sweetgeorgia » Knitting

Getting Ready for Fall Knitting

sweetgeorgia — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:36:55 +0000

Win. Newest socks knit with BFL Sock in a new colourway.

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.

New colourway for Fall — Autumn Flame

My favourite, hard-wearing Dutch heels.

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

sweetgeorgia — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:42:18 +0000

Finally finished the Cropped Cardigan. Argh.

But I ran out of yarn on the last sleeve.

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

sweetgeorgia — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:59:23 +0000

Lots and lots (and lots) of knitting needles, in need of a little organization…

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

sweetgeorgia — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:31:15 +0000

The start of a shawl, on 3.25 mm addi lace needles

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.

Knitting Space

Spinning space by the window

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

sweetgeorgia — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:31:06 +0000

Socks for a boy (meaning I knit them on 2.25mm and they are 72 sts around… meaning they took forever… 18 months, in fact), in Tough Love Sock, colourway Dutch, of course.

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.)

Simple Things

sweetgeorgia — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:44:56 +0000

Sometimes, my brain makes up obstacles for itself and I self-impose these barriers on myself. Such is the way with this simple lace shawl, the Swallowtail. The Swallowtail Shawl pattern was sitting in my Ravelry queue for over two years and now that I’ve finished it, I don’t know why it took me so long. Maybe I was waiting for the perfect yarn, or maybe I was thinking it would be difficult… I don’t know. But I’ve done it and it was fun AND easy to knit. I even knit the nupps on the Greyhound bus to and from Whistler.

Swallowtail in Merino Silk Lace (Raspberry)

Detail of the Swallowtail

The Simple Things shawlette here was knit by my mother, intrepid new-ish knitter. She’s always excited to show me her new projects and, seriously, she knits so fast. She’ll leave the studio with yarn one afternoon and three days later, she’ll show up with a new scarf. But she can also be a little timid about new things… like this whole top-down triangular shawl technique. But MH’s Simple Things pattern really makes things quite easy and I think my mom’s got the hang of it now. She’s knit another one in Merino Silk DK in Violet Hill… but I think she took that to London with her.

Simple Things in Superwash Sock (Honey Fig)

Variegated Lace

What I found quite eye-opening was that variegated ‘lace’ wasn’t as horrid as I thought it might be. In fact, I quite like it here in this case where the pattern features mostly stockinette rather than complex lace. I’m also really pleased with how the golden yellow bits are spread out quite evenly and not pooly or blotchy.

Simple things like writing these blog posts or my email newsletter take me forever (okay, like 4 hours). I don’t know why they take me so long, honestly. If someone can answer me that, I’d love to know. It’s not even that I don’t have things to share. It’s just that I think I make everything so massive and unmanageable in my mind that it becomes a mountain. Oh, wait, there’s a saying for that… making a mountain out of a molehill. Ohh, I see… that means Wiki says I have cognitive distortion. In any case, I need to stop saying things like “can’t” or “that’s too hard” and just believe that everything is easy, manageable and doable.

Knitting in Nanaimo

sweetgeorgia — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:08:58 +0000

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.

Lots of stockinette at the Coyote Café in Nanaimo on Sunday afternoon

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.

More stockinette at the Whip Gallery in Vancouver on Monday morning

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

sweetgeorgia — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:49:57 +0000

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…

Lace-trimmed sleeve edge, knit in SweetGeorgia Yarns Superwash Worsted (Slate)

Vine Yoke Cardigan, pattern designed by Ysolda Teague

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.

SweetGeorgia Yarns Superwash Worsted (4 oz skein) in Cypress

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!

Ballard Slouch

sweetgeorgia — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:56:59 +0000

A tiny shock of colour. Ballard Slouch knit in Superwash Worsted (Saffron).

I owe this blog a whole lot of posts. But let’s start off with a simple and slouchy hat that I designed while I was sitting in my car for over 90 minutes, waiting to cross the border into the US to attend the Earthues Natural Dye Studio workshops in Ballard, Seattle, WA. A lovely clover lace pattern is the basis for this slouchy beret-style hat. Its easy-to-memorize lace pattern makes for a very simple and elegant one-skein gift. Since that day in July, I’ve made four of these hats in different yarns and colours and tested different sizes and gauges. I like this result the best:

Knit in Merino Silk Aran, the hat is quite drapey and warm.

Knit it up in a luxurious and drapey Merino Silk Aran or a lush and cushy Superwash Worsted yarn. I love how the lace is gentle and uncomplicated. It decreases seamlessly at the crown to form a beret-type shape. The simple pattern lets you add repeats if you like to make a slouchier hat.

The 2-page PDF pattern includes both charted and written directions. And it’s available via Ravelry or the shop site. And it’s free. My gift to you this crisp fall morning. Keep your head warm.

Phoenix Rising Shawl

sweetgeorgia — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:58:00 +0000

Phoenix Rising Shawl in CashSilk Lace. Photos by Sivia Harding.

When I first decided to move into the studio at the Watershed Building, I remembered thinking, “it’s so wonderful, there’s a little garden in the courtyard where you can go knit in the afternoons… and there’s a rooftop garden where you can see the entire city… ohh, I’ll definitely be spending time there…” After all these months of working at the studio, I’ve had very little time or cause to actually wander around the courtyard garden, but yesterday, I had a lovely visit from Sivia Harding and we had good cause to visit the garden. She brought me her Phoenix Rising shawl (also here on Ravelry) that she knit up in my CashSilk Lace yarn (Boysenberry, for those who want to know) and I got to hold it for photos!

Some serious shawl. It goes down to the back of my knees!

I was immediately smitten with the top portion of the lace. The wandering lines snaking back and forth down the shawl until you reach the weighty, beaded edging. Sivia is well-known for her exquisite and unique beaded lace designs and while this gorgeous shawl pattern was only available previously through the 2008 Year of Lace club, it is now available through Sivia’s website. She explained that this Phoenix Rising redux includes new beading instructions as well as a new lace edging. I was just looking at it, thinking, “I’m so honoured to be wearing this amazing shawl … on my first day in the courtyard garden, no less.”