I win! October 27, 2009

As much as I appreciate Kif’s guest post the other day while I was… indisposed, it was very hard wrestling the laptop back from him.

 

 

Now that I have it back (I think I will pay for this ousting with a midnight hair-ball) I would like to share this with you:

 

   

That’s right, an entire completed Central Park Hoodie back!  With short-row shoulder shaping, every cable turned the right way, the right size and everything. I win! (…but I really shouldn’t say that in print until I’ve finished it, lest I anger the knitting gods again.)  I’m on to the left front now, just finished the ribbing for it.

 

In other news, I haven’t told you about my fun trip to Weaving Works.  I went there with my mom while she was visiting.  I hadn’t been there before, even though I’ve lived in the Seattle area for 6 years!  I don’t have any pictures of the inside, sadly, but I can describe it for you!

 

When you come inside, there’s a massive wall and shelves full of yarn like Noro, Lana Grossa, and Sirdar.  There’s a great selection.  And then there’s the back third of the store.  Fiber and thread, in bulk.  Undyed cotton, nylon, wool, bamboo, rayon and more in all different weights and then there’s the dyed selection of those threads!  And the fiber!  Silk, wool of different breeds, yak, mohair, hemp, even milk and Firestar; it’s enough to drive a spinner mad.  There’s pre-dyed wool for felting and spinning and tons of undyed/natural fiber for dying yourself.  Silk in hankies and in cocoons if you want to do the reeling.  And some blends of fibers that are just great.  Sadly, not even the prices helped me decide- all the fiber is really well priced!  After a lot of indecision and burying my hands in bins of fiber, I decided on a few things.

	About an ounce of 80% merino, 20% bamboo blend, undyed.  This one’s just for experimenting.  I love knitting with wool/bamboo blends so I’d like to see how it spins.
	2.5 ounces of pure, undyed Blue-Faced Leicester top.  It’s soooo soft.  I thought I’d dye it myself, something fun.  Of course now I can’t think of a good color combination; blue or purple or brown?  And I can’t decide if I want there to be subtle gradations, stripes, or just a gentle switching of shades as I spin.  Any ideas?
	About 2 ounces of a pre-dyed 70% merino/30% silk blend.  I can’t stop petting it, it’s so luscious!  I even braided the hank so that it looks all pretty in the photo (notice I didn’t do that for the others!)  They had a small sample spun up at the store and it was beautiful.  This is what I’m going to spin as soon as I finish the CPH.  And what am I going to spin it on, you ask?
	My brand new, top-whorl spindle from Cascade Spindle Co.  I love their spindles and they’re all inspired by mountains in the Cascades!  This one is Mt. Baker, which is north of me, and we went skiing there a few years back.

 

The spindles are in the last part of the shop, with the spinning wheels, extra bobbins, niddy-noddys, and knitting needles.  Oh, and the books!!  So many shelves of books about anything to do with fiber.  This is my new favorite store.  It’s a good thing it’s not too close, otherwise I’d be overrun with fiber in no time!

Grr. Argh. October 20, 2009

The gods are toying with me.

 

I spent a goodly chunk of time churning out gauge swatches for my Central Park Hoodie.  Four large swatches later and it looked like size 10 needles were the way to go.  My yarn and needles came yesterday and in a strange fit of rationality, I decided to swatch again, just to be sure.  I even washed and blocked the swatch.  Guess what?

 

I’m now one stitch too short.  I have 16 sts for 4 inches instead of 17.  ARGH!  Forget it.  I’m just going to use my circulars and forget the idea of knitting this lever-style.  I can’t knit another swatch.  Well, really it’s more likely that I can’t wait to get more needles. I have all the circs that I need…

 

To take the bad taste of swatch out of my mouth, I’m going to show you the yarn that I got at Knit Purl last week.

 

My mom came out and visited last week.  We drove down to Portland for a day and spent some time in the Japanese Garden, which was beautiful and very peaceful.  That’s my mom on the bridge.

 

Then we went back into the city and went to Josephine’s Dry Goods and Knit Purl.  Knit Purl is a great store.  Lots of yarn and variety and even some roving!  They had a whole wall of Koigu sock yarn (which I don’t like as much, but I know lots of people love!)  My mom was really nice and bought me a Japanese stitch pattern book, and these yarns:

 

Some sock yarn from Happiest Girl! Dyeworks, 75% superwash/25% nylon.  The yarn isn’t very soft (washing will probably take care of that), but I am completely in love with the saturated teal next to the deep black.  It looks fabulous in natural lighting.

 

Sheep Shop Yarn (Sheep #3), a sport-weighty merino/silk blend.  Deliciously soft and it has that dangerous sparkle to it that makes it hard to put down.

 

Last but not least, a yarn that my mom picked out that is to die for.  ShibuiKnits Baby Alpaca DK, in a very royal blue.  So very, very soft!

 

 

Favorite color? I don’t have a favorite color.  Clearly I love all colors equally and nothing you can say will convince me that I love blue more than yellow.  It’s obviously not true.

Once upon a time October 8, 2009

Once upon a time there was a knitter.  She lived in a pleasant land with a slight nip in the air.  This got the knitter to thinking.  She really needed a light jacket to keep out the chill but not be too warm.  Her husband had just gotten a very nice leather jacket to fit that niche for himself.  The knitter wanted something nice too.  She searched high and low for a suitable jacket but none of the shops had what she wanted.  The knitter was very sad, thinking that her old ratty fleece jacket that she didn’t like was going to have to last one more year.

 

Then a good fairy appeared and bonked the knitter on the head with a very sharp wand (the part of the fairy in tonight’s performance will be played by a cabinet door.)  The fairy reminded the knitter that she had yarn, needles, and more than a little intelligence to make her own jacket.

 

The knitter thought that the fairy was very smart.  The knitter carefully ignored the unworn vest in her closet.  She didn’t like vests and never had.  No amount of “science” could convince her that vests can keep your arms warm by keeping your core warm.  Nope, she vehemently denied ever having thought that she would wear such a thing.  She had no idea why she would have knit that in the first place.

 

Having conveniently forgotten about the vest, she had also forgotten about the things she learned while knitting it.  Like the fact that she dislikes knitting things flat.  That she hates seaming.  And that the witchcraft of attaching sleeves was vaguely terrifying.  She also worked very hard not to remember the seamless cardigan that she had started earlier in the year.  She was pretty sure that the cardigan had been lost at sea, even though it had never been to sea.  It was tragic, really, she’d never quite gotten over the loss.

 

Maybe it was the bonk on the head, but the knitter thought that she could probably finish the knitted jacket before the weather turned too cold to wear it.  It wouldn’t take her that long to knit a worsted-weight jacket, especially if she shoved aside all the other things she was working on, including her spinning, and ignored the fact that Christmas (and a December 1st deadline for publications) was in two and a half months.

 

The knitter happily repressed any and all logical objections from her aforementioned intelligence and went and bought the pattern for the Central Park Hoodie.  Then she bought some Wool of the Andes, because she thinks that it’s generally nicer against the skin than Cascade 220.  She decided against superwash since a jacket needs less washing than a sweater or socks.  She is even thinking about knitting this using lever knitting, hoping that this will make things faster, even though her lever knitting still isn’t faster than her regular knitting.  This, of course, will require new needles.

 

And they all lived happily ever after.

Learning New Things September 24, 2009

I love learning new techniques.  One of the things I like so much about knitting is the number of techniques to learn.  Like entrelac, Norwegian purling, Portuguese knitting, colorwork… every time I worry that I’ve learned it all, something new pops up!  The story of how I stumbled on this new technique is long and boring, but I will tell it to you anyway.  I’m just that kind of person.

 

I was poking around on Abby Franquemont’s YouTube channel for some spinning videos about a week ago.  One of the videos there was this one of the Yarn Harlot knitting and explaining a bit about her technique, particularly how it’s better for preventing repetitive stress injury.

I watched the video and marveled at her speed.  “Isn’t that cool?” I thought.  Then I didn’t think much about it for a while.

 

A week went by, and I saw on the Harlot’s blog that she had finished another pair of socks.  Now, this woman is always traveling, teaching, writing, and has teenagers at home.  How is it that she can churn out multiple projects in the time it takes me to finish one (not one project, one sock)?  It dawned on me.  She is using that other knitting technique.  I watched the video again and paid attention to the name.  Irish cottage knitting or production knitting.  Also known as lever or armpit knitting.

 

Well, that set off a full-blown Google search for anything and everything that I could learn about Irish cottage knitting.  This is the technique that the Harlot teaches in her class about knitting efficiency.  I missed out on that class at the Sock Summit (it sold out fast!!) so I’ve tried to piece it together online.  There isn’t actually a ton of info about it out there.  It’s a bit of heritage knitting; not taught much anymore unless you are taught by someone who knits that way.  I mean, I have seven thousand books on knitting and I’ve never seen it really mentioned before!  There’s a brief description in the Art of Fair Isle Knitting and the History of Handknitting, but no pictures or instructions.

 

So, I believe that I have indeed recreated this technique.  I’ve been practicing so much that I’m almost as fast cottage knitting as my regular knitting!  Hopefully after some more practice, I will reach actual speed-knitting speed.  This is the technique that the world’s fastest knitters use!  It would be very nice to be able to churn out more projects… I have so many ideas for designs but I’m limited by the speed of my knitting.

 

So, we’ve got the above video.  Then there’s this one, which has a slow motion section and an analysis of the way Stephanie holds her needles.  Then there’s some good info on the Ravelry group about cottage knitting.  Once I’m sure that what I’ve come up with is indeed cottage knitting and really is faster, I’ll post up a tutorial about the technique!

 

And because I came across some other fun stuff in my YouTube searching, here are two other videos that I enjoyed (the first is very similar to the speech she gave at Third Place Books last October):

 

 

And this one is just plain funny whether you’re a knitter or not.  And especially if you’ve visited Denver.

Titles are hard September 15, 2009

Well, that was an unexpected hiatus.  Let’s see what’s been going on lately.

 

One of my best friends got married (congratulations again!)  I was a bridesmaid and the dresses were strapless, so I knit up a shrug using some yarn that I bought at the Sock Summit for just that purpose.  I was knitting this as we drove to the ceremony- it’s a good thing that the location was so far away!

The yarn is Toe Jammies Merino-Tencel, from Sweet Grass Wool in Mulberry.  I really liked this yarn.  It’s soft with a delightful shine and didn’t split at all.  The pattern for the shrug was pretty much improvised as I knit.  It started circularly, with a few rounds of moss stitch and then a few rounds of Larkspur Lace (which I used in these gloves.)  Then I worked the shrug flat until I nearly went insane the night before the wedding and when my sanity was hanging on by a mere thread, I joined it back in the round and worked the other “sleeve” in the opposite order.  Actually, it was all finished, even with some blocking, by the time I got in the car to leave, but then I stupidly decided that since I had an extra hour I would add a moss stitch border to the flat section.  And I finished it too… except that I wasn’t paying attention when I cast off (there might have been some champagne involved) and the cast off was too tight to get the shrug on.  So I ripped out the border and all was well.

 

Then I rushed to finished a last-minute submission to Knitty.  Unfortunately, if I show you any part of it, I would have to kill you.  So, that will remain a mystery until I hear back from them.  I think I can show you the yarn I used, though, this very pretty Malabrigo Sock in Persia.  The design uses twisted stitches which have become so much of an obsession that I’m actually dreaming about them.

 

After that, I had an unexpected and fun visit from my dad.  We took a day trip to Mt. St. Helens and hiked around there as well as doing some biking closer to home.  We also had a good time being dorks in the Sci Fi Museum.  But there wasn’t much knitting, so I’ll leave it at that.

 

And finally, which brings us up to yesterday, I sent off a submission to Yarn Forward for an issue later this year.  Again, I can’t show you anything but the yarn, which is Cherry Tree Hill’s Sockittome in Loden.  I like this yarn a lot (the stitch definition is great!), although it knit into a very stiff and somewhat scratchy fabric.  After a good, aggressive blocking (a treatment I rarely pull out for socks) the yarn softened up and the fabric became soft and pliable.  Amazingly enough, the socks that I submitted have absolutely zero, nada, no twisted stitches in them!

 

 

In positive news, I just remembered that I have a few patterns all written up from last year that I’ve been saving for this fall.  Those should be up soon!