As with (I am guessing) many knitters, I have read a lot of knitting blogs. I meant a lot. My feedly feed is full of them. And I have been reading many of them for years. Ever since I had the inkling that I might want to pursue knitting design as a calling I have been following one called “How to Become a Professional Knitter” by Robin Hunter. She posts weekly interviews with professionals in the knitting industry and I have probably read a couple hundred by now.
Imagine my surprise when I received a request to do one of these interviews?! You could have knocked me over with a feather. But interview I did and it was posted today. If you would like to know more about my design process and maybe peep into how my brain works please click over and check it out.
Secondly, I am super behind in blog posting. I have found that I am much better at talking to a camera than getting my thoughts out with the keyboard. The best way to keep up with me is to check out my YouTube channel Watch Barbara Knit. But that is not to say I am giving up on blogging. I just need to get better. Mostly it’s the fact that the Fall festival season is upon us and time has just flown!
I went to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool and had a grand time!
And I went to New York Sheep and Wool and had even more fibery fun.
I have released some new patterns along the way and will be writing up posts about them soon!
Can it be done? My answer is yes. Should it be done? Also yes!
I teach a 3 hour blocking class and I am pretty evangelical about blocking. Blocking is the closest thing to magic I’ve found in the world of knitting (unless you count actual spinning – because fluff into yarn is pretty amazing). It is a very rare project that I would say “eh, you don’t need to block that”. I mean, it happens but not often.
Which brings us to acrylic content yarn. Acrylic is plastic. You can get it as wet as you want and there will be no penetration of the fibers. Wet blocking can clean acrylic projects but it doesn’t really do any actual blocking. And when you have blends with acrylic it really fights with you about the blocking. It inhibits the process. But I have read a bit about heat blocking acrylic and it fascinates me.
I received a fun blend of cotton and acrylic from Kraemer Yarns called Tatamy Tweed DK and I decided to go a wee bit mad scientist on it. It is 45% Cotton and 55% Acrylic, which makes it machine washable and that is a major plus for many projects. I knit four swatches and messed about with them a bit.
The first swatch is the “control” (proper sciencing here). I knit it and took it off the needles. Bing, bang, boom.
Kraemer Tatamy Tweed DK Unblocked
The second swatch I blocked using a hot steam iron (no actual physical contact – that would be melty) to see if it would work and it did. But could I leave well enough alone? Nooooooo. I had my husband throw it in the washing machine and then into the dryer. I was not nice to this swatch. It received no special treatment. I think the dryer was on permanent press.
It shrank a bit but overall it did hold out some of the lace and looks pretty good. As long as you take into account the shrinkage I think this is a viable care technique. You would probably get less shrinkage if you were more careful with the temp of the drying.
Kraemer Tatamy Tweed DK, Wet Blocked
For the third swatch I used wet blocking. The yarn bloomed a good bit and drew back some after unpinning. I speculate that this is the acrylic content having a bit of an argument with the cotton about where it wants to be. But it looks nice. I am guessing it will have to be reblocked after each hand washing.
Kraemer Tatamy Tweed, Heat/Steam Blocked
And finally I steam blocked the fourth swatch on camera so that y’all could see how heat/steam blocking works! In short, you pin the knitting out to the final size you want and then use a steam iron to heat set the stitches. You hold the iron about a half of an inch above the surface of the yarn and allow the heat and steam to permeate the fibers. Move slowly and make sure the yarn heats up. When I unpinned it there was no movement and the lace stayed crisp and clear.
So there you have it. You can indeed block yarn with acrylic content. In fact there are several options. To see the heat/steam blocking in action and hear further analysis of my experiment check out the video on Watch Barbara Knit.
I called this Swatch Lab and hopefully it will be the first of many of this style of video. Please let me know in the comments if you like this idea and if you have any suggestions for future yarn experiments.
It’s true! I’m going on a road trip. Early tomorrow Gale from Gale’s Art will be coming by with her vehicle packed to the gills. We will wedge me in and head off into the wilds of the MidWest to attend Wisconsin Sheep and Wool. I am going to be helping in her booth and she has given me a little space to display my samples and patterns. So very excited about it!
If you are in the area or traveling to this fiber event please stop by and say Hi! I have heard wonderful things about this festival and cannot wait to take pictures and video and everything. If you are interested in my trip you should watch my Instagram for the pictorial story. I am sure there will be yarn, sheep, and silliness. I also talked about the trip on my most recent video blog if you want to check that out.
But before I hit the road I have a few things I have to share here!
First – the Fix-a-Stitch Give away has come to a close and I posted the video announcing the winner this morning!
In the video I ask for a little feedback about give-aways. Specifically, do you want more? If so, what should I give away? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Going to the Post Office this morning and mailing off the package left me with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Which is a feeling I would like to have more, so I am on the side of more give-aways.
When I get back from Wisconsin I have sooooo much going on. I cannot wait to share all of the awesome with you. I have no fewer than SIX patterns slated for release in September. Can you believe that? Hopefully it will make up for the slow summer. At least it is proof that I was knitting all summer.
Finally, I need to make plans for the winter. Do y’all have any thoughts on what kind of new patterns you might like to see? We started up a great chat in my Ravelry forum about what kind of shawl shapes people like and if you want a little peek into what might be coming down the pike you might want to mosey on over there. And the conversation can continue, please feel free to jump in!
I am hovering somewhere between excited and nervous. I am doing an official give-away! But of course me being me I had to do research into how to do it. And then I ended up reading pages and pages of legal mumbo-jumbo and getting a wee bit scared about the whole prospect. But then I talked to some individuals more experienced in this process and managed to deescalate from scared down to nervous. But mostly I am excited!
A couple of weeks ago I made a video on how to use the awesome Fix-a-stitch tool. I just realized I never put it on this here blog so here it is!
As you can see, you need one of these in every knitting bag and I am perfectly happy to enable you in this regard. The lovely people at Fix-a-Stitch gave me one to give away to y’all! Additionally, what is a knitting blog give away without yarn? Not really a knitting blog give away, eh?
Recently I was pawing through my stash and came across an unfortunate circumstance. You see, I have a tendency to fall in love with yarn in color combinations when I am in yarn stores. So I purchase said pairs of yarn and frankly they are married in my eyes. Those two yarns simply go together. And I have every intention of designing something with them. You know, after they have had the appropriate aging time in my stash (stash is like wine, none shall be used before it’s time). The unfortunate thing is that often that aging time allows the yarn manufacturer the opportunity to discontinue the yarn.
*pout*
I can’t design with discontinued yarn. I mean, I could but y’all wouldn’t like it very much. If a knitter likes my pattern and yarn selection so much that they want to knit the exact same thing, well I want them to be able to. Starting with a discontinued yarn really isn’t meeting that need. But my stashes loss is your gain! So to keep the awesome Fix-a-stitch company on it’s journey to the winner’s home I have selected a married pair of discontinued yarn to go along for the ride.
Click the picture to get to entry form!
This is Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool XL in two fabulous colors. I adore the green and charcoal together and in my mind it was going to become a cowl, or maybe a hat, or possibly finger less mitts. It’s bulky so there is plenty to make a nice accessory. Or you know, live in your stash, it has experience. 😉
I am running this as a Rafflecopter giveaway so there is more than one way to enter. When you click on the link it will take you to Rafflecopter and you will be prompted to either sign in with FaceBook or your email. If you win I will be using your email to contact you, so you might want to consider what email address is associated with your FB account. I recommend using your email.
You can get one entry by subscribing to my YouTube channel Watch Barbara Knit. You can get a second entry by subscribing to my e-Newsletter. And then you can get a third entry by using Social Media to share one of my Ravelry patterns. This third option is a repeatable option in that you can do it once a day for the entirety of the give-away. If you want more specific information you can check out my YouTube announcement by clicking here.
And of course – there are official rules. They are in the description of the YouTube video but I will put them here also. I apologize in advance for their boring-ness. If you have any questions please ask in the comments and good luck!
Contest Rules:
This contest is being run through Rafflecopter, a full list of Terms and Conditions are available on entry. To enter click on link provided and select one (or more) of the three options provided. If you are already a newsletter and/or YouTube channel subscriber go ahead and select those options. These two entries can only be used once. The Social Media option can be used once per day for the duration of the contest.
Entries will be accepted starting on or about August 17, 2016 and ending September 1, 2016 at 11:59 PM EST. This give-away is free to enter, no purchase is required. Open to US residents 18 and older. Void where prohibited by law.
The prize includes: (1) Fix-a-stitch set, approximate retail value of $14.99 and (2) balls of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool XL, approximate retail value of $20.
Winner will be selected through Rafflecopter on September 2nd and announced within 5 days following winner selection. Winner will be announced via YouTube and contacted via email to the email address they entered with.
Any personal data collected through entry in this give-away is only for use in running the give-away. No information will ever be shared or sold to any third party.
When I decided to do books for YouTube I was definite in my desire to not be putting a lot of negativity out there. I want to share with other knitters books that I think are awesome and the things in the book that I thought were on point. If I get a book and don’t care for it, why would I put in all of the effort that it takes to make a video saying such a thing? I had fun with the two book videos that I did, but I really wanted to do, as they say, kick it up a notch. I am a firm believer that all dials should go to 11.
Cue brainstorming on how I could change up the book “reviews”. And it occured to me, if I am definitely not going to be all Anton Ego on screen why not see if I could get the actual author/designer of the book to chat with me? Sort of a hybrid interview/book review. What could be better than sitting with the book and having the ultimate authority for that book on tap to answer any questions that might come up.
And Heather Zoppetti did not disappoint. She shed light on all of my questions and provided fun and interesting insights into many of the choices she made in the book. And at the end she was kind enough to share what she is working on now and even give us a sneak peek into what is coming down the road. So make sure you watch to the end of the video.
FYI, she has “serious” glasses and these awesome kitty glasses. I put in a request ahead of time for the kitty glasses and she totally went the extra mile with the amazing headband. Seriously, if you don’t feel like watching the video I totally understand. But you should at least check out her Ravelry page because her sense of the fun and unexpected really comes through in her design.
On Thursday I will be getting up very early in the morning and heading out to TNNA which is located in our nation’s capital this year. It has been a while since I’ve been to DC, but I will be spending 95% of my time in a convention center, so it isn’t like I will get to see the city.
I am pretty excited and nervous about the trip. Well, not the trip itself but the convention. I adore meeting all the wonderful knitters but I am always worried that I am going to say something ridiculous. Actually I am pretty much guaranteed that I am going to say something ridiculous. Hopefully most people will think it is part of my “charm”. And if you want to increase your chances of me saying something ridiculous come later in the day. The more I have been talking the more I am likely to say.
If you have ever wanted to see any of my pieces in person, now’s your chance! I have plans and chains and sticks and tables and all kinds of stuff to set up my booth, which I am sharing with the awesome Andrea Rangel so be sure to stop by if you are there.
On the YouTube front I finally worked out the tech aspect of doing a Skype interview and had a lovely chat with Stephannie Tallent who has a new Craftsy class on designing your own color work fingerless mitts.
I split the interview up into two parts to keep the videos relatively short. First, an interview that is mostly about the Craftsy class ( I say mostly because staying on topic is not my strong suit):
And then we have what I call the “outtakes” which is where we went more in-depth into some Craftsy stuff and then seriously derailed into talking about knitting while binge watching TV.
I had a ton of fun making this video and I hope that y’all enjoy watching it. If you do please let me know in the comments so I can do more. If you have any suggestions on who I could talk to, please let me know!
Finally a little reminder. I now have a monthly e-newsletter that I would love for you to sign up for if you haven’t already. The first Thursday of each month I will be sending out a recap of what happened in the previous month, what’s on my needles, and a sneak peek of things to come. For at least the first few months I will also include a one time use coupon code for 25% off any of my independently published patterns on Ravelry. Click Here to sign up.
Have you ever had a great mail week? Where you open the mailbox and find something awesome? Walk up to your door and find a package? Answer the knock and it is your friendly parcel delivery person? I hope you have because it is fantastic! I had a great mail week this week. I received two knitting related packages and opened them both as “Unboxings” for my YouTube channel.
The first was something that I ordered for my booth at the Summer TNNA show. Its use is the only thing that really makes it knitting related.
The second was my Secret Shopper for this month. Have I mentioned how much I love doing this? There are so many amazing products out there for knitters and I know that I will never find them all. Having one of you kind souls share with me some thing that you have discovered is absolutely amazing.
A huge shout out of thanks to CathyG (it’s a Ravelry handle) to being my intrepid shopper this month! If you have an idea for Secret Shopper, something you think I need to have, please drop me a note and we can see if we can schedule you.
I had to look back through the blog to see what I have previously said about the Secret Shopper concept. I don’t like being terribly redundant, but I also don’t really remember what I write after a couple of weeks. My brain, she is full of stuff. In case you need a reminder, Secret Shopper is where I ask another knitter (or crocheter, I’m equal opportunity as you will see) to do a little shopping for me. I give them a budget and a couple of rules. Whatever they send me needs to be readily available to others (no yarn that you have to stay up until 2 am and press refresh constantly) and something cool for knitting. Tools, notions, yarn … whatever.
They have it shipped to me (or ship it themselves) and I open the package on video. I have no idea what is in the package and the viewers of the video get to be surprised with me! It’s a win/win and I have been having a lot of fun with the idea. If you think that you might want to be (or have a suggestion of who else might be) a Secret Shopper please let me know! Obviously this is all in preface for the next installment in this series. Over the weekend I received my April package and I opened it yesterday!
This month’s shopper was the fantastic Lindsey Stephens. Lindsey is the crochet and knitwear designer behind Poetry in Yarn and she did an awesome job sending me a surprise. I cannot thank her enough and can’t wait to play with my new knitting stuff!
In looking through the blog I noticed that I totally failed to post Secret Shopper 2 – which was also a grand ole time. If you enjoyed episode 3 make sure to check out episode 2 Secret Shopper 2. I hope you guys enjoy watching these videos as much as I like making them. If you have any input, comments, or requests I would love to hear them. Feel free to comment on a video or here on the blog!
If you have knit a pattern with two or more colors you have inevitably run into the phrase “carrying the yarn up the side” or “carry the yarn loosely up the side”. When I first stumbled across that instruction I did what any self-taught internet era knitter would do. I googled it. This was many years ago, and I haven’t tried it recently, but back then it turned up surprisingly few results. I ended up talking to other knitters at knit night and eventually was able to figure out what precisely that meant.
Of course now I take it for granted. And it is like many other things in knitting, everyone has their own way of doing it. And like many other things in knitting, as long as you are happy with your results – you do it the way that works for you! But with the publication of The Peephole Stole I have been reminded that not everyone automagically knows how to accomplish this “carrying”.
And you know what? It is darn difficult to describe how to do it using words. Luckily I now have a tool in my teaching arsenal for just such a situation. Yay YouTube!
In the video I show how I carry yarn up the side – focusing on using a slipped stitch selvedge because that is a feature in most of my striped patterns. I also show how I avoid tight edges just in case that is an issue you run into. If you have any questions – please do not hesitate to ask in the comments.
I would like to send out a big thank you to the knitter in the Peephole along that reminded me that this is a technique that can cause some difficulties. I don’t want to call you out by name, but you know who you are. I hope that this is helpful to you. And if any knitter out there has something that they’d like to see – just let me know and I will see if I can figure it out!
Have you heard of a sock blank? It is this really cool concept where the yarn supplier takes an entire skein of sock yarn and pre-knits a long strip of stockinette yarn. This provides a palette where the dyer can then work their magic. From the knitter’s point of view you buy this beautiful strip of art which slowly unravel as you knit directly from the blank. Or you can go ahead and ball the whole thing up and knit from that.
The amazing thing is that, when knit, the colors completely rearrange themselves and you get this beautiful variegated yarn that doesn’t really pool. For this new shawl I worked with the sock blank Sea Garden from Gale’s Art to create a top down crescent shaped shawl. Gale requested lace and beads and I think I fulfilled those requests. I might have gone a bit bonkers with the beads.
But I don’t regret a single bead. It is so sparkly. I may not be a big fan of myself when I am putting them on (who thought this was a good idea is something I mumble to myself), but the end result is so worth it. It isn’t a spectacularly large shawl, I designed it to make the most out of a single skein – more of a shawlette really.
It works as a kerchief!
But it is easily adjustable. There is the main lace motif and then the edging. You can adjust either to suit your desires. Because the color was named Sea Garden I decided to try and evoke a watery feel. The central lace pattern is wavy, which also does double duty in moving the gradient around a bit, and the bottom is meant to look like a fisherman’s net awash with the sparkling drops of the sea. This desire also led to the naming of the shawl. I took a line from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T S Elliott:
Each to Each
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
Tumped Duck 