Hanukkah

I'm really feeling the hanukkah spirit this year! Holidays seem much more fun when there's a depression. Not so much pressure to find the perfect item, which is a great relief, for I'm a terrible shopper. Also, making gifts is much more accetable during times of economic strife! I made cut paper cards for my family. Here's the one I made for my mom.
And this is the one I made for my sister!
I made one for my dad too, but he's already squirrled it away in some secret place. He thinks I am conspiring to keep art from him.  You will have to imagine it- it had mountains on it.  He likes mountains.  I was stumped on a present to get for my mother, because, as I have previously stated I'm a terrible shopper and Mom is the woman who has everything. And if she doesn't have it, she probably wants to pick it out herself. So I had nothing, and no ideas, and then, all of a sudden, I had a moment of inspiration. I made her a case for her knitting needles! We suffer from knitting needle black hole proliferation at our house.
I used all my favourite fabrics. My sister brought us the most fabulous textile from Mexico.

Is'nt it beautiful?
For Nora, I made a pillow based on the quilt code she and I made up last year.

It means that she is a gold star lesbian who wants a nice trannie or perhaps a drag king to take her out for dinner. And possibly oral sex. Dirty quilting!

The back is the most beautiful rainbow step ladder! With vintage buttons I found in Santa Fe.

This one is for you, Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge

Sometimes at night I lie awake and worry about our nation's less successful presidents. How must it feel to attain the highest office in the land and then be remembered as being rather dull, if you are remembered at all. The presidential libraries of Chester Arthur, Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding, and James Garfield are all probably having trouble raising funds. If they even have libraries. Calvin Coolidge was keeping me awake the other night. He was veep when Harding popped his clogs (which was the most interesting thing Harding ever did) and then won the presidency for real in 1924. But I couldn't think of one thing Coolidge did in office! I still can't, actually. But, thanks to the White House dot gov's handy biographies of first ladies, I now know that Coolidge may have been a stiff, but his wife, Grace, was a delight. In addition to being a most popular first lady, she was also a psychic knitter. That's right, her knitting predicted the future. Consider this tidbit:

Some one noticed that a bedspread, knitted nearly a year ago by Mrs. Coolidge and intended to be left in the White House, bore a prophecy. On one side was knitted "Lincoln 1861-1865." On the other side; "Calvin Coolidge—1923-1929." Long before President Coolidge announced his "choice," Mrs. Coolidge said, to a friend who exclaimed at her bedspread, "I know what I'm doing."

(It seems the newspapers of the early 1920s were just as obsessed with their President-elect as we are now, and followed his every move) Yes, Mrs. Grace Coolidge was a righteous prophetic knitting babe.
I think she could not only see the future, but used yarn to gather useful information and possibly even influence policy. (I mean, look into those eyes. Those are cunning eyes.)

When Grace Coolidge died, a whole pile of knitted blankets were left to the Coolidge estate. Several of them, including one reading "President Barack Hussein Obama 2008- 2016", were considered to be evidence of Grace's descent into madness in her elder years, and were thrown away.

Monsters are attacking my head!

And my hands!

Googly eyes are really great.

Anxiety Projects

I'm still reeling from the election. Being anxious about it for so long, it's hard to realize its over. Though I am thoroughly relieved, I still have moments of complete panic. Not that I don't have things to freak out about now. How can you deal with a world in upheaval, trying to find a job, and breaking up with your girlfriend? Well, damned if I know. But making stuff has always helped me. I finally finished the cardigan I've been working on since Santa Fe. Turns out, Careful Knitting Nelly is kind of slow! I admit, I got very angry that it wasn't going faster during the second sleeve. I haven't blocked it yet and its kind of covered in cat hair, but it came out very nicely.I also finally finished a scrap hat for Nora. Only took me a year to weave the ends in! Worst part of knitting, as far as I'm concerned.
Between Mom and I there is a lot of ugly scrap fabric in the family home, and really nothing to be done with it. I mean, neon fish with overbites might have been a good idea in some designers head- it appealed to 7-year old Nelly- but what to do with stuff like that now? In a fit of the crazies, I bleached and dyed all of it. (On the left is my post college dye kitchen.) Then I tore everything into strips and made a quilt top.


And when you have anxiety, its always good to have something to hide under.

Get ready!

If you were overwhelmed by the New Englandy-ness of my last post, you better look away, because my mom and I just went on a wool arts tour of New Hampshire. The Blimp, which has followed me from Holland, smiled upon the fibersy-ness of our trip.
My mom and I have a great deal of free floating anxiety about the upcoming election and we talked about it non stop on the trip up. Our fears were immediately vanquished at the first stop on the wool tour. The Wool Room at Meadow Brook was built in the seventeen-dipity doos, and was just scenic beyond belief.

I think my favorite stop was at the Chauncey Farm. Ellen Dumas told us all about getting into sheep farming (something Mom and I have been really interested in, ever since I heard about the mill in Mora, New Mexico) and introduced us to her sheep. One of her sheep, Cappuccino, got sheered while I was there. I've never actually seen a sheep shearing before, having always been frantically busy with school every time there was a sheep and wool festival in Maryland. When in the special shearing position, sheepies go from being freaked out and running around and stressed to limp and funny looking. Cappuccino looked like a big, disgruntled wooly teddy bear. It was really cool to touch all the wool that came off of her. The lanolin was really nice on our hands, surprisingly! I bought some of the most beautiful, soft gray yarn from Ellen. It has some Cappuccino in it!

Some other highlights included a spinning lesson for me and Mom- Mom really wants to get a spinning wheel, I am still more interested in knitting. Though I am wanting other people to make me yarn.
There was this amazing woman, I think her name was Janet Sillars, doing old school spinning. It was so amazing to watch, mom and I were hypnotized for awhile. It looked like the wool was just coming out of her fingers.
Everything was a delicious color.
And the landscape was beautiful. I would say that New Hampshire does indeed deserve all those electoral votes.

Fibers Trip

I'm home with my mom, and we decided to do a little bit of local tourism. We drove up Cape, along scenic route 6A, which we usually avoid because of tourists. We're the only tourists now! We stopped at a local Unitarian church that was having a sale.
Mom bought a fabulous vintage mint green and white apron, and a beautiful table clothe with red roses.
Then it was on to the wool! The town of Dennis was having a local spinning/knitting/wool festival. We touched all of the fibers and talked to everyone about how they made their stuff.

Many of the people were dying their wool themselves with natural dyes, and getting the most beautiful colors. I bought some lovely pink yarn that had been dyed with cranberries.

Bunnies!

Finished my tank top!

Supposed to be a nightie! Hah! Nightie my bum. Any way, I love it.

Festivities

I went to the Spanish Festival in downtown Santa Fe on my one day off.



The visual culture here is just so different than the old protestent greenery of the north, it never fails to shock me a little bit.  I met this amazing woman selling beautiful weavings and yarn she had spun in a mill that she built herself in Mora, New Mexico.



You can see the indigo dyed yarn I bought in the lower right.  She told me that I could work for her in the mill, picking alpaca fleeces apart, before they are spun.  Wouldn't that be amazing? Here's the website for her mill: http://www.tapetesdelana.com/ 

Who knows what the future holds.  But in the meanwhile, fibers! 

Mail box day!

Nora sent me the best package! Not only does it have a zine she made for our quilt that was in two shows in Baltimore, it also contained some beautiful yarn she spun herself.

She wrote me a little loving note that said the only condition of me using this yarn was that I tell her how she can improve her spinning! As if! It's a pleasure to work with handspun yarn! Now all I have to decide is what I want to make. It has to be something worthy! Maybe a hat?

Leap of Faith

I decided to re-knit the scarf I started here. I thought I would do it on circular needles so that the feather and fan scallop would go all the way around. I measured before I cast on so it would be the right length but I just can't tell if its going to work now. Knitting scarves in the round is a total leap of faith. I just have to trust myself and my instincts and my measurements because there's no telling until I cast off. I keep drawing a metaphor between all these things in my life and this scarf. Is this long distance relationship going to work? Will I be able to find a creative job in this down trodden economy? And everyone keeps asking me as I'm knitting, how is this going to come out? Will it be okay? Baby, don't stop believing.

New scarf

I started knitting another scarf with sock yarn in the feather and fan pattern. But because I love the repeat so much, I made it way too wide! I kinda like it, but I'm still undecided. Should I start over?

Again, cell phone picture.

Some Santa Fe Yarn

Some other knitting minded people at the Opera took me to see some Santa Fe yarn stores. My favorite was the Santa Fe School of Weaving.

The outside

And the inside! I had no idea that there would be so much knitting here. I found a reward for myself if I make it through the summer. Really expensive, amazing adirondack yarn! Here's a picture of the dye lot, but I'm going to get it in super fine silk wool blend. Its fifty dollars! But you get 300 feet. We'll see.

I walked around Santa Fe a little bit, too. I wish I had my real camera, but here are some crappy cellphone pictures.

Busy/Lazy

I've been so busy I've hardly had time to think. But opening night it tomorrow, so calm is on the way. No new knitting, but I finished some wristy-fingerless gloves.

This was my first ever time making a thumb hole, and I did it! I am so smart. Maybe one of these days I'll make gloves with fingers, since I can kind of see how its done.

The lacy pattern was really simple, just knit one, yarn over knit two together. It did that awesome twisty thing on its own.