After weaving the threads of community, the shopping was grand.

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moosie

There’s nothing more delightful than spending a day wandering through the vendor barns at Rhinebeck, taking in the intense colors, meeting friends, and of course, shopping.

I had given up on having a Moosie spindle from Journey Wheel. The waiting list was long, and the ordering process so arcane that one can wait for months and end up with nothing that one wanted in the first place. That’s what happened to me earlier this year.

What a surprise to find that I had my choice of five Moosie spindles on Saturday morning.  What a curiosity that this one looks nearly like the one that I wanted in the first place. What a joy that this sweet little spindle is mine and all the difficulties of obtaining one are behind me.

The wonderfully colorful fiber behind the spindle is a Party in a Bag from Puckerbrush Farm. It’s a pound of colorful fiber, locks, sparkly angelina and pure fun!

There are so many ways this beautiful fiber can be spun.

A thick, soft single

A slubby thick and thin single

A slubby medium twist yarn, to be spiral spun over a solid core yarn.

A bulky two ply.

Have a look at all the fiber that I bought. Do you think this will keep me spinning until NYS&W 2010?

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Click the thumbnails for some serious fibery goodness.

1. 16oz Starry Night from Tintagel Farms. 50% mohair, 50% wool and a dusting of angelina. I fell in love with this last year, but they had run out by the time I went back to buy it.

2. 18 oz. Party in a Bag from Puckerbrush Farms, in luscious autumn shades with hints of aqua, purple and angelina. Don’t you  just love the name?

3. 16 oz. Another Party in a Bag from Puckerbrush Farms, in blues, aqua and purple.

4. 32oz. Ocean roving from Creatively Dyed. Wool and Seacell. I’ve always wanted to spin enough yarn to knit a sweater. This should be it.

4. 7 oz. Dyed locks from Liberty Ridge Farm.

The threads of community converge

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Contemplation

We are the weavers, we are the web. We are an extraordinary clan of spinners, knitters, dyers and weavers. We converged in Rhinebeck, NY for the New York Sheep and Wool Festival, and wove a community that was spectacular but fleeting.

Friday was a beautiful day to drive up the Bronx River and Taconic Parkways. These are old roads, built for leisurely drives through the countryside. The autumn foliage was spectacular.

I traveled with my friend Jo. This was her first NYS&W. It was my eleventh. Honestly, I lost count years ago. I started going in ’88 or ’89, and missed a few along the way. Last year, I jokingly declared it my 10th visit, so I’m counting from there.

The threads of community are spun from the moment we decide to make the trip to the festival. Some become manifest in the clothing that we spin, knit and weave. We converge on Rhinebeck like so many spiders weaving our giant web. Anchor strands extend out to Finland, the UK, Canada, and across the US. (Other places as well. I’m thinking of the people that I met.)

Who are fiber folk? I like to think that as a whole, we are gentler and more creative than the norm. We value the Earth and her bountiful gifts. We are unconventional. We are warm. We are colorful.

Friday night at our hotel, we joined a circle of spinners and knitters. We shared wine and cheese. Fate seated me next to a woman who walks a similar spiritual path to mine, and we explored the idea of co-leading a spiritual journey that centers on spinning and weaving.

Old friends met again. New friends made. Welcome to our web.

Honest scrap!

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I’m very honored that Tromp as Writ has received the Honest Scrap Award from a sister blogger, Life Looms Large.  When I return from the NY Sheep and Wool festival, I will share the honors with seven more bloggers of note.

Honest Scrap is a good metaphor for both the way I weave and the way I blog. Both are collages of my life, made from a bit of this and a bit of that.

Weaving connections

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The New York Sheep and Wool Festival begins on Saturday and I am feeling that wonderful buzz of anticipation. Officially,  this is my eleventh year going to the festival, but I suspect I lost count years ago. I think the first year I attended was 1989, a few months before buying my first loom.

What really matters to me are the changes over the past few years. 2006 was my mother’s last visit to Rhinebeck, a special time together. In 2007, I was fragile and numb, seeing no color, buying only white wool. I think my psyche was wrapped in a thick layer of white wool, protecting me while I healed.  Last year, the color came back, and I reached out into the fiber community, meeting new friends Nancy and Donna, and reconnecting with people from the place I lived some eight years ago.

This year’s festival promises to be filled with people.  The weather threatens to be cold and wet, but there will be hugs under umbrellas, and the warmth of community.

When I tell people about the festival, I hear myself talking more about the people than the shopping. NYS&W  is so much more than barns filled with vendors. It’s a temporary community, a place where everyone shares a passion for yarn.  But a little shopping is a good thing, too.

Intentions

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In ZATI The Art of Weaving a Life, Susan Barrett Merrill equates weaving an amulet with setting an intention.  It becomes the container for the fragile, young intention. It brings focus to our thoughts, and when it is woven, it becomes a tangible symbol, keeping the intention real, making it less elusive.

Now that I have found a place that I want to call home, I’m setting the intention of being there, pledging myself to the few acres of land that I will buy. The place where I will build my next home. The details are totally fuzzy, but I have to start somewhere. I have a lock for my potting shed door, and this amulet. I have a few years to figure everything else out. Am I crazy, in my middle age, to think about retiring to a more rustic way of life?

Amulet II 1As I wove, I sat in the garden at the Aerie. It’s not rustic, but it’s the only patch of land that I own. I had to touch the earth and pet the grass as the living being that it is. I let all the fatigue of the week drain away into the ground.

As I wove, I looked down and found a feather in the grass. Feathers are signposts for me, the Goddess’ way of making me pay attention.

Would I clear this much land for my house, having enough room for a stone terrace, a tiny bit of lawn, and a big kitchen garden? I would also clear a small circle in the midst of the woods, a place for magic and meditation. Might I be fortunate enough to have a small spring bubbling to the surface, like the one that was deep in the woods of my grandparents’ home?

So I wove my intentions, using bits of hand-spun yarn from my treasure basket, and snippets of the art yarn I had learned to spin.

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Spinning beyond

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Insubordiknit-workshopIt really is all about the yarn. You’ve heard me say that when I talk about my approach to weaving, because the color and texture of yarn is more important in my work than complexity of the weave structure.

When the yarn looks like this, it REALLY is ALL about the yArN.

I spun all this yarn in one fabulous weekend workshop with Jacey Boggs of Insubordiknit.

Jacey is a gifted teacher. She guided the twenty of us through each technique by calling up small groups to stand behind her as she demonstrated. Then, as we went back to our spinning wheels to practice, we got to hear the instructions repeated three more times as she called the other groups up in turn. This really reinforces the learning. See it. Hear it. Do it.

Working hard. Taking breaks to look out the window at the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge. That’s the same view as my new office space. I’d rather be spinning, of course.

Taking this class in NYC was a good idea. I had a chance to meet and hang out with many of the local fiberati. Familiar names from Ravelry now have faces.

I was essentially the only weaver-spinner in a room full of knitter-spinners. I’m sure a couple of people are going to rush out and get looms. This yarn is made for freestyle weaving.

If you are spinning to weave, here are a couple of things to consider:

-Don’t wet-finish the yarn after spinning. Just steam it enough to get the kinks out. It will be wet-finished along with the other yarns in the fabric.

-What you see is very close to what you get. Knitters space their inclusions, coils or cocoons farther apart, because knitting takes up a lot of the intervening yarn. Weaving doesn’t consume as much, so space them where you want to see them.

-Over-spun yarn creates a collapse weave effect. I madly over-spun some of my yarn while learning the techniques. I’m prepared to be happily surprised by what happens in wet-finishing.

The yarn? You want to see close ups of yarn?

Insubordiknit

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I will be spending the weekend in an art yarn spinning workshop with Jacey Boggs of Insubordiknit. I am really excited by the idea of creating “durable, usable art yarns, brimming with color, creativity, and a touch of mischief.” There’s a lot of mischief in many things that I do, so why should I expect my yarn be any different?

I believe that art yarn is at its best in weaving, and am thrilled at the idea of creating unique yarn for the Misted Hills coat.

My Lendrum spinning wheel is packed in its new, lime green suitcase, surrounded by a few pounds of roving and miscellaneous fiber.

How am I going to sleep tonight?  I’m too excited. The mischief in the fiber is calling me.

A second helping of blessings

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You can never have too many blessings, can you? I’ve always thought of the Receiving Bowl as a place to hold your blessings. Since I just wove a second one, I must be preparing to receive more of life’s blessings.

IMG_0105This little  bowl was woven on my Journey Loom, using Recycled Sari silk yarn and cotton rug warp. I beat the weaving well with a small tapestry beater, and the resulting bowl is quite firm.

The pattern for this Receiving Bowl can be found in ZATI The Art of Weaving a Life.

Weaving and technology. Each has it’s place.

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It has taken all evening to get online. My time has been squandered by a dodgy internet connection. I should have known something was going wrong with the wireless modem this week, because it kept getting slower and slower. The spare one is older technology, but it’s working better. At times like these, I am so grateful for my decision to keep my computer out of my weaving. It may be my research library and the recorder of these musings, but it is not part of the way I create cloth.

I don’t mind using simple, mechanical equipment, such as bobbin winders, ball winders, spinning wheels, and jack looms. That’s as far as I am willing to go, because these items still respond directly to my actions. They help me, but they don’t stand between me and my work. Once the computer intercedes, I become distanced and detached, because it takes over some of the things that engage my mind, like knowing which treadle to press.

What about you? Does technology enhance your weaving experience or detract from it?

Rainbow’s End

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It took me four years to go from winding this rainbow warp to cutting this last length of fabric off the loom. I am not the same weaver I was when I began. I am not even the same person.

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Rainbow’s End is the resting point between life’s many journeys. As a weaver, my journey has been toward Saori free style weaving, a place outside the rule books, the place where instinct is all you need. As a person, it’s been a journey from a desperate need for absolutes, back toward a softer world of possibilities.

Rainbow’s End is the image of this transformation. The warp, with its regular stripes, is where I began. The weft, intuitive, yet made from mostly that same thread, is where I am today. My now empty loom is where I will begin my next journey.

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It took courage to plunge my smooth weaving into a tub of hot water. I was right to trust my instincts. The wool inlays are fine. The tightly spun worsted singles, steam-finished, didn’t shrink as much as the cotton. Don’t believe everything they tell you. Sometimes you have to take a chance.

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Amber cat says, “Chances. I take them.”