The Independent Stitch

Holidays

The year-turning holidays are always a bit disjointed for me. Here are a few tidbits from recent travels.

First, an art assemblage I saw being constructed at Denver International Airport a while ago. It is ephemeral, as is its topic, and it will be going away. I'll miss it.

It extends through both sides of one of the arched bridges between the terminals and consists of 10,000 paper cranes constructed from an unpublished manuscript, along with similarly sized crystals. Called "Shadow Happy," it is by Brianna Martray.

DIA's copy of the artist's statement is here. There are many more photos on the artist's site, as well as a link to a YouTube video (about 11 minutes long) about the installation, which I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to see part of. I flew in and out of DIA a number of times during construction, guessing at and then having revealed the reasons behind the blue-tape markings throughout the passageway.

"Shadow Happy" will be in place through February 2012 along the walkway from the main terminal to the A concourse.

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Because of our travel plans, I wasn't able to be in Salida, Colorado, for the winter solstice celebration of the life of my friend Richard Cabe, who left this plane of existence on November 27. Richard, who was among other things a sculptor who saw rocks as "ambassadors of the earth," worked in a way that was as elemental as, although dramatically different from, the vision in "Shadow Happy." (That last link contains a couple of pictures of Richard shaping granite, and a mention of a scholarship in his name to support other artists.)

In our luggage, my daughter and I carried with us some of the materials to make luminarias in Richard's honor, linking the memory of his life to another part of the globe that was important to him, the one we were traveling to, the Pacific Northwest. My sister and brother-in-law had on hand the other items we needed.

It was, fortunately, not raining. Beanie the cat supervised, as did the heron my sister received as a gift one Christmas.

The luminarias burned a long time (except the two that Beanie knocked off the deck rail).

____

Speaking of Beanie, she helped wrap presents:

. . . and got into my luggage and retrieved (and claimed) a plastic-wrapped fish knitted by my friend Jodie Aves. She liked it even better after we took the ripped plastic bag off.

It seemed to make her very happy.

____

The family gathering lasted close to a week and involved our two 87-year-olds, plus honorary long-time family members (I'm not sure what J. is doing with my aunt's cane, but neither she nor Mom looks worried) . . . .

. . . and, for the first time, one of the younger generation participating by video chat from across the country.

I spent a lot of time doing preliminary sorting of family photos and artifacts from the boxes we packed when we moved Mom to an apartment a couple of years ago.

That's just the start of one section of the 1940s material, which included about 200 photos Dad took in China/Burma/India.

____

We were home in time to pick up the dogs from the kennel on New Year's Eve, although I drove the backroads to get there because of the high winds—the interstate is exposed for most of its length. I learned later that it had been closed altogether for a couple of hours that morning. Our trip was uneventful, although the winds had also knocked out traffic signals along our route, and it was good to have the two-legged and four-legged household reunited.

A quiet evening was topped off by neighborhood fireworks (the official city ones had been cancelled because of the weather), which gave Ceilidh an opportunity to demonstrate exactly how small a corner a dog of her size can fit into.

I think her perception is accurate that there is safety in the vicinity of a spinning wheel, a ukulele (the black case along the bottom), and a supply of dog food (the white container).

____

We also played Settlers of Catan on several evenings, as well as one round of Carcassonne, and my daughter and I got my mother and a friend of hers past their stuck spot on one of their jigsaw puzzles. I also managed to get almost all of the yarn samples prepared for teaching at Madrona, but that's a story for another day.

____

May 2012 bring us all lots of friend-visiting time, good conversations, rewarding work and discoveries, and restorative play.

___

Edited to add another "we're home" photo, actually the one that started me writing the post. I looked down this morning and saw this, which amused me a great deal:

It's obviously an indicator that I'm in a familiar environment.

Happy new year again.

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!

 

It's been busy around here . . .

. . . and I have a backlog of ideas for posts. For some of them, I need to find the items to photograph, and I haven't had time to organize the office (or the rest of the house) for the next phase of research and work.

Here are some of the reasons why. . . .

Starting up my freelance business again

During the final phases of preparation for publication of The Book (now being referred to on Ravelry as FFSB, for The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook), I had to turn down almost all other freelance work. Getting that part of my life started again has meant re-thinking the way I go about it, and getting more closely focused on the clients and projects where I have the most to offer.

The result of all this has been two new pieces of written material:

1. An introduction to editorial work in general, and to working with me in particular (should be helpful for anyone who's thinking about consulting an editor)
2. A questionnaire for potential editing clients, which has the intention of setting up a solid foundation for figuring out whether this writer, this editor, and this project are all simpatico (again, should be of value for folks working with me or with others)

Right now, those links lead to a public section of my Dropbox account. Soon I hope to have them on my personal website (see the next section of this post, about the thesis, for why they're not there yet). Although I've tested the documents thoroughly, I still consider them works-in-progress and welcome feedback.

In addition to the thinking and writing and information design involved in producing these pieces, I needed to learn how to make a fillable PDF. Then I upped the ante, because I wanted a form that could be used on both PCs and Macs (plus Linux, but the Linux folks can manage just about anything on their own). I also wanted the PDF to allow the user to print, to save a partially filled-out form, and to send the results to me, as needed.

Getting those functions into a PDF is not as straightforward as I thought it should be. Each involves a separate set of solutions. Having discovered this, I now understand why some PDFs that I've run into have not let me save my responses or print, as well as why the "print" and "submit" functions didn't work on my Mac, while the "clear form" command, with what appeared to be identical types of coding, did. Lynda.com got me through all of these problems except for the Mac issues, which I just needed to bash around and puzzle out. Several friends tested my drafts on other systems; I'm grateful.

There's never a dull moment in the world of technology. I'm also learning new software: DevonThink, MarsEdit, and I forget what else. My most recent completed post came from a digression on this topic. Several started-but-not-published posts keep getting shoved back due to my long list of tasks, chores, and responsibilities. And a few pleasant milestones that have been too important to miss.

My daughter's thesis defense

My daughter, who is my webmistress (her choice of title), is well on her way to having earned a master's degree. Just under two weeks ago, she defended her thesis.

There was lots of paperwork involved, framing and documenting a discussion with the three faculty members of her committee.

Two of the profs came from her program, the rhetoric and composition section of the English department, which encouraged her in looking at computer-game culture from the perspective of literacy and communication. Her outside reader is in the sociology department. She dug into her topic from multiple angles, including visual rhetoric (a comparatively undeveloped field), theory of composition, sociological theory, and autoethnography.

Her biggest challenge throughout the thesis process has been defining a topic that was small enough to be contained in about 25,000 to 30,000 words. The final subject: rhetoric of gender in Mass Effect 2. (She did rationalize including brief coverage of a number of other games, to make certain points or establish the position of Mass Effect 2 within the universe of computer games and within her broad area of study. Some of the thoughts that didn't fit into the thesis were diverted into presentations she made at three national conferences this spring, and even more went into major projects for classes she was taking.)

Many of the committee members' questions were prefaced by words of this general sort: "Now, this angle would only really be relevant if you were doing a dissertation rather than a thesis, but let's talk about it anyway." One of the most interesting questions, toward the end, was: "What if there were no such thing as gender?" Everyone laughed, in part because the query wondered about the existence of such a basic idea and in part because it also elicited even deeper examination of the issues. Then we listened as my daughter considered, out loud, what that would mean.

I wish I had the whole event on tape, because I would like to listen to what she said again. In the not-too-distant future, she'll need to talk (or write) about the new ideas that arose, in addition to writing for other sets of audiences about what she put together for her thesis. The committee estimated that she has three distinct publishable academic papers within its pages. In addition, she intends to connect in the future with game designers, producers, and players. (Because of research constraints, she has not so far been able to engage in discussions within the gaming community.)

Here's the support team, minus the one who was behind the camera:

We were a motley crew, but a friendly one. (Knitting: swatch. Yarn: Swaledale wool, chunky.)

After the conversation, we observers waited in the hallway while the committee discussed whether my daughter had passed the thesis requirement.

Yes—with distinction!

Much more paperwork followed. As it turned out, even I received a request to sign something. It wasn't an official form. The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook shows up in unexpected places.

We adjourned to a nearby coffee shop for chai and a celebration, plus all the questions and comments that the observers, who did not participate in the official proceedings, had jotted down while listening.

The rest of the degree process involves getting correctly signed papers to the appropriate offices in quick order, along with formatting and digitally submitting the thesis. My daughter is making a few changes for her own satisfaction, but none were required by her committee. They encouraged her to go on for a Ph.D. There are lots of hurdles between here and that possibility. An early question is where. It was hard enough finding a program that would let her do the work she wants to do at the master's level! The program she has been in doesn't have a doctoral-level component.

In the long (or short) run, she wants to consult to the game-development industry on how to significantly increase their market, and improve their game-play experiences, by not actively alienating huge potential market sectors, as they currently do. It's not clear to her that a Ph.D. would help her do that, although it might.

Simple cleaning and organizing

Following the publication of The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, I am woefully behind on housework and clutter-abatement. It's been hard to manage The Project within the available space, which means that while the files related to that one part of my life have stayed excruciatingly well sorted and filed, everything else has fallen into disarray. There's been no time. A project of that scope and size, undertaken within the relatively short time-frame of four years, requires the development of an obsessive approach that narrows the focus to a single, complex goal. Almost everything else goes into a mental cabinet labeled "after deadline."

"After deadline," what would really be appealing is a vacation, although sometimes that isn't an option. (But see the next two items.)

Over the weekend, I've been working on labeling fabric swatches for teaching, and rearranging some books, and making piles of accumulated stuff to go to the next charity pickup. (I can't do too much of this, much as I'd love to take a month just to clean and clear things out, because I do have more deadlines to keep track of.) I'd like to reclaim the living room, kitchen, office, and bedroom in the foreseeable future. I've made some progress in the living room and kitchen, but there's a way to go yet. The office and bedroom are getting worse, I hope temporarily, as the central areas get better.

Border collie rescue "reunion"

We took Ceilidh to her first "reunion" with a bunch of dogs adopted through Western Border Collie Rescue. If all the eligible dogs had come, there would have been more than seven hundred. As it was, there were only, oh, sixty or seventy. Or maybe a hundred and twenty. I can't count things that move that fast.

Lots of different activity areas.

We talked to some folks about treibball, a sport that is mentally challenging but low-impact. Ceilidh, at two, already has signs of some arthritis, so we're looking for high-brain-power, low-joint-strain things for her to learn. Ceilidh was a little distracted by all the other things in the vicinity.

So we decided to introduce ball-herding later and went to play around in the tennis-ball-and-frisbee area. Throwing balls for a field full of Border collies is a kick.

Siblings get to attend the gathering, so Tussah tagged along.

We met some dogs who were up for adoption at the same time as Ceilidh and were delighted to learn that they'd found their "right" homes, just as Ceilidh found hers. What a treat.

Vacation

Here's my almost-daily vacation.

Most days, I mess around with it for ten to twenty minutes, usually just noodling with Uncle Rod's Ukulele Boot Camp. I have no purpose for playing the ukulele, other than not working for a short while.

Saturday morning, I spent about an hour and a half at the inaugural meeting of a local ukulele group. Interesting folks, from "never did music before" to several types of professional musicians with a remarkable lack of pretentiousness.

And

. . . that's about a third of what's going on around here.

Cheviots divided and conquered (maybe)--and a new sheep book

It's been quiet around the blog, although not in real life. Last time I checked in, we had discovered a major problem with the Cheviot treatment in the book (fortunately still in production, so changes are possible . . . although not for long). Several weeks have passed, full of deadlines and travel and lots of great experiences and fine people.

As of yesterday, we have resolved the Cheviot question as best we can without resources that don't, as far as we know, exist (such as DNA data). We submitted a rewrite of three full pages (47, 50, and 51) to the publisher. We also finished devising the final 75 captions, all of which had to be extraordinarily succinct.

Here's a new book I've been following through its production process for about a year and a half, which has finally been released (it's got something to say, and show, about most of the Cheviots):

It's the new British Sheep and Wool from the British Wool Marketing Board (BWMB). Although the breed on the cover is not identified with a caption anywhere, those are Exmoor Horn sheep.

(The Exmoor Horn is a critically vulnerable breed due to geographical concentration, which means 75% of the population lives within a radius of less than 12.5km, or 7.6 miles. Exmoor Horns grow nice wool that's easy to spin and is good for making sweaters, blankets, hats, mittens, pillows, and other textiles that will be pleasant and durable in everyday use.)

Here's the book's coverage of one of the breeds for which we had to revise our treatment, the Brecknock Hill Cheviot:

They're Cheviots from Wales (the Cheviots originated on the Scottish/English border). No, the new BWMB book didn't help us find answers to our questions about the Cheviots, but I sure love the photos—which are equally clear, abundant, and varied for all the types of sheep within the publication's pages. Three of the four Cheviots we needed to untangle are shown in this book (the fourth originated in North America).

The new book's 180 pages cover exclusively sheep that are found in the British Isles, of course. The marketing board came up with a list of 75 types (breeds and classic crossbreeds). Some of these sheep have been introduced from elsewhere, but the majority evolved within the British Isles. A enormous variety of types developed in the islands in response to dramatically distinct environments.

At the front of the book are a few essays on topics like the history of British wool and the role of the wool board, along with an index of wool types. Most helpful to me—because I hadn't visited that part of the world until quite recently—is a simple map on page 9 that names the basic regions of England, Wales, and Scotland. A ten-year-old raised there would likely be familiar with the terms, but someone from elsewhere probably only has a vague idea from, say, reading novels. The map also shows the St Kilda, Orkney, and Shetland archipelagos in their proper locations (instead of in squares relocated to fit on a printed page). St Kilda and Orkney aren't labeled as such; they bear the names of the sheep that originated on particular islands—although other sheep names aren't on the map (for example, Orkney is labeled "North Ronaldsay" but southwestern England doesn't have a label for "Cotswold"). Thus the map i.d. notes are inconsistent, but still useful.

Then there's the table of contents, fascinating in its own right. There are so many possible ways to organize sheep! Carol Ekarius and I spent months kicking back and forth different ideas for clustering and sequencing the animals in our upcoming book. At this point, having lived with our system for quite a while, I'm extremely comfortable with it, which means I think we made the right choices. Yet it's intriguing to see how another publication is set up. We all see things through our own filtering lenses.

The British Wool Marketing Board is responsible for maintaining the economic viability of British wool in the national and global marketplace. Here's their self-description: "The British Wool Marketing Board operates a central marketing system for UK fleece wool with the aim of achieving the best possible net returns for farmers." The groups of sheep and the information provided for the individual breeds reflect that focus. In today's marketplace, the best possible net returns for farmers come from meat production. Wool is what is called a "second crop." Even when the wool board's reason for being is to increase the value of WOOL, its work takes place within the context of the dominance of meat and the need to connect large quantities of wool with industry.

That's a really different emphasis from mine, which is exclusively oriented toward wool (as a handspinning vegetarian, I have only an abstract and peripheral interest in the meat part of the equation), with an additional bias in favor of hand-processing, rather than (or, more accurately, in addition to) fiber that's industry-friendly.

Sections in the new BWMB book include:

• Fine wools (Note that this is "fine" by the standards of mass production for British wools.)
• Medium wools
• Cross wools (These are mashams and mules, crossbreds that are traditional in the British sheep-management system.)
• Lustre wools (These are mostly the British longwools . . . interestingly, Border Leicester and Romney are located in the "medium" category, although Bluefaced Leicester is here with the luster wools.)
• Hill wools
• Mountain wools
• Naturally coloured wools (Although there are rare breeds in the other categories, most of the breeds in this group are rare or vulnerable.)

I'm always interested in seeing how groups are assembled and which breeds end up where. I can see the reasoning behind the placement of Border Leicester and Romney with the medium wools, although in our book we've put them with the English longwools. Is the organizer looking at history, wool quality, or a balance between the two? If history, which sources and aspects are given greatest weight? And if wool quality, which components of it are considered most important?

I was curious to note that in the breeds and wool types chart (page 10), the "fine" category is listed as containing wools with micron counts between 29 and 35. First reason for my curiosity: this is not a range of micron counts that is considered "fine" on the global scale (most Merino wools run from about 18 to about 24 microns). Second reason: some of the breeds in the BWMB "fine" list can grow fleeces with smaller fiber diameters than 29. Assigned numbers set aside for the moment, the same chart shows locks that are characteristic of each of the categories, and these images are extremely informative: they illustrate the different characters of the types of wool, each resulting from a combination of lock shape, crimp configuration, and other qualities.

Within the bulk of the book, each breed gets a two-page spread that contains WONDERFUL photographs plus a brief text description and some comparative numbers. The micron-count range for each breed is given as a one- to four-micron span, with most breeds described as having two- to three-micron variability. For example. Devon Closewool's fleece is given a micron range of 34–35 microns, and Lincoln Longwool is tagged with 35–38 microns. The estimates for fiber diameter in our upcoming book are a good deal broader than that; consistency at those narrowly defined levels just doesn't happen in many breeds.

Yet the presence of these small spans begins to make sense when I remember that the wool-classing system in use in Britain goes by fiber quality and is not breed-specific. When breed names are used to designate the classes, as they sometimes (but not always) are, the breeds are considered emblematic of the type of wool in that class, not necessarily the only contributors to it.

I'm very interested in how people who spend so much time thinking about and managing wool decide to present the breeds.

Their perspective is, as I've noted, very different from mine. I think about single fleeces (or sections of fleeces) and they think about bales of wool. I think about my spinning wheel, and they think about the world commodity market. These orientations frame our ways of understanding the common materials we work with. Some fibers that have high value for me (say, naturally colored wool) have very limited value for them.

People at the British Wool Marketing Board were enormously helpful in getting us generous wool samples from of a bunch of breeds we were having trouble obtaining. Each time I spin a bit of that fiber, I'm grateful. Several of those breeds are low-value in their system, and also are customarily low-value within the hand-processing community. Having encountered them now at my wheel, however, I treasure the experience, have copious ideas about how to use yarns spun from them, and wonder where I'll get more when I've run through my samples. . . .

This new publication is a wonderful book. The group that assembled it has worked hard to make it excellent, and they have succeeded. I'm especially fond of the photographs. Because the book's focus is not the same as mine, the fact that we didn't have access to it while we were researching was not a loss. So I'm glad to be able to enjoy it now, when I don't have to rush past its information on my way to another destination that would yield more of the types of data that I was collecting.

Thanks so much to the friends who made sure I got a copy as soon as it was released. I carried it with me to Michigan when I taught there, tantalized Beth Smith with it, and she is likely to be stocking it at The Spinning Loft, which will likely be an easier place for North Americans to obtain it than from the British Wool Marketing Board, although direct orders from the wool board are possible.

The sheep on the back cover is a Dorset Horn (Rare Breeds Survival Trust watchlist, minority category).

___

Soon: A glimpse of the workshops I taught at The Spinning Loft in Michigan, and a few notes about the DVD recording session at Interweave Press.

___

Meanwhile, I have taken a few breaths following the onslaught of work and am reading The Scent of the Missing, by Susannah Charleson. It's about finding, training, and working with a search-and-rescue dog. Excellent.

On a related note, our new rescue Border collie Ceilidh and I have completed beginning obedience. Yay!

A wonderful, windy Puppy Up! walk

Yesterday the inaugural Puppy Up! walks to support comparative oncology research took place in twelve U.S. cities, including Fort Collins, Colorado, and through a number of "virtual" and impromptu walks. I've been involved behind the scenes with the Fort Collins walk, in honor and in support of both human and canine friends who have needed to deal with cancer.

The idea behind these walks is that cancer research that can be done with dogs benefits both the pups and humans. Dr. Rod Page, director of the Animal Cancer Center at Colorado State University, was recently interviewed by Sarah Hansen for the Fort Collins Coloradoan (published November 6, 2010). As he observed, "We treat beloved pets, we don't perform lab experiments. . . . They get the same consideration that human patients get, the same level of care, the same sensitivity."

(The Coloradoan link may only be freely available for a limited time after the article's initial publication.)

What is learned through the animals' experiences turns out to directly benefit humans as well. I've heard a number of stories about people whose cancer treatments have been substantially more effective (in all ways) as a result of connections between their doctors and the docs at the vet hospital.

So we walked for the dogs and we walked for the people. As of a week before the event, about 250 people had registered for the local walk. Fort Collins "won" the fundraising effort (the decision date was the third week in October) and thus also earned the pleasure of having 2 Million Dogs founder Luke Robinson and his dogs, Murphy and Hudson, join us.

The morning of the event, I worked with Cynthia, who drove in from near Glenwood Springs, and her husky, Sky, to set up the dogs' water stations and fill the buckets and bowls. Then I tended the Puppy Up! sales table (which generated more funds for research), which meant that our Tussah, who doesn't like big crowds of people or dogs, could have a relaxed experience of the day.

During set-up, we had beautiful weather.

Calm in all regards.

We'd been concerned about the weather, because this is Colorado, and this is what November 13 looked like last year:

That's Ariel (with her beloved wheels), Tussah, and my daughter.

We didn't get snow yesterday. However, shortly before the walk was scheduled to begin the sky darkened and the wind began to blow. It kept blowing for several hours, until just after the conclusion of the event.

We had a good time anyway.

Here's organizer Claire Preston, managing not to be swept away while giving the introductory comments:

 

All speakers kept their comments brief, and the later ones abandoned the stage. The wind was serious. Later in the afternoon, someone who'd been flying a kite in the park got pulled off his feet and slammed into a tree. Fortunately, other than being stunned and shaken, he was basically okay, but for a while that was in question.

Luke, Murphy, and Hudson led off the walk, definitely undaunted by the windstorm (and smart enough not to have brought kites):

The rest of the participants weren't inhibited, either.

The stroller right behind Luke and his buddies contained two pups currently in treatment.

We think the walk ended up being a little longer than intended, because the signs marking the route blew away, but nobody minded. Here are some glimpses of the official tromp around the huge park:

It was only after I got home and looked at my photos that I realized how many dogs were wearing the green bandanas that indicated they had been or currently were being treated at the Animal Cancer Center.

Including Boon. . . .

. . . being towed in his personal transportation device by Connie Fredman, who provides home-away-from-home services for animals whose owners can't stay with them in Fort Collins while the critters are being cared for.

And Murphy:

A few more photos:

The dog with the orange vest (and the human orange-clad arm nearby) in the photo just above is part of one of several Larimer County Search and Rescue teams who were present (I think that's Merlin). The search and rescue group recently lost a six-year-old canine member, Trace, to cancer and were walking for Trace and others.

Some folks drove all the way from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to join the closest walk in remembrance of a number of pups, honored on a wheelchair-mounted banner:

Here's Lady:

Husky Sky, meeting a new friend:

And Tussah, checking things out from her personal space (after I'd used a handy bundle of string to keep the t-shirts from blowing away):

I'm not, as I've said before, much of a fundraiser. I do better with behind-the-scenes jobs, like staying after an event and making sure the site is well enough cleaned that the group will be allowed to use it for future activities.

Yet I put up what felt to me like an ambitious fundraising goal, and as of the day before the walk I was, thanks to several anonymous donations, a mere $5 short of reaching that figure. I thought briefly about topping off with a donation of my own, but my finances currently argue in favor of in-kind rather than cash contributions. So I was surprised when a friend came up to me yesterday and told me I'd not only reached but exceeded my goal, through yet another donation.

All of the folks who pitched in to help with my fundraising page were anonymous, which I think is great, and I want to thank you here. It doesn't matter who does this work, or whether we get individual credit for it. It just matters that we get it done.

Luke Robinson's vision is the complete eradication of cancer. Soon. It's an ambitious idea, but so was his walk, with his dogs, from Austin to Boston . . . as is the thought that we can have a bunch of walks occur simultaneously across the country. He talks about the project being more about "friend-raising" than "fundraising," although clearly it is the latter as well.

Every little bit counts. When I signed on to help with this event, I knew I didn't have much time or energy or money to contribute. I also knew that I needed to do whatever I could. I never agreed to a task that I didn't think I could comfortably manage, and I didn't hesitate to say "okay" to things I thought I could fit around my other responsibilities.

And look what we all managed to do!

It was fun, too.

Even in the midst of a serious blow (check out the dogs' ears and tails).

Puppy Up! Walks for comparative oncology research

Mostly these days I'm writing captions for the book (doing the fiber images only, I've made it to page 191 out of 438). However, despite my intense focus on deadlines and daily responsibilities, I endeavor to have a slightly balanced life, so I've been doing a few other things. Here's one.

On November 7, the first of an annual series of walks will be happening across the U.S. with the goal of funding comparative oncology research. A friend of mine is the organizer of the Fort Collins walk. I offered to help out, which means that I've been putting up posters and handing out postcards as I go about my other business, and have also been assisting with behind-the-scenes tasks that I can do when I need a break.

Research into canine cancer directly supports treatments for humans. Nearby Colorado State University is at the forefront of some of this research, and there are people in this community whose cancer treatment has been coordinated by both human and veterinary medical staffs.

The project started with the 2 dogs 2,000 miles project, which then led to the idea that if 2 dogs can walk 2,000 miles to work for the prevention and treatment of cancer, then 2 million dogs can walk 2 miles for the same purpose. Read about the origin of the phrase "puppy up!" here.

I'm not a great fundraiser, but I am good at, say, making sure that water bowls are filled for dogs at the walk and that registration tables are staffed so other (more extroverted!) people can raise funds. So that's what I'm doing. Here's my daughter's fundraising page (she's a full-time grad student, also an introvert, and has been doing more background work than fundraising, too). Here's Kris's. (We love what Kris is doing for the walk, in all ways. She's in the vet tech program at Front Range Community College and has lots of great connections.) Here's the whole Fort Collins group of individuals and teams. And here's my page. Just in case you have some spare change to pitch in to, as the event's information says:

• Support those with cancer
• Honor the friends we've lost
• Walk for those we can help

If each of us does a little bit—through this effort or another—we'll all have more success stories to tell each other about beating cancer. Treatments have come a long way since I was young. I'd love to see additional leapfrog progress in cure rates now.

The inaugural walks are taking place in

• Atlanta, GA
• Auburn, WA
• Boston, MA
• Cincinnati, OH
• Edinboro, PA
• Fairborn, OH
• Fort Collins, CO
• New Milford, CT
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Poughkeepsie, NY
• Richmond, VA
• Seattle, WA
• . . . and a Virtual Walk

Along with the many human friends I'm doing this for, I'll be walking in large part for Heather. Sorry for the bad picture. I think you can see her spirit anyway.

We adopted Heather at the age of 6, in 1992, when she retired from producing show-quality puppies, and we lost her to adenocarcinoma when she was 12, in 1998. Early spaying significantly reduces the risk factors for this type of cancer. Some of her diagnosis and treatment took place at Colorado State at a time when a number of creative treatment and support programs that are now well established were just getting started.

Here's Heather with Ariel, whom she raised (even though Ariel was a rescue and not one of her own puppies):

Heather lives on in our hearts, and the quality of love she taught us continues to benefit everyone we meet. We'd like to surround all our friends, especially those who are dealing with cancer, with Heather's legacy of intelligent (and also mischievous) caring.

So we'll be walking on November 7. Join us?

 

UK Knit Camp aftermath, and human/dog creative play

I'm working on another post about UK Knit Camp. I don't know when I'll get it finished, but in the interim I have been doing what I think is an amazing job of dealing with the follow-up stress.

Yet there have been indicators that all is not as mellow as I wish, perhaps because I've been on the road a lot and my yoga practice has been even more abbreviated than usual.

The mess is not the item on the right, which is proof that despite the fact that Ceilidh is amazingly calm for a year-old Border collie she is a Border collie. She has already removed the tennis ball from the end of her new rope toy (it took her two days: Ariel would have completed the job in less than 20 minutes). The toy still works just fine for playing tug, which is its purpose.

The mess is the item on the left. When I got the call asking me if I could get to Cleveland to tape two segments for Knitting Daily TV, I realized that my wardrobe did not meet the criteria for clothing. T-shirts don't cut it. While I have a closet full of handknits, none of them is TV-ready. They're too warm, have the wrong sleeve lengths, are in the wrong colors, or have necklines unable to accommodate a mic. (I received very detailed instructions. I will also need to get a manicure. Plain polish. That part's okay. The time and the expense of getting it done will try my patience, however.)

I thought that I just might be able to knit something in time, if I kept it simple. I found a pattern (one likely to be troublefree), buzzed over to a nearby shop and found yarn, and started knitting in my spare time. When the body was about 2 inches (5cm) along, I spread the fabric out on the bed, smoothed it thoroughly to check that I hadn't twisted the cast-on (which I'd already checked before and after knitting the first round, of course), and re-measured my gauge, which was right on. So I kept moving.

When the body was about 5 inches (12.5cm) long, I started to knit on it during a meeting and something felt wrong. I knitted a couple of rows and got that sinking feeling. I stretched out the fabric and moved the circular needle this way and that, hoping that it would straighten out into a tube. It wouldn't.

Despite my 2-inch check (I smoothed it out fully on the bed), it appeared to be true that I had managed to put a full twist into the starting row. I asked a knitterly friend if my brain was deceiving me. She said it was not. I took the object home and asked my daughter to confirm that I was seeing what I was seeing. She did.

There's no way I'll make that deadline. A friend has loaned some alternatives, but I'm supposed to have multiple choices (in case the TV stylists don't like what I offer) and each episode has to have different clothes. Fortunately, only the TOP matters. I can wear slacks that I already own. I've headed to TJMaxx and Marshall's to fill the gaps as inexpensively as possible. AARGH.

I have never missed a cast-on twist for more than one row beyond the start. It's a sign. All is not quite well balanced around here.

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My recent travel book was Jon Franklin's The Wolf in the Parlor: The Eternal Connection between Humans and Dogs. It's a personal exploration by an experienced (Pulitzer-winning) science writer on some questions that began bugging him, like why humans and dogs have been hanging out together for so long and why they continue to do so. He ventures some theories that he doesn't present as more than that, and that may agree or disagree with other folks' ideas, but I found it a fascinating ramble through observation and, among other things, brain science by a smart guy who's got enough background to say interesting things.

Ceilidh

And looking at a similar topic from a completely different angle:

Tussah

News of the choreographed rock video with OK Go and a dozen dogs has been traveling around the internet, but in case you haven't seen it here's the YouTube location (3.5 minutes). It might be seen as a visual representation of some of the ideas in Franklin's book.

Here's the story behind making the video; that link has another link to the video at its top.

. . . and here, just for quirkiness, is a parody involving a cat (1 minute). . . .

Introducing our new pup for real

Our new family member has a name. Also a microchip (a very good addition, because she has a reputation as an escape artist . . . we are accustomed to escape artists and keep our fence in good repair, but we also like additional safety nets for the return of any potential wanderers).

She is:

Tempest's Ceilidh Sora

Call name pronounced "kaylee"

She seemed to respond to this name immediately. We had sorted through a couple of dozen names, working from an array of criteria. And these are the stories behind our choices:

Tempest: The "kennel" name for our rescues. When Ceilidh is registered for her AKC-ILP number (so she can enter obedience or agility trials at shows, should she ever want to), this will be an official part of her name. The "tempest" comes both from the Shakespearean play and from the first dog in this series, Ariel, who was almost literally saved from a tempest, having been abandoned at the age of 7 weeks in hole in an open field in late December (with two siblings: all, miraculously, survived, although that was questionable for the first 24 hours after they were found).

Ceilidh: A social gathering involving music and storytelling. Probably spinning and knitting, too. This pup's movements seem to suit fiddle music, more likely jigs than reels.

Kaylee: A character in Firefly with a personality that seems to parallel that of this dog.

Sora: Offered by my Finnish exchange sister, this is the word for gravel, a link to the pup's shelter name of Pebbles.

Sora: My daughter also enjoys that this name represents a character (albeit male) in the computer game Kingdom Hearts.

Sora: Also, in Japanese, sky.

Yesterday morning, along with her name and her microchip, Ceilidh had her first play sessions with Tussah, our older dog. This was day 4 of their being together. Since their initial meeting last Sunday, the two dogs have behaved as if they'd known each other already for so long that they were not especially interested in interacting.

Ceilidh initiated the first round of play; Tussah initiated the second. They tore up the living room (not a problem) and then played chase around the kitchen counter (through dining area, kitchen, and living room, circularly).

Although Ceilidh is obviously different from Ariel (our previous Border collie) in many ways, she also displays many behaviors (already) that remind us of Ari and make us smile. For example, at the moment Ceilidh is asleep in her crate, lying on her back, with her paws in the air. There are a handful of other behaviors we have seen in these two Border collies that we have not seen in the other dogs we have lived with for long or short times—Aussie, poodle, mutt, Golden, Springer, Westie, Corgi, Tussah-mix, hound, Husky. The family resemblance is, of course, charming.

Welcome to Ceilidh, one smart pup who will be lots easier to work with on training now that we all know who she is!

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The next post will return to the photo shoot account.

New-to-us rescue Border collie!

We have a new member of the family.

The addition seems sudden to us, although it feels really right, and only the last couple hours of the process took place in a hurry. We went to meet a dog. Within minutes, we knew she would fit into our family (although we spent more time with her before we said that out loud), and she ended up coming home with us directly from the first meeting.

Here's the slow part: Over the past nine months, since we lost our Border collie-ish Ariel to old age, I have on a handful of occasions tempted fate by browsing our region's Australian shepherd and Border collie rescue pages. Dogs of both breeds tend to end up in rescue situations when they are between one and five years old, most often between one and three—that's when people who thought they were SO cute as puppies or had a romantic idea of what living with a herding dog would be like hit the wall of reality and acknowledge that they don't have time to make sure the dogs have WORK to do.

Early this summer, I noticed that the Aussies were being adopted out pretty quickly but there were a whole lot of Border collies needing homes. I downloaded an application from Western Border Collie Rescue, but didn't do anything with it. I just contemplated the possibilities, while acknowledging the relatively irrational choice to take on responsibility for another being right now.

Then I started filling it out, just to see what kinds of questions were asked and how we might answer them. I talked over the possibility of a new dog with my daughter. We both think Tussah needs a canine companion, although, of course, primary responsibility will be ours. My daughter added her perspective to the forms.

Eleven single-spaced pages later, we thought we just might mail the application. I'd put on the form that we wouldn't be able to consider taking a dog until the fall, because of my travel commitments. I knew the approval process would take time. Sent first class, the application took a month to travel from Colorado to Wyoming. I wasn't thinking about it, because of all those work and travel engagements.

Our packet did finally arrive at the rescue organization. They started checking our personal references; that took a couple of weeks. Just over a week ago we enjoyed the required home visit—a Border collie aficionado and one of her lovely dogs came over to talk about pups! The various checks include people and animals in the family, type of household (physical set-up and routines), and (very important) state of yard and fences. The goal is to have the placements for these dogs be their permanent, perfect homes. Our home visit coordinator told us not to expect final approval in less than a week to ten days, because the (all-volunteer) people doing the rescues had two big events to attend. (One was the Meeker Classic Sheepdog Trials.) So far, this whole endeavor had been progressing very deliberately (aided by the postal service) for about three months.

Following the home visit, though, our approval came through almost instantly and we found ourselves on the phone talking things over with a "matcher" (a person works on figuring out which specific dogs might be the best matches for a family). One of our top criteria was that the new dog must not bully or otherwise make life difficult for Tussah, our established dog (also a rescue), who is now, as far as we can tell, roughly 12 years old. Any addition to the family must enhance Tussah's life at least as much as ours. Tussah is kind of alarmed by puppies, so we have assured her all along we would not get her a puppy. Plus an older dog needs us more than the puppies do.

After a flurry of phone calls and e-mails, we set out on Sunday morning to meet a dog whose shelter name has been Pebbles. (The page in that link will probably move once her status changes from "available" to "success stories." [ADDED Thursday, 9/15: her page has moved to "adoption pending." It will move again later.] She's one year old and unusually mellow for a young Border collie. We were told that she got along well with other dogs and with cats (we might have a cat again in the foreseeable future).

We drove about 2.5 hours to the meeting. Mapquest and Yahoo seriously underestimated the time to drive to the meeting location, an error that I should have picked up on before we were actually driving but didn't. My daughter practiced texting on her phone to keep the rescue folks updated on our whereabouts as we got off the freeway to avoid miles-long traffic jams and accidents. We finally met Pebbles and her foster mom at a school yard.

And we took the little dog for a walk (and a ramble through the play equipment and along some stone walls), with Tussah nearby.

This young dog is spicy, but she's also wise and she and Tussah seemed to feel like they already knew each other. So we decided (gulp) to take this particular rescue home with us, and her foster mom went off to get some of the food she'd been eating and an adoption contract for us to sign. We hung out in the only shade around and got to know each other more.

The only trick in getting photos was that initially every time I wanted to take a picture, the little dog started running toward me.

Then she began getting used to us.

So we returned to her foster mom the flexi-lead the pup had arrived on (we always have extra leashes in the car), packed up her food, signed the contract, and headed toward home.

All this took longer than we'd predicted, so I had to give up the idea of using the ticket I had for a special musical presentation that afternoon. Instead, we stopped off in Denver and got some lunch at Whole Foods, where our new addition charmed passersby, and my daughter took a side trip to the independent store Twist and Shout to get a couple of CDs that were on her wish list; I stayed in the car with the dogs and knitted.

When we got home, we introduced the new pup to her new spaces, inside and out, and we took both dogs for the evening walk. Then we did what we do on many Sunday evenings: went, with dogs, to visit friends, have supper, and watch a DVD (the final episode of "Firefly," in this case . . . my second time, my daughter's third, and our friends' first). The young dog acted as if she'd always done this.

In a number of the new dog's behaviors, it is quite apparent that she's part of the same family tree as our Ariel, although in both looks and personality she's quite different.

For one thing, she's tiny: roughly 35–37 pounds. (Tussah is 43–45 pounds, and Ariel was about the same.)

We got home and I washed down one of our crates for her (while I was doing it, she settled herself into Tussah's crate a couple of times), put in a pad, and showed her where she could sleep. She seemed ready. It had been a big day for all of us.

She'll get a crate like Tussah's for regular use in the house and this one will go back into the car, but for now we all know where we belong. It seems like she's always been here.

We just don't know what her "real" name is yet.

"Pebbles" is too soft to be a good call name, and Border collies need good call names: one or two syllables, not something that sounds like a command you'll want to be teaching, with some crisp-enough consonants to get attention. We're listing possibilities on a piece of paper on the bathroom mirror and are open to suggestions.

Our previous dogs have been:

• Farley (big, goofy dog; borrowed—the people who owned a house we rented left him with the house)
• Daisy (a miniature poodle, adopted at age 10 when our neighbors decided she had become senile; she was just lonely)
• Heather (Aslan's Mountain Heather, adopted at age 6 after her retirement from producing show puppies)
• Ariel (Tempest's Ariel Miranda, adopted at 7 weeks after being abandoned in December, with two siblings, in a field near Greeley, Colorado)
• Tussah (Tempest's Tussah Redfurr, adopted at about the age of 5 after having been abandoned at a reservoir in South Dakota, adopted out of our local humane society, and then re-homed to us after being picked up running loose in traffic quite a few times; her name in her previous home was "Red," which wasn't feminine enough for her)

"Tempest" is the "kennel" name for our rescues. (It became official with Ariel's AKC ILP registration.) We might like to incorporate the "pebbles" aspect of her history into the name, although we haven't set that as a requirement.

We also don't know what her "real" work is yet. She looks like a great candidate to be a therapy dog, and I suspect she'd like recreational (though perhaps not competitive) agility and rally. She doesn't have the drive to be a real competitor, but she obviously likes to work her brain and she's pleasantly bouncy without being hyperactive. We'll start with basic obedience, which she's already got the hang of.

So we'll all be getting to know each other for a while, although it feels like we've already been together for a long time.

Trading up for Ireland: a bunch of handspun yarn

Writer Rosemarie Colombraro lives in Vermont and wrote a recent post about how much she wants to go to Ireland and how that's not a practical thing for her to have in mind. She especially wants to go to the Galway region (I was spinning Galway wool for The Project just yesterday).

She heard about an event there and it got her thinking. She said:

This area of Ireland had called to me for the better part of my 50 years on this earth. It was on my "Boxcar List." That’s like a bucket list, but much bigger and harder to ignore. I had written about the female pirate queen, Grainne O’Malley, and recognized her castle immediately among the pictures on the workshops web site. There was a strange need to visit, to walk the countryside and find spiritual sites I knew but could not describe, to breathe the air of a country that I recognized only through genetic memory, through the drops of blood that came from my Irish ancestors.

She decided to see what she might have around that she could "trade up" into a trip to Ireland, like the guy who traded a red paperclip up until he owned a house. She made a list of several items she could easily spare:

1. 6 AAA batteries. Not new, but a few of them might have a little bunny left in them.
2. A wire hanger, used.
3. My wig, used this summer during my bald period.
4. The hair of a dog. Really. The hair of a dog.
5. A Virgin Mobile Kyocera phone , with chew marks and a battery that is still fairly good.
6. And, if I find it, I will offer a four-leaf clover, found by me. This is surely worth an entire trip, flight and all! Let me know if anyone is interested in this one and I will look harder.

Here’s more:
JUST ADDED: My high school class ring, circa 1975.
My voice: Got an advertising project that needs a female voice?
My skill: Blog content? A story…on Ireland? Want me to tweet about your Irish wolfhound?

Grainne O'Malley, about whom Rosie had written, is the subject of Molly Lyons' exquisite one-person play, A Most Notorious Woman (with fine original music by Martin Stillion). I thought that if Rosie did not know about the play, she certainly needed to. I dropped a comment on her blog:

Okay, no trade from me yet (though I may think of one), but a question: have you seen . . . A Most Notorious Woman? It’s about Granuaile (Grace O’Malley, pick your name: the pirate queen). It is EXTRAORDINARY. I saw its world premiere—and have seen it three more times, and will see it again when I have another chance (and I don’t tend to do things I’ve done before).

Rosie responded:

Thanks for the info on the Grainne play, Deborah! And…um…this hair of the dog…beautiful spinnable Belgian Tervuren hair. A manilla envelope stuffed full. Want to trade for a sample of your yarn, to be put up for further barter?

Okay, THAT's interesting. Spinnable fiber. She's got my number. I figured I could find a sample of surplus handspun, probably even a whole skein, to trade for it.

Then I got to pondering. To make a long story slightly shorter, here's my trade for the dog hair (I like Belgian Tervurens, and I would love to hear that Rosie, whom I have never met, gets to go to Ireland):

Here's what I wrote about my trade:

Handspun yarn, I’d call it “rose gray,” a medium gray with a warm cast to it, plus a knitted swatch and a small piece of the original fiber: 2 pounds 4 ounces (1 kg, not a typo) of two-ply, light sportweight, moderately thick-and-thin, 14 wraps per inch, suitable for knitting or crochet, and strong enough to be woven (warp and/or weft).

This is a former UFO (unfinished object), about two-thirds of a sweater that I have disassembled and turned back into skeins of various sizes: most are good-sized, a handful are quite small. I’ve just washed the skeins [note: retrieved from semi-sweaterdom, skeined, and bathed in a hurry, as I was packing to head for the cabin], but they still have a bit of crinkle from their previous adventures, which were nearly successful. The skeins got slightly disoriented while I was spinning out the water in the washing machine (despite three skein ties each), but will be easy to ball.

I think the fiber was an Ashland Bay multicolored Merino top . . . that’s what it looks and feels like. Spinning quality: this was some of my intermediate yarn, the sort that a beginner aspires to and that gives a spinner with much experience an opportunity to feel good about her or his own yarn. It knits or weaves up to a nice, supple, lightweight fabric, or it can be worked double for more body (and quicker working).

A spinner could also uptwist the two-ply and turn it into a cable.

I actually like this yarn a whole lot. It's got great karma. It's sort of tweedy, like Ireland, and sort of rosie, like Rosie. I have no idea why it has not wanted to become something for me, other than yarn. I'd love to know what it becomes for someone else! (Whenever.)

Here's what I'm getting in return:

Traded to Deb: hair of the dog
This is a manilla envelope full of clean soft Belgian Tervuren hair from the coat of Richelieu’s Faelhan of the Land, the only surviving puppy of the last litter of American and Canadian CH Richelieu’s Exeter D’Allante, CDX, PT. This hair will spin into either a soft brown or gray yarn. “Fae” is my best buddy!

I'm thrilled. Fae's hair might make a special appearance in The Project, too. We'll see.

If you want to know more about this trading-up sequence, just started, there's a special page for it now.

Anybody else want to play?

 

Yes, all of it.