Mandy Moore's Blog, page 72

WWW: Mathematical Knitting; On Recreating a WWI-era Sweater, Vogue Knitting Live Class Report

Makes my nerdy heart beat faster: the 2014 Joint Mathematics Meetings, put on by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America last week featured a full day special session on Mathematics and Mathematics Education in Fiber Arts.

One of the highlights was Carolyn Yackel‘s session on creating modified Truchet tiles, which she called p4m tiles. The best part? They were inspired by the Templeton Square competition in Knitty.

And another session, led by Elizabeth L. Wilmer, was all about a mathematical formula for truly random cables, something she started pondering after seeing the Knitty random-cable design “Chaos”.

One of my students, starting her first sock!

Self-promotion alert: Amy Kasper of the Knitting Examiner sat in on one of my Vogue Knitting classes last weekend, and she writes a report.

A full run-down of the event is here.

The assignment.

Designer Elizabeth Lovick writes about recreating and knitting a WW1-era sweater for a film production. It’s a lovely sweater, and the blog post is a nice insight into how you analyze a garment for recreation. Can’t wait to see more pictures of the sweater as it grows!

Astounding! Fantastic! Clever! Adorable! Tiny! Potter-riffic!

Gratuitous puppy-in-handknit-sweater-photo alert! A group in Lincolnshire in the UK is making and collecting hand-knit sweaters for a local dog shelter.

It’s great to see Susan Crawford and her Knitted Swimsuit project getting a shout-out on this blog post about the history of swimwear.

Might be good for those friends and family members who have been asking you to teach them to knit. Let them learn from Nell, and you can get on with your own project…

UK Newspaper the Guardian is offering a knitting lesson. The teacher, Nell Frizzell, reports that she was taught to knit by her father.

WWW: Mathematical Knitting; On Recreating a WW1-era Sweater, Vogue Knitting Live Class Report

Makes my nerdy heart beat faster: the 2014 Joint Mathematics Meetings, put on by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America last week featured a full day special session on Mathematics and Mathematics Education in Fiber Arts.

One of the highlights was Carolyn Yackel‘s session on creating modified Truchet tiles, which she called p4m tiles. The best part? They were inspired by the Templeton Square competition in Knitty.

And another session, led by Elizabeth L. Wilmer, was all about a mathematical formula for truly random cables, something she started pondering after seeing the Knitty random-cable design “Chaos”.

One of my students, starting her first sock!

Self-promotion alert: Amy Kasper of the Knitting Examiner sat in on one of my Vogue Knitting classes last weekend, and she writes a report.

A full run-down of the event is here.

The assignment.

Designer Elizabeth Lovick writes about recreating and knitting a WW1-era sweater for a film production. It’s a lovely sweater, and the blog post is a nice insight into how you analyze a garment for recreation. Can’t wait to see more pictures of the sweater as it grows!

Astounding! Fantastic! Clever! Adorable! Tiny! Potter-riffic!

Gratuitous puppy-in-handknit-sweater-photo alert! A group in Lincolnshire in the UK is making and collecting hand-knit sweaters for a local dog shelter.

It’s great to see Susan Crawford and her Knitted Swimsuit project getting a shout-out on this blog post about the history of swimwear.

Might be good for those friends and family members who have been asking you to teach them to knit. Let them learn from Nell, and you can get on with your own project…

UK Newspaper the Guardian is offering a knitting lesson. The teacher, Nell Frizzell, reports that she was taught to knit by her father.

Jillian’s Spinning: Spiral Ply

I like textured yarns. Some textured yarns take a lot of thinking and are fiddly, or more fiddly than I sometimes have the brain power on a particular day to spin.

That’s why I love spiral plying. At it’s most basic, a spiral ply is plying a 2-ply yarn with one ply held straight from the orifice under a bit of tension with the second ply held at a 30-45 degree angle with almost no tension. Magically, the angled ply wraps around the vertical ply in a lovely spiral.

Like this:

Spiral ply

I usually hold my vertical ply taunt , but not pulling against the uptake and the angled ply so loose it almost just runs through my hands. The combination of the difference in angle and the difference in tension makes the angled ply spiral around the vertical ply.

Spiraling works best if the two plys are of a different size, with the spiraling ply being bigger. I like to spin my thinner ply worsted and my spiraling ply woolen for extra contrast. I also like to use different fibers and different colors for even more visual contrast. I spun and knit a few samples this weekend.

I used silk brick from Briar Rose Fibers for the thin ply and Shetland top from Into the Whirled for the puffy ply.

Briar Rose and Into the Whirled

I spun all of my silk at once, I didn’t want to vary that yarn. I spun it worsted at about 26 WPI. I spun the Shetland three different ways: a fingering weight, a thick and thin  and a bulky super puffy. The photos below show (L to R) the front of a stockinette swatch, a bit of the yarn and the reverse of the stockinette swatch.

Fingering weight Shetland and thin silk.

With these samples I think the  yarns were too close in size and I wasn’t getting enough angle on the spiral. It looks like an interesting-ish marled yarn.

Thick and thin Shetland and thin silk.

I love this, especially the reverse side of the knitted fabric, all randomly bumpy with shots of the silk. For choosing knitting needles, I split the difference between the thick and the thin, but more toward the thick end. The knitted fabric is really lightweight.

Thick Shetland and thin silk.

I like this one too, but not as much as the thick and thin. With this one I like the reverse side of the knitted swatch too. The silk on the front side looks random in a way that’s not pleasant to me – kind of clumpy, but on the reverse side it looks organically random, which I like.

I also did a thick and thin sample with both yarns from the same fiber.

Tonal spiral ply

Again I am in love with the texture of the reverse side of the knitted swatch, and really like the tone on tone.

I wonder what a sweater out of spiral plied yarn would be like?

 

 

WWW: Knitwear in Fashion; Amy & Kate hit the Big Apple; Knitted Microbes

A profile of two small British fashion labels specializing in knitwear, & Daughter and Needle. Points off for mentioning the inevitable “granny” stereotype, but it’s nice to hear about interest in high quality knitwear picking up.  Both are using high quality yarns and valuing the work. I particularly appreciate the price point of the socks. Even if you’re not in the market for a new cashmere merino blend sweater, the styling of the garments is very nice – clean, modern, easy to wear. Simple and chic – just the way I like it!

See you there?

Both Amy and Kate are teaching at Vogue Knitting Live this weekend in NYC – say hello if you see us!

Improving lives – through knitting!

The City of Science program in Glasgow, Scotland, has put out a call for knitters to make woolly microbes to contribute to an educational program to run in primary schools this spring. The goal of the program is to teach youngsters about the importance of handwashing to combat the spread of disease, and patterns have been published for various microbes, including the common cold, swine flu, cholera and TB. (They’re not all bad – you can also knit penicillin if you’d prefer.)

Just that idea that there’s a pattern to knit the common cold makes me smile.

Even if you don’t have favorite numbers, they are still great socks…

Interweave has just launched its Spring 2014 issue of Sockupied, with a focus on math & science and how it influences knitters and knitting. The featured designer is our own Kate, and her design Constant Cables codes some of her favorite numbers into a sock.

Fascinating for knitters, spinners and historians: I’ve just found this blog, A Fisherman Knits. The author and knitter, an environmental scientist from California is interested specifically in the gansey form of sweater. In a recent blog post, he writes about choosing yarn for a garment project, looking at the details of the fiber but also the spin and the construction of the yarn itself. And I love this fantastic historic detail he drops:

Working with rather fine needles on rather fine yarns in a cool house, I have gotten out the leather knitting apron. Look at the old pix of knitters – they are all wearing aprons – they knew what they were doing. Fine DPN are pointy, and aprons protect the legs.

Singing duo My Bubba sing a beautiful little ditty about knitting... “got the yarn and I’m gonna do some knitting…. I need to do some knitting”. Recorded live for KEXP, a radio station out of the University of Washington, in Seattle.

Designer and blogger Andi Satturlund with some rather excellent hacks to use office supplies for knitting…

Jillian’s Spinning: Happy Camper Fiber Retreat 2014!

September 19-21, 2014

 

Come spin and dye in the Michigan woods! The Happy Camper Fiber Retreat is on for 2014!

Walden Woods

The 2014 retreat will take place September 19, 20 and 21.

When was the last time you went to camp with s’mores, bonfires, a bunkhouse, a mess hall, new friends, maybe even a camp song? We have all of that plus fiber!

I am so excited to be part of the Happy Camper Fiber Retreat. This year’s retreat will focus on color with classes from Rita Petteys, Jillian Moreno (that’s me!) and Beth Smith.

You will have the opportunity to take a class with each of the instructors and increase your knowledge of color and how to play with it in different ways. You will dye braids of fiber with Rita, card your own color wheel with Beth and create unique yarns by combining colors in spinning with me.

Rita, Beth and I will be around all day and night, not just in class. We’ll be available to answer questions or fine tune techniques. We love this stuff.

For two and half days you will get to immerse yourself in fiber and color by dyeing, carding and spinning. There will be time to just kick back too, to walk in the woods, chat

Fiber in the woods

with friend or just nap. This is a creative retreat with some time to learn and some time to play.

On Saturday night we will have a fiber marketplace featuring some of the best fiber goodies in the state of Michigan. You’ll want to shop until you drop.

The retreat will be held at Waldenwoods Retreat and Conference Center in Hartland, Michigan. This beautiful historic retreat center is located less than 4 hours from Chicago, IL and 30 minutes from Ann Arbor, MI. The Detroit Metro Airport is just 50 miles away.

Ready to sign up or just want to know more? Visit Happy Camper Fiber Retreat.

I am so excited to be part of a retreat in my own back yard here in Michigan, it’s going to be fun!

 

WWW: Staying Warm, Hobbit Knitting, Cycling-Themed Knitting

It seems like many parts of the world are experiencing extreme weather right now. Most of us are too cold and possibly wet right now, but our friends in Australia are experiencing extreme heat. Wherever you are, we hope you’re comfortable and safe in this awful, awful weather.

For those of us coming to grips with the concept of a Polar Vortex, blog “GussetPress” provides a list of the Top Five Warmest Fibers.

We love this.

Warming, in two ways: designer and editor Kate Heppell has published a pattern for a lovely rainbow headband. In advance of the Sochi Olympics, she has made the pattern free to help start discussion and spread awareness about Russia’s policies towards the LGBT community.

The warmth of love: a beautiful essay about loss and love and knitting from knitter Alanna Okun.

Astounding.

There are so many incredible things about this story. Knitter Denise Salway has knitted the cast of the Hobbit, including Smaug. Sure, you’re thinking to yourself, I could do that, given enough time. Lots of time. Ok, that in itself is pretty fantastic.

But the article tells us that she only picked up the needles last year, and that she wasn’t working from patterns… I nearly fell off my chair. I know it’s the wrong reference, but I think it would still be appropriate to say that the force is strong in this one.

Looking forward to the summer, Yorkshire yarn shop Baa Ram Ewe has published Bespoke, a book of cycling-theme patterns to celebrate this year’s Tour De France, which kicks off July 5 & 6th. The Grand Départ is the official starting point of the Tour, and it is held in a different location every year. This year’s edition takes place within a few hundred yards of a yarn shop! All of a sudden I’m developing an interest in cycling…

Jillian’s Spinning: What Are You Doing in 2014?

 

Here’s to lots of spinning in 2014!

I love goals, sometimes they give me a general direction in my mental meandering, sometimes they get me places I never thought possible.

I have spinning goals for this year, do you?

1. Write more / Teach more. This past year I realized how much I love to write and teach about spinning. For me there is a lot of spinning that happens before I show up in the classroom or on the page, so this goal includes lots of sample spinning as well as the teaching and writing.

2. Figure out a way to organize my spinning projects from vision, through sampling, through finished product that works for me. I seem to do this in a different way for each project/idea. The photo above is Spunky Eclectic Pomegranate Martini on mixed BFL to be a cardigan. It’s my first test project.

3. Study, research, spin, stitch, completely belly flop into and abandon myself to my lust for embroidery thread. Why fight it?

4. Start my own blog, I love writing here on the KnittyBlog and will keep doing Spinning Tuesdays and more, but I want a place where I can talk and show and ponder more things, including spinning. I want a place where I can slip down a rabbit hole and stay there for awhile. I’ll let you know when it’s live.

5. This touches on spinning, but isn’t totally spinning: participate in Year of Making. Year of Making is a 365 day photography project. I was inspired to do this by Miriam Felton, she had a gorgeous Year of Making last year. I’ll be taking a picture every day for a year about something I’m making or have made. It can be anything that is creative to me. So far I’ve posted the usual knitting, spinning, embroidery, but I’ve also posted making soup and learning how to make stop action videos on iMovie. I’m doing it on my Instagram feed.

Five things, I think I can do it all.

What are you up to in 2014?

 

 

WWW: Knitted Lamps, Peak Knitting Experience, Disagreement about New Year’s Resolution

The winner of our Wraptor yarn pack giveaway is Chelsea, from St. Paul, MN. Thanks to Twisted Fiber Arts for the prize.

Love this. Imagine the beautiful shadows.

More knitting in home decor: a knitted fabric is used as the basis for a lamp construction…

Did anyone catch the QI Christmas episode last week? Kingston University student Imogen Hedges made an appearance with her bicycle-powered ‘unknitting machine‘. Stephen Fry clearly doesn’t knit, or know any knitters, as he seemed more amazed by the unravelling than we might expect…

An excellent question posed on the Fringe Association blog: what’s your peak knitting experience? To quote from the blog post: Maybe it’s pulling off something you didn’t think you were capable of. Maybe it’s the anticipation of a gift recipient’s response. Or maybe it’s making a thing that proves to be endlessly comforting or useful to you or a loved one. Loving the replies in the comments.

Harumph: The USA TODAY thinks that knitting more tree sweaters is a “weird” New Year’s Resolution. I think it’s a lovely idea.

A great British knitter.

A nice profile of four knitters from the UKL Hazel Tindall, the world’s fastest knitter, designer Louise Walker, creative cafe owner Peter Allison, and teacher Louise Wilke, who is using knitting to help her cope with a serious illness…. It’s great to see the broad variety of knitters being represented, without resorting to old stereotypes.

I hope that when I’m 100 I’m still doing such beautiful and detailed work.

Haven’t the faintest idea what a Dumbo Rat is, but the picture is a win.

Jillian’s Spinning: How Did I Do on My Spinning Goals for 2013?

This last week of the year is usually when I reflect on the past year’s goals. I do goals, not to badger myself into something, but to give myself direction. I also like the time spent thinking about “Who do I Want to Be when I Grow Up?” It still changes regularly.

Goodbye to 2013!

Here’s what I hoped to do and what happened.

Jillian’s 2013 Spinning Goals:

1) That nagging handspun sweater. I have one sweater’s worth of yarn spun and almost a second sweater’s worth. Now I need to knit! I’m going to get some help from Ann Budd’s Handy Top-Down Sweater Book.

Oh boy this one didn’t work out. I knit most of the body, found something I didn’t like and couldn’t live with and ripped put 90% of the sweater. It’s been in time out since October.

 2) Organize stash. Holy cats my stash is out of control! It’s become a huge jumble of fiber, most of it piled on top of empty containers. Even if I tame it back to something very basic like: to dye, to card into batts, to blend and to spin as is – I’ll be happy. I might throw, organize spinning equipment, in there too.


I did this once and I’m working on my second round. I’ve been doing books and yarn this week, working toward a second pass at my spinning stash. Check!














3) Teach/write more. I want to write and teach more about how I spin with knitting in mind. So far, I’ve sent class proposals to Rhinebeck and I’m starting a new column in Knittyspin in the next issue.




This one was my favorite. I started my column in Knittyspin that spinners seem to like. I had articles in two of the three issues of  PLY magazine for 2013. I taught at Rhinebeck and even had a couple of sold out classes. Check, check and check!





That was a year to be proud of! Now I need to figure out my goals for 2014.


What did you accomplish in 2013?

2013: We Had Fun!

Just a quick note from all of us at the KnittyBlog, wishing you a spectacular 2014!

To send off 2013 on a happy note we each rounded up three things that we loved or were proud of in 2013.

Jillian’s Top 3:

Rhinebeck classroom

1. Teaching at Rhinebeck.

Rhinebeck has been on my list of  there’s-no-way goals for a couple of years now. For 2013 I applied and was accepted. I had a spectacular time teaching and learned as much if not more than I taught.

PLY Magazine

2. PLY Magazine

I feel honored to be part of the Editorial Board of PLY Magazine. It’s everything I was looking for in a new spinning magazine, lots to do and lots to think about. I knew Jacey Boggs would create an amazing magazine.  I am excited that so many other spinners feel the same way.

3. Embroidery

I fell hard for embroidery this year. I has never learned in my childhood, so I figured 50 was a good time to learn. I do a little every day and am moving to adding it to my knitting. I love learning new things and it’s feel good to remember how to be a beginner.

 

 Amy’s Top 3:

Denny models my Neat Ripples blanket in progress, just hours before my car window gets bashed in so someone can steal it.

1. Learning to crochet

I was pushed over the edge into this new-to-me craft by a deep need to make a Neat Ripples blanket. Crocheting ripples is a comforting and aesthetically pleasing addition to my craft arsenal. I love it and I’m still doing it.

2. Yarndale (and meeting Lucy)

Lucy is the designer of said Neat Ripples blanket pattern, and I, along with hundreds and hundreds of others, were thrilled to meet her at the newest fiber festival in Yorkshire, UK, last September: Yarndale. I taught some classes and met a lot of great knitters. I rhapsodized about it here.

3. Getting my stolen blanket (etc) back

In what is one of the oddest things to ever happen to me, my unlabelled Cath Kidston knitting bag (itself not inexpensive) full of my Neat Ripples afghan in progress, all my crochet hooks AND all the cotton DK yarn I’d been saving for 10 years to make it was returned to me unharmed, three months after it was originally stolen. Someone dumped it after finding out it wasn’t worth selling to buy crack, another someone found it and one tiny receipt from my chiropractor left in the inside pocket helped that someone get it back to me.

Still can’t believe that happened.

Kate’s Top 3:

1. Bigger on the TV

Seeing my Bigger on the Inside shawl on TV! A knitter was spotted wearing the shawl on the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special pre-show show in the US.

2. Recording and launching online classes which has introduced me to a whole new crowd of knitters, students and friends around the world. It was also great learning exercise for me, as a teacher, to think about how to present ideas so they are most impactful, to see how I look and sound on camera, and to be able to examine my own teaching style. Challenging, but totally worth it.

3. Having a colorway named after me… well, actually, one of my spelling mistakes.

Just perfect. And perfectly hilarious.

I am a tech editor, as you probably know. I’m usually pretty good at proofreading others’ work, but I find it immensely difficult to proofread my own work. A couple of years ago I designed a pattern for the indigodragonfly club. I tried to work extra hard to proofread my own pattern, but as is always the way, a typo crept in.

Now, this was a lace design, and I often use a safety pin in lacework to mark the RS of the work – I find it helpful when establishing the pattern.

But I often type faster than I think…. So instead of “safety pin” I typed “safety pint”.

That in itself is funny enough.

But with me being a relatively well-known tech editor with a passion for precision, and it being a design for the indigodragonfly club (where strange things have been known to happen), the typo stopped the TE in her tracks.

There was, apparently, some discussion about whether it was a mistake, or whether I’d actually intended it to be that way.

We’ve been laughing about this ever since. It’s become a sort of short-hand for “beware: this is the sort of pattern that might drive you to drink”.

And this spring, the genius yarn dyers Ron and Kim surprised me with a gift: a colorway named for my typo – “Safety Pin or Safety Pint: Discuss”, a most fantastic orange.