St. Denis

Let's talk for a minute about the tragedy of my new yarn obsession.  St. Denis Boreale is the most wonderfully textured, beautifully colored 100% wool I've ever laid my hands on.  It knits up so neatly, and has an incredible springy texture that makes you want to squoosh your knitted fabric every couple of minutes.  The colors are gorgeous.  It doesn't make me want to scratch my skin off the whole time I'm wearing it.

And it's been discontinued since the fall of 2012.

OH THE HUMANITY!

Luckily, Webs has the last of their stock for sale, so I've done what any sane knitter would do.  I've purchased four sweaters' worth of Boreale for the stash.

Oatmeal, Red, Balsam, and Eggplant

Magenta

Fjord

(which actually came from the lovely autumnsky on Ravelry, as Webs sold out of this colorway before I could convince myself of the wisdom of this splurge)

Aurora

Hand-dyed inspiration

I took a two-week vacation from work, in the hopes of not injuring the incoming class of freshmen with my bad attitude (born of too much rah-rah orientation spirit and not enough me-time).  While some of this time was spent at the beach, at least a day of it was spent dying wool with my mom.

We've done dying days before, with rather less than stellar results.  Either the colors weren't quite right, or the yarn didn't take the dye evenly, or in the end it didn't align with the vision I saw in my head.  So this time, we changed up our system, worked a little more diligently and patiently, and came out with four skeins each of yarn that made us (for the most part) quite happy.

I thought I would share the photos that were our inspiration, and the resulting yarn.  All of these are on KnitPicks bare bases, some of which have been discontinued since we stashed them.

source: pinterest.

source: pinterest.

source: Pyrex Collective via pinterest

source: pinterest

Stashbusting: Pea Soup Sweater

I've had this Brown Sheep Cotton Fine cone in my stash since...2007 or 8.  It was part of a Patternworks sale that seemed like a good idea at the time, because I was convinced of my wool allergy (which turns out to be an issue solely with lower-micron wool - pretty much anything that comes from Peru makes me itch just looking at it) and thought cotton was the only alternative (this was before I learned about Amy Singer's No Sheep for You).  Clearly, as it has been languishing in the stash since 2007, it was not such a great idea.  Four cones of lace-weight, unmercerized cotton might be perfect for weaving, but it's not as awesome for knitting.

But finally, as part of the great stash-busting event of 2013, I took some time to match these cones with projects, and found the Pickle's Plain Cardigan pattern.

I made the smallest size, and even with the yarn held tripled I still didn't manage to use up the whole cone.  The only changes I would make if I knit this again is to make fewer button-holes, and to make them smaller.  They sort of overwhelm this small garment, and it makes it difficult to find appropriate buttons.  I'm still searching - I think dark brown wooden or faux leather would look nice, but I haven't found anything I'm completely sold on yet.

Overall, the yarn turned out to be much more pleasant to work with than I was expecting, and produced a fabric with much more drape than the feel of the cotton on the cone led me to expect that I would get.  For my first major Knit the Queue project of the year, I think it turned out quite nicely.  And it worked up in a single weekend, so I definitely can't complain about that.

Spinning

You guys.  In school, they warn you about pot by telling you it's a gateway drug.  How come nobody ever warns you about knitting?  It's totally a gateway craft.  Without knitting, I would never have learned to crochet, to needle-felt (not that I enjoy that, particularly, but it's a life skill I now have), or to dye.  And now, the gateway has opened that much further.

I've started learning how to spin.

Now, perhaps not all of the blame should be put on knitting, as a craft.  Some of the blame belongs squarely on the shoulders of my YEE (yarn enabler extrodinaire, to use the Jimmy Beans' phrase) mother.  I mentioned to her a few weeks ago that I was considering learning how to spin.  As she is an avid spinner herself, I probably should have known better, because when I stopped by for dinner last Wednesday, there was a braid of GnomeAcres Merino/Silk blend in Gnomey Nights waiting for me.  We promptly sat down at my mom's wheel and she showed me how to spin.

Here are the results of my first thirty minutes of spinning:

I realize these are terrible pictures, but it was late and this was my only chance to take the shots.  It runs the gamut between lace and sport weight, but is more consistently at the lower end of that spectrum.

I have already learned that I prefer to spin off rolags, rather than the braid, and I had a fit over the color transition from blue to yellow (I think the yellow dye damaged the fiber slightly, as it isn't drawing as evenly or easily, no matter how much I open it up before-hand.  You can see the lumps it created.  I'm sure eventually I'll be adept enough to prevent that, but this was only the result of my second time at a spinning wheel).  I'm a short-draw spinner, and I'm working hard on learning how not to overtwist.  But dang, it's fun!

And just to cement the habit, on Saturday, at the Fiber Fest, I picked up these:

Now I just need to buy my own spinning wheel.

Expectations, great or otherwise

You know the saying "caveat emptor?" I feel like that is doubly true since the invention of the internet and the proliferation of monitors with different color profiles.  When you fall in love with the image of yarn on your screen, you can't always be sure that the color you're seeing is the color of the yarn itself.  We've all purchased yarn we thought was a certain color, only to find out it was in fact five shades darker or greener or what have you.

This is doubly true of hand-painted yarns, where each skein is unique anyway, without the added burden of color profiles.  However, I recently received a skein where it was not simply a matter of it being a just different shade or hue than had been illustrated on the screen.  This was a matter of it being almost a completely different yarn.  I ordered what I was expecting to be a vibrantly saturated yarn that resembled green rolling hills, and received yarn that looked like a sad Easter Egg.

I am not going to name any names, because we all have off-days.  These things happen.  But I will admit to being extremely disappointed when I opened up my package and saw pastels staring up at me.  This was not the yarn I wanted when I excitedly purchased it lo these many weeks ago.

So being a good diy-er, I decided to fix it myself.  I soaked it in vinegar and went at it with some blue dye, and this is what I ended up with: 

Which was maybe slightly more vibrant than I had intended.  This is why I don't judge.  Dying yarn is hard, yo.  But I'm much happier with my shocking blue yarn than I was with my pastel Easter egg yarn, and already have the perfect project in mind for it: Regina, by Carina Spencer.

However, those of you who intend to do this yourself, take note - BFL felts.  Which probably shouldn't have been as surprising as it was, but I am impatient, and like to touch my yarn while it's soaking.  That was a mistake.  As you can see, the yarn is still servicable, but it certainly roughed up and each strand got cozy with its neighbors while it was drying.  I had to do some gentle tugging to separate things as I was rolling up the ball.

So note to self: when rinsing out hand-dyed yarn after defacing it, don't swish.

Bates

Not all that long ago, I came across the Downton Abbey Luxury Yarn Club, hosted by Woolgirl and Curious Creek Fibers.  Now, while I recognize that it is a luxury yarn club, with awesome extras like Wee Ones Dowager Countess stitch markers, $550 is FAR outside my price-range for any club (no matter how much I might have wanted it).  So I lusted, but did not purchase.  

Since the pattern I was most interested in was the Mr. Bates socks, I decided that the next best thing would be to go ahead and design my own.  So I did.

I present you with Bates:

Constructed toe-up, with a combination of cables and twisted stitches on a reverse stockinette stitch background.  I had originally envisioned using a staggered cross cable (one with uneven numbers of repeats between each cable-row - to call to mind Mr. Bates' limp), but found that oddly, the roundness of the cables did not suit the design at all.

The heel is short-row, with a twisted stitch heel flap.  These are men's size 9, but were knit fairly narrow.  The pattern can easily be sized up, however, to account for more robust foot and leg circumference.

The yarn is Malabrigo Yarn Sock, in the Piedras colorway, which was meant to call to mind the khaki uniforms of the British army in the Boer war, when Mr. Bates was the Earl's batman.  This was my first order from Loopy Ewe, and I plan on buying more yarn from them in the future, if only for more adorable sheep drawings.  However, I think the pattern would hold up well in any gently variegated yarn.

The pattern is still being edited, and will be out for test-knitting soon.

Stash flash #1

Hi.  My name is Caitlin, and I have a knitting problem.

Well, not so much a knitting problem, because if the knitting were the problem, the stash wouldn't be.  Let's say I have a yarn problem.

It looks a little bit like this:

Pardon me for *ahem* flashing my stash.  But even this is actually quite an improvement over the state of the thing at the beginning of January, before I buckled down and got organized.  Now each yarn is in a plastic bag, and if I know what I plan to make with it (and I do for about 70% of the yarn in that pile), the pattern has been printed and put into the bag.  And a half hour after this picture was taken, all the loose yarn you see was similarly corralled into ziplock baggies and placed into the storage bins you see in the background.

But no matter how beautifully organized it now is, it's still an overwhelmingly large stash.  Especially because more than of it than I would like is squeaky acrylic or dry and halo-y cotton, which won't cut it for the vintage patterns I now love to make.

I tried going Cold Sheep (ravelry link) last year, which went quite well until it...didn't anymore (yarn is a perfectly acceptable way of rewarding oneself for being a successful grown up, what are you talking about?).  My goal was to make it from the end of May to the end of December.  I made it from May through the end of September.  In penance for falling off the wagon - and boy, did I ever? -  I have signed back on for another three-ish months (til the NC Fiber Fest, in April) of being totally cold sheep, and, as I've already noted, I've pledged to spend 2013 knitting from my stash.

And in attempt to stay accountable to myself, I am also making myself accountable to you.  I will periodically flash my stash, to show that it is decreasing rather than increasing, and will have to publicly shame myself by announcing it here if I do add any new yarn.  Hopefully, you will help to keep me honest and on the wagon for the duration of 2013.

Surprise!

Look what was in my mailbox today!

Not too terribly long ago, I donated to Three Irish Girls to help get them out of the studio of horribleness. In exchange for monetary support of a certain amount, Sharon and co promised a skein of a special colorway.

And lo and behold, this lovely appeared in my mailbox today:

The colorway is Moondance (as in "a marvelous night for...") and is on the Adorn sock base.  It is beautiful and I can't wait to see how it works up.  Sometimes 3IG's yarns can be a bit...exuberant, but this looks promisingly sockworthy.

Hazel Knits

I am a sucker for hand-dyed yarns.  The colors, the vibrancy, the blends!  The frequently unexpected way it works up (although that is not always pleasant, as Jean noted today)!  The joy of watching each new color appear as you stitch.  It is, not to be too much of an aesthete, a transcendent form of knitting.

I have plenty of favorite dyers:  Three Irish Girls (I think I've put one of Sharon's children through college),  Nerd Girl Yarns, Sweet Georgia, the Verdant Gryphon (her yarns are so squishy!), Dragonfly Fibers.  They all do fascinating things with color blends and produce yarn that is fantastic to work with.

But today...today I found some of the most beautiful semi-sold yarns I have ever beheld.

Hazel Knits.

Image (c) hazel knits.  Artisan Sock in Nickel.

Image (c) hazel knits.  Filigree lace in Jay Blue.

I am sadly Cold Sheep (more on that soon), and cannot buy any of these lovelies until April.  But you should.  You absolutely should, and then come back and tell me about how pretty it is so that I can live vicariously through your yarn acquisition.  Because this is seriously the most gorgeous yarn I've seen in ages.