Retreat, and the lure of spinning

My knit group retreat last weekend was short, but idyllic. There was a foot of snow on the ground in the Sierras, but the weather was sunny and gorgeous. Most of our Saturday was spent on the deck:


Knitting was the excuse for the expedition, but there was also just lots of good company, great conversation – and delicious food and wine. What a blast!

I didn’t do much knitting (although I did finish binding off my Brandywine shawl), but my trusty wheel rode with me and I did do lots of spinning. First some plying to clear my bobbins:

Softly-spun merino-wool in lavender, silver-gray, and sheep’s black. I spun all of each color before going on to the next, then made a two-ply. Where the colors don’t match exactly, there are marled black-gray and gray-lavender transitions. I think it’ll make a nice color-banded hat or mittens.

Then I spun this Corriedale in three coordinating colors the same way (these flash photos are quite accurate):


The fiber is from Royale Hare - a mixture of dyed and natural gray carded together, for a lovely, complex heathered effect. It has yet to be plied, but should make a nice slightly fuzzy worsted-weight 2-ply.

It’s time for me to tell you my spinning story. When I started knitting, I thought I should give spinning a try, and eventually I had a drop-spindle lesson from a friend a couple of years ago. It was a group lesson, and several folks were instant spinners. Not me – hopeless. With some relief, I decided I didn’t need to spin after all. One less enthusiasm to complicate life.

However. I’ve got a great virtual knitting group – we’re friends who’ve been talking knitting, and other things, for years online.  Many of the group are longtime spinning enthusiasts, and enablers par excellence. After that spindling lesson, I told them I’d been there, done that, no thank you very much. But they knew better. Last summer, a great deal on a preowned Matchless cropped up in the discussion. I seem to have expressed some interest, because before I knew it, the wheel was delivered to my door. As a surprise, the whole group got together to make it happen – and over the cliff I went.

Here’s Ms. Matchless on the day she arrived:



I still haven’t figured out what I did to deserve this incredibly generous gift, but it has proven to be the beginning of a love affair.

My day job is serious left-brain work. Indexing is reading, writing, and analyzing; often I’m thinking about abstruse, complicated topics like identity politics in the Caribbean or the emergence of modernity in the Middle East. Knitting is a great complement to the work I do, because it’s about handling real materials and making real objects. But knitting is just a little bit technical. The lure of spinning for me is that it’s so elemental and so different from my paying work.

A long time ago, I baked for a living for a few years. Knitting is like pastry making; spinning is like sourdough bread baking. Oh, I know, I could be a technical spinner – but I prefer to spin intuitively. It’s simple in some ways, but mysterious and complex in others – so there’s always something to learn. And when spinning, I feel connected to a tradition that goes back thousands of years. It’s satisfying in the same way it is to grow food, or make wine. In short, it makes me feel human.  So thank you, dear friends, for making this adventure possible.

Ravelry at 500,000

Two weeks ago, Ravelry's membership hit 500,000. There's been surprisingly little hoopla about this milestone, but it's really quite amazing. A social networking site this big that's useful, inspiring, easy on the eyes, fast, educational, and fun? With remarkably few annoying people, low-key, welcome advertising, and no goofy third-party apps? That members can use and enjoy in all sorts of different ways, for fun, business, or both? How do they do it?

random project photos from my Ravelry notebook

One knitter with a great idea, one brilliant tech guy, and no venture capital. That's how Ravelry started two and a half years ago. They dived in, listened to user comments, gradually added features when they could. They worked really, really, hard, and accepted the help of thousands of volunteers. It was just becoming easy and free to upload the user photos that make Ravelry such a great resource. Knitters were already communicating with one another in online forums and via blogs. In short, the time was ripe. The resulting community is a demonstration of the Internet at its very best.

Founders Jess and Casey told the Ravelry story in their own words in this 2008 YKnit podcast interview. Tim Bray ran a great print interview with Casey a couple of months ago. This post discusses some of the behind-the-scenes tech and engineering aspects, as well as a bit of history and some usage statistics. And here is the Ravelry forum thread where the milestone was discussed.

I've been a member since October 2007, and I think I've looked at the site every single day, if not away on a trip. (And often when I have been away on a trip.) I don't spend much time in discussion forums. What I like most is to start at my "friends activity" page or the patterns page, and just cruise around looking at new-to-me patterns and projects. The result:

You read that right. 1,609 favorites, almost all of them projects or patterns. Of which 951 are untagged (sigh), making them hard to find, sort and organize. (My fault, not Casey's. Tagging used to be a little harder - it was a two-step process, and I was usually too lazy to go back and add tags. Now if we could get a search and replace capability so I could edit my tags, that would be fantastic!)

I'll never knit more than a minuscule percentage of the patterns and projects I see on Ravelry. But I do a lot of knitting in my head, and I learn a lot, without ever casting on. I'll admit my pattern library is rather large too. I have a weakness for collecting PDFs from Ravelry designers. The ability for anybody to give away or sell patterns on Ravelry, combined with the encouragement and feedback made possible by the community, has led to a truly incredible explosion of design creativity.

What could be better for knitting and knitters? Congratulations, Jess and Casey, and thank you. I know it's a huge amount of work, but I hope Ravelry is as much fun for you as it is for the rest of us. May it live a long and happy life.

It's hard to believe there are still knitters who haven't joined. If you're one of them, what are you waiting for? Ravelry isn't intimidating or hard to use. You can participate as much or as little as you like (although the more you share, the better it is for the community, of course). Go create an account so you can join the fun. And don't forget to friend me: I'm ThereseS. See you there!