One behind, another ahead

The 2013 festival season is officially open with the 104th Connecticut Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend kicking things off.

And what adorable faces KnittingKittens, Patshere and I found as we

Nellie was a little lamb …

wandered through!  This was, it seemed, the year of the nursery.  Kids (the kind with hooves), bunnies, and of course, lambs like little Nellie, here.  She is a Romney; by unscientific observation Romney was one of the most visible breeds of this show.

We were pleased to see one of the

Olympia Farm Romney yarns

newer farms in Connecticut bringing lovely Romney fiber and yarn to market.  Anne McIntyre-Lahner and Mark Lahner’s Olympia Farm of Guilford first appeared on my radar a couple of years ago.  This year, their booth was well-stocked with natural-colored Romney in cream and grays at various weights and extremely reasonable prices.   The lighter shade you see here comes from Maggie, Bonnie, Coco and Cookie.

Sadly, in spite of victories like that, overall there appeared to be fewer vendors than in previous years.  Some of our favorites were not to be found in the barns and tents, perhaps reflecting just how hard it is to keep a small

Slinky Mink … an understatement

independent business afloat.  However, others, like Still River Mill, continue to work at distinguishing themselves with their own unique yarns.  Take, for example, Slinky Mink, pointed out by Clara at Rhinebeck last fall.  It was heavenly to touch.  Find it.  Knit it.  Love it.  Repeat.

As a non-lamb-eater, I did appreciate that the lamb stew and other lamb entrees were not on the menu ~ or infusing an entire indoor area.  I always found it a little jarring (if not downright creepy) to have lamb served up a mere twenty yards from barns with live sheep.

Making knots with a purpose: tatting

Every year festival organizers bring great demonstrations to this show.  It is easy to be mesmerized by the bobbin lace makers. I found the tatting equally hypnotic.  It’s kind of like macrame using cobwebs that ultimately produces its own special lace. All those teensy knots and they were just flying by.  It was something to behold.

Since I have been

Fripperies so beautifully displayed …

somewhat preoccupied planning my new knitting space, I confess to being completely taken by everything about this display from Nifty Thrifty Dry Goods.  It had more trims than I would ever begin to know what to do with … and everything in the booth was just pretty.  (I am ignoring the fact that everything here requires use of a sewing needle and thread, where I

How many owls can YOU spot?

possess no talent whatsoever and generally provoke sympathy from those who see my infantile attempts … )  Then again, maybe if I amassed enough antique spools with enough different ribbons like these, I might be motivated to change that.

Nahhhh.  They’re better just to look at and enjoy.

Now that “the season” is underway, if you are heading out to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend, I hope to see you there.  I will be reprising my role as a Booth Babe at Spirit Trail Fiberworks ~ that’s at A30 of the Main Exhibition Hall.  Do come by to see what Jennifer has been cooking up in her dyepots and give me a hoot!

TINK-erbell’s candles

Forsythia

Happy blogiversary to me … four years that we have visited here in this virtual owl box.  Seems a lot longer, then I look at my extremely erratic posting over the past eight months and drop my head in some shame.  But life happens, and it’s happened to me in spades.  And while many of my blogging brethren have no problem sitting down and dashing out a post, I spend time thinking about I want to say and how I want it represented, visually and otherwise.

The upshot is a rather absent(minded) Owl of late. I can’t promise I will do better over the next year with the mayhem I expect on the horizon at Owl Manor, but I will try.

‘Course, just blocking a half dozen pieces would help (cough, cough).

That said, I will be honest and tell you today about a new experience in my knitting world:  I blew a deadline.  I didn’t want to or mean to, but ultimately, we agreed it was the best outcome for everyone.

Sunna in Fig with 8/0 Miyuki Delica Hex beads

The project is a lovely little shawl from my friend, Sivia Harding.  Nothing complex, just some beads and my favorite fingering weight yarn, Spirit Train Fiberworks Sunna.  It was supposed to be done for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival later this week.

First, I ran out of beads.  They were from my little bead stash, which is pretty well-organized, so it took very little time to order and receive more, but it did delay me a few days when I really needed to  have those days back.

Everything was going great guns until I had one of those head-slapping, I-should-have-had-a-V-8 moments around 4 in the morning.  You see, even though Sivia clearly told me how to do the increases, I still manipulated them to look like yarn-overs.  After all, this was lace.  Of course increases should be decorative.

What hit me in that predawn haze was the notion that a shawl knit side to side increases halfway, then decreases back again.  So all those increases would be decreases imminently.  Decreases that would NOT need a yarn-over to highlight them.  Ummm.

Oops.

See the lovely dropped stitch at the top just waiting to be picked back up?

I am pretty game at fixing mistakes.  I mean, I just had to drop the stitches to each increase, pick it up the right way, and then run the stitch back up to the needles again and Bob’s your uncle.  Yeah, sure.  Tinking down 70 or more rows to reach some of those offending increases.  Then discovering a few times that maybe I didn’t catch every single stitch I needed to on the way back up again …

Am I an 11-year-old who can’t read a pattern, for the love of Mike? Apparently so.

Bottom line:

Ready to rip!

The shawl was about 45% complete.

I ripped it all out and started over again.

You’ll see it at Rhinebeck.

I will have some sanity in the interim.

But blowing a deadline, that’s going to bug me for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for coming by to visit today and every time I post.  I appreciate you taking the time. Now let’s eat some cake, or at least find ice cream.

Everything is a little better with ice cream.

Windward

The blocking backlog chez Owl is rapidly reaching epic proportions.  So while away (we somehow managed to narrowly escape in the wake of the blizzard for a week in a much warmer clime), I figured it was at least time to try to photograph a project that refuses to be photographed easily.  Or well.

Windward, all points and angles

However, Heidi Kirrmaier’s Windward is an incredibly easy ~ and fun ~ little knit.  Is it a scarf or a shawl?  Either.  Both.  Whichever you want.  It starts with a garter triangle at one

Cast-on corner

end and using increases, decreases, cast-ons and bind-offs (but no picking up stitches or breaking your yarn), produces modular triangles and rectangles in garter, stockinette and reverse stockinette.  Really, it’s hard to know which is the right side.

Pure simplicity

The knit is so simple that it deserves a really yummy yarn ~ and one without distracting color changes that would detract from the shaping of the piece.  I used one of my all-time go-tos, Spirit Trail Fiberworks Sunna, a fingering-weight blend of merino, cashmere and bombyx silk that is positively delicious and wearable year-round.  The unnamed blue-violet colorway was the 2010 Holiday Yarn Club selection.  Because of the unique construction of the piece, and because my skeins were extremely well-matched, I did not alternate skeins.

Wrap it and go

Windward is extremely wearable.  Its unusual points give it a ton of visual interest no matter how you wear it.  Initially, I thought I might want to whip a quick I-cord edge across the top to keep it from rolling, but that would create a front and back side, and it really isn’t necessary.  Why complicate something that works?

So here are the deets:

Pattern:  Windward from the “Come Sail Away” ebook by Heidi Kirrmaier, aka PiPiBird.  I would recommend this to a new knitter who has mastered the basic stitches and is ready for a little challenge.  For an experienced knitter, this is pure amusement.

Yarn: Spirit Trail Sunna.  Sunna has wonderful drape that fits this pattern wonderfully.  Total yarn used: 490 yards ~ 65 g remain from second skein.

Needles: US 4

Mods: none

Project marriage score: 9.5.  This was a no-brainer.  I’ve given up trying to get a good image of it and will just wear it instead.

Embraced

In the afterglow of the Knitter’s Review Retreat, I sometimes find it difficult to write; never more so than this year.  I’ve said that this four-day respite is my Christmas.  To stretch the metaphor farther, this time I felt mostly like George Bailey, simply overwhelmed by the tidal wave of kindness that swept me through the weekend.  It seemed every time I was alone for a moment, another friend sat down beside me with a thoughtful memento or hug to say that Nutmeg Owl would never really be flying alone.

The shawl-clad snowy owl – he hoots, for real!

From stitch markers to fancy soaps; handmade bags to mittens for Darling Bebe, you showered me until I was nearly speechless and certainly misty-eyed.  It’s no wonder that wherever this group convenes, when it is together, I am home.

Whoooo needs hexi-puffs?

And, for the record, the trendy “hexi-puffs” have NOTHING on these little guys ~ who are part of a complete ju-ju kit for Owl Manor.  (It would have taken me longer to sew on the eyes than to knit them ALL.)

But on to the weekend …

Ann Budd and a magic formula

The teaching draw featured the best battery of instructors we have every had in tandem at KRR:  Ann Budd, who always has a trick to share; Sivia Harding, patroness of lace and beading; Amy Herzog, who helped every person there see the value of the right cut for the right body, and Mary Scott Huff, who left us

Sivia Harding demystifies lace design

laughing so hard we gasped for air and wiped away tears (and I was incapable of taking a single picture without shaking violently).  Whichever teachers you had, you wished you’d had them all.  And every one was generous with her time in and out of the classroom.  This is not a gathering where teachers hide out at special tables away from the plebes.  We are all knitters; we mix and mingle throughout the weekend.

It seemed that the 361 days since we were last together have brought sad times for so many ~ the loss of mothers, spouses and

How many knitters does it take … ?

other close family members.  Perhaps that is what made for the most cohesive gathering anyone can remember.  Time crept rather than sped as we reconnected, updated and helped each other through entanglement.

And helped each other treat ourselves to a bit (or more) of fiber luxury at our

All the pretties …

on-site marketplace with Spirit Trail Fiberworks, Briar Rose, String Theory and newcomers Three Bags Full and longtime Retreat-goer turned vendor PeaceLoveYarn.  The line in the hallway outside looked a lot like Black Friday at midnight ~ or whatever they are now going to call it since the holiday season must now start the day after Halloween, but I digress.

2012 swag bag

I have not even mentioned the swag bag for 2012, including one of the sweetest of children’s books, Extra Yarn, the very useful color grid (that I will use at Owl Manor more than for knitting) and yarn, stitch markers and more.  I do use my KRR coffee mugs judiciously, when I want a special reminder of being with people I love who share something special.

Somehow, in the midst of her constant personal reinvention and multiple projects, Clara Parkes manages to put the right people together, sprinkle yarn-fairy dust and make magic.  Never more so than in 2012.  I am endlessly grateful that she and the others who help behind the scenes do so, and allow me to be a guest at the party.

I am strengthened and humbled and ready to face the next chapter, whatever it might bring.

Remnants

At the end of most projects, I am left with a small ball of yarn.  Sometimes there’s enough left to be seriously useful.  Other times, it’s hard to tell.  That’s why I was intrigued by the Knitspot pattern Plain Jhaynes, part of a generous birthday present from KnittingKittens.  Anne Hanson wrote the pattern for some light fingerless mitts made from a tiny bit of laceweight yarn.  I saw major possibilities for using up the remnants left from all of those shawls.

But first, I’d need to see just how much little yarn I needed to make a pair.  I had 41 grams of Spirit Trail Fiberworks Nona in

Looking plain … for now

Seaweed from making the Phoenix Rising shawl.  Conveniently, it was already divided into two pretty-much equal balls.  I would have been comfortable working from both ends of the same yarn cake if that were not the case.   As you can see, I worked them up two-at-a-time on a US 1 circular using the magic loop method, as I do anytime I am making “two of a kind.”

Nona in Seaweed with beads

Of course, not being content to leave well enough alone, I couldn’t really leave them to be “plain.”  Since there were extra beads from the  shawl, I wanted to use those, too.  I decided to apply them to the pattern after each of the “crossed” stitches was worked.

Then Owl’s little disaster struck and every subsequent piece of knitting I picked up went to hell for weeks.

Harrumph.  Lest you think me a human knitting machine, somehow, I simultaneously picked up an errant stitch on one side of the left mitt, then on the right one I made the beaded pattern go wonky.  Seriously and undeniably OFF.  RIP-it.  RIP-it. RIP-it.  Back about 12 rounds.

Photography requiring contortions and a timer

I know Anne Hanson had a reason for making the two lace panels different on the two hands ~ presumably for mirroring.  However, for beading purposes, the beads just sit better on the right-hand panel (Panel B if you are keeping score at home), which features crossed stitches.  The beads lean nicely and pick up the light.

Ergo, with mistakes to fix anyway, I seized the opportunity to rip all the way back to the beginning of the lace panel on the left hand and use the Panel B chart for both.  I don’t think it makes one whit of difference whether they are “mirrored.”  What they are is soft, lightweight and oh-so-cozy.  Cashmere, silk and merino will do that.

Project marriage score:  9.5  (Nona is a recommended yarn for the pattern.)

Needles:  US 1 Addi Turbo, .5mm crochet hook for beading

Modifications:

• Used Panel B chart for both hands
• Placed each 8/0 bead after working the “crossing over” stitch of the sequence
• Worked 9 1/2 repeats of Panel B chart, then added an extra .75 inches to length at top before ribbing
• On thumbs, worked 10 rounds stockinette before ribbing

Total yarn usage:  31 grams

Nice little thumb gussets

Of course, you need not bead yours.  You don’t even have to bother with a patterned panel.  Just go round and round with that stockinette and some luscious laceweight leftovers.

I am toying with bringing the needle size down one more because the Nona really relaxed after a bath.  I think it would be very easy to tweak these for fingering/sock yarn, too.  Finally, a way to use up all of those little balls of laceweight I am too stingy to get rid of.

Nothing plain about these Jhaynes.

 

Proof

Eight weeks and almost no knitting.

It just hasn’t felt right.  (Then again, a lot of things haven’t felt right.)  I’ve been jumpy, constantly amped up, never really able to settle down.  There’s also the job that never stops, either.

It’s been driving me nuts.

Said by an extremely generous friend ~ who also happens to be very wise: “Why don’t you just try some knits and some purls.  A scarf or something.”

Wha’?

The Knitting Goddess clearly agreed.  I had signed up for Sivia Harding‘s first club, Mezzaluna – the patterns only, to knit down some stash along the way over the next year.  Penumbra was released at the end of August.  I decided to use some lovely organically grown and naturally dyed stash yarn.   The Yarn Goddess made sure the beads I ordered were inexplicably delayed for nearly two weeks coming from a mere 2 states away.  Then, when they arrived, there had been a mistake in the order and the wrong quantity of beads was sent.  So I started knitting while I waited for the remainder.  And it turned out that the yarn has just enough indigo in it to crock on my hands (and clothes) every time I touch it.

O-kay.  No beaded lace right now, though I was sure a nice chart was going to sort this out and bring the rhythm back.

But today, I can show you proof of knitting.

Proof of Knitting with Birte

Doesn’t look like much, other than the gorgeous colorway Lamb’s Ear in Spirit Trail Fiberworks Birte.  Birte and Sunna; Sunna and Birte.  Identical yarns (75%  merino, 15% cashmere, 10% bombyx silk) of different weights that do everything you ask.

This will eventually be the Winding River Cowl.  A bunch of ribbing and some cables that will make it reversible.

Just what the Yarn Goddess ordered in the first place.  I wasn’t clever enough to recognize it at the time.

Special

When things go horribly awry, you learn which of the people in your world really care.  I am so very fortunate … other than BFF KnittingKittens, my dear ones are an Internet connection away, but they are there.  With endless support and encouragement.

It takes my breath away.

Like the package that showed up yesterday.  A puffy package from Spirit Trail Fiberworks.  Only I didn’t order anything.  And it’s too early for a club shipment.

Dyed and spun with love

This is no retail therapy.  This is love.  974 yards of hand-dyed, hand-spun support just waiting to be turned into a cashmere-merino hug I can wear.  In my favorite shades, of course (which I found the iPad camera wanting at capturing).

Can we talk over-achievers here for a sec?  Okay, not one to waste a minute, no, she had to combine the meditative aspects of spinning with exercise:  Jennifer spun it on the treadmill, for EZ’s sake!

I hope this can help me find my knitting mojo, for like Peter Pan’s shadow, it has utterly deserted me.  In the month since Owl Manor burned, I have managed to:

• bind off a shawl;
• drop stitches on one mitt while adding an extra stitch to its mate (requiring massive frogging of beading);
• knit 4 rows of garter stitch.

That’s it.  Most nights, I just don’t have any stillness anymore.  There is sourcing and searching and seeking and reading and researching to do.  It is hard to roll it up and Put. It. Away.

But now I have something else to search for: the perfect pattern to marry to this very special delivery.

Roundtrip

I know I’m not the only daft knitter who does this.

Can’t be.

Upcoming: 72 hours of travel through two time zones to attend a meeting in the desert, then turn around and fly back East.

What will I obsess over most before I leave?

What knitting to take, of course.

With my current project too close to completion, it’s a recurrence of startitis.

Key considerations:  A one-skein project that involves minimal tools, little swatching and nearly mindless instructions.  Because I have some sense, a pattern that I already own.  And a combo I can package easily this evening while packing the other stuff.  You know, clothes, makeup ~ things muggles consider necessities … before my wake-up in the owl-hours to catch my flight.

Sometimes I will spend days thinking this over.

I don’t have the luxury of time now.

But the answer is incredibly simple:  Knitspot’s Plain Jhaynes mitts with Spirit Trail Fiberworks Nona in Seaweed left over from my Phoenix Rising.  It’s a perfect use for laceweight remnants, and since the yarn just happens to be (ahem) in a basket on the coffee table, we can check that off.  Oh – and I have a skein of BrooklynTweed Loft and Pei within easy reach, too, so I can finally write some kind of a review.  Loft in the colorway Barn Owl, to boot. Or hoot.

Check and check.

Season 2 of Downton Abbey is loaded on the iPad.  A defensive measure for the one (long) flight where I appear to be stuck in a middle seat (gulp!).

Now to the rest of that packing list …

Caboose

Yes, dear friends, I am still here.  It’s just that I am so very far behind at everything that I can see my own backside!  That includes correspondence, mailing prizes (for wont of packaging), laundry, organizations I purportedly lead, gardening and anything but the care of one Darling Bebe.  On the other hand, there is some packing, straightening and staging accomplished, so the ledger isn’t completely unbalanced.  It’s just that priorities are restacked and jumbled at the moment.  And somehow my employers have failed to notice that it is summer, when things are supposed to slow down.  Not so.

Polaris, a mystery KAL

I can’t claim any significant knitting is happening.  Nope.  By the time I pick up needles, I pretty much doze off sitting up straight in mid-stitch.  But some long-completed FOs are finally getting the attention they deserve since there is an invitingly pristine guest bed available for blocking.

Spirit Trail Fiberworks Nona

This is my first attempt at a KAL, or knitalong, as part of the Susanna IC group on Ravelry.  Today, you know the pattern as Polaris.  But at the time, participants were rationed portions of the pattern  every couple of weeks, and dutifully kept each other company knitting in our respective places around the world.

Beads? Can you see beads?

I liked the concept a lot.  The problem with the “mystery” KAL for someone who lives and dies by the success of project marriage is the great difficulty in choosing the right yarn – and more difficult – beads – for the pattern when you don’t know what the finished project looks like.   In this instance, the yarn was easy – Spirit Trail Fiberworks Nona.  I used it to make an enormous and dramatic Phoenix Rising for STF, but had nothing of my own made with Sunna’s skinnier laceweight sister.  Time to use the skein from the 2011 Holiday Club in a colorway very similar to STF’s Aquitaine.  (Most accurate in top photo)

Modification: I-cord bind-off

I know that Nona is marked “heavy laceweight” but as someone who’s knit several football fields’ worth of it, I would quibble with that.  Nona takes an 8/0 bead via crochet hook just fine.  Because of her fiber composition (50% merino, 25% silk, 25% cashmere), she has a bit of “grab” that laceweight yarns without cashmere don’t have.  Once soaked, Nona blocks out hard and gets thinner.  I would not hesitate to use Nona for just about anything calling for “laceweight” unless the project specifically called for 100% silk.   And if you are new to knitting with laceweight yarns, I would recommend Nona specifically because of that bit of grabbiness you might like.

Look – see there are beads, really!

Choosing the beads was another story altogether.  I had some 8/0 dark amethyst AB seed beads, but in swatching, they seemed kind of lost on the dark yarn.  So following some advice from Bead Queen Sivia Harding, I went with a lighter, clear bead I found at a local shop.  They do pop a bit in plain natural light.  Admittedly, they are rather subtle.  I’m not one for too much bling.  But next time, I will try to go with a triangle or hexagonal bead ~ one with facets that flash a bit more when picking up the light.

I know you can see the beads here.

As for the pattern, it was the usual clear Susanna IC crescent.  I thought it was fun to knit with other folks and to get the pattern in installments.  Until the lights went out.  And stayed out in the aftermath of the October Snowpocalypse.  (Which tells you how long ago all this started.)  It’s one thing to knit lace by candlelight.  Beading by candlelight?  Nope.  Unh-unh.  No way.  Sorry.

Eventually, the poor little shawl was finished and relegated to the blocking pile.  It has waited and waited and waited.  But now you get to see her.

Yarn:  Approx. 410 yards Spirit Trail Fiberworks Nona

Pattern:  Polaris – “Susanna IC Mystery Crescent KAL”

Modifications:  Because of the tendency for the top edge of these crescents to roll in stockinette, I chose to use a two-stitch I-cord bind-off using a US 7 needle.  If I had it to do again, I would have bumped that up to an 8.  It gave a very nice edge to the top that I think it needs for stability.

Needles:  US 8 (C/O) and US 5 Addi Turbo circulars

Project marriage:  Yarn – 9.5  / Beads – 6

Somehow, I’m afraid that if I resurrect the KAL thread on Ravelry, I’ll be in for a lot of hazing.  I guess that’s what happens when you are the de facto caboose.

Brigantia

I felt it coming on.

A full-blown case of yarntoxication, brought about by Brigantia.  Brigantia is the newest Spirit Trail Fiberworks yarn, a blend of 85% Polwarth and 15% silk.  Polwarth is a breed of sheep, but there’s not much of it that gets spun up for knitters.  Those spinners tend to hoard it all for themselves.  Now I know why.

Mountain Ash – almost as big as the bed

My test project was Kate Gagnon Osborn’s Mountain Ash shawl.  It starts with hundreds of yards of garter stitch, which allowed me to really get a feel for Brigantia.  This DK blend does not split and you can knit for hours without looking at your hands.  For its apparent lightness, the silk also gives it warmth ~ something to keep in mind if your personal thermostat runs hot.  (Mine does not.)  I appreciated the lap blanket it became during the damp wet weeks before MDSW.  The hefty 600-yard put-up seemed like the skein-that-would-not-end.  But it did, about six rows before the knitted-on lace border for the large shawl.

I assure you, this lace border eats yardage and you won’t have as much left as you think you will.  I used Addi Turbo US 6 needles for the entire project to see how Brigantia would perform lace tricks without extra-sharp tips.  Beautifully.  Nary a split anywhere.

Brigantia likes lace lots

The Persian Nights colorway, a ringer for Crayola blue-violet, did not bleed at all in a nice sudsy bath.  For blocking, I wanted to maintain the squishy integrity of the garter stitch and still be able to open up the lace edge, so I ran a lifeline through the stitches where the border joined the shawl and pinned that in place before pinning out the lace points.

Colorway: Persian Nights

Brigantia was happy to oblige: it took the blocking wonderfully and held it well, likely because of its silk content.  Unfortunately, my overtaxed brain failed to remind me to photograph the full shawl on display in the STF booth or anywhere else off the pins.  Sigh.  I hate it when that happens.  Suffice it to say that the finished piece has wonderful drape and leaves me thinking that a whole shawl in Brigantia ~ like Juneberry Triangle or Terra or any one of about a zillion others ~ would be just ducky.

The official 411:

Pattern:  Mountain Ash

Yarn:  1.75 skeins Spirit Trail Fiberworks Brigantia

Needle: Addi Turbo US 6

Pattern mods:  None

Project marriage score:  9

It’s a good thing Brigantia is the STF Knitting Club selection this month.  That means there’s more en route to my house.  Because

Stowaways in Spice

there’s already a skein chez Owl earmarked for an Isla Wrap I know will chase off the fall chill nicely.  And there are these other skeins that vaulted into my carry-on before I left for the airport.

Keep an eye out for Brigantia on this page, where it should appear in late May/early June.  You won’t be disappointed.