the story. . . It goes against my nature as someone who majored in French in college, but in these parts, you pronounce the "L" in Rambouillet whether you want to or not. Say it a few times. Let it roll around on your tongue. If I can get used to it, so can you.Anyway, these gentle giants are direct descendants from the Spanish Merinos that Ferdinand, King of Spain hoarded up until the late 18th Century. Lucky for Louis XVI, King of France, his cousin Ferdi gave him 359 Merinos, which Louis installed at his farm in Rambouillet in Northern France and bred with some English long wools to create a distinct, but related breed. Sadly for Louis, he was beheaded before he could fully appreciate the fruits of his idea.The ever versatile Rambouillet arrived in the U.S. in 1840 where they have thrived in a variety of climates and on a variety of food. These guys are hardy and do well on a diet of spurge and other meager grasses. They are also big (200-300 pounds), good mamas, prolific breeders, and producers of fine wool, all of which makes them a hit with ranchers who might actually make a living raising Rambouillet sheep. Not to mention fiber artists who know how to appreciate a nice fine wool straight off the sheep. THE KNITTY GRITTY. . .  Photo courtesy of Helle Rambouillet, Dillon, Montana. Since the Rambouillet is a kissing cousin to the more famous Merino, you can expect a fine fiber with next-to-skin softness, with some caveats. The Rambouillet fiber is a tad warmer because the crimp is a tad more disorganized. The fiber is also a tad sturdier than Merino fiber, so it will pill less and wear longer. It has a little less luster, though, so when you dye it, expect a matte finish with a softer uptake of color.
Rambouillet yarn is bouncier, where Merino fiber can be spun into sleeker yarn.
Nuts & bolts:
Staple length: 2-4 inches, max 5 inches.
Micron count: 18-24
Color: mainly white, but you can find grays and blacks
Felts easily.
High lanolin content, so wash your fleece in super hot water as soon as you get it without agitation. Best not to store a Rambouillet fleece in the grease. It will seize up like that day old piece of pizza in your fridge. fun fact. . . Rambouillets have done well on Western ranges in spite of the coyotes and mountain lions looking for snacks. This is partly because they snuggle together at night (think: puppy pile) refusing to give hungry predators outliers to poach. unrelated fun fact. . .
Last night our girls put themselves to bed in their coop for the first time. You know...as opposed to snuggling on the bicycles in the basement and us having to pluck them off and put them in the coop one by one before it got dark. I was so proud! They're growing up so fast.
|  The girls...it's hard to get a picture that isn't six butts up in the air. | Thanks, as always for reading. If there's a fiber animal you are curious about, leave a comment and let me know and I'll get right on it!
There be dragons at my house right now. Stinkbugs, actually. Stomping around all over the place. I chucked a whole smoothie last week because it tasted like stinkbug. Little armored charlatan must have crawled in the Vitamix before he went to his choppy death.
Embarrassing? Not really. We are outdoors people, so bugs on the walls and snakes in the cellar are as normal for us as scented candles and drinking wine out of stemmed glasses. I feel like I'm camping all the time at my house. Only with indoor plumbing. And "Breaking Bad" on TV. But I still drink my wine out of jelly jars.
I draw the line at MOTHS, though.
Moths, I don't tolerate because they snack on wool. They like all natural and even synthetic fibers. Which means everything in your yarn stash is on the smorgasbord. They like the way you and your yarn smell. But don't consider that a compliment!
BE RUTHLESS with these critters, or else they will make you cry.
HOW TO BE RUTHLESS:
1. Regularly and religiously inspect, CLEAN out, vacuum and wash areas where you store your yarn and fiber. Clean the area with a lavender-scented soap like Dr. Bronner's.
2. If you find evidence of moths in your yarn or in your sweaters, put your stuff in the FREEZER for a few days (at least two).
3. Moth balls smell like the toxic soup they are, so avoid them and MAKE SACHETS instead.
YOUR MOTH-BUSTING SACHET RECIPE:
- Sachet sacks. Be as upscale or as downscale as you like, here. Options include paper tea filters, organza bags, old panty hose tied in a knot, old-fashioned canvas hardware bags.
- Sachet fillers. Lavender is my go-to moth repellant, mostly because I planted a bunch of it last year in my garden. I mix it with fresh rosemary (also from my garden), then sprinkle a few drops of cedar essential oil in the mix. Moths also despise mint, cloves, thyme, lemon, tansy. Experiment to find a blend that pleases you, but makes your dragons squirm. Boost your ruthless quotient by adding drops of essential oils to your herb mixture.
Blend your herbs. Stuff your sacks. Toss them in with your stash. Done. |
Tea filters...you can get them at the health food store.
Rosemary blooming in my garden this morning.
| Do you have any ideas or tips for protecting your stash? Share them with us by leaving a comment below. See you there in the comments section or over on our Facebook page.
If only she ate stinkbugs!
...often go astray." Oh that Robert Burns was wise, was he not? I wasted, I mean, devoted some, I mean, a lot of time the other day to planning my summer knitting projects. That's not usually how I roll, and I may end up with a bunch of unfinished projects scattered around my house, in random project bags and tote bags and dog bowls and probably down between the couch cushions. But I got excited about summer knitting for the first time this year and I wanted to explore some new yarns and patterns (and de-stash a bit, too). Wish me luck!
SOCKS FOR TWO-LEGGED JULIE
My grandmother, Muna, was a voracious needle-worker--knitting, needle point, cross stitch, sewing. You name it she did it until literally the day before she died. She was working on a cross stitch. She finished everything except that cross stitch. Muna didn't know how to not finish anything she started, unlike the rest of the Wilson women. She told my Aunt Nancy she hoped Nancy married a one-legged man because Nancy had one sock syndrome--finish the first sock and find it unbearable to start the second one.
I found a way to finish sock number 2 and stay married to a two-legged man...have a sock give-away. Thanks to Julie, who has two legs and won this pair, I am racing towards the toe of sock #2.
By the way, I love these cable needles by Brittany. You get 3 sizes in a package and because they are made of wood, they are grippy and super easy to manipulate while you cable on.
FLOW TANK
OMG, I bought yarn!
I can justify this. It's cotton. It's summer soon. I don't spin cotton. I need a white tank top. There...justification done. How easy was that? A lot easier than knitting a swatch and counting the stitches in this ripply, ribbony yarn from Tahki Yarns, that's for sure!
heather hoodie
I love a short sleeved cardigan for layering on cool nights. I found this pattern on Ravelry and it is perfect!The yarn is Noro Cash Iroha and it's pure decadence with silk and cashmere blended with a little wool. It's already a favorite and I haven't even started it yet.Again with the swatching. I like things to fit.LITTLE SECRET ABOUT THIS YARN...I've already knit it up twice into two different sweaters. Pullovers. Fronts. Backs. One sleeve. Part of the second sleeve. Only to realize I wasn't feeling the love and it had to be yanked. I wonder if my grandmother ever frogged a sweater. I wonder how she would feel about frogging it twice.
UGH...I FROGGED THIS ONE, TOO
I went on an unraveling rampage a few months ago. Just took a deep breath, cranked up some music, probably angry hip-hop, and started ripping.This is one of the things that had to go and it was heartbreaking for two reasons:1. I'd never cast on that many stitches for a project EVER. 288. A s**t-load.2. It fit really well...from the waist up.
From the waist down, though, a disaster. The pockets were funky and the linen yarn stretched so that by then end of the one day I wore it, it went from tunic to maxi dress.
I'm giving it another shot, though, with modifications. The yarn in Euroflax sport weight linen. The pattern is Liesl from Cocoknits. I love her stuff so much for it's Japanese aesthetic. So, much, I bought two more patterns for more summer knitting...Maude and Paulina.
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I'm gonna need a lot of luck and a long summer to get through my list!
What are you making this summer? Leave a comment below and let us know your favorite summer projects.
Did I mention I completed a 2,000 hour yoga teacher training in 2009 at The College of Purna Yoga with Aadil Palkhivala? I travelled back & forth from Asheville to Seattle a few times, then just packed up my car and went for a year after selling my gallery. Aadil is an amazing teacher of alignment-based asana (poses). But Purna Yoga is much more than just a physical practice. "It is the art of loving yourself by living from the heart," and it continues to change my life on a daily basis as I keep refining my ability to live from my heart and honor the wishes of my soul.
That said, most of us come to yoga through the physical practice. Maybe we have pains that need healing or imbalances that are throwing us off. I've been paying attention lately to what my body craves, and I find when I sit and spin or sit and knit or just sit too much period, this, or some variation, is what I crave: But I don't have any of that stuff! Just because you don't have a pile of fancy "yoga props" doesn't mean you can't fashion a variation of this heart-opening, spine balancing pose from what you have in your home. Do you have blankets? Fold those neatly and line them up along your spine. Knees don't bend that way? Straighten your legs. Shoulders ripping out of their sockets? Support your arms with pillows.
When I'm doing a marathon spin session (meaning longer than an hour), I set up two yoga blocks--one for my head, one for my upper back, that I place between my shoulder blades. I get a pain there that wants to take me down on a regular basis, it shows no mercy. I lie back, close my eyes and breath, releasing tension and expanding the love in my heart.
Set up.
Ahhhh!
BENEFITS 1. Restorative poses like this soothe the nervous system, relax the body, quiet the mind and allow healing energy to flow unimpeded through your body.
2. Back bends open the heart, allowing you to give and receive love more freely.
3. Back bends also rebalance the spine. Gravity is busy 24/7 pulling us forward and down, crunching our vertebrae in the front, squeezing our discs out the back and stretching and weakening our postural muscles. Back bends reverse all that and make us look younger and taller, not to mention feel better. And who doesn't want that?
and because it's a yarn blog... Did you notice my hat? Last one of the season. It's a simple roll brimmed hat knit from Echoview Fiber Mill's Alpaca/Mohair/Merino blend (local fiber, mostly) and sprinkle dyed by moi. This yarn is so soft, I just love it. Almost as much as I love pom pons! Thanks for joining us, and leave a comment below letting us know either 1) what is your favorite yoga pose or other activity to relieve the stress of knitting or spinning too much and/or 2) what is your favorite hat yarn.
 The Random People Picker (aka slips of paper in a hat) has chosen
Julie Bantin
as the new proud owner of a pair of hand-knit socks, size 8ish.
Congratulations to Julie and to everyone who left a comment on the blog or my Facebook page.
Julie, as you can see, they are still on the needles, but I'm all over it. I'll e-mail you when your socks are complete and we will make arrangements.
Have you liked my Facebook page, yet? Please hop on over there now and like Bellalulu Yarn and share it with all your knitting friends, too.
And stay tuned for more giveaways and Etsy. Soon! Very soon!
And here is a little something I finished yesterday...Hand painted Blue Faced Leicester roving, hand spun then Navajo plied. Yum.
I'm not a big fan of thrift shopping, but sometimes I surround myself with light and take the plunge for the sake of a good roasting pan. They're perfect for kettle dyeing yarn and fiber. And, unlike the crock pots at the Goodwill store, the roasting pans are cheap. (Who spends $17 for a used crock pot? Does that seem overpriced to you?) I took the Goodwill plunge last week and look what else I found! I know! Hideous, right? But so full of potential. Potential to be something else. And I'm nothing if not the Mother of Reinvention. Mostly of myself, but occasionally of sweaters. These two practically leapt off the rack and into my arms the other day. I am excited because against all odds I found two sweaters made of NATURAL FIBERS! A minor miracle in my opinion. The one on the left is 70% lambs wool/30% alpaca. The one of the right is 100% cashmere. Woot! Here's what I have planned for them both: That's right. These two ugly ducklings have a new life waiting for them just as soon as I unravel them down to the last thread. I can see the manly wool sweater transformed into a cute little cardigan with some flattering shaping and unusual buttons. The cashmere could be a neck warmer or wrist warmers or even a lace shawl. It's all about picking the right sweater and taking the time to carefully deconstruct it. Here are some tips and tools to make your project go a little more smoothly. tools you will appreciate: 1. Seam ripper--use sparingly and wisely.
2. Strong magnifying glasses.
3. Bright light.
4. Patience--it could get tedious.
5. A few episodes of Downton Abbey or Breaking Bad, depending on your inclinations. | |
TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL UNRAVELING:
| 1. Look for quality fibers.
Natural fibers in light colors are ideal. If you don't like the color, but it's a light color, you can kettle dye it or hand paint it. I'm not wild about the blue of this cashmere, but I know I could overdye it with purple to make a beautiful indigo. Or I could ply it with another blue or green and let the eye transform it into another shade of blue.
2. Look for proper construction.
Be sure to look inside your sweater. Look at the seams and make sure the sweater was not cut from a bolt of knit cloth then serged together. If this is the case, you will end up with lots of short pieces of yarn rather than a continuous thread.
This might be okay depending on how you want to use the yarn. The cashmere sweater was constructed the right way for continuous yarn, but it keeps breaking as I unravel because it is so delicate. It's okay with me. I won't be able to knit it into something new. But I can throw those little pieces into my drum carder with other fibers and card up a textured batt for spinning that will have a hint of luxury fiber in the mix, a soupcon of cashmere, if you will.
2. Look for the little tail.
Here's where your seam ripper and your patience come in handy. You should be able to poke and scratch and dig and finagle around at the end of a seam and eventually extract a small tail that is the key to total bliss. This tail, when you find it and give it a tug, will unzip your seam instantaneously and make you wonder how your clothing even manages to make it through one day in action. It's quite satisfying once you find it and it will make your unraveling journey smooth and carefree.
3. Unzip all the seams before you unravel.
Separate the individual pieces from the whole garment--sleeves, collars, insets--then your unraveling can proceed uninterrupted. Wind it into a ball as your sweater gets smaller and smaller.
4. Skein it and wash it and set it.
Once you've unraveled your prize, you'll notice it's a bit kinky. You could knit it from the kinky ball (huh?), but I recommend skeining it, setting the twist to remove the kinks, then rewinding it for smoother knitting. You will definitely want it in skeins if you are going to dye it.
There it is! I'll keep you updated as the transformation progresses, and I'd love to see what you find at the thrift store and how you reinvent it. |
Good seam!
Bad seam! This is what a serged seam looks like.
Oh joy! I found the little tail.
Pulled it.
Voila!
A bird's nest, and some yarn.
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I've got two things on the needles to share. This first is a poncho....rather 3/4 of a poncho which I mentioned in THIS POST. It's not exactly languishing, but it did come to a grinding halt when I ran out of yarn. Luckily I called this yarn "Kitchen Sink" because I raided that drawer of fiber odds & ends and tossed it all together on the drum carder like a big fiber salad where I try to use up all the veggies in the fridge before they melt, sprout or become carpeted with mold. I'm waiting on a shipment of merino from Mohair & More before I continue on my merry poncho way, knitting with hot dogs. One of the challenges of knitting your own designs with your own hand spun yarn is figuring out how much yarn you need. The other problem is the difficulty one has in repeating the essence of a hand spun yarn if one does happen to run out. One is open to suggestions.
So many fixin's.
Moving on to the next project...a sock! One lonely sock! It's a little big for me, and destined to stay lonely unless someone with a size 8-10 (women's) foot would like a nice pair of hand knit socks. Leave a comment and I'll pick a winner at random and finish those socks just for you! Help me out...I need a reason to go on.
This color is the most accurate...a lovely pinkish red with cables and everything!
Still slowly working my way through Spin Art: Mastering the Craft of Textured Yarns by Jacey Boggs. Sometimes it is all I can do not to chuck a project in the trash and stomp on it, so fierce is my judgment. I've learned, though, that with creative endeavours it's usually advisable to step away from the thing that vexes you so and come back to it later with a fresh perspective and an open mind. Drinking a glass of wine helps. Nine times out of ten this works and I find something beautiful or charming or satisfying about the piece. Not this time.I've resisted trying to learn tail spinning because, for me, tail spun yarn veers into the realm of novelty yarn. That makes me think of Jo-Annes and Michaels and I get the shivers. But looking at Jacey's exquisite yarn made me want to try it. It gave me hope for the potential of creating tail spun yarn that is dignified and artfully textured. As opposed to yarn that looks suspiciously like the yarn I made the very first day I learned to spin. Even after the wait and the wine and some more waiting, I still think "hot mess" when I look at it, only now it's a knitted swatch. I wonder if the cats would like it?
Never one to pass up a learning opportunity, here is what I gleaned from the experience.1. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right.2. In a uniform color, I do see potential for this technique--as a lapel on a jacket, a pillow, cuffs for mittens, boot toppers.3. I could use some live instruction. What can I sell so I can go take Jacey's workshop in April at the John C. Campbell Folk School?4. I love the drape of core spun yarn!
For those interested in the technical details, tail spinning is a variation of core spinning. Instead of spinning from a batt, you spin from a pile of prepared locks. Long wools like Teeswater and Wensleydale work well. Mohair is ideal. I used a combination of wool (the green and the teal) and local mohair from Echoview Farms. To prepare, I teased out the base of the lock (swiped it across my hand carder, really) and left the tip intact. As I enticed the fiber onto the core, I went slowly enough so that I could pull out the tips (tails) as they went by so they would sprout out of the yarn like Carrot Top's worst bed head. You decide. Does it bear repeating? | |
Still slowly working my way through Spin Art: Mastering the Craft of Textured Yarns by Jacey Boggs. Sometimes it is all I can do not to chuck a project in the trash and stomp on it, so fierce is my judgment. I've learned, though, that with creative endeavours it's usually advisable to step away from the thing that vexes you so and come back to it later with a fresh perspective and an open mind. Drinking a glass of wine helps. Nine times out of ten this works and I find something beautiful or charming or satisfying about the piece. Not this time.I've resisted trying to learn tail spinning because, for me, tail spun yarn veers into the realm of novelty yarn. That makes me think of Jo-Annes and Michaels and I get the shivers. But looking at Jacey's exquisite yarn made me want to try it. It gave me hope for the potential of creating tail spun yarn that is dignified and artfully textured. As opposed to yarn that looks suspiciously like the yarn I made the very first day I learned to spin. Even after the wait and the wine and some more waiting, I still think "hot mess" when I look at it, only now it's a knitted swatch. I wonder if the cats would like it?
Never one to pass up a learning opportunity, here is what I gleaned from the experience.1. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right.2. In a uniform color, I do see potential for this technique--as a lapel on a jacket, a pillow, cuffs for mittens, boot toppers.3. I could use some live instruction. What can I sell so I can go take Jacey's workshop in April at the John C. Campbell Folk School?4. I love the drape of core spun yarn!
For those interested in the technical details, tail spinning is a variation of core spinning. Instead of spinning from a batt, you spin from a pile of prepared locks. Long wools like Teeswater and Wensleydale work well. Mohair is ideal. I used a combination of wool (the green and the teal) and local mohair from Echoview Farms. To prepare, I teased out the base of the lock (swiped it across my hand carder, really) and left the tip intact. As I enticed the fiber onto the core, I went slowly enough so that I could pull out the tips (tails) as they went by so they would sprout out of the yarn like Carrot Top's worst bed head. You decide. Does it bear repeating? | |
I'm a list maker. I love to make them and am enamored with crossing things off them. I keep a running notebook full of dated "To Do" lists. It's a journal of sorts that documents progress (or lack thereof--some things NEVER get crossed off). To keep up my momentum in life and in business, I make a point of listing my three MITs (Most Important Tasks) first thing in the am. When I get those crossed off, I count that as progress and a day well spent. If I want to eat bon bons the rest of the day, I am allowed once those three MITs are off the list.
Looking back over my lists, I noticed recently that I rarely include creative ideation on my MIT list, and I think that's a mistake. I think it's important to spend time just playing with whatever medium you work in, without regard for the outcome or the end result. I think it's important to explore your materials and be open to letting them speak through you about their nature and what they want to become. I think it's important to play, in whatever form that takes for you, in order to stir the pot and break out of ruts. Even though any time I sit down at my wheel it feels like creative work, I try to remember that even that can slip into the realm of mechanical more easily that one might expect.
So this week, I tried something new. I designated Sunday as my Creative Noodle day. I still made my list, but my list was only for creative noodling. It looked like this:
- Play with color.
- Spin art yarn.
- Card some batts.
- Play with poncho & wrap designs.
- KNIT!
- Play with product photography: light/location/props/time of day/etc.
Here's how it went down. PLAY WITH COLOR? CHECK I broke out my Caran D'Ache water soluble crayons and my Kuretake Water Brush and blended and mixed some colors I'd been thinking about on my walk in the woods the day before. The idea came from an orange dye job gone bad, then resurrected with a little swim in some dilute sapphire dye. Everything just calmed down a bit and bad fiber was made good again.
I hear Caran D'Ache. One day I'll have the 144 color tin. One day.
SPIN ART YARN? CHECK |
I'd show you the "before" picture, but it would put your eyes out.
| First there was an epic fail and a vine-full of sour grapes about how I really don't like Tail Spun yarn anyway. And what do you know? I don't have a picture and I'm not running downstairs to document that hot mess. (Another time, I promise). But I remembered author Anne Lamott's sage advice in Bird by Bird about being willing to write "shitty first drafts" before getting to the good stuff. I cast the "shitty" tailspun yarn aside and got busy playing. Look what I made!
FOR THE SPINNING GEEKS:
It's a bit of a fusion of boucle, the autowrap and tornadoes. It's a 2-ply core (mohair/shetland from resurrected dye job mentioned earlier). I was autowrapping with commercial mohair and metallic copper thread as I plied, but that was not going well, so I manipulated the autowrap as if I were making a boucle (that's what all the little nests of purple mohair are). Finally, I plied it again with the copper thread to fix the boucle nests and there it is. A sweet little skein of whatchamacallit that makes me smile.CARD SOME BATTS? NOPE. MOVING ON.
PLAY WITH PONCHO & WRAP DESIGNS? CHECK. KNIT? CHECK.  Two for one, here. Two years ago, after huddling under my friend Pattie's poncho at 3 in the morning after a raucous night of Moogfest (it was cold, it was late, there were no taxis answering their phones, we called my beloved husband in the middle of the night and he showed up, as he does, because Ralph is Top Ten), I decided I needed a poncho. Finally, this might be it. It will be more decorative than utilitarian, designed for the warmer winters and to show off textured yarn. When it works out, I'll share the pattern. I'm knitting it on size 50 needles! It's like knitting with hot dogs! As for Moogfest...the next night, and the next year, we rented a room at the Radisson and Ralph slept soundly through the night. The End. No more Moogfest in Asheville.
PLAY WITH PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY? check. | Here's my latest set up. If the sun is out, and the time is between 9-11 am, and venus is in mars, and the daffodils are blooming, and the moon is full, and it's the year of the dragon, and the Magic Eight Ball says "yes," THEN my photos will be right on.
| | So, there it is...a day of play and exploration and, not surprisingly, rejuvenation and recommitment. Sunday is my new favorite day.
How would you spend your favorite day?
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