Spring Break Woo

Another spring break, another knitting catch-up post. This lovely piece is the Inspira Cowl by graphica, which had been in my queue for awhile, but which jumped to the front when A Verb for Keeping Warm suggested in their newsletter that it could be knit with just one skein of their Gather and one skein of Spincycle Yarns’ Small Wonder. I picked the “midnight” colorway in Gather, and I’m not sure if the hand-dyed Small Wonder even has colorway names.

I picked the “steampunk” version of the pattern; it offers a few different configurations of stripes, and I’m not sure exactly what makes this one steampunk, but it’s the one I found most appealing.

Next up is a gift for a stranger! I belong to a Facebook group called “Garak’s Craftiers,” which is a group for crafters who are fans of Star Trek, because of course I do. A few times a year, they do a gift exchange called “Secret Garak” wherein you fill out a form about yourself and your interests and what sort of gift you’d be interested to receive (knitted, jewelry, etc), and then you’re paired with somebody who makes the sort of craft you would like. I was pretty excited to be matched with a nonbinary individual who said their favorite colors were “purple, black, blue, and a manly gray.” I decided to make them a Noro Stripe Scarf in pretty much all those colors, since it’s a decidedly unisex pattern:

It’s two colors of Noro Silk Garden, probably 395 and 373 if I’ve located the correct labels. Isn’t it lovely??

Speaking of Noro Stripe Scarves, I realized recently that my absolute favorite scarf, which I wear all the time, has never been documented on this blog:

This scarf is made of my own handspun yarn; the gray is a yak/silk blend and the multicolor is a merino/silk blend. The multicolor was originally much brighter, but after I spun the yarn I accidentally bathed it in hot water & it became much more muted. I was a disappointed at the time, but this muted range of colors is something that I find myself reaching for nearly every time I go out in the winter. I made this at least three or four years ago, and it actually suffered a pretty major moth attack this summer. I fixed it by unraveling the affected portion (it happened to be near the end) and re-knitting it; this shot is from the scarf’s first re-entry into the world.

One more piece for today:

This is Melanie Berg’s The Girl In Me, knit in Baah La Jolla in the Mystique and Maldives colorways. The hem is mosaic knit, which is a fun and pretty easy colorwork technique.

I did not bother to use blocking wires on this because it was huge, it was not lace, and I was lazy, and the very edge admittedly looks a little crappy. My bind-off was a little too loose, also. If I wanted to really be a perfectionist about it, I’d re-do the bindoff and re-block it, but ain’t nobody got time for that!

Without a Net

Today’s catch-up post documents two pieces that I knit recently without following a pattern. Neither is so innovative that I’m going to bother to publish a formal pattern, but I’ll give you a general idea of how to make them. First up is this purple shawl/scarf, which I knit out of two colors of leftover Sundara Sock from two earlier projects. One is the first scarf pictured here, and the other I’m suddenly realizing I never documented on this blog before! It turns out we did do a photo shoot of it back in 2018, so I’ll add some of those pictures to the end of this post.

This is just a basic top-down triangle shawl, bird’s eye lace, and a picot bindoff. When I started it, my main goal was to use up most of my leftover yarn, and I had a bit more of the purple than the variegated yarn. I suppose in retrospect that for a slightly more balanced look, I might have started the lace section earlier, but I’m very pleased with the look of the variegated yarn as the picot edge.

Next up is a much more wild and wooly piece, a freeform project that I have been thinking of as my “seaweed wrap”:

The forerunner of this piece was Gaea’s Wrap, a freeform wrap that I knit for a friend as a wedding present back in 2014. This “seaweed wrap” is a little less complicated in its stitchwork, in part because the yarn was fuzzier and wouldn’t show subtlety quite as much. It’s a mix of garter stitch and bird’s eye lace, whereas Gaea’s wrap also included wave stitch and seed stitch. The bird’s eye sections were knit in a beautiful multicolor green cheviot yarn that I handspun and seem to have NO PICTURES OF AT ALL, with the exception of this sad, crappy shot that I thought to take just as I was running out of it:

The other featured component of this wrap was this lovely (but very fuzzy) silk yarn from Darn Good Yarn:

And otherwise it was lots of leftover stuff from my stash.

Lastly, let’s take a look at that previously-undocumented piece which lent its leftovers to the purple scarf above:

These pictures were taken in November 2018, more or less immediately after finishing this scarf. This is Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust by Lily Go, knit in Sundara Sock. I’m not sure the name of the colorway; the label seems to have vanished.

I knit most of this while watching the first season of The Haunting of Hill House, and I associate it with that experience pretty strongly — I picked the dark purple because I thought it gave this piece a gothic vibe. I’m a sucker for traveling twisted stitches, so I think the edging on this is gorgeous. This was definitely the easiest and least troublesome of the Lily Go patterns that I’ve knit so far.

That’s all for now, folks!

By the Book

I am very much what they call a “process knitter” as opposed to a “product knitter”. This is testified to by the fact that I blocked and photographed SEVEN different projects over winter break that had been languishing in the “done” pile! This post, however, is dedicated to three of those projects where my focus was more “product” oriented — where I saw the designer’s prototype, said “I want THAT,” and made it exactly to their specifications, without substituting yarn or making any other substantial changes. This is not something I do very often — I usually enjoy the creativity and insight involved in matching yarn to pattern. But sometimes I am forced to admit that the designer has gotten it exactly right, as in the following gloriousness:

This is a blocking board shot of my version of Twist by Lily Go, knit in her own yarn, Rendezvous Silky Gradient in the “Olivia” colorway. I’ve said before that my relationship with Lily Go is that of a masochist to a sadist, and this project was no exception — I had to do the 372-stitch cast on at least three times before I got the edging to line up correctly. The edging is the only really tough part, though; once you get to the twisted stitches with the cables, it’s pretty straightforward. The skein of gradient yarn was pretty tiny, though — just 383 yards — so this is knit at the smallest size and is a tiny confection of a scarf when you actually wear it:

Next up on the knitting-by-numbers menu is the Lovage sweater from Berroco:

I saw this in a Webs catalogue and decided that I needed it immediately, in the original yarn the pattern calls for, which is Berroco Sesame in the Zen Garden colorway. It’s only 43% wool, and the rest is mostly acrylic and some cotton, so I decided not to block this and I think it looks fine. I was a little worried that if I did, it would grow/lengthen, and it’s already pretty big. Here’s the back:

Maaaybe blocking would get rid of some of that puckering where the hem part joins; I’d be interested in other knitters’ opinions! The only mods I made on this were to knit the hem a little longer for my long torso, and the sleeves a little shorter for my short arms. I was a little angry that when I put it all together, I still had to cuff the sleeves to make it work, but behold what I discovered when I looked up the pattern just now for this post:

That is a cuffed sleeve in the original pattern photo! It looks basically fine, another blocky element in a blocky garment, except that up close, cuffing reveals an ugly sleeve seam that’s really supposed to be on the inside. ZOOM ENHANCE!

So I’m gonna call that an overall design flaw, and I recommend that if you knit this sweater, you knit the sleeves at least 3 inches shorter than the pattern says to.

Last up for today is a project I made a slight switcheroo on:

This is On the Spice Market by Melanie Berg, one of my favorite shawl designers these days. This was originally released with a gradient yarn kit from Miss Babs, but I decided to knit it not with the kit designated for this shawl, but with their “Coastal Highway” gradient kit (which seems to no longer be available, alas!), which was intended for a different pattern. But I just loved the rainbow colors and the progression they form in this design:

I struggled a little with the question of whether to actually put them in rainbow order, but I ultimately went for it and was happy with my decision.

That’s quite enough for today! Next time I’ll come at you with some completely freestyle / self-designed pieces to balance out all this knitting by the book.

Remember… doing things?

If it wasn’t clear enough that I am a “process” and not a “product” knitter, consider the fact that, despite the fact that I knit just about every single day, I have not updated this blog since spring break last year. Now it’s spring break again, and we’re all under quarantine, and on top of that it’s raining out so I can’t even go for a walk. So let us remember happier, sunnier times when it was okay to leave the house and do things. Here are some projects I’ve finished lately, and that were photographed back in the innocent, pre-apocalyptic times (January).

First up is the Dandelion on a Meadow Shawl by Lily Go. I will be the first to admit that my relationship with Lily Go is that of a masochist to a sadist. With her 300+ stitch bottom-up cast-ons and her intricate, complex patterns, she designs beautiful work that is an absolute pain in the ass to actually knit. I don’t think I’ve knit a single one of her patterns without having to rip back huge amounts due to some gigantic blunder. With this one, I had to rip out the whole middle/top section (see below); everything back to the border section, after getting quite far along. Use stitch markers, my friends, and life lines. The yarn I used was Sundara’s fingering silky merino in “Seditious Sedum.”

This was something I worked on mostly this past summer; my blocking board shot is dated September 1:

If you’ve been following me for awhile, though, you know that I always have a “comfort” knitting project going alongside my more difficult knitting, and this sweater was that for most of the autumn:

This is the Van Damme Tee by Sarah Solomon, from the Summer 2019 issue of Interweave Knits. It was easy-peasy with its miles of basketweave stitch, and I love the result! A very wearable casual sweater that doesn’t scream “handmade,” not that I don’t also love things that do. The yarn is Dharma, a 50/50 yak/mulberry silk blend from Dragonfly Fibers, in “Into the Woods.” It’s not as soft as I’d imagined, given that fiber content, but it has a great drape.

Lastly (for now), a pair of socks that I sort of have Stockholm Syndrome about. They’re objectively ugly, but I kind of love them?

You know, orange and purple? Natural complements? The colorway made a little more sense in the skein, where it reminded me of a sunset sky, than it does knitted up. I picked a pattern that was designed for variegated yarn, and I think it worked pretty well. The pattern is Dalekanium by Dena Stelly, and it’s free! It’s a toe-up pattern, and it uses a garter-stitch short-row heel, which I think I haven’t done before and ended up really liking — it’s easy and intuitive, and in spite of the fact that the heel & gusset look shallow, they fit my feet really well. The yarn is Sundara Super Sock, in a colorway called “Love Like Lightning.” I think/hope it’s a reference to Romeo & Juliet. In Act 2, Scene 2 (the famous balcony scene), Juliet says, “I have no joy of this contract tonight: / It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; / Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say ‘It lightens.'” Juliet: demonstrably smarter than Romeo for the entire play, but not smart enough to realize that there might be life after that dope. Alas.

My hope, folks, is that I can cajole my husband into photographing more of my recent knits so that I can blog them for you in the coming days. If the rain ever stops. Stay safe out there!

Scarf Life

Way back in September (!), Pat and I did a photoshoot of three scarves that I’d finished in the recent-ish past, and I’m only now getting around to sharing it with you, as the first of this series of catch-up posts. This one here is Estuary by Emily Wessel, knit in Sundara Sock yarn, a superwash merino, in the “Indigo Sky” colorway. I used 2 skeins, and I alternated them for color consistency.

I knew the variegated colorway would compete with a lace pattern, but I picked a pattern with a “watery” motif that I thought would look good with the shifting colors, and I think I succeeded. I knit this mostly last summer; I remember working on it on the train on the 4th of July. Here’s the full wingspan; I’m pretty sure I added a repeat or two in the middle to use up more of my yarn:

Next up is a pattern called Trickery by Hunter Hammersen:

It’s from “Curls 2,” her second collection of these asymmetrical scarves. I knit it in another Sundara yarn, the Fingering Silky Merino in a colorway called “The Verge of Spring.” It’s quite beautiful in person, a mottled shiny silver, and I picked this simple textural pattern to let the yarn do the talking. Here’s an extreme close-up:

I worked on this mostly in the spring of last year; it was the travel project that I brought on our trip to New Orleans. (Which means that I definitely knit on this while very drunk — part of why I brought it was that it was pretty simple!) Here’s a shot that shows you the texture in context a bit more — and those earrings are from the New Orleans trip! They’re a rendering of the ironwork on the balcony across the street from the shop where I bought them:

Lastly, a bit of comfort knitting, even less complex than the above:

This is just a garter-stitch striped scarf, knit lengthwise, in some DELICIOUS yarn — Sulka Nina from Mirasol, which is a blend of extrafine merino, baby alpaca, and mulberry silk. GET IN MY FACE!

Look at this shiny, fuzzy goodness! The colorways are Blackberry, Thistle, and Victoria — I think that goes from dark to light. I bought this yarn in Idyllwild on our second wedding anniversary trip (August 2017), and I think I started knitting this off and on shortly afterwards. I honestly have no memory of when I finished it.

I have plenty more backlog projects that I’ll share at a later date, but at least this is a start! Today I’m off to Peru for a school trip — can you say LLAMAS AND ALPACAS? I’ll be on the hunt for some good yarn and fiber to be sure!

On Trend

If you’ve been following the online knitting world for the past year or so, you know that the Find Your Fade shawl has been alllll the rage for awhile now. This is not that shawl. One reason it wouldn’t work for me is that I didn’t have enough colors; what I had to work with was three skeins of a four-skein gradient set that I got on sale (because of the missing skein) from Sundara during one of her odds-n-ends sales. The colorway is “Reverberation,” and I think what’s missing is the darkest skein. You can actually snag a non-gradient version of “Reverberation” right now at Sundara if you act fast; she dyes in small batches and things sell out fast, so it’s serendipitous that it happens to be available right now as I’m posting this! What she’s selling right now is on her “extra fine fingering merino” base, while this shawl was knit from her older “fingering merino” base….. I’m not too sure what “extra fine” adds, but it looks in the photo like it might be springier and denser than this was.

So what pattern did I use, you ask? A less complicated, very similar pattern that came out a year earlier than the ubiquitous Find Your Fade: the Everyday Shawl by Jenny F. Here’s the wingspan shot:

What I did to stretch out the gradient-ness of my three-skein set was hold two strands together the whole time. On the lefthand side of this picture, I was holding the lightest yarn together with itself, then I moved on to holding it together with the second-lightest yarn, which I then held together with itself, etc. I knit approximately the “small” size (on size 9 needles because of the 2-strands-at-once), but what’s great about the Everyday Shawl is that it’s very easy to adjust the size to the amount of yarn you have; you just have to weigh it carefully and begin to change the shaping at the appropriate time. I used all but about 5 yards of the ~1500 yards that I had, so hooray for math!

While we’re on the subject of math and shawls, I might as well show you one of my other recent creations, which I’m calling “3,892 Miles”:

If this looks a lot like Melanie Berg’s “5190 Miles,” that’s because it is, but with about 75% less yarn. I bought two skeins of Madelinetosh’s Tosh Merino Light, somehow under the impression that they would be enough for this project, and then when I actually read the pattern, I realized that was not the case. So I just made it a little smaller. Every time you’re supposed to do the chain-pattern twice in a row, I did it only once, and I cut out a few repeats here and there, and it ended up looking fine and still being plenty of shawl.

The colors of TML, by the way, are “Ceremony” and “Fir Wreath.” I’m assuming “Fir Wreath” is the green one. One more picture, because I’m rather fond of this dramatic angle:

Alight from Tartessos

It’s a shawl! It’s a scarf! It’s a… shawl-scarf hybrid, I guess? Anyway, it’s pretty. The pattern is Tartessos from Knitty, by M K Nance. I got nearly all the way through this thing before deciding it was a stupid size, unravelling the whole thing, and re-knitting it with two additional repeats to make it longer. The actual pattern is more like a caplet-shawl than a scarf, but I wanted it to be long enough to wrap, like so:

With the original pattern, I don’t think an arrangement like this would work; I think the only way you can wear it is with a shawl pin. I do like it that way:

But I also like having options. And I wanted to use up all of this gorgeous yarn, and to not have a stupid useless small amount left over. The yarn is Sundara Sport Silk (which I recently used here), in a colorway called “Alight from the Dawn.”

I’ll be back soon with a sweater rehabilitated from the naughty list — in the meantime, happy holidays to you and yours!

Blasphemy

I have committed a knitting sin: I. Did. Not. Block. This. Scarf. And I will not apologize. The yarn: it was 100% silk. Blocking kills silk; it becomes stretched-out, limp, inert. With this piece I wanted texture, all the lovely texture you see in the above photo.

The lovely yarn is Sundara Sport Silk, in the “Worlds of Unknown” colorway. Most of the yarn I impulse-buy these days is from Sundara; I’m a sucker for the dyer’s “daily dreams” email format. The pattern is Hunter Hammersen’s Infuscate, from her Curls book, which I adore, and to which I recently learned there is a new sequel. Here’s a zoomed-out photo, so you can see more of the piece in all its glory:

The 3-D texture is 3/4 of the appeal for me with this thing, and it’s plenty big without blocking. So here we are: blasphemy.

While we’re at it, here are two more projects from my backlogs:

Ok, so maybe I’m a sucker for variegated purples. You did notice how I dyed my hair purple this summer, right? This yarn here is Pride from Forbidden Woolery, in the “Spellbound” colorway. It was produced specially for my LYS, Alamitos Bay Yarn Company, for the 2016 LA County Yarn Crawl. It’s hard to tell from this picture, but it has silver threads woven into it, so it’s sparkly.

The pattern is Ardent by Janina Kallio, whose simple designs I have been into lately. I picked this pattern because I thought it would hold up well to the variegation in the yarn, and I was not wrong. I made this a bit larger than the pattern in order to use up most of the yarn; I added another lace section at the end.

Here’s a REALLY old FO:

I finished this at least four or five years ago, but I didn’t block it until a few weeks ago, because when I don’t have the blog going I sometimes just… don’t really have an end point in mind for a piece, and it slips my mind. The yarn is Tosh Merino Light; I’m not sure of the colorway. The pattern is the Augustine Shawlette by Valdis Vrang, a variation on the once-ubiquitous Clapotis.

Clapotis is perhaps the first pattern that I remember “going viral;” it was back in the bad old days before Ravelry, when the only online knitting community that I was personally aware of was the knitting group on LiveJournal. I was still just learning my knits and purls in 2004 when Clapotis hit the web, so its drop-stitch technique was beyond me, but I remember that EVERYONE ON EARTH made one, and there were jokes to be had about “catching the clap.” Later in my knitting life, when I came across this triangular version, I decided I would give it a shot to see what all the fuss had been about. It’s very easy to knit, which is nice, and I get it now: there’s a certain magic to dropping your stitches at the end and ripping out those entire huge columns to create the final effect. I’m glad to finally have this thing in my wardrobe, at any rate — thanks, knitting blog, for getting me off my ass!

Leftovers

This scarf, like this post, is made of leftovers. My previous catchup posts had at least vague themes, and this one’s theme is “everything else.” In fact it won’t quite catch us up to the present, because there’s only so much I feel like I can cram into a single post, but it’ll get us pretty darn close.

What you see here is a linen-stitch scarf made from literal leftovers — scraps of yarn from various other things I’ve made over the years. Unlike some other things that I “saved for the blog” and didn’t wear until I could photograph them, this thing has gotten a lot of use and even been washed a few times — I love it to pieces!

You may also notice that I’m in — gasp! — a new location in these pictures. Pat and I spent a weekend in Idyllwild to celebrate our anniversary, and I brought all these pieces up there to photograph them. However, the other three pieces are all brownish-grayish, and I totally neglected to bring any outfits that would go with them, so this is the only one that we actually photographed up in the woods.

For the rest of them, it’s our beautiful driveway yet again! And sorry to fans of my (very faded) purple hair, but it’s gone now; I have to start being a stern 9th grade teacher again next week:

This scarf is also (half) made out of leftovers. The gray is leftover merino/yak/silk yarn that I spun for my Starshower Cowl, and the gradient yarn is the merino/silk handspun that I talk about making here. The pattern is just a simple two-row stripe & one-column rib, made famous by Jared Flood. This is one of those times that I wish you could reach through your screen, because this scarf is SO soft and lovely that you would not believe it.

Next up is an unbelievably large shawl whose knitting took up most of this past fall:

No lie, this thing like like 9 feet from end to end. This is Sunwalker by Melanie Berg. The yarn is Sundara fingering merino, in the “Seaside Storm” colorway. This took most of two skeins, which I did in fact alternate to make sure the color stayed relatively even. It’s a pretty gorgeous autumn-y blend of browns and grays up close:

Lastly, a project in a mystery yarn:

The pattern is Lintilla by Martina Behm, and I love how everyday-wearable it is. The yarn label, though, is lost to history. But look how pretty it is!

Here’s what I know about it: 1) I bought it at an LYS in Seattle. 2) It’s not a major nationwide brand that I’d heard of anyplace else. 3) It’s a springy two-ply merino sock yarn, not unlike Koigu. 4) I’d swear that the colorway was called something like “copper penny” or “bad penny.” I distinctly remember thinking that was a weird thing to call it, as it’s only sort of copper. I’ve done a lot of googling and am really coming up short here. Does anyone out there have any leads?

One last leftover: I need to post this photo somewhere so it will have a URL so that I can put it on the front of my blog. Sorry!

Am I Blue?

Today’s catch-up post is dedicated to neckwear in my favorite colors, which are blue and purple — I sure knit a lot of things on this end of the spectrum! First up is the fabulous All Paths Lead Home shawl by Melanie Berg, whose designs I’ve been super into lately. This was a BLAST to knit; it was super addictive and it kept changing things up. The striping is achieved through slipping stitches, so that part is super easy with a stunning result. Here it is in all its glory on the blocking mat:

My LYS (Alamitos Bay Yarn Company) does a one-time discount during your birthday month of (I think) 20%, so I make a point of making a birthday yarn present to myself every year, and this was last year’s: three skeins of Baah La Jolla, a wonderfully springy sock yarn that I’d been wanting to worth with for forever. The three colorways here are “Over the Moon,” “Pecan,” and “Burgundy.”

I want you to appreciate that it was 85 degrees out last week when we took these photos, but I cheerfully put on jeans and my cutest booties and made believe it was fall:

However, it was pretty unpleasant. So this week I decided to get more bang for my buck and have Pat photograph three pieces in one shoot. Next up is a piece I’ve been dying to wear with jeans, because just look how perfectly it goes with denim!

This is Pavonated, from Hunter Hammersen’s genius Curls book, where all the designs are in this unique curled-triangle shape. This shot on the blocking board is totally inaccurate to the color of the yarn (one thing that’s going on is it’s very wet), but it will let you see the shape:

One thing I really like about this design is the reversibility of the stitch pattern; both sides look really good! However, I will admit that I had more success in the mirror than I did arranging this thing on myself blind for this photoshoot. The below picture would have looked better if I’d tucked that dangling end up, I think:

But let’s talk for a minute about THIS YARN. It’s Sundara Sport Merino Two, in a colorway called “Contarini Palazzo,” inspired by the Monet painting by the same name, and I’m just wild about its subtle shifts between green, blue, and purple, and also about how they all add up to something that goes so well with jeans.

The next piece also features a really amazing yarn:

Sorry for the boob close-up, but I wanted you to see the amazing range of colors in this yarn! This is a 100% tencel yarn by Prism called Delicato Layers. As a fiber snob, I’d been suspect of tencel, but I really liked working with it, and I love the drape of the finished product! Here’s the whole piece:

The pattern is Lale Lace Shawl by Alina Apposova. You can see now why we needed that close-up though, right? From here this mostly just looks purple.

This is one of my favorite things that I’ve made lately; it’s stunning but very everyday-wearable! Here it is on the blocking board, so you can see the lace pattern more clearly:

Lastly, we have a cowl that I knit from yarn I spun myself:

The pattern is Appia by Hillary Smith Callis, and it works really well for handspun yarn! The fiber I bought at my local Renaissance fair, and all I can find on those ladies online is this website, which doesn’t give many details about the actual fiber they sell. I actually have no idea what kind of fiber this was apart from “some kind of wool” — the label doesn’t specify; it just calls is “Colonial” and says that the colorway is Burgundy. While this cowl looks pretty cute, it feels pretty scratchy, so I don’t know how much wear it will get.

Believe it or not, I do knit in colors other than blue and purple, and next time we’ll cover some of those other projects. By the way, if you are friends with me on Ravelry you may have noticed that not many of these projects that I’ve been blogging are posted there yet — they will be soon, I promise!