Welcome September

I adore this time of year. I suppose it's likely true for lots of people who knit/spin/weave/craft with wool, but the start of September means some very specific things for me: 1) the start of school (only one more day of holiday to go, not that I'm counting it down or anything like that); 2) a bite to the air that makes me think of wood fires and snuggling into wool sweaters and scarves and hats while the leaves blow on the autumn wind; 3) apple cider donuts (sadly not to be found in the UK, as far as I've been able to discover).

We've settled in to our new digs fairly well by this point. My studio, while being somewhat crowded by the vast piles of stuff that are amassing for the Great London Yarn Crawl, has sorted itself out into its usual state of disarray (there are towering piles around the computer on my desk, for instance, and bags of fleece waiting to be washed piled under the workbench, bits of yarn are strewn everywhere). The important thing is that I know where things are. Really I do...

So much GLYC stuff. So, so much.

Spinning nook

I've managed to set up my spinning wheel it's it proper spot, however, and the result has been a whirlwind of spinning. On of my (sadly failed) Tour de Fleece goals was to time how long it takes me to make a handspun woven scarf, from fiber to FO. So over the course of the last three weeks, I've been timing my spinning of various fiber types.

From left to right: Southern Cross FIber South African Merino/Corriedale in "Buccaneer", Hello Yarn BFL in "Scorch" and Hello Yarn Panda in "Villain"

Unwashed, so somewhat mangy looking.

All of these were spun as 2-ply yarns at my default single wpi. The really interesting thing to me is that my production speed varied depending on the fiber type. The fastest singles were from the SA Merino/Corriedale (4.15 yds/min), with the Panda next (3.75 yds/min) and the BFL the slowest (3.5 yds/min). Plying was less variable, ranging between 3.75 and 4 yds/min. 

My other motivation behind this timing experiment is that having all my stash in one room and visible has brought home the hard reality that I have more handspun yarn then I will ever use, and it needs to go to new homes. So I'm setting up to sell handspun over at Porpoise Fur, and the big question to be answered is How much will it cost? I'm very aware of the issues in pricing handmade goods, and trying to find the balance between what the market will bear and what is a reasonable compensation for time and skill put in to making the product. So all these variations in timing are very interesting from that perspective - stay tuned over at the Porpoise Fur blog for more details in the next few days.

The other result of sitting in a room full of yarn has been much knitting! I've knit two shawls in the last couple of weeks, finished off a languishing pair of socks, and started a Tiny Tea Leaves Cardigan for Boo (Devil's will follow shortly). My design brain is going bonkers too, and I've cast on a new shawl design that is flying along...whee!

So what's on your needles with the advent of the new season?

The Creative Blog Hop

This is the first one of these I've ever participated in, so thanks to Jacqui at Happymaking Designs for including me! She tagged me last week in her post, which I really enjoyed reading. It's always interesting to get a view into other's creative process and how they work. So welcome to anyone finding their way here from her site - I'm glad to have you for a visit!

Here are the blog hop questions:

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
3. Why do I write/create what I do?
4. How does my writing/creating process work?

As I thought about these questions, I realised that my wooly creative life is inextricably linked with other parts of my life, so there's going to be more in here then just yarn. Consider yourselves warned...

What I'm working on:

Under normal circumstances, I knit, spin, crochet (some), weave (occasionally) and dye fiber. I also work part time as a biomedical research scientist. I started technical editing for knitting designers in May of this year, and am in the process of trying to do more scientific editing/writing as I get less enthusiastic about lab work. I'm on Ravelry as porpoise and my Rav designer page is here. You can find my handdyed fibers at Porpoise Fur.

It's been a crazy few months for my family. We moved to the UK from the States just over five years ago, as expats with my husband's company. At the beginning of April, the company said "We're sending you back to Houston at the end of July." This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but Himself and I are both from New England, and experienced more culture shock with moving to Texas in 2002 then in moving to the UK. So we spent a few weeks dithering about what to do, decided to stay in the UK indefinitely, and have spent the intervening weeks finding a new place to live, finishing the school year and sorting out new schools for the autumn, going on a long-planned and eagerly anticipated holiday to Norway, and packing up the house and moving. We haven't moved far, but it is still a huge drain on everyone's energies. My creative energy has been otherwise directed, not surprisingly. Our trip to Norway did give me huge inspiration on both the dyeing and knitting fronts - I came back full of ideas for new colorways and new projects (in some instances, with the same inspiration for both). Now the challenge is to get everything sorted out so I can get back to work on those ideas and get them out into reality.

The other thing I'm currently spending a lot of energy on is the Great London Yarn Crawl, of which I am one of the co-organisers. This event is a one-day stash enhancement extravaganza, happening this year on 20th September, where nine teams of yarn lovers visit four London yarn or haberdashery shops over the course of the day, ending with an after-party sponsored by Pom Pom Quarterly. It's happening in just over six weeks, so we are frantically trying to get everything sorted out for the big day.

How my work differs from others:

On the design side of things: as Jacqui said, this is a really tough question! The number of ways to knit a sweater or a sock are, let's be honest, not infinite. I think what can be strikingly different is how the designer got from inspiration to final piece. I find that a lot of my inspiration for knitwear design comes from structural examples - I've designed hats and mittens inspired by London sky scrapers, a stole that mimics pierced stone screens found at Moghul palaces in India, and socks that were inspired by the tiles of a swimming pool. I also am inspired by nature, and particularly by water. I love designing with textured stitch patterns; the process of trying to re-vision an architectural element or a waterfall in knitted fabric is more fun then should be legal.

On the dyeing side of things: my colorways all have a story behind them, whether its how cells divide, a number that shows up in art across the ages, or an inspiration that hits closer to home. I usually have an image in mind before I create a new colorway, and my dyeing process owes a huge debt to my lab background - every little detail gets written down so it can be successfully repeated as needed on different fiber bases.

Why I write/create:

Because I'd be a miserable pathetic ball if I didn't. Really and truly miserable.

It is a bit strange to think that there are strong similarities between scientific research and knitting design, but I find the skills needed for writing a scientific grant or an academic paper can also be applied to writing a knitting pattern or a technique tutorial. I find the challenge of writing a clear, easy to follow pattern really fun. This may be why I have found tech editing to be such a rewarding experience. I also find the puzzle solving process (of both science and designing) to be endlessly entertaining, just on its own. As well as requiring the same kind of out-of-the-box creative thinking. 

Dyeing is a never ending experiment: if I put this much dye on this fiber and heat it this way, what happens? The fact that other people seem to like the results, and go on to make beautiful things with them is the ultimate in gratification.

How my writing/creating process works:

London Slouch photographed by the London Eye.

I've talked a little bit about this already, but let's take an example - the London Slouch hat. My "real" work is located near Waterloo Station, so every time I go to the lab from southwest London, where I live, I get to pass by the London Eye. One day I was daydreaming on the train, noodling about with ideas for a hat collection inspired by different cities (which became Travelling Hats), and was struck by the silhouette of the Eye against the sky - round cars at the end of long straight spines, wheeling across the skyline. The circular yarn over motifs around the hat were derived from a pattern in one of Barbara Walker's stitch dictionaries, and they are linked to each other over the crown of the hat by columns of twisted knit stitches, which mimic the spokes of the London Eye.

Thanks so much for coming to visit and read my babblings! To share the love, I'm going to tag my BKFF and GLYC Partner-in-Crime, Allison, at Champagne and Qiviut, and the fabulous Linda of Kettle Yarn Co. Alli is a thoroughly enthusiastic knitter, throwing herself at any and all projects with contagious enthusiasm, and is a fabulous resource in the world of marketing and social media - I'm looking forward to reading her thoughts on these questions. Linda creates the most gloriously rich and inviting colorways for her yarns, and I'm sure she'll have something new and exciting up her sleeve. 

Thanks again to Jacqui for tagging me, thank you for coming by to visit, and go check out my tag-ees - they are fabulous!

Rhaeadr

The designing process is a funny thing. At least it is for me... Sometimes I get a glimpse of a stitch pattern, or see an intriguing piece of a building that I want to translate into knitted fabric. Sometimes it's something as simple as a shape that makes me spend countless moments daydreaming about how that little piece might work in a larger garment, and puzzling out how to get there.

But sometimes, the image of the finished piece appears fully formed in my head, something akin to Athena's birth from Zeus's forehead. Those are the designs that scream at me until I get them on the needles and out of my brain space. Rhaeadr is one of those screamers, and it started from one simple comment at the October Plug and Play Pembrokeshire retreat a couple of years ago. A comment about the rarity of top-down, textured shawls in the Ravelry pattern database.

From that moment I knew I had to design such a shawl: a shawl that started at the nape of the neck and flowed down the back and over the shoulders, covered with sinuous cables that looked like sunlight dancing off the ripples on the surface of a stream as it flows on its merry way. Those cables would give way to cascading sheets of ribbing, ribbing that evokes the rush of water cascading over the edge of a cataract, hurtling down through space until it explodes in a wild tangle of mist and spray and water droplets flying every which way.

In celebration of the release of this pattern, and the fact that I'm heading off to the US this weekend for my 20th (!!!) college reunion, I'm going to offer 10% off all of my patterns through midnight, Sunday 15th June. And since I'll be in the States, we'll make it midnight EST. Just enter the coupon code "RHAEADR-FF2014" in the appropriate space when you check out, and the 10% will be automatically deducted.

Thanks to SweetGeorgia Yarns for yarn support, and Allison Thistlewood for photography. The photos were taken at Thames Barrier Park and the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, both in East London.

Unexpected inspiration

Over the last few weeks, spring has really exploded on the scene here in southeast England. As this is our first spring in our new residence, we've been having a fabulous time discovering new flowers in the garden, new trees to pass by, and (most importantly to Boo) a new place to spy wildlife. Our town green has a duck pond, and every morning for the last week we've been stopping on the way to school to gauge the population growth. There are some fancy orange and brown geese with four goslings, an albino Mrs. Mallard with 15 ducklings, numerous Canadian geese incubating progeny, and even a pair of swans on a nest. It's all very exciting.

With the plethora of feathered beasties around, wouldn't you know that my muse would settle on what might be

the oddest of them all

for my latest sweater inspiration. And I've spent the last week and a half scouring the local (and not-so-local) yarn shops for the right color yarn. After many fruitless trips about town, I began searching online, and have discovered a new use for mini-skeins:

They're just the right size for swatching. These three beauties are from

fivemoons

, whose lovely booth I visited at Wonderwool Wales. I think the Robin's Egg and the Nelly are going to be just perfect for what I have in mind, and the Forgetmenot base is just glorious (50% superwash Falkland merino, 50% silk). And she does DK weight too, which would be my preference, as a fingering weight sweater is too much of a commitment even for me....so now it's on to designing a stitch pattern and some sketching and a load of swatching. Fun, fun, fun!

Leaf Peeper Cowl

I've designed a little cowl with some of the Leaf Peepers BFL I spun up this summer.

If you are on Ravelry, you can purchase the pattern here, or buy now

Happy spinning (and knitting!),

Rachel