Fiber & Friends #4 Continued--My Fisher Lassie

If you haven't read the previous post about Fisher Lassie, you need to do it now. I'll wait right here till you're done.

Ok. So.  My own Fisher Lassie is made with Jo Sharp Classic DK Wool in a heathery shade called Ink. I picked the color (a navy blue with grey doing the heathering) because it looked so much like denim, not only a work clothes fabric, but one of my all-time favorites whether woven or knitted. (see weakness for Rowan and other denim cotton yarn)

Once I began knitting those first patterned sections, though, I had a brief freakout about the color choice. A gansey is all about texture patterns, and it was looking like a heathered field of moosh. Pattern submerged in the randomness of blended grey and navy.

Fortunately, when I backed away from the knitting, the texture was unmistakable. It was there! It is visible! But a new mental post-it note for my knitbrain. Absolutely solid colors are the best for textured patterns. I might not be so lucky the next time.

There was also another mental warning embedded here. When it's hard to see texture up close, it's hard to spot knitting errors in time for an easy fix. I had jolly well better get through the patterned upper sections before the summer light wanes, or I will be a crazy lady with a crappy looking sweater next spring. Once the armholes are joined and the texture finished, it's smooth stocking stitch sailing with the sleeves and the remainder of the body.

So here I am just before the Joining of the Armholes:

Armholes were joined, and carefully I made my way to the end of 5 pattern repeats. While spraining my arm patting myself on the back in congratulations, a Wonderful Idea sprang into my joyous knitbrain. Why not do the sleeves now? The entire armhole is waiting and ready. And by making the sleeves now, I can avoid my least favorite part of the knit-in-one-piece sweater. The part where the entire body is done and you have to do the sleeves by tossing this big hot pile of wool around and around in your lap, with associated tangling of needles and yarn.

So, Reader, that's exactly what I'm doing. Tossing a little bolero around and around instead of a full-grown sweater. Putting the main sweater body on spare yarn also enabled a try on of said bolero. Hm. Fit is as expected, but the end of pattern hits not quite at the bottom of the boobage. On the pattern model (refer to previous post) the ridge is somewhere midway between bust and waist. As the sleeves go round and round, I am contemplating doing an extra vertical pattern repeat so the ridge hits in a more flattering place.

Oh yeah, and I found just the right heathery denimy buttons already--See?

Wish I could get the photo to show how well buttons and yarn match. You'll just have to take my word for it.  Navy is fickle to photo.

So round and round and round we go, and where the pattern's gonna stop, nobody yet knows!

Fiber & Friends #3

I've wanted to dye with indigo for a very long time, probably about as long as I've been fooling around with fiber. Indigo ikat,  sashiko, shibori and batik have always been favorites in shades of blue. I even own an indigo dye kit that I have never felt competent to use.

So I was absolutely elated to find that I could take a class in Cordova from a true natural dye expert, Kathy Hatori of Botanical Colors.  I had read enough about indigo to know that it was an art, not just a 1 2 3 set of instructions.

The class was held outdoors, at a cabin by Eyak Lake. It's a great idea to dye outdoors, for obvious color-drippy reasons.

Here's our class space--a propane burner and vat for each student, with various dyed and undyed skeins hanging about. The magenta and golden skeins were for overdying with indigo. I was so preoccupied with turning white yarn blue, I never got around to the overdyes.

My main aim was to dye my 6 skeins of Cormo wool from a Juniper Moon CSA share bought last year. My plan was to just plainly dye two skeins, dye two skeins shibori-style with resist areas, and do an ombre job on the last two.

First up was the process of making the vat: stirring up the indigo powder with a little henna and calcium hydroxide.  We started in quart jars and eventually progressed to the big pots of warm water. Because making indigo dye is an organic process, there's some waiting time, but eventually you get your vat ready to go, and it looks like this:

Bubbly scum on top, and a metallic sheen. The top of the vat is blue because the dye has oxidized in contact with the air, but the liquid below the surface is a green tea color. As you proceed with your dyeing, you must constantly check the color of the dye solution, and rebalance it with additions of fructose when it veers from that tea green.

One thing you quickly learn about indigo is that your fiber exits the vat not blue, but green. Then with exposure to air, the dye oxidizes and turns blue. Intensity and depth of color is not so much the strength of the dye solution, but the number of times the item has been in and out of the vat, each dip with a pause to air and oxidize.

Here is the pair of cormo skeins tied with rubber bands and ready to go in:

 

And here is a pair of the plain skeins after a couple of trips to the vat: 

They look a bit uneven because they have picked up some of the powder from the bottom of the vat. A plain water rinse evened them out and neutralized the pH from the dye solution.

 Here are my products of the day, posed with some fishnets for added ambiance--The darker blues are the plain skeins, the lighter ones the shibori and the other two. Plus the colorful non-overdyes.  Time and the waning strength of my dye vat made my later skeins much lighter than the first two, and the ombre version a goal for the next time.

 

Yarn is famously not the only thing that turns blue on indigo day. Indigo dyers are known for their blue hands. Though I wore gloves during the actual dyeing, I got a little blue in the paws just from handling the yarn to reskein it  before its final rinse.

Banging Out a Blaer

Followers of the Mason Dixon blog will recall from a short time ago their #bangoutasweater project. The idea was to pick pattern and gauge that would be quick to knit, and to make a sweater in a short enough time to enjoy wearing it before the weather turned too warm. The pattern was Stopover in an Icelandic aran wool, very light and airy yet warm. It turned into a big knitalong where many knitters did indeed #bangoutasweater.

I was enchanted by the concept, but not really on board with the chosen pattern. I even had been lurking in Icelandic yarn stores on the web, electronically drooling on the yarn, but not ready to commit. And then the very same Mason Dixons flashed this in my receptive eyes.

The Blaer Icelandic cardigan! Not in the big gauge of the other one, but still a swell excuse to venture into Icelandic yarns. Being a creature of weak will, off I went. A couple of weeks later, a genuine parcel of yarn from Iceland plopped on my doorstep, and it is very exciting.

It smells not of sheep or lanolin, nor of dye and processing, but has a very pleasant herb-y soap-y scent. If Yankee Candle tried to capture it, might it be called Clean Wool?

And pondering (yet another) delicious new pile of yarn, it occurred to me that I maybe should try to #bangoutablaer. Yes, this is finer gauge than Stopover,  but the spring knitting retreat is coming soon, and wouldn't it be fun to see how much of a simple cardigan I could #bangout in a weekend dedicated to hours and hours of knitting in the company of like-minded souls? Stay tuned to this station for thrilling updates!

P.S. No worries about finishing too late to wear it. It's always sweater weather in Alaska!

Yet More Yarn Yarns

Trawling (appropriate for fisherman sweater, no?) through denim yarn patterns, I think I've found what my ecru Rowan pile wants to be:

The Cornish Knit Frock by Jane Gottelier from the book Indigo Knits. I had a flirtation with the Whitby Sweater from the same book, but decided that in ecru it would look like any old aran, as it would not have the lightening effect that makes the cables stand out when using a colored yarn. Besides, Whitby is in Yorkshire, not Cornwall.

An added attraction is that the Cornish sweater was made by one of the Knitting Goddesses, Kay Gardiner of Mason-Dixon fame, and was done with the same yarn substitution I am using, Rowan Denim for elann.com Den-M-Nit. Happily for me, Kay demonstrated that the shrinkage of the two yarns is the same.

Plus there is the connection to Cornwall. My DH is from there, and we have visited family there many times.

Fisher ganseys are also on my mind because I am happily anticipating my sojourn to Cordova, Alaska this summer for the Fisher Folk knitfest:

I have always loved gansey sweaters, the look of them and their lore. I have knitted a few, and will enjoy knitting more. They are a garment that looks great on everyone, men and women, big people and little people.

And when I'm in Cordova, one of the workshops I'll be attending is an indigo dyeing session. I'm going to take my now-foofed 6 Juniper Moon CSA cormo skeins and dunk them in the pot.

For a while, I was conflicted about whether I should just do them plain indigo, or go for spaced shades of blue, or tie them up to get white spaces in the blue. Wait. Three techniques into six skeins divides evenly--I could do 2 of each! Hope the teacher agrees...

Another Yarn Yarn

I'm sure this has happened to you. You nip to the local yarn store for just one skein that you need immediately to finish/enhance a current project. Their friendly personnel help you find said skein right away--hurray! But since you're in this yarn store and you haven't been to this particular one for a while, it would be a good idea to have a quick scout around to see what they've got these days in case you have another yarn emergency. Emergency preparedness, right?

And so it was with me. Just running my eyes over the goods until--oh my stars and garters!! A big ol' heap of one of my very favorite yarns, now discontinued, Rowan Denim by name. On sale! 50% off! OK, it wasn't in one of the actual indigo blue shades that behave so bluejeans-y when washed and worn. It was ecru, but still...

Reader, I succumbed. To all 26 balls:

If you're not familiar with this denim yarn, you may not know that because of its built-in shrinkage, it must be knit to its own specific patterns. There's no substitution. For a while, Elann.com sold a knockoff yarn, that was much like the Rowan, but sadly, it, too, is no longer with us.

Once home with my bulging bag of cotton, I hauled out my old Rowan magazines to hunt for the sort of gansey pattern I dimly remembered from those august publications in the '90s. I knitted a plain blue gansey with Rowan denim long ago, and finally had to part from it when the denim wear pattern began to lighten up the boobage area on my front and to highlight the girls in a way that was most unseemly. (At least that won't happen with ecru!)

That was when I fell down a nostalgic rabbit hole. Do you remember Rowan in its heyday? The tunic lengths! The baggy volume! It was a heckofa way to sell a ton of yarn.

In Rowan's defense, it was a British company conceiving garments for a British climate, and of  course people needed to show off their knitting chops while chilling in houses without central heating or walking colourfully on the windy heath. Plenty of room under there for more woolen layers and maybe a hot water bottle or heated brick or two.

But not only did the large mass of the sweaters demand a lot of yarn, there was an insane intarsia design trend, possibly the acme of this technique, that required the purchase of many, many balls of yarn, of which you would only use a few yards. Stocks of knitting bobbin companies soared, I'm sure. And it all probably peaked with this amazing pattern:

Persian Carpet, by Donna Lauren. It calls for 30 (30!) different shades of Rowan DK yarn. I don't know how you could use the chart without blowing it up to the size of a table top. 30 colors means 30 different chart symbols. Did anyone ever actually make this sweater? I checked on Ravelry to see. No projects, and in only 2 queues. How long would you dangle this thing in your queue before you cast on? Probably forever, in my case. There would always be something I wanted more than to fiddle with over 30 bobbins and weave in umpty-gazillion (an actual count) ends.

The end of this trawl through nostalgic Rowanland was to wonder if these dead tree publications have any resale value. The answer is yes, indeedy! Many of mine weren't shown on Ebay, but the older numbers seem to go for $20-$40, and one rarity for $120. Don't get your hopes up or your bankrolls out yet though, folks. Old Rowan magazine $20, knitting nostalgia--priceless!

Yarn Matters

Good old Ravelry. I got my CSA share from Juniper Moon Farm a few months ago. Checking to see what others planned to do with their dk Cormo yarn, I read that the first thing was to foof it out by soaking the skeins in water. Whoa. Glad I heard to do that--it makes a b-i-i-i-g-g difference!

Here are the skeins as received:

Color is yellower than real life

Soaking:

And post-soak. All foofed out, as you can see!

It wouldn't even fit in a square frame!

That could make such a big difference in the final product! Still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with it. It's not quite a sweater's worth, but more than a scarf. Perhaps I'll experiment with indigo dyeing it and figure out for what later.

Lately I've been having fun using up stash with the Crazed Scandinavian Cowl. 

It's fun because the pattern changes frequently--all sorts of traditional and modern Scandinavian fair isle that I decided to mix up further with various selections of Knit Picks Chroma.  Then at nearly the half way mark (300 of the 600 rows), I looked back and found this:

It's what happens when you knit in dim winter light. Some of my "white" wasn't so white. Some of it was ivory! I decided to laugh and consider it another element of crazy in the crazed cowl.

As the tube grows, I am thinking I might stop well before I do all 600 rows. Doubling what I have at the halfway point, this thing could be 6 feet in diameter! That is way more cowlage than one person needs or possibly could even see over. Maybe I could  do it as two cowls?

One more yarnly yarn. Handmaiden's Great Big Sea has been discontinued. I found some beautiful skeins on sale intending to knit for a special event. Then my idea got bigger, and the yarn was still available, and somehow my pile got bigger.  And then the event was cancelled. The yarn makes a beautiful arrangement in a basket on the coffee table. I wonder what it wants to become now?

Small Things

My next Seven Skeins project is the Stranded Bunnet, but it's not my best work. This happens to me sometimes with Sudoku, too. I go crashing along and then find out when I'm nearly done that I've screwed up back there somewhere and it's too late to find the mistake without erasing/frogging everything back to the beginning.

The gauge or something was off, and it ended up somewhere between a beanie and a slouch. My double decreases were wrong, and they look like rubbish. On only 1 of the 5 decrease lines the Coo color predominated, so I stitched it over with Ptarmigan in order to make it look a little more like the others. Bleh. Still keeps the noggin warm, though.

One of the fun things that happened with the hat was needing new needles. Yes, although I have many many needles of many many kinds in many many sizes, I did not have a set of 4mm dpns. I'm sure this never happens to you, right? So I hie me to my nearest yarn shop and come away with these beauties:

See the points? Half blunt end up, half pointy

Addi Flipstix. One end of each needle is sharp; the other is rounded. A handy feature, but you do have to pay attention every time you start on a new needle that is the way round that you prefer. I think it's delightful that each set is multicolored. I'm not sure what benefit that confers, but it makes them look fun, and just right for knitting the great colors of Buachaille.

But all is not Buachaille all the time. Like a true acolyte of the Yarn Harlot, I get sidetracked by other projects, to wit:  The Fish Bone Scarf from a Morehouse Farm kit.

I bought a bunch of kits from them, and this was one. It was a quick, fun knit, but not a terribly practical scarf. Nice and soft, but too lacy to be very warm, and it needs to be worn as in the picture to display what it is. I made the tail bigger than the pattern said, and added a yarnover eye to make it look fishier.

Also from Morehouse is a kit for their Dinosaur Scarf, which I made into a Dragon Scarf, mainly by making meaner eyes and trying to rig up some fire breathing instead of a flat round tongue. The shaping of the piece is really genius. Except for separate upper and lower jaw, the whole thing is knitted in one piece. Really fun to knit and pretty cool looking.

  Morehouse has designs for lots of animal scarves--alligator, fox, raccoon--a bunch of them are in their book Critter Knits.

Finally there has been enough clear weather and daylight to photograph the Solar System Blanket in all of its glory. (Pause to consider the irony of depending on sidereal conditions.) It was given and, I think, much appreciated, to my friendly local astronomer for Christmas.

Buachaille Cowl

This week's Seven Skeins pattern releases were much more the sort of things I'd like to knit. Kokkeluri looks like they would be really interesting to knit and great to wear--a firm yet soft fabric that would make wonderful warm mittens. Trouble is, I rarely wear mittens, as most of my venturing outdoors in winter involves driving, for which gloves with grippy palms are better suited. Reluctantly, I will have to pass on these until I find an important use (or user) for mittens.

Cochal, though, is something I certainly would wear. I find scarves and cowls really essential to keeping warm, and the soft touch of Buachaille is just right for something that will snuggle the neck and face. But which of the colors to choose for it? They're all so lovely and all of them go together with all the others so well! They're beautiful together just as they are:

See what I mean? It's almost a shame to break up the bouquet! But I finally decided to use two of the natural shades because they are just slightly softer than the dyed ones. Squall and Haar it is, then, saving the white Ptarmigan (!!) as a contrast for whatever I make with the dyed shades. An added plus is that these neutral shades will go well with any coat or jacket.

And then I noticed in one of the pattern photos a bright Highland Coo "cell" in the grey and green version. I loved that little accent and read the pattern eagerly to find out how it was worked in. Turns out it's not just a single cell, but a row of cells only one of which shows in the photo. Hmm. so much for trying to figure out how to achieve that little spot in the overall circular knitting.

Then lightening struck. Well, OK, a minor inspiration hit me. I could have ALL the colors! I could make this cowl a celebration of all the Buchaille colors at minimal yarn expense if I used Squall for the main color (the framework), Haar for the contrast color (the cells), and duplicate stitch a little of each of the other colors in random spots. Eureka!

On I cast and away I went.  It's a fast pattern and the yarn feels lovely moving through the hands:

Here's the finished item, with its little colored cells looking like jewels in settings! And take a look at how well the yarn usage was calculated. I made it exactly to pattern and the little coils are all that was left over from the main colors. Very impressive.

Having said that, when worn the cowl feels a little too tall for its diameter. If I made it again, I think I would knock off about 3 rows of cells. And being less scrunched, the "jewels" would show off better!

And now, back to our previously scheduled projects. I've just amassed this pile of Handmaiden Great Big Sea with the intention of making a shawl. What kind of shawl does it want to be, I wonder?

The Seven Skeins

I am crazy about the following: the designer Kate Davies, Scotland, yarn, new stuff, posh yarn, and, occasionally knitting clubs & schemes. How could I not jump at the Seven Skeins yarn club, concocted by Kate to introduce her own yarn line produced from Scottish wool?

The deal is, you pay up and receive a package containing one each of the seven colors produced. Plus a bag to keep them in, plus patterns, and eventually a print book with the patterns and extra goodies. I paid, I waited, and now the yarn has arrived:

The yarn is called Buachaille, named for two Scottish mountains whose Gaelic name means "herder". Colors, from left to right, come from the Scottish countryside: Between Weathers, Squall, Yaffle [a green Scottish woodpecker], PTARMIGAN!!, Islay [KD's favorite Hebridean island], Haar [Scottish fog], and Highland Coo [the red shaggy Scottish cattle]. I love how the coo skein is twisted in the opposite direction from all the others. That's a contrary redhead for you.

What's the yarn like? It's a loose 2-ply, fingering/sport weight, with a haze of long fibers. Three colors are natural undyed wool and they are as soft as kittens. The dyed skeins are just slightly less cuddly, but they all would feel fine worn next to the skin.

Patterns will start arriving soon, 1 per week. It makes me smile that in thrifty Scottish tradition, the complete set of club patterns will use up every scrap of the 7 skeins, and to that end, Kate recommends that you obtain a scale that weighs to the individual gram, and she provides a spreadsheet-cum-calculator to help you figure out how much of which skein to use for what. Meh, I doubt that I'll want to make all the patterns, and I really don't want to buy another scale, so I'll bumble along as I usually do. And anyway, two of the skeins have a knot in them, so that will mess with what I do.

Well, all wound up and ready to go! Bring on the patterns!

P.S. The first patterns have been published, and meh, indeed, I'll nae be makin' baffies!

Heavenly Net Loft

I recently made an extremely brief trip to Cordova, Alaska, and fulfilled a longtime ambition of visiting the Net Loft handcraft store there. Not just a visit, but a one-woman private browse. Wow. If this place isn't heaven, it's at least the waiting room. Such a stupendous store in such a remote place!

I first made the acquaintance of the Net Loft when I was scouring the internet for the last skein or two that I needed to complete my Winter Sunset cardigan. I tried them all--local stores, the giant web sites--nada. Then I saw this little place down at the bottom of my search. Cordova, Alaska? It's not even on the road system. Still, I had to try or abandon the whole project. Of course, you know the end of the story. They had my 2 skeins, saved my sweater, and were super nice into the bargain.

Then this spring I heard about an utterly fantastic knitfest being held at the Knit Loft in June. It's over now, but if you're quick, the info is still up on the web here. It wasn't just a little weekend do with a big name instructor; the list was full of knitting superstars: Bonnie Marie Burns, Donna Druchunas, Gudrun Johnston, and Mary Jane Mucklestone, to name a few. And there were more, some lesser known and some local, but all very very talented. Nor was it just sitting and knitting for a week. There were early morning walks; there were hikes and art tours; there was special yoga for knitters; there was weaving, spinning, felting, needlefelting, and more, and more, and more! You can see why I was seriously put out that I heard of this so late when all my travel time and budget for the year was committed elsewhere.

When I made my visit, Dotty, the principal organizer of the whole thing, was still recovering from it all. How does such a genius and major maven recharge her batteries? By taking herself to Shetland for Shetland Wool Week, of course!

But back to my browse. I took some pictures, but there are more and better ones on their web site here. Seriously. Click that link and at least watch the slideshow. Besides some stunning Alaska scenery, you will also glimpse some of their yarn displays, and let me tell you their yarns are truly unique.

Three Irish Girls dyes a whole lot of custom colorways just for them. Some reflect the scenery, the rocks, berries, and animals. Some reproduce exactly the colors and pattern of watercolor paintings by local artists. Here's a sample, and here and here.

And then there's the local librarian who dyes yarns in colorways inspired by books.  Skeins in the Stacks even have Dewey Decimal-inspired numbers indicating weight. And the Peter Pan color actually twinkles with fairy dust!

Snow Capped Yarns are works of art created by local dyer Shelly Kocan. The seasons, the landscape and its inhabitants all inspire her. There's a special range of New Zealand yarns in big skeins. There are selections of international brands like Shetland's Jamieson & Smith and Dale from Norway.

There's beautiful and unique jewelry, chocolates, teas, cards, knitting bags, fiber for spinning... If this were the waiting room for heaven, you just might have so much fun that you'd never actually go in!

On the right above is one of my eventual purchases, a big skein of New Zealand dk called "Copper Sunset", not reproduced here true to color, but good-looking this way, too. In daylight it's fuschia and a very rusty brown. Gorgeous!

One more thing to show you. Across the street from the store is the city library and museum. The anchor outside has been very thoroughly yarnbombed. (7-year-old grandson added for scale.)

Intentionally off the beaten path and definitely worth the journey!

Mountain Topper

Another hat done for the Hats for Huts auction!

It's Deborah Tomasello's Snow-Capped Mountains, done in the prescribed yarn (Knit Picks Palette) but in shades I had on hand, not the exact prescribed ones. Still, turned out pretty well, don't you think? Braided tail on the top is my own added whimsey.

Snow Dyeing Again

What could be more appropriate for an all-Alaskan yarn than to dye it with 100% Alaskan snow? And so I did.

Base yarn is the Alaska Yarn Co. 100% Alaskan Grown Wool, DK/light worsted weight from CommuKnitty Stash in Homer, AK. Remember when I bought it last fall? Here's the nest I plucked it from, all pale and bare down in the corner:

After the vinegar soak, the skeins went into the tub laid out on racks, then covered with snow. Sky blue dye powder sprinkled on top of the snow:

and the whole thing left in the heated garage overnight to let the snow melt and the dye seep down into the yarn. Next morning, this is what I had:

Pretty pleasing that for once,  I got something like what I was expecting from a crazy dye technique, a cloudy blue Alaska sky. Last layer was a sparse sprinkle of yellow powder, for sunshine and to meld with some of the blue to form greenery.

 Then a half hour's steam, a rinse, and what have we got?

The yarn for a very Alaskan hat.

Farewell , Old Friend

I have a favorite sweater, one that has been with me for a long time. I love its colors, the way the simple pattern shows off those colors to best advantage, and I enjoyed knitting it long ago. Because it's such a great match of yarn and pattern, I have always gotten compliments when I wear it.

I made it, oh, probably at least 20 years ago with a Vogue Knitting pattern and Colinette yarn, back in the day when multi-colored yarn was rare, and Colinette dyed plain-textured wool in finer gauges as well as the wild stuff they're known for today. I had a rummage for the pattern and yarn, but they are lost in the mists of time or the family move from the UK to the US.

 I've become a smaller person in the past year, and just recently caught a glimpse of myself in this sweater. Oh dear. It is huge. And not in an oversized-cosy-sweater way. More like a knitted-tent sort of way.

I even had a brief seizure of "I'll unravel it and steam the yarn and make it up into something smaller", but reality quickly reasserted itself as I thought about how many of the items in my Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble may have landed there because it was apparent they would turn out to be a size or 3 too small.  Much wiser to invest my effort in something from the Heap, so I will wash and block my old friend, and donate it with other undergrown clothing. Maybe someone else will enjoy having a sweater that gets compliments, and they can say, "Can you believe it? Hand knitted, and I think it's wool, and it only cost me $5 at Value Village!"