Knitters, let's change the world.
Over the last week I have finished a few projects (on their way to the blocking mat) and frogged one fairly major project (story coming later this week). Since everything on the needles is giving me attitude, I decided to start a project I’ve been excited about for a while.
Plus it was my birthday Sunday. What better excuse to cast on a cardigan?
I only started this yesterday and it’s already ten inches deep. It’s a welcome break from troublesome projects!
It’s wonderful to get away for a while. In the middle of July we packed up our things into a car that is much smaller than it looks from the outside, like a sort of reverse TARDIS, and drove a few hours along the edge of Lake Ontario with our knees by our chins. It’s been a long time since I went camping and I had no idea what to expect from a Canadian campsite, so I was excited for new experiences (and hopefully raccoons).
As we drove through the gorgeous Southern Ontario countryside my head whipped around when my girlfriend pointed out a field full of alpacas. I noticed the sign ‘gift shop’ and tried to be polite and say we could maybe stop on the way back? If we had time? Except somehow I gave in and we turned around, pulled into the yard, and descended upon the friendliest alpaca farmer I’ve ever met.
We’ll pretend I’ve met more than one.
The farm was Nuevo Norte Alpacas in Colborne, and the owner – I believe her name was Amy – opened up the gift shop just for us. Well, me. My girlfriend and her mum weren’t in it for the fibre.
She showed us down to the gift shop and I told her that one day I wanted to keep alpacas, and she was super helpful. I feel as though I learned more in that half an hour than anything I’ve learned before. She explained the entire philosophy behind how she cares for the alpacas (and she has 80+ so she should know), and that she got into it for the fibre as much as anything else.
I bought two sets of roving and a beautiful grey lopi yarn from their flock, and geeked out about knitting and spinning. On the way back Amy (I think) showed me the wild woad growing on her land which I had never seen in person – only in pictures. She brought us to the pen full of pregnant alpacas or those who had recently given birth, plus some thoroughly adorable crias (babies). I learned that alpacas all poop in the same spot in the field and that crias will stand for a long time in that spot with nothing happening while they’re still nursing. This entertained me more than it should.
Though I cannot get back out there easily for now as I don’t drive, once I do – and have some spare time – I will be going back. My aim to one day keep alpacas is sincere and I think I’ve found a place that would be perfect to learn more.
If you’re ever passing through, check out Nuevo Norte Alpacas. They do tours and workshops and classes, and they have some gorgeous fibre for sale.
Wandering around the Twitterverse with all my lovely knitting buddies brings some interesting things to my bookmarks bar. Today it’s Yarnsub which might be my new favourite knitting tool online.
It’s a simple enough idea. Type in the yarn, find other yarns that would match up in fibre, weight, etc. It’s handy if you don’t particularly like the yarn a pattern calls for or if you have none of the necessary one in your stash/LYS and are looking for a substitute.
If you’re anything like me, it’s also a good way to waste half an hour randomly clicking through yarns and being struck by the urge to buy all of them even if that isn’t at all possible.
Yet.
The layout is pleasing and simple. Here’s what I get when I search for Malabrigo Sock:
And here’s how the suggestions work:
Isn’t that the most useful thing ever?
The site is run by Wendy Peterson and her husband. Wendy runs the site Muddy Sheep and it’s one I’ve visited before. Sometimes despite the masses of us it does feel like the knitting world is very small!
What are your favourite online knitting tools?
Lately every time I admire the texture of a knitted item it seems to be either linen stitch or herringbone. There’s something about them that is almost non-knitted, as though they are some other kind of fancy magical craft like weaving or suchlike. I thought I had better give one of them a go.
I used a fairly simple tutorial which you can find here. Linen stitch is almost as basic as you can get but the dense fabric it creates is very pleasing. Perfect, thought I, for a bag. And lo, I happen to have some yarn that almost immediately made me want to make a bag with it.
This yarn was a birthday gift from Tamara, my girlfriend’s sister. It’s Romney and it’s hand-dyed/spun. It’s as close as I could get to the real colour which is a rich and slightly tonal grass-green. Very classy. I love the dramatic plying.
Of course since I’ve never heard of a Romney sheep I had to go look one up.
Just look how happy this dude is. I would be too if I had legs as woolly as that (I’ve shaved mine recently). I have to admit that this guy looks like the little puffy clouds with legs we all drew as kids when asked to draw sheep – at least in the UK, even though I grew up on an island with much more unusual looking breeds.
The Romney yarn is scratchy so it’s not suitable for right next to the skin unless you’re into that sort of thing, and I’m told some people are. It talks all sorts I suppose. It’s super squishy though and I do like a good crunch to my yarn so I’m happy with it.
The main downside is that this was not well-cleaned before spinning. Half the goddamn field is in this yarn. I’ve picked out as much as I can but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it would be a lot less scratchy if it hadn’t been plied with a haystack. I know it comes from an independent dyer/spinner but I’ve used plenty of indie yarns and never found it to be this much of a problem before.
After casting on a random bag (no pattern) to see what happens, I’d say I quite enjoy knitting with this yarn. It’s not well-made. It’s uneven to the point of being bizarre and there’s too much straw in it but I like a good scratchy wool because I’m a weirdo.
I’m changing my posting schedule slightly – Monday/Wednesday/Saturday. Stay tuned for Saturday’s images of how this yarn looks knitted up.
Have you worked with Romney before? Am I alone in my love for scratchy natural fibres?
Say you put two geeks in a house and tell them to make it their own. What do you think will happen?
My girlfriend and I have been living together for over a week now, but we cohabited for the entirety of 2012 too so we’ve had some practice. The most stressful transition by far has been trying to figure out which comics to keep and which to ditch for now on our budget. I instantly said I wanted to keep:
They are my favourite comics apparently, or at least the ones that mean the most to me. Because if pressed I would say Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye is my favourite. We’re keeping that too, along with Young Avengers and Iron Man. But it’s the female-fronted comics that mean the most to me because not only do they have good stories (at least these ones do, especially Ms. Marvel) they also stand for increased diversity in Marvel comics and I’m a feminist as much as I’m a nerd.
Aside from masses of comics, there are a few other signs around the house that we might be of a geek persuasion.
Hawkeye and Cyclops are hanging out there happily. If we had a little more cash during our trip to Toronto on our 4 year anniversary, I’m sure my girlfriend would have brought home the Daryl (from Walking Dead) bust we saw at the Silver Snail.
In terms of knitting, I’m currently job-hunting (read: unemployed) so I’ve had a little extra time. I’m most of the way through a bright pink sock for my girlfriend which really just shows how much I love her since I really, really don’t like knitting with pink. The only one who has been granted such an honour before was my little sister who is awesome.
The pattern is Hermione’s Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder. If you’ve been on Ravelry you’ve seen them; they’re the most popular sock pattern, at least in the free category which is all I can look at until I get a job. It’s such a simple pattern but very satisfying.
As for the yarn, it was my last purchase from The Knit Studio in Newcastle. It’s Lang Jawoll Superwash in brain-searing pink which will go quite nicely with most of my girlfriend’s clothes, including her work uniform. And I’m the feminine one.
In a final bout of exciting news, I finished the Avengers blanket of doom. It took me a year but I did it. I also realised I spent about three months knitting the thing and then, in an absolutely nonsensical chain of events, took nine bloody months to sew it together and weave in the ends. I never thought of myself as one of those knitters but apparently I am.
I’ll be posting pictures of that next week when I can talk someone into helping me. It’s almost as tall as me.
It turns out preparing to emigrate is a lot more hard work than I remember from my last time leaving the country, but then last time I was extremely ill with IIH and on some rather potent medication so it’s honestly a bit of a blur. Seeing as I turned up in Canada with a few items of clothing and all of my yarn, including my crappy stuff, I don’t think I was all there during the process.
This time I’m going to send all but my most expensive, treasured yarn ahead of me or just get rid of it (/donate it to friends). I can only bring one suitcase. The most difficult part will be my comics, of which I have many. It’s looking like the only option is to send them ahead which is going to be expensive but less expensive than buying them all over again. Most of my things I can stand to get rid of; I have deliberately not acquired many books or DVDs this year which has meant purchasing a kindle and living off Netflix. Yarn and comics? Those are too important to me.
Due to the rest of my brain power being thoroughly taken up by the stress (and sheer bloody elation) of moving back to Canada to my wonderful girlfriend and all our pets, the rest of this entry can be in bullet points.
That’s it for now. What are you guys up to at the moment? Anyone started their summer knitting? I’ve been meaning to start some socks – perfect lightweight knitting!
It’s one thing to meet someone with one similar interest to you; it’s quite another to meet someone with lots. That’s how I feel about quite a few people I’ve met in Newcastle since I moved up here a year and a bit ago. I never expected to meet people who share both my love of comics and my love of knitting/fibre in general but I have multiple yarn/nerd friends up here and they’re all wonderful.
One of these friends is Rachael. We met at my first or second trip to the Knit Studio for the Saturday knitting group (currently suspended) and hit it off, eventually deciding that we needed to hang out outside of the knit group.
A couple of weeks ago we decided to go to Durham to see the new yarn store (The Woolly Workshop) and to go the comic book cafe (Dark Matter Cafe). SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I bought some lovely Cashmerino from the yarn store – yes, the one that made the baby hat/booties – and marvelled over the sheep model outside it. We went TWICE to Dark Matter Cafe because their peanut butter hot chocolate is utterly divine and we could not resist going back for more.
Rachael is the one with the blue mask and fabulous hair; I’m the one with the rather dashing jawline and sparkling whites.
It’s so refreshing to go to a place where you feel comfortable and like you’re in the majority rather than the minority. People were sitting playing Pokemon and making awful Pokemon/Doctor Who puns. The walls were filled with posters and interesting comic art. These were our people. I wish I’d had somewhere like that to go as a teenager; I woulda been much happier.
Of course we got a little knitting done whilst enjoying our drinks. Rachael is making her first socks; they’re amazing because she is an over-acheiver when it comes to knitting new things, seriously. And I knitted some more of a scarf I’m making out of some beautiful blue silk.
All this in the beautiful surroundings of Durham which is one of my favourite places in the world. Sure, you go home with super sore muscles from walking up and down all the ridiculous hills but it’s gorgeous and full of interesting things as well as the famous Cathedral which is older than my brain can compute and drenched in history.
It’s days like these that fill me up with happiness and inspiration. I’m lucky to have such interesting and awesome people in life. Since today I’m going to eat lunch with another fellow knitter/nerd (hello Jen!) I’m feeling especially pleased with my lot in life.
Except for that part where I’m still waiting to hear back from the Canadian Embassy. Hurry up, guys.
At least I have fun things to do and nice people to see while I wait to go home!
Hat – Little Scallops by Maria Carlander.
Booties – Saartje’s Booties (modified) by Saartje de Bruijn.
I used Baby Cashmerino which is totally squishable. I managed to get these little cuties done while on five days holiday from work – there were a lot of train journeys so even though I messed up the booties the first time I still finished it off quite quickly.
Beautiful patterns, beautiful yarn.
In some flash of madness I decided that nupps cannot be as difficult as people say. They’re wrong, thought I. People told me turning a heel was hard and I did it without any problem at all. Jumpers/sweaters are a piece of cake despite what people have said. Yeah, okay, self. Let’s try a nupp.
A notoriously difficult and fiddly stitch involving a k7tog in this pattern. A k7togtbl, in fact. Yes. Knit seven together through the back loop. That sounds like something I can do, I decided. It’s totally not a big deal that I am sitting on a bumpy bus on the way to work when I make this decision.
For anyone considering doing this: don’t. Just don’t. It was never destined to end well.
The problem is, of course, that I’m a super tight knitter. I get even worse when I’m anxious, like say when I’m about to try a really difficult stitch for the first time whilst using a really splitty yarn and bouncing around on the crappy Newcastle roads. There was no poking my needle through that little clump no matter how hard I tried.
I am not defeated. I will defeat the nupps.
Maybe next time I’ll wait til I’m off the bus.
What did I do this year?
I ended up in Newcastle upon Tyne of all places thanks to a kind offer from a lovely friend (Lucy!) when I realised I was stuck in England again for a while. This was one of the most difficult times of my life to date but I’ve grown to love Newcastle even as I long to get home to Ontario.
It’s a gorgeous city full of vibrant people and a great yarn shop, The Knit Studio. I’ve met some lovely people there and have really enjoyed my time getting to know them. If you’re in the Newcastle area look up The Knit Studio – it’s shut for a bit at the moment but it’s worth a visit if you get the time. Gorgeous yarn, brilliant people.
In September I went back to Canada. Hello, Ontario! I spent a week chilling with my lovely girlfriend and remembering my life there before we skipped over the border to head out to Las Vegas for a few days. It was one of the best holidays I’ve been on and it was brilliant getting to spend unadulterated time with her in such a vibrant place. We stayed in Circus Circus which meant a lot of walking and some rather disgusting blisters but it was worth it for the heat and the surreal beauty of the place. It took us a while to realise the grass was fake – makes sense in a desert!
We saw a few shows and also went to the Grand Canyon on my birthday. I’d always wanted to go there so I was thrilled. We had a really nice day even though the weather was being a bit weird – it was just before the floods around the area.
While I was in Oshawa I got to see the pets I left behind and to meet a new one. Van is Nari’s new puppy – quite big already and growing by the day. He’s a sweetheart.
I saw my family a few times. I went down to my hometown in spring and spent a week there, mostly with my little sister though I saw a lot of my mum and saw my big sister and my niece too, as well as my dad. Then I saw the paternal side of my lineage in London both in September and earlier in December. Both times were great and lots of alcohol was imbibed. My mum came up in autumn and we had a good time exploring Newcastle.
My niece and nephew got big. I’m not sure when this happened. I guess it’s because I only see them a few times each year; they seem to expand exponentially each time. I am an extremely proud aunty.
It has been a tough year. I’m thousands of miles away from the person I love and only got to spend two weeks with her; that’s 50 weeks apart. On top of that I’ve been dealing with some pretty heavy mental health stuff and I’m emotionally exhausted. It hasn’t been easy but I think I did a good job of making the most of it: I started exercising, I’m in therapy, I knitted all the things.
Which brings me to my last awkward collage.
The Knitter Nerd 
