Within the White

The snow today meant everything was layered in white. The air was very still so the snow stayed on the branches and became barely discernible against the white sky.

I was so lucky to have a reason to be able to experience this day at Wave Hill, which never looked lovelier.

A smaller-than-usual group of intrepid spinners came and brought colour into this whitest of days. We declared that the only thing missing was a fireplace next to which we could dry our skeins.

And after four hours of wooly fun, we went back into the wide, white world.

House Study/Handmade: Wave Hill Blog

After another amazing Saturday, full of great conversation, beautiful colours and connections made over the experience of working with wool, I came home especially tired. It was a long day - I try to get there early on Saturdays to organize the space and get some skeins ready for what have become regular crowds. Then I stayed late so as to have some skeins ready for Tuesday and to re-organize the wool pile back into colours. I love that it gets completely messed up within minutes and I like putting it back to rights at the end of the afternoon. It feels very satisfying to see the pile diminish. There is just something so satisfying about doing all this work: the dyeing, the carding, the spinning, the soaking, the knitting (and crocheting and felting). Things get made and used in the most real, practical way. In a world that gets more and more virtual, the satisfaction of seeing the fruits of our labour right in front of us may be what is drawing people back week after week.

Today a woman came in right near the end expressing, as many have, that this was something she always wanted to learn more about. She very carefully made a batt on the drum carder, choosing specific colours that had meaning for her. Then I got her going on a spindle, which she picked up quite nicely. But time was running out so I promised to set aside her spindle and batt for next weekend. This is a promise I nearly never make because my motto has been "it's all community property" for this project but occasionally someone comes along and spends so much time, working really hard that I just can't insist that they toss their batt into the mix. She was very grateful and went to collect her things. Then she came back and asked to have a little piece of her batt to take home - just to look at and admire during the week.

We laughed as she pulled a piece off but I knew exactly what she meant. Sometimes you just need to let your eyes rest on a thing of beauty.

There is a lovely post up on the Wave Hill blog just now. It was written by Stephanie who has been my #1 assistant for this project. She had never done any this kind of thing before and now she uses the spindle and the wheel like a seasoned expert. Today she had her boyfriend spinning! Thanks, Stephanie, for writing such a nice piece. I am definitely going to miss our twice weekly spinning frolics!

Colour For Nothing

It's a fact that if you have do something every single week, you will get better at it.

Example #1:

This seemingly modest colour was made from the water left over from soaking black beans. My first attempt at this resulted in an even more modest silver colour, barely visible to the naked eye. This colour, which in comparison is nearly florescent, is quite lovely. The fact that I have dyed wool with this liquid and made any colour at all seems nothing short of a miracle.

Here we have some mohair dyed with onion skins. I know, I know, the old stand-by, but look at that colour! I would go so far to declare it nearly tangerine. And imagine, all from stuff that others might pour down the drain or toss in the compost or worse.

This is the onion skin dye on some naturally brown BFL fibre.

My indigo pot was acting up yesterday. I think I pushed the limits of my non-scientific dyeing technique and it finally pushed back. Nothing was really working, but I did get this lovely greyish blue mohair.

And the creme de la creme! An amazing green - of course it is incredibly difficult to photograph accurately but trust me on this one. Indigo and onion skins on mohair.

Also had some nice results with orange peels and banana peels, and coffee grounds. Why do we ever throw anything away?

The Hats, They are A-Coming In

Despite the threat of mountains of snow (that never came), we still had a lot of visitors on Saturday. I started out feeling up to the task, with a nice stash of yarn at the ready.

It was quickly absorbed as people came and went.

Several came with their hats in hand,

while others arrived with their hats on their heads.

We have collected 15 so far, including three felted versions. Many people have returned with hats and collected more yarn for a second go-round. As Lucy said, after spending the day with me, this is fun!

Here are some more skeins (can you stand it?):

A rare plied skein. I needed a break from the single ply yarns but it is not really very time efficient to make plied yarns given the fact that most skeins are leaving still damp from setting the twist. But a spinner can not live on bulky art yarns alone and occasionally I need to spin thin, if you know what I mean.

This was a skein spun by a woman who had just learned to spin and was falling deep down the rabbit hole. We spent many a fine hour talking about wheels and drum carders. She also carded some gorgeous batts for me. She left for her home in L.A. with yarn, fleece and a promise to mail back the resulting hats.

This was a wild skein that is a mixture of grabbing into my pile of bits and pieces and some straight up white merino.

Some little guys that came off of spindles that people were working on...a little overspun but filled with good intentions.

Unconditional Yes: The Blog

The project at Simmons College has a new blog! Not a lot of content yet, but check back now and again and see what is happening.

To Boston and Back

The whirlwind trip to Boston was very fruitful. Although it is quite physically exhausting to fit a trip to Boston into one day, there is something kind of lovely about taking a long train ride, ending up in a new city for a day and boarding the train home in the evening. The hardest part is seeing our house flash by right near the end of the return trip and know it will take a good 45 minutes to an hour to retrace the steps to get back there. Surely Amtrak could make a quick stop in Sunnyside? No?

Ah well. Here are some the goodies I found in the archives at Simmons. I have no idea what my plan is with these items (I was only looking and taking pictures, although the staff of the archives seem willing to share for exhibition purposes).


The mandatory commemorative mug. I have some vague idea of recreating fake ceramic mugs and salt shakers and the like but to what end, I am not sure.


I learned that, up until the 1960s, each class would pick an animal mascot to represent their year. This led to some funny, kitschy knick knacks and stuffed animals in their collection. According to a little display in the archives, the tradition has been reinstated recently. This year's class mascot is a shark.


Another interesting item (it is a matchbook in case my photograph is too cryptic). I noticed a distinct change in how the women in the school viewed themselves when I looked through the yearbooks last time. Somewhere between the 1960 issue and the 1970 issue, not surprisingly, the tone changed from a jokey, ain't we got fun, self-depreciating tone to one a more enlightened, hear me roar tone. This is, obviously, pre-1970.


As is this.


This I found most curious not only for the somewhat cartoonish portrait but also for the writing - is that Thai? Very mysterious.

As I say, I really don't know what I will do with all this. I like the idea of playing with the whole notion of archives and presentation, especially since the library science program is one of the largest programs at Simmons.

I also met with an art administration class who will be my assistants through out the development of this project. They were so amazing - very engaged and enthusiastic. They had already thought of several ideas and were ready to take on the task of engaging others in it as well. Being in their early 20s, they have embraced facebook, blogs, twitter and other means of communication so I found myself ending my self-imposed FB vacation. All in the name of art, you understand. I can quit anytime I like. Really.

I am so pleased with how the project is shaping up. I feel like the quirky aspects of campus life at Simmons are perfectly suited my own quirky aspects. I think it is a good match.

Then, it was back to my little sunroom studio! Tuesdays tend to be the day when people return week after week so it has become a lovely group of dedicated spinners and knitters and a few new people coming for the first time. I have lost track of how many skeins have gone out - many people have taken more than one - but I think we will have about 30 or more hats in the end. All I know is that when I put skeins out on the table, they are always all gone by the end of the day. Likewise, my pile of fleece disappears and it is time to start dyeing again.

Here are a couple more skeins that I managed to document before they left. I am loving that deep cochineal red. Both skeins, indeed nearly all the skeins, are from batts carded by visitors. I have hardly touched the drum carder since the first session, except to demonstrate how to use it.

Busy Hands are Happy Hands

That was one of the things my father would say as he doled out a list of chores for us to do and we were grumbling about it. Who knew I would so embrace the idea later in life?

Another great day at Wave Hill. Despite the cold, we had a nice group come by, including some of my favourite people on this fine earth.



And when some of your favourite people on this fine earth are sitting near you, quietly spindling...well, it is very, very nice.

When I started this project, I thought one of the key components would be the trust between me, as the maker of the yarn, and the knitters, who had no real obligation to return with a hat. But somehow that issue seems a small point, almost besides the point. The real point, as it turns out, is the experience of making the yarn together. Even the hats are besides the point. Everyone is enjoying seeing them come back, and some people are doing great things, but they are like little pieces of candy after a great meal. The meal, as it turns out, is being there together.

As is the way lately, I must almost immediately turn my mind from dyeing, carding, spinning and talking to the next big thing. For me, the next big thing is the project at Simmons College. I will head to Boston on Monday for day full of meetings with faculty, art students and a visit to their archives. It will be a long day with lots of train travel but I plan to take full advantage of this to get to work on the first of (I hope) several crochet pieces for that exhibition.

In amongst the pounds of fleece I have been dyeing each week, I managed to drop in several skeins of merino sock yarn I had on hand.


This was an attempt to re-create the fabulous cochineal red. After reading more about it, I tried adding cream of tartar to soften the effects of the tin mordant, which can be harsh on the wool and make it brittle. The final result is a totally different colour, but still a good one!

Catching and Missing

No new pictures today, I am afraid. Just words. Or maybe I will dig around and find something.

I decided to wean myself from Facebook. Like many, I love it and hate it. But clearly it is too seductive for me because I spend much too much time there. I didn't have the nerve to completely deactivate my account, but I am challenging myself to stay away unless I have something urgent to say or add. Too often I felt like I was repeating myself here and there. So I am choosing here rather than there. I like this format better - strangely more intimate yet, in actuality, more open. Who knows, maybe it will encourage more people to comment. I do so like getting comments, by the way.

Now free from Facebook, I want to take a moment to reflect more on the Knitting Sprawl exhibition in Peterborough. I must confess that I left Peterborough with an unsettled feeling. Unsettled because I knew in my heart of hearts that the work presented there isn't quite hitting the mark. It feels too unfinished and uncertain. The project is so large - the topic, the media, the scale - that I have been having a hard time distilling it down into something new. While knitting is at the center of it, it isn't necessarily the heart of it and I am thinking that perhaps me knitting in response isn't actually the answer. Or perhaps only me knitting isn't the answer. I aspire to have my work be 1 + 1 = 5. I think I have only hit 1 + 1 = 2 here.

Then again, I wonder if I am just uncomfortable about being back in the more traditional gallery/studio world where it is so much more crowded than, say, on a Manhattan rooftop with a water tower. If you remove the "wow" factor, is there anything left?

These are the thoughts that I have been walking around with lately, in between dyeing and spinning sessions. Perhaps they are coming forward because one of the successes of the Wave Hill project has been that, in creating a format for people to come together and focus on this rather simple topic, something new has been created. Something intangible but very real nonetheless. I know it when I feel it and it is definitely happening at Wave Hill.

I just haven't felt it yet with Knitting Sprawl.

Rhythm

House Study/Handmade went well yesterday. When I arrived, there were three people waiting and they dug right in. I have been granted a fantastic assistant named Stephanie, who has eagerly learned about carding and spinning and now actually does most of the teaching so I can spin.

The light was lovely yesterday in our sunroom studio.


Stephanie is the person standing in the back. Notice how she is demonstrating the spindle for a visitor. I found it interesting that, while many people gravitate to the bright colours, Stephanie cards up the most subtle combinations in very limited palettes. For example, here is one of her's:



Here are yet more skeins that were carried away. I am having trouble keeping up!


This one was carded by a volunteer who helps out on Saturdays. She decided to card together all the odds and ends that come off the carder when it is cleaned.


This one is mostly wool dyed with orange peels, tea and black walnut.


I see indigo, tea, orange peels and natural white in here.

If you look closely at the foreground in the first photo, you can see the first hat to be returned - a felted hat made from fleece that the participant carded. I think she has two more coming.

Crushes

I confess that when I had my moment of shock when Shawn of islandsweet admitted she was having some issues with being vegetarian and working with wool, I may have had an ulterior motive. Witness:


I ordered this skein from her a couple of weeks ago and it ended up being even better, that is to say, way better than I had pictured it. I love this skein of yarn so much that the mere thought of Shawn giving up wool...well...I just couldn't bear it. Ain't no cotton in the world that can do that!

I bought a couple of other skeins on etsy as well. Let's call it a paypal moment.

These are from naturallyspun, a woman who lives in Washington state and spins all her yarn on her spindle. Truly amazing skill on display here. Check it out.




It is actually a little finer than I thought it would be, so I will save it for something delicate and beautiful, like a lacy cowl. I can already picture it.

And finally, one crush I have had recently was actually of my own doing. After years of trying, I finally achieved the deep reds I so desired from cochineal. Look, my friends. Doesn't it make you want to weep for joy?



You, yes you, dear reader can work with this and all the other reds, blues, greens, and yellows I dyed up yesterday. I am bringing it to Wave Hill this morning as part of Home Study/Handmade.

The weekend was full, to say the least. Lucy and I were out the door early on Saturday so that she could be at her first chess tournament of the year. It was held at the Spence School, a very fancy, private, all-girls school on the Upper East Side. As her coach says, it is a very civilized tournament. A nice way to get back into the craziness of chess tournaments. Lucy came in 7th in her division (she lost her tie-breaker game or she would have been 4th - not exactly sure how that all worked out but it did). Congratulations Lucy!

I had only a little time to absorb the white glove world of the Spence School, however, because I had to get myself to Wave Hill for a Saturday of spinning, carding and talking. It was great. Two experienced spinners showed up - one with her wheel - and they dived right in. I have both my wheels there so we had three wheels going at one point. Then everyone got into carding and I have a stack of batts to spin up tomorrow. Everyone was learning and busy and having a great time. Even Helen showed up. If some natural disaster had struck Wave Hill at that moment, the knitting and spinning world would have been much the poorer.

Here are a few of the skeins that walked out the door:


Some indigo dyed wool and corn fibre blended with some natural grey wool as well as some cochineal and orange peel dyed merino, along with some odds and ends.
Mostly cochineal and orange peel dyed wools - merino and mohair.

Mostly cochineal with some of the natural grey wool.

This one was a real crowd pleaser for all its subtleties. It is a blend of white and orange peel dyed merino and tea dyed mohair. Lovely!

This was our "Valentine" skein - lots of cochineal dyed merino blended with sari silk and white merino. I didn't spin this one - it was carded and spun by one of the visiting experts whose name I think is Caroline. IN any case, she goes by Miucat on ravelry. Look her up!

It was such fun. And I am enjoying how the art staff are getting into the act - teaching people to card and spindle spin and talking to people about the dyeing process. There is something about this whole thing that touches a nerve for many people and therein lies the art.

Yet even then I could not spend a lot of time reflecting on human nature and its affinity for wool. I got into our car and drove from Wave Hill up to the Zen Mountain Monastery, where I had an appointment on Sunday to meet with their Guardian Council. To say that Dan has had a field day with this name is an understatement. For weeks he has been going around the house saying "The Guardian Council" in his best sci-fi, alien leader voice. No worries about feeling self-important in our household.

This meeting was an important and (almost) last step in officially becoming a student of the Mountains and Rivers Order and officially asking Shugen Sensei to be my teacher. They have deliberately set up "barrier gates" for people so that those wanting to become students really have to work out quite a bit before committing. At first glance it might seem overly fussy or even elitist but in reality it is quite a good thing. It is a mutual relationship of giving and receiving and it is smart to take steps to ensure that everyone is ready for it.

Meeting the Guardian Council was rather intimidating, and I think it is supposed to be. They asked some very basic but very big questions such as "why do you practice Zen?" and I had to answer as articulately as I could without fainting or crying or worse. I have no idea how long we spoke, probably only about 10 minutes, but in the end I passed through the gate and was welcomed as a student.

It was a moment of huge relief and happiness for me. Now I will have to spend a day sitting zazen, which is called Tangaryo, and then enter the Zendo and ask the Sangha for support of my practice. I have been present as a sangha member for this and it is quite moving.

Then it was back in the car and a slightly icy ride home, where Dan had purchased celebratory cupcakes and we all cheered for a great weekend.

Never Underestimate the Power of Knitters

This, from the Yarn Harlot:

$ 1 000 110

Knitters who read here (the YH's blog), who make up this community, have donated more than one million dollars (and we aren't finished tallying) to Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders since we began the effort in 2004. That matters. Kindness, humour, decency, yarn, passion, interest, participation in the world around us... it matters, even when it sucks sometimes...

Lost My Train of Thought There...

First, take a look over here for an insightful, if disturbing, essay by the wonderful Rebecca Solnit about Haiti and the media coverage of the earthquake there. I also highly recommend her book on the history of walking.

There have been provocative things happening in my little world of blogs-that-I-follow. Over at Dangerous Harvests, Nathan has taken up the question of whether parents who are convert Buddhists should actively teach their children to follow Buddhism. He gives an interesting explanation of the term "indoctrination", among other things. He was provoked to write by another blogger who suggested it was most definitely wrong to do that. From the trenches of our family unit, I can say that even if I wanted to indoctrinate my children, they wouldn't have any of it anyway. They are already so secure in their ability to think for themselves that they never take what I put forward as a good idea at face value. Believe me, even things like "taking showers" or "changing your socks". If they come to Buddhism, it certainly won't be because I told them it was a nice thing.

My teacher often says that the best way to "teach" children about Buddhism or Zen is to live it yourself. Want to teach children about compassion? Be compassionate! I agree; it is as simple as that. It may not be something that you can assess on a standardized test later, but it will appear.

Then, over at Islandsweet, Shawn dropped a little provocative bomb, saying she has been considering "the hypocrisy of spinning with animal fibres" as a vegetarian, wannabe vegan. Shawn and I have been encouraging (enabling?) each other in our spinning habits for a couple of years - we have had a fast but deep friendship - but this comment really left me blinking.

I have heard of people, let's call them vegans, who eschew wearing wool just as they would leather. They consider it part of a system that is cruel to the animals. While I can wholeheartedly agree about leather - it is a by-product of the meat industry which is one of the most unconscionable blots on the face of humanity. But wool? Ok, you could make a case that ANY domesticated animal is wrong and cruel but to me, that is living in la-la land. I don't think humans are going back to hunting and gathering anytime soon. Or I guess just gathering if you are a vegan. So let's make it a given that there will be domesticated animals - animals whose sole purpose in life is to work for or entertain humans. One of these is the sheep. Sheep's fleece will grow and, if not shorn, it will become a matted, dirty mess that is more likely to do harm than good for the sheep.

My friend, blogless Janine, raises sheep, among other animals. She has told me quite a bit about her experiences learning to shear and observing other farmers in her area. Yes, some of them are not so nice to their animals, some of them use lots of drugs and chemicals on their animals, etc., but others treat their animals like an extension of their family. Even on small scale, there's a range.

In the same way, one can go to the green market and buy a chicken that has been raised with full dental coverage, as Dan likes to say, or you can go to the supermarket and buy something raised by on a factory farm that vaguely resembles chicken. Know thy farmer is probably a good idea all around.

I say all this, of course, with a big box of fleece just arrived from Louet, where I don't know my farmers. I do it because it is just too much work to buy raw fleeces and clean them for the volume that I need. A trade off. Am I contributing to the suffering of the world? My best answer is: maybe.

And further...I would add that most of the plant-based fibres like bamboo, corn fibre, etc., are so heavily processed that I really wonder how eco-friendly they are. I suspect that they, like cotton, are possibly more polluting (and cruel on a more global level) than wool.

Now, I had wanted to write something about Knitting Sprawl....but I forgot what I wanted to say.

ETA: Just want to be clear that I am completely supportive of Shawn's decisions about wool, whatever they may be. Even to write that seems a little funny to me, but I don't want anyone, least of all Shawn, to think that just because someone doesn't like wool - swooning slightly at that - I can't get along with them.

We watched the Massachusetts Senate election results come in via the internet last night, our hearts sinking as the night went on. I didn't need to see how my hometown went - the fact that nearly every single person I attended high school with is a devout Republican gave me my answer before voting had even begun. Still, it was hard to believe the results.

How is it that we have so little patience now? Somehow Americans managed to be ceaselessly patient when it came to eight years of wars started under false pretenses, corporate/government shenanigans, selling off our public natural resources to the highest bidder, and more. But now, now even The People's Republic of Massachusetts can't stand one more day of it. Throw the bum out!

On a brighter note, the newly-installed governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, has made some efforts to create an atmosphere of what seems to be a genuine sense of bipartisanship.

Which way will things go from here?

ETA: If you don't mind strong words, here's a take on the Mass election. No apologies.

Small Things

Because you can't live on high end, conceptual art alone...

Yarn purchased at the Knit Cafe in Toronto - in the sale bin. I started it immediately on the tram but quickly feared I would not have enough for the whole hat. Luck was on my side, however, and there was even a little leftover.

My bonnet pattern, although ever-changing with small modifications. This time, more shaping at the front and a crocheted edge. The i-chord bind off just wasn't working.

Satisfying little projects that finish up quickly. They are a welcome relief after all the intensive knitting of the past several weeks. And they are a small way of gearing up for the next major undertaking - a series of crocheted works for my project at Simmons College. But more on that another time.