wildyarndreams

[wildyarndreams]

Okay fuck it if this post reaches 666k notes by the end of 2023 I'll practise basic self care

Why 666k? Because it's funny and impossible so good fucking luck

[wildyarndreams]

Hey everyone!

As some of you may know, my mom is an amazing artist and creates gorgeous knitwear, including Star Wars-themed designs (I admit, I put her up to it by requesting a Captain Rex sweater for myself :D). Her Star Wars designs are mostly featuring clone trooper, but she is working on a new custom-ordered Ahsoka Tano-specific design right now, to be revealed to the public soon :>

Sadly her yarn shop business has been affected by the quarantine as well, and she and her husband (they run the shop together) are doing whatever they can to find their footing in these difficult times. 

So to make ends meet and keep busy in quarantine my mom is now taking commissions for her sweaters (any other item is open to discussion) for a reduced price of 220$, worldwide shipping included. All her knitwear is hand-made from 100% natural top-quality yarns. Open to creating brand-new custom designs. 

Please take a look at her instagram at natela_a, and send either of us a message or email at ksenia@lornaka.com if you’d like to order something!

Any support and spreading the word around is highly appreciated :) 

[wildyarndreams]

So I dyed more yarn, because I might as well, but now I’ve arrived at the reason why I decided to let the shop languish. Shipping has gotten MUCH more expensive especially outside of Europe.

I used to be able to send yarn across the globe for workable postage because I vacuumpack and send it letterpost. Except you are no longer allowed to ship any kind of goods as letterpost. It HAS to be a package.

Within the EU it’s a couple euro more, but the jump between sending two skeins and three skeins is not huge. It’s workable.

Sending elsewhere (US, Australia, anything outside of Europe) a package up ‘til 350gr (that’s two skeins plus packaging) is €11. And then the next tier up (three+ skeins) is €23, and that’s without tracking, which makes both weight tiers cost €30 (!!)

It makes me so sad because I’ve sent a fair bit of yarn to the US, I love the idea that somebody halfway across the world wears something I dyed, but I just don’t think it’s an option anymore. Unfortunately I think that if I remove the option to ship over there, people over there can’t see my listings/shop at all anymore either.

[wildyarndreams]

please expand on fibrecraft sorcery, for 3 hours if necessary. Definitions of necessary are really flexible here

VIKING LORE HELD THAT BOTH WEAVING AND SORCERY WERE WOMEN’S WORK, DITTO THE ORDERING OF THE HOUSE ACCOUNTS. MANY CULTURES HAVE HISTORICALLY LEFT ACCOUNTANCY TO WOMEN! MANY SOCIETIES HAVE ALSO LEFT FIBERCRAFT TO WOMEN BECAUSE IT IS TEDIOUS AND REPETITIVE BUT ALSO VERY NECESSARY. SEE ALSO: COOKING, CLEANING, BUDGETING, EMOTIONAL LABOR. 

ANYWAY FIBERCRAFT, AS I HAVE DISCOVERED VIA LEARNING TO DO A WHOLE LOT OF IT, IS ALMOST ENTIRELY APPLIED MATHEMATICS EXCEPT FOR THE PART THAT’S ENGINEERING (WHICH IS ALSO MATHEMATICS). ONCE YOU LEARN EVEN THE BASICS OF KNITTING, SEWING, AND WEAVING, IT BECOMES ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE TO REALIZE MEN THINK WOMEN ARE BY VIRTUE OF THEIR SEX (these are of course sexist gender-essentialist men who are not cool with trans people) ILL-EQUIPPED TO DO MATH SOMEHOW. HOLY SHIT, HAVE YOU SEEN HEIRLOOM KNITTING PATTERNS? HAVE YOU SEEN THE FORETHOUGHT THAT GOES INTO WORKING A HARNESS LOOM? OH MY GOD. 

THIS IS, THEN, WHERE PROGRAMMING (AND SORCERY) COMES IN. A PROGRAM IS “CODED INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE AUTOMATIC PERFORMANCE OF A PARTICULAR TASK”. WEAVING IS OFTEN A BINARY PATTERN: OVER/UNDER. PUNCH CARDS ON ADVANCED LOOMS CAN SET WHETHER THREADS GO OVER OR UNDER, AND SWITCHING THE CARDS AROUND YIELDS DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF CLOTH. A DUDE NAMED JAQUARD DEVELOPED EXTREMELY COMPLEX PUNCH CARDS THAT STARTED TO ENCODE HIGH VOLUMES OF INFORMATION FOR INCREASINGLY AUTOMATED LOOMS. A HUNDRED YEARS LATER WOMEN ARE USED AGAIN FOR THE ‘TEDIOUS BUT NECESSARY’ BUSINESS OF USING BINARY ON/OFF CARDS TO WRITE PROGRAMS FOR EARLY COMPUTERS. 

WHERE SORCERY FITS INTO ALL THIS IS HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A WOMAN USE A CARD LOOM REALLY FAST? IT’S THE MOST INTIMIDATING SKILLSET OUTSIDE OF A RODEO. SHE 100% LOOKS LIKE SHE COULD MAKE YOUR BUTT FALL OFF IF YOU CROSSED HER. APPLIED MATHEMATICS / ENGINEERING IS BAFFLING TO WATCH FROM THE OUTSIDE, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO FIBERCRAFT. YOU CAN MANIFEST WITH YOUR MIND AND HANDS THIS HIGHER AND TRUER ARCANE PLANE OF EXISTENCE INTO A NICE SCARF AND KEEP YOUR HUSBAND ALIVE FOR THE WINTER. MAYBE IF HE CROSSES YOU YOU CAN ALSO MAKE HIS BUTT FALL OFF. 

I TOTALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MEN DO FIBERCRAFT TOO BUT THIS WAS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN, MATH, FIBERCRAFT, AND MAGIC, SO THERE YOU GO. 

[wildyarndreams]

you: knitting pattern

me, an intellectual: yarn recipe

[wildyarndreams]

70 skeins on their way

I delayed it for a while, but new blank stock is on its way and dyeing season is about to start

[wildyarndreams]

I decided to make a post about Ravelry

I’ve recommended it to many people over the years, mostly elders who hadn’t considered the internet being that useful, and usually they’re like, “aw? A website? No thanks, it’s not necessary”. Which is fine even if internally I was like “plsssss no it’s so good”. 

A lot of gen-z are getting into fiber crafting and that is exciting.

So, here’s a little intro

This is the homepage, after making an account 

Up on the top right is your notebook, which you’ll probably visit the most because it contains all of the tools for organizing your projects.

That’s your notebook, on the left bar are your various tools. Projects are lined up neatly on the rest of the screen. There’s a Handspun tab for spinners, Stash is where you organize your yarns, uQeue is where you list upcoming projects, Favorites is where you can save and organize your favorite projects/patterns, Needles & Hooks gives you a chart that you can fill in with what you already own, Library is a digital library of patterns and even representations of the physical books that you own.

Each of these can be customized, for example in favorites in there is a place to bundle them, so that if you wanted to say make a bundle of everything you want to knit as Christmas presents throughout the year, you can do that. In Queue you can link the called for yarn and the yarn you are going to use, linked from stash or otherwise, you can make notes on each entry. I will often note whether I need needles and what kind, so that if I drop by the store, the info I need is just a couple of clicks away. There is even a place in the stash to note where you got your yarn and how much it cost.    

I’m not going much more deeper into that, but if ya’ll want me to do a post about specific tools let me know. 

The most attractive part of Ravelry for me is easily searchable database of patterns.

If you click on the Patterns button at the top left of the homepage, it takes you here.

I typically go straight to pattern browser & advanced search through the link under the search bar. 

The great part of this are the filters on the left. You can filter by category of clothing, if and how it’s in your notebook, by craft type, by it’s availability (like whether it’s free, downloadable, or purchased elsewhere), whether or not it has photos (because there are many self-published designers), by attributes such as shape, techniques, texture, and types of colorwork, by age, size, ease, fit, and gender, by weight of the yarn called for, by yardage required, by number of colors used, by pattern source, by needle size, by star rating, by difficulty, by origin of crochet terminology, and by language. There are many more search options after the main filters. 

So for example if I had exactly 700 yards of worsted eight yarn in two colors, and I knew I wanted to make a scarf, using bobbles and colorwork, I could search that. 

Not only that, but you can customize the filters to combine traits:

I could make my selections and hit advanced where I’ve circled in red and,

specify that I want merino, and cashmere, or silk, but not nylon. I still got 27 matches from that search, but that’s how big the database is. 

And the same goes for the yarn tab at the top left of the homepage next to patterns. You can search through pretty much every yarn available, from red heart to indie fiber artists, using similar characteristics to narrow it down.

I hope someone found this useful and if you’re a knitter or crocheter, it’s seriously worth a look. I’m not very active lately, but It’s where I go for inspiration if nothing else.  

[wildyarndreams]

'Autumn Walk' - Superwash Merino yarn - Hand-dyed - DK weight - 100gr/~200m

Can you believe I updated? Neither can I!

A lovely walk through a mixed-tree forest.

Find it here in my Etsy shop

[wildyarndreams]

“The folklore among knitters is that everything handmade should have at least one mistake so an evil sprit will not become trapped in the maze of perfect stitches. A missed increase or decrease, a crooked seam, a place where the tension is uneven - the mistake is a crack left open to let in the light. The evil sprit I want to usher out of my knitting and my life is at once a spirit of laziness and of over-achieving. It’s that little voice in my head that says, I won’t even try this because it doesn’t come naturally to me and I won’t be very good at it.”

—

Kyoko Mori, ‘Yarn’

That last phrase especially - “I won’t even try this because it doesn’t come naturally to me and I won’t be very good at it.” It really is like some kind of all-encompassing evil spirit sometimes.

(via blancheparish)

[wildyarndreams]

[wildyarndreams]

Vintage Paisley shawls

These type of woven wool/cotton shawls with paisley patterns were worn in the Netherlands in the early 20th century and made a comeback as house decoration in the 1940s and 50s. They are sometimes known as 'Worteldoek'.

You’ll see in the listing titles: [A] shawls are unworn or without any visible signs of wear. [B] shawls have signs of wear but in good state for a vintage cloth item. [W] stands for ‘Wastelanded’ - shawls with significant wear or damage. It’s described in the listing.

I wish the shipping didn’t have to be so expensive, but they’re pretty heavy :-/ The shipping fee is a flat fee up to 2 kilo, so if you want 2 or 3 (or you want to team up with somebody to save on shipping) I’m happy to accomodate that - just ask me if it’ll work weightwise, I have the weights noted down. (or more than 2/3, but then we’re into the next weight tier. I want to make this work. Get in touch please.)

GO HERE FOR THE THINGS

I hope there’s something there you like :-)

[wildyarndreams]

What is that lovely yarn behind your logo? The one with turquoise and golden browns?

A skein of fractal handspun! I knit it into a cowl:

[wildyarndreams]

taking a break from socks

[wildyarndreams]

🍁🍊The Colours of Autumn 🍊🍁

[wildyarndreams]

The Icelandic bind-off - “A medium-speed, stretchy bind-off that’s good for intermediate knitters”

[wildyarndreams]

New Jersey

[wildyarndreams]