sweetgeorgia

Toasty warm with Chambord

Years ago, I made this incredibly decadent torte (specifically the Chocolate Cranberry Torte) from an old issue of Bon Appetit magazine for dinner during the holidays. The torte was intensely chocolatey — kind of like eating a ginormous chocolate truffle and was a strong, warm memory of the holidays. The torte called for Chambord, a black raspberry liqueur, and so I ended up keeping half a bottle in the pantry for several years… that reminds me… I wonder where it is now?

In any case, all those warm fuzzy memories flooded back when I saw that Karen Maple had designed this beautiful cozy and elegant sweater for Twist Collective’s Winter issue using our yarn. The sweater is called Chambord (here on Ravelry) and features this delicate colourwork in the wide collar and cuffs. It seems like the perfect thing to throw on to stay warm this winter. I might need one myself… apparently we might get snow in Vancouver this weekend!

A most unfortunate ending

It’s been yeeeeaaars since I started this cardigan. And finally, this hot, sweaty summer, I managed to finish knitting it. It’s Amy O’Neill Houck’s Cropped Cardigan design and it’s so sweet looking. Knit with two strands of luscious Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca & Silk on big 8 mm needles, it’s supposed to be ridiculously easy… but somehow, I managed to make it a mess.

I ran out of yarn with about 3 inches left to go on the second sleeve. Of course, buying an extra skein of yarn four years (this is pretty much pre-Ravelry days, so I didn’t track even how many skeins I bought) after I started the cardigan meant that they were no where near the same dye lot. And not only were they different dye lot… they were different yarn lot. The main body of the cardigan is this warm and fuzzy kind of alpaca yarn, but the bit of extra yarn that I joined for the sleeve is all smooth and more silky looking. So it’s a sharp and distinct difference. It’s totally visible.

So now what? Should I wear it and just not care about the difference in the sleeve yarn (even though it’s totally obvious)? Or should I frog it? I’m leaning towards the frogging and knitting a Mini Manu. What would you do?

Knitting in Nanaimo

It’s been about ten years since I’ve been to visit Nanaimo just over on Vancouver Island. But this past weekend, I had the great opportunity to go for a short visit and also drop by their local yarn store, Mad About Ewe. It’s a sweet little shop located in the Old City Quarter of Nanaimo amongst a complex of restored heritage buildings from the 1800′s and early 1900′s. I dropped off an order with them of the new Silk Crush Sock and some other yarns and then took some time to walk around the waterfront and enjoy the sun. It’s not often that I get a completely free weekend to just wander around in the sun, watching elderly couples walk down the seawall holding hands.

By Sunday afternoon, it had started raining and I headed out for lunch, bringing my current project… the Geodesic Cardigan. I have been feeling pretty lucky that I managed to get a copy of the Knitscene magazine that this pattern is in. It seems to be sold out everywhere, but on one visit to a yarn shop, the staff didn’t have it but helped me call around to other yarn stores to locate it for me. It was like a scene out of Miracle on 34th Street. And yes, they found a copy of the magazine for me at another yarn shop who promised to hold it for me. So, now, even though I really want to make this cardi, I feel a little obligated to enjoy this gift.

Well, I’ve had a lot of time to knit on this… We attempted to leave Nanaimo on Sunday afternoon around 3:30 pm but missed the 5 pm ferry and ended up on the 7 pm ferry. Then the 7 pm ferry was delayed by 30 minutes in departing. Mid-way through the trip, the captain says they were directed to go retrieve a boat that had flipped over, so we had to turn the ferry around (is that even possible?) and go back to get that boat. Turns out the “boat” was a little walmart tub that looked like a baby’s washing basin. That delayed us by another 45 minutes. It was pretty much 10 pm by the time we set foot in Horseshoe Bay. Six and a half hours spent waiting and sitting. We could have flown to Toronto in less time… I honestly don’t know how people commute back and forth from the Island for work. It’s such an unreliable form of transporation. But I guess if you have the luxury of time like we did, then no matter.

Slate Grey Days Ahead

It’s true, Vancouver is usually pretty grey during the winters — especially February and November (when, I believe, it rained 28 out of 30 days in 2009). So, I’ve sort of avoided dyeing any sort of grey hue. The crisp lighting in the studio encourages me to dye brighter, more saturated colours, but I love and I live in greys and neutrals. Sure, I love a little nervous/awkward chit chat about my shockingly hot pink socks or my hot turquoise hat, but I can relax in a colour like this slate grey…

This pattern, the Vine Yoke Cardigan, is wonderfully written. It’s sort of a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet and so far, the lace pattern seems to be working out just as Ysolda says it will. I’m enjoying the knitting of it as it’s going pretty quickly. Although I won’t finish in the 10 days someone else on Ravelry took to knit this, hopefully it won’t be in my queue for a year… unlike other projects.

So, for Winter, I’m adding this new Slate grey colour to our palette of Dye To Order yarns as well as the Cypress green above. It’s a bit woodsy and murky, a darker and more desaturated teal green. Both these colours will be available in all our yarns, although it might take a bit of time to get it all entered into the online shop. If you don’t see it, just email/txt/twitter.

Another change we’ll be making to the offerings is that our Superwash Worsted and Superwash Sport yarns will be available as larger 4 oz skeins now… more than double the 50g skeins we were doing originally. Hopefully for you sweater knitters, this just means fewer joins and more continuous knitting time. I think we all need more of that. And the opposite is true for the Silk Lamb Lace — we’ve changed the put up to 60g of 625 yards of laceweight goodness. More affordable at this skein size and perfect for the smaller shawl designs that have been popping up!

Automatic Knitting

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a fashion designer who referred to stockinette stitch as “jersey”. For whatever reason, that word seemed so 80′s. Not sure why. It’s the same thing, just different terminology from a different field. Whatever you call it, I love my plain knitting. No need to look down and watch my stitches, I am pleased that I can form these stitches relatively quickly and completely in the dark. Sometimes, I knit in bed and actually fall half asleep while still knitting stockinette. A particularly bad thing that I sometimes do is knit at stoplights. This is NOT recommended. But knitting at stoplights prevents the other evil that is road rage.

I love that I can knit on a stockinette sleeve in the movie theatre and not lose my place… good thing, since I managed to spend all of Friday night at the Twilight Drive In theatre in Langely… If you haven’t been, you must try it! It’s kind of a trek, but super relaxing to be able to sit in your own car and talk and knit through the entire movie(s) (they show three features in one night). During those six hours, I think I may have eaten my body weight in gummy bears and Pringles.

This knitting is so simple and so soothing. It’s automatic and doesn’t require much angst or thinking. I knit this sleeve of the Whisper Cardigan on much of the drive to Seattle for the Cheese Festival this past weekend. Rather than starting with 90 stitches as in the pattern, I followed the recommendation of a couple knitters on Ravelry and cast on for 76 stitches instead… so I wouldn’t have such a huge bell-shaped sleeve. Not that my arms are particularly tiny. But anyway.

A weekend full of automatic, plain old knitting has got me to the point of finishing this test sweater. I might find some time for doing the sewn bind off of that 1×1 rib tonight… or tomorrow. Finishing never seems as relaxing as knitting. Now that Dollhouse is finished and I’m still waiting for the return of TrueBlood, I’ve been given the first season of The Wire so that I have something to knit to.

It’s lovely that my mom finished knitting her first project too, last week. It’s a stockinette vest for my dad, knit in a Shetland Aran yarn, with 1×1 ribbing at the bottom edge, armholes and neckline. We adapted a pattern to fit my mom’s gauge on 5 mm needles and the size, pre-blocking, appears to be pretty darn good. She’s encouraged, I think, because she’s excited about starting a vest for herself this time. I like when people are happy about their knitting.