I love knitwear and yarn photography, and this grey stack of alpaca with stretching shadows, shows the month so well! Recently getting a down-pour of rain, rain, rain, washing all that is bad in the world away. Life is good.
Category: Yarn Play
Yarn Scapes
I am loving the new year so far, and the varied yarn-scape through which I am setting out to wander indulgently. Rowan greets me on this sunny January day, a nice tall stack of Felted Tweed, just look how substantial and tasteful the three tweedy colors look ! I just can’t wait to begin throwing stitches. Yarn tasting of the classic (though often spendy) yarn is one of my New Year resolutions by the way, this is my first purchase of Rowan yarns, and I want to well-familiarize myself with their yarns in 2015. Add Isager as one of the LYS lines, and a few local boutique yarns.
And only just days ago I had undertaken a very fastidious project, a rather inventive rendition of Una Cosettina Mitts. With a photographic opportunity ahead (tomorrow) I hurried through the knitting and finished in two days, involving these two yarns ; Isager Alpaca-Merino 2, and Shibui Silk Cloud…
held together to make these . . .
I am quite pleased with them, and so will Miss Fifteen I am certain.
(( Warning: Half mitts made of dangerously fuzzy & soft yarns,
one could trip & injure themselves from the distraction of wearing them. ))
Tomorrow morning, my nieces and I have a little photo shoot for their knitted holiday bounty,
so watch this space!
A Humble Yarn
This week, while at my LYS I fell in love with a new yarn. As I held it I instantly knew it’s potential. It comes in lovely 50g skeins, so I could really squish and caress, and yes, this stuff is amazing. Why didn’t I see it before? Because I was like a schoolgirl, with a schoolgirl crush on elite British wools, I guess that I had my eyes closed.
I bought four skeins for barely more than $20, and brought them home in their cheery little orange paper bag. It felt wonderful. I showed it to Jeff , who is my scratchiness barometer (that is, he is an extreme case of FOSW ~~ fear of scratchy wool) and he was impressed with it ! So in recent days I have been thinking about my new find. I have decided that as a developing designer, it is important that I am ‘yarn conscienscious’, yet not yarn elitist. Well, in most cases. That is, in most cases I will design something entirely for itself, using a yarn that I feel compliments the design, and also that I feel is easily accessible, and easily affordable. ((Though , still, there are those special design occasions to showcase beautiful specialty & heritage yarns, for which I am very happy to be elitist . . . lol )).
A challenge indeed. One of the reasons I have liked Jamiesons Of Shetland Spindrift, a 2ply fingering yarn, is because it is not expensive, but very affordable, considering it’s imported from the actual Shetland Isles. However, I have learned by observation, that not everyone has easy access to this British wool , even though it is growing in popularity as the boundless community of the internet brings us knitters together globally.
I am talking about a very popular yarn which I never noticed because I was maybe being a bit of a yarn snob. Yet at the same time, I developed this closet tendency to buy inexpensive yarn on-line. Strange indeed. Though I adore the ease of my on-line purchases , I do happen to live up in the backwoods, and it’s not always cost-effective to drive to the next county to purchase exactly what I want. I have had a yarn epiphany regarding this LYS exclusive . . .
I’m talking about Cascade 220 yarn folks, in fingering weight. 100% Peruvian Highland Wool. 50g skeins = 273 yards / 250 meters. 2 ply. About $5 per skein. What I have here is four neutral undyed colors in Jet, Charcoal, Doeskin, and Natural.
Striking resemblance to the yarns with which I created my Vineyard Rows Highland Bonnet .
My Vineyard Rows bonnet (tam) however, will remain a Jamiesons Spindrift novelty , as it is inspired so much by Scottish Highlands that I believe the Scottish wool is completely perfect, but I will list the Cascade 220 fingering as an alternate yarn on it’s pattern pages.
You can guess that the next up & coming thing I am working on , will be a Vineyard Rows design, and in the yarn which is beautiful yet humble and very likely at your own LYS. I still have a crush on Virtual Yarns Hebridean and Jamiesons Of Shetland, but perhaps I’ll broaden my more local horizons , this side of The Pond. I tell you, Peru really has it going on these days when it comes to yarn !
Over-Dyed
My latest yarn play. I dyed a ton of yarn ( details in previous post ) with a mind to knit them into an autumney-equinoxey sort of thing, but now I think not. I’m calling this colorway ‘curry blend’, or maybe ‘marigolds’ . Anyway, I think it fitting for my recent post-pattern-writing crash, to continue to chill out with a clean slate for a while. Just knit socks, socks, and more socks, and not have anything big brewing beyond re-writing Penny Candy Socks pattern for the remainder of Spring. Oh, just look at these cheerful balls of yarn perched , happily waiting for whatever comes. I am very pleased with the dye this time !
Yarn-scape
I’m up to something again. Here, winding off skeins of Shibui & Madelinetosh sock yarns. I’m drowning myself in skinny yarn. I did mention something about knitting socks with it however, a few posts back . . .
Which I am doing.
My nieces are coming in a few days, and I am going to rewrite my original Penny Candy Socks pattern completely different ~~ very soon~~ so , I’m madly knitting the above pair (in Malabrigo Sock) for another fun photo session with them !
Then there’s this madness , heaps of skinny Knit Picks Stroll sock yarn (which by the way, like Shibui and Malabrigo, is from Peru) and very fine Lana Grossa (from Italy) . . . over-dyed and drying still . . .
I nearly spent a mint on some fancy hand-dyed superwash Malabrigo Arroyo (I sooo wanted to) , which is a sport weight, for I am erupting with ideas already for Autumnal Equinox sweaters, but decided instead to over-dye a mess o’ sock yarn I had on hand which was bound for nowhere. Was 4 balls of light blue Stroll — now cayenne red, 4 balls of light grey Stroll –now mustard yellow, 1 ball of hot pink Lana Grossa, — now deep garnet. All now a very lovely array of Autumn tones, achieved with Dharma Trading acid dyes in colors “cayenne” , “mustard” , & “maroon” .
I had spent hours going color crazy at the kitchen last night ~ while cooking dinner (a habit I always seem to get into ). Today all is calm, and quiet, winding off like a busy bee hive, immersed in this lovely yarn-scape.