sweetgeorgia

Getting Ready for Fall Knitting

This is the kind of knitting that makes me absolutely, positively blissed out. Simple top-down socks in the most basic pattern ever, knit in plain old stockinette on 2.25 mm circular needles. I’ve been knitting this in one of our new yarns for fall, the BFL Sock. It’s a blend of superwash bluefaced leicester and nylon in a 3-ply sock yarn… pretty much what I consider ideal in sock yarns. Sturdy, wooly, warm, elastic… and takes dye oh so vibrantly.

I do love these Dutch heels too, as a reinforced heel stitch. Right now on the needles, I’m knitting a toe-up sock with a real heel flap… very new for me, since I’ve always knit short-row heels and then been disappointed when they wear through. If these socks are a success, I might permanently switch to toe-up & heel flap sock knitting!

While knitting these, I realized how much I love the fine gauge of this sock fabric… it’s about 8.5 sts per inch (nearly 9). If I had swatched ahead of time, I might have considered adding more stitches to my sock (which I’ll probably do next time). After washing and wearing these socks a few times, I really love how the yarn blooms and fills in. I’ve stashed a few skeins of this at home so that I can knit simple socks all winter.

And speaking of socks, have you seen the new Sockupied? I haven’t downloaded/purchased it yet. I hear knitters are sad it won’t work on the iPad or iPhone. Has anyone read it? What do you think?

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?

Needle in a haystack

It’s been pretty hot these past few weeks, but then the weather turned sharply cold and rainy on Saturday. The turn in the weather must have caused me to catch a cold or something, but I started feeling crappy yesterday afternoon. So after finishing up with dyeing the August Fibre and Yarn Clubs, I came home to comfort myself with a bowl of Dan Dan noodles and some knitting. Being still completely enamoured with Kate Davies’ Manu cardigan pattern, I was thinking about beginning to cast on when I got stuck… looking for needles. 3.75 mm circulars. Where the heck are they?!, I’m thinking.

Over the past several years, I’ve accumulated more knitting needles than I could have ever imagined. As a kid, I had a small collection of straight Aero needles which didn’t take up much space and were easy to sort and organize. But now, I’ve switched mainly to knitting with long circulars… everything from socks to sweaters, and they just end up in these big tangled piles. I am in search of the best way to organize these circular knitting needles so that I don’t have to go through six pairs of 4.0 mm needles to find the 3.75 mm needle.

So far, over the years, I’ve tried:

• Keeping the ziploc they came in and returning the needles back to the bags when not in use… this doesn’t work for me and I have a huge stack of empty Addi plastic needle bags to show for it
• Using a Lantern Moon circular needle holder (those horizontal tubes sewn in to separate different size circulars)… didn’t work for me because there are too few “pockets” for clear separation. Also, there’s no markings on the pocket to show what size needles are supposed to be there. (So sad that this option didn’t work. The case is made from lovely Thai silk, but since it’s not used, it was just a poor investment on my part.)
• Storing the entire pile on a bookshelf and digging through the pile as needed. I think that’s where I’m at now.

I finally managed to find a set of 3.75 mm circulars, but they are Knit Picks Interchangables so I didn’t even find what I was looking for in the circular tangle. Once Around in Mill Valley had a great post on their old blog about organizing them by file folders, but since they’ve re-opened the post is gone now. Any ideas or suggestions on organizing knitting needles, including circular, straight and double-pointed? How do you organize your knitting needles?

Keeping Cool

Ugh, knitting and summer. I don’t know how people do it. Already, I live in the Vancouver where the climate is beautifully cool most days. If the temperature gets above 26 degrees, I start to want to wear a bikini top to work. Totally inappropriate work wear, I know. But once the weather gets warm, I find it hard to knit wool without wanting to go rinse my hands under cold water every ten minutes. So, I have two solutions. One: new yarn. Two: hide in the shade.

Enter this SeaCell-based laceweight yarn. For some time now, people have been asking me if I have non-wool yarns because they are either allergic or just want to avoid animal fibres. And outside of often pricey 100% silk, I haven’t had much opportunity to dye non-wool blends. But I did get my hands on a batch of this lovely laceweight and it’s available exclusively on the website as a limited run, called SeaSilk Lace.

It’s a 60% SeaCell and 40% tussah silk blend in a 2-ply laceweight. SeaCell® is a cellulose-based fibre (like Tencel®) derived from seaweed. I had dyed and tried some SeaCell/silk yarn a while back and even blogged about the differences between SeaCell skeins and 100% silk skeins. Being a cellulose-based fibre, the SeaCell doesn’t take up the dye the same way as the silk, so this resulting yarn is at the same time glossy and shiny but also heathered looking. It’s an odd combination to describe, but it’s like having shiny and tweedy in the same yarn.

Here’s hiding in the shade. For those of you who have visited the studio, you’ll know that two sides of the studio (north and west) are actually floor-to-ceiling double-high windows… which means, being in the studio is basically like being in the outdoors. When it’s dark outside, it’s dark at the studio. When it’s hot outside, the heat is magnified by the windows and it’s invariably roasting inside the studio. So, on non-dye days, I have been hiding out at my mini home office.

It’s a little corner I carved out to surround myself with yarn and knitting books. In the daytime, there’s plenty of natural light but it’s stays cool and I can see out into the garden and courtyard space. The hydrangeas are in full bloom and are so unabashedly rich in colour. Violet and mauve. I keep my spinning wheel nearby as well as my guitar and music things. Kind of a grown-up craft girl’s romper room, I guess.

This is where I’m working today. Emails. Bookkeeping. Writing. And keeping cool.

Going Dutch

There is a soft spot for Oranje in our household, and it’s become much more acutely pronounced as the World Cup Final draws closer. Starting in January of last year, I knit these socks as a gift for my Holland-loving, stroopwafel-eating, “beautiful game”-watching guy. They were finished just a couple days before the start of the World Cup and I’m proud to say he’s worn the socks while watching nearly every game with the Netherlands. The only time he forgot the socks was during the last game with Uruguay when Holland was down at the beginning (I blame that on the lack of orange socks) but ended up winning 3-2. These days, quiet moments are broken with the exclamation, “Big game on Sunday!”. Maybe you can catch us on Commercial Drive on Sunday… I’ll be with the guy bedecked in orange… right down to the socks.

(and here’s another pair of amazing Dutch orange socks… not mine, but I love them all the same.)