DesigKnit

One of the things that I like most about knitting is the long timeline. Sometimes a project goes quickly from idea to item, and sometimes it sits on a back burner and simmers for a while. In most things, I don’t delay much between idea and implementation. But in knitting, there are no deadlines, and sometimes things just need time to ripen. If a yarn makes it into the stash, it seems that my average turnaround time is 2-4 years before it comes back out and gets made into something. Designs are the same way; some are knit immediately, and others simply take their own sweet time.

In October of 2009, I had a scarf project that failed.

We were living in Germany at the time, and Branden had brought me back a couple of skeins of Claudia handpaint (in the Ink colorway) from a trip to the US. I only had two skeins, but I hoped to use them to make a scarf. I came up with a highly textured knit-purl pattern, and began to knit. Sadly, it turned out that two skeins wasn’t enough, and I frogged the project. (The yarn later became one of Branden’s favorite pairs of handwarmers.)

I loved the way the ribbing and welt texture worked in the fabric, though, and I decided that this would someday become an allover pattern for a sweater.

I decided on the yarn that I wanted: a BFL worsted from the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Raven clan. But I had other things on the needles, and it just wasn’t time yet to start the project.

In April of 2010, I went to the BMFA website to order the yarn. They were temporarily out of the BFL worsted, and I decided to wait again.

This August, I ordered the yarn. It just happened that they had a new Targhee yarn base, and I decided to go with that instead, in the Shadow colorway. I put in an order for 4 skeins, which they estimated would take 10-12 days to arrive (they hand dye to order, so it takes a little longer than the usual yarn order).

It turned out that there was a delay in their shipments, though, and they ran out of the yarn base just after I ordered. It is sourced from a single farm supplier, and there had been a snag in the processing somewhere along the way. They knew that there would be a delay, but there was no way to know how long it would be. Well, I figured I’d waited 5 years already, so a month or two probably wouldn’t make much difference.

The yarn came last week, and it was well worth the wait. When I showed it to Branden, his first comment was the it reminded him of the colors in my Irtfa’a shawl. The man has a good eye for yarn; Irtfa’a was knit from a BMFA laceweight in the same color clan, but a slightly different colorway (and it was knit in 2008, though I’ve worn it quite a lot since then!). I was impressed that he was able to call it so quickly.

Over the past few days, I’ve been swatching it up in a couple of different designs to get a feel for the yarn.

It will be interesting to see if the pattern keeps this depth of texture through the blocking process. It’s probably terrible for my yardage, but I love the 3D feel of the pattern in the swatch. Knowing that I wanted a highly textured pattern, I bought 2464 yards of yarn, so yardage shouldn’t be too much of a limiting factor (I hope).

The pattern on the right is actually a pattern of spirals, but they don’t show up quite as strongly as I’d like.

The left hand side is a simple basketweave pattern.

That one keeps all the wonderful curves where the ribbing and welting wrap around one another, and it’s currently winning the design competition. Looking back at the pictures of the original swatch, I’m thinking I might try one or two more patterns before I’m done, though Branden tells me that he likes the basketweave and I can stop now.

So, 5 years after I first conceived this design, it is finally inching its way toward completion. This isn’t the oldest design in my backlog, but it seems that it is the one whose time has come.

Branden and I drove out to Rhinebeck yesterday with a couple of friends for the NY Sheep and Wool festival. The market seemed quieter this year, but that might be because we got there after the first morning rush. There was still plenty to do and see, and it was nice having (a little) less jostling and jockeying for position inside the barns.

As usual, I didn’t take very many pictures. It’s always fun to scope out the knitwear, but I don’t like to take photos of other people without their permission, and it seemed that there wasn’t quite as much on display as usual. (I have this sneaking suspicion that I might be becoming a Rhinebeck old timer, constantly going on about how it was different in the old days…)

I did notice that a lot of rust and green color combinations were calling to me, and yellow was surprisingly attractive, too. My one yarn purchase stayed pretty true to form, though….blues and grays, even if I did spring for a little bit of an acid green.

I went into the festival without any plans for what to buy. I usually have a theme of one kind or another, but this year there wasn’t really anything that I needed, and so I left it open to serendipity. A few barns into the festival, we stopped at the O-Wool booth, where I was sold by a swatch. It was just a simple stockinette square knit from the O-Wool fingering weight yarn on size 00 needles. The fabric was just beautiful. Good drape, very soft, and beautifully springy. (I think it was the springy that got me, in the end.)

I know better than to buy one-off skeins. I’ve done this often enough at festivals to know that a single skein or pair of skeins will sit in my stash forever, no matter how much I love the yarn. It’s sweaters that get knit. But did I want to knit a sweater with 8-9 sts to the inch? Well, kinda, actually…yeah.

I’ve been needing a lot of mindless knitting lately, and the more I knit with tiny needles the more I love them. (I may have spent a couple of hours investigating sources for sub-0000 needles recently…) Miles and miles of tiny stockinette might be just the thing. Throw in a little colorwork, and it was hard to say no.

And so, 2568 yards (21 ounces) of the base color came home with me, along with a few skeins of accent yarns for the colorwork. I have no idea how many yards it will actually take to knit a sweater at that gauge, but I’m hoping that that’s enough. It seems like it should be, right?

Just look at these colors:

The color names are Appalachian Stone (dark gray for the body), Night Heron (dark blue), Brook Trout (light blue), Black Bear (black/dark brown, depending on the light), and that beautiful green is called Arrowgrass.

I was also tempted by some Astral (just look at that shine, and those colors!), but decided to hold off on that one until I have a project for it. I’m pretty sure I saw some of this at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool back in 2011, and have often thought about using it since. At least now I know what it’s called!

The Fiber Optic booth is always hard to resist, and Just Our Yarn is one of my favorite stops. And I love everything in the Briar Rose booth. In each case, though, I decided to wait until I have a project in mind…the O-wool should be more than enough to keep me busy until the next Rhinebeck, don’t you think?

I did notice this shop sample of a Stephen West pattern in the Fiber Optic booth. I’m thinking that this might be a good alternative project for the neon slip stitch project if I decide that my own design just won’t work.

I also noted the gauge of his fabric (you can see how open it is in the photo…light shines right through it). My preference is always to knit at a pretty firm gauge, but a more open fabric might get me a bit more fabric for my yardage, which would be helpful with that particular set of yarns. Something to think about, anyway.

My favorite thing about fiber festivals is finding ideas that are new or unexpected. This year, it was a really interesting knit/woven shrug by Koochi Ku (looks like her site is undergoing some maintenance at the moment).

The weaver in me was very intrigued by this fabric. It’s made from a simple stockinette ground fabric, with a heavy weight accent yarn woven in during the knitting. The knit base fabric keeps all of the stretch and flexibility of knitting, but the primary design element looks like a weave. The artist said that she knits the ground fabric on a loom, and then lays in the accent yarn as she goes. The end result is a fabric with a beautiful, open feel and nice drape, but the very low-spin accent yarn thickens it up enough to be nice and warm. I just love the colorplay in the accent yarn, too; I very often prefer a weave pattern for showing off a handpainted yarn.

I think it would be possible to do something like this with a slipped stitch technique, though it would take a little engineering to figure it out. I thought it was a really beautiful piece, and an interesting way of mixing two different textile forms to make something new.

Instead of knitting at home this week, I’ve been spinning. I think I mentioned in the last post that I had started spinning up some Shetland lambswool that’s been hanging around for a few years now, and I’ve been focusing on that instead of new knitting projects.

I am always surprised at how fast fiber spins up, especially when it’s a nice, fluffy top like this one is. I’ve just finished up the light oatmeal color (this is the same color I used to knit the Embroidered sweater). It’s a fingering-weight 2-ply, and I got 1348 yards out of 556 g (just over 1 lb) of wool. Forgive my mixed units there, but my niddy noddy is in yards and measuring the weight of fiber is much more precise in grams than in pounds and ounces.

Even after knitting a sweater in it, the oatmeal is still the color that I have the most of, by far. I have 113 g of the dark brown, 360 g of a medium brown, and 225 g of a pale fawn color that’s just a tiny bit different than the oatmeal. All of those together add up to 698 g, so I’m just under halfway there.

Considering that the last sweater used up just a tiny bit more than the 1500 yds I originally spun for it, I should have more than enough for a second sweater by the time I’m done. Until then, I’m just enjoying feeling the flow of fiber through my fingers. This week, it will be fun to watch the colors changing as well.