I thought a lot about whales last summer, while on the Zodiac Schooner trip, and on the Vogue Knitting Alaska cruise. I didn’t see a single whale, but they were definitely on my mind!
The Whale Conga Line cowl is the result of those whale-centered expeditions. It’s knit flat from the bottom up and seamed, using 2 skeins of DK weight yarn in contrasting colors. I used Anzula Luxury Fibers Lucero, which is a sparkly blend of superwash merino, cashmere, and stellina. So pretty!
detail
If you’re not into whales, choose a different color and you’ll have migrating birds on the wing, or Jack’s beanstalk reaching for the sky.
The pattern is available through Ravelry, link here, and Payhip, link here. Use coupon code FLUKE for 15% off through January 10, 2024.
Thanks to tech editor Jen Lucas, test knitters Ann Berg, Debbie Braden, and Erica Erignac, and model Sharon Hsu. And thank you to newsletter subscriber Shauna, who came up with the winning name for this pattern! I’ll be sending her a copy of the pattern.
I forgot to add the biggest knit thing I did in 2023, which was also a second chance: I re-published my sold out, out of print book, Brioche Knit Love: 21 Skill Building Projects from Simple to Sublime! It’s for sale through Amazon.com and through select yarn shops including For Yarn’s Sake and Northwest Yarns and Mercantile. Get a copy and enjoy brioche knitting!
To ring out the old year and ring in the new, I’m having a sale on my 2023 individual self-published patterns on Ravelry. These are the eight designs you see above (not the book, which is not on Ravelry). Here’s a link to the Ravelry bundle so you can find them easily. Get 20% off any of my 2023 patterns from now through January 5, 2024. Explore assigned pooling, play with brioche, or just have a simple knit and let a gradient yarn walk you through Ebb and Flow! (If Ravelry is not accessible for you, message me and we’ll work it out.)
Happy new year…are you doing something fun for New Year’s Eve? We’re staying home with the cats. That’s enough excitement for us!
We’ve added Pooling is a Cinch to the Starfall KAL, so now it’s a PDXKnitterati Assigned Pooling KAL!
Starfall cowl
We’re kicking off the knitalong on January 9 via Zoom. I’ll be there to demonstrate some techniques and give you pointers on how much more you can do with Starfall and this fabulous yarn!
The Starfall pattern is available through Ravelry, link here. It is also available through Payhip, link here.
Check out Keith’s colors here; choose a color that works for assigned pooling in 100g fingering weight for Starfall. There are a lot of pooling colors to choose from. Your yarn purchase will get you on the Zoom invite list. Order your yarn by December 27 so you can knit with us in January!
Pooling is a Cinch in Times Square colorway
UPDATE: We’re adding Pooling is a Cinch to our KAL; if you order this yarn (it’s worsted weight, so an even quicker knit) from Keith, you’ll get the Zoom invite, too. Wednesday Dec. 27 is the last day to order to get your yarn on time for the January 9 Zoom. Jump into the pool with us!
AND! I’ve opened a thread in my Ravelry group so we can discuss both of these projects and the KAL. Here’s the link. Hope to knit with you in January!
Those two Starfall cowl samples that I knit recently? I’m having a knitalong with Keith Leonard’s beautiful Yarn Snob yarns!
Starfall in Wine Mom colorwayStarfall in Keith’s Irresistible Iris colorwayNew colors, and the colors I used
We’re kicking off the knitalong on January 9 via Zoom. I’ll be there to demonstrate some techniques and give you pointers on how much more you can do with Starfall and this fabulous yarn!
The Starfall pattern is available through Ravelry, link here. It is also available through Payhip, link here.
Check out Keith’s colors here; choose a color that works for assigned pooling in 100g fingering weight. There are a lot of pooling colors to choose from. Your yarn purchase will get you on the Zoom invite list. Order your yarn now so you can knit with us in January!
Pooling is a Cinch in Times Square colorway
Keith’s colors are amazing. He also dyed the yarn for my first pooling pattern, Pooling is a Cinch. I love this colorway; I used it again for my Firefly Trails cowl. It would make a great Starfall, too. Tempting? Of course! Come knit with us!
UPDATE: We’re adding Pooling is a Cinch to our KAL; if you order this yarn (it’s worsted weight, so an even quicker knit) from Keith, you’ll get the Zoom invite, too. Wednesday Dec. 27 is the last day to order to get your yarn on time for the January 9 Zoom. Jump into the pool with us!
AND! I’ve opened a thread in my Ravelry group so we can discuss both of these projects and the KAL. Here’s the link. Hope to knit with you in January!
I just realized that I never told you that registration is open for Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat! I was away in the woods near Mount Hood when registration opened, and meant to blog when I returned. Oops.
The retreat is February 15-18 in Tacoma Washington. It’s a lovely event at the Hotel Murano.
Starfall Cowl
I’m teaching Assigned Pooling using my Starfall Cowl as a backdrop for several bonus pooling stitches,
Favorite Shawl Shapes
Favorite Shawl Shapes (learn the construction of basic shapes and use them to design your own shawls),
Aspen Leaf Coasters
Aspen Leaf Coasters (intro to brioche increases and decreases, and knitting brioche flat),
Brioche Pastiche
and Brioche Pastiche (beginning brioche in the round and a little more: choose your own adventure hat or cowl, plain rib or fancy increases and decreases).
I also signed up to take Xandy Peters’ Color Blocked Brioche class. I love seeing what other designers are thinking about brioche. Come knit/spin/weave with us in Tacoma!
Alder?
A leaf (maybe alder) on the railing of the bridge over the creek, in the woods that I mentioned before…
Well, I didn’t get my swatching done for the When Harry Met Lucy KAL, but I have a good excuse. I went on vacation and couldn’t fit bulky yarn into my luggage!
Knitting on the go with qiviut and POG mimosa
But one ounce of laceweight qiviut, 200 yards, doesn’t take up much space at all. And yes, that’s a tiny yarn scale because I didn’t want to have a yarn chicken issue when coming to the end. I wanted to use as much of the yarn as possible.
No yarn chicken here!
I ended up with just over half a gram left, which was less than one round’s worth of yarn. Perfect.
Souvenir qiviut cowl
I gave it a light steam blocking. The top edge doesn’t wave as much as the bottom; that’s the nature of this stitch pattern (Old Shale). It doesn’t matter; the whole thing will collapse around my neck. I began and ended with a garter stitch edge to give it some heft, and to avoid curling.
Old Shale stitch pattern detail
I’m glad I chose this stitch pattern; it has just enough going on to make it interesting, but I was never fighting with not being able to see the stitches with this dark and fuzzy yarn.
Qiviut cowl
I’m really happy with how this souvenir qiviut cowl turned out. I didn’t have much use for this cowl on vacation in Hawaii, but I put it on right after we landed back in Portland. I was so glad that I had it with me in my carry-on bag! 36 degrees F which was quite a shock to the system. This cowl is so lightweight, soft, and warm. I love it.
Is it worth writing up a pattern, or should it just be one and done? It’s great for any precious souvenir yarn. This particular yarn began in Alaska and ended in Hawaii, the 49th and 50th states. It’s been a good knitting year.
I did bring some fingering weight yarn with me for a design project, too. It didn’t take up too much room!
It’s a lovely sweater, but I like it better on me than on him. I think it’s because this yarn (Berroco Vintage) is soft and drapey, and the sweaters that I like on him have more body to them.
I want to knit another sweater for him, and when I saw Paul Haesemeyer’s sweater in Knitty, I was smitten. Bonus: He’s having a KAL and it’s opening weekend right now!
When Harry Met Lucy KAL
The sweater is knit in bulky weight yarn, which should be relatively quick. The sample was knit in an alpaca blend, but I ordered Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Bulky in Mineral Heather, which should have more body, and be less warm.
why yes there’s a cat hair on it already…
I think I’ll make it with a relaxed fit, but not as oversized as Paul’s. DH is not a large person, and I don’t want him to look like the sweater is wearing him! I could knit it in the round up to the armholes instead of in pieces. Does it need the structure of the side seams? My favorite sweater that I knit for him was knit in the round to the armholes. I altered the drop shoulder construction to cut in at the armhole, and picked up the stitches at the shoulder and worked downward, instead of knitting the sleeve and then sewing it in. Hmmm.
On the other hand, knitting it flat would make it easier to swatch for gauge, and I could avoid the “keep knitting and figure it out” debacle that I just did gauge-wise on my recent Starfall sample. (Knitting in the round takes longer to figure out that your first instinct was a bad choice…) I don’t have to decide about the sleeves until later. And I could knit it with or without cables on the sleeves…
Anyway, I’m dreaming of how I want to modify it, and I haven’t even swatched yet. Stay tuned.
Remember these two beauties? I last posted about them, wondering which color I’d use to knit a Starfall sample. I have now knit three cowls with these two skeins. (You’ll see why/how in a bit.)
Wine Mom, first swatch
At first glance, I didn’t think there was enough going on with Wine Mom. And the color run was longer than in my previous Starfall cowl, so there was a lot of color on each side of the star. This swatch was knit on a US5.
Keith’s Irresistible Orchid
This colorway called my name. I was knitting on a US4.
Starfall Cowl, unblocked
I knit this over the Thanksgiving holiday, but I wasn’t really happy with it. The stars are pretty small, and the fabric is a bit firmer than I like. There’s a lot of color at the sides of the stars, too. I wondered if it would be better on a US5, even though I thought that looked a little puny with this yarn. What if I made 6 stitch stars instead of 5 stitch stars? Would there be enough yarn to finish the cowl? I didn’t want to frog the whole thing and reknit it, if it could mean losing at yarn chicken.
Of course that meant that I should knit an entire cowl with Wine Mom, just to make sure the yardage would work out. Behold, 6 stitch stars on a US5 needle.
Starfall cowl in Wine Mom
I love it. Which meant I had to frog and re-knit the first cowl. And that’s how I’ve knit three cowls with these two skeins of yarn. I re-knit the Irresistible Orchid cowl in 3 days. Don’t try this at home; my arms are definitely feeling some tendinitis. Oops. But I did binge watch the current season of Virgin River on Netflix, so that was fun.
Bisquee is ready to help with blockingStarfall encore
The stars are bigger and there’s less color leakage at the sides of the stars. And the fabric feels right, too. Winner! I also added one more 4 row repeat of the old shale lace at the bottom edge, because there was enough yarn left to do that. I would have added that to the end of the Wine Mom version too, if I had thought of it. It all depends on how much yarn you have left.
Blocked photos coming soon. And I’ll figure out if kits are happening with Keith, the dyer of these gorgeous yarns.
Oh! While I was knitting, I realized it would be easier for me (and you, the knitter), if I gave row numbers throughout the triangular increase section, instead of just telling you to repeats rows 2 and 3, 39 times. So I edited the pattern. If you purchased it through Ravelry, the updated pattern is available to you. I’ll get the Payhip version updated today, too.
Now I need to finish my qiviut cowl, and think about a sweater I want to knit for DH, and design something with some fun new yarn from Knitted Wit. Never a dull moment, right?
Is it possible? Can you frog brioche? Of course. It’s getting it back on the needle that’s tricky. I’m here to help! I’ve had a lot of experience frogging…(for newbies: frogging means rip-it, rip-it, rip-it).
You can rip one row/round at a time, alternating colors, but it’s just as easy to rip them simultaneously. The trick is to rip until you’re close to where you want to end up, and then tink (un-knit, knit spelled backwards) the last row or round, one stitch at a time, picking up each stitch as it’s freed from the yarn. This is also how I frog regular knitting.
After I made this video, I frogged this project completely, because it’s a little too big. But I wanted to show you how it worked, before completely undoing it. It turned out to be just a big swatch!
Well that was stellar! And lunar. And solar…definitely awe inspiring!
Pinhole camera made with knitting needle and paper on hand
I trekked down to Salem to view the eclipse from Willamette Valley Vineyards. They were in the path of totality; Portland was at 99%. That tiny, tiny 1% makes a big difference.
DH stayed home; he’s not as geeky about these things as I am. I wanted the sun to disappear completely. It did not disappoint.
It was so uplifting to share this awe-inspiring event with an enthusiastic group of people. So much positivity. We wrote and sang “Path of Totality” to the tune of Age of Aquarius. Fun and funny.
Of course I brought my knitting. Bag by Chicken Boots (Saremy), needle keeper by A Needle Runs Through It (Maria), bead needle by Bead Aid (Sarah), bead tin by Miss Purl (Danielle), yarn by June Pryce Fiber Arts (Cheryl), beads by Bead Biz (Jean)! It’s like another group of friends beyond the ones I was actually sitting with.
People’s phones kept going off with emergency alerts. Turn off your ringers, please! Yes, rock climbing. Check out this link for an amazing photo; it’s not mine so I don’t want to publish it here. Rock climber silhouetted by eclipsed sun at Smith Rock.
I don’t pretend to have a camera good enough to get a picture of what it really looked like; I’m leaving that to the professionals. This is what it looks like from an iPhone.
So cool to see Venus out during the day. The sun is completely eclipsed here, but the phone camera can’t catch it. It was a dark circle surrounded by intense twinkling light. It was easy to tell when totality hit; a collective gasp went up and our eclipse glasses didn’t let any light through. It was equally easy to tell when it was time to put the glasses back on. So bright! Those two minutes of totality went by all too quickly. Just a tiny sliver of sun seemed like complete daylight.
The sun was about halfway back for this picture. Hard to tell.
Traffic home was a bear. But it was worth it. Biscuit and I caught up with Game of Thrones the next day. She likes dragons; I think because they sound like her. Kind of raspy and squeaky. Bisqueak!
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 