SpinnySpinny

I’m working on another Maker Faire project. The deadline is at the end of the month so I’ve got some time to pull things together. I have fiber and one volunteer, I need a larger loom to borrow and a couple more people. Depending on what happens in the next couple weeks, I’ll adjust the scope of the project. I am talking to some people about getting educational materials to hand out.

The idea is to show the process of creating fabric from raw fiber, with carding, spinning and weaving. I have additional fiber and fabric samples as well as a simple loom and spindles people can try. I don’t intend to make it a spinning lesson, the size and noise level of the event make focused teaching difficult, but an active demo with several different stations showing the process.

Check out the project page if you are interested. If you are a Bay Area spinner and want to participate, let me know. Maker Faire is a hard event to drop in for a few hours, so I’m looking for people who can commit for at least one full day. I’d like to have at least 4 people each day, 5 would be nice so there is more time to see the rest of the event.

There may or may not be free parking but the nearby parking is not free. If you can go both days, I can collect your spinning wheel in advance and bring it to the fairgrounds. Maker exhibits get free badges, if I don’t get enough it would be nice to have people who can help cover the expense. (But we’ll see.)

My knitting and I made it back in one piece, although it was touch and go there for the knitting. I very nearly had a Textile Emergency in the airport on the way out of town. Apparently Ronchi airport security doesn’t like metal knitting needles. Or crochet hooks, blunt toy scissors or safety pins. They were quite helpful in trying to get them securely into a checked bag, but there was no way I was getting on the airplane with my dangerous safety pin and whatnot. This is what I get for failing to replace my remaining long 3mm circular needle with a wood one.

Fortunately for me, and I did not before this weekend think I would ever have cause to say that, a different security detail was at the same time questioning DH and giving one of our checked bags the rubber glove treatment. For a can of dolmas. It was quite confusing for a moment as while I was attempting to explain to the nice inspection signorina in half English and half Italian that my husband had a bag that could be pressed into service as checked, said husband and bag vanished into a remote hallway. But convenient since they had already pulled the checked bag for inspection, it was available to stash the offending textile implements.

If we hadn’t been staying overnight in Munich on the way back, I would have been really irritated to go without knitting across a continent and a half and a rather good-sized ocean. (It’s about 24 hours on a normal trip, without the long layover.)

I did make an attempt to find a new, non-metal needle in Munich but the giant Nordstrom-clone store’s knitting department did not carry the hugely popular and made in Germany Addi needles. I picked up a suitable Inox on the theory that at least it looked like it could be plastic but quickly found out that I can’t stand the bent cord ends they have.

And of course, the Munich airport security didn’t bat an eyelash. (They did inspect my bag of knitting stuff on the first half of the trip and had no problems.)

I’ve spent a good bit of time wandering around downtown Trieste looking for various items. In the process I’ve had the opportunity to observe how Italians shop for clothing. For reasons unknown to me, every type of clothing has a specialty shop, with several of them nearby. For example, one particular pedestrian mall appears to be the Trieste underwear district:

All three of these shops are within meters of each other, the first two across the street. I am accustomed to stores selling only shoes, or children’s clothing or women’s clothing. But underwear? I saw another shop that appeared to contain mainly hats and scarves.

All the stores are small by American standards, although not so different than many in San Francisco. But the shopping experience is often not so leisurely. I visited several knitting and fabric shops that are basically counters behind which there are shelves of products retrieved by the staff. We visited an ancient hardware store where all the merchandise is on high shelves on the walls just as it would be a hundred years ago. There is no browsing to do and not even remotely a place to sit and compare purchases. (And I still was not able to locate the 120 cm circular needle I was looking for.)

I found a knitting shop, and through some luck the person there spoke English. She didn’t have the circular needle I was looking for but I did pick up some Mondial magazines. I’ve seen Italian knitting magazines before and was familiar with the crazy stuff contained therein. I passed on the current issue, for Summer, as I don’t need patterns for hand knit bikinis and so on. I picked up one from October 2006 which seemed to have a few things of interest to someone who is in need of scarves and hats most of the year. It also contained this gem:

Semi-sheer panels with cable accent only vaguely pretending to hide the model’s lack of a bra. In angora. Huh?

Why, oh Why could I not have found the October issue with this far more reasonable lace jacket:

There was a basket of old (like 1994 old) issues for cheap, but this and the summer issue were the current selection available.

I forgot to grab my book so I had nothing to do on the flight except knit. How terrible. Ok, I did a lot of sleeping as well. Eventually we end up on campus in Grignano, outside Trieste.

All these computer people I’m staying with, they know nothing of textiles. But finally I met the biologist (and quilter) who gave me a selection of fabric and knitting shops to try. I don’t know how much shopping I will do but it is nice to see what is around. Getting it all home could well be another issue.

I could go to lectures, but the lab is small and I don’t want to get in the way of the students. Besides, I know most of what they are learning anyway. So while DH teaches people from countries some Americans have never heard of how to build wireless communications networks, I get to entertain myself. A lot of that involves poking around shops and trying to not a) get lost or b) totally butcher the Italian language. I’ve done a bit of knitting and at some point I need to hem the coat that I’ve been wearing with an ugly line of machine basting at the bottom.

If you’d like to see more of the general adventures, you can find that on my other blog. If I score some cool textiles, I’ll tell you about it here. I also will try to get some pictures of the recent garments that were finished for the trip.