Anne Hanson does it again!

I bought yet another Anne Hanson design -- her latest, Caricia (also in her store), is stunning! but there seems to be only one source of Handmaiden in Australia, and their web site says nearly everything is out of stock ... nor do they even list the 5-ply cashmere-silk suggested in the pattern. Looking through the yarns available at Sunspun and Southseas, it's not all that easy to find yarn that's 400-450 yards per 100 g -- lots of them are more like 300 yds, and then there are laceweights with 200 yds per 25 g ... Eki Riva has a baby alpaca yarn that's 400 m, which would feel very nice, but the colours aren't very interesting.

Anyway, I've got two cones of cashmere-silk somewhere in my stash: red and cream -- I'm just not sure how many yards are on the cones. There's also a cone of lavender yarn, which might be alpaca ...

Mon 2 Feb 2009: correction -- the red stuff is 150g of pure silk (!) and the lavender yarn is, indeed, alpaca (4 ply superfine, 475g) ... 17 wpi makes it light fingering weight, and very likely 400 yds per 100g -- not as exciting as the Handmaiden, but it's in my stash, and will look almost as nice as it feels.

French Girl Knits!

Kristeen's beautiful book arrived yesterday, only 10 days after Amazon shipped it (the book fairy must be able to find my house in his sleep!) :-) and already several KALs have started to organise, with a few knitters already half-finished! I put my hand up for the Veronique airy shrug, and considered buying more Colinette Parisienne from Sarah, or the Kidsilk Haze suggested by the pattern, then realised I have just the right amount sitting in my stash -- not the colour I was thinking of buying, but it is a colour that I wear, and I did buy it thinking that I would wear it. I'm swatching it, trying out some lace patterns for the lower back: maybe Anne Hanson's vine flower, or the diamond motif from Diamonds & Triangles ... I considered the Myrtle Leaf pattern, but that requires lacework in both directions. The vine flower pattern is much more subtle in laceweight -- I nearly gave up on it, because I thought it wasn't showing up but, after knitting the diamonds above it, the curves became quite visible.

I'm surprised that no KAL has formed for Satine, the first pattern in the book -- it's so pretty, and looks relatively quick and easy to do ... except that I need to go out and buy 8mm and 9mm needles -- I swatched the 12-stitch lace pattern on 10mm and it is too big. I'm hoping that some fuchsia mohair in my stash will be enough (the Sirdar Kid Mohair is from the days before labels specified yardage, and it's not in the ravelry database, which lists 111 yds for the Hayfield Mohair 80) -- I'll frog the back of the Alterknits abstract cardigan that has been hibernating for months, at least partly because I had second+ thoughts about a fuchsia back with the much more sober front.

So I'm making inroads into my stash, which is just as well, since I ordered some Habu laceweight silk this morning, along with the silk and wool stainless steel yarn for Romi's designs.

the less-hot change

can't really call it a "cool" change when the temperature's still 30+ degrees ... it went through Geelong and environs a while ago but hasn't yet reached Melbourne :-(

so I'll stay here in my nice cool office and continue knitting Aurelia's dress -- the skirt is finished and the next round decreases to half the stitches, and onto needles one size smaller ... but my Kollage square circs are all 32" long (the dress bodice is only 20") so I'll try pulling the excess cable out between stitches (Kollage cables are very flexible) but if I get tired of this, I might have to switch to non-square needles ... but then I might need to go down two sizes -- I'd forgotten that Kollage advise using needles one size larger than the pattern suggests, to get gauge.

OTOH there are only a few rows of bodice before the work splits into front and back, and they're only short rows ...

4:35 pm update: here it comes! down to 37 degrees and (hopefully) falling!

a Romi kind of day

the book fairy visited again yesterday, despite the 43-degree heat, and left Rosemary Hill's book -- full of jewelry and scarf projects using techniques that are quite new to me ... I need to source all kinds of interesting new tools and fibres :-) including Habu wool-stainless-steel yarn (!) -- but I'll probably start by making some flower petal earrings for Ruth ... 

Earlier in the day, before I knew the book had arrived, I followed up an email from Romi's Yahoo group, and bought two scarf pins: the one I drooled over before:

plus this other beauty, which will look wonderful nestled in my mauve-hued lacy things (e.g., Chitra's wrap, and the Colinette Parisienne Raphael-colourway lace scarf I started knitting ... some time ago now): 

Vine flower / braided river dress

I started a dress for Aurelia, using Anne Hanson's vine flower dress pattern and repurposing the Paton's Focus on Linen yarn that I bought long ago to make a summer no/short-sleeve top, which I frogged to attempt the simple cardigan in Knitting Experience 2, which has been hibernating while I thought about how to handle the insufficient yarn problem. I still don't know how many metres I've got, as the label has no info except fibre content (not even any gauge or needle info!).

I really should have swatched the lace pattern before starting, to quickly see how the whole pattern would look in this yarn, but I thought I would have to reverse/invert the instructions on WS rows if I did it on straight needles -- it actually would have been quite easy, as every WS row would just be purled (that'll teach me to read the pattern though before starting!)

Luckily, the lace pattern seems to be turning out ok:

I really like this yarn -- such a pity that it was discontinued! In the vine pattern, the mixture of thick and thin, white, grey, aqua and lavender, reminds me of the braided river in NZ -- this outcrop.org photo comes close to my memory of it.

another day, another knitting book

The book fairy came again yesterday (the Australia Post contracters don't knock anymore -- they just leave the parcel on the front porch, unless a signature is required -- my partner has "temporarily" shifted some junk from his workroom to just outside the front door, and the delivery guys have decided this is just the place to leave parcels ... they blend in with the clutter, so I'm never sure how long something's been sitting there, in plain sight yet invisible -- the up-side is that they're also pretty invisible to any opportunists who might be inclined to pinch stuff ... also, I usually go in and out via the side door, so I just have to make a point of checking every so often, or when I hear a van arrive/depart)

so now I have Knit 2 Together which is currently a steal on Amazon at US$5.50 -- it has some great patterns for bags and tops; some of the other patterns are interesting  just to see what Santa Monicans get excited about -- Mel Clark is a Kiwi who, although she's lived in California for 20+ years, bases a lot of her designs on what she grew up with ... and many of these are what my sister Americans are going for :-)

but the stories are the best part of the book! I love knitting (and cooking) books that tell stories! I'm actually only vaguely aware of who Tracy Ullman is, but she writes very well and entertainingly, and certainly contributes a lot to my enjoyment of this book.

at the bottom of the Ravelry page for this book is a link to Mel's Ravelry profile, which links to her blog and web site -- she moved back to NZ in 2007 and has a miraculous online store that's really well set-up to help you find the yarns you need/want -- including Manos del Uruguay non-sock yarns, for which Google found no Australian sellers.

moebius cowl practice

I'm getting a tiny bit bored with my sock knitting (also this one) so I'm gonna do it today -- I have the KnitPicks 40+ inch cable and the 6mm tips aren't being used in any other project, and the Spotlight bamboo/cotton yarn is close enough to 11 wpi -- I'm gonna cast on Cat Bordhi's Moebius Cowl! it will be a practice run -- more like a large swatch (I have only 75m of bamboo/cotton) -- to get used to the technique and lace pattern before I cast on with fancy yarn for the real thing ... although, as the bamboo/cotton is nice and soft ... and purple! I'll probably wear it as a neck warmer.

books!

Book of Yarn arrived today from Amazon -- only two weeks since they shipped it! so Knit 2 Together should arrive soon, then the other 3 in another few weeks ... I think I have too many books and/or not enough time to knit ... but I still want Sally Melville's new book, which might become available sooner than the official publication date -- French Girl Knits isn't due out until 1 Feb but they shipped it yesterday.

Book of Yarn has pretty pictures but also quite a lot of information that merits close reading, followed by careful study and consideration of my stash -- hopefully this will help me decide what to make with it ...

Odd that the book has a Moebius shawl pattern that doesn't use the method made popular by Cat Bordhi's books -- it creates the twist the "wrong" way, by twisting the cast-on stitches before joining -- sure enough, the project photos show that it has a full twist, i.e., it's not a Moebius strip at all. (I couldn't find the web pages I read before about this but found this awesome page by a mathematician who gives 3 different methods for knitting Moebius bands.)

The book does contain a pattern by Cat Bordhi -- a very elegant felted bag shaped like a calla lily, which might be just the thing to start me felting -- it looks like something I would fall in love with all over again, every time I looked at it.

break's over, back on your heads!

I go back to work tomorrow, such as it is ... I've been keeping an eye on email activity and it seems most people are still away, although that hasn't stopped the people who are working from sending out numerous notifications of deadlines -- I should have chosen my sessional staff by last Friday, and my supp exam paper is due this Wednesday ...

And I still haven't prepared the documents to send to my tax agent, for my 2007-8 tax return!

what I have been doing is spending a lot of time on Ravelry :-) -- friending people (esp people in Australia, esp in Melbourne), joining groups from their group lists, adding patterns to my queue (trawled through 23 pages of Drop Designs -- only 73 to go, but I was finding fewer and fewer patterns of interest, so maybe I'll just wait for them to finish translating this season's patterns), and adding projects -- need to get the photo from jh of pokemon modelling Aurelia's capelet and hat ... I actually kept myself awake last night, thinking about the finished and unfinished projects that I could/should add! I posted something about Sally Melville's new book but noticed this morning that the other postings about this are in the "my website" thread. I answered a couple of questions -- one about the not-knit-round shawl and another about psso. And I PMed Emma, asking to buy her 2 skeins of Rare Yarns Fire -- could be just the thing to make the Drop house slippers -- I remember how nice it was to work with this yarn when I made Clare's Einstein Coat. Not that I really need more yarn ... I poked around in my stash drawer and cupboard, wondering where various balls of yarn have gone, and re-discovering yarn that I'd forgotten about ... which is why I really need to get them listed in Ravelry -- then I can try to start matching them with queued patterns, and make a shopping list of [types of] yarns that I should look for -- and not just keep buying a bit (or a lot!) of this and that, on impulse!

Note: many people who post in the forums use ETA in a way that's sort of, but not quite, like BTW -- will need to find the right place to ask what this means ...

more ravelry

• finally noticed the rss field in my profile -- copied in the link from this blog: still no posts :-( -- turns out I had to hit Enter after copying the link in
• noticed that other people's photos are on flickr ... have to figure out how to set this up as part of an efficient workflow ...
• looked up maylene (the name I'd originally tried): she's been a member since Oct 2007, hasn't been knitting all that long but has done some wonderful things, including a shrug designed by Ashley Adams Moncrief for Knitty (this is going into my queue!)
• followed the link to see Ashley's other designs and found Cherie Amour, which I promptly sent to Ruth -- she would look amazing in this! -- then discovered a ravelry group (which I've joined) dedicated to people who are knitting this design: women of all shapes and sizes seem to love this design! 

interesting idea

knit rings! being sold by finkifibre (in Melbourne) on Etsy for (US?)$4 -- these look a bit bulky ... I could use some leftover Tofutsies (on 2.25 mm needles?) to make my own

pretty picture

This was today's Van Gogh painting in my sidebar -- it could be inspiration for a knitting project someday ...

etsy

I've been seeing references to "etsy" so finally looked it up: Etsy is an online community where anyone can sell handmade things. It's been around since June 2005 and has more than 100,000 sellers, mostly in the US, UK and Australia, some/many of whom are able to make a living from their etsy store.

Shawl pins

ooh ah! lovely elegant shawl pins at Designs by Romi! especially this penannular swirl (page 4), which comes in nickel, copper and sterling silver:

and this bay laurel leaf (page 5, nickel or copper):

"The stick portion is attached to the pin and slides around to lock" so it can't fall out and you can't lose it -- so clever!

Romi (Rosemary Hill) has a blog but it has no rss feed ... and several patterns at knitty.com. I've ordered her book from Amazon (didn't know about using the link from Ravelry -- next time!)

Moebius knitting

I set out to find the definitive word(s) on knitting in the round on two circular needles -- I like andrade's page best -- and was lured onwards to Cat Bordhi's Moebius books and patterns. Fortunately it's been long enough since she invented the technique that you can find out how to do it without buying her books: there are videos, including her own, and casting on instructions are included in the downloadable pattern for the cowl scarf she demonstrated on Knitty Gritty. There's a good photo at Yarn-a-Go-Go that shows the stitch pattern quite clearly.

As it happens, I have a very long circular knitting cable in my KnitPicks case, so I can start on one of these ... as soon as I decide which yarn to use

Ravelry!

I received my invitation to Ravelry today and promptly joined ... it felt like "coming home" -- the site is full of the tools that knitters need to keep track of all their projects, books, stash etc, and is also a community where you can see what others are creating, and show them what you're doing. 

I set up my library (most of my books are in the Ravelry database) -- it's so nice to see their covers displayed on my infinitely large virtual bookshelves! -- and clicking on a book displays photos/links of what other members have created from patterns in that book (Round Trip from Jackets and the Einstein coat from Knitting 1 are obvious favourites). I need to get photos of the yoke cape and hat that I made for Aurelia, and also post photos of the coats and jackets that I've finished making for myself.

You can also BYO blog to Ravelry, so I've set up this one, just so I can link it to my Ravelry account [a couple of days later now: odd -- when I try to read my blog in Ravelry, it says it's not reading it, and have I added it to my profile ... well, yes I have ... does it require human intervention to activate it within Ravelry?]