Posts Tagged ‘yarn’

This week, I've been spending a lot of time waiting. In ERs, in sickrooms, on the road, in parking lots, on trains and on streetcars. Helping loved ones get better involves driving hundreds of kilometres, drinking many pots of tea and spending lots of quiet hours watching them sleep away their maladies.

All this waiting means my travelling craft bag is getting a workout. When I head out, I make sure it's packed with portable projects and supplies. And since I love those What's in Her Bag behind-the-scenes things, here's a peek at what's inside:

• My current project. This week, it's my cross-stitch seed packet and a Simple Things shawlette.
• Stork scissors. These are the perfect little snippers for embroidery and yarn ends.
• Knitting markers and notions. These little guys are always handy – and you can never have too many.
• Needle holders and stoppers. I hate when stitches drop off the knitting needles in my bag. These little springs keep your needles together, even on the go, and these sticky point protectors are great for keeping rogue stitches where they belong.
• Stitch holders and waste yarn. These are great for holding on to stitches you're going to work later.
• Tape measure. Sometimes a retractable ruler is just a wee bit more accurate than your eyeball at measuring, isn't it?
• Crochet hook. This is essential for picking up dropped stitches and fixing runs in your knitting.
• Tapestry needles. I always seem to be on the move when I'm sewing in ends on knitted projects. These big blunt needles are a must-have.
• Cable needle. I love my compact curved cable needle because it stays in my knitting a little better than the longer ones with the bump in the middle.
• Highlighter. For marking up stitching charts, there is nothing that saves your sanity better than a fine-tip highlighter.

What do you carry in your travelling craft bag? Is there something I should be adding to mine?

Share in the comments below!

Hi friends,

Most of you will have received your November issue by now, so I don't think I'm ruining any surprises by talking about the knitting pattern that you'll find on page 149. Isn't it lovely?

Photography, Ryan Brook. Layout, Chris Bond.

This lace scarf was designed by Toronto knitting teacher, writer and technical editor Kate Atherley. The simple pattern is easy to memorize and results in a beautiful end product. Kate even provided a page of helpful hints to help novice lace knitters decipher the pattern. I think it's a perfect candidate for your first lace project – or to add to your list of Christmas presents to make!

The project takes one skein of Cascade 220 – a 100 percent wool worsted weight yarn. We like it because it comes in dozens of brilliant colours. And at 220 yards per 100 grams, you get great value for your dollar.

Cascade 220 is widely available in Canada (here's a list of Canadian retailers, always call ahead), but if you can't find it in a store nearby, I'd recommend substituting Patons' Classic Wool. This recently relaunched product is also a 100 percent wool worsted weight yarn that comes in a wide range of colours; and at 210 yards per 100 grams, it's also a really good deal. And, of course, it's also available across the country.

If you can't find either of these yarns, or if you'd like to make something with a more luxurious feel, consider changing the type of wool (for example, 100 per cent merino wool might be less "itchy") or even looking for a completely different fibre. Keep in mind that changing the fibre will likely change the look and feel of the finished product; if you're in doubt, ask the owner or one of the employees of your friendly local yarn store to help you make a substitute.

If you'd like to learn more about yarn substitution, I'd recommend checking out The Knitter's Book of Wool and The Knitter's Book of Yarn by Clara Parkes. They're excellent resources, and packed with beautiful projects, too. (Clara also writes Knitter's Review, a weekly online knitting magazine. She's a dynamo!)

Happy knitting!

Hi friends,

My friend Alli recently finished a whirlwind vacation in western Canada. She said that the highlight was having the opportunity to meet Felicia Lo of SweetGeorgia Yarns fame and check out the studio where she creates her sumptuous colour palettes. Enjoy!

First thing in the morning the day after my arrival in Vancouver my brother drove me downtown to 4th and Main streets and the location of Felicia Lo’s SweetGeorgia Yarns studio. And I was nervous!

Felicia Lo of SweetGeorgia Yarn.

Of course there was no reason to be. Felicia was just as nice as I remembered (we met briefly last year at a trunk show at Toronto’s Lettuce Knit). She graciously opened her studio to me just days after returning from Sock Summit and a couple of weeks after getting married.

Knitted samples.

If you’re a Canadian knitter or crocheter who likes bold colours but you don’t know SweetGeorgia Yarns – you should. Operating since 2005, SweetGeorgia Yarns has expanded their indie-dying operation from part time to full time, with an attitude as relentless as their colours.

Felicia trained to be a pharmacist, but knew almost immediately that it wasn’t the right career path for her. She moved to a career in web design, where she honed her eye for colour and design and continued to explore fibre arts on the side.

Cultivated silk before dyeing.

Felicia finds inspiration for her colour choices in the bold colours that she and her friends like to wear. In fact, many of the colours are influenced by favourite wardrobe pieces from her past. Felicia says that her pharmacy background is what allows her to have an extremely scientific approach to her dying process, ensuring consistent colour results time and again.

Stock on display in the studio.

After an explosive period of growth (she says she had no idea her business would take off so quickly once she started taking wholesale orders) and experimentation with dying different yarn and fibre bases, Felicia has refined her product offerings to those that showcase the vibrant colours the best.

All of the SweetGeorgia yarns are protein based (except for some fibre, which has a blend of some bamboo) and have been selected for their ability to really soak up the colour and reflect the saturated quality that the SweetGeorgia label has become known for.

Yarn and fibre drying in the studio.

With all these beautiful colours in their palette, Felicia says her plans for SweetGeorgia are to work on designing really beautiful and wonderful things to make with her yarns.

If the designs are as beautiful as the colours, they’re sure to be a winning combination – I know I can’t wait!

I recently got back from a terrific visit to my parents' house. Besides the usual treats (lots of hugs, steamed crab dinners and fresh country air), I received a couple of early Christmas presents. True, they were gifts to myself, but I was just as excited to open them as I am on Christmas morning.

Last summer, Austen wrote about the wondrous workings of the ball winder and swift. I had no idea that you could turn tangled hanks of yarn into tidy balls in no time at all. I figured it took four hands, a vast knowledge of curse words and ninja-like knot-untangling skills to produce a ball worth knitting. But it doesn't!

How a Swift Works

The swift works like an umbrella. You loop a hank of yarn over it, then push the centre piece up to tighten the yarn. (Back in the good old days, my dad acted as a human swift, holding the yarn between his outstretched hands while my grandmother wound balls of wool.)

How a Ball Winder Works

The ball winder turns the wool around and around a spindle, creating a pretty, perfect doughnut of untangled wool. You simply slide the end of the yarn through a tension pin, then through a slit in the centre of the spindle. Then you turn the crank, and the cone spins. It couldn't be easier.

These tools make the front end of the knitting process a breeze. Instead of days, it took me a couple of hours to turn this:Into this:

I learned a couple of things as I was getting to know my new favourite tools. Here are some hints to help you make the neatest balls of yarn.

5 Tips for Using a Ball Winder and Swift

1. Make sure your tools are far enough apart. My first ball was slumped and tangled because I set the swift and ball winder too close together. If you have room, clamp them to opposite edges of a table to make sure there's proper tension as the yarn winds.
2. Untwist the hank on the swift. By turning the hank so the winding yarn is pulling off the outside, you'll prevent snags and frustration as you wind.
3. Snip the ties carefully. Hanks are tied to keep the loops from tangling, sometimes in more than one place. Use small, sharp scissors to snip the ties close to the knot. Keep your eyes peeled as you snip so you don't cut into the hank (totally frustrating!).
4. Turn at a moderate speed. Turning too fast or too slow can create a lumpy result, so get into a smooth, moderate rhythm as quickly as you can.
5. Guide the yarn with your free hand. Let the yarn run through your free hand as you wind to ensure it's guided properly into the tension pin. This will keep out snags and give you a smooth ball of wool.

If you're more of a visual learner, check out this video demo from Knitting Daily TV. Scroll to 0:44 and watch the magic take place!

Hi friends,

My friend Alli rarely meets a yarn store that she doesn’t like. On her recent trip out west, she managed to visit a record five yarn shops, one weaving studio and one indie dyer’s studio – in just over 10 days. She'll be joining us over the next couple weeks to tell us all about it. Enjoy!

Ever since learning about KnitMap I’ve become obsessed with checking the site when I’m planning a trip. Contributing to my obsession is the fact that over the last two years I’ve been knitting the Lizard Ridge Afghan. It requires 24 different balls of Noro Kureyon, so I try to collect one each time I find myself in a different yarn store in my travels.

The need to manage my family’s patience levels means I’ve become adept at gaining intel on stores before I visit them to maximize time and success when picking up “souvenir yarn.” This vacation was no different! Here’s a roundup of the different places I visited in Alberta.

Calgary, Alberta

Store: The Loop – Kensington
Impressions: Bright and cheerful with a fresh and funky vibe.
Excuse for being there: Knit night – and the gang was very welcoming.
Highlights: Spinning fibre hand-dyed by owner Annie, as well as the rich colours of Rocky Mountain Dyeworks yarns and fibres (colours used on knitted samples on the walls fly off the shelves).
Purchases: A crochet hook for adding beads to your knitting. This was two days into my vacation and I was easing into my vacation shopping.
Verdict: Definitely coming back to hang out with the gals and absorb the good vibes in this place!

Store: The Knitting Room
Impressions: Good size space with lots of stock.
Excuse for being there: Hunting for Berocco Seduce for a new project.
Highlights: Spinning fibre from Australian company Pear Tree (so soft!) and a sale section at the back that I wish I’d had more time for.
Purchases: Nothing, as they didn’t have enough yarn of the colourway I wanted for my project and my mom and son were waiting in the car.
Verdict: Good place to go with something in mind or a list as their website is a blog that hadn’t been updated in a while and it was impossible to look up in advance what they might have.

Store: Pudding Yarn
Impressions: Small but beautiful shop crammed with posh yarn goodies.
Excuse for being there: Still on the hunt for Berocco Seduce.
Highlights: ShiBui sock yarns, Blue Sky Alpacas, Rowan products, books by Kim Hargraves, Signature Needles, and tons of really great stock.
Purchases: Success! Eight skeins of Berocco Seduce in the colourway I was looking for (seven for the project and the inevitable one extra just-in-case skein), and a real treat in a pair of size 4mm Signature Needles that are usually only available online via the US. (I’m counting the needles as a birthday present to me!).
Verdict: There’s always a lot to see in this tiny shop (I’ve been here on a previous trip) so I’m looking forward to coming back.

Hi friends,

I've been knitting like crazy to finish my sweater in record time, and while it's turning out well, I have to admit that I'm getting a little tired of brown wool. I've put almost a kilometre(!) of brown wool into this sweater so far, and that really is a lot of brown.

Maybe that's why I was more interested in photographing the pins than the knitting when I set out to block my sweater sleeves.

And maybe that's why I felt compelled to pick up a couple skeins of KPPPM when I was at the yarn store on Sunday.

The yellow background with the flashes of colour reminds me of driving down a country road in southern Ontario at the end of August, past fields full of yellowing grass, speckled here and there with wildflowers, weeds, and the occasional butterfly or bird. Goldenrod, chickory, coltsfoot, thistles, monarch butterflies, eastern bluebirds: if you could wind my childhood summer memories into a skein, they'd look just like this.

I'd like to make this into a cowl, the perfect accessory to wear as summer turns to fall. And I'll get started as soon as I can – I've just three more skeins of brown (and 21 inches of sweater front) to go.

(Are you already planning your fall projects? Here's the Pantone Colour Trend report for Fall 2011.)

After a long hiatus, I've started knitting on the bus again. My Old Port sweater got a lot of concentrated stitching mileage before I grew weary of cabling and put it down indefinitely. I'm sure I'll come back to it one of these days, but for now, I'm concentrating on smaller projects that don't feel so much like work.

A project languishing in my knitting basket was a delicate Grapevine Lace Scarf from Azure Knits. I'm not a fan of wool-on-skin, so I picked up some heavenly soft balls of Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo in a very pretty shade of lavender. The pattern called for a worsted weight yarn, but I figured the lighter DK weight would make the scarf a little lacier and better for all-season wear.

With World Wide Knit in Public Day coming up this week – June 11 to 19 – I'm thinking of other projects I can keep on hand for social, public knitting. The Grapevine Scarf does test my limits when someone's talking to me. The purl back rows are no problem, but the lace repeats can be a little challenging when you're trying to carry on a conversation with a friendly co-knitter.

So here are a few projects I'll be casting on to take with me to public knitivism events (or a working lunch with my knitting colleagues). Best part? I'll be using up my crazy stash at the same time.

• Honey Cowl from Madelinetosh
• Sockhead Hat by Bohoknits
• Sunday Swing Socks by Kristel Nyberg

What are you knitting in public or on the go? Share your links in the comments section!

Jazz is all about improvisation. You're given the main musical cues – the tempo, the chord changes, the melodic line – then you spend a nice 5 to 10 minutes noodling around, playing with the theme. You add a few accents here, riff off the chord changes there, and you have a song. It may be unique, but it's still recognizable as the tune you set out to play.

Why all the jazz talk, you ask? Well, my stash-busting hat is not going so well. I set out to make the simple but beautiful Brattleboro Hat from New England Knits, one of my very favourite pattern books of all time. Voilà:

Photography, Sadie Dayton, © Interweave Press LLC

But I ended up with this:

That's a sad pile of frogged yarn (and a promise to myself that I will never play jazz with a perfectly good pattern ever again).

Improv #1: I added an inch to the band, because my head is slightly...larger than average. ("It's all those brains," my mother would say.) I washed and blocked the band, as directed, to "relax the stitches." Well, my stitches must have vacationed in Tahiti, because the band ended up about 3 inches longer than necessary.

Lesson #1: Stick with the pattern. If it says the finished product will fit your huge cranium, don't add extra stitches for insurance. Oh, and it wouldn't kill you to do a gauge swatch once in a while.

Improv #2: I picked up an extra 8 stitches (enough for an extra set of decreases) around the edge of the band for the crown. (That should be big enough!) I stopped picking stitches up about 2.5 inches before the end of the band so when I joined the stitches in the round, there would be a tail left over. (That should take up those extra couple inches on the band! And I'm sure I can engineer it into some sort of pseudo-flap for the buttons!)

Lesson #2: If something is too big to start with, fancy footwork probably won't save you. Unravel and start over before you're in too deep.

Improv #3: I read the moss stitch pattern repeats wrong and alternated P1, K1 and K1, P1, rather than doing two rows of one, then two rows of the other. (Oh, well, who cares if the first two rows are wrong? I'll just start fresh from Row 3!)

Lesson #3: Read the pattern repeats at least twice before you start. Before. Not after.

Improv #4: I plowed into the crown decreases even though I hadn't ended my moss stitch on the correct row. (Well, Row 1 is close enough to Row 3!) Since my moss stitch was off, the decreases looked weird and the texture devolved into chaos. I might also have purled when I was supposed to knit, and knitted when I was supposed to purl, in few places.

Lesson #4: Start over now, before you have to wear this monstrosity in public.

So, I gave up. The hat is now frogged, and I have plans to start over with fresh yarn and a new appreciation for careful pattern following.

I hope your knitting projects are going better than mine!

Thank you all so much for all your excellent pattern suggestions for using up my yarn stash. I can't believe how many fun ideas you posted. Now I have a buffet of options to choose from. I took a few minutes to look up some of the links you suggested and thought I'd share them here.

• Jan suggested I try a well-loved Canadian Living pattern for tiny knitted dolls. It's a great idea for using up a pile of small yarn scraps. Plus, you can customize each doll for the recipient.
• Deb suggested I try out Shelly Kang's sock-yarn blanket. I love the Kaffe Fassett look of the squares in this throw.
• Deb also suggested a Log Cabin tree skirt from Sally Melville's Warm Knits, Cool Gifts. I love Log Cabin anything, so I'll have to get the book. Or maybe craft a bunch of Log Cabin squares I can make into all sorts of things – totes, throws, etc.
• LouLou suggested a modern version of the crocheted granny square. Isn't it cool how the finished product looks a little like stained glass?
• GiGi was a champ – she posted several links. One was Soule Mama's no-pattern stash-busting blanket and another was Posie Gets Cozy's ripple afghan. I'm a huge fan of both Amanda and Alicia, so I'm very happy to see them in this list. If I ever learn to crochet, The Ripple is a must.
• GiGi also included links to a cool vertical striped afghan and a wicked stripy scarf.

I'm having a crazy-busy week, but I have managed to get just a touch of sewing time in. I finished my sashiko mail holder. Hurray for finished objects (at last)!

Austen may have startitis, but I've got a nasty case of stashitis.

A quick cleanup of my office/craft room at home revealed several baskets and bags stuffed with yarn. Then I took a look at the yarn basket in my living room and discovered another huge pile. Then a few smaller piles tucked into other baskets and on shelves. Yikes!

Last weekend, my mom and I hit an anniversary sale at a huge yarn store. While the deals were amazing and the company was excellent (hi, Mom!), all I could think of was the growing tower of fibre threatening to take over my life. So I plunked down the cash for a single pretty skein of camellia pink sock yarn and a set of DPNs I needed and headed for the door.

So, crafty friends, here's where you come in. What are your favourite stash-busting patterns for small amounts of yarn?

I have lots of sock-weight and worsted wool, but only one or two skeins apiece in most cases. I like to knit baby sweaters for my friends' adorable kids, and I love hats, mitts and scarves. What else do you typically make with your odds and ends?  Post the link in the comments box on this page and help a drowning gal out. Please?