Buy OFS Yarn: Naturally Dyed
|
I have a bag of Kirby Meritime samples – one of each, to be precise. What would you do, if you had a bag of colors sitting by your side, and a paper to avoid writing? You play, of course.
My idea: A hat, big and slouchy, with a loud combination of three colors, definitely combining warms and cools. But which three? It’s hard to pick a wrong combo when they all go together so well. So I put a bunch of combinations together; you tell me what you think. Or go to the Meritime page and come up with another combination. I’ll probably decide by tonight and knit it over the weekend, and if you like more than one of them, I’ll have to knit a bunch of little swatches up…
#1: “Iris” – Mystic Mauve, Groovy Green, and Golden Delicious.
#2 “Meadow” – Naked Apple, Winter Sky, and Groovy Green
#3: “Jewels” – Mystic Mauve, Sprout Sage, and Peach Orchard
#4: “Bouquet” – Magentastic, Mystic Mauve, and Nectar
#5: “Rosebud” – Raspberry Rouge, Nectar, and Sprout Sage
#6: “Posies” – Golden Delicious, Groovy Green, and Magentastic
#7: “Drifted” – Magentastic, Groovy Green, and Naturally Neutral
#8: “Punch” – Naturally Neutral, Raspberry Rouge, and Peach Orchard
#9: “Peat” – Naturally Neutral, Black Walnut Brown, and Sprout Sage
How to decide?! I shall employ my favorite tools: procrastination and delegation. In other words, you decide while I go do other things. Today I have three scottish side dishes to make before 6, and a book on buddhism to read while things boil.
It’s time? It’s time? Did she just say it’s time?!
The launching of a brand new yarn is a freakishly exciting thing, especially when you’ve been working on it as long and hard as my dear mother has. If we were a big name brand, we would have a widely published newsletter, a whole team of designers filling pattern booklets out months in advance, and a trio of impossibly skinny models to make everything look extra glamorous. We’re not Berroco, or Lion Brand, or Madelinetosh, and I have a long way to go before my photography looks anything like Brooklyn Tweed’s, but believe you me that Kirby Meritime is going to get all the fanfare I can muster. Because this, folks, is a very real, very cool, and very fabulous addition to Osborn Fiber Studio’s growing line of yarn.
In case you forgot, here’s the deets: 109 yards of Aran weight (4 st./in. on US8s), 50/50 merino/tencel, 12 colors dyed in the hues offered by nature.
Of what fanfare do I speak? Well, if you are surfing Ravelry’s general forums during the next month, you might see this:
That makes me just as pleased as punch; I don’t know about you.
Then of course, there’s the store; you’ll see a link to your left, and scroll down to see close-ups of all the marvelous colors – including three never-before-seen hues, and one brand-new natural dye ingredient that mom will be sharing with us soon.
And what’s a new line of yarn without pattern support? These fun colors go together so delightfully that we can’t help but mix and match them into bunches of different sets – cool and warm, and all different seasons. Mom’s working on a five-color pullover pattern in two colorways (“feverishly” doesn’t quite describe it – when was the last time you knit an adult sweater in eight days?) and I have a hat idea that will use three colors, if I can manage to fit it in between the epiphany and lent offerings.
BUT believe me, each color looks gorgeous on their own, as well. The natural drape of the tencel would make a lacey sweater look particularly gorgeous. If I had time to make myself another sweater, this would be my new pick for the Hampton Cardigan, probably in the dark purple Mystic Mauve. If time and money were no object, what would you make out of Kirby Meritime?
Good morning! I know it’s two hours after noon where I am, but on the day after two weeks of Jan terms have been completed, that totally counts as morning. I had a blast, I learned, I laughed, I read, I wrote, I had deep thoughts. And, of course, I knit. Oh, how I knit. Goodness; I haven’t shown you a single thing I’ve cast on (or off) since Christmas! I’m going to start small, so I don’t overwhelm myself as I get back in the swing of blogging.
I’ll start, in fact, with a piece that came completely out of the last two weeks and the 80 hours of classroom time therein. Jared & I did succeed in walking to school, at least one direction, every day of class (except one when blisters prevented me). This has been fabulous; every day I walk I feel healthier and more cheerful, and this time I don’t think it’s just out of some sick sense of earned self-worth. However, it’s left me in a fashion dilemma.
Walking to school in the deadly cold (the second week has come laden with snow) means I have to walk bundled up. I am well-equipped for such a task, and don’t leave the house without multiple layers of wool around my neck, face, and head. But this means (a) I don’t really want to wear makeup which will rub off on my scarves and cowls and get all nasty, and (b) I have horrible hat hair every day. Since I am unwilling to carry an apothecary on my back, I have no solution for (a); though I’ll take other suggestions. To solve (b), I’ve just been wearing hats all day, every day. But hats that suffice to warm both head and ears during a January sunrise are not the sort that you wear just to look cute. They mostly make me feel like an surfer who moved to Colorado to learn snowboarding: out of place, sloppy, and androgynous.
But on Friday of week 1, the only other woman in the class was wearing a hat that solved this problem completely. It was thick and warm and ear-shielding, while being cute, feminine, and belonging in a real outfit. It was a cloche. Of course! A cloche! I had to have one. Specifically, I had to have this one.
I dug out a pair of yarns from the neglected corners of the stash on Friday night, knit it up mostly over the weekend, finished it early on Tuesday (one of those insomniac mornings which I redeemed by knitting and reading Arts and Letters Daily. I felt cultured), let it block over Wednesday and Thursday, sewed it up Thursday night, and wore it Friday to much comment.
(I assure you that I did not look quite this unkempt on Friday, though I really need to get on this whole makeup thing.)
I love it. I want to make four more and wear a different one every day of the week. Next time I’ll curl the spiral up better; I don’t think it’s supposed to wave like that. The pattern was one of those annoying things that is both boring but attention-requiring, because you have to do lots of short rows and counting amidst all the stockinette. But it was quick, and worth it.
Of course, I’m not sure I’m wearing it exactly right. If there were spirals on both sides of the hat, I would look irredeemably Princess-Leia-cinnabun-esque.
Addendum: Since every person on the internet has been talking about SOPA and PIPA this week, I thought I’d add my comment. I tend to be a little cynical about politics (a little?) and slow to get behind these movements that sweep the internet. But I at least have a fantasy of being one of those people who make something like a living by providing internet content, so it seemed my due diligence. This morning I ran across this comic which described the last week more or less perfectly. Mostly I’ve been enjoying watching the hoopla.
This is my 500th post. 500! Coming as it does so near the turn of the year, this seems an appropriate time to do a little reflection on this blog, and everything that has happened to me through it, because of it, and since I started it back in May of 2009. If I were to do so in a simple list format, it might look something like this (actually, exactly like this):
- Because of this blog, I began to feel like an active investor in the larger world of knitting and handcrafts.
- Because of this blog, I had a meaningful record of my work, and a way of further using my knitting as self-expression.
- Through this blog, I found a medium in which I really like to express myself. (My best thoughts are about blog-post length… which is problematic when it comes to writing long papers.)
- Since I started this blog, I went from a rather serious hobbyist knitter, to an industry professional, to an aspiring full-time crafting artist.
- Through this blog, and the business that sprouted from it, I found my “voice” as a designer.
- Through this blog, my mum and I became business partners.
- On this blog, dozens of people have been kind enough not only to read, but to encourage me to do more of what I really love, taking the opportunities that came up as God presented them
Do you believe in serendipity? I don’t, not really. As Jenna over at Cold Antler likes to say, the way to find yourself living the life you want to live is to put it in the front of your brain, to invest in it in your every day life in little ways. This blog, on top of all the knitting displayed on it, ended up being how I did that. If something really captures your heart, you may find yourself doing this anyway, if you give yourself permission. And the opportunities that have sprung from the woodwork for me to take things to the next level, I can only attribute to the providence of God. Landing jobs at two different yarn shops, just at the right times? Coming up with a design idea last Lent that took off? Having a mother who is also both passionate and capable in the fiber arts? Those are just the big ones.
I know this is still in no way a sure thing. God might take this away from me; I’ve lost enough, and seen enough small business owners and artists struggle, that I know that’s how it goes. But I certainly wasn’t expecting any of this to happen, so I have no reason to think that I know how the rest of my life will play out. I may neither live long nor prosper, but I think I get now that that really doesn’t matter.
I’m not really a new-year’s-resolution type; they always seemed to me like a recipe for perceived failure and fruitless self-hatred, which I try to keep relegated to my past. But as December closed, I felt a little different. After processing a lot of things through Advent, and engaging in that prayer-around-the-edges that God grants even those who are a little miffed at him, I found myself ready to start trying again. To engage with life a little more, this time a little more sanely. So with that in mind, I made one resolution: I want to take better care of myself. That’s it: no long-term goals, just better (if you’ve seen how I’ve been living for the past six months, you’d know I have nowhere to go but up). So far I’ve been on several walks, and done a good number of push-ups. Myself and the three other housemates have a plan to consistently make the house a nicer place to be. Tomorrow I’m making Portuguese kale-sausage soup, in an effort to get something green into my body that isn’t mostly comprised of high-fructose corn syrup.
I’ve also got a wee resolution for the blog, on occasion of its semi-millennial post. I think, after all this, I can set goals with my hands open. By the time I write my 1000th post, as Randall Monroe just did, I would like to have published a book. A book related to knitting. I have a few good ideas, and I’m not telling you what they are. But I think it might just happen. It might not. But it might.
Tomorrow starts two weeks of interterm classes, appropriately called “intensives,” so you might not hear much from me for a bit. My goal is to get up early and walk to class every day. Wish me luck! I’ll be knitting…
Jesus has so many names, it is hard to keep track. By the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Aragorn had so many names that I was quite confused, and he had only lived for eight-some years and just become king! In a fictional context like that, I learned that titles don’t have to be honorifics used by sycophants. These were names earned with mighty deeds, or inherited through a mighty lineage, or pointing toward a mighty destiny. So you can imagine that Jesus, the incarnate Word, God made flesh, would have accumulated a few meaningful titles in the two thousand years since he came to walk on this earth.
When I began designing a sock for Epiphany, I only intended to capture an image of the Star of Bethlehem. If Epiphany makes me think of one thing, it’s the Maji, following the star to the stable to worship a baby. I remember when I first learned that astronomers can not only predict the movements of the stars and plants, but trace them backwards, and that they had figured out that the Star of Bethlehem was probably an actual conjunction of the planets around 4 B.C.
But if there’s one thing knitting gives you, it’s time to think. And as I graphed and designed this star, I kept thinking not of the Star of Bethlehem, but of the fact that Jesus is called the Bright and Morning Star, and the Sun of Righteousness. That the mystery of the incarnation is that God himself, who had to shield Moses from his glory because seeing him face to face, who would outshine any star because he created every one and knows them each by name, became one of us. Not just because it was humbling and touching or poetic – he became one of us to show himself to us, to give himself to us, to show us who God is in person.
It was out of this meditation that the toe was designed. I elected to use Unique Sheep’s Gradiance yarn because I to show a transition from a starry night on the leg to the sunrise at the toe.
Over the next few weeks, I might pop out with some unscheduled meditations on Christmas and Epiphany. There’s so much to dwell on in this season, which we tend to reduce to the 25th December and a bucketload of commercialism and sentiment. The church calendar gives us until Ash Wednesday to chew on these mysteries, so chew I shall.
Christ is our light, but he came into a very dark place. As Bishop Martin Minns discussed when he came to visit Trinity a few weeks ago, it was utterly appropriate that Christians began celebrating the incarnation on the Pagan solstice. The darkness is terrifying, even though we can now ignore it utterly with electric light. When the days finally started to get longer, ancient peoples would breathe a collective sigh of relief – even though a long winter was still ahead, the sun’s increasing light promised it would end. The arrival of Christ on earth was exactly that beginning of a new thing, that even though many trials still lie between us and the final kingdom of heaven, the Sun of Righteousness promised us it would come.
Christ, whose glory fills the skies,
Christ, the true, the only Light,
Sun of Righteousness, arise,
Triumph o’er the shades of night;
Dayspring from on high, be near;
Day-star, in my heart appear.
Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by Thee;
Joyless is the day’s return
Till Thy mercy’s beams I see;
Till they inward light impart,
Glad my eyes, and warm my heart.
Visit then this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief;
Fill me, Radiancy divine,
Scatter all my unbelief;
More and more Thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.
~Charles Wesley
“Morning Star” is now available through Ravelry: click here.
This year, mom and I both experienced that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Well, that’s not exactly true. We gave each other gifts of yarn that were hard to give up, but ended up surprising each other when we loved what we received even more than what we gave away.
I ended up giving Mum my wonderful rainbow three-ply handspun (the roving was from Koigu, purchased at MD Sheep & Wool ’10, and I would do a murder to get some more). She’d gushed over it so excessively that I realized one day that she would love it even more than I did. But I didn’t realize how much more; when she opened it and realized what it was, she burst into tears! I think she waited a whole five minutes after she regained her composure to ball it up and cast something on. She chose a clever faux-entrelac scarf pattern to let the yarn shine in all its glory, with the added coolness that the whole thing is on the diagonal.
As for my gift, Mom had picked up this bundle of pretty when she was at So Original, a yarn store in Olney, MD. It was originally for her, but before long she resigned herself to the inevitable, that these were really MY colors. It was such a surprise! This is in the category of thing that I always covet when I see it, but would never buy it for myself.
This mega skein, called “Barber of Seville” from that mysterious company called Hand Painted Knitting Yarns, is actually twelve mini-skeins of all different textures. They’re all natural fibers (with a happily disproportionate amount of merino). This pictures aren’t conveying to you the perfect balance of fall tones
Of course, the first thing I had to do was untie them all, carefully retie them into individual skeins, study their content and contstruction, and put them in an order that I felt best balanced their various texture attributes. This ended up being almost identical to the order they came in.
After a few abortive swatch attempts, I ended up casting on about 250 stitches on a US 8 and going to town. I’m using up each ball in garter stitch, sticking a row of elongated stitches in the middle of each stripe. I love elongated stitches; in this case it showcases the texture of each yarn, and you get to see the color repeats distinctly. It’s been my indulgence while reading for the past few days.
I didn’t realize it until I saw the first set of elongated stitches, but the color progression in these skeins – green, rainbow to purple, rainbow back to green – is the same as the color progression on the handspun I gave Mom! You know what they say about great minds.
It’s the last day of Christmas; I hope your celebration during this darkest time of year has been joyous and merry and bright, even medievally jovial. Tomorrow is Epiphany, and the socks are on deck. But tonight, they’re being put to use at a Twelfth Night party. Until the end of this year, Merry Christmas!
This is a big one, you guys – a big reveal that we have long been waiting to share with you. Mom has been dyeing her little heart out in the Maryland branch of Osborn Fiber Studio, and now I can show you what’s in store for this spring.
During my few years of exposure to the handknitting industry I’ve learned that there are two big seasons to prepare for: Fall, which launches the cold-weather time in our part of the world, when most knitters are starting to think about casting on something serious; and Spring. “Spring” really starts in the depths of winter, when you no longer have the cozy excitement of the holidays to look forward to, just those last few unfair months of cold followed by mud. It’s when I want my knitwear to cheer me up with bright colors and exciting patterns. If it’s interesting enough, it can transition perfectly into that more specialized season of summer knitting.
For the first time, we have something big to be an official Spring offering: a brand new line of yarn. I shouldn’t say brand new; this yarn made a small appearance as part of the Beaded Tunic Kits. But now we have a full-color compliment to release as its own line of Kirby Meritime.
These eleven colors (plus white) are 50% merino, 50% tencel (also known as seasilk, made from seaweed, lending to the nautical pun in the yarn’s name). It’s silky and soft and shiny and drapey. the colors we chose divide neatly into warm and cool colors, and we’re working on a couple patterns that take full advantage of them, both individually and together. This yarn will also be used in the final pattern of the Liturgical Year Series, in a kit for that purpose.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this sneak peek. We plan to begin offering this yarn for sale toward the end of January, with a couple of patterns, and more to come as we look toward Spring.
Today’s post comes late because the knitted gift in question had to be not only gifted, but… finished. It was knit almost entirely during the Doctor Who Christmas special, “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.” (Just for good measure, it was stuffed and assembled while watching the new Star Trek movie.) I liked it, though it seemed a little spastic watching it on actual TV with actual commercial breaks. The Narnia allusions were very clever, but didn’t go much past what was shown the trailer. It was visually and dialogically stunning, and I am continuously shocked and amazed by Steven Moffat’s capacity to write endings where everyone doesn’t die and no one is depressed. I am more or less reconciled to Matt Smith, and plan on getting season 6 from Amazon instant as soon as I have a free weekend. In other words, March. But I digress. The gift in question was…
A baby Adipose for Roommate A, who is personally responsible for my televised obsession. If you don’t know what an Adipose is, find a way to watch “Partners in Crime” post haste, and you will want one too. It’s the first of the fourth revived season, during the tenure of the Tenth doctor (hence the title of this post), who will always be my doctor.
The pattern was right out of my head, an enjoyable conjunction of random bits of knowledge. I could have bought her one off thinkgeek, but I was poor, and had the perfect yarn sitting right off my shelf. He’s knit top down, with a start much like that of the Pileable pups; his arms were made with thumb gussets; his bottom was borrowed from the top of a fair isle hat, and his feet, are more or less baby booties. The rest of him was a little math, figured out by holding a tape measure up to a screenshot of the character.
In related news, Jared got the Best Present Ever from his brother:
I know, right?! It even lights up and makes the sound when you go for a cookie. Right now it is stocked with chocolate-covered raisins and non-pariels.
Yesterday was really busy, and my planned Day 9* post fell through (I realized the thing is at home, I haven’t taken pictures of it, and the recipient hasn’t even opened it yet), which factors conflued to give me the perfect excuse to put off posting ’till today. But I think you’ll agree it was worth the wait.
What do you do when you have a dudely friend who is really into tea, and you want to knit him tea-themed socks, but there is no such thing on the internet as a sock pattern with leaves on it that doesn’t look girly? Honestly, I have no idea what you would do, but I designed my own. He got his gift in the mail just in time for Christmas, and now you get to partake in the giftage. I give you a new free sock pattern: Tea Time.
The idea was a variation on the traditional “clock” designs on socks, but modified to look more obviously like a clock. The tea theme is both in the light brown yarn (which could have been dyed with tea, but was actually dyed with black walnuts), and in the fact that the “hands” on the clock arms are in fact little tea leaves. There are actual eyelets involved, but I am confident they are subtle enough that they do not take away from the manliness of the socks. In a clever twist, when the socks are in their relaxed position off the foot, the hands sit at about four o’clock, traditional tea time. (Flip them over, and they sit at eight o’clock, the time I am most likely to have tea.)
In order to make the hands the same, this sock is constructed rather unusually: you knit the heel flap first, then the foot, then pick up and knit the leg last. This not only simplifies the construction of the leafy hands, but means that you can use up all your yarn while still getting a top-down fitting for the foot. In my book, this is having your cake and eating it too. It comes in three sizes, from Women’s Medium to Men’s Large. (Please note: the largest and smallest sizes have NOT been test knitted at this time; if you elect to knit these, would you please let me know if you have any issues?)
Here’s a secret just for the blog readers: The pattern calls for 100% Merino Fingering, which would be perfect for these babies. However, This pair was knit with My Backyard Sock, which I’m keeping on sale until it’s all gone. There’s one skein left in this colorway, if you feel led to snap it up.
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! You can download this pattern for free by clicking here, or through the pattern’s new Ravelry page.
*apologies to Starcraft 2 players everywhere. I did try watching one episode of Day 9, out of some desperate insecure need for nerd cred, but I let it go. Real Time Strategy is just not for me; I’m sticking to adventure games and wimpy RPGs.
On December 24th, the last pair of socks from Folk Socks came off the needles. They were the only pair for which I used the actual recommended yarn: Jamieson & Smith’s 2-ply Jumper Weight. They were kept hidden from the internet because their recipient was my mum.
Pattern review: I thought 90 stitches around seemed a little much, so I cut out a bit of the fair isle pattern to make them more reasonable. But then, feeling nervous about having such a thin wool on a sock sole without any nylon or reinforcement, I went down to US 0s. As a result, the socks just barely fit my mum’s wide feet. Because they’re a bit tight, they tend to show off a bit of the under-cuff ribbing, which I did in a contrasting color to save yarn. Thankfully, mum is enjoying this effect.
Yarn review: They also took a lot more wool than I expected; each foot took nearly a whole ball of 2-ply. These are projected leftovers from my epic fair isle sweater, which I think will still be okay sans two balls of the main color, but it makes me a little nervous. It’s amazing how a fairly rough wool is okay knit loose (on 3, this stuff is knit loosely) but knit tightly, like on 0s, it nearly made my fingers bleed. I have decided, actually, to never knit socks on 0s again; they are just too delicate for me to wail on with the death-grip I usually have on socks. But golly, these are pretty.
These and six other pairs of self-imposed sock-club socks went away as Christmas presents. But before they were wrapped, I wanted to see just how much knitting this project took.
These 18 pairs of socks, knit over 19 months, totaled about 30 feet of tubing. They were knit using around 7200 yards of yarn, which is just over four miles.
(The last pair wasn’t quite done on photo day, but I decided I didn’t care at all. It’s nice to be able to let little things go.)
Book review: Folk Socks is a classic. It inspired so many sock knitters to get back into traditional sock knitting way before it exploded into the communal obsession it is now. It has every basic heel and toe technique for top down socks that you could ever desire, and more besides. Knitting all of them has shown me some that I love and others that I will save for special situations. It’s taught me to be daring with color, as our ancestors did the hard way before we started dyeing yarn crazily to do all the work for us. It has a couple technical issues – her gauge is really tight on most of them, probably because older sock techniques were way tighter still. And the sock feet are usually shorter than my own (perhaps I just have shorter row gauge and therefore knit shorter toes). BUT…
Of course, Nancy Bush has probably fixed in the NEW EDITION of Folk Socks that JUST came out.
I am thrilled that she’s done this, though maybe a little disgusted that it comes out NOW after I’ve knit through the old edition. I sort of think that if Nancy is reading this, she should send me a copy of the new one just because. Don’t you think that? I think that. Though I’m sure she has better things to do, and besides I probably won’t knit many of these socks again. Possibly because I’ll have moved onto the next book…
|
|
