Very Sweet Dreams

I've been buying less yarn lately. In fact, I think I may have gone as much as a couple of months with no new yarn - quite an achievement. Even when I did buy, it was for a specific project and was used immediately. I've not bought speculatively in some time.

But, when I was in Dublin in March, I fell completely and madly in love with Coolree: 50% Silk / 50% Merino in the most stunning shades. Subtly variegated, enough to make it interesting but not too much to clash with lace. I could have spent all my euros and then some! I restricted myself to a single, wonderful skein.

So the hunt was immediately on to find the perfect pattern. One skein. Pretty. Challenging. Different.

And this is where I, again, have to thank the fabulous This Is Knit as they had several shawls by Boo Knits made up in the shop. Once I started looking for patterns I realised pretty quickly where I was going to find something perfect!

In the end I bought the In Love collection with the specific intention of knitting Sweet Dreams but at least two others are firmly in my queue now (and some of my speculative yarn is ready and waiting!)

The pattern is great. Clear and effective with a beautiful effect. The picot edging took a while but I was prepared for that and it actually didn't take as long as I'd expected. Even if it had taken twice as long I wouldn't have cared, not when I finally lifted the finished product after blocking.

It's really hard to explain how lovely it is, partly because of how it moves! The weight of the beads is just perfect and the soft, soft, soft yarn drapes amazingly. A couple of people have tried to sneak off with it, everyone has had to have a squish and a swish of it. It's a gorgeous pattern for wonderful yarn. I couldn't love it more!

Coolree

I don't know what Coolree means but it may well be Gaelic for "temptation". It wasn't hard to decide to buy a skein bit it was almost impossible to decide which one!

Knitters in Dublin, I'd highly recommend a trip to This Is Knit!

When in Ireland...

Buy wool! I wasn't even looking for it, I swear but I couldn't resist this fabulous skein from the Donegal Wool Spinning Company (via the Donegal Shop). The colours are beautiful, subtle but not bland, plus I can't stop stoking it, it's so soft.

I don't know what I'll make with it, I don't even know what weight it is but I do know it's amazing and I had to have it. Had to.

Rewarding Rewards

I've written a few times about my growing kickstarter addiction and I know I mentioned that I was supporting Sara of Smudge Yarn's project to fund the development of her Irish yarn business. For my reward I chose unspun fibres, the colour blend is Illuminate (inspired by colours in illuminated manuscripts) and I chose to have it blended with metallic fibres. It arrived in the post shortly before I went on holiday and I couldn't have been more delighted.

I don't know what I imagined illuminated manuscript colours might be but, as soon as I saw the blend, I understood completely. The mix is fantastic and the fabulous coppery fibres perfectly highlight the other colours. I don't think I've ever been so excited to start spinning something and I even managed to start before I went on holiday.

I tend to spin quite finely. My spinning teacher described me as one of nature's laceweight spinners but even my best attempts ave been fairly inconsistent up until now. But something about this blend suited me perfectly. I mean, absolutely perfectly. I think I only broke my thread three times during the whole lot, which is utterly unprecedented. There are a few burrs (texture!) but, for the most part, the yarn is smooth, consistent and exactly what I was aiming for.

Most of my spinning has been Navajo plied but, because I was hoping for the maximum length from this, I decided to just go for two ply. The result is somewhere between laceweight and 4ply weight but I'm hoping it should still be suitable for the project I had in mind. Unfortunately, the 270 metres on this skein probably isn't enough so I'm hoping that I might be able to buy another 100g of the same blend.

I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to more: knitting this skein or hopefully spinning another!

My Own Personal Yarn Shop

In the beginning there was "wool". It was a generic term for stuff to knit with. I can clearly remember my mum explaining how to pick wool for a pattern and that, generally speaking, the less acrylic it had in it the better. I also remember being daunted by the fact that the stuff with less acrylic was as much as four pounds a ball! For a teenager looking at patterns that would require ten balls, that's a staggering price.

I spent a long time completely oblivious to the range of wool that truly was out there. My idea of a good wool shop was having Patons and Sirdar. Then I joined Ravelry and started to use the term "yarn". I went to Get Knitted and got my first proper glimpse of real quality. And real price tags.

Over the years, the amount of money that I consider to be a reasonable price for yarn has grown quite considerably. If I spend less than £5 on a ball/skein then I begin to suspect that I may accidentally be buying acrylic. And as my imagination and mental library of patterns and techniques have grown, so has my tendency to buy any yarn in which I can see the potential for something interesting.

As a consequence my stash of yarn grows regularly and relentlessly. No longer am I buying generic balls of generic double knit, instead my living room has become filled with clear plastic bags of expensive, beautiful yarn. They take up quite a lot of space.

I had a bit of a tidy up yesterday and gathered together my favourite skeins. In my living room I've got shelves that have always reminded me a bit of a yarn shop. 

I guess the result was inevitable.

Support A Local Yarn Producer!

Well, Irish is almost local.

And the fleeces are local to her.

Stop nit-picking the title and look at the lovely yarn!

Loop

When knitters go to new places, either on holiday or just to a meeting somewhere exotic (Birmingham too), the first question that comes up is "are there any wool shops?" When I said I'd be going to London, the response was almost unanimous: "ooo, Loop"

One of the surprising things about London is its short supply of yarn shops. I've added a special "yarn" search to my places app and it keeps coming up empty. But Loop is probably the most prominent knitting destination in London and I can't quite believe it took me two days to realise that it's just up the street from where I've been staying.

After a bit of getting lost that resulted in me buying two books in Waterstones, I found Loop tucked into a little alley-way. At first glance it looks likes small but eclectic shop but it turns out that the downstairs houses only laceweight, 4ply and (first time I've seen it in England) sport weight. Upstairs there's a lovely selection of heavier yarns and a range of books and leaflets that eclipsed anything I've seen before. And they gave me a canvas bag inside a plastic bag so my stuff wouldn't get rained on. Lovely people!

Calling Loop a knitting destination sounds a little like a marketing line and it is, a little. But comparing it to most knitting shops is also unfair. Like most modern shops they run classes and offer great helpful advice but this is also a shop that has its own pattern book and that slight air of exclusivity is also apparent.

In my little town, knitting shops serve one purpose: they sell cheap wool to fairly uncreative knitters (lots of acrylic, lots of baby sets). Get Knitted in Bristol has a foot in both camps: they stock some fabulous small-scale yarn for addicts plus enough mainstream acrylic to satisfy traditionalists. As I walked into Loop I felt that they may as well have set up security detectors to alert them to any attempts by man-made fibres to gain a foothold in the shop.

And that's great, Loop is very definitely serving a different need to my local shops. Different and, without a doubt, more affluent. At one point I found myself lovingly stroking some cascade 220 as I realised it was almost twice what I'd pay in Bristol.

So, onto what I bought (pictures will have to follow, phone camera in a cafe doesn't do it justice). I fell in love with some breath-taking Yarn Collage in rich browns with silk and sequins woven in but I convinced myself that it wasn't really justified when I've not done anything with my Pixie Dust yet. So instead I bought two skeins of THE softest chunky alpaca that I've ever felt. Walking back from the udderbelly last night I was dreaming of a scarf/hood that would warm my neck and ears, so I think it'll be that. I also bought a German stitch dictionary with some of the most unusual lace patterns I've ever come across. Logically, this can only help me make more stuff. Therefore it can only result in a smaller stash. Therefore, I deserve more yarn. Scientifically proven.

Yarntastic

I've been attempting something of a Yarn Pr0n Tuesday thing because I'm usually at college on a Tuesday night. So I cheat on Monday and schedule a picture of yarn that I like for while I'm out. So, in approximate keeping with my own tradition (four weeks is a tradition, right?), here are some photos of my purchases from Saturday.

This is Nimu Yarns' stunning Blea Lace. It's 100% silk and it has an impressive 750m of fabulousness waiting to be knitted into I-have-absolutely-no-clue-what. 

Although I was taken with the texture of the yarn (and I really don't have the first idea what to do with 100% silk laceweight) it was the colour that really caught me. There's a definite trend to most of my purchases this weekend and I just couldn't resist the stormy blue-grey colour, especially when I discovered the tiny flecks of turquoise in a few places.

No turqouise here, you'll just have to take my word on it

This is more Nimu Yarns Sizergh. I bought a stunning blue/black skein in December and my plans for it just won't work. I panicked when I realised I couldn't find it on their website so obviously I had to buy some when I saw it. Obviously.

For some reason I can't get a good, clear picture of the whole skein of Sizergh. My only guess is that the mohair halo is throwing off the focus of my camera.

If this were a regular Tuesday I think this would be my Yarn Pr0n

And here's the new holder of Most Paid For a Single Skein. It's also without any doubt the highest I've ever paid per yard: This amazing Pixie Dust by Yarn Collage is only 35 yards. 

What am I going to do with 35 yards? I have no idea but it's going to be a real challenge to do justice to this yarn. It's soft and beautiful and it makes me think of silk cocoons, strung together then spun in a web of fine mohair and silver. 

That's not what it is but it's still amazing and for some reason I can't seem to get a suitable close-up.

And that just leaves my two non-yarn purchases. Well, I also bought fabric but that's not going to look remotely interesting until I've done something with it.

It was probably inevitable that I'd buy some Colinette but the real surprise was just how little of it I saw at the show. This is Roving and I plan to fight the very strong urge to spin it. For a while I've been curious about felting with fibre before it's spun/knitted and I think this may end up as some sort of (highly) experimental scarf. 

Now, as if I hadn't indulged myself enough, I thought I should probably buy something that wasn't wool. I'd just succumbed to the Pixie Dust and was lost in visions of cowls when I came across the Stealth Bunny stall. Aside from being very friendly people with chocolates on their stand, they were also selling an extremely weird and wonderful selection of buttons. 

Well, I thought, if I'm going to spend lots of money on wool and (probably) make some sort of cowl with it then there's no way I'm putting a normal button on it.

That is a hallmarked, sterling silver button made from the bowl of a spoon and I would be far too ashamed to admit in public how much it cost. But it's so beautiful and so lovely to stroke. And it'll go so well on the shimmery Pixie Dust. And it's silver. And...

And...

And..

And, hello. My name is Rebecca and I'm a yarn addict.

0 - 60

This is not the post I was intending to make this weekend. I had planned to ramble a little about my new bus project (which I'm very much enjoying) or maybe, just maybe, to be feeling triumphal about finishing Winterthorn 3. As it turns out, the poor hat hasn't moved in over a week.

My weekend began with below-zero DIY with my parents. Recommended dress code for below-zero DIY is: Socks, slippers (knitted), walking boots, jeans, long sleeved top, roll-neck jumper, multi-purpose cowl-thing, hoodie, hats × 2, gloves (fingers), gloves (fingerless) and big jacket with built-in fleece. Not exactly attractive but very warm.

After my parents rescued me from bits of my house getting detached by coastal winds, they popped into the local garden centre where they found a new bird feeder and an unexpected wool shop. By this point it was not only snowing but the snow was beginning to settle on the ground but there was no way I was going to miss out on a new source of yarn only three minutes from my house!

There are a lot of things I like about where I live and I can't really complain about a town that has four different shops that sell wool, at least not justifiably. Unfortunately they all cater to a certain type of knitter. Perhaps because Burnham is pretty much a retirement community, Rico CanCan is about as ground-breaking as you're likely to get.

Well, things have changed now! Once I got to the garden centre (through crunchy snow!) I found Manos del Uruguay, Debbie Bliss, Lousia Harding, Rowan, Rico (more than CanCan!) and many other brands that I've long wished I didn't have to drive to Bristol for. The shop is being run from December to March by http://www.andeeknits.co.uk/ and, if there's a suitable space, they may move out of the glorified tent they're in now and move into the larger (and warmer) main building.

I tried to keep in mind my recent splurges on http://www.nimuyarns.co.uk/ and at Get Knitted so I was very restrained and bought a single skein of Manos Wool Clasica in a fabulous riot of rich colours and some interesting super-fine mohair from Italy that I've never come across before.  I'm planning to keep the mohair for my Chiminea pattern and try knitting it with two strands together. If that works then it should also work with Rowan kidsilk haze.

So. The mohair was sorted but what to do with the Manos clasica? I'd dithered a lot about exactly which Manos to buy and I almost fell for some stunning cranberry-coloured laceweight but I've been doing so much 4 ply lately that something in my brain snapped and demanded some substantial big, fat wool.

Although it's listed on Ravelry as aran I'm certain it must be chunky. It's single ply, rather thick-and-thin, 100% wool and utterly lovely.

There's something about Manos del Uruguay - probably seeing the hand-written name of the woman that dyed this beautiful masterpiece - that demands you do something special with this yarn. You owe it to them to make something worthy of it, something that you're really proud of.

So. Something beautiful. Something I'll actually wear/use. Something a bit different. And something I can make with one skein. I'll be honest, I truly expected this to sit in my spare room for several months until I found something on Ravelry that felt right.

My normal knitting process goes something like:

1. Buy beautiful yarn
2. Come up with a plan
3. Test to see if plan works
4. Knit it

Normally there's an extremely long gap between one and two. Steps two and three get repeated a LOT. But for some reason the Wool Clasica hotwired my brain and I went from one to four, via two and three, in about half an hour.

By the time I got home I was pretty sure it was going to be a little scarf. It's been cold in the office a lot lately and I feel like an idiot wandering round in a full-size scarf. Plus, being nearly chunky, it would knit up quickly. But that means nothing complex so how could I make it interesting? Edgings have been in my brain a lot lately and there's something I want to try that has involved stripping out the tiny mini pom-poms out of some Sirdar Snowdrop but that's another story.

I was thinking about fringes for a while but I only had the one skein and fringes can go a bit rubbish, especially if there's any risk of them felting a little with body heat.

Five minutes after I got home I was struck by an idea but I assumed it wouldn't possibly work in real life so I tested it. And it worked. It worked so very well.

It's a sort of spiral-y cast-off that I figured would go well along the cast-off edge. Though working it on every stitch looked a bit busy so I tested it on alternate stitches and I liked it even more.

All that was left was to trawl my stitch dictionaries for something that was pretty but simple enough for me to work out the repeats along with rapid increases. Plus it had to not use a huge amount of yarn as I only had 126m to work with. I tried a rather boring rib variation then something described as "Knotted Openwork". The effect is very similar to an open, latticey star stitch, something I didn't really notice until I started on the Manos.

Within half an hour I had started on the scarf and, though I had to rip it back once and accidentally stayed up to midnight, it was about 60% done by the time I went to bed. This morning I slept in late but still had it finished by midday.

I'm not sure I've ever gone from buying a random skein, to having something planned, knitting it and getting it all pinned out for blocking within 24 hours. As much as I would've liked to get a little further with my hat, I think this might have been more rewarding. I'm pretty proud of both the result and my half hour of high-velocity inspiration.

Inspiration on the Park & Ride

This is how I now view the internet:

This post contains two important lessons of the week:
1) I really never stop thinking about knitting
2) Everything looks better in my head

The bus company has clearly been having a rubbish week. The buses have been full and late and generally a bit rubbish. This has been my excuse for - when I finally get on a bus - just switching off and not doing any knitting. Any rumour that this is because my current bus project is the damned frog is entirely unfounded. Maybe partially unfounded. Okay, entirely founded.

Anyway, yesterday I actually got a seat and found myself staring at a rather interesting scarf. It was woven rather than knitted but the way the threads intertwined fascinated me. I've been thinking about something with dropped stitches for a while and all of a sudden I could picture a pseudo-checkered scarf with woven bits.

When I got home I waited only long enough to eat dinner and notice that the first series of Sherlock had arrived from Amazon. Then it was to hell with Winterthorn V3! To hell with my fascinator, my rainbow scarf and my sizergh scarf! It was time to try weaving dropped stitches!

About ten minutes into the first episode of Sherlock, it was obvious that it wasn't really working. By the time Watson was meeting with Mycroft I knew I needed a new plan.

See the woven sections? No? That's cause they're rubbish.

By the time I started the second episode I had an interesting but rather unoriginal-looking pattern that might actually work. Photos will probably follow on the weekend when I can get some decent light.

Am I the only one seeing little wheat sheaves?

So, the reason I was composing scarves on the bus? http://www.nimuyarns.co.uk/ and their flash sale on Friday that enticed me into breathtakingly beautiful yarn at 20% off. I managed to limit myself to two skeins: Torva and Aira (again, pictures to come on the weekend). I've found a pattern for the Torva but the Aira has such a stunning sheen and subtle colours that I want something a bit different to show it off.

Torva

Aira

Although it might not be the intricate woven plan I made on the bus, I think the new drop-stich sample might just work in the Torva. The more I think about it, the more I think that the woven idea might be fantastic in two colours. The only thing letting it down is the fact that the woven sections are so tightly packed that it's hard to distinguish them from the moss-stitch sections. There's something in it, I'm just not sure what.

See the woven sections now?

And the Torva? Well, if I can bring myself to wind that vivid blue skein into a ball, it's going to be my next bus project.

Frogs? What frogs?

On scarf yarns (a rant)

I'll start by saying that I have no problem with any particular scarf yarns, nor with the people that knit with them. I know a lot of people have knitted with scarf yarn and, if you have, this rant is not aimed at you, it's aimed at the current prevalence of scarf yarns. No offence is intended to anyone.

Now that's out of the way, on with the opinionated rant...

Over the last year, scarf yarns have become huge. Every yarn shop now carries several and I'm not going to argue that they don't have their place in the knitter's stash. However there's something that annoys me about scarf yarns and it's taken me a while to realise what it is.

It's just one word: scarf

This is not about scarves. I am a worryingly prolific scarf knitter. I have three whole racks of scarves in my house. No, this is about the idea that the yarn is for a scarf and only a scarf. Do we go nuts for kits? No we do not. I think we generally see them as a perfectly good gift for a novice knitter but, other than that, we're not interested. So what is it about the kit-without-needles that is Can Can or Kidsilk Creation that makes us suddenly feel the need to knit a scarf that is carbon-copy identical to a thousand other scarves that are out there?

I don't know, but I do know that I feel sad every time I see a ball of scarf yarn.

What I love about knitting, the thing that gets me truly passionate about the craft, is the sheer limitless scope of what you can create. Your imagination is the limit. Okay, there are scarves and hats and jumpers but also chair covers and shopping bags and ties and wooly covers for tanks and yarn bombing projects and knitted bike covers and who knows what else! That's the truly beautiful thing about a ball of yarn, it could become anything in the hands of a person with the vision to shape it.

Even the scarves and hats and gloves that are made to well-worn patterns will have the little personal touches. Maybe a little longer, a few beads, 2×2 rib, exotic stripes or beautifully blended colour. You could put something I've made next to someone else's project in exactly the same wool and I'd bet nine times out of ten I'd be able to spot which was mine.

What makes me sad about scarf yarn is the fact that - with a very few exceptions - that scarf yarn will be a scarf. It will be as wide as every other scarf. It will be as long as every other scarf. It will look like every other scarf.  Surely all yarn deserves a more ambiguous destiny?

Don't get me wrong, the overall effect and the yarns themselves are genius works of imagination. The luscious ripples of Can Can and the lacy, looping halo of Kidsilk creation are fascinating and unique.  The attempts at non-brand imitations go to show just how hard it is to get these yarns just right. But that's where the creativity ends in a sea of uniform scarves.

They may as well have come out of a factory because half the work and all the originality has already been produced for you in those factories.

So do I have anything good to say about scarf yarns? Yes, I do. I really, truly hope that the wide availability of scarf yarns and the dependability of the results help to introduce more people to knitting. I hope that people see that they can enjoy using their hands and their minds to create something that is all their own. I hope that they take that feeling of achievement and seek it out again and again. As most of our knitting group know to their cost, it doesn't take much to make a person into a yarn snob!

This rant has been on my mind for a while. I've been more and more annoyed at the ever increasing range in scarf yarns in all the shops. And at the ONE pattern that's suggested on Ravelry for kidsilk Creation. And at the identical scarves I see on the street.

And now, I've had enough. Scarf yarn has been on my mind for so long that it has become a challenge. It taunts me. It says: if you think you can do better then prove it.

I've bought a ball of Can Can and it's absolutely not going to be a scarf.