Twisp of Fate

Carol Sunday kindly sent me the photographs of my Windfeather – High Country colorway stole so I could use them to update my projects on Ravelry and/or social media.  The only “social media” I use is this blog!  Note to self:  update that Ravelry account.

Anyway, the pictures turned out beautiful and are now on her website with the kits and pattern for Windfeather from Sunday Knits, and are incorporated into the High Country version of the pattern.  She sent back my stole and it arrived yesterday.  I am thrilled!

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I finally finished my Windfeather stole, which I started last July.  This was a kit from Carol Sunday at Sunday Knits and I had chosen the High Country colorway (one of 8 colorways).  I purchased it when she first brought out the pattern under her Beta Sale discount.  At the time she only had one of the eight colorways knitted up and she offered a further store credit if you were the first to finish one and allow her to have it for photography (see link above).

Here it is before blocking:

I checked her website and she still did not have finished items for the “Earth & Sky” and the “High Country” colorways.  So I emailed her and she sent me a prepaid shipping label and off it went to her yesterday for photography.  Kind of cool!

Her line of yarns, spun and dyed for her by a small mill in Italy, are absolutely wonderful and I will wear and treasure this stole for a long time.

We still have snow on the ground, but are having a very early warming trend, so who knows how long it will last.  Usually we have snow on the ground and ski trails in good condition at least through February!

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Methow Valley Spinners & Weavers annual show and sale was the weekend before Thanksgiving.  I sometimes put some handspun yarn in the sale, but hadn’t put any knitted items in for a while.  Since the focus is on spinning and weaving, our “rule” is that knitted items (or crocheted, or other crafts) have to be done with handspun yarn.

So I went to work on some of my Mosaic Mojo Hats (pattern available on Ravelry.com).  I wound up finishing six of them, and three sold at the guild sale.  The others went to Winthrop Gallery for the holiday gift show.

BFL roving in blue tones, polwarth/silk roving in greens, both dyed by Judith MacKenzie

Brownish yarn created at spinning camp with Judith Feb 2017 from grab-bag of different colors & fibers, plus blue BFL

Another hat with same fibers

Yet another hat with same fibers

Green polwarth/silk and some natural gray handspun from years ago

Reddish polwarth/silk roving I dyed at spinning camp Feb 2016, plus some leftover purple handspun from Taylored Fibers roving

I also had some handspun polwarth/silk from three rovings I bought a few years ago.  They were dyed by Abstract Fiber in Portland, Oregon.  Each 4-oz roving was a different colorway, but they went well together, so I spun singles from each one and then made a 3-ply yarn.  It came out more or less a worsted weight and I didn’t have enough to knit a garment, so it was just sitting there for a while deciding what it wanted to be.

I wound up knitting two cowls based on my Squirrel Cowl pattern (written for fingering weight yarn).  This is a sequence knitting project and uses a multiple of 12 + 1 stitches.   I used a size 9 needle and 228 + 1 sts and it came out a good length for wrapping around twice.  One went into the guild sale and then on to the Winthrop Gallery, and the other I am keeping for me!

Abstract Fiber cowl #1

Abstract Fiber cowl #2

The second one (the one I am keeping) is actually a little different.  I ran out of one of the singles but had more of another one, so I had a small skein of 3-ply with 2 singles of the latter and none of the former.  It was more blue.  I started the cowl with that color, then blended into the main yarn which had all three colors.

By the way, I think Abstract Fiber will be one of the vendors again at the 2018 Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in Tacoma, WA  (Feb 15-18, 2018).  She really does beautiful work.

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About this time last year, at a knitting event I have attended for many years, I was the big winner of a raffle prize.  It was 5 skeins of yarns from The Plucky Knitter (a very popular indie dyer) on their Snug Worsted yarn base (70% merino, 20% cashmere, 10% alpaca – a very yummy feeling blend).  They had picked the 3 colors and it came with one of their scarf patterns and was packaged in a Field Bag from Fringe Supply!

I had hit the jackpot, although the colors might not have been what I would have chosen.  There were 2 skeins of “Utility” (gray) 1 skein of “Take a Hike” (pine green) and 2 skeins of “Glamping” (cream with spreckles of orange and green), each about 230 yds.

That time of year is rolling around again and last month I decided I should do something with the yarn so I could take it to show off.  I started the scarf pattern they had provided, but became disenchanted with it when partway into the second color.  I was afraid I would never wear it (too heavy, I like knitted scarves from lighter weight yarn) and it wasn’t going to make good use of the yarn, especially the first color which is used very little.  So I tore it out and went on a search for another project.

This is where good old Ravelry really shines!  I searched for a vest made out of Snug Worsted and lo and behold, found someone had made Exit 4 by Bonnie Sennot from this yarn and used 4-1/2 skeins all in one color.  I had 5 skeins in 3 colors, but figured I could make it work.  It’s more of a poncho than a vest, being open at the sides and held together with 2 buttons on each side.

Exit 4 by Bonnie Sennott in Plucky Knitter Snug Worsted

But wait, there’s more!  When I was done I had enough yarn left to make a hat, or so I thought.  19 gms of the Utiity, and about 35 gms each of the other 2 colors.  So I went back to an old favorite I have knit a couple of times:  Crown of Leaves by Faina Goberstein.  This is written for a lighter weight DK yarn but I had notes from knitting it from worsted weight before.  So I did the decorative cast on over a US 10, then changed to a US 4 (instead of US 2) for the twisted rib, then a US 7 (instead of US 5) for the body of the hat.  I cast on for the middle size, then increased only 24 instead of 36 to knit the body in the smallest size.  And it fits!  I had enough gray to do the ribbing, green to do Chart A, and the confetti color to almost finish the top, although I ran out and switched back to the green and gray bits of leftover to finish it off.

And this is how much yarn I had left over from the 5 skeins:

and I still have my new Fringe Supply Field Bag for future knitting projects!

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I have been away from home quite a bit so wanted some small knitting projects to have with me.  Plus, I just didn’t feel like launching into another sweater right away, although I have the patterns and yarn selected for a couple that I want to do.

First up was another Squirrel Cowl, which is my own pattern and available on Ravelry.  I used some hand dyed yarn that I bought a couple of years ago up in Vancouver BC at Sweet Georgia Yarns.  This is the dyers’ studio and operations office, but they do have a retail storefront there as well.  You can also get their yarns at many retailers in the U.S. and Canada.

The pattern calls for fingering/4-ply yarn on a US 5 needle.  I wanted to verify that the yardage I used was consistent with the pattern (as well as to have another cowl to wear), so I weighed the balls of yarn before and after and used that to calculate the yardage used.  I wound up using about 260 yd/75 gm of their Cashluxe Fine as color A – 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere and 10% nylon in a dark teal semi-solid called “Riptide”.  For color B I used about 200 yd/62 gm of their Silk Crush – 50% superwash merino, 50% silk in a variegated colorway called “Stormchaser”.  So I think I am safe to stick with the requirement of 250 yds of each color for yarns with about 180 yds to 50 gm in the pattern.  This was Variation 2 of the pattern charts.

I also wanted to make the Reverse Psychology scarf by Mindy Ross after seeing the one a friend made.  It is written for a color gradient yarn and has bead placement on both edges and sometimes across the scarf.  My friend just used 3 different colors of fingering weight yarn and no beads, and it looks great.  So I did the same, using 3 colors of Koigu PPM that I had in stash.  Just change to a new color when running low on the old one (we both did this after doing one of the partial bind-offs with the old color, and then joining in the new color to finish that row).

Very fun and interestingly shaped scarf, here it is on the blocking mats and then draped on a mannequin.  It seems to drape a little differently depending on what edge you put against your neck, but I think they both look good!

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Finished Objects, that is.

I have had a run on my Mosaic Mojo hats up at the Winthrop Gallery, so decided to dig into the box of miscellaneous hat knitting yarn and whip out a couple more.  I knit all 3 of these in the last week or so (they take me about 6 hours each).

These have been kind of fun to do again so I may have a couple more in me before winter is completely over.

The big project last month was finishing a sweater before I went to spinning camp on Orcas Island.  Even though it wasn’t knit from handspun yarn!  I bought the yarn 10 years ago from Island Fibers on Lopez Island (part of the San Juan Islands chain in Washington State, along with Orcas Island).  Maxine always has a selection of spinning fiber and yarn at our event.  The wool was from local sheep on Lopez and had been spun at Taos Wool Mill to a woolen 3-ply.   Then it sat in storage until last year – 2016 spinning camp – when Judith helped me dye it a wonderful moss/lichen green color.  So I was determined to make a sweater out of it before this year’s camp.  I quite literally finished it the day before we left.

The Rainforest Sweater 2017

I didn’t have enough of my green yarn to do the whole thing, so I knit the bottom and sleeve borders with some Koigu sock yarn I had in stash, held with a strand of Jaggerspun Zephyr wool/silk to beef it up a bit.

The pattern is from a new electronic publication from Interweave Knits – knit.wear Wool Studio.  You buy the pattern collection as a PDF file and then can download and print whatever you want.  There are several patterns in there that I like, and this one is called “Truro Pullover” by Amanda Scheuzger.  It is knit in one piece from the bottom up, and the most fiddly bits are up around the short rows for the front neck and beyond.  One thing I really liked about this pattern is the shoulder shaping – besides the raglan line, there are decreases along the top of the sleeve from just below the shoulder up to the neck.  This makes it sit very nicely over the shoulder and is an idea I plan to incorporate into my next top-down raglan.

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