::Groan:: Sally refused to even be associated with a blog post with this title! However, she is represented! These are our “matching” Holden Shawlettes — a beautiful pattern found F-R-E-E on Ravelry! The shawls are a speedy knit, look gorgeous when worn because of the eye-catching scallops, and show off that single skein of sock or fingering weight yarn you bought for the color.
My Holden is knit from Madeline Tosh Light in Color Flashdance (the yarn I bought recently at StevenBe’s — shop hop). Sally’s is in Viola Fancy Sock in the color Sea Storm. Sally and I both did a modification described by others on Ravelry: we stopped 2 rows short before starting the feather and fan chart: 189 sts instead of 193, and then worked all of the pattern repeats in the identical manner (in the original pattern, one repeat has two extra sts = 4 total for both sides). I was concerned with yardage and may not have had enough without the changes. Sally did the same, but had a lot of yarn left over.
I think I will be making a lot more of these as gifts. They are a very quick knit and really show off the yarn and the wearer’s sense of fashion. Fast and beautiful…what more do you want?
We are nothing if not givers. Always giving. Always thinking of others. Take the economy. We have to do our part, and we take that very seriously. Very. Seriously. Tirelessly, in fact.
Sally arrived last Thursday for Yarnover* and we have worked at doing our patriotic duty nonstop ever since. Not all of the yarns pictured were purchased since Thursday but they are very recent acquisitions. 🙂
*Yarnover purchases indicated by asterisk
1- This was actually an investment in class time: these skeins are Sally’s hand dyed yarns! She made them in a class she took at Fibre Space in Alexandria. From Susan: they are gorgeous and very “buyable” if that is a word!
*2- Susan bought these skeins of Berocco Cotton Twist at Yarnover: she saw a special someone wearing “Braided Glory” and thought this was the same yarn…unfortunately not, but she is hoping it will work anyway. The wrap is a show stopper.
*3- We LOVE Madeline Tosh Light and bought a lot of it!! Some of these colors are for gifts… (some were bought at Yarnover and some elsewhere)
*4- Sally tried on a darling swing jacket in Schulana Mosco in at StevenBe’s Yarnover booth and just had to have it — and buttons to boot.
5- Susan thought that Jared Flood needed some additional reassurance about his recent foray into yarn development, so she bought enough Shelter (color Nest) to make his new design Brownstone for DH for Christmas (give, give, give!!). ETA: Sorry — no Shelter at Yarnover! Sally brought it with her from DC (purchased at Fibre Space!).
6- Supporting the independents: Dye for Wool in a deep denim sock weight.
*7- Supporting more small dyers: Sun Valley Fiber Farm — this booth was filled with stunning yarns. We bought several colors in order to make this design by Romi Hill. Romi was at Yarnover so we wanted to show our support for her as well! Mapleweave was wearing Taygete in two stunning colors so we dragged her to the booth and tried our luck at coming up with winning combinations!
11- Susan bought this “green” yarn for the Summer Solstice Cardigan and is loving it — this will be a workhorse sweater to wear every day. Ethical Twist in color Oatmeal.
*12- Another stunner from Sun Valley Fiber Farms in merino and cashmere.
Oh yeah. We also attended Yarnover. 😉
Yarnover was a huge event this year — celebrating its 25th year. 25 stellar instructors, 400 participants, 40 vendors in a bustling marketplace. The gift for participants was especially nice this year for the silver anniversary: silver needle gauge necklaces. We worked the event so came home exhausted.
The highlight for both of us was being approached by our readers with a greeting, “Hi, I read your blog!” We LOVED it!! Sally leaves today after a whirlwind weekend.
Come and join Sally and me at the Silver Anniversary Yarnover! Even if you do not want to sign up for a class, there is plenty to see and do.
The keynote address will be presented by Merike Saarniit and is called, “The Evolution of Tradition to Contemporary Knitting.” It is free to those taking classes and open to the public for $5. The Vendor Market is free and boasts some fabulous shops and independent knitting-related artists. You cannot fail to have a spectacular time. And there are classes that you can still sign up for ON THE DAY ITSELF!!!
If one Niebling is good, aren’t two even better? I made my first Niebling table covering (doily??) a couple of years ago. It was knit out of laceweight alpaca — not a very practical doily. I had it in mind to knit another, and I finally did. I chose Lotus Flower, because I thought it was very beautiful. The pattern is readily available on Ravelry by Doilyhead. I used Aunt Lydia Crochet Cotton Size 10. Cheap stuff you can buy at Joann Fabrics. After reading this discussion, I probably would have chosen differently…but, it is too late now and it seemed to have worked out fine.
Lotus Flower by Herbert Niebling, Aunt Lydia Crochet Cotton ~1200 yards, US 1(2.25 mm) Needles
I did need to starch it, which was traumatic to think about but easy to do. I had to starch it: after just wet blocking, it became a limp rag that did not hold its shape properly. I immersed it in a 50-50 solution of Sta-Flo liquid starch and water and then pinned it out on a piece of styrofoam insulation. This worked out great…getting the insulation to my car was a comedy of errors, but that is a different story!! Don’t attempt this feat on the windiest day of the year!
Believe it or not, this was my “take-along” knitting project! The even rounds were straight knitting of up to 1200 sts. The pattern rounds were often simple repetitions that were easy to follow because the pattern is so pictorial. Still, it took a couple of months to complete.
Lotus Flower Overall Grade: A
Pattern: A — nice “starter” Niebling
Yarn: A — though there are probably higher quality choices out there
Finished Size: 40 inches in diameter
All in all, I am very pleased and highly recommend this pattern. I am without a knitting project! I just finished a Holden Shawlette, which I will post later…but now my needles are bare! I have a few ideas, but the project has not revealed itself to me. Hmmmm…
PS to Surly: NO, it will NOT fit into your suitcase!
PS2: I did need to join a second ball and also join within the first ball because it had a knot tying more length onto the ball. I spit spliced it.
PS3: Bonnie asked about spit splicing and how it works on non-wool fibers. I “spit splice” all kinds of yarn, but that doesn’t mean that I felt them together: I thin out each end, overlap and suck on the yarn — very appealing in public!! I do this with almost every yarn I use. If the ends are difficult to blend, I let them hang to the inside and then I sometimes weave them in or just cut them. I had absolutely no trouble with the crochet cotton at all and the ends were completely smooth and the transition invisible. I make sure I overlap the ends over several sts and never when a YO is involved. In this pattern there were long stockinette areas where I could easily splice my thread.
I am so lucky to be part of a knitting group with such very talented knitters — I have been exposed to so many great projects that have inspired me to pick up my needles. Kathy (beloved friend and sidekick to Decorah, IA) brought in a set of the cutest felted bunnies you have ever seen. Inspiring, yes, but I did not feel like making a bunny. So, I made her an offer that she couldn’t chose not to refuse: I would knit her something and she would knit me a bunny. The item she chose from me will be revealed later this year (stealth knitting as it were), but I ended up with the original bunny o’ my dreams!!
Lil Bunny Foo Foo
You can see how cute he is, but you cannot tell how soft: butter soft out of wonderful alpaca. The pattern is Wooly Bunnies by Marie Mayhew — a local designer we are proud to call our own!
There is still time to make one of these lil cuties before the real Easter Bunny makes his appearance!!
It is the weekend of the Annual [Yarn Store] Shop Hop here in Minnesota. Yay! Explore, shop, eat…repeat!
Some of my knitting friends and I decided rather spur of the moment to veer off the beaten path and come up with our own list of shops to visit. We’ve done the Shop Hop thing in the past (obtain passports, get them stamped, collect charms, etc.), but this year we decided to focus on shops that not all of us had been to rather than going to old favorites. The Final Four:
I did not buy much: just one skein of gorgeous Madelinetosh Merino Light in color Flashdance at Yarn Garage:
We dined at The Dock in Stillwater and had GREAT food! I became an embarassment to the group while trying to get something sticky off my hands, so Kathy (former friend 😉 ) said, “I wish WE could post pictures on Susan’s blog!” Thanks…
Flood season is upon us and Stillwater is located on the St. Croix River, so we got to see the levy they built to try to keep the town from flooding:
That’s a street sign in the water!
What a fun day. If you get a chance to do something like this in your area, DO IT. It is such a nice way to meet up with other knitters and share our passion!
PS: The weather was spectacular! We revelled in the warm spring breezes and relished the sun on our faces. We also realized how much we love the four seasons, and pity the people who have perfect weather all of the time and therefore cannot truly experience the joy of a beautiful spring day. Okay, we know we are rationalizing, but give us our small victory!!
I make my share of mistakes while knitting. Sometimes I misunderstand directions. Sometimes I miscount. Sometimes I think I’m smarter than I really am. And sometimes I get caught up watching Jeremy Irons in The Borgias and just don’t pay attention.
For example, the other day I randomly threw a p2tog into my pink Japanese cardigan. (I can’t even blame Jeremy for that one.) I figured it out four or five rows later when my stitch count was off. I came to the end of a section of traveling stitches and instead of two purl stitches remaining, I only had one. It wasn’t difficult to fix that mistake — the hard part was finding it. I looked and looked at both sides of my knitting until I realized it wasn’t a dropped stitch, but a “gee what was I thinking” decrease. I dropped down a few rows, undid the p2tog, and laddered back up, adjusting the tension of the surrounding stitches to have enough yarn for the stitch that had been decreased on the rows above the mistake. Here are a couple photographs of the fix.
That wasn’t so hard, now was it?
I’m also working on a lace shawl — a gift for a dear friend. It’s a beautiful but relatively simple pattern (more on it at the end of this post). That’s where Jeremy Irons comes in. I was working on the shawl the other night. I glanced down at the pattern repeat, memorized it, knit that row, and kept going while Jeremy did things modern Popes just.do.not.do. In the light of day, I noticed something wrong. The pattern has lines of stitches that converge. Left leaning decreases (sk2p — slip 1, k2tog, pass the slipped stitch over) are paired with right leaning decreases (k3tog). I know this. I had already done these decreases on other rows. This time, however, I did the left leaning decrease across the entire row, and by the time I noticed I was five rows along in the pattern. Rut roh. The mistake is shown below.
So, to fix it I was going to have to drop back, and then recreate the intervening rows. (Did I mention there were fifteen repeats of this mistake?) The key part of the five rows (from where I was down to the mistake):
1. Current row (RS): yo, k3tog, yo
2. (WS): purl back
3. (RS): yo, k2tog
4. (WS): purl back
5. Mistake row (RS): yo, k3tog, yo (instead of yo, sk2p, yo)
I chose to work the next wrong side row and correct as I went along. I worked to each mistake, turned the knitting so that the right side was facing, and dropped down to the mistake. I only dropped down those stitches that I absolutely had to. Because I was correcting just a few stitches, I didn’t pin out the running threads to keep track of them — instead, I used a different wooden (non-slippery) needle for each row. After fixing the mistake a dozen times, I had it down to a science. It suddenly occurred to me that I should try to demonstrate what I was doing for the blog. That was harder than I thought it would be, even with a tripod. But here it is. (Disclaimer: I hate my voice, and I know this is not going to win for best documentary short at next year’s Oscars.)
Here is a close up of the repair.
Whew! That was one of those mistakes that I could have left — it didn’t change the stitch count. I obviously kept going without noticing it. I am making it for someone who doesn’t knit, and so I doubt she would have noticed. But the overall effect of the pattern would have been diminished.
As for the shawl pattern, it is Romi Hill’s Asterope, from her book Seven Small Shawls to Knit. The photograph below is from the book (I hope Romi doesn’t mind!).
The Asterope pattern is very clear, as are the charts. I cannot blame Romi for my mistake. I blame you, Jeremy.
