That skein: Hitchhiker

Sometimes you plan out the perfect yarn for the perfect pattern, and the whole thing comes out as inspiring as a Hefty bag.  Other times, an amazing project seams to materialize in your lap without any thanks to planning or forethought.  This is a story of one of the latter experiences.  

When I was buying yarn from Webs for several baby projects last Spring, I was just a few dollars away from getting their big discount, so I bought a single skein of sock yarn to put me over the top.  This is Pagewood Farms Chugiak in the Prism colorway. 

When it arrived, I regretted it.  I had no idea what I was going to do with this highly variegated yarn.  I really don't like pooling, which is when the colors that are so nicely mixed up in the skein clump together in splotches in your project.  So I stuck it in my stash expecting it to stay there forever. 

Then the Yarniacs, a fantastic podcast, hosted a brilliant KAL: knit something using one of the Pantone fall colors.  I searched through my stash and discovered that this skein had about three or four of the colors.  It would be perfect for fall.  But what to knit?  I did not want to take these pretty colors and splotch them all up in poorly planned pooling.

On Ravelry, I like to browse patterns by what's Hot Right Now, or what is getting the most page views.  For basically years, the Hitchhiker pattern has floated around the Hot Right Now page, which is hard to do for a pattern that's been around for a while.  In all those months, though, I never clicked on it.  Something about the cover picture left me as uninspired as that skein of yarn up there. 

When I was looking for a pattern for this yarn, I decided it should be garter stitch to break up the colors.  I wanted to make a shawl for fall.  I searched patterns with these criteria, and Hitchhiker kept coming up near the top.  So I finally clicked around to have a look.  I began to think it might have potential.  In an uncharacteristic move, I didn't over think it; I just cast on. 

This was a breeze to knit.  It was fun and simple, but not boring.  The colors turned out to be amazing, so they kept things interesting, and seeing the shawl instantly take shape was pretty motivational.  The yarn has a very tight twist, which I think would make it good for socks.  It means it's not very cozy for a shawl or scarf, but it's worked out okay.

I think this will be easy to wear, wrapped around my neck like a scarf.  I think I can tuck the ends in if I want it to look more like a cowl. 

I'm pretty pleased with this successful project that came out of nowhere.  Instead of regretting that skein purchase, I wish I'd bought more!  I think I'll be knitting another of Martina Behm's garter stitch shawls in the weeks ahead! 

Whew.

Packing + baby + packing + wrapping up work + packing + new house uncertainties + packing = headache. 

We're all a little on edge around here.  Poor Little A is being a trooper, but little things are setting her off into fits of tears, which is very unlike her.  Today when I picked her up from day care, she burst into tears because I hadn't brought her string cheese which she'd started eating at breakfast and had apparently left in Daddy's car.  She was looking forward to that string cheese all day, and when I showed up string cheese-less, it was more than she could take.  It's sad and sweet all at the same time. 

Thank goodness for beautiful yarn and an easy but non-boring pattern! 

This is Pink Label lace weight in colorway Moonmist from the Year in Colour Club, knit into a Fairy Mist.  I'm anxious to finish this project, but only because I'm going to keep knitting with the yarn!  I bought an extra skein so I can make an ethereal Girasole.  The colors are so dreamy and moon shiney, and not in the home brewed liquor kind of way.  Seriously, knitting is reducing my blood pressure and replacing the years to my life which moving is threatening to take away. 

In two weeks, we'll be in a new house in a new town, and I'll have a magical, airy cowl around my neck.  Ahhh. 

magic + wool + calm quiet + beauty + tiny bit of math = knitting

Mr. Postman, bring me some yarn ...

In terms of yarn in the mail, it was a banner week!  Webs has been having their annual sale, I treated myself to a special Mother's Day yarn present, and, most excitingly, the May installment of the Tanis Fiber Arts Year in Colour Club arrived! 

This is the pink lable, 100% merino laceweight.  There are 1000 yards in this one skein!  I love it.  This colorway is called Moonmist.

Swatch on size 2 on left, swatch on size 3 on right

I'm having a hard time deciding on the needle size, even though I knit a couple good swatches.  The problem is that I blocked the smaller swatch more aggressively, so I actually got the same gauge on both size 2 and size 3 needles.  That was dumb.  I think I'm going to go with the 2s and not block so aggressively with the FO. 

I am so loving this club.  I'm not sure I would have picked either this color or this pattern on my own, but I love this process of trying something new.  I pretty much love all Tanis' colorways, so I feel comfortable trusting the mystery and surprise. 

There are a lot of changes approaching rapidly in our family, so it's great to have a big lacy project into which to escape!  More about those changes soon ...

FO: Patina socks!

These are the best socks I've ever made.  I started with this:

This is the March installment of the Tanis Fiber Arts Year in Colour Club.  This gorgeous perfect-for-Spring colorway is in her Blue Label fingering weight yarn, and it is a perfect sock yarn.  I love it.  Tanis designed a pattern to go with this variegated yarn, something that would help the colors play well together while not totally obscuring the stitch pattern.  That is a very tricky line to walk, but I think Tanis got it just right.  

This yarn is completely amazing, and I am stalking all things Blue Label right now.  I'm dying to order a skein in the pink grapefruit colorway.  I need pink grapefruit socks!

It's (finally finally finallllllly) spring here, so I'm not wearing socks at the moment, but that's okay.  I have these beauties on my dresser, and I'm just admiring them as works of art.  I'll look forward to wearing them when the weather turns cool again.  And maybe by then, I'll have another pair of TFA socks to enjoy, too.

Ravelry page here.  The next installment comes in May!  I can't wait! 

Yarn treats

We are going to have a crazy next couple of months.  We're having a baby in a few weeks.  We're moving house in June.  Aaaaand we're not exactly sure where we're moving.  Yesterday we got some news that means our plans to move into another house in town might have fallen through.  We could still end up moving across town, or we could move across the state.  Or even somewhere else.  So it was a completely perfect day to get something wonderful in the mail. 

I've joined the Tanis Fiber Arts Year in Colour Club.  (How much fun is Canadian spelling?)  I've admired TFA's yarns for a long time, but I've never used any of them.  I decided that during such a year of transition and change, maybe I should treat myself.  This is a serious treat!  Every other month, Tanis sends out a one-of-a-kind colorway on one of her bases and a new pattern commissioned just for the club. 

I am so thrilled about both of these yarns that I can't even bring myself to cake them up yet.  I just keep looking at them like they're Tiffany diamonds or something.  The berry colored yarn is her Silver Label, 100% silk, and was actually the January yarn.  After seeing pictures of it on Ravelry, I decided I had to join the club, so I received it with the March yarn.  The March yarn is her Blue Label fingering weight, 80% superwash merino and 20% nylon.  The pattern is for a beautiful pair of socks, and I couldn't be more excited.  

I never thought I'd be in the position of having a newborn and not knowing exactly where we're going to live.  It's not a position I'm really crazy about.  But I have some beautiful yarn and some great knitting to do, so take that, life. 

FO: Maternity Nanook sweater

Are you ready for pictures of the tiredest pregnant woman ever?  I could hardly summon the energy to open my eyes.  It's getting to that point in the pregnancy where I wish someone would just order me on bed rest.  And I still have eight weeks to go.  Wah, wah, wah.  

So I may be feeling a little sorry for myself, but my whiny state has provided an excellent opportunity for wool to display its magical, healing properties.  When I put it on for the first time, I think I actually, physically, felt better.  It was so comforting and squishy and welcoming.

I'm not sure I would have knit this one if it weren't for a baby belly the size of Pluto.  I've liked this design for a while, but I usually knit things with a little more structure.  I'm glad I did, though, because it's incredibly comforting, and I think it will be fun once my girth is less ... girthy. 

As we were taking these pictures, I realized my husband hadn't said anything about whether or not he liked it, and he usually is quick to volunteer compliments on my makes.  So I asked him what he thought, and he said, "It's a little floppy at the top.  I'm not sure what it's supposed to be doing."  I'm not sure either, but right now I don't care.  I just like that I can wrap it around myself and snuggle up. 

Laughing at my "floppy top" sweater.

Pattern: Nanook by Heidi Kirrmaire.  Super well-written and clear.  I still need to add a button, but I might wait until I'm not pregnant anymore and add it then. 

Process: Once I got past the arms, it was a bit boring.  Despite feeling like this knit was unending, it actually took me less than two weeks, a sweater record by a long shot.  I think it felt like forever because it just got so heavy and bulky on the needles. 

Yarn: Northampton by Valley Yarns.  A worsted weight wool.  Very comparable to Cascade 220 or Wool of the Andes.  Not a luxury yarn, but still very nice.  I'd happily use it again, especially if I can get it on sale.  I think I paid $4.19 a ball, so at 5 balls, this sweater cost $21.  You can't beat that. 

New techniques: The pattern called for lifted increases, which were new to me.  I loved them!  The left and right versions were easier for me to remember than the typical M1L and M1R.  I can never remember which one is which. 

Instead of binding off the sleeves in the K1, P1 ribbing, I used the Kitchner stitch.  I put the knit stitches on one needle, the purl stitches on another level, and then grafted them together.  This makes for a very neat edge where the stitches look like they just curl around to the other side.  Binding off in binding can sometimes fan out, and I wanted a tighter, neater look.  

Da-da-dah! The After photos!

I did it, internet!  I let the shame of having terrible Before pictures of a horribly messy sewing/yarn room motivate me to clean up and achieve a perfect(-ish) After state!  And I did it within the month, too.

Take a tour:

I organized and stored all my fabric into tubs, and I put all my patterns in the basket.  They're not really organized, but they're all in one spot, and fairly easy to flip through.  The yarn on top is Stylecraft acrylic that I'm slowly using for a blanket. 

I pulled out all my yarn and organized it as I put it back, bulky on the left to lace weight on the right.  I threw out a few old things, and weeded out. 

I pulled out a little side table I got from goodwill a few months ago and set up a winding station!  No more taking the swift down and putting it up on the ironing board, shaking everything off it while I'm winding.  Speaking of the ironing board, look what's on it!  Just the iron!  Aha!  Now, the key of organization is Know Thyself, and I know that stuff will pile up eventually.  But I can pile it up on the winding table, not the ironing board.

For months, I've been ripping things out of magazines and saving special cards, wanting to put them on my bulletin board.  For some unexplainable reason, instead of pinning them up, I've been storing them in a box below my table.  What?  How long does it take to pin something up?  That's the whole point of a bulletin board--easy access to items you want before you.  So I pinned them up.

And if you're thinking that looks like a brand new sewing machine, you're right!  My parents very generously bought me a new Janome for my birthday.  More on that later.

There's one thing you will not see: the closet.  No one will see it.  If you open it, you will be buried.  But whatever.  The rest of the room is spectacular.  I'm ready to go!  Bring it, 2013. 

Good as new!

After a very simple and enjoyable ripping, winding, washing and hanging, here is the yarn from my Wood Hollow Vest, all ready to be wound into cakes and cast on!

Just a few hands on minutes, plus two days of drying time took this:

to this:

Isn't wool amazing?  I love it.

I'm all ready to cast on!  Bring on the opening ceremonies!

Reclaiming yarn: Easier than it looks!

Have you ever put something off because you thought it would (a) take forever, or (b) be really difficult, or (c) both?  And then finally talked yourself into finishing the task and found that it was (d) no big deal at all?  That was me and frogging this vest.  I've been thinking about that thing for two years.  Two years, people!  And the whole thing took about half an hour, and was really pretty fun.  Two years of thinking about something that took 30 minutes.  Why do we do that to ourselves?

Here's what I did.

I used a yarn swift to hold the yarn and wind it into a hank.  I pulled about 3 yards off the sweater, then wound it on to the hank.  Trying to wind it directly from the sweater would make the yarn too taut, and would also be very fiddly. 

If you don't have a yarn swift, you can use the back of a chair.  Just make sure that the sides of the back of the chair are parallel, or angled in towards each other.  If the sides are angled away from each other, if the chair back gets wider as it goes up, it will be nearly impossible to remove the yarn after you've wound hundreds of yards.  I know of which I speak. 

When I'd wound about 100 grams (about two balls of the Wool of the Andes), I tied it up in four places using some scrap cotton yarn.  I'd just started a fifth ball of this yarn, so I wound the sweater into two hanks.  

You sort of make a figure 8 with the cotton through the yarn.  Well, a figure 8 with another loop on top.  So really, more of a figure snowman. 

Look how crinkly the yarn is!  You can't knit with that!  Not without driving yourself mad. 

It does look sort of awesome though, doesn't it?

 

To get all the crinkle out, you have to wash it.  Washing unknit yarn sounded like a scary prospect to me--oh! the tangles!--but since I'd tied it well, it was not a crisis.  It was as easy as washing a sweater.

After squeezing--not wringing!-- the yarn and wrapping it up in a towel and stepping on it, I hung it to dry, using a couple of skirts on hangers as weights to pull out the crimping.  I think I'll wear the vest with this khaki skirt this fall!  Ooh, with boots and tights.  And the sky will be blue and the leaves will be beautiful and it will be a delicious 55 degrees and not 194 and sticky and terrible like it is now. 

I let it hang about 24 hours, rotating the hank so it dried evenly and didn't get re-crimped from the two hangers.  Then I let the hank rest on my ironing board for another day or so to rest.  The yarn really plumped up again, and looks like no one ever even thought about knitting a gigantic sweater with it. 

I'll show you the finished hanks tomorrow! 

Because of my recent discovery that (a) I am tall and need to lengthen sweaters, and (b) I therefore need to buy more yarn than a pattern calls for, I am finding myself up knitting creek without enough yarn for my current WIP. 

I'm making Aidez with Cascade Eco Wool, just to be completely original.  These are monster skeins--250 grams and 487 yards.  My ball winder shuddered in fear at just the thought of balling those puppies up.  I had two skeins in my stash that I bought last year before the price of wool increased.  Most people on Ravelry were able to finish their sweaters with just two skeins, so I started the sweater with confidence that I would be fine. 

I scoured Ravelry for people making the same size (44") with the same needle size (9), and it looks like most people still used just two skeins.  But I decided to add an extra inch to the body length, and I started to get nervous.  The first skein got me through the back and the left front, except the last two inches.  So I started looking around for a third skein.

This must be the smallest dye lot in the history of yarn.  I could only find one person on Rav with the same dye lot, and hers wasn't for sale.  I did find the same shade, although different dye lot, at a local-ish yarn store, and I figured that was as close as I was going to get.  The new skein is very, very close to my old skeins.  But what's the old saying?  Close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes?  (Wow, what a lovely saying.) 

I swatched the two together, and the difference is detectable.  How detectable to people other than me, I don't know.  I don't think it's so bad where I alternated every two rows.  Can you see a difference? 

The stripes are more visible on the bottom of the swatch, where I alternated every 8 rows. 

Alternating every two rows.

The new one isn't as brown as the old one.  I have just the two sleeves left to do.  What approach should I take? 

1. Knit one sleeve from the remaining skein, then knit the second sleeve from the new skein.
2. Knit both sleeves from the new skein.
3. Knit both cuffs from the new skein and the sleeves from the old skein, hoping the old skein holds out for both sleeves.
4. Knit both sleeves with both skeins, alternating every two rows. 
5. Knit both sleeves from old skein, and switch to new skein when I run out. 

Clearly, this is ridiculous.  I've never run out of yarn before, so I've never faced these kinds of decisions.  But I didn't put this much thought into choosing grad schools.  The longer I think about it, the more options I discover.  (Knit one sleeve with old skein, knit second sleeve alternating new and old skeins.  Alternate skeins with greater/lesser frequency the closer I get to the sleeve cap so that the cap will be mostly old skein so as to match front and back knit from just old skeins ...  The polar ice caps are melting, and my most pressing concern is two different dye lots of yarn.)

From a distance, it's not too bad.  (Hello, poor, sad, neglected Granny Stripe in the corner!)

In the end, I'm going with option 4.  It's the most time consuming, but the safest in terms of producing two identical sleeves with the best hope of matching the rest of the sweater. 

In these circumstances, what would you do? 

yarn diets don't work

They say that diets don't work.  If you refuse yourself your favorite things to eat--say, chocolate--eventually you end up feeling deprived.  And when you're deprived, you feel hungry and sorry for yourself and like you deserve a little treat.  So then you end up eating a bunch of stuff--say, pretzels and cheese and popcorn and ice cream and PBJs--trying to compensate for missing out on a little bit of chocolate.

Guess what?  It works the same way with yarn, too.


Two weeks ago, I had this interpersonal struggle about whether or not I should by some good yarn at an extraordinary price.  It was on sale for three days and I had the perfect project for it--Angostura from Little Red in the City.  It was a serious craving.  But I knew that I had plenty of yarn and projects waiting for me.  I made a list of my stash and my queue, and that sobered me up a bit.  I didn't buy the yarn.

So I should feel virtuous, right?  All righteous and proud of myself?  Nope.  I feel sorry for myself.  Poor little me without a new vest for fall.  C will have a new vest (I'm about 95% finished with his Skye Tweed Vest), but not me.  Sob sob. 

Guess how I comforted myself?  I bought some yarn.

I got some Berroco Vintage, which I've been wanting to try for a while.  It's not as nice as the merino/alpaca might have been, and it was more expensive.  But I do think it will make a lovely vest, and I'm glad (relieved?) that I can start on a new fall vest for myself.



And guess what?  I got a few more things, too.  I went shopping with my mom, one of the only knitter friends I have, so she bought me a couple of things.

This is Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky, and it is amazing!  This is for a Shawl Collared Cowl, a pattern I purchased in Never Not Knitting's fall sale.

Mom also bought some for me to make her the same cowl.

So I missed out on one sale, which would have given me a merino/alpaca vest for $18, and I ended up with three projects of yarn, worth about $60.  The moral of the story?  Yarn diets don't work.