As the world seems to be getting smaller and smaller, the place we call home is our touchstone. Where we live holds pieces to the puzzle of our identity. Our values and attitudes can be molded by our place. Place determines the comfort food we eat and the way we dress. It even inspires our art and the materials we choose to express ourselves.
Author Jacqueline Harp brings you an exciting interview with shepherdess (mother of five daughters, veterinarian, and knitter) Meg Falcone of Five Sisters Farm for an insightful Q&A about raising Shetland sheep with the theme of Place in-mind. Read more now!
In different seasons of our life, we may feel the wheels are just spinning. We can’t get out of the ruts. Same problems at work. Same issues with kids. Same health (mental and physical) struggles. Same relationship issues. Our wheels keep spinning to find a way out.
Southern California might seem like an unexpected place to produce spinning and weaving fiber, but people have been processing plant and animal materials here for thousands of years. San Diego is in the territory of the Kumeyaay people, who have lived here since time immemorial. The Kumeyaay processed milkweed, dogbane, agave, yucca, bark, and rabbit skins into garments, cordage, netting, and other items.
Handspun yarn has always been a favorite of mine for knitting. It makes fabric with interesting textures and color combinations, and I always feel excited about how the fabric will turn out. These yarns are also wonderful for weaving fabric for the same reasons. Anything made with handspun yarn has a bit of magic in it.
Are you “up to your neck” in a project or in stash? Perhaps you’re concentrating instead, and you’ve hunched up your shoulders practically to your ears. That experienced spinner at the guild meeting, she stands “head and shoulders” above the rest.
Guest blogger Cindy Craft is here to share her experiments with using a Circular Sock Machine to knit single ply socks. She also uses a flatbed machine for color work using singles. If you’ve ever wondered about knitting machines, we think you’ll be very inspired by her post!
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I’m a hand spinner. I spin every night; it’s the way I wind down at the end of the day. As a result, I make a lot of yarn – there are several blanket chests in my house full of handspun yarn. I knit with my handspun yarn but I spin much faster and much more often than I knit. Several years ago it occurred to me that unless I wanted to die with a small mountain of handspun yarn, I needed to find a way to use my handspun faster.
A sock in progress on Cindy’s CSM.
Circular Sock Machines had been on my radar for many years, but I was reluctant to buy an antique as they’re expensive and not always functional, so I had never purchased one. Then one day I was vending at a local sheep shearing show and a vendor a couple of booths down had a CSM that they were demonstrating – and not just any CSM but a new CSM! So I marched down with a small skein of handspun to see if it would knit on the machine. It did, and within a month we had our own CSM and I was happily using it to knit socks out of my vast supply of handspun.
The resulting Navajo Churro socks.
On one of the Ravelry CSM forums I encountered someone who was knitting socks on their CSM from handspun singles. This blew my mind, because I had always been taught to ply my yarn for knitting. I had always thought it might be possible to use singles for weaving but never for knitting – there would just be too much biasing of the knitted fabric. I figured I’d give it a try; even if it was a disaster I wouldn’t have invested more than a couple of hours to make the socks. The resulting socks were just fine. If I looked carefully I could see that the loops were not quite even but the resulting fabric wasn’t twisted or misshapen.
If you look at the photo to the right, you can see that the right side of the knit loops is narrower than the left side but the shape of the socks themselves is even and not twisted. These socks were made from handspun singles of 50% wool of unknown breeding and 50% alpaca that I processed from raw fiber. This photo was before washing.
To the left is a photo of three different pairs of socks I made using singles yarns on the CSM. In this photo you’ll see three socks all made from handspun singles and knit on the sock machine. These are all socks that I have been wearing and washing by hand for at least a few months. The striped sock is made from a BFL x Romney fleece and was dyed – there is almost no biasing of the stitches present in that sample. The blue sock was made from a Dorset x Southdown. It might be 50/50 or 25/75 as it came from a fleece from a local flock but I don’t know which sheep. There’s lots of biasing in this sock to the point where you can actually see the stitches twist on the sock. The third sock is undyed Romney with a bit of sparkle blended in. This is the oldest of the three socks and you can see some of the wear in the right hand corner. This pair is starting its third year. I spun and knitted these socks in very similar ways – the only real difference is the wool type used.
When I started using singles for socks it got me thinking about using singles for other knitting projects. At the same time, using the CSM got me thinking about using a flatbed knitting machine to speed up my knitting. I’ve been knitting singles on a flatbed for the past couple of years now, and I have found the biasing to be nearly imperceptible. Below are a couple of photos of items knit on the flatbed.
The black and white hat is made from a black Shetland fleece, and I think the white is probably some of the Dorset/Southdown cross fleeces I got in 2014. I am hard pressed to see any biasing in this knitting. The blue and white mittens are made from the 2015 Dorset/Southdown cross fleeces, and the biasing is more visible in this knitting. Perhaps the all over pattern in the black and white hat helps to disguise any biasing that may be present.
Do you knit with singles? Have you ever used them on a knitting machine? What have your experiences been?
Meet Cindy: Spinning is at the core of what I do but yarn is not a finished object so I’m always exploring new ways and tools to use my yarn. You can see more of the ways I use my yarn at our website, www.subitofarm.com.
It was slow coming to you international folks, I know, but I think just about everyone (minus a few South American subscribers) has their Winter issue of PLY. What did you think? I have to tell you the truth, this one took the most for me to love but it wasn’t the content or articles or samples, it was our photoshoot venue!
We learn as we go, as usual, and what we learned this time was that grand, wide-sweeping locations aren’t for us. They just don’t work as well as the itty bitty gritty shots full of textures and detail. We shot at the gorgeous Longview Mansion in Lee’s Summit, MO. And just like the website implies by it’s own lovely photography — your bride will look stunning as she glides down the grand staircase beneath the crystal chandelier; your fish and/or chicken plated dinners will look delectable as your guest consume them along side copious amounts of champagne from the champagne fountain that’s placed under the twinkling stars; and never will you and your spouse feel so majestic and magical as when you walk down the column-lined promenade punctuated with extravagantly shaped shrubbery. The location was all of that and more.
However, when you’re attempting to capture the tiny felted corner of a Wendsleydale swatch, you tend to shoot a little closer. Heck, you tend to shoot a lot closer. With our specific photo needs, it’s hard to capture the grand staircase, the champagne fountain tower, the topiary shrub that’s skillfully pruned to look like an actual tree, and the imposing stone columns. In fact, when we what you see is mostly the wood on the staircase, a stump of the shrub, and the concrete at the base of the columns.
Bernadette and I worried and woe-ed. We did. We actually woe-ed. It’s a thing.
Woe: a feeling of great sorrow or distress.
to woe: to slightly sway back and forth while consumed with a feeling of great sorrow or distress.
Woe-ed: to do all the stuff I just said but, you know, yesterday, last week, in the past.
We woe-ed. We woe-ed all the while we waited for the issue to go through layout, then to go to print, then to make it through the USPS-mystery-system. And then we got it, cracked it open, and we thought and then texted each other “oh, that’s a pretty good issue.” I mean, it’s no “ruins of a castle” but in the end, it looked cohesive and it told the story it was supposed to tell.
So what do you think of the issue? And I don’t mean the photography in particular (Bernadette always does such a good job with what I give her, right? and she did rock those concrete shots!) but the issue in general. I love hearing and reading what spinners think of each issue! Plus, it helps people on the fence decide if they should give us a chance. So, if you’d be so kind, head over here and leave a review for the Singles issue of PLY!
