Spring Shawls

Yes, knitwear is functional.  It keeps us warm. But sometimes it's nice if it keeps us just a little warm.  Lightweight yarn, knitted into simple delicate shawls, provides the right amount of warmth and comfort on those first days of spring when the sun has come out but it's still chilly.  I usually don't dress warmly enough due to my excitement that spring is here!  But then find that it isn't actually here yet.  Wearing a lightweight type of neck scarf, I can act less cold even if my toes are freezing in my sandals and my ankles could use sock coverage. At least my neck and shoulders are warm!

Handspun and handknit wool and tencel.
Wool is dyed by the reaction of copper and ammonia.

Two-ply handspun

These shawls can be folded over and worn as scarves with the triangle point in the front or the back.  Stretch them width-wise and wrap them twice around or stretch them length-wise for a traditional shawl style worn down over the shoulders.

These two items are available for purchase by email or on my etsy site.  They are handspun and all natural fibers.  See them at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/EmolynKnits

Color Everywhere

Sometimes customers don't have a lot of preference when they ask for a hat.  They say, "You're the artist!"  Other times, they know just what they want, exactly what they want, and I do my best to create what they are imagining - in knitwear.  I hung up the phone after speaking with a customer like this.  I pulled yarn from the shelves in my studio to match the description I'd just heard.  I looked at the balls of yarn and arranged them on the table, then put them in another order, then another.  It turned out, I was about to leave for Hawaii. I was going to have some fun with this one.

The Trial Run

The Finished Hat

The Matching Infinity Scarf

The View

As I was knitting, a rainbow appeared on the horizon.  I looked at it for a while.  There it was - a burst of color, like a wink from nature saying, "Yeah, I love color too."

Hand knit one-of-a-kind HATS!! -- Coming to a craft fair near you!!

Come visit me at my booth next weekend, October 5th and 6th from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the John C. Campbell Folk School Fall Festival.  This festival is something special.  It has been going strong for forty years! I will be sharing a booth with my mother Martha Owen and my sister Annie Fain Liden. Click their names to see their work.  We will have special handmade knitwear, hand spun yarn, fleeces, blankets, scarves, paintings, and handmade books for sale -- everything you need to cozy up for the winter (except for a fuzzy kitty cat or a hot cup of tea.) We probably will have tea cozies though! 

I wrote about this wonderful gathering a few years ago on the folk school blog. 

Read more here: Folk School Blog - Fall Festival

October is CRAFT MONTH in western North Carolina.  

"Winters'a'comin'!"

Making Hats Makes Me Happy!

I have been in a hat making frenzy.  It's getting warmer here in the mountains. Daffodil season has already passed and the days are getting longer.  Yet, here I am knitting away! It'll get cold again...

These hats will be available soon on Etsy from my shop "Emolyn Knits."  Check it out at www.etsy.com/people/EmolynKnits

Road Tripping and Knitting

Tripping can be seen as a negative thing - fumbling, stumbling, and falling come to mind - but when it's connected to the "road" it quickly becomes joyful.  And better still is to go on a road trip with an armload of yarn feeling hopeful to return home with a stack of new hats.

First stop Baltimore.  Wintery winds blustered me into a neighborhood coffee shop where I finished hat number one and tried it on for size.

That evening I went to D.C. and it was just as cold there - but my new hat handled winds blowing from every direction.  Where to next?  There is more to see and now I'm armored with a warm new hat.

On to Ithica where there was more than just wind blowing.  I woke up the next morning to a layer of snow covering the street.  I finished hat number two in time to try it out on a wintery walk.  I need warmer hiking boots!

I was happily knitting in Ithica for two days before continuing on to Rochester.  As soon as the car wheels stopped, I jumped out to stretch my legs.  I stopped in a park and watched the sun go down behind some trees.  Diamonds, diagonals, and stars were my idea for hat number three with hot pink to warm it up around the edges.

Last stop Brooklyn, where friends showed me around their neighborhoods and warm orange and yellow street lights juxtaposed the grey and somber blue of the cold night sky.

Overall, I think I faired well during my northeastern trip in the middle of January.  It wasn't that cold when I had yarn running through my fingers and was armed with circular and double pointed needles, and a pair of scissors and a sewing-up needle in my holster.

All of these hats are for sale by EmolynKnits.  Contact me at emliden@gmail.com.

Looks like fun but -- what are they doing?!

On the 3rd of July we celebrated July 4th at Penland by having a parade.  The classes were invited to participate and my group, the Sculptural Knitters, came up with the idea to knit as we marched - why not?  But we can already knit and walk at the same time (we're great multi-taskers) so we needed to up the stakes.  We decided to knit caution tape with people as the row holders.  Can you picture it?  We casted-on around Jenna, Karen, Sharon, and Ronda.  Carolyn crossed in front of the marching row while the ladies lifted the loop around their waists up over their heads.  Then Carolyn ran back across with a new line of caution tape and the ladies lifted loops again.  Our name was "A Cautionary Tale" and we had a long one by the time the parade was over.

Adrienne wore a ball of yarn on her head,  Leslie carried Miss Penland 2010, Lexi and I played drums from recycled ketchup cans and we sang and had a chant!  We went above and beyond -- and laughed a lot in the meantime.

Emolyn Teaches Knitting

My dear sister Annie Fain is traveling in France and sending me news about the fabulous food she's been eating, Bal folk dancing, and the kind people she has been meeting. I am lured into her world there as I dearly love to travel. While I rely on her stories to add some foreign spice to my day, I look for adventure here at home.

The most recent adventure in my life has been a dive into a deep-end of sorts: what ensued was me teaching my first knitting workshop. My class was full and took place at the John C. Campbell Folk School. All beginners, my students introduced themselves and buckled up for the journey.

We began discussing the relationship between needle size and yarn size then casted-on and soon they were knitting for the first time! What fun! The weekend progressed from there into a glorious fiber experience: in the mornings we warmed up our hands and fixed mistakes made in the wee-hours of the night, while practicing knitting and talking at the same time. We moved from knitting to purling, and ribbing. After lunch Saturday I took my class to Brasstown's local yarn store, the Yarn Circle, to dabble in the "what-if's" of knitting projects. After hours of knitting, I reminded them to look up and far away! something every enthusiastic knitter need not forget - so we visited the sheep at the barn, the pregnant ewes, our two Great Pyrenees, the shy kitty, and the rams living strategically far from the unbred ewes. Sunday morning we added increasing, decreasing, and casting-off to the list as well as reading gauges which led to a fun sweater-making discussion.

At the end of every class at the Folk School the students come together to display their work in an event called Show-and-Tell. Here we get to see what others experienced during their class. We all lucked out this weekend because there was a very generous chocolate making class going on. I sampled espresso flavored truffles, a rich layer cake, fudge of some sort and more until I learned that the key was not to look the students from the chocolate class in the eye for fear of being lured to their table again.

Yes ~ chocolate is a reason to digress and so I have. But let me take you back around to the knitting table where we had our lovely samples on display.

My student Brigitta Remole standing in front of our table

To my students: Thank you for being a great class. I am happy to know that there are now eight more knitters in the world!

Knitting Wonderland

As I'm sure you know, we've seen more snow than usual this winter. On the news I've been hearing, "Oh this blasted snow!" while others have been saying "We've had a hard winter." I have to admit that all the while I have been saying "This is best time of year for knitters!"

Today my dear mother and I were leaving the house for an afternoon jaunt. We layered up and I met her at the door. "Wait a sec mom," I said "Look at all the handmade knitwear we're wearing!" I puller her outside into the sunshine (though it snowed all evening this morning beheld the bluest of skies) and I gave my dad the camera. We had to get a picture of our knitwear in use. And worn all at once - might I add.

My mom and I were wearing ten knitted items. My mother had on one of her hand spun, dyed, and knitted vests under a sweater made by the same mastered skill. She also wore socks and a hat which she made and a pair of mittens one of her students so sweetly gave her. I was wearing my own socks and sweater with a scarf and hat made by my mom and mittens made by my aunt Suz. We were well suited for the walk. Actually, once we got going I realized I was a little too warm and had to take a layer off. The least I can say is we were two very happy knitters! Now we just need knitted long-johns.

Picking a Project for the Fiber

There are many types of fiber in this world and hopefully we'll be able to work with them all at some point in this lifetime. As I go along my fiber road, I stop to touch the cotton, angora, wool, silk, bamboo, hemp and think about what I could make - a cotton wash cloth for the face, an angora shawl to wear with a cocktail dress, or a pair of chunky wool slippers to slide around with on the wood floor on a snowy day.

It is true that some yarn (however warm it may turn out to be) is just too prickly to wear on the skin or up around the neck. When I came across the Lopi Icelandic wool, I knew it would make me feel as warm as a wood stove if I knitted into a sweater. Icelandic wool is good for keeping you toasty and for that I love it. It is crisp and holds it's shape, but in the south the prickle-factor goes up. Here we look for fiber to wear against the skin. This particular day I didn't want to turn down the sweater route, instead I asked myself, "What could I make with this fiber - for this fiber?"

And that is why I made my first Teddy Bear -- there was no child or expectant mother in mind. It was solely for the fiber. This was actually the first time I have ever followed a pattern and I admit I had NO CLUE what I was doing. How was this odd octopus shaped spot of knitting ever going to become a bear? I continued to mumble this as I faithfully followed the pattern, until I turned it up-side-down, and inside out. Only then... yes! He just needs to be stuffed and I have a bear!

My bear is a little long-legged and his eyes pop out on his face, but he cheers me up every time I look at him in my parent's store. He really is the perfect sample for the yarn. Customers can poke him and squeeze his belly and some have even said that they want to make one too.