A fun thing to do at the end of the year: check out my top nine Instagram posts!
Whale Watch, the crown of the cap
“How I style” collage: basic black with a pop of color! With Wailin’ Jennys and BRUUUUUUCE
On the Norwegian Breakaway for the Vogue Knitting Cruise
Cherry blossoms on Portland waterfront
What I wore at Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat
Sheepy Steeky Coasters class at VKLive Seattle
Closeup! Elongated stitches on Half the Knit Sky
Key lime pie that naughty cat Calvin sampled (we ate the unsampled part)
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.
And I love it with the lighter color on top. I’m so glad I didn’t frog it. Sometimes you have to tell that little voice to just go away. Blocking went fine, whew! But I think it will become less crisp the more I wear it; it’s 50/50 baby yak and silk.
This is the first one I knit while designing. It has a taller neck, and less down in the triangle. I think I like them both! This one is 85/15 superwash wool and nylon. The fabric has more body to it, which I also like.
What I really like is how the math works so elegantly for the increases in the triangle, so that each section is created in exactly the same way. Very satisfying for my inner nerd.
This shape is one of my favorites; it doesn’t fall off when you wear it. Do you have a preference on the neck/triangle options? I like having options! If you have a lot of yardage, you could have both a taller neck and a longer triangle.
On to test knitting and tech editing! This will be out in 2023. I’m looking forward to the new year. I hope you’re having a joyous holiday season!
I started this on vacation a couple weeks ago, and I was closing in on the end yesterday. Have you ever been knitting a gradient, and all of a sudden you begin to think that maybe you should have started at the other end? And that thought keeps buzzing around in your head?
This is my Go Tell the Bees, which is not what I’m knitting, but it’s the same colorway, with the deepest color at the top, and the lightest as the edging. I think it looks great that way, but I’d forgotten all about it. My current project is a top down cowlish thing, and the light color is at the top. I’m at the last 12 round repeat using the darkest part of the gradient, and I nearly frogged it yesterday.
I finished it this morning, put it around my neck, and the color was fine. Glad I didn’t frog it! It’s currently soaking so I can block it, and then comes the next test. I’ll find out if it was a mistake to not wash and block a swatch with this new to me yarn base of baby yak and silk. Fingers crossed!
Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! And happy solstice, too. (Pic from a previous year; we’re not that far into the holiday yet!)
The news that Mauna Loa was erupting when we already had plans to be on Hawaii kicked my planning instinct into high gear. Kīlauea has been erupting since September 2021 (it stopped in 2018, and started up again), so we hoped to see Kīlauea and a distant glow from Mauna Loa if we drove from Kona over to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and stayed overnight.
I booked an AirBnB in Volcano (the town) for Saturday night so we could drive over on Saturday, bask in the glow Saturday night, and come home on Sunday.
We scoped out the overlook on the Crater Rim Trail so we’d know where we were going to go after dark, planning a viewpoint that would include both Kīlauea and Mauna Loa. Halema’uma’u (the crater inside Kīlauea) was smoking that afternoon
and looked beautiful at sunset from Volcano House. (Although suspiciously less steamy?)
I spoke with a park ranger, and she pointed out Mauna Loa’s steam in the distance, but said that things had quieted down quite a bit. (Steam from Kīlauea’s Wahinekapu steam vents in left foreground.)
We went down Crater Rim Trail to the overlook after dinner, and this is what we saw. Yep, nothing. No lava glow from either Kīlauea or Mauna Loa. Too dark to see steam (the moon wasn’t up yet). I guess Madame Pele (Pelehonuamea, the volcano goddess) has her own timetable, which didn’t coincide with ours! But I have to say that the sky was stunning, with more stars than I’ve ever seen at once.
We rose before dawn to see the sunrise (in the rain) over Halema’uma’u from the Kīlauea Overlook. (We picked a different overlook, because there was no need to try to get Mauna Loa in the same view.)
No lava glow, but it was beautiful anyway. It looks like both Kīlauea and Mauna Loa are now taking a break. I think Pele is laughing at us! (If you’d like to see more glow from a previous visit in 2015, see this post.)
Of course I took a picture of my knitting with the volcano. I didn’t actually knit…it was rainy, windy, and cold. This is the little sample I’d be using the next day to review increases and decreases for the Brioche Buddies cast on party.
The nice thing about getting up before dawn is that there was nobody on the Chain of Craters Road, and we were the only people looking at the Hōlei Sea Arch before 8 a.m.
The arch in 2013 and 2022. It’s 90 feet tall, and was formed 550 years ago. You can see by the angle that they’ve moved the viewing overlook; heavy surf in July made the cliff less stable. The heavy surf also took some chunks out of the arch leg; at some point it will fall into the sea.
It was a beautiful, quiet, windy morning.
I’m glad we took this road trip, even if we didn’t get to see hot lava!
Sometimes you just have to chill out and go with the flow…
I’ve been working on a design project with this lovely yarn from Moss Fibers. The colorway is The Maine Event, and this was in our goodie bags at Knit Maine. It’s really nice; the color is evocative of our event, and the yarn is wonderful to work with.
After several false starts, I knew needed to simplify; there were too many ideas trying to fit into this single skein project. I started again, and frogged it again after I realized there was a more elegant way to arrange my chosen stitch pattern. It now flows seamlessly, and that makes me happy.
This is a 2 part cowl, like Cosette, with a round cowl and then a bandana cowl at the bottom. Now that I’ve finished the project, I’ve decided that it’s not as wide as I want it to be at the bottom. Because it’s a one skein project, if I want it to be bigger at the bottom, it will have to be shorter at the top. Does that mean I’m going to frog the whole thing? Nope. It may become a size option; we’ll see.
Now I’m knitting option number 2. A little wider to begin, and on we go. This yarn is BosSi from Fierce Fibers in the Plum Gradient colorway. She’s not dyeing on this base any more (50/50 baby yak and silk), but it’s very lovely, and was one only two options in my limited stash when I suddenly wanted a gradient. Beautiful!
Ummmm, I just realized that I haven’t knit with this particular fiber base before. I didn’t knit and block a swatch before beginning, and I can’t just stop in the middle of the gradient and make a swatch. I hope that doesn’t turn around to bite me later! I mean, I guess I could knit a small swatch from the other end of the ball, but why take the blocking chicken fun out of the game?
Recently, Knit Picks sent me some new needles to try, before they became available to the public. They sent me two sets of their new Reflections stainless steel interchangeable needles, one in US sizes 4-11, and a new lace and sock set in US sizes 0-4. Borrowing this picture from their website because I forgot to take pictures!
My usual go-to metal needle is the Hiya Hiya stainless steel interchangeable. The new Reflections needle tips are very similar. The points are perfect, not too pointy and definitely not dull. I love them! The join between the cables and the needle tips are very smooth, and that’s important for me when I’m working stitches with multiple yarn overs.
Right now all my projects are on US4 needles, so I did a deep dive on the US4 from the lace set and the regular set. The points are the same (perfect). The lace set and the regular set have differently sized cables, because the lace set has smaller sized needle tips. US 4 needles are in both sets, with different cables/joins; this is where the sizes overlap. I prefer the skinny cable on the lace set to the heavier cable on the regular set because it feels more flexible. Since my work is topping out at a US 4 right now, I can choose between the two.
The 24” cable for the regular set combined with the longer needle tips made the circle of the circular feel a little tight, because it doesn’t curve right at the join. Like the cable on my 16” US 7 Chia Goo needles, it wants to make a pear shape instead of a true circle. The 24” cable for the lace set was paired with a shorter needle tip, and it’s a pleasure to work on.
The new regular sized Reflections needles will work with all of Knit Picks’ regular interchangeable cables. In which case I’d probably use the nylon cables from my other KP wooden interchangeables rather than the newer coated stainless ones. I’m glad I have choices.
When I sent my feedback, I asked if KP would consider making cables for a 20” interchangeable circular. Apparently that’s my new favorite length! I’m doing a lot of 20 to 22” cowls, and they’re just a little too small to fit on a 24” needle. Same for hats for big headed people. I know I can knit these items on a 16” needle, but I like having a little more room to stretch out. And yes, they’re considering it as an option for separate purchase. Yay!
Do you have a favorite needle? For me, it depends on what kind of knitting I’m doing. Sometimes I need to balance a slippery yarn with a more grippy needle, in which case I’ll use wood. But when I want my stitches to fly, I really like stainless steel.
It’s been a busy month since I last posted. Lots of teaching, and lots of fun. I’ve been sitting in on Shaina’s and Keith’s brioche sessions in Brioche Buddies
and tonight it was my turn. I taught about fixing mistakes, and increases and decreases. Here’s the aftermath on my desk with three swatch samples plus Deep End cowl and hat (and my little cork buddies)
and the aftermath of samples next to me
as I kept pulling more things out of the dresser where I keep some of my samples. Next week is the last week, and we’re having a cast on party, woot!
I also did a couple more rounds of tea towels.
Okay, this may have been overkill; that’s a lot of work for each towel!
I love these pine cones with gradient shading; they have more depth than the plain brown ones I did before. I’ve learned a lot and am still learning more.
And I’ve been knitting! More on that in the next post…
I’d been promising all year to teach my sister Sharon how to block print tea towels. When she saw my friend Sharyn’s bee block, she was ready to make her own!
So she did. But I also wanted her to have the full experience, from carving her own block, to mixing color, to printing.
She chose to carve a hibiscus blossom, plus a contrasting pistil and stamen.
I chose to carve a more stylized bee, to go with the flower block I made last month.
We ran out of time, so I still need to add my flowers to my bee towels.
But Sharon finished hers!
A fun afternoon, making beautiful and useful objects. Because who couldn’t use more tea towels?
My lovely book, Brioche Knit Love, celebrated its birthday last month. Now I’ll be making some of the patterns available individually. First: Seafoam Latte Scarf. This was the first piece I designed for the book. In my head, it was called Beachcomber Scarf, before the great theme renaming. Seafoam Latte works!
The Seafoam Latte Scarf is a two color brioche scarf, knit flat. Regular increases and decreases create the rhythmic wave pattern. Syncopating the third wave highlights the crest of the wave. I’m looking forward to using this pattern in brioche classes.
Pattern requires two balls of worsted weight yarn in contrasting colors. Knit to the length you like. Gauge is not critical. I knit mine with 2 balls of Knit Picks Chroma Worsted in Surf’s Up and Bare.
The pattern is now available through Ravelry and Payhip; click either of those hyperlinks to purchase.
I loved my old Lantern Moon ebony needles, from the very first stitch. The wood was warm, and smoother than bamboo. The needles had enough grip for my stitches to slide, but not descend into chaos. The tips were just pointy enough for me. I even loved the *sound* of the needles gently clicking.
The only thing I didn’t like? The join between the cable and the needle. There was a distinct gap where the swivel cord came into the brass connector. It wasn’t a big deal, until I started designing with a lot of fancy stitches that required multiple yarn overs. It was hard to scoot my stitches and yarn overs from the cable onto the left needle so I could work them with the right needle. That eventually drove me to another needle, which turned out to be the Hiya Hiya stainless (regular point, rather than sharp). It’s nice to have a variety of needles for different projects; each needle has a purpose.
When I found out that Lantern Moon had been sold to Knitters Pride, I wanted to try the new needles to see if they had a cable join more to my liking. Sally at Close Knit ordered a needle for me to try out.
New needle above, older needle below. See how the taper on the new needle connector comes down to meet the cable? No hard bump between cable and connector for stitches and yarn overs to catch on. And it’s still a swivel cable, which is nice. Will the lovely lettering stay put after years of knitting? Maybe not, but it’s not a deal breaker. I have many needle gauges.
I took the new needle with me to Knit Maine, to use for my YO? YO! Fun and Fancy Elongated Stitches class, which is all about the multiple yarn overs!
Verdict? A very smooth swivel join. It was a pleasure to knit with these (US6 24” circular) needles. No problem moving my stitches and yarn overs up to the needle! I also knit a brioche cowl on these with worsted weight yarn. At some point I’d love to try the interchangeable needles too; they offer both a fixed join and a swivel join. And that would give me a chance to compare joins at different needle sizes, too. Someday!
Find my patterns on Ravelry: Michele Bernstein Designs
Here are some of my favorites, and the newest. Many of my designs are also available through my Payhip store.
PDXKnitterati 