2015 Wrap-Up

This year flew by. I made some really big changes in my life that have made some things seem much easier and other things seem much more difficult. First off, I'd like to address my goals from the beginning of the year:

1. Knit Local.

Mission accomplished! I did not purchase much yarn this year until October and November and then I went on a mini-spree and picked up items for my birthday and from Knit Fit! Most of my purchasing dollars went to local dyers, some of whom use local wool for their yarn, or to companies like Quince & Co, who use North American wool and have it milled in the U.S.

2. Knit more colorwork garments.

This is a bit womp womp. I knit two garments with colorwork accents and three accessories. 

This is my Prussian Glitter Cardigan. I've still got plans to grade this puppy and publish the pattern and that's on the list for 2016. 

The other garment is this Welcome to the Flock sweater. Knit in a baby size with some stash sock yarn, it was featured on the front page of Ravelry and got a ridiculous amount of love. Thanks!

The other accessories are hats and one isn't totally finished as it needs a good steam block and a pom pom.

3. Participate in Me Made May. 

Done! I petered out a bit some time in the middle of the month (taking selfies every day is difficult when you get up at 5am) but I did participate. Go me!

And Me Made May really brought me back into sewing and concentrating on creating a handmade wardrobe. There are a lot of social justice issues surrounding the clothing industry and I don't want to contribute to an industry that's concerned with making a $5 t-shirt (it's bad for most of the people involved in the supply chain, yo). 

Ravelry tells me that I only knit about 10k yards this year, which is inaccurate, because some of my yardage for samples and SECRETS haven't been added; I'd say it's more in the 20k arena. Overall, I knit less this year than in past years but I'm much happier with many of my FOs this year than I have been in the past. Go figure. As per usual, I have a huuuuge list of things I want to knit and some things I have to knit. For now, I'll be concentrating on that handmade wardrobe and coordinating new pieces that work together. Now, what should I cast on for New Year's Eve?

Knit Fit! 2015

A few weeks have passed since Knit Fit and I finally feel recovered from all of the socializing that attends volunteering and chatting with fellow knitters, vendors, and teachers. This year I spent quite a bit of time in the market compared to other years and purchased items that I had been thinking about over the course of the year. Honestly, the market gets better and better each year and I went a little bonkers this year.

My big purchase this year was one of Dave Yocom's hand-turned wood yarn bowls. Talk about a marriage of beauty and function; all of Dave's yarn bowls are natural wood and showcase the grain of the wood with no added dyes or stains. I chose a medium bowl in sapele mahogany with spalted maple inlays. Also pictured, a skein of Spincycle Dyed in the Wool in Devilish Grin. I have cast on plans for this skein - a Fandangle hat by Andi Satterlund - which I would like to finish by Christmas. 

A new vendor this year was Cedar House Yarns. This is a skein of Sapling Sock in Bark. Jenn and her husband are super nice and they've got a lovely color palette in their yarn line. The yardage is also really great in the sock yarn; 463 yards of superwash merino and nylon. 

Oh, Bumblebirch. Sarah was at Knit Fit last year but I was on a super duper tight budget at the time so I could only daydream about her yarns. This year I knew I wanted to purchase from her and I had such a difficult time choosing since I wanted ALL of her colors. In the end I picked up two different weights to try out. At bottom is heartwood, a fingering weight yarn (463 yds!), in the color Wednesday. At top is forage, a 4-ply worsted weight, in the color Honey. Wednesday is calling my name and is on the docket to be cast on post holiday knitting. 

Tweed yarn never looked so good. Intrepid Otter was missing from the market last year due to an unexpected illness but I was glad to see her back this year with this shiny new tweed sock yarn. I picked this bright, slightly scummy green to knit myself a pair of socks. Chubby Cloud was also back at the market with her awesome print bags. This year, I chose a zipper pouch in a great orange and yellow stockinette print with an olive green geometric floral print on the inside. 

Finally, (told you I went bonkers this year) I spent a good deal of time at the YOTH booth because WOW. Danny and Veronika have gorgeous yarns and introduced new colors to their palette, as well as a new yarn base. 

At bottom is the new 100% American sourced and milled worsted weight yarn, Father, in the Caviar color. This stuff is light and lofty and will make a fantastic hat. The upper two colors are both Big Sister, a dk weight yarn in sw merino, cashmere, and nylon, in rosemary (blue-gray) and mango (yellow). Mango comes from the new Juicy Palette, featuring various shades of yellow, orange, and green.  I also purchased a couple of gifts but I can't share those, sorry!

I love that the Knit Fit! market features so many local independent dyers and businesses. Putting my money back into the local economy makes me feel good about my purchases and that I'm supporting people who love the knitting industry as much as I do. I'll see you at Knit Fit 2016!

Start to Finish: Channel Cardigan

The Channel Cardigan begins with casting on stitches for the entire body of the sweater; for my size that is over two hundred stitches to cast on. Rather than trying to estimate the amount of yarn needed to long-tail cast on that many stitches I used both ends of my wound yarn to cast on. 

However, if you've wound your yarn into balls, or can't find both ends, you can generally estimate one inch of yarn per cast on stitch for worsted weight yarn. To test how much tail you need, you can cast on a stitch, mark the beginning and end of the yarn you just used, pull out the cast on stitch to see the length of yarn you used and multiply that length by the number of stitches you need to cast on. I like using the two-end method because I don't need to estimate anything and that's worth having an extra tail of yarn to weave in at the end. 

Since I took this project on vacation with me I was able to get quite a bit done. Unfortunately, I was having such a nice time that I didn't realize that I neglected to  change the needle size after the ribbing and had to rip out about 8 inches of knitting. After throwing a little tantrum I ripped out the necessary length and got the sweater back on the correct needle size. 

There is a lot of texture knit into this cardigan and it's slow going at first but once the stitch patterns are established it's quite easy to keep track of where you are in the pattern.  

I'm just past the waist decreases and, as I mentioned in my previous post, I'm skipping the belt so I omitted the eyelets used to make the belt loops. The next section of the pattern includes waist increases and front shaping decreases for that large shawl collar. As soon as I reach the part of the pattern where the fronts and back are divided for the raglan sleeves I'm going to stop knitting and figure out the math for converting this to a set-in sleeve cardigan.

Start to Finish: Channel Cardigan

Last year I did a series called Start to Finish with my Pomme de Pin Cardigan that went through my decision making and knitting process and I've decided to repeat the process for my next sweater project.  I belong to a wonderful group on Ravelry, My Sister's Knitter, and the current KAL is Brooklyn Tweed patterns. Sounds like fun, right? After a whole lot of back and forth - should I join? should I not? - I decided to knit Channel Cardigan. 

The cardigan calls for Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, a worsted weight yarn that is woolen spun and therefore very light and lofty. I've knit with Shelter in the past and liked it but I didn't want to break the bank since my size calls for 14 skeins, so I went to Ravelry and looked at what other knitters used for their cardigans. Cascade 220 is a top yarn in that list so I decided then and there that I would use Cascade 220; a yarn with a ton of color options, great stitch definition, and is a reasonable price. The downside to using Cascade 220 is that the finished sweater will be heavier since it isn't woolen spun, but I'm okay with that. There are already several modifications that I want to make: removing the belt, making sure the shawl collar is big enough to snuggle into, and possibly adding another button hole. I'm also contemplating changing the raglan seamed sleeves to set in sleeves since raglan cardigans always slide off my shoulders. I knit my swatch at knit night on Monday.

Guess what? Perfect stitch and row gauge on the recommended needles. It's a knitting miracle! I used a US #7 (4.5 mm) needle and knit my swatch in moss stitch as listed in the pattern and it's approximately 5 inches by 6 inches. A good general rule is to knit a swatch big enough that when you measure over four inches you don't run into selvedge stitches; your stitch count will be more accurate since those selvedge stitches sometimes behave a little wonky. This project is now ready to cast on!

2015 Purlygirl Retreat

This last weekend was my knitting group's annual retreat to Fort Worden. We go every Spring and spend the weekend eating, laughing, talking, and knitting. 

 

Fort Worden is a beautiful place to walk and I enjoyed some time on the beach (I also took the opportunity to stretch since marathon knitting is hard on my hands). The weather was a bit brisk but warm enough that I didn't need my coat, just a handknit sweater. 

There was knitting on the porch, knitting in the living room, knitting at the dining room table, and knitting in the car. Basically, lots and lots of knitting all of the time and it was wonderful.

It was great to spend time with ladies I don't see very often as well as those that I do see often and spend some time relaxing and catching up. The retreat gets better every year and I can't wait until the next one.

FO: Welcome to the Flock

 

It has been a little quiet over here. I'm working diligently on two projects but also doing a fair amount of sewing. However, I did manage to finish baby sweater and it's ADORABLE.

 

See? The perfect little sweater to knit when Winter is desperately trying to become Spring. It reminds me of verdant fields and little lambs. 

Pattern: Welcome to the Flock by Julia Farwell-Clay

Yarn: Vesper Sock Yarn in Ivy League (green) and scraps of white and brown for the sheep

Needles: US #3 (3.25 mm) & US #5 (3.75mm) Hiya Hiya Sharp Interchangeables

Mods: I used larger needles than the pattern called for since my gauge was too small using the needles listed in the pattern. The pattern calls for a sport weight yarn knit at a dk gauge but I used a heavy sock yarn that knit up beautifully on size five needles. Fair warning, there are two rows of colorwork where you are knitting three colors in the same row which makes keeping even tension difficult. So worth it.

FO: Mary Mead

A short while back I wrote my first post in my American Wool Series about Toots LeBlanc and a cardigan that I was knitting that hadn't been released yet. I finished the sweater about a week and a half ago, the cardigan pattern has been released, and I sewed my buttons on today and finally took pictures!

I'm pretty jazzed by the finished sweater. 

It looks cute over a dress (top picture) or with separates (above). I'll admit that I had some reservations about knitting a cropped sweater but since the construction is top down and seamless I can totally add length if I decide I want this to be a bit longer at some point. Right now, I'm really happy with the length and how it looks over dresses and longer tops. 

 If you remember, the yarn is a sport weight alpaca/wool blend in a lovely natural charcoal; the perfect substitution for Andi's pattern which uses Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light. The sleeve construction is top-down set-in and this is the first time I knit this sleeve construction in a stitch pattern - I like it!

Pattern: Mary Mead by Andi Satterlund (Untangling Knots) $6.50 pdf download

Yarn: Toots Le Blanc 50/50 Jacob/Alpaca Sport

Needle: US #3 (3.25mm) and US #1.5 (2.5 mm) Hiya Hiya Sharp needles

Mods: Since this was a test knit I followed the pattern exactly for the size large. I have a 43 inch bust and knitting the large gave me 2 inches of negative ease which gives me a perfect fit through the upper bust, shoulders and sleeves and the appropriate sweater fit for a vintage style cardigan. The absolutely only thing I changed was to add an extra buttonhole in the buttonband since I have a weird thing about having odd numbers of buttons on my sweaters (that's my own personal finicky thing and has nothing to do with Andi's pattern). The jacob/alpaca yarn I used was a two-ply and less round than Ultra Alpaca Light so I ended up going down to a US size three to get gauge but that is the needle size recommended on my yarn's label so I wasn't really surprised by that. All in all, I'm very pleased with this sweater and might even add more cropped sweaters into my sweater wardrobe to wear over my growing collection of dresses.

WIP: Migee

Say hello to Migee. I started this wrap back in December but it languished a bit as I worked on a couple of last minute gifts and obligation knits. I got a sudden hankering for garter stitch the other day and rooted it out of my wip basket to work on.

The sample uses a Black Trillium Fibres Gradient Kit in the Pebble Sock base in the Smoke color but I just happened to have a gradient kit from the same dyer in the Water color. Realistically, I think I put this down for two reasons: 1) garter stitch isn't my favorite thing to knit 2) I wasn't sure what color to use as the contrast. My first impulse was to grab a bright green, but that immediately reads Seahawks to a lot of Seattleites (not my bag). I decided to go with a neutral and picked a long-languishing skein of Miss Babs Yummy 2-ply in the Oyster color out of my stash. The color is a light gray with beige undertones and will look great against all the shades of blue, not to mention my charcoal winter coat. I'm plugging right along now that I've reached the straight knitting section and it's the perfect thing to knit while watching movies.

2015 Resolutions

 Happy New Year's Eve!

 Like most bloggers this time of year, I've been pondering my knitting goals for 2015.

After a lot of list making and brainstorming I finally came up with three goals that encompass a lot of smaller goals:

Knit local. I want to spend 2015 supporting the North American wool industry and the more local I can get, the better. If I had tried to do this even a few years ago I think I would have had a hard time finding yarn that was sourced entirely in the United States, but times have changed! Off the top of my head I can list half a dozen companies and independent yarn purveyors that use wool from North American flocks and North American mills. This isn't to say that I'll 100% stop purchasing yarn that doesn't meet this criteria but I'd like to start the shift toward a local wool stash. 

Knit more colorwork garments. I have one Fair Isle pullover (which needs some surgery) and I need more in my wardrobe! One of my favorite knitting techniques is stranded colorwork and I'd like to build a sweater wardrobe that will work with my solid colored clothing wardrobe. Which leads me to my final, non-knitting goal.

Participate in Me Made May. MMM is an annual event that, you guessed it, takes place in May in which sewing bloggers and knitting bloggers showcase their handmade wardrobe (hopefully without repeat pieces). I took up sewing garments again in 2014 and I'm starting to think about shifting my entire wardrobe from store-bought to handmade. I need to take a look at my existing wardrobe and start sewing replacement pieces rather than purchasing them. Most of what I sewed last year was dresses so I need to branch out into separates and I've already purchased a couple of patterns to get going on this: Renfrew by Sewaholic and Clover by Colette. 

There you have it! These three goals are fairly broad so I have some wiggle room in executing them throughout 2015. 

Do you have resolutions for 2015? What are they?