The Nordlándda Collection: Ifjord, Sappen and Skáidi

This is the last post to cover the Nordlándda Collection, and I've save the hats for last.

All images copyright 2015 The Fibre Company & Tommy Martin

When originally discussing the collection, Daphne and I decided that we wanted to have a hat that was throughly unisex. I went for a close fitting shape with a small, all-over stitch pattern and ended up with Ifjord.

Starting with 2x2 ribbing, the hat is then worked in a lovely but simple cable pattern that only every uses 1x1 crosses; in other words, only 2 sts are in each cable crossing, making this a good project to work without using a cable needle. The stitch motif is a 6 stitch repeat worked over 4 rounds, 2 of which are plain stockinette, making the stitch pattern easy to memorise. The crown decreases are worked at four equally spaced points around the circumference of the hat, and hide the decreases within the already existing stitch pattern, making for a smooth transition to the crown shaping.

Next up is Sappen. This is another beanie that is worked in an all-over cable pattern, but unlike the small stitch motif in Ifjord, this hat uses two cable patterns: a large complex cable panel bordered by four stitch Honeycomb cables repeated around the hat. After starting with 1x1 twisted rib (k1tbl, p1), the cables are worked up to the desired length. The crown shaping is built in to the cable panel as the hat grows, so there is a lot to pay attention to as you work your way to the top!

Slouchy Skáidi is related to Sappen, in that they share the twisted ribbing, the large cable panel and the Honeycomb cables. In Skáidi however, the cable panel is only worked once, with Honeycomb cables on either side and a third Honeycomb cable directly opposite the cable panel. The crown decreases are again worked into the large cable panel and on either side of the opposing Honeycomb cable. Although the rest of the hat is worked in stockinette, I actually think this one is the most difficult of the three because of the more complicated crown decreases.

This wraps up my overview of the pieces in the Nordlándda Collection. It's been great fun to share them all with you, and it's wonderful to see projects and FOs starting to pop up on Ravelry, Twitter and Instagram. There's still time to join the #AYSWinterCablesKAL hosted by Carmen from A Yarn Story if you need a holiday gift, and share your projects in the Ravelry thread!

Note: If you are in Europe and would like to purchase one of the patterns from the collection without paying VAT, please go to the Nordlándda page and be sure to include your Ravelry ID (if you have one) when you check out. The pattern will be emailed to you and put into your Ravelry library. Thank you!

Shop Update and #todayshandknit

First off: there will be a shop update tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 10:00 am - preview photos will be up by this evening for your perusal.

Second: Now that the weather has gotten a bit more seasonal (hooray!), I've been wearing a lot more of my handknits. I've been posting some Instagram pictures of what I'm wearing over the past few weeks, and have noticed a couple of things:

1. I'm posting to Instagram more regularly, and
2. I'm wearing a lot more of my handknits.

I think a lot of us probably have vast piles of handknitted objects to hand but don't actually wear all that many of them. Or we end up wearing just a small subset of our collection. Or maybe, it's just me! In any event, the #todayshandknit hashtag has inspired me to break out more of my woolly bits and wear them. The result is that I'm warmer and things that have been neglected are getting worn. Result!

Items from top left to bottom middle: Handspun Garter Yoke Cardi and Windmill Bay Stole in Drops Alpaca; handspun Clapotis and Angostura vest in Cornish Tin; handspun Aestlight Shawl and Paris Beret in Classic Elite Lush; handspun Groovy, Oxford hat in baa ram ewe Titus, Butterfingers in Botany Lace; handspun vaniilla socks; Ravensprings Cowl in Noro Obi; Juniper in Campolmi Roberto Filati Baby (and Groovey); another handspun Clapotis with the Angostura vest and my current WIP, Dark & Stormy in SweetGeorgia superwash worsted.

These are things worn in the last couple weeks of November, and I'm looking forward to a December collection soon. Want to join in? Use #todayshandknit and tag me (@porpoise_fur) on Instagram to play along.

THE NORDLÁNDDA COLLECTION: Nøss and Heggelia

When I was brainstorming about the pieces to include in the Nordlándda collection, I wanted to include some projects that were suitable for new cable knitters. The first piece that fits this bill are the Nøss mitts.

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Copyright 2015 The Fibre Co. & Tommy Martin

These super simple little mitts are worked in the round from the bottom up, and feature a very small, 2 stitch cable on either edge. Since the cables are only two stitches, this is a perfect pattern if you'd like to try cabling without a cable needles.

I've got some handspun London Fog Bluefaced Leicester spun up that I'm using to cast on my own pair of Noss mitts at Knit Night tonight - the pattern takes less then 120 yards for all sizes, but I've only got 85 yds of handspun. I'm still going to try to squeak out a medium pair for myself - stay tuned for future Yarn Chicken games!

The second pair of mitts in the collection are the super scrummy Heggelia gauntlets. 

Copyright 2015 The Fibre Co. & Tommy Martin

I just love these mitts - long and cosy to protect against any intrusive winter winds, worked in reverse stockinette for interest with a big bold cable running down the back of the hand and arm.  This is also a good potential no-cable-needle project - the cable looks complicated, but all of the cable crosses are worked over four stitches, so its just a step up from the Nøss mitts in terms of cabling complexity.

The Heggelia mitts come in two sizes, and use up to 240 yards of bulky yarn. I want to do a handspun pair of these too, but I'm going to need to spin up some yarn for them specifically. I'm not such a pink person generally speaking, but it is a colour that works well with the design! Maybe I'll have to bite the bullet and stay in keeping with the original sample...

There's still plenty of time to join in the #AYSWinterCablesKAL on Instagram and over at the A Yarn Story group on Ravelry. We'd love to see your projects!

Note: If you are in Europe and would like to purchase one of the patterns from the collection without paying VAT, please go to the Nordlándda page and be sure to include your Ravelry ID (if you have one) when you check out. The pattern will be emailed to you and put into your Ravelry library. Thank you!

Lab Goddess Fibre Club signups now open!

Happy 1st of December! I've opened signups for the first 2016 instalment of the Lab Goddess Fibre Club here, and I hope that lots of you join us! It's been an absolute thrill over the past few months to send off the fibre club, and then see what everyone does with it. I saw one October Fibre Club FO in person yesterday, and I'm still trying to find the perfect project for mine. There are hints of November spinning also popping up here and there.

October Fibre Club, "Alpha, Beta, Gamma" on Finnish, inspired by Dr. Marie Curie

For those of you who aren't familiar with a fibre club, it works like this: every month, I develop a new colourway inspired by a female scientist and her work. As a club member, you receive 4 oz/113 g of fibre each month dyed in this new colourway, along with a brief biography of the scientist and a bit of information about the colours and how I came up with the combinations. Any extras that are leftover after club ships will be available to club members only for six months; after that, they will be available to the general public, although more fibre will not be dyed.

November Fibre Club "Mutable Loci" on Cheviot, inspired by Dr. Barbara McClintock

It's also been lovely to meet some Fibre Club members in person, and get their feedback. So far, everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, but please do let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the next round of club brings!

Lab Goddess Fibre Club November 2015

This month's colourway comes from a suitably seasonal inspiration (at least it's seasonal this week if you celebrate American Thanksgiving). Behold, the lovely colours of maize:

What does this have to do with Lab Goddesses? Well, I'm glad you asked, because this month's highlighted scientist is modern, a woman who, even though she lived a century after Marie Curie, experienced many similar challenges in her scientific life. I remember when she won her Nobel Prize (I was 11), and the fact that my own scientific exploits have led me to use techniques that directly grew out her groundbreaking research makes this month's scientist even more special to me personally. I'm looking forward to spinning up my November fibre for some super sturdy, warm socks to brighten up cold winter days.

Barbara McClintock (1902-1992)

Mutable Loci on Cheviot

From the Fibre Club insert:

Barbara McClintock was the third of four children born to Thomas and Sara McClintock. She was a very independent and solitary child, but knew her own mind – her original first name was Eleanor, which she rejected at an early age as being too feminine and delicate. She grew up in Brooklyn, NY and had a love of science starting in high school.

In 1919, she went to Cornell University’s College of Agriculture over the objections of her mother, who feared that a college education would make her “unmarriageable”*. Her interest in genetics began in 1921, and a year later she was invited to participate in a graduate genetics course at Cornell by C. B. Hutchison, an early plant geneticist. She credits Hutchison as the reason she continued in genetics.

McClintock received an MA and PhD in botany, and her research focused on cytogenetics in maize, the structure and function of corn chromosomes, the coiled structures in the cell nucleus containing DNA. She developed a technique for staining chromosomes that enabled scientists to see chromosome shape for the first time. By studying chromosome shape, Dr. McClintock was able to link inherited traits to specific chromosomes. In 1930, McClintock was the first person to describe a specific chromosomal shape seen during meiosis, the process that generates reproductive cells like sperm and eggs. Together with Dr. Harriet Creighton, she found that recombination of chromosomes, the swapping of DNA between two chromosomes, was correlated with the appearance of new traits in the resultant offspring plant.

In 1941, after five years at the University of Missouri, Dr, McClintock went to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she remained for the rest of her career. There she began to analyse the mechanism of mosaic colour patterns of maize seed, and their unstable inheritance. This led to the discovery in 1948 of transposons, mobile genetic elements that are regulated by a mechanism that allows for cells with identical genomes to have different functions. This research was initially met with puzzlement and hostility, and unfortunately, she stopped publishing her research on transposons in 1953 due to fears of alienating the scientific mainstream.

Although she officially retired in 1967, Dr. McClintock continued to pursue research at Cold Spring Harbor. Although a French group discovered similar genetic controlling elements in the early 1960s, Dr. McClintock’s pioneering work was not acknowledged until the early 1970s, when she was widely credited with discovering transposition, and ultimately the discovery of genetic regulation.

Jumping genes in a nutshell

Barbara McClintock was the third woman ever elected to the National Academy of Science, and was the first female president of the Genetics Society of America, both in 1944. In 1981, she was the first recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Grant, also known as the MacArthur Genius grant. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1983, and was the first woman to win the prize unshared. Her work on “jumping genes” and genetic regulation paved the way for the incredible explosion of molecular biology and genetics in the 80s and 90s. She continued to work at Cold Spring Harbor after winning the Nobel Prize, and died of natural causes in 1992 at the age of 90. True to her mother’s fear, she never married.​

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* I'm realising as I continue to research future women scientists for these colourways that I am running into a number of similar issues regarding how to convey their work and why I've chosen them without descending into strident feminist outrage, and telling the same story ad nauseum. I hope you'll find these overview interesting and not off putting. Please let me know your thoughts.