It’s been a busy week here at the shop, and even busier out of it. Last Tuesday Tabi and I were the Guest Speakers at the Kitchener Waterloo Knitters’ Guild. In keeping with their Lace theme for this year, we helped members decide “What to Knit with When and Why.” Tabi spoke about her amazing handspun lace yarns as well as the basic properties of different yarns, fibers and ply structure. I talked a little bit about unconventional lace, especially lace which involves using bulkier yarns.

I guess I’m just an impatient knitter, because I certainly found a ton of samples to take with me. I’d never really noticed consciously before, but I seem to knit heavy-weight lace quite often. First there was the Gull Lace Scarf, and then as I went deeper back through the cache of finished projects, I found tons of food for thought.

First is Jared Flood’s Hemlock Ring Blanket, slightly improved by a kitten, knit out of worsted weight Alpaca. This is a nice, quick simple knit that I a great time with, and which has gotten a ton of use since I finished it. As you can probably tell. I used it to demonstrate the draping and unique properties of alpaca yarns.

Yarn: Alpaca With A Twist Big Baby
Pattern: Jared Flood’s Hemlock Ring Blanket
Needles: 5mm

I also took this little linen top with me to showcase the properties of that fibre:

This is the Lotus Blossom Tank Top from an older issue of Interweave Knits.
Yarn: Rowan Linen Drape
Needles: 3.75mm
This was a knit that got picked up and put down, and then frogged and reknit a couple times, because it was knit way back when I was still pretty new to lace knitting and pattern stitches in general. The yarn was rather splitty as well, as linens often are, due to loose ply structure.

There were others, many, many others, including a few that I borrowed from Grace, one of the girls who comes to knit and chat on Thursday Nights. Overall I think the talk went pretty well, despite the fact that I’m usually a little nervous speaking in front of crowds that large, and despite the fact that some technical difficulties meant that my part of the presentation looked a little less polished than it should have, but such is life. Right now I’m working on finishing my sock homework so I can help Johanna B. as she teaches her “Toe-up socks on two circular needles” class next weekend!

Sampling

Where did the weekend go? I spent yesterday out on the motorcycle and it was pretty awesome to be back on the bike again after all the chaos of the past couple weeks. It was just a little trip in and around Waterloo but it was still pretty fun.

There has been lots of sampling going on here at the shop, both sample knitting and sample spinning. I cracked into one of my fibre purchases from the Knitters’ Fair:

70% merino wool, 30% seacell fibre from The Black Lamb.

I had made a deal with myself that the only thing I’d buy at the Fair would be spinning fibre, as obviously yarn shopping was not on the menu! Over last winter and this summer I basically whittled my stash of beautiful things to spin down to almost nothing, so it seemed reasonable to pick up a few lovely things to spin at the show. So far I’m having fun:

I’m spinning with a 2 ply sport weight in mind, and it’s going reasonably well so far. I’m using a short draw worsted method for this particular preparation, so it’s really bring out the shine in the yarn. I can’t wait to ply up a little bit to see if it turns out as I expect.

I’ve discovered that it’s very hard to take a picture of a hand-knit hat when that hat happens to be on one’s own head. I wanted to show off two different hats that have found there way into the shop recently, but the camera is confounding me at the moment. Angela was kind enough to knit a hat for the shop out of Jared Flood’s new book, Made in Brooklyn, but it only really makes sense when it’s on a human head.

Pattern: Quincy by Jared Flood, Classic Elite #9108 Made In Brooklyn
Needles: 5.5mm 16″ circ and 5.5mm dpns
Yarn: 1 skein Manos Wool Clasica, color 703 (there was tons of this wool left over at the end, probably enough for a pair of fingerless mittens.)

This is the most interesting execution of a hat I have seen in a long time, using a moebius-like construction as its base and an I-cord edging to make everything look quite tidy. It took Angela and I a little while and a little tea to figure out how to pick up the stitches for the crown but the result is definitely worth it.

The other hat is tough to photograph mostly due to color, not construction.

Pattern: Odessa(ravelry link) by Grumperina
Yarn: Manos Silk Blend, Color 3105
Needles 3.75 and 4mm

This pattern is an old favourite from back when Magknits was still running. I knit it once before for a friend but I had never attempted the beads, so it was fun to actually work the pattern as written, beads and all. Apparently it looks good on me because I sold the yarn for it to two different people almost immediately after I’d finished it. I think this one will be a favourite this fall and winter…

Diving In

I’m not going to do the standard blog introduction thing.

Last weekend we took the whole yarn store to the KW Knitters’ Fair, so you can imagine the chaos that results from taking everything out of the shop, putting together a booth, taking apart said booth, and then putting the yarn store back together again at the end of it all.  We managed it though, but my wall of Cascade 220 and Eco wool is looking a little bare at the moment.

Believe it or not this is considerably less than we had before the fair, despite the profusion you see in this photo.

After all the chaos my knitting has had to be very simple. Think 9mm needles and superbulky yarn simple. Luckily we had a shipment of Cascade Magnum come in so I cast on for a store sample.

Gull Lace Scarf

Yarn: 1 skein (2 if you like a very long scarf) Cascade Magnum (250 g, 123yds)
Needles: 9mm straights or circular, whichever you prefer

Pattern:
CO 15 stitches.
K 3 rows.
Begin Gull Lace stitch as follows:
Row 1: K1, *k1, yo, ssk, k1, k2tog, yo* rep from * to * one more time, k2.
Row 2: k2, p to last to stitches, k2.
Row 3: K1, *k2, yo, sl1, k2tog, psso, yo, k1, rep from * to * one more time, k2.
Row 4: rep row 2

Repeat these 4 rows to desired length or until you run out of yarn!
BO loosely and weave in ends.

With Cascade Magnum you may want to split the yarn end in half and weave in one half at a time in order to make the woven in ends more invisible, but it depends on how fussy you are about that sort of thing.  I will have this pattern available in the shop for everyone but I thought I’d share it here as well.  I don’t claim any rights to the stitch pattern, which you may have seen before in the February Baby Sweater (ravelry link) by Elizabeth Zimmerman, and the February Lady (ravelry link) adaptation by Flintknits

I’ve since finished it, but I still have to weave the ends in (or ask my mom to weave them in for me! what are moms for, eh?) It took almost no time to knit but was still quite satisfying. Now that I’ve had a little instant gratification I can get back to projects that are going to take more than a few hours to finish. What I have to watch out for is that I don’t immediately cast on some giant new project as a replacement for this one. We’ll see how that goes, as there are some Norah Gaughan patterns that are just calling to me right now…

Tags: cascade, FOs, Free Patterns, knitters' fair, State of the Shop