From Russia With Love

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I acquired this thing at an antique show a while back – like most textile tools, the seller didn’t know what he had, but he thought it was cool. And I had to agree.

Old & lovely

It’s a distaff, for spinning wool. (Or flax, but I’d've thought it would have a comb on top if it was for bast fibres.) You’re looking at the public side of it; the spinner sits on the flat part, and spins from the other side. It’s likely Russian, though I’m not going to rule out any of the Baltic countries; they have a great many textile traditions in common. I couldn’t even guess at its age; it does show a fair amount of use wear and there’s a few bits broken off.

For more than a year, the distaff has been waiting quietly in a corner of my living room, just perched on a shelf being beautiful. And then a thread came up on the Spindle Lore board on Ravelry, asking if anyone used a distaff… and I felt ashamed that I had this marvellous thing right here, and had never even tried it out.

So I did.

I’m not very good at it yet, but I can already see how incredibly useful this tool is – I can spin fine yarns faster and more productively. I have no idea why distaffs never migrated to North America, and why they’ve never found a place in modern spindle spinning. My mind is blown by this wonderful, useful, gorgeous thing.

PS: There’s no sound in that video, but the only thing you’d hear is the dog snoring anyway. And me swearing softly.

PPS: See that basket sitting on the cheese box beside my chair? There’s an Athabasca sleeve in there. But more on that in another post.

Twist and Shout

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Have you seen the new Winter issue of Twist Collective yet? It does not disappoint – colourwork, twisted stitches and cables, oh my! Go look right now, I’ll wait here.

I have a soft spot for Twist; I like their philosophy. It’s less like a magazine and more like a showcase – designers retain the rights for their patterns after they’re published on Twist, and are free to sell them on their own websites or do whatever they want with them. Magazines and books, of course, keep the pattern rights themselves – designers get huge exposure, but lose the opportunity to profit directly further down the road by taking back an out-of-print pattern and re-publishing it themselves. I like knitting magazines – there’s a shamefully high stack of them in my workroom – but it’s always made me a little uncomfortable that the designers have to give up the rights to their pattern in perpetuity in order to get it published; it seems like an unfair deal for the designer, and it certainly doesn’t pay well. Twist Collective’s business model aims to change that, and gives designers a chance to put more money in their own pockets. This can only lead to more good things being designed.

I’d like to say I vote with my wallet and buy Twist patterns for philosophical reasons, in order to encourage business models that support designers. But I’d be lying – I buy the patterns because they’re beautiful, and well-written, and wearable by normal human beings. I’ve been wanting to make another pullover, and I don’t need another cabled one – cable sweaters are my default, when I can’t think of anything else to make. Still, I was on the verge of casting one on anyway – luckily, Fiona Ellis came along just in time to save me with Athabasca:

I’m loving the buttony goodness of this sweater. Have I ever told you how much I love buttons? oh yes, I do. I have jars and jars of buttons – biscuit tins of buttons, chocolate boxes of buttons. I buy them at yard sales and flea markets, in box lots at auctions. I’m mad for buttons. Here’s my chance to sew some onto something!

Of course I won’t be using the yarn that’s called for. I’ve no idea what I’m going to use. Maybe… maybe I’ll spin some…? In soft natural greys and browns maybe?

Time to toss the stash and see what falls out!

 

I Think I’m Getting the Hang of it Now

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After struggling with this silly circular sock machine for so long, something went “click!” in my head and suddenly it all makes sense.

warm and toasty

Warm & toasty toes

I like fancy hand-dyed luxury sock yarns just as much as the next knitter… but when it comes functional boot socks for a Canadian winter, nothing that can beat the sheer comfort and indestructibility of good old Paton’s Kroy. Stuff wears like iron.

 

Google+

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I’m not entirely sure what I think of Google+ so far, but I thought I’d give it a go. It’s been kind of interesting – I’ve found some spinners and knitters and weavers, and I’m slowly adding to my circles. The fibre people tend to be a little more on the geeky side, like many of the early-adopting Google+ers in general. If you’re on there yourself, there’s now a link to my profile in the sidebar (or you can just click here).

When it first came out, I pooh-pooh’d it and said I couldn’t be bothered to get on another time-sucking social network. Then I started messing around with it, and discovered some really fascinating knitters on there that I’d never have found any other way. I also said I’d poke out my eyes with a dpn before I ever knit a dishcloth, but I then tried one and realized I was being silly – knitted dishcloths are the best thing ever.

However, I am standing my ground on that ridiculous hexipuff thing.

In Which An Unexpected Bisson Arrives

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Last week, a Ravelry friend messaged me about an auction that included a very interesting Quebec spinning wheel. She already has a similar one, so (bless her generous heart) she gave me a heads-up and let me know she wasn’t planning to bid on it. The auction was being held locally; my problem was that I was scheduled to work a series of 12-hour nightshifts, and so there was no way I’d be able to physically get to it. Fortunately for me, the auctioneer accepts absentee bids by email. Unfortunately for me, he also offers very high-quality items… so the room is generally filled with people that have money falling out of their arses, and hammer prices trend toward the higher end of the spectrum. (Translation: I usually can’t afford his stuff.) But I sent in a low bid anyway, frankly expecting that nothing would come of it.

So you can imagine my jaw-dropping surprise and delight when I got an email telling me I’d bought the wheel… for even less than my low-ball bid. Obviously there were no spinners in the room on auction day – oh, lucky lucky me! (Insert happy dance here.) A couple days later, the auctioneer was even kind enough to deliver it to my door. (Click photos to embiggen, if you like.)

barn fresh Bisson

My stunning Bisson wheel

This wheel was made by one of the Bisson family – probably Louis, probably sometime in the mid-1880′s. It’s not marked, but the style and construction identify it with certainty: Bissons have a form that’s remarkably unique among French-Canadian production wheels. You can pick them out at a distance by counting the number of spokes (8 – fewer than most wheels of that period), and observing the sexy, rakish slant of the table (steeper than most others). When you look closer, you can see the outstanding beauty and skillfulness of the the lathe-turned spokes, wheel posts and support posts:

support posts

Graceful turnings

The flyer has a signature form, with strong shoulders and a sturdy one-piece construction… again, it’s a shape you only see on Bisson wheels. The delicate little finials on the tips of the maidens often get broken off over the years, so I was thrilled to see that they’re still intact on this one:

mother of all

Mother-of-all

It’s a screw-tension wheel, so it isn’t a Canadian Production Wheel in the accepted use of the special, all-capital-letters term – CPWs are exclusively tilt-tension, and their tension mechanisms always involve iron in some sort of way. This wheel comes from an earlier era, and was probably one of the kinds of traditional Quebec wheel that influenced the more radical CPW design.

In this wheel, you see the art of the 19th-century Quebec wheelwrights at its highest form – graceful, strong, eminently practical, and designed from the ground up for speed and high production. I can’t wait to take it apart and give it a good cleaning – that dreadful black gunk on there is the build-up you get from a century of lubricating with oil and animal grease, and it’ll take some scrubbing to get it off. So I’ve had to set it aside until after I get back from SOAR… which I just realized is less than a week away now, and I suppose it’s time for me to start flailing around and panicking a bit because I’m so totally not ready.