This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. The same thing happens every year, but it always comes at a different time. It’s that subtle, undefinable moment where winter gives way to spring. Things shift somehow, ever so slightly, and winter’s grip loosens. It’s like the moment when the tide turns; hard to mark exactly, but all of a sudden things change and the water recedes instead of rising. Low tide is a long time coming, but it is inevitable.

It’s still a long way toward spring, but this week I can feel it coming. I can feel it in the sunshine, hear it in the birdsong, see it in the puddles forming from all the melting snow. The buds are swelling, and the world is awakening again. Granted, the puddles re-freeze every night and the black ice makes walking anywhere an exercise in balance, but the fact that the puddles are there in the first place means that the end is in sight.

I love living in a place with a real winter. There is nothing quite so magical as watching spring come creeping back into a frozen landscape. It makes the cold and the wind and the dark of winter so worthwhile; it’s simply a backdrop for the brightness of spring. These periods of transition are beautiful to behold, and I have missed them living in places with gentler seasons.

This year, it’s been a particularly dramatic changeover. Last Thursday, it was -11 degrees outside. This Thursday, it’s supposed to be 45. That’s a 56 degree change in temperature in a week! I’m not sure that we’ve had a day above freezing since before Christmas, and now we suddenly have grass poking out from beneath the snow. Granted, it’s last years’ grass and it’s looking rather sad today, but all this slushy snowmelt is feeding the green of springtime. I know winter will be back again before we’re done, but it won’t stay for long; its days are numbered.

If I were gardening this year, I’d be starting tomato plants indoors in a few weeks to be ready for planting out in May. Somehow that really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? This last month of winter can feel so long, and yet already the tide has changed. This week, it became spring.

Happy springtime!

When I posted about needing a new yarn for the next Namaste scarf , Amanda chimed in and reminded me of tencel (thank you!).

Tencel is a fiber that I have often admired but that somehow never stays on my radar long enough for me to use it. Every time I see it, I fall in love with the shiny and the soft and the almost metallic gleam.  I long to spin it someday. And then I walk away, musing on what I might do with such a fiber. And then, I forget. Honestly, I just don’t do a lot of “shiny” in my knitting. I usually stick with simple, unassuming fibers that are beautiful but not necessarily showy.

But the Namaste series demands shine, and drape, and flow. It wants a yarn that can manage a little effortless showing off. The Namaste projects are all accent pieces, defining and centering, structured and bold. Utterly simple, and yet with a presence.

In this, I may finally have found my reason to use Tencel.

A ravelry search didn’t find a whole lot of yarn with a high Tencel content and also a bit of wool (must have wool to help it hold its shape and keep things light in a worsted-weight yarn). Amanda mentioned that Blue Moon had a nice blend. I went and looked. It was very nice.

And so, I am currently waiting (a little less than patiently, I must admit) for a couple of skeins of Blue Moon Marine Silk, in the colorway Copperfine (it’s the one listed as their sample skein, and after seeing it I could have no other).

I’m trying to be patient, but I am so very excited to begin. I wonder what theme this piece will take on?

Riots and rainbows notwithstanding, I often feel that the appropriate name for a group of colors is a celebration. There is really nothing else I feel like doing when confronted with beautiful shades of color.

I began yesterday’s dyeing as I always do; I sat down with my color sampler cards and matched colors. Since I was dyeing for friends, I pulled colors that fit one person, and then colors that fit the other. Then I threw in a few more that I wanted to play with for a project that’s percolating in the back of my mind.

That might seem like a lot of colors, but since many of them are shades of the same dye (gotten by using different dilutions) or mixtures of a set of base dyes, I ended up with only 5 main colors, plus black to work from. I think I did end up throwing in two other accent colors, but I usually try to stick to 3-5 dyes per session. It keeps things manageable, and it allows me to fully explore the possibilities contained in those little jars of magic.

I began with the roving, since it’s a little more finicky and it was the star of the day. Despite my worries about that silly scarlet dye, the roving turned out to be the perfect pink, somewhere between salmon and sunset.

To my surprise, the greens gave me a little more trouble. I’ve gotten used to adding extra dye, or increasing the concentration to match the colors on my sample cards, but apparently yesterday I had no need of extra. I was aiming for something lighter, with a stronger presence of gray, but if I put my expectations aside I am deeply in love with the greens that came out.

The blues were also much darker than I was aiming for, but darker blue is hardly ever something you’ll hear me complain about. Next time I will cut down on the saturation for both of these colors, but today I am glorying in their depth.

My absolute favorite of the day was a long shot (it often is). I took a bunch of strong colors in heavy saturations, and I laid them in stripes of varying width all along a skein of yarn. It has a little of everything, from reds and orange to blues and even a little yellow.

And I absolutely love it. Do you see that fire?

The next skein was much closer to what I’d expected for the roving. A paler, more subdued blue shot through with gray.

My favorite reason for working with a small number of similar colors is that it often creates unexpected synergies between the yarns. I wouldn’t have thought to pair those first two skeins with one another, but look how perfectly they flow into one another:

It’s like they were made to go together, when really that was the farthest thing from my mind when dyeing.

The same thing happened with the last two skeins.

The one on the right is dyed very much like the first roving; a combination of different saturations of scarlet and fire red, this time mixed with just a little gray to tone it down.

The skein on the left is my “serendipity” skein. At the end of the day, when the dye jars are getting close to empty and my wash jar (where I rinse the spoons as I measure) is getting to be a deep, saturated color, I mix whatever is left over and not enough to be worth saving and use that to dye the last skein. It’s funny: every time I encourage people to mix colors on their yarn, they say they’re afraid of creating mud. Every time I dye, I mix everything randomly, and usually get something beautiful.

This particular serendipity skein is a mixture of two reds, a teal, an orange, and a yellow dye, plus liberal sprinklings of black. There may also be some brown and a little pure blue thrown in. To me, it looks like the sunset.

And again, all of these very different skeins fall into harmony with one another in unexpected ways.

Yes, I think color should be called a celebration.

The more I dye, the more I realize how much pleasure it brings me to put color on fiber. I love to see how it develops, how it takes these strange and often unexpected turns to become so much more than I could have expected from looking at my samples alone.

The problem is, I don’t need any more yarn. I have enough, and though I love each and every one of these skeins, it’s the creation that I enjoy, and not the possession.

And so, today, we began another project. One that Branden has been suggesting for a long, long time, and one that I am finally becoming ready to embrace.

We took photos.

Well, really Branden took photos and I mostly kept myself occupied elsewhere so I wouldn’t interfere. (There are different ways to enable, and sometimes the best way is to simply get out of the way…)

We printed ball bands. (!)

And we’re beginning the process of setting up a small shop over on Etsy. It’s not ready yet, but it’s coming. We’re busy creating a place for all these colors, so that I have room to make more.

This week, I’ve taken a brief pause in my regularly scheduled knitting, in the name of sanity. As many of you already know, Ellen is hosting a “Warm hats not heads” campaign to remind our elected representatives (and perhaps ourselves as well) of the value of civil discourse and mutual respect in public debate. And so, I am knitting a hat.

This may look familiar to you, as it’s the second iteration of the hat I tried to knit for myself and ended up giving to my sister.  Knitting it a second time through is giving me a chance to work out all the kinks, and who knows? It may end up being a pattern someday soon. As with all good collaborations, Ellen’s challenge is helping me finish this project now; without the extra push, it would probably have been shelved as a partially finished chart for months to come.

And though I have been pausing  just a bit, other things are making progress, too. I finally plied some singles that have been waiting patiently on their bobbins for a couple of weeks now. This brings me up to seven skeins of medium worsted weight wool from the fiber I bought this fall at the sheep and wool festival. I’m about half way through the fiber, so I should have plenty for a sweater in the end. It’s spinning up beautifully soft and fluffy, as only a lightly processed roving can. There’s just no way to get this much loft from a commercially prepared fiber (or no way that I’ve found, anyway).

I’ve been off of spinning for a couple of months now, for no apparent reason. But it is good to be back again, and it will be even better when I get to knit with this yarn.

Not one but two of my friends are taking their first drop spindling classes this month. That seemed like good cause for celebration, so I’ve been playing around in the basement with this today:

(Hint: It’s not white anymore.)

I’m hoping that everything comes out well; some of the dyes were acting a little funny today. I’m not sure if it’s just because the basement is cold and it’s hard to keep the solution water warm, or what. They’re steaming away in the kitchen now, and I’m crossing my fingers that they’ll come out of their wrappers in good shape.

And finally, my sweater may actually get a finished first sleeve soon.

The sleeve itself knit quickly, but the cuff is a little difficult to work, and so I’ve stalled out again there. But I am hoping that I will get that done this afternoon, and possibly even begin the second sleeve. There may be hope after all!

Funny how much gets done when I try to “pause”…

I am usually the one who has a plan. I may not see all of the details, but I’ve lived most of my life with a strong sense of direction. No matter that that direction has sometimes changed drastically from one year to the next; I’ve always had a pretty good idea where I’m going (or at least where I’m going next).

But right now, that’s just not the case. There are quite a few big life things that are just out of my control and beyond the reaches of my imagination at the moment. And then there is the much smaller issue of pattern publishing that has become, as such small things often do, a rippled reflection of the whole.

I’ve been thinking about direction a lot lately. Over the past few weeks, I have suddenly been inspired anew to pull out the charting software and start publishing things. And then a little voice in the back of my head starts wondering where will that lead? Where are we going with this?

The short answer is that I really have no idea.

I’ve been hanging around with internet entrepreneur types for a few years now, and I’m not really interested in “growing my business” online. In fact, that very idea is probably why pattern publishing sputtered to a halt just before it got started at this time last year. I’m not interested in an online empire. I rather like this quiet little backwater of the internet where we all hang out and pet fiber, and I’d like to keep it this way.

But I also want to share what I create with people beyond this little circle. And that means opening up to the rest of the world.

I don’t want this to become a “sales” blog. I’m not going to suddenly start pushing “products” or even designing things specifically to be sold as patterns. Some things that I make may become patterns. I will not make things simply to publish another design. I have no intention of beginning “secret projects”, or at least very, very few of them. I want this blog to be about process, about creation, and about exploring. Out loud. Openly. In public. No design behind closed doors; I’d rather throw open the doors of the studio and invite everyone in to party.

How will that work? I have no idea.

What exactly does that mean for the day-to-day here on the blog? I hope it doesn’t really mean much of anything. As an inveterate lurker, I’ve often found myself holding back from commenting on things that people put up for sale. It feels false somehow to say how much I admire something and then not buy the pattern, or the yarn, or the beautiful little stitch marker that I really don’t need. Sometimes it seems that there is an unspoken assumption that if you really liked it, you would buy. I don’t want that here.

In my perfect knitting world, people would have no need of patterns because they would be too busy creating art of their own design. We would look to one another for inspiration, not direction. If we bought instructions, we would buy to learn something, to study a technique or to explore an idea. That spirit is easier to maintain when there are no products for sale.

For a long time, I’ve considered just not publishing anything. I’ve focused on illuminating the process rather than publishing the end design. I intend to continue along that path. But that alone feels increasingly incomplete. There are times where you must see an example written out before you can take those first tentative steps toward creative engagement. It is true that you are limited only by your imagination – and the tools that you have available to hand. If you have not yet developed those tools (or have not learned how to use them), your imagination can be a very boring place to hang out. I know, because that’s where I sit when someone asks me to paint or draw a picture. Stick figures, anyone?

Sometimes you need to start with lines to follow.

So that’s where I see patterns fitting into place. They lie somewhere between learning and creating, a stepping stone to independence. If you’re independent already (as I know many of you are), then hang out for the fun of it. Check in and see what’s happening, and never, ever feel obligated to buy. If you’re still more comfortable on training wheels, or just want someone else to take the wheel for a while, I hope you enjoy.

Sometimes the only thing to do in the face of uncertainty is to act. When there is no “right action,” you just do something, see where it takes you, and adjust from there. That’s where I am right now. My imagination is not yet big enough to reach around the questions lurking at the edges, but sometimes it doesn’t need to be. Like complicated lace where you can’t really tell what you’re doing until after you finish the first repeat, sometimes life is lived one stitch at a time. Let’s knit on, shall we?

After only a short (year-long) delay, the Drishdi pattern is now available on the pattern page and through Ravelry.

As promised, Drishdi is a free pattern; it came to me freely, and so I pass it on to you. Knit, and enjoy.

Her sister scarf, Shanti, is also for sale on the pattern page. A simple modulation on the Drishdi design makes a stunning difference in texture. Both scarves are simple to knit, using only knit, yarn over, and knit2tog stitches. They are the inaugural pair of patterns for a new series exploring the essence of lace. called the Namaste Series.

The Namaste patterns will feature highly textured, simple knitting intended to show off the qualities of a beautiful yarn while creating a meditative knitting experience. Whether a raw beginner eager to try lace for the first time or an experienced knitter seeking the soothing rhythm of a basic pattern, I hope you will find something here.

There are lots of preparations going on around here. We’ve just launched the badass project, and then I’m also working on launching a few more fibery projects, coming soon to a blog near you.

I’d like to start another shawl-scarf like the one I just finished. I have the stitch pattern picked out, and I thought I had the yarn I wanted in the stash, but swatching revealed that it is just not up to the task. So yesterday, we went off to a couple of LYSs in search of the perfect yarn.

We found a couple of close contenders, but nothing that was quite perfect. (Well, there was one yarn that was close to pure perfection, but it was also pure silk and therefore just a wee bit over the budget I’d like to keep.)

So I’m still on the lookout, waiting to find the perfect yarn. I want something smooth with high stitch definition and a lot of shine. I’d also like a reasonably low price tag, because I want to make a bigger piece with it and six 50 gram balls adds up fast (especially when it’s pure silk!!). I’m guessing I need around 400 yards. Both the Cascade Venezia and the Louet Gems were perfect; I’m looking for something along those lines, but I’d like to try a new fiber rather than just sticking with what I know (I have a tendency to do that if I’m not careful.) Any ideas?

We didn’t find the yarn we were looking for, but we did find a few distractions.

The first is a set of yarns for a new scarf for Branden. From left to right, we have Nashua handknits Isabella in Labradorite (love the texture), the ever-reliable Cascade 220 #2401, and ShubuiKnits Merino Worsted color 6, which has a very nice semi-solid look that you can’t really see in the picture. Aren’t they beautiful?

And then, I fell hard for a skein of Madeline Tosh lace. I don’t need any more lace weight. My stash is full of it, almost to the exclusion of all else. But how could I resist this color?

I caved when I realized that I have a cone of Rayon weaving yarn just waiting for a perfect partner.

I think we’ve found it.

Today’s lovely pictures brought to you by some beautiful winter sunshine, and Branden, who is home for the weekend and agreed to spend time taking some blog pics.

The Badass project is live! Go check it out if you have a chance. There are some amazing lessons to be learned (and it makes for good listening while knitting).

I realized shortly after announcing that I was working on a new Drishdi scarf that the new scarf isn’t actually the Drishdi pattern after all. The pattern was so simple (literally three stitches; k, yo, k2tog) that I didn’t bother to look it up when I started the new scarf. I was sure that I remembered.

Well.

You may note that there is a subtle difference between this:

and this:

It’s amazing what a difference one little knit stitch can make. (Especially when it’s two thirds of the pattern repeat.)

Of course, that got me thinking. What else can you do with just k, yo, and k2tog in a reversible pattern with only one pattern row? So tonight, I’ve been playing around:

Turns out there’s quite a lot that can be done. Somehow I think we haven’t seen the end of the Drishdi family…

Tonight would be the perfect night for some fireside spinning. Weaving guild is canceled because of snow, so I’m actually home, Branden is off working again (he’s been out of town M-F and home on weekends for the past 2 weeks and the next several), and I’m in a cozy fiber mood. Sadly, we have no fire.

My wheel has stood completely untouched for well over a month now. I think it might be time to pull it over and spin up some warmth, eh?