Ask Tara is a  weekly-ish feature in which I attempt to answer your questions about spinning, dyeing or confusing knitting acronyms. If you have a question, ask it in the comments and I’ll answer it here with either a post or a video!

Sodalimegirl, a YouTube viewer, asks:

Could you  show how you initially get your wool onto the wheel and how it gets all set up to spin. In your videos you already have spun wool on the wheel when you do your demos.

Excellent question! This is something so innate, I barely think about it. In preparing for this video, I realized I might do it completely different from someone else. How do you do it?

Here’s how I start each skein of yarn:

What do you think?

Is this how you get started? If not, how?

Have a spinning or dyeing question? Leave it in the comments!

Welcome back to the Month of Love!

Each weekday I’ll be posting 1 yarn inspired by a famous pairing, from now until February 14th and each Wednesday I’ll be giving a little roundup of the last week’s love-y yarn.
But I need some help! Suggest a couple you can win 50% off your next skein of BCB yarn, by commenting right here!

This week I have some yarn inspired by you, darling readers, and a few winners to announce!

Most of the yarns this week sold as soon as I listed them, but we’ll start with the two that are still available.
The first is Ketchup + Mustard, inspired by my condiment-loving husband.

Ketchup & Mustard

JFK & Jacki-O was suggested by Sailor Jenny

(available here)

Navy Blue Suits + Petal Pink Chanel = yummy handspun yarn

My very favorite yarn from this week was Brenda & Dylan, suggested byAmber.

(already sold)

It has 90’s neon blue and pink and was inspired by surfer Dylan + Minnesota-girl Brenda.

Another clever suggestion, from Regenia, was Superman + Lois Lane

(already sold)

I particularly like the contrast between the brightness of the red, blue and yellow of Superman + the black and white (of newsprint and pencil skirts) for Lois

Cinderella + Prince Charming

(already sold)

That classic sky blue dress + his navy suit (or was it a uniform?)

If you are one of the inspiring people I mentioned above, you have won 50% off one skein from the Boutique! To redeem it, just buy what you like and put “Month of Love” in the message to seller. I’ll send you a revised invoice (or if you want to pay right away, I’ll refund your discount.)

Keep those suggestions coming!

I’ve almost run through the list of suggestions that inspired me and I need at least 5 more!

Specifically, I want to spin another Battlestar Gallactica-inspired yarn. What couple from the show do you think I should immortalize in yarn? What color would that be? Leave your suggestion in the comments below!

“Begin as you mean to go on”

I heard this phrase at the beginning of 2008, on Breda Dayne’s Cast On. I was struck by it then – such a clever phrase – but never explored it. It’s really lovely, so much more poetic than the idea of New Year’s Resolutions and with so many more implications. Every new project that can be started with the notion of  “Begin as you mean to go on”.

At the beginning of this year, as I started work on my new website, it came to me again.
How do I want to go on in 2009? How do I want the new website to go on?

I don’t “do” resolutions. I love lists and I love setting intentions. But the concept of “resolutions” doesn’t resonate for me. I’d rather remind myself on a regular to basis to learn, improve and grow.

And that, the growing, is what appealed to me in Chris Brogan’s  post about picking a word as a goal for the year. At about  the same time, Lisa Call wrote about choosing a word to set her intention.  These two posts stirred something, stirred that phrase “Begin as you mean to go on” and I began to think about my intentions for this new site and the new year.

I set intentions for nearly every day, could I expand that to a year? The intention would need to be simple; just a few, memorable words that would guide my business decisions this year. I can look at every decision and say, will this be in alignment with my intention?

So what did I come up with?

Kill it. Share it.

When it came to me I knew that’s it! But, ugh, I hate the violent connotations of the phrase “kill it” or it’s similar “crush it”. What I mean when I say I want to “kill it” is that I want to achieve excellence, I want to become as fabulous as I can, to learn as much as possible. But the phrase “learn it” just doesn’t have that same push, that same insistence. Is there another word that invokes this sort of insistent drive towards excellence?

As I was thinking over this excellence, I read about succulence - the state of being juicy. That’s what I want! I want to infuse my work with juiciness -  full of richness of texture and color.

It somehow goes along with “kill it”. I want to bring succulence to it, to enjoy it, to delve into it thoroughly.
I’m still unsure of the right word, something to align the ‘Kill’ with the ‘Succulence’…is there anything in between?

There we go, that’s my expanded Intention for 2009: Kill it (make it juicy), Share it.

And what is the “it”?

The “it” is whatever it needs to be. The “it” is yet to come, the “it” can change. For the next few weeks, the “it” is designing the Month of Love Series, learning about video editing, launching a new video project, organizing a mill-spun line of yarns.

So this is how I’m beginning. I’m learning, infusing and sharing.

What do you want to learn this year? What do you hope to share?

Ask Tara is a  weekly-ish feature in which I attempt to answer your questions about spinning, dyeing or confusing knitting acronyms. If you have a question, ask it in the comments and I’ll answer it here with either a post or a video!

This week’s question was spurred by Laila of Rawfish.
She wondered:

Is there a name for yarn bigger than 8 WPIs?

But wait, what is WPI?

WPI stands for Wraps Per Inch. It’s a way of measuring the thickness of yarn.

Well, let’s back up a little more.

What we’re talking about is the diameter of a strand of yarn, but the industry standard way to describe this “weight”. I find that’s confused with the actual weight (like, 4 oz.), so for our purposes, we’re going to call it the “thickness”.

Commercially spun yarns are not measured in WPIs, but in stitches per inch. This is the measurement of how many stitches fit in an inch of St st knitting. It’s usually given as a range of numbers, as knitting styles cause variation in tension.  Commercial yarns also contain “suggested needle size” and that can give you some insight into the thickness of a yarn.

Have you no standards?

The Craft Yarn Council of America has created an industry standard for measuring yarn: Numbers and Words! You can see in this chart how the numbers represent the weights (thicknesses) of yarn (0 is smallest, 6 is biggest) with corresponding “official” words (Lace through Super Bulky)

These measurement systems are all well and good if you’re looking at a ball band, but what about the yarn you just created? Do you need to knit a swatch to know if it’s worsted or super bulky?

Honestly, once you’ve knit with a wide range of yarns, you can usually figure it out by sight and touch. But relying on intuition for yarn I’m selling isn’t a reliable policy, so I use WPIs.

The reason so many spinners use WPI and many knitters haven’t?

• Spinners need to know the thickness without knitting it up
• Knitters want to know what it will be like after they knit up!

How to measure WPI

So simple! Get out a ruler, gently wrap your yarn around the ruler for one inch (from 1″-2″ or 5″-6″). Make sure the yarn isn’t being pulled too tight or overlapping or leaving gaps. You want to fill in that entire inch without stretching your yarn.
Now count how many times your yarn wrapped around – that’s your “wraps per inch”!

So what does it mean for knitters?

Well, WPIs can be translated (roughly) into an idea of what how many stitches/inch the yarn will produce.  At the very least it will land you within the right number label.

Or at least, it should. While researching this issue, I came across quite a few WPI charts and all of them seemed slightly different. Some charts label a yarn with 7 WPIs Super Bulky and some just call it Bulky.

What do I do if a yarn is on the edge? Take a good look at the yarn, check this chart and use my common sense! If the yarn is very dense, I round it up to the bigger size (because the knitter/crocheter is going to get a bigger gauge). If the yarn is soft and fluffy, I’ll round down, knowing the yarn will smoosh into a smaller gauge.

But what to do with that “off the chart” yarn?

Well, friends, that’s where you come in! What do you think we should call the ginormous, bigger-than-super-bulky yarn? I asked that question on Twitter today and got some responses including “Jumbo”, “Gigantor” and “CrazySuperBulky”.

What do you think? What should be the industry standard in mega-yarn?

Resources:

Spindlicity article about measuring WPIs
WPI chart
Another WPI chart
Craft Yarn Council’s Yarn weight standards

Welcome to the Month of Love!

Each weekday I’ll be posting 1 yarn inspired by a famous pairing, from now until February 14th and each Wednesday I’ll be giving a little roundup of the last week’s love-y yarn.
But I need some help! Suggest a couple you can win 50% off your next skein of BCB yarn, by commenting right here!

This week I explored some ideas I’ve had rattling around for a while, like PB + J:

I knew that I wanted to have this skein of yarn knit into an actual representation of PB&J, so I started with white piece of bread (undyed wool), spun a slather of peanut butter and then really laid on the jelly and finished it off with another slice of bread. When knit up (I’m picturing a plain hat or a garter stitch scarf), you’ll have one BIG PB &J sandwich, with mostly jelly, just the way my Jay likes it!

Another long-pondered yarn is Cheech+Chong:

Various shades of recycled green wool with a splash of sparkle, swirl around a green thread of hemp. Really, I think that description says it all, since this is a family site, I’ll let you make the jokes!

As a French major, I felt I needed to honor Louis XIV (always pronounced Quatorze by moi) & Marie in a fun yarn:

Inspired by the candy-coated opulence of the French court (as depicted in the recent movie), this yarn is a colorful mix of brilliant pink, sky blue,chocolate brown with a single shot of aqua green. I was first inspired to think of the couple in THESE colors, by Cloudlover’s beautiful colorway. Thick & thin (to represent the couples ups and downs) Louis & Marie is supersoft and luxuriously squishy.

And that’s it for this Month of Love round-up, there were 2 more  (Barack + Michelle, Surf+Turf) but those have sold, so I shan’t tempt you with them!

What do you think of these yarns? Do you have alternate colors I could have used for them?

Have an idea for a future “Month Of Love” pairing? Suggest it in the comments!

Ask Tara is a  weekly-ish feature in which I attempt to answer your questions about spinning, dyeing or life with a dog that sneaks into your videos. If you have a question, ask it in the comments and I’ll answer it here with either a post or a video!

The question I get asked the most often is pretty much the same thing, from a spinners and non-spinners alike. The wheel, it’s always all about the wheel.

The spinners ask: What wheel do you use?
The non-spinners ask: How does it work?

I give a little spiel on how it works to anyone who looks twice at me spinning at craft shows, but I’ve never shared it with you!

Instead of writing for 1000 years about how I love my wheel and how it works, how about a video?

So now I ask YOU: what kind of wheel do you use? I’d love to hear about it in the comments and if you make your own video, before sure to share the link!

Do you have a question about the wheel I didn’t answer? Just let me know in the comments!

Hello and welcome to my brand new website!
I’m still figuring this out and making changes, so if you see a broken link or something doesn’t make sense, please leave a comment!
I know this is pretty different from my last, static website and from my old blog, so let me show you around!

• If this is your first time here, why don’t you read the About Page, it”ll give you a good idea about what I’m doing here.
• If you’re ready to buy some yarn, then head over to the Boutique, or just click on the mini-shop there on the right!
• If you Tweet, Ravelry or Flickr, be sure to connect at the….Connect page.

And if you’re here just to catch up and read the blog? You’ll always find the most recent blog entries on the front page, under the big “Featured” box. To be sure you don’t miss any, subscribe to the feed by clicking on that big orange SUBSCRIBE button at the top of the page!

Don’t know what a feed is or how to subscribe? It’s a super easy way to get updates delivered to your inbox or into a “feed reader”. This means you don’t have to visit here everyday to see if I’ve posted, the feed will come to YOU! Exciting, eh?

Whether this is your first time here or you’ve been a fan, customer or friend since the beginning (or something between the two), Thank you SO much! Thank you for your encouragement, your feedback and your silly comments. Thank you for knitting, crocheting and weaving with my yarn and for sharing pictures and projects with me! And thank you, always, for inspiring me to sit down at the wheel and spin you a fabulous yarn.

I believe that everyone has a color. For some people it’s intentional, like a signature color  ( Blush & Bashful for Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias). For other people it’s unintentional; it’s the first color that comes to mind when you think of them. Interesting things happens when people partner. They have their color, but it looks different next to someone else’s.

Take me and Jay, for instance: my lifelong favorite color has been a not-too-pale, not-too-bright sky blue. My husband (dark and broody) is definitely a gray. Next to his gray, my blue looks a lot brighter, a lot more like electric blue. And of course I’m a pale blonde and he’s dark-haired, chocolate-brown-eyed and generally a bit of a scruff.  Next to him everything about me, including my blonde hair, looks sparkly bright. I never thought of myself as sparklybright until I was with him..so not only does my color look different, it feels different too!

I’m interested in how this interplay of colors and how the addition of a color (or person) to a yarn (or your life) can change a color or at least, the perception of that color. And some couples, they just have a single color to symbolize the pairing (ex. Cheech +  Chong = green). Of course, this applies to more than just romantic couples; it happens with any sort of pairing: PB & J or Bert & Ernie.

Bert & Ernie

Inspired by this interplay of color and personality, last year I created the Month Of Love Series – everyday between January 14th and February 14th, I posted a new couples-inspired yarn. It was SUCH a fun project and so inspiring, I’ve decided to revive it for this year’s 2nd Annual Month of Love.

And it just isn’t a Month of Love unless I spread some love to my sweet Chicken-ettes.  So here’s how you can win 50% off your next purchase at the Boutique:

I need help thinking of pairings! I’m looking for all new couples this year, no repeats from last year (check here to see what I spun last year)! I’ve already come up with a few couples (so don’t enter them!)

• Barrack & Michelle
• Cheech & Chong
• Frida & Edward
• Buffy & Angel
• Joanie & Chachi
• PB & J
• Ketchup & Mustard (that’s my husband’s idea!)
• Louis & Marie Antionette
• Danny & Sandy
• Cinderella & Prince Charming
• Donna & David
• Rick & Ilsa

To enter: leave a comment below this post with both a COUPLE and their COLOR(S). You must include your email (no one will see it) so I can let you know if you’ve won. You may suggest as many couples as you like and if any couples are duplicated, the winner will be the first who mentioned both that couple and the colors I use.