7 Reasons to Wind your Own Balls

When I was a newbie knitter working on my first real project, I made the mistake of trusting a store-bought center-pull skein.  I was at least 3/4 of the way finished with the simple black shawl I was making, when I came across a devastating knot in the skein.  Since I'd been pulling yarn from the middle, the outside of the skein lost more and more of its structure until it collapsed on itself, resulting in a three-hour super frustrating question to untangle the knot without having to cut the yarn.  Three hours of my life that I will never get back!  So here are all the reasons why I wind my own balls.

1. To discover any knots.  Fresh-from-the-store balls of yarn can have egregious imperfections hidden in their many yards.  KnitPicks is famous for tying knots into their Charisma line at the wrong color change!  Going over every inch of the yarn with my own two hands gives me the chance to correct these mistakes before I've even cast on.
2. To get to know your yarn.  Does it have any random slubs or other unplanned bumps in the road?  Does it shed?  Are the individual strands rougher than the larger ball?  This is your opportunity to learn about your yarn before working with it.
3. The LYS's swift is always in use.  Always.  Who has time to wait for someone else to wind their latest 21-ball purchase when I could be casting on?
4. Swifts make an annoying creaky sound.  Not to mention the cost.  I'd rather spend my money on yarn, thank you very much.
5. Winding is cathartic.  You get into a rhythm, just like with knitting.  Wrapping and wrapping and wrapping a single strand of yarn over and over again.  Excellent mindless entertainment.
6. Just enjoy the feel of it.  Yarn, glorious yarn, flowing through your hands.  Feel free to fantasize about all the wonderful projects you could make with it.
7. You can wind anywhere.  On an airplane.  In the car.  On your couch, bed, or toilet.  Okay, maybe not the toilet.  But it's portable if you're not tied down by a swift.  You don't have to wait until you get home or until the LYS's swift finally frees up.  You're that much closer to starting your project.

Bonus reason: You're completely in charge of the tension.  Your ball won't be so tight that it kills your yarn, and it won't be so loose as to risk tangling.

So how do I do it?  I'll show you how to wind perfect center-pull balls by hand in my next post!

55 Free Patterns to Knit Before I Die

Ravelry has this function called the Queue.  It's a place to store all the patterns for things you want to make.  Or things that look really cool.  Or things that are really unique.  Or...  You get the point.  It's a lineup, a place to turn to for inspiration when you're not sure what you want to knit next, and a place to hold all those patterns that you know you'll get to some day.  Maybe you won't get to them; maybe you have QBLE, queue beyond life expectancy.  If you knit every day for the rest of your life, would you be able to get through all the projects in your queue?

I have a queue as well, but sometimes it fails me.  Sometimes I just don't have the right yarn.  There's also the issue of a lot of the patterns in there being far too expensive for my knitting budget.  How can I spend $7 on a pattern?!  That's, like, a skein of yarn or two packages of beads.

So here I have made up a super-queue, a knitting bucket list, to give myself (and hopefully you) some inspiration when my queue just doesn't do it for me.

1. Clapotis - a classic, well-known scarf/wrap/shawl thing that everyone but me seems to have made.  
2. Triangle Entrelac Shawl - who doesn't love a little entrelac in the morning?
3. Vortex Shawl - circular shawl that just wows me every time I see it
4. Glitz at the Ritz - an elegant beaded shawlette
5. Creoso - lace and cables in a unique heavy shawlette
6. Budding Shawlette - another chance to play with lace and beads, this time in a flower motif
7. Begonia Swirl - did I mention I like lace?
8. Elly - just one more, I swear
9. Estuary - two different lace patterns flow together in this water-inspired shawlette
10. Good Day Sunshine - Estonian lace shawlette with serious points
11. Sagrantino Shawl - 20 lace hectagons knit up and sewn together into a shawl
12. Bamboo Wedding Shawl - elegant rectangles of lace interlock in a rectangular shawl.
13. Strips and Stripes - colorwork scarf that plays with horizontal and vertical striping
14. Padma "Pashmina" Wrap - giant lace wrap brimming with elegance
15. Diagonale - laceweight stole
16. Colorplay - a rainbow scarf with fringe on both ends, the best in LGBT knit fashion
17. Pilsener Zigzag Scarf - unique zigzag lace pattern
18. Cerus Scarf - all linen stitch, all the time.
19. Starry Night - beads and lace in a dark blue, lightweight scarf
20. Wishing Cowl - long cabled cowl
21. Fillan Cowl - short cabled cowl
22. Cloche Divine - I don't even wear cloche hats, and I want to make this one
23. Once Upon a Tam - lace tam modeled after a hat from Once Upon a Time
24. Rosalina - cables, lace, and beads, oh my!
25. Pinwheel Beret - brioche in two colors on a slouchy hat
26. Alokananda Beret - stunning cabled beret
27. Rylands Cabled Hat - cabled in an entirely different way
28. Cafe Au Lait Tam - faux-cabled beret
29. Nottingham Hat - a completely different faux-cabled look
30. As the Leaves Begin to Fall - colorwork hat with leaves motif
31. Undergrowth - a completely different colorwork hat with a flower motif at the top
32. Shapely Boyfriend - everybody's got one of these simple cardigans but me
33. Wayside Lace Cardigan - it's knitting sideways!
34. Cadence - boat neck pullover with a lace pattern around the top
35. Pretty Mallory - raglan pullover with lace sleeves
36. Sequoia - shawl-collared vest in a heavy worsted yarn
37. Rose Trellis Shawl Vest - drapey vest with a lace pattern
38. Firelight - cabled vest
39. Thrummed Mittens - you know you want some of these toasty puppies
40. Yummy Mummy Wristwarmers - deliciously cabled fingering weight fingerless gloves
41. Magic Mirror - cabled mittens
42. Citadel Mittens - stockinette and reverse stockinette spell out the pattern in these mittens
43. Rubber Duck Socks - the ultimate in colorwork socks
44. Solstice Socks - mismatched socks that play with the different phases of the sun and moon
45. Basket Weave Rib Socks - unisex socks with an interesting texture
46. Free Bees - fun socks with lace bees 
47. Moon Socks - mmm, slippers
48. A Blanket for Seriously Cold People - giant squooshy bulky weight blanket made entirely of ribbing.
49. Norma - a lovely lace throw blanket
50. Modern Log Cabin Blanket - a bit of an updated look to a classic construction
51. Summer Leaves Throw - lacy summer afghan
52. Fancy Mug Cozy - everyone needs a mug cozy, might as well make it fancy
53. Elephant - isn't his little trunk adorable?
54. Texture Bite - the perfect little teddy bear
55. Catnip Bunny - our furry friends need a little love, too

And if you're a more visual person, I've also compiled all these patterns onto a Pinterest board!  

That's NOT What She Said

A youtube video has gone viral in the knitting community this week.  Have you seen it?  The ladies at Loops Knitting in Tulsa, OK, call it "Said no knitter ever."

Hilarious!  The best one for me was "Honey, can you clean out my yarn stash for me?  Just throw away whatever you think I don't need."  No knitter would EVER say something like that.

A couple I might add:

• I love finding cat hair in my yarn.  It's like my cat is part of my knitting now.
• Qiviut isn't that expensive.
• I'm tired of knitting in my favorite colors.  Got anything in neon orange?
• Uggh, Ravelry is such a waste of time!
• Knitting is boring.  I think I'll take up crochet instead.  

Twist and Shout

Sometimes, knitters make mistakes.  I know, I know, we don't want to admit it.  We think maybe we can drink it away.  Maybe no one will notice, or only the really advanced knitters will notice, and they'll be too polite to mention it.

I made a mistake.

Knitting along, watching television, I wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing.   Perhaps I set my knitting down in the middle of a round and forgot where I was when I picked it back up.  Either way, something terrible happened.  I forgot to twist a cable.  Uggh, just look at it:

Do you see it?

Maybe you don't see it.  But I do!  It's right there, a big patch of stockinette that should be twisted into a cable, like its neighbor a few stitches down.

And as you can see, I didn't notice it until I was already 6 rounds further along.  I'd already made another cable before I noticed this one, sitting there grinning with its ugly, untwisted face.  What was a girl to do?  I could have ripped back those 6 rows, but it would have been nearly impossibly to pick up the lace panels that are having a jolly day between the cables.  If I'd put in a lifeline, like a smart knitter, it wouldn't have been a problem.  I am not a smart knitter.

I could have ripped the entire hat out, then gone and cried for a little while.  But I didn't want to do that, either.  

So I got brave.  Using a technique demonstrated by the Yarn Harlot, I slipped just the offending cable panel off my needles.

Whoa!  That's crazy!  Why would you purposefully slip stitches off the needle?

Nine precarious stitches.  Just these.  The stitches that are surrounding it on the needle are safe because they're still on the needle.  But these nine stitches are about to be shaken to their core.

Oh the humanity!  

I ripped them back 7 rows, just far enough to properly twist the cable.  Then I used a couple DPNs and worked those stitches like their own little mini rounds using the yarn from each respective round (that kind of looks like awful green spaghetti in that picture).

If I had the hat with me (I'm travelling for work again), I would show you the after-picture.  It worked!  I fixed the cable, finished the hat, and it's beautifully Spring-esque.  Don't let your mistakes hold you back, knitters.  If I can fix this unsightly cable without too much wine, you can certainly correct your knitting mishaps!

Edit: Check out the finished hat!

Ten Things I Would Rather Do Than Weave in Ends

I signed up for a Reddit hat swap in r/knitting a month or so ago, and the person I'm sending to has her heart set on a fair isle hat.  That's cool, I like fair isle.  The hat, based off the DIY Fair Isle Hat pattern by Meg Myers, was really interesting to knit.  I had a chance to flex my creative fingers as I used five different colors of yarn rather than a solid and a variegated, and I also modified part of the pattern so that the top would be a flat square because my partner specifically asked for the hat not to be a beanie.  

It was fun, I have a lot of leftover yarn to play with, all is well.  Except.  Except the inside of the hat.  It's full of loose ends that require weaving in.  I count at least 23.

What a mess!

Uggh.  It's my least favorite thing to do.  I mean, really, I hate weaving in ends and generally go out of my way to avoid it by knitting things in one piece rather than seaming, limiting colors or using creative joins to switch between colors, or simply knotting yarn together and leaving the ends to hang out in any item that's for my personal use.  But none of those are options this time around.

Top Ten Things I'd Rather Do Than Weave in Ends:

1. Donate blood
2. Stare at the wall
3. Pick at hangnails
4. Give my cat a bath
5. Scrub away the grit that builds up behind the toilet
6. Sigh at my yarn stash and dream of other projects
7. Write something for my actual job
8. Drink
9. Rant
10. Pay someone very much money to do it for me

I have another week to finish this up and ship it out (deadline is May 1), so I guess I'll just have to suck it up and get it done.  But I really don't want to.  

FO Friday: Royal Tenor Cami

As promised, I'm gonna show you what I made with that purple linen while I was away, my version of the Razor Cami.  It's pretty.  It fits.  It... can't be worn on its own because it's rather see-through.  But I love it, and I hope you do too.

Just as I expected, my slightly large gauge resulted in a S/M size, just right for me.  The straps might be a little bit long, but I prefer to have extra room in the armpits, and since I'll have to wear another cami under this one anyhow that's even better.  

Props to the designer, Katie Marcus.  Her pattern was easy to follow, and I'll never be able to express my full gratitude for designers who give their work away for free.  

The best part about this FO is that it has really strong memories attached to it.  The lace is knit together with the ringing chords of the choruses, the sweet sound of the quartets, the laughter that accompanied the Open Division contestants, and all the excitement of taking the stage for the first time.  Every time I wear this cami, I'm going to remember the people I met, the songs we sang, the late nights and friendship and fun.  

How to Become Lifelong Friends with a Knitter

If you read my last post, you know my chorus went to Regional Competition last weekend.  Awesome job, Sound Harmony!  We had a fabulous debut, and I'm really proud of the sound and energy that we produced on that stage with such a small group.  Check out these beautiful, smiling faces:

Thank goodness for knitting, though, because I did a lot of sitting.  All together, I sat through a 6-hour drive from Seattle to Spokane, 26 quartet performances, 23 chorus performances, a couple of hours worth of judge deliberations, intermissions, and setup breaks, and a 5-hour drive back home.  On Friday, I'll reveal my wonderful creation from all that knitting.

Today, though, I want to tell you how I made crafting friends while at this competition.  Are you ready to hear my method?  Here's what I did:  I held knitting in my hands.

Well, okay, so that's not exactly all that I did.  At one point during a break, to keep myself pumped up about the next quartet, I spotted someone knitting and yelled out, "What up, my Knittah!?"

My chorus promptly disowned me.

I'm not ashamed, though.  Every knitter knows the best way to make a knitter friend:

• Approach knitter, knitting in public.  
• Say, "Hi, what are you working on?" 
• "Can I touch it?"  
• "Is that wool?"  
• "Wanna see what I've been knitting?"

It's foolproof.  We all love that connection.  Anytime I bump into a knitter in the wild, it's as though we've been crafting together our whole lives.  And really, we have.  

FO Friday: Indian Feathers Shawlette

I'm in Spokane at the Region 13 Sweet Adelines Convention, and my group doesn't take the stage until tomorrow.  It's a really... interesting experience.  Lots of glitter everywhere.  But that's not what you're reading this for.  You want to know what I've made!

Last week, I finished a shawlette that's been sitting in a sad little bag, waiting for someone to block it and let its true colors shine through.  This small shawl / large scarf is based off the Indian Feathers pattern by Alina Appasov.  The pattern included an option for either knupps (a complicated little detail that can be really tough on your hands and requires extra yarn) or beads.  It wasn't even really a choice for me; I will always choose beads.  I used less than a skein of Silky Alpaca Lace by Classic Elite Yarns and 175 beads of different shades.  Here's what it looked like before blocking:

Kind of sad, right?  But watch is it gloriously unfolds after a 20 minute soak and some quick pinning.

Mmmm, that's good blocking!  And check out the drape on this beauty:

So, you can't really see the beads, and the top of the stockinette area curls (as stockinette will do), but I really love the subtle variegation in the red yarn, the halo from the alpaca, and the way the ends turn into a lovely ruffle when it's not pulled tight.

Travel Knitting

I've been sort of panicking all week because I don't have enough knitting to last for a 10-hour round-trip car ride.  Tomorrow, I'm heading off to Spokane to compete with my chorus in the Region 13 Sweet Adelines convention.  Yep, alongside my knitting, I sing sweet, sweet barbershop harmony.

But seriously, what was I going to do with all that time in the car?  Twiddle my thumbs? On top of that, I'll be sitting in an auditorium for many hours watching other groups perform.  I need something to work on, and I didn't have a project ready!

So I spent way too many hours on Ravelry this week looking for a pattern that

1. I already had the yarn for
2. Would take a significant amount of time to make
3. Didn't require me to look at the pattern the whole time
4. Wouldn't be enormous by the end of the weekend so I could pack it away when necessary.

It seemed impossible.  Socks are too finicky.  I found a LOT of lace options, but I couldn't immediately memorize any of the charts.  Hats I would finish in the first few hours (though I did consider bringing enough yarn to make 14 hats while I'm away).

Finally, I settled on a tank top.  I have this lovely purple yarn from Newton Country Yarns that's 75% Tencel and 25% Linen, perfect for a Summer project.  I found the Razor Cami pattern on Ravelry, and it only requires me to memorize a single round of lace!  I checked my gauge, and it came out a little bit big.  "No problem," I told myself; the pattern is for an XS-S, and I probably want a S-M, so that should work out.  I cast on yesterday, and I already like it (though it still seems a little small).  

Here's hoping it lasts through the weekend.  Maybe I'll pack some extra fingering weight yarn and needles just in case.  Mawata doesn't take up much space in a bag...

You Stood By the Wall

You were waiting for someone to come out of the bathroom at Lincoln Square Cinema, staring at your phone.  You wore a brown sport jacket, jeans, and flipflops.  But the thing I can't get out of my head, the reason I may remember you forever, is your socks.  You wore toeless socks, obviously handknit with much love and wool.  They looked a lot like this:

I wanted to ask you if it was you, the tall, burly man with hipster glasses, who knit such beauties, or if it was the woman in your life, perhaps the person you were waiting on.  I wanted to ask about the yarn, the pattern, and perhaps most importantly the feel of the finished object between your toes.  I wanted to engage you in conversation and count you as a friend forevermore.

But I didn't.  I was too shy.  And my bladder too full from sitting through the latest Captain America sequel.  

So I write this missed connection to you, just in case you read knitting blogs, just in case you remember that bit of wall, just in case your toeless socks, those great stinky cousins of fingerless mitts, are still feeling the love.

FO Friday: Blocking Is a Lot Like Finishing

I found a shawl in my crafting closet this week that was mostly finished.  It only needed a good blocking and to have the ends woven in.  But it had been waiting for those last couple of steps so long that I forgot I'd even knit it!  Seriously, I remember enjoying the pattern while I made it, and I remember looking forward to wearing it for something, but I can't remember when I actually knit it.

So I put it in a cold Eucalan soak, dried it a bit by rolling it in a towel, then pinned it out to finish:

This is the Myrskylintu shawl, and the yarn is KnitPicks Gloss Fingering in colorway Winter Night.  The yarn was actually gifted to me by a stranger in a superhero-themed swap (my favorite super hero is Superman, and this is for his cape).  Check out the detail on this baby:

After I put that shawl away and while I had the blocking boards out, I went ahead and blocked a shawl that I finished more recently while I was in San Francisco.  This is the Sewanee shawl in madelinetosh tosh merino light.  To give you an idea of what blocking can do for your knitting, here's a before picture:

The picture is a little blurry, but you get the idea.  The edges are horribly curled and messy, the lace is closed up, and the overall shawl is a bad shape.  You can't tell from that picture, but the stitches are also misaligned or malformed because it was knit on square needles rather than round ones.  Here's what blocking did for it:

Now, you can see the true shape of the shawl, a heart.  You can see all the lace and the edges have those sharp points.  Everything is opened up, the sides are no longer curling, and each stitch is aligned properly for a smooth finish.  It also grew so that it's a proper shawl size, whereas before blocking it couldn't fit around my shoulders.  

This took me twenty minutes to set up, and half a night to dry.  It is so worth your time to block, knitters.  Just do it.  

Color, Color Everywhere

The other class I took at Vogue Knitting Live was called Slip Sliding Away, and it centered around using slipped stitches to create interesting texture and color combinations.  Melissa Leapman, a famous designer, taught the class in her characteristically laid back, slightly funny, almost meditative way.

Now, this class came with homework.  That's right, homework.  I felt like I was back in college.  Even worse, the homework was boring.  We had to knit 5 test swatches, each a different color, of 21-25 stitches (respectively), in K1P1 ribbing for one inch.  Uggh, so boring.  But I faithfully knit the swatches in the ugliest colors in my scraps bin because those are the scraps with the most yardage.  Look what they became:

Sorry for your eyeballs.

The first swatch played with texture.  Each row moves the slipped stitch over just a tad so that these zigzag patterns emerge in the fabric.

Oooh!

The second swatch is also a texture piece, with elongated stitches creating little boxes that stick up slightly.  I'd love to do a baby blanket with this stitch pattern.

Aaahh!

Then we started to get into playing with color.  Swatch three used three colors, but only one color was worked with at a time.  It made a sort of chevron pattern that looks like a castle to me, but it was way easier than actual chevron with much less counting involved.  I might use this technique to make a hat.

Wow!

Next is this sort of dragon scale stitch.  It doesn't look so great in the swatch, but the samples that the teacher brought were fantastic!

Mmmmmm!

The last stitch we practiced is definitely not something I'm likely to use.  It has cables between columns of colorwork.  Obviously, it's awful with the colors I used (thank you, scrap bin), but even the samples Leapman brought didn't really wow me.  It might be good to use in a man's sweater pattern, but even then it's a bit too much work for the result.

...eeeww...

I would definitely recommend this class to anyone who wants to learn these techniques.  Even if you think you could easily eyeball these swatches and reproduce the stitches, it's still worth your time and money because of how incredibly inspiring it is.  She blew our minds with some of the stitches she's come up with, some of the different ways we can play with color, and it's all so much easier than you'd imagine.  

If you're interested in learning more about these techniques, I would highly suggest Leapman's books, Color Knitting the Easy Way and The Knit Stitch Pattern Handbook, which includes 300 (three-freaking-hundred!) different stitches you can make with knitting.  

Blissful Brioche

Nope, not the bread, though you will wreck your diet just by looking at this Google search.

Please, just a taste?

Brioche knitting is a technique that creates a squishy double-sided fabric.  I've dabbled in it before to create a simple infinity scarf with a variegated yarn and a more complex cabled scarf based off of the Reversible Cabled Brioche Stitch Scarf pattern by Saralyn Harvey.  Brioche has its own rhythm, slightly different from the flow of regular knitting, and I found it very therapeutic.

But I wanted to step it up a knotch.  I kept seeing all these patterns for brioche knitting in two colors, like this wonderful hat:

Photo courtesy of the Ravelry 

That hat, the Pinwheel Beret by Nancy Marchant, blew me away.  It's so pretty, and the color combinations are endless, and I WANT one!  But the pattern is almost written in a different language.  I had no idea what a "bark" was or how to execute a "burp," so I thought this technique was beyond my reach.

Until, of course, I signed up for a Two-Color Brioche class as Vogue Knitting Live.  And who do you think taught it?  The very same designer, Nancy Marchant!  

I have to admit, I was a little bit disappointed with the class.  It cost a lot of money, and we spent the vast majority of the class trying to learn what she calls the "Italian Cast On," which was not an essential skill but a nice-to-know.  It felt like a waste of time to learn that one picky little trick instead of what we were actually supposed to be focusing on.  

Nevertheless, I did learn what a burp is (brioche purl stitch), how to read a brioche pattern, and how to work with two colors in this fabulous stitch.  Check out my perfectly imperfect beginner's swatch:

Isn't she lovely?

If you look closely, you can see my mangled stitches on the third or so row up.  Other than that and the poor color choices (they were just a couple scrap balls I had leftover), I think it turned out marvelously!  I'll put that in my success column.

If you want to learn more about this brilliant technique, check out Nancy's website, www.briochestitch.com.  She has tutorials and explanations for working the stitch with one or two colors, all the accompanying tips and tricks, and free patterns!  Her book, Knitting Brioche, is also beautiful, and I'm dying to get my hands on it, especially now that I know what I'm doing.  

Nine Rubies

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm travelling this week on business.  And it is a very,very lonely trip.  I'm down in Foster City, CA, just outside of San Francisco.  None of my teammates are here.  My husband stayed home with the cats.  I don't know anyone, and no one speaks English in the break room (which was a big surprise for me).

Even though I'm down here for work, my evenings are my own.  Tuesday, I drove over to Chinatown to see what all the hype is about.  Honestly, I found it to be really dirty.  I mean, people often say that Paris is a dirty city or New York is a dirty city, and I never saw what they were talking about.  But Chinatown was dirty.  Like, lots of trash all over the sidewalk and funny smells everywhere, dirty.  I didn't want to stay there for very long; it was still rush hour when I went back to my hotel room.

But I knew that Wednesday night would be better because Nine Rubies Knitting in San Mateo hosts a social knitting circle on Wednesdays.

Ah, sweet beautiful knitters, you make me so very happy.

This shop is gorgeous.  I've never been in such a large LYS.  Rather than the cramped/cozy little stores I'm used to, Nine Rubies has a high ceiling (with a sparkly chandelier), lots of open space to walk around, and plenty of seating area.  What they lacked in yarn variety, they made up for with their incredible samples.  I asked to see a sample of a silk-straw yarn, and she showed me three unique garments and said, "I have more samples of this in the back, if you want."

They ladies around the circle were as warm as the California sun.  Jeanine was working on designing a tutorial for crocheted dragon stitch fingerless mitts.  Two sisters sat crafting and telling me about their dogs and plans to move to Seattle.  A mother came in with her daughter to get help on knitting a herringbone cowl edged in faux-fur.  We chatted about ergonomics, cats, local yarns, Ravelry, and restaurants in the area.

Lonely knitters can always find a refuge in local yarn stores.  Nine Rubies Knitting was an excellent safehaven.  A skein of Malabrigo Worsted and Anzula Cloud made its way into my stash.  For a couple of hours, I almost stopped missing home.  Almost.

Like Sweet, Sweet Manna

When yarn is literally falling from the sky, you push the person in front of you over and grab as many skeins as you can.  Right?

Actually, that's not what happened at all.

I attended Vogue Knitting Live! this weekend in Seattle (disclaimer: it was not actually in Seattle; it was in Bellevue, a large neighborhood outside of Seattle.  It made the Seattlites VERY angry that this event is labeled Seattle).  At the end of the event each year, they do a Yarn Drop: the lobby has skeins of yarn hanging by fishing wire off a balcony, and hopeful knitters gather on the floor below to try and catch the REALLY good ones.

Photo courtesy of the Vogue Knitting Live Facebook page.
You can see me standing about halfway down, looking up expectantly.

It made me really, really anxious.

Seriously, I thought someone was going to pull my hair out to get at the skein above me, a lovely pink/yellow/purple number that reminded me of sunsets.  Glorious, yarny sunsets.  We stood their, our necks aching as we looked up at the generous gods above us, standing against the balcony with scissors and occasional pulling on fishing wire to make the skeins dance in terrible torment.

Ten minutes before the scheduled drop, I made a deal with the girl standing next to me.  If she caught the amazing blue and I caught the awesome pink, we would swap.  When the cutting of the strings began, and the yarn came raining down upon me, I caught that pink.  And I caught two others!

I turned around and gave one away to a lady behind me who just couldn't push through the crowd to catch one herself.  I'll call it a sacrifice to karma; she didn't maul me, so she got a free skein of green superwash.

And the girl next to me was as good as her word.  Here are my wondrous spoils:

I'm travelling this week, so I'll leave my discussion about my two classes until I can get back home and add relevant pictures.  But it was a great conference.  I spent more money than I meant to on yarn (again), but I picked up these treasures for free.  Add the knowledge I gained and the time I spent just enjoying knitting, and it was totally worth it.

Startitis

How many projects do you work on at once?  And how many is too many?

Assuming that we don't count the blanket I started five years ago that is still sitting forlornly in my closet waiting to be finished (let's be real, that is just never going to happen), I have

• 3 projects on needles and currently active
• 6 projects that just need a little bit of finishing (blocking, sewing seams, weaving in ends)
• 4 dead projects that need to be frogged
• and an ever-expanding queue of projects-yet-to-be.

Basically, I have this bad habit of starting a project and not finishing them before starting another project.  It's called startitis, basically a disease in the knitting community.  Check out the webcomic Worsted For Wear for a relevant example.  

Here's the first problem. I cast on in November (early November, mind you) for a scarf that I was going to give to a friend for Christmas.  And in my twisted, gnarled brain, I was going to finish that fingering weight, linen stitch scarf with 375 godforsaken stitches in a little over a month.  As an added challenge, I decided to knit the thing up in a different style of knitting than my usual, beloved throwing English.  Continental, I told myself, would be way faster.  And yes, Continental has been faster for this particular project, but I have to watch what I'm doing because I'm not familiar with the technique.  That means I can only work on this scarf when I don't need my eyes.  I'm (only) about halfway done with it, and it seems like it will never end.

So to fix the first problem, I have to cast on for another project.  This time, I want something to work on in my own style of knitting, English.  I choose lace, again in fingering weight yarn but at least it's on larger needles than the linen stitch scarf.  And the pattern is really interesting to me because it's not the same thing over and over again.  But, that's the problem.  I actually have to think about the pattern.  I can't memorize a lace pattern that's ten lines long, and I have to constantly be counting to make sure I decrease and yarnover in all the right places.  That means that I can only work on this project when I don't need my brain.  

So to fix the second problem, guess what I did?  That's right: I cast on for something else.  This one is a shawl that is so tediously simple that I can set my brain on auto-pilot and work on it while I'm in a meeting, watching tv, or reading a book on my Kindle.  The other great thing about it is that when I think I might want to burn it because I'm so bored with the pattern, that's just when the lace border will begin!  

Those are my three active projects right now.  The six projects that still need finishing are doomed to sit in the closet until I get really bored or until I have time to work on updating my Etsy shop.  They're looking at 6 months to life.  As for the dead projects, I will frog them when, and only when, I desperately need the bag they are sitting in or when I have a truly brilliant idea of what to do with that yarn.  

What's next up in your queue?  Because I'm thinking about casting on for slouchy cable hat...

A Knitter's Approach to Copyright

Since I have only designed one thing in my knitting career, 99.9% of the items I knit are from another designer's pattern.  They've come from magazines, books, Ravelry, other blogs, Reddit, and pamphlets.  But regardless of where they're published, most of the patterns I use have a copyright notice that I have to pay attention to, especially because I intend to sell a lot of my knit goods.  So what do knitters need to know about copyrights?

Knitty.com has a great laymen's guide to copyright for knitters that explains the basics.  Knitters have to be aware that copyright can apply to an entire written pattern including charts and instructions, stitch patterns, photos in a pattern, and knit goods that come from patterns.  Knitty's conclusion is that it's best to ask the copyright owner if you have any question about your usage.

A lot of knitters disagree on the matter.  Copyright can be really hard to enforce, especially when it comes to the gray area surrounding the sale of knit goods.  A designer would have to be particularly litigious, really adamant about the use of their patterns, for a knitter to see any consequences from infringement.  As such, a lot of knitters don't worry about copyright issues.

Honestly, I wish I could be one of those knitters.  There are a lot of pretty patterns out there that I want to make and would like to sell, but I hate the idea of stepping on another crafter's toes.  These designers have been kind enough to put their work out into the world (many of them for free), and I want to reward their kindness by actually paying attention to their wishes.  So I look for a copyright notice on every pattern I consider.  I think of copyright notices in three categories that I call restrictive, optional, and permissive.

Restrictive copyright notices retain all rights for the designer.  These designers are clear about their work being for personal use only.  I would not use patterns with these copyright notices for selling items:

• Copyright 2011.  All rights reserved.
• For personal, non-commercial use only.

Optional copyright notices are a little less definite.  You may or may not be allowed to use that pattern, and the only way to find out is to ask.  If I see something like this, I'll contact the designer for permission:

• Pattern and images © 2013
• No copyright notice

Permissive copyright notices, god bless them, are when designers specifically say that they don't mind their work being used for commercial purposes:

• Written pattern copyright 2012. Please do not reprint or repost this pattern, but please feel free to link to this page to share this pattern with others. You are welcome to sell items made from this pattern, but please link back to [the designer] with credit for the design on the listing or tag.
• "Please link this pattern to your listing if you do plan to sell from it."

Most often, permissive copyrights include a little request from the designer that you link back to their pattern so that they get credit for the design.  That's the type of copyright notice I chose for my Refreeze pattern because I want credit for the design but don't mind if people sell their items.  

There's a lot of wiggle room in knitting copyright, a lot of gray area to sludge through.  I just try to do what feels right, give credit where credit is due, and knit the things that make me happy.  

Beading Madness

Adding beads to my knitting is a relatively new skill for me.  Last year, I took an Advanced Lace with Beads class at Vogue Knitting Live with a fabulous designer, Laura Nelkin.  She gave very detailed instructions with helpful tips and tricks for both methods of beading, and by the end of the class I had a firm grasp on the techniques.  I even had a darling (though imperfect) little swatch:

This swatch used both techniques for beading: pre-strung and placed.  For the pre-strung, we used beading needles.  Actually, we used something cheaper and easier to find: floss threaders.

A great tutorial for using floss threaders to string beads onto yarn can be found here.  The same tutorial also explains how to use regular old thread or a yarn needle, but I like the floss threaders because they can take even the smallest beads.  Basically, all you have to do is put a few inches of your yarn through the big loop in the threader, then slide beads down the threader and onto the yarn.  For one of my latest projects, an Entomology Shawl, I had to pre-string more than 1200 beads. At least it turned out beautifully:

Each technique has their own advantages.  For pre-stringing, the majority of the work happens up front: you can't start knitting until you've strung as many beads as you're going to need for that ball of yarn.  But then, you just knit along without having to stop.  For placing beads, you have to stop knitting each time you need to bead, but you don't have all those beads adding weight or wearing down your yarn as you knit.  Pre-strung beads can float along the yarn in your work and more than one bead can be put on a single stitch or yarnover.  Placed beads stay put where you tell them to.  Pre-strung beads can have a smaller opening and accommodate thicker yarn because only one strand of yarn has to fit through the bead.  When you place a bead, both legs of a stitch have to go through it. Finally, though this isn't really an advantage or disadvantage, the two techniques look slightly different because pre-strung beads have the hole going horizontally in the work and placed beads have the hole going up and down.  

If I had to choose one technique and stick to it my entire life, I would go pre-strung.  I like being able to focus on the knitting and have the beads be a perk of the project rather than feel like my time is split throughout the project between knitting and beading.  But each pattern will be different, and I think the placed method is more common.  My Refreeze pattern happens to use a crochet hook to place the beads.  The Jeweled Cowl is another great example.  It's easier, I think, to conceptualize and design a pattern that places the beads while you go rather than pre-stringing.  As to which one is easier to knit, well, try them both and decide for yourself!

FO Friday: Refreeze Hat

For once, I had the inspiration, know-how, and materials to make something unique enough to call it my design.  That's right: my very first design!

And it's on Ravelry!  That makes it double official!

Okay, enough with the exclamation points.  You get it: I did something new and I'm proud of the way it turned out.  When I'm being honest with myself, I think things like "Well, anyone could have come up with that pattern," or "You're not really making anything new, you're just combining knowledge that you already had."  It's a simple pattern.  All you need to know is cast on, knit in the round, 1X1 rib, stockinette, K2tog, and how to place beads on stitches with a tiny crochet hook.

That's the hardest part: the beading.  And again, I made it really simple by doing an easy diamond chart that anyone could have written.  But the technique for beading was a little time consuming.  For each of those 224 beads, I had to

1. Pick up a bead with a tiny crochet hook.
2. Slip a stitch from the left-hand needle onto the same crochet hook.
3. Slide the bead down onto both legs of the stitch (with much, much help from the tiny hook).
4. Put the stitch back onto the needle and knit it.

Can you tell I'm a technical writer in my day job?  I love lists.

If you need pictures to go with those steps, you could check out this tutorial from About.com.  The only difference is that she did not knit her stitch after it had a bead on it.  Maybe I did it wrong; maybe it doesn't matter.

I hope you like my pattern.  Try it out, and let me know if there are any mistakes.  

A Handmade Morsel

When I opened my Etsy shop, A Handmade Morsel, I had this wonderfully naive dream of fully supporting my knitting habit with the profits.  Yarn, after all, can be very expensive, and my husband was tired of my large fiber purchases.  I was going to knit, sell the things I knit, and then buy yarn so I could knit some more.  It was the perfect plan!

The problem is that my shop has been open since last April and I've sold exactly 7 hats.  The highlight of my selling career was when a stranger asked me if I could make a custom hat with a bow from some white angora.  Mmmm, angora!

I'm not yet disheartened.  I enjoy looking at my shop stats and seeing that 2 or 20 people have viewed my items in the last week.  I like taking pictures of my hats on a little mannequin head.  She even has a pretty wig.  And for Christmas, I was given a mannequin body to help display scarves and cowls.  I like setting up sales and conversing with potential buyers.  And I love packaging my goods to ship them out.

But I wonder what more I could be doing.  Could my pictures be brighter?  Do I need a larger social media presence?  Am I using colors or materials that customers don't want?  Are the patterns I used too simple or complex to draw a crowd?  Are my prices wrong?

Let's talk about that for a minute.  What is a fair price for hand knitting?  Obviously, the cost of the materials should be included, and that means something made from alpaca yarn is going to be way more expensive than something made from cotton or acrylic.  Some knitters try to estimate how long it took to knit an item and give themselves at least minimum wage.  But I knit for fun and while I'm doing other things (like watching tv), so I don't really keep track of how long it takes.

The rule I generally go with is to charge by the yard (5-8 cents), add the cost of materials, and then look at similar items on Etsy to make sure I'm in the right neighborhood.  I don't want to try and undersell the other merchants; not only would that cut into my profits but it would undervalue knit goods all together.  And I'm not interested in getting the highest price because as a customer that's not what I would buy.

I have a friend who makes and sells unique a line of plushy donuts cats (among other stuffed toys) at Pike's Place Market.  She's put her entire life into this pursuit, all but quit her day job to make her passion a reality.  She's an inspiration, and it gives me hope that one day I'll be able to quit my day job, too, to follow the things that matter most to me.

Until then, I'll keep knitting, writing, and dreaming, knowing that the good I put into the world will come back to me in time.

Silk Worms and Bad Math

Silk.  Pure silk.  You may think of a silk scarf or blouse: smooth, cool, shiny fabric that costs too much and gets ruined by a grease stain.    I'm thinking of unspun silk: shiny but soft, stringy, and still costs too much.

Last weekend, I took a class with the Yarn Harlot called "All About Mawata."  Mawata is a silk hanky made of many layers of stretched silk cocoons.    We learned the entire process of soaking the cocoons, extracting the "passenger" (a dead silk worm), stretching the cocoons over a frame, and drafting from the hankies to make an unspun yarn that we can then knit.  There's a really great site that explains the whole process with pictures and useful hints, but I thoroughly enjoyed the class and think it was worth paying to learn this new skill.  Something about the group setting with a hilarious teacher over an afternoon dedicated solely to crafting made the technique really stand out in my mind as unique, beautiful, and fun.

After the class was done, I did something a little crazy.  I went straight to the Marketplace next door to find ALL the silk hankies.  Credit card in hand, I was ready to fight for all the best colorways.  Silk hankies are something you don't find at big box craft store, and even a lot of local yarn shops don't carry these treasures, so I thought the pressure was on to stock up.

Now, mawata is not measured by the yarn like a lot of yarn, but it's measured by grams or ounces.  We learned that a lovely silk cowl (probably the biggest project you'd want to make from mawata) will take about 40-60 grams of silk.  The first booth I came across that offered mawata was charging $1.20 per gram.  I bought almost 80 grams, enough for two cowls.  Oooh, I was so happy!  But it cost almost $100, my entire budget for the Marketplace.

No big deal, I thought.  I'll just look at the rest of the vendors.  I don't have to buy anything else...

It turned out, all the other booths were selling silk hankies by the ounce.  A single ounce is about 28 grams, so with my dirty, dirty math skills I decided I would need about 1.5 ounces for my cowls.  (Oh, and in my head, I was going to make ALL the silk cowls).  Here's the kicker: every booth that was selling mawata by the ounce charged $10 per half ounce.

Quick and dirty math: 1.5 ounces (42 grams) costs $30.  That's only 71 cents per gram.  My original 80 grams should have only cost $57.

I went ahead and bought a few extra hankies at the lower price, just in case.  My whole haul from the Marketplace at Madrona:

Start Somewhere

A caterpillar once asked, "Who are you?"  I am a daughter, sister, and wife.  Friend and confidante.  Writer.  I'm a pet owner, cook, and sock-folder.  And I'm a knitter.  I wear a lot of hats (most of my own creation), and that's how I like it.

Last weekend, I attended Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, where I took classes with the famous Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.  She has been my knitting idol for years, and I was giddy at the thought of getting to learn from her in person!  In case you were in any doubt, she is every bit as funny, fabulous, and knit-tastic in person.  Really, she blows me away with her skill.  But she's also genuine.  Authentic.  She's the real deal: a real person who happens to have published several books, can knit at more than 60 stitches per minute, and travels all over North America to share her crafting wisdom.

In the middle of my second class with her, she started lecturing about something that seemed very familiar to me.  She was talking about something that I had already studied and practiced.  That may not sound like such a big deal, but to me it was like the heavens opened up: I knew the things that the Yarn Harlot knew!  She has a couple decades of experience on me, but for a few minutes in that class, I could have been the teacher.  I could have been her.

And it hit me that I want to be!  Okay, not THE Yarn Harlot.  I'm not going to steal her identity, get a perm, or give up on meat.  But I want to write, teach, and live knitting.  Woven through the tapestry of my life, through all the things that I am, is this obsession with fine alpaca yarn, nickel-plated circular needles, stitch markers.  I love project bags, entrelac, and charts.  My relationship with Ravelry is at least co-dependent, if not based entirely on maniacal stalking.

Who am I?  I'm a twenty-something.  And the caterpillar's question left out all the things that I'm still trying to become.  I am a writer and a knitter, and I want to become so much more of both.