autumn stuff

see the geese?

and here i'm wearing hannah's beautiful sweater

(knitted twice)

she says i have to smile more

hannah visited for a few days,

after a marathon and a job interview

and a long drive

first to montpelier

then to the north country.

 she's addicted to yarn,

wool mostly.

she remembers fondly my little flock

of mostly brown sheep.

 after hannah went home

i used slu's paper mill

(zone 4 paper)

where i beat thistledown fiber first

and then linen canvas.

the linen clogged the beater

and while fixing melissa found this,

 large helping of old, 

oniionized pulp.

 yuck, 

thick and light

a map of sorts of who'd been there.

 i brought home thistledown sheets

and put them into a jerry-rigged drying stack

 on the counter the thistledown 

(and that's all there is, no formation aid)

and here it is,

layered on fall prints

 and i finished off yesterday what i began 

on wednesday

 this edition of paper is exactly like it was when i made it 

without a beater, using only a blender.

a two sided sheet,

 extremely textured.

a decorative sheet, but pretty satisfying to use

north country fiber.

hope

 hannah 

hannah winding using my old swift.

my daughter is an avid knitter. this is a lovely mohair and wool hat. 

 this is a sweater with her christmas yarn, a variegated deep teal.

 i wanted some wristies.

 so i bought her some black and off white wool

 i wanted a fun pair so i asked her to vary the solid color placements. the black and white stripes remind me of someone out there, jude. these are just plain fun. 

i like it that she likes to knit and i do not. 

sometimes i spin and she uses my yarn for a knitting project. it's a little bit sad that i no longer have sheep. but i may have them again in the future. 

who knows?

collaboration

when someone makes something both useful and beautiful, it comes from somewhere, it doesn't occur in a vacuum. i make plenty of useless objects, some beautiful, some not. some are, i hope, provocative. sometimes something is just plain fine. just before my camera died, i took two shots of these wristies, or fingerless gloves. i had some machine spun, sock weight wool with nylon that i space dyed last summer. the dyes were acid dyes, dye baths that were hanging around after dyeing vellum. i think i might have used three or four baths to come up with the variegation.

hannah knits wristies and for these long, elegant ones, she picked this skein. i think they're lovely, but find them too long for my taste, they bunch up more than i'm happy with. they're quite long, about 12 inches. if i were less curmudgeonly, it wouldn't bug me.


one pair of fingerless gloves = four dyebaths, two friends (carol and mark) to dye vellum with, one knitter, one dyer, one skein of wool. she thinks they're "eh". i think they're lovely.