Getting out of this snow and heading south to rain this coming Sunday.  Spending a week with  family in both Seattle and then Portland.  Will be shopping for yarn, of course, too!  So, there will be no Friday Night Knitting Friday, February 24. I’m back that weekend, and we’ll be back to normal.  We’ve got the Top Down Baby Sweater class coming up Saturday morning, March 3, and I’ve added an Entrelac class Sunday morning (9:30 to 12:30), March 4.  Also have added a Hat on DPNs class for Sunday, March 25.  Don’t forget Shadow, or Illusion, knitting scheduled for Saturday afternoon, March 24. This is a fun technique to learn, and there are some great patterns out there.

See you this Friday for FNK, and don’t forget the Northern Lights Valley Knitter’s Stash Sale Saturday morning, and then their monthly meeting following at 1 pm.

Now, a knitter has created an I-phone app. It’s Ann Budd’s app for yardage requirements.   Knit Handy, just like her books, has yardage requirements for all sizes of yarn and many, many  items.

Imagine you’re at a great yarn shop, and you fall absolutely in LOVE with the most amazing, soft, lovely yarn.  It would make THE sweater to die for, but how much would you need?  This app will tell you.  Can you think of anything handier?!

Check both apps out when you get a chance.

Cashmere Goats

Cashmere comes from a goat, originally from kashmir in India.  It has long, coarse guard hairs which are made into brushes.  It’s downy undercoat, however, is magnificent!  The fiber is about 1/3 the diameter of human hair, is eight times warmer than wool and 30% lighter.  Each goat produces only about 450 yards of fiber a year, so it’s no wonder how expensive it can be.  Most cashmere comes from china now.

It is usually spun woolen sytle, with all the fibers just in a jumble and not combed straight.  This helps the short, delicate fibers trap air and keep things very warm.

Cashmere is not a strong fiber, and won’t hold up to much punishment.  In it’s pure state, it’s best to use for hat brims or collars or mitten/glove cuffs, the parts that don’t take such a beating.

Find it in a blend, and you get the best of all worlds.  Knit Picks Capra is a good example of lots of good things making one great yarn.  Classic Elite’s Princess is another great blend of wonderful fiber.

Read the yarn labels the next time you’re in a yarn shop, find some great soft wool with cashmere in it, and buy one.  Even if you just do the leg of your socks, you get to call them your cashmere socks!

We’ll meet Angora and Quviut in a few days.

Mohair is flame retardant, absorbs moisture but stays dry feeling like wool, has flatter scales so it has a bit of shine, and takes dyes easily.  It can feel itchy/scratchy.

Mohair fibers are usually plied with fine nylon as they’re spun, creating a bouclé looking yarn.  Or, it can be brushed to create the fuzzy mohair we commonly think of.

boucle

It’s Bass Pro Shop’s worm binder.  Yuck, you say?  No, not real worms, plastic ones.  But forget worms, I just put my needles in the pouches instead.

I couldn’t get a picture from the site, so included one of my worm binder, which is probably 15 years old.  The newer ones look even better.

I’ve got one that is perfect for my circular needles, and then another that is just the right size for my double points.  Don’t think they make one big enough for straight needles, but you never know . . .

The heavy-duty zipper pouches hold needles or supplies or whatever very well.  They’re on binder rings, so you can just flip through.  I used a Sharpie to put sizes on each pouch, and I just slip the needles in appropriately.

Corraling all your supplies and tools is usually quite a job, and this is the way to do it.

There’s a worm binder at Sportsman’s Warehouse here in Wasilla.  It’s a little different, but would work wonderfully, and was just $19.99.  Check it out.

four alpaca and a llama

I don’t know if it’s ‘better,’ but it’s sure nice!  Alpaca.  This fiber comes from the alpaca, a member of the camelid family. They’re slightly smaller than the llama.  They’re kinda cute guys and gals, are easy to raise and are clean, and their poop can go straight into the garden as fertilizer – isn’t that mulit-use!  They’re sheared like sheep, and thier fleece is soft and warm.  The fiber is long and strong.  It is less itchy than a lot of wools, and contains no lanolin for those alergic.  Alpaca fiber comes in a number of natural colors, but takes up dye very well, too.

Alpaca will felt, although I’ve never wanted to do that to the items I’ve knit with it.  They’re to soft and cushy to think of shrinking them!  Alpaca needs to be handled like wool, gently washed, never rung, and laid flat to dry.

Again, try a blend of alpaca and wool.  You get the softness and strength of alpaca, the elasticity and memory of wool, and a less expensive skein of yarn!  Alpaca is blended with other fibers as well.

Or, really splurge, get some 100% alpaca and knit the perfect scarf or neckwarmer or hat or cowl for these cold winter days. You’ll be glad you did!

There are so many fibers out there!  Understanding what they are, how they respond to spinning and knitting, and how they need to be cared for is quite a job.  So, let’s learn a bit about the basic fibers, then how blending fibers creates an even different yarn, and then how spinning and plying make up the final product we knit with.  I’ll be referring to a great book, Clara Park’s The Knitter’s Book of Yarn.  If you find this information as fascinating as I do, add her book to your library – you’ll enjoy it.

We’ll start with wool.  I think it’s the most amazing fiber.  Garments knit with good wool will last more than a lifetime if properly cared for.  Let’s look through the microscope at some wool . . .

Wool comes from sheep.  There are a bazillion types of sheep and wool, but we’ll speak collectively for now.  There are three  characteristics of a strand of wool that determine its value, both financially and fiberly.  The diameter of the strand, measured in microns, tells it’s thickness.  The staple, or length of each hair, determines it strength.  The crimp in each hair adds elasticity, helps trap air, and absorbs and balances twist when spun.

That crimp is the elasticity or memory of wool.   When the wool relaxes as it’s washed, the crimp plumps back up, evening our your tension and softening the piece.  That elasticity is what allows you to pat a bit in or out as you block to get your garment pieces to their correct size.

The hairs, like our own, are covered with scales.  These scales are what allows wool to felt.  As the fiber is warmed with water and agitated, the scales grab on to each other and hold, creating felt – either with raw wool (wet felting) or with knitted garments (fulling).

Wool is an even more amazing fiber.   It can absorb up to 30% of its weight in water before it will feel wet to the wearer, and while it does that it’s releasing heat to help keep you warm!  It wicks perspiration away, it breathes, it insulates, it warms, and it lasts!

Wool can be itchy – it’s the scales – or it can be soft.  Merino, the finest and softest of wools, can be worn next to the skin without any problem, but it’s expensive.  Lately, many brands are producing superwash wool, fiber which has been chemically treated to soften the edges of the scales so it’s not so itchy.  This fiber is great for knitting, but cannot now be felted.

Or, you can resort to one of my favorites, a wool blend.  Find a fiber that’s more wool than not, but blended with cotton, or rayon, or even acrylic.  These fibers add strength and durability (wool is not a really strong fiber, as your worn out sock heels and toes will tell you), and they help lower the cost.

Look at the content of the yarn you’re working with – read the information on the yarn label.  See what you’ve got, then pay attention to how you like working with it, how it knits up, how you like the finished garment.  Make a note or two, and remember that when you shop for yarn next time.

I’ve got a bit of fine tuning to do with the descriptions of the new classes, but everything else is there, and the calendar is right.

There are 8 new classes this session:  crochet, crochet edges, duplicate stitch, needlefelting, slip stitch, beading, shadow/illusion, and Brioche in the round.  I’m working on samples and patterns now, and having fun!  The shadow knit washcloth is great – I’ll get the picture of it up very soon.

For those of you who’ve been with me for awhile, I hope these new classes will interest you.  There are still a few techniques I haven’t covered, but I’ll save them for the fall session!

Also check out Christmas in July.  We’re going to knit a stocking, with options for Intarsia, Fair Isle, simple striping, duplicate stitch, and more.

Registration is OPEN!!

In the zone.

Interweave Press, publisher of Interweave Knits magazine, did a survey on how people learned to knit.

My mother or Grandmother 47%
I learned in school 3%
A friend 11%
Took a class 6%
Taught myself 30%

Interesting! I wonder what the other 3% answered?!  I need to work on that Took a Class percentage, though.

I read the following quote in At Home in Mitford, the first of four wonderful books by Jan Karon about a fictional village and its residents:  “Knitting is comfort to the soul. It is repetitious. It is regular. And in the end it amounts to something.” Couldn’t have said it better. When you get into that knitting zone (or zen!), you know it. And, when you’ve finished a project, you couldn’t be prouder.

Stephanie Pearl McPhee also talked about getting in the zone with knitting. She says that knitting is like a mental tape recorder. When you pick up your knitting, your thoughts immediately go back to what they were when you last knit on that piece – even if it’s been years since you picked it up. Like you actually knit them into the fiber!

Both thoughts ring true for me. Not only is knitting my passion, but it’s my stress reliever, my go-to when I’m too tired to do much else.  I enjoy just zoning out and thinking about what I’m doing and who it’s for – I find it amazing where my thoughts end up sometimes!  And, I derive great pleasure from what all that knitting amounts to.

The stranding behind pulls the first and third stitches together, creating the cord.    The cord can be turned into celtic knots and appliqued onto  things, turned into frogs, and more.  You could actually knit this around a tube of cording/piping, and create a great handle.  Check out Nicky Epsteins Knitted Embelishments book – she has a great time with I-cord.

It knits up fast, is easily done in front of good TVor at a hockey game, and is a great way to use up scraps of yarn.  See what you can come up with!