Episode 30 - a whole lotta yoke!

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] hi welcome to episode 30 of the gentle matter podcast my name is Nicole and I'm coming to you from Ottawa Ontario today is Sunday December 15th 10 days before Christmas I am NOT ready not that I have a ton to prepare for we are having a very quiet Christmas just mark and I at home which I'm really looking forward to I cannot wait to just be off of work and just have some time to relax it's been a very busy fall at work really intense I'm working on two big big projects one which opens at the end of next week so thank goodness for that and the other one I just had a major deadline at the end of this week so now I'll be able to kind of have a little bit of a break at Christmas and I'm hoping that I will get a lot of time to knit and ski and play in the snow which finally arrived we have had a very wet and yucky December so far but now we have snow and last night it snowed and I'm so excited it's really really put me in the Christmas spirit I have to admit I wasn't really there before but now that everything is blanketed in snow and I will be able to pull out my skis and go play outside I put on some Christmas music this morning and it's decorating and now I feel like I'm in the Christmas spirit yeah last time we spoke was before Rhinebeck that was a wonderful time as usual had a great have time hanging out with my dear friend Elizabeth Doherty and lo Laurie who works with Elizabeth and Claire from the Willie thistle also stayed with us and yeah we had a beautiful house we stayed in right in Red Hook which is right next to Rhinebeck so super convenient and it was great it was cool so we all got to wear our Willy's I got to meet so many of you thank you to everybody who came up to say hi and give me a hug it's it's really wonderful I it's for me the highlight of Rhinebeck is meeting all of you and getting to sort of put a face to comments and and just interactions that I've had with people through the years of doing this podcast so yeah I just had a wonderful time met some people I've been kind of friends online with time hello time I wore my hair in braids time is a wonderful designer and I will show you something that I knit of hers in a little bit she's the cleverest stitch on Instagram I was able to meet ocean of ocean by the sea beautiful Instagrammer and yarn Dyer and bought some of her yarn so I was really but it was so lovely to meet her and she's even more lovely in person and then Denise Denise Barron another amazing creative person and a beautiful soul we we didn't have a lot of time to talk but it was just nice to finally you know sort of be able to look at each other in person and really connect on a on a real level so yeah I just so many of you were there and and it was a really great time bought some yarn so I will show you some of what I bought I didn't buy a ton but you know I did some damage so yeah let's jump into it because like I said I have a lot a lot to show finish projects some in progress things one sort of fail but anyway let's get into it so the first thing I want to talk about is my beautiful soiree sweater which I finished in time for Rhinebeck I was talking about it in the last episode and and I loved it it's really cozy especially for like a cool day like today it's so light and so warm it's really really lovely maybe I'll stand up so you can see I made a longer version so it is a cropped sweater it'll just ignore the slight wrinkles there it probably would need to be reblocked but it is got a beautiful beautiful cable detail along the side which was a lot of fun to knit and I just it was a pleasure to make the pattern is by Emily Foden and it was first released in an issue of pom-pom magazine a couple of years ago and then it was also included in her knits about winter book which came out last year one of my favorite knitting pattern books and I admit it in Emily's beautiful yarn when I was visiting this summer I got a chance to I was visiting Emily's studio she has an open house every summer and so I talked about it in a previous episode but I bought the yarn to make this soiree and so it is a combination of her alpaca poll worth fingering and her merino sorry her mohair silk blend and I don't recall the names of the colors I mentioned them in the last episode but it's just a really pretty mix of soft soft purple or lavender and gray and brown and beige it's it's just a really really pretty mix there's a little bit of blue in there and it's such a gorgeous fabric it was a real pleasure to work on because just you know when you're working and every stitch is just like just so beautiful and the fabric is just growing and that I don't know and it's it's like eating a super delicious dessert you know so soft and and yeah I was an easy pattern really really fun it's easy to throw on the one thing is that you do end up with mohair and in your nose and I'm not sensitive to mohair I know some people are so it doesn't bother me it just you know it'll get stuck in your in your lip balm or that kind of thing but but yeah I really love it I highly recommend the pattern and the yarn what else did I want to say about it does pill quite a bit but you know that's the nature of any yarn that's super super fuzzy is gonna those fibers that are kind of floating in the air tend to rub together and then create little pills but because the overall garment is very fluffy it they don't stand out as much and you know just kind of pick them off as you go but soiree sweater done and very very happy um I wanted to mention that I am recording with a different device today I'm actually using I got a new iPhone and so I'm using that as a test I had a web camera and I really liked the quality of the image and the sound but there's something technically I'm having a hard time it records in a different aspect ratio and a 4:3 aspect ratio and then I can't bring it into into iMovie and anyway the technically there's something I need to figure out to make it work properly and which is meant that I've tried to record and then the footage I recorded didn't work and anyway so I'm trying with my iPhone because it's super simple let me know if you are if you think the sound and image quality is good then I might just go with that I mean trying to make recording a bit easier for myself because I do want to record more often but anyway we'll see let me know my next finished finished object is I believe another project that I talked about in the last episode it is this beautiful shawl designed by Sophia cama born of the camel born a podcast and it is called the sky meaning shawl and not sure if that's how it's pronounced but I didn't wet block this I did give it a quick steam but I do want to wet block it because I really want the the lace to kind of be nice and and blocked so that you can really see the detail of it but but it's it's just a delightfully easy shawl to knit it is nice it's big and lush and the yarn is lovely it is round the penal guard and the kind of cream the natural color gray and then this gorgeous soft soft Brown I would actually really love to knit a full sweater in this color I bought the yarn from natok rafi farms she offers kits I actually checked this they still have some kits available Sofia had knit a version that was like neutral tones but then with a beautiful gold color for the lace and I love that version I kind of I love this one I'm happy with it but in the last episode of the camera Borneo podcast she was I think she showed either images or she was wearing the the one with the yellow the gold trim and I was like oh I really love that one but but this will get tons of wear and it's just a beautiful generous shawl to put put on when it's cold and snowy so I highly recommend it such an easy pattern if you've never done lace before it's a super easy lace I it would be a great beginner project for that but yeah my scanning shell i knit another shawl and I love the results however I am going to take out the edging and modify it a little bit it is my Trelawny shawl by time Swedish who I mentioned earlier she is doing a whole series of Harry Potter themed shawls and they are all gorgeous so I think there's three out right now and I want to knit them all but I started with the turtle Andi shawl I talked about it last time I love professor Trelawney she's the movie version of the of the character is hilarious and so I adore it it's really beautiful however I didn't I it with the icord and I feel like I would rather have a garter it's the last section was a knit section so it alternates between garter and then knit sections and then bound off with a with an i-cord my the yarn I have is a slightly different gauge and I think it ended up being a little bit it looks big here but a little bit on the small side in terms of like wanting to tie it I kind of end up with these little bits here and so I've got a bunch of this pretty kind of light dove gray so I'm gonna do a big I'm gonna use up the rest of it and do a big garter section to end it I kind of wanted to end on this really pretty sort of soft mauve but but I do want it to be bigger so I can wear it so it's not blocked and the ends are woven in and I like I said I'm gonna rip out that I cord and add an extra section of the Garter and I actually I've done that on many many shawls I'll add a wide Gore garter edge and I really like that I just like it as a as a finishing and it prefer my yarn the the icord is rolling now like I said I'd haven't blocked it so had I blocked it that would probably not happen but but yeah the pattern is so beautiful that yarn I've used is so gorgeous I just really want to make sure that I am a hundred percent happy with this the yarn I used is viola yarns and it isn't her I believe it's her Moore's burg decay base and sorry for not knowing the names of the colors but like I said there's a really beautiful kind of grey but it's a warm grey with flecks of blue and yeah like a bit of light like lilac and then this stunning mauve color is just my favorite and I love how it's just tonal you know it's not like ultra variegated but you do get that richness of variation in the in the color and it's really really gorgeous yarn so so I will show it to you next time when I've actually finished finished it but the Trelawney shawl is absolutely delightful and I recommend the pattern the next thing I'm it was a test knit for Elizabeth dougherty my super talented friend it is the tiny boats hat and I adore this pattern what a beautiful beautiful result you get this really cool slip stitch bottom that creates these little she said they kind of reminded her of little Viking boats and it is that it's easy and it is just textural and I really really really love how it turned out I knit it in the top or the gray is fibre company Road to China light which I bought probably like 15 years ago I bought it at lettuce knit in Toronto when it was in its original location it's unfortunately no longer it doesn't exist anymore but it was a really lovely charming little yarn store in Toronto in Kensington Market and so I bought it there like I said such a long time ago the beige is a it's black or yarns and oh dear I will put the name of the yarn here because I don't remember it's it's one of their like kind of breed specific blends in this really pretty kind of oatmeal color and I just I really I wish I didn't have my braids I would put it on for you but it is a lovely pattern if you have sort of special yarn it doesn't take up a lot of yarn this would be great if you have like one a luxury skein of you know cashmere or or Surrey alpaca or something like that it's really quite a lovely project to use that kind of stuff have a look at Elizabeth's pattern page because she has also done some versions with multi colors like different colors and in kind of I think she used some Shetland yarn maybe some Jameson's and those versions are gorgeous so I'm I'm thinking maybe I'll have to try making another one but tiny boats hat is definitely a win what else do I have so I have I'll start with works and progress I'm knitting some very plain socks I've got one here it's in this beautiful mossy green the yarn is black her yarns mohair sock yarn what's it actually called I'll put it down here but I it's as part of my kind of testing non super wash yarns to make socks this yarn is not soft at all but it's got a beautiful halo and I you know my feet are not sensitive so I am really curious to see how they will wear my efforts so far at kind of working with non super washed sock yarns has been mixed I I would say I yeah they just tend to I don't know if it's my feet or just the types of shoes I wear but even though I'm hand washing them they do tend to felt in my shoes and I don't know I I'm curious to see how this will perform but I'm kind of a little bit maybe relaxing my whole non superwash yarn thing for socks and I bought some some yarn that is super wash for socks at Rhinebeck and it's so gorgeous that I don't you know I mean there's nothing wrong with super wash yarn it's more a question of feel how it feels when I'm working with it and often times with superwash merino I'm just not super I'm not into the feeling of it but but I have to admit that the socks that I have that have been the most durable are my commercial yarn socks so my the socks I've done in reg yeah or Lang all those socks are they wear like iron so I don't know I kind of feeling like you have to find what works and and those those yarns work really well for me I have pair you know some socks that I've had for probably like 20 years and I'm still wearing them whereas the couple of pairs that I've done in non non-treated yarns some of them they're not holy but they are they are felted and they're really really tough to get on so anyway we'll see how these do but I am enjoying working with this yarn very much I'm almost done the toe on this one and you know we'll have just enough yarn to to finish those but enjoying working with the yarn it's it's delightfully wooly and and snuggly what else I am I have torn out something I had started last year and I didn't show it I showed it to you serving progress I was knitting a widow's kiss sweater out of some Sakia farm yarns that I bought last year at Rhinebeck in this gorgeous rusty color it's their variegated decay yarn and it's called Rhode Island Red and I absolutely love this color I really did love the how it was looking in that pattern it's a it's a beautiful pullover by thea Coleman and it's got it's all over cables it's sort of a boatneck and why did I I just felt like I was looking at my wardrobe and I've knit several pullovers lately and I really felt like I didn't think that I needed more pullovers what I really need are basic cardigans that I can throw on top of a dress I that's what I wear like I would say 90% of the time is linen dresses and I just love having small simple cardigans to go over that so all that to say I ripped out I had maybe two-thirds of the body done it was really beautiful I I would love to knit that pattern again but it's beautifully written pattern that cables are like super smooshy and lovely but anyway all that to say I ripped that out I actually didn't rip out the sleeves I had knit this the pattern calls for you knit the sleeves first and I'm secretly hoping that I can attach these sleeves to the sweater on making excuse me because the sleeves in that pattern are just plain and it's kind of like you start it's a top down and you start with the the sort of the top of the yoke and then eventually you attach the sleeves so I don't know maybe I can make that work but maybe not I'm just waiting to get to that point to see if I can make it work so what am i knitting I'm knitting the peasy sweater by Heidi kiermaier there's really not a lot to see right now I have just just started the lace panels so it's a really simple cardigan with just like a little lace paneling on the front and I just I love mixing a super rustic yarn with lace I don't know why but I just I love kind of the mix of the fuzziness of this it's a single ply yarn very very similar to a low pea but in a DK weight so yeah I don't know I just like I said I I feel like and this is something that I will that is true for my next project that I'm going to show you that a total fail and I just really want simple everyday sweaters though the few that I have that are in that category are the things that I wear the most my Albini cardigan which I adore my Trillium cardigan which is a Michelle long pattern that I knit like a long long time ago like I've worn through the elbows I've actually done some duplicate stitch on the elbows now but it's it's just a cardigan I wear all the time so I just want more of that so that's what this is going to be with this gorgeous yarn the fail is it's not a fail so much as a realization that this is not me so I knit oh darn what is the name of this pattern I will have to put it up on the screen it's this gorgeous thing um and you might be looking at this going yeah Nicole that is not you it is so the reason why I met this is because at India entangled this year I was at the spin cycle booth and the one of the ladies the one of the owners of spin cycle was wearing this exact sweater she had knit it it was a charcoal gray but that with this spin cycle yarn which is a yarn that mimics hand spun it's a really very beautiful yarn and I just fell in love with how it looked on her she just she's a super cool lady and I was like I want to be a cool lady like her and have a really cool sweater and so I bought the I already had this beautiful navy BuChE BuChE which a really really sweet viewer had sent me last year and I knew it would look really beautiful with the colors in this this yarn this spin cycle yarn so I bought the spin cycle I only had to get two skeins and I knit up the yoke and I really loved working on it it was so pleasant to work on I love color work and just these this really gorgeous pattern I have to say and I tried it on I had haven't done the sleeves obviously and I was like this is so not me it's too ornate it's too colorful and I think the mix of the yarn the the bishi brush is much much lighter than the spin cycle yarn and so the top of it is because there's so much color work and you know you have all these floats the top is kind of stiff and when I tried it on it did this weird like kind of weird puckering it wouldn't sit on my shoulders and I think is probably due to the fact that the bishop yoosh and they're not weight wise they are not compatible so you create this this sort of body that is ultra ultra light and this kind of more stiff top and I don't know it just it was the combination of it being way way too busy too colorful and not fitting properly so it's gonna be going to the Frog Pond because the yarns are gorgeous and I don't you know I don't want beautiful yarn to sit in a garment that I'm not gonna wear so even though these super ornate yokes are all the rage I just think for me it's too busy I you know I kind of like a very plain or very traditional I like the what are they called that I think they're Swedish or Norwegian kafta cardigans that have like the kind of flee in the body flee pattern which is just you just have regular regularly spaced dots of color work and then more ornate at the top but it's always two colors usually it's like charcoal gray and white or red and white Navy and white that kind of thing so I like that kind of intricate detail I like Icelandic yolks with a lot of colors but for me I realized that this is just a little too much this kind of pattern in hat or mittens I would love but it's just a whole lot of yoke for me so yeah it's it's a fail but it was delightful to knit and so I'm I'm totally at peace with that and I will definitely reuse the yarn for something else so uh I guess I can talk a little bit about some of my Rhinebeck purchases I didn't go overboard this year I have a lot of yarn as you know and just trying to be really thoughtful about my purchases although I just finished telling you all about you know yarn that I bought for a design that totally is not appropriate for me but but the other things I bought I feel very confident about so I'll start with some Green Mountain spinner yarn that I bought it it's yarn that I bought before it's their sock art Lanna yarn which is it's a hundred percent fine wool u.s. grown wool and it's a two-ply sock weight yarn but I am going to I bought enough to make a cardigan so I'm gonna make a fine a small gauge simple simple cardigan with it it's in this gorgeous so that's more accurate when I bring it up close it blows out but I just I do want you to see the little flecks of kind of yellow and navy but not but it's saturated it's more like the overall tone is more darker like this and I just I love this kind of deep deep forest green I think it looks really beautiful with blue and I have a lot of Navy clothes and I think it would just be really really pretty I had knit a shawl out of this yarn which you may remember was yarn that I bought at Rhinebeck it's kind of a beautiful kind of slate blue and the Shaw line it was I can't remember what the name of the pattern is but it's just basically a triangle with these eyelet lines and I really love the feel of this yarn it's kind of got slightly dry feeling I think it's the way I would describe it it's almost cottony but with the with the kind of balance of wool and it wears beautifully so I think I think it'll make a really really pretty cardigan the cardigan I'm thinking of making is the anchors cardigan the the adult version it's a just super simple yoke cardigan that has just these rows of basically of ribbing but there's kind of offset and it's it's a super simple cardigan but I the type of thing I would just wear to death so so that was my first purchase the color is tornado no TRO needle throw needle I don't know I don't know what the word means but if anybody does let me know but yeah I am super happy with this it's gonna be really lovely lovely garment I believe the next thing I bought was some stunning yarn from Prato de Lana and they are a there where are they based is it in Maine they have the most beautiful booth with all of these super super natural yarns this one is called mod revoir and the yarn is from their sheep they always write down the name of the sheep that provided the fleece so the sheep I believe I could be wrong on this but it's Brigitta and Bruce I think those are sheep names and it's a hundred percent Romney and it is to die for it's got so much luster and softness at the same time so it it glows and it's got a halo and it's super bouncy and squishy I am obsessed with this yarn so they had a sample knit out of this yarn of a shawl that I have had my eye on for a long time I have it over here let me just grab it it's a shawl pattern from from an older issue I think it's issue number two of wool week which is a magazine that's put out by Shetland wool week they put one out every year they're really beautiful publications with gorgeous patterns and so they so proud oh Delana had a sample of the sanik shawl by donna smith and it is this shawl here I I think I've shown this to you before it's a beautiful triangular shawl lots of garter the way I love with this amazing shell it looks to me it looks like a shell lace pattern a traditional Shetland lace pattern and yeah I am very excited to knit this the yarn this yarn is a little bit heavier than the yarn that is called for which is totally fine with me because I you know the bigger the better as far as I'm concerned when it comes to shawls but yeah this is probably it's one of my favorite purchases that I've made at Rhinebeck and I'm excited to cast on with with this gorgeousness for the sanic shell so I mentioned that I met ocean of ocean by the sea on Instagram and she's a beautiful natural yarn Dyer and so she was there with pom pom magazine and she had a small beautiful selection of her yarn for sale and I got three skeins of these beautiful yarns they are on a tweety base so that her base it's the Fleck base and it's a BFL Donegal blend it doesn't say super wash but I think it is a super wash base I've seen other dyers use this base and actually I bought a bought a skein from another Dyer in in this base or a base that looks very very similar but this color is called Beachcomber and it's the perfectly named skein it's a gorgeous sea glass kind of greeny blue with some beige and some you know sandy flex and the the Tweed little tweed Donegal tweed nubs are in there too so it has that kind of sandy feel then this this other color is called stracciatella and it is just a neutral that has little I'm just going to take the label off has these very very subtle pops are not pops but like swaths of peach which may not be showing on screen but it is really really pretty and then speaking of each the last one I bought is called the color is called peach fizz and it is if I bring it up close it really blows out but it is definitely a beautiful soft soft peach color and yeah so I think that these will go together in a shawl of some kind I don't know what but something big maybe something brioche I'm not sure but I just love these soft colors love them so yeah so anyway ocean these are amazing and like I said I bought another scheme in a very very similar base so it it's actually I'm curious so this says it doesn't get the percentage as it says BFL Donegal this says 85% superwash VFL 15% naps and that would be the probably what ocean is calling Donegal so maybe it isn't the same base but it has a very very similar very similar look the naps are kind of the same they're kind of dark chocolatey Brown and then some are paler kind of beige this yarn is by one spawn a corgi it was the first time I bought some of her yarn I just fell in love with this color it's called care warmed caramel and actually you know I think this all looks really beautiful together so I don't know maybe maybe it'll be it'll be something together I'm not I'm not quite sure but yeah it might also be socks because like I was saying I am sort of interested in maybe going back to more durable or sock yarn that doesn't felt as easily so so yeah so these are super SuperDuper beautiful very happy with those and then the last thing I bought was a sweaters quantity of a yarn by a company called tidal yarns and I've admired their booth every year I I just really really loved their booth they just have a gorgeous natural set up all their yarns are naturally dyed they're all rustic yarns this is let's see it doesn't say specifically it is it is a fingering weight yarn it's a two ply it doesn't give a color but it's dyed I believe with indigo it's a really pretty blue that has a slight kind of say G undertone I believe the yarn they use it's a blend of kind of natural color and more of a brown base like a pale brown base so you get if you can see you get sort of a tonal you can see a little bit of Brown there and anyway I just love their yarn it is pricey so I've always kind of resisted buying buying stuff but the person one of the persons in the booth was wearing a sweater that I absolutely fell in love with and it's this sweater here it's called the high-low the title high-low and it is designed by the yarn Dyer and you can only buy it as a kit so you can't just buy the the pattern by itself but yeah I couldn't resist I got the I got the yarn for the sweater this is something I will wear another super basic simple it's got some seed stitch detailing and it's got a little pocket and I bought a contrasting scheme so I will be doing this the little inside of the pocket will be this color and then the sweater will be this color and this year in actually has a very similar feel to the to the Green Mountain spinner II it has that kind of slightly dry quality that that is very very comfortable to wear so yeah so this is a another really beautiful purchase I love this color I think it looks really good with my eyes so that in a nutshell are all my Rhinebeck treasures and yeah it's a lot oh I'm calming myself down for 2020 it's gonna be all about kind of bringing the stash down but anyway I am excited to work with all these beautiful things lastly I'll show you some hand-spun that I've done recently I talked about it and I think in my last podcast it's fiber that I bought from into the world and just used my my my moosie my my spindle to to spin it up and so I ended up with this really really pretty kind of mossy green with kind of icy grays and then some darker more kind of richer bronzy colors and I don't know what I'm gonna make with it it's I think you know like most of the yarns I spin it's kind of a mix between a fingering a sport and a DK not a very good spinner but I do enjoy just the process of it and yeah so yeah I don't know what I'm gonna make with it but I you know I'm just really happy with with the pros and the results are really pretty - so maybe a hat maybe some mittens I don't know maybe socks we'll see but it was a lot of fun to spin and I yeah I don't know what else to say I get a lot of questions I think I've said this before when I show spinning I get questions and I am not the person to ask for this spinning advice it's just something I do in a very intuitive manner in a very you know not planned I kind of let the fiber do what its gonna do I let my fingers do what they're gonna do and they kind of pretty much always do the same thing I end up with kind of a a worsted spun so meaning it's not I don't let the twist come into the fiber I will manage the fiber as it goes in and so it ends up being you know sort of a little bit less fluffy than I would want and eventually I will learn how to really do a good job at prepping my fiber to do woolen spun which is a little more lofty and fluffy and rustic looking which is what I like but in the meantime I I really enjoyed spinning that um there is one other thing two other things I wanted to show you let me grab them so another semi fail of mine was I was working on a pom dapeng cardigan by Amy Christopher's a designer I really really love and another another kind of example of something that was beautiful that I really enjoyed working on but that I felt was too fussy to like over over detailed or just felt like it wasn't something I was going to we're regularly I like I've realized that I don't mind having a shawl that has a lot of laziness but for my sweaters I want something really plain so ripped it out the yarn I was using is Harrisville tweeter Harrisville water no flywheel in this really pretty steely gray blue with some red and some yellow and some brighter blue flecks it's a really gorgeous yarn as you can see I just raw rolled all the whole thing in a big ball when I knit with non superwash yarn I always spit splice my ends so if I rip something out it's all comes back in one long big gigantic ball but what I want to make with this is a sweater that I've knit before it's from a super super old issue of Rowan Magazine it's issue number 24 and I believe they're in the 60s now I checked the date on this it came out in 1998 so it's 20 years old oh my god feel sold some of you may not have been born when this came out but it's a sweater I knit is the fruit one of the first sweaters I knit for myself and I love that sweater the sweater itself the yarn I used was not a hundred percent wool yarn it was a mix of wool and acrylic and I didn't wear very well so I ended up I think I donated it to Goodwill but I love the sweater and I really miss wearing it it is this little cardigan here and it's got a mitered collar which I really love and then these little pockets the the bottom section here is all seed stitch this seed stitch here and yeah I just love this cardigan I loved wearing it it was really easy to wear so I'm going to be knitting this with this yarn and I think it is gonna be a sweater that it's gonna get so much more wear than the super lacy beautiful pom to panic cardigan so yeah so those are some of my plans for this year lots of very plain cardigans but always with a little detail and usually you know what I like to do is let the yarn shine so I think those will do that the last thing I wanted to say before I wrap up because this is gonna be a super long episode is I bought this beautiful beautiful book and it's called Masha Swedish mittens or maybe this is my own I'm not sure how it's pronounced but it is a sweater by Mahamaya Carlson and I just just fell for it because first of all it's got a ton of beautiful patterns I had seen Sophia the California podcast knit some of these patterns and I think at the time the book was only available in Swedish but now it has come out in English and I'm just a sucker for anything Scandinavian and then you add in stunning photography and I have no willpower against that yeah it's a really really beautiful book one of the charming things is that at the beginning there's kind of an index of all the patterns and these are all hand drawn and I just think that's so sweet [Music] but yeah I mean hello this is just too beautiful and then the patterns are just gorgeous I love a traditional mitten sorry I'm just gonna keep showing you this Scandinavian goodness so this is kind of a little bit like what I was talking about earlier but I like a planar version than this but those those really traditional sweater patterns so hello this book is so beautiful um some of the patterns I want to knit I will show you quickly should have probably marked them first it's sweet pattern of just snowflakes and then it's got a Latvian braid really like those I probably I'd like to do it in like a dark charcoal background and then a creamy white for the snowflakes it's the what's it called the flakes pattern then I mean frankly I could probably knit all of them there's a pattern called spruce sprig and it's this really sweet pattern here that calls for it's knit with let low piece so lots of leftovers of that in my stash for for this really really sweet pattern anything woodsy you know was right up my alley and then there's another pattern that I think it's the one that Sofia net that made me want to buy the book it is this the promised pattern and it is these two little lovebirds oh so pretty with a little branchy pattern and then the flea this is what I was often called a flea motif just little flecks of color and then a heart yeah I love those so those are definitely in my future so all in all a really really beautiful collection of mittens and using all different weights of yarns so really good first - busting and I haven't tried knitting any of the patterns yet so I can't speak to the quality of the pattern writing but I don't know I feel pretty confident that I will enjoy there's also this little pattern with the the man and woman or is it two women Oh doesn't matter two people hanging out there's a little insect one there's a little compass one some are really really simple like this kind of just stripey some are a lot more traditional like this beautiful flower motif with the initials so yeah yeah a really really beautiful book I recommend it well I think I'm gonna have to say goodbye for today I'm actually driving out to the countryside to meet up with Lee from quiet quietly on Instagram we're gonna have a nice chat and a knit and maybe a walk in the woods this afternoon so I'm really really looking forward to that I hope that your holidays are filled with all those good things and that you have a beautiful time with your loved ones and lots of wooly goodness to start off the year and oh I did forget one thing I wanted to announce the winner of the giveaway that I talked about last episode let me grab the prize here's somewhere I'll be right back so um I had two beautiful skeins of fiber nymph dye works to give away one is a fingering in a color called lighter green it's a custom in milled blend of Romney and Falkland so it's 400 yards of fingering weight really really beautiful blend and the other skein is rich top DK custom mill blend again the Romney Falkland in the cinnamon color and it's DK weight really really pretty pretty yarn so the giveaway I asked people to comment and the in the Ravelry group about telling me who their favorite Harry Potter character was and why because I talked about the turtle Trelawny shawl and how much I love a professor Trelawney and so I got a ton a ton of responses was really really fun to read all of your who was your favorite and why one thing that I wasn't clear about was that I wanted people to comment in the Ravelry group but a lot of people commented in the YouTube video so what I ended up doing was took a while but I wrote down everybody who had commented from the YouTube group and from the Ravelry group and I put it in the in the Hat and I drew a winner and that winner is Jen VF there was only one Jen yet so you know who you are but congratulations I will send you a private message to let you know that you won the giveaway and we'll send that off to you very very soon so thank you everybody for participating it like I said it was really fun to read everybody's favorites and why there was a lot Luna that was a big favorite and she is one of my favorites too I have to say she's my favorite in the movies in the books she's a little I don't know a little less appealing I think the way the actress plays Luna is just really what endears me to that character there was a lot of Jimmy a lot of Hermione of course not that many Harry's which was interesting a lot of Neville and you know it what was great was reading through it kind of gave me different perspectives on the characters Neville being you know one of the characters that is just so ultimately so brave and so like able to kind of surmount a lot of difficulties and just be so so loyal to his friends and I don't know it was it was really nice and then there were also I had sort of mentioned that if you weren't into Harry Potter you could mention a favorite character from me there are another series or just from a book and there was a lot of Anne of Green Gables which really warmed my maritime heart my Canadian heart so that's it's one of my favorites too but um yeah thanks again to everybody for participating thank you to fibrin in works for donating the beautiful beautiful yarn and with that I will leave you merry Christmas to all of those who celebrate it happy solstice Happy Hanukkah happy Kwanzaa what else happy holidays everybody I hope that this time of year brings a lot of warmth to your heart I know it's not an easy time for everybody but if that's the case for you sending you lots of love and I think the most important part is just to be really gentle with yourself and offer yourself that warmth and that love so anyway I'm glad to have had a chance to talk to you and hopefully will speak to you soon [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: the gentle knitter

Views: 29,782

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Id: E6xGHzarWnY

Length: 64min 15sec (3855 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019