Noordzee and a special Wonderwool Wales offer

I think most designers would agree that sometimes the hardest part of the process is finding the perfect name for our latest creative endeavor. That was certainly true of this month's pattern, until serendipity stepped in with the perfect solution.

I've been working on this lovely little shawlette for the past few weeks, using some absolutely divine yarn from Linda at Kettle Yarn Co (more on that later). It's just the perfect little tidbit to whet your knitting appetite: beads along the border, a bit of lace, some mindless stockinette with short rows to shape the body, and ta da! In very little time you've got a lovely scarf to throw over your shoulders on those slightly chilly spring and summer evenings (aka all of them in the UK). But as of Easter weekend I still didn't have a name. I was well and truly stuck.

On Easter Sunday, I took myself, my new shawl and my husband to the beach to get some photos.  But not just any beach - this was a beach in Holland, where we were visiting for the long weekend. While the girls built sandcastles and entertained thoughts of wading in the water, Himself snapped a bunch of pictures, and commented that the colors of the shawl and the colors on the beach were the perfect match. When I looked at the photos later, I knew I'd found the perfect name: Noordzee (otherwise known as the North Sea).

Noordzee is a fairly simple knit, but the beaded edging and changing short row intervals give it a bit of interest along the border and a somewhat unexpected shape. The short rows first draw the border up in a curve towards the shoulders, but then swing outwards and down, flaring into a shape that looks almost like wings. The piece can be worn as a shawlette (particularly if you block it somewhat aggressively to get the most coverage) or as a scarf for a bit of warmth around the throat.

The yarn for this piece is Kettle Yarn Co's glorious Westminster, a 50/50 blend of camel and silk. It is soft and beautiful to work with - I didn't find it at all splitty - and the silk gives Linda's incredible dyeing skills a lovely shine and luminosity. And here's where the special offer comes in...

If you are at Wonderwool Wales this weekend, I would encourage you to go visit Linda's booth and cuddle her yarns for yourself. If you are inclined to purchase any Westminster while you're there, she will give you a coupon good for 15% off the purchase price of Noordzee. I'd bet you could even find the perfect beads while you're there...

You can find the pattern page for Noordzee here, or click below to purchase it from Ravelry via Paypal. Happy knitting!

FO: Green The Whole Year Round, aka how not to panic

I blocked my latest FO on Saturday morning on Boo's bed while she and her sister played their ongoing, never-ending and incomprehensibly elaborate game of pretend. As I was pinning it out and adjusting the points, and smugly commenting to myself that it was absolutely lovely, I saw it.

You know what I'm talking about. It.

The dropped stitch:


I think all of you who have ever knit lace know the feeling that hit me at that moment - suddenly and completely incapacitating panic:

OOOOOOOHSHIIIIIIIIIITTTTT!!!!!!!!!!

Thankfully I had enough functioning neurons left to take the first and most important step in a lace (or any kind of) emergency:

Step 1: take your own pulse*

Step 2 really only applies to lace emergencies: stop the drop


In this case, with a handy dandy split ring stitch marker. Stick it through the dropped stitch and bammo - no more dropping.

I took a few moments (ok hours) to regroup and let the shawl finish drying. Then the next step was to fix the boo boo.

Step 3: find an appropriately sized crochet hook and fix the dropped stitch.



Step 4: find darned darning needle somewhere in the morass of chaos you call a desk/office/studio/room full o' wooly goodness, take a bit of leftover yarn, and secure that little barstard tight up against the i-cord bind off.



If done carefully, the result of Steps 1-4 is a invisibly repaired lace piece without having to resort to Valium and/or liters of red wine.


wrong side


right side

I was helped in this instance by a few factors - yarn that wasn't too slippery (100% silk would have been....trickier) and a lace pattern that called for moderate blocking rather then full on Nuclear Warfare blocking. The stitch had only dropped down about 3 rows when I caught it, and there weren't any complicating lace stitches below it to screw things up. That being said, the same sort of fix can be done with more complicated and elaborate lace patterns. The key is deep breathing and going slowly.

Without further ado, my latest FO:




please excuse the bad pretentious iDevice selfies, but I can't find my camera anywhere

Pattern: Green the Whole Year Round by Anna Yamamoto
Yarn: Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply (55% merino/45% silk), 399 yds/100 g, in Cherry. My shawl weighed in at 102 g, and I still have a little bit left over, so the skein might have been a bit heavy.
Needles: US 9/5.5 mm for the cast on, US 6/4.0 mm for the rest of the shawl
Start/finish: 17 January 2014 - 1 February 2014. Knitting done by 29 January, but, you know, blocking...

Comments/modifications: I made one major modification, which was to cut out one pattern repeat to make the shawl slightly smaller. I was worried I was going to run out of yarn (it calls for a full skein of sock yarn, so 440+ yds) and my yarn was slightly heavier, so I figured it would still end up big enough. The final dimensions of my shawl are 16 in deep at the middle and just over 50 in long, so about the same size as the original pattern.

Now for the comments portion of the evening: since doing more tech editing I find myself incapable of reading patterns without a running (usually waaaaaay more snarky then necessary) internal monologue. I try to keep this to a minimum, particularly with a lovely pattern like this which is provided for free. But sometimes I can't help it. I had two major problems with this pattern:

1) the designer includes charts AND written directions for every single line of the lace pattern, WHICH IS FANTASTIC! However, the symbols used in the charts were not ones with which I was familiar. The biggest brain cramp for me was that the symbol that I usually associate with a knit stitch (a blank square) was, in this pattern, the symbol for a purl stitch. Cue headache...

2) Problem 1 was exacerbated by the fact hat I didn't find the key to the charts until I was doing the short row section of the shawl (in other words, was done with the lace section). This is because the key was on the very last page of the pattern, and not with the charts. To solve my confusion, I ended up having to go back and forth between the written directions and the chart to decipher the symbols.

So really, these two problems were mostly on my head, for not hunting harder for the chart key, but I also think that they could have been avoided by putting the key with the charts. /end grumpy porpoise

The pattern is otherwise very well written and put together, and the final shawl is gorgeous. As soon as I get my act together it will get packaged up to off to it's recipient.

And now that it's finished, I can get back to my Unravel sweater...how's everybody else doing with theirs?

* When I was teaching newbie Ski Patrollers in college, this was A Real Thing. Just the act of stopping to take your own vital signs is enough to stop the freeze up that can happen in critical situations. 

Instead of what I'm supposed to be doing

I've got a couple of samples for pattern releases that desperately need to be knit. However, somehow all my yarn and needles and whatnot ended up in the bag with my spinning wheel after the Small Wool Gathering, which got transported to Basingstoke so that we could fit a fourth person plus luggage in the car on the way back to London. So...instead of working on knitting that needs to be done ASAP, I've been enjoying doing other thing.

Things like a little shawl sample for Allison out of Sweet Georgia CashSilk Lace (quite possibly the most gorgeous yarn in the world, just FYI).

I was also very eager to jump into a new sweater project for me - a few weeks back, Knit Edge 4 came out, with the fabulous Ruth Garcia-Alcantud on the cover in her newest gorgeous sweater design, Automne. I'm usually pretty good about not buying yarn on a whim, but I have to knit this sweater. Immediately. My mother had given me some money for my birthday, which I promptly dropped on a sweater's worth of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in a dark green. It arrived with my parents the week before SWG, and when I got back I started to swatch.

Here's where things went wrong: the yarn that Ruth used is very weird in terms of grist (i.e. how many yards there are in a pound). She used Cephalopod Yarns Beastie, which is listed as aran weight, but comes in at a chunky 140 yds/100 g. And the pattern calls for 3.25 sts per inch on US 10.5/6.5 mm needles. Ultra Alpaca is 215 yds/100 g. Somehow I didn't notice the vast discrepancy in grist when I was in the throes of my MUSTBUYYARNNOW!!! fit (bad spinner! No new sweater!). In any case, there was nothing else to do but swatch. So I did.

I was hoping that blocking would cause the alpaca to bloom, but sadly it didn't work out that way. My stitch gauge is spot on but the fabric is really thin and flimsy - not what I want for a sweater-coaty type thing. Bah!

The following days saw much searching of yarn databases and looking for more appropriate substitutes. Sunday saw a trip to John Lewis for my mother to get some yarn for a new sweater for her, and I grabbed a ball of Debbie Bliss Rialto Chunky to swatch with - at 66 yds/50 gr it is much closer to the yarn used in the original.

Much, much, much, much better. Still drapey, but much more substantial. But I'm not buying 24 balls of DB yarn at £6 a pop because, you know, my husband would divorce me. After several more days of searching and banging my head against the computer screen I finally pulled the trigger on a sweater lot of Elann Highland Chunky (76 yds/50 g) in Spiced Wine. Sadly, shipping to the UK was almost as much as the price of the yarn, so it's going to Maine and I will have to wait (sob!) to knit my gorgeous new sweater until after I go back to my parents' house. Which is likely to be next August (woe!).

So. Now I have a sweaters worth of dark green yarn to figure out what to do with . Therefore, I have been swatching...

This is only the first swatch. I've got about 7 more stitch patterns to go. I do not think this is going to be done by November. And I get all my deadline knitting back tomorrow. Guess I'd better keep swatching!

Classes, classes

I realized, while trolling through my brain for something to blog about that is not "picture of knitting that is indistinguishable from previous picture of knitting" that I hadn't ever posted details about the classes I took at the iKnit Weekender.

Class the First: Fair Isle knitting, taught by Biggan Ryd-Dups. This was a good overview of fair isle techniques, which I was already familiar with, but was worth it for the fact that I finally figured out how to hold two yarns in my left hand.

Let me back up: I learned to knit English style (throwing, yarn in right hand), but about four years ago, I decided I needed to learn how to knit Continental (yarn in left hand, faster then throwing). To do this, I knit an entire short sleeved sweater Continental style. In cotton. Needless to say, tension issues doomed the garment to un-wearability from the beginning, but I did learn to hold the yarn in my left hand (I ended up as a combination knitter, not a Continental, but that's neither here nor there). When I started my Olympics project, I was intrigued by the idea of two yarns in one hand, particularly on the rows with three colors, but I couldn't quite get the hang of it. Frustration ensued.

You know how sometimes you try to figure something out and you bang your head against a wall trying to get it and nothing works? And then you see someone doing it and the lightbulb goes on? Yeah, that was me with the one handed Fair Isle. All I needed to do was watch Biggan do it for two minutes and I was set. Or sorted, as they say on this side of the pond. So now I'm looking forward to my next Fair Isle project so I can try it out.

Class the Second: From Square to Eternity, with Pat Ashford and Steve Plummer. I signed up for this one with absolutely no idea what it was going to be about. The course description was suitably vague, but said something about designing, so I figured what the heck?

Turns out that Pat and Steve are math teachers who have used knitting to teach math to students all over the UK. They gave a slide show of their creations, and we did a bit of knitting of different geometrical shapes that were then all combined together at the end. It was really interesting, and they things they've created are gorgeous! Some of the ones they talked about are here, and they've got a bunch of toys that I'm dying to make for some geeky kids.

Class the Third: Estonian Lace Knitting with The Dutch Knitters. I don't know where to begin with this class, it was that good. We started with some history of Estonian lace knitting and traditional shawl construction. Carla and Hilly brought a pile of shawls to show off different construction styles and shapes. I learned that traditional Estonian shawls are always rectangular, and the borders are always knit in two pieces and then attached to the center panel. We knit tiny little sampler shawls with gorgeously thin Wensleydale yarn. I learned that "nupp" is pronounced so that it rhymes with "soup". I left with big plans to get myself a whack-load of 1600 ypp lace yarn and spend the next year working on my own Estonian shawl. I was foiled by the lack of yarn with that particular grist at the Marketplace, but it's still simmering in the back of my mind. Of course, that project will also involve investment in the appropriate reference materials.

All in all, I really enjoyed my first knitting event. It was way less crowded then I had expected, but people seemed to think that a lot of people went to Knit Nation instead of waiting for the Weekender, so it wasn't so crowded. I'm planning to hit Knit Nation next summer, but that doesn't mean there won't be a return visit to the Weekender too!

FO times six: Annis

Pattern: Annis by Susanna IC
Yarns: hand-me-down turquoise wool from my grandmother, teal handspun, Malabrigo lace in pink and blue, dyed-by-me coned silk.
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm and occasionally, US 10/6.0 mm.
Started/finished: 11 June - 6 July 2010.
Comments/mods: I picked this pattern because I wanted something that would go pretty quickly but not be too boring. I chose so well! The pattern is very simple, but the resulting shape is just gorgeous. It's also vastly adaptable - I forsee doing a number of these with various edgings from my stitch dictionaries, and there's at least one mega-version in Jaggerspun wool/silk on the list for me somewhere down the line.

Since I did something a bit different for each one, I'm going to go in order.

Annis #1 - by the book.

I did this one as written, with the exception of using US 8/5.0 mm needles and a backwards loop cast-on to start with (same cast-on used for all). Finished this one in three days when Himself took off for his bike ride. For Boo's Mon/Friday nursery teacher/girls' occasional babysitter. Details on Ravelry

Annis #2 - handspun, shrunken

This one is for Boo's main nursery teacher, who earned the only handspun version by being a knitter herself, and complimenting me on Boo's Nemo set early on in our relationship. Sadly, she is not coming back next year, so I wanted to make her something really nice. I cut out two of the 12 stitch repeats and the nupps because I was worried about running out of yarn. I had plenty left (which, of course, I have no idea what to use for now), but so be it. Did some work on this on the beach in Cornwall while the girls climbed on the rocks. Six days - clearly I was too busy eating ice cream and lying in the sun. Ravelry details here.

Annis #3 - pink Malabrigo

For Devil's teaching assistant, a lovely young lady who is also leaving at the end of the year. I went back to the pattern without mods for this as well. And as I slogged along, I threw out the idea of doing any more nupps on these things. Too slow! Four days to finish, 32 g of yarn, Ravelry.

Annis #4 - beads!

For Devil's main teacher, whom she has absolutely adored. Mrs. A is having her first baby in October, and I wanted to make her something nice for the fall. Pale blue Malabrigo, blue seed beads instead of nupps, correct number of repeats, but I made the short rows longer (fewer of them) to try and speed things up. Three days, 30 g, details.

Annis #5 - red dyed coned silk

Several years ago I ended up with a lot of coned machine knitting yarn. I got rid of most of it when we moved, but held on to one cone of natural colored laceweight that was labeled silk. I'm not sure it actually is silk, but it dyed with acid dyes, so it's some kind of protein fiber. In retrospect, I should have used smaller needles for this one, because it ended up pretty holey on the 5.0 mm needles. Oh well. No time to go back and redo! No nupps, longer short rows. For Boo's other nursery teacher, who is also not returning. Five days, and I think I may get rid of the rest of the cone, even though there's a ton left. I didn't like knitting with it. On Ravelry.

Annis #6 - mini-version

I had 22 g of blue Malabrigo left, so I decided to try and squeeze out on more mini-Annis. Took out four repeats, yarn overs instead of nupps, and I still had to bind off a few rows early. But it blocked out to reasonable size. This is for Dev's reading teacher, who broke her foot very badly a couple of weeks ago and has decided to retire. Three days, 20 g, Ravelry.

Blocking: all of these were soaked in cool water and Soak, and spun out in the washing machine before being pinned out. I threaded blocking wires through each of the points on the bottom edge, pinned the top two corners and stretched the whole thing out.

I tried pinning the top edge on the first two, but found that it was unneccessary - just stretching out the lace part smoothed everything out. They do tend to be a bit on the narrow side however, so I probably could have gotten a bit more width if I'd futzed around with the top edge. So be it.

I'm hoping that the vast exodus of teachers has nothing to do with my kids, but it is unfortunate that it's all coming this year. The girls have loved the school and, while they're looking forward to summer break, I suspect they're going to miss everyone a great deal.

Annis update

So...it's now T = -9 days and I have three out of six Annis done (two blocked even!) and have started #4. Things that I have learned along the way:

Backwards loop cast on is a good stretchy edge, but makes the first row a bit dodgy
Malabrigo lace is gorgeous soft stuff, but can make some really impressive yarn barf
Just say no to nupps (at least when you're going for speed)

And finally...my husband really doesn't understand how important it is that I not be required to drive anywhere for the next week plus. That's key knitting time!

waves and dives back into lace knitting/short row fray, not to be heard from again until Le Tour starts

Two extremes

So the last time we saw this project, I was bemoaning my lack of competitiveness in the Ravelympics and making myself blind with black beads and fingering weight alpaca.

I'm still making myself blind, but the shawl has grown considerably, and I am now only 50-something rows away from being done. Hooray! Granted, I'm doing one less repeat then is called for, but from my extremely scientific calculations* this thing is going to be at least 40+ inches across. Plenty big enough. The only issue is that the rows are approximately 550 stitches each (and only going to get bigger), so I get maybe four rows done per day commuting to and from work. Which means 5 more weeks of knitting. And Christmas is only 6 weeks away right? So...hmmm...we'll see.

To combat the wear and tear on my noggin from Ms. Isis up there, I cast on a few days ago for something nice and simple - garter stitch.

Devil has decided that she needs a "coat", and due to our impending relocation across the pond, I've decided that I need to do some serious stashbusting, and fast. Enter some stashed Lamb's Pride Bulky (in a barely acceptable purple color, since there was no pink to be had), and a couple of evenings with EZ's The Knitting Workshop and Alias, Season 1 DVDs, and I've gotten almost to the armpits of my first ever Tomten (Rav link).

Look at the squishy garter stitch! Absolutely the perfect brainless evening knitting.

So Isis for the bus commute, and Tomten for after the kids go to bed. Or for Knit Night, since I brought Isis last week but was extremely uncommunicative (which totally negates the entire point of going to Knit Night**, right ladies?).

* I pulled on the center to stretch it out, put it next to a piece of paper for comparison and said "That looks like about 16 inches, and with 50 more rows, I'm sure I can get 4 more!" You know, Scientific and shit...
** Which is, of course, to talk very loudly, share completely inappropriate and embarrassing stories about our children/spouses/pets, and scare the folks who go to Whole Foods to, you know, buy food or something!

Sticking the dismount

Or, in my case, not sticking the dismount. As in, taking a huge giant sideways step on the dismount, then falling on my ass and rolling off the podium onto the ground in a giant heap.

Can you tell I've been watching too much gymnastics? Or as Devil calls it, the monkey bars.

My grand, ambitious, long-anticipated Ravelympics project is probably not going to make it across the finish line. I'm loving the pattern, the yarn is gorgeously soft (mmmmm, baby alpaca!), and it's moving along. It's just that, well, it is kind of overwhelming. I'm maybe a third of the way in, and the rows are 400+ stitches and take about 12 minutes each. I'm finding that I want to savor this project, not rush through it. Plus black yarn plus black beads divided by spending much of my day in front of the computer makes for sore eyes. I worked on it on the bus yesterday, and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was knit stockinette sleeve caps. No more yarn overs, no more tiny beads on tinier crochet hook.

It is going to be absolutely phenomenally gorgeous when it's done. I just don't think it's going to be done by Sunday at noon. Oh well (Porpoise untangles herself from hurdle and stumbles across finish line).

FO: Swallowtail shawl

This has to have been the fastest shawl ever:

Cast-on: 7/28

Bound-off: 8/5

Either that, or I'm just getting better at lace. Which is good given that I'm supposedly knitting a beaded lace shawl for the Ravelympics...

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark

Yarn: Handmaiden Sea Silk in "Mineral", 440 yds/100 gr - I used most of one skein

Needles: Addi Tubo Lace needles US 5/3.75 mm

Comments: I was worried that I would run out of yarn, since I only had the one skein, but there were a bunch of Ravelry folks who had done this pattern with one skein, so I set forth. The yarn is incredible. So soft and silky and smooth. And the pooling didn't turn out too badly at all.

The nupps (which I had never heard of before!) were a breeze with the Addi Turbo lace needles - pointy, pointy, pointy. In fact, the only bad thing about these needles was using them in combination with the Sea Silk - a bit too slippery! I think there are going to be some Harmony needles in my future for just this occasion.

We had a fantastic trip to Colorado. The weather was good (up until the wedding - oops!), the four-kids-under-5 thing worked out pretty well, and Devil and Boo were dancing queens at the recpetion on Saturday night.

A very sleepy dancing queen

It was a wonderful trip, and very hard to get on the plane on Sunday to come home. We're already planning a trip back for some skiing once winter hits.

Oh yeah, knitting

Sort of. I've been out of commission the last week dealing with loads o' work stuff, and a lovely summer cold that knocked me out for most of the weekend (exhibiting the equisite timing for which disease and various other useful roadblocks are known). But today I came to the realization that 1) I'm going to a wedding in a week and a half and 2) while I now will have something to wear (having ordered 4 dresses from Patagonia in the hopes that one will fit and be a good color), I don't have an appropriate wrap/shawl type thingie. So tonight I spent way too much time winding this

into this

so it can become this. If I work on nothing else in the meantime. Project Monogamy, here I come!

FOs: Thank you brain

FO#1: a large research grant, which is out of my hands and off to the lovely administrative folks at my institution to submit to the Grand Poobah of Federal Biomedical Research Funding (otherwise known as the National Institutes of Health). I am looking forward to reclaiming my very worn out brain cells and returning to the land of the semi-coherent sometime in the next week or so.

FO#2: the North Roe shawl in my own handspun...

Pattern: North Roe shawl by Odile Buatois-Brand
Yarn: 70% merino/30% mohair, colorway Verdant, from Hello Yarn, 5 oz/approx 650 yds
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm
Size: preblock, 60 x 26 inches; post-block, 70 x 36 inches.
Mods/comments: Loved the pattern, loved the handspun, even though I ran out and had to spin more. I even love how the striping came out, and I'm not big on striped shawls. Since I was light on yardage even before running out, I worked fewer repeats of Charts 1 and 2 (4 repeats and 3 respectively), and made it 8 of 12 rows into the edging before I decided that binding off was the better part of valor. Since running out again and having to spin more "laceweight" at 10:00 pm Sunday night would have dissolved me into a puddle of tears on the living room floor. This is my third lace shawl, and as with all the others, I am enamoured of the process of taking unblocked blob:

and turning it into this:

Chart 1

Chart 1 morphing into Chart 2

Chart 2 morphing into edging

Bliss.

FO#3: will have to wait for another day - I can't put all the goodies in one post now, can I?