Ravelry Pattern Store Open for Business

My Ravelry Pattern store is now open for business!

I have lots of my patterns available for sale...

the Peace Hat

the Exploded Ribbing Sock

the One Skein Luxury Kerchief

and lots more!

If you don't have a Ravelry account, email me and I can sell you patterns through PayPal.

Meet Earnest

This is Earnest the bear. He is rather serious looking, but that's because he knows he has an important job. He's my demo bear.

I've been wanting to design and knit a bear for a long time now, and finally gave myself the kick in the pants I needed - I decided to teach a class on the topic.

Earnest is knitted with a little less than 100m of plain and simple worsted weight wool, and he's about 6 inches tall when seated. His sweater is made from a scrap of DK (leftovers from the Peace Hat, actually). I embroidered his features rather than using button as it's safer for young children. He's thread-jointed, which means he's posable.

Bear knitting (whether in my class or from a pattern) is quick and fun. It's a good project for adventurous beginner or intermediate knitters. As long as you're comfortable with increasing and decreasing, and reading patterns, you'll do fine.

In the case of Earnest, the body and head are made in one piece, and the legs and arms knit up in a matter of minutes. The biggest challenge is the finishing, as the pieces have to be sewn up and carefully assembled.

In the class, we'll work through the bear pattern -- with any yarn you like! Fingering weight makes a terrific pocket pal - and a chunky weight would make a great bedtime companion. (Earnest is the perfect size to sit on a shelf, watching over the action at the shop.) We'll also create a customized sweater. Stripes, cables, even lace if you're making a girl bear. You can change his expression with the use of buttons for eyes, or different embroidery.

I'll teach you everything you need to know -- how to read and follow the pattern, how to sew up and assemble your bear, and how to add the finishing touches of face and sweater.

More details about the class here.

Noro socks: done! On the question of softness

At long last.

I've worn them a couple of times already, and I can report no ill-effects or untimely wearings-out.

I am going to keep wearing them as often as possible (allowing for washing, of course), to see what's up with this damn yarn. The wear is the big concern for me -- it's a single, and rather fine in parts, and I'm honestly not sure how long it will last when exposed to the abuse of my winter boots. I've heard that it "fills out" and felts a bit with washing, to make a better, denser fabric. I will post regular reports.

Another complaint I hear about this yarn is that it's not very soft. I get a little cranky about this, I'll be honest. Yes, softness is great, but the softer the yarn the more it pills, and pilling means wear, and wear means wearing out.

We're not talking about itchiness, we're talking about softness. I will happily concede the point if you tell me that you find the yarn itchy. Fine.

But softness? I mean, come on. Your feet just ain't that delicate. Who doesn't wear shoes or sandals without socks at least a few times in the summer? I don't know about your sandals, but mine are certainly less soft on the inside than Noro sock yarn. Anyone who's ever given themselves a blister from a pair of ill-fitting or uncomfortable shoes and then proceeded to wear them again is, IMHO, immediately disqualified from claiming that sock yarn might not be soft enough.

Harumph.

I Dream of Noro

I had a dream about knitting last night.

Specifically, about Noro. But not the sort of dream I would have expected to have about Noro yarns....

I've picked the long abandoned Noro sock yarn, and am committed to finishing the second one in the very near future. Like others, I am unsure about the wearability of the yarn -- not the softness, more on that later -- but how well it will wear.

Last night, I had a very disturbing dream. I dreamt that the gusset separated from heel -- that the picked up stitches had all broken. I checked them this morning, they're all ok.


Phew.

(Amateur psychoanalysts: have at it.)

A Needle Pulling Thread

I'm thrilled to announce that two of my sock designs and a profile appear in the new issues of the Canadian magazine "A Needle Pulling Thread".

Click here for a preview...

There's a lot of terrific stuff in this magazine, and it covers a variety of different needlecrafts. There's some wonderful designs -- including an absolutely stunning quilt design called "Frosted Midnight" that may well actually cause me to dig out that quilting-for-beginners kit I got last year.

Look for it at your favourite Canadian crafting store.

For a Good Cause

Because I only take my clothes off for a good cause...

I'm Miss November in the 2009 Purple Purl "Naturally" calendar. I am modelling some of my socks. Several pairs of socks. In strategic locations.

For sale at The Purple Purl, $20 each, and all proceeds go directly to Princess Margaret Hospital. Someone close to me was treated there for cancer this year. He had nothing but good things to say about his experience, and thanks to their work he will live many more years.

I'm thankful for that, and they deserve all the support we can give them.

Rest assured there's a little something for everyone in the calendar -- there are fabulous knitters, crocheters and spinners, there are lovely ladies, handsome men, and a gaggle of adorable babies. I think my personal favourite is Tom's handsome rescue dog snuggling in a heap of Noro....

The Power of the Internets

Thanks to a reader (and commenter) on my blog, I now have two balls of the longed-for Regia Nation Colour in red and white.

Thank you Mrs. G!

In Which I Reveal My Proclivities To All The World

To Graft or Not to Graft... my Knitty Winter 08 article.

Have already had one comment from a knitter who enjoys grafting. That makes three of you.

;-)

DKC Winter Workshop

I'm thrilled to announce I'm going to be teaching at the Toronto Downtown Knit Collective Winter Workshop, January 31 and February 1st 2009.

January 31st, 11am-1pm, I'll be running my Pattern Reading Workshop. This is designed for newer knitters who are confident with their needles, but less confident with pattern instructions. Over the years, as I've taught many different knitters, it's become very clear that being a good knitter is one thing -- being able to decipher the diagrams and tables and codes and strange abbreviations in a pattern is something else entirely. I've been collecting all the weird and wonderful things I've seen in patterns, and I'll explain every last one of them. If nothing else, this session is worth it to figure out how to handle the very unhelpful "reversing shapings".

Sunday February 1st, 10am-1pm, I'll be revealing the secret of Entrelac!



See flyer for more details.

Hope to see you there!

Peace Out!

Just finished!

Peace hat, also known as "hey, have you seen some of the wacky cables in the Barbara Walker books, I should do something with those... "




Update: Available at Patternfish and Ravelry.

My project for over the Christmas break is to get set up for pattern sales on Ravelry, BTW.

Two Quick Mitten Related Things

To answer a question I've been asked: the yarn for the mitered mitt is Kureyon colour #188. And no, I didn't plan it so that the colour change would happen at the end of the ribbing -- it just worked out that way. So for the second one, I could either throw caution to the wind and let the colours fall where they may -- or I could engineer it to match the first. Either is a valid technique with Noro, I feel.

(And in a related, very annoying point, the mitt uses 26gm of yarn. Which means that a single ball will almost but not quite be enough for two mitts. Argh.)

And on the other topic, it's cold today and snizzling today. Snizzle is like drizzle, but with snow. It's cold enough that the snowflakes are small, light and dry and pretty constant. Snizzling.

So I broke out the Latvian mittens for the streetcar ride. And I discovered a serious design flaw... the colour work is all over the hand of the mitt, making a lovely layered and warm fabric. Except for the thumb.


It's a single colour. Which means it's a single thread of yarn. So it's not nearly as wind-proof. Harumph. This may well be enough to inspire me to design my own, with stranded thumbs.

Look! A Mitten! Yay!

My own variation of EZ's mitered mitten, tweaked in several ways.

I added a ribbed cuff for better fit - a mitered k2 p2 - and reduced the number of sts so that it actually fit me.

Click on the picture to see the ribbing.

The original calls for 48 sts in this gauge yarn, which would be a good size for a man or a larger woman, but significantly too big for my little girly hands. I suspect that EZ was a big, strapping farm girl with big, strapping farm girl hands...

And of course, worked in Noro Kureyon because it's the best yarn in the world for this sort of thing -- warm and wooly, yes, and great colour effects for the mitering.

I'm teaching a class on the Mitered Mitt and its variations at the Naked Sheep. Click here for more info.

Improving on Perfection; And Lessons Learned

At Lisa's request, I've been playing with some Noro Kureyon, and the Mitered Mittens pattern in EZ's Knitter's Almanac.

Love love love how the stripes work in the miters -- this is, after all, what makes the Jaywalker sock so great.

Two things have become obvious during this process.

The first is that you really should read the pattern. Really. I seemed to have missed the "Knit one round" instruction. During first and second attempts, I thought to myself that it seemed odd that there wasn't an even round between pattern rounds... but by the time I got to the fourth attempt, I'd thrown caution to the wind and was proceeding on blind faith that our Great Mistress of all thing Knit, EZ herself, must have had her reasons.

Nope. Turned out I had simply missed that line in the book.

(Thing the First and a Half is that, as a pattern writer and technical editor, spacing can make a huge difference in the readability of the pattern. The "K 1 rnd." is immediately after the instruction for the second half of the first round, with no line breaks. And I missed it. I know why. The round is worked in two halves, with the patterning exactly the same on the second half as on the first. And as I read the instruction for the first half of the round in detail, noticed the litte note that said that the second half is the same as the first, and then ignored the rest of the line.

(Which I suppose means that Thing the First and Three Quarters is that Experience breeds Arrogance. I figured I knew what to do so I didn't bother reading any more.))

Anyway, Thing the Second is that you shouldn't -- and really can't -- mess with the genius that is an EZ pattern.

It turns out that it's impossible to improve on perfection. I've been working on them for a week, and all I've got are two bits -- both of which are going to be ripped out.

I don't like the cuffless nature of the basic Mitered Mitt, so I've been playing with a ribbed cuff, in the same mitered style, and it's just plain awful.


As is my usual strategy with mitts, I worked the cuff on fewer sts than the body. So on its own, the mitered cuff looks cool, but there are two big issues... the first is that mitering the ribs significantly reduces the stretchiness. And the second is that I really couldn't figure out how to make the increase flow smoothly into the hand. If I simply worked a couple of rounds of miters with only the increases and not the decreases, the pattern is retained, but it bunches oddly where the decreases should havebeen.

My original, middle-of-the-night idea was to offset the miters, so that I'd get a flat bottom to the cuff, rather than the angle that the pattern normally produces. But that didn't do what I needed it to do, for reasons I have not yet figured out.

Eventually, I gave up on the cuff and went back to the original design. 5 rounds of k1 p1 rib and then launch straight into the miters. Still riding on my high horse, I only worked 2 rounds of k1 p1 rib -- this seems to actually be ok. But because I've got tiny girly hands, I decided that the 48 sts that the pattern calls for, and that I'd been playing with on attempts numbers 1 through 4 was too damn big, so I cast on 40 sts. And of course, it's just too damn small.


Still cruising down that river in Egypt, I forged ahead for a while last night, and got far enough that I thought it might be time for the thumb. So I went back to the book to figure out what she says about thumb placement, and there it was... "K 1 rnd."

So. Back to the beginning. Again.

The eagle-eyed will also notice that I changed around the decreases... that might or might not stay.

Argh.

And so all of this leads to Thing the Second and a Quarter... if you're going to significantly alter a pattern, it's probably helpful to have worked it according to the instructions at least once before...

Found one!

Found: one ball of Regia Nation Color sock yarn in red and white. Sadly, there was only one ball, in a bargain bin, labelless.

Even if the hand-written label hadn't been there, I would have bought it. It's unmistakable.

I reckon I'll do black ribbing, heels and toes, and I'll still be able to reverse the stripes - but it won't be quite as amusing as the all-over striped version.

Next up -- seeking the red, white and blue, and the blue and white... Santa?

Finishing

I was teaching the other day, and a woman dashed into the shop. "I see you offer classes... " She seemed somewhat relieved.

"Do you have one on... you know... putting things together?" "Of course!"

More relief on her face.

"Is there one before Christmas?"

Yes Virginia, there is a finishing class before Christmas... And it's in the first half of the month, so there will be plenty of time to do whatever needs to be done for gift-giving.

On that note - some finishing of my own to report...


The second exploded ribbing sock is done, as is the fatigue-inducing mystery project - the edge of which can be seen in the photo.

The exploded sock pattern (I really need a better name for it) will be done by the end of the weekend, I promise. I have a bit of a queue of knitters waiting for it at this point...

Knitting MacGyver Tip of the Year

No cable needle handy?

Use a golf tee!

Big thanks to N. for the tip!

Now, if only Norman played golf...

Sock Knitting: Practical Yet Insane

At the risk of whining about the weather, it's unseasonably cold and snowy here. Winter has arrived early. Too early for my tastes.

So it's back to my double-sock routine... a pair of thin cotton socks under a pair of hand-knit socks. I get really cold feet, and I need the extra layer.

I got caught out last night -- the snow started pretty seriously only after I'd left to teach a class. The good news was that it was a sock class, so I had a bag full of pairs to choose from for my extra layer.

I love teaching sock classes. Socks are my favourite form of knitting, no question. I had a student in my class last night, B., who has attended other of my classes. She's a great knitter, but she confessed to me a while ago that she wasn't a sock knitter... I got a sense that she was hesitant about the whole thing, that she really didn't understand the deal. It seemed pretty clear to me that she only really attended the class so she could see what the fuss was all about, and so she could help out her Mum, who has just started her first sock project.

I hear this reasonably often... puzzlement about what the big deal is. Sock knitting may well be the least efficient way of spending of your knitting time and money... I just spent nearly $40CDN (yes, forty dollars) on sock yarn with sterling silver thread in it. This is for something that goes on my SMELLY HORRIBLE FEET, to be HIDDEN inside my boots. And I'll probably spend between ten and twenty hours knitting a pair with this yarn (am noodling on a design idea, something fussy and interesting).

Socks can be complicated and challenging, and they require special equipment - insane teeny tiny needles, double points at that, which makes them more difficult to work with. And it's slow going, the tiny gauge.

It's not necessarily a rational thing, sock knitting.

Midway through my class last night, just after we'd turned the heel, B. looked up, smiled, and said... "hey, I get it now!" I think I've just converted another disbeliever...

Project Fatigue & Sparkly Encouragment

It's not an unfamiliar concept, project fatigue. When you tire of what you're working on, and need to take a break.

I see it often in my Project Classes. The Project Class is a workshop that runs for a few weeks; over that time, I guide students through their entire project - from choosing it, to swatching, to reading and working the pattern, to finishing it up.

I do encounter students who make excellent process for a time, and then partway through the class, suddenly stop. They're suffering from project fatigue.

I'm suffering from a serious case of it myself right now. I've been working on a commission, a set of items using the same yarn, for a yarn company. The yarn is great and I'm happy with the designs -- but I've been knitting nothing else for about 5 weeks now, and I simply need a break.

I've found myself scratching around the house looking for anything else to work on, any possible distraction.

I've picked up the long-abandoned Noro Kureyon Sock project...


(Remember how beserk I went when this yarn first appeared? Odd how I never actually managed to finish a pair... )

I've been working through the final few inches of the second Exploded sock so that I can write it up....


And I've been making far too much progress on the circular shawl thingy.


It happens. Sometimes you need a break from a project -- particularly a project that's big, or demanding.

This is all well and good, and I always recommend that knitters have more than one project on the go, particularly when one is challenging. I like to have an "at home" project, something that requires serious attention and goes well with mindless TV and radio. I also like to have a totally mindless project that goes well with engaging TV, movies with subtitles, in-car and in-the-dark knitting. More often than not, it's a plain and simple stocking stitch sock, because I can work them in my sleep. J. told me just today that she always knits a pair of socks between bigger projects, as a sort of palate cleanser.

My problem right now is that I'm actually on deadline.

So, as an encouragement to finish up the deadline project, and to finish up the others, I bought myself some sock yarn... some of the most stunning sock yarn I've ever seen.

Dye Version's Silver, in Midnight.

I'm not a sparkly girl, but this is absolutely magnificent. Look at it... shades of night sky, with a fine thread of silver through it.


And the thread of silver? It's actually sterling silver. Really!


I'm dying to start knitting with it. Can't wait. And therefore, it's going to sit, unwound, in plain sight, until I get everything else done. How's that for a reward?

Party, Party

See you there, perhaps?

The lovely ladies at the Purl talked me into participating in a charity... err... event... All will be unveiled today at 1pm. Visit the shop, or this site later for more information.

Let's just say that it's good thing I have a lot of pairs of hand-knit socks.

Things We Take For Granted: Sheep

I know that there are knitters out there who are wool-sensitive. Indeed, I've even contributed to Amy Singer's bible on the topic, No Sheep For You.

And I've certainly answered a lot of questions from knitters about non-wool sock yarns, and about good non-wool yarn substitutions in general.

Me, I'm the opposite of wool-sensitive. It's far and away my favourite fibre (yes, ok, I do love cashmere and the softer members of the wooly family), and I can wear some pretty scary scratchy sweaters without complaint. (I will wear Kureyon and Lopi next to my skin!) And so although I understood the problem intellectually, I'd never really internalized it. Indeed, I will admit that in the past I was one of those knitters who didn't really believe it was an actual allergy, that it was just a point of preference. Working with Amy disabused me of that notion some time ago... but that doesn't mean I've ever really thought about what it might mean when I teach classes.

Last night the whole thing was brought home to me in a way it never had been before.

A lovely knitter by the name of H. was in my class. The topic was Fixing Mistakes, and a key part of the class is having the students examine some mistake-ridden swatches I've prepared for the class.

(It leads into a fun discussion about the types of mistakes that you do have to fix vs. the types of mistakes you don't have to fix. I'm a pragmatist, after all. If the sweater isn't going to fall apart, if the pattering is working out, and the mistake isn't [very] visible, then why bother?)

And my swatches are all in wool.

H. is very wool-sensitive. Very. To the point where she took an antihistamine before she came to the class -- since she knew she'd be surrounded by wool.

I'd never considered that my teaching swatches might be a problem.

Lesson learnt. Thanks, H.