Mandy Moore's Blog, page 13

Tips for Teaching Spinning

There is something about the summer, maybe it’s because I spin out of my house more, or because of the abundance of fiber shows, but I get more brand new people asking me to teach them to spin in the summer than any other time. I bet it happens to you too. Here are some of my tips for teaching a newbie.

 

Let your new spinner spin slowly

Give them the ability to start and stop easily. Use the park and draft method on a spindle, and if you use a wheel make sure it’s one that is very responsive to stopping and going with just the treadles, and will spin smoothly with the drive wheel going slowly.

New spinners should feel comfortable stopping when they feel the twist is ready to draft or getting over twisty.  They really don’t want to take their hands off of their fiber except for drafting, having to nudge-start a wheel with their hand or foot is just one more thing to think about. The wheel I use most often for teaching is my Lendrum DT

 

Into the Whirled Shetland, color: Selene

 

 

2. Use beautiful fiber. Use fiber that makes your student light up, you know that look. Use a medium-ish wool, Corriedale, Falkland, Shetland, in a beautiful color.

Something that is friendly to uneven drafting and treadling. Even if they ask for it, I won’t start a new spinner with Merino.

 

 

 

 

Good reference books for new and new-ish spinners

3 .Give them references. New spinners will want something to refer to when you aren’t around, mentioning online classes, websites and books they can delve into will boost their confidence.

My go to new spinner book is Maggie Casey’s Start Spinning, and once they can make yarn and start asking the why and how questions I recommend my book, Yarnitecture.

Bonus things: music, a relaxing beverage, and your time, sitting quietly side by side spinning.

A few minutes with Lisa Evans of Knitting & Yoga Adventures

Lisa Evans (left), a long-time Knitty advertiser, is the creative force behind Knitting & Yoga Adventures, a small business that offers Knitting Retreats in a variety of locations in the US. We asked Lisa to tell us more about her Retreats and the thought behind them.

Q:  What made you decide to offer fiber and yoga adventures as a business? How long have you been doing these retreats?

A: The idea of knitting retreats began many years ago when my own knitting group tried to join a local knit shop’s annual retreat to Monhegan Island, Maine, and there wasn’t room for us. Not to be thwarted, we organized ourselves and spent a long weekend on the island having a blast. A few years later a friend and I talked about this intriguing combination and I knew just the place. 13 years and over 30 retreats later, Monhegan Island has become the mainstay retreat, with New Mexico, Vermont and now Knit Maine at Haystack Mountain School of Craft.

Q: How have the retreats changed since you began offering them?

A: In the beginning I taught the knitting classes, mostly intarsia based upon the designs I had created for LBEvans Handknits along with a friend who taught the yoga sessions. But I switched over long ago to bringing in known knitting designers, as well as established professional yoga instructors and a massage therapist. Not all of the trips include yoga or massage, but there is always an element of easy healthful movement and pampering involved. I now focus on the creation and organization of the retreats always seeking out new venues and new instructors working about 18 months in advance.

Q: What are your retreats like? What can your guests expect?

A: When I am creating a retreat I consider the geographic location, travel options, and venue carefully keeping each trip unique from the others. At this point I know many who will possibly attend so I think about what would they be willing to do, how much I can stretch the group to trust me try new things. Experience has taught me that the architecture of a space is critical to the success of an event.  There must be a comfortable space for us as a group that feels naturally inclusive and fosters bonding and conversations. It could be a large living room with lots of seating options, a courtyard, or a small gallery space. What it will never be is a conference center with big screens and long tables!

Q: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned in offering these retreats?

A: One thing I have learned is that we all want the same basic things in a retreat. We want to make friends, have good food and conversations and to see, learn and experience new things. More importantly we need to feel safe, included, rested and comfortable. I take great care in curating an experience for my participants to create an experience that is not just fun and entertaining but takes care of these basic needs.

Q: You have retreats planned in Maine, Vermont and New Mexico this year. Tell me more about why you chose each location.

A: Monhegan Island and Quechee, Vermont are easy mainstays on my roster. They focus on a primary location with a few hikes and outings.  While New Mexico is a day-tripping type of experience that is much more logistically challenging and takes a great deal of choreography moving through Northern New Mexico. It is a fabulous place to visit.  The big addition this year is Knit Maine, September 6-9, at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. Haystack is an internationally known craft school nestled into the rocky landscape at the waters edge. It is a completely new type of event for me. This event takes place over 4 days with 8 instructors; over 30 class offerings, evening presentations, morning yoga sessions and a Saturday marketplace with Maine & New England based producers. It’s very exciting and very nearly filled.

Q:  How do you choose which instructors to have at each event?

A: Selecting instructors is always fun. I am so pleased to have a core group of amazing designers and instructors that travel with me: Norah Gaughan, Susan Mills, Julia Farwell-Clay and Beth Brown-Reinsel to name only a few. This year Kate Atherley, Patty Lyons, Katharine Cobey and Beatrice Perron Dahlen are joining me!

Q: Tell us more about you personally, Lisa. What’s your background?

A: After growing up in Texas and attending Texas A&M I moved to New York City to work as a Landscape Architect for several years before moving to Maine and starting a family.  One of my first friends in Portland told me I must learn to knit because ‘all the ladies knit’.  So my mother-in-law got me started on a pair of straight-needle mittens.  All the basics were there and I was off!

 

After the birth of my first child I realized I needed something to dip back into the technical side of my mind. Not one to follow the directions of others very well I began designing my own knit projects. With the birth of my third child LBEvans Handknits was created and I went to market with a line of knitted kits for backpacks, totes, and purses.

This all didn’t just happen in a vacuum, however, I had been attending the TNNA shows with my mother, Boots Bailey for many years to assist her with her needlepoint and leather finishing business. But needlepoint wasn’t my thing and she helped me get yarns to play with from Westminster Fibers, the company that brought Rowan yarns to the USA.  These kits featured Rowan yarns and were pre-lined structured bags with leather tops and knitted bodies. The knitting was simply shaped but had highly involved colorwork, primarily intarsia. Much to my delight, my small design business became one of Westminster Fibers featured product lines at market just as I was beginning to run retreats and creating K&YA.

Creating retreats is something I really enjoy, it fulfills the southern hostess side of my personality. But the artistic side of me is a very important and a big part of my life. I began working with clay and learning to throw on the wheel gradually as a hobby while my family was young. It took on a much larger role for me during the time of my mother’s illness and her passing. The potters wheel was my ‘go to’ to stay grounded and let go of the stress while I traveled monthly from Texas to Maine to help in her care and to manage her business. It was very clear to me that I could not step back from it and have since created a private studio. I now pursue this work as a ceramic artist right alongside K&YA with work in several galleries in Maine and Rhode Island and a small online presence as Lisa B Evans Pottery.

You can learn more about the upcoming Knit Maine Retreat and the other Knitting & Yoga Adventures at Lisa’s website. Thanks for sharing, Lisa!

WWW: Alpaca Yoga Class; linen production; FIT/MIT workshop

The inaugural 2018 Alpaca Owners Association (AOA) Natural Fiber Extravaganza sponsored by Long Hollow Suri Alpacas/ New Era Fiber takes place July 13-15 at the Wilson County Exposition Center in Lebanon, TN and will feature the Alpaca Owners Association National Fleece Competition. In addition there will be a FREE hour-long yoga class with a group of friendly and beautiful alpacas at the Natural Fiber Extravaganza Sponsored by Long Hollow Suri Alpacas/ New Era Fiber. The classes will take place in the backyard area of the Wilson County Exposition Center on Friday, July 13 and Saturday, July 14 at 8 a.m. and be led by Yoga instructor Sheri Link. To learn more about the show visit www.fiberextravaganza.com.

Summer finally arrived to my corner of the earth which means not only heat, but also humidity. This miserable combination means that I turn to linen to wear and to knit. I also enjoy how it’s made type documentaries, so this video about linen production was nine and a half minutes of summer venn diagram bliss.

Students today have access to experiences that sound more exciting than those I had in college. The first FIT/MIT Summer Workshop was held in June. The students split their time between MIT and FIT and to explore and develop clothing concepts using advanced functional materials that incorporate 3D printing or advanced knitting technologies.

Tour de Fleece Update, Sheepspot Breed Club, TdF Tip

My TdF spin, a Homestead Hobbyist sock blend in Deepwood

The Tour de Fleece is underway and people are spinning up a storm!

Take a peek at the Instagram hashtag #tourdefleece2018 there are already close to 2,000 posts. I

t’s all so inspiring. If f I’m honest it inspires me to shop as much as it makes me want to spin, there is so much beautiful fiber.

What fiber are you spinning?

 

 

 

 

The Sheepspot Fiber Club is open!

Looking for a breed study or fiber club? How about both? The Sheepspot Fiber Club is now open!

Working with commercially prepped fiber, you can learnabout a different breed every month and spin some beautifully dyed fiber as you learn.

 

 

 

Day 1 of the TdF for me, soccer!

Here’s my biggest tip for the Tour de Fleece: Have fun!

Don’t set goals you know will make you stress or hurt your body. You don’t have to spin a mile or poundage from your stash. My goal is 4 ounces, that’s it. To spin a little every day for the Tour. I’m not watching the Tour either, I’m watching the World Cup and Netflix. I might watch the last day of the Tour, but bike racing just isn’t interesting to me.

Here’s something I have to tell myself over and over, social media is only an option. You don’t have to post on social media and please don’t compare yourself to the spinners on social media. I love to look at what everybody is spinning, but as soon as I start hearing that little voice in my head telling me I should do more, I close my app. Sometimes social media takes all of the fun out of things.

Be good to yourself and have fun spinning!

WWW: Why is Apple so freaking dumb; 10,000 new knitters!; time to get the tits out

I’ve got some wonderful photos from the very recent TNNA trade show to share with you. Of course, Apple keeps moving where they let us store our photos every time they do an operating system update (grrr) and I’m having a heck of a time consolidating them all. As soon as I get this octopus handled, I’ll post a link on the blog!

10,000 New Knitters, a movement by Skacel

Meanwhile, Skacel is very NOT dumb. They are clever. They’ve launched the 10,000 New Knitters drive, providing free kits of needles and yarn to LYSs (and those of us who can do) so we can teach others how to.

Go forth and make new knitters! (And when you do, tell your new knitter about the Knitty Library, where they’ll find 15+ years of free patterns that don’t suck.)

Sciency knitters will love this: A new model predicts how each stitch in a knitted fabric will respond to a stretching force. Physics + knitting! Wooo!

From Countess Ablaze, we have the Tits Out Collective, her response to a plagiarism of a popular charity colourway (it’s a gorgeous pink/purple/orange concoction). It’s a charitable movement, and a reminder that all of the people in this world of knitting need to make a living. It’s also a good excuse to buy a skein or two of some gorgeous yarn. Read more at the link above.

Wisconsin S&W Registration is Open; So You Want to Be a Dyer?

Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival is a little gem of a fiber show. Held the weekend after Labor Day in Jefferson Wisconsin it has everything bigger shows have

Pet the sheep, take a class!

but without the stampeding crowds. This is a show that runs at a relaxing pace, everyone is having a good time, no need to rush. There are classes, vendors, a fleece competition and sale, sheep dog trails, and food trucks roll in from Madison. I’m teaching there again this year, Friday-Sunday, my classes are: The Gist of Grist, Pretty Maids All in Row: Successive Color Plying, Yarnitecture, and Colorplay: Stress-Free Ways of Spinning Color. Already taken those classes? Amy Tyler, Kate Larson and Emily Wohlscheid are also teaching spinning!

 

 

Have you even had the desire to become a dyer? Do you think it’s all about waiting for the color muse to strike and creating beautiful, right-the-first-time colors, that will sell out immediately?  In this short video (16 minutes), Amy of Stranded Dyeworks gives us all the low-down on what it’s really like to be a working dyer. Thanks to The Knitgirlls for pointing me to the video!

TNNA 2018 – Things That Aren’t Knitting

The Dress at Freia Fibers

Amy, Kate and I are just back from the annual National Needlework Association convention, where we get to touch yarns and plan with yarn companies and designers. Amy posted to the Knitty Instagram all about the knitting side while we were there.

I get so caught up in looking and touching new fiber things and the hugging of friends that I forget to take pictures, but I have a few.

I do have to mention one yarn company that always makes me smile with their creativity, Freia Fibers. That dress is knit from

Amy, Tina and the Yarn Bomb

their gradient yarns. I have a crush on Tina’s yarn akin to the crush I had on Noro in the 1990s. She has a new giant gradient ball called a Yarn Bomb, 860 yards of fingering weight Merino. There is a shawl in my future.

There were a few other yarns that turned my head, Cashmere People, Kellbourne Woolens new Faroe imported yarn, and Jade Sapphire’s entire range of cashmere yarns.

 

 

 

There were quite a few companies with spinning fiber, I think the most I’ve ever seen at TNNA. I took no pictures, I was too busy touching. My spinning representative is Roy G. Pig from Oink Pigments, who had delicious fiber. Here are the companies I saw and touched with fiber: Oink Pigments, Frabjous Fiber, Dragonfly Fiber,  DM Fibers, Ashford Wheels and Looms, Lorna’s Laces, Malabrigo, Manos, Anzula, and Elemental Affects. I’m sure there were more.

 

 

 

 

Just a tiny bit of the beauty at Brooklyn Haberdashery

 

 

The biggest growth area this year that wasn’t knitting was stitching, embroidery and cross stitch mostly. I saw several companies selling the quick to stitch types of samplers that I love, but the thing that had my head spinning were all of the gorgeous notions. Brooklyn Haberdashery had the most amazing things, but their booth was so packed I could never get in!

The thing that lots of people, were talking about, but wasn’t represented was punch needle embroidery.

 

 

Schacht Easel Weaver and Louet Erica

 

You’ll notice that I haven’t mention weaving, the craft that I keep dancing around. Well, at this show I stepped fully into the weaving soul train. There was great weaving at the show. Purl and Loop had their new woven earrings, Ashford was there, Kromski premiered a new rigid heddle loom. Schacht has a great new Easel Weaver, it’s an I style loom with a kickstand, genius. I can’t wait to play with it.

 

Me and my Erica, scampering out the door.

 

 

 

Louet was there too with their amazing Erica loom. It’s a table loom that’s 2+2. It comes with two shafts with the option of adding two more. Which to me means weaving twill!  It’s a great step up from a rigid heddle without investing in a floor loom. Reader, I bought one. When I’ll have the time to learn about the loom and weaving with four shafts will remain to be seen, but she’s sitting on my dining room table singing me a little song.

WWW: Politics impacts a small knitting business; WWKIP 2018; TNNA weekend!

Heather Breadner, owner of Aberdeens Yarn Shop in LIndsay, Ontario (photo by Yanjun Li/CBC)

A Canadian yarn shop whose owner did everything possible to abide by US law was rejected entry at the border for what appears to be an error. This has resulted in a huge financial hit and concerns that those who accompanied her will have trouble entering the US in the future. There seems to be no doubt that this is a result of the US government’s new trade legislation regarding Canadian imports.

If you want to see (and maybe support) the yarn shop in question online, they’re here. I’m heading up to the Kawarthas later in the summer and will be sure to visit and see what I can do to help offset their financial losses with a little personal stash enhancement.

Were you able to participate in the World Wide Knit in Public day this past Saturday? Here are a few stories that will help you feel like you travelled the world with fellow knitters:

Park Ridge, IL
Madison, NJ
Chicago, IL (video)
New York, NY (video)
Queensland, AU (video)
Cromwell, NZ 
Instagram roundup
The official Facebook post: (click “see more” to see photos from participating events worldwide…give it a second to load. There are some cool photos.)






so much cute!

Jillian and I are off to TNNA tomorrow! If you’re attending and you see us, stop and say hi! This year, we’re giving out the cutest zipper pulls ever.

A note from us both: We are attending TNNA, and – in fact – continuing to publish Knitty thanks to our Patrons and Members. Without them, we would not exist, let alone flourish and be able to reach out to industry professionals like we will this weekend. If you are one of our supporters, THANK YOU. We get so inspired from TNNA, meeting colleagues, planning new designs, finding out what’s new in yarn and tools and notions and bags, and we look forward to sharing it with you.

In fact, I have a TNNA surprise planned for our Patrons, and I’ll email you when it’s ready. (Want in? Just become a Patron at any level!)

 

Tour de Fleece 2018 – What Are You Spinning?

The bicycles are going on this route.

Tour de Fleece this year is July 7-29 and it’s going to be here before we know it! Are you spinning? Do you know what you’re spinning?

For those that don’t know about the Tour de Fleece here’s the scoop. Every year during the run of Tour de France bicycle race spinners spin. They challenge themselves to spin every day for about three weeks following the schedule of bicycling Tour, resting on days that the riders rest.

Lots of spinners join teams for camaraderie, fun and prizes, check out Ravelry for lots of team info. Some spinners watch the Tour as they spin, some spinners spin with no team, binging on Netflix. It’s fun and it’s casual.

What all spinners do is challenge themselves somehow. They learn new skills, or spin new yarns. They spin a sweater’s worth of yarn, or they just spin down their stash. It’s amazing how much can get spun with focus, if you have and take the time.

I haven’t spun during the TdF for a few years, for a lot of reasons. It’s usually vacation time for my family and mostly I just don’t want more deadlines.

Homestead Hobbyist Deepwood

 

This year I decided to change my thinking about it all and release the pressure I put on myself. I have always wanted to spin and knit a pair of socks. One of my fav dyers is going to hold a sock spin along/knit along over three months from July-September. It will be announced soon, I’ll let you know the specifics when he releases them.

So my spinning goal for the Tour de Fleece is to spin four ounces of fiber into sock yarn, that’s it. It feels good to take part in the Tour and have a tiny goal. I even have my fiber already, a perfectly socky blend from The Homestead Hobbyist , 50% Southdown/ 25% Dorset Horn/ 25% Mulberry Silk, in the color Deepwood. And yes, that is a not-so-subtle hint about who is having the sal/kal.

Tell me about your TdF plans, goals, team, fiber, all of it!

 

 

NwRSA – PNW Spinners Are Amazing

A giant felted spinning wheel!

What I didn’t really realize when I said yes to teaching at the NwRSA conference this year is just how many spinners there are in the upper left hand corner of the US. The North West Regional Spinners Association conference is a whole bunch of guilds coming together. It was all spinning all the time and it was wonderful!

I taught Yarnitecture and the Gist of Grist to very enthusiastic and talented spinners. The conference was in a hotel in Olympia and we pretty much took over.

The main ballroom was ours and it was full of a gallery (check out the giant felted spinning wheel!), vendors and spinners from the morning to 11 at night. There was a banquet with the ferociously talented Andrea Love as a speaker. She is the stop-motion animator and felt artist who did the short film, Revolution, for Hansen.

 

 

Andrea Love, grist mess, our spinning room and Elizabeth Palmer’s gorgeous tunic.

 

 

The spinners here were so welcoming, I drifted around to different groups and never stopped talking. The first person I met was from Michigan, the second is a University of Buffalo alum (Go Bulls!). I asked so many questions about weaving and everyone’s spinning projects and received such thoughtful answers. It was a weekend where no one was in a hurry and everyone luxuriated in their craft and their friends.

 

 

 

 

 

Rug hooking and Tasmanian Comebck

I did the tiniest amount of shopping, but managed to discover a new dyer and pick up a new craft. I bought fiber from Fleebers Farm (she doesn’t have an online shop yet). Yes, that says Tasmanian Comeback for breed. She explained it as a Merino bred to a Longwool sheep then bred back to a Merino, I can’t wait to try it.

After three years of circling rug hooking, Judy Taylor’s kits finally made me jump. I bought a small kit (the sheep one) to try hooking with yarn, but already have my eye on a large rug that uses wool strips.