Posts About Landscapes and Special Places

Being Thoughtful, Using What I Have

Published on December 11, 2016 by spunplumLeave a comment

In carrying with the theme of my last post, where I talked about knitting with more intention, I am making a resolution for myself to start knitting with a bit more thought. I want to start taking more time, and using what I already have.

Recently packing to move house, I was reminded of how much yarn I have that I’ve been intending for specific projects which I haven’t gotten around to starting. Having said this, I’m not a huge yarn hoarder. I watch occasional podcasts on YouTube where people sit in front of massive walls of yarn of what must be hundreds and hundreds of untouched skeins and talk about how they bought more yarn on the weekend. I also recently found an article featuring this woman and her stash:

bonney_stashshot1 — Photo credit: http://mochimochiland.com/2011/01/worlds-biggest-yarn-stash-update-and-interview/

My stash is small, and fits comfortably onto two shelves. I have about 6 sweaters’ worth of yarn dedicated to patterns that I’ve never started, and some odds and ends and smaller lots for littler projects. It’s not that I feel like I have too much, it’s more the fact that I never use the yarn I love because I’m too busy jumping to the next project and not spending time planning and enjoying the whole process of what I have. I will impulsively decide that I need to knit something, and quickly buy the yarn to do that, meaning that nice stuff that I bought on holiday or carefully chose and set aside until I had time, never gets used. Buying yarn should be for both pleasure and purpose, and yet a lot of my yarn gets and gives neither.

So I made myself two goals for the upcoming year: Use what you have, and knit thoughtfully.

This means that I will take the time to look for patterns, test out designs, and accept that if it takes a week to start a new project because I spent time looking hard for a pattern and doing lots of swatches, then that’s ok.

fullsizeoutput_1299 — A careful swatch that I spent hours designing for a pullover for my niece.

This also means that I’m not going to go out and buy yarn this year. I’m going to appreciate what i have and be resourceful. I’m going to give what I have some credit.

(Disclaimer! I’ll make exceptions for yarn for gifts: I don’t have any more toddler-appropriate yarn in my stash and I’m not going to go a whole year without knitting gifts for my niece and nephew, and also I really want to knit my dad a pullover this year using Scottish wool.)

I started small:

I was desperate for a cozy new pair of slippers, specifically a pair of knitted mukluks. Many years ago I knit a fab pair of cabled mukluks in cream coloured yarn with dark leather soles. I felt like a polar bear every time I wore them, and then I lost them in a move.

cadeautje_medium2 — Photo credit: ©Ysolda Teague, Cadeautje, http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cadeautje

So I thought I would do the Cadeautje pattern by Ysolda without the thrums and instead sew on some thick felt for the soles. I had some purple West Yorkshire Spinners yarn leftover from a sweater and I started the project while on a day trip to the coast, knitting while watching the sun set over the Isle of Arran, sheltering from the wind against the walls of the Portencross Castle.

It was kind of wonderful, and very good for the soul.

Everyone needs to try outdoors-knitting.

And then I realised that I didn’t have enough yarn for the second slipper. So I decided to have a little think. The first slipper that I was now pulling out and returning to the stash pile wasn’t a waste of time. It was still time well spent relaxing, reflecting, enjoying the process, and in the case of some of the knitting time, experiencing the winter seaside and fresh sea air. Yes I wanted a new pair of slippers, but what I really wanted was to knit myself something comforting and special. A little piece of self care during what has been a difficult few months.

So I pulled this ball of yarn out of my stash,

And decided to make something special. This yarn was in my mother’s stash for I don’t know how long. It’s pure Canadian wool from the Madawaska Highlands, the special place on the threshold of the Canadian Shield where spent my summers growing up.

1231655_10151582290181568_1072186570_n — Photo credit: Friends of Algonquin Park This is why Canadians have those moments of pride and awe when they talk about the hard-to-describe Great North. I’m having one now.

I don’t know why or when they were producing yarn there, but at some point they did, and my mum bought a skein. I’d been saving this yarn for something special and so I cast on a new pair of slippers.

It was a good decision. Knitting with this yarn made me feel like I was celebrating the piece of home that I left behind when I became an ex-pat in the UK. It reminded me of the bedrock and the pine trees and the smell of lake water. I felt grounded while I knit and remembered these special things. I should also say that I ended up thrumming the slippers with pencil roving and abandoning the sewn felt sole. I figured that if I was going to knit with Canadian yarn then I should go all the way and do the thrumming. Thrumming, after all, is a Canadian thing, and I still wear the thrummed mittens that my mother knit for me.

The end result:

I feel grounded every time I put them on. Which is every day when I get up and every time I come home.

There was a time when knitting a pair of slippers would be a quick, impatient “my feet are cold and I want to wear these” affair. I must prefer this approach.

Knitting With Intention, Knitting in Special Places

Published on November 4, 2016 by spunplum3 Comments

It’s time that I made this blog a bit more interesting. Really, I spend way more time knitting than I do spinning. Furthermore I often feel a bit pressed to come up with interesting posts about spinning, other than a regular “I spun this skein, I spun that skein”. And I originally got in to spinning because I’m a knitter, and I like to knit some of the things that I spin.

So in short, I’m going to expand this little blog to include knitting, and not just knitting with handspun.

Last week I went to a wonderful evening event at the Queen of Purls that was a talk and group spin all about spinning with intention, and bringing significance into making.

I left it feeling inspired and wanting to focus on significant projects and to knit and spin with more intention than I usually do. I have a wonderful little niece and a nephew and living far away from them is hard. So I knit and sew for them. Of course knitting for a loved one already carries that intention of caring and connection. But knitting this sweater…

fullsizeoutput_1040 — Pattern is George by Susan Mills. I had a lot of problems with the pattern, but the outcome is still really lovely.

fullsizerender-2 — The yarn is Adriafil Mistero. Buttons were from E-Bay.

…made me think about how other pieces of significance are carried in a handmade gift. This sweater is special because it carries meaning in where it was knitted.

I started this sweater on a crisp, cool, but lovely afternoon when my friend and I went to the Burrell Collection (the last day it would be open for four years! We were cutting it close) in Pollok Park in Glasgow. We had tea and cake in the Pollok House tea room and then sat in one of the walled gardens as the afternoon faded and had a knit. We knit until the groundskeeper kicked us out.

If you live in or are visiting the Glasgow area you must go to Pollok Park. It’s like a countryside respite in the middle of the city.

The Burrell collection is closed now, but the park is beautiful and Pollok House has beautiful gardens. It’s my favourite place to go on a sunny afternoon and sit in the grass with a book, a flask of coffee, and my knitting.

Best sunny day knitting spot. Leaning against a tree, close to the river.

The following day I had a really really bad day. In the afternoon I went for a drive and ended up driving all the way down to New Lanark, where I bought an ice cream (even though it was really cold out), and sat by the mill with a river view up the valley, working on this sweater until my fingers got too cold to knit.

What I said about visiting Pollok Park applies to New Lanark. It’s a World Heritage site, where Robert Owen put into practice his theories of Utopian Socialism. When I went there the first time, it was with my sister (who happens to be a British economic historian) and I got a fabulous in-depth history lesson. But history aside, it’s a beautiful little area set in a stunning valley. There is a walk up to the Falls of Clyde, award-winning ice cream, and they sell British yarn, milled on-site on the historic machinery. Most of the time the massive wheel is still turning.

The day I went there I followed the sun up the valley as the evening fell and found a bench in the last patch of sun nearer to the car park where I did my last bit of knitting for the day.

As I finished the cardigan off the next day, I realised that so many of my hand knit gifts are significant because of where I have knit them. My family lives far away and most of my life is separate from them. I feel like being conscious of where I knit my gifts can bring significance to them because it brings a bit of my life to them. This cardigan absorbs two of my favourite peaceful places near my home and days where visiting these places gave me respite and much-needed fresh air.

This shawl for my grandmother was mostly knit while on holiday in Adalucia, a place which she would have loved to visit.

fullsizeoutput_e65 — The pattern for this was improvised. The yarn is Artesano 4-ply Alpaca (for the dark teal) and 4-ply Alpaca Silk (for the main colour)

I thought of her when I went to the sea-side in Cadiz, and then knit her shawl on a patio over looking the beach.

I’m now feeling inspired to spend more quiet time, knitting with intention. I’m going to take more time, more thought, more in-the-moment-ness. I’ll probably make fewer projects, but I think I’ll enjoy them more.

Re-focussing Chez Plum

Published on June 19, 2016November 4, 2016 by spunplumLeave a comment

A lot of things have been happening in my little spinning and yarn world over the last few months. The biggest one, for me personally at least, is that I got more focussed about my colours.

When you sell on Etsy, you receive a lot of tips about improving your shop and there is a lot of talk about branding, which is something that is foreign and which I’d rather not think about. But then I discovered a really beautiful brand of hand-dyed yarns from Canada. I came across them by accident through a knitter whom I follow on Instagram and I was inspired by their colours and the simple elegance of their land and sea colour inspiration. They’re called Lichen and Lace and at some point I will treat myself to a lot of their yarn.

Aren’t these lovely? Screenshot from Lichen and Lace website

This got me thinking about what really inspires my colours. Since my yarns are all one-offs, my dyeing until now was usually a case of throwing around colours in whatever way I fancied. I named my yarns after towns and places, but my associations were sometimes loose and after the fact. So I decided to get back to basics and think about what has always inspired me.

The answer was pretty simple. Landscapes. And I’ve even blogged about them before (see Landscape Yarns, and More Grey Sheep Love: Spinning with Gotland)

Handpainted merino fleece handspun single on the bobbin — Spinning my first landscape yarn, which is now in the stash of my dear friend Ashley, mitten knitter extraordinaire.

I’ve always gotten a bit annoyed at people who turn crafts into long-winded academic exercises. I don’t think that dyeing or spinning are academic and I’m not trying to swing things in that direction. However, sometimes it’s nice to make the simple act of adding dye to wool into something a bit more personal.

Back in my previous life as an experimental film student I was inspired by the wonderful Canadian artist Joyce Wieland.

2014-04-15 — Joyce Wieland “Reason Over Passion” film still, 1968

I loved her for so many reasons: her take on feminism, her promotion of traditional crafts, her Canadian patriotism… But more relevantly, she talked about landscape and how Canadians are affected by their sense of landscape.

8ca3e88d29712c991239f360d94e6f1a — Joyce’s and Michael Snow’s geese still fly in the Toronto Eaton Centre.

So to get back to yarn: I decided to refocus all my dying and colours on landscapes. And since I live in Scotland, where beautiful landscape, both urban and rural, is abundant, this has not proved to be a problem.

IMG_20160602_183817 — Scotland, you are just so amazingly beautiful. I took this at the top of Conic Hill, overlooking Loch Lomond

Above are early morning chimney pots from the window of the flat I stayed in the first time I came to Glasgow a few years ago. Beside is its corresponding yarn, a thread-plied thick and thin merino.

Below is a lovely street in Barcelona where I stayed last month, making me want to dye everything blue, pink and green (although you can’t see the lovely green building in this photo).

I’ve started saving pictures of landscape inspiration, and I found that I’ve started to enjoy dyeing more because I’m actually aiming for specific results. I don’t know how much people who buy yarn care about where the inspiration for colours comes from, but for me, it makes it more enjoyable.

Landscape Yarns

Published on October 20, 2015November 4, 2016 by spunplum2 Comments

I’ve recently completed a couple of yarns inspired by familiar and favourite landscapes and am thinking of making a whole series specifically dedicated to the landscapes in my life. I used to be really fascinated with landscapes when I was in art school (a very long time ago!) and I’ve been remembering this a lot lately, as I’ve also been doing a great deal of driving along the edges of the stunning Scottish Borders and Northern Pennine regions in the UK. Both are open and vast with beautiful variations in natural colours.

The northern Scottish Border region, near the town of Biggar, taken by me on a very windy hike.

Here are my landscape yarns so far, based on two other favourite landscapes:

This one was inspired by early summer on the North York Moors in Yorkshire, when the heather is starting to bloom, but the moors are still very barren and red. It’s a beautiful expanse of empty and dramatic land with distant sea views. When I first moved to the UK, I remember driving through this region with a friend, and stopping by the road side to stand quietly together and look at the view.

SONY DSC — Heather blooming on The North York Moors National Park, photo credit http://www.walkingenglishman.com (also a fab website for finding walks all over these beautiful places!)

This is a single that I spun from hand painted locks of merino cross fleece from Clive the pet sheep. It’s mostly sock weight, but was spun directly from the locks, so it’s textured and a bit thick and thin in places.

This was my first time painting locks, as I usually kettle dye them, or paint the yarn after its spun. It was very successful though, and there was much less blending of colours than I thought, so the yarn maintains the dyed variegation of the fleece, and some of the natural white comes through.

My other landscape yarn was spun from handpainted merino top. I like how dense merino top is, and how when you paint it gently, the colours maintain a brightness from the white fleece in the middle that the dye doesn’t reach. I dyed this to be turned into a self striping yarn. It was based on the landscape of my childhood: a basic combination of lake and trees and sky, translucent blues and variations of greens.

F1030022 — An old photo, taken many years ago at my favourite lake

I used three shades of green and one shade of blue on the top. I had hoped for a bit more variation in the blue, but I’m pleased with the translucency of the colour.