Saving the world

Remember a few weeks ago when I was all excited to go see a trunk show a friend was having to show off her hand dyed yarns?  Do you also remember even further back me talking about feeling overwhelmed by my yarn stash?

Well I do.  And now, now we have a roof leak and while we wait for the roofer and wait to see if his repair job works, everything in my room is squished over into a three foot strip along the edge of my bed.  My only seating is now on the bed.  So I sit on the bed knitting, and staring into the closet of doom.  With the exception of my camera bag on the floor and a very tiny plastic Christmas tree on an upper shelf, every thing you see in that closet is craft related and 95% of it is yarn.  And that's not even all the yarn.  I'm completely overwhelmed.  It's actually making me a little bit depressed thinking about the fact that I will never ever live long enough to knit up all that yarn.

And with that in mind, I swore to myself that when I went to the trunk show, I'd only buy one skein.  One.  One single, solitary skein.

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Yarn Haul from the Dying for Art trunk show at Yarn Matters, Williamsburg, VA

And so I came home with eight skeins and a new tote bag.  Good grief!

I don't even have concrete plans for them.  The top two skeins, that purpley gray and the red multi colored, plus the light blue multicolored on the bottom row are all DK weight and will be socks.  Or maybe fingerless gloves, but most likely, socks.  I desperately need new socks.  I just don't want to knit socks anymore.

All the rest are fingering weight and will most likely be shawls.  The gold and navy skeins on the bottom row are Urth Harvest and I plan to use them together.  I just love that navy and gold together.  I also feel slightly better about my purchase because Urth plants a tree for each skein sold.  I may be overwhelmed by my yarn closet but it's helping to save the world.   The other skeins are all my friend Martha's, or more specifically, Dying for Art yarns.

And that bag!  Well, I needed a bag.  Okay, okay.  I needed another bag like I needed another skein of yarn.  But look at it!  How could I resist such an adorable bag?  Besides, it has pockets galore and is big enough to hold an interchangeable needle set, a medium sized tool bag, a large sweater, the start of two shawls, a wash cloth project bag and a few spare skeins of miscellaneous yarns that may also turn into shawls at some point.  You know, just in case I run out of knitting and need to start a new project on the fly.  And yet while big enough to hold all that, it doesn't feel like a huge, gigantic project bag. Besides, it has alpacas and lamas on it.  No one, including alpaca farmers, can agree whether they are alpacas or lamas so I'm saying it's both.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Yarn Therapy

Thank you all for the kind, encouraging words on yesterday's post.  I was in a rather dark place yesterday.  Thankfully I was able to attend last night's knitting group gathering which always helps.  Getting a couple of hours of sleep also helped.

Bamboo Pop Sock

A little yarn therapy helped too.  It's a good thing we'll close on the sale of our house and be debt free next week because I keep spending all our money on yarn. But hey, yarn is cheaper than the mental institute and that skein is ready to knit.  No winding needed.  And, I have the Reyna pattern already printed.  I'm feeling a lot better today.

Knitting group was quite productive.  Besides making me feel better and helping me de-stress, I was able to finish the Martha Shawl.  

I-cord bind-off

I still have quite a bit of the Sunset (the pink & yellow) from Dying for Art but I ran out of the Carbon from Knitted Wit.  Since there was so much Sunset left, I thought about knitting some kind of lacy border but ... dark place.  I took the easy way out and knit an i-cord bind-off instead.  

Martha Shawl

The shawl isn't quite as long as I'd hoped it would be, but then, I haven't blocked it yet.  Garter does stretch a lot when blocked.  It may even be too long after blocking!

Completed Martha Shawl

I really love the way it looks with a shawl cuff, although I definitely need to buy myself a black cuff.  The brown leather one isn't really cutting it.

Three on Thursday

I'm joining Carole for Three on Thursday and I have three knitting updates for you.  My apologies in advance if the photos are blurry.  I can't tell.  At the moment, everything in my world is blurry.  That never-ending, cold-like virus I've had is still hanging on and now it's gone into my eye.  My eye and eyelashes are full of antibiotic ointment which makes it tricky to see details.  

You'll also need to excuse the packing boxes, weird furniture placement and general disarray in every photo taken for the next month or so.  Did I mention we are moving?  Yeah, I'm still in slight denial about it.

Fable Fur Cowls

Luckily the Fable Fur cowls I've been knitting are garter stitch on giant needles.  I could practically knit them in my sleep.  Which it sort of feels like I'm doing.  The gray one on the bottom is Kuma, the middle is knit with Bjern and the top is Mishka.  Kuma is my favorite.  I feel like it looks the most like real fur.  I thought I'd prefer Bjern over Mishka but it turns out, I like Mishka better.  

And speaking of Mishka, have you seen the free teddy bear pattern Knit Picks is offering to go along with their Fable Fur yarn?  It is Adorable!  And did I mention, it's free!?!

Test knitting the Showl Cowl for Chris Knits with yarn from Forbidden Fiber Co.

Next up is the test knitting cowl I knit for Chris Knits.  I ended up making the medium size with an extra garter ridge row.  I really wanted to knit the largest version but the skein of yarn was getting smaller and smaller and I am the Queen of Denial.  Just like I'm happily denying our upcoming move, I was denying how quickly the cowl had begun to eat up yarn.  I finally calculated how much yarn each row was taking and had to face facts; I didn't have enough.

I'm hoping to get the cowl blocked over the next couple of days and show you a better photo of it next week. But even unblocked, I think it looks great!  

I can't wait for Chris to put this pattern out into the world.  I think you'll enjoy knitting it.  It's super simple to knit but you never get bored.  Even with the longer rows you don't have a chance to get bored.  You only knit a few rows of one stitch before it changes to something else.  And the lace sections are simple too.  The pattern is easily remembered, yet it changes every few rows.  Super simple, yet it keeps you on your toes.  Definitely my kind of design!

I'm so thankful Chris offered me the opportunity to knit this wonderful cowl and gifted me the yarn.  I'm hesitant to include a link to the yarn shop because I don't trust myself not to shop and did I mention we're moving soon?  I'm supposed to be getting rid of yarn, not collecting more.

The Martha Shawl

And last, my most recent project.  I'm calling it Martha.  I'd planned to knit a simple but lacy shawl design with only Sunset, the pink/yellow yarn, but I didn't like the way the yarn played with the lace.  It was a little too busy for my taste.

Long ago I knit a loooong triangular scarf from a pattern whose name started with a "B."  Sadly, the shape and the "B" are all I can remember about it.  Although I don't know the design's name, I liked the result and have knit my own made-up version numerous times since.  Each one has been knit slightly different.  

This time around, I'm knitting (Actually knitting every row.  Yay! No purling!) two rows of the not-so-solid, solid black (Carbon from Knitted Wit) and two rows of Sunset from Dying for Art (KnittersKnacks on Facebook.)  Each first row of the black is an increase row.  It couldn't be simpler.  Four rows repeated over and over and over until it's long enough and/or you run out of yarn.  If you're interested in the details, they are:

The Martha Shawl

Using 2 colors of similar weight yarn and needles to obtain a pleasing gauge,

Cast on 3 stitches
Row 1:  Using color A, K1, Kfb, K1
Row 2:  Knit across
Row 3:  Without cutting yarn, switch to color B and knit across
Row 4:  Knit across

Row 5:  With Color A, K1, Kfb, knit across
Row 6:  Knit across
Row 7:  With Color B, knit across
Row 8:  Knit across

Repeat rows 5 - 8 until you run out of yarn or reach the desired length.

I have knit a version of this in the past where I used three colors and it looked great but keeping up with the increase rows wasn't a mindless thing.  You may have noticed - I like mindless.

Lucky Girl

I am such a lucky girl! 

First, my awesome boss gave me two days off so that I can attend the Montpelier fiber festival this coming weekend.  Will I see you there?

Second, Martha, a friend from my Wednesday night knitting group, is a yarn dyer.  She's been dying yarn for a while now and not long ago started her own business selling her hand dyed yarns.  But what does that have to do with me being lucky you ask?

Dying for Art Sunset sock yarn

I'm lucky because Martha gifted me a skein of her superwash sock yarn.  The colorway is Sunset and it's much prettier in real life than it is in the photo.  Currently, the state fair is in town which means it's raining.  And when it rains, my house is dark and dreary and taking a decent photo is out of the question.  Also, my camera hates reds and absolutely refuses to accurately portray anything red, pink or orange.  And today, for some reason, gray. 

The Ocean's Daughter and Sunset 

In the photos, the yarn appears to be pink, blue and yellow.  In reality, it's pink, orange, yellow and a darkish gray.  I plan to knit The Ocean's Daughter, a Kat Riddell design.  I'd prefer to knit a baby sweater with it, but Grand-baby To Be wasn't cooperating at the last check up so we still don't have an answer to the boy/girl question.  But it's okay.  There is plenty of yarn in the stash pile and one day in the not too distant future, the question will be answered.  Meanwhile, I'll be content to knit The Ocean's Daughter... just as soon as I finish test knitting the cowl.

But enough about what I'm doing.  What you should be doing is checking out Martha's yarns.  Her shop is on Facebook and can be found at KnittersKnacks and if you're on Instagram, she's luvsteddybears.  Go check her yarns out, she's got some beautiful colorways.