sweetgeorgia

What I did on my Gap year

It was exactly one year ago today when I started on my trip to Fiji. I didn’t think that I’d be away from work, friends and family for so long. In fact, the idea started out as just a three-week vacation… which became a hiatus from work wherein I declined all new projects and clients and explored other avenues of creativity, design and content development. Two of my close friends got married while we were in Fiji and, outside of sporadic wedding planning, we did a little bit of surfing and a lot of sunburning.

Traveling ended up being a very small portion of my year. Although I did travel to London several times, I think my travels and explorations were mainly internal. I started a couple new business ventures (because you can never have enough new ideas), looked back at the last ten years and looked forward ten years, discovered new friends and old souls, snowboarded during all my spare days this past season, uprooted and moved my possessions three times, and got divorced from my husband of six years. I tearfully sold my childhood and family home in Kitsilano … the one housing my entire dye and design studios… and am joining the hoards of people looking for a place to live in Vancouver.

My internal travels still take place every day. I question and I doubt. I look at different paths and avenues and simultaneously get inspired and despondent. These travels never end but I am just grateful that I don’t need to walk these paths alone. My family and friends have been an unmeasurable support and I am very very grateful for them.

Yesterday, I received news that I’m back on the practicing registrar for pharmacists… so I’m returning to practice in a field I thought I’d never go back to. I’m learning to see that not everything is black and white… and adjust to seeing all the shades of grey in my life, appreciating all the subtlety. And I’m also starting to knit again. Finally.

The back and front pieces are done. All I need are sleeves now. Why does it always feel like “All I need is ‘fill in the blank’ now”? I don’t know. But at this particular moment, all I need are sleeves now.

Here’s to the end of my gap year and to a most beautiful fresh start.

Orange you blue?

It’s starting to warm up here in Vancouver and that scratchy, heavy Shetland wool fair isle is sort of the last thing I want to knit right now. I’m itching for some lace. Being without a Zephyr project or shawl project right now makes me antsy. Gah, my hands want lace.

So here is my respite. Orangina. Stephanie Japel’s perfect solution for easy peasy and pretty lace. It’s lovely mindless knitting in quite a nice cotton. Rowan 4-ply Cotton doesn’t split but it does remind me a bit of thin dishcloth cotton. Whatever, my hands are happy now.

The Power of Knitting is Fierce

Thanks so much everybody for your wonderful and mood-lifting comments! You guys made me laugh — especially Gleek who said “we yarn-buying ANIMALS totally hosed your server!! the power of knitting is fierce.” And we all know that with great power comes great responsibility…

So in celebration of the new dedicated server and yarn-buying animals everywhere, 10% of the sales on Monday will go towards the Canadian Cancer Society via my friend, Jazzi, who is participating in the Relay for Life on June 9 in Salt Spring Island.

Michelle was superfriend yesterday and when I said something about “this is the kind of day that needs wine”, she bought me a bottle of Cedar Creek Ehrenfelser — a wine that’s been described as “fruit salad in a glass”. Ah yes, because that’s what friends do. They bring wine on bad days.

But last night, during dinner (much to the amusement of the waiter), I finished my Pomatomus socks and Michelle finished Kate Gilbert’s Anouk — Michelle’s version is knit in denim yarn with the cutest red ladybug buttons. Must get a photo of it! My socks are here:

…and now I can continue to work on Fair Isle Yoke Cardigan (Elizabeth Zimmerman)…

The photo is of the left shoulder… and yes, there are no real sleeves yet. The EZ method is to knit the body in the round, then knit two sleeves separately in the round, then join them all together and start the fair isle yoke bit. Same idea as the Hourglass Sweater except that the Hourglass has raglan shaping and the EZ cardi has round shaping (evenly spaced decreases).

I wanted to break up the long stretches of plain, grey stockinette rounds, so rather than knitting up sleeves, I just did a provisional cast-on for the number of stitches that I want at the top of the sleeve and joined the “sleeves” to the body. Now I can enjoy the fair isle portion of the sweater. When it’s all done, I’ll just pick up the sleeve stitches and knit down to the wrist. Easy and lazy.

Happy weekend!

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.

The Red Phase

Shopping your own stash is a good thing. There are beautiful yarns that I bought and put in the stash for a reason… specific things I wanted to make but then forgot about. So picking through your stash, re-organizing, poking around… it gets you inspired to make those things again. Here’s what I picked up:

Plain and simple (if you pick up the errata on PURL’s site), I’m knitting the Hourglass Sweater from “Last Minute Knitted Gifts”. I bought the Cash Iroha in Japan for this very purpose. The time has come… for cashmere.

And for the Harlot’s Knitting Olympics, I’ve picked…

This beautiful skein of Zephyr was purchased at the Salt Spring Island Fibre Festival last summer. It’s about 1170 yards but the pattern specifies 1260 yards. I’m hoping I can knit this shawl without running out of yarn… because, well, that would suck.