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The Tangled Skein Meet • Knit • Learn The Newsletter of the Ottawa Knitting Guild May 2012

Meeting Preview May 14: Cat Bordhi will be our speaker after an amazing 3 days of workshops.

June 18: Last meeting of the year. Annual General

Meeting, voting for executive members, yarn swap.

Event Listings Stitch Doctor

Come to the Stitch Doctor from 7:00 to 7:30 p.m.

(before the Guild meeting) in the Friendship Room, off the main corridor near the back of the church.

You will discover new ways of doing things, sugges-

tions for overcoming problems, and your knitting

will take on a new professional look.

May – Knitting Nupps for Orenburg Lace, Knit One

Below and what is an easy way to deal with your row tension which is not as given in the pattern.

Submitted by Elizabeth Payne

Twist Fibre Festival

If you’re looking for end-of-summer knitting fun in

the Ottawa/Gatineau area, you may want to check out the Twist Fibre Festival, which will be held from

August 24 to 26, 2012 in St André-Avellin, Quebec,

on Route 321, just north of Montebello. Artisans,

producers of materials and services are invited to

participate at kiosks and there will be workshops

on August 25 and 26. It sounds like an interesting outing for us fibre folk at the end of the summer.

For more information, contact Amélie Blanchart at

819-983-1792 or e-mail [email protected].

Submitted by Jacqueline Biéler

Library News The OKG Library wants to thank Liane Thiry-Smith for taking the time and trouble to find the indexes

to all our Lucy Neatby DVDs. Liane printed them

and cut them to size, allowing us to insert one into

the back cover of each DVD case. It’s a great contri-

bution.

Submitted by Gillian Villeneuve

Creativ Festival, Spring 2012 For the third consecutive year I tripped off to the

Creativ Festival (not a spelling error!) in Missis-

sauga in what is becoming an annual event with

my friend (also Kate!), to see what was new in the

crafting world for 2012.

This year I treated myself and went on both days, spending Friday taking the free workshops and

watching demos and stage presentations, which left

us Saturday strictly for shopping!

We noticed in contrast to last year, the balance of

yarn vendors was up significantly providing a nice mix of sewing, needlework, jewelry and paper craft

vendors.

While natural fibres are still featured strongly, we

did see that acrylics were up front and centre as

vendors went out of their way to provide economic

relief for crafty customers in the form of high qual-ity acrylics along with very nice projects kits at very

attractive pricing.

(Continued on page 3)

In this issue:

Meeting Preview ...................................... 1

Event Listings ......................................... 1 Library News........................................... 1

Creativ Festival, Spring 2012 .................. 1

Jana’s Gems ........................................... 2

It’s a Boy! Actually, Two! ......................... 3

Where Are You From? ............................ 4

April Meeting Recap ............................... 4 Knit Lit .................................................. 5

Minutes of the 2011 AGM ....................... 6

April Show and Tell ................................ 7

Knitting in London Through History ....... 8

Guild meetings are held monthly at Woodroffe United Church, 207 Woodroffe Avenue. The

Banquet Hall opens at 7:00 p.m. for networking, with the formal program commencing at

7:30 p.m.

http://www.festivaltwist.org/mailto:[email protected]://www.csnf.com/

2 www.ottawaknittingguild.ca May 2012

Learning New Techniques, And Knitting Souve-

nirs

First of all, I am very excited that our workshops weekend is virtually upon us! I am greatly looking

forward to finally meeting Cat Bordhi, and learning

as much as I can possibly absorb in one weekend. I

try, as often as I can, to learn knew techniques that

help keep my knitting experience fresh and inter-

esting, and I encourage others to do so as well. What better place to do this than at an Ottawa

Knitting Guild workshops weekend, when you can

attend “Knitting School”, learn new things, and

spend time with other knitters. Attending the Knit-

ting Guild meetings, where we have so many mem-bers to learn from is already inspiring. This experi-

ence is so much more focused at our annual knit-

ting workshops weekends! Knitting is such a visual,

tactile hobby that the best way to learn to knit and

to enhance your learning is by actually doing it, so

practice is essential. I am greatly looking forward to the Cat Bordhi workshops because I need to push

myself to think “outside the box”, to try new meth-

ods of casting on (among other things), and in gen-

eral, to be more creative in my knitting.

When you travel to other places, do you shop for souvenirs? What kind of souvenirs to you prefer to

collect? Do you like to (or remember to) buy me-

mentoes for yourself? If you are such a collector,

there comes a point in your life when you realize

you are running out of space to put these beautiful

little gems, and after all there are only so many co-conut creatures or keychains that you might really

want or need. That is the point I have reached in

my life. Now when I want a souvenir, I seek out

yarn shops that sell locally produced Indie yarns, or

unusual or different fibres, tools and supplies. I have had the good fortune to visit two such shops

in the past month or six weeks, one was in Vancou-

ver, BC, and the other in Woodstock, Ontario.

In another issue of the Tangled Skein (several years

ago), I described a previous visit to Vancouver,

when we found a yarn shop simply by happy hap-penstance. At that time, I was just starting to knit

socks, and got myself some gorgeous hand pained

Koigu sock yarn. This will serve as a practical, fun,

and comfortable reminder of that trip. More re-

cently, I had the pleasure of another visit to the

same fair city, and this time made sure to seek out and visit an LYS by looking for shops near the ar-

eas that I would be visiting or staying. My sister

actually found this one for me—the shop was called

Baaad Anna’s, located in Vancouver’s East Village

along Hastings Street. It is a spacious shop, with

yarns hanging from pegs on the walls rather than tucked into cubby holes. Baaad Anna’s caters to

spinners, so they offer a large variety of roving in

various colours and materials. There were 3 or

4 tables set out about the room, in preparation for

an upcoming trunk show later in the week. And they had several buttons on display near the cash;

these were so unusual that I treated myself to a

couple of them, as I asked the clerk which yarns

were from local farms or

dying artists. I chose an-

other sock yarn hand dyed by a local artist. You can’t

knit yourself too many

pairs of socks! I really ap-

preciated their display of

“Why Gauge Matters”, a simple but effective demon-

stration of how several peo-

ple using the same yarn

come out with different re-

sults.

The other shop I recently found was called Len’s Mill

Store, a newly opened shop in Woodstock Ontario. I

had heard of this store before, as I had seen their

rather large display at a Creativ Festival a few years

ago, so I was eager to see what the real store looked like. It turns out that the original “Len” has left his

business to his sons, who are expanding the chain,

and this one was opened up a little over a year ago,

in a converted warehouse. I found it to be quite a

shop! I did not realize it would be so large and

would offer so much!! They don’t only sell yarn, but also many small and affordable household objects.

There is a large area dedicated to sewing and quilt-

ing materials. When I expressed my pleasant sur-

prise at what I found there to one of the clerks, she

indicated that this was only a small portion of the yarns they do offer. No wonder, then, that their dis-

play at the Creativ Show had been so impressive!

However, it should also be noted that Len’s doesn’t

seem to sell any upscale yarns such as alpaca or


Deadline for Submissions The deadline for submitting articles for next

month’s newsletter is 11:59 p.m., Friday, June 8.

Items submitted after that date will be published

the following month. Send your submissions to

[email protected].

Jana’s Gems

http://baaadannas.wordpress.com/mailto:[email protected]

May 2012 www.ottawaknittingguild.ca 3

qiviut, but the do

offer wool and wool blends in a

variety of colours.

You can find out

more about Len’s

from their web-

site: www.lensmill.com

Happy Knitting, everyone!!

Submitted by Jana Dinelle

(Continued from page 2) It’s a Boy! Actually, Two! Magnus is

the black

lamb and

Liam is the other lamb.

They are

both Shet-

land

Rams—I

decided to put my

money

where my

mouth is

and try to create a

quality wool,

starting of

course with

the sheep!

So, my

small flock

has dou-bled… Who

knows what

the number

will be next

year!

Submitted by Karen

Kauth

One of the more memorable vendors was The

Bagsmith (www.bagsmith.com) who featured not only the most beautiful jumbo sized wooden knit-

ting needles I have ever seen, but also had super-

sized Tunisian crochet hooks too. Their focus was

on big stitch knitting with Big Stitch Alpaca yarns,

and they had a variety of garments knitted up with

this luscious yarn, from the expected wraps and cowls to unexpectedly sumptuous skirts and long

coat-like shrugs.

We also saw a great deal of cross-crafting—sewing

vendors incorporating knitting or crochet into

their garments, beading and jewelry incorporated everywhere and onto everything, and accessories

such as fascinators and small purselets were fea-

tured prominently and were highly adorned little

works of art.

Overall we were pleased to see that rather than just

try to sell merchandise, vendors went out of their way to show customers the potential of their items,

the enjoyment of the crafts they were promoting,

and how tight budgets could be honoured and still

produce quality hand-crafted goods that gave as

much enjoyment to the creator as to the recipients.

And so we called this year’s spring festival a com-

plete success, and we can’t wait for next year!

Submitted by Kate Cook

(Continued from page 1)

http://www.lensmill.comhttp://logcabinyarns.com/http://www.bagsmith.com/http://finefibrefinds.webs.com/


Where Are You From? Have you ever wondered where your wool came

from? The obvious answer is from a sheep, but

what breed? Which country? I scrutinize food labels

more closely these days, and now do the same for yarn labels.

I’ve recently taken note of some yarn labels and I

feel that there is just not enough information pro-

vided. The last few months of my unemployment

have provided me great opportunity to re-acquaint

myself with the “stash” that I have acquired and ponder their origins.

It’s wonderful to see that some of the skeins and

balls have come from far off exotic places (China,

Turkey, Iceland, Australia, Italy, etc.), but I am dis-

appointed with the fact that the product may have been spun, processed and labelled in the far off

places and some not so far off. Where is the wool

from, really? And what kind is it? Did the sheep

that provided this wool graze on cliffsides in Ire-

land? Hilltops in Shetland? Pastures near Paken-

ham?

Australia is the #1 producer of wool in the world.

So, I think it’s safe to say that the majority of the

wool we purchase in a store that may have a label

displaying “Made in China” would have come from

Down Under. I believe for convenience’s sake that the majority of the wool is blended and then proc-

essed. If one wishes to claim the wool is Merino,

then the percentage of Merino must be disclosed

(source: nationaltextile.org). I imagine it’s much like

the production of Scotch, single malt vs. blended.

Both are very good indeed.

Take a look at some of the yarns in your own stash.

For instance some of the indie dyed yarn in my own populace has the % of contents clearly identified,

but where it’s made is often missing. I would be

happy if the tag said imported from________ and

hand dyed in____, spun in ________, labelled

in________, but that may require a bit more quality

control than is possible. Cascade Yarns Eco+ is 100% Peruvian Highland Wool—geographically good

but still does not tell me what kind of critter or

where it was made. See what I mean?

This does not prevent me from purchasing again,

just that I am left wanting more information about a product that I can get really personal with while

working on a project.

Submitted by Karen Kauth

April Meeting Recap Rare Breeds Canada

Our guest

speakers were

Elwood Quinn and Pam

Heath of Rare

Breeds Can-

ada. Elwood,

Director and Livestock

Chair, was

born on a

dairy farm in

nearby Greeley.

His background is in horticulture,

and he’s passion-

ate about farming.

Pam, Office Man-

ager and former Director, was also

born on a dairy

farm, but in Eng-

land. She moved

to Quebec in 2010

after living in Manitoba for 30

years.

Pam narrated a

slideshow of pic-

tures from various


http://www.nationaltextile.orghttp://www.rarebreedscanada.ca/http://www.rarebreedscanada.ca/http://www.rarebreedscanada.ca/http://www.wool-tyme.com/


places and events visited by Rare Breeds Canada in

recent years, including farms in England (the pic-turesque Cotswolds) and Quebec, as well as Maine’s

famous Fryeburg Fair. She explained that for all

livestock species—horses, cows, chickens, pigs, and

wool-bearing animals like sheep and goats—only

one breed is popular, and all other breeds are con-

sidered rare. In fact, a number of sheep breeds are so rare that they are in danger of extinction. The

Romney sheep, for ex-

ample, is considered

endangered just like

many wildlife species. How can we save rare

breeds? By providing a

market for any and all

parts of the animals,

including the wool, car-

cass and horns. Para-doxically, the only way

to save an endangered

breed is actually to

slaughter and use it

more in order to boost its popularity.

Pam and Elwood

brought in huge potato sacks of fleeces—fresh off

the sheep, dirt, straw and all—for the members to

touch, and also sold skeins of yarn spun from the

wool of Newfoundland sheep, one of the oldest breeds in Canada.

Guild member Deb belongs to a spinners’ group

that formed about two years ago. The Ottawa area

boasts a large fibre arts community, since it is

home to many indie dyers and yarn producers and knitting-friendly farmers. Deb and her fellow spin-

ners were given samples of Romney, Shetland,

Cotswold, Border Leicester and Clun Forest fleeces

to wash, card

and spin,

then knitted swatches to

create a

touchable

display to

show off the differences

between the

various

breeds. She

advised look-

ing for locally “grown” yarn at farmers’ markets.

Submitted by Julia Yeung

(Continued from page 4) Knit Lit

“But I don’t see how any one CAN object to a nice clean little cat at the table,” Billy had remonstrated tearfully.

“I know; but—er—they do, sometimes,” William had stam-mered; “and this is one of the times. Aunt Hannah would never stand for it—never!”

“Oh, but she doesn’t know Spunk,” Billy had observed then, hopefully. “You just wait until she knows him.”

Mrs. Stetson began to “know” Spunk the next day. The imme-diate source of her knowledge was the discovery that Spunk had found her ball of black knitting yarn, and had delightedly captured it. Not that he was content to let it remain where it was—indeed, no. He rolled it down the stairs, batted it through the hall to the drawing-room, and then proceeded to ‘chasse’ with it in and out among the legs of various chairs and tables, ending in one grand whirl that wound the yarn round and round his small body, and keeled him over half upon his back. There he blissfully went to sleep.

Billy found him after a gleeful following of the slender woollen trail. Mrs. Stetson was with her—but she was not gleeful.

“Oh, Aunt Hannah, Aunt Hannah,” gurgled Billy, “isn’t he just too cute for anything?”

Aunt Hannah shook her head.

“I must confess I don’t see it,” she declared. “My dear, just look at that hopeless snarl!”

“Oh, but it isn’t hopeless at all,” laughed Billy. “It’s like one of those strings they unwind at parties with a present at the end of it. And Spunk is the present,” she added, when she had extricated the small gray cat. “And you shall hold him,” she finished, graciously entrusting the sleepy kitten to Mrs. Stet-son’s unwilling arms.

- Eleanor H. Porter, Miss Billy (1911)

http://www.justknitting.ca/https://sheepsahoy.com/home/


Minutes of the 2011 Annual General Meeting

The 2011 Annual General Meeting was called to

order at 7:40 p.m.

Jana read the President’s Report and stated that

she would send it to the newsletter editors.

The meeting heard a rundown of the highlights of 2010-11:

First and foremost: the new Guild website.

In terms of program, Sylvia’s roadmap set the

course for the year.

The Guild also introduced new kinds of speak-ers: for example, a representative of the Ottawa

Public Library, who talked about how to search

the OPL catalogue for knitting-related items and

provided some recommendations.

The executive had some turnover during the

year, with various members stepping down for various reasons, but volunteers filled the gap.

Charity knits continued on strong: CHEO sent

their thanks to the Guild. The Guild also sup-

ports 10 other charities.

There was also discussion of Stitch Doctor and

Knit and Learn sessions.

On the knitting project front, this was the Year

of the Thrummed Mitten.

Events: Earth Day display at Wabi-Sabi, Creativ

Festival, Knitters’ Frolic, etc.

The Guild also attended its first quilt show; at-

tendees were enthusiastic (“Oh look! Knitting!”).

Vendors were thanked for their support.

Knitting Challenge had 12 submissions this

year. Ideas wanted for next year’s challenge!

Workshops this year: Cabin Fever (Deb Gem-

mell), top-down knitting.

The Treasurer’s Report would appear in September

newsletter.

Next came the elections. The initial burst of self-

nominations filled all slots except Program, then someone was found to fill the blank.

All positions acclaimed.

Program: Anne Goodwin


http://rosehavenfarm.net/http://www.victoryfarm.ca/http://www.yarnfwd.com/main/http://janiehknits.com/


April Show and Tell

Sheila Weinfurter showed a very vibrant

modular vest made from four skeins of Noro

Taiyo. The pattern was from the Noro book 30 Designs in Living Color. You can choose

from eight different colourways online. This

is colourway #3.

Fiona

Bremner

made this bikini top

for a friend

who has

been diag-

nosed with

breast can-cer. The

friend is

tired of the

routine of

having her bust exam-

ined by an

endless

procession

of doctors.

The Boob Trap bikini

top will

definitely

shake up

the rou-tine—at least for the doctors! The cups and strings were

knitted and felted, and the areola and nipples were needle

-felted on. The pattern is from Ravelry.

Inspired by last year’s guild meeting on vintage knitting,

Michelle Demers knitted two vests from Astra acrylic yarn using a vintage Paton’s Beehive pattern.

Treasurer: Laurie Chochinov

Membership: Kathy McEwen

Member at Large: Dara Greenberg

Special Events: Debbie Wilson and

Lynne Moore

Website: Carolyn Duke and Emilie

Poncelet

Library: Jen Skanes and Julie Thur

This year there are three teams on the

executive. Positions with only one mem-

ber can of course call on the rest of the

Guild for help when needed as well. (In the call for volunteers, it was empha-

sized that the key word in the position

description is COORDINATOR—you do

not have to do all the work yourself.)

Adjournment: Barbara Bondar moved to

adjourn the meeting, Gina Smart sec-onded. Meeting adjourned at 8:00 p.m.

Submitted by Jeannie Grundy

(Continued from page 6)


Knitting in London Through History Recently I took a trip to London with my family. We spent nine days exploring a wide range of museums

and galleries, all of which were documented exhaustively by yours truly. (Digital cameras are both a

blessing and a curse where I’m concerned.) One museum of the many we visited was the Museum of Lon-

don, which traces the history of the city from prehistoric humans to the Romans and later Saxons, from the Middle Ages to the present day. There’s something for just about everyone to find interesting, includ-

ing knitting-related items.

Submitted by Shauna McNally

Moving forward in time to the 1200s or so, we

have an early example of knitted stockings. I’m

pretty sure those are actually holes and not just some odd lace pattern. The person who made

these was probably a bit more utilitarian.

This is from the prehistory gallery and is a very early

example of fibre arts. The pointy thing on the right has wool spun around it, and the big triangles at the

back are loomweights.

A riot of colour greets us

with the present-day exam-

ple of knitting. This is a jumper made from strands of

recycled silk. I’m not sure

whether the purple hat

above it is knitted too.

For those of a patriotic, charitable

knitting bent, the Imperial War Mu-

seum has this great poster from the

Second World War.

An interactive display at the

London Transport Museum fea-

tures a ticket agent who reverts to other activities when she is

not otherwise engaged.

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