I first discovered Philsophers Wool a few years ago, when I stumbled upon a book of their Fair Isle sweater patterns in a library in Colorado. Since then I’ve admired them for their commitment to producing local, natural, and fair trade yarns–unlike most wool buyers, Philosophers Wool pays farmers a fair price for their [...]
Archive for the ‘spinning’ Category
A visit to Philosophers Wool
Posted in knitting, spinning, sustainability, yarn stores, tagged philosophers wool on July 22, 2008 | No Comments »
brief update
Posted in finished object, knitting, spinning, yarn stores on July 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Clearly I deserve some sort of award for Blog Neglect, but the briefest of updates as to my goings-on in fibre arts these days:
- More classes at Ariadne;
- Potential involvement in an upcoming issue of Twist Collective;
- Devoting time to building an inventory to sell at Puces Pop this October (hopefully);
- Handpainted spinning fibre. [...]
New class! Intermediate spinning
Posted in spinning, teaching, yarn stores on May 29, 2008 | No Comments »
I’m excited to say that I will be teaching an intermediate level spinning class, Spin 102, at Ariadne Knits in June. Having taught a lot of people the basics of spinning, I’m happy the lovely ladies of Ariadne are having me back for a workshop on fine-tuning your spinning skills: it’ll cover different [...]
observations from old issues of Spin-Off
Posted in spinning, vintage on May 16, 2008 | No Comments »
I’ve been working my way through a pile of old issues of Spin-Off magazine, courtesy of the local guild library. There are quite a few articles on teaching spinning (of particular interest to me these days) as well as some wonderful technical articles. Dense, jam-packed information; a real pleasure to have access to [...]
pondering the 100-mile yarn diet
Posted in knitting, spinning, sustainability on April 17, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Even though the phrase ‘carbon footprint’ has only recently entered my official vocabulary, for a long time I’ve made the effort to shop locally whenever possible, especially when it comes to food. It makes a lot of sense to me: things are fresher (and often therefore healthier), there’s a better chance that small-scale [...]
I love teaching!
Posted in spinning, yarn stores on April 17, 2008 | No Comments »
Seriously, I do. I’ve taught two classes at Ariadne Knits so far, with another scheduled for early May and more in the works. The response from my students has been overwhelmingly positive and I’ve loved being able to share the craft with others. I’ve noticed that people generally start out the class [...]
sharing the knowledge
Posted in ravelry, spinning, yarn stores on March 2, 2008 | 4 Comments »
For a while I’ve noticed that there aren’t a lot of opportunities to learn to spin in this region, which surprised me given this area’s long history of fibre arts activities. There are a couple of guild-affiliated classes around, but they tend to be expensive and offered more for guild members rather than the [...]
official Blog Action Day post
Posted in spinning, sustainability on October 16, 2007 | 3 Comments »
For Blog Action Day, I thought I’d write a bit about why I’m moving further away from commercially-prepped roving and spinning fibre. When I started spinning my own yarn, I’d never worked with raw fleece straight off the sheep’s (or alpaca’s, or goat’s, etc.) back. As I was just trying to get the [...]
soon to be featured
Posted in knitting, spinning on September 20, 2007 | No Comments »
As of sometime in October, I will be selling my knitted items through Indyish, a Montreal-based group of independent artists. Indyish’s focus is on being sustainable and giving support to “folks who make stuff”, as they put it. I’m excited to be a part of it and I’ll post when my stuff becomes [...]
Alpaca toque
Posted in finished object, knitting, spinning on September 14, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Remember that handspun alpaca yarn I made? Well, I went ahead a knit a toque with it. I knit it on size 8 (US) needles and used a mock cable pattern in place of ribbing. The decreasing at the top was done using a somewhat unorthodox P4tog method, but I like the look it gives [...]
