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?

Owl's Well

I've been not-blogging for quite a spell, so there's quite a bit to catch up on.

First up is the Tale of the Owl Mitts. It started with a friend's Instagram post of a pair of fingerless owl mitts captioned merely "Want!" I knew she A. was not a knitter, B. is a big-time bird lover, and C. there was a good chance the pattern or something very like it was on Ravelry. Found the pattern in about 2 minutes and told her about it, offering to make her a pair.

Like many passionate knitters, money can't buy my work. To put a real dollar value on the time it takes to knit something, even a small thing,  makes for a ridiculous price tag that seems all out of proportion.  To set a nominal price is to trivialize the effort and possibly make the item undervalued in a non-monetary sense. So barter is often a good solution. A chunk of my skill and time for a chunk of yours. We still haven't hit on exactly what her part of the trade will be, but figuring it out is all part of the fun.

Meanwhile, I took some measurements, bought the pattern, and pulled the perfect owl-brown alpaca from the stash. I cast on. Knitting the mitts was a fun, cable-y time. But what about the eyes? Eyes are crucial to the appearance of the owls. Most of the versions of the pattern (and Kate Davies' Owls sweater, Owligan, and Owlet) use small buttons, so off to the store I went. What I found were exactly four small stuffed animal eyes with black pupil and clear plastic iris. Pretty good, but even better if the iris was a bright yellow. If I could find the right nail polish, I could paint the back of the clear area, and, reader, I did!

(Bottom portion shows upended eyes with paint/polish drying)

 Add eyes to owls, and the effect is perfect piercing owl stare-eyes!

Mitts were ready for their wearer, and very happily received to keep hands warm in a cold studio.

The owls' stare has also come in handy for admonishing family members. When held up as outward-facing fists, her kids call them "the Owls of Justice." As in, "don't make me get out the Owls of Justice!"

And just to confirm the lifelike gaze of the Owls of Justice, take a look at a Great Horned Owl that once perched on my deck:

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 Madness

The Buachaille yarn and the Seven Skeins Club has been almost too much fun thus far. The yarn is so wonderful to work with and the colors are so beautifully made for each other. The multicolor idea I had for the cowl  has infected my view of the next pattern release, Pawkies, the fingerless mitts.

At first I was dead set on the stranded version, fondly imagining how warm the double layers of this wool would be. But then my eye landed on the striped version, and I counted seven stripes on each mitt. Seven stripes, seven skeins! How could I not continue the theme? I had at least a smidgen of each of the seven colors. It was totally possible!

The pattern prescribes a rolled-edge cast on, and gives some resources for learning how to do it. I tried making a small swatchy trial, and got basically nowhere with it except a little balder from pulling my hair out. But casting a wider YouTube net, I found this one, which has you make a temporary waste piece half as many stitches wide as your eventual ribbing, do the business, and then pick your "real" knitting off the waste.

It makes as fine a tubular edge as any other method, with no dangling "udder" needle (thanks for that image, Cat Bordhi!) or shoogling stitches back and forth and reaching around here and there.

And here we are, tubular edge, seven-color pawkies all done:

Did you notice the color order is reversed on the pair, but still looks balanced by the Highland Coo in the center? Total accident. And the smidgen of Haar was not quite a big enough smidgen so I had to fake the second gray stripe with another yarn, but I don't think it's very obvious, do you?

I took a picture of both cowl and mitts to see how they'd go together, contrasting dots and dashes in the same color suite.

But the real stunner is how both pieces completely coordinate with the colors of my purse:

Amazing, and another total accident!

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!

Lifeline

This is what happens when you take the directions in a pattern as suggestions, not instructions. Beavering away on my Gradient Yoke Sweater, I get down near the hemline where it says to put a life line in the row to which the edge of the hem will be sewn after its turned. Pffft. As if I couldn't follow a row of purl bumps on the back side of stockinette. I tootle on down, purl a row for the bottom of the hem fold, and knit on 8 more rows, ready to hem. [Boring technique note: often a knit hem is made by running a circular needle through the appropriate row and binding it and the edge row off together. This pattern said sew, so I was going to sew.] Came time to sew the hem and--uh oh--I wasn't as good at following those purl bumps as I thought. The result was all skew-whiff and uneven and looked terrible. So terrible I didn't even take a photo of how terrible.

I could either abandon the sweater at this stage to the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble, or pull my socks up, undo what I had done, and put my life line in after the fact. Reader, I put in the life line. And it made all the difference, see?

Here's the resulting hem, inside and out, just as tidy and straight as you please:

Now it's just a question of sleeves, with yarn weighed so it can be divided half-and-half, length to be determined by how far the yarn goes. How long will they be? elbows? 3/4? All the way to the wrist? Only the scale knows.