Spa Knit and Spin 2007

We spent last weekend in Portland, Maine, at the New England Textile Artists' Fifth Annual Spa Knit and Spin. We've been home for a couple of days now and while I was working, I've been trying to figure out exactly what was my favorite part of this fantastic mini-vacation.



Was it the knitters, spinners, crocheters, needleworkers, felters, and fiber artists of all kinds filling every nook and cranny of the Doubletree Inn for 2-3 days? Was it the informality that encouraged beginners to folks with advanced skills to mingle and share and just have a good time together, exploring their chosen fiber art and perhaps dabbling in some new ones? Was it that two strangers enthusiastically volunteered to untangle Jesse's ball of yarn so he could continue on his first knitting project, or the way the male spinners (Scott, Bart, Doug, Lars, and eventually Jesse) bonded as a jovial group within a group? Or the way somebody could plop down at any time to ask all about your current project or to get some help with a skill, and you could do the same with anybody else there, so everybody had something to offer and everybody had something to learn?



Maybe it was the vendors. No doubt about it: this was was a top notch group of vendors assembled for the weekend. Our trunk was overflowing with spinning fibers and yarn. Leah was given the gift of a beautiful shawl clasp from Leslie Wind...just because. We won a Friendz Blendz Hexi-Hat kit from Friends' Folly Farm and a most spectacular bag of merino for spinning from Sereknity. Leah says it looks like strawberries and peaches. I think it looks like a bouquet of deep red roses with pale peach accents. Our friends won goodies too, including a pound of fiber. Definite highlights included chatting with Jackie Fee, who wrote The Sweater Workshop, and her equally pleasant daughter, who sought Leah's opinion on spinning wheels for kids; Scott going nuts at the the Grafton Fibers booth (as expected); and pawing more handpainted rovings at Friends' Folly Farm (where he just about wiped them out of one colorway so they threw in the remaining few ounces and the sample skein as well). Or buying a traditional hooked rug kit from J. Conner Hooked Rugs and having Janet then spend over an hour teaching Emma and Leah how it's done. Or the folks from Circles, who were enthusiastic enough about the stitch markers we were giving away (over 50 of them!) that they asked Scott to make more to sell at their knitting salon in Jamaica Plain.




Yeah, I liked all of that, but more too. There was the live music and the vibrant storytelling. There was the swimming and the spa services and the fun meals. There were the free shuttles to area yarn stores and brochures for upcoming events and area guilds. There was charity knitting and fundraising. There was a fashion show, in which Leah modeled the hat, poncho, and slippers she knit, enjoying a strut down the runway with Emma, who was also wearing her own handknit beret, as well as a poncho by her aunt and slippers by her mom. And then there was the free cake to go with the cider that Jesse enjoyed throughout the weekend.



But above all, there was laughter and learning, history and handcrafts, community and camaraderie. It was the kind of weekend where the whole was waayyyy greater than the sum of the parts.

(You see those spinnerguys up there? They had so much fun spinning together that they've decided they need to learn to knit so they'll have a reason to spin more yarn. And Jesse's just about ready to ply the bobbins he's been spinning lately too, but there will be a little delay because he's also working on creating an electric spinning wheel made out of K'nex. :-)

rockin' the free world

Finally, the parade of post-vacation finished objects. Believe it or not, there are still more FOs to come!

Just Enough Ruffles scarf, knit by Debbie. The luscious angora yarn was purchased at Spa Knit and Spin last Feb. Leah was going to make this pattern, but it became my project instead when I needed another vacation knit. Entirely easy and quick to knit, but I think the result is pretty fabulous. This yarn, we paid for, but it occurs to me that everything else in these four pics was free or pretty darn close to it!

The scarf pin is a stick pin made by our friend Leslie Wind and received as a gift when we shared a booth at Franklin County Fiber Twist this fall. The stick travels through the back of one of Scott's glass buttons for a little more decoration where it holds the scarf ends in place.

Didja notice the cool cascading earrings Leah's wearing? Inspired by Sassafras Creations' knitting needle jewelry and our stash of aluminum straight knitting needles (which we rec'd as hand-me-downs, but don't use for knitting and were thinking about giving away), she used our pipe cutter to slice some needle shafts into loops. She then used chainmail rings to attach these to a small length of chain salvaged from who knows what. She also added a couple of rings with crystals on them, for sparkle, then hung the whole shebang on ear wires. They make just the slightest happy jingle when she walks, are colorful enough to go with everything, and the fact that they're made from knitting needles gives her a giggle.

Next up, mittens I knit in twined knitting technique. I've always been curious about this way of making extra thick and squishy fabric by knitting from both ends of a skein, alternating strands with a twist behind each stitch, so when I won two skeins of Crystal Palace Yarns Taos and saw that it was well suited to stranded knitting, it seemed a good time to give it a try. I got a Twined Knitting book from the library and really liked some of the patterns in it, but when it was time to cast on, I wanted very straightforward and simple instructions. Lisa Ellis' basic twined mittens pattern was a perfect introduction. Twined knitting is slow going and needing to frequently untwist the yarns is a little tedious, but I really didn't mind it and think the results are pretty cool. My tension was tight with the twisting of yarns, which is probably not uncommon with beginning twined knitters, so these turned out child-sized and will be donated somewhere. Another perfect opportunity to pay it forward.

In between bigger projects, Leah decided she wanted another snood, so she used weaving thread received (a big box of it, in many colors!) as a gift from a weaver to crochet one. She attached it to a headband that was in a bag of hair things received as a hand-me-down from my sister a couple of years ago.

Our lives are chock full of little gifts like these and a million more intangible kindnesses too. We are thankful for every single one of them and how they enrich our lives every day. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the States!