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.

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.

Coal Harbour Socks

I’m having a most miserable week… so tired all the time but feeling very wired. I keep asking myself, “Have I had too much coffee? Have I had enough coffee? Am I hungry? Am I full?”… I just can’t tell anymore. This could all be attributed to the fact that the office two doors down from me is being renovated and the constant drilling is driving me insane. There is sawdust everywhere which has made the whole floor smell like a hamster cage.

There’s also some low-level craziness around here as Jet Li and Jason Statham are filming in and around our building and also at Brioche bakery & café across the street. In fact, if you walk by the café today you’ll probably see the funky little bamboo shutters and the little Chinese entrance they added to the front of the café. Very odd. It’s kind of disappointing that with the renovation of the suite on my floor, the production people opted to use a different floor for one of the scenes… otherwise, there’d be Jet Li fighting evil in front of my door!

Anyway.

Maybe I will feel better today because I am wearing new socks.

These socks are so new that I haven’t even darned in the two ends yet. I put them on this morning for their photo shoot and they were so comfy, I just couldn’t take them off (plus we were running late) but maybe I can bring myself to weave in the ends tonight. Richard was very amused watching me take pictures of my feet.

Coal Harbour Socks

• Pattern: Wendy’s Generic Toe-Up Pattern
• Yarn: SweetGeorgia Yarns Superwash Sock in “Coal Harbour”
• Needles: US 1 / 2.5 mm Addi Turbos
• Notes: No changes to Wendy’s pattern. I knit a 6 inch leg and still had 18g of each skein leftover. So if I had more patience, I could have knit a way longer leg. I was also a little impatient with the foot, so I could have knit about 1/2″ more foot before starting the short-row heel.

And in Sweet Shop news, the next big shop update will be Thursday, April 6th at 12 noon PST! There will be about 20 skeins of Superwash Sock, 35 skeins of Speed Demon and 10 skeins of Handpainted Sock yarn. Of course, I am still working out kinks with this new setup and I really appreciate everybody’s wonderful feedback and suggestions. One of the changes is that once yarns are sold out, they won’t appear in the product listings anymore — this way, you only see the stuff that’s available. Yay. There’s a new page that shows all the sold out yarns only.

Ok. I’m off to get more coffee from the film set… I think.

I never thought it would happen to me.

Second sock syndrome. It must be a reflection of my tendency to be distracted by pretty things.

Here I am mid-sock. Four potential pairs of socks and nothing to wear. From the left, there is the Friday Harbour socks that I started in August, the Jaywalkers in River, some handspun socks knit toe-up, and a fresh new toe-up sock in the new sock yarn that I’m dyeing.

I’m using Wendy’s super fabulous toe-up sock pattern with 60 stitches around on 2.5 mm needles (US 1). It’s going super fast too — I knit almost the entire foot while watching Brokeback Mountain. Hopefully, if I keep this pace I’ll have an actual pair of socks to wear next week. I’m knitting toe-up because I want to see how much length I can get out of each skein… Then next time I can knit top-down and be more confident that I won’t run out of yarn by the time I get to the toe. I prefer the toes on top-down socks…

I’m all fidgety now after seeing Anna Maria’s Pomatomus sock and Lavender’s Pomatomus socks. Yummy. Must have new sock(s).

Finally, I did promise to update the shop this week with those new yummy superwash sock yarns… and I did… You can find them on the new SweetGeorgia Yarns online shop. Many of the yarns are already sold (you guys are fabulous — I love you all) but I will be dyeing again this weekend (since FibreFest in Abbotsford is next weekend).

Happy Thursday!

So handspun it hurts

Use your handspun. It’s the only way you can determine if your spinning is any good. I read that somewhere and it’s stuck in the back of my mind all the time now.

Last May, I bought 1/2 lb of Ashland Bay merino roving from Penelope Fibre. It sat in the stash for a few weeks because I was intimidated by it and worried that I might ruin it. I sucked up the courage to start spinning it laceweight. Finally, in January, I finished all the spinning and started knitting the Lotus Blossom Shawl.

This is my real first, large-scale handspun and handknit project… and here it is off the needles:

Lotus Blossom Shawl

• Pattern: from Fiddlesticks Knitting, designed by Dorothy Siemens
• Yarn: Handspun Laceweight Merino (I have about half of my spinning leftover! So I must have used about 100 g)
• Needles: US 6 / 4.0 mm Addi Turbos
• Changes: I used a smaller needle size just because I didn’t have any other needles handy, so I had to knit chart 2 twice to give the shawl extra length
• Finished Measurements: 70″ x 35″ (definitely smaller than the pattern specs, just slightly bigger than my blocking board).

What are things that people always say about spinning laceweight… the singles need lots of twist to hold the finer diameter, take all the tension off so that you can get lots of twist in, blah blah blah. This handspun is irregular in grist because I spun it over such a long period of time, was still getting a hang of spinning fine and also because I switched wheels part way through! But in some places, I think the yarn had so much twist that it became wirey and dense. If I were to do it again, I would spin it all a little softer.

This leads me to sampling. What a good idea. It’s like knitting a gauge swatch (which we always do, right?!). How does the fabric feel knit at that tension with those needles. How about going up a needle size, going down a size? Is the fabric too dense? Too drapey? When your knitting with commercial yarns, the yarn itself is taken out of the equation — it’s your job to just pick the most appropriate needle size for that yarn (ok, I’m oversimplifying). But when you are making the yarn, you need to look at how your yarn works up as fabric and if it is appropriate — will it be hardwearing? Will it pill or fuzz? All those variables are under your control now. So, spin a little bit, knit a little bit. See if you like it.

That’s what I’ve done with this new project:

There’s about 2 oz of Cashmere/Silk 50/50 top that I bought from Deep Color Studio this past November… Again, nervous about spinning it up and ruining it. So I tore off a little piece and spun it up laceweight using my new highspeed bobbins and whorl (I’m using 19.5:1 for spinning singles “from the fold” and 17.5:1 for plying). I washed the yarn and have started knitting it up in Evelyn Clark’s “Trellis Scarf” pattern from the Spring IK magazine. I figured if I liked it, I could keep going. If I didn’t like it, I could just go back and modify how I’m spinning it. As it turns out, I like it.