Shawl time

I was already enjoying the Forest Canopy shawl as I was knitting it. For real, I was only halfway through it and already thinking of what shawls I was going to make next, what other lace projects I’d filed away for “someday” in my knitting brain. Then, I blocked it. Yes my friends, blocking lace really is the most fun you can have with yarn and T-pins. I present to you my first lace shawl:

A few of my knitting friends have been working on this pattern lately, and when i realized it could be done with sock yarn, and that I could use the 2nd pair of skeins of Socks That Rock that I purchased at Rhinebeck (in the lovely semi-solid Jasper colourway, no less), I was sold. I cranked this out in about 2 weeks, and then inexplicably let it sit there for another week before blocking it.

The astute and experienced among you may notice that I didn’t quite get to a full border - I only managed 4 of the final border rows instead of 8, as I ran out of yarn. And indeed, I ran out of yarn after getting 80% of the way through the bind-off. Clearly, this is an indication that I over-shot and should have stopped 1 repeat short and done only 17 instead of 18 repeats of the main pattern. But you know? It totally works. Nobody who has examined this shawl has caught the 12 inches of substituted yarn I pinch-hitted the final bind-off with, and dudes, I call that a win. I have Kate’s yarn to thank for being the right shade.

I like that this pattern is easy to ‘embiggen’. Although it’s possible to complete the pattern with only a single 350-400 yd skein of fingering weight yarn, it’s pretty easy to just keep going and do more repeats until you feel like you’ve gone far enough. The finished size is about 78″ across, which is pretty much perfect for me (I’m 5′9″. Big comfy shawl, please). Great for wrapping around my shoulders in the heavily air-conditioned theatre on Friday night.

The STR Mediumweight makes this a less ‘holey’ knit than it is perhaps intended to be, and I probably could have gone up a needle size (I used 5.0mm) without trouble. Still, I call this a win and freely admit that there will be more shawls this summer. Shawls Ahoy. Summer of Shawls. I’ve got the patterns stacking up in my mental queue and have but to choose.

Lace knitting. Why didst I forsake thou for so long? Good thing I finally found you.

More with the yarn shops

I am actually starting to get backed up on the knitting content and WIP/FO reporting. There’s a completed Forest Canopy Shawl that is finished and blocked and just needs some ends woven in, and a 2/3 finished pair of Noro Kureyon Sock knee-highs that I’m really enjoying. On the shawl front, I have definitely been enticed to the magic of lace. Here’s what it looked like about a week and a half ago, almost-finished and unblocked:

That’s Socks That Rock Mediumweight in ‘Jasper’, from two of the skeins I brought home from Rhinebeck last October. I’m hoping to take the finished product out for a spin tomorrow night, for a trip to the theatre. Martha just finished one as a birthday present for our mom, and Steph is working on her own right now too with Indigo Moon. Shawls ahoy. Summer of Shawls has commenced around these parts.

But I still had more yarn shops to talk about, carrying on from my last post. In April I got to travel twice, to New York and to Boston. I did quite a bit of yarn shop visiting, more than is characteristic even for me - this is a testament to how a stressed out about-to-defend-her-thesis grad student looks for comfort. There are many fine shops in those cities, but some particular ones stood out for me.

Knitty City is the New York shop that still sticks out in my mind. This was admittedly partly due to the selection - lots and lots of sock yarns, worsteds, things in sweater quantities and little quantities, and Canadian favourites like Mission Falls and Fleece Artist as well. The staff were also very friendly, as were the clientele. There were a few separate chairs and tables, even in such a small shop, and my friend Rebecca and I just sat for a bit after our purchases and knitted, and chatted with the people there. During that hour or so I watched a large number of customers come and go, and the staff people dealt with a huge variety of requests, all with patience and skill. I left wanting to go back again.

Also, I will say that it doesn’t hurt to combine the yarn-ing with a visit to the awesome Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is what we’d done that morning. In fact, I think my ideal day in New York would look something like that, possibly rounded out with a yummy dinner. (I should mention that after visiting S’Mac I continue to have dreams of their gruyere macaroni and cheese.)

Boston’s yarn shops are many. I think I visited 5 altogether and there were still others I could have gone to. The most memorable ones for me were the two in Cambridge (wish I’d spent more time there, too, it was way more fun than the Copley Place office/hotel/mall complex that I was trapped in for the conference): Mind’s Eye Yarns and Woolcott & Co. Here’s why.

These are both small shops, each with strong selections that complement each other. Mind’s Eye Yarns is clearly a spinner’s shop as well as a knitter’s place, and so I walked out with a bit of fiber instead of yarn - and could have walked out with more than I did, believe you me. I was alone in the shop and Lucy, the owner, let me browse on my own and answered a few of my questions when I mentioned I’d started spinning and was looking for advice on plying. As I was leaving I mentioned that I wanted to find Woolcott as well, and she gave me directions (accounting for the construction-at-the-time around the relevant subway station) without hesitation. And then she said, “Tell Sean I said ‘hi’.”

So when I got down to Woolcott, Sean the owner was there with another staff member, both knitting away and chatting happily. I walked in and he greeted me and told me about the sales on, and I said, “Oh, and Lucy from Mind’s Eye said to say hello.” And he said, “Oh, Lucy’s just about the nicest woman you’ll ever want to meet.” I left thinking how awesome it was that they were so friendly with each other, rather than being in cutthroat competition. I bought a skein of sock yarn and a skein of Noro Silk Garden, and as I was checking out he told me about both of the yarns and how they behave (Noro still has “some action in it”, is how he described it, which is why centre-pull balls and Noro are not so mixy), which was reassuring.

All three of these shops were comforting experiences, I went in and left feeling on equal footing as a knitter with the others sharing the space, and I liked how accessible they were to a person accessing cities largely on foot or by transit. My visits in April overall confirmed for me that yarn selection is, at best, only part of the reason why some LYSs become ‘favourites’ more so than others.

Onwards to the weekend - the days go by pretty quickly when you’re taking a bit of time off! Next time I promise some photos of knitting content, either a finished shawl or a knee sock, or both. Have a great Thursday, and may your knitting be close by!

Yarn stores I have known and loved

Last week I exchanged a couple of emails with Scott, whose wife manages Mouline Yarns in Montreal. He mentioned that it would be neat to read more blog posts about favourite Local Yarn Shops, and I’ve been thinking about that off and on for the last week. And since I’ve somehow managed to let almost another week go by without posting, I figured it was time to blog some of those thoughts, such as they are in my post-dissertation-atrophied brain.

I’ve been a knitter for almost four years now - not long in the grand scheme of things, but plenty long enough to build an obsession - but my love of yarn shops has probably only grown over the last 2-3 years. When I was a new knitter, I went down to the Lewiscrafts and Michaels shops and figured that was where the yarn came from. I gradually became more aware of the smaller shops, and sucked up the courage to go investigate - contrary to how it may appear otherwise, deep down I’m an incredibly shy person, and for Shy Folks it can be intimidating to enter a new LYS with an established clientele.

Happily, I’ve overcome much of this shyness, but it did take a while. I like visiting Lettuce Knit nowadays, but I don’t mind admitting that the first time I went to a knitting night there, I sat there with knots in my stomach the entire time. (I dunno, man. Shyness, it is irrational and stupid.) I regret that I only discovered knitting nights a year before I moved out of Toronto, but luckily I’m in Toronto often enough to make yarn shop visits as needed. (”Need” may of course be defined fairly loosely.) I still like Lettuce Knit and often go to fondle the sock yarn selection and purchase a skein or three, but I think the Purple Purl is becoming my first favourite LYS in Toronto (below).

Jennifer and Miko are wonderful and have created an equally wonderful space. I like their yarn selection and also their cafe setup. The space is big enough to hold a lot of seating but not to the point of feeling crowded or to give you the fishbowl feeling. Sitting there with a tea and a marshmallow square and my knitting is now on my top list of activities for knitting time in Toronto.

I do also visit Romni Wools on a regular basis, less for the atmosphere than for the yarn itself. It’s a big, big shop, and is one of the few places around where you can pretty much depend on getting a sweater quantity of whatever yarn you please. They’ve got Canadian stuff, International stuff, walls of books and needles, and there are certain sections of the store where you can turn a corner and be completely surrounded by yarn and forget that the outside world exists. That’s a pretty singular feeling, my friends.

Romni’s size can be intimidating, and can sometimes feel less personal than smaller shops, but I’ll keep on visiting it for two big reasons. First, they offer a standing student discount, and may possibly be the only yarn shop I’ve seen to do so. (When you’re a stressed out grad student in need of yarn therapy, every 10% off helps, I’m here to say.) Second, when you’re at Romni, you can do this:

Some times I think if you haven’t hugged a wall of sock yarn (or a wall of any yarn for that matter), you really haven’t lived.

Over the last couple of years I’ve gotten more and more into the whole ‘knitting tourism’ idea, of seeking out yarn shops in cities I’m visiting. It gets me out to different parts of cities that I might not have seen otherwise, and I often encounter new yarns I wouldn’t have found at home. At some point, everyone has an excuse to travel somewhere - different cities, provinces, countries, etc. I figure if people can do this for restaurants or pubs or fishing or art galleries, then knitting is sure as heck a bonafide side benefit for travel, even if it’s not the main purpose.

Stash Yarns UK was probably the first LYS I visited in this way (picture up at the top), when I was in London almost two years ago for a conference. When my father travels, he spends his first day of de-jet-lagging going to museums. I spent it drinking caffiene and looking for yarn. Michelle, one of the Stash Yarns owners, was so friendly and helpful and completely understanding of my jet-lagged state. She invited me to sit with a drink for a while if I wanted to just take a pause, and I did. The space was small but felt open and uncluttered, and they had a variety of yarns in different weights and fibres. We chatted off and on and I left wishing I’d had more time to go back again.

I think I’ll stop my ramblings blogging there for today, and pick up with more LYS tales tomorrow. I hope your Monday isn’t too Monday-ish today. May your knitting be close by!

Finished but not Forgotten

Back in February when we were on our eleventy-billionth (numbers are approximate) snowfall of the season, I clung to bright and colourful knits. Casting on for something Fair Isle was just good prescriptive knitting at the time, never mind fun. But the Venezia pullover ended up taking top priority and so Glowing got pushed to the side, not to be finished until the end of April. I’ll have to wait until next fall and winter to take full advantage of this FO.

Pattern: ‘Glowing’, by Fiona Ellis in Inspired Fair Isle Knits
Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Wool, MC ‘Raspberry’, and several other CC colours. All yarn is to specification from the book, with the exception of the pale green shade - I substituted in the slightly cooler ‘Thyme’ shade instead of the ‘Pistachio’ which is a little more in the bright yellow area of green. I like the overall effect.
Needles: 5.5mm for the fair isle sections, 4.5mm for the plain stockinette.
Mods: I had to up-size the needles on the fair isle to get closer to gauge, and actually I think in the end I still came out sliiiiiiightly more snug on gauge than the pattern. The final product does fit, though, and I’m happy with that.

The major modification that I made was to add an extra row between the raglan decreases for several of the decreases, to add a bit more room in the shoulders. My row gauge was a bit too snug on the stockinette and I needed to make sure my arms and shoulders would still fit. This worked out well.

I’m pretty much in love with Mission Falls 1824 wool, after this project. There will be more sweaters with this in the future. It feels glorious to knit with, and the colours are so rich. I put it through the washer and dryer (YAY superwash), and you’d never know. Not a pill in sight. It is, however, a yarn that rewards swatching - stockinette does grow a little bit after it is washed and dried. I admit I was pretty much banking on this happening because my pre-wash gauge was more tight than it needed to be. (But the stranded sections did need to be closer to pattern gauge to start - colourwork does not stretch as much as plain stockinette).

The stranded sections really fly by on this, and are the most fun to work on. Usually I don’t mind stockinette because it’s mindless, but it was a long push to get the yoke finished once the body and sleeves were all done. I was glad to get to the hood - which is actually a decently functional hood, it covers my head when pulled up, and doesn’t come loose like the decorative hoods on so many other knits. Of course, that could also just be because I have a lot of curly hair to stuff under there…

I must thank Steph for taking the photographs, and letting me finally put this FO up for the record. Since a hooded wool pullover isn’t quite what I need for summer, though, this will be taking up residence as a shop sample at the Purple Purl, until I can reclaim it again for the winter.

Have a great Tuesday!

Tempus fugit

Thank you all so much for the congratulations comments on my last post, it was very heart-warming to read them. Hoo boy, though, time sure does fly when you’re trying very hard to do nothing. The last week has been pretty busy for someone who was supposedly going to take time off. People to see, houses and cats to house-sit and cat-sit, knitting to do, parties to throw…

I had an absolutely fabulous time at the Purple Purl on Friday night, where Jennifer and Miko were so generous to let me stage a party in celebration of my future non-graduate-student life. I am starting to wonder if Jennifer and Miko are in fact, too generous and nice to be real. Possibly they are secretly working on a plan to take over the world and none of us realize it on account of their overwhelming appearance of niceness.

It was a great night. So many people brought me little gifts which was a wonderful surprise (YAY YARN), and I have to showcase one of them from Kate, who is quickly revealing herself to be a top dyer in disguise:

I gave her my last 2 skeins of Knit Picks ‘Bare’ superwash/nylon sock yarn as they had been sitting stashed for at least a year untouched, to be returned to me in dyed form in exchange for her getting to keep the dyes I’d also had stashed and untouched for that long. She obliged me with a 3rd skein for fun, a canary yellow which would normally be far outside of my habitual colour palette, but which is just soft enough to work. Or at the very least pretty enough to stare at and pet for a while. Awesome job with these colours, K.

I also had people write down their possible answers to the question “what should I do now that I’ve finished my Phd?” There were many fine responses (knitting while lying on a beach, saving the world through craft and social justice, run off and join the circus, open a cupcake shop…) but I must give props to Ladylungdoc’s winning answer: “Knit a CN Tower cozy, out of handspun, because you can.”

My work is cut out for me. Next post - finally I have some Finished Object pictures to share for the ‘Glowing’ pullover, only a month late!

Thank you again to everyone who helped me celebrate the next phase of my life, both in person and online. Let’s all meet again for tea and marshmallow squares at the Purl.

Onwards

Long time no blog. I’m going to rectify that starting this week!

So, last weekend I finished spinning and plying up my third attempt with the drop spindle - I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Plying has mostly been Very Not Fun, but it’s getting easier. Fleece Artist Merino/Alpaca Sliver, and I turned it into about 90m of something worsted-ish:

What else, what else…Oh right! Last Thursday I defended my thesis. (For the final time). It went well and overall I’m still a bit bewildered at the thought of being able to put the PhD behind me. I’ve gotten so used to it being there and being not done, you know? So, there will be a bit of wrap-up before I hand it in and then I’d like to chill for a bit before getting back to more job applications and wrestling with publications.

And also I’d like to knit a lot. With drinkies. (Well-wishers please send wine and yarn.)

Catch ya again later on in the week!

[EDIT: If you're in Toronto, and want to come celebrate with me and a few knitterly friends later this week - send me an email (crazy[dot]knitting[dot]lady[at]gmail[dot]com), and I’ll send you details on when and where! Naturally this invitation does NOT apply to any psycho internet stalkers of course, only regular friendly knitters, heh heh heh.]

Knitting on

Oh. My. Noro is coming out with a Silk Garden Sock Yarn. I’ve been hemming and hawing over the Noro Kureyon Sock, because while I love the colours I don’t love the texture…and truth be told, Silk Garden is one of my top favourite yarns. Yes please, I would like to cover my feet with some of that.

In tangentially knitting-related news, but also in generally fun and Canadian sort of news, my sister and a friend of ours went on Wednesday afternoon to a taping of The Hour, hosted by George Stroumbolopoulous. We had been led to believe that the guest would be James Orbinski, of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontiers (he helped the organization win the Nobel Peace Prize, and is a phenomenal speaker). Much to our disappointment - and the disappointment of many audience members - he didn’t end up at our taping but had been rescheduled.

Instead we got Melanie C (formerly of Spice Girls fame - lovely, but not James), and closed-minded jerkface author Mark Steyn. But then as an addition, we got to watch a taping of Ivan Reitman (director, Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters, etc), who was there talking about the anniversary of the state of Israel. He talked about how his mother was held at Auschwitz, and also a bit about his lengthy film career, and about his son Jason (director of Juno, Thank You For Smoking).

After the taping George stuck around for questions and chatter, so we did too. Martha (who also took all of these pictures, thank you so much) insisted I ask George to hold my sock. And turns out he didn’t even blink an eye, required no explanation. He did, unsurprisingly, have some fun with it:

And then did a normal one. (Boy I wish I’d done some makeup…)

So that was the trip to ‘The Hour’. It’ll have to be repeated.

This next week has some major stress and distractions coming up for me, so the blog may go a bit quiet. But I’m still alive and still knitting. Have a good weekend everyone!

Better with catnip

It’s a sad, sad truth that this blog has been greatly lacking in cat content lately, ever since I moved out of Miss Beatrice’s place when her regular humans returned at the beginning of March. Sure, I’ve visited her (and her humans), but it’s just not quite the same. Well, Beatrice’s world got rocked a little bit the last couple of weeks, when two young’uns showed up to join her.

So naturally, I spent a good chunk of my time on Sunday making kitty toys. Borrowed my sister’s copy of Stitch n’ Bitch Nation and sat down with the ‘Catwarming Set’ pattern, and churned out 3 catnip mousies and 3 stripey catnip balls. (All the better for rolling and chasing).

Hallie showed some reluctance at first but came around once the toys were put in motion.

I tossed Ramona a mousie and she promptly killed it. Their little i-cord tails, I see, are excellent for biting:

So all in all a good Sunday’s effort, I think:

Looking forward to more kitty times. They are always good times.

Tomorrow: reports from the set of The Hour. Sock picture with George? Check.

Friday

My sister recently acquired a new MacBook. (My envy, let me show you it). We played with the camera’s photostrip feature the other day:

Fun times. Technology really does make our lives better, doesn’t it?

I’ve got a few knitting-related bloggable things in the works but I think I’ll have to save ‘em for next week. My knitting mojo took a bit of a dive after I ripped the back of ‘Halcyon’ entirely and started over from scratch (this time with a sleeve). I was fretting to myself over the size and wondering if I should have cast on the size 2 inches wider to accommodate more hip ease (what with cables adding more bulk and so forth), and decided to just stop fretting and rip. So I did.

Happy Friday my friends, and have a great weekend!

Cue the cooing

It’s baby’s first handspun. Well, first handspun AND first attempt at plying. I got the key things done this morning and was sitting around waiting for a few computer things to start working (not my computer, stuff on the university end), and was contemplating miscellaneous fibre-related things and thought to myself, “stop saying you’re going to ply and just PLY.” I got the pink fluffy stuff that I’d spun up when Kate visited in October and brought a bit of pink roving and a handmade spindle just for moi. I’d spun it all up, just hadn’t done anything with it yet, on account of that plying thing.

To cut to the chase - after an hour or so I had this (ootchie cootchie coo):

Now, I’m quite willing to call a spade a spade here - it’s a wee tiny skein of pink fuzzy crud, but at least it’s MY skein of pink fuzzy crud. Spun back in October on a wobbly drop spindle (Kate knows it was wobbly, as much as I do love it there is sadly the wobbling), left to sit for months while I worked up the mental energy to go back to it.

I started with this:

Read up on Andean plying here and then did this:

Which eventually became a spindle full of this:

Nice fuzzy completely unevenly twisted (and unevenly spun, for that matter) strands of this:

Which weighed up to just under 30 grams of my very own fuzzy pink worsted/chunky handspun. Conversation piece yarn, no? I can’t imagine what I’d make with such a small amount anyhow, so I’m quite happy to just let it be a skein.

Good times.

I can tell that practice does make perfect. I am looking forward to getting more practice at the plying and I hope I can do it better next time around. I think I missed a step and was supposed to have left the Andean pre-ply stuff around my wrist (and not, as I did, dropped by my side as I was spinning the plies, ahahahaha), so that is goal #1 for next time. And there will be a next time, because I’ve been gradually accumulating more bits of fibre.

Martha got me a Fleece Artist braid of merino/alpaca at Christmas and I’ve been gradually turning it into this:

Still imperfect, but better. I suppose that is generally a good way to be.
Spinning ahoy!