04.30.06
Posted in Brooklyn, Crochet, Dying, Felt, Knitting, Photos, Weaving, Yarn at 6:51 pm by delipics
It’s been a Yarn Tree weekend! I volunteered for The Yarn Tree to help do demonstrations for Shearing Days at the Prospect Park Zoo. We lucked out and got a gorgeous day for it so we were busy all day.
Shannon, Sasha and I showed kiddies how to make felted wool balls -
There was also weaving, spinning, finger crochet and knitting and Kool-Aid dying.
And the most exciting event of the day - the shearing!
This is Wallace before -
Here is Wallace after . . . I love his little shock of hair over his forehead - sweet!
And here is Wallace’s 10 lbs. of fleece . . . . I wonder how many skeins we could get out of that?
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04.29.06
Posted in Fiber Artwork, Photos, Weaving at 5:16 pm by delipics
My Friday night started with a glass of red wine while perusing the intricacies of warp and weft. The Yarn Tree is having a show of their beginner and intermediate students at Habu Textiles.
When I look at artwork (be it fiber, paintings, drawings, etc.), I like to first take in the whole thing then look closely, in this case, at the textures and details of the yarn -
These beginner students’ weaving work selected yarns whose textures and weaving structures fascinated me -
The fiber artists from top to bottom: Valerie Knecht, Lillian Figueroa, Daniela Serowinski and Aldona Rygelis.
Congratulations weavers!
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04.27.06
Posted in Knitting at 5:48 am by delipics
Yes, I know it’s spring now but check-out what designers are thinking about for knit accessories for the fall. Knitting embraced by high fashion - ooh la la! Personal favorites: Salvatore Ferragamo’s glittery wool and leather bag with mink and metal trim and Renata Mann’s knitted cotton necklace with shell, crystal and stone.
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04.24.06
Posted in Knitting at 4:08 pm by delipics
In case you did not see this past Sunday’s (4/23/06) New York Times section the Sunday Styles (link to article here), it featured a blurb on knitting needles that glow in the dark! They are called Knit Lite and will be available from www.laknitterieparisienne.com.
The article says you can knit at the movies - why would you do that? So I can annoy the other viewers? But I could definitely see myself using them while being a passenger in a car driving down the PCH, the sea salt air caressing my hair, or maybe a NYC summer evening in a garden drinking mojitos . . .
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Posted in Yarn at 12:59 pm by delipics
Have you heard of Wordsmith? This it today’s word that I have co-opted for us yarn addicts (additions in bold):
yarn-oniomania (yarn-O-nee-uh-MAY-nee-uh, -MAYN-yuh) noun
Compulsive shopping for yarn and yarn related items; excessive, uncontrollable desire to buy things from any yarn store or store that carries yarn related items.
[From Latin, from Greek xnios (for sale), from onos (price) + -mania., yarn from Middle English, from Old English gearn; akin to Old High German garn yarn, Greek chordE string, Latin hernia rupture, Sanskrit hira band] (entymology from Miriam Webster online)
(Here is the actual word link http://wordsmith.org/words/oniomania.html )
Tee hee - that was fun!
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04.23.06
Posted in Brooklyn, Cleo, Knitting, Photos at 4:04 pm by delipics
I was a little nervous when I woke up to such a rainy Saturday in Brooklyn. Would people cancel? Will people brave the weather? A small but dedicated group of Brooklyn knitters trekked their way to my neighborhood. When there is knitting and eating going on, the ladies know what comes first - EATING! We had quite a range, from homemade Ghiradelli chocolate chip cookies to Entenmann’s Glazed Popems to spinach pies from
Damascus Bakery - it was all goood. Once we were all fueled-up we were ready to knit!
The lovely Caroline shows us her own hand-spun yarn. I should have taken a close up of this yarn - it was fascinating. She had spun the wool together with all sorts of goodies - rick rack, cloth and sequins to name a few. (Caroline, besides being a knitter and designer, is the spinning teacher at
The Yarn Tree in Williamsburg.) Here Caroline starts knitting her wool into a scarf with a wavy pattern:
The multi-talented Shannon is making her pair to her first sock (Look at Cleo to the left of Shannon - isn’t she sweet? The first thing she tried to do when the food showed up was to try and snatch a popem).
I love the colors she chose! I have been craving to learn how to make socks and she gave me a mini-lesson on why she thinks knitting socks are great: easy to do, instant gratification, each section of the sock (from rib to toe) is quick, and plus they fit your feet (imagine that!) She also explained to me why Koigu yarn is amazing. Thank you, Shannon, for explaining to me the term “super-wash wool.” Shannon really knows her stuff - she’s also a papermaker, sock and mitten AND felting teacher at The Yarn Tree, and that is only the stuff I know about. (Learn more about her at
carriagehousepaper.com)
And here is Dana, all-around-warm-wise-and-incredible person, receiving a lesson from Shannon on how to seam a raglan sleeve to a sweater front.
Her pattern is British and we were having a heck of a time figuring out the instructions. (In my case, the two glasses of white wine probably did not help the left-brain thinking process.) Cleo thought she could help us out by nosing around in Dana’s yarn bag.
When it comes to the yarn-thing, Cleo is mostly well-behaved. She went for Caroline’s yarn only once and then spent the rest of the afternoon napping.
Finally, here I am knitting my spring poncho. My wrist recovered just in time and I was able to knit off and on for about four hours without any twinge.
It was a perfect knitting-eating-talking-laughing day with my smart and talented friends.
(p.s.When I wrote this post I went into the html code to add page breaks and Wordpress would not save them. Any suggestions?)
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04.21.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:05 am by delipics
If you are a knitter or crocheter, I highly recommend buying a buckwheat pillow, the kind you can stick in the microwave to heat up. I can wrap this buckwheat pillow around my neck and shoulders, or in this current situation, around my left wrist. A combination of wearing the Handeze and applying heat at night has been helping my wrist mend.
I am saving my wrist for this Saturday. Some friends are coming over and we are going to knit, crochet, stitch and - EAT! I have been thinking about what food we should have. It cannot be messy finger foods because we are using our hands but I still want “easy” food. I will probably go to this great Middle Eastern food & grocery store in Brooklyn called Sahadi’s and buy whatever looks yummy there.
So until I have new fiber news to share, here are three links to keep you interested:
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