Category Archives: Uncategorized

Three nights in Reykjavik, Part 1

Aurora borealis, and two chilly people below
Photo from our tour guide. Check out the crown of my brioche Deep End hat!

Just catching up from 2 weeks away; it feels like a lifetime! Cats are glad we’re home. We took a 2 part vacation; a 3 night stopover in Reykjavik, then on to France. Iceland Air has a stopover program that allows you to stay up to one week on the way to somewhere else, and just counting it as a layover on your itinerary. Sold!

Blue Lagoon

We landed at 7 in the morning. The Blue Lagoon is on the way into town from the airport, and lots of people stop here while waiting for the afternoon hotel check-in. The water is geothermally heated, 38° C/100° F, and pumped from 6000 feet underground. And it really is this milky blue, due to the high silica content in the water. This is a nice way to relax after flying overnight. Check out the lifeguard attire; it’s definitely not Bay Watch material.

After check in, we took a walk around town and found the Handknitting Association of Iceland, where you can purchase pre-knit sweaters, or yarn to make your own.

sweaters on shelves
Lots to choose from, and more on hangers

I brought my blue Stopover sweater with me, and bought yarn to make a coordinating, but not quite matching, headband. (Stopover sweater pattern is by Mary Jane Mucklestone, who designed it on her stopover in Iceland.)

Stopover sweater and 3 new balls of yarn
Sun Voyager and me with Stopover sweater
Sun Voyager on the waterfront, and Stopover sweater on stopover!

The next day, we walked along the waterfront to Harpa (music theater) to meet our food walk. I doffed my coat for this chilly picture! The food tour was great, five stops with lots of interesting things to taste. Lots of fish and lamb. We did not go hungry.

The famed fermented shark, Hákarl, with a shot of Brennevin. One cube is enough! A definite ammonia taste at chew 8. The Brennevin (flavored with caraway) definitely helped wash it down. The walk gave us time to digest between stops, and passed several local viewpoints.

rye bread ice cream

We ended at Cafe Loki across from Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral. The rye bread ice cream with whipped cream and caramelized rhubarb syrup was divine.

Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral and statue of Leif Ericsson
Hallgrimskirkja and Leif Ericsson statue
Rainbow street
Rainbow street below the cathedral

After the food tour we wandered our way back to our hotel for knitting and nap. We were gearing up for a Northern Lights Tour.

More in a following post!

Woodsy weekend encore, frog hat

A walk in the woods is good for the soul.

I was pleased to have an opportunity to spend time in the woods with friends last weekend. We reconnected and played with craft projects. I love walking in the woods, the fungi tickle my fancy.

I don’t know what these are called, but they’re striking.

The green on this was so bright!

These look like a tiny fairy garden inside a decaying stump.

And these are just pretty.

Orange jelly fungus

I did have to look this one up. So cheery!

And the same color as Cheetos, really. There weren’t any chopsticks in the house, so I had to use skewers to avoid Cheeto dust on my new project. Slightly more challenging to balance.

I came home with a finished frog hat, and a lot of swatching for a couple projects. But there’s a lot of information in swatches, so I’m on my way with a couple designs.

leaf on the bridge railing over Camp Creek

I was hoping to sell this Portland Frog Hat for $100, but it’s not moving at that price point. So here’s the deal: Best offer over $50 gets the hat and Feminist Knit Club patch. USA addresses only, I’ll choose in the event there are multiple offers. Money goes to Northeast Emergency Food Program!

Back from Nashville

We went to Nashville last week for AmericanaFest, and I didn’t knit a stitch! But there was a lot of great music, from many new-to-me artists, and a few that I did know.

Brandy Clark at City Winery

We saw Brandy Clark in the round with several other artists. This was the one singer I really wanted to see. I love her songs; she can really turn a phrase! Her song “Dear Insecurity” won the AmericanaFest Song of the Year award the night before we heard her sing it here. So close!

Old Crow Medicine Show

Old Crow Medicine Show did a pop-up at Robert’s Western World; we found out about it a few hours before. There was quite a line when we arrived, and DH was sure we’d never get in. I told him we’d stand in that line til they told us no! We got in, and eventually ended up right in front. And I got a free beer (PBR, but whatever), a cowboy boot-shaped beer cozy, and a show poster. Made out like a bandit!

My new favorites: Paul Thorn, Tami Neilson, Steve Poltz, Melissa Carper, Sunny Sweeney, Grayson Capps. Go find them all on Instagram! Now to listen to more music; I generally work in silence but it’s time to change things up.

Stopped for a soda on a hot walk, and there was a John Prine booth. Of course, Nashville, of course.

The area near 5th and Broadway has gotten a lot nicer. There’s a new National Museum of African American Music, which was excellent. And the Assembly Food Hall (in the same building, right across from the Ryman Auditorium) offers a lot of dining choices at reasonable prices, a big plus.

This was the tastiest ice cream I’ve had in a long time!

Back to my knitting! I’m teaching two classes this weekend, Sheepy Steeky Coasters at Hook and Needle in Vancouver, Washington, and Brioche Pastiche at For Yarn’s Sake in Beaverton, Oregon. Both are sold out. Happy knitting season!

Classes! Virtual VKLive in June, and more

Just added to the calendar: Petite Brioche and Next Steps in Brioche: Increases and Decreases! New this time: Classes will be recorded and you’ll have access for 2 weeks after the event. You can preview the class offerings now, here.

Where else am I teaching this summer/fall?

Petite Brioche (beginning 2 color brioche in the round), Zoom class via For Yarn’s Sake, June 3, 10:30 am


Starfall Assigned Pooling Cowl, Zoom class via For Yarn’s Sake, June 4, 1:30 pm

Brioche workshops at Sitka Center (Oregon Coast) July 15-16


Nautical Knitting cruise on Zodiac Schooner, July 31-Aug. 2


Vogue Knitting Cruise to Alaska, Sept. 2-9


Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, Oct. 13-15 (website not up yet…)

Planning ahead…come knit with me!

Yarn chicken hijinks

I’m just back from Vogue Knitting Live in NYC. I’ll catch up with pictures from that eventually, but right now I’m packing to go to Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma, Washington. I’m leaving today, so…I’ll catch up when I catch up! You can see some of my pictures on Instagram.

I worked on this assigned pooling design on my flights to and from New York. I have a very small digital scale for travel, but it’s not very accurate on a bouncy airline tray table. I waited until I was in my hotel room to carefully weigh my yarn to see how many grams it took to knit a round. Then I figured the number of rounds I needed to complete my project, and added a buffer. That yarn there? That was calculated to be enough to bind off, and knit a cord to cinch the top of this cowl/hat, just like the finishing on Pooling is a Cinch.

Almost done…and it’s clear that the bit of yarn left is not going to be enough to finish binding off the stitches on the needle. So much for math! I need about the equivalent of one more round, but I’d have to frog 10 rounds to get to the place where I would shorten this piece. Blergh.

Luckily, I remembered this trick, so here is this tutorial for you.

Binding off when you’ve lost at yarn chicken…

I win! And I like this narrower cord; it will fit in the eyelets better. That’s serendipity!

Have you ever had to resort to binding off without yarn?

Top Nine 2022

A fun thing to do at the end of the year: check out my top nine Instagram posts!

  1. Whale Watch, the crown of the cap
  2. “How I style” collage: basic black with a pop of color! With Wailin’ Jennys and BRUUUUUUCE
  3. On the Norwegian Breakaway for the Vogue Knitting Cruise
  4. Cherry blossoms on Portland waterfront
  5. What I wore at Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat
  6. Sheepy Steeky Coasters class at VKLive Seattle
  7. Closeup! Elongated stitches on Half the Knit Sky
  8. Key lime pie that naughty cat Calvin sampled (we ate the unsampled part)
  9. PeaceKnitLove demonstrates winding on the KnitMaine bus!

You can check yours out at TopNine. Interestingly, it’s a collection of photos rather than a collage, so you’d need to take a screenshot because it’s nine individual pictures. I also tried BestNine, but it never finished gathering.

Happy new year!

Peacetree Fiber Adventures retreat

Virtual, of course!

I’m teaching for Peacetree Fibers Knitting and Yoga retreat, July 24 and 25. Classes are via Zoom. Click here to register.

I’m teaching Petite Brioche (beginning 2 color brioche in the round), and

brioche knitting

Next Steps in Brioche: Increases and Decreases featuring your choice of either Heliotrope Hat or Cowl, or Brioche Pastiche hat.

You can take one or both classes, and you can even use the knitting from the Petite Brioche class as the beginning of the Brioche Pastiche hat!

I’m also teaching these classes at Virtual Vogue Knitting Live the week before, but those classes are already sold out. This is another opportunity to take these classes, soon.

(As of this moment, there is still room in the VKL Minerva Entrelac class. Jump if you want it!)

Bluprint/Craftsy update

If you’re a previous Craftsy/Bluprint purchaser/subscriber, you’ll be pleased to know that their assets have been purchased by TN Marketing, and your access will continue. Yay!

Will I actually watch the classes I purchased a million years ago? I don’t know, but I’m glad I’ll have the option to do so!

Bluprint’s statement here.

And a news piece on it here.

One more story here.

Tonal Contrast in the Knit Sky, redux

Remember this? I really liked how the smaller/whiter ball was popping against the dark blue background, but I didn’t have enough to knit a whole shawl with this leftover half ball.

The more heavily speckled/creamier ball had more color than I liked in the big stars. (This was also against a lighter background, so it had even less pop.) What to do?

Mix and match! I’m using the whiter/less speckled yarn for the single stitch stars, and for the big star stitch rows. I’m using the specklier yarn for the star trails, and I love how it looks. It’s blending really well. I didn’t take out the very first set of star trails; they’re so short that the less speckled yarn was a better choice there.

I’ll still keep the overall combined contrast color to 100g for test knit math purposes. But this night sky version is making me very happy.

weighing yarn for half the knit sky

I have enough of the blue to finish as written, but not enough to add any extra rows. Good to know! I like that I can figure this out without playing yarn chicken. Instructions for weighing (ha!) your options are in the pattern.

Note that Biscuit is helping me here.

Are you interested in a KAL? I think this could also be a fun class; it has a few interesting techniques, and you’d learn them all at the beginning. Hmmmm…..

Rhapsody in pink

I love my Aquarius/Beach Glass Love Note so much. It’s a teaching wardrobe staple. I have a skirt that pairs well with it.

It was such a quick knit and perfect fit, so I decided to knit one more.

This time the colors are Cherry Blossom and Ticklish, which has tiny flecks of pink and green.

Since I’m using the same yarn, hazel Knits Lively DK, and I have good notes on Ravelry, it’s a pretty mindless knit. I’m going to use all of the MC on the body, and work the sleeves in Ticklish. Thank you, past self!

I started this on Monday night. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m zooming along down the body. But now it’s time to put my knitting down and prep for my next Virtual VK Live class. I’m teaching Minerva Entrelac this afternoon. Two more classes tomorrow, both brioche, and that will be the wrap up! I’m so glad knitters can still get together, even while knitting apart.

My Facebook Live with Wool and Fiber Arts and Bead Biz was fun. We had five designers instead of four; Alasdair Post-Quinn was able to join us after all, yay! So it’s me (in my Love Note sweater above), Alasdair, Anna Dalvi, Laurinda Reddig, and Linda Dean. Here’s a link to it on YouTube if you want to watch.

And my Facebook Live with Knit Picks was postponed a week, so that should be happening this coming Thursday, June 18, 8:30 am PDT, link here. .

It’s Worldwide Knit in Public Day. I may knit for a moment on my porch! So different this year. Are you knitting in public?