The ryoknits knitting podcast: Episode 30

[Music] hello beautiful people and welcome to the rio knits podcast my name is rhiannon i live in portland oregon for the time being and i am an intermediate knitter so um i will talk later in this episode too about specifically um certain knitting challenges that have eluded for me for a long time so let's hop right into this episode i've got a lot of things to share with you and i normally stick to it every two week schedule but i skipped a week last weekend because i just wasn't feeling it and i also wanted to have a little more content for you and i knew that just one more week would really um make that happen and then it ended up being kind of more of a bumper crop than i expected in that week so um yeah let's jump right in um in this episode i'm going to share with you um what i'm wearing finished objects half finished objects some fails works in progress acquisitions what i'm reading what i'm watching you know because we all like to be entertained while we're knitting and just some other kind of um check-in stuff so without further ado let's talk about what i'm wearing this is the felix by amy christopher's or perhaps christopher's i have heard it both ways i've not heard it from amy herself um but um this is not what you'd expect of felix to look like and that's because i knit this in row and frost which is a blend of alpaca and viscose it's a discontinued yarn now but you can still find a lot of it if you are looking at people's d stash pages on ravelry um you can you can see the um the distinctive pattern that is sort of the i would say definitive feature of this knit however this is what happens when you knit something with a yarn that has no memory um and the the neckline on this is fairly wide anyway however if it was wool as the designer intended it would really be up here you know it would it would be um wide but nowhere near off the shoulder however i ended up with a very drapey off the shoulder top and i'm okay with it um i don't wear it a lot because it doesn't it doesn't go with a lot of things in my wardrobe but it is um one that i find i like in certain weather around the house um unlike wool it it does get a bit sweaty i feel like when i'm wearing wool if i get overheated i feel hot but not sweaty and i don't know if it's because it's absorbing it or um you know just wool has a natural breathability if you think about it it's off of an animal so because this has um not just alpaca but also man-made materials i think it doesn't breathe as well so um i might change later in the show but i wanted to wear it because i think it's worth seeing that you know it is something that i wear sometimes um and you know it was an experiment for me and i'm all about that i'm in the learning phase of my knitting journey and still trying out different kinds of yarns i didn't spend a lot of money on this so i don't feel bad that it didn't turn out you know as something i can wear all the time and the the more sweaters i knit the more i find that um you know maybe 50 of the sweaters i knit become something that i wear a lot and then 50 either i don't like them at all or um you know they're they're like um a total fail or there's something that they're okay but only in special circumstances or i'll only wear them around the house or something like that um so you know anyways if you want to know more about this and my journey knitting it um episode 9 which is actually from june of last year um hard to believe it's been a year since i knit this but also believable has i have a lot more information and i probably finished it in episode 10 which i can double check um so yeah so that's what i'm wearing as for finished objects i have two finished objects i'm really excited to share these with you one you've never seen before so let's talk about that this is my estuary skirt maybe i should put it here this is the estuary skirt by so liberated the pattern is um a fairly straightforward um skirt with buttons down the front you can do a faux button band or you can do a real button band um the the funny thing is as i wondered why would you want a real button band and then it says in the pattern if your hips are a lot wider than your waist over time pulling on that elastic to get it up over your hips will strain the elastic so having buttons and being able to button up your skirt right maybe unbutton a few buttons before you put it on is really useful my hips are not much i mean they're they're i mean you know that's not an issue for me is what i'm trying to say um i feel like i have plenty of ease i haven't clipped all the threads yet but um i made this skirt and i'm really darn proud of it i i opted for the um the pockets that are in the seams because i just don't love big patch pockets i think they're really cute but i like to load my pockets up and as much as i enjoy patch pockets from the perspective of when i'm walking i'm never going to smack my hand into my keys or my phone or something that's you know swinging back and forth on the side of my body in that pocket um i do feel like they get baggy and and even with interfacing on the pocket panel i feel like they're still i don't know i i suppose if if i was doing a heavier fabric i would do that but anyways um i want to hold this up and show you this pattern surprised me with how much fabric it uses and that's because you are not cutting a straight panel and then gathering it you're actually cutting you are gathering but you are also cutting it to where it's wider at the bottom so you've got many pieces now kind of the probably most surprising thing about this garment is the color i do not look good in yellow well in this lighting it's not so bad but in real life i feel like yellow makes me look really washed out and kind of sickly i have a lot of yellow tones in my skin and not in a good way to wear yellows look good i know some people have more of an olive complexion and yellow looks amazing on them and i am not one of them you'll just have to take my word on it because the lighting here is really not showing but i mean i think you can kind of see right like i i just look a little more almost like gray or putty like um color so i don't wear yellow and i love this shade of yellow this kind of honey mustard is how i think of it i also really like honey mustard um but i love this color and so i thought if i do a skirt then it won't be anywhere near my face and so you will see my pale putty colored legs poking out of the bottom but i don't think anyone's paying that much attention so um i went ahead and went with this fabric it is just a quilting cotton and i say just because i know that there's a almost like a stigma in the sewing community against using quilting cottons for garments but i actually find it's incredibly comfortable fabric especially in a skirt you know it's it's really um fabric that is pleasant to wear um it feels really good next to skin it's lightweight i mean there's there's a variety of weights of quilting cotton but in this case it's it's lightweight enough that i feel like it maintains the movement and the swish and everything of the skirt but it's also sturdy enough to to hold up to you know this waistband and and so on so again i didn't do the um authentic button band but what i did do that might be visible is i actually stitched um multiple rows down here to really secure um this button band and hold that fabric flat so i think the pattern only calls for like maybe an edge stitch but i just went ahead and made those bands really really secure and flat i got these buttons at pearl fiber arts if you are looking for buttons and you're in downtown or pearl districts or northwest portland i highly recommend checking out pearl fiber arts it's not a sewing store it's a knitting store and she has a lot of great like souvenir yarns i think that's sort of her specialty but she has an amazing button selection and i was looking for buttons didn't see anything at the fabric store and then i thought i better go check pearl fiber arts and sure enough i found these buttons that i think just are absolutely perfect you know they're they're just um it's it's subtle enough that the buttons don't become the feature which i think is important with a print you know i didn't want anything that was going to like take away from that so skirt done maybe i will insert footage of me wearing it i don't know my next finished object is this pair of socks now i have been on a sock knitting journey this is like my this is my third pair of socks that i've knit completely on my own i have knit two pairs completely on my own and then i've knit one where i actually just knit the toes heels and cuffs on a tube that was machine knit so um so i guess you know this is maybe the fourth pair of socks that i have made but i wanted to just sort of try knitting a sock tube and adding uh toes heels and cuffs because i was doing the tube sort of i started with um i started with the cuff and i just put in uh you know like a lifeline for the heels and then i went ahead and finished it with the toe i took the chart from the pattern nummy which is a sock pattern i've knit from before and wheeled it with again it's a really cute sock pattern that gives you just some fun texture and i think it showcases a yarn that's variegated or a yarn that is um you know speckled or really any kind of yarn is gonna look good with this pattern because the pattern is not overly obtrusive i guess um yeah it it's nice and subtle there's actually two different patterns that you get so there's the you me daytime because it um the word you mimi is means dreaming so it's like a daydream and then a um actual nighttime dream so this is the night this is the chart from the night and as you can see i actually didn't do it all the way down so in the original sock pattern you were doing the chart around all the way around and then on the foot you're doing it on the top half i just did that a little bit there um and i did lengthen the cuff i wanted little ankle socks but i thought okay a longer cuff will be better um and i knit these in candy skeins luscious fingering in the colorway blue corn chip this color is amazing i think i need a sweater in it it's so fantastic i can't even it's like everything i want in a yarn i'll just say that so my feet are gonna be the luckiest feet in the world um i'm gonna be putting these on my feet and it's going to be awesome um the other thing is these sock blockers actually were really great for um for this now i've heard a lot of people say sock blockers are great for just showing off the stock you know if you have a store display or if you're doing a video like this or taking a photo um but i found that when i did the after thought heel it was a little weird and so actually putting it on the blockers helped that sort of pull out and my my heels don't exactly match because i was experimenting with different um stitch counts and you know when do i um bind off and all of that so you can see one of them i think has stretch has more stretch to it and then the other one i knitted almost all the way to the end um but probably those words don't make sense but anyways um one of these is rounder and one is more square is really what it what it looks like but when they're on the blockers i think that it it just pulls it into the appropriate shape so i'm very happy with that okay let's talk about half-finished objects and fails so first i'll talk about my failures because i think it's really important to acknowledge that throughout your knitting and making journey you are going to have failures so the first thing is i was trying to sew myself a pair of pajama shorts um and i took this fabric and i had this pattern that i picked up at scrap which is our local creative reuse store and scrap had a bunch of old sewing patterns for like 25 cents each and i bought like four of them one was a pajama pants and shorts um you know you can make the pants or the shorts kind of pattern it doesn't have the instructions with it and i think if you were a good sewist you wouldn't need them but if you're me you need them so i won't be using that pattern after all what i did is i had this really cute fabric that's got like origami butterflies on it and i wanted a pair of pajama shorts um so i laid out this pattern piece that you're supposed to cut out like a left and right side of and i laid it out and i cut it you know let's say i laid it like this and i cut it out then i thought okay so for the other piece you want it going the other way so i laid it like this and i cut that out if you sew you know what i did wrong i should have flipped the fabric over and it wouldn't matter if it's this way or that way right that only changes the directions of the butterflies it doesn't actually solve the problem that i have two left sides of a pair of shorts so now i have this fabric which there's not enough to fix that um i have to figure out how to make uh two left sides of pajama shorts into something else and it's probably going to end up as squares in a quilt because i really cut a shape that is going to be hard to repurpose so um lesson learned if you are new to sewing don't try to get away with cutting corners don't try to get away with you know buying a pattern that um was donated from someone's stash i mean if it's not complete it you're gonna need all of it so unless you're just smarter and more intuitive at it than me i'm not intuitive at sewing i and it's kind of funny because i sometimes feel bad about that i have been sewing i've known how to operate a sewing machine i've known how to stitch by hand since i was a child and it still is way harder for me i've been knitting for five years and it's knitting has been a lot easier for me i think knitting is more forgiving for sure because you can rip something out whereas with sewing once you cut it it's in that shape right um so it has to become something else right it has to become something smaller and there's no ripping out and fixing it so um yeah that was a big fail failure number two i had been watching knit live the podcast which is really good if you don't watch it you're wasting your life susan has a really bold color sense and i love that i love the way she uses color i love that she's unapologetic about having color on color and on color i think a lot of us maybe are made to feel like um we shouldn't have loud clothing we shouldn't have bold clothing or if we have a bold statement it should be you know i'm wearing entirely black and then i have a bright red scarf or something um you know like that pop of color you always hear people talk about the pop of color well i love that susan is calling on that and just wearing all the colors right i mean all of her all of her outfits that she puts together are really nice and coordinated they make sense they look great on her um and you know i think that we need more fashion icons who are unafraid of using lots of color and um yeah i was feeling really inspired however i'm not susan so i had this really great idea that i was gonna knit the um it's the mount pleasant tea by pip and pin um which she has done and is now doing a second one of and i had this brilliant idea that i was going to knit it with the colors of the mexican flag along the bottom because the um the lace detail at the bottom reminds me of um papel picado right like the cut paper um so i started doing that um and i started with this really pretty variegated uh green yarn it's a mini that i had in my stash and then i went with um this is the host coast in the colorway ecru and then i had some uh other cotton wool blend yarn in red and i did the final um i did the final uh lace piece lace chart whatever in that ripped that out and was like no that doesn't work because it's such a flat color against this really variegated speckly green so i had a tiny tiny bit of this red yarn that's tonal and it's more of a pink red um i had a tiny bit of that left from my moving forward wrap scarf that i made so i made it work right and it didn't quite finish out the lace chart but it was close enough so then i started knitting the body um because in this pattern you're doing the bottom lace chart and then you're knitting bottom up um i just don't like it and i don't think i will ever wear something like this i mean i love mexico i love being mexican i am very proud of it i just don't think wearing a mexican flag top is for me it's not my style um i really struggle with the fact that i love red white and green and they are associated with christmas it also for whatever reason in this was really making me think of italy those are the colors of the italian flags so it wasn't even like obvious what it's supposed to be right um and i don't like the way this whole coast is knitting up at this gauge it's way too it looks like a net like i'm going to throw it in the water and catch a fish it is not it is not nice at that gauge i think whole coast ecru is much better held double the way i did with my tea top so yeah this is a total knitting fail um i yeah it just you know when you're so inspired by somebody that you forget that you're not that person and you forget that it's okay to have a different style and also to admire someone's style who's different than you without trying to emulate it yeah don't forget that um just think about it um i do think that i want to knit the mount pleasant eventually i do think that i will have to um really work myself up to doing something bottom-up because i don't love bottom-up sweaters i just i have way too much anxiety about fit and i felt like as soon as i started knitting this i started having all kinds of anxiety it was stressing me out and i think that's just how i feel with things that are bottom-up i have no faith in in you know in that to work out i have no faith that i can trust myself to know that the length from the underarm is appropriate right i really need to do things top-down and i really need to stop trying to be somebody else so um yeah sorry not gonna wear that mexican flag but if you needed an idea and you wanted to wear a mexican flag or an italian flag hey any flag if you just want to rep your country's colors or your um you know another country's colors have at it haas like it's yours half finish objects i have these skeins of yarn that i have dyed this is nitpick stroll which is a classic 80 20 sock yarn and i dyed this with kool-aid so i used multiple colors and blended them and applied them different ways so i would get this really multi-tone variegated kind of yarn um it is not as purple as i wanted it to be i guess i wanted more of this like purpley color and less of the reddish purple color but um i wonder if you can see the color the color just doesn't show well on the screen and i'm sorry about that but maybe i'll throw in a photo but i so i dyed this one it didn't come out exactly as i hoped but it's pretty good um i am going to make some socks out of this probably and i also dyed this one which came out exactly the way i wanted it to so um this one i was trying to emulate to a certain degree this this yarn from candy skein so this is um from candy skein yarns in astoria oregon it is acid dyed it's got this cool speckles and everything and so i was trying i was thinking i want to do something like that but with a little more of a grainy blue um and not as much purple so i really think i got there i think i got exactly what i wanted um with this one and i'm really super proud of it because um it's uh you know it's very it's very imprecise especially when you're just starting out you know you're trying to figure out how to dye something and you know there's a lot of different tutorials online a lot of them say kind of a different way to do it i don't think i don't think i will um continue dying with kool-aid all the time um but i do really like how this color came out so let me try to hold it all up at once yeah and just again side-by-side comparison this is what i was kind of emulating and i think i did pretty good right um if you saw this in real life again with the lighting you would see this is a lot more green here than blue um yeah this one's definitely more blue purple and this one's more blue green so um yeah okay there's that one and then because i had used some whole super soft um to tie the skeins like to add more ties to the skeins just so that they would you know really keep their shape in the dye pot i noticed that the whole super soft picked up color like that like it really picked up the color um and so i just took some off of the cone that i had um i have a whole cone well maybe half a cone at this point of the bleached white whole super soft and i just stuck it in the leftover dye from the purple yarn and i just like got this amazing lavender color which you cannot see at all but it is a very very nice subtle variegated lavender and i feel like this i can do with kool-aid like this this holst it just sucked up the color um it it makes a really nice pastel color and i'll probably work this into a sweater or something because it's really really lovely um and yeah now i have a 50 gram skein of this too so i am gonna have to do a costume change it's hot as okay well since i had to do a costume change i thought i'll show you that this is a shirt i recently mended um yeah you probably can't even see it but there was a little spot over here oh over here and you can probably see right there there's a slight irregularity um i have loved this shirt since day one and i had this little like um just at the seam it came apart and i like left it for a long time and just let the shirt languish in my closet um and and didn't wear it or occasionally wore it with a cardigan so that nobody would know and i finally mended it so yay me um i followed through okay um let's talk about works in progress so last time i showed you that i was knitting a sock tube i think it's just about an inch longer now i am actually going to be seeing my friend for lunch today and so i'm going to make him try this on and then i will know if i am you know barking up the wrong tree in terms of sizing but i'm really excited to confirm that it's the correct size because it's hard to knit socks for somebody else i'm realizing um yeah unless they know about it so i think i'm going to ruin the surprise but oh well um the next thing i wanted to show you is just that i've made a lot of progress on my botanic shawl so this is a stephen west pattern it is my first ever stephen west pattern um and i totally get why people love steven west i mean i just haven't ever found something that i really wanted to make i'm using all kinds of scraps and leftovers in this because it is designed to pair a solid color yarn with a self striping yarn so it's self striping because i made it so so i'm just using up a lot of leftovers and i think it looks really fantastic i of course blue is my favorite color so i love this section that has kind of some more bluey green but it's really fun to watch it grow and my wife is really loving it which is great because i i put all these colors together and i was like i don't know if i would wear these i don't know it might just be like a household shawl that we all just you know like a throw blanket everyone can use it um even the cat um and actually they really like it so i don't know but um yeah i made some progress on that it's feeling good this bag i'll just show you i had to put it in here because it has botanical theme to it this is a project bag of my own making and i also wanted to try out this pattern that a lot of people are doing because caddy jacks has a knit along for the half and half triangles wrap so i thought okay it's a big rectangle right but it's a unique construction on the bias so i'm actually making a half and half cat blanket and you can see there's there's where i ended one half and started the other right like you see that strong line um so this is a free pattern from pearl soho and i'm not using their yarn because i had been gifted this 100 alpaca which i think is like this it's the softest thing in the world i think it's baby alpaca but i had gone to an event with puddle puddletown knitters guild and there was someone there who was a spinner who i guess just had made so much of this and so the sale it was a de-stash sale event and it was almost over and um you know she just was like oh please god this is my last gain please take it and i was like i'm not gonna say no right i mean i i uh i didn't need it and i didn't know what i would use it for but now i'm making a blanket for my cat out of it and it is like it is just buttery soft i mean it is so good this is gonna be one lucky little kitty um but i'm glad that i'm able to use it up and also this is like much nicer yarn than i would ever just well i don't know um if it hadn't been free i don't know if i would one obtain this as and i don't know what it's for and then two also make it for the cat um yeah but she's pretty spoiled so who knows i've let her lay on all kinds of things and and now whenever i have something on the blocking mats drying i have to put those mats up on like a drying rack or on my desk or something because it is an invitation right um the cat will just look at it and go that must be for me um so anyway so yeah i do really enjoy this pattern i agree it's it's really fun to to do this pattern in front of the tv or um you know when you're just being you know maybe social knitting when you don't want to have to pay close attention um it's really great for that so yeah half and half triangles cat blanket um and i thought about doing you know a true half and half and having something of a different color or a different texture but i had so much of this left over i thought i should just finish it up because then what am i going to do with the second half make another half wrap cat blanket and i was going to pair it also with this holst tides which is a wool silk blend but the colors are almost exactly the same so i don't even think you would see the difference you would only feel the difference and because cats don't have words to say whether or not they enjoy contrasting you know um like a contrast fabric i'm gonna just give her a one fabric thing okay i have two more i think i have two more works in progress to share with you and yeah if it seems like i have a lot it's because i do i have been just um in the last week i cast on two things and i i sort of knew um again the reason i delayed recording last weekend is because last weekend i was finishing up my socks and i thought well if i wait one more week i will have finished these socks and my goal right now with socks is that as soon as i finish a pair i'm going to cast on another pair so that i always have something little and portable to work on in case i'm um you know waiting for to pick up food or um you know waiting in the car for any reason um or you know someday i will probably be riding a street car or a bus again so you know just having um having like a small portable project and i like socks you know and i i feel like you know it's the best way for me to get good at knitting socks is to just keep knitting socks always be working on some socks so i um cast on another pair of socks and i made this little sock project bag and i freaking love it i just have to say i what i did is i had cut out these um rectangles to make masks last year and then i made way too many masks and i got kind of tired of making masks so i just repurposed it and made a little sock bag and i actually really love this little sock bag so um yeah let's talk about this sock so i'm using the pattern vanilla latte socks by virginia let's see bye oh boy it's not on my notes um okay well the pattern is vanilla latte socks it will be in the show notes um which is just down in the description box um i've decided to just keep doing the show notes because i think they're valuable um so here they are so far this yarn it was a gift from a friend the same friend who gave me the swift gave me some yarn because she used to be a knitter and is no longer a knitter and i i don't understand why people don't want to knit forever but i do understand quitting a craft because i've done a lot of crafts and then not stayed excited about them so this yarn is a discontinued yarn but it is really pretty it's called um santa fe by aslan trends yarn and the colorway is carnival um it's spelled with an a at the end um so not carnival but like or i mean car naval car car naval that's what it looks like um you know so i'm thinking carnival right like the holiday so it's got these really beautiful purples pinks yellows it's got a really subtle kind of gray green in there which kind of to me throws off the colorway but i think um when you're knitting it up it all together it looks pretty good um i wish the lighting was better so you could see this better so i'm going to make these in my size and then give them to my mother-in-law i'm pretty sure that we have the same size foot exactly um and so yeah i started knitting them and then i thought these are really nice and squishy but i don't i don't love this colorway actually and it's just that gray green that's kind of throwing it for me everything else is fantastic but she loves purples and pinks and that sort of thing and i think she will like this so um yeah and also like they're just socks i don't have to make every pair of socks for myself in a color i love but i can so why not right um yeah there you go so that's those socks um and the next thing that i'm very excited to share with you so excited also in a project bag that i made out of leftovers it's that same fabric but um this is uh like a chambray i love this bag it's my favorite bag now which is so funny because it's very simple and plain but um i am knitting the ultra yolk cardigan by skender knits and i cannot even believe that this is coming out of my hands this gorgeous color work is coming out of my hands i want to talk about this for a minute i i started knitting lace right away my first ever knitting project was lace right i was doing yarn overs i was um doing like a drop stitch effect i was i was just like i learned how to knit i learned how to purl and then i immediately learned how to do those other things because i was like okay this is what knitting is right i never had the phase of knitting like a long garter stitch a scarf or a a pot holder or whatever i just dove right into knitting lace it was very simple lace but then my second project was like a horseshoe lace scarf which is arguably a little more complicated now i think lace is easy because it's repetitious because you have usually a chart as well as written instructions um and i never had a hard time reading a lace chart i think the first time i saw one i was a little like oh how do i do this and then i just figured it out um and i i don't remember ever feeling intimidated by lace i don't remember ever feeling intimidated by textured knits of any sort um when i was kind of new to knitting i saw this pattern that was for an ombre hat and i decided to make an ombre cowl so i just took the same pattern and instead of decreasing the stitches i just knit a straight up um you know uh cow what do you call it um a tube you know what's that word for something that is around a cylinder thank you thank you brain for finally kicking in um i and and i did the ombre with um where it fades from one color to the other and you are doing color work in that however i didn't know about going up a needle size for your color work so the cowl kind of had a um a waist to it you know it was a little thinner in the middle or less the circumference in the middle was smaller and after that i never did any color work and then when i started watching podcasts and and interviews with people who are color work experts they had so many rules about how you're supposed to hold the yarn how you're supposed to tension the yarn making sure you get the right gauge and it just became to me like this mountain of things that i had to be able to be great at before i could even attempt color work um so i'm here to tell you if there's something in your knitting that you feel you can't do right that you want to try but you can't do um just try it just do it and do it the way that you do it right the way that you knit is the right way to knit if you like the results you're getting go with it um so so all of that to say sort of two things that made me feel like i could do this one is i'm i'm a fan of gigi made it um gay who is uh you know better known as the iconic orange lady or gigi made it um she had a big um bugabear kind of thing about um doing color work too and she just did it you know she just did it one day and was like you know what i can do this i need to stop telling myself i can't do things because when you say you can't do it then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy but if you say you can do it then you just do it and it that also is a self-fulfilling prophecy the other thing and apparently i don't know why i needed this permission but i did so thank you ellie i've scanned your knits on one episode she was talking about the proper way to do stranded color work and why um she's not a fan of that sort of rhetoric right that there's a correct way to do it and that this is how a real scandinavian person does it and she said a lot of people in norway do just drop the strand they're working with pick up the other strand and and and knit the color work right and so hearing that was like a light bulb moment for me where i thought wow all this time i thought that only an idiot would do that and actually it turns out that many knitters around the world are doing that all the time getting the results that they love getting beautiful beautiful color work i mean this okay this this is awesome and i'm not gonna edit that out this is awesome this looks like a real knitter is knitting this right and i am a real knitter and i just think i just had this for so long this idea that i couldn't do this because of the way i hold my yarn because i don't knit continental because i don't tension my yarn a certain way now i can hold the yarn in my left hand but it is a dramatically different tension because it's a different method of tensioning yarn i'm not great at using these little fingers to to assist with tensioning yarn so when i have yarn that's going over a finger it is a lot harder for me to tension it now i think i've talked before about having nerve issues with these these fingers so i'm not going to go so far as to say i have like a disability but there's definitely i have a really hard time making these fingers grip a thin strand of yarn um they just don't want to they don't want to do that and so when i'm holding yarn i'm almost always let's see if i can show you what i do um i i'm i may hold it like this but then i'm actually using my whole hand to my whole arm kind of pivoting from the elbow sometimes from the wrist which isn't as good but i am using my whole arm to move that yarn around so this hand moves a lot this one tends to be pretty stationary and holding things in place and one of the things that i do with this hand too is i keep my stitches on the needle so i'm just holding that second to last stitch so the first one is close to the edge and so i have knit all of this without doing any kind of proper you know vip continental whatever technique i've just been dropping one strand and lifting the other strand and i tension the yarn between um the finger between the fingers that are holding it and the needle itself so i'm not tensioning it down here i'm tensioning it up here and it works and i love the results i get and it turns out with color work it works here too okay so i mean i don't know if you can tell but i'm so proud of myself with this because this i think is is like so amazing this is the ultra yolk cardigan by scandionites this is amazing i'm knitting it in holst super soft this top color is elderberry the contrast color is bleached white i don't know if it's actually bleached i suspect not i think it's just very white yarn um like i don't think they use actual bleach on it i'd be surprised um but yeah i am getting it i'm getting a good gauge um i think in some places the gauge is a little off i think that will block out um i am enjoying the results i'm getting i'm gonna have a sweater i love and this has a stick so this is gonna be my first time doing a steak i finally figured out that on all the color work rows if i just keep the colors the same you know go purple white purple white purple on that stick then i will have a nice line to cut right it will be really obvious where to cut so um i was trying other things before where it was like all in one color or i was trying to do like holding both strands together just to just to carry them across um and then i read the instructions and i realized that i'm supposed to be doing this so um yeah i i'm just so excited about this i mean i can't say enough and i had swatched for this when i was recovering from surgery and felt like the swatch came out pretty good and so i didn't have to um swatch again when i started doing it i was like okay it's going to be fine i did go up a needle size on the color work um and i went down a needle size on the rib from what was suggested but something i really like about the way that ellie's patterns are written is that it doesn't say just like the needle size it says specifically use the size needle that gets you gauge for the main needle size and then go one millimeter down for the ribbing so that's what i did um i got the gauge i wanted i went one millimeter down for the ribbing and yeah and i'm really happy and also i didn't have to do a tubular cast on i just cast on and it looks fine it's fine you know it's fine you do whatever cast on you want um the last few things like sweaters i've done have had like a tubular cast on or something and it's so much work and it's really it's it's especially hard because i think when you first start when you're casting on you're like excited and raring to go and then you're doing this like fiddly process so um i liked that i could just cast on and then do some short rows and whatever you know and then be really you know diving into the chart pretty soon so again i can't stop raving about this it looks like real color work by a real knitter because it is um but it is so pretty and i love love love love these colors i love this fabric that it's making i love the texture of this yarn it's just a little toothy but it's so soft like you can wad this whole thing and fit it in your fist like it's just so soft and light i also really love that i think i'm doing pretty good on the floats too they're looking very neat and orderly to me um so i feel like i'm doing pretty good with that there's nothing um you know too wild and crazy happening on the reverse side so yeah this is the whip that i've been sort of um most excited about i've been um just really enjoying this process so one more thing before i go on to acquisitions i i had meant to show this before and i don't know if i did and i'm way too lazy to go back and review all my videos so um i wanted to just share because i'm using a journal to document my knits now um all my projects i'll show you an example it looks like this it's just a regular journal regular pages but i made this little printable for myself i guess that has you know the pattern the yarn i'm using the size that i'm making the needles who it's for and i basically just copied what ravelry has on their project pages and made this little printable which then i print a bunch of them cut it out and then i just paste it in so i don't have to write all that stuff um you know i don't have to remember to document all that stuff it's sort of like a prompt and then underneath i just have my notes on you know how it's going i haven't been putting pictures in here and i don't think i'm going to i do really like sticking stickers in here um i got some stickers from from uh m to the third and so you know there's like this fun little black cat which i thought was perfect for the tea because i was making a black and white shirt this is another sticker that i just had more cats people i think it's perfect this is for miso's uh blanket um you know uh i i do have fun kind of you know picking the stickers out but anyways i just wanted to say if you want this rather than having to recreate it yourself you want to save a step just comment below and i will happily share that pdf file with you it is super simple to make your own if you want to you know um i don't expect you to need the one i made but like it would just save you a step i am still not buying yarn i i mentioned in my last episode i'm on a yarn buying break until my birthday and i invited anyone who feels like they have enough stash to keep themselves occupied for a while to join me on this you know pick a date in the future maybe it's your birthday maybe it's christmas maybe it's some other event where you think you might want to buy yarn um you know maybe it's a fiber festival and just say i'm not gonna buy anything from now until then um but i'm still buying other things of course so i bought some stitch markers and i wanted to show you not quite an unboxing but i wanted you to see the beautiful way that this um gets shipped so um this is from la serena tejera which i've talked about and hyped up before because it is it is this this company makes me feel seen in in ways that i didn't anticipate um so here are my stitch markers in this beautiful box and then the um mermaid washi tape which i really love um i also got sent a sticker that i didn't order but it just came with it it's adorable it's a queen bee with lots of yarn isn't that great i love it um yeah let's just like i don't know just made my heart sing so got this little sticker um and then inside this cutely packaged box let me open this are the most incredible stitch markers i'm going to take these out of the bag so that you see just how fantastic these are so i did not know about oaxacan black pottery before mona who is the genius behind this company introduced me to this oaxacan black pottery but it is a it is a um traditional form of pottery from mexico i'm more familiar with the red clay pottery because that's i'm from or my family's from jalisco um so but in oaxaca there's a black clay pottery tradition and let me just show you i don't i can't get it to focus well but there is here is a moon here is a flower and here is a little bird now the shape of this bird is immediately recognizable to me this is a bracelet that um my dad got me in mexico when i was maybe 10 years old right this is a bracelet from my childhood um this little bird shape um motif whatever is really common in mexican textiles in um you know uh pottery in in just all kinds of uh handcrafts um handmade things and historical things so it's it's a it's a shape it's a um these stitch markers have cultural resonance is what i'm trying to say they're so beautiful they're so beautiful and i am so excited about this and the thing that just gets me i mean you can't see all the detail on here so um the thing that just gets me is that this is polymer clay but this is like polymer clay to the i've tried to make things with polymer clay and it's hard for me to make a very simple thing um the fact that this is made with detail okay so what you what you can't see the detail is that every one of these has layers of texture right there's there's like texture to the flower petals to the center this little bird has um texture on it the the moon has like little flowers on it and leaves and i mean it's just like it's so pretty and it and it's just amazing i i just i don't know i i just wanted to share that with you um i think um you know it's more than just stitch markers like i have a lot of stitch markers that are pretty or that are cute or whatever but there's just something so beautiful about seeing your your culture and seeing your heritage you know in in art and then also to have it be in the kind of like everyday art right the stuff that you engage with on a daily basis versus in a gallery or at a museum right um just to have it be something that it's a it's a functional object in your home and in your life but it's also um you know just really beautiful and the talent and the creativity that goes into making this is like off the charts so um yeah that's pretty much my whole i just i just felt like i have to say that because every time she has a new product i think okay i'm not gonna buy more stuff i don't need more stuff i don't need another stitch marker and then she just knocks it out of the park so um yeah i i love these i think they are so cool and now i'm obsessed with wahawkin black pottery like i just want to look at it all the time on the internet and just google searching it and i'm like okay i wonder if i could like buy something that you know obviously is um going to be like a replica of a more historic piece but you know it is one of those things too that it's a living tradition so there's there's like old pottery but there's also like people making it today right there are still artisans that make this pottery um it's not just something you know traditional um it's like tequila right there are people making tequila today and it's and it's very specific to a place and it's a very specific set of artisans that are making it but um it's a modern product too so anyways that the other thing i bought was a whole bunch of books so i'm gonna share more about books if you're not into books um the next five minutes or so are going to be about books so [Music] whatever um so the first book i bought um and i'll also mention what i'm reading so i bought vanishing fleece at the very beginning of the pandemic however i ordered the paperback not knowing the paperback hadn't come out yet so it finally made its way to the bookstore and then i kept forgetting to pick it up so i had checked out the audiobook or or the um the ebook from the library was reading it on my kindle and then i didn't get to finish before i had to return it last year so now i have my actual paperback copy so happy and i'm reading it and it's so much fun and i've had forgotten a lot of stuff you know because there's a lot of um visits to different mills about spending yarn so this is clara park's um basically annals of how she obtained a bale of yarn and then had it spun had it died or i'm sorry a bale of wool and how it got transformed into yarn for knitting so um the um the underlying story is that you know it's um how do you how would you do this if you were determined to have american grown wool american spinning mills american dyers all of that right everything in this is american so um you united states american too not like north american um so you know it is really about the whole industry and there's a lot of history in it there's a lot of how these mills did in the 1950s how they were in their heyday how they are now you know what has changed what what changes have they had to make or adaptations to the modern world um how has nafta impacted them all that kind of stuff so fantastic book um i started reading this book because i had talked about this in my um i did a special episode that was just about my favorite author and all his books and this is probably my favorite book of his and possibly my favorite book of all time um i've read it like four times now um but i watched a documentary about q anon and it was like the whole time i was like this is like an alberto echo novel what is this like why do people believe this why is everybody like so convinced because one person on the internet is posting something that that somehow negates all other like forms of information um it it just like i couldn't i couldn't not pick up this book and read it because it just was like wow so i'm if you haven't seen that other video i'll just give you a brief synopsis the this book is written it's set in the early 80s and so um the personal computer is sort of a new thing right there or the word processor and so these guys are bored and they they work together and they just start playing with this word processor and they start putting in pieces of history and culture and art and whatever and story and it spits out right because this author obviously doesn't know how computers really work but they but somehow they weave it into a cohesive narrative so it's sort of like um it really reminds me of like national treasure or um what's that dan brown one um the da vinci code you know where it's like there's this conspiracy that you're uncovering but what it is is these guys invent their own conspiracy theory and then strange things start to happen and they go is it true um and it's just really bizarre and it's fun and it's you know just it's just a very weird book so um i like it because it's sort of like um it's sort of like those adventure stories you know or like an indiana jones like you know uncovering some mystery um that somehow is obvious to the hero even though it was like opaque to everyone else in all of history um but it's sort of like a a step back from that in a behind the scenes of that where it's like maybe this person's just delusional so um yeah i'm reading that again um so there's that i just bought this book um i pre-ordered it and was really excited to get it um how the word is passed a reckoning with the history of slavery across america i think that the thing to know about this book is that it's not just about the history of slavery it's actually about how history is told right and so for most of us i think um the primary way we learn about history is through school through formal education and and you know we all go through more or less the same k through 12 system although i'm learning you know state by state that can vary in teacher by teacher it can vary um you know so that's kind of the primary way the second the second most i guess common way that people learn about history is through the internet through articles through um wikipedia posts through um people talking about it right and now we have this whole like genre of people using tick tock and instagram and other forms of social media as education tools um not a lot of people engage with academic history um but what this book is really looking at and what i think it's sort of an ode to in a way is public history so when you go to a museum or when you go to a historic site and there's a tour guide who's showing you around those people play a really important role in educating the public and they and they don't do it from a sort of you know ivory tower using a lot of academic language they actually have to be able to deal with the fact that on your tour there's going to be people from all walks of life there there's going to be people who maybe have an emotional emotional reaction to some of the information they're receiving so this book is really fantastic because it's it's looking at those historic sites and the people who are tasked with sharing the history of that place and that time with people and it's it's just a phenomenal book so far i'm only like a couple chapters in but it's really making me want to like travel and go to all these historic sites and and you know hear like go on the tour and see how they talk about it um so yeah i i would really recommend this if you are at all interested in how people learn because something that's been sort of bothering me lately is the way that the way that social media also can distort people's view of history right like i think a lot of people are recognizing that the history they received in school was maybe um compromised by um you know institutional goals so you know i don't i'm not here to criticize academics as a whole what i'm saying is that we have we all have a bias and um western institutional bias is real and um a lot of the history we learn especially in the public school system which is the only freely available education in the united states and free as in it doesn't cost money to go um which is you know obviously college is just cost prohibitive for a lot of people um a lot of that history is really whitewashed is really um not accurate but then i think people take it to this extreme where it's like you know similar to the folks that were you know obsessing over the queue drops i think people see a post on instagram and they take it as absolute truth right because it uses words like decolonizing or um you know it's critical of um white nationalism and subtle or colonialism and so i think using the right words um somebody can also be spreading a false narrative on the internet but i i notice a lot of people who haven't formally studied history in an academic setting are really quick to just jump on that bandwagon and i think um there's something really amazing about um public historians who make it their task to welcome people from all walks of life who have maybe you know been on one train or another right in terms of getting a narrative from the internet or from school or whatever um from family lore and um just kind of holding their hands through that process i think public historians are amazing and um i wish they all got paid a million dollars because they're they're incredible and they and they do such important work so um yeah i i would recommend this book just as sort of a love an ode of love towards public historians so now let's talk about i also bought this book women in power if you want to know what's it what it's about google women in power there's a video where mary beard gives this talk that this is basically the transcription of an important talk she gives but it it was she was inspired to do it after i think seeing some of the past few election cycles where um there's this just constant narrative of like i would vote for this woman but i don't think anyone else is going to and there's sort of this question of how do we make sense of that right and like why is it that we have such a hard time imagining a woman in power in a positive way right game of thrones looking at you so i was in a bookstore in seattle i got to take a trip found this for like two dollars so um i've read one thing by brett easton ellis before really liked it um i'm a fan of donna tartt they're like best friends or something so i figure it'll be good right um then i went to target they had so many great books that were on sale i was when did target become a bookstore that's what i want to know um so i got a copy of this a paperback copy of this because i was going to lend my copy to a friend and i've talked about this book at length before but i recently attended a talk that mickey kendall gave and you know long story short this is a real manifesto for 21st century feminism that is inclusive of everybody and that looks at issues like poverty and hunger and student loan forgiveness and labor rights and all of these and says these are feminist issues right that um being a girl boss is not real feminism and this book really changed my life in a lot of ways i um yeah i i just um stopped caring about a lot of things that i had been kind of seduced into caring about um and really thought where do i want to spend my energy when it comes to feminism and social justice and so it it is a really amazing book and it was really fascinating because when i saw her speak recently there was of course that introduction where somebody reads off the bio and here's where she studied and here's what she's accomplished and one of the first things that the author said was here's the stuff that didn't make it to my bio right and talked about being poor and a single mom on public assistance and how you know we prioritize celebrating the wins when we introduce people and we think ah this person is worth listening to because of their education because of their uh being a new york times bestseller that sort of thing we don't think oh they're worth listening to because they know what it's like to be a single mother on public assistance right which is completely backwards in my mind i think somebody who is a single mother on public assistance or who has been is much more authoritative on issues of poverty and feminism and and you know like fair wages and all of that sort of thing um but i think you know culturally we tend to we tend to want to look up to people who seem more successful than us and and so we ascribe some level of genius to that um yeah that they you know so it was just really great to hear her remind us that you know the stuff that's not in my bio is the stuff that got me here right that's why i'm a new york times bestseller is because i know what i'm talking about i got song of achilles this is a retelling of the iliad madeline miller did a really great retelling of the odyssey from the point of view of cersei the witch who tricks odysseus into staying on her island and it was great so this is going to be great too um this one i believe i'm so if you don't follow shelby in the book club follow her and if you can donate to her um she's fundraising to start a bookstore and i totally think she should um i'm not trying to tell you how to spend your money but like if you felt like supporting somebody starting a bookstore there's a good one um so i'm pretty sure she shared this book and as one of her book club recommendations the girl with the louding voice um and it is really just you know i think a coming-of-age story about a girl who um maybe people are telling her that she doesn't need to share her opinion so freely and she's learning um that's not right you know she's learning how to um how to be herself in a world that is maybe not designed for people like her to succeed so uh i'm really looking forward to that i picked up of women and salt i've heard so many good things about this book um i'm hesitant because i feel like it's one of those mother-daughter sagas where nothing good ever happens and i'm kind of i'm kind of over not over i'm quite well i'm kind of over these books being the only books by latinx authors that get famous is the ones where bad things happen mostly to women and it's sad um i don't know i need some like latino joy um if anybody knows any books i should be reading please recommend them um yeah i need some joy i'm not a huge fan of why a i'll just say that um nothing against y a i just find that i don't enjoy reading it as much as a lot of other people do so anyways i don't know i picked that up because it's like the book that everyone's been talking about forever so it's probably pretty good um and then yellow wife this is one that um shelby talked about on her podcast and i totally want to read it um again i kind of hesitated because it's about slavery and i feel like i want to read more um black joy you know i want to be reading more joy for black people and people of color in general like i feel like there's a lot of books about slavery there's a lot of books or movies about civil rights and about people having a hard time but not a lot of joy in it and so i'm trying to find yeah i'm just trying to find more stuff but this book just seemed really compelling when she was talking about it um and so i decided to pick it up also it was 30 off so who can say no it was like 18 and then 30 off so that's a good that's a good deal um so yeah i totally um you know walked up i totally got stuck in the book section of target and then reappeared with a stack of books that um you know then my wife said i could picture you as a five-year-old at the library and i said that's that's right that's exactly how i was and that's still how i am so okay all of that so there's some other entertainment things i just wanted to share with you um and before i wrap this up um so i have been watching like i said i watched the q and on documentary um great if you're knitting because it's mostly just heads talking and so you don't even have to look at the screen um the one it's it's called oh i can't remember the name of it maybe i'll put it in the show notes um but it was on it was on hbo which i get through hulu i finally watched love craft country um everybody was telling me how it was so great and i finally watched it um and it's scary i didn't expect um to be so scared but there were a couple episodes where i was what like i couldn't walk around the house at night i couldn't get to get a glass of water or anything i was so scared there were ghosts that were really scary and then there were creepy twins that were really scary and i'm gonna leave it there in case you haven't seen it but like wow um i watched a show called rutherford falls and it it's amazing and you have to watch it you just have to watch it i think i talked about it before but i kind of want to just re-watch it now um it's been like a month so i think i should just rewatch it um i watched some a series called high on the hog which if you're into food in history that's a really great one sorry i'm checking the time so high on the hog is um the history of african american food it's a very very condensed history and it really um it it does a really good job of being an entertaining food show right like if you're just like into food but it's it's also got um amazing history and something that kind of surprised me on it they did have an episode about all the juneteenth foods and i didn't realize that juneteenth had specific foods like red velvet cake is a really common one it was nice because they featured not just like famous chefs but also food bloggers or people who are doing kind of kind of doing public history through their cooking um they had it really covered some ground that i think doesn't get covered a lot where i think there's obviously um in a show about you know african food it's gonna talk about like gumbo and stews and like southern cooking and soul food and barbecue right like you expect that but then there was also this whole thing about like the history of catering and how it was um black chefs and chef families restaurateur families that kind of made american catering they had an episode where they talked about macaroni and cheese which was invented by a black chef um and it was really amazing because the way that they made mac and cheese was like i thought oh that's how our family made mac and cheese but then when i looked at that recipe i was like oh no we never put eggs in it and i realized so apparently my family makes a very specific regional dish of new england macaroni pie who knew right um so the way that we the way that mac and cheese was made when i was a kid was a very specific regional thing and i thought well that makes sense because my great-grandmother was born in massachusetts um so i'm guessing it started with her because she was the first person in the u.s but um and then i you know i saw her cook it that way her daughter cooked it that way my mom cooked that way you know all that um so there was that and then i just started another show on netflix called warn stories um that is a really cool one if you like clothes and fashion and stories of self-expression it's really just a show about clothes and what people get out of clothes aside from you know literally just covering your body there is in the very first episode which is about community there is a lot of nudity because there is a um nudist community that's featured but i thought it was really fascinating the way that they talked about not clothing as kind of like a form of clothing um which was so interesting to me um and i just think it's a really neat um show and so it got me thinking about the show got me thinking about clothing and gender expression and um you know kind of the the way that clothing is from a very young age gendered and also um uh like prescribed right um so we live in a society that tells us how to dress from the minute we're born um and i just thought that was so interesting because of course me as a queer person as someone who is i guess considered feminine presenting um i think a lot about how you know the clothing i wear gives people an idea that they know who i am right or that they they think that they can um define me by my clothing and how i've had to work to not care about that um because i think that we all go through a phase maybe in our teenage years where we're really trying to express ourselves a lot with our clothing and then as we get older that mellows into what i'm trying to express is that i really love blue or that i wear a lot of blue because i love it not because i want people to see me a certain way but just because like i love this color and it makes me really happy when i look at my closet and i have lots of blue things um you know i think that we i think that we like sort of um change throughout our lives the clothes we wear not just for reasons of practicality but also of self-expression and i actually think that that self-expression piece is a very practical human need right because we are social creatures and so there is a desire to be known and to be part of a community and to be um you know sort of um making yourself open to the people you want in your life right you want you know in a way i think wearing a hand knitted sweater out in public um it's a way that for you to be open to connecting with another knitter i remember being in the grocery store and seeing somebody wearing a sweater that i had long wanted to knit and i identified it and immediately you know bam you know hello i could have a conversation and if she hadn't worn her knitted sweater that wouldn't have happened i wouldn't have known she was a knitter another time you know i went to a restaurant and there was a young lady very young probably like 18 wearing the weekender and i said oh that's a fantastic weekender and she was like shocked that i knew the pattern that i you know what i mean like um and she was like i'm a new knitter this is the first thing i've ever knit and i was like well damn you did a good job you know um but it was like i think maybe her first experience of like another knitter seeing her and going that's a knitted you know i know that pattern i know that designer and um i think about you know when i was new to the knitting world i didn't know that other people knew that stuff so um yeah you know i think um there's just something there i've just been having a lot of thoughts about this you know and it um it's not surprising because i wrote my thesis about people's self-expression through their um self-presentation in the ancient world um but i've been thinking a lot about it lately and consuming more i guess content from other people about this subject and it's pride month and i'm thinking more about it and i will just say i'm disappointed that there's a continual that the trend of harry potter themed knitting stuff is continuing that's another thing i've been thinking about i wasn't building up to saying that i was just saying that as another layer is that i think people people are people in the knitting community are being alienated by certain designers or certain um companies being so committed to this one particular fandom that it almost feels like a slap in the face i mean there are other things to be a fan of there are other things to be inspired by um we don't need that anymore it's not an endless source of inspiration i know you want it to be but it really isn't um and it could be hurting people so just stop that's my advice if you want my advice i'm giving it away for free every day okay so the last thing i just wanted to say is that the quiet queers craft along is starting really soon i have not been asked to promote it but i'm going to promote it because i also identify very much as a quiet queer also a lazy queer so you will not be see me doing me made gay any any posts because i already did like february and i'm like posted out you know um yeah if i want to have any energy for vlogmas this year it's gonna have to be no more challenges no more post a day challenges or vlog day challenges for me for a while um but yeah so um if you are queer and if you identify in any way as someone who enjoys being quiet then i would say um you know join us all you have to do is use the hashtag and then i think you're part of the thing i'm not sure the quiet queers craft along page on instagram has all the information but just wanted to throw that out there that's going to be happening i've donated a really nice project bag to be part of a prize package so get ready there's going to be a cool project bag and other prizes so yeah on that note i am going to say goodbye and i hope you are having a great week bye

Channel: ryoknits

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Id: FbCpt2Fgtuc

Length: 87min 39sec (5259 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021