Brenda Dayne's Knitting Badges!

Have you seen these? Knitting badges for Knitting Scouts!

Here is what I have earned so far: [Quotes from cast-on.com]

"The “Proselytize Knitting” Badge - A requirement for all Knitting Scouts, the recipient must do his or her bit to present knitting in a positive light, whilst at the same time avoiding all references to “hipness”, grandmothers, and yoga."

I accomplish this by knitting/crocheting/spinning in public and wearing, with pride, what I have made. I have some good pictures of me spinning on the beach at family camp this summer that I should post.

"The “MacGyver” Badge (Level One) - The recipient must demonstrate clever use of a non-knitting tool in a knitting-related scenario. For instance, recipient has used paper clips as stitch markers, or successfully whittled and then utilized bamboo skewers as dpns."

I use bobby pins to hold seams together while sewing them up. I have a small blue circle of plastic from a lego set that I am using as a stitch marker for my MS3. I used to have 2 but sadly lost one.

"The “MacGyver” Badge (Level Two) - The recipient must demonstrate clever use of a knitting tool in a non-knitting-related scenario. For instance, recipient has used a strand of Regia Bamboo to slice cheese, or repaired a small appliance with a metal knitting needle."

I regularly use a knitting needle to clean the vacuum filter. The girls have used various bits of yarn for pretend leases, clothes lines, kite string and who knows what else. I have put out bits of yarn ends for the birds in the spring.

"The “Knitting Has Forced Me to Seek Medical Attention” Badge (Level One) – In which the recipient has been forced to seek the advice of a medical doctor, nurse, or alternative healthcare professional for injuries sustained as a result of knitting."

3 springs ago I knit like a fend all one day. I started to feel pain in my wrist but didn't stop. The next day I picked up my needles and after 3 stitches pain went shooting up my thumb, through my wrist and up my arm. I stopped and called the doctor. After examining me he, thankfully, told me I hadn't done any real damage, just hurt it a bit and to stop knitting for 5 or 6 months ... yes months. I decided to do that so I could knit another day. I didn't knit a stitch all that summer. I didn't wait exactly 5 months, more like 3 but I was careful.

And the moral of the story is: DON'T WORK THROUGH THE PAIN! Instead, to the tune of that jazzy song they sing to Ernie on Sesame Street, sing: "PUT DOWN THE NEEDLES!" and give yourself a break.

And if you have read this far, thank-you and please post on my "Pay It Forward" post. I asked for at least 3 posters and don't have that yet. Come on Knitsibs! Show me the love!

I walked into a new world today.

Last year I met a spinner, Marg, at a demonstration she was participating in at the local fair. She works at one of the two yarn shops in town, and invited me to join their Tuesday afternoon fiber arts meeting [hang out in the back of the store around a big table, craft and yak]. I never made it until last week. It was great! Knitters/Crocheters are the nicest people. I talked about learning how to spin and I was invited to the local spinning guild's casual spinning afternoon they have in a member's home once a month during the summer.

That was this afternoon. I arrived and found myself warmly welcomed into a beautiful house on one of the more ritzy streets around here, surrounded by 8 energetic women, none of them looked less then 10 -15 years older than me, all setting up wonderful looking spinning wheels and pulling out all sorts off amazing fiber: camel, musk ox, silk, dog, cotton, flax and wool. And I said to myself, "Kellie, you are way out of your league now. Don't say or do anything stupid." I was there to soak it all in. I watched, chatted, asked a few questions [didn't want to be a total wide-eyed newbie asking about a million things].

After about 20 minutes Marg asked if I had brought anything to work on.

"Ah, ya" I gulped. "I brought my homemade spindle." There was no putting it off any longer. I pulled out my homely CD & knitting needle spindle with my homely fleece [you know, the wool my friend cut off my BIL's sheep and that I am having such a hard time getting the VM out. Just follow the links if you don't.]

No gasps of horror.

No looks of disgust.

All I got was, well not much of a reaction at all. No one was shocked or dismayed. They obviously had seen it all before, beginner spindles, beginner technique, beginner yarn. All I got was encouragement. I was told I had a nice touch, well actually I over heard the expert spinner, Pat, say to Marg, as she looked at my yarn, "She has a nice touch. She just needs to get on a wheel." And I discovered I am being way too picky about my fleece. I saw others spinning with fiber that had VM in it. I was told that a lot comes out with spinning, more with knitting. I was shown the sweater the group worked on together in the spring on Sheep-to-Sweater Day. The fleece was spun and knit dirty, right from the sheep and then washed. It is beautiful. I was truly amazed.

Two hours gone and I was told we would be having tea and cake soon. Yahoo! By this time I had resorted to knitting on my Cardigan for Arwen by Kate Gilbert because my CD finally broke. I was told to make an other one with 3 CD's glued together to make it heavier and more durable. Will do! I walked into the dinning room and found a beautifully set table and elegant spread: coffee bread and gruyère, mini strawberry tarts, blueberry and apricot bunt, chocolate cookies, mini cream buffs. wow. And wonderfully open conversation to boot. I had been thrown into a pool of wisdom and experience I couldn't even touch yet they made me feel like I was one of them and invited me to hang with them at this years demonstration at the fall fair. It comes full circle.

My eyes have been opened to new possibilities, new ideas, new adventures to come. I will be taking a spinning class in October and then I can rent the guild's spinning wheels for $5 a month. Ya! That's the truth! Now to get on with making that new spindle.

Looky what I did!

Playing catch-up here. This post has been unfinished since June 14th. The day after I was off to Winnipeg for the weekend and I haven't done much since. I have so much to tell and will try and blog everyday until I am caught up. Yet to come: yarn candy from Winnipeg and summer of socks progress.

I dyed the little yarn cake. I used Wilton icing colour, Delphinium Blue. I have done a lot of reading on dying and thought using something I already had in my cupboard was a good place to start. What is so cool about this is the dye colour split into different shades [as was discussed on the email group dyehappy] .

So I looked for how to do it. I don't know why I didn't think to just ask the email group but the result probably would have been just as confusing as what I found elsewhere on the web. Seems everyone has their own idea of how it should be done. Most recipes for Koolaid dying would contain references to Wiltons saying it is used the same or similar. So which is it? There is so much info out there on Koolaid dying, with conflicting procedures and methods I actually became overwhelmed and put off doing it because I couldn't decide what I should do. After a week of letting all that knowledge rattle around in my brain I just did it. I didn't bother following anyones recipe i just went with what had collected in my memory.


My process: Soak the yarn in a mixture of 1 cup water and 1/4 cup vinegar for an hour. I had discovered on some chat board that the difference between koolaid and wiltons is you need more vinegar with wiltons because koolaid has citric acid in it. Some dyers don't even bother adding any vinegar to koolaid. Some dyers cautioned using to much vinegar because it could damage the yarn and use as little as a tablespoon to a cup of water, others said that was rubbish and used as much as a 1:1 ratio of vinegar and water.

Use a toothpick to poke the Wiltons colouring into the wool in a few spots. I almost used to much colour. To encourage colour splitting using less is better.

I covered the cup with plastic wrap and microwaved the wool at 50% for 5 minutes. Raising the temperature of the wool slowly also helps with the splitting.

Let it set for 2 minutes. Microwave for another 5 minutes. Let set for 2 minutes. letting it rest helps prevent hotspots and scorching.

Continue to microwave and rest in 2 minute intervals until the water was clear.
I was soooo impressed when the water did clear. That's when I knew it was working!

And here she is, the one, the only, Little Cake: First Wool in Delphinium Blue!

First wool: I SPUN IT!

In this post we meet the 1st wool. learn how I did it and what I think about the information out there on processing wool-simply put: us newbies need help!

LOOK MOMMIE! I DID IT! My first little cake of homespun!

It's kinda shy, a little embarrassed. She's over spun in most places and not even spun in some. [I don't get it]. But maybe if we promise not to laugh or make fun of her she will come out of the shadows and into the light.

Come on little wool. We promise not to laugh. You look so cute, all wrapped up in your little cake. Come on.....that's right.......



There you are! aren't you sweet!


I think that is all we are going to get from her at the moment. If you click on her you will get a good close up. You will notice there is still some VM caught in there. I just couldn't get it all out with the carding and couldn't wait until I managed to get combs from who-knows-where.

I spun it on a spindle I made from a knitting needle and a CD. I got the plan for that from 'Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning' by Judith MacKenzie McCuin. I like the book. I like pictures. What I don't like is that Judith shows you how to make a spindle but then doesn't actually show using it. There are pictures about using a spindle just not the one homemade. For some reason that really bugged me. Like the instructions weren't complete.

The other thing that bugs me is that there are no step-by-step instructions that show how to take fleece from sheep to knitting needles. The instructions are there but they are not connected. This is a complaint I have across the board. I could not find step-by-step instructions anywhere. You can find instructions on washing, combing, carding, spinning and whatever else but nothing that said what comes next. Like: step 1) wash the fleece like this...... 2) card.... 3) comb..... 4) spin..... or whatever. I had to do a lot of reading and research to find out what the different steps were and then figure out what order they go in. I am still not sure I have it right. It seems no one out there has thought that there are those of us who know literally nothing about it and need to be held by the hand and taken through the step-by-step procedure.

I had washed and carded until I was sick of it and still had VM. There must be something else. The closest I came to a step-by-step procedure was in the files of the Spin List at yahoo groups. The file is called "Fleece to Yarn". 'Hurray!' I thought, "Finally I can find out what to do after I card". I read step one about skirting - check - , step two is washing, - check - , step 3 is dying, will do that later, this fleece still has VM!, step 4: comb, card or flick.....so what about them? That's it. This is the step I have all the questions about. No where can I find why you would do one over the other, what the benefits of each one are. What my next step should be.

I got an answer on youtube. Yah, no kidding. Rexenne shows how to use combs here . She talks about how it can help remove VM and separate out the short fibers and leave you with only the long fibers. Eureka! The info I have been looking for. Because the sheep was sheered by ametures short fibers [second cuts] are an issue. OK, I need combs....and a ditz, finally saw what your supposed to do with that too. Yes, I know all this info is in the book and elsewhere but this was the 1st time i saw anything about combing helping to remove VM and that it is this process that makes those nice, big, fluffy balls of ready-to-spin fiber you see in the store AND online and IN THE BOOK! CONNECTION COMPLETE!

Maybe its because I am a visual learner I had a hard time connecting the dots or maybe this really is a short coming in the spinning community. It seems everyone who puts fiber and spinning info out there assumes their reader has at least some kind of basic knowledge to start with. Well I had none! I did A LOT of research and reading to obtain the knowledge that I have now. I just wish I could have received it in all one go from somewhere.

Now I want to test dye my little test cake. Then I'll test knit it into a swatch and keep it as a reminder of my beginnings because this is NOT the end. There will be more. I have to get better at this and put to good use all the knowledge I have.