We love colors.

All of them. A lot. Which is why we've set up our newest display:

And just might be planning some wicked Fair Isle treats over the next few weeks. Oh, yes, indeedy. Along those lines, Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting is BACK IN STOCK!


Get your copy while we still have them. I know I (and several other staff members) have. This is THE reference to have on the art of Fair Isle. Really, honestly, and truly. It has pages and pages of detailed diagrams, pictures and instructions on everything from technique to designing your own sweater. If you're a knitting tech-phile, this is the book for you.

Anyway, that's what I think.

Moving on... Frances kindly brought in her newly finished Girasole:

No, it hasn't been blocked. But it's still gorgeous! In fact, I had a hard time taking a photo that didn't have someone or another's hand on it, petting. The finished "cloth" is just sublime - due entirely to the high quality of Catherine Lowe's Silk Mohair 1. And Frances has promised to bring it in after she blocked it, so keep an eye out for that!

Lastly, we sent out the very first Sock Club 2010 packages this afternoon! Excitement abounds. We can't wait to see (and hear) your reactions, o loyal Sock Club members, so please let us know what you think. Until next time, blogfans, start planning those Fair Isle projects...

Wires and glass.

Over the past 10 days, we've had the pleasure of being visited by Catherine Lowe. Aside entertaining us with several days of fantastic Couture Knitting workshops and a wicked sense of humor, Catherine also taught a mini-workshop on blocking garments with blocking wires:

It was a bit of a shame that so few people could make it, but I know everyone on staff learned a lot of new tips a tricks. I certainly did, anyway. Catherine's suggestion for using foam board from an art store is going to be a space saver on so many levels.

Above is Catherine's sleeve slowly being blocked into shape. And below is a closeup of the edge of the sleeve, once it was pinned in place:

The graph paper beneath the sleeve was used to sketch out a template of the finished dimensions, so it wouldn't end up too large or small. Neat trick, right?

Now, because I know this'll come up, the sleeve is part of a design for Catherine's next Simple Couture collection of patterns. Just like Simple Couture 4.01, it will be exclusive to Knit Purl. It should be available by the end of winter, I believe. But we will announce it in our Newsletter when it's available, for those of you who are enjoying 4.01.

That covers the "wires" portion of our post today, onto the glass...

We're a very Portland-centric store (hence the Sock Club's focus), which gives me the excuse to show you this:

A fully-functional glass spinning wheel, made by Portland native Andy Paiko. I saw it on display at the Museum of Contemporary Craft recently and just had to blog about it. It even has handspun wool yarn on the bobbin! And here's a video of it being used.

Only in Portland.

I'm afraid that's everything, for now. We've got another Newsletter coming out this Friday, so 3M and I are rather narrowly focused at the moment. Look for it in your inbox at the end of the week!

A Rock Star and the News

Where to begin... there is just so much news on the yarnfront... Mind you it's not good news. Tragic news is the best word to describe it actually. The best way to take the sting out a bit is to sandwich the news between some happy news.

Happy news: we have a rockstar in our midst and her name is Esther Hynes. Since Esther lives in California we do not have a current photo of her. I imagine she looks like this. Here is a picture of her with her sister.

As you know, rockin' is a tough job. You're traveling to the next gig, eating food on the road, and you need to make sure you look hot for the next show. You just wore the black lacy outfit at the last show and you'd like to bring out something colorful for that very special groupie you've had your eye on. Something like this:









The "Butterfly Poncho" from Knits from a Painter's Palette. It can be worn in two different ways making the costume changes between sets easy.

















You would really like to wear the "Kimono Jacket" that Maie Landra designed in the Vogue Anniverary issue, but you've been knitting for one year and you are only 25% done:


It uses a crazy amount of Koigu, but the color change keeps you entertained and the blues and greens really makes the color of your eyes pop. Perhaps you can finish on the way to your next gig in Portland. Yeah, 'cuz you're a Barracuda.

------------------


Now for somber news: in May the Malabrigo factory had a fire.

(Told you the news was tragic.) We will take the sharp inhalation of breath as a response similar to our own. We are sick. Pit-of-the-stomach-stabbing-pain sick.

The good news is the mill is still running, but because they are in Uruguay and have to deal with Uruguian bureaucracy, they haven't even been given the okay (as yet) to return to rebuild the warehouse, or start dyeing again.



The delay means any Malibrigo yarn available in the store right now is all we can get. All of it. I want Lace Baby in "Amoroso" for my next SKIF project, but it's not gonna happen. We would love to get more to you but we can't. Because they can't. Because of Uraguian beaurocracy, the space-time continuum, and the Ides of March. No more.

At least, no more for awhile. The rumor mill has the first Lace Baby being available sometime in April 2009. So there you go.

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Now even more somber news (anyone need a therapist yet?): In keeping with the theme of rumors, or fires, or Pit-of-the-stomach-stabbing-pain we are loathe to announce...

You might need to sit down for this...

Our good buddy Lars (good ol' Lars), of Unicorn Book Publishing, told us the news...

We are loathe to announce: the warehouse fire that destroyed the master copies of Poetry in Stitches.

Yeah that's gonna sting for a bit. Try some aloe or some antibiotic ointment.


Can you even believe it? It seems getting a copy of this book is like trying to kill a windmill. So, the first editions that those smart knitters have (The Blogger is not one of them) is like gold, wrapped in platinum and coated in diamonds.


Eventually there will be more. For everyone who signed up on our list (all those names we painstakingly recorded) do not worry. We plan on making big announcements when we hear more about the return of the book. Just keep us updated on your shipping address if we are to mail your copy to you.

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After all that gut-wrenching pain, I leave you with a bit-o-pretty:

Zena.
Isn't she just divine?












I sprinkled some Catherine Lowe Alpaca in the mix and now I must have more. See the pretty plum color (as opposed to the chocolate or blueberry color)?


Knitting it in was akin to heaven.


My yarn diet is collapsing in a big way.

An Ice Cube Tray and Yarn

To start off our SKIF Knit-a-long out right, for those trapped underneath something heavy and can't make it in on Tuesday nights to hangout and get your SKIF knit on, I present to you today's topic:

Choosing yarn

I know it sounds absolutely thrilling. Right now one of you is thinking, "If I can pick out my own socks in the morning I can certainly manage choosing a yarn that I love."

Au contraire, mon frère (and mon soeur). Choosing yarn is sometimes as hard as finding that perfect bottle of soft drink to go with backyard barbecue. Would you pair Jolt cola with Brats? How about Chocolate Yoo Hoo with German style potato salad? I didn't think so.

So let us just consider for a moment the weighty (worsted-weighty) decision you are about to undertake and let's travel to the magical world of the Standard Yarn Weight System as brought to you by those wacky kids at the Craft Yarn Council of America (cue music).

The SKIF patterns are knit at gauges from 4 to 4½ stitches per inch on US needle sizes 8 or 9 (4.5 or 5 mm). If you were to create a garment from just one yarn for these patterns, you would choose a worsted (or Aran) weight yarn. In the land of yarn, this is medium weight.

However, you are no sissy. You are going to take on the full-throttle joy of knitting a SKIF International pattern for the full Monty effect so you choose multiple fine gauge yarns. (Deep in your psyche your alter ego sports a bicep tattoo that features yarn and needles with the old-time banner caption of "Balls of Silken Stainless Steel".)

Now here comes the perplexing part: how do you find fine gauge yarns to equal a worsted weight?

Think of the worsted weight in terms of its parts (I won't use the word fraction here because as I think about typing it I hear cogs grinding and springs sproinging in the collective minds of the math-phobic masses). Think of worsted weight yarn like an ice cube tray! As illustrated here:

Does your brain-machine feel better now?
Worsted weight yarn is composed of many skinny yarns called plies just like the tray is composed of several little ice cubbyholes (what else can you call the individual hole that makes ice other than a cubicle? I already lost half of our two readers with the math reference. I don't want to loose the other one with office-speak). Most worsted weight yarns are about 8-ply. About is a very important word. Sometime the crafty mill-mongrels will make really pretty worsted yarn that is single-ply, double-ply, and whatnot. But for illustration purposes we shall pretend all worsted weight yarn is the same and is made from 8 plies. As we have taken the trolley to the land of make believe, we shall also pretend lace weight yarns equal a single ply.

Worsted = 8 plies
Lace = 1 ply
Ergo 8 strands lace = 1 worsted yarn.

HURRAY! Whoopee! Yay we did it!

Not so fast my young Padawan. We used a word of infinite magical power. We used the word: about. The reality is yarn is made by madmen, purchased by the insane, beloved by the stark-raving mad, and coveted by the crazier-than-owning-three-vacuums (I fall into the last category... none of them work properly either but that's a story for another day). Due to this unhinged quality in the world of knitting, you might find that seven, six, or even five strands of lace can equal a worsted weight yarn. You may decide you aren't feeling the lace weight love and want to use sport or double knitting (DK) weight yarn. How do you manage that?

You let go of the control and dare to imagine:

Lace = 1-2 ply
Fingering = 2-3 plies
Sport = 3-4 plies
DK = 4-5 plies

Your head might be swimming at this point. Take the edge off with some fresh yarn stash enhancement. Don't worry we'll wait.

So now that you have some fresh stash, the next thing you do is prune some of your old stash-beast to go with it. Take those single skeins that you bought "just because" and those leftover skeins and sort them by color. Pick your favorite color(s) then sort that pile by animal/vegetable. Anything that is the hair from an animal goes into one pile and everything else (including silk) goes in the other. If you have a blend use the primary fiber as a guideline. Choose the yarns that seem to go best together, but make sure you choose a some of each: animal, vegetable, smooth, and textured yarns. The combination you choose will make your garment completely unique. If all this gives you a headache, don't fret. Tomorrow's post will show you examples of how to blend and mix your yarns together.

Until then lets see some examples from real live coworkers:

Fyberduck is using Joseph Galler's Inca Cotton in Ecru for "Neptune".

Inca Cotton=Worsted weight=8plies

Here is a great example of the use of the word about. Below is "Martha" in Tsumugi Silk Combo carried with doubled Sea Silk by SandyKay:

Tsumugi Silk Combo=Fingering Weight=3plies
Doubled Sea Silk= Doubled Lace Weight=2plies x 2

That's crazy! SandyKay is making her's with 7plies! Aaaaaaa!!!! Panic! Panic!

Feel better? Did you get it out of your system? There's no need to panic because she's getting gauge so there is no need to worry.

This one is a whole bucket of crazy... like owning-three-vacuums crazy:

I have taken my stash apart and grabbed all the silly little leftover balls of lace weight mohair and sock yarn and added some Tsumugi Silk and Bamboo from Habu, Flaxen, and Alpaca 1 for my Zena. Who knows, the urge to buy more yarn might come on me again and I might just add something else.

The patterns require anywhere from a pound to a pound and a half (.5 to .6 kilo) of blended yarn. In terms of yardage (or meter-age for the rest of the world) that is approximately 890-1350 yards (815-1230 meters).

The nice thing about the patterns are they emphasize and encourage knitters to just go with the flow and think of the experience like a Sous chef thinks of cooking: blend, mix, experiment. Some of the tips offered in the patterns are: "Be glad when the shop runs out of your dye lot" and "Keep switching yarns the whole way through".

Think of it as an opportunity for anarchy.

For those of you Anarchists out there who want to post pictures and progress on your own SKIF knit, write a blog post on this all inclusive blog: skifkal dot blogspot dot com!

No Rest for the Weary...

..or is it the wicked?

My great-grandmother, "Grand Mutter", had a nasty habit of mumbling idioms and now I can always remember the spirit of this scary bad-ass east Texas woman every time I think of one.
Remember "Stupid is as stupid does"? How about "Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end"? Betcha never heard "Beatcha like my ugly red-headed step child" or "Snatch ya ball-headed".
Yeah, that was Grand Mutter and boy was she the life of the party.
The trouble is because I hear them so infrequently nowadays, they've managed to swim around in my head and copulate and I'm left befuddled with: "Idle hands are the Devil's..." What?
It's particularly trying on my sanity because they always seem to come to mind during bouts of insomnia.

1 am:
Idle hands are the Devil's campground.
No don't do this. Go to sleep. Try some chamomile.

1:40 am:
Idle hands are the Devil's toolbox.
Stop it. Sleep already crazy person. Try some music. Maybe jazz.

1:52 am:
Chet Baker or Leonard Cohen not Charlie Parker. Sleep making music you moron!
Don't call us a moron.
We can call us a moron if we want. Whatcha gonna do about it?
Idle hands are the Devil's FourRunner... or is it Fore Runner?
Fine. We are goin' for the big guns now: rooibos with the valerian root paired with the dulcet tones of Francoise Hardy and Claudine Longet. That'll fix it.

3:29 am:
Idle hands are the Devil's...
Blog! Work on the blog and how we can't sleep and...
Do you want people to think we're meshuge?
We're sure they've figured it out all ready.
You know, we could always just use the Google-fu and look it...
No! we'll remember all on our own, or we'll forget about it.

4:07 am:
Idle hands are the Devil's playstation.
It's not playstation... Playstation. Hmm, solitaire or maybe Brick Breaker?
Idle hands are the Devil's Brick Breaker?
No idiot. Maybe we should play a video game.
Don't call us idiot. Play Brick Breaker.
No, if we are going to play something it should be yarn. Still have that True Plies experience to blog about.

(Habu's Fique. McLovin' it!)


















We could also tease those that read the blog with the new new new news of the "Catherine Lowe event spectacular"
Yeah she's cool but she totally deserves her own post...
...devoid of the Blogger's sleepless mad rantings. Yeah, we're right.
There's always the lace design work for the spring Gratis Knits to work on. Oooh!


We can totally bust out the Swiss Mountain lovely-goodness and the beads and play yarn à la Ruth Sørenson.












It's reeaallly late. We should just try to get some rest.

4:49 am:
Idle hands...
Fine we'll look it up.

The find

Well it could be anything. Most importantly though, we don't care anymore. So there. Nanner, nanner, nanner. Sleep is ours at last!
Is it wicked or weary?
Huh?
No rest for the...

Kill me.