I’ll Knit If I Want To: Episode 26

hello and welcome back to i'll let if i want to i'm andrea marie of drea renee knits and this is episode 26. today i am wearing my macworth sweater knit in ritual dies um it's named after a really sweet little island here in maine where we like to take our kids hiking and people gather driftwood and pinecones and seashells and they make little fairy houses it's really fun and it is a glorious getting to be fall morning here it was really nice and cool and delightful and it just makes me so happy to put out a sweater so i hope your friday morning is going really well and let's try to answer some questions so question number one i've had a lot of people telling me to be careful about making a hobby your business because then you won't enjoy it anymore what has that process been like for you do you still love knitting even though it's a way you provide for your family and make a living i do absolutely still love knitting i will be watching a movie with peter and i'll look over i am halfway through as i'm knitting and watching the movie and just saying i love knitting like it just never gets old for me um i also used to be a baker and never got sick of baking um so that hasn't rung true for me but i definitely think it can i think it just depends what your relationship is with that creative outlet um for instance i wouldn't want to make some of my other hobbies i wouldn't want the pressure on those hobbies for them to need to support me and i think that's actually kind of important at the beginning of my career as a knitwear designer um i started doing it in an attempt to be able to buy a yarn like that is what my goal was was maybe if i can sell a few patterns i can buy the art i want to buy and we were on a very very tight income so it was just like having i just wanted a little yarn allowance and that's all i was asking of it and so i think it kept it really positive for me where i think maybe when it kind of goes the other direction is when we're almost asking like too much of our hobby not too much but there's that pressure that's put on it and then it becomes a stressful thing like something that we relate stress to instead of this like outlet to make us feel better and to fill us up um so i always um there's a book called big magic and she talks about how to not put that pressure on your creative outlet even if you really want to be a writer you want to be a baker you want to be a newer designer like whatever it may be you keep your day job until it's completely viable so that if it's not making you the money you need to support yourself you still have it um and you don't have to put too much pressure on it because then sometimes i think it moves away from like its integrity um does that make sense i yeah so anyways i have not yeah i've not ever regretted making them my business but um it just still really fills me up with joy and i really really love it um so yeah and i think it has to you know sometimes people like to dally i do being in the restaurant business i definitely met people and just saw experiences of people who maybe really loved throwing a dinner party and so then they say i'm gonna open a restaurant and then they realize all the hard stuff that comes along with opening a restaurant that it's not all fun and throwing a dinner party and cooking fun food and things like that there's this whole other side of it so i guess that is something to definitely think about you know i would love if my job truly was just knitting all day that would be amazing but there's this whole other administrative side to it where especially in the beginning as things picked up for me i started spending so much time on the computer doing all that admin stuff that i felt like i didn't even get time to knit and design um so i just had to find balance there and that's the thing too is i think in the beginning there's gonna be the stuff you have to work out all those kinks and trying to find a good schedule that works for you especially when you have your own business i think no matter what the business is when you have your own business there's those growing pains you have to go to to figure out how to have balance and how to organize it in a way that really works for you um so there is that side of it so if you don't have an interest in the business side of it then i wouldn't make a job out of it because that stuff has got to get done and in small businesses like this one a lot of times uh the money isn't there to necessarily just hire all that like not fun workout you get you got to do it so maybe that's kind of where some of that comes from too anyways that's been my experience i still love knitting and i don't bake quite as much as i used to um because i'm not in a restaurant i actually miss baking for that reason like i don't necessarily want to always have a huge stock of cookies and pastries in my house like i just we can't we can't eat that many of them but i miss having a reason to bake a lot of them because it was so fun for me being like i'm gonna try this recipe like every day i would try new recipes and i actually kind of missed that because it's just not as realistic to do that at home okay on to question number two like you i can knit either continental or english style i like to switch from one to the other in a project since it makes my hands less sore and i can knit longer i am wondering if that is a bad idea as it might change my gauge or maybe the way the stitches look i'm a pretty new knitter and i'm not sure if i can see a difference when i knit either way so my question is do you think i should knit a project in all continental or all english style or can i combine the two methods whenever i feel like this what do you do thank you for your thoughts so in general most people's gauge does change depending on the style with which they're knitting i definitely knit tighter english style and looser continental and that's quite common a lot of times that is how it is english knitters seem to be a little bit tighter continental a little looser so i would not do it within a project unless you yourself uh are getting an equal gauge or one that's so similar that with blocking you're not gonna see those discrepancies but only you can know that you can it's up to you like do you mind if there is that small discrepancy i mean depending on what it is if it's a shawl and you're wrapping it around you might not mind a little changing gauge where it's gonna be a lot more noticeable as something that needs to fit you properly such as mittens or a sweater then you probably don't want to have some gauge changes there and so the best way to know is i would knit something half english and half continental and then block it and maybe mark like put a stripe in the middle so you know which side is which and check your gauge after it's dried and just see is your gauge changing um if it's not awesome you do you uh if it is and it makes your hands feel better i would then always have two projects going i would have your english project going and your continental project going that way if you want to change up how your hands are feeling you can be like okay i've had enough of my english project i'm going to work on my continental a little bit and i kind of like to do that anyways so that depending on what i'm doing you know i might have i haven't been to a midnight in a very long time but hope to someday in the future and so for me i want to have a project that i don't have to think too much about that i can just sit in it while i chat but there are times when i'm knitting on my own where i really want something that engages my brain more so i always like to have just a couple sorry excuse me um pardon me i do like to have a couple projects going because i always find i'm looking for balance in life and sometimes my brain just needs different things my hands might need different things um i might want something more portable something bigger so i'm i am pro polyamorous knitting um personally so next question question number three i have been knitting for a long time but i have never understood the attraction of making a shawl until watching you every week in your videos thanks your shawls look so beautiful and cozy but as a process knitter i'm scared to start a shawl because they seem similar to all the blanket and scarf ufos in my stash box that are decades old that i've given up on do you have any suggestions on what makes an interesting quick or just can't live without pattern for this shawl rookie so i do you know shawls really kind of changed the game for me and my knitting in general and i think it's because they're so fun to knit um most shawl shapes in general start off very small with just casting on a couple stitches and they grow so you end up feeling like especially in the first half of that shawl you feel like you are knitting so fast because you're watching it grow and grow and grow um so unlike a blanket or a scarf which obviously patterns vary but unlike those you you're not just knitting row after row after row without like a whole lot going on you're shaping so you have to pay attention there might be increases and decreases or just increases there's all different shawl shapes so you might also realize there's a certain shawl shape you really enjoy knitting but also shawls tend to enjoy a lot of fun stitch patterns and or color and so they're very fun to knit i think that's why they're so popular and i wear them a lot i mean shawls are something i wear almost year-round um especially if i go we don't have air conditioning in our home but when i go to a place that has ac it's just so jarring to go from like hot summer weather into a cold air conditioned building and i love shawls for that because they're not so hot and heavy that they're going to be like when you are outside but once you go inside to the air conditioned place it's so nice to wrap up in them so they can really be a year-round knit wear um so i think there's a lot of factors that make shawls great projects that you will want to finish so the fact that they're easy to wear and are a great way to have something especially if you don't wear a ton of your knitwear i find it's a great entry level into wearing what you've made which sometimes it takes us a little while to get to that place of like how do i wear this and what do i wear out so their wearability color if you like to play with color they are such a fun palette to do that with because you can use i mean the options are literally endless you can combine all different kinds of colors it's a great way to play with those really interesting hand-dyed yarns or a special skein of yarn that's maybe a little more pricey there's a lot of one skein shawl patterns out there um so lots of options for creativity playing with new stitch patterns it's a great way to learn a new stitch pattern if you've never done lace before if you've never done cables or fading or all kinds of stuff i've done mosaic stuff in my shawls like there's so many fun things to try out and that's also what's going to keep it interesting and keep you from getting bored and maybe not finishing that project um i will say some usually when some people tend to set them down would be at the end because then you tend to have a lot more stitches on your needle so every row starts to take longer and longer um and i think that's when i circle back through my list and think about like i'm so excited to wear this shawl that that gets me through any end part that might just be taking a little longer than it um but yeah there's a lot more going on in shawls again there are some really amazing like knit blankets out there and different scarves that are going to keep your interest up as well but i think that's kind of the cornerstone of shawls as they tend to be really interesting and fun to knit so i think you should definitely check them out um and [Music] as far as pattern suggestions it's really such a personal preference um i really like free or fade is one that i recommend to people if you're interested in playing with color combining and fading there's some eyelets in there some really simple lace and then it has a cute picot edge and the nice thing about that one too is you can make it as big or small as you want so if you just decide you're done you could go ahead and do your picot bind off and finish it um so that's kind of a nice one that i think would be a good beginner one but otherwise i would really look at is there a technique you really want to try out maybe you want to try brioche and then i would recommend trying out brioche alicious or something like that so it just kind of depends what do you have a lot of fun knitting and i would look for that technique to be in the shawl you choose and have it be one that you really want to wear all right i look forward to it every friday oh thanks they're talking about i missed something sorry this might be loud i feel like my headphones falling out okay let's start that one over question four thank you for your weekly show i look forward to it every friday i am currently knitting a sweater using an indie dyed sock yarn held together with mohair the pattern recommends against blocking it because of the mohair how do you treat your garments that are constructed with mohair both for finishing and ongoing care um so i found this question really interesting it is a little hard for me to say not knowing the pattern i don't know why they would say not to block it because it's mohair um i definitely block my knits that have mo hair in it i think it actually really helps kind of re-fluff the mohair after knitting it um so yeah i would block it i'd be curious if they gave you any more information in the pattern of why they don't want you to because who knows i mean definitely designers have different things in their mind that they feel like this is how it worked out the best um but yeah i i block everything so i would block it and um i block it the same way that i block anything out so my general way i block things is i run a warm to hot bath now the reason i feel comfortable with that heat is because i know i'm not going to agitate whatever i'm putting in there at all i literally just pop it on the water and like very gently with like one finger like poke it down um if you are somebody who like you can't keep your hands out of there definitely don't use hot water you don't want anything to felt um but what i do is i do fairly warm to hot water and then i just leave it in there till the water is completely cooled and then i drain the water squeeze out as much moisture as i can right there in my i have um like in my laundry room i have kind of a big sink that i do that all in but you could do it in the tub and your kitchen sink whatever works for you and then i roll it up in a couple towels i just lay it flat roll it up and i'll step on it or put some weight on it to squeeze out as much extra moisture as i can and i might repeat that process once more again the more moisture you can get out the better um and then i'll lay it flat to dry either on locking mats depending if i need to pin it to open it up maybe it's lace or i also have i've talked about it on here a lot it's this blocking it looks like a big pringle it's like a mesh pringle from coconuts and it's a sweater blocker that allows air to circulate all around the sweater instead of just on the top so if it's a sweater or a smaller garment i do like to lay them on there and then i just let it dry so that's it and i do find that with mohair like it's beautiful after blocking so i wouldn't have i wouldn't let that stop me um i think if you were nervous nervous about blocking mohair i would stay towards cooler to cold water instead of hot to warm because that is something that might kind of like make it a little more grippy and tangly if you were again agitating it at all all right last question i am having trouble with the tab cast on for my shawls the top edge of my shells is not straight but has a bump where the tap is do you have a way of avoiding this it has happened on a crescent and a triangle shawl so i'm curious about your bump i grabbed a couple examples so there can be with a tab cast on if you're not familiar with the tab cast on i'll write that i do have a tutorial i'm just gonna write myself a note so i don't forget um so a cab test stop a cab cast on a tab cast on is when you basically cast on just a few stitches it might be anywhere from [Music] i mean it can really be anything it can be from two stitches all the way up to some people do like a wide garter border but it's basically what the edge of your shawl grows out of so you cast on a couple stitches and you knit however many rows your pattern tells you and then what you end up doing i'm going to pretend this is my tab it's my tail so you would cast on and you would knit some rows and then what you do is you turn it sideways and you pick up say your needle is here you would pick up stitches all along the edge and then back where you had originally cast on and that way your shawl will then grow the body of it will grow out of here and the border will grow out of each side so it's a really nice just continuous way to create a cast on for shawls um now i find when they're when i see like kind of like a little lumpy bit is generally when we go to pick up back into our cast on stitches to that i would say no one's ever gonna look so like here is where i would have done my garter tab cast on this shawl this is winter honey and my tab is right in here and i can actually feel you can't really see it that well but it's like a little thicker right here where i had picked up into my cast on i don't tend to worry about it so i'm not super finicky about it because if you look i've worn this shawl quite a bit it's gone through blocking at least once do you see how it all smooths out so it doesn't end up really being a problem and generally with how i wear shawls that is gonna be hidden on my neck somewhere um so i wouldn't worry too much about it if you're just getting a little bump there i wouldn't worry too much about it now you mentioned crescent shawl here is my brioche luscious and what happens with crushed crescent shawls and you can see i've really minimized it yeah yeah you can't even really see it on this but if i pull up we'll do it like this you can see the natural tendency of a crescent shawl is that it wants to where that tab is it wants to do a little mountain peak so actually what i have done to combat that in my patterns is i do a longer tab and i very quickly increase out from it on that edge because it's what kind of creates that is all of our increases are on this edge so if the designer has not done anything to accommodate the crescent shaping it will look like there is like this peak that happens in the center of your crescent shawl um so that the designer kind of has to take care of with their shaping to try and smooth that out blocking will also help a lot and again i mean you can't really see it can you can you see how like just gently there's a little bit of a slope there it's so minimal um and again when you wear it i mean it disappears but it depends on the pattern so if the pattern didn't really do anything to combat that you might have like a little bit of a mountain peak there but even when wearing it you could always kind of fold that bit down before putting out a bib before then kind of wrapping it around you um but yeah so that's that's kind of my my only tips remember the power of blocking because that can help a lot and especially with a shawl i generally block shawls the hardest out of any of my garments so i'll put them in place and kind of stretch them out because they can handle that nice drape all right bonus question actually before i do bonus question i have something to show this is my latest spin and i thought it would be fun to show y'all and talk to you a little bit about it so i after i showed in the last couple episodes i think it was like two episodes ago i showed jillian moreno's book yarnitecture which i love and highly recommend and looking through her photos of how she plays with um using dyed top and all the different things you can do with color it just really inspired me and i love to do club fiber so if you've never done a fiber club or a yard club it's basically where you sign up and you pay and a lot of times it's like three months and so once every month you get a surprise package and you don't know what it's going to look like and it's really fun because it allows the dyers of our fiber or our yarn to just get to be an artist again because they it's when they play and a lot of times that you can kind of see in the future when they really had fun with a certain color and it ends up becoming a permanent color down the road but generally they are one-offs it just gives them a chance to play with color again without having to write down the recipe and make sure they can replicate it so i really love to do it and i belong to a couple different fiber clubs my favorites are hedgehog fibers which is what i have here and nest fiber and hello yarn have some great fiber clubs so one of the things i like about hedgehog fibers is they're all in that hedgehog fiber wheelhouse so if you're not familiar with their yarn it's all very speckly and fun and there's lots of pinks and a lot of i mean they have so many colorways but i found that the fiber really plays well together they're all kind of in a similar color wheel i will say um to where you could use them together so what i ended up doing was i went through and i found like all kind of my blues and i put them together and created a big gradient out of them i was just gonna grab my phone to show you a picture i'm recording on my phone but that's a question i've gotten a lot a lot of people ask me what equipment i use to do this and it's literally just my phone i'm very low tech and so i am i have my phone looking at me with the video that's it and i use headphones in a hope that it will create better sound but that's about that's about it um so i can't show you a picture but if you look back on my instagram you can see photos of both so i did all my blues and then basically turn them into little like nests and then just pull them out in some kind of fadey order and then spun them up and so i have about 14 ounces and so that's about three bobbins full of my blueish colors my cool colors and then in my other pile i put all of my pinks which were definitely pink dominant there's some white and purple and stuff in there too it's kind of funny because these two next to each other look quite similar but if you look at the pictures on instagram from a couple weeks ago they're quite different but anyways i also had about 14 ounces of my pinks spun that up onto three bobbins and now i'm applying them together and i don't know what's gonna happen and i started applying them together last night and i got really nervous all of a sudden like what if i made a mistake and it's interesting because the difference i feel like with uh spinning yarn and knitting and sewing like knitting we're kind of spoiled with the fact that we can just tear it out again and again and reuse that yarn and i have found with cutting fabric and with spinning yarn i do have some fear that comes up and almost pressure i put on myself like well it has to be perfect because i can't just redo this i mean obviously you can find a way to reuse fabric um you're just gonna be limited by you know how you've cut into it but spinning yarn you can't you can't un-spin um at least i wouldn't go through that process it seems so tedious and awful uh but so i had a lot of fear come up and last night i almost changed my mind it was like oh maybe i'll just keep all the pinks together and spin them into one yard and keep all my blues and like not combine them but then i thought to myself i'm never gonna learn i'm never gonna know what's gonna happen if i don't experiment and so i pushed forward and watching those tears apply together has been so fun because i really the way i spun all my singles i kind of created my own gradients as i was mixing the colors from all the different club shipments and so now i'm seeing them come together and you can see that there are some blues in my pinks and there are some pinks in my blues and so sometimes those are overlapping and almost doing like this fractal thing so anyways i'm excited and i have three bobbins of each so i thought i'm gonna spin one with the blues and the pinks combined and then i will wash that and probably knit a swatch and just see how i'm feeling about it and if i if i don't love it then with the remaining bobbins of each color i could do a further experiment of like okay now i am gonna apply my pinks together and i'm gonna put my blues together and i'm just gonna see like what my favorite is but anyways that's my spinning update that's been kind of fun um bonus question so can you show your favorite way to wear birds of a feather so i loved this question and urge you all to please um let me know which shells you want to see me try out because i do the other day i was trying to remember even what shots i've already shown you even though it's only been a couple and it's hard to pick so if you pick that's excellent please let me know what shawls you would like to see me um demonstrate for you and birds of a feather is such a good one because the wingspan on this guy's like 90 inches it's a very long shawl it's almost more like a scarf i love birds of a feather this is knit with both mo hair and then a single ply amids hedgehog fibers i can't remember the color way off the top of my head it's been a long time um but it's on the pattern and so what i did is i alternated sections of garter stitch which is why it's called birds of a feather because it's all the same colorway but on two different bases and i love how you can see how different it is and then i added some beautiful feather and fan lace to keep it interesting um so this is one of my favorite shawls it's very ethereal and lightweight but it is long and kind of a different shape so sometimes people don't know how to wear it so let's show this one i never know where y'all can see me without me hitting my head on my light um so the first thing i'll say is don't be afraid to play around with it like don't expect yourself to be able to just wrap it first thing and it's perfect like you might want to fiddle with it but i like to take can you see how this side stays wider longer than this side has a longer like thinner edge so i like to start with the long thin edge and i can i get closer if i do this so i'm going to start with the longer thinner edge because i might not want quite so much of this length hanging down so i like to take it sorry i lost my top there we go and i'm going to start with this one and putting this over my shoulder so i already have a complete wrap with just that edge and now i'm left with my triangle and i like to bring it around just like that and then i have this pretty wider edge which i also really love being able to see like this in the front and then with my little triangle again offset how i always like to do but one of the things i love about this shawl is even though it's so long and it can feel a little daunting when you're first putting it on it just like billows around you like a cloud um i've seen quite a few people knit this for their wedding which just like makes me so happy um just so special and it is it has a very it can look very dressed up um the other thing is too is sometimes so this is a similar shape to find your fade and so again it's this really long wingspan which i would get some emails of people saying you know i'm really petite or short and i just get kind of swallowed up in it and the thing about both of those shawls of this one and find your fade is when there's this much drape and air you can really wrap it up into just almost like a little cowl you know you don't have to wear it completely or you know big and drapey around you you can actually just wrap it right up and it's really snuggly with your coat or jacket in the colder months or my favorite way to wear both of these um i knit both tangled up in and out i knit both of these shortly after i had my second child my son levi and so i was always wearing a baby carrier always for two years and so i actually one of my favorite ways to wear it was just to drape it around my shoulders again because they're so light so i even wore them during the entire summer so i'd have a baby carrier on and then i would just have it around like that so you also you don't have to over complicate it it looks just as beautiful just over your shoulders um all right i think that's everything and this is a long one today i was very chatty this morning um we've had an exciting week getting the kids back to school and lots of emotions so um i have a really quiet house so i feel like i'm not like racing to get this done before a child comes up and is like mama all right we still have our illuminate knit along going on there's links to that below it's not too late to join there are so many beautiful sweaters being completed and makes me want to knit another one because i see everyone's different color combinations so you can check out the hashtag i wonder if i have this oh i do so the hashtags below too but it's just pound sign illuminate kal um so you can follow that on facebook or instagram we have forums on ravelry and facebook so that's all linked below um it's being hosted by the amazing kayla and sam and i have their instagram names below they've been doing such a fabulous job with fun reels and tick tocks and zooms so it's really fun please feel free to join us and yeah i have been getting some questions in the comment sections um just so you all know i keep them on a spreadsheet so that i can go through there is a lot of questions um but it's just a lot easier for me so i don't miss your question if you want it to be answered in this q a style please make sure to use the link below again right below this video box you see here there is a little part where it's going to say the title of the show and show more just click that and it'll drop down you can find a link to my newsletter i have a new sweater coming out tuesday it is my douglas cardi you may have seen a photo of it as far back as last february i it wins the prize for most emails i have received of like when is this pattern coming out but it was just a long time coming we had some different things with trying to organize so that both um tuku wool which is the yarn company this is their new dk yarn was ready at the same time as fitting it in with my schedule so it's finally coming tuesday you will want to make sure you're signed up for my newsletter so you can get a little introductory discount and be the first to know when it is live and ready to snag um so you can do that through the link below and if you're enjoying these weekly shows you can hit that subscribe button and the little bell and that'll let you know whenever a new video has been posted i try to do these every friday but thank you so much thanks to everyone who keeps coming back and to anybody who's new who's seeing these for the first time um i will continue to do my best to try and answer your questions all right happy weekend

Channel: Andrea Mowry

Views: 21,065

Rating: 4.9860992 out of 5

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Id: FmE5Mz9TQYY

Length: 35min 44sec (2144 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021