PDXKnitterati

Alaska cruise: Yarn shop hop

Posted on September 14, 2023 | 8 comments

I had a great time on the Vogue Knitting Alaska Cruise on the Holland America Eurodam. I taught brioche classes, had fun with other knitters and DH (my plus one), and visited some cool towns and glaciers. But I know you’re here for the yarn, so I’ll start with my three yarn shop visits.

Display case at Changing Tides, and is that a JaMPDX yarn bowl?

Our first stop was in Juneau. I made a quick scouting trip as DH waited for me in a coffee shop before our tour to Mendenhall Glacier. Changing Tides (Instagram link, formerly Seaside Yarns) is right in the port area. They have yarn and lots of fabric for quilters, too. Local dyers Juneau Woolies and Alaskan Yarn Co. are featured here.

I try not to stash a lot of yarn; I’d rather shop for each project as I go. But I knew I wanted to get a skein of qiviut, musk ox fiber, while on this trip. You can buy qiviut yarn in its natural brown color, but this lovely Violet called my name. Qiviut is very soft with a lovely halo. Stitch definition won’t be great, but that’s not the point. It’s lightweight, warm, and cozy, and it packs down to nearly nothing. This skein is 200 yards of fingering weight, and it will be a simple cowl, eventually.

Changing Tides also had a little goodie bag for VK cruisers: a mini skein, postcard, and tea. Sweet!

In Sitka I stopped at the Raven’s Hook, a small arts and crafts store with yarn and other craft supplies. No qiviut here.

My favorite thing here was the yarn dyed by Raven Frog Fibers in kits for the Glacier Bay Beanie by Nancy Bates. I resisted because I knew I’d never knit the hat (I don’t wear them very often), but oh how I coveted that blue yarn! I’d love a whole skein of it, please.

In Ketchikan I visited Fabulous Fiber Arts and More (formerly The Hive on the Creek). This is an easy walk from the dock.

They have an inspiring wall of yarn from Raven Frog Fibers (and more twisted hanks in the cubbies below), including the Glacier Bay Beanie kits. I still resisted the beanie, but I swear it was following me!

Raven Frog’s Garden Wall colorway was swoon-worthy.

Fabulous Fiber’s other featured indie dyer is Robin’s Nest Fiber Arts; Robin is one of the owners of the shop. She dyes very pretty yarns on interesting bases.

I fell in love with this Robin’s Nest color on a sparkle base, but Rhoda found it first. Clearly it’s her palette; it goes with what she’s wearing! And no, Rhoda wasn’t on my cruise; she and Jen were on a different ship, the Royal Princess. We ran into each other in both Juneau and Ketchikan. (I first met Rhoda and Jen at VKLNYC last February.) Like the beanie kit, I think they’re following me!

They were out of qiviut here, so I’m glad I bought some in Juneau while I had the chance. That’s my lone Alaska yarn souvenir.

My other cruise souvenir? Covid-19! After we got home, I poured myself a glass of bubbly. It didn’t taste like anything. Nor did the cherry tomato, chocolate chips, and pistachios I tried after that. Uh-oh. (Breakfast on the ship was delicious that morning.)

Guess which one is mine? I feel like I have a cold; it’s not terrible. I’m hoping I can taste/smell things again soon!

8 Comments

Posted in travel, yarn

Tagged Alaska cruise, alaska yarn shops, qiviut, Vogue Knitting Cruise, yarn shops

Tonal and color contrast, redux

Posted on September 13, 2023 | 2 comments

I’m back from Alaska with lots to blog, eventually. It will take a while to catch up!

Remember I was looking for a couple social knitting projects to take with me? I didn’t knit much on my Slip Away Cowl sample; too much counting. But I worked on it in my stateroom at night, and a bit when I got back home.

I’m not happy with it; it needs more tonal contrast. Or color contrast, or something.

I’ll save the blue-green Solis (one of my favorite Malabrigo colors) for another time. The variegated Liquidambar needs to be the feature of this project. I lined it up with all my Rios leftovers that had enough to work this project.

I thought that the deep purple would be perfect, that it would make the Liquidambar pop, but a few rows in I could see that it would all be too dark. I then tried the light pink, but it was so strikingly pale that it wanted to upstage the Liquidambar.

Onward to English Rose. I love how vibrant the pink/orange combo is. From the previous photo you can see that there’s not a lot of tonal contrast here, either, but I think the Liquidambar reads as blue/green overall (too similar to the Solis), and makes a better contrast with this deep pink/orange.

I can see the contrast better, both color and tonal. You can see it in the vertical stripe section in the grayscale photo. The garter/stockinette contrast helps move things along, too.

I tried to take a picture of just the knitting, but my camera keeps reading the pink incorrectly, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one for now. It’s very fun knitting, but I have to set it aside to work on my Buggiflooer Cowl before Sunday’s class.

If you’d like to learn about stranded colorwork with me, sign up here! Class is Sunday at 1:30 pm Pacific, via Zoom.

If you’d like to learn more about slip stitch knitting, I’m teaching a Zoom class Friday Oct. 27 for Virtual VKLive, featuring the Slip Away Cowl. Registration isn’t open yet; I’ll let you know! The Slip Away Cowl is a fun introduction to colorwork. It looks complicated, but it’s slip stitch knitting. Only one color is used per row, which means there is no stranding or juggling two colors in the round.

More cruise blogging soon!

2 Comments

Posted in classes, Knit, yarn

Tagged color contrast, tonal contrast

Squirrel! Redux

Posted on August 31, 2023 | 4 comments

Again, I’m supposed to be packing, but instead I’m playing with knit-in i-cord edges for my Slip Away Cowl. You can barely see them on the right side of the fabric.

But they’re pretty obvious on the wrong side! They’re very tidy and I love them. I’m revamping the pattern to include them, and adding an extra slip stitch pattern as a bonus. Soon!

Now I really do need to pack…

4 Comments

Posted in classes, Knit, pattern design

Tagged Malabrigo Rios, Slip Away Cowl

Buggiflooer musings

Posted on August 31, 2023 | 3 comments

I started the Buggiflooer Beanie a few days ago, adjusting the stitch count based on my known gauge with this yarn.

Katie’s Kep, da Crofter’s Kep, Bonnie Isle

I’ve knit 3 previous Shetland Wool Week hats with Jamieson’s Spindrift, which means I have 3 existing gauge swatches!

I did some math so I could reduce the main stitch count by one flower motif (which would make it an inch smaller than the previous hats), but I goofed up my math between the ribbing and the pink zigzag sections. I only realized it when I got to the next motif (flower), and was off by 4 stitches. Math, blech. I could go back and fudge it, but I I took it as a sign that I should knit a cowl instead of a beanie, anyway. I don’t wear hats very often.

You can see that I shortened the corrugated ribbing a bit when I restarted; I took out one row of each of the colors (white/gray/white) because the ribbing will repeat at the top of the cowl (symmetry!), and I don’t want it to overpower the lovely buggiflooer.

It’s going swimmingly. Look at all those pretty heathered colors in the background color, Mirry Dancer! So much more interesting than flat black. And I made a little braid with my yarn ends, so I don’t accidentally knit with a tail. I know I could weave in ends as I go, but I’m still not completely committed to the project yet.

I recently bought myself a little present…a knitting light. It’s helpful with the black yarn if I’m tinking (I don’t have to see to knit) in bed; the lamp on my nightstand isn’t quite enough. It will also be a hands-free camping light. I tried a different one earlier this month, but it was heavier and clunkier, and prone to accidentally turning on in my bag. I like this one much better!

I need to start packing for the Vogue Knitting Alaska cruise. And of course that means deciding what knitting project will come with me! I’m enjoying Buggiflooer, but I don’t want it to be my main cruise knitting next week. Cruise knitting is social knitting, and counting charted colorwork isn’t conducive to chatting.

My little DK brioche project from the schooner trip isn’t panning out the way I hoped. It was great social knitting, though. I have about 4 inches done, and it’s lovely, but my yarn scale and math are telling me that two skeins won’t get me across the finish line. It won’t be a cost-effective cowl design if it requires 4 skeins of sparkly luxury yarn, so I’ll use this beautiful yarn for a something else later.

I do have an experimental version of this shape under way in fingering weight yarn, and I think that can be completed with two skeins. But I’m not completely committed to it yet, either. I need a backup plan.

Ever since MDK Summer Camp, I’ve been thinking of the elegant knit-in i-cord edging that we put on our mini washcloths (thank you Lorilee Bateman). So tidy! I’m planning to re-knit my Slip Away Cowl before upcoming classes, and play with that i-cord edging. If I like it, I’ll update the pattern to include it. This should be a reasonable social knitting project. Except that I’m monkeying with it a bit…

When you go on trips, what do you pack first? Knitting? Or clothing? I think you can see my priorities all over this page!

3 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, travel, yarn

Tagged buggiflooer, Jamieson Spindrift, keps, Malabrigo Rios, shetland wool week beanies, travel knitting

Coming soon: Star Flower Shawl

Posted on August 29, 2023 | 4 comments

This one has been cooking for a while! I wanted to combine assigned pooling with something in a second color to make things even more enticing, and I think it does. I began building this on ideas from my Aloha Shawl, but it was supposed to be flowers upon flowers upon flowers in the assigned pooling section, and the same flower but smaller in the flower band stripe. (That flower band took the focus away from the assigned pooling, so away it went.)

I worked really hard to make this low tonal contrast assigned pooling yarn sing on my first sample.

And so it did! The bi-colored rings around some of the flowers were fine in this orange/pink combo.

I knit it once more in another color while double-checking my math for the edging. I then realized that I didn’t love the all of the assigned pooling flowers in a contrastier yarn. I only liked the starry ones! See the bi-colored rings around the flowers? No thank you.

Team star flower all the way. Post-blocking

So I adjusted my directions, and now the pooling flowers are more like stars. And because I just can’t get enough of this colorway, Bali Wood, this shawl is a kissing cousin of my Starfall Cowl.

The pattern is currently being tech edited, and I’m looking for some test knitters. Is that you? You’d need 2 contrasting skeins of fingering weight yarn, one of which is dyed for assigned pooling. I’m hoping that test knitting is finished by September 30.

The pattern features assigned pooling on a garter stitch background, and some fun and fancy stitches in the contrast color. I’ve made video tutorials for the pooling stars and the flower bands.

If you look at it just right, these are shooting stars amid the Milky Way! I knit part of this during our Perseid meteor shower camping trip earlier this month. If you want to emphasize the shooting star look, you could let the extra bit of pooling color extend on just one side of the star flower. I balanced my star flowers between the extra color, only realizing while knitting the last section that I could make it look more like meteors. That’s not something I’d frog and re-knit for, but I love the idea.

Sooo, are they stars or are they flowers? I think it’s knitter’s choice!

4 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

Tagged design process, dream in color smooshy, Star Flower shawl

Fall class lineup

Posted on August 28, 2023 | 8 comments

Holy cats, it’s almost September! My favorite month: birthday, anniversary, back to school, back to knitting classes.

I’m teaching on the Vogue Knitting Alaska Cruise September 2-9; I’m teaching Brioche Pastiche, hat or cowl. Ana Campos is also teaching on the cruise; she’s teaching Portuguese knitting. I’m looking forward to this! I haven’t been to Alaska since I was working in a cannery on Kodiak Island to pay for college.

I’m teaching a Zoom class on stranded colorwork for For Yarn’s Sake using the Shetland Wool Week Buggiflooer Beanie as a jumping off point. I have the feeling that I’m going to go rogue with my sample and knit a cowl instead; I haven’t worn any of the previous beanies (they mess up my hair!).

We’ll talk about yarn color dominance, ways to manage your yarns, and more.

I’m teaching Petite Brioche on Saturday September 30 in a new venue! I’ll be in-person at Hook and Needle, a new shop in downtown Vancouver WA, right across the river. Register here.

I’m teaching at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival October 13 and 14. Come learn assigned color pooling, and entrelac with me!

I’m teaching a Thrill of the Thrum Zoom class for For Yarn’s Sake on October 22. These deliciously cushy slippers are a longtime favorite.

Virtual Vogue Knitting Live is the weekend of October 27. I’m teaching Brioche Pastiche, Slip Away Cowl (slip stitch knitting), and Syncopation (syncopated brioche). And I’m giving a lecture on blocking, too. Come knit with us, virtually! Registration isn’t open yet (there’s a virtual event at the end of September currently on the site), but you can sign up for their newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when classes are available.

I’m teaching assigned pooling via Zoom with my Starfall Cowl for For Yarn’s Sake on November 12.

And that’s the plan so far! Are you planning your fall knitting experiences? It’s time!

8 Comments

Posted in classes, Knit

Tagged classes, Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival, Virtual Knitting Live

Register now for Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival

Posted on August 21, 2023 | Comments Off

It’s time to register for classes at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival! I know it seems early for October classes, but it really helps us plan for you. The festival is October 13-15.

This year I’m teaching Sheepy Steeky Coasters on Friday morning. (Your first steek? totally non-threatening!)

Assigned pooling on Friday afternoon, using Pooling is a Cinch as a jumping off point to explore several pooling stitches. I’ve ordered this yarn (my favorite, A Wondrous Worsted in Times Square colorway from Knits All Done) for class. I have a limited number of skeins, so sign up soon!

entrelac knitting — Minerva entrelac cowl or scarf

I’m also teaching entrelac on Saturday morning. This technique looks woven, but it’s knit a square at a time and is simpler than it looks! You get to look clever while taking it easy.

The new venue in Albany, Oregon is pretty spiffy; the tradeoff from the closer Clackamas site of previous years is worth it. It’s just about an hour down the road from Portland. Come knit with me, or one of the other fine teachers at OFFF. And the shopping at the marketplace is pretty wonderful, too. I’m looking forward to teaching AND shopping!

Comments Off on Register now for Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival

Posted in events, Knit

Tagged OFFF, Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival

Tonal contrast in knitting

Posted on August 18, 2023 | 5 comments

I’m on the second knit of an upcoming assigned pooling shawl design; I won’t show you the whole thing until I’m ready to ask for test knitters. First I need to knit through again to confirm some numbers.

I started with this color combo back in March or April. So pretty!

There’s not a lot of tonal contrast between the orange and the pink…

Which meant it didn’t make much difference if I had garter bumps on the edges of the star/flower stitches.

In fact, it added a little something-something that I kind of liked.

But in my second knit, I really didn’t like those contrasty garter bumps. They looked kind of like toothy maws, waiting to bite. No thank you!

So I’m editing the draft pattern to make all of the stars/flowers smooth on the top and bottom edges. (Looks like I may have missed one up there, oops.) This will look good in both the less contrasty and more contrasty yarns.

This design has been through a lot of fussing since I began it; I really wanted to make the assigned pooling sing as the star of the show. I think all the do-overs will be worth it in the end. The orange/pink version blocked out beautifully. I’m so glad, because I didn’t know if I would like the finished shawl until I blocked it. That was a leap of faith to keep knitting til the bitter end.

I’m looking forward to sharing this with you soon!

If you like thinking about tonal contrast, check out this previous post and this post about picking colors for my Soldotna Crop sweater in 2019.

5 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

Seeking the Perseids

Posted on August 16, 2023 | 4 comments

Back from a weekend camping trip with the Gal Pals. We went over to central Oregon for clear dark skies, anticipating water fun by day, and the Perseid meteor showers by night.

We live on the west side of the Cascade Range, so we drove over to the east side going around Mt. Hood. It’s pretty bare in the summer.

It’s drier on the east side of the mountains. The views of the mountains in the Cascade Range are stunning from that side.

The setting sun cast a shadow of the mountaintop against the slight haze in the air…

followed by an allover orange glow. That’s Haystack Reservoir in the foreground, where we were camping. Unfortunately, it had a toxic algae bloom going on, so we couldn’t play in the water. Pivot and adapt!

We went to Sisters (the town) on Saturday, shopped at a couple favorite stores (Bedouin and the Stitchin’ Post), had an impromptu visit with friends there (hi Becky & Lisa) and swam at their community pool, and then went for music and wine at Faith Hope and Charity Vineyards.

Three Sisters: South, Middle, and North, or Faith, Hope, and Charity

What a beautiful setting! It wasn’t quite the day we had planned, but it was lovely.

The next day we set up at Tumalo State Park to play in the water, either floating down a short stretch of the Deschutes River, or just wading. Delightful! No pictures; we were having too much fun.

We stopped at Smith Rock State Park on the way back to camp. I had always imagined that Smith Rock is a single monolith that rock climbers love, but I guess not!

It’s an austerely beautiful place in the summer.

We enjoyed the starry skies, the Milky Way, and the streaking meteors each night. On the last night we took off the tent’s rain fly so we could skywatch through the mesh roof. Perfect!

So grateful to have friends to play with!

4 Comments

Posted in travel

Tagged camping, central oregon, haystack reservoir

Oh the places you’ll go…

Posted on August 10, 2023 | 4 comments

I’m guest posting on the Rough and Rede blog. This is my fourth guest post there, and I’m honored to be asked! This is George’s 12th, and last year of organizing his Voices of August series. My topic this year is Silver Linings, and it’s about how my work life has changed since 2020. Here’s a link to the post.

My previous posts: What happens when DH decides to go vegetarian/pescatarian? Check out last year’s guest post for Voices of August on the Rough and Rede blog. Here’s the picture from that one!

My other guest posts are on the previous Rough and Rede blog (blogspot instead of the current wordpress site). Here are the links to those posts: Because I Can in 2013 about snorkeling and my relationship with swimming, and The Empty Nest in 2012.

Happy reading!

4 Comments

Posted in Blogging

Tagged Voices of August, Voices of August 2023