My Year of Making and Healing: POST 5: “PLAYING WITH STRING” SAMPLER BOARD

(In case you missed it, I introduce this series here.)

It is very common to experience depression when you are ill. Many cancer patients experience profound depression—and it is understandable. One way to counteract this is to keep your mind occupied with things that make you happy. Dance, fishing, painting, gardening, hiking, teaching, singing, socializing, acting…anything that makes you happy. For some people, it is their work.  It is important to make time for these things in everyday life, but it is essential when experiencing challenging times.

Because I have always found time to do the things that I enjoy, the transition was easy for me. And as a result, I experienced only a handful of times when I felt a little down during my year of therapy and healing from breast cancer.

I am always playing with ways to transform various forms of fiber into something else. Last fall I put together this Sample Board to pin up some of my experiments. By the way, it is made from a couple layers from cardboard—another fiber I enjoy transforming! Then I just covered it with some spare black cloth with a glue gun (a favorite tool!) No need for a corkboard at all.

My most enjoyable activities with fiber are spinning, knitting, and dyeing. The items on the board are mostly tiny experiments. But sometimes they are tests for planning a specific project. You will see the results of some of these tests in future posts.

For example, these two experiments will show up in future posts. In one I was trying out colors for a small  wall hanging. In the TWEED tests, I was figuring out how to create a tweed yarn for a sweater.

Check out the close-up photo of this 10 Lari note I acquired while in the country of Georgia. Look what that woman is doing!! 

My Year of Making and Healing POST 4: THE PRICE IS RIGHT FOR THIS DISPLAY BOX!

(In case you missed it, I introduce this series here.) 

Sometimes making the simplest thing from scrap materials can be very therapeutic.

I am a sucker for cool looking boxes. There is an awful lot of cardboard in my house that never makes it to the recycle bin.

My daughter likes this brand of soap that she buys at Costco. That was one box that did not get away!

I covered the box with scrap material to make a kind of framed shelf and it was perfect to display my little knitted dolls that I bought in Peru several years ago. 

The woman who made one of the dolls let me photograph her smiling face!

My Year of Making and Healing POST 3: THE SEWING MACHINE

 (In case you missed it, I introduce this series here.)

Soon after I arrived home from my year-long trip, I purchased a sewing machine. Supposedly a “heavy duty” one, but really it is about the same quality as the everyday sewing machine I learned on over 50 years ago. In the coming months, I would churn out many satisfying projects.

I would be living with both my son Ben and my daughter Rebecca, so we needed to find and furnish a larger apartment. She had been living in furnished apartments, but the one we chose was a 3-bedroom unfurnished with a large deck overlooking the back yard. Every room needed stuff to fill it and we had a very restricted budget. Rebecca is a wizard with Facebook marketplace and we have all been thrift store shoppers forever. We had a great deal of fun over the next months decorating both inside and out. (More to come about that.)

The Cabinet!!!

One accidental find was my sewing machine cabinet. I was not planning to have one—to just put the machine on a table as I had done for years. But Rebecca was picking up a used television table from a graduating college student and I accompanied her. The student’s roommate just happened to mention that she had an old sewing machine cabinet that she just used as a side table. She did not know I had a new sewing machine. She also did not know how the cabinet worked--she had just used it as a side table. Were we, by any chance, interested? $25! My eyes went wide, and we went upstairs to investigate. Wow! It was one of those cabinets that easily raises and lowers your machine with a pneumatic lift! It was meant to be! There are no such things as coincidences!

My Year of Making and Healing: POST 2: I AM A TEST KNITTER

(In case you missed it, I introduce this series here.)

This is a post full of stories…

I first heard about Debbie Zawinski when I read this article by her in Spin Off magazine back in 2014. I was totally fascinated. She combined my love of spinning, knitting and walking. I knew I had to meet this woman someday! I immediately ordered a copy of her book, In the Footsteps of Sheep.

In the book, she narrates her walking journeys around Scotland investigating the native sheep breeds. Dedicating a chapter for each breed and location, she included a knitted sock pattern to highlight the quality of the breed. It is a beautifully crafted book with images of breathtaking Scottish landscapes and the people and sheep she met along the way. 

When I first approached Debbie near her home east of Edinburgh, I was somewhat starstruck and nervous about our meeting. But no worries…Debbie is about the warmest and sweetest person you have ever met. Over the years, with the help of modern technology, we became great friends. We were even guest artists together at the Roscommon Lamb Festival (in Ireland) in 2018. 

Debbie and I knitting and spinning in front of the Scottish Parliament building for International Women’s Day in 2018. Commemorating and celebrating the contribution of “women’s work” throughout history. We were accompanied by other members of the Haddington Knitters and Spinners group. 

Last year when I was in Scotland, we were reunited again, and my daughter and I spent a few days at her home celebrating her birthday. While I was there, she told me she was working on another book, also with knitting patterns. Would I like to be one of her test knitters, she asked?  I had never been a test knitter before, but she assured me the pattern was simple, and a small one, but it did have “short rows” (a knitting method). I had quite a bit of experience knitting short rows, so I agreed. After I returned home, she sent me the initial pattern instructions and I got busy. 

Here are the the “Herbedacious Wristies” that I test-knitted for Debbie—modeled by my son, Benjamin Fulton. We call them “handwarmers” in the US, but it is “wristies” in the UK. These will appear in Debbie’s upcoming book. Each of the fibers that I included in the wristies has its own story. 

The dark brown is some handspun that Irish spinner Brigid Banham gave me when we were guest artists at the Roscommon (Ireland) Lamb Festival. Bridgid was demonstrating handspinning at the festival.  

While in Roscommon, my friend and host, Caitlin Browne presented me with a bag of handspun white Angora (rabbit). A friend of hers had given it to her to pass on to me. It was hand spun in South Africa about 30 years ago!

The green is from Targhee sheep—an American breed. It was recommended to me when I was first learning to spin on a hand spindle because it is easy to draft. So this was in my very first spinning project.

The gray is from a Lincoln Longwool sheep raised on Vashon Island, Washington. It is very coarse and mostly is used for carpets. But the complete fleece was given to me and I used it in a “sheep-to-sweater” project—the first time I took a fleece from raw wool to finished sweater.

 “Stories in Stitches” is Debbie’s upcoming book in which the pattern for these wristies will be published. Look for it to be released this coming fall!

My Year of Making and Healing: POST 1: WORLD OF WOOL & RETURNING HOME

(In case you missed it, I introduce this series here.)

In late March 2023, Rebecca, my daughter joined me in Scotland and we spent a month traveling around the country—mostly hiking the mountains and magnificent coastlines.

Hiking on the magnificent Isle of Skye.

Hiking on the magnificent coast of Scotland east of Inverness

Suspicious that the changes in my right breast might be something serious, I decided to return with her to New Orleans where I began my year of tests, surgeries, radiation, rehab, and healing.

Before leaving the UK, however, I had discovered a mail-order supplier of fiber goods there that far surpassed anything I have found in the States. World of Wool’s selection of quality wool and other fibers for spinning is amazing and the prices are one half to two-thirds less than prices in the US. Of course there is a much higher percentage of people who spin, knit, felt, and weave in the UK than here. Almost every variety of wool-producing sheep species is represented in the company’s repertoire. The challenge is in the choosing. I had tried one of their products (see description in Cream Crunch photo) while in Scotland and later decided to place a HUGE order to bring home with me. In the end, I spent over $200 US and brought home enough fiber to keep me happy for at least a year or so!

Rebecca kept asking me how I was going to pack all that product in our luggage and stay within our free checked-bag limit. I joked that it would make good padding for all the whisky she was buying. And in the end, it did prove useful to protect several bottles of Scotch in her large bag!

I could not wait to start spinning some of my new luscious fiber and brought my little Nano e-spinner on the plane with me! The color of the fiber from World of Wool is called “Passion” and is a blend of various dyed merino wool tops.

World of Wool’s “Blaze” wool blend.

 I have always been drawn by these colors. It is a blend of several colors of dyed merino wool and was the first item from this order that I completed spinning.

World of Wool’s 100 % Merino Wool top

I purchased 1.6 Kg of this wool, but only 570 grams are left. During the winter I made the   sweater from this luscious fiber. More about that project in a future post.

World of Wool’s “Cream Crunch”

Cream Crunch is a mix of 70% Merino wool and 30% Tencel (similar to rayon but produced by a more sustainable method). The result of spinning is a soft elastic yarn with shiny highlights. It is a delight to spin. When dyed, the wool absorbs color, but the Tencel does not, creating a bit of sparkle to this luxurious yarn.

This is the first product I purchased from World of Wool. After falling in love with it, I ended up ordering an additional 1.6 Kg (that is over three pounds!) of it. For less than $50 I had enough to make a couple sweaters.

World of Wool’s Coconut Cake

This is 500 grams of 70% Merino and 30% Nylon, which makes a good sock yarn. The nylon makes the socks wear longer.

 

World of Wool’s Botany Lap Waste

Botany Lap Waste is World of Wool’s version of a “Mystery Box.” These are the small bits left over at the end of processing. For about $12, I got over a pound of various fibers. They are great for ingredients for many kinds of projects. I was able to identify a few of the fibers from the web site, but most of them are truly mysteries but fun to experiment with. As you can see, I have already spun up several of the samples.

World of Wool’s Undyed Sock Yarn

The only pre-spun yarn I bought from World of Wool was this undyed 70% superwash merino/30% Bamboo blend. This is great for socks. Merino wicks moisture away and the bamboo adds strength (additional wear) to the socks like nylon. However bamboo is  biodegradable, naturally antibacterial and it is a renewable resource. 

“Superwash” just means that the wool has been treated so it won't shrink or felt when washed. It is safe to just throw the finished socks in the washing machine.

World of Wool: Non-Wool Fibers

From time to time, I enjoy experimenting with various fibers that are not animal products. Many of these originate from plants. One interesting fiber that World of Wool offered was Pearl Fiber. It is made from eucalyptus cellulose and is infused with pearl powder which contains amino acids and trace elements.

Bio Nylon is a new type of nylon that is bio-degradable and uses renewable resources as a base.

I always like to keep a bit of Tencel in my collection. It adds a special shininess to my blended yarns.

I often blend these kinds of fibers with wool to get different effects in the look or feel of the final yarn.                 

My Year of Making and Healing: PREQUEL

(In case you missed it, I introduce this series here.)

I am a do-er, a maker, a creator, and a tinker. And somewhere in all that is a bit of an artist.

From as far back as I can remember, I have been a maker and a “fixer.” I remember learning to sew and do all kinds of handwork when I was 12 years old. Here I am at 70 and I almost always have some kind of project (well…several) that I am working on. And then there are more ideas floating around in my head at any given time!

Even while traveling, I have projects—especially fiber projects I work on during down time or while on trains or buses. Knitting projects are very portable. And now I carry a little e-spinner, so I can indulge that addiction as well.

Here are some of the projects that I completed during my travels between March 2022 and April 2023. 

My Williamson Scarf

While still in Scotland in March 2023, I finished my version of the famous Williamson Shawl. I had been working on it on and off for over a year. The original shawl was made sometime in the early 20^th Century by Jane Thomasina Williamson. She handspun the fine yarn from the fleece of hearty Shetland sheep.  It is on display in the Unst Heritage Museum in the far north of Scotland in the Shetland Islands. The pattern for it was reverse engineered by a team of skilled designers who published it Creative Commons a number of years ago. (HeirloomKnitting Group on Ravelry.com)

When I was in Scotland in 2017, I visited the museum and later picked up some Jamieson and Smith Shetland yarn, cobweb weight. It took me a few years until my skills were up to attempting this fine shawl with this tiny yarn. (For you lace knitters out there, this is knitted lace—with patterns on every row and few “resting” rows. Not for the faint of heart!)
I did not have near enough of the precious cobweb yarn to make the entire shawl, so I altered the pattern to make it narrower and shorter and this is my version:  a “Williamson scarf.” 

Legwarmers

I carried with me a supply of merino wool top for spinning on my little Nano e-spinner during my journey. I did not have a plan for the yarn until I began planning my winter Camino. I would need very warm clothes in layers. So I designed these legwarmers meant to be worn over tights. They are heavy and require garters connected to the top of the tights to stay up. They not only came in handy on the Camino, but also on some nights of my journey when my accommodation was freezing!

Heavy Mittens

I spent a few days in Plovdiv, Bulgaria on my train journey from Georgia to Spain. There was a cute yarn store near the main square that had a yarn-bombed bicycle in front. It was here that I picked up this green yarn. This yarn is much heavier than I usually knit with. But I had in mind these heavy mittens which I would wear over my handwarmers on the expected cold days of my upcoming Camino. 

Matching Blue Hat and Mittens

I found the fine soft blue yarn that would make this matching set in a yarn shop in Sofia, Bulgaria during my 2022-23 train journey. I already had a heavy wool hat, but it was nice to have a lighter, prettier one for when the weather was not so cold. 

Rebecca’s Handwarmers

I spent a month in Scotland between my Camino and the arrival of daughter Rebecca, who joined me for a month in Scotland. During that month, I made these handwarmers from the same handspun merino wool that I had used for my leg warmers. Even though it was late spring, the weather was still quite cold in northern Scotland. 

My Year of Making and Healing: INTRODUCTION

“We are, ourselves, creations. And we are meant to be creative beings.” —Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way

With this post, I am beginning a series about my “Year of Making and Healing.” In early 2023, I was not expecting to find myself confined to the US for over 15 months. But by May, here I was in New Orleans with no idea when I would escape to foreign climes again.

This post is the backstory of how this accidental year came about.

I am a planner. I especially enjoy working on the nitty gritty details of travel plans—as many of you who follow me at Cathleen’sOdyssey know.

But, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley” (Robert Burns). 

Covid was, at first, a challenge. But as “pivot” became an everyday word in our lexicon (that I hated, by the way), I did indeed figure out how to find alternate pathways for my life—as most of us did. By 2023, Covid was over, but the powers that be were not finished with some of us. Back in about October 2022, I noticed something a little “a-gley” about my right breast. I brushed it off. While in Istanbul in July, I had broken a rib above my breast and I attributed the deformation to that. Now, in October, I was in the country of Georgia, ready to launch a fabulous three-month train journey from there to Spain. 

As the months wore on, the deformation niggled at me, but not enough to make me abandon my travel plans. I completed the train journey in February, walked a couple weeks on the Camino de Santiago, and then made a beeline for Scotland, where I stayed until late April. I would have stayed longer in the UK, but decided I should probably come home and have this issue checked out. 

Several tests, scans and biopsies later gave me my expected diagnosis. In June, it was confirmed: I did have breast cancer and it had begun to invade my underarm lymph nodes. I will save you all the details of the cancer journey. I was a lucky one (as usual) and it was really not a very tough ordeal for me. Not even any chemotherapy was required. (I cannot talk enough about the advances in breast cancer research of the last 40 years!)  I was fortunate (again) to have a great team of practitioners at Touro Infirmary in New Orleans to guide me through the process step by step. Today, I am still healing, but getting stronger every week. It has been a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of journey, but the light is shining at the end of the tunnel, and I am looking forward to beginning my travels again by Fall 2024.

I have not been idle. I cannot stand to have my hands and brain idle. This last week I began making a list of all the projects I have completed in this year of healing. It contains over 50 and I keep discovering some I completed but had forgotten.

So brace yourselves…upcoming posts will tell the stories about many of these projects: My Year of Making and Healing.