Author Archives: pdxknitterati

Potpourri post

Posted on February 4, 2011 | 11 comments

A little of this, a little of that.

We’re in college visit season, as you could see from my last post. We have another trip coming up, to another warm place. I think theTeen wants to escape the rain!

Too bad theTeen no longer knits. He used to knit, a long time ago. He even knit one red worm. (Naomi Dagen Bloom’s worm; she used to live in NYC, as did we, and now she blogs here in PDX as A Little Red Hen. Small world!) Anyway, I found out about this scholarship opportunity recently.

Five $3,000 scholarships are now available to hardworking students who can knit or crochet (that’s $15,000 total)! Jimmy Beans Wool has teamed up with many people in the fiber arts industry to provide the Beans For Brains Scholarship for deserving knitters and crocheters! This merit-based award is for students who will be attending an accredited institution in the Fall of 2011. You can get more information and an application by visiting the Beans For Brains Scholarship page (the deadline for submissions is April 1st). Not attending college but know someone who is or will be? Spread the word and help the next generation of fiber artists fund their dreams of higher education!

Maybe I should get him started again. I’m a knitting evangelist! What else? I finished the project I was working on at last week’s knit nite, but I’ll blog about it next week. This week? I finished the first sleeve on my Heather Hoodie cardi, and started the second. It goes really quickly, when I actually knit on it!

Oh, you want to see the *knitting*?

I also started on a project for Sock Summit. I’m using Knitted Wit’s lovely Bling (sparkly) yarn; she dyed both of these for me and I am having a hard time choosing which color to knit first! I think I’ll eventually use both of these, separately. The one on the left has blue overtones, and the one on the right is more gray.

My tiny start here isn’t quite what I want, so this will get ripped out and I’ll start again. This is my favorite part of designing: the dreaming about what it’s going to be, and starting and re-starting until it matches the dream. Frustrating sometimes, but that’s okay.

What are you knitting now?

11 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged heather hoodie, Knit, scholarship, sock summit

Sunny, fake i-cord, and a survey

Posted on January 31, 2011 | 13 comments

The Teen and I went to Tucson this weekend to visit the University of Arizona. We loved the weather: sunny and warm, 70 degrees f.

The flora was quite different from PDX.

It was an Honors visit weekend, and they did a great job of promoting the Honors College and the UA in general. The engineering department presentations were stellar. It’s a pretty big university (30,000 undergrad) which makes for a vibrant campus. We both really liked the school. It’s good to know that this is a viable option. Next month: more college visits. ‘Tis the season!

I knit through a lot of presentations, and finished a project which I can’t blog yet, but will blog soon. Meanwhile, here’s a tiny bit of another project I can’t blog yet. Do you ever use knitted cord? You can knit a tiny 2 or 3 stitch i-cord, which can be really tedious. Or you can crochet a chain, but then it’s not knit, and it looks a little unfinished. Or…

you can cast on a bunch of stitches, and on the very next row, bind them all off. That’s my new favorite cord.

One more knitty thing: My friend Lorajean (Knitted Wit) is conducting a survey to help her decide how to shape her business. If you complete the 10 question survey and share it to Facebook or Twitter, you’ll get a coupon for 40% off in her store. You get a discount, she gets your helpful information, everybody wins.

Go!

13 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel

Tagged knit cord, tucson, UA

Entrelac madness

Posted on January 29, 2011 | 4 comments

Looking at next month, I hereby declare February to be entrelac month. I’m teaching two entrelac classes at Twisted. One is for Athena, which is entrelac in the round, on Saturday, February 5.

And the other class is for Infinity, which is entrelac knit flat (so it has side triangles), with a bit of lace in the center rectangles.

Want to sign up? Contact Twisted. Hope to see you soon!

4 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Athena, entrelac, infinity, Knit

Books!

Posted on January 26, 2011 | 14 comments

Just home from knit nite. I brought five new books with me. One was Lorna Miser’s The Knitter’s Guide to Hand-dyed and Variegated Yarn that I told you about here. Another was The Complete Photo Guide to Knitting by Margaret Hubert that I told you about here. The third was a Christmas present that I haven’t taken a picture of, so I’ll tell you about it later. And the last two were from TNNA. Let’s pretend that you went to knit nite with me; you can see the two new books (and go back to the other two linked books, if you’d like).

At TNNA, there were book signings every hour, and the books were free. Two came home with me. This is Rosemary Drysdale’s Entrelac: The Essential Guide to Interlace Knitting. As you know, I’m completely entranced with entrelac lately, so I was thrilled to get this book. Actually, Lorajean (Knitted Wit) picked it up for me, because I was already on my way home during this book signing. Thanks, LJ!

This is a gorgeous book. Drysdale constructs her entrelac a little differently than I do; she starts her base triangles on the purl side, and has right side and wrong side rectangles. I work everything from the right side, and so I call mine left and right leaning rectangles. I don’t think it matters. If you don’t already do entrelac, it’s a good place to start. If you already do entrelac, the rest of the book is a treat. She goes through several different things you can do to spice up your entrelac,

including texture, lace, cables, colorwork, beads, embroidery…all lovely. And the photography in this book is gorgeous. Here’s a little embellishment.

I saw these fruit caps at TNNA; they are really cute!

There are several patterns in the book too, incuding a felted bag, scarves, a poncho, a cardigan, the fruit caps. I love this book.

The other book is Nicky Epstein’s Knitting Block By Block.

She accidentally signed the book in the back, upside down, so she signed it again in the front. It was worth a giggle!

You can use these blocks for anything: a blanket, sweaters, scarves, hats. There are blocks of cables

colorwork

other embellishments. The i-cord here is sewn on to a plain block. There are so many ways to use this technique.

I love this blanket.

And there are patterns, too. Another beautiful, inspirational book by Nicky Epstein.

What else am I reading? Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua! This book has gotten a lot of attention recently since an excerpt appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

My in-laws sent this to me. Are they trying to tell me something? I actually think it’s rather tongue in cheek; some of the things she says are so over the top that I can’t imagine saying them for real. (“Why not A+?” has been a joke for many years in our house.) I had theTeen read the chapter on Suzuki piano, and he just smiled. We did Suzuki piano for nine years, and it was pretty wonderful.

Oh, at knit nite I was knitting with this. I’ll show you what, when I’m further along.

It’s unseasonably warm here (about 55 degrees fahrenheit), and the tulips think it’s spring. (I like they way they’ve pierced the dead leaves that I never got around to raking. That’s violent growth!)

The hostas think it’s spring, too.

I think they’re all going to have a rude awakening.

What’s happening in your neck of the woods?

14 Comments

Posted in book review, Knit

Tagged entrelac, nicky epstein, rosemary drysdale

BOLO

Posted on January 22, 2011 | 7 comments

Be on the lookout…

for a suitcase full of lovely knitwear. Local designer Mary Scott Huff’s car was broken into here in Portland, and her knitted garments for her trunk show were stolen. You can read her letter to the thief, hoping against hope that these knits will be returned to her.

I hope she gets them back. That’s six months of intensive knitting, gone in a blink.

7 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit

Tagged Mary Scott Huff

Hot new colors for spring

Posted on January 21, 2011 | 11 comments

At least according to Pantone! These are the top 10 colors for women’s fashion this spring, as chosen by NY designers. I learned about these at a mini-session with Vogue Knitting editor Trisha Malcolm at TNNA. She gave us these color cards. (You may get a truer reading if you go to the Pantone website.)

The color of the year is honeysuckle, or Pantone 18-2120. Pretty.

What else did we learn? White is the biggest trend for spring. Plan on seeing lots of it, especially with navy, because navy is the new brown. Remember when brown was the new black? We’re so over that. You’ll also see navy with citrus (green or yellow) and honeysuckle.

Other fashion trends for spring: sheer layers, especially lightweight cowls, scarves, and wraps. Less shape: we’ll be seeing comfortable billowy shapes replacing the refined look of fall 2010. Trisha says that the long sleeveless vest will be the “it” garment, and knitters will make it more interesting with embellishments like lace or cables. Sounds good to me.

Here’s the back of the card with the rest of spring’s trends.

And when you’re done with spring? The color for fall is wine. Trisha says that the good news is that wine is a color that looks good on almost all skin tones.

Do you follow fashion colors? I still mostly knit with blue and purple, because I like them. Wine looks good, too. In fact, this reminds me that I should finish my Heather Hoodie. I set it aside last spring when I realized that it wouldn’t be done before the weather got too warm. I’m cold now, so that’s a great incentive to pick it up again, and I can wear it next fall, too, when it’s the very fashion-forward wine color! (Really, it’s called Bing Cherry, but that’s our little secret.)

Instead of a vest, I’m making this with long sleeves. I’m so glad I wrote good notes before setting this project aside! I picked them up at the shoulder, worked a modified drop shoulder sleeve cap, and am knitting them flat down to the wrist. Yes, I could have done it in the round, but I like my 26 inch circular and didn’t want to have to change to dpns part way down. And I like mattress stitch seaming on stockinette.

One more tidbit from TNNA: The Noro rep told me that Silk Garden Lite is coming back this spring. I’m pretty pleased, because that means that my Infinity scarf is no longer designed with a discontinued yarn. I’m feeling so au courant…

11 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged color, heather hoodie, Knit

30 seconds of fame, and a book

Posted on January 19, 2011 | 11 comments

If I’m mentioned in two blogs, isn’t that 15 seconds of fame, twice?

This week Beverly from Yarn Intercept interviewed me for a feature on her blog. Click here to visit Beverly’s blog and find out 10 things about me and my knitting!

And I discovered that my new Yarn Train friend Sandi is a blogger, too. She chronicled our yarn crawl here.

What else is new? Working, working, working, and no daylight pictures. But here’s a book I bought before going to TNNA.

It’s The Knitter’s Guide to Hand-dyed and Variegated Yarn by Lorna Miser. I borrowed a copy from the library, and liked it so much that I had to buy one. I have a prickly relationship with variegated yarn. They’re so pretty in the skein, but they don’t always do what I want or expect them to do when I knit with them. Sometimes you get this:

These are all the same yarn; the only thing that has changed is the length of the row. Crazy, huh? I remember a lovely yarn that I used for a shop sample. I wasn’t anticipating this:

The book first goes through how to predict what might happen based on the length and frequency of color patterns in your yarn. It then gives all sorts of stitch patterns and ways of combining yarns that might mitigate some of the craziness in variegated yarns. There are also patterns for garments that show how this is done, if you don’t want to figure out your own. I’m using some of the ideas in a super secret design project that I’m working on. I’ll show it to you…someday. For now, I’ll keep showing you my new books. There are several more!

Do you like variegated yarns? How do you use them?

11 Comments

Posted in book review, Knit

TNNA inspiration

Posted on January 17, 2011 | 10 comments

Last Saturday and Sunday I walked the floor at TNNA. Lots of yarn and needles and bags and designs and more to see. I don’t have a ton of photos from the floor, because cameras are technically not allowed, but here’s a rainbow from Bergere de France. (I had met Vincent the night before, so wasn’t shy about asking for a photo!)

The Lantern Moon booth was beautiful, as planned, and the butterflies all stayed in their places (hooray).

The Pico Accuardi booth had a woodland theme, complete with its own pixie.

BTW, his sweet hat is a felted creation by Sarah at Attitude Hats.

I took a few mini-session classes. The first was on social networking, led by Erin Slonaker, editor-in-chief of Yarn Market News. One thing that she told us about that I’d never heard of: Pinterest. It’s like bookmarking, but publicly, and it’s very visual. You can make beautiful pages of things that interest you, and share them. Erin talked about things going viral via Pinterest. Go look! Here’s Erin with the YMN cake at Soho Publishing’s Sunday reception. You may know her as the designer of the Leyburn Socks on her Pepperknit blog.

I also took a class on blogging/social media with Benjamin Levisay (CEO) and Kimberly Reynolds (social media director) of XRX, Inc. Their point? Do it! But don’t stress about it. They said that a company should have four things in the social networking world: blog, Facebook, Twitter, and a Ravelry page. We’re getting there…I need more hours in a day.

I had two mini-sessions with Trisha Malcolm, editor of Vogue Knitting. One was on teaching, and one was a color forecast for spring/summer. I’ll tell you about the colors later, when I can take a picture of the color card. So gray here in PDX this weekend, and I haven’t been home during the day.

Lantern Moon had a champagne punch reception to celebrate their 10th anniversary TNNA show.

The team from Soho Publishing brought us a cake!

Jess, Casey, Sarah, and Mary-Heather from Ravelry helped us celebrate.

I love Mary-Heather’s shawl, and I can’t remember what it is. I tried looking at her gallery on Ravelry, but couldn’t find it. Do you recognize it?

Kristin Omdahl (far right) came by to showcase her new book, A Knitting Wrapsody. She had some friends model samples of a few of the designs. They are really lovely. The book comes out next month, and it looks great. Best feature: it comes with a dvd to demonstrate less familiar techniques. What a great idea.

You can see how I was wearing many hats at TNNA last weekend: blogger, LM blogger, designer, LYS teacher! One last cool thing: Unicorn Books had a book signing/giveaway almost every hour. It took me a while to figure that out, so I just ended up with two. I’ll tell you about them later, after I can take a picture or two, and maybe even get a chance to sit down and look at them!

This weekend? The Day Old Pastries played at a MLK Workday and Celebration for the Portland Backpack Lunch Program. It was a fun gig, and that’s another hat for me!

10 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit

Tagged TNNA

SEA-PDX yarn train 2011

Posted on January 16, 2011 | 18 comments

We interrupt this TNNA blog-fest with a report on the Seattle to Portland Yarn Train Yarn Crawl.

I started my day at Urban Fiber Arts, Cindy Abernethy’s shop. It was full of happy knitters. Susan Stambaugh of Abstract Fiber was there, and she brought spinning fiber in a new colorway, Urban Joy, in honor of Cindy’s fairly new shop. Gorgeous!

The PDXKnitBloggers/PDXSpinnerati were out in force, too: Karen’s mom, Karen, Judy, Bobbie.

I met Kathee of Kathee Nelson Art Yarns, and she showed me some of her pretty fiber.

I ignored the siren song of the cupcakes at Cupcake Jones (a coupon!) and went over to Knit/Purl next. There were lots of happy knitters there, too. I actually ran into my across the street neighbor who teaches there, too. Hi, Judy! And I saw Jared Flood’s yarn, Shelter, for the first time. The colors were deep and luscious.

After Knit/Purl, I went to Starbucks across the street, and found more PDXKnitBloggers: Camille, Kathy (also a Turkish Delight spindler), Angela, Rachel, Tami. Please note that Tami’s shirt and shawl are raspberry, not pink.

We were discussing where to go next, and talking to the yarnies at the next table, who wanted to know how to get to Yarn Garden. I offered to drive them, and I assured them that I was not an ax murderer. Norma, Sandi and Anna trusted me, and we went to Yarn Garden, where they had a good time.

We also went to Happy Knits, and Twisted, because Sandy wanted to see Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarn, up close and personal. She got her wish! And she definitely got some yarn, too…

OT: Interweave Knits is offering a free download of 7 hat patterns here.

18 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit, spinning

Tagged SEA-PDX Yarn Train

More Friday at TNNA

Posted on January 14, 2011 | 7 comments

I went through the pictures on my camera, and realized that I didn’t quite finish Friday. You can see the Lantern Moon part of it over at the Lantern Moon blog. And here’s the rest of *my* Friday story.

After set-up, there’s a frenzy known as Sample It. Vendors can sell special samples at this one hour event. And it goes fast! There was lots of fun stuff to look at. I didn’t buy any yarn. It was close a couple times, but I kept thinking of all the yarn that was waiting for me at home. And you know I don’t stash…much.

Our friends at Pico Accuardi Dyeworks and Knitted Wit were there with Baby O.

And so was Carrie of Irishgirlieknits! She designed the cowl she’s wearing, and you can see it in the poster in the upper left corner, too. She was in the Kollage booth; they were using her pattern to promote their new Recycled Blue Jeans yarn.

Later on Friday evening, there’s a fashion show. Joel introduced the fashion show, wearing the cutest accessory ever. By the end of the evening, Baby O had his own fan club.

Here are a few of the thing that caught my eye in the fashion show.

This is the Birgitta shell, designed by Marly Bird in Lhasa Wilderness by Bijou Basin, a 75/25 Yak/Bamboo blend. Very soft. Bijou Basin Ranch raises yaks to sell premium yak fiber products. I fell in love with their Mahika Beanie kit by Anne Lukito at Sample It, too. And they’re really nice people.

Look at this dress! This is Brompton, designed by Kim Dolce in Universal Sensational. I love the lines and colors of this piece. Doesn’t it look fun to wear?

I think the cardi on the left is Manana by Kim Barnette in Classic Elite Sprout. I think. Simple, with a nice border.

These pieces are from Great Adirondack Yarn Co. They have much more color than I usually wear, but I love how the color highlights the geometric action on these three pieces.

Lantern Moon’s Bali Weekender bag was in the show, too. I really want one of these; it’s even prettier in real life.

And this was my favorite piece in the show. It’s the Warren 2-Way Jacket designed by Irina Poludnenko in Tahki Ripple. This yarn knits up into a really interesting fabric; it’s kind of crisp and kind of stretchy at the same time. It’s thick/thin, and very textural. It must be new, because I don’t see it on the Tahki website yet. The jacket can be worn this way, long, or flipped upside down and the fabric that gave it length becomes a big shawl collar, and the previous collar becomes a short jacket. I saw it at the Tahki Stacy Charles booth, and even tried it on.