31 January 2022

LLama wool mitts


Fingerless mitts.
 

So, a friend cleaned out her yarn stash and gave me two 99-yard skeins of "Maya" yarn produced a while back by the bygone company Classic Elite Yarns.  Ravelry came through again with a pattern by Leslie Friend for fingerless mitts. As I find touch-screen gloves don't work well for me, I thought I'd try these. On the advice of another Ravelry user, I knit with size 5 needles, although the pattern called for size 6.  The result is a nice, dense fabric, and a good fit on my small hands. (DH is modeling in the image.)

The worsted-weight yarn, made in Peru, is 50% llama, a fiber I don't often encounter in yarn, and 50% wool,  and is very, very warm. The mitts used up about 2/3 of the two skeins.

24 January 2022

New Tammis Keefe items on website

Courage, pink colorway.

 
I began collection Keefe items in 1999, when a friend introduced me to this artist.  Although the pace of acquisition has slowed considerably in the last few years, I've been able to find some new items and, thanks to my patient DH, there are now 22 new images on the www.tammiskeefe.com website.  These include designs already listed but in additional colorways, and also a few new designs.  I continue to be impressed by Keefe's output, given the relatively short span of her career.  She began designing print textiles around 1947 and died in 1960.  The linen towels were produced by home textiles manufacturer Fallani & Cohn.

Grocery List.


Reef.

 
Thanks to the kindness of fellow textile aficionado Merle, who has a wonderful website dedicated to Vera Neumann,  I've recently added dozens of Keefe hankies to the treasure trove; it will take us a while to process them, but stay tuned. Before being posted to the site, the items must be photographed, the images water-marked, and then I have to think of a title for each design, which is more difficult than you might think when dealing with about 400 individual designs. Cataloging takes time but I love sharing the work of this talented woman artist.


Pond Lily.


Ringmaster, red colorway.


Mermaids, indigo colorway.