The Gentle Knitter Ep. 38 - new year, new knits

a [Music] [Music] me hi welcome to episode 38 of the gentleman my name is nicole and i'm coming to you from ottawa ontario where i live with my husband mark and our sweet greyhound marcel today is sunday february 28th i'm having a hard time believing that we are at the end of february um so far the winter is flying by and i'm not sure why because we are still kind of stuck at home we're no longer in full lockdown so i think last time i spoke to you we had just entered a full lockdown situation where pretty much the only thing that was open were essential stores now we have some um some relaxing of those rules uh so non-essential stores are open but a very limited capacity and of course you know it's still take out at restaurants and not allowed to gather in um in groups of people that kind of thing um yeah so i'm not sure why the winter is going by fast um it's been a beautiful winter as you can see uh probably from outside the window there we have gotten a lot of snow today is actually a really beautiful mild day it's uh i think it's like three or four degrees celsius so uh stuff is um kind of melting but we've had like i don't know maybe four or five feet of snow this winter and um this week in particular we've had quite a bit of snow but it's not cold and it's been really pleasant to be outside normally i would do a lot of skiing in such beautiful snowy weather but this year uh was different because um with the lockdown we are actually not supposed to uh cross the provincial border and the place where i ski is on the quebec side so ottawa is right um on the border of the of the ontario quebec provincial line and i every year including this year i get a pass a ski pass to this huge uh park that we have um here in the ottawa capital region called gatineau park it's a it's a huge park that is just like a giant network of trails in the summer it's hiking trails and in the winter they turn into groomed cross country and fat tire biking and snowshoeing trails and because of the lockdown like i said we're not supposed to cross the border for non-essential reasons so even though i got a ski pass i'm not supposed to go on the ontario side however tempting it is and um i have had some friends tell me oh like that they live on they live on the quebec side and and that they see ontario license plates all the time but i guess for this i'm trying to be a good citizen and trying to sort of follow the uh follow the directives that we are getting and so i have been sticking to that we do have some uh we have some really lovely uh places that you can ski on the uh on this side of the of the pro of the border if you will um however those trails so they are um sort of in the green belt so that the areas just outside of the city limits um so we have lots of lovely trails however they're really crowded uh because people are not able to go where all of the main ski trails are so a lot of people are sort of skiing there but they they're multi-use trails so there's also people walking with their dogs there's people snowshoeing and so the trails are quite crowded and really not they're not groomed uh on a regular basis so they're not very nice for skiing they're great for walking um i tend to try and go when it's not busy so like really early in the morning or later uh in the afternoon because i'm really trying to avoid going when there's a lot of people when there are a lot of people were supposed to wear a mask and you know i'd rather be in the woods not wearing a mask so if i go and it's not busy then that's fine so i have been getting out and of course walking the dog and all that so i'm getting lots of nice fresh air but i'm not you know really fully um taking advantage of all the beautiful snow that we've been getting and for those of you who've been watching the podcast for a while you'll know that winter is my absolute favorite season and so this year is different for so many reasons and you know in a nutshell we're healthy we are able to work from home so we're incredibly lucky and so i'm not gonna complain too hard about the fact that i can't go cross-country skiing but uh the the upside is i've had a ton of knitting time so i have really a lot to show you today so why don't we get into that [Music] so first i'll talk about what i am wearing and this is a brand new sweater that i uh cast on and and off in the in between uh episodes actually i think everything i'm gonna show you today is new stuff i guess when 21 2021 rolled around i was just in the mood for new projects so i've kind of put my yell aside i've put my i was knitting a big love cardigan and that's kind of stalled a little bit um but i have some other projects to show you so um yeah so this is the felix cardigan and it was designed by amy christopher's who's also known as savory knitting and i knitted in some very special yarn i've talked about this yarn before um the sun is starting to come down so i will show it to you in the sunlight because it actually these colors are pretty pretty close this kind of reads as quite brown but it is more rust um it's got actually a lot of pink in it that uh maybe you're not quite seeing but this yarn is called nutiden and it is produced by a swedish company called uh oneer okay i believe is how you say it it's owned by carolyn and knut they're a couple that live in sweden and they use um basically all uh local uh swedish breeds and produce this beautiful unspun yarn so it is a very very fragile uh yarn when you sort of um you know as a single like this i knit this sweater uh holding a double and holding a double definitely adds a lot of a lot more body to the yarn so it doesn't it's not quite as tricky to work with but honestly similar to plotulope once you get the hang of working with the yarn you don't break it that often and when you do the great thing is you don't even need to spit splice it so let's say i'm knitting and it broke i can just um layer the yarn and like you can do a little bit of twisting if you want to kind of just sort of reattach it but honestly you don't even need to do that you just you know you just keep on knitting and it it will hold together so um yeah it's a really special yarn it's it produces a fabric that is very has obviously a lot of halo and it's incredibly light so it's it weighs nothing and it's very warm and it's also just a really beautiful beautiful fabric i'm gonna try and hold still somebody uh commented in my last episode that when i show off my knitting i move a lot is because i do tend to use my hands when i talk so i guess when i'm holding it i'm also moving my hands and the person said i love your podcast but sometimes i feel a little seasick and i felt so bad but uh you know what that person was absolutely right i do tend to move the knits around a lot so i'm gonna try and be better about that but um yeah this um this yarn is very special uh i've had questions about sort of how do you uh get it because uh so they're a very small mill and they so they produce collections where um they will sort of develop four or five new colors usually usually there's five and then they have a shop update and it goes up for sale and then when it's gone it's gone so that color way those color ways are basically just available once so carolyn and nut are always coming up with new colors and it's very tempting to just buy everything that they put up because it's always so gorgeous and so if you are interested in this yarn my advice to you even though i kind of don't want to give this advice out because i want it to stay um kind of a secret but that wouldn't be very nice so what i suggest to you is that you follow uh on that on social media you can also follow carolyn's uh instagram account maranguset and i will put those in the description box uh below so you will be able to follow them she does a lot of kind of announcing posting on like upcoming shop updates and then set a timer and when the shop update is live you know just kind of go in there and and place your order so that is how you acquire this highly desirable and beautiful yarn but on to the sweater so uh this is such a lovely everyday piece simple just the way i like it um i will try and show it to you i'm really kind of stuck in the corner here but it is a somewhat cropped it it actually grew a bit in the blocking but it is um here try not to move too much it's a very simple sweater i made a few modifications i when i cast off the button band the sleeves and the collar i cast it off all knit-wise so it created kind of a chain here just um a chain of knit stitches i just really thought that was that was really pretty and just kind of gave it a bit of structure so the sweater is a really cool little construction it's a raglan sweater but the raglans are the increases are done with yarn overs so instead of increasing by making new stitches you're doing yarn overs and that adds a little lace detail that's in the front and the back and yeah it's it's just a sweet sweet cardigan very warm very soft like i said um i had some questions about sort of uh how does this yarn compare to plotulope and i would say in terms of its usage so in terms of like substituting i think it would work great [Music] because it's very similar sort of in its weight um so for a sweater that would call for let's say two strands of plateau of new tiding yarn you could probably knit it with two strands of pluto lopey it is quite a bit softer than plotulope i have to say different colorways will have different levels of softness because each colorway is a different blend of sheep braids and as you know some sheep breeds are softer than others so i've ordered some colors where it is extremely soft and other colors that definitely had more of a woolly sensation and overall plotulopee is icelandic yarn so it is you know what people would call itchy um i luckily thank you i have um my wool sensitivity which i kind of talked about in the last episode has not come back so i am actually wearing a sleeveless dress with this on and it is really really comfortable i'm not experiencing any any issues with that so i love love love this cardigan i used some buttons that i bought their mother of pearl buttons they're vintage buttons that i bought at rhinebeck not this year unfortunately but the year before there is a woman who has actually i think it might be two sisters um they have a booth there every year uh filled with vintage buttons and so i bought a card of them and what i liked is that they are kind of darker gray but they they have little flecks of warmer warmer yellow and kind of purple they're the shell that is used for these buttons has a lot of kind of fiery tones to it so i thought it looked really really good with with my new cardigan anyway the felix cardigan i highly recommend it i would love to knit a bunch more i think i might try a more cropped version next time um a pullover version so yeah very happy with it [Music] the next thing i have to show you is another cardigan um so early in the year um taylor owen who is who has the thread to mend podcast she um posted a sweater on her instagram and she also talked about it in some of her episodes it was a cardigan that she was designing and she was looking for test knitters and i absolutely fell in love with it so i kind of looked at what the yarn recommendation was and i had something in my stash and so i asked if i could test it and so she uh she agreed and so i had the chance to knit this really beautiful beautiful sweater it's called the onot cardigan i still haven't put buttons but it's got a really nice generous button band there now i was a bit of a test knit fail because my collar did not turn out the way that the pattern is um i did some extra ink decreases so it's a bottom-up cardigan and um i didn't i just i just made a mistake and i was really sure that i had done it right i double triple checked it um i think that there was a little ambiguity in the language but um anyway i didn't i didn't realize it was a problem until i actually cut it open because this is a sweater that's knit in the round and then you cut it to stick it so before i cut it and this is the one real downside of sticking is that um i didn't realize i had made a mistake until i cut it open knit the button band and then put it on and then i went oh like the color should this color is supposed to kind of lie flat like that and and kind of low so like that and i'll i'll actually insert a photo a beautiful tailor wearing her cardigan in the appropriate collar version uh yeah so you know i'm a huge fan of sticking i love it because there's no purling and it was really fun to just to make the sweater and not have to work the cables on the on the wrong side and um yeah it was great except like i said it it you know once you cut it open there is nothing you can do you cannot rip it back out if you do something wrong so i but so the the upside is that i actually really like it with this kind of little shawl collar um i i really think it's quite sweet that way so i so it turned out i just feel like a failure because it is not the garment that taylor designed and so as a sample or as a it's not a sample but as a as an example of the garment this is kind of giving people the wrong impressions so i i just wanted to make it really clear that this collar is my error not not the pattern and that if you purchase the pattern you will get the version that is in the photos that taylor has on obviously that she is using for the pattern the real um the real winner for me of this pattern is the cable motif like so you have you know you have some nice cables in the front it's very simple i will get up here um it's slightly cropped her version is longer i wanted a cropped version there's some beautiful i-cord finishing on the button band but the showstopper is hopefully you can see that i'm just going to kneel on my chair here yeah hopefully you can see that with my hair out of the way it's a stunning uh cable panel at the back and that's really what made me fall in love with this pattern so all in all i'm really thrilled with the way it turned out i'm sad that i wasn't able to have a finished product that is necessarily useful for you know the pattern promo and stuff like that but um i'm definitely gonna wear i've been wearing it a lot i knitted in brooklyn tweed shelter in the storm cloud color so surprise surprise it's gray it's a warm gray with a lot of blue flecks which i think you can probably see so it's you know it's a tweed yarn so it's got some brown some blue some white kind of all mixed in and so it's really soft i've had this yarn in my stash for years and years it uh it dates back to the days where i did a lot of sample knitting for brooklyn tweed it's a it's a soft yarn it's it's quite lovely i would say it's not the most durable yarn uh it does get fairly pilly and even kind of a little ratty over time the yarn that the pattern calls for is um is harrisville either flywheel or what's the other one i will put it up on the screen i will we'll put it in the description below but um that yarn is very similar to brooklyn tweed and sort of in its construction and its feeling and the fabric the the resulting fabric however i find that uh yarn a little more hearty and so i i do prefer it but i had this in my stash so i i've been really really trying to be good and work down my stash at least a little bit because i've also done other things that are new acquisitions so yeah i'm trying to be good in some in some places on some projects it occurs to me that i forgot to tell you something about the felix cardigan the color of the yarn is called between petals and i used 400 grams of the yarn now that is one of the slightly challenging things about using nutella yarn is that you don't get a yardage you buy it by weight and so i had 500 grams of this and looking at other people's project pages i figured i would have enough so in the end like i said i only um i had some leftover had about 100 grams left over and so the sweater i weighed it and it weighs 400 grams so 400 grams for an adult size like a fairly generously oversized cardigan it i knit the size 48 bust because i wanted uh quite a bit of positive ease and so uh so yeah if you're wondering how much to order if you're kind of an average sized person then four to five hundred grams should be enough to knit a sweater and it was held doubles [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do speaking of test knits i was contacted by albina of lb hand knits i've talked about her designs before because she had developed a new um way of knitting a thumb gusset on a mitten and she knows that i do a lot of playing in the snow and so she wondered if i would be interested in testing her her new mitten construction out so i am always in the market for new mittens because i tend to leave them in the car or if i lose them or just can't find uh can't find a pair to put on so the more the more pairs of mittens i have the better these are called the backlog mittens i don't know if i'm pronouncing that correctly but it is a mitten pattern that features a really interesting [Music] um thumb gusset as i mentioned of course now we're getting full on sun so you're getting a really blown out image there but uh so here is kind of you know what you're used to in terms of thumb gussets but the closing of the gusset has a bunch of decreases and this creates a really lovely little kind of pocket of fabric there that is super super comfortable for for your hand so i am a big fan of these um these new mittens they are designed to be knit in a a range of weights i think you can knit them from an errand weight to a dk mine i knit with uh actually i held a strand of dk yarn with a strand of silk mohair lace weight so i kind of got i would say heavy heavy worsted gauge probably and the yarn i used is viola organic merino dk so that's the thicker yarn and then in the color silver birch so it's got it's a warm gray with brown and flecks of blue you can see here really really pretty and i uh paired it with the mo hair i don't know the color it's it's rowan's kit rowan kitchel case in kind of a dove gray color but uh yeah this is a great pattern i really really enjoyed they're super easy to make of course very basic and uh albina is offering the pattern for it's it's not an expensive pattern it might even be um pay what you want but uh i think it's a really useful everyday pattern and i would love love to make more so the backlog mittens by albina lb hannitz [Music] [Music] a project that i had actually uh started in the fall but hadn't shown you i think i posted about it on my instagram uh stories or instagram grid is a shawl that i knit uh during the time when i was being when i was feeling very sensitive um when i had this full sensitivity and i it was in the fall things were you know the weather was cooling and i couldn't wear any of my wool shawls and that was really quite upsetting to me so i went into my stash and i found every scrap of superwash yarn that uh i could find leftovers from you know various projects and so i had quite a bit of beautiful yarn hand-dyed yarn from mostly from viola and so i gathered it all together and i knit a shawl this shawl here so i will show it to you it's a very simple um kind of wedge shape shawl and it is like very softly striped because again i was using a bunch of leftovers and the pattern i mute or that i used it's really beautiful it's a pattern called hidden gems it was designed by lindsay of the quarter past web or youtube journal knitting journal i've talked about lindsay before in my last episode i showed you a shawl that i met out of her hand spun that she sent me and when she sent me the hand spun she had included she had emailed me this shawl design saying you know if you want to knit that with uh that the hand spun with this pattern that i could uh i ended up not doing that because i i didn't think i had enough of the uh the yarn she sent me but i really love the shape of it so um so i did that for this one and it is it is really really lovely it's um it obviously is very soft and uh it was the perfect thing to work on when i couldn't work with any other yarn and i was really very very sad about it um it was great that i had all these gorgeous leftovers of um a very special yarns that i'd acquired from emily of viola yarns so there's a lot of just very soft toned speckled gentle colors and and i really enjoy wearing it it's it's very very cozy and the size of it is great because you can you know wear it as i just did as a scarf or just like wrap yourself up you know in in this beautiful like very in my case very soft stripes but of course you could make a more vibrantly um striped one and because of the way the shawl is shaped you get this kind of lovely sort of chevron shape so this shawl as i said is called the hidden gems shawl and lindsay uh very generously put it up on her um there is a link tree in her instagram profile so if you click on that you will there is a link to her pattern a download a pdf download and it's a free pattern she calls it a shawl recipe it is a very easy basic uh shawl construction but uh really really lovely it i love the size of it it just sits perfectly and um now lindsay is the most beautiful uh fiber artist she is really really skilled at blending different fibers so she creates bats that she sells for hand spinners and she's a hand spinner herself and the yarns that she makes out of her blended fibers are extremely beautiful so my my plans are to do a special blend i will use my i've got a blending board and i will be blending some charcoal gray fiber that i have with some jewel kind of turquoise and browns and navy blues and maybe a little bit of kind of wine and gold i want to make a very dark and moody version so i want to do a fiber blend and then make this shawl but using using that kind of fiber blend so i'm excited about making another one of these but in the meantime you know um days where i want the most kind of soft and cuddly hug this this shawl is a really great one and it is comforting because you know even if i can't wear my woolly wools i still have you know we still have beautiful materials at our disposition we're we're really lucky um as knitters now we just have such a great variety of yarns that we have access to so yeah so this beautiful hidden gems shawl has kind of a lot of lovely layers of meaning for me [Music] do [Music] [Music] next i for uh works in progress i have a i'm working on a color work hat this beautiful design here it's the mauna hat i hope that's how you pronounce it it means mountain in hawaiian it is designed by leila raven and it's part of a collection that is called aroha aloha series 1 manawahine and so yeah it's the first uh first installment of that collection and such a joy to work on i chose these colors because they really kind of reminded me of hawaii when i visited it must have been six or seven years now i i did a trip to hawaii and absolutely fell in love it was the one time i went to a warm place where i thought oh maybe i could live somewhere that doesn't have winter and snow because it's just the most beautiful place with the most beautiful people and uh just i don't know i just i really felt i just fell in love with the place and this kind of oceany sea glass color with then the the earthy sort of darker brownish gray which reminded me of a lot of the the lava rocks that you see in in hawaii i just yeah i just really really am enjoying it it's a very quick knit and the yarns i'm using are really old stash so this uh the bluish color is a yarn that was made by fleece artist i don't know it's definitely a discontinued yarn and i do remember that it had silk uh in it and you can kind of tell it's got a really look to it it doesn't have like silk sometimes has a smell that i really dislike it doesn't have that but it's a very very beautiful soft yarn and the brown i'm using is um i believe this is estelle andy and dk it's again another just kind of mystery ball of yarn in my stash but i just really love the way they look together and so now i'm basically almost done the last color repeat and then and then i'll be uh doing the shaping at the top yeah it's kind of a slouchier version of the hat and it's got a beautiful latvian braid which if you've never done a latvian braid it's really not hard it looks fancy but it's quite easy to do and of course leyla has great instructions on how to do it in her pattern so really enjoying that i also just got started like literally i actually had probably this much fabric done and ripped it all out because i was not happy with the density of the fabric but um what i'm knitting this long 260 stitch garter square here is for a pattern called the half and half triangles wrap i think is what it's called and it's a free pattern by pearl soho you might have seen it because it's actually making the rounds a lot of youtubers are knitting this right now uh they're it's been heavily featured on a great podcast the caddy jacks knits podcast um they've knit several versions in really beautiful beautiful um jewel tones and and then softer colors and it is a very generous um it's two triangles that are basically knit together and it's constructed you uh work on you cast on the full amount of stitches and then you're doing short rows to create the first triangle and then you are from those you're doing short rows with the other color to um you're basically doing [Music] how do i explain it you're on the full amount of stitches and then you're decreasing to the one triangle and then when you change color you're doing short rows to increase and do the second second half i think that's right anyway uh and so after seeing their gorgeous versions and then of course uh there's also amy palco of uh the meaningful stitch she also knit a really stunning version uh stacy from stress knits is knitting has actually planned on knitting a bunch of different ones and they just look so so cozy and i know the uh the ladies from the caddy jacks knits podcast are organizing a um a meetup for people who have knit the shawl at rhyme back next fall we'll see i'm crossing my fingers and toes really really hard that that will happen we'll see but um anyway it is uh it's kind of like just i really needed a 100 garter 100 like turn off your brain uh project to sort of just completely bliss out and zone out and uh the shawl calls for uh a pearl soho yarn that looks really amazing i think it's called the linen quill yarn and uh if i'm not mistaken it's a mix of it's mostly i think alpaca maybe merino and linen but i again wanted to go stash diving and i had this stunning stunning yarn by blue it is her noble base which is a 70 baby alpaca 20 silk and 10 cashmere so this yarn is absolutely decadent it's knit sorry it's naturally dyed with matter and i believe it's dyed on a on a gray base because you get a lot of kind of heathery gray areas so that'll be half of my triangle will be this color and then the other half will be this yarn which i also had in my stash although i did have to order an extra skein it is a very beautiful soft gray the color is called bed straw and the yarn is is meadow from the fiber company so it's a blend of baby llama silk linen and merino wool actually this yarn is probably a bit closer to the linen quill but these both are very very very similar in the weight and so i think they will they will work perfectly together now the reason why i ripped out what i had already knit is because i had gone up a needle size um i used to always have to go up a needle size because my gauge would always be slightly tighter than um than what you know what was called for but i don't know if i'm just relaxed lately but i find that i actually am getting gauge on on the sort of smaller the recommended needle size and i thought it really wouldn't matter i i kind of like i said i i went up to a size four millimeter needle and the pattern recommends three three and a half but once i'd gotten quite a bit of fabric i could see that it was very very loose i think that maybe the fiber content in the original yarn might have more body this is quite quite floppy and drapey which will be absolutely lovely but um i just i had to actually i had to rip out one row because i had made a mistake so i took it off the needles and i mean it was it was like one and a half times bigger than what it was supposed to be so i thought that's that's not gonna work so i just cast on again and uh on three and a half millimeter and so i will get going on that like i said this is like a hundred percent mindless project and i don't know how long it's going to take me but it doesn't matter because you know who wants a delicious dessert to be over really quickly right [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] another project that i sort of ripped out uh is something that i had talked about last time i recorded um i'm participating in the lost words making mal make long if you will and that make along is being hosted by sarah hunt of the fiber trek podcast and by the way uh sarah has recently opened up a patreon account and so if you like me are a huge fan of what she does i highly highly recommend that you consider going over to patreon and and supporting what she does she has some really exciting plans for the podcast and um i i've been really really inspired lately by everything that she's making i mean i'm always inspired by sarah but she's really on fire lately and she's been doing a lot of work with different video clips and uh different editing and i'm really really impressed with uh with her videos now she's not on youtube to find her uh you can go to her instagram account so fiber track or you can search for her blog so her her website is fiber track wordpress something like that i will put the link below and uh and you can see you don't have to be a patron to see her videos however uh if you want to support her you can also find her on patreon and so yeah she's not on on youtube her videos are hosted on her website through vimeo so um i would suggest subscribing to her newsletter and then you get an email notification that she has a new episode up and then you can go and watch it and speaking of notifications i just want to mention it because i often get messages about this saying oh i keep checking hoping there's a new episode and um for those of you who are kind of regular viewers i would highly recommend that you first subscribe to the channel so just hit the subscribe button but also hit the notifications button so it's a little bell icon and that way you will actually get a message when i upload a new episode which i know is not often enough trust me i i feel the pressure that i actually put on myself but you know what it is i record when i have a chance and that's just that's just the way it's gonna be but like i said if you wanna be notified on when i have finally uploaded a new episode uh go ahead and uh click subscribe and hit the notification button so yes so what what was i saying i was talking about sarah from the fiber track podcast she's hosting the last words make along the last words is a book by um robert mcfarlane and jackie morris i showed it off last time i wish i brought it to my little studio here to show it to you again but it's a very beautiful book that marries poetry with a gorgeous illustration and it's based on words that were eliminated from the children's oxford dictionary a couple of years ago and most of the words that were eliminated were words that relate to nature and so robert mcfarlane who's a really well-known uh nature writer um decided to do this project with jackie morris to kind of highlight these words and uh bring bring awareness to the fact that these are words worth uh knowing and worth cherishing because they are words like blue bell adder raven uh dandelion so they're they're all really important words if you are um you know if you are a human animal living in the natural world and so um so the project that sarah has started is that you choose a um a project a making project that relates to one of the words and i had uh settled on the word fern and i was knitting some socks um called something like a walk along among the ferns something like that and it's a beautiful sock pattern however they were turning out really small and it's funny because it's not the word i wanted to choose what i wanted to choose was the word raven because i love ravens um i just i don't know what it is i'm just really drawn to them we have some in our neighborhood and it's a relatively new phenomenon that we have them in in our area and there's just something really there's something really magical about hearing them they just have a very primordial sound to me like just a really i don't know i don't know what it is uh they're they're mysterious they're beautiful i had read a book years ago called the mind of the raven about how intelligent and and really fascinating ravens are and so that's the word i wanted to choose but i couldn't find a pattern that i really liked with the word raven in it and then i ordered some yarn from uh farm to cable yarns uh if you live in canada and you love rustic yarns the way i do you definitely want to check out her webshop dale has curated an amazing assortment of beautiful um you know rustic [Music] fiber like sort of breed specific yarns a lot of them from the uk but you know from from all over the world and i saw this yarn it's uh made by daughter of a shepherd and it's their heritage blend it's 75 percent haberdian 25 zwarbles or swartz plus i think is maybe how you pronounce it but it's a beautiful dark dark chocolate yarn that has uh it's a so uh hammer diem is a longer staple uh wool so it's got a lot of sheen to it i think you could probably see that um but a beautiful like it's like the most delicious dark chocolate that color is just stunning and um and i ordered a shawl quantity so there for each skein there's 400 meters so i ordered um two skeins and i just the dark color really really spoke to me so i started looking for a shawl pattern and i found a pattern that is called let me get it right here raven's eye view by denise bartels so i wasn't even looking for to use this yarn for that project i was just looking for a shawl pattern for this yarn but when i saw the the name of the shawl i'm like this is the project for the uh last words make along so i am knitting a beautiful lace shawl so it might be a little difficult for you to see but it's i'll put up a photo of a shawl right here it is just basically a forest of of evergreens so the the name of the shawl the raven's eye view you can just imagine a raven flying over a forest like a dark deep forest and that really spoke to me that was like yes that is the right project so i am really enjoying this and i think you know once it's blocked out it's just going to be stunning it's it's a very traditional kind of shetland looking triangular shawl and an all-over lace the design has a border you might have noticed in the picture the border is kind of a zigzag and there's little fish that are swimming as if as if there was a river around the around the forest and although i like that sort of in theory i like the story of that i don't love the fish motif i don't know i have i have other associations with with that shape i'll just leave it at that but but um so i might change out that little pattern to something else maybe just like a little diamond or or maybe a little kind of a little flower design but that should be pretty easy to do i'll just insert a different lace motif in there but so far i'm really enjoying this the yarn is is uh oh it's it's so beautiful it's silky it's rustic it's um it's really really beautiful beautiful stuff speaking of beautiful rustic farm yarn uh my friend elizabeth doherty of bluebee studios came out with a new pattern it's called the sean pullover i think that's how you pronounce it it's either sean or c on or cian it is um it's a pullover that has a slip stitch motif um she had used a similar motif and a hat design called the tiny boats hat which i had knit when it came out it's a really lovely hat pattern and when i saw this pullover i just fell in love with it and so i went looking for yarn i was hoping to have something in my stash but i didn't quite have the right yarn it calls for um used uh yarn which is a is a yarn company from the hebertes and um i didn't have that yarn and it was sold out at farm to cable yarns so i went looking for some other yarn and i came across this company here fiber and forge it is a farm in alberta or hmm it might be in pc it's grown in abbotsford is that bc oh dear my canadian geography anyway canadian out west i know that for sure and uh so they have they make yarn with individual sheep so this yarn comes from their sheep named harley and harley is a beautiful gotland sheep he's a he's a cross but um he's got a lot of got linen in him and so you get this lovely dark kind of charcoal but like a warm charcoal yarn and the yarn the sweater calls for a dk so this is a dk weight yarn however when i swatched for the for the sean the yarn that it's called for is a much lighter and loftier yarn this because uh gotland is a long staple yarn and the way this is spun and uh and processed it is quite a dense yarn and as advertised on their website it is not the softest yarn it's definitely that this one definitely has like a woolly feeling but it's beautiful like i am completely in love with this yarn and i have plans for this young but it's not going to be for the sean so i went ahead and ordered the used yarn i have actually i had a skein of eust um this one is the uh oh dear i can't remember the blend i will put it down [Music] something like that and it's um it's just uh it's a natural colored yarn that's got some gray in it and it's very very beautiful very rustic um and so i ordered the dark charcoal shine base which is what the pattern calls for so the color work will be done in this and the rest will be a dark charcoal gray and so that is kind of like my wool dreams are are about this pullover and i'm really looking forward to um to making that for for this yarn um i think i've got i'd like to make like an outer uh cardigan that is quite quite big i've got another yarn on my stash that's very very similar to this but a pale gray but it is also gotland and so i'm thinking of making something with a fairways design um i'm getting a low battery message on my phone here so i'm going to wrap up but um anyway so this yarn we will definitely revisit and i really recommend going on their website uh i think this is like their one blend that is like quite rustic and dense and sort of um more of an outerwear yarn there are other yarns i actually ordered two other skeins like two other colors because i wanted to try different things out for um for my swatch and they are like super soft they're rustic and they're you know clearly like a farm farm yarn but uh super lofty really lovely beautiful colors and and their website is stunning so really i highly encourage you to check fiber and forge out um but yeah so we'll once i've gotten my uh ust yarn from from great britain i will uh i will get going on that and i will um i will talk about it some more um i had some books to show you but i i think you know i am definitely running out of juice here maybe i'll just mention them quickly i got this book for my birthday the spinners book of fleece i haven't had a chance to really i've just thumbed through it it looks absolutely beautiful i want to get into a more kind of like up my game a little bit spinning wise because i kind of just rely on my sort of natural um like what my hands want to do and you know i don't put a lot of work into getting a specific result when i'm spinning but i would like to kind of work on that a little bit so so this book has a lot of great information on different sheep breeds and sort of different preparation methods and um it's just a great resource so looking forward to diving into that there's like little profiles of the different sheep breeds and it's a it's a really lovely lovely publication and then the other book i wanted to show is this book here by susan crawford it's called evolution and um it's a uh it's a um collection of patterns 13 wearable hand knits inspired by the vintage shetland project so if you don't know susan crawford is a designer who um here she is she's so beautiful um she has done a lot a lot of work and she has several books out about vintage knitting patterns and i've always really appreciated her work i don't really wear vintage um designs they're not necessarily my style although i love i love people who dress in the vintage style but but this book is a little bit different so it's more modern designs with a lot of sort of traditional vintage motifs and in particular this book is uh all kind of shetland inspired and i just really when i saw the projects that she previewed i i really thought they were all so beautiful and [Music] the other thing about this book which i just like the photography is spectacular the uh the styling and um like i really love these beautiful lace socks susan um had uh has gone through some really tough times and she's talked about this on her on her social media her website and so forth so i'm you know i'm just kind of talking about stuff that she's already talked about but she um she had a quite severe breast cancer and she had a double mastectomy and decided to um to model the designs herself as she is and she said it was a really difficult decision she felt very um it was hard for her at first to kind of show herself in her new in her new body but um but that it was important to her to um to present herself as she is because we are more than just you know certain features that that we may or may not have and uh i i really first of all i think she is a gorgeous woman i think she looks amazing in her designs and i really and and sort of the name evolution is kind of alludes to that her evolution and her changes as a woman and um i really very much appreciate her um her willingness to show herself the way she is i think that it's something as i get older i become more and more uh comfortable it doesn't always um it's not always perfect but comfortable with the way my body is evolving and the way the changes that i'm seeing as i age and i think that embracing those changes and and valuing them in ourselves and in other people is really the healthiest way forward if we're just constantly trying to fit in to kind of a societal model of what's ideal even the people who chrono code have those ideal features are it's not even they have have issues and see all the things that are wrong with them you know it's it's an ideal that is impossible to attain especially you know when you're looking at pictures that are highly edited highly filtered or bodies that are frankly have been sort of forced into a certain aesthetic um you know that is not quote unquote sort of easy to attain let's say um i don't know anyway i i just i really appreciate people who are fully themselves and show who they are and embrace who they are and that's really something that i um i work towards and i i strive for because once you are you know accepting and loving of who you are in the way that you would be with other people um then it just makes life so much easier and it's so much easier when you dress for who you are now and not who you might be um i don't have time for that anymore and uh so anyway for that but also just because it is a beautiful knitting design book with tons of gorgeous patterns that i absolutely want in it i recommend this gorgeous volume well that's gonna be it for me the sun has definitely disappeared which honestly for recording is better but uh i am going to uh lose the power on my phone so i will say uh so long for now and uh hope that all of you are keeping safe and staying healthy and i hope that you are also finding ways of being fully you and comfortable in who you are and that you've got lots of beautiful and comforting knitting to uh to bring you some some cozy moments anyway i look forward to talking to you again take care [Music] bye [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: the gentle knitter

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Length: 76min 54sec (4614 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021