Author Archives: pdxknitterati

San Francisco déjà vu, and Single Skein Club

Posted on October 7, 2009 | 10 comments

DH & I took the kids to San Francisco at the end of August. We had a great touristy weekend. This was going to be our planned summer vacation, until we decided to visit Vietnam and Tokyo. It’s been a big travel year.

We toured the Davies Symphony Hall and San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a friend who plays for the symphony. The Teen sat down at the piano in one of the recital halls.

He even remembered part of a sonatina he played about six years ago. He hasn’t played piano since 2005 or so. How does he do that?

When I told Mom we were going, she said, “I never get to go anywhere.” That got me thinking. Mom’s birthday was coming; why not take her to San Francisco? So my sisters and I took her for a girls’ weekend. My August trip was a great preview!

Of course we went to Chinatown; we’re Chinese! We had a very touristy fun weekend. We even rode a cable car. (Excuse the wind noise; it was windy.)

Before we left, I went to Twisted to pick up my Single Skein Club package for October. If you’re still waiting for yours, you should avert your eyes now. Otherwise I’ll ruin your surprise. Look away!

This month’s club offering is a very chic hat by Lee Meredith, aka Leethal. It’s called Ocean Breezes. Here’s a Rav link to some better pix.

The yarn is Alpaca With a Twist Highlander Tweed. It’s beautiful yarn, smooth and soft. I love the sheen it has from the alpaca. I even got to choose my own color, which made this little control freak very happy.

The package also includes these very cute fish buttons, some cedar moth balls, and some point protectors. And Halloween candy.

Even though I haven’t knit the past several kits, I really like being part of the club. The suspense and thrill of finding out what’s in the package pleases me. The patterns are always clever, and the yarn is always sumptuous. I’ve been introduced to some yarns that I never would have considered in my browsing. Cool!

10 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel

Tagged cable car, Knit, san francisco, single skein club, twistedpdx

Knit your fingers to the bone, what do you get?

Posted on October 1, 2009 | 25 comments

Baby Hat Palooza!

We’re having a little baby boom at church. The music director’s baby received the pink baby bolero last month. We’re having a baby shower for three new moms this weekend, so I did a hat trick! (hockey, anyone?)

This is the tomato cap from Ann Norling’s Fruit Cap pattern (Rav link). It was my standard baby gift for a long time.

This is my own watermelon cap. Here’s a link to my free pattern.

And this is Elsa. The little knot in the pattern makes me think of Elsa Schiaparelli’s Bow Knot sweater, even though it’s nothing like it. It’s just a little decoration. I envision the knot worn above the ear, but anything can happen once it leaves my hands! Front and center? Down the back? Whatever!

I’m offering the Elsa pattern for free. It’s a simple pattern, quick and easy to knit with dk weight yarn. I used Sublime Yarns Baby Cashmere Merino Silk DK, so mine is quite the little luxury knit. I hope you like it!

25 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged baby hat, free pattern, Knit

OFFF stash enhancement

Posted on October 1, 2009 | 7 comments

So what did I get at OFFF?

A few very carefully chosen goodies!

My main goal for this festival was to buy another spindle. I love my Turkish Delight, but I wanted one more spindle so I can experiment with one while the other has an ongoing spinning project. I thought I’d try a top-whorl spindle. I found out that there are a lot of spindles out there, with a wide range of prices. I bought this cherry and red cedar Kundert spindle and the book, Productive Spindling, at the Carolina Homespun booth.

Here’s the underside. The fiber is a sample from Abstract Fiber; it was in the goodie bag from WWSiPDay. (Thanks to Susan for donating, and Tami for organizing!)

It spins for a long time, and I’ve learned to roll it off my leg so it really gets going fast. Just another hint from the Productive Spindling book by Amelia Garripoli. I have a lot to learn!

I also bought four one ounce fiber knots from Knitted Wit. I love the colors, and I could see using handspun from these for colorwork, interspersed on a background of commercial black or white yarn. At $3 a knot, it’s a completely non-threatening experiment fiber (merino, yummy).

My last purchase was a small maple niddy-noddy from Ol Lar’s Drop Spindles. Isn’t it pretty? I almost bought a bubinga top-whorl spindle from them, but it was gone when I went back. That’s probably a good thing, because I was just going to impulse buy it because it was so beautiful! I had already bought the Kundert the day before.

It comes apart and turns into this.

Pretty restrained, huh? Now to go spin all that fluff! And Lorajean gave me a braid of merino/silk in her Rose City colorway to thank me for helping her set up. It’s gorgeous. Thanks, LJ!

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, spinning

Tagged OFFF, spinning

Turkish Delight goes viral

Posted on September 30, 2009 | 13 comments

You may remember that I fell for Leila’s Turkish delight spindle back at Sock Summit. Leila’s quite the enabler. She was trying to get me to try out her spinning wheel at OFFF, but I’m not falling for that. Yet.

Last week at the WWSiPD event, Rachel fell for my Turkish spindle. She bought one at OFFF.

I think Rachel is stalking me. First, the February Lady Sweater. Then the Turkish Delight. Next, she says she’ll be making some Leyburn socks…

Anyway, when Tammy saw my spindle last week and Rachel’s spindle this week, she had to have one, too.

Leila enabled another spinner, my friend S (seen here). Who then enabled L. (Names are hidden to protect the innocent.)

And so it goes. Pretty soon, you get this:

All Turkish. Except Duffy. We let her spin with us, anyway, because she’s nice. She and I broke out into song: One of these things is not like the other. Shades of Sesame Street!

By the way, my new Maya Floral bag from Lantern Moon is perfect for holding a little bit of roving and my Turkish Delight. I love it!

13 Comments

Posted in Knit, spinning

Tagged OFFF, spinning, turkish spindle

OFFF report

Posted on September 30, 2009 | 8 comments

Finally catching up with myself. I had a great, if brief, time at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival last weekend. After helping Lorajean set up on Friday, I returned Saturday afternoon with three friends. The first thing we did was make a new little friend.

Last year I completely missed the animals; I never made it into the barn. I only experienced the Fiber part of the festival! This year I made it a priority to see the flock.

We saw goats. (At least I think they’re goats. I’m a city girl; what do I know?)

V loves goats. She has a business plan for our goat farm. DH makes a million dollars, and then he bankrolls our hobby farm. Perfect, no? I stipulated that we hire someone to shovel goat poop. Or she does it. Anyway…

We saw sheep. (I think.)

And alpacas. (I’m sure these are alpacas; note the helpful sign.)

And bunnies. Definitely bunnies. What kind? Um, the bunny kind. Oh, there were chinchillas, too, but I don’t have a picture of them.

It’s not all animals in the barn. We also saw some cool knitted items, dyed fiber, and this exquisite little exhibit.

There was a lot of fiberlicious eye candy. Here’s Lorajean’s booth.

Karie (silverpurl) was there with her beautiful silver jewelry and stitch markers.

Roland from Laurel Hill had a small corner carved out for himself at the Carolina Homespun booth. They have some interesting new straight needles that are triangular in shape (you may have seen Kollage’s square ones before). I tried them, and they were easy to hold, but I remain a circular needle fan. Pretty woods, though.

And here’s my favorite set-up at the festival. This is the Bellwether Wool Company van (mini-bus?) from Philomath, OR. Note the cool awning for sheltered yarn shopping.

But even better is the inside of the van. Yes, you can shop inside, and it looks like this! (I’m shooting from front to back.) So cool.

And the PDX KnitBloggers and PDX Spinnerati were at OFFF, too.

More on that in the next post. Stash enhancement post is coming, too…

8 Comments

Posted in Knit, spinning

Tagged OFFF

More fun from Jeny Staiman, Cat Bordhi, OFFF

Posted on September 26, 2009 | 9 comments

Remember how I waxed rhapsodic over Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off? Jeny just posted a stretchy cast on to match. Simple, yet elegant. And oh, so stretchy! Very cool.

And I just bought Cat Bordhi‘s new book, Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters. Cat is, as usual, brilliant! And she has Jeny’s bind off in her book. I feel so in the know this week…

Off to OFFF (Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival) this afternoon! Yesterday I helped Lorajean (Knitted Wit) set up her booth. She has some really gorgeous hand-dyed yarn for sale, including Bling, a new fingering weight line that is merino, silk, and silver. It would make beautiful socks or a shawl. There’s a blackberrry colored skein calling my name…but I don’t stash! She also has braids of hand-dyed fiber: merino, corriedale, blue faced leicester, some silk blends. And my patterns!

OFFF runs through tomorrow (Sunday); come down and say howdy! I’ll be there, looking for a second drop spindle…

9 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged cat bordhi, Jeny Staiman, JSSBO, OFFF

How many knitting days until Christmas?

Posted on September 25, 2009 | 11 comments

I don’t know. But this is what I was knitting in my “how to carry two colors in your right hand” video tutorial the other day.

It’s a shop sample for Twisted; I’m teaching a Christmas stocking class on Saturday, December 5, 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. The class is based on my pattern, which I finally wrote up this week! I made the first of these in 1996, but didn’t write it up until now. Here are all the variations at my house, made over several years.

The pattern is for the snowflake stocking; I wanted to keep things simple since it’s for a class. I dropped off the stocking and patterns this afternoon. Sivia Harding says that the stocking is perfect! That made my day. How could you not want to knit this pattern after such an endorsement? And yes, Sivia is now working at Twisted!

Patterns are available at Twisted and through Ravelry download; you can find more information on the pattern page.

11 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged christmas stocking, Knit

Sibling Socks, aka Coriolis

Posted on September 24, 2009 | 16 comments

I finished the second sock from my “”What I learned at Sock Summit” project.

Remember I said that I wanted to make the second sock different, so I wouldn’t have Second Sock Syndrome? The first sock was a spiraling Coriolis. On the second one, I decided to try Cat Bordhi’s Upstream sock architecture, and put the increases on the instep in the form of a diamond with lacy holes. Isn’t it funny how the pink/purple pooled in the diamond?

When I finished the diamond, I decided that I didn’t want lacy diamonds going all the way up the leg. I was curious what would happen if I took the spiraling line from the Coriolis sock and moved them in different directions. So I echoed the holey diamond with a snakey one.

I think I like the snakey diamond even better than the holey diamond! But I wasn’t going back to do it over again.

Voilà! Two socks that read pretty much the same at first glance, but are different enough to make knitting two socks remain interesting. I wonder why knitting two socks the same is a challenge to me, but I can make the same baby sweater or baby hat several times without a second thought? Go figure. Probably because I can multi-task and watch a movie or read at the same time I’m knitting that baby sweater or baby hat. Aha!

The details:
Variations on Coriolis pattern by Cat Bordhi, New Pathways for Sock Knitters (I took the information from Cat’s class and ran with it)
Socks that Rock Mediumweight, Alley-Oop colorway
Size 2 Sox Stix by Lantern Moon (love these needles)

I love Cat’s heel turn, but I need to fine tune the fit. The back of the heel is a bit too tall and loose for me; I’ll try fewer increases over the arch expansion next time. But I love Judy’s Magic Cast On and Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off; these two techniques have made toe up socks a lot more attractive to me. Especially since I still don’t like to close toes with kitchener stitch. I can do it, but I don’t enjoy it!

16 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged cat bordhi, Knit, sock

Knitting with two colors, right hand

Posted on September 21, 2009 | 23 comments

I’ve been saying for a while that I wanted to make a video of how to do this, and I finally did it. Sorry for the slight blurriness; my arms aren’t long enough to get further in front of the camera! I’ll experiment with other set-ups some time, but this is my first video, warts and all. It was kind of fun.

I’m a thrower; I carry my yarn in my right hand. I took a colorwork class with Anna Zilboorg at Stitches some time in the 90’s. In preparation, I taught myself to knit continental style (hold yarn in left hand, pick with right needle) so I could carry a color in each hand. When I got to class, Anna showed me how to carry both colors in my right hand, which was a lot easier for me. Here it is.

Enjoy!

23 Comments

Posted in Knit, tutorial

Tagged colorwork, Knit, tutorial

Worldwide Spin in Public Day

Posted on September 19, 2009 | 13 comments

or WWSiPD, for short.

Saturday, September 19. Tami organized the Hillsboro spin-in at the Hillsboro Farmers’ Market, and it was great. Lots of spinners, under the canopies on a slightly drippy morning. There were even goodie bags! Here’s the loot:

I forgot my camera, so these are from the camera phone. Sorry.

That’s Tami on the left. She’s such an enabler. She got me started with my little Turkish drop spindle last month. Melissa is next to her.

Rachel is wearing her February Lady Sweater, and winding on a niddy-noddy. (I just say these words. I’m not sure what everything is, being the new girl and all.) There were lots of wheels out, but there were also spindles.

Dana is on the right with a Turkish drop spindle. I asked her how she controls the fiber while it’s waiting to be spun. So far I’ve been throwing it over my shoulder and letting it drag on the floor, so I needed a better way to control my fiber in public. She showed me a little i-cord distaff that she made with some handspun, and then she gave me one! This will keep my fiber off the floor. Thanks, Dana! Seated are ? (didn’t catch her name, although we did have a conversation) with a top whorl spindle, Melinda, and Jessica.

This is a CD spindle; that works, too. I tried a top-whorl spindle that looks like the bottom whorl spindle at right. It was harder for me to get the spin going smoothly; I’m used to twirling the Turkish Delight from the top like, well, a top! But it does work. That’s Bobbie behind the spindle; she’s also an enabler, and she knows it. She was teaching kids to spin. In public!