a simple yarn

Remember this oldy but goody? (Ya gotta do the tune in your head.) “My baby takes the morning train…”

Just got text from Husband-Will who’s in the U.S. My baby is going to be taking the ‘morning train’ (actually a plane, but that’s okay cuz it rhymes, right?) He’s gotten my new-to-me Kessenich loom all packaged up and has arranged for it to be shipped to Ireland. It gets picked up on Thursday morning and as he said, ‘you’ll probably see it before you see me.’ He also emailed a pic of the final wrap job.

So as The Pointer Sisters sang, so I say, ‘I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it…I’m about to lose control and I think I like it!’

Note: While the following picture-filled lengthy blather is not truly fibre-related, it goes quite well with knitting as evidenced by…a) knit cafés, b) Knittyheads, and c) the fact that I’m a knitter. And that’s good enough for me!

I am not an avid coffee drinker. Oh, it’s fine with dessert once in a while, but not what I would call a passion in my life. So, when we moved into our Dublin home I looked, with dubious skepticism, at the espresso machine left by our landlords. (I guess I should mention that Landlord-Wife is a lovely Italian woman, and therefore a very reasonable addition to her kitchen.) To me, though, it was taking up precious counter space.

But, as a service of love to Coffee-Drinker-Husband-Will, I thought I’d at least try an experiment with the enigmatic, oh-so-Italian-breakfast-beverage, cappuccino.

Cappuccino, so the coffee-lore goes, is named after the colour of the Capuchin friar’s habit, which is a milk chocolate brown with a white hood. In Italy, it’s simply a stiff draught of espresso served in a normal sized cup, with steamed milk rapidly swirled on top and perhaps a small dollop of white foam in the center…or so says Al-The-Cappuccino-Expert.

So here’s what Google Images says the ideal cup of cappuccino should look like, although I think the cappuccino expert guy would say there’s too much foam:
Okay, so now that I’m living in Dublin…which is bit closer to Italy than Ohio…I decided that I ought to embibe in this glorious Europey drink. Moreover, wanting to be a knit-in-public-kind-of-girl, I also thought I ought to drink something in these trendy joints to justify my taking up space in their establishment.

And now I have a confession:  I’m hooked…nigh unto addiction…I am a cappuccino-drinker (is that better than being merely a coffee-drinker?) AND, I drink cappuccinos so regularly that I have more than one 10% discount frequent buyer card! AND, to top it all off, Husband-Will and I make a cappuccino each evening in the rare quiet space after the kids go to bed and before we retire for the night. AND, it doesn’t keep me awake at night! Eee gads.

So, I’m calling myself an expert now and think it’s time to compare some of my favourite cappuccinos.

Anderson’s Food Hall and Café, The Rise, Glasnevin

Husband-Will and I meet at this quaint little neighbourhood jazz-loving gourmet café each Thursday morning. Although I haven’t asked, I think they must use ‘illy’ espresso if the sugar packets are anything to judge by. It’s a lovely cup of wake-me-up and typifies the cappuccinos that the gourmet coffee shops (like my two other favs Barnie’s and Costa) use. Like the dash of chocolate on the top, but sometimes an inattentive server can overdo this. Overall, a good foundational beverage that goes well with my gourmet toast and jam!

Avoca, Suffolk Street, City Centre

Besides going to Avoca for their gorgeously savory Sun-Dried Tomato and Cheese Scone (with the mandatory cream cheese and tomato chutney!), I am mesmerized by their cappuccinos. Simply put, they are a work of art. They have an understated elegance to them. Just look at it! Excellent colour coordination…not too foamy…even artwork! I think even Al-The-Cappuccino-Expert would be pleased.

Do you know why these are so distinctive? Cuz they have The-Aussie-Guy-Who-Is-An-Award-Winning-Barista making them. This is obviously his life’s work. He even travels world wide to judge coffee-making competitions. Wow. You have got to see this!

So, Barista-Guy was kind enough to show me how the art is done. My handy-dandy picture phone couldn’t take the pics fast enough to get true action shots, but here’s an idea. And Avoca is such a top-notch place that after making two of these beauties, he sent them to our table as a complimentary treat! That’s class!

My House, Whitehall, Dublin 9

After trotting Daughter and Son off to bed, H-W and I have our end-of-the-day unwinding ceremony, which of course centers around the home brewed cappuccino. I like ‘illy’, but I have to say that for home use, I much prefer Lavazza. It tastes richer without overt bitterness.

I’ve never really gotten the hang of steaming the milk with that little nozzle attachment. Think we need an industrial strength machine for that! Graduated to the spinny whisk thing which was an improvement. But really hit pay dirt when we purchased the Bodum milk frother. Okay, it’s going to be more foamy that what an authentic Italian cappuccino should be, but I’ll go to Avoca for those and frankly, I like the foam!

Well, those are my favs. I guess I’d rank them like this:
1) Avoca:  for the sheer pleasure of drinking a cappuccino as it ought to be.
2) Home:  for the ‘aaaaahhh’ feeling at the end of the day
3) Anderson’s:  for the consistently good ratio of coffee to milk
4) Costa Coffee:  for sheer quantity, have you seen their large cups? Two-fisted bowls they are!
5) Barnie’s:  for giving me my first frequent buyer discount card!

Well, it’s off to bed I go. Okay, is the fact that I’m doing this late at night an indication that I can’t sleep because of the copious amounts of caffeine in my system or am I just a night owl? Hmmm.

Last time our neophyte was surrounded by a pile of fleece…no longer poo-infested, but clean and fluffy…

Carding is not a particularly difficult concept to grasp…we’re getting all the fibres heading in the same direction before we spin ‘em up. It’s not like brain surgery or rocket science or warping a loom (which I categorise with the first two skills!) But even as I say that, it’s not a particularly easy skill to acquire. It takes finesse…and coordination…and stamina!

Step 1: Fluffify

The drum carder can only handle so much fibre at a time (I feel the same sometimes!), so it needs to be spread out, or fluffified as shown here by Fleece-Processing-Friend-Holly.

Step 2: Feeding the Carder

Simple, really…in goes the fleece and out come the batts (how is that spelled by the way? Bat? Batt? Batte? Or as it would be in Irish…baoiuemhbht…um yes, that’s just a joke….)

Step 3: Round and Round She Goes

This is the tricky and tiring bit. Endless turning, turning, turning with one hand. Feeding, feeding, feeding with the other. Stopping for periodic fluffing. But after this, Husband-Will won’t want to arm wrestle me!

Step 4: Hazard Warning

See all those pointy spikes on the drum carder? Gotta stay clear of them or off for an unscheduled detour to Casualty! There’s a handy-dandy pick to pull out the little stray pieces of fleece. But even with all that, it’s a lot quicker than hand carding!

Step 5: To the Wheel, Battman!

The beginning of a lovely stack of batts waiting for their turn at the wheel!

Well, there you have it…pretty straight forward really…no cliff-hanger episode here. But another step of progress taken in making yarn of my very own!

On my way to the house of Friend-Lucy-Who-Doubles-As-Student-Of-Russian-Culture, I have passed this sign many times. Even though I wasn’t raised on a farm, of course I understand the broader scope of its meaning. Dog runs after sheep…sheep keels over…dog pays consequence. But what about the finer points of its message?

How exactly would a dog ‘worry’ a sheep? Would he say something like….?

‘I’m sorry but that fleece makes you look fat.’

‘Fluffy went out with last year’s fashions.’

‘Did you know 100% wool shrinks in the wash? Look, I think it’s beginning to rain.’

Frankly, what concerns me more than sheep who worry…are dogs that can read signs.

Warning: Thursday-Night-Knitting-Friend-Mary once said, ‘Never knit when you’re tired or drunk.’ I’d say there’s a lot of truth in that. I wonder if the same holds true for introspection? But as it is now Sunday (albeit the wee small hours of the morning), I’d like to do some self-reflection. Tired blather? Maybe, so proceed at your own risk…

Having recently entered the sub-cultural fibre-world, I think having instant access to hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of blogs is a blessing. How inspiring it is to be able to click into someone’s life and see the wonderfully fascinating creations that are dripping from exceedingly talented hands! Aahh…

But having recently entered the sub-cultural fibre-world, I think having instant access to hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of blogs is a curse. I am simply overwhelmed by the quantity of craftspeople there are in the world and mind-boggled at how creative they are and how much stuff they create! Whew!

And after starting by reading a few blogs, I am then connected to the blogs they read, which brings me to yet more creatively talented individuals who then share the 80+ blogs that they are inspired by, which sends me down another rabbit hole of creativity. I’m tellin’ ya, it does my head in! It’s like an addiction and seeing all that talent in the world leads me to realise that…

I am a hack.
I am glaringly mediocre.

And as much as I’d like to mentally and emotionally crash and burn at those two facts, I have to say…I’m okay with it. More so, as a cathartic exercise, I’ve made a short list of Confessions as a Craftsperson:

1. I will never be a master knitter, weaver, spinner, dyer, or _____ (fill in any fibre-related noun).
2. I will (probably) never be able to make a living out of being a _____ (fill in any fibre-related noun).
3. My things will merely make nice Christmas pressies for family and friends.
4. I will never have enough time in the day to create all that I want.
5. I’m way too hard on myself.
6. There will always be someone who is more experienced, more talented and more creative than me, for such is life in the Creative Food Chain.
7. In that Chain I am a guppie.

For all that, I’m still okay, because I don’t want to do what I do in comparison to anyone else but me. And why do I do what I do? I knit or weave or spin or dye or _____ (fill in any fibre-related verb) to work out in tangible form what is in me. See my first woven scarf? You know…it’s not bad and it’s something I created with my own two hands, which is something to celebrate!

So in pursuing quality rather than quantity, I say farewell to the hundreds of thousands of crafty blogs in the world and will keep to the few which inspire.

My Top 4 Blogs for Creative Inspiration (for now)
Sweetgeorgia
Woven Thoughts
Sheepless in Suburbia
Two Pointy Sticks

Well, this is a new one on me! Someone has organised a day when everyone-who-is-a-knitter is encouraged to take their sticks ‘out of the closet’ and get ‘out in the open’ to knit in public. And it’s TODAY!

So, in all my enthusiasm I went to the WWKIP Day website…wow…lots of countries participating! Eagerly I scan down the list for Ireland…hmmmm, not there.

Does that mean I can’t bring my sticks out in public cuz my country of residence is not on the list? Of course not!

Does that mean that my enthusiasm for knitting in public is drastically dampened? What a silly question!

What is DOES mean is that I want to encourage all my fellow-knitters-in-Ireland to get in the game and join in for the 2007 WWKIP Day festivities. Info will be posted on the website in September 2006.

That’ll be handy since I’ll be on my way to the Birminham Knitting and Stitching Show in September with my knittin’ buds! It’ll give us something to talk about!

His Nibs has commented that I’m limiting my adjectives to ‘manky’ and would I kindly find some synonyms. Ok, I may have to…begrudgingly mind you…agree with him. After all, I’d like to think I have some verbal prowess. But after handling 2 poo-flecked fleeces, I’m afraid ‘manky’ is the only description that comes to mind. Need to do a little research…

Step 1:  Dashboard Thesaurus Widget
‘manky’ could not be found. Am I spelling it right? Trying ‘mankey’. Ditto.

Step 2:  Answers.com (surely they must know with a title like that?)
No, I did not mean ‘mangy’. OK, try adding the ‘e’ again.
Mankey…oops, didn’t want that Pokémon character. Ick. Looks like fleece with anger management issues.

Hey, wait! What’s that listing at the bottom?

Step 3:  The Dictionary of Cork Slang?
Knew it had to be Irish! Hurray! There it is…manky…meaning dirty, filthy. And that’s what my fleeces were…dirty and filthy, in a cool farmyard kind of way!

Well, I’ve learned something today…there aren’t a whole lot of synonyms for my beloved ‘manky.’  Dirty and filthy are just too common of a description when I need that oh-so-special adjective to describe:

the smell of my 6 year old son’s feet after being barefoot all day
the state of same 6 year old son’s bedsheets after a week or two
the odour in the car after a few months of winter muck
the forgotten yogurt in the back of the frig
my cherished fleeces before the soak

But I guess I can’t describe them that way anymore. Guess I’ll have to pick some different adjectives…how about ‘clean and fluffy’!

Long Way Round was a UK series where Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor decided to ride around the world on motorcycles. During their trip they revealed how horribly naive and unprepared they were for what they were about to do. Great entertainment, but not a good lesson in life wisdom. And so this post is aptly named…

There’s a little detail about the recent Woolapalooza that I haven’t mentioned. I bought some yarn. The thing is, it isn’t really yarn yet. Better said, it’s more like a fleece. Two fleeces in fact. Look, who could resist such a deal as 5euro per fleece? Being a thrifty shopper, I couldn’t walk away from that!

Did I also forget to mention that I have absolutely no idea what to do with a fleece? It’s cute on the back of the sheep, but once removed from the original owner and now sitting in my kitchen, I’m at a total loss as to what to do with it. Gotta do something quick cuz the stink is rapidly spreading throughout the house…kids are reaching for gas masks…this is a little too close to nature for them…the dried poo bits are freakin’ ‘em out. What was I thinking?

Well, I guess I was dreaming I was Ma Ingalls again and thought how wonderfully self-sufficient it would be to start with a fleece and then…(okay the picture gets a little fuzzy here, losing important detail)…and knitting it up. I didn’t really stop to consider all the in-between steps. Are they important? Ok, I’m naive…

So, back to Knitting-Mentor-Holly-Who-Has-Recently-Delved-Into-Fleece-Processing, for those all so important middle bits. I’ve been shown what to do initially with this manky, pooey fleece. Wash it. Oh… After a few soaks, out it goes into the sun to air dry. Thankfully Dublin has been the grateful recipient of many hot, sunny days.

That’s all I know. Full stop. Now I have bag-fuls (or is it bags-ful?) of clean, fluffy fleece ready for the next step…carding. And I’m sure that has nothing to do with aces, jacks and the like. Guess this ought to have read, Yarn-the Long Way Round, Episode 1. Stay tuned…

Warning: The following post is a result of my eternal fascination with the Irish-ised English language.

As an American, I don’t commonly hear the word ‘ye,’ except, maybe, when we’re on holiday in Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) where they perpetually re-enact the pre-Revolutionary year of 1774. The bailiff might call out a familiar ‘hear ye, hear ye’ before the mock trial takes place. Other than that, it’s not something that I’d hear in everyday vocabulary. Until I moved to Ireland….

‘Ye,’ as in ‘how are ye,’ is quite often peppered into a conversation. Now I confess, I don’t know what counties in Ireland actively use ‘ye.’ I’ve heard my friends from Cork, Kildare, Westmeath, Wexford and Carlow use it and I’m sure more ‘ye-users’ are lurking about in other counties.

But you know what? It’s a great word! ‘Ye,’ meaning more than just you…equal to ‘you all’ (more commonly reduced to y’all in the American South). There is no mistaking who is involved in ‘ye’…everyone is! It’s so all-inclusive and that’s what I like about it!

I think it would be great if the use of ‘ye’ would grow in popularity. I think it would reduce so much of the social confusion we feel when only ‘you’ is used.

Compare this:  ‘How are you?’

‘Uh oh, are they talking to me or the person standing next to me or the person right behind me?’

…to this:  ‘How are ye?’

‘Well, being one of the crowd, it’s okay for me to answer, too!’

So, hurray for ‘ye’…one of the most welcoming words in the English language!

I received a phone call last week from a lady running Woolapalooza, an ‘everything-about-wool’ show at Airfield Trust. The conversation went something like this…

Lady: ‘I got your name from M_____ and wondered if you would like to demonstrate your felting at Woolapalooza.’
Me: ‘Ummmmm….’
Lady: ‘What exactly do you do?’
Me: ‘Well….I make felted knits.’
Lady: ‘What is that and can you demonstrate it at the show?’
Me: ‘Hmmmmm….actually, I knit things, throw them in the washing machine and they shrink. That’s what felted knits are.’
Lady: ‘Do you do this for a living and do you have some things you could bring with you?’
Me: ‘Wellllll….I….um…not really…I mean….not yet. It’s kind of a hobby. Emmm, let me see what I have around the house…’
Lady: ‘Would you be willing to set up a table and demonstrate felted knits?’
Me: ‘Eerrrrrrrr…’

Okay, how exactly would I demonstrate felted knits?

‘Gather ’round, ladies and gentlemen! Step right up and watch me knit something for a few hours! A few hours, you say? That’s right, you too will be astounded by my knitting prowess! And now, let me wheel up my washing machine. I’ll throw in this hideously-oversized-glad-the-80s-are-over knitted item. But wait! In just a few hours the washing machine will do its wonders and out will come a shrunken bag! Can you take it with you? Of course not! It will take a day or two to air dry!’
Not exactly rivoting…

And then there’s the matter of my ‘it’s just a hobby’ brain freeze. What was I thinking? How could I forget that for the last couple of years I’ve been relentlessly pursuing the Irish Department of Justice to grant me artisan status to allow me to work in Ireland as a recognized craftsperson? Here was a great door of opportunity and I was apologizing for being one! Duh.

Well, thankfully the story ends well. After a much-needed pep talk from husband-Will, I gathered up a good selection of felted stuff (some of which is shown above), rubbed a couple of brain cells together and rang the lady back. We arranged for me to have a table and just chat with people about the process of felting knits. It’s a rather novel concept here.

So, I spent yesterday at Woolapalooza under a gloriously clear blue sky on a warm summer day having great fun chatting with people…showing them the work of my hands and seeing a spark of interest in this new form of knitting. The spark may be small, but as we all know….it only takes a spark to get a fire going!

Note: Fuzzy photos in this post taken with my handy-dandy picture phone.

It all seemed harmless enough…needed a computer bag…had loads of leftover yarn…found a cute pattern in Stitch n Bitch Nation…know how to knit. What went wrong?

Now I knew that my yarn and needles were a little bigger than called for…OK, made adjustment for that.
I also needed to make the bag a little bigger to fit around a padded computer sleeve…OK, made adjustment for that.

I knit up the first side panel….oh my….it was HUGE! I’m sure it could have:
a) easily become a sleeping bag for my 9-year-old
b) made a lovely rug for my living room
c) become a hideous skirt for myself
d) provided shelter from the rain for my car
e) doubled as a parachute

But it was NOT going to work for this computer bag, even after being felted and shrunk. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

What now? Well, I did what every self-respecting craftsperson does. I tossed the pattern, stared at it for hours and tried to figure out how to salvage the knitting because I certainly didn’t want to have to frog all those colour changes!

Have you ever seen those M.C. Escher prints where you could turn it 90º and see something new? That’s what happened to my computer bag. Thinking ‘outside the box’ (or bag in this case), I turned it on its side and the one panel actually became the front and back of the bag with vertical striping. I liked it! All that was needed was to make the gusset/strap. And, glory be, it fit the padded insert after washing!

So, necessity being the mother of invention, when good patterns go bad, just bag it and do something creative!

Sometimes you wonder if it’s worth it. In this instance, it most certainly was!

I teach knitting as an after school activity for 2nd to 6th class kids. Last term I had 3 students…2 girls and a boy. Bit of a challenge. Wasn’t sure I’d do it again. This term I had 5 students…all girls. For the first few weeks, they were attentive, interested, enthusiastic, intent on learning and improving their knitting.

Toward the end, they were chatty, cheeky, distracted, intent on doing anything except knitting! What was I doing?

Today was the final class. Had a party. They gave me a stuffed animal and a card which read on the cover, “Thank you for all your help”. Inside it said, “To our best knitting teacher, We all appreciate your hard work to help us knit. It’s very sad that it felt like a short time. We hope that you will open it again. With all thanks from: Sarah, Catherine, Sibéal, Megan, Sadhbh.”

It’s a Kleenex moment.