Knitting Podcast Episode 10: It’s (almost) Fall, Y’all!

hi welcome or welcome back my name is felicia i'm a knitter living in washington dc and this is my little corner of the internet where i share all about my knitting um and yarny and fiber endeavors and if this is your first time joining welcome if you're a returning viewer thank you so much for your support and for giving me a little bit of your time to listen to me kind of gush on about my yarn my crafting my needy things i have a lot of things to share today and a very short window of time within which to share them so i'm going to try to move through things pretty quickly and um yeah i'm excited for the things that i'm sharing today i actually have some really really pretty things to share so i'm really really excited so yeah let's buckle up i am not wearing anything knitted it is still like summer adjacent in dc so it's still pretty warm uh i can feel fall in the air there's a little bit of a crispness in the air now and i really enjoy that i've i've said before on here and anybody that knows me in real life knows i hate summer i do not like to be hot i'm a fall girl kind of through and through and i'm excited for fall like i'm excited for it to finally be here and to start being able to wear some of my knits and i am i'm sorry i'm looking over here because i have everything kind of piled up on my sofa and um i'm like looking at it i'm so excited to start wearing it and i'm gonna start back having to to go to work a couple of days like physically go to work a few days a week in october and so i am trying to get myself sort of amped up for that by having some really pretty knitwear to wear and my goal is to be able to wear something knitted every single day that i go into the office because i want to feel as cozy and comfortable as humanly possible at work um in my you know in my office so i have one finished object and three whips and then just a few acquisitions that i'm going to share so let's get into it i'm really excited um actually pause one i want to thank everybody um for the birthday wishes on the video my birthday was it was interesting i did not spend it the way that i intended to spend it but my family made it really really special for me um i had to there was a family emergency and i had to travel back home for alabama to be in alabama for my birthday um so yeah i don't know if i've said this on here before but i'm from i'm from alabama i just live in dc so i spent my birthday in alabama but thank you so much for the for the kind birthday wishes and for all of the feedback on whether i should rip out or keep the uh the brioche cardi from the knit collage knit along i ended up ripping it out for a couple of reasons one it was just taking up like physical space in my apartment and that was creating mental clutter and mental clutter is very i i just i don't like mental clutter the other piece was that what i showed you took me about two or three hours to knit if that so i figured if i changed my mind at some point and wanted to knit it again i could just do that i didn't really need to keep it if it was causing me that much like consternation so i decided to just rip it out and i'll revisit it at some point um but yeah i there was no point in like keeping it so yeah but thank you everyone for the feedback people gave the suggestion to like over diet or give it away or reverse it and there were so many great ideas if you want to see like what people's ideas were i will like link to the video and you can read the comments there were so many great comments and ideas so thank you i just want to thank everybody for leaving a suggestion even though i'm not i'm only i ripped it out anyway but they were really good ideas and i think that's that just speaks to the the heart and the mind and the creativity of knitters that we're like trying to problem solve and yeah it was yeah so thank you um okay i'm gonna start with my finished object which is my half and half triangles wrap i have been working on this for or had been working on this for the better part of a year probably probably a year this is my third half and half triangles wrap it's knit and um i think this side is red kiln and this side is poppy red or red poppy one of those two it is in the linen quill from pearl soho you all know that i love that yarn i'm obsessed with it and i've said this before on the podcast that i don't like i don't think that this pattern is like life-changing or you know that you just like have to go out and knit it but for me personally i enjoy having something that is garter and easy and i don't have to think about and i can pick it up and i can put it down it makes for great tv knitting it makes for great travel knitting it makes for great you know if you're out at the park with your friends or on a work meeting it's just like great mindless knitting and so i really enjoy it for that and i think for someone like me who is color nervous you know like i'm not the best with color and color play and things like that doing something like this where it's two colors is sort of really easy um to deal with and it does create this like super lush squishy garter goodness mine is soaked in tough woodlands i've already used it at a couple of events and i love it i have plans for a new one um over the labor day holiday here in the us the uh pearl soho did a a sale on linen quilt i think it was like 15 off or something like that maybe it was 20 off and i picked up um i picked up one of the colors for the one that i want to cast on next they didn't have the other color um available it was out of stock so i'm hoping that it comes back in stock if not i will be putting out an sos eventually until i get that second color but i i figured i could get the first color it would be fine i could start on that and then if the second color comes in stock when they have a sale then i'll buy the second color but it wasn't it wasn't that pressing so i don't know that i will cast it on anytime soon probably not this year but since the yarn was on sale i went ahead and picked it up and if i decide to cast it on i will but my what do i call it what is it the half and half triangles wrap from pearl soho in the linen quilt so one thing i talked about is that i love just like the mindless garterness of of this knit and so my next whip kind of fills that role although i have to think a little bit more than i have to think with the half and half triangles wrap so it is living in this project bag i think i've showed this on the channel before but um i had purchased some yarn from a d stash on ravelry and the person that i purchased the yarn from was so sweet and sent me this really pretty um project bag that she had made herself and um yeah it's so pretty and then it has this really pretty yellow polka dot inside it's really pretty okay so my first whip is my it's a mess things are happening okay is my what the fade from andrea mowry i'm not doing okay here this is a better way so here it is and all of its yarny baby chartreusey goodness so i have a lot to say about this project but it is a relatively old pattern by andrea maury it is knit in brioche at the top and then it has garter at the bottom and the brioche is faded and then the garter is faded so i am knitting this in the peridot um fade kit from hugh loco i bought it last year i believe someone correct me if i'm wrong but last year hugh loco did a um they every month they did a fade kit for that birthstone that month's first stone so i bought the birthstone for august because that's what my birthday is and so on august 1st i cast on my my what the fade and on the last episode i talked about that being sort of my grand idea and one of my concerns was that you need six basically like six full skeins of yarn for this project and so what i decided to do was weigh out all of this gains because usually when you're buying hand-dyed yarn especially it's not exactly 50 or 100 grams there's usually a little bit more usually on the more side rarely do you end up with less there's usually a few grams more per skein and so i weighed all of the yarn i laid it out in a fade and then i kind of bundled it together based on how much yarn i would need for the colors a through f and then what i did to organize it i'll show you one here is i took one of these zip top bags from ikea and just labeled it like this is colorway e and right now i'm working on colorway d which is just really pretty i'll show you just a really pretty complex sagey green color i really love it i'm obsessed with it so i did that and then i so for some of them i'll show you an example like this is a for some of them i have i'm sorry for the wrestling i have a solid or semi solid this is just a bare they're pink and then a speckle and so what i did is i laid it out so that there was like a speckle and a a semi solid together as one color so this is my color a and then i just kind of you know was winging it as i was brioching or you know whatever and so i'm doing the same thing with the garter so when i did the brioche i only used the speckles in the brioche section so i didn't use any of the semi solids and then as now as i'm working the garter fade i am incorporating more of the solids and i think this just speaks to like how good of a dyer um the hue local team is this section right here is three different skins it's it's a solid it's a speckle a solid and then another speckle and it looks like just one big chunk of chartreuse and at first i didn't love it but now i'm obsessed with it i i love it i met the garter section almost to completion and it was very pink and i'm not a i'm not a pink kind of girl i've already told you i'm not a baby pink girl and it was it was it was giving salmon pink and apple green um if you know you know and that's also not my color story so i ripped it back out and ripped it not fully out but i ripped out the garter section and decided to sort of shorten the fade sections and incorporate more of the solids into it and i'm really enjoying the effect that it's having and so now that i'm just on the garter section i mean just like come on look at that babe like it's sickening it's so good it's sickening um so yeah i've really been enjoying this and this is sort of my mindless knitting now because it now i'm at the garter i'm no longer kind of in the brioche piece of it so i don't really have to do as much thinking there is increasing that you have to keep track of but i'm not even counting my stitches anymore i'm not i'm not doing any that i just make sure that i'm on the right side and i'm increasing like when it's a right side row that i need to increase on that i'm increasing and going from there so i'm just slowly working my way through and i'm going to just keep fading until i get to my last color and then do the i think there's an i cord bind off now one thing i will say this is not my first andrea maori pattern it is my first andrea maori fade and my first andrea maori shawl the the brioche set up part like portion happens in like the first three rows or something you like you cast on and then you do some setup and then you like set up your brioche and then it tells you to like look at the middle spine and add a a stitch marker so that you can start to do your your increases out from that spine your in you're increasing along the spine and then along the edges when you're told to do that you have about this much knitting like it's literally like this much knitting and i sort of wish that the pattern would be more clear to be like knit six stitches you know place marker whatever but it's just like go to the middle it's a very if you have the pattern or you buy the pattern you kind of know what i mean and so the first time that i did the brioche section i put it in the wrong spot and so my increases were like not directly in the middle so i had to rip it out and when there's that little knitting you have nothing to kind of rip out to so you just have to start over um so yeah i just sort of wish that that was a little bit more clear but otherwise the pattern is amazing it's super well written my only other tip and i say this all the time is like use more stitch markers than you think you're going to need so i have a stitch marker on the edge for the i-cord then i think the pattern tells you i think on i think on this section it does tell you to include two stitch markers but i made sure to include two here and then i have a stitch marker along the the other i-cord edge and that's just because again this is my mindless knitting and so when i when i feel a stitch marker then i'm like okay like mentally i know that i need to do something different and then i also have um this stitch marker is from whitney marie anderson i love her stitch markers i will have her shop um linked below you kind of can't see it it's almost like a it's a leaf but it's um she did like a chromatic collection and so these actually change color in the light it's it's it's so fun um and then i have just like two stitch markers along the outer wing so that i know whether i'm on a right side or a wrong side row um because as the shawl gets bigger and bigger and bigger it gets kind of harder once you get to the outer edges to figure out if you're on the right side or the wrong side i had three of these on this project but my five-year-old nephew um i love him to death he was playing with my knitting which is fine and he broke one of the stitch markers so sadly i lost a stitch marker to you know auntie life but um these stitch markers are amazing i think they were a limited run so i don't know if you can buy them but i love whitney marie anderson's stitch markers i've shown them on here before so if you can get your hand on one you should you should do that so this is my first whip um this has slowly become my my like meeting knitting my tv knitting my in the card knitting um because it's so easy to pick up and put down except for where you're increasing you're literally just knitting at this point well i'm just knitting at this point because i'm on the garter section and so i'm just working my way through the remaining colors and i can show you what colors i have left so like i said before i am working on this sage green color and i have a few more rows of this before i'm going to start fading it into some more of the pinky peach colors so that was deep okay so that sage color is going to fade into this color and you can't really see it because it's it's wound back up in a ball cause like i said i i undid it and i had pretty much made it through all the colors so uh anyway so it's gonna fade into this that will fade into this which is a soft it's not quite true to color on camera um it's a little bit more of a like millennial pink like a true millennial pink color and then from that it will fade into this color and then it will fade that will fade into this semi solid and then the last color will be this speckle and the thing about these speckles is they are about this uh fade is that it's a very soft fade it's a very very gradual face so some of the colors look very similar and i kind of like that color play for this especially with that chartreuse like that chartreusey green color it's really nice to have it it be a little bit more of a softer fade but i like this pattern so much that i do think i'm gonna do one where there's more of a fade between both the sparkles and the base colors so going from like a gray to a purple or something like that in the base and then the the speckles and i i am a member of the magpie fibers fiber society club nope a society and a club are the same thing magpie fiber society and so there are a lot of i get a like a lot of the times the skeins are the swanky sock and so i think i'm gonna start pulling out some of those and playing around with some of those to put them together because it's not i get like two skeins which is not enough for a sweater for me and more than i need for a pair of socks like it's like a weird quantity of yarn i enjoy it but it's it's a weird quantity to try to figure out for my size so i think i'm going to try to put them together into a wet the fade and i think that's going to be really nice so one last look the next time you see this it will probably be done or close to done so bam bam i'm obsessed with it obsessed okay my next whip comes with a little bit of a disclaimer so i have hesitated on whether or not to even share this project i have decided to share it because i it is something that i'm working on and i'm not really one as y'all have seen on this channel i'm not really one to shy away from like difficult conversations or to sort of speak my mind on something and i spoken last week about last week last episode about how i had sort of taken a little bit of a step back from social media just for a couple of reasons and i'm still not like fully back on i'm still not like fully 100 back on social media but i was off social media especially when i was home in alabama because i just i had a lot going on and i was trying to be really sort of attentive to my family and what we had going on and the needs that were there so i had decided to cast on this next uh whip and when i when i returned to social media i found that the designer of the whip was in or the designer of the pattern is in a lot of controversy about their the lack of size inclusivity in their patterns um at that point i had already cast on the project and yeah so that that's sort of the that piece of it i've had the yarn i've had the pattern and i don't have to make excuses like i'm i'm going to knit what i'm going to knit but i do think um about size inclusivity the same way that i think about skin tone inclusivity and so um as a black woman who has a black mother and a black sister and a black niece and black cousins and black friends um something that i think about often is skin tone inclusivity right and so like if i'm purchasing from a cosmetics brand and i am the deepest shade that they go and i know that my mother and my sister both have much deeper skin tones than me and if they can't enjoy it then it's usually not a brand that i will patronize or give my money to because i can't recommend it right and there's like not really any fun in that if you can't share it with your friends or your family and i feel the same way about patterns and i feel the same way about um especially in like paid for patterns and really popular well-known designers and this is a designer who frankly i i've not really been super attracted to a lot of their knits but i was really drawn to this one particular pattern and i was really inspired by this one particular pattern so i am going to share the pattern i am going to talk about it here on my channel i probably will post about it on instagram but i don't want my sharing of this and i understand that i have a platform because there are people who are influenced by the yarns that i buy and the knits that i make and so i want to try to be as responsible as possible with what i share on my channel and so i'm not saying that you need to go out and knit this pattern if it does if it is not inclusive for you don't knit it i'm not saying that you need to boycott this design i'm not saying any of those things i think people have done outreach to this pattern designer about their lack of size inclusivity and um yeah at this point they already had my money they've had my money for some time because i bought this pattern when it first came out and so i i i get the pattern um i don't know that i will buy anything by any additional patterns from this designer both for the lack of inclusivity but also i'm just not i am not as obsessed with this designer as a lot of other knitters are i like this one particular design from them uh there are other designs that i that i like that they do but i think that there are other there are dupes for it and i think there are kind of dupes for this pattern as well but like i said i already had it so enough of my sort of ramble and disclaimer and etcetera etcetera let me show you what i'm talking about i am knitting camisole number five by my favorite things knitwear and this is in the line weight by pearl soho in the color red pine so it's kind of scrunched up on the needles but i'm going to talk a little bit more about this pattern and the construction so it is a boat neck um tank yeah a boat net tank knit and two by two rib all the way through and then it has this double knit what is this what do you call the thing around the armhole armhole okay a double knit armhole and then a double knit collar my collar looks a little floppy but on my on my body it kind of lay it it lays flat and it lays really nicely so maybe a year earlier last year i picked up two skeins of the line weight in this color and i picked up two in a like a lime green i almost used it in my in a shawl the lime green color not this color so this is the color it's a really pretty they call it like a heather but it's a really rich red color and i when i bought this yarn i had this pattern in mind and i noticed that a lot of people were knitting tanks this summer and all of that obviously and they were using linens and cottons and things like that and some people were using you know merino wools but i wanted to knit a tank for the fall and the winter because i layer and dc has interesting weather and it's not like full sweater weather all the time but you still want to knit and so i wanted something that i could wear to work and be a transitional piece if i'm going from work to happy hour or something like that and so i thought this red color would be really pretty for that because it's going to read just a lot more fall and winter than the i see this pattern a lot in creams and beiges and taupes and tans and you know that's a choice but i went for red um red is growing on me uh it's it's becoming a little bit of my color palette and i'm not a big red girl i still don't like love red but sometimes a classic red tag is just a classic red tank so a couple of things this yarn is a single ply and i may come to regret this decision because this it's already like a little fuzzy i don't know if you can yeah it's already a little fuzzy and that's the nature of working with single ply and i didn't i knew that when i started this project but i i guess i just i didn't care and now that i'm you know almost halfway through i care a lot more about that and maybe i should have cared less so i don't know this goes back to this like being torn about the controversy of this pattern i i think i will probably knit this pattern again because it is a very well written um pattern it's not necessarily intuitive but there are places where it explains things really well there are parts in the pattern where it's like oh like go on youtube and figure this out which i think is a choice and um yeah so i don't know i will probably knit it again in a more summer weight applied um sort of material or yarn i think the original pattern calls for knitting for olive silk merino or merino silk or whatever it is pure cotton whatever it calls for a knit i feel i shouldn't have said it like that i'm sorry it calls for knitting for olive yarn that i probably will not purchase for this um i don't know maybe i will maybe i won't i don't know i but anyway i'm rambling so what i did and i'm sort of stalled on this project but what i did is i i i knit it until you so you you knit some portion of it flat i don't want to give away just because i'm i don't agree with the designer's uh choices does not mean that i'm gonna give away the details of the pattern so you do start the pattern flat um and then you work part of it flat and then um i think you start with the back and then you come back and you attach the front or something like that and then you begin to knit in the round you cast on some stitches at the underarm and then you knit it in the round once i knit maybe a half inch under the um cast on join y'all help me out once i joined it in the round and i knit for about half an inch i went back and i picked up for the sleeves and i did the did we decide we're calling it sleeves what did we decide under arm i picked the armband our man whatever we're calling this i picked up and i knit the armhole i knit the armhole and then i went back and did the collar and the reason that i did that is because i am considering adding bust darts to this pattern so this pattern is knit with a considerable amount of negative ease i thought that i was going to knit the based on my bust measurement i was planning on knitting the largest size which i think is a double xl then i decided to knit the xl and i think i ultimately knit the large or maybe i knit the xl whatever it was i did not knit the size that was indicated for my bust size for a couple of reasons one i still have um i i still have the memory of my camisole from petite knit that i knit whatever that one was called that i ripped out because it was so much bigger um and and this is also intended to fit with a tremendous amount of negative ease and i also know that ribbing will stretch and frankly i like the way that this kind of looks when it's a little bit more stretched out sorry for covering my mouth so i wanted to have that negative ease the other part is that so i have a 42 inch bust bust at like my apex right but my under my well how am i trying to say this my bust is in the front it's not equally distributed so i am like chest heavy top heavy whatever so my underarm what is this upper bust y'all help me out it's been a it's been a long week my underbust measurement that's not your underbust my upper bust and my underbust measurement are are close to the same they're about an inch and a half off um but there's a difference between my my across here and my bust i am not doing a good job of explaining this i'm so sorry for y'all who are trying to follow along anyway i was worried that if i knit it to fit here it would fit wonky here and then along the rest of my body which again i i then curve in because i um my bust circumference is not based on like width it's based on depth hope i'm making sense anyway so i was watching um this orange couch i cannot think of the maker's name and i'm so sorry because i i love watching um her channel she's a phd student in north carolina if i'm not mistaken um who also deals with like bust issues and i believe i don't want to mistake but i believe that she is vegan but i know for a fact that she does not knit with like animal fibers so she knits with acrylics and cottons and linens um and she produces the most beautiful like the most beautiful knits anyway she talks a lot about doing bust starts and so i was considering doing bus starts in this because i think it would be relatively easy in the um the rib pattern which is also why you see these stitch markers and so i wanted to know how it was going to fit and lay with the with the armhole armband what did we decide with the arms and the collar so i wanted to knit those and have those on so that i could make a decision so after this episode i'm going to try this on one more time and make a decision about whether or not i'm going to do bus starts i think because it is so because it is ribbed i don't think i'm necessarily going to need the bus starts in this particular pattern like i would if it was something that was stockinette so i think it's going to be fine without bust arts if it's great i can wear a regular bra which is again another concern it might be a felicia specific sort of situation but i can't be outside in these streets without a bra on i just i can't i can't do it um the things go places they don't need to go they do things they don't need to do and so i need a bra um and so with the top like this i needed to make sure that i could wear a bra that would that would support everything that needs to be supported on me because again i i can't just i can't do what all the girls are outside doing you know what i'm saying like i need my situation is set up different than everybody else is i need a different i need a different configuration okay but i can wear bra which is great which means that i can wear this to work i don't know that i would necessarily wear a tank top to work but it's going to make a great layering piece it would look great under this denim shirt that i wear like every other every other episode on here but i you know i love this top and i love the yarn i love knitting on it and now that it's now that all of the finishing is done i can just knit until my heart's content i have about this much left of my first skein so all of this was pretty much done with one skein and then i have this much left of my second skein so i'll have plenty of yarn left um and i think it took me about 24 20 about a quarter of a skein to do the finishing to do the armhole and the neck band in the double knitting and seaming it together and all of that etc etc so now i'm just in two by two rib city until it's the length that i want i think in the photos it's a little cropped it looks it looks cropped to me and all the ones that i've seen are pretty cropped i think i'm gonna knit it a little long so that i can tuck it um but not like sweater length so i don't know we'll decide and it's living in my black pearl black pearl magic bag by my beloved shayla um i'm like obsessed with everything that she does everything that she does um and i bought this at the um not house in frederick maryland during maryland sheep and wool weekend so i've talked about it at length it's an amazing bag i will link to shayla's shop below okay last whip very last lip okay so this is my cote cardigan by herroco payne i have talked about it now i think oops um at length on here so i'm just going to give you a quick little update i have oops my sleeve which is adorn with stitch markers is about 75 done i need to do um one more repeat of the cable and then i'm going to do the doubled cuff on this um i did not work on this for the better part i worked on it for maybe three or four days after my last podcast and then i had to put it up it got hellfire and brimstone hot in dc like it was very very hot it was very very humid i did not want wool or anything like that touching me and this is a tactile wool it's not superwash um it's the koi it's the corey worsted from lobby anime and the color kitsune and it's um i think corey works it as falkland and coriado nope falkland and gatlin it's a very you know tactile woolly wool it's a dk weight i've got over 600 grams without the sleeves it's um about 550 grams of yarn just like on your lap and it's the sleeve like you have no choice so it was too hot that was a long way of saying it was just entirely too hot for me to be knitting on this thing and so i did not knit on it um but now that the weather is starting to cool down a little bit and like i said i'm i'm trying to gear up mentally physically emotionally spiritually to be back in my office um and so i want to have this finished by the time i go back to the office in october so i don't have that much left the sleeves really don't take that long you're decreasing and then there's a doubled cuff um and then i have to pick up and do the shawl collar that's going to be the interesting part um now there are a lot of decreases in this sleeve as you can see um there's a very interesting sleeve construction one that i've never yeah i've never done it that way before on a sleeve so um i was very cautious and i wanted to make keep track of everything that i was doing and then it just proceeds down in sort of the normal fashion um and then there's a cable that runs along the top and then you can you can choose to either do a regular cuff or you can do the folded over i'm gonna do the folded over and so i wanted to finish both of the sleeves so that if i needed to buy um according to the designer you're gonna need about 100 grams to do the shawl collar and button band so if i needed to pick up an additional skein i wanted the collar to be the different color or the potentially the different dye lot not the sleeve or any portion of the sleeve so this is knit in the same dye lot as the rest of the body and because lobby animes die team is just chef's kiss phenomenal you cannot even tell that there are different schemes in here like it just it it's phenomenal so um yeah trying to check my notes oh i also need to locate some buttons for this i've been scouring etsy i'm gonna go look at um some local to me yarn shops i actually just recently discovered one that is even closer to me which is dangerous and they carry some really beautiful yarns and then they also have um like sewing and sewing notions so i'm gonna check around there uh and try to see if i can find some buttons i don't know what i what violet i'm going for with the buttons i don't know if i want to do wood i don't know if i want to do metal i don't know if i want to do something kind of whimsical or whatever so i'm just going to keep looking around and when i find the right button i'll that will be the button that goes on it and i think i need five or six buttons i don't remember but um i'm not in a rush it it will look great without buttons and i don't even think that i'm gonna wear it button i just if a cardigan is supposed to have buttons i wanted to have the buttons you know trying to follow directions so um trying to see what else so i was watching the most recent episode of um i'll knit if i want to by andrea mowry and somebody i thought about this actually while i was knitting on this sleeve and never before this sleeve and somebody had written in about sleep decreases and whether you're supposed to like if a pattern says decrease every 10 rows do you decrease on the 10th row or do you knit 10 rows and then decrease on the 11th row now this has never been an issue for me before because it and it's not an issue now but it frankly doesn't matter when you're knitting um like a plain stockinette sleeve and it doesn't entirely matter that much for this one either because you're you're taking the stitches out of the bottom side of the sleeve like in a traditional manner and so it really doesn't matter either but she gave a really interesting answer about what you should do like how to interpret that and as an english major i feel like i have failed myself in the way that i was thinking about it anyway that's a long way of saying that i think that had i done what andrea mowry suggests and i will link to that episode below and let you see what her answer was that i would be done with the sleeve right now but it comes to about the top of my watch and in the pattern it tells you that it should extend just a little bit past your your wrist bone so i i'm going to need to do and i can i'm gonna need to do one more section of the cable pattern before i can start with the folded over cuff and i'm also contemplating knitting the whole second sleeve and then working on the cuffs i don't know what i'm gonna do but i'm gonna figure out something sooner rather than later but um i feel like i'll be done with this sleeve by the end of the weekend i have a lot of uh knitting time i will have a lot of knitting time uh before i mean over this weekend so my plan is to work very very hard on these sleeves so that i can start on the shawl collar and focus my like active mental my active knitting time like the time where i have like strong acuity and mental energy on working on this and not on some of my other whips um a lot of my mental energy sort of went into my camisole number five um and not really into this and i will say with the camel saw number five even though i cast it on on my birthday which is about a month ago i worked on it it it grew really really quickly i did i had it joined in the round in less than a week and i had the arm band armhole and the collar done in about another week or so so it knits up pretty quickly and now it's just kind of monotonous finger weight ribbing anyway back to this pattern um i talked about it at length in my previous episode so i will link to that if you want to know more about the yarn the pattern the things all of that yadda yadda but i love this i'm still obsessed with this pattern and um my goal is to have it done in october so that i can wear it to work and when people ask me about my stunning sweater i can tell them i made it which i love doing so that is everything that i've been knitting on um i'm gonna share a couple of um acquisitions just a few not too many um and they each come with a really fun story which is why i'm sharing them i i don't normally share everything that i get and i'm now remembering that i have one other thing that i want to grab and share i don't normally share everything that i get because um i love watching people share their acquisitions i just sort of feel like you'll see it eventually when i'm knitting with it or you know whatever so i don't always feel the need to share what i'm knitting or what i've what i've acquired um unless i think it's going to be sort of like universally helpful in some way so i'm actually going to hop over and grab and it is it's going to be a hop because i literally threw all of my knitting on the floor i'm going to hop over and grab my other thing that i want to show okay i'm back so my first acquisition is actually um so i was watching needles at the ready and um kevin and ray were talking about this i think they had gone to like a yarn crawl or something like that and they showed this which is a really cute little it's almost like a fishing tackle box and it has different compartments mine is not completely full i've sort of been filling it on the go um or filling it as i need it and it's from this brand called exchanging fire i'll have it linked below and i will link to the shop where i found mine now they found theirs like at a store like at an actual shop i had to do a little bit of digging online so hopefully um it will still be in stock where i found it but most of the places that i that i was able to locate it it was no longer in stock so but i will link to that one and so i picked it up you can this little section can be different colors i picked yellow and then inside i have some scissors i also did yellow because i like to coordinate and um the little gripper for my interchangeable set some darning needles um right now it just has uh stitch protectors and then um some cord stoppers and things like that and then i'm gonna also put in i think um they had folders with like stitch markers so each of these little sections opens up so i'll eventually do that maybe with some hexis and some locking um stitch markers and things like that this is really great because i travel with my knitting quite often um and i feel like i never have the notions that i need and i'm always trying to like throw together a knitting notions pouch and all that this can just live and exist as it is and be like a pack ready to go knitting notions sort of thing and i thought it was really neat i remember being relatively affordable um and the shipping it came really quickly from the vendor where i found it so you can either look for this at your local yarn shop um or you can um source it from where i found it but i will have it linked below um both the company which is exchange or maybe i bought it from exchanging fiber i mean exchanging fire i don't know if that's the brand i don't know anymore i will link to where i found this so that if you want to pick one up for yourself you can but it's a really handy little notions pouch and it seems very sturdy sturdily it seems very sturdy um okay so when i went to the maryland um sheep and wool festival i talked about going to the magpie fiber um flagship store and i had pre-ordered some yarn from lola being yarnco and it's just so it's so interesting the way that like things work out and and how things happen so story time i like i said i'm in the magpie fiber society i um had i pulled a goof and i was not intending to renew my membership um for this year simply because of the issues that i brought up before i love magpie fiber yarn i think it's great but two skeins is like not enough for a project for me and but like one skein would be more ideal because it's like okay i can just make a sock or i can fade it into something but now i have two skeins of it and i have to figure out what to do and blah blah anyway and so i had i was going to email um because with the magpie fiber society you pick um whether like what there are two like options and you pick which option you want and i had like missed the window because again i was like traveling and it just wasn't on the forefront of my mind so i had like missed the window to um to choose and so i reached out to magpie and their customers like services amazing and i was like hey my bad like i um and i had moved and so i was like hey i need to change my address because the last time that i got a shipment i was at my old address and so i was like i need to update my address and um i need to switch out my like i want to make my color selection if i can if i can't it's fine but i definitely want to change the address and they were great and they worked with me and that like flagged for me in my mind that i had pre-ordered this yarn from lola being yurinko and i was like i wonder where that yarn is and i was but it was just like a you know whatever because i knew when i ordered it they said it was going to be a pre-order they said that it was going to come later in the year and i remember that distinctly because i had already signed the lease for my new apartment so i gave them the shipping address for my current apartment and so i remembered that it was going to be a little bit later but i was like man that was in march and it's august and like i still don't have um at least i think it was in march maybe it was in may y'all i'm just making up stuff i think it was in may anyway whenever it was to what it was now i was like dang i wonder where that yarn is and so i was like okay if i don't hear anything by like by labor day i'm going to reach out to magpie and just say like hey i ordered pre-ordered the charn no rush just curious when you anticipate that it's going to ship because i knew it needed to come from lola bean yarn to magpie and then magpie was going to ship it out um so i got a shipment notification um from my apartment complex uh no i got a shipping notification from like ups that was like you have a package that's being shipped to your address and i was like i don't remember ordering anything um i know i do a lot of late night yarn ordering but i don't remember ordering anything so i was like okay maybe it's a birthday present maybe somebody sent me something whatever i come back from alabama i go to check my package and it was this [Applause] it's okay i'm gonna take it out of the plastic sorry for the crinkling and magpie was so sweet um so they sent um this beautiful card and then it has a mine is smudged um because it was handwritten but it just said like thank you so much for your patience and it was signed by the magpies it's beautiful i don't think it's a nope and it has some care instructions for the yarn they included a little sticker which is really cute and then they included one of these little stitch fixer things and um that has a little like magpie feather on it and i wonder if this will fit [Applause] [Music] no it will not okay i have another little stitch fixer thing that i will throw in here because the stitch fixer is always great to have but anyway i thought it would fit in here it doesn't and this little stitch fixer thing which i think is really sweet but first of all i'm obsessed with lola bean's new label i mean it's just anyway it's so cute but this yarn y'all i'm going to take the label off i'm not going to unwind it because it's so like i don't know who the master i don't know if jimmy is the master skater or adella or maybe they've got lola over there skating the yarn now it's so beautifully stained it's insane this is called black beaver it was a special run color that was done for magpie to go in their bieber line so it goes with like the bougie bieber and the bushy beaver is the only one i know but it's it's for that collection and i remember the live that adella was on when she was like i should do black beaver um that is my adela impersonation and i know that she does not talk like that but um and then when i was in the store i saw it on the dk base but i love fingering and i wanted it to be for a sweater and so look at this it's like a grungy grayish with it looks black but it it almost breaks into like a navy like a deep navy and then it's got these really beautiful um speckles of like olive green which is a love that adella and i share is olive green and i just think this is so beautiful now i don't know if it's because i was just like caught up in the haze uh in the fumes of the yarn or maybe they told me this and i just didn't pay attention i'm going to read y'all the the composition of this yarn because i feel like i owe a dollar money because i don't remember spending a lot of money on this yarn but i adella i owe you money i don't even think she watches this but if you watch this adela i owe you money for the composition of this yarn first of all y'all can see the drape i mean you can see the drag right okay it is 60 merino 20 yak and twenty percent silk i owe a dollar money but it's so good it's so good it feels so good um it feels so good and i know that she's been bringing out like her own kind of blends of it's so good so what i want to do i don't know what i want to make with it yet but i do know that i want to pick up some either of the the magpie feather which i think is the regular like silk mohair base or the one that like all the girls have gone crazy for because it's in that new andrea maori pattern um what is that one called but i think that one has like cashmere and i don't know she's very luxury she's high-end she's a high-end base but i feel like something like this deserves to be paired with something like that um so and then i also think that like i love a i i love variegated yarns in the skein i don't always love them knit up as like garments or things like that but i did buy a sweater's quantity of this and i i want to use it and i think it's going to be a beautiful garment um so i think i want to find something that's a little bit um kind of this taupey color and a vamo hair and pair that with that to kind of um hope to blend down some of the tone like the speckles um i love adela's buckles but i think for something that i'll be able to pull out and wear and one thing that i was thinking about was maybe doing a another um autumn league pullover which is a i think it's a dk or a sport weight so i think if i pair this with um that that it's such a like just stunning stockinette and the yarn would speak for itself like i need it to be something where the yarn is going to do all of the talking um i may also just take a trip up to frederick and go to the nat house and then go to um magpie and like do it in person because i i've been looking on looking at some colors online and i'm just a wee bit nervous about ordering especially like that expensive of a yarn online when i only live 45 minutes away and i can just take the trip and go to frederick and frederick is beautiful especially downtown frederick so i got that um and then one last thing that i want to share because i think it's so beautiful um so i know a lot of people are planning sorry um the whole like setup of the camera situation is always very perilous always always questionable so a lot of people are preparing for fall um and getting their phone it's ready and i also am i have some yarn on the way for my next um sweater cast on after sort of the complicated things that i've been working on here i want a really simple easy um knit and i'm doing it in a really fun color which i think is going to bring that sort of fun and um uh whimsy to my knitting that i really kind of look for like i i want it to be like i don't want to knit things that i can buy in store that's not that's not how i think about my knitting um and i know that works with some people and so i either try to make it fun by the design or the color or whatever yada yada so um i have yarn coming for that and then after that i am going to be knitting i'm so excited so i'm after the pattern that i'm talking about that i'm going to cast on next i am going to be knitting the i'm gonna nope sorry via kimmy so i talked about this pattern a while ago i um i knit a pattern by okamoto and i was following the hashtag on instagram and somebody on instagram had knit this sweater and they knit it in this really pretty um like almond almond beige color i'm not i'm not a beige sweater kind of girl i'm not saying that you'll never see me knit a beige sweater what i'm saying is that it's not my preferred um that just doesn't feel fun doesn't feel like what i want to spend my time or my money on i will just buy i'll just buy the beige sweater anyway it was beautiful then i saw that um jackie of caddy jack's knits had knit one and she made it in this really pretty like yellow color i don't really do the yellows i'll wear yellow uh but it's not like really my vibe and so i just like you know locked in the back of my head and the thing about following a hashtag on instagram is that it'll pop up in your feed the hashtags pop up in my feed more than the people that i follow at this point so i um yeah so i was like seeing it pop up in my feed and then a few weeks ago and i have no concept of time so it could have been a month ago it could have been three months ago um caitlyn did a green version of the kimmy and she made hers short sleeve and she like they modified the fit and it was stunning and i was like okay i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm going to knit the akimi it's going to be my next sweater but the achievement has a lot going on and i have this i have this cabled cardigan that i've been working on for like way too long okay everybody else on the test knit is done they they put their buttons on they're done and i'm still working on sleeves right like i've been working on this for too long but let me tell you how the bind intervention works maybe like the day after my birthday i had gotten a little bit of birthday cash and like the day after my birthday i marie sue put the yarn on sale for this project so i bought it now i went back and forth about what color to get and this color might shock you it might not i don't know it shocked me uh and i showed my mom and it shocked her also hey ma um it shocked her and i almost went with another color i almost went with it let me show you what i got um and then i'll tell you what i almost got so it's beautifully packaged i did go for the yarn that the pattern calls for because um jackie and caitlyn said that the yarn is amazing and um pretty much everybody that i've seen knit this has knitted in the called for yarn and you know as long as like if it's like a superwash merino you know nylon blend i'll go with whatever right but if you're doing something that's like different or unique i will try to knit it in the call for yarn um maybe that's a lack of creativity maybe that's i know that there's a tremendous amount of privilege in that because i i don't really have to think about yarn substitutions in terms of cost it's more so in terms of like color or availability or things like that um but this yarn seemed so unique when they were talking about it and it was actually relatively affordable um i did some calculations so for my size which i think i'm going to end up needing less yarn because i'm going to be doing some mods um it was going to be about 85 for the yarn and then shipping and handling which isn't the cheapest but that's not that's also not extremely expensive that's by no means the most expensive um yarn that i've purchased for a sweater before anyway this is a dk weight [Applause] yep a dk weight um it's sold in 50 gram balls and it's just 100 merino wool and it's from the brand jim jin mouth my ai was just talking to me um it is from the brand daruma i think and the the yarn is genmo and i am doing it in the color 19 which i think is carrot let me open this let me take it out you will get a first impression my first impression of the yarn okay y'all i wish you could feel okay this yarn is so incredibly soft i don't even know how to describe it it's it's good okay so i'm so excited to cast this on the color is carrot if you look at the project page for this i am knitting it in the color that the pattern is knit in um but yeah so i almost got this color i think it's called ginger which is a little bit less of a true orange this is like a true orange um but i wanted to do something a little fun and the sweater itself is like full of whimsy and things like that um and so i wanted to sort of play into that whimsy by picking a more whimsical color and it's the type of sweater that it's like it doesn't matter what color you knitted in it's gonna stand out that you're wearing it so i went with this color um i'll talk a little bit more about the my modifications that i'm planning and um things like that once i actually cast it on which will probably be november my plan is to cast on my next cast on in october probably i mean the yarn is going to get here eight like soon um and so i'll be able to like gauge swatch and get ready for that and then once i have finished the collar i'm not going to cast on anything else until i cat finish the collar on my um cote so probably november i will cast on um this uh a kimmy but i the yarn was 15 or 20 off so i bought it like i jumped on it and i bought it and i'm so glad that i did the sharna is it's so scrumptious um yeah i want to kind of like find other patterns that use it um again sorry for the crinkles because it's that it's that good um oh it's i'm i'm excited about that so anyway um [Applause] trying to think if i have anything i think else all i think that's all i've got y'all um like i said i do have some things planned for fall um but i'm still just kind of thinking through it right now i just have um my next two patterns picked out um like i said one is a little bit more simple but it's i think it's going to be in a really fun color and i'm excited to share that when that comes i will be trying to share that a little bit more over on instagram and um then i have the yarn for this and then i have another pattern in mind but i am holding off on buying the yarn um for a couple of reasons one i don't need the yarn yet i probably won't even be able to cast it on until maybe december just depending on how long this takes so there's no need to buy the yarn right now and just have it sitting at my house uh taking up space so i'm going to um probably start picking up the yarn for that um at the towards the end of the year uh they carry the yarn at one of my local yarn shops so i'm excited to be able to go and pick it out let me take this off the table um i'm excited to be able to go and pick it out in person um and play with and and do the play with the colors a little bit it is a color work sweater and um i want to also cast on this yarn um sooner rather than later that might be a top of the year cast on because like i said i want to i think i want to go to frederick in person and pick out the yarn for that for magpie which means i'll also go to the not house um in frederick and i love their yarn and they have some beautiful brands that none of my other yarn stores carry so um maybe if i do that i will vlog it a little bit um because i did not vlog when i went before um i don't know i feel weird about like filming in yarn stores i know that people do it but i don't know i feel weird about it so yeah um but i'm not in a ru i'm not in a super huge rush to like find like to to cast to cast on new projects um this is something that um i have personally been thinking about a lot and then i think there has been increasing conversations in the making community in general around this but like i knit for fun i knit to relax i knit for my mental health and um i think that like the urge to like produce at a high volume takes some of the joy away from the process and for me that's just like not my ultimate aim now i want to knit my what i want to knit that list is so long what i'm gonna knit that list is so much shorter right because it's just my two hands and my time um but i think that like and i don't know if it's because i'm more involved with knitting social media these days um and just like more aware of like the energy and the effort and like what goes into producing a knitted garment and sharing it um sort of for the world to consume and the pressures of the algorithm and those sorts of things and that's very real and there are people who like their entire livelihoods are built on on this or some portion of their livelihood is built on this this is my hobby sharing it on social media is my hobby it's a way for me to share and like connect with people but it's not my job um what little amounts of money i make from youtube i have to pay taxes on it so i don't even get to enjoy that money um and you know like so i am aware of like the pressures for certain people but i just feel like there's like pressure to like crank out three new sweaters a month or like constantly be knitting is just draining and i didn't you know i didn't knit for like two weeks and i was like okay i'm fine with that it was hot like i i was busy i i didn't feel like it and then when when the urge sort of hit me which did really coincide like that that sort of ramp down in my knitting mojo and my knitting production was very much so correlated to the heat ramping up and when it cooled down um and it felt just like it felt more comfortable for me i picked up my knitting and i i was able to get a lot of knitting done but i just i don't want to be i don't want to feel pressure to produce um to in order to have something to share so that is part of the reason why my episodes are a little bit more sporadic and i don't always share you know film a video every week or every two weeks or even every month because again this is my hobby it's for fun and once you like put those time constraints and those pressures on yourself um it takes the fun out of it and i need fun in my life right like i don't i don't need i don't need anything that's not fun that's not gonna work for me i need fun i need the fun things and only the fun things um and so yeah so i've just been thinking about that a lot because i think um if you are somebody who engages on you know making social media or you have a podcast or you have a you know a knitting instagram where you actively share your lips i think you can maybe identify with this sort of pressure even if you're just somebody who watches these things and see people knitting um who come out and they're like i knit 30 sweaters this year or even i knit 12 sweaters this year that's a lot but like that's not normal and um you don't have to like you don't have to knit at that volume you don't have to produce at that volume i think if i stay on track for my for what i have planned to cast on this year i will have cast on and cast off four sweaters this year four and that feels like a feat for me um i guess i can count my fox stocks as five because i cast it off this year if i get through the sweaters i'm planning and there are some people who knit five things in a month that doesn't make my knitting any less important any less beautiful any less valuable any less inspirational to share and that's the same for you if you're somebody who knits one sweater a year there are people who came in maybe there are people who don't need any sweaters a year anything that you do that you make is it's it's stunning and it's miraculous and anyway i'm going on this ramp because i just feel like there's this like pressure to produce and pressure to um be you know a factory and like i'm not a factory these are my hands i got a little carpal tunnel my hands swell up and that gets uncomfortable and it's hard to knit sometimes and the needles are tiny and the yarn is hot and i'm working or i'm tired or i'm just mentally not able to concentrate and all of that is okay and so yeah i mean i feel like i go on a rant at the end of every video this is this is this this video's rant and i hope that it makes sense i hope that what i'm saying like resonates with people it makes sense but like tap into your creativity and the way that it shows up at the the pace that it shows up in the manner that it shows up and don't feel like you have to produce because other people are producing at that level i started this channel on a journey to become a prolific knitter and at the time that i started this channel two years ago almost two years ago i thought prolific meant banging out the knits like knit after knit after knit after knit was what i needed to do and i realized that um that just wasn't for me that's just not how i work and that it doesn't make it sustainable or fun and so i i'm picking up more challenging knits and i'm i've learned so much that i wouldn't have otherwise learned i've done color work and cables and cardigans and all these things that i wouldn't have otherwise done but for this platform and for the community but and that is what that is what has made me a prolific knitter like my my fully cabled cardigan is what makes me a prolific knitter my color work yolk sweater is what makes me a prolific knitter my garter stitch schlanket thing is what makes me a prolific knitter like we're all prolific knitters and there's not a benchmark for that and that benchmark is most certainly not can you knit 17 sweaters in a year or like 30 sweaters in a year and come up with a stack of you know a pile of knits this high to post on social media um and that's not directed at any one person i'm not even i'm not i don't even have anybody in mind when i'm thinking about this i'm just thinking about the pressure to produce content and to produce items and this sort of like quick quick quick quick um mentality that we have around knitting and knitting is slow fashion and it's okay to slow down in your slow fashion and not produce as much and for the people who can knit all day and all night and make a sweater in three weeks and do all like more power to you like that deserves to be applauded at the same rate as the person who spends an entire year thoughtfully and intentionally knitting on something and maybe only producing that one thing at the end of the year anyway i am going to go the light keeps shifting and fading and moving and um i hope that this setup was okay this is going to be where i film from now on um you all can see two of my beloved plants i don't know if you can see the one directly behind me um but maleficent is the fiddly big actually you can see a bunch of them maleficent is my federally fig aurora is on the tv stand behind aurora is a zz plant um it doesn't have a name i'm thinking either um i'm thinking rafiki because um rafiki means friend in swahili and zz plants are native to africa so i'm thinking of maybe that but i don't know he doesn't have a name yet and then o'connor is my white brother paradise right there so those are just some of my plant babies that you can see there are others but um you all enjoyed seeing them in the last podcast but i think this is going to be my setup going forward um because it's just really easy to film from right here and there's a window and i get a little bit of natural light i will try to film a little bit earlier in the day next time so that you can see things a little better and um the next time that i come to you i think i i will have a few more finished objects some new cast ons everything's going to be um great but again no pressure no rush i'll come back when i when i feel like i have a lot to share um in the meantime if you are not already subscribed and you made it this far and you would like the video please consider subscribing to my channel it costs you nothing but it will help to keep you um up to date on when i'm up on when i upload things you can also click the little bell notification and that will let you know when i upload a video which will be really good because i don't have an upload schedule i just film when i get around to it and upload when i can so um and then last but not least i did not mention this at the beginning of the video but everything that i discussed is linked in the description box below there's a little arrow that you can click and i will list out the yarns the makers um shops anything that i mentioned that is linkable i will link below um i don't think i have anything else i don't have anything else i hope that everybody is staying healthy and happy and safe and that you're doing well that your families are doing well um and if you like me are a fall lover i hope that you are gearing up for ball and you're pulling out your knits and getting your sweaters ready and just like fall girls it's our time it is our time to shine you know it is it's our season um i pulled out my you know apple cider mrs meyers i'm ready i'm drinking hot tea now like i'm excited because fall is falling and i i love ball um but until the next time i will talk to you later um if you leave a comment or anything like that below i will do my very very best to respond to it even if it's a month from now um but yeah until then bye

Channel: Phylena

Views: 2,696

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Id: OGFc21Zy0P0

Length: 76min 59sec (4619 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 19 2022