Month: February 2019

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It’s all in the name

The story. Or it can be. Even my giant, super-size Crayola box (and yes, I still have one) doesn’t have enough colors in it. Think about being a yarn dyer and wanting to make the most perfect colors for your seasonal offering to the yarn addicts among us. You can’t just go with the yellow, pink, red, or purple. You must have sunflower, rose, lipstick and amethyst. But what if your bestie, who also dyes yarn has already used those?

Where do you get your inspiration? Maybe you think about where you saw the color you just dyed. Maybe you’re watching your favorite movie and absolutely love the costumes or hair colors or scenery therein. Maybe you look down at your dinner plate and find the right color combination for a shawl pattern. Would you name it Pasta Primavera? Perhaps. So many places for inspiration. What would you name a yarn color-way based on these pictures?

  • Mural Rekjavik airport
  • Fredericksburg peaches
  • Isek Kingelez Exhibit MOMA
  • Turkish carpet
  • Summer Hat
  • El Paso garden

I think you can get to know people a wee bit by the names they choose for their yarns; not just the colors but the yarns themselves and the collections of those yarns. It could be you are a geologist in your non-yarn life and so your colors are named for minerals. Or maybe you like the chemistry involved so you name them using the periodic table. Or just maybe your dreams are so vivid and full of color you find their names there.

Some of my favorite yarn names have come from Dr. Who, New Orleans krewes and events, Harry Potter, and places I’ve visited. I’ve also bought yarn simply because once I picked it up to look more closely (so, you know, I was already drawn to it), I had to buy it because of the name.

Many things, can be unique experiences to each of us. A piece of art will speak to each viewer perhaps in a different way than intended by the artist. A piece of music sounds different to each person who listens to it. I have yarn in my possession not because I know the backstory but because the name (or the color itself) has triggered a memory unique to me. These are a few of them.

  • Sleep Paralysis
  • Sock Monkey
  • Dr. Strange

Granted, I have also bought yarn that I absolutely love but cannot for the life of me tell you what it’s called. But, just as in life, names matter and have a power of their own. So, I try to get them right and they intrigue me because they tell a story and connect me to the human who created them.

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Yarn-a-palooza NYC

Yes, indeedy. The official name is Vogue Knitting Live but since I’m not a knitter, I prefer Yarn-a-palooza :). I thought the DFW Fiber Fest was big but oh my goodness, this was amazing. And Vogue has these shows all over the country. ‘Twas probably a good thing that I didn’t know about it ahead of time and I only had a few hours to explore and Tom was with me to ground me. Twice as big as the one in Dallas; two full floors in the Time’s Square Marriott – the ballrooms and filling up the hallways around them. The shops we had visited that same week in the city all had booths, we saw booths for places that had been on my list of possibles, yarn companies big and small that I recognized and so many more.

One of the first booths we saw was for the Vineyard Marketplace from Texas (see my earlier post on October 25th – Making a Difference). Since Tom hadn’t been with Tina and me when we visited them last Fall, I enjoyed introducing him to their yarn and their mission.

We tracked down the dyers of some yarn that I had acquired earlier in the week from Knitty City. The yarn company’s name is Nooch Fibers (named after their cat) and it’s a husband/wife team. I bought two colors of their yarn; one is a burgundy color called Sorry, Snake and the other is called Sleep Paralysis. I had to buy the latter because, a) it’s purple and b) Sabrina gets this…and that’s another very funny story but not for right now. So, anyway, the folks at KC did not know the back story of the SS moniker. Darn. I was oh-so-curious. However, the Nooch folks were scheduled to be on site at the yarn-a-palooza. That said, we knew we had to talk to them because there is always a story and I wanted it. Anyway, the name comes from an old tv show on Amazon Prime called Peep Show. If I found the right series, it’s kind of an odd couple sort of premise. And if I get the next part right, this phrase was in part of a story where one of the characters who happens to be a snake (the reptile, not a slimy person) gets left behind because he/she wasn’t there when the rest of the posse left somewhere …. My eyes sort of rolled back in my head during the explanation because I don’t watch tv and had never heard of the show, but, now I know. Lots of ifs there. At some point I’ll track down this show so I have a visual.

After talking to them, we walked around while I tried not to succumb to all the yarn calling to me on both sides. Not easy. I just kept reminding myself that there was only so much room in the suitcase. And I had to have my viewing fairly quickly before Tom lost patience. There were martinis calling to us along with oysters in the near future.

My spidey sense had me stop at what was most likely one of the very few crochet-centric booths there: designer Janie Crow from the UK. I bought a scarf pattern from her that fits in with my mandala fixation (and yes, I’m still trying to finish the afghan) except the parts to this scarf are shaped liked lanterns. Hence the name of the pattern: Mystical Lanterns.

Next we happened upon the ladies of Twisted Fiber Art who came from Michigan for this event. They were great fun to talk to and looked like they were enjoying the event…course it was only the first couple of hours into an entire weekend of excitement. Again, Tom wanted a picture of the sign they had posted and one of the ladies graciously agreed to pose. You can see some of their cakes on the table along with a few of the samples they made to show off the yarn. Truly yummy. The cake I brought home is a merino/cashmere blend with a hint of sparkle. It is the unique color way they dyed for the event called Kama and ranges from dark grape in the center to a merlot on the outer edges.

  • Kama Evolution

Our last stop at the event since they were about to kick everyone out for the evening was at the booth of a fiber farm: the Long Island Livestock Company. They raise fiber animals and process their fleece/fiber into rovings, yarn and other products. This might have been Tom’s favorite spot; he had a very long and detailed conversation about, you guessed it, llamas. Raising llamas, llamas vs. alpacas, how many you need; well you get the idea. And no, no llamas for us, although we might go to LI, to visit the farm on our next trip to NYC. There are a couple of Fiber Fairs up that way; one in May at the Hallockville Museum Farm and the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY in October. They both list sheep herding demos on the list of events so that may mean we would get to see herding dogs in action! Yippee. Probably won’t happen this year but maybe next year? Who knows.

Fun times, but it was after 9 and we hadn’t dinner or cocktails yet. So. Into the cold and a brisk walk back to Wayfarer for the above mentioned martinis and oysters. What a great end to the trip!

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New York, New York…

You can keep singing if you want. It certainly is a H@@**$#^ town. It is also a very yarny, fibery town. Tom and I were there in January for our annual trip. Cold, windy and not as full of tourists. Our timing also quite often is during tax free shopping weekend. Whoopee! And now I know it also, happily, coincides with the Vogue Knitting yarn-a-palooza. Bigger Whoopee!!!

This trip we didn’t make plans to do anything, well almost anything. Very different approach for us. We usually see shows, have dinner rezzies at fun new and old spots, and have big museum plans for lots of things to see there. We planned to take it easy. We did see a concert at the Morgan Library. It is a very small space, quite intimate. The couple performing were a cellist and her guitar playing husband. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Their performance handle is Boyd meets Girl. His last name is Boyd….

The other plan ahead was to buy tickets to see the History of Magic exhibit at the Historical Society. ‘Twas all about the magic in Harry Potter and the history surrounding its origins. Hogwarts wanna be’s all over the place; of all ages too, many dressed in their preferred house colors. I’m not giving you a link here because the exhibit is over now.

And then the last minute add on was a piano concert at Carnegie Hall. Again, wise choice. The pianist, Jonathan Biss, is a Beethoven sonata expert. He teaches a course on Coursera about understanding B’s sonatas and is on his way to record all of B’s sonatas. Kind of a big goal for those who are familiar with them. Any who, we loved the concert.

And on to the yarn part.

Knowing we didn’t really have an agenda, I had done the “yarn shops in NYC” google search and made note of places that might be interesting to scope out if we were in the vicinity. Of course. I think I might have mentioned this to Tom. We ended up having our own mini yarn crawl over about 3 days.

  • No Opium smoking allowed
  • Knitty City

The first stop was Knitty City. They are on the upper west side not all that far from the Historical Society. See, the stop fit right in to our path. The shop is long and skinny. And jam packed full of yarn and people shopping and/or working on projects. Tom made me take the picture on the left. Cracked us both up. We didn’t see anyone smoking regular cigarettes either.

The folks there were quite friendly. When they found out we were from out of town, they asked if we were here for Vogue Knitting. I had no idea what that was (neither did Tom :-)). So, it’s a Fiber Fest. This year it was at the Time’s Square Marriott. Two floors of yarn. OMG. And that was partly why there were so many boxes sitting around the shop (and most other shops we explored). Everyone was getting ready to go set up their booth.

The next day, in the rain, we wandered to the upper East Side. Had a great lunch at one of our preferred spots (Fig and Olive) and then checked out String Yarns. Again, friendly and busy. They have their own line of yarn that looked lovely but I fell in love with some more or less one of a kind yarn (more on that in another post).

Downtown Yarns

And then Friday we took to the subway down to SoHo, West Village, Chelsea area to wander around. Three yarn shops there. The first was Lion Brand; big name, can buy anywhere but they do have some things there that are unique and not sold online. ‘Nuf said. The second place, Downtown Yarns is charming and, they have a shop dog. Again, very small and packed to the gills. I selected yarn to take home with me from a small dyer that the gals there really liked; the yarn and the dyer.(Again, more later). Their website has a full schedule of classes listed. I have no idea where they might hold them…maybe there’s a hidden room.

The third was Purl Soho. I had totally forgotten about it and we stumbled upon it as we explored the area. Lovely yarn, lovely people and very, very busy. Nothing that isn’t available online so I didn’t make a purchase. If you haven’t seen their website, they are really great about putting kits together and have their own line of yarns. Their focus is mostly on knitters.

There were a few other shops we did not check out since they weren’t in our flight path during that trip. And then, there was the yarn-a-palooza in Time’s Square to make up for it. Of course, the official NYC yarn crawl would be fun to fly up and explore. I believe it’s in September of every year but this year’s is not yet posted on their website.

Until next time. Happy yarning!

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The long and short of it

Why is some yarn scratchy and some not? Some of it has to do with the kind of fiber used for the yarn. Mostly though, it has to do with the width of those fibers and that can vary even within the same species; different breeds of sheep have different widths of fiber. It’s not just that alpacas have softer fiber than sheep and angora rabbits have the softest of all.

  • Are these not the cutest?

Side note here, angora rabbits originated in Turkey hence the name. The breed was named after the city of Ankara, the capital of the country. And no, I haven’t gone completely off into the deep end and started raising rabbits, I found these pics on google. Sabrina (the dog, for those who don’t know) would love it if I did though…bunny stew, yummm!

But I digress. Microns, my friends, are how these fibers are measured. One micron is equal to one thousandth of a millimeter, or one millionth (pinky to lips here please) of a meter. Amazing. Difficult to imagine being able to measure something so tiny.

Here’s how they rank by species. The overall range is between 10 and 40 but can go up as high as 100 for some of the courser outer coats. Not all animals have a double coat that’s used so I’ve ignored that in my list. I won’t list the micron ranges but if you are interested in reading more, I will put a couple of links at the bottom of the post.

  • Angora Rabbits
  • Qiviut (Arctic musk ox) – Looks very Yak like to me
  • Vicuña – Wild alpaca cousins. If you want to learn more, go to this link but do it quickly as their site says it is going away mid Feb. Arkive
  • Opossum…I know, weird hunh. I have a sweater, socks and hat made from possum…it’s a thing in New Zealand. I haven’t see yarn available to purchase. These opossum are not the same breed as the ones we usually see Stateside but are still considered vermin.
  • Kashmir goat – See photo below…there’s a Pinterest board full of pics if you want to look.
  • Camel – We all know what they look like, yes. Who knew they have enough fur to even make yarn.
  • NZ Opossum
    Cuter than our domestic ones

  • Qiviut
  • Kashmir goat
    Look at those horns!

All the above start between 10 and 15 microns. The next group is 16- 20 microns.

  • Merino Sheep – The different sheep breeds run the whole gamut in the micron measurement test but from what I have learned, Merino is the softest, i.e. smallest.
  • Alpaca – Ok, so the weird thing to me here is that the numbers are about the same range for these guys as the merino but the yarns I have felt and used feel so much softer to me.

This last group is the list of the courser ones. Microns that is and every time I say that word, my brain wants to link it to Mycroft for some reason. Can’t tell you why, it’s a mystery.

  • Angora goats – Remember my Curly post?
  • Llama – And no, Tom does not have a llama, not one that walks and talks anyway…although he chatted with a woman who has a fiber farm in upper New York when we were in NYC recently…. and I did make him a beanie out of llama yarn.
  • Yak – The yarns I have in my stash and have used have all been mixed with other fibers like merino and bamboo.

Here’s the take away: While it’s interesting to know this, I have never seen this information listed on a yarn label. The first time a fiber person said the word micron to me I rushed home to research and learn, convinced it was vital for me to know all about it. It is interesting but, I have decided that the numerical specifics are not vital if I can remember the basic order of things. There is only so much room in my brain.

Any who, if you want to learn more about the various fibers, I recommend you go to this site: Wild Fibres. I found a plethora of information on other sites as well but most of it was way more than I needed to know in order to buy yarn at my local yarn store. This alpaca site has lots of info and cute alpaca pics and they’re in Montana…Alpacas of Montana.

To close, I will share with you two photos…one of my newest stash addition, and one of the reason I had to buy it. The yarn is called Sleep Paralysis…

She really does get sleep paralysis. It could be she was protesting the fatal penalty screw-up in the Saints playoff that most probably cost them the game. Or maybe I just wanted to see if she’d stay put once I covered her up (and she did).

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