Mandy Moore's Blog, page 85

Obsession: Knitting with Beads

Have you tried knitting with beads? It’s awfully addictive. It takes simple stocking stitch and makes it into a jewelled wonder. There are lots of fabulous beaded shawls and other projects out there.

Me, I’m slightly obsessed with Laura Nelkin’s fabulous bead knitting kits. They’re small projects, easy and quick to knit – practically instant gratification! – and the end results are those rare wear-everywhere go-with-everything pieces.

They’re also an excellent and affordable way to add something new to your wardrobe, if you’re feeling the winter blahs.

So very chic – and so very quick to knit!

Because we want to share the obsession, we’re giving away a Soutache bead knitting kit.

Even more beautiful close up.

Soutache is a great introduction to bead knitting, as no special skills at all are required – it’s just 4 strands of i-cord. The kit contains everything you need – yarn, beads, a dental floss threader (yes, really, the bead knitter’s best friend) and the clasps for both the necklace and the bracelet.

You can see more of Laura’s kits in her Etsy shop.

You know the drill: leave a comment below to win; deadline is Sunday February 17th, Midnight EST. We will randomly pull a name, and the winner will answer a skill-testing question. Winner chooses the kit colour!

WWW: The Fiber Factor, Wonderwool Wales, Pom-pom Sheep (Join the Flock!)

The winners of our Lucy Neatby class giveaway are Jodi, Patti, Susan, Deb and Carolyn. They each get one free class download from Lucy’s site.

A wonderful weekend for all!

Knitters and Spinners in the UK, mark your calendars for Wonderwool Wales , being held April 27 & 27 in Builth Wells, Wales. This is the 7th annual event, and promises a huge range of activities for the entire family: classes and workshops on a wide range of topics and woolly goodies for sale, of course, but also demonstrations and a Hat fashion show and competition.

If you’re in other parts of the world, that weekend is also the Toronto Downtown Knit Collective Frolic - not as many live sheep, but otherwise nearly as good! And it’s also the Fabric of Life Creative Fibre Festival in Porirua City, NZ. Remember, you can always check the events list on Clara Parke’s wonderful Knitter’s Review website to see what’s going on near you.

I love this: students of a local high school and residents of an assisted living center team up to yarnbomb the building and grounds of the residence. Both the inside and the outsides at The Point at Rockridge, in Oakland, CA were decorated – flowers for every resident’s door, and decorations for the railings and even scarves for the statues in the fountain on the grounds.

Can’t wait to watch!

Skacel Yarns has announced their very own reality competition – The Fiber Factor. It’s a knitting design competition with the goal of finding the next great knitwear design superstar.

Skacel is looking for 12 contestants to participant in 6 challenges to run between April and October 2013. The winner of each challenge will receive a cash prize, and in January 2014 a grand prize winner will be chose, and will be awarded a five-day, all-expense paid trip to Germany to tour yarn production facilities and the addi needle factory.

This just makes me happy!

The Campaign for Wool in the UK is also running a contest – this one open to everyone! They are trying to break a world record for the largest collection of pom-pom sheep. Details here. If you’re contributing, they need your sheep by March 1st. Even if you don’t plan to send any in, you can download a template and instructions to make your own sheepy adorableness. The project is the brainchild of the Eden Arts group, who are aiming to create an installation of thousands of pom-pom sheep – and hoping to break a world record at the same time. Last year‘s was a resounding success, with over 5300 sheepy participants, and we’re excited to see this year’s results.

Speaking of wool and things that make us happy: this story about the prevalence of wool in equipment and clothing being shown at the The Outdoor Retailer Winter Market, a tradeshow for sports and outdoor gear stores, recently held in Salt Lake City. Wool is starting to regain popularity over man-made fleece fabrics: “Natural fibers is where it’s at,” said Matt Skousen, of Everest Designs, one of the exhibitors at the event. “It’s the real deal. Wool has had millions of years to figure itself out.”

The beautiful in the everyday…

And in other uses for wool – and household items beautiful enough to be art objects: this wool dry mop from a fourth generation family business in Vermont. Jillian says: “Almost pretty enough to make me want to clean…”

Spinning Tuesdays: My Next Wheel, How Do I Choose?

I’m getting a new wheel soon. It will be my fifth wheel. I spin as my job and I feel like one lucky woman.

When I feel it’s time to get a new wheel it takes me a bit to figure out what wheel I’d like, where the holes are in my team of wheels. I’m not telling you which one I’m getting yet. It’s taken me a year to figure that out.

I can tell you how I chose each of my wheels and why I love them.

My entry wheel I bought because it was cheap and I could get it right that second. It was a Reeves little castle wheel and that was about 18 years ago. I don’t have it anymore, we never gelled. I never even tried it before I bought it. I was a new, new, new spinner.

My first wheel that I still have was love at first sight.

Matchless!

As soon as I saw a Schacht Matchless, I knew I had to have one. The wheel I was looking for at the time was one I could never outgrow. I was willing to have a big learning curve and  spend a bit of money (as long as there was layaway!). I was still a beginning spinner and this wheel is so full of spinning possibilities and adjustments, that it scared the hell out of me. It was way more wheel than I needed at the time. But I was in love. I had her on layaway for months before I brought her home.

At the time I had been weaving for awhile on a Schacht loom and I knew I couldn’t go wrong buying a Schacht wheel, it would last forever and spin like a dream. It took me years to get really comfortable with her, but she is my ‘I can adjust and spin with my eyes shut’ wheel. As I became I better spinner I began to appreciate all that she can do. There is no yarn that I can’t spin on her. If I had to own only one wheel, it would be this one.

 

My second wheel is a workhorse. I traded my Reeves wheel for her.

Majacraft Suzi Pro!

Aww Suzi, once she starts spinning she never stops. The wheel I was looking for when I got Suzi was one to spin super texture yarn on, I needed a big orafice, something besides hooks as a yarn guides and huge bobbins. I bought the Wild Flyer and love making super textured yarn on her, but I can spin really fine too. I had to get used to her treadles, they are different than the Matchless, a harder push and also taller. I can’t comfortably spin on the couch with Suzi, but I tend to like sitting taller when I spin arty yarns, rather than lounge spinning. I love her heavy wheel (so easy to keep spinning) and her HUGE bobbins. The fact that her head moves from side to side is fantastic when I adjust to spin different yarns.

 

I decided I needed a travel wheel right about the time Schacht released the Sidekick. Convenient, no?

Sidekick!

The Sidekick folds up tiny, teeny tiny. She fits in a suitcase and I can squeeze her into almost any leftover spot when I pack the car for a road trip. I have the bulky flyer for this too. I like how it goes on and comes off of my Sidekick better than my Matchless so I just use it on this wheel. For me it had a learning curve and a little bit of break in time. The learning for me was about adjusting her on set up. I expected her to snap together like Legos and that is not the case. But it is exactly those I adjustments I have to make on set up that make her a remarkably sensitive wheel, an excellent piece of spinning equipment.  It’s great being able to take a wheel almost anywhere. She spins like a dream, better than most travel wheels I’ve tried. The big bonus is all bobbins, the bulky flyer and my WooLee Winder are interchangeable with my Sidekick and my Matchless. Win!

 

Wheel number four is a wheel I never liked much until I finally broke down and spun on her.

Lendrum!

My Lendrum confession is this: I never liked the way they looked, so I never spun on one. I thought that how the wheel leans towards the spinner would be claustrophobic. Weird, I know, but there you have it. The day I finally broke down and tried one I became a woman possessed. She’s a smooth wheel, lighter than I usually like, but she travels too. I wasn’t really looking for another wheel, but I thought maybe I might want another all around wheel. This is the wheel I wish I had bought first. No disrespect to my Matchless. The learning curve on this wheel is really, really short, the most confusing thing is remembering how to break her down and put her back together. There is only one way to set her up. She is never feisty, never complains, just spins – a basic yarn? of course! Fat yarn? You bet! Fine yarn? Bring it! Super textured craziness? A piece of cake! I just change her head and spin. This wheel wins the anti-Diva award.

By the time I was on my second wheel I knew a few things about the type of wheels I liked. I like castle wheels. It’s mostly aesthetic, I just like how they look. But they are also easier to store, they fit into corners and spots that a saxony wheel wouldn’t.  I like heavy wheels. I’m a hard treadler and I will push a light wheel across the floor. I like a double treadle wheel, I can get into a spinning rhythm easier with both of my feet going.

I learned right away to spend time spinning on any wheel I considered buying and to talk to spinners who like and don’t like the wheel in question. If you already hang out with spinners they will be happy to let you try their wheels and tell you all of the things they love. If you live near a shop that sells a variety of wheels you are a lucky spinner! There are no more passionate spinners in the world than spinning shop owners.  They will spend lots of time with you and share knowledge that’s hard to find all in one place. They will watch you spin, ask a lot of questions and suggest wheels that match your spinning style and budget. Chances are, you’ll get a mini spinning lesson too.

***Soapbox Warning***

I need to get on my soapbox for a minute about buying from spinning shops. If a shop owner has spent hours, sometimes days and weeks with you, helping you pick out a wheel that’s just right, please buy your wheel from her. There is nothing worse than taking her time and years of knowledge and then buying somewhere else because you found a wheel $20 cheaper. That extra $20 or $100 spent at a spinning shop pays for the 20 years of experience your shop owners has.

The shop owner will be a resource for your lifetime of spinning, tuning up your spinning and wheel for as long as you spin. Help them stay in business by spending your money with them. I’ll put it bluntly, whatever your job is, would you do it for free, no matter how much you love it? By using their time and knowledge and buying your wheel elsewhere that’s exactly what you’re asking a shop owner to do. If spinners keep shopping for just for price and using local shops like a live catalog, spinning shops will go away.  ***End Rant***

I was first intrigued by my next wheel at Madrona last year [shout out to everyone going this weekend!]. I was sure I wouldn’t want one. I sat and spun a few times at one. I talked to the bazillion of people who had one at Madrona. Then I let it go. As this year has progressed I realized that I have to spin faster and more as I take on more spinning related work. I don’t have a lot of room for a new wheel and I’d like it to be travel and WooLee Winder friendly. It’s coming sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ll be a tease and not tell until I have pictures to show.

How do you choose your wheels?

WWW: Contest Winner, Sweater Day, Celebrity Portraits in Knitting

The winner of our Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs giveaway is Janice in Virginia.

Was diet and exercise on your list of New Year’s resolutions? This might interest you.

How can you not smile?

The most cheerful yarnbomb ever? London’s Knit the City yarnbombing crew cheers up a dark corner of Brixton, UK.

Not only is it well-executed and fun, but we love that it’s also part of a campaign, “Positive Power“, supported by Toyota, that is designed to bring an “injection of positivity” to residents of London. A nice idea for the dreariest of months.

Love it!

Knitters in a small town in Wales have replaced a long-lost street sign with a knitted version.

The Boston Globe reports that men are turning to new hobbies to help them relax, including knitting. Thanks Clara Parkes for the heads-up on this one!

Mr. Bowie himself, in yarn.

Polish artist and designer Izabela Kaczmarek-Szurek uses knit fabrics as a basis for her rather remarkable celebrity portraits. She’s produced an “Extreme Knitting” calendar.

Celebrity Twitter Parody account alert: @KnittingRonSwanson.

We knitters know how to stay warm!

Tomorrow, February 7th, is National Sweater Day in Canada. This initiative, driven by the World Wildlife Fund, is designed to get Canadians to think about their energy consumption: put a sweater on and turn the heating down a bit to save some energy. We don’t need to be asked twice!  WWF is offering a reminder service – you can book a call from a “granny” of your choice to remind you.

Free knitting pattern on the Guardian for a rather fetching and clever scarf.

Spinning Tuesdays: WPI Lies, A Cautionary Tale

My WPI. like my knitting gauge, lies constantly.

I use WPI (wraps per inch) as a guide to keep my yarn consistent when I’m spinning and to match yarn used in specific knitting projects.

The problem is I can get my yarn to read at almost any WPI I want it to.

Just like when I knit a gauge swatch, my hands can knit the perfect gauge with a particular yarn. But once the projects starts and I relax into it, my true gauge appears, and it’s wrong.

Here’s my latest WPI kerfuffle.

This is yarn I spun to knit the gorgeous Wanderlust Mitts from Knittyspin. The pattern calls for 11 WPI.

Yarn spun  from CJKoho, WPI gauge from FBN Plastics

 

I can look at that yarn now and know that it isn’t 11 WPI, it’s a bigger yarn, but I was determined to use it for those mitts.

11 WPI?

I made it work. Like Cinderella’s stepsisters and the glass slipper I made it fit. I pulled it a little snugger, not yanking, but I took the poof out of the yarn. Lies.

For fun I tried making it an even bigger yarn.

7 WPI?

Here’s a relaxed wrap, letting my woolen spin puff. If I wanted to knit something that called for 7 WPI, I would buy it, it’s close enough. Lies.

The lessons I took away from this are to measure several times, and try not to be so excited that I make the yarn fit. I have to remind myself to let the yarn speak, or it won’t work.

In all things spinning I find that I can encourage the yarn, but if I try to bully it, it always gets the last laugh.

 

Here’s the real WPI for the yarn:

9 WPI, no lie

What’s your relationship like with WPI?

Meet Knitty’s new Techniques Video Columnist!

Do you remember when we put up this Call for Submissions?

Our beloved Theresa Vinson Stenersen, who did such a fabulous job as our Techniques columnist for 9 years (!) decided she needed new challenges. (She’s moved from Norway, where we first met her, back to her family’s home in North Carolina — with her Norwegian husband — and in addition to her day job, now has a tiny but growing farm, including sheep, alpacas, chickens, a cat and Audrey, possibly the most beloved rescue dog in the history of dogs. Yup, she’s pretty busy.)

So we needed to find ourselves a new Techniques Columnist, and this time, we thought we would add something new: video! After our exhaustive search through some really fabulous contenders, one candidate’s video submission really struck us as very much right for Knitty, and she was the person we chose. Ladies and gentlemen, please help us welcome Knitty’s new Techniques Video Columnist, Kristin Fraser!

Sez Kristin, “I am so excited to be the new video techniques editor. Take a look at my video to find out a little more about my knitting life. While I love knitting, I make a living as a freelance tv news field producer and corporate video producer/editor. My husband is a college professor as well as being my videographer. We have two house rabbits, Scout and Lola (you might catch snapshots of them from time to time on my office wall). If you hear a strange noise in the background of my first video, it’s Lola snoring. I hope you find my video more interesting than she did.

We make our home in a rehabbed craftsman bungalow near downtown Seattle, Washington. I am working at being a more regular blogger and you can find me, the ‘neurotic knitter’, on Ravelry and Twitter.”

I hope it’s pretty clear from the video that Kristin was chosen on her own merits, but yes, I would agree that a fondness for rabbits is considered an asset at Knitty HQ. We are a bunny-positive organization.

It’s Friday and We Have a Lucy Neatby Giveaway!

I don’t know about you, but my week has been crazy! I have never been happier to see Friday.

To make your Friday happier Lucy Neatby has donated 5 of her on-line videos as prizes for today’s giveaway!

Four of Lucy’s sixteen videos. She keeps busy!

Lucy has converted her original 16 DVD titles into a new on-line format. They are smaller in file size and designed for use on laptops and mobile devices. The on-line videos live in your  Notebook on Lucy’s website. They can be viewed there or downloaded to your own computer or tablet. Cool, no? Lucy was one of the first knitting teachers to have DVDs and her video ‘classes’ are packed with a huge amount of great knitting knowledge.

5 lucky KnittyBlog readers will win 1 on-line video of their choice from Lucy’s collection of 16 videos.

To receive your prize you will have to register and set up at Notebook (which is free) at lucyneatby.com.

Regular contest rules: leave a comment on this post between now and midnight eastern time, Tuesday February 5th. Five comments will be chosen at random to answer a skill testing question. If the commenter answers correctly they will win one prize. Prize value, $19.99 each.

Happy Friday!

WWW: Sally Fox; Insight into the Design Process, More on the Shetland Ponies Photoshoot

A hero, Ms. Fox.

A really wonderful blog post from Etsy profiling fiber pioneer Sally Fox. Sally single-handedly drove major changes in the US cotton industry in the 1980s, introducing naturally colored cotton, created by specially breeding cotton plants. In recent years, she has been in “hibernation”, due to changes in the US textile industry, but she’s re-emerging, working again with a spinner in the US and a mill in Japan, to bring her organic, environmentally sensitive and health conscious ideas and processes to the world.

Inspired and inspiring!

Knit designer and philosopher Annie Modesitt has written a fabulous post on her blog, the “Anatomy of the Hand Knit Design Process“. She does a terrific job of explaining the creative as well as the administrative aspects of the process, and gives wonderful insight into the origins of one of her characteristically beautiful works. Much of Annie’s work is inspired by historical costume, and you can see how she has taken an idea and brought it to life. I’ve had the honor of working with Annie as a tech editor, and I’ve learned so much from her.

[image error]

Photo courtesy Thordale photography.

Some background and other views from the Shetland Ponies in Fair Isle sweaters photoshoot, first post, second post from the organization whose ponies appeared.

A group of CBS local news websites are listing “Best Places for Knitting” in their Arts & Culture section. We approve. Minnesota, Denver , Detroit and Sacramento.

The Penguin project mentioned last week continues….  Love it!

Photo Courtesy Time Out London.

An editor from Time Out London takes a “macro knitting” class. (Note: the piece is slightly saucy.)

A group of knitters in Winston-Salem N.C. is knitting mats from grocery bags to donate to the homeless of the area, to use as sleeping mats.

Spinning Tuesdays: Sarah Anderson’s Book Is Out Today! I Have One to Give Away!

It’s finally out! Spinners have been teased by several prospective publication dates for Sarah Anderson’s The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs, but now it’s finally available.

A most wonderful spinning book!

It’s a fantastic book, here’s my review from Deep Fall Knitty (I told you the publisher has been teasing us for a while):

This is the spinning book every spinner will rush out and buy this fall. This book doesn’t teach you to spin it — teaches you the potential of your spinning.

Sarah Anderson guides spinners through the making of 80 different yarns, each building on the techniques of the yarn before it. The writing style is concise and at the same time thorough and inspiring – I wanted to spin every single yarn I read about the second I finished reading.

Beyond the making of yarns, Sarah reminds spinners of the basics: twist and balance, woolen vs. worsted, washing fleece and an excellent section on fiber prep carding (hand and drum) and combing. Throughout the book, she talks about a sock knitting experiment she carried out while writing this book – what yarn structure is the best for socks? You’ll have to read it to find out. There are tips scattered through the book that focus on tricky bits of some of the yarn structures and invaluable tips for knitting with different types of yarns.

The book is filled with photographs, more than I think I’ve seen in any other spinning book – excellent process photos, beautiful project photos and lots of inspirational photos. It’s wonderful to see a book take the space to satiate visual learners.

This isn’t a book for the most beginning of spinners, but it could be a second spinning book. There is little discussion of how different breeds affect the yarn spun, but that’s a book in itself.

The joy in this book is the instruction of 80 yarns spinners now have at their fingertips. What the Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting pattern books are to knitters, The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs will be to spinners.

Here are some sexy spinning photos from the book. All Photography by John Polak:

 

Spiral Yarn

Wool Bouclé

Doesn’t it make you want to hide away with your spinning wheel and a big pile of fiber until you’ve tried all 80 yarns?

 

I have a copy to give away! Regular contest rules: leave a comment on this post between now and midnight eastern time, Thursday  January 31st. One comment will be chosen at random to answer a skill testing question. If the commenter answers correctly they will win our prize.

Good luck and happy spinning!

 

 

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!