Ack, I thought I had already posted this. Durr. Apparently not.

So, I make stuff!

A few weeks ago, now, Mom had to have her gallbladder out. Not a huge deal, but long and sore. As an early Xmas gift to make her happy, and to make her feel better about the house for for turkey day while G’ma is visiting, I made her this.

A pair of slip covers in duck cloth, for the couch. One of the upper cushions and one for the lower cushions. She’s wanted one for *years* but they’re expensive. So I made one (and another one ready to make for her b-day). Super simple, 4.5yds of fabric.

I also recently finished a hat. Knit. Super simple. From my own handspun yarn. Merino. In an almost black maroon merino with blue flecks.

I need to make more things with my own yarn. I like it. It’s fun.

In other news… Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers. Happy Thursday to my non-U.S. readers! We got up early and got things going. And now, the cranberry sauce (fresh, not jellied) is made, the green jello (with pineapple and cream cheese) is set, the turkey’s in the oven, the gravy’s stewing, and the stuffing’s in! Just rolls/biscuits, and mashed potatoes left (and slicing up homemade pickles, putting out olives, etc).

~The Gnome

We shall now bend time a little, and report on Rhinebeck before I get around to the full report on my backpacking trip. I figure that’s fair since you all probably care more about Rhinebeck than backpacking. Rest assured backpacking report will also come soon.

So, Rhinebeck! Also known as the NY Sheep and Wool Festival. Like every year, I brought my camera intent on taking lots and lots of photos. Like every year, I didn’t get nearly the photos I intended. UNlike last year, I at least got a few.

So I spent the time between getting back from the aforementioned backpacking trip and Rhinebeck frantically dyeing as fast as my two pots and multi-color colorways would allow. It was… hectic. My dyed fiber and buckets I was filling with inventory filled the living room and dining room. As a result, I seemed like a poultry perambulating while lacking a cephalic nerve control center that hadn’t realized it was deceased.

But I actually got my inventory done and everything packed BEFORE needing to leave. Well ok, not quite. I was pretty damned close but ended up pulling out about 45 minutes later than intended. But with NO wet materials, and (almost) all the things I intended to bring! I failed to bring my sample yarns for people to play with but… can’t have everything.

So I drove through the lovely fall countryside (a much shorter drive from my parents’ than from Worcester!) and arrived at the Duchess County Fairgrounds to help Jennifer (owner of the booth) and Tsocktsarina set up the booth. Like always I swore I was going to take a photo before people arrived… and like always I totally didn’t.

Then I met Terri and Beth… who I also seem to have forgotten to photograph, wow I did worse than I thought. Terri kindly offered a bed in her camper, and fed me! MMm with excellent food too. This made everything much easier. Unfortunately, I was slow getting out in the morning (because I was dumb. I had lots of time, then I had my morning tea and suddenly I was late). So… no pre-crowd booth shot! As things were starting, I did get this…

Um… yeah. And that’s the best I could manage. Really. Besides being blurry, the place was MOBBED. Absolutely mobbed. I was sold out of some of my less populous fibers within the first hour.

We had a slightly different organization thanks to Jennifer’s brilliant mind, which made the booth much more navigable and open. I don’t know what we would have done without the shift, because WOH. I spent fulltime explaining fibers, pointing people to yarns and kits, explaining prices, restocking yarns and fibers, and trying not to be trampled. It was awesome.

Here’s a back view (from behind, while I was restocking)

Patrick manned the payment table for most of the festival.

That’s… pretty much all the photos I got the first day… wait not quite!

Tsocks made socks! From my fiber! A lovely purple cheviot braid in “Balloonflower” became these fabulous socks…

Mmm socks. Pretty! I love seeing my fiber/yarn as finished yarn/objects. This is only the second Gnomespun I’ve seen as a project in person! Also, as always Rhinebeck is a time to see people!

By the end of the first day… this was what all that was left of my inventory.

I tried a new method for put-up, to make it less… snakey and awkward and intimidating for display. Worked great. I’ll probably modify it a bit, but the basic concept? Perfect. I managed to find a way to let people touch and feel the fiber while still keeping it in a disk! Also found a folded method that worked pretty well. My yarn sold remarkably well too. Especially the darker muted colors and browns. ::thinks::

The second day, there was a chance for breathing, though things were still pretty busy. Before everyone arrived (I actually got there on time, though… without my hat, DOH)…

After the hecticness of the first day, I wandered off to actually see the fair. Unfortunately, I’m… well… um… chatty. And I’m moderately well known so I kept getting caught up and distracted, so my wandering the fair took like… 4 hours and involved things like conversations with breeders, other vendors, and demonstrating support spindling and bottom whorls. But… it was worth it, and fun.

I saw sheep!

Here’s the breed of the year at Rhinebeck, the Oxford, which has a nice fleece but almost impossible to get hold of because it grows slowly so if you shear at the normal times you get about an inch to inch and a half tops staple length. Doh.

Cheviot, a good chewy sock fiber (though I still prefer a high quality Dorset). They are adorable little dog-sized sheep.

And of course, pygora goats. Which are adorable, but don’t feel like goats to me ’cause they’re SO SMALL. My goats were big. Even the ones that were supposed to be little (Toggenburgs).

And I ran into a lot of people, most of whom I forgot to get photos of, booo! But I also ran into the fabulously awesome Arak42, Jellycrys, and Arak’s Mom. We talked for like an hour, and they were appropriately appreciative of the geekiness of my scarf (more about that in a moment). And then we took photos appropriate to our ridiculousness.

Then it was time to go back to the booth for more explaining and photos of cool people.

Like Yrallee, who brought some wensleydale I dyed that she’d spun up into an amazingly soft squishy yarn that was becoming a shawl.

TheGeorg

Westfaire

Jennifer, Westfaire, DivineBird, Sandi Wiseheart, and Georg

And before I left, I actually managed to remember to get a photo taken of me with this stuff…

Ok, so you’re probably familiar with the kilt by now. The socks I’m wearing there are also handknit by a good friend, as is the scarf and socks I’m holding.

We’ll start with the scarf. You’ll notice it’s long (it’s also awesomely warm and cozy). That’s because it’s oxygen… that is, an oxygen emission spectrum. If you burn oxygen and refract the light you get through a prism, that’s what you see. It’s how scientists tell what stars are made of. It’s utterly geeky and utterly me. I love it.

The socks I’m holding are very very special. You might recall that ages ago I went to an estate sale and got a ton of fleeces. Well I gave one of those fleeces to Tsocks, then for my birthday she gave me beautiful batts from that fiber (Romney) blended with some silk and mohair. Well I spun it up into my first handspun sock yarn (plus some extra she made me in grey ’cause my yarn was a little thicker than I intended). I then mailed the resulting yarn across the sea to my friend in the UK who is way too generous for her own good. She knit me these fabulous socks and sent them back. So now I have socks that were prepped by one friend, handspun by me, and handknit by another friend. And they feel great. What could be better?

So… it was a very successful and enjoyable Rhinebeck for Gnomespun. I’ve got a bunch of Exmoor Mule dyed up and other stuff on the way shortly.

That’s all for now!

~The Gnome

So, as you may know, there has been a big competition across the pond where men in funny outfits kill themselves on two wheeled contraptions. It’s called the Tour de France.

Anyway, while those crazy people are doing their thing over there, we fiber people do our own crazy thing over here, the “Tour de Fleece.” It tends to be pretty free-form though some people get together for specific challenges and such. Last year my own TdF was more organized.

This year my main goals were to spin every day, even if only a tiny bit, and make progress on some standing projects.

In those generalized goals, I succeeded. One of my specific goals I didn’t make, I wanted to finish spinning the handprepped romney/mohair batts into sock yarn, a project that’s been kind of hanging over me for a long time. Oh well. I did get a lot done.

For one thing, right at the beginning of it I flew down to North Carolina for a family thing. I managed to keep up my spinning at least a yard or two every day, and got a lot of spinning done in the airports. On the plane I started a basic beanie hat with my own handspun.

The hat

And the handspun. Abby Franquemont batts. These are going to be weft for a woven twill weave scarf I’m working on.

Both spun up on my lovely Spindlewood top whorl.

Once I got back, I finished sleying the reed on the loom for the scarf project. I’ll post more photos of the weaving project progress start to finish once I get a few more steps along.

I also spun some cobweb weight from cormo handprepped by the Tsocktsarina.

Spinning it on my newest spindle, a zebrawood spindle called a Tiger by… Cascade bought from Spunky Eclectic as my one purchase at MA Sheep and Wool. Love it. Spins great, especially things like silk for superfine stuff.

Then, right near the end of the Tour, the first of my new roving came back from the mill. Very exciting. Domestic Perendale and Polwarth. Since I’m going to be putting some of the Perendale up in my next shop update, I thought I should spin some myself since it’s a new fiber to me. So I grabbed my Bosworth Midi spun some up longdraw and plied it, washed it, fulled it, and dried it. 3-ply on the left, 2-ply on the right.

3-ply close up

2-ply close up

It’s an interesting fiber. Spun this way it’s a fairly prickly fiber but makes a much softer yarn than you expect. So I went all the way and knit it up, washed it and blocked it. Well, as much as you can block a 1.5″ squarish.

And a closeup. You can see it’s got more luster than your average downs wool. It comes from the Romney in the bloodline. It’s VERY springy and lofty with a big halo. It’s not super soft, about what non-specified “wool” sweaters usually are. So good for anything a mid-level romney would be good for, sweaters, hats, mittens, heavy-duty socks, outerwear, etc.

And that’s about it for my TdF. Other than keeping Gnomespun running, and expanding things slightly and examining a few new possible paths.

TdF 2010

And now, back to the dye pots. Perendale and Polwarth roving. A couple new things coming up!

Until the next time!

~The Gnome

I’ve been doing hats lately. They’re a good way to test out some design theories that don’t take too long.

This one is a one-skein hat (exactly one skein, 14 inches to spare) of KnitPicks Wool of the Andes.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased. However, I need to make one more pattern repeat to fit my fat head with all the cabling. You can see in the photo where I’m wearing it that it still pulls too much across the cables. I’ll add a pattern repeat and then go down a needle size for the “ribbing” at the bottom.

So that’s in the plan. But I also want to do a sweater, for me. So I’m designing one. From (pretty much) scratch. It’s interesting so far. I’ll be casting on shortly. I’ll have ~12 hours on the train coming up, so that should give me some good time to work on it.

That’s it for now. See ya soon!

~The Gnome

So clearly I’m way behind on blogging. This means that I have the freedom to choose among several topics for a while.

But first, the shop. So it was updated, and has been quickly being depleted. I will be updating it again soon. I will be updating again on Monday, assuming we don’t get hit with a snowstorm… Which is a pretty fair assumption since we’re at less than half the usual snow for our area. DC has stolen all our snow, and more since they have wetter air. Going to be really rough on our water table.

Until then, here’s an actual knitting project I did. It’s a hat that I started on the plane down to my New Years Eve get together in the Outer Banks. I didn’t have any pattern or anything, so I cast on from memory, and unfortunately misremembered the size of a head. I thought I was casting on an extra 10 stitches, to account for the cabling, but instead I cast on 10 less than normal. Doh.

My own pattern, and mostly a proof of concept for doing separated cables. It came out very well.

See? I was pretty happy. Unfortunately, those missing ten stitches are a full pattern repeat, and make the hat rather… small for my fat head. Doh! So, I couldn’t wear it. Luckily, I have friends with kids. So, I dyed it. Red!

Here, you can see why I couldn’t wear it myself. Look how it pulls all to heck around the eyes of the cables.

You can also see why people strongly suggest dyeing the yarn, not the finished item. I worked pretty hard (and I’m pretty sure the recipient doesn’t mind) but getting the dye in under the cables is almost impossible. I should, however, have added more salt (to slow dye reaction) which might have helped. But it still came out pretty well, no?

I used about 150 yards or so of some grey Cascade 220 I happened to have lying around.

As I said, it’s a proof of concept hat. I’m working on two patterns based on it. One that’s still fairly conservative and one that’s requiring a rather extensive charting. More updates on those as they progress.

That’s all for now. See you soon!

~The Gnome