Finding a Style

I took a needle-felting class over a year ago and was taught how to make sheep -- standing and lying down -- because a. The class was given at the WS&WF and b. Xmas is perpetually 'right around the corner.' There must be a creche somewhere without a purchased ovine totem and I have the needles and wool to correct that deficiency.  

It's taken over a year but the idea of needle-felting something fun has been bubbling away in the dark recesses of my mind and I've finally unleashed that unholy desire.

My first attempt at needle-felted Day-of-the-Dead Catrina earrings was successful in that the eye-pins are the right length, and the sterling ear wires are easy to manipulate.  I have plenty of wool that is just this side of unspinnable and plenty of bits and pieces of spun and unspun materials. My ideas on hair styling work very well and I'm pleased with the little buns and soon (hopefully) Pompadours.  The one thing I don't have is a style. 

In cruising the Internet for inspiration, I ran across a critique of a painting of a Day of the Dead celebrant with Catrina-like make-up.  The critic blasted the artist by assuming he/she was attempting to make some sort of statement with half-baked zombie imagery.  The critic made much of the 'sewn lips' and the 'racoon eyes.'  It's a good thing several passers by left comments correcting the critic's under-educated assumptions, otherwise my google search for "Catrina" wouldn't have pulled it up.  It's also good because that's the main problem with my first earrings.  They look more like shrunken heads than Catrinas, which is okay of course, but not what I was trying for here.

I started with a different size and shape of wool blob for the second set of earrings.  I also started with an idea that Frida Kahlo deserves more than just standing on the sidelines while Catrina has all the fun.  The Braid Experiment was a success as was the use of dark gray alpaca for the eyes, nose and limited success with tooth definition.  I just don't like the skull shape.  And I hated the Kahlo uni-brow so much I pulled it off.  I'll use her hair styles but she gets to keep her signature facial hair.  

The second set are fun but I'm still not happy with the shape of the skull.  While there are plenty of people who are horse-faced and plenty of Catrina images that represent that homely caucasian bone structure.  I'm looking for the apple-head shape.  

I think.

Starting with cylinders isn't the way to go then.

Which didn't stop me from trying it again, at least to get a better handle on the tooth construction.  The third set of earrings will be more abstract in construction as far as shape is concerned.  I will be using more of the Catrina type paraphernalia to accessorize them as well.

I can see that there will be many permutations of these earrings as I work towards the style I want to use for each type: Catrina; Zombie;Shrunken Head.  I know there are enough people who are going to want these earrings all year long and so there will be no reason to force their construction into the two-months before Halloween.

The single most important thing about these earrings is the weight.  I love big earrings but they can be painful and disfiguring if they are heavy, and they usually are -- very.  My felted earrings are so light that they don't tip over this empty plastic cup.

 More Halloween later ....

I Wish I Had a Thousand Words

The two barns given over to the sale of all things woolly at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival remind me a lot of the Dealer's Room at a Science Fiction Convention.  You have to walk very slowly to avoid missing anything and breath very shallowly to avoid hyperventilating and refuse to spend a dime the first and second time you walk that path of fiscal destruction.  This mohair was beautiful hanging and swaying in the warm September breeze that blew through the wide barn doors.

You have to remember, it's not just one barn that is half a city block long with two aisles all jam packed with dealers of spinning wheels, fiber, knitting and felting needles, books, fiber, hand dyed felt, silk, hand-spun yarn, roving and fiber, looms, spindles, and patterns for knitting, crochet, tatting, spinning, dyeing, weaving and felting.  It's that there are two barns full.  They should just supply brown paper hyperventilation bags and drool cups at the door.

Demonstration pieces like this lace cape and gorgeous cardigan that show precisely what kinds of exquisite clothing you could make if you had the time AND the patience using this purveyor's hand spun and that dealer's dye -- these examples hang everywhere. 


 
I never thought seriously about learning how to double knit until I saw this scarf.  Like some of Barbara Walker's knit stitches it appears that double knitting like summer-and-winter weaving does spectacular things with hand dyed variegated yarn.  That scarf on the left is a single piece, flipped so you can see both sides.  The crocheted shawl to the right displays yet another way to use variegated yarn (on sale at that booth) to best effect.  FYI, I couldn't dye a yarn like this.  It would require a dyeing table about half as long as the barn, meticulous attention to detail and impeccable skill in applying just the right amount of dye in just the right amount of wool. 

And there are inventors there too.  Here is Nels Wiberg, inventor of my favorite spinning wheel the PVC Babe. On the table before him from left to right are: teaching drop-spindles, his Little Spider Charkha Wheel which sits behind 1, 1.5 and 2 yard niddy-noddys lying next to plying bobbins which are in front of the Pinkie spinning wheel which stands behind a box of odd bobbins.

Then there's Nels writing up my receipt for a single 1 yard niddy-noddy.


Behind him there are the fliers and bobbins and maidens he has built from Patio Furniture Pipe so that I can afford to spin.  And behind that, more dealers.


And that is it for pictures from the 2011 Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.  There are more, of course, but I won't be taunting you with them.  You'll just have to go and see for yourself next year.


Next week.  Halloween is coming ... oooOOOOoeeeeeEEEEeeoooooOOOOoo.

A Brave New Pattern

Born to Rock

I need Beta testers for my Halloween cap patterns.  I've knitted about 20 of these Li'l Punk Skull Caps and have settled on a pattern that makes them one-size-fits-all-babies.


The problem is I automatically adjust patterns written by other people to suit myself as I'm knitting.  I'm afraid that I may have done that unconsciously while following my own pattern.  


If you would like a free copy, or have a knitting friend who would like a free copy of the pattern in exchange for a critique, let me know.  I'm going to be charging around $5 for these patterns online, so it would be a more than suitable 'just because' present for someone you know who finds fault in table salt and is vocal about it.


Thank You!

Friend. Good.

Was there ever a more poignant movie scene about new friendship than the one between Peter Boyle and Gene Hackman in "Young Frankenstein?"  Probably.  But those other scenes manipulate kittens, flowers and butterflies, crying children, puppies and rainbows and so don't elicit the same tender feelings from me.

It's always great to be encouraged by a friend when you're learning something new.  It doesn't matter whether they are a new friend or someone you've been talking to for years.  Outside input and encouragement makes a difference.

The Mistress of Shadowmanor is one of those cool friends who knows how to make Bridge Mix out of garlic cloves and common crickets and sews her children's Halloween costumes.  If you don't already know about her blog, you should.

The delightful thing about her is -- well one of the things -- is that she's much more conscientious about the job of blogging than most and she will find something interesting for you to mull over almost every day.  Her encouragement and pointing me to tutorials that were actually helpful is directly responsible for the felted eyeball pictures today.

Jumping from present to past, I have pictures of sheep left over from the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival that I haven't posted because I've not had the time to study all the breeds of sheep.

I'm already familiar with the Jacob, though, and this fellow was one of the friendliest rams I've ever met.  He made me question the rumor that Jacob Sheep are mean, tempermental spawn from hell and only suitable for clearing brush and weeds in unpopulated areas. One of the handlers said that Jacobs have personalities and so frighten farmers accustomed to dealing with walking slabs of meat.

I don't need to crack any books on this particular breed. I first learned about Jacob sheep with their 4 to 6 horns (on both male and female) and spotted fleeces not long after I started spinning.  I had been buying roving and top from dealers on Ebay and decided to take the next step with a whole fleece.

I dealt with some pretty dirty and nasty things that arrived in the mail.  One fleece hadn't been skirted at all and was full of dung tags and another -- a merino fleece -- required three washings before it was clean enough to spin.  But of all the fleeces, I would buy a Jacob again in a heartbeat.  If it is well skirted (the four arm-pit areas, the neck, belly and the briches area should be removed) it washes easily and dries quickly and on a sunny day you can have fiber to spin by nightfall.

The white wool has some long guard hairs, but they're obvious and easy to pull out when carding or combing.  The hard-wearing white wool is lusterous and long with a wave and reminds me of a shorter, softer Mohair.  It makes excellent worsted and I have warped a rigid-heddle loom using only single-ply white jacob.  The brown and black wools are spongey, dense and soft, and perfect for spinning woolen.

Loading a hand card with light on one side and dark on the other  makes it possible to spin a variegated yarn that takes dye well and produces a lusterous intense single. While I wouldn't want to wear the white close to delicate skin and the dark isn't merino, the wool is still wearable as hats and mittens and maybe even socks.  (Oh look what I just did.  Now a Jacob Sock Experiment is going to haunt me until I buy a fleece.  :::sigh:::)

Jacob fleeces are pricey because they are easy to clean, a joy to spin and create variegated yarns that dye very well. They are worth every penny.

Schrödinger's Toilet Paper

I'm sure that everyone reading this blog is completely familiar and comfortable with Erwin Schrödinger's Verschränkung that involves a box, a cat, and a random number machine.You can follow the link for a refresher here on quantum mechanics and who was arguing about it when, or take my quicky explanation which is -- a lot of things (on the quantum level) don't actually happen until you see them happen.

What does that have to do with knitting? Well, I'll tell you.  

I would very much like to learn how to make my own 'porcelain' dolls eyes for my Halloween Shoggoth Hat and that is because most truly eerie and chilling eyes cost $9.00 a pair.

 

Nine bucks a pair would be prohibitive for a Shoggoth anything, and a chocking hazard to boot, but frankly right now I don't have the time to learn a new craft for one piece. I've compromised my horrific artistic sensibilities and have substituted glow-in-the-dark yarn for the whites of the eyes on the Toddler version.

While visiting friends this weekend, the three of us were watching the news. I was working on my hats when a commercial featuring an abrasive woman's voice chastised a man for leaving a "naked" roll of toilet paper sitting on the water closet.  A can to house the TP was touted as the "solution" to the "problem." 


My friends, who are world travelers and members of the intelligencia have used bathrooms belonging to friends, relatives, lovers and complete strangers and so have had the opportunity to be confronted by the doll-in-a-hoop-skirt toilet paper cover.  They asked me why any sane person would crochet something like that and I said I'd already decided it was because some people just can't stop knitting/crocheting -- or perhaps they had traumatic potty-training issues and can't pee unless someone is watching.


And so, they gently suggested that my Li'l Shoggoth hat would make a perfect TP cover.  Ahem.  Well!  Okay.  They're right. It would also (with some minor alteration to the pattern) make a superb tea cozy.  And dammit ... it will be one.

I CAN stop knitting anytime I want to stop.  But they've already started putting Xmas decorations up in the stores so it would be a bad idea to quit right now.

I'll be taking pictures with an infant model later in the week.  Until then ...

Wool Gathering

I imagine that the telepathic message the border collie was sending the sheep went something like, "I eat you, you don't move, you stupid, omnomnom,"  or "I am wolf in bunny clothing, hurry to safety of blond lady."  This dog got a lot of applause.  Not all dogs can move so many sheep at such a distance so adroitly.
 
The image is deceptive though.  I "photo shopped" it.  Well, truthfully I used my much cheaper and easier to use program, Paint Shop Pro so it's not technically photo shopped, but then that border collie on the left isn't technically that close to the sheep.  With your mind's eye, double the width of the picture and put the Border Collie on the far left edge.  Yep, that dog was a good 50 to 100 yards away from the sheep while willing them into the pen.  

The dog's blond handler on the right of the picture also technically has a face, but I didn't technically ask her if I could use this picture on my blog so I smudged her at the same time that I moved the dog closer to the sheep.  No offense lady, just protecting your privacy.  You have a genius dog though.

I took a few pictures at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival, but I won't be posting them all today.  Some will be going up over the next couple of weeks, others will pop up when you least expect them.

I'm bummed.  I didn't get to take a class I really wanted to take.  It was cancelled day before yesterday. I was so looking forward to meeting Jacey Boggs and learning her technique on slub and coils that I took a whole day off work. Anyone who knows me understands that I only take off a whole day's work for amputations and/or oral surgery.  

BUT, I did get great roving and a new and necessary tool.  So I'm not TOTALLY bummed. 

I've been wanting a smaller niddy-noddy for taking off novelty and art yarns as I make them.  Nels Wiberg, inventor of my favorite spinning wheel, makes a little one-yard niddy-noddy out of PVC and it's less than $10.  I also picked up two large balls of dark brown jacob roving for $4 each, and a 1.5 oz. ball of Cormo Sheep's Wool blended with Angora Bunny.  

Prairie Moonrise Farm out of Minnesota had Bunny Fur for sale at $6 an ounce and they had it in those clear plastic take-away containers ... the kind that hold a full sized meal.  You know the size I mean, the size that is contributing to the obesity of this nation?  That size.  

I'm hoping they start selling it on the internet soon because I keep stopping and getting up  from the computer to go over and touch the roving.  Wool from a sheep whose daddy was a corridale and whose mama was merino all carded up with fluffy bunny.   It's something.

 $6 an ounce may sound expensive, but there is a LOT bunny fluff in an ounce.  

Finally, I ran into one of the owners of Argyle Fiber Mill.  I've been wanting to visit them for some time because they're an honest to goodness fiber mill in South Central Wisconsin that processes local wool.  50 Mile Fiber is what they call it.  They also hold what sounds like absolutely hilarious and fun knitting get-togethers at their mill.   Who knows ... maybe they'll let me take pictures.  

I'll be posting again later in the week as I finalize some designs I've been working on for the Drooling Crumb-Crusher Line of Halloween Haute Couture.  I have a model lined up for the "Punk" and "Li'l Punk N Head" Halloween hats but the "Li'L Shoggoth" hat is giving me problems.  Making a three dimensional static representation of ... a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us ... particularly one that people might actually buy to put on their 6-month-old's head, has proved to be challenging.  

How's that for a convoluted Lovecraftian sentence married to an gross understatement?  Until later this week ...

What Regretsy Taught Me - Ask for Feedback

Beaded Little Leaf Lace in Sage

I just got through listing several berets and neck laces on Etsy and it seems like that was a lot more work than actually making the things.   I decided to NOT use the word steampunk as a keyword, style, description or any other thing, anywhere on my listings because

a. Nothing has clock parts knitted into it and
b.  I know better than to call something Steampunk, particularly if it actually IS steampunk. 

I did use the tags of Edwardian, Victorian and Goth for my neck laces.  So I'm asking for feedback on that.  If you believe that I've misused the descriptive words Edwardian, Victorian or Goth anywhere in my Etsy shop, please let me know.

While I was posting the berets I've been making, though, it occurred to me that I can offer something I've not seen elsewhere.  After knitting a couple of berets using hand spun it occurred to me that I couldn't possibly charge $200 for a beret -- so I shouldn't be using hand-spun exclusively when I knit my designs.  

I should concentrate my spinning time on novelty/art yarns and use them to enhance berets that had been knitted primarily in commercial yarn.  And that is what I've done.  Though one or two of the berets are completely hand spun, most start with a base of Lion's Fisherman's yarn and go from there.

Thick N Thin with Flags Novelty

It was just a small jump from that to the idea of offering berets with extra novelty yarn so that customers could knit their own matching scarf (with suggestions on how to use the novelty yarn to best effect -- or not.)

The beret here, for instance, is primarily White Fisherman's wool with a couple of different novelty yarns.  Hems of novelty on both ends of a garter stitch scarf would be easy to do, and when the customer is finished they could say "Hey, I knit this scarf just for you!  And here's a hat too!"  ... but is that too odd?