The Ubiquity of Jane (i.e. Selfish Knitting, Part 3)

I think I may have talked once or twice before about my enduring love of Heather Ordover's Craftlit podcast  - it's like going back to school with the coolest English teacher ever, and getting all sorts of cool background and context and detail that is so important to really understanding and appreciating some of the greatest works of literature ever. Over the past three years or so that I've been listening, I've "read" a bunch of books I managed to avoid (or never got exposed to) in school. Books like The Scarlet Letter, Gulliver's Travels, Wuthering Heights, Flatland, Woman in White, A Tale of Two Cities, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Turn of the Screw, Little Women...the list goes on and on. And then there are the books that she's covered that I have read: Pride and Prejudice, Tristan and Isolde, A Christmas Carol and the current book-in-progress: Jane Eyre.

Heather is also the creative power behind a series of books with patterns inspired by characters inspired by classic literature, What Would Madame Defarge Knit? And when she started Jane Eyre on the podcast in November, she also started a KAL for Jane's Ubiquitous Shawl by Erica Hernandez. This shawl is amazing, with a specific reference from the book for each of the four sections.

You may have noticed, if you've been reading here for a while, that I tend to make things more complicated then necessary when it comes to these knitting projects. Not content to search through my stash for approximately 1300 yds of DK yarn, I decided to spin my own.

I choose to spin up some Hello Yarn Fiber Club fiber*, Shetland in the "Minerals" colorway. I only had 8 oz, so I traded for three more bags. I ended up with just over 1300 yds for the 20 oz I spun up. I did a 2-ply, and it ended up being somewhere between DK and worsted weight.

The shawl starts from the center out, and I used a little i-cord trick to do the starting cast on. If you're interested in the details, I talked about it in the KAL thread on Ravelry. I made it through the first 2 sections with my first skein of yarn (~560 yds), then through the trinity stitch section and part of the border with the second skein (488 yds), and I've probably got 50-70 yds left from the last skein.

Details ad nauseum:
Pattern: Jane's Ubiquitous Shawl by Erica Hernandez (Ravelry links)
Yarn: ~1300 yds of handspun Shetland, Hello Yarn Fiber Club, colorway "Minerals", DK- to worsted weight. Final "shawl"** was 54 inches square.
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm needles
Start/finish: 8 Nov 2012 - 19 Jan 2013 (actual blocking day)
Comments/mods: only modification was using handspun rather then commercial yarn. The pattern has a couple of errata that have been posted on the KAL thread, but other then those, it was well written and easy to follow. I loved Erica's exploration of the role that shawls play throughout the book, and how she used inspiration from the different stages of Jane's story for the different sections of the shawl. It doesn't hurt that the finished project is gorgeous...***

So, from here on I have some deadline projects: one secret from everyone, one semi-secret wee person present, and one handspun sweater for barter for a sooper seekrit exciting project that Alli and I are working on. So from here on out, things may be a bit sparse on shareable knitting content. But I do have some more handspun yarn coming up, fresh off the miniSpinner!


* You're shocked, I know...
** It's a shawl, but really it's going to be used as a blanket. So. Big.
*** And many thanks to the weather gods on Friday for providing an appropriately seasonal backdrop for the photo shoot!

Selfish knitting, part 2

Because I am insane, I decided that just before Christmas was a good time to start a KAL project for myself. So I joined Ruth's mystery KAL for a pair of gloves. Now I've made several pairs of mittens in my time, and have enjoyed them, so I thought - how bad can a pair of gloves be?

Answer: pretty freakin' bad. Rather, pretty freakin' fiddly. First there was the yarn: Botany Lace (underlined emphasis mine). Then there was the gauge: 9 sts/inch (I don't even knit socks at that gauge). Then there was the pattern: lots and lots (and lots) of twisted stitches.

I managed to get both gloves done to the end of the hand by Christmas time, but my initial plans of having these be a gift was thwarted by lack of fingers. So after New Year's I started in on the fingers.

Holy Fucking Fiddly Batman. To be absolutely fair, my hatred of glove knitting has nothing to do with Ruth or her fabulous pattern. It can be totally blamed on the fact that I am, in the best of times, only slightly more coordinated then an octopus trying to conduct an orchestra. So I sat on my parents' couch, with wooden dpns sticking every which way at dangerous angles, growling at anyone who asked me how it was going. And that was only the first glove!

Thankfully by the time I got to the second glove, I was on my way home (hello airplane knitting!), and it seemed to go a lot smoother. I triumphantly finished the last thumb before touching down at Heathrow. Hooray!

You may be asking why it's taken me two weeks to show them off? Well, it took me a week and a half to weave in the ends one the first glove, another four days to find the project bag with the second glove, and last night to finish weaving in those ends. See? I told you it was fiddly...thankfully the finished project is gorgeous:

I promise - they look much better on, and will look much better once they've been blocked. I admit I couldn't wait to wear them, so they haven't had their spa treatment yet. And given that it was -5C this morning when I left the house, I was glad to have them - they are toasty warm!

Pattern: Butterfingers by Ruth Garcia-Alcantud
Yarn: Araucania Botany Lace, 450 yds/100 grams, about 75% of 1 skein in gorgeous purples
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm dpns/circulars for magic loop
Gauge: 9 sts/12.5 rows per inch
Start/finish: 26 Nov 2012 - 4 Jan 2013
Comments/mods: this is a lovely pattern for a lovely pair of gloves. I just have to be in the right mood to do fingers I guess. That is all.

Now, I'd like to say I'll never knit another pair of gloves again, but I've got another skein of this yarn lying around (in greens and greys - swoon!), and I am finding myself in need of a pair of gloves for running. Maybe a pair with some conductive thread in them...

Selfish knitting

Once I finished up all the Christmas knitting (on December 27th, but who's judging, right?) I fell headlong into a morass of long-overdue selfish knitting. This is the second of four things that I've knit for myself in the last few weeks, but I'm putting it out here first because the first things I knit for myself, while lovely and much appreciated, are also somewhat boring. There you have it.

Here is my new selfish hat:


This hat all began when JoAnna pointed me in the direction of Looped Yarn Works in Dupont Circle. I was all hot and bothered to get yarn for my slippers, so I made a break for it while Himself and the girls were buying out Kramerbooks and walked into yarn nirvana. It's a lovely shop, up a set of stairs, with fabulous light and lots and lots of pretties.

I managed to focus long enough to get some Cascade 220 for the clogs,

but then I looked up and saw a basket full of little jewels of yarn. A pile of this yarn, in fact.

I. Was. Smitten. So this particular ball came away with me, and I knew from that moment it was going to be a hat.


It's knit from the top down, with a yarn over eyelet pattern that spirals down to the ribbing band. This particular yarn only has 127 yards per ball, so it's not quite as slouchy as I wanted it to be. But still...it's lovely and soft and scrummy, the colors are divine, and it did a good job keeping my head warm yesterday on our 2 hour dog walk along the river.

However, I do want to see how it looks with a bit more depth to it, so as soon as I get the shop update online tomorrow, and pack up some samples for Fibreholics UK, I'm going to spin up some singles and see if I can't get a version I like better. Stay tuned for pattern...

ETA: If you're interested, I'm offering 10% off any fiber purchase if you can guess the inspiration behind tomorrow's new colorways. Head over to this Ravelry thread and post your guesses!

Spin, spin, spin like a tornado...

Since returning from our travels abroad, my knitting has fallen by the wayside. This week has been all about the spinning - I think I've spent at least an hour spinning every single day since we got back. Bliss! Here's what I've accomplished:

No, not all of that was done this week. The bobbin on the right was done a while ago, but I finished filling up the bobbin on the left (8 oz of Portuguese Merino in "Silt" from Hello Yarn) and spun up the last bag of Minerals Shetland (also from Hello Yarn) for my massive shawl/blanket KAL. I've very pleased, because now I've finished all the Silt and can start on the squoosh-tastic Targhee in "Parritch" that is A) also from Hello Yarn (I'm sensing a theme here...) and B) the third ply in my 3-ply sweater lot combo spin. Last night I prepped the fiber,

and started the last bobbin.

I can not wait to have this yarn finished and ready to cast on. Given the nature of both merino and Targhee, I suspect this 3-ply is going to come in on the bulkier side of worsted weight, so I'm going to use a big-ish needle to get some good drape. I predict this is going to be the Coziest. Sweater. Ever.

Right, that's it: there is spinning waiting for me. Along with a new goodie that nobody got me for Christmas so I got it for myself...hooray!

2012 in wooly goodness

Looking back, it's been quite the productive year...

The knitting/crocheting:

6 sweaters, 2 toys, 9 items of neckwear (shawl, scarf, cowl), two pairs of mitts, two blankets, one (!) pair of socks, 3 potholders, 10 hats and 2 pairs of felted clogs. This would explain why my handknit sock well is running dry...

The weaving:

7 scarves (the last of which I managed to giveaway before I took a finished picture - help JoAnna!), and 2 dishtowels. 4 of the scarves were given away.

The spinning:

I think it ends up being 30 skeins total. At least that's what I find going through my flickr photostream. I know there's at least one or two others that haven't been photographed, but we'll call it an even 30. I'm too lazy to go back and figure out yardages though, so you'll have to make up your own numbers.

So what does this tell me? A couple of very important things...number 1: it is perhaps conceivable that I spend far too much of my time knitting/spinning/weaving. Number 2: I need to add socks to the 2013 to-do list. Or learn how to darn. Anyone got any good darning egg recommendations?