Adding Insult to Injury

The Original Stash Configuration:




The injury:



The insult:



The response:


Have a wonderful New Year, everyone!

A Handmaiden's Christmas Tale

Santa was clearly not paying attention to the gloomy economy prognostications when he visited chez fleegle this year.

Having fallen in love with Susan Pandorf's magnificent designs, Roy took it upon himself to order the yarn required to complete three of her shawls. And then he added some more stuff for emergencies because he's a prince, **supreme panjandrum** of a husband.

Handmaiden Seasilk in Mermaid, for the Iris Scarf:


Handmaiden Seasilk in Poinsettia, for the Poinsettia scarf:


Handmaiden Seasilk in Pale Autumn, for the Zinnia scarf:


And a few non-assigned skeins of Seasilk.

Pumpkin:



Blackberry:


Fleur:

Renaissance:


Some Jojoland Melody for lace:





An exquisite skein of Art Yarns Beaded Silk Rhapsody:


And, just in case I get overwhelmed with complex lace beading, a simple shawl kit from Colinette:



And finally, to keep me warm while I am playing with all this lovely stash, a cashmere bathrobe:


Harry watched the unwrapping process with a furtive, avaricious look in his eyes. He became profoundly depressed when he saw that, along with the stash enhancement, came some first-class SWAT-designed stash protection. Sitting proudly atop the chain-locked, police-taped plastic box, is a spray can of BUG REPELLENT! Merry Christmas, Harry!


I hope you all enjoyed your holiday as much as I did!

Pearly Blues

Disaster struck the fleegle household this week. Harry pranced in the door a few days ago with an iPod Nano that he won cheating in a poker game. He then spent two days downloading the lyrics to his tunes--an ominous portent of things to come.

With astounding proficiency, he proceeded to jack the iPod into a pair of speakers only slightly smaller than Toad Suck, Arkansas. And in a final display of arachnid ingenuity, he added some tiny wheels to the Nano, turning it into the world's first MP3 skateboard.

The next day, our nearest neighbor (who lives a half a mile north of us) called the police, complaining that a brain-melting version of Irene Cara's Fame was blasting out of her poinsettia.

Fortunately, Roy and I had invested in sound-suppressing earphones minutes after we were introduced to Harry's karaoke machine. We never heard (a) the police hammering on our door or (b) the high-pitched yelps as they fled from the vision of a ten-inch break-dancing spider draped in Red Roxx earbuds, caroming around the dining room on a purple iPod.

And anyway, I was too busy finishing this sweater to bother about the noise.


The design is loosely based on the Feather and Fan Sweater in Gathering of Lace. The original reminded me pleasantly of a raspberry sundae, but I am past the days of wearing ice cream, so the first thing I changed were the colors. I didn't care for the shapeless bottom hemline, so I added a neat twisted ribbing. The sleeves of the original were way too long and wide for someone who cooks on a gas stove, so the shape was streamlined. And during the cuff redesign, some pearl beads wandered in.



By this time, I was having too much fun deviating from the original, so the feather and fan pattern itself was modified (didn't care for the purl ridges) and more beads were added around the neckline. Having been knitted with Blue Sky alpaca/silk. it's a luxuriously soft and warm confection.

Small Bits

I am still somewhat clobbered by whatever I caught last month, so my knitting has been unusually sporadic. I did start the Dragon of Happiness shawl with some hand-dyed Fino, but decided that I really dislike knitting Fino on #1 needles--the resultant fabric is stiff and weirdly hairy.


I ordered some brilliant red Colourmart cashmere/lurex and will try again when I am feeling better. Or not. Somehow, the design isn't calling to me at present.

In search of something different, I happened upon Susan Pandorf's lyrically gorgeous designs and purchased five of them. Despite my dizziness and chronic cough, I managed to cast on and knit a bit of Triad:


As you can see, I added little gold beads to this design, which is being worked with Handmaiden Lace Silk in the Rainforest colorway. The formation of the trefoils is especially interesting, requiring cast-on's in the middle of purl rows and other challenges to eye-hand coordination. I did figure out how to avoid turning the work around to do the cast-ons, which in my physical state, is no mean feat.


Stitches South!
Finally! A Stitches event near me! I signed up for only one class--Fiendishly Difficult Stitches with Merike Saarniit, but I hope to meet up with friends on Friday. Anybody coming? Let me know!

Ninjin: The Killer Rabbit

Fleegle is out sick again this week--felled by a nasty broccoli bronchial infection. Fortunately for my faithful readers, I don't have any broccoli bronchi, so I offered to fill in. I am so thoughtful, considerate, brave, trustworthy, loyal, friendly courteous, helpful, friendly, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent!

I've been resting on my laurels since my last fantastic creation (Lavori #5, page 14)... well, actually, I've been resting on my waterbed...but you get the idea that I am resting.

Anyway, since fleegle is currently incapable of decided which part of a dpn is the working end, I thought I would introduce you to the newest member of the household:


As you can see, Ninjin (carrots, in Japanese) is fairly fearsome. The other day I pointed him at a fruit fly in the kitchen and the next thing you know, he cuddled the buzzy little irritant to death. Ninjin will be on his way to Japan soon, where he will become the Chief Enforcer in Tonya-san's household.

Bon Voyage, Ninjin!*

And folks, keep those cards and letters coming!

*This pattern can be found on page 8 of Ondori Organic Cotton Knitting, ISBN 978-4-277-17190-8. I think it's out of print, because I can't find it anywhere. The yarn used was Classic Elite Yarns Premiere, one skein of lavender with bits of purple and orange for the eyes, nose, and tail.

Poor Little No-Name

Harry danced in the door the other day, his propeller beanie twirling madly and a smirk on his face. He tossed his new masterpiece onto my lap, instructing me to post the photos and heap on some praise for his knitting, creativity, and utterly magnetic personality.

While I am obeying his first order, I shall leave the praise to the readers of this blog. Until he returns the skein of cashmere/alpaca/silk snatched from my hands before I had even finished unwrapping it, I refuse to say anything nice about him, his knitting, or his magnetically repelling personality.

Flipping though his raspberry smoothie-spattered notes, I see that this design is called Copritavolo (tablecloth) and appears on page 14 Lavori Artistici a Calza #5. Harry used #4 needles and the carefully hoarded Vermilion Malabrigo lace yarn that I had forbidden him to touch.

The directions called for doubling the outer leaves in alternate sections, but Harry doubled them in all the repeats--he says it makes the design looks more fluid and, much as I hate to be seen agreeing with him, I think he definitely has a point.

The piece is reminiscent of the swoon-worthy Lyra, but with less mesh and plain stockinette flowers instead of twisted stitches. It's a speedy knit, actually--he finished the 140 row-pattern in a little over two weeks. Of course, he does have eight arms...

Harry must have adored the Malabrigo lace yarn, seeing as how an order form order for 100 skeins of the stuff in various colors is clipped to the front of his notes. Oh wait! Here's a match! Here's a pile of ashes that used to be an order form! Here's a spider web coated with order-form ashes! And here's a Really Annoyed Giant Spider waving eight lethally sharp objects!

I guess I shall post the remaining photos and leave him to sulk, surrounded by Ninja Stars, RPG, and flamethrower.

A Letter From Finland

I confess that, up until recently, I rarely thought about Finland. If I did think about Finland, it was usually because I was thinking about Kyrgyzstan, a country with an overwhelming and catastrophic vowel drought. Every time I ran across a reference to Kyrgyzstan, I would invariably think how useful it would be if Kyrgyzstan would indulge in some aggressive phonetic exchange with a consonant-challenged country such as Ethiopia, Estonia, or Finland. Kyrgyzstan could unload it's overabundance of consonants and Finland (or Ethiopia or Estonia) could trade down its vowel surplus--a clear win/win for everyone, most especially anyone who has trouble pronouncing things like Kyrgyz* and "Puhuuko kukaan täällä englantia?".**

Thanks to Ravelry, Finland has been much in my thoughts this last week, as I have been exchanging emails with a lovely knitter in Finland named Marjut (whose website is here). At one point, I idly asked her about the State of Knitting in her country. To my delight, she sent back a thoughtful, insightful, and fascinating essay, which I thought I would share with you guys.

NOTE: If you start clicking on the links in the article, please do NOT blame me if you suddenly need postage rates from Finland. It's her fault, not mine. No! Hers!

From: Marjut

I’m lucky to live in Espoo, the second biggest city right next to our capital Helsinki. I have a lot of possibilities when it comes to yarn shopping as there are many yarn shops around. Not all the people in Finland have yarn shops this close but there are more and more great online shops.

I think the yarn shop business can be divided into three categories.

First, there are the shops I could call dinosaurs in a respectful way, the brick and mortar shops that have been around for ages. It does not matter whether knitting is trendy or not because they have enough regular customers to keep the business alive. They usually sell good reliable yarns from good reliable brands, some domestic but mostly imported ones. I’d guess the yarns are mostly Nordic or European. They’re mostly made of wool, cotton, alpaca and other natural fibres or they’re at least blends, very rarely they’re 100% acrylic. To mention just a few brands, the first ones that come to my mind are Garnstudio, Gjestal, Istex, Grignasco and Schoeller & Stahl.

The shops might also carry something fancy and trendy from eyelash yarns to other novelty yarns and luxury yarns such as cashmere and silk (blends). If the public demands and the yarn shops get good deals, they may also add new brands, like Rowan, to their selection.

The shopkeepers usually know a lot and have gained a lot of experience throughout the years. They might even have the next generation working in the shop now.

While some of the dinosaurs don’t even have web sites, some of them have moved on. They’ve started selling Debbie Bliss, Colinette and Noro and yarns made of exotic fibres like milk and soy as well and they have online stores.

Secondly, there is the Internet generation, the young women who know foreign online yarn shops and the different lovely yarns from abroad. They realised that no one is importing those yarns to Finland so they decided to do it themselves and during the last year or two they have opened many online shops. They don’t always have brick and mortar shops (some do and some don’t), but they do go to fairs or such events so you can go and fondle the yarns. They sell luxurious sock and scarf yarns, SWTC, ShibuiKnits, Malabrigo and many American yarns and bring on the new yarns as soon as they can.

They also like to cooperate with the Finnish online knitting magazine Ulla which I appreciate very much, being one of the founders and the editor in chief. Ulla is the Finnish equivalent of Knitty, made by Finnish knitters for Finnish knitters. The first issue was published in 2004.

Thirdly, we have Novita, formerly known as the Helsingin villakehräämö (Helsinki wool spinnery). Novita practically dominates the Finnish market, you can get the yarns from every supermarket that sells yarn and their most famous yarn 7 Veljestä (7 brothers, named after a famous Finnish book by Aleksis Kivi) is even on the Ravelry top 100 list.

Novita is both loved and hated. People say that the quality of the wool blend yarns has gone down during the last years and that the new yarns are mostly plastic and have too few or terrible colours. I think it’s at least partially true. Novita does have nice cotton yarns, though. It’s also true that if you want an inexpensive working horse yarn you an always go and buy Novita. They do not have much of a colour selection or the yarns look like someone used all the crayons in the box to colour it, but the yarn is easy to get. I think people partly complain because they feel let down due to the quality issues and partly for the reason a friend one explained once. She told her husband: “Darling, I nag because I want you to change your bad habits. I want to be with you and not change you to another man.”

Novita has recently launched three new luxury yarns, an eco(ish) wool yarn Stone, a wool and silk blend Wind and a wool and bamboo blend Cloud. That’s really an improvement.

Then, of course, there are small spinneries, such as Pirtin kehräämö and Ylistaron kehräämö that buy wool from the local sheep farmers and spin their own wool yarns. You can also send your own wool there to be spun.

I almost forgot Wetterhoff and Vuorelma, two corner stones of the Finnish yarn business. Wetterhoff was founded by Fredrika Wetterhoff as a handicrafts school in 1885. It is still a school and much more. In the shop they sell yarns for knitting, weaving and other handicrafts. Vuorelma was founded by Helmi Vuorelma about 100 years ago and they also sell yarns for knitting, weaving and other crafts as well as the Finnish national costumes or supplies for making them yourself.

There are also some really cool indie dyers. First there was the Kool-Aid frenzy after which people moved on to acid and reactive dyes and some started selling their hand-dyed yarns. We have Ilu, who sells Handu yarns. We have Villa Mokka who sells Mokkasukka sock yarns in her yarn shop, you can see the recent colours in her blog. We have Juuli who recently opened an online store Naurava Lammas (The Laughing Sheep) and sells fibres for spinners also. We have Utuna with an ecological touch, the owner has her yarn spun and dyes it herself. There’s also Tuulia who lives in the USA, designs knitwear, spins and dyes yarn and who has a small Etsy shop. The indie business is small but very much admired among the Internet-savvy knitters and knitbloggers and I probably forgot many dyers anyway.

I can’t think of anything as traditional and well-known knitting patterns as, for example, the Icelandic and Norwegian sweaters or the fishermen sweaters. Of course, there are some traditional sweater patterns. The Jussi sweater for men comes first to my mind but it’s actually quite a new design from the early 1920’s. There’s the partly knitted and partly crocheted Korsnäs sweater (from a place called Korsnäs) for the masochistic knitters and the tikkuripaita from the west coast and archipelago area. (“Tikkuri” is the part with a different pattern under the collar. Only that section was decorated because it was the only part you could see if you wore a coat).

The Finnish knitting patterns are pretty much the same as the Nordic or Baltic ones as there has been cultural exchange all along. Knitting came to Finland in the 17th century from Middle Europe through a nunnery in Naantali, before that the naalbinding technique was used. Sock knitting was an important trade then. First men knitted the expensive luxury socks for sale, but when knitting became more of an everyday thing, it moved on to women. In addition to socks, people knitted mittens, sweaters and scarves, later also cardigans and spun their own yarn. Knitting was seen as a virtue, a good housewife knitted all the time, no matter where you were. Today both girls and boys are taught to knit in the first grades of school but few men knit.

We did not knit as lovely lace scarves as the Estonian knitters but we did some nice colourwork. There’s an old mitten book Sata kansanomaista kuviokudinmallia (100 folk coloured knitting patterns) from the 40’s that was recently re-published due to high demand from the Finnish knitters. One knitter found the then out-of-print book from an used books store and blogged about it, the others got excited and started e-mailing the publisher and finally the book was republished. It includes 100 mitten patterns collected mostly from the east and west coasts.

The new generation has also published knitting books which are not all about instant gratification. The authors of Punokset puikoille, Kristel Nyberg and Johanna Koski, started by designing knitting patterns for Ulla and due to the huge public demand (from friends and buddies also) they published a book.

Another internationally known Finnish knitter and knitblogger is Tikru. She first published the GreenGable cardigan pattern in her blog, people loved it, talked a lot about it and then Vogue Knitting found it in Ravelry. It was published in the Fall 08 issue.

Disclaimer: These are the first things that came to my mind. I probably forgot many important things! Watch out for the sequel…

*This means either "40 girls," "40 tribes," "imperishable", "inextinguishable" or "undying," depending on whose doing the translation.

** This means "Do you speak English? in Finnish. A handy phrase to know if you can wrap your mouth around it.

A Little Subtle Color

It was cold and rainy the other day, so Harry decided to reorganize his stash. He kindly allowed me to assist as long as I didn't pilfer anything (or try to steal back my priceless ebony circulars). He did, however, graciously assent to my taking anything he didn't want. Among his rejects, I unearthed a small ball of uninspiring white Aran-weight cashmere silk and a partial skein of variegated Richmore Count 10 mohair.

A few hours later, Kyoko-san's birthday present was finished:


I was intrigued by the fact that, no matter how close I looked, I couldn't see two separate yarns. The Count 10 is so thin that it virtually melted into the heavier-weight yarn, while still imparting its lovely variegation and fuzzy silkiness to the finished object.


The pattern is a free Ravelry download called Beaufort--get a copy here.

As I was working away on the hat, I noticed Harry carefully placing a skein of hot pink fun fur into his neatly arranged stash drawer. When I asked him what he intended to do with it, he mumbled something about a blow-up tarantula doll ... pink furry legs... I really do not want to see that finished object any time soon...

Sweet!

I ordered some stuff from Yarn Place a few weeks ago (Why did I do that? Why?). When the package arrived, there was a sweet treat inside--a free ball of Dolce, a new gossamer lace yarn.

Of course, a sample was in order, so I wrestled my #0 needles away from Harry and unearthed my standard lace testing pattern from his well-hidden library (clearly not well-hidden enough, however).

Here are the specs:

Yarn Place Dolce
50% bamboo, 50% merino
7640 yards/lb
62.5 grams/1093 yards per ball
Needle size used for swatch: 0

I photographed the swatch along side Yarn Place's Angel for comparison. As you can see, Dolce is quite fine--apparently much finer than Angel (8423 yards/pound), even though the specs say otherwise. Dolce is tightly spun and I think #00 needles would enhance its appearance, but I was too lazy to knit a second swatch.





Pros: Pleasantly springy, slightly silky yarn with a tweedy appearance (at least in the color I received). Dropped stitches don't run away immediately.

Cons: Colors are subdued and the selection is limited to muted shades. No black, no white, no red. Fortunately, no pea green, either. I couldn't knit this with my eyes closed--it required my undivided attention.

I personally prefer Angel's cuddly and lively feel, but if you like your fine lace yarn a little polished with a bit of a bounce, go get some here and knit on!

No Two Snowflakes...

...And no three skeins of Handmaiden Seasilk, either. I had ordered three skeins of Violet some time ago and, while two of the skeins were a pretty good match, the third skein was too red to even be designated a fifth step-cousin twice removed.

Triinu's shawl, like Hyrna, has a pretty, fluted border, so figured I could drop the mismatched skein into a pot of dark blue dye and use it for the edging. As you can see here, I followed through on this inspired thought and the shawl came out looking rather pretty.


My copy of the pattern is, well, intensely hilarious, sprinkled with directionally randomized double decreases, as well as a few single decreases meandering in the wrong direction. I giggled through the body, and by the time I got to the edging, I was laughing out loud with every row. The finishing row evoked sidesplitting laughter--the sequence given for crocheting off the stitches had nothing to do with the actual number of stitches on the needle. The fact that I paid an extortionist price for the, erm, directions, contributed a final sprinkling of mirth.

Fortunately, it was easy enough to fix the errors by checking which way the leaves were leaning, and crocheting together sensible groups of stitches at the end.

And boy, there was an abundance of leaning leaves...




...and held up the the light, the pattern is both graceful and dignified.


I received one email from a reader who said her pattern had no errors, so the designer must have made the corrections in later versions. If you can bear the $30 price tag, it's a quick and pleasant knit. Ordering information can be found on this Yahoo group.

After finishing Triinu's shawl, I was depressed to note that my WIP sink* was empty. Unlike most knitters, I loathe starting projects. Find project, find yarn, find needles, experiment, repeat...table littered with notes, needles, pattern fragments, eraser crumbs...ugh

But I persevered and now have two more Niebling shawls (I need more shawls, right?) and a pretty sweater on the needles. Alas, they are too diminutive for photography at the moment.

In lieu of eye candy, however, I would like to point out the usefulness of a trained lapcat.

Here I am peacefully knitting around, when suddenly, Laptop spots an error!


She points her nose right at it so I can pinpoint the problem.


She certainly knows her Nieblings--what a cat!


*My knitting lives in the kitchen bar sink.

It's In The Bag

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Japanese is their endearing ability to make something out of nothing. Well, almost nothing. What other culture could have invented the Corn Flake Sundae (corn flakes, whipped cream, maraschino cherry); karaoke (microphone, tin ear); and the subject of today's post: the furoshiki (square cloth)?

Furoshiki literally means bath (furo) spread (shiki). The term was coined in the Edo period (1615-1868) when public baths became popular. Patrons arrived at the bath house with a change of clothes and other essentials, tidily wrapped in a furoshiki. The cloth was then spread on the floor, giving the bather a personal space on which to change clothes.

More recently, furoshiki have evolved into a package-wrapping art form. The concept and execution are quintessentially Japanese--space-efficient, ecologically sound, totally practical, and exquisitely elegant.

I purchased several instruction manuals on my last trip, and I especially recommend this one. For some inscrutable reason, the directions are in both Japanese and English, and the wrap jobs are just exquisite.





Although these wrappings look complicated, they are actually easy to do, requiring only the ability to make a square knot. And frankly, a granny knot seems to work just as well, although the ties might not look quite symmetrical.

Today's post will show you how to make two quick knitting bags and the most sought-after container in the galaxy: a watermelon holder. You know you need one. Go ahead, snicker. But the next time you go to the market and wrestle with an awkward, slippery, round, heavy watermelon, you'll remember I Told You So.

All you need for this lesson is a square cloth. Obviously, the larger the cloth, the more it can hold.

Let's start with the watermelon holder, which, by the way, can actually hold knitting, a bowling ball, or some frolicking chipmunks.

Place your watermelon (or pile of chipmunks) towards the back of the furoshiki.


Tie the two back corners together with a square knot. Notice the hole behind the knot. You will be using this in a minute.







Pull the front two corners through the hole.


Lift them up...



...Twist them...


...And tie them together with another square knot.


You're done!

Here's a slightly more complicated bag.

Start by tying an overhand knot in each corner of the furoshiki.



Tie two of the knotted corners together. And then tie the other two knotted corners together.


You're done!


If you want to, you can pass one handle through the other, like this:


Finally, I'll show you how to make a bag with real handles. In this case, I used a set of plastic circles. You can buy these on eBay or get them from a shop like SpinBlessing.


Pull two corners front to back through one handle.


Bring the corners around to the front and tie them in a knot.


Do the same with the other two corners.



You're done! Here's what the open bag looks like:


I love these bags for two reasons: first, when not in use, they occupy little space, and second, you can tailor the size of the bag to its contents. And, of course, when people admire your knitting bag, you can tell them you make it in under two minutes.