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Traveling to Rhinebeck

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Today I gathered up my belongings and, while it was still dark, walked the three blocks to the train station, dragging my two suitcases behind me.  The larger one has my teaching supplies.  The smaller – more teaching supplies and clothes.

This morning I was on the train from Ashland to NYC, now I’m on the second leg of my journey, from NYC to Albany.  This train ride remains one of my favorites.  I’d rank it up there with the train ride Michael and I took going across the Rocky mountains.  For anyone who has ever taken the Empire Builder, they know that heading north, you get seats to the left of the train.  Heading south, you get seats to the right.  Why?  Because of the views over the Hudson.

Each time I take the train it’s different.  Today there are dramatic clouds – shades of dark and light grey, with occasional glimpses of blue.  The river is the color of Buckingham Slate – dark and reflective.  River grasses billow in the breeze, their heavy heads full of seed.  An dominating everything is the color of the trees: the bright orangey red of sugar maple, the yellows of beech, the reddish browns of oak, and the occasional bright flash of red dogwood and butter yellow willow.

My heart sings with the colors of fall.

It seems like Rhinebeck is the culmination of a knitting year: the time when we get to show off a year’s worth of the fruits of our labor.  I have to admit I’m thinking the weather is going to be perfect… a little on the cold side on Sunday, but that’s what wearing your knitwear is for.

Catching Up: Fishing Failures, New Pattern, and Rhinebeck!

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Yesterday, I managed to crank out the rough draft to two different patterns: a pair of gloves and a crochet shawl.  I worked for nearly 6 hours straight, with only a small break for lunch.  It was intense, deep thinking, and I haven’t managed to get in that good of workflow in months.  I take it as a sign that things are finally returning back to normal.

This morning, I woke up super early to try and go fishing, again.  About a month ago, my husband took me fishing and I caught 2 fish.  Since then, I’ve been fishing 3 other times, only to catch nothing.  Nothing.  Many times, my bait would be in the water and a fish would be jumping not three feet away.  Clearly I’m doing something wrong, but I can’t seem to figure out the right combination of bait and line setup.  Today, armed with new bait and a week’s worth of reading on the art of fishing, I thought I was ready to catch something, anything.  I would have been happy even if I just got a nibble, to tell me I was going in the right direction.

Instead, the fish were more active than ever, jumping out of the water and showing off, and I just managed to jab myself twice with the hook, and get my line tangled in everything.

While I am quite stubborn, and I’m not giving up yet… I came home much discouraged.

I have a pattern out today!  Stripes Three Ways should be familiar to some of you… it’s a teaching

pattern that I’m finally making available to everyone!  Newly tech-edited and test knit, it’s a lovely fall cowl that comes in 3 different sizes, and a variety of combinations.  It has a special twist – each time you make it, a roll of the dice determines how the pattern is going to work.  I’ll have an official post coming out in a couple of days, but I couldn’t wait to share!

If you’ve made the pattern before in one of my classes, I’d love to have you put your finished project (or even unfinished project) up on Ravelry.  It brings me such joy to see people’s work on my patterns!

Speaking of new patterns… you know the ones I was talking about before?  They’re part of a bunch of patterns that I create and am just getting to write up to release.  The plan is to have them out before the Indie Designer Giftalong starts in just over a month.  This is a big event where a whole bunch of Independent Designers band together to put all their patterns on sale before the Holidays.  It’s a great event, and I’ll be sharing more information with you as it becomes available.

Rhinebeck is coming in less than a week!  So, don’t expect much posting next week.  Still, I’m going to try and get some pictures and rock the event with my own knitwear.

Hairpin Crochet Brainstorming, Fiber Festival Recap, News

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I’ve got a cat on my lap and cannot move.  He is warm and purring up a storm.  This is one of the reasons I love the Fall –  my not-so-cuddly-cat (Peake) turns into a snugglebug come cold weather.  And unlike Watson, who will sit on your lap but demand you pet him the whole time until it gets REALLY annoying, Peake will just fall asleep on your lap, purr, and share his warmth.

I made a mistake on my last post – which wasn’t supposed to go live until later this month.  Three Square won’t be available until October 15th.  Sorry.  I’m going to leave the post up (because I imagine it’d be more confusing if I withdrew it and then put it back up), but if you’d like to be notified when it will be available, you can signup for the email newsletter here, and I’ll send out an email when the Knitting Boutique has it ready.

This last weekend I was all over teaching.  On Saturday I was teaching at Woolwinders and then speaking at the Kensington Creative Knitter’s Guild.  On Sunday I was at the Montpelier Sheepdog Trials and Fiber Festival, where I was teaching my wonderful Hairpin Lace Class.  To my shame, I got no pictures of the entire weekend.

I love teaching, and I love how I can teach the same class and have it be entirely different each time.  Sometimes I’ll have a class where everyone is REALLY motivated to learn the skill.  The energy is electric as people are concentrating and thinking. Sometimes I’ll have a class where the students will just click.  Life stories will be shared. By the end of the class everyone is good friends, trading contact information, and resolving to see each other again.  Sometimes I’ll have a class that’s really struggling with a concept, and then suddenly the lightbulb goes off for one person, and that person’s understanding will spread, until there’s a turn in the class and everyone suddenly “gets” it.

My last two Hairpin Lace classes have been amazing.  I make no bones about the fact that one of the reasons I teach hairpin lace is because I want to design more lace, and the only way I can do that is if I have a market for it.  In my last two classes I’ve had students walk away really motivated to do more hairpin, which I love.  Two weekends ago at SVFF, I had a student who came back the day after the class to show me the scarf nearly half done she was so excited.

This week at Montpelier, the last half hour of the class turned into a brainstorming session, with students imagining different uses for hairpin lace.  They were brainstorming ways to integrate it with knitting, talking about ways to shape it or connect it, and generally getting fired up about the technique.  It was wonderful.  It was amazing.  And I came home completely motivated and wanting to play with the hairpin lace more.

The center of the scrumble, an 8 pointed star.

Let me show you.

The last few evenings last week, instead of knitting or crocheting for work, I was fooling around with a cone of cotton & rayon thread I’d gotten several years ago.  It’s basically my version of scumbling/sketching, and I was crocheting just for the fun of the action, not to make anything in particular.  Oftentimes when I do this, my brain will disgorge something I didn’t even realize I was thinking about, and it will eventually become some sort of design idea.  But for now, I was just playing.  I decided I was going to try and add a little bit if everything I knew how to do, kinda like a sampler.

So last night I added a “row” of broomstick crochet.  And then I decided I was going to play around with a way of connecting hairpin lace strips to work that I hadn’t seen before.  I did the math, and I need to make a strip of 264 loops (that is, 264 loops on each side), and it’s in thread weight
cotton.  I don’t know what I was thinking (as in, it’s going to take a couple of nights).  BUT!  It’s going to be interesting.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

The 8-pointed star, with a round of broomstick crochet worked.  the hairpin lace loom, with the loops.  Each of the bunches is 50 loops on each side.  Still got another evening’s worth of work before it’s done.

Exciting News: Three Square & The Knitting Boutique

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I’ve got a new pattern that should be hitting the newsstands soon (edit: October 15th).  It’s up on Ravelry, so I thought I’d give it a little introduction.  Three Square is one of two patterns that I’m producing this fall for The Knitting Boutique.

The Knitting Boutique is unique among many LYS’s in that they have their own, store exclusive yarn.  They’ve been written up in a couple different magazines about it. In the last couple of months they rolled out a new yarn, called Anacostia (after the river, which used to be local to me, and still is local to them).  Dianna, the owner, graciously invited me to create patterns in this new yarn line.

Let me tell you how much I love Amacostia.  It comes in a variety of weights.  I used the fingering, and worked it up on size for needles to get about 19 sts every 2 inches.  It’s soft, colorfast, and 100% superwash.  Seriously, its a wonderful yarn.

Three Square is a pattern written for sizes newborn – 24 months.  (And I’m working on getting one for 2T – 10 yrs out too!)  It’s made up of what I like to think of as 3 squares: one for the yoke, one for the body, and the last for the handkerchief skirt.  It’s got a false button placket (that actually fastens with snaps – which if you have small children you know you’ll appreciate), and can be worn with the buttons in the front or the back, depending on your preference.

Three Square isn’t my first baby dress I’ve designed (it’s just the first to be published).  Still, I happen to be more than a little attached to it.  I LOVE square necklines, and they just don’t do well on a busty lady of my shape.  But Children?  Children look amazing in square necklines.

The other thing I love about Three Square is the fact that it’s a sleeveless dress.  As you can see in the pattern photos, you can pair it with a long sleeve and tights for colder weather, but in warmer weather it’d be perfect in short sleeves or even by itself.

So where can you get Three Square?  Right now, it’s only available in print, from The Knitting Boutique.  So head on over to the store, either in person or online!

Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival Recap!

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Another newsletter went out yesterday, if you didn’t see it, you can check it out here.

Last weekend I was at SVFF, and had an amazing time interacting with students, and finding a couple of new-to-me vendors.

Being a little closer to the introvert side of things than the extrovert side of things, after teaching for 3 days straight, I spent Monday and Tuesday happily working on my computer and not interacting with anyone.  I answered only the most pressing emails, and was unable to even contemplate a blog post.

This isn’t unusual – I normally need an hour or two after teaching for a day to “recover.”  This was just a more extreme example.

I thought I’d share some highlights from the weekend, in the form of a pictorial essay:

Mr. Turtle in a tree, looking smug.
Heading into SVFF – we managed to completely blow past the sign and had to turn around.  I was completely hopping in my seat I was so excited!

Being in the mountains, the leaves were starting to change, even though they haven’t in Ashland.  The contrast of the leaves against the sky was just stunning.

Teaching duct tape dress forms!  Always a tricky part – getting the seam of your dress form to match up!

Bethany, the chairman, hooked me up with an SVFF t-shirt.  Even though it was cool in the morning (and I had on my long-sleeve shirt and a shawl), by midday I was cooking, and eyeing the short-sleeved shirts.  Bethany noticed and got me one.  I’ve already washed it once so I could wear it again today.

Teaching Hairpin Crochet!  Keep an eye on those two red hairpin lace strips – they’ll show up again!

The hairpin strips all connected!  A little tiny piece of One Salt Sea.

I had a short hour after my second class on Saturday ended to check out the festival.  I had to stop by and admire Dragonfly Fiber’s Booth and say hello.  My eye was drawn to the shawl hanging up.  It’s Faberge by Laura Aylor, and simply gorgeous.

On Sunday I was teaching an all-day class called Heels, Heels and More Heels!  It was a terrible amount of fun to geek out about something I love.  In the morning I was so cold – I had a turtleneck on under my dress, and a shawl overtop it.  Recognize the shawl?  It’s the Silva Shawl!

On Sunday at lunch I got a surprise – my student from my hairpin lace class was back – with far more than two strips connected!  She wanted to share two helpful pieces of advice about One Salt Sea.  First, she found it easier to connect the strips if she left her guideline in until after they were connected on both sides.  It also helped when she didn’t stretch the strips out until after they were connected.  I thought it was good advice, so I’m passing it along!

I loved the class space at SVFF.  The class tents were set away from everything else, and I didn’t have to compete when speaking with anything else!  Every once and a while we could hear some whistling from the sheep-herding demo that went on slightly nearby us.  I was disappointed I didn’t get to see it, but Mr. Turtle took pictures – this was my favorite!

I’m looking forward to heading back to SVFF next year.  It was a lovely event, and very well run.  Did you go?

Blocking: Quick and Dirty No-Fail Method

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Blocking is one of the things which simply transforms knits.  When people tell me they don’t like the finished result of their work, my first response is always, “Did you block it?”  Simply said, blocking can really, really make your projects shine.

So I’ve got a tutorial for you! Here’s how I block.

You will need:

  • The piece you wish to block
  • some towels
  • some water (cool, but not cold)
  • a place where the piece can dry, undisturbed
  • optional: pins
  • optional: something like Soak or Eculean if you wish for it to smell nice.  Or essential oils work too.
  • optional: things like blocking wires, pins, or in my case, a rubber band.  You’ll see.
  • optional: cats to watch what you’re doing (joking)
First, submerge your pieces in the water until they are completely wet.  Plant-based fibers will suck up the water right away.  Wool based fibers you might have to help a little.  I’m impatient – I squeeze the piece gently to get all the air out, because wool likes to trap air in its fibers.  Keep squeezing until no bubbles come out of your piece.  Or, you can just walk away and come back in an hour.  Both work.

Now, gently squeeze the water out of your piece.  Don’t wring, just squeeze.
The next part’s my favorite part.  Lay the pieces out on a towel.
Then, start jelly-rolling them in the towel.
Keep rolling.
Until it looks like this.
Now, this is the highly technical part.  I tell my students in class this, and they all laugh at me.
In your bare feet (don’t do it in socks – your socks may get wet!), step on the towel.  Stand on it.  Then shift around and do it again.  You want to press ALL THE WATER OUT.
Sometimes, when I’m doing something really big, I need two or three iterations of this step – because the first towel gets SOAKED.  This case, because I was blocking a swatch and a hat, I only needed one.
When you take your pieces out, they should be damp, but not wet.
Now what happens?  Well, you have some choices.
If the piece is something flat like my swatch, all you need to do is lay it out and pat it into shape.  No need to stretch or contort the piece!
For my hat, I needed some assistance.  I needed something larger than a head, because I wanted to block this piece open and stretch things out.  I wanted the final hat to have drape and slouch.  FYI: I did the same thing with my Triple H!
So I found a bowl that stretched the hat out, but left the ribbing at rest (because I didn’t want to block the ribbing out, I still wanted the ribbon stretchy).
Here’s the hat stretched out over the bowl.
Still, the hat kept shifting out of place, so I figured I needed to take one step further.  I pulled the ribbing in, and held it in place with a rubber band.  Perfect!
Then I left it to dry.
For something like the Sylva Shawl, I needed to take a bit more extreme measure.  This shawl needed the lace to open up quite a bit, and I wanted to give the shawl a particular drape and swish.
So I used pins and blocking wires.
Blocking wires are great because you can bend them a little for a curved shawl like this.  See how I threaded the blocking wire through the shawl?  The pins are just holding the blocking wire in place.
This thing was big enough I didn’t have anything big enough to block it on.  So I pinned directly into the mattress.  Shhhh!  Don’t tell Mr. Turtle!
Sylva Shawl, all blocked out.

Review: Sock Architecture by Laura Neel

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I tweeted just when Sock Architecture came out that I was really excited about the book – just based on the glimpse of the pictures I saw on Ravelry, this book was for me.

Sock Architecture is a book that focuses on the knit socks – no adornments, just the facts.  The photography reflects this dedication: the socks, heels and other techniques are photographed against a plain white background, absent of more artistic styling.  It reads more like a textbook and less like an art book.  The pages lack a glossy texture and Neel doesn’t shy away from the math.

I’m not complaining – this is the book I’ve been waiting for.

It embraces the math (no surprise, Neel’s blog is titled Math4Knitters), and talks about socks the way I think about them – in ratios and proportions.  It doesn’t dumb down the fact that knitting is a thinking person’s hobby; that there has to be a part of each knitter that can see, can think, a project into existence.

I’m about halfway through my second re-read of the book, and I thought I’d make a list of my favorite parts thus far:

  • The history part of the book is short, but informative.  I now have several places where I’m going to go to do my own research.  If you have an electronic copy of the book, the links to the pieces she’s talking about are great.
  • The mini-heels, demonstrating how each heel fits on the same model.  So great for a couple of reasons: acknowledges that not every heel is for every foot, and that you can substitute out one heel for another.
  • The attention to detail given to the different types of heel, toe, and sock construction.
  • The loving discussion of gussets, why they’re helpful, and why you nearly always want one.
  • Several-fool proof ways of measuring feet.
Now, lest the math scare you away, the whole back of the book is filled with normal, written patterns, and many of them are very, very lovely.  My favorite is the Uncommon Dragon.
I think, if you’re a dedicated sock knitter, or a sock designer, you are doing yourself a disservice to not have this book.
You can buy the book here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/sock-architecture. I bought both the e-book and the physical book.  I have no regrets.

From the Business Desk: Stakeholder Engagement

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From the Business Desk is back.  From the Business Desk is a semi-regular series that looks at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business.  This feature revolves around managing the many important parties your business works with on a daily basis.


Due to the specialized nature of a fibre arts small business, you most likely are interfacing with a large number of external parties in your day to day business operations.  From suppliers and vendors to accountants and banks to individual customers, the web of interactions you weave is a significant challenge to manage for any business owner.

Complex web of your network.  Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Managing these types of interactions with all of these various individuals is key to a business’s well being, as often times a business is judged by the market not by it’s actual results, but by how it operates and delivers results against its’ expectations.  You see this a lot of times with Fortune 500 companies where although they could show spectacularly profitable results, if these do not meet the expectations of the organization, things like it’s image, reputation, clientele, or stock price can suffer. 

There are many in-depth training classes you can take from high-paid consultants on how you can accomplish this; what I’m going to do is share some high-level tips for how we at Tinking Turtle keep track of things here to best manage the expectations of all of the interrelated individuals we commonly interact with.

Constant External Communication.  Communication is absolutely tops in managing any sort of relationship that you have, be it with a vendor for ordering supplies, or a customer expecting a deliverable on a particular project.  Often times, when you know things are not going according to plan and you cannot meet a deadline, the earlier you can communicate this, the better.  That way things don’t come as a shock to those impacted, and if you can both communicate the issue and what you are doing to resolve it, you can ensure your relationships are positively maintained.  Studies show that customer loyalty can actually be increased if your business takes ownership and provides an exceptional level of service in the event of a customer service issue.

Internal Communication.  If your business has more than one employee, it is vital that all of the staff are on the same page and have access to information regarding the various stakeholders that they interact with.  Nothing is more off-putting than to have an external vendor be told “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about” in relation to an issue.  This could be something as simple as having a weekly staff meeting, or a common room whiteboard with a high level FYI list of things to be aware of for all of the associates to have access to.  There are also technology solutions to allow these relationships to be documented, having a CRM application is one avenue that Tinking Turtle uses, as to us, everyone we interact with from vendors to contractors to customers is tracked in our system.

Understanding Expectations.  The last item I want to stress here is the importance of actually understanding the expectations of everyone you interact with.  A classic example of this can be found in the Project Management Tire Swing analogy, which has been around for quite some time and is demonstrated in many introduction to Stakeholder Engagement classes.

The importance of understanding expectations.

By making assumptions about what is really necessary in a relationship, the chance for misscommunication is high, which then leads to situations where one party’s expectations are vastly different than the other.  A good way to think about this in any interaction is to ensure that both you and the other party have clearly understood conditions of satisfaction that need to be met as part of this relationship.  In ensuring that you have established these up front, it is much easier to then set expectations, and then identify areas that can be changed as the nature of the relationship changes.

These are only a few of the ways that small businesses can work to ensure that the relationships with the many individuals and organizations with which they interact remain strong.  It is the strength of these relationship, and how engaged you are keeping all parties involve that can really be a stragic benefit to the long-term success of any fiber arts business.

A quickie Contest: Stripes Three Ways

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So, trying to print off the pattern for my class on Sunday, my printer was freaking out.  After

troubleshooting for much longer than Mr. Turtle should have, we printed out some copies of the pattern that are… a little wonky.  Nothing to make them unreadable, but enough that I wouldn’t feel comfortable handing them out in class, and they’re nice enough I felt bad just throwing them away… dead trees!

So, our crazy printer is your gain.  I’ve got a quick little contest for you that’ll just run the week.  They’ll be 5 winners, and they’ll each get 2 copies of Stripes Three Ways – one for themselves and one for a friend.  The only thing I ask is that you share your extra copy with someone who will appreciate it, and when you do knit the pattern up, you show off your finished projects on Ravelry, so I can live vicariously through you!

The contest is through Rafflecopter, below.

Share with your friends!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Week ago Saturday Morning

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Tea, fruit, morning reading, knitting, and sitting on the porch.

Baked goods at the Farmer’s Market

The Farmer’s Market, and it was still cool out.

This all contrasted with today, where I’m spending my morning driving down to DC to teach at Fibre Space, and tomorrow, the Knitting Boutique.  Very different, but both good.

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