Oh Bother

I had to search my own blog. I remember talking about it but couldn’t for the life of me recall when. And then I was like, did I just write that blog post in my head? But I did indeed write it. Speckle dyed yarn, a bit of an obsession for me really. It is an awesome looking dye technique that has been showing up recently from the yarn artists (dyers) I follow. Swatching to deal with the yarns idiosyncrasies took place a while ago and a pattern has been in development. Today is the day that I have unleashed it upon the world (BWAHAHAHAHA – man, I should probably lay off of the Phineas & Ferb – channeling a wee bit of Dr. Doofenschmirtz).

Yarn in skein, yarn in pattern – do they match?

Honeycomb style stitch —> Honey —> Winnie the Pooh —> Oh Bother. Because that is the way my brain works, I have no real excuse. But this isn’t your average honeycomb stitch, can I ever leave well enough alone? Don’t answer that. By tinkering around a bit and adding some slipped stitches I was able to cause the honeycomb effect to kinda scrunch down into an almost brioche like effect. The resulting fabric is deeply smooshy with a three dimensional element. It actually has a thickness to it without a whole bunch of needle gymnastics.

While I was knitting the cowl I kept trying it on to make sure that it was as I liked. Specifically I was going for a “close to the neck” style. Which meant that I had to slide it over my big ole head. Sometimes I would start pulling and then get distracted and end up with the cowl on my head. It felt good there. I looked at it in a mirror and it looked good there – so obviously I had to do a hat too. Luckily Gale from Gale’s Art has several colors that I lust over. The cowl that started it all is in Meadow, which makes me inordinately happy. It just makes me feel Spring in my heart. But the hat? The hat is Goth Girl which has everything I love all blended together and yet somehow still working.

And the hat!

And the stitch is so easy that I was able to provide instructions for sizing up the hat; Adult, Youth, Toddler, and Newborn are all included. The hats are worn with almost 3 inches of negative ease, so they will definitely grow with a child’s head. I don’t have any pictures of a kid wearing one – but hopefully y’all knitters will fill in that gap!

Pics or it didn’t happen

Hello blog.

I have a confession to make. Well, more of an issue. Possibly a challenge to be dealt with.

I have a mental block when it comes to blogging. You see, I am stuck on the idea that there really isn’t any reason to blog if I don’t have pretty pictures to post. The problem is that this becomes a self defeating proposition.

When working on my computer I tell myself that I should write a blog post. I want to write a blog post. If you had ever interacted with me in person you would know that I almost always have something to say. Once I had a friend who had never met my husband and functioned under the assumption that we were one of those “chatty partner/taciturn partner” dynamics. When she finally went out to dinner with the both of us her reaction was “I don’t know how either of you get a word in edgewise.”

We are a chatty family. My son is chatty, just ask him. “Eman, why did you get non-satisfactory on your behavior report?” “I was too chatty today Mom.”

The upshot is that I do not have a lack of stuff to say, but I often lack anything to show. Which has led me to this experiment. What do y’all think about non-photo posts. Will you read if I am just yammering along? I promise that I will predominantly yammer about knitting. Really, I can talk about knitting for eons.

Right now I am pondering speckle yarns. Have y’all seen this kinda new phenomenon coming out of hand-dyers? It is hand-dyed variegated yarn, but with a very different technique and results. If you remember Gale of Gale’s Art she does some speckle dying and has had quite a hit with a color called Graffiti and Asphalt. And with apologies for linking to a whole bunch of stuff you can’t buy, Skein out of Australia has some amazing speckle dyed yarn here. Just so you can get an idea.

I am guessing that this style of yarn is going to present its own set of design challenges. It looks fantastic simply knit up in stockinette or garter, but as with other variegated yarn more complex patterns can get lost. There is going to be some serious swatching going on in the near future, once I get my hands on more of this yarn!

So there. An entire post without photos. Will this post fall into the black hole of the internet? Only time will tell. I leave you with a question. Would you enjoy more frequent posts regardless of the photographic content or should I stick to posting when I have something pretty for you to look at? I would love to know.

au Courant

What do you want to hear about? Do you want to have a detailed description of the pattern proposal process and the wonderful experience that was working with Twist Collective? Or do you want to peer into the dusty corners to try and understand the slightly off mind that would even dream of combining these two techniques? Maybe you want to see my relatively pitiful attempt at a “fashion sketch” that is required for pretty much all proposals?

Or do you just want to see the pretty pictures? Because we can totally do that!

Photo by Linus Ouellet courtesy Twist Collective

I was waiting impatiently to see how the photography for this shawl turned out … and I was not disappointed. I hope you love it too. This pattern involved quite a bit of indulging myself. If you hadn’t noticed, I like to push the boundaries a bit, break a rule here and there. One day I was visiting my best friend (who is a knitter of course) and I started paging through her copy of The Haapsalu Shawl and, just like any knitter, was in awe of the beauty of these intricate stitches.

But can I leave well enough alone? Hah! Never. Where I stray from being on the “normal” side of things is that my first thought was “how can I make this two color?” The review I linked to refers to the book as “The Estonian Barbara Walker” which explains a great deal, considering my obsession with Walker’s Mosaic knitting concepts. Long story short (don’t laugh) I spent a great deal of time figuring out how to make this happen.

Photo by Linus Ouellet courtesy Twist Collective

And this was the result. I will be forever grateful to Twist Collective for being willing to publish such a adventurous pattern. The entire issue is absolutely beautiful and if you haven’t taken a look at it yet, you should. I will be here when you get back.

It is a big piece, my biggest to date. I am not going to lie, it is a lot of knitting. But it was nothing that even resembled a chore because of the unbelievable yarn I had to work with. The incomparable Miss Babs supplied the perfect blend of Merino and Silk in her fingering weight Shiruku in the colors Helen of Troy and Cygnus. In my proposal to Twist I was fairly adamant that they yarn needed to contain silk. This was necessary for a couple of reasons.

The slip stitch color-work technique used in the pattern creates a situation where there is a lot of compaction of the stitches. If you have handled any “traditional” mosaic work it can be quite … dense. Much of my development time has been centered around figuring out ways to thwart this tendency. One solution I have arrived at is knitting at a larger gauge than normal. A second component is the lace itself; adding in holes creates a more bendy fabric. The silk is the final component.

Silk has fine drape and allows the fabric to move and flow just as a shawl should. It also has very little memory so it improves the shawl’s ability to retain its shape once it has been blocked. Now, you might ask “Why not just go 100% silk?” which is a good question. Silk tends to be a very well defined yarn and the stitches stand out individually. Which is not precisely what I wanted. My yarn needed some floofiness, some bloom. It needed to fill in a bit so that the color-work had more of a presence.  So the Merino/Silk blend is perfect! And shucks if I didn’t have to knit with it. The sacrifices I make for y’all. 😉

Photo by Linus Ouellet courtesy Twist Collective

Well, I have babbled on haven’t I? Considering that I started out with questions please let me know in the comments if there are any questions you have about this new shawl. If it is complicated enough, or if there is more than one, I can do a whole additional post. If you have an easy one I will answer in the comments.

I want to wrap things up by sending a special Thank You out to the awesome Raveler CathyG. The knitting of this shawl took place during my jaunt around the MidWest and she was kind enough to allow me to take over an entire room in her house to block this big guy. Crawling around on the floor with someone is an excellent bonding experience and I was pleased to have it with you!

Wrapping (up) Presents

OK, I have one more post to share about prizes for the Lace-a-long. I want to say something like “last but not least” or “saved the best for last” but really, I think all of the prizes are pretty awesome and totally want to keep them all. I hope y’all feel the same.

Anzula Squishy in Spruce – I forsee a beautiful green shawl.

At TNNA I met a whole bunch of great people who are doing amazing things in this yarn-y type industry. One of the wonderful surprises was meeting the Lady(ies) behind Anzula. Sabrina and her dynamic team create absolutely stunning yarn on a wide variety of bases, many of which I have never seen anywhere else. Being in Atlanta things like linen and silk really speak to me of cool, breezy knits that could be worn most of the year. Why is there so much to knit and I only have two hands?

Anyhoo … seeing that this is a lace-a-long and I mostly design shawls when offered the opportunity to claim a skein of yarn for y’all I decided to go with this decadent MCN fingering blend base. And this green, it is so soft and lovely. I hope I did good picking yarn for y’all? Honestly, if I were able to keep this yarn I would totally knit a Roller Coaster Cowl out of it; just so I could have all of its squishy softness up close to my skin.

Finally, a place to keep your doohickeys and thing-a-ma-bobs:

An Erin Lane notions wallet

To be honest, I purchased this for myself at Stitches South, but then decided it would make such a good prize that I would have to part with it. I was going to link to the Erin Lane website but it appears to currently be under construction. Regardless, they/she make really cool bags and things of holding to organize your knitting life. I fell in love with the pattern on this and its really innovative inside. To see the inside you will need to click through to the additional photo in the Prize thread on Ravelry.

That pretty much wraps things up on the prize front. I will be figuring out what will be “Grand Prize” and how to distribute the other prizes in the near future. I want to spread the love as much as possible.

In between

There are things going on. Really, there are – I promise. It is just that there isn’t much of anything done right now so I don’t have anything interesting to show you. I mean, I finally finished the pair of socks that I started last February but they aren’t blocked. And I have a new shawl that is almost ready for prime time – but also not blocked.

I have a hat that is shaping up pattern wise but it hasn’t been, you know, cast-on? 😉 There are a couple of cowls in the planning stage and a couple of shawls in the stewing stage … really not anything to blog about. I bought a new camera! That’s something right? A Nikon D610 and I cannot wait to shoot some pictures with it. I bought it at a local camera place instead of ordering it online. It was a bit more expensive than I could have managed but it comes with a 3 hour class specifically on how to use this camera. So I thought that was worth it.

The Lace knit-a-long is going beautifully … ooh, that is something that I can talk about. How about pictures of a couple of other prizes?

100% BFL 2 ply Laceweight

One of the awesome participants was gracious enough to donate not one, but two skeins of hand-spun yarn.

As the label says Silk BABY! Also lace-weight.

They are stunning and some lucky knitter will win them. I cannot imagine spinning these, it is pretty much a miracle-type thing to me. But I bet that they would be awesome to knit with! Thank you so much for your generosity Margaret!

If you are itching to get your hands on one of these skeins of yarn, come join in the -a long and try your chances! If you have thoughts on knitting with hand-spun, I would love to hear them in the comments. I have never tried to do it and wonder what the benefits & pitfalls are to the process? I can see designing something for hand-spun, but I would have to understand better first.

Blue Sky Day

As a resident of the (American) South and a knitter I have a love / hate relationship with wool. I love to knit will wool and revel in all of its wonderful wooly knitting attributes. There are many things where substituting another fiber simply will not work. But …

I live in the South. It gets hot.

Really hot for extended periods of time.

I think it is why I have such a fondness for lace when dreaming up a new pattern. But it also means that I have a special place in my heart (and my stash) for yarn companies who offer non-wool yarns and interesting wool/non-wool blends. One such company is Blue Sky Alpacas.

Yes, yes. I know, alpaca is considerably warmer than wool. You have totally busted me as a total hypocrite. But alpaca is so soft. I really have an alpaca problem. My best friend says I have “alpaca-radar” where I can walk into any yarn store and immediately find the yarns that contain alpaca and that is pretty much true. The soft halo and beautiful drape seduce me every time. So I guess I should modify my above statement. I am a huge fan of Blue Sky Alpacas because of their great non-wool options and the ridiculously soft and beautiful alpaca.

One of their yarns, Worsted Cotton, is my go-to yarn for anything and everything baby related. Before you get all ewwww cotton on me, this is not dishcloth cotton. This is a soft, fluffy two ply of organic cotton that knits up beautifully and comes in a large range of both soft and bright colors as well as multi-color. When someone close to me is fixin’ to have a baby – this is where I start in blanket planning.

Wee Kimono for what turned out to be gigantor baby.

When my nephew was “in the oven” I knit a baby blanket out of the colors Azul, Aloe and Honeydew. Unfortunately I have only pretty crappy pictures of the blanket because really, how interesting is what is essentially a giant washcloth. But with a skein of the natural cotton and the scraps from the blanket I also made the adorable jacket above. Light, soft, easy wearing. Perfect for our weather and a wider range of wearing possibilities.

Why am I babbling on about Blue Sky Alpacas you might ask? Did they pay you, you might ask? Well, no – they didn’t. But I was lucky enough to get my hands on a skein of their brand new yarn at TNNA.

This color is Cherry Blossom

And it is so very, very lovely. I just want to sit and hug it, and pet it, and name it George. As you can see by the tag it is a 50/50 blend of Alpaca and super soft merino. Just like the Worsted Cotton it is a super lofty 2 ply that creates a soft, fluffy yarn. I so desperately wanted to wind this up and start playing with swatches but I said to myself “Self, hands off!” It occurred to me that one of you getting your hands on this new yarn would be  a great prize in my Lace-a-long! (Also, on the BSA site they have this awesome, wee stitch sampler that you can scope out).

So that is why this bad boy is still pristine in its skein. It will be given away to a lucky knitter participating in my Lace-a-long. I figure that by the time the -a long is over that people might be wanting to knit up something maybe not so lacy. And this yarn fits that bill (although chunky lace is a-w-e-s-o-m-e).

As an Aran weight yarn I anticipate that this would knit up crazy fast and since the put up on it is 150 g (ove 200 yards!) one skein is more than enough to do a whole project. I could see it being a great, close to the neck squishy cowl. Or I bet you could get a chunky pair of fingerless mitts out of a skein. I have no doubt that you could manage a hat easily.

I was totally curious so here, I did a Ravelry search for you with the parameters of knitting>aran>accessories>under 218 yards. Man, there are a lot of things there I could make. I have the pattern for this hat and it would be fabulous in that pink. Can you imagine a giant, pink, fluffy alpaca/merino pom pom. Arrrrrgh, it is a good thing I have already published this skein on my list of prizes in the Rav group or this puppy would be going back into stash.

Obviously you need this yarn, so come over and join in the Lace-a-long. We just got started on May 15th and the -a long will be running until July 31st. You can jump in at any time and use any of my patterns that have lace as a design feature. Everyone is welcome and we hope to have a grand old time!

SAFF (part two)

When last we saw our intrepid adventurer … There was yarn, lots of yarn. I don’t think I will ever get tired of yarn.

Both The Unique Sheep and Dragonfly Fibers were in the big arena and I spent  most of my time there on Saturday (they had heat and food) but if you remember we started out the day in the barn and that is where we finished out the day.

I had been forbidden to purchase anything until I had seen everything. Having seen everything I was ready to do some damage. I made a bee-line directly to The Ross Farm set up.

This man is proud of his sheep, and he should be

It is out of my normal comfort zone, but this yarn really seized my imagination. Completely un-dyed, the range of natural colors was stunning. This farm is dedicated to preserving rare and heritage breeds of sheep including Leicester Longwools. While some of the yarns are blends of different sheep they raise, other skeins are not only breed specific, but actually sheep specific. Like the yarn is named after the sheep that the wool came from.

How awesome is that?

I spent a goodly amount of time chatting with these dedicated farmer/artisans and I really hope that I can do justice to the yarn that I acquired from them. It is beautiful, textural and interesting and I am going to have to spend some time in the “getting to know you” stage with this yarn. Not to leave you hanging, here is a shot of one of the gorgeous samples they have on display:

The Qunita Cowl, and gorgeous yarn

Next on my plan of attack was The Copper Corgi. I have been eyeballing The Copper Corgi ads on Ravelry for some time now and have friends who rave about their yarn, but wanted to see it in person. It is necessary to see it live to be able to choose between all of the stunning colors.

How do you choose?

It was hard. Really hard. Once I manage to get photos of my loot you will see what I chose. It rocks. Rich colors and stunning variegated is what you can expect from this dyer. One thing I really loved was the depth of color in the more “neutral” yarns. Brown can be – eh, brown or it can be ooooooh, brown. The same with grays. I was also impressed by the lighter end of her range, how something can be so light and have such depth at the same time is beyond me.

Another bonus? They are based out of Savannah, GA – so for me that is kinda local. Yay local! I have been noodling on trying to drum up some other GA based designers and dyers and seeing if we can cook up something that is all about the Peach State. Of course, I prefer pecans. With peaches. Peaches and Pecans, how could you go wrong?

 

All in all SAFF was a wonderful experience. I went with friends who, over the course of the weekend became good friends. We bought yarn, ate delicious food and explored the awesomeness that is Asheville. What more could you want?

Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) part one

Last year I went to my first fiber festival ever, and it was Rhinebeck. It was insane and overwhelming and fun but really – way too much. This year I decided to make a trip up to Asheville, NC for SAFF and it was a fantastic decision. Not that I don’t want to go back to Rhinebeck, and possibly hit Maryland Sheep & Wool … but SAFF was a ton of fun.

I was lucky enough to have some awesome ladies from my Friday night knitting group be willing to include me in their plans. We rented a two room condo that sleeps 4 (or 5 with the couch) just outside of Asheville and stayed the weekend. We drove up on Friday and bummed around Asheville a bit in the evening and then woke up and moseyed on over to the Fair grounds.

It was pretty freaking cold, but that didn’t slow us down. We hit the open air barn first and perused the offerings. I was strictly instructed not to buy anything on the first go-round. First look is for looksies only and then we could come back later to do damage. This is strikingly different that Rhinebeck. In NY you really don’t get the opportunity to retrace your steps, you are too busy going forward and trying to see everything to go back.

After being pried away from a couple of vendors we went into the Arena where it was considerably warmer.

I don’t have panorama, so you have to imagine the left half.

There was so much to look at and feel, but not so much that I felt antsy that I wouldn’t get to see everything. We were able to take our time and leisurely survey our options. I want to note here that all of the photographs were taken when I returned on Sunday and do not reflect the attendance on Saturday. Also, the lighting sucked. I did the best I could but the pictures are not the greatest.  There were plenty  of new-to-me vendors and old favorites that always manage to sneak their way into my bag. I will try and get some photos of my loot and do a yarn porn post in the coming days.

So many beauties to choose from.

One of my main goals of going to SAFF was to finally see The Unique Sheep gradients in person. I have been pouring over their site, but it is difficult to really wrap my brain around how they work. I wanted to lay hands on them to get a better idea of the bases and the colors. I must say I was not in any way, shape or form disappointed.  Both Laura and Kelly are just as vibrant and interesting as the yarn they dye and I wish I could have brought half of their booth home with me. Obviously something gradient will be in the works in the near future – any suggestions of what you would like to see?

Truly happiness is in this booth.

While new loves are always exciting, long-standing passions cannot be denied. Dragonfly Fibers has been one of my favorites since my very first Stitches South. The colors that Kate achieves are stunning and her yarns fill my dreams. You know I did not walk away from here empty handed. There might have even been some plotting.

As a group we spent what might be considered by some to be an excessive amount of time in the Dragonfly booth, but the ladies there are so much fun we ended up actually having dinner with them. We went to Tupelo Honey and it was absolutely delicious, if you are even in Asheville I highly recommend a stop. But beware, the shrimp & grits are quite spicy, like take a bite and then wish for milk spicy. But so tasty that you have to come back for more.

Thus ends the first entry on SAFF. There is way more to talk about but this post is getting a bit long. I will leave you with another shot of Dragonfly’s booth for you to drool over.

Hummina, hummina

 

Color Love, Chevzam

You may have noticed that I tend to favor accessories. It is what I like to knit so it is what I tend to design. I like projects where I can use and enjoy some beautiful yarn but have a chance of actually getting finished within a couple of months (weeks preferably). It is the way I avoid cast-on-itis. The new is always alluring and if a project takes too long I find myself pining for something different and exciting.

Which means that I have a lot of accessory projects favorite-ed. Consequently my “Pattern Highlights” section of Ravelry – you know, the part where they suggest things you might like based on the stuff you have made and favorite-ed – is chock full of tempting accessories.

And boy did a doozy pop up yesterday.

Look at that Cowl!

Chevzam is from the always fun Alexandra Tinsley. If you want to know what I mean by fun you should check out her blog Dull Roar and if you walk a little on the wild side you might want to check out her slightly less safe for work blog. These pictures are obviously hers, but I got permission to use them here.

Why?

Because as soon as I saw this piece my brain went into color overdrive. Her color palate for this cowl is flawless and I adore the use of colors that are so close in both hue and shade that the overlapping areas are boldly subtle. The clean lines of the pattern allow this subtly to work in an awesome way. To me, this presented a challenge. Could I pick out a color palate that would work this well. Now, I am not going to bust out a couple of new cowls to test it out. But I have the technology to fake it.

I started with Apricot.

First thing I did was pull up the Malabrigo page for their worsted weight yarn and start perusing. I admit, I initially thought I might have to look at another yarn manufacturer to come up with variants; but I obviously had no idea the sheer depth of their color offerings. (As an aside, I got this page from googling Malabrigo Worsted, this morning when I went to make a second palate I went to their site and found that I was working from an outdated page – here is the current one).

For this first try I was drawn to orange/apricot colors. I adore the yellows in Alex’s original but those colors make me look like the undead. I need more warmth to balance out my skin tone. For the contrast color the spring water seemed to be a scaled back teal that balanced well with the peach/apricots. The final color was the toughest and I ended up choosing one of Malabrigo’s subtle variegated colors. Apple has tones of peach and green in it and I think it could bring something really interesting to the party. note: Alex who is know-er of all things Malabrigo pointed out to me that this is Apple Cinnamon, oops.

Lets go crazy

This morning I got up and decided that to make this subject blog post worthy I would need a second set of choices. This is when I discovered, as mentioned above, that I was looking at an older list of Malabrigo colors. After going to the Malabrigo site and pulling up the Worsted page I was all “Where is the Apricot I was looking at?” Gone. But luckily, should I really want to do the first cowl, if you google for Malabrigo Apricot you can totally get your hands on it.

Back to the second set of colors. Purple. If you know me you had to see it coming. I love purple. Initially I had Periwinkle and Orchid, but they were too close in color, so I went with the darker Curazo. Honestly, either might work; this is a situation where I would need to have the skeins of yarn in my hands to compare. For the lightest color I thought that the Pink Frost would be fun, but the final color stumped me.

I considered another in the purple or pink range to keep it monochromatic but in the end the barely yellow won out as a nod towards the original color combo. I think the pop of the yellow running down the middle would be awesome.

I cannot decide which of these I would like better. Possibly the purple, but I am loving apricot right now. Who knows? Regardless it is a fun mental exercise with the end result of me wanting to buy lots of Malabrigo. Not that that is anything new.

So, what do you think of my choices? What colors would you use?

And the winner is …

ME!

Well, not specifically that I am going to give myself the prize, but I think I am the big winner here. I am completely floored by the response to this and deeply humbled. Thank you all for your kind words and support. I wanted to reply to every single reply here – but then realized it would make figureing out the whole drawing thing a complete PITA.

You know how many total commentors there were? Bear in mind that I was prepared to be pretty excited if I got between 25 & 30. But nooo, y’all are too awesome for that! My final list had FIFTY EIGHT names on it. 58.

I think that is amazing for my little blog and really, thank all of you.

Enough blathering  – it is cutting to the chase time.

For the Runner Up – who gets a copy of Curiosity for themselves and one that I will gift to the knitter of their choice:

It is like the Magic 8 ball of the Interwebs

Congratulations SherryG! Based on poking around in the new members of the BBD Rav group I believe that this is SherryGlover1. I will be sending you a Rav message to confirm and discuss which of your lucky friends gets a copy!

And for the Grand Prize of the skein of Arroyo in Marte, the Curiosity pattern and two for your friends:

Sweet Sixteen

Congratulations MJ, MJLegg on Ravelry! You also will be receiving an Rav mail from me to discuss shipping & stuff. I hope you are ready to knit with this yarn. 😉

Look! Bonus number!

Why lookee there – I just happened to draw one more name. I love playing with the Random Number Generator. Since I had such great response I thought I would give away one more pattern. so tmeelliott – you will be getting a surprise Curiosity pattern in your Ravelry Library.

Again, thank you all for playing this little game with me. The response has been great and it encourages me to try and cook up more for the future. I hope that those of you who found this as an introduction to the blog stick around, and those who have been here a while – you are why I keep writing all of this babble!

So, what’s next on y’alls list to knit for the Spring? What is exciting you? Socks? Shawls? Monsters? I would love to know.