Category: Knitting

Yarns of the City – 27 August 2009

Village Spinning & Weaving

For the fiberholic on a road trip through the central coast area of California – north of Santa Barbara – the Village Spinning and Weaving shop is a must-do. This summer, John and Marsha, the proprietors, celebrated their eighteenth anniversary in the same place by being able to more than double the size of their store by expanding into the retail area next door. When Josh and I visited them in June, they had just broken through the connecting wall.

Some of our closest friends, Stephanie and Jay, were living in Solvang at the time Village Spinning opened. Stephanie is a full-time weaver, and I primarily a spinner/knitter – of course this was heaven for us! And Solvang is always good for a lazy day or a short trip if you live nearby, or need cookies or chocolate or cutlery, or you are on your way to the wine country. (I recommend the large cookie boxes at Mortensen’s Bakery, Ingeborg’s Chocolate, and Nordic Knives, if you need to satisfy some other vices.)

Anyhow!

As you walk in the main door – which will probably still be the only entrance to this fiber wonderland – you enter the current store, filled with yarn, fiber, weaving supplies, looms, spinning wheels, roving, bats, books, dyeing supplies, knitting needles, and on and on. You want it, they probably have it. (Notice, I did not say “need“!)

Getting extra space at Village Spinning & Weaving will benefit everyone. The new space has a lot of lighting, both natural and installed. All this will allow better display of looms and spinning wheels, which is really important if you want to check out how an item looks, or feel how a wheel spins. There will be room for knitters. Some lucky group will get to sit around the fireplace, but the sunny windows are not a bad place to be either. As you can see below, there is a lot to look forward to – at least there was in June. I hope they are all moved in and ready to go!

The service you get at Village Spinning & Weaving is wonderful. And they have a lot of stuff – dangerous! This is what they say on their “About Us” page:

Solvang’s Village Spinning & Weaving Shop was started in 1992 by John Novak and Marsha Mullaney-Novak. This shop grew out of our desire to simplify our lives and provide the best possible service and products — something we find lacking in much of today’s world.

Whether you are looking for a new loom or some cochineal for dyeing or maybe a new tatting book, check here or give us a call.

We carry much more than we can possibly list here, so… we have several different print catalogs – you can download a pdf file from this website for many of them. As things change, sometimes too quickly, prices in our printed catalog may not always be completely up to date.

John and Marsha are very knowledgeable about the products they sell. Inventory includes so many books you think you have died and gone to heaven, wheels to test drive, looms both large and small. John takes a lot with him when he does shows such as the Black Sheep Festival, Stitches, or Convergence. Many of you may have met them at one of these events.

For those unfamiliar with Solvang, it is a small town off the 154 and 101, about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara. The Sant Ynez valley is a beautiful place, and as you come over San Marcos Pass into the valley on the 154, the view is breathtaking. This valley, toward Santa Ynez, is where the movie “Sideways” was filmed.

I’m looking forward to my next trip to Village Spinning & Weaving, to see how the expansion is going, to finger fibers, play with wheels, peruse books I have never seen. My pocketbook may suffer a bit, but it sure is worth it!

See you there, and tell ’em I sent ya!

Knitting: Posture and Pain

Having had shoulder surgery a few weeks ago was a big relief – major pain gone.  Now, with some time on my hands before the next semester begins, I picked up my knitting needles and long-neglected projects, begun and unbegun.  A couple of days ago I started working on the Trout Season Socks, listening to an audio book, enjoying the peace and quiet.  The next day, my shoulder hurt and ached on the backside, where the clavicle and scapular articulate, just where the surgery was.  Needless to say, I was not happy, and given that, when I returned to physical therapy yesterday, I brought my knitting with me for the therapist and me to discuss.

One look at me when I showed her what I was doing and she said, “Sit up straight, bring your shoulders back, and down.”

I will be the first to admit – I have sloppy posture.  When I buy furniture, I have to be able to sprawl in it, legs over the chair arms, and if the back of a couch touches my knees when I sit in it, it is too shallow for comfort.

Of course, being sloppy is far easier than focusing on changing bad habits.  I looked up shoulder support devices on google – there are a lot out there which will pull your shoulders back for you.  Knitty has an article about posture and knitting, which is quite good.  In a nutshell, keep your arms parallel to you body, shoulder to the elbow, and knit close to your body.  Don’t bend your wrists, as that increases your risk of carpal tunnel problems.  Accidental Yarnover blog has a lot of suggestions, some of which are the classical “keep your feet flat on the floor,” to using shorter knitting needles, and letting the weight of the knitted object rest in your lap.  Rachel Knits blog links to this article, which is quite interesting in and of itself.  Carpal tunnel is also a risk of knitting, and you can read about it on Subversive Knitting.  The New Zealand Railways Magazine in 1931 shows “the correct posture for knitting and darning.”

Obviously. knitting and pain have been around for awhile – and who knows how people who earned their living by knitting fared.

There are a lot of websites which will give hints and ideas about how to improve posture, exercises to strengthen shoulder muscles to help keep them back and down, as well as ergonomic information to prevent carpal tunnel.  I have been given a number of exercises to do, from stretches to isometrics (not up to weights or stretchy bands yet).  If I don’t do them, I can tell.  If I do them, life is far more pleasant. 

Finding the time to do them is imperative, no matter what my schedule.  In other words, they have to be the primary focus of my day, and then the playtime can follow. My biggest resistance to doing them is boredom – and they are Boring with a Capital B! Thank goodness for the iPod and Pandora!

Online Knitting Resources – A Few Thoughts

Online knitting resources have been around for years, but as internet technology and hardware improves, they have become better than ever.

One of the most valuable tools, for me, is the video.  On youtube, there are all sorts of instructional videos.  These really help get points across, and show the viewer something which is really difficult to describe in words, even with sequenced photographs.  Just doing a search for “backward caston” results in numerous hits, and refining it with “knitting” breaks it down even more.  If it hadn’t been for youtube, I’d never have been able to purl using the continental method – the Norwegian Purl video was more than a little bit of a help!

Other favorite sites for patterns include Ravelry, Twist Collective, Knitting Pattern Central, and KnitNet.  On many of these, techniques can be found, groups, local yarn stores.  In some ways, the internet is like an ongoing treasure hunt – click here, click there, and something new and interesting pops up!

Still, despite the potentials found online, there are also limitations, although as time and technology move forward, that will  become less of an issue.  The low-tech book and magazine provide a portability not found online, and yes, you can take them with you!  I personally would rather look at these than spend hours online, sitting in a chair, at a desk, and be indoors.  Much nicer to wander outdoors to peruse.  Color illustrations still catch my eye, the smell of ink and paper, and the beauty of layout, design, type font as well.

And, in this high-tech world, isn’t it interesting that many of us still prefer to knit with fine knitting needles in our hand, rather than at a knitting machine?