Finally! A real live website. If you’ve been following me, you know of my old blog, Handspuncentral, my Etsy Store and my pattern store on Ravelry. At this point, those three sites are still available, up and running, but I will start posting all my new blog posts here on lynnevogel.com, this being the maiden post. (For old blog posts, check out Handspuncentral.) Before too long, I’ll have a store on this site with patterns and finished work. If it’s fiber and yarn you want (I only offer those things from time to time), you will want to check out the Three Waters Farm website or Three Waters Farm Etsy Store. Mary Ann Pagano of Three Waters Farm is the official dyer of my colorways and she has a lot of beauties of her own as well. So if you want some Hurricane or African Sunset, that’s the place to go.
I think it’s only fitting, since I want this site to be a gallery for my retrospective work as well as current, that my first post would include a favorite piece (and friend/model) from my first years as a fiber artist. This is Leah and she’s wearing a piece I designed when I lived in Taos, NM and had daily access to the fine handspun yarns from La Lana Wools. La Lana is the place that drew me into knitted fabric as canvas, to yarn as paint. It was my first real introduction to handspun yarns as well, and though I messed with learning to spin myself at this point, I was spoiled by the gorgeous long draw handspun singles yarns in Luisa’s shop. This piece is knit in panels of forever random blends (probably potpouri and moonmist) with a panel of pure bombyx silk dyed with (Luisa, tell me if I’m wrong) onion skins or onion skins over marigolds or chamisa. For more pieces of this period, check out the Gallery under New Mexico.
When I moved to Oregon in 1987, my style naturally changed to reflect the quality of light and color of my surroundings. And my yarns changed too when I met Sandy Sitzman of Woolgatherings (now in its second generation thanks to Kate Sitzman), who taught me the easy dye methods that are immortalized in The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook. We collaborated on yarns during the period from 1989-1995 when I finally took up spinning seriously. I dyed a lot of the fiber, designed the color blends at the carder and she spun the yarns you see here in the background colorblocks of this mosaic vest. Mosaic Knitting (brainchild of Barbara Walker…see Charted Knitting Patterns, Mosaic Knitting, etc) uses alternating rows of yarns to form a slip stitch pattern. I think of these two yarns as foreground and background yarns, the foreground forming the pattern, in this case the chevrons and dots, and the background filling in the colorblocks. To achieve this complexity of background colors, I used intasia within mosaic. The background yarns are mostly Sandy spun, but there are a few of La Lanas forever random blends in here as well, I believe. The foreground is brushed mohair that I handpainted to match the colorscheme. This is the technique that Melanie Falick featured in my section of America Knits and you can find my Tree of Life pattern there. For more pieces like these, see Gallery under Oregon.
I’ll be adding more and more so please come back as often as you’d like. As any website, it’s always a work in progress.