Did I Ever Tell You the Story of the Three Legged Sheep?

True confession: I can only remember the punchline of two jokes. So here I'll share one joke, lifted from a joke website, with minor alterations to suit the story of last weekend's knitting exercise...

A traveling salesman trying to make a buck was driving through the plains of Nebraska when he decided to stop at a farmhouse coming up on his left. As he was walking up the driveway toward the front door of the house, a sheep with three legs caught his eye. It was just hobbling through the grass.

When the farmer answered the door and asked what he was selling, the salesman first asked about the three legged sheep.

"That sheep is the most amazing sheep in the land, son," the farmer said.

"Last year, our house caught fire when we were all asleep and that sheep ran in and woke us all up one by one and saved our lives!"

The salesman was surprised. "That is one special sheep," he said.

The farmer replied, "That's not all. Last summer, that sheep jumped into the pond and dragged my drowning son to safety. He would have died!"

The salesman was in disbelief as to how incredible this sheep was. "One question: why does he have three legs; is it from the fire?" he asked.

"No son, ya see, a sheep like that you just don't eat all at once."

*************************************************************************

So a couple of weeks ago, I was trolling around the internet and came across Honeoye Craft Labs on facebook. And I noticed they were selling kits to make sheep hats. Hats for people, with sheep knit on the hats, not hats for sheep. (I feel bad that I feel the need to clarify on that point, but I've heard about people knitting outfits for assorted endangered animals, so figured I must.)

And then I saw they were selling these bendy double pointed needles, called Neko curved dpns, and I watched a video about how to use them and thought maybe they could solve my problem with dpns. My problem with dpns is that I always look like I'm in a wrestling match at the end of my hat and mitts projects, with needles flying all over the place, and a certain amount of mumbling and ill-will.

So my husband took me for a field trip (I grew up in Honeoye, and it's only 20 minutes from where I live), and we picked up the yarn, a free pattern called BAA-BLE Hat by Donna Smith, and the bendy needles. And since I've never done multi-color yarn knitting, I hired Liz, who owns Honeoye Craft Labs, to teach me how to follow that pattern.  

Here's my first sheep hat. For a first time using multiple colors of yarn, I think I did pretty well. I'll admit, we got to a point pretty early on where it became clear that one of my sheep was missing a leg. Liz gave advice about how one might deal with that problem, but it seemed to me that a one legged sheep was sort of a badge of honor in the world of learning to knit. So I decided to let him soldier on as is. All the sheep ended up with faces in the right places, so I am pretty tickled.

My one legged sheep hat

I decided to make another sheep hat, with these adjustments:

1. The hat came out a little tight around the area with the sheep, so I'm going to try perfecting my stranded knitting skills. I also forgot to bring all my needles with me for my lesson, and the pattern said to switch from size 4s to size 4.5s, so I ended up knitting with size 4s for the whole thing. Also, I'm a tight knitter, so these sheep were pretty well destined to be dancing in a tight conga line.

2. I like a bigger brim, so I made my next one longer.

3. While I am not normally a hat pompom person, Liz made a pretty good case for buying a pompom maker.

4. I wanted to try a night sky at the top of the hat, so I bought a skein of dark blue yarn from Liz. The pattern called for four different colors of a yarn called Ella rae Classic Sport, a 100% wool yarn that cost $4.50/ball. It looks like I can get at least 2 hats out of the yarn that I originally bought, probably more with the dark blue, since you don't use much of the brown. I love the colors of the Ella rae - there's lots of variety, but the colors are just a bit muted, so they seemed more natural looking.

Here's the second hat, and a matching cowl:

As for the bendy Neko needles, I found that they work particularly nicely on thumbs for my mitts. I felt like I was able to finish more quickly, and that I had more control. I recommend them. They were $9.95 for a set of three - I took a look on ebay, and they were much more expensive there.

These are the mitts that I made with my bendy needles. I handspun this yarn, made with 50% white angora, 50% black alpaca, blended on my Patrick Green electric drum carder and spun up on drop spindles. Thanks to the bunny, these will be particularly snuggly.

Mmmm... bunny

If you aren't familiar with the business of spinning, you might be worried that there are dead bunnies everywhere when I say that I've just hauled home a good stash. But please, set your minds at ease, one plucks the fiber from the lovely bunnies, or trims the fiber off with scissors, which isn't quite as nice as plucking in terms of the quality of the fiber, but still, it is nice, and it is bunny, and it is soft. No bunnies part with their lives to becomes part of a handspun scarf or a sweater.

I like to dye bunny, because the colors come out very vibrant. And I like to use bunny with my nuno felted scarves, because the bunnie is very cozy. Warmer than wool, and snugglier.

HOT Pink Nuno Felted Scarf... Who's With Me?

My mother, a conservative sort, noted that my newest scarf is "very nice, dear, but... well, the color is... well..." Say it ain't so, Grandma! What kind of attitude is this?

Do I look gaudy?

Friends, I ask you, does this scarf make me look like a tart? I wore it to a restaurant yesterday, and can assure you that not even one seedy character gave me the eyeball. I wore it to a parent-teacher conference... is it possible that my son's teacher is secretly thinking, "Goodness, look at that brazen woman. That explains a lot."

Nonetheless, I'll let you get a closer look so you can decide for yourself:

It is two-sided. My son says the other side looks like cotton candy. The amount of angora in this scarf is plentiful. All that pink... and I used white... and then there's even some light peach.



For my next project, I'm going to try embedding flower leaves that I cut out of an angora sweater I purchased at a thrift store. I theorize that I need to lightly baste the flower petals onto the silk, then add all the other fiber, and then pound away to make it all stick together. Stay tuned...

I'm Feeling All Tweedy

I've been chugging away, to come up with something that compares with my friend Denise's multi-colored very sassy yarn. And so, I present to you my week of TWEEDS.



This is two ply. One ply is violet alpaca with gold firestar blended in. The other ply is blue silk.



 

I made this with purple angora, blue silk, purple sari silk threads, and blue firestar.

Here's the Old Man Purple

So then I decided to take "Old Man Purple" and ply it with cashgora blue.



Here's the blue cashgora



The result is blue cashgora tweeded with hints of maroon, light green and lots of blues

 

I like how this turned out. It's a hint of light green alpaca, lots of purple angora, lots of blue silk, purple sari silk, and blue firestar.



Practice Makes Perfect

Our first project is a practice one. Make a small piece, and use it to try out different fibers, learn the felting techniques, and see what you like and what you don't like. My practice piece looks like someone threw up on it, but I definitely know what I like and what I don't like:


I brought a couple of bins of fiber. On the right is a bag of blue locks. Above that is silk that I dyed. Right in the middle, at the bottom, is sari silk, which is basically a bunch of threads.



You need moreno.

The black stuff on the left is silk hankies.To its right is gold tussah silk. I thought I would like angelina, so there's coppery angelina and blue angelina.

So, I started with a piece of black silk gauze, then a layer of black moreno fiber, and then I put different types of fiber and the silk on top of that. I know, it's ugly. I'm not trying to win an award for this, I just want to see how different materials felt.

See those little white pieces? Those are to help you tell if you've fulled enough. I've put tulle on top of the whole thing, then I'll add warm soapy water, then I'll pat it down and make sure everything is wet.

I call this the "assault phase." The wet fiber is between two pieces of plastic. Roll it up inside the bamboo mat, and then roll and roll and roll until it turns into felt.

The result.

I concluded that I didn't like the angelina. It didn't felt in very well. So, I'll take my angelina and use that in my spinning. I use a lot of angelina that way. I didn't like the dark blue silk. I liked the light maroon silk, the deep blue green sari silk, the gold tussah silk, and the hot pink angora. I also felted in some dark blue green moreno and some gold moreno, and I didn't like that. The tussah silk was all shiny, which was nice.

Yumm... Pickled Bunny Yarn

My cousin Michelle Pettinger was commenting on Facebook that she was looking for a recipe to dye t-shirts with leftover juice from canning beets. My thought, of course, was that intentionally canning beets rather than throwing them in the road was akin to mashing up lima beens in order to make a yummy lima bean butter. And of course I can't help but wonder if Michelle and her family will end up smelling like canned beets if they start soaking their clothes in beet juice.

Nonetheless, I have finally found a purpose for my canning jars, which I have been carrying around with me since college, for no good reason that I can think of. I found them under the kitchen sink, and now they are full of yarn.

Pickled Ocean Bunny Yarn

This yarn is made completely from angora that I dyed with my friend Val. My friend Cheryl Dunn provides me with the angora. I buy everything she produces, as it is my personal opinion that you can't have too much angora, not under any circumstances.


It is the colors of the ocean; greens and blues and greys. Sometimes when I was working with it, I thought it was more blue than green. And other times, I thought it was more green than blue. I honestly can't say for sure. It is fluffly, lumpy and bumpy, plied to itself, and just dreamy to hold on to. I am tempted to make it into a scarf, but worry that with my limited knitting skills, I would not do justice. I think, also, there is not enough yarn to make a scarf, so I was thinking that perhaps I should spin up some more angora... some white, maybe?

If you think you could make something delightful out of this, do let me know. Perhaps we could trade your knitting services for some of my stash. I do, after all, have quite a collection of fiber, yarn, and roving upstairs where my husband can't contemplate its magnitude.

So, for what it's worth, I think that this yarn would look fabulous as a scarf to complement a t-shirt that I bought at Coldwater Creek:

I must confess, I bought this shirt and brought it home, and my boys were so complimentary about it, that I started worrying about what would happen if I spilled something on it. So I marched back to the store, intent on buying another one. But then I got to thinking that if I were going to be the most gorgeously clad tee wearer, then I should share the wealth, so I bought two, one for me, and one for my dear sister-in-law Pat. I haven't gotten around to mailing it yet, but I am quite convinced that she will look wonderful in it.

I would save it to send as a Christmas present, but I'm afraid I can't remember anything, so it would end up eventually mushing into my laundry and before long I'd be sitting around trying to figure out why I have three t-shirts that all look alike. Sooo, it has got to go into the mail this week, come heck or high water.

The Dark Side of Angora

It seems that there is more to the question of what to do with angora than I had first realized. You'll recall, my friend Denise suggested I spin "straight bunny" - so, no blending in of alpaca or wool. In terms of things that make you go "ummmmm", spinning just bunny is the way to go. Just imagine spending hours on end feeling that luxurious fiber.

However, sadly, bunny has no crimp.

In a crimpless world, my friend Denise explained to me just yesterday, if the knitted angora item gets wet, it becomes limp. Inevitably, your angora item will become rather limp over time. So to compensate, you must either blend the angora in with some other crimpy fiber, or accept the limposity (my very newest word... some day I'll tell you about fartalicious, another new word). If you accept the limposity, then you just need to knit something that lends itself to limposity.

A shawl. A scarf. My friend Denise says that somebody from the Genesee Valley Handspinners Guild made a hat that was actually an angora hat then a wool hat, with the angora hat becoming the lining and brim of the wool hat. Using circular needles.

I own circular needles, but I'm not going to go getting all circular on you now, because I honestly have no idea how to use them. But my Mom likes to knit hats, so consider this my request to my friend Denise to the lady at guild or whomever else might have it to please let me have the pattern for the angora lined hat. I will then hand the task over to my Mom, who likes to knit hats and knows how to use a circular needle.

Now, just in case nobody comes back with a pattern, I have been googling, and I see another approach at:

http://www.butternutwoolens.com/snowshoe-hare-hat-kits/hat-kits-click-here-for-more-photos-scroll-down-to-buy/

This lady felts bunny into a strip and tacks that into the interior of her hat. I'll have to think about that. You can imagine that for me, if you're going to use bunny, it's bunny all the way.

Of course, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm starting to wonder if all of the hats that my Mom has knit along the way couldn't be refurbished to include an angora lining. Wouldn't that be decadent?

It's All in the Presentation, Honey

So last week I decided that I needed some all out decadent, hedonistic joy in my life. Unfortunately, I had just weighed in with my son's Wii Fit, and had it chastise me for letting days pass without regaling it with my shoddy Wii Fit hula hooping skills, so heading to the store for more chocolate didn't seem like the right way to go.

So instead, I pulled out my last fiber purchase from the Shepherds' Market in Rush, NY. Yes, it was there that I got a bug up my butt and insisted on buying all the marine blue dehaired cashgora that Black North Fiber had to sell. Sorry, when I indulge, I do not do it in snippets. Nosiree, I suffer from a completion obsession, so I cannot leave anything behind. People who buy an ounce of fiber and then make a sweater or a trenchcoat out of it are to be admired, but they are not me. I never know what will be made of my spun creations, and I hate to think that I might go back to the vendor and discover that someone else has bought the last bit of something for which I need more, more, more. So I ended up with a collection of this lovely soft fiber. And so I began to spin.

And spin.

And spin some more.

Up close and personal with the cashgora. How's that for a color?

Now, my normal procedure is to complete spinning one project before starting the next. But life took a turn for the worse, and I found I needed to raise the bar on my decadent, hedonistic joy in life. So I went upstairs and pulled out the bunny.

Oh, yes, the bunny.

But, it was kind of dark upstairs when I had this epiphany, so I stuck my hand in a bin, felt up the contents until I hit the land of angora, and dragged down the bag and started spinning. Straight from the bag. No extra prep.

I'm a WILD WOMAN.

The spinning went pretty well. Normally, I blend the bunny in with other fibers, but my friend Denise had advised me of the virtues of spinning "straight bunny", so that's what I did.

In the morning, in the true light of day, I discovered that my bag o' bunny didn't look all that good. In fact, I worried that I was creating ugly bunny, a diservice to the angoras of the world.

So I stopped and switched back to the soft cashgora and discovered a terrible terrible thing.

Once you spin bunny, you never want to go back.

Yes, it's true. That wonderful cashgora felt like I was spinning macrame twine. So I switched back to the ugly bunny. Then back to the macrame twine.

Please note, you should not conclude from this that cashgora isn't a lovely soft fiber. It is merely that the bunny is so overwhelmingly softer than just about anything else that the cashgora temporarily lost its luster for me.

Then back to the bunny. More ugly bunny. And then, suddenly, in the light of day, I noticed that the ugly bunny was spinning up LOVELY. Yessir. You might want to fight your way into my house and wrest the spun bunny away from me. It is that nice.

Somehow, the ugly bunny, which was festering in a Glad Bag looking all muddled, with a piece of masking tape stuck to the bag that just said "Bunny", has turned into a delightful meld of grey (I overdyed some grey in there, apparently) and all the luscious colors of the ocean. Stand back. I am now feeling so utterly complacent in my satisfying decadence that I am actually thinking of KNITTING THE FORMERLY UGLY BUNNY.