Saturday, Mom heard on regional news that Sunday was the last day of a yarn fair held all last week in Kaysersberg, a little town an hour away by car, so we spent our Sunday afternoon walking around in the sun and… buying fibery things. The fair was small, only eight or ten exhibitors, but really varied and nice, with a mix of weavers, knitters and felt-makers, and products ranging from organic yarns (dyed in vegetable dyes) to felt jewelry to hats and bags, etc. Mom found great felted wrist warmers/mitts (not knitted and then felted, but wet felted only) for a friend of hers with a birthday coming up. I nearly bought a felt hat.
I did buy 2 skeins of a fat single ply of wool-linen blend (260m) in a wonderful acid green to knit a quick scarf for a friend (I’m thinking 7mm needles and the Yarn Harlot’s one row scarf pattern), as well as 100g of a tweedy hairy wool (mohair blend?) in a wonderful tawny rust color highlighted with a discreet strand of lurex. That one is much thinner, DK or sport, perhaps even thinner.
Both came from the same table and are the work of the dyer Catherine Morel for her shop ‘L’atelier de Laine Garance’, which Google found only one mention of in all of the internet, here, in 2005. I will keep her card preciously, as her yarn looked wonderful. I’ll to ask her for a color card.
I have started knitting the scarf and stopped when I had used the whole first skein; my plan is to knit a pair of mitts with the second skein, which won’t use all of it, and then to use the rest to lengthen the scarf. The first mitt is done, though I fought tooth and nail and messed up the kitchener stitch about 5 times, ouch. I’m trying to knit a second one twin to it, which might prove hard as I sort of improvised loosely, once more, on Ysolda Teague’s wonderful garter stitch mitts pattern. I’m doing these in a very different gauge, with a different stitch count, and this time not even in garter but in stockinette, so… Wish me luck that I can replicate what worked once!
(The reason I couldn’t resist casting on to try those in stockinette is that I desperately needed a reason to put into practice the fabulous Japanese short rows method I finally “got” the other day. I’m not using a pin, because now that I got it, I don’t need to - and oh, this clever trick fills me with such joy!)
When I was in Cornwall recently I bought one hank of a lovely aran weight pure wool for a friend who wanted to (re)learn how to knit (he chose it). He mastered the knit stitch quickly enough, but after a while knitting a scarf in garter stitch, concluded that the wool was a little too scratchy to be worn next to skin around his neck.
I hence inherited 380g of undyed aran wool I had no project for. Quickly, an idea presented itself: I could not resist trying to knit a Hemlock Ring blanket, because it’s a such a gorgeous pattern. 
Let me share a secret: I’d rather knit something from a written out pattern than from a chart. Charts are great to help me understand what’s going on, yes, but when it comes to following the pattern I prefer to read out written instructions. Which in this instance was great, since the Hemlock Ring is written out and not charted. Still, I am also tempted to chart it, just to put the chart out there - it seems a little sad that only the latter, expanded part of the pattern that Jared charted exists out there (most likely, this idle thought of mine will never lead anywhere. but it’s a nice thought for something useful to do one day!).
The knitting went well, though it was tiring in places, because I was of course dealing with an increasing amount of stitches on a limited circular needle. Then I hit the end of my 380g of Dales pure British wool, and I wasn’t done. I could have stopped there, of course - backtracked and knit the border and call it a small lap blanket, but I wanted it bigger.
Fortunately, I had in the stash two skeins of undyed DK weight French wool (sheep from the Pyrenées, wool washed, carded and spun in Ardèche, bought on a market in the Massif Central). So I knit a few more repeats of the pattern holding this yarn double. I thought it’s be interesting, color-wise, later on, because there was no doubt that both yarns would absorb dye differently. Before I started I saw on Ravelry that variegated yarns obscured the central motif, so I was confident that my choice of a solid was right, but that did not mean a colored ring effect wouldn’t be lovely on the finished object… Which it is, as it turned out.
The I hit the border. I am in love with the border as it appears on Jared’s pictures. I was therefore very disappointed when I realized that I could not, no matter what I tried, construct my border in a way that would make it look remotely like that. The patterns proposes two possibilitis for the edging: a knitted and a crocheted variant. Clearly, Jared’s is the knitted border (it says so on Flickr, if you’re doubtful), which goes like this:
k2tog, O, k2tog, turn, p 1, work 5sts in next st– to work 5sts in 1 (k 1, p 1) twice in the same st, then k in the same st. once more, P 1, sl 1, turn, bind off 7sts (1 st remains on right-hand needle) repeated as many times as possible. (O = yo)
I tried to knit it as written; I tried the same with only one strand of my DK wool instead of too when that looked too bulky and blah; I tried making it less “round” (to better match the picture) by knitting only 3 stitches in one instead of 5. I knew of course that the picture I was trying to match was of a blocked blanket edging, but even with the magical blocking to come, I could not believe that the bulky round scallops I was knitting would ever become anything approaching that image I loved so much.
In the end I opted for the crocheted border, which I chose to do with the grey-white variegated Monoprix yarn Rayure Double (Ravelry link), since my plan was to dye the blanket blue once the knitting was over.
Crocheting it went by much, much faster, too, and though I see now that blocking probably would have made the difference, I’m not sorry.
It’s not very big - under 4 feet across, smaller than Jared Flood’s I think (which kinda bugs me because I used a lot more yardage than him, seems like!) and there are rather big mistakes in the beginning, right past the flower, but even though they’re big I don’t think people will see them. Much. When I’m not pointing them out, anyway.
Today, I discovered that for years I have not been doing what I thought I was.
Apparently this is the long tail cast on, when what I’ve been doing all along is this, aka the twisted German cast on, that I was mistakenly calling long tail. I found this out through a comment with embedded video on Livejournal in the knitting community. I’m still sort of in shock, heh.
I’m surprised, too, because the person who posted the video mentioned that it’s a stretchy, springy cast on. I’ve always found it quite tight, and its tightness is actually part of the reasons that made me think it was the long tail cast on, which everybody always notes is tight. I think tubular is stretchy, but twisted German? Not so much…
In other news, I have a ton of pictures to edit, of the yarn I added to the stash during my trip to the UK, and of several FOs: the Hemlock Ring blanket I knit last week (which I just dyed blue - it’s cooling as we speak), a ribbon scarf I knit out of bamboo for my friend in London, and the Noro Silk Garden vest I knit sideways for Mom this week. But I’m a little too tired to fiddle with that right now, so it’ll be for another day!
I was already coveting Habu paper yarn and others, but now with these examples I’m positively lustful!
A Dutch designer called Greetje van Tiem makes yarn from old newspaper; Italian artist Ivano Vitali is already all over that.
I love how the comments from the dezeen.com post are teeming with people who want to buy some, to make some, and who’re already trying to reproduce the result. Enthusiasm is fun.
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We’re being very, very quiet here for the passing of 2007. It’s just Mom and my brother and me. We had quite the domestic day. In the morning we did all the shopping for groceries in the next village over and joked with the butcher. In the afternoon, I put on a stew for tomorrow, then dyed some recycled sweater wool in food coloring dye, then prepared the upside down apple pie for the evening meal.
I have enjoyed quiet New Year’s Eves several years running — big parties in the streets are not my type, I have a deep phobia of the sudden popping noises of firecrackers — but this one might take the cake with its exceptional calm.
We were done eating our wonderful roast duck meal at about 9.30, and an hour later the pie had been gleefully consumed, too. Mom dozed in front of the TV while me and my brother puttered each at our laptop for a while.. It’s now just gone over into 2008 and Mom’s in bed already!
I might follow soon; I got up after a mere 5 hours of sleep last night. I only wanted to post this recipe I improvised for my stew, because I think tomorrow it’ll be the yummiest start of the year, along with the New Year Concert of Vienna.
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Wah, I am still really bad at updating this, uh. Let’s do it in reverse chronological order, shall we?
In culinary news, yesterday I tried this recipe for experimental dark chocolate chip / bacon cookies.
I messed up and put the bacon bits and chocolate chips in the dough at the same time as the flour.. So the whole thing ended up less bit-heavy that it should have been: the chocolate and bacon got chopped fine fine fine by the food processor. Still, an interesting experiment, and I will know better next time! I like the result a lot. It was also my first time ever making sugar icing, which is easier than pie! 
Yay for icing.
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One (picture-less) FO! A day to remember, then.
Yesterday I dragged my brother back to Le Comptoir, and bought a second skein of yarn for the odd shoulderette object. The lighter blue I’d picked was all sold, so I settled for a darker, petrol blue. Yes, my FO is made out of two - no, actually, 3 - different colors. I did wonder how silly it would look, and I thought perhaps I would even frog and knit it back up while striping all the while… Since the ridged design even naturally lends itself to that.. But I decided against. This was to keep me warm now that winter-y temperatures are there, and I needed/wanted it sooner rather than later.
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I can be extremely short-spanned some days (also, language-mangling, if you notice). For example, the title of my post yesterday had to do with that I’d meant to write about my Endpaper Mitts project (ravelry link) - but I completely lost sight of that as I wrote out the rest.
What I wanted to say yesterday: I have frogged what I had so far, as it was but the swatch for the project. The plan is to cast on again tonight (as soon as I post this, actually), and perhaps manage to knit the whole ribbed cuff of the first mitt in the time it takes to watch Bones. That is rather optimistic, but you never know.
As for the lack of picture of yesterday, I remembered that I have the yarn, if not the FO, to show. 
This is the wool I used for this weird non-capelet thing I made, which my brother has taken to calling my Persian armor. I still intend to lengthen it so it falls past my shoulder, which would modify the look of it and hence the visual connotations, I think (not that they bother me) - but I’ll need to buy more yarn for that.
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No pictures this time, I’ve missed the right daylight window to snap up the new yarn I bought in Nantes. I was away for a weekend of professional networking, which I am unused to, and it made me feel strangely afloat and vulnerable. Obviously the way to regain my footing and manage some semblance of control over my surroundings was to buy yarn! And needles - I needed big circs for some of the more bulky threads I’d bought recently, and I managed to acquire both 6mm and 7mm circulars. Too short, yet useful anyway.
I used them already, knitting a sort of shoulderette thing from the blue 100% wool I bought at Le Comptoir in October. It’s inspired from the Noro Hat from Saartje de Bruijn (Ravelry link). I knitted two of those last year, one in Kureyon #165 for me and one in Iro for Mom, and I love the effect of the horizontal faux-rib so much, I used it for this shruglet-noname blue experiment. It stope right after covering my shoulders so far, and I think I’ll go back to the shop for a second skein and lengthen it some.
I might even manage to take a picture of it, too! I’m wearing it right now, it’s nice and warm.
Let’s ignore the previous, sad half-life of this here limping blog and start anew with vim and vigor! I got my ravelry invite a few days back - a week, two weeks? - and I borrowed my brother’s camera to take snapshots of what yarny things fill my life at the moment; in short, I am hopeful I might be able to stick to blogging about crafty topics this time.
I recently knit an Edgar for the one I call sister-friend, whose birthday I was late celebrating. continue reading »