Fiber Dreams

Welcome to all who are here for the Sweet Summer blog tour, hosted by Karen and her Cotton Spice blog.

Yes, it’s really been a week since I last posted. Honestly, I can’t believe how quickly a week goes by these days. I think I’m starting to get the real gist of Grandma’s complaint about how fast a year disappeared when she was in her mid 80s. Between drafting new patterns, tweaking those that have come back from test knitting, sending everything off to be printed, and buying supplies for more blocking wires, I’ve been swamped!

Last weekend we suddenly found ourselves out of the annual fog and early morning drizzle otherwise known as June Gloom, and fully into summer. One day the high was maybe in the mid 70s, and the next it was in the mid to upper 90s across the Los Angeles basin. The temps have settled down a bit since then, thankfully, but the skies are clear and the days are warm. Yup. It’s summer now.

The current shawl project

Though I’ve been too busy to post, I have not been too busy to knit. In fact, just yesterday I finished knitting the center panel of the (so far nameless) shawl I’m making with the fabulous Kami Bison yarn. As you can see, I have made a good start on the border as well.

The border is so easy to knit that I’ve memorized it already, making the knitting of it extremely quick. The other thing that’s fast about this border is that there are at most only 18 stitches to it, and you have to work up to that number row-by-row from the starting ten stitches. I’m hoping to get this pattern off to Dixie, my test knitter, later today. Keep your fingers crossed. Dixie and her husband recently moved from southern California to Dublin, Ireland. Dixie’s recent blog posts are filled with the ins and outs of setting up her new home there in Dublin.

Naming poll

I don’t have a clue yet what to call this shawl. That makes me think it’s time for another naming poll. I’ll give you all through the weekend to come up with a list of suggested names for it. This time I’m looking for names on a theme of far away or exotic lands, historic times—but names that haven’t already been used much or at all. I’ll put my favorites up in a poll to be voted on on Monday, July 6, then you can vote for your favorite. The person who suggests the winning name will get a free copy of the pattern when it’s done. Leave your suggestions in the comments to this post.

A sweater pattern from Berroco

For the first time in ages Berroco has come out with a pattern that I think is worth the cyberspace it fills up. Ditto is a short-sleeved sweater that’s just in time for summer. It looks quick to knit, while having a little going on so you won’t be bored to death while knitting it. Personally, I’d stay away from the yarn they used for the model… I don’t know about you, but I don’t need those horizontal stripes to make me look even wider than I already am—besides, if it were knit in a solid color, then vertical lines in the yoke would stand out more. All good.

Miss Ricki in the sun

I’ll close today with a picture of my sweet kitty, Miss Ricki. She’s been lapping up the sunshine, moving a bit now and then to keep out of the shadows as the sun moves across the sky, barely managing to lift her furry little head to acknowledge my presence—I’m sure it was mostly in complaint as I was blocking some of her sun.

I wanted to see how far I’ve really gotten, so last night after getting a fair amount of knitting done on the new shawl I traded needle tips for plugs, got the fabric wet, and pinned it out on the bed to block and dry over night. Blocking this way is far from perfect, but it usually gives me a pretty good idea of where I am, and how far I need to go. I’ve used up 24 grams of the 50 grams on the first ball (I have two), and the piece measures out to about 16¾ inches wide by 25 inches long. Thankfully the border is reasonably narrow, a tad under three inches at its widest spots, so I should be able to use some yarn from the second ball to make the center bit longer than it would be with just one ball of yarn.

Since I had things out anyway, I took final measurements of Antigua. If you’re not into huge shawls, you’ll be glad to know that this is the largest of four sizes. If you are into large shawls, you’ll be happy to note that this one measures out at 82 inches across the top, and 41 inches high. Big. Plenty of shawl length to wrap around, drape over your shoulders, pin attractively, that sort of thing.

I’ve been lazy about bringing Babylon downstairs to put away—it was still sitting on the bar after its photo shoot last week. I grabbed it and piled it on top of Antigua for its trip down, and noticed how gorgeous the colors are together. I can see it now: wear a rich red dress, and wrap Antigua’s taupe and bronze lacy-ness around the shoulders, or wear a taupe dress with the fabulous red scarf. Either would be a stunning outfit, don’t you think? Or, wear a black dress and layer taupe and red shawls over it. Ooh.

Dee at Posh Yarn received the Tilia patterns that I sent her before running off to TNNA. She’s kitted them up with 26 glorious colors of her luscious Diana yarn, and will be selling them starting at 8 pm UK time on Wednesday. The official preview will go up on her site tomorrow (Tuesday), but if you want to see the yarn colors ahead of time, Dee has a Flickr set out there that you can look at. Kit details are on the Posh blog. I’ll put the pattern details up on my site and Ravelry hopefully later today.

On the one hand, it looks like I’m making pretty good progress on the shawl I’m making with the lovely Kami Bison. On the other hand, I really wanted to be farther along than this by now. The weekend was more full than I expected, so not all that much knitting got done. I have two full repeats knit, though, and have started on the third. The picture below is the blocked swatch with the Kami Bison that I made after using different yarn to decide what stitches to use. There’s going to be just the one stitch pattern in the center of the rectangular shawl, with an applied border around the whole thing. The bison-blend yarn blocks beautifully, and is so soft that you almost don’t feel it sitting in your hand. Amazing stuff.

We finally figured out what’s wrong with my computer. Pretty much, anyway. The data drive is fine. The new housing that the data drive is in is fine. The problem is either with the motherboard or with the USB connector or bus where the data drive was plugged in at the back of the computer. We plugged the data drive into the USB connector at the front of the machine, and it works just fine. Go figure. We figured that out this morning. I have a new external drive on order—ordered it yesterday—it should be here later this week. I’m not sure at this point what we’re going to do with that one. Gads. Meanwhile, I’m very, very glad to be back in my home office using my own computer, and not limping along with the laptop on the dining room table.

Dave and I had a fabulous time in Columbus, Ohio for the summer TNNA trade show. We talked to tons of people, fondled lots of fabulous yarn, and managed to find time for some fun along the way.

Getting there

Our flight out of southern California was on time, but early, early, early. A friend came over to take us to the airport at 5:30 am. Other than the hour, everything went just fine with that flight. We even discovered that a couple of the attendants on that flight are friends with one of the pilots we know who flies for that airline. Like most people flying on Friday, our connecting flight out of Dallas was delayed, then instead of making up the time in the air, we actually lost even more time, and landed in Columbus 1½ hours late. After picking up our luggage, getting a cab, checking into our room, and doing a very quick change of clothing, we found our way across the street to the convention center, and to the room where the fashion show was already in progress. It was fun seeing all those knits on the runway. We got our hands on a program after the fact, and discovered that the fashion show must have started a bit late, as we saw most of it.

Antigua is done!

Friday evening, while relaxing in our room after a very long day, I finished knitting Antigua. I didn’t block it until day before yesterday. It’s huge. I haven’t measured it since it was pinned out—it’s undoubtedly relaxed a bit since then—but when pinned it was 88 inches across. I’ve yet to figure out how much yarn I used, all that stuff, but there’s a lot of yarn left on the hank—definitely enough to knit a good sized scarf or small shawl out of. I’ve written up the pattern in four or five sizes (don’t remember which at the moment), and this is the largest one.

First full day at TNNA

Saturday started with classes for both of us. Dave took a business on the Internet class, and I took a class from Sally Melville: First Choices, Basic Shapes. Dave managed to learn a few things from his class, and was reminded of other things he already knew but had temporarily forgotten, so that was worthwhile, and I learned a ton from Sally’s class. I learned so much, that I’m going to rip out the West Coast Swing cardigan I knit last autumn, and start over. Yes, I’ve been wearing the sweater. No, I haven’t released the pattern yet. And I’m glad. The more I wear that sweater, the less pleased I am with it. Ripping it out and starting over will be just the thing to do. In spite of the absolutely perfect button I found for it at Stitches West in February.

After our classes were over, we headed for the market. Though Dave’s been to a lot of conventions in his day, he hadn’t seen anything like this. One of the first things he noticed was how quiet it was in there. He’s used to high-tech conventions, where people and products are talking, buzzing, bonking, beeping over loud speakers every time you turn a corner. There’s nothing like that at a needle arts convention. Yarn and needlepoint canvases do their talking subliminally. Appealing to your sense of touch and your imagination, they provide eye-candy and hit your emotions not your ears.

First thing we did when we got into the market was to head to a well-known distributor’s booth. We’ve been talking with this distributor about getting my patterns to more shops for a couple of months now. We wanted to meet him in person, see the booth, etc. Another reason we wanted to see the booth was that I’d sent samples of seven of my pieces to be displayed for the show. They were hung in a prominent spot, and looked great. This was just the first of several conversations we were to have with the distributor over the next couple of days.

Next up, we found our way to the Claudia Hand Paints booth, to see Domus Aurea in action and talk to Claudia. She loves the shawl. She said that everyone loves the shawl. They all tried it on when it arrived the week before the show. One of her employees is going to knit it herself, right away.

Hold on a sec. I’ll be right back.

Sorry about that brief interruption, but Dave just came by with a long Internet cable, and moved me into the dining room. While not ideal, it’s a whole lot more comfortable here at the dining room table on a real chair, than perched on a bar stool. Yes, diagnostics are still going on my computer downstairs. He took the data drive out, attached it to one of his computers, and is now running diagnostics on both drives at the same time. Though obviously faster than doing them one at a time, it’ll be at least another day before we know anything. Argh.

Anyway, we found our way to a few other booths on my list, later swung by Interweave’s booth to get a signed copy of Cookie A.’s first book, Sock Innovation. It was marvelous seeing Cookie again. She still recognizes me. Amazing. Dave loved meeting her. She’s such a doll. She even happily posed for this picture with me. Thank you, Cookie!

Take me out to the ballgame

Not only had we not planned on going to the local Stitch ‘n Pitch game on Saturday evening (World Wide Knit in Public Day), we’d definitely planned not to go—we were both beat after a long day and a short night (our hotel room neighbors woke us at oh-dark something and I never did get back to sleep, though thankfully Dave did)—until a pair of tickets landed in our laps, at which point we realized that we needed to be at that game. We headed for the buses that would drive us the short distance to the ballpark less than an hour after the market closed for the day.

We had a fabulous time at the ballgame. We were told that the stadium was practically brand new, and it looked it. Though not absolutely packed, there was quite a good turnout, I thought. We met some great people at the game, including this marvelous quartet who ended up sitting behind us: Astrid and Siv from Dale of Norway, Kim, and Therese Chynoweth (some of her designs on Ravelry). Watch for Therese’s book coming out early next year on Norwegian finishing techniques.

What did I knit at the ballgame, since my shawl was done? Why, I cast on for a sock from Cookie’s new book, of course, and knit up all the ribbing. I’m making Wanida. I’ve been thinking lately that a simple project to take to knit knight, to work on now and then when my brain is fried, would be just the thing. I know. “Simple” and “Cookie A.” don’t normally belong in the same sentence, but Wanida is pretty easy for one of Cookie’s patterns. Not having to make any decisions about the pattern is a relief, and definitely simplifies the whole knitting experience—even if there are a number of yarn overs and knit-two-togethers, and SSKs on every other row.

If the photo of Dave in a crowd, and the ladies perched on a bleacher aren’t enough proof to you that we really were at a baseball game, I submit the following:

Yarn pron

Sunday was spent going to more booths, talking to more people, getting a little yarn to take home and knit. I’m sure you were wondering when I’d be getting around to the yarn pron that I teased you with yesterday. First up is a hank of Bellezza from Nancy at Chameleon Colorworks. You won’t finid Bellezza on Nancy’s site yet. It’s a brand new lace weight yarn, and is stunning. It’s 100% extra fine merino wool, and comes on a two ounce hank that gives 610 yards of yarn-y goodness. The hank I have is in a new colorway, that also isn’t on the site yet: Black Sheep. The color is one of those tonal things, shifting back and forth between black and shades of gray. I’m looking forward to knitting with it. It’ll be lovely. We saw Anne Hanson when we were visiting Nancy’s booth. It was good to see her again. Hi Anne!

The other yarn I brought home is Kami Bison from Fibre-Isle International. Did your ears perk up when I mentioned the name of this yarn? Yes, it has bison fiber in it, among other things. This is how it works out: 60% bamboo, 30% merino, and 10% bison. Sylvie buys died fleece, then spins the different colors together to create her beautiful and unique yarns. When you look at her site you’ll see Mooi listed there. Sylvie spins the beautiful Mooi yarns for Louet. Back to the Kami Bison. It’s fabulous. It’s so amazingly soft. I knit up a small swatch with it a couple days ago, then ripped it back. I don’t want to waste a single bit of this yarn. I want it all to go into the shawl I’ll be making with it. I think I have my stitches picked out. Now to nail down how the shawl will look, do a swatch just with the stitches I have in mind, before I cast on for the real thing.

Winding up and pattern news

Not only did we have a great time, make some stunning new contacts, and come home with yarn, but we’re 99.999% sure that we came home with a deal with the distributor we visited with about my patterns. It’ll be 100% sure on our end when we get that first order, probably some time next week. When that happens there will be some changes around here, one in particular that you may be unhappy about, especially at first, especially if you’re in the U.S. or Canada.

One of the conditions of going with this distributor is that I not sell PDF patterns. It turns out that shops don’t like it when customers come in with patterns they’ve downloaded from the Internet. Dave and I talked about this a lot, and we feel that going to 100% printed patterns within the U.S. will ultimately get more of my patterns into more knitter’s hands. That’s what it’s all about, right? While knitting and designing are the best career I’ve had so far, they’re also my job. I need to be paid for my job, just like I did when I worked for someone else, so I can do boring things like pay bills. In order to do that, and hopefully at some point to be able to do more than to just pay the bills, I need to sell more patterns. While Internet sales of my patterns have been good, over all I know I could sell a lot more patterns if I can only get them in front of more people. That’s where the distributor comes in. In addition to the orders that he took for me at TNNA, and in spite of his teasing I have a feeling they did fairly well there, I get nearly instant access to 2,500 shops across the country. I’m sure that quite a few of those shops will have Internet sites where you’ll be able to buy printed patterns online. I know of two right off the bat (pardon the baseball analogy), as I already sell them printed patterns: Elann and Earth Faire. You’ll have to wait for the patterns to show up at your door, but you’ll be able to get the yarn at the same time, and that’s good, right? I hope you understand. This was a purely business decision.

To those of you who are not in North America: Dave is certain that he’ll be able to make adjustments to the web site, so that those farther away will still be able to get PDF patterns. At least for now. I’m hoping in the future to find reputable distributors in other countries. But that’s a while out yet.

My computer’s still sick, so I’m still using the laptop. It’s sitting on the bar in the family room, and to use it I either sit on a bar stool that has no back support, or stand. Needless to say, I’ve about had it for the day. I didn’t want to leave you completely, though, so as a small tease, I will share with you pictures of yarn that I got from vendors at TNNA:

I did manage to get all the photos processed, and some are even on my pages on Ravelry, but my back has had it. I’m off to knit instead of torture myself further. I hope to get a good post out to you tomorrow morning, early, before my back gives out on me again.

Sorry, no photos for you today. We got home from TNNA in Columbus at 5:30 yesterday evening, and are still recovering. It was an awesome trip. I can’t even begin to tell you how glad we are that we went. We met fabulous folks, each took a class, met fabulous folks, went to the ballgame for Knit in Public Day, met fabulous folks, talked, walked, felt fibers, and otherwise had a fabulous time. I got to see samples of my designs hanging in two different booths, brought home incredible yarn, and got my picture taken with Cookie A. It was fabulous from start to finish. Well, except for the flight delays, but whatcha gonna do about those? Grin and bear it. We weren’t delayed anywhere near as long as other flights were, so didn’t have it all that bad. Dave was bowled over. He’d no idea that the show would be so big. I think it was the yarn fumes. They even got to him.

I’ll have pictures and better descriptions for you soon. I promise. Today we spent a lot of time going over our notes from the show. And running tests on my computer to try to find out why it died Thursday afternoon before we left. Yeah. Like that was good timing. Not. I was still trying to print stuff out to take with me. Luckily I got the main stuff printed in the morning. Whew.

Summer Knitty

Another thing that happened computer-wise but this time on Wednesday was a self-induced tragedy. I’d gone through every pattern of the new summer Knitty magazine, then closed the window without saving it after typing most of the post. Lost. Lost. Lost. I had to walk away from the computer for a while. At this point, I’m not even going to try to recreate what I lost except for this: Deadliest Crab is hysterical, and my favorite pattern in the issue is Miss Honeychurch by Cheryl Niamath. What follows is the meager amount that was saved before I blew it.

Hats.
I’m the only one in my family that I know of who has ever worn a knit hat, and I haven’t done it since the last time I went skiing—years and years ago. Because of this, the two hats in this issue, Urbanista by Wooly Wormhead and Trilobite by Hannah Ingalls are patterns that, though both nice, I have no use for.

Lace.
I love the geometric designs in Cold Mountain by Kieran Foley. I love the bead placement in Entomology by Laura Nelkin, but the double point at the bottom center feels a little odd to me.

Socks.
I like the stitch pattern in Mermaid’s Lagoon by Sadie Bellegarde, though I’d continue it down the foot until the toe decreases begin.

You maybe, but not me. Sorry to tease you. Even after years of the occasional attempt, and actually (at least sometimes) enjoying the smell of it, I still abhor coffee. The coffee I’m talking about here is the color. Colors. My good friend Denise (sadly blogless) loves her coffee, and each week as I work on this at knit knight she continues to be reminded of her favorite beverage because of the color of the yarn and beads.

Denise asked me the other day if I had a name for this design yet, and I told her what I was thinking of calling it. That just didn’t work for her. She suggested I name it after one of the many kinds of coffee, or perhaps after one of the places where it is grown, such as Antigua. Ooh. I like that. In fact, the more I think about calling the shawl Antigua the more I like it. Thank you, Denise!

I’ve made a lot of progress on Antigua over the last couple of days. The beading is all done, and I’ve moved into the part of the pattern where the ever shorter rows are more obvious and the stitch is simply repeated until it fades into the top center of the shawl.

I have about 240 stitches or so left on the needles at this point, so I’m nearing the halfway mark. Stitch-count wise. This means the rows are 180 and counting stitches fewer than they were to start. The actual knitting is much more than half done.

It was pointed out to me the other day (I think it was Denise, but I could be wrong), that kitting shawls starting with longest rows and ending with the shorter ones is perfect. Most of us have a lot of enthusiasm at the beginning of a project, so the long rows are more fun and exciting at that point. By the time we get to the shorter rows near the top we may be getting bored with the project—the short rows are a relief, and are better at keeping our interest. There’s something to be said for that. I think I agree. I’ll let you know next time I knit a triangular shawl the other way around.

It’s official. I’m delighted that I ripped out all that knitting and all those beads last week and started over with different beads. Though for a lot of things I do like matching the color of the beads to the yarn so that the beads just add a little sparkle, a little texture, it turns out that for this one I want the beads to stand out, show up, have a larger role in the look of the finished shawl.

I didn’t really like the black beads on this yarn. Somehow they were too flat. I dug out some different ones I have had in the stash, and they work much better. These new beads are a dark bronze color, and have a slightly metallic glint to go along with their general bead-y shininess. Love.

I got a fair amount of knitting done on Thursday night and Saturday, as Dave was off playing Halo with friends both nights. On Thursday a guy from Bungie was even there. He brought along a preview of Halo ODST that everyone got to play. Dave even got a cool Halo ODST t-shirt. Because of this, I’m farther along now than I was when I ripped out those 15,000 stitches on Thursday.

I’ve more than halfway decided to provide multiple sizes for this shawl, so that people can easily knit it to suit their personal needs, desires. I’m currently thinking that this will be the largest size, and there will be two smaller sizes. We’ll see what happens when I start charting out the changes.

Dave and I are starting to get excited about going to the TNNA convention in Columbus later this week. I have to help Dave with his homework for the class he’s taking, though. For some reason, that just tickles my funny bone.

Dave thinks the lovely taupe color of this yarn looks like dust bunnies. Especially from a distance. Especially when the knitting is bunched up and small, like it is now.

Yes, you heard me say, “Small, like it is now.”

This is because all that lovely knitting that I showed you the other day is gone. All 15,200 stitches and 480 beads. Gone. With a simple pull of the thread.

It’s a bit of a shocker, isn’t it?

When I got up on Tuesday morning I was quite happy with my project, and was until I photographed it for the blog. But things showed up in the photos that are hard to see in real life, and my disappointment grew. Thinking that I could ignore the warning signs, I actually knit at it in the afternoon. The dissatisfaction reached its peak around 5 pm. Okay. It’s got to come out. Those beads simply will not do.

The only problem at that point was how to frog the thing—not the lace, I’ve done that plenty of times before, that part’s a simple matter—but how to safely disengage that many beads without losing half of them. Or more.

Dave had a fabulous idea at this point. Put the knitting in a bag, close the bag up so that only one strand of yarn can come through the hole, then pull. So we tried it. I got a large ziplock bag, stuffed the knitting into it, zipped it up, held my breath, and pulled. You know what? It worked really well. It wouldn’t work this well on all yarns, but this one unravels so cleanly that it did just fine. The beads popped off as the frogging got to them, and they danced around safely inside the bag. In a sad, bizarre, frustrating way it was actually sort of fun.

All I can say is that it’s a very good thing that I enjoy knitting.

I spent the rest of the evening casting on again. You know what? It takes a while to cast on 419 stitches. And to count them—multiple times—to ensure that the correct number of stitches are on the needle.

Yesterday I started actually knitting again. So now, instead of having 38 rows and almost 500 beads attached to my project, I have 9 rows and no beads. The beading will resume with row 11. In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not going to use black beads. Two reasons: I don’t have enough—this project requires a lot of beads—and it turns out I have another lovely dark color that has a little more bling than black, and looks ever so much nicer on this lovely taupe yarn.

The tiny swatch on the left is my experiment with black beads. They work (though Dave will argue this point), but they’re nothing special. The other beads I have in mind are much, much prettier on this yarn.

I had an adorable furry helper this morning for my photo shoot. She even let me zoom in on her pretty little face. I love her expression. She rarely even sniffs at the camera any more. Instead she’s all, “Mom…”

On another note entirely, we have a little volunteer plant that we’re nurturing. No idea what it is. I’m embarrassed to admit where it was growing. It all comes down to screwy plumbing. No, really. It does. Whoever plumbed our kitchen was either sick, demented, or had absolutely no idea what he was doing. It twists and turns and bends every which way, with the result that if we regularly use the garbage disposal for, you know, all the normal stuff, it inevitably backs up. On a holiday. When we’re in the middle of cooking, cleaning, and preparing to have a lovely meal. Right. You can see the problem.

At one point Dave invested in a really, really long snake to clean it out with. Really long. That really long snake barely reaches some of the clogs. It’s a nightmare. Much swearing and many days are normally involved in de-clogging the sink. It’s so painful that we have all but given up on the garbage disposal. These days, for the most part, only the smallest of plate scrapings go down the drain. Because of this, the disposal isn’t run every day. There’s just no need.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

When I was at Mom’s Dave came up one morning to make coffee, get his breakfast, and happened to look in the sink. It’s a pretty normal thing to do, right? This particular morning, however, he did a bit of a double take. There was a plant, a seedling, growing up out of the garbage disposal.

Instead of running the disposal, he got one of my tiny pots and a pretty little saucer out of the garage, found some potting soil, carefully pulled the seedling out of the sink, and planted it. It’s been growing happily on our windowsill ever since.

The only real problem at this point is that we have absolutely no idea what this baby plant is.

The normal things to go down the drain are tiny, tomato seeds, bell pepper seeds, things like that. We talked about what he’d been eating, and there was nary a cucumber nor a grape, neither an apple seed nor watermelon. The little plant remains a mystery. Do you know what it might be?

I started working on the triangular version of Domus Aurea the other day. Until a few minutes ago when I was upstairs taking pictures I was tickled pink with it. Now I’m not. Why you ask? Because it’s clear to me now. I should have used black beads.

If I’d used black beads, the diamond design would show up better. Read: the diamond design would show up. At all. There are two problems with this.

1. I’ve already knit 35 rows, which amounts to about 14,000 stitches and exactly 480 beads. We won’t comment on the time involved.

2. I don’t have enough black beads to do this project. I don’t think. Maybe I do. It’s hard to tell as the black ones come in a tube, and the rainbow-clear ones I’ve been using come in a box.

Since when have I let a mere 14,000 stitches keep me from ripping back and starting over? If I’m careful, perhaps I don’t have to rip out the whole thing, just the rows with beads. Cough. That would leave me a foundation, anyway. Decisions, decisions.

Does anyone know how many no. 8 seed beads are in a tube that weighs 26 grams, including the tube? Help! Sigh.