Got Me Some Yarn

It is amusing that the day after I ordered a bunch of yarn I got told there was no more work for me for a while. I don't believe in such things, really, but if I did, I would think I jinxed myself for thinking, "Well, we are both employed this holiday season, so for once I can treat myself." but, I could not undo the Loopy Ewe order, so I will just enjoy it. And besides, some of this yarn is from other sources!

This first one certainly cheered me up when it arrived. It's Dream in Color Starry in my favorite of their colorways, Pansy Golightly. I also have a skein of their laceweight "Baby." I'd sure like to use one of those to make the Bitterroot shawl I talked about in the last blog entry. Since I did get two skeins of the Starry, though, I could make a larger Shetland-style shawl that glistened from that. Mmm. I do know I love the colorway so much that I want to make something large from it.


Here's another color that I fell for. These are very saturated colors--it's all blue with purple and green overdyed in it somehow. It's from Fiberphile Alchemy and appears to be on the same base as Smooshy--it's called Squooshy, which is a hint, huh. I think these colors (called Pacifica) are subtle enough that you might be able to knit socks in a complicated stitch pattern out of it and the colors not detract from the patterning. This is all good, since I have a LOT of such socks on my To Knit list! There's that whole Cookie A book, for example!


I got this skein specifically to knit one of Cookie's patterns. The colorway is called Passion Flower and is exactly the purple of the flowers on that vine. A bluish purple but not quite violet, nor grape exactly. It's a perfect semi-solid for one of the Sock Innovation patterns, or one of the other highly textures ones I've been wanting to make! this completes my Loopy Ewe order, so you can see I didn't go totally bonkers over it.


Next is a skein I got at the LYS, which had been sitting there a while looking at me. I do have some red semi-solid socks (plain ones that I am actually wearing right now!), but this Pagewood Farm Chugiak is a orangey red, and my others are on the blue-red side. I wanted something fiery. I guess in the back of my mind, I knew I was going to run into the perfect pattern for that yarn. Because, lo and behold, while browsing Ravelry this morning (which I can do, since I am not working!) I saw this pattern, Flaming Desire by good ole Anne Hansen, who I believe wrote the first sock pattern I ever knitted. Go look at it and then come back and agree with me that it is a really fun-looking pattern. Nice big motif, multiple sizes--yep!

And by the way, the yarn above is more orange-ish than it appears in the photo. I made it a bit orange, but could not quite get it to appear accurate on my computer screen. Just take my word for it that the Fruit Freeze colorway really does look like fire. If it weren't for having to make black-and-white socks for my sister, these would start soon!

Now, to take a break from skeins of yarn, I did finally take a picture of the Angee sock in progress. It is blurry on one side because I took the picture of it on my arm. But, I think you can see how nice the color looks and how intriguing the pattern repeat is. It just squiggles and wiggles around, going here and there. These will be some fine socks, and I guess if I don't have a lot of work and spend my days at the Division of Motor Vehicles trying to get Beccano's driving permit taken care of, they will be done soon.

But wait, I have one more skein of yarn. Last night was the holiday gathering at the LYS, and while a lot of the regulars weren't there (late notice on the festivities), we had a nice crowd, and enough folks to make a sock yarn exchange fun. I started out with some Plymouth Sockatta that I already own a skein of, so was thrilled to have someone "steal" it so I could get this. I am amused because last year I ended up with pink and gray yarn, too. But, this is from a vendor I'd never tried before (but did see on someone else's blog today), Scout's Swag. It's the regular twisty base yarn a lot of dyers use, and 100% superwash merino. It is called Rowing Home and says it is inspired by Winslow Homer. OK, I believe that, though not sure what painting of his it goes with!


The Belleza vest is cranking along. I am almost finished with the first skein of yarn, but I noted that the armholes are only 9" and use fewer stitches than the body of the vest, so I think I will end up with a bit of yarn to spare. I find that I lose count, even though all I am doing is counting to 3 over and over. This makes me laugh, but I am using the excuse that the textured yarn makes telling whether you are looking at a knit or a purl on the previous row rather difficult. I also really ought to stop trying to knit and read music at the same time. The choir director will appreciate it, too.

More from me soon--it is nice to have a bit more time to blog these days! Thanks for reading!

Succumbed to New Yarn Yearning

Hmm, maybe New Yarn Yearning, or NYY, is a new diagnosis knitters may have. I seem to have succumbed to NYY badly with respect to the yarn I saw at Hill Country Weavers a week or two ago and could not stop thinking about.



So yesterday, since my work is on some interminable hold, Beccano and I journeyed to south Austin and I got some yarn. We had a nice trip, even though there was a huge delay due to an accident--we listened to music and he analyzed it for me (including telling me exactly what guitars members of various bands use, etc.).

Above is the one I really wanted. I ended up not getting my favorite color, which was a red, just because I already have a lot of red laceweight. This is a natural brown, so it has lots of bits of other colors in it. The brand is Isager Strik, from Denmark (well, I do have one reader who can read the website, but she probably already has). This yarn, Tvinni Tweed, is so lovely, though. Not sure what kind of wool it is, but it feels nothern, like Shetland stuff. I see another shawl from it, though it could be a nice cardigan, too. I have two skeins, so more than a thousand yards. I just have never seen yarn quite like this, so I had to get it. The photo shows a very realistic depiction of the color.
Beccano begged me to get the one above, too. He loves the color, which is also very accurate in the photo, for once. It is called Almond Green, but it is really a heather of a lot of subtle colors. I would like to make a lace stole from this. It is softer than the other, and is Højlandsgarn, whatever that means. It is made in Scotland, though, which hints it might be Shetland yarn, too. But I think it says merino on it (or the other one does--I am not at home so I can't check). I have three skeins of this, which is about 900 yards or so.
Finally, here is the Knit Picks yarn I kept forgetting to show you, for a second Lady Janevest. I will probably do a swatch to make sure it blocks, over the weekend. The colorway is Creme Brulee (with an accent mark I am too lazy to put in, but hey, didn't my Danish look good?). It looks pretty yellow to me.

Speaking of Lady Jane, the author contacted me on Ravelry and let me know that she put the binding off instructions in the pattern, so if you want to make Lady Jane, be sure you get the most current version of the pattern! I am going to be sure I have it for the second one! I promise to get a photo made of the final product on that one for you, maybe this evening.

My Dianna shawl is going great. I am on the 9th teir and it looks really, really cool. I am enjoying it greatly. It is complex enough to keep me on my toes, but easy enough I can mostly do it in public (unless there is WINE involved). I would like to do a KAL at the yarn shop on this, if they could get in some yarn with slow striping like a Noro sock yarn or JoJoland Melody. I guess you could make it in thicker yarn, but I am not sure how good it would look.

Some Lovely New Stuff: Drool Time!

Today’s fun: stash enhancement. A kind gift certificate has brought new yarn into the fold without me actually buying any. And I didn’t waste it on anything mundane, either. I’ll be sharing the progress on the Kauni jacket tomorrow I hope, but until then, let’s drool! All these nice yarns came from the Simply Socks Yarn Co. online store, because they were the ones with the sale on the spectacular stuff I show you last.

First we see the Yarn of the Moment, Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, in the 102 colorway, which is mostly reds and purples. I know, it’s probably for ladies in the Red Hat Society, but I like those colors, too, just as colors. Everyone in blogging world loves this yarn, so I had to get some to handle and view for myself! And everyone’s right. The colors are vibrant and happy, and the single-ply fingering weight yarn is way softer than either of the Noro sock yarns. I think this will make much comfier socks than the Noro, though I still like some of the Noro colorways more and since its sturdier, think it will hold up and pill less than the Mini Mochi. Mini Mochi has the same feeling to it that Berroco Foliage had—nice and soft, but because of its nature, perhaps doomed to some pilling and shedding (which my alpaca Wrenna is doing quite spectacularly as well). I’d intended to save the Mini Mochi for socks, but if something more fun comes to mind, it may end up a scarf.


Next come two colorways of Berroco Sox Metallic. I may have mentioned that Tuba Boy asked for purple metallic gloves. I had seen some of this yarn that a friend got at Hill Country Weavers, and thought it would be what he wanted, but of course, they sold out before I had a chance to get any, even though someone offered to pick it up for me long before I’d have made it down there! When I saw that it was available at the Simply Socks Yarn Co. site, I went ahead and got him the purple one (not sure how it came out a bit blurry), and picked up the red one (which has gold metallic in it, ooh), too. I told Tuba Boy I’d make him the gloves to take off to college with him. Heck, even if he ends up in San Antonio, they will be a fashion statement. I will NOT make a complex pattern with the red, I promise.

Now for the really wonderful part of our show and tell. Look at these two hanks of yarn. You can even see their gleam in the photos! You see here Fleece Artist Nyoni, a wonderful blend of wool, silk, mohair and a bit of nylon. It’s only flaw? It’s not superwash, which makes it less than ideal for socks (for people who put theirs in the washer and dryer, anyway). I don’t care—I hand wash them all. But, you see. The wonder is this stuff was half off. You get over 800 yards for the price of a 400 yard hank that would make a pair of socks. These are big enough for a substantial wrap or small shawl! It’s the same blend as their Somoko superwash sock yarn (and I have a very bright yellow/orange skein of that).

Both colors are really something to behold in person. The green is rather bright, granted, and its name indicates it: Bright Moss. But when you look at it and touch it, the green seems perfectly reasonable. I think it would be gorgeous worn with black, or really any solid color. I have a couple of blue tops with bits of green in them that this would go well with, too. Mainly I just want to knit with it. It feels so incredibly soft, drapey, smooshy and perfect.

The second one is called Morgana. It has browns, grays and reds in it, and might not be as versatile as the green, but is still not too loud. There are many patterns that would work for it, too. I might even try to turn it into a vest. Who knows? There’s a lot you can do with 800 yards.

This whets my appetite for some big-time shoppin’ coming up. We are doing another trip to Paige and Brenham next weekend. I am going to carefully pick two things I want to make and TRY to just pick yarn for them, as birthday gifts from Lee, who has authorized this purchase. Wish me luck.

Knitting Stuff Boggles My Mind

Just Finished, World Series Finale
Originally uploaded by sunasak

You can see what I did most of yesterday--I didn't feel too hot, so skipped all social obligations (except one, will mention later) to just knit or do knitting-related activities. And I vowed to finish those darned Redwood Pagoda Lace socks. I got them done before the World Series was over. And since they are "redwood" it's like I knitted Red Socks for the Red Sox. (I thought both teams were very good, though.) I like my idea of recording where I was and what I was doing when I finish a pair of socks. In any case, these are interesting, mainly in that I think my gauge changed from one sock to the other. The second one fits more comfortably and is longer, even though they have the same number of pattern repeats. Of course, knowing how often I messed up the pattern, sock #1 could simply have more mistakes in it. I really should do this pattern again in semi-solid or solid yarn. But, I love the colors and will enjoy wearing a decent pair of brown socks, at last.

Yes, I did get a little done on the other projects. Shedir is bigger and the lace scarf is well into the easy part of the main section. The Former Tangled Mess is very pretty.

Much of what I did over the weekend, though, was thinking, planning, and recording. I took pictures of the Rosebud Shawl, which is stalled at the moment, and of an old feather-and-fan baby afghan I made for Tuba Boy in 1991. Yowee it was made out of extra acrylic, but it held up well.

Then I took a deep breath, and since I have new lighting in the media room and the camera suddenly likes batteries, I began to photograph my commercial sock yarn balls. I just counted, and I photographed 36 skeins of sock yarn, predominantly Opal, Trekking , Regia, Meilenweit, and Austerman Step. Goodness. I got the info on all the yarn in my decorative "bowl o' sock yarn" plus the top layer of the "big basket o' sock yarn." This means there are probably at least 20 MORE balls of yarn in the bottom of that basket. Ai yi yi.

Anyone who's glanced at what I already uploaded to Ravelry (69 yarns so far) knows that most of my stash is sock yarn (with lace a distant but substantial second). I wonder if I will break a hundred skeins of sock yarn yet to be knitted, once I have them all up? (Noting that many of them are 50 gram balls, so a lot of the colorways have two skeins...yep, I may hit it.)

It will take me a while to edit all the photos, so just a bit of it went up today. Whee, something to look forward to. I am sure my poor parents are sick of going to my Flickr pages looking for pix of their grandchildren, only to see endless balls of yarn. I promise, it's almost over, and soon just a few will go up, as I buy stuff. And I am slowing down. Really.

I DO knit socks most of the time, but also other stuff. So I doubt I'll ever get to all this. That's OK, because as I have declared before, it's a collection, not a stash. Some of the yarns are valuable collector's items (like the test skeins and limited editions), and other are just beautiful to behold. So I declare that I feel no guilt about the extent of my sock yarn stash. It's an investment that may well increase in value, like other people's trading cards or Hummel figurines. Yeah.

Long Live My Sock Yarn Stash! I just ordered three more skeins from that enabling Loopy Ewe!

My personal news is that my wonderful Life Partner Man Lee bought me an engagement ring yesterday, with a genuine practically colorless practically flawless diamond in it. I can't wait to pick it up. I was careful to choose a setting that wouldn't snag on yarn too much. (I am old fashioned and got yellow gold, because I LIKE it, and a small dainty one, not a big retro style one--this should be in style the rest of my life, I hope.)

Thoughts on Finishing

Urban GypZ Hand Painted Twisted Sock Yarn
Originally uploaded by sunasak

Speaking of finishing, I had almost finished blogging the photo of this yarn on Flickr when my browser aborted. Goes to show me that the glitches of the past couple of weeks are NOT over just because I feel a bit better emotionally.

So, to reconstruct my brilliant earlier thoughts...look at that yarn. Isn't it pretty? The colorway is called "Playing with Matches," and I just love the twists in it. Reminds me of the way people ply their hand-spun yarn and get that great effect of two colors changing at different times. This is one of the lovely things I got at the last Loopy Ewe sneak up. I also got two colors of Yarn Love with bamboo in it: Romance and Violets (I love violets almost as much as pansies). And to top it off I got two colors of ShibuiKnits Sock, which is incredibly soft merino. They are dusty greens and a very bright colorway with red, orange, turquoise and avocado colors.

I really want to knit with the Urban GypZ stuff, but it will have to wait its turn while I get to the shiny blue sock and holiday gift socks that must get done. Maybe when I finish Mr. Greenjeans I will do two socks at once.

Finishing

In the past week or two I have noticed multiple knitters bemoaning the fact that their knitted items were good until they did the finishing, which is when something went wrong. They are so disappointed that all their hard work led to a less-than-satisfactory product. I must admit that this has also happened to me, especially before I learned some finishing tricks.

Finishing is often neglected in knitting classes. This is inevitable in some ways, because usually the students finish projects after the actual class is over, so the teacher no longer has the student's undivided attention. That's why in an ideal world, I think, LYS owners would schedule finishing classes at least once a month, so that students would have ample opportunity to learn skills such as mattress stitch, three-needle bind-off, stretchy bind off options, grafting, skillfully sewing in sleeves, weaving in ends, and things like that.

Of course, if I designed such a class, I'd have a section on "ways to avoid icky finishing techniques." During this time I would extol the virtues of top-down knitting, circular knitting and this topic...

How to Avoid Grafting

As a grafting-challenged person (say it with me, awwwwww), I tend to do things that let me avoid that skill. That's one reason to favor toe-up socks, though a skillful three-needle bind-off can do fine for cuff-down socks unless someone has very sensitive toes.

I also would be incredibly pleased if designers, especially designers of long lace shawls, would change from having you knit two halves then graft them in the center to using a provisional cast-on and knitting from the center outward in each direction. That is so much easier and less likely to end up with some ruined lace. True, some directional patterns would need to be re-done to go the other way and other just wouldn't work starting from the center and going down, but lots of shawls would be fine done the way I describe. I know I have converted more than one item, myself!

Blocking

There is one more important finishing technique that sometimes gets neglected, and that is blocking. I know some people never block knitting. I guess if you are a polyester lover you rarely have to! Of course you need to block lace, but cotton, wool and other natural fabrics of all types can benefit from blocking. That is why I NEED to block the surplice top I "finished" a few weeks ago. It really won't be "finished" until I take the time to block it a bit, especially around the collar edge and lace section. It will lie down better and have the "swing" it should have, once I block it.

Now I feel very guilty for watching a Weird Al Yankovitz (perhaps this is misspelled?) movie last night instead of blocking that top! Well, maybe over the weekend...that will be my next free period block of time!

Moral to this? Blocking is important. Do it. Finishing techniques matter! Learn them!

Resources:

The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques by Nancy Wiseman: Very thorough reference with good illustrations.

Finishing Techniques for Hand Knitters: Give Your Knitting that Professional Look by Sharon Brant: Even more thorough, but more advanced, so there is a lot of stuff to plow through.

The Knitting Answer Book: Solutions to Every Problem You'll Ever Face; Answers to Every Question You'll Ever Ask by Margaret Radcliffe: This is the one I use most, because it is compact and has very clear illustrations and examples.

Knit Fix: Problem Solving for Knitters by Lisa Kartus: This is about fixing mistakes, but it also covers finishing mistakes. You should own this if you are not a total and complete expert.

KnittingHelp.com: If you want to see little movies and stuff so you can learn that way, this one is great. Many people are extremely devoted to this site.

Stash Enhancement Lovelies

Stash Enhancement Lovelies
Originally uploaded by sunasak

My shipment from the Loopy Ewe came in yesterday, and what a bundle it was! I got some really interesting yarns, because for the first time I managed to get up and ordering early enough after new yarns were put up that I got some of the "cool" stuff. And I got a red stitch marker, too. I love red.

Hey, for once, one of my photos came out with accurate color (the light was good, and there was no flash).

On the far left is stuff from Woully Boully, signed by the dyer, Ms. Boully. It's that highly twisted bouncy base yarn I like so much, in a colorway called Beneath the Cherry Trees. Really pretty colors.

Next is some really interesting yarn from Duet. It's Duet Skinny (and yay, it IS nice and thin) in a color called Platinum Sun. I got it because I realized I didn't have any yellow sock yarn. You can't have that. But what's cool is that it comes with a second little skein in a solid color to use on heels, toes and cuffs. KEWL!!

The dark yarn is by those wonderful J. Knit folks, made especially for the Loopy Ewe one-year anniversary called Happy Anniversary to Ewe (I don't know what all the famous bloggers did for yarn before this place came along). I love the colors--they will go well with jeans and stuff, and it's dyed in that wonderful random way that my Sea Cell was dyed. Lots of variation. It is more loosely spun, but very soft. I can't wait to knit with one of my skeins of this stuff. The pattern is a free pattern that was designed to go with the sock, celebratyro something or other.

And on the far right is some really special stuff. It is Fleece Artist's newest yarn, Somoko. It has all sorts of wonderful things in it, including mohair and silk, plus the nylon needed to make it strong. Well, it feels heavenly. The colorway is Sun, again because I have so little yellow or orange yarn.

That's it for fun with yarn! I need to finish Campanula socks so I can knit with one of these (next is Fiesta Boomerang, already decided).