I flashed back to one of my former possessions today. My vintage sterling silver western saddle ring; a gift from my best friend, Katie, in junior high. A small but perfectly formed little silver saddle that sat on my finger, which featured hand tooled details, just like the leather on a real saddle, and a tiny little rope hanging off the pommel, and a wee little turquoise chip set into the horn.

The pommel is the rise at the front of the saddle and the horn is the sticky up bit at the front, for those uninitiated into the ways of western tack. I used to ride with a western saddle, way back when I was young enough to wear a silver saddle ring, and getting thrown from a horse didn’t hurt so damned bad.

When I remembered the ring today I went looking on US eBay because I knew, if there was a silver saddle ring to be had, that’s where I’d find it. You can find anything you want these days on eBay, pretty much. I did actually find a couple of saddle rings, but none of them could hold a candle to the memory of the one I used to own. Though this one came close.

I held on to my saddle ring for three decades, even when it became too small for me and I had to stop wearing it. I loved it. I have no idea where it is now. Somewhere along the way from there to here I lost it and today I am having a little nostalgia fest for my old saddle ring, and I decided to invite some friends.

I know we’re only talking about stuff here, and stuff isn’t really important, but I wonder if there’s something you once had, that you loved, and managed to lose somehow? Something you’d like to have back, if only you could? (No, your misspent youth does not count.) If so, just set it down there amongst the general splendour of my missing saddle ring, where it can be admired by all.

PS: The contest announced in the last podcast now has actual winners whose names will be declared in the next podcast, which is the one I’m currently working on. Thank you for playing along if you did.

PPS: There will be more words here again soon. I’m using up the words in another place right now, but as soon as I have a few to spare, I’ll be back.

Setting up a new computer is a royal pain. It goes like this: Try to install zipped app, Winzip launches asking if you want to buy it, realize you don’t have anything installed that will unzip things, look for free unzipper, discover ALZip no longer free, remember something you read about essential Windows apps on Lifehacker, search for and find it. Select a bunch of “essential” apps you probably don’t need but which sound good. Wait for exe file to download, launch, wait for essential apps to install. Occupy yourself while waiting by fiddling with taskbar, try to remember how icons were arranged on old machine, boot old machine, realize you still have a lot of apps to install, shuffle icons around for 20 minutes, realize you forgot something, install it, create shortcut, pin to taskbar, delete shortcut, shuffle some more, realize you forgot another app, shuffle, give up and chuck everything up there, realize this makes the taskbar too full and you can’t tell what’s open, and also, you forgot xamp. Get up, make coffee. Come back and try to remember what you were doing before you made coffee. Give up. Write blog post to complain about how hard and time consuming it is to set up a new computer.

On the up side, I have a new computer. It’s a quad core PC that was surplus to requirements for one of Tonia’s co-workers, who gave us a really sweet deal. It’s running Windows 7, and is so much faster than my old laptop, it makes me dizzy. Rejoice with me.

We’re off into the woods looking for bracken, and answers to the deep philosophical questions of life that may be found in the stitches of an Alice Starmore sweater. I’ll tell you how trigger points help knitting-related repetitive stress injuries, how the builders next door are nearly ready to stop ruining my life, and how I’m coming to terms with the impending birthday of doom. I also ‘splain why I’ve been away from the mic for so long (in case you missed the memo.) Whew!

For more information in Trigger Point therapy, click here, and here. For shoulders, buy the Frozen Shoulder Workbook, for all other repetitive stress injuries, buy the all purpose Trigger Point Therapy Workbook. I have both. They worked for me.

Look! I can knit again! (This is Mom’s shawl; its twin is on the needles.) The pattern is Bitterroot. The fiber is hand spun BFL roving from Briar Rose Fibers.

This week’s Audible pick is A Prayer for Owen Meany. Click here for your free audio book.

The knitting book that made a middle-aged woman who knows better pull an all-nighter, Sweater Quest: My year of knitting dangerously, is available here, and here. Thanks to Adrienne Martini for taking the time to talk with me about knitting and life.

Read the rest of How to Be a Poet, by Wendell Barry. (I know you will.)

The results of the Bracken Experiment are below. Clockwise from upper left – three skeins orange yellow (from onion skins) that I do like, a single skein of the original yarn, a single skein of the gold colour (onion skins and alum) that I didn’t like, (but am glad I saved); just below the gold, two skeins of pale green gray that I tossed into the pot the next morning. (I’m so glad I did that!) to use up the dye stock solution; below them three skeins of darker green gray, from the first batch, and to their left, the two over-dyed skeins that were gold, but are now more olive. Not a huge difference between the dark greens, it must be said, but I’ll probably use the over dyed gold in the yoke of my planned Fair Isle, just to be safe. All I need now are some hot colors. Maybe a green close to the shade of the actual bracken, or a bright clear pink. What do you think?

KniTunes were provided by and used with the permission of:

Additional music by Allison Williams and Chance McCoy, with thanks!

Download Episode 91

I’ve a very full Sunday planned, and an even busier week ahead, so I thought I’d pop in and share this week’s M3 video with you a little earlier. This one’s from Etsy, and it’s about natural dyeing.

As you know, I have not had much in the way of success with natural dyes. Unless you count flesh colored yarn a success, which I don’t. My last experience with natural dyeing was enough to put me off it for a good long while. After seeing the results of Felix’s gorgeous walnut-dyed sweater a few weeks ago, however, I was inspired to give it another go. Fortunately, I had onion skins on hand, which soon found their way into a simmering pot. After a hour or so on the stove I strained the liquid, poured it into my trusty Burco boiler, added un-mordanted yarn, and crossed my fingers.

I have mordants on hand – alum, as well as some of the more noxious heavy metals – but I read somewhere that dyeing in an aluminum pot works as well as alum. The Burco is lined with aluminum, so I decided to chuck everything in and hope for the best. As you can see, it was a good strategy. Natural colored yarn became soft orange-y yellow yarn. The color in the Crayola box called “bitter-sweet.” I love that color. And I achieved it in under an hour. Well, a year of saving onion skins, and an hour.

As luck would have it, I only had time to simmer the one batch before it started to rain. I had lots of dye stock solution left, so I drained the Burco and brought everything inside. I used my stainless steel jam pan. I know, I know. You’re not supposed to mix dyeing things with food things. Onion skins being non-toxic, I made an exception.

The second batch was a bit of a surprise. I decided to mordant with alum (also non-toxic) as I knew the stainless steel pan would not have the same effect as the trusty aluminum lined Burco. It was getting dark, and the light above the stove isn’t great, so I couldn’t really see how dark the wool was getting, or if it was the same color as the first few skeins, or lighter. I really didn’t know what to expect.

In the cold light of day the following morning, I discovered that I’d created an entirely different color with that second batch. Mordanting resulted in the gold you see at the bottom of these images.

It’s not a bad color, this gold. But I don’t like it as well as I do the color of the first batch. So today I’m heading into the woods with Tonia in search of bracken fiddle heads that, I’m reliably told, are an excellent source of yellowy green. The plan is to over dye the gold I don’t like, and throw some un-dyed yarn into the pot as well, and hopefully maybe get two greens. We’ll see.

As if turfing Tonia out of bed early and making her collect bracken before the day gets too hot isn’t enough joy for a Sunday morning, I’ll be taking my trusty AKG C1000 into the woods, to record the process. Yes, that does mean I’m working on a podcast. I’ll talk you soon.

Simon, a retired policeman, and one of the four farmers down at the end of our lane, is our closest farming neighbour. Well, he used to be a farming neighbour. Now he’s just a neighbour.

Simon only ever kept cows, and he stopped keeping those a few years back when changes to Ministry of Agriculture rules made cows too expensive. Not to keep, but to dispose of. What used to be free – the carting away of dead cows, of any age – now costs several hundred pounds. Young cow carcasses are still carted away for free, but Simon’s middle-aged herd of breeding stock were going to cost him dearly when they shuffled off this mortal coil. This change in policy meant the end of hobbyist cow farming, as far as Simon was concerned, and the end of cow watching in the pasture behind our garden.

I always had a soft spot for Simon’s cows because they were in the field on the day Tonia and I first viewed our house. We leaned over the back fence to watch the cows one afternoon, and Gerta, the previous owner of our house, opened the window and asked, “Can I help you?”, which is British for “What the hell are you doing?”

“We’re interested in buying the house,” we said, and Gerta kindly invited us inside to have a look. It was high summer, and cows could be heard in every room, through every open window. Cow munching provided the soundtrack for our tour of the house, and from the terrace it sounded as if they might be eating their way through much of the back garden. We liked the little house well enough, and were blown away by its view across the valley, but the cows were also one of the main selling points.

I know. It doesn’t seem like having cows for neighbours would be a selling point. They don’t do much beyond eat and shit, loudly. Which means that in the summer, with our windows flung wide, we are blessed with not only an abundance of cow noises, from both the front and back ends of cows, but also the flies which inevitably follow the latter. These come in two varieties. There are the large horse flies or, I suppose in this case, cow flies, that dive in through open doors and windows, Kamikaze-like, and leave just as quickly. We think of them as the “smart” flies, because they usually manage to find their own way out. The second, smaller variety are dozy little “idiot” flies that circle aimlessly around the ceiling light, or hurl themselves uselessly against open windows, to die beaten and baffled on sunny window sills.

We always assumed Simon’s organic beef had to be tasty, what with the satisfying lives his cows seemed to enjoy. We never actually bought any because after a few summers of watching adorable calves grow quickly in the pasture out back, we had neither the heart, nor the stomach, to eat any of them. They were endlessly entertaining to watch, moreover, we began to think of them as friends. As everyone knows, one doesn’t eat one’s friends.

We’ve been saddened by the empty pastures, just as we were at the news that Simon would no longer be keeping cows, though other farmers in the village say it’s a mercy, really, that Simon’s fields contain naught but grass now. His cows were, according to some, “half wild and largely unmanageable.” Their own cows are, naturally, so perfectly behaved you could invite them to tea. Farmers are nearly as fond of pointing at each other’s gates, and saying, “They don’t look after their beasts there, you know,” as they are of their own methods for farming.

The field out back is full of cows this week. Though I haven’t asked, I’m fairly sure they’re not Simon’s, as his cows were always so pretty, and these new cows are not a wholly attractive bunch. They are rough and ready cows that I’d put at somewhere between one and two years of age. A teenage gang of cows, several of which sport wicked looking horns, they’re fiercely territorial, for all that this is a relatively new ‘hood in which they live. I’ve seen cats fleeing across the pasture, pursued by these young thug cows, and they mass at the hedgerow, glaring, whenever Ruby is the garden. Lean and curious, they’ll come right up to the fence when I’m out back, to noisily munch, and gaze, and wonder what the hell I am doing. They seem placid enough where humans are concerned, but there’s something about their eyes that warns they’re not to be trifled with.

I’ve been watching the herd for a week now and though I’m used to looking at cows in the field, I feel as if I’ve never before seen cows in my life, probably because I haven’t. Painting has me seeing everything, including cows, with new eyes. Beginner’s eyes, Ruth called the process, on Twitter last week.

Beginner’s eyes are why, when I stare at cows lying across the field in the early morning sun, I don’t see a field of green dotted with bovine black and white, but masses of yellow and orange bodies, and purple and green shadows. I may not be able to paint cows yet, but I can see them with my new eyes. Beginner’s eyes are responsible for what I’m sure is a vacant expression on my face as I stare, slack jawed, at spectacularly back lit grass and amazing light falling on cow shaped bodies. I’m sure I look like an idiot, standing, staring at cows. You will tell me, won’t you, if I begin to drool?

No, not my first choice in beach refreshment, but the title of my latest watercolor. (Click to biggerize.)

The scene is a small rocky beach at Saundersfoot harbor, painted from a photo taken back in October. The day was overcast, and the scene was decidedly lacking the play of shadow and light that makes images interesting. Still, I was intrigued by the planes of the beach access ramp and railings, the dynamic lines of the sea wall, the rocky cliffs, and the lettering on the dilapidated old corrugated refreshment stand, which reads: “TEAS ICES SNACKS”.

Sadly, masking the tiny letters prior to painting wasn’t entirely successful, causing Tonia to read the sign as “Testicle Snacks”. Although I did try to beef up the legibility with a bit of Chinese white, now that she’s read the sign in her own inimitable way, I do too, every time I look at it. There’s nothing to do, really, but make it the title of the painting.

What I like about this piece are places where the watercolor went off on its own little tangents; in the cliffs, the rocky beach, and the concrete. There are two backruns in the painting (also called blossoms, blooms, cauliflowers, watermarks, backwashes or runbacks); one at the top of the brick part of the seawall, which added some much needed texture, and another at the right edge of the lowest ramp. Backruns happen when you apply a second wash before the first is dry. While technically a mistake, I kind of like the unpredictability of backruns, and I made this lower one on purpose. Once I applied the wash I could only stand back and watch what happened next. The sea washes against this ramp at high tide, and the the backrun captured the texture of the concrete ramp beautifully. I didn’t really paint that. It just happened. And this is what I love so much about watercolor.

For the record, I used my new little tube of artist’s quality ultramarine blue and, man oh man, is it ever a joy to paint with. The only way I can think to describe it is “more.” More juice. More life. It’s like the difference between fresh strawberries, and frozen ones. It’s amazing. I can’t wait to squeeze all my student quality tubes dry, so I can replace them with the good stuff.

This method of painting, laying down wash after wash, is easier to control than flinging juicy paint and pushing it around the canvas, and it made the actual process much less fraught. I took my time, and walked away a lot, and worked on the painting over a few days. It was very relaxing. That said, I don’t find the finished painting all that interesting to look at. It’s kind of flat. A dull painting of what was essentially a dull and overcast day.

I read somewhere that you have to be willing to risk ruining a good painting in order to make a great one, and I wonder if perhaps the missing ingredient in this painting is, simply, risk.

*

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted a video for Multi Media Monday, mostly because I’ve not come across anything that felt imperative to share. That changed this week when knitsib, Leslie, shared this week’s lovely, lovely video with me, and now I get to share it with you. Thanks, again, Leslie.

Passport photos make everyone look like a terrorist. You know it’s true.

Please don’t tell me that your photo is worse. Nothing could possibly be worse than whatever the hell is up with my Alfalfa hair. The girl who took this photo at Kinkos ten years ago didn’t say a word. Presumably she looked through the view finder. She cannot be blamed for the rictus grin and stare-y eyes, but she had to have seen my hair. Not. One. Word.

Thankfully, this passport has expired.

Which is why, when in London two weeks ago, I made a very special pilgrimage…

… up many, many steep flights of stairs…

… to the place that is passport photo purveyor to the stars. All those pictures above my chair? Those are stars. From Allen, Woody, to Winslet, Kate, since 1956 everyone who is anyone has had their passport photo taken here. Yes they are that good.

If you are going to be in London, and your passport will need replacing in the next year or so, you would be crazy not to avail yourself of the genius at the top of those stairs. They take as many images as you want, and they don’t print until you’re happy.

No one is ever going to confuse me with Kate Winslet, but at least I no longer look like a terrorist.

Last week at this time I was on a bus, traveling from Hackney to Barking, an area of London I’ve never visited before. Barking is a rather odd little place, about as far east from the center of the city as it is possible to live, and still call yourself a Londoner. I was in Barking to assist my friend, Katie, and about five hundred other committed souls (plus our fifty from Hackney), with a process known as “leafleting.”

Leafleting is an incredibly easy, if somewhat messy job that involves walking through someone else’s neighborhood, and sticking something which they didn’t ask to read through the mail slot of their door. It’s a dirty job but, especially in this case, someone had to do it, and that someone was me.

The leaflets in question were eight page newsprinted papers denouncing, quite rightly, a far right political party known as the British National Party, or BNP. And just who are the BNP? Well you may ask. They’re the party who would like to return Britain to its all-white roots, by kicking out everyone in the country who was not born here. They would like white people to be given first priority in housing, jobs and education. They would very much like to outlaw mixed race marriages. They are, in short, racist nutbars, and I am happy to say that they are a very small minority party here in Britain. Except in Barking, where they actually have a very real chance of gaining control of a council and getting their hands on a £200,000+ annual budget. And that would be bad. Which is why I spent a beautiful Saturday morning in London getting my hands dirty for the cause.

I haven’t forgotten my promise to share the best damned passport photo I’ve ever taken, and full details of where you can go to get one too, if you’re so inclined. I will do that, as soon I’ve scanned the image and can share it with you. Plus the Kinkos version from last time, so you can compare the two. That will have to wait for Monday, however, as I’ve a few fibery things on the go at present and am just itching to get back to them.

Last year I scored a number of cones of Welsh wool singles from the Wool Museum. The folks at the museum are trying to get a yarn spinning operation off the ground there, using all the old machinery and actual Welsh wool. It’s early days yet, but the last time I visited, Keith gave me some cones to bring home and try out. They’ve been sitting for months, and this week I made the time to ply it up as slightly-lighter-than-Aran triples. The stuff was covered in machine oil, and lanolin, and took some serious scouring to get clean. The last batch of newly plied yarn is in the sink, as I type.

It’s a fairly coarse wool, not really soft enough for next to skin wear, but I’ve got about 800 grams of finished yarn, more or less, and it will make a nice top down raglan cardigan someday. Since I didn’t spin this stuff, I only plied it, I’m totally not attached, making it the perfect yarn on which to experiment with a little natural dyeing. I’ve been saving onion skins for over a year, and today’s the day.

The skins are simmering away on the stove, but I don’t have enough of them to dye the entire stash of newly plied wool. However, I did notice today that there are a lot of bracken fiddle heads in my garden, which means there are plenty more to be had in the woods.

Other than leafleting for a good cause, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday morning than gearing up for a spate of natural dying. Results to follow. Stay tuned!

Life’s been a bit of whirlwind over the past couple of weekends, with much visiting with friends, a lot of sketching, many good meals, occasionally perhaps a wee bit too much wine, and even a little knitting. The trip to London this past weekend was, as ever, both incredibly stimulating and completely exhausting. Being used to neither the pace, nor the pounding pavement of big cities I am, as they say here, “shagged”. I promised Tonia that I Will Rest Today, and I really do plan to do so. After I gently tidy the house. And do some restful laundry. And maybe get in a bit of relaxing gardening.

Full London report later this week, to include where I ate, what I saw, whom I hung out with, and what yarn I bought, as well as full disclosure on where to go in London to obtain THE BEST passport photo you will ever have taken. Seriously. If your passport expires soon, and you’re going to be in London, and you’re tired of looking like a convict in your passport, you simply must have your new photo taken at the amazing place that is passport photo picture purveyor to the stars.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t wait to share this week’s M3 video – The Revolution Will Be Animated – a mini documentary about Nina Paley, the director of the animated film, Sita Sings the Blues. Ms Paley had to pay upwards of $70,000 to use songs from the 1930’s in her animated movie. She then put the movie online for free and turned herself into a free-culture activist. I adore her work as much as I admire her stance against draconian copyright laws that are currently being drafted by Big Media across all corners of the developed world. Plus Nina just seems nice, you know? Like someone I could happily sit down and chat to over a coffee for several hours. The video is a bit longer than my usual M3 fare, but it’s well worth sixteen minutes of your time.

The handspun yarn currently on my needles began life as a Shetland fleece Tonia gave me for my birthday, about 8 years ago. Do you remember this yarn? I talked it about in a podcast a couple of years ago. This is the yarn that I tried to dye red using avocado peels, pits, and some horrible heavy metals. Might have been tin. The colour stopped a bit short of red, rather nearer to that colour that Crayola used to call “Flesh”.

Yep. Flesh.

So I over-dyed it using acid dyes and, despite extensive pre-testing to determine precisely how much dye would be necessary to dye the yarn a soft coral, I overshot the mark and landed closer to orange. Not quite electric orange, it doesn’t vibrate when you look at it, but… it’s orange.

But that’s not the worst of it, oh no. The worst is that all those chemicals took what had been a lovely soft fiber and just beat the hell out of it. So the yarn isn’t even as nice as it was when I started. And it’s lace weight handspun. From a birthday fleece. And now it’s orange. TRAGIC.

Now that I can knit again for short periods, I am thinking about projects and wanting to start twelve new things all right this second. I discovered the Summit Shawl on knitty.com this week, and the shapes it makes kind of reminded me of … Yes! It’s like one of those safety mesh orange things.

And that is when it hit me that the not-quite-electric-orange yarn would be perfect for this pattern. In fact, I think this is possibly one of those contemporary patterns which really should be knit in orange, always.

As an aside, the pattern is really fun to knit, and the wool yarn (subbed for the 100% silk that pattern calls for) does seem to be working. It’s a good pattern to knit if you’d like to practice your backwards knitting. I’m not sure if backwards knitting is any faster than purling, in my case, but it is definitely fun. Every aspect of the project is making me happy.

Painting will soon commence with my first ever real artist quality paints! Yep, I’ve decided to replace my student grade paint with artist quality as I run out, and the first tubes arrived yesterday. I gotta say, not cheap, this fancy pants artist’s stuff. I hope it’s worth it. I haven’t cracked them yet, as they’re so wee and cute I just want to admire them in their little box for a while longer. (Next time, however, I will get the jumbo economy size because a lot of the cost, I’ve been told, is in the packaging.)

Waiting in the wings for a quiet moment this weekend to cast on, another big ass pile o’ handspun (the fiber is Bluefaced Leicester, a gift from Chris, of Briar Rose Fibers) that will soon become (yet another) knitty.com shawl, Bitterroot, sans beads. There’s a tiny little bit of the most excellent coral running through this yarn, along with greens and browns, though the colours tend to homogenize a bit in this image.

If it seems that I’m having a bit of love affair with shawls right now, it’s because I am. I’ve knit lots, but given most of them away as gifts, and there is an appalling lack of shawl-age in my closet at present. I would like to remedy this fact in a weekend, naturally, but as I can only knit for half an hour at a time, a couple of times a day, I think it’s probably going to be a while before I have shawls to model.

Have a good weekend, knitsibs.