High on yarn fumes from Rose City Yarn Crawl

That pretty much sums it up! The Crawl was well attended; I saw lots of very happy yarnophiles. I started the crawl at Twisted, where I had a trunk show on Thursday afternoon, sharing space with Chrissy Gardiner. She brought all the socks from her new book, Indie Socks! (She’s got legs, I’ve got heads, we’ve both got torsos…)

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Even though it was the first day of the crawl, Valerie had already visited nine of the 18 shops.

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I went crawling on Saturday. Cathy and I decided to visit some shops on the west side that we hadn’t seen before or in a while. We visited four. Luckily, I’m local, so I can visit the rest of the shops at any time.

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There should be five buttons (including Twisted) on my bag; I forgot to get a button at one of the shops. I was a little distracted by yarn!

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Aren’t the logo colors pretty? They may have influenced my color choice at For Yarn’s Sake. This is Cascade 220 Superwash, 100g/ball.

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I bought 3 skeins of each of these colors, thinking that I would knit a log cabin baby blanket for an soon-to-be-born cousin. But I must have been high on yarn fumes; there’s no way I can get that much knitting done soon, while still working on my design projects! So some of this will have to go back. I think one ball of pink will become In Threes, a sweet little cardigan.

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Our next stop was at the Knitting Bee, which was new to both me and Cathy. This sweet piece was on the wall, which made me remember that I hadn’t taken any pix at For Yarn’s Sake. High on yarn fumes, I tell ya. The shop was cute! And owner Jami’s pattern for the Vintage Fremont Shawl is lovely. It has an interesting construction and applied lace edging, which is something that I’ve been wanting to try. Winner!

From there we let the car navigation guide us to Northwest Wools. I used to shop there all the time, before there were many yarn shops in town. It’s still a lovely place, organized by yarn weight/fiber and then by color. I couldn’t resist this lovely yarn’s perfect chinaberry red. It’s Cascade Cloud, 70% merino, 30% alpaca.

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Look at the construction of it! It’s cabled, or chain plyed. I love it. It will probably be a squooshy seed stitch cowl, which would really show off the yarn’s structure.

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From there we went to Pearl Fiber Arts, new to Cathy but not to me. There was a lot of pretty yarn! Not being much of a stasher, I settled for the latest Interweave Knits magazine since I had already bought yarn. Cindy had some seriously big yarn, and the needles to match!

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We ended at Twisted, just because it’s home base. And now I’m back to knitting away at my Honey Cardigan. So far, so good!

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Did you participate in the yarn crawl? What was your favorite thing? If you’re not local here, you should come visit for the crawl next year. I think it’s going to be February 27-March 2, 2014. Knit on!

Rose City Yarn Crawl trunk show tomorrow

I’m getting my hand knit designs ready to show. Here’s what’s on my blocking wires right now; it was time to freshen up!

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This is my Infinity Entrelac Infinity Scarf, the Mini Mochi version. Come see it and lots more of my designs, and me, at Twisted tomorrow (Thursday) from 3 to 5 pm. I’ll be holding down the fort with Chrissy Gardiner!

Git ‘er done

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Crafty Moms Weekend was great; it’s always nice to hang out with friends. Our kids have grown up so we’re no longer hanging out at soccer games and school concerts together. That means we were overdue to have the chance to catch up with each other. And I got a lot of knitting done, even if I had to rip out 7452 stitches. That project is finished and blocked, and the pattern is nearly done. But it won’t be a self-published pattern, so it will be a while before I can show it to you. I loved knitting it, and hope you will too, eventually. It was great Downton Abbey knitting! Fairly simple, with just enough going on to keep it interesting.

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I started a sweater for me. This is the beginning of the Honey cardigan by Veera Välimäki. The pattern is pretty straightforward and nicely written. I just haven’t decided if I like the yarn yet. It’s 45⁰ North Worsted in Pinot Noir, 100% Superwash Merino specially dyed for Twisted, but discontinued. I bought it on sale last week, knowing that I wanted a worsted weight cardigan. The yarn is nice, but different. It’s a tightly twisted 3-ply, and it almost feels like knitting with cotton rather than wool. I will knit a little further and see what I think. I am happily cabling along without a cable needle. Do you use a cable needle? For these 2×2 cables, I don’t really need one. Check out the tutorials on the sidebar if you want to know how you can ditch your cable needle, too.

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One more sunset!

Life’s A(nother) Beach

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Not Hawaii; this time I’m at the Oregon Coast for our annual Crafty Moms Weekend. This is the 10th annual gathering. There are 12 of us this year; some of us are knitting, others are sewing, beading, making cocktails. It was glorious yesterday when we arrived, 60 and sunny.

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The sunset was gorgeous.

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And this morning’s view was equally lovely, through the window as I knit. I love the reflection of clouds on the wet sand.

I just got to the finishing on half a scarf, and figured out I should have cast on 2 more stitches than I did. I had 2 prototypes but I knit from the graph and didn’t check which one, because i thought they were the same width. Oops. 7452 stitches, to the frog pond…

But first! The winners of the Lantern Moon silk needle cases are…Sheila and Stephanie! I’ll email you to get your snail mail addys. I also want to give a shout out to Sheila for her beautiful Mergoum shawl design. So lovely!

CSY Goodness

I caught up with Lorajean of Knitted Wit this week. The last time I saw her, we were in a mad dash to get our Rose City Yarn Crawl project done for the prize baskets. (Don’t forget to get your free copy of my Daffy Taffy Twists pattern!) After we got that done, I went to Hawaii and she went to TNNA. We’re both back now, so I took the opportunity to catch up with her, and I also picked up *two* months worth of CSY:Fingering Edition yarn. Here’s the January skein:

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This variegated makes me think of chocolate and berries. I’ll be looking for a stellar stitch pattern that does it justice. The yarn is Corriedale Socked, 75% super wash Corriedale and 25% nylon, 4 ounces/445 yards. Corriedale is a new breed fiber for me; I’m looking forward to knitting with it. Not sure it will be socks, although the yarn feels like it would make a sturdy but soft and long lasting pair.

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This blue-green is Cashy Light, a 80/10/10 blend of superwash merino, cashmere,and nylon. It has tons of yardage, 496 yards in 4 ounces. I think it would make a generous one skein shawl. The color reminds me of the ocean, way out in the depths.

I have a lot of knitting lined up for this weekend. I need to finish a design, start a new one, and I still want to knit myself a sweater. Remember that January was supposed to be selfish knitting month? I never got it done, too much work knitting. But last week I bought some clearance yarn at Twisted, worsted in pinot noir, enough for a sweater. I’m thinking it will be Veera Välimäki’s Honey Cardigan. Click the link and tell me what you think! I like that the neckline is less relaxed than on the Tea Leaves Cardigan. I want something top-down so I don’t have to commit to the length until the bitter end. And I decided that I didn’t want the big borders on Serra or Rocky Coast right now.

What are you going to knit this weekend?

Just a little organized

I”ve been looking for a way to organize my circular needles. I have two beautiful Lantern Moon silk needle cases, but they’re not enough to hold all of my 30+(!) Lantern Moon ebony circulars, I think because I save the packaging. Why save the packaging? I use my needles so much, the sizes rub off! It’s frustrating to not be able to tell what size I’m plucking out of the needle case, and it’s hard to mark the silk to tell me. These are so lovely, but my needles are always spilling out all over.

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When I saw this file organizer, I decided to give it a try.

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There are enough pockets inside that I can go from size 3 through 10. Anything larger than 10 goes in with the 10’s, too. It all fits and is quite tidy, and I can tell at a glance which size I’m looking at because of the packaging. Pretty happy over here! I will also admit to having a not quite so pretty accordion file of bamboo circulars, and some dpns over there, too. But for the most part, I use my ebony circulars, and I want to have them easily at hand.

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You may suggest that I use a zippered binder full of plastic zip pages, but I’ve tried that, and have too many needles for it, too! How do you store your circulars?

And! Now I have these two lovely silk needle cases that are looking for a new home. If you’d like one, please leave me a comment telling what you’re using now, and why you think the silk case would work better for you. These are too pretty to not be used! I’ll pick a winner on Friday.

Life’s a Beach…

Well, perhaps not, but I did have a stellar beach getaway last week. I went to Hawaii, the Big Island, with a group of friends to help celebrate a birthday. No people pix, since I don’t have permission to share them. What happens in Hawaii stays in Hawaii! But I did take my knitting. Gotta work, you know!

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It’s a shawl; can’t you tell? I love all the blues in the water and the white sand at Manini’owali Beach at Kua Bay. This is a good beach for wave jumping.

Snorkeling was great (and easy) at Kahalu’u Beach, and rock hopping was even better for pictures.

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This guy was there all three days; sea turtles come up to bask in the sun on the rocks.

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My favorite fish, the Moorish Idol. They’re quick; it’s hard to get a decent picture from above. My second favorite fish? The humuhumunukunukuapua’a, or triggerfish, which is the state fish of Hawaii. I just like being able to say it, but it’s good looking, too.

We went to Buddha’s Cup to see how Kona coffee is grown, and had a very informative tasting session there. The grounds (ha!) are beautiful, as is Milo, the resident parrot.

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This is a jade vine. It comes in this unusual blue-green, and also fire-engine red.

Lots of different birds to spot here!

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These are my favorite birds, the saffron finches.

We saw many beautiful sunsets.

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And howled at the full moon.

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I happened to wake up early the next morning (6:30) and saw the full moon setting over the water. It was magical. I was so pleased to get this picture, a 7 second exposure. Who knew my little point and shoot could do that? It was left on the “night portrait” setting for the birthday candles from the night before. When I realized it could do a long exposure, I set the timer for a 2 second delay so I didn’t have to touch the camera to push the shutter button.

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The view from our lanai looked out over the water, with crashing waves on the lava rock below. It’s high whale season. We saw whales every day, sometimes heads, sometimes backs, and my favorite, the tail flip. It’s hard to catch a picture, though. Can you see the whale spouting in this picture?

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And here’s a whale of a tale for you. It happened on our last day in Hawaii. That afternoon, we were on the lanai, watching whales a half mile offshore: flukes, breeching, turning…thrilling. We saw a kayaker getting closer and closer to the whales. We weren’t sure it was a good idea to be that close. And then…

A whale swamped the kayak! The kayaker disappeared for a bit. We waited for him to surface, unsure of what to do. Eventually his head popped up, a tiny speck in the sea. We could tell with our binoculars that he didn’t have a life jacket, just his floating paddle. He didn’t return to his kayak, though. We knew that he couldn’t swim to shore where we were, because it was all rocks and crashing waves. He was trying to swim back to the marina, which is maybe a mile or more  away. We called 911, and they asked us to keep an eye on him while they sent a boat and had 2 helicopters on standby.

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Before 911 arrived, a small tour boat (zodiac) happened by and he waved them down. Can you see him in the picture above? His head is a tiny black speck in the big ocean, on  the same level as the boat, but 1/3 from the right edge of the picture. Zoom in! They picked him up and transferred him to the rescue skiff that showed up a few moments later. He looked happy to be rescued. The skiff took him back to get his kayak, because he wanted to bring it in, so apparently he was ok.

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Tour boat on left, rescue skiff at center, and kayak is just to the right of the skiff.

We ran into some firefighters at the grocery store later and got the scoop from them. The kayak was broken. The kayaker had some minor scrapes on his arm from the broken kayak, but nothing too serious. He probably could have made it back swimming, eventually, but it was good that we called. It’s a good idea to stay away from the whales, and maybe smarter to stay with the kayak to avoid SHARKS! (We hadn’t even thought about sharks. Yikes.) And apparently no one wears life vests here (except me).

We were glad to see the kayaker live to see another adventure. 60 years old; I wonder how many of his nine lives he’s used so far? We think we should go back every year to monitor the whales and the kayakers!

Trunk Show at Twisted for Rose City Yarn Crawl

A few more notes on the crawl:

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I’m going to have a mini-trunk show at Twisted on Thursday, February 28, from 3 to 5 p.m. I’ll be teaming up with the fabulous Chrissy Gardiner for two hours of fun! I hope you can stop by and say hello.

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The Daffy Taffy Twists pattern is up and available for you, for free! Knitted Wit‘s Gumballs mini-skeins are perfect for this, and leftover sock yarn works in a pinch, too. Tuck a little lavender inside the stuffing and make sachets! I’d suggest catnip to make catnip toys, but I never want Mookie to have an excuse to chew yarn. You can decide for your own cat, though…

And last of all: Today, Monday, February 4, is the last day to pre-order your limited edition 2013 RCYC tote bag. They’re cute, with the RCYC logo on the front, and participating store logos on the back. What are you waiting for? Are you a procrastinator like me? I’m ordering mine right now!

Rose City Yarn Crawl 2013

Mark your calendars! The Rose City Yarn Crawl is coming. This year’s crawl will feature 18 shops in the Portland metro area February 28-March 3.

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Each of the 18 shops will have a prize basket with goodies donated by sponsors, plus something from the shop. You can enter to win a basket in each of the shops. If you make it to all the shops and fill out your shop passport, you can enter to win the grand prize basket.

Lorajean Kelley of Knitted Wit and I are teaming up and donating a fun little project for this year’s baskets.

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These are my new Daffy Taffy Twists, knit with Knitted Wit’s Gumballs, mini-skeins of fingering weight superwash merino. I wrote the pattern especially for this event, and it will be available here on the blog soon. I just need to reformat it so it’s not a postcard! It ties in with Lorajean’s theme: Treat yourself!

Check out the yarn crawl buzz on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow the fun on the Rose City Yarn Crawl Facebook page, or on twitter. You’ll find the full shop list and more information on the Rose City Yarn Crawl website.

I’m really looking forward to this year’s crawl; I missed last year’s because I was in Nicaragua. See you soon!

Knitting: Art or Craft?

Knitting as art?

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I saw a review of Johanna Jackson’s “The Big Fig” in the local paper, so I decided to check it out.

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It’s located in a relatively new gallery space in town, the Portland Museum of Modern Art, which is a small room in the basement of Mississippi Records at 5202 N. Albina.

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(I love this blanket; I’m guessing it’s phases of the moon)

Is it art? Is it craft? I think of my own knitting as more craft than art. At what point does knitting cross the line from craft to art? Is it the way it’s displayed? The combination of pleasing colors and forms? Or something that can’t be explained?

What do you think?

If you’d like to see this exhibit in person, you’ll need to go by the end of January. It’s open from noon to 7 p.m. daily, and admission is free.