Archive for June, 2007

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designing

June 29, 2007

i appearantly needed to start numerous projects right in a row… one book knit down, one in progress, one to go. according to this picture, i cast on for this pink earflap hat – while making home fries last night. and i finished up the knitting this one yesterday afternoon - it will go in the shop, but i’m also heeding the call to offer some patterns to go with the yarn kits if wanted.

then, there’s the problem of the yarn kits… the danger of me trying to make these is that i find color combos that i want to knit, like the one above. don’t know what it will be, but it needs to be something!

i took this photo this morning on my couch. gee, wonder what i was doing late last night. speaking of designing (which i use loosely since i don’t normally write down what i’m doing – you can substitute in the phrase “making things up” if you like), my current favorite thing to do on ravelry is to click on all of the designers pics on the pattern page. then refresh and click some more. i’ve been checking fairly regularily because i’m curious as to who designed what, what they look like, and there are new designers joining every day. when you join something like ravelry, you come to notice that the world is much bigger and there are so many people you don’t know exist.

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we put all of the names in a hat…

June 29, 2007

and pulled out ‘alissa and kristen’ and joanne! congrats you two! i’ll put together some packages for you shortly.

seen in this photo is the yarn that will be going out to these two lucky winners. it is lady allure double crepe – here’s the label and here’s a more sparkly picture. you get two balls each and you get to choose your color. the yellow has gold in it and the red has silver. i never promised you a rose garden… er something pretty, but instead something interesting so here’s the story.

while in alaska, i somehow managed to inherit this wool from a lovely serbian alaskan pioneer named angie. this adventure included eating both pineapple upside down cake and fudge, as well as digging around in her basement, where she hadn’t been for at least several years. i was actually searching for some darker yarn in skein form that she bought in china, but came up with this crazy crepe stuff and some mohair and loopy wool. i left the acrylic for the next unsuspecting soul. i plan to make her twin grandchildren hats in return for her generosity, but mostly i think she’s glad to see it used. my mother-in-law had me show her all of my book knits and she showed me some of her lovely crochet work. the garbage bag with this yarn in it also included a pattern for a granny square tunic (yikes), but angie said that someone gave her this yarn too and she just never used it.

what do i find spectacular about this yarn? all the yarn that i’ve ever seen similar to this has been nasty christmas acrylic. i was, indeed, pleased as punch to find not only wool with labels, but also a slice of history that i didn’t even know ever existed. i’ve no idea what i’ll do with it… but i’m happy to have it. and i hope that the winners of the contest are too!

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when is a button not a just a button?

June 28, 2007

one of the things that i like most about buttons, besides the fact that they’re colorful, shiny, useful and fun, is that they connect me to other women. yesterday we took a little road trip to steveston, a lovely historic fishing village at the bottom of an ugly suburb just below vancouver.

there, susan took amanda, i and the littles to her favorite thrift store where she went every week for the last 4 months while her daughter was at musical drama practice. they had lots of very lovely buttons – but what i bought is not the point of this story – the point is that they were carefully tied together, attached to little squares of paper with holes punched in them and the prices carefully written on by hand.

at the mennonite thrift store where i volunteered for the last two years, there was a button woman who carefully sorted, priced, and packaged all of the buttons. other women cut the buttons from clothing before they sent them to the rag-picker.

there is something unseen about buttons that is precious. for me, it shows in the many button stories that included the community that came together over buttons in some way or another – whether it is to sew them on, rejoice over them, collect them and sort them, or to interact with each other in some other way. there is also a wonderful interaction of care for our environment and matter in general, a responsibility that i would call stewardship, when someone snips the buttons to be reused before the shirt become a rag.

so, in the end, i find that a button is not just a button.
thanks for the button entries, the contest is now closed and i’ll announce the two winners soon.
thanks for all of the feedback on the yarn poll, it is ever so helpful.
thanks for reading – the blog just went over 20,000 hits!

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yarn poll

June 26, 2007

i wound a lot of yarn into balls this morning and weighed them. then, i corresponded much of the day with my friend erin about what sort of colors she would like for two baby hats she’s going to make. this pic is of some of her options, but not the ones she took.

i’ve been told time and again that i have a way with colors. so, the question has been for a while now, how can i use that in the shop to cater to my friends who like to knit themselves. here are the options i’ve come up with:

1) yarn kits – no pattern, just 4 oz. of color coordinated yarn (with some extra colors etc. for embellishing)

2) knitting kits - 4 oz yarn with the option of several patterns to choose from

3) hat/mitt kits - yarn with the pattern, put together with a very specific pattern in mind

and to add to the mess that is my brain, once the book comes out in the spring, many of those patterns can be used with these same yarns (basic worsted weight). should i just do yarn kits with no patterns until the book comes out?

i obviously don’t have the time right now to work on 2 or 3, but i’d love to hear which you are most attracted to and why.  and if you’ve any other ideas of how to integrate my sense of color into something for the shop, i’d love to hear them!

thanks!
cosy

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a new project and button shops

June 26, 2007

last night ben and i took a good long walk and bought me a kitchen scale for weighing yarn.

this morning, i weighed all the hats i could find around and was surprised to note that the adult sized stockingnet stitch hats (on size 7 US needles) are all under 3 oz.! and the smallest child’s hats are under 2! it really doesn’t take much yarn to make a hat, people. i had my suspicions, but now it’s scientifically proven (or something)…

beyond my current fixation and revelations, there’s another new button contest entry to read. and the question/ponderance for today is about where we find buttons. i’ve inherited and thrifted mostly, but i’ve heard tell of some amazing button shops. a couple of the button stories share stories of button shops and i remember one from a blog i read accompanying a discussion on flickr that i lost :) here… she even took pics of the outside and inside of the shop. like how i stole someone else’s adventure for this blog post? i think i’ll enter her into the contest too even though i told the story.

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overwhelmed

June 25, 2007

i become hilariously overwhelmed every time i dye… nearly paralyzed. better to be paralyzed by yarn than many other things, i suppose. individual shots are now up on flickr of the yarn dyeing. i always photo right away, because who knows what i’ll knit up before i take a pic otherwise… and should you like to see how much i love such things, see my all things spinning and all things dyeing sets over on flickr. yup, i am sometimes organized. anyhow, when i come out of my overwhelmed stupor, all i want to do is knit. best not to wait that long.

lots of purples this time, partially because susan loves it and i always try to exhaust dye baths.  it’s fun to see how dyeing with others affects my color schemes.

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buttons on garments

June 25, 2007

many of our button stories have to do with buttons on garments or that belong to a paricular garment. there were several new ones over the weekend if you want to take a peek. and the contest is still open till midnight on wednesday, so join in!

now, i must admit that i generally don’t even notice buttons on garments. perhaps this is because most are not that exciting… but ben and i each have at least one garment with pretty fun buttons.

mine is this dress that i recently thrifted. i love the use of the blue buttons (all for style, not function) to add some shimmer. for some reason, they provide a necessary contrast to the neoness of the fabric. lord only knows why.

ben’s piece of clothing is a old thrifted dress shirt. i couldn’t find it, so i assume it is already packed… but imagine a regular white men’s short sleeved button up dress shirt with a subtle pattern of little blue flowers and you’ve got it. men’s clothing (as ben continuously complains) is boring. men’s white dress shirts get white buttons. but not this one – for some unknown reason it has little blue buttons! we both find them thrilling and it has seriously made us consider replacing the buttons on some of his other dress shrits. we probably won’t because that would be too time consuming, but you get the idea of how cool this shirt is to have that sway. and to think, we didn’t even really notice the buttons when we originally bought it!

have you ever had any project, when you found the buttons as the final step to completion, that just made you squee with joy?  you can imagine that i do it all the time with my hat creations :)  sometimes a good button is just what a hat needs.

UPDATE: ben’s shirt was in the laundry, here’s a photo.

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my haul

June 24, 2007

drying. see the notes on flickr and i’ll be telling more on flickr as i document these. the one thing i always get in trouble with when dyeing with my particular dye set is the yellow/yellow-brown. note that there’s not much yellow in the yarn section. i’m a bit afraid of it, and appearantly i should be more afraid of it when it comes to roving cause some of this is not the prettiest roving. mostly recycled sweater - if not recycled, then thrifted wool. some domestic roving and some gift roving. eye candy for my kitchen on a rainy sunday afternoon. now i need to buy a scale. maybe monday.

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after

June 24, 2007

susan and her yarn bouquet. here’s one of her smiling at me instead of the yarn. check out this whole washer full of yarn and roving – and that’s just mine. susan’s took up another half a washer. sent susan home with any liquid dye that was left and now, i’m going to bed :)

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before

June 23, 2007


recycled sweater yarn, ready to be dyed!  today susan and i are dyeing a bunch of fiber to use up the dyes i have mixed in jars. besides my knits, many of these will probably go into hat kits and the like for the shop.

speaking of, my shop got a very nice mention on the joint canada day/etsy shop issue of the christa knits podcast. you can find that episode here. thanks christa! i’m honored.

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