Kinky Yarn

Hello out there! After putting lots and lots of thought into it, I won’t be continuing this blog. I’ve never had enough time to maintain it properly, and at this point I’m so busy with school and everything else that I don’t even have time to take pictures of my projects when I finish them!

I’m in the process of moving all of the stuff that I’ve written for this blog into my Ravelry notebook and I will continue to keep my notebook updated. I’ll also have a pattern page on my regular, non-knitting blog, and I’ll continue to put out patterns whenever I can. Meanwhile… are you interested in politics and climate change? You might like Palimpsest. It’s less fuzzy, admittedly. But I want to finish my PhD, too, and also… sleep? I’ll miss writing about my wooly adventures though. And I’ll miss you, dear reader. Hopefully you will forgive me for abandoning you!

Happy knitting.

Remember this yarn that I was spinning? It was originally a braid of Sweet Georgia Superwash Merino in a colorway called “River”.

I spun it up into a single-ply, light fingering weight with long repeats of color. I loved the way the fiber had looked in the braid, and I really hoped that I could reproduce the colors in my skeinlets. I spun up 582 yards total, in five mini-skeins of various sizes. I don’t even have a picture of the spun yarn because I was so eager to start knitting with it I didn’t even pause to photograph it. I mean, really. Look at that. Wouldn’t you want to start knitting with that too?

While spinning it, I decided that it would look great as the Revontuli-huivi, which means “Northern Lights Shawl” in Finnish. It’s a free pattern with over 2500 projects on Ravelry, and it’s easy to see why. The chevron pattern is easy to memorize and it is perfect for yarns with long repeats of color, where it emphasizes and breaks up the color changes at the same time.

So I downloaded the pattern – painstakingly translated from the original finnish – and went to town. It was surprisingly difficult from the first to the second chart, because the repeats totally change from one to the other. If you look at the completed projects, it looks like each of the chevrons runs from center back to outer edge uninterrupted. Not so! You knit chart A, pull off all your stitch markers, and then place them again for Chart B. Once I figured that out, it became very easy. Most of it is plain knitting, and I made the increases with eyelets instead of M1s because, IMHO, M1s are a pain in the ass and should be used sparingly. It doesn’t have the tighter, more rigid look that some of the other Revontulis do, but I think it looks quite nice, don’t you?

I got the second shipment of my Little Red Bicycle Yarn Club the other day, and I realized I had to post about the last one, which I am achingly in love with. This was the first shipment of the “Greek Mythology” segment of the club, and the colorway is called, quite fittingly, Zeu Pater. When I was much younger I was obsessed with Greek mythology – obsessed – so the theme made me do a happy wiggle dance. (Incidentally, yarn club signups are open right now… just sayin.) This color is on the Hipster Sock base, which is a fairly sturdy 3 ply 80/20 merino/nylon blend. It’s a generous put-up – 430 yards – which opens up a lot of possibilities for larger shawlette and scarf projects.

Here is the problem: it looks so beautiful in the skein. I mean, running around flapping my hands in glee and bumping into walls beautiful. It’s nice to look at, on my wall of yarn (have I showed you the wall of yarn? Maybe I should show you the wall of yarn at some point). I haven’t been able to bring myself to even think about winding it up, which (clearly) makes it very difficult to choose a potential pattern.

Also, the variegation – and the fact that I want to, if anything, play up that variegation – rules out anything with complicated lace or cables. I have been playing around with textured slip-stitch patterns for a design I’m working on, and I think they may have a lot of potential for getting the effect that I want. And now it comes down to that most epic of epic decisions: Socks? Or shawl? I don’t wear handwarmers enough, and whatever I make out of this yarn, I want it to get a lot of love. First world problems.

Zeu Pater. My new boyfriend. I hear he sleeps around but whatevs.

Welp, I did it. I braved the madness that is Wollmeise ordering and got myself some of the coveted stuff.

Wasabi, 80/20 twin

Sabrina (two skeins), 100% merino sock

Feldmauschen (field mice), 100% merino superwash

Kornblume (corn flower), 80/20 twin

Pesto, 100% merino

So. What is this gorgeous stuff like to knit with? The truth is, I can’t tell you – I haven’t even swatched with it yet. I’ve only even wound the Sabrina into a ball – it will soon be the Cookie A’s German Stockings (I mean, what could be better for such an iconic German yarn than a pair of German stockings?), as soon as my other deadline knitting allows me to cast on something new. The other skeins hang on my yarn wall, and I look at them every day wondering what they might want to be.

Pattern: Ishbel Beret by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: A Verb for Keeping Warm High Twist in Transnational Fury
Needle size: US Size 3, for the ribbing, and US size 6 for the rest

Ravelry Project Page

This was my first foray into real deadline knitting – I was desperate to try out Verb’s new High Twist yarn, so Kristine agreed to let me knit a sample for the booth at Stitches West. High Twist is a fascinating yarn: perfect stitch definition, and even though it’s a heavy laceweight the energy in the twist somehow causes the yarn to fill the space in a particularly unusual way. It has fabulous drape and it would be a great yarn to make a light cardigan out of (such as Ysolda’s Laika). I now have two skeins of it for my very own – ooh, I guess that should have been shared with you already – and one of the many projects on my back burner is to make my own version of this beret, in green. I wouldn’t normally re-knit a pattern, but I love the way it turned out, and it’s such a flattering hat I want to have one of my own.

Amy Swenson, aka indigirl, has a blog post up telling you exactly how to deal with this tricksy technique. I particularly like her advice on picking up stitches when the precise number to pick up is not given.

I’ve been such a busy bee of late! I just finished dog/house-sitting for a very beautiful border collie who lives in a very beautiful house on the hill above Berkeley. Since I took my qualifying exams (meaning: I am halfway finished with my PhD) in May, it was nice to take some time off. I spent a lot of time at the dog park, woke up every morning and looked out at the gorgeous San Francisco Bay, and spent a lot of time sketching up ideas for new patterns.

Meanwhile, I have started two new knitting related jobs. The first is providing pattern support to Liz Abinante, the designer of Traveling Woman and Saroyan. Since she has a super-exciting new job in Chicago, I’m making her life less stressful by answering questions that her customers send in about her patterns. This is a fun opportunity to practice a new skill; as a teacher, I’ve had lots of opportunity to help people work through problems one-on-one, but it’s very different over email. Thank the gods of the interweb for instructional videos on YouTube.

I’ve also started helping out at A Verb for Keeping Warm, my favorite local yarn store. I’ve been an enthusiastic customer of theirs for years now – as you can tell from this blog – and I’m delighted to be a part of the team in a more formal sense. I will be helping out with the shop and teaching some new classes, in addition to helping to develop a knitting curriculum for the store. The goal: everyone in the East Bay learns how to knit. (I like to start small.)

In the meantime, I’m excited that people are liking Denizens of the Deep so much! It’s only my first paid pattern and I’ve had so many orders already, I can’t believe it! I know that part of it is the fact that it’s on sale, but I hope it’s also because once people see the pattern they realize how much love and effort went in to the pattern (as well as indefatigable test knitting from Sarah Jeong and Sarah Kukuchek). Don’t forget: it’s only $1 (regularly $4) if you buy it before June 30th.

If you knit socks and you haven’t heard of the Blue-Faced Leicester sheep, let me sort that out for you right now. Blue-Faced Leicester (often abbreviated BFL, pronounced “biffle”) is hands down my favorite wool for socks. Offering a longer staple length and more coarseness than merino, when it is tightly spun this makes for tough stuff indeed. This used to be a drawback: it was hard to find wool from this particular breed, and when it was processed it often came out scratchy and harsh. Not anymore, my friends. The wonder of modern wool processing and a revival of specialty breeds means it’s easy to find BFL-based sock yarns from good yarn stores and independent dyers alike. And when you do find it, the yarn is soft and the color is rich – perfect for hard-wearing, beautiful socks.

This sock is designed to take full advantage of a BFL sock yarn’s structure, stretchiness, and stitch definition. An homage to H.P. Lovecraft and all the things that lurk ominously in deep water, two lace stitch patterns mimic fish scales and the suckery undersides of octopi. The two lace sections transition into a standard slip-stitch heel and a plain foot, making for a speedy finish. This pattern has a lot of what Cookie A calls “suckage”, which makes it a cozy, close-fitting sock that grips your ankle, much like a friendly tentacle. Three stretchy sizes make it a great Christmas knit for that friend or relative who’s watched Jaws one too many times.

Finally, you can get this pattern for $1 if you buy it between now and June 30th – use the coupon code “earlybird”.

The samples are knit in three different yarns, so you can see how it looks in a solid, a semisolid, and a stripe.

Two stitch patterns create visual interest and a close fit.

The stitch pattern tapers off into a plain foot, making for a speedy finish.

My very first Neibling is done at last, and I am excessively proud of it.

It took quite a long time – I started it in April, because around row 88 I started fighting with it. Stitches slipped off the needle, decorative acorn cups twisted the wrong way, every row seemed to take forEVER, and at one point I put it on time out so it could think about what it had done. (Later, it apologized profusely and admitted that it had far too many double yarn overs and yes, the chart was very complicated. It was a breakthrough. We wept together.)

A couple of weeks ago, I was driven to complete the thing, to prove that I had the chops to finish a Niebling. It was my first peak in what I hope will be a career of genuinely committed, Alpine-mountaineering-style lace knitting, and I had to get to the top, even if it required increasing 15 stitches into a triple yarn over and edging rows that became 810-stitch brick walls of doom. I did it, and with the help of garnetlocks, I blocked every loop in the decorative crochet cast-off that lacefreak taught me how to do. Then we ran out of t-pins, and decided that blocking every other loop would look just as good. Then we stared at it for a while. It was quality staring – don’t the solid motifs look like liquid metal?

This effect is courtesy of Verb’s Shimmering Tussah laceweight yarn, and the glories of natural dyes. Even my housemates – many of whom I have not yet trained to praise my knitting as effusively as I want them to – were impressed, although I was surprised by the number of guys (it was only guys who said this) whose only response was “wow. that’s a lot of pins.”

Yes. It’s a lot of pins.

I am spinning up some Sweet Georgia fiber into a laceweight single. I plan to make Anne Kuo Lukito’s Weekend Shawl with it. So far I have 302 yards in skeins, and I think I probably have another 200+ yards on the spindle right now – just the right amount to make something substantial, but not overwhelming.

I have separated the fiber so that it is making long repeats of color, so it will theoretically stripe between turquoise, brown, and a mix of the two colors. I am hoping this will be pleasingly dramatic. Actually, I will pretty be happy as long as it knits up into something that… looks like knitted fabric?

I think I am getting better at spinning. At least my spindle isn’t dropping to the ground quite as often. (at one point Kristine gently took me aside and said “honey. put it down for 15 minutes.” I think she felt sorry for my poor battered spindle.)

Also! I found this neat tutorial on Kettle Dyeing that I thought was really helpful – I hadn’t thought much about setting the dye in the oven before, but I’m eager to try it in my house’s industrial-sized ovens.