New Post - Old Quote

"There is scarcely a field of human experience which is not enriched through contributions made by human hands or which a student may not enter with keener zest and fuller understanding if his hands play their rightful part of subduing and shaping concrete materials to his thoughts and his purposes."

Louis V. Newkirk

A Festival. A Book Signing and Three Classes

My calendar is filling up and I am looking forward to sharing my fiber skills with others.

This Saturday, tomorrow, October 16th I will have my spinning wheels and a crochet demonstration out in front of Classic Cottage for the Fall Festival in Bowling Green, VA.

On October 30th I will be signing copies of Contemplative Crochet at the Fredericksburg, Virginia Borders between 2 and 4 PM.

Beginning knitting classes at Classic Cottage will be October 23rd and November 13th and the first crochet class is scheduled for November 6th.

Developing Will

"So much of handwork has to do with waking up, seeing things and noticing details."

Patricia Livingston in Will-Developed Intelligence

It's Crochet!

I love this technique and the possibilities it opens up! Usually stranded colorwork is the domain of knitters. Crocheters almost always carry their unused yarns inside their stitches which can make the resulting fabric more stiff than it would otherwise be. Also, crocheted colorwork is most often done in continuous rounds. In this sample, single crochet is worked back and forth in rows with the colors carried along the back. It could have been worked back and forth in the round, or I could have carried the unused strands up the outside edge, eliminating the ends to be sewn in later, but, since I am still experimenting and I like fussing with the edge when I come to the finishing process, I chose to cut the yarn free of the ball at the end of each section.

The yarn is some Brown Sheep wool from my stash and even though I didn't choose colors specifically for this project I have been reveling in the cheerful,playful effect. Thomas likes it, too.

Preliminary School

One of the many reasons the Amish keep their tools and techniques simple is so that their children can grow up observing and practicing how work is accomplished, starting with the earliest inclinations to imitate.

A Steiner School teacher in Denmark presents her children, each with his own pocket knife on celebration of the child's sixth birthday. Children start this kindergarten at three and a half years of age so that by the time each one turns six he has observed the older children using their knives over the course of several years. The pleasure and the safety of using a real knife have been absorbed through the intense observation and imitation that belongs to the early childhood years.

Imitation nurtures my grandson, Liam, when he copies his father using manual and power tools. Of course, he will not be allowed to use a real power tool for a very long time but he can imitate the use of a chain saw (with a yardstick) so effectively that his friends all demand yardsticks to play with. Last year's Christmas gifts of a real hammer, pliers, wrench, measuring tape, work gloves and safety glasses coupled with observation and imitation, take him one step closer to turning play into work, training his hands, his body, his whole being, to useful activity.

Growing Creatively

"Creativity always has the stamp of the individual upon its product, but the product is not the individual, nor his materials, but partakes of the relationship between the two."

Carl Young from On Becoming A Person

Old Knitting Form

In March of this year, I spoke of seeing a piece of ancient South American fabric that looked like i cord or spool knitting and was described as being made with a needle. That was a long time ago and I wasn't even sure I trusted the curator of the museum to be correct. Turns out that textile specialists know a lot about some very early forms of needle looping. Shortly after making that post, I came across a beautiful, special, knitting publication from Interweave Press called Knitting Traditions. There is a short article in it by Kax Wilson, author of A History of Textiles. She describes, and includes a picture of, a tiny, detailed strip of looped fabric very similar to the one I saw so long ago. This fragment was found in a 2,000 year old burial ground on the south coast of Peru.

Textile historians call this looping technique "needle knitting" or "cross looping" or "looped needle netting" and it is made using cactus thorn needles. Only a needle and some very fine yarn were used to create miniature figures of people, plants and animals with lots of color changes, connected along a needle looped band of the same fabric. This article is followed by another, written by Jean Scorgie detailing a way to experience the technique while creating a finger puppet. I recommend these articles and further study to all my fiber friends. My only disappointment is that a photo of the fiber tools wasn't included in the article.