Yarny things including sheep, antique knitting patterns, and bagpipes

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing Franklin Habit speak at The Loopy Ewe's Spring Fling. Nope, I wasn't a Flinger (how do you join that club?) and though I sat about 10 feet from Franklin which gave me plenty of time to contemplate whether hipster garb would work for me (I think not), I did not see the Yarn Harlot, my hero. I saw evidence in photographs that she was around, but I did not find her. I am pleased to say that Franklin was an excellent substitute.

Franklin was wonderful in fact. His talk was about antique knitting patterns. He promised at the beginning that he would get us interested in this particular rabbit hole of knitting lore and he almost succeeded in my case.

I did go home and buy his book, It Itches. It is a hilarious collection of cartoons and thoughts about knitting and definitely worth a read.

And he finished off with a lovely night cap pattern. What an enchanting evening, complete with pocket watch.

Fast forward to last weekend...

Saturdays are a good time to run errands--especially when your errands include two yarn stores, one of which is having a fleece day.

Somehow I wasn't surprised when I pulled into the parking lot of The Recycled Lamb and heard a bagpipe. Bagpipes mean Scotland and Scotland means sheep and well, there weren't any sheep on the lawn of the shop, but there were goats and alpaca and plenty of sheep fleeces.

I drove down for the fleece day to find fiber for a project I want to do this summer. Alas, I have been spoiled by Maggie Casey and the fleeces she gets from Sheep Feather's Farm. Nothing I saw could compare and I'm going to have to somehow bribe either Maggie or the owner of the farm, Robin Phillips for one of those gorgeous corriedale fleeces.

The Lamb has many classrooms and they always have classes going on. This one was ready for a spinning class. I bumped into the knitting teacher from my two-at-a-time-toe-up sock class a few months ago and was happy to be able to say that I am just finishing the ribbing of my first pair of socks knit this way.

And the Lamb still had a few of Sarah Swett's How to Weave a Bag on a Box. If you can't get one from them, you can get them HERE. You're welcome.

Yarn-y things.

Weaving color gradations with tapestry... or fun with a copy machine

I'm working on some new sample tapestries for a class I'm teaching in June in Michigan. The class is called Predicting the Unpredictable: Color in Tapestry and it is a color theory for tapestry class. I think I called it that so I would have to learn to spell unpredictible. See there, I still got it wrong. One I, one A. Unpredictable. (As in my spelling is...)

Yesterday I pulled this one off the loom.

The top half is a photocopy of the weaving on the bottom. I was attempting to match the values in the grayscale with the colors and I'd say it came out pretty close. I didn't pay any attention to the hues of the colors on the bottom, only to the values (though I'm sure I don't have a yellow that would match the darkest three hues).

I am going to do this again. I am also going to dye a different gradation of blacks. This one has a large jump between depth of shades 0.26 and 1.0. See it right in the middle? I am using a dye scale by Ginny Phillips but I think for this one I might just go back to the scale James Koehler taught me which is based on a different geometric progression. I'll certainly show you how it turns out. I think the value gradation in the photocopy (top left) is better than the woven grayscale (top right)!

This is woven with Harrisville Highland which is a two-ply yarn. I will also do it with the singles yarn I use for my tapestries to illustrate the difference between just two and three plys.

I'm also getting ready for another round of Color Gradation Techniques for Tapestry, April 30 - May 3 in Golden, Colorado. I'm really excited about this class. Not only do I have some new ideas to try in the area of color theory and using gradation in real weaving applications, but the class is super small and full of great people I have met various places over the last few years. We really do need a couple more people in the class, so if you have any inclination to spend four days with me in sunny Golden, let me know! Information on The Recycled Lamb where the class is being held is here: http://www.recycledlamb.com/events.php
And a little more information on my website here: http://www.rebeccamezoff.com/workshops

Here are some of the yarns for the class, all packed up now and ready to go!