This is not typically a travel blog, but owing to the fact that I’m sick of these monochromatic and freezing days I’m going to share a few pics from our vacation. Because they all look mighty good right now and I’m calling summer baby….
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The central deck on the ship Bridgetown, Barbados St Lucia Phillipsburg, Sint Maarten Phillipsburg, Sint Maarten San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan, Puerto Rico Castries, St. Lucia Castries, St. Lucia -
Vacation knitting is always a conundrum, right? You don’t want to be bored, you don’t want to lose all that precious knitting time, and you don’t want to run out of stuff to work on. Here’s my criteria:
- Mindless (No charts, no lace, no pattern to carry about)
- Portable (No multiple balls of yarn, no striping or colour work. Nothing huge)
- Not Socks (This is just a personal thing. To avoid having someone in an airport confiscate my needles, I prefer to fly with wooden circulars, and I hate knitting socks on anything that isn’t metal)
- Fast (I wanted to end my trip with a Thing, not another WIP)
In this case I decided to write my own quickie patten for a scarf. It’s been hella cold, and I had 2 skeins of unbelievably soft Alpaca from the Kickin’ Back Alpaca Ranch in their signature grey. I knew that yarn had to be a scarf for my dad.
Daddy is not a scarf kinda guy, so it had to be classy. I wanted just enough detail to keep it interesting and masculine and keep me from dying of boredom, while simple enough that I could knit it on airplanes and on a cruise ship and (since it wasn’t done when I came home), during the gold medal hockey games ;)
The ‘pattern’ hardly justifies the name since it’s so simple, but if you want to get the same results I got, see my instructions below.
A few notes on construction – the slipped stitch at the beginning of each row was to give the piece a nice attractive selvage. The ‘purl through the back loop’ instruction twists the stitch immediately following the cable to keep it nice and tight and eliminate that horrid ladder that occasionally can happen with cables. If this is not your thing you can ignore that bit; just give your yarn a little tug after the first purl and the results will be the same. There are 4 stitches of garter at each end to keep it from curling.
You will need:
- 3.5 mm needles (I’m using wooden 16” circular needles per my point above)
- 200g of sport weight yarn (approximately 400 yards)
- Tapestry needle for weaving in ends
- 4 stitch markers (Optional. The knitting will be very easy to read.)
- Cable needle (Optional. I cabled without a needle for this project, here’s a great tutorial)
Gauge: It’s a scarf. Live a little.
Note: Work the ‘Slip 1’ instructions at the beginning of each row as follows:
Slip one as if to purl with yarn in front. Move the yarn to the back of the work and continue in pattern.Cast on 62
Garter stitch edging:
Rows 1-4: Slip 1, knit to endBegin Cable section:
Row 1 & 3 (RS) Slip 1, k3, pm, k30, pm, p3, k6, p3, pm k12, pm, k4
Row 2, 4 & 6 (WS) Slip 1, k3, sm, p12, sm, k3, p6, k3, sm p30, sm, k4
Row 5 (RS) Slip 1, k3, sm, k30, sm, p3, C6F, p1tbl, p2, sm k12, sm, k4Work rows 1 – 6 until you only have a few yards left.
Repeat Garter stitch edging:
Rows 1-4: Slip 1, knit to endBind off loosely
To really get all that stockinette to lay nice and flat I soaked it (in Soak, of course) for about 20 minutes to really saturate the fiber and then used blocking wires (see photos) to open the piece up.
Finished dimensions: About 12 inches wide (may vary because of my lackadaisical attitude towards gauge in this case) by about 50 inches long.
Abbreviations:
- k – Knit
- p – Purl
- p1tbl – Purl 1 through the back loop.
- pm – Place Marker
- sm – Slip Marker
- Slip 1 – Slip one as if to purl with yarn in front. Move the yarn to the back of the work and continue in pattern
- C6F: Cable 6 front: Slip 3 stitches to cable needle and hold in front, K3 and then K3 from cable needle
Super warm and just the right length to tucking into a winter jacket and covering up the chest – daddy loves it! And where practicality took off, guilt came in, which means that he actually wears it too!
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I love winter. I really do. But this winter… this winter has finally done me in.
Every year we go out and do stuff, photography, hiking, road trips… but this winter has been a real doozey. With -30C days and worse, even my walk to work has become sort of a trial that I need to get out of the way rather than something I enjoy. It’s literally been too cold to do stuff.
So this weekend Tito and I decided that, cold or no, we would get out of the apartment with the cameras. We found, randomly, a maple syrup festival about 45 minutes out of Toronto.
We got to see how the trees were tapped, eat the best pancakes I’ve ever had in my life, and see the process of boiling down the sap (it takes 40 buckets of sap to make one bucket of syrup!).
We also bought genuine Ontario Maple Syrup (of course) and a box of cookies that shall be the death of me this weekend. We didn’t stay very long, even pony rides and wagon tours couldn’t keep us out there for long. There was a petting zoo, though.
And he was like, screw this, it’s cold. And there was this wood pecker that was pretty obliging to the camera.
But on the whole it still felt a bit glum.
I like to enjoy things while they’re happening. I hate the mentality of spending precious time waiting for something to be over. There’s always something to photograph, something to make, even something new to learn while you’re holed up in the house avoiding the weather, but I just can’t get my mojo going and it’s driving me nuts. We even tried to go aurora hunting a few days ago and were turned back by a severe snowstorm. This winter has got me beat!
And the only answer is, despite how many WIP’s you’ve got going, to cast on something bright and tropical.
Pattern: Magratha by Martina Behm
Yarn: Tanis Fiber Arts OOAK colourwayIt’s bright and happy and definitely helping :)
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While Rayna and I were in Waterloo we decided to check out another brand new store in nearby Kitchener, called ‘Woolverine’ (great name!).
This store is literally a week old, and located in a fantastic space above street level. It feels a little tucked away but I have no doubt that once the word gets out the store will get some great traffic. We met the owner, the lovely and warm Tia, sitting below this fabulous Elvis quilt.
The store is nested inside of a gorgeous space, big and airy with colourful shelves full of fiber goodness. At the moment her stock selection is in it’s fledgling stages, but she gave us a sneak peek of some of the lines she’s going to be carrying soon, and we’re looking forward to seeing the new additions the next time we visit.
Tiny details and comfy nooks make this store, you can tell that a lot of love has gone into putting it together.
I walked out of there with 5 balls of Patons Beehive sport for a baby blanket, and 3 balls of Patons Astra for a friends hat. Normally acrylic isn’t my thing, but for items that will get heavy-duty wear (and for people who are allergic to natural fiber) sometimes acrylic is the answer!
Congratulations on your store Tia!
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Last Saturday, Rayna (my partner in fiber-related crime) invited me on a road trip to Waterloo to visit a yarn store I had never been to, ‘Shall We Knit?’. Much damage to my credit cards ensued because, wow, what a gorgeous store. Good thing I’m shameless when it comes to yarn.
We met with the lovely Karen, isn’t her hair the best? You know this is a woman who possesses a great love of colour. She’s the owner of the store, friendly, helpful and extremely knowledgable about her product.
And the store reflects it. Larger than it looks from the outside, it has entire rooms dedicated to spinning fiber, bulky, dk weight, books, (yes, sales) and a sock yarn room that will, well, knock your socks off.
Shall We Knit? boasts a few brands I had never heard of – and I was immediately taken in by an Australian company called ‘Skein’. These are destined for a 2-skein shawl. I’m hunting for just the right pattern now, oh, the pressure!
I shopped predictably, buying blues and greens and fulfilling Tito’s regular expectations of ‘wow, that looks just like all your other s**t’. To break it up I bought a bright orange bag of something called pencil roving. It’s pre-drafted, which I suppose sounds pretty lame, but it might be just the thing to get me spinning again. Pencil roving was also a new discovery for me, I’ve never found it anywhere else.
I also picked up 2 skeins of String Theory Caper Sock, they are well-matched, have beautiful drape and stitch definition, and are destined for my new adventure, the Taliesin.
And this beautiful stuff… because I couldn’t resist…
I would definitely do the trip again – the drive was enjoyable, the day was sunny and Shall We Knit is a blast! Fiber road trips might just become a thing… if we can afford it!
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I apologize for the dearth of posts – I’ve been away for a week on a truly memorable family vacation. My parents, Tito and myself went on a caribbean cruise (highlights of that to come later). My mom had asked that I bring at least one nice outfit (I brought several) and so I commenced a giant Haruni.
I now know why she wanted me to look all girly. The cruise came with a surprise. On the beach in Barbados (where, alarmingly, my parents insist on telling me I was conceived) while I was gritty and salty from snorkelling, having just kicked Tito in the face (totally by accident) while in pursuit of a photo of a turtle… Tito got down on one knee in the sand and made me the happiest girl ever.
I’m glad he did it that way, private and understated, just us and my parents, and some random Barbadians who came up to congratulate us (including a monkey, the monkey was awesome). It was very us. I am one happy, lucky girl!
Shawl specs for those interested – 700 yards of Mad Tosh sock in colour ‘celadon’. The skeins didn’t match, so I used one for the body and one for the second chart. I went for 16 leaves on each side before starting the second chart. Blocked measurements were 60 inches by 30 inches.
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Casper was a lab-hound mix that a friend of mine adopted about 12 years ago. I still remember the day he brought him home–Casper was a big, goofy puppy, all limbs. He was a gentle and sweet-natured dog all his life. When he finally had to leave us last autumn I knew I wanted to make Casper a special urn for his ashes.
After the piece was thrown, I used a shellac technique to get the relief in my design. It’s very simple, using ordinary shellac, you hand-paint a design onto a bone-dry piece of pottery.
After the shellac dries, use a damp sponge to rub the clay body very gently. The sponge will remove layers of clay from the piece, except where the shellac is. Fire the piece as normal, when it comes out of the kiln you will have a raised design.
After that I cross dipped my piece in a few different colours to finish it. I gifted it to my friend a few days ago, and he agrees that Casper would have liked it :)
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I bought this bracelet in Bath, England a few years ago. Originally, those silver frames held mother of pearl inserts. I wore the bracelet to a Tragically Hip concert (they rocked the house, btw) and somewhere in there the mother of pearl fell out.
I was devastated, and even though the bracelet was ruined I kept it. A few weeks ago while cleaning out our storage I found it again. Happily, I have some resin and polymer clay skills under my belt now (which I didn’t have at the time) so I remade it. The only thing left to do is smooth out and clean the silver. I’m so happy with the results!
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If knitting were an extreme sport, then last night was, like, the knitting equivalent of the space jump. I understand that some folks may think that’s a slight exaggeration, but let me tell you, it didn’t feel that way.
So I’m working on a 2 skein giant Haruni. I’m halfway through the last chart when I notice that a few rows back, on just one petal, the ‘stem’ and petal edge jumped a few stitches to the right. My OCD has OCD, so this was enough to give me a fit. Serves me right for trying to watch James Bond movies and knit lace at the same time.
My giant, annoying mistakes. 
What it’s supposed to look like Now, tinking was simply not an option. I went for extra repeats, it’s a 2 skein shawl, and there are eight hundred freaking stitches on my needles. Times 6 rows that would need to be tinked. That’s 4800 stitches. That’s crazy talk. I told Tito I was going to fix it. He got me crochet hooks and got out of the way. I put on Leonard Cohen, I got a lot of chocolate, and I went to work.
I was too panicked to do a step-by-step photo tutorial, but the genius was all in this post from the Twist Collective by Robin Melanson. I used her lace knitting fix (scroll down a bit to see it).
The general idea is this:
- You knit your way to the problem
- Slip the errant stitches off the needles
- Unravel them until you’re below the problem
- Slip a dpn through the dropped stitches
- Grab a second dpn and, using the loose strand behind your knitting, ‘knit’ the pieces back up the way they’re supposed to look.
I added a few changes just for myself:
- I pinned down the piece to my couch, running the pin through the last stitch on the needle to keep it from sliding off and making my problem worse.
- I used a crochet hook instead of another dpn because I found knitting from the little strand too fiddly otherwise.
- I divided my problem into 2 sections, the ‘stem’ and the ‘edge’ so that I was fixing fewer stitches at a time instead of having the entire area to re-knit.
It’s tricky; you have to remember where your decreases were, and your yarn-overs so you can put them back in. You have to remember to add a row of plain knitting above the lace (the equivalent of purling back over the row), and you get seriously sweaty palms from the stress alone. In my case, the number of stitches I unraveled to was not the number I needed to have back on the needles at the end because of the increases in the intervening rows, so being able to read your knitting is a must.
NSFL (gore) The results are definitely wrangled-looking but I think that will block out. Sure beats the alternatives of tinking almost 5000 stitches, or having to live with the wonky petal!
The wrangled, but correct result. -
I spend endless hours on Ravelry, searching, day-dreaming, getting inspired. It’s like knitters porn for me to cruise people’s gorgeous projects. I love it all. However, I barely graze the surface of what Ravelry can do–I rarely participate in forums, I’ve never queued anything, and most tragically of all, my stash was empty.
Enter Rayna. Organizer of Things. Kicker of Butts. Grand Poobah of All Things Fiber.
Rayna offered to come over and
boss me aroundorganize my stash. Now, while my stash is about half the size of Rayna’s, it is no small thing. Also, there were a fewdozenballs of yarn that had been wound in a bout of optimism, and then left that way, their ball-bands gone the way of the dodo.Then there’s vacation yarn. “Where did you get this?” She’d ask. “Um…. Nova Scotia? Montreal? Calgary? Boston? No, I don’t remember the store. No, I don’t remember when”. Rayna’s poker face at these moments was admirable.
Over the next 4 hours I held up yarn, raked my memory and took photos. Rayna asked questions, did math, and rocked out data entry. She was brilliant and patient and hilarious. She also showed me that there is a whole world of Raveling that I haven’t touched yet. I’m still quietly amazed that, with a kitchen scale and a little math she deduced (and recorded) exactly how much I had in the way of partial skeins… that’s never even occurred to me.
At the end of it, this
…had turned into this:
And this:
…had turned into this:
Thank you Ray, for making something that sounded like a nightmare so much fun I could have gone twice as long (though you might have throttled me by then). You’re a rockstar!
Check out my schmancy new stash page here–and it would be lovely if you would add me as a friend on Ravelry while you’re at it–I’m going pro!
The Blue Brick 