A couple weeks ago I wrote here about not owning a ballwinder or umbrella swift. This isn't a hardship for me because most of the yarn I use is in ball format. But now I'm working on a new big project and have had to source different kinds of yarn. It has been really fun to see what is out there now. The big snafu was that many of the yarns I ordered came in twisted hanks. When I worked for the yarn company, this put-up was one of my favorites because it really showed the yarn off - the softness, the drape, the gorgeous quality of the natural fiber blends.
Leave it to a deadline to get me cursing. Man, I had to wind all those hanks of yarn so I could knit from them (thank you Cathy for the use of your winder). After moaning about just this here on the blog, I got a message from an old knitting friend of mine. I've known Patience through knitting for over twenty years. I met her when I spoke at a knitting guild in New Hampshire way back when. We have kept in touch sporadically so when I got a note saying she had a few extra ball winders and swifts and would I like one, I jumped on the offer.
On Sunday, Patience and her partner Mark Trumpler drove the tools on out. Just in time considering I just got a new box of Butterfly cotton on hanks that need to be wound. We had a great visit and catch-up and then I gave them the almost royal farm tour. Mark is a photographer and he had some fun taking photos of the sheep. I love this one of the running lambs. We were sorting sheep and when we do this, the lambs can't be in the
pens with adults (they can get easily trampled). Since the lambs are barely without their mamas, they
were having good fun chasing after each other - kind of like lunch
recess.
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| Running lambs by Mark Trumpler |
Our neighbor Willie was helping The Farmer load some of the rams that will become our lamb meat for the upcoming Farmers Market Season. This shot catches the action and a bit of the physical strength needed to move a sheep.
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| Loading sheep by Mark Trumpler |
Thank you so much Patience for the awesome gift. It will be well-used!
If you are in Amherst Saturday, it is the first day of the Amherst (MA) Farmers Market. The three of us will all be there with smiles on this Saturday and every Saturday until the middle of November! Stop by and say hi.
Other interesting links I have found.
1. Via Swiss-Miss, a new website called Webbygram which lets you look at your Instagram photos on your computer. Cool. (You did hear that FB bought Instagram, didn't you?)
2. This article about food writing by Amanda Hesser is good (via Diane Jacob).....
as is this one about whether "food-blogging" is over.
3. This website about creativity called Brainpickings.
2 comments:
I bought my swift years ago. I was a knitter who wanted to weave, and I thought of it as my first piecesof weaving equipment. I must admit that I am hard on ballwinders and always manage to get the yarn tangled around all the gears and plastic parts underneath, and have broken two of them, so I have gone old school and use a nostepinde. (I love my nostepinde---it was made by an older farm wife I met at a spinning workshop. I asked her if her husband had made it, and she informed me that she had turned it on *her* lathe.) I ordered your sock yarn from Yarn at Websters and am knitting my first pair right now. It is pretty in the skein, but the colorways really come to life as they are knit. And Regia makes such a good-quality base yarn---I have knit many pairs of socks from the Kaffe Fassett colorways, and they are wearing like iron. I'm *almost* looking forward to next winter so I can wear your socks.
Brenda in Iowa.
I'm so happy you have a skein winder and swift. I couldn't live without mine. Seeing the skeins stretched out on the winder is great because I can see the colorways better and imagine what they will look like knitted or woven.
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