yarn – Page 3 – The Knackered Psycho

The Frogathon

So this week hasn’t quite been the hive of creativity that I had hoped it would be. On the positive front, I have finished Shawl Number 6 and I am really pleased with how it has come out, and Shawl Number 5 has come back from the pattern testers with a thumbs up and only minor tweaks and so all I have to do now is one final check of that one and it will be ready for uploading.

On the less productive front, I finished and then frogged the Christmas Shawl I was working up. The pattern was getting very complex and the finished product was a bit too flouncy and old fashioned. I like traditional shawls, but this was just a bit meh. So I sat and re-balled the whole skein I had just used, slept on it, and came up with something much better. I am now whizzing through this new one and it is much better. Phew.

Frogging and generally screwing up a good idea is an essential part of my design processes. I often start something full of enthusiasm and high expectation only to find myself staring at it after each row, worried that it isn’t working, or that parts of it seem ok but others are not, and the decision to either frog or even bin the thing has to be taken. I don’t bin very often, but there are various abandoned projects around my room, like this wrap (see below) that I started and had to give up on. I kept what was left because I liked to colour mix, and I liked some parts of the stitch pattern, and I wanted to remember that. What I need is a big yarn scrapbook to stick these remnants into.

But messing up a good idea, or accepting that the idea wasn’t good enough in the first place, is always a good thing in the end. It makes me focus on what doesn’t work, and the brief of what I am supposed to be doing, rather than going all self-indulgent. And goodness knows that I am self-indulgent enough in other ways. You just have to look at my stash to know that.

I was planning to get some garment designs nailed this week but I just haven’t had the time. Lots of family stuff and a small person who just seems to be in overdrive at the moment means that I haven’t managed to achieve the list of 1000 jobs I had set myself. Anyway, I have some more time before I have to go back to work for playing with yarn. I will see what I can achieve in this short time. Maybe I will get the Moo-Ra pattern out finally (still need to type up the updated version) and a few other bits. But I have to remind myself that this isn’t a race. I will get it all done eventually. I just need to be patient with myself.

The Yarn Emporium

crochet, yarn

This week has been strangely productive. I am not used to this. I confess that on Day 1 of being at home on leave I wandered around the house, too afraid to settle down with a hook in case I discovered I was hallucinating. I eventually stopped pacing the house and settled down in my yarn room for a bit of a tidy up, a yarn squidge, and to have a think about some project ideas I had been playing with. Tuesday saw two of my yarn friends dropping by to invade my yarn room. Now, to put this into perspective, my yarn room is my office with a big 4×4 Ikea unit in the corner which contains all my yarn, books, sewing machine (I have a dinky one) and other yarn paraphernalia. But I do have quite a bit yarn stash – about 50% shop bought commercial yarn and 50% hand-dyed loveliness. I was in denial about how much yarn I had because it was all tidied away, but this also meant that I had lost track of what I had.

So my lovely friend, who is now on maternity leave, offered to come and catalogue my stash into my Ravelry account. She has recently done it for her own stash and has slight OCD compulsions and so enjoys this. She also just wanted a chance to squish my yarns and be nosy, but I don’t mind as other people’s stashes are always interesting. Our system was that she typed in the yarn details into my computer and the yarn was then ferried to me (initially by a small child) in another room with good light where I took pictures. After about 6 hours we had managed to get through most of the hand-dyed and all of the commercial cotton yarn, but I still have other yarn to add in. The best bit was when she emptied one of my bins of hand-dyed yarn on the floor and just launched herself, baby belly and all, into the middle of it. I couldn’t get to my camera fast enough, but let’s just say her expression said it all. This was the aftermath.

When you have had your yarn catalogued, there is no getting away from just how much yarn you own. Its even worse when you know it only represents half your stash. I don’t have a stash, I have a yarn emporium. I toyed with the idea of a de-stash, but to be honest now that I knit socks there isn’t a skein of yarn that I can’t think of a project I could use it for. So I have decided that I really, really need to go hard on the yarn ban until I can empty at least one of these bins. I am not sure what a respectable stash size is, but I am pretty sure I am not respectable. I am a yarn harlot.

The best thing about it, however, is that I have a fantastic range of yarns to use when I am designing something. For example, I decided to elevate this example of a Dye Candy OOAK baby camel and silk yarn from a yarn pet (it is sooo soft) to project yarn. This has been a revelation to me – it moves and behaves completely differently to a standard merino sock yarn and its a pleasure to work with. My friends have suggested a new blog feature entitled ‘squish of the week’. I may yet initiate this.

So now I am busy hooking up prototypes for new shawls. I have Shawls 6 and 7 on the hook, and the concept for Shawl 8 is on the sketchbook and is next to be played with. This is so much fun. And I haven’t even got onto the non-shawl projects yet! Time to go squidge some more yarn…

Beating Heart Wrap

crochet, patterns, Shawls, yarn

So the other thing I was working on whilst I was away last week was a quick final test of the Beating Heart Wrap. This is shawl number 4 of shawl club and I designed it a while back using yarn from Unbelievawool and Jo.Knit.Sew that I had in my stash. I am not normally a pink person but I love the way that the pink contrasts with the black and white variegated yarn. The spike stitch reminds me of an EEG trace and so that is how the wrap got its name. The shawl pin is a Knit Pro one which works well with the colours I used. The shape is a bit unconventional but when it is folded over is creates a nice shape around the shoulders.

To make it practical for shawl club, I needed to change the colours to 3 x 50g skeins. Sam sent the new colours to me a while ago, but they arrived during a particularly crazy time. Then time caught up with me and I realised that I needed to get the new colour way version done immediately. So the long drive to the south coast and the first day or so of the holiday was spent hooking up the shawl club version, which also showed off the alternative ending of a button to secure it, rather than a shawl pin. Personally I still feel a shawl pin gives you more flexibility about how to wear this, but the button is often more practical, and is certainly less expensive.

So the shawl club colours give the wrap a very different look – sugar sweet candy colours with a glittery handmade button from the amazing Cross Crafts which matched the yarn perfectly. If you fancy making this yourself, you can find the pattern here.

Hot Beverages and Sandy Balls…

knitting, socks, yarn

So, I have just returned from a week by the seaside with the family. It was a much needed break for all of us – a rest for the head and the heart. As normal, I overpacked yarn, and came home with more than I took because I was able to meet up with Sam from Unbelievawool whilst I was there and she gave me some more to take home with me – one set of yarn for the next shawl, and another set of skeins which are part of a blanket club that I belong to. So much for reducing the stash… But as you can see from the main picture, there was a lot of sitting on beaches or the sofa with a nice cup of tea and a project on the go.

I did manage to get some crocheting done (more of that in my next blog), and once that was done I had a go at the Arwen pattern from the new Truly Hooked sock book, using a merino / mohair mix yarn from Jo.Knit.Sew. Those socks turned out to be the main project for the holiday. I am not a very confident knitter, and although I can do the basics and a bit of intarsia (badly, usually), lace work and mock cables are new to me. I also had to use YouTube to learn how to do long tail cast on, which now I have mastered it I can see will feature a lot in my future projects. The yarn overs between knit and purl stitches are what drove me to despair initially though. I got there in the end but not before ripping the first sock back to the beginning about three times. But once I nailed it I was pleased with the results. I have the socks on the blockers now -I have just finished the second sock in the last half and hour – and so I will try to get a good picture to show you how well they look. I am not sure I would make such pretty sock very often, but I learned a lot from making them, and I am sure someone will appreciate them for a gift.

The price of creativity, however, is pain. I have developed a hole in my right index finger from repeatedly using it to push the tip of the circular needles through the stitches. It doesn’t look like much but trust me its quite deep and very sore. Apparently I am not the only one who has one of these little holes in their finger, which makes me feel a bit better, like I have now earned some sort of badge of knitting honour.

When I got back home my DK socks I had just finished before I left for holiday were ready to come off of the blockers. These socks are special for two reasons: they are for me, and they are made with yarn I dyed myself at the retreat last year. They look amazing and are so soft. And they have blocked so well. These DK socks always looks a bit of a funny shape when they are done but they are so smart when they are blocked.

It is late now so I am going to got to bed, and I will blog again about my crochet exploits in the morning. The knitting needles are being put away for the next two weeks whilst I go into crochet overdrive. It is time to get some of my project ideas out of my head and into reality…

Fibre East 2016

crochet, knitting, socks, yarn

Well Fibre East didn’t disappoint. Last year we had fantastic weather and a brilliant day, and this year was the same. I took a small gang with me – three of my best yarn friends – and we had a great time fondling yarn and chatting to the stall holders. I got to help out very briefly on the Unbelievawool stand, and I was so pleased to chat to Nicola from Fleabubs, Sue Stratford from the Knitting Hut, Lisa from For the Love of Yarn and Phyllis from Rosebuds and Rainbows. I also managed to get some yarn from some new folk, and chatted to Lola from Third Vault Yarns for ages whilst I dithered over 2 skeins of the most beautiful DK merino / silk mix I had seen (I resisted – my stash is out of control as you know – but I will be ordering it online at some point I am pretty sure).

So on my shopping list this year was a new shawl pin, some more ‘manly’ coloured sock yarn (ready for Christmas presents) and some red yarn, as I love deep dark reds but have very few in my stash. As you can see from the picture above, I overachieved this year so I was pretty pleased with my haul. The picture at the top of the blog post shows part of the most amazing Art Blank from Fleabubs – too fabulous to resist.

Verity from Truly Hooked was there but I was a bit too shy to chat to her this time, but her new sock book was on proud display. When I got home my own copy of it, that I had pre-ordered, was waiting for me and it looks fantastic. I have already picked which pair I want to try first, and so I will have to pack it in my holiday bag, along with a nice skein of sock yarn.

Talking of socks, in the car to and from Fibre East (and at the show too, if I am honest) I was knitting another pair of Easy Peezy socks, but this time using up some yarn that I dyed myself at the Devon Sun Yarns retreat I went to last November. I learned how to heather yarn, and the result was this purple and grey mix. So I thought it might look pretty in a pattern like this and sure enough it does. I don’t think any of the yarn dyers are in any danger from me, but I am a little bit proud of them, even though the light in here doesn’t quite show off the colours. What do you think?

Special Days

Blanket, crochet, yarn

I’m starting to get excited for the summer now! I have just submitted the last big piece of work I had to get done before the end of July, and it is just tidying up loose ends at the day job next week. Today has also be special because I have said goodbye to two colleagues – one is going to a new job, and other – the person who taught me how to crochet and therefore is responsible for you reading this – is going off on maternity leave very soon. So we threw a surprise party for both of them today. My yarny friend got a box of baby things, including the cosy blanket you have seen me making on instagram, and a little matching hat of my own creation. I am really pleased with how they both came out, and I even blocked the blanket, which I normally never do. I will pop the hat pattern up here over the weekend for those of you who fancy making it. It is a great little project for using up the left over yarn from a blanket make!

I also wanted to get my friend a special something from me to celebrate our yarny relationship. So I asked Helen from Bare Threads to make up a bespoke yarn box. I told her a bit about my friend and she came up with this – all so beautiful, all handmade, all ethically sourced. I cannot recommend Helen to you highly enough. Her yarns are exceptional and at the moment her yarns tend to sell out before they get onto Etsy, so it is worth contacting her directly if you want to get your hands on her goodies. Oh dear. That sounds a bit wrong doesn’t it. Sorry Helen.

Anyway, the final reason to be cheerful today is that it is ONE SLEEP UNTIL FIBRE EAST. See me doing the happy, happy dance of yarn joy! The yarn ban is temporarily lifted and I get to take three of my best friend to fondle some fine wares. I will get to see some yarn contacts / friends there too, so I am very excited.

So, expect lots of yarn porn shots on my instagram feed this weekend and hopefully at least one, if not two, blog posts as I get overexcited and giddy.

Re-emerging from the abyss

crochet, knitting, Shawls, socks, yarn

So, as you have noticed, things have been very quiet on the blog front. July is, for me, traditionally a month of stress – it is when all the work deadlines for the day job come into conflict, with an added topping this year of trying to get end of year gifts made for the very special women who have helped to look after my little one. In September she starts school, and so this summer is going to be extra emotional. Everything I have made doesn’t seem to be enough, or good enough, to recognise what they have done for us as a family. I said goodbye to the first of my daughter’s current nursery teachers this week. The only thing I could think to give her was the very first Thank You Shawl I ever made, as it was in her favourite colours, and it was huge. I hope that every time she puts it on, she feels hugged.

So this week should be the beginning of the end of the crazy season, assuming I can get all my work done on time. One more week and then it is Fibre East (oh my, I cannot wait), which signals the beginning of the end.

Shawl Club continues a-pace, and one of the things I can finally show you is Shawl Number 3, otherwise known as the ‘Forget Me Never’ Shawl.

Two pictures of it – the first one shows it unblocked – highly textured and cosy. The second shows it blocked (and shows nicely how much blocking can make a project grow. It is called Forget Me Never, because Sam and I agreed on a pretty forget-me-not colour way for the yarn. The pictured shawl shows the very subtle first dye of this. We subsequently decided to ramp up the colour contrasts, so the final yarn colour is a stronger blue, with purple and green accents.

I need to update my archive with this and the previous shawl, but that is a job for the summer months. I also hope to get some designing done too, so I can launch a new collection of items ready for September, when we all start looking around for ideas for Christmas present makes. It may not be a very big collection, but it will be exciting for me. This is all baby steps. I am still only 3 months into this experiment, and so far it has exceeded my expectations. I just need to keep all the plates spinning.

And of course, because I don’t know when enough is enough, I asked Phyllis from Rosebuds and Rainbows if she has a DK sock pattern, to help me with my stash busting. She sent it over – a new pattern for testing – and I used a very special neon yarn by Dye Candy, called ‘Blacklight’, to try it out. As you can see, it makes a very nice (and super quick) winter sock. Merino cashmere mix. A treat for the toes.

The pattern is now up on Ravelry as the ‘Easy Peezy Socks‘. I am already on my second pair, which I hope to finish to give as a gift to my daughter’s key worker, along with this lazy waves shawlette, which I made on retreat last year.

I am not sure if either the socks or the shawlette will hit the mark, but here’s hoping.

The featured yarn at the top of this post illustrates how I feel – a bit of colour is creeping back into the darkness and not before time. The yarn is called (perhaps appropriately enough given how crabby I have been on occasion this month) “Kill the Witch”, and it is by Lollipop Guild Yarns.

Anyway, lots more to follow soon, including some new free patterns, the end of the retro blanket pattern (you thought I had forgotten, didn’t you?), and some more videos as you seemed to enjoy my first foray into video making. I may even speak in the next one, who knows…!

Colour me happy…

crochet, knitting, yarn

So this has been a very odd week. Big events in the real world that have implications for my day job, my colleagues and my friends. A real sense of devastation, and disquiet for what is to come and what has already started to happen. It turns out that I live in a very different country to the one that I thought I did at the beginning of the week.

So here I am, in my yarn room, trying to come up with something to write and resisting the temptation to curl up in my chair with my yarn pets all around me, gently rocking to some suitably maudlin music. On Friday I broke my yarn ban and bought some skeins to raise my spirits. Fibre East – the yarn show that I was planning to refresh my stash at – was too far away. I needed some solace to come this week.

What has been interesting is that I have become more obsessed than before with trying to finish off projects. My latest set of socks are on the blockers, a test shawl for shawl club is blocking on mats on the floor, and I have three blanket projects that I am determined to finish before I start another project. And yet the desire to start something new that will cheer me up is overwhelming.

I dive into the yarn drawers then, to seek inspiration. I find the yarn pictured at the top of this post, the ‘colour me happy’ skein from Pollyorange that is almost too perfect to use. More rummaging, this time to find this skein of Bluefaced Leicester and Silk yarn by Lollipop Guild Yarns.

It is another skein I am keeping to make something very special for myself. For now I just wanted to remind myself of what it looked and felt like. I turned over the tag to see what the name of the yarn was. ‘Premonitions’. How appropriate.

I will stick to the plan – finish those blankets, get shawl 6 nailed, continue to stashbust. I need to focus on what makes me happy, and hang onto the fantasy of one day being able to concentrate on this properly. Who knows, I may need the second career option a bit sooner than I had originally anticipated.

Beaded Arches Shawlette

crochet, scarves, Shawls, yarn

OK, so I am very excited to be able to reveal Shawl 2 from the Shawl Club collaboration with Unbelieva-wool. This is the Beaded Arches Shawlette, so named because of its beading and arches (I lack imagination).

The yarn is a pretty special merino / nylon / yak base, dyed in reds and plums in a colourway called ‘Loving You’.

So, the story behind this one is that shortly after we agreed to do Shawl Club, Sam said that she really liked the idea of a long, thin crescent shaped shawl. So did I, but boy, that is a hard shape to nail without making the pattern so involved that your head explodes from tracking where to place the increases. One of my rules of pattern design is that ideally it should be something that is mainly simple and meditative to do once the pattern is set, with the occasional bit of complexity. So I tried to find a way of coming up with the shape, without the headache.

This was what I managed to come up with. It is a complete cheat, as the shape is achieved through cunning use of blocking.

I also wanted to incorporate beading because, as you know, I like a touch of beadwork in a shawl and it suited this particular shawl well. In trying to get the shape right, I made loads of these shawls, and I have to say I have fallen in love with them as I wear them as scarves, like this:

But here are some early contenders I am also very fond of…

These are using a vibrant grad from Dye Candy, and the one below is using a silk mix yarn (also from Dye Candy) entitled ‘Scream Queen’, without the beads.

I have more but I will spare you here, although you may see them crop up on Instagram from time to time. So there you have it: a cheeky cheat. Forgive me, but it does work!

Stop the world…

crochet, Shawls, Uncategorized, yarn

I am exhausted. Again. I am also going through one of those phases where nothing seems to be going to plan on any front. I am not particularly prone to melancholy, but when life gets this overwhelming, I just want to hit rock bottom and stay there. It’s not quite a matter of feeling sorry for myself, more just a strong sense of being sorry – of wanting to apologise to everyone and everything for all that I have failed to do. The only thing I find I can do is to take myself away from everything, and focus on the stitch-by-stitch repetition of making something for someone. It is a bit like making a peace offering, but it is more to do with making peace with myself than with trying to please someone else. After all, when I feel like this, I don’t feel like I can really please anyone anyway. This is more about reminding myself that I am actually capable of something positive.

So it is a little bit ironic, or appropriate (depending on your viewpoint), that I recently received a Well Being yarn box from Fleabubs, and a skein of yarn from Lollipop Guild Yarns called ‘Dance your cares away’. They were the last of my yarn clubs before I cancelled them, and they are beautiful. I want to make them into beautiful things, and they inspire me. I just wish I had more time to work with them.

On a more positive note, shawl number 2 should arrive with shawl clubbers this week. I have been so delighted with the reaction to the Thank You Shawl that I am a little bit nervous about whether the next one will go down as well. That said, I love it and I have made several versions of it that I wear a lot, so I know it works, but whether it is quite what people are expecting…I just don’t know. I really hope it proves to be popular. I will put a post up about it when the reveal time comes to tell you a bit about its development.

I will try to get another post up this weekend but I am preparing for a work trip that currently has me numb with fear. I might have to cake one of these beauties to come with me and keep me company on my travels. They will give me the peace I need to think clearly and push through this next bit of stuff. A bit of yarn meditation is in order…

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