Portland Yarn Crawl

This past weekend was the Portland Yarn Crawl. It's exactly what it sounds like--a bunch of crazed knitters hopping from yarn shop to yarn shop and getting drunk on yarny-goodness. There were 20 (yes TWENTY!) yarn shops in the greater Portland that participated this year. The point was to try to get to all the shops in one weekend. Each shop had a basket full of awesome goodness that they raffled off (no, I didn't win) and most of the shops had special sales and door prizes going on as well.

I had to work at Yarnia (it was packed!) on Saturday and Sunday so I had to get all my crawling done on Friday. I hit TWELVE shops in one day. It was amazing! There was so much yarn (and I bought bunches of it) and so many knitters. If you don't want to see what I got, stop reading. This post is all about the new stash I acquired.

Stop 1: The Naked Sheep. I got this bag. I can't believe how cute it is. I love the color, I love the sheep, it's wonderful. The shop was small, and the selection was small, and this bag is blatant advertising for the shop (which was only a mediocre shop) it's so cute that I just don't care if I lead people there unintentionally, at least they can get a super cute bag.



And this Elsebeth Lavold Baby Llama (it's so soft!) I'm thinking a slouchy beret type hat. Or a cowl. I don't know. I think Alpaca is super soft on the skein but next to my skin sometimes it drives me nuts. Since llamas seem pretty close to alpaca a cowl might be risky. We shall see, I may throw caution to the wind.



Stop 2: Close Knit. I got this yarn. It is called BFF B Sock. The color is called Anzu (which means apricot.) It is hand-dyed by a woman in Vancouver, WA (just across the river from Portland) and it's so springy and happy and it was a gray drizzly day and I could not let go of this yarn once I picked it up. The dyer was there and I chatted with her and she was wonderful and you should check out her etsy shop.



I also got this Malabrigo, colorway Cypress. It's malabrigo, do I need to justify this purchase any further? Ryan has already claimed it as "beanie yarn" (the man loves beanies). It's greener than it looks in the picture--basically a black-green (such colors can't normally exist but in Malabrigo they can.)



Close Knit is one of those yarn shops that's stuffed with yarn. There's so much yarn that there's not much room for people (especially on a day where all knitters in the greater Portland area are out hunting yarn) It's all the way across town from me, but if I lived closer I would probably stop by to pet the yarn frequently, it's basically jumping out begging to be petted.

Stop 3: Gossamer. This isn't what I would call a "yarn shop" in the strictest sense. It's more of a "craft shop." It's got a little bit of everything. I do mean a little bit. Very small selection. They do have fiber though and there are not that many shops that carry spinning fiber (which is weird since it feels like there are a ton of spinners in Portland.) I was one of the first 20 customers so I got this skein of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece as a door prize. It's a good thing I like pink. I think I'm going to make one of the Rebecca Danger Monsters with it.



I bought this fiber. It's 3 little 1.5 oz batts of corriedale wool in a natural-undyed brown. I'm going to try to spin it for socks. We shall see if I can make a nice Navajo-plied 3-ply.



Stop 4: Twisted. The sock yarn wall is pretty impressive (it is an entire wall covered in luscious hand-dyed sock yarn.) Maybe this store has just been so built up by all the ravelry hype about it, but I was sort of disappointed. I was expecting some sort of knitting Mecca based on the way I've heard this store described by adoring patrons, but really I didn't think it was any more special than some of the other perfectly wonderful shops I hit. That didn't stop me from picking something off the sock yarn wall though. This is Dream in Color Smooshy in colorway Strange Harvest. I'm always so drawn to this scummy yellow-green-brown color. I think it's pretty and ugly at the same time.



Stop 5: Happy Knits. Easily my favorite stop on the crawl. This really is a happy place. It's a very good thing I don't live closer--they only carry the pricey stuff. Here I got Stephen West's new pattern book. West Knits Book Two. I also spent about 15 minutes gushing with the man behind the counter about how awesome Stephen West is and how amazing his patterns are. Oh, and I bought this.



A cardigan's worth of Cascade Eco + in colorway Butternut Squash. Can you see what kind of a color mood I was in on Friday?

Stop 6: Yarn Garden. I've decided I don't really like Yarn Garden. This is the second time that I've been there, and each time the shop has felt very unwelcoming. That didn't stop me from buying something though. This is... I'm not quite sure, the label is in German. It seems to say Järbo Garn Gästrike 1-ply. I can tell that it is 100% wool and that it is 600 meters of laceweight.


That is half of my adventure. I will post about the second half later in the week. If you found this post incredibly dull, don't bother reading that one either.

Test Knit Mitts

In February I was given the great privilege of being able to test-knit Anna Sudo's new pattern Spiral Staircase Mitts. The pattern is exceptionally well written. Even though the pattern is intuitive after the first few rounds, Anna has each round carefully written out so that if you think you might be lost (or if you are constantly picking up and setting down projects like I am) you can easily find exactly where you are. Here are the palms of the mitts.





As you can see, these are long mitts, that go about halfway up the forearm. The 1x1 twisted ribbing is slowly replaced with stockinette in a spiral created with simple YOs and decreases. (As usual, the Portland spring has supplied no sunshine for picture taking so you get nasty inside fluorescent light photos.) The spiral continues around to the back of the hand and stops under your pinkie finger.



One of the things I really like about these mitts is how far up your fingers they go (especially for me since I have small fingers.) It provides maximum warmth while still allowing your fingers to be free. I did find that it was hard to type while wearing them because they don't allow your fingers to spread out far enough, but my solution to this was to simply fold the top down while typing.



One of the things I don't really like about these mitts is that the YOs on the left mitt make very large holes, whereas the YOs on the right mitt make very small almost invisible holes. I think this is because on one mitt they are placed before the decrease and on one mitt they are placed after the decrease. I don't really like holes in my mitts (seems impractical to me) so If I made these again, I would probably correct this by doing all the increases with a backward-loop M1 which would produce no holes at all.

My mitts are made from Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in colorway Bittersweet Heather which looks black in some lights and brown in others. It's leftover from the Into the Woods kit. I decided that I'm not making the mitts that came with the kit, so the extra yarn will be cannibalized as attractive projects present themselves. I used 1.5 skeins for these mitts.

New Beanie

Not too long ago I ordered a skein of hand-painted sock yarn that I thought looked pretty awesome online. When I got it, it was much less impressive in person than it had looked online. Ravelry to the rescue, I just went to the Knit Picks board (it was one of the Knit Picks handpainted colorways) and offered up my skein for a comparable amount of sock yarn in a different color. I was offered one of the discontinued kettle-dyed colors and made the swap.

Ryan was around when the new skein arrived and fell instantly in love with the color. Basically as soon as it was out of the envelope he was asking me if I could make a beanie for him using it. This is the result.





Ryan is blog-shy so only his forehead is appearing today. The pattern is Ski Beanie by Terra Jamieson and is in the Son of Stitch 'n Bitch book. The yarn is Knit Picks Essential Kettle-Dyed (discontinued) in color Jay.

Ryan flips the bottom of the hat up to have a folded brim. I would wear this type of hat like this to get maximum ear coverage:



Please excuse the crappy webcam photo, the angle makes my head look huge, and the lighting is terrible, but the point is, the hat also works as a no-brim beanie as well.

I altered the patter quite a bit since it's written to be knit flat and in DK weight and I wanted it to be knit in the round in fingering weight. I cast on enough stitches for 5 extra pattern repeats (as the hat is decreased in 5 sections) and dropped my needle down to a size 1 for the 1x1 ribbing and 1.5 for the body of the hat. (Side note: it takes FOREVER to knit a hat out of fingering weight yarn on size 1 needles. At least it feels like forever when you're used to the speed of a worsted weight beanie that can be worked up in an evening.)

Since this is a super simple two-row pattern is was easy to change the rows that originally would have been wrong-side rows into right-side rows for knitting in the round. I followed the decrease directions as written except that I had one extra pattern repeat between each marker so I had to do more decrease rounds.



This in-progress picture really shows off the kettle-dyed nature of the yarn. I was worried at first because it looked like I hadn't made it wide enough, but I blocked it over a balloon (the BEST way to block hats!) and it loosened up nicely and fits wonderfully now. Ryan has confessed that on the 1-10 scale of warmness it's only about a 3 (um yeah, it's fingering weight) but on the 1-10 scale of looking-good it's an 8. I know most of the credit goes to the awesome color of the yarn, but as the knitter I'm claiming that 8 for myself.

Hardly worth mentioning

Today I am sick. Apparently a super nasty flu has been floating around Portland. Right now, I just feel like I have a head cold, but I have been feeling increasingly worse as the day goes on... let's hope that now that I am in bed with some good tea that this is as bad as it gets and it doesn't escalate into the death-bug that so many others have had this winter.

That is why this will be a quick post to show you a little project that doesn't need much explanation (or deserve much praise).



It's a crocheted pot holder. It's made from di. Ve Fiamma which is a super bulky think-thin wool. I didn't use a pattern, just the instructions for crocheting in the round from the Stitch n' Bitch Happy Hooker book. It's felted a bit. I put it through one wash cycle which shrunk it about 15%, though most of the stitch definition is still there. Now it is slightly firmer making it more suitable for it's purpose. Here it is before felting/shrinking... Can you see the difference?



My brother has been using an old t-shirt as a pot holder/oven mitt for a while, so I gave this to him when he moved to his new apartment as a housewarming gift. He said the blue made it a sufficiently masculine pot holder to warrant a place in his kitchen, though he expressed his desire that if I make another it incorporate dinosaurs in some way. If I didn't have so many other projects on the needles right now, I might step up to the challenge.

What's on the needles Wednesday

Possibly by participating in Kerry's What's on the Needles Wednesday I will be sufficiently kicked in the butt to finish something. Therefore, this Wednesday, the project on my needles is this:



That is Ryan's blanket. Right now it's just over 4' x 4' but it needs 20" more of black before it's finished. I try to devote one hour to it a day, but some days I just can't bring myself to garter for that long.

It's based on the golden ratio rectangle. When it's finished, it will have a big red spiral surfaced crocheted onto the top.

Lotus

I have recently been expanding my hat wardrobe. I have decided that hats go with most of my casual day to day wear and are a great way to 1) stay warm and 2) cover up a bad hair day. My newest addition to my hat wardrobe is this.





It's the Lotus Hat by UptownPurl and it can be found free on her blog. It's a very simple 8 row zig-zag lace repeat that makes beautiful vine-like motifs running up the hat.

I made a few changes to the pattern as written but they were so minor and mostly based on other ravelers' suggestions. I did the 1x1 ribbing as twisted rib instead of normal. I did the ribbing for 10 rows instead of 6. I knit 4 repeats of the pattern before decreasing instead of 3 to make it come down over my ears. That's all. Not minor changes, but worth mentioning if you want your hat to look "just" like this one.



This is the hat blocking over a balloon... my new favorite way to block hats. A bag of balloons was less that $2 at Target (in the area with the birthday wrapping paper) and it's so much faster than blocking by laying flat. I just blew up a balloon to 21" circumference and put the hat on it. No having to constantly flip the hat to make sure both sides are drying, no having to rotate how the hat is laying so that it doesn't dry with a crease, AND it drys 3x as fast because the wet layers aren't sitting on top of each other keeping the moisture in.



The best part of the hat is the crown where the decreases make the vines spiral together beautifully.

I used Malabrigo Merino Worsted in colorway Black Forest. According to my yarn scale, this took 50.5 g of yarn, so just a bit over half a skein. This was leftover from my earlier Botanic hat, where I used it as the secondary color, and even after both hats I still have 33 g left. I'm thinking I will just be able to squeeze a short pair of fingerless mitts out of it.



Action shot! Also, a picture of my fuzzy mitts from last post where they can be seen in actual use... and in sunlight no less. Much thanks to the Portland weather gods for sending a bit of sunshine our way.

Warm hands, warm heart

My grandma always says "warm hands, warm heart" which I think means that having warm hands is proof that you are a "warm-hearted" person. This does not bode well for me because my fingers are always cold. Recently I've been craving a pair of fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm and still allow me to use my computer (my school says they're being "green" by keeping the classrooms freezing cold, but I suspect is has more to do with being cheap...) I was in my LYS, and they had a sample of this simple pattern, and it stole my heart.



This pattern is Brushed Suri Mitts by Merri Fromm. I used the exact yarn called for Blue Sky Alpacas Brushed Suri. The yarn is 67% baby Suri alpaca, 22% merino, and 11% bamboo. It's a halo yarn like Kid Silk Haze from Rowan or Suri Dream from Knit Picks. There is a "core" to the yarn that fuzzy alpaca fluffs out from. The pattern only takes about 75% of a skein.



It's not super clear from my bad photos (we had a week of gloom w/ no natural light at all when I took them, now that the sun has returned I should go outside and take some more) but one mitt is actually about an inch shorter than the other. That is because after you knit the thumb gusset you are supposed to knit straight for 10 rounds before actually separating the thumb... I forgot to do this on the second mitt. I love this bunches, so I bought another skein and I will make one long (correct) mitt and one short (leaving out the 10 rows) then then have a pair for myself and a pair that I can give away (or a backup).



This photo is blurry, but it shows the halo coming off the gloves well. I was worried that I would find them itchy because of the high alpaca content and because of the halo, but they're pretty much the softest most comfortable thing ever and I wear them all the time.