AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

wrap up: Ignite Boston

Friday I punted my normal activities (sorry gaming group) in order to attend Ignite Boston. A few hours, about 17 different talks and a feeling of connectedness with my local craft community that I don't normally have in my day to day solitary crafting life. I went because I know Georgy who spoke about DIY Marketing for DIY People, but I knew way more speakers than I was expecting to know. 

While waiting for the event to start, I was talking with a woman named Diane who is active in the science education for girls and way too many other charity things for me to think about. One of the things we talked about were programs for lower income families and educational programs for children in all socio-economic backgrounds.

Then we talked about Lego League. The group she does stuff with is 9-14 and is as far as I know school based, but there is also a Jr. Lego League, which is for children from 6-9. This sounds perfect for so many of my friends, and I could have spoken with her about this program alone for the entire time I was there.

Then the programs started.

Ignite is a story-telling format. Presenters have 5 minutes to tell a story about their topic, building enough of a connection with people in the audience in order to have meaningful dialog in the break between the first and second sessions and afterwards in a less formal environment. 

I took notes especially for things that I found useful in a cross-crafting context. 

Amanda Grondin spoke about her sculptural art, which were these fantastical creatures blended from mythology and animals. She works in polymer clay on armatures, and incorporates organic elements into her designs. She talked about layering, building up her pieces as sections of muscle on bone, which contributes to realism. There are a lot of different crafts that can take this approach, from the hooker (crochet, dudes!) who embellishes a bag with a layer of vine work followed by a layer of flowers and grapes, to a toy designer who builds upon basic shapes to make an object recognizable as a distinct creature while being uniquely theirs.

Georgy spoke about marketing and crafting as an act of making connections. Her focus included truisms that are surprisingly easy to forget: be attentive and responsive, take time, be consistent, add value and be relevant. She showed some of the different tools you can use to put yourself out there and be less like a person speaking in a void and be more of a community presence. One of the things she mentioned that I find hard to do is to show the behind the scenes. You know those crafters: the ones you have progress pictures of their knitting, or they have a picture by picture expose of how to know when you have whipped your cream to stiff peaks. They are some of the most useful bloggers out there in the craft world, because they help the rest of us help ourselves. Me? I'm much more likely to show a fate accompli. 

Schneider Mike of Belching Monkey talked about beer. Many a crafter I know loves their beer, so I enjoyed his presentation. He was witty and at times completely hilarious. Afterwards, he gave me, a non-beer drinker, a gateway beer to try given my love of the girly drinks. So, maybe someday I will find a place with Anderson Valley Boont Amber on the menu. Till then, I will keep it in mind and remember that Michelob and Miller Light are not beer. They are water with piss and vinegar. Maybe I'll even be more willing to try my friend's home brews.

Ann Weaver talked about self publishing, which is how she published her most recent collection of patterns. It was definitely a reminder for me, because while I have a lot of dreams I'm not terribly far on most of them. There are some things that only real effort will make happen, and those are the kinds of dreams I have. The problem with things like my sad Etsy store and self published books is that a lot more falls onto the creator. It is one thing to make a cute sweater or create a flavor of cupcakes and another thing to go out to the world and say, Hey, look at this cool thing I made! You want one too, right? Self promotion (despite having a blog) is not my strong suit. Also: lulu.com. 

Sarah Kuhn and the Parts and Crafts Collective talked about two sides of the same equation. Sarah focused on how people learn through doing, thinking through using their hands, and interaction with the environment creating power and knowledge. The owners (for lack of a better word) of the Parts and Crafts Collective spoke about empowering children to do things that they don't normally have access to, like using a drill or a soldering iron. They spoke about community supported education. They send out boxes each month that have materials for a project and some small amount of guidance. The goal is to move away from the abstract knowledge learned in schools to the concrete knowledge learned from doing. They both sounded cool, but the takeaway quote for me was from Sarah in asking her students: Did you learn more? Answer: We learned we can do things. 

Lis Pardi's talk was also about learning and about fear. Do not fear to try something. With a lack of fear, you can do anything you set your mind to including furniture repair and washing machine installation. Things that we normally leave to experts. Her tips included think cheap (aka, don't try your new trick on that expensive couch. Try it on something found on the curb or freecycle), use simple tools, and get some knowledge (read, ask an expert, etc.). I have a door in the basement that was from freecycle or one of our friends cleaning out a basement that I want to make into a table. My card table is fine, but not stellar for crafting and computer work. So, if this new table project comes out OK-ish, then I won't have lost anything but some time and I might have learned something new!

While there were more talks, the last one I truly connected to was Katie Helke at Knit for Boston. Her simple talk reminded me that I love to knit just for knitting's sake. There is no better way to just get my knit on than by making things like scarves for charity. Given that my feet are freezing inside my house (we keep the temperature lower when we aren't here during the week and boy, can my feet tell the difference) but at least I have a house and extra socks, it is time to consider making things for charity again and to think local. While I love knitting for Dulaan when I was doing it, there are plenty of people who have been poorly affected by the economy of the past couple of years who would be just as appreciative of a simple scarf that doesn't look like it has already been through the ringer or a hat that actually covers the ears.

It was a good event, and they are thinking of doing another one. Maybe next time I will speak. I know I can fill 5 minutes with talking about ice cream, and in June or August people might even want to hear about it!

from the guild

Yesterday was the last Common Cod meeting of the year (the year runs from September to July with meetings on the odd numbered months).  Barbara Parry was talking about color inspiration and bit into the technicalities of how she visually selects colors from her environment.  It was much like a woolly Georgia O'Keeffe.  Barbara takes pictures of the world around her, mostly on her farm, and then crops them and blows up elements and selects colors from that section.  It's a gross oversimplification of her technique. 

Afterwards, she was signing books and selling yarn.  I'd done the koolaid and the wilton dying before, but I don't really have the space to do dying on a regular basis or the desire to get even a few large cheap pots (so I can keep dying separate from cooking).  The only dye method that she mentioned that was really interesting to me is solar dying, and I can try that when summer really gets here with some good sized mason jars.

I bought yarn.  Her yarn line, Foxfire Fiber, is super duper soft.  She has two (to me) main color groups: pastels and the richer, more saturated jewel tones. 

I bought this yarn, sort of: I actually got the wool-alpaca blend, which is a much fuller color than the cormo-silk blend at the right.  Without the silk, the yarn doesn't have the sheen and just soaks up the color.  i have 4 skeins of loon, a rich teal blue-green.

I'm thinking of making a cropped vest, like the Portland Tweed Vest.  My 4 skeins have a slightly larger yardage than the yarn called for, but are fairly close to the same yarn weight. 

In completely unrelated news, I got home to find out that I had rehung the bag with my cross-stitch in it, so Saru-chan did not get an opportunity during the day to snag the nearly finished project.  Must finish the stitching first, before starting anything else!

January is a good month (so far)

Life has been a busy crazy thing in the past few weeks as we continue to sell our condo in this unfriendly market.  Luckily, it isn't all about the crazy economy.  Friday I went to the first Common Cod Fiber Guild meeting of the year.  Clara Parkes was speaking, which was a lot of fun. 

Here is her formula from the meeting (because it was held at MIT and all):

Stash = (yarn squared / space) to the infinite power.  Just in case it isn't terribly visible from the picture.  Taking a photo of a chalk board isn't terribly easy.

At the meeting I brought my first two completed items of the year to the guild meeting.  They were caps that Guido was collecting for Knit One, Save One.  It was my first time using Rowan Calmer, and it is really nice yarn though it definitely has a learning curve.

Normally I join everyone who is left after the end of the speaking portion of the meeting to knit and kibbutz (a lot more knitting than kibbutzing, because the mix of people changes pretty much every meeting).  This time the demo corner had a weaving demonstration with Carol, using a 4-harness table loom by Leclerc.  After knitting for a bit, I hovered over there while she finished tying off the warp and then we got to try it after she did a little demonstration.  It was a lot of fun!  I did a bit of plain weave and some twill and a bit of herringbone.  The herringbone was especially maddening, because Henry (the scarf that is eating my brain) is a woven herringbone pattern done on the long axis of the scarf.  I could have done a similar pattern with a loom and I would have been done by now.

Carol mentioned the Boston Weaving Guild as a good resource, but the only weaving guild information I could find indicated that the meetings are in Westborough.  While it is under a 2 mile walk from the commuter rail to get to the meeting site, I could never get there on a Wednesday night when the meetings are held.  That's too bad, because it was a lot of fun. 

It is snowing again right now, as I get ready to go to another dental appointment.  So, here is the cap picture to end it today.

I tried taking a picture of the smaller hat on top of a can of soda. Bad idea! Putty color just made it look, umm, a little raunchy if you catch my drift.

sleeping with the fishies

At tonight's guild meeting, Clara Parkes will be speaking.  I love her book (and her website) and currently am feeling a little regret that I had packed it away.  I don't go to any of the local S&Bs anymore, because they just aren't convenient.  The guild meeting with its bimonthly meetings is a nice change of pace, and makes me feel less like I am knitting in solitude. 

At the last meeting, I volunteered to knit a baby cap for charity and got to try my first ever skein of Rowan Calmer in the process.  It's such a strange yarn to work with, but not in a bad way.  The yarn is stretchier than I expected and more fun to knit with than other cotton yarns I have used in the past.  I can see why so many people swear by it, and why I should have just splurged on the yarn when I was thinking of making Nothing But a T all those years ago. 

I used a pattern that was in the charity booklet, which I altered slightly to work in the round.  I don't particularly like my hat with the seam up the back, so it felt like a bad thing for a baby cap as well.  I knit my hat on size 5 and 6 dpns, and the resulting cap was a little short of the finished size of a 10-inch circumference.  I had yarn left, so I started another one just out of the blue this morning (which probably won't be finished in time for the guild meeting) in a much larger size with size 7 Denises on the shortest cable I could find.

I'm considering finding enough Calmer for a sweater for myself later in the year.  I have too much knitting to do right now to justify buying more yarn, even if I know I already like it.

Hopefully I'll have pictures of the baby hat(s) later this weekend with their fleshy putty color!