Thursday, January 28, 2010

yarn candy

My favorite yarn store is tiny, just a small room. If it isn't raining or snowing, they put all their on-sale yarn outside in big baskets and they have some rolling shelves they put outside, too. If it is raining or snowing, you can't move around in the shop, because all the yarn outside needs to be stored inside. If there are too many customers (and I always seem to attract them when I go in there), you can't move around either, but that's good for their business. One advantage of the small size is that they really have to do a sale when they change over from summer to winter yarns or from winter to summer yarns, because they simply don't have the storage. And I love sales there, although I definitely pick up enough yarn during the non-sale time, too.

To me, it's like a small, but full to the brim candy shop and since I suffer from the "single ball/hank/skein" affliction common among knitters, it's a dangerous place for me. It isn't so bad with the summer yarns, but when the new winter yarn comes in, I feel the need to get just one ball of every yarn I like. Not a sweater's worth, no, just one ball or maybe two (for mittens, so many mittens on my queue ...). Even worse is the end of winter sale, which starts in January. Single balls aplenty, just waiting for me, sometimes for weeks. All the good intentions and resolutions go right out the window and yarn follows me home.

So when I went to my favorite yarn store to pick up that ball of Latte for my snow bunny, some of the yarns that I've been eyeing since they came in pounced on me. I always rejected them because while they were pretty, they weren't really my colors or I didn't know what to do with them. But how could I say no to this:



No, I don't ever wear orange. It doesn't suit me. But I love the heatheriness of this yarn and its thickness and its bright, beautiful orange orange orange color. What will I knit with it? Pfffff, that's not so important, is it? Maybe a big version of a baby ball ...

I can blame the following on the snow bunny, at least, since the colors are clearly snow bunny-inspired. But apart from that, Nuvola from Lana Grossa is a lovely yarn, soft and squishy and again it has lovely heathery colors, which is a definite improvement as well. For a long time, Lana Grossa yarns were either one single color (lovely colors, I love them) or variegated.



With this yarn I'm definitely thinking mittens. Fairisle mittens with a delicate plant pattern on a white background. They just won't get knitted until next winter I guess.

And the last ball of yarn that followed me home was this one:



This poor bedraggled ball of Dieci had been waiting for me in the single balls sale basket ever since they put out that basket. I had to finally taken pity on it and bring it home. Since it's machine washable, I'm thinking ball for my friend's baby - that way I can test for my orange ball.

I still have a lot of single balls of yarn waiting to be turned into something pretty. I guess I just love the challenge of finding or designing the exact right pattern for them all.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

milk and snow bunnies

There are new summer yarns at the yarn store. Deliiiiiiicious summer yarns. My favorite shade of pink. Shiny stuff. Yarn that looks like it should be in a Klimt painting. Vibrant colors - for some reason I'm really being drawn to orange and yellow. Lots of tape yarn (have no use for tape yarn, but it's pretty). Incredibly soft yarn. Exciting new fibers.

See, continental Europe hasn't picked up on all the exciting new fibers out there. And there are a lot less handdyers and handspinners and small yarn companies. There are some, but definitely not as many as in the US, UK or Canada (don't know about Australia). So ever since my favorite yarn company, Lana Grossa, started releasing a line of organic yarns with non-common fibers, I've been over the moon and tempted to try them all. I got a lot of single balls for cowls, mittens and the like.

I've tried their cotton, bamboo and soy yarn, cotton and soy yarn (soy! unheard of! and there's even soy sock yarn) and the wool and alpaca yarn, and dang, I never got around to trying their yarn with maize fiber. But! Yesterday I bought a ball of yarn consisting of cotton and milk protein. It's called Latte and it's soft and pretty and I just wanted to try it.



I've been wanting to try it ever since I saw it. I wanted to get my hands on that milk yarn and squoosh it until it liquidized. I wanted to knit something with it. Something white. Something cute. Something squooshable.

Enter Natsume Yuujinchou, second season, second episode. Natsume Takashi, the protagonist, is able to see all the spirits that live in everything and can inhabit anything in Japan. Some of these are evil, some are good, many are neutral. While he's trying to return the names of the spirits that his grandmother collected in a book, he also comes across spirits that have turned evil for a reason or need his help and he tries his best to help them. It's sweet and sometimes sad and makes you a little wistful, but it isn't one of those anime that take a katana to your heart. For a katana-to-your-heart-dealing-with-spirits anime, try Mushishi.

In this second episode, a forest guardian spirit living in a statue needs Natsume's help but tries to possess him first. Natsume evades possession and the spirit, Gen, possesses a snow bunny that Natsume made instead.



Yeah, you can see where that ball of Latte is going.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

owls and cowls



Owls seem to be a real trend since 2009. Someone discovered that you can make cables look like an owl (like this or like this) and now there are owls everywhere. Apart from the many, many owl toys, crocheted and knitted, those cable owls are on everything, owl hats, owl gloves, owl sweaters, owl baby sweaters, owl cardigans, owl socks, owl cushions, owl bags, owl bibs and whatever else can be decorated with this cable pattern. Owls are hot and I don't get it. I prefer snowmen/women, myself.

There are patterns for owl cowls as well. How could there not be? Cowls were extremely hot in late 2008 and all through 2009, but now the trend to cover your neck has differentiated itself into various categories. Cowls are still being designed and offered, but the real run is currently on kerchiefs (hot, but leveling off), infinity scarves (pretty hot, but not as hot) and hooded scarves (increasingly hot). Now that's a trend I can get behind (even though I don't really like a bandwagon). A warm neck is very nice and a cowl uses much less yarn than a scarf, so I can buy a ball or two of pretty yarn, knit it up very quickly and not have to spend too much money.

So, since the sun has refused to come out of hiding (yesterday my mother and I chased it to Lower Austria and drove up a mountain to get to it) and since I'm kind of stalling before starting my 200th project (200 put up on Ravelry anyway) and since the baby hat I started has given me only pain and is on a time-out ... it's time for a walk through the cowls.

Between Bern and Lucerne in Switzerland, there is a wonderful stretch of country where you can get all sorts of deliciousness. There's Kirschtorte from Zug, big gingerbread from Lucerne which is cut into slices and eaten with butter and giant meringues from Bern. All to be had just by driving along a single road. And at the end of that particular road lies Huttwil with its Spycher-Handwerk farm/yarn/fleece/woolly things shop and yarny goodness! A giant barn full of yarn and unspun wool and we only had 30 minutes before they closed! So I grabbed a beautiful 50/50 silk/merino mix (among other things *cough*) and only a little later, I made two cowls. I love the color so much - it's like the sky at dusk and dawn when it's kind of lavender, yet still a beautiful blue. I simply took my favorite lace patterns - that sprig or sometimes also cockleshell lace of the first cowl is basically my favorite lace pattern - and knit. These are the Cowl for Dusk and Dawn and the Cowl for Dawn and Dusk.

 
 

Soon after these, I knit another one, using the colors of the season, grey and petrol, and a simple but effective lace pattern, feather and fan, calling it the Fleeting Fashion Colors Cowl. I donated it to my mother, though, because she was cold and wanted a cowl. The yarn I used was Lana Grossa Laseta and I found these two balls next to each other in the sales bin of my favorite yarn shop. I can totally tell that this picture was taken in very early spring 2009 (besides, I actually know it was taken then), because of the mallow plant in the background



Then, I was a little cowled out. But after the 2009 Knit in Public Day in Vienna's Stadtpark, where I left with a few goodies and even more purchases, at the completely wrong time (really hot summer), I made a neckwarmer. I used the Cashmere Neckwarmer pattern by Kim K. and a freebie skein of Malabrigo Gruesa (first time I used Malabrigo ... sigh) and let myself be inspired by one of my favorite anime, Seirei no Moribito. Then began the hunt for the perfect button and I found one, too, but I have yet to sew it on and block the Seirei no Moribito Neckwarmer, even though I could use it right now (yes, that's a little silly).



The anime theme stayed right with me. After obsessing for a long time about Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto and its hero, Akizuki Youjiro, and coming across the beautiful Lana Grossa Fauna (so soft! with alpaca) in exactly the right shade of blue, I knit a rather simple, but warm and (to me) effective cowl (for You-san). Once anime and knitting come together, it's a slippery slope. See, You-san wears a dark blue cowl and he uses it to hide his face when he doesn't want to be recognised and I felt just like that at the time. It isn't the most impressive cowl, the stitch pattern is simple and easily lost, but I love it and its understatedness.



And then my favorite yarn store (the Pingouin on Alserstraße) put out the good stuff. Pure, thick cashmere. Lana Grossa Solo Cashmere, to be exact. In a shade that was impossible to photograph, an ultraviolet purple. In the pictures it looks blue, but it really, really isn't. So I got two balls of purple and one ball of grey and set out to create a cowl that would pay homage to a great female anime character, Re-L, from Ergo Proxy. It matches her eyeshadow ... (slippery slope, I said). When the weather is damp, it smells a littly goaty :) The fairisle pattern was a bit painful - how to create something that looks random, but isn't? It all turned out well in the end, I think.



So I actually have six cowls (and a neckwarmer) at my personal disposal. Two for spring/fall, four for winter. The last one so far is for the coldest winter weather only and so I fittingly called it Winter Armor. It is the simplest of designs, because I didn't really want to bother with something extra-fancy - now I kind of wish I had, but I don't want to undo it all. Maybe with the next cowl. Gedifra Highland Alpaca, the yarn I used, made an appearance in the yarn store in the fall of 2008 and I had been lusting for it ever since, but couldn't find a pattern to justify buying a ball or two. Cowl to the rescue!



There's one more cowl (ok, probably a few more, but I have yarn especially designated for a cowl) in my future, but  I still don't know what pattern to use. Design one myself? After all, five of my six cowls are self-designed. Or find a pattern? We'll see. For now, it's baby hats baby hats baby hats baby hats baby hats ...

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

there's no end in sight

I have amazing projects in my (Ravelry) queue.

There's these, this, this one, this, and finally, this. I have the yarn and needles and pattern for every project. I have had the yarn for some of those projects for a long time. I've even swatched for some of those projects. But am I making any of these? No.

My main projects (those I'm supposed to be working on ... besides the thesis) are all for other people. There's the Tachikoma for my brother that requires undivided attention (as crochet always does)((Rav link), there's the headband for my mother (now finished), because the other one I knit got stolen - also needs almost undivided attention or at least a movie I know by heart and then there's the second one of the Aviatrix baby hats, just in case the first one doesn't fit. There are fifteen more baby things on my queue. Some of those won't be knit, others will be knit multiple times.

But I just want to knit this one again:
This is the Little Luxury Kimono, Rav link here. I love it. It can be made completely seamlessly, if you don't count kitchenering the shoulder seams (and I don't). You start at the bottom and oh, how many patterns I want to try out to make the bottom look all obi-like. For this one, I used one of my favorites, double moss stich aka broken rib stitch. Then you could use a cable or other cast-on for the ties, but I didn't because ... well, next time. Don't forget to make a hole for one tie to go through. Then separate the whole thing for the armholes, finish it, kitchener the shoulders and pick up stitches for the sleeves. Reverse the sleeve directions and ta-daa! Seamless kimono!

The yarn for this sweater is Lana Grossa Bingo, 100% merino and my favorite bulky workhorse yarn. This yarn has also been in my possession for ages. When I bought it, I had just come across Knitty, so it was 2005 and in Knitty's 2005 spring edition there was this pattern: Cleaves. I wanted it. I coveted it. But I didn't knit it, because I was busy knitting other things. I still wanted it. Then Ravelry came around and convinced me not to knit it. So what to do with the lovely yarn? I made a Springtime Bandit, which looked like nice enough, but ... I didn't like it all that much (Rav link). So, I decided to frog it and reuse the yarn for my vicarious my friend's baby. And am I ever glad I did.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

meandering through picture quality, knitting potato chips and a brief history of my stash

Today it's finally sunny here in Vienna after days and days of grey fog. I quickly whipped out my camera and took some pictures of my almost and recently finished objects on my window sill. Not the most charming background, at least compared to the balcony I used to have at my disposal, but it's the only place in my room that has enough light for my camera to not need flash - comparable to Turtlegirl's top of the washing machine. Except the sill only works when it's sunny.

Two projects belong in the "knitting potato chips" category. I had to stop myself after the second one (which still isn't done, because the jumble on my couch has swallowed the green yarn I need for the bottom edging), otherwise I think I'd knit about three, four, five ... six, seven, eight ... nine ten?

The potato chip pattern is the Telemark Pullover by Erika Flory. Top-down raglan, very easy, infinitely customizable, done in a flash and gender-neutral. The pattern is very clearly written, but as mentioned in many other project descriptions on Ravelry, once you're switching to knitting in the round, cut your yarn and add it or a new ball at the left underarm, otherwise the end of the garter stitch placket will not add up in the middle. If you don't care to finish the placket, no need to switch.

Here's the first one I made:


Made with my favorite workhorse yarn, Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000. There's a lot of history in this little sweater. The wine red yarn is from my first and to date last pair of real gloves with fingers, the apricot is a lonely ball of yarn I rescued from the sales pile a while (years) back and couldn't find a project for and the coral ... oh the coral.

The coral used to be piggy pink. Yes, really. I used it to make gloves for my mother (shown at right). I had lots of piggy pink yarn left over and it lived in my stash for many years until my friend told me of her pregnancy. I looked through the whole stash and picked out all the yarn I could use for baby knits. But this yarn was too piggy pink. Overdyeing it seemed like the best option, so I bought wine red dye and went to work. The yarn looked lovely coming out of the dye, a muted wine red. Then I put it in the fixing bath and it turned coral. I just hope it doesn't turn back into piggy pink in the first wash. It also lost weight - it's significantly thinner than the apricot and wine red yarn, which is the reason the sweater looks uneven.


The Telemark Pullover can also look like this:

More Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 leftovers, this time the green from my mother's gloves and some of the insanely bright variegated Cool Wool that I used for her wrist- and legwarmers eons ago when I got back into knitting (so, 2005). It is quite alright for kids, though, since it will make the child easy to spot. I intentionally left the arms short - this pullover turned out bigger than the other one, so it will fit longer, probably even into spring 2011, when it can be worn over a long-sleeved shirt.
And that's the end of the Telemark pullovers for me. No more! No more Telemark pullovers until all the rest of the baby knitting is done! Otherwise I'll never get to the baby socks.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

what happens when Capricorns knit


Capricorns supposedly love to make plans far ahead of the actual event. At least I do. I like to plan ahead. I like to have a plan. Once I have a plan, I can deviate from that plan (although sometimes someone has to make me see that possibility first), but without a plan I feel very uncomfortable.

Now one of my closer friends is expecting her first baby. I love this friend dearly and she is also the first of all my friends to have a baby. So naturally, I have already produced a number of baby items and there are more on my list.

The baby is due at the beginning of March, so as soon as she's ready to actually be outside, it will be April and soon it will be too warm for knitted hats and cardigans. What's a Capricorn to do? Easy. Knit for the next winter.

I've knit exactly one cardigan for her to wear during the first three months, the ever-popular February Baby Sweater (pictured above). I didn't plan for it to be newborn size. It is a newborn size because I used sock yarn and followed the directions, except I made the neck bigger.  For every other cardigan or sweater I have knit I used the 12-month if not the 18-month size, because babies grow at different speeds and come in different sizes, so (for Capricorns) it's best to be prepared.

And yes, I am knitting all the hats in at least the 12-month size. But I am only knitting three of those to minimize the risk that they won't fit.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

D/B-Day


There's rather a lot happening in 2010.

Here's what Wikipedia has to offer. But honestly, I prefer the German Wikipedia description, they list plants and animals of the year (cormorant - bird of the year, iris - flower of the year, badger - wild animal of the year, clove - medical plant of the year, and ivy - medicinal plant of the year) and which composers and authors are celebrating their birthdays - Chopin, Schumann, Mahler, Twain and Tolstoy.

2010 is the year of the tiger, the year of biodiversity and the year of youth.

It also is the fifth year since I started knitting again - I learned from my grandmother somewhere between four and five, did some knitting during my teens, during my later teens, then in 2005 it stuck. I blame it on the internet.


And coincidentally, today is my 30th birthday.

The best day to start a blog. A knitting blog, although I guess I won't be able to keep out my opinions on movies, books, comics, music and other things out completely. A knitting blog that will hopefully not only cover the projects I'm working on, but also my thoughts on knitting, new patterns I've discovered, things that are going on in the knitting world and so on.

Well - off I go.