Gentle Knitter Episode 32 — Looking out for each other

hi welcome to episode 32 of the gentle nature podcast my name is Nicole I'm coming to you from Ottawa Ontario today is Wednesday March 18th I'm recording on a weekday which is very unusual for me but as most of you I'm sure I am working from home right now and so I figured it would be an opportunity for me to set up the camera at the end of the day and just do a quick little catch up with you I'm hoping that I I'm pretty sure I will be working from home for a while and so I'm hoping that maybe I can find some opportunities you know on my lunch hour or after work to do recordings a little bit more often it's my way of maybe offering you a visit with a friend I think it's really important at this time that we stay in touch with people even if we have to limit our in-person interactions to still to still find ways of communicating with others and sharing with others and so if that's something that can bring you a little bit of distraction and a little bit of pleasure and this kind of really really tough time then then I would love to be able to do that so so that's my intention I hope you're all well and I hope that this is that you're doing okay despite the hardships that we are all facing right now we're doing really really well mark and I are both working from home our cell is very happy he's like he doesn't know what his thatman happened but he is happy for all the extra belly rubs and all the extra treats so so that's lovely and luckily we can still go it's out and still go for walks in the woods and that has brought me a lot of comfort and a lot of stress relief I'm doing really well I know that last time I recorded was right before I was going into quarantine this is the the season 2020 is the year of quarantine for me because I had to actually go in quarantine for two weeks because of a treatment I received for a thyroid problem that I have and so they treated it with radioactive iodine which meant that I had to be isolated from others for two weeks so did that it went quite well I didn't have any major side effects the only thing is that it actually is making my thyroid symptoms worse for a short while and I'm definitely feeling that still not sleeping very well but but other than that I feel fine and I think the hardest part of the quarantine was being away from from mark and from the dog and from my friends and and family but you know we are all living that right now so so yeah it's and you know this is easier because I actually can have close contact with with my family but just not with the world outside so hopefully by visiting with you here and on social media we can all kind of stay in touch and get inspired by what we're doing and the things that we're doing to help sail through these difficult days certainly knitting has brought me a lot of comfort as it always does knitting and spinning - I've actually been doing a lot of spinning and really enjoying that I'm also reading a lot more which is wonderful I decided to tackle the Mount Everest of literary works I'm actually committed to reading the entire work of allows chefs to talk people do buy mouse input which is a huge huge novel it's several thousands of pages long and I had it's sort of broken into I think five or six novels it's a sort of a work that has been divided up into I think six different works and I had read the first three I've read the first one like three times and the second and third maybe once and this is like throughout my life I had always kind of thought okay I'm gonna start reading it I'm gonna I'm gonna read the whole thing and I would just always lose steam because it's you know it is quite a dense work and it requires you know quiet and concentration to really really get into it and and so I would you know start it and then put it aside and then several years later I'd be like oh I'd really want to read it now so I started all over again anyway I've done that a few times but this is the time I am going to read that Michelle was you thought that Dubai a masochist because it's really really beautiful it's one of the most beautiful I mean he's an incredible writer and he writes a lot about sort of memory and about there's a lot of melancholy and a lot of room like remembrances of things past as I think the English translation of the title and it really is a lot about you know thinking back on on life and on the sensations of being in a body and and having just the place that you occupy in the world and so I don't know I feel like it's really it speaks to me at this time you know at this time where we are we're asked to kind of live inside a very small and restricted space but we are still expansive beings and anyway I am really really enjoying it and it's yeah it's like I said a bit of an Everest but I'm I'm gonna do it this time anyway you're probably not here to hear me talk about massive posts so why don't I get to a little bit of knitting before I lose my light at Christmas I had cast on Christmas Eve I cast on a shawl project and for some reason I didn't really work on it that much it's a pattern that it's a lace pattern that is still requiring me to pay attention to the chart and so I think I was just busy watching movies and stuff and didn't want something I really had to concentrate on but but with everything that's going on one of the things that I am trying to do is spend some time doing quiet things that that require mindfulness because I think that that I'm you know I am spending a lot of time watching the news and sort of taking in a lot of information and it's good to sort of have these like moments where it's almost more of a meditative practice to to work on something so so yeah so I'm knitting on a shawl called the sprout shawl it's a pattern by Sylvia McFadden and it is really beautiful it's kind of a leafy a leafy lace pattern and yeah I'm really loving the effect so far it's an a symmetrical asymmetrical it's symmetrical shawl triangular shawl with a little garter border and the yarn I'm using is this stunning prodded Alana Pratt owed Alana yarn it's um the mad reguar the fiber comes from their sheep Brigitta and Bruce I think they you know they will share specific sheep and they'll do they'll spin that yarn and so you kind of get the name of the sheep that is used their romney sheep so it's 100% romney a sport weight 320 meters and it's so so beautiful it's got a beautiful halo which I think you can see there but it also has a little bit of luster and it's a two-ply it's very it's kind of not a rigid yarn at all it's quite quite springy but also quite drapey so I think it will make a really really beautiful shawl and I love this very soft color it's like a spacious grey a beautiful neutral color and I'm really really enjoying it as I said it's not an intuitive lace right now but I think eventually as I work more more repeats of the chart I will I will start to be able to knit on it without referring constantly to to the pattern but yeah I really love it you may remember me talking about a different project for this yarn I wanted to knit a beautiful Donna Smith shawl actually when I was at Rhinebeck which is where I bought this yarn I had seen a sample in their booth knit up in this yarn of that of the Donna Smith shawl that I wanted to knit I believe this is called the Senate shawl and it was in a previous issue of the shetland week magazine the one that they put out every year but I didn't buy enough yarn I only got two skeins and I would have needed three so I was really bummed because I adore that shawl and the sample was so beautiful I did kind of wonder I kind of wrestled with the idea of buying another skein but I really really really really don't need more yarn and felt that you know I could I couldn't hit something else that would be equally as beautiful so that Donna Smith design I will definitely knit with something else in my stash when you know when I get to it so yeah so the sprout shawl is kind of my pay attention project at this point the other thing that I've been working on is a sweater from this magazine here Rowen magazine that is it's rolling 24 it came out in the 90s and I have a lot of these old drone magazines and they you know there's still some really great classic patterns in this thing that that you know I want to make the pattern that I'm knitting is this time of year and it's a pattern by Kim Hargreaves the pattern name is Betsy by Ken Hargreaves it's a very simple Raglan cardigan with a mitered collar and a seed stitch panel at the bottom and at the sleeves I had knit the sweater I think I talked about in my last episode I admit the sweater was one of the first sweaters I knit for myself a long long time ago when I first learned to knit and I loved that sweater it was really I wore it a ton but it wasn't it was knit in part acrylic and you know I got really stretched out and and not not great-looking so you know I got rid of it a while ago but I I always missed that sweater so I decided to cast it on again and this time I am using this yarn here and it is Harrisville there flywheel base which is in the granite colorway and this is a yarn that's actually very very similar to Brooklyn tweed shelter it is fun at the same mill and so it has a similar feel it's a little bit lighter and but and not as um how do I want to put this it has a little more strength than a shelter and I really love the colors it's you know from afar reads as a grey but when you look at it up close it has like red and brighter blue and yellow and it's a really really pretty yarn it's a DK weight and okay well so I finished the back and then I started the front and so this is the back it's knit in pieces and that's the back and I'm working on the front and I pin them together because I just wanted to make sure that my Raglan was was all matching up so yeah so it's looking a little discombobulated I've got the seed stitch detail at the bottom and then of course just miles and miles of stockinette for the body and so far so good this is you know this is a more mindless project and been working on it sort of here and there for the last couple of weeks yeah I think this will be a great everyday super super wearable piece and I'm loving the way the the yarn is working up and the fabric that it's producing yeah super pretty I love seed stitch it's a bit of a pain because you're just switching every stitch from knit to purl but it's really pretty got this in a gorgeous project bag that was sent to me by viewer couple years ago and so so beautiful fabric believe the flower the country flower of South Africa an attack made it yeah what's next the next thing I'm working on is a bit of a beast a couple of weeks ago Denise Baron of they're on Hemnes started a cow for a beautiful cardigan design that she put out it's called the winds of change jacket and on a whim I just I just decided I needed to make one of those and so here it is so far I've got most of the body done it's it's still on uh needles and I'll talk about that in sec and I've made one sleeve and I have to start the other one and so I have made modifications first of all I am hoping that I have enough yarn to make a longer version her version is quite cropped and it's super super cute but I wanted this to be like a jacket something I would wear at this time of year you know over over other things as a coat and so I knit the body till I had the length that is called for in the pattern and now I am sort of leaving those stitches because I'm doing the sleeves and then whatever yarn I have leftover I will knit the rest of the body and I did modify the sleeves also she has a really cool shaping of the sleeve where it starts off you know wide but then it quickly kind of decreases and it kind of ends up looking a little bit that way which I really liked but because I want this to be more of a coat I wanted there to be a lot of room in the sleeves so that it would fit over if I'm wearing another sweater underneath so I decided not to do any of that shaping I just kept going so that I have this kind of like generous sleeve and then I did a severe decrease at the cuff to make like a little puffy sleeve which which you know I don't know I think is really cute it's kind of a style that I'm seeing more and the I watch this podcast done by these two awesome ladies who own a yarn shop called poppin Len Kathy in 12 yeah and they often will modify a pattern to kind of create these like little balloon sleeves and so I was a little bit inspired by them feduni thing and kind of wanted to do something similar so because this takes more yarn than what was called for and because I wanted to maximize my yarn I figured let me finish the sleeves and then whatever I have left can go into making the button bands and I would try and make it as long as possible I have like 4 skeins left and I'm hoping that I can add several inches of length but I don't know and because the sleeves are taking up more yarn then then the pattern calls for it's hard for me to judge how much yardage I'm gonna end up needing so I'm kind of playing it safe and if it ends up being kind of a more crop jacket that's that's ok too the yarn I'm using is some very very deep stash this is a rowan yarn where is my label it it is a bulky yarn I'm just gonna try and remember I'll find the tag and put it down below it's discontinued yarn anyway I think it's Rowan York Shire tweed yeah it's it's a very I've probably had this in my stash for like 20 years it's a really really old yarn but beautiful I love love love love the speckle or not speckles but the Tweedy bits and you know it's a hundred percent yarn yarn the Thunder percent wool is quite soft and I love the results so far so yeah I think um I think this will end up being a really really useful and and lovely piece I'm knitting it on six millimeter needles yeah well hopefully have that done for next episode in a recent Instagram post I showed a photo of some socks that I'm working got a lot of questions as to what beautiful pattern I was doing and it is the into the woods socks by melody Hoffman be mandarines a designer I I've talked about before on the podcast she is a wonderful designer and it's just the sweetest little sock pattern with these beautiful little trees or branches or wheat sheaves depending on how you look at them but just a really sweet sweet stitch pattern I took me a few tries to kind of understand what it is I was doing I read some of the other people's project notes and kind of been clued in on on what I was supposed to do to create these little designs the yarn I'm using is montine but it's so it's the rose upon my Rose mundum but died by leggy enemy and it's in the quail colorway you'll have to excuse my shaking hands that's just a side effect of my thyroid problem I have shaky hands but it's really really pretty it's like a soft beige with kind of pinky purpley undertones and then these beautiful flecks of rust and yellow and it's the yarn that melody used to make her sample and I just loved them so much so I decided to make my own and and I'm now that I have the pattern sort of now that I understand how to do the stitch pattern it's very enjoyable just really fun to see those those little those little branches develop it looks a little big but I'm okay with that this is a non superwash yarn and so even with hand washing they tend to shrink up a tiny bit so I'm happy if they have a little bit of extra room and I have big feet so they'll probably fit me great just mention the beautiful project bag they're in it's gorgeous tiny happy melissa watson ii is a maker in new zealand and she makes these beautiful hand embroidered project bags i know you can get them i don't know if she still has her Etsy shop open but I know that loop London has some think there's some available right now on on their website but it's one of my favorite project bags so sweet so as I mentioned earlier I have been doing quite a lot of spinning and just loving it it's it's again like I was saying earlier one of those activities where you can just really kind of be quiet and get into a meditative groove and just feel like your blood pressure is just going down and so I've been doing a lot of spinning and when I was in quarantine I gathered up all of my spinning fiber and I had my blending board and I made a bunch of row legs the this is just a few of the ones that I made I made a huge pile and I what I did was I blended some core mo that I had the white the white that you see here is warm like creamy white here is coeur MO and then this really pale kind of robin's egg blue was some BFL from I believe it was fleece artist actually also the yellow the yellow was also fleece artist then I also added some strands of rust and that was I believe some LeWitt spinning fiber but yeah I just basically made a bunch of these soft sort of beachy colored row legs and I have been spinning them up into singles really some really fine singles because their prep does relax they end up being I guess that's a semi semi what would I call it semi woolen spun they I'm still spinning them kind of worsted for draw but because the fibers are kind of mixed up in a row lag they come out they're not all going in the right direction or the same direction and so you end up with a slightly fuzzier ply then if and and not as it's not as tightly spun usually I get a lot of twist I guess that's still quite a bit of twist but I usually get a ton of twists in my in my spun singles but these ones are pretty pretty relaxed and so I'm hoping that I will have enough to I'm gonna apply them I'll do a two ply and I'm hoping that I will have enough to do a really simple and cozy and rustic shawl it'll be quite soft because I mean core mo is super super super soft but I'm hoping it'll be really puffy and fluffy and I'll probably just make a really basic maybe garter II type of shawl but yeah I am so excited to have a hands bunch all I've never had I've never spun in fiber to make a shawl but I do think that I will have enough with this and it'll just be a really pretty soft kind of icy icy cozy shawl lastly I thought I would talk about a few publications that I picked up recently the first one is the new the spring issue of pom-pom quarterly and what a gorgeous what a gorgeous addition this is it was art directed by ocean rose you probably know her as ocean by the sea an amazing natural Dyer I've kind of shown you her beautiful yarns before but yeah she it's very obvious to me that she art directed this issue because the photos are just absolutely gorgeous the styling of it is amazing the model is beautiful and there's just so many pretty pretty patterns in here as I mean pom pom pretty much always knocks it out of the park but this is a really beautiful issue and I was talking earlier about those kind of puffy sleeves being in right now this this is a beautiful example of that that pattern is the Bronte notes right it is the Bronte Swannack is the designer the pattern is called a loft pullover and it is really super super pretty I love I continue to love this kind of nudey pink that is still so popular it's so beautiful and there's also yeah there's there's several sweaters with with these really pretty puff sleeves here that one is called Niebla by kamila Larsen as a fail I believe is how you pronounce her name oh and I really love another kind of pinky pinky sweater is this pattern here it is the the carry pullover and it was designed by one when KP / German / German sorry and knit in woolly mammoth fibre company VfL yarn and yeah the yarn for this is yeah that is I love just the texture of that pullover is really really beautiful yeah there's just there's a really great article by by Jacqueline's this says luck oh my goodness my name's right now and she is wearing this sweater here it's not a pattern in the magazine but it is a pattern you can get from her from her on Ravelry it's called I think it's called the Water Bearer and I really love that pattern it's so and I mean these photos like Jacqueline looks so so beautiful in this in that photo it's a really really great article an interview with her so yeah I highly recommend this beautiful issue of pom-pom magazine and then I also got a bit of a treat I got gift certificates for my birthday for my local yarn store and so I got the the 52 weeks of socks book this is really is a a treat because it's quite expensive but it is as far as I'm concerned a coffee table book it is that beautiful which is no surprise because it's put out by Len magazine and you know they just aesthetically they are just so up my alley and there are just so many beautiful patterns in this book these are beautiful socks by Helen Stewart I would literally knit pretty much every pair of socks and wouldn't it be fun to have that as a project yeah it's just typical Mad Magazine styling just really really beautiful kind of rustic and moody photos and gorgeous colors yeah it would be really really fun to to kind of have as a goal to knit all of those can you imagine like you'd have the most beautiful soft drawer in the world I haven't read there's there's some texts and articles I haven't had a chance to read any of those yet but looking forward to spending some time with this beautiful book so you know if you have a little a little birthday money and you want to kind of treat yourself this is a really really beautiful publication ribbon it's just the cover is like this kind of linen beautiful linen fabric yeah it's it's really really beautiful it's definitely a treat I think that is it for me for today it's really starting to get a bit dark I'm starting to get a little bit cold oh I did want to mention though what I was wearing this is the east light shawl by Gordon Johnson and it just so happens that it's her birthday today so happy birthday gudren it's a shawl that I knit many many years ago and I wear it all the time it was knit out of Rouen Scottish tweed again it's really really old stache and yeah it's just a really lovely wearable piece so yeah that's uh I think that's it for me today if you enjoyed this episode please hit the like button and if you've not subscribed now's a really good time to subscribe because I like I said I will be aiming to put out more content and so so if you don't want to miss any new video you will you can get notification if you hit the bell as they say and I hope that you are all staying healthy and doing okay and if you're not okay you know that is completely understandable because this is a very very stressful time but hopefully we can look out for each other and send each other a little bit of warmth and comfort so take good care and I look forward to talking to you again very very soon all right

Channel: the gentle knitter

Views: 23,502

Rating: 4.9614058 out of 5

Keywords: knitting, spinning, podcast, fiber, fibre, wool, craft, hobby

Id: Hu5qH7qRheY

Length: 37min 16sec (2236 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 18 2020