Episode 52 - Pile O' Yarn and Some Knitting!

[Music] do [Music] all the stars have come in close just to see you i suppose then they're a gleaming you must be dreamy and the sun has said goodbye with a twinkle in his eye he's left the ocean hello there and welcome to episode 52 of little big knits this is a podcast about knitting primarily my name is salma i'm your host and i'm coming to you from a very hot and sunny ottwa where i live with my family and our cat yoda so hello to you welcome back and hello to new viewers if you've joined recently hello to you and thanks for coming back to those of you that just keep coming back every time i'm glad that you appreciate what i have to offer you on this little knitting channel of mine and just so you know we have a group on ravelry called little big knits and in that group as well as below you'll find the show notes um in that group you'll also find our knit along the ranunculus love cal which is a sort of informal knit along for the ranunculus sweater by midori hirose and you're welcome to come in there and chat and check out what other people are sharing as far as their ranunculus sweaters goes post pictures of a work in progress or a finished renunculus it's just an informal one thread kind of knit along for that particular sweater so welcome to join the ravel group as well if you so please i'm also known as salmanits on both ravelry and instagram in case you happen to be looking for me and by the way i forgot to mention that the ranunculus lovecal is also being hosted on instagram with the hashtag ranunculuslovecow and i tend to share in my stories people's finished ranunculus sweaters so um yeah please feel free to go in there and tag me or to use the hashtag and i'll find you so yeah there you go um from the last episode couple of things uh first so many people commented about being glad to hear the uh barefoot mccoy song back i love you only um and it really was nice to have on there again i can't promise that it's going to stay but for now it'll be there and i've been looking for music it's actually incredibly difficult to find um music i music that i want to have and ideally i will have the same piece of music all the time just because it makes my life in terms of editing a lot easier i love doing montages at the front and and the back end of the podcast and i love music to go with that but to find the music sometimes could take a long time and i think i've actually happened upon another song that i quite like um so you might hear that at some point so anyway i just wanted to make a comment about that and then also a couple other things i had a technical glitch last episode if you watched it you'll have known that i sort of came in and interjected because i thought i had lost uh well i lost a segment i thought i had only lost the answer to one question but i realized later on as i was editing that wait a second where are my answers about this question this question quest this question so those questions there are other questions that also went missing because of my technical glitch so what i'll do is at the end of the podcast today i will resume and uh finish the um question and answers of from a couple of episodes ago so there were some fun questions in there about yoda and my knitting and alejandro my husband and my his knitting and so forth so i'll answer those at the end of the episode and then one thing i forgot last time i was talking to you a little bit about the qualities of linen and i'll be sharing a little bit more about that today um because i have a finished object that's made out of linen uh but one thing i forgot to mention before was that um sewing in of linen in particular cotton i think is a little bit easier for sewing in linen can be tricky um and people asked if there were tricks for sewing in ends and i am going to put down below in the show notes below here in youtube the name of a podcast her name is mel makes stuff this is melissa who used to actually have the whale street yarn company and she's a podcaster and has been a podcast for years she stopped podcasting for a while but she does really informative videos i really enjoy her podcast a lot and she had one specifically for joining yarns um with regards to linen different types of methods that one can use depending on the type of linen so um feel free to go and watch that video because i think it's really quite interesting i tend to be a little bit um i just want to go i don't want to stop and focus on the ends as i'm knitting so i haven't used any of the techniques that she suggested but when i talk about the sweater that i'm wearing i'll tell you something that i did this time with this type of linen that i think i'll be employing again because i have had lemon unravel from the ends that have been sewn in and you've you know you've cut it so you don't have a whole lot to work with to try and put it back in it can be very slippery so i'll tell you what i've done this time but do feel free to go and watch mel's video mel make stuff and somebody also asked about pilling i've never had linen pill at all i don't know if anybody else has it would probably depend on how it was how it was treated i have had some linen cotton blends pill a little bit and i think that's probably more the cotton that's that's causing the pilling than the linen itself um but that said it's not like really horrible pilling it's it's really quite minimal and linen and cotton are a lovely blend together so um that would never stop me from working with from working with them when they are together and i've made some things that haven't pilled in some things that have so again i think it's probably depending on how things how the fibers are spun um and treated rather than the actual fiber itself so those are a couple of little extra thingies to tell you uh about linen and that kind of segues into the sweater that i'm wearing because i'm wearing my outline tea i think i was working on this last time i'd gotten quite far and uh here it is it is a finished garment now this is the outline tea um by jessie mae designs and she had started with a tank which a lot of people have made which is kind of an oversized tank and then the moment i saw this i bought the pattern and found the yarn in my stash and cast it on and it is finished i used the cratiallino which is a 100 plied linen yarn i showed it you guys last time and here it is it's really lovely we are having an incredibly hot summer so over a tank this is actually a really nice thing to wear it is an oversized i've got it in this sort of loose tank top that my that was actually a hand-me-down from my friend holly thank you holly because it's actually perfect and here it is it's just a really really loose fitting easy peasy t-shirt with this super duper wonderful drop stitch feature which i could see myself having more of in my life this was a great design loved it um it the one thing i would say is that it's quite loose up here so it's the kind of thing that can will go all over the place um and i thought if i were to knit it again i think i would use the same size sweater because i really like the ease of it and it's meant to have a lot of ease i think i went with 48 inches of ease i think i went with a size 48 um so for me it has about six or eight inches of ease and i like that i think it worked out well it's it's supposed to be like a loose fitting top like that right however i do find the neckline a little on the big side um she offers the possibility in the pattern of picking up the stitches and then binding off to sort of try and and give a little bit of structure to the v and it didn't do a great job of that so i think if i were to make this again i would make the same size because i really really like it but i think i would use the v-neck from a smaller size maybe even a couple of sizes smaller that's my thought right now um just because i think i would prefer it to be a slightly smaller v for me i mean it works with this with this tank which is a great v-neck tank but i have a feeling that you know as i wear it it's going to flop forward it's going to go backwards it's going to go all over the place because it's a silky kind of fiber right um linen is not going to give you a structured garment as i've said before but it will give you a really great cool wearing garment for hot weather so if you're in a place that gets uh hot i know there are people who live in places that are much hotter than here but our summers are getting hotter and hotter um and this summer has been particularly hot we all know that we've had some crazy weather in the world globally certainly in north america we've had a lot of wildfires we've had wildfires in the northern part of ontario of our province and it's an unfortunate reality right now um the heat uh i mean the heat is is you know you could have mixed feelings about the heat whether it's it's good or bad but it is a reality that it is hotter so having really nice light garments to wear is really great and linen is probably the perfect fiber for that i mentioned to you guys last time that linen can have a tendency to warp and you will notice that there is a little bit of warping here in the ribbing not so much in the actual stockinette um and i do wonder if this um drop stitch feature actually helped to kind of reset all the stitches here but there is a little bit of warping happening in the actual twisted rib of this sweater um and it's it's another bizarre feature of linen so um something to think in mind that's why making linen garments that are that have a little bit of something that breaks it up uh are likely to sort of put it back into uh in in in line so to speak and uh yeah but i really love this linen this cafe alino that comes in so many interesting colors there was a this was from my stash but when i went to the store just to see what they had they had a beautiful kind of indigo blue that i thought this t-shirt would be gorgeous in i think this would be gorgeous in white in the original salmon color so many colors so many possibilities so the last thing i wanted to talk to you about was how i sewed in the ends somewhere looking for an end to show you but so this was a plied linen i remember last time i showed you there are applied linens and then they're sort of chained linen so you couldn't do this with the chainette linen but i think the chain linen is less likely to shimmy its way out of a sewn in part of it the sweater anyway this is just extremely silky and what i ended up doing was actually when i came to where the two yarns were hanging and they just sewn it get sewn in i would actually separate the plies and sew them in separately and in some cases even not apply together with another ply from the other thread and i think that is going to be a really good solution for this type of yarn it creates zero bulk um it creates i think much more stability because the yarns are going in different directions rather than using all the plied yarns together to do it i separated them and sewed in different directions so it does take perhaps a teeny weeny bit more time because you end up sewing in more ends but i think that's going to work and if it doesn't i'll let you know and then there's always mel's video mel make stuff if you're looking so i think that's what i have to share with you about about this beautiful sweater and i do like the color in the end i think it's just a very sort of neutral kind of color to wear um today i happen to be wearing it with a skirt that's kind of a silky uh i don't know what would you call this rayon type of skirt and um you know it's something that you could wear with with skirts with dresses with pants just about anything so we'll see if i make another outline tea in the future it's i'm certainly not opposed to it i would go for it um i do have a lot of other plans so we'll see what happens so anyway the outline tea by jessie may knit in katie lino in color number nine which i think is called beige but i would call this more of a coffee kind of color next work in progress oh sorry next finished object is the pair of socks which was the reversed vanilla socks that i have not sewn in the ends yet [Music] these are the reversed vanilla socks by anna fletcher who is a local designer these are a toe up sock and i shared with you the interesting heel construction last time absolutely loved doing that and we'll do it again for sure um this was great great great great um it's a speckled yarn by fine fish yarns who is out of ireland i believe she still has her shop open but is not really dying anymore but um which is unfortunate but life uh takes us in all kinds of ways and but she had has had beautiful yarns so this was a skein of yarn called manta in her sock base that my friend kate had brought for me from ireland when she came to visit uh the first time which was 2018. i think no i can't even remember anymore anyway so i had this in my stash for a little while and i made these socks one thing i noticed this morning as i was putting these talks onto the blockers is that they're not the same height they are a slightly different height and i need to decide whether this bothers me or not i don't think it's going to bother me um i think i think i'll probably just wear them that way i'll see what they're like when they're actually on but it's really not that much not such a huge difference really so so lovely pattern this is definitely going to be a pattern that i will use again for socks because the construction is so neat it fits really really nicely and i think it'll work for not necessarily for self striping yarns but i was told that it works really well for gradient yarns and i have some gradient yarns in my stash acquisition section which i will share with you a little later yeah i forgot to tell you that at the beginning i promised you last time that i would share my acquisitions from the last well actually the last two or three months really um and it's a pile o acquisitions i'm looking at them right there there are a lot of them and there's actually one missing because i haven't gone to pick it up yet so yeah that's coming up a little later all right on to works in progress i'm trying to figure out which work in progress to start with i will start with the work in progress that is farthest along and [Music] i don't think i had this as a work in progress last time but i had swatched a little bit it is a project that is being held in this bag that my friend kate of the hawthorne cottage craft podcast had given me years ago and you may recall if you have that crazy kind of memory that remembers all kinds of details that in here i have a ranunculus ranunculus number five which i am making for a friend of mine although i'm so in love with it of course i'm gonna give it to her she's even tried it on but i just i think i want a white winter white ranunculus so i have actually it was scrunched up in the bag so it's all wrinkly i have finished the body on this ranunculus and my friend has tried it on and it fits lovely and i have actually just just started the sleeves uh so uh i'll be getting on that but this is the radunculus by midori hirose which i am making out of remix light the berroco remix light which is uh kind of a they call it a dk and i really i don't think it's a dk i think this is more of a sport weight so this is a combination of nylon cotton acrylic silk and linen so uh i had gotten this yarn thinking that i would make a sweater for myself but in the end i'm making a sweater for my friend and this came from the stash lounge which is a has an online shop um out of alberta i believe and then i am double stranding it with le petit mohaire by bish ibush in the cream colorway that i got from farm to cables who is here in ontario also an online shop and she has this yarn so um this is what i'm using for this pattern and i am making the uh well the the original size um i've talked about this on the podcast i do i just do a long tail cast on i don't do the tubular cast-on that is suggested and i don't do the twisted rib um i just do a regular one by one rib and and at the bottom as well i use i think a five millimeter needle for the ribbing and then i go to the suggested six millimeter needles for the body and i still love knitting this pattern it is so such a lovely easy well it's and although it's got some unusual techniques once you get them and just follow the instructions they're grand so yeah it's got a little bit of short row shaping for the front and the back in this sweater which is also an interesting technique usually there's only short row shaping in the back but i think it helps to create a really nice fitting garment this just has such a lovely fit across the shoulders i find so ranunculus number five is on the way we've decided that we're going to do three-quarter length sleeves for her with ribbing not the i-cord that is suggested as the cast off um so the last one no the second last ridiculous i made for myself the one that was in oatmeal um an oatmeal color i actually did a three-quarter sleeve with ribbing on that one and so she's requested the same for this one so that should be ready sometime in the next couple of weeks to share with her so this is uh yeah ranunculus number five as part of the ranunculus love cow there you go the next thing why don't we stay on the sweater theme i showed this to you last time this is actually being housed in this beautiful bag by harrington bags oops sorry who is claudia matu and this is one of her more summery fabrics that i bought at one point and i just love her bags really and it's huge practically all the yarn for the sweater is in here along with the pattern the paper pattern and the width and there is oodles of space so it's it doesn't seem that big but it's actually a very large bag inside and i am oh knitting the ellery which is just coming off my needles coming off what happened to my english um let's just come off the needle so i think i showed you the swatch last time and i finally started knitting this this last week it's been a great pattern but there was something that put me off in the beginning that took me a while to wrap my head around and then i decided to just simplify things and not complicate my life so the thing that's complicated about this pattern is that she calls for multiple needle sizes to be used and i swatched with the recommended needle size but i i found the swatch to be too floppy although now that i'm looking at it i'm like that looks really nice that looks really nice but then it meant when you were supposed to have a different needle sizes throughout this there's actually two needle sizes used in the actual yoke there's another needle size here there's another size for the body and i i was just there were actually five or six needle sizes and i just thought i just can't do that like it's just not going to work so i've decided to reduce it to two needle sizes um and so this was done on a six and a half millimeter needle and i decided to and then the body was going to have to be with a six millimeter needle and i just decided to do the yoke as well as the body in a six millimeter needle and here it is now it's a little bit more i mean it's still got a lot of give still got a lot of give but it's it's a more opaque fabric and i'm just wondering but it hasn't been it hasn't been blocked whereas the other one had been blocked and i do think that probably all the stitches will come out a bit more nicely once it's been blocked because i'm finding that you don't really see the stitched stitch pattern on the yoke that well so i decided to use a six millimeters for it um [Music] and i'm starting to have some slight second thoughts about this but um i think i'll keep on going or what i might do is actually wet it and see what happens put it on a put it on a cable and wet it and and see what happens is what i think is what i'll do but this is the ellery by elizabeth dougherty extremely well explained um it's got an unusual you know slip stitch yolk which is very cool um it's got short row shaping it's got it's got a lot of different things going it's a really well written pattern my only issue is just i'm like i can't grapple with all these different needles happening all the time so i have simplified it and hopefully rightly so so i think that's what i'm going to do i think i'm going to wet it and try because i'm i'm just wondering if it's going to end up having the beautiful definition of the of the stitch pattern which you can see so nicely here and it's probably just because it hasn't been wet and blocked that you don't see it that well this is being made out of quincean company kestrel and in this beautiful color called yarrow and unlike this yarn this was a chainette if you watched last time you'll remember that it's kind of a sort of a knitted yarn so now that i finally started once i decided on my needle sizes it's been going beautifully i'm really enjoying it um really really enjoying it and it's linen as well but because it's going to be a long sleeve sweater it might take me right into september and um yeah so i'm hoping to finish that off soon next whip which is in this beautiful bag by kate of the hawthorne cottage craft and she had gifted me two of these one for you guys which will be part of a knit along and one for me and i finally chose i i couldn't decide and then when it went to actually pick one i decided on these beautiful bees and in here was a bit of a an impulsive cast on can we say that um i was camping a few weeks ago um and you'll have seen some of that footage at the beginning of the podcast uh with some friends and my friends daughters there was there and it just dawned on me soon not when i was with him i think when i came home i should make her the ripple tee which is a little not the ripple t but the ripple tank which is a little tank top or no it's the bralette the ripple bralette by jessie may designs i thought i should really make that for her and then i just went into my stash and this color just totally spoke to me so i have started this my friend's daughter is a very very petite little person who wears just all kinds of things and loves color and whatever and i had this orange in my stash and i just thought this would look so amazing on her so i swatched and i decided not to make the smallest size although she probably is the smallest size but i decide to make the next size up and i have stopped for now because i was just booming along and having a lot of fun knitting on this because i wanted to try it on i want to be 100 sure this is this is the right size um for her so i'm hoping to see her at some point this weekend and if it is the right size if she loves the color then i'll be moving ahead with this um i do think she'll love the color this is totally her color and um yeah and if it fits then this will probably be finished in a flash because it is a very small little bralette um and it's just really fun and easy and i've wanted to make it since the pattern came out um and so i was just happy to finally sort of the yarn the person and the pattern just came together in my mind this is the terra cotta colorway by malabrigo this is the malabrigo sock yarn so this was one that i had gotten from the malabrigo dyeing center in montevideo uruguay the last time i was there i bought some bright colors just for fun and this was there and spoke to me and so i'm so glad to finally be casting it on and making this little bralette in it so that is work in progress number three and the last one is being housed in this lovely bag that my friend sue of the tangled skein podcast and also a former etsy shop owner this is a bag that she made for me at one point and i just pulled it out for these socks but um i'll talk about sue again in the near future of the podcast in the next little while um because she sent me a lovely lovely package so this is a bag that she made for me at one point knowing that i do love birds i love birds and butterflies and any animal really in nature so in here is a pair of socks and i'm very excited to be knitting with this yarn and finally making this pattern so this is the show set which means sock in french the chaucette yarn number three is the color um by lei zav textile du tiemis quatta which is a an indie dyer yarn dyer in um i'm not actually sure where they where they are in quebec and um i ordered this yarn a while ago i ordered another scheme as well that i ordered for the podcast for as a prize at some point and this is a ho do i have the tag i do not have the tag anymore it's a 40 merino 40 something else and 20 nylon but the merino and i think it's bfl are non-treated so they're non-superwash so it's a non-superwash yarn that also has nylon in it so yeah and i just i love the color it's just beautiful and i have been wanting to make this pattern since it came out in the 52 weeks of socks i did not buy that book the 52 weeks of socks but when the pattern the individual patterns came out i bought it and it is the limia socks and i've only just started but it looks beautiful this is the linea socks by minna sorbala who is also known as finfrost on instagram and she has some lovely lovely sock patterns um i think i own one or two other ones and i'm just so happy to finally be knitting a pattern by her as well as using this yarn and it took me a while to choose which yarn but i thought that this would be beautiful with it and i think i'm right i'll be knitting on these slowly a little bit here and there i definitely want to finish the the three garments that i have but this is something that i pick up here and there and despite it having cables on it it's actually very very easy pattern and um just has a really beautiful final outcome so i'm looking forward to that so that is my last whip of the day all righty we are going to go into the acquisitions section i got my palo acquisitions as i said it is not your jam i totally understand um but i thought i would share with you some of the things that have come my way um for the last couple of months actually um actually longer than that i think some a couple of things maybe for me anyway uh june was also my birthday month and i treated myself a little bit and i was also treated very kindly for my birthday so i wanted to share some of that with you too um so i already recorded this and there's something that's weird happening with my phone so hopefully won't do it again this is what happened the last time where suddenly it just stops recording in the middle of um me talking and it just shuts down there's no like it goes to the home page of my phone and there's still storage so i don't know what that's all about but anyway hopefully won't happen again let's start a while back i bought some nice tucked woolen hand creams from the grocery girls i had mentioned their creams as being as being much appreciated by my hands because of the eczema that i have and some of you actually asked a couple of you asked where i buy them from and i was buying them from the states but i have since bought some from the grocery girls the grocery girls podcast i'm sure you know who they are super duper fun jody and tracy they have a shop um where they sell uh their pom-poms as well as some yarns and some of their own merchandise and they also carry top woolens products they have their soaps i got a couple of little soaps um which are not here with me i've bought creams more than once um and uh also there i bought a couple of their what do you call these measuring tapes um as well and so these are creams some of these will probably end up in a prize at some point um but i really do like their creams i do find that it is a bit of an expensive cream because it i find i use them quite quickly but it really is i have to say a really good cream and my eczema has uh i mean i wouldn't say that it's cured my eczema but it really calms it down so i have to be very particular about the hand creams that i use because there are some hand creams that my hands just do not like but they really like the tuft woolens and it's a small businesses business catering to knitters so i thought must help the other acquisition i want to share with you uh is one that i actually ordered in march so that was like five months ago and there's a bit of a weird story around this because the creative knitter is located just outside of ottawa like literally about 40 kilometers away and this package took three months to get to me i thought i could have walked there and back in that time quite easily so i wanted to buy minis because you may recall that i had some wonderful sock tubes produced and um i realized that i didn't have i didn't have that many minis that were the best that were the right colors for those so i was looking for a good set of minis that could be versatile and used for a variety of things and i found this i ordered it a week later i got or not even a week a few days later i got a canada post alert that the package had been delivered and i didn't run to the mailbox right away but i realized a few days later that hey wait a second i haven't seen that package so i contacted the seller and she uh in the end you know after canada posted that they had delivered it um there was not a whole lot to do and so and she she put in a claim with them as well but she said look why don't i just reimburse you i don't have any more to share with you i'm like oh well that's really too bad and i just bothers me that a small dier is also you know kind of in a situation where they're not making the money but that was very kind ever and i said and if it does arrive i will i'll let you know and i'll give you the money so it arrived three months later from crystal beach which is which i where i think she's located and um it's great it was exactly what i wanted i haven't gotten to my sock tubes yet but i'm hoping to do that this fall um as i prepare christmas presents for people and i think these will be fabulous um and they arrived and i contacted her and i sent her the money and it's all good but that was not a very happy canada post story um and i don't like the fact that they say that something is delivered when it isn't and that's actually the second time that that's happened this last year of course i've done an awful lot of online shopping as have many people so there could be some little glitches in the process but these are another thing that arrived that i'm supremely happy about and then as my birthday approached well i did some shopping from fleece and harmony who are located on the east coast of canada i bought myself a couple of things the pretext was actually needles i needed a set of needles which i bought but you got free shipping if you ordered more and i really wanted a couple of things one thing that i really wanted were these knitter's pride blockers that i kind of thought why do i not have these because they really are handy i've always used the wire blockers but i tend to use them for shawls and and big items like that that need to be blocked but sometimes a part of a sweater may need to be blocked and not the whole part um or you know a part of something and i thought these would be very useful to have so i ended up buying myself a pair of these and they're the kind that have it's almost like a comb they're blocking combs that you that you put in so they're really cool and then the other thing that i really wanted to have was this beautiful book by kate davies 10 years in the making and actually it was mel of mel makes stuff she made this cardigan and um and i just thought that is so beautiful and then when i looked on ravelry at the book and the patterns in it i thought oh my goodness i absolutely need to have this and then i think friends and i were talking about the book and i thought that's it i'm i'm buying it and there are so many beautiful beautiful sweaters in this book i'm looking specifically for one that oh there's just so many but i really really love this sweater and there are actually so many beautiful books her books are always of such a gorgeous quality with such amazing photography there's a vest here that i really like that has cables and um there are some of her classic patterns like her what was it called the one that was made by a bazillion people the carbeth she has the carbeth cardigan and the carpet sweater in here so there are some that are previously published and then others that are not and some that are just lovely simple designs like this very nice striped sweater and then others that are color work and a little bit more complex there's a beautiful beautiful cabled sort of aaron style cable sweater in here that's lovely so this was a treat for myself and then specifically for my birthday i think i just lost one i bought myself six schemes of the quincean company sparrow which is a linen that i wanted to try for a long time i bought myself this yarn from wabi-sabi my local yarn store it's a 100 organic linen it's got this is the blue spruce colorway and it has 168 yards and it's just such a stunning stunning stunning color um i bought this specifically to make the cumulus i think that's called the cumulus by elle by isabel cramer although there's another pattern that's kind of similar that i also like i cannot remember right now what it's called but it's it's basically a simple t that has a lace detail across the top they had one in the shop and when i saw it i was like oh i need to buy this yarn and i need to make that sweater so this will probably happen next summer yeah it's absolutely beautiful so that was a birthday present to me and then a kind two kind people also gifted me uh gift certificates for wabi-sabi for my birthday thank you very much now i decided um that i would wait until the fall to to purchase i most likely will get myself some let lopey with those two gift certificates because i've been wanting to make a let lopey sweater for a while and i know that they have placed an order a wabi-sabi has placed an order with uh with the lopi people and it hasn't arrived yet and apparently lopi is very slow these days uh i think i heard another shop talking about the fact that or somebody talking about the fact that lopey is is um they're not able to ship very quickly these days i'm not quite sure why so but uh thank you for those gift certificates another person also very kindly gave me a certificate to the stash lounge in i did i talked about them already i believe they are in um in alberta and i ended up buying with that gift certificate a sweater quantity of the katya cotton cashmere in this color which is color 74 this very very bright it doesn't it's coming on screen a little bit more bright than it is in real life beautiful beautiful color and this is essentially a 90 cotton and 10 cashmere yarn and i feel like i'm going to be mentioning mel a lot today but mel was mel from mel makes stuff podcast she had made a sweater out of this and she waxed poetic about the yarn and somebody else also was talking about another podcaster i can't remember who it was though and i and i thought that just sounds like they're talking so highly about this yarn that uh when i got the gift certificate i decided to try this out so um and i also thought that what i wanted to make with this was the celeste tea by um sorry nordland i'm not 100 sure that that's what i'll make but i do have the pattern which is also kindly gifted to me and um and so i might make this make that with this yarn so that was a lovely birthday acquisition as well then as you know from the last episode if you watched the footage i went to montreal and stopped in at espastrico the yarns i bought there because i did partake in their lovely goodies were for specific purposes so let's go back a little bit you may recall that i got some lovely yarn sweater quantity from donna of roots and rain yarns donna literally lives about a kilometer and a half from me um she actually lives very close to where my mother used to live so i i actually picked up the yarn from her door and uh this is in her storm decay base which is a corodale merino cross and this was dyed with logwood which makes this beautiful sort of lavender color and i know i want to make a color work sweater at the top of my list is the ingles sweater by caitlyn hunter however it could also become the forest land by um jennifer steincast and i have settled on what i want this will be the main color but i wanted a sort of dark gray blue to go with this so in montreal i picked up some of this uh rauma finnel in the colorway 4006 in this dark gray oh i'm very excited about this this is so beautiful and also some knitting for all of mohair in the dusty violet that will be the if i make the ingles then it'll be double stranded for the color work and that just makes my heart sing it's so beautiful so i specifically went into espastrico to buy a yarn for that i actually brought the yarn with me and then forgot it in the car so i i was going in my mind kind of going okay it's sort of a dusty lavender and so anyway these are the two that i got to go with this for a color work sweater and that was my main intention i also bought the punch needle book by buku um [Music] for a friend of mine uh which i've given to her that was part of her birthday present and then i happen to see this yarn it's called uh lamina modena or modena modena which is a lace weight yarn out of a 70 wool and 30 cashmere and it's a very very fine lace weight and the reason i bought this is that i have a an alpaca yarn that's just about the same color that i want to make a sweater called dew out of dew is a sweater that came out oh i do not remember the designer's name but i'll put it down here it came out in the last couple of months and maybe in may maybe june and the moment it came out literally i just bought it right away i was like i'm making that it's a sort of um an oversized cropped sweater but it has the detail is here in the shoulders and i just absolutely loved it and i decided that i would use this uh fingering weight alpaca that i have upstairs um but i know that it's not going to be a it's not a it's not it's a fingering weight it's not a very heavy fingering weight it's a light fingering weight and i thought it's not going to be thick enough because that sweater actually calls for a dk yarn so when i saw this i thought i'll double strand that with it which will bulk it up just enough to turn it into the right weight for the two sweater so i'm very very excited about these two things dew sweater i will definitely be making this fall um for sure and so you'll be seeing that knit up in that so i bought enough of that for the dew sweater and those are essentially my um purchases from espacicle sorry i'm thinking another thing i purchased uh for myself can we call it a birthday present let's just do that uh was one of the deconstructed fades by shirley brian yarns another local dyer she lives here in ottawa and uh this is her poor myself a cup of ambition colorway and she had a an update and i was able to snag something a snag a skein so i'm looking forward to actually using the reversed vanilla pattern for this fade as a combination of pattern and yarn and hopefully that'll get knit up this fall i'm very excited to use one of her yarns they ended up so incredibly beautifully if you don't know her work should really check it out her her color sense is amazing and uh just really really fun and it's funny because that i find looks weird um here in the skein but when this is knit up it's just so beautiful her her work is just so amazing so i'm really really happy to be to have a scheme of this and to knit this up soon and then next were some birthday presents that came my way my friends paul and antoine who live in montreal were very kind and gave me this yarn candy i cannot think of another word for this but to call it yarn candy i just feel like this should be framed it's it's so incredibly beautiful this is uh the wandering flock which is actually a brooklyn uh hand dyer but they bought it in montreal and at a shop in montreal i'm not 100 sure which shop not espastrico i think it's one that is uh in the um verdun area of the city that carries this yarn and this was called lavender highlights and it's so incredibly beautiful now i went and looked at how it knits up and what's interesting is that if you knit these up together when the yellow hits the purple it'll turn it green so you can end up with actually multiple colors so i i have to really ponder what to do with this yarn because it's it's going to be an unusual uh i think it's going to create an unusual pattern so anyway at this point i just really love looking at it like it is seriously so incredibly beautiful and just yeah so thanks to paul and antoine for that really really beautiful then out of the blue a beautiful package came from my friend dana in germany now i'm just going to preface this by saying that some people are so incredibly talented dana sent me these two enormous skeins of yarn this one she spun herself and it's this beautiful beautiful green teal kind of color just stunning and i have to say i've never knit with hand spun yarn so it just totally warmed my heart and then she thought that because i loved mohair that she would dye up some mohair to go with it and there is a large amount of yarn here i don't know where the card went that she sent with it but there's definitely enough in here for a sweater so i have to think about what this is going to become it is not going to become a ranunculus but i am thinking about some sort of a layering piece but oh my goodness they're so incredibly beautiful so yeah that was another that was a surprise gift that arrived that really i just i was just showing everybody look she spun this and it's so beautifully spun just gorgeous so thank you for that another package that arrived um i did a swap with minna sorvala who is the designer of the linea socks actually she and i have been we've been chatting for for a while and actually we talked about doing a swap a couple years ago and then it didn't happen and the pretext for this swap was that i wanted to get this pattern this sewing pattern called the monday dress and it's a pattern that is designed by uh what are they called again the casa que ho pompom in finland they've got a shop and they have some patterns and um the pattern itself was 12 and a half euros and i was like okay fine but the shipping was 25 euros and i thought that is not fine i am not paying that so i contacted minna and i said look would you be willing to send me the pattern and do a swap with me and she was like yeah so i sent her a bunch of canadian yarn and she sent me this pattern and i actually took it out this last week to start cutting it up uh we were at a cottage for a week and i thought perfect i'm gonna cut up the pattern and the fabric at the cottage and then i realized that i needed tracing paper for this because the pattern the two pieces are actually overlapping so the idea is that you would trace it out which was a little bit inconvenient for the moment because i wasn't able to cut it out at the cottage but it means that you can use the pattern for multiple sizes which is really really great i have to say i was really impressed with this pattern so far except for that one little detail i was like oh darn and then i thought no that's actually very practical because usually once you've cut out a pattern you can't make the larger sizes but i also love the fact that it's in this large envelope so you can stuff the pattern and the instructions back in it's just really really great so i'm hoping in the next couple of days to actually get this traced and cut and maybe if my mojo is working for me next time i podcast i'll have a dress however i realized that's not around here but the linen that i got to use for this is a linen i bought a while ago i had thought about making a tunic not a dress so i don't think i have enough to make the full dress so i'll be making a tunic first go around but i'm already thinking about buying some more linen and making a couple of dress versions so i'll see how the tunic version comes out and uh and then i'm hoping that this is just going to be a really nice standard simple fitting dress every time i've seen a version on instagram i've really liked it so i'm really happy to have that and then mina included some candies which are of course gone as well as a lovely tea towel which is this gorgeous gorgeous tea towel beautiful which came with a story actually um so i'm gonna have to read that of an artist a finnish artist so it's basically her work on a tea towel and then she sent me by lohitarin luala lohitara lola is a yarn dyer in finland she sent these two lovely schemes which are just beautiful and i'm going to have to think this is called laguni and this one's called ilmatar the bottom one so very excited to have some finished yarn i've never had hand-dyed finished yarn i don't think i've had uh commercial yarns have been but not hand-dyed so that's very exciting so thank you mina and the last i think this is the last thing i have to share with you was a surprise gift that came from my friend sue also known as craftyknitter7 so sue has got a sock cranking machine and sent me this sock um tube which is really cool and it i've tried it on it fits so i will be making some socks out of this as well and she sent some uh markers some stitch bag of stitch markers as well as a progress keeper and some minis which could very likely go with this so that's really cool so i've got myself a project for socks there but she also sent two bags and i'm going to be keeping one of them i think probably this one and keeping this one as a prize for the podcast it says unwind on there and um [Music] one thing about sue as you know she is a she's made a lot of bags and i have enough i have many of her bags because she's been very generous over the years and always made me bags she used to have a shop and she's actually reopening her etsy shop i believe the 29th of august called the tangle scheme ca so look out for that because her bags are really lovely these are like little socks sock um almost like a basket like you can fold it down and put your skein of yarn inside and just have it sitting beside you um they're really great and this is her sock sock size and yeah they're just really really really lovely so so yeah so she's opening up her shop again she's gotten her sewing mojo back which is awesome so thank you so much for that too soon oh my gosh was that enough acquisitions i think so the last thing i want to share with you i think i may have mentioned that i took the punch needle workshop with buku um through espastrico i did that that was in early july i didn't finish my piece but um that this was really i just love learning new crafts now where in the world the ball bend go for this yarn i have a mess beside me we used this yarn which is an alpaca wool blend for this for the punch needle but this was great um joined the workshop they sent a box in the mail with one two three four five skeins of yarn a chunky yarn as well as the monk's cloth as well as this very nice very sturdy loop um the punch needle tool of course uh and i think a couple of other little items that you needed some clippers and and then you just joined the workshop online on zoom and it was really really great this technique is so actually so easy um and really really interesting i decided not to finish this because uh it was just a good learning for me but i didn't quite know what i would do with it and so i've decided not to complete the whole thing but i've been thinking a little bit about what to do with punch needle technique because it really is neat i think it could be used for so many things and um aruna's punch needle book which i got at espacicle for my friend who was also doing the workshop um just has some really really fabulous ideas and because it's so stylized you can really quite easily make your own design and not have to use the design of other people so yeah so i didn't finish it but i really really enjoyed doing it and i just think it's got some really really fun potential for for future crafts so let's see where this takes me in the meantime like i've got tons of the different colors left so they may get used for something in punch needle or or something else we'll have to see but uh yeah that was really really fun workshop highly recommend these workshops okay so that was a lot of acquisitions um yeah i think i won't be buying yarn for a while actually that being said i have one more yarn to show you but i don't have it and it's also a yarn that i ordered a while back um so i'll probably have it by the next time i podcast and i'll show you then i think this is uh getting to a situation where there's yarn everywhere in the house luckily my family doesn't complain um but there does feel like there's a lot of yarn in this house i have my yarn closet and then there's yarn around the house anyway thank you for humoring me with that i think i'll just end this podcast with answering the last few questions that got lost last time um because there were lots of great questions and and i didn't want to miss out on them so if you're here for that awesome um so one of the questions that i was asked is do i stick to a yarn budget or do i have a knitting yarn budget and do i stick to it and i think the answer is no i think it's pretty clear that i don't um i don't i don't tend to have a budget um i probably should have one at this point because i really do think that i have um more yarn than i'll ever be able to knit um but i as some people say yarn buying is another hobby um knitting is one hobby and yarn accumulation is another one yarn is so beautiful it really is so beautiful just as fabrics are and textiles so i do think that it feeds another part of you um but yeah i don't have a yarn budget the next question was does yoda get into my knitting yoda is our cat in case you don't know she shows up occasionally i have no idea where she is right now um she does not get into my knitting actually uh she does not demonstrate a whole lot of interest for yarn um our previous catsuko who died where was that three years ago or four years ago um in 2017 i think it was she at 18 she wasn't never really interested in my yarn either so i don't know why i think there was one time that yoda ran away with a ball of yarn and we all laughed um and retrieved it and that was the end of it uh it it just isn't something that seems to happen i don't know if when the cats were kittens they got reproached enough that they just thought not going near there or they had other interests i don't know but no she's not interested in my yarn another question i was asked was how is alejandro's knitting so you've asked that question because you've been around for a while uh there was a time where my husband used to knit i taught him to knit at one point because he wanted to learn and he made some um he made a cowl for his his nephew he made a scarf for our son he made some decorative pieces for his office um and then he uh started a sock i showed him how to actually we knit a pair of socks together i did the complicated stuff and he did the body and then the next time he wanted to learn how to do it all and then he just kind of lost interest um and that was the end of that i guess that need for a smaller motor activity was just not there anymore he's got a lot of other interests himself so he just didn't continue knitting so house is knitting it's not i guess that's i guess that's the answer another question i was asked was what is a favorite workhorse yarn that's hard for me to say um i'm not very good at choosing favorites um i can tell you the one that comes to mind immediately and i would say that that's cascade220 actually the items that i've made i think i've used it on three or four sweaters and they've always looked great very little pilling it just keeps a beautiful stitch definition it wears really well it's a really good workhorse yarn i can't think of any other sweater yarn off the top of my head that i would consider a workhorse yarn cascade's also a really reasonable work uh price point and and it comes in a great selection of colors so i don't like their super wash yarn i'm going to tell you that right off the bat that is a yarn that i probably would never use again i found that it stretched a lot and i've never used another super wash yarn that has done that before um so i would not use their super wash yarn but they're 220 heathers and the the solid colors i i consider that to be really good yarn um i've i've worked with other yarns too that i've really adored but i can't think of them right now but i would say that that's a really good workhorse yarn with a good price point next question i think i may have come to that last question oh i think i was asked a question about um my favorite knitting festivals and how do i feel at knitting festivals if i get overwhelmed um yeah how do i feel at knitting festivals do i get overwhelmed over stimulated um yeah definitely now i'm i'm i'm i'm an extrovert um not hardcore extrovert but i'm definitely an extrovert and um so i may have a higher tolerance than than an introverted person does um but a big festival like rhinebeck is overwhelming um i think everybody will tell you that it's overwhelming and i often well i i rarely buy yarn on the first day because it's it's so overwhelming um and there's so many people and so many things to see that it's usually the next day that i'm able to do that the first day there's just so much take in and i think that we're usually quite exhausted in the evening of the first day and just quiet and needing to recuperate um smaller yarn festivals are less less overwhelming and they are you know what often equally wonderful um i'm thinking one of the last knitting festivals i went to which was the prince edward county festival uh was just so nice to walk around and see you know local makers and so forth so if you're the kind of person who's likely to get overwhelmed i'd say go to smaller yarn festivals um and then gird your loins for rhinebeck [Music] um and i think that brings me to the last of the questions i hope it does bring me to the last of the questions and then i got them all um but and thank you thank you for all the questions again and uh yeah i think that's it and i think that brings us to the end of the podcast um i will keep books for for next time again just because i i'm conscious of this becoming a rather long podcast and my family's also walking around and trying to get life going so i'll leave it there for today and um i'll see you probably sometime in september in the meantime i'll have left you with some footage from um from our camping trip and perhaps a little bit of cottage and some flowers from the season and i'll see you next time take care bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] oh [Music] [Music] malena [Music] my

Channel: Little Big Knits

Views: 14,993

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Id: ZKic9lXo6lo

Length: 75min 3sec (4503 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021