sweetgeorgia

The Perfect Red

Last April, we were visiting Japan and I felt the need to buy Noro in the “mother country”. The selection of Noro Cash Iroha at Okadaya near Shinjuku station was surprisingly limited — a lot of black and a bit of red. So, I bought the red.

This red was a warmish, rusty red that just wouldn’t wear well on me, so after I finished the sweater, I overdyed the whole thing. I wanted to shift the colour from warm to cool without darkening or muddying the existing colour. Solution? Overdye with just over 1% WashFast Magenta.

Since the yarn has a bit of silk content, I had to soak the sweater at least overnight… I was busy most evenings, so I ended up soaking it for three nights. Then the dyeing happened on Thursday evening with 4 g of dye powder (the sweater weighed 360 g, so this is just over 1% DOS), 36 g of citric acid (to make the dye strike) and 36 g of glaubers salt (to promote even dyeing). I agitated pretty much continuously for the first few minutes and then I’d come back and agitate the sweater lightly during each commercial break of The O.C. The sweater cooked for about an hour in total and I let the whole thing cool down overnight.

Hourglass Sweater

• Pattern: From Joelle Hoverson’s “Last Minute Knitted Gifts”
• Size: I knit the smallest size (33″) but the sweater stretched on its own to about 36″
• Yarn: Noro Cash Iroha, 9 skeins (the ball in the photo is what I have left of the 9th skein)
• Needles: US 7 / 4.5 mm Addi Turbos
• Mods: I shortened the sleeves by about an inch (they were 17.5″ before joining to the body). Oh, and lazy me didn’t kitchener the sleeves and body under the arm. I did — of course — a three-needle bind off.
• Notes: Well, I think everyone who has made this sweater with Cash Iroha has made the same comments before — if in doubt, make a smaller size since the yarn will stretch out. Also, the neckline is very “Flashdance”. I had to string some additional yarn through the neckline in a lame attempt to maintain the neck shaping.

A couple months ago in Seattle, I came upon Cash Iroha in the exact same dyelot as I bought in Japan, so I purchased 2 additional skeins (for a total of 11 skeins) but ended up not needing them at all. I’ll probably use the remainder of the yarn for a little scarf or maybe a hat… and then overdye that too.

This sweater is super easy to make and so so so comfortable to wear. I think I might even make another one… with more mods of course.

If everyday were a dye day…

…I could swim in oceans of fluffy, coloured fibre… the coffee would flow freely and music would be sweet… sigh

Excuse me as I attempt to recover from my three-day dye extravaganza. Long weekends are simply the best, guilt-free days to dye and this Easter, I spent Friday to Sunday hooked into my iPod, drinking entire pots of coffee, and covered with dye and mohair fuzz. But ah ha, I have figured out a way to package the Blue-Faced Leceister fibre, so the next shop update will have lots of scrumptious braids of fibre. Each one is about 100g (4 oz). Very fluffy and yummy.

Speaking of the next shop update, it will be Thursday, May 4th at 12 noon PST. There will be sock yarns and fibre as well as laceweight kid mohair yarn. New colours, new yarns, new fibres. Sweet.

Over the weekend, I also managed to finish the Cash Iroha Hourglass Sweater, but I decided I didn’t like the rust red colour, so the whole sweater is soaking right now so that I can overdye the whole thing a slightly cooler red. We shall see how a sweater likes being overdyed.

Having finished that sweater (finally), I started Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Fair Isle Yoke Sweater, but I figure there’s no need to post a photo of what will be 15 inches of plain stockinette knit in the round with charcoal grey Shetland wool.

The Sweat Shop.

There’s this running joke among my friends where everytime someone mentions “The Sweet Shop”, someone else will say “Oh, you mean ‘The Sweat Shop’?” Tease as they might, the DH, my friends and my family are always so supportive of my wacky ideas. When I first opened shop in September, Jen was one of the first to send me her congratulations and it’s a message I go back and read from time to time.

I can’t really say that I’m a one-woman dye/spin/design operation because I just couldn’t exist without the support of the people around me. From Glenda (also a knitter!) at the print shop who printed all my new yarn tags so I wouldn’t have to continue hand-trimming each and every one… to my bookkeeper who has worked through my exasperating pile of receipts to get things ready for my accountant… to Richard who re-skeined yarn pretty much every evening last week and tied the yarn tags… to Michelle who stayed up with us until about 10:30 pm on Sunday night helping us package the yarn orders for shipping on Monday. I owe her a really good beer.

If you bought yarn on Thursday, you’ll see the new tags… with the colourway written in Michelle’s delightful handwriting. I took the opportunity to print tags for some new base yarns too… so look for up to seven new base yarns (silks, silk and merino, kid mohair lace, yum yum yum…) coming to the shop in the next few weeks.

By the sweat of my brow, I am grateful everyday.

Boys, boys, boys

The boys club has a new member.

A couple days ago, I taught my friend, Francisco, how to knit. It was just last week when he was over at our house and expressed some interest in learning to knit (girls, this one’s a keeper). Well, not even the teeny tiniest amount of interest in knitting goes unnoticed around here. Over the past year and a half, I’ve taught half a dozen people to knit. I’m remarkably sentimental about the whole thing. In fact, I don’t know if Richard knows, but I saved his first few rows of knitting as well. It’s like your first handspun. Precious. A single moment in time, captured in a few stitches.

So here’s the thing. I’m an awkward teacher. Since I pretty much learned from pictures in a book, I never had the experience of someone else showing me step-by-step what to do. So when I teach someone to knit, I start with the long-tail cast on, then move to the knit stitch, and eventually to purl stitches and casting off… ’cause that’s how it’s described in books.

And here’s where it all kind of goes downhill — how about tensioning? needle/hand position? Tensioning is crucial to beautiful fabric (and relaxed knitting)… so when Michelle says she’s frustrated that she tends to knit tightly, I kind of blame myself. And holding your right hand under (like a pencil) or over the right needle? There are so many different ways to knit that, in a way, I figure the most comfortable method will eventually come to you. If you are interested (or obsessive like me) you might check out some books that will show you the English, Scottish, French, German, or Combined (Eastern Uncrossed) styles of holding your needles and yarn. But in the end isn’t the goal getting the stitch formed on the needle in the method that is most comfortable for you?

Do any of you teach knitting? Casually for friends or “officially”? How do you do it? Do you start with the cast on? Or do you cast on for the student and then just start with the knit stitch? What kind of cast on do you start with? Long-tail? Backward loop? Knitted on?

Being the control freak that I am, I tend to want to watch them make each and every stitch — either congratulating them on nice looking stitches or attempting to dive in and fix problems. Luckily, ‘Cisco is an engineer and knitting is not rocket science. He was able to spot and fix most of his own issues. Irene, my spinning teacher, does this thing where she walks away from you so that you don’t think she’s looking over your shoulder… but really she is observing from a distance. That way, she allows you to relax into it. I can’t do that. I hover. Maybe my friends are just too polite to tell me to shut up and go away for a bit.

Speaking of boys and their knitting, Richard is all inspired to start knitting socks again. This time, he requested fat yarn in “Slayer” so that he could actually see some progress. Here’s his progress:

I, too, have sock progress. Here’s one finished Pomatomus sock knit with my hand-dyed superwash sock yarn in “Libertine”:

Siew and I were both working on our Pomatomus socks at Rachael and Lala’s drink-up on Monday night and I realized that I had mis-read the pattern… so my “version” of Pomatomus has only two repeats in the leg and not three. I also changed the toe shaping because I like my standard round-ish toes: decrease row, 3 rows plain, [decrease row, 2 rows plain] x 2, [decrease row, 1 row plain] x 3, decrease every row until there are 16 stitches in total (or 8 on each half of the magic loop) and then graft together (or be lazy and do a three-needle cast off). Super easy to remember. See? Not rocket science.

Shop, shop, shop

Phew! As of this morning at 2 am, the shop is now sold out!

My server and I were completely overwhelmed by the response at 12 noon yesterday — in fact, the server crashed and I had to call the server guys to get them to reboot it! He seemed mildly amused that the machine was conquered by yarn shoppers. I didn’t find it particularly amusing though — I was freaking out.

Hmmm, I’m going to need to find a way to prevent future tech issues. It may involve moving the shop site to it’s very own server and allowing for more connections, or maybe a server cluster, or… or…

In any case, I really appreciate everybody’s support and enthusiasm for these yarns! You guys make me so happy!