Yarn stores in Montpellier

Here is a post solely about the yarn shops to be found in Montpellier. I have no idea how useful this will be for others, but I myself, appreciate when others do posts about stores they see when they travel.  I find that in my travels going to yarn shops can really take you off the tourist track and give you a sense of what life is really like there. You will also be able to visit neighborhoods better and see more of the city if you search out your local yarn shop. I am going to try in the future to make more posts about yarn stores I visit while traveling. Also I know, I do not have a post about yarn/wool stores in Madrid. If you have questions in that area, please feel free to email me or leave a comment below. 

Knitting in museums

So we know that Montpellier is knitting friendly for three reasons:

1.) No one looked twice while I was knitting away in the park

2.) There are little signs of knitting everywhere (I even saw a yarn bombed bike)

3.) There are five yarn shops in just the center!

Knitting everywhere!

Before we get into the descriptions of the shops one quick note: Apparently a lot of shops in Montpellier are closed on Mondays (and maybe Sundays too, it's the case here in Spain). Also it seems that some of the stores close for a long lunch break (also like in Spain). I have included the hours that I found on their websites, but it is good to plan in advance and be aware of local operating times.

All of the yarn stores had very little overlap of brands/poducts that I could see, so they might all be worth the visit.

First up we have my favorite.

LaMercerie

23 Rue des Étuves

Monday from 10h to 19h and Tuesday to Saturday from 9:30 am to 19h (non stop)

 This shop had everything that you would expect in a craft store in the US! There was a good selection of: buttons, beads, fabric, sewing notions, knitting notions, yarn, and even a small section with felting supplies! The yarn selection was impressive with a selection of fibers and of well known brands. There was also more then one brand of French yarn including a good selection from Bergere de France. There is even more yarn than on display in the shelves at the back of the store, so you might want to ask for something if you can not find it. In my case I am addicted to self stripping sock yarn I couldn't find any and was not sure how to ask. I am currently studying French but I am a beginner, so I was relived when a friendly saleswoman who spoke English well asked me if I needed any help.

Let's be honest here (and if you have read this far you are a crafter/knitter too so you might know how I feel) the presence of just this shop makes the potential move more exciting. There is no one shop (that I know of, please tell me if there is) in Madrid that such a selection of all of these materials under one roof.

Phildar

5 Grand Rue Jean Moulin

10:00-19:00 Mon-Sat

 The store sells mostly clothes, but there is a yarn section (only selling Phildar yarn/magazines, of course) at the back. The yarn that I saw had more acrylic and cotton than I would like. There was not an atmosphere conducive to browsing so I did not look at everything.

 Avant Aprés
29 Rue Foch
10:00-19:00 Tues-Sat

This s a very upscale yarn and fabric shop. All open space and chrome. Here is where you would go to get your high end international yarns (non-US) such as Rowan, Noro, Debbie Bliss etc.

Anne Ouvrages
28 Rue Paul Brousse
Tues-Fri 9:30-19:00
Sat 9:30-12:30 and 14:00-19:00

I wasn't going to drag my husband to any more yarn stores, but then a local convinced me to try to go one more. She warned me that some people felt that the sales people are less welcoming here. However, she always feels welcome and I did too. When I came in with my camera holding husband (it was so obvious that we were tourists) they greeted me and when they had time they came over to ask if I needed any help ("I'm just looking" is one the phrases I know in French) and they gave me a box to put yarn into. It was a great sales technique as I had yet to pick any yarn. They (there were two saleswoman) also pointed out the other yarn section to me. They do not speak English here, but I was able to understand what they said by context and my limited French.

This store had a good selection that included a lot of yarns from both Amy Blatt and Bouton d'Or which are both French brands. This is also the store that has by far the most mohair/cashmere yarns (just a little warning for those of you unfortunate enough to be allergic to goat hair like I am). This store also included fabric and sewing notions. (Mercerie in both Spanish and French mean fabric/sewing/yarn shop.)

I am told that there is also a fifth yarn store that sells mostly Katia (a Spanish brand). "Coccinelle" which is located at the bottom of Rue Saint Guilhem, but I did not get a chance to visit it.

Please a comment if you have anything to add to my quick summary.

From batt to roving

I made this tutorial today!

There are so many tutorials that I want to make, but there is a steep learning curve to make making these, so please be kind. Once I run the subtitles past my Spanish editor (husband) I will put up a version with Spanish subtitles, maybe Spanish audio. So, why am I so obsessed about tutorials in Spanish? There just isn't many out there right now. 

I am sure that my tutorials will get better with time, but I think that you see everything fairly well. Go ahead and watch the video first, and the scroll down to the photo tutorial to see the steps.

Video:

Step-by-step tutorial for a quick reference guide.

Step one: Place an unfolded batt on a flat surface.

Step two: Starting at one end pull a section apart with both hands (this is why I made the video, can't show my hands and take the picture at the same time). You are going to be creating zig-zag strips.

Step three: Leave some space at the end, a good rule of thumb is to leave a section a little longer than the staple length (how long each wool hair is).

See here I want a little too far at the second "join" and now it is a weak point in my roving.

Step four: Then you will want to start drafting out these strips. I recommend you draft at least twice, once going each way, but you can draft as much as you would like to. 

Step five: wind into a lose ball or a nest for storage until you spin it. It is a good idea if you a spinning a project to turn all of your batts into roving at the same time, so that they are similar thicknesses.

So what do you think? Have you ever tried this?

Now with more needle felted creations!

 I really wish that I could tell you some powerful story of what inspires me to make a piece. But the simple truth is that with all of these pieces I was basically trying to embellish simple shapes differently.

Everything can be mostly made out of basic shapes. You art majors already have this drilled in your heads, but us self-taught artists need to remind ourselves of this and start training our eye to look for the shapes.

How you connect the shapes, how you put them together to form a seamless piece, that is the secret, and it is different in every art form. It takes lots and lots of practice. Below you have two unfinished egg shapes, one of which is smaller and they are joined together at the unfinished areas to create a body. I had recently learned to make the sausage shapes more rapidly so I had them at hand.

I joined them at the center back. Then I was inspired to do a mummy shape. Maybe because it is the season?

Can you break this guy into shapes too? He is a character right?

Even with the simplest of shapes, you change up the color, and then you have an endless variety. These little guys are my answer to my stained glass-felt obsession in 3D form. I hope to have a kit to make them available in my store within the next two days. They are perfect to make for beginners, because they can be any shape, have any amount of eyes and you get to play with blocks of color. (Or maybe that is just my favorite part?)

All the little creatures shown here today are available in my store, should you wish to take them home.

over-dyeing sucess!

I bought this sock yarn at my very first ROC day hosted by the Black Sheep Handspinners guild in Ithaca NY. In the skien it reminded my of Starry night, but once wound up into a ball it started to lose some of it's appeal. When I knit it up, it looked even worse. The colors, while beautiful when separated by white, would touch when knitted up and looked a little like vomit. However, I held on to it anyway, move after move. and in a summer of 2012 when I was traveling a lot, I took this skein along to knit sock from. My reasoning was that I would knit it while distracted by travel, and knit it because I had nothing else to knit. One day I vowed that I would over-dye the finished socks. 

Why go to all this trouble for one skien, you ask? Well, readers from other countries, you have no idea how precious a resource like wool sock yarn is, until your supply is limited. Even though I can order more yarn online, the lack of selection for natural fibers locally adds a layer of value to any skein.

Left sock

 So I finally got around to dyeing it this week, along with a test bump of the some Spanish merino fiber I recently acquired. I put in purple, navy, and grey into the pot, put the socks in first, then the merino. Because I was kettle dyeing it without salt. I knew that the colors would be tonal, darker in some areas than others. I also knew that because this was an already (tightly) knit object, that the dye would attach to some areas easier then others.

Right sock

I am in love with the result, what do you think? There are areas where the original colors shine through, especially in the purl ridges of the ribbing at the top. I like it! It adds a depth to the dark color, while at the same time improving the original colors.

Art Challenge Day 4 and 5

Yesterday was a very busy and emotional day, so nothing got done on the challenge. 

However today I'll bring you two things. We will call this first one Day 4's project.

This is a project that I have been working on for a while. It is my first felt piece with a wire armature inside, and I have to say that I will probably never do that again. I kept hitting the wire inside as I was felting it, also the armature does not move as smoothly as I was hoping for.

Because working with the armature was uncomfortable, this guy sat for a long time. When I first covered the armature around 3 years ago (I still lived in the US) I thought that he was going to be a bear. Then about 3 months ago I got it out again and decided to make something dinosaur-eske, but in fun colors.

Then the blue was too boring, so I added polka dots, three shades of blue and tusks.

There he is walking away. Since I am not used to an armature inside I keep thinking that I misjudged that length of the legs, when really, they are only bent outwards. 

This little guy I will call Day 5's piece.

He started out as just a head many months ago. At the time I was thinking "monster head broach". 

Today I decided to give him a body, not worrying too much about the shape of it, keeping the focus mainly on the head.

Then I tried making the arms 2D for a change. Sure he is a little strange, but that is exactly the point of a monster: to stretch your imagination. To try to make something unique and never seen before.

If anyone is wondering my kitty is doing better today, fingers crossed that he keeps improving.

Wool brain

I had the awesome idea to make a picture of a brain, with the different areas done in different colors of yarn. So I go where I normally go for images to work from...Google search images.

My favorite was this one:

Source here

The more I thought about it the more I realized that maybe I was making the project to complicated for the medium of needle felting. I wanted to make a yarn brain, but the multiple colors might not make sense without a lot of detail. So I went on a hunt for brain colored wool in my stash. (OK I know that brains are not pink until exposed to air, but I wanted a pink-ish brain.)

I quickly discovered that I had some yarn the color that I wanted, but it was too tightly plied and the grist was too small to make the cerebrum's folds at the scale that I wanted. So I pulled out three colors of wool, carded them together, and spun a thick and thin single. Perfect color, perfect thickness.

Here it is on the spindle with the hand-dyed yarn I used for the crevices of the cerebrum.

As with all art projects, you tend to go where the work takes you, that is half of the fun.

I ended up trying some things and ripping them out. The best thing about needle felting is that it is really easy to rip out the wool and to try again if the shape or scale is off. 

At first I was using some handspun for the cerebellum, but the color, shape and texture was off. I ended up ripping it out and using the same color of wool that I was using in the crevices of the cerebrum. I added some dark red to the bottom, to add more depth to the section, and put as many white branches as possible in this scale to make the Arbor vitae.

I also ended up redoing a lot of the posterior folds.

I put an outline around everything so that it would stand out. I left off the face portion, because doing faces is not where my talent lies.

I really like how it turned out. A brain made of yarn. Yarn Brain. Wool Brain. This is Your Brain on Wool.

And that is why I really wanted to finish it, to play with the title. Well that and we need more science based art. 

Which title is best?

Results / Resultados

Here are the results of my last post about fiber dyeing. I tried to keep the colors simple, but you should remember that I deliberately over saturated my colors so that they would run into each other. I am glad that I did. I really like the result.

Aquí están los resultados de la tintura de fibras de mi post anterior. Traté de mantener los colores simples, pero debéis recordar que yo deliberadamente puse más tinte del necesario para tener unas zonas donde se mezclaran los colores. Me alegro de haberlo hecho. Me gusta mucho el resultado.

For my first bump of fiber I only used three colors: a golden yellow, purple and turquoise. As you can see in the photo the colors are not touching each other, but remember that I deliberately over saturated the dye. This means that there was more liquid in the fiber and therefore more opportunity for the dye to run into other areas and for the colors to mix together. I am very pleased with the results. This is exactly the kind of color-way that attracts my attention when I look to buy from hand-dyers. The color variations add a lot of interest, and since the colors are analogous (in the same part of the color wheel) no matter how you spin it you know that the result will look spectacular.

Para mis primeros 100 gramos de fibra sólo utilicé tres colores: un color amarillo dorado, morado y turquesa. Como puedes ver en la foto los colores inicialmente no se tocan entre sí, pero recordar que usé deliberadamente más tinte del necesario. Esto significa que hay mucho líquido en la fibra y por lo tanto más oportunidad para que el tinte vaya a otras áreas y los colores se mezclen. Estoy muy contenta con los resultados. Este es exactamente el tipo de combinación de colores que llaman mi atención cuando busco para comprar de gente que tiñe a mano. Las variaciones de color agregan mucho interés, y puesto que los colores son análogos (en la misma parte de la rueda de color) no importa cómo lo hagáis hilar, sabéis que el resultado será espectacular.

 For this next one I was playing with complementary colors (oposites on the color wheel). I am from Colorado where the sky is always blue. There is a particular mix of Colorado's rust colored rocks and blue sky that have always reminded me of home. When I made my dye journal I saw that when the orange and turquoise dyes met there is a very pleasing green-brown color that reminds me of the Colorado mountains on the horizon. I knew I had to try to dye some fiber with those two colors. I had some golden yellow and purple left over from the first bump of fiber, so I used them here, one stripe of each.

Para el siguiente estaba jugando con colores complementarios (opuestos en la rueda de color). Yo soy de Colorado, donde el cielo es siempre azul. Hay una mezcla particular de piedras naranja de Colorado y cielo azul que siempre me recordó a casa. Cuando hice mi diario de tinte vi que cuando los tintes de color naranja y turquesa se ​​mezclan el resultado es un color verde-marrón muy agradable que me recuerda a las montañas de Colorado en el horizonte. Sabía que tenía que tratar de teñir un poco de fibra con esos dos colores. Tenía un poco de oro amarillo y morado que me sobraron del primer ovillo de fibra, así que los utilicé aquí, una banda de cada.

Again, I am VERY pleased with the results! The places where the colors met have made the color-way a very complex and lovely thing. I am going to use this combination of colors again in the future and try to create a repeatable color-way for my soon-to-be store. Since the braid does not show the colors to their full advantage I have laid out the fiber like it was in the dyeing photo.

¡Una vez más, estoy MUY contenta con los resultados! Los lugares donde se mezclaron los colores resultaron en una combinación de colores muy compleja y hermosa. Voy a utilizar esta combinación de colores de nuevo en el futuro y tratar de crear una combinación de color repetible para la que será mi tienda futura. Dado que la trenza no muestra los colores del todo bien he presentado la fibra tal como estaba en la foto durante la tinción.

Gradient color-ways are very popular in the North American spinning community right now. So I painted this next bump of fiber in three chunks. It is not a true gradient because there is three separate colors, but when you spin it, it might be a different story. While drafting there should be some overlap between the colors. I am thinking of spinning this one and navajo plying it (to preserve the color change) and seeing what I get. 

Los colores con gradientes son muy populares en las comunidades de hilanderos del América del Norte en estos momentos. Así que pinté este proximo ovillo de fibra en tres partes. No se trata de un gradiente de verdad porque hay tres colores diferentes sin un gradiente claro, pero cuando se hile, podría ser una historia diferente. Durante el estiraje debe haber una mezcla entre los colores. Estoy pensando en hilar este ovillo y usar el estilo "navajo" para capar (para la preservación del cambio de color) y ver lo que pasa.

I love the combinations of purple and orange, and purple and yellow, but if you spin them together you tend to get brown. This way you could still have them close to each other, but not in a way that the colors get muddied.

Me encantan las combinaciones de morado y naranja, y de morado y amarillo, pero hay que recordar que si hilas juntos estos colores tienden a producir el color marrón. Al tener los colores distribuidos tal como aparecen en la foto, puedes tenerlos juntos, pero no de una manera que los colores se enturbien.

Note that this fiber looks different from the other two, more bouncier and brighter. That is because it is "South American" wool top and not BFL like the first two. Different fibers always equal slightly different dye results.

Esta fibra es diferente a las otras dos, más mullida y más brillante. Eso se debe a que se trata de "South American" wool top y no BFL como las dos primeras. Diferentes fibras siempre dan resultados de tinte ligeramente diferentes.

Hand-painting fiber / fibre pintando a mano

This is not an exhaustive tutorial, but I am learning the steps of how to dye fiber with acid dyes at home. Now you can take that journey with me. I dyed three 100 gram bumps of fiber (2 were Blue-faced Leicester and 1 was "South American" wool) on Monday. Here is what I did:

Este no es un tutorial exhaustivo, pero estoy aprendiendo los pasos sobre cómo teñir fibras con colorantes ácidos en mi casa. Ahora puedes tomar este viaje conmigo. Teñí tres cantidades de 100 gramos de fibra (2 eran Blue-faced Leicester y 1 era "América del Sur" lana) el lunes. Esto es lo que hice:

First I soaked the fiber in warm water and Synthrapol, an agent that helps to absorb the dye into the fiber. I soaked the fiber for about 30 minutes.

Primero remojé la fibra en agua caliente y Synthrapol, un agente que ayuda a absorber el colorante en la fibra. Remojé la fibra durante aproximadamente 30 minutos.

While the fiber was soaking I got out all of the other equipment that I have amassed to dye over the past few months. Here is my dye pot, which I only use for dyeing and never for cooking. The strainer is to elevate the fiber bundle above the water so that the steam can set the dye.

Mientras que la fibra se remojaba, cogí todo el equipo que he acumulado para teñir en los últimos meses. Aquí está mi olla de tinte, que yo sólo uso para teñir y no para cocinar. El colador es para elevar los paquetes de fibras por encima del agua, de modo que el vapor pueda fijar el tinte.

Here is a few jars of my dye stock, measuring syringes, plastic wrap, a beaker to measure water, paper to cover my counter and stencil brushes.

He aquí algunos tarros de mis colorantes en forma líquida, jeringas para medición, envoltorios de plástico, un cubilete para medir agua, papel para cubrir mi encimera y pinceles.

I also have my notes of what colors I want to use, notes of what concentrations to add of the dye and the citric acid, my dye journal for reference, a calculator; also not shown here, my electronic scale that can measure in 10th of a gram up to 1 kilo.

Yo también tengo mis notas de los colores que deseo utilizar, notas de qué concentraciones a añadir del colorante y del ácido cítrico, mi diario de colorantes de referencia, una calculadora; y no mostrados aquí, mi báscula electrónica que puede medir décimas de gramo hasta 1 kilo.

I measure my dye into plastic cups, and then I add 10%/(weight of fiber) of citric acid to the dye as a mordant. The pastic wrap is laid down, and I take the fiber out of the water it is soaking in and squeeze  it (not twisting it ) to remove the water. Then comes the tricky part, laying the fiber onto the plastic wrap. Note to self: do not soak the fiber as a ball, you will then have to unwind all of it and it will not be fun. You have to spread out the fiber. Here I only had about a meter of space so I made four loops of the fiber.

Yo mido mi tinte en vasos de plástico, y añado 10% / (peso de fibra) de ácido cítrico al tinte como mordiente. Pongo una capa de plástico en la encimera, y saco la fibra fuera del agua donde se estaba remojando y aprieto (sin retorcer) para eliminar el agua. Luego viene la parte difícil, poner la fibra sobre la capa de plástico. Nota mental: no empapar la fibra en la forma de una pelota, porque cuando tengas que extender la fibra, no será divertido. Hay que extender la fibra. Aquí sólo tenía alrededor de un metro de espacio, así que tuve que serpentear la fibra cuatro veces.

BFL fiber

This is just a close up shot of my set up and my jar of citric acid solution.

Esto es sólo una mirada de cerca de mis cosas incluyendo mi frasco de solución de ácido cítrico.

Next you literally paint the dye onto the fiber with a paint brush. You have to use quick up and down movements to put the dye onto the fiber, otherwise you will tangle the fibers together and make felt.

A continuación, literalmente hay que pintar el colorante sobre la fibra con un pincel. Tienes que usar movimientos rápidos hacia arriba y hacia abajo para poner el colorante sobre la fibra, de lo contrario se enredan las fibras entre sí y se hace fieltro.

BFL fiber

Then I folded the plastic wrap in half and started rolling from one end to make this fiber bundle. This bundle is now ready to go into the pot to steam.

Luego dobla el plástico por la mitad y enrolla desde un extremo al otro para hacer este haz de fibras. Este paquete ya está listo para ir a la olla a vapor.

Here are two more 100 gram amounts of fiber that I dyed that day. I am experimenting with color ways and ways to add color. Notice that I painted the colors really close to each other and deliberately used enough dye to over saturate the fiber, just a little, so that the colors would run into each other (yellow and blue makes green!).

Aquí hay dos cantidades más de 100 gramos de fibra que teñí ese día. Estoy experimentando con distintas combinaciones de colores y con la forma de añadir color. Observa que he pintado los colores muy cercanos entre sí y utilizado deliberadamente suficiente colorante para saturar la fibra, sólo un poco, de modo que los colores se mezclen entre sí (amarillo y azul hacen verde!).

BFL fiber

"South American" fiber

In the next blog post you will see how the fiber turned out once it was rinsed and dried. 

En la siguiente entrada del blog veréis el resultado una vez que la fibra se aclaró y se secó.