Drop Spindling.

One of the women in my Wednesday night knitting group makes drop spindles. Last week she gave one to me. I had always thought drop spinning was just a craft I could not catch on to, but it turns out that the spindle I had been using was really unbalanced and difficult to spin with. Since trying out the one she made, I've spun all this.

This was my first 50 g. It's Fleece Artist hand-dyed merino sliver from Nova Scotia. I bought it at Yarn Forward in Ottawa. It broke a lot. And is very thick and thin.


This is my second batch. It's Schoppel-Wolle merino pencil roving from Germany, purchased at All Strung Out in Guelph. It's much more even. The colour changes inside of this one are impressive too.


I'm going to make a large artwork type thing out of all of my handspun wool. I need to think of the best way to show off the fibre and all of my hard work.

Life's too short to knit boring work socks.

Haven't really done much knitting up here, but wanted to show this off:


This is a sock made from the blue wool I purchased when I was last in Ottawa. I found an ancient knitting book and was inspired to design this chevron sock at Squirrel Camp. Number one is finished except for the kitchener stitch at the toe, and two is already casted on.

I spent some time today looking for my northern souvenir. I was really hoping to take some mukluks home, but the price for local handcrafts is prohibitive on a Squirreler's wage. Also, I think I would enjoy making myself some one day.

So instead I went to the local knitting store and bought some new sock wool. Turns out I'm turning into a sock knitter. These were all in the 25% off bin....even that Noro. I've been wanting to buy that colourway for years now (literally, since they first brought it to Canada), but I just wasn't a sock knitter before. Now that I am, I snatched it up at sale price.


I also picked up these handcarved buttons. I'm a sucker for handcarved buttons. These are made of, from top to bottom, deer, moose, and caribou antlers.


Over all, it was a very good day for wool. I'm going back to the store on Monday because the owner wants to see my Hiya Hiya interchangeable needles. I also want to take some pictures of her store because it is truly lovely. She also carries the elusive muskox fibre, quiviuk. Unfortunately, it is extremely labour-intensive to collect this rare fibre. The women in the collective that supply her store follow the muskox herd around and pick up the little bits of their underbelly coat that falls off. Then they have to sort out all of the grass, lichen, and guard hairs by hand. This is the warmest and lightest animal fibre anywhere. It costs $80 for 25g. I could not even justify that as a souvenir. They make these kits with one of the neatest mitten patterns I have ever seen. It has a muskox graphic on the back of a very straight mitten with classic Norwegian shaping. I tried one on and that was dangerous. The kit cost $210.00. They were by far the nicest mittens I have ever put on, but there was no way I could buy the kit. She did a really good job at trying to talk me into it, however. I resisted. It was tough. I'm pretty sure she actually wants me to come back on Monday so she can try to sell it to me again. I'm not going to buy it. Really, I'm not. I promise everyone in blogland that I will not buy that kit. I'll just have to come back to the Yukon someday when I'm a rich and famous ecologist and buy it then.

Lemon & Paeroa.

The thing about New Zealand is you can be just about anywhere doing just about anything, driving, hiking, strolling along, and you end up looking down into these valleys of rolling green hills. The fields are generally designed by sheep, so they aren't really square patchwork pieces on the landscape, they are tiers of ancient footpaths carefully balanced along ridges between dark green forests and golden yellow broome and gore (it's called something like that, at least). The clouds are bright white and thick and they sit at the tops of the hills. The sheep are absolutely everywhere like little cotton fluffs. You can see so far away that the sheep are very very small sometimes. The rivers are either so clear you can barely tell they're there, or opaque and turquoise, you'd never find the bottom. The family here laughed when one of the other girls asked why the water was so blue. But, I knew exactly what she meant. I've never seen anything like it either. And, if you're luckly, wheverer you are you'll be able to see the top of Mt. Cook, always with snow, or the ocean in the distance, grey, blue, doesn't matter, still so beautiful. It can be a perfect spring day, a rainy, foggy morning, or the water can be coming down in buckets, it doesn't even matter.

O, and I know I mentioned that I purchased three hanks of wool from the lovely farm I've been staying at. We all know I sort of don't tell the entire story, sometimes, maybe, when it comes to wool shopping. And at that time I had already planned on buying 2 more hanks, so really I had 5 from this place. And then I bought 5 more (I couldn't have done it without your encouragement, Chris....just kidding, nothing really has an effect on my consistent, constant, yarn-buying habits).

Tomorrow I fly back to windy Wellington and the North Island for a bit.

See you soon! Cass

p.s. L&P is my favourite Kiwi pop. It's delicious and Kiwi As. And "world famous in New Zealand since ages ago!"

Raes Junction.

Right now I am way out in the country in the southern part of the South Island.

The internet here is dial-up and I have a cold so I can't tolerate the lack of speed to put up posts here.

I have learned how to spin on a wheel and have already made a toque out of the wool I spun. They have huge industrial wool carders here and make all sorts of rovings for spinners. The past few days have been black merino and silk. It is so beautiful and I wish I could have a huge bag of it, but it would take a year to spin it all on a drop spindle at home. The grandfather has been running this place for years and he does all the dying too. This week he dyed a bunch of hanks of spun merino pink, purple, and blue. Not really my colour combination, but I did find some I liked. He sold me 3 HUGE hanks of light heather grey, dark heather drey, and light heather purple for $10 each. There is enough to make a giant sweater. I'm going to make a normal sized striped raglan sweater and still have a ton left over. I haven't figured out how I'm going to get it all home yet. I'll probably leave some other things behind.

Grey Hoki.

I stopped in a little seaside town on the west coast for one night just to break up the 10 hour busride from Nelson to the glaciers. It was called Hokitika and it was grey. I actually really liked the beach and I had it mostly to myself. Around 6:00 pm the sun was out so I ate dinner down there and just sat and knit and listened to my ipod until I was too cold. Then I went back to my hostel, which was practically empty and more like a hotel. I had my own room with sink and huge window and everything.

Empty beach. Grey. Sand, not stone, nice change from the east. Much easier to walk on.

Me on the empty beach. A little more sun. Pretty blue skies.

Once back at the hostel, I sat in the lounge and watched TV for a bit. Meet the Robinsons was on, a computer animated film about an inventor kid. Cute, but nowhere near as good as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Mara and Chris and I had went to see that on Friday night and I Really Loved It. I laughed throughout the entire thing. So good. Go see it. You'll love it too (probably).

And, while I was there I remembered to take a few pictures of my new wool purchases for you. This is a bubblegum pink merino with which I will be making myself mittens. Bright pink mittens to go with my dark blue winter jacket.

This is a bright blue merino with pink and peach silk slubs. Will be a headband (Calorimetry, for those in the know). I'm into the bright colours right now.

That being said, I also picked up awhole bunch of little naturals in all sorts of different shades and sheep species to make myself yet another pair of mittens and a stripey scarf. Should be cool. And mindless. I'll have it done in the next few weeks, I think.

I know, I know, this is a lot. AND there's even more, but it's all surprises so you can't see it yet ;)

Fibre Spectrum.

Nelson is known for being an artsy little city. Long before I visited I had a feeling I would find good wools and things there. And, well, I was right. I made a list of all the local yarn stores I had heard about and then set off to find them. When I came across Fibre Spectrum I knew my search was complete. This little storefront was pretty nondescript, but it houses the products of a local cooperative. They handspin and handdye and handweave and knit every item in the store from fibre to finished product. The store is long and narrow and is completely lit by skylights. The natural light makes everything even more beautiful. I spent a long time chatting with the woman running the store the first day. Then I bought a lot of things from her. Then I met a girl who graduated from the University of Guelph the same year I finished my undergrad. She recognized me and we talked for a few minutes. She wasn't a knitter though, and I has some serious shopping to do. I had to limit my purchases for financial and backpack space reasons. Mara and Chris think I am crazy. Then, I spent the entire night thinking about one skein I had really liked, but didn't buy, and had to go back the next day to pick it up and take pictures of the place so I will never forget it. O, and then I visited several of the women in the co-op at the Nelson Farmer's Market on the weekend. Yep.

When I wrote out the list of pictures for this post I had about 40, but I narrowed them down to just these few.



Baby Surprise Jackets!

Wall of handspun, handdyed merinos and corrydales and silks and everything you can think of. I pulled out every single one of them and inspected them all.

Did I mention all of the handmade felt in this place? So cool. I bought a little heart christmas ornament (well, it's bright blue and beaded) for Mara and Chris to thank them for their hospitality.

Handknit sweaters.

The weaving was pretty incredible too.

Yeah. Good day for wool shopping.

"We tend to get addicted to our activities so you better make sure you love what you do." Wilt Chamberlin.

.

Christchurch.

I spent a couple days looking around Christchurch where I was meeting Chris and Mara.

There are a lot of churches there, as the name would suggest. A lot of the buildings are made of this beautiful dark stone in this gothic style. I really loved just wandering through the streets. I stayed at a good hostel in an old building called Rolleston House. I think that was where one of the old mayors of the town lived. It was right in between the museum, art gallery, art centre, and botanic gardens. Very nice part of town.

The front entrance of the museum. It says: Lo, these are parts of His ways but how little a portion is heard of Him. Because, of course, it used to be a church.

The fountain and one of the houses in the gardens.

From the front porch of the hostel I stayed at where the street cars ran. The art centre is in the background.

More gothic architecture.

O, and this town is Rugby World Cup crazy. I thought it was next year, but it isn't even until 2011. They have a huge, beautiful new stadium though. This countdown clock was in the centre of town.

And, Christchurch must have a long history of wool production too because so many of the buildings have there old woolstores signs on them. I saw one called the Kashmir Building too. Too bad it isn't full of cashmere anymore? How it's an electronics superstore.

Kia ora, Kaikoura.

In Maori, that means: Hello, good day, town of crayfish food.

Kiakoura is actually named after a Maori story. The entire name is Te ahi Kaikoura Tama ki te Raki. It means "the fire that cooked the crayfish of Tame ki te Raki". He was on a journey from the North Island around the South Island to find his three runaway wives and he stopped here for dinner. Kai means food and koura means crayfish. And this town fishes for crayfish (which are lobster sized and cost $50 here).

In Kaikoura, I spent a lot of time just sitting on the beach. The hostel was right on the beach. It was very nice and there were some really cool people there. I shared my room with a Swiss girl and an American guy who had met a few days prior to arriving in town. The guy had the same pack as me, only in the boy version. His was 5 L larger, but mine was (slightly) heavier. I don't know how I do it. We had a lot of fun, cooked dinner together in the amazing kitchen (some hostels don't have amazing kitchens, this one did). They actually invited me to come to Nelson with them, but I already have the rest of my trip pretty much planned out! I also met a German guy who had traveled through Canada, Australia, now NZ, and was heading to Thailand. He said Canada was his favourite country (I'm biased, but I can understand what he's saying :)

This was the gravel beach. O yeah, Kiakoura is at the base of a beautiful mountain range. There is snow at the top of the mountains all year round. When I saw the snow, I felt SO happy, like happy homesickness. I'm sure I'll take that back next March.


My NZ wool on the NZ beach. Fits right in.


On my second day in Kaikoura, I walked down to the Saturday market. I bought some honey and I had a whitebait sandwich. Whitebait is a local delicacy, it's at the end of the season right now, and apparently it's worth a lot of money. I had no idea what it was, but I thought I'd try. It's tiny little fish fried in a pancake. Yep. Eyeballs and everything. O, and they serve it on a piece of Wonderbread with margarine. HOW is that a delicacy? It tasted pretty good, but I couldn't look at the little worm-fish while I was eating it. Here is a horrible picture of my mostly-eaten whitebait pattie.


And, there's a big thing in Kaikoura. A big crayfish, of course. Since this I've found two more big things in NZ, so watch out for them.


More perfect knitting on the beach, this is going with this and it looks lovely. It'll be nice and warm for the winter back home.


And then I hiked out around the lovely coastline. The seabreezes here were just so refreshing.


I walked out to the end of town to see Fyffe house, the only remaining house from the whaling days in Kaikoura. And this house belonged to the man who brought the whaling industry to this region. I don't know if it's always been pink, but now it's very, very pink. And it's built on whale bones as a foundation. They also used the bones as fences.


A cool cookie cutter in the kitchen cupboard :)


Whale vertebrate on the front porch.


I went down to a wool farm to see a sheep shearing show. That was interesting. This is a picture of Ramman, one of the rams at the farm. I fed him. I can't show any pictures of the sheep being sheared because it was too traumatizing. It took three minutes with electric clippers to shear one sheep, but the farmer can actually do it in 37.2 seconds. In the background you can sort of see the little sheepdog pup that's learning how to work on the farm. His name is Sam! There's also a little bit of a black sheep too. They're both eating the ram's food.


These are some of the lambs at the wool farm. I got shocked by the electric fence for this photo (and it's not even that good...I wanted more lily and spotted lamb face). I'm sure I'm not the first since people come here to see the lambs and I didn't notice any signs indicating the fence was electric. The farmer even told one guy he could go in with the lambs and didn't mention the fence. Anyway, it was just like a flick to the muscle of my left arm and I was totally fine.


On my last day in Kaikoura, I borrowed a bike from the hostel (for free, that was nice) and rode out to see one of the seal colonies and hike around the end of the peninsula.

Baby sealface! Can you see him?


Landseal, right beside the boardwalk. You're supposed to keep at least 10 m between you and the seals. Usually, that's no problem because they stay out on the rocks. This guy was right beside the boardwalk. I wasn't that close, but other people were.


The hike was really neat. There were all kinds of old Maori sites along the way. The ridges you can see in the first hill were actually a Maori fort, or Pa. The town of Kaikoura is around the other side of the point. It was so foggy I couldn't really see the mountains in the background.


I sat up over the ocean and knitted for awhile.

A day out with the Ignatius CSA Interns.

Last Monday I received a phone call from my good friend Sarah. She was calling to invite me to spend a day with the interns from the Ignatius Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) farm in Guelph. I had been a member of the CSA for the past two years, but was not able to participate this summer since I am leaving town during peak harvest time. Sarah knows that I miss the CSA a lot and had made special arrangements for me to tag along on their fieldtrip. Also, she knew this particular trip would be of special interest to me because the first destination was the Wellington Fibres Mill.

I know a little about the mill and I have knit with several of their yarns. One store carries their yarn and it happens to be my Local Yarn Store (LYS), All Strung Out. Every time I'm at All Strung Out I end up in a conversation about Wellington Fibres. I've been meaning to get up to visit, but Elora is pretty far away when you don't have a vehicle. So, of course I jumped at the opportunity to visit and tour the farm with the interns.

We set out and the drive to Elora was quick. When we first arrived at the farm we met Lorne and Donna. They showed us their Angora goats and the little goats who had all been weened from their mothers last weekend. All of the goats were inside the barn because they don't like being wet at all and it was a bit rainy outside. I learned that the goats are named Angora goats because this is the region of Turkey from which they originated. The Sultan did not let any goats out of the country for a long time. I also learned that Angora goats produce mohair fibre while Angora rabbits produce angora fibre. This was actually something I had been wondering about for awhile. The little goats were all so cute. They were all very curious, but if anyone made a quick movement they would all scatter away. Sarah took some pictures, so I will add one here once she sends them.

After meeting the goats Lorne gave us a tour of the mill. The mill produces small batches of yarns which makes every colourway unique. Donna is the dyer and with many years of experience she has her dye recipes down pat. The mill processes and dyes all of their own mohair, blends it with various amounts of wool, and processes and dyes any special orders for customers. The mill is run on solar power. This is quite amazing considering how much hot water is required in a yarn mill. I took some notes about the process of turning newly shorn mohair into knitting yarn.

First, the fibre needs to be washed. It can't be agitated because it will felt with heat and friction. So, it sits in soaker tubs full of hot water and orange oil based cleaner. The water is changed every 30 minutes until the batch of fibre has soaked 3 or 4 times, depending on the amount of dirt and organic matter that needs to be removed. It then drys on large racks until it is almost dry.

Next, the fibre goes through the picker. This fluffs up all of the fibres and removes any remaining straw. The picker blows the fibre into a little room. It comes out of the picker with the consistency of dandelion fluff and it can be very static-y since most of the natural oils have been removed in the washing process. At this point, the fibre is lubricated with a spray of oils and water.

Lorne likes to blend fibres from different animals in order to combine the favourable traits from each species. This also helps to overcome the less-favourable traits associated with each type of fibre. For example, wool from sheep is very light and lofty and has a very strong 'memory'. No matter what you do to wool it will eventually find its way back to its original state. Wool fibres have barbs that point outward. This prevents colour and light from reflecting back to our eyes so wool will appear matte. Mohair, on the other hand, has fibres that bend inward; light and colour reflect back to our eyes at a higher rate than wool so the fibre appears shiny and vibrant. Mohair is also very heavy. If you make a mohair sweater the sleeves would just continue to grow and nothing you could do would bring the sweater back to its original shape. So, Lorne combines the shiny, vibrant mohair with the light, lofty wool. This makes a nice yarn that drapes well, but also retains the garment's shape.

After the wool has been picked and gathered from the tiny room it is placed on a conveyor belt that moves it through the English-made carding machine. This machine removes all of the short, broken fibres and any remain bits and pieces that don't belong in the final product. Carding lines up the fibres and creates a roving or sliver. Sliver is a new term for me, but both terms refer to a long bundle of fibre that is ready to spin. The special carder that Lorne and Donna have is designed so that they can easily change the colour of fibre coming through the carder and it will not contaminate the next roving. On average, they probably run about three colours through the carder each day. This is an unusual trait for a carding machine, but enables them to work with very small and diverse batches of fibre.

Next the roving runs through the pin drafter three times. Drafting makes the roving uniform and smooths out all of the thick and thin areas. A needle pin combs the fibres and heavy rollers stretch out the roving by about 4.5 times. The pin drafter lays the drafted roving into a canister, forming coils with no twist because the coiler rotates one way and the canister itself rotates in the opposite direction. The yarn that is produced in this mill is worsted meaning that the fibres are combed a lot so that they all run parallel to one another in the final product. If the fibres were not combed as much and the fibres were all higedly pigedly in the roving the final product would be called a woolen yarn.

The coils of roving are very beautiful. Sarah took some pictures and I'll add them as soon as possible. Once everything is straightened out, drafted, and combed, the roving goes onto the spinning frame. This machine is set with a certain draft (length) and twist per inch. Everything is based on very concise mathematics. Lorne knows all of the numbers. For example, lace roving would give about 10 yards of yarn for every half ounce of fibre. This machine spins all of the yarn onto bobbins in single plys.

Once the required amount of roving is spun, the bobbins are transferred onto the plying machine. This is where the different types of wool are made depending on the number of plys, how different plays are put together, and the types of fibre that are plied together. The ply machine has three drive shafts (generally they only have two) and is German made. The extra drive shaft allows Lorne to make some different types of yarn, such as boucle (a yarn that has little loops down its length).

After all of this, the yarn is skeined. It must hang straight in a skein. A straight-hanging skein has the energy of the ply balanced with the energy in the twist and will make nice, straight garments. If either the twist or the ply is stronger than the other any garment produced will turn out crooked (due to the memory of the wool).

There are a few other tricks that Lorne mentioned as well. Wellington Fibres brushes most of their finished yarns. This gives it a beautiful, fluffy, puffy feel. I love that about their yarns. It is so pleasant to work with and to wear. This softens the fibres by locking the barbs of the mohair in. They also make an interesting Lopi wool. Icelandic sheep have thick guard hairs in order to survive the cold, long winters. If this guard hair is not removed, the yarn can be scratchy and heavy. This single ply, low twist yarn is a traditional Lopi wool. It is excellent for making felt or heavy, water-resistant sweaters. Lorne makes a Lopi, but replaces the sheep gaurd hair with a component of the mohair. This makes a nice, low-twist, rugged wool that is still great for felting and sweater knitting.

After all of this, we only had a few quick minutes to check out the shop. The Wellington Fibre Mill shop is bright and open. I would love to take a class there. They have all sorts of looms and spinning wheels as well. Before we headed out on the rest of the trip I managed to purchase two skeins of periwinkle blue (more of a blueberry blue) mohair/wool blend.

This picture does not do the yarn justice:


The next stop on our journey was the Elmira Produce Auction Cooperation. This organization is owned by the farming community in Elmira. It provides an outlet for local farms to sell this produce, rather than traveling to to Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto. This is very important for the rural Mennonite community who may not have the means to make the trip to Toronto each week. The entire auction process is really mind-boggling to me. I suppose participating is something you have to practice a bit. The just moved through the produce and flowers so quickly. I couldn't tell who was buying what, let alone for what price.

After being confused by the auction, we made a quick visit to Diversity Gardens. The garden was beautiful and certainly diverse. There were fat raspberries everywhere. Unfortunately, the amount of rain we have had this year has watered their flavour down a bit. The stop was nice, but the mosquitoes were out. This is something I am not used to at all this year since I've been tucked away, safe and sound, from the outdoors for such a long time. We continued our drive to visit Pfennings Farm.

Pfennings is a huge operation. Probably the biggest organic operation in Ontario. Before taking a tour we sat and had lunch. The CSA interns take turns preparing lunch each day and the food was fantastic. We ate many veggie from the farm, including roasted peppers, zucchini, and eggplants on bagels, and an incredible summer salad with tomatoes, parsley, so many other delicious ingredients. I brought the dessert: Lindt chocolate from one of my Rav pals and cookies from Saunder's bakery in Rockwood. Andrew and I had checked out my research plots the day before and had a chance to stop by. It's been awhile since I've shopped at Saunder's and it's definitely one of the things I miss about working in the field. Once lunch was finished one of the farm employees, Neville, took us on a driving tour of the five farms Pfennings operates. We saw giant cabbages, onions of every variety, rows upon rows of carrots, and all of the various machinery it takes to prepare the fields, plant, harvest, clean, sort, and package the produce. The entire tour was very impressive.

Once we returned to Ignatius, I had tea with Sarah in the sun room of the intern's house. It was really a great day and I'm so glad that I had the chance to tag along.

These are the three little guys Sarah gave to me from the CSA. They were turned into coleslaw. yum.

Knit Digestive System.

I actually came across the knit brain from the previous post at a crafty forum I read sometimes. The people there find all kinds of fantastic projects and items. This completely knit digestive system came up in the same thread as the brain. I'm going to keep an eye on this one.



The first Fibonacci legwarmer was finished just after knit group last night. The second was cast on today. It's slow going because the wool is fine and the entire thing is ribbed for extra stretch. Next up in my knitting bag is the fourth self-striping sock since Christmas (I had to take a break before I finished the last one...fourth sock syndrome, anyone?). Self-striping wool is a mathematical achievement in itself. One of my favourite bloggers, Eunny Jang of See Eunny Knit has a great tutorial for home dyeing.

Okay, I'm out. I've been doing some research on my science family so I'll try to update that tomorrow.

Cass