Mandy Moore's Blog, page 121

Knitting Mondays: What's on our needles

A few of you blog readers have shown curiosity about what the Knitty staff is knitting, so we're adding a feature to our Knitting Mondays called What's on our needles. Literally what we're knitting, or have finished knitting, dream about knitting or are struggling with knitting.

First up is Jillian, with a cautionary tale about gauge.

Thanks to a friend who is about to have her first granddaughter, I got to knit Joelle Hoverson's Baby Bonnet from her newish book More Last Minute Knitted Gifts. It's an adorable vintage-y knit , and a quick  3.5 stitches to the inch. I chose super soft Saphira, a superwash merino yarn from Southwest Trading Company. I swatched, got gauge, and knit the hat in just a few hours.

About halfway through I started to get that nagging feeling that I love to ignore. Something wasn't right, the hat seemed really big for a newborn baby.

It was true. I had relaxed while knitting and my gauge loosened to 3 stitches to the inch. The hat was big. Before I show you just how big. I will say I knit another bonnet, with the right gauge, with needles two sizes smaller, in under two hours.

Let this photo be a warning, my knitting friends and neighbors, always check your gauge.

I call this photo Bad Baby:

No bad babies were forced to smoke cigars for this photo.

Obsession: Hot Drinks

For me, as for many others, knitting and the kettle are inextricably linked.

I love me a hot drink. Coffee, tea, hot chocolate – even hot water in moments of desperation. If it's warm, and served in a mug, I'll drink it.

Although it's very cold where I am right now – and has been for several long weeks – my love for hot drinks is absolutely not weather-dependent. It has to be pretty darn hot for me to drink iced coffee.

And if I'm going to sit down for any length of time to knit, I put the kettle (or the coffee machine) on.

A couple of things have made my life better, as a hot-drink-obsessed knitter….

1. Good decaf coffee. I dearly love coffee; brutally strong, black coffee. It's my favourite foodstuff in the entire world, but I really do try to keep the caffeine consumption to a reasonable level. So when I found a good, dark roast decaf that tasted the way I liked it, I was thrilled.

Yes, I would probably rescue this from a house fire.

2. A teapot that keeps itself warm. The Guy Degrenne Salam teapot is brilliant: it has a felt-lined stainless steel cover that allows you make a pot of tea and keep knitting without stressing about your tea going cold.  They're not inexpensive, but amortized out over the number of times I've used it, I've got more value from this than anything else I've ever bought.

WWW: Contest Winners; How to Crochet A Bull Cozy; Woolen Octopus Attacks!

The winner of the Lisa Souza BFL sock yarn is comment number 742, Bridgette.

The winner of the Cuckoo Mitten kit using The Loopy Ewe Solid Series yarn is comment number 3005, Eileen.

Congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to the wonderful fiber folk for donating prizes!

You thought I was kidding about the octopus, didn't you?

Some truly excellent guerilla knitting (woolen octopus streetcar attack!) in Japan [see right].

A video of the Wall Street Bull yarnbombing in progress – outstanding finishing skills on display.
The Toledo Main Library is hosting a collection of rare and wonderful knitting images.

Rare Purls: Knitting Images from the Victorian Age through World War II, features 85 images and items from the private collection of Ellen Foley, a local resident.  The collection includes lithographs, engravings, photogravures, magazines, children's books, and ceramic plates, all showing knitters in action.  A portion of the exhibition focuses on war-related items: patterns for knitting for troops from World Wars I and II, and even a replica of a World War II-era Red Cross sock knitting kit.

The exhibition runs until February 1st.

An article from the Times in London about how knitting is part of a program to help schoolchildren from non-English speaking families in the UK improve their English language skills.
Sadly only available on the UK, a BBC program from the series Great British Railway Journeys. The host takes a trip along the eastern coast of England from Filey to Scarborough, and learns about traditional gansey knitting patterns.

Starting the year off with yarn & a giveaway!

Remember I was going to spin some Southern Cross Fibre BFL and Merino?

Well I did:

BFL left - it's a little hairy, and Merino right

Then I did some plying:

This marl I like!

I couldn't wait to see what these two would look like as a piled yarn. I spun and plied most of this over 3 days – I actually woke up with sore calves in the morning! I love these colors together, and yes, they even marl in some places. I'm not usually a fan of marled yarn.

It's about 500 yards, 15 wpi. I spun the singles woolen and piled it to balance, because I wanted a softer yarn to be knit into something where abrasion/piling won't be an issue and that needs drape, this shawl – Annis.

I really enjoyed the thinking about the structure of handspun yarn and how it presents itself in knitting. More please.

How about a contest to kick off our spinning year?!

A $30 Gift Certificate to any store at The Fiber Cooperative!

Here's how to win: leave a comment to this post by Wednesday, January 5, at midnight eastern time, and you could win! We'll choose a winner at random, make them answer a  skill-testing question, and post the results next week.

Good luck and happy spinning!

2010: A good year for knitting

One of my favorite reads at the end of every calendar year is Clara Parkes' Year in Review at Knitters Review. I'll never forget the thrill I got when she named Clapotis "Design of the Year" in her 2005 edition.

Well, one of the reasons we re-launched this blog was to bring you the voices of our editorial staff [Amy, Jillian, Kate, and occasionally Mandy], and we like stuff too. So without cribbing from our friend, Clara [we'll peek at hers after we write ours], let's see what the Knitty crew are taking away from 2010.

thump, thump, thump

Amy says… My favorite aspect of 2010 was technology and where it's taking us.

Knitters, crafters, and just about everyone else latched on to Twitter like a lifeline, sharing information from the banal to the beneficial. As I'm the keeper of the Knitty Twitter feed, the voice you hear there is mine [hence all the ukulele references].

Knitters [and others] have also recently discovered Pinterest, and are pinning their inspirations, aspirations and delusions on their own virtual bulletin boards to share with anyone who wants to peek.

2010 was the year we re-launched this blog, learning all about WordPress and the good and bad that goes with it. Mostly good, and we're really glad to be back. The KnittyBlog has given us a place for our frequent contests, and we're having a blast giving away great prizes and look forward to doing more of this in the years to come.

We also moved our mailing list to our own server this year, something we'd been meaning to do for a while. We think it's pretty awesome.

2010 was the year I hacked my first computer, so that the main Knitty laptop could stay safely at home when I traveled for work.

Remix by Berroco

With all the good that technology brought to 2010, I can't ignore the fact that it was a crap of a year for technology for Knitty in particular. We had some serious server challenges and fought our way through them. No growth without a little grunt work, right? It was all worth it, though the number of mint Oreo cookies consumed in the Knitty office [by me, that is] in early spring, to get through the worst of it, was staggering.

I also have a thing for cool stuff, and 2010 was no slacker when it comes to shwag. My personal favorites: the new Lexie Barnes Glitterati line [glitter vinyl makes my heart beat faster], the new Field Journal Notebook from Tom Bihn [so new, we haven't written about it yet, but watch the upcoming winter issue for my review], and Signature's new circular needles.

My final favorite thing, as a non-wool knitter, were all the innovative non-wool yarns that were introduced in 2010. At the top of my list was Berroco's Remix, a blend of nylon, cotton, acrylic, silk and linen fibers, all recycled. A lightweight tweedy yarn of this quality is something I'd never seen before, and one that had warmth and environmental sensitivity — that deserves kudos! Thank you, Berroco!

Love!

Jillian says... My favorite idea for 2010 was doing your own thing.

Two yarn lovers, in conjunction with wonderful partners, launched 'just what I always wanted' yarn lines: Pam Allen launched everyone's new go-to basic yarns in Quince and Co; Jared Flood launched his textural and tweedy Shelter Yarn.

A whole bunch of really talented designers self published (or published with small independent publishers) lovely and true-to-themselves pattern books this year: Miriam Felton, Stephen West, Ann Weaver, Cookie A, and Gudrun Johnston are some of the stand outs. And though they weren't released in 2010, Ysolda Teague's two self-published books — Whimsical Little Knits and Whimsical Little Knits 2 — are the success stories of this year, allowing Ysolda to feature her work to retailers in a charming 4-booth space on the TNNA [The National Needlework Association] trade-show floor.

But my number one favorite thing for 2010, because of the quality of information, timeliness and the out and out balls it took to publish: Shannon Okey's The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design.

Signature Circulars are very popular among the Knitty staff

Kate says… My favorite thing about 2010 was the books – both paper and digital.

Tons of really amazing books were published by big publishers, small publishers, and even designers working alone at their kitchen tables. 2010 saw the release of so many amazing knitting books, on topics both broad and fabulously narrow.

We saw wonderful pattern collections, we saw excellent new teaching books, we saw books about the usual topics like socks and sweaters and adorable things for babies. 2010 also added books about finishing and cables and Entrelac, and Nordic knitting, and lace (such wonderful books about lace) and collections of patterns for dogs and

WWW: Rare Beasts & Art

Rare and beautiful.

The Rare Breeds Survival Trust in the UK is a charitable organization dedicated to conserving Britain's native farm livestock. Founded in 1973, not a single breed has gone extinct since then, and they are doing important work to protect both the animals and small farms and holdings who keep them.

They have recently launched a Wool Exchange, allowing members to advertise wool and fleeces from rare breed sheep for sale or exchange. The listings are fabulously breed-specific. (Note that the advertisers are small, independent suppliers – they likely would only ship within the UK.)

Bonus adorable sheep pictures on the site, too!

Hand-knitting would be ok, though, yes?

Toronto's Drake Hotel is currently hosting an exhibition called "Wrap Your Head Around This". The exhibition is interested in how the physical features and the iconography of cloth combined with traditional textile practices contributes to overall meaning. Collectively, the artists included use traditional methods in textiles for political, social, historical and cultural commentary.

Los Angeles-based artist Lisa Anne Auerbach knits political messages into sweater sets, simultaneously rendering them comfortable and uncomfortable. Her work "Take This Knitting Machine And Shove It" has pride of place at the entrance to the hotel.

The exhibition also features some of Jenny Hart's embroidered portraits of rock stars.

Ok, it's not knitting, but it's still pretty cool.

The Wall Street Bull in New York City was (briefly) yarnbombed this past week, just before the big storm hit.

Martha Stewart apparently will be needing us in the new year….
And even sheep get the winter blues… photo of the front page of The Guardian newspaper last Thursday. Sheep in County Antrim, Ireland, have been dyed blue so that they can easily be spotted in the snowdrifts.

Dreaming about 2011

Lusterous locks

I am a list maker, I love making lists. This time of the year I carry a little notebook and dream of all of things I might do in the next 365 days or so.

Occasionally, I look back at the last year and take stock of what I learned.

In my spinning life in 2010 the biggies for me were:

Learning to spin fat yarn
Learning to spin art yarn
And it really, finally, hit home for me about how important and varied sheep breeds are, and how lucky we are to have so many to spin with.

For 2011 my big three (so far) are:

Knitting with handspun. I find handspun yarn so different than millspun yarn, it has a liveliness and feistiness that I adore. How do you knit it to it's best advantage? What about the stitches used? What about the different breeds?
Travel for spinning. Gotta go this year and I want it to be a big one. Maybe SOAR, or Rhinebeck or Taos.
Color. I want color to click in my brain this year, and my brain likes to fight this one. Good thing The Spinning Loft is bringing Deb Menz to town.

What are on your lists? What did you accomplish in 2010? What are you dreaming about for 2011?

It's official: we've gone nutty.

And now it's Monday, and the last contest isn't even over yet, but we're doing it ONE MORE TIME! Because we take holiday madness quite seriously over here at Knitty.

Here's how to win: leave a comment to this post by Wednesday, December 29, at midnight eastern time, and you could win! We'll choose a winner at random, make them answer a terrifically difficult [cough] skill-testing question, and post the results next week.

What's the prize this time, you ask? It's a kit for the gorgeous Cuckoo Mittens from the current issue!

we are cuckoo for these mittens. no, really.

Cuckoo mitts kit

contains this gorgeous yarn:

The Loopy Ewe Solid Series Fingering [100% Superwash Merino; 220 yds per 55g skein]

MC Robin's Egg Blue; 1 skein

CC Blackberry; 1 skein

Retail price for kit: $20.50

We'll choose the winner at random, which means anyone has the same chance  to win as anyone else! So enter, and good luck to you all!

Ninja strikes again! Another contest!

What is this…Thursday contests every week? Not even close. We just feel like giving away stuff and it happens to be on a Thursday again this time! I know, we're out of control. It's fun.

Here's how to win: leave a comment to this post by Monday, December 27 at midnight eastern time, and you could win! We'll choose a winner at random, make them answer a terrifically difficult [cough] skill-testing question, and post the results next week.

What's the prize this time, you ask?

this loveliness is the Emerald City colorway

1 skein of Lisa Souza Superwash BFL sock yarn

Fiber: 100%Blue Faced Leicester Superwash wool hand dyed

4 ounce skeins/ 465 yards

Needle size for socks 0-1 US /2.0-2.25mm  suggested

Care: Machine wash and dry

Value: $18 US

Can't wait to see if you're the lucky winner? Lisa Souza herself has given us a special discount to share with you: Free Shipping through January 6th, if you mention KnittyBlog when you place your order.

Good luck everyone!

The lucky winner of the Briar Rose contest from last Thursday: Nancy H, comment #6176. Congratulations, Nancy! Happy knitting!

You didn't win? Well, at Briar Rose has given us a special discount to share with all our readers: 10% off through the end of December. Just use code KnitBR.

WWW: Yarn-bombers, chickens and other wild animals

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"Darn cute"

The Edmonton Journal has a charming little piece about the final rush of gift-crafting. Perhaps the journalist herself is a crafter and was perhaps looking for a quick article to write so she could get back to her projects?

The staff at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum were thrilled to see the museum yarn-bombed in November, proudly posting the pictures [one shown at left] to their Facebook page.
Planning for 2011? Take a peek at the comprehensive round-up of knitting and fiber-related events at  Knitters Review .
We love that Sarah Keen's book Knitted Wild Animals has made it onto a New York Times' Style section list of notable books.

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Insert chicken-related pun here.

Knitters in the UK are making "chickinis" for rescued battery hens. Many of the hens are featherless when they arrive at the Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare, and are outfitted with the little jackets to keep them warm until they regrow their own feathers.

Pattern and more information here.

An absolutely stunning pair of hand-knitted gloves featuring Sanquhar patterning, on the website for the BBC's series "A History of the World in 100 Objects", contributed by the Dumfries Museum.