Alternative Knitting Panel

I'm finally getting around to posting about the Alternative Knitting panel I mentioned before at the Museum of Art & Design. Unfortunately, I missed the first 1/3 of the event, so as you can see, I didn't exactly have a good vantage point. I caught the tail end of the first panelist's presentation and that was probably the most interesting one. I did manage to look at some samples of David Cole's knitting with lead, kevlar, and other such fun stuff. I wish I had seen the lead knitting process...

The second person to speak was Takako Ueki of Habu Textiles--which I have been dying to go to--and she discussed knitting with stainless steel yarn (generally wrapped in silk) as well as paper and bamboo yarn. A lot more delicate than lead, but definitely much more feasible for someone like me. The interesting thing about the stainless steel yarn is that it retains shapes and--I may have gotten the details wrong for this--if you try felting it, the steel will start to show through the silk. The paper yarn sounds like it would turn out interestingly but I would be too afraid of it falling apart on me because I'm paranoid like that. Though supposedly they treat it or blend it with something else so that won't happen.

Lastly was the qiviuk person. We got to hear all about the plight of the arctic muskox. To be honest, this was around the time I started wandering around the exhibits (good thing too, because they closed everything up not even 5 minutes after the panel ended). I feel bad for saying that now because I did win the baby skein of yarn and all. So the last panelist was Linda Cortright, who is the editor of Wild Fibers Magazine. The muskox were a diminishing prehistoric species, but from what I gather (no pun intended... really) it seems that they're making a comeback now.

But, as I said, I missed a chunk of that discussion because I was busy taking these pictures. I apologize in advance for the poorly focused pictures. Apparently photography is prohibited in the museum, so I had to sneak these. Let's hope no one finds these pictures and tries to take them down...

No, that's not a stitch counter

Yeah, so apparently earrings and scarves don't mix well. I had a little unbundling mishap when I got to work this morning...



Wait, here's a closeup.


Noooo! It's a yarn emergency!! Now, what I don't understand is how these things can hook themselves on so easily, yet be such an ordeal to remove. This probably the 5th time this has happened (same scarf, different earrings) and each time the earring won't let go without a fight. You can see the battle scars from this bout:



Not so bad from afar, but still...! I know it's there.

Qiviuk!

Look, I won a mini ball of yarn at the Alternative Knitting panel last week!



Isn't it cute? It's a baby skein of qiviuk yarn. What, you ask, is qiviuk? Well, according to the official qiviuk site:

Qiviuk is the inner down of the Canadian Arctic Muskox. It is a fiber of exceptional quality. Noticeably softer and lighter than cashmere, and 8 times warmer than wool. The Muskox is one of the Arctic most valuable resources.

At the end of the panel (which I will write more about later, or at least about the exhibit) they raffled off about 20 to 30 of these little guys, plus 2 grand prizes of scarves made from this yarn, all donated by Jacques Cartier Clothier. Here are a couple of pictures to demonstrate the scale of the yarn ball. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the scarves, but they were beautiful. From my vantage point in the back of the room, they looked big and shawl-like. The yarn seems to knit up very finely and delicately. Speaking of knitting up, I have no idea what I'm going to make with my new yarn. I'm not sure that I'd even be able to get a complete wrist-warmer out of it. Oh well, we shall see...

Here it is sitting next to my PDA.


The specs.


And one last picture of it all snuggled up next to a big ball of yarn. "Awwww..."


(If you look closely at the pic, you can see a corner of the yet-to-be-revealed project I'm working on.)

A Secret Project

Obscure hint #2:

This...



...will become something very soon.



Alternative Knitting panel tomorrow, yay!

Tea for One

Here's a really obscure hint to what my next project will be...

Chocolate mint tea, yum! (Kind of weak but like chocolate tea, so I'm willing to overlook that fact) Okay fine, the truth is that I just thought the packaging was pretty and wanted to post pictures of it.







P.S. Bonus points for anyone that gets the title reference.

Brrrrr

It's cold. Really cold.

But at least my scarf has been getting a lot of use!











Coming up next week... Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting - Alternative Yarns!

One-Hour Baby Booties

So here are the baby booties I made back in the summer and forgot to post about. Got the pattern from Stitch 'N Bitch Nation. It's a busy day for me, so I'll just let you look at the picture: