1. Do you knit or crochet? How long have you been at your craft?
I knit. I’d like to learn crocheting well enough to add crochet edgings to things. I was taught to knit by my “Aunt” Gudrun. She grew up in Germany, and she & her husband and kids were like our ‘other family’ when I was a kid. I was maybe ten years old when I first learned to knit.
2. Do you spin? What type of spinning?
Nope, I’ve never spun. My mom once spun some yarn out of wool from our very own sheep, which I considered a pretty neat trick!
3. What are your favorite yarns/fibers? What are your least favorite yarns/fibers?
My favorite yarns – natural fibers that are soft or shiny, a little stretchy, fat or thin, and definitely soft.
Lovely yarns I can hardly every afford include
* alpaca, softer-than-soft merino, cashmere (who doesn’t?), bamboo, and soft blends of silk and another soft yarn, like bamboo, cashmere, alpaca, or supersoft merino.
* sock yarns in gorgeous colors
* Yarn that is sleek and shiny and therefore shows off cables nicely.
* My favorite weights are Lace weight, DK, and Worsted weight.
I don’t knit with super-chunky yarn.
* I like Glamorous yarns, homebody yarns, big skeins, little skeins, plys from one to a dozen (I don’t actually know what a “ply” is, time to look that up.)
Note to self: Think more seriously about this “favorite yarn” business, because “all of them” isn’t a very good answer.
Yarns I don’t like are – anything the least wee bit scratchy; yarns with a more than 40% synthetic fiber; and yarns that look like they’d be a big hit with a 4 year old girl in that purple-magenta-sequin-my-little-pony phase.
Y’know what? Every one of these “rules” that I write, I can think of a dozen exceptions, some of which are in the other room. I guess I just like yarn that’s “pretty” and “soft.”
4. What are your favorite colors? What are your least favorite colors?
Like most people, my favorite colors are the ones I look good in! Many years ago, my sister-in-law insisted that I “have my colors done” and I learned that I’m an “autumn.” I have brown hair and eyes, and pale skin with a few freckles. I’m in my 50’s, so pale colors wash me out and super-dark colors sometimes also wash me out.
It’s almost supper time and I keep thinking of food colors. I like lettuce green, blue-green turquoise, creamy yellow, tomato red, brown, mocha, chocolate, oyster, tangerine, sunny yellow, aubergine (brownish burgundy), eggplant, periwinkle, teal and forest green and olive green but only if they’re pretty and not drab, coral, peach, bright cream, wheat, and mixtures of colors. I like self-striping sock yarn better than color-pooling yarn.
The colors I never ever look good in and don’t like are:
white, black, navy, grey, pink, mauve, kelly green, royal blue, baby blue, bright blue turquoise, grapey purple, and anything too bright and neon, too drab and muddy, or otherwise un-pretty.
Many Happy Returns 