podcasts

Episode 196

May 2, 2018 by Sara

Post your photos of the Humblebee socks on this thread!

Yarn Lover at Large

Learn to Spin on a Turkish Spindle

What if you could create a ball of yarn on your suspended spindle AS you spin? You can!

Easy to use and lots of fun, Turkish spindles are also a practical choice for hand spinners. Spin and ply straight from the beautiful center-pull ball you create as you build your cop on to the cross-shaped whorl. In this two-hour session, you will learn and practice the basics of operating a Turkish spindle:

making a half hitch
starting a cop
building a balanced cop
managing a center-pull ball
creating 2-ply yarn

This class is suitable for beginning spinners as well as those who have some experience spinning and want to learn to use a new tool.

Participants will receive instruction and 2 ounces of fiber for spinning.

Purchase a spindle from the selection at Hope’s Favorite Things or bring your own Turkish spindle.

Saturday, May 12th 10-noon
OR
Thursday July 19th 10-noon
Instructor: Sara Bauer
Class Fee: $45

#IRISKAL

I’m hosting a knit along for this beautiful shrug designed by Melody Hoffmann. Join me and Emily of FibreTown and create a versatile piece for your warm-weather wardrobe. Cast on is May 5th!

Off the Shelf

This week I shared “Ted Kooser Is My President” by Naomi Shihab Nye. The piece appears in her collection titled Honeybee, but I have also found a link to a video of her reading two poems at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 2008. The Kooser poem is the second in the recording and begins at 3:00.

Ted Kooser served as the US Poet Laureate from 2004-2006 and has maintained a poetry column to promote interest in American poets. A free, weekly column available to newspapers and online publications, American Life in Poetry is a great place to search for accessible poems that give voice to the range of American experiences.

Arrows and Doorways

The design for this super-cozy cowl was inspired by textiles in a hotel lobby. Concentric geometric shapes kept playing in my mind until finally I was able to chart the pattern and get it onto my needles. The interplay of this chevron-like patterning has a mesmerizing effect–while you’re knitting and when you wear the finished accessory.

Knit up a cowl with yarn from your stash, adding some magical new mini-skeins from your advent calendar, or exchange leftover yarn with a friend. The design invites frequent color changes, and makes an ideal knit for the advent season. It could be just as striking knit with two high-contrast colors.

While most cowls of this type are seamed within a band of a single color, this pattern incorporates a technique called stranded donut grafting, an incredibly clever and completely seamless graft that allows you to maintain colorwork patterning so that your starting and ending rounds are undetectable. Really! With many possibilities for color play and a new technique to add to your skill set, this cowl pattern is really an opportunity for knitters to level-up!

NEW PATTERN DESIGN!

ONE DARK BLUE NIGHT

This hat is the third in a series of patterns inspired by teachings in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. This time, I drew inspiration from Estés’ retelling of a Japanese tale, Tsukina Waguma or “The Crescent Moon Bear,” in which a young woman travels to the cave of an incredibly intimidating and ferocious bear. She makes several journeys to the cave, leaving food and quickly retreating, until “one dark blue night,” she musters the courage to stand her ground and ask for what she seeks--one hair from a moon-shaped patch on the bear’s chest--which she is granted. The young woman returns, triumphant, to the old healer who has sent her on this quest. She believes this single hair is the magic ingredient in solving the problem that plagues her. She holds it forth, but the healer tosses the hair into the flames. The young woman is in despair until she realizes the true lesson of her quest: that using her determination, courage, and patience, as she did with the crescent moon bear, will help her to confront the challenge at hand.

The moon phase motif of this colorwork hat is meant to capture the magic of a dark blue night--when the moon shines brightly overhead, the frosty air sparkles with possibility, and we succeed in summoning accumulated wisdom from deep within ourselves so that we can apply it to our own healing. Choose colors to conjure a wintery night sky, or select a palette of your signature colors.

Available on Ravelry December 20th.

Yarns at Yin Hoo

Episode 196

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