A Quick F.O.

I finished the Tiers scarf in Shibui Twig a couple of weeks ago. I made ii right under the wire in time for the Shibui Knits KAL deadline. I didn’t win the random drawing, though. 😦   I enjoyed this quick and sophisticated knit. I made this in the Graphite color.

If there’s one thing I learned from knitting Tiers, it’s that I need to invest in a set of blocking wires.  Based on other knitters’ reports on Ravelry, some curling at the edges is unavoidable. The knitters who blocked the hell out of their scarf and used wires had much smoother edges. Sigh. So I placed another order with Jimmy Beans Wool. Any excuse, right?

I’m tempted to make another one in a lighter color, such as Apple. But there are other things already on my needles and in my queue. I’ll add another Tiers in there somewhere…

What’s On The Needles?

…I hear you ask.  Lots of stuff, I reply. Plus two projects that just came off the needles, finally. Today’s post is a hodge podge of projects in various stages of completion. I’m working with a lot of yarn lines that I’ve never tried before, and I’m having a great time using these new-to-me yarns. There are lots of photos ahead. Join me, won’t you?

WORKS IN PROGRESS:

Cable-Brim Hat.

I recently came across Malabrigo Rios worsted weight in my local shop, and I fell in love instantly. This is my first time using Rios, and it’s wonderful to work with.  it’s lovely to handle, soft to the touch, and beautiful to look at. This hat is in the color Teal Feathers.

Each colorway is a subtle gradation of one shade, from light to dark and every shade in between. I’m doing a made-up pattern, just a cable brim and stockinette top.  I knit the cable band with a 4-stitch front and back cable.  I seamed it up, turned it on its side and picked up enough stitches to fit around my head. I will knit it a little longer than usual before decreasing near the top for a little bit of slouch.

I wanted to give this hat a name, so I decided to call it the Seafarer Slouch, because the cable reminds me of nautical braids that sailors make with rope. I think the electric blue will pop against my red hair.

Now that spring is here, my winter hat is almost finished. I bought 2 more skeins of Teal Feathers so I can make a matching pair of gloves. I might put them on hold once the weather gets hotter. I think I can safely say that we’ll have no more snow in New England for several months.

Firefly Socks

This pattern is by Jennifer Hagan, and comes from Clara Parke’s The Knitter’s Book of Socks. I was happily zooming along on the first Firefly sock, when we had an unseasonably warm day last week.  As I knit with fingering weight yarn, the yarn was sticking to the wooden needles I was using. I put it down when I started to feel warm. I’ll pick it up again after a quick break to knit with a linen and silk blend, though, because this sock is incredibly fun to knit. I’m eager to wear the finished pair.

I chose Knit Picks’ Palette yarn in Turmeric. I don’t gravitate towards yellow much, but I like the rich, warm mustard shade. Who else thinks this color could also be named Taco Shell?! In my opinion, these socks are best knit in a solid color, so the alternating cable pattern can stand out.

Tiers 

When it comes to understated yet elegant, Shibui’s beautifully organic designs are a pleasure to look at and to knit. I seem to gravitate towards their scarves and cowls rather than garments. During a trip to my local shop, I picked up some of Shibui’s newest yarn, Twig, which was recently introduced as part of the Spring 15 line.  The Spring 15 collection include Tiers, a drapey drop-stitch scarf. Shibui is hosting a spring KAL for Tiers until May 22nd. The pattern is free with purchase of the yarn during the KAL, no matter where you buy it.  I bought my yarn locally and received my free pattern. Time’s almost out on this KAL, but there is a Shibui Knit-Along Ravelry group where knitters can join in Shibui’s seasonal knit-alongs. Participants are entered in a drawing for a complete Shibui project; the more photos you post in the forum, the greater your chances of winning.

Tiers can be knit in two different lengths and in two different yarns, Twig or Cima.  It takes two balls of Twig for the shorter length, which is over five feet long.  I purchased two balls of Twig in the graphite color. This photo doesn’t do it justice; in real life it’s a deeper blue/gray color. Twig is a cool linen/recycled silk/wool blend. It’s a little coarse and a little stiff, and it’s slippery as hell on my wooden needles. I switched to metal but the yarn was still slippery. I have to knit a little more carefully than usual, but this project is simple and fast, and it’s working up beautifully. The fabric is light and airy. I love the color I chose, but once i saw the projects in the Ravelry group, I regretted using grey yarn, just a little bit.  I’m tempted to make a second one in a brighter spring color. But I need to finish this one first!

FINISHED OBJECTS

Chevron Knit Throw

The pattern for this throw is available for free on Red Heart’s website. The instructions for Row 2 say to knit all stitches, but the throw is knit flat, so that should read purl instead of knit. I used Rowan Pure Wool 4-ply in four colors: Bottle (dark green), Oats (beige), Light Denim (light blue) and Soft Cream (off-white).

I wanted the colors to represent the seashore: the water, the sand, the sky and the clouds. The Pure Wool was a joy to work with, and after I blocked the throw, the yarn became even softer. I used Soak knit wash for the first time, and it really made a difference. The Fig scent is lovely, and my blanket smelled delicious. Until the wet wool smell took over. Blocking flattened my cast-on edge, which rolled a little bit.

I started the Chevron in October, put it down for a few months, and picked it up again with just a few inches to knit–200 stitches at a time–in April. I enjoyed making this so much, I’m going to knit another one as a Christmas gift for my brother. I have certain colors in mind, so I’ll take my time searching for the right yarn.

and finally…

Ying Yang Gauntlets

This is a Plymouth Yarn pattern that uses 2 colors of their Merino DK weight yarn. The shop didn’t have any colors I wanted in stock, so I bought 2 balls of Cascade Venezia Sport. One ball of Deep Sea and one ball of White Heaven.

Ying Yang Gauntlets are supposed to coordinate rather than match. Color A for the main color and color B for the wrists on one gauntlet, with the colors reversed on the second. I wanted them to match, though. The yarn I bought came in 100-gram balls, so I had enough yarn to do both mitts in the same style.

Once again, a winter project dominated once the weather turned warmer. And once again, New England weather decided to screw with all of us. I got in some outdoor knitting on a warm spring day…

…and wore them a week later on a blustery, fall-like day in late April.

The weather made fingerless mitts–and a mocha chai–absolutely essential that day.

But it was a beautiful day nonetheless.

S is for Socks, Sorrow, and Solace.

I make it a point to keep this blog focused on knitting, fiber arts and other fun and interesting subjects–nothing downbeat or depressing or personal. I’m going to deviate from my rule this one time, because sometimes life punches you in the throat, and all you can do is vent, and pray for a sympathetic ear.

I lost my my mother and my Aunt Joan one month and one day apart from each other. They both passed in the past couple of months, during Lent; my Mom passed on Good Friday. This Sunday is my first Mother’s Day without my mom, and the aunt i considered my second mom. My mother had been battling liver disease caused by cancer for a few years, so her passing, painful as it was, wasn’t unexpected. My aunt, however, was diagnosed suddenly with esophogeal cancer around Christmas. Four days after Valentine’s Day, my entire family drove her to the hospice she chose to enter. Three weeks after that, my Mom was in the ICU. We knew it was the end.

My mother was clearly deteriorating while we visited my aunt daily. She needed a wheelchair. My aunt, of course, knew my mother was ill, but Mom insisted on leaving the wheelchair outside my aunt’s room, just out of her view, so my aunt wouldn’t worry, or know how much sicker Mom was by then. My mom always worried about other people before herself.

In mid-February, I began to stockpile sock yarn as though it were canned food destined for a fallout shelter. A couple of times, driving home from the hospice, I stopped off at a local store and grabbed skeins of yarn. I felt guilty for going shopping, it seemed so tacky and shallow. But I needed my knitting to get me through what I knew was going to be a rough patch. It ended up being a lot rougher than I expected.

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I drowned my sorrow in sock yarn. I stashed Crazy Zauberball, well, like crazy. I wanted bright, bold colors. I bought sock yarn brands that I’ve never knit with before, choosing simply by colors I wanted to knit with.

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Sometimes my hands shook while casting on. I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up in front of the TV so I could keep working on my socks. I don’t have to tell you how knitting centers and calms a person; after a while my hands would stop shaking and I produced endless rounds of lovely stockinette stitches.

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I stuck to plain knit socks. I wanted some mindless knitting to keep me occupied and calm.

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When I realized Crazy Zauberball is dyed to not match, I gave up trying to line up the second sock just like the first and let the mismatching stripes form.

Day to day life seems normal on the outside, but it’s not.  I get up and go to work, but sometimes I wake up shaking like a leaf. I pull my knitting out when I get home, clinging to it like a lifeline, which, truth be told, it is. Knitting is familiar, a huge part of my life, and comforting.  I’ve been knitting for years. I will continue to knit for the rest of my life.

My Aunt Joan taught me how to knit–twice. Once when I was nine, and again when I was 14. When I was eight, she gave my sister and I each a beautiful doll for Christmas. This doll had a ton of clothing made for her, and my aunt bought several outfits as part of the gift. She also handknit several tiny sweaters and skirts for these dolls, with little faux mother-of-pearl buttons. I didn’t know she could knit before then, and she never knit again after that. She and my mom both knit when they were in college in the 1950s. They both dropped it soon after they got their first jobs. I dropped it soon after each of my aunt’s attempts to teach me. But I picked it up for good in my thirties, with some pink yarn and a little book. When some of the diagrams of knit stitches confused me, muscle memory took over and I slipped the stitch off the needle like a pro, thanks to my aunt’s early lessons.

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Yesterday I cast on for the Firefly pattern in The Knitter’s Book of Socks.  I think the pattern looks best in solid colored yarn, so I bought some Knit Picks Palette in the color Turmeric. I don’t choose yellow very often, but I love the rich, autumnal color of this shade. These socks are working up very quickly. I love cabling.

Before this past February, I had never been in a hospice or an Intensive Care Unit before. Despite the fear, uncertainty and pain, there was one positive thing that I experienced first hand in these places: the selflessness and generosity of other knitters and crafters.

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It’s hard to see because of the light pink yarn, but there’s a cross in the middle of this square. This is a comfort square. The hospice chapel had a box of them for people to take if they needed comfort. There was also a design with a heart in the middle. All were knit by local knitters. The chaplains also provided my aunt and all the other patients with a beautiful hand-quilted prayer square, made by local parishioners and blessed by a priest. My brother has the quilt mounted on his bedroom wall.

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The chaplain at the hospital gave my mother a prayer blanket. The chaplain was a registered nurse, and she and other volunteers knit the blankets.

Prayers were said over these items as they were made; prayers for complete strangers whom the knitters and quilters would never meet. That kindness, as well as the handmade items themselves. do bring me some comfort. They’re a reminder of something sad and awful, but they’re also a reminder of the generosity of spirit and the best of intentions given by kind souls for those who are grieving. I am motivated now to make some blankets to donate. In time I’m sure I’ll be up to knitting something for someone else who’s grieving. But for now, I’m going to be a bit selfish. I need some more socks.

Thanks for listening. I hope I didn’t bring anyone down too much. I promise to resume the happy knitting chat with my next post. Peace to you all, and Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, grandmothers, and aunts, whether they are on this Earth or not.

Conversations In Newburyport

Yesterday I spent the day in Newburyport. The humidity has let up for the time being and I figured the temperature would be nice and cool down by the waterfront, so my sister and I drove up for a day. It was the perfect day to eat, shop and relax by the Merrimack River. We shopped, walked through some of the older streets to view the beautiful 18th- and 19th-century houses, and we ate popsicles on a bench overlooking the river. Newburyport is one of my favorite places to spend the day, and I mention it frequently on this blog. Yesterday  I didn’t have any particular goals in mind other than stopping into Newburyport’s LYS, A Loom With A View, for some sock yarn.  It turned out to be a day filled with, to say the least, unexpected fibery finds.

Our first stop was the antiques warehouse Oldies, which is never dull and always full of surprises. There is a vintage clothing section that often has a lot of old sewing and knitting things on the shelves, so I ventured into that room first. There were several pairs of old steel knitting needles, small cones of thread, and a lot of darning eggs. There were also three nearly identical rough wooden Russian-style support spindles.

Has anyone ever seen a spindle like this? It’s very plain, and it’s certainly seen some use.

They were $5 each. I picked out the one I wanted and gave it a twirl on a countertop. It had a pretty decent spin. Satisfied, I decided I would buy it.  A nearby dealer was watching me.

Seller:  Have you figured out what that is?  I thought it was some sort of knitting needle.

Me: I believe it’s a support spindle for spinning yarn.

Seller: You could be right. The vendor put her initials and the price on it but didn’t tell us what it is.

I give it another twirl

Seller: Whatever it is, it’s only five dollars.

Me:  O.K. I’ll take it home and try to spin yarn with it and see what happens.

Seller: That-a girl!

I really do love the salespeople at Oldies because they’re lovely people, and they love what they do.  The lady at the register called it a “spool” for making yarn.

Let’s take a look at it:

It actually has a nice, tapered top, the better to grip it in order to spin the spindle. I think that’s pretty clever!  It’s not fancy, but the little ball and disk detailing above the tip is a nice little touch. It’s definitely hand carved. The wood is aged but still smooth. The saleslady couldn’t say for sure how old it was, but her best guess was that it, along with the darning egg, was from the 1940s or 1950s. Here’s a close up of the tip:

I’m no expert but I think the spindle might be older than that, because t’s so plain and utilitarian, like someone literally did not care what it looked like because they just needed it to function. It’s hand-carved. It looks very aged to me. This is a tool, and no one obsessed over what kind of wood they wanted, or what color stone or crystal to put above the tip. We’re so spoiled for choice these days, when we are spinning for fun, and not for a do-or-die need to put clothes on our backs. And people certainly didn’t pounce on spindle makers as soon as their shops opened because the newly made spindles were going to sell out in a ridiculously short amount of time. Man, how times have changed. I bet the woman who used this spindle would laugh and shake her head if she saw what some of us go through today when we stalk online shops for a chance to buy a handmade spindle or join a hand-dyed fiber club!

It’s going to be awhile before I get some usable yarn from this spindle. I’m still trying to get the hang of support spindling, and I need a lot of practice. But I look forward to using this spindle in my efforts. I like the idea of using an antique tool for an ancient process.

According to the saleslady, the darning egg is also from the 1940s or 1950s. Again, I’m no expert, but I would believe that. The egg seems a little more sophisticated than the spindle, which adds to my belief that the spindle may be older.

Despite its age, the egg is still in great shape and very pretty to look at. It’s very smooth and pleasing to handle. it’s also very glossy. Look at the beautiful grain. The Forties or Fifties makes more sense to me for the egg because, apart from hobbyists, I don’t know how common it was at that point for women to still be spinning yarn on hand spindles. But women were definitely still hand knitting (and repairing) socks–especially during the war. Sock-darning is an as-yet untried experience for me, but it’s a skill I want to learn. The egg was $12, and is in excellent condition.

My next stop was my favorite bookstore, Jabberwocky Books. Their crafts section is tiny but the few craft books they stock are always thoughtfully chosen. I was surprised to see four books on spinning, and almost bought the Tiny Owls Woodland Knit book, but I put it back for another day. Because you can’t beat this price:

Now compare it to the original price:

I can’t believe no one wanted this book, and that makes me sad. But on the other hand, markdown! Woo-hoo for me! I took it to the cashier.

Me: I can’t believe no one wanted this book.

Salesguy: You want that book.

Me. This is true. I’ve been meaning to buy it for a long time.

Salesguy: And now it’s yours for $7.98! Do you know how to spin?

Me: Yes.

Salesguy: Good for you!

Clearly this was the tone of the day. *eyeroll*

I also picked up the most adorable knitting reference book ever!

It’s 4″ x 6″ and costs $7.99. It’s thin and light and perfectly portable.

Wait! What’s that bright green bag next to the ball of Zauberball? Why, that’s Loom With A View’s signature green, of course.

I went into LWAV with the specific goal of buying some pink and brown sock yarn. I saw some socks on Ravelry in this colorway and wanted to make some, too. Pink and brown together is one of my favorite color combinations. I didn’t know which yarn companies made this colorway, but I thought to myself, “It would be nice if I could find it in Zauberball.”  There was a nice variety of Zauberball, but I didn’t see my colorway. I didn’t know if it existed but I was determined to look through every color just to make sure. I reached out to the very back of the cubby when lo and behold, I pulled out a ball of pink and brown! In Zauberball. Like I imagined in my head. Something I imagined but wasn’t sure existed, existed exactly as i imagined. Spooky, right?! Chalk it up to one expected fibery find!

Now let me share with you the most surprising fibery find of the day: a sheep hanging out in the middle of town. My sister and I were walking through the beautiful waterfront park when my sister points towards the distance and says to me, “That lady is walking a sheep on a leash!” As you can imagine, I asked her to repeat that. She did. I really wanted to see a sheep on a leash, so we walked towards it. There were two ladies sitting on the grass. There was a big black dog, maybe a Great Dane, on one leash, and, sure enough, a sheep on the other. I approached the lady holding the leash.

Me: Do you keep your sheep as a pet or for the fleece?

Sheepmom: Both!

Me: What breed is she?

Sheepmom: She’s three-quarter Leicester and one-quarter Romney.

Me: Can I take her picture?

Sheepmom  Sure. You can pet her if you want.

I did want to pet her. She let me, and gave a contented little Baa-aaa when I patted her on the head!

 

But she put her head down and went back to grazing when I took her picture!

Later, my sister and I spotted this sheep and her entourage crossing State Street in the middle of downtown. They were in a pedestrian crossing with a city bus waiting for them. I bet the bus driver got a bit of a shock.

I could see people stopping and snapping pictures with their phones (not one person was taking a picture with a camera).

It just goes to show you: people love sheep. See the dog and the sheep together? They appeared to get along. I wonder if the dog thinks the sheep is just another dog, and the sheep thinks the dog is just another sheep.

Then the sheep began eating the flowers out of the restaurant’s flowerbox.

Everybody laughed, and that was when I realized that the crowd around them had grown, full of people eager to take a look at a sheep being walked on a leash in the middle of town, and to take her picture.

I bet that happens to them a lot.

 

Best street name ever!

The Spinning Continues

…on a spindle. The plied merino and silk yarn that I worked on last week is now hanging from my shower curtain rod, drying. I’ll post pictures when the skein is dry and finished up. In the meantime, I’m still plowing through the fiber club monthly samples from Paradise Fibers. I’m having a great time with it and I’m so glad I joined this club. The samples are generous, and compared to a pound or more when spinning for a big project, they’re the perfect bite-sized introduction to a variety of fibers. I’m not spinning with any particular project in mind, I just want to perfect my technique and tweak my results.

I’m a little behind on my club spinning. Last week I finished up the April shipment. Now that it’s June, I’m just getting started on the May shipment. As I write this post (on June 7th) my June shipment is sitting at the post office downtown and should be on my doorstep later today.

Updated on June 14th (the day I published this post): the June shipment did in fact arrive later that day. Deets and photos to follow.

These pictures feature the last of the April samples and the first of the May samples that I started spinning. Here’s the April sample:

The fiber is a merino/silk and get this–Tibetan yak blend. TIBETAN YAK, PEOPLE!! It’s from Ashland Bay. The spindle is a lightweight Golding .84 ounce top whorl called Night Owl. I like owls, and I love my little owly spindle! I chose it to get a fine yarn from this fiber. I enjoyed spinning the yak blend. It was easy to draft, it was smooth and it has a beautiful sheen to it, which you can see in the picture. Compared the the merino wools I was knitting and plying earlier, this yarn is much thinner, which is what I was aiming for.

The sample was 2 ounces, and it didn’t produce a lot of yarn. I have two adorable little balls of yarn that are ready for plying. I would like to try a lace pattern with this yarn. Depending on the yardage, I am hoping to perhaps knit a lace kerchief to go around my neck, since I don’t think there’s enough here for a small scarf or cowl. If I don’t get a lot of yardage I’ll do some lace swatches. I think this yarn will be soft and drapey and perfect for lace. Time will tell if I’m right…

On to the first of the three May samples that I’m working on. I grabbed the 4 ounce bag of painted merino and Tussah silk fiber first. This is much loftier than the other samples and the amount looks huge! It looks like they gave me a lot more than other samples, although some of the April bags had 4 ounces in them, too.

This colorway is called McKenzie. Look at all the gorgeous colors swirling around in there:

It reminds me of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night:

 

Here’s the McKenzie on the spindle.

Out of all the bright colors swirling around in the fiber, the black is very prominent. The yarn has a fuzzy halo when spun. There are so many colors in there that there’s a barber pole effect taking shape as I spin. I’m disappointed that the little bit of bright minty green you can see in the previous photo is barely noticeable in the spun yarn.

I’ve started two little balls of McKenzie.  I’ll add to each one as I finish spinning the fiber and then I’ll pull out my flowerpots and ply them together. 🙂

Yarn. It’s what’s for dinner.

I’m happy with this yarn so far. Again, I was able to spin a thinner, more consistent yarn. Maybe I was out of practice when I picked up the Cyan and Mallard spinning fiber. I think this yarn is shaping up nicely.  I can’t wait to see McKenzie as a two-ply.

The weather has finally warmed up but my hands have not stopped spinning and knitting. I have a lot of things to write about and lots of photos to share with you. As always, I thank you for reading Spin. Dye. Knit. Love.

Adventures In Plying

OK. So. I’m ready to ply. For real this time. This time I’m going the whole nine yards: plying, yarn bath, winding into a skein, the works. I’ve got the niddy noddy on standby.

I’ve got my high-tech plying tools:

And two balls of yarn ready to go:

On the left is Ashland Bay’s merino/tussah silk blend in Mallard. This photo is more accurate in terms of its color, which is a predominantly dark green with blueish tones. The photos I took outside in a park a few weeks ago were way off. Crazy, right? On top of that to the right is Ashland Bay’s merino in Cyan.  These are the samples from the April shipment of Paradise Fibers’ fiber club. I love this fiber club, but the monthly shipments are coming in faster than I can spin the fiber!

I’ve got my huge and heavy Golding plying spindle on deck (literally, it’s on my front deck):

And…let’s ply!

So far so good. The yarns are “grabbing” each other nicely. They’re twisting up a little bit even though I’m holding them so that there isn’t a lot of slack. Once I separate each color by sticking my index finger in between as I ply, the plying gets easier. I’m doing a chain ply, no fancy Andean plying for me. I’m happy to work towards a barber pole effect right now; I’ll move on to the special effects like self-striping yarn and matching color repeats after a lot more practice.

The yarn looks pretty even here. It’s not super fine, but it’s not too bad looking.

There’s actually a lot of science involved in spinning, isn’t there?  Crafts, please don’t make me learn science, dammit, the math in knitting is bad enough! There’s physics to understand how the spindle works. Knowledge of different sheep breeds and plant fibers is helpful in getting the best out of your yarn: is the fiber long stapled or short stapled? Corse or curly? Also, knowing the properties of the fibers you’re using is important when planning what to make with your yarn once it’s spun. Which fibers are good to wear right against the skin and which ones would you not want to wear next to your skin. In the latter, what could you blend with the first fiber to make it more comfortable? I’m not even going to get into spinning with fleece straight off the sheep, whether to card or comb it, etc. There are so many decisions involved in spinning. Even as the unread spinning books accumulate in my library, all I want to do is grab my spindle and some fiber and see what kind of yarn I get. They say ignorance is bliss; well, I’m in a very blissful state right now!

Is this what is known as art yarn?! I went out on my front deck tonight and plied for an hour until the sun went down. As you can see, the more I plied, the more uneven the yarn became. There are very lovely, perfect, thin strands and there are nice but thicker strands, and there are uneven, lumpy strands, all in the same yarn. The yarn keeps breaking as I ply–you can see where it broke on the left. That was when I called it quits for tonight.

I’ll finish plying over the weekend. After that, I’ll get to work setting the twist by soaking the yarn, then I’ll hang it to dry, and then I’ll wind it onto a niddy noddy and see how much yardage  it yields. I’m hoping to have this spinning project all wrapped up (Ha!) by next week. I hope to have some pictures of a finished, tied-off skein sometime to post then. In the meantime, wish me luck!

So…I’ve been spindling for about four years now, taking my time, not in any hurry to finish and ply. I know, this project is long overdue. Is anyone else out there like me? Share your stories in the comments and tell me the longest time it has taken you to learning a craft or finish a project!

Complete Guide To Modern Knitting And Crocheting

Whenever I visit Gloucester for the day, I spend a lot of time browsing among the shops on Main Street.  Gloucester is well-known for being an active fishing port, but there’s a vibrant art scene there and all throughout Cape Ann. Main Street is an eclectic blend of seafood and Italian restaurants, art galleries, gift shops and antique stores, all just steps away from the working waterfront. Occasionally I come across a gem of a vintage knitting book in the antique store and used bookstore here, and last Saturday, I scored a real gem, indeed. I assume there must have been a dust jacket at one point, but they don’t always survive. 😦

Let me (re?)introduce you to the Complete Guide To Modern Knitting And Crocheting by Alice Carroll. Published in 1949, this book is a wealth of information aimed at beginner knitters and crocheters. The Guide is sensibly structured to ease new stitchers into the art of each craft, propelling them gently from there into a variety of patterns and projects.   An introduction to tools and basic stitches starts the book off, followed by stitch patterns for knit and crochet projects. The projects then are grouped into children’s, women’s, men’s and home decor sections.  In the spirit of make do and mend, there’s a section on how to reuse wool that’s already been knitted.

From there, garment structure and more technical work become the focus. There are chapters on the essentials of knitting a garment, then on assembling a garment. More advanced techniques such as fair isle, lace patterns, even knitting with ribbon, follow.

Ah, early printing methods: when charts were hand-drawn, and everything was in black and white.

Mrs. Carroll then guides the needlewoman through socks and stockings, mittens and gloves, and finishes up with a comprehensive section on designing your own garments.

This book is impressive in its scope of information.  The variety of garments is interesting, especially seeing the everyday items people made with wool–including swimsuits–before synthetic fabric was available. Some of the ladies one-piece dresses are breathtaking and diaphanous, while the baby and toddler clothes are endearing.

This pattern is for a “one-piece dress for the older woman.” The woman modeling it doesn’t look a day over thirty to me, but we won’t start any trouble over that. 😉

The book is a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era. Many of the patterns are items that were essentials in their day no longer have a place in modern society. Ellbow-length evening gloves were once de rigeur when in an evening gown, while “soakers”–knit panties for babies–have been made obsolete by modern absorbent disposable diapers.  I won’t be knitting a snood to tuck my hair into, or an “automobile robe,” which is a lap blanket for traveling, any time soon,  but there are two patterns that I wouldn’t mind, in all seriousness, giving a go.

The first is this Winter Hood, also called a Skating Hood. I think the Skating Hood should make a comeback, don’t you?  I think if I were to knit this in a neutral color, either white, black, or grey, I could pull it off with a simple black winter coat. The adorable peak on top is a cheeky retro touch, no?

The second pattern is this gorgeous “Striped Slipover.” How stylish is that? Look at that fabulous woman wearing it. She’s fierce and she knows it. I suspect she might even be wearing slacks!! (dungarees, even!)

Look at how great that top looks, even in black and white. Color theory recommends reducing the colors you want to use to black and white to look at the shade values anyway, so this is a great example of that.

I think this might be wearable today without looking costumey…

…which brings me to the actual knitting of vintage patterns. There are a lot of problematic areas in this book when it comes to reinterpreting for the modern knitter. Clothes were sized differently back in the 1940s. Most of the ladies patterns state a size 16. That’s it, 16. There are no multiple sizes given. So do your own math. I don’t know what the modern equivalent is. The women in the pictures are more full-figured than the waifs that became popular in the 1960s through today, but I don’t think this 16 is today’s 16. So I will have to do my own math and measurement conversion. Which I hate. It’s going to be a fair amount of research, trial and error and swatching, but hopefully it won’t be impossible. If I have to, my ultimate backup plan is to pay for private knitting lessons at my LYS to have someone more experienced in designing help me write up a pattern with the modern measurements.

The needle sizes and yarn requirements in this book are very different than today’s standards. The needle guide depicts (steel only) needles sized fro 20 (the thinnest) to 10 (the thickest). So great, more research will be involved. Yarn requirements are in ounces, not yards. I suppose I could do an ounce to gram conversion, since grams are listed on modern yarn labels. Yarn weights are very different as well. The Guide lists worsted and fingering, but after that, things get a little weird. There’s Saxony, which is finer than fingering, used for baby garments. After fingering, there’s Germantown which, if I were to hazard a guess, might be DK Weight. Then there’s boucle, and angora, which need no interpretation. Finally, there’s Jiffy, which is “thick and bulky” so it’s safe to assume it means…bulky.

We need to bring back illustrations like this, too!

By far the weirdest piece of vintage knitting instruction comes in the section that talks about gauge. If you don’t get the correct gauge with the needle you’re using…eliminate the appropriate number of stitches in your row until you get the required gauge. Great, more math, which essentially means you’re altering the written pattern. I’m so glad I live in the modern world where knitting instructors teach us to simply go up or down a needle size. I wonder when someone figured that out.

Glaring historical differences aside, this is a terrific book that’s full of practical advice and as much in-depth instruction as an author can fit into one book. It can certainly be as helpful today as it was in 1949. Alice Carroll’s tone is in itself a lost art; she sounds like a ladies’ finishing school instructor who drinks tea with her pinky extended. She extols the virtues of living in an era in which knitting has surpassed mere function and warmth to take its place among fashion for fashion’s sake.

And on that note, check out this guy! He invented the male model pose!

Yarn Crawl Finished Objects

Back in March, I did the North Shore Yarn Crawl and came home with some yarn to make some small-scale projects. Unlike most years, I didn’t overdo it on the spending and I actually knit most of what I bought instead of letting it sit around the house.  I bought two different yarns for two different cowls, and yarn for one pair of socks. Out of the yarn I purchased, I only have one hank of yarn/1 unknitted project remaining. But I kind of cheated. I liked the yarn I used for the first cowl so much I purchased another ball in a different color and made the same cowl all over again. I think the hank I didn’t use yet became angry with me, because when I went to untie it in order to unwind it, it became knotted up before I could put it on the swift. Now I have a tangled purple mess on my hands whose existence I currently refuse to acknowledge. Two can play at that game.

The first cowl I completed was the Tangier cowl, knit with Cascade’s Tangier yarn.  I  bought one ball of Tangier in Forest Glade in Gloucester, MA during the crawl.

I still call this yarn “green” even though, once knitted up, the gold totally dominates all the other colors.

This is a simple yet satisfying one-ball project using a mock cable, no cable needle required.

I meant to work on another cowl after this one, but after the yarn tangled, and because I enjoyed this quick knit so much, I bought another ball of Tangier in Denim Blues in Salem, MA a few days after the crawl.

I love the pale blues/almost greys and how the bright turquoise pops for a nice burst of color.

I knit both of these the week after the crawl. Once I was done, I moved on to the Mad Color Fiber Arts sock yarn I bought in Gloucester. The color is called Poison Apple.

I do love a good sock project.

About five weeks after the Yarn Crawl I received a phone call from Seed Stitch Fine Yarn in Salem. I won a door prize! It’s a pattern from Toil and Trouble for a lovely pair of fingerless mitts. This is the second year (in a row, no less) that I won a small door prize; last year I won a skein of orange Malabrigo. Hopefully my lucky streak will continue next year, so, you know, fingers crossed.

Now onto spinning for a while, even though my dog is waiting for his sweater and I’m still knitting one for me… *eyeroll*

 

Because I Don’t Have Enough Spindles

…I had to buy a couple more.  So I have a spindle collection that’s shaping up nicely. Off the top of my head I’m not sure how many I have at the moment. I’ll have to go through them and see what’s what. I think the number is somewhere around 15-20.  I’m a natural collector, I need to accumulate stuff. Cataloging my spindle collection would be a nice future blog post, I’m sure. Most of my spindles are from Golding Fiber Tools in Vermont. After that, I have a couple of Greensleeves, a couple of basic Ashfords, two Turkish spindles (one Spanish Peacock, one Jenkins) I have yet to spin on (damn you, half-hitch knot, what am I, a sailor?!), a Spanish Peacock Victorian Ladies silk spindle that I can’t for the life of me get the hang of, and a few other assorted models. Yes, I think taking serious inventory of my collection is in order.

But on to my two newest beauties from Golding. Last week I noticed a beautiful spindle made with pink ivory and holly for sale. This is part of their “Gemwood” series.

See the back of the attached card for the stats:

At 1.8 ounces this spindle has a nice weight to it. I love how the pink and white woods pop against the darker walnut.

The second spindle is one I’ve been thinking about for a very long time. I love purpleheart wood’s deep purple color. But whenever I log onto Golding Fiber Tools with a purchase in mind, I end up being distracted by the gorgeous vintage spindles with their antique jewels and enamel and metal findings. On Friday, I finally bought a purpleheart spindle, and it’s beautiful!

This one’s a bigger model. With a 3″ diameter whorl, It’s pretty hefty at 2.1 ounces, and feels nice and sturdy in my hand.

The spindles came with a sample of fiber from Ingelnook Fibers in a color called Brick Wall. I love that name!

I ordered my spindles three days ago, on Friday morning. They were on my doorstep the next morning!  That is usually the case when I order from the Goldings. I wonder if it’s because Massachusetts is right next to Vermont, so Priority comes overnight instead of two days. I love the almost instant spinning gratification I get when I shop on Golding Fiber Tools; I received a shipping confirmation email an hour after I placed the order. Do the Goldings run each and every order to the Post Office when they receive them?!

I’ve started spinning some Ashland Bay merino in Cyan on the pink ivory spindle. I’m working my way through a three ounce bag in order to do something fancy: ply two different colors together. I’ve been spinning for about 5 years now, and I’ve always been content to just spin. Except for a little experimentation, I haven’t really moved on to the plying stage yet. I find the act of spinning alone to be pretty satisfying. But that’s all going to change. Yes, I’m finally pushing on to the next step! It’s about bloody time, right? I have various balls of handspun stored in my home that are crying out to be plied and knitted. So I give in!

When it comes to my crafts, I’m not very organized. I work at a leisurely pace. I go with the flow. I spin but don’t ply. I knit something, put it down, pick up something else and put that down, too. I lose needles and tools and end up digging around in my stuff when I want a specific item in hand.  I always thought of myself as a product knitter rather than a process knitter because my original reasons for learning to knit was to have sweaters and other garments for myself. But I’ve come to realize that I enjoy the process more than anything else; a sweater at the end is just icing on the cake.

I suppose my crafting philosophy can be summed up as follows: Enjoy the journey, don’t worry about the destination. It will always be there.

 

A Much Needed Spinning Post

It’s been way too long since I pulled out a drop spindle and worked on making my own yarn. I’ve been doing a lot of knitting these last few months, but no spinning, despite a cabinet full of spinning fiber. Did I pull out some of the stash I already have lying around the house? No! I joined a fiber club so I could get monthly shipments of even more brand new spinning fiber! Cool, huh?!

I found myself browsing the Paradise Fibers website a couple of months ago and saw their fiber club options. I have always wanted to join a fiber club, but the only ones I knew of were run by independent dyers and, while the fibers were gorgeous hand-dyed works of art, the clubs seemed pricey and hard to join. For a good price point, members get to test-drive a generous variety of fibers, from different wool breeds, silk and silk blends, to exotic fibers such as yak, with the occasional neat-o gift thrown in.  I joined the 12-month club; for $40.00 a month I receive very generous samples of beautiful fibers, both natural and dyed. I’ve received two shipments so far and I am blown away by the quality and beauty of the fibers, which are a generous 3-4 ounces per sample. The April shipment had a bonus item thrown into the mix: an adorable Lantern Moon tape measure with a carrot-eating rabbit on top.

The bag I grabbed for my current spinning is from the April shipment. It contains an Ashland Bay merino/tussah silk blend in a color called Mallard. It’s a bluey-green hue that is truly reminiscent of the colors found on Mallard ducks: sometimes it’s blue, sometimes it’s green, depending on the light. I took a lot of photos of this fiber today–most of them were taken in the same lighting conditions–and the color never looks the same twice.  It may be hard to pin down, but it’s gorgeous in any light.

Today I took my spindle and some Mallard to the park for some spinning. It turned out to be a little too windy by the water to get any spinning done, but I got some great photos.

The spindle is one of my Golding spindles. It’s called Inuit Snow Dance. The whorl is made out of linden.  (yarn=bright blue)

 

I have a lot of spindles,  but Golding spindles are my favorite. I love the vintage ringspindles and the different and unique findings used on the whorl. (yarn=medium bluey-green?)

 

Some blue handspun in front of a blue sky. (yarn=medium blue)

 

Look at my spindle as it encounters NATURE!! (yarn=light/medium blue?!)

 

The merino/tussah silk blend is easy to spin, for the most part. I started out on a smaller spindle but I was having trouble getting started with the drafting each time after winding what I’d already spun onto the cop. I’m not an expert at the technical spinning stuff but I want to say merino is a longer staple than, say, bluefaced leicester. I switched to the heavier Inuit spindle and the spinning became a lot easier.

(yarn=bright blue, again.)

I have a lot of plans for spinning the rest of this fiber, but none yet for knitting it. I am going to spin the Mallard first. Then I’m going to spin the sample of merino wool in Cyan separately. Then I’m going to ply the two colors together. Since I don’t know how many yards I’ll get, or what the drape and nature of the fabric will be, I’m not sure what I’m going to knit with it. Full disclosure: I loved these two colors and fibers so much I ordered a pound more of each from Paradise Fibers.  I have a feeling a pound of each is a lot more than I bargained for. Should I make a warm throw to drape over my lap in the winter? A hat and mittens? Dare I say it–will I spin enough to make a sweater? I don’t know what this yarn is going to be yet, but I’m having a lot of fun making it in the meantime.

(yarn = dark greeny-blue.)