Handout for Knitting Class

You’ve got to be knitting


Yarn, Equipment and Information Suppliers

Custom Woolen Mills  yarn, spinning fibre, a local Alberta supplier

Elann Vancouver based, bargain yarns, patterns and needles

Knitpicks source  of the needles I use for classes,  good yarn and books too

Shuttleworks just south of Calgary, great store, yarn, books

Ram Yarn Coop source of the yarn used for classes, great people

Techknitting is a blog that has had more than a million viewers, great information

 Learning to Knit is the site put up by the craft yarn council,  a nonprofit organization of most of the big yarn companys

Elizabeth Zimmermann founded Schoolhouse Press in the 50's and it is still going strong, yarn, books, advice.  She and her husband collected schoolhouse, hence the name.
 Russian knitting is taught at this site,  I haven't learned this method yet. But someday.

Raverly is a huge social web site, you must be a member to use it but I encourage everyone to become members

Books and DVDS are available here by these and other writers
Elizabeth Zimmermann, Sally Melville, Debbie New and Barbara walker

One of the best local resources, a week long adult summer camp

Babe's Three Bobbin Kit for Country Spinner

This was my first effort, some of the thick bits were by design and some were me loosing control of what I was doing. I've had the Country Spinner for 4 years but I have never spun much on it, I mostly used it for plying and love it for that. The fibre wasn't the best, even in this picture the amount of straw bits shows, the both the dyer and the mill should be ashamed of themselves, sheep have no shame. But the bobbin set up was fine. I spun quite fine singles, 8 to 10 wraps par inch in places and I could do better with practise. I don't think I would spin much finer than 6 wraps on the original Country. The plastic bobbin is smaller and lighter, much lighter, much easier to turn.

Here's the kit on my wheel. Wish I had taken a picture of the wheel with the original Ashford wooden bobbin on it http://www.ashford.co.nz/newsite/spinning- %20wheels/4/spinning/country/moredetail.html the Ashford site has all the specs and a good picture.

This is the ugliest piece of spinning equipment I have ever seen, it has no charm, it's plastic and junky looking plastic at that. It's junky feeling plastic, there is one piece of wood and it's crude, the whole thing reminds me of phentex yarn. The country Spinner is plain but good wood and has the beauty of a piece that does it's job.


But, ugly is as ugly does and these bobbins do a really good job.

Start with price, 57.30 for three bobbins and adaptor kit, one bobbin from my Ashford supplier is more than that, shipping was cheap 9.35, shipping was quick even across the border, it's a great deal.

The instructions are not great. I often get irritated by instructions that tell me to much, "what kind of an idiot do these people think their customers are?" but in this case I am that kind of an idiot. But I did figure it out. And no, there are no better instructions on the site. I am sure that if I had emailed or phoned Nils would have helped but the instructions should be better.

 

 

 

 

Plying, ah, plying, that why I wanted more than one bobbin in the first place,  and that's why Babe's sells them in a set of three, very sensible of them.  So why the devil don't they design and sell a kate, either separately as of part of the whole thing.  I made my own quite easily but well, what can I say.  This is ugly too but it works.

There are all kinds of possibilities that open up,  an regular 2 ply with a large amounts of continuous yarn, 3 ply, fill the babe's bobbins and then put the larger Ashford bobbin back on to ply.

A Country Spinner takes some getting used to,  it's harder to start, more work to pedal and the spinner need to really pay attention to which direction it's going.  But it's the best choice I know of for a second wheel, even if the only thing you ever do is ply singles spun on another wheel.

And those ugly, really really ugly bobbins?  They are great, they work.  I'd like to try 3 bobbins in the original Ashford wood for comparison but not enough to buy them.  And price is not the only advantage,  the lightness of the plastic bobbin really makes an improvement.

Twitter part of CPL 2.0

What can a person say in 140 words that is really worth reading, Fire! Flee at once, everthing is known!   CPL is using Tweets to redirect users to other things mostly, an attempt to get the attention of teens expecially.  Is it worth the time and effort?

But it's just one more thing, not a website and I can't keep up with the websites I like, not a blog and I can't keep up with the blogs I like,  one more thing to RSS, Information fragmentation.

I'd rather knit and I am knitting.  June 13 is World Wide Knit in Public Day, L'Arche is the Charity Sponsor and I am taking pledges to support their good works.  Please support me.  

I'll be knitting Entrelac Hats and would be happy to give one to my biggest supporter.

Silly Rule, silly sign

This is a garbage can. It is at a bus stop.

It is a garbage can of high standards, rigid principles, only the users of mass transit can use it, no walkers, no cyclists, no users of privately owned motor vehicles.

Can I use it all the time, I am a regular transit user or can I only use it when I am there waiting for a bus?

And exactly how is this going to be enforced?

How much of my tax and ticket money went to pay for this?

Dyeing for Entrelac

I don't like writing posts from Blogger, could be this layout, could be me.  Now I can't even get the pictures in the right spot

 

This is yarn natural dyed with cochineal expecially for an entrelac sweater.

I did a wonderful post using My Journal software and the pictures didn't come though.

Used 100 gms of finely ground cochineal from Maiwa 7 skeins of wool Soho Bulky Tweed 2 skeins of different handspun, and roving. The trick to getting the skeins different shades is putting them in one at a time about 20 minuties apart.
Used Jenny Dean's method but forgot the lemon juice.

Library Thing

Library Thing might be my favorite site on the Internet. 

I record everything I read as I read it, and rate it, even if it's so bad I don't finish it, hopefully this helps me not to be attracted to the same book again.  I review only occasionally mostly books that don't have any or not a lot of reviews and try to balance good and bad comments. Collections are part of the entry, some basic and some member created, I track books I own, books from CPL, books I want (mostly paperbacks in a series) and books I read years ago and don't own.  Tags most users use for subjects, I tag things I will want again for programs, this replaces the wish list that one could keep on the CPL site. 

LT has lists of series and charactors which is handy. There is a forum for asking help finding books from whatever details one remembers,  one for knitters, and one for librarians.

Office and others

Today Microsoft is releasing Office 2010, right on time to consider productivity suites, free or expensive, computer based or in the cloud.  My favorite technology writer has an interesting article on the free parts of 2010.

I own Office 07 and dislike it mildly, I own it because the Library does and because some of my other software, Inuit's Quickbooks  will only export to Excel and only email though Outlook.  Ah, Outlook, I loathe Outlook.  Without these constraints, I'd probably use Google docs more.  I will certainly not pay for Office 10 but I will probably download the free part, not today though.

Google Doc's are free, Google Doc's are accessible anywhere there is internet, reasonably private, and quite safe.  I think the Library is doing it's patrons a disservice teaching Office instead of Google, and a harm teaching Office 03.

But I use a small word processing and calendar program called My Journal,  the writing part is easy to use, the calendar kind of clunky, I might switch to Google, it started as a very secure program for journals and is designed to be installed on a Flash drive.   Private and portable but vulnerable to loss.  It actually is easier to blog on and then export to Blogger than using Blogger.