sweetgeorgia

In search of simple

Maybe it was exhaustion… or the smell of sheep and vinegar… or realizing that the finished sweater would look terrible on me… I ripped St. Brigid. Gone is the AS aran sweater. I just figured it would look like I was wearing a giant, wooly purple potato sack. Instead, my fingers crave smooth, sleek, minimal… so I cast on for Wendy’s (Knit and Tonic) “Sizzle”.

The yarn is Estelle Mystik DK (cotton/viscose blend) that I bought the day after Jo’s wedding. Really, the wedding was at the Radisson Hotel in Richmond which is right next to Yaohan and the cute knitting shop with all the Japanese yarns… so of course we had to make a quick visit. Besides, I haven’t bought yarn for myself in ages it seems. This yarn is splitty but the viscose that is blended into it lends the yarn a lovely drape and sheen. Of course, it would be ideal if this were silk but there was none to be found at the shop.

In between knitting and dyeing, I’ve been dressing the loom with more 20/2 silk. I had a lot of silk warp leftover, so I combined them all to make a shawl about 15.5″ wide. This will hopefully be my first foray into all 8 shafts — it will be a block twill (I think that’s what it’s called).

I’ve also made several warps in various stages of readiness. The plan is one warp on the loom, one warp ready to go, one warp ready to dye, and one warp marinating in my head…

The purple and black warp is all hand-dyed silk (Cascade from Henry’s Attic, 2000 ypp) that will become a log cabin scarf. This is based on an article from an old Handwoven magazine. The “pattern” calls for an 8-dent reed but I just have the one 10-dent reed so I’ll have to see how I can get “16 epi” out of that reed — I know that either 15 or 17 are possible.

The pile of blank silk is 20/2 Bombyx silk in three different chains, each with 230 ends. I’ll handpaint each one with similar colours and combine them into a 690 end shawl, sett at 30 epi that should give me a shawl about 22″ wide. This warp is 6 yards long — enough to make two shawls. Again, the idea is a block twill on eight shafts.

I know that all of July, I thought “Oh, after the wedding I’ll have more time… after the wedding…” but it seems like that’s not the case. There’s always more work. There’s always more stuff. There’s always too much to knit and never enough time. But maybe it’s not about trying to find more time. It’s about simplifying. Paring down. Minimizing… meanwhile, I just found at least four new things I want to make from Rowan’s Fall issue.

Crap.

Finishing what you start.

It is Monday morning and I am ticking things off my list. I am being productive. I am… “getting things done”… (who knew — it really is like a cult!)

I finished knitting and assembling the little baby Trellis sweater. It’s so tiny! So adorable! And that’s without the baby! All it needs now are buttons… so I’m off to visit the local button lady today.

And since I finished something, I figured it was ok to start something else. Ok, ok. I started a bunch of things, but they are all gift things that are impossible to talk about here… So, I started Alice Starmore’s St. Brigid sweater. Commence the cable-y goodness.

I’m knitting this in Jamieson’s Heather Aran (or whatever they are calling what used to be Soft Shetland). I bought this from them a couple months ago when they were having some massive over 50% off sale — this colour is called “Pagan”, a really vibrant, clear purple.

This is so far one repeat (plus two rows)… I have made some changes since I don’t really want to be swallowed whole by the sweater. I’m only going to do 7 repeats rather than 8 to help shorten the sweater a bit — don’t want to look like I’m wearing a giant wool dress. Also I ditched the two double seed stitch panels on either side of the sweater — this should remove about 10-12 cm (approx 4 inches) from the width of the sweater. That would still make it a 40 to 41″ sweater which is quite large, but liveable for me — it’s an outdoor sweater… or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Yippee, I also finished spinning for Ron’s Animal Cracker Hat — you know, the hat he’s wearing as the boys are sharing animal crackers in Prisoner of Azkaban? Yeah, me like-y. Most of the yarn was spun from Border Leicester — the same stuff I spun for the Jayne Hat. The darker greens on the left are a mix of Border Leicester and brown Romney (both dyed in the same pot together). The red is actually the red yarn that was leftover from the Jayne Hat — but I overdyed it with straight Magenta to get this blindingly brilliant red colour. It’s pretty glow-in-the-dark!

And in weekend news, I taught one of my friends to spin! Jen’s a knitter but her mom used to spin flax, weave and other crafty things. It was Jen’s birthday recently, so I stained and finished a bottom whorl drop spindle and dyed two little bumps of Corriedale wool for her. By the next day, she told me it was all spun up! The infection process has begun…. muahahhaha… ,

Fall is on its way…

Another day, another stash acquisition! Mmm, that’s right, I’m stashing for Fall projects now…

Little Knits is closing out their Cascade yarns, so I broke down and bought a pack of Cascade 220 for my St. Brigid… It was wonderfully priced at $4 something per skein. Funny, Cascade 220 isn’t sold at any of the LYSs in Vancouver, but it is available in the middle of nowhere. These availability issues, I just don’t understand. Anyway, here’s the colour I picked… plum. I originally wanted something heathered looking, but decided to go with this nice solid colour…

Also as a result of Wendy’s needle quest, I found myself ordering ebony needles from Susanne in Germany. I bought a set of 2.5, 3.0 and 3.25 mm Holz & Stein ebony circulars that I’ll be using for my fall Fair Isle projects. Yay.

On a quick detour after a client meeting Richmond, I picked up last fall’s Japanese knitting magazine called “News Style of Heirloom Knitting”. Very cute patterns throughout — there are at least three projects in each traditional knitting style: Fair Isle colourwork, Aran knitting, and Shetland lace. Beautiful and inspirational photos of knitted colour swatches… it just seems to exude the luxury of time. Ah, to be able to sit and slowly decide on colourways or textures…

Anne at SheEweKnits has the new Jamieson’s Shetland Heather Aran in stock, so I’ll be ordering the yarn for the DH’s Na Craga sweater. I’m excited to use this yarn and pattern — it was kind of a jaw-dropping experience when I first opened “Aran Knitting” and I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.

And finally, I have a bunch more stuff on order: the multitude of yarns for the Rowan 38 cover vest, Rebecca 30 magazine, the new RYC Classic pattern books, a Schacht Dizzy Gauge (I can’t believe this thing is $16), and a yarn meter. I think my wallet is tired now.

Blackwater Abbey Yarns

I received my tiny order of three 1 oz. balls of Blackwater Abbey yarn a few days ago. I’m test driving the yarn for the future St. Brigid from Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting (I just managed to buy a copy — for way too much — on Ebay!). This yarn comes in gorgeous colours but is really, really scratchy. Much scratchier than Jamieson’s Soft Shetland. In fact, it’s like exfoliating your fingertips when you knit with it.

I’ve heard it’s often difficult to get gauge with AS patterns and it was funny, I got 20 sts/34 rows for the St. Brigid double moss stitch swatch where the pattern requires 21 sts/27 rows. I’m also using 4mm as opposed to the suggested 4.5mm needles to try and get a smaller gauge, but it’s made my stitch gauge bigger! In any case, I’ve also heard that there’s quite a bit of flexibility with blocking and that you can resize up or down quite a bit.

Ah, decisions decisions. Which yarn? BWA or Soft Shetland? Which colour? Pink Heather (almost the same as Jamieson’s Raspberry) or Iris (almost the same as Jamieson’s Iris). Agh. I don’t even have the energy to write about my “Meg’s Fair Isle Cardigan” angst.