I so appreciate all of the birthday wishes. This has been a quiet birthday; my husband is in Minnesota visiting his mother so we celebrated early. I’ve spent the day knitting and reading. I even managed to squeeze in a visit to a yarn shop just because.
I also spent a little time watching this video of a knitting machine made entirely of Legos. It’s fascinating. I can’t quite figure out what it’s doing, but I was heartened to see that this machine knits even more slowly than I do!
Astrid wrote a comment about Roslin, “I can’t wait to see it. I know you’ll love yours as much as I do mine. How are you working the neck opening? It looks different. If you continued in the round that far up, how did you do it?”
Response to Astrid: I think it is an optical illusion in the photo. I started working back and forth right above the fair isle band as described in the pattern:
It may be hard to see, but the split is there.
After Susan arrived on Thursday, she did some “stash diving” at Surly’s and found a number of treasures before we even embarked on our quest! We left for NYC bright and early on Friday, hoping to get a couple of yarn store visits under our belts before the “theatah.”
Friday
Based upon the recommendations of our readers, our first stop on Friday was School Products — a counterintuitive name for a yarn store, but hey. It was full of various treasures, especially some nice cashmere. Even so, Sally was drawn to the wall of Koigu like a moth to a flame, though she already has a wall of Koigu of her own. Seventeen skeins (which was every skein they had) of a rich eggplant “solid” somehow found its way into her knitting bag. Hmmmmm…how did that happen?
School Products is owned by Bertra Karapetyan — author of Runway Knits and the force behind Karabella Yarns.
Next up: Habu Textiles.
Habu Textiles is not really a yarn shop, but does specialize in very exotic fibers: steel yarn (thread, actually) and an array of other fun things like silks and bamboo. It’s a fun place to browse and touch, but we didn’t buy anything. (Sally already has six or seven cones of exotics from Habu that she bought several years ago.)
Friday Night
Friday night marked Clay Aiken’s Broadway debut in Spamalot. Who could miss that? It was a crazy, irreverent, bawdy, funny show. Clay was wonderful in his multiple roles: Sir Robin, monk, idiot guard. We loved Tom Deckman, who played “Herbert,” as well and enjoyed the play immensely. There was a huge crush of fans at the Stage Door waiting to get Clay’s autograph, which we were unable to do — too far back. But we left feeling like the evening was a raging success.
Saturday
First Stop: Purl Soho, which has more beautiful yarn per square inch than almost any other store we’ve been to. The shop is small, but it is more than worth a trip (or two). We could have spent a fortune here, but we tried to restrain ourselves. We bought some silk and mohair blends and some Blue Skye Alpaca and Silk for experimenting. Oh! And some sock yarn.
Soho itself is a fun area to wander around in. We wished we hadn’t eaten a late breakfast because right by Purl is a restaurant called Once Upon a Tart that looked intriguing if you know what we mean and we think that you do.
Next stop: Knit New York — a wonderful knitting shop with great coffee and even nicer people:
They encourage knitters to just hang out and knit, which was fine with us! This place was our favorite.
Here’s Nina, whom we met at Knit New York:
Nina blew us away! She is an extremely accomplished knitter at the very tender age of seventeen. She made her hat (Interweave Knits) and knew so much about all kinds of knitting. She has made two Rogue Hoodies (one sans hood for Mom), and just seemed so ahead of the game with her knitting. We would love to see where she is in twenty years! What a sweetie!
Here Sally is enjoying the ambience of the shop: it was great to sip coffee, knit and hang out in the warm and welcoming atmosphere — note wall o’yarn!! (Doesn’t she look tired? We were up way too late Friday night, especially Sally.) We relieved them of a lot of their yarn burden 😉 — it was the least we could do. We bought some lovely 5-ply cashmere from Artful Yarns (for fingerless gloves or mitts) and lots and lots of Sirino, a silk and merino blend from the Great Adirondack Yarn Company.
The fantastic staff agreed to pose for us, Chorus Line style!
From Left to Right: Anneli, Miriam (shop owner), Carlee, Brooke, and Meghan
We rushed back to the hotel so we could get dinner before going to Wicked, but got waylaid by the opportunity to have Clay sign our programs after the matinee — and he did!
Saturday night we dined atop our hotel in the revolving restaurant with a view of the city and then on to the play: Wicked was fantastic, as everyone knows. The production was amazing — we left there feeling like we had experienced a real Broadway show. Sally especially loved it, as she hadn’t seen it before. Then back to reality! We took the train back to DC early Sunday morning.
Here we attempt to capture the beautiousness of our acquired yarns:
The silks, the alpacas, the cashmeres… ::sigh:: Just packing the yarn was a treat because of the softness.
We had a totally wonderful time — made even better by meeting up with old and new friends. We say farewell to Times Square (view from our room):
View from Times Square!!
It was really cold there….Hey Cowboy, you seem to have forgotten your pants 🙂
2008 is the year of the Knitter :)!!Â
Enjoy a safe and happy evening and a great New Year’s Day tomorrow.Â
It’s hard to blog when the one project I’m devoting all of my time to has to remain a secret until Christmas. So here’s a progress picture.
No out loud guessing, please.
I’m glad so many of you liked the square neck on my Kauni. I meant to include this link in my post yesterday. It describes the whole square neck process with my Kauni. I did not want to go on and on in a regular post, but figured that those who are interested could click. It is also located as a link in “Susan’s Gallery” for future reference.
Astrid, our unofficial Roslin guinea pig ;), found another small error in the Roslin Hoodie pattern. On page 6, Row 26 of the hood shaping instructs you to knit to the end of the row, but at that point you will be purling — it should read “purl to end of row.”  The pattern link and the errata page have been updated.
This means that Astrid is almost done with her hoodie — woo hoo!!!
‘Those who walk among you’ are knitters who have discovered Herbert Niebling and are now obsessed! Apparently there is an underground cult of sorts of Niebling Followers — who knew? I would never have heard of Niebling myself except for the influence of fellow bloggers. Soo left a nice little comment about my Hemlock Ring Throw so I innocently clicked on her blog, not knowing that it would change me forever. I found this:
My jaw still hurts from hitting the table. All I knew was that I had to make me one of these! I am not much of a lace knitter but decided to not let that be a barrier! ;) The most immediate barrier was finding the pattern. Niebling died over 40 years ago. This pattern, called Lyra, was only printed twice. The most recent was in a 1986 Burda magazine, European issue. Soo kindly provided many details and I found the magazine in an ebay auction that very day. It had to be mine! I paid way too much for it but it was worth every penny. It arrived last Saturday. It is written in Dutch, I bought it from a woman in Germany, and it included an English translation. All the charts are done using Niebling’s unique charting style.Â
I started my Lyra already. I laid out my knitting supplies like an operating room: yarn (Fino Laceweight Alpaca with a Twist — check), needles (Size 2.5 mm — check), reading glasses (check), small crochet hook (check), valium (sorry — all out!), bead mat (check), lamp (check). I used the Emily Ocker cast on and for the first several rows had the highest anxiety going! I was so worried I would drop a stitch — then I did and actually fixed it :), so I am off and running.Â
Here is my progress so far:
I am not far enough into it to be at the hard part but so far I have not had any trouble. I have put many hours into it so far and it is still very TINY, though it already has over 300 sts! Soo finished hers in two weeks. That’s right: TWO WEEKS! I will not even attempt to match her pace.Â
Because I can’t work on Lyra in anything but the most optimal conditions, I also started this (Rowan’s Calmer “Loll”):
I am making mine in ivory (Rowan Calmer in “Drift”) and I have about 5-6 inches of the back done; all of the fringes complete — whew, are they ever slow! I’ll post a picture later. Why a summer sweater?? Who the heck knows! It’s something to work on as my take along project.
PS in response to pjknits: I buy 99.9% of my yarn from my LYS’s — I find almost all the yarn I want locally. If there is something I absolutely must have and it is not readily available (i.e., the Kauni yarn or the Swedish Bohus kits) then I shop on line.  I know a lot of people do not have access to the quality of yarn shops available in the Twin Cities. We are tres lucky here!
Â
I’m almost finished with Silver Belle — I’m knitting the collar, which I think will take me three to four years at the current rate of knitting. In the meantime, I’m fantasizing about my next project. There are several under consideration, including one phantom sweater.
The other day I was reading a bunch of different blogs and doing google searches. At some point, I came across a lovely vintage-looking sweater with an interesting mitered collar. It was designed by Kim Hargreaves; I think it was a cardigan. I don’t remember which rabbit hole I went down and I don’t remember enough details to find the actual pattern. I think it was in a Rowan book and I’m fairly certain the name of the pattern was “Betsy.”
If anyone knows more, please do tell. Thanks!
ETA: Thanks — it looks as if I need to track down Rowan #24, which, of course, I don’t have — if I did I might have made this sweater already! It’s also great to hear that it’s very wearable.
ETA2: Yes! Mama Stop Knitting was where I saw it — thank you. Here’s a photo.
Powered by WordPress
