I Hate Online Shopping Carts

Whew! That was a very stressful 45 minutes I spent this morning! Trying to get registered at Maiwa for the Symposium workshop, lectures and fashion show that I wanted. Every time I got to the final checkout button it would give me an error message. Took 3 tries but I finally got a confirmation. Hope I don’t get charged for the other times it didn’t…quite…finish…

I would have held off until later today when the initial rush is gone before attempting the whole thing but I wanted to take the Woad Workshop with Bleu de Lectoure’s Henri Lambert from France. (You know how obsessed I am with woad!) It said there were only 3 spots left available of 16. Plus I thought the lecture with Elizabeth Barber, author of “Women’s Work: the First 20,000 Years”, would be sold out pretty quickly as well. Watching little timing arrows go around and around is not a lot of fun. I was willing the pages to load with my mind. At least it finally went through. I’m nothing if not persistent.

Going back to yesterday, we had the biggest turnout ever at our Sunday Afternoon Ravelry Meetup at the Saltspring Coffee Shop on Main St. A dozen of us knitters took over the inside and even when we rearranged furniture the staff didn’t blink an eye! We put it all back when we left of course. Then most of us trooped the few blocks to Three Bags Full for our usual pilgrimage. They had a huge new shipment of Blue Moon Socks That Rock just in and we did some definite damage to the pile. I kept saying I didn’t need more yarn but succumbed to the wool fumes and the general encouragement and got these:

 

That’s Valkyrie on the left and Ravenscroft on the right. Subtle dark colours that might be a bit tough to distinguish on the screen especially with the distraction of my rag placemats underneath! They will not necessarily become socks. I’m kind of tired of socks lately for some reason. Maybe because I’ve finally saturated the family’s sock drawers for the moment?

Also yesterday I pulled out the old polymer clay stash and whipped up a funky handle for my 3.5 mm Aero aluminum crochet hook. It looks like crap (literally) but it feels just right because I shaped it with my hand. A wee bit heavy (due to the large chunk o’clay I used) but very comfortable to crochet with. The square in the upper left is the reject one, being too open and floppy (though pretty). The one on the lower right is better, more dense and with smaller holes. Now to make a gazillion more and crochet them together for my Frankenblanket. This is going to be a long-term project. Especially when I keep removing sock yarn from the leftover pile thinking “This is too nice and I should use it for gloves or something else instead”.

Somebody explain to me why most crochet hooks don’t have more of a substantial handle on them? It might depend on the way you hold it: like a pen or like a knife. I hold it in my fist and skinny little hooks are harder to grip. Maybe one day I’ll get a whole set of the Clover Soft Touch. Meanwhile I’ll modify my Aeros! One at a time.

And speaking of notions, I also got some of these in the grocery store:

Teeny little hair clips. (That’s a quarter in there for scale.) I got 2 dozen for a fraction of the cost of Knit Klips, though they’re perhaps not quite the same as the patented version. They seem to work just fine for the job of holding two pieces of knitting or crochet together while you stitch them and they stay in place much better than pins. Anyway I don’t have enough to clip into so I’m certainly not going to be using them in my hair!

What I Learned

First I want to remind local folks that Maiwa Handprints now has their complete list of fabulous workshops, lectures and events that comprise this year’s Symposium up on their website. The workshops only happen every other year and I’m going to attempt to get into the one from France’s Bleu de Lectoure on dyeing with woad. There’s also a lecture with Elizabeth Barber on her book “Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years”, a Slow Clothes fashion show and a whole bunch of other interesting stuff. Registration opens June 22 at 10am PDT. It’s a singular opportunity to expand your knowledge of world textiles and cultures. Don’t miss it if you live close enough – or even if you don’t!

Speaking of classes, the ANWG conference included 3 half-day seminars (as well as optional post-conference workshops which I skipped). The first one on Friday morning necessitated me bringing along a spinning wheel. I took Tori (Louet Victoria) since she’s the most portable wheel I have but I really think I could have gotten away with a drop spindle because this is all I produced:

A couple of yards of chained-3-ply fingering weight wool in a hideous colour combo (which I can’t blame on anyone else since I chose it). The seminar was “A Fistful of Colors” with the lovely and talented Michelle Boyd from Ft. McMurray, AB, who apparently reads this blog (as I do hers)! <waving> Hi, Michelle! Don’t you just love this photo I captured during class?

Here she’s demonstrating chain (aka Navajo) plying. She has the most expressive hands! No wonder she’s such a good spinner, eh? I had said that I wanted to avoid making mud when combining colours, but I think I missed the boat completely judging by my sample. However, I think I know why now so that is a net gain. I also learned that I need more practise with long-draw and, despite what Michelle says is possible, I’m not going to give up my carders (either drum or hand) anytime soon. One small criticism: there were murmurs of complaint that the class supply fee was too high for the amount of fibres that we got. Just sayin’. Though there were a few leftovers on the floor because we were too polite to grab ’em up.

After lunch (I haven’t talked about the food on campus yet, have I?) on Friday was another seminar: Ode To Woad with Bobbie Irwin, author of a number of books and articles for Interweave. Her original article on the many colours she got from woad came out in Spin-Off in (I think) 1997. (I’m going to have to look it up.) I got to hold the original blanket that she wove from her handspun woad samples and it was really lovely. Not only did she use woad in the more traditional way to get blues but used the leaves, immature and ripe seeds as a regular plant dye in a boiling water bath with alum mordant to get red-browns, straw yellows and even something close to pink. I suspect the woad Bobbie was using which was growing wild in a field across the road from her when she was living in Utah was the invasive (and considered inferior) kind called bastard woad. Though she did get deep blues, in the slides she showed the plants looked somewhat different from mine and the leaves were hairy rather than smooth. She seemed very concerned that woad would get loose in the wild if we tried to cultivate it! In several states it has become quite a pest but that can be explained if it’s bastard woad and not the true “pastel” variety long used as a dyestuff in temperate climates where true indigo won’t grow.

Since I’m going to have a lot of seeds from my two second-year plants, I might try using them a a dye and see what colour I can get. I only have room for a dozen plants so there’s no need for thousands of seeds! And no, I won’t let them get loose though I suspect the “tame” woad is much less aggressive. And yes, I did check first that it is not listed in BC as a noxious weed. From Bobbie I also got a limited-edition t-shirt:

I just might wear it when I’m harvesting leaves for a dyepot!

On Saturday morning I took my last seminar with Anne Field from New Zealand on Collapse Weaves. I had already read her book on the subject but wanted to see what else she had to say. I did get to see some lovely mostly-wool fabrics that she had woven but I find her approach somewhat limited. There are so many other fibres to work with! However if you come from a land with ten times more sheep than people I guess you work with what you’ve got handy. It seems to me that her colours were mostly natural white also but I think that was deliberate for the book in order to concentrate on structure. You can’t really dye energised (overtwisted) yarns without losing the energy and apparently pre-dyed overtwist yarns are rare as hen’s teeth. (You’d have to do it in the fibre stage before spinning.) As a dyer herself though, you’d expect more exuberant experimentation with applying colour after the fact but she said she prefers to keep it simple to let the structure tell the story. Anne makes scarves and shawls from her collapse fabrics and utilises the help of a bridal couturier to design and sew high-end garments. Not my taste really since they only suit the figure of a young thin thing.

What I did get out of her class is the idea for this nifty device:

It allows you to wind off yarn from a cone without adding or subtracting twist as you would if you drew it from the top of a standing cone. It’s like a lazy kate but with thread going under the roller allowing it to wind back and forth along it as it comes off the cone. The end then goes through the eye and directly to a bobbin or around a warping reel, keeping any overtwist intact as it winds. Cool. I want one. Yoo-hoo, T-Man?

I briefly mentioned the campus cafeteria food which was, um…edible. But not good. A phrase I heard lately was “You can’t eat low-carb by accident.” and it’s totally true. In a situation like this it’s nearly impossible. I swear I had potatoes in some version for nearly every meal and I usually only eat them about once a week on average. I tried to avoid the sugar and starch but without a lot of success. I ate a lot of iceberg lettuce with grated cheese. I avoided the fruit which was mostly melons which I’m allergic to, except for the excellent apples. I tried to have the eggs and sausages and not eat the hash browns and pancakes that came with them. I succumbed to a chocolate chip cookie…or two. I drank lots and lots of tea in my big 8-oz. cup. I have to say the banquet was really good though: barbequed salmon. Yum! Orange mousse for desert too. But the juice was melon-based and there was no wine, tea or coffee served so I had to make do with water. I never usually drink water with a meal but the heat was making me dehydrated. Even when we ate in a restaurant, the portions were huge and it was hard to avoid the carbs. (Yeah, I know I don’t have to eat everything on my plate. But I paid for it!) So I was very happy to get back to cooking my own food and eating my normal portions.

Best get back out in the garden before it gets stinking hot again. Lots more to catch up on. I’ll carry on the story tomorrow. I haven’t told you about the winery tour yet.

Now That's More Like It

It’s only intermittently sunny but at least it’s been much warmer. Saturday we went walking (of course) and I got a new pair of shoes. What do you think?


Aren’t they spiff? These are Keens and I’m so in love with them that a few weeks ago when I saw a woman on the street wearing them I actually followed behind her to ogle! I saw them again in a newspaper flyer so when we walked by a store that carries this brand, I couldn’t help myself. They are very comfortable, somewhere between Mary Janes and clogs. Ever since my clogs had a meltdown a few months ago I’ve been hunting for a replacement. I was considering the closed toe Birkenstocks (Boston) but these are much cuter and of course Birkies don’t come in this wild colour. It’s called Flamingo and goes with lots of things in my wardrobe. I don’t know of any flamingos quite this colour though — it’s definitely orange!

We also went to see the new improved Maiwa Supply store on Granville Island. They’ve moved from inside the Netloft out into one of the exterior shops. It’s a much larger space than previously and with all the dye and surface design stuff displayed with some of their Indian antiques, it’s very exciting and inspiring. See?


And this is only a portion of the shop! Charllotte, the owner, was in when I was there and it was lovely to be greeted by name and invited to explore and take photos. You can see why she has won awards for her fair and supportive business practices. Yes, of course I spent money there! I was topping up some of my dye supplies. We are so lucky to have this fabulous resource close enough for me to walk to. I’ve treasured it for over 20 years. I’m even wearing a linen shirt at the moment that I bought years ago at Maiwa’s main store. It’s the same colour as my shoes. Heh.

By this time we were packing a lot of meat (honey glazed ribs) and fish (halibut steak) and vegetables from the Market along with the shoes and dyes. It was all getting somewhat heavy! Here’s the view on the Seawall on the way home:


Finally truly spring-like in Vancouver! Yesterday we got some work done in the garden. Planted a few more of the path stones, planted some seeds, and planted my wall and rail planters. Of course there’s tons more work to do but it was a very pleasant day and not too sunny. That’s better for transplants so they don’t get fried. I’m also slowly getting the tomatoes used to being outside because they no longer fit under the grow-lights. Besides there’s more little seedies under there now.

Gotta go chop some veggies to go with the dip I’m taking to my Guild’s Memorial Lecture this evening. We organise this lecture once a year and this time it’s James Koehler, a tapestry artist whom I saw last summer at the ANWG conference in Red Deer, AB. His work is deceptively simple and elegant and he’s quite an inspiring speaker so I’m looking forward to this. T-Man is coming with me too. Apparently he enjoyed hearing him the last time and wants an outing on this pleasant evening. Little does he know we’re going to put him to work since one of our members volunteered our Spectrum Study Group to take care of the refreshments.