You say ‘bitch’ like it’s a bad thing

In Julie Powell’s book Julie and Julia one of the cooking moments she describes is working through this one method of rice cooking which is extremely laborious and time consuming. Though reportedly tasty in the end, all the while Julie Powell is cooking it she goes through fits of yelling back at Julia Child through her cookbook, so that by the end of it her husband has dubbed the recipe ‘Bitch Rice.’

My spinning over the last couple of months has been progressing in a similar manner. It took me a month and a half to finish my 6th skein (though really it is 2 skeins), that teal blue Louet Corriedale I started spinning way back in September. I became so frustrated with the whole process that by the end of it all I could do was call it the Bitch Skein, as all it had done, seemingly, was to make my life miserable.

It took me several sessions to get anywhere near approaching moderately consistent weight; the wheel itself still refuses to settle and so the drive band still occasionally jumps right off the treadle so that I have to stop and put it back on again – or else it sits just barely at the point of jumping off the treadle and thus grinding the wheel speed to a slow slog, making it impossible for me to develop any kind of consistent treadling speed; By the time I got to the second bobbin I had to stop and start about five times when the fiber got away from me and disappeared somewhere into the fuzzy contents of the bobbin (at one point I let it sit idly for 3 weeks because i was terrified I had somehow re-started the bobbin somewhere in a new place and then when I tried plying it it would come back at me in a tangled 2-stream mess);

Then when I started plying it the lazy kate became Bitch Kate and absolutely refused to stay upright or in the same position for any more than about 30 seconds, thus once again making my attempts at plying consistency as futile as…well, something that’s really futile. And then the drive band would do its thing and jump off the treadle again.

When it was all done I couldn’t bring myself to skein it up, I just let it all sit there plied up on the 2 bobbins, in a corner as though forced into thinking about its crimes.

The thing is, though…Have you ever noticed that a lot of women who get called ‘bitch’ are usually pretty accomplished at what they do, don’t apologize for it, and still look really really good while doing it?

Yeah. Me too.

Damnit.

I think I’ll try defying gravity

It’s official folks, kits for the ‘Wicked’ and ‘Yellow Brick Road’ knee-high socks are now available for pre-order exclusively at The Sweet Sheep (scroll down). Michelle has been dyeing her heart out to get these ready to ship starting December 1st, and I hope you’ll enjoy them.

Each kit comes with 3 skeins of Sweet Sheep Tight Twist fingering weight, hand-dyed for these two Oz-inspired colourways. (Though I can tell you – wink wink, nudge nudge) that Michelle is not intending to stop at just two. More dyeing efforts are underway. Each kit also comes with my pattern instructions for working the knee-highs with shaping to fit legs with an upper calf circumference of between 13-18 ins. (I, incidentally, fit into the 14-15 ins calf circumference area, so that puts me about in the middle). I include several tips for achieving best fit with knee-highs: as there is absolutely no way of writing a “one-size-fits-all” knee-high pattern, many of these are guidelines that use my pattern sizing as a baseline for indicating places where modification may be likely. Know your body, and knit accordingly.

There is something classic and nostalgic about striped knee-highs that I just love, especially when combined with colours reminiscent of two of the most iconic female fictional characters of the past century. Especially with re-tellings of the Wizard of Oz through the novel Wicked and its musical adaptation, both Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West are alive and well in the modern imagination and each have more to their story than it may seem at first glance.

I love both of these colour combinations, and I think Michelle has done a fabulous job developing relatively single-tone semi-solids which appear slightly mottled, as this really gives the stripes a velvety, textured appearance. The Yellow Brick Road set practically screams gingham and cornfields, and the Wicked set is completely unapologetic and stubborn. Which way do you want to knit your way through these stories?

As for me today, I’m at home for once and I think I have some knitting to do. Just ignore the rian clouds, lalalalaa. Happy Thursday!

Book Review: The Knitter’s Book of Wool

Okay, so first of all, you all already own The Knitter’s Book of Yarn, right? Right? If you don’t, I’m going to assume the reason is because you a) know someone who owns it and borrow it when needed, b) have permanently absconded with the copy from your local library, or c) are Clara Parkes and therefore know everything that is in the book and therefore don’t need your own copy of it to remind you.

And if you’ve read the Knitter’s Book of Yarn, chances are you already know how wonderful it is, and therefore can guess at the awesomeness of its sequel, The Knitter’s Book of Wool.

I’m a big fan of wool, so I’m very happy about this book. If you have ever taken a skein of wool of any kind from your stash and given it a loving squeeze or imagined in your head what you would like to knit it into, just based on touch alone, then this book is for you.

Like its predecessor, the Knitter’s Book of Wool is divided between knitting knowledge and knitting patterns. Independently, these two contributions would make a worthy publication, but here they are combined in the same volume, to make it more than simply a collection of patterns but a book that will sit in your knitting library to be consulted time and time again.

In the first four chapters, Clara Parkes takes you through ‘What is Wool’, ‘Turning Wool into Yarn’, ‘Meet the Breeds’ and ‘Plays Well With Others’. These four chapters are a pretty thorough education into what makes wool such a versatile and useable fibre. Spinners in particular will likely enjoy Chapter 3 on sheep breeds. Ever wondered what the difference is between Cormo and Merino, or Bluefaced Leicester and Border Leicester? Well, Clara will tell you. She’ll also tell you about what will happen when you blend wool with different types of fibres and what you can achieve with that yarn and why.

The patterns that accompany this fibery education are a pretty versatile collection. There are items in here that will appeal to beginners on up to seasoned knitting veterans, for women, men, children, and home. How about this Bella baby sweater, for example? Surely something that could be knitted quickly and stylishly for wee recipients.

The adult sweaters are also accessible to a variety of skill levels, and are constructed in a way which shows off the texture of the wool being used. I like the Allegan Cardigan (by Sandi Rosner) and Comfy Cardigan (by Pam Allen), below.

The patterns I really keep coming back to look at, though, are the shawls. There are several here, of all different construction types and using a variety of yarn weights. Just get a look at the Falling Water stole by Jane Cochran, for example. Couldn’t you see this draped at your desk chair for chilly working days, ready to accompany you right out into the brisk air over your coat? I sure could.

Then there’s Sivia Harding’s beaded Tibetan Clouds stole, which is so beautiful that I do not see how a person could knit this without imagining herself wearing it to an elegant dinner soiree and meeting the tall dark and handsome stranger of her dreams rocking the lace like there’s no tomorrow. These last 2 stoles are the patterns I am hoping to cast on for some time soon…if the Christmas knitting doesn’t get me first, heh.

I think the best compliment a knitting book could get is that it makes me want to knit things from it right away. Clara Parkes, this is a winner.

Happy knitting!

The first three notes just happen to be

I’ve got book reviews in the works, new projects to post about, but also the whole “work day” thing and so I have to wait at least another day to post about the things I really do want to post about…

But in the mean time I feel as though this video is so awesome that even if you have seen it already, there is absolutely no reason not to watch it again. If only everyday life had more things like this in it.

A Festive Occasion

Today I went into the big city with Kim to pay an afternoon visit to the Purple Purl. It was a Very Important Occasion indeed, as they are celebrating their 2nd Anniversary as a yarn shop. Happy anniversary and many happy returns, Jennifer and Miko! It’s hard to imagine the Toronto knitting scene without you. Lots of fabulous yarn, friendly faces, and tea and goodies…what more could a knitter want?

What a wonderful and cumulative transformation the shop has had since their (already welcoming) opening day. Today they were vibrant and bustling.

I sometimes forget how many friends I actually have made in the knitting world, but I always remember pretty quickly again once I’m at the Purl. I am just so pleased that they are a part of Toronto’s wonderful knitting community and that they are thriving. The world needs knitting shops, and knitters.

And sometimes also cake.

So all in all, not a bad Sunday afternoon. Happy Anniversary, Purple Purl! Are you sure you’ve only been here 2 years? It feels like more.

Knitting right along

Allow me to say how wonderful it was to read all of your comments on the Mulled Wine Mitts post from a few days ago. I’ve never received so many on a single post before and I am greatly touched and flattered.

And, just as important, I am pleased to announce the three winners of the Canadian Living December issue! I pulled 3 numbers from a Random Number Generator online and those corresponded to comments made (after I indicated the drawing on Wednesday’s post) by Susan from North Carolina, Marianne from Oklahoma, and Ali from Perthshire, Scotland. All 3 lucky knitters have been contacted for their addresses and I’ll be putting the mags in the mail some time next week. For everyone else not in Canada, I will definitely let you know asap if/when the pattern becomes available in any other format. Thank you so much again for your response to the pattern!

I hope your weekend is enjoyable. I’ve got a bit of knitting planned for mine, of course. This week I started two new projects, both interestingly enough in the green-blue-purple spectrum. Clearly my colour jag tendencies have circled back around to the wintery tones, as this Ultra Alpaca scarf can testify.

I’m working with the simplicity of stripes on this one, having cast on 80 sts in the round, and alternating colours every 3-7 rounds as I please. I’m using 5 different shades in the hopes of getting a finished scarf that looks polished and slightly colourful, but also versatile enough to match different hats and mittens. And I want it to be long enough to wrap around my neck and shoulders and head approximately 3 zillion times, so we’ll see how that goes.

Happy Saturday!

There’s No Place Like Home

The first thing I have to say is this; If you go back and comment on my last post and are not a Canadian, then I’ll put your name into a hat to win a free copy of the Canadian Living December 2009 issue with my Mulled Wine Mitts in them. Comment and tell me where you’re from and what your favourite thing to knit for winter is. 3 winners will be chosen. That’s right, 3! Share the warmth, baby. Comments accepted until Saturday morning at 10 am EST.

(If you’re not in Canada your only recourse is to phone up your – possibly long-lost – friends and relations here to the North and bribe them to send you a copy of the magazine, as the knitting pattern in it is currently available only in that print copy. If and when this changes I’ll let you know. But seriously folks, the cover price for the whole magazine is only $4. It’s worth it for the shortbread recipes alone.)

The second thing I have to say is…Okay, so remember back in September when I said I was going to have a few designs to talk about in the next couple of months? Well lo and behold I’ve already managed to reveal 4 of them, but I have at least one more to tell you about, which is sort-of-new-but-not-really. (I promise to the highest stashly heavens that I’ll return to regular blogging posts soon and this won’t just be an all pattern-reveals-all-the-time, I swear…It is too bizarre how these things coalesce some times…)

So anyhow…Remember back in the summer when I knitted my pair of Wicked knee-highs? Well, as it turns out, so did Michelle from the Sweet Sheep, who dyed the yarn that I used for them. She chatted me up at Sock Summit and was all, “sooo, wanna sell me the pattern and I could totally kit that up so other people could knit it?” And I was all, “absitively, but you know what else we need…we need another colourway.”

And since the first colourway of purple, green, black, is now known as ‘Wicked’, well…I’ll give you three guesses about the second one, and the first two guesses don’t count.

This, my friends, is the ‘Yellow Brick Road’ colourway. Michelle is currently furiously dye-ing away yarn for both of these colourways (there may be a third one in the works…go on, I dare you to guess). And, if you go on over to her blog right now you could win one of these sock kits for free if you leave a comment over there, too. I mean, who could pass up the chance for a free knitting kit, I ask you?

I just love these, I really do. Michelle dyes a wonderful fingering weight – it is a unique base yarn, sort of in between Louet Gems and Socks That Rock, if I were to describe it – and her colours have a very nice mottled quality that really work well knitted up in stripes.

When the kits are available for official pre-order both Michelle and I will be sure to make the announcement. They will have sizing instructions for shaping to fit legs of 12-17 inches in calf circumference, and tips on how to achieve the best fit for your leg. And best of all, they’ll have all 3 awesome colours that you need.

So, that’s plenty of me for another day, I’d say. Go on over and see if you can win yourself a free knee sock kit! And have an awesome Wednesday.

Knitting Season

[EDITED to add a Note From The Future: Comment here to win a copy of the December 2009 Canadian Living issue mentioned here! All you have to do is Comment and tell me where you’re from and what your favourite thing to knit for winter is. 3 winners will be chosen. That’s right, 3! Share the warmth, baby. Comments accepted until Saturday morning at 10 am EST.]

I don’t know about you people, but something in my knitting impulse had a major shift this past weekend. Maybe it’s my rebound from the knitting ennui talking, but suddenly a few days ago I started looking at my yarn stash, and all of a sudden, knitting socks (as I’ve been doing a lot of lately) was not good enough.  We’re talking mitts, gloves, sweaters, scarves, here. Anything and everything to add layers of warmth because, um…winter is going to be here soon.

Around here we’ve been granted a reprieve this week and the temps are still several degrees above zero, which means this is the perfect time to put in some time on the cold weather knits because I always end up in the trap of only knitting these things when I actually NEED them, which is of course far too late to start.

So it’s darned good timing for me to be able to announce my latest design, a jenn-you-wine published pattern for the December 2009 issue of Canadian Living magazine. Yesterday’s twisted stitch tutorial goes hand in hand with this pattern, as the ‘k1tbl, p1′ ribbing is exactly what starts off this pair of mitts. I present the ‘Mulled Wine Mitts’, available now in print, in the issue which hits newsstands today. (The only downside is that you can only get the pattern at the moment if you are in Canada, or have a subscription to Canadian Living, or can bribe someone to buy you a copy and send it to you. The upside is that because it’s Canadian Living, you also get whackloads of recipes and home tips and all sorts of useful things along with my wee pattern.)

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are one or two fingerless mitt patterns already out there. You may have already even knitted a pair or twelve as gifts, oh, right about this time of year in knitting seasons past. So when I got hooked up to design a pair for Canadian Living I said “Sure! Super fun challenge, I’d love to!” And then, I quietly panicked. “It’s all been done before,” I moaned to myself.

So I went and got some Malabrigo (like you do, when you want something warm and cozy on your hands), and started playing around with it, and got a first version. And then I made it less complicated and knitted it again. And then I changed one or two other things and knitted it again. And then the thumb wasn’t how I wanted it to look, so I knitted it again, and you know, now that they’re done, I rather like the result.

These mitts are simple enough to not require more than a week or two of off-and-on knitting (or a weekend for the speedy types), but interesting enough to keep you paying attention. There is a full thumb gusset – because I like thumb gussets – but the actual thumb itself is quite minimal which means that once you’ve cast off the palm, you’re practically done. They’re knitted in Malabrigo Silky Merino which is super soft and lofty, but because the double-moss stitch panels are done in twisted stitch, they will be a touch more snug and durable than if done in plain stockinette. And they are long enough to fit under the cuff of your sweater or jacket, which means they can keep that chill from going up your sleeve while you sit in your cold office or dash out to grab that newspaper maybe with your coat thrown over your pyjamas and clogs not that I would ever do that, though or whenever you find yourself needing a bit of insulation.

And, most importantly, because they only require a single skein of that delicious, delicious Malabrigo Silky Merino, they will let you splurge on some of that luxury yarn without having to break the bank. Of course, because they’re so soft and quick, you may need to either guard yours carefully or be prepared to make more for gifts. They may be hard to take off.

Also, may I say how pleased I am to be in the Canadian Living December issue, which always has whackloads of holiday recipes in it…this one, I have noticed, includes a holiday brunch menu offering recipes for not one, not two, but three different vodka/juice cocktails. Canadian Living food editors, I like your style.

In case that’s not enough reading for you today, Austen, the CL crafts point-woman was nice enough to do a little blog-style interview with me, and you can find further Ramblings Of Mine over on her post from today.

Enjoy, my friends! Stay tuned later, when I may just have to go off in search of extra newsstand copies for a blog giveaway. And, as always, may your Monday be as painless as possible, and may your knitting be waiting for you at home.

Twist it, baby

As an adventurous knitter one of the things I have become pretty comfortable with is twisted stitches – that is, purposefully twisted stitches. I’m a pretty conventional knitter in the sense that I knit “normal” English-style, and don’t twist my stitches unless I mean to. There are, of course, knitters who knit all their stitches twisted and then purposefully untwist them (or not) on alternating rows as they please, and this works well for them. When I talk about twisted stitches, I mean that instruction that we come across to knit “through the back loop,” or as it is often noted, “ktbl” or “k1tbl.”

However, on the off chance that there are knitters out there reading this who have no idea what we mean by “ktbl” for “knit through the back loop”, I thought I’d offer a brief demonstration of this. If it’s a new term for you, it’s the sort of thing that is much easier to understand visually than descriptively. Below is a short, 3-minute video clip of me demonstrating ribbing in alternating ‘k1tbl, p1′, but I’ll show off the basics with a few photos as well. This was a fun chance to practice out a few more camera tricks and use my little point & shoot for more of the things it can do. Here we go!

Video-me explaining ktbl, below:

(I think my voice sounds a bit odd here, but that is probably due to the fact that I was lying on the floor in front of my wee camera and tripod to do this. Totally worth it, though.)

Photo-me explaining the same process from 2-D images:

We’ve got some nice ribbing going here already in ‘k1tbl, p1′. The yarn helping us out is Malabrigo Silky Merino in ‘Amoroso’. It’s a single-spun yarn which really shows off the difference between k1 and k1tbl quite well. (I’m using the Magic Loop technique to work in the round on this sample.)

Now, if we were doing a regular k1 stitch, we would move to insert the needle through the stitch knit-wise, through the ‘front’ loop, like so:

However, this isn’t a normal k1, so we are instead inserting the needle through the stitch purl-wise, through the ‘back’ of the loop, like so:

From there, we simply wrap the knit stitch (or pick, as all you super-speedy continental-knitters would do) as we normally would, and pull it off onto the right-hand needle. The result is that the knit stitch sits slightly twisted on the needles, as we have rotated it slightly:

And you’re done! That wasn’t so hard, was it?

The result is that the twisted stitches sit much more snugly and produce a more clearly defined, sturdy stitch than a regular knit stitch would. They are highly decorative, which is why they can be well-used in applying texture to stitch patterns and to swirly, twisty cables. Anything labelled as “Bavarian” is going to have whackloads of twisted stitches. (Mmmm, delicious challenge). However, twisted knits are also much less elastic than normal stitches. So, ribbing in ‘k1tbl, p1′ will still be clingy, but much less stretchy. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is just something extra to take into account when you apply twisted stitches. When applied all over a garment, you may need a few more stitches than you normally would to achieve the same size or fit.

And you know, I think they’re pretty.

One of the key things to keep in mind is how you hold your hands and fingers. You are adding more twist and tension to your knitting when you do this, so there can be added twist and tension on your hands and fingers as well. You may find yourself wanting to stop occasionally and stretch it out a bit more than you normally would, or feel your hands fatiguing a bit sooner. I know this is often the case for me.

I’ve used twisted stitches as a design feature a couple of times – for any of you who have already knitted Viper Pilots, you know there isn’t a single normal knit stitch in there. They are all twisted. I know this because after I finished them I had to remind myself that it was possible, in fact, to knit normal knits instead of always twisting them. They can be a challenge at first, but very easy to get used to.

That’s the story for today, folks! Stay tuned for Part 2 on Monday, wherein I reveal my most recent application of the k1tbl Happy Sunday!

My brain and Fiona

I find my knitting brain in an odd place at the moment. I think that I’ve been putting a lot of my knitting energies lately into finishing things so that I can move on and start something else, whether something of my own or just an item that I want to make and check it off some kind of “done” list. And it’s great for getting things accomplished but not so much for the psyche after a while. In the last week I’ve been feeling a bit of the knitting ennui and a bit of the project fatigue and even some of the “but what if I’m a hack who will never have any more creative thoughts EVER” and, well. That’s never fun. At the moment I’m medicating myself with small, manageable-sized, travel-knitting projects and telling myself it’ll all turn a corner again at some point.

So, it was pretty darned interesting sitting in Fiona Ellis’s class on Morphing Cables at the Naked Sheep on Saturday morning.

It was, make no mistake, a great class. I’m very glad I went. Fiona is a friendly and expert teacher and strikes me as the sort of person who could go from beginner basic to advanced crazy talk heirloom knitting in about 5 seconds, and would see nothing strange about this at all. Happily, all of us in the class had had some experience with cables before and were pretty game, so she started us all off a few floors up from the basic and after a bit of discussion of breaking down what cables are and how we get them, she had us go right into creating our own.

Yep. Did you know you can make your own cables, just from your own brain? I think I might have known this, but possibly just needed Fiona to tell me so. And really, you should have seen the swatches people were turning out in this class. I was a little bit intimidated looking around the table, for reals. There was a lot of intent work and exploration and graph-paper-charting and “let’s see what happens when I do this” sort of knitting.

Me, I spent a lot of time staring at my swatch, knitting a few rows, noting on the graph paper what I’d done, knitting another few rows, ripping them out and knitting them again, re-writing the graph paper, and staring at my knitting for even longer moments. And Fiona would go around to everyone and talk and give tips, and then get to me and steeple her fingers and ask “how are you doing, Glenna?” And I would say “UM. I have no freaking idea.”

As soon as we had the word ‘go’ I recognized I was going to have a challenging morning ahead of me, because it immediately became clear to me what exactly my creative process is. I absolutely suck at not having a plan. When I get an idea I have to mull it over for the requisite number of hours or days that it decides it needs until it is fully formed, and then I have a plan, and then I work towards executing it. And here we were asked to have absolutely no plan whatsoever, and just “go”. Ahahahahhahahahahhaha surely you must be kidding about this.

It was a little bit world-tilting for me and my brain went back to the “but what if I don’t have an idea?” problem. I have decided that I just need to tell that part of my brain to sit down and shut up and mind its own business, because it has nothing constructive to offer me. I’ll have an idea at some point, it all comes around when you least expect it. And the fact of the matter is I love cables and want to use more of them and have a few pretty specific thoughts on where I’d like to apply them. They’ll let me know what they want to look like, when they feel like it.

And now I feel a bit more as though I know how it works to do go through that execution process. Fiona had several key tips on how to construct cables and make them appear and disappear and morph, and how to try experimenting with them on a rainy day with nothing to do. I’d go back again.

At the end she showed us many of her samples of cabled items which she has knit into patterns and we all ogled and oohed over them. It reminded me I have my printed out copy of Bonnie all bundled with a small heap of Mission Falls 1824 that I need to get out there and knit this winter.

And in the mean time I’ll just be over here clutching my stash and being patient with my brain. It’s got work to do.