Today I’m sharing my reference books with you.  I entered the Fiber Side a bit over seven years ago, in 1999.  Before that I knew zero about fiber.  I was clueless about knitted vs. woven, wool vs. mohair, and woolen vs. worsted.  So, how did I amass a huge amount of information about knitting, spinning, dyeing in that amount of time? 

First, I found many fiber goddesses.  Maine is ripe with them and all were willing to share their wisdom with me.  I feel quite blessed to live in a place with so many wise women.  Many thanks to Beth, my Knitting Goddess; Sharon my dyeing guru; and Jody, who taught me to spin and, later, fixed my spinning wheel over the phone.  Amazing, wise and sharing women!

Second, I’m willing to try out almost any technique, and am very willing to try over and over again until it works or I find a better way.  There are no failures when playing with fiber.  What have I done with things I don’t like?

• Knitting: Take it out! Honestly, just take it out and do something else with it.  That’s one of the best things about knitting.  Nothing is final.
• Spinning: Either cut it up to use as bits in the next spinning project or give it away.  I’ve used both methods and I’ll talk about snipping up yarn at a later date.
• Dyeing: Dye it again or give it away.  Someone will love it even if you don’t.  You don’t like the green in your roving?  Give it away.  It came out too bright?  Give it away.  I have many wonderful friends and have never had trouble finding someone to take my "castoffs".

Third, I’ve found many good books.  I’ve read them and tested them.

What makes a good reference book? It needs to have good information, be clearly  documented in pictures and graphics, be well-indexed, and the data needs to be reproducible.

• In Sheep’s Clothing has more info about sheep’s fleece in one place than any other book.  I take it with me when I work at the fleece tent at the Fiber Frolic  and Common Ground Fair 

  Most breeds of sheep are covered in this book, with comparative information on lusture, length, softness, and feltability.  There are pictures of fleece from each breed as well.

• Color in Spinning is written with spinners in mind, but the color theories work with yarn as well as roving.  This is color theory at its finest, with many diagrams and pictures.  This was out of print for a long time, but is thankfully available again.

   

• Harmony Guides (Volumes 1 through 5) are a series of knitting stitch books.  I’m lucky enough to have all of them.  I often sit down with one of these books before I start a knitting project to pick out a stitch or cable to throw into a simple pattern.

Next time: books that inspire my Fiber side.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.