Variations on a theme

This is the kayaking that I didn't do on the weekend. I got all geared up to go but a phone call at the last minute had me taking someone to town in the motorboat. So Mark went out and took this picture.

Here is another picture of some samples I did with a skein of wool/alpaca/mohair. The colours are brighter than they appear here. All skeins are plied and have one or two singles from the same skein. Some have a single added from another dye scheme. So these samples are really variations on a theme (the keystone colour). Furthest to the right is a 'fractal' spun skein which spreads the colours so they rarely match up. The skein second from the left is Navajo Plied to keep the colours together. So if you compare skein 2 with skein 5, they are both from the same colour dye, yet appear very different. The others are variations on the theme.

The herring are spawning, the herring are spawning

I meant to post this last week. It was a beautiful day and the herring spawned along the beach in front. The water became milky blue. I think herring wait for the sunshine to spawn.  Today was just as beautiful and it reminded me to post this picture. The gulls are circling by the hundreds and sea lions satiated, full and fat are floating by holding one flipper in the air. With so much activity on the water, and a promise of sunshine we are going to go kayaking tomorrow. If I capture any good pix of the activity I will post them. Meanwhile, here is last week's picture.

The Original Knot Yarn

I was recently inspired by Materfamilias in a talk she and a collaborator gave about the creative process. They had been paired off in an experiment to see what would emerge if you put two academics who didn't know each other and who came from different disciplines. She spoke about knitting and how the two collaborators discovered common threads and ideas. Being an academic enthralled with Canadian literature, she naturally spoke about P.K. Page who had recently passed away and how P.K. was also a keen knitter and had written some poetry about knitting...to wit:

Knitter's Prayer

Unknit me --

all those blistering strange small intricate stitches --

shell stitch, moss stitch, pearl and all too plain;

unknit me to the very first row of ribbing,

let only the original simple knot remain.

Then let us start again.

' Materfamilias pointed out that the original simple knot could also refer to the umbilical cord knot. All these thoughts came together in my mind with another question 'What creative product would I come up with given their thoughts?' And a personal challenge was born....what if I designed a yarn based on this talk? What would it look like?  

With yarn, you can play with colour, the fibre or a mixture of fibres, the diameter, and the structure (single, two ply or specialty structure). I decided that the yarn would need to start with the colour of red (blood), fade to white (life) and then darken to black (death). I would use a mixture of fibres to represent the many creative thoughts that went into this. I dyed wool that went from red, white to black and then spun it thick and thin for the core. Black alpaca mixed with recycled threads of multi-coloured silk to represent the many threads of thoughts coming together. These were plied together with extra twist and strands of coloured mohair to represent many different life events. Then spun a grey alpaca with a grey/blue cultivated silk to give it a tone and plied it with the already plied yarn in the opposite direction encase the yarn. So what do you think?

Spinner's Prayer

Knit me --

The original knot 
starts the thought.

Blood red, our life begins,
wool white, wool black
a balanced spin.

Many threads, random caught.

spun worsted and woolen, 
slubbed and thin,

paired and plied and 
plied again,

entwined, encased 
and wrapped.

Knit me a life to spin.

Salish wool dog - update

I just came across a podcast on the Salish wool dog that I thought people would be interested in. It's well done by Sterling at his site The Future Soon. Sterling interviewed Susan Crockford - the dog bone expert mentioned in an earlier post. Here's the podcast:

To see all the Salish wool dog related posts on this site, click this link: Island Weaving Salish dog posts.

 ..side diversion: His site has a great quote

"Science is what you do when you don't know what you are doing."....

Confined to barracks

I have been confined to barracks with Chicken Pox. Despite having it as a child, I have succumbed to it again. The miracle drug they gave me has made it very bearable. I have the red spots but feel pretty good. So what does one do when confined to barracks? Spin. Knit. Dye. Cook. Clean. Watch movies. Read and cruise the 'net. Not a bad life.  

I've been taking pictures of some natural dye material. Here's Japanese Green Tea (interesting grays with a greenish tinge) and Lac (reds) dye stuff. Lac is interesting. It is a excrement from an insect that parasitizes certain trees, mostly in Asia and Mexico. The insect colonies make a resinous cocoon from which the dyestuff is extracted. The resinous material is made into shellac and in the old days, into lacquer ware.  Who would have thought that insect excrement could be so useful?! I remember eating off 400 year old lacquer plates on a remote island off Guadalcanal thinking it most unusual to be there eating off such beautiful elegant dinner ware in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Knowing lac comes from insect excrement makes that dinner experience even more bizarre.

The spinning sisterhood

Last weekend I joined the sisterhood of spinners. I had no idea that these fiber sisterhoods existed--weekends where women get together and spin, or knit or weave. The one I went to was for spinning. Think of a large meeting room filled with 40 middle age and older women (and one man) and 50 spinning wheels, all spinning up a storm of fiber, and you get the picture...very weird. But it was two and a half days of spinning bliss. Hard to believe one could get such enjoyment from making yarns.

I took a workshop on things to look for in buying a fleece. Interesting tip when looking for fine wool. Test for softness by taking a lock of wool, twist it and rub it against your face just below the nose and above the lip. This is one of your sensitive areas and works to detect softness far better than your fingers or the rest of your face. The picture of the fleece is from a sheep named Tomeye, a lovely Romney. Shorn in 2008. We also saw some of Tomeye's fleece from this past year after he suffered from pneumonia. The fleece reflected his poor health.

Yarn bombing

I have been meaning to post this picture for a long time.  This is a bicycle that has been 'yarn bombed' outside of the Knotty-by-Nature yarn store in Victoria (great fibre store by the way). This is kinda like a knitted tea cosy but think bigger scale. Yarn bombing is taking the world by storm, stitch by stitch.  A friend had his truck yarn bombed and came back to find little knitted accessories hanging from the tailgate, the antenna, mirror, etc.  Cute in a devilish kinda way.  Anyway, the Vancouver Island University light poles got yarn bombed last week and unfortunately my camera battery died so I don't have proof that one light pole was dressed as a flasher in a grey knit sweater (moss stitch, with a cable or two) from which a pink sock-like appendage protruding.  That may be providence that I couldn't capture that image, but I did manage to capture the seaweed being circled by fish and the snake that slivered around a pole and captured one of the campus bunnies it its mouth.

Last week on Saltspring Island I saw a book on yarn bombing ' Yarn Bombing - Improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time and see that the two women from Vancouver (I just realized I am almost at the epicentre of this knit revolution) have a blog dedicated to recording yarn bombing activity around the world.  Some where I read an article about subversive knitting in Paris (of course).  Social knitworking where twitters twitknit a pub or cafe and knitters descend upon that location, armed with yarn and needles, ready to knit up a storm, usually on a public object like a mail box, tree or statue.  One never knows where or when, but wired knitters have learned to be prepared at a moments notice to do their bit and warm up the world.