Ta-daaa!

The sweater for Fred is finished!

My mom sent me the Barbara Walker fourth treasury of knitting stitches for my birthday and I found an awesome cable that looks like a three dimensional chain. The only trouble was I couldn't figure out how to do it from the Walker book.

So I went on the Ravelry group - Big Sky Knitting- and found out the pattern for the cable (left and right versions)is in handy photos in Janet Szabo's cable book. (Cables: the basics, volume 1).


I love making sweaters starting with the shoulder saddles and working one's way down. Fred tried the sweater on numerous times so it fits very well. It is made from my handspun Finnsheep wool.

National Coverlet Museum

Last weekend we went to the National Coverlet Museum in Bedford, PA to see antique spinning wheels and other fiber processing equipment from the collection of Kitty Bell and Ron Walter displayed against a backdrop of exquisite hand woven coverlets.

We were thrilled to see so many southeastern PA wheels with red/orange stripes on them - - all carefully documented like the three Andrew Kunkle pieces and this gorgeous yarn Johannes Kroh winder. There are over thirty antique wheels in the show including several Farnham wheels, a glorious Irish Castle wheel by Henry, several patent wheels, double flyer wheels, as well as flax processing tools.

One whole room was devoted to flax processing. The title of the flax processing exhibit is “Stay at Home and Use Me Well”, taken from an inscription on a flax hetchel.

The museum shop is filled with reproduction coverlets and other items hand woven of easy care fibers instead of the original wool and linen fibers. The patterns duplicate actual coverlet designs.
The town of Bedford is lovely and is home to Old Bedford Village open during the summer as well as Fort Bedford.

RHINEBECK!

This year the weather was a lot cooler for Rhinebeck, but that made the cappuccino all the more enticing once we finally got to it. Before we ever got to Rhinebeck, we had to detour to Red Hook to view a pristine W. Hopkins saxony with the terrific chip carved detail.

The featured breed was Lincoln Longwool with luxurious lustrous locks.

We got to meet the Tsocks Tsarina of the Ravelry Antique Spinning Wheels group. She had a couple of questions for Fred about two of her wheels.

Also met Jesh who we also “knew” from the Ravelry group. The reason Jesh’s neck is all scribbly is because she has only recently submitted the pattern for release and it isn’t out in public yet. It was a lovely thing, but you’ll just have to wait for it.

As usual I had to get pics of the horses. I think one will do for a painting. This is what came of the photos of the black team of horses I took at Goschenhoppen.

We paid a visit on the way home to the Beekman Inn for lunch rather than brave the cold winds at the vendor stands.

Estonian Lace

This is what happened after I bought Nancy Bush’s Knitted Lace of Estonia.

I’ve done a few simple lace scarves starting with Branching Out and had some scary times so decided to make life easy on myself. I picked the Lily of the Valley scarf and chose to make it in Knit Picks merino and silk white fingering yarn on size seven needles.

The yarn is terrific - - maybe because of the 30% silk content. Even frogging the same row ten times didn’t make the yarn look funny, a handy quality for a beginning lace-weight-knitting-wannabe.

There are some mistakes here and there, and I only did one repeat of the central motif and three instead of five of the lace edging.

Unfortunately Knit Picks was out of the bare (white) laceweight merino/silk blend yarn so I got this magenta for the next version of the same scarf. I wish I had used the seven loop knupp instead of the five loop knupp, but I’ll do that in the future.

The pattern is going much easier and managing the laceweight yarn is also going a bit better than I expected - - am still making mistakes, but maybe by the next project…..

I really wish I was making the scarf in white. To me lace just needs to be white. Oh well, they’ll have more in November. BTW there is an Estonian Lace group on Ravelry!

FALL ABUNDANCE

Summer’s ending and fall is almost here. The Endless Mountains Fiber Festival was last weekend. Saturday it was misty and overcast, but nevertheless more people came out than we could have expected. My personal favorite souvenir from the festival was this amazing Canada goose done in crochet by Janet Povlock of Unadilla, NY. Her booth was right behind ours and I couldn’t go home without one of her geese. She also makes them in other versions, but all are exquisite.

There was a threat of frost last night so I made a last batch of basil pesto, picked a bunch of flowers and covered the eggplants up. After the tomatoes and potatoes were hit with late blight I thought it would take out the peppers and eggplants too, but that didn’t happen. I never grew eggplant before and they were a great addition to the garden. Almost every recipe for eggplant talks about sprinkling the slices with salt and letting them drain to get the bitter juices out of them. If they are sliced, dusted with flour, dipped in egg and fried in olive oil immediately from the garden there isn’t a trace of bitterness. We have been enjoying an orgy of eggplant parmesan at least once a week and have frozen the fried slices for later.

Even the late blight hitting the tomatoes was not such a horrible tragedy. I quickly learned that green tomatoes plus a bit of sugar and tomato paste makes a fine tomato sauce. The neat thing is that there is no need to peel or seed the tomatoes because the skins are tender and the seeds are tiny. That is going to be my plan for next year’s green tomatoes at the end of the season.

Judy also gave me a very nice green tomato relish recipe that we like.

Fred wrangled the winter squash this year, keeping them mulched and weeded. They were far happier than under my haphazard care and produced such abundance that there were more than enough for us.
I still need to shear two more white lambs, but the other three ewes and the grey lamb are done. The grey lamb’s fleece is so pretty and soft. I can’t wait to spin it!

GOSCHENHOPPEN FOLK FESTIVAL!

The weather was herrlich for our trip to the Goshenhoppen Festival yesterday.

It is a long drive for us, but there is nothing like it any closer. This year we got to sample an old fashioned stew of potatoes, onions and wurst as well as homemade peach ice cream - - peaches, sugar, vanilla and heavy cream, oh my!

There were lots of Mennonite show towels embellished with drawn work, cross stitch and satin stitch and folks making them in the old ways. The towels were normally hung on two little nails on a door and never actually used as towels.

When we got there the teams were just being hitched. Draft horses are so impressive no matter what they are doing. There is even a threshing machine operated by a grey draft horse on a treadmill.

The highlight for us was being able to talk to Eleanor Bittle. We met her for the first time last year at the festival. She has been demonstrating on her tape looms at the festival since 1983. She had a marvelous loom with her yesterday dated 1816. It was clearly a labor of love by who ever made it. It would be hard to find more bells and whistles.

She was showing how her narrow linen tapes were made on her treadled floor tape loom.

Tape Loom Project

I think I probably saw this idea somewhere, but cannot recall where.

Fold the tape in half or wherever the patterns work out the best and sew the edges together. Shape the fold end to a point. Hem the bottom and fold up under the point.
Sew the sides together; attach a button and loop and it’s done!