Knitting on Impulse

Fudged For the Win!

Not fudged exactly, because I was actually on precisely the right track, I just forgot.  (It's the way my brain rolls these days - the subconscious doggedly getting on with things, while the conscious bit bumps around fretfully, wondering if this interminable headache will ever subside long enough to pursue a coherent train of thought.) After some consideration, I opted to add a completely new design feature all around the edge of the hat... and I think it looks great and fits exactly as I had hoped.

 
One great possibility of earflap hats is the ability to create a sort of cocoon around the head and cheeks without relying on elastic tension across the ears and forehead (the source of so many complaints of "itch") to keep it in place.  This is best accomplished by having zero to slightly positive ease in the initial iteration of the brim, then reducing the number of stitches a bit when knitting the all-around border. 

It could have used a bit of blocking to straighten out the garter stitch cross on the crown, but the necessary work surface was covered in gingerbread cookies and pots of icing, so it will have to wait.

I did take careful notes as I knit, except for the border, which I was rather winging as I went along, but since the girl child has ordered an identical hat in pink, I'll take notes on the border next time with an eye to publishing the design.

Yarn: Merino /Cashmere / Nylon in worsted weight - most of a 110 gm skein in Blueberry Skies. Every bit as lovely as you'd expect, and coming to the webstore as soon as I get the new category page sorted and a little more selection dyed up.

Coneflower Gloves

Knit to my daughter's exacting specifications and pronounced (by her) to be "way better than I ever imagined," these are basic knit-to-fit stockinette gloves garnished with a smidge of inexpert embroidery and two all-important pom poms.

 
"Knit-to-fit" in this case, incurred a certain degree of whinging about the four zillion fittings required to get the fingers of the first glove exactly right.

I don't think I'll win any prizes for embroidery, but you can make out a general petal-ish impression, right?

Not entirely unlike a Coneflower?

The recipient is thrilled, which in the end, is what really matters.

 
The yarn was a tragically knot-containing skein of Blissful Sock in Echinacea.  (There were actually two more, each with a single knot, that I kept back - I suppose if anyone is so inclined, I could knock off a buck or so for the knot and let them go....) I have to say, I really loved working with this sock yarn - the superwash treatment has done nothing at all to diminish the sheen and wooly softness characteristic of BFL.  Sheer pleasure to knit up.

Sampler

I've been tossing around variations of this idea for ages, but I got a sudden impulse to just work up a sample (so to speak) over the weekend. I thought it would be nice for customers to be able to play around with the different yarns I dye before committing to larger projects, but at the same time, I couldn't resist the possiblity of doing a little more with it.

Here we have 10 yards of each of my wools and wool blends (I left off the super-luxury silk yarns for the time being) - merino in lace, fingering, sport, worsted, and aran; BFL in fingering, sport, and worsted, the three sock yarns (merino, BFL, cashmere-merino), merino-silk, Merino Whisper, and Cruiser:

I think I'd probably do 15 yds of each for the actual sample pack - a little more manageable, and would work out to a little over 100 gms of yarn in total.  Enough to swatch, fondle, play with, or.....

Make something.

 
What do you think?  Is there interest in something like this?  I think I'd price it around $25.  I could do mini skeins or mini balls (all labelled of course), though I think the mini balls are actually easier to handle on the receiving end. Although the concept of a feather and fan cowl is hardly original, the stitch does a fabulous job of mixing up varying colours and gauges, and I could include a wee pattern for this cowl version. Comments and/or further ideas would be gratefully received!

So That's Where They Go

You know, I'm truly pleased, and even grateful that Rob does a goodly portion of the vacuuming, but.....

 
He didn't even notice it going in, which says something about the power of our new vacuum. (Handknit, Trekking XXL, if you were wondering.)

Saddled

I keep meaning to blog daily, and then the day kind of plows over me like a runaway steamroller and when I pause for breathe... it's bedtime - too dark to take a photo, too tired to say anything coherent.  I'm going to try adding it to my list of things to do First Thing In The Morning. (Does it still count as First Thing if there's a half a morning's worth of stuff on the list?)

Despite my angst this summer about sweaters and shoulders and fit, I have actually made some garments over the last year that I quite like, but never got around to showing off as FO's.  Here's one - I think I blogged it in progress but never on completion:

It is a basic bottom-up sweater with a bit of waist shaping and Elizabeth Zimmerman's seamless saddle shoulders formula.  It definitely fits, and I've gotten plenty of compliments when I've worn it.  (Yarn is merino worsted in Dark Water - with a bit of Enchanted Forest for contrast).  I don't know that I'd want to use saddle shoulders exclusively - they do perhaps overemphasize the width, but it does seem to be a viable option for my frame.

Hot Chilly Live

It has been one of those days: kids home from school so the teachers can professionally develop, weather sucky, dog insanely bouncy, lower back loudly protesting the contorted sleeping position from which it awoke this morning...

To Do got seriously shortchanged today, but I did get Hot Chilly Hat loaded and live into the Ravelry pattern store. To that end, there was a last minute photo shoot (often the best kind):

FO: Oblique

Mere hours after a long overdue visit to the Hairdresser of Awesomeness (seriously - if you're ever in Whistler and in need of an excellent haircut that is priced for regular folk rather than gazillionaires, email me and I'll give you her info) I decided to strike while the hairdo was hot and drag hubby out back for a photoshoot.

   

 

  

Pattern: Oblique by Veronik Avery (Knitty link)

Yarn: my own Cruiser in Winter Creek - I made an extra sweater pack for myself that week and used 3 1/2 of the big 1/2 lb skeins.

Mods: knit entirely in the round (see edit below), added an extra inch before starting waist shaping to account for my long-waisted-ness.  Otherwise, it was knit entirely according to the excellent and well-written pattern.

(ETA: I meant to say seamlessly.  I did not steek it, since there is purling on both sides (albeit more on the WS), hence not a lot to be gained.  The sleeves were in the round, which required a bit of a shift when I went back to knitting the lace panels back and forth after joining with the body, but nothing too earth-shattering.)

I was a bit whiney at first about the Big Sweater thing, but it actually is rather shapely in its own way, and it's not such a bad thing to own a few pieces of clothing where you don't have to suck in sharply and hold your breath the whole time.  Also, there's nothing like fresh highlights to undumpify clothes...  all a matter of perspective, I guess.

Employee of the Month

(We were watching an episode of Corner Gas the other night where the single employee of the business felt underappreciated and was duly bought off with a similar poster on the wall.) 

I've recently come to the realization that standing about reskeining yarn for hours on end while emails, design work, sample knitting, etc. etc. pile up is perhaps not the best use of my time and talents.  Enter the willing slave valued employee.  To my surprise, Rob did not balk at the suggestion that he would be well suited to begin taking over some of the the mindless labour (the fact that the business puts food on the table probably helped).  So I'm teaching him the art of skein winding, including that fancy twisty thing you do at the end to make them look nice.  He's a quick learner, but I've got him practicing on the personal stash for a while until his technique is up to snuff (not that I'm a perfectionist boss or anything....)

 

Anyway, soon you'll have the singular satisfaction of knowing that your yarn has passed through the skilled hands and steely gaze of this handsome fellow.

Which brings me to another point - I've been holding out on you.  Just a bit.  Many months ago, I was reading the blogs of other dyers who were struggling to dye enough yarn to take to impending fibre festivals and I thought it would be very clever of me to hold back a couple of skeins of everything I dyed so as to have lots of stock for this coming summer, should I choose to do the fibre circuit.  Well, over the winter, the Rubbermaid totes piled up... and up... and up beside the computer cabinet, and my web stock got rather ransacked in the lead-up to Christmas and it occured to me recently that if I were to put all that backlog on the site, one of two things would happen.  Either it would get largely sold off by summer, in which case I wouldn't need to truck the family and display gear all over BC in an aging Forerunner, OR the better part of it would remain, in which case I would have plenty of stock for festivals.  Most of it needs reskeining though, which is where Rob comes in.  There's a lot of it.  Like, probably twice again as much as is presently on the site - mostly BFL, merino-silk, and summit sock, with a healthy dollop of laceweight.  Unless there's a flood of requests, I'm not going to send an update notice every time I add these - we'll just keep plugging away and put them up as they're ready. If you missed something first time around, you may want to keep an eye out, though.

Speaking of holding out, I completely forgot about this one yesterday:

     

Oh, and the hat? That was dyed/designed for his role as Chief of Finish at the recent Bobsleigh & Skeleton World Cup. If you were enough of a sliding aficionado to follow the races on TV, you would have seen it bobbing about in the finish area. (It will appear at the 2010 Olympics, too, in case you missed your chance.)

  

Labouring

over the dye pots is what I'll be doing soon, thanks to a successful market.  The yarn display is looking awfully skimpy (not that I'm complaining, having perused the dentist's contribution to our latest Visa bill), and I'm thinking that a monochromatic theme isn't really what I'm going for in the tent, so barring any back-to-school emergencies, there will be several colourways this week.  (You will, as usual, get first pick.)

Here's a wee project I finished up this morning - for me this time.

Simple, neutral (Sunbleached Silver), and practical: I've found that when manhandling market displays or shopping bags in the chilly rain, regular wool (especially the buttery soft stuff) tends to felt rapidly and unattractively.  I think a tightly spun superwash will be just the thing.

Tomorrow: an update on the Minus Twenty project.

Diversion

A little something to pass the time in the tent while the rain thundered down... and down... and down yesterday:

Fittingly enough, it is in the Lost Lake colourway.  The yarn is that worsted weight superwash merino I got a while back - it has such a tight twist that the jury's out on whether it is saleable (it is so tight, it tends to kink back on itself in the skein.) I'm having great fun knitting with it in any case. 

Pattern: my own (though it is basic enough that I wouldn't guarantee nobody else has thought of it!)

These will go in the Christmas gift box, an idea I picked up from the Yarn Harlot.  Unlike Stephanie however, I am not nearly prolific enough to keep a massive inventory of knitted items in a range of sizes for spontaneous gifting, so my box will merely be a device which allows me to keep the blog alive from September to Christmas, whilst keeping potential recipients (most of whom read the blog) guessing.