Incoming shop update

Happy November everyone! The next shop update will go live at 10:00 am GMT on Monday, the 5th. And, since Monday is my favorite UK-specific holiday (remember, remember...), all fiber in the shop will be discounted 10% for 24 hrs only! So until 10:00 am on Tuesday, everything will be 10% off.

Here's a couple of the upcoming goodies in Monday's update...

Hope y'all are enjoying your autumn, and keeping yourselves wrapped in wool for Wovember!

Happy spinning,

Rachel

7 years, 7 months and (just over) 7 days

Dear Devil,

Well, well, well...here we are. Your seventh birthday was in March, and here it is November and no birthday letter? Mother-blogger fail in a major way. Let's see if I can fill everyone in on what's been happening with you.

And boy, has a lot been happening with you. In your seventh year you weathered a number of challenges with ever increasing aplomb. You dealt with a serious increase in academic demands while your Year 2 teacher tried to get your class ready to move on to primary school. You overcame your fear of the unknown in stellar fashion, and discovered that sometimes taking a scary step into the unknown can work out really well.

You built on that new confidence by happily jaunting off to a very strange foreign country, and tried all sorts of bizarre and strange things - riding on an elephant, eating some very different food, and spending a lot of time in a car not going anywhere very quickly - and were enthusiastic about most of it.

Then came September, and a brand new school. I was sure that on the first day, I was going to take you to the bus stop to go off on your own, and that I would have to do some serious damage control to get you onto the bus by yourself to go off to the unknown. Boy did you surprise me! The bus pulled up, you gave me a kiss goodbye, and happily hopped on and sat down. Off you went. Your transition to a school approximately five times the size of the one you left has been amazingly smooth. You've made friends, you've settled in to your new class and your new schedule, you've even taken up new pursuits (stay tuned for many maternal complaints on violin practice in the Twitter feed).

To be fair, we still have our struggles - you have a pretty short fuse when you're tired. Or hungry. Or upset about something. This usually manifests as yelling either at me or your sister. I think I'm finally figuring out strategies for minimizing the tantrums that inevitably erupt. Surprisingly, the toughest times are when something has happened at school to upset you, and if I give you a chance to tell me about it and get it off your chest, that seems to make things much better. I just need to remember to give you the chance, and I'm working on it baby.

I am daily filled with awe and inspiration at the person you are and the person you are becoming. I love you baby.

Mummy (although sometimes it's Mum, and there is some serious adolescence-foreshadowing going on these days....oy)

Warning:some patterns may be infectious and designated as biohazard

I usually avoid really popular patterns. I'm not exactly one to keep on top of the most popular patterns on Ravelry, and if something becomes really, really hot, my inclination is to avoid it like the plague. I'm just not that in to knitting something that everyone else is doing. In other words, I'm contrary and don't like bandwagons.

The thing is, sometimes those really, really popular patterns? They're popular for a reason. And everyone's knitting them for a reason. A really good reason. Cue Color Affection by Veera Valimaki. I first saw this shawl on the Yarn Harlot's blog at the beginning of the summer. Then they were everywhere. People were spending endless hours debating about color combinations, then vendors were selling pre-chosen sets so people didn't have to agonize over color choices (there are reasons why it takes a special kind of crazy to design Fair Isle sweaters...), and my general reaction was meh. I like garter stitch alot, and I can get behind stripes in certain circumstances, but I still wasn't on board with this pattern.

Then I saw, not one, but two in person. First Brenda's (which she talked about in length on a recent podcast), which is just the perfect combination of autumnal colors. Then there was Jane's, which I sat next to over the entire P3 weekend, and lusted after. So at the P3 marketplace on Sunday afternoon, I fell down hard at Countess Ablaze's booth and ended up with these lovelies,

and I cast on my own Color Infection. Things did not go swimmingly at first, as I forgot the trick of doing a YO between the first two stitches of every row to ease the edging a bit. I ripped back most of section 1 to fix that.

I'm now 7 repeats into section 2 and looking forward to adding in "Only When Invited" for section 3. And I'm plotting the colors for my next one, of course...because this pattern is contagious.

Today's sweater, take 2

Subtitle to post: Yes Gertrude, gauge does matter.



What you see above is my Today's Sweater for P3, so-called because I cast on the day of the Today's Sweater presentation. I dutifully knit my way through half of the colorwork chart for the bottom hem before I got home, and was very pleased with how things were turning out.

But when I got home, I put the sweater down for  a few days, and when I picked it up again, I began to have the sneaking suspicion that all was not well in River City. I knit a few more rows, all the while knowing, without a doubt, that I was going to have to rip out the entire thing and start over again.

Why was I going to have to rip out? I hear you asking. Well, dear readers, the answer is: swatches lie.

Now, perhaps they don't lie if you do a proper swatch, aka cast on 40 stitches, work in pattern for 6 inches and cast off, block the swatch, and then allow it to hang from one side for a few days so that the weight of the piece can work whatever voo doo it will do on your knitting. However, if, in a fit of wool fever, you knit a swatch that is approximately 2 inches by 3 inches while on the train to a knitting retreat, then block it by hastily wetting in from a bottle of water in a deserted Welsh train station while waiting for your connection and then have a complete and utter brain fart regarding the actual required gauge of the pattern of interest (note: 6 stitches per inch is in no way the same as 6.5 stitches per inch, just for the record), you may have problems such as the one I encountered.

My supposed-to-be 42 inch sweater was actually closer to 48 inches around, giving me approximately 8 inches of ease. And even for a comfy, oversized sweater that is destined to be worn as outerwear, 8 inches of ease is too much. Waaaay to much. So, with much muttered obscenity and a few tears, my 4 inches of Today's Sweater became piles of loose yarn, and I retreated to the comfort of Open Office spreadsheets to figure out what to do. I'm already knitting on US 2 needles, and I have absolutely no desire to go down a needle size, so I plugged in my gauge and the stitch counts, and have figured out that I can knit the next size down and get something that will fit. Hooray!

You may also notice that I've changed from a ribbed bottom edge to garter stitch. It just seemed better that way. Onward to rustic wooly goodness!

Leaf Peeper Cowl

Some of you may know this already (ha-bloody-ha!), but I really, really like knitting with handspun yarn. I mean really, really like it. If given my druthers, I'd probably never knit with commercial yarn again. So it seems only reasonable that I might start designing some patterns for handspun yarn, right?



Meet the Leaf Peeper Cowl (attractive posed amongst the dead ferns in Richmond Park). Knit from side to side out of just under 100 yds/92 m of bulky weight handspun yarn for a cowl that is about 18 inches in circumference unstretched. If you want a longer cowl, simply keep going until it's the desired size. When it's long enough, graft the ends together and voila! Instant neck cuddles.

The sample was knit out of 3-ply BFL from my shop, in the Leaf Peepers colorway. The fiber was split into three equal lengths before spinning, and then two of the pieces were split further lengthwise. Final yarn was 95 yds/3.5 oz, or approximately 450 ypp.

This is the perfect quick cowl for holiday presents - I think mine took me a couple of nights to whip up, and the stitch pattern, while it may look complicated, is pretty easy to follow once you get going.

Pattern can be found on Ravelry in my store, or you can get it here for $5.00.