's response, shortened: "A new release this Spring titled The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook authored by Deborah Robson & Carol Ekarius. . . . The process of shooting that book with the author and the art director, here in my studio, and keeping all these fibers organized and labeled was immense. But the result is probably the most beautiful book I’ve ever worked on."

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It is indeed beautiful, thanks to all the folks associated with Storey who worked to make it so—more wonderful folks than I can mention here, but Mary Velgos devised and implemented the most amazing design concept I've ever worked with. Maybe ever seen. I'm very, very grateful to everyone involved.

And I'm delighted that it's almost ready to share with other folks . . . as soon as the main shipment arrives on the ship, clears customs, and gets delivered to the various warehouses. Soon!

Certificate of excellence, part 3

Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

The Project, including The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and Handspinning Rare Wools

In 2007, I got caught up in The Project, which was supposed to be a comparatively concise effort, completed by August 2008, and has so far grown to require almost four years and has resulted in the upcoming publication of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, co-written with Carol Ekarius. I hope and believe the book will delight and inform other members of the textile community as much as the research, fiber processing, spinning, and writing required to bring it into being have supplied me with insight and increased knowledge.

 

 

And then there is the set of DVDs for Interweave, Handspinning Rare Wools. Plus teaching a few workshops on general breed-specific and rare-breed wools.

 

What next?

Well, I could undertake a certificate program (see part 1 of this sequence of posts). That would mean choosing not to write the next book I have in mind; perhaps not teaching workshops on wools, rare and otherwise; and likely not editing and producing publications that present other people's discoveries and support the creative growth of the textile community as a whole.

It would mean I'd need to at least temporarily abandon the exploration of sheep and of wool and of other fibers that truly fascinate me (to complete the initial parts of the certification process). Yes, some of what I know already and want to learn might feed into the in-depth study portion of a certificate program, but I would need to jump through a lot of hoops before I got to that point.

I'm not willing to do that.

When I have read through the requirements of the COE program in its past iterations (the specifications have been revised a number of times over the years, and I don't have a current set), I can already check off the majority of the experiences, although I would undoubtedly have to do them again in order to submit materials for evaluation. I would also need to pay more attention to my spinning in order to produce skeins of the consistency required for evaluation, something I'm loathe to do because it would require me to give up the adventures that have, for example, allowed me to produce the yarn samples for The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, some of which (even though they were all produced in a rush) hint at the possibility that I might have the concentration and skill necessary to complete a COE in handspinning. (Or would I get a COE in weaving? Or do a certificate program in spinning through an organization other than HGA? Or complete a TKGA Master Knitter sequence? Is there a certificate in other types of fiber manipulation, one that would let me further explore nalbinding, luceting, bobbin lace, braiding, and tatting?)

Most especially, there at least one book that I want to be researching and writing next.

A digression about something I've learned from yoga

I've been spinning for more than thirty-five years. I've been doing yoga almost as long. I take yoga classes now and again, and at one point, when I was studying with an excellent local instructor, I realized that I had "given" my practice to her. I was no longer doing it at home for my own pleasure. I was waiting for her to tell me what to do, and for her to correct me.

Because my personal, daily practice is vitally important to me, I quit attending the classes and reclaimed responsibility for my own yoga. Without question, I learned a great deal from that teacher and have incorporated valued elements of what she taught into what I do on my own. I also do continue to support my practice by taking occasional weekend workshops—if I'm lucky and if time, money, and location all coincide, as often as once a year—from people I particularly want to study with.

Despite all these years of yoga, I have never had more than a passing interest in teaching it myself, any more than I have been compelled to earn a Certificate of Excellence. The thought comes; the thought goes. I want to keep these aspects of my life for myself, not give them away, as I do with so much else.

End of the yoga digression

Because I am so curious about fibers, particularly wools and most especially about all aspects of the sheep who grow rare wools, my own spinning will likely never reach the levels of proficiency and consistency that I have admired in the work of others. (It's also a bit daunting to have been in regular contact for many years with yarns by folks like Stephenie Gaustad, Charles Black, Sara Lamb, Rita Buchanan, and Kaye Collins.)

I love spinning, and I love working with the yarns I make. I don't care if they are totally consistent. I can count twists and measure angles, and that type of information makes it easier for everyone to communicate details about spinning through media such as print and the internet. In my personal life, I choose not to count and measure very much. The yarns I produce make me happy. The process of spinning delights me. That's enough.

If I'm going to give in many and deep ways to the textile community, as it seems I am wired to do pretty much regardless of personal cost, I'd rather do so in a way that is both unique to me and, in my opinion, most effective and meaningful. My way seems to be through writing, researching, and supporting overall creativity in others. Not by earning a Certificate of Excellence in anything, as enjoyable and personally satisfying as that might be.

In my opinion, the sheep and their wools need a dedicated advocate more than I need a Certificate of Excellence, even if my concentration in earning such a credential did happen to focus on rare fibers.

So no, I won't be going there.

Stay tuned here for more information on where I will be going. Some of it I can talk about in the very near future. Other parts need to stay tucked away for a while. I do always aim to achieve excellence, although I'm going to need to forego the certificate part.

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Addendum

My editing, coaching, and publishing work is not all about textiles

P.S. As part of earning a living, I also edit books on non-textile subjects. As with the books mentioned in part 2, some of the works highlighted below were staff projects, although most have been done on a freelance basis. My roles have varied widely. Sometimes I've just gotten the writer past a stuck spot; a few involved simple manuscript processing and copyediting; and on others I've guided the process from initial idea to completed book.

 

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I think that's more than enough for now. I've been knitting a bit, and have some photos to share. Spinning in scraps of time, too, and need to take pictures of that. The knitting and spinning are for the delight of it, and to keep myself moderately sane.