Spinning Daily

Telling narratives in yarn

Amy Clarke Moore — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Amy sings the praises of patterns in the latest edition of Jane Austen Knits that were inspired by Fanny Price.

Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild: where spinning meets opera.

Kate Larson — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:50:00 GMT

The 11th annual Knoxville Opera's Rossini Festival was held on April 28th in downtown Knoxville, TN. The festival is well known for its live performances, including fully-staged operas and artisan demonstrations. Last year, over 100,000 people attended this free community event, which spans eleven city blocks. The Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild has demonstrated at the Rossini Festival for the last six years. Members work in two-hour shifts through the day sharing their love of fiber arts...(read more)

Homespun Handknit, Old and New

Linda Ligon — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

All New Homespun Handknit is now available as an eBook.

...(read more)

Tunisian Crochet with Your Handspun Yarn

Toni Rexroat — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Learn How to Tunisian Crochet

Tunisian crochet has been known as many names over its history, including Afghan crochet, hakning, railway stitch, and Princess Frederick William stitch. It is a fabulous technique using a crochet hook to create a unique fabric with a woven appearance and myriad stitch possibilities. Tunisian crochet is also ideal for use with handspun yarns to create warm accessories and items of clothing. Let's explore the construction of the most popular Tunisian stitch.

Mulled Spices Afghan

Tunisian crochet is worked using either a Tunisian hook (sometimes called an Afghan hook) or a regular crochet hook that does not widen at the grip. Some Tunisian hooks are made extra long with a cord or wire that extends from the end of the hook.

The hook shaft needs to be longer because you pick up stitches across the row until a loop for each stitch is on your hook, much like knitting, then work the stitches off the hook as in crochet. A single row is made up of both a forward pass and a return pass. With Tunisian crochet, the right side of the work is always facing you.

We'll begin with Tunisian simple stitch. You can find examples of Tunisian simple stitch in the Mulled Spices Afghan, as well as the Spice Market Tunic, and the Five Peaks Shawl (all from A Step-By-Step Guide to Tunisian Crochet).

Pull out your swatching yarn and give it a try. Create a chain long enough for a good-size swatch. For the foundation forward pass, pull up a loop in the bottom ridge loop of the second chain from the hook (see Figure 1), leave this loop on the hook, and *pull up a loop in the next bottom ridge loop of the foundation chain, leaving this loop on the hook as well; repeat from * the entire way across the foundation chain (see Figure 2).

You should pull up one fewer loops on your hook than chain stitches you made for the foundation chain. The loop already on your hook when you begin pulling up loops counts as the first st.

To work the Return Pass, yarn over and draw through first loop on hook (this stitch becomes your selvedge stitch), *yarn over and draw through two loops on hook (see Figure 3); repeat from * until you have only one loop left on the hook, leave the last loop on your hook (it becomes the selvedge stitch for the other side of the fabric).

Spice Market Tunic

For the Tunisian simple stitch (tss) forward pass (FwP), insert the hook from right to left behind the 2nd vertical bar (see Figure 4), yarn over and pull up a loop leaving this loop on the hook, *insert the hook from right to left behind the next vertical bar leaving this loop on the hook as well; repeat from * to the last vertical bar. When working the last vertical bar, insert the hook behind both the vertical bar and an additional loop at the edge of the fabric. This creates a more stable edge. Now work the return pass as above. You've just done two rows of Tunisian crochet!

Five Peaks Shawl

Continue to repeat the Tunisian simple stitch Forward Pass and Return Pass to create this unique fabric.

Inserting the hook in different loops or multiples of loops will create a remarkable number of different fabrics, including fabrics very similar in appearance to knit or purl stitches but with increased thickness for warmth. I've found that this technique can be terribly addicting.

Give Tunisian crochet a try with your handspun. Download Interweave Crochet Presents A Step-By-Step Guide to Tunisian Crochet today. And check out other great crochet eBooks in the Crochet Me Shop for more beautiful crochet projects.

Best wishes,

Redwood Guild of Fiber Artists (California) invites Nadine Curtis of Be Sweet Yarns

Kate Larson — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:40:00 GMT

The Redwood Guild of Fiber Artists has been active in the Sonoma County, California, area since 1949. The guild website features an impressive list of monthly speakers and topics. In April, Nadine Curtis, founder of Be Sweet, spoke to the group.

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The pieces come together magically

Liz Good — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

There are many similarities between putting together an issue of Spin-Off and creating a project from scratch with handspun.

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Looks like I will be coming home

Melanie@2 — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:31:00 GMT

When I was a scholar three years ago I never really thought I would be able to make another one. I had such a great experience, from the learning to meeting tons of really neat people and food wasn't bad either. When I got home and my husband asked how it all went, I told home it was like coming home because everyone at SOAR totally got me. They totally get the whole need for more fiber and cool tools. As a normally shy person it was so easy to sit at a table at lunch or in a chair with spinning wheel and say "Hi, I'm Melanie from Idaho what classes are you taking?" Something I would never do. But the wonderful people at SOAR make it so easy.

When I left Bend I never really thought I would be able to attend again, but as luck would have it I am now getting ready to come home again this year. After a couple of tense moments waiting for the registration button to load I was able to sign up for the class I really wanted to take. Although I will only be able to take the workshop and stay through Friday, it still will be great to meet up with my spinning "family" again.

See you all at SOAR!

Melanie Smith

The time is now! Register for SOAR!

Liz Good — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:09:00 GMT

Some of you have been waiting with bated breath for Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR) registration to open. (And we've been looking forward to finding out who will be joining us this fall at Lake Tahoe!) Well, breathe deeply and go register at www.interweavesoar.com . Make sure to refresh your browser so that the Registration button in the upper right hand corner is visible (on some browsers it appears at the bottom of the page). We can't wait to see you! (And when you've registered, start...(read more)

Organizing a guild library: Two guilds' strategies.

Kate Larson — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Rosemary Skinner (pictured on the right) is a longtime member of the Handweavers', Spinners', and Dyers' Guild of Western Australia , and she has filled the post of guild librarian for twenty-five years. When she started in 1987, there were about 450 titles in a library that has now grown to 1,389 titles (in addition to numerous magazines and DVDs). Rosemary's husband, Roy, has over time developed a computer database for the library. This burgeoning database not only tracks individual...(read more)

Who was the Einstein who invented spinning?

Amy Clarke Moore — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Learning how to spin your own yarn is pretty easy and straight forward, especially if you have access to great teachers. This eBook can help you learn or help you teach others all about spinning wheels.

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Small, portable, and at your fingertips

Liz Good — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Research—one of the many benefits of past issues of Spin-Off being available digitally.

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Fibers Through Time 2012 Conference in Phoenix, Arizona

Kate Larson — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Arizona Federation of Weavers and Spinners Guilds sponsors a biennial conference. The first Fibers Through Time event was held in 1998 and has continued to evolve over the last fourteen years. A new feature at the event is the Learning Center , an area near the vendors that will be dedicated to two-hour fiber arts demonstrations. Topics covered at the Learning Center will include flax spinning, shirret , kumihimo, tatting, and more. There will also be a fiber-arts show and handspun yarn judging....(read more)

Go On, Have Some Fun!

karen brock — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

The toque, shown flat, with a pom-pom on one end and a tassel on the other. The ingenious construction provides two hats in one. Photograph by Joe Coca.

Optical Illusion mittens by Sonata Eidikienė. Photograph by Joe Coca.

"Toss and Tumble" frolicking your way. Photograph by Joe Coca.

Go On, Have Some Fun!

We have invited Karen Brock, assistant editor of our sister publication PieceWork, to tell you about the latest special issue, the fourth edition of Knitting Traditions magazine. Who knew knitting history could be so much fun?

Karen Brock: The fourth of PieceWork's super-popular special issue Knitting Traditions has just arrived on the newsstands, and all I can say is "How fun!" Each issue of Knitting Traditions becomes a character of its own. In the premier Winter 2010 issue, it was all about the type of projects—socks, sweaters, gloves and mittens, shawls and scarves; for the following Winter 2011 issue, it was all about technique: colorwork, texture, and lace. For the third issue in Fall 2011, we took readers on a knitting journey around the world. For the current issue, we framed the articles and projects in terms of Useful Articles, Adornments, and Vintage. But within each of those categories is fun, a lot of fun.

In Useful Articles, Maureen McGinnis Patterson shares amusing tales of her Canadian mother and the necessity of knitting toques; she provides the pattern for these whimsical looking yet terribly practical double-layered hats. Martin Polley, a professor of sports history, offers fascinating insight into what knitting patterns can teach us about cultural history. The companion photographs from Sirdar pattern leaflets elicit a big grin every time I open the issue.

Even in the Adornment section, which features gorgeous lace shawls and cashmere/silk Russian gloves, there's plenty of delight, too. Optical illusion mittens, based on a traditional Lithuanian design, are a bold and brilliant example of colorwork, reminiscent of M.C. Escher patterns. If you don't know what stulmeni are, you'll learn in this issue as Barbara Plakans explains the components of traditional dance costume from Latvia and, of course, shares her pattern for these decorative cuffs—for socks!

The entire Vintage section is packed with fun. I love poring through vintage and antique publications, but bringing some of those patterns to life is the best. Among a shawl, gloves, lace patterns, and intriguing instructions for making your own needles, we've included several sweet children's garments: booties, mittens, a hat, and how could it be complete without a fancy frock? But one of the most charming contributions to our vintage children's collection is "Toss and Tumble," who, after having been transported from the pages of a 1928 Needlecraft to the pages of Knitting Traditions Spring 2012, is ready for a "frolic with his wee owner."

We hope you'll have as much fun with this issue as we've had putting it together. Purchase your issue today and have a good frolic!

Have fun,

Las Arañas Spinners and Weavers Guild invites Blue Alchemy: Stories of Indigo filmmaker.

Kate Larson — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The Las Arañas Spinners and Weavers Guild (New Mexico) will be viewing Blue Alchemy: Stories of Indigo at its April meeting. The 2011 documentary will be presented by the producer/director herself!

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Dyeing To Be A Kid Again

theytoldmesew — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:31:00 GMT

Yesterday was the 'reward' for my son's second grade class for working so hard throughout the year to learn to knit and for working together to create scarves and a blanket that will be donated to needy members of our community.

Yesterday was 'Dyeing Day'. Armed with 20 quart-sized canning jars, a bag full of Kool Aid packets, a double burner with pots, a plastic table cloth and 20 skeins of undyed yarn (courtesy of Brown Sheep Wool Co.), I called the children of Mrs. Sowder's second grade to the floor of her classroom and taught them to dye wool.

The kids had a ball watching the colors they chose bleed into the jar and mix and mingle.

They are gripped with anticipation to see the results of their unbridled creativity.

And I have a sneak preview...

An intimate knowledge of yarn

Eunny Jang — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Knowing the right yarn for the project

The Yarn Review section of Spring 2012 issue of Interweave Knits takes a look at Tencel yarns.

I thought I knew yarn before I took on editing Interweave Knits. After all, I knitted! I was on a first-name basis with everyone at every yarn shop in a 50-mile radius. I owned a lot of yarn and seemed to buy more all the time. I could spin, a little. That's pretty much everything you need to be a yarn expert, right?

Was I in for a surprise. When I landed in Interweave's offices, I realized that my yarn knowledge amounted to a single splash in the deep, fast-flowing river of yarn conciousness surrounding me. All around, people were casually talking about spinning yarn for sweaters, discussing twist and ply and how they would affect the yarn and the final fabric. I learned that you can prepare a fiber in many different ways, and that they all produce different yarns that act in different ways. I met people who dyed their own, skeined their own, grew their own on the backs of pet cashmere goats.

I realized that I was a yarn lover, and that was about it.

At Interweave Knits, we tend to address commercially available yarns much more often than yarns spun at home. But living at the center of the yarniverse started to rub off on me: I began to really examine yarns, to learn about why they looked the way they did, felt the way they did, behaved the way they did. I've swatched dozens—hundreds—of yarns over the years, investigating their hows and whys, raveling an end or two to see how it's made. I talk to manufacturers, read specs, do burn tests. And I think long and hard when pairing a project up with a yarn—springy, round-cross-sectioned 5-ply Merino to make those cables pop, fuzzy woolen-spun Shetland to make that colorwork hazy-bright with blended color. My yarn education has been a lot of fun.

	The Yarn Review section of Winter 2011 issue of Interweave Knits takes a look at heathered yarns.

And my enthusiasm for yarn has found its way into the pages of the magazine—in every issue, we run a Yarn Review that investigates commercially available options within a certain fiber or construction type. We've called on authors as varied as Stephenie Gaustaud, Clara Parkes, and Deborah Robson—experts in their fields, all—to share some of their knowledge with us. It's one of my favorite parts of the magazine—and probably the two pages that teach me the most in every issue. It's become one of my missions: to give knitters the tools they need to start discovering the wide world of yarns themselves.

I never think of myself as a yarn expert now, although I certainly know more about yarn than I did when I started in this job. Instead, I think of myself as a student of yarn—always ready to learn something new, always ready to add to my stash of useful information. And of course, that's not the only stash I've added to.

It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it.

Learn a luxury spinning technique direct from the source

Liz Good — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Galina Khmelev shares the techniques of traditional Orenburg spinning in her new DVD.

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Historic Spinning at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan

Kate Larson — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Elizabeth Wood became interested in handspinning after watching a demonstration in an ancient textiles class at Emory University. The demonstrator, Annie, was a member of the Peachtree Handspinners Guild , and Elizabeth and her mother soon joined the guild. Three years later, Elizabeth now lives in Michigan and works as a historic presenter at Greenfield Village . This 80-acre living history museum is connected with the Henry Ford Museum , both located in Dearborn, Michigan. Elizabeth has enjoyed...(read more)

How to card wool, a study in opposites

Linda Ligon — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Linda looks at the different ways spinners approach carding wool.

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Illinois Prairie Spinners Adopt a Native Elder

Kate Larson — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:00:00 GMT

The Illinois Prairie Spinners recently made a donation to a nonprofit called the Adopt-a-Native-Elder Program in honor of guild member Jane Plass. Jane is the guild treasurer and program cochair, in addition to newsletter editor and webmaster. The Adopt-a-Native-Elder Program supports over five hundred Navajo, or Diné, traditional elders in southern Utah and northern Arizona. The guild's surprise tribute to Jane is a continuation of its annual support for The Navajo Sheep Project . Navajo...(read more)

The fungus among us

Anne Merrow — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Fiber Gets Earthy . . .

My parents learned to spin and weave in the 1970s as part of the "back to the land" movement. They also planted a huge vegetable garden, kept chickens, and canned food—things their parents had been delighted to stop doing in the previous generation. As a child, I remember foraging for edible mushrooms in the New England woods, guided by our local mycologist (and bona fide shaman!). The dishes we cooked over campfires weren't fun for me as a fussy eater, and the only ones I liked were the inoffensively named Chicken of the Woods and Puffballs.

Twenty-five years later, I learned that we could have used those very mushrooms as dyestuffs, creating yellow and orange colors.

	Just a few examples show the range of colors that can be extracted from mushrooms. Photo by Joe Coca.

Fun with Fungi
Carol Lee discovered the dye possibilities of mushrooms around the same time I was gingerly tasting them. A passionate spinner, weaver, and dyer, she heard about mushroom dyeing at a conference and began her own explorations, eventually foraging for mushrooms across North America and in Scandinavia. Learning from experts such as Miriam Rice, she discovered an amazing array of colors that could emerge from the plainest-looking fungi. Over the years she has become an expert at dyeing with mushrooms, meeting mycology enthusiasts around the world and hosting dye retreats at her Encampment studio.

Carol Lee holds a Cortinarius semisanguineus mushroom along with samples of yarn using different mordants. Photo by Jessica Gates.

The owner of the Sheep Shed Studio in Encampment, Wyoming, Carol uses synthetic dyes to produce dyed rovings, but she dyes with mushrooms for her own fiber arts. During a visit this spring, her backyard studio was bubbling with dyepots containing an array of colors (including her favorite, the red Cortinarius semisanguineus). As Carol pulled out bags of dried mushrooms and jars of brightly colored dyes, she talked about using ammonia to bring out colors and the role of mordants in mushroom dyeing. She loves the process of dyeing with mushrooms so much that she's written a book called Mushrooms Are To Dye For. She shares her love of mushroom dyeing in two videos in this issue of Colorways.

More to Explore
This issue of Colorways includes lots of ways to color your cloth, from resist dyeing to painting mineral pigments directly on fabric. Explore the magical world of color for yourself.

The Story Behind the Wacky Blanket

Amy Clarke Moore — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:00:00 GMT

How a Magazine Article is Born Avedan Raggio's Wacky Blanket in the SOAR 2010 Handspun Gallery. Fresh copies of the 2011 Spin-Off Collection CD just landed on my desk, and inside the case is a lovely large photo of Avedan Raggio’s Wacky Blanket from the Summer 2011 issue—I instantly flashed back to the first time I encountered the blanket at Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR) 2010 at the Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin. While SOAR participants were busily spinning away in class...(read more)

Colorways, Spring 2012

Anne Merrow — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 22:08:00 GMT

FEATURES

Colorful Traditions

Purple Nails, Purple Thread: Eric Mindling follows traditional Purpura pansa dyers

Painted Shipibo Textiles: J. Claire Odland explores labyrinthine designs in Peru's Amazon Basin

Resist!

Shape It Up: Malka Dubrawsky's contemporary take on itajime
+PDF Download: Itajime-dyed Luncheon Napkins

Guatemalan Jaspé: Deborah Chandler explains the complex techniques of a simple cloth

Woven Shibori: Catharine Ellis and the Oriole Mill bring the weaving technique to dyers

Colorful People

Life and Times in Color: Nell Znamierowski

Preserving Natural Color: Olga Reiche

Earth Tones

Bingata: John Marshall paints pigments on cloth with an Okinawan technique

Dyeing with Mushrooms, Earth's Colorful Fungi: Jessica Gates finds color beneath our feet

DEPARTMENTS

Editor's Corner

Try This: Natural Dye Workshop with Michel Garcia

Sources & Suppliers

In Closing . . .

Visit the Colorways Blog for more!

Corrections to Linen-Hemp Shirt: Cut on the Bias, Spin-Off Spring 2005

Liz Good — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:01:00 GMT

There is an error in the draft for Selma Miriam's Linen-Hemp Shirt, as well as some aspects of the pattern that could have been better explained. A great discussion about and corrections has been posted in our forums. It can be found here: http://www.spinningdaily.com/forums/p/2740/8159.aspx.

A PDF of the corrected draft can be found here.

We apologize for any inconvenience these errors might have caused.

Swift Indiana Hosts a Mayan Hands Fair-Trade Sale

Kate Larson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

I am part of a thriving fiber community in Indiana. We are lucky to have so many guilds, great yarn and fiber shops, and workshop opportunities. Indiana also has a networking organization called Swift (Spinners and Weavers of Indiana Fibers and Textiles) that helps to spread the word about workshops and events throughout the state. Swift has an annual meeting each March at Conner Prairie , a living history museum in Fishers, Indiana. Nearly sixty people attended this year for a day spent spinning...(read more)