Category Archives: yarn

A couple more OFFF finds

Posted on September 29, 2015 | 3 comments

I taught my Fern Lace Shawlette class at OFFF, and showed my students my Altoids tin bead management system.

I’d noticed that my Bead-Aid wasn’t sticking to the top of my magnet as well as I would like. The enameling on this magnet from my kids’ magnet set was pretty, but interfering with function. When I saw needle minder magnets from A Needle Runs Through It in the Knitted Wit booth, I had to have one.

I chose the sheep. Of course. These are actually meant for cross stitch, but they’re perfect for Bead-Aids, too. Maria also makes beautiful project bags. Go check out her Etsy shop!

Perfect fit, and the magnet is super strong so my needle is NOT going to get lost. If you want to make one of these to corral your beading equipment, all you need is an Altoids tin, magnet, Bead-Aid, and a short bead tube. If you want to get fancy, put a piece of fun foam or bead mat in the bottom so your beads don’t rattle so loudly. Keep most of your beads in the tube, and pour out about 20 at a time. If your tin gets dumped, you won’t lose ALL your beads!

What else did I get?

From local dyer Alexandra’s Crafts, this a gradient dyed sock blank made up of two strands of fingering weight knit double. Normal knitters would knit perfectly matching socks.

Me? I don’t love knitting socks, but I love fingering weight accessories. This will be some kind of scarf/stole, shading from one end to center and back out again. It’s Duffy’s Fault. I don’t know what the thing is yet, but Duffy made me buy it, and that will be the name. Eventually. Other deadline knitting has to happen first. Queue it up!

I have a new design coming out October 1. It’s a fun Portland designers group project, and I’m really looking forward to showing you one of the many things I knit this summer.

I also have a new shawl design coming out, probably next week. I’ve knit it in two sizes, both in gradient yarns, and also a non-gradient version. They’re like children; I can’t decide which one I like best!

My needles have been super busy, and now you get to see at least some of the fruits of my summer. Soon…

3 Comments

Posted in beading, Knit, pattern design, Portland area fun, yarn

Tagged A Needle Runs Through It, Alexandra's Crafts, Bead Aids, bead tin, OFFF 2015

Even more gradient yarn, and pretty food

Posted on September 6, 2015 | 5 comments

Knitcircus Greatest of Ease, Come What May

The pink is shading ever so gently, getting paler and paler. Heading into cream (why does this look like dessert?); the gray will come later. Pink and white roses, gray rain clouds? Whatever, it’s gorgeous.

This is waiting in the wings. Black Trillium Fibres Lilt, in Periwinkle.

In the meantime, there’s been a lot of pretty food! I hosted my annual Pinot & Piano fun-raiser a couple weeks ago. I provide piano and dessert. My co-hosts provide wine and music. It all comes together in a lovely evening for 16 guests. This year’s desserts:

Flourless Chocolate Torte

Puff Pastry Pear Tart, served with Bourbon Caramel Sauce

Pomegranate Panna Cotta

These aren’t as big as they look; they’re served in mini wine glasses.

Love these glasses for presentation!

Last week Sue (Tango Mango) taught us how to make bagels.

We had them for lunch!

And panna cotta with raspberry sauce for dessert.

What pretty things are you making? Knitting? Food? Other?

5 Comments

Posted in foodies!, Knit, yarn

Tagged bagels, dessert, food, panna cotta, yarn

Lobelia sneak peek, knit nite

Posted on August 28, 2015 | 4 comments

Here’s a sneak peak at Lobelia. I think the lace pattern looks like little lobelia blossoms.

This is 150g of Thrilling by KnitCircus, Starry Night colorway. The initial write-up is done, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for the pattern. I’m knitting up a version for a 100g/400 yard skein. Because, options.

This yarn is KnitCircus Greatest of Ease, a super wash merino/nylon blend. Colorway is Come What May; I received it as part of my Kickstarter package supporting Jaala’s new studio. Gorgeous!

In other news, we had knit nite on Wednesday, and we actually knit! There are two grandbabies on the way, so there was some blanket knitting going on. I guess zigzag/chevrons are in!

I made my new favorite quinoa salad. You can pretty much throw all your favorite things into quinoa, dress it a bit, and it’s delicious.

Summer Quinoa Salad

1 cup quinoa
1 cup frozen shelled edamame
1 cup frozen corn
1 avocado, diced
1/2 lb grape tomatoes, various, cut into halves
1 15 oz can garbanzo beans, rinsed & drained
1/2 cucumber, cut into bite sized pieces
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

dressing
4 T fresh squeezed orange juice
4 T olive oil
4 T apple cider vinegar
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp sugar or honey
1/4 tsp salt
liberal grind of black pepper

Rinse quinoa. Put in pot with 2 C water. Bring to boil, cover & simmer 20 minutes until water is absorbed and quinoa is tender. Fluff with fork and transfer to large bowl to cool.

Combine corn & edamame in microwave-safe dish. Add 2 TBSP water. Cook for 3 minutes on high. Drain and cool.

Assemble all dressing ingredients and shake in a jar.

When quinoa, corn, and edamame are cool, combine with all other salad ingredients. Add dressing to taste. Serve at room temperature. Serves 6-8, depending on how hungry you are…

Do you have a knitting group? We don’t meet as regularly as we used to, but it’s always a pleasure to get together to share food and knitting!

4 Comments

Posted in foodies!, Knit, pattern design, recipe, yarn

Tagged knit nite, Lobelia, quinoa

Portland outdoors, knitting, Tigard Knitting Guild

Posted on August 20, 2015 | 7 comments

It’s been a warm dry summer here, which makes getting outdoors a pleasure. Yesterday we climbed a volcano. Within the city limits! Mt. Tabor is an extinct (or maybe just dormant?) volcanic cinder cone, with an elevation of 636 feet. We wanted a short, spur of the moment hike close to home, since we were getting a late (noon) start. This was perfect.

You know most of my hikes involve waterfalls. This will have to do. This is one of the three open air reservoirs on Mt. Tabor, where part of the city’s water supply is held.

There’s a nice view to the west toward downtown, looking out at Portland’s newest bridge, Tillikum Crossing.

DH and I saw that bridge the other day, when I took him on my favorite bridge walk. The reflection of the bridge, and him, on the Portland Opera building was pretty cool.

This was the fifth time I’ve done this walk this summer, and I just noticed the cool sculpture on the fire station. See the concentric circles? They come into focus as you walk eastward on the Hawthorne Bridge.

If you’re looking for more fun free things to do around Portland, the Oregonian just ran a feature today. I’m feeling pretty savvy, because I was already doing some of those things!

Other than that, I’m knitting, knitting, knitting. I took a little detour from my gradient project to work with this lovely yarn from Knitted Wit. There’s a deadline for this design project, so it has moved up to the front burner.

I’m speaking at the Tigard Knitting Guild tonight, talking about blocking. You know I love blocking! Click the link for details. You can visit the guild twice before joining, so if you’re local, come on by.

Onward!

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, Portland area fun, yarn

Tagged mt tabor, portland, portland bridges, tigard knitting guild

Gradient yarn knitting progress

Posted on August 12, 2015 | 5 comments

I’m knitting along on my current design project with Knit Circus gradient yarn, and I wanted to show you my progress.

See how the yarn is changing into the next shade of blue? I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next, and when.

5 Comments

Posted in Knit, yarn

Tagged gradient, knit circus yarns

Gradient yarn

Posted on August 3, 2015 | 17 comments

Have you fallen down the gradient yarn rabbit hole? I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!

This is 150 grams of gradient heaven from Knit Circus Yarns. The yarn is called Thrilling, 80/20 Superwash Merino/Tussah Silk, colorway Starry Night. 575 yards is going to make a shawl that I can really wrap up in! The long continuous color change is going to work perfectly with the design I’ve plotted out.

The other gradient that I’ve knit with recently is from Black Trillium Fibres. Rather than a continuous shading, it’s in five even mini-skeins.

The mini-skein put-up was perfect for the design I was working on, where the color changes are distinct and need a start and end point.

Have you knit with gradient yarns? Do you plan your gradient projects based on the type of gradient, or do you choose your gradient based on the project? Or do you just wing it, and apply glorious gradients to whatever you’re knitting? Inquiring minds wanna know!

PS: I had a math error on my last post: It was 40,000 stitches, not 20,000! I was thinking in terms of the right side row patterning, rather than both right and wrong sides. No wonder it went on and on and on! But definitely worth the effort. So pretty!

17 Comments

Posted in Knit, yarn

Tagged black trillium fibres, gradient yarn, knit circus yarns

Swatching and blocking, yarn and ice cream

Posted on July 23, 2015 | 7 comments

Do you always swatch? Do you always wash and block your swatches? True confessions time here: I don’t always swatch, and when I do, I don’t always wash and block it. This has come back to bite me several times. Lesson learned! I’ve modified my approach: If the yarn is familiar to me, I might dive right in. A new yarn? It’s best to do my homework.

This is Knit Picks Galileo in a deliciously plummy color called Urchin. It reminds me of these shield urchins I saw last December.

But I digress.

This ia a new to me yarn. It’s sport weight, a 50/50 blend of Merino and Bamboo viscose. Two ply. It’s deliciously bouncy and round to knit with. Occasionally I’ll split the yarn with the Hiya Hiya Sharps that I’m knitting with, but I want that pointy tip for the lace stitches I’m working. It’s a reasonable trade-off.

The ballband recommends a size US 3-5 needle. I started with a 7, just for grins, because it’s going to be lace. Definitely too floppy. I swatched with a 6, and it felt pretty good, but I thought I’d push the envelope and swatch with a 5, too. It felt a little full on the needle, but surprise! It was my favorite of the three blocked swatches. It relaxed a lot from the bouncy knitted piece, but it also had more of the structure it needed to make this lace behave. So glad I swatched AND blocked in this instance. I’ve been knitting like crazy, and I’m halfway done with the project. No pictures; it’s a secret for now.

Speaking of plummy, my friends offered me plums from their super-productive tree again this year. I picked two colanders full, which was enough for two batches of jam.

I thought I’d come up with my perfect plum jam last summer. That was before I had some plum bourbon jam on a mini-doughnut at Pip’s Original Doughnuts. And over the year I’d also decided that I like a more traditional pectin set for plum jam. (Pomona’s is still my go-to for strawberry, and no pectin at all for raspberry.)

After the first batch, I went for the trifecta of favorite things: Plum, bourbon, crystallized ginger. Heaven. Not particularly boozy, but a extra depth of flavor that plain plum jam doesn’t have.

Notes for myself:

6 cups chopped plums
1/4 c water
Bring to boil, simmer 5 minutes. Add 1 box Sure-Jell pectin for less sugar (pink box) mixed with 1/4 cup sugar. Bring to boil.

Add
4.5 cups sugar
1/4 cup bourbon
1/4 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

Boil 1 minute per pectin package drections, water bath process for 10 minutes (sea level).

Yum.

I must be an extravagant measurer, or maybe I should re-measure my plums after the first simmer, which I don’t, but I always end up with a bit more jam than I’m expecting. I can only process 8 jars with my stockpot/orange silicone trivet setup, and that’s my expected yield. Maybe it’s the added bourbon, ginger, water? Anyway, the extra jam goes into a jar and into the fridge. I had extras from 2 batches in the fridge, so I did this.

Plum bourbon jam ice cream. It was a good reason to use the ice cream maker the kids gave to me a couple years ago. And they were coming for dinner!

Tastes as good as it looks!

Inspired by Erica’s recipe, but I doubled it and adjusted it for sweetness:

2 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup plum bourbon jam
up to 1/4 cup sugar, to taste

Mix milk, cream, jam. Taste! Adjust sweetness as desired. Process in ice cream maker 25-30 minutes. This is a soft set; I put the ice cream in a storage container in the freezer for a couple hours before serving for a firmer set. Delicious. In a perfect world I might make a custard base for a smoother texture, but that would mean more work. I wonder if I’d like it with half and half instead of cream? This is like swatching, with food! But I’m guessing that laziness will win out, and this simple version is probably how it will always happen at my house.

I think this would be spectacular with strawberry balsamic jam, with some additional sugared strawberries thrown in. Just sayin’.

So, extravagant swatching, blocking, measuring, eating! What is your extravagance this summer?

7 Comments

Posted in foodies!, Knit, pattern design, recipe, yarn

Tagged blocking, jam ice cream, knit picks galileo, plum jam, swatching

Pink…yarn, wine, and a PDX bridge ramble

Posted on July 17, 2015 | 4 comments

I’ve just bound off and blocked a new design project.

Such pretty leftovers! And they kind of go with my wine.

I’ve loved every moment of knitting with this gorgeous gradient kit from Black Trillium Fibres. It’s Lilt, an 85/15 superwash merino/silk blend. Very nice. I’ve been intrigued by gradients recently, but this was my very first adventure with one. I’ll be back for more.

It’s a gorgeous day for blocking outdoors. And after my bird poop blocking incident, I’ve devised a way to protect my knits. I can’t show you what I’m blocking, but here’s the scoop.

I had a roll of this fiberglass screen material in my basement. Once upon a time, I was going to make simple screens to put in our casement windows when they were open. Long story short, it never happened, and then we replaced all the windows a few years ago. (54 windows. Ouch. Love the new ones.) So I cut off a piece and laid it over my blocking project. I put a few extra pins in the project to hold the screen up above it, and a few more pins to hold down the corners. Perfect! And no bird pooped on it…this time.

Steel, Broadway, Fremont Bridges

We’re having a very lovely summer in Portland. I walked the downtown bridge loop with a friend the other morning. It’s 2.7 miles from the Hawthorne Bridge to the Steel Bridge on the East Side Esplanade, over the Steel, along Waterfront Park on the west side, and back over the Hawthorne.

Play me!

A picture perfect day. And we also took a little side trip to see the new Tillikum Crossing bridge, which is scheduled to open September 12. It’s for pedestrians, bicycles, and light rail. No cars. So pretty.

Yellow plums are ripe; there will be some plum bourbon jam in my near future. What’s on your needles or in your kitchen this summer?

4 Comments

Posted in Knit, Portland area fun, yarn

Tagged black trillium fibres, blocking, bridges, Lilt, PDX

TNNA wrap up

Posted on June 15, 2015 | 4 comments

So late, I know! It’s been busy here. First of all, this happened yesterday:

CollegeKid2, Computer Science, summa cum laude. We had to take his picture on the Jumbotron, because we were too far away from the stage to get a non-blurry zoom pic. Yay, technology!

So, TNNA. It was fun! Lorajean (Knitted Wit) had a double booth with three designers featuring designs with her yarns: Debbi Stone, Shannon Squire, and me. Here’s my corner:

We used my Pointer Hat and Mitts to feature Targhee Shimmer DK and Worsted at Sample It. I knit the hat sample on the plane. There’s nothing like the power of a deadline!

(just before the doors opened for Sample It)

We saw a lot of people come through the booth! StevenBe loved my Snowy Woods Cowl and LJ’s special Snowy Woods colorway.

Jen Lucas came by to say hello. She was at TNNA to do a book signing with her latest book, Sock Yarn Shawls II.

Sometimes you have to leave Oregon to see the Oregonians!

Marie and Vivian from Tangled Purls in Salem

Sonia from Stash in Corvallis

Jackie from Northwest Wools was there, too, but I didn’t catch her picture. Somewhere on Instagram is a great picture of her napping in Skacel’s yarn teepee!

I sold all my look books (catalogs) and took orders for more. Yay! There were so many lovely yarns and I am inspired to design. all. the. things. I wore my new Summertime Blues for most of the weekend; it was the perfect weight for the air conditioned convention center.

My favorite thing I bought over the weekend? This cute project bag from Binkwaffle. (Product research, right? I want them to do a pdxcarpet bag…they probably think I’m nuts.)

You can hang it on your wrist and keep knitting as you walk. Reversible, and no hardware other than the giant grommit to pass the handle through. No snags!

I’m so grateful to Lorajean for having me in her booth. I got her a Pyrex bowl to feed her pyrex obsession as a thank you…

What a fun crew! JJ Foster was also there; she reps for LJ and also had her Buttonhole! Buttons in the booth.

(Elevator pano of all the booth babes)

An exhausting, fun, productive weekend. Now I’m back to work, but I’ll share the rest of these pics…

Sun popped corn and darkest chocolate ice creams. So good.

A cool way to use a Jul button to wear a small triangle shawlette.

Felting!

And the obligatory #pdxcarpet and Mount Hood pix, of course.

4 Comments

Posted in events, Knit, yarn

Tagged graduation, TNNA

New: Summertime Blues Wrap

Posted on May 27, 2015 | 7 comments

I’ve just released my Summertime Blues pattern. This wrap/poncho is a perfect summer accessory. Knit in fingering weight yarn, it is light and sleek and swingy, especially in a wool/plant fiber blend. It features two sets of lacy leaves, twining up the side.

I knit this with Knitted Wit’s Shine, a 50/50 merino tencel blend. It’s a gorgeous, shimmery, drapey wonder.

The length and width of this wrap are easy to customize to your perfect size. The wrap shown is 21″ wide by 31″ long, modified from the instructions which are for a 19″ wide wrap.

This pattern is available on Ravelry, page link here: Summertime Blues Use coupon code BLUESFEST for 20% off through June 7, 2015.

I just finished knitting a second one, same color, but with beads. A little shorter, because I’m shorter than my model! I’ll be wearing it at TNNA this weekend. What are your plans? More knitting?

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

Tagged summertime blues, TNNA